James Wyatt: Dragon forge

“Only if they can catch us,” Jordhan said with a grin. He spread his arms to indicate the grandeur of his ship-her three masts and the elemental ring of water surrounding her. He had every reason to be proud of her.

“We can outrun them to the coast easily enough,” Rienne said, “but then what? When we disembark, we’ll be on the beach and you’ll be at anchor, and we’ll both be easier targets.”

“I could sink them,” Gaven said. The idea was distasteful, but if it meant that Jordhan and his crew were not at risk, he’d do it.

“Don’t be so sure,” Jordhan said. “Their ships are built to weather storms. I’ve never heard of the Dragonreach lying as still as it has these past few weeks.”

Rienne put a hand on Gaven’s shoulder. “You can thank the Storm Dragon for that.”

Gaven leaned on the bulwark and surveyed the coast. Beyond the sandy beach, a cloud of mist hung over what looked like thick jungle, obscuring the horizon.

“I wish I had a better sense of the land.”

“You’re looking at as much as the charts show,” Jordhan said. “The beach with its watchers, then a strip of forest. That mist might be a permanent feature.”

“That’s one thing about the weather,” Gaven said with a grin. “It always changes.”

He closed his eyes and felt the air around him, the wind blowing toward the coast. He spread his arms and drew a long breath, then let it out slowly.

I am the storm, he thought. I am the wind.

The skin of his arms tingled, and his dragonmark grew warm. For a moment he held a swirling ball of air in his outstretched arms. With a sharp breath, it gusted out before him. He took a step back against the force of it, then planted himself more firmly on the deck. He felt Rienne’s hand on his back, lending him her strength.

The wind grew into a gale blowing out from the Sea Tiger’s prow. He opened his eyes and watched it churn the sea into foaming waves, then kick up blasts of sand on the beach. Branches thrashed wildly, and the mist roiled before dissipating completely in the face of the mighty wind.

Beyond the forest, the land rose up in a wall of forbidding mountains, high enough that their peaks were cloaked in snow. Gaven staggered back another step, as though the mountains pushed back against his blast of wind.

“Ten seas,” Jordhan breathed. “How are you going to get across those?”

Gaven ignored him, keeping his mind focused on the wind. The mist draping the forest blew off in wild streams away from the central point directly ahead of the ship’s prow. The mountains indeed formed a wall following the line of the coast, rising higher toward the east. As he watched, dark shapes took to the air, spreading wide wings to ride the wind rising off the mountains. Dragons.

“There, to the east,” Rienne breathed in his ear.

Gaven focused more of his attention to the east. The Seren longship’s sails flapped fiercely, and the wind turned her broadside to the Sea Tiger as the Seren crew fought to furl the sails and bring their oars to bear. Gaven kept his eyes on the horizon and saw what Rienne had seen. After reaching their highest point, the mountains dropped abruptly on either side toward the sea.

“Good eye, Rienne,” Jordhan said. “There’s an inlet or bay there, and I’d wager it cuts through the mountains.”

Gaven slumped against Rienne, and the wind died as suddenly as it had begun.

“Get us there,” he said, panting for breath.

“I’ll do my best,” the captain answered.

“You’d better get your charts,” Rienne said. “You’re going to be adding to them.”

“Let’s hope they find their way back to Khorvaire.”

Despite their taste of Gaven’s power, the Serens shadowed the Sea Tiger along the coast, trying to keep between her and the beach. The Serens knew the waters better than Jordhan’s charts could show him, and the captain’s caution kept the galleon from outdistancing the Seren longship.

“If we hit a rock or even a sandbar out here, we might as well have sailed into the jaws of the Keeper,” he said. “No one will come to rescue us, and we’ll find no harbor to repair the hull.”

“We’re no better off if the Serens ram us,” Gaven pointed out.

“I’m fairly certain you can prevent that.”

“Probably. But they have oars as well as sails, and I’m not going to underestimate their determination to drive us away.”

Jordhan sighed. “We’re going as fast as I dare. They haven’t caught us yet.”

As fast as Jordhan dared proved to be fast enough. The captain dropped anchor at night, refusing to sail the unfamiliar waters in the dark. Gaven stayed on deck through the night, tracking the shadow of the Seren ship by the light of the Ring of Siberys, but they came only a little closer, keeping a safe distance from the Sea Tiger while still guarding the beach. By the middle of the next day, the inlet was in clear view-wide and calm, flanked by jutting pillars of natural stone like twin sentinels guarding the entrance to Argonnessen’s inner reaches.

As they approached the inlet, the Serens fell farther behind, until the longship was nothing more than a dark speck amid the sea spray on the horizon.

“I think they’ve turned back,” Rienne said.

Jordhan nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me. They’re superstitious about this land. As far as I know, Totem Beach is as far as they go inland.”

“With those mountains as barrier, I can hardly blame them,” Gaven said.

“Perhaps that’s all there is to it. But I suspect they wouldn’t enter this inlet-they wouldn’t dare trespass on the dragons’ land.”

“What remarkable discretion,” Rienne said. Gaven scowled at her, but she smiled and put a hand on his arm.

“You know I’m joking,” she said. “We’re in this together.”

He put an arm around her shoulder and gazed ahead at the sentinel pillars. On the western side of the inlet, the stone was clearly part of the mountain range that shadowed Totem Beach. At that point, the sea pressed in close to the mountains, squeezing out the beach almost completely. The mountains, for their part, grew shorter as if giving way to the sea’s advance into the inlet, but offered one last proclamation of their strength with this outcropping. On the eastern side, though, the stone towered over a surrounding blanket of forest. The mountain chain continued on the other side of the inlet, but much farther inland.

As they sailed closer to the pillars, the land beyond took shape. The inlet proved to be a wide channel cut deep into the mainland. On either side, the mountains sloped up to form a daunting barrier, but ahead the land rose more gently-Gaven was confident that they had found a way in to the land of dragons.

With the inlet beckoning, Gaven found it hard to stand still. He paced the deck through the afternoon, his eyes fixed on the gap in the mountains. It was a threshold few had ever crossed before him, an entrance into an almost unknown land. Even more, he felt something beyond the inlet calling to him, enticing him with a deeper understanding of the Prophecy. He kept the sails full of wind, but the Sea Tiger couldn’t sail fast enough to satisfy him. He tried to persuade Jordhan to keep sailing through the night-the entrance was so close! — but the captain refused. He spent another restless night sleeping in fits, then getting up to pace the deck some more.

Late the next morning, the pillars rose up on either side of the Sea Tiger. They were miles apart, but they still seemed threatening as they loomed above the ship. Gaven watched them drift slowly past-then started in amazement.

The stone of the pillars was striated in varying shades of gray, brown, and red. The sides facing the inlet had strangely smooth walls-but they were carved with the enormous faces of dragons. They were clustered near the tops of the pillars, far above the reach of any human hands. Dozens of them, and no two the same. Long horns and short ones curled and coiled, or jutted straight back or to the sides. Scaly ridges jutted at every angle from cheeks, jaws, chins, and ears. Each one had its own attitude, its own personality. Gaven pointed them out to Jordhan and Rienne.