James Wyatt: Dragon forge

“Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear,” Malathar said, his dry whisper undiminished in the gale. “Wind is his steed and rain his cloak.”

“The words of creation are in his ears and on his tongue!” Gaven shouted over the howling storm. He didn’t know where the words came from. “The secrets of the first of sixteen are his.” More of the Prophecy-had he always known this?

“The Storm Dragon flies before the traitor’s army to deliver vengeance. The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer.”

Now Gaven remembered. He looked into the dragonshard in his hands and saw it, his destiny written in the lines of his dragonmark. “The maelstrom swirls around him,” he whispered, and his words were lost in the wind. “He is the storm and the eye of the storm.”

Malathar spouted another blast of black fire, but a whirlwind sprang to life around him and carried the flames away. Gaven’s feet left the ground and he clutched the dragonshard to his chest. Lightning danced around him, joining him to the whirlwind. He spoke a word, a single syllable in the language of creation, and Malathar erupted in purple fire. Lightning sprang from the whirlwind to course along the dragon’s bones. Thunder buffeted him, snapping his wings and beating him to the ground.

The dragonshard burned with red light as it had in the Dragon Forge, casting the lines of Gaven’s dragonmark around the walls and floor once more. It shone right through Gaven’s chest-he was wind and storm, not flesh-and traced lines of white fire across Malathar’s body. The wind carried streams of ash and grave dust from his bones. A scream arose in the howl of the wind, issuing not from Malathar’s body but from a black shadow that now streamed away from him in tattered ribbons. Malathar’s damned soul, bound too long to his ancient body, was lost in the wind.

Just before Dania died, Aunn remembered, she had kneeled at the pinnacle of a ziggurat in Xen’drik and let herself be swallowed in silver fire. When she stood and brushed her hair back from her face, Aunn-Auftane, at the time-had seen a silver torc around her neck-the same torc that was now part of the Dragon Forge, funneling the Secret Keeper’s power into the apparatus. Then he had seen Dania’s eyes, transformed into pools of quicksilver. When her gaze had lingered on him, he felt sure that she saw him as he really was. She moved with purpose, leading her companions to the heart of the temple where she met her end.

Purpose, Aunn thought. That’s what this is.

He didn’t think the Messenger within the prison had taken residence in his body the way the Silver Flame had filled Dania. He felt too… too present, perfectly aware of everything that happened around him. Even lying on the floor of the Dragon Forge, no detail had escaped him-he knew exactly where his bones were broken, where each of Gaven’s footsteps fell as he foolishly ran toward him, where Cart circled carefully around the dragon-king. No, he was still in control of his mind, where Dania had relinquished control.

But there was purpose now in everything he did, a cascade of objectives and intentions that all built toward the greater goal of destroying the Dragon Forge and ensuring that the Keeper of Secrets remained imprisoned. Protecting Gaven so he could reach the dragonshard, Gaven summoning this storm, Malathar’s annihilation-these were steps toward his greater purpose.

The wind whipped around him, snatching at his breath and stinging his eyes. Cart and Ashara had taken cover in the shadow of a boulder, Cart’s armored body shielding Ashara from the driving gravel and biting sand. Gaven stood on a column of whirling air, halfway to the arched roof of the Dragon Forge, arms raised skyward, lost in the storm’s fury.

A knife of lightning struck the iron structure, arced to Gaven’s outstretched arms, and flowed through his feet to the ground. Gaven threw his head back and held the lightning in place. His every muscle strained, as if the lightning were chains that bound him to the walls, and Aunn saw him begin to pull the walls down.

It was time. Before Gaven leveled the forge, Aunn had to deal with the lattice of magic and gold that fed it. He stood up and slid his healing wands back into the sheath at his belt. Then he turned and walked, unhampered by the wind, to the hilt of the sword plunged into the crystal.

He recognized the hilt-Kelas had shown him the blade. The Ramethene Sword, which Janik had discovered in Xen’drik and Maija had stolen from him when the fiendish spirit possessed her. She had given it to an agent of the Order of the Emerald Claw, who had then sold the blade to Kelas. The blade, of course, went through the ring of Dania’s torc as it entered the stone. The Torc of Sacrifice, Kelas had called it, when Aunn-Haunderk-had given it to him. An embodiment of the serpent’s binding power. The torc formed the gleaming center of an intricate lacing of silver threads, which then joined to two cylindrical reservoirs. Inside those reservoirs, Aunn thought, must be pure, distilled magic.

No, he reminded himself-or the Messenger’s velvet whisper reminded him. There was nothing pure about the magic fueling the forge. Every mote of its power was polluted by the fiend’s incalculable evil. That Dania’s sacrifice was connected to this abomination made him sick. Slowly, he stretched his fingertips to touch the silver ring of her torc.

He jumped as twin crashes of thunder boomed behind him, followed by the sound of wrenching metal. Then a monstrous roar made him wheel around in sudden terror.

Gaven had managed to wrench the roof over the forge open, and steam billowed up where rain fell into the open furnaces. The roar had come from a red dragon, small compared to Malathar, that had emerged from the furnace and was trying in vain to redirect its fiery breath at Gaven. Its wings grabbed at the air, flapping wildly, but the wind buffeted the dragon and would not let it fly. A second dragon leaped up from the furnace and well into the air, unfurling its wings as it reached the apex of its mighty leap, catching the wind and soaring away, jerking in the turbulent storm but unharmed. Then a third followed the second, just as the first dragon crashed down onto the jagged wreckage of the metal roof and lay still. A blast of lightning pinned the third dragon for an instant, but it flew on, quickly disappearing behind the lip of the canyon to the west.

Aunn drew a steadying breath and felt calm flow through him again, soft and warm. The wind raged at his back, but his mind was still and silent. Once again he stretched his fingers to touch the ring of the torc. He closed his eyes and let the web of silver threads trace themselves on his mind.

He was in the Labyrinth again, utterly lost and bereft of hope. A fiend stood close at his back, her arms wrapped seductively around his chest. “Why do you fight me?” she whispered, her breath hot in his ear. “Don’t you want me beside you?” She ran her hands over his body, seeking some response, but receiving none.

Her gentle breath became a roar of fury in his ear. “You dare threaten me?” The fiend’s face was now the horned bear of the Demon Wastes, fearsome in its rage. The hands on his chest were massive claws, and they tore into his chest. He threw his head back and screamed.

A voice called to him within the Labyrinth, “Over here, Aunn.” The pain faded and he turned his head to see Ashara, her hands pressed to the blue crystal. Cart stood behind them, trying to shield them both from the storm. Aunn looked around, but saw no fiend. He looked down, and to his surprise saw no blood on his chest.

A shadow moved within the crystal as he stepped beside Ashara, keeping his fingers on the silver tracings. The fingers of one hand met hers, and suddenly he saw the latticework in its entirety, spread like a map before him. Ashara had been working to unravel the threads at one end, and he knew at once he should do the same at the other, near the opposite reservoir. The torc and the blade-those would come last.