James Wyatt - Storm dragon

“My other… Gaven?” The old man’s skin went ashen, and he slowly sank down onto a bench. Then he seemed to recollect himself, and he looked away. “I have no other son, Sentinel Marshal. He was excoriated a long time ago.”

“All the same, it’s Gaven I need to talk to you about.” He shot a pointed glance at the other man, but Thordren sat down on the bench next to his father, his eyes glued to Evlan.

“Is he dead?” Arnoth’s eyes told Evlan almost everything he needed to know. Excoriate or not, Arnoth loved his son, and as far as he knew, Gaven was still locked away in Dreadhold.

“No. At least, not as far as I know. He has escaped.”

“Escaped? From Dreadhold?” Arnoth got to his feet again, Thordren fluttering after him, trying to get him back to the bench.

“Yes,” said Evlan. “According to House Kundarak, there was a dragon involved.”

The old man’s eyes went wide. “Where is he?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Evlan said. “I take it you have not received any communication from him?”

“Not in twenty-six years, no.”

“Were you aware that he manifested a Siberys mark during his imprisonment?”

“Yes. House Kundarak has kept me informed of developments.”

“You have seen the reports of his ravings?”

“Ravings?” Arnoth said. “You think he is mad?”

“His mind hardly seems stable, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

“You underestimate his mind, Sentinel Marshal. He is not all brawn.”

Evlan shrugged and tried another tack. “Does the name Haldren ir’Brassek mean anything to you?”

“Ir’Brassek?” Arnoth scratched the side of his face. “Wasn’t he an Aundairian general? Tried for war crimes?”

“Yes. Are you aware of any connection between your son and ir’Brassek?”

“Gaven and Haldren?” Arnoth seemed genuinely confused. “No. I can’t imagine that Gaven would associate with such a person.”

“They occupied adjacent cells in Dreadhold,” Evlan said, a reminder that Gaven was no less a criminal than Haldren.

Arnoth shook his head and looked back at Thordren. “No, I’ve never heard their names connected.” He looked back at Evlan. “Did Haldren escape with Gaven?”

“Yes, they fled Dreadhold together. Mounted on wyverns.”

Arnoth raised his eyebrows and sank back down to the bench, to Thordren’s obvious relief. “Gaven is free,” he muttered, running a hand through his short gray hair.

Thordren spoke for the first time. “Sentinel Marshal, my father is in poor health. I must ask-”

Evlan cut him off. “He has escaped, but he is hardly free. He is a fugitive from justice, and the combined efforts of Houses Deneith, Tharashk, Kundarak, and Thuranni will locate him eventually.”

“House Thuranni?” Arnoth said. “They’ll kill him!”

“Probably. Certainly you can appreciate that it would be better for Gaven if I find him before Thuranni’s assassins do. If you have any information that might help me locate him…”

“If I knew anything, I would certainly tell you, Sentinel Marshal,” Arnoth said, and Evlan believed him. “And if I hear from him…”

He trailed off. He couldn’t quite bring himself to promise that he’d turn in his son. Evlan would have marshals watch the house.

“Thank you. I have just one more question for you. Do you know where I might find Rienne ir’Alastra?”

The shadows pooled and thickened in a corner of the little room. A sword blade took shape out of the darkness, glinting dully in the dim light that filtered through the shutters of the room. Then the hand that held it appeared, covered in a black glove. Phaine d’Thuranni stepped out of the shadows, lowering his sword as his eyes swept the empty room. Another form took shape in the dark corner, and Phaine made a hand signal: Stand down.

Either they had received bad information, or they had arrived too late. Phaine shifted his sword to his left hand and used his teeth to pull the glove off his right hand. He bent over the bed beside the window, placing his palm on the mattress. A trace of a circle rumpling the blankets showed that someone had been sitting there not long before. Very recently, in fact-Phaine could still feel the heat.

Phaine shot Leina another hand signal, and she stepped to the door, pressed an ear to it, and shook her head. Then something on the door caught her eye, and she examined it. She knelt and looked at the floor, then stepped away from the door, signaling to Phaine: Look here. She pointed at the door and the floor.

Phaine crossed the room in two steps and looked where Leina had pointed. There was a mark on the door as if something had struck it. Perhaps the metal head of a mace, but not a hard blow. The floor was scuffed.

“A warforged,” he whispered. “Pacing here beside the door, and the door hit him when it opened.” The other elf nodded. Search it, Phaine told her.

Phaine pressed his own ear to the door then opened it silently. There was no one in the hall, and the opposite door stood open. Taking his sword in his right hand again, he stepped quickly across to the other room. Empty. The two beds were pushed together, their blankets piled on the floor. He found white hairs on the bed-presumably ir’Brassek’s-and curly black hairs that must have belonged to the woman the innkeeper had described, the beautiful elf. Phaine snorted. He didn’t like to imagine an elf dallying with an old human like ir’Brassek.

He stepped back across the hall, no longer making an effort at silence. “What did you find?” he asked Leina, who knelt on the floor beside the window.

“Come have a look,” she said.

Phaine crossed the room and looked over her shoulder. The window sill was thick with grime-except where a fingertip had traced patterns in the dirt.

Without thinking about it, Phaine reverted to hand signals: Over there. Leina got out of the way, and Phaine knelt on the floor to study the patterns. At first, they were incomprehensible, but he knew there was something-the shapes hinted at letters, in the ornate Draconic script. But they’d been written on top of each other, and he found it almost impossible to distinguish them. He breathed the words of a simple spell, and the letters slowly resolved themselves in his mind.

He read them aloud, translating them from Draconic to Elven. “The Bronze Serpent seeks the face of the first of sixteen.”

“What?” Leina said.

“The Prophecy. Come. Let’s get out of here.”

The shadows in the corner darkened again, and Phaine stepped into them. When he vanished, Leina took one last look around the room, then followed.

Rienne ir’Alastra whirled on Evlan, a picture of righteous fury. “I assure you, Sentinel Marshal,” she said, “if I had any idea where Gaven was, I’d tell you, just as I did all those years ago.”

She set her jaw, trying to make herself believe the words she spoke. Back then, she had honestly believed that she was helping Gaven by leading the Sentinels to him-she thought they would help him, restore him to his right mind. Instead, they had locked him in Dreadhold, and she had spent two and a half decades blaming herself for all the tortures she imagined him enduring there. Now he had escaped, and this Evlan d’Deneith seemed a little too skilled at reading the ambivalence she felt.

“I am sure you will do what’s right,” Evlan said. He smiled slightly, but his eyes fixed on her like a hawk.

She turned her back on him again. “I appreciate your confidence,” she said.

“I spoke to his father this morning,” Evlan said. The sound of his voice drew a little closer. “Master d’Lyrandar does not believe that Gaven is mad.”

“Love blinds him.”

“Perhaps. Although he was careful to remind me that, technically, he has only one son.”