James Wyatt - Storm dragon

“Quite a day,” he said.

Gaven made a sound a little like a laugh and nodded.

“This time last night I was landing a wyvern on top of Dreadhold.”

“How did you end up a part of all this, Darraun?”

“Haldren figured the group needed someone with my skill set, to work on Dreadhold’s defenses. And help keep everyone alive, I suppose. He planned the whole thing from his cell, you know.”

“How did he do that? We were kept in the Spellward Tower-he couldn’t use any magic there.”

“Not in his cell, no. Except the magic of his tongue. You’ve probably noticed by now that he could talk a sphinx into answering its own riddle for him. So partly he persuaded the guards to help him out. And he also used some magic to talk to Vaskar, when he was out of his cell for exercise and such. Again, he talked his way out of the usual restraints and the constant supervision.”

Gaven shook his head. “So he told Cart and Senya to find an artificer, and they got you?”

“Senya talked to people in Aundair who were loyal to Haldren, and my name came up.”

Gaven turned to look at him-a little too closely, Darraun thought. “You made sure your name would come up,” Gaven said.

Darraun let a trace of a smile show on his face. “What do you mean?” he said.

Gaven shrugged. “So are you a true believer in Haldren’s cause? Anxious to see him sitting on the throne of a new Galifar? Or are you just along for the ride?”

“Something like that.”

“Something like which one?”

“What were we talking about?”

Gaven arched an eyebrow at him and stopped asking questions.

“So,” Darraun said, “now that you know all about Haldren’s plans, what are you going to do?”

“Do?” Gaven scratched his chin. “At this point, it seems I’m along for the ride whether I like it or not.”

“I take it you don’t like it.”

“It’s better than Dreadhold, but I don’t look forward to spending the rest of my life on the run from Sentinel Marshals. If I’m going to be free, I’d like to be really free.”

“And you think helping Haldren will get you there?”

Gaven scoffed. “No. I think helping Haldren will get me dead.”

“So you’re along for the ride for now. Not long-term.” “Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because I could talk a sphinx into answering its own riddle for me.”

“I thought that was Cart.”

Darraun laughed. “Don’t underestimate Cart’s powers of persuasion.”

“Believe me, I don’t. I saw the way he jumped at that… thing.” Gaven gestured out toward the surrounding jungle.

“The displacer beast? Yeah, Cart can handle himself in a fight.”

Gaven stared into the dying embers.

Darraun shifted so he could see Gaven more easily. “What would you do if you were really free?”

Gaven raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t look away from the fire. “I have no idea,” he said.

“You didn’t spend the last twenty-six years making plans?”

Gaven shook his head. “It never occurred to me that I might get out of there. I spent that whole time… I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about the future.” His brow furrowed. “Well, I wasn’t thinking about my future.”

“Just the Prophecy.”

“Right.”

“The future of the world, the future of countless people whose names you don’t know. Great events and terrible cataclysms. And no idea where you fit in to it all.”

“I never would have thought it had anything to do with me,” Gaven said, looking up. “The Prophecy was just a hobby for me, until-” He broke off and looked back to the fire.

“Until what?”

“I don’t know. Until I was in Dreadhold and had nothing else to think about.”

Darraun cursed to himself. He’d been so close, but he’d pushed too hard and Gaven had shut him out again. Until… what? he wondered. What had made the Prophecy take such a hold over Gaven’s mind?

And how could he not know his own part in it?

Haldren roused them early and set Cart to work packing up the camp. Gaven found it increasingly difficult to sit around the campfire and eat with these people. He’d fought with Haldren when he found the Eye of Siberys, and he was chafing under the sorcerer’s barked commands and patronizing explanations. He’d shown a little too much of his thoughts to Darraun last night. And Senya kept looking at him in a way that made him distinctly uncomfortable. After eating as quickly as he could, he got up to help Cart roll up the tents.

All too soon they stood in a close circle again. Senya held Gaven’s right hand and Darraun his left, and both seemed as though they believed Gaven could understand a secret language of squeezing his hands. He almost pulled both hands free in frustration just as Haldren completed the spell and brought them, in the blink of an eye, to Darguun.

The hobgoblin lands presented a stark contrast to the steaming jungles of Aerenal. The air was no less sweltering, even so early in the morning. But the towering trees and lush ferns were replaced by dry grasses, stunted shrubs, and barren outcroppings of red and gold rock.

“The Torlaac Moor,” Haldren announced.

Gaven surmised that Haldren was the only one of the group who had been here before. The rest looked around at the alien landscape with curiosity and perhaps fear.

Haldren gestured to the rising sun. “To the east is the Khraal rain forest, which is not too different from the jungle we just left on Aerenal.” Gaven could see a green haze on the horizon he supposed might be the canopy of a distant jungle.

“Jaelarthal Orioth,” Senya said. “The Moonsword Jungle.”

“I’m not sure what Khraal means in the Goblin tongue,” Haldren said. “It probably describes a peculiar form of disembowelment, knowing their language. And knowing the jungle, for that matter.” He turned and pointed in the opposite direction. “To the west, the Seawall Mountains divide this land from Zilargo. Just north of here, the Torlaac River marks the end of the moor, and wide plains make up the rest of the goblin lands. Far to the north, goblins dwell in ruined cities built by the good people of Cyre. Beyond that region, to the east, is the Mournland.”

“I see no settlements nearby,” Gaven said. “Where are we supposed to get supplies?”

“Have faith, Gaven,” Haldren said with a patronizing smile. “As I did when we journeyed to Whitecliff and Aerenal, I chose a destination outside of a settlement and out of sight, lest our sudden appearance startle the natives. And far better to startle an elf in Aerenal than some bugbear going about his business in Darguun.”

He laughed at his own joke, and Senya smiled at him. Darraun and Cart were busy scanning the horizon.

“In any case,” Haldren continued, “there’s a small town on the river just down in the valley there, to the north. It carries the rather quaint name of Grellreach.”

“Grellreach?” Gaven said. “I don’t understand.”

Haldren started walking to the north, with Senya and Cart falling into place beside him. Clearly, Cart was not going to allow Haldren to fall victim to another surprise attack.

“Grells are hideous aberrations said to dwell in the Seawalls near here,” Haldren explained as he walked. “They’ve been described as flying brains with beaklike mouths and long, barbed tentacles. Can you imagine living in a town named after such a thing?”

“I take it that it was not originally a Cyran settlement,” Darraun said with a wry smile.

Haldren laughed. “No, it was not.”

The spell had set them down a considerable distance from Grellreach, despite Haldren’s easy confidence. They walked through the morning, with the sun growing hotter as it neared its zenith, before they even came into sight of the town. They walked through fields of grain nestled between the wreckage of ancient settlements and monuments. Wheat stalks brushed up against weather-beaten blocks of reddish stone, the vague outlines of long-fallen buildings. Here and there a farmhouse stood at the feet of an ancient colossus, clearly built from stone salvaged from the toppled statue. Gaven had to remind himself that, as easy as it might be to think of the goblins of these lands as brutal savages, they had once ruled a mighty empire that stretched across the length and breadth of Khorvaire.