James Wyatt - Storm dragon

Then the creature’s smell-a mix of carrion and excrement-hit him and nearly knocked him off his feet. Gaven was glad for the sword in his hand but nervous about his lack of armor. He circled to one side and let Cart take the brunt of the troll’s initial charge.

With a word, Gaven made crackling lightning erupt along his elven blade. He ran forward, put all of his rage and frustration into his swing, and brought the sword around in a wide arc. The blade bit deep, and the lightning coursed up the creature’s body. It howled in pain. Gaven glanced behind it-and noticed two smaller trolls emerging from the cave entrance. Perhaps that first roar hadn’t been anger but a command, summoning the creature’s followers to its aid.

“More on the way!” Gaven shouted.

The mountain troll’s club came at him, and Gaven ducked, feeling the wind from the massive limb sweep over him. His attack had drawn the troll’s attention. Either that, or the creature was smart enough to recognize an unarmored foe as a soft target. Following the big troll’s lead, the other two moved in.

Gaven looked up at the trolls surrounding him. The big one was twice the size of the other two, but even the smaller ones were head and shoulders taller than him. Their claws reached for him even as the mountain troll raised its club.

Gaven kept his sword up, batting aside the smaller trolls’ tentative slashes and grabs. The trolls stepped back, and Gaven dodged as the massive club came crashing down. He knew he couldn’t outlast them in a hand-to-hand fight. They were too big, too fast, and too damned strong.

He focused his mind and chanted the syllables of another spell. Gaven’s body erupted in violet flames, and the rain hissed into steam as it touched him. All three trolls recoiled.

The mountain troll turned from Gaven with a grunt and swung its club hard into Cart. The warforged took a couple of steps back, then shook off the blow and renewed his assault. Senya darted around the mountain troll’s feet, finding its most vulnerable spots, the weaker parts of its thick, stony hide, and slashing at them with her light blade.

The two smaller trolls overcame their initial shock at the appearance of flames around Gaven, and one took a swipe at his back. The claws raked his skin, but the troll roared in pain as the violet flames engulfed its claws, searing its rubbery flesh. Both trolls backed away. Gaven brandished his sword with a roar of his own, and they scurried further back, unwilling to be seared by Gaven’s fire.

“Gaven!” shouted Haldren.

Gaven tumbled and rolled back the merest instant before an eruption of flame struck the trolls, Even so, it seared him badly-the flames around his body burned the trolls that attacked him, but did nothing to protect him from other fires. He got back to his feet in a fury. Haldren had cast the spell, he was sure, and didn’t seem to mind that Gaven had been caught in the blast. Despite his rage, Gaven had to admit that the spell had been effective. Both smaller trolls lay on the ground, their unmoving bodies charred black from the flames, and the mountain troll showed signs of serious injury. It could have been much worse.

Thunder rolled overhead, and Gaven leaped at the giant troll, channeling all his anger into each swing of his blade. It dropped to one knee, nearly overwhelmed, and Senya ran up its back to drive her sword into the base of its skull. The troll fell hard, throwing Senya to sprawl on the ground, but it did not move again. The fight was over. As Gaven tried to catch his breath, silence fell back over the ruins of Paluur Draal.

Gaven whirled on Haldren. “So what is it, Haldren? Are you dragging me along to help you on your fool’s quest, or do you want to get rid of me?” He stood nose to nose with the old man again, and grabbed a fistful of Haldren’s shirt. “Because if you want to get rid of me, I’ll go. There’s no need to kill me.”

“Don’t be absurd, Gaven.”

“Absurd? You nearly blasted me into the fires of Fernia!” “Hardly,” Haldren said.

Gaven suddenly felt like a small child getting a scolding, and his anger boiled. He pulled Haldren up so his toes just dragged on the ground. “I’m not an idiot, Haldren.”

“Of course, Gaven.” No trace of fear came through in Haldren’s voice. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, certainly not kill you. I simply realized too late that you had moved into the area of my spell. I did try to warn you.”

Gaven realized that his threatening steps toward the retreating trolls had taken him closer to the center of the fiery blast, so Haldren’s excuse might have been true. That possibility did little to diminish Gaven’s rage, though. He pushed Haldren away and stalked over to Darraun, who crouched on the ground beside Cart.

It seemed the troll had gotten one good blow in before it fell. Cart’s left arm looked badly hurt-or did it hurt? Gaven realized he had no idea if the warforged felt pain. In any event, Darraun ran his hands over the damaged arm, and his touch straightened bent plates and knotted broken cords back together. It was amazing and strangely fascinating-although, he realized, it wasn’t too different in principle from the way a healer’s magic knit flesh and bone back together. That was just a magic he was more used to seeing.

While Darraun tended to his injuries, Gaven traced a finger in a groove that ran through the stone on which he sat. He didn’t like to watch a healer’s magic when it was his flesh being knit together. A flash of light drew his eyes up to Haldren, who had just cast a spell to brighten the darkness inside the cave from which the trolls had emerged.

“Finished,” Darraun said, and he rose to join the others, who were gathered around the cave entrance, staring upward.

Gaven started to get to his feet, but the groove he’d traced caught his attention. He had run his finger along a straight part of the groove, but it was not straight for long-it traced the outline of Kraken Bay.

“Behold!” Haldren announced, sweeping his arm across the cave entrance. “The sixteen gods of Dhakaan!”

Gaven brushed a thin coat of mud away from the stone, his heart racing. He glanced up at Haldren, but the sorcerer was completely absorbed in the spectacle within the cave. He looked back at his work, smiled, and tried to sweep mud back over the map he had uncovered.

Darraun looked over Haldren’s shoulder at the cavern beyond. The cave might have been natural in origin, but the ancient builders of the place had carefully enlarged it, hollowing the ceiling and smoothing the walls. The debris of a thousand years and the more recent remnants of the trolls’ habitation littered the floor, but as Darraun’s eyes followed the arches up he realized that the grandeur of the ancient city was far better preserved here than anywhere else they had been so far.

Sixteen enormous figures stood around the far wall, their stone heads near the ceiling and their feet a troll’s height above the floor. Most of the figures were proud hobgoblins, dressed in archaic armor and carrying ornate weapons. Two loomed taller than the others, bugbears with their hairy hides and fang-filled mouths, and one goblin crouched near the center of the frieze, half the size of the burly bugbears. As Darraun looked, Haldren started naming them.

“On the left end is Norrakath the Hunter, who slew the great serpent and roped in the sea with its corpse. When humans first came to Khorvaire, they identified him with Balinor.”

Norrakath was a fearsome bugbear, leaning on a bow that seemed to be made of the bones of some beast-perhaps the ribs of the great serpent. He was a far cry from any representation of Balinor Darraun had ever seen, though the god of the hunt was sometimes depicted as a half-orc. Balinor smiled in every depiction Darraun had seen. Norrakath, on the other hand, snarled like a beast.