James Wyatt - Storm dragon

Ossa stepped ahead of the others and addressed Rienne, pointedly turning away from Gaven. “I know from experience it’s pointless to ask for Gaven’s surrender,” he said, “but there is still a chance for you, Lady Alastra.”

“Surrender?” Rienne said. “You don’t know me very well, Ossa.”

“There are few witnesses to the events near the Mournland, and it’s not too hard to believe that he enchanted you and forced you to aid him. I certainly can’t think of a more logical explanation for your behavior.”

Gaven sneered. “You’re wasting your time, Kundarak.”

“Am I?” Ossa finally acknowledged Gaven’s presence with a glance. “She delivered you to justice once, she can do so again. And certainly escape with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. You needn’t spend the rest of your life a fugitive, Lady Alastra.”

“No,” Gaven interjected, “You’re wasting your time chasing me at all. Two of us escaped from Dreadhold. Haldren’s the one fomenting war and planning his conquest of Khorvaire. Why are you spending all your energy chasing me?”

Bordan stepped forward at that. “When you’re just a harmless, misunderstood victim? Is that it, Gaven? We’re chasing you because you’re a dangerous fugitive. You expect us to just let you run around Khorvaire crashing the lightning rail and airships as the mood strikes you?”

“If you hadn’t been chasing me, neither of those accidents would have happened,” Gaven said.

“What makes you think you’re so damned important, Gaven?” Bordan pushed his way through the rank of dwarves and thrust his face into Gaven’s, heedless of the shield of flames around Gaven’s body. “You think you’re more important than the people you’ve killed? Is your life worth more than theirs?”

“Haldren’s about to plunge the world into war again. Do you understand that?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Gaven. Yes, Haldren’s a mass murderer. But you still have Evlan d’Deneith to answer for. You might be less evil than he is, but that doesn’t mean you’re good. You’ve earned your place in Dreadhold-or worse. So we’re going to take you in, whether it’s now or later. And then we’ll find Haldren and take him in, and put an end to this nonsense. And the world will be a better place when you’re in a cell again.”

Gaven snarled, and lightning answered him, dancing around the spires of the mooring tower above them. “Take me in? You?”

“We will prevail, Gaven.” Bordan’s smile was calm and confident, which only infuriated Gaven more.

“How? You can’t handle me.”

It was not Bordan who answered, but Ossa. Her voice, too, was calm. “We don’t have to handle you, Gaven,” she said. “We just have to handle her.”

Gaven realized his mistake at once. While he’d been yelling at Bordan, the dwarf in the back had cast a spell on Rienne, freezing her in place. Gaven sent a hurricane blast of wind down the alley, sending Bordan sprawling on his back and forcing the dwarves into half crouches. But two of the dwarves held Rienne’s arms, and they started pulling her stiffened body away, letting the wind lighten their load. Ossa pressed the tip of a dagger to Rienne’s neck.

“Careful, Gaven,” the dwarf shouted over the gale. “The wind seems to have caught my blade.”

Gaven saw a prick of crimson well up on Rienne’s neck. The wind caught it and drew it in a line across her throat, as though demonstrating what Ossa threatened to do. With another rumble of thunder overhead, Gaven made the wind stop. His shoulders slumped.

Rain began to patter on the cobblestones around them, to hiss and vanish in the flames that still licked across Gaven’s body, to spatter Ossa’s scarlet shirt with darker spots like blood. The dwarf spellcaster spoke another spell and snuffed the magic of Gaven’s fiery shield. Gaven stared at the tip of Ossa’s blade and the dimple it made in Rienne’s throat.

“If you harm her,” he growled, “I swear that I will hunt down every person that so much as knows your name.”

Two of the dwarves moved to seize Gaven’s arms and pull them behind his back. As they clamped manacles around his wrists, he saw Bordan get to his feet and look up at the sky.

“I must admit my surprise, Gaven,” Bordan said. “I knew you were powerful. But when did rain last fall in the streets of Stormhome?”

The greatest of the daelkyr’s brood, the Soul Reaver feasts on the minds and flesh of a thousand lives before his prison breaks. The Bronze Serpent calls him forth, but the Storm Dragon is his doom. A clash of dragons signals the sundering of the Soul Reaver’s gates. The hordes of the Soul Reaver spill from the earth, and a ray of Khyber’s sun erupts to form a bridge to the sky. The Storm Dragon descends into the endless dark beneath the bridge of light, where the Soul Reaver waits. There among the bones of Khyber the Storm Dragon drives the spear formed from Siberys’s Eye into the Soul Reaver’s heart. And the Storm Dragon walks through the gates of Khyber and crosses the bridge to the sky.

The Starpeaks jutted up above Thaliost as if a fiend imprisoned in the earth had pushed them upward in its struggles to escape. Senya stood on a rocky overlook at the edge of the mountains, with Arrakas d’Deneith at her elbow, never letting her stray too far. The dramatic landscape spread out below left her speechless. To the southeast, hills spread out from the mountains like ripples frozen into earth. Boulders littered the rocky ground, gathered in places into enormous cairns commemorating fallen soldiers from untold centuries of warfare. On the eastern edge of the plain, a dark forest stood out against the background of the jagged field. A chill wind blew out of the mountains at her back, moaning as it blew through gulleys and chasms in the bare rock.

It was easy to see why Aundair considered this land Aundairian soil: the only natural feature that divided the land was the Aundair River, which flowed into Scions Sound just south of the plain. But at the end of the Last War, the Thronehold Accords had established the new border between Thrane and Aundair somewhere in the middle of this plain below them, and extending on an indeterminate path through the Silver Woods beyond. By demanding that Thrane’s borders include Thaliost, the Thrane delegation to Thronehold had almost undercut the peace process. Had the memory of Cyre’s desolation not been so fresh in everyone’s memory, this plain might have seen another decade of war.

“The Starcrag Plain,” Arrakas said, gazing down with Senya onto the rocky field below them. “So just to the north-” He pointed an armored finger to the left, to the mouth of a wide valley that opened into the plain. “Bramblescar Gorge. Not too deep into that charming valley, just across the border in Aundair, we’ll find your Haldren camped and ready to launch a new war over Thaliost. We’ll reach his camp by nightfall.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Senya said. She knew her protests were futile-she had run through the same arguments at least a dozen times since Arrakas had captured her in Vathirond. “He won’t jeopardize his plans for my sake.”

“Don’t worry,” the Sentinel Marshal said, still staring at the valley. A grin touched the corner of his mouth. “You’re not the only dragon in my flight.”

Senya suppressed a shudder at the mention of dragons, though she knew the phrase simply referred to a tavern game. She wondered how much Arrakas knew about Haldren’s plans. Was he prepared to venture into that valley and come face-to-face with a real flight of dragons?

Senya found herself much less nervous about a score of dragons than she was about her inevitable encounter with Haldren.