James Wyatt - Storm dragon

“The plain that lies in the sunset shadow of the mountains of stars,” Gaven said. Again the dread gripped him, and he took a deep breath.

“What?” Darraun said, but then he nodded. “Yes, it’s to the east of the Starpeaks.”

“They’re attacking there in order to fulfil the Prophecy. Sovereigns,” Gaven said, “it’s going to be a bloodbath.”

While Darraun and Rienne slept, Gaven was left alone on the deck. The Ring of Siberys shone bright overhead, and the approaching dawn stained clouds in the eastern sky red. To his mind, they whispered warnings of doom: the shining ring of dragonshards that lit the night foretold the consummation of a prophetic cycle, the emergence of the Soul Reaver and the revelation of the Storm Dragon, while the bloody signs of dawn spoke plainly of the cost that would be paid in human lives.

He turned the airship inland, and absently guided her between the darkness of the Whisper Wood on his right and the shadows of the Gray Wood on his left, following a narrow strip of grassy land between the two forests. He was grateful that the navigation didn’t require more attention-his vision seemed to keep slipping between the reality that presented itself to his senses and something deeper, the language of creation.

The Prophecy was written everywhere. Everything he saw spoke of its past and its potential. As he piloted the Eye of the Storm between Aundair’s primeval forest and its younger offspring, making his way to the jutting Starpeaks, he saw the words that had made them and heard distant echoes of the language they strained to speak. And images of his nightmares flashed through his mind, tastes of the horrors those lands would see.

Vultures wheeling over fields strewn with corpses. The howling hordes of the Soul Reaver boiling up from Khyber and spreading out across the land. Legions of soldiers beneath the banner of the Blasphemer. Dragons in the sky.

The visions blended and blurred together, weaving themselves into a tapestry of horror in which he could no longer discern individual threads. Haldren’s march to war would not be the end of the nightmare.

Rienne emerged from below decks at dawn, and Gaven watched with a tired half smile as she stretched and practiced with Maelstrom at the keel. Darraun came up a little later, rubbing his stomach.

“Do you think Thordren had any supplies stashed away?” he asked no one in particular.

“You’re welcome to look below,” Rienne said, “but don’t get your hopes up.”

Darraun disappeared back down the forward hatch, and Rienne hopped up onto the bulwarks’ railings, keeping perfect balance as she practiced complex sequences of lunges, parries, and ripostes. Gaven watched carefully, and chose a moment when her balance seemed most tenuous to jerk hard on the wheel, making the ship lurch to port.

Rienne didn’t miss a step in her exercise, but Darraun let out a cry of pain from the cargo hold. A moment later his head appeared in the hatch.

“Everything all right?” he called to Gaven.

“Fine, sorry,” Gaven said. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Just cracked my head on a beam.” He rubbed his scalp, then checked his fingers for blood.

“Maybe you should go back to being a dwarf,” Rienne suggested.

Darraun scowled and dropped below again.

“Do you think I hurt his feelings?” Rienne asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Aha!” Darraun yelled from below. “We’ve got breakfast!”

Rienne stepped lightly from the railing to peer down the hatch. “What did you find?”

Darraun emerged with an armload of small boxes and a strip of dried beef dangling from his mouth. “Lady Alastra,” he mumbled around the meat. He left his sentence unfinished as he began setting out the foodstuffs he had gathered-pickled vegetables, dried fruits, nuts, and salted beef. When he had swallowed, he addressed Rienne again. “Lady Alastra, I hope that we have the pleasure of traveling in each other’s company under better circumstances so that I can cook you a proper meal. But for the present, please enjoy these… erm, trail rations, with my compliments.”

Rienne and Gaven laughed. “He really is quite a cook,” Gaven added. “I’ll vouch for him.”

“There are many men to whom I would entrust my dinner,” Rienne said, bowing slightly to Darraun. “There are precious few to whom I would entrust my life. I don’t know if I can bring myself to entrust both to the same man, but it would be an illustrious honor indeed.”

Darraun smiled awkwardly, then busied himself with the food.

With the help of a box of spices he unearthed from his pack, Darraun managed to make even the preserved food palatable, which earned him a new measure of respect in Rienne’s eyes. As the day wore on, Gaven found himself dozing at the wheel, while Rienne and Darraun took turns pacing along the prow. They left the Gray Wood behind and followed the curve of the Whisper Wood’s edge along to the south, then left it as well, making straight for the eastern edge of the Starpeaks. Any movement on the rocky plain below brought a moment of intense scrutiny and heightened tension, then a return to the interminable waiting once the lookout realized it was just an animal or a farmer or a gust of wind below.

Rienne and Darraun were so focused on searching the ground below that it was actually Gaven who spotted the first real threat. “Check the sky,” he called, “four points to port!”

The sun was high in the sky, but beginning its descent behind the Starpeaks on the airship’s port side. Darraun had to cup his hands around his eyes, but Rienne spotted it immediately.

“A dragon,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Gaven shouted. “It’s not very big.”

Rienne wheeled and gave him an incredulous stare. “Not very big?” she said.

“No, he’s right,” Darraun said. “Compared to Vaskar, this one’s small, immature. No bigger than a bear.”

“If you mean one of those Eldeen bears that the druids send before them in war to tear up enemy infantry, I’ll grant you that.” Rienne gripped Maelstrom in a trembling hand.

“Yes, that’s exactly the kind of bear I mean,” Darraun said.

The dragon closed on them quickly-it had clearly seen them before Gaven spotted it. The sun gleamed dull red on its scales, and Gaven’s mind filled with the image of the Morning Zephyr in flames outside the Mournland. He had a sudden, unsettling realization.

“How do I land this thing?” he called.

“Land her?” Darraun said. “I don’t think you do. That’s why they have mooring towers.”

“Well, start looking for a mooring tower. I don’t want to be in the air when that thing breathes fire on this ship.”

“No,” Rienne said, “you should be able to do a ground landing in a ship this size. Smaller airships like this are designed to moor just about anywhere.”

“Then take a look beneath us, and tell me where to set her down.” He glanced at the onrushing dragon, now close enough that he could distinguish its horns and the predatory curve to its mouth. Rienne rushed to the starboard side and peered over the edge.

“Rocky, very steep-and trees to the east. I don’t see-”

“Oh, damn it to the Darkness!” Gaven swore. He stretched one hand to the clear blue sky, and the sun went dark, blotted out by a black thunderhead that appeared from nowhere. He jerked his hand downward, and a bolt of lightning thundered out of the sky and struck the onrushing dragon. For an instant, it hung suspended in the air, engulfed in burning light, then it plummeted downward.

Spreading its wings, the dragon pulled out of its fall and swooped back up toward the airship, sending a blistering gout of fire from its gaping maw ahead of its flight. The flames parted around the keel and licked up around the bulwarks, but it seemed that much of their energy was pulled into the ring of fire surrounding the ship, making it flare brightly for a moment, then fade back to normal.