Tristam leaned back against the bulkhead, rubbing his face with one hand. The rush of his duel against Marth was fading, leaving him exhausted. Dalan glanced from Seren to Tristam impatiently.
“I don’t know what to say,” Tristam said.
“And I told you, I don’t care,” Dalan said. “Whatever you learned in Zul’nadn does not matter to me so long as you use the knowledge wisely. I trust you to do so, Tristam. It merely galls me that you do not return the favor.”
Tristam looked up at the guild master soberly. “I’m sorry, Dalan,” he said.
“Apology accepted,” he said pertly. “Any more questions?”
“No,” Tristam said. Seren continued glaring at Dalan darkly.
“Then I’ll just excuse myself, if both of you are satisfied that I still deserve to live.”
Neither Tristam nor Seren spoke. Dalan gave a very curt bow and strode off.
“Tristam,” Seren whispered once he was gone. “What did you see in Zul’nadn that you didn’t tell us about?”
Memories of the Draconic Prophecy stirred in Tristam’s mind. He saw the conqueror rise above the shattered mortal nations once more, but this time he saw the conqueror’s face. The conqueror was not Ashrem, and he was not Marth.
The conqueror was Tristam.
“I don’t know,” he said, he slumped to the floor and buried his face in his hands.
Seren stood her distance for several moments, watching Tristam with a stunned and wary expression. Then she sat beside him and took his hand. Tristam looked up at her, ready to order her away, to leave him in peace. He couldn’t bring himself to speak the words.
Seren smiled, and the dark visions of the Draconic Prophecy faded back into memory.
TWENTY-FOUR
Mourning Dawn blazed a trail across the Brelish sky, soaring in wide circles over the forests and plains. The crew assembled, standing in a rough circle on the ship’s foredeck. Seren sat in the ship’s bow and reflected how strangely different the mood was among today. For perhaps the first time since she had arrived here, they were in no immediate danger and had no destination. The uncertainty was making everyone uneasy. Even Gerith was reserved as he fed scraps of fish to his glidewing, murmuring softly in his native tongue. Omax knelt in silent meditation, staring out at the sky toward the Mournland. Ijaac sat near the warforged. The dwarf had given up on his attempts to make conversation and had instead turned his attention to looking pointedly at the deck and pretending to be on the ground. Eraina paced the center of the deck restlessly while Dalan watched her with an annoyed, impatient expression. Only Pherris and Aeven seemed entirely unfazed. The gnome stood in his customary position at the helm. The dryad sat beside him, her eyes closed as she listened to the alien song of the ship’s elemental ring.
Eraina ceased pacing as Zed and Tristam emerged from the hold. The inquisitive held a sheaf of rumpled papers in one hand, a mix of Devyn Marcho’s speaker posts and Shaimin d’Thuranni’s reports. Dalan winced when he noticed the tangled heap Zed had made of the ordered documents. The inquisitive was still reading thoughtfully as he ascended. Tristam cast about the deck briefly, smiling and moving toward Seren when he saw her.
“I think we have something,” Zed said. “It isn’t much. Mostly a hunch.”
“Better than the sorts of clues we usually have, then,” Gerith said.
“Snowshale,” Dalan said, his tone warning. “Just tell us what you can, Arthen.”
The inquisitive nodded. “Well, I can’t guarantee that Marth is still where I think he is,” Zed said. “None of these speaker posts Seren stole are newer than six months.”
“The newest ones would have been useless,” Seren said. “They just would have told us where the Seventh Moon has been chasing us. We already know that.”
“True,” Zed said. “I’m just qualifying that this information could be out of date. Marth might have moved his base in the last year.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Tristam said.
“Hopefully,” Zed said dubiously. “There’s a definite pattern here.” He rifled through the stack of posts. “Over one-third of the posts originated from Nathyrr, a village in southern Thrane. Strikes me as odd, as thus far we haven’t discovered anything related to the Legacy in Thrane.”
“You think Marth’s base of operations is in Nathyrr?” Eraina asked.
“You couldn’t hide a Cyran army in Nathyrr,” Zed said, “but the village is near the Harrowcrowns. Marth’s base could be in the forest there. What’s more, the forest is close to the southern border, where Thrane meets the Mournland. So old Cyre is right nearby.”
“I’ve heard legends about the Harrowcrowns,” Gerith said. “Those forests are haunted, aren’t they?”
Zed laughed darkly. “According to the legends, all Thrane forests are haunted,” he said. “It’s a wild and untamed place.”
“What of the Thuranni report?” Dalan asked. “Did you learn anything of use?”
Zed shook the stack of papers, straightening them with a snap, and sorted till he found Shaimin’s letter. “I learned that elves have very messy handwriting,” Zed said. “I think Shaimin holds the pen between his teeth.”
“Intriguing,” Dalan said dryly. “What else?”
“There was definitely someone watching the gates of New Cyre over the course of the last several days,” Zed said. “Marth does a lot of recruiting there, so he must have suspected we’d come there looking for clues.”
“Paranoid,” Eraina said.
“And organized,” Zed said. “We still don’t know how many people Marth has working for him, but if he can spare them to spy on his own city, that’s a bad sign. I mean, granted, we’ve increased the size of our own crew by ten percent in the last few days,” he nodded at Ijaac with a grin, “but signs indicate we’re still enormously outnumbered.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Eraina said. “Our fight is with Marth, not his army. Once he’s been brought to justice, all of this will end. He’s the only one with the knowledge to rebuild the Legacy. Without him, his soldiers will return to obscurity.”
Seren noticed Tristam glance away nervously at that. She worried about him. He’d been so distant since he returned from Zul’nadn. What had he seen?
“Speaking of Marth,” Zed said, “Shaimin wrote quite a bit about him.”
Tristam looked back at Zed, suddenly attentive. “What?” Tristam asked. “How did Shaimin find information on Marth?”
“Marth claims to be a Cyran soldier,” Zed said. “So, Shaimin looked into Cyran military records.”
“Where would he find such things?” Omax said. “Cyre is no more.”
“Prince Oargev has a strong interest in restoring and preserving his lost nation’s history,” Zed said. “He’s spent the last few years hiring small salvage teams to sneak into the ruins of Metrol and recover anything with the royal seal of Wynarn on it. Everything they bring back is stored here, in New Cyre. There’s a substantial cache of Cyran military records. Apparently Shaimin accessed it.”
“Broke into it,” Pherris corrected.
“Probably,” Zed said. “I don’t really care how he learned what he did-it’s interesting.”
“Tell us,” Dalan prompted.
“Getting there,” Zed said, growing impatient at the interruptions. “Apparently there have only been three changeling officers in the Cyran military within the last sixty years.”
“Unsurprising,” Eraina said. “I think most armies would find it difficult to trust an officer whose very identity was suspect.”
“Or at least have the wisdom to use such duplicity to their advantage,” Dalan said. “Changelings make terrible generals but excellent spies. It would behoove an army to keep such assets secret.”
Zed frowned as he studied the papers. “The story of this changeling, Captain Eover Halloran, seems to be exactly what we’re looking for.”
“Eover Halloran doesn’t sound like a changeling name,” Dalan said.