Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three by James Wyatt

credit. “I want to ensure that you feel properly compensated for what you’ve done. And I trust that we can also rely on your complete silence.” He pressed a seal onto the finished letter and handed it to Havrakhad. “Will that be sufficient?”
    Gaven saw Havrakhad’s eyes go wide, and he looked at Kelas with a mixture of wonder and fear.
    “That is more than enough, I assure you,” Havrakhad said. He bowed to Kelas, then turned to Gaven. “Remember, Gaven: Whatever you deserve, freedom is what you have been given. Use your freedom as if you deserved it.”
    Gaven nodded. “Thank you.”
    Havrakhad clasped Cart’s hand. “I hate to cause any further trouble, but I wonder if you would be willing to see me safely to my house?”
    “Of course,” Cart said. “The city at this time of night can be daunting.”
    “I suppose there is that, yes,” Havrakhad said, as if the threat of street thugs hadn’t occurred to him. Gaven wondered what danger he did fear.
    “I’ll come as well,” Ashara said.
    After a last round of bows and farewells, Havrakhad left.
    Cart closed the door behind him, and Aunn let out a long breath.
    Gaven wheeled on him. “Now will you tell me what in thunder is going on?” he said.
    “I’ll try.” Aunn rubbed his temples. “But I’m not entirely sure myself.”
    “Why don’t you start by explaining why you’re pretending to be Kelas?”
    “I was hoping to learn more about Kelas’s plans,” Aunn said. “It also gives me a position where I can warn the army.”
    “Warn them about what?”
    “Kathrik Mel. The barbarians.”
    Gaven remembered fragments of dream—a corpse-strewn battlefield, a sky darkened by vultures’ wings, the earth torn open. He sat down across the desk from Aunn.
    “Kelas thought he was creating a pretext,” Aunn continued, “givingAundair an excuse to invade the Eldeen Reaches. He assumed that the army would have no trouble defeating the barbarians, especially with the Dragon Forge at its disposal.”
    “With my Mark of Storm,” Gaven said. “The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer …”
    “What’s that?” Aunn asked, looking up at Gaven. “Oh, the Prophecy. Which reminds me.” He collected a sheaf of paper from the side of the desk and straightened the pile. “Here’s another thing I want to figure out about Kelas. While you were in Dreadhold, the dwarves recorded everything you said or wrote down about the Prophecy. They sent a copy to House Lyrandar, at your family’s request. But how did Kelas get a copy?” He pushed the papers across the desk to Gaven.
    Tumult and tribulation swirl in his wake: The Blasphemer rises, the Pretender falls, and armies march once more across the land
.
    Gaven didn’t remember that verse, but according to the paper in front of him, he had written it on the wall of his cell sometime during the night of Zarantyr 29, 973 YK. One of his first nights in Dreadhold. He flipped through the pages, ignoring the Prophecy in its neat dwarf-printing, looking only at the dates. One entry every week or so, two or three entries to a page, covering all twenty-six years of his imprisonment—he held more than five hundred pages.
    “Maybe the Sentinel Marshals or Bordan d’Velderan came to Kelas after I escaped,” Gaven said, “looking for help from the Royal Eyes.”
    “That would be strange,” Aunn said, “the dragonmarked houses asking for help from a national government. And why the Royal Eyes? You haven’t spent much time in Aundair.”
    “But Kelas had his own interest in me. He wanted me for the Dragon Forge. Or he wanted my mark.”
    “And he was interested in the Prophecy as it pertained to you and the Dragon Forge, certainly. But that doesn’t explain how he got these documents.”
    “He could have …” Gaven had reached the last pages of the stack. These were written in a different hand, a flowing script nothing at all like the block letters of the dwarves. His father’s hand.
    My dear