City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [136]
“Report,” she said. Her voice was a velvet purr—smooth and quiet, yet resonating throughout the chamber.
The man hesitated, surprised. He had just entered the room, and the lady’s back was turned. He had a gift for moving quietly, and with the sound of the wind whistling through the chamber, it seemed impossible for her to have heard his approach.
She turned around, her eyes gleaming in the depths of her hood. “Captain?” she said with a smile.
Captain Grazen inclined his head respectfully. “The workshop has been destroyed, and the mindflayer is dead. The damage was extensive, and we couldn’t find anything of value.”
“I doubt Chyrassk is dead, Grazen,” she said. She lowered a hand toward the floor, and a tendril of mist reached up to embrace it. “It is difficult to kill a child of Xoriat, and Daine lacks the knowledge such a task would require. But its power is broken for the moment. With its tools destroyed and its chief agent slain, I imagine that it will be some time before Chyrassk shows itself again.”
“You aren’t concerned?” Grazen was visibly relieved.
“Not at all. Chyrassk served its purpose—as have my friends in the House of Cannith. The only issue is Flamewind and whether they will make sense of her riddles before it is too late.”
“Why haven’t you eliminated the sphinx, if she poses a threat?”
Green eyes gleamed in the shadows, and for a moment Grazen thought he had overstepped his bounds. But the lady answered. “Until I know what power Flamewind serves, direct action is unwise. But I am not concerned. Everything goes according to my plans. Lei has been driven from her house. Jode is dead. Pierce is beginning to awaken to his true potential. And Daine …” The dark mist swirled around her feet as she smiled. “The game has been in motion for longer than you can imagine, Grazen. Now the endgame begins. Keep an eye on Daine and his companions. Soon it will be time to put them into play.”
She dismissed him with a gesture, and Grazen left the room, running from the shadows and searching for the light.
Appendix 1:
A Guide to the World of Eberron
Excerpts from Eberron: A World in the Shadow of War
by Jhanor Jastalan Dolas, Provost of Korranberg
The oldest myths say that our world was born in war, born of the struggle between the first dragons. The Seren Tablets describe this battle, how the dark wyrm Khyber tore her brother Siberys into pieces before being bound within the coils of her sister Eberron.
In these enlightened times, we can see this as metaphor. Looking to the sky, it is easy to understand how the ancients could see the ring of Siberys as a great gold dragon stretching across the horizon. Eberron is the world on which we walk, the mother of all that is natural. Khyber is the darkness that lies beneath the surface of the soil, giving birth to horrors that haunt the night and things that should not be. Today, we may consider ourselves too wise to believe in such tales, but the ancients believed that Eberron was formed from magic and from war—and these forces have certainly shaped the world in which we live in today.
Magical energy is all around us, invisible and unknown. It is a force we are slowly learning to control. The wizard can draw on this power to reshape reality with a gesture and an incantation. The priestess calls on gods to work magic on her behalf. The artificer crafts tools that can produce the same effects as either. And then there are the dragonmarked, who carry mystic power in their very blood. As we have learned to control the powers of magic, we have created many wonders that have changed the world in which we live. There was a time when a journey from one edge of Khorvaire to the other would take months. Today the lightning rail and the airship allow the wealthy