CHAPTER
29

Gaven stared at the lines of his dragonmark until the light faded from the shard and draped the room in shadow again, and then he stared at the ceiling until Senya, standing beside him, nudged him back to his senses.

“Did you find what you seek?” she said, holding a hand out for him.

“I believe I did.” He took her hand and got to his feet. The braziers’ fire had already died down, so the only light in the temple came in through the open doors.

“Where will you go now?”

Gaven looked back up at the ceiling as though the lines of his destiny were still visible there. He knew his destination, but he still had a choice of paths to get there.

“West,” he said. She started to pull her hand away, but he gripped it with both hands. “Senya, thank you. Thank you so much.”

Senya beamed at him, her blue eyes sparkling in the firelight. “The fact that I was able to help you is atonement for a great many past sins. You might not recognize it, but you have helped me as well.”

Gaven released her hand and drew her instead into a tight embrace, which she returned. He closed his eyes as he held her, and for that moment he thought he saw the twisting lines of her destiny as well, all the mad rush of her past, but only serenity ahead, the peace of communion with her ancestors and service to her people.

“Now,” she said, pulling out of his embrace. “I meant where will you go now? When’s the last time you slept?”

Gaven laughed. “It has been a while since I had a good night’s sleep.”

“You’ll sleep in my room tonight, then.”

Gaven started to stammer a protest, but she cut him off.

“Don’t worry, I’ll leave you alone. You need sleep tonight.”

He hadn’t realized until that moment how tired he was. Without another word, he let Senya lead him back upstairs to her room.

“Sleep well, Gaven.” She kissed his forehead and left him alone in the warm darkness as sleep reached to claim him.

*  *  *  *  *

The morning sun dazzled Aunn’s eyes, accustomed as they were to the dim light of the cathedral. He scanned the sky for a storm cloud that might point him to Gaven, but the Storm Dragon was not making it that easy to find him. Aunn bit his lip and tried to think. Where would Gaven go?

As far as Aunn knew, Gaven had no papers. Aunn had promised to get him some and deliver them to the Ruby Chalice the night before. Without them, he would find it difficult, if not impossible, to board a Lyrandar airship, the lightning rail, or even an Orien coach.

He had done it before, Aunn reminded himself. Gaven and Senya had taken the lightning rail from Korranberg well into Breland. But that was before the skirmish at Starcrag Plain and the all-out war now being waged in the Eldeen Reaches. Security would be much tighter … unless …

Unless Gaven managed to talk his way onto an airship. It was unlikely, but if he found someone he knew, an old friend who’d be willing to take a big risk for his sake. Jordhan had done it, first ferrying Gaven and Rienne from Sharavacion to Stormhome, then taking them all the way to Argonnessen.

Drawing a deep breath of the wintry air, Aunn got his bearings, then set out toward Chalice Center. He had to find Gaven. The fate of much more than the queen might depend on it.

*  *  *  *  *

Harkin sighed. “Well, this should be interesting,” he muttered as the pair approached the table.

“Ashara d’Cannith?” the tall human woman asked. The dwarf stood behind her, arms crossed over her chest, glaring at Cart.

“I suppose that depends,” Ashara said. “My baron and the queen would have us say ir’Cannith.”

“By the terms of the Korth Edicts, they would be wrong to give land and noble rank to heirs of a dragonmarked house.”

Ashara smiled. “And your name?”

“Sentinel Marshal Mauren d’Deneith.” She gave a slight, stiff bow. “And this is Ossa d’Kundarak.”

The dwarf turned her gaze from Cart and smiled briefly at Ashara, then recrossed her arms and resumed her staring.

“This is Harkin,” Ashara said, “also of my House, and this is Cart.”

“Cart?” The Kundarak’s gaze sharpened. “Haldren’s Cart?”

That explained the harsh stare, Cart supposed. How did this dwarf know him?

“I beg your pardon?” Ashara said.

Ossa stood with her hands on her hips and brought her face unpleasantly close to Cart’s. “Are you the Cart that belonged to the late Haldren ir’Brassek?”

“The last time I belonged to anyone, it was to the army,” Cart said. “By the terms of the Treaty of Thronehold, it would be wrong to call me anyone’s property.”

Ashara beamed at him, but Ossa’s face darkened and Mauren scowled as well.

“What’s wrong, Ossa?” the Sentinel Marshal asked.

“A warforged named Cart helped ir’Brassek escape from Dreadhold,” Ossa explained. “I chased them from Cape Far to Stormhome.”

“It’s hardly an uncommon name for warforged,” Ashara said. “This one has been with my House since the war.”

“He has a very independent mind for a Cannith warforged,” Ossa observed. It was true—the warforged at the Cannith enclave had been docile servants.

“But clearly you’ve grown very attached to him in that time,” Mauren said, “which is part of the reason we’re here.”

Cart shot a glance at Harkin, who was leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, hands folded on one knee. He didn’t seem inclined to betray Ashara’s lie, but he wasn’t leaping to Cart’s defense either. His face had a bemused expression, as if he were interested to see how Ashara would worm her way out of the situation.

“You’re here because I’ve become friends with a warforged?” Ashara said. “Surely the Sentinel Marshals have more important things to do with their time than chase down every soldier, artificer, and dockworker who’s struck up a friendship with a warforged.”

“We’re not interested in every soldier, artificer, and dockworker, Lady Cannith,” Mauren said. “We’re interested in you.”

*  *  *  *  *

Gaven awoke to sunlight streaming through a high window he hadn’t noticed in the dark of night. He felt rested, for the first time he could remember. He wondered whether Senya had used magic to knock him out, and how long he’d slept, but he decided it didn’t matter. He stood and stretched, and even then the complaints of his cuts and bruises were diminished, if not entirely absent. He felt good, and ready for what fate had in store for him.

He pulled his chainmail shirt back on and slung his scabbard over his back, wondering where Senya might be and whether his emergence from her room might arouse scandalized speculation among the other residents of the temple. As he stepped forward and reached for the door, though, glowing red lines flashed across his vision, part of his dragonmark as it appeared in the shard. He paused, trying to sort out a vague sense of imminent danger and make sense of the pattern he’d seen.

He felt a presence behind him an instant before he heard the soft rustle of silk, and he spun and ducked away. A blot of shadow in the streaming sunlight slashed past him, and a black blade cut across his arm, drawing a thin line of blood that burned even as icy cold spread from the wound. The shadowy figure spun to follow him, relentless in its attack. He yanked his sword from its sheath on his back as he dodged again and his eyes struggled to pierce the shadow that cloaked his assailant.

The figure lunged again, and Gaven tried to bring his sword around to block the blow. His left hand, though, was numbed by whatever toxin coated the assassin’s dagger, making his grip on his own sword unsteady. He banged his elbow against the wall as he maneuvered his sword in the tiny room, and the black dagger slipped past his guard and toward his neck.

His attacker’s face was close enough that Gaven could see through the veil of shadow. “Phaine,” he breathed.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the point of the elf’s dagger touched the skin of his neck and pressed inward. Then a burst of blinding white light drove away Phaine’s cloak of shadows and threw the elf back as a crack of thunder exploded between the two men. Gaven and Phaine slammed against opposite walls of the room.

Phaine struggled to his feet, his breath rasping. “The power of the storm is still with you after all,” he said, scowling. His eyes ranged over Gaven’s body, lingering at the pouches at Gaven’s belt. “So you must have the bloodshard.”

The cut on Gaven’s arm was on fire, even as his hand grew increasingly numb and cold, and the toxin spread up into his shoulder as well. His heart pounded in his chest, which he knew would just send the poison coursing more quickly through his veins.

“Isn’t that why you’re here? Malathar never did give you a chance to study it, did he?”

“He didn’t,” Phaine said. “You have disrupted a great many plans.”

“Considering that those plans involved torturing me and stealing my dragonmark, I can’t say that I’m sorry.”

“You will be.” Phaine’s shadow-filled eyes were fixed on Gaven as if he were watching the poison spread through his body, waiting for him to keel over. As if in response, a sharp jolt of pain stabbed through Gaven’s chest.

Gaven fumbled with his numb left hand at the pouch that held the dragonshard, then shifted his sword to that hand and reached for the shard with his right. Phaine chose that awkward instant to leap at him again, his dagger poised to swing in a broad arc across Gaven’s neck.

Gaven’s fingers touched the smooth crystal and lightning gave shape to his fury and hatred, leaping out from him to engulf Phaine. The elf’s black eyes shot wide as twisting tendrils of lightning suspended him in the air between floor and ceiling, with a stream of blinding light connecting him to Gaven.

Gaven withdrew the shard from his pouch and shook it in Phaine’s direction. “Is this what you came for?” Sparks danced in his mouth as he spoke. A second bolt of lightning shot from the shard to spear through Phaine’s middle for a moment, and smoke started to billow from his scorched clothes and hair. “Here it is, you bastard. Want to take it from me?”

Gaven was a pillar of crackling lightning. It coiled in arcs around his body and cascaded down his outstretched arm, and tendrils of it danced over the walls of the room. He was more than the storm—he was destructive energy barely contained in mortal flesh, annihilation he couldn’t restrain.

“Gaven?” The door swung open, and a tendril of lightning leaped to course over Senya.

“No!” He let go of the dragonshard, but it clung to his flesh as lightning continued to flow through him and dance across the walls, up to the high window and the ceiling, across the floor, and over the still forms of Phaine and Senya where they hung suspended in the air.

*  *  *  *  *

A sharp crack that sounded like thunder, muffled but not distant, caught Aunn’s attention as he hurried toward Chalice Center. He slowed his steps, trying to determine what he had heard and decide whether to investigate. He scanned the sky, but it was clear and cold with winter’s approach, with no sign of a brewing storm, either natural or sprung from the twisting lines of Gaven’s mark.

He heard some commotion, distant shouts and running feet. Clearly, he hadn’t imagined the sound. He was in a part of the city he didn’t know particularly well—he remembered a tiny enclave of Aereni immigrants nearby, elves who clung to the ways of their ancestors, unlike most of the urbanized elves of Khorvaire, who worshiped the Sovereign Host and fit in smoothly with their human, dwarf, and gnome neighbors. What would Gaven be doing in that neighborhood?

A chill ran up Aunn’s spine as he remembered the undead thing Senya had addressed as a revered ancestor, and he shuddered. “All right,” he muttered, “I’m coming.” He listened for the nearest sounds of commotion and followed them.

*  *  *  *  *

“Who you are now is who you have been and who you are yet to be.”

The cold, clear voice of Senya’s ancestor echoed in Gaven’s mind as he hung suspended in time, lightning like the twisting lines of his dragonmark binding him together with Phaine and with Senya. Pain seared along his every nerve, power too great for his body to contain.

“You are Gaven. You are the Storm Dragon. You are a dishonored child of Lyrandar, cut off from your line but still a product of it. You are Shakravar, and you are the murderer of the Paelion line.”

I’ve killed her, he thought. He tried to shake the dragonshard from his hand, but it was a part of him. He struggled to lower his hand, to bring it in to his chest so his other hand might pry the dragonshard free, but the lightning was like a swift-flowing river that would not release his arm.

“However, you are also, in this moment, who you will choose to be, and that is a far better thing.”

And so, Gaven thought, I now choose this.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. The air, heated by lightning, seared his throat and lungs, but he focused his thoughts on the dragon-shard in his hand. He saw the lines of the Prophecy winding within its rosy heart, and words formed in his mind—words he might have known once, in this life or another, but which were now part of his destiny and part of himself:

Under the unlight of the darkened sun, the Storm Dragon lays down his mantle; he stops his song before it can be unsung, and so his storm is extinguished.

The dragonshard clattered to the floor in a shower of sparks, and the writhing tendrils of lightning withdrew into its gleaming surface. Phaine and Senya, released by the storm, fell to the ground, shrouded in reeking smoke.

“Senya!” Gaven gasped. He stepped toward her, but his leg faltered under his weight and he toppled onto the floor beside her. He was vaguely aware of voices outside the door, chattering in confusion and alarm, but he couldn’t lift his head to look. His face pressed against the cold stone, he could see only the death mask of Senya’s tattooed face.

“Senya, I’m sorry,” he gasped.

Blackness swallowed his vision, but he thought he saw two smoldering green flames looking into his eyes before the darkness claimed him.

*  *  *  *  *

It would have been easy for Aunn to put on an elven face and blend in among the dozens of elves rushing into their temple to find out what was going on, but he did not. He saw some bluntly hostile glances, but no one accosted him as he moved through an open courtyard outside the temple. Flickering light—white like lightning, not the red of a fire—lit a high window near the top of the temple, and Aunn could feel the ground beneath his feet rumbling with the thunder of Gaven’s storm. He could feel the fear of the elves around him, and it was no wonder. Aunn was terrified, and he had a pretty good idea what was going on. To the elves, this must have seemed like an angry divine manifestation.

As he climbed the stairs to the temple, he drew more angry glares. A few elves shouted at him in Elven, which he couldn’t really make out. “No go in,” one managed in Common, but Aunn ignored her and pushed his way into the building.

A pair of tall stone doors stood open inside the temple, and a few of the elves gathered inside, seeking solace in the spiritual presence of their ancestors in the absence of any priests. A dozen or so more huddled around the bottom of a staircase leading up in the direction of the storm-filled window, as if waiting for news to be delivered from on high. The flickering light cast eerie dancing shadows down the stairs, and the building trembled with the rumble of thunder. Aunn hesitated, unsure if he’d be allowed to climb the stairs or if he could even make it through the press of elves.

The building stopped shaking abruptly, and the flickering light went out. A hush fell over the crowd, but in a moment there were shouts from the top of the stairs. A murmur spread through the elves around him, and they turned toward the temple sanctuary.

Aunn bit his lip and started walking against the crowd. There weren’t that many elves, but they were crammed into a narrow antechamber and moving with some urgency in the direction opposite the one he wanted to go in. Every time he collided with an elf, he provoked shouts and glares, and he understood just enough Elven to know quite clearly that he wasn’t welcome.

Finally he reached the bottom of the stairs, and stopped in his tracks. A deathless soldier blocked his way, clutching the haft of a poleaxe with both bony hands and staring at him with eyes of green fire.

“You are not welcome here,” the soldier said. “This is where we pay honor to our ancestors.”

Aunn swallowed hard. His fear of the undead was utterly irrational, but that didn’t make it any less paralyzing. It took root in him years ago, on one of his first missions during the war, in Atur—the Karrn city rightly called the City of Night. He tried to answer the soldier, but his voice froze in his throat.

You are mine. He felt Tira’s breath on his lips again. I did not call you to live in fear.

“Please,” he said, the memory of the presence in the cathedral giving him strength. “My friend is upstairs.”

“Your friend? The Khoravar?”

It took Aunn a moment to recognize the word, a term for half-elves. “Yes! Gaven.”

The undead guard made an eerie sound that was half growl and half wail, and Aunn’s fear returned in force. “Your blaspheming Khoravar friend killed our priestess.”