by James Wyatt
“Leave him, Gaven,” she said, reining in the mare beside him.
Rienne clutched Gaven’s arm and helped him swing up behind her. He put his arms around her waist—a little hesitantly, she thought—and she had to stifle a gasp. It had been so long since she’d felt those arms around her, she had all but forgotten how it made her feel.
She urged the mare back to a gallop, no destination in mind but away. This time, though the hoofbeats filled her ears, all she felt was Gaven pressed against her, holding her. After almost thirty years, she had finally come home.
CHAPTER
35
I think it’s time to honor your promise,” Rienne said.
She sat on the edge of a hard, lumpy bed in a squalid inn, somewhere in northern Breland. She didn’t know the name of the town, and she didn’t care. Gaven stretched in the bed, and for the first time in two days, he didn’t wince in pain. That confirmed her assessment that he was well enough to start talking.
“Rienne,” he said, “I promised to marry you a long time ago and under very different circumstances. I think—”
“Not that promise, you ogre.” She slapped his shoulder. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember. You promised to explain everything.”
“Can I eat breakfast first?”
“No. Get started.”
“It’ll be time for luncheon before I’m done explaining, and you won’t be able to hear me over the rumbling of my stomach.”
She quirked her mouth at him, then broke into a full smile. “Very well, we’ll get some food, and you can tell me everything while we eat. And if I’m pleased with the story, we’ll buy you a new sword before we head out of town.”
Gaven grinned. “Thanks, Mama.”
She cupped his cheek in her hand and smiled at him. How long since he had called her that? It was an old joke between them—he complained that she mothered him, but she knew he appreciated it. And no matter how many times she reminded herself that she had many reasons to be angry at him, she couldn’t help but thrill at every such recollection of their old life together. And to savor the feeling of his skin under her fingers.
He insisted that she turn away while he stood and dressed, which made her smile even more, thinking of the evening she had bathed him, tended his wounds, and dressed him when he was too weak to do it himself. But she resisted the temptation to nettle him further by peeking over her shoulder.
* * * * *
They were quiet as they left the inn and went in search of a fruitseller. Rienne couldn’t think of anything to talk about besides the coming explanation, and Gaven seemed deep in thought, as if composing the words he would say. Her mind raced through all the things she thought he might say to her, and her mood grew darker. Her thoughts kept circling back to the elf woman in Vathirond, the one who had been arrested.
She watched Gaven pick out fruit. He checked each piece over for bruises or rot, used his thumb to test its firmness, and finally brought it to his nose before deciding whether to buy it. They bought a small bag of plums, a block of sharp cheese, and a fresh loaf of bread, then started back to the inn. By the time they reached the corner of the building, Rienne scowled down at the dirt road beneath her feet, tormenting herself with thoughts of Gaven testing the fruit of that elf strumpet.
“Hey,” Gaven said, coming to a sudden stop just outside the door to the inn.
Rienne’s sword flew into her hand as she whirled around to face him; it whistled softly as it bit through the air—and neatly cut through the plum that Gaven had tossed at her. She caught one half in her left hand, and the other landed in Gaven’s outstretched palm. He laughed, and she couldn’t help but smile again.
“I see Maelstrom hasn’t lost its edge,” Gaven said, pulling the pit out of his half of the plum and holding it up to her. Rienne’s cut had divided the pit in half. His eyes found hers. “And you haven’t lost yours, either.”
She brought the point of her sword right under his chin. “And don’t you forget it,” she said, trying to scowl again.
He winked, and her face dissolved into a smile. She returned Maelstrom to its sheath, took a bite of her plum, and started up the inn stairs.
Back in the room, she sat cross-legged on her bed while he sprawled across his, devouring a plum.
“Where to start?” he wondered aloud, wiping juice from his chin and tossing the pit aside.
Rienne cut a piece of cheese from the block. “Perhaps at the point where you started acting like a madman?”
“Hm, no. I think I need to go further back.” He pressed his palms to his eyes and drew a deep breath. “All right,” he sighed. “Our last descent together, those caves in the Starpeaks. Remember?”
“How could I forget? I was so worried when you fell. I tried so hard to catch the rope! I was about to grab it, and then a swarm of bats came up from the shaft, thousands of them. I couldn’t see my hand, let alone the rope, and by the time they’d flown by, the rope was gone.”
Gaven let his hands fall to the bed and stared at the ceiling. Rienne waited, but he didn’t continue. She stood and leaned over him. His eyes didn’t register her presence.
“Gaven?”
His voice was distant, dreamy. “I fell. Down and down through endless dark. The pain …”
She sat beside him on the bed and put a hand on his chest. “You were so badly hurt.”
His head jerked up, and she saw his eyes come back to focus on her face. “You found me. But not until after—” He sat up, taking her hand in his.
“After what?”
“Did you look in that box that Krathas gave you?”
“No. What was in it?”
Gaven reached into the pouch at his belt and produced the adamantine box she’d given him in Vathirond, the one he’d left in Krathas’s care so long ago. As she watched, he opened it, his eyes gleaming as he peered inside. He stared so intently that she grew worried and started to push the lid closed. Only then did he turn the box so she could see its contents.
Her breath caught in her throat. A long time ago, a very different Rienne had made a career out of exploring the depths of Khyber, far below the sunlit world, searching for the dragon-shards that formed there. Legends held that Khyber shards were formed from the blood of the Dragon Below, one of the three primordial; dragons who had shaped the world at the dawn of time, the progenitor of fiends and the father of all evil. Those legends gave nightshards their other common name: demonshards.
Legends aside, nightshards were valuable—especially during the Last War. The dark crystals were suffused with magic, making them extremely useful in the creation of certain magical items. They carried a particular affinity for magic of binding, which made them essential for the artificers and magewrights who crafted elemental vessels for House Lyrandar: seafaring galleons early in the war, airships in more recent years. She and Gaven had made a small fortune procuring nightshards, because they had been good at finding them and good at selling them to the right people at the right price.
But she had never seen a nightshard like the one in Gaven’s adamantine box. It was larger than her fist, and the swirls of midnight blue in its heart pulsed with barely contained energy. She reached out and touched its hard surface, and it seemed for an instant as though her fingers might sink into the crystal to touch the writhing serpents of color inside.
“The Heart of Khyber,” Gaven said, and his hushed tone gave voice to the awe in Rienne’s heart.
She moved her fingers slowly over the smooth facets, then suddenly jerked her hand back, wrenching her eyes away from the crystal to Gaven’s face. The largest nightshard she’d ever seen—the largest demonshard. Her original suspicions about Gaven’s behavior resurfaced—could the exorcists have been wrong? A shard this large—perhaps it held a spirit powerful enough to hide its presence from their examination.
Gaven must have read the fear on her face, because he snapped the box shut and took her hand. “I’m not possessed,” he said, his eyes searching hers. “But i
n a way, you were right. Something was in the shard, something that entered me when I touched it.” Rienne tried to pull her hand away, but he held it tight. “Not a spirit, though—it didn’t dominate me, control me. Just knowledge. Memories. A whole lifetime of memories, incredibly ancient and wise.”
The mystery that had haunted Rienne for nearly three decades was starting to unravel. She felt dizzy. “But whose memories, Gaven?” she said.
“A dragon’s.”
A dragon’s memories. She tried to imagine the thoughts and experiences of a dragon’s long lifetime, and found that her mind wasn’t up to the task.
“So many memories, Ree. I still can’t keep them straight.” His eyes were staring, out of focus again.
“Which ones are really yours, you mean?” Sometimes, before all this happened, she would remember doing something as a child, or thought she remembered—it turned out Gaven had done it in his childhood. They had been that close, once. They had shared so many stories and memories that they had forgotten whose were whose.
He nodded. “At first, it seemed like the dragon’s memories were mine, and the memories of my life as Gaven were the figments. I knew you, but it felt like I knew you from a long time ago, like you were someone I cared about when I was young.”
Tears sprang to Rienne’s eyes. “You weren’t yourself. I thought I’d lost you.”
“You had. I became the dragon, in a way, and tried to live his life, pick up where he’d left off. It took me a while to figure out that time had passed, and I’ve only just got a sense of how long it had been.”
“How long was it?”
“I think somewhere between four and five hundred years.”
Rienne whistled softly, casting her mind to what she knew about Khorvaire’s history. Four or five centuries past—the Five Nations united into one empire of Galifar, Cyre alive and flourishing. A world that could barely imagine the horror and violence of a century of war.
“Twenty-nine turns of Eternal Day and Endless Night,” Gaven murmured. His brow was furrowed, and his eyes closed.
“What’s that?”
He held up a finger, and she sat back to wait. He rocked slightly, as if he were lost in the rhythm of some unheard song.
His eyes opened. “The Storm Dragon slumbers for twenty-nine turns of Eternal Day and Endless Night, and then withdraws from the world, to emerge in the Time of the Dragon Above.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Turns of Eternal Day and Endless Night—Irian and Mabar, the planes of light and darkness. Irian draws near every three years, Mabar every five. Every fifteen years they draw near in the same year. Twenty-nine cycles of fifteen years is four hundred and thirty-five years. I think that’s how long I was—”
He broke off and lay back on the bed.
“Not me,” he whispered. “The other.”
Rienne lay beside him, propped up on one elbow. She ran her fingers through his long hair and watched his eyes, staring wide at the ceiling, darting around as if there were something to see. Her heart ached, and tears stung her eyes. What must he have endured? So many years of this—not certain who he was. And still he was haunted, she saw it in his eyes.
“What do you see?”
Gaven looked at her, and a smile danced on his lips. She smiled down at him and buried her fingers in his hair.
“So many horrible things, Ree,” he said. “Such horrible things.”
“Hush,” she whispered, stroking his cheek.
He sat up, pushing her aside. “No, thunder, no,” he muttered, his gaze darting around the room.
Rienne pulled gently on his shoulder, trying to get him to lie down again. “Shh, Gaven, relax.” His sudden unease sent a jolt of panic through her. This was too much like before—she didn’t understand what he was saying, and she didn’t know how to keep him under control.
“Help me, Ree. I don’t want this.”
“I know. I know. Relax, love.”
“No!” He pulled free of her touch and stood. “I can’t relax. That’s when the dreams come.”
Rienne took a deep, steadying breath, calming her racing heart. “Can you tell me about the dreams?”
He stalked to the door and turned to face her. “It’s all the time now, even when I’m awake. Sometimes I know I’m dreaming about things that have already happened—some things I did, some things the other, the dragon did. Sometimes they blur together—I’ll dream about my fall, say, and then I dream that I’m the dragon, putting my memories in the nightshard. Other times I think they’re past events, but not anything I experienced.” He pressed his palms to his eyes again. “But the future ones are the worst.”
“You dream about the future?”
He slammed his fists into the door behind him. “All the time. Why can’t I just live my life, here and now? Why do I have to see so much?”
She held her hands out to him, and he came and took them. There was so much she still didn’t understand, but at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. She kissed his hands, then brought them to her cheek, savoring the touch of his skin. “I’m here, Gaven,” she murmured. “Here and now.”
CHAPTER
36
Gaven did his best to recount his travels from the cold Lhazaar coast to Q’barra, to the City of the Dead in Aerenal, to Darguun, and then north from Korranberg on the lightning rail. Some parts were hard to tell, particularly the parts where Senya played an important role in the story. Other parts were hard to remember—his confrontation with the Sentinel Marshals on the lightning rail, for example, was confused in his memory with the dreams that had haunted him.
Whenever he started to lose focus, though, Rienne was there. At the beginning of his tale, in particular, it was hard to mention his dreams and visions without starting to slip into them, but her touch always brought him back. She asked gentle questions that clarified her understanding and sometimes helped him refine his own. Finally, she asked the question that struck to the heart of the situation he was in.
“So Vaskar is trying to become a god, and Haldren wants to be king of a reunited Galifar. What do you want?”
He frowned. Why should that be such a difficult question to answer?
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” he said. “When I left Vathirond, I thought I knew what I was doing. I decided I wouldn’t accept a destiny that somebody else had placed on me, that I would forge my own destiny.”
His thoughts went back to the night outside of Vathirond, alone with the Heart of Khyber. The dragon’s words had stirred something in him—a sense of purpose, the idea of choosing a purpose. But the purpose he’d chosen, pursuing Vaskar into the Mournland, had led him down paths he didn’t want to take. He had felt as though he were still pursuing the dragon’s purpose, not his own.
Rienne drew him out of his reverie. “Can you say more about that?” she asked. “Who was trying to place a destiny on you?”
“Everyone. The lords of the dragonmarked houses and the Sentinel Marshals had decided that my destiny was to rot in Dreadhold. Haldren and Vaskar had the idea that I would be the accessory to their greatness, like some kind of seer that validates their dreams by declaring them the fulfillment of the Prophecy. And then even when I thought I was choosing my own course, the dragon in the shard still seemed to be foisting his destiny on me, trying to make me finish what he couldn’t. I didn’t want any of those things.”
“To forge your own destiny,” Rienne mused. “That’s heady stuff, Gaven—the sort of thing that legends are made of.”
“I know. That’s what bothers me. Before all this happened, I never really thought of myself as a person of destiny. I failed the Test of Siberys, and figured I’d live my life as a minor player on the stage of the drama of the dragonmarked houses.” He had wanted to fail the Test of Siberys—precisely because his father expected the opposite. Arnoth had dearly hoped Gaven would manifest a dragonmark and carry on his work in House Lyrandar.
“It seems Siberys herself cho
se you for a greater destiny than that,” Rienne said, reaching up to trace her finger along his dragonmark.
“Perhaps,” Gaven said. “Although I feel more like I stumbled onto a different stage when I found that nightshard, and I’m trying to fumble my way through a play I don’t know.”
“So to forge your own destiny means taking control of the play. Becoming both player and playwright.”
“Mm.” Gaven nodded. “Heady stuff, as you said.”
“So what did you think you were doing when you left Vathirond?”
“I thought I would be Vaskar’s nemesis—and Haldren’s, too. I thought I would be the agent of the Sovereign Host, punishing their pride and bringing their plans to ruin. So I went to the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor thinking that I had to stop Vaskar from gaining the knowledge there.”
Vaskar hadn’t gained the knowledge of the Sky Caves. But was that Gaven’s doing, or Vaskar’s own failure? He hadn’t even seen Vaskar until he’d been in the Sky Caves for days, walking the paths and exploring the Prophecy. Why hadn’t Vaskar gained the same understanding—and the same power—that he had?
Again Rienne prompted him out of his silence. “That seems like a worthwhile goal.”
“Yes. The thing that worries me …” He trailed off again.
What worries me, he thought, is that I might become a god.
“The thing that worries me,” he said, “is that the only way I could stop Vaskar was by claiming the knowledge of the Sky Caves for myself. I set out to become his nemesis, but ended up playing the part of the Storm Dragon in his place.”
Rienne’s brow furrowed. “The Storm Dragon … Gaven, what about these storms? The lightning rail near Starilaskur, the Morning Zephyr—I’ve never seen a Lyrandar heir throw that kind of power around. Even the tales of other heirs of Siberys don’t say anything about storms like those.”