The light reappeared, brighter than before, but this time Gaven turned away from it, buried his face in his arms to shield his eyes. The darkness stirred in response to his movement, then settled in around him again, rustling softly, cold but comfortable.
“This is where I belong,” he murmured. “What I deserve.”
A chorus of whispers voiced its assent. “What you deserve.”
“No, Gaven.” An unfamiliar voice cut through the whispers—a voice made of light, clear and strong. Gaven tried to lift his head, but the darkness held it down. “You are a prisoner here,” the clear voice said.
“I was sentenced,” Gaven said, “sent to Dreadhold …”
“But now the Keeper of Secrets holds you bound.”
“It lies,” Gaven said, a reflex. “Truth would burn its tongue.”
“It speaks nothing but lies,” the voice said. “Cast it off. Stand up, Gaven.”
Gaven lifted his head, pulling against the tendrils of darkness that held him down. The light was close beside him, and a man stood at the center of the light. Tall and slender, the man was a vision of beauty, like the light made flesh.
“Are you the Messenger?” Gaven asked. The darkness stirred in angry whispers around him.
“I’m Havrakhad, and I’m here to lead you to freedom,” the man said. “Take my hand, get up, and follow me.” He bent over Gaven, extending a hand.
Gaven wrenched a hand free of the darkness and seized Havrakhad’s hand. The whispers turned to shrieks of pain and fear as the darkness fled. Gaven stood on a floor of pale pink crystal. Red fire burned just beneath his feet, leading off in both directions, forming a maze of whirling lines stretching as far as he could see.
“I know this path,” he said. His eyes traced the pathways, seeing more than the glowing lines. They were the words of creation, and they spoke to him of what had been and what might yet come to pass.
“We can lead each other,” Havrakhad said.
“Wait—Rienne …” Gaven turned. A cloud of darkness formed before him, and Rienne’s crying face appeared in the midst of it. She stretched her arms out to him.
“Don’t leave me here, Gaven!” she wailed.
“Rienne isn’t here,” Havrakhad said. “Follow me to freedom, then you can find her.”
“He’s lying, Gaven!” Rienne cried.
“It lies,” Gaven murmured. “Truth would burn its tongue.” But that was the darkness—the Keeper of Secrets. He turned back to Havrakhad and the light. He surveyed the pathways again, and he made his choice. “This way,” he said, and together they started walking.
“What is this path?” Havrakhad asked.
“It’s my dragonmark,” Gaven said. But it was more than that. “It’s my life, spoken in the words of creation, part of the Prophecy.”
“But there are many paths here.”
“Many paths and many destinations.”
“Why are we going this way, then?” Havrakhad asked. He stopped and gazed into Gaven’s eyes.
“This is the path I choose.”
They were in a room, and the light was only a single lamp on a table beside him. The dragonshard floated just above Havrakhad’s fingertips. Other faces crowded behind Havrakhad—Cart, Ashara, and … Kelas ir’Darren?
“No!” Gaven cried. He leaped up from his chair and pulled the sword from its sheath on his back, then swayed as dizziness washed through his head. Havrakhad jumped back, and the dragonshard clattered onto the floor. “What have you done to me?”
“Gaven, calm down,” Havrakhad said.
Cart stepped closer, wary of Gaven’s sword. “You’re safe,” he said.
“Whose side are you on today, Cart? I can’t keep track any more.”
“Yours, Gaven.”
“Then what’s he doing here?” He turned his gaze to Kelas. “You were dead. I saw Aunn kill you. Am I still dreaming?”
Kelas met his eyes, and then—just for an instant—he wasn’t Kelas anymore. Darraun’s face appeared where Kelas’s had been, and just as quickly vanished. Then his eyes flicked over to Havrakhad and back. Gaven stared, uncomprehending, for a moment, all the more convinced he was still dreaming, but then he understood.
“I’m sorry, Kelas,” Gaven said. He sheathed his sword, trying to think of something to say that would allay any suspicion his behavior had stirred up in Havrakhad, but he decided to keep quiet until he had a better understanding of what was going on.
“I understand,” Kelas—or rather, Aunn said. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”
“Where are we?” Gaven said, looking around the unfamiliar room.
“My office in Fairhaven.”
“Fairhaven?” Gaven wasn’t sure exactly where the Dragon Forge had stood, but he knew it was near the Blackcaps, and it would have taken three or four weeks to get from there to Fairhaven on foot. “How long was I …?” He realized he didn’t know what state he’d been in. Had he been unconscious?
“Not long. Twelve or fourteen hours, perhaps.” Aunn looked as though he were about to say more, but he glanced at Havrakhad and closed his mouth.
Havrakhad must have noticed that he was crowding the small room. “My work here is done,” he said. “But you should contact me again if Gaven’s sleep is particularly troubled—or if you can’t wake him up, of course.”
“Wait—the dragonshard,” Ashara said. “What should we do with it?”
Gaven’s gaze followed hers to the dragonshard on the floor. The lines of his dragonmark beckoned him to walk their pathways.
“I should think that House Cannith would be best qualified to find an answer to that question.”
“But should we … keep it away from him?” Cart asked.
“What do you think, Gaven?” Havrakhad said.
Gaven stooped to pick up the dragonshard, hesitating just a moment before curling his fingers around the smooth crystal. A tingle of soft lightning ran down his neck and chest, the tender skin where his dragonmark had been, and he thought he heard a distant rumble of thunder. He stared at the twisting lines for a moment, the path he’d chosen shining clear in his mind.
He smiled at Cart. “You want to try to take it?” he said, laughing. “I’ll wrestle you for it.”
“It’s yours,” Cart said. “I want no part of it. Oh, uh, Kelas—I told Havrakhad that he should work out the details of payment with you.”
“Of course,” Aunn said, moving to sit in the chair behind the desk. “Did you agree on terms?”
“Cart generously assured me that I could name my price,” Havrakhad said. “But I live simply. I don’t need much.”
“But you were here all night, and it was very taxing work.” Aunn produced paper and a quill from the desk and began writing out a letter of 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, “giving Aundair 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 friend Kelas.
“What is it?” Aunn asked.
I hope this letter finds you well. I’ve enclosed the latest reports from House Kundarak—more of the same. I certainly hope they mean more to you than they do to me.
Gaven’s own father, writing to Kelas as if to an old friend?
“Gaven?”
“My father sent them.”
Gaven flipped through the last pages, scanning dates again. The last letter was dated the fourth of Eyre, 999 YK—less than a week before Gaven escaped from Dreadhold, just over a month before his father’s death.
Dear Kelas,
My younger son and all Stormhome are sleeping soundly as I write this, but sleep eludes me. Perhaps I have let my mind be influenced too much by Gaven’s ravings, if that’s what they are. I feel the weight of the future pressing on me. My health, I must accept, is failing. But how can I accept that if it means I am never to see Gaven’s face again?
You have long assured me that I would live to see Gaven walk free of his prison, his innocence proven at last, and that hope has sustained me through these years of our correspondence. But unless you know some way to prolong my life—or Gaven’s release is somehow imminent—I fear you have been mistaken.
So now I am preparing myself for death. Thordren will carry on my business, as he has ably done for many years now. If you wish, I will send a letter to House Kundarak, asking them to continue sending their reports to Thordren, and instruct him to send them on to you as I have done. And I will go to the Land of the Dead and strive to retain my memories there in the endless gray, so that when Gaven joins me there—many years from now, if it please the Host—I might still know him and be able to tell him what I couldn’t tell him while I lived.
Thank you again—a thousand times—for all that you have done for me and my son. I hope you will continue your efforts on his behalf after I am gone, for the sake of our friendship.
Your friend,
Arnoth d’Lyrandar
Gaven read the letter three times—the first time, blinking back tears as he thought of his father, gripped with the pain of having missed the chance to see him by a few hours. The second time, he hunted through every sentence for a hint of what Arnoth had wanted to tell him. The third time, his tears dried, he looked for a better idea of what Kelas had supposedly been doing on Gaven’s behalf.
“You worked for Kelas,” he said at last.
Aunn was holding a glass orb and peering intently into its depths. “I did,” he said, setting the orb aside on the desk.
“He sent you to join Cart and Senya, to get me out of Dreadhold.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Why?” Gaven asked.
“Why did he send me? Isn’t it obvious? He wanted your mark for the Dragon Forge.”
“Did you know that at the time?”
“No,” Aunn said. “I knew he wanted your knowledge of the Prophecy. Please believe me, Gaven, if I’d had any idea—”
Gaven shook his head. Cart had said the same thing. It didn’t matter. “Did you know he was corresponding with my father?”
“I had no idea.”
“He thought I was innocent,” Gaven said. “He called me his son, even though I was excoriate, and he always believed he’d live to see me walk free.”
“And he did, right?
“No. He knew I’d escaped, but that’s not the same thing. I’m still not free. I’m still guilty, they’d still throw me back in Dreadhold if they could.”
Aunn leaned forward over the desk. “But are you really guilty?”
“What do you mean? I did the things they accused me of.”
“But the dragon—”
“I wasn’t possessed. Its memories confused me, to be sure, but it was still me, doing what I did. As much as I’d like to avoid responsibility, I can’t. The Thurannis killed all the Paelions because of me.”
Aunn sat back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the desk.
“Bordan d’Velderan kept saying that I was no different from any other common criminal,” Gaven said. “I have to prove him wrong.”
“And how—” The glass globe on the desk began to glow, cutting him off. He looked at it for a moment, as the light grew from a faint shimmer to a brilliant glare, then reached for it. As soon as his fingers touched the smooth surface, the light faded, but Gaven could see the hint of an image inside the sphere.
“Kelas?” A woman’s voice came from the globe, as clear as if she were in the room. “What’s going on? I’ve been waiting all night!”