Senya tucked her feet under her and smiled. “So why did you come here?” she asked.
Gaven leaned back in his chair and sighed. Why had he come? “I’m not sure, actually.”
“Really?” Senya shifted forward slightly. She wasn’t mocking him—she seemed genuinely intrigued.
“Well, I got to thinking about what your ancestor said to me in Shae Mordai. ‘The third time, you will finally find what you seek.’”
Senya nodded. “‘Twice you have come to me now,’ she said. You never did explain that.”
“The first time, it wasn’t me. A dragon disguised in human form went with Mendaros to see your ancestor.”
“What? If it wasn’t you …”
“That dragon’s memories took root in my mind. That’s why—well, basically that’s why I went to Dreadhold. So when you took me before your ancestor, she recognized the dragon in my mind. That was the second time.”
“The dragon’s second time.”
Gaven frowned. “Sort of.” It didn’t make sense, as he thought about it. The dragon had visited Senya’s ancestor once, four or five hundred years ago. If Gaven’s visit was the second time, then the ancestor had been talking about the dragon, not Gaven. Perhaps he’d been fooling himself to think that Senya’s ancestor could give him anything he sought.
“So that’s why you asked about Mendaros,” Senya said.
“Yes. When we were in Shae Mordai, I was overwhelmed with the memory of being there before, walking up those stairs with Mendaros beside me. I remembered him as a good friend.”
“A good friend to a dragon. Hence his disgrace in our family.”
“Yes. You said that he opened the door for an invasion of dragons.”
“He did. I have learned more about him in the last few months, if you’re interested.”
Gaven leaned forward. “Quite interested. Please.”
Senya smiled. “Well, Mendaros Alvena Tuorren was born in 398, in Galifar’s reckoning, just over six hundred years ago. He was born in Shae Cairdal, but by the mid-four hundreds he was wandering around Khorvaire, already sort of an outcast from the family. He was evidently very interested in the Prophecy of the dragons, and in 512 he was involved in the construction of an observatory in the Starpeaks.”
“King Daroon’s observatory?” Gaven said. As ruler of Galifar, Daroon had grown obsessed with predicting the future by studying the moons and stars.
“I suppose so, yes. It’s not clear to me what his involvement with it was, and I don’t know what his connection to the king was.”
“I might have known once.” Gaven wasn’t sure how he knew about King Daroon. Was that something he had learned in his studies, or the echo of the dragon’s memories in his mind? He shook his head.
“Mendaros only exercised his Right of Counsel once,” Senya said, “and he brought a friend from Khorvaire—a human, or he seemed to be—with him. I assume that human was actually the dragon you described. Mendaros asked questions about the Storm Dragon, and received answers similar to what you and I heard on our visit. They went on to ask about the Time of the Dragon Between, and the Time of the Dragon Below. Mendaros, apparently, was particularly interested in the Blasphemer.”
“The Blasphemer?”
“My ancestor, in her wisdom, perceived that, while Mendaros’s human companion fancied himself the Storm Dragon, Mendaros imagined himself to be the Blasphemer.”
“Dragons fly before the Blasphemer’s legions,” Gaven said, and visions of bone-white banners danced in his memory.
“And apparently, as dragons winged across the sea to attack Aerenal, Mendaros commanded a fleet of warships full of his mercenary legions.”
Gaven sat back and ran his fingers through his hair. “And when was that?”
“That was in 537.”
“So more than four hundred years ago. What happened? You said it was a devastating invasion.”
“It was. Taer Senadal was burned to the ground, and both Var-Shalas and Shae Thoridor were in flames before the dragons were routed.”
Gaven had studied maps of Aerenal before, but the names meant little to him. Taer Senadal was a fortress—he could figure that much from the name. He nodded for her to continue anyway.
“Mendaros made land near Var-Shalas,” Senya continued, “and tried to bring his legions upriver to the town, but they didn’t get very far. He was killed in the battle.”
Gaven rested his forehead in his palm and tried to make sense of this information. The dragon had sought to become the Storm Dragon more than four hundred years ago, and then, when its memories found their way into Gaven’s mind, he had followed along a similar path. Mendaros had set himself up as the Blasphemer four centuries ago, and now a new Blasphemer had arisen out of the Demon Wastes. Was the Prophecy fulfilled in cycles, so that every age had its Storm Dragon and its Blasphemer? Or were Mendaros and the dragon deluded, pursuing the Prophecy when the time of its fulfillment was still far off? Or perhaps they were all deluded—neither Gaven nor the dragon actually fulfilled the Prophecy of the Storm Dragon, and the warlord from the Wastes was no more the Blasphemer than Mendaros had been.
Senya got up and stood before Gaven, filling his nostrils with the smells of incense and spice. She held out a hand, and Gaven took it.
“Why did you come here?” she asked again.
Gaven’s eyes stung. “I was hoping someone could tell me what it is I’m supposed to be looking for.”
Senya nodded. “Come with me.” She squeezed his hand, and he stood beside her.
Senya led him out of her room and back down the stairs, her hand soft and warm in his—so alive, in contrast to the death mask on her face. She led him to the tall doors across from the entrance, and there she released his hand.
“Just a moment,” she whispered.
Gaven watched in silence as she busied herself around one of the braziers outside the doors. Scented smoke billowed up from the coals, and she moved to the other and sent another offering of smoke into the air. Then she stood before the doors and sang softly in Elven. Gaven caught only a few words speaking of honor, reverence, death, and wisdom. She touched a few of the carved images as she sang, and when she was finished with the song the doors swung open like arms reaching to enfold her.
She was smiling when she turned back and extended a hand to him. He stepped forward and took her hand, and she drew him into the interior of the temple. The doors swung shut behind him, and he was in darkness.
His eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, found the dim glow of coals just before they flared to life at Senya’s touch. The tiny fires did little to illuminate the cavernous room, though. Gaven wasn’t sure what he had been expecting—something more like the small tomb where Senya’s ancestor had granted them an audience in Shae Mordai, he supposed. Instead, the room was the size of a grand temple of the Sovereign Host.
Senya took his hand again and led him to the center of the room. “Kneel,” she whispered, and he obeyed. A woven mat of dried reeds offered a meager cushion between his knees and the stone floor.
As Senya drifted away again, Gaven found himself wondering how old the temple was. Shae Mordai was ancient—the elves had started its construction more than twenty thousand years ago, although surely not every building could be that old. But when had the population of Aereni in Fairhaven grown sufficiently large to support a construction project on this scale? It felt old, but he suspected that had as much to do with the burning incense and the presence of the deathless than with the actual age of the building.
Two more braziers flared to feeble light in front of him, where Senya stood in front of a carved altar. The altar looked as old as anything he’d seen in Shae Mordai, and Gaven wondered if it had been brought from Aerenal, perhaps as sort of a foundation stone for the whole community of Aereni here.
Senya turned and smiled at him, then sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the altar and closed her eyes. In the half-light of the flickering braziers, her face was an ornately decorated skull floating above her shoulders. When her eyes were closed, they could easily have been gaping sockets. He watched her chest rise and fall three times with slow, even breaths, and then her eyes shot open.
Her eyes, though, were no longer sparkling orbs of sapphire blue, but pale yellow flames that seemed to dance in empty sockets. And when she spoke, her voice had become the cold, clear voice of her long-dead ancestor.
“Gaven, Storm Dragon, dishonored child of Lyrandar, what do you seek?”
Gaven pressed his forehead to the ground as he had seen Senya do in Shae Mordai, surprised to find tears already welling in his eyes.
“I—” His voice caught in his throat, and he cleared it as he rose to look at Senya again. “I don’t know.”
“How can you hope to find it, then?”
“I thought …” Gaven peered at her. “Senya?”
“My daughter cannot hear you right now. Speak to me.”
“I’m sorry. Senya’s … you told me, in Shae Mordai …”
“The third time, you will finally find what you seek.”
“Yes.”
“And you hoped I could tell you what your desire is? Only you can name that, Gaven.”
Gaven sighed. “There’s so much.”
“And you don’t want to appear greedy? Is that it?”
Gaven frowned. “I suppose it is.”
“I have not promised to grant you any wish you might voice, Gaven, and I cannot magically solve all the difficulties facing you. I offer you counsel, even though you have no right to claim it—it is my gift to you.”
“Why do you offer this gift?”
“Three times you have come to me now,” Senya said. “The first time, you were a dragon seeking the power of the Storm Dragon. The second, you were a man dreading that mantle, as the dragon’s thoughts within you encouraged you to seek it. Now you are a man, and you have been the Storm Dragon, but you did not choose the path that the dragon before you sought. You have shown insight and restraint. I am pleased to offer my wisdom to aid you.”
“I am grateful.” Gaven bowed to the floor again, trying to collect his thoughts. “The first time, though—that wasn’t me. It was the dragon.” The name surfaced in his memory. “Shakravar.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m Gaven. Just the man, not the dragon anymore.”
“Here, then, is my gift of wisdom for you. You cannot cut time with a knife, as if the present were utterly separate from the past and the future. Who you are now is who you have been and who you are yet to be. 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.”
Senya’s words hit him like a blow to the stomach, and he bent forward to the floor again. “I wish that were not true.”
“But you know that it is. However, you are also, in this moment, who you will choose to be, and that is a far better thing.”
“How do you know? Is it written in the Prophecy what I will become?”
“You know the answer to that. You have read it in your own dragonmark.”
“There are many paths traced in the lines of my dragonmark.”
“Yes, there are many paths you could choose, many paths you might have chosen but did not, paths you have turned away from but could yet return to. The Prophecy, like the lines of your mark, offers many possibilities.”
“Then how can you say what choices I will make? How can I already be what I have not yet decided to be?”
“Because who you will be in that moment includes who you are now.”
“That moment? One particular moment?”
“There are many moments, past and future, that define who you are. There is one decision coming upon you soon that defines the shape of your destiny.”
“What is that?”
“In the darkest night of the Dragon Below, storm and dragon …” Gaven joined his voice to the thin voice of Senya’s ancestor. “… are reunited, and they break together upon the legions of the Blasphemer.”
“But what—”
“The maelstrom swirls around him,” the ancestor continued. “He is the storm and the eye of the storm. His is the new dawn, and in him the storm cannot die.”
Gaven leaned forward, trying to imprint the words in his memory. His eyes fixed on Senya’s face, he fumbled at his pouch and withdrew the shard that held the glowing lines of his dragonmark. Light spilled from it and spread to fill the enormous temple.
“His are the words the Blasphemer unspeaks, his the song the Blasphemer unsings.”
Senya closed her eyes, and the lambent flames were extinguished. Gaven glanced down at the dragonshard, but it was glowing so brightly he had to look away. He looked up instead, and saw the lines of his mark etched over the ceiling and every wall, as they had been in the Dragon Forge.
All the lines of his mark, the paths that delimited the possibilities of his life—they were all laid out before his eyes. Layer upon layer of meaning was contained in the twisting patterns, and he lost himself in them as if he were walking the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor again.
“His are the words the Blasphemer unspeaks.” He saw that path—that network of paths, that expanse of possibility. “His the song the Blasphemer unsings.” He saw creation undone, reality unwoven, his power of creation and the Blasphemer’s sword of annihilation rending the fabric of time and space.