“You came to ask my counsel,” the ancestor said, “but you have proven yourself unwilling to heed it. I will give you the knowledge you seek because I must, but I will not tolerate insolence from the likes of you, Senya Alvena Arrathinen.”
She turned her back on them, and Haldren shot a glance over his shoulder at Gaven. Gaven looked away.
“It can be no accident that you have come here on this night,” the ancestor continued. “You seek the Eye of Siberys, and your question suggests that you would help the Storm Dragon rather than hinder him. So be it.” She turned to face them, and again her eyes burned into Gaven’s. “The Eye of Siberys lifts the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor from the land of desolation under the dark of the great moon, and…”
Gaven found himself speaking the rest of the sentence in unison with the ancestor. “… the Storm Dragon walks in the paths of the first of sixteen.” The Draconic syllables of the Prophecy coiled and snaked through his mind as he spoke them in Elven. Those words had become a part of him.
The ancestor stepped closer to Gaven. “I have told you this before.”
Gaven shook his head slowly, trying to wrench his eyes away from the ancestor’s piercing stare. “I am just a man,” he gasped.
I am not the other, he thought-I am not the one who was here before.
“In the first age of the world,” said Gaven, “sixteen dragons transcended their mortal forms to become like the Dragon Above who had made them. These are the first ascendant. In the second age of the world, the first elders of Aerenal transcended their mortal forms to become the second ascendant. In the last age of the world, the Storm Dragon takes the place of the first of sixteen, the Gold Serpent whom the world has long since forgotten. The third ascendant.” Words spilled from Gaven’s mouth without thought, the narrative of his nightmares: “A clash of dragons signals the sundering of the Soul Reaver’s gates. The hordes of the Soul Reaver spill from the earth, and a ray of Khyber’s sun erupts to form a bridge to the sky.”
Images filled his mind as if summoned by the words he had spoken: the gibbering hordes of tentacled monsters, the brilliant column of light bursting up from the ground.
“The Storm Dragon descends into the endless dark beneath the bridge of light, where the Soul Reaver waits. There among the bones of Khyber, the Storm Dragon drives the spear formed from Siberys’s Eye into the Soul Reaver’s heart. And the Storm Dragon walks through the gates of Khyber and crosses the bridge to the sky.”
The deathless elf stared at Gaven in silence for a long time, and Gaven could not turn his eyes away. He was dimly aware of the others-Haldren glaring at him, Senya gaping in amazement, Cart watching with curious interest. Darraun’s eyes were elsewhere, probably avoiding contact with the undying thing he seemed to fear.
Finally the ancestor turned her gaze away from Gaven and wheeled on Senya. “Your question is answered, my counsel given. Depart from here, and may you bring honor and not shame to your family.”
Senya pressed her forehead to the ground then stood and busied herself around the brazier that burned in the corner of the room-Gaven had not noticed it before-but the ancestor interrupted her.
“I do not care for your prayers and offerings. Be gone!”
Startled, Senya hurried from the chamber, Darraun right on her heels. Haldren and Cart followed. Gaven tried to avoid the ancestor’s gaze as he moved to the door, but she placed herself in his path.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I am just a man,” he said again. “Gaven, once of House Lyrandar.”
“Go then, Gaven. Twice you have come to me now. The third time, you will finally find what you seek.”
Gaven hurried after Cart. He did not think he breathed until he was back on the street.
When he reached the street, Haldren snarled at him. “What in the Realm of Madness was all that about?” The sorcerer’s face twisted in rage.
Gaven shrugged, his eyes darting everywhere but in Haldren’s direction. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he certainly didn’t want to tell Haldren what he suspected.
“How did she know you?” Senya asked. “Why did she say you’d been here before?” Her voice held none of the fury of Haldren’s outburst, and Gaven allowed his eyes to meet hers. But he quickly looked away, and shrugged again.
“Who did she think you were?” Haldren demanded.
Gaven sat on his haunches and stared at the ground.
Darraun put a hand on Haldren’s arm. “Why are you so angry, Haldren?” he said. “What did you expect to happen in there?”
Haldren straightened and seemed to calm down a bit, but his eyes were still narrowed in suspicion, and he didn’t answer Darraun. “Have you been here before? Is that how you learned about the Prophecy?”
I have not been here before, Gaven thought. I just remember being here. He ran a finger along a groove between the cobblestones. But what had the ancestor meant with those words? The third time, you will finally find what you seek?
Senya fell to her knees in front of Gaven, trying to make him meet her eyes. “Gaven, that was my ancestor in there, and she said you had been there before,” she said. “Why did she say that? What’s your connection to my family?”
Gaven kept his eyes on the ground. Senya Alvena Arrathinen, he thought. What is your relation to my old friend Mendaros? No-I never knew him, he reminded himself, shaking his head. That was the other.
“Damn you!” Senya drew her hand back as if to slap him, but Cart’s words stopped her.
“It seems those showers of light have begun,” the warforged said.
Gaven looked up at the night sky. The Ring of Siberys made it look like an overcast day; the sky was dark blue gray and studded with points of golden light. Streaks of fire crossed the sky as dragonshards fell from the ring and rained to earth.
A few dragonshards clattered on the stone streets nearby, and Gaven heard others striking the buildings above them. He had been a prospector-that’s what he’d told Darraun. To a prospector’s mind, there was a small fortune to be made here. Siberys shards were the most precious dragonshards, useful primarily to the dragonmarked houses, who sent prospectors to Xen’drik to find the products of showers like this one. Properly attuned, a Siberys shard could enhance the power of a dragonmark in a variety of ways. House Lyrandar built them into the helms of their galleons-probably their airships as well-so that a dragonmarked heir of the house could control the elemental spirit bound into the ship. Clearly many of the living residents of the City of the Dead shared that point of view. They were scrambling after the shards that landed in the street like chickens after a handful of seed.
But Gaven was not here to make a fortune, and the shard they sought was no ordinary dragonshard. As he looked, one shard flared brighter than all the others and streaked across the sky. It grew brighter as it fell, stinging his eyes. When it landed, he heard its impact, like a great spear striking the earth. It was close, no more than a mile outside the city.
“The Eye of Siberys,” Haldren said. “Move!”
Gaven did not need Haldren’s command-he was already on his feet and three strides ahead of Haldren. Darraun kept pace with him at first-spurred, no doubt, by his eagerness to leave the City of the Dead-but Gaven soon left him behind.
The guards at the gate started to close ranks as he approached, probably assuming that he was fleeing the scene of a crime or trying to escape an angry watch patrol. Gaven prepared himself to barrel right through the guards if necessary. It proved not to be necessary-either the guards noticed the lack of any pursuit or they figured the city was best rid of the foreigners anyway.
It felt good to run. For so many years he had been confined to a small cell or given his exercise in a tiny yard where he just walked, slowly, counting his paces like the passing of years. Now the wind whipped his hair behind him, cooling the sweat from his face. His arms and legs pumped hard, his muscles protesting the exertion but also exulting in his speed. He remembered riding on the wyvern’s back behind Cart, feeling the dragon’s muscles as it flapped its wings hard to propel them through the air, and for a moment he felt as if he were flying.
A hundred yards outside the city, he realized he didn’t know where he was running. Three more steps, and he realized he didn’t care. He would run until he reached the sea, and then he would take flight and run across the waves. The wind blew at his back, and he could almost feel it lifting him off the ground.
In the jungle ahead of him, he saw a flicker of golden fire lighting a wisp of smoke, and he remembered why he ran. He turned toward the glow. The wind blew his hair into his face, and he lifted a hand to brush it aside. Then
