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 in 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?”
