'I'm glad to see you, too.' Strangely, he meant it.
Senya smiled up at him, clutched his arm a little more tightly, and led him toward a narrower stairway inside the building-which Gaven suddenly recognized as a temple. A pair of tall doors were carved with Elven invocations to the Undying Court and adorned with images of skulls and swords, honoring the warrior ancestors of Aerenal. Braziers outside the doors smoldered with coal and incense, waiting for morning when their flames would be stoked to life again for the next sacrifices. In the night, the whole building was as quiet as a tomb.
Senya released his arm and led the way up the narrow stairs. They climbed three flights in silence, then down a short hall, and she led him into a small chamber. A curved couch, made for reclining, stood against one wall, a table and a single chair opposite it. Between them was a tiny altar on the floor, with a straw mat set before it. In an icon above the altar, Gaven recognized the deathless ancestor he had met in Aerenal.
Senya closed the door behind him and sat on the couch. He was suddenly uncomfortable again, alone with her in her bedchamber. His discomfort must have shown. 'Sit,' she said with a laugh, gesturing at the chair across the room. 'And don't worry. I'm done with all that.'
Gaven felt his face flush and turned away, taking longer than he needed to pull the chair out from the table and turn it to face her. When he sat down and looked at her again, she was grinning.
'What's so funny?' he asked.
Her grin became a full-throated laugh. 'You are,' she said. 'I'm sorry. I must have been truly awful.'
He was struck, suddenly, by the brilliant blue of her eyes, which he hadn't noticed in the darkness outside. 'Awful? No. You were quite persistent, though.'
'I'm sorry.' The smile faded from her face.
'It's all right.'
'It's not-not for me, anyway. I had the opportunity to learn from you, to study the Prophecy of the dragons at your side, and I squandered it. I think I knew what I really wanted, but I translated that into the only desire I really understood at the time.'
'What did you really want?'
'The same thing my mother and all my ancestors wanted for me-what all the universe wanted for me.' She extended an arm, vaguely encompassing the room and the temple beyond. 'This.'
'Your destiny?'
'Exactly.'
CHAPTER 25
The iron dragon loosed its breath first, cascading waves of lightning pouring from its mouth. Maelstrom spun to life around Rienne, gathering the lightning into a whirlwind that crackled and sparked around her but didn't harm her. Drawing a deep breath at the eye of that storm, Rienne planted a foot firmly on the ground and directed a focused blast at the red dragon, just as it was inhaling in preparation for loosing its own gout of fire. The lightning struck it in the face and filled its mouth, turning its exhalation into a roar of pain.
'Barak Radaam,' the iron dragon rumbled. 'I didn't believe it.'
'We will deliver it to the Blasphemer,' the red one said, wisps of smoke trailing from its mouth. 'With the body of this one.'
Rienne was too tired to repeat her boast that the Blasphemer would have to take her himself. She crouched, waiting for the dragons' next attack, trying to keep them both in view as they circled her warily.
The red dragon lunged first, springing at her with surprising speed, half running and half flying. She ducked and sprang aside so the dragon's mouth snapped at empty air, but the iron dragon-smarter than it had first appeared-had anticipated the direction of her dodge, and it was ready. Its heavy claw lashed out and raked across her back as she tried to arch away from it, pushing her back, stumbling, toward the red.
Maelstrom swung around and bit into the red dragon's snout as it snapped at her again, and trailing a line of steaming blood, it cut into the other dragon's claw. Rienne followed its momentum, whirling dangerously close to the iron dragon's claws until it stumbled over her. For one terrifying moment, the dragon's feet were stamping the ground all around her. She swung Maelstrom up to cut a wide gash across the dragon's belly, showering blood around her, then it staggered past her and crashed into the red, landing on its side.
Rienne wiped the acrid blood from her face as the iron dragon scrambled to its feet and the red circled her again. The barbarian tide had parted to give her and the dragons a wide berth, and at a glance Rienne couldn't see any of the Eldeen defenders behind her-the barbarians must have pushed the line back. She was alone, then.
The prospect of dying on this battlefield had not occurred to her until that moment. Her dream in Argonnessen had convinced her that she was fated to confront the Blasphemer at the Wynarn-alone and perhaps in failure, but at least not yet, not until the barbarians had advanced that far. But now she stood alone in the midst of the horde, flanked by dragons as her every muscle screamed in exhaustion, cut off from any aid. She shook her head ruefully.
Then a shriek like an eagle's cry pierced the air overhead, and she glanced up to see three hippogriffs circling in the brightening sky. Both dragons chose that instant to lunge at her, coming in from opposite sides. The iron one was slower, perhaps because of the wound in its belly, so she leaped toward it to avoid the red's bite. As the iron dragon opened its jaws to snap at her, she threw herself at its mouth. She planted one foot just behind its front teeth, and before it could close its jaws on her leg she flipped up and over its head, landing solidly between its shoulders. The dragon reared up to throw her off, but she grabbed a wing to steady herself, and drove Maelstrom down behind its shoulder. With a roar that made lightning crackle in its mouth, the iron dragon collapsed.
Now the red was distracted, looking up at the sky. Rienne followed its gaze. Two of the hippogriffs were still high above her, but the third was swooping low, and she saw Sky Warden Kyaphar on its back. Did he hope to extract her from a losing battle? As she and the dragon both watched, Kyaphar stood up in his stirrups and lifted one leg over the hippogriff's back, then jumped off. Rienne gasped-he was still a long way from the ground. But Kyaphar spread his arms wide and they became wings, and the rest of his body transformed until he was a great eagle, diving rather than falling down to her side as his hippogriff flapped upward.
The red dragon roared a tremendous blast of fire. Rienne pulled the dead dragon's wing up as a shield to block the brunt of it, and she saw Kyaphar pull up from his dive in time to avoid most of the flames. Emboldened by the Sky Warden's unexpected appearance, Rienne charged.
The dragon reared up to meet her charge, exposing its belly to Maelstrom's arc. But in order to reach it, she would have to put herself in easy reach of the dragon's claws. She didn't look up, but she could hear the beat of Kyaphar's wings, so she took the bait, leaping the last few yards with Maelstrom drawn back over her shoulder, ready for a mighty swing. As she reached the dragon, she saw its head and claws start down, but when Maelstrom cut through the scales of its belly, Kyaphar swooped past the dragon's head and slashed his talons across the dragon's eyes. It pulled back away from the eagle and fell wildly off balance. Rienne drove Maelstrom into its heart.
She heard a rustle, then Kyaphar stood beside her, clutching a short wooden rod adorned with eagle feathers. 'Perhaps you didn't need my help after all,' he said with a smile. 'I've never seen anyone wield a sword quite like that.'
'I appreciate it nonetheless,' Rienne said. She looked around at a wide circle of barbarians watching her. They had kept their distance while she fought the dragons, and they seemed reluctant to approach now that she'd killed both wyrms, but she suspected their leader would soon drive them forward again. 'Can you get us up and out of here?'
In answer, Kyaphar gave a piercing whistle, and his hippogriff swooped downward. But the encircling barbarians also seemed to take the whistle as a signal to charge. With a ragged shout, 'Kathrik Mel!' they surged in from all sides.
Kyaphar held out his feathered totem, and a blast of icy wind threw barbarians back into their fellows, collapsing one side of the closing circle. Rienne crouched and waited for the nearest ones to reach her, but the hippogriff was faster. Kyaphar leaped onto its back before its feet touched down, and he held a hand out to Rienne. She swung Maelstrom in a wide sweep that killed three plague-marked men, then took Kyaphar's hand and vaulted into the saddle behind him. A pair of shifters, their bodies and faces warped in their bestial rage, pounced on the
