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.
He knew at last what he would do, and who he would become.
CHAPTER 29
Gaven stared at the lines of his dragonmark until the light faded from the shard and draped the room in shadow again, and then he stared at the ceiling until Senya, standing beside him, nudged him back to his senses.
'Did you find what you seek?' she said, holding a hand out for him.
'I believe I did.' He took her hand and got to his feet. The braziers' fire had already died down, so the only light in the temple came in through the open doors.
'Where will you go now?'
Gaven looked back up at the ceiling as though the lines of his destiny were still visible there. He knew his destination, but he still had a choice of paths to get there.
'West,' he said. She started to pull her hand away, but he gripped it with both hands. 'Senya, thank you.
