James Wyatt - Storm dragon

“Gaven, we’re ready,” Haldren said behind him.

Gaven turned to see Cart and Darraun shuffling into the chamber. Haldren extended a hand, inviting Gaven to join them, a broad smile on his face. Gaven’s pulse quickened. What did Haldren hope to learn here?

Gaven followed Darraun into the small stone chamber. It smelled of death, clouds of incense unable to mask the acrid scent of the embalmed corpse that stood and watched them enter. Pale flames flickered in empty eye sockets, and Gaven felt them burning into him as he approached. Senya’s ancestor was draped in ancient finery, rich velvet and brocaded silk cloaking her withered flesh. Long black hair fell around her desiccated face, pale paper-thin skin stretched tight over her bones, and her clawlike hands held a slender gold rod. Senya knelt on the floor before her ancestor, and Cart took a similar position behind her.

Gaven cast a sidelong glance at Darraun as they sank to their knees, noticing his wide eyes and the sweat beading on his brow. He’d seen this reaction on the battlefield during the war. Soldiers faced with the undead soldiers of Karrnath, animated from the corpses of earlier battles, often suffered more from their own fear than from the blades and arrows of their enemies. He wondered if Darraun had fought in the war, perhaps suffered at the skeletal hands of Karrnathi forces. He gave the man credit for facing his fear at Haldren’s command. Haldren knelt in front of Gaven, just behind Senya’s elbow.

“Senya Alvena Arrathinen,” the deathless thing said. Her shriveled lips barely moved, as though the cold, clear voice emerged magically from somewhere inside her head. Gaven was surprised at the purity of the voice, a far cry from the rasping whisper Gaven had expected. “What are you doing here? You are not a credit to your family.” She spoke in Elven, and Gaven wondered who else in the room understood her words.

Senya held her head high. “I am a warrior, and my skill at the blade brings honor to my ancestors.”

“Martial skill is not honorable when it is used for the pursuit of profit.”

“The Valaes Taern would not agree,” Senya said.

Gaven held back a smile. The warriors of the Valaes Taern had been mercenaries in the Last War until they annexed part of southern Cyre to form the nation of Valenar.

“Your family is not of the Valaes Taern.”

“Nevertheless, I fight with honor in a worthy cause.”

Her ancestor made a sound like a long sigh and stepped closer to where Senya knelt. “You have invoked the Right of Counsel, and tradition requires that I answer your questions, as much as I might wish to deny you. What counsel do you seek, Senya?”

Senya glanced over her shoulder at Haldren, and Gaven caught his first glimpse of fear in her eyes. Haldren put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and she turned back to her ancestor. “I seek knowledge of the Prophecy of the Dragons,” she said. Her voice sounded high, strained.

“The knowledge of the dragons should be used only as a weapon against the dragons.”

“I have invoked the Right of Counsel, as you said. Grant me the knowledge I seek.”

“There is more to wisdom than knowledge. You would do well to heed my counsel.”

Gaven watched Haldren take his hand from Senya’s shoulder and bring it to his mouth. The old man had to restrain himself from jumping into the argument. Gaven rather enjoyed seeing Haldren faced with someone he could not charm, bully, or dominate. He hoped to see many more examples of Haldren caught powerless.

“Give me knowledge, and trust my wisdom and that of my allies,” Senya said. Haldren nodded approvingly behind her.

“You have given me no cause to trust either.” The ancestor cast her burning eyes over Senya’s companions. Gaven was sure she dwelled longest on him. Was she studying his dragonmark, perhaps? Or did she somehow recognize him? “On the contrary,” she continued, “to all appearances you are rushing headlong into folly and destruction. I would not assist you in this.”

“You must,” Senya said.

Gaven was impressed at how Senya handled herself. For a moment he wondered if Haldren had established a magical connection between his mind and Senya’s so that he could speak through her. But Gaven decided it was more likely that Haldren had fallen in love with a woman who shared some of his talent for debate.

The undying ancestor drew herself up, bristling with anger. “I am bound to give counsel to deaf ears and show the path to blind eyes.”

Triumph rang in Senya’s voice. “Tell me, revered elder, how the Storm Dragon shall claim the place of the first of sixteen and become a god.”

The Storm Dragon?” The elder’s voice was quiet, and the fire in her eye sockets dimmed. She fixed her gaze on Senya, then on Haldren for a long moment. Gaven watched the old man hold her gaze without flinching. Then the deathless elder turned her burning eyes on Gaven, and he forced himself to meet those eyes.

“Who is this, Senya?” the ancestor said, her eyes still locked on Gaven’s. “Who is this hybrid you have brought into the city of your ancestors?”

Senya rose to her feet and stood between her ancestor and Gaven. Gaven looked at the floor and took a deep breath.

“Answer my question,” Senya said.

“Kneel!” The ancestor’s shout rang with supernatural power, and Senya dropped back to the floor. Gaven saw that Haldren had been about to rise as well, but he planted both knees back on the floor at the elder’s command.

“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.