James Wyatt - Storm dragon

“What’s this about? Did you follow Gaven here?”

“Yes. He escaped.” Another step closer. “Again.”

“Now, wait a moment, Thuranni. If you had any inkling of his power-”

“I believe I do.”

“Did you see that storm?” Bordan said. “Do you know what he’s done?”

“Far better than you do.”

“Do you know what he’s been ranting about all these years? What he’s been dreaming?”

Phaine wrinkled his nose in disgust. “My blood is from an undiluted line of Aerenal, human.” He drew out the last word with a vicious sneer. “I know.”

Bordan’s gaze flicked between the two elves. “What are you doing?” he said. “Gaven is the enemy here.”

“Of course,” Phaine said.

The elf woman spoke for the first time. “We can’t let you fail again. He grows stronger each time.”

“Why don’t you get him, then?”

“We will,” Phaine answered.

“And this is what we’ll do to him,” Leina added.

Both elves’ swords spun in a burst of motion, and Bordan fell to the blood-spattered sand.

The sun was dipping below the horizon, setting the last shreds of storm clouds ablaze with yellow and red, when Rienne returned to the main deck. Gaven watched as she looked up at the sky, and he smiled at the way the sunset glowed in her hair and eyes. She leaned against a railing near the wheel and smiled at him.

“How’s Darraun?” he said.

“Exhausted, but he’ll be fine.” She glanced at the hatch leading below. “I suppose we owe him our lives, or at least our freedom.”

“Again,” Gaven said. He remembered his first glimpse of freedom from his cell in Dreadhold: the Ring of Siberys framed within a ragged hole in the stone ceiling, the warforged jumping down and trying to coax him out, and then Darraun, finally, standing at his side and bringing him back to his senses. It seemed so long ago, and Dreadhold just a memory of a dream.

“Did you know he was a changeling?” Rienne asked.

“No idea. I remember that almost from the beginning I knew he was hiding something. He didn’t quite fit in with the others-he was the only one who would even think of challenging Haldren, for one thing. And Senya thought he had some connection to the Royal Eyes. But a changeling?” Gaven shook his head, remembering the dwarf who had released his manacles-the same one who had barged through Thordren’s back door and landed in a pile of cooking pots-and struggling to find any similarity to the familiar human artificer. “No, I can still hardly believe it.”

“It sort of makes you think, doesn’t it? Anyone you talk to could be a changeling, really-even someone you think you know. How can you ever be sure?”

Gaven had no answer for that.

Rienne watched him for a while, her eyes following the slight movements of his arms as he steered the airship over the sea. “So you’re flying an airship,” she said at last, a smile spreading across her face, gleaming white in her dark skin.

Gaven returned the smile. “I am,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”

“Is it hard?”

“Not in the least. She’s really not very different from a ship on the water. And the elemental does most of the work.”

“It seemed to be plenty of work for Darraun.”

“Oh, it was. These wheels are made to channel the power of a dragonmark-they’re the same ones they use on the seagoing galleons. They won’t work for just anyone.”

“It’s fortunate he was able to do it at all.”

“Yes, but not altogether surprising. Artificers are good at making magic work the way they want.”

Rienne ambled a few steps toward the prow. Gaven watched her as she stared ahead for a moment, then to the right, then to the left. She searched the horizon for a long moment, then turned back to him and asked the obvious question. “So where are we going?”

He gave her a sad smile. “If you don’t know what you want, you’re sure to do what someone else wants.”

“That’s my line,” she said with a grin, but then her face grew serious, and she stepped closer. “So what do you mean by that? Are we still talking about you and your destiny, or are you making some kind of comment about me?”

“I mean it’s time for me to decide. I’ve spent my whole life squirming under the pressure of other people’s expectations, without ever deciding who I want to be and what I want to do. It’s time for me to grow up, to stop defining my life by whining, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ ”

Rienne laughed at his exaggerated voice.

“Do you know,” Gaven continued, “before my Test of Siberys I must have prayed to each of the Nine Sovereigns a hundred times, asking that I wouldn’t show a dragonmark?”

Rienne frowned. “You never told me that.”

“It’s true. And I always felt like my father knew it, or at least blamed me for failing the test. I think he always figured that once my mark manifested, I’d come around-I’d be the dutiful son he wanted me to be, and follow in his footsteps. I guess I must have figured that if I did get a mark, I would pretty much have to. And that’s why I wanted so badly not to get one.”

“I don’t want to do that.” Rienne mimicked Gaven’s whining voice.

“Exactly. I never wanted to do what I was supposed to do.”

“And yet you served your house well, all those years with me.”

“By working around House Tharashk to get better deals on dragonshards. By working outside the system.”

Rienne stepped closer. “Very well, you rebel. So now you’re fighting against expectations again. Some ancient dragon inside your head wants to become a god, but you’re not going to do that. Haldren wanted you working for him, but you weren’t about to do that. You’re supposed to go back to Dreadhold and rot like a dutiful prisoner, but I note we’re not sailing east to Dreadhold. We’re sailing west. So what are you going to do?”

Gaven’s brow furrowed, and he looked away. “I think I’m going to be a hero.”

“Really?” Rienne almost laughed, but she reined it in when she saw the seriousness of his eyes.

Gaven blinked back tears. “The elder son of Arnoth d’Lyrandar could be nothing less.”

She closed the distance between them and placed a hand on his chest. “He was proud of you, you know.”

Gaven nodded, but he stared down at the wheel. “The memories of him that come most readily to my mind are the stern father, judging and distant and gruff. I don’t know why those are so much easier to remember than the kinder moments, the times he made it clear how much I meant to him. The way his eyes would shine when he talked about me, positively beaming with pride.” He looked up and found Rienne’s eyes. “That’s an expectation I suddenly find that I want to live up to.”

She held his gaze, then reached an arm behind his neck to pull his mouth down to hers.

The changeling was dreaming-he knew that much, but the knowledge did nothing to help him navigate the chaos. A jumble of identities, names and faces and personas, stumbling through one unlikely crisis after another. At last he stood in his true form in the awesome presence of a goddess.

“The Traveler,” he said. “Bless your ten thousand names.”

But the Traveler wore the face of his paladin acquaintance of recent months-a tall half-elf with short red hair and blue-gray eyes-and she glowed with an argent radiance like the Silver Flame of the Thranes.

“Who are you?” she asked him.

“Auftane Khunnam,” he said, and he was a dwarf, all black and brown and sturdy, strong.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“Haunderk Lannath.” Human, sandy hair, scheming.

“Who are you?”