A bed. Gaven hadn't slept in a bed since he and Rienne boarded the Sea Tiger in Sharavacion. Without Rienne, though, he feared a bed would seem painfully empty.
"How far is it?" Ashara asked. She looked as though her only concern was whether she could make it all the way to a bed before she fell over.
"Not far," Aunn said. "A few blocks."
"I'll help you," Cart said, and Ashara smiled up at him.
Aunn stood. "Let's go, then, before the sun rises."
Gaven lifted the sheaf of papers from Kelas's desk, his fingers scrabbling to get the bottom page off the smooth wood. He glanced around the room to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything, but his only possessions were on his person-the armor and sword that Cart and Ashara had secured for him while Phaine held him captive. He clutched the papers to his chest.
Aunn led the way out of the quiet white tower and onto the street. Crown's Hall rose in stately majesty just off to the left, and Gaven saw a pair of royal guards watching as Aunn led his friends away from the palace. Gaven imagined that the guards stared particularly keenly at him, though he knew it was unlikely they'd recognize him. Following Aunn's lead, he ignored them and walked with the others down the wide street, kicking at the dry leaves on the cobblestones.
Kelas's house was everything his study in the Tower of Eyes was not-large and well lit, with tall, glass-paned windows offering a pleasant view of the tree-lined neighborhood. Aunn produced a key, but the door swung open before he could turn it in the lock, and a pretty young woman smiled at him.
"Welcome home, Master Kelas," she said. "We weren't expecting you back so soon." To Gaven's eyes, her smile seemed forced.
"Plans change," Aunn said. He was gruff, aloof. The woman gave way as he stepped through the door and into a long entry hall. "We haven't slept, and we mean to. Are the guest rooms ready?"
"Of course, master."
"And send some wine to the rooms as well."
"The vintage?" She didn't look at Aunn when she asked that, but at Cart.
Aunn hesitated. The servant's eyes fluttered back to him. "Bluevine '92," he said, and she seemed to relax.
"A fine choice," she said. "Will you be needing anything else?"
"Just sleep."
"As you wish." She bowed deeply and withdrew.
"This was a terrible idea," Aunn whispered. "We should just leave."
Gaven looked at the shadows beneath Aunn's eyes. Ashara was leaning heavily on Cart, and despite Gaven's earlier protest, he felt the weight of exhaustion. "We need to rest," he said.
"We'd have been safer at an inn," Aunn said, glancing around the hall.
"Why?"
"Kelas was a spy master. He had so many precautions in place-" The sound of footsteps cut him off. "The guest rooms are this way," he said, louder, and he led the way through a door into another hall.
"Like the business with the wine?" Gaven whispered as they climbed a flight of stairs.
"Exactly. I think I said the right thing, but I'm not positive. It's probably best not to drink the wine."
They reached another hall, and Aunn pushed a door open. "Here's one room," he said, "and the next two doors. I, unfortunately, will be at the other end of the house."
Gaven looked into the open doorway. It was large for a guest room, with space enough for a low table and two upholstered chairs in addition to the soft-looking bed. The first morning sunlight streamed in through a tall window on the far side of the room.
"Avoid conversation," Aunn added in a whisper. "The servants will hear everything you say."
Cart led Ashara down the hall to the next door and opened it for her. Gaven didn't wait to see them say good night. "Get some rest," he said to no one in particular. He tossed the papers onto the bed in the first guest room, closed the door with a last nod to Aunn, pulled off his boots, and squirmed out of the chainmail shirt Ashara had given him in the cave temple behind the Dragon Forge.
Pain flared from a dozen scrapes and wounds on his chest and arms. His shirt was in tatters, thanks to Phaine's ministrations, and some of his cuts oozed fresh blood when he pulled the mail away. He wished Aunn had ordered the servants to draw a bath, and briefly toyed with the idea of summoning them himself. He remembered Aunn's warning, though, and decided to avoid the servants. He fell into bed, and immediately sleep reached to enfold him.
"No," he said, and he heaved himself to a sitting position, propped against the elegant headboard. When he closed his eyes, the darkness was like the blackness of his dreams, pulling him down and holding him captive. Best not to close his eyes, then. He grabbed the papers from Dreadhold, straightened the pages on his lap, and started to read.
Tumult and tribulation swirl in his wake: The Blasphemer rises, the Pretender falls, and armies march once more across the land.
The Storm Dragon, Gaven thought. He couldn't remember the rest of the verse, but it was something to do with the Storm Dragon.
He ran a hand over the tender skin where his dragonmark had been. Am I still the Storm Dragon? he wondered. He reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out the dragonshard that held his Mark of Storm.
Or is this the Storm Dragon now?
Turning the shard in his hand, he thought for a moment that he saw in his mark the same words he'd just read on the page. Something about the Blasphemer, anyway.
He placed the bloodstone on the skin of his chest and balanced it there as he turned to the next page in Kelas's papers.
The cauldron of the thirteen dragons boils until one of the five beasts fighting over a single bone becomes a thing of desolation.
The twentieth day of Olarune, 973 YK. Gaven had scrawled those words on the wall of his cell twenty-one years to the day before the Mourning, when Cyre became "a thing of desolation." They were transcribed without comment-surely no dwarf at Dreadhold could have guessed in 973 how those words might be fulfilled. Gaven remembered that verse and its conclusion:
Desolation spreads over that land like wildfire, like plague, and Eberron bears the scar of it for thirteen cycles of the Battleground. Life ceases within its bounds, and ash covers the earth.
Apparently the Mourning had been foretold in the Prophecy. Did that mean it had to happen? Were the deaths of millions of Cyrans somehow necessary, because the Prophecy predicted it?
Or had someone brought the Mourning about in order to fulfill the Prophecy? No one knew for certain what had really happened on the Day of Mourning. Perhaps some dragon or sorcerer, obsessed with the Prophecy, had decided that killing all those people was the best way to fulfill those words, words found written in the the depths of the Dragon Below or encoded in a dragonmark, or signified by the movement of the moons and stars. Where had Gaven learned them? In a nightmare?
What nuance of meaning was obscured by the bald translation he'd scribbled in his cell? All the verbs he'd chosen seemed clear, painfully direct, making it hard to imagine any other possible interpretation. Could the Prophecy have been fulfilled in a less devastating way? Could Cyre have been spared?
He closed his eyes as he thought, then jolted awake as sleep tried once more to claim him. He scowled, shook his head to clear it, and turned the page.
Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear. Wind is his steed and rain his cloak. The words of creation are in his ears and on his tongue. The secrets of the first of sixteen are his.
Malathar had echoed those words back to him during their final battle-why? Was the dragon-king seeing his own doom in the Prophecy? And then Malathar said another verse. Gaven looked at his dragonmark again, and saw it:
The Storm Dragon flies before the traitor's army to deliver vengeance. The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer. The maelstrom swirls around him. He is the storm and the eye of the storm.