"Gaven?"
Gaven looked up and scanned the courtyard. The living soldier had emerged from the building and started back down the stairs, followed by a woman in a plain white robe. Her head was shaved bald, and her face bore a skull tattoo like that of the soldier.
The deathless soldier stepped back and watched the others approach. Gaven started to stand, but the guard turned and glared at him, so he stayed on his knees. The woman hurried toward him, sandals slapping against the flagstones. Gaven watched curiously-there was something familiar about the woman, but he couldn't place her in the fragments of his memory.
Finally she stood before him, a little breathless, her slight smile strangely out of place on her tattooed face. "Gaven," she said Common, "I'm glad to see you again."
Gaven stared dumbly.
"Gaven, it's Senya."
"Senya?" Gaven gaped at her, trying to see Senya's face past the tattoo. Her full lips, no longer painted scarlet, had been made to look like stark white teeth, and the eyelids she had colored blue before were black, so that when she blinked, they might have been empty sockets. Her bald head was perhaps the most disconcerting, but when he tried to imagine a full head of curly black hair, he could almost see her face.
"Yes, it's really me." She bent down and kissed his cheek in greeting. She smelled of incense and spice, not the flowered fragrances she'd worn before.
"You have changed," Gaven said.
She laughed. "Yes, I have. You may stand." She offered her hand to him, and he took it as he rose to his feet. "And I have you to thank for it."
"Me? Why?"
"You helped me discover who I am. You gave me the courage to stand up to Haldren. You taught me…" She looked away. "Many things." Glancing at the two soldiers who frowned at them, she took Gaven's arm. "Let's discuss this indoors. It's cold out here."
"One moment, priestess," the living guard interrupted in Elven.
Gaven looked at Senya again. Priestess?
"What is the matter?" Senya said in the same language.
"This man you greet with such familiarity has spoken blasphemously of the revered ancestors and demanded a right he does not have. I would see him punished."
"I will bring your concern to the ancestors," Senya said. She tugged Gaven's arm. "Come with me," she added in Common.
"But priestess-"
"That is all. Return to your post."
Both guards bowed and stepped back from them, and Senya led Gaven toward the building she had emerged from.
"Priestess?" Gaven said, once they were out of the soldiers' earshot.
"Indeed. Much has changed since you left me outside Vathirond."
"You were at Starcrag Plain," Gaven said. "With Haldren. Darraun and Rienne captured you."
"Yes. We'll discuss it inside."
Gaven walked beside her up the wide stairs to the many-tiered tower. The warmth of her hands on his arm stood in strange contrast to the death mask inscribed on her face, and when he wasn't looking at her it was easy to imagine her at his side in Korranberg, too close for his comfort, flirting seductively. But then he looked at her again, and all he could see was a priestess of the Undying Court, her body shrouded in her shapeless robe.
"Senya?" he said as they passed through the arch at the top of the stairs.
"Yes?"
"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.