for. The many years, the cruel schooling, the forest paths, the summer journeying, and this was all it meant. She walked numbly, shapes and colors pulsing and blurring, sounds blaring loud, and fading away. For a week she had not truly slept, for fear that the shadows she had summoned would slip from her grasp
She heard the shouting from the city, “Reji Marates! Andiene Rejin!” The bells were ringing a discordant jangle. Someone had gone ahead of her. Was this her victory?
It was too easy, like a dream. There was no joy in it. The bells had rung that other time, too, and they had named a king. The crowd had shouted then, too.
The mass of soldiers divided and left her a pathway. They had thrown something over the palace walls, a man’s body, sprawled and broken. She walked to where it lay, and stared down at Nahil’s body, his face turned blankly to the pale autumn sky, a face she had carried in her thoughts for eight years. He was younger than she remembered, scarcely older than Kallan.
Her anger grew. It was all she had left to her. “Who robbed me of my revenge?”
“No one,” the eager voice of a stranger answered. “It was self-slaughter. When he saw his army scatter like songbirds before a sea-hawk, he took his sword, set the hilt to the ground and the point to his heart, and kneeled down.”
She shook her head. “Then what has become of my revenge?”
Kallan stood at her side, speaking urgently. “Be glad this is the way it ended. He was your father’s brother. Be glad that it was his own fear that destroyed him. What more could you have done? Maybe this will break the old cycle of son killing father, and brother killing brother.”
“He had a son,” she said. “Does he still live?”
He nodded.
“What shall I have done with him? You have solved such problems before.”
Kallan raised his head and saw the unforgetting anger in her eyes. He who gives a king his heart’s desire must beware.
“Before, I was never asked such questions,” he said. “He is young and his mother is dead. Have him fostered by one who is loyal to you.” He looked to where Syresh stood, with Lenane close beside him.
Andiene nodded, and the challenge faded from her eyes. “Now begins the unfamiliar part, of ruling and reigning.”
“Your palace waits for you,” Kallan said. “You can trust these men. There are none of them that will hold to the lost cause. The nobles are waiting to swear fealty to you. Speak to the city and it will answer you.”
“Not yet,” she said. “They must wait. One place that I must go. Dragonsquare. I do not know where it is.”
Kallan did not question her. He led her there, along the winding streets, with Syresh following behind, and a crowd of soldiers to guard them. “Stand here and wait,” she told them, “and let no one enter till I return.”
Syresh nodded and stepped back. “Not alone!” said Kallan. “I swore you no oath of obedience.”
“What do you know of this?”
“Nothing, but I have guessed much. All of our company dreamed alike.”
“I tell you, you have no part in it.”
“You will not go alone,” he said.
“Let it be your doom, then,” said Andiene, and she walked ahead of him into the square. Behind her, she heard the heavy gate swing closed, iron-shod wood crying out against the stone like a living creature.
The square was paved with pale stones. It blurred and shifted so that she seemed to see the flowerless meadow above the ocean, overlying the city courtyard. The dragon lay before her, his green eyes watching, revealing nothing. “I thought I would have to summon you,” she said.
The white flames flickered from his jaws and died. “I summoned you. You came at my call as you have always done. Did you think that you owed me nothing, after I gained you all your heart’s desire?” Though he whispered, power filled his voice like the roar of summer wildfire.
Andiene blinked her eyes. The meadow dimmed and faded. The dragon lay on the cold stones as though he were still chained captive in the city square.
“I made you no bargain,” she said.
“None needed to be made. From the first, you were mine. I called you to me, and when those meddling creatures would have turned you to a different path, I shifted them aside, and drew you to me again.”
She remembered his cruel voice calling her, the call