The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,122

do you think the grizanes called the mountain down to overwhelm you? They taught your people the laws they cannot live by; you are what they feared. You are my child. Give me the man. You cannot stand against me, and I will have either you or him.”

“I tell you, you will have neither of us! I can raise fire to match you and water to drown you!”

“If you destroy this whole city with fire and water, I will still be here,” Yvaressinest said. “You are the gateway and the key. Did you not realize why the grievers could run in daylight, to follow you? The ones of the forest are my people, and so are you. You will unlock the gates of the woods and set the prisoners free to run across the wide land.”

He saw her shudder, and spoke more winningly. “I will make you so you may walk unharmed among the forest lords. I will teach you the secrets of the sea, so you may walk on the sunken reefs, walk through the cities drowned long ago. I will teach you to make wings of power, to soar on the endless paths of the sky.”

“You will teach me nothing,” Andiene said, but in her heart, she despaired. If he had given her all her power, then what weapon was left to wield against him? Still she spoke defiantly. “If my power is flawed, then I will use it flawed, and fight you with it as long as I can.”

The dragon raised his heavy head. The flames engulfed them. Kallan sobbed in pain. Andiene fought the flames back from both of them, building a wall about them. But her grasp on the white fire weakened; her own fire turned to devour her. She fought it back again, but more painfully. On that high meadow, eight years earlier, the war had been easier. So much easier. Why? She had been weak then, untrained.

Then she realized that till now the dragon had used but one sliver of his power against her. He had beguiled her, deluded her, flattered her pride. He had played with her, to let her think that she could war against him and win. In despair, she abandoned the pitiful backfire; it was swept up in an instant by the raging wildfire.

Through the curtain of flame, she saw the very paving stones melt and run in puddles, the earth beneath them fuse to stone. Bone and flesh and blood would have been gone in an instant in any earthly fire, but yet they endured in agony.

Then the dragon drew in his breath. The fire died. “Now you see what your power is worth to defy me. Every shaping of it I gave to you, and do you think you could turn it against me? Give the man to me.”

She shook her head. No enemy—no, not even Nahil, would I give to this one. The mind devoured but yet alive, the body worn like ragged castoff clothes. No!

The eager flames rose again. Agony beyond all reckoning, driving her back into the silence of her childhood. This fire did not destroy flesh, but its patient fierceness would burn away all mind and reason, in time. In time … and there is time enough … even years went by that other time and the sun did not rise or set once.

As the fire died again, a sound echoed like laughter, but too inhuman for laughter. “In the songs they call me Radel’s Bane. They shall call me Andiene’s Bane, yet. Give the man to me.”

“No,” she said, the easiest word, one that can be said when all hope and power has burned away.

Kallan spoke then, his voice as harsh as if he had not spoken for years. “Did he teach you healing as well as fire, my lady?”

“No gift of healing lies in me.”

“Think back, my lady. Who healed Ilbran, as he lay in poisoned fever in the forest?”

He tried to say more, but his words were swallowed up in the sudden roar of flames sweeping higher and fiercer than before. Andiene did not fight them. Her mind whirled in frantic speculation. Kare had healed Ilbran with her herbs. But Andiene remembered how she had lain close beside him. No use of power there. It did not make her weary. The stillness too simple. No fixing of her mind. But why had the dragon said, again and again, ‘no root nor seed of healing in you.’ Why was it necessary

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