that she had gathered did not catch fire.
She threw the flints aside, at last, and looked at the fish doubtfully. After she had starved for a few more days, she might be hungry enough for it.
Then, as Andiene abandoned her attempt to draw fire from the rocks, the unlearned knowledge came to her once again. Not understanding what she did, she set hands together, fingertip to fingertip, palm to palm. As she drew them slowly apart, flames leaped up between them. The sea-grass caught and burned, with twistings of blue and green among the yellow flames.
Though her hands trembled and she could not control them, she fed the fire with dry driftwood, broiled the fish, then banked up the coals with ashes. She had learned her first lesson in the use of power, that it is more wearying than the hardest labor a man might do.
As she was picking the last tiny bones from the fish, the calling came again. “Come, Andiene, come. You are rightful ruler and the people will not deny you.”
She saw herself in robes embroidered in silk and gold, ruling, judging, waging war. She walked the white corridors of the palace of Mareja. She heard a minstrel sing her praises, the Song of Andiene. The kings to north and south sent tribute in dread of her. She was Lady of fire and air and water, holding power in her hands.
Andiene rose to her feet. She took an uncertain step up the gorge, another one, and then stopped. Was this the way to gain power, to move to another’s will like a puppet on a string? Anger freed her. She struck out with all her mind’s force, and the link that bound them stretched and was gone, as a spiderweb will stretch and then turn to tattered cords.
Almost, she longed to have the voice, the presence back, to fill the emptiness and silence. She laughed at her own folly, and stretched herself upon the sand to watch the stars. It was as though she had walked in a dream for all her life, and had only just awakened.
She had paid a heavy price for that wakening, to be sure. When she slept, she dreamed of the blood-soaked courtyard, dreams of terror from which she could not wake.
In daytime, though that terror was gone, the thought of the fisherman’s family troubled her. In the few days that they had sheltered her, she had seen more love than she had seen in all her twelve years of life. She had abandoned them to an uncertain fate. If she had been able to summon power at will, she could have stayed and fought to protect them, as rulers should protect their people. But the power had eluded her, or else she had been afraid to use it.
She thought of it often, the great power she had used to free herself from Nahil’s men, the little power she had used to start a fire to cook her meal. It was an unknown thing, coming to her with no warning. No stories or songs had ever told of sorcery—and sorcery it must have been—acting without tools, herbs, incantations.
She found no reason to use her power again. She searched until she found a hollow branch fallen from the cliff far above, to fill with ashes and coals to carry with her, so she would not need to call fire from the air.
As the days went by, the caller remained silent. Once or twice she reached out with her mind, in a way she did not understand. She could feel no other presence.
The life she lived was easy enough, though bitter hard compared to the princess’s life she had been born to. The sanderlings grew no warier. She learned which plants could be eaten. After another storm, a sea-hawk’s nest, built out of season, drifted ashore. She fried its eggs, one by one, on a great flat stone.
And so Andiene grew thinner and taller and stronger. She learned her land well—a day’s walk north and a day’s walk south, to where the cliffs ran into the sea and she could not pass. The land fed her, but not easily enough to give her leisure to think to the future. She lived, for the most part, like a wordless animal.
Still, the caller was silent. Her impatience grew. She longed to war against his harsh subtle voice.
The river’s gorge was steeper as it went inland. As Andiene grew more skilled in climbing, she traveled further. One