chill, and the chanting of the grizane seemed to come from a great distance. Ilbran forced himself to walk away and lean against a tree, outwardly at ease.
The birds and insects had stopped their singing. There was a sound he could not name, a muffled blow, a soft cry. “Lord, are you well?” Ilbran called.
“Come to me, but crawl along the ground,” the grizane answered in a faint whisper. Ilbran started forward, uncomprehending. Then something tugged at his sleeve, like the hand of a friend claiming his attention. Arrows! He threw himself on the ground. The kingsmen had caught them unaware.
He kept himself flat to the ground. He heard the muffled thunk of two more arrows striking the dirt near him. The dust he stirred up choked him, and his sense of direction failed. “Lord?” he asked.
“Here,” was the barely audible reply.
Ilbran changed his direction, crawling his way along the ground. He touched clothing, at last. He felt along the grizane’s body. Fingertips touched fingertips, and he could see again.
There was no time to waste on wonder, for the arrow had gone through the grizane’s chest. Ilbran reached out his hand to touch it, and then drew back.
“No use,” said the grizane. “No more use for your gift.” A shadow of a smile touched his lips, and then was lost in his pain.
He coughed once, shallowly, and bright blood sprang from his lips. Though he choked on it, he forced himself to speak.
“Go … Leave … me … Carvalon … Danger … Dragon … The broken bridge … mended again.” He made a great effort to speak plainly, though his voice grew fainter every moment. “The break in the web … The first changing. She is the greatest danger your people have known.”
His eyes were sightless, but his whole face seemed to express urgent need. Then he shuddered and was still.
Ilbran had no time to grieve. Under his hand, the flesh grew cold and gray. For an instant, it seemed harder, stone-like, then face and hands crumbled, shattered, and fell to nothingness. The robe crumpled in on itself. Nothing lay in the southern road but a heap of gray rags pierced through with a bright-feathered arrow.
Chapter 8
Wide and deep is the water that lies between the Nine Kingdoms and Dragonsland. Andiene stood on the foggy plateau and knew she had crossed the channel that no ships may sail. She was not in the world of men.
Still, she stood silent. She had heard many tales of dragons. She had been carried through the square that marked the heart of the city, where a chain, massively forged, fettered white dragon’s bones. She stared at the great gray dragon again. One foreleg was gnarled like a tree stump, heavy claws digging rootlike into the ground. The other … tattered and unfinished …
“Yvaressinest,” she said.
“How are you so learned, daughter of mine enemies, that you know my name?”
“The songsters have sung of you for a hundred summers and a hundred winters,” she said.
The dragon’s voice, dry and inhuman though it was, seemed tinged with human pleasure. “So they still sing of the revenge of Yvaressinest?”
She was spurred to pride in her own people. She remembered the stories she had heard. “They sing of the madness of Karstir—how he vowed to his love, Cresine, that he would bring her a dragon meek, tamed, and chained. They sing of how that dragon was the marvel of the Rejiseja, of all the Nine Kingdoms, till he escaped, forced to gnaw off his leg and escape like some animal in a trap.”
White flames licked out from the dragon’s half-opened mouth, flickered and died like the motion of a serpent’s tongue. “And what of the city that died in flames that day?”
She smiled. “In all the songs, they sang much of dragon’s indifference, but little of dragon’s curiosity. They might have told more and been more truthful. In the songs I heard, the city lived unharmed.”
A mutter, deep down in the dragon’s throat, that could almost have been a growl. Andiene met his eyes fearlessly. In the huge slit pupils, she saw herself, a tiny figurine, a shadow in the darkness. She was dizzy, as though she stood on the edge of the sea cliffs. She swayed, took a step nearer, another step. Great circles of green surrounded those doll-like images of herself, but they had no meaning—it was important only to come closer … closer … to that gray-barked tree-trunk lying in the flowerless meadow. Moving was like