wading upstream. She lifted her foot, moved it forward. The water swept it back again. Moving was like walking in deep sand. She floundered and sank.
Black shadows of herself, black, green, gray—she looked outward from the center, and stopped, and laughed. “Lord Dragon, I will not walk into your jaws so easily. I did not come to your call. I came of my own free will to strike a bargain with you.”
“What do you have that you could offer me?” Yvaressinest asked. He raised his heavy head, wedge-shaped like that of a poisonous snake. His mouth opened. She saw the teeth like curved yellow swords, venom dripping from each fang.
The white flames sprang out and engulfed her; they burned deep but did not consume. In summertime the air is so dry and hot that it seems to sear the skin. Though the air is still, the weight of it lies on men like a heavy garment. The flames lay on her like that.
She tried to beat them out with her hands. She fell to the ground and rolled to smother them. They clung and burned like executioner’s fire. Under the cliffs, the waves crashed against the rocks. Water will quench the flames, she thought in her madness.
No! The cliffs were high; the rocks were cruel. The answer came like a door opening on a familiar land. Fight flames with flames! She called fire of her own, from her body, from her mind. It pressed outward, warding off the dragonbreath. White fire warred with white fire. Then both were gone.
Andiene laughed arrogantly. “You see, Lord Dragon, I am not for you.”
His eyes regarded her, jewel-green as the depths of the green sea. “In the days that I knew your kind, they would have leaped over the cliff into the sea to escape that burning.”
“But not I.” Andiene looked down at her hands. No pain, no burns; the fire had left no marks. There had been greater joy and excitement in that struggle than in anything she had done in her short life. Already, though, she felt the weariness, the paralyzing weakness. In all wisdom, she knew that she should flee while she was able. Instead, she asked, “Why did you call me here?”
“I wished to see what manner of royalty they bred on the other shore. I know what you saw, what wakened your powers. I was with you when you fled from that courtyard. Nahil reigns now by conquest and birthright, with no one to oppose him. The city will not speak to him, but he has no need of that. He has no one to fear.”
“Does he not?” she asked.
The dragon’s voice went on, harsh and dry. “There is much I can teach you. If you stay with me, you will gain the power to return to that other shore and destroy them. Destroy your uncle and all his kin, to the very least one. Set yourself over the people and trample them into the dirt, the filthy people, the fickle people, ready to cheer for anyone.”
Andiene looked deliberately at the dragon. “So you will help me gain my revenge, and in doing so, you will win your own vengeance?”
If dragon’s voice could have smiled, then the voice of Yvaressinest did. “Indeed you are right, child of the Rejiseja. You need what I have to offer. Down on the beach, you lit a fire to bake your fish, and it left you as weak and sick as a woman who has given birth to a brat. You will need greater power than that to conquer your kingdom.”
It is true, Andiene thought. I need what he has to offer. But once I gain power, I do not need to use it to work his will. Once on that other shore, I can choose my own way. Wide and deep is the water that lies between the Nine Kingdoms and Dragonsland. He will have no power to bind me to his will.
She looked around the meadow where she stood. Though it must have been very late in the day, the twilight was no dimmer, the air no colder, than when the fog first closed in around her.
“I want to learn all that you can teach me.”
“Then listen while you learn of yourself,” said Yvaressinest. “You know the laws of the land, that those gray-cloaked fools taught your kind. There was a race once that kept to a straiter law. They vowed that they would gather in one day only the food