they needed for that day, that they would raise no animals for slaughter, that they would not shelter in the earth in summer. So they thought that the land would not corrupt them.
“That first summer they died, and that winter they starved, and the ones who remained broke their oath that they might live. And because they broke it, it crushed them more certainly than if they had never tried to abide by it. They are mine now.”
His cruel voice continued. “And so, think of the law that your kind holds to. They break it also, and scarcely know that they have done so. You are the result. You are what they have been guarding against for these thousand years.”
The dragon’s flames licked out almost casually toward Andiene. With her new-learned skills, she warded them off the way that a man brushes away a fly.
His voice was full of mockery and rage. “They are weak, fools and weak. ‘We live in the houses that other men have built,’ they say, and think that will save them. When they need metal to forge a sword, they fear to dig in the earth to find it; they do not even dare to turn over a stone in search of it, but go scrambling over the hills, looking for where the rain has washed the rocks bare. They crawl on the surface of the earth like maggots, too weak to burrow deeper into the rotten flesh they devour.
“And for all their care, their petty laws, they have failed, like all before them. ‘Let our children not be born as strangers,’ they say. You are the stranger they fear. Did you see the fear in your father’s eyes when he saw you for what you are?”
The dragon’s words lashed against Andiene, crueler than the flames of his breath. “Even before you were born, they failed. Do you think your ancestors looked like you, with white hair and bleached eyes and mud-colored skin? I saw them when they first came, singing prayers of thanksgiving for a land they feared to understand. Dark hair and pale skin like the people of the south that they hate. Their own fear has changed your people, though they do not realize it. The ones that they once were would have run from your kind in terror.
“Look, and I will show you what they are.”
His contempt overwhelmed Andiene. So weak, so silly, so futile, the people that lived their little lives. She saw them through his eyes, as he relived his imprisonment.
Dragonsquare was the heart of the city. Yvaressinest had lain a captive there for two hundred years, watching his enemies to learn their ways. All the great betrayals lay before her eyes. She saw her ancestors, bloody-handed, as son killed father, and brother killed brother, an endless round of hate and retribution.
And the lesser betrayals lay plain before her also, the thievery, the cruelty, the words of love, lightly spoken and lightly forgotten. She heard the foolish words, the endless foolish jabber from men who thought that they were wise. Generation after generation the same, wearying, sickening.
Yvaressinest showed her all that had passed before his eyes. She saw the empty-eyed gawkers; she felt the maiming pain of escape. He meant for her to see her people in all their littleness.
She saw that clearly enough, but she saw other things that he did not intend, even though she saw them through the haze of his contempt and fury. She searched the faces of the crowd for what she needed, and found parents leading their children, teaching them with love. Then time passed, and those same children guarded their parents, and took good care of them.
Andiene listened, and heard words of wisdom and gentleness, half-unnoticed among the clamor. She saw lovers talking joyful foolishness, blind to the grimness of the place they were in, and fifty years later, she recognized those same people, walking hand in hand and still looking at each other with love.
Andiene let the folly and cruelty slip by her, and clung to those images of love and life, letting them hold her up and save her from drowning in his hate. But she said nothing, and listened meekly to his fierce teaching.
“Now you have seen more of your land than you ever saw before,” he said at last. “You know what your kind are.”
“How will that teach me to use what is within me?”
“Be patient,” Yvaressinest said, and he showed her all the forms of fire, and