When a man wishes to study sorcery, the art drives him a hard bargain, to wit, that it will trade its secrets only for sacrifice and lonely toil. Should he try to clutch at common human happiness, he will find that he might as well pour wine into his hands. The sorcerer’s art will allow him to drink no more of life’s wine than the few drops he can lick from his fingers.

The Pseudo-lamblichus Scroll

Without any effort on Evandar’s part, spring came to his country. Formerly, a hundred years and more could pass in the lands of men and elves while a single afternoon crept by in his. Now spring burst upon him while he mourned his people, so quickly that he knew it must have fallen upon the physical world as well. He stood on the hilltop and watched, dazed, as the snow melted into rivulets that poured into the river below. Spring, however, came only where it wanted to come. He picked his way downhill across brown mud, flecked here and there with dead stone. Once the river had run silver, but now it oozed, a dark grey like lead. The water reeds along its banks stood dead and brown.

For a moment Evandar stared into the river, which in the past had shown him many a vision. He saw nothing. He turned away and set off upstream, walking slowly, listening for voices in the wind — none. As he walked, the dead terrain around him changed. First he spotted a few blades of grass, then some small saplings, more grass, and then trees until he found himself far from the river in a meadow of spring grass, dotted with white flowers. Still, even in the midst of this burgeoning life, he heard no voices, and he saw no visions.

For the seeming-space of an afternoon, Evandar walked his lands to see how they’d changed. All the images of cities had vanished, and the rose gardens, the arbours, the cloth of gold pavilions where his people had once feasted had disappeared with them. Much to his surprise the green hills remained, dusted with yellow buttercups and little daisies now instead of roses. Tall trees stood unpruned; straggly saplings grew amid tangles of weeds and shrubs. Now and then a flock of birds flew overhead, and he could hear bees among the clover. Once, when he passed a tangle of hazel withes near a stream, he saw a little pointed face and two bright eyes. He took a step closer, but with a noiseless slide into the stream, the water rat swam away. Above in the tangled thicket, a red squirrel chattered at him.

Where did they come from? he wondered. I never created any such. He found himself remembering other bestial faces, these snarling and dark, in the strange country just beyond his lands, where the old man sat endlessly peeling his apple and bringing life down from wherever it was that life sprang. The old man had redeemed those creatures, perhaps, and sent them off to live in the green fields.

‘The wild things will endure,’ Evandar said aloud. That soothes my heart.’

Perhaps the land had lost its voice simply because it had returned to the wild. Yet as he walked in the eerie silence another reason suggested itself to him. Perhaps he had no future for the omens to reveal. Perhaps it was time for him to die, whatever ‘die’ might mean to such as him. He found himself thinking of Jill, who had spent her life like a coin to ransom Cengarn from Alshandra. Must he do the same to stop his brother’s meddling?

I’d best make some other provision for Salamander, then, if that’s true.’

On a sunny hilltop Evandar stood waiting. No voice spoke, no answer came to him from the future or from the green hills.

‘Fade away and die!’ He shouted it out. ‘Is that what will happen to me? Fade away and die?’

Not even an echo floated back on the wind. Finally with a shrug he turned away. So this, then, was what fear felt like, a bitterness in the mouth, an empty coldness at the heart.

In winter, dragons tend to their dreams. Even on short summer nights dragons are great dreamers; when they wake they consider their dreams well, then lay them up in memory for the cold time. Once winter comes they can brood them properly, as they drowse deep within their fire mountain lairs. The old dreams hatch new ones, long elaborate visions and tales that often take several nights to complete.

All that winter Arzosah found the man she called Ron Dragonfriend woven into her dreams. At times she would relive the moment when he’d held up the rose ring and enslaved her with name-dweomer. From those dreams she woke shivering and hissing in fear. She would leap to her feet and stretch out her wings for flight until she remembered that she was awake and safe in her beloved home. She would lie back down on the stone ledge, and from her perch, high up in an enormous cavern, she would contemplate the steam rising from the hot springs far below until at last she felt soothed, ready to sleep and dream again.

At other times she would dream of the battles of the summer past: the stench of blood like perfume and Rori’s berserk laughter ringing over the slaughter. From tbose she woke smug, yawning and stretching her claws at the memory of dead horses. The remembered taste of those feasts would drive her out of her lair if the day were clear. She would soar over the snow, seeking out the valleys where she could find deer. In the deep snow they floundered, easy prey. Once she’d gorged herself, she’d return to her home mountain and the warmth of its gutted interior.

Slowly the year turned toward spring. When Arzosah flew she felt warmer air and saw the snow growing thin. Eventually the rains came, and the world turned to brown mud. On a day when the trees were putting out buds, Arzosah returned from one of these hunts to find an unwelcome guest. She entered her home cavern through a fissure high up on the side of a cliff, and as soon as she started crawling down the tunnel inside, she smelled dweomer. To her all things magical smelled like the air immediately after a strike of lightning - sharp and clean, tingling with power — a scent so strong that it could mask the accustomed stink of brimstone and old burning within the cavern. She backed out of the tunnel, clung precariously to the little ledge below the fissure, and considered what to do. The dweomer smell attracted her, but she remembered how she’d been mastered by dweomer in this very cavern.

‘Once of that is enough,’ Arzosah muttered — in Elvish. With a possible enemy so near, she refused to speak in Dragonish, a tongue the great wyrms keep to themselves.

She let go of the ledge and spread her wings with a slap of the air that boomed like a drum, but rather than fly away, she glided down to the valley below to perch on an outcrop of grey granite. Arzosah folded her wings, sat back on her haunches, and contemplated the mouth of the fissure, far above her.

‘A clumsy trick like that isn’t going to fool me.’ His voice came first; then Evandar materialized in front of her. ‘I heard you fly away.’

Hissing like a thousand cats the dragon leapt to her feet. Evandar laughed and stepped back, raising one hand as if to ask for peace. He had taken the form of an elf, dressed in a green tunic and tight deerskin trousers, but to her dragonish sight his body wavered and glowed. He smelled so strongly of dweomer that she longed to eat him. Unfortunately, he only looked like meat, she knew, rather than being made of it.

‘So!’ Arzosah snarled. ‘I thought I smelled trouble, and trouble you are.’

‘None other,’ Evandar said, grinning. ‘Arzosah Sothey Lorohaz, remember that I bound you by the power of your true name! I control and command you.’

‘I keep trying to forget, but I can’t, so there we are, you nasty bit of etheric slime! What do you want with me now?’

‘A number of things. First of all, spring is here.’

‘So it is, not that it’s any of your doing.’

You made Rhodry Maelwaedd a promise, that you’d return to him in the spring. Do you intend to keep it?’

‘What’s it to you if I do or not?’

‘Ah, you don’t, then. I thought not. You wyrms are faithless, aren’t you? A promise is naught to you. Nasty and faithless both.’

Arzosah growled at him, but Evandar laughed, waggling a finger at her like a schoolmaster.

‘I caught you out there, didn’t I?’ Evandar said.

You did not! I never told you if I meant to go or not.’

‘If you’d planned to keep that promise, you wouldn’t have been so coy.’

‘Coy?’ Arzosah hissed again. ‘How dare you call me coy? If you didn’t have name-dweomer, I’d kill you.’

‘But I do have it. The second thing I want is an errand. Rhodry Maelwaedd’s brother lives in far-off Bardek, and he’s gone mad. I promised I’d bring him home, but I find that I’ve got too many other important matters to attend to.’

‘Hold your tongue! Do you expect me to fly across the Southern Sea and fetch him back?’

‘I don’t merely expect you to. I intend to demand it and bind you with your name to ensure you do it.’

‘But I can’t. The ocean’s far too wide, days and days of flying. I can’t fly forever without food and sleep. And how would I carry him home? In my claws? And what would he eat and drink, anyway?’

‘Ah,’ Evandar hesitated briefly. ‘I hate to admit this, but you’re right. It wasn’t much of a plan, was it?’

‘Why not send a ship for him? That’s what ships are for, carrying things back and forth over the water. Dragons aren’t.’

Evandar nodded, staring down at the ground with narrow eyes, as if he were thinking things through. Arzosah sat back down and considered just how much she hated him. He’d tricked her into revealing her name, he’d given the rose ring to Rhodry to enslave her, and now apparently he thought of her as some sort of servant, to run and fetch at his bidding.

‘The third thing,’ Evandar said at last. ‘I have need of a vision, wyrm. It’s one thing to say I’ll return Salamander to Deverry. Where exactly in Deverry is another thing entirely. My heart is too troubled for me to see clearly.’

‘Are you saying you want me to scry for you?’

‘Exactly that.’

‘No.’

You can’t say no. I have your name.’

Arzosah tipped back her head and roared her rage to the sky.

‘Whine all you want,’ Evandar said, ‘But you’ll do as I say.’

‘Whine? Whine, is it?’ Words failed her, and she snarled, tossing her head back and forth.

‘The sooner you scry for me,’ Evandar said, ‘the sooner I’ll leave you alone.’

‘Oh very well, scry I will, but I’ve never met Rhodry’s brother, so how can I scry him out?’

‘It’s the future I want to see. I know where he is now.’

‘There’s something else you need to know. You’re a wretched nuisance. Come into my lair.’

Evandar vanished. Arzosah flew to the cliff-side, scrabbled her way into the fissure, and paused to breathe deeply. The dweomer-smell lay over everything, hot and exciting. She crawled down the tunnel and, when she emerged onto her sleeping ledge, she found Evandar there before her, sitting on the rock and staring down into the cavern. Far below them steam roiled and curled from the hot springs deep within the fire mountain’s heart.

‘How will you scry?’ Evandar said.

‘Into the mists.’ Arzosah lay down on the ledge and tucked her front paws under her chest. That’s the dragonish way. Tell me of this brother and his madness.’

While Evandar talked, Arzosah stared into the steaming mist below her. Shapes formed, mere illusions of the sort that anyone can see in clouds, then drifted into nothingness. In her mind she began to picture this Ebany, began to see his wife as well and the children, playing among the tents of their travelling show. She saw in her mind Bardek, green with spring, and the white cities on their sea-cliffs. In the mists other images began to appear, fragments only and short-lived, until at last the scrying took her over.

‘I see the ocean,’ Arzosah began. The ocean pounding on great rocks beneath a high slender tower. Night is falling. I see the tower again, and lo! a fire is burning at the top of the tower. Down below lies a dun, and beyond that, a little town.’

‘Cannobaen!’ Evandar whispered. ‘Go on.’

‘Strange ships are sailing into the harbour, ships with prows carved into the shape of dragons. On the deck stands a blond man with a child in his arms, a wild child with brown hair that’s all matted and curly.’

‘Salamander and his son Zandro. Go on.’

‘There is naught more but mist.’

‘Don’t lie to me!’

‘I’m not lying.’ Arzosah swung her head his way and hissed. ‘That’s all I can see.’

‘Well, it’s enough,’ Evandar said. ‘Strange things, indeed, and things of great moment. To Cannobaen in ships in the elven fashion, is it? Strange and twice strange.’

Abruptly he was gone. She had no perception of his vanishing; he simply ceased to be there.

‘Good riddance!’ Arzosah muttered. The gall of him! Faithless and nasty, are we?’

She tipped back her head and roared out a dweomer command in the secret language of wyrmkind. Her answer came as a rumble and a hiss and spew of steam. Again she roared out the spell-word, and this time the mountain answered with a leap of fire deep in its heart. All round the peak, the land trembled in fear.

‘I’ve looked everywhere,’ Marka said. ‘I can’t find him.’

‘I saw him just a little while ago,’ Keeta said. ‘He was walking toward Vinto’s tent.’

‘He’s not there now. I’ve already asked Vinto.’

‘Ye gods. He could have gone anywhere.’

The two women were standing at the edge of the public caravanserai on the outskirts of Myleton. Behind them the travelling show was still setting up camp. About half the tents stood, and all the animals bad been watered. When she glanced back Marka saw that the acrobats were beginning to unload bedrolls and cushions from the wagons.

‘Where are the children?’ Keeta said.

‘Kwinto’s watching them,’ Marka said. ‘He hasn’t seen his father since we pulled in, he told me.’

‘He could have gone into the city to buy a permit.’

‘Maybe. But something’s wrong. I can just feel it. Come with me, will you?’

‘Of course. Let’s take the Myleton road. We’ve got a couple of hours till sunset.’

Side by side they walked down the archon’s road. The winter rains had turned Bardek green, and on either side of the road, set back behind low stone walls, fields of hay bowed and rippled in the warm wind. In the ditches twixt wall and road wild flowers bloomed in scented tangles, red poppies, white alyssum, dark violets. It was in a ditch that they found their first hint of the trouble ahead; one of Ebany’s sandals, lying among the flowers. Keeta picked it up and inspected it.

‘It’s his, all right. Well, he can’t have gone far, limping along on one shoe.’

The second sandal turned up about a hundred paces on, lying right out in the road. Keeta retrieved it, started to speak, then merely shrugged. They walked on in silence. Another hundred paces or so, and they saw something white flapping among the flowers: his linen tunic. Keeta wrapped his sandals in it, and they hurried on, walking faster. Ebany’s floppy-brimmed riding hat showed up next, lying off to one side of the road, and not too far on, the strip of white linen that he used for a breechclout.

‘Ye gods!’ Keeta snapped. ‘He’s wandering around stark naked.’

‘It certainly looks that way.’ Marka felt so suddenly, impossibly weary that sitting down in the middle of the road and weeping seemed like an excellent idea. Instead she took the bundle of clothes from Keeta. ‘Maybe if you stood on top of the wall and looked around for him?’

‘Good idea.’

Keeta climbed the nearest stretch of stone wall and shaded her eyes with her hand while Marka watched, hoping against hope that Ebany hadn’t got far. Keeta turned this way and that, peered into the distance on all sides.

‘Hah!’ Keeta pointed off into the hay field. ‘Something’s moving out there. Doesn’t look like a dog.’

Keeta jumped down into the field. Marka trotted over and handed her the clothing. Scrambling over the wall, even with Keeta’s help, took her a few moments, and she begrudged every one of them, fearing that Ebany would run off again. The green hay, all sweet-scented and rustling, closed round her like water up to her shoulders. With her height, however, Keeta could easily see over it. She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered.

‘Someone or some thing is rolling on the ground,’ Keeta said. ‘I hope he’s not having a fit.’

‘I hope this farmer doesn’t see us trampling his hay.’

‘We’ll buy him off if he does. Don’t worry about that now.’

With the hay murmuring around them they strode across the field. Marka could hear someone singing under his breath, harmonizing with the wind, it seemed at first. The song grew louder, burst into full voice - Ebany, singing in the language of his far-off homeland. Marka wept in a brief scatter of tears. Keeta turned to her in concern.

‘It’s just relief,’ Marka said, smiling. ‘I was so afraid that he’d wandered into Myleton like this.’

The song stopped. Ebany suddenly appeared, rising from the hay around him some twenty paces away, and waved.

‘Well, there you are, my love,’ he called out in Bardekian. ‘I was just searching for prophecies.’

Marka nearly wept again, but she managed to force out a smile. Keeta sighed and shook her head.

‘I see you’ve found my clothes,’ Ebany went on. ‘I thought I’d become a wild man and go live in the forest. They live among the trees like beasts, you see, and the lesser gods come to them and give them prophecies.’

‘There isn’t any forest near here.’

‘I know.’ Ebany smiled brightly. ‘That’s what made me give up the idea.’

They got him dressed and led him back to the road, but getting him back to the camp took a long struggle. He would walk a few steps, then fancy himself a wild man again and try to disrobe. Each time Marka wouid have to talk him out of it while Keeta held him pinned in a strong grip. By the time they returned to the caravanserai, the sun was setting, gilding the tents. Cooking fires bloomed among them, and the rich smell of grilling meat and griddle breads baking beckoned them home.

‘I’m hungry,’ Ebafty said. ‘Do wild men eat roast meats?’

‘Of course they do,’ Keeta said firmly. ‘Look, there are your children.’

At the sight of them, running to meet him, Ebany burst out sobbing.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he said between sobs. ‘I can’t leave for the forest.’

‘No, you can’t,’ Marka said, and she hoped she sounded cheerful and strong. ‘We love you, and we’d miss you.’

After he’d eaten, Ebany seemed to return to himself. He discussed the coming show with Vinto, told the children several stories, and laughed and joked with other members of the troupe. But that night Marka was afraid to sleep. She kept waking to make sure that he hadn’t run off into the night. Will we have to chain him? she thought. You hear of that happening to madmen. Toward dawn she lay awake for a long time, thinking about Evandar and the help he’d promised, months ago now. Would he return soon, now that it was spring? Perhaps his ship had never reached Deverry, what with the autumn storms and the pirates. Perhaps the healer he’d told them about wouldn’t return with him.

There were too many doubts for her to have much hope. As she lay exhausted on their blankets, watching the canvas walls of the tent brighten with the dawn, she found herself thinking a traitor’s thought, that perhaps if he should run off somewhere it would be better for them all.

Up by the plaza on Citadel stood a public well, which drew water from a spring sweeter than the lake. Every morning Niffa would carry two wooden buckets on a shoulder yoke to fetch the day’s drinking water. With the coming spring in the air, the task gave her a certain domestic pleasure. The sky itself seemed lighter, as if the gods had spread a prettier blue upon it. From the plaza she could look down to the town and beyond the walls to the surrounding meadows, dark brown with mud, streaked here and there with dirty snow. At the well itself stood other townsfolk, gossiping while they waited their turn to draw.

On a day that was undeniably warm, Niffa trudged up the hill to the well. Councilman Verrarc’s blond young servant, Harl, had just filled his buckets. He saw Niffa, smiled, and hurried over. ‘Good morrow,’ Harl said. ‘And how do you and yours fare?’

‘Well enough, my thanks,’ Niffa said. ‘And your household?’ ‘Fine, fine, though the master’s woman still be sickly, like.’

One of the women at the well screamed. Niffa spun around just as two others began to shriek and point at the sky. Niffa looked up and saw a dragon flying toward Citadel.

In the pale sun the beast glittered like obsidian. Huge — Niffa could not judge how large, but at least the size of two wagons, and the wings spread out in vast sweeps of greenish black. She could hear each wingstroke beat the air like the pound of an enormous heart as the dragon dropped down, swooping in a soundless glide, then banking one wing to circle lazily over the plaza. Niffa could see the enormous copper-tinged head bend down as if it were looking them over. She nearly screamed herself, thinking it would land.

The dragon spoke in a huge rumble, but although Niffa could tell the sounds meant words, it spoke a language she didn’t know. All she could think to do was raise a hand in the sign of peace. With one beat of its wings, it sheared off and flew, gaining height as it headed south and east.

Everyone at the well started gabbling at once. Niffa walked a few steps away and watched the dragon until it turned into a tiny speck against the morning.

‘Niffa, Niffa!’ Harl came running. ‘What did the beast say?’

‘I know not. Here! Think you I ken Dragonish or suchlike?’

‘Weil, truly, not.’ Harl had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘It be only that you - well, you do see things most folk can’t see, and so mayhap, I thought, you heard hidden things as well.’

She realized that the other women had walked over to stand behind him. They were nodding their agreement.

‘The only one round here who do ken secrets be Werda,’ Niffa said. ‘And I’d best be telling her about this wyrm.’

Werda, however, had heard and seen the beast herself. Wrapped in her white cloak she came striding across the plaza. When everyone started talking at once, she hushed them and beckoned to Niffa.

‘Come walk with me a bit,’ Werda said. ‘I saw the beast speak to you.’

Niffa left her buckets at the well. As she and the Spirit Talker walked away, she looked back to see the townsfolk gathering to discuss the omen among themselves. At the edge of the plaza, where worked stone met the huge boulders of the hill, Werda stopped and turned to look out across the broad view. Citadel fell away before them down to the ring of Cerr Cawnen. Beyond the city walls the earth stretched out dark to the horizon.

‘So,’ Werda said. The dragon did mark you out, did she?’

‘I know not. She spoke, but in some strange tongue, although I did think I heard our Jahdo’s name.’

‘Ah,’ Werda turned and leaned against a boulder before she continued. ‘The lore of the gods do I ken, where each lives and what does please them. The witchlore I ken not. It be your road, not mine, young Niffa. I wonder if the spirits did take your Demet because you did love him so, more than you do love them and their lore.’

‘Then I hate them all! They be fools, if they do think I’d follow those that did slay my love.’

‘Nah, nah, nan!’ Werda raised a hand in warding. ‘Never curse the spirits! They’ll be taking yet another fee, if you should spurn them. Wish you to lose your mother, say, or have some other death come upon you?’ She lowered her hand. ‘This be a harsh saying, I do know that. But the witch road is a long one and harsh as well.’

‘And why should I walk it then?’

Werda smiled.

‘Because the spirits will never let you rest till you do take up your Wyrd. When I was a lass, I wanted naught more than a farm and a good man to work it with me. I dreamt of that farm and what I would plant in its fields. But the gods called me to their lore. I did whine and beg and plead, but not for me the life of a farm wife with her butter and eggs. Not for me the daughters and strong sons I did covet. One winter I took ill with fever, and in the fever visions came to me. I could serve the gods or I could die. Those two were the only roads they would let me walk. And so I chose life and the lore. And here be a secret: once I did set my feet upon the road, then did I feel a joy beyond any the farm would have brought me.’

Niffa felt her eyes fill with tears.

‘Why do you weep?’ Werda said.

‘Because in my soul I know the truth of what you say.’ Niffa rubbed an angry hand across her eyes. ‘But if you ken not the lore, where shall I learn it? It aches my heart to think of leaving my home and kin.’

Where indeed? I know not. I think me though that if you do vigil, the gods will show you where you may go to set your feet upon the road.’

Niffa went back to the well to find that Harl had drawn water for her. She murmured a thanks, picked up her buckets, and started for home. The silver lady in my dreams, she was thinking. She must ken the witchlore, or she’d not be speaking to me there. At that moment she saw her life open out as if like the dragon she’d taken wing to see the future spread out below, a vast landscape wreathed in mist.