“What did you do?” Taudde whispered to Nemienne.
The girl, her gaze wide with wonder, shook her head a little. “Glass for the ephemeral,” she whispered, but almost more to herself than to him. “Iron for the eternal, and pearl for the immanent… I wasn’t sure it was right…”
But the girl had evidently guessed exactly right. The dragon turned its huge head and studied each of them in turn. Taudde experienced its gaze as pressure and heat, or perhaps as a noiseless clap of thunder and cold. He wanted to look away, to lift his hands to block that terrible gaze. But he couldn’t move. When the dragon looked away, dismissing him, the shift of its attention was like being released from physical bonds.
Last of all, the dragon turned its attention to Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes and his son. The prince still stood with his father. They looked much the same, for each wore the same stern mask. They both gazed at the dragon, and there was something in their eyes that was akin to what Taudde had seen in its gaze.
The dragon’s nearest foot shifted across the cavern floor. Its talons, each longer than a man was tall, tore gouges across the stone. But the stone flowed in again afterward and was left unmarked.
Then the dragon spoke. Its voice was dark and slow as a dirge, powerful and somber as the tolling of iron bells. “Blood and magic you have spilled into the deep shadows, O king. Glass and iron and pearl you have cast in tribute into the darkness. Is it then time to bring down the heights and let in the great sea?”
Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes gazed speechlessly at the dragon.
The dragon shifted restlessly, opening its wings to the farthest extent allowed by the caverns, which suddenly seemed small. “Is it time?” it repeated.
The king closed his eyes for a moment, visibly gathered his strength, and stood up straight with an effort almost painful to witness. He put back his shoulders, lifted his chin, and said in a tone that just missed matter-of-fact confidence by a hair, “This disturbance was a… a mischance, O Ekorraodde, Dragon of Lonne. No one meant to disturb you. It is not time.”
“No one?” said the dragon. “Would one reach through the ephemeral shadows and the eternal darkness to wake me… by mischance? Do you say so, O king?”
The powerful, rolling tones of the dragon’s voice were completely unfamiliar to Taudde, and yet he knew it spoke with irony. Or perhaps with threat. Or possibly with humor. Its black gaze rested on the king, and yet he was certain that its attention was on Ankennes. And, Taudde felt, on himself as well. He stayed very still.
Mage Ankennes, blank with well-deserved dismay, was staring at the dragon.
“It was a mage’s hand that woke me,” the dragon said to Ankennes. “Yours? What do you desire, O mage?”
“The destruction of the darkness that underlies and corrupts Lonne,” Ankennes answered, with a directness and courage Taudde couldn’t help but admire. The mage gripped his staff, once more returned to him, with both hands. But if he tried to work any magery, Taudde perceived no signs of it.
“And is it in pursuit of this desire you have worn your heart so thin?” asked the dragon. Its tone held a strange kind of indifferent condemnation. “You are mistaken, O mage. It is by the existence of shadows that men recognize light. Darkness does not corrupt. All corruption exists within the hearts of men.”
Mage Ankennes began to speak.
“For example, your heart,” added the dragon, and reached across the pool of shadows to hook the mage’s heart out of his chest with one long talon. The heart was made of a sliver of black obsidian so fine and translucent that the greenish light of the caverns shone through it. The Dragon held it between the tips of two talons and observed, “Hard and cold is the heart of the Mage of Lonne. There is nothing left of it but stone.”
Ankennes had put a hand, in an involuntary gesture, to his unmarked chest. “Illusion,” he said, but with an involuntary tremor just audible within his voice. “A play of light and shadow.”
“Of course. Also truth, for truth lies at the heart of all illusion as darkness lies at the heart of the light. It was not you who cast glass and iron and pearl into the shadow. You have not the inclination toward truth,” said the dragon, dismissing him. Its talons parted, and the obsidian heart it held dissolved into the dimness and was gone. The dragon turned its attention to Nemienne. “It was you, young mageling, who cast the ephemeral and the eternal and the immanent into the heart of darkness, which is my heart. Was it not?”
“Yes,” whispered the girl. Her voice shook, for which Taudde could not blame her at all.