“Your heart echoes with the rhythm of my darkness,” said the dragon. “I see you are not a mage, nor yet a sorcerer of Kalches, nor a spellcrafter such as the sea-folk make, nor an enchantress out of Enescedd. What are you?” And when the girl only stared, baffled and frightened, it asked, “What would you be?”
“I don’t know!” Nemienne protested.
“You must choose,” said the dragon. “Would you be a mage of Lonne?”
“… yes,” Nemienne answered, but uncertainly, with a flinching glance toward Ankennes and away.
“I hardly think so,” Ankennes said coldly. Two of the king’s men had moved up beside him and held him now between their drawn swords. One of them took his staff. Though he did not seem especially intimidated by them, neither did he try to resist his staff’s confiscation. And no wonder. After his last trick, Taudde suspected the men would have been happy with any excuse to kill him. He was only surprised they didn’t simply cut the mage to pieces without waiting for an excuse. Probably they were afraid the dragon might be offended. That possibility would make anyone hesitate.
The dragon ignored the mage. “It is for you to choose,” it said to the girl. “Do you then reject magecraft and all its strictures and precepts?”
“… no. I don’t… I don’t think so. Can’t I… can’t I choose more than one thing? You… you’re more than one kind of creature. Aren’t you? You exist in the ephemeral and the eternal and the immanent. All at once. Isn’t that right?”
The dragon lowered its long, elegant head across the pool toward Nemienne. The lapis and amethyst tones of its head deepened toward sapphire and rich violet as it moved; the colors were reflected back again by the black water of the pool, the light of the caverns taking on a purplish cast. The dragon’s antennae stretched out in sinuous curves, reaching forward to comb through the air near the girl. What those delicate antennae perceived, Taudde could not guess. Magic, perhaps.
Nemienne had closed her eyes. She put up a hand without looking and laid her hand on the dragon’s jaw. For a moment the dragon was still. Then the light surrounding them took on pale opalescent tints, and the dragon lifted its great head with a sharp, decisive gesture.
Nemienne dropped her hand to her side and opened her eyes. “I can’t reject magecraft. But it’s all the same to you, isn’t it? Magecraft and Kalchesene sorcery and the sea magic of the islands and whatever they do in Enescedd. Because you’re not really a dragon at all. Dragons are natural creatures, but you… ‘Ekorraodde’ means ‘indwelling darkness,’ doesn’t it? Kelle Iasodde wrote about glass and iron and pearl, but he said if a mage wants to see the eternal darkness, he has to be ready to cast his heart into the darkness after those elements. Only… only, he didn’t write about what would happen after that.”
“The gift of the ephemeral drew me into the ephemeral world,” said the dragon. “Did Iasodde write that? Much of what he wrote was false, but that was truth. You have indeed offered me your heart, little mageling: I have it already in my hand.” Talons closed, with a gentle clicking sound, and opened again to reveal a heart like a delicate rose-and-pearl jewel. “It was your gift. What would you have of me in return? You may ask one boon. Perhaps I will grant it. Shall I bring down the mountains? Do you wish the eternal sea to cover the bones of this transient city of men?”
The king’s hand closed hard on his son’s shoulder. Prince Tepres’s mouth tightened.
“No!” Nemienne cried in horror.
“No?” To Taudde’s ear, the dragon sounded amused. He thought it had never expected the girl to agree to anything of the sort, but what it expected her to ask for, or wanted her to ask for, he could not begin to guess. “Then ask a different boon,” said the dragon. And, relentlessly, when the girl did not answer at once, “Ask.”
Taudde more than half expected Nemienne to ask for everything to be back the way it had been the previous night, or for something else equally impossible. She bit her lip and glanced quickly at her sister, but then she straightened her back and said steadily, “O Ekorraodde, how should the ephemeral know what boon to ask of the eternal? I don’t ask for anything, only… only,” this time she glanced at the king, flinching slightly at his hard, impassive face. “Only, if it does not offend you, and if you think it wise, O Ekorraodde, I would like… I would like the transient cities of men to prosper and not be… not be covered by the sea.”