Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [225]
But when the dragon once more let her see out, it was another fiery scene, and once more she thrust arrow tips into the dragon’s tongue and took them out tipped with the dragon’s fire … and once more the arrows stopped the scathefire. This time, others were close enough to hear: the shouts of terror as the flames towered over the trees, the shouts of relief when the flames fell.
They left quickly, and the next thing Arian saw out the dragon’s mouth was a small, beautiful vale surrounded by mountains. She had no idea where it was, physically, but she knew what it was: the elfane taig, the holy center of the Ladysforest. Had the Lady come here to calm herself? Or sulk?
“It is a complicated matter,” the dragon said. It had not changed back to a human form this time. “The history between us—the Sinyi and dragonkind—reflects certain fundamental differences in our natures. We are more comfortable, for the most part, with rockfolk, and of the rockfolk, with the kapristi, who are of the Law.”
Arian had no idea how this bore on the problem of scathefire or her relationship to Kieri.
“I am very old,” the dragon said. “And it is the nature of dragons to grow more wise as they age. It is not so for all.” It rubbed its chin on the knuckles of one foot. “Sinyi … the Sinyi have beauty and wit and grace and share with the First Singer and Adyan the gift of making beauty. What they do not have is the clarity and logic of elder dragons: they are unable to think out the long consequences, and thus they make foolish mistakes.”
“Are you saying … the Lady makes mistakes?”
“Flessinathlin Orienchayllin Belaforthsalth,” the dragon said, drawing out the names. “If she were a dragon, and not Sinyi, the world would be different.” One eye blinked. “I do not say perfect, but the problems would not be the same. And she would have been a most difficult dragonlet to bring to wise maturity, not only because of her sex.”
“Female dragons are less wise?”
A huff of hot air answered that. “You have no need to know more of us, Half-Song, than pertains to the moment. I lay the foundation of your understanding where it is needed, and on it you must build a sound structure of your own.” Arian said nothing; the dragon gave a short nod and went on. “The Lady of whom we speak is hasty for a Sinyi, and for a Sinyi more apt to risk conflict, though in both far less than humanfolk. It was her choice to center the elfane taig not only here, in a valley apt for such by its shape—a chalice to hold wonder—but to construct underground, in the rock, the physical center. She purchased stone-right of a dwarf king; she hired kapristi, gnomes, to carve the stone, though elven artists decorated it.
“You know what happened,” the dragon went on. “Evil came—partly by other actions she took—and it became the banast taig, cursed. She had the courage to cut away that part of her power trapped there, accept diminishment, and she had the strength to still rule the Ladysforest. But when the evil was destroyed—and I have heard only that a paladin accomplished that—she yearned to rebuild the elfane taig as it had been, warding it more closely, and for that she sought once more the help of rockfolk.”
“She’s never liked rockfolk,” Arian said, before she could stop the words.
“It is wise, when asking help of those one does not like, to consider well all consequences and treat one another with great care,” the dragon said. “Words had been said, when the Lady first departed, words of blame to the kapristi as if the banastir were their fault, as if the evil entered through some flaw in the construction, which was not true. Perhaps the Lady had forgotten those words, but kapristi do not forget. The kapristi never thought stone-right should have been sold; that quarrel smoldered between kapristi and hakkenen through times that would be long for you. And the dwarves, while always claiming their right to sell their own stone-mass if