Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [226]
“She probably thought it would balance her favor to buy from dwarves but hire gnomes in the first place, and would be an insult to gnomes not to hire them the second time.”
“A failure of foresight,” the dragon said, “or understanding of the nature of the rockbrethren. As she failed to anticipate the results of her actions before.”
She should not be listening to criticism of the Lady, even though she herself had reason to criticize. But she was Kieri’s Squire, and Kieri’s love, and nothing to the Lady but a problem to be tossed away. A confusion of feelings emerged in speech. “But why am I here? Is she?”
“She is below.” The dragon tipped his snout to point at the ground. “Kapristi and elf together—as kapristi insisted—began cleaning out the debris left by the banastir the winter it was destroyed. There was much foulness, and some were sickened. Just lately, Flessinathlin arrived in haste, and in haste descended to view the progress made by those she hired.” The dragon paused. “She was displeased, because work had scarce begun on rebuilding. Words were spoken by elf and kapristi, and none would share blame with the other.”
“How do you know all this?” Arian said. “Where do you live?”
Another gust of hot, iron-smelling air. “I live where I please,” the dragon said, “and where it does not please me for all to know. As for how I know what I know … I have a relationship with the hakkenen and kapristi, and so they speak to me.”
Arian felt her brows rise. Before she could think how to ask, the dragon spoke again.
“It is not a matter that concerns you,” it said. “What does concern you, Half-Song, is that the Lady of the Ladysforest is below, and cannot emerge without aid. The kapristi resented her words, and left, sealing the rock behind them.”
“How did she get down there?”
“By a—” The dragon uttered a sound that had no meaning for Arian, but a picture built in her mind, a pattern similar to other elven patterns of power she had seen. “The kapristi thought it just to deny her the use of it to return outward. I disagree, though I also do not approve what she said, or her failure to foresee the results of her words and actions.”
“But she has the taig—she can move with it anywhere, in an instant—”
“Not there, not now. She went under stone, into the realm of the rockfolk, and her power is with the living world, out here.” The dragon looked at her. “But you are Half-Song; you have some strengths she does not. Especially when I lend you mine. Can you still see that pattern I drew in your heart?”
Arian reflected. It was there, clear and crisp as if graved in stone. Stone? She glanced at the dragon.
“Yes, stone. You need to go there, and repair the pattern the kapristi altered, so that she and her people can use it to return to the surface. If I go down, I will disrupt the work, possibly destroy it. It would be better, indeed, if she agreed to rebuild on the surface, and stay within her own realm, returning that below to the rockbrothers. But you are the one to tell her so.”
“She hates me!” Arian said again. “She doesn’t want Kieri to marry me! She could cast a glamour—”
“If you save her life and aid her to save the forest taig, she may change her mind,” the dragon said. “But even if she does not, at least you will have saved the taig. If it concerns you.”
“Of course it does!” Arian felt as if she were arguing with her mother. “But how can I go down, if she cannot come up?”
“Ah. Well, it will be another strange journey. Are you ready?”
Clinging to the roof of the dragon’s mouth while it pierced earth and the rock ceiling of the great hall—carefully, to cause the least damage—and then riding the dragon’s tongue down and down into the silvery elf-light to confront a very angry elven queen—would not have been Arian’s chosen activity for the day, but she had no choice.
Arian caught only a few details of the glittering mosaic in the upper part of the great hall, simulating the leaves of an early-summer forest, or the great columns