The Song of Andiene

CHAPTER 24



Andiene watched the gates of the city swing open. She stood between the dragon’s paws, those wide-stretched lines of stone that welcomed those who entered the city. This was what she had waited for. The many years, the cruel schooling, the forest paths, the summer journeying, and this was all it meant. She walked numbly, shapes and colors pulsing and blurring, sounds blaring loud, and fading away. For a week she had not truly slept, for fear that the shadows she had summoned would slip from her grasp

She heard the shouting from the city, “Reji Marates! Andiene Rejin!” The bells were ringing a discordant jangle. Someone had gone ahead of her. Was this her victory?

It was too easy, like a dream. There was no joy in it. The bells had rung that other time, too, and they had named a king. The crowd had shouted then, too.

The mass of soldiers divided and left her a pathway. They had thrown something over the palace walls, a man’s body, sprawled and broken. She walked to where it lay, and stared down at Nahil’s body, his face turned blankly to the pale autumn sky, a face she had carried in her thoughts for eight years. He was younger than she remembered, scarcely older than Kallan.

Her anger grew. It was all she had left to her. “Who robbed me of my revenge?”

“No one,” the eager voice of a stranger answered. “It was self-slaughter. When he saw his army scatter like songbirds before a sea-hawk, he took his sword, set the hilt to the ground and the point to his heart, and kneeled down.”

She shook her head. “Then what has become of my revenge?”

Kallan stood at her side, speaking urgently. “Be glad this is the way it ended. He was your father’s brother. Be glad that it was his own fear that destroyed him. What more could you have done? Maybe this will break the old cycle of son killing father, and brother killing brother.”

“He had a son,” she said. “Does he still live?”

He nodded.

“What shall I have done with him? You have solved such problems before.”

Kallan raised his head and saw the unforgetting anger in her eyes. He who gives a king his heart’s desire must beware.

“Before, I was never asked such questions,” he said. “He is young and his mother is dead. Have him fostered by one who is loyal to you.” He looked to where Syresh stood, with Lenane close beside him.

Andiene nodded, and the challenge faded from her eyes. “Now begins the unfamiliar part, of ruling and reigning.”

“Your palace waits for you,” Kallan said. “You can trust these men. There are none of them that will hold to the lost cause. The nobles are waiting to swear fealty to you. Speak to the city and it will answer you.”

“Not yet,” she said. “They must wait. One place that I must go. Dragonsquare. I do not know where it is.”

Kallan did not question her. He led her there, along the winding streets, with Syresh following behind, and a crowd of soldiers to guard them. “Stand here and wait,” she told them, “and let no one enter till I return.”

Syresh nodded and stepped back. “Not alone!” said Kallan. “I swore you no oath of obedience.”

“What do you know of this?”

“Nothing, but I have guessed much. All of our company dreamed alike.”

“I tell you, you have no part in it.”

“You will not go alone,” he said.

“Let it be your doom, then,” said Andiene, and she walked ahead of him into the square. Behind her, she heard the heavy gate swing closed, iron-shod wood crying out against the stone like a living creature.

The square was paved with pale stones. It blurred and shifted so that she seemed to see the flowerless meadow above the ocean, overlying the city courtyard. The dragon lay before her, his green eyes watching, revealing nothing. “I thought I would have to summon you,” she said.

The white flames flickered from his jaws and died. “I summoned you. You came at my call as you have always done. Did you think that you owed me nothing, after I gained you all your heart’s desire?” Though he whispered, power filled his voice like the roar of summer wildfire.

Andiene blinked her eyes. The meadow dimmed and faded. The dragon lay on the cold stones as though he were still chained captive in the city square.

“I made you no bargain,” she said.

“None needed to be made. From the first, you were mine. I called you to me, and when those meddling creatures would have turned you to a different path, I shifted them aside, and drew you to me again.”

She remembered his cruel voice calling her, the call that could not be denied. “The people who befriended me, you were the cause of their destruction?”

“Such weaklings, those ones you call your people. Flimsy tools, but they served their purpose. You are another matter, a sword of true-forged steel. But foolish too. From across the sea I called you to me, and you never asked me why?”

“Why then?” Andiene spoke in anger, but in fear also. “To take your revenge?”

The white flames licked out toward her, but drew back slowly, as though they had a life of their own, and said, “Not yet, not yet.” Yvaressinest spoke proudly. “Do you think I care for revenge? Who takes revenge on the crawling things of the earth? Why would I want revenge for my imprisonment? I let myself be taken captive.”

“Why?” she asked.

At her side, Kallan spoke for the first time. “The enemy within the gates.”

The dragon’s green gaze stayed fixed on Andiene. “I entered your defenses. I learned the ways of your kind, their foolishness. When I departed, of my own free will I left my bones behind, to hold the gateway open, and I waited for one to come who would open it wide.”

“Not I! I am no part of your plans!”

“Yes you are. You, or that fool who stands like a statue by your side. You have power over him. Give him to me. He has laid himself open to that. I will live in him and teach you more. You will walk freely by my side. Did you think you had learned all I had to teach? You have not scratched the surface of your power.”

Andiene stared past him to the blue-gray forest that stood in the mist, in the beating roar of the patient waves. She fought again, and drew the battlefield back to the high-walled courtyard, the land where she was born. The dragon’s stony bulk curved around three sides of the enclosure. He lay as he had been chained, his torn shoulder close beside the fettered bones. The shattered stones lay behind him, speaking mutely of his wrath.

At her side, she heard Kallan’s breathing, loud in the unearthly silence. He had not once turned toward the dragon, his attention all fixed on her. “So you offer me the filthy bargain of the southerners?” she said slowly. “To make treaty with evil, and offer it sacrifice, and live close to it? I would rather see the whole land laid waste from the mountains to the sea!”

The pavement cracked from the white heat of the dragon’s breath. Little chips of rocks split off, and flew hissing through the air. One struck her cheek and slit it open, but she scarcely noticed.

The crackling dryness of the dragon’s voice became louder, but still as inhuman. “You have no choice. You are my creature. Think back to that witless, speechless child. Can you remember that life as your own?”

He knew well that she could not. The chasm had grown wider and deeper with every day.

“I shaped you from nothingness,” Yvaressinest said. “Cast off what I have given you and you will be mute and mindless again. I made you what you are, and I chose to make you flawed. Look at all your endeavors. You raised a storm that wracked the ocean, and your enemy took no hurt from it. You fought the grievers of the forest, and if a weak child had not come to your aid, your comrades would have died. In your pride, you went out into the heat of summer, and nearly destroyed yourself and the ones who trusted you. You could find only one way to enter this city, and to do it, you slaughtered those you call your people.

“Look at the very beginning. You vowed to help the creatures who rescued you, and they died in agony, by the orders of the one who stands beside you. You tried to save your father; he died too at the hands of the man who stands beside you. What could be more fitting than to give him to me and make your revenge complete?”

Andiene shook her head. Around her feet, the gray-green grass sprang in the flowerless meadow. She was in the dragon’s land again, or it had come to her.

The list went on, relentlessly. “What have you ever done that you can call your own, that was unflawed, that did not end in sorrow and death? The other soft fool that you thought you loved; he fled from you as from a viper. Why do you think the grizanes called the mountain down to overwhelm you? They taught your people the laws they cannot live by; you are what they feared. You are my child. Give me the man. You cannot stand against me, and I will have either you or him.”

“I tell you, you will have neither of us! I can raise fire to match you and water to drown you!”

“If you destroy this whole city with fire and water, I will still be here,” Yvaressinest said. “You are the gateway and the key. Did you not realize why the grievers could run in daylight, to follow you? The ones of the forest are my people, and so are you. You will unlock the gates of the woods and set the prisoners free to run across the wide land.”

He saw her shudder, and spoke more winningly. “I will make you so you may walk unharmed among the forest lords. I will teach you the secrets of the sea, so you may walk on the sunken reefs, walk through the cities drowned long ago. I will teach you to make wings of power, to soar on the endless paths of the sky.”

“You will teach me nothing,” Andiene said, but in her heart, she despaired. If he had given her all her power, then what weapon was left to wield against him? Still she spoke defiantly. “If my power is flawed, then I will use it flawed, and fight you with it as long as I can.”

The dragon raised his heavy head. The flames engulfed them. Kallan sobbed in pain. Andiene fought the flames back from both of them, building a wall about them. But her grasp on the white fire weakened; her own fire turned to devour her. She fought it back again, but more painfully. On that high meadow, eight years earlier, the war had been easier. So much easier. Why? She had been weak then, untrained.

Then she realized that till now the dragon had used but one sliver of his power against her. He had beguiled her, deluded her, flattered her pride. He had played with her, to let her think that she could war against him and win. In despair, she abandoned the pitiful backfire; it was swept up in an instant by the raging wildfire.

Through the curtain of flame, she saw the very paving stones melt and run in puddles, the earth beneath them fuse to stone. Bone and flesh and blood would have been gone in an instant in any earthly fire, but yet they endured in agony.

Then the dragon drew in his breath. The fire died. “Now you see what your power is worth to defy me. Every shaping of it I gave to you, and do you think you could turn it against me? Give the man to me.”

She shook her head. No enemy—no, not even Nahil, would I give to this one. The mind devoured but yet alive, the body worn like ragged castoff clothes. No!

The eager flames rose again. Agony beyond all reckoning, driving her back into the silence of her childhood. This fire did not destroy flesh, but its patient fierceness would burn away all mind and reason, in time. In time … and there is time enough … even years went by that other time and the sun did not rise or set once.

As the fire died again, a sound echoed like laughter, but too inhuman for laughter. “In the songs they call me Radel’s Bane. They shall call me Andiene’s Bane, yet. Give the man to me.”

“No,” she said, the easiest word, one that can be said when all hope and power has burned away.

Kallan spoke then, his voice as harsh as if he had not spoken for years. “Did he teach you healing as well as fire, my lady?”

“No gift of healing lies in me.”

“Think back, my lady. Who healed Ilbran, as he lay in poisoned fever in the forest?”

He tried to say more, but his words were swallowed up in the sudden roar of flames sweeping higher and fiercer than before. Andiene did not fight them. Her mind whirled in frantic speculation. Kare had healed Ilbran with her herbs. But Andiene remembered how she had lain close beside him. No use of power there. It did not make her weary. The stillness too simple. No fixing of her mind. But why had the dragon said, again and again, ‘no root nor seed of healing in you.’ Why was it necessary for him to say it?

She remembered Syresh, lying sea-chilled on the stony beach. She thought of Ilbran, dying of the grievers’ fury. She stared blind-eyed into the wall of flames, and then she understood.

“One thing you did not teach me, Lord Yvaressinest.”

The fire ebbed and died, leaving a stillness behind. The ruined courtyard waited. She was afraid to look into Kallan’s eyes, for fear of the pain-filled madness she might find there. She spoke as confidently as she had ever spoken, though her heart was filled with doubt and fear.

“There is one thing you did not teach me, dragon, and with it I can give you back the sacrifice that ties you to this land. You taught me to kill, not to heal. You cannot claim any part of this.”

Knowledge came to her this time, not by dragon’s gift, but freely, the use of the power that lay within her. It was bitter tedious work that she must do, to heal when she would rather have destroyed. But the pattern lay before her in stony bone. Flesh and bone obeyed her will, and the dragon waited in helpless anger, as she bound his fettered bones to his body again, and clothed them with flesh and hide and scales. The chain coiled like a serpent and fell away from his leg. He watched her in cold fury.

“You have no claim on this land now,” she said. “And no claim on me. Whatever source my power has, it is not all from you. I have proven it.”

For all his subtlety, he could not deny it. She could see the division in the worlds now, almost tangible, like a wall of stones half battered down. She set the stones into their places, lifting and fitting them one by one, though it was blasphemy, and the meadow high above the sea faded and was gone.

One last whisper came, dry and rustling. “You built the wall shoddily. It will not last forever.” Then there was quietness, a stillness like the first rain after summer, the song of birds after winter.

No dragon bones lay in the courtyard. The chain and fetter lay useless across the stones. Andiene looked in wonder, to see those stones whole and white, the tufts of sweet-snow springing unscorched from their earth-filled crevices.

At her side, Kallan took a sighing breath. His face was haggard but peaceful. “Our minstrel could make a fine song of this.”

“She will never know.”

“Now I know what voice Nahil heard,” Kallan said. “He heard it first in the northern lands, telling him that his father had been poisoned. He spoke of it long ago. Later, it told him what to do.”

“Nahil, and Giter, and I,” Andiene said.

“Who was Giter?”

“Another who heeded his subtle voice, it seems.”

“Would any of us have been deaf, if he had wooed us?” Kallan asked. They walked together to the gate. Andiene stumbled, and Kallan reached out to steady her. “You have blood on your face,” he said foolishly.

“Never mind.”

“Our fathers, how could they bear it, to see that living among them?”

“They were blind,” she said. “They saw a gray lizard and looked no further.”

Kallan shook his head. “I wonder. Since the time of Karstir, your land has killed three kings for every one that died to north or south.”

He set his shoulder to the gate, and dragged it open. The guards surrounded him. “How long has it been?” Andiene asked.

“One day,” Syresh said, staring past her into the empty square. “A day and a night. We did your will, and did not try to enter.”

“Do I still have a city to rule, or has another one taken power?”

“You are Rejin of this city. None rose up to challenge you. None would dare.”

They walked along the winding streets toward the palace. Ahead of them, a grizane stood and waited, robed in heavy gray.

She faced him boldly as he spoke. “Greetings, Lady Andiene. You were made of stronger metal than we thought.”

“You made good time,” she said. “How far did you have to travel to go around the rocks you pulled down from the high cliffs?”

“Not I,” he said. “It was my fellow who did that, and died under those heavy stones.”

“It was no feud of my choosing.”

“We know that. He should not have moved to war against you. But his fear was great, and first he tried to stop you gently.”

Then Andiene laughed. “Still, you trust me. How long has it been since you could travel freely through this city? One day after I gain it, and you walk as though you had never been hunted. And for all your fears, you came too late. The battle is over and done.”

“Not over, not done,” the grizane said. “Not for you, nor for the child you carry. That wall you built will not stand, and you are still the gateway that he will use to enter this land.”

Andiene’s face was joyful and serene. “Not now,” she said. “Not now.” She walked on, till she stood at the gateway to the palace, the very heart of the city.

She set her hands on the stones that guarded the archway, and spoke, and the city answered as it had answered its true lords for half a thousand years. No mortal hand was set to bell ropes through the whole wide city, but the bells spoke in exultation, first the near ones calling, then the far ones answering. They clashed and hummed their many notes into one dizzying blur of sound.

The day had begun, Festival day, Year’s Beginning, when all mankind walks outdoors, rejoicing and feasting. The bells rang through all the city, but the bell-ringers listened and laughed and joined the crowds that filled the streets. Leisure for all on this day of triumph. Their hands would not grow weary this day. Though the bells rang loud, the singing was louder, and after they sang, they danced.

Kallan stood at Andiene’s side as she spoke to the lords of the land and heard them swear their allegiance. And then, when they were done, the bells rang louder, till it seemed that the stone walls of the palace hummed with the sound.

Ring louder yet, Andiene thought, for on this day I have won my kingdom! And the city, that great stone beast crouched on the land, answered her once again.

Outside the walls was the sound of singing and rejoicing. Who would question the people, to ask if they celebrated their Rejin, newly come and conquering, or merely rejoiced in the end of summer? It was wiser not to ask.

“Tomorrow, I will go down to the shore where the fishermen live,” she said. “I may have work to do there.”

“Walking, or carried on a litter?” Kallan asked.

“Walking,” she said. “I have not forgotten so soon those many leagues through mountain and forest and field, which led me to my journey’s end.”

At the far end of the hall, Lenane bowed her dark head over her lute, plucked the strings and sang. “This is the song of Andiene, of how a few went out and conquered a wide kingdom.”