“He has reason.” Her voice was soft and musical. “My folk have slain his kind for serving as the Sunderer’s eyes, and the eagles of Meronil drive them from our towers. But it is also true that the Rivenlost do not begrudge any of the small races their enmity.” Cerelinde smiled at the raven. “They do not know what they do. One day, perhaps, there will be peace. We hope for it.”

Shifting from foot to foot, Fetch bobbed his tufted head. His sharp beak nudged its way through the dark strands of Tanaros’ hair, and his anxious thoughts nudged at Tanaros’ mind. Opening himself to them, Tanaros saw through doubled eyes a familiar, unsettling sensation. What he saw made him blink.

Cerelinde ablaze.

She burned like a signal fire in the raven’s gaze, an Ellyl shaped woman’s form, white-hot and searing. There was beauty, oh, yes! A terrible beauty, one that filled Fetch’s rustling thoughts with fear. Her figure divided the blackness like a sword. And beyond and behind it, there was a vast emptiness. The space between the stars, endless black and achingly cold. In it, as if through a crack in the world, stars fell; fell and fell and fell, trailing gouts of white-blue fire, beautiful and unending.

Somewhere, there was the roar of a dragon’s laughter.

Tanaros blinked again to clear his vision. There was a sudden pressure upon his shoulder as Fetch launched himself, soaring with outspread wings to a nearby branch. The raven chittered, his beak parted. All around the rookery, his calls were uneasily echoed until the glade was alive with uneasy sound.

“Perhaps I am unwelcome here,” Cerelinde said softly.

“No.” At a loss for words, Tanaros quaffed his wine and held out his goblet for Speros to refill. He shook his head, willing the action to dispel the lingering images. “No, Lady. You are a guest here. As you say, they are fearful. Something happened to Fetch in the desert.” He furrowed his brow in thought, pondering the strange visions that flitted through the raven’s thought, the recurrent image of a dragon. Not just any dragon, but one truly ancient of days. “Or before, perhaps. Something I do not understand.”

“It seems to me,” said the Lady of the Ellylon, “many things happened in the desert, Tanaros.” She gazed at him with the same steady kindness she had shown the raven, the same unrelenting pity with which she had beheld the madlings of Darkhaven. “Do you wish to speak of them?”

Speros, holding the wine-jug at the ready, coughed and turned away.