“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 they wished, resented the Lady’s decision to ask for kapristi workmen—not just once, but twice.”

“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?”