“I wanted her to go, Your Highness, but only for her sake. For mine I wish she could have stayed, but I’ll hope and pray that she lives a long life and finds a little joy in it as well.”

“The thought becomes you. I doubt me if you and I will do either.”

“The only joy I can see myself finding, Your Highness, is dying before you do.”

“That’s a boon the gods will probably grant you.” Ranadar paused, looking up at the cloud-strewn sky. “One way or the other.”

PART II - THE NORTHLANDS SUMMER, 1160

PART II

THE NORTHLANDS SUMMER, 1160

The reflection in the mirror is not your actual face. No more is the world you see the world.

—The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

.

I GOT MY WISH. I died long before the prince did.

The silver dragon spread his wings, contemplated flight, then closed them again. A wind came up, whining through the broken towers, murmuring in the trees. A dust demon whirled across the shattered paving stones of the courtyard by the long-gone gates.

“I thought I’d die here in Garangvah,” Rori said aloud, “but I didn’t. We lived through the siege, and then I followed Ranadar when he began raiding. It was all that was left to us, raiding. We stole their horses, we killed as many of their men as we could.” He laughed with a long rumble of satisfaction, remembering the kills. “It was my wyrd, when I died on one of those raids. Was it an arrow?” He considered one of Garangvah’s broken towers, as if perhaps it had heard and might answer. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a new war now.”

With a rustle of wings the silver dragon leaped into the air and flew, heading east. He laired that night on one of the foothills, then set out again in the morning. Late in the afternoon he reached the fortress he’d seen a-building. Although he’d flown over the area a number of times, he’d never examined it carefully. In the slanted light of the aging day, he saw marks upon the ground he’d not noticed before, places where the scrubby grass grew thicker or thinner. As if they were shadows thrown by Time itself, the marks displayed a pattern of long lines enclosing areas that might have been fields and little circles the size and shape of farmers’ huts. Yet nothing remained on the ground to explain them.

The fortress itself presented a further surprise. In the midst of flat scrubland, it stood on a hill of sorts—very much of sorts, he realized. He flew up high and glided in a lazy loop, studying the hill and the half-finished buildings, all of wood, that stood behind a wooden palisade. Despite the clutter, he could see enough to discern a crucial truth.