"How strange," Carabella murmured. "Have you ever seen one do anything like that?"

"Never. Never." Valentine shivered. "Omen upon omen, Carabella. What am I being told by all this?"

"Come. Let's go in, and have a warm mug of wine."

"No. Not yet."

He stood as if chained to the deck, straining his eyes to make out that dark figure against the darkness of the sea in the gathering dimness of the evening. Again and again the huge wings flailed the sea, until at last the dragon furled them in, and raised its long neck high and threw back its heavy three-cornered head and let out a booming mournful cry that resounded like a foghorn cutting through the dusk. Then it slipped below the surface and was lost entirely to his sight.

4

Whenever it rained, and at this time of the year in Prestimion Vale it rained all the time, the sour odor of charred vegetation rose from the burned fields and infiltrated everything. As Aximaan Threysz shuffled into the municipal meeting-hall in the center of town, her daughter Heynok guiding her carefully with a hand to her elbow, she could smell the scent of it even here, miles from the nearest of the torched plantations.

There was no escaping it. It lay upon the land like floodwaters. The acrid reek found its way through every door and every window. It penetrated to the cellars where the wine was stored, and tainted the sealed flasks. The meat on the table stank of it. It clung to one's clothes and could not be rinsed away. It seeped through every pore and into one's body, and fouled one's flesh. It even entered the soul, Aximaan Threysz was beginning to believe. When the time came for her to return to the Source, if ever she was permitted to quit this interminable life, Aximaan Threysz was sure that the guardians of the bridge would halt her and coldly turn her back, saying with disdain, "We want no smell of vile ashes here, old woman.

Take up your body again and go away."

"Would you like to sit here, mother?" Heyrok asked.

"I don't care. Anywhere."

"These are good seats. You'll be able to hear well from here."

There was a little commotion in the row as people shifted about, making room for her. Everyone treated her like a doddering old woman now. Well, of course she was old, monstrously old, a survivor out of Ossier's time, so old that she remembered when Lord Tyeveras had been young, but there was nothing new about her being old, so why were they all suddenly so patronizing? She had no need of special treatment.

She still could walk; she still could see well enough; she still could go out into the fields at harvest time and gather the pods—and gather—go out into—the fields— and—gather—

Aximaan Threysz, faltering just a little, fumbling about, took her seat. She heard murmurs of greeting, and acknowledged them in a remote way, for she was having trouble now in matching names and faces.