To Light A Candle

from Sentarshadeen, she is at risk. She is a great prize for Them,” Jermayan said.

“I am still not a horse,” Ancaladar said, stretching his head out so that Jermayan could rub the sensitive places just behind the eye sockets on the massive head. Jermayan had already learned that Ancaladar liked that.

“The children would be frightened,” Jermayan said, after several minutes of silence. “To go again the way they did before, spending days upon the road, wondering each day if they are to be attacked again, to see their friends and companions slain before their eyes by monsters out of nightmare. I am afraid that such a journey would only undo what little healing has been accomplished.” Jermayan thought he knew Ancaladar’s weak point—that he had been slowly deprived of nest-mates and companions until he found himself alone. “Those poor children—to know that their friends and their own kin were slain, and they were helpless to prevent it! And then, to wake in the darkness, and discover that they were all alone—”

“You can be truly annoying sometimes,” Ancaladar grumbled. He thought for a while, while Jermayan walked forward a few steps and transferred his attentions to the soft skin just behind the armored plates at the hinge of Ancaladar’s jaw. “If I did not know better, I would say this was an attempt to distract me from your lessons in Magery.”

“I would say that I dislike them nearly as much as you dislike my plan,” Jermayan said with a sigh.

What he learned from Ancaladar didn’t seem to be very much like the Wild Magic as Kellen and Idalia knew it. He knew about the obligations and Mageprices involved there, but in Bonding with a dragon, all prices were paid by the Bond. The dragon surrendered its immortality, and all prices were paid in full, forever.

Nor was it anything like the High Magick practiced in Armethalieh. The Elves knew something of that: There had been hints gathered over the centuries that the Elves had traded with the Golden City, and Jermayan had pieced together a little more from the few disparaging comments he’d heard Kellen make. Elaborate incantations, complicated equipment… no.

To use Ancaladar’s magic, all Jermayan needed was his Will. Each spell had a specific shape and color and taste—there was no better way to describe it. He had to hold the proper one in his mind and let Ancaladar’s power pour through him, like sunlight through a crystal.

Spells for fire, for ice, for darkness, for invisibility, for flight. Thousands upon thousands of them, like trays of jewels.

And all he had to do, Jermayan thought wearily, was remember each unnameable colorshape perfectly, and always select the right one. At least Ancaladar was only putting a few of them into his mind at a time, though the dragon insisted he was only helping Jermayan remember them. According to Ancaladar, if Jermayan hadn’t known them already, they never could have Bonded.

It was something Jermayan preferred not to think about. Elves were not Mages. Humans were Mages. Demons—Leaf and Star wither and blast them— were Mages.

Elves were not. Elves had given up their magic long ago, in the childhood of the world. They had done so in order to save the world, and the Light—but that was something that was not spoken of outside of the Sanctuary of the Star. Humans and other races were not to know of this… he was not certain that even a dragon should be told.

Then again, he was not certain that a dragon didn’t already know.

“Then if you will practice, I will take your children to the fortress,” Ancaladar said, sounding both resigned and amused. “But you know I cannot land there. It was built when your kind had… reason to fear dragons.”

“Andoreniel will send a message. We will land at the foot of the causeway. I think the children will be safe there for as long as it takes to get them inside.”

“With what you have learned, certainly,” Andoreniel said. “And now… practice. Make a flower.”

Jermayan stared at the snow doubtfully.

“The canes are there, beneath the snow. They slumber. Wake one,” Ancaladar said.

“It will freeze and die,” Jermayan said, shaking his head.

“Then change them,” Ancaladar said implacably. “Make flowers for the cold.”

As clearly as if a voice had spoken inside his head, Jermayan could see what to do. He reached, and out of the snow beneath his feet, tender green rose-canes began to shoot up out of the snow, growing with unnatural speed.

But that wasn’t enough. Roses were flowers for summer. They would die in the cold. He reached into them again and began to change them, even as they reached out toward the ice-covered walls of the canyon and began to twine and climb.

The pale green faded to the dark green of the mature plant, then faded further, into black. But not the black