months that he had been gone.
'Have you heard anything from Thelvyn or Sir George?' she asked.
'Not since the last time you asked,' Solveig replied, with no hint in her expression about whether she was amused. She paused a moment while Taeryn set her plate before her. 'You don't miss Thelvyn, do you?'
'I just recall that he did not have much cause to think well of me the last time we spoke,' Alessa admitted. 'I've come to think that I would like to amend that. Do you ever regret that
you didn't go with them?'
'From time to time,' Solveig answered. 'But mostly as a matter of curiosity. Then I remind myself where they were going, and that cures me. I'm not ready for the company of dragons, especially dragons who don't yet think much of Thelvyn and even less of his friends. I wonder if he's already found a way to break the spell that has always prevented him from assuming his true dragon form, or if that still is years away. I wonder what he looks like as a dragon, and if he's happier that way.'
'Do you suppose that we'll ever see him again, or does his fate now entirely rest with the dragons?'
Solveig made a small helpless gesture. 'I can't say for certain, but I suspect that we'll see him soon enough. Somehow I feel that all this business with the dragons is not yet finished, that there are still matters remaining unsettled.'
They waited while Taeryn brought in glasses and a bottle of wine, then took out a corkscrew to pull the cork. Taeryn took a special delight in this particular task, and they were not about to interrupt. He extracted the cork deftly, and it slipped out with a satisfying
'I would very much like to see Kharendaen again,' he commented as he poured the wine. 'She was a very nice dragon. Very polite.'
'I wonder how polite she would be if she knew that you've been stabling griffons in her lair,' Alessa observed. 'And speaking of griffons, I was thinking that it must be about time for Darius Glantri to visit again. That's why I wondered if he were here tonight. It's been a while.'
'Perhaps it has,' Solveig agreed vaguely.
'So what about Darius?' Alessa continued. 'How can the two of you have any meaningful relationship if weeks and weeks go by between visits from halfway across a continent? I know Darius visits every chance he gets, on the pretext of delivering important messages, but usually he's here only one night before he has to go home. You've never told me much about the relationship between the two of you, but if he's willing to go through that much trouble to visit you, something serious must be happening. You grew up in Thyatis, didn't you? Have you ever thought about going back? Might he consider coming here?'
'You're inquisitive tonight,' Solveig remarked evasively.
'Are you going to avoid the question?'
'I don't know,' she was forced to admit. 'I've always thought that I would go back to Thyatis someday, but I can't abandon my responsibilities here in the Highlands any time soon. Darius and I both have important duties in our own lands, duties that we can't forsake at a time when all the known world is in such an unsettled state.'
'What drove you away in the first place?' Alessa asked, then hastened to interrupt Solveig before she could answer. 'I know the story people tell about how your barbarian heart just longed to be free, and also how you were sold into slavery by the northlanders and bought by one of the first families of Thyatis so that they would have a daughter to present to society. But I've always had the feeling that you left Thyatis for someone's peace of mind, and I'm not certain it was your own.'
Solveig frowned. 'Actually, that's the exact reason. As I was growing up, I realized that everything I was being taught was to prepare me to be the type of person my adopted parents expected me to be. And being naturally rebellious and contrary, I of course wanted to do exactly the opposite. Since I was supposed to be gentile, I wanted to be a warrior. Since I was supposed to be dignified and respectable, I wanted to be an unsavory adventurer. When I found out that my father was already planning my marriage to someone who would be an advantage to the family, I decided to get out of Thyatis until I was too old to be married away.'
'And then Darius Glantri came along,' Alessa observed.
'Yes, that's the irony of it. In the course of being everything I wasn't supposed to be, I actually found a Thyatian who is a far more prestigious match than my father could have ever arranged for me. But what about you? Let's discuss your personal life for a while.'
'I don't have one,' Alessa said with a hint of honest regret. 'That's the problem with my profession. I only have my spell-book to keep me company at night.'
'If you don't have anything else to distract you, I was wondering if you've discovered anything new about the Collar of the Dragons,' Solveig said, pouring herself another glass of wine. 'I keep thinking, now that winter has passed, the dragons could be coming back here at any time wanting to know what we've done about finding their collar. The last I heard, you were certain that Kalestraan must have had some part in stealing it.'
'Not only that, but I'm also fairly sure that he was the one who hid it,' Alessa said, then smiled in almost comic self-sat-isfaction. 'In fact, I've run across one of Kalestraan's secrets just tonight. I don't know if it will help us find the collar, but it's the only possible clue I've managed to find in a long while. I'll need a little time to probe the secrets of this thing safely.'
'If the dragons come back, I don't know how understanding they'll be about our excuses.'
'Do you think Thelvyn would intercede on our behalf?' Alessa asked.
'I don't have much hope that he would be able to. He's never been very popular with the dragons, and I don't even know if he's found the way to become one himself by now. Even if he has, he'll need some time to assert his authority among his own kind.'
The end of the war with the dragons had left things rather unsettled. Once Marthaen, the leader of the dragons, had revealed Thelvyn's hidden heritage as a gold dragon and destroyed his trust and support among his allies, the dragons had simply withdrawn. Whether or not they considered their complaint with the Flaem resolved was uncertain, but they would probably be willing to defer their other complaints if the Collar of the Dragons was returned. At least Alessa now had some hope of finding the collar, if only she could force the jewel to reveal its secrets.
Alessa was still considering that very question later that night when she rode home in her carriage. But once she was walking slowly through the dark and silent corridors of the Academy, another matter began to intrude upon her thoughts. The strange, soft voice returned, speaking in words too distant for her to hear, forcing itself slowly yet relentlessly upon her.
She ignored it at first, as she had often done in the past weeks. After changing into a robe, she tried again to spend some time with her spellbook. She had to spend several hours each day learning and relearning her spells, since the price of working magic was the memorization of spells. She had trained herself years ago to be religious about spending daily time with her spellbook.
But the voice of the jewel continued to call to her. Alessa did her best to ignore it, having left the stone on the table by her bed, but once again she found the distraction was too great. The effort it took to ignore the voice was disturbing her concentration, and she realized after some time that she had learned nothing. She gave it up at last, closing the book and returning it to its hiding place. Picking up the jewel from the table by her bed, she brought it over to the light of the lamp at her reading desk.
This was the first chance she had to inspect the jewel closely, since her original intention had been to leave it alone until she had the chance to research the matter and prepare protections. She still didn't dare to probe its secrets magically, but she thought that there could be little danger in simply looking. She laid it down on the desk just the same, careful not to touch it at the same time that she was staring at it intently. Only then did she see that, while the stone had little more beauty than a piece of colored glass, it was indeed a cut jewel of some unknown type. But it was definitely not a ruby.
A moment later, she felt the pull of the jewel, like a slight touch at the edge of her awareness. She drew back in sudden terror of the thing, almost more by instinct than by conscious choice. But in the same moment, she knew that the stone, or the will behind it, had not been trying to trap her but was merely exploring with a delicate touch. All it wanted, at least for now, was to know who she was. Just the same, Alessa was not about to take any chances. As a sorceress of some experience, she knew a great deal about magical traps designed to ensnare not the body but the mind or even the soul of the unwary.
Just to be certain that the jewel would remain harmless, she took it into the adjoining room, which served as her office, and hid it inside the top drawer of a cabinet. She was determined not to look at it again until she had
