Like a dragon, she saw backward and forward in time; and like a dragon, she
felt no passion at what she saw.
She was free, to have what she had always sought— not only the power, which
the touch of Morkeleb’s mind had kindled in her soul, but freedom to pursue
that power, released from the petty grind of the work of days.
Her mind touched and fingered that knowledge, wondering at its beauty and its
complexity. It was hers now, as it had always been hers for the taking. No
more would she be asked to put aside her meditations, to trek ten miles on
foot over the wintry moors to deliver a child; no more would she spend the
hours needed for the study of her power ankle-deep in a half-frozen marsh,
looking for frogwort for Muffle the smith’s rheumatism.
No more would her time—and her mind—be divided between love and power.
...
In time, she knew, even these memories would fade. She saw within herself, as
she had probed at the souls of others. Trey’s, she recalled, had been like a
clear pool, with bright shallows and unsuspected depths. Zyerne’s had been a
poisoned flower. Her own soul she saw also as a flower whose petals were
turning to steel at their outer edges but whose heart was still soft and
silky flesh. In time, it would be all steel, she saw, breathtakingly
beautiful and enduring forever—but it would cease to be a flower.
She lay for a long time in the rocks, motionless save for the flick of her
jeweled antennae as she scried the colors of the wind.
It was thus to be a dragon, she told herself, to see the patterns of all
things from the silence of the sky. It was thus to be free. But pain still
poured from some broken place inside her—the pain of choice, of loss, and of
stillborn dreams. She would have wept, but there was nothing within dragons
that could weep. She told herself that this was the last time she would have
to feel this pain or the love that was its source. It was for this immunity
that she had sought the roads of the sky.
