Dragon's Winter by Elizabeth A. Lynn Page A

it?”
    Shaking her head, she bit into the loaf. A picture slid into her mind: two dragons, one black, one gold, locked in lethal combat in a brilliant blue sky. Deep within her mind she heard the cold laughter of the darkness. She snarled, and the laughter ceased.
    Kira chattered at her: house gossip; this or that girl was sick, or having a birthday. This one was in love, or sulking, or pregnant. The torrent of words broke over her head like a wave. She finished the bread.
    “Here.” Kira slid her a wedge of hard cheese. “For later.” She thrust it under her cloak.
    Kira hovered over her. Kira was always kind to her. It entered her mind to wonder why.
    “Thank you,” she said. The words came slowly, as if her mouth had no memory of such sounds.
    Because she was looking at the floor, she did not see the wonder that fell across Kira’s round face. Rising, she shouldered her bundle, and left the kitchen, leaning on her black staff. The temple cats, as always, came to twirl around her ankles. She bent, crooning to them, and then went on. Kira watched the silver-haired figure until it rounded the corner. “Watch the oven,” she said to Lena the under-cook. Then, drying her hands, she sped from the warm kitchen up the brothel stairs and scratched on Sicha the madam’s door.
    After a long while, Sicha herself opened it. She had obviously been wakened from sleep: her hair lay loose and straggly over the shoulders of her cerulean silk robe, and her fine narrow feet were bare. Green malachite stained her face above the high curve of her cheek. The room smelled of jasmine. The bedcovers were soft fleece, and the lamp was fine silver, with a bronze base.
    Kira said, her voice shaking, “She spoke. The Silent One spoke.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She said, Thank you. For the bread and cheese. Every day for ten years I have given her bread and cheese, and never has she done more than grunt.”
    Sicha said, and her voice, too, shook, “Was there more?”
    “No. That was all.”
    “It doesn’t matter.” Sicha sat, then. The smell of baking bread drifted upward from the kitchen. “I will have to go to the castle.” She glanced sharply at Kira. “You know you must not speak of it.”
    Kira said, with dignity, “I shall not speak of it. I never have.”
     
     
    That afternoon the beggar crouched in her place against the temple wall. It was raining, a hard, dismal rain; it pounded on the cobblestones and ran in rivulets along the muddy streets. Only the beggar’s heavy blanket and the jutting overhang of the temple roof kept her from the wet.
    A passing cartwheel splattered her. She glared from the tent of her blanket at the oblivious driver. A rear wheel wobbled and dropped from the cart, which lurched, and juddered to a stop. The driver leaped swearing to the ground. He scoured the street for the pin, which had unaccountably come loose. Borrowing a hammer from the bakery across the alleyway, he banged it back into place.
    You did that. The words leaped accusingly from the depths of her mind.
    “No.” She did not realize at first that she had said the word aloud. The sound skipped from her like a pebble from a child’s hand. “No,” she whispered.
    Sleeping, waking, moonlit eye, find the one for whom I cry... The words, a country witch’s rhyme, came unbidden out of the jumble of her mind. She felt for her staff. Shivering, she stood. Her blanket slithered unheeded to the street. She saw again the man with silver-tipped hair lying in the snow. The dead woman was his. The living child was his. He would die, too, and she could not save him.
    “Go away!” she cried aloud.
    The words, abrupt and flinty as stones, hurtled from her and spun into the rain-wet day. The rain stopped abruptly. The clouds drew apart. Sun lit the puddles and sparkled off the cobblestones. A fierce warm wind blew down the wide street. The staff in her right hand was vibrant with life. An image slid across her mind. She cupped her left