As the noise subsided, Cerestes slowly curled in the middle of the chamber. He began to enlarge, his dorsal bones scraping, pressing against the far wall of the cavern. Soon the light from the entrance was blocked out entirely by his huge, bulking body.

Sternly, as the pain settled in his wings, in his enormous haunches, in-the long tail that had burst from the base of

his spine, the voice of the Lady echoed all around him. On the chamber ceiling, reflecting among legions of startled bats, amid the shimmering droop of stalactites, a single golden eye stared mercilessly down upon the coiled red dragon that was Cerestes.

You are no longer Cerestes, the Lady soothed, but you are once again Ember, and entirely my creature….

"Tis a painful Change, Majesty," Ember protested, his voice dry and grating, speaking now in a draconic language of hisses and hard consonants. His voice was like the rattle of the bats' wings.

'Painful-' The voice of the Dragonqueen was icy, mocking. How painful do you think it was for Speratus, the Red Robe, when I arranged your . .. promotion to Daeghrefn's wizard? If you're squeamish when it comes to the pain, Ember, and the Change itself is painful, then perhaps you should never change again.

Ember squirmed uneasily. The form of Cerestes was his veil, his protective guise in a world in which the dragons could not yet force their presence. For eight years, he had walked in human form.

Oh, yes, Takhisis continued, smelling his thoughts as if they were a faint whiff of blood. Imagine being always yourself, coiled here like a giant serpent, like the dale worm of centuries past, unable to escape. Prey to your own hungers, perhaps, or to the lances of name-eager knights.

"Do with me what you will, m'Lady," the dragon rumbled, shutting his thoughts to her with a brief, powerful spell of masking. He stirred on the chamber floor, his confined movements dislodging rocks and old guano, startling the bats, who launched into the darkness with piping cries, their leathery wings brushing against Ember in their whirling flight.

Very well. Keep your thoughts from me. Let it not be said that the Dark Queen … intrudes, Takhisis conceded ironically. I shall pry no further, though if I willed it so, that spell of yours

would be thin as as … as …

"Gossamer?" Ember asked, with a dark, toothsome smile. It was good that she stopped at the masking spell. He could feel no encroachments, no attempts by her sharp, mysterious sight to pierce the veils of his own magic.

Perhaps she could not even do it. Not while she hovered in the abyss, awaiting a chance at entry to this plane.

Yes. Until they found the green gemstone, the goddess waited behind the portal, a poor version of what she was yet to be.

You have asked again why I sent you here. Well, I have fires for you to start, she said. And all the fires begin with those two.

"Verminaard and Aglaca?" Ember asked, his cloaked thoughts racing. "What would you have me do?"

Continue in your role as mage. Reveal to none that you are my cleric-not yet, at least. Continue to tutor Aglaca and Verminaard; nurture them. But become more than their teacher. Be now their confidant, the eyes that shape their world.

One will be your companion in the years to come, when we are stronger and more numerous in this hostile country.

One will be your companion.

Ember opened a golden eye, regarding the light at the ceiling of the chamber with curiosity and dread.

"Which one, Your Highness?" he asked, his rough voice laced with suspicion.

They will choose. Aglaca and Verminaard. In this world, there is room for only one of them.

And they might have already chosen. The larger is the more pliable, the smaller more spirited. Verminaard will be the easier won, Aglaca the prouder trophy. But they will choose. I shall provide the occasion.

"Why these two?" Ember asked, and in the long silence that followed, he heard the air buzz and crackle, like the sound in the sky at the beginning of lightning. He feared he had angered her, insulted her, and yet, after a long pause, she chose to tell him.

Laca. I've a long grudge against Laca. How better to pay him back, and the cursed Order…

"And if the other one is chosen," Ember added slyly, "what greater blow to the Order than to have your servant fathered by the great rebel Daeghrefn!"

Takhisis was silent. In the depths of the cavern, Ember heard his last words echoing, the echo circling and catching itself until echo flowed over echo and the dark recesses of the mountain bristled with tangling voices and words: other one… chosen .. .father…

I shall provide the occasion, Takhisis said, breaking the settling silence. First the girl. Then the other . . . circumstances.

"What girl?" Ember asked eagerly, his long, branched tongue flickering excitedly, hotly into the darkness. "You told me of no girl, m'Lady."

Why, the one that Paladine has chosen. The one he sends to the druidess-regarding the runes. Or so I believe.

"The runes?" Ember asked, closing his eyes, struggling for a note of idleness, of indifference. "I thought they were only a game. Indeed, I've kept Verminaard busy with them when his questions annoyed me."

And indeed they are but a game, Takhisis answered. Tor now, that is. Until the blank rune is sounded.

Ember opened the other double-lidded eye. In the slanted light of the chamber, his gaze was golden and scheming.

"The blank rune?" he asked. "So the old legend is true?"

Paladine has hidden it too long. Since the time of… Huma.

Ember masked a smile. The Lady still stumbled on the name of the Solamnic hero whose lance had driven her back into the Abyss.

He has hidden it so long, Takhisis continued, that they teach the mages that the blank stone is a substitute, a replacement in case another stone is lost or damaged.

"Indeed," Cerestes conceded. "So I have told Ver-minaard, who rummages in rune lore constantly."

So I have seen, Takhisis said. Perhaps the time will come when all the runes will lie before him, the blank rune adorned with its symbols….

"What then?" The dragon was eager, hungry for the forbidden knowledge. "What then, Lady?"

Then we shall wield the greatest of oracles, Takhisis purred. The augury that has lain silent and broken because the rune was blank, its symbol forgotten.

All of this time, it seems, L'Indasha Yman has kept the secret.