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beauty stood in the night, a woman who shone like running water, her hair a silky torrent of silvergold, her soft green robe flowing to her feet. Frain jumped up with a cry. “Shamarra!” he gasped, but as he moved the vision shifted shape. A ragged brown bird stood there instead.
    â€œWhy did you do it to her, why!” Frain shouted, sobbing, plunging forward. But on the instant the bird stretched hugely, horribly, a nightmare thing, it was a feathered serpent rippling up over our heads, then something with horns, then something with a woman’s laughing, shrieking head—all fast, too fast to fathom. It hissed and writhed and menaced, sending Frain staggering back with the shock of it. I caught him as he nearly fell, and in an instant Trevyn was beside us as well, and the goddess laughed and laughed in the night.
    â€œWhy does she laugh?” Frain asked Trevyn from between clenched teeth.
    â€œShe says you are a fool to think Shamarra still stands and weeps.”
    More words came as the goddess’s amusement calmed somewhat.
    â€œShe says Shamarra is not one to weep for long. Did she not send her minions against Tirell even before you left Vale, overstepping her authority? She was punished, but at this very moment she coldly plans her more fitting and lasting revenge. Frain, beware, Alys says. Shamarra makes a puissant enemy.”
    â€œBut Shamarra is not my enemy!” Frain cried. “She is my beloved!”
    The goddess had quieted and taken her most fair and simple form, a moonlike orb, pearly white. It flared briefly in warning, white fire, and Trevyn put an arm around Frain.
    â€œShe says you are your own worst enemy. Hush, do not argue, listen. She speaks.”
    She told us the tale of the crippled swan, and as she did so Trevyn told it to Frain in words he could understand.
    In ancient times in Vale, it seemed, there had been two princes, twins, one light and one dark. They were sons of the goddess. And the light one was raised as the king’s favored son, and he was called Doray, meaning Golden. But the dark one was taken as an infant to Acheron and left there to die. The All-Mother in form of Eala the swan took pity on him and gathered him under her wing, and he lived.
    Doray knew nothing of his brother. But in an inner sense he always missed him, and he grew up warmthless and fey. One day when he was yet small he tore from his nurse’s grasp and hurled himself over the battlements. He survived the fall, but it left him with a crippled, useless arm. “I was only trying to fly,” he said.
    The king’s vassals would not accept the odd, crippled boy as heir, and when Doray was a youth they rose up against his father and him. The king was killed and Doray fled to Acheron, where he knew no one would follow him. He walked through the twisted trees and climbed the crags of despair. He came to the dark lake and stepped into it, and because he was of immortal sort he became a swan, a fair swan white as asphodel, white as white lotus. But his wing hung useless in the water, and still he could not fly. A black reflection looked back at him from the water.
    â€œWho are you?” he asked it.
    â€œI am Arget,” the black swan replied, “your brother, whom you have never known. Search for me.”
    â€œBut how can you be my brother, you who are black?”
    â€œSearch for me,” Arget said.
    Doray left the lake and was human once more.
    So he went on yet again, through the forest of fear, up the barrier mountains. In time he found a youth sleeping—it was Arget. A warm feeling went through him that he had never known. He awakened him, and they embraced.
    They wandered, befriending each other. When they felt the bond complete, they made their way back to the dark and mirroring lake. Both stepped in together. Then a single white swan floated there, and its image in the water, white, and its wing was well and whole.
    â€œYou can fly now,”