And in that moment, I know that no matter how our confrontation ends, the dragon has already won.
He’s right, and he’s wrong. I don’t want justifications for the priests.
I want justifications forme.
I want to know whether she was right, so that I know if I’m right.
Right here, right now, I can make the biggest statement any sage ever has. I can unwork what the Sage of Wrath may have given her life to accomplish, and in so doing change the nature of understanding of sages and divinity.
Or I can hold still.
And it galls me that I am not sure I have the resolve to do either.
That I am not as strong as I, or anyone else, thought.
That the Sage of Wrath could do so much, and that I, ostensibly her equal, cannot do anything.
That perhaps not only am I insignificant now, but—counter to what I’ve believed—I always have been, and can onlybeinsignificant, because of who I am.
I hear commotion behind us, and instead of relief—that the priests are here, that they will take this choice out of my hands—all I feel is dismay. The chance for me to doanythingthat matters is slipping away.
I stare at the dragon, who is beginning to back away into the fog leading to the island as the gold light fades and the resolve of my command holding him falters—or he wants me to believe that was what was holding him—and stop moving entirely.
The gold of my power vanishes.
And yet the dragon freezes now in truth.
“I’m here to take down the dampening field,” I tell him.
Shouts behind me; the priests can see that I’ve stopped moving and will think something is wrong.
And indeed something is.
“Iam not irredeemably stupid,” the dragon snarls back. “Congratulations, your cowardice will recreate tenfold the conditions that pushed the Sage of Wrath to this.”
Thatis what I am afraid of.
That having finally realized I alone can make a difference, I will make exactly the wrong kind. That I will drown a seed rather than nurture it.
That maybe I have theworstkind of significance: the kind that supports the wrong side.
A strange realization settles on me; almost disbelieving.
“I can’t do it,” I say, more to myself. “I don’t have the resolve.” But then I meet the dragon’s icy eyes head-on as I add, “I don’t think I have the resolve to fight you, either. If you go now, you can escape unscathed. They won’t follow you to Sanctuary now, not with the tide coming up and no idea what to expect on the other side.”
I still don’t know what he hoped to gain here. If for some reason it was to keep the dampening field up, he has it.
But though he may have been hunting sages before, he didn’t attack me here.
If a dragon can make that choice, so can a sage.
“Maybe not irredeemable,” the dragon mutters, or at least I think he does—an instant later he is in his dragon form, sparkling like moonstone and the size of a house, and this close to him Icanfeelthe heat shimmering off his scales as he takes a menacing step toward me.
Toward the Precipice.
Gods, maybe I am irredeemably stupid after all.
Then the dragon’s voice sounds in my mind.
