He felt a disturbing need that interrupted the joyful song.

He stopped a mriswith. "Where am I needed?"

The mriswith pointed with its yabree. "She will take you. She knows the way."

Richard wandered off in the direction the mriswith had indicated. In the darkness near a ruined wall, a figure waited. The singing of his yabree urged him onward with need.

The figure wasn't a mriswith, but a woman. In the moonlight, he thought he recognized her.

"Good evening, Richard."

He took a step back. "Merissa!"

She smiled congenially. "How is my student? It's been a while. I hope you are well, and your yabree sings for you."

"Yes," he stammered. "It sings of a need."

"The queen."

"Yes! The queen. She needs me."

"Are you ready, then, to help her? To free her?"

After he nodded, she turned and led him on into the ruins. Several mriswith joined mem as they entered the broken doorways. Through vine-rimmed gaps in the walls, moonlight streamed in, but when the walls became more solid, blocking the moonlight, she lit a flame in her palm as she glided along. Richard followed her up stairs coiling into the gloomy ruins and down halls that looked to have been undisturbed for thousands of years.

The illumination from the light in her palm suddenly became inadequate as they entered a huge chamber, Merissa sent the small flame into torches to either side, bringing flickering light to the vast room. Long-dead balconies covered with dust and spiderwebs ringed the room, looking down on a tiled pool making up the main floor. The tiles, once white, were now dark with stains and dirt, and the murky water in the pool was laced with strings of muck. Overhead the partly domed ceiling was open in the center, with structures rising up beyond the opening.

The mriswith slipped up beside him, standing close. Both tapped their yabree to his. The pleasant singing resonated with the calm center within him.

"This is the place of the queen," one said. "We can come to her, and when the young are born they may leave, but the queen cannot leave here."

"Why?" Richard asked.

The other mriswith stepped forward and reached out with a claw. As it came in contact with something unseen, a whole domed shield lit with a soft glow. The sparkling dome fit neatly within the one of stone, except it had no hole in the top. The mriswith pulled its claw back, and the shield became invisible again.

"The old queen's time is passing, and she is at last dying. We have all eaten of her flesh, and a new queen emerged from the last of her young. The new queen sings to us through the yabree, and tells us that she is rich with young. It is time for the new queen to move on, and establish our new colony.

"The great barrier is gone and the sliph is awakened. Now you must help the queen so we may establish new territories."

Richard nodded. "Yes. She needs to be free. I can feel her need. It fills me with the singing. Why haven't you freed her?"

"We cannot. Just as you were needed to still the towers, and to wake the sliph, only you can free the queen. It must be done before you hold two yabree, and they both sing to you."

Guided by his instinct, Richard moved to the stairs at the side. He could sense that the shield was stronger at the base; it had to be breached at the top. He held the yabree to his chest as he climbed the stone steps. He tried to imagine how wondrous two would be. Its comforting song soothed him, but the queen's need drove him on. The mriswith remained behind, but Merissa followed him.

Richard moved as if he had made the journey before. The stairs led outside, and then up spiraling steps beside the ruins of columns. The moonlight cast jagged shadows among the craggy stone still standing among the devastation.

They at last reached the top of a small circular observation tower, pillars rising to the side of it, connected overhead by the remains of an entablature decorated with gargoyles. It looked as if at one time it had circled the entire dome, connecting towers like the one atop which they stood. From the high tower, Richard could look down through the opening of the dome. The curved roof bristled with huge columns, like spikes, radiated out and down in rows.

Merissa, in a red dress, the only color he had ever seen her wear when she had come to give him instruction, pressed up close behind him, looking silently down into the dark dome.

Richard could feel the queen in the mirky pool below, calling to him, urging him to free her. His yabree sang through his bones.

Casting his hand down, he let his need flow outward. He cast the other arm out, pointing the yabree down along with the fingers of his other hand. The steel knives knelled, vibrating from the power coursing out of him.

The blades of the yabree rang, rising in pitch, until the night screamed. The sound was painful, but Richard didn't allow it to abate. He called it onward. Merissa turned away, covering her ears as the air reverberated with the howl of the yabree.

The domed shield below quaked, glowing as its vibrations intensified. Sparkling cracks appeared and raced along its surface. With a deafening knell, the shield shattered; pieces of it, like glowing glass, rained down toward the pool, sparking out as they fell.

The yabree went silent, and the night was once again still.

A bulk below stirred, shaking itself free of the strands of weed and muck. Wings spread, testing their strength, and then, with frenetic strokes, the queen lifted into the air. With needful beats of her wings, she lifted to the edge of the dome, her claws snatching and catching at the stone for support. Partially folding her newly tested wings, she began climbing the stone of the tower upon which Richard and Merissa stood. With sure, slow, powerful pulls, she hauled her glistening bulk up the column, her claws finding purchase in the cracks, crags, and crannies in the stone.

At last she stopped, clinging to the pillar beside Richard like a clawed salamander clinging to a slimy log. In the bright light of the moon, Richard could see that she was as red as Merissa's dress. At first Richard thought he was seeing a red dragon, but upon closer scrutiny he could see the differences.

Her legs and arms were more heavily muscled than a dragon's, and covered over with smaller scales more like the mriswith's. A raised row of interlocking plates ran the length of her spine from the end of her tail to a nest of spikes at the back of her head. Atop the head, at the base of several long, supple spines, was a raised protrusion crowned with rows of scaleless flesh that occasionally fluttered as she exhaled.

The queen's head snaked about, looking, searching. Her wings unfurled, slowly sweeping the night air. She wanted something.

"What do you seek?" Richard asked.

Twisting her head down toward him, she huffed a breath that engulfed him with an odd aroma. It somehow made him feel her need more acutely; the aroma had meaning he could understand, saying, "/ wish to go to this place."

She then turned her head out to the night beyond the pillars. She blew out, emitting a long, low, vibrating rumble that seemed to shudder through the air. Richard could see her expelling air through the fleshy ribbons atop her head. They fluttered as she trumpeted, creating the sound. With the heady aroma still filling his nostrils, he looked to the sweep of night before the tower.

The air shimmered, brightening as an image began to emerge before him. The queen trumpeted again, and the image brightened further. It was a scene Richard recognized — it was Aydindril, as if he were seeing it through an eerie, ocher fog. Richard could see the buildings of the city, the Confessors' Palace, and, as she trumpeted again, brightening the image floating before him in the nigh sky, the Wizard's Keep towering above on the mountainside.