Prologue
The Converging of Paths.

Flame Song Firedancer stood on top of a low hill and surveyed the countryside around her. It was spring, and wherever she looked she saw green grass and flowers, but the air still had a bite to it. She was north of the Barrier Mountains and even in summer it was never truly warm on the northern tundra. But the rolling plain was the closest thing she could find to her lost home, and so she had come here to build her new home.

She had friends in the south, and she had considered staying there, making her permanent home among them, but in the end she had not been able to bring herself to. Much as she loved her friends, being around them could often be painful for her. Some of them were married, others were courting, and all of them were Arethans or humans that blended into Aretha's own human population. She was different. She could look human, and had tried living as one for a brief time, but she found she couldn't be happy pretending that she was human. That was a lie, and dishonesty wasn't in her nature. But though Arethans were less prejudiced about race and species than many peoples, the native races of Aretha were all at least humanoid. Flame Song was not.

The spring breeze that made the grass ripple ruffled her coat, the thick white fur with its flame-like markings tugged into disarray by the gentle gusts. She stood on all fours, her paws with their long retractable claws and pink pawpads resting amid the spring grass. Her long plumed tail trailed out behind her, and the eyes that gazed on the sunny plains were grass green with slit pupils, set in a broad feline face.

She was a firecat, or had been. What species she could claim now she wasn't really certain. But she still felt that this was her true form. All the other shapes she could now assume seemed false, unnatural, and so she seldom took them.

And that was, of course, the problem. As accepting as Arethans were of elves and dwarves and aerians, they were not so accepting of seeming animals, however intelligent. Few of them had mistreated her, and many were her friends, but none had been willing to be her partner or mate. And after years of rejections, years of watching friends pair up and have children, she simply couldn't take it any more. She would visit them still. She would answer her queen's call when it came. But she could no longer live among them. And so she had come here.

She pawed at the ground, and the dirt beneath the grass was firm but dry. It wouldn't be too damp, and it wouldn't be too loose or too sandy. This is a good spot, she thought, and nodded to herself. She padded down the slope to the base of the hill. She looked at the angle of the sun and picked a spot on the southern side of the hill. With another nod she unsheathed her claws and began to dig. The first couple of yards were easy. Dirt flew out behind her, and she burrowed rapidly in. Then she reached the permafrost, the place where the ground was frozen as hard as stone. She paused there, and took time to widen what she had dug into a roughly rectangular passage that was almost tall enough for a human, though most would probably have to duck. She didn't anticipate many visitors, but she might have a few, and she didn't want them to have to crawl. Flame weighed four or five times the weight of most humans, but she stood only three feet high at the shoulder. With the passage enlarged, the next step was to dig into the frozen earth. Flame had thought this out carefully. Had she been still on her home world she would have softened the frost with fire, using the firecats' gift to make the air itself burn over the earth, and melt it. But she had lost that gift. Aretha changed all those who lived on it, and Flame Song had been changed indeed. Some of her firecat gifts were still with her, but the ability to make anything burn was not among them. But when Aretha had changed her, it had given her a different sort of gift, and she used it now.

An observer, had there been any, would have seen a distorting shimmer, rather like the way hot air ripples, come over Flame Song. She wavered and blurred, the blur changed color and shape, and when it cleared and she was fully solid again it was no longer a giant cat that stood there, but a small dragon. In this form her scales were mostly white, but with broad stripes of fire-orange that spread out from her spine, where a line of blood red spikes ran down her back. The backs of her wings were every shade of orange and red and yellow, blended in swirling patterns, and the undersides were shell pink, delicately veined. Her eyes were still the same grass green.

She was small enough to fit easily down the shallow tunnel, so she went in and positioned herself in front of the hard surface of the frozen earth. She had spent quite a lot of time in this form, practicing, to be sure she could do it right, so inhaling and breathing out flame was easy, almost natural. The fire played over the ground, and she kept it up for nearly a minute before stopping. She considered shifting back, but a dragon's claws were as good as a firecat's for digging, and she didn't want to waste her energy bouncing back and forth. So she simply dug into the ground, flinging the steaming soil back. She nodded, pleased, to see that the thawed earth was damp but not saturated. She had picked well, this spot was dry enough that warming the den wouldn't flood it.

Hours passed, and the tunnel grew slowly but steadily. She paused every so often to move the earth she'd flung behind her all the way out, and to scatter it. She didn't want to build up a new hill in front of her door.

A day passed in digging, and she slept the night curled at the bottom of the tunnel, her thick coat impervious to the cold earth around her. The next day the tunnel itself was done, but her work had only just begun. She would be lucky if she finished it before the snow fell.