"Penance?"

"Yes. It's an idea that's found in several religious traditions. The idea that when you've done wrong, divine justice demands a punishment, so you need to do something which is hard, or uncomfortable, or perhaps boring so that you'll be punished and then can be forgiven. I find it a rather useful idea, really. The notion is in there, isn't it, that you deserve some kind of punishment because of what happened."

She thought that through. "Yes..."

"So when a punishment is given, you can feel that it's all wrapped up and done with, and it's easier to set it aside. But I don't know if I could give a punishment to you. I'm not sure it would be right and I'm not sure, as I said, what penance I'd give in any case. Perhaps there's something you can do, to make up for it, yourself."

"I don't know what."

He shrugged. "Something may yet come along."

She nodded. "Thank you," she said. "I wanted to tell someone, but I was afraid if I told anyone in the village... that I'd have to see them every day, and see them looking at me thinking that I was a murderer. I don't think I could."

He smiled just a bit. "And me you only see every other year, which I suppose would be easier. But if it helps, I don't think you're a murderer. You did what you had to do, and perhaps you did the world, and any number of other young girls, a favor by taking something evil out of it."

"Perhaps." She hadn't thought about that, about other girls that he might have hurt. The thought made her feel a little better.

"Thank you," she repeated.

"You're more than welcome," he said.

Janus left the next morning, on his way to the distant southern lands. For Serali, time passed, as it tends to do, and she kept growing. By the time Janus visited again, she was fourteen, and taller than her father. They spoke of dragons and magic, of love and of life, but not of death this time, and Serali complained that none of the village boys were interested in holding her hand and walking in the woods. The presence of a dragon in the area had given young lovers a new excuse to go out of town together. They went hunting dragon scale, but they very seldom found any. Janus just shook his head. "You're an eagle among pigeons, my dear. They're quite likely too terrified to even think of it."

By the time Janus' next visit approached, Serali was taller than every man in the village, and had filed out. She looked, at sixteen, like a woman of twenty, and was feeling somewhat miserable because despite this, not a single boy in the village would speak a word to her. She was also eagerly awaiting Janus's visit, largely because, with the exception of her family and Breck, she had no one at all to talk to. But it seemed that Janus was to be late this year as autumn began to slide into winter with no sign of the mage. She wondered if something had happened to him. Some accident? Or some magic he needed to see to that had delayed him? She hoped that whatever it was, it wouldn't keep him long.

In a tall tower, on the edge of a great city, a silver haired mage sat and thought. He held a small object in his hand, which he turned over and over, flicking it every now and then with a finger. No matter how often he hit it, it always rang with only a single clear tone.