Time to construct his letter, while the Salamander and all its kin considered his requirements. He was Fafnir like the giant, now utterly transformed to something no one who knew the former self would ever recognize. He spoke out of the darkness of his velvet-covered, wingback chair, his voice rising from the shadow like the voice of the dragon Fafnir from its cave.

This was special paper, and more exclusive than it seemed, pressed with his own watermark and not that of the maker. He summoned the creature from the dish with a thought obedient to his will, it hovered above a pristine sheet of cream-laid vellum. At length, he tired of watching it dance, and determined to set it upon its task. Their patience was endless, but his, being mortal, was not. What one saw, all saw speak to one and you spoke to all of them, for such was their nature. They brought him the news of the world now closed to him what better source of information could he have? Where fire was, there they lurked candle-flame, or gaslight, coal-fire or stoked box of a steam-boiler, burning hearth or burning forest-all held his informants, any of which could impart their observations to him. He was a Firemaster, and all creatures of the element of flame answered to him. At times a manikin of light, at times in the shape of the mundane salamander that bore the same name, this was the eyes and ears of the mage who had conjured it. It swayed and postured to a music only it could hear, the only source of light in the otherwise stygian darkness of the room. Golden as sunlight, white-hot, the Salamander danced and twisted sinuously above a plate sculpted of Mexican obsidian, ebony glass born in the heart of a volcano and shaped into a form created exactly to receive the magic of a creature who bathed in the fires of the volcano with delight.

The fire rose by mercedes lackey