Free Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust

unconscious parody of Andor) while he ran his other finger along lines of ancient script. Andor winced in false sympathy to see him rubbing his finger, and looked away. Then he looked back, once more admiring the wizard’s calm demeanor. Dignity, that was it. Even the unpretentious pale green robes added to the effect of calm self-assurance.
    After a moment, Sándor looked up. “Yes?”
    Andor was flustered for a moment to be caught staring, but he held out the injury. “Do you think you could help me with a sliver? I’ve tried digging it out, but I can’t seem to—”
    “Certainly,” said Sándor. He grasped the end of the finger tightly, turning the tip purple, and reached down deftly with the fingernails of his other hand. Between the pressure from the squeezing and the light pain from the digging of the nails, Andor
didn’t actually feel the sliver come free, but Sándor was holding it, and rubbing now produced no pain.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    Sándor nodded brusquely. Andor settled back and sighed. Sándor seemed to resign himself to a long conversation. “What is it?” he said.
    “The flowers,” said Andor. “They don’t seem to be coming up. It’s been more than a week now, and—”
    Sándor snorted.
    “What is it?” asked Andor.
    Sándor snorted again. “Late autumn is not the time to plant flowers, my foolish friend.”
    Andor, who had been prepared for either a shocking revelation about the Nature of Truth or a severe tongue-lashing for lack of trust in the Power of Life, felt his jaw drop with amazement.
    After a moment, he managed to stammer out, “But you said—”
    “I said nothing. I was speaking in generalities. You chose to take my examples literally and wouldn’t listen when I tried to correct your error. Flowers, indeed!”
    Andor stared at him, trying desperately to understand. At last he said, “Please, Sándor.”
    “Please what?”
    “Help me. There is something … .”
    “Yes?”
    “Something missing. Something that I’m not seeing or doing.”
    “And it’s making you unhappy, is that it?”
    Andor nodded miserably.
    “You feel an emptiness in your life, and you come to me because I seem to be fulfilled.”
    “Yes.”
    “You think there must be some secret that I have, knowledge of how to be happy.”
    “No, but—”
    “No buts. I can hear it in everything you say.”
    Sándor’s expression was midway between exasperation and disdain. Andor looked down, like a child confronted with the evidence of a dish found under his bed with remnants of months-old pudding still on it.
    Sándor said in a suddenly gentler tone, “It isn’t that easy, Andor. I have paid for my peace of mind with the burden of power, and paid for the power with years of study. The ways of the Goddess—”
    “The Goddess?”
    “Certainly, the Goddess. She is the living embodiment of the power of Faerie. That is why we worship her.”
    “Then the power comes from her?”
    Sándor frowned, considering. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose it does, but—”
    “I understand!” cried Andor. It felt as if, after hours of chasing lanterns, he had emerged for the first time into the full light of day. His pulse raced as exhilaration swept through him.
    For years, he realized, he had been going through the duties of worship and obligation to the Goddess as if such things were separate from his personal life. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that again and again the Goddess had spoken to him, but he had chosen not to listen.
    Little things, such as the flowers refusing to grow, or the fountain breaking down when he had been looking forward all day to cooling off in it, or his consistent failures at tests of arms, or even today, the splinter received while watching for flowers that would never break the soil. Hundreds of things should have pointed him in the right direction, but he had been blind.
    Well, that was over, now. His search had been long, but at last he was on the