This story is the sequel to Her Insatiable Thirst. A brief summary of this story follows, but please do read the whole thing if you have the chance.

When I set off to the northern lands I had no idea quite what I would find. All that I knew was that I must go, for I had been called. It was no ordinary calling, and was one that I had to answer at any cost: for from a far-off place I could sense the presence of a dragon.

I had never felt the mind of a dragon before, but I knew intuitively what it must be: for it was a grand and immeasurable consciousness, though it had been stinted somewhat by some outside force; and the emotions that emanated from the being were too powerful to ignore. Sadness and misery and helplessness filled my mind, feelings poured in by this poor creature; I tried to address it, but it had no power of speech, save to tell me a name that it had heard somewhere. The sensation was irresistible, and I knew myself to be the only person who knew about it. And so I set off in the direction of the plea.

Me, Ganieda, the stepdaughter of a farmer, who had never ventured more than a few miles from my village! It would be a great and dangerous journey, and yet a sensation in my mind, the persuasion of a distant creature had forced me, willed me to set out into the unknown, and find it, and rescue it.

I came at great length to the Northern Plains, and there met the most terrific snowstorm: winter ravaged this place with a vengeance, covering everything with a block of white several feet deep in places, rendering the landscape perilous and nigh on impassable.

And yet I continued, and came at last to the fortress at Idirsholas, almost delirious with the effect of the cold, struggling, shivering. And I looked upon the fortress, and felt utterly hopeless: had my mission been for nothing.

It was a towering citadel, spiked, black, foreboding. It was like a sheet of ice in itself. I approached it, and there had to dodge a good many patrols before being detected by whoever it was who resided in the fortress; and I let them take me, for I could no longer move, such was the cold.

And I was brought then before none other than the High Priestess Morgana.

I knew little of Morgana save that she was a great and terrible sorceress, but I had believed her to be dead, for such was the rumour. Yet here she was, and I was her prisoner. Fighting against her would be useless.

She questioned me; I did not answer. And then she asked: 'Where is Emrys?'

The name was familiar to me: it was the name that the dragon had spoken. But I did not want to reveal that I knew about the dragon, for it was here and I wanted to save it without her knowledge. Morgana was adamant however to find out about this Emrys, who, I suspected, was the owner of the dragon, or a Dragonlord, or something akin to that. And thus I did not betray this man about whom I did not truly know; I preferred to die than to give up any morsel of information. I did not know the intentions of Morgana.

She tortured me; she brought me close to death, and I would happily have sunk into that abyss. Yet I did not, and instead came to myself deep below the citadel: and there I came by the dragon, whose name was Aithusa.

But in rescuing the dragon, or trying to, I discovered that the poor creature had been turned to Morgana's will, and so he betrayed me.

The next time I awoke I was back beneath the castle; but here I came by a creature known as the Diamair, who saved me and kept me safe from Morgana and her forces. After some time kept below the castle in this strange sanctuary I was saved by the men of Camelot, who had stormed the citadel in the hope of saving their own knights; and thus I was taken back with them, for I myself came from Albion and would have taken the same road.

Among these men was the servant of King Arthur, whose name was Merlin. He was a good-looking young lad, with a cheeky grin and unruly hair, but he hid beneath this bumbling exterior a good many great secrets. Firstly, that he had magic. Secondly, that he was a Dragonlord.

This second point was to me the more important: for I had been told that I myself was the daughter of a Dragonlord, who had fallen in love with my mother, but had to leave the village before I was born. His name was Balinor: and he was also the father of Merlin.

Merlin was younger than me: a couple of years, perhaps. His birth had come from a liaison between Balinor and Merlin's mother Hunith when Balinor had been driven out of Camelot not long after my own birth. Thus we were half-siblings.

I had grown up as an only child, and with no other children of a similar age, and so it was something of a surprise and a delight to meet Merlin, my half-brother. I would go back to Camelot with him; we would catch up on each other's doings; we would spend as much time together as possible. Such was our plan, and thus I came to Camelot with the King's men, and decided that I would stay there for a short while at the least.