“Stories of how she won the Shadow War?”
Luc-Jon threw up his hands dismissively, buttressing the gesture with an outrush puff of breath. “Stories about everything!”
“The flight from Angwyn,” bugled a brownie.
“The fire in Cherlindrea’s forest,” crowed Rool.
“The dance with the firedrakes.”
“The romance with the Lord of the Dance.”
“The death of the dragons!”
“The fall of Ch’ang-ja.”
“The siege of Tregare!”
Then, together, delightedly, “And that’s just the part that’s true!”
They’d bounced titles back and forth with such giddy abandon that Anakerie had to laugh, and she was quickly joined by the others at the table.
“Did you know,” Luc-Jon informed them, “that Elora Danan rode a dragon all the way to the sun and brought back a piece of its molten heart? Or that she crept into the castle where her true love was held captive and won him free from the Caliban itself!”
“Any description on that sweetheart, young scribe?” Anakerie asked.
“The usual,” replied Luc-Jon, in the same humorous vein. “Tall, ridiculously good-looking, means well but dumb as the proverbial post. He exists, it seems, to be captured and rescued and to look superb on her arm. Otherwise…?” He shrugged dismissively.
“No resemblance between art and life then, eh?” Anakerie teased.
“Not even close.” He twisted a little on his seat, toward another figure sitting so deep in the shadows she might have been mistaken for one herself. “Something to ask of you, Khory?”
“You may ask, scribe,” the warrior told him.
“What exactly happened in Ch’ang-ja?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Anakerie.
“Elora Danan’s version of Drumheller’s ‘disappearing pig’ trick, you mean?” And Khory chuckled, but whether at the memory of the moment itself or the sheer audacity of Elora’s improvised ploy, none could tell. “Sleight of hand,” she told them with a shrug of her shoulders.
“You don’t slip loose of our net quite that easily, my girl,” warned Anakerie. “I was there, remember? With my sight bonded to Drumheller’s. There’s no way you could have escaped notice, even in that chaos. And how’d you get out of the city?”
“By the time it was destroyed, I was well clear.”
“I ask again, on behalf of us all—how?”
“The flash was a handful of Chengwei thunderpowder. When we rolled out of sight of you and especially the Malevoiy, she asked the earth for help. She literally threw me through the floor, into the molten heart of the world.”
Enough of the others had shared such an experience that a series of faint shudders passed around the table. It was a journey they’d all survived unscathed but which few wanted to repeat.
“She asked the earth to carry me safely to the place of my birth,” Khory finished.
“Angwyn,” said Drumheller.
“The catacombs, yes, beneath the old Palace Royal.”
“Why there?”
“No one to harm me, for starters,” she said with a slight quirk of the lips that passed with her for a smile. This was a shared secret between her and Drumheller, that she was a demon, cast forth in this human shell. “And the ploy also put me inside the Deceiver’s citadel, allowing me the opportunity to reach her unnoticed.”
“Why?” Anakerie asked.
“You saw what I did,” Khory told her.
“How could Elora have anticipated what would happen between her and the Malevoiy, and what would come of it?”
“Reasonable deduction? Calculated risk? Blind instinct? If she became Malevoiy, she knew she would seek out her other self to end their rivalry once and for all. If she failed, the Deceiver would still have to be dealt with. If she succeeded, as she did, then she would become my target.”
“She planned for you to kill her?”
“Drumheller,” Khory explained patiently, “even I comprehend the significance of the Realms of Life and Death. One with all the Realms, that was the geas demanded of the Sacred Princess. That meant she had to perish and be reborn. Her sword did the one. Your Resonator provided the power for her resurrection, and the dragon’s egg she gave to my charge allowed me to direct that power.”
“And if you’d failed, Khory?”
“That wasn’t an option,” she told him, closing her hands with a soft clap to cap the discussion, only to think better of it and speak again. “She had to make a decision, that ultimately made the difference between victory and disaster, in a split second of time, without consultation or reassurance that she was doing the right thing, and without the opportunity to warn me of what was happening. And afterward, trust that I might deduce what else was required of me.”
“That’s a gamble you couldn’t pay me to make,” said Luc-Jon, shaking his head in wonderment.
“You misunderstand, scribe,” Khory corrected him gently. “For Elora Danan it was no gamble.”
She noticed the badge that anchored his cloak. “You’ve not worn that sign before,” she told him.
Anakerie answered for the young man. “It means he passed his boards, his qualifying examinations.” And she congratulated him on advancing from his status as an apprentice. He was a full-fledged scribe.
“An award as well deserved,” said Giles Horvath, “as it is long overdue. You should be proud, my boy.”
“Thank you, Master.”
Anakerie noted that Luc-Jon was dressed for the road and commented on it. He grinned a little shamefacedly, as though caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
“I leave with Elora,” he said, and actually blushed in the face of her raised eyebrow.
“There’s a whole world to explore,” he explained further. “Who knows what we’ll find along the road, in the way of artifacts for Master Horvath’s library. And”—he grinned wide—“considering how easily she attracts…trouble, those adventures ought to make for some exciting chronicles.”
“She believes her work is done?”
“Don’t you?” asked Giles Horvath. “Things are better, you know. Look about you, Anakerie, what do you see?”
“A tavern doing what it does best, providing a place for people to enjoy good means and good company.”
“True enough. But look more closely. Did you know, for example, that the embassies on Veil Isle have been reopened?”
That was news and it made her straighten in her chair.
“The World Gate in its catacombs can evidently be accessed from the far side of the Veil. They can use it on a limited basis. We Daikini, regrettably, cannot. And while conditions on the isle are not ideal, they are bearable. Evidently, the Realms beyond the Veil, especially Greater and Lesser Faery, believe it worth the effort.”
Mindful of the Master Scribe’s earlier challenge, Anakerie searched the room once more and sat up even more straight in her seat. The crowd was mainly Daikini and mostly young—altogether to be expected given Madaket’s proximity to University—but there was a broader smattering of mixed bloods, people like Renny Garedo, whose heritage crossed both sides of the Veil. Moreover, in one of the other alcoves, she saw figures too lean and tall to be Daikini, whose deceptively languid grace bespoke a single race.
“Elves?” She was incredulous.
“Walking the heartland of a Daikini city for the first time in living memory,” said Giles with pardonable pride. “The Chancellor offered them a welcome and our Chief Constable guaranteed their safety.”
“I know Renny’s part elf himself but would they believe him? Or rather, why would they believe him?”
“Who can say, milady?” Thorn mentioned with a small grin. “Mayhap it’s easier nowadays to trust?”
“How about you, Drumheller?” she asked,
sitting close to him again and taking one of his hands in hers. She was near twice his height yet his hands were larger, his fingers longer and more delicate than her own. There was a strength in them that could crush her bones but she didn’t fear it. Instead, while she waited for her answer and the ones to follow, she stroked his fingers, his palm; she caressed the calluses and gently touched the nicks and scars that were the legacy of his work as both farmer and sorcerer. One of them, she’d put there.
“Any word from home?” she asked.
He shook his head, quietly said, “No.
“My people are inherently cautious,” he explained. “They’d want to be absolutely sure of a thing—in this case, that it’s safe—before they commit and come out of their warrens.”
“For how long?”
“As long as necessary.”
“That could be—oh, Drumheller, I’m so sorry!”
“Nothing’s lost, Highness, nor even mislaid. They’re safe. And they’ll stay there until they satisfy themselves that the world is. And that I am, too.”
“That last, Drumheller,” cautioned Rool, “is no picnic!”
“Still walk with the stench of a demon about you.”
“That was the price demanded for bringing Khory Bannefin to life, and it’s one I gladly paid. I’ve no regrets on that score, brownies. Of course,” he said to Anakerie, “they don’t mention I also carry the taint of the Malevoiy.”
“How so?”
“Elora Danan is bound to them, I am bound to her. And I am a sorcerer.”
“You have no sorcerers among the Nelwyn?”
He didn’t actually reply in words, but the play of his lips, the tilt of his eyes, the emotions and conflicts she glimpsed in them, all combined with the InSight they shared to present Anakerie his answer. Sorcerers, yes. But Thorn Drumheller had wielded power beyond the scope of any Daikini and most of the Veil Folk themselves. He had stood as an equal among dragons, had seen one generation of those awesome creatures perish and helped bring their successors into being. For all his lack of physical stature, his imagination had always been limitless. As a mage, his reality now walked hand in hand with those dreams. That marked him more indelibly than any curse, and set him apart from his fellows as it did Khory Bannefin and Elora Danan herself.
“Why are you smiling, Princess?” he asked of her.
“Just pacing the trail of your thoughts. And thinking myself that if ever a way can be found to your true happiness, Drumheller, to the restoration of all you hold dear, you’ll find it.”
“You have more faith than I.”
“Isn’t that why we championed Elora’s cause? For faith? For hope?”
She’d slipped onstage unnoticed, which was a revelation for Anakerie, for every time she’d seen Elora Danan in the spotlight it was impossible to take your eyes off her. Her skin still gleamed but the argent coloring was flushed with a pale rose that gave her more than a semblance of normal humanity. She looked in fact like a fair number of young women in the audience and hardly at all like the vision in chrome silver that was how most described the Sacred Princess. Her hair and brows were black but that word was an inadequate description of the color. It was as if that part of her retained a small vestige of the Malevoiy. Her eyes were so blue they registered even as far from the stage as the alcove, where Anakerie and the others welcomed their friend with applause. Her gown was a burgundy red so dark it was mostly black; only the warriors present recognized it as the color of blood, and only a few of those, that it was the color favored by the Black Rose. She wore it as a trophy. Having beaten those legendary, and rightly feared, assassins in fair combat, she thought it only fair to claim their colors as her own.
She paid no attention to the crowded room, hunched over her guitar as though she sat in her own parlor and was simply passing the time by improvising some tune or other. Only gradually did the shape of her ballad emerge, and it was a little longer before she began to sing.
Elora’s voice was low and husky, far more suited to a tavern like this than the stage of a palace, where most troubadours preferred to play. Her first choice was a love song, about a man and a woman and a passion that transported them both. They were doomed, of course, because that was invariably the fate of the subjects of such songs, caught up in the machinations of an evil Monarch who had become so corrupted by foul ambition that the purity of the lovers was more painful to her than torture.
Anakerie remembered what she’d seen in Nockmaar, which was why she was taken off guard when Elora’s ballad came to a happy ending. The lovers did not die. In fact, it was the strength of their bond that sustained them and allowed them to vanquish their foe. It was, for Elora, what should have happened.
She acknowledged the applause with a gracious bow and repaired to their table with a delightful skip-dance to her step.
“That was good,” Anakerie told her.
“Work in progress.”
“Is that what you plan to do with your life, Elora Danan? Sing for your supper?”
“It’s an honorable profession, Anakerie.”
“For some.”
“Royal Highness,” Elora chided, “you know better than that. The last thing any government wants on their hands right now is a living, breathing, active Sacred Princess. That goes for Chengwei, for Sandeni, for Angwyn. I’m far, far more useful to everyone as a symbol and a legend. Revealing myself as flesh and blood would spoil everything.”
“You’re far too glib for me, girl.”
“I think you’re just a little bit jealous.” Anakerie had the grace to drop her eyes, she couldn’t hold her gaze with Elora’s, recognizing the truth in the younger woman’s claim. There was jealousy in her, and resentment, that she felt bound to shoulder responsibilities that Elora gleefully cast aside. “But you’re wrong. I’m not abandoning my duty or my responsibility. I’m not like you, or Drumheller for that matter. My role isn’t to command, be it nations or magic. To work my will, I have to implore, to beseech, to entreat, to persuade. That’s better done on the quiet, where nobody notices, or realizes what I’m doing. For that role, a song isn’t so bad a choice of tools.
“In the face of the Sacred Princess, people generally tend to feel compelled to obey. That way lies disaster. For me, because it’s an easy habit to fall into. For others, because they abrogate their own free will. Or worse, resent the usurpation of their authority.
“If there’s a need, the legend can always come back to life. Otherwise, I think we’re all better off if she remains a ghost and a mystery.”
“So what will you do?”
“I’ve my whole life before me,” said Elora Danan, as she reached out with her right hand to Thorn Drumheller, with her left to Khory Bannefin. Perched in the hollows of her collarbones were a pair of brownies and on a beam a little above and behind her head, two great golden eagles. She flashed a smile that made Anakerie’s heart ache.
“I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
The Shadow War was over.
The legend of the Princess, the Warrior, and the Mage has been born.
Their story—has only just begun.
Dedicated to
ALASDHAIR MAXWELL
&
BENJAMIN SIMON
With a Father’s undying love
because they, like Elora Danan,
are the hope and the future.
And to the man who made it all possible,
with thanks for the opportunity
delight for the vision
and gratitude for the trust
in allowing me to share that vision:
GEORGE LUCAS
PUBLISHED BY BANTAM BOOKS
SHADOW MOON
FIRST IN THE CHRONICLES
OF THE SHADOW WAR
SHADOW DAWN
SECOND IN THE CHRONICLES
OF TH
E SHADOW WAR
SHADOW STAR
THIRD IN THE CHRONICLES
OF THE SHADOW WAR
CHRIS CLAREMONT is best known for his seventeen-year stint on Marvel Comics’ The Uncanny X-Men, during which it was the bestselling comic in the Western Hemisphere for a decade; he has sold more than 100 million comic books to date. His novels First Flight, Grounded!, and Sundowner were science fiction bestsellers. Recent projects include the dark fantasy novel Dragon Moon and Sovereign Seven™, a comic book series published by DC Comics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
GEORGE LUCAS is the founder of Lucasfilm Ltd., one of the world’s leading entertainment companies. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series, each film among the all-time leading box-office hits. Among his story credits are THX 1138, American Graffiti, and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. He lives in Marin County, California.
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Shadow Star Page 53