DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  I can’t lose Damion’s friendship, she thought in sudden panic, I just can’t.

  Then a single musician began to play upon a man-high Elei harp, the notes plucked from the strings drifting toward Ailia like petals shaken from a flowering tree. All the Elei, she knew, were musically gifted—the heritage, as they believed, of an angelic ancestry. She listened as a woman’s voice was raised in song:

  Whene’er I gaze upon thy face

  To me it seemeth, more and more,

  That in another time and place

  I knew and loved thee once before.

  O was it in that fairer land

  That was before the worlds began

  We met, and wandered hand in hand,

  Ere grief was known to god and man?

  On earth thy love is not for me,

  And all my yearning is in vain.

  Yet life must end; so it may be

  In Heaven we shall love again.

  It was a song of old Mera, penned by the unknown Bard of Blyssion. The court never tired of hearing Meran songs and stories: Ailia had often regaled her ladies-in-waiting with long-lost folk and faerie tales from that distant world. She had heard this particular song many times before, it was a great favorite at court, and it was simply stupid for her to have tears in her eyes as she listened. She took her seat and watched as the dances began—the dances of the Elei that were as pleasant to watch as they were to take part in, forming elaborate interweaving patterns as the dancers glided across the floor. In none of them did Damion offer to be Ailia’s partner, though he danced with Lorelyn several times.

  “What a lovely couple your young friends make, dear.” Ailia turned to see that her great-grandmother had been following her gaze. She was more than 150 years old, for she had Elei blood: her hair was pure white, and yet she looked younger by far than would a Merei woman of four score years. And her eyes and mind were still keen. “They are both so tall, and blond!” she exclaimed, smiling. Ailia merely nodded, not trusting her voice to reply without a telltale tremor. Could it be—were the two of them . . .

  A bell chimed, and the guests all drained from the room, flowing into the corridor and down the stairs to the banquet hall below. Damion and Lorelyn, she saw, walked together.

  IT WAS A SPLENDID BANQUET in the Elei style, which dictated that food must feed the eye as well as the palate, so there were slices of fruit laid out to look like bright-winged butterflies and many-petaled blossoms, and melons with carved rinds, all cooled by blocks of ice sculpted to look like swans or dolphins or dancing maidens (these caused a sensation among those of the guests who had never before seen frozen water). There were blue eggs of halcyons lying in soft green nests of moss, candied flowers, and little cakes shaped like crescent moons and covered in thin layers of edible gold or silver. Ailia felt her spirits lift a little. It was a pleasure to feed people, to watch them talk and laugh as they savored the delicacies furnished by the royal kitchens.

  She glanced up to see Jomar striding into the hall: she was not surprised that he was tardy, for she knew how he loathed court gatherings. Had it not been her birthday he likely wouldn’t have shown up at all. He was leading a large white dog on a leash—at least, he had one end of the leash, the dog another; there seemed to be a contest under way as to which of them was leading.

  “Why the dog, Jo?” asked Damion. “I didn’t think you liked animals that much.”

  “It’s for her,” replied Jomar, gesturing brusquely at Ailia. “It’s my birthday present. I want you to take this dog with you whenever you go out in the grounds,” he instructed the princess. “I’ve trained him to attack anyone who tries to assault you or abduct you.”

  The hound flung itself happily on Ailia, then on Damion, greeting them with sloppy kisses. “Oh, I see—it’s been trained to love people to death,” Damion said, trying to fend off its enthusiastic attentions.

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s only fierce to assailants,” retorted Jomar. “Look—here, boy, attack!” He advanced on it in a menacing manner. With a merry yelp the faerie-hound pranced up to him, licking his face. Jomar cursed the animal with a comment on its parentage, technically correct in its case but not normally uttered in polite society. The other three laughed.

  “All right, so he needs a little more training,” said Jomar sheepishly.

  “Do you really think there’s any danger here, Jo?” Lorelyn asked. “Eldimia seems such a safe place.”

  “So far,” retorted Jomar cynically.

  Lorelyn was right though, Ailia reflected: this new Eldimian year was unfolding as had all the others before it, in unbroken peace and content. The world of Arainia was smaller than Mera, both in its physical size and in its population, and its events were smaller too: there were the usual minor dramas that occur wherever human beings are, but no great wars or social upheavals troubled its sphere. Yet still she felt a little shadow of unease at her heart.

  “What lives we lead, don’t we?” Lorelyn went on, her cheer undimmed by Jomar’s scowl. “Just like those stories you tell, Ailia. Don’t you feel as though you’ve fallen right into one?”

  “Yes,” said Ailia. “I have often thought that life is like a story, only the people in it are also writing it. They can help to decide what will happen, and how it will all end.”

  Lorelyn looked pensive. “I never thought of it that way. How would you choose to write your own story, Ailia?”

  “I don’t know. At the moment it seems it’s being written for me.” And with that Ailia fell silent again.

  Jomar surveyed the festal board with distaste. “No meat. No liquor. I can’t stand this!”

  “Have some nectar, Jo,” said Damion, offering a pitcher of clear golden liquid. “It tastes good, and it doesn’t make you drunk.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” growled Jomar. But he settled into a chair and started picking at the dishes.

  “What’s the matter with you, Jo?” Lorelyn asked him bluntly.

  Jomar glowered down at his plate, his fingers toying aimlessly with slices of fruit. “Whenever we have a party like this, I keep thinking of Zimboura, and all the slaves still in the labor camps there. Why can’t we do something about it? Go and fight to free them?”

  Ailia said nothing, her thoughts turning once more to her adoptive family in Mera. She wondered if they had remained on the western continent, or fled back to Great Island. They might not be safe for long in either place, if the king of Zimboura chose to send forth his armies.

  “Remember, Jomar,” said Damion, “no one in this world knows how to fight. There has been no war here in centuries.”

  “And then there is the question of how we’re to cross the void to Mera,” King Tiron added. “Only the queen succeeded in doing so. No one else knows how to construct a flying ship, not even the Nemerei. Nor have we the aid of dragons or cherubim. For the moment, any army we build can only be for our own defense, in case of an invasion.”

  Ailia wished they would speak of something else. It reminded her too much of the prophecy concerning herself. Me—lead an army into Mera! As if I ever could! she thought. But the people here really believe that I will, one day. I feel a perfect fraud.

  The feast was followed by more entertainments. There were jugglers, singers, and, finally, a demonstration of magic by a troupe of white-robed Nemerei from the sorcerers’ academy of Melnemeron. Never had anyone present seen such superb illusions. Flocks of flying rainbow-colored birds, and fireballs, and spouting fountains appeared out of nowhere, only to be banished again with a wave of the enchanter’s hand. At one point the whole of the banquet hall was transformed into a forest: the frescoed roof was replaced by green foliage, while trunks of trees rose around the dining tables, and in the center of what had been the floor a stream ran bubbling. Then the illusory scene disappeared, and the revelers blinked about them at their restored surroundings.

  “Well,” remarked Damion as they all applauded, “this lot would put all those sleight-of-hand conjurers on Mer
a out of work!”

  “What is a Nemerei, anyway?” Jomar asked in his brusque way. “Just a better and cleverer conjurer?”

  “Not at all: the Nemerei do not deal only in cunning tricks.” It was Master Wu, the aged and venerable court sorcerer, who answered. A small, stout man of Kaanish extraction, he sported a long silver-white beard that hung down to his belt. No one knew how old he was: he had lived in Mirimar for many years, and been an instructor at Melnemeron before coming here. As always he was flamboyantly attired, wearing for this occasion a robe of purple silk worked with silver stars and runes and a matching peaked cap. But he was a Nemerei of no mean skill, and Ailia had learned long ago to respect Wu’s wisdom and advice.

  “Our power is very real,” the old sorcerer informed Jomar, in a tone of mild rebuke. “Nemerei are healers, augurs, warriors, ambassadors. Before priesthoods arose to mediate between gods and mortals, before the dawn of philosophy and the healing arts, the Nemerei existed. We are in all worlds, all races, all times. The ancients of Mera called our predecessors by various names: shamans, prophets, wizards, witches.”

  “But how do you do what you do?” asked Lorelyn, curious.

  “The source of what you call magic is the plane of the Ether. Some of us can faintly sense it, others are fully aware of it, fewer still are able to tap its power. The Nemerei are poised on the cusp of two realities, drawing on the one to influence the other. We can use ethereal power to heal physical injuries, divine possible future events, reach out to other minds.”

  “But any power can be misused,” observed Ana in her quiet voice.

  Wu inclined his head. “That is so, Queen Eliana. Magic can hurt as easily as it can heal. Mera’s King Andarion formed the Paladin Order to counter the cruelties of other armed knights; even so, the Nemerei have had to organize themselves against the abusers of magic. A sorcerer is far less likely to wield magic for evil if he knows he will be punished. The true Nemerei must be forever vigilant.”

  As they fell silent, snatches of conversation from the other guests at the table could be heard. “. . . fearsome visions—stars falling out of the heavens, dragons in the sky—”

  Jomar turned around to face the speaker. “Visions? What is all this? You Nemerei are always seeing things,” he said irritably.

  It was Head Sibyl Marima who was talking. She had put back her sibyl’s veil to dine, and her young-old Elei face looked into his with a solemn expression. “Many dream portents at one time or another, but for so many to dream alike is a portent in itself, and cannot be ignored. The Great Comet that entered our skies was only a forewarning. There is plainly some evil at work in our world: the influence, perhaps, of a star or planet of ill omen.”

  “A star and a planet, I think,” said Wu.

  Ailia stared at him. “Do you mean Azar and Azarah?” Elei lore spoke of a small, dim star accompanied by a single planet that circled the sun, far out in the void. “Master Wu, please tell us more.”

  But what Wu meant to say in answer they would never know. For at that moment there was a great flash, like lightning, and a figure appeared in the center of the hall. It was attired in a robe and kingly crown of strange design: its face was pale above a black beard, and its eyes glittered with savage light as it stared at the high table. “I am Khalazar of Zimboura!” thundered the apparition.

  Greymalkin caterwauled and sprang from Ana’s arms onto her shoulder. Tiron leaped up in anger. “What is this? Who summoned this illusion?” he demanded. But the white-robed Nemerei all stood open-mouthed, as astonished as anyone else.

  “It is none of their doing,” declared Wu, also rising to his feet.

  “It is Khalazar!” Jomar leaped forward, knocking a chair aside. “Call the guards! Take him!” he shouted.

  “Impossible,” Ana told him calmly. Alone of them all she had remained in her seat. She stroked the bristling cat on her shoulder. “He isn’t really there, Jomar. It is an ethereal double—a projection of his image.”

  As the dark king drew nearer they saw that he was indeed transparent and insubstantial, objects behind him showing through his red robe and golden mantle as he moved. He glared upon Ailia with his ghostly eyes. “Vile enchantress! The days of your unholy reign are ended. My armies shall descend on your world, seize and conquer it, level your cities, and slay every man down to the smallest child. Arainia shall be mine—its cities, its wealth, its women, its cattle, and all else that lies within its sphere. And you, witch, shall be cast down from your throne!” He flung his mantle aside, exposing the sword-belt its golden folds had concealed, and with a flourish he drew forth a great scimitar and brandished it.

  Somehow Ailia found her voice. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, as Damion and her father moved to flank her protectively. “What have we done to you?”

  The spectral figure had already begun to fade at its edges, like a mist in the sun. “I go now, witch,” the harsh voice cried, “but when I return it will be in might, with many armies at my command.”

  And with that his ethereal form vanished from their sight, leaving them all staring at the empty air.

  3

  The Lords of Wind and Water

  BY IMPERIAL COMMAND, the grand council of the Loänan gathered in its customary place of assembly, the Emperor’s palace of adamant. This was the largest of many such palaces built by the Old Ones, and like all of them it sported many towers and spires, rising to majestic heights and glittering like diamond; they were carved from a crystal pure and unclouded as fine glass, which no weapon of any kind could break nor even scratch. Like a few of its sister palaces, this one had been built without any foundation, so that it might be raised aloft by sorcery. Wingless beings visiting these aerial castles found it a wonder merely to look through the floors, which being transparent were also windows: to see, there beneath their feet, vertiginous views of valleys and mountain ranges, or dimpled seas, or white canopies of cloud. The Emperor’s palace was at this time suspended in the skies of Alfaran, the Motherworld. Beneath it spread a sea of blue and gold and purple cloud, with the crimson whorl of a storm visible on the far-distant horizon. No land showed through the misty gaps below, only more airy chasms floored with variegated vapors: clouds upon clouds. The planet’s surface lay submerged deep at its center, and nothing lived there. On such planets as these, it was not the surface but the upper atmosphere that bore life. Alfaran’s martlets and alerions and giant thunderbirds dwelt among the gyring clouds and branching bolts of its centuries-old storms, whose vortices could have engulfed many lesser planets. So did the scaly-headed safats that came here to lay their eggs in air. The pearly globes were buoyed up by the winds, light as bubbles, and from the moment the safat hatchlings’ beaks broke through the shells they were able to fly. Alfaran was a world of wind-riders.

  For millennia Loänan had visited this planet to play in its mantle of many-colored clouds. But within the walls of the crystal palace the mood was grave. All the dragon monarchs of the Empire were in attendance in the vast central hall, kings and queens of the four races that took their names from their preferred abodes: the cave-dwelling earth-dragons, the water-dragons that made their homes in rivers and lakes and ocean deeps, the sky-dragons that lived in lofty mountain aeries, and the ethereal dragons that spent much of their time upon the higher plane, far removed from the worlds of matter. A fifth race, the Imperial dragons, had been specially bred in ages past by the Loänan to protect their stellar realm in times of conflict. Six members of this warrior caste watched over Orbion, Emperor of the Loänan and ruler of the worlds; their own draconic attendants and guards surrounded the other monarchs.

  The dragons gleamed in the heart of the crystal chamber like a rainbow within a prism, for each race sported its own distinctive hue. The sky-dragons were blue as lapis lazuli, the water-dragons jade-green, and the earth-dragons red as the molten fires of the earth; while the ethereal dragons were white, and the Imperial dragons golden. Yet when seen up close no Loänan was all one color. The scal
es of the sky-dragons held a sheen of violet, like the iridescence on a blue butterfly’s wings; those of the green Loänan had a silver gloss like rime, and the earth-dragons bore glints of gold. Upon the white ethereal dragons, elusive pearly hues shifted and shimmered. And the eyes of the Loänan gleamed jewel-bright: irises of ruby red for the water-dragons and amethyst for the dragons of the sky, sapphire for the ethereal dragons, emerald for the guardians of the Empire, and smoldering topaz for those that dwelt within the earth. In the forehead of each was a round pale dracontias crystal, glowing with an opal’s veiled fires.