by Alison Baird
She felt terribly alone here. Her father had remained behind in Mirimar, and her friends were in the Barrens. Only Wu and Lira had come here with her. As she stood and watched the light wane from gold to rose-pink on the eastward faces of towers and mountains and clouds, a voice spoke behind her and she started slightly.
“Dragons—the masters of wind and wave,” said Lady Syndra in a soft voice. She was standing a few paces away, gazing at the gate. “But also the rulers of the Ether. The most ancient beings in all Creation, after the Old Ones. They hold aloft the mansions of the gods in heaven, it’s said, and ride upon currents of magic that run invisibly through our physical plane. No one may enter the ethereal realm without their consent, and in their minds lies all the wisdom of the ages, which they bestow only upon those mortals they deem worthy. Few Nemerei have been so honored as to have had a Loänan for a teacher. But no Arainian has beheld a Loänan for many centuries. There are no dragons here now. Though one never knows where a dragon might be.”
Ailia shuddered, recalling Mandrake’s nightmarish transformation. Syndra looked at her. “I have heard it said that Your Highness and your companions have seen dragons.”
“We have. I hope to see them again someday.” Ailia remembered the golden dragon that had saved her. “Back then I thought they were only beasts. Tell me, Magus, is the magic gone forever from that gate? I hear the Nemerei cannot open it.”
Syndra turned back to the pinnacle. “Ah, the Gate of Earth and Heaven! There is no magic in the statues themselves: they are as they appear to be, mere carved stone. The gate serves for a signpost, indicating the presence of a rift that leads from this world to a pathway in the Ether. The Loänan are the guardians and principal users of such paths, so many call them the dragon-ways, but the Old Ones made most of them. They are composed of quintessence and maintained by magic, and lead through the Ether like a system of roads to other worlds of the old Empire. But Arainia’s gates were all closed long ago by the Loänan, and Mera’s also, so that people from our worlds can never again enter the Ethereal Plane.”
“But why?” Ailia asked.
“I do not know. No doubt the Loänan have reasons that seem good to them.” But Ailia caught an eager glint in the dark gray eyes as Syndra turned away. “It is cold out here, Highness. You should go to your chamber. There is your handmaiden, looking for you.”
Ailia followed Syndra back into the main entrance, where Lady Lira awaited them. The long stone passage was all carved and frescoed with scenes from Elei lore: winged beings, heroic figures riding in chariots drawn by flying horses or cherubim. Ailia noticed many stylized figures of dragons—winding in and out of painted clouds, supporting airy palaces on their scaly backs, or swimming through high-crested seas. Wavy lines emanated from their bodies: lightning bolts perhaps, or rays of magical power. Syndra paused and waved a hand at a mural depicting winged angel-like figures in a regal hall. “And these are the Old Ones in their heavenly court. The figure next to the throne of Elarainia is her daughter Elmiria: she is preparing to descend into the mortal world.” The winged figure’s raiment was pure white, long and flowing, she wore stars in her hair like a chaplet of flowers, and beneath her feet was a blue crescent moon. “She spoke to the great Nemerei mystic Zarthor of her coming, three thousand years ago. She told him she would challenge Valdur’s Avatar.” She indicated another mural, where the same figure battled a huge dragon.
Lady Lira threw a sharp glance at the Nemerei woman. “You are in the presence of the Princess Elmiria,” she interrupted. “Why do you speak of her in the third person to her face?”
Syndra bowed her head. “But how foolish of me,” she murmured. “It seems strange to me still that the one whom the most ancient writings speak of should now walk the earth in human form. Of course, Highness, you remember the very words you spoke to Zarthor.”
Ailia, having no such recollection, felt a wave of embarrassment and was afraid Syndra expected her to repeat those words now from memory. Was this a sort of test?
“And now you have come in the flesh, Highness,” Syndra commented, “the final victory over our foes is yours to win, it is written. Your powers, not ours, will save the worlds.”
Ailia felt discomfited again. Was there an unspoken question in those words—a challenge, even? She could not meet the Elei woman’s agate-gray eyes. “Excuse me,” she said, turning away down a side hall. “I must go. I just remembered something—”
“Highness?” said Lira. “Will you not come to your chamber?”
“In a moment, Lady Lira. There is something I would like to see first, now that the sun has set.” Ailia walked quickly down the chill stone passage to the observatory. No one else was in the vast domed space, and she sat down in front of the great gold-plated telescope. She had looked through it many times since her arrival, gazing at stars and planets, but most often she had trained its great far-seeing eye on the world of Mera. Staring at the blue seas and familiar continents of her erstwhile homeworld, she yearned to know what was happening there. Where was her foster family now, and were they all worrying about her—or had they given her up for dead?
Looking through the eyepiece now, she saw the telescope had recently been in use: the lens was fixed on a trio of stars in the Dragon constellation. She peered at the three pale round dots shining in their dark blue field, and tried to imagine them as mighty suns blazing in the skies of other worlds. This world and Mera were only the least of little kingdoms. Beyond the sky lay a vast realm of light and dark, fire and void: the Empire of the stars. Once people had actually traveled to those alien earths, walked upon them and seen all their wonders . . .
At the sound of soft footsteps she drew her gaze and her thoughts back from the heavens. Master Wu was standing there, watching her. “What are you looking at, Highness?” he asked.
“Master Wu,” she said, rising and facing him, “can you teach me about the stars and worlds, and this Empire that you say unites them?”
“Talmirennia—the Celestial Empire. Yes, Highness. I have been meaning to tutor you in cosmology for some time,” he answered. “Well, what was it you wanted to know?”
“Everything,” she said simply.
“Everything! Hmm—that’s a tall order, when one’s dealing with the cosmos.” He gestured, and suddenly the huge round chamber disappeared: she and Wu were adrift in a starlit sky. A quick glance downward showed her no ground lay beneath her feet. She knew it was only a glaumerie projected by Wu’s mind into hers, but it looked very real. “Look behind you,” her tutor instructed, a smile curving his lips.
She obeyed, and gasped. The point of vantage was many leagues above the world. She saw the blue globe beneath her, mottled with the familiar cloud patterns—long mare’s-tails of cirrus and the curdlike clouds that presaged rain—now looking as distant from above as they always had from beneath. And there, only a very few leagues distant, reared the Arch of Heaven. She now saw that it was not solid after all, but was made up of many layered fragments of ice lying along the plane of the equator. From majestic blue-white bergs the size of Halmirion to little pellets no larger than hailstones, they hung weightless above the world as though some act of sorcery suspended them there. The sun blazed down on the world unveiled by cloud or air, its rays glancing from the reflecting ice surfaces as the sky-bergs rolled and tumbled in their courses. This, then, was the cause of that diamondlike glitter she had so often seen upon the Arch . . . and then, though the scene was not altered, Ailia found her perspective changed: she realized suddenly that she was looking not at a world surmounted by an Arch, but a planet enclosed within a ring. In the great Night beyond, Miria appeared as a pale blue hemisphere, but she could see its dark side dim against the stars, and the mossy sprawl of vegetation within its sunlit limb. Never again would she think of Miria as a moon. It was plainly a little planet in its own right.
“Your friend Welessan the Wanderer got a great many things wrong,” Wu explained. “He was a man of his time, and subscribed to
the erroneous Maurainian theories of concentric crystalline spheres and a planetary system that centered on his world, rather than on the sun. What he saw in his Temple vision was real enough, though: it is merely his interpretation of what he saw that was wrong. In the glaumerie vision given him by the sibyls he imagined himself to be traveling ‘upward’ into Heaven, when the vision was really of an outward journey, a flight into space.”
Arainia was gone. In its place a fire-yellow globe appeared in the void before them. “What is that?” she asked.
“Arkurion,” said Wu, “the closest planet to the sun. Not a pleasant place to visit: it rains acid there instead of water, its lakes are of sulphur and its rivers of molten stone. But the Salamanders like it.”
“They’re not—human, are they?” She knew the question to be foolish: no human being could live in that frightful cauldron of a world.
“No. They are curious creatures, reptilian-looking, with armored hides and a sort of fleece on their backs that protects them from the heat of the sun. Salamander wool and their shed scales were once highly prized by your people, as they are impervious even to a firedrake’s flame. Also, when they are young they spin cocoons of silky stuff to shield themselves, stuff that once was woven by Elei into a light cloth that could withstand the fiercest heat without burning.
“There were, you see, Archons who had a particular affinity for certain environments. The Old Ones were skilled shapeshifters: indeed, it was they who first discovered the art. Some loved water, others liked to fly in the air, and still others preferred the deep places of the earth. The undines favored a form with a fishlike tail in place of legs. The gnomes who dwelt on Valdys took a heavy, squat form that was more comfortable on that heavier world, while sylphs, who dwelt in airy Iantha, adopted small slender bodies and great, gauzy wings. Those who mingled with Arkurion’s inhabitants took their likeness and used the same name: salamander. Here in Arainia they were seraphim—bird-winged human figures. Some of these elementals brought humans with them to their worlds—except Arkurion, naturally, since no human could be expected to live there. The half-human offspring of the undines, gnomes, and sylphs resembled their elemental ancestors.”
The yellow sphere had vanished; in its place was another globe, this one a shining white.
“Talandria, the undines’ world. When Welessan made his ‘journey’ to it he saw a world of water, and so thought himself to be in some sort of heavenly realm composed solely of that element. But what he was seeing, of course, was actually the watery deeps of an ocean-world. That is what Talandria was like in his time, when the merfolk lived there. But the Great Disaster altered its path about the sun and caused its seas to freeze over. It may be that some life yet stirs underneath its icy shroud; or perhaps there are remains of its ancient creatures lying preserved in cold crevasses. But let us continue on our journey.”
Each planet, she learned, was unique in its atmosphere and other features; and each seemed as devoid of life as the one before it. Valdys proved to be sere and desolate, a stark landscape of desert and scattered rocks under a sky of eternal night. But the gnomes and their offspring had not minded this, Wu explained, as they had lived not on the planet’s surface but in deep caverns beneath its crust, warmed by the molten core. For this reason they had not suffered too greatly from the Disaster, but they had in the end chosen to abandon their world for others of the Celestial Empire whose wealth of ores and gems was yet unmined. Iantha, though a magnificent sight with its swirling golden clouds, was not habitable, nor were its five barren moons.
“The upper reaches of Iantha’s atmosphere can support life,” Wu told her, “but it is gaseous, a world made up mainly of cloud layers. This was the ‘heaven of air and cloud’ in which Welessan saw winged sylphs flying. But they went to Iantha only to play upon the winds of its upper airs. They lived on its moons, which have solid surfaces like Arainia’s, and were very light, so that flying on them was easy. But the Great Disaster destroyed all these little worlds, and the sylphs too were forced to flee.”
He showed her next the flight of long-tailed comets loosed by the disruptive passage of Azarah. Cast out of their places in the heavens eons ago, many were only now flying into the paths of the inner planets, and a collision with even one of them could wreak catastrophic damage on a world. “It all began long before Queen Eliana’s famous prophecy in old Trynisia,” he explained, “for she had not in fact made a prophecy at all, but only a statement and a warning of what was to come. We Nemerei are seeking some way to change the courses of these comets and render them harmless.” Beyond the sorceries and machinations of human and Loänan, it seemed, lay a conflict far larger, more ancient and more terrible, set in motion long ago by the first rulers of the universe. He showed her the dismal planetscape of Azar, cold and empty beneath its baleful sun. Over the scene brooded the sullen face of Azarah, in a sky whose upper vault, owing to the thinness of the atmosphere, was nearly pitch-black in hue. The brown dwarf star had for billions of years granted only grudging warmth and a dim, dun-colored illumination to its sole planet; from distant Mera and Arainia it was not even visible. The great sun of Auria that warmed those worlds was but a remote yellow star in Azar’s sky, its glow too distant to shed any heat on the surface. A small irregularly shaped moon tumbled across that sky like a boulder hurled by a giant, but it too afforded little light to the lands below. The plains were pocked with craters that gave them the look of a lifeless moon, yet the tumbled walls of ancient structures could be seen upon them, and the nearer surface was scattered with the bones of living things so ancient that they were now turned to stone. Ailia saw, not far away in the dull light, an ossified skeleton with skull and limbs still attached: the vertebrae of the spine were massive, forming a thick, strong column with jutting processes, and the skull was large and heavy-browed, its great jaws swelling at the front almost into a muzzle. But still it resembled, though in a grotesque and nightmarish way, the skeleton of a man.
“Is it—an animal?” she asked hesitantly. “A great ape, perhaps?” But she knew it could not be. Strewn among the bones were weapons, large axe-heads of stone, and one of these lay not far from the creature’s huge, skeletal hand.
“No,” Wu answered. “Those beings were human—or at least their ancestors were. Trolls, they are called. The Morugei races are all descended from human beings who were taken to a world called Ombar long ago. Over time, the Ombarans were . . . changed. Some say they were crossbred with evil Archons, others that conditions on that world altered their forms. Many went to live on other planets, including Azar, which was then an outpost of Valdur’s empire. They perished when Azar passed through the comet cloud.”
Ailia could not tear her eyes from the skeletal remains. To think that such creatures could be her kin, however distant, filled her with mingled horror and fascination. Wu waved his hand, and the dreary scene faded mercifully from view. Once again they were adrift in a starry void.
“Beyond this sun’s system lies the comet cloud, and beyond that nothing but the emptiness of the Great Night, until one comes to the closest star. The stars, you know, are not eternal, as the poets would have it. Stars have lifetimes, like humans and animals and trees: they simply exist for a very long time, billions of years. Their ages may be determined by their colors. Young stars are blue, then they gradually turn whiter, then become yellow, and finally red as they cool. Some shrink to glowing embers then, while others—large, swift-spinning ones with no planets of their own—burst and scatter their elements across the galaxy, and so help create new worlds in other systems. Some fade into pale ghost-stars, or . . .” He hesitated. “If you look closely at Modrian-Valdur’s constellation, Entar—the Great Worm—you will see a star in it called Lotara.”
“I know it. The Worm’s Tail. It isn’t far from the star called the Worm’s Eye, because Valdur is supposed to be eating his own tail.”
“If you look at Lotara in that great spyglass of yours, you will see that it is not round like other stars
but has a peculiar shape.”
From the field of stars ahead a pair emerged, growing larger—nearer. One was red as a coal of fire, the other a pale blue-white. It was the latter that drew her gaze, for she saw that it was stretched or warped into the shape of an egg or a teardrop, and from its point there extended a long tongue of fire that streamed through the void, then curled around upon itself at the end. “You see?” he said. “The energies of that sun are swept away from it on that side, and then . . . they vanish.”
Something in his voice made her shiver and draw her fur robe close around her. “Vanish?” she said. “What do you mean? How can a star’s fire vanish?”
“Because it is being consumed.”