DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  She tightened her grip. The golden dragon was hurtling like a meteor through the alien sky with his wings still furled against his sides. She stared at the view below them in bewilderment. It was like a landscape painted by a child or a lunatic, with harsh bright colors in all the wrong places: blue and orange and sulphur-yellow trees, fields of red grass, lakes and rivers of luminous pink and purple water. After a moment she realized that the water was of course reflecting the glowing colors of the nebula. But those trees—! Massed together, they gave more the effect of giant gaily colored flowerbeds than forests. Beyond them lay the only touch of green—not verdure, but a range of mountains whose naked peaks were made of some emerald-green, semipellucid stone.

  Perhaps they were emerald . . .

  They were lower now, at the level of the mountaintops, and the dragon’s speed had slowed. He stretched out his great golden wings, but they did not flap: he was still only gliding, using the momentum of his plunge from the heights. To the east lay water, she saw, a broad bay of one of the lunar seas of Temendri Alfaran, and it sparkled in the sun. Spread along the arms of the bay, something else gleamed: an array of crystalline and metallic shapes. It was a city—but such a city as no human being had ever built or dreamt of. The most beautiful of human-made cities is only an untidy sprawl when seen from the air; but this city had been made by beings that could fly, made to be beautiful when viewed from above. Its domes and towers and plazas were arranged in radial patterns to form floral or starlike shapes, and there were many pools and fountains in the city, shimmering with the sky’s lambent hues like giant sapphires and amethysts. These were placed within ornate settings of stone, as though water was to the Loänan as gems are to a jeweler.

  The wings of the dragon had at last begun to beat as his passage through the air slowed. The city flowed away beneath them, was replaced by the surface of the ocean. The Loänan planed gracefully down over a smaller bay, his reflected image following him along its surface like some golden sea-dragon. Welcome to Temendri Alfaran, Highness, Auron said, alighting on a carpet of soft, rose-colored moss just beyond the white shore.

  AILIA SAT VERY STILL ON THE DRAGON’S NECK, gazing around her. The city’s spires showed above the treetops, and beyond these in turn the mountain peaks of viridian crystal rose sharp as steeples, their slender pinnacles paling almost to translucency at the tips where the sunlight streamed through them. They might have been awe-inspiring, for they were certainly higher than any mountains she had ever seen, even on Arainia: but they were dwarfed in their turn by Temendri Alfaran’s sister moons and the giant ringed planet with its bright stripes of cloud and staring storms. These hung in the sky like the suspended figures of a mobile, or like the exposed internal mechanism of a gigantic clock. No timepieces would be needed here, on clear days at least, with their waxings and wanings, and the traveling shadows they cast upon one another, marking the passing hours. Beyond lay the nebula like a colossal, unfading aurora, or a mad dream of a sunset. Within the great swirls and arabesques of violet, rose-red, and blue, many stars were plainly visible, huge and brilliant though the hot white sun still stood well above the horizon.

  “What a lot of eclipses they must have here,” remarked Ailia to Auron. “And how bright the sun is.”

  It is a younger star than your sun, the dragon told her. It is called Anatarva.

  “Yes, I know Anatarva! It’s one of the brightest stars in the sky. To think of its being a sun, as well . . .”

  Ailia slipped down off Auron’s back onto the moss and stood there a moment, clutching in one hand the casket containing the Star Stone. She had no other baggage: Auron had told her that all her needs would be provided for here, though she felt a bit lost without her belongings. There was a faint, sweet smell on the air, she noticed—like fruit or flowers, overlaid with some indefinable spice. “Does no one know we are here?” she asked, looking about her. The strange landscape was empty.

  “I thought it best that we not announce your arrival,” Auron replied. She turned to see that he had once more transformed into his human shape. “Just in case you have any enemies lurking, even here.”

  She shifted her gaze back to the city. There were dragons swarming about its spires: with their size diminished by distance, they gave an impression of delicacy rather than strength, their translucent wings and long slender bodies suggesting the beautiful water-flies that bore their name. Their colors were dragonfly colors, too: metallic reds and greens, blues and golds. “Are we going to that city?” she asked, pointing.

  “Not yet,” Auron answered. “It is not safe for you even there: many beings dwell within it, too many for us to watch. You will stay in a Loänan guest house for now.”

  He led the way, across the fields of rosy moss to a parklike space beyond where a path ran among the brightly colored trees. She now saw that these not only resembled but were in fact flowers, graceful plants as tall as elms with smooth greenish-white stems and many-colored blossoms the size of sunflowers. It was from these that the sweet smell came. “Your home is beautiful, Auron,” she exclaimed.

  He smiled. “You have seen but little of it yet.”

  The treelike plants overarched this section of the path and the flower scent was heavy in the warm, moist air. They passed a grove of shorter, smooth-limbed plants whose boughs bent almost to the ground. Enormous pods weighed them down, and the seams of a few had split. A white woolly substance extruded through the cracks. “It’s a kind of cotton plant,” said Ailia, going up to it. “But so big!” The least of the pods was larger than her torso.

  “It is a barometz tree,” said Auron. He looked amused.

  Ailia heard a rustling sound on the far side of the tree and looked around the trunk. A white animal the size of a sheep stood a stone’s throw away, grazing placidly. She had never seen anything like it: it had flat green ovals in place of eyes, and its muzzle also was pale green. Its feet were broad and flat, and it waddled on them comically. As she drew closer, curious, she saw that the creature appeared to have entangled itself on a branch. It was trying to pull free, but the smooth green stem held it like a tether. Then a closer inspection showed her that the creature was not snared on the branch: the latter appeared to be growing out of the animal’s back. “Or the animal out of the branch,” she realized suddenly, seeing the fragments of one of the huge pods littering the ground around it. She reached out, touched the thing’s back. Cotton—it bore a fleece of cotton!

  She laughed aloud in amazed delight. “It’s a vegetable lamb!” She recited the words of Bendulus: “This beast is not born alive nor hatcheth from an egg, but groweth rather on a tree, as do fruits and nuts. It is at first attached to the tree branch whereon it grew, and grazeth upon the grass at the tree’s root.”

  Auron smiled. “The word for the creature here is barometz—but yes, you behold the original of Bendulus’s ‘vegetable lamb.’”

  Now she noticed several of the creatures wandering about eating the moss, broken stems protruding from their fleecy backs. Animals, or plants? They seemed to be both—and neither.

  “These are the true inhabitants of Temendri Alfaran,” Auron explained to her as they walked on. “The original world of the Loänan has long ceased to support life. We abandoned it thirty million years ago, bringing with us some of its plants and animals—but we try not to disturb the natural life of the planets that we settle.”

  Auron raised his hand in a greeting as three people approached them through the trees. The one in the middle of the group was recognizably an Elei: a smooth-faced, fair-haired man of middle age, clad in a simple robelike garment of white linen that reached to his ankles. But the figures flanking him had a more exotic appearance. One was an aged man with a long white beard: but so short was he that the top of his head barely reached the other man’s waist. The third figure was a woman in a pale, floating gown—at least she had a woman’s face and frame, but she was extraordinarily thin and slight, though still graceful. A long cape of some diaphanous, iridesce
nt material flowed back from her shoulders, sweeping the pavement. Then as Ailia approached the “cape” twitched and fluttered, dividing into four sections that spread out, two to each side of the woman’s body.

  “Wings. She has wings,” Ailia whispered to Auron.

  “A sylph,” Auron whispered back.

  The three figures bowed politely as they passed, the dwarf’s beard sweeping the ground. Ailia realized she was gawking foolishly and recalled what Auron had told her: human beings had developed differently on the various worlds to which they had been taken. Such extreme variations in appearance were to be expected. Her gaze turned to a woman in a white shift who was walking some way ahead of them. “Why is her hair green?” she asked in an undertone.

  “She is a dryad. Legend has it that her people are the descendants of unions between humans and hamadryads—spirits that inhabit trees. However that may be, they have a powerful empathy with trees and plants. Their hair is green because a tiny plant called an alga grows in it.”

  “Look, there’s quite an ordinary-looking person,” Ailia whispered almost with relief as an elderly white-haired man came to the doorway of a low white building among the trees to the right-hand side of the path and saluted Auron.

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” replied Auron with a smile, leading Ailia toward the house. “Ah, Hada, my friend! Well met. This is the Princess Ailia.”

  Inside the doorway, the walls of the house were covered in jeweled mosaics, the pillars with gold leaf, and a fountain played in the central atrium. “It is very good to see you again,” the old man wheezed, bowing stiffly.

  “It’s not necessary to change your shape for our sake, by the way,” said Auron.

  “I am grateful. I must say I find shape-shifting quite fatiguing at my age,” the man replied. Suddenly his form shimmered and faded. In his place appeared a thing like a snow-white fox the size of a wolfhound.

  “How goes it, Hada?”

  The creature gave a long, vulpine grin. “A draconic delegation arrived here ahead of you, to accuse your Tryna Lia of agitating for war against their people and the Zimbourans of Mera. I assume this is she?”

  “It is,” said Auron. The fox creature bowed its head.

  “The Zimbourans? It was they who threatened us,” Ailia protested.

  The fox creature nodded its long narrow-muzzled head. “Ah, but Morlyn’s lackeys deny it, of course.” Its grin widened: was it really smiling, like a human, or did the expression mean something else to its own kind? “He means to cast you as the aggressor, the builder of empires, while concealing his own aspirations in that direction.”

  “Has Prince Morlyn been seen?” asked Auron.

  “Not here. He is using others as spies and tools, watching and biding his time. It is rumored that he has assumed leadership of the Loänei, and also revealed his true identity to those Loänan who follow him.”

  “Thank you, old friend. I hope you will join us when we expose his lies.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for all the worlds,” said the creature, with a bark that sounded very much like a laugh. “I’ve a few things to attend to first, but I will join you presently.” He turned and trotted to the back of the atrium, and disappeared inside. Ailia saw to her astonishment that the fountain and mosaics were gone and the courtyard now held a small, mossy garden with neatly placed boulders and tiny shrubs.

  “Is he a Loänan too?” Ailia asked as they walked on.

  “No, that is his true form,” said Auron. “He is a kitsune—one of the fox people. They excel at taking human forms, and also at creating illusions. His home is really a very plain and humble place, but he likes to alter its appearance for his own amusement. He’s always changing it—never the same glaumerie twice. Kitsune love variety.”

  “But fox people? How can that be? What world are they from?”

  “The same as that from which your own ancestors came. The Archons did not take only humanity’s forebears from the Original World. They brought many other creatures out of that unknown place, and some were introduced into alien planets. Their descendants developed differently from their Meran kin. The primitive creatures that turned into the foxes, badgers, serpents, seals, horses, cats, and wolves of Mera became kitsune, tanuki, nagas, selkies, pucas, cait-sith, and lycanthropes on other worlds. Like the human race these beings gained the ability to reason, and Nemerei powers as well. They will often take human forms for convenience’s sake.”

  “But—but their ancestors were animals!” said Ailia in disbelief.

  “So were yours, as a matter of fact,” said Auron. “It is the same with all races. We Loänan, for example, are descended from sea-going reptiles that dwelt in our original world millions of years ago.

  “The whales and dolphins that swim the seas of Mera are intelligent beings too, however animal-like you humans may find them. The Elei knew this and learned long ago to communicate with them. There are some dolphins and whales in the oceans of this world, for there were once ethereal portals beneath the waters as well as on land. I will see that you are introduced to a few of them.”

  Introduced to a whale! “It’s as though all the myths of old had come to life—talking animals and so on,” she remarked.

  “We are all of us talking animals. All myths spring from a seed of truth,” Auron told her. “The Elei and Merei still dimly remember the days when they mingled with these other peoples of the Imperium. And it may be that Nemerei-sensitives in far-off worlds may have visions of other worlds and races, and imagine themselves to be dreaming. You have not yet seen most of the races that frequent this world: many are not even distantly related to humanity.”

  Everyone here spoke Elensi, she had noted, though sometimes with slight differences in pronunciation. The Archons, Auron explained, had taught every young race they encountered the language, perhaps with a view to making future communication between alien races easier.

  The flower forests gave way to a larger, more open space. There were some houses here, constructed out of marble and adamant: they might have been the work of human hands, but Auron told her dragons had built them. Ailia sighed. As aristocrats will play at being peasants, donning rustic garb and vacationing in picturesque country cottages, so must the Loänan play at being human: it could not be much more than an amusing pastime for them, a sublime condescension. Why did they bother taking human forms when their minds were so splendidly housed in huge, strong, graceful bodies? What must they think of the human forms they temporarily adopted? Were they amused by these naked, gangly, awkward bodies, so much smaller and weaker and less impressive than their own? She recalled sitting in a lecture hall of the Royal Academy in Mera, listening to old Magister North recite in his droning voice the words of the philosopher Elonius: “I declare Man to be no less than the Paragon of Nature: for the sovereign Beauty of his Form; for the Nobility of his Countenance and the Dignity of his Bearing; but chiefly for his faculty of Reason, which same doth elevate him to the level of an Angel.” Ailia had never felt much of the pride of species, particularly when it was used to justify the mistreatment of animals. But now she could not help feeling something of a pang. “You Loänan have so much,” she remarked rather bitterly. “Intelligence, magic, strength, the ability to fly. Why would you ever bother taking our form?”

  “Because we envy you,” said Auron.

  “Envy humans! We’ve nothing you could possibly want.”

  “You have thumbs.”

  Ailia halted in midstep. “Did you say thumbs?”

  “I did. The opposable thumb is a wonderful thing, that lets you grasp tools and build and make things. No other creature can do this: even we Loänan must change to your form if we wish to build. It is for that reason we call you the Makers.”

  “But the Archons could build—”

  “They too learned the art from you. For they could see all futures, it is said, and even before you arose on your original world you already existed as a possibility waiting to become reality. The Archons o
ften borrowed your form in the dawn-time, but it never truly belonged to them. They merely discovered it, and with it all the things that you would later make. Like that, for instance.”

  He was pointing at the many-colored sky. She looked up, too, and there she saw yet another vision out of legend: a ship sailing the sky as though it were a sea. There amid the clouds a gleaming golden keel was suspended, supported by winglike sails of ribbed canvas that alternately beat gently up and down and then glided motionless as the pinions of a gull. She realized now that many of the distant flying shapes she had taken for dragons were in fact flying craft like this one.

  Auron chuckled. “You humans never cease to amaze. Being wingless is no obstacle to flying! No, you simply go and make wings to carry you aloft!”

  “The Ships that Sail Over Land and Sea,” breathed Ailia. “So they never lost the skill of crafting such vessels here.”

  “Yes—and these ships can enter the portals of the Ether also, journeying to other worlds.”

  “I would love to ride in one. I have always wished I could fly. Do you know, I even dream about it sometimes.”

  He looked at her closely. “I think, Princess, that there may be Loänan blood in you.”

  “In me!” she exclaimed, astonished.

  “Yes—your longing for flight, and your ability to call up a storm, would seem to point that way. Loänan are masters of the weather-magic. And it is true that in bygone days many of our kind took human form to mingle with your ancestors. The flesh remembers what the mind cannot know. What you are, child, is written in your blood and bones. There could well be Loänan on your father’s side. There were transformed dragons dwelling with humans in Arainia’s early days, and many of its people may have a draconic ancestor or two. In most this would be too distant a heritage to have any effect on them, but because you are so powerful through your mother’s side, any draconic blood will be amplified and carry real power.”