by Alison Baird
One of the guards struck him and he staggered back into the arms of the young maidens, who cried out in fear. Never had such treatment been meted out to the people of Elarainia. “Your time is over,” the Zimbouran snarled, standing over them with his hand on his sword hilt. “Over, do you understand? Your people will be destroyed. This land has been given to us. The Queen of Night and her daughter cannot defeat our god. He is stronger than they are.”
“That is so,” said a woman’s voice. A figure appeared at the edge of the firelight, clad in a dark cloak: its hood overshadowed the upper half of the speaker’s face, so her eyes could not be seen. Roglug recognized Syndra, the Elei traitress. She had come as she promised, to offer them her guidance and knowledge of this land. “You shall have all you want of Arainia, and so shall the Morugei also. Their revenge has been denied them for too long. But if the Tryna Lia is found here you must leave her to us: to my lord and me. Even the goblin-wizards can do nothing against her. Ailia’s power has grown too great.”
“You believe she may be here?” asked Roglug, throwing a quick nervous glance around him.
“I know that she is. My powers tell me so. Prince Morlyn and I will seek her out as soon as it is light, but until then you must all remain close to the camp. There are evil spirits in these woods, the gods of our enemies. Those who stray may never return.”
For a long time no one spoke, as the chilling effect of her words took hold. Then one small and wiry goblin sprang up from the fireside, squealing in terror. “I saw it! I saw it!” he cried.
“Saw what? What’s biting you?” the Zimbouran captain demanded, turning on him in irritation.
“That tree, over there—I was looking at it, and suddenly I seemed to see—”
“What? What?”
“A woman—” the goblin spoke in a tone of fearful wonder. “Not a tree, but a woman tall as a tree, with long dark hair. A hamadryad: I’ve heard of such things. There are gods that live in trees, and can take human forms.” He shivered. “She was looking down at us—she was angry.”
A silence fell. The huge trees rustled and murmured like a thousand whispering, conspiratorial voices. The small goblin clapped his hands to his ears. “Stop! Stop it! They say, Go away! Go away! I hear them!” he screamed.
“He’s gone mad!” shouted the Zimbouran.
“No—there is some enchantment in this,” said Syndra. “You cannot feel it, Zimbouran, but we Nemerei can, and the goblins also.”
The goblin wailed on. “Something stirs in this forest—a Power—I feel it: so vast, so strong—”
He broke off, cringing, as Roglug approached. “Enough of that, now! We’ve got our own sorcerers, and the witch-woman: they are more than a match for any spirit!” he shouted. But the goblin-king was not as full of aplomb as he appeared. The Avatar was not with them at the moment, and though Roglug feared him, he also looked to Mandrake to strike terror into their enemies’ hearts. It was he who had delivered this paradise to them. But why had he not come with the army as he promised, to fight the beings rumored to dwell in this fearful place?
He looked up through the dark tree boughs at Hyelanthia and recalled the strange and terrifying display of lightning atop the tallest plateau this evening, illuminating the great roiling clouds that hung about it. “A storm,” he had then said, dismissive. But it had occurred only on the one plateau—the very one that the natives said was sacred to their goddess. The native prisoners said that “she” was there—and “she” would be angered at the harm done her children. Who exactly was she? Not Ailia, surely—though the natives sometimes appeared to confuse her and Elarainia.
The forest . . . Now that the sun was gone, the forest seemed to change from a bountiful, benevolent place to one of dark secrets and unknown terrors. The smallest leaf rustle put him on edge. They said the Princess and her sorcerers could talk to animals. Was every night creature, every bird and burrowing thing, spying on them?
“There! Do you see?” howled the maddened goblin, pointing.
A figure had emerged from the deep shadow under the trees and stood there before them in the moonlight. It was a female form, young and slender, clad in a pale garment that fell to her feet and left her arms bare. Her hair was unbound and hung about her, and a fiery swarm of glimmering golden lights surrounded her figure and circled her head. These were in fact pyrallises, the little four-footed fireflies of Arainia, drawn to the power Ailia gave forth as to a light. They surrounded her like a living and visible extension of her inner aura. To the speechless men it seemed that the figure before them was robed and crowned with stars.
For a long time no one in the glade moved. Then one of the Zimbouran men lurched to his feet. “The goddess!” he croaked. “It’s she! The Queen of Night!”
If he had shouted at the top of his voice the effect could not have been more dramatic. At once all the men were on their feet, yelling and cursing. The Elei also cried out, but in joy, recognizing not the Mother but her daughter, sent to save them.
Some of the men, led by their captain, moved upon her. But they moved like men in a trance. They feared this being clad in light. As they advanced, Ailia drew a step forward into the circle of firelight. Her eyes were unafraid, and drew into themselves some of the fire’s leaping light, while in its glow her hair took on a fiery aureole. “I warn you,” her clear young voice said, “you must leave now!” As she spoke Ailia sprang up onto the large boulder. And it seemed to her that the rock rang beneath her like a gong, sending out waves of power through the air. “I call on all Archons in this wood,” she cried, “all powers of earth and water, fire and air. Naiads and hamadryads, nereids and oreads, I call upon you now! I call on the Mother also, to lend us her aid!” For a moment Ailia stood motionless.
Nothing happened. “So we have you at last,” said Syndra, emboldened. She walked toward the boulder, casting back her hood so that her beautiful face shone pale and cold under the stars. “Mandrake and I. He is here, did you know? And he wields a new power that is greater than yours, greater even than Elarainia’s.”
The Elei gasped in horror at this blasphemy. “Syndra,” Ailia said in a quieter voice, “you are a traitor to your people and your world. For these things you might yet be forgiven. Do not go further, and condemn yourself by opposing Elarainia. She is your mother also.”
Syndra drew herself up. “I serve only the Dark One, whose incarnation Mandrake is even now becoming. I will reign at his side, as his empress, once he and Valdur are one.”
“You love Mandrake,” whispered Ailia. “Or so I thought. Would you wish such a fate on him?”
Syndra’s gaze was stony. “You understand nothing. The union will not destroy Mandrake, it will only make him more powerful. It will give to him a strength even the Elaia cannot defy: a magic that cannot be bound, by iron or by law. The magic of the Elyra, highest of the high.”
So that is why she is so confident, Ailia thought. She knows she cannot defeat me, but she believes Mandrake will. And she knows that he is near . . .
Syndra strode forward, her hands stretched out as if to seize Ailia. But from her extended fingertips quintessence began to flow, like blue and white forked lightning. It lapped about the sides of the stone on which the Tryna Lia stood, and reached its multiple tongues up toward her like hungry flames. “My powers also have grown since last we met,” Syndra said. Ailia spread her palms, and the bolts crackled and faded away. Mother, you promised I would have help! she added in her mind as the Elei captives scrambled up to join her on the rock.
The Zimbourans were already fleeing in panic, but the goblin-sorcerers laughed at her. “She called on the Powers for aid! They must be hard of hearing!”
Suddenly the woods rustled loudly. Trees and bushes quivered, and their leaves stirred. The small goblin screamed again, “The trees! I told you the forest gods are angry! They’re here, I tell you!”
Ailia stared into the forest along with all the others. The branches were tossing about as if in a storm, thou
gh there was not a breath of wind: it was as if the trees had come to life. And then she saw that they were full of mimic dogs. The usually gentle animals were leaping about from branch to branch as if possessed, hurling sticks and gourds down at the men below. They dodged.
“Shoot them!” bawled the captain.
At the same moment the bushes all around them stirred, and beasts began to emerge. Everywhere the invaders’ panicked eyes turned there were horrors—or so the Arainian creatures appeared to their eyes. Vast slender shapes advanced out of the gloom, walking on legs as big around as saplings: camelopards, whole herds of them, like walking siege towers. Behind them came colossal aullays, dapple gray and chestnut-colored, flailing their mighty trunks and trumpeting in challenge; and then hordes of many other smaller grazing beasts: argasills, pantheons, thoyes, leucrottas, bagwyns, catoblepases, and boreynes. Creatures of Arainia that had never before shown violent intent, to human beings or to one another, now galloped into the clearing from all sides in a great stampede. Everywhere the men and goblins turned were horns and pounding hooves. The Elei cowered down on the rock in bewilderment, but Ailia remained standing. She might have been the goddess herself, surrounded by all her creatures.
For an instant Syndra stood silent, staring at her in hate, fists clenched and trembling. Then she flung her arms wide and called out. All the sorcerers felt the dark surge of her power and a luminous mist began to gather, shrouding her form. Her minions watched the glowing cloud spread, hoping for some great magic to deliver them. Instead it dimmed and dissipated, and Syndra was gone. Finding themselves abandoned, the remaining men and Morugei looked about them in terror, and prepared to flee in their turn. But it was too late. The hoofed beasts charged, a limitless cavalry, and after them followed the carrion-scavengers, with their fearsome claws and teeth. Lion-sized gulons, and lean pards and calopuses came bounding out of the bushes, and fleet-footed enfields, and the alphyns with their great talons and muzzles tipped with hooklike horns. Birds flew shrieking down out of the trees into the enemies’ faces. In the midst of it all Ailia stood stock-still on her tall boulder with the Elei huddled about her, as on an island in a flooding stream, as amazed as her unfortunate foes at what her petition had wrought. Then she understood. Her strong emotions had spread to all the living things in the area, and they had responded with this wild and uncontrollable rage, foreign to their own placid beast-minds. “No,” she whispered. “No, stop this! I never intended it. Mother, let it stop!”
But the onslaught continued unabated, and against it the goblins and men had no chance. Many were trampled and mauled, and the few who escaped unscathed retreated from that place, utterly overwhelmed, as the din rose up to drown all other sounds under the sky.
11
Pas de Deux
DAWN CAME AT LAST—FIRST to Hyelanthia’s cloudy heights, turning them red and then pale yellow, and then seeping down through the forest’s woven roof into the groves beneath. The light of the new day shone there on scenes of battle and destruction: scattered armor, lifeless men and goblins, and the carcasses of dead animals also. They lay where they had fallen, on the trampled mold of the forest floor, amid the ruins of crushed ferns and toppled saplings. The campfire of the invaders had subsided to a bed of ash.
Lorelyn and Jomar had searched through the night for the landing site of the winged ships of the enemy, and returned with the morning light to say that they had found it, but that only one empty craft remained. The survivors of the sorcerous attack had returned to their ships and fled into the void.
They found Ailia still slumped beside the boulder. She had not stirred from the spot since the violence ended, and she watched now with dull eyes as the Elei gathered up the fallen—beasts as well as men and Morugei—and bore them away. Their own captive kin had escaped unharmed. When the last of the dead were removed from the clearing, she rose and asked her friends to leave her alone for a while.
“Should Ailia be by herself like that?” whispered Lorelyn to Jomar as they complied.
“The enemy’s gone. And she’s strong enough now that nothing can hurt her, I think,” said Jomar, pausing for a moment. He too was subdued by his first sight of Ailia’s fully unleashed power. “If she needs to be alone, then let her have what she wants. I want to make sure no one’s still lingering in the woods with a sword in hand. Will you come with me?”
“It all seems so peaceful,” Lorelyn said to Jomar in a soft low voice as they walked away from the clearing. “As if nothing at all had happened, and the Elei and the animals were still living as they did before. And perhaps a day will come when it is all forgotten.” But Ailia will never forget, she thought. She looked up. “What a beautiful bird that is, flying over there above the trees. Its feathers look like gold, though I suppose that’s just the light . . .” Her voice trailed away.
In the sky above them, the bird with the golden plumage wheeled about and flew back toward the clearing.
AFTER THEY HAD GONE AILIA sat by herself on the stone, her eyes staring into the green forest—staring but not seeing. Her mind was sunk in unhappy contemplation. It had been necessary to protect her world, and the surviving intruders would tell fearsome tales of the perils of Arainia. But the violence sickened her.
She heard a voice call her name, and as she turned her heart seemed to still. Standing there in the grove before her was Damion.
He was not an ethereal image this time: there was no transparency about his figure, which seemed solid and real. He was clad in a plain white robe that fell to his ankles, and his feet were bare. The long slanting beams of sunlight that fell through the boughs touched his fair hair and surrounded it with a pale golden light. His blue eyes gazed at her, filled with a look of tender concern that she knew well. Amazed, she rose to face him, but though her mouth moved she could not form his name. “No,” she breathed at last.
An illusion: it must be another illusion. It could not be the real Damion. He could not come again, for he was an Archon now and their Pact bound him. He had not been summoned. But he called out, softly: “Ailia.” And then she wondered no more, but ran to his outstretched arms.
“Yes, I am here,” he said as he embraced and held her. “I have been permitted to come back, to help you. The Archons know I am needed here. And you have been calling to me in your mind, night and day. That is as true a summons as any.”
He was real, firm and solid, and filled with a living warmth. She buried her face in his shoulder, and realized that she was saying his name over and over again—just as she had said it in her dreams when she believed that he was dead. The pain that had lodged so long in her breast seemed to rise into her throat, and then break through her voice. “When I thought you were lost forever, I—I didn’t know how I could live!” And with those words the pain was released at long last, dissipating into the air.
He released her, and then seeing that she was swaying on her feet, he took her hand and led her to the stone. She sat down upon it, and he seated himself by her side. “I am sorry to give you such a shock. And you were weary to begin with. I know what happened here in the night.”
“I had to do something,” she said in a low voice. “They would have hurt the Elei. But I didn’t want to do it, and I am desperately sorry for the men who were killed. This is none of their doing—the Zimbourans, I mean, though I don’t suppose the Morugei really chose to come here either. Their leaders sent them. The Zimbourans only wanted to escape their world, to live. And this is just the beginning. If Mera is to be freed, and Ombar defeated, there must be more fighting. More killing. But that isn’t how you won your victory. You turned the killing on itself, by submitting to it, and you won.”
“Not all victories can be won that way. But you’re right that there might be another path to this peace you’re seeking. Would it ease your mind at all to talk of it?” he asked. “Perhaps we can find a solution, together—”
She looked away from him again. “There is nothing you could say. I know I’m bound to my fate, and
I am reconciled to it. But I am glad you are with me again, Damion.” He said nothing, but sat with his arm about her, sharing her silence. Presently she spoke again. “I know what it is that I must do. I hate it, but I think at last I understand why it must be done. Ana told me long ago that I should not make the same mistake she did. That Mandrake is suffering, and may cause others to suffer, and when he was a true Paladin he would not have wished that to be. And if the enemy does come to control him, it will be a kindness to . . . free him.”
The blue eyes turned to her, gently probing. “But still you hesitate to do it? Out of compassion—pity?”
“No—not pity.” She could not lie to him. “You know the story of the philter, Damion. What you don’t know is that I—felt something for him—long before that. Not as I feel for you, but . . .” She paused.
“You needn’t say any more.” He covered her hand with his. “I understand.”
“Do you? It was different, you see. With you, I felt the essence of you right away—your inner strength. You were so complete in yourself, so perfect, I had nothing to give you. I loved you for that completeness. With Mandrake, though—I sensed an emptiness, a need in him. I suppose I was lured by the thought of feeling needed, of being able to give.”
He drew away from her a little, his face pensive. “I see.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Mind? Of course not. You feel what you feel, and it has nothing to do with me. Of course, given a choice, you would seek the one who needed you most. It is the way you are, Ailia. You could not do otherwise.”
“But I do love you, Damion. I have from the moment I first saw you—only of course that wasn’t really the first time: I recognized you, rather, from our time before—in the Ether—even though I had no living memory of it. And I will go back with you into the Ether, I promise, when this is over.”