by Alison Baird
Damion looked down at her from the height of the cherub’s back. “No, Lorelyn. I’m sorry, but it will be much too dangerous. You must understand: we are going to Ombar. That is where he has taken her. And the scales of battle have been tipped against us. He is stronger in that place than she can ever be, and it is well defended. There is nothing more you can do, friends! Stay in Nemorah and help the people here, or else take a flying ship back to Arainia. There is no use for armies where we are going.” He and his mount rose with a roar of wind into the black sky.
The company ran back toward the edge of the city. There was a sound of many loud reports, as of cannon fire, and glowing bursts of ash and embers rained down upon them. The air was growing foul with fumes. “Why?” Jomar yelled as he ran, his voice rasping and hoarse. “Why would she let herself be taken like that? She knew she wasn’t strong enough to face him yet! Now he has her!”
“Perhaps she was too tired to think clearly. But why didn’t he kill her straight away?” Lorelyn shouted back.
“Because there would be nothing between him and us then. None of us dared harm him while he was carrying her. She gave him passage to freedom. For all we know she’s dead now—”
“Don’t say that! Perhaps they will catch him in time—or perhaps she will come out of her faint, and fight back—” Even now Lorelyn could not let go of hope.
They pelted on through the street. On one side of them rose the black smoke of houses ignited by the falling cinders, while on the other a white bank of steam wisped up from the river, marking the progress of the lava stream: the waters were seething in protest as they mingled with the river of fire. Ahead lay a gap between the black and white clouds, but it was closing as they ran. They would be caught between the two fires. Taleera flew above them, keeping pace with them and uttering urgent trilling cries.
“We know, we know!” panted Jomar.
They sped on and heat smote their faces from both sides as they entered the gap. To the left a stately cypress tree in a garden turned to a sparking torch, and beyond it were roofs rimmed with flames. To the right the river boiled, and sent forth more bursts of liquid flame like burning pitch. They ducked their heads as they ran, and the firebird was forced to fly higher, out of range. Then they were through, they were safe at last. A rush of cooler air met their faces as they left the outer boundary of Loänanmar behind and raced on into the fields beyond, away from both city and river.
Great throngs of people had gathered here, faces red in the light of destruction, watching as all they had ever known shriveled and fell in ruin. Some were weeping, but most had fallen silent in despair. Jomar left them no time to mourn, but urged them onward. “I don’t know anything about these fire-mountains,” he said. “I can’t say how far this will spread. We must keep going.” He added in an undertone to Lorelyn, “Better that they shouldn’t watch. Moving on will give them something to do.”
Lorleyn moaned. “I can’t just go back to Arainia and wait to find out what’s happened—who has won. If everything is going to end, I want at least to be there when—when it all happens. Not standing about here or in Halmirion, biting my nails! Ailia is my friend.”
“I feel the same way,” said Jomar. But he was afraid now as he had never been in his life before. Ombar! He glanced up at the sky above the smoke-cloud, where the red star could be seen, the Worm’s Eye and the pale star next to it with its unseen companion . . . The Zimbourans had worshipped Vartara, shed blood for it and the god said to inhabit it. And now Ailia was being taken to the world nearest that star.
He swallowed. “Couldn’t we use that portal thing in the ruin?” he suggested.
“I don’t know how,” Lorelyn groaned. “And I can’t fly a ship on my own either.”
But as they marched on with the fire at their backs, a mind-voice spoke to Lorelyn: Come with me! She turned to see another huge golden shape descending through the air. Auron—and Taleera was with him also, hovering over the dragon’s head. As he alighted, blowing their garments about with the gusts from his tremendous wings, Auron’s great green eyes looked on Lorelyn with understanding. I am going to Ombar, and I will take you with me, if you wish.
“Auron! Thank you!” Lorelyn exclaimed, running to his side.
You may have little to thank me for, but I feel as you do. We may as well end our days there as here; and though we cannot help Ailia, it may comfort her to know we are there. Come! But I fear Jomar must leave his iron sword.
Auron did not tell her that he had never yet been to Ombar. He had seen it long ago, from a great distance: lying between him and its parent sun, it had appeared to his eyes only as a black circle like a sunspot, a mole on the red eye of Utara. Auron would go no nearer than that to the world where Valdur had reigned—until this moment, when he no longer had any choice.
Reluctantly Jomar surrendered the Star Sword, exchanging it for one of steel. Then he gave orders to the Paladins, instructing them to accompany the people onto the jungle paths and urge them to walk on as far westward as they possibly could. There would be few dangerous beasts about, at least, with the smoke-stench and sound of the burning putting every living thing in the area to panicked flight. Auron waited as the dispirited crowd moved slowly off, and the two humans and the firebird settled on his broad scaly back. Once they were secure in their places he sprang aloft, sweeping high above the dying city and the spouting volcano, with its tall plume of black and blazing red, the pyre of the Forbidden Palace.
AILIA CAME BACK TO HERSELF by slow degrees, aching and bewildered. Beneath her was soft cloth over some hard surface, and the air about her was cold. Blinking, she sat upright and saw that she had been lying upon a black cloak, which was spread on the floor of a stone chamber. Two great rows of rounded columns marched along its length, their capitals lost in the darkness of the ceiling, and the floor was barred with their black shadows. On one side were tall unglazed windows set deep into the wall, through which a red light poured. The huge room was completely bare of furnishings and had only one door, and was lit only by that blood-colored light. For an instant she feared that it was firelight, and she was still in the burning fortress. But the chamber was too cool for that—she was shivering in her thin robe.
Mandrake stood in human form before one of the windows, his back to her, his tall robed figure casting a long shadow upon the floor behind him. He did not turn his head as she rose and approached him.
She too said nothing, but went to stand at his side, and she wondered at the view before her. The cloudless sky glowed dark crimson, as if with the last light of sunset, and in the west rose a great arc of lighter hue. In the next instant she understood what she was looking at. It was a sun—but a sun so vast that its swollen sphere filled nearly all the western sky. Before Ailia’s eyes its dull red surface seethed and boiled, and immense prominences thrust out from it on all sides like tongues of fire.
Mandrake said, “There were once other planets between this one and Utara, but when the Worm’s Eye aged and swelled up it engulfed them. The sun is expanding still. This world is doomed: Utara will one day devour Ombar, her only remaining child, before she herself withers and dies.”
Ombar, she thought, filled with horror. We are in Ombar. Why has he brought me here?
Beneath the sun spread a vast city that borrowed its hue from the light. Ailia’s tired eyes beheld great temples and arenas, bridges and aqueducts, ziggurats, massive courts, and triumphal arches. After a moment Mandrake said, “That city down there, it is half-dead now, but once it was full of life. The Archons built it: they lived here, and later were joined by the mortals who served them. Now only the slaves remain, living on like rats in the ruins of their masters’ houses.”
Though the city was inhabited, nothing stirred anywhere, neither beast nor being. There were no trees or gardens to be seen: nothing green would grow here. Beyond the city a desert stretched, dull red under Utara’s light. Though the colors were warm, the wind blowing toward them was bitter: despite its nearne
ss, the great ember of a sun above gave out little heat. Ailia already felt starved for other colors, especially the eye-soothing greens of vegetation and the blue of sky-reflecting water. The one small sea on the horizon was shrunken and stinking with salt, red-lit so that it seemed a sea of blood. The western sky, like all else, took its hue from Utara: the red of a perpetual sunset. But the day here was always ending: night could not come to these lands. The domain of night lay to the east, a looming darkness that did not advance. Auron had told her all he knew of Ombar, which was not a great deal, for few even of the Loänan dared to come here. Because the world always kept one side facing its sun, neither side could be inhabited: one was too hot and bright, and the other too dark and cold. But between the lands of the sun and those of the never-ending night, he had said, there lay a narrow girdle of twilight, circling the world. In this shadowy zone were the cities, and the only growing things in Ombar’s sphere: swamp lands that bred the nuckelavees, bugbears, barguests, and other creatures that haunted humanity’s oldest tales and dreams.
Ailia suppressed a shudder. She had seen the beasts of Ombar that had been kept in Zimboura: the fighting beasts from the arena, and the barguests that had been used as watchdogs in Yanuvan. All had been slain after Khalazar fell, and she had looked on their hideous and nightmarish carcasses in horror.
“Forgive me, but I had to bring you here,” said the Prince. “You would have perished in the fiery ruin of the palace had I not lifted you up, for I could tell your powers were spent. And once I was airborne, the firedrakes surrounded me, and your Loänan also. The latter would have wrested you from my grip, and then slain me. I did not know what else to do but follow the firedrakes, and come here.” He shuddered. “I wished for it all to end, there in the palace courtyard. I was not unconscious: I refused to use the iron power any longer, to save myself or to continue fighting my foes. I decided that I preferred to die. But, you see, I have been saved, despite my efforts. Even my wounds have healed themselves. I cannot slay myself: I cannot die. There is a fate that governs me, and turns my body against my will, and prevents my escape. I did not wish to come to Ombar; yet here I am.”
“Why did you not kill me when you had the chance?” she asked.
“I might ask you the very same question. Is it that you pitied me? Or do you still wish to join me, and be free?” There was a little pause as she tried to form an answer. Then Mandrake spoke again. “You and I were bred to destroy each other. It is the reason we exist. It may be that we have no choice. Long ago, when I lived in the land of Marakor, I had a hedge-maze on my estate. It used to compose my mind to walk along its convoluted paths—until I began to reflect on its semblance to my own life. Is there something beyond even the schemes of the Old Ones that holds us to a certain course? Do they merely serve a higher destiny, which even they must obey? In a maze there are no true choices, only the design long set out by the maze-builder. So long . . . I have been fate’s slave so long. I wanted only to be free.” He turned his head, suddenly, and fastened his eyes on hers: it was like gazing into endless depths of fire. “I thought, back there in the burning castle, that if I died it would at least mean I had been freed from destiny. But perhaps there is no freedom. Perhaps you and I, Ailia, have been moving toward an end that was foreordained from time immemorial. And—there is in me another power, a second personality that is taking command. I am no longer one person but two, and the parasitic thing within me is winning the conflict. I have done vile things without knowing why, obeyed commands that came from elsewhere. I believed at first that I was going mad. But I know now I was made this way. When I was born it was not a normal birth, and it seems I am not destined to die as others do either. When the moment of my death comes, it will not be the death of my body—that will live on—but of my mind.”
“You’re saying that you are possessed.” Ailia took his hand, and looked deep into the dragon-eyes.
“There is something evil within me, a Voice. It has always been there, a part of me.”
“No,” Ailia said, “the Voice is not part of you. It comes from outside, from the dark place, Perdition. It is Valdur’s voice. Do not listen to him, Mandrake. Be free of him. You have a soul, and that is your own, however your material body came to be. As to what you have done, I certainly cannot condemn you, because I too nearly became a monster.” She told him what had happened in the forest of Ardana, when her fear and anger spurred the beasts into attacking the invaders.
“I did the same in Nemorah, with the beasts of sea and jungle,” he said. “And like you, I was unaware of what I did. But your soldiers suffered all the same. This is what befalls when we accept the aid of Archons. We must resist them.”
“I will help you if I can.”
“Remain here with me.” He closed his eyes, shuddering, and his fingers grew tight around hers. “I can trust no one save you. You spared me when I was at your mercy. Forgive my rambling a moment ago: I know it was not any dark fate that made you save my life, but your own free will. You were always compassionate, to me and to others.” He opened his eyes and gazed down at her. “The Valei hate and distrust me. I can barely keep them all in check, and I need someone to guard my sleep. Not all of them want me for their ruler.” His grip eased. “But if you will help me, watch over me, I can control them. And your world will be safe, and all others, so long as I rule the Valei empire and you command the rest of Talmirennia. Together, we can thwart destiny.”
“But can you control the Valei, Mandrake? Or will they end by controlling you?”
He released her hand. “I can control them because I must. Our two empires can be joined in one.” A trace of a smile flitted across Mandrake’s features. “It would be a grand jest. Did it never occur to those scheming Old Ones that two adversaries as finely matched as we might come to admire each other for the very qualities we share?” But as he gazed out the glassless window, he grew somber again. “Here humanity’s ancestors were brought, to be bred with demons, and over time become the goblins and ogres, trolls and ghouls. Loänan became firedrakes. Even some of the cherubim turned to the Dark One’s side. For a time the Empire was ruled from this place—before the war. Before Valdur was defeated, and cast into the black star.”
“Did Valdur—live in this palace?” The thought set her to trembling again.
“No. This city was Elombar’s to rule, and this was his palace. The Archon of this world had his cult here, and demanded the worship from his slaves. Valdur chose to dwell in the Nightlands. Do you see that great avenue running through the center of the city? That is the road that led to his old fortress, through the lands of twilight and of the Night, to the Perilous Citadel.”
Something within Ailia shrank back. “The fortress of Hell—does it truly exist? Does it still stand, after all this time?”
“I am told it does, though I have never been there. The central keep was made of adamant, and could never fall in ruin. His throne is still there, it’s said, and his crown of iron. He came back to this place after Athariel defeated him in Mera and took the Star Stone from him. He left his crown here, and he changed to a dragon’s form to fight the other Archons one last time—out in the void. They conquered him and cast him into the black star. But his slaves believe he will return in another form, and reclaim throne and crown. The Iron Diadem, the latter was called. Modrian used it to dominate Elombar and all the lesser Elaia in this world, for of course they could be cowed with iron. It was a potent symbol of his superiority.” He paused. “And I must go there, to that Citadel.”
“Why?” she asked.
“To destroy both throne and crown, to show his minions that there will be no return of their god. Also Naugra is there, I believe, and as Regent he too is a symbol of that hope, and must be cast down. Until these things are done, there will be no peace or freedom for these miserable creatures. You need not come with me.”
Her mind recoiled again, but she moved to stand closer to him. “I will go. I believe you are right, Mandrake—we can choose
our fate, and not merely surrender to it.”
“But we cannot go yet. I am weary, and so are you. Rest now, if you can. You will need all your strength and power. If you do not fear to take a dragon’s form again, it would be best to do so for this journey. The Twilight is a perilous place, as are the Nightlands. There will be dangers on land and in the air, some that can creep on you unawares, so claws and scaly armor will serve you best. Much rests on our success. There is no tomorrow in this place, but change may yet come to it.” And with that he bowed to her, and left the room by the door that she had seen in the shadows.
She remained, unable to tear herself away from the window, gazing out on the city from the deep embrasure. And as she looked, it wavered before her eyes, and though she had taken no ambrosia, it was suddenly transformed in a waking vision. Seated colossi with faces worn away by wind and time became whole, their features appearing out of stone and shadow, staring down in lofty arrogance. The city came to life, as did the barren land, re-forming and rejuvenating as she watched in bewilderment. Shades of people, human and otherwise, thronged streets now smoothly paved. Surely this was a glimpse out of the past, out of the days of Ombar’s glory when it had been the capital of Entar. Did Modrian reign on his throne in the great fortress-fane in the Nightlands? She thought of the majestic archangel-figure she had seen depicted in old books, slowly transforming into a demon, and then a dragon. So great a power, in visible form—the mere thought of it set her knees to shaking with a mixture of awe and dread. No, she dared not look upon him, even as an impotent phantom of the past.
High on one of the ziggurats a gong sent out its shivering voice. The crowds stirred and murmured, glancing back up at the palace. Ailia saw their looks of fear and her own dread increased. A figure strode out of one of the high doorways below, majestic and regal, and yet shrouded in dark raiment, only the eyes glowing. It looked up toward Ailia. It can see me, she thought. It is not truly in this time, as I am not.