DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  HE TURNED HIS ATTENTION BACK to Gemala’s report. “I was forced to leap down from my elephant and fight on foot,” the general was telling the king. “Even so, it was difficult for me to tell friend from foe. But my men won the day. The people will be heartened when they hear of my victory.”

  Khalazar’s eyes were icy. “You mean—my victory.”

  The cropped gray head bowed. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “We are pleased,” the king declared, though his voice and face did not show it. “You shall have your reward for this. But . . . do not enter our royal presence again in such a state of disarray. It does not show us the proper respect.”

  JOMAR TRUDGED SLOWLY OVER THE SAND, past the still bodies of men and horses. Vultures circled overhead. He had fought as hard as he could, well into the night, but he had not found Damion, and at daybreak it was clear the battle was lost. In the end he had been forced to take shelter in an abandoned shed. A scene of death and desolation had greeted him when at last he was able to venture out. In all the countryside, it seemed, no one was left alive. The sun’s heat gave to the bodies he touched an illusion of living warmth, but none stirred when he shook them and they gave no sign of life. Some the sandstorm had already given burial to; others he covered up as best he could. The rest of the army had gone—they must have retreated through the portal, for there was nowhere else they could have gone to in the empty waste. Without the Loänan, he could not open up the tunnel through the Ether and return to Arainia. He was stranded here, and so were any of his men who were still left alive. The entire venture had been an utter failure. Khalazar had not been intimidated nor overthrown, but had won instead another victory, and many young Arainians had been brought here to their deaths.

  My doing, he thought. I was the one who brought them. And all for nothing . . .

  And then he found Damion.

  The knight-priest was lying in the sand, surrounded by dead Zimbourans. His eyes were open and staring ahead of him, expressionless, and he took no notice of Jomar. He was breathing, and blood from a wound in the side of his head had dried in his hair.

  Jomar halted. “Hello, Damion,” he said quietly.

  The blue eyes closed, then opened again. “Hello, Jo. There’s blood on my sword,” Damion murmured. “Do you see? And these men are dead. So I suppose I must have killed them. It’s odd, though: I can’t recall a thing . . .”

  It was battle shock. Some men never recovered from it: they went mad, or suffered from fits and nightmares for the rest of their lives. Jomar leaned down and shook him, hard. “Wake up, Damion! I need you. Damion, do you hear me?”

  At last the other man shuddered and rasped, “I’m all right.” Color returned to his cheeks as he sat up.

  “You’re the first person I’ve seen alive,” said Jomar heavily. “Come with me. Let’s see if there are any more survivors.”

  They found Sir Martan lying not far away, his white surcoat covered with blood, his face and hair coated with sand. As they approached he stirred and looked at them without recognition, then closed his eyes and groaned. Jomar glanced at the wound in his side where the armor had been pierced, and shook his head at Damion. The priest knelt beside Martan and began to give him the Last Rites. As he prayed, the dying youth suddenly opened his eyes again, gazing skyward. “Ahh, look—look,” he whispered through cracked and bloodied lips.

  “What?” asked Damion, leaning forward.

  But Martan was gone.

  Jomar looked grim. “I knew he would die.”

  He and Damion looked about them. The Unknown Knight lay motionless near Martan, and he too was covered in blood. The pair of them had fought well, if all the Zimbouran dead surrounding them had fallen to their swords. Jomar bent to open Raimon’s visor. Damion walked away; he had no wish to see the dead young face of the fallen knight.

  The gash in his head throbbed painfully. What had happened? His memory was blank. There were not enough bodies in the sand to account for all their army. Had the Arainians retreated? Had the Loänan taken them back to Arainia, or had they all been captured and taken to Felizia as prisoners?

  A shout from behind made him turn. The Unknown Knight, apparently very far from dead, was standing up, confronting Jomar, who was yelling and gesticulating. The knight’s helmet was now off; Damion froze at the sight of the face beneath the cap of short, blond hair.

  “I had to come,” Lorelyn was arguing, tossing her cropped head and waving her arms about. “I couldn’t just stay behind. The army needed all the help it could get, you said so yourself. I kept thinking about that story Ailia told, about Lady Liria dressing up as a page to go into battle with her knight-prince. And then I remembered what Ailia said, about life being like a story, except that we’re making it up. And I decided that this was what I wanted to happen in my story.”

  Jomar was nearly screaming. “Are you out of your mind? This is a war! You’re not staying here.”

  “Lori?” Damion gasped.

  “Damion! I’m so glad you’re all right,” she cried, running to him. “When I saw you had been surrounded I turned back and tried to cut my way to you. But I was pulled off my horse and had to fight—” Lorelyn fell suddenly silent: she had caught sight of Martan, lying lifeless on the ground.

  Jomar saw what she was looking at. “There!” he snapped. “He’s dead—do you see? Dead! This isn’t a game. It’s real.”

  Lorelyn’s face was very pale. Slowly, step by step, she advanced toward the body. Slowly she knelt beside it, looking into Martan’s white face. Then she kissed the boy’s forehead and covered his face.

  He will always be young now, Damion thought. Another thought occurred to him. “Lori—it was you who helped kill those Zimbourans—” he said in horror.

  “I had to,” she said. “I didn’t want to do it, Damion, but they were going to kill you.” Lorelyn walked over to the bodies and knelt beside them, her head bowed. Presently the tears that she had not shed for Martan began to stream down her cheeks.

  He shook his head in amazement. “She’s a true Paladin.”

  Jomar groaned. “She’s a true imbecile. It’s all pretense to her, don’t you see? A kind of play-acting.”

  Damion watched as Lorelyn prayed over the dead soldiers. Perhaps she was a little like someone playing a role, every gesture exaggerated. As he walked up to her Lorelyn lifted brimming blue eyes to him. “Damion—I truly didn’t want to kill them—I had no choice!”

  He relaxed somewhat: this was real grief. No Paladin ever desired to kill, but her distress was genuine enough: he could feel it pulsing through her words. She might have proven herself a warrior, but her innocence seemed unharmed by her deeds. For himself, though, he felt no lifting of the burden. He could cleanse the stains of battle from his sword, but not from his mind. The still young faces of the dead Zimbourans would never leave it.

  At last Lorelyn stood. “What are we to do, Damion? I’m afraid to call out with my mind—any sorcerer could overhear, including him.”

  “You’re right. Best not to use the mind-speech, then. Perhaps our Loänan will come back to look for survivors.”

  “And perhaps not,” said Jomar, coming up to join them. “Well, this is a mess, all right. Out in the wastelands—and no horses!”

  Damion gave him a bleak look, then glanced about him. There was nothing to be seen but sand in all directions. The sandstorm had buried the pitiful fields and changed the local features of the land beyond recognition. He looked for the hills, orienting himself. “Where is the camp?” he asked.

  Jomar squinted into the distance. “Due east of here.”

  They began to trudge along. The sun rose higher and waves of heat began to shimmer above the dunes. They were obliged to stop and remove their armor—its weight and heat were becoming unbearable.

  When at last they arrived at the camp they halted in dismay.

  The tents were all burned and half-buried in sand, the river and ditches choked with mud. Several sheds had blown down, ad
ding to the destruction. All was still: there was no one in sight.

  Jomar swore softly as he inspected the damage. “Here are some water bottles, at least—we’d better take them with us.” He straightened. “We’ve got to leave. With any luck we’ll run into more of our army. Some of them might have been scattered. They can’t all be dead or captured.”

  A strident bellow came from behind them. Turning, they saw the head of an ypotryll emerge from one end of a small dune. The creature rose to all fours, shedding the mound of sand that had been deposited over its humped back. It shook out its shaggy coat and grunted at them peremptorily, but did not move from the spot. It was, they saw, still hobbled at the ankles.

  “We’ve got transportation anyway,” said Damion, freeing the animal. It made at once for the shallow irrigation pond, now clogged with wet sand, and began to drink noisily.

  “Can you control that brute?” asked Jomar.

  “I hope so. I wish Ailia were here, she’s so good with animals.”

  “The last thing we need is another woman on hand. Come on, let’s go.”

  The ypotryll was willing and able to carry them, though not without some grumbling at first. They packed as many unspoiled provisions as they could onto its broad back, and there was still room for two to ride. Damion walked at the beast’s head: there were no reins and no halter, as the animal was meant to be controlled by Nemerei. At last he succeeded in coaxing it to move forward by holding out a feed bag. It stretched out its long neck and followed him.

  “Where to, Jomar?” asked Damion.

  “There’s only one place we can try. The other slaves used to say there was an oasis far out in the desert, a place that was always green whether the rains came or not. It’s supposed to be where the ruins of an old Mohara city lie, with lots of natural wells. Every now and then a slave would escape and run away across the desert. We never saw them again: some said they’d died of thirst, that there never was a city. But some of the Loänan say they saw a spot of green far out in the desert. There could be a real oasis, even if there isn’t any lost city. It’s west of here, they said.”

  “It’s a long way off—across all that desert.”

  “It’s the only way. North and south are all desert, and east is Khalazar.” They moved off slowly across the dunes.

  BY NOON THE HEAT WAS UNENDURABLE.

  “Tie something over your heads,” said Jomar to the others. He had dismounted and Damion was taking his turn on the ypotryll’s back. “That white skin of yours is going to burn to a crisp out here.” He began to lecture Lorelyn again as he led the animal forward. “The idea of you coming here, endangering yourself like this. I ought to kill you!”

  Damion couldn’t help smiling at that. “Wouldn’t that be self- defeating? Tell me, Lori, how did you arrange to come with us? How did you get Raimon’s armor?”

  “He was hurt in that fall in the Barrens—the healers said he did some damage to his back, and said it would take weeks to put it right. So I put on his armor and went and jousted in his place.”

  “Yes—I wondered how he was able to come back like that,” said Damion. “I visited with him afterward, and he was lying flat and in a good deal of pain.”

  “That’s right. It was I you saw in the tournament. At first I only wanted to prove to Jo that I could fight on horseback, and I meant to take the helmet off and show myself. But then I realized Jo still probably wouldn’t let me go. And as I’d fooled everyone once, I thought I could again. I had to let Raimon in on the secret, though. He said he was glad someone could go in his place, he’d been feeling badly about his accident’s costing Jomar one of his knights. We swore the healers to secrecy, and we told Lothar and Martan too—but no one else.”

  “But—” Damion felt slightly dizzy. “Lori, that must mean you were knighted too, at the ceremony in Melnemeron. You were knighted under someone else’s name!”

  “No, I wasn’t: Ailia dubbed me ‘Sir Knight Unknown,’ as Raimon had asked her to do.”

  Jomar continued to bawl at Lorelyn. “Of all the pig-headed, lame-brained—”

  “It’s no use, Jo. She’ll have to stay now,” interjected Damion. “There’s no way to send her back.”

  Jomar swore. He and Lorelyn kept on arguing for some time, and Damion soon grew heartily sick of their repartee. The ypotryll, too, had some negative feelings that it expressed volubly. Twice it halted and had to be alternately coaxed and chastised into moving again.

  Their discomfort grew worse by the minute. The water had to be severely rationed, and each of them began to dream of pools and running streams and pitchers of iced water. Their mouths were dry, their throats parched, their lips and tongues seemed to swell. None of them spoke now: the only sound was the muffled thud of the ypotryll’s broad hooves. The glare of sun on sand was painfully bright and harsh. Lorelyn sprawled upon the beast’s hump, her eyes half-closed, her skin pink with sunburn where her makeshift turban did not protect it. Damion hunched atop the packs containing their meager supplies, squinting at the horizon.

  Oasis, Damion thought, trying to picture it in his mind. Trees. Plants. Water—water . . . He sank slowly into a semiconscious state in which he found himself once more in the garden at Halmirion. All around were fragrant flowers, shrubbery, trees, and—tormentingly—the sound of fountains, the music of water at play. Ailia was there sitting on a fountain’s rim, her face framed in flowers and her eyes large and soft and oddly hopeful as they gazed up into his . . . He tried to speak to her, but his mouth was too dry, and she faded away along with the pleasure garden, another desert mirage.

  The sun began to descend by painfully slow degrees. A wind picked up, hot and dry, stirring the sand along the crests of the dunes and blowing it into their faces. Damion roused from the stupor into which he was falling as their mount gave a sudden lurch. Was it stumbling, about to collapse? He stared down. The animal was feeding.

  All around them the ground was covered in tough sharp-bladed grass. Ahead of them a flat plain stretched, dotted with thorny bushes and squat gnarled trees. And in the distance was a dark blur . . .

  “The oasis,” he croaked. Lorelyn straightened up, blinking.

  “Not far now,” rasped Jomar.

  The sun was sinking, huge and red beneath a bank of cloud, and as they moved on the desert night fell swiftly. A cool breeze rattled the stiff leaves and boughs of the little stunted trees. Not far, thought Damion. Not far . . .

  And then the ypotryll reared up with a bellow that seemed to fill all the night around them. With a yell Lorelyn tumbled off its back onto the ground. Jomar whirled with an oath while Damion leaped down beside him and struggled to calm the beast.

  It sank to its knobbed knees, shuddering, and now Damion saw the arrows protruding from its neck and side.

  “Get behind it!” Jomar shouted, pulling Lorelyn toward him.

  The animal’s roars diminished to low groans, and it stretched out its long neck upon the sand. Even as they huddled behind its sprawled bulk the wasteland came alive with figures. Out from behind rocks and bushes they leaped, appearing almost magically out of the landscape: dark-faced men, armed with bows and spears and curved scimitars.

  A voice called out: Jomar started, stood up. He yelled back in the same language, and Damion found he could understand it: it was a curious heavily accented version of Elensi. And the men were Moharas.

  Jomar strode forward, conversing with them.

  “It’s all right,” Damion heard, “all right, do you understand? We are all Moharas together.” This last, Damion thought, had the ring of a ritual phrase.

  “Where did you come from?” came the challenge.

  “From the desert. We rode here on the back of this beast.”

  “What is it? We took it for another of Khalazar’s demons.”

  “This is no Mohara!” said another. “He is a spirit, a genie. He rides upon a monster—”

  “Ai! A genie—”

  “Stop!” Jomar shouted. “I’m a man,
the same as you!”

  “Who are those with you?” the first voice demanded.

  Damion and Lorelyn rose and looked cautiously at the armed men, whose spears and bows were still leveled at them.

  “They’re my friends,” Jomar began, but was interrupted.

  “Pale faces! They are Zimbourans!”

  The spears advanced. “No!” Damion cried. He seized his head cloth and tore it off, exposing his fair hair. Lorelyn followed suit.

  “He’s no Zimbouran, and neither is the woman,” Jomar said.

  “Woman?” The dark-skinned warriors crowded around them: they were a fearsome sight, clad all in dark leather and sporting necklaces of animal claws and teeth. “We thought both were men.”

  They were interrupted by the ypotryll, which gave another loud groan and beat its long tapering tail upon the ground. The men jumped back, but the beast was dead, its blood staining the sand. Damion felt a passing sorrow for the creature, brought out of its own peaceful planet into war upon an alien world. But he turned his attention back to the Moharas.

  “It is he! I know this man!” the leader shouted, pointing at Jomar. “It is Jomar of Felizia! The half-breed!”

  A low muttering went up. The Mohara leader approached Jomar and deliberately spat before his feet. “Get of a dog! Serpent! You carry Zimbouran blood in your veins, you fight beneath their banner. Collaborator!” he bellowed, swinging around to face his men. “This is the half-Zimbouran lackey, the tool of Khalazar, betrayer of Moharas! He joined the Zimbouran army and fought on their side. Khalazar uses such people—spies and traitors, all of them, unworthy to be called Moharas!” He turned to face Jomar again. “So, half-breed, have you been sent back to spy on us? You’ve escaped, is that to be your story—you’ll come with us to our hiding place, pretend to be our friend, and then run off and tell your masters where we are? But it won’t happen, traitor. We will kill you now, you and your spying friends!”