by Alison Baird
A ray of light sprang up from the stone, piercing the thin gauze of a captive cloud to rise through the crystal vault high above. Within it there rose a radiant form that resembled a flying bird—a bird of fire, soaring up from the Stone’s depths. It too soared up to the cloudy roof and vanished from their sight. It was the very same sign that the Arainians had beheld when Ailia took her throne, the Stone’s acknowledgment of its chosen wielder. The ambassadors were moved: the rumor of their awe went up like the voice of a sea, rebounding from the adamantine walls. In the watery chamber a makara raised his elephantine head above the surface and trumpeted.
“It is a sign,” exclaimed one of the dragon monarchs. “A sign! An eidolon out of the Ether—the Elmir itself!”
The earth-dragons’ king snarled. “That, or a conjuring trick. How can we know? And even if she is the one prophesied, what of it? That proves only that you have indeed come to bring war, as the prophecy said. I will have none of it, or you!” Torok declared, rearing up on his haunches and spreading his crimson wings wide. “Morlyn wants us to be free, as he is free.”
“Free!” exclaimed Taleera. “Can you call any being free who has sold his soul to the dark one? If you do not beware, you will fall into the same trap! There will be no more talk of freedom then!”
“Morlyn does not wish to make war,” the red dragon replied. “I am come to convey a message from him. He asks that the Tryna Lia go to him on his home world of Nemorah, to parley. He will not come to her, as his life has too often been threatened by her allies, but he assures her safety if only she will go to him.”
“That is out of the question,” said Taleera decidedly, before Ailia could speak.
“You see?” Torok said, turning to the rest of the creatures. “His offer is rejected. If war follows, it will not be the prince’s fault.”
The Emperor of Heaven arose. “We will think on these matters,” he announced, “and all come together again tomorrow eventide, to see if an accord can be reached.” And with that he descended the throne, accompanied by the Imperial dragons, signaling that the audience was at an end.
“WELL, I FAILED,” said Ailia to Auron and Taleera, as they sat in the garden of the dragons’ guesthouse.
“At least you tried,” said the dragon. “That is important. No one can say you did not try for peace.”
The garden was filled with people, all of such unearthly beauty that they seemed more like animated statuary than human beings: the women all young with skin like flawless porcelain, the men like idealized heroes cast in marble. Most Loänan preferred to assume young, strong bodies when they took the shapes of other species. But she had grown used to this by now, and her eyes barely dwelled on them. Only Auron continued to take the form of a plump and diminutive old man—to put her at ease, perhaps. The firebird in her own shape perched on the back of the stone bench where he and Ailia sat. Hada the kitsune was there, too, in his true form. There were also two serpents larger than pythons, with necks that they could flatten and spread in the manner of a cobra, and a black furred creature that looked not unlike a domestic cat, only the size of a leopard.
“Well!” exclaimed Taleera, cocking a ruby-red eye at Auron. “There’s one that will bear watching—King Torok! He is clearly Morlyn’s creature.”
“He does not speak for all the Loänan, Princess,” the golden dragon assured Ailia. “Not even for all dragons of earth.”
She looked at him. “Mandrake and I are dividing your people, aren’t we? Auron, I’m so sorry.”
“No, Princess, this schism is very old. It dates to the time when my people first lived and mingled with yours.”
“Then I must try to convince Torok that I mean no harm.”
“Small chance of that, I fear,” said Taleera.
“Falaar, is there nothing your people can do?” Ailia implored the cherub. He was reposing sphinx-fashion on the mossy ground, head raised.
The cherub’s voice was solemn as he replied. “When last my people went to war the very face of Heaven was marred. We fear what may happen should we confront Valdur’s hosts again. We do not fear our own fates—it is an honor undreamed-of for one of us to die in battle—but the human worlds would be laid waste by the sorceries we unleashed.”
“You mean, another Disaster?” asked Ailia.
“That is our fear. And so we watch and wait, and the votaries of Valdur watch and wait, and the wars in your little worlds go on. Yet they are as nothing compared to the destruction that would occur, should our hosts join in this fray.”
She turned desperately to Auron again. “Is there anything that can be done? Can the Emperor do nothing?”
“He has lived more than a thousand of your years, remember, and his strength and authority are not what they once were. His body weakens, and I think it will not be long before he seeks the Ether and dies. And our enemies know it. He will do what he can, but he is not the master of the people, rather their servant.”
“All races that bear human blood will support Ailia in whatever she wishes to do,” said Hada, looking at the cait-sith and the two nagas. “And Chukala, queen of the myrmecoleons, has declared she is on Ailia’s side: though being a hive-creature she naturally favors a female ruler. Her people will all follow her lead, of course. And the cherubim are with us, and the firebirds. But the manticores do not favor our cause, and the rest are undecided. I am afraid a war is inevitable,” he stated, shaking his head. “Now not only the Loänan are divided but all the Celestial Empire.”
“Curse that Mandrake creature!” said Taleera angrily. “What does he hope to gain from all of this?”
“If only I could go to his own world and talk to him, as he asked,” said Ailia. “Perhaps—perhaps I could reason with him.”
“Far too dangerous,” said Taleera.
“Then I could go there by ethereal projection, as I did for Khalazar.”
“No, child. You do not understand yet how dangerous Mandrake is, how subtle and persuasive he can be. It is not so much his powers that I fear. He is cunning and filled with deceit. He traps his victims in webs of words—not lies, but half-truths. Do not speak to him!”
“What if he and I met here?” Ailia suggested.
“He would not come,” said Taleera. “He would say that the Loänan have threatened him in the past, and he would not be safe here. I know him! He made you that offer on purpose, knowing that you must refuse it. Thus he appears to be the conciliatory one, you the haughty leader bent on war. We might as well begin to prepare for battle.”
“But a stellar conflict!” said Auron, aghast. “It could turn into another War of Heaven.”
Ailia rose. “I beg your pardon, but I must retire. This has been a long day, and a frightening one. I feel very weary.”
Taleera agreed. “Yes, it grows late and you need your rest. There will be much to do tomorrow.”
Ailia left them and walked slowly toward the guesthouse. She was filled with anguish for the losses in the battle. Even if Jomar had thought of it, she had given her approval to the plan, and the responsibility for it lay with her. There must be no more such battles. Above her the stars were big and bright and alien: the old familiar constellations that had accompanied her on all her previous travels were nowhere to be seen. Those strange stars blazed down upon her—like eyes, she thought: watching, judging, taking her measure. Whatever decision the Empire’s peoples came to, pain and suffering on an unimaginable scale would be the inevitable result. It must not happen, Ailia thought, filled with horror. I am the cause of all this, I started it just by being who I am. She bent her head beneath their luminous gaze.
A plan had begun to form within her mind even as she listened to the others talk. But to act on it would require all the courage she could summon, and what wisdom she had as well, for from this time on her deeds would affect not only her own life but the lives of countless others. Her own words came back to her, the same words that had inspired Lorelyn: Life is a story, except that the people in it are also
writing it. They can help to decide what will happen, and how it will end.
Ailia glanced around her as she entered the front hall of the house. No one was there. She would have watchers, guardians shape-shifted to innocuous forms. But she too could play that trick: not with shape-shifting, not yet; but she could disguise herself. She quickly and quietly summoned a glaumerie: the likeness of an Elei woman, tall and fair, and clad in raiment finer than the simple apricot-colored chiton Ailia wore, a woman whose beauty would have turned heads on Mera, but whose appearance in this world was commonplace.
No one stopped her as she walked back out the door. Her deception had worked, she knew, for the Loänan would never have let her leave alone.
She walked on through the grounds. Ephemeri fluttered among the trees, their leaf-wings rustling stiffly like paper fans. Fountains, lit from beneath by many-colored underwater lights, flung up plumes of luminous blue, or gold, or crimson spray against the gathering darkness.
She continued on, through the orderly parks, to the edge of the city. It might have been Mirimar on a carnival day, she thought as she looked at the teeming streets. All around her were wondrous figures, furred, feathered, scaled, strangely bedizened. But these were not costumed revelers, they were living beings: visitors from every world of the Imperium, come to sample the wares and wonders of the dragon-world. On the far side of the street strolled a group of men and women who were literally covered in hair—thick shaggy fur that coated even their faces and hands. It took Ailia some time to realize they were human at all, and not some species of ape. Woodwoses, they must be: the Wild Men of Meran legend. A group of satyrs capered to the music of a flutelike instrument, horned heads tossing, naked swaying torsos changing strangely into the shaggy and backward-curving legs of goats. Brazen automata shaped like horses clopped along the streets, bearing their riders all about the city without tiring. No, the mythmakers of old had not been idle dreamers. They had merely recorded what they had actually seen here, and in other distant worlds of Talmirennia.
She continued to walk purposefully along the city’s broad avenues, until she came to the wharfs. And here were many sky-ships resting quietly at anchor, just as ordinary seagoing vessels might, their wing-sails folded upright like the wings of butterflies. Some were small, no larger than a skiff, others were immense and many-winged, with heavily ornamented fore- and aftercastles.
“May I be of assistance?” asked a voice in her ear as she gazed.
She turned. Beside her stood a tengu, a singular-looking creature. He resembled a great bird, with leaf-green plumage and a hooked bill, but there was something oddly anthropomorphic about him, too: his head was rounded, with large dark eyes, and at the “wrists” of his wings were handlike claws. He was speaking Elensi too, in a croaking parroty voice. He winked at her, mimicking the human gesture roguishly, and waved a pinion toward the winged vessels. “Are you a Nemerei, my lady? If so, all these elegant flying conveyances are for hire.”
“Don’t you listen to him!” shouted another voice, this one speaking an unknown tongue that she had to translate mentally. “Tengus can’t be trusted, lady. Hire your conveyance from me.” Another curious creature came forward, running on short stubby legs: he was a kappa, something like an ape but with the hard shell-armor of a turtle encasing his body. “Don’t you believe that petask. Tengus are full of trickery! And that one is the worst of them all. He’s got all the scruples of—”
“A kappa?” suggested the tengu.
“A goblin, crossbred with a—”
The tengu reached out, placed a wing-claw atop the kappa’s head, and thrust it down inside his turtle shell. Noises of muffled outrage came from within and the hairy arms waved wildly. “Pay no heed, mistress,” the bird-man said. “Kappas are tiresome creatures. Stupid, too. It’s said their brains are mostly water,” he explained in a penetrating stage whisper. “That’s why they never bend over—else their brains would dribble out their noses.” He pointed with a pinion at a vessel. “I can see you are a lady of means and—if I may say so—good character. You needn’t pay right away! Pay me only on your return, if you wish.”
The ship had no bowsprit: instead its prow was carved in the shape of a dragon’s horned head, with eyes that were pale gems, glittering cold as rime. Prow and hulls were clad in lapping scales that shone like beaten gold. Its wings were broad sheets of yellow canvas supported by ribs of gilded wood. Another pole thrust out horizontally from the stern like an elongated rudder, ending in a flat fan shape: it reminded Ailia of the toy windmills with wooden blades that Island villagers whittled for their children.
An inner voice shrilled at her. There was still a chance: she could decline his generous offer and return to the guesthouse at once. “I would like to see the inside first,” she said instead.
“Of course, my lady.” They crossed the wooden gangway and stepped onto the ship’s deck. It was tiled like the hull with thousands of golden salamander-scales, hard as metal under her slippered feet. The windows were panes of unbreakable adamant, carefully caulked around the edges to prevent any air from escaping should the ship be forced to drop out of the Ethereal Plane and into the vacuum of the void.
“Here is the entrance,” said the tengu, pushing a lever. It opened a low rectangular door in the stern cabin. “It is designed to be an airtight seal, and there is an antechamber within.” They passed through the small cubicle and descended a metal stair into a long, low-roofed room with padded walls—“To prevent injury once one is outside the sphere of gravity.” There was a table on which several maps lay: star charts, and maps of the continents of alien worlds. A console was set into the front wall under a window. Many strange knobs and projections arose from it, and mounted in its center was a crystal globe about the size of her head. “Now, however great a Nemerei you may be, your power alone could not lift the ship far or fast enough to make it an effective vehicle for travel. That is where the mechanism comes in, to make it an ornithopter—a vessel that flies like a bird.” The tengu pulled on a brass knob shaped like a flying eagle. There was a clanking of gears and Ailia saw, out the port window, a great silken pinion lower itself until it was at right angles to the hull. Its twin on the starboard side did the same. “To fly, you simply put two powers, magical and mechanical, together. This is how dragons are able to fly, by combining sorcery with physical flight.”
Ailia turned to examine the crystalline globe. It was clear as glass, but she thought she saw a flickering of pale light within its depths. “That is an oracle, my lady, such as all our star-ships have. There is a power within it that comes from the Ethereal Plane, and can reveal to you the portals leading to that realm. It will augment your own powers as well, and it can warn you of dangers, and display things on command. Spirit of the crystal, show us another world,” commanded the tengu, stroking the globe with his wingtip.
The quivering luminescence was gone; in its place an image filled the crystal’s depths. Peering at it, she saw it was a scene in some strange land. There was a forest unlike any she had ever seen: the foliage of its trees was red and gold and vermilion, the harsh brilliant hues of autumn, yet the leaves showed no signs of decay, and none had fallen to the ground. It seemed these were their normal colors. The sun above was huge and red-golden, like a setting sun—only it stood at the zenith; its beams fanned down red as firelight through the boughs. In and out among the trees firebirds were gliding on their jewel-bright wings. Their nests were not untidy heaps of twigs, but elaborate bowers adorned with flowers and spices and brightly colored stones. They sang as they flew, the same joyous song that Taleera had sung in the alpine forest.
“I can hear them!” she exclaimed.
Then the scene changed to a vista from another world: its colors were as cool and restful as those of Taleera’s world had been hot and vibrant, shades of blue and pale purple melting one into the other. Through hanging veils of mist she saw a forest of pale azure and lavender color; a purple shore sloping down to a dim blue sea; an ameth
yst sky in which an immense moon hung, three-quarters full. Blue and green fronds stirred. Out of the wood there stepped a lithe, graceful creature, ivory-white, in size between a horse and a deer. The tail was long and ended in a plumy tuft, while a mane like a horse’s, only softer and more luxuriant, fell like foam along the crest of the neck. She gazed at it in open-mouthed wonderment. Among her foster father’s exotic south-sea treasures had been the dried body of a seahorse, and Ailia had often marveled at how closely its arching neck and head mimicked those of a real horse. She saw here that same miracle, that same blend of familiar and alien. But it was the horn that held her gaze: that wondrous, single horn, with no stump or socket to show where a second horn might once have been. It was shaped like a spiral seashell, softly shining with its own nacreous luster, as though its coils enclosed a shaft of light. For a brief moment the creature stood there, poised on the points of its cloven hooves, holding her still with its horn, its seahorse strangeness, the beneficence of its lamblike smile. Then with a single light and airy bound it was away, not galloping like a horse but moving in graceful leaps like a gazelle. “A Tarnawyn,” she whispered. “A unicorn—I have never seen one before—”
“You see! This vessel can take you anywhere in the Imperium—anywhere at all,” said the voice of the tengu behind her. “The power within the stone will reveal to you the doorways in the Ether, and the way that leads you to the world you desire to see. Come, lady! One trial flight, and no payment afterward if you are not satisfied. I know you Elei are an honorable race.”
Ailia clutched the edge of the console. The aperture of Possibility beckoned, but it was closing, like a gap between clouds. It was now, or never: an opportunity to be grasped at once, or lost for all time. Ignoring the inner voice that still desperately counseled retreat, she made herself answer, “I will take it. Thank you.”
