DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Damion fell silent too, gazing on the stone ruins. Only the Trynisian realm was older than this, and for much of its early history it had been kept separate from the rest of the world. The true civilization of Mera had begun here, long before the ancestors of the Elei sought out their Merei kin in other lands. The Mohara were the first to build, before the Kaans or Shurkanese or the peoples of the west. He felt that he looked back through some enchanted window on an earlier time, the very morning of the human world.

  Time passed, and began to weigh upon the prisoners. What were their captors planning to do with them? To calm her thoughts, Lorelyn began to do Byn-jara exercises, standing on one foot with her arms spread to either side like wings. The “bird in flight” exercise was supposed to train the body’s sense of balance and compose the mind, but Jomar thought it looked ridiculous. He turned away moodily and went to the door. The sentry outside, a tall man with a necklace of warthog teeth over his white linen robe, stopped him with his spear. “Any farther and you die.”

  Jomar bristled. “I’m a Mohara! I belong here, with my people.”

  “Are you sure you would not prefer the company of Zimbourans?”

  Jomar clenched his fists. “You say that again, and you’ll be wearing your own teeth on that necklace.”

  For a moment Damion feared the two men were going to come to blows, but the other just contented himself with a glare. Presently another warrior came striding up to the hut, with several men behind him. It was Unguru, the leader of the men who had captured them. “Take them to the elders now,” he ordered. “It is time for the judging.”

  They were forced to walk in front of the warriors’ leveled spears and scimitars, toward the center of the village. They walked slowly, despite the prodding spearheads. All of them were hurt and weary, and Damion held his hand often to his temple as he walked: the sword gash in it had begun to throb painfully. In the open area at the center of the huts stood a row of Mohara elders. They were unexpectedly magnificent, clad in long robes over billowing trousers of some soft material, dyed in rich ochre and bronze and wine-purple. On their heads were turbans, also dyed in bright hues: the chief’s had a large jewel over the forehead, and a pair of ostrich plumes. At their sides their guards stood, wearing great curved scimitars. Younger men, women, and children gathered behind them, watching with wide eyes.

  “Hear our judgment,” one of the elders intoned, a tall man wearing a leopard skin cloak over his robe. “We hold that you, Jomar, are a spy and informer, in the pay of Khalazar—”

  “That’s a lie!” Jomar shouted. “Who accuses me? I demand to know. I challenge him to a duel!”

  Unguru’s lip curled. “You are not Mohara. You have no right to challenge anyone.”

  Damion could feel the fear and anger radiating from Unguru and the others. He could not blame them, for they lived each day in fear of a Zimbouran invasion. Warriors’ spears surrounded Jomar now, as he stood desperate and furious as a beast at bay.

  Then one of the women cried out, pointing toward the ruin. “The shaman, the shaman!” Others took up her cry. The seated figure was stirring in its alcove: perhaps the commotion had roused the old man from his trance. Gasps arose from the villagers as he stood, climbed slowly and stiffly down from his stone seat, and approached the gathering. In addition to the goatskin loincloth he wore a string of animal claws and teeth, his only ornament. The old man walked up to the prisoners with his halting gait, then stood still in front of them and spoke. “I knew that you would come,” he said in a wheezing voice. “I asked for help to come to us here, help to fight our enemy, and I received a dream in answer. In it I saw you.”

  “You are a Nemerei?” Damion said.

  “That is the Elei word. Yes.” The old man nodded. “Speak to me of your errand: I will understand. I am Wakunga: I dream for this tribe, and the gods talk to me.”

  “You know why we are here?” asked Damion.

  The old man nodded. “I know,” he answered in his own tongue. “I have dreamt it. You and the warrior and the woman, but chiefly you. It is your presence here that will decide the later course of events: how, I cannot say yet, but I feel it. And you have all walked the Dream-place. This, too, I can tell.”

  “You mean the Ethereal Plane?” asked Lorelyn. “We passed through it to come here.”

  “Yes. You come from the Morning Star’s daughter.” Wakunga gestured skyward with one arm. “It is she who sent you.”

  “What do you know of her?” asked Damion.

  “We have tales in our tribe, that the star of morning and evening would at times descend to the earth in a woman’s form. That she would one day take a mortal mate and bring forth a woman-child. And that this being will one day save, not only Mohar, but all the world.”

  Damion recognized the strands of Elei lore. They had brought their tales and traditions to this place in ages past. Wakunga was gazing at him with deep, dark eyes. “And you have dwelt on high with her; she has sent you down from the sky to aid us in our struggle.”

  “Yes,” said Damion. It was near enough to the truth, after all.

  The shaman turned and addressed the people in the old Mohara tongue. A hush fell over them all as he spoke. Unguru and a few other young men looked displeased.

  “What is he saying, Jo?” asked Lorelyn.

  “He says we were sent here by the gods,” said Jomar, listening intently. “He says—he says that I’m the Zayim!”

  “But you’re not,” she objected. “And we aren’t sent from the gods. We must tell them they’re wrong about that.”

  “Not if it keeps them from sticking spears in our backs,” replied Jomar. “It won’t hurt them or us—look!”

  A group of women had come forward, their hands full of flowers. They laid these shyly at the travelers’ feet, looking up with wondering eyes. The chief stepped forward, his face for a moment impassive beneath his plumed headdress as he gazed at them. Then he bowed his proud head.

  “Lorelyn is right, Jo,” said Damion, disturbed. “We can’t allow this to continue.”

  “I doubt you could stop it now if you tried,” Jomar told him. “These people are desperate for hope. So they think we’re servants of a goddess: what of it? It’s much better than being killed.”

  A FEAST WAS HELD THAT NIGHT in the village. The three visitors from the stars were enthroned on chairs of woven cane, and garlands were placed about their necks, while the Mohara performed a dance of gratitude to the Evening Star, raising their hands to Arainia where she shone in the clear sky, praising her and the emissaries she had sent.

  Jomar clearly reveled in his new status. Now sporting elaborate war paint all over his face and torso, he spoke with his fellow Moharas in their own ancient native tongue and joined in their celebrations. Damion and Lorelyn felt rather abandoned as they sat watching the leaping flames of the bonfires and the dancing flame-lit figures. Jomar seemed to be moving away from them, becoming incorporated into this alien tribe of which they still knew so little.

  “At least he has returned to his own people,” said Damion. “He wanted that very badly.”

  “I know, but—it’s as though he’s not our Jo, anymore,” said Lorelyn, trying to distinguish the painted figure of her friend as it blended with all the others in the night. The thought saddened her somehow.

  But as the light of dawn seeped out of the east he came back to them at last, bounding over the ashen remains of the fires to stand before them in triumph. “There’s talk of getting up a raid on the Zimbouran farmsteads,” he told them, “instead of just defending this old city. These people are tired of hiding and skulking around; they want to do something.”

  “They wouldn’t attack the farmers?” said Damion. “Those people can’t help their lot, you said.”

  Jomar looked stern. “They still stole our land.”

  Damion noted the our, and said: “Their forefathers did. And they’ve nowhere else to go. It’s Khalazar who is the real enemy, remember. He is the one we came to dea
l with.”

  “Yes. Well, there’s some talk of freeing slaves from the camps. But there aren’t many of us, we can hardly take on the God-king’s troops. The whole Arainian army couldn’t defeat them! All we can hope to do is conduct a few forays.”

  “I’ll help,” offered Lorelyn eagerly. “He’s right, Damion, we should do whatever we can, even if it’s only a little. Otherwise the whole mission to Mera will have been a failure. We can’t go back home, so we might as well fight on, as best we can.”

  “I don’t know what the Moharas will make of a woman warrior,” said Jomar doubtfully.

  “If any of them wants to challenge me, he’s welcome,” she declared, tossing her cropped head defiantly. “I won’t be left out of this, Jo.”

  Damion sighed. “All right, I’ll join you. I promised I’d help, Jo, and I will.”

  Glancing up, Damion suddenly noticed Wakunga standing not far off. The old man, he realized with some discomfort, was gazing not at Jomar but at him, and his expression was oddly intent.

  12

  Castaway

  “IT IS MY FAULT!” moaned Auron. The dragon paced to and fro like a fretting dog in the gardens of the guesthouse. “My fault . . . I have failed utterly in my sacred duty.”

  “I, too,” said Taleera, her crest and pinions drooping. “I am not worthy to be her guardian.”

  Falaar raised his head from his forepaws and fixed them both with a golden eye. “Thou sayest sooth, but deeds are needed now, not words.”

  “What!” screeched Taleera, rising from the ground in a many-colored flurry and hovering in front of the cherub. “I have never been so insulted in my life!”

  “The words were thine,” said Falaar, tilting his eagle’s head in puzzlement.

  “Lummox! You did not have to agree with me.” Taleera flew over to Auron and settled to the ground in front of him. “Don’t you worry, Auron, we will find her.”

  “But where to seek her?” Falaar queried. “She hath at her command a flying vessel, and may have fled through the Mid-Heaven to any world.”

  “She has not fled.” There was a curious note of pride in Auron’s voice. “I know my pupil’s character. She has not run from danger, but toward it. She has gone to Mandrake—to face him, to parley. You heard how she asked, again and again, to be allowed to do so.”

  “Merciful heavens!” exclaimed the firebird, holding up her pinions in horror. “He’ll not parley with her. He will kill her!”

  “Then we must needs seek for her in Mera or in Nemorah,” the cherub said. “For if thy presumption is correct, Loänan, it is to one of those worlds that she has gone.”

  “You will come with us?” said Taleera in surprise. “Should you not guard the Star Stone?”

  “The Archons’ gem is safe here,” the cherub answered. “My people will take charge of it. I would aid thee and Auron in the search. And we must not delay in seeking her. It is not good for Ailia to be so long separated from the Star Stone.” He looked down at the alabaster casket lying between his paws. “It is lodestar and lodestone to her, guiding her toward her true purpose. Without its influence she may go astray, and be lost to us.”

  “The parley was to take place in Nemorah,” Auron said. He reared up and spread his golden wings. “We must go there, I think. Even if it is too late to stop their confrontation, we can at least lend her our aid.”

  AILIA WOKE TO THE SIGHT of a window filled with stars.

  It might have been the night sky as she had seen it so often before, from windows in houses, dormitories, and palaces. But as she gazed at it a blazing blue star rose before her eyes, larger than any star save a sun ever looks from a planet’s surface; and after it there came another that was smaller and yellow in color. Many stars, Auron had told her, were partnered in their cosmic dance as these two were: Meraur and Merilia, the suns of Nemorah. Her craft was suspended in the void not far from that world, and she was suspended within it. For the planet was not near enough to draw upon Ailia with its binding force: she hung in midair as though levitating, her limbs afloat and her hair billowing about her like a cloud, along with the star charts and various small objects she had not thought to store away in the ship’s cabinets. It had been rather pleasant to fall asleep in that position, and every muscle in her body was utterly relaxed. But now that she was awake, she was once more uneasily aware of her situation. She had fled those whose duty it was to protect her from harm. Her star-ship was adrift within the domain of the alien suns: beyond her little vessel stretched black unimaginable abysses that she shared with no other creature, not the merest mote of living matter. A pale moon shone high above: she stared at its gray face, at the nameless mountains and night-filled valleys, the arid airless wastes. Nothing lived there—had ever lived there, and nothing ever would. There was no atmosphere, no body of water, no green and growing thing in its sphere. No mortal had ever walked the slopes of those barren vales, climbed those stony peaks, sat and contemplated the luminous beauty of the dust-gray deserts. She gave a little shiver. She was alone as no Arainian or Meran had ever been in living memory. Like the stars and planets themselves—for they were lonelier by far than islands, which were rooted at least in the same seabed, and joined together in chains. There was nothing at all to connect these flying spheres, these fragile havens of life and warmth, with one another: each spun and circled in absolute solitude, surrounded only by emptiness. The thought filled her with a kind of dread.

  But she had a mission to fulfill, and she must follow it through. She must meet with Mandrake, accept his offer of parley, and attempt to reason with him. And if she failed, if she were lost—“The others can carry on without me,” she said to herself. “I am not that important, whatever they say.” And she forced down her fear.

  Beating her limbs as though she were swimming, Ailia made her way to the window and gazed in silence at the world below: a world green as an emerald, robed with seas and sprawling continents. She reached down to touch the crystal ball. She must leave this exalted orbit, re-enter the Ether by some other portal and emerge within the air of the green planet. Presently she felt the surge of power, and the vessel shifted from its course as a seagoing ship does when a wind takes its sails. The blazing chasm of the Ether opened before her, then vanished again, and she saw that she was in the atmosphere. At once the celestial body’s pull asserted itself: Ailia dropped to the cabin’s floor with a painful thud, while the loose objects showered down around her.

  The ship was falling freely. A red glow flickered outside the windows as her passage burned the air. She was not afraid: a shield of quintessence surrounded the dragon-ship, and even were it to give way she knew the hull could withstand the fiercest temperatures. The sails too were of purest salamander silk. I must look like a falling star to those below, Ailia thought. The red glow increased, and then faded away again, and she guessed that the invisible shield had gone, too. She was among the clouds now. Beneath them, and patched with their doubled shadows, lay a green ocean scattered with a few irregularly shaped islands. A larger land mass lay to the east, its edge scalloped with many bays. Land, sea, and sky were all green—the land darker than the sea, while the sky above was lighter in hue than either. Sea and sky owed their tint to the blended light of the suns, no doubt, but as the ship descended she saw that the land’s greenness came from dense jungles clothing it.

  She went to the console, rubbing a bruised elbow, and seized the knob that made the wings beat. “Crystal,” she said, shifting her hands to the globe, “show me the chief city of this world.” It displayed for her an aerial view of a great river, with many buildings surrounding it. “Take me there,” she commanded it, and again the ship altered its course like an obedient mount. A few hours passed before she looked down and recognized the river, a long red-brown one with countless venous tributaries, a great artery in the planet’s flesh. To either side of it were many curious mounds rising from the green canopy: they were like small steep-sided hills, completely enveloped in verdure. She coul
d also see ranges of mountains with conical summits to the east, some belching forth fumes like immense chimneys.

  The crystal globe suddenly flared with a bright red light, like a warning. Ailia glanced out the window and recoiled in alarm. A flight of dragons was approaching her vessel, flying at great speed through the clouds: but they were not Loänan. Their scales were black as night. Firedrakes! With them were other, smaller creatures like two-legged and long-necked dragons, with the tiny figures of riders clinging to their backs. So Mandrake had set a guard on his city. She called to the creatures with her mind, but received no reply.

  Wildly she reached for the crystal. But the swift-flying firedrakes were already nearly upon her, spouting flame.

  Not far away lay a chain of volcanic islands, heavy plumes of ashen smoke hanging above their peaks to form one tremendous cloud. What if I were to go through that smoke? They couldn’t follow me through it. The inside was likely pitch-dark, the smokes poisonous and heavy with suspended ash. Surely nothing that breathed, even a firedrake, could enter that cloud and live. But I would be safe. This ship was made to be impervious to all outer atmospheres.

  The wyverns and their riders fell back as soon as it became apparent where she was heading, but the firedrakes continued to close on the ornithopter, their wings drawn in tight against their flanks as they dived: swift deadly shapes like javelins in flight. They could not burn the salamander silk of the sails, but they could easily tear them asunder with their claws and teeth. And magic alone would not hold the ornithopter aloft . . .

  Quickly Ailia spun the little wheel next to the eagle knob, bringing the craft about and at the same time working the lever that increased the frequency of the wing beats. The heavy gray-black crag of smoke and ash lay directly ahead of her now. Behind her the firedrakes opened their jaws, but the speed of their flight did not permit them to spout fire: the flames would merely have streamed back around their own bodies.