by Alison Baird
“INCREDIBLE. IT SEEMS THAT SHE came not to challenge me, but to answer my request to parley. She knows now it was not a sincere offer, but all the same she hopes to strike a pact. To appeal to my better nature!”
The prince had returned to his throne room and summoned his councillors. The ethereal forms of King Roglug and the regent of Ombar also floated on the air before him: both had now returned to their home world. Roglug guffawed loudly at Mandrake’s last words, then hastily subsided as the wer-worm’s golden eyes turned to him.
“How could you let her live?” snapped the black-haired Loänei who had brought the Brides. “The Tryna Lia herself! Was it not you, Prince, who told us she was perilous? It is mad—heedless. She will destroy us all.”
“She cares nothing about you—and, Erron Komora, it was you brought her into the fortress—into my very presence!” Mandrake spoke harshly, with a reptilian hiss on each sibilant, as he only did when really angry. “Shall we speak of your heedlessness? Unless, perhaps, you suspected who she was all along, and intended that she slay me?”
Erron paled. “I swear I did not know who she was, Highness! She was too well disguised.”
“It is not too late to kill her,” said a voice from the doorway. Lady Syndra stood there, clad in a long green gown of Loänei make, her dark hair loose about her shoulders. “Reconsider, Prince, and rid yourself of this threat once and for all.”
Naugra’s spectral eyes were also fixed on Mandrake. “Hear her, Prince. This is an opportunity, a gift of fate. You must slay the Tryna Lia if you wish to continue as our Avatar, and enjoy Ombar’s protection.”
Mandrake rose abruptly from his throne. “I will consider the matter, and let you know my decision.”
Naugra’s image dimmed and faded, though Roglug’s remained. Mandrake went to the nearest of the tall windows. The lower pane was designed to swing outward: he opened it and stood for a moment staring out.
“What are you going to do?” asked Roglug.
The prince made no reply. Drawing on his magic, he began to transform. A moment later a bright-plumed bird whirred up from the carpet and swooped out of the window into the night.
The golden bird was an old familiar form, not based on any real fowl but invented by him on a whim when first he became adept at shape-shifting. In flight it was fast as a falcon, and the cry it uttered was piercing and powerful, rising and falling like the howl of a wolf: hearing that warning note, few other winged creatures dared approach it. He flew up to the battlements with a few strokes of his golden wings, riding a column of heated air from the boiling springs below. The city lay spread out before him, its lights shining even at this late hour. His temple glowed at the center, like a great lantern of stone.
He recalled a time when there had been no lights on the land below, save for a few flickering tallow candles in mud huts along the river’s edge. The Loänei had left behind their human slaves when the Loänan drove them from this world, and over time the descendants of the freed thralls had thrived and spread. He found them when he came here to seek their vanished masters, and claim the cavern in the hill for his new home. Slowly and inevitably the human population had grown as he watched, driving back the jungle and tainting the river. When at last it grew too large for his liking, Mandrake attacked the settlement in dragon form, frightening away the herd animals, disrupting the local weather so that the villagers’ crops were alternately battered with hail and parched by drought. But the humans had come back over time, lured by the gold-bearing river and the rich volcanic soil. Again and again he had assailed them, and always they had returned in time.
One day a small group of them carried a slaughtered goat up to the very mouth of his cave. Disguised as a lizard clinging to the rock nearby, he watched them with contempt. They killed wyverns in this way, he knew, setting out carcasses laced with poison. Did they think him a mere beast, to fall for such tricks? But a few hours later he noticed that some cockatrices gorging on the carrion were unharmed. Was the goat meat an honest gift, then? Or possibly a bribe? Or . . . Then he realized in a flash what it was: a sacrificial offering, brought here to placate him. They must have some dim recollection of the fearsome dragon-people their ancestors revered. There was something pathetic about their gesture of appeasement, and though he attacked the settlement again that night he did it halfheartedly, inflicting only minor damage this time.
But in his long years of exile from his kind he had forgotten about human tenacity. The people, finding their meat offering spurned, sent a second delegation, this one carrying many trinkets of beaten gold and precious gems. These attracted him as the meat had not, calling to him with their seductive and radiant power. He left his cave at last, tempted beyond bearing, gathered the treasures up, and carried them back to his lair. From that moment on he made no more forays against the settlers, and the town flourished and grew into a great city.
And so the curious cult had developed. The tributes continued, and in time he lost his resentment of the humans and even found their presence diverting. He watched as their settlement expanded, and sometimes he even visited it in his human form. But this nearly proved fatal. He became infatuated with a human woman, a young vestal in his own temple, and revealed himself to her. Unknown to Mandrake, a Loänan was then visiting the city in human guise, observing this cult and suspecting its originator to be a Loänei. It was the Imperial dragon Auron, sent by Orbion to seek news of Prince Morlyn in all the worlds. Even then he had been striving to protect the Tryna Lia, who would not be born yet for centuries, by searching out her prophesied adversary. He had challenged Mandrake, who was forced to flee, and from that day forward the prince had cherished a bitter hatred of Auron for driving him from his chosen home. He had sought refuge, in desperation, among the followers of Valdur in the world of Ombar where the Loänan never went. And there for many years he had been forced to remain.
The golden bird glided down to Ailia’s window, just as he had flown to Khalazar’s tower window on that first night in Zimboura. He alighted on the sill and perched there a moment, staring in. The window was open, as were all windows in the castle on this hot night. Mandrake fluttered down onto the floor, and returned to his human shape. His feet made no sound upon the soft carpet as he approached the bed. With one hand he pushed back the diaphanous netting, gazing down at the sleeper within.
Ailia lay half under the satin sheet, her face turned up and defenseless. Her slender arms and neck were bared by the filmy white nightgown the servants had given her, and with her eyes closed she looked suddenly vulnerable. Her breast rose and fell slowly beneath the thin sheet. It would be the work of an instant to kill her. She had even given him a weapon. A silver dagger lay on the pillow where it had tumbled from her fingers. He took it up carefully, weighing it in his hand. Poor Ailia. She had committed the fatal mistake of listening to her enemy, of desiring a truce. Had she been wiser she would have tried to kill him immediately.
He looked down at her sleeping form again, willing her to move, to flutter her eyelids, to utter a murmur: to appear to be on the verge of waking. How easy, then, it would be to use the knife. If she saw him standing there she would surely attack, defend herself with all the awesome power at her disposal. He would be entitled to protect himself. But Ailia slept the impenetrable sleep of one exhausted in body and mind, drained of all animation but for the slow rise and fall of her breast beneath the covers. Her breathing was regular, soft, peaceful, and she did not stir. Her face was pale and still, emptied of expression, with not even a flutter of her long dark eyelashes to hint at some passing dream. All at once she looked to him like a child—as if sleep had given back to her the innocence she had lost. He stood rooted to the spot, gazing down at her.
Then he set the dagger down again and walked softly back to the window. She has made victory too easy! She has thrown it in my lap. And why, after all, should I kill this girl? She is not what I feared she was. I listened to Syndra’s accounts of her, and never stopped to think that the ima
ge she painted of the Tryna Lia was distorted with her own hate and envy. Ailia has no desire for power and dominance: she is only a hapless pawn in the games of the Archons and the Loänan and the Nemerei. They are the true enemy.
He could have hoped to fight any other foes without recourse to sorcery. His mother’s race was exceptionally tall and strong, and he had worked for uncounted years to push the limits of his physical frame. He could wield a bow or broadsword as tall as himself, jump a wall as high as a man’s head, break a plank with a blow from his bare hand. Yet it was not enough. These skills might give him the advantage over a human assailant, but his worst adversaries were creatures many times his size and immeasurably stronger. In a physical contest with the least of these he would not stand a chance, and there were many situations in which his sorcery could fail him. If only he could exchange this body for another . . .
There was a sudden sharp pain in the side of his neck, as though a red-hot blade were biting into the flesh. It was there that his father’s sword, wielded by the knight Ingard, had struck him long ago. It was not uncommon for a wound from a magical weapon to remanifest as a stigma: such wounds could even fester and bleed. And now there was another stab of agony, this one in his left side: for that same sword had pierced him again, in his fight with Ailia’s companions on Arainia.
He staggered against the window frame, clutching at his neck. Yes, there were two angry welts rising from the skin. The manifestations were caused by stress and fear: he had but to eliminate those emotions, and the wounds would vanish with them. He took several deep, calming breaths, willing the pain away. After a moment it eased, subsiding to a dull ache. With an effort, Mandrake stood upright again. He climbed onto the sill, stooping, and then flung himself over the edge as he called upon the power of the Ether to shift from human to dragon-form.
His human skin he exchanged for a mail of metallic scales; his hands curled into claws; his blood pulsed through mazy veins powered by the vast engine of a draconic heart. He had the eyes and claws of an eagle now, and the wings and ears of a bat; his teeth were tusks that could shear through steel as if through paper. With his altered eyes he was able to see minute details on the ground far below, while his ears were open to a wide range of sounds unknown to the human ear. Two long whip-shaped vibrissae extended from the end of his muzzle, waving gently as they sensed the air currents. His consciousness expanded with his cranium, spreading like a thrown net to encompass centuries of memory a human brain could not hold—instincts and reflexes foreign to his man-self, strange dark hungers, hoards of ancient knowledge, lodes of power.
Fire-red wings arched into the air as he plummeted from the battlements. In this form the sheer drop that would have been death to a human was of no consequence. And very few weapons could harm him. This was the form in which he felt safest: if only he could maintain it for longer periods of time! Some day he would learn to take this dragon-shape permanently, discard his human body forever. He would live as a Loänan, his former human existence all but forgotten. True dragons began their lives as tiny, helpless larvae: even so would the man he was evolve into something greater and stronger. For now he must devise other means to protect himself.
I planned once to make use of the Tryna Lia: perhaps I can still do so. One can knock the sword from the hand of the opponent and snatch it up to use against him. The weapon itself is not the enemy, but rather the one who wields it. The servants of the Imperium are my enemies, not this sorry creature. If I could win her to my side, all her sorcerous powers would be at my disposal. I could take up this prized weapon of theirs—on which they have so clumsily lost their grip—and turn it against them. With Ailia’s power joined to mine, I would not need the Valei—would never need, nor fear, anyone or anything else again.
It was a tempting vision. But how could he seduce the Tryna Lia into becoming his ally and turning on her former protectors?
18
The Duelers’ Dance
WHEN SHE WOKE, AILIA looked about her in blank bewilderment: she had awakened so often of late in strange surroundings that she felt completely at a loss. Then she remembered. The audience hall—the tower—Mandrake.
She sat up, and then she saw that her dagger had been moved. She had set her Thorn with its handle toward her so that she could grab it quickly at need. Now it was the tip of the blade that faced her. She knew at once whose hand had taken it up. He had been here in the room—right beside her, while she slept! She shivered.
But he had done her no harm. She was alive still.
It was a little triumph in its own right. She had trusted him, and he had not betrayed her trust. Her instincts had been right. Thanks to Ana and the Paladins there remained in him some vestige of virtue, a memory of the code of honor he had once served. And if that were so, then he might yet be redeemed.
She threw off the silken covers and pulled the filmy netting aside. The suns were up, and the room in their harsh brilliant light still looked elegant, but had lost its faerie-tale glamor. She washed in the marble bathroom, and combed and braided her hair, then had another look around the apartments. There were many fine gowns in a wardrobe, the property no doubt of one who had intended to use this room before the unexpected guest took her place. Ailia did not touch them, but dressed in her white shift from the temple.
Presently she heard a knock at the door, and cautiously she opened it a crack and peered out. There stood an aged stoop-shouldered woman, her hair wrapped in a scarf. She carried a tray with a domed silver cover. “I have brought you something to break your fast, my lady,” she said.
Ailia opened the door wide, and the maidservant shuffled in and set the tray down on a table near the window. “Your pardon, Highness,” said the elderly woman as she lifted the cover, “but His Highness ordered us to taste the dishes first, lest you should fear any poison in them.” Ailia nodded, but thought it highly unlikely that Mandrake would spare her while she slept only to kill her by poisoning. What would be the point? She watched as the servant sampled the dish of rice, eggs, and boiled fish. Then, the tasting over, she asked the old woman to sit with her and talk to her while she ate. Surprised and a little flustered, the servant obeyed.
“How did you come to be here, may I ask?” Ailia said.
“Offered up, I was, sixty years ago. Bridal offerings was often made then. My mother couldn’t afford to feed me, so to the temple I went. I was only seventeen then: my, but I was frightened! But it was just a place like any other—except grander. They made me a vestal, and put a roof over my head, and gave me bread each day, but I wasn’t ever to leave. Still, it was more’n I ever had at home, where there were so many of us, and so little food. When the Overseer came all we vestals was thrown into the streets, except for the ones his friends carried off for themselves—I can still hear their screams, poor things. But I wasn’t took, praise be, for I was long past my youth—though I was left to make my own way in the world, and I’ve been poor and hungry ever since. When I heard the Golden Bird had been seen in the city, and that people was coming back to live at the castle like in the old days, I offered my services again. They don’t want me for no temple maiden, o’ course, but they brought me up here to be a maidservant.”
Ailia listened, moved. This poor woman had never known true kindness in her life—of course to her the theocrats had been benefactors. She had been used, taken advantage of by them and now by the Loänei. It was an outrage—but for the moment there was nothing she could do.
She picked at the rice dish, but found she had little appetite.
The next few days she spent wandering about the castle on her own. “They always do sleep in the daytime here,” the old woman had explained, “and come out at nightfall—creatures of the night, that’s what the dragon-folk are. I’m afraid you’ll have to amuse yourself, mistress, until the evening. There is to be a ball tonight, in your honor I understand.” It was a truly magnificent place, very reminiscent of Halmirion: there were rooms of marble in many different colors, splend
id statues in niches, gold candelabra the size of saplings everywhere she looked. In addition to a banquet hall and the great throne room there was a ballroom with gilded and muraled walls, and a conservatory so large it had graveled paths winding in and out of its potted trees, all under a dome of glass. She found a door leading out into the courtyard her room looked down on, with its fish pool and rose bowers and trees. The suns’ heat smote the back of her neck like the blast of a forge as she stepped out on the grass, and nothing stirred in the garden. Even the carp hung motionless in the shade of the lily pads. Perhaps this was the reason the Loänei preferred to be active at night: no sinister preference for darkness, but merely a desire to avoid the oppressive heat.
By late afternoon the silence and emptiness of the place had become unsettling. She retreated to her guest room, and found that someone had been there: a cold meal stood on the table, and a red silk kimono and a magnificent formal gown were lying on the bed. The latter was rose-colored, sewn with silk rosettes on skirts and sleeves, and trimmed at neck and cuffs and hem with lace as fine as frost. She held it up against her body: it was lower in the neck than she liked. Its original owner, whoever she might be, was broader in the shoulders and had longer arms, and the hem had been raised. But all in all it was not a bad fit. And the color was flattering. Looking around, she saw a pair of pink slippers also adorned with rosettes and tried them on. These fit her exactly: of course, it would have been easy for them to measure her shoes while she slept. But there was still something almost magical about it, and to her own alarm she felt a foolish flutter. Hastily she put the things away and headed for the bathroom. She had not had a proper bath in days.
The room was as magnificent and luxurious as the other chambers, with its large sunken bath of marble and taps that gave hot water on demand: she wondered if this came from the hot springs in the caverns below. There were aromatic soaps and bath oils such as the Arainians liked to use—indeed, every luxury had been provided. Only the room’s mirrored walls gave her pause. People here were plainly not troubled by nudity: she had been amazed to see scores of unclad bathers of both sexes lolling in Mag’s hot spring every morning. It was true that she had been raised on Mera, in a society with a long tradition of shame and modesty. Only on Arainia had she begun to feel, when dressing alone in her bedchamber, the innocent animal pleasure of possessing a body—of being embodied. At such times the sheath of her skin seemed to come alive as it never did under clothing, and her mind in turn knew a thrill of guiltless pleasure. But this room with its abundance of mirrors—this went beyond mere enjoyment of one’s own fleshliness. She felt as though she were being manipulated into self-admiration, and she averted her eyes from the reflected images as she stepped into the foaming bath.
