by Alison Baird
“We can take care of Mandrake. Remember our vow?”
“Our vow was nonsense,” she said. “And we knew it at the time, we were just too upset to admit it. Neither of us can harm Mandrake. Only Ailia can face him.”
“Well, let’s go to Maurainia,” said Jomar. It was a relief to act at last, after all these weeks of sitting and waiting. “Maybe Ana really is alive. We have been assuming the old woman died because no one has heard from her. But maybe she’s just being cautious. Ethereal messages can be overheard by the enemy, can’t they? If she and Ailia are over there we should try and get them both back. But there’s no chance of crossing by ship, not with the Armada still on the loose. Ailia used some magic or other to get herself across the ocean.”
“I will call for a dragon, as soon as you are ready,” said Lorelyn.
Yehosi entered the room and gave his most obsequious bow. “My lord, the ambassador of Maurainia craves an audience,” the chief eunuch announced.
“Oh, hang it, I forgot all about him,” said Jomar. “We had better see him now. Send him in, Yehosi.”
A heavyset man with a graying beard entered the room, resplendent in the gold and purple livery of Maurainia’s royal house. He too bowed, but not so low, and he looked them over with an imperious eye as he straightened. Then he began to speak to them in Elensi. Though a dead language in Mera, and used with any kind of regularity only in the liturgies of the Western Faith, the tongue of the Elei was still occasionally spoken by ambassadors and by certain tribes of the Mohara, in situations where a lingua franca was required. The peoples of this world had once been united under a Commonwealth dominated by the Elei, and traces of the Fairfolk’s culture and influence remained. “Ambassador Jevon, servant of King Lian I and Queen Paisia of Maurainia,” the diplomat announced himself in formal tones.
Jomar waved a hand. “You can speak in Maurish,” he said, using that tongue. “I learned it long ago.”
The man Jevon blinked in surprise, then recovered himself. “I take it I am addressing the new potentate of Zimboura?”
“There is no potentate,” Jomar answered. “I’m just looking after things until the Zimbourans decide on their real leader.”
Ambassador Jevon’s brows rose. “Indeed? I was given to understand that you had seized the throne for yourself. You say that is not in fact the case? I find it difficult to understand—ah—how is it I am to address you, sir?”
“I’m Jomar. And this is Lorelyn.” He jerked his thumb at her.
The sharp gray eyes shifted to the tall young girl. “Your—consort?”
Jomar bristled. “My friend, and my advisor. Anything you have to say can be said in front of her.”
“Very well, then—Jomar. We in Maurainia are, as I said, disturbed to learn that the situation here is so unstable. It is best that a monarch be crowned immediately after the previous one perishes or is deposed. The people feel more secure. Also, we in Maurainia are wondering about your intentions.” His eyes went back to Lorelyn. “I see that you are not of any Antipodean race, my lady,” noted the ambassador. “You are a westerner yourself, are you not?” It was clear that he saw in her presence a possible advantage to his side.
“I was raised by monks in the Archipelagoes,” Lorelyn explained. “And, well, it’s rather a long story. But to return to the matter in hand, Ambassador—”
“Yes—we keep hearing of this Antipodean conflict. I understand that with the former king’s demise, a struggle has arisen between two rival cults. Your own goddess religion, and another based on the worship of Valdur.”
“It’s the prophecy, Ambassador,” Lorelyn explained. “The Tryna Lia, Princess of the Stars, against the Dragon Prince. We follow the Princess, and they worship the Prince. He’s their god, you see: Valdur in an earthly form.”
“So that’s it—all the old heresies and superstitions have come together in this place! And the Antipodeans really believe this is the Apocalypse?” asked the ambassador.
“It’s true,” Lorelyn insisted. “The Dragon Prince is a real man. And the Princess is a real person too: I know her well, and she is what she claims to be. Truly!”
“With respect, we shall reserve our judgment on that. Regarding such things as prophecies, my liege lord will take some convincing,” the ambassador said.
“Then let him be convinced of this,” returned Jomar. “We’re going to war on the Princess’s side, with or without his help.”
“Well, then, can I at least meet with this Princess of yours?”
Lorelyn and Jomar exchanged glances. “She—she’s not here at the moment,” Lorelyn said.
“I see.” He made no effort to conceal his skepticism.
“Look here, Ambassador,” Lorelyn said. “You simply must make up your mind whose side you’re on. The fate of this whole world is at stake. We are going to do all we can at our end. But you can do your part too: send your navy against the Armada, for instance, and free the Archipelagoes. That would free us to do other things.”
“What things? Do you think you can conquer the remaining fanatics here in Zimboura?”
“No, not them,” Jomar replied. “They’re just blind, deluded fools, and some are acting out of fear. We won’t make any moves against them. No,” he repeated, rising up to his full height. “We are going to kill their god.”
3
The Book of Doom
IN MAURAINIA’S CAPITAL THE GROWING fears of its ruler were reflected on the streets. Though no war had been fought here within living memory, there were still many in Raimar who recalled the tales of Zimbouran assaults on their city long ages ago: of the vessels of their fearsome navy, armed with catapults and burning pitch, and the savage warriors who had streamed ashore to pillage and slaughter. The passage of centuries had taken little from the power and dread of these old narratives, and the city’s defenses had been maintained. The old seawalls still reared their grim masonry along Raimar’s seaward side, and watchtowers looked out toward the eastern horizon like the raised heads of wary beasts. The enemy was still out there, beyond the ocean’s curve, and now possessed the intervening islands of the Archipelagoes: all knew there was nothing to stop the horrors of the past from happening again. Rumors had come to Maurainia of war in the east, brought by sailors who knew of what they spoke. Some citizens had fled by cart and wagon through the range of mountains to the west, to shelter in the lands that lay behind their natural rampart. For those who remained in Raimar the passing hours were filled with dread. Every day brought some dark foreboding of imminent doom: word came from the wharves, from the coastal road that ran up from the south, and from the marketplace where foodstuffs were beginning to grow scarce—and not only because it was the tag end of winter.
And now there were new tales, scarcely to be believed, of an unknown terror that came not by sea but by air.
Every face was somber, every voice edged with stress, as another day dawned bleak and chill. As the sun climbed, however, the normal rhythms of the city returned. War might come tomorrow, or even this very afternoon or evening: but for the moment there was work to be done, food to be found, necessities to be bought or bartered for. And so it was that no one noticed the old woman who came into the city from the direction of the shore. She was unremarkable, clad in a dirty white cloak and plain dress, with disheveled steel-gray hair and a pale, hollow-eyed face that was deeply lined. There were many poor women just like her, lone widows and spinsters who lived by toiling in the warehouses or on the wharves. She mingled with the crowds, walking slowly and bowed as if with weariness. When she reached the broad main streets of the city’s center a voice yelled above the heads of the crowd, making her pause in apparent bewilderment.
“Out of the way, you riffraff! Make way for Their Majesties!”
She was slow to move, and the press of jostling bodies nearly swept her off her feet. As a result she was left standing in front of the crowd when the open carriage rumbled by, drawn by its matched white horses and driven by a purple-liverie
d coachman. The occupants were a young man with dark hair and beard and olive skin, and a fair-haired young woman at his side, gowned in white and silver. Their garments were of fine velvet and brocade, and they wore circlets of gold on their heads. It was the king of Maurainia and his queen, Paisia, daughter of the late King Stefon.
“Back, you!” shouted an armed guard, shoving the old woman roughly into the ranks of onlookers. “Make way for your betters.”
As she staggered backward she heard a man’s voice grumble behind her: “He’s got a nerve, talking to us like that.”
“It’s their way, don’t you know. Those Marakites! This is what comes of marrying our princess off to a foreigner,” said a woman.
“Oh, hush! Would you have the Princess marry a commoner, then?” remonstrated another woman. “She’d no choice but to take Prince Lian.”
The surly man spoke again. “It’s just our ill luck Stefon had no male heir. A foreign queen would do little harm, for her husband would keep her in order. But Paisia must obey this Marakite husband of hers, and go along with whatever he decides. It was he signed the truce with Khalazar—”
“It’s not his fault. The Holy Father talked him into it,” said a second man. “I don’t think any great shakes of Norvyn Winter as Supreme Patriarch, as I’ve said before—him and his Zimbouran converts! Spies for Khalazar, that’s what they really are—everyone sees it but he—”
“Well, now Khalazar’s gone, and good riddance!” said the first woman.
“Ah, but now there’s this civil war brewing over there. We’ll have trouble no matter which side wins, mark my words. Both are heathen, and see us as the enemy. And they do say the Armada’s on the move.”
“Never mind the Armada!” interjected a new voice. “What of these other ships—the ones that can fly through the air? The seawalls are useless against them.”
“Flying ships?” repeated the gray-haired woman, her tone sharp.
The speaker turned to look at her. “Haven’t you heard?” he said. “It’s some new witchery the Zimbourans have come up with: they’ve made vessels with flapping wings in place of masts and sails. They’ve been seen all over the countryside, sailing in the sky. The wise ones up at the Academy say it’s naught but machinery and they could do the same—but they haven’t, have they?” The man shook his head.
Ailia made no reply. He was right: the builders of the old stone fortifications down by the harbor had never dreamed of an attack by air. But much as she would have liked to ask more questions, she knew that she should leave. She was filled with unease, and her weariness and hunger and lack of sleep made shape-shifting impossible, and even a glaumerie illusion hard to maintain: keeping the false image of the grizzle-haired woman before all these bystanders’ eyes took all of her concentration and much of her remaining strength. She did not dare show her true face here, for fear of enemy spies. As she continued to walk up the steep sloping streets, she began to feel as if she truly were as old as her illusory guise. She felt strangely dizzy, and hot despite the chill damp air. Her lungs labored and her calves ached, but her eyes remained fixed on her destination: the escarpment that jutted over the western end of the city, and the many-towered stone building atop it. It was the Royal Academy, where once she had been a student. Longing filled her to walk its familiar halls again and rest in its quiet chapel.
When at last she reached it she had to sit on the stone steps of its threshold and catch her breath. The building’s facade lowered above her, its gargoyles and other fabulous stone beasts capering about the roofs. There was a unicorn among the animals in the carvings, she now noticed, the ignorant Meran artist portraying it as a horned horse. Of course no one here had seen the exquisite grace and delicacy of the Tarnawyn for many centuries, and did not know they were as different from horses as swans from geese. There were also figures of cherubim—gryphons, the sculptor would have called them—and scaly firedrakes. The people here had long dismissed these otherworldly beings as fancies. Little did they know that the old dreams—and nightmares—would soon come to Mera again. And she could do nothing to warn them, for no one would ever believe her.
When she felt somewhat rested she walked up the steps and into the front hall—and there she stopped, as suddenly as if an arrow had transfixed her. On the stone wall before her hung a dark and aged painting in oils—a portrait of a former benefactor, a lord of olden times with stern narrow features and piercing eyes. She had passed it many a time as a student, but only now did she recognize its subject. The elegant beard, trimmed to a point like a spear’s, masked the lower half of the face, and the eyes were gray-blue instead of golden. But all the same, the portraitist had captured more of Mandrake than the latter had no doubt intended. A glaumerie had altered his eye color and possibly other details in the painter’s mind, yet something of him still showed through in the confidence of his pose, the proud tilt of his head and determined set of the shoulders under the black velvet doublet. With some difficulty, Ailia tore her eyes from the painting and walked on.
Once the Royal Academy had been a home to her, where she lived and slept and took her meals, and browsed to her heart’s content in the vast library. Now no one gave her a glance as she entered it, and all the faces were strange. She moved among these people like a ghost among the living. Once she glimpsed a fair-haired young man standing with his back to her, and without thinking she cried out, “Damion, Damion,” and when the man turned, startled, she retreated in confusion at his unfamiliar face. As she made herself walk on, the memory of another face, dark of skin, wrinkled with great age, rose within her mind. Wakunga. And his words came back to her as well.
“You seek Damion in the wrong place,” the shaman had said to her. “The sky-goddess Nayah knew that she must find her consort in the Netherworld, and summon him forth to live again. And your tale in many ways follows hers.”
Superstition: it was mere superstition. Wakunga was wise, but he had not the training of the Arainian Nemerei. Damion Athariel would not return, ever. He lingered in this place, as he had in Zimboura, only as a memory in the minds of those who had known him.
She wondered drearily if there was anyone in Maurainia she should inform of Damion’s fate. He had been an orphan with no known relations, raised here at the Academy by the monks of St. Athariel. Perhaps the abbot and prior should be told. And there had been a boyhood friend of his, now an ordained priest down in the city—what was his name? She couldn’t recall. Her thoughts felt thick and slow, dulled no doubt by fatigue and depression. Several people she passed in the hallway gave her ragged figure a disapproving look, and she expected at any moment to be told to leave the premises. At least she could not be thrown out of the chapel, which was open to all the Faithful: she quickened her pace, heading toward its safe haven. When she reached it, she knelt down in a pew in a prayerful attitude, and fixed her eyes on the sanctuary. Once again the familiarity of her surroundings set her heart to aching. The high vaulted ceiling with its carvings of stone, the ranks of flickering candles, the altar of the sacred flame, all were imbued with traces of a safer and happier past. Behind the altar rose the stone screen of the inner sanctum, adorned with winged figures of bronze. Angels, they were called here. But like the stone gargoyles, these statues were inspired by true accounts of beings from ancient times: the sorcerous shape-shifting Archons, onetime rulers of the Celestial Empire.
And it was here in this chapel, in that flame-lit sanctuary, that she had first seen—
No. She was not going to think of Damion again.
Ailia turned her attention back to the carved angels and demons on the altar screen. They made her think of the old accounts in the Meran scriptures of the war of Heaven and Hell. She picked up the illustrated Kantikant in her pew and opened it at the first part, the Book of Beginnings. There, in the accompanying woodcuts, robed and winged angels warred with fearsome fiends that sported horns, tails, and other bestial attributes. Modrian-Valdur appeared first as a crowned archangel, then as a demon wit
h a man’s form and the wings and tail of a dragon, and finally as the terrible Crowned Dragon, breathing out flames as he menaced Athariel, captain of the heavenly host. In the last picture of the sequence he was depicted falling defeated into the Pit of Perdition, which was represented symbolically as a monster’s head with fuming jaws that gaped to receive him.
She gazed on this picture for a time, and then turned to the Book of Being, where Orendyl’s more detailed description of the Pit was to be found. “I beheld in my vision a realm of everlasting darkness,” he wrote, “presided over by demons of hideous aspect, neither beast nor man. In that place there is a bastion of mighty towers and walls, the Citadel Perilous, wherein dwelleth the Great Deceiver and all his demons. It is founded upon the brink of a pit of eternal flame. Into that Pit of Perdition the condemned are sent, to endure forever the torments that the demons devise for them.” The accompanying illustration showed a fortified tower rising above a gaping chasm from which curls of smoke arose, while the Crowned Dragon along with many grotesque demons drove cowering men into the abyss. She set the book down again. Was it simply a nightmare? Or had Orendyl truly received a vision of Valdur’s realm? His account of Heaven was much like that given by Welessan the Wanderer, though less detailed—and Welessan’s vision of the planetary spheres had proven remarkably accurate. Was Perdition also real then—not an imaginary place of eternal damnation, but an actual place in the material realm that Orendyl had glimpsed? And if so, where might it lie? One tradition made the black star in the constellation of Valdur the Portal of Hell, but that might be mere fancy. The scene described by Orendyl, however, could have been in a real world within Entar, Valdur’s stellar empire. Perhaps the prophet had glimpsed the distant past of the empire’s old throne-world Ombar, planet of the red star Utara? According to Mandrake, one side of that world was forever turned away from its sun. A place of “everlasting darkness.” As for the demons, sorcerers could use shape-shifts or glaumerie to appear as hideous monsters—and the Archons had been sorcerers beyond compare.
