by Alison Baird
The south shore was very like her winter retreat, she thought. The Eldimians had tolerated the yearly removal of her court to the Winter Palace, a castle of coral on an atoll in the Havens, in order to give Ailia a respite from the rainy season. She had loved making the annual journey. The royal yacht, Sea Star, was the size of a galleon and equipped with every conceivable luxury, sporting tall leaded windows in place of portholes, and decorative carving and gilding throughout her elegant, spacious cabins. The figurehead below her bowsprit was a golden-haired woman with a star upon her brow, a design repeated on the white sails whose flaglike flapping and rustling lulled Ailia to sleep at night. When the Sea Star anchored in a harbor her masts were hung with lanterns, and feasts and revels were held upon the decks with musicians and players, and acrobats to swing and leap in the rigging for the passengers’ enjoyment. Now Ailia looked back to those carefree days as if to some ancient epoch of the world.
She began to walk along the white sands of the beach, right to the very edge of the sea, as if the answers she sought lay there. It stretched before her, seeming to contain in its sweeping expanse all possible shades of blue. The Meran seas she remembered seemed always to have been murky green or gray, borrowing the blue of the sky only on clear summer days. But these waves might have been stained with indigo: even their churning bubbles were blue. As they had peeled back from the royal yacht’s prow Ailia had always half-expected them to leave a stain upon the white hull. And she recalled how the fishes called serras would surface in front of the ship’s bow wave, and spread wide their enormous wing-shaped pectoral fins just as the smaller flying fish of Mera did, riding upon the same wind that drove the Sea Star forward. And there were the Arainian dolphins—great, green, frilly-headed fish, as intelligent and playful as the warm-blooded beasts of Meran seas, for whom they had been named by the human settlers of this world; and the charming “sea-dogs,” little web-footed creatures like a cross between an otter and a sea lion. Sitting in the bow with her neck craned eagerly forward, like a second figurehead, Ailia had happily watched these and other wondrous creatures of the Arainian sea for hours at a time.
But here, closer to shore, the waters were the green-blue of turquoise. Flocks of trilling seabirds swarmed above them: the little kingfisher-colored halcyons that were native to this ocean, and built floating nests of seaweed upon its surface during the calm spring months. In the shallows the sea grew transparent, and then she could see through to floors of white sand, or the marvel of rainbow colors that was a barrier reef. For Arainia’s riot of life did not end at the shore, but continued in another form, as sea-forests and fantastical gardens whose hues rivaled the brightest flowers on land: blazing scarlets, and purples and vermilions; delicate fans such as a court lady might carry, waving to and fro in the gentle currents, and groves of fluted columns crowned with plumes, and shapes like fanciful trees or stags’ antlers. About the reefs swam fish of such exotic shapes and tints that they rivaled the corals themselves. Farther out in the bay islands rose, themselves formed of coral, but so thickly grown over with plant life that no trace of their foundations could be seen: they might have been solid mounds of vegetation. They clustered together, so close that their overhanging trees made green galleries above the narrow channels between them, and the leaping dolphins sported beneath a roof of leaves.
Each morning her mother had swum in the sea, it was said, joined by frolicking sea creatures. Elarainia had first been seen by the Elei coming up out of the waves, and the tale had been spun that she had not merely been bathing but had magically emerged from the sea fully formed, a goddess taking flesh to walk on land. Ailia stepped into the shallows. The water was warm as a footbath, the white sand smooth and yielding beneath her tired soles. This was the very womb of the mother-goddess, the source of all native life in her sphere. Another time Ailia might have dived into its clear sapphirine depths, to swim among the coral gardens and bright shoals of fish. But not today. A sense of urgency filled her. She looked up at the great comet again.
The battle of the comets was still being fought. Some the Wingwatch had sent sunward, and some they had pointed toward others yet held by the Valei—much as sailors might fire a captured ship and set it on course to strike another vessel of the enemy’s fleet. But all of the turned comets had still to be defended, lest they be retaken by the firedrakes and aimed once more at Mera and Arainia. Thus each capture meant fewer warriors were available to guard the worlds themselves. Ailia wondered if this might not have been Valdur’s plan. The one who had sent the comets flying toward the inner worlds had plotted their courses thousands of years ago; but that same power had surely known also that those worlds would have defenders. Had this celestial bombardment all been merely a grand bluff and distraction from the foe’s true aim—not to destroy, but rather to invade and subjugate Mera and Arainia? And did Mandrake now follow that same plan, consciously or unconsciously doing Valdur’s work? With her army fighting to deliver Mera, there were few soldiers left to protect her own world.
Only some great power, greater than army or Wingwatch, could come to Arainia’s aid should an invasion occur. The apparition in Numia had spoken of Elarainia—had it meant that Ailia’s mother indeed lived still, or had it referred to the planet itself and the strange enchantment that dwelled within it—that had helped Ailia to drive Mandrake away once before? She wondered if it was strong enough to repel an entire attacking force. She would not know until the attack took place.
The enemy may come soon, thought Ailia. They must know I am here. But better that they find me here than in the city. The people there cannot defend themselves as well as the Elei. She fancied there was a slight stress in the atmosphere, a hush of anticipation, as though the world itself was waiting for her to do something, perform some incantation. She felt that if she only knew the right spell, or the right action to take, Arainia’s wealth of life and beauty would be saved from destruction.
She left the shore and began to walk inland, into the cool green groves of the forest that the Elei revered as the creation—more, the manifestation—of their goddess. Everything in it—the huge towering trees, the plants, the animals—was holy to them. There were many wondrous Arainian beasts in these groves: star-spotted pantheons, allocameli like donkey-eared dromedaries, the trogodryces whose antlers grow down rather than up, the argasills that resembled antelopes but for their long, toothy jaws, and boreynes with their curious fin-shaped dorsal humps and inward-curving horns. There were the beautiful bagwyns with their horselike manes and tails, and hoofed leucrottas with long badgerlike heads and ridges of sharp bone in place of teeth, and enfields like tall attenuated foxes, and the magnificent cats called calopuses, whose heads bore sweeping horns. There were many creatures unlike any the Merans had ever seen: the shaggy su, for instance, which carried its young on its back with its broad tail spread over them like a parasol. Most wonderful of all, though, were the giant aullays. In shape they were not unlike horses, though maneless and with tails shorter in proportion to their bodies; but from their upper jaws projected mighty curved tusks, and trunks that groped the canopy above them for food or restlessly winnowed the air. Ailia had read of these beasts in Meran bestiaries, and knew from the accounts (long dismissed by Merans as fable) that the aullay is as much larger than an elephant as the latter is larger than a sheep, but her first sight of the beasts years ago had still stolen her breath from her. There was no living thing in sight now, though, save for a dragonish-looking lizard that was basking on a mossy boulder. It was about the size of a crocodile, and in any world but Arainia would probably have been a dangerous beast. Its scales were green, shading to blue on its back, and on its head was a reddish excrescence that shone in the sun like a jewel. It returned her gaze blankly, not stirring from its sun-warmed rock.
Ailia walked on. She yearned for the serenity this temple of trees brought to her Elei kin. Had her mother ever walked where Ailia now set her feet—or climbed the trees? In this forest it was possible to traverse ma
ny leagues without ever setting foot to earth, so densely interwoven was the roof of boughs and attendant vines that roofed it. The upper tier of branches was a world unto itself, where birds as bright as flowers flew singing with sweet voices, and mimic dogs sprang like acrobats from tree to tree, clinging to the boughs with handlike paws. The Elei had added bridges and ladders of hempen rope and the occasional platform, rather like a hunter’s “hide,” for the use of those who harvested the sweet perindeus fruits and others that grew high in the canopy. Ailia had learned to walk the tree-ways, and though she dared not emulate the gymnastic feats of the Elei and the natural climbers, she found that she could get by quite well without needing to alter her form. For now, though, she was content to walk beneath the trees, in their cool scented shade. In addition to the many fruits, there were the trees from which grew the great hanging fleeces of cottony fibers that the Elei spun into thin white cloth for their garments. But the Fairfolk did not love only those trees that fed and clothed them. There were some that bore bright-hued and fragrant blossoms all the year, and there were groves of “singing trees” whose stiff leaves chimed one against the other in the slightest breeze to make a delicate music. Some of the trees bore leaves that were not green but crimson, or blue or gold or purple, so that the tropical forests in places had an autumnal splendor of variegated hues, and the sun streaming down through the foliage gave it the brilliant translucency of a stained glass dome. Other trees brought forth what appeared to be uncut gems: solidified globules of a saplike liquid that hardened when extruded into the air. Each had a different-colored sap, so that there were tree-rubies and tree-amethysts, and emeralds, and diamonds glittering among their boughs.
Walking through these jeweled jungles, Ailia thought of the winter-dulled woods on the slopes of Selenna that would soon bear their own glory of pale-tinted blossoms. Always her thoughts turned back to Mera these days. And then, even as she brooded on the fortunes of its people and of her army, a small shape darted across her path—a gray-furred creature, familiar yet at the same time unlooked for in this place. She blinked and halted, staring at the stand of crimson bushes into which it disappeared.
That’s odd—for an instant I could have sworn it was Greymalkin! But I left her behind in Maurainia. I’m just tired, that’s all: seeing things that aren’t there. It is high time I rejoined the others.
“THE ELEI HAVE BEEN WONDERFULLY welcoming,” Lorelyn said to Jomar. “They don’t seem to understand that we’re bringing danger with us.”
“Does this lot even know what danger means?” Jomar asked.
The interior of their guesthouse resembled a fine mansion, with pillars and ceilings carved from a pale stone frosted with little white crystals. Lamps suspended on chains shed a warm white-golden light. The visitors walked down the glittering halls, many of them frescoed with scenes of Elei history, or of gods cavorting with fabulous beasts. At least they had once been believed to be fabulous, those hoofed and fishtailed hippocampi, and chimaeras, and the like. But the Elei had shown their visitors a nearby cave in which was preserved the fossil skeleton of a creature with a horned skull and hoofed forelegs, tapering behind into an impossible fishtail in place of hindquarters: a creature seemingly suited neither for land nor sea. The singular outline of the beast was preserved in the form of a shadowy film surrounding the bones. Another strange creature had been found inside a cloven rock not far away, this one a serpent with wings. No serpent of any kind lived in this world, and the wings, attached by a keeled breastbone to the sinuous ribs, were those of a bird: the impressions of feathers were still plain to be seen in the stone. According to the Elei these lands, and the plains beyond Hyelanthia, had once formed the bed of a primeval sea. The inhabitants of that sea, and some winged beasts that had perished and fallen into its waters, had been entombed in the sands that later became solid stone. The fossil oddities could not be natural, but they were also too ancient to have been the work of any human sorcerer, and so through their mute witness the existence of the Old Ones was proven.
The guests passed on through a set of doors inlaid with gold, into an antechamber and then on through a doorless opening screened only by a curtain of vines. They emerged on the slope of a low green hill, one of a range that rolled about the feet of Hyelanthia: the city of the Elei. The Fairfolk did not want their houses to intrude upon the landscape, out of respect for the goddess. And so they had delved deep into the earth to make their dwellings, carving chambers from the living rock within and decorating them with the gems that they unearthed as they dug. At least the Hollow Hills would offer the Elei some protection against the assaults of the Valei, Jomar reflected. Apart from the great green mounds there were no other houses anywhere to be seen, nothing to provide an aerial assailant with a target.
Between the hills and the sea lay the forest. From its depths groups of Elei were returning from their daily harvest of fruit, root, and herb: a sweet smell as of incense came before them as they walked, for in addition to foodstuffs they had been gathering spices. An Arainian bird called the cinomologus lined its nest with these, and the gleaners had found an abundant store in a vast rookery high in the trees. They laughed and danced as they came, and their voices, deep and high, were raised in song. They were always singing, these pure-bred Elei: while they worked and while they played—as if music was to them like breath and blood, intrinsic to their very being. It was the heritage of angelic forebears, they declared, who continually praised the Divine. At the cavelike doorway of the largest hill several men and women in ankle-length white robes had gathered. They appeared to be waiting for someone—their returning kin, perhaps? There were Nemerei among them: Lorelyn could feel their power from here. Suddenly they all bowed and curtseyed deeply, and when she turned she saw Ailia coming toward them through the trees.
“Ailia! Hullo!” Lorelyn called, jumping up and down and waving. Ailia waved back.
Among the Elei stood a tall woman whose pale silver-gilt hair flowed back from a face fresh as a girl’s and wise as a crone’s. Ailia had nearly shattered protocol by curtseying when she first met Lady Jihana, so awed was she at the sight of this ageless, pure-bred Elei. Now the woman came to meet the Tryna Lia with a graceful flowing motion, and dipped her own shining head. “Highness, you honor us with your stay.”
Ailia replied: “Lady Jihana, I thank you again for your hospitality. I believe you are one of the great Nemerei in this land?”
“I have command of magic, it is true. For the task to come, though, greater powers than mine are needed. I understand the enemies from Mera are expected to come here.”
“They are. They may wish to claim your country as their own.”
“And why should they not? If these Zimbourans desire land,” said one of her household, a curly-headed youth who looked no more than sixteen, “there is plenty here to spare. I do not see the difficulty. We can share it with them.”
“You do not know these people. They cannot content themselves with a little, as you do. They will take all, and leave you nothing.” Thoughts of raped and pillaged Shurkana and Mohar filled Ailia’s mind, and her voice shook a little as she spoke.
“But why?” the youth persisted.
“There is no why,” Ailia said. “It is what they do to those they conquer.”
“You mean,” said one of his elders, “they are not, like us, beings of thought and reason.”
“They are thinking beings,” she answered, “but they do not think as you do. And they will bring with them the Morugei, who are children of Valdur and follow his ways.”
“Perhaps, then, we can teach them all, and make them wiser.” The fair youth turned to the others, who nodded in agreement.
Jomar leaned close to Ailia and spoke in a hissing whisper: “These people are doomed. Doomed!”
“No,” she answered in a low voice as they took their leave of the lady and her retinue and walked off together among the green hills. “There is still hope, while there are Nemerei among them.”
&nb
sp; There was another power in this place too. It throbbed in her mind, a background noise as immense as the sound of the sea or the rushing flow of the wind. All sorcerers who came to this land experienced strange visions, like waking dreams. The Fairfolk claimed that the source of the enchantment was the goddess herself.
“The Elei told me they believe some Old Ones still live deep inside in the forest,” Lorelyn remarked at length. “I don’t think that can be true, but is there some sort of Archon magic that lingers here, do you think? I can feel—something—in the land, all around. So did Auron and Taleera: they went off to see if they could find its source.”
“Yes, I feel it too. Look!” Ailia held her ring hand up. The star sapphire on her third finger blazed with light—not the light of the sun pooling in its blue deeps, but an unnatural radiance that came from within. “There is some power here. I have never seen the gem glow like this,” she said.
Suddenly Jomar gave a startled exclamation.
“What is it?” asked Lorelyn.
“Oh, nothing—I’m just overtired, I think,” said Jomar.
“But what made you yell?”
“Nothing—it’s just that I thought I saw something. But I didn’t.”
“Are you certain?” asked Ailia.
“It can’t have been what I thought it was. I was thinking of the Valei coming here, and what they might do to the Elei—whether they might make slaves of them. It got me to thinking about the days when I was a slave in the work camps, and how we always had to be on our guard for lions at nightfall. And as I was thinking that, I looked over there at the forest’s edge and I thought I saw—”
“What?” Lorelyn asked, moving close to him.
“A lion. In the bushes—only it couldn’t have been, not here. It must have been one of the Arainian animals. The light’s beginning to fade, and it tricked my eyes.”
