by Alison Baird
Ailia looked thoughtful. “Perhaps not. It’s like my seeing Greymalkin in the forest, just now. I was thinking of her, too.”
“But that’s what the Elei say!” Lorelyn exclaimed. “About the Archons: they say you can still summon them here. And that they can take any form. Remember, if you think hard enough about something that thought can go into the Ether. Maybe they can hear it—”
“We’re all tired, that’s all,” said Jomar.
Ailia got up and walked in the direction he had indicated. “Was it here, Jomar?” she asked presently, standing beside a dense mass of undergrowth.
He followed. “Oh, for Valdur’s sake. It was just my eyes playing tricks—”
And then his words died, at the sight of the huge paw prints pressed into the earth beneath the bushes.
“So I did see something, then! It wasn’t just my imagination. An Arainian beast . . .” He squatted by the tracks. “That’s strange. They look like lion prints.”
“But they can’t be,” said Lorelyn. “Not in Arainia. It can’t be a Meran lion. It must be an Archon, or something!”
“Let’s follow them, Jomar, and see where they lead us,” said Ailia.
“All right—but be on your guard, both of you.”
“I will alter my form,” said Ailia. “I have that power now.” Mandrake taught it to me, she thought but did not add. “Perhaps I can follow the scent.”
Ailia toppled slowly forward and put out her arms as if to break her fall. But when her hands touched the ground they were no longer hands. A huge lion stood there in her place, golden mane rippling over mighty shoulders, tail lashing. She—he? Jomar thought—turned and loped off, nose to ground, following the tracks.
They all walked alongside the prints for a short distance, but found that they ceased halfway across a clearing. The lion raised its shaggy head and snuffed the air.
“I don’t understand it,” said Jomar. “The ground isn’t any different here, and the paw prints don’t get shallower or anything. They just stop. As if the brute vanished into thin air.”
Ailia changed back to her own form. “The scent just stops too. There’s magic here, Jomar. I can feel it.”
“But what’s the point of it all?” asked Jomar, standing.
“It’s almost as though our thoughts had some sort of influence here. We think of things, and then we see them. But whose is the sorcery? Not the Elei’s: they wouldn’t do such things without telling us.” Archons, she thought. It could be. The stories said they were shape-shifters. If my mother really was one, might there be others lingering in this place? Might she have returned?
“I don’t like this,” said Jomar. “I think we’d better leave while we can.”
“Just a little longer,” said Ailia. “I feel as though we’re meant to be here, somehow.” She could scarcely contain her excitement now.
“All right,” said Jomar. “Just don’t anybody think about firedrakes or nuckelavees, that’s all.”
As they walked on, Ailia reached out with her extra sense, but could detect no danger here: only the same feeling of expectation, as though the whole planet held its breath. She reached out to the living world around her. What is it? She cried out silently. Speak to me!
A soft sound made her turn. She gasped, then made a quick gesture to the other two, pointing to the far side of the clearing.
A figure was walking there: a tall feminine form with long curling nut-brown hair. They could not see the face from where they stood: the woman was turned slightly away, looking into the forest. She was wound about with garlands of wildflowers, pink and white and red, and her slight green shift was patterned with them. A wreath sat upon her head like a crown. Ailia called out, but the woman did not answer or look their way. With a cry Ailia ran toward her. She turned at last, and the Princess saw a laughing girlish face. And then the figure was gone: she did not slip away into the woods, but vanished, as though she had never been. But when they approached the spring that bubbled from the earth where the woman had been standing, there was the print of a bare foot in its damp margin.
“Well,” said Jomar, “was anyone thinking of that?”
Wordless, they shook their heads. Ailia thought of the face that had turned to her: it was not like a human face, nor yet an Elei’s: it was at once knowing and innocent, wild yet benign. “A nymph,” she said at length. “That’s what it was. A nymph out of the old myths. They were a kind of Elemental: nereids and naiads, oreads and hamadryads.”
“Were you thinking of them?” Lorleyn asked.
“No,” Ailia replied. She stood for a moment thinking, then she called upon her power again and took a bird’s form, a great golden eagle. Beating her wings, she soared up over the tops of the trees.
“I hate it when she does that,” Jomar muttered. “Is she Ailia now, or a bird? I don’t understand it.”
“She’s Ailia and a bird,” Lorelyn replied. “You don’t stop being yourself just because you change shape, Jo.”
A hundred feet above them the eagle circled, drew in its wings, and dived. Just above the ground it changed its shape, and Ailia dropped the remaining distance to land light as a dancer on her toes. “No—there’s nothing to be seen. No nymphs, no lions.”
Jomar looked doubtful. “You might have missed them. The tree-canopy is thick.”
“There are lots of gaps in the foliage. And an eagle’s eyes are very keen, even in this dim light.”
They walked back to the Hollow Hills together. The sun sank in the east, and the forests drowned in blue shadow. Lanterns bloomed like stars in the trees, twinkling on high boughs along the airy tree-paths to guide the last of the canopy-harvesters home, and lower down, to light the paths of the forest floor. These “lamps” were in fact vessels of sweet nectar that the Elei hung on chains from the branches. After dark each attracted its own little galaxy of pyrallises, the four-legged fireflies of Arainia, and their compact, luminous swarms served as beacons for wayfarers after dark. But on the heights of Hyelanthia an aureate glow still lingered, and the clouds about the goddess’s plateau turned to lambent gold, making it look more than ever like a place of magic. Ailia’s gaze kept returning to it. She could no longer endure its unsolved mystery, and as she looked at it a plan took shape in her thoughts.
I will try to see the past as I did in Numia, she decided, even though I suppose I won’t succeed here. No Nemerei has ever been able to glimpse Hyelanthia in its golden age: it’s as though it’s somehow forbidden. But I have to try. I might be allowed to see, to learn something—some power to aid us now . . .
Parting company with her friends, she returned to her lodging for her warm clothes, then went to pluck a ripe fruit from a Tree of Life that grew near the foot of the Hollow Hill. Food-of-the-gods: perhaps its potent amber juices would vouchsafe her a vision. She placed it in the pouch at her side, and then climbed the hill’s green slope to its summit. Auron lay there, coiled like a snake around the base of another tree, with his bearded chin resting on his tail. Taleera slept on a bough above, her head under her wing. “Will you fly me up to the heights, old friend?” Ailia asked the dragon. “I would like to attempt another vision of long ago. To see the gods, as they were, in their own land.”
It has been tried before, he reminded her gently as he uncoiled himself.
“But not by me. Perhaps whatever has been preventing the other Nemerei will permit me to do this, if it will help me in my task? I must give it a try, at least.”
Neither of them said any more, but an understanding that was not even mind-speech passed between them: the knowledge that Ailia’s request was also a statement. She could now take a dragon’s form and fly to the heights if she pleased, but chose not to, just as she had not taken draconic shape to flee Mera. She would not tempt herself with such power. Auron bowed his head to the ground—not merely to make it easier for her to mount; there was in the gesture a hint of the draconic obeisance. Drawing up the skirts of her robe, she scrambled onto his proffered neck,
seating herself in the midst of his mane. Grabbing hold of his horns, she clung tightly as he crouched, then leaped skyward.
The ground dropped away with dizzying speed. Then the horizon tilted as he banked, gliding low over the land. Auron flew into the warm upward thrust of a thermal, and rose within the bubble of heated air in a slow circling climb, as though ascending a spiral stair. Before long they were level with the tablelands. Auron flew closer, until all the sky ahead was full of towering rock faces, sculpted by wind and erosion into vast numinous shapes. Far below, through rifts in the clouds, lay the roof of the great forest—like the coral-forests that grew upon the seabed. For this gulf of air was a sea, and the plateaux were islands: they rose above the cloud-layer as islands rise from the deeps, while waves of vapor broke upon their stony sides and were flung upward like sea spume. For a moment Ailia had a curious sensation, as though she were seeing the view from another’s eyes. This realm of sky and soaring stone was the true world, it seemed to her, and what lay beneath the clouds merely a lowly, secondary realm, at whose very bottom humans and other creatures crawled about like crabs on the floor of an ocean, never knowing of the glorious spaces so far above them and beyond their ken . . . Auron soared higher—higher. The sky seemed to deepen above her—and, wondrously, more stars came shining through it.
The plateaux lay below now, amid the cloud-foam of the airy sea. Ailia looked down at gray rock, stark and still beneath the dark blue sky. Nothing lived here on the heights anymore, and the air was thin and cold: she was reminded of the desolate terrain of Mera’s moon. Crystal glittered in the sun, forming grid patterns, interconnected oblongs and squares with here and there a lone, upright tower. Loose fragments lay strewn between them on the rock like broken glass: the foundations and rubble of fallen houses of the gods. Ruby towers, crystal pillars, ramparts and bridges like spun glass lay beneath her. These, then, were the buildings of the Archons, this world’s original inhabitants. She studied the ruins with eager curiosity. But they revealed little of their makers—there were no statues or monuments to show what the builders had looked like. Some of the structures did not even seem to be proper buildings—glassy obelisks, hexagonal columns, globes, hemispheres, and pyramids that were solid right through. Most were made of gemstone or of adamant.
Auron flew low, then alighted on a spur of rock. The air here was hard to breathe, and Ailia had to alter the rhythm of her lungs. Before them lay a vast open space, paved with white stones in a circular pattern. A rounded column of clearest crystal reared up from its center. Ailia dismounted and stood looking about the place. Even had the Archons left images of themselves, she thought, would these have been of their true forms, or only shape-shifts they had assumed for their amusement?
Beyond the plaza of the column was a great oblong hall built of the same white stone. She made for it, and as she approached its high doorless entrance she gave an exclamation.
For a brief instant she thought they were alive: those tall, pale, slender figures enthroned amid the crystal columns. They had plumed wings, and slender hands resting upon their draped knees, and many wore diadems upon their long-haired heads. But all, crowned or not, had a lordly air. She felt that she had trespassed into some solemn council and shocked them all to silence with her uncouth intrusion—even though the passage of a few seconds had shown her that these were mere statues, not living beings as she had initially supposed. So here at last were images—and as she had expected, they were not true likenesses but only adopted shapes. The Seraphim, the Winged Ones, had delighted in combining the human and avian forms. She walked closer to the nearest figure. Like all the others it was seated on a raised throne, its wings spread to either side. These, and their implied ability to fly, seemed almost an extension of the exaltation that showed in the carved face. There was a curious atmosphere of expectancy in the great hall: the figures sat erect, heads raised as if listening, or awaiting something—some unknown event—with an ageless patience.
She went back outside to rejoin the dragon, who had not entered with her. “Auron, I feel I am closer to the Old Ones in this place, even if they are gone. I can’t quite explain it: it is just a feeling. Thank you for bringing me here. And now—I will see whatever I am permitted to see.”
She drew out the food-of-the-gods and bit into the smooth golden skin: and before she had consumed even half of the sweet flesh she began to feel the light-headedness that precedes an enchanted vision. She knelt down upon the cold stone and closed her eyes.
9
The Queen of the World
WHEN SHE OPENED HER EYES, Hyelanthia was enveloped in white.
A cloud had descended upon the plateau where she knelt. She could see no sign of Auron. Slowly she stood, and as she did so she realized that her form was ethereal: she could see and hear with perfect clarity, but there was no other sensation. She began to walk straight ahead, placing one phantom foot before the other, moving but feeling nothing beneath her feet. It was as if she walked through a thick fog, or as if she were wrapped in wool. From time to time some stirring of the upper air shifted the vaporous mass through which she advanced, and a pale pearly radiance tinted its whiteness. Or else she would look up, and suddenly through the blank space above her she would catch a glimpse of the sky, with perhaps a scalloped edge of cumulus showing starkly white against its deep blue; and then the gap above would close once more.
But presently she was aware of a looming darkness ahead that shaped itself into trees: a stand of tall leafy trees that showed gray through the white shroud. Then the air moved again, and the whiteness turned to the thinnest of sheer curtains, and was all blown away, and she found herself looking on the ancient past. Upon the once barren summits great forests reared, all wreathed about with the clouds that passed over and through their close-growing boles. The nearer groves were green as an emerald’s heart within, but the cloud-vapor that streamed through them like mist veiled the further parts in shades of pale gray. Through the arches and oriels formed by the winding boughs and billows of foliage, she glimpsed far-off spaces with still more branches and leafy masses, nebulous and dim. Her desire had been granted: she had been vouchsafed a vision out of the far-off past. This was the gods’ own country, part heaven and part earth. Here the winged people dwelled, and the Trees of Life grew. Perhaps one of the pale blossoms starring the green boughs was the very same that was prisoned within the Elei’s amber globe . . .
Ailia sent her ethereal form forward, through the trees. Here in the steep forests among the clouds many wondrous creatures lived, unlike any in the world below. A large bird perched on a high bough, a mere silhouette in the gray mist like a shadow projected on a screen: but it was no bird, despite its feathered wings and tail, for when it turned its head its profile was that of a lioness. After a time she came upon a large body of water, wider than any mountain tarn: almost a little sea. The trees grew down to its edge, and its surface was smooth and tranquil. As she looked down into its depths, she saw the sky repeated there, its dome inverted. Across its reflection went a blur of white, too swift for cloud, and with a shape out of the oldest tales: a horse with wings. She glanced up at the real sky with a gasp. There was the winged steed: as she watched, it descended, its legs unfolding, reaching down for the earth. It flew low over the placid lake, so low that it approached its mirrored image, and she thought for a moment that it would settle on the water like a swan. But it flew on toward shore, touched the ground—was for a moment cantering, its wing beats matched to its beating hooves. Then it halted, snorted, arching its neck and furling its long white pinions against its flanks. No earthly steed ever matched this creature for beauty, even the faerie mounts of the Elei: it was like a poet’s dream of a horse.
As the sky-horse stooped to drink at the mere’s edge a ripple spread in wide circles far out on its surface. A woman’s head rose up, her fair hair floating about her. Then she dived, showing a bare white back and shoulders—and where her legs should have been, a long glistening green tail. It w
as scaled and finned and shaped rather like a fish’s, only the tail fin that slapped the surface as it went under was horizontal, like the flukes of a whale. A daughter of the undines, perhaps—or was this lake home to the water Elementals themselves? In this long-ago time the mer-folk might not yet have come to be. Or, for that matter, human beings, or horses. These could be eidolons summoned out of the Ether; or creations of the Old Ones, living dreams of what would one day be.
She longed to stop and ponder these marvels, but she made herself journey on. At last the trees thinned, and the clouds gave way, and looking over the cliff to her right she saw far below her the rolling waves of the long-vanished ocean, where in her time forests and green plains spread. Ahead of her towers reared up out of the whirling whiteness, pale and pellucid as though carved of quartz: cupolas and minarets, with multifoliate windows of many-colored glass like great luminous flowers. She had come to the city that she had seen from Auron’s back. There were the strange spheres and obelisks of precious stone: and they glimmered now, not like venudor with its strong steady radiance, but with lights that came and went, and danced and flickered as if alive. She was reminded of the glow she had seen within her star sapphire ring.
But her attention quickly shifted to the glorious beings in the city’s white streets. They were as beautiful as Elei, but very much taller, and wonderful to see. For they were seraphim: each had a pair of wings feathered like a bird’s, white or bronze or golden, crimson or peacock-colored, and they were robed in loose garments of many hues that fell from their shoulders in long and flowing folds. A few wore garlands upon their heads, of leaves or flowers. Some looked like women and some like men, but many had a hermaphrodite appearance, as though in assuming their forms they had not troubled themselves to choose one gender or the other. Shape-shifters beyond a doubt: though they all seemed to be young, the wisdom of countless ages showed in their eyes. The auras of many were visible, flickering about them like flames and crowning their heads with light.
