by Alison Baird
“You need not go,” he said, “not if you don’t really wish it. The Lesser Heaven is beautiful too, and you have seen so little of it yet.” His voice grew softer. “You do wish to remain, don’t you?”
Ailia closed her eyes. “Yes, a part of me does: the mortal part. I have been changed, by being born. A part of me will now be always yearning for this plane. It is very wonderful.”
“Yes,” he agreed, and his eyes dwelled on her, keen and intent. “It is.”
JOMAR AND LORELYN RETRACED THEIR steps through the dense greenery, feeling anxious. Ailia had been alone for more than an hour now. If she were caught with her guard down, an enemy might yet harm her. As they neared the clearing they halted, hearing voices. Ailia was speaking with someone—but with whom? Jomar suddenly stiffened, listening. His eyes grew wide, then he plunged through the greenery. Lorelyn ran after him.
In the clearing stood Ailia, and with her a tall blond figure whose familiarity made them stop and stagger in their tracks.
Lorelyn spoke first, breathlessly. “Damion? Damion! Then it is true—you are still alive—”
Jomar stood staring. “No—it’s just another of those illusions. Like the lion. We want him to be here, so we see him—”
“No. Neither is true.” Ailia turned back to the Damion-figure at her side. “Once before you deceived me, using Damion’s form. And you have done so again—but I guessed who you truly were when you spoke of the Lesser Heaven.”
His form faded before their eyes, and changed: and there stood Mandrake. His face was thin, cadaverous, its pallor now of a sickly hue, the face of a man who has endured torment of the mind as well as of the body. He had allowed his nails to grow out into the long curved claws they tended naturally to become, and his eyes held a febrile gleam.
“I have come here,” he said, “to offer you a last chance.”
Jomar and Lorelyn rushed to Ailia’s side, weapons drawn. But the Tryna Lia did not move. She stood regarding Mandrake with unwavering eyes.
Mandrake in his turn looked at her, and his emotions rose again in a great flood, threatening to overwhelm him. He sensed a last chance for freedom, a last opportunity to avoid the path of destruction that threatened them both. If only she would hear him! She was powerful, she could save him from the demons and their sinister designs. “I did not deceive you altogether,” he went on. “Damion does live. His mother was one of the Archons, and the Zimbouran priest was not able to destroy him. He dwells now in the plane of the Ether.”
“Yes,” she replied, her voice still level and calm. “I know, for I saw him there.”
“So you know that your chief complaint against me is untrue. I did not cause your friend’s death. And I will not harm these two either—” gesturing to Jomar and Lorelyn. “You will see that I bear you no ill will.”
Jomar clutched his steel sword, wishing for his blade of pure iron. He could not counter any sorcery this warlock intended to cast. He had only words to throw at the enemy. “You still left us to die at Khalazar’s hands. We have a score to settle with you, Lorelyn and I.”
“Khalazar disobeyed me.” He spoke to Jomar, but his golden eyes remained fixed on Ailia’s. “He slew my goblin-guards and sent you to die—but he has paid for his misdeeds—”
“You haven’t,” Lorelyn interrupted, advancing on him with her blade of adamant.
“Lori—don’t. Please. You are no match for him.” Ailia raised a warning hand.
Mandrake continued to gaze at Ailia. “The prophecy is wrong, Highness. This will not end with the death of either one of us. It will go on—and on. If I am killed, the dragons that are on my side will seek vengeance, and the Valei will continue to spread destruction wherever they go. If you die, your people will fight me and my subjects to their dying breath. But there need be no contest at all, Princess. It is for you to say whether we fight. I cannot surrender to your side—Jomar there is not the only one among them who has sworn to destroy me. But if you were to come with me—”
“Then your allies would destroy me.”
“No, they would not dare to defy me. I could keep you safe. Come with me, Ailia”—there was a new, imploring tone in his voice now—“I am alone, and I cannot trust any of the Valei. But we could rule the Empire together, wisely and well. You would have the peace that you long for.”
Ailia said nothing. She felt that she saw him truly at last, exposed and vulnerable as a sea-creature out of its protecting shell: a being tortured by centuries of loneliness, starved for companionship, desperately afraid. She herself no longer felt fear, or love or hate for him: pity filled her soul now as it had Ana’s long ago. And then she realized that she had unconsciously taken a step toward him.
At that moment a voice spoke in Ailia’s mind: You called on me, and I am here. There was a great flash, as if a rift in the air had opened, and a white-clad figure stood there in the glade with them. Another likeness of Damion, or so it appeared. Lorelyn cried out as the figure strode toward Mandrake.
“Let her be,” the new Damion-figure said.
It is you! Ailia answered silently. At last!
Mandrake stared at the robed man in hate and fear. Then he stepped back and reared to his full height, seeming to grow taller as they watched. He turned to Ailia. “Well, you may have changed and grown in power. But so have I!” As he spoke, Mandrake drew upon the dark power, calling on the demons for aid. Help me . . . He stretched out his hands, and as the sky clouded over and the light grew fainter he began to transform, becoming a towering shape of scales and gaping jaws. The red dragon.
“Ailia!” called Damion. “The Stone!”
Ailia reached into her pocket and drew forth the Star Stone. It shone like a fragment of the sun. Then she too changed her shape. Before the onlookers’ eyes she became a form white as cloud and graceful as a gazelle, with a single horn like a spire of ice—the alicorn of the Tarnawyn, whose pearly spirals are founded upon a living gem like a Loänan’s dracontias. But at the base of this horn’s rising gyre was a glimmer of pale light: the white radiance of the Star Stone. It had become a part of her.
Lorelyn gasped. “She’s beautiful!”
But the unicorn did not level her horn and charge. She turned and fled through the forest, passing easily between the close-growing boles of the trees. The dragon spread its wings and flew up over the canopy, pursuing her through the air.
“After them,” said Damion quietly, and he too raced into the trees. Lorelyn and Jomar, recovering from their momentary stupefaction, followed.
At long last the trees thinned, and they found themselves on the shore of white sand. The unicorn had reached the sea’s edge and turned at bay, her horn-gem glowing ever more fiercely. Surely she would fight now—or else the enemy would retreat in fear before the Stone, as he had done once before. But the dragon dropped out of the sky toward her, roaring. Ailia turned, and leaped into the water. In midair her unicorn-shape shimmered and changed, became the form of a dolphin that dived down in a graceful arc and splashed into the water. The dragon drew in its wings and dived after her.
Ailia sped over the wondrous branching shapes and turrets of the barrier reef and on into the clear deeps beyond. Diving down into a large rift between walls of coral, she waited as the Loänan swam past her, holding her breath. She could go for half an hour without breathing in this form, but then she would have to rise to the surface. Fish swam about her in bright, flashing schools. One large sargon-fish, his head topped by curving horns that gave him a regal appearance, passed within a finger’s-breadth of her head. A sea-hog came rooting through the sea-herbage just as its earthly counterpart would on land: its barrel-shaped body was coated with scales and its tail was fanned like a fish’s, but it had four stumpy clawed legs, and a snout from which tusks protruded like a wild boar’s. Higher up, sleek black-and-white gerahavs darted about the coral caves with swift strokes of their wings, literally flying underwater; the wondrous birds that surfaced only to breathe, and never went ashore save to lay
their eggs. She waited, watching all of these creatures with an anxious eye, but knowing as she did that they would show no fear of the dragon should it return, and so could give her no warning. She waited for many minutes in an agony of suspense, fearing to see the dragon’s head appear in the gap overhead. But he did not come: only a pair of Arainian dolphins that glided out of the depths and circled above her, their round intelligent eyes gazing with open curiosity at this odd-looking intruder in their ocean realm—their namesake, had they but known it. At last she felt that her lungs were burning within her. She would have to rise and breathe.
DAMION STOOD AT THE WATER’S edge, waiting for the two adversaries to return. Lorelyn and Jomar hung back.
“If it is Damion—if he’s really returned—why doesn’t he help her?” Jomar said.
“I don’t know! Fight, fight, Ailia! Why doesn’t she turn and fight?” Lorelyn urged.
“What if she still doesn’t want to fight—deep down?”
“But she must!”
Even as she spoke, the dolphin burst out of the water in a spurt of foam, leaping high into the air. Then in mid-leap it changed and became a swan, soaring skyward on white wings, graceful neck outstretched straight as a spear. The dragon too leaped out of the sea and sped in pursuit of the bird, talons outstretched.
“Ailia! Look out!” Lorelyn shrieked.
Too late: the dragon’s claws closed on the bird’s fleeing form, and then he flapped back to the shore, roaring in triumph. The friends stared, appalled, at the huddled heap of feathers on the sand beneath Mandrake’s talons.
“Oh, no—no,” Lorelyn breathed. “Not dead—”
Then there was a flicker, and suddenly the dragon was perched on the back of another Loänan. Its scales shimmered like mother-of-pearl, its wings were like white sails, its eyes blue as the ocean, its dracontias glowing with the radiance of the Stone. It gave a trumpeting cry and rose, dislodging the enemy from its back with a shrugging motion. The red dragon leaped aside, and then wheeled to confront the ethereal Loänan.
The humans watched in awe as the white dragon spread her wings and sprang into the air. “Oh, she’s magnificent—but she really has changed this time. She isn’t Ailia anymore!” Lorelyn exclaimed. But at the same time she thought: Yes, she is. There was always more to Ailia than what you saw with your eyes. You are seeing that more, now.
Land and sky whirled in a terrifying confusion as Ailia and Mandrake spun through the air interlocked. Then Ailia managed to break free and found she was hurtling through the air at a terrifying speed. The land rushed beneath her at a slant, the horizon crazily titled as she fought to regain control. A grove of trees rushed at her and she managed to clear it with a handspan to spare. Where was Mandrake? She moved her head slightly to the left, glad of the dragon’s superior peripheral vision which enabled her to spy a pursuer without turning her head completely around. There was no sign of him though . . . Suddenly he struck her—from above, digging in his talons and closing his jaws in a vise-grip on her neck. He bit her throat, and the white dragon kicked out, scoring his underside with her claws in an action more instinctive than intended. He roared and released her. She looked at his blazing eyes, feeling the wild confusion of rage, fear, and pain. It was Mandrake she saw there, but also there seemed to be another presence in those eyes: more ancient, more powerful, but free of the terror and wrath that tormented the dragon’s human soul. This other presence had moved far beyond such things. It was cold, passionless, guided only by some sense of purpose that she could not begin to fathom. Was this the primordial self she saw, the legacy of the reptile that lingered still in the man’s mind, and was greatly strengthened by his shift to draconic form? Or was it something else—a driving purpose older still, older than all the worlds? The Power that reigned still from its prison in the depths of a black star? The slit pupils of the dragon’s eyes seemed all at once to her like rifts giving onto a fathomless, inner darkness. She felt herself shrink from it. Her foe—Mandrake, or whatever now ruled him—took advantage of her momentary dismay to strike at her, raking her side with his talons. Then he turned and flew away toward the summits of Hyelanthia with their thick concealing clouds. After an instant of bewilderment she hastened to follow. He must not remain at large in her world. She plunged after him, into the dense whiteness that deepened to pearly gray and then lightened again as the sun showed through the other side.
Without warning, a giant dark shape appeared in the mist directly in front of her—a towering pinnacle of gray rock. She tilted her wings sharply. The wind shrieked in her ears as she flew past the grim gray shape, her near wingtip scraping the solid rock. Then other tall perpendicular shapes appeared, to right and left and straight ahead: dozens of rocky formations rising from the plateau beneath. She and Mandrake wove wildly in and out of them like swallows sporting around chimneys. The hunt became an ecstatic game—a race—a chase through high halls built of white feather-down, in and out of obscuring mists and around the colossal monoliths of granite that thrust up perilously through the veiling cumuli. Then they were both out into clear air and sunlight again: a view of the forest and plains on the north side of the tableland was revealed, a narrow view at first framed in scrolls of white vapor, then widening as they broke free of the clouds.
And now she could not help but feel what she had so briefly sensed before, when she had taken draconic form under the influence of the philter: the fierce wild joy of flight, the dizzy height above the earth, the howl of the wind and the feel of it under her wings. Beneath them spread the grassy plains, with herds of beasts vast as the shadows of clouds moving upon them. They saw a small lake coated in what looked like white lilies, but when they flew over it the whiteness arose in a flurry, and a great flock of caladriuses took to the air—not in fright like Meran birds, but in curiosity, flying along with the dragons so she and Mandrake were surrounded by a cloud of wings.
When the red dragon looked back at her, the black emptiness was gone from his eyes. They were bright as fire, challenging, fiercely alive. She understood then that he was not fleeing in fear but had led her on this wild pursuit on purpose, to make her feel her dragon’s form, the strength and majesty of it, and the godlike freedom that it owned. His transformation had been deliberate, a challenge and an invitation to her to take Loänan shape as well.
Back over the tablelands they swept, until they could see the ocean spread out below them in a dazzle of sun. Ailia’s friends watched from the shore as the dragons met and fought again, their necks and tails twined together, wings beating the air, mauling and biting one another’s throats and flanks. Almost they seemed suspended there in the blue vault of the sky, nearly on a level now with the clouds. Then they broke apart and flew through the air, only this time the red dragon pursued the white, and they closed a second time, locked together, tumbling down through the sky. They dropped almost to the earth, broke apart once more, and rose—now flying with necks outstretched, wing to wing, no longer pursuing but soaring side by side.
“What are they doing?” cried Lorelyn.
Jomar said nothing. Once before he had seen a flight like this one: not a clash of two assailants, but the aerial dance of a he-eagle and she-eagle, meeting in the air above the hills in Zimboura . . . Higher the dragons flew, until they were only two flecks, red and cloud-white, against the dark blue dome. Then at last the red one vanished, like a flame extinguished by a breath: it had found and escaped into an ethereal rift, as a fox fleeing the hunters darts into an earthen holt. Would the white dragon follow?
Leagues above them it circled in the sky, its motion wild and purposeless as a piece of chaff caught in an eddy of air. Then it drew in its white wings close to its body, and dropped downward once more, disappearing into the blue expanse of the sea.
Damion watched its long plunge to the waves. Then he sighed, and turning to his friends he spoke to them at last. “We nearly lost her.”
12
The Return
HE REMEMBERED WARMT
H, A GOLDEN light, and what sounded like a chorus of countless voices raised in song: but these were perhaps only symbols, all that his material mind could afterward comprehend of the celestial harmony that was the Ether. Of the ordeal in the sanctum of Valdur’s temple he recalled little, and nothing of either fear nor pain. There had been darkness for a time, that much he knew; and then into that darkness there had come the light, faint at first and then growing brighter as a flame grows. In the soft, golden radiance he had seen a shape appear, somewhere beneath him as it seemed. It was a man, young and fair-haired, robed in white and lying as if asleep upon a bed of stone. He looked down at it, uncomprehending, until at last he realized it was he himself that he saw—and no image of the mind, either: he was gazing on his own body, stretched upon the altar of Valdur. Am I dead then? he wondered. But still he felt more bewildered than afraid.
As the strange luminosity grew ever brighter he glimpsed the blind priest with the ceremonial knife still clutched in his hand, oblivious to the light that enveloped his figure; and the acolyte by the door gaping in blank terror, his face also lit by the glow. But Damion felt distanced from them, and from his own abandoned body, and from the world. After a time it occurred to him that the light was coming from his left, from a sort of rift or opening in the air. And through this he saw, as through a window, figures moving through a shining realm beyond: they were human in form, but beautiful with an unearthly beauty. Some were winged and some were not, but all were luminous as the land through which they moved; and they gestured to him, and called to his mind with sweet voices. Come, join with us!
Still he hesitated: though he yearned for that untroubled Ethereal realm, the bodiless drifting awareness that he had become was loath to leave his body behind—the one familiar thing in his altered world. As he lingered, a figure came to the opening, looking between the worlds: a woman’s form, golden-haired and clad in a gown that glimmered like flame-lit emerald. Her white arms stretched out toward him.
