The Archons of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “Syndra—”

  “I am not Syndra. I am Elnemorah.”

  Elnemorah: she named the old deity of Nemorah, the goddess of volcano fire who dwelled in the burning heart of the world. He backed away. Was she mad, drunk, possessed?

  “I am the Archon of this world, who rebelled against my kind long ago. For that I was banished, prevented from returning in the flesh—until now. Now I have found a willing vessel. As for Ailia, she is a mere servant, a moon-spirit, the least of those whom we hate. Through her they act; yet through her sufferings they too can be made to suffer. You will kill her for us, our Morlyn.” She reached out a long white hand, tipped with blood-red nails nearly as long as his own. Her mouth was red too, glistening with paint: it curved into a full smile as she gazed at him with her too-brilliant eyes. “Ah, it is good to be robed in flesh again, and free to walk this plane.” He drew back from the pale hand. “But perhaps this form does not please you. I shall alter it.”

  And then it was Ailia standing there, with her soft hair and her great eyes turned up to him. He started and clenched his hands, wounding the palms with his nails. She smiled, and held out an arm graceful as a lily on its stem. She was still clad in the shift of ember-red: it slipped, showing the soft white sculpture of one shoulder and the dimples at the base of the throat. He was sickened at this blatant theft of another’s face and form, and yet he could not tear his eyes away.

  “You see?” Ailia’s soft voice said. “I can be anything I wish, Mandrake—or that you wish. You have but to ask it of me.”

  She was so like . . . yearning called to him, irresistible as a current that seizes hold of a swimmer and pulls him out to sea. But then resentment awoke in him: resentment at being thus controlled, reduced to a mindless animal by an unsummoned instinct. The fierce pride that was all he had left now came to his aid. He averted his eyes with an effort of will greater than any he had ever called on before. Syndra, or the thing within her, wanted him bound to her just as he himself had sought to bind Ailia. But though he might owe his life, his very body, to the dark Archons, his mind he still jealously guarded as his own.

  “Keep your ensorcelments for the enemy,” he said in brusque dismissal, moving away. “I will have none of them.” Sultry laughter greeted this statement, and by its sound he knew that she had reverted to her own form.

  Mandrake swept from the room, striding swiftly along the corridors while his few remaining vassals fled before his dark-mantled figure and dead-white face. Once alone in his own quarters he slammed the door, and flung his mantle to the floor. Syndra was only a minor trouble. Most likely she had merely partaken of some potion that had maddened her. But the Tryna Lia: what must be done about her? Perhaps Damion Athariel had done him a service by returning and claiming Ailia. It would be easier now to kill her—kill them both. Jealousy and hate came now to his aid. He saw in his mind’s vision the two of them together, and was able to feel the rage he needed—to fight them, to survive. Hate was an ally, the dark door through which power came. He clenched his hands on his robes, tearing them inadvertently with his claws. Then releasing them he went to the cabinet where he kept his ambrosia elixir, and on taking it felt the physical self recede and his mind detach itself with the old feeling of freedom. Lying down, he was removed from the events unfolding around him, and from the body reclining as if in sleep on the divan. He could look dispassionately at the drawn face with its ghastly pallor and vivid scars, at the red-gold hair tumbled about it in disarray. It was more distancing than looking at one’s image in a mirror, for this was no shadow but the thing itself. He observed with detachment the slow rise and fall of the chest beneath the black silk robe, and knew that should the tenuous thread between it and his immaterial self be severed, it would be stilled forever. And if it ends, will I end too? What of this conscious spark—will it continue, or be annihilated? And if it were annihilated, would that not be a release?

  Shaking off these thoughts, Mandrake decided that he would project himself unseen, and move among his few remaining courtiers. He must be desperate indeed to seek such pitiful company, but his solitude was unendurable. Too human for the Loänan, too dragonish to be among humans, all his life had been spent in limbo. He drifted from the room and down the halls, and no one fled from him now, invisible as he was. He moved among his people like a ghost, observing them, listening to their talk.

  Presently he heard his name spoken, and he followed the sound of voices into the dreary empty space of the ballroom. Some Morugei were lounging there, including Roglug.

  “We shouldn’t hang about here. I reckon Mandrake’s done for,” said the goblin-king. “I’m leaving, at any rate.”

  “I won’t shed no tears when he dies!” said another. “Let that Empress have him! Then we’ll be free.”

  “Free,” murmured the king. “Yes—they did nothing against us before he came. After he’s gone they may let us alone.”

  Mandrake had heard enough. He fled back the way he had come.

  All at once the demons were there, with him, one ethereal form at either side. Elombar thrust his bestial face close to Mandrake’s. “You fool! Why do you not leave this place yourself and come to Ombar? You allied yourself with us, for good or ill, and now you must remain on our side, or be killed. Do you think the Tryna Lia will spare you? That we are helpless to stop you turning against us, so you can do as you will? We made you, you are ours.”

  Mandrake laughed, the sound harsh and humorless. “You are afraid now, Archon—if that is what you truly are? You fear that your weapon has in mind of its own, and can turn and cut you?”

  “We shall see. The Empress has come with her army to destroy you. Depart and live, or stay and be slain: it is your choice, you think. But you are wrong.”

  They had entered his private chamber. The Archon pointed to Mandrake’s prone body. And then he watched in disbelief as that body, apparently of its own volition, rose to its feet. It walked out of the door, and down the hall, and he heard it addressing the Loänei lingering there. The voice was his, but not the words:

  “We go to Ombar. Prepare to depart. It is my command!”

  Mandrake’s ethereal form pursued his stolen flesh. And there in the high-roofed hall he saw his body begin to transform into a dragon’s shape.

  Horrified, he imposed his will upon it. The scales came and went on his face and limbs, talons and teeth lengthened and then grew shorter again. He returned to his body, and mastered it; but there was no longer any sense of absolute control. He felt that he was twice imprisoned: in this hated castle and in his own flesh that had been designed, deliberately bred by the Archon Valdur in order to be taken over—a tool, a thing to be used. He stared down at his hands, at the bones within the meshes of veins. He flexed his fingers with their sharp claws. They were his to command—for now, a voice seemed to say. Only for now.

  “No,” he whispered. The dragon-folk stared at him, and he straightened. “No—wait. We do not go to Ombar.”

  “But the enemy—they have come to Nemorah,” began one Loänei.

  “We will go to my castle in the sea. It is easily defensible.” His eyes flared golden fire at them. “Obey me!”

  AILIA LOOKED OVER AURON’S HORNED head at the sphere of Nemorah. The world lay beneath them, a huge dome of many tints: grassland, jungle, ocean showed as pale jade, dark malachite, and shimmering emerald. Clouds swirled across that patchwork of greens, pure white save in one place, where the whorl of a vast and angry storm could be seen upon the ocean’s surface. As night’s shadow advanced over the typhoon, tiny sparks of lightning flickered fitfully in the gray mass at its center, not all of it natural in origin. For this was no natural storm arising from sea and weather but a magical barrier, a gigantic citadel crafted by the Dragon King out of cloud and air. It did not advance as a true sea storm would, but remained always in one fixed position, and its central eye stood directly above the spot where his submarine castle lay.

  Auron continued in his lofty orbit. Weightless
here, he had no need for his wings, and the great translucent membranes hung half-furled at his sides. Her heartbeats quickened at the familiar sight of Nemorah. It was another Ailia who had come here before, who in retrospect seemed like an innocent child, naive and unsuspecting of what lay before her. Now she knew. From her height above the world, she marked the spinning mass of the typhoon and knew she had found her quarry. He is there, Ailia thought, and she felt as though her heart would burst through her ribs. She saw Damion astride his own mount, the cherub Falaar, and he looked back at her reassuringly.

  “Now we are the attacking force!” said the cherub. “I cannot wait for battle to be joined. This is what I was made for.”

  Ailia looked across at Falaar’s fierce hooked beak and savage talons, and realized that this must be true: they were designed for seizing and rending flesh. Almost she could pity his prey. Damion looked at her as though guessing her thoughts.

  Auron gazed down with ears and nose barbels twitching, following the aerial battle far below. “They have engaged the enemy,” he said at last.

  “Then let us go,” said Damion. “They may need us.”

  “We will have the victory!” cried Auron as he descended, burning the air with his speed. Falaar gave a ringing eagle-cry and followed him. Soon they were low enough to see the great clouds roiling and colliding beneath them, and the flying forms of dragons and cherubim plunging in and out of the ragged gaps between. In another few minutes they were level with the field of battle. Thunderheads reared high above, veined with lightning bolts, lit up by great fiery flashes from within. Never before had Ailia seen a storm from above the level of the clouds, and she was filled with awe even as she mourned what was taking place in its depths.

  Dragons fighting each other! she thought, grieving, and she felt Auron’s sorrow too. The firedrakes were evil, but for Loänan to fight Loänan was a terrible thing.

  We have to fight, said Damion in her mind. They gave us no choice.

  I understand, she agreed, unhappily.

  They flew on toward the main battle. They were high in the sky still, moving above a gray-white cloud-plain under a starry sky of darkest blue-black. Two of the world’s moons shone above them, bright-lit on their left sides: one gray and one golden in color. The only other light came from the bulking gray-purple cumuli ahead. When lit from inside, they flashed pale lilac, and every detail of them showed: crags and tufts and filmy strands spreading like roots in air. They were being buffeted and tormented by the great winds into strange shapes, top-heavy towers and bulging battlements, table-mountains with long streamers of mist blowing off their flat tops, mounds of wool slowly shredding to pieces and re-forming before her eyes. Ailia was reminded of the winter sea off Great Island: of the great shapes of the white icebergs looming up out of floating pans of ice. The cumuli were the bergs, and the flat plain of cloud between them the pack ice: in places it thinned and gave way to dark openings, just as the frozen pack gave way to dark patches of open water. She looked down into those deeps of air as Auron passed over them, but could see nothing below.

  She felt the winds too, as Auron encountered them, often with as jarring an impact as if he had struck something solid. Sometimes he dropped as if an invisible floor beneath had given way and cast him into a pit. Often he was blown about so violently that the dragon had to pull his wings in and let himself fall like a stone, away from the gust that had seized him. The other winged warriors were suffering the same difficulties, she could see. Ailia clung as hard as she could to Auron’s horns, for if she were blown off his back she would not be able to breathe, even if she took a bird’s form to save herself from the fall. Only a dragon or cherub could live at these heights; she had not learned how to take the latter shape, and dared not assume the former.

  The storm was constructed like a fortress with concentric rings of curtain-walls, protecting an inner keep. The Wingwatch’s aim was the same as that of any army besieging such a structure: to break through each barrier in turn, until they could overrun the keep. The dragons and cherubim could choose to overfly the storm and plunge straight down toward the central eye, and some had chosen to do so; but there the wild winds were strongest, the sorcerous guardians fiercest. Many losses had already been reported among those who had made the attempt. For the rest there was the task of breaching each ring of defense, until the enemy’s ranks were depleted, and those at the center were forced to spread themselves outward to replace the fallen, weakening the inner guard. Peering ahead through all the gray fantastic shapes that barred their way, Ailia caught glimpses of bright lights, tiny sparks they looked from here, that came and went in an instant: they might almost have been the shining specks that appear before weary eyes, but she knew they were gouts of dragon-fire. The firedrakes were trying to attack the Loänan. It was not like the fights among the comets where the firedrakes had to enter the Loänan’s envelopes of air in order to use their fire on them. Here there was plenty of air to feed the giant flames.

  She understood now why the weather was in such turmoil. Two factions of Loänan were imposing their will upon the atmosphere: and as they dueled each other, the great winds they commanded clashed together, and created this chaotic turbulence. She tried to help, drawing on her own power to move wind and cloud, but could not bring any order into the airy melee: instead her efforts merely contributed to it. “This is no use!” she cried as they plunged into the middle of one thunderhead. A jagged bolt clove the air before their eyes, mere wing-lengths away: the gray darkness flared to white-purple brilliance all around them. Dazzled, they burst out through puffs of what resembled motionless steam into open sky again.

  “We are seeking to move the storm out to sea,” said Auron.

  “But what if it strikes the coast instead? Hundreds of people might perish.”

  “We cannot turn the whole cloud-mass southward, nor east nor west. It is the nature of such storms to move in a northerly direction as they feed on the warmth of the waters beneath them. A contrary path would be unnatural, and would take more power than even we can command. The very atmosphere would have to be altered, with devastating effects in many other places. The winds of the world are against us.”

  “Auron, I know it is difficult to get through the storm ourselves, but if shifting it could cause more harm then let us not try it.”

  Auron gave a beat of his wings and soared skyward again, out of the grasp of the tumultuous winds. “You are right, Highness. We may risk our safety, but no one else’s. My people will continue the fight to breach the walls of cloud and lightning, and win through to the storm’s eye. For now you should join with your army, who await you near Loänanmar. There is still the matter of the people on land, who do not yet know their deliverance is near.”

  14

  The Overseer

  AURON AND FALAAR FLEW their riders to the old city of the Loänei downriver from Loänanmar, where a portal had been opened by Mandrake: the same through which Syndra had come when she first fled to this world. It now gave entry to the Arainian army. The soldiers had set up an encampment in the ruins, after Ailia warned them of the many dangers in the jungles beyond. None of them had ever ventured to the domain of an alien star, while a few had not even passed beyond the bounds of their home world. Jomar and Lorelyn were as filled with awe at their surroundings as any of the warriors fighting under their command.

  Ailia was restless and uneasy. She had not wanted to return to this place, and not merely because of its sinister associations; there was a real menace in the air that unsettled her. She understood, now that her Archonic side had reawakened, why the jungles had seemed so hostile and threatening to her when she first entered them. It had not been merely because of their unfamiliarity, and the dangerous animals dwelling within them. The incorporeal powers that reigned over this sphere were aware of her and resentful of her intrusion. Was this what the invaders of her own world had felt in the forests near Hyelanthia? However she might feel, though, she must not let anyone in the camp s
ense it. As their leader, her duty was to inspire them with confidence.

  She went to stand at the opening of the tent that had been raised for her, and looked at the sentries strung along the riverside. The tepid water was flat as glass, and opaque with silt; it was impossible to tell what lurked within it, and she had told everyone of the perilous river-dwelling beasts: the many-headed hydras, and the terrible guivres that resembled serpents with the jaws of crocodiles. Everyone was watchful and ready for an attack, from either the jungle’s denizens or the enemy. The air steamed all around them, humid and dense, full of eerie cries from the tangled groves beyond. It was heavy, sultry, and the knights who were wearing their armor sweated and mopped at their streaming brows. The whole of the atmosphere was oppressive with heat and tension.

  Yet beneath all the apprehension, Ailia was aware of a competing emotion: it felt oddly comforting to be in these same surroundings, but not this time alone, as she had been before. Now her dearest friends were here with her, and the Wingwatch and an entire army. The more mundane fear she had known before, the dread of being injured or killed, had gone. Ailia gazed at Damion where he stood in the open, his hair bright in the glow of the two suns as he looked around him.

  “This is a terrible world,” he said. “Do you feel it? The Vor-power is very strong here.”

  The Vor-power. “I saw it,” Ailia said. “Our old ancestor, the reptile in the mire. I know it is in us all, the chief cause of our failings.”

  “In mortals, yes,” Damion said. “All beings began as beasts, long ago. I was aware of the creature’s presence within me. Even the Tarnawyn, the foe of serpents, began as cold-blooded creeping things themselves. The first unicorns were hoofed and horned as now, but their bodies were scaled, and they had heads like dragons. In fact, they arose on the same world as the celestial dragons. Tarnawyn and Loänan are close kin. But humankind is young, and closer to its bestial ancestors. Perhaps that is why I—and so many others—dreamed of slaying dragons. It was not the Loänan we hated and feared, nor even the firedrake, but the creeping thing that lies within us. I no longer need fear it, though: my link to it was severed when I became an Elaia. My dragon is slain forever.”