“We have been waiting and hoping for the Promised One,” Yanor had said, leaning towards them across the stone table. His black hair glittered as if sprinkled with stars, and Aeryn found herself distracted by it. “He is your companion—John Crichton. He alone can enter the chamber where the Orb of All guards the power gems that keep us in our ghostly, immortal form. We have programmed our sensors to look out for such a one, but in hundreds of cycles of searching we have found no one with the neurological patterns that a Promised One must have. Other of our people are taking him to the Orb of All even now.”
D’Argo made a noise of impatience. “What is this Orb of All?”
Yanor stared at them earnestly. “A device set in place when this ship, this World, was first constructed. It was originally meant as a safeguard against the destruction of the power gems. It reads the mental patterns of all who penetrate the chamber. And it destroys interlopers.”
Aeryn slammed her hand against the table. “Then it will destroy Crichton?”
Yanor shook his head. “It will not destroy him, because he is the Promised One. It was necessary that he hurry on ahead, before anyone could stop him. But since you are concerned for him, we will follow. Our transport will be arriving at any moment.” He rose to his feet.
D’Argo and Aeryn rose to theirs. “Who would try to stop him?” asked D’Argo with a worried tone.
“What if you’re wrong, and he’s not the Promised One?” said Aeryn in an angry tone.
“The Nightfolk wish to stop him,” said Yanor. “And we are not wrong.” He was looking up at the sky, and their gaze followed his.
There, blotting out the blue of the heavens, were the vast, ragged wings of a dragon.
* * *
Once the dragon had landed, Yanor strode forward and unknotted a kind of harness it wore, letting down a rope ladder just in front of the dragon’s folded leathery wings. The wings were a pale color, shot through with gold, and the rest of the dragon was covered in gold and red scales. It had a long head, now resting on its front claws, and steam came from its nostrils. A long scaly neck led down to its substantial body, the top of its back being even higher than D’Argo could reach, and the body ended in a long scaly tail that did several loop-de-loops as it diminished in size.
“I’ve heard of these,” said Aeryn. “We have myths of them. A mythical beast for a mythical race?”
Yanor slapped the dragon’s side fondly. “We call it Mortcalm. Of course, it’s mechanical: we couldn’t keep a whole colony of real dragons in space. But it reminds us of home.”
D’Argo walked around the dragon, studying the folded wings, the curling tail. “Remarkable. I’ve heard of a number of races that have such a species in their mythology, but I’ve never actually seen one. And you have real ones on your home planet?”
A look of sadness crossed Yanor’s face. “Had. Who knows whether they still survive on Nokmad? And as for the myths many races have about dragons…” A small smile crossed his face. “Perhaps they saw one of ours when we came by?”
D’Argo contemplated this possibility.
“Come,” said Yanor. “We must board. Time is passing, and the Hole in the World awaits us.”
* * *
The shadow that fell across them was dark as the stuff that clung to distant stars in a sky full of forever.
The countryside spread out before them, lush and picturesque, like a living map of tiny trees and miniature streams threading their way through fields. The dragon’s flight was smooth. In its back was a compartment with six seats, one behind the other. With safety webbing pulled across their chests, Aeryn and D’Argo were free to look down at the passing wonders of the World below them.
The light from the two suns was bright until suddenly a shadow passed over the dragon, a dark rectangle above them; a trapdoor in the sky had opened.
Aeryn could not make out what it was at first; it was so dark, blotting out all illumination.
“By the Sky Gods!” cried D’Argo.
“Stay calm!” said Yanor. “We shall evade capture.” His hands were busy at the controls, yanking throttles, pulling levers, keying in coordinates. The right wing of the dragon dipped. With a roar, the flying beast drew its leathery wings to its sides and dropped like a stone. The g-force threw them back against their seats. Aeryn looked down and saw craggy mountain peaks rushing toward them. At the last possible moment, the dragon’s wings opened, caught the wind and pulled up.
Maneuvering to follow was what looked like some kind of metal raft. From the underside it did indeed resemble a dark trapdoor hovering above them. Now that they could see it from above, they saw that the upper surface was filled with knots and promontories and turrets. Even as they watched, a scarlet beam of energy zapped down from a nozzle of a gun emplacement, sizzling the air fifty metres away, exactly where they had been moments before.
“What is it?” Aeryn screamed above the wind.
“I will shoot it down!” cried D’Argo.
“It is a ship of our enemies, the Nightfolk,” said Yanor. “It is better armed—but it is not as fast or as maneuverable as Mortcalm.”
Yanor yanked on the controls and Mortcalm’s huge wings stroked the sky again, pulling them faster through the air. They dodged and hopped around the mountains while the raft pursued them, firing energy bolts.
“We can take refuge soon,” said Yanor, “and then we will have several options.”
“I hope death is not one of them,” said D’Argo.
The ship of the Nightfolk followed them relentlessly. As they flew on, swooping and diving, Aeryn could tell that the sky was darkening. The flashes of fire from the attacking skyraft seemed brighter and of different hues now: magenta and orange, hot red edged with deep blue. A bolt of fire touched the side of the dragon. The beast pulled away, flying more slowly now, its wings beating with what seemed almost like painful exertion.
Yanor remained intent on piloting Mortcalm. He swooped and swerved, banked and looped, but the dark sky-raft remained behind them.
The sky was filled with a silvery gloom, as if the impending nightfall had robbed even the horizon of its customary sunset glow.
And then suddenly the dragon began to dive. Aeryn could feel the g-forces pinning her to her seat as their speed quickened. She expected the dragon to pull up again at any moment, but the winged creature kept plunging down and down.
Aeryn craned her neck to one side for a better view. The dragon seemed to be aiming at the side of a mountain, but she could see no flat landing space to give them refuge.
The side of the cliff hurtled towards them; in the space of a second Aeryn took in the shape of the stones, small bushes clinging to the rockface, a cascade of dirt where it looked like there had been a slide.
“The mountain!” she shrieked.
Still Mortcalm plunged, wings tucked against its side. Just as it seemed that their descent could only be stopped violently, the dragon’s wings unfolded again, and the wind slowed their descent—but not enough. Mortcalm was still heading straight for the mountain. Its side loomed, great granite crags and all, a whole line of trees and roots, and disaster—the dragon flew straight into it, and they were swallowed by darkness.
CHAPTER 14
“Zhaan?” cried Crichton.
The beautiful woman looked at him, tilting her head in an inquiring fashion. But as Crichton looked at her more closely, he could see that though the woman looked like Zhaan, there were differences. First, she was not blue, but a pale and creamy color. Second, she had a beautiful mass of flowing brown hair. She seemed somehow both substantial and insubstantial—like Zhaan but not like Zhaan. Where Zhaan was ethereal, this woman had an intense physicality. Where Zhaan was cool and serene, this woman was warm and enticing. Where he had admiration and respect for Zhaan, this woman seemed to invite more. There was the delicate scent of perfume about her that crept through Crichton’s nose and down his backbone in a delicious shiver. Her eyes surveyed him with an alluring excitement, a th
rilling connection of all that was electric about sexual attraction.
At first glance she’d seemed just as material as Zhaan, but as Crichton watched he could see her materiality fade, the colors and substances that made up her form moving around like dense smoke.
“Zhaan?” repeated the beautiful woman.
Crichton almost stuttered in his confusion. “You—you look like someone I know,” he said. “But you’re not Zhaan, are you?”
She threw back her head and laughed a silvery laugh. “I’m as much as you want me to be,” she said, moving closer to him. The rest of the cave was dark, and the wraiths had faded into the blackness, leaving him alone with the mysterious woman.
“I demand that you tell me what’s going on,” he said. “Are you another person who thinks I’m some sort of Promised One?”
The woman took one of his hands between her own two cool hands. “Are you some sort of Promised One?” she asked.
Crichton withdrew his hand politely but decisively. “My name is John Crichton. I am an astronaut from the planet Earth, stranded far away by accident. I mean no harm to you or your ship, and all I want to do is go home.”
The woman gave a slow smile. “Yes,” she said. “You yearn for the cold emptiness of space, and you yearn for home. Those twin yearnings give you great power, O Promised One.”
Crichton sighed in exasperation. “I am not promised to anybody,” he said, “and my companions and I only want you to let our ship go so we can leave in peace.”
The woman smiled and her dark eyes seemed to glow with an almost hypnotic fervor. “Oh, no, John Crichton,” she replied. She smoothed a hand across his shoulder and then pressed a cold, delicious kiss onto his lips. “You are in exactly the right place for what you seek.” They were in a huge cavern, lit by torches that glowed with a cool, even light. Aeryn studied the cavern. The entrance through which the dragon had glided was as invisible from the inside as it had been from the outside: it was as if they had penetrated a screen of illusion, but from a distance it all looked real and solid. Rocky walls were to either side of them, and far above a ceiling dripped with stalactites. But they were standing on a shiny metal floor. This was what Mortcalm had landed on and now was curling up upon. A little puff of smoke rose above its nostrils. Aeryn was surprised to see its great head sink down upon the metal, eyes closed with something like a half-smile upon its face.
Yanor was also smiling. His hair was unruffled, as if the wind had no power to touch him, and his dark tunic was as smooth and pristine as it had been when they had first met.
“Quite the ride!” he said. “But I think we are safe now.”
“Who were those terrorists?” cried D’Argo. “I swear I shall meet them in battle again! And they shall taste my fury!”
Yanor moved to Mortcalm and stood with a hand smoothing the dragon’s great scaly neck. “If only it were that simple,” he said. “In fact, you cannot kill them—just as you could not kill me, if you tried—without going to the Hole in the World, where our forms are generated. It is there we were headed, and they sought to prevent us from getting there, as they did. So far.”
As Yanor was speaking, Aeryn looked around the cavern. Her eyes were adjusting to the dim light, and she gradually became aware of two more dragons, a little smaller than Mortcalm, tucked away in the corners, resting with their heads on their forelegs. Beyond them were countless machines, blinking with lights, angled with catwalks and odd alien architecture, colored in harsh jade, bright magenta, streaks of cerulean. The place smelled of burned insulation, oil and electricity.
“This way,” said Yanor, and he turned to lead them.
“Where are we?” demanded D’Argo.
“We are in the mountain stronghold,” said Yanor, moving ahead of them towards the far end of the cavern. “This is where many of the Dayfolk—our kind—live at night.”
“I thought you were called Nokmadi, not Dayfolk,” said Aeryn.
The ghost stopped and turned his green eyes on her. “We are all Nokmadi, but only some of us are Dayfolk. The rest are in the service of the Queen of All Souls, the Empress of Night. The Nightfolk oppose our desire to return home, and for that reason they seek to destroy us—as you have seen.”
The ghost turned and flowed away.
Aeryn and D’Argo exchanged a glance and then followed.
As they walked along in the dimly lit cavern, Aeryn noticed that other ghosts were perched in the scaffolding. They seemed intent on technological duties with the machinery. One looked down at her, and she could see that its face was not quite human, its clothing flowing robes instead of the tunic, trousers and boots that Yanor wore.
“The other ghosts,” she said to Yanor, “do not look like you.”
“But they do look vaguely like your kind, do they not?” said Yanor, leading the way around a bank of machinery. “We take the form of memories, and we have gleaned enough from you to look comfortably like your species.”
She processed this thought. That meant that Yanor, too, was not really what he looked like.
“And yet you,” she continued, “you’re dressed like one of my kind; you look so much more Sebacean than the others. Why?”
He stopped and smiled, looking at her squarely in the eye. “This is the way I choose to appear to you.” He looked over to D’Argo. “I considered appearing as a Luxan, but in searching your mind for possible reactions, I found you would respond more favorably to this Sebacean form. Perhaps it reminds you of someone you once knew? Do you like it?”
Aeryn frowned. “What does it matter? Let’s get on with this!”
Yanor nodded. He turned again and led the way until they came to a large cage-like apparatus with wheels, decorated with motifs of dragons that looked as if they were made out of wrought iron. Yanor pulled open the door, which groaned on its hinges. He stepped in and beckoned to them. D’Argo and Aeryn followed him inside. The door screeched closed. Immediately, the cage contraption was lifted. Shuttles and wheels spun and clicked and they were drawn up, then hurtled along horizontally into a narrow tunnel. The carriage rattled and shuddered as it passed along through a darkness punctuated by specks of light.
Finally the contraption clanked to a stop. Yanor opened the door of the carriage and they got out.
They stood on a tier—one of three—along the side of a vast room. These tiers and terraces were hung with tapestries of intertwined ivy and flowers and other plants, surmounted by a brilliant and glowing woven sun.
On the spacious ground level, a fountain spurted several jets of water, the centermost of which was the largest. Streams of water jetted in pinwheels and loops. Surrounding this fountain, statues of rock and metal floated about a metre above the floor. The statues turned to watch Aeryn and D’Argo as they followed Yanor along the upper tier.
On every tier, as well as on the ground floor, other ghosts moved. As they passed by, the ghosts looked at them with great interest; several seemed as if they would come up and speak to Yanor, but held back.
“What is this place?” asked D’Argo. “What is going on?”
“This is the city of the Dayfolk. We can take refuge here while we plan the rest of our journey.”
Yanor guided them onward along the terrace, and then finally inside a room about twelve paces square. Smoky paintings of ochre and bronze decorated the wall. There were oddly assembled geometric figures in one corner, and to the right was a small fire, around which padded furniture was situated.
“Please. Sit. Make yourselves comfortable. I shall have some material vials brought. Something to slake your thirst. Something comestible as well.”
These chairs and couches looked comfortable enough. The fire crackled by her in orange and reddish glows.
D’Argo, still tense, eyed her and then looked suspiciously at a chair.
He grunted as the ghost drifted away. Aeryn sat down, closed her eyes and allowed herself to unwind.
* * *
Grunting, Rygel XVI gave one final shove t
o the unconscious form of Zhaan’s body.
It slipped a little more into the compartment. Odd strands of connectors had already wound around Zhaan, cradling her bleeding head and limp body. He could see pulses of biomedicinal transformation as the pod adapted to fit Zhaan’s life-maintenance necessities.
“There! That should keep you!” said Rygel. Carefully, he moved away from Zhaan. Now fully cradled in the pod, she lay still.
With a sigh of relief, Rygel returned and started back to the bridge. Not three steps down the hallway, however, he tripped over one of the DRDs.
“Oof!”
Rygel XVI fell flat on his face. Fortunately, the distance from face to floor was not very great, but the fall left him winded and with a few stars whirling around his head. He sat up, feeling his skull tentatively to make sure the royal noggin was intact.
The DRD he’d tripped over circled around him attentively, eyestalks downcast. Blearily he looked down at it, anger suffusing him.
“Blast and damn you, you clumsy oaf! You have tripped your lord. You have—”
The DRD screeched backward. It twirled around madly, like some jittery bug, then it flopped on its carapace, little wheels whirling.
Sparks crackled. Black smoke twirled upward. The DRD shuddered and was still.
Eyes wide, Rygel got to his feet. The device in his ear began to squeal. He felt for the controls and turned it down. The other DRDs in the area crowded around. Their eyestalks wavered nervously as they surveyed their fallen comrade.
“Rygel! What have you done?” came a voice from above him.
The diminutive Dominar whirled around. “Who said that?”
“It’s just me, Rygel: Pilot. I am not projecting my hologram, but I can see what happened.”
“It tripped me!” cried Rygel defensively. “And then I yelled at it. Nothing more than it deserved. I swear, I didn’t touch it.”
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