DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Alison Baird

  All rights reserved.

  Aspect / Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

  The Aspect name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books.

  First eBook Edition: November 2004

  ISBN: 978-0-446-50691-5

  Book design by Giorgetta Bell McRee

  Contents

  Also by Alison Baird

  Dedication

  Proloque

  Part One: The Tryna Lia

  Chapter 1: The Dragon Prince

  Chapter 2: The Phantom at the Feast

  Chapter 3: The Lords of Wind and Water

  Chapter 4: The Gathering Storm

  Chapter 5: The Black Star

  Chapter 6: Dragon and Phoenix

  Chapter 7: The Gate of Earth and Heaven

  Chapter 8: Temendri Alfaran

  Chapter 9: The Battle in the Waste

  Chapter 10: The Flying Ship

  Part Two: The Games of Gods

  Chapter 11: The Zayim

  Chapter 12: Castaway

  Chapter 13: The Temple of Valdur

  Chapter 14: The Jungle and the City

  Chapter 15: A Snare Is Set

  Chapter 16: The Forbidden Palace

  Chapter 17: The Dragon’s Lair

  Chapter 18: The Duelers’ Dance

  Chapter 19: Parry and Feint

  Chapter 20: Victory Stroke

  Chapter 21: The Tide Turns

  Chapter 22: The Dragon’s Bride

  Chapter 23: The Leavetaking

  Appendix

  Glossary of Extraterrestrial Words

  Glossary of Terrestrial Terms

  About the Author

  DRAGON FLIGHT . . . DRAGON FIGHT

  High above the gray void they flew, bursting out into the dazzling clarity of the upper atmosphere. Beneath them the gray-white vapor spread in all directions, seamed with deep furrows and slow-rolling waves. Like dueling hawks, the dragons repeatedly circled and lunged and disengaged, each striving to get past the other’s defenses and wound an eye or wing. Occasionally they drew on the air’s latent power to supplement their own, flinging blazing arcs of lightning at one another, summoning sudden gusts of wind to disrupt one another’s flight. The green dragon’s assaults became more and more frenzied; the red dragon no longer reacted defensively, but fought with savage fury for his life.

  Once more they closed in a mass of tangled limbs and wings and jaws, dropping back into the cloud layer. Lightning leaped and crackled around them, illuminating the grayness through which they fell . . .

  ACCLAIM FOR THE STONE OF THE STARS

  “Legendary gods and lost temples emerge from dragon mists. This is writing that calls enchantment forth from the shadows of Time.”

  —Andrew Norton, author of Beastmaster’s Ark

  “A strong contribution to the epic fantasy genre.”

  —Library Journal

  Also by Alison Baird

  The Stone of the Stars

  For the Trinity College “gang,” with fond memories—

  Rodney, Gordon, Sherri, Monica, Eric, and Diane

  PROLOGUE

  (Excerpted from Maurian’s Historia Arainia)

  IT IS DIFFICULT FOR US, studying these annals, to envision the events and personages in them, so fantastic do these accounts seem; so remote and even godlike the figures that move in their midst. We must not lose sight, however, of the fact that these beings were as human as we, in their outward forms at least: that Ailia, Damion, Morlyn, and the rest lived and breathed and knew our mortal weaknesses, doubts, and fears. For any chronicler of this strange and wondrous era the principal task must be to clothe those names in flesh.

  As to their story, it is elsewhere recounted in full, and a brief retelling of its main points will serve here. When the Queen Elarainia, revered throughout the world of Arainia as the incarnation of its goddess, gave birth to a daughter, the people rejoiced to see prophecy fulfilled: the Tryna Lia, Princess of the Stars, had been born in mortal form to deliver them from the designs of the dark god, Modrian-Valdur. When the little Princess Elmiria was still scarcely more than an infant, her mother took her from her home world and conveyed her by sorcery to the neighboring world of Mera for her protection, for Morlyn, the avatar of Valdur, knew that she would one day challenge his rule. Also, it was in Mera that the Star Stone lay. This enchanted gem alone could give the Tryna Lia the power to defeat her foreordained foe. But upon reaching Mera Queen Elarainia disappeared, and the little princess was left, not in the care of the holy monks on the Isle of Jana as both friend and foe would later come to believe, but on the shores of Great Island much farther to the north, where she was discovered by a lowly shipbuilder and his wife. They took the foundling into their home and raised her as their own. And when she grew older she did not seek out her true origins, for her guardians allowed her to believe that they were her true mother and father.

  When she was in her seventeenth year, Ailia (as the young maiden came to be called) made a journey along with many other islanders to escape the invading armies of Khalazar, the Zimbouran tyrant king. She and her family found sanctuary in the land of Maurainia, and at the Royal Academy of Raimar she first encountered Damion Athariel, priest of the Faith of Orendyl. She secretly fell in love with him, though such a love was forbidden, but she did not guess that their lives were interwoven by destiny.

  Many others were also bound by fate to Ailia. One was the aged woman known only as Old Ana, a reputed witch dwelling in the coastal mountains. The “coven” that Ana led was in truth a secret company of Nemerei, seers and sorcerers who practiced the magical arts of elder days, and she told Father Damion of their ways and of the predestined ruler who would one day descend from the stars. At that time the girl Lorelyn, who had fled with Damion from the Isle of Jana when the Zimbouran forces menaced it, was believed to be the Tryna Lia. Damion later came to Lorelyn’s aid again when the sorcerer-prince Morlyn, then using the name of Mandrake, abducted her and confined her deep within the ruins of Maurainia’s oldest fortress.

  The Zimbouran king, who believed himself destined to seize and wield the Star Stone and conquer the Tryna Lia, then captured Lorelyn and with her Damion, Ana, and Ailia. He set off with his prisoners by galleon to the long-lost Isle of Trynisia: for there the holy jewel lay waiting for either the Tryna Lia or the dark god Valdur’s champion to claim it. But with her sorcerous power Ana freed the prisoners after landfall was made, and they escaped together into the wilderness of Trynisia. They were joined by Jomar, a half-breed slave who hated his Zimbouran masters and rejoiced at the chance to thwart them of their prize. The Stone lay in the ruin of the holy city of Liamar, high upon the sacred mountain of Elendor, and Lorelyn and her party resolved to find it before the Zimbourans could.

  But many perils lay in their path: not only the vengeful king and his soldiers, but also the misshapen and evil beast-men that dwelt on the isle, and the dragons that made their lairs on the summit of Elendor. Morlyn, using his sorcery to take the shape of a great dragon, led the latter in an assault upon Ana’s company. For it was his wish that no one should ever come near the Stone, nor awaken its wondrous powers.

  Yet though he caused Ana to be separated from her charges, and though he fought Jomar and Damion in the cavern wherein he kept th
e Stone, and took young Lorelyn back into his power, in the end he was thwarted by Ailia. The maiden, whom he thought a harmless shipwright’s daughter, ventured all alone into the treasure-cave, and took from thence the sacred Stone. She was assisted in her escape from Elendor by a great golden dragon, a servant of the celestial realm, whom she freed from the chain with which Morlyn had bound him fast. The semidivine Guardians, whose sacred duty it was to protect the Stone until the Tryna Lia came to claim it, saved her remaining companions. All were borne away through the heavens and reunited in far-distant Arainia—a world that, to them, had become merely a myth.

  Morlyn met them there and once more attempted to challenge them, denying them entry to the royal palace of Halmirion. But before the others’ wondering eyes Ailia took up the Star Stone and drew upon its power to put the dragon-mage to flight. In so doing she revealed at last her true identity. And before the people of Arainia she was returned to her throne.

  But countless dangers still awaited. For Ailia had not destroyed her predestined adversary, and there were on other worlds many cruel and powerful beings whose aid he could summon in his fight against her.

  Part One

  THE

  TRYNA LIA

  1

  The Dragon Prince

  THE FIRE-RED DRAGON BURST OUT of the Ether high in the upper air, his entrance into the skies of this world a bright flash hardly to be seen amid a shimmer of many-hued auroras. All the lands below him were shrouded and still, bound in the ice and silence of Winter-dark. Nothing moved here save for him, and a few furtive creatures in the snow-clad forests, and the remote flickerings of the Northern Lights. Impervious to the bone-bitter chill, he flew on toward his goal: a mountain that stood apart from the rest of its range, as though singled out by fate for the role it had played in history. Its double spire of granite did not reach as high as most of the cloud-piercing peaks beyond it, yet it was by far the most famous. In days of old it had been called Elendor, the Holymount.

  To the Elei people who had once dwelt in the valley beneath, its two peaks had loomed like living sentinels: a pair of great beasts or vigilant giants, keeping watch over the city that lay between them on the mountaintop. But Liamar had long since been reduced to ruin, mere fragments of walls and buildings interlaced with shadow. The stone sentinels guarded nothing now, and the people were long gone from the island. All the Elei’s fabled treasure lay piled within an immense cavern deep inside the mountain: they had placed it there for safekeeping, ages ago, but now that their ancient race was gone the dragon had claimed their gold and jewels for his own. He dived down to settle on the lower of the two peaks, mantling his wings about him, and staring at the ruins.

  There were cries in the sky above him, high and wild: other Loänan, celestial dragons, greeting him as they flew past and acknowledged his authority. He was their Trynoloänan, their master and ruler. They thought him one of their own. None guessed at his kinship with those who had dwelt in the city below, none knew that even in this shape he had the soul of a man. His dual nature was a secret he guarded as jealously as any jewel-hoard. But while he wore this form it wracked him with a torment very near to pain, as though mind and body were being wrenched asunder. Once he had dwelt as a man among men, heir to a distant kingdom: Prince Morlyn of Maurainia. In that far-distant land his name was still known, his tale told as legend.

  He recalled a time when the city below him bustled with life—for he was old, at least as humans count time: five centuries had passed since his birth, although in draconic reckoning he was not yet in his prime and even in his human shape preserved the vigor of youth. Here in Liamar the Elei had kept the Star Stone, which they cherished above all their other treasures: the enchanted stone of the gods, cast out of Heaven in their last great battle. Indeed, the whole city had grown around it, shrine and fane and lodgings and fortifications spreading outward in concentric rings from the place where it fell. But Liamar was empty now, a setting without its jewel. He had been here in the land of Trynisia when comets rained down on this world, and he had seen, without regret, the old Elei realm fall in ruin. The Stone had then been taken from its sanctum, and hidden in the secret cave. There he had guarded it after the people fled, and set dragons to watch the hoard when he was not present. And there it had lain for centuries . . . until all his plans went awry.

  He recalled other scenes more recent in time, shared with him by the witnesses through the joining of their thoughts. He beheld soldiers of a foreign land pursuing two men and one aged woman, the latter bearing the Star Stone in her hand. Winged beasts—not dragons, but strange creatures half lion and half eagle—stooped down upon the armed invaders as they followed the fugitives up to the roof of the central temple. Driving the men back, the creatures took up the Stone’s bearer and her companions and flew them away to safety. Lastly he saw a young girl run out onto the top of the taller peak opposite his stony perch, with more soldiers in pursuit. And he watched as she too fled the mountain on the back of a golden dragon, outflying the arrows of her foes.

  The images faded away from his inner sight, ghosts returning to the past.

  The Tryna Lia. Five hundred years ago she had been only a faceless figure within his mind: his prophesied antagonist, according to the Zimbouran priests who had raised him. Over the ensuing centuries he had been able to forget her, but now the shadowy threat had at last become a reality. And yet superimposed on these fearful thoughts was his memory of this girl, whom he had first encountered in the country of Maurainia, then again here on the Isle of Trynisia: a seemingly ordinary young girl, guileless, naive, utterly innocent of her own destiny. But in the hands of old Ana and her sorcerous conspirators, young Ailia was even now being corrupted, carefully shaped into the living weapon that would one day threaten the realm of the god Valdur’s servants—and, if prophecy was to be believed, his own life as well. Nor had she any choice in the matter. In the eyes of the Nemerei she was bound to her fate as surely as he, and there was no escape for either one of them but the death of the other. He must find a way to draw her out of her own world, into another where her powers were not so strong. And prophecy said that she would come to Mera with an army, to deliver it from Valdur’s servants. If he could but force her hand, make her attempt to fulfill that prophecy before her powers were developed enough, he might perhaps defeat her.

  He sprang off the peak and soared skyward on his flame-colored wings, as though seeking to leave his thoughts behind. For if he continued to muse along these lines he might begin to pity Ailia, and in the conflict to come pity was an indulgence that he could ill afford. He wasted valuable time in brooding here. As the other dragons turned in their flight and tried to follow him, he warned them off with a roar and they retreated reluctantly. He had a journey to make, and allies to seek far beyond the frozen sea. Swifter than any wind of that world he flew southward, until the sun returned to the sky, and still he flew on, barely pausing to rest. He left behind the spinning stars of the pole, passing on through the tropics while the moon tilted above him, until at last it stood inverted amid the bright-burning constellations of the Antipodes.

  IN THE LAND OF ZIMBOURA, high in the topmost tower of his old stone keep, the God-king Khalazar was at work upon a spell.

  It was night and the chamber was swathed in shadow, its one narrow window showing only a few stars, its only other source of illumination a few guttering candles. Their fitful light played upon a profusion of curious objects on the shelves along the walls: black-bound volumes of gramarye, bunches of dried herbs, wooden wands, astrolabes and orreries, crystal globes of many sizes. There were bones of birds and animals, and several human skulls staring dully from dark corners. On one large oaken table were ranged all the tools of the alchemist’s trade: beakers, retorts, crucibles; but all of these were now filmed with dust and strung with cobwebs. The potentate of Zimboura sat cross-legged in the center of the floor. His flowing black hair and beard were touched with gray, and deep lines of discontent were engraved on the
face grown fleshy with middle age. His hand, as he traced in blood the outline of a magic circle on the floor, was far from steady. The spell was new, and much hung on its success:

  “Akhatal, azgharal, Gurushakan rhamak ta’vir . . .” It was a spell to summon the ghost of Gurusha, ancient demon-king of Zimboura: for the task at hand no lesser spirit would suffice. If he could not succeed in this, he would know that he was not in truth the Avatar his people sought.

  All was not well with his young empire. The northern plains and forests of what had once been the neighboring country of Shurkana were his, along with their vast yield of wheat and wood. But Shurkanese bandits based in the mountains continued to bedevil his troops. The Archipelagoes of Kaan were his, but to the west lay an unconquered continent, whose people had defeated his own in battle centuries before, and could well do so again. The northern island of Trynisia was his, but the oceans that divided it from Zimboura were impassable in winter, and it was populated only by hideous and hostile savages. The fledgling Zimbouran empire was stretched to its limit, thin and vulnerable, its few troops unable to control the restless and resentful populations of its conquered countries.

  And now, even here in the capital city of Felizia, bread riots and other minor insurrections were breaking out like wildfires among his own subjects. He badly needed allies, but in all the world there was not one to be had. So he had turned in desperation to the only other world that he knew of, the world of the spirits: day and night he had performed incantations designed to summon supernatural aid. Yet no spirit would answer his call, not the most minor imp or incubus.

  It had been Khalazar’s belief for many decades that he was no mere mortal, but the earthly incarnation of a god—and no minor deity, either, but that highest of all deities, his people’s primary god: Valdur the Great. For years he had felt the utmost certainty concerning his godhood. As a boy he had smiled to himself whenever he heard the priests of Valdur speak of the god’s coming incarnation—knowing that he was the one, that he was already come. He had despised his predecessor, King Zedekara, even while he served him, for that monarch had merely feigned divinity in order to impress the mobs. When Khalazar and his followers rebelled against Zedekara’s rule, he took his victory for granted and was unsurprised when it came. And when news was brought to him that the location of the Star Stone—the enchanted gem preordained to be wielded by the avatar of Valdur—had at last been discovered, he took this as yet another sign that his destiny was at hand.