Marit hesitated, preferring to trust in her magic. Then she realized that she might not make it. She was tired. So very tired. She would need all her strength once they reached the Final Gate.
Marit clambered up on the dragon, sat on the great broad back of the beast, between the shoulder blades where sprouted the enormous, powerful wings.[2] The wings began to beat on the air.
Zifnab, who had been directing operations, completely oblivious to the fact that no one was paying any attention to him, suddenly gave a strangled cry. “Wait! Where am I going to sit?”
“You’re not going, sir,” said the dragon. “It would be too dangerous for you.”
“But I just got here!” Zifnab whined.
“And done far more damage than I would have thought possible in such a short period of time,” the dragon remarked gloomily. “But there is that other little matter we spoke about. In Chelestra. I assume you can handle that without incident?”
“Mr. Bond could,” said Zifnab craftily.
“Out of the question!” The dragon flicked its tail in annoyance.
Zifnab shrugged, twiddled his hat. “On the other hand, I could be Dorothy.” He clicked his heels together. “ ‘There’s no place like home. There’s no place—’”
“Oh, very well,” the dragon snapped. “If nothing else will suit you. Try not to make a pig’s breakfast of this one, will you?”
“You have my word,” said Zifnab solemnly, saluting, “as a member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
The dragon heaved a sigh. It waved a claw, and Zifnab disappeared.
Wings beat, raising clouds of dust, obscuring Marit’s sight. She clasped hold tightly of gleaming scales that were hard as metal to the touch. The dragon soared into the sky. The treetops fell away beneath her. Light—warm and bright as the beacon fire—touched her face.
“What is that light?” she cried fearfully.
“Sunlight,” said Alfred, awed.
“Where does the light come from?” she asked, staring all around. “There is no sun in the Labyrinth.”
“The citadels,” Alfred answered. Tears glimmered in his eyes. “The light beams from the citadel of Pryan. There is hope, Marit. There is hope!”
“Keep that in your heart,” said the dragon grimly. “For if all hope dies, then we die.”
Turning their faces from the light, they flew toward the red-tinged darkness.
6
The world of Chelestra is a globe of water, hanging in the cold blackness of space. Its outside is ice; its inside—warmed by Chelestra’s free-floating sun—is water, warm, breathable as air, destructive of Sartan and Patryn magic. The mensch of Chelestra, brought here by the Sartan, dwell on seamoons—living organisms that drift through the water, following Chelestra’s erratic sun. The seamoons make their own atmosphere, surrounding themselves with a bubble of air. On these moons, the mensch build cities, raise crops, and sail the water in their magical submersibles.
On Chelestra, unlike the worlds of Arianus and Pryan, the mensch live together in peace. Their world and their lives had remained undisturbed for centuries, until the arrival of Alfred through Death’s Gate.[1] He accidentally waked a group of Sartan—the very ones who had sundered the world—from a stasis sleep. Once considered demigods by the mensch, the Sartan attempted again to rule over those believed to be inferior.
At this time, the evil dragon-snakes, long held prisoners in Chelestra by the ice, first felt the warmth of the sun. On Arianus, King Stephen hired an assassin to kill the changeling Bane. On Abarrach, Prince Edmund led his people to the doomed city of Necropolis. On Pryan, the tytans began their murderous rampage. The good dragons, sensing the awakening of their evil cousins, left their underground homes and prepared to enter the worlds. I do not believe we can consider such timing coincidence. It is, as we are beginning to learn, the Wave correcting itself.
Led by Samah, Head of the Council—the man who had ordered the Sundering—the Sartan were angered and amazed to find that these mensch not only refused to bow down and worship, but actually had the temerity to defy the so-called gods and wall the Sartan up in their own city, keeping them prisoners by flooding that city with the magic-destroying seawater.
Also living on Chelestra were the manifestation of evil in the worlds. Taking the form of enormous serpents, the evil dragon-snakes, as the dwarves named them, had long been seeking a way off Chelestra and into the other three worlds. Samah inadvertently provided it. Enraged at the mensch, fearful, no longer able to control men or events, Samah fell unwitting victim to the dragon-snakes. Despite the fact that he had been warned against it, the Sartan opened Death’s Gate.[3] Thus the evil dragon-snakes were able to enter the other worlds, where they worked to foment the chaos and discord that are their meat and drink.
Secretly appalled at what he had done, Samah left Chelestra, intending to travel to Abarrach. Here, as he had learned from Alfred, the Sartan were practicing the ancient and forbidden art of necromancy.
“If,” Samah reasoned, “I could bring the dead back to life, we would have a force strong enough to defeat the dragon-snakes, and once again rule the four worlds.”
Samah never lived to learn the art of raising the dead. He was captured, along with a strange old Sartan who called himself Zifnab, by their ancient enemy the Patryns, who had accompanied their lord Xar to Abarrach. Xar was there also to learn the art of necromancy. He ordered Samah executed, then attempted to raise the Sartan’s body through magical means.
Xar’s plan was thwarted. Samah’s soul was freed by an undead Sartan named Jonathon, of whom the prophecy says, “He will bring life to the dead, hope to the living, and for him the Gate will open.”
Following the departure of Samah from Chelestra, the other Sartan remaining on the Chalice—the only stable piece of land in the water-bound world—have been waiting impatiently, and with growing anxiety, for his return.
“The Councillor has been gone well past the time he himself set. We can no longer function leaderless. I urge you, Ramu, to accept your father’s position of Head of the Council of Seven.”
Ramu glanced around at each of the other six members. “Is this what you all think? Are you all of one mind?”
“We are.” They spoke in nods and words.[4]
Ramu had been carved from the same cold stone as Samah, his father. Not much could warm either man. Hard and unyielding, Ramu would shatter before he would bend. It was never twilight in Ramu’s vision—it was day or night. The sun shone brightly or darkness engulfed his world. And even when the sun shone, it cast shadows.
But he was basically a good man, honorable, a devoted father, friend, and husband. And if his worry over his own father’s disappearance was not etched on the rock-hard surface of his face, it had been burned deep within.
“Then I accept,” Ramu said. Glancing around the group again, he added, “until such time as my father returns.”
All on the Council gave agreement. To do otherwise would have been to disparage Samah.
Rising to his feet, his white robes brushing softly against the surface of the floor—a surface that was still cold and damp to the touch, despite the fact that the flood-waters had receded—Ramu moved from his seat at the end of the table to take his place in the chair in the center.
The other members of the Council of Seven rearranged themselves to suit, three sitting on Ramu’s left and three on his right.
“What business is brought before the Council this day?” Ramu asked.
One of the members stood up. “The mensch have returned a third time to sue for peace, Councillor. They have asked to meet with the Council.”
“We have no need to meet with them. For a peaceful settlement, they must meet our terms, as given to them by my father. They know what those are, I believe?”