Isaura laughed aloud, her silver eyes flashing as she soared above the landscape. Outside the valley, far to the north and again to the west, she could see the distant, dark cones of volcanoes with steam rising from them. Vast fields of pure white lay between them, stippled here and there with small clusters of domed buildings. Most of the Aurolani citizenry lived in vast cavern complexes. The buildings she could see largely consisted of shelters for the various flocks and herds raised on the tundra.
The whirlwind set her down gently on the balcony, then swirled tightly into a slender column. She bowed her head graciously. “Thank you, kind sir.”
With barely a sound, the column of ice convulsed and then dissipated.
Smiling, Isaura entered the open arched doorway. Her skin tingled as she passed through the threshold spell that retained the castle’s heat. A few flakes of snow fell from her shoulders and hair, but only the most hardy hit the stone floor. Those that did melted quickly, then evaporated.
She stopped three feet inside the threshold of the grand chamber. It extended on into darkness far ahead of her, easily three times as long as it was wide or high. To the right, in the middle of the wall and opposite the main doors, stood a hearth tall enough for a man to march through and wide enough to accept a whole company. A fire raged therein, bathing the woman standing before it in undulating light.
The woman stood easily as tall as Isaura and had the same slightly pointed ears. Her hair was golden, however, matching her gown, in contrast to Isaura’s snowy mane. Clean-limbed, though heavier than Isaura, the woman had a calm elegance about her that appeared to quiet the riot of flames in the hearth. The fire continued to burn hot, but the flames slowed, twisting and floating like silk on a light breeze.
Isaura smoothed her gown and raked fingers back through her hair. She allowed herself a smile and the barest flash of strong, white teeth, then approached the other woman. “Mother! You’ve returned from the Southlands. Did you succeed?”
“Yes, daughter, I did.” The woman looked over at her with blue-green eyes alive with reflected firelight. “I have some of what I want from Draconis, but a puzzle as well.”
“A puzzle?” Isaura wrinkled her brow. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, my child; do not frown like that. Yours is a face too beautiful to be marred with worry lines.” The woman raised her right hand and beckoned. “Come closer, Isaura. You will help me solve this problem, then all will be well.”
Isaura’s heart leaped in her breast as she moved to her mother’s side. She did know that the Empress Chytrine was not truly her mother. Chytrine had adopted her when she was just a babe, since she had been abandoned by her mother, and of her father there was no record. Her bastardy had not concerned Chytrine, however, who took her in and raised her as if her own, giving her every appropriate benefit as a child legitimately born to the throne.
“I do want to help, Mother. Please, I will do anything I can.”
“Of course you will, child.” Chytrine smiled in a kindly manner, but the smile died quickly, bespeaking concerns that only an empress could bear. “In the south, daughter, they vex me. They slew Anariah in a cruel trap. They lured him into it by using decoys, and linking them to the real fragments of the DragonCrown. The imitations were not good, but Anariah was young and not schooled in lesser magicks. He was unaware of the danger until too late.”
Isaura closed her eyes and lowered her head. Anariah had been a golden dragon with which she had only a passing acquaintance, but he had been one of her mother’s favorites. He had first been drawn to Chytrine because of the one fragment of the DragonCrown she had possessed before the fall of the Fortress Draconis. She told him of her plans for the re-created crown and the dragon allied himself with her cause, becoming a fervent supporter of Chytrine’s campaign against the south.
“Oh, Mother, you have my deepest sympathy.”
“Of course, yes, child. You are most kind.”
The pressure of a finger under her chin lifted her head and Isaura opened her eyes. “I can imagine he was very brave.”
Chytrine nodded solemnly. “He was. His dedication to our cause never wavered. Anariah never hesitated in the cause of liberating the DragonCrown from the southern tyrants. Their possession of it imperiled his kin, even himself, but it was not for dragonkind alone that he acted. He fought to stop the rot of the south from poisoning us.”
Chytrine’s hand fell away and she again gazed into the fire. “Oh, daughter, you have no idea the corruption of the south. This is my fault, and you must forgive me. I have kept you here, in our land, to preserve you. There are times—and I do not mean this as criticism—that you are so sensitive.”
“I know you only want the best for me, Mother.” Isaura smiled. “I am quite content to be here in your realm.”
“It is beautiful, isn’t it? Whenever I travel to the south, I long for it, not just because I hate the oppressive heat, but the stink, the moisture, the way things grow and drag on you.” Chytrine frowned. “You see, Isaura-sweet, the world of Aurolan is simple and it is the way it was meant to be. It is cold; it is unforgiving. Weakness is dispatched in favor of strength. Here we live in accord with the dictates of the world, as it should be.
“But there, in the Southlands… Oh, Isaura, you would not believe it. They think they can harness rivers, diverting water into fields. They build dikes to steal land from the sea, then wonder why the sea shatters the dikes and reclaims its property. And then their cities…”
Chytrine shook her head slowly. “Our people reside in caverns, in living rock. We find a space within which to exist, but in the south they use rock to wall away space, to make it smaller. They are so afraid of the world that they encyst themselves in these festering artificial caverns. Here, when something dies, it is harvested, rendered, every bit of it used for the common good. Our nightsoil is collected and feeds our gardens. Nothing is wasted, but there, they pour their chamber pots in the streets. Dead animals lie in the gutter and vermin crawl about, fighting over corpses and worse, getting into storage houses, eating until they are corpulent. And if they are found out and killed, are they eaten? No, just discarded in the streets to feed a new generation of pests.”
The Aurolani Empress’ eyes blazed. “I have insulated you from that, daughter, for it causes my stomach to churn. I hate telling you of it, and I would shield you forever from it, but circumstances will not permit this.”
“Why? What is happening, Mother?”
“Many things, Isaura, many things.” Chytrine reached into one sleeve of her gown and produced a green-and-gold gem set in gold. With a flick of her free hand, the empress summoned a small table, which flew across the room and tottered for a moment beside her. As it settled, she placed the stone on it.
Isaura recognized the first fragment of the DragonCrown that had been liberated from Svarskya before her birth. Her mother had possessed it since then, and wore it on occasion. Isaura had always liked the stone because of the play of colors through it. There were times, when she was just a child, that she had imagined the stone winking at her like some jeweled eye.
Chytrine’s hand again emerged from the sleeve and held a yellow stone. The fire’s light created a luminous cross that shifted through the gem’s face. Chytrine set it down on the table, then brushed her fingertips over it.
“That one is from Draconis, Mother?”
“Yes, it is the first we recovered. We found its duplicate and used that to trace the original. We also found a duplicate of the ruby and it led us to this.”
Chytrine’s right hand dipped into the left sleeve and produced a gold-bound ruby that, at first glance, appeared to match the others in terms of workmanship and setting. It even radiated power, though on a more muted scale than the other two. Still, had she not been looking for the differences, Isaura was uncertain she would have noticed them with a casual examination.