The interview with the Chatcaavan Emperor entailed a rather long climb, but Qora appreciated the chance to savor the coming encounter. As far as he knew, the dragons had no prophecies, no promises that one day an alien species would walk alongside them into a Golden Age. But the Faulfenza did, and Qora had decided endowing the Chatcaavan ruler with the Faulfenzair shape would bond their races as they set forth on that path. The moment he’d decided, he’d felt the warmth that accompanied decisions the God approved.
Nearly two centuries ago, when Qora had been born with the white coat of an Eye of the God, he’d been raised with the expectation that he would see things… dream, perhaps. Know pieces of the future, share them with others. His disappointment and alarm when he’d evinced no such talents had shaped his life, and at times he’d considered the knowledge that he was on the God’s path a poor replacement for the gifts he should have had with his Paint. Today, though, he could be grateful, knowing that he was where the God wanted him to be. If that interior knowledge was less dramatic than being able to prophesize or dream true dreams, at least it had saved him from the tedium of fame.
He would not, he thought, have enjoyed being famous. It was far more fun to be enigmatic. Even if he had cultivated his air of mystery to deflect attention from his lack of Eye-like authority.
The stairs wound around the central core of the tower, a narrow, windowless climb that would have oppressed had the ceilings not been so high. He hadn’t climbed this particular tower when he’d wandered this palace the first time, but he’d gone far enough up other shafts to guess he was nearly halfway up now.
The Queen, shifting a wing to one side so she could see him over a shoulder, confirmed it. “We are half done. You do not find it tedious?”
“Light exercise,” he said, meaning it. No alien world he’d set foot on had had heavier gravity than Qufiil, and some of them were so light that moving had a dreamlike quality. Steps proper to a shorter species with differently jointed legs were too shallow for someone of his height and stride, and the sense that he was never quite putting his foot right amused him. Yes… a dream of a journey to meet the Others. Appropriate for a Faulfenzair seeking the Golden Age.
The final landing had a grand door guarded by two forbidding guards, and how inevitable they seemed now that Qora had witnessed the violence Others were willing to inflict on one another so casually. Would there still be a need for guards in the perfected world they’d been promised by the prophecies? Perhaps he would learn. Firsthand! Would that not be a wonder!
“This way,” the Queen said, and led him into the private suite of her consorts. As one of the few parts of the palace Qora had not yet seen, they gratified, with opulence that a Faulfenzair could appreciate in the form of beautiful rugs and hangings, finely crafted furnishings, and mosaics as apt to portray pastoral or galactic themes as bloody battles. Each chamber led to the next without hallways, spiraling inward past a series of balconies toward a protected inner series of chambers. He imagined more intimate spaces were close to the center of the tower, and wondered if how far one was allowed to penetrate was considered a measure of the Emperor’s trust. This room, then, tucked just behind the last chamber to offer a balcony, was a sign of confidence—perhaps.
Two males awaited them in this chamber in the attitudes of those released to leisure after a long day of work. One was the Eldritch princess’s cousin, the ambassador who’d helped win the Chatcaavan War, and who looked like the sort of man who could: there was an electric quality to his movements that made one wonder if he ever relaxed. Qora’s most lasting memory of him was from after the war, however: how he commanded the situation on the pirate base after Qora had rescued Sediryl from the conflagration. A most useful male to have at one’s side, Lisinthir Lauvet Imthereli. Like all Eldritch he had an Eye’s coloration, and as he was related to the princess, this was perhaps merited, because supposedly the Galare could see the future. Maybe if Qora asked, the man would have advice on how to court visions? Amusing thought.
The other male, of course, was the Emperor of the Chatcaava, who ruled over hundreds of worlds.
Qora knew neither of them well, and didn’t expect to know them better, but they were important to the princess, and the princess was important to him. And, of course, he was supposed to be here.
The Eldritch spoke first. “Ah, Sediryl’s instructor. Shall I leave you to him, Exalted?”
Qora had seen the Emperor now and then on the ship that had delivered them from dragon space to the battle in the Alliance. Being this close to him was revelatory in the best of ways. One did not like to bring gifts as significant as one’s shape to unimposing individuals, and the Emperor’s coloring was dramatic, his gaze magnetic, and his presence effortlessly commanding. He looked the pinnacle of his species.
“I leave that decision to my guest,” the Emperor said, in Universal. “Alet, what would you prefer? Privacy? An intimate audience?”
“A larger one?” the Eldritch added, insouciant. “We could arrange a spectacle on the field at dinner tonight.”
Qora chuffed a laugh. “Like this is fine. Unless you prefer spectacle or privacy.”
“Like this, then.” The dragon began disrobing, an act Qora watched with interest. Had the Other made a ritual of shape-gathering, then?
Perhaps his expression was not as inscrutable as he’d assumed, for the Emperor said, “It is easier, when the shapes have different numbers of limbs, or are likely to be different in size.”
“Ah! Very practical.”
“But also,” the dragon said, “because it shows respect. One of the Harat-Shar told me all their rites are enacted naked, because naked they came from the womb, and naked their gods made them. Her words stayed with me.”
“Faulfenza don’t wear clothes, do they?” the Queen Ransomed asked, drifting from behind Qora to stand alongside the Eldritch.
“Not unless it is protective gear. The God made us as we are.”
“And you are perfect thus, is that it?” the Eldritch said, eyes sparkling.
“Of course!” Qora answered, mimicking the grin with pulled back lips. “What else?”
The Emperor laughed. “Then I am honored to be taught this perfect form. Alet?” He offered his hands, his dark, furless hands with their long black talons.
Qora wiggled his brows. “Are you sure you don’t want to be sitting?”
“If I fall, I fall.”
Despite the humorous shape of the exchange, there was something terrifying about those words, like a precipice, and Qora had had no idea he’d been near its vertiginous edge. But he grasped the Emperor’s hands and willed the dragon to learn, and relished the warmth of knowing he was supposed to be here.
He was supposed to be doing this.
He was watching as the dragon closed his luminous eyes, concentrating.
He was here, now, feeling the flinch against his palm as the dragon’s hands contracted, claws parting Qora’s fur near the wrists.
He was supposed to be here as the Emperor of the Chatcaava, the most populous Other species in the galaxy, torn by warring factions, shaped by strife and violence, poisoned by a turbulent history of cruelty and injustice, grasped his fingers, hard, and the fur flew over his body, and brought with it the shape of a Faulfenzair, and that Faulfenzair was black from toe to eartip, black unremitting, black like a void, like a hole, like the hole Qora was falling into at the sight, and the hole was the end of that precipice, the oubliette.
The Emperor stepped back, twitching, folded inward on himself until his darker-than-black limbs could no longer be distinguished from the core of his body, then exploded outward, and it was Dancing, the sacred Dance, and the words burned themselves in Qora’s eyes.
Comes the Golden Age at last
When my FireBorn shall be the Firebringer
When all the stars will blaze and the galaxy set aflame
Prepare the way
Prepare the way
Prepare the way, for the FireBorn is at hand
The Golden Age comes!
With the last sentence throbbing in his heart, Qora watched the Emperor slide out of Faulfenzair shape and stagger, to be grabbed at the elbow first by the Eldritch, then the Queen.
“How strange,” said the Emperor. “Did I take the shape? I reached for it and it fled.”
“You wore it,” the Queen said, fear hastening her words. “You wore it and you moved in it. You danced. Yes? Qora?”
Were words leaving his mouth? They were, somehow. “Yes.”
“But when I reach for it now, I find it beyond my clawtips. Did I fail in the Touch?” The Emperor straightened, puzzled, turned his blameless dragon’s face to his female consort. “You know better, my Treasure. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. So little is understood about the Change.”
Qora could have told them what the Dance meant. What the words had, at least. The rest of it…. “I must go. Immediately.” Realizing it as he spoke, “But I have no conveyance.”
“Go? So quickly?” The Queen glanced at him, still hovering at her mate’s side. “We are not sure the Touch worked. If it is for this that you came….”
“I have done all that I can,” Qora said. “Now it is imperative that I return home.”
Of the three, only the Eldritch suspected something beyond the ordinary haste of a guest eager to be gone—that Qora could see in the evaluation of that dark-eyed gaze. Thankfully, as one expected of the Eldritch mania for discretion, the princess’s cousin made no reference to Qora’s agitation and took charge the way he had on the pirate base. “Then we shall supply you transport. Leave it to us.”
The Queen Ransomed said, “I know who to call on your behalf. Only I wish you would remain, Qora. How pleased the princess would be if you were to return with us when the Ambassador presents his heir to the Eldritch court.”
And how he hoped he would be able to see her again soon. But now everything was in doubt, and everything in play. He had seen an Other in the Paint of a Voice of the God, Dancing prophecy in the palace of an alien. About the advent of the Golden Age!
There had only been three Voices, and all of them had been companioned by their FireBorn messiahs. Had lived contemporaneously with those messiahs. Which meant….
“I need to go home,” Qora said.