The Zyungian did not fall. He hovered before the cracked palace wall as mortar dust rained upon the carpets below. Khama launched himself at the sorcerer. His snout caught Damodar in the chest and tore through the shattered wall. He burst into the sky between the jade towers with Damodar clinging to his jaws. Freed of the palace confines, Khama could now bring the full force of his power to bear.
Damodar’s eyes were silver-gray like his raiment, and blood trickled from his mouth. “You cannot survive his coming!” shouted the envoy. “We are all but sparks about his great flame!”
The envoy released his hold on Khama’s snout and fell toward the streets of Morovanga. The Feathered Serpent coiled about in mid-air and belched a streak of lightning hotter and brighter than the one he had called from the clouds. The bolt found Damodar as he fell. This time, however, the lightning struck a sphere of light that enclosed the envoy’s body like gleaming crystal.
Khama sped toward him on currents of hot wind, but the radiant bubble arced toward the eastern coast of the island. Damodar was no longer falling; he was flying. He shouted back at Khama, who struggled to overtake him.
“There are hundreds of us, Khama! We are the last of the Old Breed! All of us serving him! You have a few more days to think on this…”
Khama opened his maw to spew another thunderbolt, but the sphere of light shot away with terrible speed. Soon it was lost over the eastern horizon, where Khama saw only the green waves of the Outer Sea. Somewhere beyond that horizon, not too far from him, the Hordes of Zyung were winging their way toward the Jade Isles and the Land of the Five Cities.
You have a few more days…
Khama turned his wingless body back toward the island chain, a few smoldering feathers falling free of his leathery flesh. New ones grew instantly to replace them in shades of scarlet, emerald, azure, and gold.
A matter of days. The God-King’s forces are near.
Damodar’s power was undeniable. He could have stayed and fought Khama to a standstill. Perhaps he would have even won. Yet he fled instead back to Zyung to fulfill his mission and report Zharua’s answer. The Jade King’s decision had been made for him.
There are hundreds of us…
Khama soared above the Jade Palace as the islanders pointed and stared against the sun to catch a glimpse of him. He swerved and spiraled for a few moments below the heavy clouds that marred the blue sky, then sank head first toward the hole he had made in the Jade King’s roof.
In the throne room the soldiers had sheathed their weapons. Undutu and D’zan stood close to Zharua’s throne. They spoke in tones of assurance and comforted the Jade King with statements of bravado. Great Zharua wept on his green seat, nodding his head at the words of his allies. He seemed relieved that the weight of an impossible choice had been removed from his shoulders. Yet now he must face the consequences of rejecting Damodar’s terms.
Khama sank to the floor on a soft current of wind and resumed his manly shape. His cloak of crimson feathers had been altered; it now bore all the motley shades of his serpentine plumage. Singed feathers and shards of glass littered the carpets and pillows.
The faces of all three Kings turned to hear Khama’s next words.
“Zyung is coming.”
5
Daystar
In the dreadnought’s heart chamber Sungui tended the Ethus Tree with thought and sickle. The tree’s bark was the color of burnished gold and smooth as a shark’s skin. Sungui floated among its maze of branches, wrapped in the earthy smell of the amber leaves. Its trunk was as wide as a merchant tower, its branches thick as arching bridges. The gleaming roots coiled seamlessly, like the branches, into the chamber’s floor and walls. The difference between branch and root was found only in the clusters of foliage growing from the former. Over the course of decades the tree had grown this ovoid chamber to cocoon itself, as it had grown the keel, hull, decks, and masts of the airship that was its extended body.
Sungui had fostered this particular tree himself, from seedling to fully formed dreadnought. He felt strangely secure nestled inside its network of yellow limbs. His heartbeat and the tree’s own pulsing essence achieved a synchronicity similar to that of a mother tending a child. Yet, dwarfed by the tree’s colossal stature, Sungui felt more the child than the caregiver. In the presence of the Almighty he often felt this way, yet Zyung’s presence was a paternal force; the Ethus Tree seemed more like a silent mother. Sungui did not remember having any true parents.
New sprigs constantly sprouted from the interlinking branches. If left to its own free will the Ethus would continue to manifest larger and more complex structures. The carefully sculpted shapes of dreadnoughts were guided by the thoughtforms of tree-bonded High Seraphim. Many of Sungui’s kind had bonded with two or three different Ethus Trees, yet he had refused to weaken his union with the Daystar by adding another ship to his heart-mind. This was the flagship of the Almighty himself. Sungui’s charge was to ensure that it kept a form and substance that outshone the rest of the Holy Armada.