Iyana woke to the sound of the little doctors, the ringing of the bells, and Jenna's footsteps approaching.

"You must eat," Jenna said, holding a silver bowl in one hand and a variation on a spoon in the other.

The food offered was familliar to Iyana, as it was a Mirian dish rather like soup. She finished the contents of the bowl and looked at Jenna.

"You said you want to hear the rest of my story," she said.

"Ai," Jenna answered.

Iyana settled back on the bed, thought for a moment, and said, "I woke slowly.

"You're awake."

I looked up into a familiar face. Standing before me was an ethereal being, as slender as Tiannen but shorter than Faeya Marilin's mother, but she had wings of great rainbow beauty, like butterflies' wings, folded neatly over her slender shoulders. Her bone structure was now definitely more avian, and her face definitely birdlike, the sharp, elegant, curving nose, the high, curving brow, the prominent cheekbones, the bird-bright star-eyes and the small mouth with its delicately pointed chin, it all was strangely birdlike, as if she were half ancient Miriana, half bird.

"Yuon!" I cried.

"My child, my child," she replied, and she could call me that; I had only lived a fraction, an eye-blink, of her lifespan.

"Yuon, Simon is dead!" I said, feeling the shattered connection. The shock of it sent my mind reeling. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn't come. I lifted my hands...

My hands! My hands were large and green, with the gold symbol worked on the palms.

"Yuon ..." I began. "What exactly did you do to me?" And then I caught myself. I was speaking my first language. I knew at least a thousand languages, some I'd learned as second, third, and even fourth languages in my many lives. My first language was the home speech of Miria. It was not suited for the human ear. Its many subtleties would be lost on any human who heard it. The Mirian language had many subtle tones, fluid, liquid sounds and overtones that were meant for the delicate, sensitive Miriana ears and the minds with their attention to exquisitely fine detail. It was an elegant, liquid language that sometimes seemed more song than speech.

"Yuon, give me a mirror," I said when she didn't respond.

She produced a reflective glass.

Well, I must say, for a Miriana I was quite fine-looking. Large, beautiful, still-pool blue eyes, round, slightly misshapen, smooth body, a rich, healthy, dark green hue, large, capable, nimble, graceful hands, and the delicate symbol of the majik adept which is so much more than majik and includes a little of all ... yes, I suppose for a Miriana I was quite fine.

For a human, I would have been incredibly ugly. My face was rather flat, the eyes overlarge and the nose flat and large, my head big and oddly triangular, my body too round, and the delicate, long-toed feet too large. I was slightly over three feet tall, and a rich, healthy deep leaf-green hue, my eyes blue like a gem, like one of the bottomless sapphire pools high in the mountains. Quite a range of blues could pass through my eyes according to mood and awareness-focus, anywhere from a light, flower-blue of excitement to that deep bottomless-pool blue of higher awareness deep-trance states.

"I want to see the look on Daniel's face, I really do," I said. And I could see, with all the intensity of the Miriana focus, down to the subatomic level, and into higher awareness levels where I could see the streams of psychic energies on seven different planes of this dimension. I also had the intensity of my focus on all of those levels, and could peer into the minute details no one could ever have dreamed of seeing on the lower levels of the astral plane. My eyes flicked rapidly through their focuses and levels, my resilient Miriana mind dealing with what would usually amount to an overload strong enough to cause a heart attack.

"We haven't found Cianan's soul," said Yuon. "We were hoping you could help."

Our link had grown so strong that we were literally mind-to-mind, a contact closer than skin.

Only the majik adepts knew links like this. They know a little of everything, and practice a little of everything. Majik devotes itself mainly though to the deeper mysteries of life, the workings of the inner soul, the majik of worlds and song, the studies that in themselves took hundreds of thousands of years. They let me graduate at my fifteenth cycle, but in majik, one never stops learning. They created the School of Majik to preserve something of the great early days when tales of our majik were known across the known dimensions. They called us stars fallen to earth and made into beings of light, for we alone were spun from the Essence itself. We were not simple, frail shells with a mere tiny spark of Flame Eternal, but Essence made living and breathing. But then again, the Essence does live, and breathe. Its breath is the wind, its heartbeat that of the universe, its voice that of the stars' music, its eyes the myriad jewels of the stars themselves, breathtaking against their velvet black tapestry of night.

And majik knows this. Very, very few become majik adepts anymore, and there are only two great Masters of Majik left, Lord Tiannen of Light, brother to the Great Mother Andelin herself, who sits in supreme rule, our benevolent queen, in the High Court of Ithelian; and Yuon, ancient and childless, so none remembers now from where her line came. She is older even than Tiannen, older than Andelin herself. Some say she is billions of years old, the oldest alive. And still she remains powerful, her intellect and her power surpassing all else. She'd been offered the high seat when the last Queen faded, but she had declined. There had been rumors flying for quite some time as per her reasons for that.

I reached, reached, but there was an icy void there, it seemed. I employed all the powers of my Miriana mind and reached, wrapping a melody in thought and sending it winging, like a small, stone-blue bird with streaks of varying shades from rose to bright gold, a diamond pattern of a darker, paler, softer gold, black feet, and a clear, glowing beak, its tail streaming out white behind it. I sent it along the connection, winging swiftly and surely, with all the strength I could contain within it. When the bird found his spirit floating among the stars, it would open its beak to a normally impossible size, and capture Simon's soul within its warded substance. For the bird was hollow, its body a thickly woven shield.

Yuon had seen what I had done.

"Will it have enough energy to trace its path back through four dimensional gateways, all several galaxies apart, and halfway across a universe?" she asked skeptically.

"Possibly. I am no mere student, and majik is my craft," I said.

"I'm sorry. I keep thinking of you as though you had only graduated and gotten your official First-level rank twenty-seven years ago." She shook her head. "My, time seems so strange sometimes."

I looked around me. I was surprised! I was in no city, but in a simple sung house.

The way the rural houses are made, among the adepts that tend toward the majikal or life studies, are made of sung life. Yuon is quite good at singing things. There are the mistwood trees, those that can be thought or sung into shape by the superior mental power of a Master, and then songreeds and songwood and songmoss. These still require intricate melodies, but one does not need to be a Master in one's art to sing growth out of them, merely the musical knowledge. Those who devote themselves to music, the Memoryspinners or Taleweavers as they call themselves, or simply the song or story adepts, sculpt things out of songplants. Their Memory Masters' mistwood art is legendary. Some say that the Memory Masters, countless aeons ago (or the beginnings of them because this was far enough back that the Miners were in control and majicians worked for themselves alone and could not always be fully trusted), sang and thought the great cities into being, a task that took over a million years to complete.

I was in Yuon's own sung house, I realized. It was spacious enough. She had sung it, rather than from the ground up, out of a grove of mistwoods, so that there were several levels overlapping within the high branches of the great, stately trees themselves. Spiral staircases with intricately designed banisters wound themselves around the ancient trees' trunks.

"Yuon! How did I get here?" Dumb question. "I mean, why am I here?"

The old, laugh-lined face crinkled into a smile. "We saved you when your soul left and put you in suspended animation."

"Why am I not in Tilianum, or Lucianum, or just in Tilian even?"

"You can't expect Lady Andelin to welcome you with open arms."

"What?" For all the superior intellect of my Miriana mind, I was confused and uncomprehending now.

"You failed her precious mission." Was that a tinge of resentment in Yuon's voice? The great, ever-loving, all-embracing Yuon?

"Lady Andelin thinks I have failed? And the Court agrees?"

"Apparently," said Yuon. "No one dares to question Andelin."

"Why not? That doesn't make sense?"

"She blames you for Earth's infection and the discord surrounding it. She says if you could just let something like that go, then what else could you let go? Our world?"

Andelin's assumptions stung. This wasn't like our kind, benign Queen. What had come over her?

As if reading my thoughts, Yuon said, "The whole Court has been acting quite strange lately." As the one Bonded to Andelin's own brother, Yuon had a great deal to worry about herself here.

"Yuon, what will Andelin do to me?"

"Andelin has demoted you. She sent you to Tilian and is thinking of sending you away."

"Is there anything you can do?"

"No ... but maybe. I have allies within the Court."

I didn't like the way she discussed this. It was almost as though we were speaking of the High Court of Faery, not that of Miria, the benign planet with its gentle people and kind, generous Queen.

"I have friends among the Memoryspinners," said Yuon, "and Tiannen will always side with me." She smiled. I understood that look. No Miriana, even with our great powers, save the Memory Masters and majik adepts could appreciate the Bond. It was a higher form of life-bond, a different kind of love.

"Does Andelin still listen to Tiannen is the question," I said.

"Oh, I think she does. Iyana, how could you have saved a planet? She can't say you failed."

I only shut my eyes. It took me a second to realize I couldn't, I'd have to shut the vertical lids first. I shut both sets of eyelids and sat there, depressed.

I felt a long, slender, delicately boned hand rest on my shoulder.

"Look at me, Iyana, look at me."

I flicked back the horizontal lid and peered up through the distorted semitransparency of the tough inner lid. "What?"

"I promise I'll vouch for you in Andelin's court, Iyana. I won't let you down. Alai was like my daughter. I might as well have raised her. And then she became one of the most brilliant majik adepts, a Master at only three million. That is beyond rare. Most achieve mastery at third stage, after over forty-five million years, but Alai ... she was special. And she was so bright, so very, very bright. But she always had the best heart. She would give her life for those she loved. And she wasn't ashamed of loving anything, any being, any plant, any world, any star. And she chose, rather than to move to Lucianum with the Masters, to stay here. She did not even stay in Tilian. She chose to come back to me. I see so much of her in you, Iyana my child, so much." There was an old pain in her eyes. To Yuon it might as well be very recent; the unknowable span of her life saw a mere six millennia as a blink of an eye.

"I swore to Alai, Iyana." There was pain in her voice, terrible pain. "I swore to protect you. As I loved her like a daughter, so I love you, because I am childless." Her smile held no warmth. "I will have no heir. Some have many, some like Alai have one, I will have none, and when I fade, my life will fade to myth because for as long as anyone can remember, I was a mystery." And suddenly her arms were around me, and I felt how thin and brittle she was, and she was crying. Poor Yuon! She felt so fragile, so delicate, so brittle and ethereal and slender. She felt like a feather could break her.

I let her cry. I cried, too. I cried for innocence. I cried for my lost love. We cried together for the beauty that was slipping away. We cried because we needed to. We cried freely, millennia of restrained tears falling from our eyes.

I remembered a good friend of mine, Lacey, from Earth when I was a child. She had felt like Yuon, so fragile and delicate you wanted to hold on to her just because you were afraid the wind would blow her away and you'd never see her again, and the thought of that was so unthinkably, unspeakably terrible and heart-rending that by your own life, you wouldn't let it happen, not only wouldn't but couldn't, because then you would want, no, need, to shatter into so many little sharp pieces that it just wouldn't matter, and the pain would be lost to the cold. And remembering those old friends, the friends from all the worlds I'd lived on, I cried as my heart tore itself apart and healed itself over and over, and each time a little more of me went with them. I had left something crucial behind on all those worlds, my innocence, my loves, my lives.

When our tears subsided, she let me go. There was a new depth of understanding between the incomprehensibly aged, fragile being and I. I had never understood, until now, just what Yuon had endured over the countless aeons, and just how fragile she had become. I remembered her being much stronger than this when I was little more than a child. Her color was lightening now; I remembered her being a deeper, richer gold. The colors in her wings had not faded, but lightened, so that it was easier to see through their folds. They were more transparent and brittle. And in her eyes was a new depth, a new grace. I had never seen a Miriana that neared their end, but I knew that no other had lived as long as Yuon, and that all things fade in time.

I watched her ascend the stairway silently to the contemplation chamber above us, the masterpiece that had taken so much energy and such a long time.

I got up and went out and down the wide spiral, into the clearing below. My Miriana memory knew this place.

My feet carried me down and away from Yuon's home, and across her gardens. There was a place where the mountains encroached upon the gardens. I walked across the great expanse laid aside for Yuon over the billennia, and found the little valley. It had high stone walls round the open sides, and a flight of stone steps cut into the steep side of the valley.

In this restful, quiet, beautiful place were Yuon's masterpiece flowers, the most beautiful and exotic. In the center was a clear fountain rushing from a spring and into a deep, deep blue pool, a sapphire pool. I looked over its side and could not see my reflection in it. In fact, I could see nothing in it but a faint, faint light. The pool led to a stream that flowed out beneath the wall.

I walked down the jade and turquoise stone path to the pool, watching the light move.

On an impulse, I spoke to it.

"I can't find him," I said.

There seemed to be a questioning in the air.

"Simon," I said.

There was only puzzlement.

"Cianan, son of Miriel and Rhilinon."

There was a deep sorrow emanating from the sapphire-studded onyx of the pool's bank.

Set above the mouth of the spring was a great stone. It was clear and faceted, reflecting and refracting rainbows from the fading sunlight. It was the entity of this pool, Corunan it was called.

Corunan was now turning a sad, cold blue. The waters of the pool wavered.

I was looking down on to a view of the stars, breathtakingly beautiful. There were swirling energies among the stars, veils of light, and they seemed almost as though they could reach out and call for me, touch me, sing to me ...

Something flitted across the surface.

It was a small Miriana figure, so insignificantly tiny against the stars.

The spirit called to me, fragile, alone. I reached instinctively ...

"Don't touch the water!" said Yuon.

I spun. She was standing there, wrapped in a rehtaef cloak.

I turned back. I cast the bird from a warded melody again and sent it like a blue, white, and gold to red streak into the water. I felt Yuon move up beside me, felt her infinite presence, wise and warm like a glowing candle, a fountain of warm light that kept away all darkness.

"What do you see, child?" she said in her musically soft voice.

"Simon," I whispered.

I felt the bird hurtling back up. Quickly, Yuon took a breath, and blew as if whistling. A bubble of light formed as if from bubble gum, and swallowed the bird. She lifted a hand, cupping the bubble in her hand.

"Come." She turned and strode up the path, tall, stately, and beautiful, green and blue cloak billowing behind her.

I followed Yuon back up to her house. We did not go up into the trees, though; she bent to the foot of her great tree and pressed on a large knot.

The massive tree trunk was hollow! I realized. Inside were stairs, narrow but smooth, with shallow, easy steps for the smaller, short-legged, large-footed first-stage Mirianas. A Miriana changed most in the years it took to grow from first to second stage.

I had never seen this place before. We descended into the caves below. They were carved from the knoll.

There was a large room that looked like part of a medical facility. "This is where we kept you and Cianan." She went to a large, white, unmarked container, one of four in the room. She unsealed it, and opened it. Cold gases wafted out.

There, within, in repose, was Simon's perfect Miriana body. He was also quite fine-looking, I realized absently.

Yuon opened the light bubble, and it vanished. The melody bird lay dying in her palm.

"Quickly, quickly!"

I rushed to her side.

"Wait for my signal." She positioned a light over the bird, so that it was between the light and Cianan's forehead.

"Now."

She switched on the light and let the bird go at the same time. I sucked its waning energy. There was a psychic mist. It entered Cianan and vanished.

Yuon gently lifted the body from within the container and resealed it. She ascended the stairway, which met the great tree's own spiral inside the trunk. In its center was a huge carved column, a mistwood masterpiece, intricate and laced with rainbow vines, their small moonlight-colored flowers nodding, closed. They would open at night, and shine. Somehow Yuon had made the outer wall transparent as well, laced with a vein of gold where the stairs met it. On either side we passed quiet, tranquil rooms.

We reached the room where I'd slept, and she laid Cianan-Simon in the bed of rehtaef. Automatically, it snuggled around him, conforming to his shape. Every plant, in fact nearly everything Yuon used, was still alive.

Yuon left me to await Cianan's awakening.

Nearly three hours went by before he opened his eyes. "Where am I?"

"In Yuon'Lia's home," I said.

He looked up at me, and stared incredulously. "Light ..." I could sense his thoughts whirling as all his twelve million, eight thousand, three hundred and fifty-nine years of memory came back to him.

"Iyana!" he said.

"Yes," I said.

He looked up at me. "Yuon'Lia ... where is she?"

"Yuon's upstairs. Yuon!"

Yuon glided noiselessly into the room, as if on cue. I knew she hadn't been spying. She'd been called by Cianan's awakening.

"Give him the mirror," I said. Yuon held it up. Cianan's eyes practically popped, if it was possible.

"A Miriana." He started laughing.

"Er, it's not all that good." Yuon explained what had happened. Cianan's spirits deflated.

"What the fuck is her major issue?"

Yuon looked shocked; apparently she knew the word. Yuon knew more than she let on, and well, she let on a great deal. I was sure Yuon knew over a billion forms of communications, the in-depth histories of scores of planets, every known majikal secret in the known universe, all the most highly advanced maths and sciences and so much more. I wouldn't be surprised if Yuon already mysteriously knew Earth's language, history, geography, inner workings of its social structure, and so much more, in detail.

"How could we save a planet? She might be able to, but she's Andelin! That's different!" He'd gotten up now, the stiffness of millennia eased by Yuon's healing, and was pacing.

"Sit down. It wouldn't do good for either of you to exert yourself this first while." Yuon pushed him back down and he fell backward into the rehtaef bed. It wrapped itself around him and he was left lying on his back, feet in the air, tangled in feathery material. I had to laugh at him as he fought his way out of the clinging, soft substance.

"Andelin is corrupt," said Yuon finally. I could see how much it took for her to say that.

"I would be careful who you let hear that."

Yuon didn't even turn. "I trust you, Tiannen. If you tell, I'll know what I've wasted, love, trust, and over a billion years of my life."

Tiannen swept into the room, tall and stately beside her small, slender, fragile form, but less fragile-seeming. He gazed at Yuon with piercing intensity. She stared right back.

He looked away first.

"I see both of you are awake, and speaking of Andelin, I was just in Ithelian vouching for the both of you. I got Iranikus and Alinorun on your side too."

Iranikus was Lord of the Night, some said. He was not evil, simply darker, and kept to himself. He was the last of whatever he practiced, but he had three apprentices, Sharion, Ithilin, and Arinius. They did not speak of what they did either. Iranikus was dark and quiet. He spoke little and was always cryptic, but he tended to be slightly impulsive and go on his instincts. As well-honed and finely-tuned as Iranikus's intuition was, some did not like his impulsiveness.

Alinorun was an old forest lord, quiet and green, serene and calm. You couldn't help but to trust Alinorun. His very serenity and calm itself was the best persuasion, for though he spoke little, one would do well to heed his advice. Not much was known about Alinorun but that he was of the line of the forest deity, Olirion. There were probably records somewhere, as there were for all their people, and though every record was open and nothing was secret, few ever bothered to look at them in their old, dusty Hall of Records.

"Iranikus isn't the best choice, but at least he's something," said Yuon. I was saddened that we were planning cold, calculating strategy that would divide the High Court. Nothing like this had happened in six thousand years.

"Alinorun was more than I was hoping for," Yuon continued. "He's always been so peaceful. I wonder what his motive is for joining us, the rebels." That word sounded ominous.

"Alinorun promised to speak to his people. With the Nightlings at our backs, I fear we will inspire fear, not the urge to follow us," said Tiannen.

Behind their backs, the three apprentices of Iranikus were called the Nightlings, or Darklings. They were of a unique form, for Iranikus was their parent. He had created them in his image, slimmer than most, taller than most, and darker than all the rest. Arinius's eyes were black swimming with flickering star-lights, Sharion's were a dark, dark green, but every once in a while there were flickers of a faint molten gold in those eyes. Ithilin's eyes were midnight-blue, and she could show any vision of stars and moons in her eyes, or the great tapestry of space could roll through her eyes when she meditated. I'd seen it once. It was breathtaking. She, of the other two, most loved the stars and moons and their bright lights, while Arinius loved the dark and Sharion the forests at night. He could often be seen, a still small (but taller than any other first-stage being) figure, slim and lovely. They all had dark, shining skin. They were perhaps the strangest of the beings that still remained on the Surface. It was said Andelin had been reluctant to let them stay on the surface, and that they had some secret treaty with the Queen.

"Tiannen ..." I began.

"Iyana."

I looked up at him. He must have seen something in my eyes. More likely the force of my emotions was conveying to him. I was filled with mourning, mourning for the loss of the beautiful peace of Miria. The Ulich Aena (the Dark Ones), antithesis of the Elenimin Lintennainin (the Shining Minds), are the dark spirits drawn to the world's power. Good cannot exist without evil, as evil cannot exist without good. Where there is either there is always resistance, and Miria's resistance was rising.

"But come on! There's so much we haven't seen! Seriously, Andelin hasn't made her decision yet."

"A lot has changed," said Yuon, a warm, glowing smile on her warm, creased face. I could understand why everyone loved that smile. Yuon's kind personality, which would have been called grandmotherly by any human, and even better her smile, made one feel so warm and peaceful, as though nothing bad could possibly happen. It made everything seem blissful and perfect. You couldn't help but to love her and the quiet, perfect serenity that surrounded her. It wasn't the intimidating brightness of her intelligence that left you in awe, though her intelligence certainly exceeded that of most in Ithelian, Tilianum, Lucianum, or any of the other great cities. It wasn't the deep, contemplative serenity of the fabled old mages. It wasn't the achingly beautiful simplicity of that serenity, either. It was simple happiness in its purest, most warm form. It wasn't the kind that makes you cry. It wasn't the wistful kind either, like the memory of happiness.

It was love. Yuon loved freely. Yuon was compassionate and forgiving. Many say they say what they mean and mean what they say, but Yuon truly does. Why regret when one's life is so long? she says. I have only lived so long because I am sure I have nothing to regret. Regret is what kills an immortal. Yuon loved life, Yuon loved everything. She embraced everyone with open arms, drawing them in and shining on them that simple, easy, sweet love that comes so naturally to our kind.

"How can a lot change in five thousand years? For you ancients, that's nothing."

Yuon's smile flashed bright in her golden face. "You'll see, you'll see."

"I'll leave you to your playing then; I've things to do," said Tiannen, and he flitted out like a shadow.

Yuon led us down the stairs. We flitted out into the gardens. Yuon had bred lots more unusual flowers. I always loved Yuon's experiments; she had wonderful taste in her combinations when she bred hybrids.

Yuon paused at the gate to her private garden, with the pool where I'd awakened Cianan.

We went down to the pool. The water cleared as we neared, and the great crystal's telepathic voice resonated, deep and ancient. This pool had been here before Tilian, before Yuon had lived here, before anyone could possibly trace back.

My children, it spoke, and as we neared, the water cleared. It showed a tapestry of space. I recognized the space around Earth's solar system. It zoomed in closer; the planets were in great detail, and then an image of Earth and its moon filled the pool. The moon was dark that night, so it merely floated bleakly there beside the cloud-wreathed planet. Breaks in the clouds showed blasted landscapes, jagged and impassable, and dirty grey-black oceans. Everything was dead. Cities, tiny specks on the surface, lay abandoned. Earth was no longer a blue planet, it was dark and ugly and dying.

The picture zoomed in, over a continent, then a country, then farther into a lonely road that passed through high mountains, mountains that rose majestically, bleak and black in the dim shadowed light the constant heavy clouds let through.

There was a lone truck driving precariously on the icy, slick road. To one side was a cliff that dropped, sheer and icy, to dizzying depths. Far below in the gorge, an icy silver ribbon was running. On the other side were high, jagged impassable mountains. The whole scene had a stark, dark, lonely beauty.

Suddenly a black shadow streaked over the scene, a bird with sharp, metallic feathers, polished to a bright gleam and sharpened to a razor's edge. Its huge, wicked looking silver talons dripped fresh blood. It was carrying something, and I gasped when I realized it was the body of a small child wrapped in grey, tattered, bloodstained rags. Its jagged wings spread majestically, darkly over the scene as it gained altitude. Where it should be sharp and crude, it was sleek and incredibly refined, its predatory look beautiful in a cruel, terrifying way.

"A Bladebird," said Yuon gravely. "The great Ghalemma Múrdegh herself. She who comes from Ulikkar with her flock to absorb the life force of worlds." Suddenly she plunged her hands into the water. It roiled, boiling, but the glow from her hands lit the blackness pink. Tendrils of steam rose off the fiercely bubbling water, but she kept her hands there, unperturbed.

The crystal's light dimmed, and the rock itself shivered. She has discerned my gaze on her, it said in its deep, ponderous voice. Where once that voice was serene and melodic, resonating with a deep, calm, rich timbre, now it was higher, somehow sibilant. It sent chills down my back, and gave me a curious unpleasant feeling, as though I were smelling some sharp heavy chemical that was making my head heavy and fuzzing my senses. Suddenly the feeling intensified and I slumped forward against the pool's edge, clutching the sapphire-studded onyx banks. I swayed dangerously. Cianan tried to hold me up but his new form made that difficult.

Yuon reached out a hand and placed it on the crystal. "It's hot! If it breaks ..."

There was a clattering, pattering sound down the turquoise-emerald path behind us, and Tiannen was there. Yuon had fallen silent and gone strangely pale. "Yuon! Yuon!" Her head slumped forward. Gently, tenderly, he lifted it and looked into her eyes, drawing her close, half-carrying her trembling body, stroking her feathery hair.

"Andelin will blame us," I said quietly to Cianan, "if Yuon'Lia dies."

Her lips moved soundlessly as she gazed up at Tiannen. He pulled her hands out of the water and dried them.

"The Laimé Arelinon has been poisoned," said Tiannen gravely, "by Ghalemma Múrdegh." He turned on his heel, leading the unresponsive, unresisting Yuon away.

"She was so happy, just two minutes ago," I said, stricken.

"She won't die, Iyana."

I felt a ray of hope. Cianan had the Foretelling sometimes. Maybe he was truly seeing this.

We turned to follow, but I felt the crystal gasp. I turned back to it.

It was going to fracture. The entity of the great crystal was dying. Impulsively, I reached out to touch it, and when I did, my hands were locked on the hot, shivering stone. Cianan stepped up beside me and watched as the crystal's light merged with mine. I was so weak that I slumped forward, only supported by my hands glued to the rock.

Then the crystal's ancient presence, beyond old, old as the planet itself, trillions of years old, spoke to me.

Ghalemma is not as old as I am. Ghalemma holds not the power of this world. Can you summon it? Can you help me?

I considered, but time was running out fast.

I must.

A bit of the crystal's energy flowed into me, so I could help it summon the necessary power. I knew how hard it must have been to do that.

I took the energy, cast my mind into the planet, and called.

Light, come forth. Light, banish the dark. Love of beautiful Miria, surround us, banish fear and pain ... and save Ghalemma.

I knew that last bit was the right thing to do. Killing her would displease the soul of Miria, taking any life without great deliberation always upset the great old mother spirit of the world. She always tried to seek other alternatives, killing only when absolutely necessary. But there is a time when all must fade, and Miria knows this as well as any world soul who has seen as many years as she.

I looked down at the great crystal, feeling power return to it slowly ...

And I fell suddenly, face-first, into the pool.

I may have fallen for a second or an eternity, I didn't know. My limbs were locked in place and I was being pulled. I heard the whirling of the water around my body. But I grew numb, and then all I could hear was a quiet hiss, like water in plastic pipes. I could see nothing; I was in utter blackness when I flicked open the first lid, but I had the sense of a great, vast space before me, endless and filled with water, and an abyss below me. If I ever got out, I'd have to tell Yuon there was a cavern beneath her crystal.

If I ever got out, I thought, and it suddenly donned on me that I might never get out. I switched my breathing off, which automatically put me in a higher-awareness trance state. I upped my focus and sensitivity, so I could feel even the movements of the tiny unicellular organisms in the water, and see the barest flicker of light like a bright beacon. Hopefully no bright lights would go off and nothing would make a strange sudden movement.

There were none. At least, none were moving.

I realized that I was the only disturbance here for years, possibly. Otherwise this water stayed black and so still it was frightening.

This unnatural absence of life and movement unnerved me. How could this be possible?

Suddenly a crackling red light descended from above in one direction, ghostly radioactive green in the other, and a flickering, icy blue from below. I shut my eyes, barely avoiding crying out and getting a mouthful of the strange water.

Something began to hum. There was a mechanical click-click-clack, then a great choking sound as if something were being dislodged, and then the great blue thing hurtled at my face. The water grew warmer by at least twenty degrees. I felt chemicals swirl up where the blue thing had left, toxic combinations, some I knew were drugs used for torture on dark worlds ...

Suddenly I was surrounded by something sticky and red, blood-red tentacles of goo that drifted slowly up to my face. The great blue thing wrapped a mass of sticky, clinging ooze, like a sack of goo, round me. Below I could see a bubble of the red thing, and I could see that the bubble was diseased, swollen and discolored. What did it want? Healing? That I couldn't, and wouldn't anyway, give. The thing was pulsating strangely, as if with breath, but it was no heart or lung. Streaks suddenly spread across its surface, weak places, streaks of a discolored filmy mucus.

It was going to rupture in the water. It was going to die horribly and decay here. I was about to be surrounded by nasty infected goo, and be poisoned. The outer film ruptured. Something strained and the bubble burst. Dark fluid gushed forth. The tentacles tensed, shivered, spasmed, let go, and flailed wildly.

I could see it had taken quite a long time for it to get into this condition, or a long time compared to what was happening now. It must have taken it three or four months to get to this stage, this point of no return. Tattered red shreds hung in between the folds of tentacles, and as I watched in horror, the infection turned back and swept through the exposed organism. With my higher focus I could see individual cells bursting, thousands and millions at a time. It may have taken several hours for this to progress but I saw it as if it were in seconds, the organism torn to shreds, its ragged, dying scream, high and thin, indelibly etched on my memory.

What horrors lived here? This was Miria! This was the prize emerald of the cosmos, the center of life, the most evolved and powerful world but two, an island of serenity in the stars, that was Miria.

I felt myself being drawn upward. The hissing turned to a normal sound, the water flowed normally, and I was out, pushed over the banks by careful invisible hands. For a moment they lingered, gentle fingers moving, inscribing signs over my face. They were not Miriana hands but they were seemingly human, and they knew the star-codes, and had the eternal will of a spark of Time itself to use it. Then they slipped away.

I lay there, face down in the miniaturized rehtaef plants around me. They waved gently against my face and round my body, comforting, kind. They whispered softly, "Whhhhhhhaaaat doesssssss botherrrrrrr ourrrrrrr f!ffeatherrrrrrry f!ffffriend ..." they said in slow, measured, soft tones.

"Iyana! Cianan! Iyana?"

It was Tiannen, racing down the path. He looked down at me, and his face grew grave. He lifted me and motioned for Cianan to follow.

"What happened to her?" he asked as they began to make their way away from the pool.

"I don't know," Cianan replied.

I sent Tiannen the memory. He stopped, cursed in seven different languages. The language that seemed to dominate was an extremely old tongue spoken by the last remaining inhabitants of a now dead world. The language was somewhat like High Speech, but different in several ways. Some, in fact, refered to it as the "Dark Speech."

"Eyelab! Eeelah-eyelah-a-babbalah naz! A-babbalah why? Abunnaloo coy? Kazzalah! Kazzalah-CAN! Fie! SHY-fie! Blet! Blet ky-yam doe-ram kazzalah a-babbalah! Rast!"

We reached Yuon's tower. She was standing at the bottom. She seemed a little dazed, but otherwise alright.

"Iyana!" I heard her say. I felt her walking beside Tiannen on the steps. I felt her long, exquisitely sensitive, cool gentle fingers brush my face.

"The A-virus," she said. She'd sensed it through the stupor my mind was in. "Engineered quite a long time ago on Earth by a dark Fae."

"Can you heal it?"

"Possibly. But she won't like it. The medicines that must be used are ... intense. This is a super-infection, resistant to all but the strongest drugs, and those will take a toll on her strength."

We were at the room I'd woken in. I was laid down on the mats. The rehtaef curled round my body.

Yuon ran her hands down my body just above my skin, stopping with each hand on either side of me. Beams of light met in the middle, making a joined questing beam. It entered my skin. I felt something, like a heavy knot, loosen inside. The stupor lifted somewhat, and I was merely tired now.

Yuon stroked my face with one long finger and I fell asleep.

I awoke suddenly, aware that my insides felt like they'd been stretched as far as they'd go without snapping and tied into intricate little knots, and it was also too hot, the air too heavy.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine," I croaked. Yuon raised an eyebrow.

I tried a smile, if a weak one. I was sure it was unconvincing. "No really."

Yuon's sculpted blue eyebrow rose so high I thought it would disappear into her feathery white hair.

Yuon was strange. Unlike any other who'd hit a billion, she'd shrunk, and was now only a foot taller than I, diminutive compared to anyone in her stage.

"Okay, kill an indestructible infection," I said.

"Aren't you done with infections? Can't the infections leave you alone? Are you a magnet for super-bugs? Honestly, you've had three in thirteen years."

"Hey, one was intentional, manmade, and beyond my control," I said.

"And so was the other one. And so is this one."

"This is Fae-made, Yuon, big difference, they live for eight thousand years, humans live for eighty. They're indestructible, highly majikal, and inhumanly beautiful. And to a human or a Fae, that's a big difference."

"Fae, human, bird, whatever," said Yuon. "It still doesn't occur naturally. No, you're not a magnet for infection, you're a magnet to be the center of universe-altering upheaval, just like..." She shook her head. "How do you manage it?"

"What, are you jealous?"

"Definitely not."

"Where's Cianan?" I said.

She was silent.

"Yuon?"

"In Ithelian," said Yuon finally.

"What's he doing in Ithelian?"

More silence.

"Spit it out, Yuon."

"Speaking before the High Court, before Andelin herself."

I fought to sit up. Yuon gestured, and the rehtaef locked around me.

"Damn it, Yuon!"

"You're not well enough, Iyana. You are not bouncing off your deathbed to go to Ithelian and yell at Queen Andelin; it's just not possible!"

I lay back. You couldn't argue with logic like that. But I didn't like it.

"I'm sorry, Iyana. You'll get your chance. Andelin hasn't completely lost her mind."

"This is why they say madness and corruption come with power and immortality. This is what's wrong with Queen Marsaili, with King Ariandil."

"Andelin is not a Marsaili or an Ariandil," said Yuon firmly, "and I pray to the Mother Miria that it will never come to that."

"It will mean impeachment."

"Andelin won't be satisfied with that. It will mean death."

War on Miria, I thought. Must it come to this?

"He'll be back by nightfall, I promise. You're not really on your deathbed; you've got a few months and I'm sure I'll find a drug strong enough by then. Otherwise, I'm flushing the infection out of your system by majik, and that will be very unpleasant indeed. If all else fails, well there's always drastic measures. Are you sure you've never gotten the Plague of Mortality?"

"On Mai're," I said numbly. "Forty-eight years ago."

Yuon ran her hands through her cloud of wild white hair standing out in all directions from her narrow head. "That makes things more difficult. You may have to ride it out on your own. Then, in your next life, if you're sent out again, that is, you'll be immune, not only to it, but its next-life after-effects." In vain, she tried to flatten her hair. It just made it worse. "I'm sorry, Iyana, there may be nothing we can do for you."

The Plague of Mortality is the only known infection that immortals are susceptible to. It's also vicious, insidious, slow, incurable ninety-nine percent of the time, a doctor's worst nightmare. Its cause is unknown exactly, but there are theories. There's a part of every being's system that it can only attack, and this varies from species to species. It's usually somewhat uncommon but not very rare. And it follows you from life to life if you're not an immortal. But there is a point of no return, and trust me, if you think you're in pain now you can't even fathom the pain you'll have then. You will know when it's a lost cause." Vainly, she tried flattening her halo of white hair again. "I don't think it'll come to that."

"Wait. As a human, I had it, and beat it."

"Not really. You had nervous damage from the form it hit you in." Another bad thing about the Plague of Mortality is that it doesn't have one form, it has many. Its common form in humans, though, tends to be mainly one disease rather than several. I suppose I mutated it, or it spread. You're not supposed to live if it spreads. No one has lived if it's not isolated, because if it spreads it means bad things, let's just not go into the nasty details. No one, no matter how lucky or how advanced medicine has become, has managed it. It just doesn't happen.

Or I got the Miriana form of it, and that's why it was undiagnosable and also why they couldn't pinpoint quite where it was. Strangely, they dismissed it. I was sent home. My fever climbed past 104 for a week solid, during which I truly knew a living hell, and still everyone dismissed it. Subtle Corporation workings, probably.

"I suppose you're right." I gasped and shut my eyes. I could feel myself subtly, slowly being put delicately off balance, as if I were standing on a knife's edge, and there were only two ways to fall, and it was all too easy to fall to the roiling turmoil on one side rather than salvation on the other. The infection had a life, and a mind. This was not just going to be a battle of wills, but a battle of wits, a battle of the mind.

The infection couldn't win.

I realized this with such certainty that there was absolutely no way I could die. The full force of my Miriana will and of my fate was behind it, and a Miriana with fate on her side is a thing any being, microscopic and deadly or no, would have sense not to face. But this is an infection. There is no sense, no rhyme or reason to all of it, no method to the madness. The only word an infection with a mind can think is "Kill, kill, kill!" as it subtly and insidiously orchestrates your demise. Black majik, though evil, is ingenious.

I waited impatiently for the rest of the day, burning with questions for Cianan, whenever he was coming back. Yuon wouldn't let me up and confined me to my room, despite all my protests.

Apparently she'd told Cianan about the situation. When he came in, I had millions of questions.

"What did they want to talk to you about?"

"The mission, mainly. They made me tell them seven thousand years of stories, no details omitted. It took days..."

"How long have I been out?"

"A month."

"Shit!"

"Iyana!" It was Yuon.

"Sorry."

"It took days to tell them all that. Then they spent time questioning me on every detail. It was all really boring."

"What did they say about me?"

"They demanded why you weren't there. I had to tell them you were unconscious. They didn't believe me, and I'm not entirely sure they believed Tiannen and Yuon."

"Did anyone side with you?"

"Iranikus and Alinorun, as Tiannen said they would. Eligúlin did, though how many would agree with him is sometimes questionable."

I sighed. There wasn't much else we could hope for.

"Eligúlin doesn't want to divide the Court," said Cianan. "He talked to me some, more than I would have expected of him. He doesn't talk much to anyone."

"He's very much the wise, quiet, green Master of Botany," I said.

"He's Eligúlin," said Cianan. "There's no more to say."

"What about Andelin?" I asked.

"Andelin forged a form for herself, tall and pale and slender. She looks very much more the Fae Queen than the gentle Miriana Queen."

An image came to me then, an image that was a tall, pale specter of a being with a wave of raven's-wing hair and high, hawklike features, Yuon's bird face, intensified and warped. There was something very birdlike about her, something essentially birdlike. It disturbed me that I couldn't put my finger on the quality I was seeing in her image, her hair swept back by a sterling silver and hematite clip, her jade eyes circled in black, her red, red lips, and that birdlike essence ...

"Her voice is very birdlike, very beautiful," Cianan said. "But she is ... warped."

I got the distinct impression she was as well. "Yes," I said. "I can't quite name it."

"That disturbed me, too," said Cianan. "She sat alone. Torian was gone."

Torian had been the consort, until now. Where was he? I wondered. I pictured the slender, gentle, submissive Miriana and cursed Andelin. Andelin was essentially corrupt now and had been for years apparently. What would happen to Torian? What had she done to him?

"I asked Eligúlin about Torian and he only clicked and said, "What do you mean?", which didn't make sense."

"Iranikus wouldn't have bothered with pretending," I said. "Why not ask him?"

"He bothers me sometimes. He's so intense and dark."

"I want to go to Ithelian, Cianan, I have to. I have to tell them what really happened on Earth. I'm absolutely sure the Corporation is far ahead of the rest of humanity and had agents everywhere." I sighed. "One may have taken advantage of Andelin's corruption."

"A Miriana ruler, corrupt," said Cianan, and sighed. "What are we coming to?"

The days passed and I grew progressively weaker. Yuon's theory was proven true, and I could not be healed.

An official summons came from Ithelian, and Yuon and Tiannen told us there was no avoiding it, Andelin wouldn't believe it until she'd seen it.

Two weeks after Cianan came back from Ithelian, we were on our way there.

When we reached Ithelian with its sparkling towers, vast, tiered gardens, and marble streets, we were sent immediately to Andelin's court.

The great capital of Ithelian is built into the side of a high mountain, the Lyl Nulin, the Lone Mountain as it is called. It is a set of nine tiered half-rings, and upon the highest stands the tall, sparkling white and gold tower of Ithelian. This citadel is called Lillin Limarin Eniri, Tower of the Rising Sun. It stands alone, with the sheer white rising cliffs of the mountain as its backdrop, a tall, fair, beautiful needle of white marble and gleaming gold thrust into the vivid blue sky, over a thousand feet high and over a thousand feet in the air. When the rising sun hits it, it is crowned in golden light. The image of this nine-tiered city with its high tower and crown of light like a sun wrought in gold is the sign of the Way, the Path of Light, and the advanced center of power that is Miria. Only the Elenimin Lintennainin and the Masters of Majik are allowed to wear them on their shimmering robes of all colors. The majik adepts wear the simple white-gold seven-pointed star. The Masters wear that and the Sign of the Way. The Mirian Wanderers are allowed to carry them, but not wear them, and only off-planet or at ceremonies and banquets and such functions.

The Elenimin Lintennainin of the High Court can choose their own forms, while any other of their advanced stage remains the pale, star-eyed, golden-feathered norm of their kind, and unless they rise to the level of the Court they can not change their form. They can flow and shape-shift, but they cannot design for themselves a face as can those of Andelin's inner circles.

Yuon had come with Cianan and I. I was supported in a small chair that Cianan pushed. It was humiliating, I, a majik adept, being wheeled along like a baby. I knew I looked sickly; I hadn't slept in days and my color was an unhealthy, pale hue. I could feel hundreds of eyes on me as we passed with our escort, three tall, pale-skinned city guards. They were dressed all in white, with the Sign of the Way embroidered in gold over their left breast. They were slender but strong, upward of six feet tall and with long, dark hair. It was a rich red color, not quite Fae red and not at all brown, but a rich, warm red. Their eyes were a curious amber color. They were very human in appearance, but there was something inhumanly graceful about them, and their graceful bone structure was too intricate and delicate to be human. Yet they seemed to have withstood the test of time, so delicate-looking or no, they radiated strength. They were very quiet and there were very few of them. Their kind were the only trained fighters on Miria, and they were born of Tyalon Antalis. They rarely needed their skills; now they were simply there out of routine and always had been there. There was not one less than six thousand years old.

We ascended the tiers, the lead guard, tallest of them, carrying a Sign of the Way, which he flashed at the great gate to each tier.

The ninth gate was ringed on each side by three tall, stately, white-skinned guards. These were the fighting elite among their kind. There was one standing directly before the gate. He was taller than all of them, with all the grace of an Elf of legend, pale and fair and beautiful. But his long hair, hanging down to his waist, was jet-black, and his eyes were dark, silver-grey lances of memory, knowledge, and a strange kind of distant cold. He was Elandir, named after Aléna's spouse, Aléna, daughter of Alai, Aléna Geuliliel, the Beautiful, they called her, or Aléna Tinnai, the Wise.

Something was swimming over Elandir's skin as he raised a hand. He was dressed differently, wrapped in lighter robes. And underneath the cloth ...

Something was swimming over his body! I watched a tentacle of it writhe and reshape itself over his right side, flicker, and then reshape again.

His entire body was covered in intertwining, fantastic blue designs, and they lived. As I focused on his face they were even in his eyes, but the eye-flickers were silver. Rather than marring him, the masses of blue designs made him look more unnervingly beautiful. Well, beautiful wasn't quite the word.

"He was tied once," said Yuon very quietly. "Radioactive death-vines, on Tiri Anorai by their rebels in the Discord, or perhaps not their rebels. Perhaps it was Tarulon's own forces, or it could have even been Rassilon's few faithful on that world. He was deathly ill when we got him back. He was teetering on a knife's edge for several months, until we were willing to do what we must to save him. Now he's practically indestructible, and he has the determination to outlast the Plague of Mortality on the first try if it hit him."

I gasped. That was impossible!

He didn't speak. His eyes never moved. But the silver flickers seemed to take us in, and then he brought his hand down, the gate opened, and we entered. The guard at the gate took the Sign from our escort as we passed. All but the leader of the escort left us.

We were in a circular courtyard, paved with pale white marble. In its center was a fountain, playing in a sculpted silver pool. Beside it, feeding from it, was a tree, ancient and stately, with white bark and beautiful green leaves. But its most remarkable features were the flowers. They were exquisite golden globes encased in feathery white petals. On an impulse, I reached out and touched one of the globes.

Light spilled out of it, warmed to my hand, flowed into me.

I would live. What I knew for myself with certainty was confirmed by the flower.

I would do something no other had done. Others had survived the Plague, I thought. I suppose it's something different.

A soft golden rain fell past my hand and into the pool. For a moment, I thought I saw Tatyana's face reflected there.

I would lose what I had already won, but win what seemed irretrievably lost. The face flickered, and was gone.

I would break beyond repair but I would walk among my people again, more whole than I had ever been. Something shifted within me, physically. I could feel something changing shape.

I would shatter from within and Fate would put the pieces back together with a hand whose touch guaranteed strange and fantastic things. The unknowing thing stirred again. I could vaguely feel, somewhere distantly, that it was painful, but I was locked to this flower and its light, mind and soul spellbound, captive of the haunting beauty of the falling light.

You will not come out of this unscathed, but forever you bear a sign of strength. My body appeared in the water now, dissolving and reforming. It seemed to crack perfectly in two. Darkness spilled out. But maybe it had just dissolved strangely. It sealed, dissolved, reformed ...

And I bore star-eyes, eyes that knew Death.

You will go to a place where no other can follow ...

The water turned a transparent blue, with scenes flickering quickly in its depths. The last flickers of my body suddenly ran with the water and were gone.

And the final fallen will rise again.

Something within me shattered then, absolute extremes of fire racing through my body, burning every cell with dark destruction, the taint that can not be erased.

In perfect clarity, I sat, holding my breath, so still as if carved from stone. But within me, physically and mentally, a battle raged the likes of which none had won.

And I fell from the knife's edge, past the point of no return."

"And that is how you came to me?" Jenna inquired, "there seems to be no more left to tell."

Before Iyana could reply, Yuon entered, nearly flying.

"Guards!" she cried.

Jenna knew not what Yuon was talking about, but she sensed the urgency in her voice. Before she could stop herself, she shook her head violently and the dark bells rang out, their sound no longer beautiful or soothing. There was a note of power in the sound that none could resist.

At the sound, the little Doctors, except for the ones on Iyana, made for the entrance, their song rising to a scream of fury.

"No!" cried Yuon, "you mustn't! They are Mirianas! You can not set the Doctors on them! If you do ..."

Jenna attempted to hold back the army of Little Doctors, but it was too late. Their wrath had been roused, there were intruders attempting to enter their domain and the dark bells had called them to attack no matter what the cost, they would defend and they would repay any who entered without Jenna's leave.

Yuon sensed that Jenna couldn't hold back the Little Doctors and that the insects were about to attack and absorb the Guards who had been sent by Andelin, probably for the purpose of finishing Iyana. She also knew, thanks to what she knew about Jenna's kind, that if the guards became part of the Little Doctors' magic, that they and Jenna would be, as Jenna had put it, "doomed to eternal damnation." There was only one thing she could do. Summoning the powers at her command, she raised a telekinetic shield between the Little Doctors and the entrance. The insects began, immediately, to pile up against the invisible barrier, their scream of rage still rising.

"Trapped," Yuon thought, "trapped and nowhere to go."

And at the next moment, she felt the power of the summoner vial she'd given Stephen. She began gesturing and at the next moment, vanished, leaving her shield to hold back the enraged army of insects.

"I pray that we will be in time," she thought. Her mind reached out, seaking the other she would need for the rescue operation.