Dragon Throne: Fantasy Novel: The Dragon Earth Saga 3

By Alfred Bekker

Dragon Throne: Fantasy Novel: The Dragon Earth Saga 3

by Alfred Bekker

 

The size of this book is equivalent to 518 paperback pages.

 

The Empire of the Dragon Riders is doomed and the balance between the five realms is finally destroyed. When the rulers of fire, air and magic join forces, chaos and destruction threaten. With a handful of dragon riders, Rajin, heir to the dragon throne, confronts the forces of disaster. But although Rajin wears the three dragon rings of the Emperor, he soon realizes that he cannot use his true power until he faces the shadows of the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alfred Bekker
• Release date: Feb 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215730010

Alfred Bekker

Alfred Bekker wurde am 27.9.1964 in Borghorst (heute Steinfurt) geboren und wuchs in den münsterländischen Gemeinden Ladbergen und Lengerich auf. 1984 machte er Abitur, leistete danach Zivildienst auf der Pflegestation eines Altenheims und studierte an der Universität Osnabrück für das Lehramt an Grund- und Hauptschulen. Insgesamt 13 Jahre war er danach im Schuldienst tätig, bevor er sich ausschließlich der Schriftstellerei widmete. Schon als Student veröffentlichte Bekker zahlreiche Romane und Kurzgeschichten. Er war Mitautor zugkräftiger Romanserien wie Kommissar X, Jerry Cotton, Rhen Dhark, Bad Earth und Sternenfaust und schrieb eine Reihe von Kriminalromanen. Angeregt durch seine Tätigkeit als Lehrer wandte er sich schließlich auch dem Kinder- und Jugendbuch zu, wo er Buchserien wie 'Tatort Mittelalter', 'Da Vincis Fälle', 'Elbenkinder' und 'Die wilden Orks' entwickelte. Seine Fantasy-Romane um 'Das Reich der Elben', die 'DrachenErde-Saga' und die 'Gorian'-Trilogie machten ihn einem großen Publikum bekannt. Darüber hinaus schreibt er weiterhin Krimis und gemeinsam mit seiner Frau unter dem Pseudonym Conny Walden historische Romane. Einige Gruselromane für Teenager verfasste er unter dem Namen John Devlin. Für Krimis verwendete er auch das Pseudonym Neal Chadwick. Seine Romane erschienen u.a. bei Blanvalet, BVK, Goldmann, Lyx, Schneiderbuch, Arena, dtv, Ueberreuter und Bastei Lübbe und wurden in zahlreiche Sprachen übersetzt.

Book preview

First book: Shadows of the past

It is said that the history of the world is five eons long.

In the first aeon, the dragons ruled - and fell again.

In the second aeon, the mages ruled over dragonkind, so that the will to order kept the will to chaos in check.

In the third aeon, Barajan gave the people of Drachenia dominion over dragoness.

In the fourth aeon, the balance of the Five Realms prevailed.

But the fifth eon will bring the end. The signs are unmistakable. The twilight of the world has begun, and the snow moon will shatter the works of mages and men like the blow of a mighty forge hammer, wielded by begrudging, death-addicted deities who have too long endured mortals' disregard for them.

For know that the gods - whether visible or invisible, whether bound to their sanctuary or omnipresent - are as jealous as children, and woe to mortals who do not pay sufficient reverence to these supreme beings!

From the Banned Scrolls, chapter III, verse 23 - The Church of Ezkor forbids the reading of this text to all who are converts to the congregation of the Invisible God. Violators will be punished by permanent exclusion from the Holy Acts, according to a decision of the XXXIII Abbot of Ezkor. 

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Dragon Earth has five moons.

Red is the blood moon, the home of Blootnyr, the god of battles, rage, unbridled passion and fire. In the past, when the dragons were powerful, he took on their appearance, and at times he still transforms into this manifestation, although he prefers the flame form or the red ray of light to show himself to mortals.

Blue is the moon of the sea, and there reigns Njordirskint, the son of Njordir, the god of the seas. With the stormy seas of his moon, Njordirskint deals impetuously and clumsily, churning them as much as his father Njordir might have done with the oceans of the world in his youth, before he finally learned to be considerate of mortal life.

Green is the jade moon on which Groenjyr, the perpetually drunken god of fate, rules. There he constantly weaves the carpet pattern of fate, but often enough he is so drunk that he has to leave this work to his incompetent journeymen weavers and apprentices, from which the mortals will probably have to suffer until the end of time, because the errors in the pattern of the fate carpet are legion.

Sand-colored and marred by two dark spots of different sizes, resembling an unequal pair of eyes, is the eye moon. He is the image of the pale dead face of his master, called the dream god Ogjyr. He sends the dreams, the sleep and the death and separates the souls of the deceased from the rotting bodies. On the battlefields he holds gruesome harvest - a cowl-bearer with the double-bladed axe of an executioner. Sleep-bringer, death-herald, dream-man and axe-man he is called - and because the souls of the dead refuse to follow him on the eye-moon, he sometimes strikes them a bargain and leaves them a little more alive than they were meant to be. Woe to those who get involved. Damn them all!

White as innocence and icy as the realm of Fjendur, the god of cold, is the Snow Moon. Its lord is called Whytnyr, but he is better known to all as the Traitor God.

In its sign is the Fifth Aeon, in which the end of the world will come.

Brane Moonseer from Islaborg, The Book of Moons

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But one day the snow moon will become as great as the hatred of the traitor god Whytnyr against his own. Its white cold will cover the sky and its light will turn the night into day. Like a stone the size of an entire world, it will fall and crush everything beneath it.

Then who will ask about alliances and wars among the five realms? After the betrayal of a god, who will remember a traitor among mortals?

The seer of Rotland

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For thus spoke Whytnyr: "Behold, it is indifferent to me that everything perishes. Only it lasts me that none will remain to fear me and to curse me, except my worthless moon brothers among the gods. Shame on them all! But I tell you this: even if Groenjyr were to abandon his drunkenness and there were a careful pattern in the tapestry of destiny, springing not from the whim of a journeyman carpet weaver but from the wise counsel of a wise mind, it would not prevent what is inevitable. And who believes to be safe on his moon, while down there on the world, which we call the dragon earth, the embers of the earth's interior emerge like coagulating blood from a multiplicity of volcanic wounds, he should be told that none of the moons will draw the same course afterwards as before. Nothing will remain as it was. They will be cue balls in a cosmic game - a game that is as incalculable as the dragon chess of the dragon hawkers on the New Zealand coast. The blood moon will burn up in its own fire or become a cold stone. The waves of the sea moon will freeze into icicles, the cold desert sand of the eye moon will be scattered into the vastness of the starland, and the weavers of Groenjyr will leave the moon of the god of fate in panic fear before the forests and mosses there wither and the woolly animals die. For this reason alone, it will not be possible to continue weaving the carpet of destiny.

The end of all future and all destiny would have come. Nothing would remain that could be reported about. Finally, even the words and signs in which one could write about it would be forgotten.

The book Whytnyr

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The battle between Dragonkind and the demons of the Ember Realm was fought, and the primordial dragon Yyuum fell to destruction.

Prince Rajin, the last scion of the imperial house of Barajan, had won across the board and reclaimed the Dragon Throne. But without pride, Rajin and his family moved into the palace of Drakor, from where the land of Drachenia had been ruled for so long. Even if it was a satisfaction that the hated usurper Katagi had met his death, and even if Rajin felt it was just that the murderer of his parents and brothers had thus been judged, the young ruler of the dragon country knew full well that the most difficult tasks still lay ahead of him - and one of them might not even be solvable for the one who possessed the three dragon rings and whose left hand had turned into a magical metal hand with which he commanded powers like no dragon emperor before or after him.

I have defeated the Primordial Dragon, and the demons of the Ember Realm that Katagi summoned have been put in their place, Rajin spoke to his faithful. But let us not forget that the power of four realms has united against Drachenia, and moreover, the Snow Moon is preparing to end the Fifth Aeon, as the prophecy foretells. Both of these I will have to face.

So you will not only conquer against the power of the other realms, but also oppose the power of the Invisible God? the honorable legate of the Abbot of Ezkor is said to have railed.

Who tells you that the Invisible God has decreed the end of the world? retorted Rajin, to the horror of his advisors and friends, who knew very well that in Drachenia all power rests on two pillars: One is the dominion over Dragonia, the other is the good understanding with the Church of the Invisible God in Ezkor.

What else could the Invisible God possibly intend by the fact that he, who has hitherto kept the five moons in their orbits in order to make our night sky shine colorfully and brightly, now lets one of them fall down, as has been prophesied for a long time? If he should spare us, then that arises just as much from his counsel as if he lets it happen and our world experience the day of the last judgment.

Rajin tempered his retort, knowing only too well how much he needed the power of the Church of Ezkor to unify the torn land. He raised the metal hand that was studded with the three dragon rings, the signs of man's dominion over dragoness. The metal hand clenched into a fist in a gesture of determination as Rajin spoke, Rest assured, venerable legate: I know my power, but I also know its limits.

That's good to know, returned the legate, whose name shall not be mentioned here.

From the chronicle of Drakor 

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Countless are the worlds of the polyverse. Sometimes the power of a dream or a strong imagination of the mind may be enough to change from one of these planes of existence to another, in other cases magic rituals or a world gate are necessary for this. It varies depending on the time, place and person. But wherever you walk, you will discover only variants of your original existence, because neither among the celestial bodies nor on them there is something truly new.

The Book of the Spirit (attributed to the Pale Hermit)

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But when Prince Rajin had taken the imperial crown, he addressed the assembled great ones of the realm of Drachenia. Many of them had come to their offices under the usurper Katagi. But those to whom this did not apply had served the wrong lord for eighteen years and were now ashamed of it. Rajin knew that this circumstance could make them particularly dangerous enemies within, for nothing is as bad as the loss of face that these unfaithful ones had inflicted upon themselves. Rajin was for them the living sign of their own disgrace, and so some among them might hope that this disgrace would be erased if the sign were erased.

You served the one who killed my parents and whose hatred pursued me to exile in the farthest corner of the sea realm! You have served the one who had the place where I was taken in and raised by alien sea mammoth hunters completely destroyed and its inhabitants killed! You have followed the one who put my beloved Nya and the unborn son in her womb into a magical sleep, from which they have not awakened to this day, so that many think they are both as good as dead and it is better to abandon all hope! I would have reason enough to take revenge on you, because I cannot even exclude with certainty that one or the other of you was even personally involved in these crimes. And yet I have not come to retaliate and inflict carnage, though justice would demand a whole torrent of it-a torrent mightier than the floods of the Old River! Rajin considered one after another of the great ones of the realm who had gathered in the palace of Drakor with a scrutinizing glance. Only the worst scoundrels and basest lawbreakers have to fear punishment, the others may show the same loyalty they did while serving evil, if they follow me henceforth! For Drachenia is in danger and surrounded by enemies. The usurper, whose name I no longer wish to speak, since it has been like a curse for our realm, has destroyed the balance of the Five Realms and has caused all the powers of this world to turn against us!

Then he raised the metal hand so that all could see the three rings shining on it in the light of the festive torches.

These are the three dragon rings that the usurper was neither able to preserve nor to use properly! Never forget whose powers guarantee you the obedience of dragoness! Never forget that I am the last descendant of Barajan!

The great of the empire, however, shuddered to the core. Their fear of the emperor was even greater than their shame of their own disgrace.

But then a great gate was powerfully thrust open, and Ghuurrhaan, the emperor's tamed wild dragon, crept in with folded wings - great and lofty, even though he tried to make himself small and had his wings folded behind his back. A jet of fire blazed over the heads of the great ones of the realm, a red glow that made the air buzz and the mind freeze in horror. A murmur went through the room, and here and there a panic-stricken scream mingled in.

The emperor walked with a measured step towards his special guest, who then laid his enormous head on the ground and even put up with his master touching him on the muzzle.

Fear me - and fear my dragon, for he does only what I want, Rajin spoke.

The princes and dignitaries did not let a moment pass before they expressed their attachment to the rightful lord of the realm and paid homage to him.

The Book of the Liberator

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It was the time of equilibrium among the five kingdoms, which became a winged word describing the state of the world throughout the ages.

But then the sacrilegious attempt was made to establish a sixth empire.

Today it is known as the Island of Forgotten Shadows.

Nothing remains of the Sixth Empire - nothing but the ruins of Qô and the nameless horrors that most people's inner strength is no match for ...

From the writings of the sage Liisho

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The Sea Kingdom of the Sea Men and the Air Kingdom of Tajima were at war with the Dragon Country of Drachenia, whose Dragon Rider Samurai were initially advancing everywhere. Allied with Drachenia was the Fire Lord of Pendabar, who ruled over the realm of Feuerheim.

Magus, the realm of the magicians, was biding its time, only to later side with the strongest and tip the scales of fate. With the lowest possible stakes, the greatest possible profit was to be reaped and the age of the magicians was to begin [...].

It was in the time after Komrodor, Grand Master of Magus, had been murdered by the assassin Abrynos of Lasapur, who succeeded him in office. Abrynos summoned the envoys of four of the five realms: In addition to Magus, the realm of mages, these were Fire Home, the Sea Realm, and the Air Realm of Tajima.

With the Fire Lord of Pendabar and his racing-bird-drawn chariots already deep in the Air Kingdom, and the Priest King of Tajima in dire straits due to the destruction of many of his airships, Abrynos spoke with all the persuasiveness that magic gave him: The Sea Kingdom and the Air Kingdom of Tajima are already at war with Drachenia, and the Kingdom of Magus has long since abandoned its neutrality, so that no one can stop the victory of these three. Is it not the order of the day for the Fire Lord of Pendabar to take our side?

To be henceforth a vassal of the Grand Master of Magus? one asked from Fire Home. This will not please the Fire Lord, especially since his battle chariots already occupy the western provinces of Tajima and intend to incorporate them into the Empire of Fire and Iron!

Abrynos assured that no one would want to force the allies into vassalage once victory had been won, but rather that they would still be depended on even then, since they could not exercise rule alone.

But since the envoy of Fireheim remained obdurate, and the Firelord himself, fearing magical influence, was neither willing to travel to Magussa himself nor to receive a visitor from Magus, Abrynos turned to the priest-king of Tajima to persuade him to make a concession. Leave to the Fire Lord of Pendabar the provinces he has conquered, and forgive him the numerous airships he took from you, suggested the Grand Master of Magus. The Fire Lord, in turn, shall promise you to give back the conquered provinces if you let him in on the secret of weightlessness that makes your airships fly. But all this is to be done only after the end of the war, when you will be entitled to the greater part of the conquests, since you have so far lost most of them.

The priest-king accepted this proposal, because he was up to his neck in water and saw no way to continue the two-front war against Tajima and at the same time against Drachenia and to preserve his kingdom in the long run.

There is one condition I make, however, the priest-king demanded before placing his seal under the treaty. For the purpose of our alliance and warfare, it shall be declared that all dragonkind shall be exterminated, from the mighty war dragons to the merchants' transport dragons. Even a wild dragon encountered that might be tamed in later times shall be killed.

No one among the allies objected to this condition. The priest-king of Tajima, however, promised himself a golden future for his kingdom, because future generations of Tajima airship pilots would no longer have to fear the competition of dragon transports, whose own land had been protected by an ancient monopoly on air transport.

The Book of the Fifth Aeon

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Often, however, Rajin sank into dark thoughts that attacked him like evil spirits. The last scion of the House of Barajan accepted his victory over the usurper Katagi and the allied infernals from the Ember Realm, which Grandmaster Abrynos had summoned through the World Gate at the Citadel of Kenda, just as joylessly as the fact that after eighteen long years a rightful dragon emperor sat on the throne again, who had managed to defeat even the primordial dragon Yyuum.

He was often seen clenching his metal hand in the Hall of the Thousand Winds while he struggled with his fate. How happy, in retrospect, seemed the time of his exile on the sailor island of Winterland, where he had been accepted by Wulfgar Wulfgarssohn in place of his son and named Bjonn Dunkelhaar. How carefree his life had been when his thoughts had been only about how to prove himself in the sea mammoth hunt or how to face Kallfaer Eisenhammer, the father of his lover Nya, as soon as it was discovered that she was carrying his child under her heart.

Even the hatred of his foster brother Wulfgarskint, born of sheer envy, and the chilling breeze of Fjendur that blew across the land in the icy winters and froze everything, seemed insignificant to Rajin Ko Barajan at those moments compared to the sad fate that threatened to choke the young emperor's soul.

The power I have won, but everything else seems lost to me, he could sometimes be heard saying, as the light streaming over countless reflective tiles into the interior of the vast Hall of a Thousand Winds caused the dragon rings on his metal hand to glitter.

A wreath of light then surrounded the glass coffin in which his beloved Nya lay, still trapped in the magical sleep into which the renegade mage Ubranos from Capana had once put her. The fact that this henchman in the service of the usurper had paid for it with his life could not console Rajin over his painful loss.

Lost in other worlds and planes of existence were the souls of his beloved and his unborn son, whose destiny would have been to ascend the Dragon Throne as Kojan II.

One day I will find your soul again, Rajin vowed over and over, but anyone who overheard him could hear the growing despair from his words.

Every now and then, the magical power of his metal hand made them appear to him as ghosts - Nya and his son, whose translucent soul body sometimes even took on the appearance of a ten-year-old, although in truth he was not even born yet.

Even these apparitions were by no means a comfort to the emperor. Rather, they increased his pain and ensured that no one could speak to him for days.

Let the snow moon fall on the world! Let an assassin be found who will finally extinguish the lineage of the descendants of Barajan! Let the power of the dragons unfold again as impetuously as in the First Aeon, at the end of which the earth was torn open and the embers within it spurted up in fountains! It shall be the same to me!

He was sometimes heard speaking in this way, but it was forbidden under penalty to mention it in public.

Chronicle of Emperor Rajin, written by Kanjiang Ko Song - court scribe under Kojan III. 

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A curse has weighed on the imperial family for many ages, for it is the heir to ancient guilt.

Once upon a time, the people of Qô wanted to renounce the rule of the Emperor of Drakor and proclaimed the Age of Six Kingdoms. However, the then ruling Emperor Onjin could not tolerate this. He sent out his army of dragon riders and held a terrible blood judgment on the inhabitants of the island and the city of Qô. This was to warn and deter other provinces where there might have been similar aspirations. What you can still hear today, O unfortunate one who has been displaced to Qô, are the cries and lamentations of those who were killed by the emperor's samurai. No one was left alive, and for centuries no one entered the island now called the Island of Forgotten Shadows, until a later emperor sent an expedition to reclaim the land for Drachenia. There were rumors that the Tajimaeans had sent their airships to the island, and this people did not want to leave even an uninhabited island.

Only one half-mad dragon rider returned to Drachenia from this island at that time, bringing word of the Forgotten Shadows. Another expedition that set out for the island was never heard from again, and since then there has been no one in all of Drachenia who would voluntarily go here.

This is what Jaiang proclaims to the world of the post-born - a man who was stranded and died here, and who learned to speak to the Forgotten Shadows until he became one of them.

Carved in Middle Dragon script and language on a wall at the eastern edge of the ruined city of Qô on the island of the same name 

Chapter 1: Three rings - one throne

His skin shimmered reddish and resembled the scale armor of a dragon. The tunic, held together by a wide belt, stretched around the strong body of the three-armed man.

Koraxxon swung the double-bladed battle axe of almost monstrous size in the paw of his axe arm. The two arms growing out of the shoulder and torso on the opposite side were far less powerful than the axe arm, but any human thigh, however muscular, would have seemed slender in comparison. The lower of the two arms held the shield, the upper the sword.

Now see how a misfit knows how to fight! he roared. With a massive movement, he made a lunge. Noisily, his foot stamped. The double blade of the axe whirled through the air.

The opponent of the three-armed man was a hooded ninja. In his right hand, he held a slightly curved matana sword, as it was otherwise carried by the dragon rider samurai of the dragon emperor, with his left hand he swung a nine-link chain whip.

The axe blow of the three-armed man came to nothing, because the ninja retreated at the last moment with almost cat-like suppleness. Then he let the chain whip lash forward. It clanked around the axe and caught on the blade.

A jerk tore the huge weapon out of the groaning three-armed man's hand and also caused him to stagger forward two steps on his exceedingly stocky legs. He needed the sword arm to balance himself. The shield arm rose a few handbreadths to deflect the ninja's thrust with the matana blade. 

But this thrust was so fast that the three-armed man was unable to react quickly enough. The ninja let out a piercing, barbaric-sounding battle cry. The tip of the matana sword aimed with deadly accuracy into a gap between two neck scales.

But the push was stopped in mid-motion.

Both opponents faced each other as if frozen.

Your body is weak and of frightening vulnerability, Koraxxon stated in a calm voice.

But I control it perfectly, the ninja replied, his voice muffled by the black cloth wrapped around his face. Only the eyes were left free. They were sea-green eyes, not uncommon among the people of the Sea Realm - but among the almond-eyed inhabitants of Dragonia and Tajima.

Unusual for a dragon ninja were also the size and shape of this man, for though he might seem small and lanky next to the three-armed man, his stature was tall and broad compared to an average dragon man.

An eventful fate had brought the sailor to the land of the Dragon Riders many years ago, where he had been stranded on the coast of the province of South River and later trained as a ninja in the service of the Prince of Sukara.

You forget one thing, Ganjon, said the three-armed man, still perfectly calm; the strain of his muscles and sinews could at best be guessed at beneath the thick scale skin. You could barely pierce my scale skin deep enough to kill me fast enough that you wouldn't feel my sword blade. 

Ganjon took the tip of the dragon-style forged matana blade from the three-armed man's neck. And you forget the special way we ninjas wield our weapons, he replied, sliding the blade into the sheath on his back with an elegant, fluid motion. We can so concentrate our power that I myself could hurl a couple of chopsticks into your open mouth that they would take your life on the spot.

Koraxxon laughed boomingly. He raised the mighty paw of his axe arm. Your dexterity is legendary. I couldn't even eat with dragonic chopsticks! He stepped forward, picked up the axe from the ground, and had some trouble removing the nine-link chain whip from it.

We do well to practice our skills in battle, Ganjon said. Even though this is a palace and not a battlefield, I get the impression that it's more dangerous here than in some of the other more uncomfortable places I've been.

I readily agree with you there, Koraxxon admitted.

The loyalty of his retainers will protect Emperor Rajin, Ganjon was convinced. And at least he will be able to rely on the ninjas in the service of the Prince of the South River ...

Isn't it said that Emperor Kojan also relied on the loyalty of his subordinates - before a lowly commander of his dragon-riding samurai, of all people, rose to the position of usurper?

Ganjon nodded. Certainly.

The three-armed man sheathed his sword and cradled the monstrous axe in his axe paw. I heard that you left a family behind in the South River Country.

Ganjon nodded again. That is also correct.

Are you thinking of catching up with them after Drakor when things stabilize a bit here?

I'm afraid it will be some time before then, Ganjon replied. That being said, I don't know that I wouldn't prefer to return to the South River Country. Because honestly, I don't like living within these palace walls, where you can never be sure there isn't some eavesdropper hiding behind a pillar. Or an assassin.

I feel the same way, Koraxxon returned with a grim undertone. The Minotaur Forest of Lisistan sometimes seems like a cozy place in retrospect.

You would have been free to stay there, Ganjon said.

No, Koraxxon suddenly said in a very serious tone, and it made on Ganjon the impression as if the words of the three-armed man were not addressed to him in the first place; they seemed rather a kind of self-assurance. When I dwelt in the forests of Lisistan, I was a misfit. A being whose ancestor sprang from the mages' creative art and who was destined to obedience, but did not fulfill that destiny. Now I have found it. I follow Rajin. And for nothing in the world would I trade my life in the minotaur forest of Lisistan for it, even if this palace sometimes seems to me the worse jungle - and the insidiousness of its inhabitants many times greater than one can accuse even the most deceitful forest snake or creeper of.

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Rajin stood in the Hall of a Thousand Winds, where there was a perpetual chant. The breeze was directed through the innumerable columns in such a way that a peculiar music was created, which continued without a single pause. It was extremely rare for Drakor Bay to be completely windless, and furthermore, the long-lasting echoes, merging into an ever-changing tapestry of sound, continued this symphony for hours. Thus it happened that this stream of fluctuating sounds hardly ever broke off.

But if this happened, it was interpreted as a warning sign of the Invisible God or as an indication of the presence of magical forces so strong that the elemental spirits of wind and air vibration imprisoned in this hall could no longer maintain the state of their inner equilibrium, a state to which the artist Yainn Ko Namran had brought them under the rule of the legendary first dragon emperor Barajan. In fact, the Hall of a Thousand Winds was one of the very oldest parts of the Palace of Drakor, which formed a city within the city that alone was larger than the capital of many a kingdom.

Canals, bridges, man-made lakes and wide roads crisscrossed the complexes. The canals connected them to the great seaport, for even if the dragons were the dominant means of traffic and transportation in Dragonia, there was still enough cargo for thousands of junks to be carried to their destinations by the favorable coastal winds. In particular, goods that did not need to reach their destination quickly were transported in this way along the coasts and the great rivers. In the interior at the latest, however, only the ubiquitous cargo kites remained to carry the goods further.

The Hall of the Thousand Winds was no longer the center of the palace since the advent of the belief in the Invisible God, because in the opinion of the priesthood of Ezkor it was filled with ancient powers, which perhaps once the supreme being, whose commandments one now wanted to follow, was able to control completely. On the other hand, the respect for the will of Barajan and the creative power of his master architect Yainn was simply too great to dare to change anything in this construction or even to transform the hall in any way.

Some legends told that Barajan's spirit returned to the palace from time to time and walked among the tens of thousands of columns, carried by the sounds produced by the elemental spirits of wind and air vibration in an interplay that was as much preordained as it was random; an interplay that seemed like a perfect parable on the interaction of order and chaos in the polyverse.

Barajan - a mage who had taken a human woman as his wife and with her founded the imperial house and human rule over the dragons - had been blessed with a lifespan longer than that of any human, but immortality had not been granted to him either. Magic could only delay death, but not prevent it. This was true even for Barajan, who had succeeded in so many things that no one would have thought possible before. Through his spell, he had snatched the rule of dragonkind from the mage race and placed it in the hands of his descendants, who created the most powerful of the five kingdoms: A human kingdom, whose power rested on the strong wings of the battle dragons and against which the kingdom of Magus had not been able to rise until that day.

But against the violence of death Barajan had been as powerless as all his successors - and this powerlessness he shared with his distant relatives, the Grand Masters of Magus. When his consort died long before him, he preserved her in the Hall of a Thousand Winds, and legends said that her body miraculously defied decay. It was as if Barajan refused to acknowledge the death of his beloved companion, and even refused to pay any respect to the power of death.

Every day that the empress laid out in the Hall of a Thousand Winds withstood natural decay and did not decompose, every year that her pale beauty did not diminish in any way compared to the last portraits made of her by court painters, seemed to be a challenge to death itself.

But Barajan's magical arts failed to unravel the mystery of deathlessness, as did the human alchemists at the court of the first Emperor of Drakor.

And so Barajan himself finally had no choice but to surrender to his fate. His strength flagged, and the breath of life that had filled him for so long left him.

Only when Barajan himself had also died, the body of the dead empress began to decompose. Deep under the foundations of the hall, they had then found their eternal resting place together. The Hall of a Thousand Winds had thus become as much a monument to their will to live as to their love, which even death seemed unable to harm.

That was the reason Rajin had laid out his beloved Nya in this hall. Nya, who was still sleeping her death-like sleep in the glass coffin. Nya and her unborn child, who had so horribly become the playthings of a mage who had served the usurper Katagi.

Many who had walked his path with him had had to pay bitterly for helping him, it went through the mind of the prince who had been elevated to emperor. He thought of his companion Bratlor Starseer, with whom he had fled Winterborg in the vain hope of averting doom from the place he considered in some ways his home. The only home he had ever had, when it came down to it - for when the wise imperial advisor Liisho rescued him and his four brothers from the burning palace where his parents had been murdered, he had been too young to remember. And even though Liisho had taught him everything there was to know about the past through dreams and the omnipresence of his mind's voice in the years that followed, it was only second-hand knowledge. Nothing, which was based on own experience.

His brothers had been murdered in turn - and now Rajin had lost Liisho as well. It had been at the end of the battle for the future of Dragon Country, when everything had already been decided and the victory seemed complete: the usurper slain, the demons of the Ember Realm driven out, and the Dragon Rings once again in the hands of a descendant of Barajan - Rajin had achieved everything, when his wise mentor had suddenly turned against him as if under the influence of a foreign will. But before he could kill the future Dragon Emperor, Liisho had turned the sword against himself.

Since then, this moment had repeated itself again and again in Rajin's nightmares. Since earliest childhood the thought voice of the sage Liisho had accompanied him. The knowledge that this voice - whether in thought or in reality - would never speak to him again shook him deeply, and he could still hardly believe it. Already in the first days since he had arrived in Drakor and had accepted the sometimes rather hypocritical homage of the great ones of the empire, he had become painfully aware of how much he missed the sage's advice. Even though he had not always been of his opinion lately, it remained his most important orientation until that day, even though he was no longer on the Dragon Earth circuit.

But the worst loss remained that of his beloved Nya ...

The thought that the young woman lying motionless in her glass coffin was carrying his unborn son under her heart drove him half mad.

Rajin stepped forward and touched the coffin with his fully sentient metal hand. The dragon rings glittered in a special way. Green sparks spurted from the brass-colored fingertips of the metal hand. They danced across the surface of the glass coffin and crept up to head level, penetrating the interior of the coffin. In a strangely delayed way, this happened: The sparks and lightning behaved like spider-like creatures that seemed to consist only of twitching legs of