Saga of Shadows 1: The Dark Between the Stars Read Online Free

perpetual day kept all shadows at bay. The soaring towers and crystalline architecture of Mijistra caught the bright light and reflected it back, celebrating with rainbows and sparkling flares. The capital city’s crowning masterpiece was the Prism Palace, assembled from interlocking multicolored crystal, its central sphere surrounded by a symphony of minaret towers, each one capped with a smaller globe.
    In the skysphere audience chamber, Nira basked in the Mage-Imperator’s presence. She and Jora’h were inseparable, bound more surely than by law or telepathic thism, by unbreakable ties of love. The two had survived ordeals that threw them together, tore them apart, and at last let them return as eternal partners.
    Overhead, the skysphere dome was a rainbow-hued ceiling, hung with flowers and verdant vegetation. Birds and colorful insects flitted about, enclosed in the shimmering ecosystem. A roiling cloud of mist in the center of the dome served as a projection screen for Jora’h’s benevolent three-dimensional image.
    Beside the Mage-Imperator’s chrysalis chair, Nira held a potted treeling from the worldforest, through which she could share her thoughts instantaneously with her fellow green priests. She looked forward to seeing her son and saying goodbye before he departed on his voyage on the Kolpraxa.
    She reached over to clasp Jora’h’s hand, only to find his fingers already moving to enfold hers. That was how closely their minds and hearts were linked, although her emerald skin looked different from the faint golden sheen of his Ildiran skin.
    The Mage-Imperator sat in the skysphere audience chamber, holding court. Jora’h’s predecessor had become so corpulent over centuries of rule that his chrysalis chair served as a reclining cradle to hold his enormous body. By Ildiran tradition, a Mage-Imperator’s feet should never touch the ground, for even his footprints were sacred. But Jora’h had done away with that tradition, as well as many others. Nira was glad of that. She loved to walk beside him through the Prism Palace or out in the city streets.
    Knowing she was eager, he raised his voice to the audience. “Send in Tal Gale’nh so that I may bid him farewell.” Noble kithmen and court functionaries repeated the command, and attender kithmen scurried about to make way.
    The doors opened, and Adar Zan’nh passed under the glittering archway into the audience chamber, but Nira had eyes only for her halfbreed son. Gale’nh looked dashing in his Solar Navy uniform. Though his skin was paler than that of a normal Ildiran, he was young, energetic, and confident.
    Adar Zan’nh stepped aside so Gale’nh could come forward. The young man touched a fist to the center of his chest and bowed in respect. “Liege, I will make you proud of me and the Kolpraxa ’s crew. We will write a new chapter in the Saga of Seven Suns, and we will lay down threads of our racial thism even beyond the Spiral Arm.”
    Jora’h raised both of his hands. “Yes, your mission expands the reach of our Empire, but we do this not out of mere ambition, but because we are part of the universe and the universe is part of us. For thousands of years the Ildiran race slumbered, but now we are awakening.”
    Unable to conceal her proud smile, Nira touched the treeling she held. Her fingers brushed the golden bark scales, felt the multileaved fronds tremble. She dropped her mind into the tree, letting her thoughts travel out via telink into the stochastically connected worldforest, where each tree was identical to all others, each one a quantum reflection that allowed her thoughts to be in all places at once, without regard to distance or transmission speeds.
    Nira sent images and thoughts back to the primary worldforest on Theroc, as well as to green priests scattered across the Confederation, any colony that had a treeling. Even Ildira had the trees, since she had spent two decades tending them. Her telink announcement of the Kolpraxa