The Gem Lords

The Realms - Part 4

     They flew on for another half an hour before the three steeds landed on a wide ledge half way up a mountain.

     Totally inaccessibly except by flying creatures, the edge dropped away into the misty depths, and as the gem steed opened its jaws and deposited him gently on the ground Thomas scrambled away until he had the comforting solidity of the mountain at his back. He knew that Saturn had to have arrived back in camp by this time, and was almost certainly watching in the Hummingbird's scrying mirror, so he made an act of being cowed by the fearsome reptiles, as did Lirenna, who'd clearly come to the same realisation. When Bard gestured with his wand for them to mount the creatures and sit in the saddles strapped to their backs, therefore, they did so without a word and they completed the rest of their journey in comfort.

     They only allowed themselves to relax when they arrived at the island of the Emerald Oracle and entered its curtain of invisibility, where they no longer had to worry about the wizards back in the Majestic Mountains watching them. The gem steeds could fly incredibly fast and it only seemed to take a couple of hours to get there.

     The journey brought back more memories of Tak's life, times he'd spent in flight on steedback, and as they sped across the ocean he experienced a sudden flashback, so vivid and real that for a moment he forgot who and where he was. It seemed as if the last three thousand years had just slipped away and he was once again on his way to confer with Coal and Lady Jet, in company with Topaz and Lapis Lazuli. They'd sped across a vast stretch of water, either a sea or a very large lake, and the suns had shone in the calm waters beneath them, just as they were now. Maybe it had been the very same stretch of water they were crossing now. Maybe the meeting had taken place in Lord Emerald's island fastness. The very same island on which the Emerald Oracle had later been built, to act as a lure, to bring the right kind of people. A place to which the kind of person they wanted would be sure to come sooner or later...

     He stiffened in the saddle. Him! Thomas Gown! The Emerald Oracle had been created solely because the Gem Lords had been looking for him, or rather, someone who fitted a very special set of criteria. But the Emerald Oracle had been of invaluable assistance to hundreds of people over the last two hundred years, not least himself as he'd searched for the Maze of Samnos and, later, the Scrolls of Skava. The war might have been lost without those two objects. The whole world might have been conquered by the Shadowhosts by now. The Oracle had been instrumental in defeating them, and yet all that had been a mere side effect, a small, unimportant bonus, of their search for him. His head began to spin with astonished disbelief. What could they possibly want with him that was so important?

     The three steeds flashed across the island towards the building at its centre, the building that contained the Oracle itself, but as they came in sight of it they were astonished to see that it had changed. Grown. The triangular building he'd visited twice before had vanished, and in its place was a gigantic archway, like the triumphal arches the Agglemonians had erected during the days of their growth to commemorate a victory, the defeat of an enemy army.

     It wasn't a simple arch, though, but a portal into another place, another reality, and as they approached, flashing across the raised plateau faster than a diving falcon, Thomas had time to see rolling hills and stretches of open grassland through it, and a sun shining in the sky even though both of Tharia's two suns were directly above them as they approached. Then they flashed through one at a time, the steeds' wingtips bare inches from the semi-transparent emerald of the structure on either side, and suddenly they were surrounded by the new landscape, the island of the Oracle only visible through the arch behind them.

     They flew on for some minutes more, the arch dwindling behind them, and the two wizards stared in wonder at the new world in which they found themselves. One of the Realms, thought Thomas, his heart hammering with excitement. The Realm of Lord Emerald. An artificial universe, who knows how big? As large as an entire continent, perhaps, with mountain ranges and lakes and entirely different climates ranging from desert to swamp to frozen wasteland. Here, the Gem Lords had almost godlike powers. They could do almost anything they liked. He remembered a day when Lord Opal had gotten bored with a temperate climate, fancying something harsher, more challenging, and had created a winter landscape simply by lifting his hands.