“The Seventeenth Chapter” is set after the epilogue of 'Horizons of Fire' and is written a bit differently than the remainder of the novel, having been added long after the original novel was completed.

 

 

 

The Seventeenth Chapter

 

I lay in the grass for a long time after I sent my Zaltan’ohr away, him and his men.  Tears ran in a steady stream over my temples and into my hair as I stared up at the stars in my sky.  It was every bit as painful as I’d known it would be, feeling that absence in my mind where my Zaltan’ohr, my Fire King had lived…  but also living there, in my mind, is the connection to my Mother Za, that Presence that makes me the voice of my world… and freshly conceived in my womb live the children of my Zaltan’ohr.

 

I rest my hands on my flat belly and wonder who they will look like, these bright links to my starlord and our ancestors.  Will they have ZaworthIan eyes, brilliant and liquid and swirling with colors… or will their eyes be more like his, Terran eyes in mutable hazel shades?  I promised James his generations would sing of him for the next ten thousand years.  It is a promise I intend to keep, but I would trade it all for one more night with my Fire King.

 

“Daughter,” Za bespoke me.  That immense and powerful Will moves through me like a tide.  “I grieve with thee, beloved,” and I felt my Mother’s sadness and regret at having forced me to choose between what my heart wants, and what duty insisted I should do.

 

I turn over and lay my face on the ground, arms flung wide, as if in doing I can embrace my Mother… and my Mother embraces me, holding by mind and washing away pain with love and care.

 

“Thou art favored in My sight, beloved Ysaulte’h,” Za whispered, a caress carried on a south wind that lifts my hair and strokes my shoulders with warmth.

 

“I know, Mother,” I answer gently.  “I know.”  And I let that supernatural comfort carry me into sleep.

 

I awaken with the dawn, which breaks with uncommon beauty this day.  The air is so sweet and pure it feels like a benediction to breathe.  Aleser is there, watching me, and I know he has watched over me all night, guarding my sleep.  And he probably wasn’t alone.

 

“Fair morning, milk-brother,” I tell him.  Aleser and I were reared together from infancy.  His mother tended and nursed me beside him, so there is a bond between us independent of telepathy.

 

“Is it, milk-sister?”  He asks, and gives me a searching look.  I know he fears for my sanity, for Aleser knows me as few others, and he knows how much I loved__ love__ my Fire King.

 

“Don’t worry so, Aleser,” I say, rubbing the top of his great head as he pads along beside me on my way into the Hall.  We pass through the fire of hakan gate together, because I can do that now, walk through fire.  After all, I have known such fire as cannot be held on this planet…  and I look to the rising sun and pretend it is the brightness of aShaiLan’s morning rays that bring the sting of tears to my eyes.

 

I blink them away, and Aleser does me the honor of ignoring that momentary, telling display.

 

“It will be as you say, a’hava Zaltana,” he says.  ‘My beloved Fire Queen’.

 

He leaves me and I enter the Great Hall alone.  I lay my hand against the opalescent stone and open a door, and try not to    remember walking in thus, with my Zaltan’ohr at my side, and we, invincible together.  It remains to be seen how invincible I will be alone…  but I forget, I am never alone.

 

“Even so, Daughter,” I hear the voice of my Mother say, and I walk inside the Hall. 

 

At the far end of the long room, the empty space where the Fire Throne once sat disturbs me, and I go there with a sigh.  It seems wrong to see it so, although it has been that way for ten thousand years.  I remember it with different eyes now, because I was here two days ago with my Fire King, and the Throne called to me then with a siren song of possession. “Mother.”  Even my unspoken voice shakes.

 

"Ysaulte’h.  What wouldst thou wish, child?  It is in me to give thee a gift.”  Za makes the offer generously, I know.  I will have to guard myself from asking for too much, just as I guard myself from asking for my Zaltan’ohr again.

 

“Mother, I would see the Fire Throne restored, if it meets Thy will,” I tell the active force of my world, and in a brilliant flash my request is granted.  The Fire Throne sits once more at the end of the Great Hall, and it awaits me, pure power shining from it, visible only to inner sight.  Despite an absence of ten millennia, despite having been wished into the dispersal of its component molecules by the first Zaltana, Akilah, the Fire Throne looks the same now as it did when I last saw it.

 

"Thank you, Mother,” I say, and seat myself upon my Throne.  The power of it takes me beyond corporeal restrictions; turning me into the creature of energy and light that I will be once I lay down my physical life.  I can see everything now, my view ranging far from the confines of Za’s solar system to beyond, and finally, finally, I catch sight of my Fire King’s starship. 

 

I know full well I cannot often permit myself this indulgence, but just this once, perhaps…  and I see him on his bridge, my starlord at the heart of his kingdom.  He is sitting in the center seat, signing one of those ubiquitous fuel consumption reports, and laughing at something Leonard is telling him.  I feast my eyes on his beloved face, his mutable, hazel eyes so bright and clear.  I wish I had spent more time just looking into his eyes.

 

There is Spock, looking rather grim, and I wonder if he knows I watch.  Spock remembers so much more than James, for I took the pain of memory from James and the rest of his crew…  but Spock__  Spock remembers it all.  Maybe that was a mistake, for I value Spock as well, and would not see him anguished.

 

It would take so very little for me to ease his mind as well…  and then I do, and watch him shake his head as if he felt my touch.  He would not thank me for this, I know, but Spock has borne enough in his life, and so much more to come that I cannot let what happened be an additional burden on him.  What difference will it make if I am the only one who remembers what it was like to take James as my lover and be bound to him by mind… bound then, by extension, to Spock’s mind, too… 

 

Certainly, I will never forget.

 

I leave them, because if I linger any longer it will be all too easy to forget my good intentions.  All too easy to slide back into my Fire King’s mind and feel him all round me, his power and grace and magic in me as deep as my soul.  It was my choice to surrender this joy, and the reasons for doing it are still valid.  The days of his life a gift that is not his to give, for he is fair Terra’s son and she needs him.  To do as my heart tells me to do, and condemn millions to die who did not die before…  that I cannot do.

 

I open my eyes, and find myself sitting on that old wooden chair, alone in the Hall.

 

Of course, I am never alone.  I am the Fire Queen.

 

End, Horizons of Fire