The Empire of the Stars
Chapter One
The Dragon Prince
THE FIRE-RED DRAGON BURST OUT of the Ether high in the upper air,
his entrance into the skies of this world a bright flash hardly to
be seen amid a shimmer of many-hued auroras. All the lands below him
were shrouded and still, bound in the ice and silence of
Winter-dark. Nothing moved here save for him, and a few furtive
creatures in the snow-clad forests, and the remote flickerings of
the Northern Lights. Impervious to the bone-bitter chill, he flew on
toward his goal: a mountain that stood apart from the rest of its
range, as though singled out by fate for the role it had played in
history. Its double spire of granite did not reach as high as most
of the cloud-piercing peaks beyond it, yet it was by far the most
famous. In days of old it had been called Elendor, the Holymount.
To the Elei people who had once dwelt in the valley beneath, its two
peaks had loomed like living sentinels: a pair of great beasts or
vigilant giants, keeping watch over the city that lay between them
on the mountaintop. But Liamar had long since been reduced to ruin,
mere fragments of walls and buildings interlaced with shadow. The
stone sentinels guarded nothing now, and the people were ... read full excerpt from: The Empire of the Stars ebook
