The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (78 page)

There was a pause, then Alilia said; “Well, we’re halfway between Sweettower, Mark and Talia’s place here, and my place.  You can just see Sweettower from here, that big maple over there, though it’s a lot easier to spot from higher up.  My place is in that big walnut tree over there.

“Where would you like to go first?”

“Show us the sights!” Mark laughed.  “You can be our tour guide!  I’ve only been here once before, and we only had time to see what we could see from Sweettower.  One thing I
would
like to see is our new hospital.”

“All right.” Alilia grinned as she released her daughter and tied her hair back with a black ribbon she’d Summoned.  “I suggest some very deep, very soft Shielding, in case we collide with anything.  There are a lot of birds, branches, and other flyers in the air here, so it’s best to be safe.  And besides, we’ll take some time to appreciate the sights when we get to them, but between attractions I intend to have some sport!  Do try to keep up!”

And with that, she was off like a bolt fired from a marksman’s crossbow.

The rest chased after her, but there was obviously no catching her unless she let them.  Heartwood was a vast aerial obstacle course, and Alilia knew it all perfectly, as well as being the second-best flyer in the group after Povon.  Though the spaces between the great trees and between branches were large, they seemed far smaller at high speeds, and many were congested with flyers.  More than once their deep soft Shields deflected a likely collision.

Of course they’d been recognized almost as soon as they arrived, and soon there was a huge crowd of elves following them around; keeping a polite distance when they stopped, and usually failing to keep up when they flew.  As elves are wont to do around celebrities, the entire crowd acted as though they just happened to be going the same way by chance, and made no attempt to speak with them without invitation.

There were sights aplenty to see.  Along with the beauty and majesty of the great trees, Heartwood featured great works of architecture; beautiful residences, businesses, government facilities, stadiums, and amphitheatres, all grown from the branches and trunks of the great trees themselves, often suspended from dozens of great thick vines that were as hard and stiff as the wood of any tree.  Wildlife was profuse throughout the city and on the ground beneath it, where the undergrowth was as extensive as a normal healthy forest in the human lands.

There was also a mountain near the center of the city.  Though most of it was overgrown by the forest, occasionally a jagged sheer face of bare dark-gray stone was visible, and the steams and rivers flowing down its flanks often formed beautiful waterfalls and misty pools as they made their way to its base and joined the mighty River of Life, which flowed through the city and the nation from west to east.

The final attraction that Alilia showed them was The Heartwood Flight Racing Course.

There was no need for her to describe it; she just slowed to a stop in mid-air as they came to a good vantage point from which to view it.  It was deep twilight in the magic forest, and the labyrinthine course was easily visible as a semi-transparent glowing blue tube over twenty meters wide.  Numerous glowing orange signs floated in the air around it, naming the course in Elvish.  A few dozen elves were visible in the course from Alilia’s vantage, all racing along it as fast as they could fly.

“Wow!  This is great!” Fire enthused as they all stopped around Alilia, read the sign, and surveyed the track.

“It was obviously modeled on a pan of worms.” Mark chuckled.

“Look there, the track actually spirals around that spruce tree right from the ground to the tip!” Karz pointed out.  “Twenty-eight wraps from bottom to top!  Whoever designed this is an insane genius!”

“That’s not the half of it!” Alilia laughed.  “It changes every hour, and it’s never the same twice!  That way no one has an advantage from knowing the course.  It’s always arranged within the course volume, which is a rough cylinder about half a kilometer wide from the ground to the top of the tallest tree here, it’s always exactly five kilometers in length from start to finish along the center of the course, and there’s always about the same number of turns and twists and bends.  And it’s spelled to keep birds, spectators and insects out of the track.

“The beginning is always in the same place, on the ground over there at the west compass point of the course space, but where it finishes is different every time the track changes.

“Shall we?” she finished with a grin.

“Oh we most definitely, absolutely shall!” Six enthused, and then the rest were chasing him around the course volume to the starting point.

Povon insisted on paying the small fee for each of them, claiming that it was her right as the wealthiest among them.  They were each registered by the course officials and given a small round red stone on a string, which they were instructed to wear on their persons, and to not move it’s location on their bodies during a race.  It allowed the officials to constantly track the exact location and speed of every flyer, and to register exactly every racer’s elapsed time from start to finish.  That information was also used by officials who supplied public commentary during important races.

As the track was open to the public that day, and some of those using it might be novice flyers, everyone was started at staggered intervals.  The competition was for quickest time, rather than crossing the finish line first.  It was explained that this reduced accidents.  There was nothing to stop someone from going off the course; it was insubstantial from the inside.  But once outside the track there was no re-entering except to go back to the start, and no time was registered for that lap.

Incredibly; the record for the five kilometer course was just less than a minute, held by a professional race flyer who did little else.  The Hilians flew for over two hours, and while all of them were skilled flyers, none of them could best a minute and a half on any of the three track configurations they flew that evening.

Alilia posted the best time among them, and Val the slowest, but there were only six seconds between them.

It was nine very happy but fatigued flyers who accepted Alilia’s invitation to dine at her home, and they all ate heartily of the feast of forest-elvish dishes on a great flat veranda outside her residence’s dining room, where there was room for dragons.  As Povon pointed out with a chuckle; “There’s not much use in eating as a Simulacrum.  Besides, there’s room for fifty of us here.”

“This tastes like our wedding.” Mark grinned to Talia around a mouthful of roast venison.

“Many of the dishes are the same.” Alilia pointed out with a smile.  “They may even have been prepared by the same chefs.  And…  Excuse me.”

“She’s getting a Speaking from Smogin, her Regent.” Talia explained to the rest as Alilia fell silent for a moment.

“I have some things I need to deal with.” Alilia announced when she returned her attention to the table.  “I’m still the ruling monarch here, and Smogin is my Regent, but he’s not Prince Regent, as Povon is Dragon Lord Regent of Serminak.  There are many things that he’s not allowed to do on my behalf; I must do them myself for as long as I reign.  And my citizens have the right to appeal to me directly in many matters.  If I’m unavailable, all these issues must wait until I’m available again, so they accumulate while I’m on vacation or otherwise indisposed.

“It would be a mercy to Smogin if I deal with the most pressing of these issues while I’m here tonight.

“As you’ve let me help you in governing Hilia and Serminak, so I welcome your input on anything you might choose to contribute to, all of you.  On the other hand, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I tend to hurry through it, so if you want to speak up you’ll have to be sharp about it.  You’ll probably have to be Linked with me in order to follow what I’m doing or intervene effectively.

“Smogin will be here with the petitioners shortly.”

“Very fine.” Kragorram said between huge bites of buffalo.  “Mark, Talia, Povon and myself are all novice rulers, and we haven’t had much opportunity to observe any experienced monarchs while they were actually performing acts of rulership.  So this should be both interesting and instructive.”

“Hey, for us too!” Fire laughed.  “Don’t forget we’re still the Governors of Hiliani, and I’m Princess of The Sylvan Nation now.  Zwak still does the actual administration of the Sylvan Nation and Hiliani is administered somewhat co-operatively by the elders of Homestead and the Sylvan, but we really should learn to do it ourselves.”

“Well said, Love.” Talia smiled as she reached over and gave the girl a quick caress on her head.

A few moments later Smogin appeared, along with a crowd of perhaps twelve hundred elves.  As usual, the Regent of The People of Life was ornately dressed, but rather harried looking.  The state of his white hair and short beard, along with a few wrinkles on his apparel, gave the mild impression that he’d last slept in his clothes.

“My Lady, Princess Alilia, your people are overjoyed at your unscheduled return.” he sincerely stated as he bowed to her with one foot before the other and presented to her an ornate gold ring with a single two carat diamond flanked by two slightly-smaller sapphires.

“The ring of administration, in this language, approximately.”
Alilia informed her table-mates as she took the ring and placed it on her right middle finger.  Vast stores of information were held within it, and Alilia began reviewing her nation’s tax and spending figures even as she greeted Smogin with a warm smile.

“It’s always wonderful to be home, old friend.”

“Indeed.” he nodded, with a slight smile of his own, and waited while she worked in silence.

Through the Link, the others could barely follow what she was doing as she reviewed and decided with amazing speed.  She had the ability to skim through vast amounts of information, discern where a decision needed to be made, make it, record the decision in the ring, and move on without hesitation.  It was breathtaking to observe.  In less than ten minutes she had dealt with over two hundred issues that Smogin wished her to rule on, and had made almost as many other decisions on matters that had caught her attention as she reviewed her government’s accounting and status reports.

She raised or lowered the tax rates on several categories of goods and services to reflect the vast changes in the world trade situation over the past few weeks.  She approved or disallowed numerous plans for training, production, construction, and fortification, and initiated a much closer integration between the militaries of The People of Life and those of Hilia and Serminak.  She hired, appointed, or promoted dozens of personnel in every field of government, reprimanded thirteen, demoted six, and fired two.  As a temporary war preparations measure, she relaxed several construction rules meant to preserve historical sites, noteworthy views, and the finest balance of species in the forest, in order to allow the installation of military emplacements and physical shielding.

Finally she gave Smogin a slight smile and a nod, which he returned before turning to call forth the first of the petitioners.  Two family groups approached and bowed low to Alilia, then straightened while she quickly Read them all.

As her companions were surprised to discover, this petition and most of the others involved the settlement of a dispute.  Even though the elves were the most just race in the world, and all of those present were sworn to justice with a binding vow, disputes and disagreements still developed wherein both parties honestly believed they were in the right.

In this first case, both families involved owned homes built in the same branch of a great birch tree.  The branch had grown faster than usual since the tree was last assessed, and the dispute arose over how much of the new real estate each family owned.

Alilia made her decision almost as soon as she’d finished Reading them for the particulars of the case.  “Your property division shall be thus:” she announced as she cast a semi-transparent model Illusion of the branch in question, showing the three-dimensional division she had decided on.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” The spokespersons for the two families responded simultaneously as they all bowed, then they moved aside for the next petitioners.

Soon all of the petitions were dealt with.

“Before you all go, I’d like your opinions on a matter.” Alilia announced to Smogin and the petitioners.  “As you know, I am bonded with Mark and Talia and our children now.  For the foreseeable future, my life will have far more to do with them and with Hilia than with the lands and citizenry of The People of Life.  I feel this presents me with a conflict of interests between my new family and my role as Princess of The People of Life, and I also fear that I may neglect my duties as monarch.  Therefore it is in my mind that I shall train Bezedil and Dalia in all the duties of your monarch for the remaining years in the duration of the Hiliani time-bubble.  When we again emerge from the time-bubble on its originally planned termination, I would abdicate, and recommend that Dalia and Bezedil co-rule as reigning Prince and Princess of The People of Life.

“What are your thoughts on these matters?”

Smogin grinned and bowed, then glanced around at the gathered happy petitioners before he responded.  “My Grace, your new family circumstances and your feelings about your rule and your succession are all great and happy news, but I’m sure that all of us agree that your plan requires a slight modification.

“Your sense of responsibility does you proud, but I think you are missing the greater social and political implications of the situation.

“We have always benefited from our alliance with The High People, and been very proud of it, and we know that our powerful alliance with them is based on your close personal friendship with Prince Yazadril, which gives our alliance a greater dimension than the merely political.

“Hilia is universally recognized as the most dynamic and progressive nation in The Just Alliance, and your bonding with Prince Mark should represent an alliance between Hilia and The People of Life of an even more profound nature than our alliance with the High People, which is itself strengthened by your bonding with Talia, and by Bezedil’s marriage to Dalia.  The fact that Mark and Talia are Key to The Just Alliance and key to the nexus in no way diminishes their popularity and appeal.