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"And you must be Estarra's little sister." Peter turned to Estarra. "Is she the one who kept pet condorflies?"

"Oh, I was just a little kid then!" Estarra demanded introductions, much more interested in Solimar, who was apparently Celli's boyfriend, than she was in condorflies.

Peter craned his neck, staring up at the beautiful green canopy. "Are all the trees here so . . . tall?"

Celli laughed. "You should have seen the verdani battleships!"

"Oh, we did--a lot closer than I would have liked."

Wearing overly extravagant beetle-carapace headdresses, cocoon-weave garments, and shellacked chest pieces, Idriss and Alexa arrived, happy but perplexed. "We're thrilled to have you home again, daughter," Alexa said, "but please explain what's happening. Nahton sent us sporadic messages from Earth, but he doesn't have many details. Even if the hydrogues are defeated at Earth, they may keep coming back and--"

"The hydrogues won't be a problem any longer, Mother Alexa," Solimar said, and all the nearby green priests nodded. "The verdani battleships are quite convinced of that. The war seems to be won. The enemy is destroyed."

Estarra said breathlessly, "And we escaped from the Chairman. He was trying to kill us. And the baby, too." Nahton had already sent word of their danger.

Alexa quickly understood the implications. "Are you in exile, then?"

Peter's voice was grim. "The Hansa is in a shambles and run by a corrupt madman. The Chairman taught me my skills and duties, but he himself has forgotten what it means to be a leader."

Idriss looked from side to side. "What about Sarein? Did she come with you? She should be here with the rest of her family."

Estarra frowned, feeling a pang. Sarein had given them invaluable assistance, but in the end she had chosen to remain with the Chairman. "No, she stayed on Earth." The Queen hugged her parents, feeling a deep gratitude in her heart. "We had no place else to go."

Alexa had tears streaming down her face. "There is no question about it. You must both stay here." She held up a gently scolding finger. "Forget all of your politics for now. I insist that you let our first grandchild be born here on Theroc."

138

MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA'H

After ten thousand years of waiting and preparing for the inevitable, it was over. Now the Ildirans began to pick up the pieces.

Standing outside under the multiple suns, Jora'h gazed at his damaged city. All sixty of the threatening warglobes lay smashed in the streets and on hills where they had fallen. Though Mijistra's sky had been empty of enemies for days, the last cohorts of the Solar Navy maintained a diligent cordon around the planet.

Nira stood next to the Mage-Imperator, silent and somber, her hand resting lovingly on their daughter's shoulder. Armies of worker kithmen operated heavy machinery to excavate and drag away the wreckage of shattered warglobes. As they considered the devastation, she said, "It could have been worse, Jora'h. Much worse."

"It very nearly was."

Jora'h still didn't know the extent of damage across his Empire. He had been overwhelmed by resounding echoes of mental anguish in the thism. As the dying warglobes had crashed into the city like a rain of diamond asteroids, a wave of shock and death had rolled over him, nearly overloading his ability to receive messages of pain. The Mage-Imperator was at the center of it all; the lives and deaths of so many people funneled into him.

Medical kithmen scurried to rescue the injured, pulling bodies from the wreckage. Handlers counted and prepared the dead. Jora'h had felt them all cry out, felt the threads of thism snapping with exquisitely sharp pain. But oh, how much more terrible it would have been had the hydrogues vaporized the entire city--and then the whole Ildiran Empire.

Nira sensed his distress. "Your gamble paid off."

"It was not my gamble alone. It was for all of us. And I could not have done it without you or Osira'h." Turning Adar Zan'nh's warliners against the hydrogues might have sealed the fate