And Anvar the Magnificent, the Master Ruler of all things, stood in the Courts of Heaven before the Creator. And Anvar disagreed with the God of Gods in this manner.

“Mightiest, all that lives needeth servants. So even this race of Human that you allow to be made on these many worlds needs servants.”

“I have said that it is not good for them to rise to this place immediately. They must need learn to master themselves to some degree first.” The Creator replied.

“You are wrong. I will show you so with this world that you have given me.”

The Creator sighed.

—-A heretical text disputing the Church of the Masteries.



Lakraine is beautiful. Every view is a vista, and even the slums have a romantic edge. The wine-dark seas, the forrested mountains, the four moons teem with life, and provide a near twilight during the Bright Hours. Every man is a poet, a swordsman, and a master of many elementals or so he claims at one of the many parties on those seas Purple, Blue, Imperial, and Violet.



These parties are on air-boats which are towed by captive elementals. The sight of an eagle of air and fog dragging a silver sled across the Sea Velvet would inspire poetry in the stolid. Due to natural breeding, there are not many stolid people in this world. The women are not impressed by a stiff upper lip, but by a dashing manner, and a graceful dance step, and the courage to bend a rogue elemental to your will.



Their whole economy is based on controlling sprites, mostly, and djinn, less so, and of course, the elemental lords for the brave and expressive and strong-willed. I sought out knowledge from actual masters, and found truths common and secrets uncommon. In exchange for my story, they told me theirs.

I was obviously a stranger. No one had ever seen a man with blonde hair on their planet. Blue eyes, and curly black or straight brown hair was the rule.

In order to control an elemental required more than strength. It required knowledge, and often knowledge of an esoteric kind. Often enough, it required one to understand the purpose of the then rogue elemental in the native ecology.

I checked one theory I had heard mention. The rogue elementals snared by respectable sorts were not intelligent, except in the animal sense.

They had, hundreds of years ago, controlled sentient elementals. Thus had come the curse. The sun would rise, and all that Lakraine was would die. Then, as I looked over a balcony, at a glittering ball, they told me when. Next week.

And I was the one prophesied who might be able to stop this horror.

“The white-bone hair outsider

worlddancer, long-rider

shall teach thee the Seventh Spells

Of Command, and then you shall be able

to break the curse”

I did not know any such spells. I do know a great deal of magic, but nothing suited to stopping a planet from rotating into the sunlight.

So, as I sat drinking ambrosia from a golden cup embedded into a giant pearl, while clouds of sprites attended to our every whim, while these great ones before me in their platinum encrusted velvets, I listened as they explained their magic.

They commanded elementals and their lesser brethren to do things for them. The seventh spells would command something. The general feeling was that it would raise the Planet which would bow to the magus with enough nerve and skill to summon her. And then the magus need only to ask her to stop the planet’s rotation.



I accepted the quest even though I am notoriously bad at riddles.



Lakraine needed the elementals and other spirits. It supported a voluptous lifestyle which is not bad in and of itself. Without them, the people would starve.



Then I saw the one thing they had not mastered. I reviewed the spell, and made some alterations. Then I called the council, and I told them I had a fix.



We met in this baroque fantasy of pillars of marble with base relief engravings of magicians bending the elemental lords to their will.



I told them the secret. They laughed at me. I repeated myself, and they laughed more.



Finally, I saw the only method of proving it. I would test it on myself. Never mind that what I knew about Larkrainian magic wouldn’t fill a thimble.



I cast the spell of command on myself. Suddenly, I was in much more precise and thorough command of my own thoughts and physical moves.



While standing, upside down, on my finger-tips, I started firing questions based on their appearance. The one hiding something, I decided, held a useful bit of knowledge. I pried it loose. And soon, they had a plan to stop the rotation of Lakraine into the spell-destroying sunlight.



This new spell spread, and gradually in a myriad of sudden fits and starts, the Lakrainians learned self-control. The spell showed them the truth about themselves becaus it had too in order to work at all.



Lakraine is still beautiful. But the wastage has stopped, and the people are less self-indulgent. The Long Night continues with its horde of parties.



Tadeusz