however, find it highly diverting and entertaining. If one room in the Grotto is closed off by the rapidly growing coral, the elves simply pack up their things and move to another that is certain to have been created in the interim.
Finding one's way through the palace is an interesting experience. Corridors that lead one place one day will take a person somewhere completely different the next. Because every room in the Grotto is certain to be one of surpassing beauty—the white coral glistens with an opalescent radiance, pink coral shines warmly—it doesn't really matter to most elves where they are. Some who come to the palace on business with the king may wander the Grotto for days before making the slightest attempt to find His Majesty.
No business is ever pressing in the elven community. The words
hurry, haste,
and
urgent
were not in the elven vocabulary before they began dealing with humans. We dwarves never dealt with either until only recently in our history.
Such diversities in human and elven natures once led to serious clashes among the two races. The Eimas, though generally easygoing, can be pushed only so far before they push back. But, after several destructive wars, both races came to see that they could gain more by working together than apart. The human Phondrans are a charming, if energetic, people. They soon learned how to manage the elves, and now they wheedle and flatter them into doing what they, the humans, want. This noted human charm worked even on the dour dwarves. Eventually, we, too, were won over by them.
The three races have lived and worked together, each on their own separate seamoon, in peaceful harmony for many generations. I have no doubt that we would have continued to do so for many generations more, had not the seasun—the source of warmth, light, and life for the seamoons—begun to leave us.
It was human wizards, who love to probe and prod and try to find out the why and the wherefore, who discovered that the seasun was altering its course and starting to drift away. This discovery led the humans into a perfect flurry of activity, quite marvelous to behold. They took measurements and made calculations, they sent out dolphins to scout for them, and questioned the dolphins for cycles onend, trying to find out what they knew of the history of the seasun. 2
According to Alake, this is the explanation the dolphins offered:
“Chelestra is a globe of water existing in the vastness of space. Its exterior, facing onto the frigid darkness of the Nothing, is made of ice, fathoms thick. Its interior, comprised of the Goodsea, is warmed by the seasun, a star whose flames are so extraordinarily hot that the water of the Goodsea cannot extinguish them. The seasun warms the water surrounding it, melts the ice, and brings life to the seamoons—small planets, designed by the Creators of Chelestra for habitation.”
We dwarves were able to provide the humans with information concerning the seamoons themselves, information gleaned from long Times tunneling and delving into the sphere's interior. The spheres are a shell of rock with a hot interior comprised of various chemicals. The chemicals react with the rays of the seasun and produce breathable air that surrounds the seamoons in a bubble. The seasun is absolutely required to maintain life.
The Phondrans concluded that, in approximately four hundred cycles' time, the seasun would leave the seamoons far behind. The longnight would arrive, the Goodsea would freeze, and so would anyone left on Phondra, Gargan, and Elmas.
“When the seasun drifts away,” reported the dolphins, who had witnessed this phenomenon firsthand, “the Goodsea turns to ice that slowly encases the seamoons. But such isthe magical nature of these moons that most vegetable and some animal life on them remains alive, merely frozen. When the seasun returns, the moons thaw out and are once more habitable.”
I remember hearing Dumaka of Phondra, chieftain of his people,
Finding one's way through the palace is an interesting experience. Corridors that lead one place one day will take a person somewhere completely different the next. Because every room in the Grotto is certain to be one of surpassing beauty—the white coral glistens with an opalescent radiance, pink coral shines warmly—it doesn't really matter to most elves where they are. Some who come to the palace on business with the king may wander the Grotto for days before making the slightest attempt to find His Majesty.
No business is ever pressing in the elven community. The words
hurry, haste,
and
urgent
were not in the elven vocabulary before they began dealing with humans. We dwarves never dealt with either until only recently in our history.
Such diversities in human and elven natures once led to serious clashes among the two races. The Eimas, though generally easygoing, can be pushed only so far before they push back. But, after several destructive wars, both races came to see that they could gain more by working together than apart. The human Phondrans are a charming, if energetic, people. They soon learned how to manage the elves, and now they wheedle and flatter them into doing what they, the humans, want. This noted human charm worked even on the dour dwarves. Eventually, we, too, were won over by them.
The three races have lived and worked together, each on their own separate seamoon, in peaceful harmony for many generations. I have no doubt that we would have continued to do so for many generations more, had not the seasun—the source of warmth, light, and life for the seamoons—begun to leave us.
It was human wizards, who love to probe and prod and try to find out the why and the wherefore, who discovered that the seasun was altering its course and starting to drift away. This discovery led the humans into a perfect flurry of activity, quite marvelous to behold. They took measurements and made calculations, they sent out dolphins to scout for them, and questioned the dolphins for cycles onend, trying to find out what they knew of the history of the seasun. 2
According to Alake, this is the explanation the dolphins offered:
“Chelestra is a globe of water existing in the vastness of space. Its exterior, facing onto the frigid darkness of the Nothing, is made of ice, fathoms thick. Its interior, comprised of the Goodsea, is warmed by the seasun, a star whose flames are so extraordinarily hot that the water of the Goodsea cannot extinguish them. The seasun warms the water surrounding it, melts the ice, and brings life to the seamoons—small planets, designed by the Creators of Chelestra for habitation.”
We dwarves were able to provide the humans with information concerning the seamoons themselves, information gleaned from long Times tunneling and delving into the sphere's interior. The spheres are a shell of rock with a hot interior comprised of various chemicals. The chemicals react with the rays of the seasun and produce breathable air that surrounds the seamoons in a bubble. The seasun is absolutely required to maintain life.
The Phondrans concluded that, in approximately four hundred cycles' time, the seasun would leave the seamoons far behind. The longnight would arrive, the Goodsea would freeze, and so would anyone left on Phondra, Gargan, and Elmas.
“When the seasun drifts away,” reported the dolphins, who had witnessed this phenomenon firsthand, “the Goodsea turns to ice that slowly encases the seamoons. But such isthe magical nature of these moons that most vegetable and some animal life on them remains alive, merely frozen. When the seasun returns, the moons thaw out and are once more habitable.”
I remember hearing Dumaka of Phondra, chieftain of his people,
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