As Recounted by Mimsy Storygrower, Tir Naroth 984 H.E.

Long, long ago, there was a great empire that stretched as far as your eye can see, and beyond even that, from the Shimmerglen Forest to the Drachenfange Hills, these were the Empire of Hadran. Long had the Hadrani reigned, and their emperors never tired of conquering new lands. One day, the Empress Lytheria summoned her House Mage to her audience chamber.

The Mage Talifar, most powerful of all the scholars that have ever lived, then or since, bowed to his Empress and said, "What would you have of me, O my Empress?"

"Talifar, from your high tower, can you see the lands of Hadran?" Lytheria asked him.

"I can," he said.

"Tell me, O Master of Magics, what do you see from your tower?"

"Empress," the House Mage told her, "to the East, I see down the Languedon River to the Sarspeki Moor, and all that land you rule. To the South, I see down the Hadran River to the Teriel Woods, and that also have you conquered. To the North, I see up the Shordan river to the Great Ice Ocean, and these lands also you dominate. To the West, I see up the Hadran River to the Shimmerglen Forest, and all this land belongs to Hadran."

"Then you do not see the sky?" the Empress asked.

"Highest, I do see the sky," Talifar replied.

"And do you see the stars?" the Empress asked.

"Indeed," replied the wizard, "I chart them every night to determine your future, O Empress."

"And do they belong to me?" the Empress asked.

"No, Your Highness," Talifar said softly. "The stars belong to themselves. No one can own the stars, for they determine the destiny of all living things. Such power is beyond any person to control."

"Nevertheless, I shall rule the stars and control my own destiny," the Empress proclaimed.

"As you say, O Empress," Talifar said and bowing low, left her presence. He returned to his Tower, and for seven weeks he neither ate nor slept but worked instead upon a new and terrible magic. At the end of the seven weeks, he summoned the Empress to his Tower.

When Lytheria entered his workshop, she gasped, for Talifar had been a young man seven weeks before and now he stooped like an old, old man. She could barely discern his bow from the tottering of the elderly.

"Welcome, O Empress," the Master of Mages greeted her. "I have wrought the magic you seek. I have made a bridge to the stars, that you might conquer them." He beckoned her into his Circle and raised it behind him. Lytheria unsheathed her sword and readied her shield as Talifar spoke the final words to bring them to the stars.

But as the Great Wizard had said, the stars cannot be ruled by any who lives beneath them. Even as Talifar raised his magical bridge to the sky, the stars swept down upon them. They shattered the Tower whence the Empress and her Mage stood, making all metal run like the River Hadran, and the river itself fled from the assault by the stars.

Swordless, Lytheria pulled herself from the ruins and called for the stars to submit to her, but they heeded her not and captured her and Talifar, bearing them back into the heavens with them. Realizing what terror he had laid upon the land, Talifar called upon all the magic of the heavens and charged the stars to return whence they came. The stars laughed and laid waste to the city, but they could not deny their origins. It is the lot of the stars to chart the destiny of Tyrra, not to act it out. So, one by one, the stars returned to the sky, leaving behind devastation and chaos as punishment for the pride of the Empress.

On a clear night, you can still see the figure of the Empress in the sky, the figure of a maid twisting in the hands of her torturers. Think upon this when next you question the astrologer's reading. Every word I have told you is true, and if I lie, may my tongue turn into a bird and fly away to peck at the eyes of all those who would tell false tales.