We’re taking a break from Heart of Fire-related art for a minute or two, but I still have an Art Saturday for you, featuring a recent digital drawing I did. This one relates most directly to the Return of the Dragonriders Trilogy.

This is Malchoris, a giant blue star out in the far reaches of the galaxy – where no other individual stars are visible, and the distant galaxies are faint. The universe of the Areaer novels is not confined even to the system of Areaer’s star, Anidril, and personal magic is predominant everywhere. Stars, like so much else, can be persons, even if not usually people a human could relate to – or even be aware of as persons.

But Malchoris appears in DragonWing, because Aelaza, the Ellena – a creature with a very different relationship to time than stars or humans; you can read more about the Ellenari here – dedicated to Silmavalien also knows Malchoris. In fact, she was the one who had to help him (though it is rather silly to associate gender of any sort with a star) gather the material from which he was supposed to born, after it had been scattered by the Nightmare across the reaches of space, far from all that forms the usual environment of a young star, and Aelaza has a feeling that seeing Malchoris will help Silmavalien with some of the struggles she has to deal with, and that Malchoris will be glad of Silmavalien’s brief company – though they can only even be aware of each other through her power.

You can get DragonBirth, the first book in the Return of the Dragonriders Trilogy here.

Or you could take a chance on the whole trilogy in the beautifully illustrated omnibus, complete with an exclusive short story-sequel here.

You can also find out more about the series, and how I came to write Return of the Dragonriders – and even visit Areaer at all – here.