The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Poor Lorelyn! Ailia thought. Now, if this were a story it would turn out that she wasn’t an orphan at all, but the lost daughter of a nobleman. And when the other girls realized she was a rich heiress they’d be sorry they were so horrid to her. She sat down next to the girl. “Are you having trouble with your studies?” she asked.

  Lorelyn nodded, looking glum. “Books!” she groaned, shoving the volume aside. “How I loathe them.”

  This was nothing short of sacrilege to Ailia. “How can you not like books?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “I think they’re wonderful. You learn so much from them.”

  “That’s what Damion says. He’s always giving them to me for presents.”

  Ailia gasped. “Damion? You mean Father Damion, the chaplain—you actually know him?”

  “Yes—quite well, really,” replied the other girl.

  Ailia gaped at her. She still felt a warm glow of gratitude whenever she remembered her first—and only—meeting with the young priest. It was, she thought, just like the stories of divine beings that disguised themselves and moved among ordinary mortals, blessing and healing with a word or a touch. Every boy raised in the monastery orphanage was given the name of the archangel Athariel in place of a surname, but she felt it suited Damion best. She gazed at him in the Academy chapel, and in the nuns’ chapel whenever he officiated there, so lost in admiration that she often forgot to sing the hymns. But to know him—know him well—was something she had never dreamt of. “How did you come to be his friend, Lorelyn?” she pursued.

  “You haven’t heard, then? He helped me escape from the Archipelagoes. He was a missionary on Jana before he became chaplain here.”

  “Escape!” Ailia breathed, instantly enthralled. “You don’t mean—you were actually in danger?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied the other girl, still in a calm matter-of-fact tone. “Damion and I left on the last ship out of Jardjana port. The Zimbourans were right behind us.” She pointed to her book. “What’s this word here? One of the monks tried to teach me Maurish, back in the cloister—but I don’t think he knew it that well. There are still an awful lot of words I don’t understand.”

  Ailia moved her chair closer to the other girl’s, all the while looking at her in amazement. What a life she must have lived—like something out of a storybook. And to know Damion Athariel—know him well! She itched to ask Lorelyn more about him, but at the same time felt oddly shy.

  “I’m always making mistakes,” the big blonde girl went on. “Yesterday I told the girls I’d found a cat living in the ruins with her litter of cattle. They just bellowed with laughter. What is the right word, anyway?”

  “Kittens,” replied Ailia, keeping her own face straight with difficulty. “Never mind them: you can speak two languages, after all, which is more than they can do. Just keep on studying. I’ll help you if you like.”

  Lorelyn sighed. “I’m so tired of it all—of being locked away behind walls! I used to climb up onto the outer wall of the monastery sometimes, and look down at the people in the streets below, and watch the ships in the harbor. The monks wouldn’t let me go out on my own, and they never left the place themselves. Finally I started stealing out at night when they were all asleep, and going down into the city. I suppose that was wrong, but it just seemed so unfair that I had to stay indoors and not be a part of what was happening outside. When the Zimbourans came I finally got to sail across the sea—but then Father Damion brought me here, and now I’m surrounded by walls again. There’s a whole world out there, and I want to go see it, not just read about it!”

  Ailia felt a twinge of empathy, remembering her own longings on the Island; but she made herself say, “Father Damion meant well, Lorelyn. The world isn’t a very safe place, for women especially. We can’t travel on our own, and it takes money too.”

  They had forgotten to lower their voices, and Lusina Field came mincing over to them. “If you two don’t stop talking, I’ll complain to the librarian,” she threatened. “I’m trying to study.”

  Lorelyn gave an unladylike snort. “Study what? The men?” She jerked her thumb at a table where a group of male students sat grinning and eyeing the girls.

  Lusina colored, and turned on Ailia. “I wouldn’t have thought even you would associate with someone like this, Worm. Goodness knows who her parents were, but I doubt they were respectable.”

  Lorelyn bridled, though not at the insult to herself. “Worm? Why did you call her that?” she demanded angrily.

  “Why, it’s short for Bookworm, of course—because she’s always reading,” replied Lusina, putting on an innocent look.

  Lorelyn sprang to her feet. “That’s not true—you’re pestering her! Now leave her alone!”

  Ailia looked up at her in awe. Lorelyn, the nuns often said, seemed to think she had been sent into the world to right all its wrongs. She had once disgraced herself by fighting with a pack of village youths who were tormenting a dog: she returned to the convent with her gown all dirty and torn, but by all accounts she gave as good as she got. Now she towered over the table like a Rialainish warrior maiden: it wanted only a steel breastplate and a spear in her hand to complete the picture. Lusina actually backed away from her. “It was only a joke,” she muttered.

  “Nobody’s laughing.”

  The head librarian descended on them at this point. He regarded his library as only slightly less sacred than the chapel, and similarly deserving of reverence: it had always been a sore point with him that women were allowed to enter it. “If you girls don’t want to study, you may leave,” he thundered, lowering his bristly brows. “I won’t have you distracting the men from their work.” Lusina slunk back to her table, and Ailia shrank into her chair, wishing the floor would open beneath her. But Lorelyn met the librarian’s eyes with her usual direct gaze.

  “I think I’ll leave, then,” she said. And she turned and strode out of the room, her flaxen braids swinging in defiance.

  The librarian scowled after her, then threw a final glare at Ailia and strode back to his desk. The Island girl hastily snatched up the first book on her pile. It was the book with the dragon on its cover, the one she had found on her first day in the library. She had been longing for some time to read it: its intriguing title, printed on the front page, was Welessan’s Wanderyngs: Being an Accounte, by Welessan Dauryn of Mauraynya, of his Travells Through the Worlde and Beyonde. Small wonder they hadn’t tried to get all that on the front cover!

  She hesitated as she held it in her hands. She should really be working on her Elensi translations, and she had brought her copy of the Grammatica Elensia for that purpose. But something about this little travel book drew her irresistibly. Whatever did the author mean by “the world and beyond”? She plunged into the pages. It appeared that this Welessan Dauryn had lived in Raimar a few decades before the Dark Age, and he claimed to have traveled all over the world by land and sea, journeying not only to the Antipodes and the Archipelagoes but to the fabled land of Trynisia as well. His account of the latter place, though obviously a tall tale, was so imaginative that she soon found herself engrossed in it. The author spoke of the marvels of the Fairfolk’s homeland, of the glory of the “Faerie Queene’s” court, and of making a pilgrimage to the Temple of Heaven:

  If a pylgrym bee goode and worthie, he may passe betwixt the Holie Cherubym that guard the Temple’s Portall, and draw nigh unto the Goddesse Elaraynia. For She is the Way and the Door for alle who would seeke the Starre Stone. I speke truly, for I Welessan Dauryn have looked upon it.

  Ailia read these words with a sense of having come home. How often, as a child, had she dreamed of this far, fair land—how often gazed on the old maps, where Trynisia was shown at the north of the world, with blank space within its borders and perhaps the legend Here Dragons Dwell. She read on:

  Then wyth a Holie Sibyl for my guyde, I did entere into a Trance: and my Spirit did pass from out of my bodie and leve this mortall realme, rysing up unto the Spheere of the Moone that is the Fi
rst Hevyn, and so up to the Second Hevyn, that is the Spheere of the Mornyng Starre. The Fayre Folke calle this Starre Araynia: wythyn her Spheere there lyeth a Hevynlie Paradis, wherein are many wonderes. The Fontayne of Youthe is there, and precious Gems and Floures of wondrous beaute . . .

  Ailia read on, enchanted. The titters and whispers from Lusina’s table could no longer reach her: like Welessan, she had left her body behind and was sojourning among the spheres.

  DAMION WAS WITHDRAWN and preoccupied as he climbed the winding road to the top of the escarpment. Kaithan’s advice regarding the scroll was reassuring, but the visit with his old friend had disturbed him in a different way. He found that he had less to say to Kaithan with each visit. Their friendship, so strong and precious to him in boyhood, was slowly fading with the years as their personalities and interests diverged. Today he felt more keenly than ever the inevitability of its eventual loss. He had once enjoyed their verbal jousts, but the afternoon’s discussion only left him feeling flat and depressed.

  “We’re not little boys anymore . . .”

  He glanced behind him, at the sweeping panorama of the old walled city below, the dome of the High Temple gleaming at its exact center like the round boss on a knight’s war-shield. He recalled the day of his ordination in the temple, when as part of his formal initiation he had been allowed to pass beyond the portal into the holy of holies, and see at last what lay there: shabby relics in a dim and dusty chamber. No world of wonders had been revealed to him there, and in every temple of the Faith he knew it was the same: old broken things, and dust, and emptiness. At first he had told himself that no doubt all young ordinands went through this brief phase of disillusionment. But the others seemed well content with their vocations, whereas Damion’s dissatisfaction only grew with the passage of time.

  And then last night the dream had come—a dream so vivid, so profoundly unsettling, that he had ended up mentioning it to Prior Vale in his daily confession. It replayed itself now before his waking eyes, supplanting the view of the city.

  In the dream he had stood, it seemed, upon a hill beneath a night sky. Clouds hid the stars, but the veiled moon shone through them and turned them a luminous silver-blue, lighting all the land beneath. He did not recognize the place. There were the lights of a great city below, and beyond lay rolling hills like folds in cloth, smooth and gentle; farther off there were mountains. But such mountains! Never had Damion seen anything like them. They were not the mountains of the Maurainian coastal range—those low, tumescent shapes, worn and round-shouldered with age. These dream-mountains leaped and hung upon the air, great cresting waves of stone. There was something about them that struck him as strange, though he could not at first think what it was. Then he realized that, though they were obviously very much higher than the mountains of the range, they bore no trace of snow upon their sharp summits.

  In his dream he turned slowly, surveying the land about him. Then, as he completed his turn, he caught sight of something more wonderful still. Atop the hill on which he stood, ringing its summit like a crown, stood a palace that made the royal residence of King Stefon seem a vulgar hovel. Built of white stone that glimmered in the light of the silver-blue clouds, its walls were topped with a wondrous array of towers and domes. There were round turrets with roofs of pale glinting gold, and great hemispheres of glass glowing from within like lanterns, and tall towers capped with slender cones that imitated the mountains’ skyward thrust. And as he watched in fascination, the mighty doors, unprotected by moat or drawbridge, swung open and two figures emerged.

  All at once, though he did not move, he found that he could see those figures as clearly as though they stood next to him. One was a woman, tall and graceful in a hooded blue cloak. By the light that streamed through the doors he saw that she was remarkably beautiful, with eyes the color of her cloak and golden hair that framed a smooth oval face. In her arms was a little girl-child, scarcely more than an infant. The child was fast asleep, her curly blonde head resting on her mother’s shoulder. Beside the woman walked a man, also tall and regal in appearance, with dark hair and deep-set eyes.

  The two looked at each other, and he could see that they were in the thrall of some deep, shared emotion. Suddenly the man embraced the woman, and they stood together for a time, cradling the child between them as if they would protect her with their own bodies. And then with a swirl of her blue cloak the woman hastened away down the hill, while the man gazed after her with sorrow-filled eyes, but did not follow.

  When he recounted this dream to the prior, the latter responded in a pompous tone: “But the meaning of this vision is simple, Brother Damion. The unfortified castle is your soul, which is vulnerable to the assaults of the Evil One—hence the lack of defenses. The lord of the palace is yourself—”

  “But then shouldn’t he have looked like me—?”

  “Don’t interrupt! The woman and her daughter are the wife and child you will never have, since you have sworn the vow of celibacy: you see them departing symbolically from your life. You feel some human regret at this, hence the lord’s sorrow. The Heavenly Powers wish to convey to you that you have made a holy vow that must not be broken.” The prior wagged an admonishing finger. “Damion, the first few years of a priest’s vocation are always the most difficult, as he faces the fact that he cannot live as other men. You in particular have been blessed, or should I say cursed, with looks that make you attractive to women. And you possess a restless, inquiring mind, which can be dangerous if it is not disciplined. We are all of us prone to temptation, but you, Damion, have more reason than any to fear it, and need to fortify yourself against it.”

  Kaithan had only laughed when Damion mentioned the dream and the prior’s interpretation of it. “Dreams have no meaning, Damion. Yours was the product of indigestion, like as not!”

  The Royal Academy lay before him, but Damion did not feel ready to go back there just yet. He set off across the fields instead, heading for the old paved road that led to the mountains. A walk in the fresh air was what he needed, he thought, to clear his head.

  The flat, cultivated fields with their low stone fences soon gave way to sloping pastureland, the beginnings of the foothills of the coastal range. Sheep wandered here in flocks, or lay taking their ease, scattered about the stubbly meadows like small white boulders. There were shepherds standing watch over them, more than he could ever recall seeing at one time. Presently he saw one figure approach him, crook in hand: a tall man with a face lined and weathered as a crag. “You’re not going to the range at this hour, Reverend?” the shepherd called out to him. “Is someone ill in one of the villages there?”

  Damion smiled. “No, no, friend: I’m just walking for pleasure.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you, son—Father, I should say.” The shepherd drew closer, bringing the musky, overpowering odor of sheep with him. “I wouldn’t want to be out walking alone in the hills myself—not with it getting dark,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s perfectly safe,” Damion reassured him. “I know these mountains well. I used to play on them as a boy.”

  “That’s all very well, but there’s strange things happen on them nowadays,” the man said, lowering his voice, though there was no one to overhear. “We daren’t leave our flocks for a moment. There’s somewhat evil afoot—we go out in the mornings and find animals dead or maimed, and all the farmers say the same. They’ve had hens and cattle stolen or killed, sheds and barns burnt.”

  “Brigands, I expect,” sympathized Damion. “There are bound to be a few hiding in the forest.”

  “Don’t you believe it.” The man leaned close. “There’ve been no brigands here in an age and an age. Witches, that’s what it is. Demon-worshippers. There’s covens of them up in the mountains. That old woman that lives on the Mistmount—Ana—is one of them, or so I’m told. And the ghost prince has been seen too. He rides along the Old Road of nights on his big black horse, with his visor down and his eyes all afire.” He pointed back along t
he road with his crook.

  This was strongly reminiscent of the Academy’s current description of its famous specter, and Damion suspected a little friendly rivalry between villagers and students over the legend. As for old Ana, any eccentric elderly woman living alone in these mountains was believed to be a witch. In their lofty isolation, the inhabitants of the range had not yet been caught up in the Age of Reason that was overtaking the rest of the land. It had stopped, like some mighty flood, short of the mountain slopes with their little eyrielike hamlets.

  “Thank you for the warning,” he said to the shepherd. “I will take a little walk up Selenna and see if I can find this Ana of yours, and have a talk with her.” The man turned away and went back to his flock, muttering and shaking his grizzled head.

  Damion walked on, picking his way carefully among the broken paving stones. The Great Coastal Road was of Elei make, ancient beyond the reckoning of those who now used it. For hundreds of leagues it followed the coastline of Maurainia in long serpentine curves, then suddenly digressed toward the mountains in a line straight as an arrow’s flight. The portion of the road that paralleled the coast had been repaved and carefully maintained, as it was still a valuable trade route; but only the range’s few inhabitants used the part that led to the mountains, and its paving stones were those set down by the “Fairfolk” thousands of years ago. Many houses had dotted the mountains’ slopes in their day, and castles had crowned the summits. The latter had not been placed there to watch for enemies in the lands below, for they were not fortified: the Elei had built in high places because they wished to be as close as possible to the heavens, and to the gods whom they called their kin. Their old name for the coastal range was the Mari Endori, the Mountains of the Mother, after the chief goddess in their pantheon. But all their houses lay in ruin: no one dwelt on the range now save for the villagers and shepherds.