The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  And then, this evening, had come that disturbing vision in Ana’s cave . . .

  Vision—what nonsense! he scolded himself. Ana was renowned as a witch and fortune-teller: no doubt she had all manner of tricks up her sleeve. She must have used some form of mesmerism on him, hypnotized him into “seeing” a scene that she described aloud to him. And that tea—who could say what she had put in it?

  Far away in the night he saw the yellow flames of a bane-fire rise from some farmer’s field—warding off the spirits of the unshriven dead. He recalled Kaithan’s words: “we will be forever panicking at eclipses, or waging wars over sacred pebbles, or believing that a girl with bunged-up ears is a saint.”

  Or believing in a God, he thought suddenly.

  He recoiled, but there was no silencing the inner doubt now that it had spoken. He had walked in the Faith, the narrow middle way between two chasms: on the one side gaped the new science and its cosmos void of meaning; on the other superstition, paganism, primitive terror. But for some time now his beliefs had been eroding, the footing becoming more treacherous. And tonight, in fleeing from one pit he had stumbled into the other. His encounter with the old witch-woman had laid bare the lurking doubt by appealing first to his irrational and then his rational side. How easily superstition had taken him, in those fearful moments when he actually believed her mad claims; and how speedily he had sought the comforts of reason. At no time, he realized, had he turned to the Faith for guidance in his extremity. For a priest, a real believer, that should have been his first thought.

  With that admission, thoughts he had thrust aside and silenced came clamoring into his mind. How often had he been told that nature was the mirror of its creator, the truest and oldest scripture—that lessons were to be found in flowers and streams and stones? Yet in every grove and meadow and serene-surfaced pool, in the very earth beneath one’s feet, countless fangs, stingers, and mandibles were at their gruesome work. Poisons lurked in root and berry, plagues and pestilences waited to burst forth from dank marshes. Hawks dived on screaming hares; ravening wolves carried off helpless lambs; women died in childbirth. The world was no divinely ordered Creation but a chaos born of mindless matter, without plan or purpose, heading only toward a final cataclysm. What could he find, now, to say to the young students gathering in the chapel tomorrow? He did not even know how to counsel himself.

  There was a sudden knock at his door.

  “Yes?” he called, half irritated and half grateful for the interruption. Who could be disturbing him at this hour?

  “Pardon me, Father Damion.” A servant opened the door and looked in, his face apologetic. “The night porter asked me to tell you there’s a young woman at the front entrance, wanting to see you.”

  He looked at the man in puzzlement. “A woman?”

  “Name of Lorelyn, Father.”

  “Oh.” Damion rubbed his forehead. “Yes. I did tell her to come to me if she had any problems to discuss—but at this time of night?” He shoved the half-finished sermon aside and rose. “I’m coming.”

  Lorelyn was in the porter’s lodge by the main door, talking in urgent tones to its unsympathetic occupant. She broke off at the sight of Damion and ran toward him. “Father Damion—”

  “Lorelyn, you know you’re not supposed to leave the convent by yourself, especially after dark,” he reproved.

  “But Father Damion, we were looking out of the window and we saw a strange light in the chapel, and I thought someone ought to tell you . . .“

  Not again, Damion thought. All week long there had been wild rumors circulating among the students: strange lights, apparitions in the ruins. “This isn’t more of that ghost nonsense, is it?”

  “Some of the girls thought it might be the ghost. But Father, isn’t the Jana scroll kept in the chapel?”

  Damion stared at her for a second. Then he spun around and set off down the hallway at a hard sprint.

  First that unnerving business with old Ana, and now this! If it was a student playing a prank he’d give the young blighter what for. But with the scroll in the sanctum he could take no chances. Why hadn’t he burned the thing when he had the chance?

  Lorelyn joined him unbidden, running at his side with long loping strides like a deerhound. She reached the doors before he did and he put a hand out to restrain her. “Stay back,” he cautioned. He pushed open the great oaken doors and entered the chapel.

  It was now utterly dark save for the lamplight from the hallway behind him and the moonlight, which fell in faint slanting shafts through the windows. No candle burned, and the Sacred Flame had been removed to the holy of holies. It no longer seemed like the familiar chapel, sacred and safe, but a place withdrawn and mysterious. Above his head in the dim light angels hovered with motionless wings outspread, while the bronze Modrian-Valdur showed as a black shadow, clinging like a monstrous bat to the stone ramparts of the sanctuary. Then, as he watched, the curtains of the sacred portal opened, and for a moment the inner sanctum gaped like a firelit cave. A shadow moved in that dim red glow: a figure in a black monk’s robe with the hood drawn up over his head. Only no real monk would slink along like that, with his hood up to hide his face; nor was it at all likely that this was a student. Whoever it was had profaned the sanctum, and there could only be one reason for that. Outrage arose in Damion, thrusting caution aside. He strode forward and shouted, “Who are you?”

  The figure turned toward him. For an instant he saw two fiery points of light glowing within the darkness of the cavernous cowl. Behind him he heard Lorelyn’s sharp intaken breath. He stood there gaping; and the robed figure headed for the doorway that led down into the chapel crypt, vanishing into the darkness within.

  Damion took a firm hold of himself. He was determined not to give way to superstitious fears this time, certainly not in front of Lorelyn: he hesitated only an instant before starting after the figure. The man (for of course it was only a man) would get away if Damion didn’t act immediately. Seizing one of the votive candles near at hand, he groped for a tinderbox. It took a long time to light the candle, for his fingers were far from steady, but he knew there was no other exit from the crypt. The intruder had trapped himself.

  Candle in hand, he advanced warily down the spiral steps to the chamber below, Lorelyn following. Together they stood in the large stone space, with its squat pillars supporting the low, vaulted roof. The candle-flame showed them nothing but shadows, and the reclining stone images of long-dead knights.

  “I don’t see anyone,” whispered Lorelyn.

  “He’s hiding,” Damion replied.

  “Shall we search for him?”

  “No.” He reached into his pocket and snatched out his copy of the chapel’s master key. “Now, back up the stairs.” The two of them climbed the steps again, and Damion closed the door, turning the key in the lock. “There—we’ve got him,” he said. “Lorelyn, run and fetch the night porter—quickly!” She looked at him for a moment with wide eyes, then raced off.

  His heart pounding, he ran up the central aisle to the sanctum and set his candle down on the floor. There on one of the shelves lay the small wooden ark that contained the scroll. He snatched it up and pulled off the jeweled lid.

  It was empty.

  He ran out of the sanctum again and back to the door of the crypt. “Whoever you are,” he shouted through the door, “you had better come on out of hiding. I know you’ve got that parchment.”

  There was nothing but silence from the other side.

  “All right, then—we’ll see what the night watchman has to say.”

  He stood waiting by the door. Presently there came a sound of footsteps and the glow of lamplight at the chapel’s main doorway, and Lorelyn and the porter entered, the latter gripping his truncheon. Damion unlocked the door again, and the three of them descended the stone stair and shouted, but nothing stirred in the burial chamber of the Paladins. The porter advanced into the crypt, his weapon at the ready. After searching up and down the length
of the chamber he turned to Damion and Lorelyn with a raised eyebrow.

  “There’s no one in here.”

  “What!”

  Damion ran into the crypt and swung his candle around. He saw only bare stone walls, pillars, and stone knights. The robed figure had vanished as though it had never existed.

  6

  The Doom of the Dance

  WINTER CAME TO MAURAINIA, bringing with it one of the east coast’s rare snowfalls. For three days the snow fell steadily, settling feather-light upon tree branches and the icy lids of lakes and ponds, laying on every roof a pale thatch and on every doorstep a rounded white loaf. It transformed even the poorest quarters of Raimar, turning middens and rubbish heaps to innocent white mounds, spreading a smooth pavement over broken and dirty cobblestones. At the Royal Academy minor avalanches thundered down the steep roofs, and the gargoyles sported beards of ice and jaunty caps of snow.

  On the third snowbound evening Damion, growing restless within the building’s confines, went for a long walk in the countryside. He huddled into his heavy priest’s cloak as he strolled through the white silence of the wintry fields. So quiet was it that Damion was convinced he could hear a faint sifting sound, made by the large soft flakes as they fell and clumped and clung to every twig until trees and bushes turned to white lace and filigree. Woolly strands of smoke mounted from the chimney pots of distant cottages, but there were few other signs of life, and no one else walked the smooth whiteness where the road had been. He trudged through the floury drifts, deep in thought. Two months had now passed since the strange incident in the chapel, and he was still disturbed by it. Though Lorelyn’s account of the ghostly apparition had caused a sensation among her fellow students, only the mildest of upheavals had followed the theft: with its historical veracity in doubt, the scroll was worth little more to scholars than the parchment on which it was written. Nor did the monastery’s abbot and prior show any concern whatsoever at its disappearance. Any suggestion that war might result if it ended up in King Khalazar’s possession was greeted with the same tolerant amusement that Kaithan had shown.

  Damion wished he could know for certain who the thief was. It would be so easy for anyone to search the chapel, disguising himself as the Academy ghost so that anyone seeing him would dismiss him as a student prankster (or even believe he was the famous phantom, if the witness was inclined to be superstitious). How the escape from the crypt had been achieved Damion did not know, but for the moment he set that mystery aside and concentrated instead on the thief’s possible identity. He might have been one of the Zimbouran half-breed spies—most likely the half-Moharan man, Jomar, who was the taller of the two. If the Zimbourans had the parchment there was nothing to be done but hope, as Kaithan had suggested, that their ensuing voyage to the northern sea would end in disaster. But perhaps the Zimbourans had not taken the scroll after all. Damion glanced toward Mount Selenna. It had veiled its face again: only its snow-blanched base was visible, the upper slopes vanishing into low-hanging clouds. Old Ana would have left her cave home by now, seeking her winter refuge—wherever that might be. Damion wondered if she and her “Nemerei” friends might have the stolen scroll in their possession. As a document of things they too held sacred it would be of great importance to them. But even if Ana and company were the actual culprits, the Zimbouran spies might yet find their hiding place and seize it from them. He should have followed Kaithan’s suggestion and destroyed the wretched piece of parchment when he had the chance. Now it was out of his reach.

  The early winter evening had fallen by the time Damion got back to the Academy, and the huge sprawling structure was almost invisible in the dusk, not a window glowing from its walls and towers. The convent too was lightless, and beyond the escarpment’s edge, where Raimar’s broad sprawling constellation should have glimmered, there was only darkness. Today was the winter solstice, long ago transformed by the Faith from pagan revel to sacred festival. To the Faithful, the lengthening of the hours of daylight after this shortest day suggested the final victory of good over evil. For a week now the city and surrounding towns and villages had been plunged in the gloom of the “Dark Days,” when by ancient custom no light must shine by night, nor any lamp be lit unless the windows of the house were heavily draped. Withindoors life went on as usual, hearths glowed and lamps and candles burned, but no ray of light was allowed to escape into the dusky streets. Even the ships in the harbor lay unlit at their moorings. At midnight tonight candles and lanterns would suddenly glow from the windows of every home, in defiance of the dark. And in the countryside an old, old ritual would be performed: a young girl, chosen by lot, would lead a procession through all the houses of the village. Wearing a crown of candles and carrying a star-tipped scepter, the “Queen of the Festival” would drive out bad luck from every home. This curious observance originated in the ancient Elei prophecy of the Tryna Lia, who would one day descend to fight the forces of darkness, and the festival was still named after her: the Trynalia.

  Damion entered the main hall of the keep and shook the snow off his cloak. A large Tanaura tree constructed of dead tree branches dominated the entrance hall: from its upper boughs hung lanterns, gilded stars, and angels to symbolize the celestial realm, while on the middle branches hung doll-like figures, beasts and birds, and floral emblems of painted paper. At the very top perched the Elmir, the Bird of Heaven, while at the base of the trunk coiled the figure of Vormir, the Serpent of Chaos. The Tanaura, or Tree of Life, was another old custom dating to the days of the Elei. Damion gave it a thoughtful look as he passed it and climbed the grand central staircase to his room.

  He hung up his snow-damp cloak, drew the heavy blackout curtain before lighting his lamp, and then sat down at his writing desk. On it were piled several volumes from the Academy library: books on witchcraft and sorcery.

  Though many volumes described such things as scrying, demon-summoning, and spell-casting, it was hard to tell how much of this was genuine Nemerei lore and how much the invention of superstitious peasants. In one book he finally found an entry that caught his interest. Melbryn’s Beliefs of the Ancients declared the Nemerei to be the adherents of an ancient religion, dating back to Elei days; they had worshipped the old gods of the Elei pantheon, whom Orendyl later reinterpreted as the subservient “angels.” The Nemerei knew these gods as the “El” and believed they dwelt within the land, invisibly inhabiting rivers, mountains, and forests. There were also El of the sky: the sun, moon, and each star and planet had its own indwelling deity.

  The Nemerei had also believed in the “Three Planes of Existence”: the physical plane and two others “beyond” or “above” it. The Ethereal Plane was not made of earth, water, fire, or air like the mortal realm, but of another, holy element called quintessence, or “pure energy.” Beyond and “above” this in turn lay another heavenly realm, the Empyrean. Gods and spirits dwelt on these two “higher” planes, and one who mastered the Nemerei disciplines could communicate with them, or even learn to travel from plane to plane as spirits did. This curious Nemerei lore apparently coexisted quite peacefully with the Faith’s teachings in the early days. The “Cult of Angels” was only outlawed at the start of the Dark Age, when the Patriarchs declared that the beings revered by the Nemerei were in fact fallen angels, bent on deceiving and destroying mankind. Many in the knightly order of the Paladins had belonged to the Nemerei religion, and for this reason they were stamped out along with other “witches” during the time of the Inquisitions.

  “Some there are,” wrote Melbryn, “who claim that secret Nemerei cults still exist, meeting in hidden places at night to practice their arcane rituals. But such claims may safely be dismissed as the folly of the ignorant.”

  Damion was not so certain. He was inclined to believe that Ana and her “friends” were members of a small but very real Nemerei coven: either a new attempt to revive the old religion, or perhaps even descendants of a group that survived the inquisitorial purges. He reached for another book, Gal
diman’s Daemonologie, and as he opened it a piece of paper fell out onto the floor.

  Damion picked it up and stared at it. It was a letter, addressed to him.

  To the Reverend Damion Athariel:

  It has come to my attention that you have been seen consorting with a member of the cult of the Nemerei. I need hardly remind you that the company of witches is forbidden to members of your faith, let alone to its priests. It is you, moreover, who furnished the Nemerei—albeit unintentionally—with the scroll you brought out of Zimboura. It should be obvious to you by now that this object is the focus of numerous intrigues. By involving yourself in this affair you have placed many lives in danger, including your own.

  You know where your duty lies in this matter. You must report this witch and her cult to the leaders of the Faith in Raimar. If you wish to lead a long and harmonious life, you will do as I advise.

  There was no signature.

  Damion held the letter under the lamp and scrutinized it closely. It was written in a graceful, flowing hand, and both script and phrasing were strangely antiquated: he was reminded of documents in the Academy archives, dating back a century or more. Who had penned this anonymous note and placed it in his library book? Was there a hint of a threat in that last line?

  Damion threw down the letter. One thing’s for certain—my life’s been far from “harmonious” ever since I accepted that benighted scroll!

  He turned and strode out of his room. Ghosts and witches, mysterious letters and magic stones! It’s exactly like one of those absurd stories the convent girls love. But there’s something else those stories always have—secret passages . . .