by Alison Baird
“As I told you before, many of us here can communicate with one another across distances, without using the spoken word. Most live here in Maurainia, though we have touched minds in other lands.”
“But this vision of the palace,” the first woman called out. “Who was that lady? And what country was that, with the high mountains? Marakor perhaps, or Shurkana—?”
“No, the Marakites are dark and so are the Shurkas,” the second woman corrected. “This woman and her baby were fair, with blue eyes. What became of her, Ana, and the child?”
“I am sorry,” said Ana firmly, “but I cannot answer all your questions yet. Some because I do not know the answers, others because the knowledge I give you could prove dangerous. We are living in perilous times. Remember that you are not to speak to anyone outside this assembly of what you have seen. This only can I say with certainty: that the child of your visions is the one for whom generations have waited, the Holy Child, the Tryna Lia. The time of her earthly reign has come.”
“Wait, wait!” interrupted Brais, waving his hands impatiently. “Don’t the clergy say that the Tryna Lia is just a symbol—that she stands for the Faith?” He turned to Damion and the prior.
“The old writings do not say so,” replied Ana before monk or priest could speak. “It is said there that she is the daughter of the Morning Star.”
“Yes, yes,” said Brais, “and the Elei said she would come down out of the sky, so they must have meant she was an angel or spirit of some kind. How can you say she’s a human child?”
“It may seem strange to some of you,” Ana admitted, “but among the Nemerei it has always been taught that the Tryna Lia will assume a mortal form when she enters our world.
“How can the Tryna Lia be human? Have you never seen a shooting star fall to the earth? In the heights it blazes brilliantly, but when it reaches the ground its fires are spent. Anyone who comes upon it then will think it an ordinary stone among the stones of the earth, and never guess that it once shone amid the stars. So it is with the Tryna Lia, the Child of Earth and Heaven. She left the celestial realm to be born as a mortal, and to dwell among mortals.”
“Where is she now, then?” Brais demanded, folding his arms across his chest.
“I do not know for certain. I can tell you, though, that the visions you have all had are of a distant past. The heavenly powers will not reveal her incarnation until she is of an age to defend herself from her enemies. She must now be grown to womanhood, though she likely knows nothing of her true identity. But I believe,” said Ana, lowering her voice, “I may know who she is.”
There was a breathless hush. Then the woman at the back of the crowd cried out again. “It’s that girl Lorelyn—isn’t it? The orphan the Kaanish monks found. She’s the Tryna Lia!”
“No!” Damion shouted. He leaped up, ignoring the prior, who tried to take him by the arm. “Leave her alone! She’s got nothing to do with you and your coven.”
Vale caught at his sleeve again, and Damion shook him off. “And as for that bit about the palace—was that supposed to impress me? To make me think I was one of you, sharing your visions? You got that from Prior Vale!”
“Damion! What are you saying?” remonstrated the prior.
“I had that dream about a palace and a woman with a child. I told you about it, and you’ve gone and told them!”
“How can you say that?” Vale protested, his face reddening.
“The prior did no such thing,” denied Ana in her quiet voice.
Damion took up his lantern again and started to head for the door. Ana called after him. “Damion! I know you must find this hard to accept. But I believe that you are one of us. Why else should you have come here, at this time? It cannot be coincidence. Something led you here tonight. You are a Nemerei.”
“Listen to me!” said Damion, turning and giving her a fierce look. “I’ll keep your vow, on my honor as a priest: but on one condition. You’re to leave Lorelyn alone from now on, and not breathe a word to her of this Tryna Lia nonsense.”
“I had no intention of telling her,” Ana replied. “In fact the knowledge would endanger her: and I am not yet certain. If this truly is her destiny, she will learn of it soon enough.”
“Just let her be!” Damion shouted over his shoulder as he left the room. “Or I promise you I’ll go straight to the Supreme Patriarch about this, vow or no vow!”
“Brother Damion, wait!” Prior Vale called after him.
Their voices followed him as he hastened away down the tunnels, echoing throughout the dark and ancient spaces: but there were no sounds of pursuit. To Damion it all seemed unreal. Surely all this would turn out to be a nightmare—he would wake in a moment, in his room in the monastery, and heave a sigh of relief. But no, it was all too real, and it was his fault. For bringing that cursed scroll to Maurainia when he knew well the harm it could bring to gullible minds, for failing to destroy it when he could have done so. And now Lorelyn was being drawn into this business as well . . .
As he passed one of the gaping archways, the shadows in it appeared to stir, and he saw, with a start, eyes reflecting the glow of his lantern—like an animal’s, but at the height of a man’s head.
Damion broke into a run, his lantern swinging wildly, sprinting up the slanting tunnel that led to the crypt above. When he reached the secret door he dropped the lantern, letting it roll upon the floor while his hands swept over the stones. Which portion of the wall made the door close again—was it here, or over there . . . ? It was no use; he couldn’t find the spot. And now from the tunnel below came a rustling, stealthy sound. Farther down its length the eyes appeared again: discs of luminous yellow, the fiery eyes of a fiend.
He snatched up the lantern again, ran out through the crypt and up the spiral stair. Footsteps followed him. He tore through the door into the main chapel, preparing to yell for help, when the sound of chanting came from the far end of the aisle, and a blossoming of light.
AILIA WALKED ALONG in the train of taper-bearing students, monks, and nuns, chanting with them the words of the ancient hymn. Lorelyn walked at the front: she looked unexpectedly magnificent in the white ceremonial dress and crown of candles, with her unbraided, knee-length hair streaming down her back in a golden cascade. The nuns probably chose her for her lovely hair, and also because she was so tall. She seemed ill at ease in her finery, though, holding her star-tipped wand at an awkward angle and forgetting to wave it about as she’d been told to do. A real princess, Ailia could not help thinking, would be much more dignified.
Just then Father Damion came hurrying out of the door to the Paladins’ crypt, a lantern in his hand. (Why a lantern, instead of the traditional candle?) He stopped in his tracks at the sight of the procession, and stood staring at Lorelyn—admiring her in her festive garb, no doubt. Ailia felt a sudden twinge, almost of jealousy: the young man’s gaze was so fixed, so intense. She longed for him look at her in that same way.
As the light from Lorelyn’s candle-crown and the handheld tapers drew near, shadows went flitting into corners like fleeing phantoms. One dark shade that hung in the doorway behind Damion looked for a moment quite eerily like a man’s cloaked form, looming behind the priest: it was not Damion’s own shadow, for that lay to his right. With the light’s coming this black shade too withdrew, slipping back into the stairwell that led to the crypt; really it looked almost exactly like a man retreating down the stair, and she was reminded with a shiver of Lorelyn’s wild story about the cowled ghost in the chapel. But when the procession passed Damion, sweeping him into its flow, Ailia glanced through the doorway at the stairwell and saw no one there.
7
Star of Omen
AILIA STIRRED IN HER BED with a sigh. Though dawn was near, she hung still between sleep and waking, like a swimmer suspended between the sea’s dark depths and its sunlit surface. She had been dreaming, but only a few fragmentary images remained in her conscious mind: a dream-debris, slowly sinking back into the deeps from whi
ch she had just come. It must have been an interesting dream, for it had left her with an afterglow of enchantment, the sensation of having sojourned in some wondrous magical place. She struggled to secure its fading memory, to bring it back with her, like sunken treasure, into the waking world.
There had been something about a woman in it—a beautiful woman, wearing a golden crown . . . or no, it wasn’t a crown, it was her hair, lovely thick braids of golden hair like Lorelyn’s, wound about her head. And yet the impression of royalty still remained in Ailia’s memory of the woman. How do I know she was a queen? Somehow I’m sure she was one. And that glorious hair! She unpinned the braids, I remember: they fell loose like golden ropes, right down to the floor, and she sat there unbraiding them, until her hair flowed all about her, rippling and shining. Ailia ached with longing at the vision. What I’d give to have hair like that! And how beautiful her face was, with such blue eyes—but now I come to think of it, she didn’t look very happy. Worried, I think. Yes—that was when her husband—I think it was her husband, the man with the dark hair and solemn-looking face—came in, and they talked together. I can hear their voices yet—they said something about an enemy coming, and having to protect—was it their daughter? Yes, their daughter, and her name was . . . what? El . . . El-something—
A damp washcloth hit her on the cheek, and the rest of the dream vanished at once beyond recall. “Get up, Worm,” called Lusina’s voice. “Morning bell’s rung.”
Ailia sat up with a groan. What a shame! I’ve never had such a vivid dream before. I’m sure it would have made a splendid story to tell, and now most of it’s gone forever . . . It was curious how often one forgot the details of dreams, she reflected as she joined the queue for the washbasin. And what of those you never even knew you’d had? It was as though you were not one person but two, and one kept secrets from the other.
Lusina kept looking at her and sniggering, but Ailia ignored her; the girl’s malice was now the exception rather than the rule. Lorelyn’s staunch defense of the Island girl might have had something to do with it: Lusina and the others had by now learned not to criticize Ailia in her presence. Indeed, now that final examinations were not far off, a few of them had even approached Ailia for help with their studies.
“The nerve of them!” Lorelyn exclaimed in indignation. “Picking your brains—and after they were so horrid to you, too!”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Ailia replied. “They look so sheepish when they come to me, it’s rather funny. I don’t feel angry with them anymore.”
She glanced out the dormitory window. Only a few pathetic rags of snow lingered, lying under bushes and in little dints and hollows in the ground: winter was truly over. She had thought at first that it must be an early thaw, until she spied green shoots tonguing up through the earth, and flowers beginning to unfurl their petals: snowdrops, crocuses. In winter! thought Ailia, amazed, for back on the Island flowers would not appear for at least another month. Tree branches that a few weeks ago had been black and barren as charred sticks in a hearth now showed countless little pregnant swellings; widening mirrors of meltwater reflected the softened blue of the sky, and the grass beneath their still surfaces grew green as seaweeds in a tidepool. The winds were warmer and brought the moist organic smells of spring in through the window, now opened at the bottom to let in the fresh air.
With the vernal equinox the year began anew, in the festival of Tarmalia, the Kindling of the Stars, which celebrated the Creation. Last night they had attended the midnight service in the Chapel of the Paladins. Its cavernous interior was lit with hundreds of candles to symbolize the new-made stars, and Father Damion presided, wearing over his robe the golden festal mantle that was the gift of the nuns to the chapel, embroidered on the back with the figure of Saint Athariel subduing the dragon. Ailia could not take her eyes from him. He was so beautiful that it hurt her; she had never in all her life striven so hard to commit detail to memory. As she waited for her turn to wash, sunlight bannered through the dormitory windows; but Ailia saw only the chapel’s weave of shadow and fire, and at its center the man who seemed made of light.
She was troubled at the increasing oddness of her behavior around Damion. Once content with worshipping him shyly from afar, she had of late taken greater pains with her appearance whenever she knew he would be near. Last night she had added ribands to her hair and arranged it in a new style, braided at the temples, in the hope that his gaze might light and linger on her for a moment. It was foolish and she knew it: she was nothing to the priest, and never could be. But for a mere instant she had half persuaded herself that he had indeed looked her way briefly, and at the close of the service she had walked out in a daze of bliss.
A voice spoke in the line behind her. “Wasn’t Father Damion magnificent last night?” Belina exclaimed.
Ailia gave a little guilty start to hear her own thoughts so exactly echoed. “The chaplain?” she murmured, feigning surprise.
“Oh, Ailia!” cried Belina, turning on her. “Your head’s always in the clouds. I don’t believe you’ve even noticed Damion—and him so handsome! We’re all in love with him.”
“Belina, Damion’s a priest!” reproved Arianlyn. “Really, you’re all being a bit silly about him, girls. He’s taken a vow of celibacy, remember.”
“I know,” said Belina regretfully. “What a waste of such a comely man!” Several girls sighed along with her.
Hearing her classmates discuss Damion gave Ailia a strange jealous feeling. She, who had never minded sharing anything before, felt resentful that they too should enjoy her angel-priest’s beauty. And they spoke of him in such a crude, common way—as though he were just an ordinary man! Nevertheless, she found herself listening hungrily to their conversation as they walked downstairs to breakfast, hoping she might learn something interesting.
“Cheer up, you lot,” said Janeth in her most ironic voice. “The word around the Academy is that he’s struggling with his faith. He’s been to see the abbot and prior several times over the past few months: they’re his confessors, you know. Maybe he’ll leave the priesthood altogether, and marry one of you.”
Ailia almost choked. Damion married! This was worse than the thought of him leaving the Academy. She felt a sudden, irrational spasm of hate for the hypothetical wife.
“I think he’s got a lady love already,” declared Lusina.
“Oh no!” Belina gasped.
“He’s always going off for long walks through the countryside—visiting some country lass in her cottage, I’ll wager.”
“Lusina!” exclaimed Arianlyn, appalled. “You mustn’t say such things!”
Lusina tossed her dark head. “You’ll see—there’s a woman at the bottom of this. Faith struggle, indeed! There’s only one reason a man like that leaves the priesthood!”
Ailia could not bear to hear any more of this. She lagged behind the others, her face flushing with annoyance, until their chattering voices were far ahead of her.
Lorelyn too walked at the rear of the procession, and her face was long—though for a different reason, Ailia knew. Mother Abbess had summoned Lorelyn to her office in the cloister the day before, no doubt to give her a reprimand of some sort. The tall blonde girl had looked dejected ever since. Ailia glanced at her, feeling a vague sense of guilt. Ever since the Trynalia service she had kept a slight distance from Lorelyn. The envy she had felt for the other girl then, fleeting as it had been, alarmed her. She had examined her conscience, worried that she was cultivating Lorelyn not out of real friendship, but only from a desire to get closer to Father Damion. And so she had withdrawn from her a little in the last few months.
But there was such an air of misery in Lorelyn’s drooping posture and downcast gaze that Ailia, who had intended to slip quietly behind her, hesitated and then walked at the girl’s side instead. “Are you all right, Lori?” she inquired.
“No,” Lorelyn replied, her tone morose. “I’m all wrong.” She raised her head and looked straight at
Ailia, who as usual found it rather difficult to meet her eyes. They were such a pale, clear blue, at once ethereal and piercing. Sometimes they seemed to Ailia like an angel’s eyes, and at other times like a child’s. Under the burning purity of their gaze she always felt somehow abashed, though there was neither accusation nor reproach in them.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Did Reverend Mother scold you about something?”
Lorelyn shook her head, looking doleful. “Scold me? I only wish she had! No, she sent for me to tell me that I ought to think of taking the veil. I told her I don’t want to be a nun, but she says I ought to give it some thought. The nuns will look after me, feed and clothe and shelter me if I go to live with them. I know she meant to be kind, Ailia, and really there isn’t much else for me to do. I’m an orphan, and poor as a temple mouse. But I just can’t bear the thought of it: changing my name to something dreary like Prudence or Piety, and trailing about in heavy robes and veil for the rest of my life.”
Ailia tried a cheery tone. “It isn’t such a terrible thing to be a nun. I’ve been thinking about it myself.”
Lorelyn’s pale eyes stared. “You want to go into the cloister?”
“Why not?” Ailia returned, with some force. “Why is it so much worse to enter a convent than to marry and have babies until you’re ready to die of exhaustion? If I were a nun I could go on studying all my life—read histories and dissertations, perhaps even write a few of my own—” She stopped short, a little taken aback by her own vehemence.
“Well, you’re clever after all,” agreed Lorelyn, “so I suppose you wouldn’t mind it. But I’d feel like a prisoner in there.” She looked out a window at the high barred gate of the inner cloister, revulsion plain in her face.
