The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “The convent isn’t a prison,” Ailia began.

  “It certainly looks like one. And I thought a nun had to have a—what-d’you-call-it?—a vacation.”

  “Vocation,” Ailia corrected. “Well, perhaps you have one and don’t realize it yet.”

  Lorelyn said nothing for a moment. “There is something I should be doing,” she stated presently, “but it hasn’t anything to do with the cloister. And if they shut me up in there, I’ll never be able to do it.”

  Ailia was puzzled. “But what exactly is it you want to do?”

  Lorelyn’s face fell. “That’s the trouble. I don’t know—it’s just a feeling. Do you remember that evening when I talked about being a knight? I felt I’d come close to learning what I’m here for.” She stood still, gazing off into space. “I’m meant to fight—to protect something. If only I knew what it was!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The other girl sighed. “Neither do I. That’s the worst of it. And no one can help me.”

  Ailia searched for more words of comfort, but she could find nothing to say. After a moment Lorelyn turned on her heel and strode off, her shoulders hunched and unhappy.

  I CANNOT ACCEPT IT, Father,” Damion told the abbot. “The whole business is quite mad.”

  The two men stood alone in the empty, sunlit chapel. The elderly abbot wore a worried frown on his thin, lined face. “That’s what some of the monks say,” he replied. “Those who know, that is. A secret like this one is bound to be a burden. But a sacred vow is . . . well, sacred. The Brothers have kept the location of the catacombs secret for centuries, even when there were no Paladins or Nemerei to hide in them. We must continue to honor our promise.”

  Damion turned to face him. “And the sanctity of the confessional? Is that not to be honored too?”

  “You don’t still believe the good prior broke it?”

  Damion turned away again. “I don’t want to believe that he did. He swore, on everything sacred, that he didn’t. But confound it all, Father—what other explanation is there? The only person I told about it aside from the prior was Kaithan Athariel, and he would never have anything to do with these people!”

  “The Second Sight,” murmured the abbot. “That’s what we call it in my homeland, in Rialain. There’s many a Rialainish man and woman born with the Sight. We consider it a gift from God.”

  Damion stared at him. “Some say it’s the opposite—the work of the Fiend.”

  “True enough, but I never could see any harm in it. In Rialain those with the Sight use it to help others—search for missing children, and so on. My own mother, bless her, often had premonitions. And weren’t the holy prophets themselves given visions of the future? How can the Sight be evil, then?”

  But Damion did not want to talk to someone who believed in clairvoyance. He wanted desperately to be told that it was all nonsense, that Ana and her followers were frauds, that none of this had anything at all to do with him . . . Why was he so anxious not to believe in it himself?

  Because it changes everything, he thought in a sudden instant of clarity. I wanted to be like Kaithan: to believe in a God who was only another word for justice, a Faith that was only another word for discipline, an orderly universe obedient to Reason . . . If I let myself believe in clairvoyance, I’ll end up believing in it all—magic and miracles, an absolute Good . . . an absolute Evil. He shivered.

  He had dreamed again in the night—a dream both beautiful and troubling.

  The abbot watched him with a pensive eye. “The Nemerei are our brethren, Damion: I’ve observed their rites for years now, and they’ve no more to do with black magic or demon-worship than ours. But there are still some who would like to see them rounded up and imprisoned. Patriarch Norvyn Winter at the High Temple, for one—he’d start up the whole Inquisition again, if he could. He’s always looking for heretics these days. He’s taken to riding about the countryside with a group of Zimbouran men for his personal guard—”

  Damion froze. “Did you say Zimbourans?”

  “Yes. They’re converts to our faith, who fled King Khalazar’s reign—or so they claim.”

  “Converts my foot! Spies, more likely. They might even be here to find the scroll for their king!”

  “That is true. It would not be his first attempt. But Patriarch Winter won’t be separated from his guard. He has his eye on the Supreme Patriarch’s throne, it’s said, now that the Holy Father has become so frail. It looks well for him to be seen with heathen converts walking tamely at his heels. People might think he converted them himself.” The old man walked away down the aisle, shaking his head. “If he becomes Supreme Patriarch, we’ll see troubled times indeed.”

  Damion frowned. Concerns about witches and clairvoyance faded, replaced by this real and immediate threat. He stood for a few moments struggling with himself. Then he lit a candle, and opened the door that led to the crypt and the catacombs beyond.

  THE VAST DIM WARREN of tunnels was empty, but Damion heard distant echoing voices and followed them into the scroll room, where he found Ana sitting in a chair beside the makeshift altar. Before her squatted Ralf the village idiot, uttering his mournful seagull sounds and tossing his head about. She listened attentively, nodding her head from time to time or making comments of her own, for all the world as if this were a normal conversation. At Damion’s approach Ralf turned and howled, showing a bruised cheek and black eye.

  Ana smiled at Damion. “This seems to be my day for visitors,” she observed. “I will be with you in a moment, Father.” She took Ralf’s left forearm in her hands. There was, Damion saw, a seeping wound just above the elbow, and the hand was bandaged.

  As he waited for Ana to finish her ministrations, he glanced around the room. The back of its dim candlelit interior was cluttered with objects he had not noticed on his first visit: now he recognized them as the crates and other crude furnishings from Ana’s cave home. Wolf lay on the floor not far away, and Greymalkin sat at her feet; seeing Damion, the big dog growled low in its throat, but the cat rose and headed straight for the priest, winding her lean gray body in and out of the young man’s ankles. Damion walked over to look at the wound on Ralf’s arm: it was large and jagged, purplish round the edges, and in the center was a whitish mass. He uttered an oath and recoiled in disgust, his hand to his mouth. There was a clump of pale, writhing maggots in the open wound.

  Ana ran a finger around the lips of the wound, then nodded. “Good. That’s healing very nicely, Ralf.”

  The man made another baying sound and flapped his free hand. Damion stared, swallowing revulsion. Could she not see? “Ana—his wound, it’s full of worms—”

  “I know,” she cut him off. “I put them there.”

  “Put them there?”

  “To clean it.” Calmly she took a maggot between her thumb and forefinger, plucking it from the wound. Opening a small wooden box that sat beside her chair, she dropped the worm in. “They eat away dead tissue, and their presence also halts infection. They’ve done their work, Ralf. And now for the hand.” She twitched the last worm from the wound and placed it in the box, then took Ralf’s left hand in her own and unwrapped the bandages. The palm was scarred and the thumb swollen and purple; crude stitches held torn skin together at its base.

  “His thumb was almost severed, you see: it was quite a task for me to sew it back on again. But the blood is still not flowing properly through it; it’s clotting up. You’ll need a leech or two,” she told Ralf.

  Sickened but too fascinated to look away, Damion watched as she fetched a pail from the far corner of the room and plunged her hand into it. There were several dark shapes floating in the water within the pail. She drew out one, a slimy green sluglike shape with red streaks along its back. He felt compelled to protest: “No one uses leeches nowadays, Ana!”

  “I do,” was her quiet reply. “The creatures have been misused in the past by ignorant physicians, but they can do a great deal of good when used properly.�
� She held the leech up to the bloated thumb until its suckerlike mouth took a firm hold. “No pain, Ralf?” she asked. The man made no reply, but his bruised face was placid. “Good. It shouldn’t hurt,” she explained to Damion. “Leeches secrete a fluid from their mouths that deadens pain—that is how they are able to attach themselves without your noticing . . . There, it’s drawing out the blood now.” The leech’s green body began to swell. “You see, Father Damion, how a creature maligned by man can actually do him good? You may go home now, Ralf. Take care you don’t knock the leech off until it has had its fill. Those tissues must be drained, and the blood set to flowing freely again. When you remove the leech, wash the wound well, and come back to see me again in a day or two.”

  The injured man rose and shuffled out of the room, still moaning and gesticulating with his free hand. Damion stared after Ralf’s retreating back. “How was he hurt?” he asked Ana.

  “He was set upon by some very unpleasant men in an alley of the city. He is only alive because his attackers thought he would not be able tell the authorities who hurt him. But he could tell me.” She got up and walked over to the scroll table. “You came about this, didn’t you? You are quite right about the danger it poses, Father Damion. But the scroll of Bereborn is safe in our keeping, I promise.”

  “Is it?” he challenged. “I just learned there might be more Zimbouran spies here in Maurainia. I think they may be posing as converts.”

  “I know all about them. It was they who attacked poor Ralf.”

  “They did!” He stared. “But why would they harm Ralf?”

  “He has been spying on them for us. We thought they would never suspect him because everyone believes he is simple, and he could always pretend that he only wanted to beg from them. But when the Zimbouran men saw him following them through the back alleys they beat him and slashed him with knives. It would appear they take no chances.” Her tone was bland.

  “It’s outrageous.” Damion turned hot with anger. “They can’t do such things here, to our people. I’ll complain to the Patriarch, and the magistrates. I’ll see that Ralf has justice—”

  “No use, I’m afraid. Ralf cannot speak, so he cannot testify in court. And I could not speak on his behalf: no magistrate would believe that I can understand him.”

  “And can you?” he asked.

  “We speak the wordless language, Ralf and I,” she answered, returning the pail and box to the far side of the room. “The language of thought. Words are so often a distortion or concealment of thought rather than its true expression. When Ralf and I talk together, we may speak aloud from time to time out of habit, but we really communicate with our minds, not our mouths.” Ana shook her head. “Poor Ralf! There is nothing at all wrong with his mind, but an inborn condition deprives him of speech. He is not an idiot—such an unpleasant word!”

  “It’s a Nemerei ability, then, this wordless language?”

  “It is.” She smiled. “The heart of our conspiracy.”

  Damion stared into the withered old face. Who was this woman? No one seemed to know where she had come from, how long she had lived in this land, how old she was. The villagers told many tales about her. She had, it was said, an almost magical influence on animals. Birds, rabbits, deer—none of these, they said, showed any fear of old Ana, but would come right up to her, even allow her to touch them. She had been seen taking some honey from a hive in an old oak tree—”and the wild bees didn’t sting her,” the astounded witness reported. Some people, Damion knew, had a natural way with wild animals, and were able to calm them with slow gentle movements and a soft tone of voice. But the villagers believed that Ana possessed sorcerous powers.

  And did she?

  Damion met her veiled gaze. “Tell me what I’m thinking right now, Ana.”

  She shook her head. “No, Damion,” she answered gently. “It doesn’t work that way. Nemerei cannot read minds. We may share what we wish, but our thoughts are our own. It is rather like the monastery at the Academy: in the corridors, chapel, and refectory the monks gather together, yet at night when they go to their cells and close their doors, each monk is alone. We Nemerei can open the doors of our minds to one another, but none may enter without leave; and if we venture into the communal place where minds can meet, it is always by choice. If you were to project a thought toward me, though—concentrate on something, and will me to see it—then I could share it.”

  Damion closed his eyes. Into his mind sprang the dream he’d had the night before: the dream of the golden-haired woman from his first vision. She was seated in a chair, he recalled, clad in a robe of royal blue, her hair bound atop her head in shining braids. Her daughter was in her arms: not a child in this scene but an infant, tiny in a white gown that hung to the floor, her hair only a few golden wisps on her head. Her great eyes, blue as her mother’s, were wide open and wondering, seeming to gaze straight into his own. On waking he had told himself that the Nemerei at their meeting in the catacombs described dreams similar to this one, so it was perhaps unsurprising that his overtaxed mind conjured the same image. But it still seemed so vivid, so real . . . With all his might he concentrated on the scene.

  “Ah—the little Tryna Lia with her mother,” said Ana’s voice softly. “She cannot have been a week old at the time . . .”

  Damion’s eyes snapped open. He stared at her, shaken. “How can you—do that?”

  “It is a gift—an ability you and I both possess. Your mother had the Sight too: it is often passed down from parents to their children.”

  “My mother had it? How can you know that?”

  “I recognized her, in the vision we both shared in the cave.” Ana sat down on a bench, and her cat leaped up beside her: she stroked it absently as she talked. “I would have told you, but you left in such a hurry. Ah, yes, I remember her . . . Her name was Elthina. She lived alone in the mountains: a free spirit you might call her. I used to meet with her now and again, and we also communed with our minds. But she left the mountains many years ago. There was a man of the city, Arthon, a man who had dreams of one day restoring the Paladin order . . . She loved him very much. They used to meet in the woods on Selenna. But then he died, with all his ambitions unfulfilled, and she could not bear to return to the place. When I found you in my cave I was quite certain it was Elthina who placed you there, and the vision that you and I later shared confirmed it. Back then I thought of raising you myself, as she plainly desired. But I decided it would be better for you to live among children your own age, and so I took you to the monks.”

  Damion turned away from her, pondering all this, still not quite wanting to believe her but having no reason now to doubt her word. A Nemerei mother, a father fascinated by knights and chivalry . . . it would explain so much about his own life. But he could not speak of it, not yet. Instead he said, still without turning around, “You and your friends could abuse this . . . power. Even if you can’t read minds, you could be plotting and scheming together all the time, and the rest of the world would never know it.”

  A trace of sadness entered Ana’s voice. “I won’t say that no Nemerei has ever misused the gift, Damion. It has happened more than once in our history. But most of us use it responsibly, to help and not to harm. We would never use it to plot against others.”

  He turned and faced her again. “Then why do you call yourselves ‘conspirators’?”

  “There really isn’t any Maurish word for what we are. Conspirators—‘many who think as one’—comes the closest. That is what ‘Nemerei’ means, literally: ‘those who think together.’”

  “I thought it translated as ‘sorcerer.’”

  “Again, the Maurish term isn’t quite accurate. There is far more to so-called sorcery than the more dramatic magical feats, though in the old Academy of Andarion’s day many of these skills were taught—scrying, for instance, seeking visions by gazing at some reflecting surface; and glaumerie, the creation of harmless illusions; and ethereal projection. Many Paladins learned these skill
s: that is why they were executed for witchcraft during the time of the Inquisition. But only the White Magic was ever taught at Andarion’s Academy.

  “It all ended in the year 2497 with the Day of Disaster.” Her face was solemn. “On that day hundreds of shooting stars fell to the earth, and destroyed all they touched. Clouds of dust and the smoke of burning cities filled the skies and lingered for months afterwards, withering crops and giving the name Dark Age to the centuries that followed. But those early days were a time of figurative darkness too. Many of the Faithful believed the Disaster was a divine punishment, that the users of magic had incurred the Lord Aan’s wrath. To make matters worse, Brannar Andarion left no heir to rule Maurainia, and Trynisia, the seat of the old Commonwealth, was laid waste. So the holy Patriarchs moved to fill the void.”

  “They brought order to the kingdom,” interrupted Damion. “And they crowned a new king in time.”

  “That is true. But in the early days of the Interregnum fear of magic filled the people’s hearts, and so the Patriarchs appointed Inquisitors to purge all Nemerei from the land. Of course they could not hope to harm the great sorcerers, who could use their powers to escape. But many innocents were mistaken for Nemerei and punished or slain. The Paladins’ Academy was denounced and destroyed; ignorance and terror gripped the countries that once had been part of an orderly Commonwealth.” Ana sighed as she spoke.

  “But we must do something about these Zimbouran men!” urged Damion, steering her back to his main concern. “I know why they’re here in Maurainia. Their king wants that piece of parchment, there on your table.”

  “I know it,” she replied. “Khalazar sent an embassy to King Stefon last month, offering him a treaty of peace in exchange for one thing—a parchment scroll, containing some ancient writings sacred to Zimbourans. The Royal Academy had possession of this document, it was said, but had no right to it. Stefon sent some men to retrieve it, only to learn it had apparently been stolen.” She gave a little smile. “The embassy then left Maurainia—except for several Zimbourans who remained behind, claiming sanctuary, and asking to be allowed to remain in the country.”