The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Damion nearly stopped breathing. The shock of the shared vision, the tale of his parentage—all receded in importance. If this account was true, then all his deepest anxieties were confirmed. He looked again at the double roll of parchment, old and crumbling, seemingly innocuous. “It ought to be destroyed, Ana. What if they find it? It may be worthless in itself, but if their king is ready to go to war for it—”

  “Is that your worst fear?” said Ana. “The Zimbourans are only the least part of what we have to face, Damion. They are tools of the dark power, of Modrian-Valdur: instruments of his will. But he has other weapons, older and greater, to use against us.” Greymalkin suddenly hissed and arched her back, reacting to her mistress’s tone of voice, perhaps. “It is these great powers and principalities we have to fear, not the Zimbouran people,” she added, her face solemn. “Khalazar is a deluded man: I doubt the enemy’s true incarnation has come yet. That is not to say that Khalazar is no danger. Through him, and other tyrants like him, Valdur seeks to pervert and destroy the world. It is always the same pattern, the same tale told again and again: the face of our foe is but the mask of Valdur.”

  “You Nemerei have some dangerous enemies, haven’t you?”

  “I would hardly want them for friends,” she replied lightly. She went back to the makeshift altar, gazing down at the scroll. “My most pressing need is for a ship to take me to the far north. I must seek out Trynisia, and the Stone. So, you see, I cannot destroy the scroll. I need the sea chart and the sacred writings. And to make a copy is no solution, for it too can fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Ana, you’ll never get any sea captain to go to the arctic ocean. Too many expeditions have never returned.”

  She nodded. “It is a serious problem, indeed. But I must get there somehow.”

  “You’re afraid the Zimbourans might get to the Star Stone first, aren’t you?” he asked, voicing his own worry. “That Khalazar will find it and take it home—and then try to conquer the world?”

  “The Zimbourans will be seeking it, yes: but they at least do not know where it is. They have never seen the scroll. Our other enemies—the great powers—also desire it: and they know full well where it lies. I must go to Trynisia. The Tryna Lia’s time is come.”

  “You mean Lorelyn, don’t you? You can’t really believe that girl is the . . . the—”

  “Lorelyn,” Ana said, “is only an adoptive name, given her by the Jana monks. She may well have another. The true name of the Tryna Lia is Elmiria.” The filmy eyes were unreadable in the candlelight. “The name given her by her mother.”

  “And who was her mother? A goddess—or a mortal woman?”

  “I would say she was both, in a manner of speaking.”

  Damion groaned. “More riddles!”

  Ana looked thoughtful. “One day, perhaps, I may be able to give you a straight answer,” she said. “The truth is that I do not know everything yet. In the meantime, I must ask you to keep your promise and say nothing of this to anyone—anyone at all. If those Zimbouran spies should learn about this—that Lorelyn is our prophesied leader, our Princess—you know what they will do.”

  He stared at her in growing horror as her words sank in. The Tryna Lia was to battle the Dark Prince, the incarnation of Valdur: and King Khalazar claimed to be that incarnation. If Lorelyn were identified with that other prophetic figure . . .

  “Yes.” Ana, watching his face, nodded her white head. “They will kill her, Damion.”

  THAT EVENING AILIA and her classmates were allowed to go to the Spring Fair in Raimar, accompanied by two of the novice nuns. Lorelyn did not join the party. She had been withdrawn and remote all day, not answering right away when spoken to: it was as though she were not attuned to the real world at all, but in-habited some other realm where no one could follow. When Lorelyn announced that she would not go with the others on their excursion, Ailia felt disquieted, though she could not say quite what it was that troubled her. But she thrust the feeling aside, and joined the others with their chaperons.

  As they descended the steep path to the city they could see that the festival was already in full swing. People danced in the streets below, and strains of merry music came wafting up to them. Hanging stars of silver and gold paper turned, glittering, in the breeze, and rows of brightly colored lanterns glowed in the trees that lined the wider avenues. The fair itself was held in the central marketplace of the city. Ailia had never seen an open-air market before: Great Island’s buying and bartering took place in large, fusty, fish-smelling halls, owing to the usually inclement weather. Nor had she ever seen such a bewildering variety of goods as that which now greeted her eyes. There were sweetmeats of every imaginable kind in these stalls, and jewelry, and embroidery, and woodcarvings; there were sculptures carved from huge blocks of butter, and strange exotic fruits and spices brought from Marakor. And everywhere she looked there were eggs, the symbol of Creation: real eggs with painted and gilded shells, others that were confections of sugar, or fashioned from glass or porcelain. It was customary at Tarmalia to give gifts in this shape. Small children, waking to find the festival eggs their parents set beside their beds, believed the magic Elmir bird had laid them.

  Watched over by Sister Serenity and Sister Hope, the girls went from stall to stall, buying cheap trinkets and sweets and painted eggs, skirting jugglers and street minstrels and revelers in masquerade costume. Walking around one booth, Ailia came face to face with a princess of olden days, the sleeves of her ivory- colored gown hanging almost to her ankles, her flowing dark hair crowned with gilt and glass gems. A man strode by on stilts, trailed by shouting children. Most wonderful of all was a knight in very real-looking armor, riding through the market on a huge black horse in full jousting panoply. His visor was down, and there was a steel crown upon his helmet surmounted by a spread-winged dragon. There was also the device of a red dragon rampant on his shield and tabard, and on the flowing black caparison of his horse. Of course—Prince Morlyn, she thought in delight as the figure rode majestically past. What a pity Lorelyn didn’t come: she would have enjoyed seeing that!

  Turning back toward the stalls, she suddenly caught sight of her cousin Jaimon: she was on the point of hailing him when she noticed that he was not alone. With him was a young flaxen-haired girl in peasant attire, and Ailia could not help noticing how close together they stood, with shoulders nearly touching. Even as she watched them, she saw Jaimon slip his arm through the girl’s, who made no objection. The two walked on, then paused to watch a group of young people dancing around a small tree, its still-bare boughs hung with Tanaura decorations. The dancers’ bodies were liberally bedecked with garlands, twigs from shrubs and fruit trees that they had cut and forced into early flower; they laughed and sang in lusty voices as they capered to a lively tune played by a lad on a wooden flute.

  Something deep within Ailia stirred at that music; it beat in her blood like a pulse, like the waking impatience of spring itself. She stared at her cousin and his girl. It was not jealousy, rather a sudden understanding that now burst upon her. She rejected it at once in utter dismay.

  I am not in love, she told herself firmly. I’m not!

  She had always been determined not to fall in love: it led, she knew, inevitably to marriage and the heavy burdens of home and children. Romantic tales and ballads were all very well, but reality was a different matter. Her own life, Ailia resolved, would be dedicated to reading and learning. She gazed now at the laughing blonde girl, her plump bare arm about Jaimon’s shoulders, and she was disturbed to feel a little flutter beneath her own boned bodice. She would not have exchanged places with the girl: she felt for her cousin only the same warm affection she had known since their earliest childhood.

  But what, said a voice within her, if he were Damion Athariel?

  Her heart leaped even as her mind recoiled. No, it was too stupid: it put her on a level with Belina and the others. But recalling what the other girls had said about Damion also made her remember, w
ith alarm, the fierce possessiveness she felt whenever they spoke of him. She turned away from the dancers, her face flushing. Jaimon and his girl also moved on, to watch an open-air Creation play. A man dressed as God in gold robe and mask was reciting a speech to some actors dressed as animals. It looked interesting, but Ailia did not want to be seen by her cousin now. He might think she was tagging after him, and he likely wanted to be alone with his lady friend. She looked around for the other girls, and saw them standing by a complex of tents that dominated the eastern end of the market square. One housed a rather raucous puppet show, while in front of another a conjuror entertained onlookers with sleight-of-hand tricks. The convent girls had gathered to watch him, but a smaller tent caught Ailia’s eye. Its sign, decorated with silver stars, read “Fortunes.” Curious, she went up to the tent and looked in.

  A little old woman sat in the dim interior before a small table, clad in a gauzy gray gown. A gray silk scarf, patterned with stars, was wound about her head and shoulders. Before her on the table lay a globe of clear glass or crystal into which she appeared at first to be gazing. Then as she turned toward Ailia the girl saw that the old woman’s eyes were faded and filmy. She must be blind.

  “Hello?” called the old woman. “Who is it? Do you wish to learn of your future?”

  Ailia did not believe in astrology, but the old woman sounded so hopeful that it seemed a shame to disappoint her. Everyone else was watching the magician, who had just turned a bouquet of flowers into a scarf and pulled a live pigeon from it. She fished in her pocket for a coin. “I’d like to hear my fortune, please,” she said.

  “Ah,” said the old woman, smiling. “Very well!”

  It was all in fun, thought Ailia defensively, as she sat down opposite the old woman. A gray cat rose from its cushion in the corner and rubbed its sides against her ankles. She reached down to pet it and the animal purred loudly.

  “That is Greymalkin,” said the old woman. “So: you come from the convent.” The girl looked at her in surprise, wondering if she were blind after all: she had obviously seen the white gown. The woman smiled. “I do not see only with my eyes, but with the inner Sight. I’m a witch: old Ana, they call me.”

  Old Ana. Ailia seemed to recall hearing about this woman from her year-mates. She was supposed to be insane, wasn’t she? The girl studied the old, faded face opposite her, but it seemed to her placid and gentle. Ailia found herself thinking suddenly, She was beautiful once.

  “So, my dear,” Ana said, “you wish to know your future.”

  “Yes, please,” she answered. “My name’s Ailia Shipwright, by the way.”

  The old woman smiled. “How do you do. Well, then, let us see what the Fates have in store.” She might have been a kindly grandmother offering a cup of tea. “There’s nothing at all to be frightened of, you know. Some people of the Faith are a little alarmed by fortune-telling—they say it’s the work of the Evil One, but it isn’t really. All you must do is sit there and think—all about yourself, your life, and everything that matters to you, and I will see what I can read in it.” She sat very still as Ailia thought, then she said in clear precise tones, “You have traveled a great distance over water.”

  “Yes,” admitted Ailia. It was, of course, a stock phrase of fortune-tellers, but the coincidence was a bit startling.

  “You will travel over water again,” Ana continued, “on a journey that you will share with others. I see many lives touching yours. But I see also a path that you must walk alone. It is a dark path, but at its end I see a light.”

  Her strange filmy eyes opened, and she seemed to look right at Ailia for a moment—at, through, and beyond her. There was a brief silence, during which the faint pulse of the dance music could be heard through the tent’s thin walls.

  “Is that all?” asked Ailia at last, feeling rather disappointed.

  “That is all,” said Ana. “I do not, like some fortune-tellers, pretend to know all the future. I merely detect patterns of probability, projections that have their roots in the present. The future is not graven in stone, you know; we are not like those players out in the square, following a script already written for us. There is always free will. It is the way of the Tanaura, the Tree of Life.

  “To the Elei the universe was like a great tree, in whose boughs all living things dwelt. They were right, as mythmakers so often are. The universe of space and time has the form of a tree, with many branches forever growing and dividing. When one of us pursues a certain course of action, it creates a consequential chain of events—like a new twig sprouting from its parent limb. You hesitated just a little before entering my tent, didn’t you? If you hadn’t come in, we should not now be having this conversation, and whatever small change it may make in you would never have taken place. The cosmos itself would have followed a different path. But you did come in, and we are talking, and so a new branch grows upon the Tree of Being. Who can say what fruit it will bear?”

  “But . . . I’m just an ordinary person,” said Ailia, puzzled. “How can I change the cosmos?”

  “The future of all things great is bound up in all things small. You are a part of the pattern, and more important than you realize.” Ana smiled.

  “But you mentioned the Fates,” said Ailia, puzzled.

  “I wasn’t speaking of predestination. I used an old word: Fates, or Fays: the ancient powers of earth and sea and sky, and of the celestial bodies.” Ana indicated the stars embroidered upon her scarf. “Naturally, they too have some influence on the pattern. “From the old word Fay comes the term faerie: it was once Fayerie, the power of the Fays.”

  “I used to believe in faeries,” said Ailia wistfully, “when I was small.”

  “But not anymore? What a pity! You must be thinking of all the strange fancies that have arisen over the ages. To you faeries are quaint little people who live in flowers and under toadstools. The Elei knew better: to them the inhabitants of the higher realms were powers, forces for good—and for evil.”

  “Higher realms?”

  Ana nodded. “There are other planes beside this one, and worlds beyond the world. I know them all. I see only imperfectly—like the sibyls of old, who veiled their faces to shut out the material world—and so I must rely on the mind’s vision, not the eye’s. Such a person can behold the inner world: the Hamadryad in the tree, the Salamander in the flame, the spirit in the shell of the body. The higher planes lie beyond the world that we know with our eyes and ears and other senses. You come from Great Island, do you not?”

  “Why—yes,” replied Ailia, surprised anew. Had the old woman recognized her accent?

  “Think of your island as the world. It is bounded on all sides by the sea, a limited space, and those who live on it know it well—or so they think. For you Islanders are mountain-dwellers, though you do not know it: your home is in fact the summit of a mighty sea-mount, thrusting up through the surface of the ocean. And far down in the murky deeps the slopes of that mountain are inhabited by many other things—strange sea-denizens, beasts and fish of which no Islander will ever catch a glimpse. Our universe is the same. The physical realm, the world we know, is but a small part of it. It has other dimensions—depths you cannot plumb, inhabitants you cannot see.”

  Ailia had listened to all of this with growing fascination, and now for the merest of instants she entertained the thought, Suppose she is right. What if the reality she had always believed in was nothing more than a false perception: if this “world” was only a small part of some other, larger realm? It was no stranger than many of the things she had learned in her philosophy classes.

  Then the brief, thrilling instant passed and was replaced all at once with guilty fear. She said she was a witch! Is she trying to make a witch of me, too? Ailia sprang to her feet, almost knocking over her chair. “I must go,” she exclaimed.

  “You are frightened,” remarked Ana. “I am sorry.” She sounded as though she meant it, and Ailia felt a twinge of compunction.

  “It’s
time I went back to join the other girls, that’s all,” she amended hastily. “I don’t want them to think I’m lost. Thank you for everything.” She put her coin down on the table, but Ana did not reach for it.

  “Goodbye, Ailia,” the old woman said quietly. “I think we will meet again. But you’re quite right, you’d better go now: the Sisters will be looking for you.”

  Ailia all but bolted out of the tent. She looked around her for the other Academy girls as she reentered the square, then gave a little start.

  The man in the knight’s costume had ridden his great caparisoned steed right into the market square and halted directly opposite Ana’s tent. Something in his posture suggested hostility, even malevolence; and though his eyes were invisible behind the slits of his steel visor, she had the unnerving impression that he was looking straight at her.

  HOURS LATER, AS THE TIRED schoolgirls climbed the road to the convent, Ailia told Arianlyn about her unsettling encounter with old Ana.

  “Astrology is a lot of nonsense,” Janeth declared, overhearing. “The stars are just big sparks left over from the Primordial Fire that formed the cosmos, and the planets are embers that are nearly burnt out. That’s what the astronomy magister says. But you still find people who think they’re quick-tempered because they were born under Arkurion.”

  “Why Arkurion?” Arianlyn asked.

  “It was the Choleric Star,” Ailia explained. “Each of the planets was supposed to correspond to an element. Arkurion was the Planet of Fire, Talandria the Water Planet, Valdys the Earth Planet, Iantha the Planet of Air, and Arainia the Planet of Quintessence, the holy element. A man named Welessan wrote about them. He said that they move about in the sky because they’re set into spinning crystal spheres, each one bigger than the last like sections of an onion, with Mera—the world—at the center. Welessan said that each of these spheres was a separate Heaven, inhabited by angels and other spirits. He saw them himself, in a sort of vision he had in the temple at Liamar. He and a sibyl journeyed in spirit to the moon, where they stood and looked down at the world. Then they went on to the Second Heaven, the sphere of the Morning Star, which held a beautiful paradise. In the Third Heaven Welessan saw a burning plain with rivers of fire, and Salamanders living there: fire-elementals, that is, not the little newt-things.”