The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “What were the other spheres like?” asked Janeth, curious in spite of herself.

  “The Fourth Heaven was the sphere of the Sun, ruled by the Sun Goddess. The Fifth Sphere belonged to Talandria, and was full of water: the Undines, a kind of mermaid, lived there. In Valdys the Earth Gnomes lived, and in Iantha Welessan saw winged Sylphs flying through banks of cloud. After they left the Seventh Heaven the sibyl took him up to the Starry Sphere, and he saw all of Lesser Heaven below him—‘as if it were a turning wheel,’ he says. Then he went on to a Ninth Sphere called Mid Heaven, which was the home of angels and filled with a glorious light, but the last sphere, High Heaven, was too holy for him to enter and the sibyl had to take him back to his body. I just love the way Welessan wrote about the spheres: you’d think they were real places he’d actually visited.”

  “What a fraud!” snorted Janeth. “And what fools people were in those days. It’s the sun that is at the center of the universe, not the world. And if there really were giant crystal spheres up there, they would have been smashed to pieces by that.” She pointed out to them the great comet whose recent appearance in the celestial landscape had caused such excitement among the learned and the superstitious alike. Ailia felt a thrill whenever she saw it—this celestial visitor making its regal processional through the stars, its luminous train sweeping behind it.

  “You can even see it in the daytime, if you know where to look,” Janeth told them.

  “The star that shines by day,” said Arianlyn suddenly. “The Jana scroll said that was the Tryna Lia’s sign, didn’t it?”

  “That’s a comet, not a star,” Janeth corrected.

  Wenda gave a squeal at that. “I forgot—I must take my comet pills!”

  “Your what?” asked Janeth.

  Wenda emptied out some small tablets from a glass vial. “Comet pills—they protect against the poisonous vapors and evil influences of comets. I bought them from a peddler at the fair.”

  “Nonsense!” said Janeth. “Comets don’t give off vapors, you little silly. As for being omens, that’s ridiculous.”

  “The Tryna Lia story isn’t scriptural, Arianlyn,” agreed Sister Serenity. “And even in the Apocrypha the passages about her are obviously meant to be symbolism. You don’t talk about real people being born in Heaven to goddesses, do you—or fighting dragons?”

  “Of course the dragon’s just a symbol for Valdur,” conceded Arianlyn, “and the part about the Tryna Lia being throned on the moon and so on is just symbolism. But I believe the Princess herself is real. She mayn’t be an ordinary person like you and me, but she’s real, and she may be coming soon.”

  “I always wanted to believe in her,” Ailia remarked. “It would be so comforting to feel that someone’s going to come and set all to rights here on the earth. And really, the sooner the better. Look at the terrible things that are happening: the Zimbourans, and their tyrant king—”

  Several exclamations interrupted her. A shooting star, cast out of the heavens by the passing comet, traced a brief arc of light across the western sky. Its trail of shimmering dust lingered for a fraction of a second after its fiery head vanished from view.

  Ailia gasped. “Isn’t it beautiful? I never saw such a sky! On nights like this I always wish I could fly. I’ve dreamt of it so often—skimming through the air. It always seems so real. When I wake up I could just cry with disappointment.”

  “Someday we’ll learn to fly,” Janeth opined with confidence. “If a bird can do it, so can a man. One of the magisters has drawn some diagrams for a flying vehicle, like a huge kite with a seat inside and canvas wings that can be made to flap up and down.”

  “Oh, he has designed it,” snorted Lusina. “That’s not to say it will work.”

  “Something will work, one day. We’ll conquer the skies the way we’ve conquered the seas.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Sister Hope admonished, looking prim. “I think if God had intended us to fly, He would have created us with that ability.”

  “But why?” asked Ailia, uncharacteristically rebellious. “Why would He give us souls and not wings?” She gazed skyward with yearning eyes. “And even if we do learn to fly we’ll never get to the stars. I suppose that’s why we’ve so many stories about stars coming down to us—the Morning Star Goddess, and the Star Stone—”

  “Why, who’s that out in the fields?” interjected Belina.

  Ailia came reluctantly back down to earth and looked in the direction Belina was pointing. There were two white-clad figures walking there in the darkness like drifting ghosts. As they drew nearer the girls saw that these were novice nuns, like Serenity and Hope, with shoulder-length veils and postulants’ gowns instead of full monastic robes.

  Sister Hope held her lantern higher. “It’s Sister Faith,” she exclaimed, “and that is Sister Angelica with her. Is anything wrong, Sisters?”

  “We hope not. Is Lorelyn with you?” one of the novices asked, moving into the lantern’s circle of light.

  “No,” Sister Hope answered. “She decided not to go to the fair, Angelica. I thought you knew.”

  “We’d hoped that perhaps she had changed her mind, and joined you in the city.” The young novice’s face was pale, and she sounded as though she were close to tears. “We’ve looked everywhere, but we can’t find her. She’s run away.”

  8

  The Black Knight

  DAMION SAT AT HIS WRITING desk with his chin propped on his hands, staring out the window.

  In front of him lay two notes. The first, written in an awkward childish hand, read: “I’m sorry but I was never meant to be a nun. Please don’t look for me.” It was signed simply “Lorelyn.” The other was penned in the same graceful old-fashioned hand as the letter that had appeared so mysteriously in his library book. The nuns had given him Lorelyn’s note; he had found the second earlier in the day when he returned from his visit with Ana in the catacombs. It was lying in plain sight on his writing desk. Though he made inquiries of all the servants and the scholars who lived on this floor, no one had seen or heard anyone go into his room. He glared down at the note in frustration.

  To the Reverend Damion Athariel:

  I can see that my previous letter has not had its desired effect. I give you fair warning: you are treading on dangerous ground, violating the rules of the Faith you profess to serve, and also (which is far more serious) trying my patience to its limit.

  One more word of warning, then: denounce the monks and expose the Nemerei cult, or I will do so in your stead—and condemn you along with them.

  Who was this anonymous writer—someone from the Academy, he wondered, a monk or magister or even a student who knew of the Nemerei and did not approve of the ancient vow? But why threaten him in this oblique fashion, instead of confronting him openly? And why only him? The abbot and prior had received no such letters. Why hadn’t this person gone straight to the Supreme Patriarch with his information, if he was so annoyed about it? Why expect Damion to take all the responsibility instead?

  His head ached at the temples. How he longed to talk to Kaithan Athariel about this matter! But his vow to the monks and the Nemerei bound him to silence. Perhaps he ought simply to distance himself from the entire affair. There was nothing more that he could do: the matter was out of his hands now, together with the scroll. As for Lorelyn, he was certain that she had gone to the catacombs again, and was with the Nemerei even now. He felt a pang of compunction. She was his responsibility. He had brought her here in the first place, and he had also known what the Nemerei believed her to be.

  “I’m sorry, but I was never meant to be a nun.” Did that mean Lorelyn had somehow learned of her “destiny” as their messianic leader? In that case, Ana and the other Nemerei had broken their half of the pact. They might have decided her danger was too great for her to be left in ignorance, and summoned her back to the catacombs for her protection. But she could hardly stay down there indefinitely. Should he have taken her someplace else when th
ere was still time? But where? He hadn’t the money to pay anyone to care for her. And what if she had not wanted to leave? He could hardly have dragged her away against her will. But he had promised Shan that he would keep the girl and the parchment safe, and he had failed in the latter trust: that this was not entirely his fault gave him little consolation. He must not fail again.

  The Nemerei would not be able keep her safe. One person already knew about the tunnel gatherings—the writer of the anonymous letters. And if he grew impatient waiting for Damion to take action, he would surely carry through on his threat to expose the Nemerei himself. Then the high Patriarchs would learn about Lorelyn, about the Nemerei’s beliefs concerning her—and Patriarch Norvyn Winter’s Zimbouran followers would learn of her too.

  “They will kill her,” Ana had said. Recalling the savage injuries the Zimbouran men had inflicted on Ralf, he did not doubt her words. If they could treat a harmless beggar so, what would they do to a girl they believed to be their God-king’s adversary?

  Damion paced the floor. What to do? He must save the girl; only he could do so, for outside of coven and cloister he alone knew of her danger. But how was it to be done? Should he follow the letter writer’s advice and go straight to the high Patriarchs himself, telling them of the hidden tunnels and the cult, and the peril in which Lorelyn had been placed? He could beg them not to tell Norvyn and his Zimbouran underlings about her. But in order to tell the Patriarchs these things he would have to betray the monks—to break the sacred vow he had sworn to them, as a priest of the True Faith, not to disclose the location of the Nemerei refuge. His promise had held him so far, and he had no real proof that the Nemerei had broken theirs. In Maurainia a man’s worth was measured by his fidelity to his sworn word. A priest was held to standards higher still: sacred vows were even more binding than secular oaths. The penalty for breaking such a vow, for any reason, was dismissal from the priesthood. He might save Lorelyn by breaking his word, but the personal cost to him would be high. Unless . . .

  Unless he first asked the Patriarchs to release him from the priesthood, since it was on his priestly honor that he had sworn.

  Damion ceased his pacing, arrested by this sudden thought. It was, he saw in an instant of utter clarity, the best possible solution. He would not be able to remain in orders in any case: at least by formally renouncing his vocation first he could leave the priesthood with some shred of dignity intact. Returning to his desk, he tossed the two notes aside and, taking up paper and quill, began to pen one of his own—to Abbot Hill.

  It took several drafts to get it exactly right, and when he had finished he penned another to the office of the Supreme Patriarch. More than an hour passed before he set his quill down again and stood, stretching his aching shoulders. He felt as exhausted as though he had been fighting a physical foe. But it was over: with the act of writing these letters, he had ended the most important chapter of his life. No matter that the messages had not yet been delivered, his vows not yet formally renounced. The decision had been made in his mind. Like the isle of Jana, dwindling in the wake of the fleeing ship, the world of the priesthood—with its aura of dignity and sanctity and antiquity, its glorious trappings of robe and ritual—had already retreated from him. The Faith would still be there, its comfort still offered, its temples still open to him. But the institution that had sheltered and succored him since infancy would do so no longer. He was a waif once more, with no blood kin nor any place to call home; cast out now to make his own way in the world. The safe and comforting future that had lain before him was gone, changed to a waste of bleak uncertainty.

  But Lorelyn would be safe. In the end, he told himself, that was all that truly mattered: not his future, not his vocation, but the human life that hung now in the balance.

  He gazed down dull-eyed at his letters, then went to his wardrobe. There, alongside his spare robes and his winter cloak, hung the civilian clothes that every priest was required to keep, in case his superiors chose to defrock and dismiss him. The coarse white linen shirt and trousers were a constant reminder of the penalty for disobedience: expulsion into the world. Damion fingered the rough fabrics, then on an impulse he pulled off his robe and donned the forbidden garments. They felt strange to him after nearly two years in the loose and comfortable cassock. But he would grow used to that.

  In the room’s close confinement he suddenly felt as though he were suffocating. He opened the door, still clad in his nonclerical attire, and walked along the empty hall with its rows of closed doors. Down the great stone staircase he went, and on through the front vestibule to the outer doors. On the threshold he paused, holding one door ajar so he could breathe in the evening air with its overtones of spring. The night was calm and mild: a half-moon rode the deep blue sky like a wind-bellied sail, and overhead the stars shone with large, hazy halos, as though they had swelled in the moist atmosphere. In their midst the Great Comet spread its long gauzy tail. After sunrise it would continue to gleam through the daylight sky, a point of light visible to the naked eye.

  A new star will appear in the sky, shining even by day . . .

  A shooting star traced a fiery, evanescent trail across the sky above him, recalling Ana’s words: “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.”

  The very heavens appeared to be joined in one vast conspiracy with the Nemerei: each sign had come in its turn, like a celestial clockwork. But was that so very strange? The ancients had possessed a detailed knowledge of the heavenly bodies and their movements. There was a geometrical pattern, a symmetry to their orbits and transits, that a skilled astronomer might be able to predict for centuries to come . . . None of which explained the scroll’s foretold appearance, or the unnerving powers of the Nemerei. They could not be dismissed as coincidence.

  As he stood there it suddenly struck him as strange that, after all these months of growing doubt, he should abandon the priesthood when at last the universe had begun to show traces of intelligent design.

  He descended the steps and walked away across the fields.

  LORELYN TOO WAS WALKING alone beneath that luminous sky. After much thought, she had decided she would be less likely to be found in the countryside than in the city, where too many people would see her and identify her later. Her plan was to cross the mountains and seek work in the farm country beyond, and so she had left the convent by the Old Road that led to the range. It would be a pleasure, she thought to herself as she walked, to work on a farm: to milk cows or cradle young lambs in her arms, surrounded only by the drafty wooden sides of some rustic byre. In such a place she could come and go as she willed. “Yes, that’s the life for me,” she said to herself as she walked. “Lots of freedom—and no more walls!” And maybe someday, when she had earned enough money, she might even travel the land searching for her family and parents. There could not be very many western folk who had traveled to the Archipelagoes to live. There might possibly be someone who could tell her who they were, and where they came from. And perhaps—she thought this with a sharp stab of longing—she would also find the answer to the most important question of all: why she felt deep within her the burning certainty that there was something she must do, that she existed for a reason. The Purpose that drew her might lie somewhere in lands unknown, or it might even find her. But she knew that it could not come to her within the walls of the nunnery. She set out with high hopes, therefore, her heart growing lighter with every step she took away from the convent grounds. Over her shoulder she had slung a satchel containing a spare gown and undergarments, a little food, and a few other necessities.

  Only one thing gave her pause. Lorelyn kept thinking of Ailia Shipwright, of her gentle voice and sympathetic eyes. The Island girl was as close to a
real friend as she had ever known, and for a moment her footsteps faltered, her resolve turned to misgiving, as she thought of the worry that Ailia must surely be feeling by now. Should she perhaps have left another note just for her, explaining why she had left? And what if the other girls began tormenting Ailia again? “They will give her a rough time, I shouldn’t wonder, now that I’m not there,” Lorelyn said, talking out loud again. “She’s the sort that never fights back, and they know it—the bullies!” She halted for a moment, debating with herself, and looking back in the direction of the convent. But then she thought once again of spending the rest of her life in its confines, and she made herself go on, though she braced her shoulders as if she walked into a wind.

  When she reached the first foothills of the range she heard hoofbeats clattering along the road behind her. It might only be some villager on an errand, she thought, but it could be someone the nuns had sent to find her and fetch her back. It was too late to hide: the rider must see her there on the moonlit road. She stood where she was, arms crossed in defiance, waiting for him to approach. Whoever he was, she decided, if he thought she was going to let him force her to go back to the convent, he had better think again.

  The dark shape of horse and rider drew rapidly nearer, limned by the light of moon and stars. She gave a sudden gasp as that shape became distinct, and then stood transfixed for several moments before it occurred to her—much too late—to run.