The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  She had been having another dream: a strange dark dream of being carried in someone’s arms through long tunnels, where dim figures came and went; of a cave that was filled with groves of stone trees, and a lake like a sheet of shadow stretching into emptiness. The lake: that came from the old legend, didn’t it? The underground lake beneath the castle, the scrying-glass of the sorcerous Prince Morlyn and his final resting place . . .

  Ailia was dimly aware of two voices conversing somewhere in the darkness. She often heard voices while she lay at the indeterminate border between sleeping and waking, and knew that they were a common phenomenon of the somnolent state: sound-phantoms conjured by the drowsing brain. But the ones she heard were not usually so distinct. One was a man’s voice, she realized, and the other belonged to a woman: both were naggingly familiar, but if they were in fact real she could not find the faces that went with them.

  “Very well,” the male voice said, “if she is not one of yours then what was she doing there? How did she know Lorelyn was here?”

  “Are you certain that she did know?” asked the woman’s voice.

  “Don’t play games! I saw her go into your tent, and I know how long it took for her to come out again. She’s one of yours—your conspiracy!”

  “I only told her about the old beliefs. She knows nothing of the Nemerei.”

  “No matter. Even if you haven’t corrupted her yet, you were likely planning to do so.”

  “You used to trust me once. I wish you would again.” This was said with a sigh. “Please don’t let it come to a fight between us. I am not your enemy. I saved your life, remember—”

  “Of course I remember! There’s no danger of my ever forgetting, is there, when you remind me of it on every possible occasion? Very well! Keep that worthless scrap of parchment, for all the good it will do you. But as for the girl—I advise you to leave her alone, or I’ll not be responsible for what happens to her.”

  “You mean Lorelyn? All I want is for her to go free—and the young priest too. Where are they now?”

  “The truth is, I don’t know. When I came back she was gone, and the door to the stairs has been hacked to pieces with an axe. I put that down to your usual meddling.”

  “I assure you, my Nemerei and I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

  Ailia’s eyes fluttered open. Through a gap in thick red draperies she glimpsed an elegant furnished room, lit only by candles. She closed her eyes again. Yes, clearly she dreamed still: this room could not be real.

  “I wondered what you were up to here,” said the woman’s voice. “Dressing up in armor and pretending to be a ghost. I couldn’t imagine what it all meant.”

  “Perhaps I merely find it amusing.”

  “It also draws unfriendly attention from the villagers, doesn’t it? You want to frighten them into having the whole place exorcised, and so expose the catacombs and the Nemerei. But why hide Lorelyn here, then?”

  “She was only to stay here temporarily, until I found a better hiding place.”

  “And this poor child?”

  “Company for Lorelyn, of course. So she won’t have to face her lifetime of captivity alone. You see, I can be thoughtful.” The man spoke with deliberate irony.

  There was a sound of footsteps, and the speakers moved into the narrow field of vision afforded by the gap in the curtains. The woman, who was very short and slight, stood with her back to Ailia, her head and shoulders swathed in a gray shawl. Before her the man paced to and fro, restless as an animal: it was the man with the strange yellow eyes. He was clad now in what looked like the apparel of a knight from elder days, steel plate armor and a long dark surcoat. “But release her if it pleases you: I can always find another to take her place. I’m going to go search the countryside for Lorelyn now, and you had better be gone when I get back—or I might just forget my debt to you.” The man in armor faced the shawled woman as he spoke these words, and the light of the candles was reflected in his feline eyes, turning them to discs of yellow flame.

  Ailia tried to sit up, but there was a dull rush of noise in her ears and she fell back again, sinking into the twilight place from which she had come.

  SOMETIME LATER SHE REVIVED again. But when she tentatively opened her eyelids, the strange room was still there. She shut her eyes, willing it all away. Sometimes this happened: one would fancy oneself awake two or three times before really waking up. In a moment she would come to full consciousness, and the strong sunlight of early spring would be streaming through the dormitory windows, while Arianlyn—always the first to rise—called out to the other girls, “Wake up, sleepyheads! It’s a lovely day!” She smiled, and opened her eyes again.

  But the red-curtained bed and the room were still there.

  What’s wrong with me? she thought, the smile dropping from her face. She sat bolt upright, looking around her in alarm. She reached out to the bed-curtain, closing her hand upon its drooping folds. “It feels real,” she said aloud as she ran her fingers over the coarse red fabric. “It isn’t—like—a dream.”

  At the same instant she heard soft footsteps on the carpet. She looked around sharply, to see the slight shawl-clad woman approaching her, leaning on a knobby cane. She seemed familiar.

  “Hello, my dear,” said the old woman. “So you’re back with us again.”

  Of course: it was old Ana, from the fair. “I don’t understand,” said Ailia, standing unsteadily. “What happened? How did I get—here?”

  “A case of mistaken identity, it appears,” Ana explained. “But everything has been cleared up, don’t worry.”

  Ailia put a hand to her own temple. Her head was swimming, and everything seemed dreamlike still.

  “Perhaps I had better accompany you,” said Ana thoughtfully. “You don’t look well. I expect he drugged you.”

  “Drugged?” Ailia murmured. She rose, took a step forward, and the carpeted floor seemed to heave beneath her feet, like the deck of a ship when a wave rolls beneath it. Before she could fall Ana took her by the arm, supporting the girl as well as she could while leaning on her own prop.

  “Now then,” she soothed. “This way.”

  Slowly and awkwardly the two of them progressed across the room and out the door, along a grand corridor lined with suits of armor, and then—with even greater difficulty—up a long staircase and through several more empty stone rooms. At last they passed through an archway overgrown with ivy, and were outside: and Ailia recognized the castle ruin, a wilderness of broken walls and weed-sprouting pavements stretching before her. It was evening, and a shredding mist still trailed through the ruins.

  There was a sound of padding feet ahead of them, and a great gray animal came bounding out of the darkness to greet the old woman—a dog, bigger than any Ailia had ever seen. Ana placed a small withered hand on its head. “Hello there, Wolf!” she said. “Is Greymalkin here too?” She turned to Ailia. “Don’t be afraid, my dear. I won’t let him harm you.”

  But Ailia felt no fear. Everything was remote and unreal: her mind felt disconnected from her body, watching as if from a distance. The waxing moon had risen above the mists, but it was hard to see where she was going. The ground still seemed to move about under her feet and she stumbled, almost pulling Ana down with her. The dog followed, whining. In the distance, through a gap in the broken walls, Ailia caught a glimpse of a long line of reddish lights like torches, streaming from the Academy toward the ruin. It seemed far away, and nothing to do with her. But Ana drew in a sharp breath and turned around. “We must go the other way, I think, dear,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t do for you to be seen here with me.”

  Ailia thought of asking why, but it seemed too much of an effort. She went obediently along in the new direction. They were about halfway across the outer bailey when a voice called out, from somewhere near at hand.

  “Ana! Ana, is that you?”

  Ailia stared as a rider came trotting out of the ruined keep on a white horse. He wore a Paladin’s silver breas
tplate, gleaming in the moon, and she could see that he was a young man, with a handsome face—rather like Damion Athariel’s. Her head began to spin again; she had a foolish desire to laugh. Damion—a knight in shining armor! It’s too extraordinary, even for a dream. For a dream it surely was. There was a figure behind him on the horse—a white-gowned girl with long braids of blonde hair, like Lorelyn’s. A man on another horse followed them. He had a strange dark face that even the moon could not illuminate. She was reminded of the silent Mohara man she had seen in the library on her first day at the Academy.

  The man who looked like Damion commanded his horse to halt, and swung himself down from the saddle. He started to move toward her and Ana, and seemed about to speak. But what he meant to say she never learned.

  “I knew it!” shouted another voice, in angry triumph.

  They turned as one. There in the bailey behind them was another man on horseback, this one clad in full armor under a dark surcoat. Ailia’s head spun again and she slipped from Ana’s loosened grip, sitting down abruptly on the ground.

  The Mohara man recovered first. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he shouted.

  The figure rode its warhorse closer, and took off its helmet. Long tawny hair tumbled free, and through its loose locks a pair of eyes glittered in the moonlight, cold as frost. Of course—it was the strange, lynx-eyed man Ana had been talking to, the one who wore the armor of a knight.

  “I said, what do you want?” the Mohara man shouted again.

  “I want the girl,” the other man replied in a cold, controlled voice. “Now.” Ana’s big dog growled at him, making his warhorse snort and pound the turf with its great hooves.

  “Wolf,” Ana said sharply. “Stop!”

  Ailia watched and listened in complete bewilderment. Turning her head from one figure to the other, she tried to make sense of the scene, but all this accomplished was to make her feel giddy again.

  “She isn’t going anywhere,” Damion said to the lynx-eyed man, “except back to the convent.”

  The man ignored him, continued to gaze at Ana. Wolf snarled again. Only Ana’s hand on his ruff seemed to restrain him from lunging toward the man—no mean feat, thought Ailia, as the animal must weigh as much as Ana did. The lynx-eyed man rode his horse over to the white one and seized its bridle in an armored fist. His voice rang out commandingly as he addressed the girl still sitting on its back. “Come with me, Lorelyn. Ana is not your friend. I told you she wants only to use you.”

  So it is Lorelyn! thought Ailia, fascinated by the turn her “dream” had taken. I must remember all of this one—it’s too marvelous. Lorelyn—Damion—old Ana—that Mohara man from the library . . . Curious, how people one has met end up in one’s dreams. Her head spun again, and she felt an urge to laugh.

  “Well, Ana and her friends never held me against my will!” Lorelyn countered, slipping off the horse’s back and running over to the old woman. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  “You hear, Mandrake?” said Ana. “You cannot keep her, nor prevent her from fulfilling her destiny.”

  “Then her death is on your hands,” he snarled. He set his heels to his mount’s flanks, making the huge armored creature charge forward. They scattered in haste as horse and rider plunged between them, tearing the mist to tatters, then raced at a full gallop through one of the gaps in the curtain walls. There was a silence after the pounding hoofbeats faded into the distance.

  “Wonderful!” murmured Ailia indistinctly, and fell backwards on the grass in a swoon.

  DAMION HURRIED OVER to Ailia’s side, stooping over the unconscious girl. “Is she all right? Who is she, Ana? She looks familiar—”

  “That’s Ailia Shipwright,” Lorelyn told them. “I know her.”

  “Mandrake mistook her for one of my Nemerei and abducted her,” explained Ana. “I think he has drugged her.”

  “I’ll carry her back to the convent. Lorelyn, you come with me too.” He gathered Ailia in his arms and stood, jerking his head toward the Mohara man, who still sat on his horse in silence. “Ana, this is Jomar: he’s a refugee from Zimboura. If you and the other Nemerei could give him temporary shelter in the catacombs, I’m sure he’d be much obliged.”

  “He says I’m the Tryna Lia,” Lorelyn told Ana.

  Jomar snorted. “I said those fools think you are,” he scoffed, dismounting and walking over to join them.

  She ignored him. “Is it true, Ana?” she demanded. “Am I what he says?”

  “I’m afraid, my dear, that it very much looks as though you are,” said the old woman gently. “I did not tell you before, because I did not know for certain.”

  “Come, Lorelyn.” Damion spoke sharply. “Ana, I asked you not to tell her about that.”

  “It appears she already knows about it, and not from me,” the old woman replied. “It is no use hiding the truth from her any longer.”

  “We had an agreement—” he began and then broke off, remembering with discomfort his own decision to break his word. But Ana was not paying any attention to him. She was standing very still, with her white head cocked at an angle, as though listening to something in the distance. And then he heard it too: a low and ominous sound, like a river rising in flood. Human voices, many of them, raised in anger. The broken fragments of the curtain walls glowed yellow, tinted with torchlight. The glow moved toward them through the ruin, along with a gathering din of voices and trampling feet.

  A great, bellowing voice called through the night. “We know you’re hiding in there!” it roared. “You’re surrounded. Come on out, the lot of you!” A large crowd of people began to stream through the outer bailey. They looked to Damion like villagers from the countryside. Their clothing was plain and coarse, and though a few women of robust appearance were with them, the majority were men. They had a tumbrel with them, drawn by a large, hairy-hocked dray horse, in which several torch-bearing youths were riding.

  Ana walked calmly forward to meet them, and a hush fell over the crowd, as though they were disconcerted at having their prey face them openly. A few who stood at the front backed away, their right hands outheld with fingers splayed in the sign to ward off evil. To the rear of the crowd Damion glimpsed several figures standing apart, including some men on horseback. These were not villagers: the mounted men had the pallid complexions and black hair of Zimbourans; another man, stout and middle-aged, wore the white robes of a Patriarch of the Faith. Standing with him were two gray-robed monks.

  Damion expelled a long breath. The monks were Abbot Hill and Prior Vale.

  Into the sudden quiet Ana’s voice rang out clear and unafraid. “I am Ana. What is it you want with me?”

  A village man moved toward her, brandishing his torch. “We want you out of here, witch!” he shouted. “You and all the others who meet here in the ruins! You’ll meddle no more with us!”

  “Why, what have I done?” she asked.

  “What haven’t you done! Barns burned, livestock found killed and maimed! It’s you that’s done all this—you and your cursed coven!” He glared in suspicion at Damion and the others. “You’ve no right to dwell here among decent folk!” He took another step forward and Wolf growled, his hackles rising.

  “Mind the dog,” warned Damion.

  “Dog!” the man gave a harsh laugh. “That’s no dog! That’s a wolf!”

  The big gray beast growled again, torchlight reflecting back from his fangs and amber eyes as he strained forward. “Nonsense,” said Damion uneasily.

  “Think I don’t know a timber wolf when I see one—living in the mountains all my life? She’s a witch, I tell you. A beast-charmer.” He turned to face the mob. “And that isn’t all her mischief. Didn’t we see the ghost prince just now, riding out of the ruin? She summoned him. This place is cursed!”

  An angry murmur arose from the villagers. But when Ana spoke again they fell silent. “There is no ghost: it was a living man you saw ride from the ruin. As for your barns and your beasts, it is not my
people who have done those things, but the black witches, the worshippers of Modrian. I have warned you about them before.”

  The high-ranking cleric strode forward, and Damion recognized his thick brows and short graying beard with a sinking sensation. It was Patriarch Norvyn Winter, from the High Temple. The Patriarch spoke in a stern voice. “Woman, you stand accused by these people of witchcraft, demon-worship, spell-casting, and necromancy. You have been suffered by men of God to live here and practice your black arts, when it is the duty of all God-fearing people to report your kind to the ecclesiastical authorities.” He glared at the two monks. “When the deputation from the villages came to me, I hoped that their reports of witchcraft were merely fanciful rumors. But when I summoned the prior and abbot of the cloister and placed them under holy oath they could no longer deny their role in this obscene conspiracy. A scroll that presumes to add to the holy scriptures is blasphemy enough, and had I only had my way the document would long ago have been destroyed. But to give it to avowed witches! And when I come here to perform the ritual of exorcism upon the ruins, what do I find but a company of witches hiding in their midst—one of them in a sorcerous trance!” He made an angry gesture at the unconscious Ailia, hanging limp in Damion’s arms.

  Abbot Hill walked forward through the crowd, accompanied by Prior Vale. “I’m sorry about all this, Ana. I can’t say how it came about—I’ll swear the Brothers said nothing before tonight—”

  The prior, who looked both nervous and sheepish, cleared his throat and added, “It might be best if you left this place, Ana.”

  “No!” One of the Patriarch’s aides spurred his horse forward, and in the torchlight Damion recognized his face. It was the dark-haired, thickset man who had intruded on the Academy library with Jomar. The man bawled, “You must not let her get away! She must be punished!”

  “She will be, Hyron,” the Patriarch assured him grimly. “And all the other witches as well.”

  With a sickening shock Damion suddenly realized what a sight he must present, standing there in the ruins—decked in bits of Paladin armor—an unconscious young maiden in his arms—a self-confessed witch standing at his side. Quelling an urge to laugh that would have proved disastrous, he set Ailia down on the ground again and began to pull off the armor. “We’re not witches, Your Reverence. I just freed Lorelyn and this other girl. They were being held captive here in the ruins—”