The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Ailia gasped, and Ana reached out to lay her withered hand on Lorelyn’s. “No, my dear. I will not let him do that.”

  “But how can you stop him? Especially if he’s that Prince you mentioned—”

  “He believes he is; I do not. I doubt that Modrian-Valdur would show his hand to us so soon. He will conceal the identity of his lieutenant from the Nemerei as long as he can, the better to take us unawares. I think the true Prince must know his own identity by now, though, and what his mission is. And he would not believe in dooms. He may have tried to destroy you, Lorelyn, when you were only an infant; and so your mother hid you away. The monks kept you safe. Thanks to them, you lived and have now grown old enough to confront him. You will have to be very brave, my dear.” Her hand tightened on the young girl’s.

  “I know, Ana,” said Lorelyn quietly. “I’m not frightened. I’ve always known somehow that I was born to do something important. I believe I’m meant to be . . . a fighter.”

  “But you deserve at least to know why it is that you fight. It is to protect others, to save the weak from the strong.” Ana’s pale eyes seemed to search Lorelyn’s. “Would you really be prepared to risk your life to save the life of another? This is important, Lorelyn. You must accept your mission freely.”

  “I do accept it, Ana—now that I know everything at last.”

  “Perhaps not everything, dear, but that will do for the present.” The old woman smiled and released her hold on Lorelyn’s hand, seeming to relax. “If we are to have peace, the Tryna Lia must conquer the Prince and his followers—but I hope that will be many years from now.”

  “I’ll fight him whenever he wants,” declared Lorelyn. “Whoever he is, I’ll see that he’s put paid to. Especially if he murdered my mother and father!” Her lower lip trembled slightly.

  “We don’t know that he did, dear. But I’m afraid it is a possibility.”

  Lorelyn laid her head on her knees for a moment. “It’s all my fault,” she said in a muffled voice. “If my parents are dead, it’s because of me—who I am. And Abbot Shan and the monks in Jardjana: they protected me, and now I suppose they’re dead too.”

  “Lorelyn, dear—”

  The girl raised her head again; her freckled face was white, but tearless. “It’s all right, Ana. Thinking about it just makes me feel even more like fighting.”

  At that moment the door was opened by a guard. Ailia recognized the dark-skinned Mohara man she had first seen in the Academy library, so long ago. “Dinner,” he announced in a glum voice, waving them through the doorway.

  “Jomar,” Lorelyn began, but he cut her off.

  “Don’t talk to me,” he said, curt and sullen, and turned his back on her.

  As they approached the doorway something gray and swift darted in through it. Ailia recoiled, thinking for an instant that it was an enormous rat. But a second glance showed her it was Ana’s cat, Greymalkin. “Ah, there you are, my dear!” Ana greeted her pet. It sprang up onto a barrel and gazed at them, purring. “And what have you been up to?”

  “Hunting rats, I hope,” remarked Ailia. “She had better be careful. If the Zimbourans catch her they might throw her overboard.”

  “I’ll throw them overboard if they try it,” cried Lorelyn, putting her arms around the cat. It nuzzled her face.

  Ana led the girls out into the main section of the lower deck. Ailia supposed she should be grateful to get out of that claustrophobic cell of a cabin, but the main room was not much better. The smell of it was terrible, all sweat and unwashed bodies, and she did not much like the way some of the men looked at her and Lorelyn. Most averted their eyes, however. Either they feared the girls really were witches, or else they dared not touch their tyrant king’s rightful prey.

  One man stood out, his fair hair conspicuous among all those dark heads. Ailia stared at him, as she always did. If there was one thing in all this strangeness she could not accept, one thing that made her feel she must indeed be dreaming, it was the presence of Damion Athariel. She had listened to Lorelyn’s story of the scroll he had brought from the Archipelagoes, and Ana’s account of his meeting with the Nemerei, and they were so like the fanciful tales she loved reading that it was easy to believe they originated in her own befuddled head. The young priest entered into so many of her dreams; surely this must merely be another of them? She gazed at him as she lined up for her share of the thin and watery gruel that was today’s main meal. He looked like the Damion she had known at the Academy. Though his chin was now covered in a stubbly beard and his eyes were shadowed with weariness, those eyes were still the same intense blue, the untidy hair as golden-blond as she remembered.

  He glanced up at that moment, and the blue eyes met hers.

  “I’m sorry about this, Ailia,” he said in a soft voice, moving toward her. “I should have known better than to get involved in this affair. But you had nothing to do with it—”

  “You! Prisoner!” barked a soldier. “No talk to women.”

  The young man raised his hands to her in a gesture of helplessness, then turned away again.

  A DEEP VOICE BROKE into Damion’s gloom some time later.

  “Get up, priest,” it said. He looked up bleary-eyed, and saw that it was Jomar addressing him. The Mohara man now wore a full-length fur coat and carried another on his arm.

  “You’re to come up on deck.” He held out the coat and said, “Put this on.” His tone was brusque.

  “But why—”

  “Don’t talk to me!” snapped the Mohara.

  Damion could see that he was sober, and therefore in a bad mood. He donned the coat, then followed his surly guide up the wooden ladder leading to the deck. Were the Zimbourans going to pitch him overboard to the sharks? But in that case they would hardly have provided him with a coat.

  Up on deck the cold struck him like a blow, and he gasped. The wind was bitter, sea and sky the same leaden color. Spring had not come to the northern ocean: Damion could see his own breath steaming on the air. Sailors and soldiers stood about, indistinguishable from one another, inhuman-looking figures in bulky furs. Gray waves webbed with foam heaved and surged around the ship’s hull, and the deck pitched constantly, sometimes sloping as steeply as the roof of a house. To keep his balance, Damion had to sway and wave his arms wildly, as though performing a ritual dance. There were ice floes riding the wild swell, he saw, and two more ships plunged through the waves to starboard. They were not oared, lateen-rigged galleys like the one Damion had seen in the Archipelagoes, but galleons like this vessel in which he rode: huge ships designed to sail before the wind, square-rigged like the ships of the west with only one three-cornered sail at the stern.

  One ship, he saw—with a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold—flew the royal sun-standard of Zimboura. Why would the God-king choose to undertake such a dangerous voyage, leaving his kingdom vulnerable to usurpers in his absence? But of course he believes it’s his destiny—that he will return in triumph with the Star Stone, and no one will be able to stand against him then . . .

  There was distant land in sight to port, a few snow-mottled mountains and a gray, barren shore, but the ship was not heading toward it. There was nothing but ice ahead of them: the remnants of the polar pack, no doubt, that must only recently have begun to break up. Icebergs drifted perilously past, sculpted by wind and sea into strange abstract forms: as he watched, their galleon passed quite close to one tremendous ice-mass, the size of the High Temple of Raimar. It even had the appearance of a temple, Damion thought, gazing at it in fascination—smooth and white as finest marble, with two huge sea-carved columns framing an opening that gave onto a dim, blue interior. The other men seemed as awed as he, staring up at the vast white shape that dwarfed the vessels moving past it.

  He glanced at Jomar, but the Mohara man was gazing listlessly out to sea. Pity stirred in Damion at the sight of that exotic dark profile, so out of place against the background of bleak gray sea and ice. It belonged to a different world�
�verdant jungle or sun-baked desert, he thought.

  The captain of the vessel strolled toward him, thrusting his broad black-bearded face close to Damion’s. The priest waited apprehensively. Then the captain laughed, foul breath blowing past broken teeth into the young man’s face.

  “Time you help out a little on deck, boy,” he said in harshly accented Maurish. “This not pleasure trip.” He glanced up at the empty crow’s nest, swaying with the mast, and grinned. “Maybe we try you up there—yes?” He shouted something to the other Zimbourans in their own language, and they all guffawed. “Yes—you be lookout! Up mast now!”

  Damion winced. But there was nothing for it but to obey: some of the soldiers fingered their weapons, hoping no doubt that he would put up a struggle and give them an excuse to injure him. Jomar continued to stare moodily out to sea. Damion approached the mast, waving his arms for balance, and laid his hands on a rung of the rope ladder. His fingers were already numb with cold, and the ladder seemed to stretch above him into infinity, vanishing into clouds of bellying canvas. Slowly and painfully he climbed, long-disused muscles protesting, hands clumsy with cold, fumbling for a proper grip. Occasionally he was obliged to stop, clinging to a rough wooden rung and trying very hard not to look down. Once, his foot slipped and he found himself dangling precariously by his cramped hands, terror jolting through his frame as he kicked about for a foothold. The men below watched, with amusement, he knew, wishing he would lose his grip and plummet to the deck. He gritted his chattering teeth, determined not to give them that satisfaction.

  Up and up, hand over hand . . . The wind shrilled in his ears, freezing their lobes, while the sails swelled and flapped like flags all around him. The crow’s nest was just above him, bobbing and swaying with the ship’s movements—within reach . . .

  Hours later—so it seemed to him—he clambered up into the basket-shaped structure, gasping and shivering violently, thrusting his frozen hands into the sleeves of his coat. Now he could look down at the deck, spread out beneath him and seeming very far away, at the little knots of men watching him in disappointment. Well, he wasn’t going back down—not until he’d rested, at any rate. If they wanted him, they would just have to come up here and get him.

  Damion huddled in the bottom of the basket, blowing on his hands. He could see farther from this height, but all that was revealed to him was more floating ice. His chilled ears throbbed, and he cupped his hands over them. It began to snow, sea and sky vanishing into a gray-blue void of falling flakes. Soon the flakes obscured the shapes of the other galleons like a thick fog. Damion could only see for a bowshot in any direction: there was nothing but the white-crested waves, roaring out of a blank grayness. The sea was even rougher than before. As he clutched the wooden rim of the crow’s nest the wind abruptly shifted direction, blowing full in his face. He gave a start.

  The wind was warm.

  Warm, and moist, like a breeze out of the tropics. He must be imagining it . . . No—there it was again. An intermittent gust of hot, sultry air alternating with the colder wind from the sea. It smote his numbed face like a blast from an oven, made him reel.

  And it came from the north.

  The snow was damp and fell more rapidly now, like sleet. No—that was rain falling on him, out of the louring clouds. The gray blankness ahead was not flurries, but a bank of thick fog. Through the occasional gap in its swirling mass he caught glimpses of the ocean, heaving and hummocked with foaming waves. There was a flicker of lightning through the mists, an answering rumble of thunder. The ship bucked like a frightened horse. The crow’s nest swooped and wove wide circles in the air, while the sails with their spidery black stars billowed beneath him, the canvas cracking in the gusts until the sound rivaled the thunderclaps from above. Damion clutched the edge of the wooden basket, but it was slick with rain and he could not get a firm grip.

  Through the driving rain he saw sailors in the rigging below him, trying desperately to trim the sails and regain control of the vessel. The man at the wheel could not steer a straight course, for the ship was plunging about so much that the rudder must be as often in the air as in the water. Damion dropped to his knees and flung both arms around the mast, terrified that he would fall over the side of the crow’s nest. He would likely plunge into the sea as the ship rocked hard on its keel—though a fall to the deck would kill him too. He crouched low and clung with all his might, staring about him as thunder cracked again, seemingly right above his head. The lightning bolts would hit him first, he knew, up here in this airy perch . . . He glanced skyward, and gasped. The storm clouds hung low over the sea, and like the water beneath them they were filled with swirling, churning motion. In the ragged gray underside of one a great bulge formed, revolving as though it were caught in an airy maelstrom. He released his death-grip on the mast and peered over the rim of the crow’s nest. The men down there had seen the rotating cloud too: they yelled and pointed where they stood, ignoring the swamping waves. Out of the ominous gray swag a shape grew, long and pale and sinuous; it snaked downward, blindly seeking the sea. And the sea rose to meet it, swelling up into a tremendous wave, a watery hill capped with foam. Cloud and water came together, joined, and formed a gray, bowed pillar linking sky and ocean. Lightning flashed again, illuminating one side of the vaporous funnel, and Damion saw it undulate all along its length like a living thing.

  A waterspout. His teeth chattered as the great gray shape advanced. It was heading in their direction. Would it strike the ship? If it did they would all die: no vessel could survive the tearing winds of a water-cyclone—

  “Down!” Two large hands gripped the side of the crow’s nest, followed by the head of a Zimbouran, his thick black beard and hair streaming in the rain. “Down,” he ordered again, heaving himself over the rim. Damion was crushed to one side by the man’s bulky frame.

  “But—”

  “Down, or I throw you down.”

  Without further protest Damion hastily swung himself over and grabbed the ladder, clinging for his life to the slick sodden rungs as the wind whipped it back and forth, flinging him against the mast. He looked down. The deck was all churning foam and debris: it would be madness to go down to it and risk being swept overboard. Men scurried about amid the flying spray, up to their waists in water, screaming at one another. One of them yelled something, pointing toward the masts.

  Damion looked up. A strange phosphorescence leaped and danced about the rigging: every rope, every spar was haloed with green, flickering, phantom fire. The men moaned and gibbered with fear below. Sailors’ fire, thought Damion as he clung to the swinging ladder. It would not harm him, he knew. He had seen this phenomenon once before, on a ship in southern seas: the Kaanish sailors had told him they believed it was the spirits of drowned sailors. These Zimbourans must have seen it before too: were they also superstitious about it?

  But even as he thought this he saw that the ghostly luminosity had begun to fade from the air, and the energy of the storm appeared to be ebbing. There was no more lightning or thunder. To his relief he saw that the writhing column of the waterspout had broken off from its watery base, and he watched it slowly retract into the cloud layer. As suddenly as it had begun, the sea-tempest had ended.

  As he began to make his way down the ladder, there came a shout from the lookout above.

  AILIA LOOKED ANXIOUSLY at Ana: the old woman had not eaten all day, but had sat in a corner with her cat in her lap, looking very pale and drawn. When the girls spoke to her she appeared not to hear them. Waves thudded against the hull, boards creaked, ropes groaned, while in the distance the terrified livestock contributed to the cacophony with a din of their own: yet Ana showed no reaction. There was a slight frown on her face, her lips moved yet no sound came from them, and her hands were restless in her lap: their knobbed rheumatic fingers flexed continually. Ailia wondered if she might be praying, and to what gods her petitions would be addressed. For her own part, she tried very hard not to think of all the shipwreck st
ories she had heard. There had been a terrible one off Great Island’s southern coast, many years ago. Ailia herself had been far too young at the time to be able to recall it, yet the villagers still spoke of it in hushed tones . . . She watched the wild orbits of the oil lamp, swinging from the ceiling above their heads, and sent up a silent prayer of her own.

  “Is it my imagination,” ventured Lorelyn presently from her corner, “or is the storm dying down a bit?”

  They sat very still, listening intently to the sounds of wind and water. It was true: the fury of both had abated somewhat.

  “And have you noticed how much warmer it is?” Lorelyn added.

  Ana’s eyes opened. “I believe,” she murmured, “we are nearing our destination.”

  “Are you all right, Ana?” Ailia asked, turning to the old woman in concern.

  Ana still looked pale, but she nodded at the girl and smiled. “Perfectly all right, thank you.”

  “Ana, I’ve been thinking,” said Lorelyn, also going over to the old woman. “What would happen if the Zimbourans were to find the Star Stone? What would they do?”

  “We must see that they do not get it,” replied Ana. Her manner was as confident as ever.

  “But they’re holding us prisoner, aren’t they?”

  “Not for long, I promise you,” the old woman replied. “We must go to the mountains in Trynisia, and seek out the Guardians.”

  “The what?” inquired Lorelyn.

  “The Guardians are votaries of the Star Stone,” Ana explained. “Long ago, their order was entrusted with the task of watching over the sacred gem until the time came to relinquish it to the Tryna Lia, even should her coming take ten thousand years. They also promised to give her, and anyone who came with her, any sort of assistance that should be required. Bereborn told the Jana monks that the Guardians remained in Trynisia after the Disaster. They hid themselves among the northern mountains, to keep watch over the Stone for all time. It was a vow that was binding not only on them but on all their descendants to come.”