The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “Look,” she whispered to the others. They all turned and stared at the stone.

  Damion whistled softly through his teeth. “I wondered if this land was once inhabited. So many of the trees and plants here are the sort that people cultivate: fruit trees and so on. Orchards and vineyards must have been planted here long ago, and run wild over the centuries.”

  “Who planted the trees? The Elei?” Ailia asked.

  Ana nodded. “This must be the remnant of one of their great houses,” she said, gesturing to the tumbled stones. “Five centuries have passed since it fell, but it was most likely built long before that: a thousand years ago, or more.”

  The Elei. Ailia had always thought of them half-consciously as faerie-tale figures, half-mortal children of minor angels: majestic beings in flowing robes with faces of unearthly beauty. But of course they had been real people, real as any that lived today . . . And they had lived here, on this island. Trynisia—we are in Trynisia. Like an exhausted swimmer who no longer fights the waves but floats with them limp and unresisting, Ailia found herself surrendering to the events that had befallen her, no longer questioning, but simply accepting the strange new reality around her. Surrounded by uncertainty and unnumbered fears, she found herself thinking not of them but of the Elei, wondering what it must have been like to dwell in this land when the old Commonwealth was alive, and Trynisia the world’s great center of culture and learning.

  “If the Elei were really here,” she said out loud, “then their holy city must have been real too. Liamar.” They all looked toward the dim blue mountains in the north. “And—the Star Stone!”

  “Yes. Chance, fate, providence,” mused Ana, “whatever you choose to call it, has placed us all here in the land of the Stone. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  “Do about it?” echoed Lorelyn.

  “Us?” said Ailia faintly.

  “Us,” repeated Ana, her tone calm and firm. “There is no one else.”

  Damion stared at Ana. “You mean,” he said slowly, “that we should try and take the Stone away from the Zimbourans?”

  “Or find it before they do!” exclaimed Lorelyn, her expression turning eager.

  Ailia looked at her in alarm. “But to do that we would have to escape!”

  “And so we must. But I cannot tell you exactly where the resting place of the Stone is,” Ana said, “for if we are recaptured you can be made to tell all you know. I will guide you there instead, if you will trust me.”

  Ailia trembled at those words. She knew where the Stone lay: Welessan had described the sacred shrine of the Stone in his book. If she were caught and tortured, would she tell? She opened her mouth, then closed it again. If knowledge was dangerous, perhaps her companions should not even know that she knew. “How can we escape?” she asked instead. “Would Jomar help us? Didn’t he try to leave the Zimbourans before, Father Damion?”

  “Yes—but things are a little different now. We can’t offer him freedom and safety, as we did in Maurainia.”

  “Couldn’t you ask, all the same? He might say yes.”

  Damion stood up, took a few sidling steps closer to their guard, and spoke to him in a low voice. “Jomar—listen to me.”

  Jomar continued to gaze blank-faced into the distance. “Stoop over, as if you’re looking at something on the ground,” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

  Damion did so, pretending to examine a broken capital.

  “All right,” said Jomar after a moment. “One of the officers was watching us, but he’s gone. What exactly did you want?”

  “To escape,” Damion whispered back.

  “Is that all?” Jomar snorted. “Have you noticed we’re on an island? In case you don’t know, that’s a piece of land surrounded by water. Were you planning to swim home?”

  “I thought perhaps we might get back to the ships somehow, talk the slaves into a mutiny, or . . . or”—Damion dropped his eyes before Jomar’s incredulous stare—“I was hoping you might have an idea.”

  “Why am I listening to you?” grumbled Jomar, glowering at the ground. “Back in Maurainia we had a chance, but now—what’s the use? This place is uninhabited. Even if we could get away from the Zims, we’d be marooned here—”

  “Not uninhabited,” corrected Ana, also speaking in a low voice. “The Guardians still live here.”

  “The what?” asked Jomar and Damion together. Ana explained.

  “If the Guardians have experienced the same visions the Maurainian Nemerei have,” she concluded, “they will already be on the alert for our coming. When we arrive on Mount Elendor, they will wait and watch. If they are satisfied that Lorelyn is indeed the one foretold in the prophecies, they will give her the jewel as promised.”

  “And then?” prompted Damion.

  “And then they will assist her and her companions to leave Trynisia, if we ask it of them. They will even convey us to Eldimia if we wish.”

  “Eldimia is a real place too, then?” asked Lorelyn with interest.

  “It is.”

  “It wasn’t on the sea chart,” added Damion. “Where is it?”

  “Ever since the Disaster its location has been kept secret,” Ana answered. “But the Guardians know where it lies.”

  “In the old stories Eldimia was in a sort of faerie place, the Otherworld,” Lorelyn commented.

  “That’s true,” said Ailia. “But some of the stories called Eldimia the Land Beyond the World’s End. As though it were a real country you could travel to, if you only went far enough.”

  “But where was it exactly?” asked Damion.

  “East of the sun and west of the moon,” replied Ailia, looking apologetic. “Those are the only directions they ever gave.”

  “That’s a lot of help,” snorted Jomar.

  There was a pause; then Damion spoke again. “What if the Guardians of the Stone are not satisfied that Lorelyn is the one they’re waiting for?”

  “Then,” said Ana placidly, “we will be on our own.”

  “But—they wouldn’t let the Zimbourans take the Stone!” exclaimed Lorelyn.

  “Yes, I am afraid they would. It was stolen once before, you know, and later returned to its rightful place. The Guardians were commanded not to take any action at all until the Tryna Lia herself appeared, and required their aid. That was their sacred vow, and they will hold to it no matter what happens. They believe that she is destined to take the Stone, and that no earthly agency can prevent her coming. So they would accept its theft by the Zimbourans as just another turn of fate: after all, Zimbourans stole it once before, and it was brought back to Liamar. They would bide their time, waiting for fate to return the Stone again, and for the Tryna Lia to come.”

  “Well, the Tryna Lia has come,” said Lorelyn. “If you’re right about me, that is.”

  “Tryna Lia!” Jomar snorted, turning on her. “You don’t actually believe all that falderal? You’re no more a princess than I’m king of Zimboura.”

  “The Tryna Lia isn’t that sort of princess,” Lorelyn explained earnestly. “It just means ‘leader.’”

  “Well, you’re not leading me anywhere—and definitely not on a wild-goose chase in the wilderness. I’m better off with the Zims.”

  “Please, Jomar,” Ailia implored. “We need your help. And don’t you want to be free again?”

  “You still haven’t come up with a plan,” the Mohara man pointed out, exasperated. “How are we going to escape from this camp? Just walk away?”

  “No, we will ride,” old Ana replied, her face and tone perfectly serious. “We’ll take some of their horses, and some supplies too. There are packhorses already laden. But first we must wait for the Zimbourans to go to sleep.”

  “They’re not all going to go to sleep at the same time!” retorted Jomar, beginning to lose his temper.

  “They will, once the sleeping-potion I slipped into their stewpots takes effect.”

  The young people stopped arguing and looke
d about them. The camp did seem unusually still. One man nodded over his bowl. Others lay sprawled on the grass, and there was a sound of snoring.

  “They really should have searched me when they first apprehended me,” said Ana with a shake of her white head. “I always carry my herbs about with me, never knowing when I might be called upon to heal someone. I put a couple of bags of the herbs I use for sleeping-drafts up my sleeves, and poured in the contents when the cooks weren’t looking. Well, Jomar, what do you say now?” she went on. “Will you come with us, and help us? We may have need of you.”

  “Come with you!” A broad white grin suddenly spread across the man’s dusky face, like the sun breaking through cloud. He unsheathed his sword, tossed it in the air, and caught it again by the hilt. “Valdur’s teeth!” he crowed. “To cheat the Zims out of their treasure—what wouldn’t I give for that?”

  “Then it’s decided,” said Ana. “And we must be quick: the herb I gave the Zimbourans will only make them sleep lightly, for an hour or so. If we delay, they will begin to rouse.”

  Jomar strode across the camp to stand over the slumbering Shezzek, who lay sprawled on his back, snoring. The Mohara man’s mouth worked, and he fingered his sword-hilt: the weapon was still loose in his hand. Behind him Ana spoke in a neutral tone, as if to the air. “Mohara warriors do not kill sleeping foes.”

  Jomar sheathed his sword. “Another time,” he muttered.

  They hastened to where the horses were tethered, walking as quietly as they could, but none of their captors stirred. Ailia looked down in terror at a dozing soldier’s flushed face. “If they wake—”

  “Don’t think about it. Just move,” hissed Jomar.

  “Take all the weapons, but leave them some food. And untether all of the horses,” Ana directed them. “That will delay any organized pursuit.”

  Jomar reached for the bridle of Shezzek’s big black stallion. “Could it be this easy?” he murmured. Even as he spoke there came a loud growl from behind them.

  “The dogs!” hissed Damion. “They’re not drugged!”

  Ana turned to face the guard dogs, which advanced in a pack over the supine bodies of their handlers, bristling and snarling. Their muzzles had been removed to allow them to eat, and their lips were peeled back to show their fangs. Raising one hand, Ana spoke in a soft low voice. The brutes halted, their ears pricked as if in astonishment, their hackles lowering. The lead dog approached the old woman, and as the other travelers watched in amazement it licked her hand tentatively. She smiled, laid a hand on the great black-and-white head.

  Jomar muttered something in his native tongue. “She really is a witch,” he added in Maurish.

  “Animals aren’t so difficult to deal with, really,” Ana observed, scratching the dog’s ears. “I only wish humans were so easy to manage.” She turned to the smallest of the sturdy pack-ponies. “If someone would give me a leg up, we can be on our way.”

  Lorelyn rode pillion with Damion, while Ailia clambered up behind Jomar on the black stallion—“And don’t you dare fall off,” he warned her fiercely—and Ana followed on her small sturdy mount, leading two other well-laden packhorses. All the remaining horses followed them too: obeying a herd instinct, perhaps, or else Ana’s mysterious influence on animals had something to do with it. In haste the companions rode away from the camp, with many nervous backward glances. Together they plunged into the depths of the forest, heading for the cloud-hung mountains beyond.

  THEY MADE GOOD PROGRESS at first, fear speeding their flight. After a few minutes the riderless horses began to stray and fall back, tearing up wild grasses or stopping to drink at small forest streams. The dogs also trailed them for a time, like a pack of tame wolves, until some scent or other caught their attention and they all made off through the trees baying furiously.

  Jomar was pleased. “It’ll be hard for the Zims to follow us now, without any mounts, or dogs to follow our scent.”

  “They’ll find the animals eventually, though, won’t they?” worried Ailia, who was starting to have second thoughts. “And then they’ll be after us—and they’ll be so angry—”

  “We’ll be long gone by then—but,” added Jomar, turning to Ana, “you had better be right about those Guardians, or we’re all dead.” Ana said nothing in reply: she was apparently concentrating hard on staying in the saddle, as well as ensuring that their provisioned pack-beasts stayed with them. She led them without a rope, turning from time to time and calling to them softly.

  After an hour’s hard riding, with no sound of pursuit from behind, they came upon the river. In its midst lay the ruined piles of a long-fallen bridge, but the water was shallow enough for horses to ford. The mountain that was their destination lay on the far side.

  “We had best cross the river here,” declared Ana. “Farther up it will be swifter, and deeper, as it comes down from the mountains.” As they headed down the bank there was a sudden rustling in the bushes a few paces away, and Ailia turned to look. A gray-furred animal emerged from the greenery and strolled unconcernedly toward them. For a moment she thought it was a lynx. Then she called out in amazement.

  “Why, it’s Greymalkin!” she exclaimed, pointing. “However did she find us? I thought the poor thing was lost in the wilderness forever.” Lorelyn sprang down from her horse with a cry of delight and snatched up the cat, which purred loudly and rubbed its head against her cheek.

  Ana did not look in the least surprised. “Cats are very good at trailing their owners. And Greymalkin is better than most—aren’t you, my dear?”

  Lorelyn held the cat up to Ana, who took it in her arms. “And she’s caught up with us just in time, clever thing. A little longer and there’d have been a river between us. You wouldn’t have liked the water much, puss!”

  The only answer Greymalkin gave to that was a superior look, and a contented thrumming from her throat. Ana set the cat on the pommel of her saddle, and they rode on.

  It was not a difficult crossing. At its deepest point the water was up to the horses’ chests, and the legs of the riders were soaked from the knees down, but the river’s bottom was flat and even and its flow sluggish. Once they were on the far bank Ana suggested it would be safe to call a brief halt, and after following the bank for about a hundred yards they all dismounted, stretched their stiff muscles, and let the horses have a long drink from the river. The sun still had not risen by many degrees, choosing instead to circle the horizon of this strange hyperborean land. As they rested Ana explained to them all the natural phenomenon of the Midnight Sun: how for months in summer the daylight never faded from the sky here in the far north, due to the canted axis of the great sphere that was the world, and its position in its long orbit around the sun. In midwinter the effect was reversed, and the spinning north pole never saw the light of day. But still it seemed like magic to Ailia—as though here in Trynisia the natural laws that governed the rest of the world were somehow held in abeyance.

  “Here in the northlands high summer was one long day, untouched by the shades of evening,” Ana said, “but still its inhabitants loved the winter dark. Though it bound their land in night and bitter cold for months on end, the Elei always rejoiced to see the stars again. For from the Celestial Empire their divine ancestors came long ago.”

  “How is it that there are trees and vines growing here,” Damion asked presently, “when the only other land I saw from the ship was icy and barren? How could there be a country like this, here in the far north?”

  Lorelyn answered him. “In the stories Ailia told, it was the gods who made Trynisia the way it is. In the beginning the island was covered in ice, but they made it warm and filled it with all sorts of trees and animals. They could grow anything they wanted here.”

  “But that’s just a myth,” said Damion. “I was wondering what the real explanation was.” No one had any suggestions to make.

  Ana found some skin-bottles in one of the packs and knelt by the river to dip up some water. “We must boil it be
fore drinking, I’m afraid,” she cautioned. “And that will mean building a fire. But we must take care the smoke doesn’t give us away; and we must hide the fire-pit afterwards, as well as we can.”

  “We shouldn’t rest here too long,” Jomar advised. “The Zims may already be after us. I know Shezzek: he doesn’t give up easily.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if they were afraid to follow us,” commented Damion. “Zimbourans are a superstitious lot, aren’t they? It will be terrifying for them to wake up, as if from an enchanted sleep, and find that not only we but all their beasts and even their weapons have vanished! Maybe they’ll think Ana put a witch-spell on them!”

  “They’re terrified of Khalazar too, though,” Jomar told him. “Some of them believe he’s a god, remember. They’d rather hunt for us, even without horses and dogs and swords, than go back and tell him they lost us. And they can always send a messenger to get reinforcements.”

  Ailia sat in silence, listening to their talk. Again and again her eyes strayed to Damion’s face. At the Academy Ailia had held many imaginary conversations with the priest, all of them sparkling (she liked to think) with intelligence and wit; now, in his real presence, and in these strange and awesome surroundings, she felt tongue-tied. At last she ventured to give voice to her thoughts. “I wonder what we will find on Elendor,” she said. “Do you know, I’m almost afraid to see the Star Stone. I don’t want it to be just a bit of ugly black meteor-iron. I so want it to be just as it was in the stories—a beautiful, magical gem.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Damion. “But the Stone was an important symbol—like the Sacred Flame of the Faith—and symbols are very powerful. In the old wars between Maurainia and Marakor our soldiers used to carry torches lit from the Flame—and they used them to burn whole towns and villages.”