The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  SHE WOKE TO FIND the sun shining again, its rays beating through the sides of the tent and making a delicate sketch in shadow on the canvas wall of the fern-fronds and blades of grass outside. Opening the tent’s entrance, she peeped out, startling a plump gray rabbit, which bounded away through the trees as she guiltily averted her eyes. There was a slight ground mist, but the sky was clear overhead. Greymalkin glided through the long grass a short distance away, her tail twitching: perhaps she smelled the rabbit. At the edge of the little clearing Artagon and Kaligon grazed placidly in the company of Ana’s pony and the sturdy brown packhorses. Ana was feeding one of the horses with oats out of a small sack, while Damion rummaged through the saddlebags of another, whistling to himself.

  “Will you stop that blasted whistling!” exclaimed Jomar in irritation, thrusting his tousled head out of the tent-flap. “It’s driving me out of my mind.” Damion promptly ceased whistling and began to hum instead. Jomar looked at him with dislike. “I hate people who are cheerful in the mornings,” he grumbled and pulled his head back in again, like an irritated tortoise.

  “Nobody asked me to do a watch,” commented Ailia. “Or Lorelyn either. She’d have wakened me if she’d crawled over me to get out the tent-flap.”

  “I decided to let you two rest, and complete the watch myself,” replied Ana.

  Ailia and Damion stared. “But—aren’t you terribly tired?” Ailia asked.

  Ana smiled, shaking her head. “I am old, child, and the old sleep very little. Only young things like you need their rest. And how did you sleep, once I relieved you?” she asked Damion.

  “Not a wink,” replied Damion, packing up the saddlebags again. “Jomar snores like a boar. You must have heard him: it’s a wonder he doesn’t wake himself up.”

  “Well, you talk in your sleep,” retorted Jomar, crawling out of the tent-flap again. “Natter, natter, natter, for hours on end.”

  “How can I talk in my sleep when I don’t get any?” demanded Damion.

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” said Ana, “but as there’s no other sleeping arrangement that doesn’t offend propriety, you’ll just have to get used to each other.”

  Lorelyn came out of the tent behind her, gave a vast uninhibited yawn, and stretched her arms skyward. “What on earth’s happened to the weather?” she asked, puzzled.

  The wind had risen: a cold wind, coming down out of the north. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the trees were uneasy. Never had Lorelyn seen such a swift change in the weather. Hurriedly they helped themselves to a sketchy breakfast, canteens of boiled water from one of the streams they had passed and some ship’s biscuit they had set to soak in a pan. As they packed up and rode on, they saw that the north had become one vast maw of dark gray cloud, its upper edge swelling into bulbous shapes. It advanced in a solid mass, dwarfing the mountains, swallowing the blue sky over their heads with amazing speed.

  “You were right about the weather, Ana,” said Damion. “How did you know?”

  “I don’t like it,” remarked Ailia aloud. “It’s almost . . . alive.”

  “It’s wrong, this storm,” declared Lorelyn. That peculiar unfocused look had come into her eyes again. “All wrong—it shouldn’t be.”

  In less time than they would have believed possible the dark cloud mass completely swallowed the sky, blotting out the soft hazy light and creating a twilight of its own. They reined in their horses, staring up at it in consternation. “Did you ever see anything like it?” asked Damion, awed.

  “Looks as though it’s going to rain hellfire,” was Jomar’s comment.

  There was a blinding, blue-white flash, and a grinding roar came from the depths of the thunderhead. The horses neighed, straining at their bits. Lightning illumined random sections of the sky. Huge cloudy chasms gaped out of the dark. Cumular ridges stood out black and solid-seeming as mountain ranges. The trees tossed and roared above their heads, and debris danced in the air. Gazing up fearfully, they saw blue bolts arcing from cloud to cloud, and for an instant Ailia thought she glimpsed something else—a flying flicker of greenish fire, that darted through the clouds with the same wild, leaping motion as the thunderbolts. She blinked: there was nothing there, only a cloud canopy dark as smoke, blue-veined with lightning. I must have imagined it, she thought.

  And now the rain came, in lashing torrents that soon drenched them to the skin.

  “We’ve got to find a cave or something,” yelled Jomar. He turned in the saddle to glare at Ana. “I don’t suppose Madam would care to use her magic powers and find us one?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Ana, as always, responded to Jomar’s jibe by taking it seriously. “I cannot make conspicuous use of my powers here without drawing unfriendly attention.” In her arms Greymalkin mewed plaintively, and the old woman tucked her travel-cloak about the cat.

  They rode on, drawing the hoods of their cloaks down over their faces to keep out the rain, trying to soothe their snorting and skittish mounts. Thunder boomed again overhead, a loud rending report as though the heavens had split, and a huge lightning bolt fissured the sky directly ahead of them. This one did not move between the clouds, but reached down to the earth. There came the sound of a loud detonation, and an acrid smell.

  Greymalkin screamed; the horses reared and halted. Ana drew in the reins of her mount and sat absolutely still. Ailia, glancing at her, saw with concern that she was very pale, her face as haggard as it had been when their galleon passed through the storms. Slowly Ana raised one hand, her lips moving soundlessly.

  “It’s stopping!” exclaimed Lorelyn.

  The clouds began to shred like wool and break up, though the sky was still an ominous sight. Ana sighed and motioned to the others to continue riding. The eastern sky was a ghastly hue—a vivid, violent yellow, its lurid light filling all the inverted valleys and hollows of the cloud layer. Then the sun reemerged, and there behind them hung a colossal rainbow, seeming to bridge the world from end to end with its vivid hues.

  “Look—isn’t that smoke?” called Lorelyn presently. “Up ahead.”

  “Lightning strikes, probably,” suggested Damion.

  But when they approached the mounting columns of smoke, they saw that they issued not from burning trees but from holes in the ground. Damion peered into one. He thought he could see a red glow deep in the earth below. Fumaroles? Was there volcanism in Trynisia? Perhaps that was the explanation for the island’s warm climate.

  “Hob-holes,” murmured Ana absently. “They’re the chimneys of hobgoblins’ underground dwellings.”

  “More likely some kind of volcano,” opined Jomar, echoing Damion’s thoughts.

  They rode on for some time in silence. “I’m afraid I must have a rest now,” said Ana at length when they reached a secluded grove. Her face was deathly pale. “If you don’t mind stopping too, and waiting for me.”

  They all dismounted again, looking at her with concern as she seated herself on a fallen tree trunk, drawing deep breaths. Greymalkin went to sit at her feet, grooming her wet fur. The air was damp, the trees still dripping from the storm, and the four younger people were in exceedingly low spirits. Jomar and Lorelyn could not agree on whether the rain had really finished, or if it was just a lull: neither would give way, and the disagreement became a heated argument. Lorelyn had picked up a good deal of colorful language from the Mohara man, not knowing what any of it meant, and Ailia blanched at the obscenities that fell from the girl’s innocent lips.

  “You had better all have a rest too,” interjected Ana at last. “And light a fire if you can find any dry wood. Everyone’s feeling a little edgy and overwrought, I think.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” returned Jomar. He turned to Damion. “Will you stop that!”

  “Stop what?” asked Damion.

  “Kicking me—like that.” He gave Damion a swift kick in the ankle and the other man leaped up in pain.

  “I never touched you!” he said, wincing.

  “Well, someb
ody did.”

  “Whoever it was, it wasn’t I.” He rubbed his ankle tenderly. “There’s no need to cripple me.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t you, who was it?”

  “Jomar, I think you must be mad,” said Lorelyn, staring.

  At that moment there was a rustling in the bushes around them, and a series of high-pitched cries that sounded eerily like human laughter. Ana stood, leaning on her cane. “We must leave at once,” she said. “They do not wish us to remain here.”

  “Who are they?” Lorelyn exclaimed, springing up.

  “One of the Hobgoblin races.”

  “Goblins!” Ailia gasped, paling.

  “Hobgoblins,” Ana corrected. “A different creature altogether. Goblins are evil and malicious creatures, but Hobgoblins—Hobs as they always used to be called—are merely playful. They are humanity’s closest kin, and not really dangerous; but I think we had best not linger in their territory, or they may do us some minor mischief or other.”

  “I’d like to see them try,” growled Jomar. There was a chorus of titters from the underbrush. Snatching up a small stone from the ground, he lobbed it into the bush. It came back promptly, whizzing a finger’s length past his head.

  “Don’t provoke them, Jomar,” advised Ana. “Let’s get our gear and be off.”

  They packed up again and rode away from the spot. They heard no more laughter, though occasionally a stick or stone was cast at them out of the branches of the trees high above. Ailia, glancing up, caught a fleeting glimpse of a face. The hairs on the nape of her neck rose at the sight of it. She was reminded of a tame monkey that she had once seen, perched on a sailor’s shoulder: the tiny visage in the tree bore that same eldritch and half-mocking resemblance to a human face. The little round head, no larger than a year-old infant’s, had ears and eyes proportionately larger than a human’s, and the nose was almost flat. The skin was unnaturally pale, almost mushroom-white, the scalp topped with a fuzz of fine hair like dandelion-down. Seeing her looking, the creature dodged out of sight, and a furious chattering came from the trees along with more sticks and stones. The travelers were pelted for some time as they rode on in haste through the wood; only Ana was spared. Perhaps, Ailia speculated, the creatures did not find the old woman threatening, owing to her diminutive size.

  The trees thinned, and the twilight beneath their boughs lightened: the missiles ceased, along with the chattering. The Hobs did not wish to pursue them into the open, it appeared. As they rode out of the wood the sun shone overhead again, but the sky over the mountains was clotted with the curds of cloud that promised rain.

  NOW THAT THE FOREST was left behind, the exposed land showed a surface scarred by the passage of glaciers in ancient times. Great boulders strewed the fields, and where the earth’s granitic foundations were bared long gashes and striations were revealed even in the rock, like the marks of gnawing teeth in old bones. The dwindling of the trees exposed another feature, not natural in origin: an old paved road, much like the old Elei road in Maurainia. They guided their horses onto its cracked and grass-grown stones. It ran straight toward a great double-peaked mountain that stood a little forward of the vast blue range. “Elendor,” said Ana. “We are only a day or so away.”

  As they rode they began to see that not all the land’s wounds came from vanished ice. The meadows were pocked with many deep pits and basin-shaped craters, some with pools of water lying at the bottom. Ana said these were gouged into the earth by the Great Disaster: the graves of fallen stars. Some were more than fifty feet deep, and surrounded by scattered boulders of great size. One had obliterated part of the ancient road, and they had to make a detour around it. As they rode on the number of craters increased, until the travelers felt as though they were journeying on the moon. But though trees no longer grew here, there was still an abundance of plant life, mainly of arctic varieties: wild grasses and sedges and low-growing, shrubby heaths clothed the land. Even the bleak boulders rising from the ground bore bright lichens like splashes of gray-green, yellow, or vermilion paint. And the land thronged with wild fowls that had flown across stormy northern seas to this island sanctuary: wild geese and sea-ducks massed in little fleets on the calm pools and meres, and rose up crying as the travelers passed.

  Within a few hours the level ground began to climb toward the rolling foothills, and the road rose with it. Elendor loomed in the sky before them. Though it was not as high as the mountains behind it—perhaps seven thousand feet from foot to summit—its proximity made it seem larger.

  “We’re almost there,” said Ailia, with a lift of the heart, as they paused on one of the foothills to rest. Lorelyn opened a sack of feed for the horses, while Jomar took out his bow and arrow again.

  “We should get a good supply of meat while we can,” he said. “Game’s plentiful here, but it may not be when we reach the mountains.”

  “Must you kill something?” reproached Lorelyn. “We don’t really need it, we’ve plenty of supplies.”

  “Ship’s biscuit and meal! And the biscuit has to be soaked before it’s edible. You didn’t mind eating the rabbits, I noticed.”

  “I know, and I wish now I hadn’t, if you’re going to be casting it up to me from now on. I won’t eat anything else you kill, so there.”

  “Please yourself.”

  They had seen a number of pantheons on the plain earlier, the odd alien coloring of their violet-blue coats and their pale constellations of spots making them highly visible against the monotonous hues of the tundra. But none was in sight at the moment. Apart from a few hovering hawks, and the flies that rose in whining clouds from the long grasses, no living thing was to be seen.

  “I should have shot some ducks when I had the chance,” grumbled Jomar, his eyes searching the land.

  Damion knelt by a small pond at the roadside, using the shallows for a mirror. He had found a bar of tallow soap and lathered his chin with it, grimacing as he tried to shave with a Zimbouran dagger.

  “Why bother?” the Mohara man asked him. He ran a hand over his own bristly beard, grown during his time on the ship.

  “It itches,” Damion complained. “I’m not used to whiskers. And I think something’s living in it.”

  Ailia stared at him. As the soft yellow hair hiding his cheeks and chin was cut away, a more familiar face emerged: the young priest from the Royal Academy, the Damion Athariel she had known there. Somewhat to her own surprise she felt a familiar pang beneath her breast, and she averted her gaze. But how ridiculous! she thought. So much has happened—so much has changed. How can I feel like this about him still, just as though we were back at the Academy and everything was perfectly safe and normal?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a great flurry and a bellow, followed by a shout from Jomar. As the others turned in alarm the heath in front of the Mohara man’s feet seemed to burst asunder, and out of it there sprang a creature like a huge snow-white antelope. It snorted through flared nostrils and trumpeted again, tossing a head crowned with arching horns. Jomar, too startled for the moment to make use of his bow, gaped as the animal galloped away across the heath, still lowing.

  Their horses snorted and whinnied in alarm, and Damion and Lorelyn rushed to keep them from bolting. Jomar, recovering his wits, raised his bow. But before he could shoot, the meadow all around the travelers erupted with a dozen more of the tall ibex-like creatures, rearing up seemingly out of the earth itself. And now the travelers saw that other recumbent shapes, which they had at first taken for hummocks in the ground or glacial rocks, were in fact antelopes: those lying on the heath were green-gold in color, an exact match for its verdure, and those huddled amid the boulders were stone-gray. As they sprang to their feet their hue changed to pure white, as though they blanched with fear. The whole herd made off along the sloping ground in a thunder of pounding hooves.

  Jomar overcame his stupefaction and aimed an arrow at one of the fleeing creatures.

  “You’re not going to shoot one!” cried Lorelyn
, catching hold of his arm. The swan-white beasts were so majestic, so beautiful in flight.

  “Why not?” He drew the string back.

  “Jomar, please don’t!” pleaded Ailia. “Not for us. There’s no need.”

  Jomar stood for a long moment looking along the shaft of his arrow. Then finally he lowered his bow with the bolt unspent. He looked at the others, cleared his throat, and looked away again. “Too much meat to carry with us,” he muttered. “It’d only spoil.”

  THE RUINOUS ROAD NOWsnaked into the hills in long loops and meanders, but it still led toward the two-peaked mountain. Soon there were many ruins of buildings as well. Some had a few broken walls still standing; most were mere outlines of foundations littered with rubble and overgrown with grass. Hollowed-out shells of towers stood on the tops of hills, their windows filled with sky. They looked rather forlorn, Ailia thought.

  “What were those creatures back there, Ailia?” Damion asked her when they paused again for a meager meal. “Do you know?”

  “I think that was a parandrus herd. Welessan wrote about them, and Bendulus too. They’re like a cross between chameleons and antelopes.” Ailia spoke absently, looking up with longing at the tall ranges rising in endless rows, their dim blue blending with that of the sky beyond. “The Numiendori, the Mountains of the Moon. And Elendor is so close now.”

  Her voice trembled a little, and of its own, her hand went suddenly to his, seeking reassurance. He closed his fingers upon it, applying a comforting pressure, and she looked down at his hand on hers—it was slender, with long sensitive fingers, and where the arm emerged from the sleeve of his coarse linen shirt she saw small blond hairs glint like gold wires. She looked up then, at the face she had never imagined would be so close to her own: at the sky-colored eyes with their dark lashes and well-marked brows, the straight-bridged nose, the firm mouth and chin no longer hidden by the blond beard. He smiled at her, and she returned the smile.