The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  They’re all right! They’re safe!

  She ran forward, then halted with a gasp at the sight of Damion’s face: the injury to his temple, though not serious, had bled copiously in the manner of facial wounds. She flew to him. “Damion! Damion, are you all right?”

  He nodded, too weary to speak.

  “Damion! What about me?” said Jomar. Ailia turned to him and started.

  “Jomar! You’re covered in blood!”

  “Yes, but it isn’t mine,” he replied in a tone of satisfaction. Ailia paled and backed away slightly.

  “Ailia my dear, why don’t you boil up the last of the water from the bottles?” suggested Ana. “Lorelyn, you can help me tend their injuries.”

  Neither of the men was seriously hurt, and after ministering to them for a few minutes Ana pronounced them to be in no danger of infection or any other complications. Still, her face wore a worried expression when she looked at Damion. The young man was very silent: when Greymalkin rubbed her head against his hand he ignored her, and when Jomar congratulated him on his victory over the monsters’ leader he looked away. “I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  “What’s eating him?” said Jomar, watching Damion as he rose and walked off through the woods.

  “I think he needs to be alone for a little,” Ana answered.

  “What were those things, anyway?” asked Jomar. “They didn’t look anything like the hobs.”

  “They are one of the old Morugei races,” Ana said. “The Demonspawn. This particular race is known as the Anthropophagi. They are human, but badly deformed. You may have noticed that some had more than the normal number of fingers, or had oddly-shaped feet.”

  “I’ve read about the Morugei,” said Ailia in a low voice. “The stories said their ancestors used to be human, but they—they took demons for mates, so all their descendants were ugly and cruel. The Anthropophagi are cannibals.” She shuddered.

  “They do practice cannibalism, it’s true,” Ana conceded, “but mainly on one another. They believe that the strength of a dead man enters into those who consume his flesh. No doubt they will feast on the remains of their fallen comrades this day, and feel they honor them thereby. The other Morugei races were far more dangerous than the Anthropophagi—the Trolls, the Ogres, and the Goblins. Fortunately they, like the firedrakes, have now vanished completely from the earth. And the Anthropophagi are a dwindling race.”

  “Huh! Not hard to see why, if they eat each other,” commented Jomar. He turned to Lorelyn. “Why in the world did you come galloping into the fight like that, girl? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Well, there’s gratitude!” remarked Lorelyn. “I came to help you—and I did.”

  “I didn’t need any help: I was doing all right without you.”

  “But when I came, they all ran away,” the girl pointed out.

  “That is true,” said Ana. “They did flee at her approach, Jomar. I don’t believe they’ve ever seen a horse before. Lorelyn’s intervention may well have saved you both.”

  Ailia felt a pang of envy. She could still see, in her mind’s vision, Lorelyn on the plunging white horse, riding boldly to the men’s aid. To be so brave! As for Lorelyn, she seemed quite unperturbed by her brush with danger. Her face was flushed with excitement. “When I was on the horse, I felt as though—as though I’d grown, somehow,” she said to Ana. “As though he were a part of me. I could feel him—not just under me, but in my mind too . . . somehow. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You are an Elei. Your ancestors had many curious abilities, among them the gift of bonding with beasts. Even wild animals loved the Elei. The dolphins that lived along Trynisia’s coast came right into the shallows to play with their children, and swam before the bows of their ships.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re part Elei yourself, then,” suggested Lorelyn. “You don’t really look it, if you don’t mind my saying so, but you’re certainly a wonder with animals.”

  “Will the what-d’you-call-’ems come back here?” Jomar interrupted, wincing as he flexed his sword arm.

  “No,” Ana replied. “Anthropophagi are cowardly creatures, for all their frightening looks. They won’t dare return to this spot.”

  “Thanks to the horse!” said Lorelyn with a laugh.

  Ailia scrambled to her feet and walked away from the camp.

  DAMION STOOD AT THE SITE of the battle, looking at the bloodstained and trampled ground. The bodies of the fallen Anthropophagi were gone already, and the sight gave Damion a pang. It was a reminder that their adversaries had been not monsters or beasts, but human beings. They had taken their dead away with them.

  And I killed one, thought Damion, or gave him his death-wound at least, which is the same thing: he’ll likely die. I’ve killed a man. A melancholy descended on him which even the returning rays of the sun could not dispel. Did soldiers feel this way after their first kill—this sense of irrevocable loss, of permanent transformation? He paced about the clearing. The great black skull of the firedrake appeared to mock him with its grinning jaws: its eyeless gaze held his own.

  So this is what comes of your priestly Vows and your precious Reason, it seemed to say. They are only a gloss, a pleasing pattern on the surface. Your first desire was for the sword, as was your father’s—how long did it take for your hand to grasp a weapon? What lies beneath is the same in man and beast both, and leads always to the same end: struggle and pain and blood, victim and victor. The sword is but an echo of the talon and the fang. Call yourself man if you will, as if that were something unique and holy; but you are a beast as I am, and ever will be.

  “No,” he whispered. But the unspoken accusation hung on the air, with the lingering reek of blood.

  “Damion?” He turned to see Ailia standing there, eyeing him curiously. “Damion, what is the matter?”

  Ailia was filled with admiration. In her eyes Damion was a hero, fit to stand with Andarion and Ingard the Bold: he had risked his life to save her and the other women from the terrible onslaught of the Anthropophagi, even sustained injury on their behalf. In her mind the scar upon his temple became a grievous wound, nobly borne with the fortitude of a Paladin. Why then was he looking at her with this troubled, almost guilty expression, as though he wanted her forgiveness? “You were very brave, Damion,” she told him. “As brave as any knight!”

  He looked at the young girl standing before him in her convent gown, her eyes large and wide open, her innocence like a reproach; she seemed to him suddenly like a being from another world, a world from which he had forever alienated himself.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’ve killed someone. A man.”

  Ailia was startled into stillness by his words. She did not like, of course, to think of Damion killing anyone—not even an Anthropophagus. Now she understood his distress. “But, Damion,” she said, her tone earnest, “you and Jomar had to fight. They would have killed us if you hadn’t.” She added, “Brannar Andarion and his Paladins killed people.”

  Damion looked straight at her, his anguish showing in his eyes. “Andarion wasn’t a priest,” he said.

  “The Paladins were—they took holy vows.”

  “Not the same vows as I did. I swore never to harm anyone—ever—as long as I lived. Never to fight in a war, never to bear arms against another human being. And until the Supreme Patriarch summons me into his presence and formally releases me from those vows, I’m still bound by them.”

  Ailia stood twisting her hands, longing to say something that would comfort him, to repay in part the debt she owed him, but the words she wanted were not there. Finally she slipped quietly away and left him to his despondency.

  Why am I here? she asked herself miserably. I can’t help him, or any of them—I can’t even find the right words to say. I’m no use to the others at all, I’m just an extra body for them to protect. I wish I was brave, like Lorelyn. Then I might be of some use.

  She wandered on, feeling wretched. Pres
ently she saw ahead of her more broken masonry. Two stone dragons crouched on square plinths: like the statue on Haldarion’s rampart they were badly weathered, their batlike wings broken off and the scales upon their winding coils almost obliterated by wind and rain. Behind them a double line of broken pillar-stumps and crumbling walls flanked a narrow lane greened over with moss. They led to a lone arch, beyond which lay more fallen pillars and a glint of water.

  Then she saw the stone posts of the door they had once guarded standing behind the dragons: they were broken to knee height, and reached by three low stone steps. She caught her breath. She knew this place, though she had never been here before. It had been a temple once, covered over by a roof. She mounted the steps and began to walk up the green aisle.

  Climbing vines spread great mats of lapping leaves over broken walls where elaborate tapestries must once have hung; in the cracked floor beneath, where floral arrangements would once have been placed, hardy wildflowers now offered their own bright blooms. The fog had cleared: above the broken walls, where the roof’s arching vaults had once been, spread the sky, blue and serene as the surface of an untroubled sea, flecked here and there with a spume of clouds. All temples should be like this, she decided—roofless and open to the heavens, with unglazed windows to let the wind and the birds in. Rain would be a problem, she admitted. And there could be no services in wintertime. But on a clear day, such as this, how easy it would be to worship!

  As in the ruins of Haldarion, she felt the past as an almost tangible presence. Thousands upon thousands of people had come here before her, walked this same path from the dragon-guarded door to the pool at the end of the aisle. It was, she knew, no natural pond. She walked over the pavement of cracked and ancient stone about its marble rim, heavily grown over with grass and moss, and stood staring down at the water. Its surface was utterly still, reflecting the tree branches and the sky above, white clouds drifting against blue infinity—a mirror to Heaven. Her reflection looked up at her, eyes wide and filled with awe. She knelt, dipped her hands in, splashed the cool water onto her face. Then she kicked off her shoes and lowered herself into the pool, gown and all.

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER with you?” Jomar’s brusque voice came from behind Damion suddenly, making him jump.

  “Leave me alone,” he said without turning around.

  Jomar expelled his breath in an exasperated noise. “Damion, we’ve got to get up the mountain. The Zims may come at any moment. Let’s go get that stone of yours and leave.”

  “And afterwards?” Damion asked, facing him. “What will we do then? Will we kill a few Zimbourans, too, before we’re done? I wonder, Jomar, how many people have killed for that bit of stone up on the mountain, and how many believed they were justified. I won’t kill for the Stone, or for anything else.”

  “You’ll kill for self-defense, same as me.”

  “But I’m an ordained priest. Don’t you see? For me to—”

  “I see all right. I see that you’re no different from the rest of us,” Jomar snapped. “I’ve killed men—I did it because I had to, because they would have killed me if I hadn’t fought back. But it’s all right for me, isn’t it? I’m no priest, I’m—what do you call people like me? Sinners?” His black eyes blazed with anger. “That’s the trouble with you priests and shamans, you pure-and-holy types—you think you’re better than anyone else. Then you find out you aren’t, and it really bothers you, doesn’t it? Well, it doesn’t bother me because I don’t expect it, see? I’ve got blood on my hands, yes—and I’ll probably get more on them before this is over. And you know, I don’t care what that makes you think of me.”

  Damion stared at him, stricken. “Jo—I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant. And don’t call me Jo. I’m going now. I’m going to go on up that mountain, and get that stupid stone, and Heaven help anyone who tries to stop me. How many more people will die if the Zims take it away from this island? Think about that. You can join me or not—as you please.” He strode off. Damion stood for a moment, white-faced, hands clenched at his sides. Then he rushed after Jomar.

  Ana looked relieved when the two men reentered the camp, but her expression quickly changed to one of concern. “Isn’t Ailia with you?”

  “Ailia?” Damion looked blank. “She came and spoke to me, and then left again—I thought she was heading back to camp.”

  “She hasn’t come back,” said Lorelyn.

  “What is it with that girl?” exclaimed Jomar in disgust. “Every few minutes she’s wandering off. Do I have to hobble her like the horses?”

  Damion groaned, struck his own forehead. “This is my fault. She came after me. Jomar, we’ve got to find her.”

  They rose in a body and set off through the wood.

  DAMION WAS THE FIRST to find the temple ruin. He walked up the mossy aisle, then stopped short at the sight of the pool, staring as the head of a woman rose from behind the marble rim. The ends of her hair drifted upon the water, but the rest was dry and the sunlight streamed through its nebulous mass, tinting it with gold like a sunset cloud. Her cheeks wore a faint rose flush, her skin seemed almost pellucid, alabaster-white and warmly luminous; one ear, caught in a sunbeam, had the pink translucency of a shell. Around her the skirts of a white gown spread flat, floating like the pad of a water lily.

  An Elei it must be, some descendant of a surviving tribe of Fairfolk . . . Then with a little shock he recognized her.

  “Ailia?” he said uncertainly.

  It must be some curious trick of the light, he thought. He had thought her fairly pretty, but now she was transformed in some incomprehensible way: the face she turned on him was radiant, ecstatic, just as he had always imagined the face of a saint would look. Her gray eyes had a tinge of purple in them, the color of wild violets. She gave him a rapturous glance from those altered eyes as she swam toward the brink of the pool.

  “What happened, Ailia?” he asked, helping her out of the pool. “Did you fall in?”

  She shook her head as she climbed out, hampered by her sodden skirts. Jomar, coming up behind with the others, began to lecture her for wandering away, but for once the girl cut him off. “The pool—we must all bathe in it.”

  “Are you joking?” Jomar was taken aback at her intense expression. “There might be anything in there—leeches or water snakes—”

  “The water looks clean enough to me, Jomar,” said Damion, scanning the surface.

  “You can’t see right to the bottom, though,” said Jomar disapprovingly. “It looks deep. I’m not getting in there.”

  “I would, if I were you,” suggested Damion, who was downwind of Jomar at that moment.

  The Mohara man glanced at the dried mud and blood still clinging to his skin and clothes, and shrugged. “It’ll wear off.”

  Ana and Lorelyn were examining the ruin. The stone dragons’ heads had been recently anointed with what looked like dried blood, dark crusted runnels flowing down their jaws and necks. Greymalkin reared on her hind legs to sniff at it.

  “The Anthropophagi have been here,” Ana observed. “They have made idols of these old statues: it looks as though they sacrifice to them.”

  “They didn’t make them, though, did they?” asked Damion, joining her and Lorelyn.

  “No!” Ailia replied. “These dragons were the temple guardians. They’re meant to look frightening, to remind you that this is a holy place. You had to conquer all your fears first before you were allowed to come in here.”

  Ana nodded. “Yes, this was the temple of purification. It was dedicated to a Trynoloänan, a celestial Dragon King. Such places were always built with pools enclosed, or placed near lakes or rivers, since true dragons love the water.

  “There were two kinds of dragon, you see: the firedrakes, which were evil, and another kind that were not fearsome monsters but spiritual beings like gods or faeries. The Loänan they were called, the ‘Lords of Wind and Water,’ for theirs was the power of the sky, of wind and water; they c
ould send down rain or return a flooded river to its banks. Nor were these their only powers. The celestial dragons could change their shapes at will, becoming anything they wished—bird, beast, or human being.”

  “The Kaans believed in something similar,” said Damion, remembering.

  “They learned it from the Elei. The Kaanish emperors used to claim that Loänan in human form had mated with their ancestors, and that the emperors of olden days were able to assume draconic form.”

  “But whyever would the Anthropophagi worship them?” asked Lorelyn.

  “Perhaps they believe that these are images of Modrian-Valdur in dragon form, or perhaps they still fear the Trynoloänan and make offerings to stay his wrath at their intrusion. Small wonder they attacked us—we came too close to their holy place.”

  “Hadn’t we better leave, then?” said Damion.

  Ana shook her head. “They will not dare to return.”

  Ailia walked to the stone rim of the pool. “This is the Pool of Purification.”

  “You’re quite right,” Ana affirmed.

  “In the old days, when pilgrims came from all over the world to see the Stone, they had to be prepared first,” Ailia explained to the others. “Welessan said there were three levels to the mountain. First you bathed or washed in this pool by the Dragon Temple: it was a purification ritual. When you came out you were given a green robe, and went on to the next level—the Level of Beasts it was called. It was about halfway up the mountainside. By the time you’d gotten there you were to have mastered the bestial side of your nature, and if you had you were given a red robe by a Nemerei sage and could go higher up, to the Level of Men. There you learned to master your mind: control your emotions and so on. And if you did well at that, you were given a white robe and could go all the way up to the holy city and see the Stone. Some pilgrims took weeks to climb the mountain—or months, or even years. They had to be spiritually ready, you see.”

  Jomar expressed his opinion of pilgrims and their methods of mountain climbing in a loud snort. “Well, I’m not taking that long, I can tell you. And I’m not going for a swim, either.”