The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  A large sword with a dragon-patterned hilt hung sheathed at Mandrake’s side, Damion noticed, but somehow he felt certain this man would be dangerous even without a weapon. He watched him with wary eyes, remembering that it was Mandrake who had abducted Lorelyn. Why? Because the Tryna Lia’s coming meant Trynisia would be rediscovered, taken back from Mandrake’s people? The Zimbourans will destroy the Anthropophagi if they settle this island. Now he understood. Mandrake must have heard of the Jana scroll and realized that its sea chart betrayed the location of his land and people. And so he had literally haunted the Academy, searching for the scroll; he had written the threatening letters that urged Damion to destroy it and break the vow that sheltered its keepers. And finally, in desperation, he had written to the Patriarch about the “heresy,” and snatched Lorelyn away: all to put an end to Ana’s Nemerei conspiracy, and the precious scroll that lay at its center.

  Ailia took a hesitant step toward Mandrake. “Please—couldn’t you help us? I know you’re not on the Zimbourans’ side.” She moved another step closer to him, her eyes pleading. “I believe Ana is important to you. She helped you, back when you were a child being mistreated by the Zimbourans. Don’t you want to help her, and us? If the Zimbourans find the Stone, there will be a war—”

  “Which is none of my concern.”

  Jomar glared at Ailia. “What are you doing? We don’t need him. What about the old woman’s Guardians?”

  “Guardians?” Mandrake repeated.

  “Ana spoke of an order of Elei,” Damion told him, “sworn to stay in Trynisia until the Tryna Lia arrived to take the Stone.”

  “Here in Trynisia?” Mandrake raised his eyebrows. “There is nothing alive in this land except birds and beasts, and the hobs and Anthropophagi. The Elei are gone forever.”

  “They may be hiding in the mountains—” Lorelyn began.

  “I have explored all this land, mountain and forest, hill and vale. No one lives here. I would have found them years ago.”

  The travelers all looked at one another in dismay. No Guardians! They had been so hopeful that they would have help once they arrived here. Now what were they to do? They could never get off the island on their own.

  Unless Mandrake could be induced to help them, Ailia thought. She tried again. “You must have a ship of you own,” she remarked. “You didn’t come on the Zimbouran ships, did you?”

  Mandrake’s face was impassive. “No, I did not travel with them.”

  Damion stepped forward to stand at Ailia’s side. “Listen to us, Mandrake. If you let us find the Stone and leave the island, I promise none of us will ever breathe a word about this place.” Ailia winced, seeing her planned travel books evaporating before her eyes, but she remained silent as he continued. “We’ll all swear to keep Trynisia a secret from the Commonwealth.”

  “And what of the Stone?”

  “We won’t take it back to Maurainia, I promise you that. We’ll hide it—throw it in the sea—anything to keep it out of Zimbouran hands. Just help us to do that, and this island will be safe forever. King Khalazar will lose all his followers if he fails to find the Stone.”

  Mandrake arched an eyebrow at that, and seemed to consider as he looked from Ailia to Damion. “You argue like Ana already,” he said at length. “Very well: I agree to your proposal. I don’t usually take sides in these matters, but you have, between you, a sort of collective ineptitude that is somehow touching. I will accompany you, though, and keep an eye on you.”

  Jomar made an explosive noise of protest, but Damion turned to the Mohara man. “We don’t want a fight, Jo. I suggest we let him help if he’s willing.”

  Mandrake, watching Damion as though he followed the other man’s thoughts, nodded in apparent satisfaction. “You may as well start out now,” he said. With that, he made off at a brisk pace without glancing back to see if they were following him. After a moment they did. Jomar trailed along at the very end of the procession, wearing a baleful expression.

  “I hope the dragon won’t come back,” Ailia said, her eyes searching the sky.

  “The old woman said dragons were extinct,” grumbled Jomar.

  “She said there weren’t any more firedrakes,” Ailia corrected. “Perhaps it was that other, older kind of dragon that she talked about. The ones the Elei worshipped—the Lords of Wind and Water.”

  “I thought those were just imaginary.”

  “She didn’t say so—she talked about them as though they were real,” said Ailia, remembering. “And didn’t you notice that this one didn’t breathe fire at us? I’m sure it would have if it could. It was one of the wind-and-water dragons, not a fire-dragon. The power it seemed to have over the weather—I feel certain it somehow made that rain cloud move toward us—”

  “You’re just imagining things,” growled Jomar.

  “No, she is right,” Mandrake said, pausing and half turning toward them. “Dragons can gather clouds around them when they fly, concealing themselves. The ancients used to believe any oddly shaped cloud contained a dragon.”

  “But if they’re all wrapped up in cloud, how can they see where they’re going?” Lorelyn inquired.

  “A dragon is not limited to the five feeble human senses,” Mandrake told her in a lofty tone.

  The group fell silent, concentrating on the slow ascent toward the summit. Damion kept casting sharp, wary glances up at the sky: it was now blue and clear for the most part, but there were one or two large sprawling cumuli in it that might easily hide a hundred dragons. And if they really were “wind-and-water dragons,” might they not also be aquatic? Any of the deep sky- colored tarns they passed, cupped in the mountain’s stony folds, might also be a lurking-place. Mandrake, however, did not appear in the least concerned. Damion glanced at the man’s impassive profile. He flattered himself that he was a good reader of faces, but Mandrake’s eluded him utterly. It might have been hewn from stone for all it revealed of its owner’s emotions. Mandrake looked no more than thirty, and yet had the cynical, world-weary air of a much older man. Damion recalled reading that the Elei had enjoyed a longer lifespan than other human beings: was the same perhaps true of the Anthropophagi?

  He glanced over at Jomar. That was another worry: his friendship with the Mohara man had begun to deteriorate. Jomar did not like Mandrake and made no secret of it. He plainly did not trust the man, and also seemed to feel that his self-appointed role as leader of the expedition had been usurped.

  “Who is this Mandrake, anyway?” he demanded of Damion when their guide was a short distance away.

  “I think he’s an Anthropophagus,” Damion began.

  “Of course he’s an Anthro-what-d’you-call-it—just look at those eyes of his! I meant who does he think he is—and what’s his interest in this whole affair? I’d still like to know more about him.”

  “So would I,” admitted Damion. “Ana didn’t tell us much, did she? There’s some mystery there. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”

  “That old woman’s always making a mystery of everything,” Jomar grumbled. “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust Mandrake any farther than I could throw this mountain. Remember what he did to Lorelyn.”

  “Perhaps he was only trying to protect her,” replied Damion, trying to ease his own misgivings. “I think he was the one who told the Patriarch all about her and the Nemerei. Perhaps he felt obligated to keep her safe from the Zimbourans after that. Let’s not antagonize him, Jo. We could be wrong about him.”

  Jomar’s only response to this remark was a stony silence.

  They were all very quiet as they approached the summit. There was something overwhelming about the mountain, now that field and forest had been left behind and its igneous bones were laid bare to their view. Sheer crags hung above, gray as louring clouds. Ailia felt increasingly timid under that granite scowl. She looked out on the ranges beyond, their slopes velveted with verdure, their peaks of layered rock etched with snow. Beyond these in turn were far-off summits completely
mantled in glaciers.

  Mandrake saw her looking at them. “The great ice fields,” he said softly. “This land was once completely covered in ice, and nothing could grow here. The first inhabitants of Trynisia altered its climate long ago with the aid of sorcery. They placed crystals about the land that could warm the air around them for a considerable distance. The weatherstones are there still, but their power is weakening and will one day fail. And then Trynisia will end as it began: a frozen waste, its fields and forests buried in ice, its history forgotten.”

  Ailia shivered, thinking of the immense implacability of the slow-marching ice. The glaciers were merely biding their time until the day when they could devour Trynisia once more. She glanced at Mandrake’s face and saw a peculiar expression on his features—“Sort of gloomy and gloating at the same time,” was the nearest she could come to describing it later—and hurriedly looked away again.

  The path wound on and up, steep as a stair. And at long last they saw above them a wall, built of the mountain’s gray granite and blending with the crags so that it was nearly invisible. Atop the wall was a turret, its slit windows facing the road, and beneath the turret an archway opened, dark and deep. The path led through it; on the other side must be—

  “Liamar!” Ailia breathed, breaking the silence.

  CLOUD SWIRLED ABOUT the mountainside, bellowing with thunder; in its midst old Ana stood, leaning wearily upon a granite outcrop. Winged shadows swung through the grayness overhead, dived down, and then swerved away as she raised her free hand. But the dragons flew lower with every dive, as if an invisible ceiling positioned above Ana were subsiding along with her strength. Her eyes were closed, her head bowed.

  He is with them now, the old woman thought. He was right that I could not prevent it. Should I have warned them about Mandrake? But then they might have tried to fight him: Lorelyn is impetuous, and Jomar also. There was a crack, and the world turned white, then dark; there was a smell of scorched air. They had cast a thunderbolt at her, trying to break through her shield. She straightened with a last effort as the dragons flew lower, so low that her hair and cloak stirred in the gusts from their wings. No, they must not fight him. If the Tryna Lia draws on her untested powers, tries to use them against him, it will be her destruction. He would strike back at once with all the force he has. But for now, he does not fear her, nor she him. Let ignorance be her shield. She must not guess what he is, what threat he presents to her. Nor must she suspect who . . .

  Slowly Ana slid to the ground. Above her the dragons roared in triumph.

  16

  The Queen of Heaven

  THEY STOOD TOGETHER INSIDE the ancient gateway, gazing out on a wilderness of tumbled and broken stone. Buildings stood cheek by jowl due to the scarcity of space, their walls weathered and crumbling, among narrow streets. Above the collapsed roofs the dome of the Temple of Heaven swelled like a rising moon. But its decorative gilding had long gone, and a great winding fissure ran up its southern face. They walked on into the desolate streets without speaking. They had expected ruin, but there was something in the atmosphere of the place that overwhelmed them. Due to its high elevation the city was nearly silent: only the wind made an eerie ululation, like a lament, through the gaping doors and windows of the empty buildings.

  In the exact center of the city was a circular plaza surrounded by shattered structures, a few foundations, and some broken-off columns like the stumps of dead trees, many blackened as if by a great fire. Here stood the Temple of Heaven, with the royal palace to one side. Ailia, looking at the latter, felt her initial euphoria fade. Tears pricked at her eyes. So this was all that was left of the palace of the Elei monarch, wonder of the world! Gone were the jeweled walls, the gold leaf, the mosaics: all the splendors of which Welessan the Wanderer had written with such enthusiasm. Only the stone skeleton was left, cracked and crumbling walls and a single lonely tower. It was all the more moving because some vestige of its old splendor remained, in the proud arches of doors and windows and the aspiring lines of the surviving tower.

  “I wish I hadn’t seen it!” Ailia burst out, breaking the silence at last. “If I hadn’t, I could have gone on imagining it as beautiful and splendid, the way it was in the stories. Now I’ll always think of it as a ruin.” She looked around the lifeless city: it was like a cemetery, she thought, where all the hopes and dreams of a lost race lay buried.

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” said Jomar. He spoke with an air of authority, determined to reestablish himself as the leader of the group.

  “First we will find some shelter, a place where you can leave your gear,” said Mandrake. He led the way to a ruined guesthouse. Jomar had no choice but to follow him with the others.

  Mandrake led them along a maze of stone passages, their ceilings long since fallen, to a roofed room where they left their meager supplies and Greymalkin. At one end was a vast fireplace, large enough to stand up inside. “You will be able to sleep here in safety,” he told them.

  “What about dragons?” asked Ailia.

  He seemed to find that amusing. “No dragon could fit in that narrow door. Now, let us go to the high temple and get this business over with. Bring a torch with you.”

  The columns, statues, and broken walls of the city cast long shadows toward the east, and the larger shadow of the western peak had plunged half of Liamar into premature darkness. They could see the six-pointed star formed by the outer fortifications, a turret at each point, and the radial pattern of the six main avenues centering on the temple plaza. Though it filled all of the plateau or broad hanging valley at Elendor’s summit, Liamar was not very large: it could have fitted into Raimar many times over with ease. It had not perhaps been a city in the true sense of the word, for only the sibyls had lived here permanently, and the monarch in the royal palace—a palace much smaller than any royal residence of the modern world. The rest of the buildings, apart from the temple and the library, had been hostels and guesthouses for the pilgrims who journeyed here from all over the world.

  They picked their way across the ruined plaza in the failing light, pausing occasionally at some intriguing sight. There was a long serpentine channel or conduit, for draining off rainwater perhaps: but it was dry as dust now. There were statues, a few still standing, though with lost limbs or heads. One was a magnificent equestrian figure, a king upon a mighty war horse. “Andarion,” said Mandrake, barely glancing at the statue as they passed it. “It was raised after his victory in Zimboura, when he brought back the Stone.” There was another statue farther on, this one of a woman on a tall plinth, crowned with stars and standing on an upturned crescent moon.

  “Elarainia?” Ailia asked.

  “No: that is her daughter, the Tryna Lia,” Mandrake told her, pointing to the Elensi inscription on the side of the plinth.

  Ailia stole a glance at Lorelyn, looking from girl to statue and back again, shaking her head. These two—the same person? Impossible! Lorelyn looked as grubby and unkempt as the rest of them: her long braids were unraveling, the freckled bridge of her nose was sunburned and starting to peel. There was certainly nothing particularly holy about her at the moment.

  Lorelyn too looked pensive as she gazed up at the statue. “So these were my people,” she said quietly. “I’ve always wondered where I came from, and who I was.”

  “I thought the Elei died out,” said Damion.

  “As a race, yes,” confirmed Mandrake. “They are gone from the world. But their blood still runs in the veins of a few people living today.”

  Ailia looked at Damion. An incredible thought came to her, one she could scarcely suppress for excitement. His well-wrought features and those of the carved statues were so alike: could it be that he too was of Elei blood? Like Lorelyn, he had been left an orphan. If there were descendants of the Fairfolk still living in the world, why should Damion not have been born to one as well? She yearned to tell him of this idea, but on second thought she felt a little foolish and decided to say nothing.<
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  Nearby three white pillars were joined at the top by a fragment of entablature, which Mandrake explained was all that was left of the Great Library that burned down in the Great Disaster, taking with it most of the ancient world’s knowledge. They began to be glad of Mandrake’s company, so fascinating were the pieces of information he shared with them, so vividly did he bring to life the history of the place.

  Lorelyn pointed to the western peak. “I see two statues up there.” Everyone looked, and saw that she was right: high up on the great horn of rock was a pair of figures about twenty paces apart, dragons attached to stone pillars.

  “It’s like those spirit-gates on the Kaanish islands,” Damion commented, remembering the dragon pillars.

  “That is the Moon Gate,” said Mandrake. “The final stage of the climbing of Elendor. Most stopped with their viewing of the Stone, and went back down the mountain; but a few chose to go higher still in their quest for the Divine. They climbed to the very top of that highest peak, and then they walked through the gateway formed by those two pillars.”

  Jomar stared at the portal with an expression of mingled disbelief and disgust. “Through it—into what? The cliff’s probably sheer as a wall on the far side. The drop must be seven thousand feet!”

  “They went through the portal,” Mandrake replied, “to be transported to what you would call Heaven—the realm of the stars.”

  “To Heaven!” exclaimed Damion, appalled. “You mean they died, don’t you? They deliberately walked through that gate and fell to their deaths—a sort of ritual suicide—”

  “No!” Ailia was aghast. “It can’t be true! Welessan said nothing about that. How horrible!”

  Mandrake wore a look of amused tolerance. “You misunderstand completely. If you walked through the Moon Gate now you would die. But in the days of the Elei that stone gateway opened onto a portal through the Ether.”

  “The what?” they all said.

  “A plane that lies beyond the material world that you know. The Elei called it the Ethereal Plane. Through it one could pass from place to place without crossing physical distances. The ancient Elei sorcerers made large numbers of these portals, and taught the skill to Nemerei of other countries. The Kaans made portals of their own to link the many islands of their realm together, so that it would no longer be necessary to travel by ship. But in the end the gates became too dangerous to use, and all had to be closed. For just as mortals could enter the Ether, so . . . other things . . . from that dimension could cross over into ours. The Elendor portal was not closed, but its opening was moved: it no longer lies between the pillars, but high up in the sky above the mountaintop where only a skilled sorcerer can reach it. Real dragons guarded the portal once, to protect access to the higher plane. There was one special breed, the Imperial dragons, bred in ancient times as watchdogs. These were golden in color, with five toes on each foot instead of the usual three or four.”