The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “Were they tame?” asked Lorelyn staring.

  “They were biddable, yes: the Elei could even ride on their backs.”

  “Ride—on a dragon!” Ailia exclaimed. “How wonderful that must have been! To fly through the air—!”

  “Yes,” said Mandrake, and for the first time he smiled without mockery. “But the Elei used dragons for mounts only at need. They had other ways of traveling the skies, in greater ease and comfort.”

  “The flying ships,” breathed Ailia. “The Ships that Sail Over Land and Sea—”

  “Yes. They knew how to build ships with wings in place of masts, that could fly through the air like birds. Only a sorcerer could fly such a vessel, of course, but in those days sorcerers were common as salt.”

  Damion looked back over the desolation of the city and thought with sadness of the marvels it must once have boasted. “To think that the entire world was once united, under this city and its rulers . . . If the old Commonwealth had survived, I wonder where mankind would be now?”

  “Probably right where it is at the moment,” opined Mandrake. He had a cynical streak, in addition to the acerbic tongue that they were learning not to provoke. “The Elei were a clever race, but they were always intervening: they could never learn to leave well enough alone. They took too much on themselves, trying to impose their will on the world, to model it after their own ideals. And this is what came of all their efforts.” His cold golden eyes swept over the ruined city: it might have been a trampled anthill for all the emotion he displayed.

  Lorelyn spied a small wizened shrub growing up through a crack in the pavement, and paused to examine it. She saw that it bore both flower and fruit, like a tree of the tropics. The cream-colored blossoms had a delicate, spicy fragrance, and the plum-sized fruits smelled tantalizingly ripe. She was still famished after a soggy ship’s-biscuit lunch. Surely it couldn’t be poisonous, with such a wonderfully sweet smell?

  “Look,” she called to the others. “Is this edible, do you think?” She plucked off a fruit and held it up. It was semi-translucent, like a gem: the light flowed through its amber flesh, while the pit showed as a shadow deep within.

  “I know what it is,” said Ailia, quivering with excitement. “Food-of-the-gods—it must be the food-of-the-gods fruit. It grows on a tree called the tree-of-heaven that’s found only in Eldimia, Welessan said. But the Elei brought a few seedlings with them when they settled in Trynisia. They grow small and sickly here—only the soil of Eldimia really suits them. But their fruit’s still magical, or so he wrote. Anyone can eat the fruit, but if Nemerei eat it they will have visions.”

  “A drug,” said Jomar, dismissive. “Like opium.”

  “I want to try it,” said Lorelyn eagerly.

  “Oh no you don’t. Drugs of that kind are dangerous.”

  “But—”

  “Jomar and Ailia are both right,” Mandrake said. “The fruit is not safe.”

  “But I’m a Nemerei, and so is Damion. Ana said so. Maybe eating it will help us somehow.”

  “And maybe it won’t. I would not try it if I were you. Let us go.”

  In silence they walked on to the Temple of Heaven. Spread-winged marble angels stood on the parapet of its tall portico, as though poised for flight. But they were not really angels, Ailia corrected herself: they were the El, the winged gods of the Elei—and their ancestors, it had once been believed. Some of the figures had broken wings and limbs, but their faces were in the main unmarred, bending on the city below the same serene and regal regard they had bestowed upon it in days of old, when it was filled with life and laughter and music. What scenes had those ancient stone faces gazed down upon?

  “They were not gods,” Mandrake said to her, seeing her staring at the statues. “The Old Ones were no more gods than you or I.”

  “Old Ones?”

  “So the Elei once called the beings whom they worshipped as gods. The learned magisters of the Royal Academy would say that the Old Ones were only a myth, but the truth lies in between. I have found the evidence.”

  “What evidence? Tell us!” pleaded Ailia, her curiosity piqued.

  “As if he needed encouragement!” muttered Jomar from his place at the rear.

  Mandrake paid him no heed. “Long ago,” he said, speaking softly, “before the human race arose, there lived in this land a great and sorcerous people. They were older than the Elei, older than any other living thing on earth: the beings you call gods and angels and faeries are myths that grew out of tales told about them. They learned to control all the elements and the forces of nature, bending them as they willed: that is how they created this warm verdant island in the far north. The so-called talismans—the famous swords and rings and so on that the Elei treasured—were actually artifacts created by these Old Ones. If you were to journey to the northern mountains you might still find some traces of their cities, buried beneath the glacial ice. And there would be treasures too, and other wonders you cannot imagine. In the ice caves of those mountains you can still find, perfectly preserved, the frozen corpses of creatures unlike any other the world has ever seen. Lion-eagles, winged serpents, beasts of strange hybrid anatomy: creations of the Old Ones, who long ago learned to manipulate the very stuff of life as they pleased. They fashioned the chimaera, a huge beast with a body like a dragon’s and not one but three long necks, each ending in a different sort of head. One was shaped like a giant snake’s, another resembled a lion’s, while the third was like that of a goat.”

  “It can’t have been real,” stated Lorelyn, incredulous.

  “No?” He raised an eyebrow. “I have seen its remains myself, preserved in an ice field in the mountains. Nature could never have produced such an oddity on its own. The Old Ones may even have learned to alter their own bodies with magic.”

  Ailia stared. “You mean . . . they might really have had wings?”

  “Perhaps. We’ll never know: the Old Ones lived many millennia ago. They were a long-lived race, I think, but they were still mortal. Some of them even stooped to taking mates from among the primitive peoples of the Continents, bringing their offspring back here to Trynisia with them. And so the Elei race came to be. The Fairfolk would later believe that their ancestors were gods. Not all of the Old Ones were benevolent, though. Their ruler Modrian, for instance, was as petty and tyrannical as any human despot.”

  “He was real—I mean, a real person?” exclaimed Ailia.

  “I believe so. As was your archangel Athariel, and Elarainia the Morning Star Goddess, and all the divine beings in the ancient tales: they were probably all based on half-forgotten accounts of famous Old Ones. What the beings would have thought of their deification is anybody’s guess.”

  “What became of them, then? Where did they all go?” Jomar demanded, a note of challenge in his voice.

  Mandrake walked on toward the temple. “Legend had it that they were not of this world at all, but came from the stars and later returned there. But I think it is more likely they killed one another off in their wars. They never returned to reclaim their Star Stone, precious as it was to them. I believe they really did make it, rather than digging it out of the earth, for they could easily have learned to reshape nonliving as well as living matter. When they went to war, clashing with one another in the skies, the Stone fell from Modrian’s coronet and landed on the mountaintop. The humans must have been too frightened to approach the gem at first. Later, they came and built this temple over it, and worshipped it.”

  They followed him toward the temple steps. “I don’t believe it,” Ailia whispered to Damion. “The angels flesh-and-blood beings, mortal like us—I won’t believe it!”

  “I wouldn’t believe all he says,” Damion whispered back. “He’s very knowledgeable, Ailia, but he doesn’t know everything.”

  Ailia gazed up at the temple’s towers and façade. “The Last Level—oh, it doesn’t seem right, somehow. We ought to have prepared for it, like the pilgrims.”

  “Nonsense,” sa
id Mandrake briskly, and strode on up the wide stone steps. They followed him to the pillared entrance. Two huge brazen beasts stood guard within the portico, fantastic creatures half lion and half eagle, with brazen bowls between their forepaws where sacred fires had once burned.

  “Gryphons,” said Ailia.

  “Cherubim,” Mandrake corrected her.

  “But cherubim are angels,” said Damion, puzzled. “The angelic order that guarded the gates of Heaven.”

  “So your priestly masters instructed you, but they were wrong. The cherubim were magical beasts, half lion and half eagle, created by the gods as guardians for their treasures. Dark Age writers like Bendulus who came across pictures of the creatures centuries later decided they must be monsters—hence your mythical gryphon. And artists who read the scriptures but had never seen live cherubim supposed them to be guardian angels, and portrayed them that way.”

  “Welessan the Wanderer said no one could see the Stone without first ‘passing between the cherubim,’” observed Ailia, looking at the statues. “Was that what he meant?”

  “No doubt.” Mandrake turned toward the temple. “Shall we go in?” he suggested casually.

  The others stepped forward, but Ailia hung back a little. “Welessan said that you had to be spiritually ready to go into the temple.”

  “More nonsense,” replied Mandrake curtly. “Haven’t you been listening to all I’ve been telling you? There are no gods or angels, Ailia: no holy places.” The others trailed after him, Ailia still lagging a little. But even her apprehension could not have prepared her for what happened next.

  As Mandrake passed between the brass figures, they came to life. Ailia distinctly saw one roll its brazen eye, glaring upon the party with the dark hole of its pupil. Too amazed even to scream or yell, she halted as, with a gritty grinding sound, the two giant beasts slowly raised themselves upon their haunches, spreading their metallic wings. Then they opened their eagle beaks and uttered a simultaneous rasping screech.

  The travelers sprang back, clutching at one another. But the brazen beasts made no further move. Mandrake looked back over his shoulder at them. “Come along—it’s perfectly safe.”

  “Is it magic?” Lorelyn asked, still staring at the statues.

  “No, just a kind of elaborate clockwork. When you pass over the threshold your weight activates the mechanism. The Elei kings and queens had many such toys, in the old days. Queen Eliana had a tree of gold with mechanical birds in the branches that sang and flapped their wings when a lever was pressed.”

  “You might have warned us,” Damion reproved, taking Ailia’s arm comfortingly. She was trembling.

  “I forgot,” Mandrake replied smoothly, and vanished into the temple.

  “Forgot, my eye!” growled Jomar. He too had been alarmed, and it made him angry. “He’s just trying to unnerve us.”

  Then they entered the vast great central chamber of the temple, and what Ailia saw there drove all other thoughts from her mind.

  All around that vast round space were giant arched niches, seven in all. In five of these were stone images, each many times the height of a living man. One was the statue of a youth in the act of leaping into the air, his hair flowing up like flames: he was carved all of red granite, and his flying hair plated with copper that must once have shone red too, though it was dulled now with verdigris. Next to him was a throned marble image of Elarainia, star-tipped scepter in hand. Her niche was painted blue and patterned with white stars and the figure of the Tryna Lia on her Moon Throne floating above. In the very center of the chamber stood a stone structure with a domed roof, like a small temple in its own right. The side facing the entrance was open, showing a dark space within. Atop the dome stood a female figure, more than life-size and covered in gold leaf: from her head radiated a halo of golden rays and stylized flames that flared into brilliance when the torchlight touched them.

  “Elauria, the Sun Goddess,” Mandrake said. “To the Elei the sun was female, not male. The circling sun shines in through the doorway in summer, lighting the Sun Goddess’s statue.” He waved his hand at the niches. “Those are the gods of the Elements, with their corresponding planets: the boy is Elarkurion, god of the closest planet to the fiery sun, sphere of the Salamanders; the one with the fish-tail is Eltalandria, who ruled the watery world of the Undines. Iantha was the air-planet, home of the Sylphs; Valdys the planet of the Earth Gnomes . . .”

  The images were splendid beyond anything the travelers had ever seen. Eltalandria’s upper body was of pinkish-white marble, veined like living flesh, and her piscine half was of dark green marble streaked with white. Her royal diadem was a frothing mass of pearls, some bubble-round and others formed like falling droplets; here and there upon her figure bright stones had been set, diamonds on her torso and emeralds among her scales and fins, to glisten in the light as though the dry stone bore a sea-wet sheen. In the next niche Elvaldys stood, his somber heavy figure hewn from a single block of gray-black granite, sparkling here and there with hoary flecks of mica. Eliantha, by contrast, was an airy form of alabaster and crystal, poised as if for flight with four diaphanous butterfly wings outspread. Around her shimmering tourmaline skirts smaller sylph-figures appeared to dance and dart like dragonflies. And in the largest niche of all stood the image of a woman of milk-white marble, so exquisitely carved that her white hair and robes seemed to stir in a gentle wind. Figures of animals—deer, lions, bears—fawned at her feet, and her arms overflowed with stone fruits and flowers. The travelers stood and stared up at the images in silence, and from their shadowed niches the cold stone eyes of the ancient gods peered back down at them.

  Overhead the dome rose up in a swelling curve like a small and lesser sky, and they saw that it was in fact intended to be a model of the heavens, fretted and frescoed with stars and figures that represented the constellations. The great jagged fissure was visible from beneath, stabbing toward the apex like a black thunderbolt. Here and there, too, a gap showed in the ceiling where a stone block had fallen in and smashed on the floor beneath. At the zenith was a circular hole where the lantern would be in a temple dome, about ten paces in diameter, and unglazed; they assumed at first that the glass had been broken when the dome cracked. But Mandrake told them this round embrasure had always been open to the sky and the elements, and he pointed out to them the eaves in the roof of the central shrine, with carved lions’ heads at the corners to spout rainwater and melted snow into shallow drainage channels in the floor beneath. Marveling at the building’s design, Damion pivoted where he stood until the whole of the domed space seemed to revolve slowly about him, like the skies around the earth. Temples of the Faith had many round windows and ornaments to reflect the infinite Divine, but only the Elei had constructed a temple that was itself circular.

  “I can see the polestar,” he remarked, pointing up through the hole in the roof at the darkening sky. “Was that opening designed to frame it?”

  Mandrake nodded. “Yes—but when this structure was first built there was a different star wheeling at the pole, and the constellations you know occupied other positions in the sky. It is that old.”

  Ailia walked back to the image of Elarainia. She felt drawn to the goddess somehow. She looked up at the serene marble face under its crown of stars—at the snow-cold features that were at once young and also conveyed untold antiquity. It was the face of a divine being—frozen in eternity yet still human-featured, unchanging yet also infinitely wise: old and young, virginal yet maternal. She thought how comforting it would be to pray to such a deity, to stand before it not as a supplicant, but as a child might seek solace at its mother’s knee. Almost she yielded—almost she reached out her hand to touch the marble feet that protruded from beneath the stone robe. She noticed a difference between them: the right foot was carved with exquisite detail, even to the toenails and the straps of the sandal with which it was shod, but the left foot was worn quite smooth, as if by the touch of innumerable worshippers, and a longing filled
her to lay her own hand there . . . Then a voice shrilled in her head: blasphemy! The scowling bearded image of Aan, father-god of the Faith, interposed itself and she retreated in a confusion of guilt and dismay.

  “Mandrake,” Lorelyn said, “there’s another place for a statue over there, but it’s empty. Why is that?”

  “The seventh niche is for Elazar—the deity of a planet your people haven’t discovered yet. Long ago, Elei astrologers predicted that a strange star would one day enter the heavens, bringing with it a new planet. They created a niche for that planet, and placed an image there.

  “But the new star, Azarah, and its attendant planet Azar passed through the great cloud of comets that lies far out in the heavens, and disturbed it: and for thousands of years comets could be seen streaking through the night skies. Azarah had disrupted the order of the heavens, which the Elei considered divine: and so it was declared to be an evil star, ruled by a corrupt spirit. Azar was also clearly a planet of malign influence, and they removed the image of its deity from the Temple of Heaven. Little did they know how catastrophic that disruption would yet prove to be. One fateful day several comets entered the atmosphere of Mera, and destroyed the lands they fell upon. The Great Disaster. Those who survived cursed the name of the Seventh Planet.”