The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  “Seventh planet?” repeated Ailia, looking about the temple. “But there are only five planets—apart from Azar, that is. Where is the other?”

  “Right underneath your feet,” Mandrake told her solemnly. “The world is a planet too, you know: the planet Mera, third from the sun. The Elei were well aware of that fact, though your enlightened astronomers have yet to stumble onto it. The woman of white marble in the big niche is Elmera, goddess of this planet and all that grows on it.”

  The world a planet! Ailia wondered what clever Janeth would have thought of that idea. It was too fantastic.

  Jomar, who had paced in a restless manner while the rest of them admired the images, spoke up impatiently. “Where’s this stone of yours?”

  “It’s underneath that shrine in the center,” Ailia told him, pointing to the structure topped by the gold Sun Goddess. “That’s the original shrine they built over the Stone; this bigger temple was raised around it, later.”

  Jomar peered inside the door of the shrine. “There’s nothing in here.”

  “There’s a stair. You go down it, and there’s a sort of cryptlike space underneath, with the mountain’s top for a floor. The Stone always lay right where it had fallen. Except for the Zimbourans stealing it, that one time, it was never moved.”

  Jomar raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You’d think any stone would shatter, falling from the sky onto a rocky mountain top.”

  “The Star Stone was supposed to be very hard—harder than diamond.”

  “Nothing’s harder than diamond.”

  “Nothing on earth is,” said Ailia softly.

  “So where’s the stair to get down?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Ailia admitted. “There should be one. Welessan said there was.”

  “Are you sure it was inside the shrine?”

  “No . . . Come to think of it, he didn’t say exactly where it was. I just assumed it was in the shrine. He didn’t go into great detail about it.”

  They all crowded inside the structure. It was like a smaller, cruder copy of the great temple, circular in shape, with stone carvings of the planetary gods all around its walls. But no stairway was anywhere to be seen; there was no room for one.

  “Was it in the middle of the floor?” suggested Damion. “See that round patch, right in the center: the stone doesn’t quite match there. It looks as though something was filled in, long ago.”

  “No, there was no stair. There was an opening there in the floor, a sort of round hole the pilgrims could look through to see the sanctum down below, where the Stone lay,” said Mandrake. He stood in the doorway, watching them with the trace of a smile on his face. “The hole was filled in after the gem was recovered from the Zimbourans, to discourage any more attempts at theft. Later pilgrims had to enter the sanctum by its door if they wished to see the Star Stone.”

  “Well, where is the door?” demanded Jomar impatiently. But Mandrake merely shrugged his shoulders, then sauntered outside again to gaze at the statues in the main temple.

  “Beast,” Lorelyn muttered. “I’ll bet he knows.”

  Damion sighed wearily. “Well, let’s have a look around and see if we can find a way in.”

  They went back outside again and searched for nearly an hour, without success. There was no door to be seen in the shrine apart from the one they had entered, and no staircase anywhere in the temple, which also appeared to have only a single entrance. Discouraged, Ailia wandered back to the statue of Elarainia. “Please,” she murmured, “please help us find it. We’re running out of time. The Zimbourans will be here soon.” She knew she was praying to a pagan deity, but the situation was desperate, and Elarainia seemed the right one to appeal to. After all, she’s an angel in the scriptures, the girl thought. And Welessan the Wanderer had said something about Elarainia being the way and the door for all who would see the Stone . . . She knelt at the statue’s feet, gazing at the left one. On an impulse, she placed her own hand upon the cool stone. It was smooth as a sea-pebble caressed by countless waves.

  Then she sprang back with a little startled cry. The foot had moved beneath her hand.

  The cry, and the loud grinding noise that followed, brought her companions running. All stopped short, staring as the stone figure quivered, then began to move forward. Slowly, majestically, the carved throne advanced with a grating sound across the floor, bearing with it the Queen of Heaven still smiling her marble smile—a proud and gracious potentate commencing a regal processional. Then as abruptly as it had started, the stone chair ceased its motion, to stand several paces in front of the now-empty niche.

  Lorleyn darted forward. “Look!” In the floor of the niche, exposed by the displacement of the stone image, was a square dark hole—with a flight of stone steps in it leading down.

  “The door—the door!” Ailia cried, wild with excitement. “It leads to the Stone, I know it does! That’s what Welessan wrote—Elarainia is the ‘way and the door’! I wondered what he meant. Her foot is a sort of lever, see—you push down on it, and it opens the way to the staircase!”

  “Good for you, Ailia!” said Damion. “Mandrake, hand me that torch, will you?”

  One by one they proceeded through the archway and down the narrow spiral stair beyond, each of its steps worn to troughlike concavity by the treading feet of myriads of pilgrims. At the bottom was a passage, low-roofed and floored with the living rock of the mountain. They followed it to where it ended in a set of low, bronze doors.

  “Look—do you see the difference in the stonework, there around the door frame?” said Ailia. She whispered, as though she were in a chapel. “That must be the foundation of the shrine—we’re right underneath it!”

  Damion passed the torch to Lorelyn, and he and Jomar tried without success to force the doors, first pushing at them, then trying to pry them open.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consider giving us a hand,” snapped Jomar, glaring at Mandrake, who had followed them down and now stood watching them with a face as impassive as the stone gods’.

  “It is your quest, not mine,” he responded, indifferent.

  “This is maddening!” Lorelyn exclaimed. “To have come so far, just to be stopped a few paces away from the Stone!”

  “Wait a moment,” said Damion. “I think I felt this door give a little.”

  Jomar joined him at the left-hand door and they both shoved. There was a gritty, groaning sound from the hinges, and then, so suddenly it startled them, the door gave way. It opened inward, onto a darkness that Lorelyn made haste to light with the torch.

  Before them lay a scene of strange splendor. A blue-curtained canopy with stars wrought in silver arose before them in the gloom, and there were rich hangings of gold and red on the walls behind, and votive offerings of flower-wreaths and garlands were strewn upon the bare rock of the floor. For an instant the companions gazed at them in breathless silence. Then all at once there was a sighing sound and a rush of stale air. The flowers and hangings drifted into dust and the canopy sagged, disintegrating before their eyes. It was as if their intrusion had somehow profaned the sanctum, thought Ailia in dismay, as they backed away coughing at the roiling dust clouds. The torch fluttered fitfully.

  “Be careful,” Mandrake’s voice came from behind them. “The air in there will be foul after all these years.”

  It was infuriating, but they had to retreat down the passage and wait some time for the atmosphere to clear. Then they ventured forward again, Jomar and Damion leading, and entered the ruined chamber. The Mohara man shoved the debris of the canopy aside: it crumbled to even smaller fragments at his touch. There was a pause. “Where’s the Stone supposed to be?” he called out.

  Ailia answered. “There’s a pattern set into the floor, like a silver star, to mark the spot where the Star Stone landed. The Stone should be right at its center.”

  Jomar’s voice sounded weary. “Well, it isn’t here.”

  “The star?”

  “No—the Stone. It’s gone
.”

  17

  The Day of Disaster

  THE TRAVELERS RETURNED to the guesthouse—without Mandrake, who continued to wander about the ruins on his own—feeling tired and depressed. And I was just starting to feel useful, Ailia mourned to herself. Night had fallen, and in the torchlight the ruins looked not so much forlorn as sinister. Between their worry over Ana, their disappointment at not finding the Stone, and their physical weariness, the spirits of the four were at a low ebb. Jomar and Lorelyn began sparring almost at once as to how to cook the thin, watery gruel that was all they had for the evening meal. The other two, tired of listening to them, retreated to the opposite end of the room and talked together.

  “Are you positive that the Stone was in that particular chamber, Ailia?” asked Damion for the third time.

  She nodded, too miserable to speak.

  “There wasn’t any other place where it was sometimes kept?”

  “No—I’m certain Welessan said it was always in the one place.”

  That would make sense, if the Stone were the goal of so many pilgrims’ quests, Damion reflected. They would have to know where to find it! “Could it have been stolen?” he asked aloud. “By Mandrake, perhaps?”

  “Nonsense,” declared a deep voice behind him. They all started and turned around. For such a large man, Mandrake could move very quietly: he seemed to have come right up out of the floor. Ailia half expected to see a trapdoor behind him like a pantomime demon’s, belching infernal smoke. Greymalkin glared and rose, her fur bristling.

  “If you’ll think about that for a moment, you’ll see how absurd it is,” he told Damion matter-of-factly, neither anger nor indignation in his voice. “You saw for yourself how well-sealed the sanctum was. No one else could have entered it without disturbing the contents. Have you ever considered that the last of the Elei to leave Trynisia might have taken the Stone with them, against Bereborn’s knowledge? It could be somewhere on the Continent then, or in the Archipelagoes.”

  “That’s true enough,” acknowledged Damion. Ailia’s heart sank. She had so longed to see the gem.

  “All this fuss over a piece of stone,” Mandrake mused. “Lives lost, kingdoms overthrown, wars waged, and all for what? I don’t know whether to call it comedy or tragedy. If it’s any comfort to you, there’s probably very little you could do anyway. It’s been several centuries since the Zimbourans and the Commonwealth went to war. They are long overdue for another, Stone or no Stone.”

  “We should have a look for it all the same,” Damion persisted. “It could be lying somewhere else in the city for all we know. I don’t want to take any chances on the Zimbourans coming across it. We’ll search all the ruins, just in case it’s still here.” Ailia’s spirits lifted again.

  A brief silence fell, and was broken by a fresh exchange between Jomar and Lorelyn. A strong smell of burning accompanied their repartee. “What happened to supper?” Damion asked.

  “Her Highness the Princess of the Stars ruined it,” Jomar replied.

  “I did not,” Lorelyn returned. “It was you said it ought to cook longer.”

  “It wouldn’t have hurt to stir it. Don’t you know anything?”

  Seeing that they were about to recommence their argument, Damion intervened. “Well, it can’t be helped now. Let’s get out the other supplies. I think there’s some dried fruit. Are you cold, Ailia?” he asked, seeing her shiver where she sat huddled in her cloak.

  “No,” she answered. “It’s just that this place is so old and empty. It gives me an odd feeling.”

  He nodded, understanding. “Don’t worry, Ailia. We won’t be here long.”

  “Oh, I’m not frightened,” she assured him. “It just makes me sad, that’s all. I keep thinking of the people who used to come to this city. And now there won’t be any more people here, ever again. No more pilgrims—no more queens or kings—”

  “Except for Princess Lorelyn. And His Majesty here,” sneered Jomar, jerking his thumb at Mandrake.

  The tall man bowed, returning mockery for mockery. “I will take my leave of you now, since you seem determined to waste your time here,” he announced, “but I will remain in the area should you require an escort back down the mountain.”

  Jomar bristled, but Damion made himself reply with courtesy. “Our thanks for your offer.”

  Mandrake cast a last glance over the small group. As he turned toward the fire its light kindled his catlike eyes. “You would be wise to accept it,” he said.

  Without another word he strode out of the chamber, his cloaked figure blending into the darkness beyond.

  ALL THROUGH THE LONG ARCTIC day that followed they searched the ruins without success. It was a difficult, if not a hopeless quest, and they knew it: the Stone, if it were in Trynisia at all, could be buried anywhere under the heaps of rubble. But they knew that if the Zimbourans did succeed in unearthing it here—or even some other jewel that chanced to resemble it—a war might well be the result.

  As the little group began rummaging in the rubble they kept a wary eye out for dragons, but saw none; the only other living things in sight were some small black birds—choughs, Ailia thought—which flew about the roofs of the ruins. At midday—or what would have been midday, had the sun stood at high noon instead of partway up the southern sky—they took time off for a meager meal, which they ate in gloomy silence, huddling together at the base of the statue of Andarion. Jomar in particular was frustrated and snappish—the idea of beating the Zimbourans to their precious prize had become something of an obsession for him. As soon as the meal was over they went back to searching, Damion and Lorelyn setting off to the remains of the palace, while Jomar combed through the rubble of another unidentified building across from the Temple of Heaven.

  Ailia walked about the city on her own. Her back ached from so much stooping and she stretched, lifting her face to the sky. High in that blue immensity she spotted a minute pinprick of pale light, shining faintly. Not the Great Comet: that celestial body had since passed out of the skies. It must be the Morning Star. Her father had once told her that it could sometimes be seen in daylight, when it was in opposition and brighter than usual. She felt a sudden, almost pagan impulse to revere that distant daystar. The words of a hymn to Elarainia that she had translated at the Academy now came unbidden into her head:

  O how thou shinest in the height,

  Thou beacon bright to saint and seer!

  Thou art the very queen of Night

  Enthroned within thy sovereign sphere.

  While we who walked the starry strand

  And meads of Heaven, flower-strewn,

  Are banished to a lesser land

  Forlorn beneath the barren moon.

  As exiles from their native shore

  Are parted by a pathless sea

  So must we yearn forevermore

  In halls divine to dwell with thee.

  Night-blooming lily! Lady fair

  Of lands unmarred by war or woe!

  O Queen of Heaven, hear the prayer

  Of thy lost children, here below!

  It was called The Lament of the Elei, and dated to a time just after the Great Disaster. Her own words, she thought with dissatisfaction, did not do justice to the original Elensi verses. She stood and watched the faint gleam of the planet until a scudding cloud blotted it from sight; then she gazed for a time at the sky itself, trying to determine what weather it foretold. Her father was able to read the sky, as sailors do: she wished she had learned the skill from him. She did know a few things. That high white streamer of cloud across the zenith, for instance, feathering at its edges, was the sign of a great wind in the upper air blowing cloud vapor before it as it swept down out of the north. But what coming change of weather it portended she could not tell. How beautiful, though, were those veil-fine wisps suspended in the blue! And how majestic the puffed and snow-white summits of the cumulus clouds, thousands of feet higher than the mightiest of the mountain peaks! That was another world up
there, a land for gods to revel in: her eyes roved through it, among airy gulfs and pale knobbed cliffs where cloudy caverns gaped, gray-mouthed, revealing their dim inner chambers; through bays and inlets and wide lakes of blue sky hemmed in by misty shores. What wouldn’t she give to have one of the Elei’s marvelous flying ships! Or to be that bird up there, soaring with such ease through the heights where only her imagination could roam! It wasn’t fair, she thought as she watched the winged shape plunge right into one of the gauzy cumuli and vanish from sight. As she gazed skyward in longing and delight she found herself trying to fit words to her feelings.

  Look up, aloft! What wondrous weathers there,

  What sky-scapes fleeting-fair delight the eye!

  It had been a long time since she had attempted any poetry. Her lips moved, soundlessly shaping the words as they came to her.

  What dove’s-down drifts on avenues of air!

  What cloudy castles lift their towers on high!

  Was she mixing up too many metaphors? Ailia decided she didn’t care if she was. Now for the next line—bear, glare, dare, fair (already used that), stare? Hair? Ah—

  What silver swathes, like to an angel’s hair

  And wings, upon the firmament do fly!

  Ailia sat down on a stone block, her disappointment in the unfulfilled quest for the moment dispelled, and tilted her head back so that the sky completely filled her field of vision. The far-off flying shape reemerged on the opposite side of the cloud, the sunlight flashing on the downstroke of its wings. What a very big bird it must be: an eagle perhaps? It must be large even for an eagle, though, to be visible from such a height . . .

  Jomar’s warning whistle pierced the calm of the mountaintop.