by Alison Baird
“Are they?” Damion countered. “How can you be sure? We know nothing at all about the creatures—they aren’t like anything else on this earth. Who’s to say that they might not be intelligent—almost as intelligent as a man?” He thought of the dolphin that had swum alongside the ship, looking up at him with its large, wise eye. “The Dragon King might even be attracted to the Star Stone—”
“Dragon King?”
“That’s what Ana called him. The Trynoloänan.”
“You’re as bad as Ailia, believing all that rubbish. They’re just animals, Damion. How could they have a king?”
“Bees have queens, haven’t they? It’s just an expression. And that one did seem to be dominating the other dragons—”
“As for all that about the dragon wanting to keep the Stone,” Jomar went on, ignoring him, “it’s just ridiculous.”
“Is it, though? Lots of animals collect bright, shiny objects. Magpies, for instance. And a dragon must be far more intelligent than a magpie.”
“Don’t be stupid. He’s—it’s just an animal and nothing more, I tell you!” snapped Jomar. He added morosely, “We’d better get out of here before we both start to go insane. I say we keep on going.”
“Jo, we could wander through this mountain’s innards forever. You said so yourself. We don’t even know if there is another way out.”
“There’s still a chance if we take this way. Back there, with the dragon, there’s no chance at all.”
Damion sighed and said no more, but leaned back against the rock wall and closed his eyes. There must be a way out: of that he suddenly felt certain. They had come so far, overcome so many obstacles, that like Ana he had begun to see something else at work behind their own efforts: not fate, nothing so remote and indifferent, but a benign and guiding influence of some kind—the hand, perhaps, of the God he had so nearly abandoned. He reached out with his mind, hoping for another vision or some minor miracle, trying to make contact once more with that mysterious providence he had felt or imagined.
“You can at least show some interest,” snapped Jomar.
“Shut up, I’m praying,” replied Damion without opening his eyes.
“A lot of good that’ll do!”
“Well, what good will you do sitting there pickling your wits?” retorted Damion, opening his eyes again to look accusingly at Jomar.
The Mohara man shoved his liquor-flask back into his pouch. “All right! I don’t know what to do either. But I don’t see any point in going back the way we came, past a large and angry dragon.”
Damion sighed and rose. “Very well, we’ll keep going.”
They rose and walked on, and presently the tunnel began to level out again, widening until it resembled a gigantic rabbit-run. Soon it terminated in a gaping hole, lit by a strange deep blue glow—
“The sky!” cried Damion. He ran eagerly forward, Jomar following, and the men found themselves emerging from a wide cave mouth onto the northern face of the mountain. It was very steep here, an almost vertical slope of scree: but the two peaks and the north wall of Liamar lay only a short distance above them.
“There now!” Jomar crowed. “What did I tell you?”
Damion couldn’t smile. They had not brought back the Stone, and this second disappointment was almost more than he could bear.
“LORELYN? AILIA?”
No one answered their calls. The sleeping-chamber was empty: both girls had disappeared. “What in the—? Where are they?” exploded Jomar, staring around the room. “They were told to stay here! Don’t tell me they’ve gone off exploring by themselves!”
“Lorelyn!” Damion called, running through the passage. “Ailia, where are you?” The dark, frigid rooms echoed his voice, but there was no other sound in response.
“Why would they leave the ruin? Did they go looking for us?” He went cold at the thought, remembering the dragon in its lair.
“Maybe something frightened them, and they had to get away fast,” Jomar suggested.
“We’d better go look for them,” said Damion wearily.
They went back outside. The snow outside the ruin was well trodden, with more than one set of tracks. “One person, though,” Jomar said, studying them intently. “Going and coming, and—yes, going again. The tracks don’t look big enough to be Lorelyn’s, so it was Ailia. But then where is Lorelyn? I don’t understand this at all.”
The two men followed the tracks. One set led toward the peak, another into the plaza. Jomar decided this latter set was fresher. He and Damion followed it until they came to a place where the snow had been trampled by many feet. Booted feet. They looked at one another.
“Anthropophagi?” asked Damion.
“No,” replied Jomar, examining the tracks. He straightened, looking grim. “These are Zimbouran boot-prints.”
“The Zimbourans!” Damion exclaimed. “They’ve caught up with us and captured the girls! We should never have left them on their own!”
“Calm down,” Jomar replied, though he too looked miserable. “Ailia ran right into them,” he added
Damion’s heart gave a sickening lurch as he looked at the small footprints vanishing among the larger ones.
“If Mandrake had anything to do with this,” Jomar vowed, “I’ll have his head . . . Unless they got him, too,” he said, looking slightly cheered at the idea. He walked on, staring at the ground, then gave a shout. “Wait, Damion—look over here! They didn’t get her. She ran away!”
As he moved to inspect the trail Damion heard a curious whistling sound, followed by a faint metallic clink. He stared at the base of a broken pillar. An arrow lay before it in the snow.
“Hold!” shouted a voice.
Figures came swarming out of the ruins: Zimbouran soldiers in their black leather garb. Damion and Jomar drew their swords, but a quick glance told them it was no use. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and swords were no use against bowmen.
“Well met!” growled a voice at the rear of the group. Damion and Jomar both went rigid at the sight of the thickset figure to whom it belonged. “Now then!” said Shezzek, stepping forward. “Let’s have no nonsense, and you’ll not get hurt. For the moment, anyway.”
The weapons were struck from their hands; then Jomar and Damion felt their arms seized and pinioned behind them. There was a sound of hooves muffled in snow: another group of soldiers appeared out of the ruins, leading horses by their reins. One of them was Artagon.
“Traitor,” Shezzek hissed at Jomar. “Where is the gem?”
“You’re wasting your time,” the Mohara man responded in a bored tone. “We don’t know where it is, any more than you do.”
Shezzek struck him across the face. Damion winced, but Jomar was evidently accustomed to this kind of abuse: he did not even groan, but stood silent and mutinous, glaring at his former captain.
Shezzek directed his next question at Damion. “Where are the others?”
Damion’s failing spirits leaped at those words. The others! Then they didn’t catch the women after all!
“Answer me!” Shezzek shouted. “The Princess and the old witch, where are they?”
“It’s no good asking us,” Damion answered, surprised at his own temerity. “The truth is, all the women went off without us.”
“That’s your story, eh? Well, we’ll see what the other girl says,” the half-breed said, leering.
The other girl. Damion felt a stab of anxiety. “What have you done to Ailia?” he shouted, caught between fury and fear.
“Nothing yet; the young fool ran away, but my men are hunting her in the ruins. When we catch her—”
“Let her alone!” interrupted Damion. “She’s not a part of this. She only fell in with us by accident. She’s no use to you at all.”
“You think not?” Shezzek studied Damion’s face. “You seem very concerned about the girl. She is important to you, perhaps? That is useful. Perhaps when we put her to torment in front of your eyes you will remember where the Tryna Lia girl
is—and where we can find the Stone.”
Suddenly, and with all his might, Jomar brought his right foot down on his captor’s, twisting free as the man howled with pain, and snatching his sword up from the snow. Almost in the same movement he swung around, slashing at the Zimbouran who held Damion. The man leaped back, forced to release his captive in order to grope for his own weapon. Jomar lunged, laying open the man’s sword arm from wrist to elbow as Damion dived for the adamantine sword. The wounded man screamed and dropped to the snow, nursing his arm, but the other soldiers closed in, making a bristling wall of blades. Damion and Jomar stood back to back, panting, trying to face all their foes at once.
“Sorry about that,” Jomar muttered to Damion, “but I prefer to die fighting. It’s a Mohara tradition.”
“You fool,” rumbled Shezzek, and gestured to his men.
One of the soldiers attacked Jomar, bringing his blade down upon the Mohara man’s. Jomar parried the blow and responded with a vicious thrust of his own. Now two men rolled in agony at his feet. Damion waved his own sword about wildly, hoping that he looked formidable. The Zimbourans jeered and closed in, then howled in shock and dismay as the crystal blade sheared through their steel. But more men moved to flank him, forcing him to swing the sword from side to side in an effort to fend them all off. It was hopeless: even with the Paladin weapon he could not fight more than one man at a time. And the archers were raising their bows.
A wavering, inhuman cry rose from the temple behind them.
They all whirled, attacked and attackers alike, to face the dark doorway. A slight figure stood there, long silvery hair flowing about it. The woman’s right arm was upraised in a warding gesture, and at her feet stood a gray cat with eyes that burned red in the torchlight.
“Children of Valdur!” cried the apparition in Elensi, to the accompaniment of another yowl from the cat. “Begone from this holy place, or know the anger of the Elei gods!”
“It’s Ana!” whispered Damion in disbelief.
The soldiers backed away, but Shezzek recovered himself, barking something in Zimbouran at the men. They advanced with reluctance. The woman lifted both arms toward the sky, and called out again. “Beware! You may not enter the temple of the Elei. The gods will strike you dead where you stand.” Greymalkin yowled again, a high, bloodcurdling sound.
Two soldiers raced up the steps toward the old woman, swords in their hands. But as they passed the threshold the two gryphon statues rose onto their haunches, spread their brassy pinions, and uttered deafening screeches.
Howling with terror, the men retreated, one of them stumbling and falling backwards down the steps. The men surrounding Damion and Jomar scattered. Shezzek held his ground uncertainly for a moment, but without the protection of his men his courage failed him, and he too turned and fled the scene.
“Damion! Jomar! Come with me quickly!” Ana cried.
They bounded up the steps, ignoring the screaming cherubim. Ana stooped to pick up her cane from the stone floor, her long white hair brushing the pavement. Her left hand held something that glittered like a piece of ice.
“How did you get here?” exclaimed the Mohara.
“We mustn’t stand here talking, Jomar. Zimbourans are very superstitious, thank goodness, but King Khalazar is on his way.”
Damion could not move, however. He stood staring at the object in her hand, unable to take his eyes from it. Now that he was closer he could see that it was a great crystal, clear as a diamond and carved with a myriad of facets. “Is that it?” he asked. “How in the Seven Heavens did you find it?”
“It is the Star Stone, yes.” She thrust the gem inside a pocket of her gown, then bent down again to pick up the growling Greymalkin. “And I just found it a few minutes ago, when I was looking for you. I followed your tracks here, and saw that you were having some trouble. Now, quickly! We must find a place that is safe and secure, while we wait.”
“Wait for what?” demanded Jomar. But she merely said, “Hurry, hurry.”
They fled into the portico. Jomar gestured to one side. “In there—the tower that’s still intact.”
They hastened up the spiral staircase. Halfway up, a doorless archway opened from the tower onto the roof of the portico. Upon the parapet the stone angels stood with their winged backs to the travelers. Behind them swelled the mighty dome, a rounded mountain of marble.
There was no entrance other than the tower staircase: on one side was a steep drop to the pavements below. The roof was just wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Once it had joined both the front towers, but a portion of it had fallen in, and now this segment on which they stood was isolated. It would be easy to defend, Jomar declared. The Zimbourans couldn’t reach them from the other tower. They would have to mount the staircase in single file, so the defender at the door never need fight more than one man at a time. Jomar and Damion could take turns, each spelling the other. But even as he said this they all knew it was no use. The Zimbourans could simply wait for them to grow too tired and famished to defend themselves.
“What about Ailia?” Damion asked, worried. “They must have caught her by now.”
Jomar frowned at that. “They can use her as a hostage, to make us surrender.”
“They haven’t got her,” Ana replied, that strange far-seeing look coming into her misty eyes. She set her cat down and reached into her pocket again.
“They said the soldiers—”
“They have not captured her—nor will they.”
Damion knew better than to argue. His gaze went to the glowing jewel she cradled in her hand. “Where did you find the Stone, Ana?” he asked.
“It was lying in a bag, in the chamber where all your gear was.”
“In the chamber?” Damion stared at her. “But who . . . how . . . ?”
Jomar looked over the battlements, then turned to the others, his face grim. “I can see them coming back. They won’t take long to find us.”
They watched as armed figures began to pour across the snow-covered plaza, their boots churning its whiteness to a gray slush. At their rear rode a man on a large black horse.
Damion saw Jomar’s face go hard at the sight. “Khalazar,” he muttered.
“Rescue is on the way,” said Ana.
“If you mean the Guardians, there aren’t any,” Jomar snapped, turning on her. “According to Mandrake they’re long gone. He’s in Trynisia too, by the way.”
No surprise showed on Ana’s face. “He was,” she answered. “In fact, he was the power, the danger I told you of before. I tried to draw his attention away from you, but in vain. He attacked me again and nearly destroyed me, sending his dragons upon me and leaving me so weakened that I could scarcely move. I could not warn you about Mandrake when we parted. If I had, you might have tried to fight him and aroused his anger. It was better that you not defy him: he was less likely to harm you if you seemed harmless. Nor could I tell you where the Stone lay, for he would surely have attacked you had you tried to take it. But I see that one of you succeeded in finding it all the same. As I said before, it was meant to be.”
“He almost had us convinced that it wasn’t here at all. So where is Mandrake now?”
“I’m afraid he’s gone again. That is why I am free to rejoin you: his power no longer threatens us. But he has taken Lorelyn with him.”
Damion reeled where he stood. “He’s abducted her again? Where has he taken her this time?”
“To the land of Eldimia.”
“Eldimia? Why would he take her there?” asked Damion, puzzled.
“I know Mandrake well. He always has several plans laid, in case one of them fails. His scheme to hide Lorelyn away was thwarted back in Maurainia. Now he is trying another plan. He will place her on the throne of Eldimia, but remain by her side, forcing her to do his will. In the end it will be Mandrake who rules Eldimia, and not the Tryna Lia.” She looked away over the dead city, spoke as if to herself. “Ah, how clear it all is now! Why did I not see befo
re? He means to make use of her, for his own ends!”
“So he wouldn’t be interested in helping us,” said Jomar. “Or is it Ailia who’s going to come bounding to our rescue?”
“No, not Ailia,” Ana replied. “The Stone has its own Guardians, pledged to protect it in the hour of need.”
Jomar stationed himself by the doorway, his drawn sword in his hand. “Guardians be blasted! I told you, old woman, there aren’t any Guardians! We’re going to have to fight for ourselves. Not that there’s much point to it now. We won’t be able to hold the Zims off forever.” His black eyes blazed. “But they won’t kill me until I’ve taken a few of them first.”
“Hold them off for as long as you can then,” said Ana. She turned her face toward the mountains as if in prayer. “I will await the Guardians.” She closed her eyes once more, and cradled the gem at her breast.
“Then you’ll wait a long time. They died off, centuries ago.”
Ana’s eyes did not open. “No, the Guardians of the Stone never died. They live still.”
“What do you mean? It’s been five hundred years! No one could live that long—”
“The Guardians could. They are not human,” she interrupted.
“Not human?” echoed Damion. A hideous doubt assailed him as he stared at the aged woman, her long hair blowing in wild strands around her face. “You said . . . I thought you said they were men. Human beings, who could help us . . .”
Ana opened her eyes and looked at him. “I did not say so; but I’m afraid I let you interpret it that way. You would never have believed the truth: that the Guardians are not of this world at all.” Her clouded eyes seemed to gaze at the marble angels poised upon their pedestals.
Damion’s knees sagged: it was all he could do to remain standing. So this was how it would end. They were all going to die here on the battlements, just as Jomar had said.
AILIA RAISED HER HEAD SLOWLY. The dragon was still there, huge and silver-gold in the light of stars and moon: it had coiled its long snaky body upon the dais again, and its head was turned toward her. Now that its wings were furled and no longer filled the air with thunder, it seemed smaller than before, though it was still the largest living thing she had ever seen. It lay panting gently, its breath rising in white clouds of steam; occasionally it would raise a clawed foreleg to scratch the side of its neck. Seeing her move, it uncurled its great long body and rose to all fours once more. Ailia froze. She could never outrun the creature, even had she the strength to make the attempt. Lying very still, she watched as it approached on its great clawed feet. She noticed, in a detached kind of way, that its toes were shaped like an eagle’s: cruel, curved talons.
