The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  There were other, more ordinary-looking people there too, clad in simpler clothing and standing near the back of the hall. So that’s where all the servants are—they’ve come to see whatever is happening here! It must be terribly important. Much as Ailia longed for company, she did not dare burst in on this grand gathering. These people, resplendent in their refinery, must be nobles and dignitaries, assembled for some momentous occasion. She noticed that they often glanced toward the doorway, evidently waiting for someone to pass through. She shuddered to think of the sensation she would create should she appear there, an uncouth intruder in her torn and travel-stained attire. She shrank back, very glad that they apparently had not seen her gawking around the doorframe.

  And now a cry rang out from the end of the corridor: “She comes, the Lady of light comes! The daughter of Heaven, the Tryna Lia!”

  The Tryna Lia?

  Ailia bolted back into the stairwell, looking out through the little window-slits as the curious procession appeared around the corner. First came a group of women, robed in white with veils before their faces, carrying silver candelabra. Surely these were sibyls, like the ones of elder days. That ancient order, too, still existed in this place.

  Four of them held aloft a blue starred canopy. A figure walked beneath it, surrounded by a floor-length veil so that at first only a dim outline could be seen, obscured as if by a pillar of misty light: a feminine form, tall and slender, clad in flowing white. On her brow a diadem flashed and gleamed, while about her a mantle of gold hung—no, that was the woman’s hair, long blonde hair hanging to her knees. Then as the veiled figure drew near Ailia was able to see her face. She gasped, and sprang out into the hallway.

  “Lorelyn? Lorelyn!”

  “Ailia!” The veil was flung back and Lorelyn stood there, gowned in pearl-white, her unbraided hair falling free. She was so magnificent that for a moment Ailia could only gape at her, open-mouthed. The procession halted in confusion. The retainers, a group of grand-looking men and fine ladies, exchanged puzzled glances and murmured to one another.

  “Lorelyn—is it really you?” Ailia cried. “Are you the Princess?”

  “So they tell me,” the other girl replied, waving her hand at the group of retainers. “It looks as though Ana was right.”

  “Then—this is your palace! But where are we, Lorelyn? What is this place?”

  “We’re in the land of Eldimia. Ana was right about that too.”

  Eldimia! So it was a real place, after all—as real as Trynisia. How much time had elapsed between her flight from Mount Elendor and her arrival here? Ailia felt dizzy with wonderment.

  “But however did you get here?” Lorelyn burst out, seizing Ailia’s hands. “Mandrake brought me here on a flying dragon—it came at his command, and let us ride on its back! We flew here through something called the Ethereal Plane—a strange sort of place, all filled with light. Mandrake explained it, but I couldn’t quite understand it. You’ll have to ask him. He is a great sorcerer, Ailia—and he’s on our side after all. I’m sorry I was so suspicious of him. He’s going to help me here, help me learn to rule.”

  “I was brought here by one of his dragons too,” Ailia told her. “I suppose he must have trained it to fly here. I can’t recall much of the journey, though.” She did not mention the dreamlike sojourn on the moon: she was no longer certain that it had really happened.

  “We’re in another world now, an altogether different one,” Lorelyn told her. “I couldn’t understand that part, either! But here we are, and here we must stay, I suppose: unless you can get Mandrake to send you back home.”

  “Another world—?” Ailia echoed. She saw now that Mandrake was in the group of retainers, clad in a dark blue doublet and hose and a flowing black mantle lined with red silk. The warlock and the Island girl stared at each other: for the very first time, Mandrake looked taken completely back.

  “What is this?” he demanded, turning to one of the men beside him. “I gave strict orders that no one be admitted through the main gates aside from the chosen emissaries.”

  “No one of this description came in by the outer gates, my lord,” the man answered. “I cannot say how she came to be here, unless she was already in the grounds before they were sealed.”

  “But you’re all alone!” Lorelyn said to Ailia, ignoring Mandrake. “What became of Damion and Jomar, and old Ana? And the cat?”

  Mandrake strode forward and, pulling the veil back down over the face of the protesting Princess, pushed her back under the regal canopy. “Carry on,” he directed her retinue curtly. “The people are waiting.” And they obeyed him, as if in a daze: the unseemly interruption of their solemn procession had disconcerted them. Mandrake remained behind, facing Ailia.

  One look at his narrowed eyes was enough. Ailia’s protests died in her throat and she whirled, fleeing back down the staircase.

  DAMION AND JOMAR WALKED in silence along the streets of the city. They were clad now in fresh new clothes, tunics and trousers of soft fabrics provided by their hostess, the owner of the hostel. She and her assistants spoke few words to their guests, but looked at them with open curiosity and something like awe. Damion had been hard put not to stare back. For the woman was an Elei: very tall, fine-featured, with luxuriant russet hair that hung loose down her back. She was a healer by trade, it seemed, and she had left the house with Ana and several other people, most of them Elei, though one of the company was a diminutive Kaanish man with a long white beard and another was a tall, dark-haired man whom Damion recognized from his vision of the palace and the infant Princess. King Tiron, Ana called him.

  “He is not like your hereditary kings,” she told them. “He was crowned as the consort of the Tryna Lia’s mother, Queen Elarainia, and his title is honorary as was hers. He holds no real power. But he is much loved by the people here.” The man had not changed a great deal from the time of Damion’s vision, save for some silver hairs at his temples that might well have been put there by sorrow and stress rather than age.

  Damion and Jomar had waited until Ana and her companions left, then they too departed the hostel. There was no need for either of them to speak: each read his own thought in the other’s eyes. They were going to go to the palace despite Ana’s warning, to offer what help they could. Each of them put on his sword-belt, and these drew many a curious glance from pedestrians they passed in the streets. They themselves stared in wonder at the scenes surrounding them. Mirimar appeared to be at least twice the size of Raimar in Maurainia, but it was more orderly and serene. There were no beggars, no refuse in the gutters, no dank dark alleys anywhere to be seen. There were fountains, verdant parks, tree-lined avenues, elegant houses and mansions. There was a predominance of marble, most of it white. Pillared courts gave onto gardens, which breathed forth a paradise scent of blossoming trees and flowers. A giant, white-domed structure larger than Raimar’s High Temple dominated the city. Damion looked up at towers that exulted skyward, in seeming defiance of the binding earth. No mortal hand could have raised this city up: surely it must have grown as a forest grows, in groves of living stone and glass and crystal that burst of themselves into a bloom of steeples, cupolas, minarets. He and Jomar passed under a tall triumphal arch covered in alabaster, inlaid with patterns formed by many-colored gems. Sapphire, emerald, lapis lazuli, jacinth, chalcedony: Damion heard the words echo through his head. These were the stones that adorned the Heavenly City in scripture. Had those descriptions been based on this place?

  Looking at the faces in the crowds, Damion was struck anew by the beauty of the Elei, who appeared to make up about half of the citizenry here. All of the people were clad in the clothing of a bygone age: the men arrayed in doublets and hose, the women in long flowing cottes. It was as though he had reentered his vision of Trynisia’s past; but now the Elei could see him, he could meet their eyes and exchange pleasantries as they walked past. Intriguing scenes surrounded him on all sides. In one park people gathered to listen to a bearded old man�
�a poet, a prophet, a philosopher?—holding forth in Elensi. In another a group of children played with a strange shaggy beast, like a cross between a dog and an ape, while others danced to the music of a strolling minstrel. The general atmosphere was that of a festival: bright banners and buntings were strung over the streets, and the air rang with voices and laughter.

  “Why do you look so solemn?” asked a woman in the crowd, dancing up to them with her arms full of flower-garlands. “Have you not heard? The Tryna Lia has returned to us from the heavens, to dwell at Halmirion again!”

  “Can we get in to see Lor—the Tryna Lia, I mean?” Asked Damion.

  The woman shook her head. “Only emissaries and those of high office may enter—and King Tiron, of course. I hear that he passed through the streets just recently, on his way to Halmirion. The Princess, they say, has many evil enemies who would do her harm if they were allowed near her, and so her guardians must be careful. But have no fear: she is in safe hands. For she has with her a sorcerer, so it is said, a master of the Ether: the magic he wields is beyond compare, and he can travel wherever he wishes, even to realms outside the world. He brought her here, from her exile in the Blue Star.” She placed a garland around his neck and passed on.

  The Blue Star . . . Damion looked up into the night. A point of sea-blue light hung in an opening between the silver-limned clouds, bigger and brighter than any other star: the Evening Star, he would have called it back home in Maurainia. But that star was not the planet Arainia: Arainia was all about him, it was the city and the mountains and the ground on which he walked. Which meant that the Blue Star . . .

  Damion stared up at the great blue light shining above the streets and shivered. He had managed to make himself believe what Ana told them—that this city and the countryside in which they now walked belonged to another world, that a mortal man might pass beyond the bounds of his native earth and set foot on another planetary sphere. That the people who walked and talked and held their revels all around him were the descendants of those who, by arts unknown, had traversed the void between the worlds to settle in Arainia. This much he could grasp, but the other . . . To believe that blue star was his world—that Trynisia and Maurainia and Zimboura, all their cities and forests and deserts and plains, the oceans and the Archipelagoes, the monastery where he was raised—that all he had once called “the world” was somehow compacted within that minute and distant point of light—

  “You’re not listening to me,” Jomar accused.

  Damion gave him a blank look. “What?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” snapped Jomar. “You’re behaving like someone with a bad case of sunstroke. You don’t actually believe all that rubbish about planetary spheres, do you? This may be a different country, but we’re still in our own world.”

  Damion said nothing. This was not, could not be their own world. For one thing, there was that curious light feeling he had, as though he weighed a little less than before, and which made everything from walking to climbing a set of steps far less difficult than usual. There was the fine rare air—like mountain air, except that they were at sea level. There was the sky: when they had arrived at Mount Elendor the moon was in its first quarter, but this one was round and full, and a curious color—a shade of pale blue. And the stars—never before had he seen them shine so brightly, nor with such clear and vivid hues. Anatarva glowed a warm yellow, the stars in the Unicorn were white and blue, the red star Utara in Modrian-Valdur burned like a brand. And these were the constellations of late summer, not of spring. There were many other stars, faint and small among the larger lights, stars that he had never seen before. The strange white sky-bow was still there as well: with the clouds beginning to pull apart he could now see that it made a perfect arch across the sky from the eastern to the western horizon. Its glittering span appeared solid, with distinct hard edges that did not waver or fade.

  And there were the Elei themselves, long vanished from the world he knew . . . But there was no time to argue the point with Jomar. The man was more tense and irritable than ever before: perhaps the thought of being in an alien world frightened him, and he denied it so that he could focus on the conflict awaiting them. Fighting was something that he understood, indeed it was what he knew best.

  The two men could see now that the hill on which the palace stood lay just outside the city limits, in a large wooded enclosure like a private park surrounded by a white wall. At its golden gates stood men in blue-and-silver livery.

  “We’ll never get in there,” Damion said, stopping short at the sight.

  Jomar’s teeth flashed in his old snarling grin. “You think not? That wall isn’t very high, and there are no spikes or anything at the top! No sentries anywhere except at the gate, either. These people know nothing about securing grounds. Come on, let’s see how it looks on the far side. We could climb up and over easily enough: if we can get a barrel or something to stand on, and I get on your shoulders, I can pull you up after me.”

  “What might be inside, though?” Damion asked. “Patrolling guards? Dogs?” Dragons? Three-headed monsters? he added in his thoughts. Who could say what lurked beyond that harmless-looking white wall? Perhaps it had no iron spikes or sentries because they were not needed . . .

  Jomar shrugged, his eyes still fiercely bright. Now that he had a plan of action, nothing was going to dissuade him. “We have our swords.”

  He strode forward, and Damion followed him. Together they walked on toward the walled enclosure, and whatever awaited them within.

  23

  Darkness and Light

  AILIA AWAKENED TO A PAINFUL throbbing in her left temple. There was a lingering unpleasantness at the back of her mind, too—like that left by an uneasy dream.

  And then she remembered.

  Mandrake!

  She shivered to recall the look on his face when he had come toward her down the corridor—that look of surprise and fury in his catlike eyes. She had stumbled as she fled him, falling down the staircase and striking her head on a step: she remembered nothing after that. He must have carried her away while she was unconscious. Opening her eyes, she looked fearfully around her, blinking as her surroundings became clear.

  But she recognized this room . . . This red-curtained bed on which she lay, the stone walls, the tapestries. It’s that strange room in the castle cellars, she realized. The dungeon room, where Mandrake kept Lorelyn and me. However can I have got back here?

  She sat up, massaging her aching temple, and saw that she wore a nightgown of some rough gray material. As she sat there fingering its unfamiliar fabric the door opened, and Damion came in. He was clad in ragged clothing and his face was unshaven and weary. There was something strange about him, something odd about the way his blue eyes met hers.

  She jumped up, then staggered as pain wracked her head again. “Damion! How did we get here—to Maurainia? Did that dragon bring me here? How did you—”

  Damion stood with his arms folded across his chest, staring at her with those cool, distant eyes. “So you’ve come back to us,” he said briskly. “We didn’t know what to do with you.”

  “Do with me? I don’t understand.” Why was he looking at her like that, as though he barely knew her? She felt confused and disoriented. “Damion? Please, tell me what’s happened. How did we come here?”

  He sat down in a tapestried chair. “Ailia—what is the last thing that you remember?”

  “Remember?” She cast her thoughts back. “The palace—I was in a beautiful palace, in a strange country. Eldimia. And Lorelyn was there too. She is the Tryna Lia, Damion—she really is!” She paused and frowned. “And Mandrake was there.”

  “Anything else?” The blue eyes bored into her.

  “A . . . a dragon. That’s how I got there. It saved me. We flew up into the sky, up to the moon—” She broke off as his eyebrows lifted. “Damion, it’s true. After you and Jomar went into the cave—”

  “I and Jomar?” He repeated her words with a look
of puzzlement. “What cave? Ailia, you don’t know what has happened, do you?”

  “Happened?”

  He rose and paced to and fro. “You and Lorelyn were held here some weeks ago, by a man called Mandrake—”

  “Yes—the sorcerer.”

  Damion shook his head impatiently. “Not a sorcerer—just an ordinary man. He was trying to keep Lorelyn away from us—”

  “Us?”

  “Us witches.” He stopped and looked at her directly. “All right, I’ll begin from the beginning. There’s a coven of us who meet down in the catacombs. Ana is our leader, and Lorelyn is the one we’ve chosen to be the next leader of the coven—our high priestess, if you will. That’s why I brought her out of the Archipelagoes in the first place. The silly girl keeps resisting the idea, but we’ll have our way with her yet.”

  Ailia stared at him. “This isn’t true,” she said in a low voice. “It didn’t happen this way.”

  “Mandrake found out about us, and betrayed us to the Patriarch, who turned up with a rabble from the villages to drive us out. Some of our members have been getting a little careless—burning barns and so forth. They found me and Ana in the ruins, and you and Lorelyn as well. And that turncoat Jomar—he ran back to the Zimbourans, of course, as soon as he saw which way the wind was blowing. But we got away from the guards, and we’ve been in hiding down here ever since. As soon as everything calms down, we’ll take Lorelyn and go into the mountains. With any luck we’ll get safely to Marakor.”

  Ailia leaped up. “No! I don’t believe you! This is all wrong!” Panic filled her. “We didn’t get away from the guards—they took us on board their ship, took us north to Trynisia. It was then that we got away from them—and Jomar joined us, and helped us—and we searched for the Star Stone . . .” Her voice trailed away as he continued to stare at her.