The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Slowly, wearily, they climbed back up the hill to the palace.

  Lorelyn was groaning and sitting up, her hand to her head. Ailia still stood like a statue, motionless and pale, the Star Stone glowing in her hand. A crowd had gathered around her. Ana and King Tiron were there, but they made no move toward her. Damion went to the girl, touched her shoulder: she started, looking up at him.

  “Ailia,” he said softly, wonderingly. “Ailia, you’re one of them—you’re a Nemerei.”

  Ana came forward now with the king. The dark-haired man trembled. “It is she, it is she!”

  “Gently, Majesty!” Ana admonished. “Do not frighten her. Ladies and lords,” she said, turning to face the silent crowd upon the pavement, “I have the honor of presenting to you Elmiria—daughter of Queen Elarainia.”

  They were all looking at her, Ailia realized, not Lorelyn. “What do you mean?” she asked in sudden panic. The Stone fell from her hand into the grass as she slowly backed away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Ana looked solemn. “You are the Tryna Lia, Ailia. We have been seeking you for years, ever since your mother fled with you. You have come home at last.”

  “Come home?” Ailia whispered. She looked up at the pointed towers of the palace, lit like lanterns against the evening sky; at the familiar stars blazing down at her, and the sapphire moon winning free of the swathing clouds.

  “Home,” she murmured again, in wonderment.

  24

  The Princess of the Stars

  “YOU SEE,” SAID ANA, “it was of vital importance that the Tryna Lia should not know her own identity. As long as she was kept in ignorance, she was safe from all her foes . . .”

  The companions walked together through the palace grounds. In the sky above the strange moon shed its azure glow, while another paler radiance came from the silvery sky-bow. The Elei called this the Arch of Heaven, Ana told them, but it was really a system of rings that encircled the planet. Beneath that luminescent sky all the land was awash in blue and silver. It seemed to the travelers as though they had, indeed, come to the end of their lives and arrived in Heaven, the world of all their fears and sufferings left far behind. Ana walked at the head of the little group, Damion and Lorelyn not far behind. Before them Greymalkin leaped and pranced like a kitten. King Tiron walked at Ailia’s side, his arm about her shoulders, as if fearful that she might somehow be spirited away and be lost to him again. Ailia glanced from time to time at the strong bearded face in a dazed way, and thought, He is my father? He was very handsome, she thought, dignified in a quiet way, with his dark hair and the deep gray-purple eyes that were so like her own. He did not look quite old enough to be the father of a grown woman. For Ailia was, it seemed, older than she had thought: this was part of the deception that had been woven about her from her earliest years, the deception that had saved her life. She had always looked young for her age, and she knew now that what was said of the Elei was true: that they lived beyond the normal span of years allotted to the human race, and aged at a slower pace.

  And what of that other family, still in the troubled world of Mera, whose encircling love had fostered and protected her? Nella and Dannor, and Jaimon and the others, who even now must be wondering what had become of their daughter, niece, cousin—their Ailia? Am I even Ailia anymore?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Jomar. Uncharacteristically quiet and subdued all this time, he suddenly demanded of Ana, “Why didn’t you tell us all this before? About Arainia, and the other worlds?”

  “Because you would not have believed me. So long has it been since anyone traveled between the worlds that such travels have become the matter of myth. You would have thought me completely mad, and refused to trust in me. Even now I don’t think you quite believe that you are really here.” She smiled.

  A brief silence followed, during which they were aware of the curious hush of expectancy that lay over the land—an expectancy that had in it something more than the mere approach of dawn. Out in the city beyond, and in the palace from which they had just come, thousands awaited their first sight of the Tryna Lia since her infancy. This brief, moonlit idyll was the last moment of tranquillity Ailia and her friends would know for some time.

  “This is a great day for the people of Arainia,” Tiron—her father—said in his deep soft voice. “For two decades they have waited to see the Moon Throne filled. When you were born here at Halmirion, Ailia, people rejoiced that they should have lived to see that day. You are no mere ruler: there have been no true kings or queens in this world for many an age, and its people are governed by a council. Your role is a spiritual one, as was your mother’s. The people believe you are sent to save them from a coming danger. And not this world alone, but also the world of Mera from which you and your companions have come, will rejoice when you take your throne. Your role, Ailia, is to free both these worlds from the followers of Valdur: to fight those who would take Arainia, and save Mera from the forces that enslave it.”

  “You mean the Zimbourans? But I can’t do that on my own,” Ailia said.

  “No: but here in Arainia you can assemble an army for that purpose, and send it across the void to free Mera. These people will flock to your call, for you are the leader they have long awaited. They yearn to be reunited with their sister world of Mera. The champion of the light has come, the enemy of all those who serve the Dark One.”

  Ailia looked down at the ground. “I still can’t understand it,” she whispered. “Why me?”

  Ana smiled at that. “Ailia my dear, people have been asking that question since ever the worlds began. Andarion asked it in his time, and so have all who have ever been called to a life of great deeds and service. I cannot speak for the power that guides the cosmos on its course, but I can pose you another question: why should it not be you?”

  “When did you first know that I was—who I was?” Ailia asked.

  “I first had an odd feeling about you when you came to me at the Spring Fair. I was screening the general populace for potential Nemerei, under the guise of a little harmless fortune-telling. When you entered my tent I sensed in you a power at rest, waiting to be wakened—like the spring itself sleeping in the earth. It was not until you ended up in Trynisia that I truly began to suspect who you were, though as yet I had no proof. When a celestial dragon personally conveyed you through the Ether to Arainia, that was another sign. It wanted only the last test—the test of the Star Stone—to prove it beyond doubt. The Stone shone only for you.”

  “But how did it all happen? If I was born in this world, how ever did I come to live on Great Island?”

  “The truth of that tale,” Ana replied, “is known only to a retired sailor by the name of Dannor Shipwright and his wife. I think, however, that I know enough now to put the pieces together.

  “Eighteen years ago, the Queen Elarainia took her little daughter from Halmirion and fled her world by magic, taking refuge in the neighboring world of Mera. Her father remained behind in Arainia, to watch over the safety of the people there, and to prepare for his daughter’s return. Both knew that the servants of Valdur, and Mandrake too, had an interest in capturing their child. They knew she had to be hidden away until she grew old enough to develop her full powers, and protect herself from harm. But no place on her home world was safe. In any case, the Star Stone was in the world of Mera: her weapon, and the one thing that could protect her. Therefore, Elarainia chose to do what no one in her world had done for centuries: journey to another world by flying ship, sailing her winged vessel through the Plane of the Ether and into the skies of Mera.

  “But the ship was caught in a great tempest that raged through sky and sea: perhaps a natural storm, and perhaps not. For all Elarainia’s skill, her vessel could not stay aloft, but fell into the sea off the coast of Great Island.”

  “The shipwreck on the south coast!” Ailia exclaimed.

  Ana nodded. “Only fragments of the ship were found, no doubt: not enough to tell the islanders that thi
s was no common sea-vessel but a craft made to sail the sky. And there was but one survivor—an infant, washed ashore perhaps on a piece of wreckage, or rescued from the waves by an Islander. Dannor Shipwright took her in. His wife, it seems, was barren and overjoyed to have a child, and they reasoned that as the child’s family must all have perished in the wreck—since no one ever inquired after the little girl—they had a right to keep her.” Ana turned to King Tiron. “I am sorry if this pains you,” she said gently.

  “I have known for some time that my Elarainia would never return to me,” King Tiron answered slowly. “Indeed, I believe she foresaw something of the sort when she departed Halmirion. She was in such a strange and sorrowful mood when she bade me farewell . . . And now she lies beneath an alien sea.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Ana looking thoughtful. “She may well have gone into hiding somewhere, having placed her child in safe hands. We can still hope, Tiron.”

  “I remember her,” said Ailia softly. “At the convent I had a dream of a beautiful woman, a queen, with golden hair falling to her feet. But I never thought of it being the same dream as Lorelyn had.”

  “Many of us Nemerei had that dream, or vision,” Ana told her, “but in your case it was born out of a memory, long suppressed.”

  “She was very beautiful,” said Tiron, “and a great sibyl and sorceress. I had never seen such beauty, nor such power, in any human being. Well might the people here have taken her for the Goddess incarnate! And there is something of her in you, daughter.” He looked down at Ailia. “Though you are not like her in coloring or in height, yet there is a hint of a resemblance in your face. And I heard you speak with her voice—her very voice.”

  “That explains one thing that’s been puzzling me,” Damion commented. “You always looked familiar to me, Ailia—I’d assumed I must have noticed you at the Academy and remembered you, but now I know the real reason. You reminded me somehow of the woman in my visions.”

  Ana gave him a thoughtful look. “There may be more to it than that, young Damion. It may well be that you and Ailia were intended to meet—that your soul knew her on sight. You and Lorelyn have played significant roles in her life so far: I cannot believe that is an accident.”

  “Perhaps—nothing would surprise me now! But there’s still one thing I don’t understand,” he continued. “I saw the infant Princess very clearly in my second vision, and I’m certain that she had blue eyes like her mother’s—not purplish-gray ones like Ailia’s.”

  Ana smiled. “I had forgotten what sheltered lives you priests lead! My dear Damion, all babies have blue eyes at first!” Her face and voice grew solemn once more. “Neither Mandrake nor my Nemerei knew anything of what had happened. But we all heard, many years later, of a young girl brought from the Archipelagoes of Kaan, who had been left at a monastery as a child—seemingly abandoned by her parents—and was gifted with mind-speech. The Nemerei felt that this girl might well be the one whom they sought. Mandrake believed this also, and decided to steal her away before the Nemerei could get her to Trynisia and give her the Stone.

  “Mandrake, you see, grew away from the rest of the Nemerei long ago, questioning their beliefs, and their strict laws governing the use of sorcery. So it was that he came to see the Tryna Lia as an enemy, a being who would come to dominate the worlds and persecute rogue Nemerei like himself who would not abide by the laws. The Star Stone was to him an extension of her power, a tool of the Old Ones that she would one day use to augment her own sorcery and conquer any rival. He knew where that Stone lay, for he had been to the forgotten isle of Trynisia and learned all its secrets. But he could not destroy the gem. It would have taken the greatest of sorceries to do that, a power to unbind matter itself. Such an act of sorcery also destroys the one who performs it. And in any case the Stone had its Guardians. The cherubim will not interfere with ordinary mortals, but they have leave to defend their treasure from any dark sorcery, and they would have done so without hesitation. Rather than battle them for it—a battle he could never have won, so much greater is their power than his—Mandrake had to content himself with posting dragons to guard the cavern where the Stone lay. The cherubim watched the watchers, but made no move against them. And he himself stood guard in the cavern when we approached the mountain, meaning to drive us away—and the Zimbourans too, if they came too close. He did not intend that the Star Stone should ever leave the mountain.”

  She turned to Lorelyn. “My poor child!” she said. “When I think of all the dangers to which you have been exposed! And yet you have paid the Tryna Lia the greatest service of all: by keeping her ignorant of her own identity, you have helped to save her life. That is why I asked if you were certain you could risk your own life for another’s. You see, Mandrake eventually came to suspect that you were not the one he had sought, but through your innocent belief in yourself he thought to make use of you. Any Nemerei here in Arainia would have seen that belief was true and unfeigned: you would have passed all their tests, and been accepted by the people as their savior, and you in turn would have been ruled by Mandrake. When the real Tryna Lia came here with the Star Stone, she would have found her throne already filled, and many loyal subjects ready to fight to keep you upon it against the supposed ‘usurper.’ Oh, it was well planned indeed! Yet it worked against him in the end. Your belief and that of the others—Ailia included—ensured that the real Tryna Lia would be safe. Innocence was her shield, and it withstood the keenest probing. Mandrake himself, for all his skills at illusion and deceit, found only the memories of a simple Island girl when he questioned her here.”

  Ailia shuddered, remembering the interrogator with Damion’s voice and face. “So that was why he wanted to know what my first memory was.”

  “You are right,” Ana nodded. “It was a near escape. Who can say what early recollections he might have dredged up from your mind? But fortunately you resisted him.” She turned to Lorelyn. “I must now ask your pardon, dear, for allowing you to go on believing you were the Princess. But had you ceased to believe it, Mandrake would have detected the change in your mind, and from that change begun to draw conclusions of his own. He might then have suspected much sooner who the real Tryna Lia was.”

  “I don’t care,” replied Lorelyn indifferently. “I never wanted to be the Tryna Lia anyway.”

  “Oh, Lorelyn—” Ailia turned to her. “You really don’t mind?”

  “Mind? Why should I mind?” Lorelyn retorted. “I think it would have been an absolute bore! I’d have been locked away in that palace—trapped within walls again! Now I can do as I please, for once, and be whatever I want to be. I’m going to be a knight.”

  Jomar snorted at that. “You can’t be a knight. You’re a girl!”

  “I’ll be anything I want to be, Master Jomar,” retorted Lorelyn.

  The others moved ahead, leaving the quarrel behind. “If those two don’t stop bickering,” observed Damion mildly, “they’ll be married before a year is out.”

  They walked on in silence for a while. A warm subtropical breeze wafted past bearing with it opulent scents of jasmine and gardenia—and other, alien fragrances. The blue moon Miria was near setting now; the Arch of Heaven, partially obscured by the planet’s shadow, shone still, but its pale radiance too was growing dim. Ailia, looking up, was glad that she could still see the stars above, so safe and familiar. The Evenstar was Mera now and the polestar was not the same, while the constellations moved not westward but toward the east—but they were still the old beloved constellations she had known from childhood.

  “The Celestial Empire,” she breathed. “I used to look up at it when I was on the Island, long ago. But it never looked so bright and beautiful there. Oh, Ana—did the Elei journey to the outer stars, as it says in the faerie stories? All the other lovely things are true—surely that one must be as well!”

  “Yes, it is true,” Ana confirmed. “With the aid of the magic they inherited from the Old Ones, the Elei were able to pass through the Plane of
the Ether and reach the stars. That is not so strange a thing as you might think: for the stars themselves are suns like our own sun, and many have worlds about them like Arainia and Mera. The Arainians were starfarers long ago: your ancestors walked once beneath the moon-trees of Miria, and visited their kindred in Mera and the other planets, and traveled to worlds of far-distant stars. Arainia was then part of a great stellar Empire, ruled by a Celestial Emperor in a far-off world. But on Mera the Great Disaster and the Dark Age obscured its memory and turned it into a myth. That Empire still exists however, and the Emperor still rules on his Dragon Throne. I believe, Ailia, that one of your tasks will be to reestablish not only the ancient commerce that once existed between Mera and Arainia, but the ties of both with the star-realm beyond. Remember, it was said in the prophecy that the Tryna Lia would ‘reconcile Earth and Heaven and make them one.’”

  “I’ll do whatever I must. There are all those poor people back in Mera, slaves like Jo, and Lorelyn’s monks on Jana. And I so want to see Jaim again, and my parents—my foster parents, I mean—to tell them I’m all right, and to thank them. I miss them terribly, and they must be so anxious.”

  “Of course: they were your family for most of your life, and Mera was your home—your true home, in every sense of the word. But this is the world of your birth, and the seat of your strength. That is why the Dragon King could not prevail against you, for all his superior powers.”

  Ailia shivered slightly. “The Dragon King . . . Was Mandrake really a dragon after all, then—never a man?”

  Ana took a little while to answer. “No,” she said at length. “He was man and dragon both. You were all quite wrong in thinking he was an Anthropophagus—where you got that idea, by the way, I simply can’t imagine . . .”

  “My fault, I’m afraid,” said Damion guiltily. “It seemed a reasonable explanation at the time.”

  “It was true what I told you earlier: I found him as a young child in the land of Zimboura. Mandrake’s mother was a Loänei, a Wer-worm as they used to be called: a magician who could take the shape of a dragon at will. She was a daughter of the old imperial house of the Antipodes, who claimed transformed Loänan among their ancestors.“ Her eyes grew distant, far-seeing. ”So there was always a dragonish side to Mandrake’s nature: he inherited a dragon’s eyes, and its powers, and its longevity. A Loänan can live a thousand years and more.”