The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Damion felt his spirits lift a little as he walked. He knew these old mountains well: knew them in all their moods, when they were veiled with mist and rain, or ermined with snow, or shadowed against the stars. It was not hard to see where they got their name: they rose from the surrounding plain like the swollen udders of some vast beast whose belly was the earth. Just now their rounded peaks and upper slopes were still golden with sun, while the land below lay in evening’s creeping shade: islands of light in a dark sea. The tallest was Selenna, “Mist-mantle,” its summit nearly always hung with cloud. The villagers were superstitious about Selenna. Alone of all the mountains it bore no ruins on its peak or sides, and though sheep were pastured on its slopes, no one would build a house there. If you spent the night alone up on the Mistmount, it was said, you would be driven mad—if you came back at all, that was, and were not spirited away by the faeries . . .

  Years ago, on a dare, a much younger Damion had ventured onto those mystic slopes alone, right up to the legendary Faerie Cave. He still remembered what he had found there: silence, a vast quietude punctuated at first only by birdcalls and the wind. By slow degrees he had become aware of other sounds: the distant bleating of sheep, insect thrummings, the rushing song of a stream somewhere, high up; and this rich tapestry of sound had seemed to him to hang upon the silence as an embroidered banner hangs upon a stark stone wall, not distracting from, but rather calling attention to, the surrounding stillness. In that moment he understood the truth that lay behind the fanciful tales of the Mistmount: the ancients had not feared Selenna, but revered it.

  He thought of the Kaans and their sacred island. The western missionaries had disapproved of the pagan custom of assigning dwelling places to deities and had many times tried to discredit it, but Damion could not agree with them. Were not the Faith’s own temples believed to be holy ground, filled with the divine Presence? For the Kaans the isle of Medosha was a natural temple; the same might well be said of the Mistmount. Other mountains could be put to practical use, but not this one. Selenna existed for itself alone.

  He looked at the Old Road that led up the mountainside, vanishing into the forest, and was glad to walk it again. As he followed its winding course uphill, he felt the anxieties of adulthood slowly receding, giving way to the wonder he had felt in childhood. Oaks and maples roofed these woods with the bronze and gold of autumn, and laid down a floor of fallen leaves: many were centuries old, by their great girth. Beneath their boughs mail-clad knights might once have ridden, pursuing outlaws and wild beasts in days of old when this was the Dark Forest of legend. How he had yearned to be a knight himself when he was a boy! Over his bed in the dormitory he had hung a faded print, bought for a few coppers at a fair, of a Paladin riding to rescue a maiden from a snaky-tailed dragon. Chivalry—how utterly naive it all seemed to him now. As if any wrong could be righted just by waving a sword about. Knights were no longer needed, even here in the wild lands. The outlaws and brigands were long gone, as were the dire wolves and cave bears that once had lurked within the tangled groves. The Dark Forest itself now stood at bay, its hosts of trees forced into retreat by a burgeoning demand for lumber: only here had they been spared. He continued to walk uphill, breathing in the musty earthen smells of autumn, his mind wrapped in thoughts of the distant past.

  He came to himself at last with the realization that it was growing cool, and the brighter stars were beginning to pierce the deepening sky above the trees: he recognized the constellation of the Unicorn, and Modrian-Valdur with its red eye. He should head back before it became really dark, he decided, and leave his errand for another day. There was no telling where the old madwoman might be. Damion sat down on a stony outcrop, to rest his legs before making the homeward journey. He was, he saw, about two-thirds of the way up the mountainside now, near the so-called Faerie Cave. There it gaped from the living rock of the mountainside, just a few paces from where he sat: a narrow triangular opening that he would now have to stoop to enter. He often wondered why the locals had not chosen a more impressive cave for the setting of their legends. Here the faeries assembled for midsummer revels, feasting and dancing by the light of the moon: the faeries who were the Elei and their lost gods, reduced to mere figures of folklore in the minds of the mountain people.

  Someone else had been here not long ago, he saw, for resting on the ground near the mouth of the cave was a small crude figure formed of dried corn husks and wheat sheaves. He rose from his rock and went to pick the object up, turning it over in his hands. It was a corn doll, such as many farmers made at harvest time, using the last sheaves gleaned from their crops. Most of them had long forgotten that the doll symbolized the old Elei goddess of the earth. But whoever had placed this one here had not forgotten. It could only be a pagan thank-offering: to the goddess, to the faeries, or perhaps to both. Was it true, then, what the shepherd had said about witches meeting in the hills?

  A sound intruded into Damion’s thoughts: a soft shuffling as of footsteps on stone, coming from behind him. His skin pricking, he dropped the doll and spun around, staring at the Faerie Cave. The hairs on the back of his neck seemed to lift, and he took an involuntary step backwards.

  At the mouth of the cave stood a tiny, elfin figure, its pale garments gleaming faintly through the dusk.

  AFTER THE FIRST FROZEN instant of disbelief, Damion realized what he was looking at. But his heart was still racing as the gray-clad figure moved out of the cave and came toward him.

  Small wonder he had thought, for that brief irrational moment, that he was facing some sort of supernatural being. The old woman might have been a gnome or pixie from a child’s faerie-tale book, so tiny and wizened was she. Her little hands were bony as bird claws, her round face crazed with wrinkles. Strangest of all were her eyes: clouded over by a gray film, their color was difficult to discern. He thought at first that she must be blind; and yet she made her way easily toward him, leaning hard upon a knobbly cane but neither groping nor stumbling.

  “Good even, Father,” she greeted him in a dry, crisp voice.

  So she wasn’t blind, then: she must have partial vision in one or both eyes, enough to detect his white robe in the dusk. Damion released his pent-up breath, almost laughing. Of course: this must be Ana, the local “witch.” He made a bow. “How do you do, ma’am.”

  She paused a couple of paces away and smiled at him, wrinkles forming friendly patterns about her eyes and mouth. “Won’t you stay for a bit, Father? I don’t often get visitors up here,” she offered.

  He returned the smile. The tiny woman’s manner was kindly; there was certainly nothing sinister about her. “You’re—Ana, aren’t you? I’m Father Damion Athariel.”

  “I know,” she said unexpectedly. “We have actually met before, though you mayn’t remember it.” The old woman returned his smile and went back toward the cave’s narrow mouth, beckoning to him to follow.

  “Have we?” he asked. He was certain he would recall an encounter with such an unusual personage. Curious, he stooped and entered after her, moving through a short passage into a large natural chamber within the rock. He had never gone far inside the cave before, and he looked about him with interest. Its floor was quite level, and it was furnished with a few crates and barrels, a crooked old easel, a threadbare pallet, and a table cluttered with various objects, including bundles of herbs, a mortar and pestle, and a globe of glass or crystal about the size of a man’s fist. There were also two battered chairs that looked as though they had been salvaged from a rubbish heap. Natural outcroppings of rock served as shelves, on which a few candles burned, while a circle of stones near the entrance made a primitive hearth. Ana waved him inside, as gracious as any noblewoman inviting a guest into her mansion.

  “This is, ah, an unusual place to live,” he observed.

  “It is my summer home,” Ana told him. “I will be moving out soon, before the snow falls.”

  There were animals everywhere, he noticed. A cat and her litter snuggled together in
one of the crates, while other cats watched him warily from their perches on chairs and table. On one of the rock-shelves a starling with a splinted wing reposed in an improvised cage of twigs lashed together with twine—designed, no doubt, to keep the cats at bay. At the back of the cave was a large crevice, leading to a second chamber: a musty stable-smell came from it, and in its gloomy interior he glimpsed a goat, a tiny gray donkey, and some chickens scratching about in piles of straw. Sprawled upon the cave floor was an enormous gray dog, which put back its sharp ears and growled a challenge at Damion, glaring with cold amber eyes. The priest recoiled. He had heard of the mountain people’s huge sheepdogs, bred to drive predators away from their flocks; but hearing was one thing, confronting the bristling reality quite another.

  “Now, Wolf! Be nice to our guest!” reproved the old woman, and at once the great brute laid his head meekly on his paws. “How about some tea? No magic potions,” she said with a smile as she went to the cluttered table. “Just the herbal tea I make myself.”

  It might, Damion reflected, be a good idea to stay and pump the old woman for more information—just in case she knew anything about the shepherd’s vandals. He accepted her offer of tea, and sat looking idly around the cave as Ana placed some kindling within the ring of stones and busied herself lighting it. As she removed her enormous shawl to keep it from the flames he saw that the gray dress beneath it was shapeless and shabby—it resembled nothing so much as an old sack—but her white hair was pulled into a neat, grandmotherly knot. She looked so completely different from the disheveled madwoman he had once imagined that he stared at her for a moment, at a loss for words. Then he glanced about the cave’s interior again.

  “That’s odd . . .” he murmured, frowning.

  “What is?” asked Ana, filling a cauldronlike pot with water from a chipped earthenware jug.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that this place seemed familiar to me for a moment—as though I’d been here before. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it? A sort of false recognition.”

  “As a matter of fact,” replied Ana, “you have been here before. It was so long ago, though, I’m surprised you remember it. You were only an infant at the time.”

  Damion stared. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You were born here,” explained Ana, “in this cave. I found you here, twenty-one years ago.”

  5

  Visions and Apparitions

  IN THE LONG PAUSE THAT followed every sound seemed to Damion unnaturally distinct—the hissing whisper of the flames on the makeshift hearth, the wind stirring in the trees outside. The dog had fallen asleep, snoring softly with his gray muzzle on his forepaws.

  At last Damion found his voice. “You? You found me?”

  “Yes.” Ana stood watching him, her filmy gray eyes unreadable. “I looked after you for a day or so, then I left you for the monks to find. How very curious that you should have come back here—but then, a salmon returns to the very stream where it was spawned, without knowing how it knows to go there. Ah, the water’s boiling,” she added. She took the pot from its tripod over the fire and emptied it into a venerable brown teapot, which also looked as though it had been salvaged from a rubbish heap. She tossed in a handful of herbs from the table. “We’ll let it steep a bit.”

  He had recovered from his shock, and looked at her now with suspicion. “Why did you never come to me and tell me about this before?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want to burden a young boy with the thought that he might have been abandoned by his mother. Don’t distress yourself about it, young Damion. It is all in the past now.”

  He said nothing, but sat for a time staring into the fire. Was Ana telling the truth? Or spinning an imaginative lie, or perhaps suffering from some sort of delusion? Impossible to say. He decided it was time he left, and made as if to rise.

  “Oh, do stay! The tea’s ready,” she said, pouring the honey-colored fluid into a pair of earthenware mugs. “Or do you not want to keep company with a witch?” She smiled.

  He remembered the shepherd’s warning, and his reason for coming here. Her astonishing claim he must set aside for the moment: there might be more important things to learn here. “Now, Ana—I don’t believe all that nonsense about your being a witch,” he replied in a firm voice, settling back into his chair again and accepting a mug of tea. It smelled of flowers, and had a strong sweet taste with a hint of some unfamiliar spice.

  Her cloudy eyes dwelt on him in such a penetrating fashion that he began to doubt her vision was impaired at all. “Well, it all depends on how you define the word, doesn’t it? If you believe, like the holy Patriarchs, that witches are servants of the Dark One, then I am not a witch.” She went to the starling’s cage and, opening its door, reached in and drew out the injured bird. It lay in her hand without struggling as she gently flexed the splinted wing, stretching it to its full span. “Some children brought this poor fellow to me. The villagers know they can come to me with any injured bird or beast they find. I treat their sheep and cattle too.” She placed the starling back in its cage, then picked up her own mug and went to sit in a chair opposite Damion. “Nemerei—that was the old word for users of magic.”

  “You’re a white witch, you mean?” asked Damion.

  “You might call me that—though it still puts me outside the pale of the Faith, does it not? But the Nemerei do not practice black magic. Nemerei are the servants, Damion, of the power that aligns itself with life. What is this life, this joy and energy, but your benevolent God? Are we not really the same, you and I?”

  “That’s—an interesting idea,” he agreed carefully. “But I don’t think I will mention it to the Patriarchs just yet.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be very wise. I don’t suppose they would entirely approve of us.”

  “Us?” Damion asked, ears pricking. “You mean there are more witches about?”

  “Quite a few, yes—and not all of them of the white persuasion, I’m sorry to say. But most are. My friends and I revere many of the same things you do, for the holy scriptures of the Faith contain some of the old Elei writings that are sacred to us. Stories of old Trynisia, and the Star Stone—like that most interesting scroll you brought from the Archipelagoes. Don’t look so surprised! We have heard of it too. Now,” said Ana, before he could pursue the subject further, “is there anything else I can offer you? A bite to eat, perhaps?”

  He declined, and sat for a moment sipping his tea and looking about him. Several unframed paintings were propped against one rock wall, evidently the work of the cave’s resident. Some were exquisitely detailed studies of birds and plants, while others were executed in an odd, dreamlike style: groves of dancing, undulating trees, birds and animals connected to one another by strange luminous lines, stars that scintillated and coruscated, sending whorls of light across the sky. The strangest of all was a flight of sheer fancy: a castle with impossibly tall and top-heavy towers, about which figures were flying—human figures that seemed to have wings in place of arms. In the dark sky were stars and a tremendous exaggerated moon, bright blue in color: yet the sun was up too, shining brightly. When he saw that painting Damion began to wonder if Ana might be a little mad after all.

  He looked away from the painting and suddenly caught sight of something even more peculiar and unsettling: a pair of eyes glowing like live coals in the dark space inside one of the crates.

  “That’s my Greymalkin,” said Ana, seeing his look. “Come on out, Malkin dear, we’ve got company.”

  A lean gray cat emerged from the crate, stretched and gave a wide pink yawn, sauntered past the nose of the big gray dog (who ignored it completely), and amiably rubbed its furry flank against Damion’s ankles, purring all the while like thunder. Its eyes, though they had reflected the light with a red glow, were actually green: they turned up to him with an approving expression as he stroked the cat’s back.

  “Some of the villagers believe she is a demon,” Ana remarked. “My familiar, you kn
ow.”

  “No offense, but I don’t believe in spirits either,” he told the cat as it nuzzled his hand.

  “Tell me, Father Damion, how can you not believe in spirits? What of the beings you call angels, are they not spirits? What of the Dark One?” Ana stroked the gray cat, and it leaped up onto her lap.

  “Valdur, you mean?”

  “He is called that by the Zimbourans—and by the Faithful, ever since the Holy War. In days of old he went by the name of Modrian. But it matters little what name you call him by. Evil is always the same.”

  “I don’t think the Faithful really believe in Valdur anymore—the educated people, that is,” Damion explained. “He’s just a personification of evil—as the angels are personifications of good.”

  “Well, well! A priest who doesn’t believe in anything!” she said with a laugh.

  “I do believe in something,” he replied, piqued.

  “And what might that be, may I ask?”

  Damion found himself answering, “Justice.”

  “Interesting!” said Ana. “I should have thought that would be the most difficult thing of all to believe in—seeing there’s so little of it in evidence.”

  Damion’s voice was firmer now. “All the more reason to work to create it.”

  Ana’s face lit up, like that of a prospector who has found a nugget of gold. “Aha! An idealist! How delightful. There are so few of you about these days. But back to this business of believing in things unseen,” she went on. “You’ve read Meldegar, of course.”

  “And you have too?” interrupted Damion, surprised.