The Stone of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  Mandrake was right. The Stone had been taken from the sanctum. But where had the sibyls taken it?

  He followed the Stone’s bearers up into the main temple. A company of knights in silver-plated armor now stood there, their blue surcoats emblazoned with a white star. One of them received the casket, wrapping it in a fold of his cloak. The tall woman with the gold fillet was also there: she spoke to the knights, her voice high and clear but filled with urgency. “Go now,” she urged, “and the protection of the gods go with you! I will remain behind, and let the enemy believe the Stone is still within the sanctum.”

  “Your Majesty.” They bowed low before her, and Damion gaped at her, realizing at last who this woman was: Eliana herself, ruler of the Elei and the old Commonwealth.

  The cherubim screeched as the knights streamed out of the temple, swords drawn. The blades glittered in the light: they were not made of metal but crystal as clear as glass. He ran after them down the temple steps, out into the city. Staring down into the melee beneath him, he saw the mailed men hastening away across the plaza with their burden.

  Follow them—follow! See where they take it!

  Now that his head was level with the rest of the crowd he could no longer see the Paladins. He set off in the general direction they had taken, but it was some minutes before he spied them again, going down one of the narrow streets. He sped after them, glad that the crowd could not impede his progress, nor the Anthropophagi harm his immaterial body. The city smoked and spat embers like a forge, and in the sky shooting stars flared briefly as they fell. Wind-blown cinders rose and mingled with the stars.

  Halfway across the plaza he saw the dark knight ride up, then rein in his mount: horse and man stood there for a moment motionless, like an equestrian statue of dull black metal placed there by some act of sorcery. Then a tremor shook the mountain, and the warhorse snorted and danced, its tossing head strangely reptilian in the metal mask. The man took off his helmet and sat for a moment looking toward the temple: the light of the conflagration shone directly on his features, and reflected from his eyes. Damion stopped short, staring. The long red-gold hair was swept back and tied with a thong, and the sharp, chiseled features showed clearly.

  Mandrake!

  Somehow, Mandrake was also here in the past, a part of this dream-vision. Had he too eaten of the ambrosia fruit? Damion called out to him.

  “Mandrake—what’s happened? How did we—”

  Mandrake ignored him completely, continued to look across the plaza. He spurred his mount forward, and Damion stepped back as horse and rider moved past him at a slow walk, without so much as glancing at him.

  “Mandrake!” he shouted, and ran after him. The man did not check his pace or turn around. Damion sprinted ahead, then swung around to bar his path, yelling and waving his arms. Mandrake continued to ride straight toward Damion. Again the priest jumped out of the way, but he reached out in an effort to seize the other man’s steel-clad arm as he went by.

  His hand passed right through the arm, as it had passed through the casket that held the Star Stone.

  Damion stared as the other man rode on across the plaza; coming upon a group of armed Anthropophagi, he stopped, barked something at them in an unknown tongue. The hideous warriors listened, then bowed their heads. He put on the helmet and rode away.

  Damion gasped. Mandrake was no ghostly visitor here, like himself. The other Anthropophagi had reacted to him, and Damion was not able to touch him. Somehow, by some unimaginable feat of sorcery, the Nemerei had entered the past—become incorporated into it. Damion made as if to follow him again, but then the thought of the Stone-bearing knights made him reconsider. He turned, to see the Paladins running around a corner and disappearing from sight. Cursing softly, he set aside the mystery of Mandrake and ran after the Stone.

  He raced around the corner, just in time to see the Paladins waylaid by a great force of Anthropophagi.

  He stood watching helplessly, unable to intervene. Before his horrified eyes sword-blades swung to and fro, reddened by more than the firelight. The crystal blades of the Paladins’ swords were hard as any diamond: they bit deep into the bodies of the attackers, sheared away limbs, snapped the blades of the steel swords wielded against them. To Damion’s eyes they seemed to flash with blue fire as they were raised and swung. But as soon as an Anthropophagus was killed he was replaced by a dozen more. One by one the knights fell, overwhelmed, and the fires reflected in the red, spreading pools that stained the snow beneath them. All but one: the knight in the cloak, the bearer of the Stone, fought still like a man possessed. He cut his way free of the hordes, and as Damion watched he ran for the western peak of the summit. Why there? Then Damion saw that there was a cave mouth high in the rock-face, and the lone Paladin was heading toward it. A few Anthropophagi saw him break away and pursued him. The rest, however, were intent on the spoils of their battle, and howled with glee over the slain Paladins, tearing off their silver armor, taking up their weapons, searching their still-warm bodies.

  Up by the mountain peak the handful of Anthropophagi who had chased the surviving knight fought for their lives, unnoticed by their fellows. There were too few of them to face this man. The crystal sword flashed like blue lightning, cleaving their weapons asunder, and two of them already lay dead at his feet. The others retreated, reconsidered, fled back to their comrades. Their cries of alarm at last caught the other Anthropophagi’s attention, and as one they turned to see the knight running for the cave.

  “The Stone—the Stone!”

  Did that cry come from his own throat, or another’s? He was never afterwards certain. In the next instant the vision was mercifully gone . . .

  . . . AND HE OPENED HIS EYES, stirred, realized that he was once more sitting by the stone on the mountainside. The shadows had not moved, the sun still blazed down upon him. No time at all had elapsed during his visit to the age of the Elei. And the horror that lingered in his mind vanished, swept away by a wave of wonder and triumph.

  His wish had been granted. He knew where the Stone was.

  18

  The Dragon King

  “YOU EXPECT ME TO believe that?” exclaimed Jomar, incredulous.

  The Mohara man was tired and growing cross; he had worked even harder than any of the others, so determined was he not to give the Zimbourans any chance of victory. Now here came Damion, wandering into the ruins like some moonstruck witch doctor, claiming to have seen the location of the Star Stone in a miraculous vision.

  “Mountain air can make people see things,” Jomar told him. “Things that aren’t there. Lots of the soldiers saw illusions when we crossed the Kanja Range, back in the Winter Campaign in Shurkana. High elevations have thinner air: it does strange things to people’s brains.”

  “It wasn’t mountain air,” said Damion, and told him about the fruit. “Lorelyn was right all along. The tree was the answer.”

  “Answer? You drugged yourself,” said Jomar in disgust.

  “It wasn’t a drug, it was magic,” Ailia corrected.

  “There’s no such thing as magic!” Jomar shouted.

  “Jo,” Damion said, “I don’t expect you to understand it. I don’t understand it myself. But drug or not, I’m convinced the Stone is inside the mountain peak. I’ve climbed up there, and there is a cave mouth, with a sort of tunnel at the back of it.”

  “You must have seen it before.”

  “I swear to you I didn’t.”

  Damion looked back at the ruined city. It was bare as bone, picked clean by the passing ages of any trace of life. No hint remained here of the horrors past—the horrors he had beheld—nor any hint of the beauty that had been. But he had seen those people, seen them live and die before his eyes: he almost felt that he knew them. What had become of the sibyls—of the girl in the sky-blue gown and her lover? If they had all perished, it should not have been in vain. “We’ve searched the city: it’s not here. We’ll need torches—”

  “We?”

 
“Come, Jo—at least give it a try! Then if I’m right we’ll have it, and if I’m wrong you can gloat. Or have you got a better idea?”

  Jomar hadn’t. Unable to come up with any major flaw in Damion’s, he began to niggle at details. “Well, how can you be sure it wasn’t taken from the cave later on?”

  “The only way to find out is by looking.” He avoided mentioning the sight of Mandrake in the past. Jomar’s credulity had been stretched far enough for one day, and he himself was no longer certain that the man he had seen was Mandrake. After all, it was said that everyone had a double somewhere; it could even have been one of Mandrake’s own distant ancestors he had glimpsed. “I’d prefer not to go alone, though,” he continued, “in case there’s a cave-in, or pits in the floor, or something.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Lorelyn.

  “No, it might be dangerous. Let Jomar and me check it first.”

  “All right,” Jomar said in resignation. “It can’t be much worse than digging around in a lot of rubble. I still think you’re crazy, but I can’t think of anything else to do. Let’s go.”

  Ailia bit her lip. “What if the Zimbourans come, or—”

  “We won’t be that long,” replied Damion. “Cheer up! Stay here, and keep an eye out for Ana. She may yet find her way up here, and we might have the Stone when she arrives.”

  ON VENTURING INTO THE TUNNEL at the back of the cave, the men discovered that it divided in two. One passage was carved with steps: it rose in a steep spiral, and the two men guessed that it led to the “Moon Gate” high atop the peak. The other had a rough floor, and led downward. Jomar and Damion chose this one. Clutching the torches they had taken from the Zimbourans’ packs, they carefully began the descent. The ceiling was low, and they were obliged to stoop for much of the way.

  The passage seemed to plunge straight down through the bowels of the mountain, its frequent tight turns making the men feel slightly dizzy as they followed it. After what seemed an age they came to the end of it, finding themselves in a large cave. Above them was a ceiling of rugged rock; to the right, another tunnel leading into blackness.

  “Not another passage!” Jomar complained. “It just goes on forever. Maybe we should stop here.”

  “We’ve got to go on, Jo. You wouldn’t want the Zimbourans to find the Stone, would you?” Damion was close to wheedling now in his desperation. Jomar was ominously silent for a moment, staring into the dark mouth of the tunnel.

  “I’m beginning to feel as if I don’t care anymore,” he grumbled. “That it’s really all for nothing. Khalazar is probably going to declare a war no matter what happens: I doubt anything we can do will make any difference.”

  “That’s what Mandrake said,” Damion told him, pouncing. “You don’t agree with him, do you?”

  Jomar’s jaw tightened. He would do almost anything rather than agree with Mandrake.

  “Khalazar can declare all the wars he likes,” Damion went on, “but that doesn’t mean the soldiers will obey him. You’ve been in that army, Jo. Do you think those men would go to war if they weren’t afraid of their leader? Imagine Khalazar coming back from this little trip empty-handed, after all his boasts. It would be the end of him.”

  Jomar said nothing. Then, still without speaking, he walked on, leading the way through the second tunnel. It was as the Mohara man said: there seemed to be no end to the passages. Damion was reminded of the catacombs and could feel that same panicky sensation beginning to stir again, the longing for a sight of sky and trees. He fought to keep this feeling under control, but it was an effort. It was close to overwhelming him when the tunnel terminated in a cave, larger than the first. He and Jo stood still for a long moment, peering into its depths. They were rendered speechless by the sight that lay before them.

  Treasure beyond imagining filled this cave from end to end, lying in loose piles upon the floor: ancient wealth of the Elei. There were coins, arm-rings, chalices, and crowns: gold gleamed seductively in the torchlight, jewels flashed like frost. There were huge cloudy crystal globes, urns brimming with pearls, necklaces like cobwebs dewed with diamonds, carved rubies red as fire and uncut ones like clots of blood. There were the huge curving tusks of woolly elephants, the ivory intricately carved; and great tears of honey-colored amber; and enormous geodes split open like pomegranates to show the crystals clustering beneath their stone rinds. There were knights of marble or obsidian standing erect beside their stone steeds, every detail of men and beasts carved to give the exact semblance of life, save that the former lacked arms—for these were mere mannequins, designed to support treasures greater still: tall crested helmets and coats of silver or golden mail or plate armor, surcoats and caparisons of woven gold and scabbards from which the jeweled hilts of swords protruded. Ceremonial armor, it must be: such beauty was never meant for fields of battle.

  The huge chamber was utterly silent, save for a faint soughing sound that might be the wind playing in some hidden crevice high above. For a long moment they stood motionless; then as one they rushed forward.

  “The royal treasury—of course!” Damion exclaimed. “That’s why my knight came down here! Where better to hide a gem than in a roomful of gems? It could take years to search through all this—and you might never know if you’d got the right stone!” And how are we going to find it? he wondered. If it’s even still here?

  His companion was not in the least interested in the fabled gem, now that many more surrounded him. His dark eyes gleaming, he rummaged through the glittering piles, stuffing his pockets with gems, brooches, rose-pink pearls the size of grapes. “I don’t believe it! I could have bought my freedom with even one of these!” Jomar crowed, taking up a gold ingot from a pile and hefting it in one hand. “And look at this—and this!” He caught up a ruby-studded dagger and pored over it by the torchlight. Sullen red lights in the gem’s depths, awakened by the flames, seemed to glower back at him. Then he dropped the dagger to seize hold of a marble knight’s jeweled sword-belt. Setting his torch down, he grasped the scabbard with one hand and pulled on the exposed golden hilt with the other, drawing out the sword. The blade glimmered strangely in the torchlight, and he saw that it was made not of steel but of clear crystal or glass.

  Jomar blinked. “Now what in the—?”

  Damion stared at the weapon. The golden hilt was decorated with the sinuous forms of dragons, coiling around the handgrip. It hardly seemed right to call this thing a weapon: it was more like an exquisite work of art.

  Jomar shrugged. “Glass blade. Some kind of ceremonial sword, obviously. Pretty, but useless.”

  “No, Jo—that’s a Paladin’s sword.”

  “You can have it if you like. I’d rather have a sword that really cuts.”

  Damion set his torch down on the floor and took up the sword. It was much lighter than the Zimbouran weapon: he needed only one hand to heft it. “It cuts, Jo. The Paladins all carried swords like this, and they did use them in war. The blade isn’t glass, it’s adamant: a kind of gem, like diamond, that can cut through anything.” He touched the glittering edge lightly with his finger, drawing a drop of blood despite his care. “It could even be King Andarion’s own weapon. His had a gold hilt with dragons, like this—or so the stories say. Here, take your sword and hold it out toward me.”

  “What are you babbling about?” grumbled Jomar, but he unsheathed his Zimbouran weapon and held it out. Damion raised the crystal sword above his head and swung it down. There was a clang and a spurt of blue sparks—and Jomar leaped back with an oath. The Zimbouran blade was broken neatly off at the hilt, sliced through as though it were a stick of soft wood.

  “There, you see?” Damion removed his own Zimbouran weapon from its scabbard and tossed it to Jomar. “Adamant. The blades were supposed to run with flames when they were wielded by a Paladin.”

  “Valdur’s teeth! I don’t believe it,” Jomar rasped, still gaping down at the shattered steel. Damion took up his torch in his left hand and walked on through the
cave. His eye had been caught by something else—something small and pale that glimmered in the dim light. His eyes widened. “Jo!” he gasped, dropping the crystal-bladed sword on the rock floor. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?”

  “The Stone,” Damion replied, beginning to walk toward the object. “That’s the casket, the little box that it was in. The one I saw in my vision—”

  “What? Where?”

  Damion did not reply: in his eagerness he had already begun to walk toward the main mass of treasure. As he drew near, the light of his torch gleamed upon a vast heap of red gold, shining in the torch-glow: at its far end lay what looked like a fist-sized opal, the torch’s light rousing its veiled fires. Next to this the tips of two great elephant tusks—or perhaps they were rhinoceros horns—jutted upward from the pile. But Damion’s mind did not dwell for an instant on these things. It was the little casket on the floor that drew his eyes.

  It was the same one, he had no doubt. The Anthropophagi must have missed it in their search of the treasury. The little alabaster ark that contained the Stone—still here, after all this time.

  So great was his excitement that he did not at first notice that the booming, gusting sound seemed louder at this end of the cave, nor that there was a strange smell, sweet and pungent as incense, hanging in the air about him. He took another step—and then stopped dead.

  The heap of red gold had moved.

  It was not a trick of the flickering torchlight. As he stared, another slow, shuddering motion ran along the vast refulgent mound, and there was a clink of displaced coins and gems. The portion on which the opalescent gem and the two ivory horns lay began to stir. It rose slightly, then subsided again with a sigh and a low rumbling noise.