The Lightstone Read online

  Just beyond the bridge across these icy waters, where two large inns stood above the houses, the Kel Road from the east intersected the larger North Road. The Kel Road, as I knew from having traveled it, was one of the marvels of Mesh. It wound through the mountains around the entire perimeter of our kingdom connecting the kel keeps that guarded the passes. There were twenty-two of these high mountain fortresses spaced some twenty miles apart. I had spent a long, lonely winter at one of them watching for an invasion of the Mansurii tribe that never came.

  Maram, citing the hard work of the morning (which in truth was mostly the horses'

  hard work), argued that we should stop for a few hours and bathe at one of these inns. He grumbled that the two previous nights' camps had afforded us neither the time nor the opportunity for such vital indulgence. It was almost a sacred ritual that a Valari would -

  wash away the world's woes at the end of a day, and I wanted a hot bath as badly as he did. But I persuaded him that we should leave Ki behind us as swiftly as possible.

  Although it was late in the season, it could still snow, as I patiently explained to him.

  And so, after pausing at the inn only long enough to take a quick meal of fried eggs and porridge, we continued on our journey.

  For seven miles between Ki and the kel keep situated near Raaskel and Korukel, the Kel Road ran contiguous with the North Road. Here, as the horses' hooves strove for purchase against the worn paving stones, the road rose very steeply. Thick walls of oak trees, mixed with elms and birch, pressed the road from either side, forming an archway of green leaves and branches high above it. But after only a few miles, the forest began changing and giving way to stands of aspen and spruce growing at the higher elevations. The mountains rose before us like steps leading to the unseen stars. In many places, the road cut the sides of these fir-covered foothills like a long, curved scar against the swelling green, I knew that we were drawing close to the pass, although the lower peaks blocked the sight of it. As Maram complained, travel in the mountains was disorienting, and one could easily become lost. He had other fears as well. After I had recounted my conversation with Lansar Raasharu, he wondered aloud who the second assassin might be if he wasn't one of the Ishkans.

  Might fe this unknown man, he asked, stalk us along the road? And if he did, what were we doing venturing into Ishka where he might more easily finish what he had begun in the woods? With every step we took closer to this unfriendly kingdom, these unanswered questions seemed to hang in the air like the cold mist sifting down from the sky.

  Around noon, just as we crested a low rise marked with a red standing stone, we had our first clear view of the pass. We stood resting the horses as we gazed out at the masses of Korukel and Raaskel that rose up like great guardian towers only a few miles to the north The North Road curved closer to Raaskel, the smaller of these two mountains But with its sheer granite faces and snowfields, I thought, it was forbidding enough. Korukel, whose twin peaks and great humped shoulders gave it the appearance of a two-headed ogre, seemed all too ready to pelt us with spears of ice or roll huge boulders down upon us. If not for the diamonds buried within its bowels, it hardly seemed like a mountain worth fighting for.

  'Oh, my Lord, look!' Maram said, pointing up the road. ' The Telemesh Gate. I've never seen anything like it.'

  Few people had. For there, across the barren valley fust beyond the massive fortress of the kel keep, cutting the ground between the two mountains, was the great work of my ancestors and one of the wonders of Ea: it seemed that a great piece of mountain a fifth of a mile wide and a mile long had simply been sliced out of the earth as if by the hand of the Galadin themselves. In truth, as Maram seemed to know, King Telemesh had made this rectangular cut between the two mountains with a firestone that he had brought back from the War of the Stones. According to legend, he had stood upon this very hill with his red gelstei and had directed a stream of fire against the earth for most of six days. And when he had finished and the acres of ice, dirt and rock had simply boiled off into the sky, a great corridor between Mesh and Ishka had been opened. Indeed, until Telemesh had made his gate, this

  'pass' between our two kingdoms had been considered unpassable, at least to armies marching along in their columns or travelers astride their weary horses.

  'It's too bad the firestones have all perished,' Maram said wistfully. 'Else all the kingdoms of Ea might be so connected.'

  'It's said that Morjin has a firestone,' I told him. 'It's said that he has rediscovered the secret of forging them.'

  At this, Master Juwain looked at me sharply and shook his head. Many times he had warned Maram fe and me - never to speak the Red Dragon's true name. And with the utterance of these two simple tables, the wind off the icy peaks suddenly seemed to rise; either that, or I could feel it cutting me more closely. Again, as I had in the woods with Raldu and later in the castle, I shivered with an eerie sense that something was watching me. It was as if the stones themselves all about us had eyes.

  It consoled me not at all that my countrymen here to the north called Raaskel and Korukel the Watchers.

  For a half a mile we walked our horses down to the kel keep at the center of the valley. Maram wondered why the makers of the fortress hadn't built it flush with the Gat,-, as of a wall of stone defending it.

  I explained to him that it was better sited where it was: on top of a series of springs that could keep the garrison well-watered for years. It had never been the purpose of the keeps, I told him, to stop invading armies in the passes. They were intended only to delay the enemy as long as it took for the Meshian king to gather up an army of his own and destroy them in the open field.

  We stopped at the keep to pay our respects to Lord Avijan, the garri-son's commander. Lord Avijan, a serious man with a long, windburnt face, was Asaru's friend and not much older than I. He had been present at the feast, and he congratulated me on my knighthood. After seeing that we were well-fed with pork and potatoes brought up from Ki, he told me that Salmelu and the Ishkans had gone up into the pass early | that morning.

  ' They were riding hard for lshka,' Lord Avijan told me. 'As you had better do if you don't want to be caught in the pass at nightfall.'

  After I had thanked him and he wished me well on my quest, we took his advice. We continued along the North Road where it snaked up the steeply rising slopes of the valley. About two miles from the keep, as we approached the Telemesh Gate, it grew suddenly colder. The air was thick with a moisture that wasn't quite rain nor mist nor snow. But there was still snow aplenty blanketing the ground. Here, in this bleak mountain tundra where trees wouldn't grow, the mosses and low shrubs in many places were still covered in snow. Against boulders as large as a house were gathered massive white drifts, a few of which blocked the road. If Lord Avijan hadn't sent out his warriors to cut a narrow corridor through them, the road would still have been impassable.

  'It's cold,' Maram complained as his gelding drove his hooves against the road's wet stone. 'Perhaps we should return to the keep and wait for better weather.'

  'No,' I said, laying my hand on Altaru's neck Despite the cold the hard work in the thin air had made him start sweating. 'Let's go on -it will be better on the other side of the pass.'

  'Are you sure?'

  I looked off through the gray air at the Telemesh Gate now only a hundred yards farther up the road. It was a dark cut through a wall of rock, an ice-glazed opening into the unknown.

  'Yes, it will be better,' I reassured him, if not myself. 'Come on.'

  I touched Altaru's flanks to urge him forward, but he nickered nervously and didn't move. As Master Juwain came up to join us, the big horse just stood there with his large nostrils opening and closing against the freezing wind.

  'What is it, Val?' Master juwain asked me.

  I shrugged my shoulders as I scanned the boulders and snowfields all about us. The tundra seemed as barren as it was cold. Not even a marmot or a ptarmigan moved to break the bleakness of th
e pass.

  'Do you think it could be a bear?' Maram asked, looking about too. 'Maybe he smells a bear.'

  'No, it's too early for bears to be up this high,' I told him.

  In another month, the snow would be gone, and the slopes around us would teem with wildflowers and berries. But now there seemed little that was alive save for the orange and green patches of lichen that covered the cold stones.

  Again, I nudged Altaru forward, and this time he whinnied and shook his head angrily at the opening to the Telemesh Gate. He began pawing at the road with his iron-shod hoof, and the harsh sound of it rang out into the mist-choked air.

  'Altaru, Altaru,' I whispered to him, 'what's the matter?'

  There was something, I thought, that he didn't like about this cut between the mountains. There was something I didn't like myself. I felt a sudden, deep wrongness entering my bones as from the ground beneath us. It was as if Telemesh, the great king, the grandfather of my grandfathers, in burning off the tissues of the mountain with his firestone, had wounded the land in a way that could never be healed. And now, out of this open wound of fused dirt and blackened rock, it seemed that the earth itself was still screaming in agony. What man or beast, I wondered, would ever be drawn to such a place? Well, perhaps the vultures who batten on the blood of the suffering and dying would feel at home here. And the great Beast who was called the Red Dragon - surely he would find a twisted pleasure in the world's pain.

  He came for me then out of the dark mouth of the fire-scarred Gate. He was, even as Maram feared, a bear. And not merely a Meshian brown bear but one of the rare and very bad-tempered white bears of Ishka. I guessed that he must have wandered through the Gate into Mesh. And now he seemed to guard it, standing up on his stumpy hind legs to a height often feet as he sniffed the air and looked straight toward me.

  'Oh, Lord!' Maram called out as he tried to steady his horse. 'Oh, Lord, oh, Lord!'

  Now Altaru, seeing the bear at last, began snorting and stomping at the road. I tided to steady him as I said to Maram, 'Don't worry, the bear won't bother us. if-'

  '- if we don't bother him,' he finished. 'Well, I hope you're right, my friend.' But it seemed that I couldn't leave the bear alone after all. The wind carried down from the mountain, and I smelled his rank scent which fairly reeked with an illness that I couldn't identify. I couldn't help star-ing at his small, questing eyes as my hand moved almost involuntarily to the hilt of my sword. And all the while, he kept sniffing at me with his wet black nose; I had the strange sense that even though he couldn't catch my scent, he could smell the kirax in my blood.

  And then suddenly, without warning, he fell down onto all fours and charged us.

  'Oh, Lord!' Maram cried out again. 'He's coming - run for your life!'

  True to his instincts, he wheeled his horse about and began galloping down the road.

  I might have done the same if Altaru hadn't reared just then, throwing back his head and flashing his hooves in challenge at the bear. This move, which I should have anticipated, caught me off guard. For at that moment, as Altaru rose up with a mighty surge of bunching muscles, I was reaching toward my pack horse for my bow and arrows. I was badly unbalanced, and went flying out of my saddle. Tanar, my screaming pack horse, almost trampled me in his panic to get away from the charging bear. If I hadn't rolled behind Altaru, his wildly flailing hooves would surely have brained me.

  'Val!' Master Juwain called to me, 'get up and draw your sword!'

  It is astonishing how quickly a bear can cover a hundred yards, particularly when running downhill. I didn't have time to draw my sword. Even as Master Juwain tried to get control of his own bucking horse and the two pack horses tied behind him, the bear bounded down the snowy slope straight toward us. Tanar, caught between them and the growling bear, screamed in terror, all the while trying to get out of the way. And then the bear closed with him, and I thought for a moment that he might tear open his throat or break his back with a blow from one of his mighty paws. But it seemed that this stout horse was not intended to be the bear's prey. The bear only rammed him with his shoulder, knocking him aside in his fury to get at me.

  'Val!' I heard Maram calling me as from far away. 'Run, now - oh, Lord, oh, Lord!'

  The bear would certainly have fallen upon me then if not for Altaru's courage. As I struggled to stand and regain my breath, the great horse reared again and struck a glancing blow off the bear's head. His sharp hoof cut open the bear's eye, which filled with blood. The stunned bear screamed in outrage and swiped at Altaru with his long black claws. He grunted and brayed and shook his sloping white head at me. I smelled his musty white fur and felt the growls rumbling up from deep in his throat. His good eye fixed on mine like a hook; he opened his jaws to rip me open with his long white teeth.

  'Val, I'm coming!' Maram cried out to the thunder of hooves against stone. 'I'm coming!'

  The bear finally closed with me, locking his jaws onto my shoulder with a crushing force. He snarled and shook his head furiously and tried to pulp me with his deadly paws. And then Maram closed with him. Unbelievably, he had managed to wheel his horse about yet again and urge him forward in a desperate charge at the bear. He had his lance drawn and couched beneath his arm like a knight. But although trained in arms, he was no knight; the point of the lance caught the bear in the shoulder instead of the throat, and the shock of steel and metal pushing into hard flesh unseated Maram and propelled him from his horse. He hit the ground with a ugly slap and whooshing of breath. But for the moment, at least he had succeeded in fighting the bear off of me. 'Val,' Maram croaked out from the blood-spattered road, 'help me!'

  The bear snarled at Maram and moved to rend him with his claws in his determination to get at me. And in that moment, I finally slid my sword free. The long kalama flashed in the uneven light I swung it with all my might at the bear's exposed neck. The kalama's razor edge, hardened in the forges of Godhra, bit through fur, muscle and bone. I gasped to feel the bear's bright lifeblood spraying out into the air as his great head went rolling down the road into a drift of snow. I fell to the road in the agony of death, and I hardly noticed the bear's body falling like an avalanche on top of Maram.

  'Val - get this thing off me!' I heard Maram call out weakly from beneath the mound of fur.

  But as always when I had killed an animal, it took me many moments to return to myself. I slowly stood up and rubbed my throbbing shoulder. If not for my armor and the padding beneath it, I thought the bear would surely have torn off my arm.

  Master Juwain, having collected and hobbled the frightened horses, came over then and helped me pull Maram free from the bear. He stood there in the driving sleet checking us for wounds.

  'Oh, my Lord, I'm killed!' Maram called out when he saw the blood drenchmg his tunic. But it proved only to be the bear's blood. In truth he had suffered nothing worse than having the wind knocked out of him.

  .

  'I think you'll be all right,' Master Juwain said as he ran his gnarly hands over him.

  'I will? But what about Val? The bear had half his body in his mouth!'

  He turned to ask me how I was. I told him, 'It hurts. But it seems that nothing is broken.'

  Maram looked at me with accusation in his still frightened eyes. 'You told me that the bear would leave us alone. Well, he didn't did he?'

  'No,' I said ,'he didn'.'

  Strange, I thought, that a bear should fall upon three men and six horses with such ferocious and single minded purpose. I had never heard of a bear, not even a ravenous one, attacking so boldly.

  Master Juwain stepped over to the side of the road and examined the beatr's massive head. He looked at his glassy, dark eye and pulled open his jaws to gaze at his teeth.

  'It's possible that he was maddened with rabies,' he said. 'But he doesn't have the look'

  'No, he does't,' I agreed, examining him as well.

  'What made him attack us then?' Maram demanded.

  Master Juwain's face fell gr
ay as if he had eaten bad meat. He said, 'If the beat were a man, I would say his action were those of a ghul.'

  I stared at the bear, and it suddenly came to me that the illness I had sensed in him had been not of the body but the mind

  'A ghul!' Maram cried out. 'Are you saying that Mot. . . ah, that the Lord of Lies had seized his will? I've never heard of an animal ghul.'

  No one had. With the wind working at the sweat beneath my armor, a deep shiver ran through me. I wondered if Morjin - or anyone except the Dark One himself, Angra Mainyu - could have gained that much power.

  As if in answer lo my question. Master Juwain sighed and said. 'It seems that his skill, if we can call it that, is growing,'

  'Well,' Maram said looking about nervously, 'If he can send one bear to kill Val, he can send another. Or a wolf or a - '

  'No, I think not,' Master Juwain interrupted. 'For a man or a woman to be made a ghul is a rare thing. There must be an opening through despair or hate, into the darkness. And a certain sympathy of the minds. I would think that an animal ghul, if possible at all, would, be even rarer.'

  'But you don't really know, do you?' Maram pressed him.

  'No I don't,' Master Juwain said. He suddenly shivered too and pulled his cloak more tightly about him. 'But I do know that we should get down from this pass before it grows dark.'

  'Yes, we should,' I agreed. With some handfuls of snow, I begun cleaning the blood off me. and watched Maram do the same. After

  retying Tanar to Altaru, I mounted my black stallion and turned him up the road.

  'You're not thinking of going on?' Maran asked me. 'Shouldn't we return to the keep?' I pointed at the opening of the Gate. Tria lies that way.'

  Maram looked down at the kel keep and the road that led back to the Valley of the Swans. He must have remembered that Lord Harsha was waiting for him there; it occurred to me that he had finally witnessed at first hand the kind of work that a kalama could accomplish, for he nibbed his curly beard worriedly and muttered,