The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom Read online

  At that moment, with my legs so weak that I could hardly stand, I wanted nothing more than to run away into the night. But I couldn’t do that. A challenge had been made and accepted. There are some laws too sacred to break.

  ‘Leave him alone now,’ Master Juwain said as he came over to me. He helped me remove my surcoat, and then began working at the catches to my armor. ‘If you would, Brother Maram, please go out to the horses and bring Val a fresh tunic.’

  Maram muttered that he would be back in a few moments, and again the door opened and closed. With trembling hands, I began pulling off my armor. With my mail and underpadding removed, it was cold in that little room. Indeed, the entire palace was cold: out of fear of fire, the King allowed no flame hotter than that of a candle in any of its wooden rooms.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ Master Juwain asked as he laid his hand on my trembling shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, staring at the dreadful, red wall.

  ‘Brother Maram is an excitable man,’ he said. ‘But he’s right, you know. You could simply walk away from all this.’

  ‘No, that’s not possible,’ I told him. ‘The shame would be too great. My brothers would make war to expunge it. My father would.’

  ‘I see,’ Master Juwain said. He rubbed his neck, and then fell quiet.

  ‘Master Juwain,’ I said, looking at him, ‘in ancient times, the Brothers would help a knight prepare for a duel. Will you help me now?’

  Master Juwain began rubbing the back of his bald head as his gray eyes fell upon me. ‘That was long ago, Val, before we forswore violence. If I helped you now, and you killed Salmelu, I would bear part of the blame for his death.’

  ‘If you don’t help me, and he kills me, you would bear part of the blame for mine.’

  For as long as it took for my heart to beat twenty times, Master Juwain stared at me in silence. And then he bowed his head in acceptance of what had to be and said, ‘All right.’

  He instructed me to gaze at the stand of candles blazing in the corner of the room. I was to single out the flame of the highest candle and concentrate on its flickering yellow tip. Where did a candle’s flame come from when it was lit? he asked me. Where did it go when it went out?

  He steadied my breathing then as he guided me into the ancient death meditation. Its purpose was to take me into a state of zanshin, a deep and timeless calm in the face of extreme danger. Its essence was in bringing me to the realization that I was much more than my body and that therefore I wouldn’t fear its wounding or death.

  ‘Breathe with me now,’ Master Juwain told me. ‘Concentrate on your awareness of the flame. Concentrate on your awareness, in itself.

  Was I afraid? he told me to ask myself. Who was asking the question? If it was I who asked, what was the ‘I’ who was aware of the one who asked? Wasn’t there always a deeper I, a truer self – luminous, flawless, indestructible – that shone more brightly than any diamond and blazed as eternally as any star? What was this one radiant awareness that shone through all things?

  For once in my life, my gift was truly a gift. As I opened myself to Master Juwain’s low but powerful voice, his breathing became one with my breathing and his calm became my own. After a while, my hands stopped sweating and I found that I could stand without shaking. Although my heart still beat as quickly as a child’s, the crushing pain I had felt earlier in my chest was gone.

  And then suddenly, like thunder breaking through the sky, Maram came back into the room with my tunic, and it was time to go.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Master Juwain said as I pulled on this simple garment and buckled my sword around my waist.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  We returned to the main hall. King Hadaru and his court had gathered in a circle around the disc of rosewood at the center of the room. In Mesh, when a duel was to be fought, the knights and warriors formed the ring of honor at any convenient spot. But then, we did not fight duels nearly so often as did the bloodthirsty Ishkans.

  As I made my way toward this red circle, the floor was so cold beneath my bare feet that it seemed I was walking on ice. Salmelu was waiting for me inside the ring of his countrymen. He had his sword drawn, and Lord Issur stood by his side. Although it took me only a few moments to join him there, with Maram acting as my second, it seemed like almost forever. Then we began the rituals that precede any duel. Salmelu handed his sword to Maram, who rubbed its long, gleaming blade with a white cloth soaked in brandy, and I gave Lord Issur mine. After this cleansing was finished and our swords returned, we closed our eyes for a few moments of meditation to cleanse our minds.

  ‘Very good,’ King Hadaru called out at last. ‘Are the witnesses ready?’

  I opened my eyes to see the ring of Ishkans nod their heads and affirm that they were indeed ready. Maram and Master Juwain now stood among them toward the east of the ring, and they both smiled at me grimly.

  ‘Are the combatants ready?’

  Salmelu, standing before me with his sword held in two hands and cocked by the side of his head, smiled confidently and called out, ‘I’m ready, Sire. Sar Valashu was lucky at chess – let’s see how long his luck holds here.’

  The King waited for me to speak, then finally said, ‘And you, Valashu Elahad?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Let’s get this over.’

  ‘A challenge has been made and accepted,’ King Hadaru said in a sad, heavy voice. ‘You must now fight to defend your honor. In the name of the One and all of our ancestors who have stood on this earth before us, you may begin.’

  For a few moments no one moved. So quiet was the ring of knights and nobles around us that it seemed no one even breathed. Some duels lasted no longer than this. A quick rush, a lightning stroke of steel flashing through the air, and as often as not, one of the combatants’ heads would be sent rolling across the floor.

  But Salmelu and I faced each other across a few feet of a blood-red circle of wood, taking our time. Asaru had once observed that a true duel between Valari knights resembled nothing so much as a catfight without the hideous screeching and yowling. As if our two bodies were connected by a terrible tension, we began circling each other with an excruciating slowness. After a few moments, we paused to stand utterly still. And then we were moving again, measuring distances, looking for any weakness or hesitation in the other’s eyes. I felt sweat running down my sides and my heart beating like a hammer up through my head; I breathed deeply, trying to keep my muscles relaxed yet ready to explode into motion at the slightest impulse. I circled slowly around Salmelu with my sword held lightly in my hands, waiting, waiting, waiting …

  And then there was no time. As if a signal had been given, we suddenly sprang at each other in a flurry of flashing swords. Steel rang against steel, and then we locked for a moment, pushing and straining with all our might against each other, trying to free our blades for a deadly cut. We grunted and gasped, and Salmelu’s hot breath broke in quick bursts against my face. And then we leapt back from each other and whirled about before suddenly closing again. Steel met steel, once, twice, thrice, and then I aimed a blow downward that might have split him in two. But it missed, and his sword burned the air scarcely an inch above my head. And then I heard Salmelu cry out as if in pain; I cried out myself to feel a sudden sharp agony cut through my leg almost down to the bone.

  ‘Look!’ Lord Mestivan called out in his high, nervous voice. ‘He’s cut! Salmelu has been cut!’

  As Salmelu and I stood away from each other for a moment to look for another opening, I noticed a long, red gash splitting the blue silk of his trousers along his thigh. It seemed that my blow hadn’t altogether missed him after all. The gash ran with fresh blood, but it didn’t spurt, so most likely he wasn’t fatally wounded. It was a miracle, I thought, that I had wounded him at all. Asaru had always said that I was very good with the sword if I didn’t let myself become distracted, but I had never believed him.

  And clearly the Ishkans suffered f
rom the same disbelief. Gasps of astonishment broke from knights and lords in the ring around me. I heard Lord Nadhru call out, ‘He’s drawn first blood! The Elahad has!’

  Standing across the circle from him, Maram let out a sudden, bellowing cheer. He might have hoped that Salmelu and I would put away our swords then, but the duel wouldn’t end until one of us yielded.

  Salmelu was determined that this would not be him. The steel I had put in his leg had sent a thrill of fear through him, and his whole body trembled with a panic to destroy me. I felt this dreadful emotion working at me like ice rubbed along my limbs, paralyzing my will to fight. I remembered my vow never to kill again, and I felt the strength bleed away from me. And in my moment of hesitation, Salmelu struck.

  He sprang off his good leg straight at me, whirling his sword at my head, all the while snarling and spitting out his malice like a cat. Once again, his hate became my hate, and the madness of it was like a fire burning my eyes. As he cut at me, I barely managed to get my sword up to parry his. Again and again he swung his sword against mine, and the sound of steel against steel rang out into the hall like the beating of a blacksmith’s hammer. Somehow I managed to lock swords with him to forestall this furious onslaught. In breaking free, however, he lunged straight toward my heart. It was only by the miracle of my gift that I felt the point pushing through my breast – and then pulled frantically aside a moment before it actually did so. But the point took me in my side beneath my arm. His sword drove clean through the knotted muscle there and out my back. I cried out for all to hear as he wrenched his sword free; I jumped backward and held my sword in my good hand as I waited for him to come for me again.

  ‘Second blood to Ishka!’ someone near me called out. ‘The third blood will tell!’

  I stood gasping for breath as I watched Salmelu watching me. He took his time circling nearer to me; he moved as if in great pain, careful of his wounded leg. My left arm hung useless by my side; in my right hand, I gripped my long, heavy kalama, the bright blade that my father had given me. Experience should have told me that our respective wounds hampered each of us almost equally. But my fear told me something else. I was almost certain that Salmelu would soon find a way to cut through my feeble defenses. I felt myself almost ready to give up. But the combat, I reminded myself, wouldn’t end until one of us yielded – yielded in death.

  Again, Salmelu came at me. His little jaw worked up and down as if he were already chewing open my entrails. He now seemed supremely confident of cutting me open there – or in some other vital place. He had the strength and quickness of wielding his sword with two practiced arms, while my best advantage was in being able to dance about and leap out of his way. But the circle was small, and it seemed inevitable that he would soon catch me up near the edge of it. If I tried to break free from the ring of honor, angry Ishkan hands would push me back, into his sword. If I stood my ground, sword against sword, he would surely kill me. The seeming certainty of my approaching death unnerved me. Despite the fury of the battle, I began sweating and shivering. So badly did my body tremble that I could hardly hold my sword.

  It was my gift, I believe, that saved me. It let me feel the intended devastation of his flashing sword and avoid it by a feather’s edge, by a breath. And more, it opened me to much else. I sensed the deep calm of Master Juwain meditating at the edge of the circle, and my hate for Salmelu began dying away. I remembered my mother’s love for me and her plea that I should someday return to Mesh; I remembered my father’s last words to me: that I must always remember who I was. And who was I, really? I suddenly knew that I was not only Valashu Elahad who held a heavy sword in a tired hand, but the one who walked always beside me and would remain standing when I died: watching, waiting, whispering, shining. To this one who watched, the world and all things within it moved with an exquisite slowness: a scything sword no less than an Ishkan lord named Salmelu. I saw his kalama’s steel flash at me then in a long, sweeping arc. There came an immense stillness and clarity. In that timeless moment, I leaned back to avoid the point, which ripped a ragged tear across my tunic. And then, quick as a lightning bolt, I slashed my sword in a counterstroke. As I had intended, it cut through the muscles of both of Salmelu’s arms and across his chest. Blood leapt into the air, and his sword went flying out of his hands. It clanged against the floor even as Salmelu screamed out that I had killed him.

  But, of course, I hadn’t. The wound wasn’t fatal, although it was terrible enough, and he would never hold a sword so easily again.

  ‘Damn you, Elahad!’ he snarled at me. He gazed down in disbelief at his bloody sword and the gashes it had torn in the wood of the floor. And then he looked at me in hatred as he waited for me to take his life away.

  ‘Finish him!’ King Hadaru commanded in a voice stricken with grief. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  As the blood flowed in streams from Salmelu’s useless arms, his hateful eyes drilled into me. I felt his malice eating at my eyes like red, twisting worms. I wanted nothing more than to kill him so that I could keep this dreadful thing from devouring me or anyone else.

  ‘Send him back to the stars!’ Maram cried out.

  The Brotherhoods teach that death is but a door that opens upon another world. The Valari believe that it is only a short journey not to be feared. I knew differently. Death was the end of everything and the beginning of the great nothingness. It was the dying of the light and a terrible cold. I looked at Salmelu almost ready to collapse in terror into the pool of his own blood, and I was even more afraid to kill him than I was to be killed.

  ‘No,’ I said to King Hadaru, ‘I can’t.’

  ‘All duels are to the death,’ he reminded me. ‘If you stay your sword, you do my son a grave dishonor and bring no honor to yourself.’

  I gripped my sword hard in my trembling hand. I watched as Salmelu’s strength finally gave way and he collapsed to the floor. From the blood-soaked boards there, he stared up at me fearfully, all the while waiting, waiting, waiting …

  ‘No, there will be no killing,’ I finally said. ‘No more killing.’

  I walked over to Maram, who handed me a cloth to clean the blood from my sword. Then, with a loud ringing sound, I slid it back into its sheath.

  ‘So be it,’ King Hadaru said to me.

  At that moment, the swords of Lord Issur and Lord Nadhru – and two dozen others – whipped out and pointed at me. By denying Salmelu his honorable death, I had shamed him even more seriously than he had me. And now his brother and friends meant to avenge my deadly insult.

  ‘I challenge you!’ Lord Issur shouted at me.

  ‘I challenge you, too!’ Lord Nadhru snarled out. ‘If Lord Issur falls, then you will fight me!’

  And so it went, various knights and lords around the ring of honor calling out their challenges to me.

  ‘Hold!’ King Hadaru commanded. He pointed his long finger at the blood still flowing from my side. ‘Have you forgotten he’s wounded?’

  Valari codes forbade the issue of challenges to wounded warriors. And so Lord Nadhru and the others very angrily put away their swords.

  ‘You have dishonored my house,’ King Hadaru said, gazing at me. ‘And so you are no longer welcome in it.’

  He turned to look at Lord Nadhru, Lord Issur and other knights, and finally at his gravely wounded son. Then, in a trembling voice, he said, Valashu Elahad, you are no longer welcome in my kingdom. No one is to give you fire, bread or salt. My son has promised you safe passage through Ishka, and that you shall have. No knight or warrior shall harm you or delay your journey. But what happens after you cross our borders to another land is only justice and your fate.’

  The sudden gleam in Lord Nadhru’s eyes gave me to understand that he and his friends would pursue me into other kingdoms to exact vengeance – perhaps they would pursue me to the ends of the earth.

  ‘So be it,’ I said to King Hadaru.

  Master Juwain stepped forward then and said, ‘Your son is bleeding and shou
ld be tended immediately. I would like to offer my help and –’

  ‘Do you think we don’t have healers here?’ King Hadaru snapped at him. ‘Go with Sar Valashu and tend his wound. Go now before I forget the law of our land and make a challenge of my own!’

  At this insult to his master, Maram shook his thick head like a bull. He cast a long look at Irisha standing across the circle from us. And then he called out, ‘King Hadaru! Things shouldn’t end this way! If I may speak, then I would hope to –’

  ‘No, you may not speak, Maram Marshayk,’ the King rudely told him. ‘Men who covet other men’s wives are not welcome in Ishka, either. Go with your friends unless you’d like a taste of Ishkan steel.’

  Maram licked his lips as he looked at the kalama that King Hadaru wore. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Come on, Val, we’d better go.’

  There was nothing else to do. When a king ordered you to leave his kingdom, it was foolish to remain and argue.

  And so I turned to lead the way back into the anteroom where I had left my armor. The Ishkan lords and ladies only reluctantly broke the ring of honor to allow me to pass from the circle. It was something of a miracle that no one drew his sword. But as we made our way through the long, cold hall, I felt dozens of pairs of eyes stabbing into me like so many kalamas. The pain of it was almost worse than that of the wound Salmelu had opened in my side.

  8

  The Ishkans let us alone while Master Juwain dressed my wound in that cold little room off the main hall. It was a strange coincidence, he remarked, that Salmelu had cut me so near the scratch that the arrow had made in my side. He told me that I was lucky that Salmelu’s sword had cut the muscle lengthwise, along the grain. Such wounds usually healed of their own with no more treatment than being sown shut. That is, they healed if given the chance to heal, which I would not now have.

  It hurt as Master Juwain punctured my flesh with a sharp, little needle and piece of thread. Working on my armor and surcoat hurt even more. Master Juwain fashioned a sling for my dangling arm, and then it was time to go.