The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom Read online

  ‘Perhaps you don’t like either line,’ Maram said as I suddenly stood to gaze down at the thin, blue ribbon of the Havosh. ‘How about, “Her eyes are windows to the stars”? Val, are you listening to me? What’s wrong?’

  I was barely listening to him. A sudden coldness struck into me as of something serpentine wrapping itself around my spine. It seemed to contract rhythmically, grinding my back-bones together even as it ate its way into my skull. Despite the dreadful chill I felt spreading through my limbs, I began to sweat. My belly tightened with a sickness that made me want to surrender up my lunch.

  Now Master Juwain stood up, too, and laid his hand on my shoulder. He touched my head to see if my fever had returned. And then he asked, ‘Are you ill, Val?’

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  I saw great concern on both my friends’ faces. And I was concerned not to alarm either of them, especially Maram. But they had to know, so as gently as I could, I told them, ‘Someone is following me.’

  At this news, Maram leaped to his feet and began scanning the world in every direction. And so, more slowly, did Master Juwain. But the only moving things they detected were a few hawks in the sky and a rabbit startled out of the grass by Maram’s darting back and forth across the top of the hill.

  ‘We can’t see anything,’ Master Juwain said. ‘Are you sure we’re being followed?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At least, someone or something is seeking me and knows where I am. It’s like they can scent out my blood.’

  ‘Do you think it’s Kane?’ Maram asked. He turned south to peer more closely through the valley leading back to Duke Rezu’s castle.

  ‘It could be Kane,’ I said. ‘Or it could be someone waiting for us to ride into a trap.’

  ‘Waiting where?’ Maram asked. ‘And who is it who’s after you? The Ishkans? No, no–they wouldn’t dare ride this far into Anjo. Would they? Do you think it’s your assassin who has tracked you down?’

  But I had no answers for him, nor for myself. All I could do was to smile bravely so that the flames of Maram’s disquiet didn’t spread into a raging panic.

  Master Juwain, who had an intimation of my gift, nodded his head as if he trusted what I had told him. He asked, ‘What should we do, Val?’

  ‘We could try to set a trap of our own,’ I said, touching the hilt of my sword.

  ‘No, there’s been enough of that already,’ Master Juwain said. ‘Besides, we have no idea how many might be pursuing us, do we?’

  Maram nodded his head at the good sense of this, and said, ‘Please, Val, let’s leave this land as soon as we can.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. I pointed down at the Havosh River where it formed the border of Jathay and led toward Yarvanu and Vishal. ‘If it is Kane who is after us, then he knows that Duke Rezu advised us to go in this direction. If it’s someone else, then likely they’ll be waiting for us along the Nar Road where it crosses through Yarvanu.’

  ‘Of course they would,’ Maram muttered. ‘That’s the only way over the Santosh into Alonia.’

  ‘Perhaps not the only way,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Maram asked in alarm.

  I pointed down into the wild lands that began at the base of our hill. I said, ‘We could journey north, straight for the Santosh. And then into Alonia. If we keep northwest toward the Shoshan Range and then strike out north again, we should intercept the Nar Road in the Gap far from any of our pursuers.’

  Maram looked at me as if I had suggested crossing the Alonian Sea on a log. Then he called out, ‘But what of the wild lands we were warned against? The robbers and outlaws? Ah, perhaps the bears, too? And how will we cross the Santosh if there’s no bridge? And if by some miracle we do cross it without drowning, how will we find our way through Alonia? I’ve heard there’s nothing there but trackless forest.’

  Some men are born to fear the familiar dangers that they see before their eyes; some take their greatest terror in the unknown. Maram was cursed with a sensibility that found threat everywhere in the world, from a boulder poised on the side of a hill to roll down upon him to his most wild imaginings. I knew that nothing I could say would assuage the dread rising like a flood inside him. Dangers lay before us in every direction. All we could do was to choose one way or another to go.

  Even so, I grasped his hand in mine to reassure him. It was one of the times in my life that I wished my gift worked in reverse, so that some of my great hope for the future might pass into him. I fancied that some of it did.

  We held council on top of that barren hill. All of us agreed that when facing an opponent, it was best to do the unexpected. And so in the end we decided on the course that I had suggested.

  After packing up our food, we rode down into the wild lands with a new haste communicating into our horses. We moved at a bone-jolting trot over fields overgrown with shrubs and weeds; but upon entering the various woods that lay upon our line of travel, we had to pick our way more slowly. The country through which we rode had once been rich farmland, some of the richest in the Morning Mountains. But now all that remained of civilization were the ruins of low stone walls or an occasional house, rotting or fallen in upon itself. We saw no other sign of human beings all that long afternoon. When evening came, we made camp in a copse of stout oaks. We risked no fire that night. We ate a cold meal of cheese and bread, and then agreed to take our sleep in turns so that one of us might always remain awake to listen for our pursuers. I took the first watch, followed by Maram. When it came time for me to rest, I fell asleep to the sound of wolves howling far out on the plain before us.

  I was awakened just before dawn by a dreadful sensation that one of these wolves was licking my throat. I sprang up from the dark, damp earth with my sword in my hand; I believe I lunged at the gray shapes of these beasts lurking in the shadows of the trees. And then, as I came truly awake and my eyes cleared, I saw nothing more threatening than a few rotting logs among the towering oaks.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Master Juwain whispered. ‘Was it a dream?’

  “Yes, a dream,’ I told him. ‘But perhaps it’s time we were off.’

  We roused Maram then and quickly broke camp. Upon emerging from the woods, we rode straight toward the north star over a dark and silent land. But soon the sun reddened the sky in the east and drove away the darkness. With every yard of dew-dampened ground that we covered, it seemed that the world grew a little brighter. I took courage from this golden light. By the time full day came, I could no longer feel the serpent writhing along my spine.

  Even so, I pressed Altaru to cross this forsaken country as quickly as we could. The ground fell gradually before us; in places, it grew damp and almost boggy–though nothing like the Black Bog that guarded the way into Rajak. The horses found their footing surely enough, and began to quicken their pace, urged on by clouds of biting, black flies. By noon we had covered nearly fifteen miles, and by late afternoon, another ten. And in all those miles, we saw nothing more threatening than a couple of foxes and the prints of a bear by the muddy bank of a stream.

  And then, as we drew nearer the Santosh and entered a broad swath of woods, we came upon a band of ragged-looking men whom Maram immediately took to be robbers. But they proved to be only outlaws exiled from Vishal for protesting the ruthless war that Baron Yashur was prosecuting against Onkar. With their matted hair and filthy tunics, they seemed scarcely Valari. But Valari they were, and they offered us no hindrance, only the roasted haunch of a deer that they had just killed. And more, when they heard that we were journeying to Tria, they offered to show us a way over the Santosh.

  Meeting these ‘wild’ men that Maram had so feared was a great stroke of fortune. After we had eaten the gamy-tasting venison, they led us west along a track through the woods. A few miles of tramping along the black, hard-packed earth brought us close to the river. We heard this great surge of water through the trees before we could see it: the oaks and w
illows grew like a curtain right down to the bank. But then the track straightened and rose toward the causeway leading to an old bridge spanning the river. At the foot of this rickety structure, we paused to look down into the river’s raging brown waters. There was no way, I knew, that we could have swum across them.

  The outlaw Valari said goodbye to us there and wished us well on our quest. Crossing the bridge proved to be an exercise in faith. We all dismounted and led our horses across the bridge one by one, the better to distribute our weight across its rotten planks. Even so, Altaru’s hoof broke through one of them with a sickening crunch, and it was all I could do to extricate it without my badly startled horse breaking his leg. But Altaru trusted me as much as I trusted him. After that, we picked our way across the rest of the bridge without incident. Master Juwain and Maram, with their lighter sorrels and the pack horses, encountered no problems.

  As darkness was coming on, we camped there on moist, low ground near the bridge. Maram argued for a higher and drier campsite, but I convinced him that anyone pursuing us on horses would make a huge sound of hooves pounding against the drumlike boards of the bridge. This would alert us and allow us precious time either to flee or mount a defense.

  And so we ate a joyless dinner in the damp next to the river. It was a cold, uncomfortable night. Sleep brought only torment. The season’s first mosquitoes whined in my ear, bit, drew blood. After a time, I gave up slapping them and in exhaustion slipped down into the land of dreams. But there the whining grew only louder and swelled to a dreadful whimpering as of a prelude to a scream. Toward dawn I finally came screaming out of my sleep. Or so I thought. When my mind cleared, I realized that it was not I but Maram who was screaming: it turned out that a harmless garter snake had slithered across his sleeping fur and sent him hopping up from it on all fours like a badly frightened frog.

  We were very glad to begin the day’s journey. And very glad at last to have planted our feet on Alonian soil, if only the most southern and eastern part of it. It was a land that human beings had deserted many years ago. If any habitation had ever existed on this side of the river, the forest had long since swallowed it up. The oaks and elms through which we passed were more densely clustered than those of Mesh; there were many more maples, too, as well as hickories and moss-covered chestnuts. The undergrowth of bracken and ferns was a thick, green blanket almost smothering the forest floor. It would have been difficult to force our way through it if the forest had proved as trackless as Maram had feared. But the old road leading from the bridge–as on the other side of the river–turned into a track leading northwest through the trees. It seemed that no one except a few wandering animals had used it for a thousand years.

  All that day we kept to this track, and to others we found deeper in the woods. As I had intended, we traveled on a fairly straight line toward the gap in the Shoshan Range through which the Nar Road passed. Not far from the river, the ground began to rise before us and became drier. We saw no sign of man, and I began to hope that our cut across the wild lands of Anjo had either confused or lost whoever was hunting us. We slept that night at a higher elevation where we saw neither mosquitoes nor snakes.

  Our next day’s journey took us across several rills and streams flowing down from the mountains toward the Santosh. We had no trouble crossing them. Toward evening we encountered a bear feasting on newberries; we left him alone, and he left us alone. On our third day from the bridge, we entered the Gap in the Morning Mountains, where the land became hilly again. There I had intended to turn toward the Nar Road that cut through the Gap perhaps twenty miles to our north. But the folds of the hills and the only track we could find ran to the northwest. I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to keep to these wild woods for another day or two before setting foot on the Nar Road.

  In truth, I loved being so far from civilization. Here the trees lifted up their branches toward the sun and breathed their great, green breaths that sweetened the air. Here I felt at once all the wildness of an animal taking my strength from the earth and the silent worship of an angel walking proud and free beneath the stars. It would have been good to wander those woods for many more than a few days. But I had friends to lead out of them and promises to keep. And so on our fifth day in Old Alonia, I began seeking a track or a cut through the hills that would take us to the Nar Road.

  ‘Where are we?’ Maram grumbled to me as we made our way beneath the great crowns of the trees high above us. Through their leaves the sun shone like light through thousands of green, glass windows. ‘Are you sure we’re not lost?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him for the hundredth time. ‘As sure as the sun itself.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. You were sure we wouldn’t get lost in the Bog, either.’

  ‘This isn’t the Black Bog,’ I told him. As Altaru trod over earth nearly overgrown with ferns, I looked off at some lilies growing by the side of the track. We’re only a few miles west of the Gap. We should find the Nar Road only a few miles north of here.’

  ‘We should find it,’ Maram agreed. ‘But what if we don’t?’

  ‘And what if the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow?’ I countered. ‘You can’t worry about everything, you know.’

  ‘Can’t I? But it’s you, with all your talk of men pursuing us, who has set me to worrying. You haven’t, ah, sensed any sign of them?’

  ‘Not for a few days.’

  ‘Good, good. You’ve probably lost them in these dreadful woods. As you’ve probably lost us.’

  ‘We’re not lost,’ I told him again.

  ‘No? How do you know?’

  An hour later, our track cut across a rocky shelf on the side of the hill. It was one of the few places we had found where trees didn’t obstruct our view and we could look out at the land we were crossing. It was a rough, beautiful country we saw, with green-shrouded hills to the north and west. A soft mist, like long gray fingers, had settled down into the folds between them.

  ‘I don’t see the road,’ Maram said as he stood staring out to the north. ‘If it’s only a few miles from here, shouldn’t we see it?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing at a strangely formed hill near us. After rising at a gentle grade for a few hundred feet, it seemed to drop off abruptly as if cut with cliffs on its north face. At its top, it was barren of trees and all other vegetation except a few stunted grasses. ‘If we climb it, we should be able to see the road from there.’

  ‘All right,’ Maram grumbled again. ‘But I don’t like the look of these hills. Didn’t Kane warn of hill-men west of the Gap?’

  Master Juwain came up and sat on his horse looking out at the misty hills. Then he said, ‘I’ve been through this country before, when I traveled the Nar Road toward Mesh years ago. I met these hill-men that Kane spoke of. They waylaid our party and demanded that we pay a toll.’

  ‘But this is the King’s road!’ I said, outraged at such robbery. In Mesh–as in all the Nine Kingdoms–the roads are free as the air men breathe. ‘No one except King Kiritan has the right to charge tolls on any road through Alonia. And a wise king will never exercise that right.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re far from Tria here,’ Master Juwain said. ‘The hill-men do as they please.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps we shouldn’t cut toward the road just yet. Then we can’t be charged for traveling upon it.’

  This logic, however, did nothing to encourage Maram. He shook his head at Master Juwain and called out, ‘But, sir, this is dreadful news! We don’t have gold for tolls! Why didn’t you tell me about these tolls?’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ Master Juwain said. ‘Now why don’t we climb to the top of that hill and see what we can see?’

  But Maram, hoping as always to put off potential disasters as long as he could, insisted on first eating a bit of lunch. And so we walked our horses down into the trees where we found a stream that seemed a good site for a rest. We ate a meal of walnuts, cheese and battle biscuits. I even let Maram have a little brandy to in
spirit him. And then I led us down into a mist-filled vale giving out onto the barren hill to our north. After riding along a little stream for perhaps half a mile, the skin at the back of my neck began to tingle and burn. I had a sickening sense of being hunted, by whom or what I did not know.

  And then, as suddenly as thunder breaking through a storm, the blare of battle horns split the air. TA-ROO, TA-ROO, TA-ROO–the same two notes sounded again and again as if someone was blowing a trumpet high on the hill before us. I tightened my grip around Altaru’s reins and began urging him toward the hill; it was as if the horn–or something else–were calling me to battle.

  ‘Wait, Val!’ Maram called after me. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going to see what’s happening,’ I said simply.

  ‘I hate to know what’s happening,’ he said. He pointed behind us in the opposite direction. ‘Shouldn’t we flee, that way, while we still have the chance?’

  I listened for a moment to the din shaking the woods, and then to a deeper sound inside me. I said, ‘But what if the hill-men have trapped Sar Avador–or some other traveler–on the hill?’

  ‘What if they trap us there? Come, please, while there’s still time!’

  ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I have to see.’

  So saying, I pressed Altaru forward. Maram followed me reluctantly, and Master Juwain followed him trailing the pack horses. We rode along the dale and then through the woods leading up the side of the hill. As if someone had scoured the hill with fire, the trees suddenly ended in a line that curved around the hill’s base. There we halted in their shelter to look out and see who was blowing the horn.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram croaked out. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

  A hundred yards from us, ten men were advancing up the hill. They were squat and pale-skinned, nearly naked, with only the rudest covering of animal skins for clothing. They bore long oval shields, most of which had arrows sticking out of them. In their hands they clutched an irregular assortment of weapons: axes and maces and a few short, broad-bladed swords. Their leader–a thickset and hairy man with daubs of red paint marking his face–paused once to blow a large, blood-spattered horn that looked as if it had been torn from the head of some animal. And then, pointing his sword up the hill, he began advancing again toward his quarry.