The Lightstone Read online

  And then I felt a cold hand touch my shoulder. For a moment I was angry because I thought that Maram or Atara had followed me But when I turned to tell them that I really did want to be alone, I saw that the man standing beside me was Morjin.

  'Did you really think you could escape me?' he asked.

  I stared at his golden hair and his great golden eyes, now touched with silver in the starlight. The claws were gone from his hands, and he was wearing a wool traveling cloak over his dragon-emblazoned tunic.

  'How did you come here?' I gasped.

  'Don't you know? I've been following you since Mesh.'

  I gripped the hilt of my sword as I stared at him. Was this still a dream, I wondered?

  Was it an illusion that Morjin had cast like a painter covering a canvas with brightly-colored pigments? He was the Lord of Illusions, wasn't he? But no, I thought, this was no illusion. Both he and the fiery words that hissed from his mouth seemed much too real.

  'I must congratulate you on finding your way out of my room,' he said. 'It surprises me that you did, though it pleases me even more.'

  'It pleases you? Why?'

  'Because it proves to me that you're capable of waking up.'

  He gave me to understand that much of what had passed in my dream had been only a test and a spur to awaken my being. This seemed the greatest of the lies that he had told me, but I listened to it all the same.

  'I told you that I was kind,' he said. 'But sometimes compassion must be cruel.'

  'You speak of compassion?'

  'I do speak of it because I know it better than any man.'

  He told that my gift for feeling others' sufferings and joys had a name, and that was valarda. This meant both the heart of the stars and the passion of the stars. Here he pointed up at the Morning Star and the bright Solaru and Altaru of the Swan constellation. All the Star People, he said, who still lived among these lights had this gift. As did Elahad and others of the Valari who had come to Ea long ago. But the gift had mostly been lost during the savagery of many thousands of years. Now only a few blessed souls such as myself knew the terrible beauty of valarda.

  'I know it, too,' he told me. 'I have suffered from the valarda for a long time. But there is a way to make the suffering end.'

  'How?' I asked.

  He cupped his hands in front of his heart then, and they glowed with a soft golden radiance like that of a polished bowl. He said, 'Do you burn, Valashu? Does the kirax from my arrow still torment you? Would you like to be cured of this poison and your deeper suffering as well?'

  'How?' I asked again. Despite the coolness spraying up from the stream, my whole body raged with fever.

  'I can relieve you of your gift,' Morjin told me. 'Or rather, the pain of it.'

  Here he pointed at the kalama that I still held sheathed in my hand. 'You see, the valarda is like a double-edged sword. But so far, you've known it to cut only one way.'

  He told me that a true Valari, which was his name for the Star People, could not only experience others' emotions but make them feel his own.

  'Do you hate, Valashu? Do you sometimes clench your teeth against the fury inside you? I know that you do. But you can forge your fury into a weapon that will strike down, your enemies. Shall I show you how to sharpen the steel of this sword?'

  'No!' I cried out. That is wrong! It would be twisting the bright blade that the One himself forged. The valarda may be double-edged, as you say. But I must believe that it is sacred. And I would never pervert it by turning it inside-out to harm anyone.

  No more than I would use my kalama to kill anyone.'

  'But you will kill again with that sword,' he said, pointing at my kalama. 'And with the valarda, as well. You see, Valashu, inflicting your own pain on others is the only way not to feel their pain - and your own.'

  I closed my eyes for a moment as I looked inside for this terrible sword that Morjin had spoken of. I feared that I might find it. And this was the worst torment I had ever known.

  'What you say, all that you say, is wrong,' I gasped out. 'It's evil.'

  'Is it wrong to slay your enemies, then? Isn't it they who are evil for opposing your noblest dream?'

  'You don't know my dream.'

  'Don't I? Isn't it your dearest hope to end war? Listen to me, Valashu, listen as you've never listened before: there is nothing I desire more than an end to these wars.'

  I listened to the rushing of the stream and the words from his golden lips. I was afraid that he might be telling me the truth. He went on to say that many of the kings and nobles of Ea loved war because it gave them the power of life and death over others. But they, he said, were of the darkness while dreamers such as he and I were of

  the light

  'It's death itself that's the great enemy,' he said. 'Our fear of it. And that is why we must regain the Lightstone. Only then can we bring men the gift of true life.'

  'It is written in the Laws,' I said, 'that only the Elijin and the Galadin shall have such life.'

  Morjin's eyes seemed to blaze out hatred into the dim gray light of the dawn. He told me, 'All the Galadin were once Elijin even as the Elijin were once men. But they have grown jealous of our kind. Now they would keep men such as you from making the same journey that they once did.'

  'But I don't seek immortality,' I told him.

  'That,' he said softly, 'is a lie.' 'All men die,' I said.

  'Not all men,' he told me, smoothing the folds from his cloak.

  'It's no failing to fear death,' I said. 'True courage is -'

  'Lie to me if you will, Valashu, but do not lie to yourself.' He grasped my arm, and his delicate fingers pressed into me with a frightening strength. 'Death makes cowards of us all. You may think that true courage is acting rightly even though afraid. But you act not according to what is right but because you are afraid of your fear and wish to expunge it by facing it like a wild man.'

  I didn't know what to say to this, so I bit my lip in silence.

  'True courage,' he said, 'would be fearlessness. Isn't this what you Valari teach?'

  'Yes,' I admitted, 'it is.'

  He smiled as if he knew everything about the Valari. And then he spoke the words to a poem I knew too well:

  And down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark The dying of the light, The neverness of night

  'There is a way to keep the light burning,' he told me as he gently squeezed my shoulder. 'Let me show you the way.'

  His eyes were like windows to other worlds from which men had journeyed long ago

  - and on which men who were more than men still lived. I felt his longing to return there. It was as real as the wind or the stream or the earth beneath my feet. I felt his immense loneliness in the bittersweet aching of my own. Something unbearably bright in him called to me as if from the wild, cold stars. I knew that I had the power to save him from a dread almost as dark as death even as I had saved Atara from the hill-men. And this knowledge burned me even more terribly than had his dragon fire or the kirax in my veins.

  'Let me show you,' he said, forming his hands into a cup again. A fierce golden light poured out of them, almost blinding me.

  'Servants I have many,' he told me. 'But friends I have none.'

  I felt him breathing deeply as I drew in a quick, ragged breath.

  'I will make you King of Mesh and all the Nine Kingdoms,' he told me. 'Kings I have as vassals, too, but a king of kings who comes to me with an open heart and a righteous sword - that would be a wondrous thing.'

  I gazed at the light pouring from his hands, and for a moment I couldn't breathe.

  'Help me find the Lightstone, Valashu, and you will live forever. And we will rule Ea together, and there will be no more war.'

  Yes, yes, I wanted to say. Yes, 1 will help you.

  There is a voice that whispers deep inside the soul. All of us have such a voice.

  Sometimes it is as clear as the ringing of a silver bell; sometimes it is faint and far-off like the fiery exha
lations of the stars. But it always knows. And it always speaks the truth even when we don't want to hear it.

  'No,' I said at last.

  'No?'

  'No, you lie,' I told him. 'You're the Lord of Lies.'

  'I'm the Lord of Ea and you will help me!'

  I gripped the hilt of the sword that my father had given me as I slowly shook my head.

  'Damn you, Elahad! You damn yourself to death, then!'

  'So be it,' I told him.

  'So be it,' he told me. And then he said, 'I will tell you the true secret of the valarda: the only way you will ever expiate your fear of death is to make others die. As I will make you die, Elahad!'

  The hate with which he said this was like lava pouring from a rent in the earth, I realized then that fear of death leads to hatred of life. Even as my fear of Morjin led me to hate him. I hated him with black bile and clenched teeth and red blood suddenly filling my eyes; I hated him as fire hates wood and darkness does light.

  Most of all, I hated him for lying to me and playing on my fears and making me sick to my soul with a deep and terrible hate.

  It took only a moment for his dragon's head to grow out from his body and for his claws to emerge. But before his jaws could open, I whipped my kalama from its sheath. I plunged the point of it .through the dragon embroidered on his tunic, deep into his heart. It was as if I had ripped out my own heart. The incredible pain of it caused me to scream like a wounded child even as my sword shattered into a thousand pieces; each piece lay burning with an orange-red light on the ground or hissed into the stream and sent up plumes of boiling water. I watched in horror as Morjin screamed, too, and his face fell away from the form of a dragon and became my own. Clots of twisting red worms began to eat out his eyes, my eyes, and his whole body burst into flames. In moments his face blackened into a rictus of agony.

  And then the flames consumed him utterly, and he vanished into the nothingness from which he had come.

  For what seemed a long time, I stood there by the stream waiting for him to return.

  But all that remained of him was a terrible emptiness clutching at my heart. My fever left me; in the darkness of the dawn, I was suddenly very cold. Inside me beat the words to another stanza of Morjin's poem that I could never forget: The stealing of the gold.

  The evil knife, the cold.

  The cold that freezes breath

  The nothingness of death.

  Chapter 13

  A few moments later, Atara and Master Juwain, with Maram puffing close behind them, came running into the clearing by the stream. Atara held her strung bow in her hand, and Maram brandished his sword; Master Juwain had a copy of the Saganom Elu that he had been reading, but nothing more. The thought of him reciting passages or throwing his book at a man such as Morjin made me want to laugh wildly.

  'What is it?' he asked me. 'We heard you cry out.'

  Maram, who was more blunt, added, 'Ah, we heard you talking to yourself and shouting. Who were you shouting at, Val?'

  'At Morjin,' I said. 'Or perhaps it was just an illusion - it's hard to say.'

  I looked at the steel gleaming along the length of my sword, and I wondered how it had been remade.

  'Morjin was here?' Atara asked. 'How could he be? Where did he go?'

  I pointed toward the faint glow of the sun rising in the east. Then I pointed at the woods, north, west and south. Finally I flung my hand up toward the sky.

  'Take Val back to camp,' Atara said to Master Juwain. She nodded at Maram, too, as if issuing a command. Then she started off toward the woods.

  'Where are you going?' -I asked her.

  'To see,' she said simply.

  'No, you mustn't!' I told her. I took a step toward her to stop her, but my body felt as if it had been drained of blood. I stumbled, and was only saved from failing by Maram, who wrapped his thick arm around me.

  Take him back to camp!' Atara said again. And then she moved off into the trees and was gone.

  With my arms thrown across Maram's and Master Juwain's shoulders, they dragged me back to camp as if I were a drunkard. They sat me down by the fire, and Maram covered me with his cloak. While he rubbed the back of my neck and my cold hands, Master Juwain found a reddish herb in his wooden chest. He made me a tea that tasted like iron and bitter berries. It brought a little warmth back into my limbs. But the icy nothingness with which Morjin had touched my soul still remained.

  'At least your fever is gone,' Maram told me.

  'Yes,' I said, 'it's much better to die of the cold.'

  'But you're not dying, Val! Are you? What did Morjin do to you?'

  I tried to tell both Maram and Master Juwain something of my dream - and what had happened by the stream afterwards. But words failed me. It was impossible to describe a terror that had no bottom or end. And I found that I didn't want to.

  After a while, with the hot tea trickling down my throat, my head began to clear and I came fully awake. Dawn began to brighten into morning as the sun's light touched the trees around us. I listened to the shureet shuroo of a scarlet tanager piping out his song from the branch of . an oak; I gazed at the starlike white sepals of some goldthread growing in the shade of a birch tree. The world seemed marvelously and miracu-lously real, and my senses drank in every sight, sound and smell.

  Just as I was steeling myself to strap on my sword and go look for Atara, she suddenly returned. She stepped out from behind the cover of the trees as silently as a doe. In the waxing light, her face was ashen. She came over and sat beside me by the fire.

  'Well?' Maram asked her. 'What did you see?'

  'Men,' Atara said. With a trembling hand, she reached for a mug of tea that Master Juwain handed her. 'Gray men.'

  'What do you mean, gray men?' Maram said.

  'There were nine of them,' Atara said. 'Or perhaps more. They were dressed all in gray; their horses were gray, too. Their faces were hideous: their flesh seemed as gray as slate.'

  She paused to take a sip of tea as beads of sweat formed upon Maram's brow.

  'It was hard to see,' Atara said. 'Perhaps their faces were only colored by the grayness of the dawn. But I don't think so. There was something about them that didn't seem human.'

  Master Juwain knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. He told her, 'Please go on.'

  'One of them looked at me,' she said. 'He had no eyes - no eyes like those of any man I've ever seen. They were all gray as if covered with cataracts. But he wasn't blind. The way that he looked at me. It was as if I was naked, like he could see everything about me.'

  She took another sip of tea, then grasped my hand to keep her hand from shaking.

  'I shouldn't have looked into his eyes,' she said. 'It was like looking into nothing. So empty, so cold - I felt the cold freezing my body. I felt his intention to do things to me. I... have no words for it. It was worse than the hill-men. Death I can face.

  Perhaps even torture, too. But this man - it was like he wanted to kill me forever and suck out my soul.'

  We were all silent as we looked at her. And then Maram asked, 'What did you do?'

  'I tried to draw on him,' she said. 'But it was as if my arms were frozen. It took all my will to pull my bow and sight on him. But it was too late - he rode off to join the others.'

  'Oh, excellent!' Maram said, wiping his face. 'It seems that Val was right after all.

  Men are after us - gray men with no souls.'

  As the sun rose higher, we sat by the fire debating who these men might be. Maram worried that the man who had faced down Atara might be Morjin himself- how else to explain the terrible dream and illusion I had suffered? Master Juwain held that they might be only in Morjin's employ; as he told us: 'The Lord of Lies has many servants, and none so terrible as those who have surrendered to him their souls.' I wondered if Kane might have hired them to murder me; I wondered if he was waiting for me farther along the road with a company of stone-faced assassins.

  'But if they wanted to kill you,' Maram s
aid, 'why didn't they just ride you down by the stream?'

  I had no answer for him; neither could I say why the gray man and his companions hadn't charged Atara.

  'Well, whoever they are,' Maram said, 'they know where we are. What are we going to do, Val?'

  I thought for a moment and said, 'So long as we keep to the road, we'll be easy prey.'

  'Ah, do you mind, my friend, if you don't refer to us as prey?'

  'My apologies,' I said, smiling. 'But perhaps we should take to the forest again.'

  I said that according to a map I had studied before leaving Mesh, the Nar Road curved north between the gap in the Shoshan Range and Suma, where the great forest ended and the more civilized reaches of

  Alonia began.

  'We could cut through the forest straight for Suma,' I said. 'There will be hills to hide us and streams in which to lose our tracks.'

  'You mean rivers to drown us. Hills to hide them.' Maram thought a moment as he stroked his thick beard. Then he said, 'It worries me that the road should curve to the north. Why does it? Did the old Alonians built it so as to avoid something? What if the forest hides another Black | Bog - or something worse?'

  'Take heart, my friend,' I said, smiling again. 'Nothing could be worse than the Black Bog.'

  On this point Master Juwain, Maram and I were all agreed. After some further argument, we also agreed - as did Atara - that the cut through the forest offered our best hope.

  Soon after that we broke camp and set out through the trees. We moved away from the road, bearing toward the west. I guessed that Suma must lie some thirty or forty miles to the northwest. If we journeyed too far in our new direction, we would pass by It much to the south. Thin prospect didn't discourage me, however, for we could always turn back north and cut the Nar Road when we were sure that we had eluded the men hunting us. In truth, I wanted to get as far away from the road as I could, and the deeper the woods through which we rode the better. As the day warmed toward noon, the ground rose away from the stream. The trees grew less thickly, though they seemed taller, with the oaks predominating over the poplars and chestnuts. I could find no track through them. Still, the traveling wasn't difficult., for the undergrowth was mostly of lady fern and maidenhair, and the horses had no trouble finding footing. We rode in near-silence beneath the great, leafed archways of the trees. I took the lead followed by Master Juwain and the two remaining pack horses. Maram and Atara brought up the rear. All of us - except Master Juwain -