The Lightstone Page 31

  'Ah, what a meal,' he said as he reached for a pitcher of maple syrup to drizzle over his bread. 'I've never eaten like this before.'

  None of us had. The food was not only more delicious than any I had ever tasted, it was more alive. It seemed that the essence of the Forest was passing directly into our bodies as if breathed into our blood. By the time the feast ended, we all felt quite full but also light and animated, ready to dance or sing or tell stories according to the Lokilani's wont. As we discovered, our hosts and captors were quite fond of such after-dinner celebrations. But first, Pualani and the others had many questions for us, as we did for them.

  'We should begin at the beginning,' Pualani told us in a voice as rich as the wine she poured us. Her deeply-set eyes caught up some of the color of the emerald necklace she wore, and I thought that she was not only beautiful but wise. 'We would all like to know how you found your way into our wood, and why.'

  Since I - or rather Altaru - had led our way here, Master Juwain, Maram and Atara all looked at me to answer her.

  'The "why" of it is easy enough to tell,' I said. 'We were fleeing our enemies, and our path took us here.'

  I told her something of the Stonefaces who had been pursuing us for many miles through the wilds of Alonia. Of Kane I said nothing, nor did I relate my dream of Morjin.

  'Well Sar Valashu that is a beginning,' Pualani said. 'But only the very beginning of the beginning, yes? You've told us the circumstances of your flight into the Forest but not why you've come to us. But perhaps you don't yet know. Too bad. And sad to say, neither do we.'

  Maram, after taking yet another pull of his wine, looked at her and slurred out, 'Not everything has a purpose, my Lady.'

  'But of course, all things do,' she told him. 'We just have to look for it.'

  'You might as well look for the reason that birds sing or men drink wine.'

  She smiled at him and said, 'Birds sing because they're glad to be alive, and men drink wine because they're not.'

  'Perhaps that's true,' Maram said, squeezing his cup. 'But it tells us nothing of the purpose of my drinking this excellent wine of yours.'

  'Perhaps the purpose is to teach you the value of sobriety.'

  'Perhaps,' he muttered, licking the wine from his mustache.

  Pualani turned toward me and said, 'Why don't we put aside the purpose of your coming here and try to understand just how you entered our woods.'

  'Well, we walked into them,' I told her.

  'Yes, of course - but how did you do this? No one just walks into the Forest.'

  She explained that just as some peoples built walls of stone to protect their kingdoms, the Lokilani had constructed a different kind of barrier around their woods. She told us very little of how they did this. She hinted at the power of the great trees to keep strangers away and at a secret that the Lokilani shared with each other but not with us.

  'Here the power of the earth is very great,' she said. 'It repels most people. Even many of the. bears, wolves and higher beasts. A man walking in our direction would find that he doesn't want to walk this way. His path would take him in a great circle around the Forest or away from it.'

  'Perhaps it would,' I said, remembering the sensations I had felt the day before. 'But if he came close enough, he would see the great trees.'

  'Men come close to many things they never see,' Pualani said as she smiled mysteriously. 'Looking toward the Forest from the outside, most men would see only trees.'

  'But what if they were looking for the Forest?'

  'Men look for many things they never find,' she said. 'And who knows even to look?

  Even a Lokilani, upon leaving our woods, can forget what real trees are like and have a hard time finding his way back in.'

  'Our coming must have been a wild chance, then.'

  'No one comes here by chance, Sar Valashu. Few come at all.'

  I pointed off toward a tree a hundred yards away where a young woman stood with a strung bow and arrow. I said, 'Your people don t hunt animals - what do they hunt, then?'

  Pualani's face clouded for a moment as she exchanged dark looks with Elan and Danali. Then she said, 'For many years, the Earthkiller has sent his men to try to find our Forest. A few have come close, and these we've had to send back to the stars.'

  'Who is this Earthkilier, then?'

  'The Earthkiller is the Earthkiller,' she said simply. 'This is known from the ancient of days: he cuts trees to burn in his forges. He cuts wounds in the earth to steal its fire.

  By forge and fire he seeks the making of that which can never be made.'

  Her words sounded familiar to me, as they must have to Master Juwain. I nodded at him as he pulled out his Saganont Elu and read from the Book of Fire: He hates the flowers soft and white,

  The grass, the forest's gentle breath,

  For all that lives and leaps with light

  Recalls the bitterness of death.

  With axe and pick and poison flame

  He wreaks his spite upon the land;

  His armies burn and hack and maim

  The ferns and flowers, soil and sand.

  And down through rocky vein and bore

  With evil eye and sorcery

  He plumbs the earth for golden ore

  In search of immortality.

  Thus wounding earth to steal her fire

  And feeding trees to forge and flame,

  He turns upon himself his ire

  And burns his soul with bitter blame.

  For golden cups that blaze too bright

  Make hateful, mortal men afraid,

  And that which makes the stellar light,

  In love, cannot itself be made.

  When he had finished, Pualani sighed deeply and said, 'It-would seem that your people know of the Earthkiller, too.'

  'We call him the Red Dragon,' Master Juwain said.

  'You have named him well, then,' Pualani said. Then she pointed at his book and asked, 'But what is this animal skin encasing the white leaves crawling with bugs?'

  We were all astonished that Pualani had never seen a book. Just as it astonished her and all the Lokilani when Master Juwain explained how the sounds of language could be represented by letters and read out loud.

  'Your people bring marvels into our woods,' she said. 'And you bring great mysteries, too.'

  She took a sip of wine and slowly swallowed it. Then she smiled at me and continued, 'When you approached the Forest, we thought the Earthkiller must have sent you. And so we sent Danali and the others to greet you. We couldn't have known that you would be wearing the mark of the Ellama.'

  'What is this Ellama?' I asked her, touching the scar on my forehead.

  'The Ellama is the Ellama,' she said. 'And the lightning bolt is sacred to him. And so it has been sacred to us for years beyond reckoning. This is the fire that connects the earth to the heavens, where the Ellama walks with the rest of his kind.'

  'With the Star People?' I asked.

  'Some think of them as people,' she said. 'But just as people such as you and I are also animals, we are something more. And so it is with them who are more than human, the Bright Ones, the Galad a'Din.'

  'You mean, the Galadin?'

  'You say words strangely. But yes, I mean they who walk among the stars. When Danali saw the mark on you, he wondered if it was perhaps the Ellama who really sent you to us.'

  Maram suddenly dug his elbow into me as if.to impel me to claim such exalted origins. Atara and Master Juwain both looked at me to see what I would say. Surely, I thought, the truth was a sacred thing. But life was more sacred still. If claiming to be the Galadin's emissary would keep the Lokilani from sending us back to them, shouldn't I then lie just this one time?

  'We are emissaries,' I told Pualani. I watched her eyes deepen like cups that drank in my every word. If truth was a dear stream that replenished the soul, then wasn't a lie like poison? 'We're emissaries from Mesh and Delu, and from the Brotherhood and the Kurmak to the court
of King Kiritan in Tria. He has called a quest to find the Lightstone, and we are journeying there to answer it and represent our peoples.'

  While Danali poured more wine and the Lokilani at the other tables grew quiet, I told of how Count Dario had come to my fathers castle on the first day of Ashte to announce the great quest. Something in Pualani eyes made me want to relate as well the story of the assasin's arrow and all that had occurred since that dark afternoon.

  And so, I told them of my duel with Salmelu and the Black Bog; I told them of Kane and the Lord of Illusions and the stone-faced gray men who had nearly driven us mad.

  When had I finished speaking, I took another long drink of wine and blamed it for loosening my tongue. But Pualani looked at me with the opposite of blame. She bowed her head and said, 'Thank you for opening your heart to us, Sar Valashu.

  Now at least it's clear how you entered our wood. You must be very wise to entrust your fate to your horse. And he must be blessed with much more than wisdom to be drawn by the Forest.'

  She nodded toward a grove of apple trees nearby where the Lokilani had tethered our horses. Then she continued, 'If you hadn't been so forthcoming, we would have understood nothing about you. As it is, we can make sense of only a very little.'

  She went on to say that the world of castles and quests and old books full of words were as unknown to the Lokilani as the stars must be to us. She had never heard of the Nine Kingdoms, nor even of Alonia, in whose great forests the Forest abided. In truth, she denied that any king could have a claim upon her woods or that it might be a part of any kingdom, unless that kingdom be the world itself. As she said, the Lokilani were the first people, the true people, and the Forest was the true world.

  'Once, before the Earthkiller came and men cut down the great trees, there was only the Forest,' she told us. 'Here the Lokilani have lived since the beginning of time.

  And here we will remain until the stars die.'

  Atara, who had been silent until now, caught Pualani's eye and said, 'It may be that King Kiritan has no true claim upon your realm. But he would think he had. Your woods lie very close to the more cultivated parts of Alonia. Aren't you afraid that, the king's men will some day come to cut them down?'

  'No, this we do not fear,' Pualani said. 'Your people build a world of stone cities and armies and swords. But this not the world. Very little in your world can touch the Forest now.'

  'What about the Earthkiller?' I asked her.

  Again, a dark look fell over Pualani's face; I was reminded of winter storm clouds smothering a bright Sue sky.

  She Earthkiller has great power,' she admitted. 'And great allies, too. These Stonefaces of yours have tried to enter the Forest in our dreams even as they entered yours.'

  'But they haven't tried to broach it, in their bodies?' 'No - they will never find their way into our woods. And if they do, they will never find their way out alive.'

  'Still,' I said, 'it must be a great temptation for them to try. There are things here that the Lord of Lies would give a great deal to know: how you grow trees to such great heights and grow gems from the very ground.'

  'It is the earth that grows these things, not we. No more than a midwife grows the children she helps deliver.'

  'Perhaps that's true,' I said. I touched my scar where the midwife's tongs had once cut me. 'But a midwife would be no more than a butcher without the skills taught her.

  It's this knowledge that the Lord of Illusions seeks.'

  'You seem to know a great deal of what he would wish to know.'

  Truly, I thought as I recalled my dream, I did know much more of Morjin's mind than I wanted to. I certainly knew enough to perceive that if he could, he would crush the secrets from the Lokilani as readily as he would grapes beneath his boots.

  'There is one thing he seeks above all else,' I said. 'The same thing that we seek.'

  'This is the Lightstone that you spoke of, yes? But what is this stone? Is it an emerald? A great ruby or a diamond?'

  'No, it is a cup - a plain golden cup.'

  Here, Master Juwain broke in to tell of the gelstei and of how these great crystals had been made through many long ages of Ea's history. And the greatest of all the gelstei, he said, was the gold, which most men believed had been created by the Star People and brought to earth at the beginning of the Lost Ages. But he admitted that many also thought that the Lightstone had been forged and cast into the shape of a cup in the Blue Mountains of Alonia sometime during the Age of Swords. Whatever the truth really was, the Lord of Lies sought not only the Lightstone itself but the secret of its making.

  'He would certainly create a Lightstone of his own, if he could,' Master Juwain said.

  'And so he would certainly steal from you any knowledge of growing and shaping crystals that might help him.'

  Pualani sat very straight pulling on the emeralds of her necklace. She looked at Master Juwain for a long moment, and then at Atara, Maram and me. She asked us why we sought the Lightstone. We each answered as best we could. When we had finished speaking, she said, 'The gold gelstei brings light, as you say. And yet this lord of darkness seeks it above all other things. Why, we want to know, why, why?'

  'Because,' Master Juwain said, 'the gold gives power over all the other gelstei except perhaps the silver. It gives immortality, too. And perhaps much else that we don't know of.'

  'But it is light, you say, pure light bound into a cup of gold?' 'Even light can be used to read good or evil words in a book,' Master Juwain told her. ' Just as too much light can burn or blind.'

  I sat thinking about this for a moment and then I added, 'Even if this cup brought the Red Dragon no light at all, he would take joy in keeping others from it.'

  'Oh, that is bad, very, very bad/ Pualani said. She bent forward to confer with Danali. After looking at Elan in silent understanding, she told us, There is great danger here for the Lokilani. A danger we never saw.'

  'My apologies,' I said, 'for bringing such evil tidings.'

  'No, no, you mustn't apologize,' Pualani said. 'And you've brought nothing evil into our woods, so we hope, so we pray. It may be that you're an emissary of the Ellama after all, even if you didn't know it.'

  I looked down at the leaves on the ground because I didn't know what to say.

  'The Ellama still watches over the Forest,' she told us. 'The Galad a'Din haven't forgotten the Lokilani, they would never forget.'

  I smiled sadly at this because I supposed the Galadin had looked away from the ways and wars of Ea long ago.

  'And we haven't forgotten them, we must never forget,' Pualani said to us. 'And so we celebrate this remembrance and their eternal presence among us. Will you help us celebrate, Sar Valashu Elahad?'

  She looked straight at me then, and her eyes were twin emeralds, all green and blazing like life itself.

  'Yes, of course,' I told her. 'Even as you've helped us.'

  'And you, Prince Maram Marshayk - will you help us, too?'

  Maram eyed his empty cup and the jug of wine that had found its way to the end of the table. He licked his lips and said, 'Help you celebrate? Does a bear eat honey if you hold it to his face? Does a horse have to be kicked to eat sweet grass?'

  'Very good,' Pualani said, nodding at him. Then she smiled at Atara and asked, 'And what about you, Atara of the Manslayers? Will you celebrate the coming of the Gaiad a'Din?'

  'I will,' Atara told her, nodding her head.

  Pualani now turned to Master Juwain, and asked him this same question as if reciting the words to a ritual. And he replied, 'I would like very much to celebrate with you, but I'm afraid my vows don't permit me to drink wine.'

  'Then you may keep your vows,' Pualani said, 'for it's not wine we drink in remembrance of the Shining Ones.'

  At this news, Maram looked crestfallen, and he said, 'What do you drink, then?'

  'Only fire,' Pualani said, smiling at him, 'But it might be more precise to say that we eat it.'

  'Eat?' Maram said groaning
as he held his bulging belly. 'Eat what? I don't think I can eat another bite.'

  'Does a bear eat honey when it's held to his face?' Pualani asked him with a coy smile.

  'You have honey?' Maram asked her. 'I thought the Lokilani didn't eat honey.'

  'We. don't,' Pualani told him. 'But we have something much sweeter.'

  So saying, she pulled off a silvery cloth from a bowl at the end of the table. Inside were piled many small golden fruits about the size of plums. She took one in her hand, and then passed the bowl to Elan, who did the same. The bowl quickly made its way around the table. I noticed that although Danali's three children all seemed quite interested in the bowl's gleaming contents, none of them touched the fruit I gathered that just as a child in Mesh would never participate in our rituals of toasting and drinking beer, so the Lokilani children were forbidden to participate in what was to come.

  'The fruit has probably fermented,' I said to Maram as I took one in my hand and squeezed its smooth, soft skin. 'You'll probably find all the wine inside that you wish.'

  'Now that would be a miracle,' he said as he picked up one of the little fruits and regarded it doubtfully. He looked at Pualani and asked, 'What do you call this thing?'

  'It's a timana,' she said. She pointed up at the golden-leafed tree above our table.

  'You see, once every seven years, the astors bear the sacred fruit.'

  Maram held the timana to his nose for a moment but said nothing.

  'Long ago,' Pualani explained, 'the Shining Ones walked the Forest and planted the first astors. The trees were their gift to the Lokilani.'

  She sat looking at the timana in her hand as I might look at the stars. Then she told us that the Galadin were angels and this was their flesh.

  'We eat this fruit in remembrance of who the Shining Ones really are and who we were meant to be,' she explained. 'Please join us in our celebration today.'

  Now the whole glade fell very quiet as the Lokilani at the other mats put down their cups of wine or water to watch us eat the timanas. I wondered why none of them had been given any fruit. I thought that it must be quite rare and used by only a few Lokilani at any one ritual