The Lightstone Read online

  I had thought to score a point by invoking the name of Navsa Adami. But Master Juwain let his anger melt away so that only a terrible sadness remained. Then he said softly, 'If Navsa Adami were alive today, he would be the first to warn you that once the killing begins, it never ends.'

  I turned away as his sadness touched my eyes with a deep, hot pain. I suddenly recalled the overpowering wrongness that I had sensed earlier in the woods; now a bit of this wrongness, in the form of kirax and perhaps something worse, would burn forever inside me.

  I wanted to look at Master Juwain and tell him that there had to be a way to end the killing. Instead, I looked into myself and said. ' There's always a time to fight.'

  Master Juwain stepped closer to me and laid his hand on mine. Then he told me,

  'Evil can't be vanquished with a sword, Val. Darkness can't be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light.' He looked at me with a new radiance pouring out of him and said, ' This is truly a dark time. But it's always darkest just before the dawn.'

  He let go of me suddenly and walked over to his desk. There his hand closed on a large book bound in green leather. I immediately recognize it as the Saganom Elu, many passages of which I had memorized during my years at the Brotherhood's school.

  'I think it's time for a little reading lesson,' he announced, movm; back toward Maram and me. His fingers quickly flipped through the yellow, well-worn pages, and then he suddenly dropped the book into Maram's hands. 'Brother Maram, would you please read from the Trian prophecies. Chapter seven, beginning with verse twenty-six.'

  Maram, who was as surprised as I was at this sudden call to scholar-ship, stood there sweating and blinking his eyes. 'You want me to read now, sir. Ah, shouldn't we be getting ready for the feast?'

  'Indulge me if you will please.'

  'But you know I've no talent for ancient Ardik,' Maram grumbled. 'Now, if you would ask me to read Lorranda, which is the language of love and poetry, why then I would be delighted

  to -'

  'Please just read us the lines,' Master Juwain interrupted, 'or we will miss the feast'

  Maram stood there glowering at him like a child asked to muck out a stable. He asked, 'Do I have to, sir?'

  'Yes, you do,' Master Juwain told him. 'I'm afraid that Val never had the time to learn Ardik as well as you.'

  Tmly, I had left the Brotherhood's school before mastering this noblest of languages.

  And so I waited intently as Maram took a deep breath and ground his finger into the page of the book that Master Juwain had set before him. And then his huge. voise rolled out into the room: ' Songan erathe ad valte kalanath li galdanaan ... ah, let me see ... Jin Jeldra, song Ieldra -'

  'Very good,' Master Juwain broke in, 'but why don't you translate as you read?'

  'But, sir,' he said, pointing at a book on the writing table, 'you already have the translated version there. Why don't I just read from that?'

  Master Juwain tapped the book that Maram was holding and said, 'Because I asked you to read from this.'

  ‘Very well, sir’ Maram said, rolling his eyes. And then he swallowed a mouthful of air and continued, 'When the earth and stars enter the Golden Band ... ah, I think this is right ... the darkest age will end anda new age -'

  ' That's very good,' Master Juwain interrupted again. 'Your translation is very accurate but . . .'

  'Yes, sir?'

  'I'm afraid you've lost the flavor of the original. The poetry, as it were. Why don't you put the words to verse?'

  Now sweat began pouring down Maram's beard and neck. He said, 'Now, sir? here?'

  'You're studying to be a Master Poet, aren't you? Well, poets make Poems.'

  'Yes, yes, I.know, but without time to make the music and to find the rhymes, you can't realy expert me to -'

  'Do your best Brother Maram,' Master Juwain said with a broad smile ' Ihave faith in you.'

  Strangely, this immensely difficult prospect seemed suddenly to please Maram. He stared at the book for quite a long while as if burning its glyphs into his mind. Then he closed his eyes for an even longer time. And suddenly, as if reciting a sonnet to a lover, he looked toward the windows and said:

  When earth alights the Golden Band,

  The darkest age wmpass away;

  When angel fire illumes the land,

  The stars will show the brightest day.

  The deathless day, the Amm Light;

  leldra's blaze befalls the earth;

  The end of war, the end of night

  Awaits the last Maitreya's birth.

  The mip of Heaven in his hand,

  The One's clear light in heart and eye,

  He brings the healing of the land,

  And opens colors in the sky.

  And there, the stars, the ageless lights

  For which we ache and dream and burn,

  Upon the deep and dazzling heights -

  Our ancient home we shall return.

  ' There,' he said, wiping the sweat from his face as he finished. With a trembling hand, he gave the book back to Master Juwain.

  'Very good,' Master Juwain told him. 'We'll make a Brother of you yet.'

  He motioned us over to the window. He pointed up at the stars, and in a voice quavering with excitement, he said, 'This is the time. The earth entered the Golden Band twenty years ago, and I believe that somewhere on Ea, the Maitreya, the Shining One, has been born.'

  I looked out at the Owl constellation and other clusters of stars that shimmered in the dark sky beyond Telshar's jagged peak. It was said that the earth and all the stars turned about the heavens like a great, diamond-studded wheel. At the center of this cosmic wheel - at the center of all things - dwelt the Ieldra, luminous beings who shone the light of their souls on all of creation. These great, golden beacons streamed out from the cosmic center like rivers of light, and the Brothers called them the Golden Bands. Every few thousand years, the earth would enter one of them and bask in its radiance. At such times the trumpets of doom would sound and mountains would ring; souls would be quickened and Maitreyas would be bom as the old ages ended and the new ones began. Although it was impossible to behold this numinous light with one's eyes, the servers and certain gifted children could apprehend it as a deep, golden glow that touched all things.

  ' This is the time,' Master Juwain said again as he turned toward me. ' The time for the ending of war. And perhaps the time that the Lightstone will be found as well. I'm sure that King Kiritan's messengers have come bearing the news of just such a prophecy.'

  I gazed out at the stars and there, too, I felt a rushing of a wind that carried the call of strange and beautiful voices. The Ieldra, I knew, communicate the Law of the One not just in golden rays of light but in the deepest whisperings of the soul.

  'If the Lightstone is found,'I said, wondering aloud, 'who would ever have the wisdom to use it?'

  Master Juwain looked up at the stars, too, and I sensed in him the fierce pride that had taken him from the fields of a farm on the Elyssu to a mastership in the greatest of Brotherhoods. I expected him to tell me that only the Brothers had attained the purity of mind necessary to plumb the secrets of the Lightstone. Instead, he turned to me and said, ' The Maitreya would have such wisdom. It is for him that the Galadin sent the Lightstone to earth.'

  Outside the window, high above the castle and the mountains, the stars of the Seven Sisters and other constellations gleamed brightly. Somewhere among them, I thought, the immortal Elijin gazed upon this cosmic-glory and dreamed of becoming Galadin, just as the Star People aspired to advancement to the Elijik order. There, too, dwelled Arwe, Ashtoreth and Valorem, and others of the Galadin. These great, angelic beings had so perfected themselves and mastered the physical realm that they could never be killed. They walked on other worlds even as men did the fields and forests of Mesh; in truth, they walked freely between worlds, though never yet on earth. Servers had seen visions of them, and I had sensed their great beauty in my longings and dr
eams, h was Valoreth himself, my grandfather once told me, who had sent Elahad to Ea bearing the Lightstone in his hands.

  For a while, as the night deepened and the stars turned through the sky, we stood there talking about the powers of this mysterious golden cup. I said nothing of my seeing it appear before me in the woods earlier that day. Although its splendor now seemed only that of a dream, the warmth that had revived me like a golden elixir was too real to doubt Could the Lightstone itself, I wondered, truly heal me of the wound that cut through my heart? Or would it take a Maitreya, wielding the Lightstone as I might a sword, to accomplish this miracle?

  I believe that I might have found the courage to ask Master Juwain these questions if we hadn't been interrupted. Just as I was wondering if those of the orders of the Galadin and Elijin had once suffered from the curse of empathy even as I did, footsteps sounded in the hallway and there came a loud knocking at the door. 'Just a moment,' Master Juwain called out. He stepped briskly across the room and opened the door. And there, in the dimly-lit archway, stood Joshu Kadar breathing heavily from his long climb up the stairs.

  'It's time,' the young squire gasped out. 'Lord Asaru has asked me to tell you that it's time for the feast to begin.'

  ' Thank you,' Master Juwain told him. Then he moved back to the desk where he had left the arrow. He carefully wrapped it in my shirt again and asked, 'Are you ready, Val?'

  It seemed that the answers that I sought to the great riddles of life would have to wait. And so, with Joshu in the lead, I followed Maram and Master Juwain out into the cold, dark hallway.

  Chapter 4

  We entered the great hall to the blare of trumpets announcing the feast. Along the room's north wall hung with a great black banner emblazoned with the swan and stars of the royal house of Mesh, three heralds stood blowing their brass horns. The sound that reverberated through the huge room and out into the castle was the same that I had twice heard calling the Valari to battle. Indeed, the knights of Mesh - and those of Ishka - crowded through the doorways five abreast and moved toward their various tables as if marching to war.

  I found Asaru and my brothers standing by their chairs at my family's table along the north wall; there, too, my mother and grandmother waited for me to take my place, as did my father. I'm sure that he didn't like it that I was among the last to arrive. He stood tall and grave in a black tunic that was much like the one that I had hastily fetched from my rooms - only clean and embroidered with a freshly polished silver swan and seven bright, silver stars. As he watched me climb the steps to the dais upon which our table stood, his bright, black eyes blazed like stars; there was reproof in his fierce gaze, but also concern and much else as well. Although Shavashar Elahad was the hardest man I knew, the well of his emotions ran as deep as the sea.

  When all the guests had finally found their places, my father pulled out his chair and sat down, and everyone did the same. He took the position of honor alfthe center of the table, with my mother at his immediate right and my grandmother on his left. And on her left, in order, sat Karshur, Jonathay and Mandru, the fiercest of all my brothers. Where the other Valari knights|Jn the room were content to wear their swords buckled to their waists, Mandru always carried his scabbarded in I Ws three-fingered left hand, ready to draw at a moment's notice should he need to defend his honor - or his kingdom's. He sat looking down the table in silent communication with Asaru, who must have told him what had occured earlier in the woods, Asaru sat to the right of my mother, Elianora wi Solaru, who was tall and regal in her brightly embroidered gown - and said to be the most beautiful woman in the Nine Kingdoms Her dark, perceptive eyes moved from Asaru to Yarashan, who sat on Asaru's right, and then down the line of the table from the silent and secretive Ravar to me. As the youngest and least distinguished member of my family, I sat at the far right near the end of the table. There I had hoped to lose myself in the clamor and vastness of the room. But there was no eluding my mother's strength, goodness and grace. She was the most alive being I had ever known, and the most loyal, too, and she looked at me as if to say that she would gladly lay down her life to protect me should the unknown assassin try to kill me again.

  'Do you see him here?' Ravar whispered to me. The fox-faced Ravar was older than I by three years and shorter by almost a head. I had to bend low to hear what he was saying.

  I looked out at the sea of faces in the room as I tried to identify that of the assassin who had escaped us. At the table nearest the dais, on the right, sat the Brothers who were visiting the castle that night. Master Juwain was there, of course, accompanied by Master Kelem, the Music Master, and Master Tadeo and some twenty other Brothers besides Maram. I knew all of them by name, and I was sure that none of them could have drawn a bow against me.

  Unfortunately, I couldn't say the same for King Kiritan's emissaries, who had taken the next two tables. All of them - the knights and squires, the minstrels and grooms -

  were strangers to me. Count Dario, the king's cousin, I recognized only by description and his emblem: he wore the gold caduceus of House Narmadajpn his blue tunic, and his carefully trimmed hair and goatee seemed like red flames shooting from his head.

  At the left of the room, next to the Ishkan tables where I tried not to look, were the first of the Meshian tables. There I saw Lord Harsha beaming proudly at Behira, and Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu talking with their wives. Lansar Raasharu, my father's seneschal, sat there, too along with Mesh's other greatest lords. If any of these old warriors were traitors, I thought, then I couldn't be sure that the sun would rise in the east the next morning.

  As well I had faith in my countrymen in the second tier of tables where the master knights and their ladies waited for my father's attendants to pour the wine. And so with the many lesser knights sitting at I the tables beyond, out to the farthest corners of the hall. There almost too far away to see clearly, I studied the faces- of friends such as Sunjay Navaru and other common warriors at whose sides I had fought.

  There, I thought, near the great granite pillars holding up the arched roof, I would have sat too but for the happenstance of birth.

  I whispered back to Ravar. 'None of them looks like the one who shot at me.'

  'But what of the Ishkans?' he asked with a gleam in his eyes. 'You haven't even looked at them, have you, Val?'

  Of course, I hadn't. And of course Ravar had noticed that I hadn't. He had quick, black eyes and an even quicker wit. Mandru and the stolid Karshur often accused him of living in his mind, a battlefield upon which no Valari should dwell for too long. Like me he had no natural liking for war: he preferred fencing with words and ideas. Unlike me, however, he was very good at real war because he saw it as a way of perfecting both his mind and his will. Although there were some who thought him unworthy to wear the three diamonds of a master knight, I had seen him lead a company of men at the Battle of Red Mountain and cast his lance through Sar Manashu's eye at a distance of twenty yards.

  As Ravar began to study the Ishkans, perhaps looking for weaknesses with the same concentration that he had turned on Waas's army, I did the same. And immediately my eyes fell upon an arrogant man with a great scar running down the side of his face. Although he had a great beak of a nose like an eagle, his father and mother had bestowed upon him scarcely any chin. His eyes, I thought, were like pools of stagnant black water, and seemed to suck me down into the coldness of his heart even as they challenged me. Because I didn't like the slimy feeling that crept into my belly just then, I gazed instead at his bright red tunic which bore the great white bear of the Ishkan royalty. I recognized him as Prince Salmelu, King Hadaru's oldest son.

  Five years before, at the great tournament in Taron, in a game of chess, I had humiliated him in a crushing defeat that had taken only twenty-three moves. It wasn't enough that he had won the gold medal in the fencing competition and had acquitted himself honorably in the horsemanship and archery competitions; it seemed he had to be preeminent at everything, for he took insult easily, espe
cially from those who had bested him. It was said that he had fought fifteen men in duels - and left all fifteen dead to pools of blood. One of his brothers. Lord Issur, shared the table with him, along with Lord Mestivan and Lord Nadhru and other prominent Ishkans whom Ravar pointed out to me.

  'Do any of them look like your assassin?' Ravar asked me.

  'No,' I said. 'It's hard to tell - the man's face was hooded.'

  And then, even as I closed my eyes and opened myself to the hum of hundreds of voices, I felt the same taint of wrongness that. I had in the woods. The red, twisting worms of someone's hate began eating their way up my spine. From what man in the hall this dreadful sensation emanated, however, I couldn't tell.

  At last, the wine having been poured, my father lifted up his goblet and stood to make the opening toast. All eyes in the hall turned his way; all voices trailed off and then died into silence as he began to speak.

  'Masters of the Brotherhood,' he began, 'princes and lords, ladies and knights, we would like to welcome you to this gathering tonight. It's a strange chance that brings King Kiritan's emissaries to Mesh at the same time that King Hadaru sends his eldest son to honor us. But let us hope that it's a good chance and a sign of good times to come.'