The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  The

  Lightstone

  Part One: The Ninth Kingdom

  Book One of the Ea Cycle

  DAVID ZINDELL

  COPYRIGHT

  HarperVoyager

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperVoyager 2001

  Copyright © David Zindell 2001

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

  Source ISBN: 9780006486206

  Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2016 ISBN 9780007396597

  Version: 2018-05-21

  DEDICATION

  For Justine and Jillian

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  Appendices

  Heraldry

  The Gelstei

  The Greater Gelstei

  Books Of the Saganom Elu

  The Ages Of Ea

  The Months of the Year

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Works

  About the Publisher

  MAP

  1

  On clear winter nights, I have stood on mountains just to be closer to the stars. Some say that these shimmering lights are the souls of warriors who have died in battle; some say that at the beginning of time, Arwe himself cast an infinite number of diamonds into the sky to shine forever and defeat the darkness of night. But I believe the stars are other suns like our own. They speak along the blood in fiery whisperings of ancient dreams and promises unfulfilled. From there long ago our people came to earth bearing the cup called the Lightstone; to there we would someday return as angels holding light in our hands.

  My grandfather believed this, too. It was he who taught me the stories of the Great Bear, the Dragon, the Seven Sisters and the other constellations. It was he who named me after the bright Morning Star, Valashu. He always said that we were born to shine. A Valari warrior, he once told me, should polish first his soul and then his sword. For only then can he see his fate and accept it. Or fight against it if he is one of the few men marked out to make their own fate. Such a man is a glory and gift to the earth. Such a man was my grandfather. But the Ishkans killed him all the same.

  Elkasar Elahad would have found it a strange fate indeed that on the same day King Kiritan’s messengers came from Alonia to announce a great quest for the Lightstone, a whole company of knights and nobles from Ishka rode into my father’s castle to negotiate for peace or call for war. It was the first of Ashte in the 2,812th year in that span of centuries that the historians had named the Age of the Dragon. In the warmth of one of the loveliest springs that anyone could remember, with the snows melting from the mountains and wildflowers everywhere abloom, the forests surrounding Silvassu teemed with boar and deer and other animals that might be killed for food. My father’s steward, upon counting the castle’s guests that day, grumbled that the kitchens would require much food if any feast were to be made. And so my brothers and I, along with other knights, were called to go out and hunt for it. After all, even the murderers of a king must eat.

  Just after noon I rode down from the hills upon which our ancient city is built with my eldest brother, Lord Asaru. My friend, Maram, and one of my brother’s squires rode with us as well. We were a small hunting party, perhaps the smallest of the many to fill the woods that day. I was glad for such company, for I cared nothing for the sport of hounds yelping and men on snorting horses running down a fear-maddened pig. As for Asaru, he was like our father, King Shamesh: stern, serious and focused on his objective with an astonishing clarity of purpose. His soul had not only been polished but sharpened until it cut like the finest Godhran steel. He had said that we would take a deer, and for that we needed small numbers and stealth. Maram, who would have preferred the pageantry of hunting with the other knights, followed him anyway. In truth, he followed me. As he liked to say, he would never desert his best friend. As he didn’t like to say, he was a coward who had once seen what the razor-like tusks of a boar could do to a man’s groin. It was much safer to hunt a deer.

  It was a warm day, and the air smelled of freshly turned earth and lilac blossoms. Every quarter of a mile or so, a stout farmhouse stood out among fields demarcated by lines of low stone walls. There was new barley in the ground, and the golden sun in the sky. As we passed farther into the Valley of the Swans, the farmland gave out onto miles of unbroken forest. At the edge of a field, where the ancient oaks rose up like a wall of green, we drew up and dismounted. Asaru handed the reins of his horse to his young squire, Joshu Kadar, who had the square face and stolid temperament of his father, Lord Kadar. Joshu didn’t like being left to tend the horses, and watched impatiently as Asaru drew out his great yew bow and strung it. For a moment I was tempted to give him my bow and let him hunt the deer while I waited in the sun. I hated hunting almost as much as I did war.

  And then Asaru, tall and imperious in his flowing black cloak, handed me my bow and pointed at the forest. He said, ‘Why these woods, Val?’

  ‘Why not?’ I countered. Asaru, knowing how I felt about slaughtering innocent animals, had given me my choice of where to hunt that day. Although he had remained silent during our ride down from the castle, he must have known where I was leading him. ‘You know why,’ I said more gently, looking at him.

  And he looked at me, fearless as all Valari would hope to be. His eyes were those of the Valari kings: deep and mysterious, as black as space and as bright as stars. He had the bold face bones and long hawk’s nose of our ancient line. His skin, burnt brown in the hot spring sun, was like weathered ivory, and he had a great shock of glossy black hair, long and thick and blowing wild in the wind. Although he was very much a man of blood and steel and other elements of the earth, there was something otherworldly about him, too. My father said that we looked enough alike to be twins. But of the seven sons of Shavashar Elahad, he was the firstborn and I was the last. And that made all the difference in the world.

  He drew closer and stood silently regarding me. Where I insisted on wearing a leather hunting jacket and a homespun shirt and trousers of a deep forest green, he was resplendent in a cloak and a black tunic embroidered with the silver swan and the
seven silver stars of the royal house of Mesh. He would never think to be seen in any other garments. He was the tallest of my brothers, taller than I by half an inch. He seemed to look down at me, and his bright black eyes fell like blazing suns on the scar cut into my forehead above my left eye. It was a unique scar, shaped like a lightning bolt. I think it reminded him of things that he would rather not know.

  ‘Why do you have to be so wild?’ he said in a quickly exhaled breath.

  I stood beneath his gaze listening to the thunder of my heart, but said nothing.

  ‘Here, now!’ a loud voice boomed out. ‘What’s this? What are you talking about?’

  Maram, upon seeing the silent communication flowing between us, came up clutching his bow and making nervous rumbling noises in his throat. Though not as tall as Asaru, he was a big man with a big belly that pushed out ahead of him as if to knock any obstacles or lesser men from his path.

  ‘What should I know about these woods?’ he asked me.

  ‘They’re full of deer,’ I said, smiling at him.

  ‘And other animals,’ Asaru added provocatively.

  ‘What animals?’ Maram asked. He licked his thick, sensuous lips. He rubbed his thick, brown beard where it curled across his blubbery cheeks.

  ‘The last time we entered these woods,’ Asaru said, ‘we could hardly move without stepping on a rabbit. And there were squirrels everywhere.’

  ‘Good, good,’ Maram said, ‘I like squirrels.’

  ‘So do the foxes,’ Asaru said. ‘So do the wolves.’

  Maram coughed to clear his throat, and then swallowed a couple of times. ‘In my country, I’ve only ever seen red foxes – they’re not at all like these huge gray ones of yours that might as well be wolves. And as for our wolves, ah, well, we hunted out most of them long ago.’

  Maram was not of Mesh, not even of the Nine Kingdoms of the Valari. Everything about him was an affront to a Valari’s sensibilities. His large brown eyes reminded one of the sugared coffee that the Delians drink, and were given to tears of rage or sentimentality as the situation might demand. He wore jeweled rings on each of the fingers of his hamlike hands; he wore the bright scarlet tunic and trousers of the Delian royalty. He liked red, of course, because it was an outward manifestation of the colors of his fiery heart. And even more he liked standing out and being seen, especially in a wood full of hungry men with bows and arrows. My brothers believed that he had been sent to the Brotherhood school in the mountains above Silvassu as a punishment for his cowardly ways. But the truth was he had been banished from court due to an indiscretion with his father’s favorite concubine.

  ‘Do not,’ Asaru warned him, ‘hunt wolves in Mesh. It’s bad luck.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Maram said, twanging his bowstring, ‘I won’t hunt them if they won’t hunt me.’

  ‘Wolves don’t hunt men,’ Asaru assured him. ‘It’s the bears that you have to watch for.’

  ‘Bears?’

  ‘This time of year, especially the mothers with their cubs.’

  ‘I saw one of your bears last year,’ Maram said. ‘I hope I never see another.’

  I rubbed my forehead as I caught the heat of Maram’s fear. Of course, Mesh is famed for the ferociousness of its huge, brown bears, which had driven the much gentler black bears into gentler lands such as Delu ages ago.

  ‘If the Brothers don’t expel you and you stay with us long enough,’ Asaru said, ‘you’ll see plenty of bears.’

  ‘But I thought the bears kept mostly to the mountains.’

  ‘Well, where do you think you are?’ Asaru said, sweeping his hand out toward the snow-capped peaks all around us.

  In truth, we stood in the Valley of the Swans, largest and loveliest of Mesh’s valleys. Here the Kurash flowed through gentle terrain into Lake Waskaw. Here there were other lakes, too, where the swans came each spring to hatch their young and swim through clear blue waters.

  But across the valley twenty miles due east, Mount Eluru stood like a vast pyramid of granite and ice. Beyond it were still greater peaks of the Culhadosh Range, which separates the kingdoms of Waas and Mesh. In the distance to the south forty-five miles as a raven flies, was the hazy wall of the Itarsu in whose narrow passes my ancestors had more than once slaughtered invading Sarni armies from the great gray plains beyond. Behind us above the hills from where we had ridden that day, just to the west of the bear-infested woods that we proposed to enter, were three of the greatest and most beautiful peaks of the Central Range: Telshar, Arakel and Vayu. These were the mountains of my soul; here, I thought, was the heart of the Morning Mountains and possibly of all Ea. As a boy I had played in their forests and sung songs to their silent, stony faces. They rose up like gods just beyond the houses and battlements of Silvassu: the shining Vayu a few miles to the south, Arakel west just across the swift Kurash river, and Telshar the Great on whose lower slopes my grandfather’s grandfathers had built the Elahad castle. Once I had climbed this luminous mountain. From the summit, looking north, I had seen Raaskel and Korukel glittering beyond the Diamond River, and beyond these guardian peaks, the cold white mountains of Ishka. But, of course, all my life I have tried not to look in that direction.

  Now Maram followed the line of Asaru’s outstretched hand. He looked into the dark, waiting forest and muttered, ‘Ah, where am I, indeed? Lost, lost, truly lost.’

  At that moment, as if in answer to some silent supplication of Maram’s, there came the slow clip-clop of a horse’s hooves. I turned to see a white-haired man leading a draft horse across the field straight toward us. He wore a patch over his right eye and walked with a severe limp as if his knee had been smashed with a mace or a flail. I knew that I had seen this old farmer before, but I couldn’t quite remember where.

  ‘Hello, lads,’ he said as he drew up to us. ‘It’s a fine day for hunting, isn’t it?’

  Maram took in the farmer’s work-stained woolens, which smelled of horse manure and pigs. He wrinkled up his fat nose disdainfully. But Asaru, who had a keener eye, immediately saw the ring glittering on the farmer’s gnarled finger, and so did I. It was a plain silver ring set with four brilliant diamonds: the ring of a warrior and a lord at that.

  ‘Lord Harsha,’ Asaru said, finally recognizing him, ‘it’s been a long time.’

  ‘Yes, it has,’ Lord Harsha said. He looked at Asaru’s squire, and then at Maram and me. ‘Who are your friends?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Asaru said. ‘May I present Joshu Kadar of Lashku?’

  Lord Harsha nodded his head at my brother’s squire and told him, ‘Your father is a fine man. We fought against Waas together.’

  Young Joshu bowed deeply as befit his rank, and then stood silently basking in Lord Harsha’s compliment.

  ‘And this,’ Asaru continued, ‘is Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu. He’s a student of the Brothers.’

  Lord Harsha peered out at him with his single eye and said, ‘Isn’t it true that the Brothers don’t hunt animals?’

  ‘Ah, that is true,’ Maram said, gripping his bow, ‘we hunt knowledge. You see, I’ve come along only to protect my friend in case we run into any bears.’

  Now Lord Harsha turned his attention toward me, and looked back and forth between me and my brother. The light of his eye bore into my forehead like the rays of the sun.

  ‘You must be Valashu Elahad,’ he said.

  Just then Maram’s face reddened in anger on my behalf. I knew that he didn’t approve of the Valari system of honors and rank. It must have galled him that an old man of no noble blood, a mere farmer, could outrank a prince.

  I looked down at the ring I wore around my finger. In it was set neither the four diamonds of a lord nor the three of a master – nor even the two sparkling stones of a full knight. A single diamond stood out against the silver: the ring of a simple warrior. In truth, I was lucky to have won it. If not for some skills with the sword and bow that my father had taught me, I never would have. What kind of warrior hates war? How is it that a Valari k
night – or rather, a man who only dreamed of being a knight – should prefer playing the flute and writing poetry to trials of arms with his brothers and countrymen?

  Lord Harsha smiled grimly at me and said, ‘It’s been a long time since you’ve come to these woods, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it has,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you should have paid your respects before trampling over my fields. Young people have no manners these days.’

  ‘My apologies, sir, but we were in a hurry. You see, we got a late start.’

  I didn’t explain that our hunting expedition had been delayed for an hour while I searched the castle for Maram – only to find him in bed with one of my father’s chambermaids.

  ‘Yes, very late,’ Lord Harsha said, looking up at the sun. ‘The Ishkans have already been here before you.’

  “Which Ishkans?’ I asked in alarm. I noticed that Asaru was now staring off into the woods intently.

  ‘They didn’t stop to present themselves either,’ Lord Harsha said. ‘But there were five of them – I heard them bragging they were going to take a bear.’

  At this news, Maram gripped his bow even more tightly. Beads of sweat formed up among the brown curls of hair across his forehead. He said, ‘Well, then – I suppose we should leave these woods to them.’

  But Asaru only smiled as if Maram had suggested abandoning all of Mesh to the enemy. He said, ‘The Ishkans like to hunt bears. Well, it’s a big wood, and they’ve had more than an hour to become lost in it.’

  ‘Please see to it that you don’t become lost as well,’ Lord Harsha said.

  ‘My brother,’ Asaru said, looking at me strangely, ‘is more at home in the woods than in his own castle. We won’t get lost.’

  ‘Good. Then good luck hunting.’ Lord Harsha nodded his head at me in a curt bow. ‘Are you after a bear this time, too?’