The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  ‘Have you never seen a bear-baiting?’ Maram asked her. ‘The hounds harry the bear and wear it down before it is killed.’

  All that day, in the moist woods full of amanita and destroying angels and other poisonous mushrooms, I felt a mailed fist pounding at my head and trying to wear me down. I slept fitfully that night by a stream that gurgled like an opened throat. There the others–Atara and Maram–joined me in nightmare. Only Master Juwain seemed shielded against the terrible images that Morjin sent to rob us of sanity and sleep. But even he awoke the next morning with a fever and a fierce headache. As did Maram and Atara. Maram wondered if we had managed to drink some tainted water, perhaps from a stream poisoned by a dead animal who had eaten some of the overly abundant mushrooms. But Master Juwain doubted this possibility. He stood by his horse rubbing his bald head as he told him, ‘This is no taint of rotten flesh or the poisoning of plants. No, Brother Maram, I’m afraid your hounds are getting bolder.’

  To inspirit Maram, who groaned from fright as much as the fever in him, I said, ‘If they are growing bolder, then so must we.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘Ride,’ I told him. ‘As fast and hard as we can. If the Stonefaces are wearing down our spirits, then at least we can try to wear down their bodies.’

  ‘But, Val,’ he said. ‘They’re wearing down our spirits and our bodies. Why should we help them?’

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing else to do. Now let’s get the horses ready.’

  We rode all that morning across the gently rolling ground of the forest. In places, where the trees grew less densely and the spaces between them were free of undergrowth, we pressed the horses to a fast canter, and twice, to a gallop. They wheezed and sweated at the effort of it, and so did we. It pained me to see the froth building up along Altaru’s jaw. However, he made little complaint; he just charged on through the moss-hung trees hour after hour, driving at the earth with his great hooves. Maram’s and Master Juwain’s horses had a harder time of it. And Atara’s horse was no mount at all. By the end of the afternoon, Tanar was near exhaustion, and it was only Atara’s determination and skill that kept him moving.

  ‘I’ll have to whip him if you want any more work out of him today,’ she said as we paused by a small river to water the horses. She stood by Tanar with a braided leather quirt in her hand. I had heard that the Sarni sometimes whipped their horses bloody, but Atara was obviously reluctant to follow this cruel custom.

  ‘No, please don’t,’ I said. The horses’ flanks were already scratched and bleeding from the blackberry brambles. I looked at Master Juwain, who stood leaning against his horse as if his shaking legs might buckle at any moment. Maram had already buckled. He lay by the riverbank holding a wet cloth against his head and moaning softly. I told him, ‘We’re all exhausted. We’ll make camp and rest here.’

  ‘Bless you, my friend. But, rest? I think I’m too tired to rest. My head feels as if your big, fat horse has been stepping on it all day. Please kill me now and save the Stonefaces the trouble.’

  ‘We came far today,’ I said. ‘It may be that we lost them.’

  But my dreams that night told me otherwise. And more than once, Atara’s sharp cries startled me out of my sleep. I lay next to her by the little fire for hours listening to Maram’s pitiful groaning and to the insects of the night: the katydids and the crickets in the bushes and the whining mosquitoes that came to suck our blood. I couldn’t decide whether sleep or sleeplessness drained me more. If this was rest, I thought, we would do better to stumble about the forest and ride all night.

  The next morning–I guessed it was the 28th of Ashte–dawned cloudy and cool. We all had trouble getting on our horses, even Master Juwain who had slept soundly enough when it hadn’t been his watch. I remembered my father telling me that on long campaigns, even the doughtiest of warriors will weaken without good food and rest. We had had neither. The day before, we had eaten in the saddle: some moldy battle biscuits and walnuts that had gone rancid. I had been too exhausted to take dinner. Even Maram, when offered a bit of beer, complained that he had no head for it; he turned down as well the leathery dried antelope that Atara offered him. He had no strength to chew it, he had said, and just wanted to sleep.

  None of us had any strength that morning. We had been on the road for most of a month. The journey had worn the flesh off our bodies, and by his own ample standards even Maram was looking gaunt. We were dirty, our clothes torn by thorns and stained with mud. The hard riding of the previous day had reopened the wound in my side; beneath my armor, I felt the dampness of blood. Even so, I wanted to press Altaru to a canter. But the other horses had no heart for anything more than a quick walk. As the day dragged on, they gradually slowed their pace.

  Sometime after noon–it was hard to measure the hour when we couldn’t see the sun–I fell asleep in my saddle. A sudden splashing as Altaru stepped through a stream startled me awake. But after that I found myself frequently drifting off. Once, I swooned altogether and nearly fell to the ground. It was hard to keep Altaru to our course, which was now mostly to the northwest. At each of my lapses in consciousness, I found him turning toward the south as if he might find better browse or water in that direction.

  ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’ Maram asked as he looked around at the walls of trees on all sides. ‘We’re moving in circles.’

  ‘No, not circles,’ I reassured him. ‘We’re still on course.’

  ‘Are you sure? Perhaps Master Juwain should take the lead for a while. He’s the only one who can stay awake.’

  But Master Juwain had little sense of direction, and even Atara seemed lost. With the sky hidden by the thick canopies of the trees and the even thicker gray clouds, we couldn’t see the sun to read east or west. And no one except myself had enough woodcraft to read the moss on the elms or the lie of the flowers in the shadows of the birches. I knew well enough how to find our way; all I had to do was to keep from falling asleep.

  As we moved off again, I resolved to let the pain in my side spur me to wakefulness. But very soon my eyes closed, for how long I couldn’t say. When I finally opened them, I saw that Altaru had drifted again toward the south. I sensed in him a fierce desire to move in that direction; it was as if he could smell a mare deeper in the woods, and every muscle in his body trembled to find her. It was only by his instincts, I remembered, that we had escaped from the Black Bog. Perhaps his instincts might now help us escape the Stonefaces; certainly all my stratagems had failed in this. And so, without telling the others what was happening, I let Altaru go where he wished.

  Thus we traveled quite a few miles due south. I sensed a gradual change in the air, and I thought that the trees here grew taller. Their great, green crowns towered over the forest floor perhaps as high as a hundred and twenty feet. From somewhere in their spreading branches and fluttering leaves, I heard the voice of an unfamiliar bird: his cry was something like the raaark of a raven, but was deeper and harsher and seemed to warn us away. Other things warned us away as well. I had a disquieting sense that I was crossing an invisible border into a forbidden realm. Whenever I tried to peer through the woods to see what might be drawing Altaru, however, it seemed that a will greater than my own caused me to become distracted and look away. It was as if the earth itself here was guarded by some sentinel whom I could not see. But strangely, I was never quite conscious that some being or entity might be watching these woods. At precisely those moments when I tried to bring these sensations into full awareness, I found myself touching my wounded side or gazing at the blood on my hand–or thinking of how I had fallen in love with Atara. It was as if my mind had slipped off the surface of a gleaming mirror to behold only myself.

  I knew that the others, too, sensed something strange about these woods. I felt Atara’s reluctance to go any farther and Maram’s doubt pounding in him like a heartbeat that seemed to say: Go back; go back; go back. Even Master Juwain’s great curiosity about the woods seemed b
lunted by his fear of them.

  And then, after perhaps a couple of miles, the soft breeze grew suddenly cooler and cleaner. The sweet scent of the numinous seemed to hang in the air. I found that I could breathe more easily, and I gasped to behold the heights of the trees, for here the giant oaks grew very high above us, at least two hundred feet. The forest floor was mostly free of debris, being covered by a carpet of golden leaves. But there were flowers, too: violets and goldthread and others that I had never seen before. One of these had many red, pointed petals that erupted from its center like flames. I called it a fireflower; but its fragrance filled me as if I had drunk from a sparkling stream. I felt my fever cooling and then leaving me altogether. My head pain vanished as well. All my senses seemed to grow keener and deeper. I could almost see the folds in the silvery bark of an oak three hundred yards away and hear the sap streaming through its mighty trunk.

  How far we rode into these great trees I couldn’t tell. In the abiding peace of the oaks, both distance and direction seemed to take on a new depth of dimension. Something about the earth itself here seemed to dissolve each moment into the next so that the whole forest opened onto a secret realm as timeless as the stars. I might have been walking these same woods a million years in the past–or a million years hence.

  ‘What is this place?’ Maram wondered as he stopped his horse to look up at the leaves fluttering high above us.

  I climbed down from Altaru to give him a rest and stretch my legs. I reached down to touch a starflower growing out of a little plant. Its five white petals shone as if from a light within.

  ‘My headache is gone,’ Maram said. ‘My fever, as well.’

  Atara and Master Juwain admitted that they, too, had been miraculously restored. Along with Maram, they climbed off their horses and joined me on the forest floor. Then Master Juwain said. ‘There are places of great power on the earth. Healing places–this must be one of them.’

  ‘Why haven’t I heard of these places?’ Maram asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed, why haven’t you, Brother Maram? Do you not remember the Book of Ages where it tells of the vilds?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Do you remember the passage, sir?’

  Master Juwain nodded his head and then recited:

  There is a place tween earth and time,

  In some forgotten misty clime

  Of woods and brooks and vernal glades,

  Whose healing magic never fades.

  An island in the greenest sea,

  Abode of deeper greenery

  Where giant trees and emeralds grow,

  Where leaves and grass and flowers glow.

  And there no bitter bloom of spite

  To blight the forest’s living light,

  No sword, no spear, no axe, no knife

  To tear the sweetest sprigs of life.

  The deeper life for which we yearn,

  Immortal flame that doesn’t bum,

  The sacred sparks, ablaze, unseen –

  The children of the Galadin.

  Beneath the trees they gloze and gleam,

  And whirl and play and dance and dream

  Of wider woods beyond the sea

  Where they shall dwell eternally.

  After he had finished, Maram rubbed his beard and said, ‘I thought that was just a myth from the Lost Ages.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Master Juwain said.

  ‘Well, wherever we are, it seems that we’ve finally lost the Stonefaces. Val, what do you think?’

  I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to feel for the snake wrapping its coils around my spine. But my whole being seemed suddenly free from any wrongness. Even the burning of the kirax was cooled by the breeze blowing through the woods.

  ‘We might have lost them,’ I agreed. All around us grew fireflowers and starflowers and violets. In the trees, a flock of bluebirds like none I had ever seen was trilling out the sweetest of songs. I had only ever dreamed a place that felt so alive as this. ‘Perhaps they lost our scent.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Maram said, ‘why don’t we celebrate? Why don’t we break out some of your father’s fine brandy that we’ve been toting all the way from Mesh?’

  We all agreed that this was a good idea; even Master Juwain consented to breaking his vows this one time. Atara, who might have chided him for going against his principles, seemed happy at the moment to honor the greater principle of celebrating life. After Maram had cracked the cask and filled our cups with some brandy, she eagerly held her nose over the smoky liquid as if drawing in its perfume. Master Juwain touched his tongue to it and grimaced; one might have thought he was touching fire. Then Maram raised his cup and called out, ‘To our escape from the Stonefaces. Surely these woods won’t abide any evil.’

  Just as he was about to fasten his thick lips around the rim of his cup, a lilting voice called back to him from somewhere in the trees: ‘Surely they won’t, Hairface.’

  A man suddenly stepped from behind a tree thirty yards away. He was short and slight, with curly brown hair, pale skin and leaf-green eyes. Except for a skirt woven of some silvery substance, he was naked. In his little hands he held a little bow and a flint-tipped arrow.

  The unexpected sight of him so startled Maram that he spilled his brandy over his beard and chest. Then he managed to splutter, ‘Who are you? We didn’t know anyone lived here. We mean you no harm, little man.’

  Quick as a wink, the man drew his arrow straight at Maram and piped out, ‘Sad to say, we mean you harm, big man. So sad, too bad.’

  And with that, even as Maram, Atara and I reached for our weapons, the little man let loose a high-pitched whistle that sounded like the trilling of the bluebirds. Immediately, others of his kind appeared from behind trees in a great circle around us two hundred yards across. There were hundreds of them, and they each held a little bow fitted with an arrow.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram cried out. ‘Val, what shall we do?’

  So, I thought, this was why the Stonefaces hadn’t followed us here: we had ridden from one danger into a far greater one. I decided that the woodcraft of these little men must be very great for them to have stolen upon us unheard and unseen. But why, I wondered, hadn’t I sensed them stalking me? Surely it was because in trying to close myself to the Stonefaces, I had also closed myself to them.

  ‘Put down your weapons,’ the man said as I drew my sword. ‘Please, please don’t move.’

  At another of his whistles, the circle of little people began to close around us as both men and women approached us through the trees. It occurred to me that their strategy wasn’t the best, for many of them stood in each other’s line of fire should they loose their arrows at us and miss their marks. And then, after watching the graceful motions of their leader as he stalked me, it occurred to me that they wouldn’t miss their marks. There was nothing to do except put down our weapons as he had said.

  ‘Come, come,’ he told me from in front of a tree where he had stopped ten yards away. The others had now closed their circle some twenty yards around us. ‘Now stand away from your beasts, please – we don’t want to pierce them.’

  ‘Val!’ Maram called to me. They mean to murder us – I really think they do!’

  So did I think this. Or rather, I sensed that they intended to execute us for the crime of violating their woods. It was sad, I thought, that after facing seeming worse dangers together, we should have to die like cornered prey in this strange and beautiful wood.

  ‘Come, come,’ the man said again, ‘stand away. It’s sad to die, and bad to die like this – but it will be worse the longer we put it off.’

  There was nothing to do, I thought, but die as he had said. For each of us, a time comes to say farewell to the earth and return to the stars. Now, at the sight of two hundred arrows pointing at our hearts, each of us faced his coming death in his own way. Master Juwain began chanting the words to the First Light Meditation. Maram covered his eyes with his forearm, as if blocking out the sight of the fierce littl
e people might make them go away. He cried out that he was a prince of Delu and I a prince of Mesh. He promised them gold and diamonds if they would put down their bows; he told them, to no effect, that we were seekers of the Lightstone and that they would be cursed if they harmed us. Atara calmly reached back into her quiver for an arrow. She obviously intended to slay at least one more man and end her life in a joyous fight. I did not. It was bad enough that I should feel the great nothingness pulling me down into the dark; why, I wondered, should I inflict this terrible cold on men and women who sought only to protect their forest kingdom? And so, at last, I stood away from Altaru. I stood as tall and straight as I could. I lifted my hand from the hilt of my sword to brush back my hair, which my sweat had plastered to the side of my face. Then I looked at the man with the leaf-green eyes and waited.

  For a moment – the longest of my life – the little man stood regarding me strangely. Then his drawn bow wavered; he relaxed the pull on his bowstring and pointed straight at my forehead. To the other men and women behind and all around him he said, ‘Look, look – it’s the mark!’

  A murmur of astonishment rippled around the circle of little people. I noticed then that on each of their bows was burned a jagged mark like that of a lightning bolt.

  ‘How did you come by the mark?’ the man asked me.

  ‘It was there from my birth,’ I told him truthfully.

  ‘Then you are blessed,’ he said. ‘And I am glad, so glad, for there will be no killing today.’

  Maram let out a cry of thanksgiving while Atara still held her arrow nocked on her bowstring. The man asked her if she would consent to putting it away; otherwise, he said, his people would have to shoot their arrows into her arms and legs.

  ‘Please, Atara,’ I said to her.

  Although obviously hating to disarm herself, Atara put her arrow back into her quiver and stowed her bow in the holster strapped to her horse.