The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  ‘Atara,’ I said softly, ‘don’t go away.’

  The pain inside me was worse than anything I had ever known. It cut me open like a sword, and I felt the blood streaming out of my heart and into hers. It took forever to die, I knew, while the moments of life were so precious and few.

  And then, as if awakening from a dream, her whole body started. I looked down to see her eyes suddenly open. She smiled at me as her breath fell over my face. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for saving my life again.’

  She struggled to sit up, and I held her against me with her head touching mine and my face pressing her shoulder. My breath came in shudders and quick gasps, and I was both weeping and laughing because I couldn’t quite believe that she was still alive.

  ‘Shhh,’ she whispered to me, ‘be quiet, be quiet now.’

  As I sat there with my eyes closed, I became aware of a deep silence. But it was not a quietening of the world; now the songs of the sparrows came ringing through the trees, and I could almost hear the wildflowers growing in the earth all around me. It was more a silence within myself where the chatter of all my thoughts and fears suddenly died away. I could hear myself whispering to myself in a voice without sound; it seemed the earth itself was calling out a name that was mine but not mine alone.

  ‘Oh, there are so many!’ Atara said to me softly. ‘Look, Val, look!’

  I opened my eyes then, and I saw the Timpum. As Maram had said, they were everywhere. I sat up straight, blinking my eyes. Above the golden leaves of the forest floor, little luminous clouds floated about as if drawing their substance from the earth and returning to it soft showers of light. Among the wood anemone and ashflowers, swirls of fire burned in colors of red, orange and blue. They flitted from flower to flower like flaming butterflies drinking up nectar and touching each petal with their numinous heat. Little silver moons hovered near some cinnamon fern, and the ingathering of white sparks beneath the boughs of the astors reminded me of constellations of stars. From behind rocks came soft flashes like those of glowworms. The Timpum seemed to come in almost as many kinds as the birds and beasts of the Forest. They flickered and fluttered and danced and glittered, and no leaf or living thing in the glade appeared untouched by their presence.

  ‘Astonishing! Astonishing!’ Master Juwain called out again. ‘I must learn their names and kinds!’

  Some of the Timpum were tiny, no more than burning drops of light that hung in the air like mist. Some were as huge as the trees: the trunks of a few of the astors were ringed with golden halos that brightened and deepened as they spread out to encompass the great crowns of leaves.

  Although they had forms, they had no faces. And yet we perceived them as having quite distinct faces – to be sure not of lips, noses, cheeks and eyes, but rather colored with various blendings of curiosity, playfulness, effervescence, compassion and other characteristics that one might expect to find on a human countenance. Most marvelous of all was that they seemed to be aware not only of the trees and the rocks, the ferns and the flowers, but of us.

  ‘Look, Val!’ Maram called to me. He stood above the table as he brushed the folds of his tunic. ‘These little red ones keep at me like hummingbirds in a honeysuckle bush. Do you see them?’

  ‘Yes – how not?’ I told him.

  All about him were Timpum of the whirling fire variety, and their flames touched him in tendrils of red, orange, yellow and violet. I turned to see a little silver moon shimmer in front of Atara for a moment as if drinking in the light of her bright blue eyes. And then I blinked, and it was gone.

  ‘They seem to want something of me,’ Maram said. ‘I can almost hear them whispering, almost see it in my mind.’

  The Timpum seemed to want something from all of us, though we couldn’t quite say what that might be. I looked at Pualani to ask if it was that way for the Lokilani, too.

  ‘The Timpum speak the language of the Galad a’Din,’ she told us. ‘And that is impossible for most to learn. Those that do take many years to understand only the smallest part of it. Even so, we do understand the Timpum sometimes. They warn us if outsiders are approaching our realm or of when we have hate in our hearts. On cloudy nights of no moon, they light up our woods.’

  I looked off into the trees for a moment, and the great, shimmering spectacle before my eyes dazzled me. To Pualani I said, ‘Do your people then see the world like this all the time?’

  ‘Yes, this is how the Forest is.’

  She told me that so long as we dwelled in the Forest, we would see the Timpum. If we some day chose to eat the sacred timanas again in remembrance of the Shining Ones, even as she and the others had eaten them, our vision of the Timpum would grow only brighter.

  ‘If you decide to leave us,’ she said, ‘it will now be hard for you to bear the deadness of any other wood.’

  Just then an especially bright Timpum – it was one of the ones like a swirl of flickering white stars – fell slowly down from the tree above me. It spun about in the space before my eyes as if studying the scar cut into my forehead. It seemed to touch me there with a quick silver light; I felt this as a deep surge of compassion that touched me to my core and brightened my whole being as if I had been struck with a lightning bolt. Then, after a moment, the flickering Timpum settled itself down on top of my head. Maram and the others saw it shimmering in my hair like a crown of stars, but I could not.

  ‘How do I get it off me?’ I asked as I brushed my hand through my hair and shook my head from side to side.

  ‘Why would you want to?’ Pualani asked me. ‘Sometimes a Timpum will attach itself to one of us to try to tell us something.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Only you will ever know,’ she said as she gazed above my head. Then she told me, ‘I think the “why” of your coming to our woods has finally been answered, however. You are here to listen, Sar Valashu Elahad. And to dance.’

  And with that she smiled at me and rose from the table. This seemed a signal that Elan and Danali – and all the other Lokilani at the other tables – should rise, too. Along with Pualani, they came over to Atara, Master Juwain, Maram and me. They touched our faces and kissed our hands and congratulated us on eating the timanas and surviving to see the Timpum. Then Danali began singing a light, happy song while many of his people clapped their hands to keep time. Others began dancing. They joined hands in circles surrounding circles and spun about the forest floor as they added their voices to Danali’s song. I found myself clasping hands with Atara and Maram, and turning with them. Although it was impossible to touch a Timpum, their substance being not of flesh but the fire of angels, there was a sense in which they danced with us and we with them. For they were everywhere among us, and they never stopped fluttering and sparkling and whirling about the golden-leafed trees.

  Much later, after the sun had set and the Timpum’s eyeless faces lit up the night, I took out my flute and joined the Lokilani in song. The Lokilani marveled at this slender piece of wood for they had never imagined music could be made this way. I taught a few of the children to play a simple song that my mother had once taught me. Atara sang with them, and Maram, too, before he took Iolana’s hand and stole off into the trees. Even Master Juwain hummed a few notes in his rough old voice, though he was more interested in trying to ferret out and record the words of the Timpum’s language.

  I, too, wished to understand what they had to tell me. And so, even as Pualani had said, I stayed awake all night playing my flute and dancing and listening to the fiery voices that spoke along the wind.

  15

  Our vision of the Timpum did not fade with the coming of the new day. If anything, in the fullness of the sunlight, their fiery forms seemed only brighter. It was impossible to look at them very long and imagine a life without them.

  After a delicious breakfast of fruits and nutbread, Atara and I held council with Master Juwain and Maram. We stood by a stream not far from our house, inhaling the fragrance of cherry blossoms and marveling at the splend
or of the woods.

  ‘We must decide what to do,’ I said to them. ‘By my count, tomorrow will be the first of Soldru, and that gives us only seven more days to reach Tria.’

  ‘Ah, but do we even want to go to Tria?’ Maram asked as he stared at an astor sapling. ‘That is the question.’

  ‘There’s very much to be learned here,’ Master Juwain agreed. ‘Very much more still to be seen.’

  Atara smiled, and her eyes shone like diamonds. She said, ‘That’s true – and I would like to see it. But I’ve pledged myself to journey to Tria, and so I must go.’

  ‘Perhaps we could stay here only a few more days,’ Maram said. ‘Or a few more months. Tria will still be there in Ioj or Valte.’

  ‘But we would miss the calling of the quest,’ Atara said.

  ‘So what if we do? The Lightstone has been lost for three thousand years. Likely it will remain lost for three more months.’

  ‘Unless, by chance,’ I said, ‘some knight finds it first.’

  ‘By a miracle, that would be,’ Maram said.

  I pointed at the crown of lights that had floated from the top of my head and now hovered nearby over a blackberry bush. There, among the little ripe fruits, twinkled many Timpum that looked something like fireflies.

  ‘Does it seem to you that the world lacks miracles?’ I asked.

  ‘No, perhaps it doesn’t,’ he admitted. His large eyes gleamed as if he were intoxicated – not with wine or even women but with pure fire.

  ‘There’s one miracle that I would like explained,’ Master Juwain said to me. ‘What happened last night between you and Atara?’

  I looked at Atara a long moment before she answered him. ‘After I ate the timana,’ she said, ‘I saw the Timpum almost immediately. It was like a flash of fire. It was so beautiful that I wanted to hold it forever – but can one hold the sun? I felt myself burning up like a leaf caught in the flames. And then I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was dying. Everything was so cold. It was like I had been buried alive in a crystal cave, so cold and hard, and everything growing darker. I would have died if Val hadn’t come to take me back.’

  ‘And how did he do that?’ Master Juwain asked.

  Again, Atara looked at me, and she said, ‘I’m still not sure. Somehow I felt what he felt for me. All his love, his life – I felt it breaking open the cave like lightning and burning into me.’

  Now Master Juwain and Maram looked at me, too, as the bluebirds sang and the Timpum glittered all about us. And Master Juwain said, ‘That sounds like the valarda.’

  Master Juwain’s use of this word, utterly unexpected, fell out of the air like lightning and nearly broke me open. How did he know the name of my gift that Morjin had spoken to me? For many miles, I had wondered about this strange name, as I wondered about Master Juwain now. But he just smiled at me in his kindly but proud way, as if he knew almost everything there was to know.

  It seemed that the time had finally come to explain about my gift, which they had already suspected lay behind my sensing of the Stonefaces and the other strangenesses of my life. And so I told them everything about it. I said that I had been born breathing in others’ sufferings and their joys as well. I revealed my dream of Morjin and how he had prophesied that one day I would use my gift to make others feel my pain.

  ‘It would appear,’ Master Juwain said, looking from Atara to me, ‘that you also have the power to make people feel much else.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But this is the first time this has happened. It’s hard to know if it could ever happen again.’

  ‘You say you are able to close yourself to others’ emotions. Then surely it follows that you should be able to open them to yours.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said again. I didn’t tell him that in order to do this, first I would have to open myself to the passions that blazed inside me, and that this was more terrifying than facing a naked sword.

  ‘You should have come to us long ago,’ Master Juwain told me. ‘I’m sure we would have been able to help you.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  The Brotherhoods taught meditation and music, herbology and healing and many other things, but so far as I knew they knew nothing of this sense that both blessed and tormented me.

  ‘Your gift is very rare, Val, but not unique. I read about it in a book years ago. I’m sure that there must be other books that could instruct you in its development and use.’

  ‘Does one learn to play the flute from a book?’ I asked him. I shook my head and smiled sadly. ‘No, unless there is another who shares my affliction, there is only one thing that can help me.’

  ‘You mean the Lightstone, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, the Lightstone – it’s said to be the cup of healing.’

  If I could feel the fires that burned inside others and touch them with my own, then surely that meant there was a wound in my soul that allowed these sacred and very private flames to pass back and forth. This one time, perhaps, they had touched Atara and brought her back from the darkness. But what if the next time, through rage or hate, whatever was inside me flashed like real lightning and struck her dead?

  Maram, who always understood so much without being told, came up to me and placed his hand above my heart. ‘I think that this gift of yours must be like living with a hole in your chest. But Pualani healed you of the wound that Salmelu made. Perhaps she can heal this wound, too.’

  Later that day, I went to Pualani’s house to ask her about this. And there, inside a long door garlanded with white and purple flowers, she took my hand and told me, ‘In the world, there are many sights that are hard to bear. Would you wish to be healed of the holes in your eyes so that you didn’t have to see them?’

  She went on to say that my wound, as I thought of it, was surely the gift of the Ellama. I must learn to use it, she said, as I would my eyes, my ears, my nose or any other part of me. If finding the Lightstone would help me in this, then I should seek it with all my heart.

  That night in our house, I told Maram and Master Juwain that I must leave for Tria the next day.

  ‘There will be knights from all the free kingdoms there,’ I explained. ‘Scryers and minstrels, too. One of them might tell of a crucial clue that would lead to the Lightstone.’

  ‘I agree,’ Atara said. ‘In any case, King Kiritan will call all the questers to make vows together, and we should be there to receive his blessings.’

  Master Juwain saw the sense of both these arguments, and agreed that we should all continue on to Tria together. Maram, when he saw that our minds were made up, reluctantly said that he would come with us as well.

  ‘If you go without me,’ he said, ‘I’ll never find either the strength or courage to leave these woods.’

  ‘But what about Iolana?’ I asked him. ‘Don’t you love her?’

  ‘Ah, of course I do,’ he said. ‘I love the wine that the Lokilani serve, too. But there are many fine wines in the world, if you know what I mean.’

  Maram’s fickleness obviously vexed Atara, who said, ‘I know little of wines. But there can’t be another fruit on all of Ea like the timana.’

  ‘And that is my point exactly,’ Maram said. ‘When I find the one wine that is to lesser vintages as the timana is to the more common fruits, I shall drink it and no other.’

  The next morning 1 put on my cold armor and told Pualani that we would be leaving. After we had burdened the pack horses with a good load of fruit and freshly baked nutbread that the Lokilani provided us, we saddled Altaru and our other mounts. And then there, in the apple grove where they were tethered, the whole Lokilani village turned out to bid us farewell.

  ‘It’s sad to say goodbye,’ Pualani told us. She stood beneath a blossom-laden bough with Elan, Danali and Iolana, who was weeping. Around them stood hundreds of men, women and children, and around all the Lokilani – everywhere in the grove – flickered the forms of the Timpum. ‘And yet maybe some day you’ll return to us as we all hope you will.
’

  From the pocket of her skirt, she removed a green jewel about the size of a child’s finger. She pressed it into Master Juwain’s gnarly old hand and said, ‘You’re a Master Healer of your Brotherhood. And emeralds are the stones of healing; they have power over all the growing things of the earth. If you should take wounds or illness, from the Earthkiller or any other, please use this emerald to heal yourselves.’

  Master Juwain looked down at the gleaming emerald as if mystified. Then Pualani touched him lightly on his chest and said, ‘There’s no book that tells of this. To use it, you must open your heart. It has no resonance with the head.’

  Master Juwain’s bald head gleamed like a huge nut as he bowed and thanked her for her gift. Then she kissed him goodbye, and all the Lokilani, one by one, filed past us to touch our hands and kiss us as well.

  ‘Farewell,’ Pualani told us. ‘May the light of the Ellama shine always upon you.’

  Danali, with twenty or so of the Lokilani, had prepared an escort for us. As before, they each carried bows and arrows, but this time no one spoke of binding our hands. Because I thought it would be unseemly to mount our horses and sit so high above them when we already towered over them merely as we stood, we agreed to walk our horses through the Forest. Danali and the Lokilani led off while I followed holding Altaru’s reins in my hand. Master Juwain and Maram came next, trailing both their sorrels and the pack horses. Atara walked next to Tanar in the rear.

  It was a lovely morning, and the canopies of the astors shone above us like a dome of gold. The air smelled of fruits and flowers and the leaf-covered earth. Many birds were singing; their music seemed to pipe out in perfect time with the tinkling of the little stream that Danali followed. I thought that he was leading us west, but in the Forest I found my sense of direction dulled as if I had drunk too much wine.

  We walked as quietly as we could in the silence of the great trees. No one spoke, not even to make little conversation or remark the beauty of some butterflies fluttering around a blackberry bush with their many-colored wings. An air of sadness hung over the woods, and we breathed its bittersweet fragrance with every step we took away from its center. The Timpum, so brilliant in their swirls of silver and scarlet, seemed less bright as we passed from the stands of astors into the giant oaks. There were fewer of them, too. We all knew that the Timpum could not live – if that was the right word – outside of the Forest. But to see them diminishing in splendor and numbers was a sorrowful thing.