The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  These were simple and few. I was not to command as would a ship’s captain or a lord. At all times, I was to ask the counsel of my friends in reaching any decision that must be made. And at any juncture in our journey, either along roads winding through dense forests or the even darker paths that lead down through the soul, any of us would be allowed to leave the company at any time. For freely we had come together as brothers and sisters, and freely we must all follow our hearts.

  With my friends all looking at me to decide where we should go, I searched my heart for a long while. And then I drew in a breath and said, ‘We’ll journey to the Tur-Solonu, then. Liljana is right: it is as good a place to begin as any.’

  We then agreed on our most important rule: that whoever first saw and laid hands upon the Lightstone, either at the Tur-Solonu or some other place, would be its guardian and decide what should be done with it.

  We were among the last to leave the palace grounds that night. By the time we said goodbye to Sar Yarwan and the other Valari knights, and Atara bade her father and mother farewell, the sky in die east was brightening to a deep shade of blue. We might have remained as guests in one of the palace’s many rooms, but Atara didn’t want to sleep beneath her father’s roof, and neither did any of the rest of us.

  ‘Let’s get away from here,’ Kane whispered to me. He said that even inside the walled palace of a walled city protected by the armies of Tria’s greatest king, I had nearly been killed. ‘I know an inn down by the docks where we can stay and no one will ask our business.’

  Maram, who knew something of cities, wrinkled his thick brows and asked, ‘But is that safe?’

  ‘Safe?’ Kane said. ‘Ha – no place on Ea is safe for us now.’

  We retrieved our horses and made the short journey through Tria’s deserted streets to the inn that Kane had suggested. It was called the Inn of the Seven Delights, and there we found large, clean rooms, hot baths and good food, if not the other delights promised by the inn’s brightly painted sign. We stayed inside resting all that day and night. And then the following morning we began preparing for our journey to the Tur-Solonu.

  There was much to do. Atara went off with Kane to the horse market just north of the Eluli Bridge, where she purchased a fine roan mare to replace the mount that she had lost fighting the hill-men. Inspired by the red hairs of the mare’s flowing mane, she named her Fire. As well, she and Kane bargained for four more sturdy pack horses. These would bear the supplies we would need to reach the Blue Mountains.

  Kane insisted that we travel lightly, and spoke against burdening the horses with tents or any unnecessary gear. But he also insisted that we pack as much weaponry as possible. Atara, of course, agreed with him. Arrows especially we might lose along the way, and so she went with him to an arrowmaker’s shop, and they laid in a great store of long, feathered shafts. Kane said that Master Juwain, Liljana and Alphanderry should be able to defend themselves at close quarters, and toward that end, he went to the swordmaker’s and selected three cutlasses that they might find easy to wield. Master Juwain, upon beholding his gleaming yard of steel, shook his head sadly and informed us that he would keep his vow to renounce war. Alphanderry said that he would rather sing than fight; but to please Kane, he strapped on his sword all the same. Liljana, too, seemed chagrined at Kane’s gift. She stood holding her cutlass as she might a snake and then said a strange thing: ‘Am I a pirate that I should begin carrying a pirate’s sword? Well, perhaps we’re all pirates, off to take the Lightstone by force. And this age, whatever men may call it, is still the Age of Swords.’

  After that she went about Tria’s streets with her cutlass concealed beneath a long, gray traveling cloak. It was she, with Maram’s help, who took charge of laying in the food and drink for our journey. During the next two days they visited various shops near the river and gathered up dried apples, dried beef and dried salt cod as thin and hard as wooden planks. As well they bought casks of flour to be used to make hotcakes or to bake into bread. There were the inevitable battle biscuits wrapped in wax paper, and walnuts and almonds that had come from Karabuk. And much else. Since we would be traveling through a country of rivers and streams, there was no need for the horses to carry water. But Maram, from his own pocket, bought casks of other liquids to set upon their backs: brown beer from a little brewery near the docks and some good Galdan brandy. Such spirits, he said, would warm our hearts on cold nights, and I agreed with him. To my surprise, Kane and the others – even Master Juwain – did, too.

  Our brief stay in the inn was marked by one ugly incident: on our second night there, Kane and I found Atara in the common room winning at dice, which proved to be one of the inn’s seven delights. Her luck had been suspiciously good, and she had turned her few remaining coins into a considerable pile of gold. The men from whom she had won it – big, blond-haired sailors from Thalu who wore their cutlasses openly – didn’t want to let her leave the table with so much of their money. They might have fought her over it but for a wild look that flashed in Kane’s dark eyes, and, I supposed, in my own. As Kane put it, it was far better to warn men off before drawing bright steel from beneath our cloaks. Of course, we couldn’t always hope for such men to back down before us and so keep ourselves concealed. Therefore, he said, we should leave Tria as soon as possible.

  We completed our preparations on the evening of the tenth of Soldru. Although Kane thought it likely that we had evaded any Kallimun priests or others set to spy us out, we couldn’t know this for certain.

  ‘This inn may be watched even now,’ he said as we gathered in the larger of our two rooms. ‘So – it’s certain that the Kallimun will have the gates watched. That will make it hard to leave the city, won’t it?’

  He proposed going down to the docks and renting a boat that might carry us out into the Bay of Belen; thus we might simply sail around Tria and her great walls. But Atara had another plan.

  ‘The gates may be watched,’ she said, ‘but certainly not at night when they are shut.’

  ‘If they are closed, how are we to pass through them?’ Maram asked.

  ‘That’s simple: we’ll open them,’ she said. ‘You see, I have the key.’

  And with that, she drew forth her purse and hefted the clinking gold coins in her hand. Kane smiled at her, and so did I. None of us had really wanted to embark upon a strange boat anyway.

  We waited until midnight and then assembled the horses on the empty street outside the inn’s stable. The nearby shops – that of the sailmaker and the sawyer – were quiet and dark. I greeted Altaru by touching the white star at the middle of his forehead, then pulled myself onto his back. Atara, astride Fire, rode next to me while Master Juwain and Maram with their sorrels took up behind her. Behind them, they trailed the new pack horses, two by two, with Tanar behind them. Liljana and Alphanderry rode near the rear. Liljana’s horse was a chestnut gelding a little past his prime; Alphanderry rode one of the magnificent Tervolan whites, which were famed for their fine heads and proud, arching necks. He called him by the strange name of Iolo. Kane, scanning the street left and right from atop his big bay, took up the point of greatest danger at the very rear.

  And so we set out for the Tur-Solonu. In the stillness of the night, we made our way toward the city’s walls, now gleaming eerily in the light of the moon. The clopping of our horses’ hooves against the cobblestones seemed overloud; it reassured us that we heard no other such sounds, nor even the footfalls of furtive boots in the darkened alleys that we passed. In this poorer section of the city, few people were about: a band of drunken sailors returning to their ships; a street cleaner shoveling up horses’ dung; and the beggars who slept beneath the bridges. None of them paid us much notice or followed us. We made our way north by narrow streets paralleling the much greater River Road. Here, the buildings around us seemed ten thousand years old – and perhaps some of them were. Just to the east of us, Atara told me, were the docks of the King’s Fleet and the ancient fortresses that housed th
e sailors who manned his warships.

  We passed onto a broad avenue and drew up before the Urwe Gate. The moon had dipped toward the west; it cast a rain of silver light upon the great iron gate set into the wall before us. We sat on our horses hoping that no spies were watching what we did. The street was lined with windowless houses, and the still air smelled of bread baking and the salty tang of the sea. One of King Kiritan’s soldiers, arrayed in full armor, came out of the guardhouse next to the gate, sniffing at the air – and sniffing at us as if trying to suss out our identities. He demanded that we dismount, and this we did.

  ‘The gate is closed!’ he snapped at us. Then he drove the iron-shod butt of his spear against it as if to emphasize the law of the city. ‘It won’t be opened until morning.’

  ‘The gates are meant to keep our enemies out,’ Atara said to him. ‘Not to keep Trians within.’

  ‘And who are you to tell me what the gates are for?’ the guard demanded.

  Atara stepped forward and threw back the hood of her cloak. Then she said to him, ‘I’m Atara Ars Narmada.’

  Although it was hard to tell in the thin light, it seemed that the guard’s face paled like the moon itself.

  ‘Excuse me, Princess,’ he said. He turned to peer at Kane and me, and the others. ‘I’d heard that you’d taken up with strange companions.’

  ‘Strange, hmmph,’ she said. ‘But you’re right that they are my companions. We’ve vowed to make the quest together. Will you let us pass?’

  ‘At this hour? The King would have me flayed if I opened the gates before dawn, even for his own daughter.’

  Atara pointed at the sally port set into the iron of the gate. This gate within a gate – little wider than a horse and about thirty hands high – was meant to allow the Trians to sally out to attack besieging soldiers. At the guards’ discretion, it could also be opened for travelers who might arrive at the city after sunset.

  ‘We would never think to ask you to open the main gate,’ Atara said. Then she pointed at the sally port. ‘But if the King’s knights can pass this way, so can we.’

  The guard stood staring at the sally port – and at us. He said, ‘This is most irregular. No one has ever made such a request of me.’

  ‘How long have you stood guard here, then?’ Atara asked.

  ‘It’s almost a year now,’ he said. ‘Ever since I was wounded in Tarlan.’

  ‘And before that – how long have you served the King?’

  ‘Twenty-two years,’ he said proudly.

  ‘What is your name, then?’

  ‘Lorand, they call me.’

  ‘Well, Lorand – do you have a family?’

  ‘Yes, Princess. Five boys and two girls. And my wife, Adalina.’

  ‘You’ve taken wounds in the King’s service,’ Atara said, bowing her head. ‘My father is a great man, but he is not always able to reward his men as they should be. It can’t be easy feeding such a large family on a soldier’s pay.’

  ‘No, Princess, it’s not.’

  ‘Please allow me, then, to reward your loyalty. The House of Narmada won’t forget it.’

  So saying, Atara shook a dozen coins out of her purse and handed them to Lorand one by one. The gold worked a magic almost as deep as that of Master Juwain’s gelstei: it turned the cranky, bleary-eyed guard into an ally anxious to help us leave the city in the middle of the night. He fairly leaped back into the guardhouse where he found an iron key with which to open the sally port. A few moments later, he swung open its creaking door, and the road to the Blue Mountains lay before us.

  ‘Thank you,’ Atara said. ‘Truly, thank you.’

  While Fire nickered impatiently, Atara touched Lorand’s hand and looked him straight in the eye. Then she said, ‘You must have heard what happened at the palace three nights ago. There may be more assassins who would follow us, if they could.’

  ‘But how could they, Princess?’ Lorand said smiling at her. ‘Since the city’s gates won’t be opened until morning?’

  ‘Well, there is always the sally port,’ Atara said, smiling at him. Then she handed him several more coins, and closed his fingers around their heavy weight of gold.

  ‘No – I think opening it once tonight is enough,’ Lorand said, returning her smile. Then he looked down at the coins in his hand and added, ‘More than enough. Go quickly now, and don’t you worry about assassins.’

  And with that, he waved us to pass. We led the horses one by one through the narrow sally port and out onto the road leading away from the walls. The port clanged shut behind us. Then Kane turned to Atara and said, ‘That was well done. I couldn’t have bribed him better myself’.

  In the intense moonlight, Atara’s face suddenly fell sad. ‘It’s the same everywhere. Even on the Wendrush, men love gold too much.’

  ‘So – gold’s gold,’ Kane said. ‘And men are men.’

  ‘Well, I just hope he stays bribed,’ Maram said. ‘The Kallimun priests must have gold, too.’

  ‘Surely they do,’ Atara said. ‘But surely there’s something that the guard must love more than gold.’

  ‘Eh, what’s that?’ Kane asked. ‘The King? The House Narmada?’

  ‘No,’ Atara said as her eyes gleamed. ‘His honor.’

  Liljana, who seemed able to scent out false intentions as she might poison, agreed with Atara that Lorand could be trusted. I decided not to worry. With the world opening out before us into the starry night, I felt wild and free as I hadn’t for a long time. The wind off the unseen sea to the north carried the scent of limitless possibilities while the moon in the west called with its great, silvery face. I whistled to Altaru then, and we mounted our horses, forming up as before. And so, for the love of a different kind of gold, we rode toward the hills shining on the horizon.

  It was a fine, clear night for travel; the moon was waning only three days past full and seemed as bright as a beacon. The road, though not quite so broad as the Nar Road, was a good one, with paving stones set at a contour to shed the rain and mile markers along our way. It led northwest, along the Bay of Belen where there were many fishing villages and little towns.

  These were our first miles on the road together as a whole company and the first true night of the quest. For a long while, we spoke nothing of it. Even so, I felt my friends’ excitement crackling like lightning along a rocky crag. The moon fell toward the earth as the white towers of Tria grew ever smaller behind us and we rode deeper into the beautiful night. Although each of us might have his own reasons for seeking the Lightstone, we moved as with one purpose, as if our individual dreams were only part of a greater dream. And this dream – as old as the earth and indestructible as the stars – like a perfect jewel shone the more brightly with every facet with which it was cut.

  About an hour before dawn, we stopped to take a little rest. We lay wrapped in our cloaks atop a grassy knoll overlooking the ocean. The sight of this great, shimmering water thrilled me and loosed inside me deep swells of hope. I fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing against rocks. I dreamed of the Lightstone: it sat on a pinnacle arising from the foamy surf. There, from this still point above the world, it poured out its radiance as from a deep and bottomless source. I wanted to open myself to this flowing light, to drink it in until I was full and vast as the ocean itself. I dreamed that I could hold whole oceans inside me, and more, perhaps even the sufferings and joys of those I loved.

  When I awoke, the sun was a red disk glowing above the Poru valley behind us, and the sky was taking on the bright blue tones of morning. I sat on the grass looking out at the sea as I remembered my dream. It came to me that my reasons for wanting to find the Lightstone were changing, even as the days of Soldru grew ever brighter and hotter, and spring turned toward summer. It no longer seemed quite so important to gain renown or prove my courage to my father and brothers and the other knights of Mesh. And impressing King Kiritan and thus winning Atara’s hand as my wife was certainly as vain as it was hopeless: even if he someday cons
ented to our marriage, I thought it impossible that Atara would ever kill her hundred enemies and be released from her vows. There remained my deep desire to be healed of the valarda with which I had been born. To wish this only for myself now seemed a selfish and even ignoble thing. In truth, I questioned the very wish itself, for I was beginning to see that my gift might help my friends even as it tormented me.

  Hadn’t I, after Atara had eaten the timana and lay stricken in the Lokilani’s wood, somehow called her back from death? And hadn’t I called to King Kiritan’s compassion and softened his heart toward her? What other possibilities might be lost if the valarda were simply expunged from me like a raging fever that gives visions of the angels along with convulsions?

  Surely the Cup of Heaven held secrets unknown to any man. And surely the unbidden empathy that connected me to others held for me mysteries I might never understand.

  For many years, I had thought of my gift as a door that might be opened or closed according to my will. Some terrible things, such as my killing Raldu in the woods, paralyzed my will and left me open to the greatest of pain. But only three nights before, I had slain Baron Narcavage’s men and suffered something less than the icy touch of their deaths. Was I somehow learning to keep closed the door to my heart even as I struck cold steel into others’? Or was I only hardening, as tender flesh grows layers of callus to bear up beneath the world’s outrages and thorns?

  I didn’t know. But my dream led me to hope that someday, in some mysterious way, the valarda might help me withstand the most violent of passions and emotional storms. I did know that whatever the cost, I must somehow keep myself open to my companions, for I had something vital to give them.

  And I couldn’t not give. They were as my brothers and sisters, and each of them was close to my heart in a different way. Each had weaknesses and even greater strengths that I was beginning to see ever more clearly. This was my gift, to see in others what they couldn’t see in themselves. And in Kane and Atara, no less Maram and Master Juwain, was buried a finer steel than they ever knew.