The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  ‘What are you doing?’ Atara asked, coming over to my side. Kane, Maram and Liljana crowded inside the doorway. The others, along with the scryers, stared at me from outside to see if I had fallen mad.

  A moment later, I withdrew my bleeding hand and stood back from the wall so that I could better see inside the crack. But the golden cup was gone.

  ‘It was here!’ I said. The Lightstone was here!’

  Again, I thrust my arm into the crack, but it was as empty as the space between the stars.

  ‘I don’t understand!’ I half-shouted, looking into the crack again.

  Mithuna stepped inside the doorway then and touched my shoulder. She said, ‘Scryers often see things that others do not.’

  ‘But they don’t see things that are not, do they?’

  ‘That’s true,’ she said.

  ‘Besides, I’m no scryer.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said. Her face drew out long and sad as she admitted, ‘I don’t understand this either.’

  Atara took my bloody hand in hers as she used her other to touch the bottom of the crack. She said, ‘The Lightstone isn’t here, Val.’

  ‘Where is it, then?’

  She let go of my hand suddenly as she pointed toward the stairs and said, ‘It’s there.’

  Without warning, she broke away from me and began climbing the stairs. In truth, she practically bounded up them three at a time. There was nothing to do except follow her.

  And so we all raced up the winding stairs, Mithuna and Kane following me, while Maram puffed heavily behind him. Liljana, Alphanderry and Master Juwain were slower to begin their ascent, but climbed the more quickly to catch up. And the five scryers waited for us outside.

  When Atara reached the broken opening that was now the top of the Tower, she paused on the highest step to gasp for air. I stood just below her, gasping too. For there, poised on the melted marble of the outer wall, was the Lightstone.

  ‘Atara,’ I said as before, ‘look!’

  I lunged forward to grasp it before it could disappear, but it suddenly winked into nothingness before my hands could close around it.

  ‘Atara, please come down!’ Mithuna suddenly called. She was standing with Kane and Maram just below me. In the narrow space of the stairwell, there was room for three people on any step, but no more. Now Master Juwain, Liljana and Alphanderry crowded in behind Maram and looked up at Atara.

  ‘The Singing Caves did speak the truth,’ Atara said. She carelessly rested her hand against the Tower’s broken outer wall as she looked out at the mountains and sky.

  ‘“If you would know where the Gelstei was hidden,”’ Alphanderry reminded us, ‘“go to the Blue Mountains and seek in the Tower of the Sun.”’

  ‘If we would know,’ Atara said. She stood with the wind whipping her hair about her face. ‘If I would.’

  She suddenly held her hands out toward the earth as she lifted back her head and gazed straight up into the sky. If her third eye was a door, she flung it wide open then. I felt her do this. And so, it seemed, did Mithuna.

  ‘No, Atara – you don’t know what you’re doing!’ Mithuna said.

  But Atara was a warrior and as wild as the wind. She opened herself utterly to the invisible fires that streamed up through the Tur-Solonu. And then she let out a soft cry as her eyes rolled back into her head. She lost her balance and teetered at the edge of the Tower’s wall. I moved quickly then to grab her back and clasp her to me; if I hadn’t, she would have fallen to her death.

  ‘Take her down from here!’ Mithuna told me. ‘Please!’

  I lifted Atara in my arms and followed the others down through the Tower. Atara’s eyes were now staring out at nothing, and she was breathing raggedly. I lost count of the Tower’s steps, but there were many of them. By the time we reached the bottom, my arms were trembling with the weight of her body.

  ‘Bring her over there!’ Mithuna said, pointing at a standing stone in the direction of the temple. I and the others followed her a hundred yards over the swishing grass, where we sat Atara back against the huge stone.

  ‘Atara!’ Mithuna said, as she knelt beside her.

  I knelt by her other side and tried to call her back to the world even as I had after she had eaten the timana. But the trance into which she had fallen, it seemed, was too deep.

  Now Mithuna reached into the pocket of her robe and removed a clear, crystalline ball the size of a large apple. She pressed it into Atara’s hands. The crystal, which sparkled like a diamond, caught the light of the sun and cast its brilliant colors into Atara’s eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Maram asked. He stood with Kane and the others peering above the half-circle that the scryers made around Atara. ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘Quiet now!’ Kane barked at him. ‘Quiet, I say!’

  At that moment, Flick appeared above Atara’s head and spun about with a slowness that I took to be concern.

  And then little by little, as all our breaths came and went like the whooshing of the wind, the light returned to Atara’s eyes. She sat staring deep into the crystal.

  ‘What is that?’ Maram whispered to Master Juwain as he pointed at the crystal. ‘A scryer’s sphere?’

  ‘A server’s sphere indeed,’ Master Juwain whispered back. ‘Usually they’re made of quartz – and more rarely, diamond.’

  ‘That’s no diamond, I think,’ Liljana said as she pressed closer to look at the sphere. Something inside her seemed to be sniffing at it as she might a glass of wine.

  Just then a shudder ran through Atara’s body as her eyes blinked and she looked away from the crystal. She turned toward Mithuna and said, ‘Thank you.’

  She looked at me for a long moment and smiled before turning her gaze on Kane, Maram, Liljana, Alphanderry and Master Juwain.

  ‘That’s a kristei, isn’t it?’ Liljana said to Mithuna as she pointed at the crystal. ‘A white gelstei.’

  ‘It is a kristei,’ Mithuna said. ‘It was brought here long ago and has been passed down among us from hand to hand.’

  The white gelstei, I remembered, were the stones of seeing. Through the clarity of such crystals, a scryer might apprehend things far away in space or time. It was said that during the Age of Law, each scryer had her own kristei. But now, only a very few did.

  ‘Looking into the future,’ Mithuna explained, ‘is like gazing up into a tree that grows out toward the stars and has no end. The possibilities are infinite. And so it is easy to become lost in the branches of such visions. The kristei helps a scryer find the branch she is seeking. And find her way back to the earth.’

  That was as clear an explanation of scrying as I was ever to hear from a scryer. Everyone looked at Atara then as I asked her, “What did you see?’

  ‘The Sea People,’ she told me. ‘Wherever I looked for the Lightstone, I saw them.’

  ‘Do they have the Lightstone, then?’

  ‘That’s hard to say. I couldn’t see that.’

  ‘Do you think they might know where it is, then?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I only know that all the paths I could find led toward them.’

  ‘Yes, but led where?’

  Atara didn’t know. The paths to the future, she said, were not like those that led through the lands of Ea. Although she’d had a clear vision of the Sea People, she couldn’t tell us where we might find them.

  ‘I’m afraid that no one knows anymore where the Sea People live,’ Master Juwain said.

  ‘We know,’ Mithuna said. ‘You’ll find them at the Bay of Whales.’

  We all looked at her as Maram let loose a long groan. The Bay of Whales lay at the edge of the Great Northern Ocean at least a hundred miles northwest across the great forest known as the Vardaloon.

  ‘Are you sure they’re there?’ Maram asked Mithuna. ‘Have you seen them?’

  ‘Songlian has,’ Mithuna said. She nodded at the shy young woman who smiled at us in affirmation of past visions. ‘We’ve kn
own about the Sea People for some time.’

  Atara turned toward me and smiled, and I traded a knowing look with Kane. And Maram groaned again, louder this time, and said, ‘Oh, no, my friends, please don’t tell me that you’re thinking of journeying to this Bay of Whales!’

  We were thinking exactly that. It now seemed certain that we wouldn’t find the Lightstone at the Tur-Solonu.

  ‘But I’d hoped we would end our quest here!’ Maram said. “We can’t just go tramping all over Ea!’

  ‘Not all over Ea,’ I said. ‘Only a few more miles.’

  We were all disappointed that we had gained nothing more in the Tower than a vision as to where the Lightstone might still be found. But none of us – not even Maram – was ready to break his vows and abandon the quest so soon. And so we held a quick council and decided to set out for the Bay of Whales the next day.

  ‘I believe that would be your wisest course,’ Mithuna told us.

  Atara, who had now gained the strength to stand up, handed the crystal sphere back to her and said, ‘Thank you for lending me this.’

  Mithuna reached out her hands, and squeezed Atara’s fingers the more tightly around the sphere. She said, ‘But, dear child, this is our gift to you. If you really hope to find the Cup of Heaven, you’ll need this more than I.’

  The sunlight glazing off the crystal was so bright that it dazzled all of our eyes. For a moment, it seemed that Atara might disappear through its sparkling surface. And then she said, ‘No, this is too much.’

  ‘Please take it,’ Mithuna insisted. ‘It’s time the kristei passed on.’

  Atara continued staring at the stone. At last, she said, ‘Thank you.’

  This made Mithuna smile. She cast a long, sad look at the broken Tower and told us, ‘It’s said that when the Lightstone is found, the kristei will come into its true power, which is not merely to see the future but to create it. Then the Tur-Solonu will be raised up again. Then a new age will begin: the Age of Light we have all seen and yet feared could never come to be.’

  With that, she leaned forward and kissed Atara upon the forehead. She told us that she and the other scryers would come to say goodbye to us the next morning, and then she walked off with them into the mountains.

  For a while, as the sun dropped down toward their rounded peaks, we all stood staring at Atara’s crystal sphere. There I saw the reflection of the ruined Tower. But there, too, in the shimmering substance of the white gelstei, in my deepest dreams, flickered the form of the Tower as it had once been and might be again: tall and straight and standing like an unbroken pillar beneath the brilliant stars.

  22

  The next morning we packed up the horses and gathered by the river. It was a cool day of big, puffy clouds that drifted slowly past the sun. As promised, Mithuna arrived with the other scryers to say goodbye. They brought cheeses and fresh bread to sustain us on our journey. Although we were grateful for their gift, we needed oats for the horses even more, and this they could not provide. Where we would be going, I thought, we would find no grain and precious little grass.

  ‘The Vardaloon,’ Maram said, shaking his head as he adjusted the saddle of his sorrel. ‘I can’t believe we’re setting out to cross the Vardaloon.’

  We might, of course, have retraced our path back through Iviunn and then proceeded north through Jerolin, hugging the mountains until we reached the sea. And there, we might have kept to the coast as we skirted along the edge of the great forest, all the way to the Bay of Whales. But Jerolin was said to be a Kallimun stronghold. And such a course would also be much longer, and might not even bring us to the end of our quest. After the emptiness of the Tower, I feared dangers that fired up the spirit less than the discouragement of a journey that might seem to have no end.

  ‘There are dangers in the great forest,’ Mithuna whispered to me as I stroked Altaru’s neck. ‘There is something in there.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ I whispered back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mithuna said, looking at Ayanna and the other scryers. ‘We’ve never quite been able to see it – it’s too dark.’

  A shudder rippled through my belly then, and I told her, ‘Please say nothing of this to my friends.’

  But Maram needed no fell words from Mithuna to feed the flames of his already vivid imagination. He looked off toward the mountains to the west as he muttered, ‘Ah, well, if any bears come for us, we’ve cold steel to give them. And if the forest grows too deep, we can always burn our way through the trees.’

  Here he held up his firestone, which gleamed a dull red in the weak morning light.

  Mithuna came over to him and pointed at the crystal. While the other scryers gathered around, and Kane and my friends looked on from where they stood by their horses, Mithuna’s sad voice flowed out above the rushing of the river: You have a great fire in your heart, and now a great gelstei to hold it. But you must use it only in pursuit of the Lightstone – not for burning trees or against any living thing, if you can help it. This we have all seen.’

  To our astonishment, Maram’s most of all, she leaned forward and kissed him full upon the lips. Then she laughed out, ‘I hope you won’t mind leaving me with a little of this fire.’

  After that, she pointed out a path along the river that led up into the woods surrounding the Tur-Solonu. ‘If you follow this west, it will take you over the mountains into the Vardaloon.’

  ‘And then?’ Maram asked.

  ‘And then we don’t know,’ Mithuna said. ‘Farther than that, none of us has ever been. I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own way through the forest.’

  We went among Mithuna and her sister scryers, embracing them and making our final farewell. Then we mounted our horses and lined up in the same order as we had left Tria: I led forth and Kane rode warily at the rear. We left the scryers standing almost in the shadow of the Tur-Solonu as they watched us with cold, clear eyes that seemed as old as time.

  For a few miles, we wound our way along the river through the rising woods. Then the path veered off to the right, where the trees grew thickest in an unbroken swath of gleaming leaves. It was a good path that Mithuna had shown us: wide enough for the horses to keep their footing, if a little overgrown. Its pitch was long and low, cutting as it did along the gentle slopes of one of the long, low Blue Mountains. High passes such as we had crossed from Mesh into Ishka we would not find here. Nor were there jagged escarpments ready to hurl down boulders upon us or biting cold. Our greatest obstacle, I thought, would be the forest itself, for it grew thickly all around us, the elms and chestnuts rising up through mats of oak fern and other bracken. Shrubs such as virburn and brambles made for low, green walls between the trees. If the path hadn’t cut through this dense vegetation, we would have had to cut through it with our swords. Or burn through it with the firestone that Mithuna had said we must not use.

  We traveled all that day through the peaceful mountains. It was quiet in the woods, with little more to listen to than the tapping of a woodpecker or the calls of the occasional thrush or tanager. And we were quiet as we picked our way along the path; our failure to gain the Lightstone drove all of us inside ourselves, there to ask our souls if we really had the courage to keep on seeking unless illness, wounds or death struck us down first. It was one thing, I thought, to make such a vow in the splendor of King Kiritan’s hall, with thousands of shouting people, each of whom was convinced that he was the one destined to find the golden cup. And it was quite another to continue on through unknown lands after suffering great disappointment and the mud and cold of an already long journey.

  And yet we all rode along toward the west in good spirits. We had cause for much faith. Atara’s newly found gift and her vision of the Sea People gave us to hope that she might see our way through to the end of our quest. And we had not left the Tur-Solonu with empty hands. Maram had his firestone and Atara her kristei; with Kane’s black stone and Master Juwain’s healing crystal, that made four of the seven gelstei told of
in Ayondela’s prophecy. Was this nothing more than the rarest of chances? Or could it be that we were the ones destined to set forth into the darkness and win the Lightstone?

  Of course, we all knew that it was not enough simply to have gained these four gelstei. Somehow we must learn how to use them. Toward that end, Master Juwain continued his own private quest of moving the dwelling of his soul from his head to his heart. Often, as we rode through the thick greenery, he would take out his green crystal and hold it up to the swaying leaves as if trying to capture their life-fire and hold it within himself. There, where his blood sang to the music of the birds and all living things, he would find a forest deeper and darker than a thousand Vardaloons. And with the aid of the gelstei he held in his hand, he must find his own way through it.

  Atara had her own paths to negotiate. For her, scrying was a most difficult journey. Standing beneath the stars at night to unlock time’s mysteries came unnaturally to her, for she was a creature of sun and wind and water rushing over open plains. Her temperament inclined her to want to look out upon all things with open eyes and go among the fields and flowers like a wild mare running free. And to leave all peoples or places she came across better for her passing. This was her will, to work her dreams upon the world. But now she had to call upon all her will to enter the otherworld of dreams of the future. And so, as she rode along behind me through the mountains, she brought forth her crystal sphere and fixed her bright eyes upon it. She turned inward into that dark place that she hated to go. And there brought what light she could.

  As for Maram, he regarded his firestone as might a child who has been given a long-desired birthday present. Even while guiding his sorrel down the steepest segments of the path, he kept his crystal always at hand, now waving it about like a sword, now holding it tightly to his chest. He studied its dark, red interior with a diligence he had never applied to the Saganom Elu or the healing arts. He had a great passion to use this crystal, I thought, and I prayed that he had an equally great devotion to using it well.