The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  Late that afternoon, as we made camp by a stream running through a pretty vale, he managed to coax the first fire from his stone. We all watched as he knelt over a pile of dry twigs and positioned the gelstei so that it caught what little light the sun drove through the forest’s thick canopy. And it was good that the crystal drank in only a little light. For just as Maram’s whole body trembled excitedly and he let loose a great gasp of wonder, the pointed end of the crystal erupted with a bolt of red flame. It shot like lightning into the firepit, instantly igniting and consuming the tinder, and turning it to black ash. The pit’s stones cast the fire straight back into Maram’s face so that it burned his cheeks and scorched his eyebrows. But he seemed not to mind this chastisement, or even to feel it. He jumped away from the pit and thrust his crystal toward the sky as he cried out, ‘Yes! Oh, my Lord, yes – I’ve done it!’

  After that, we all decided that Kane should stand over Maram whenever he practiced summoning the fires of the red gelstei, and this Kane did. The next morning, as Maram tried to burn holes in an old log just for the fun of it, Kane drew forth his black stone. His black eyes came alive to match the dark glister of his gelstei, but otherwise his whole being seemed to touch upon a place that utterly devoured light. The coldness that came over him chilled my heart and reminded me of things that I wished to forget. But it also seemed to cool the fires of Maram’s crystal. In truth, Maram managed to call from it scarcely more than a candle’s worth of flame – and this only after Kane had gathered his gelstei into his clenched fist. If Maram chafed at having to work with Kane and having his best efforts at firemaking dampened, Kane was wroth. When Maram complained that Kane had gone too far, Kane practically shoved the black gelstei in Maram’s face and growled out, ‘Do you think I like using this damn stone? Too far, you say, eh? What do you know about too far?’

  His words remained a mystery to me until that night when we made our second camp in the mountains. Our two days of traveling had taken us almost all the way across this narrow range; just to the west, below us, gleamed the sea of green that was the Vardaloon. We found a shelf of earth on the side of a mountain overlooking it, and there we made our firepit and set out our furs. Around midnight, just after Alphanderry had finished his watch and gone to sleep, Kane and I stood together gazing at Flick’s whirling form against the backdrop of the stars.

  ‘Too far,’ Kane said again in a low voice, ‘always too far.’

  ‘What is too far?’ I asked, turning toward him.

  He looked at me for a long few moments as his face softened and his eyes seemed to fill with starlight. Then he said, ‘You might understand. Of all men, you might.’

  He smiled at me, and the warmth that poured out of him was a welcome tonic against the chill of the mountains. Then he opened his hand to show me the black gelstei and said, ‘There is a place. One place, and one only, eh? All things gather there; there they shimmer, they whirl, they tremble like a child waiting to be born. From this place, all things burst forth into the world. Like roses, Val, like the sun rising in the morning. But the sun must set, eh? Roses soon die and return to the earth. The source of all things is also their negation. So, this is the power of the black gelstei. It touches upon this one place, this utter blackness. It touches: red gelstei or white, flowers or men’s souls. And whatever fire burns there is sucked down into the blackness like a man’s last gasp into a whirlpool.’

  He paused to stare down at his stone, even as Flick spun faster and flared more brightly. I waited for him to go on, but he seemed caught in silence.

  ‘To use this gelstei,’ I said, ‘you must touch upon this place, yes?’

  ‘So, just so – I must,’ Kane muttered, nodding his head. ‘I cannot, but I must.’

  ‘It is dangerous, yes?’

  ‘Dangerous – ha! You don’t know, you don’t know!’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  His voice fell strange and deep as he looked at Flick and said, This place I have told of – it’s darker than any night you’ve ever seen. But it’s something else, too. Out of it come the sun, the moon, the stars, even the fire of the Timpimpiri. The fire, Val, the light. There’s no end to it. This is why the black stones are the most dangerous of the gelstei. Go too far, touch what may not be touched, and there’s no end. Then instead of negation, its opposite. So, a light beyond light. If a black gelstei is used wrongly in controlling a firestone, then out of it might pour such a fire as hasn’t been seen since the beginning of time.’

  He looked over toward Maram where he slept by the fire holding his red crystal in his hand. Then he stared out at the blazing stars for a long time and said, ‘No, Val, it’s not the darkness I fear.’

  We stood there on the side of the mountain talking of the gelstei as the sky turned and the night deepened. After a while, because he was Kane, the man of stone who also held a deep and brilliant light, I told him of Mithuna’s last words to me.

  ‘There is something there,’ I said as I looked off toward the dark hills of the Vardaloon. ‘Some dark thing, Mithuna said.’

  ‘So, stories are told of the Vardaloon,’ Kane muttered.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘They’re just stories.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  ‘You fear this thing, eh?’

  I continued staring into the night for as long as it took for my heart to beat ten times, then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘So it always is. It’s fear that’s the worst, eh? Well, let’s at least slay this one enemy, if we can.’

  Without other warning, he suddenly whipped his sword from its sheath. So quickly did he move that it seemed to burn the air. I heard its steel hissing scarcely inches in front of my face.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.

  ‘Draw! Draw now, I say! It’s time we had a little practice with these blades.’

  ‘Here? Now? It must be nearly midnight.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s too dark to see.’

  ‘Of course it is – that’s the point! Now draw before I lose my patience!’

  ‘But we’ll wake the others.’

  ‘Let them wake, then, damn it! Now draw your sword!’

  I looked over at our five friends sleeping soundly by the fire. There was little enough ground between them and the wall of thistles and branches we had cut to surround our camp. I looked back at Kane, and the change that had come over him chilled me. He stood glaring at me with his kalama held at the ready. The stars gave off just enough light that I could see it glinting behind his head.

  ‘All right then,’ I said, freeing my kalama from its sheath.

  I should have been grateful that he deigned to fence with me. In all the battles I had fought, in all the duels I had ever watched, I had never seen his like with the sword. He knew things that even Asaru and my father’s weapons master, Lansar Raasharu, did not. And it was his way to hold on to his secrets more tightly than a miser does gold. But now, it seemed, he was willing to share them with me.

  ‘Ha!’ he cried out. ‘Ha, now, Valashu Elahad!’

  His long steel blade leaped out of the dark like lightning from a blackened sky. I barely had a moment to raise up mine to parry it. The clash of steel against steel rang out across the side of the mountain. As I had feared, it brought Atara and the others flying out of their sleep. While Maram waved his crystal wildly in front of his face, Atara made a quick grab for her sword and might have charged toward us if Kane hadn’t called out: ‘It’s only us, now go back to sleep! Or stay up and watch, if that’s what you want!’

  Again, his sword flashed out at me, and again I parried it – by inches, by the shrieking sound of it as much as sight. We stared at each other through the darkness as we each waited for the other to move.

  And move Kane did, suddenly, explosively, attacking me in a fury of slashing steel. For several moments, we whirled about the dark ground, feinting and cutting at each other. Something dark came over him then – or came howling out
of him like a tiger who hunts at night. It knew little of fellowship and nothing at all of the conventions of a friendly fencing match. I stood before Kane with drawn sword, and that was the only thing that mattered to him. In the madness of the moment, in the wildness of his black eyes that I could barely see, I had somehow become his enemy. And I wondered if he had become mine: had Morjin somehow suborned him? Had the Red Dragon’s lies finally found their way to his heart? His sudden and utter viciousness terrified me, for I knew that he would destroy me, if he could.

  ‘Ha!’ he cried out gleefully. ‘Ha – again!’

  If not for my gift of sensing his movements – and the skills that my father had taught me – he might well have killed me then. He struck out with his sword straight toward me again and again, and I managed to dance out of his way or parry his ferocious blows only by the narrowest of distances.

  ‘Again!’ he called to me. ‘Again!’

  And again we circled each other, watching and waiting and exchanging slashes of our swords in a flurry of motion. We dueled thus for a very long time – so long that sweat soaked through my mail and the cool air that I gasped burned my lungs like fire. I lunged about the starlit earth looking for an opening that I couldn’t find. At last, I retreated toward the fire where the others sat watching us. I held up my hand as I shook my head and leaned forward to catch my breath.

  ‘Again!’ Kane cried out. The fire cast its red light over his closely cropped white hair and harsh face.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Atara asked him. She was now clearly alarmed and gripped the hilt of her curved sword in her hand.

  ‘Fight, Valashu!’ Kane roared at me. ‘Don’t hide behind others! Now fight, damn it – fight, I say!’

  I had no choice but to fight. If I hadn’t raised my sword to parry his blow, he would have sent me on to the otherworld. Not even Atara could have moved quickly enough to stop him. The fury of his renewed attack caught me up like a whirlwind. His black eyes flashed in the fire’s glow to the lightning strokes of his sword, and I felt my eyes flashing, too. I felt something else. His whole being burned with one purpose: to cut, to thrust, to tear and rend, to survive – no, to thrive, always and only to live deeply and completely, exultantly, destroying with joy anything that stood ready to destroy him. To know with utter certainty that he couldn’t fail, that a light beyond light would always show him where his sword must strike and an infinite fire pooled always ready to fill his wild heart. His sword touched mine, and I suddenly felt this terrible will blazing inside me. I knew then that the light of it could always drive away any darkness that I feared. This was his first lesson to me, and the last.

  ‘Good!’ he cried out. ‘Good!’

  Zanshin’s timeless calm in the face of extreme danger, I thought, was one thing; but this was quite another. I suddenly found the strength to spring forward and attack him with all the fury he had directed at me. The steel of my kalama caught up the starlight as I whirled the long blade at him. For a moment, it seemed that I might cut through his defenses. But he had more cunning and was better with the sword than I. He slipped beneath my blow and leaped forward with an unbelievable speed. And I suddenly found the point of his sword almost touching my throat.

  ‘Good!’ he cried out again. ‘Very good, Valashu! That’s enough for one night, eh?’

  After that, he put away his sword and came forward to embrace me. Then I stood back looking at him.

  ‘You would have killed me, wouldn’t you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Would I have?’ he said, almost to himself. Then his gaze hardened, and he growled, ‘So – I would have, if you hadn’t fought with all your heart. This quest of ours is no practice session, you know. We may only have one chance to gain the Lightstone, and we’d damn well better be ready to take it.’

  I went to sleep thinking about what he had said to me – and taught me. I awoke the next morning strangely eager to cross blades with him again. But it was a day for travel into an unknown land. Kane promised another round of swordplay that evening if I were willing, and I had to content myself with that.

  And so we went down into the Vardaloon. The path we had been following took us into a hilly country at the very edge of it. But soon the ground leveled out into a lowland of little streams and still ponds. Although the forest was rather thick here, we had no trouble making our way through it. The elms and oaks were familiar friends; birds sang in their branches, while beneath them shrubs such as lowbush blueberries were heavy with fruit and promised a welcome addition to our meals.

  And yet, there was something disquieting about these woods. The air was too warm and close, and too little light found its way through the unbroken cover of leaves. The squirrels who made their home here were rather sluggish in their motions and seemed too thin. A doe that crossed our path bounded out of the way too slowly; neither were her eyes as bright as they should have been. That there should have been a path at all in woods where no one had lived or gone for thousands of years disturbed us all. Perhaps, I thought, it was only an ancient game trail.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Maram said as we stopped to catch our breath, ‘it is used by people.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Kane said. ‘I’ve never heard of people living in the Vardaloon.’

  ‘They must,’ Maram said as he slapped a mosquito that had landed on the side of his sweating neck. And then he waved his hand at another hovering near his ear. ‘How else are these bloodsuckers fed?’

  We resumed our journey, riding in order along the path as it wound its way west through the trees. We saw no people but there were plenty of mosquitoes, even in the full warmth of the day. They clung to the leaves of the bushes and took to the air in whining swarms as we brushed by them. They bedeviled our mounts as well, biting their ears and choking their nostrils. The dark woods soon filled with the sounds of slapping hands and horses snorting.

  ‘I was wrong, Val,’ Maram called from behind me. His big voice filled the spaces between the tall trees around us; it almost drowned out the whumph of Altaru’s hooves and the whine of the mosquitoes biting us. ‘People couldn’t live here. And neither can we. Perhaps we should turn back.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Kane called from behind him farther down the path. ‘No one ever died from a few mosquitoes!’

  ‘Then I’ll be the first,’ Maram complained. He sighed and said, ‘Well, at least they can’t get any worse.’

  But that evening, as we made camp near some pretty poplars at least a hundred feet high, they got worse. With the bleeding away of the thin sunlight from the forest, the mosquitoes came out of the bushes like demons from hell. They sought us out in swarms of swarms, and now I began to fear that they might really kill us, draining us of blood or filling our noses and mouths so that we couldn’t breathe. If not for an ointment made of yusage that Master Juwain found in his wooden chest, we might have been helpless before their onslaught. We lathered the reddish ointment over our faces, hands and necks, quickly exhausting Master Juwain’s supply. While it didn’t keep the mosquitoes from biting us and certainly didn’t drive them off, it seemed that they attacked us in somewhat fewer numbers and with slightly less viciousness.

  ‘I’ve never seen mosquitoes like these!’ Maram said, waving his firestone and slapping at his face. ‘They can’t be natural!’

  He sat with the rest of us between three smoky fires that he had built. We were all hunched over with our cloaks pulled tightly around our faces as we now choked on the thick streams of smoke that wafted this way and that. But it was better than being stung by the mosquitoes.

  ‘They’re just hungry,’ Kane muttered to Maram. ‘If you were that hungry, you’d carve up your own mother for dinner.’

  At any other time, Maram might easily have found a riposte to Kane’s jibe. But now it seemed to drive him into a sullenness and self-pity that he couldn’t shake. Master Juwain tried to cheer him by reading an uplifting verse from the Book of Ages, but Maram waved his hand at his too-blithe words as if warding off yet another assault
of mosquitoes. Liljana made him some mint tea sweetened with honey the way he liked it, but he said that the evening was too hot for tea. He even refused the cup of brandy that Atara brought him. And when Alphanderry brought out his mandolet and struck up a song, Maram complained that he couldn’t hear the music against the whining of the mosquitoes’ wings in his ears.

  ‘We’re all miserable,’ I said as I came over and knelt by his side. ‘Don’t make it worse.’

  ‘What shall I do, then?’

  I walked off toward the stream and returned a few moments later with a large, round rock. I handed it to Maram and said, This is a beautiful thing, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s a rock, Val,’ he said, looking at it dubiously.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is. But don’t you think it has a beautiful shape?’

  ‘Ah, I suppose so.’

  ‘It lacks only one thing, though.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘A hole.’

  ‘A … hole?’ He looked at me as if my head were full of holes.

  ‘Yes, a hole,’ I told him. ‘Someday, when we return to Mesh with the Lightstone and tell the story of our journey, we’ll show this as well. And everyone will marvel at the rocks of the Vardaloon that have holes in them.’

  Maram’s eyes shone with a sudden understanding as he hefted the rock in his hand and tapped it with his firestone.

  ‘Make me a hole,’ I said, smiling at him.

  ‘All right,’ he said, smiling back. ‘For you, my friend, I’ll make the most beautiful hole you’ve ever seen.’

  And with that, he bent over it and went to work. There was just enough light left in the woods to bring his gelstei alive and summon forth a thin stream of flame. It melted out a little bit of rock before the light failed altogether, and with it the firestone. But Maram had the beginnings of a hole to show for his efforts, and this pleased him greatly. And it distracted him, for the moment, from the murderous mosquitoes.