The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  The Maii sitting on the grass all applauded our feat. In their front ranks, I noticed Piliri, Rhysu and their children smiling at us.

  Then Lady Nimaiu came forward and addressed us, saying, ‘Only in purification can there be truth, beauty and goodness. And the love from which they flow. Do you still seek these qualities, Sar Valashu Elahad?’

  Although she directed this question to me, it was clear that she expected me to speak for all of us. The soft wind just then found its way through the wet kirtle plastered to my body; it seemed as cold and bracing as the lake itself.

  ‘We do,’ I said. I sensed that Lady Nimaiu was testing me, or rather calling me to embrace the truth which the lake’s waters had set so clearly before me. And so I told her, ‘We seek the gold gelstei that is called the Lightstone. We seek the Cup of Heaven that is said to hold these things inside it.’

  At this, Maram began moaning; only the presence of Lailaiu as one of the temple attendants quieted him. Liljana was reluctant to translate my words, but I nodded at her to do so, and she did. And then I showed Lady Nimaiu my medallion and explained the meaning of the various symbols cast into it.

  ‘It is good that you’ve given us the truth so freely,’ Lady Nimaiu said, walking among the others of our company to examine their medallions as well. ‘Allow me to return the favor: yesterday we consulted with the Sea People. They told us of your reason for coming here, that you seek this shining thing you call a gelstei.’

  That the Maii seemed able to speak with the Sea People astonished me, as it did Liljana. She stared at Lady Nimaiu, her hazel eyes full of wonder and envy. She glanced at her figurine and muttered, ‘As it was in the Age of the Mother – then they needed no blue gelstei to talk with the whales.’

  Although she left this untranslated, Lady Nimaiu seemed to understand her all the same. She nodded at her and said, ‘But the Sea People know nothing of a golden cup. Nor do we. There is none such on this island.’

  I sensed that Lady Nimaiu was telling the truth, at least so far as she knew it. The disappointment I felt then was a palpable thing, as if an acid fruit had lodged in my throat. It didn’t help that my friends’ dashed hopes flooded into me as well.

  ‘Perhaps the Lightstone was hidden here long ago,’ I said, ‘and the Maii have forgotten it.’

  I couldn’t help glance at the temple, so great was the bitterness burning inside me.

  ‘I can tell you that you won’t find it there,’ she said. ‘But now you are free to look, in the temple or anywhere else that you please.’

  This news was small consolation, as little satisfying as a promise of delectable foods given a hungry man in place of a meal. I looked at Atara then, and saw that she, too, had almost abandoned her desire to search the temple. I looked at Maram, now lost in the depths of Lailaiu’s eyes, and at Master Juwain, Liljana and Alphanderry. I saw Kane drop his gaze and scowl his frustration at the earth. We had journeyed too long and too far, I thought, and now it seemed that our quest must end here, on this lost island at the edge of the world.

  ‘Now that you have tasted the Mother’s tears,’ Lady Nimaiu went on, ‘you also are free to remain with us as long as you’d like. We would like this, that you live with the Maii forever.’

  I had no power of mindspeaking, but I knew that my friends were all thinking of the vow we had made that our seeking the Lightstone would not end unless illness, wounds or death struck us down first. But couldn’t the body, while not exactly stricken, grow exhausted of a succession of life-draining wounds? Couldn’t the soul sicken? Couldn’t hope die?

  Lady Nimaiu glanced back and forth between Atara and me. Her face was as warm as the sun itself as she told us, ‘You may make your homes here; you may marry, if that pleases you, either among us or each other. The Mother would smile upon your children and call them Maii.’

  Atara looked at me, and the longing in her eyes hurt worse than any poison or sword that had been put into my flesh.

  ‘Ah, I think I understand,’ Maram murmured, still gazing at Lailaiu. ‘I think perhaps the Aryans did come here to conquer. And the Maii conquered them.’

  For a while we stood there in silence, which spread to the crowds of Maii behind us. Now the sun, higher in the sky, was working to dry our garments. Out on the lake, the many swans there floated peacefully beneath its showers of light.

  ‘Perhaps the golden cup is on this island, somewhere,’ Alphanderry said. ‘I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life here searching for it.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Master Juwain said. His clear gray eyes were now full of the sky’s puffy white clouds.

  ‘Nor I,’ Liljana admitted.

  Kane, whom I expected to upbraid us for our faithlessness, lost his fathomless gaze in the blue waters of the lake.

  ‘Atara,’ I said, turning toward her, ‘we have made vows. And you more than the rest of us.’

  I expected this noble woman to affirm that vows must always be fulfilled. Instead she said, ‘A vow is a sacred thing. But life is more sacred still. And I’ve never felt so alive as I do here.’

  ‘Have you seen us remaining here, then?’

  I was sure that she would confuse me with some sort of scryers’ talk as to the different paths into the future tangling like the limbs of a thornbush. Instead, she surprised me, saying, ‘Yes, I have. If we chose this, our lives would be long and happy, blessed with many children. The rest of Ea might go up in flames, but here there would be only peace.’

  Only peace, I thought, looking out into the green pastures of the valley. Wasn’t peace what I truly wanted? Wasn’t this really why I had set out to find the Lightstone in the first place?

  I noticed Lady Nimaiu studying my face, but I feared that I wouldn’t find the answers I sought in her soft, dark eyes which reminded me so much of my mother’s. I didn’t know where to look to find the wisdom that would decide my path. And then I chanced to see Flick glittering above the waters of the lake. His form was that of a whirling, white spiral of stars.

  ‘Our children,’ I said to Atara, ‘would know peace here, yes?’

  ‘Yes, they would,’ she assured me.

  ‘But what of their children? And their children’s children? How long before the Dragon finds this island and destroys everything here?’

  ‘A hundred years, perhaps,’ Atara said. ‘Perhaps a thousand, or perhaps never – I don’t know.’

  ‘And what of the rest of Ea?’ I asked. ‘What of the Wendrush and Alonia and Mesh?’

  Atara had no answer for this; she just stared at me with her diamond-clear eyes that opened upon the future.

  Then I heard inside myself the undying voice, whispering in fire. The same flame, I knew, burned inside Atara and my other friends.

  ‘I can’t remain here,’ I told her.

  Atara’s eyes filled with a terrible sadness. Then she said, ‘Nor I.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Liljana said, looking at Master Juwain.

  ‘Nor I,’ he said as well. ‘I’m afraid the Lightstone will be found – if not by us or others who stood with us in Tria, then by the Red Dragon.’

  And so it went, each of our company passing the ineffable flame back and forth as we remembered our purpose and reforged our wills to fulfill it. Even Maram broke off gazing at Lailaiu and said, ‘I hate to leave this island, but it seems I must.’

  I turned to Lady Nimaiu and said, ‘Your offer that we may stay here is beyond mere graciousness. But we must continue our quest.’

  ‘To find this gelstei that you call the Lightstone?’

  ‘Yes, the Lightstone,’ I said.

  ‘But why would you risk your life for such a thing?’

  I heard in her words a question beneath the obvious question, and I sensed that I was somehow being tested again. And so I asked myself for the thousandth time why this golden cup must be found. The answer, I was now certain, lay not in pleasing my father or brothers nor even winning Atara as my wife. As for my being healed of the valarda and the kirax that quickened my gift,
what did the sufferings of a single man matter? If only I could find the strength, I would accept all the pain in the world and pass on the Lightstone to one more worthy if that meant such as Meliadus would never be born and evil places like the Vardaloon would never blight the world again.

  At last I looked at Lady Nimaiu and said, ‘I would find the Lightstone to heal the lands of Ea and make them like yours. I’d fight all the demons of hell that this might be.’

  After Liljana had translated this, a sad smile broke upon Lady Nimaiu’s face. She bowed her head as if acknowledging the purity of my purpose and finding it distressful even so. And then, as the many people behind us on the lawn began murmuring quiet words of approval, she looked deep into my eyes for a long time.

  ‘You are of the sword,’ she finally said to me, glancing down at the hilt of my kalama. ‘And so if you must fight, you should have a sword to fight with.’

  She took my hand then and led me down the steps to the lake’s edge. I had no idea what her intentions were; perhaps, I thought, she wanted to cleanse me of blood that I must someday spill in pursuit of this dream.

  After taking many deep breaths, she suddenly let go my hand. And then she turned to walk down the steps into the water.

  ‘What is she doing?’ Maram cried out.

  I, too, wondered this, as it seemed did everyone else. Many of the Maii stared at Lady Nimaiu as she took one final breath and disappeared into the lake. Their cries of concern told me that this was no part of any purification ceremony they knew.

  My heart began beating quickly as if it were I who was holding my breath. I peered into the water and thought that I saw Lady Nimaiu swimming down toward a stone altar covered with silt and swaying with strands of lake moss. But then the mountains moved, casting a glow of fire into the sky and causing the earth to tremble. Gleaming ripples cut the lake’s surface making it impossible to see very far into its icy depths.

  ‘Quiwiri Lais Nimaiu?’ a young man behind me half-shouted. Now he and many of his people were on their feet, pointing at the lake and murmuring, ‘Quiwiri Lais Nimaiu?’

  The pressure in my chest grew into a pain almost too great to bear. I couldn’t move, so keen was the cold in my limbs that froze me to the shore gazing at the deep blue water.

  And then, even as the swans suddenly cried out and leapt toward the sky with a great thunder of beating wings, a hand holding a sword broke the lake’s surface. A moment later, Lady Nimaiu’s face appeared as water streamed from her glistening black hair and she gasped for breath. Her feet found the marble steps, and she climbed them one by one, arising out of the lake while she held the sword high above her.

  ‘The Sword of Flame,’ I heard Alphanderry whisper behind me. ‘The Sword of Light.’

  Although I didn’t dare believe that he might be right, I saw that the sword was bright enough to be called that and more. It was long and double-edged like the swords of the Valari; its blade shone more brilliantly than silver, and its edges were so keen they seemed to cut the very rays of the sun.

  While all the Maii stood and the temple attendants stirred excitedly, while my friends looked on and Kane’s eyes blazed like black coals, Lady Nimaiu approached to give me the sword. My hands closed around a hilt of black jade that was carved with swans and set with seven starlike diamonds; a much larger diamond, cut with many sparkling facets, formed its pommel stone. At the sword’s first touch, fire leapt inside me. And something like a numinous flame ran along its silvery blade from the upswept guard to its incredibly sharp point, for it seemed suddenly to flare much brighter. I couldn’t take my eyes from it or let it go. It was very heavy, as if truly wrought of silver or other noble metal, and yet strangely light, as if the sun itself were filling it with its radiance and drawing it toward the sky. I sliced the air with it a few times to get the feel for wielding it; its balance, I thought, was perfect. How such a marvelous weapon had come to be kept beneath the waters of the Maii’s lake I couldn’t imagine.

  Now it came time for Lady Nimaiu to tell of this. Having shaken the water from her dripping kirtle and caught her breath, her hand swept out toward the sword as she recounted this story: Long ago in another age, she said, a Maiian fisherman named Elkaiu had cast out his net hoping to catch some of the silver salmon that swim off the coast of their island. But instead his net snagged on something heavy, and he hauled it in to find the silver sword gleaming among the folds of knotted rope. Elkaiu was amazed, not only because he had found an object for which he had no name, but because the sword bore no mark of rust or tarnish even though it had drifted for untold years along the currents of the salty sea. Elkaiu had brought the sword to his Lady, who had sensed that there was a great power in it. She sensed, too, that it had been cast into the sea to be cleansed, and so she had ordered it kept beneath the lake to continue its purification. The Lady had eventually grown old and died, of course, but she had passed on the knowledge of the sword to her successor. And so it had gone, generation after generation for many hundreds of years, the secret of the sword known only to the various Ladies of the Lake who preserved it. Over the centuries, Lady Nimaiu said, there arose a legend that one day the sword’s true owner would come to take it away.

  ‘And that must be you, Sar Valashu,’ she said as she pointed at my sheathed kalama whose hilt was also carved with swans and stars. ‘And this sword, as you call it, must be the gelstei of which the Sea People told.’

  Yes, I thought as I stared at the shimmering wonder of it, yes, it must be.

  ‘The silver gelstei,’ Master Juwain said, breathing deeply. ‘So this is why we’ve come here.’

  He went on to say that on all of Ea, throughout all the ages, he knew of no greater work of silver gelstei than this sword.

  ‘If,’ he said, ‘this truly is the Sword of Light.’

  For a moment, everyone fell silent as they looked at this long blade gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. Kane, who loved good steel almost more than life, seemed to gaze at it the longest and most deeply. And his eyes burned more brightly than anyone else’s as he said, ‘Alkaladur – so, Alkaladur.’

  Here Alphanderry, standing by his side, rested his hand on his shoulder as he sang out:

  Alkaladur! Alkaladur!

  The Sword of Flame, the Sword of Light,

  Which men have named Awakener

  From ages dark and dream-dark night.

  ‘What words are these?’ Maram asked.

  ‘So, they’re from a much longer song telling of how Kalkamesh forged the Bright Sword,’ Kane said. This was in the time after the First Quest when Morjin had nearly killed Kalkamesh and taken the Lightstone for himself.’

  ‘Do you know the whole song?’ Maram asked Alphanderry. ‘Will you sing it?’

  Alphanderry nodded his head, but then looked at Lady Nimaiu and her attendants who were combing out her tangled hair. It would have been rude for him to sing words that Liljana could have no hope of translating quickly and faithfully enough to be appreciated. But Lady Nimaiu, when apprised of this difficulty, asked Alphanderry to continue. She said that the spirit of the song would come through in his voice, and that was all that mattered. And so she stood smiling encouragingly at Alphanderry as all the Maii turned toward him and he began to sing:

  When last the Dragon ruled the land,

  The ancient warrior came to Mesh.

  He sought for vengeance with his hand,

  And vengeance bitter burned his flesh.

  And yet a finer flame he held,

  The sacred spark, aglow, unseen,

  In hand and heart it brightly dwelled:

  The fire of the Galadin.

  He brought this flame into the realm

  Of swans and stars and moonlit knolls

  Where rivers ran through oak and elm

  And diamond warriors called swords souls.

  To Godhra thus the warrior came

  Beside the ancient silver lake.

  By might of mind, by forge and flame,

  A sa
cred sword he vowed to make.

  Alkaladur! Alkaladur!

  The Sword of Flame, the Sword of Light,

  Which men have named Awakener

  From ages dark and dream-dark night.

  No noble metal, gem or stone –

  Its blade of finer substance wrought;

  Of essence rare and form unknown,

  The secret crystal ever sought.

  Silustria, like silver steel,

  Like silk, like diamond-frozen light,

  Which angel fire has set its seal

  And breath of angels polished bright.

  Ten years it took to forge, ten years

  To shape the crystal, make it whole;

  The blade he quenched in blood and tears,

  And in its length he left his soul.

  A diamond for its pommel stone

  Its swan-carved hilt was blackest jade

  And set with seven gems that shone:

  White diamonds in which starlight played.

  Alkaladur! Alkaladur!

  The Sword of Truth, the Silver Blade,

  Which men have named the Vanquisher

  Of bitter lies that men have made.

  With Aramesh he rode to war

  Upon the Sarburn’s blood-drenched field;

  He charged with knights tween wood and tor,

  His bright avenging sword to wield.

  He sought his foe with beating blood,

  The Beast who stole the Stone of Light;

  Through flashing steel and reddened mud

  Pursued him all the day and night.

  The silver sword, from starlight formed,

  Sought that which formed the stellar light,

  And in its presence flared and warmed

  Until it blazed a brilliant white.

  And there on Sarburn’s battle ground,

  Among the dying and the dead,

  Where lords were killed and kings uncrowned,

  The Dragon saw his doom and fled.