The Lightstone

by David Zindell

  Here Master Juwain looked up from the journal and said, 'Please remember, this was written shortly after Kalkamesh had befriended Sartan and they had entered Argattha to reclaim the Lightstone. That tale certainly wasn't widely known at the time. The Red Dragon had only just begun his torture of Kalkamesh.'

  The stillness of Kane's eyes as they fell upon Master Juwain just then made me recall the Song of Kalkamesh and Telemesh that Kane had asked the minstrel Yashku to recite in Duke Rezu's hall. I couldn't help thinking of the immortal Kalkamesh crucified to the rocky face of Skartaru, and his rescue by a young prince who would become one of Mesh's greatest kings.

  'Let me resume this at the critical point,' Master Juwain said, tapping the journal with his finger. 'You already know how Kalkamesh and Sartan found the Lightstone in the locked dungeon.'

  And so he said that just as he and this mythical Kalkamesh opened the dungeon doors, the Red Dragon's guards discovered them. While Kalkamesh turned to fight them, he said, he grabbed the Cup of Heaven and fled back through the Red Dragon's throne room whence they had come. For this man, who claimed to have once been a High Priest of the Kallimun, had again fallen and was now moved with a sudden lust to keep the Cup for himself.

  And now he reached the most incredible part of his story. He claimed that upon touching the Cup of Heaven, it had flared a brilliant golden white and burned his hands. And that it had then turned invisible. He said that he had then set it down in the throne room, glad to be rid of it - this hellishly beautiful thing, as he called it. After that, he had fled Argattha, abandoning Kalkamesh to his fate. The story that he told me was that he made his way into the Red Desert and across the Crescent Mountains and so came here to our sanctuary. It is difficult to believe his story, or almost any part of it. The myth of an immortal man named Kalkamesh is just that; only the Elijin and Galadin have attained to the deathlessness of the One. Also, it would be impossible for anyone to enter Argattha as he told, for it is guarded by dragons. And nowhere is it recorded that the Cup of Heaven has the power to turn invisible.

  And yet there are those strange burns on his hands to account for. I believe this part of his story, if no other: that his lust for the Lightstone burned him, body and soul, and drove him mad. Perhaps he did somehow manage to cross the Red Desert. Perhaps he saw the image of the Lightstone in some blazing rock or heated iron and tried to hold onto it. If so, it has seared his soul far beyond my power to heal him.

  I am old now, and my heart has grown weak; my varistei has no power to keep me from the journey that all must make - and that I will certainly make soon, perhaps next month, perhaps tomorrow, fol-lowing my doomed patient toward the stars.

  But I before I go, I wish to record here a warning to myself, which this poor, wretched man has unknowingly brought me: the very great danger of coveting that which no man was meant to possess. Soon enough I'll return to the One, and there will be light far beyond that which is held by any cup or stone.

  Master Juwain finished reading and closed his book. The silence in that room of ancient artifacts was nearly total Flick was spinning about slowly near the False Gelstei, and it seemed the whole world was spinning, too. Atara stared at the wall as if its smooth marble was as invisible as Master Aluino's patient had claimed the Lightstone to be. Kane's eyes blazed with frustration and hate, and I couldn't bear to look at him. I turned to see Maram nervously pulling at his beard and Liljana smiling ironically as if to hide a great fear.

  And then, as from far away, through that little room's smells of dust and defeat, came a faint braying of horns and booming of war drums: Doom, Doom, Doom. I felt my heart beating out the same dread rhythm, again and again.

  Maram was the first to break the quiet. He pointed at the journal in Master Juwain's hands and said, 'The story that madman told can't be true can it?'

  Yes, I thought, as I listened to my heart and the pulsing of the world, it is true. 'Ah, no, no,' Maram muttered, 'this is too, too bad, to think that the Lightstone was left in Argattha.'

  DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!

  I looked at the False Gelstei sitting on its stand. I gripped the hilt of my sword as Maram said, 'Then the quest is over. There is no hope.'

  I looked from him to Master Juwain and Liljana, and then at Atara and Kane. No hope could I see on any of their faces; there was nothing in their hearts except the beat of despair.

  We stood there for a long time, waiting for what we knew not Atara seemed lost within some secret terror. Even Master Juwain's pride at his discovery had given way to the meaning of it and a deepening gloom.

  And then footfalls sounded in the adjoining chamber. A few moments later, a young Librarian about twelve years old came into the room and said, 'Sar Valashu, Lord Grayam bids you and your companions to take shelter in the keep. Or to join him on the walls, as is your wish.'

  Then he told, us that the attack of Count Ulanu's armies had begun.

  Chapter 33

  We retreated through the Library's halls and chambers to the infirmary, where I retrieved my helmet and Atara her bow and arrows. There we said goodbye to Master Juwain and Liljana. Master Juwain would be helping the other healers who would tend the Librarians' inevitable battle wounds, and Liljana decided that she could best serve the city by assisting him. I tried not to look at the saws, clamps and other gleaming steel instruments that the healers set out as I embraced Master Juwain. He told me, and all of us, 'Please don't let me see that any of you have returned to this room until the battle is won.'

  The young page who had found us earlier escorted Kane, Maram, Atara and me out of the Library and through the gates of the inner wall. He led the way through the narrow city streets, which were crowded with anxious people hurrying this way and that. Many were women clutching screaming babies, with yet more children in tow, on their way to take refuge in the Library's keep or grounds behind its inner wall. But quite a few were Librarians dressed as Kane and I were in mail, and bearing maces, crossbows and swords. Still more were Khaisham's potters, tanners, carpenters, papermakers, masons, smiths and other tradesmen. They were only poorly accoutered and armed, some bearing nothing more in the way of weaponry than a spear or a heavy shovel. At need, they would take their places along the walls with the Librarians -and us. But they would also keep the fighting men supplied with food, water, arrows and anything else necessary to withstanding a siege.

  The flow of these hundreds of men, with their carts and braying donkeys, swept us down across the city to its west wall. This was Khaisham's longest and most vulnerable, and there atop a square mural tower near its center stood the Lord Librarian. He was resplendent in his polished mail and the green surcoat displaying the golden book over his heart. Other knights and archers were with him on the tower's ledge, behind the narrow stone merlons of the battlements that protected them from the enemy's arrows and missiles. We followed the page up a flight of steps until we stood at the top of the wall behind the slightly larger merlons there.

  And then we walked up another flight of steps, adjoining and turning around and up into the tower itself.

  'I knew you would come,' the Lord Librarian said to us as we crowded onto the tower's ledge.

  'Yes,' a nearby Librarian with a long, drooping mustache said, 'but will they stay?'

  He turned to look down and out across the pasture in front of the wall, and there was a sight that would have sent even brave men fleeing. Three hundred yards from us, across the bright green grass that would soon be stained red, Count Ulanu had his armies drawn up in a long line facing the wall. Their steel-jacketed shields, spears and armor formed a wall of its own as thousands of his men stood shoulder to shoulder slowly advancing upon us. To our left, half a mile away where KhaishanVs walls turned back toward Mount Redruth, I saw yet more lines of men marching across the pasture to the south of the city. And to the right, in the fields across the Tearam, stood companies of Count Ulanu's cavalry and other warriors. These men, blocked by the river's rushing waters, would make no assault upon the wal
ls, but they would wait with their lances and swords held ready should any of Khaishan's citizens try to flee across it. Behind us to the east of the city, Lord Grayam said, between the east wall and Mount Redruth on ground too rough for siege towers or assaults, yet more of the enemy waited to cut off the escape of anyone trying to break out in that direction.

  'We're surrounded,' Lord Grayam told us. He ran his finger along his scarred face as he watched the Count's army march toward us. 'So many - I had never thought he'd be able to muster so many.'

  Out on the plain below us, I counted the standards of forty-four battalions. Ten bore the hawks and other insignia of Inyam and another five the black bears of Virad.

  There were masses of Blues, too, at least two thousand of them, huddled and naked and holding high their axes and letting loose their bone-chilling howls.

  OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLLLL!

  'We should have sent for aid to Inyam,' Lord Grayam said. 'And we might have if we'd had more time. Too late, always too late.'

  From out across the rolling pasture came the terrible sound of the enemy's war drums. It set the very stones of the walls to vibrating: DOOM, DOOM, DOOM! DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

  'No, that wasn't it,' Lord Grayam said to a knight nearby whom I took to be one of his captains. 'I was too proud. I thought that we could stand alone. And now but for Sar Valashu and his companions, we do.'

  Maram looked down at the advancing armies and took a gulp of air as if it were a potion that might fortify him. He seemed to be having second thoughts about joining the city's defense. Then he belched and said, 'Ah, Lord Grayam, as you observed before, I'm no warrior, only a student of the Brotherhoods and -'

  'Yes, Prince Maram?'

  Maram noticed that all the men at the top of the tower were looking at him. So were those along the wall below.

  '- and I really shouldn't remain here, if I would only get in your way. If I were to join the others in the keep, then -'

  'You mean, the women and the children?' Lord Grayam asked.

  'Ah, yes, the ... noncombatants. As I was saying, if I were to join them, then ....'

  Maram's voice trailed off; he noticed Kane had his black eyes fixed on him as did I my own.

  Again he gulped air, belched and rolled his eyes toward the heavens as if asking why he was always having to do things that he didn't want to do. And then he continued,

  'What I mean is, ah, although I'm certainly no swordmaster, I do have some skill, and I believe my blade would be wasted if I had to wait out this battle in the keep -

  unless of course you, sir, deem my inexpertise to be dangerous to the coordination of your defenses and would -'

  'Good!' Lord Grayam suddenly called out, wasting no more time. 'I accept the service of your sword, at least for the duration of the siege.'

  Maram shut his mouth then, having woven a web of words in which he had caught himself. He seemed quite disgusted.

  'All of you,' Lord Grayam said, 'Sar Valashu, Kane, Princess Atara -we're honored that you would fight with us, of your own choice.'

  In truth, I thought, listening to the booming of the drums, we had little choice. Our escape was cut off. And because the Librarians had succored us, especially me, in a time of great need, it would be ignoble of us to forsake them. And perhaps most importantly, Alphanderry's cruel murder needed to be avenged.

  DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

  Maram, gulping again, drew his sword as he looked out one of the crenels of the battlements. He muttered, 'At least there's a good wall between us and them.'

  But the wall, I thought, as I looked down at the Librarians lined up along it, might not provide as much safety as Maram hoped. It was neither very thick or high; the red sandstone its masons had built with was probably too soft to withstand very long a bombardment of good, granite boulders, if the Count's armies had the siegecraft to hurl them. The mural towers, being square instead of round, were also more vulnerable, and the wall had no machicolation: no projecting stone parapet at its top from which boiling oil or lime might be dropped down upon anyone assaulting it.

  Even now, in the last moments before the battle, the city's carpenters were hurriedly nailing into place hoardings over the lip of the wall to extend it outward toward the enemy. But these covered shelters were few and protected the walls only near the great towers at either side of the vulnerable gates. Since they were made of wood, fire arrows might ignite them. To forestall this calamity, the carpenters were also nailing wet hides over them.

  'Sar Valashu,' Lord Grayam said to me as he placed his arm around the Librarian next to him, 'allow me present my son, Captain Donalam.'

  Captain Donalam, a sturdy-looking man about Asaru's age, grasped my hand firmly and smiled as if to reassure me that Khaisham had never been conquered: if not because of her walls, then due to the valor of her scholar-warriors. Then he excused himself, and walked down the tower's stairs to the wall, where he would command the Librarians waiting for him there.

  We, too, took our leave of the Lord Librarian. There was little room for us along the crowded ramparts in the tower. We walked down the stairs, thirty feet to the wall, and took our places behind the battlements. Maram bemoaned being that much closer to the enemy. And with every passing moment, as the drums beat out their relentless tattoo and the first arrows began hissing through the air, the enemy marched closer to us.

  As they drew in upon the city in their lines of flashing steel, the nervousness in my belly felt as if I had swallowed whole mouthfuls of butterflies. I counted the standards of twenty-nine of Aigul's battalions. Among them fluttered the much larger standard of Count Ulanu's whole army, the yellow banner stained blood-red with its great, snarling dragon. Near it, on top of his big brown horse, was Count Ulanu himself. The knights of his vanguard rode with him. Soon enough, I thought, they would let the lines of their men advance forward past them to prosecute the very dangerous assault of the walls. But for the moment, Count Ulanu had the point of honor as the thousands of men on both sides of the wall turned their gazes upon him.

  'Damn him!' Kane growled out beside me. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his soul!'

  Everyone could see that we had hard work ahead of us. Four great siege towers, as high as the walls and with great iron hooks to latch onto them, were being rolled slowly forward across the grass. They were shielded with planks of wood and wet hides; the moment they came up against the walls, many men would mount the stairs inside them and come pouring over the top. Three battering rams, each aimed at one of the west wall's gates, rolled toward us, too. But the most fearsome of the enemy's weapons were the catapults that had now ceased their advance and had begun heaving boulders at the city. One of these was a mangonel, which flung its missiles in a low arc against the wall itself. Even as I drew in a deep breath and grasped the hilt of my sword, a great boulder soared across the pasture and crashed into the wall a hundred yards to the south, shattering its battlements in a shower of stone.

  Now it begins, I thought, with a terrible pulling inside me. Again and. always, it begins.

  As I did before any battle, I built up walls around me. These were as high as the stars and as hard as diamond; they were as thick as the mountains that keep peoples apart. My will was the stone that formed them, and my dread of what was to come was the mortar that cemented them in place. Already, the screams of men hit by flying rocks or pierced with arrows filled the air. But their agonies couldn't touch me.

  'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out, hunched behind his stone merlon next to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'

  Now the archers along the walls, working with crossbows or long-bows, firing from the arrow slits at the centers of the merlons, shot out great sheets of arrows at Count Ulanu's men. Warriors began falling, in their ones and tens, clutching their chests and bellies. And the enemy's archers returned our fire in great black clouds of whining bolts that arched high and fell almost straight down upon the walls in a clatter of steel points breaking upon stone and too often finding their marks in a throat or a hand or an eye.
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  'Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord!'

  Most of the arrows, however, at this range were wasted. The battle-ments provided good cover from their trajectory. More worrisome were the shots fired off by the enemy's most skilled bowmen as their armies drew closer. Perhaps one in ten of these arrows, screaming through the air in straight lines, streaked right through the arrow slits. An archer standing only ten yards from me was killed by one of these. I tried not to look as he practically jumped back from the battlements, a feathered shaft sticking out of his opened mouth and look of vast surprise in his eyes.

  There is no pain, I told myself. Now there is only killing and death.

  We had skilled archers of our own, and none so fine as Atara. She stood beside me, firing off arrows at a rate that the nearby crossbowmen couldn't match. And few could match the range of her powerful double-curved horn bow, and none her accuracy. Every one of her shots struck some man of Aigul or Virad or one of the naked Blues. Some deflected of a curve of armor or a shield; some found their mark in a shoulder or leg, and so did not kill. But as the moments of terror passed, with missiles shrieking out from and toward the walls, she slowly raised her count of the enemy she had slain.

  'Thirty-two!' I heard her call out just after her bowstring had twanged yet again. And then, a few minutes later, 'Thirty-three!'

  Kane, Maram and I might have taken our chances in mis missile duel, but there were too few bows to be spared and even fewer arrows. In any case, the battle would not be decided by archers. When I dared to look out from the crenel beside me, I saw the many men behind the enemy's front lines bearing long ladders. I saw that the Count's armies, even as they tried to batter open the gates, would try to take the city by escalade. It was the most dangerous kind of assault, the most desperate. But then Count Ulanu must be desperate to invest Khaisham before I and the rest of our company found a way to escape.