The Lightstone

by David Zindell

  I was certain that it was his rage to capture us that had led him to these tactics. I knew this, as I knew many things now since gaining my silver sword. And Kane seemed to know too. While Atara fired off her arrows and Maram cowered behind the battlements muttering prayers to the heavens, Kane looked at me and said, 'There can be no surrender for us, do you understand?'

  'Yes,' I told him. And then, as a great rock crashed into the wall below us and set the stones to shaking, I said, 'They're going to try to scale the walls.'

  'So, damn them,' he said. He looked down the long expanse of the wall and counted its defenders, who were all too few. He stood dangerously exposed, looking through the crenel as he counted the enemy. 'So, Count Ulanu has the men - if he has the will to waste them,'

  'He has the will,' I said.

  As his armies' lines drew closer, their drums boomed even louder now: DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

  Now a new terror fell upon us as the Aigul archers began shooting off flaming arrows, trying to set the hoardings above the gates, and the gates themselves, on fire.

  This tactic rankled Maram. He clearly regarded this fulminous substance as his prerogative. Astonishing both Kane and me, he suddenly stood straight up as he reached his hand into his pocket.

  'Fire, is it?' he said, taking out his red crystal. 'I'll give them fire!' Kane moved as if to grab Maram's arm, then checked himself. He looked at me, and our eyes told each other that if there was ever a time for using the red gelstei's flame against living flesh, this was it.

  'Be careful!' Kane hissed at him. 'Remember what happened in the Kul Moroth.'

  It was exactly this memory, I thought, which moved Maram to expose himself in the crenel. He knew, as did everyone, what would happen if we did not make a good defense here. And he suddenly saw that he had the power to harm the enemy grievously.

  'I'll be careful,' Maram muttered, gripping his crystal. 'Careful to aim this at Count Ulanu's ugly face.'

  As Maram positioned the crystal and the sun's rays fell upon it, a lancet of fire suddenly streaked out through the air. It fell upon one of Count Ulanu's knights and cut through the mail covering him. He fell screaming from his horse, trying to claw off the rings of molten steel burning into his chest.

  'Ai, a firestone!' another knight called out fifty yards from the wall as he looked up at Maram. 'They have a firestone!'

  This cry, picked up by others along the enemy's lines, practically halted the whole army's advance. Count Ulanu's warriors tried to cover themselves with their shields; they crouched behind their mantelets, those little rolling walls of wood that gave good protection against arrows if not fire. More than a few of them tried to duck down behind those warriors in front of them.

  'Ai, a firestone! A firestone!' came their terrified cries.

  The Librarians along the wall seemed only slightly less frightened by what they beheld in Maram's hand. They stared at him in amazement. Then Lord Grayam called down from the tower above us: 'It's a good thing you stood with us after all, Prince Maram. I wondered about the Kul Moroth. The angel fire you've been given to wield may yet win this batde!'

  But I was not so sure of this. Firestones, as I had learned from my grandfather's stories, were notoriously difficult to wield in battle. And Maram's was an old stone with an uncertain hand upon it. It took a long time in drinking in the sun's rays before spitting them back out as fire. And despite Maram's boast, he had yet to learn to aim his crystal with anything like an archer's precision with bow and arrow. The next bolt of flame loosed from his stone shot out and burned through the grass dozens of yards from Count Ulanu or any

  of his men.

  'Have pity on the poor moles!' Atara called to him, smiling as she reached for more arrows.

  Count Ulanu, too, saw that the terror of Maram's crystal might be worse than its sear. With his captains, he rode along his lines, calling out encouragements and urging his men forward.

  'To the walls!' his voice carried out over the corpse-strewn pasture. 'Be quick now, and we'll take them this very day!'

  Archers on top of the walls fired their arrows at the Count; one of these whining shafts, shot by Atara, struck his shield and embedded itself there. But Count Ulanu seemed undeterred by this hail of death. Along with the knights of his guard, he bravely charged forward into it. Then his warriors from Aigul followed him, and a whole host of the screaming Blues ran toward us, too.

  OWRRULLL! OWRRULLL!

  'So,' Kane said. 'So.'

  A tremendous blast from Maram's firestone burned a swath through one of Aigul's advancing companies. Twenty men fell like charred scarecrows. The men around them screamed and halted. But when no further fire issued forth, their captains got them moving again. They sprinted with their ladders straight toward the wall.

  The enemy had more ladders than we did men. The moment these long wooden constructions touched the wall, the Librarians tried to push them away with forked poles. Many were the attackers that fell off, crying out as they thudded to the ground and perhaps breaking an arm or a leg. But many more fought their way up to the crenels. Here they were met with spear or mace or sword. The thousands of fierce, individual battles up and down the walls would determine whether the city was taken in this first assault

  Kane, working furiously at the crenel next to mine, stabbed out his sword six times, and six of the enemy's warriors flew out into space with mortal wounds reddening their bodies. Atara, to my right, stood firing arrows right into the faces of anyone who showed themselves at the top of their ladders. And Maram stood behind me, still trying to get a flame from his glowing crystal. OWRRULLL!

  One of the Blues came bounding up the ladder below my crenel with the dexterity of a great, squat ape. His face, stained a dark blue from the berries of the kirque plant, showed no emotion other than a rage to rip and rend. His blue eyes fixed on mine like fishhooks. Foam gathered about his mouth as he let loose a terrible cry. He ducked beneath the thrust of my sword and nearly caught me with his axe. But I backed away, and its steel edge scraped along the sandstone of the merlon, sending out sparks. My next thrust drove deep into his muscle-knotted arm, nearly severing it. He took as little notice of this spurting wound as I might a mosquito bite. With a dreadful quickness, he grabbed his axe with his other hand and swung it at me, all in one motion. Its edge bit almost through the mail covering my shoulder, shocking me and bruising the flesh beneath down to the bone. His next blow might have taken off my head if I hadn't swung my sword first, taking off his. Unbelievably, he stood headless at the mouth of the crenel for at least three heartbeats before toppling back from the wall.

  There is no pain, I told myself. I stood blinking away the Blue's blood from my eyes and gasping for air. There is no pain.

  Only my grip on Alkaladur kept me from falling off the rampart behind the battlements to the street below. My sword's shimmering silustria drew strength from the earth and sky, and I drew strength from it. Now other Blues showed themselves in the crenel in which I stood; my silver sword cut through their naked bodies as if through plums. Some of Count Ulanu's knights followed them up the ladder. I had only a little more difficulty in cutting through their mail and killing them one by one.

  But many of the Librarians along the walls had less success than Kane and I. Many had fallen, hacked apart, bleeding and crying out their death agonies. Fifty yards down the wall to the left, a squadron of Blues had broken through their defenses.

  They were rampaging about the battlements, swinging their axes at anything that moved and howling hideously.

  'How are we to kill them if they don't know themselves when they are already killed?'

  a Librarian near me cried.

  From the tower high above the batdements, Lord Grayam's strong voice suddenly called down to us: 'Atara Ars Narmada! Our archers are fallen! Come up here now!'

  Atara wasted no time in hurrying up the tower stairs in response to his summons.

  From this vantage high above the walls, she could shoot her arrows d
own at the Blues who now held an entire section of the wall.

  Now, to the left and right, two of the great siege towers had nearly been brought up flush with the walls. And one of the battering rams already had. A hundred yards from us, Count Ulanu's warriors had positioned it in front of the centermost of the west wall's gates. It looked almost like a small chalet, with its steeply pointed triangular frame covered in a housing of wooden planks and wet hides. Inside it, hung on chains from the sturdy frame, was a great tree trunk whose head was black iron cast into the shape of a ram. The men inside the housing swung the log back and forth so that the ram's head struck the wooden gate, again and again, back and forth, threatening to shatter it into splinters.

  DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three . . .

  'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said beside me. 'They're going to break in!'

  He positioned his red crystal beneath the rays of the waning sun, but nothing happened.

  'What's wrong with this stone!' he wailed out And then, in a much softer voice,

  'What's wrong with me?'

  And still the great ram beat against the gates, DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three, four ...

  From the left came the yowling of the Blues, and from above us in the tower, the twang of Atara's bowstring as she fired arrows over our heads at them.

  OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLL!

  There is no pain, I told myself, hacking apart a young knight who had won through to the battlements. There is only killing and death. 'I'm out!' I heard Atara call down to someone in the street below the walls.

  And then someone else cried out, 'More arrows! Send up more arrows!'

  One of the city's tradesmen, climbing halfway up the wall's steps from the street below, heaved a sheaf of arrows up to me. I grabbed it by the binding cord, and ran up the tower steps to deliver them to Atara.

  'Are you all right?' I said to her, looking her over for wounds.

  'I'm fine, Val,' she said. Then she looked at my blood-spattered surcoat and mail and asked, 'Are you all right?'

  'For now,' I said, cutting the cord around the sheaf of arrows.

  As she fit one to her bowstring, Lord Grayam came over to me holding a long bow.

  He asked, 'Can you work one of these as you wield your sword?'

  'No,' I said, 'but I can shoot.'

  'Good - then aim your arrows at those Blues on the wall!'

  For a moment, I turned to look at the battalions of Count Ulanu's men far below us crashing against the city's walls like steel waves. They stood bravely beneath the hail of our missiles, their shields held high, waiting to take their turns ascending ladders and die upon our swords - or deal out death themselves. A great many of them were massed beneath the section of wall that the Blues had taken. They were pouring up the numerous ladders there, trying to turn the stream of men that had topped the wall into a flood.

  From the tower's vantage, Atara began shooting her arrows into the Blues with a deadly accuracy. I did, too. Where I had once pulled aside my bow to keep from wounding a deer, I now found myself firing feathered shafts into men's naked bellies and throats. Astonishingly, many of the Blues fought on even with half a dozen arrows sticking out of them. If it hadn't been for the valor of the Librarians on the wall, braving the Blues' ferocious axes as they counter-attacked them along the battlements from the north and south, that section of the wall might have been lost to the enemy's assault.

  'Push them off!' Lord Grayam called down to his knights. 'Push them off and they'll lose heart!'

  A hail of arrows aimed at the tower - at Lord Grayam and us - struck against its battlements, sending up chips of stone. And then a great boulder, hurled by the mangonel, nearly found its mark. It crashed into the wall just where it joined the tower, and broke a hole there. When the dust had settled and the tower stopped shaking, I looked down to see that the boulder had destroyed the stone stairway leading from the tower down to the walls.

  DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three ...

  And still the battering ram worked against the city's gates. I heard Maram gasp out a curse from thirty feet below me. Then I watched as he leaned out of a vacant crenel near Kane and held his crystal pointed toward the ram. A red fire that quickly built into swirling crimson flames leapt out from it. The flames fell upon the ram's housing like the breath of a dragon. In only moments, the wet hides nailed to the ram's frame steamed and began burning away as the wood beneath ignited in a great torment of fire. Screams split the air as the men inside it began burning, too.

  'Ai! Ai! Ai!' they cried. 'Ai! Ai! Ai!'

  More than one of Count Ulanu's men, upon witnessing this horror, turned to flee from the wall. Then ten more broke, and twenty, and soon whole companies from Aigul and Inyam were turning and running. Count Ulanu and his captains rode upon them, striking them with the flats of their swords and trying to turn back the tide of this uncalled retreat. But when men lose the courage to fight, there is little their leaders can do to make them.

  'I'll give them fire!' Maram called out from the wall below the tower. 'I will!'

  Just then his crystal flared a bright ruby red as a shaft of fire shot forth. It struck the siege tower, which had just been hooked onto the wall. Flames enveloped it, trapping fifty men inside its great height of crackling wood. I tried not to listen to their screams.

  Suddenly the enemy's bugles along the burning pasture sounded a loud tattoo as Count Ulanu finally gave the order for a retreat. His men, who had mounted their ladders with so much bloodlust, now couldn't be kept from practically flying back down them. They left the companv of Blues stranded on top of the wall. Although these nearly nerveless men fought valiantly, Atara's and my arrows picked them off one by one, and Lord Grayam's knights quickly finished them, closing in from north and south along the wall as they retook this blood-slicked section of it.

  For the moment, the enemy's attack failed and the world seemed to stand still. All I could hear was the cries and pleading of the wounded, and the long, dark, terrible shrieking inside me. Then I took note of a tremendous clamor coming from the south of the city. A knight on top of a wounded horse came galloping through the streets from that direction. He stopped just beneath our tower and called up to Lord Grayam.

  'My Lord!' he gasped, 'the Sun Gate is broken! Captain Nicolam is holding the entrance, but we are too few! He begs you to send more men!'

  It took only a moment for Lord Grayam to call down to his son, Captain Donalam, to lead half a company of knights to this new crisis along the south wall. Kane, who had a sense for where the battle was to be the fiercest, looked up toward me and smiled savagely as he favored me with a quick nod of his head. Then he gripped his bloody sword and joined Captain Donalam's knights. They climbed down the wall to the street and began running behind the knight on his wounded horse. I would have gone with them, but the tower's steps were broken, and I had no good way down to them.

  Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom . . .

  Out on the pasture before the west wall, the enemy's war drums were booming again.

  Count Ulanu rode among his badly mauled battalions, screaming out orders and trying to reform his men. Surely, I thought, his heralds must have told him of the breaching of the Sun Gate. And so surely it wouldn't be long before he marched his thousands against the wall again.

  'No, no,' Maram called out below me, seeming to read my thoughts, 'I'll burn him with starfire - I will!'

  Flushed with the hubris of his recent triumphs, he stood leaning out between two of the battlements' arrow-scarred merlons. He pointed his gelstei toward Count Ulanu five hundred yards from us out on the pasture below. The slanting rays of the sun touched the fire-stone. It began to glow again, hellishly hot, it seemed to me. Ten thousand enemy warriors waited to see if its fire would fall upon them. Then Maram let out a painful cry as the sear of his stone burned his hand. He wailed as his fingers opened against his will, and he let go of it. It fell straight down in front of the wall like a shoo
ting star.

  'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried. 'Oh, my Lord!'

  'The firestone!' one of Lord Grayam's knights called out. 'He's dropped the firestone!'

  Doom, doom, doom. . .

  The bright crystal, now quickly cooling to a blood red, lay on the green grass of the pasture beneath the wall. A hundred of the Librarians had seen Maram drop it. And ten thousand of the enemy had.

  'Maram Marshayk!' Lord Grayam called out next to me. He looked, down from the tower at Maram almost alone beneath us. 'The gelstei! You've got to retrieve the gelstei!'

  Maram peered over the crenel at the firestone where it lay among the bodies of fallen warriors thirty feet below him. He sadly shook his head and muttered, 'No, no - not I.'

  Far out on the pasture, Count Ulanu had called up his archers who brought their bows to bear on our section of the wall.

  'Maram!' I shouted, looking down at him. My eyes picked apart the broken masonry of the tower's stairway to see if there was any way I could climb down to him. There wasn't. 'Maram, you must not let them gain the firestone! Go now!'

  'No!' Maram shouted back at me, 'I can't!'

  'You can! You must!'

  'No, no,' he said angrily. 'How could you ask this of me?'

  Behind Count Ulanu, ten of his knights gathered in their horses' reins and turned their shining helms toward us.

  'Maram!'

  'No! No!'

  Several Librarians near Maram chose that moment to haul themselves up over the battlements and climb down the outside of the wall on the ladders that Count Ulanu's men had left there. Arrows killed them. They fell down on top of the heaps of the dying and the dead.

  'Maram!' I called out again.

  'No, no! I won't go! Are you mad?'

  He pulled back behind his merlon just as a rain of arrows clacked against the wall.

  Atara, standing next to me on the tower's ledge, looked down at Maram and said,

  'He'll never do it.'

  'Yes,' I said to her, 'he will.'