The Lightstone

by David Zindell

  It was why he had crucified the others, too. These, however, were all still alive and all too keenly aware of the agonies that they suffered It took at least two days to die upon the cross and sometimes much longer.

  'Look!' one of the Librarians said, pointing at the cross next to Alphanderry's. 'It's Captain Donalam!'

  Captain Donalam, hanging there helplessly, his anguished face caked with black blood, looked up toward the wall in silent supplication. I saw him meet eyes with his father. What passed between them was terrible to behold. I felt Lord Grayam's heart break open, and then there was nothing left inside him except defeat and a desire to die in his son's place.

  'Look!' another Librarian said. 'There's Josam Sharod!'

  And so it went, the knights on the wall calling out the names of their friends and companions - and of those few shepherds and farmers that Count Ulanu's men had captured outside the walls during his march upon the city.

  A little while later, someone called out our names. We turned to see Liljana climbing the stairs to the wall, bearing a big pot of soup that she had made us for breakfast.

  She set it down and joined us in looking out at the crosses.

  'Alphanderry!' she cried out as if he were her own child. 'Why did they do this to you?'

  'So,' Kane growled, 'the Dragon's priests make every abomination, seek every opportunity to degrade the human spirit.'

  Just then, four of Count Ulanu's knights rode out from behind the line of crosses.

  Atara fit an arrow to her bow to greet them, but she didn't fire it because one the knights bore a white flag. She listened, as we all did, when the knights stopped their horses beneath the walls and one of them called up to Lord Grayam requesting a parley.

  'Count Ulanu would speak with you as to making a peace,' this proud-faced knight said.

  'We spoke with him yesterday,' Lord Grayam called down. 'What has changed?'

  In answer, the knight looked back at the crosses behind him and the broken outer wall of the city. 'Count Ulanu bids you to come down and listen to his terms.'

  'Bids me, does he?' Lord Grayam snapped. Then, looking at his helpless son, his voice softened, and he said, 'All right then, bid Count Ulanu to come forward as you have, and we shall speak with him '

  'From behind your little wall?' the knight sneered. 'Why should the Count trust that you will honor the parley and not order your archers to fire at him?' 'Because,' Lord Grayam said, 'we are to be trusted.'

  The knight, seeing that he would gain no more concessions from Lord Grayam, nodded his head curtly. He signaled to his three companions; they turned to ride back through the crosses and return to their lines, which were drawn up across the barren ground with the city's houses just beyond them. After a few moments, Count Ulanu and five more knights rode back toward the wall, their dragon standard flapping in the early morning wind.

  As soon as he had halted beneath the battlements, his eyes leaped out at us like fire arrows. He reserved the greatest part of his hate for Liljana. He stared at her with a pitilessness that promised no quarter. And she stared right back at him, at the wound her sword had gouged out of his face. What was left of his nose was a black, cauterized sore and looked as if the bitterest of acids had eaten it off.

  'Hmmph,' Atara said, glancing at Liljana, 'I suppose he'll have to be called Ulanu the Not-So-Handsome now.'

  For a few moments, Liljana and Count Ulanu locked eyes and contended with each other mind to mind. But Liljana had grown ever stronger and more attuned to her blue gelstei. It seemed that Count Ulanu couldn't bear her gaze, for he suddenly broke off looking at her. Then he spurred his horse forward a few paces and called out his terms to Lord Grayam: 'Surrender the Library to us and your people will be spared. Give us Sar Valashu Elahad and his companions and there will be no more crucifixions.'

  'Supposing we believed you,' Lord Grayam said, 'what would befall my people upon surrender?'

  'Only that they should do homage to me and swear to obey the wishes of Lord Morjin.'

  'You'd make us slaves,' Lord Grayam said.

  The terms that you've been offered are the same we extended to Inyam. And they now crossed swords with us or murdered us with their cowardly fire.' Here he looked up at Maram, who tied to hold his gaze but could not.

  'You're very generous,' Lord Grayam called down sarcastically.

  Count Ulanu pointed at the crosses and said, 'How many more of the children of your city are you prepared to see mounted thusly?’

  'We cannot surrender the books to you,' Lord Grayam said. At this, many of the Librarians along the wall grimly nodded their heads.

  'Books!' Count Ulanu spat out. Then he reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a large book bound with leather as dark as the skin of a sun-baked corpse. He held it up and said, 'This is the only book of any value. Either other books are in accord with what it tells, and so are superfluous, or else they mock its truth and so are abominations.'

  I knew of this single volume of lies that he showed us: it was the Darakul Elu, the Black Book, which had been written by Morjin. It told of his dreams of uniting the world under the Dragon banner; it told of a new order in which men must serve the priests of the Kallimun, as they served Morjin - and that all must serve his lord, Angra Mainyu. It was the only book I knew that the Librarians refused to allow through the doors of the Library.

  'We cannot surrender the books,' Lord Grayam said again, looking at Count Ulanu's book with loathing. 'We've vowed to give our lives to protect them.'

  'Are books more precious to you than the lives of your people?'

  Lord Grayam squared back his tired shoulders and spoke with all the dignity that he could command. It was then that I learned what hard men and women the Librarians truly were. His words stunned me and rang in my mind: 'The lives of men come and go like leaves budding on a tree in the spring and torn off in the fall. But knowledge is eternal - as the tree is sacred. We shall never surrender.'

  'We shall see,' Count Ulanu snarled.

  Lord Grayam pointed at the crosses and said, 'If you have any mercy, take these people down from there and bind their wounds.'

  'Mercy, is it?' Count Ulanu shouted. 'If it's mercy you want, that you shall have.

  We'll leave their fate in your hands - or should I say, those of your archers?'

  And with that, he smiled wickedly and turned his horse to gallop with his knights back toward his lines.

  'Ah,' Maram said to me, 'I'm afraid to want to know what he meant by that.'

  But the implication of his words soon became terribly clear. The Librarians along the wall began to call out to Lord Grayam to mount a sally outside the walls to rescue those who had been crucified. Lord Grayam listened for a few moments and then raised his hand to stay their voices. And then he said, 'Count Ulanu would like us to do just as you suggest. So that he could slaughter our knights while we attempted to rescue those for whom there can be no rescue other than death.'

  'Then what are we to do?' a sad-faced knight named Jonatham asked. 'Watch them bake before our eyes beneath the sun?'

  'We know what we must do,' Lord Grayam said. The bitterness in his voice hurt me worse than the poison that Morjin's man had put into my blood. 'No, no, please,' I said. 'Let's make a sally, while we can.'

  A hundred knights called out to ride their war horses into the face of the enemy and free the crucified women and men. But again Lord Grayam held up his hand and said, 'You might kill many of the enemy, but there would be no time to pull our people down from their crosses. In the end, all of you would be killed or captured yourselves. And so we would lose what little hope of victory that remains to us.'

  The Librarians, steeped in the wisdom of the books they guarded, bowed before this logic.

  'Archers!' Lord Grayam called out. Take up your bows!'

  I stood stunned in silence as I watched the archers along the walls fit arrows to their bowstrings and the crossbowmen set their bolts.

  'Every abomination,'
Kane said. 'Every degradation of the spirit.'

  Atara, alone of the archers there, refused to lift her bow. Her brilliant blue eyes filled with tears and partially blinded her to sight of what must be.

  'Ulanu the Merciful,' Liljana said bitterly. 'Ulanu the Cruel.'

  'No, no,' I whispered, 'they mustn't do this!'

  'No, Val, they must,' Kane said. 'What if it were your brothers crucified out there?'

  Every perversion, I thought, listening to the moans of the dying. What could be more perverse than to twist a man's love for his son into the necessity of slaying him?

  'Fire!'

  And so it was done. The Khaisham archers fired their arrows into their countrymen and friends. Set upon their crosses only seventy yards from the walls, they were easy targets, as Count Ulanu had intended them to be.

  'Damn him!' Kane snarled. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his soul!'

  Lord Grayam slumped against the battlements as if he had fired burning arrows into his own heart. I listened for the cries of his son and the other crucified Librarians, but now there was only the moaning of the wind.

  Kane stood staring at Alphanderry's body, whose arms were opened wide as if to ask the mercy of the heavens. After a while, his fury poured into me, as did his dark thoughts.

  'We should at least ride out and recover the body of our friend' I said. 'He shouldn't be left hanging for the vultures.'

  'So,' Kane said, his eyes blazing into mine. 'So.'

  I walked up to Lord Grayam and said, 'It was impossible to rescue your people, truly. But it may be that we could bring back our friend's body and a couple others for burial.'

  'No, Sar Valashu,' Lord Grayam said, 'I couldn't allow that.'

  'The enemy won't be expecting a sally now,' I said. 'We could ride like lightning and return before Count Ulanu could mount an attack.'

  The knight named Jonatham called out to ride with us, and so did a dozen others.

  And then a hundred more along the wall turned toward Lord Grayam with a fire in their hearts and a steel in their voices that could not be gainsaid. And so Lord Grayam, not wanting their spirits to be broken like his own, finally agreed to our wild plan.

  'All right,' he said to me. 'You and Kane may go and take ten others but no more.

  But go quickly before the enemy begins the day's assault.'

  Already, Count Ulanu's war drums were booming out their terror as bugles blared out and called men to form up their battalions.

  I pulled on my helmet, as did Kane his. Maram, due to his wounds, could not ride, and so would not be sallying forth with us. But Atara grabbed up some more arrows for her quiver, and the long, lean Jonatham came over to us, and we had two of our ten. He and Lord Grayam helped me in choosing the other eight knights for our sortie.

  We climbed down from the wall and gathered in the courtyard below. Grooms brought up our horses from the stables. Lord Grayam had ordered his own family's armor fastened upon our horses. Altaru, who had taken me into battle against Waas, was used to the long, jointed criniere that protected the curve of his neck and the champfrein over his head and the other pieces of armor that protected him. And so was Kane's bay. But Fire was not; Atara chose to ride her fierce mare unencumbered, as the Sarni ride their steppe ponies into battle. Thus she could race her horse and turn her about with greater agility, the better to find her targets and fire off her arrows.

  When we were all ready, we lined up behind the sally port set into the inner wall's main gate. Its iron-studded doors were thrown open, and we rode out, the twelve of us, across the rocky, barren ground. The cool morning wind found our faces and worked through the steel links of our armor. But it chilled us not at all because our hearts were now on fire. We galloped forward in a thunder of pounding hooves. It took only seconds to cover the ground between the wall and the line of crosses, but this was enough time for Count Ulanu's archers to begin firing at us and for him to order a whole company of cavalry to meet our unexpected charge.

  An arrow pinged off my helmet and another struck my mail over my shoulder but failed to penetrate its tough steel. Another arrow deflected off the poitrel protecting Altaru's chest. But some of the knights behind me weren't lucky. One of them, a powerful Librarian named Braham, cried out as a whining shaft suddenly transfixed his forearm. And one of the knighte horses on my left a stout chestnut gelding, whinnied in pains as another buried itself in his hind leg beneath the croupiere. Even so, we reached the crosses in good order. We would have a few moments, but no more, before. Count Ulanu's knights fell upon us.

  I steadied Alaru beneath Alphanderry's cross. Even desecrated and left to hang uncovered in shame, he retained a beauty and nobility that defied death. Cords bound his arms to the beam while iron spikes bent over against the palms like clamps, pierced either hand. Another spike had been driven through his feet. I saw immediately that had he been still alive, it would have been impossible to pull him down in the seconds that remained to us. But he was dead, and so, standing up in my stirrups, I drew my sword and touched it to the cords binding his head and arms; they parted like strands of grass. Then I swung Alkaladur three times, against Alphanderry's ankles and wrists. His body fell down toward me; Kane, who had brought his horse up dose against mine, helped me catch it. We draped him across Altaru's back, between his steel-shod neck and my belly. His hands and feet we had to leave nailed to the cross.

  Jonatham and Braham likewise managed to recover the body of Captain Donalam, even as a rain of arrows poured down upon us. Two more of Lord Grayam's Librarians cut down one of their companions as an arrow struck into his lifeless body and added insult to death And then the arrow storm suddenly ceased. For Count Ulanu's knights rode upon us then, and his archers did not wish to kill them in trying to annihilate us.

  Although we were outnumbered seven to one, we had that which overcame mere numbers. Atara, her blonde hair streaming back behind her irt the wind, rode about wildly firing off death with every bend of her great bow. Jonatham charged the enemy knights once, twice, three times, and his lance became an instrument of vengeance, piercing throat or eye or heart with a lethal accuracy. Kane's sword flashed out with the fury of lightning and thunder, while I wielded the Bright Sword with all the terrible art he had taught me. Irode Altaru straight into the enemy knights where they gathered like a knot of shields and horses, and no matter the armor protecting them, their limbs and heads flew from their bodies like blood sausages encased in steel. The sun rising over Mount Redruth cast its rays upon Alkaladur, which blazed with a blinding light. The sight of it struck terror into even those knights who had yet to come near it As if they were of one mind, like a flock of birds, they suddenly turned about toward their lines and put their horses to flight.

  We managed to cut down five more crucified Librarians before the arrow storm began again. Behind the enemy's lines, Count Ulanu had finally gathered an entire battalion of cavalry to charge us. This force, which he must have intended to defeat any sortie, impelled us to regain the safety of the wall. We were all glad to pass back through the sally port bearing the bodies of friends and companions across our horses. Some of the librarians, I saw, had taken arrows in payment of their valor.

  These went off to the infirmary to submit to the ministrations of Master luwain and the other healers. The sortie had left Kane, Atara and me unwounded. We climbed down from our horses to the cheers of hundreds of Librarians along the walls.

  Lord Grayam came down to meet us. He thanked Jonatham and Braham for rescuing his son's body, which had been laid upon a bier in the shadows beneath the wall.

  Lord Grayam knelt down and touched the bloody wound in his son's chest which Lord Grayam's archers had made. He kissed his son upon the eyes and lips, then stood up and said, 'There's little time for a proper burial, but it will be a while yet before the enemy begins their attack. Let's do for the slain what we can.'

  He asked us if the Librarians could take care of Alphanderry's body, and we all agreed that this would be best. And so, f
orming a procession, Lord Grayam and twenty of his knights - along with Kane, Maram, Atara, Liljana and me - entered the Library through its great southern gate. There we were joined by Master Juwain and the families of the fallen knights. We made our way through long corridors turning right and left until we finally came to a monumental stairway leading down into the vast crypt beneath the library. It took us a long time to descend these broad, shallow steps. We came down into a dim, musty space of many thick columns and arches holding up the floor of the Library above us. There we laid the dead in their tombs and covered them with slabs of stone. We prayed for their souls and wept. It would have been fitting, I thought, for us to give a favorite song into the silences of that cold vast space, but this was not the librarians' way. And so my companions and I sang our praises of Alphanderry inside our hearts.

  A messenger came to tell Lord Grayam that the enemy was advanc-ing and his presence was requested on the walls. Those of us who would fight with him there that day followed him to the battlements. Kane, Maram, Atara and I said goodbye to Master Juwain and Liljana, who returned to the infirmary to prepare for the terrible day that awaited us all.

  We walked back through the Library as we had come. We crossed the courtyard along the southern wall until we came to the western wall where Lord Grayam had his post. He climbed up to the tower guarding the wall's gate, and Atara and Maram joined him there Kane and I stood with the grim-faced knights beneath them along the wall where the fighting would be the fiercest.

  As on the preceding day, the enemy's drums pounded out their promise of death, and Count Ulanu's steel-clad battalions marched in their gleaming lines toward the walls. The siege towers and battering rams rolled forward; the catapults hurled great stones crashing against the walls and the smooth marble of the Library itself. Arrows fell like rain, though not so many as before when the archers had more of them to shoot. The screams rang out as men began dying.