I was still safe behind the walls that I built for myself; Alkaladur, flashing brilliantly in the morning sun, gave me the strength to endure the deaths of those whom I would soon kill and those whom I had so recently sent on to the stars. Kane stood next to me with his sword held ready to drink the enemy's blood. He drew part of his strength from his hate. He stared down at the empty cross where Count Ulanu had put Alphanderry. I saw him scowling at the hands and feet that remained nailed to it.
Lightning flashed in his eyes then. Thunder tore open his heart. A dark and terrible storm built inexorably inside him, awaiting only the advance of Count Ulanu and his men for its fury to be unleashed.
During the first assault, Count Ulanu sent a battalion of Blues against our part of the wall. Kane and I, no less Maram and Atara, had become familiar figures to the enemy. Many of them shrank back from facing us. But the bravest of them vied for the honor of slaying us, and none were so brave as the Blues. Atara killed them with her arrows and Maram with his fire, but it was not enough. Too many of them hurled themselves howling over the battlements to meet Kane's sword and mine with their murderous axes. Their rage seemed bottomless; they attacked us without fear.
Alkaladur made a carnage of their frenzied, naked bodies, as did Kane's bloody blade. Even so, they came at us in twos and tens, and worked their way behind us.
Twice I saved Kane from an axe splitting open his back, and three times he saved me. Thus our flashing swords forged deep bonds of brotherhood between us. For a few golden moments we fought back to back as if we were one: a single, black-eyed Valari warrior with four arms and two swords guarding both front and back.
The Blues could not overcome us. I killed many of them. And each time my sword opened up one of them, I myself was opened. Although they did not feel pain as did other men, their death agonies were strangely even more unbearable. For the very numbness of these half-dead men was itself a deeper and more terrible kind of suffering. The Soulless Ones, people called them, but I knew well enough they had souls, as all men do. It was just that the essence of what made them human seemed lost, damned in life to wander that gray and misty realm that lies between life and death. To feel no pain is to be robbed of joy as well. And so I found that I must not envy their invulnerability to that to which I was most vulnerable. I found, too, that I could not hate them. It was not the One but only Morjin who had originally called their kind into life.
At last Count Ulanu's buglers sounded the retreat, and the Blues and the rest of the enemy pulled back from the walls. Teams of pallbearers worked all up and down the battlements to dispose of the many enemy who had fallen there - and the bodies of the slain Librarians, too. Others came up to us with mops and buckets of water to dean the ramparts so that the remaining defenders wouldn't slip on all the blood spilled there or become disheartened at the sight of it. But it seemed that nothing could now lift the spirits of the Librarians. There were simply too many of the enemy and too few of them. Even the fire from Maram's crystal brought them little warmth of hope.
'It is difficult to use this in batlle,' he said to me, holding up his gelstei and coming down from his tower to pay Kane and me a visit before the next assault. 'Difficult to aim. And the more fire I bring forth from it, the longer it takes to gather in the sun's rays for the next burst.'
'It's an old crystal,' Kane muttered. 'It's said that firestones of ages past were more powerful.'
I looked out to the left at the smoking ruins of the second siege tower that Maram had managed to set aflame. His firestone seemed fearsome enough. But fire was only fire, and the enemy was growing used to it. Death was only death, too, and what did it matter whether a warrior was killed by shooting flames or by boiling oil and red-hot sand poured down upon him from the hoardings above the gates?
Maram turned his red crystal about in his hands and said, 'I don't believe this will be enough to win the battle.'
'No, perhaps not,' Kane said. 'But it's kept us from losing it so far.'
'Do you think so?' 'I think that if any survive to sing of the deeds that were done here, your name will be mentioned first.'
Such praise, coming from Kane, surprised Maram and pleased him greatly. After a few moments of thought however, he looked down at the lines of the enemy gathering at the edge of the barren ground, and he said, 'But there will be another assault, won't there? They have so many men.'
It was not yet noon when the day's second assault began. This time Count Ulanu sent his finest knights against our part of the wall. They were almost harder to beat back than were the Blues, for they fought with greater skill, and their armor gave good protection against arrow and sword 1 all swords except Kane's kalama and Alkaladur.
There came a moment during the fiercest part of the attack when a dozen of these knights of Aigul fought their way over the battlements and won a bridgehead on the wall. Kane and I found ourselves separated, with the knights between us. They killed two Librarians standing near me, and a few more fighting near Kane. They had beards as black as Count Ulanu's and looked enough like him to have been his cousins; I thought they were some of the same knights that had pursued us into the Kul Moroth. They taunted Kane, telling him that soon they would capture him and have the pleasure of nailing him to a cross as they had Alphanderry.
It was the wrong thing to do. For Kane fell mad then. And so did I. Working along the wall toward the south, I wielded my sword with all the fury of the blazing Soal sun that poured down upon us. And Kane fought like a demon from hell, slashing and thrusting and rending his way north. Together, our flashing swords were like the teeth of a terrible beast closing upon our enemy. They died one by one, and then suddenly, the three knights still alive lost heart before our terrible onslaught Two of them hurled themselves over the battlements, taking their chances with broken legs or backs in their plummet to the hard ground below. The remaining knight, seized with terror, threw down his sword. He knelt before Kane, placed his hands together over his chest and cried out, 'Quarter! I beg quarter of you!'
Kane raised his sword high to finish this hated enemy knight.
'Mercy, please!' the knight begged.
'So, I'll give you the same mercy your Count showed those he crucified!'
The madness suddenly left me. I called out, 'Kane! A warriors code!'
'Damn the code!' he thundered. 'Damn him!'
'Kane!'
'Damn his eyes! Damn his soul!'
Kane's sword lifted higher as the knight looked at me, his dark eyes pleading like a trapped fawn's. There was a great pain inside him, the same bitter anguish I felt gnawing at my own heart. He burned for Me; all of us do. In such circumstances, how could I allow it to be taken away from him?
I raised high my sword then so that its silustria caught the sun's rays and threw them back into Kane's eyes. For a moment he stood there dazzled by this golden light. His sword wavered. Then he looked at me, and I looked at him. There was a calling of our eyes Valari eyes: black, brilliant and bottomless as the stellar deeps. There the stare shone, and there, too, Alpha nderry's last song reverberated and sailed out toward infinity. I heard the haunting sound of it inside me, and in that moment, so did Kane. And in the opening of his heart, he began to remember who he really was and who he was meant to be. This was a bright, blessed being, joyful and compassionate - not a murderer of terrified men who had thrown down their weapons and asked for mercy. But he feared this shining one more than any other enemy. It was upon me to remind him that he was great enough of heart and soul that he need fear nothing in this world - nor that which dwelled beyond it.
'So,' he said, suddenly sheathing his sword as tears filled his eyes. He stepped past the kneeling knight and came up to me. He touched my sword, touched my hand, and then clamped his hand fiercely about my forearm. A bright, blazing thing, secret until now, passed between us. And he whispered, 'So, Val - so.'
He turned his back on the knight, not wanting to look at him. It seemed, as well, that he couldn't bear the sight of me jus
t then. The Librarians came to take the knight away to that part of the library where captives were being held. And all the while, Kane stared up at the sky as if looking for himself in the light that kept pouring from the bright, midday sun.
Three more times that long afternoon, Count Ulanu's armies made assaults upon the wall. And thrice we threw them back, each time with greater difficulty and desperation. Kane's newfound compassion did not keep him from fighting like an angel of death, nor did my own stay the terror of the sword Lady Nimaiu had given me. But all our efforts - and those of Maram, Atara and the Librarians - were not enough to defeat the much greater forces flung against us. Near the end of the third assault with most of Count Ulanu's army in retreat from the walls, we suffered our greatest loss thus far. For one of the Blues, who had fought his way up to a section of wall where Lord Grayam stood with his sword trying to meet a sudden crisis, felled Lord Grayam with a blow of his axe. He himself was slain s moment later, but the deed was done. The Librarians set Lord Grayam down behind the wall's battlements. There he called for me and the rest of our company to come to him.
While a messenger ran to summon Master Juwain and Liljana, I knelt with Kane, Atara and Maram by his side.
'I'm dying,' he gasped out as he leaned back against the bloodstained battlements.
I tried not to look at the bloody opening that the Blue had chopped through his mail into his belly. I knew it was a wound that not even Master Juwain could heal.
Jonatham and Braham called for a litter to carry the Lord Librarian to the infirmary.
But he shook his head violently, telling them, 'There's no time! Never enough time!
Now please leave me alone with Sar Valashu and his companions. I must speak with them before it's truly too late.'
This command displeased both Jonatham and Braham. But since they were unused to disobeying their lord, they did as he had asked, walking off down the wall and leaving us with him.
'The next attack will be the last,' he told us. They'll wait until the sun goes down so that Prince Maram can't use his firestone, and then. . . the end.'
'No,' I said, listening to the blood bubble from his belly. 'There's always hope.'
'Brave Valari,' he said, shaking his head.
In truth, unless a miracle befell us, the next assault would be the last. It was a matter of the numbers of Librarians still standing and the severity of their wounds; the promise of defeat was in the dullness of Librarians' eyes and in the exhaustion with which they held their notched and bloodstained weapons - no less the gaps the enemy's missiles had broken in the walls. A knowledge comes to men in battle when the battle is nearly lost. And now the enemy began reforming themselves in their companies and battalions in front of the houses of the glowing dry; and now the Librarians peered out at this gathering doom as courageously as they could: without much fear but also without hope.
And then, from the tower to our left, one of the Librarians there pointed toward the west and shouted down, 'They're coming! I see the standards of Sarad! We're saved!'
It seemed that we had our miracle after all. I stood to look out the crenel, beyond Count Ulanu's armies and the houses of the city, beyond even the broken outer wall to the west. And there, perhaps a mile out on the pasture, cresting a hill and limned against the setting sun, was a great host of men marching toward Khaisham. The red sun glinted off their armor, their standards, in a direct line with this fiery orb, were hard to see. I told myself that I could make out the golden lions of Sarad against a flapping blue banner. But then one of the Librarians, from the tower to our right, peered through his looking glass and announced, 'No, the standards are black! And it is the golden dragons of Brahamdur!'
He then swept his glass from north to south and shouted. 'The armies of Sagaram and Hansh march with them! We are lost!'
A pall of doom descended upon all who stood there, worse than before. Count Ulanu had sent for reinforcements to complete his conquest, and with all the inevitability of death, they had come.
'Sar Valashu!' Lord Grayam called to me. 'Come closer - don't make me shout.'
I knelt beside him with my friends to hear what he had to say. Just then he smiled as he saw Liljana and Master Juwain mount the steps to the wall. He beckoned them closer, too, and they joined us.
'You must save yourselves, if you can,' he told us. 'You must flee the city while you can.'
I shook my head sadly; Khaisham was now surrounded by a ring of steel too thick for even Alkaladur to cut through.
'Listen to me!' Lord Grayam called out. 'This is not your battle; even so you have fought valiantly and have done all you can do.'
I looked from Atara to Kane, and then at Maram, who bit his lip as he tried desperately not to fall back into fear. Master Juwain and Liljana were so tired that they could hardly hold up their heads. They had seen enough of death during the past day to know that soon, like the coming of night, it would fall uporf them as well.
'I should have bid you to leave Khaisham before this,' Lord Grayam told us, as if in apology. 'But I thought the battle could be won. With your swords, with the firestone that I suspected Prince Maram possessed. . . .'
His voice trailed off as a spasm of agony ripped through his body and contorted his face. And then he gasped, 'But now you must go.'
'Go where?' Maram muttered.
'Into the White Mountains,' he said. 'To Argattha.'
The name of this dreadful city was as welcome to our ears as the thunder of Count Ulanu's war drums booming out beyond the walls.
'You must,' he told us, 'try to recover the Lightstone.'
'But, sir,' I said, 'even if we could break out, to simply forsake those who have stood by us in battle -'
'Faithful Valari,' he said, cutting me off. His eyes stared up and through me, up at the twilight sky. 'Listen to me. The Red Dragon is too strong. The finding of the Lightstone is the only hope for Ea. I see this now. I see ... so many things. If you forsake your quest, you truly do forsake those who have fought with you here, For why have we fought? For the books? Yes, yes, of course, but what do books hold inside them? A dream. Don t let the dream die. Go to Argattha. For my sake, for the sake of my son and all who have fallen here,go. Will you promise me this, Sar Valashu?'
Because a dying man had made a request of me with almost his last breath - and because I thought there was no way we could ever escape the city - I took his hand in mine and told him, 'Yes, you have my promise.'
'Good.' With all the strength that he could manage, he reached inside the pocket of his cloak and pulled out the False Gelstei that we had found in the Library the day before. He gave the gold-colored cup to me and told me, 'Take this. Don't let it fall into the enemy's hands.' I took the cup from him and put it in my pocket. Then he closed his eyes against another spasm of pain and cried out, 'Jonatham! Braham!
Captain Varkam!'
Jonatham and Braham, accompanied by a grim, gray-haired knight named Varkam, came running along the wall. They joined us, kneeling at Lord Grayan's feet.
'Jonatham, Braham,' Lord Grayam said. 'What I must tell you now, you mustn't dispute. There is no time. Everyone has noted your valor in rescuing my son's body.
Now I must call upon a deeper courage.'
'What is it, Lord Librarian?' Jonatham asked, laying his hand on Lord Grayam's feet.
'You are to leave the city tonight. You will -'
'Leave the city? But how? No, no, I couldn't -'
'Don't argue with me!' Lord Grayam interrupted him. He coughed, once, very hard, and more blood flowed out of him. 'You and Braham will go into the Library. With horses, at least two of them. Take the Great Index. We can't rescue the books, but at least we should have a record of them so that copies might someday be found and saved. Then go with Sar Valashu and his companions into the hills. From there, they will go ... where they must go. And you will go to Sarad. For a time: soon Count Ulanu will fall against it and take it as well. He'll take all of Yarkona. And so you must flee to some corne
r of Ea where the Dragon hasn't yet come. I don't know where. Flee, my knights, and gather books to you that you might start a new Library.'
He placed his hands over his belly and moaned bitterly as he shuddered. Then he sighed, 'Too late - much too late.'
Beyond the wall, the beating of the drums thundered louder.
Lord Grayam drew in a deep breath and said, 'Captain Varkam! You will hold the walls as long as you can. Do you understand?'
'Yes, Lord Librarian,' he said.
'All of you, I must tell you how sorry I am that I misjudged, that there just wasn't enough time, and that I, in my pride, didn't see -'
'Ah, Lord Grayam?' Maram said, interrupting him. He alone, of all of us, felt compelled to put need before decorum. 'You spoke of fleeing into the hills. But how are we to leave the city?'
Lord Grayam closed his eyes then, and I felt him slipping off into the great emptiness. But then he suddenly looked at me and said, 'Long ago, my predecessors built an escape tunnel from the Library to the slopes of Mount Redruth. Only the Lord Librarians have kept this secret. Only the Lord Librarian has the key.'
Here he weakly tapped his chest. We loosened the gorget covering his throat and pulled back his mail. There, fixed to a chain around his neck, was a large steel key.
'Take it,' he said, pressing it into my hand. After I had lifted the chain over his head, he continued, 'In the crypt, there is a door. It's plastered over, but. . .'
Another spasm ripped through him. His whole body shivered and convulsed, and his eyes leaped out like a siege tower's hooks and fastened onto the great wall surrounding the city of night So Lord Grayam died. Like many men, he went over to the other side before he was really ready, before he thought it was his time to die.
'Oh, too bad, too bad!' Maram said, touching his throat. Then he looked at Atara as his thoughts turned away from Lord Grayam to the problem at hand. 'We'll never find the door now. Can you help us?'
Atara shook her head even as Master Juwain closed Lord Grayam's onstaring eyes.
The Lightstone Page 79