'I don't think I'll sleep at all,' Maram said, as he cast his eyes around the room to catch sight of a bottle of brandy or beer.'That Burri gave us a bad enough time today.' Ymiru's eyes fell sad, and he surprised us, saying, 'Burri be a good man. But he has many fears.'
He explained that once, years ago, he and Burri, along with others in the hall, had lived in the same village in the East Reach near Sakai. And then one day, Morjin had sent a battalion to annihilate it.
'We were too few to hrold,' he told us. He took a sip of the bitter tea in his cup. 'I lost my wife and sons in the attack; Burri lost much more. The Beast's men murdered his daughters and grandchildren, his mother and brothers, too. And the Ymanir lost part of Elivagar. Burri has vowed that we won't lose any more.'
After that he fell into a deep silence from which he could not be roused. He brought out a song stone, a little sphere of swirling hues; he sat listening to the voice of his dead wife long after Maram - and Atara, Liljana and Master Juwain - had gone to sleep.
It was cold the next morning when we gathered at the appointed hour in Alundil's great square. The city's empty towers and buildings were even darker than the sky, which was hung with many stars. Ten thousand men, women and children crowded shoulder to shoulder facing a great spire just to the west of the square. At the head of them were Hrothmar and Burri and the others of Urdahir. We stood with Ymiru near them, ringed by thirty Ymanir gripping borkors in their massive hands. The sharp wind falling down from the icy mountains all around us seemed not to touch them. But it pierced us nearly to the bone. I stood between Atara and Master Juwain, shivering as they did, waiting with them and our other companions, for what we didn't know.
'Why are we meeting here?' Maram asked for the tenth time.
And for the tenth time, Ymiru answered him, saying, 'You will see, little man, you will see.'
Now many of the Ymanir behind us had turned to look out above the spire to the east of the square. There, above the Garden of the Gods, above the icy eastern mountains, the sky was beginning to lighten with the rising of the sun. There, too, the Morning Star shone, brightest of all the heavens' lights. It cast its radiance upon us, touching Alundil's houses and spires, illuminating the faces of all who gazed upon it.
Through the dear air and straight across the valley streaked this silver light, where it fell upon the shimmering face of Alumit. It was still too dark to make out the colors of this great mountain that seemed to overlook the whole of the world. I wondered yet again how it had come to be. Ymiru had told us that his ancestors had raised up the sculptures of the Garden of the Gods; but it seemed that the building of an entire mountain had been beyond even the ancient Ymanir. Ymiru believed that once, long ago, the Galadin had come to earth to work this miracle. As he believed that someday they would come again.
As the wind quickened and our breaths steamed out into the air, the eastern sky grew even brighter. The rising of the sun stole the stars' light one by one until only the Morning Star remained shining. Then it too, disappeared into the blue-white glister at the edge of the world. We waited for the sun to crest the mountains behind us.
Ahead of us, to the west of the square above the spire, Alumit's great, white peak caught the sun's first rays before the valley below it did. Its pointed crown of ice and snow began glowing a deep red. Soon this fire fell down the slopes of the mountain and drew forth its colors. Again 1 marveled at the crystals from which it was wrought, the sparkling blues that seemed to pour forth from sapphire, the reds of ruby and a deep, vivid, emerald green.
At last the sun broke over the flaming ridgeline to the east. The air warmed, slightly, as the morning grew brighter. And still we waited, facing this great Mountain of the Morning Star. And then, to the thunder of ten thousand hearts and the rising of the wind, the colors of the mountain began to change. Slowly its jewel-like hues deepened and grew even more splendid. They seemed to flow into each other, red into yellow, orange into green, miraculously transforming into a single color like nothing I had ever dreamed. It was not a blending or a tessellation of colors, but one solid color - though perhaps not so solid at all, for in staring at it, I seemed to fall into it and become aware of infinite depths. How could this be, I wondered? How could there exist in the world an entirely new color of the spectrum that no one ever saw? It was as different from red or green as those colors are from violet or blue.
And yet I could only describe it to myself in terms of the more common colors, for that was the only way I could make sense of such an amazing thing: it had all the fire of red, the brightness and expansiveness of yellow, the deep peace of the purest cobalt blue.
'How is this possible?' I heard Maram whisper behind me. 'Oh, my Lord, how can this be?'
I shook my head as I stared at the great mountain, now wholly shimmering with a single hue, at once like living gold and cosmic scarlet, like the secret blue inside blue that people do not usually see.
'What is it?' Maram gasped, directing his words at Ymiru. 'Tell me before I fall mad.'
'It be glorre,' Ymiru said to him. 'It be the color of the angels.'
Glorre, I thought, glorre - it was so beautiful that I wanted to drink this color into my deepest self; it was almost too real to be real. And yet it was real, the truest and loveliest thing I had ever beheld. I melted into it; I felt it washing through my entire being, carrying into every part of me the clear, sweet, numinous taste of the One that is just the essence of all things.
'But yesterday,' Maram gasped out, 'the mountain didn't appear so!'
'No, it did not,' Ymiru agreed. 'It takes on this color only once each day, in the light of the Morning Star - with the rising of the sun.'
Atara stared at Alumiit as intensely as she ever had her scryer's sphere. Behind her, Master Juwain asked Ymiru, 'Has it always taken on this color?'
'No, only for the last twenty years,' Ymiru said. 'Ever since the earth entered the Golden Band.'
'I see,' Master Juwain said, rubbing his bald head. 'Yes, I see.' Liljana looked upon the mountain in awed silence while Kane stood stricken beside her. His fathomless eyes were fixed on the glorre of the mountain. He didn't move; he seemed not even to breathe. If one of the Ymanir had fallen on him with a club just then, I did not think that he would have drawn his sword to defend himself.
'The mountain speaks to those who listen,' Ymiru said softly. 'As we must listen now.'
The silence that descended upon the square was a strange and beautiful thing. We stood with ten thousand Ymanir looking up at the sacred Alumit to the west, and not a single child fidgeted or called for his mother to take him home. I tried to listen with the same concentration as did they. As I my eyes drank in this mountain of a numinous hue seen only in the stars, I became aware of voices singing as from far away. Fair but almost impossibly near: every building in the city seemed suddenly to vibrate with these sweet sounds, which I felt resonating inside me. It was like the ringing of bells and gentle laughter carried along the wind. The music reminded me of that which Alphanderry had sung in the Kul Moroth. I tried to understand the words that formed up in my mind, breaking like the crest of a wave always just beyond my reach. And yet I knew that I could always keep them within me, in my heart and hands, if only I had the courage to hold onto them.
Others, however, were more practiced or gifted at such apprehension. Liljana stood with her gelstei pressed to her forehead over her third eye. The little blue whale seemed to have deepened to the color of glorre. Liljana's eyes, wide open, flicked about with the little movements of one who is deep in dream. 'What does she see?'
Maram whispered to me.
'You might better ask yourself,' Ymiru told him, 'what she hears.' We soon had our answer. As the sun rose still higher, in the sky, Liljana's hand fell down to her side.
She smiled at Master Juwain in her peacable way, and then turned to Atara and me.
She said, 'They're waiting for us, you know. On many, many worlds, the Star People are waiting for us to complete the qu
est.' The nine E0lders of the Urdahir, led by Hrothmar, turned our way.
The guards around us pulled aside to allow hirn room to step for ward.
'They are waiting,' he told us. 'As are the Elijin and Galadin themselves. We feared that it would be so.'
He sighed as he pulled at the white fur of his chin and looked at me. 'Sar Valashu, we believe that you and your friends must try to enter Argattha and recover the Lightstone. If you agree, we'd like to help you.'
Audhumla and Yvanu, standing just behind him, smiled as he said this; Hramjir and Hramdal nodded their massive heads while even Burri seemed to have been moved by the wonder of what he had just heard.
Maram muttered something about the madness of fordng Argattha's gates, and Hrothmar, not quite understanding him, nodded his head gravely, saying 'Then you may remain here as our guests for as long as you live - or until the Star People return.'
I couldn't help smiling at Maram's consternation. To Hrothmar I said, 'We would welcome whatever help you have to give us.'
'Very good,' his huge voice rumbled out. He looked from Atara to Liljana, and then at Kane, Maram, Master Juwain and me. 'The prophecy you told us spoke of the seven brothers and sisters with the seven stones of the greater galastei. And seven you were until you lost the minstrel in Yrakona. Therefore, you need one more to complete your company. And so we must ask that we send one of our people with you to Argattha.'
I knew from the set of his hard, blue eyes that there could be no disputing this demand. I looked toward the edge of the square at the guards, with their fearsome borkors. Either we accepted one of these giants into our company, I thought, or we must remain here forever.
'Who would you send with us then?' I asked him.
He turned to Ymiru and said, 'I have seen in you a desire to make this journey. It would be fitting, wouldn't it, that after breaking the lower law, you should fulfill the higher?'
'Yes,' Ymiru said, 'it would.'
'Will you show the little people the way through Asakai?'
'Yes, I will.'
Hrothmar looked at me. 'Well, Sar Valashu - will you take Ymiru into your company?'
I met eyes with Ymiru and smiled at him. 'Gladly,' I said.
Then I reached out to grasp Ymiru's huge hand with mine. Now, as the sun rose higher and the glorre of Alumit began to break apart into its usual, brilliant colors, the thousands of people in the square all turned their attention on,Ymiru and the nine Elders - and us.
'But we've still only six gelstei,' Maram pointed out. 'How can Ymiru come with us without a gelstei?'
Hrothmar's sudden grin seemed bigger than the sky. I noticed then that he was holding a small, jeweled box in his hand. He gripped this tightly next to his furry hip.
Then he lifted it up and said to us, 'You have found six of the galastei on your journey; now we would like to give you the seventh.'
And with that, he opened the box. He pulled out a large, square-cut stone, clear and bright and purple as wine.
'This be a lilastei,' he said, handing it to Ymiru. 'It be the last one remaining to our people. Take it with our blessing. For with you goes the hope of our people.'
Ymiru held the gelstei up to the sun. Its bright rays passed through it and fell upon the ground. The stone there seemed to soften in the deep violet light.
'Thank you,' Ymiru said.
Maram came forward then and took Ymiru's free hand. 'This is a lucky day for us.
With you by our side, we'll be more like seventeen than seven.'
Atara was the next to welcome Ymiru into our company, followed by Liljana and Master Juwain. And then Kane stepped up to him. He clasped hands with Ymiru, fiercely, like a tiger testing the strength of a bear. He said nothing to him. But the fire of fellowship in his bright eyes said more than words ever could.
Hrothmar swept his hand toward the seven of us and said, 'Your courage in undertaking this journey cannot be questioned. But we must ask you to find an even greater courage within yourselves: that should fate fall against you, you will seek death before revealing to the Beast the secrets of Alundil.'
Ymiru agreed to this grim demand with a bow of his head. As did Master Juwain, Liljana and I. Atara smiled with a chilling acceptance of what must be. And Maram, his face flushed with fear, looked at Hrothmar and said, 'Set your mind at ease. I'll gladly seek death before torture.'
Hrothmar turned to Kane and asked, 'And you, keeper of the black stone?'
Kane looked toward the east in the direction that we soon must travel. In his black eyes was death and defiance. He said, 'No torture of Morjin's will ever make me speak.'
So great was the will that steeled his being that Hrothmar did not question him further.
'Very good,' Hrothmar said, to him and to us. Then he embraced us one by one and gave us his blessing. Hramjir, with his one arm, did likewise as well as he could, followed by Audhumla, Yvanu and the other Urdahir. Burri was the last to approach us. After wrapping me up in a mound of living fur, he took out the cup that I had given him. He looked down at me and said, 'Thank you for your gift, Sar Valashu.
We have lost our last lilastei only to gain one of the greatest of the silver galastei.'
Then he turned to Ymiru and told him, 'I was wrong about the little people. And about you.'
He embraced Ymiru with an unexpected tenderness. Then shocked us all, saying,
'I'm sorry, my son.'
From the mist that gathered in Burri's blue eyes, and Ymiru's, I knew that even the hardest ice could melt and be broken.
To direct my attention elsewhere, Burri suddenly pointed above the square toward Alumit. There, limned against the last patch of glorre to light up the mountain, Flick danced ecstatically through the air, whirling and diving, describing incendiary arcs.
His being blazed with silver, scarlet and gold - and now, too, with glorre. I must have been blind, I thought, never to have beheld this dazzling color within him. As others were now beholding it as well. At least a hundred of the Ymanir nearby had their long fingers aimed at him, and their large eyes seemed suddenly larger with wonder.
And Burri, perhaps, held the most wonder of all.
'I think you did tell one lie, Sar Valashu,' he said to me. 'You told that the Timpum twinkled. But these lights - they be a glorious thing.'
Glorious indeed, I thought, watching Flick spin beneath the shining mountain that the Galadin had made. As Burri and the other Elders began wishing usigfell on our journey, it gave me hope to enter another mountain whose faces were as hard as iron and whose color was as black as death.
Chapter 38
It took us four days to set out from Alundil. Much of this was spent in gathering supplies for our journey: rations such as cheeses and dried fruit, pine nuts and potatoes and the Ymanir version of the inevitable battle biscuits. To Maram's delight, Ymiru laid in a few small casks of a fermented goat's milk called kalvaas. I thought it a foul, rancid-smelling brew, but Maram announced that drinking it gave him visions of the angels or beautiful women - to him, it seemed, the same thing.
'Now take these Ymanir women,' he said to me one night after we had worked very hard to reshoe the horses. 'Now it's true, they are, ah, rather large. But they have a certain comeliness of form and face, don't you think? And, oh my Lord, they would keep a man warm at night.'
As it happened, the Ymanir women were working very hard to keep us all warm on our journey. It took Hrothmar's daughters - along with Audhumla, Yvanu, Ulla and others - most of four days to make for us long coats that covered us from head to ankle. They were wonderfully soft and thick, woven from the long fur that the Ymanir women had sheared from their own bodies. Their whiteness, like that of snow, would help hide us against the frozen slopes of the mountains to the east.
The Ymanir men were equally clever at the making of things. They filled Atara's empty quivers with arrows, a few of which were tipped with diamond points for piercing the hardest plate armor. One of their smiths presented Liljana with a new set of cook
ware, forged from a very light but very strong goldish metal that he called galte. Burn himself, on this last night of our stay in Alundil, brought Ymiru a map that one of their ancestors had fashioned some generations before. He kept this gift wrapped in brown paper and string, and admonished Ymiru not to reveal its secrets to us until we were well away from the city.
'For the time, this be for your eyes only,' he said to Ymiru. 'And for your hands only
- only the fathers and sons of our line have ever touched this.'
The mystery that he made of the map aroused our curiosity. There was much, as well that we wished to know about Ymiru and his family. After Burn had gone, we asked Ymiru why he hadn't told us outright that he was his father. And Ymiru, staring at the paper-covered package in his hands, fell into a deep, brooding silence.
And then he said, 'I thought I did.
In truth, he had told us only that he had lost his children to the Red Dragon, and Burri his grandchildren - and this was his way of making known to us certain truths that tormented him. Clever he might be in shaping things with his huge hands, but he was not very good at bringing forth memories and sadnesses from the gloom inside him.
We did learn, however, one of the reasons that the Urdahir had chosen him to show us the way toward Argattha: when he was younger, it seemed, he had led raids into Sakai in a fierce effort to beat back the encroachments of the Red Dragon's armies.
Although he and the other Ymanir had killed many with their borkors, in the end they were too few, and much of the East Reach had been lost.
'The Dragon grows ever stronger while we weaken,' he told us. 'Burri and Hrothmar, all of the Urdahir, know that we can hrold Elivagar for another generation, perhaps two - but not forever. And so they were willing to take the dreadful chance of sending' me with you to Argattha.'
Evil omens, he said, were everywhere: in the stars, in the fall of Yarkona, in the rumor of a fire-breathing dragon that Morjin held ready to unleash upon those who opposed them. Even the new color of Alumit, he admitted, was not wholly a good thing, for in the wisdom that the Elders gleaned from the Star People there was not only hope but the murmurings of doom.
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