The Lightstone

by David Zindell

  'Brave boy,' I said, nodding my head in acknowledgement of his feat.

  'Yes, you're a brave little spy,' Kane said, grinning savagely. 'Well, let's see if Morjin has kept the password. What is it?'

  'Memoriar-damoom,' Daj said softly. 'I don't know what it means.'

  'It means,' Kane said, translating the ancient Ardik, ' "Remember Damoom." '

  He stood directly facing the door and spoke the word clearly, louder this time. And from within the door came a clicking sound as of a lock being slid open.

  As Maram hurried across the room to view this marvel, Kane's grin grew larger, and he said, 'In the Age of Law, many locks were made thusly. Song stones, keyed to a word or a voice, turn at the touch of the right sound and set the locking mechanism in motion.'

  Now he set his hand against the edge of the door and leaned his weight into it. The part that he pushed against swung inward smoothly while the left edge of the slab revolved out into the room. Beyond the opening lay a dark tunnel.

  'So,' he said.

  He started straight into the tunnel, followed by Daj and me. But when it came Maram's turn to step forward, he hesitated and said, 'Ah, I don't like the look of this at all.'

  'Come,' I said, turning back toward him. 'Where's your courage?'

  'Ah, where indeed, my friend? I'm afraid that almost all of that coin has been spent.'

  'There's always more,' I said to him.

  'For you, perhaps, but not for me. After all, I'm no Valari.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well, I mean that for you Valari, courage is a birthright. You breathe it in as easily as others do air.'

  'No, you're wrong, Maram,' I told him, shaking my head. My belly churned as if I had swallowed a nest of writhing snakes. 'Courage never gets to be a habit. Each time ... it gets harder to find. As it is now for me.'

  'For you?'

  'Yes,' I said, glancing at Kane and Liljana. And then I looked straight at Maram.

  'Without you by my side, I don't know how I'd ever be able to do this.'

  'Do you really mean that?'

  I clasped his hand in mine and smiled at him. 'Will you come with me this last mile?'

  He hesitated another long moment before slowly nodding his head. And then he sighed out 'All right, then, I'll come. But this has to be the last time.'

  Then he, too, stepped into the tunnel, followed by Liljana, who had so arrayed the tapestry that it fell back over the door as we pushed it shut. Darkness swallowed us; for a moment we stood nearly blind beneath the black shroud of night. Then I drew my sword. Daj stared at the glowing blade in wonder, but seemed too afraid to ask by what miracle it gave light. All that he said was: 'The last time I was here, all I had was a candle. But this is better.'

  He started off down the tunnel, with me, Maram, Liljana and Kane close behind. The dark tube of rock seemed empty even of rats. We walked quiedy, but the scrape of our boots echoed off the bare rocks. After a while we came to a place where another tunnel joined ours. Daj told us that he thought it led to another sanctuary somewhere on the seventh level. Or perhaps, he said, it gave out onto the passage that led to Morjin's Porch on Skartaru's east face. Along that way was to be found Morjin's Stairs, which led down to Argattha's lower levels and the secret escape tunnels there that Morjin still kept open.

  'Do you know these tunnels?' I asked him.

  'Well, I know about them,' Daj said. 'But I was never able to find out where they were.'

  We walked on for another two hundred yards and came across two more of these adjoining tunnels. And then, after turning left, toward the east, our tunnel ended abruptly in what seemed a wall of solid rock.

  'He's sealed it off!' Maram whispered when he saw this. 'We're trapped!'

  I smiled as I brought my sword up dose to the wall to reveal the cracks running through it, outlining a door - the door that must open onto Morjin's private chambers. I pressed my ear to the cold rock and listened for any sounds from the room beyond it

  'What do you hear?' Maram whispered, pressing close.

  'Only your breath in my ear. Now be quiet.'

  I continued listening for a murmur of voices, the slap of boots against stone, silverware clacking against a plate - for anything at all. But the rock was as quiet as a skull. The only sound I heard was the drumming of my heart up through my ear.

  'All right,' I said, turning back to look at liljana and Kane. 'Is everyone ready?'

  Both of them had their swords drawn, as did Maram and I. I gripped Alkaladur's hilt more tightly as I faced the door and said, 'Memoriar Damoom!'

  There came a clicking from within the rock of the door. I placed my hand on the edge of it; it felt wet as from dripping water, but I realized that it was only my sweat.

  Slowly, I pushed against the door. It opened directly into a cloth that I discovered to be another tapestry. I squeezed out from behind its clinging folds and stepped into a well-lit room.

  'This is it,' Daj said, joining me there. 'Lord's Morjin's room.'

  I knew that it was. All at once, a sickly-sweet odor as of incense mixed with decay made my stomach chum. As the others moved out from behind the tapestry and then pushed the door shut. I looked out at a large, richly furnished room. Intricate tapestries, like the one hiding the door behind us, completely covered the room's four walls so that not a square inch of bare rock remained exposed to remind Morjin that he had chosen to live inside a mountain. We stood with our backs to the room's west wall. To our left, along the north wall, was a heavy bronze door cast with roses and other flowers - the door to the rest of Morjin's palace. Straight ahead stood another door, like in size, but it showed a great, spreading tree beneath a bronze sun.

  Daj said that it opened upon the passage that led to the throne room.

  Before starting toward this door, I quickly took in the room's other features. Above the great bed along the south wall was hung a blue-black canopy embroidered with thousands of tiny diamonds. These were set in the patterns of the constellations'

  stars. On either side of the bed were gilded chests and wardrobes; three long mirrors, framed in ornate gold, were set into the east north and west walls. The ceiling was a chessboard of white and black wood squares, while the floor was covered with a single carpet woven with the shapes of knights on horses, winged lions and ferocious beasts. As before, when Morjin had brought me to this room through the doorway of nightmare and illusion, I looked down to sec that I was standing on the head of a fire-breathing dragon. 'Look, Val!' Maram whispered to me as he nudged my side. 'That's a touchstone, isn't it!'

  I turned to see him pointing at a massive desk on which many books lay open.

  There, too, set out as if Morjin had been studying them, were warders, wish stones, dragon bones and other lesser gelstei. I saw three precious music marbles as well as a sleep stone, with its many swirling colors that looked something like a fire agate.

  Maram took a step straight toward the desk, perhaps intending to touch or take one of these treasures. But i grabbed his elbow and said, 'We don't have time for this.'

  Kane, moving quickly, swept up a few bloodstones glowing with a dreadful red light and pocketed them. Then he pointed his sword at a large stand next to the desk. He snarled out, 'So, we have time for this, then.'

  I saw that the stand, which looked something like a brazier, held six large eggs thrice the size of an eagle's. Before I could stop him, Kane crossed the room and thrust his sword straight through one of the eggs, breaking open the leathery shell. Five more times he thntst out and when he was done, the steel of his sword dripped with a thick, blood-orange yolk. Thus did he destroy the eggs of Angraboda, one of the dragons that Morjin had summoned here from Damoom.

  'But there were seven eggs!' Daj whispered as he crossed the room to where Kane stood snarling down at the broken, oozing mass of shells.

  'Seven, eh? Are you sure?'

  Daj nodded his head, looking about the room, as did Kane. He stalked across it to wipe his sword con
temptuously on the silk coverings of Morjin's bed.

  'Kane, there's no time!' I said, making for the door with the great tree. 'We've got to go!'

  'You go,' he said, casting his eyes about the room. 'This is a rare chance.'

  'To destroy an egg?'

  'Yes, that,' he said, stabbing his sword into one of the bed's feather pillows. 'And to destroy Morjin.'

  Now he looked at the door on the north wall that led to the rest of the palace; he gazed fiercely at the tapestry covering the door by which we had entered the room.

  And then he said, 'So, I'll wait here for him. And when he comes, I'll send him back to the stars.'

  Liljana, who had a cooler head than mine, went over to him and touched his sword arm. 'You might wait days then. And what are we to do while you wait to make this murder?'

  'Complete your quest.'

  'But what if we need your help?'

  'You won't,' he snapped. Then his savage gaze fell upon her. 'I know that you want him dead almost as badly as I do.'

  'Perhaps,' Liljana said, looking away from him. 'But not as badly as I want to find what we came here to find.'

  I, too, found it hard to bear the fire in Kane's blazing eyes just then. But I stared straight at him and said a single word: 'Pease.'

  There was a moment when I thought he would turn inward to that burning ocean of hate that pulled him ever downward into the hell of his own being. But once, near a little clearing littered with the bodies of the gray men that we had slain, he had pledged his sword to my service so long as I sought the Lightstone. The deep, knowing touch of our eyes told me that he remembered this promise. And that he would keep it

  'All right,' he said, pointing his sword toward the east door that led to Morjin's throne room, let's finish this damn quest of yours then!'

  I stepped over and twisted the knob of the door, which was unlocked and pulled open like any other. Behind it was a hallway, draped with flowing silks, that ran straight east I led the way into it and then Kane shut the door behind us.

  We marched forward for a distance of a few hundred yards. No other doors or passages gave out onto this new tunnel. On either side of us and above us, Daj said, were the rooms of Morjin's palace that could only be reached from his room through its north door. Many people, I sensed, were all about us through thin walls of rock.

  As we hurried along, my breath came more quickly in bursts that seemed to burn my nostrils and mouth. And yet the air was cold, as was the rock beneath the thin, silk wall coverings. The door at the opposite end of the hallway was cold, too. We came upon it in a rush of driving feet and beating hearts. Like the door to Morjin's room, it was cast of bronze and unlocked.

  With a last look back at Kane and the others, I pushed it open. And then I stepped out into Morjin's throne room.

  'Oh, my Lord!' Maram whispered in my ear. 'Oh, my Lord!'

  We stood along the west wall of one of the largest enclosed spaces I had ever beheld. The vast chamber, carved out of solid rock, must have been three hundred feet high and nearly as long and wide. Immense pillars rose up from the floor like giant stone trees and fluted out to support the dark ceiling high above. Everything about this cold, vaulted hall seemed dark, with its acres of bare, black basalt Yet Morjin and the hall's makers had applied all their art toward filling it with light. In the walls and ceiling were set many hundreds of glowstones, throwing out their soft, silky sheen. The pillars were jacketed in gold leaf, which reflected this radiance out into the hall Various statues, encrusted with rubies, sapphires and other gems, added to the glitter. And yet it was not quite enough to reach into the farthest corners and drive away the shadows. In the midst of all this ancient and hideous splendor hung an air of dread that seemed to ooze from the exposed rock along the ceiling, floor and walls; here echoed the memory of torments as old as the ages and the future cries of hopelessness and doom.

  For a moment I pressed back against the bronze door to still my dizziness and orient myself. 1 noted the three closed gates, along the east, north and west walls.

  Opposite the door to Morjin's rooms where we gathered, at the center of the hall and toward its southern end, stood a great throne. It had been built, it seemed, in imitation or mockery of the king's throne in Tria. Six broad steps led up to it, and eacs step was framed at either end by the sculptures of Gashur and Zun and other Galadin who had become as monsters. The greatest of these was the coiled, red dragon monument to Angra Mainyu into which the throne itself was set. When Morjin took his place on this seat of power, his head would be framed just below the huge dragon's head, which looked out into the room with golden eyes carved out of two huge amber stones.

  Leaving the door behind us open should we have to beat a hasty retreat, we moved out into the great hall as we began what I hoped would be the final moments of the quest. But even as Alkaladur's blade shone with a new light, my hope faded. For in truth, the silustria blazed too brightly. It whatever direction I pointed it - north, east, south and west - I could detect not the slightest change in its luminosity. I knew from this frightful radiance that the Lightstone must be very close - so close that my silver sword could lead us no farther. But how we were otherwise to find it in so vast a space, I didn't know.

  For there were a thousand places where Sartan Odinan might have set down a little golden cup. Behind the throne, and in other parts of the room, there were altars, cabinets and pedestals that might have been the Lightstone's resting place. And cold braziers, lamp stands, benches, shelves and even the plinths of the great stone pillars holding up the ceiling. Along the huge walls themselves - carved with dragons, demons and a huge bas-relief of the Baaloch and the dark angels imprisoned with him on Damoom - there were recesses and rocky projections, any one of which might have hidden the Lightstone.

  'Well?' Maram said to me as we walked out into the room.

  'It's here,' I said. 'But it's so close, my sword can't tell us where.'

  'Then how are we to find it?' He stopped by the line of pillars running down the hall to the right of the throne. He bent to feel along a pillar's massive, square-cut plinth, tapping his hands along the stone like a blind man. 'My Lord - we can't just hope we'll stumble across it!'

  We worked our way straight across the hall, passing between the throne and an evil-looking, circular area with several great standing stones arising from the floor.

  We came to the line of pillars running down the hall to the left of the throne. And there, suddenly, Flick appeared. His small, scintillating form, now throwing out sparks of silver and gold, shot straight up into the air like fireworks. He whirled about ecstatically, then dived down like a firebird and began weaving his way in and out of the mighty pillars in streaks of violet flame.

  'Do you think he knows where it is?' Maram asked. 'Do you think he is trying to tell us?'

  Flick looped in and out of the pillars and then spun directly over the circular area with its standing stones, which looked to be used for rituals. Flick, I thought, certainly knew where the Lightstone was. And more, it seemed he was drinking in its presence through every sparkling bit of his being and growing ever brighter. But I sensed that he couldn't simply tell us where it had been hidden. For whatever Mick really was, it couldn't have occurred to him that for my friends and me. the lightstone remained invisible.

  It was the greatest torment of Argattha to stand so close to the Lightstone, almost to feel its numinous presence charging the air as before a storm, but not be able to see it.

  Daj, watching us look across the room as Flick streaked about must have thought we had fallen mad. He could not make out the Timpum's fiery shape. And so he was the first of us to behold another sight.

  'Val — over there!' he suddenly cried as he pulled on my arm. He pointed across the ritual area at the gate on the west side of the hall. 'They're coming!'

  And even as my eyes fell upon the gate's iron doors, they flew open, swinging inward. Many guards, dressed in mail and yellow livery stained with angry, red drago
ns, charged into the hall. Many of them bore swords and halberds in their hands; some had long, thrusting spears. Their captains arrayed them in four lines, two on either side of the doorway. Almost without thinking, I took a quick count of their numbers: there were about twenty-five of them in each line.

  'So,' Kane muttered. Just then the door to Morjin's private chamber by which we had entered the hall slammed shut 'Four of us against a hundred - so.'

  Without any more prompting, Maram ran over to the gate on the east wall behind the pillars where we gathered. He pounded against it but it was locked. 'Trapped!' he cried out. 'Now we're truly trapped!' So we were. As Maram quickly rejoined us and we stood with our backs to the pillars, there came a flurry of motion from outside the open gate to the throne room. And then a man dressed in a golden tunic, trimmed with black fur and emblazoned with a ferocious, red dragon, strode through the doorway. He was almost tall and bore himself with an unshakeable air of command.

  His close-cropped hair shone like gold while the beauty of his form and face seemed almost too perfect. His eyes appeared golden, too. For he was, of course, Morjin the Fair - the Lord of Lies and the Great Beast who had so often Come for me with his daws and illusions in the worst of my nightmares.

  'Ah, my friend,' Maram said to me as we pressed back against the pillars, preparing for a last stand. 'This is the end - finally, the end.'

  Morjin took another step forward, before pausing to beckon with his hand to his guards. He stared across the room straight at me - and at Kane, Maram, Liljana and Daj. There was utter triumph in his hideously beautiful eyes. And then, without a word, his face fell into a mask of hate as he and his guards began marching toward us.

  Chapter 44

  Morjin left half of his men to guard the open gate while he deployed the fifty othera around the ritual area facing us. I had supposed that he and his guards would simply charge us when they drew close enough. But it seemed that he had other plans.

  'Back toward the wall!' Maram hissed at me.

  I was reluctant to retreat from the line of the pillars to the wall, for there we would be trapped with no room to maneuver. And Morjin seemed loath to force this retreat.