The Lightstone

by David Zindell

  'Look at the Valari standing there!' he said to his priests. 'So tall in his arrogance!

  The long sword. The black eyes - who has ever seen such eyes outside nightmares where demons haunt the dark? Many have said that the Valari have made a pact with demons. But I say they are demons themselves - fiends from hell. They are a plague upon the world; they are a stab in the back of the body of humanity; they are a corruption of all that is good and true. It's in their blood, like poison. The taint goes back to the beginning of time. But it will have an ending, in time, an antidote of fire and steel. Haven't I foretold that if war comes, this last war we've all been dreading, that the Valari race will disappear from the face of the earth? That race of warlords and savages has on its conscience the dead of every great conflict in Ea's history.

  Would it be too much to ask that they be given new homes in the Red Desert or on trees that shall grow out of the ground in entire forests to accommodate them?'

  Once before, I thought, after the battle of Tarshid, Morjin had put a thousand Vaiari warriors on such 'trees.' And now he proposed the slaughter of the whole Valari people. Or did he?

  'It's not entirely disadvantageous,' he went on, 'that rumor attributes to us the plan for carrying out this fate. Terror can be a salutary thing.'

  How, I wondered, could Morjin speak with such passion and con viction when he must have known the enormity of his deceit? In looking at my sword's shining silustria, a terrible thought came to me. People believe what they see others believing most strongly. Long ago, Morjin had perfected those expressions, gestures and intonations of voice designed to convince his followers that he believed his own lies.

  And after hundreds of years, this greatest of deceits had worked an evil alchemy upon Morjin: it had overcome him and his sense of the real so that he truly did believe his lies. This communicated to his audiences like lightning. And thus shocked into frenzies of false faith, his listeners returned his passion to him and further strengthened his own belief.

  His own lies had possessed him, I thought. And so he had made of himself a ghul.

  For a moment, I was moved to pity him. But the gleam to his golden eyes told me that he would use any such emotions against me. As he now used his gift of valarda to further enchant and enslave his people.

  Again he pointed at me as he thundered: 'The arrogance of the Valari! Who else could steal the Lightstone and keep it behind their mountains for most of an age? Is there a greater crime than this in all of history?'

  I felt Morjin's hate beating at me like a hammer, directly from his heart to mine - as it beat at his guards and Grays and everyone else gathered in the hall.

  Morjin stepped over to one of his priests, a young man whose handsome face was marred with patches of scar as if it had been burned by heated iron. I thought that he might possibly be the least cruel of the Red Priests. Morjin said to him, 'Lord Uilliam, if such criminals came into your care, what would you recommend be done with them?'

  Morjin's eyes touched Lord Uilliam's; his tongue seemed to shoot invisible streams of relb at Lord Uilliam so that the young man's tongue caught up the flames of malice, and he said, 'Purify them with fire!'

  Morjin breathed out the fire of his approval and set the young man's blood burning with a raging desire to punish his enemies.

  'Oh, oh!' I heard Maram moan next to me. He stood by the great black pillar, looking at Atara and the bloody Ymiru as he squeezed his mined crystal.

  Morjin next addressed an older priest whose long, narrow face and great beak of a nose gave him the appearance of a vulture. 'Lord Yadom, if such criminals were persuaded to tell of clues that helped you recover the Lightstone, what would you do with it?'

  'I would bring it to you, Sire.'

  'But what if I had been abducted for torture and imprisoned?'

  Lord Yadom clearly understood that Morjin was testing him. And so he said, 'Then I would wait for your release.'

  'What if you waited thirty years?'

  'The Kallimun waited a hundred times as long for your release from Damoom.'

  'Yes, but then you didn't have the Lightstone. Wouldn't you use it to free your own king?'

  'I would want to Sire,' Yadom said with apparent sincerity. 'But the Lightstone is not to be used this way.'

  Morjin stared at him and then called out into the hall: 'Wise Yadom! Is anyone wiser than the first of my priests?'

  Even as he said this, his golden eyes seemed to swell like suns. And Yadom swelled with overweening pride, like a flower too full of nectar. Morjin's faith in Yadom that he beamed forth was so pleasurable that it made my whole body shudder.

  And so it went as he paced about the room, here pausing to question one of his guards, there nodding at one of the Grays or his priests. He played to his people: with cunning words that fell easily off his silver tongue, with long, soulful looks, with veiled threats and promises and deceits. One man he flattered; another he frightened; too many his malice opened like a black knife and set loose their animal ferocity. I hated how Morjin perverted the gift we both had been given: he played men like instruments, plucking at their heartstrings as if he were a twisted minstrel making the most evil of music.

  Morjin nodded across the hall at one of his guards, who brought a brazier heaped with hot coals into the ritual circle. He set it down in front of Atara, Ymiru and Master Juwain, and then thrust a pincers and three long, pointed irons into the coals to heat them.

  'The Lightstone will soon be recovered,' Morjin shouted. 'Haven't I foretold that this is the time when it will again foe seen in this hall? And what should be done with this cup when it returns to its rightful place?'

  One of his guards, an old soldier with a grim face and a strange hunger in his eyes.

  knew the right answer to this question, And he called out, 'Pour from it eternal lift!'

  Now every pair of eyes in the hall fixed on Morjin. His men looked at him with its almost electric anticipation.

  'Eternal life!' Morjin suddenly cried out. 'This is the gift that the Lightstone may bestow upon men and its true purpose. But is it a gift for everyone? Can a beast appreciate a flute or a book placed into its paws? No, and so it is that only those chosen to recieve the true gold of the Lightstone will ever know immortality.'

  As Kane stared at Morjin defiantly. I suddenly understood that the powerful seek power for its own sake because it gives them the illusion that they have power over death.

  But fear of death, I thought, leads to hate of life.

  With these few words, whispered inside my mind, I knew that I had condemned myself should the door that I most feared he flung open before me. For Morjin, with all his vainglory and hate, was like a mirror reflecting back at me a shape that I did not warn to see.

  'And who are these chosen?' Morjin continued. He nodded sternly at lord Uilliam and Lord Yadom. 'They are the priests who have served the Kallimun so faithfully; they are my guards and soldiers who have given their lives for a greater purpose, and so it is only fining that they shall have greater life themselves.'

  Morjin, the sorcerer who had lived thousands of years, stood before his men as the living embodiment that what he promised was poss ible.

  'And who,' he quietly asked 'shall be the one to pour the nectar of immortality from the golden cup? Only the Maitreya. But who is this man? That will be determined only when the Lightstone is placed in his hands.'

  So saying, he reached his hands out to the hundred and twenty men who bad followed him into the room. In their many eyes was a terrible lust for the Lightstone and all that Morjin had vowed to give them. And then- a remarkable thing occurred, Aa if light itself were pouring out of his hands, he used the valarda to to touch all who gazed upon him with bliss.

  'So' Kane muttered next to me. There came a rumbling sound of hate from deep inside his throat. 'So.'

  All people have love and longing to the One, for that is our source, at once father and mother and breath of the infinite in which we take our being. And Morjin had
tried to fool people into turning this love onto him. in his smile was the false promise of all joy and happiness, but in the end he would bring the world only sorrow and death.

  Now he turned to me and said, 'You've taken a vow to seek the Lightstone. And now you can fulfill it by helping us to recover it. You must help us, Valari.'

  I gripped my sword more tightly as I fought off the waves of bliss that he beamed at me. It was strange to think that he wanted my hate and fear less than he did my love.

  'Surrender your sword,' he again commanded me. 'Surrender your self.'

  'No,' I said, my heart beating fast like a bird's.

  'You must surrender, Valari.'

  He stood before me with his fingers outstretched as if waiting for me to place my sword in his hands. His eyes called to me. I knew that he required the surrender of my will and all my adoration so that he might counterfeit a sense of the One within himself.

  'Is it death you want?' he asked me. His eyes now seemed as golden as the Lightstone itself. 'Or life?'

  I took a few deep breaths to slow the racing of my heart. And then I said, 'It's not upon you to give me either.'

  'Is it not? That we shall see.'

  I lifted my sword back behind my head in readiness should Morjin send his guards against us. And I told him, 'I'll never surrender to you!'

  My contempt for Morjin was in my eyes for all to behold. Even if I hadn't possessed the gift of valarda, not a man in the hall would have been spared feeling my defiance.

  'Damn you, Valari!' he suddenly thundered at me. His face contorted into a mask of ugliness as rage took hold of him. If he couldn't have love, he was ready to embrace hate. 'Never surrender, you say? That too, we shall see.'

  He shook Atara's arrow at me, and then pointed its head back at the circle directly at Master Juwain. He shouted, 'What is it you know about the Lightstone?'

  'What?' Master Juwain said as if he didn't quite understand the question.

  'Didn't you hear me?' Morjin roared out. Upon beckoning Lord Uilliam to follow him, he turned and strode back into the circle. He plucked one of the irons from the brazier and handed it to Lord Uilliam. 'Master Juwain's ear is stopped with wax

  - clean it out.'

  As Lord Uilliam gazed at the iron's glowing red point, Morjin com-manded the guards still posted near the door to join the others around the circle. They took their places there, and Lord Uilliam looked over at Master luwain, sweating and biting his lip as he pulled at the chains that bound him to the standing stone.

  'Put it in his ear!' Morjin commanded.

  Lord Uilliam still hesitated, and he said, 'But he's just an old man!'

  'Do it?' Morjin hissed.

  'I can't, Sire.'

  Morjin grabbed the iron from Lord Uilliam's trembling hand and pointed it at Master Juwain. He said, 'He is old, but is he a man?'

  I didn't know what he meant; I didn't want to know. Beside me, Maram now had his sword drawn, as did Liljana and Kane. I was ready to charge forward in an effort to cut our way through to Master Juwain - and to Ymiru and Atara. But we were only four against a hundred.

  'Be strong,' Kane said to me. 'You must be strong now, eh?'

  Morjin now turned to Lord Uilliam; it seemed for a moment that he might put the iron in him for failing to do his bidding. But he surprised me. He drew up closer to the young man, and laid his arm about his shoulder as he bent his head to whisper in his ear. From seventy feet away, I could not hear what he said to him. But I had a keen sense that he was trying to persuade his priest that Master Juwain was not really a man at all but some kind of beast.

  'It's hard, I know,' Morjin called out so that everyone could hear him. Compassion seemed to pour from him like rain.

  'Sire?' Lord Uilliam said as Morjin gave him back the iron. He looked at Master Juwain.

  I looked at him, too. His face, tight with fear, seemed even uglier than it usually did.

  It was all twisted and knotted with lumps, bristly like a boar's and scarcely human.

  'Do as I've commanded you!' Morjin said to Lord Uilliam.

  And then his eyes fell upon Lord Uilliam, and he breathed the terrible fire of his wrath into him. Lord Uilliam suddenly stiffened as if he could feel the heat of the iron up through his hand and all throughout his body. He turned to step closer to Master Juwain. As one of the guards slammed Master Juwain's head back against the standing stone and held it clamped there, Lord Uilliam pushed the burning point of the iron into the opening of Master Juwain's ear. There came a hising and the stench of burnt flesh.

  Lord Uilliam snarled and gnashed his teeth together; he kept pushing the iron deeper, twisting it, reaming it around in circles as his hate poured out of him.

  'Master Juwain!' Maram called out, and he burst into tears.

  The pain burning through my head was so great that I could barely keep standing.

  But the sheer valor with which Master Juwain faced his torture sent a thrill of strength shooting through me. Not once did he cry out for mercy. His whole body quivered with the shock of what the priest was doing to him. Although his face contorted with agony, I saw that it was really beautiful after all - beautiful with a luminous will that overmatched Morjin's and kept him from surrendering his soul to him.

  'Master Juwain!' Maram cried out again. 'Master Juwain!'

  True men, I thought looking at Maram, didn't need the gift of valarda to suffer another's pain.

  At last, the iron's point quenched in Master Juwain's blood, Lord Uilliam stood away from him. His face was white; he held the iron in his trembling hand. He could barely stand himself. Morjin stepped closer to him, and wrapped his arm around his back to help hold him up.

  'Well done, my priest,' Morjin told him. He touched his finger to the iron's bloody point; then he touched his finger to his tongue. 'Have I not said many times that the priests of the Kallimun must do the hard things and so sacrifice themselves for the sake of Ea?'

  After Lord Uilliam could stand on his own again, Morjin shook his fist at Master Juwain and shouted, 'Is this what you wanted? That you, a master healer, should cause such sickness in my priest's soul?'

  But I did not think that Master Juwain could hear him, even with his remaining good ear. His head had fallen down against his chest, and the weight of his body pulled against the chains binding him.

  'Where is the Lightstone?' Morjin screamed at him. He stepped over and slapped Master Juwain's face. 'What have you learned about it?'

  Master Juwain finally opened his eyes and lifted up his head. His gray eyes blazed with defiance. And he told Morjin, 'Only that you'll never have from it what you wish.'

  Again Morjin slapped Master Juwain's face, which snapped his head back against the great stone. He looked at the greatly enlarged red hole in Master Juwain's ear. And he said to him, 'I would be doing you a favor to order your death. But until I know where the Lightstone is, I'm not permitted to extend such mercies.'

  He motioned for his six priests to gather around him. He stood talking to them in hushed tones as the thirteen silent Grays waited nearby and the hundred guards circled the ritual area with the steel of their swords and spears. It was a mortar of torture and blood-crime that bound this evil brotherhood together. It was well for them, I thought that they hid their secrets inside the windowless vaults of a black mountain.

  'Val,' Maram whispered to me as he stared at the standing stones. He was sweating even more profusely than Master Juwain. 'Stab your sword into my heart - I don't think I have the courage to fall on mine.'

  'Be strong!' Kane called to him. 'Strong as stone now, I say!'

  Maram closed his eyes then. It was said that the Brotherhood taught meditations that could forever still the beating of one's heart. But it seemed that Maram had been too busy with other pursuits to learn them. 'I can't,' he finally said, looking at me. 'I can't will myself to die.'

  'Will them to die!' Kane growled out, pointing his sword at Morjin and his priests.

  Now Morjin stepped o
ver to Atara and looked at her and a new terror struck into me. Atara looked back at htm boldly, her eyes as clear as diamonds. There was a terrible fear in their bright blue depths, but something else as well. It seemed that she was seeing the future and trying to surrender herself to what must be. This was her will, as a warrior and a woman, to fulfill her purpose in being bom on such a savage world as Ea.

  'Don't you ever look at me like that!' Morjin suddenly raged at her. He slapped her face with his left hand, turning her head, and then backhanded her, turning her head again. But she summoned up all her courage and held her head up proudly as she continued to sure at him. I sensed that she was seeing something in him that no one else could see.

  'Damn you!' he snarled out, slapping her again and bloodying her mouth. Then he whirled about to face me. 'And damn you, Valari!'

  He paused to catch his breath. Then he called out, 'Lay down your sword!'

  I turned to catch Kane's stare and said, 'Let's charge them now and make an end to this.' Kane eyed the hundred guards waiting around the circle, and he said.

  'It would be our death.'

  'There's no help for that now.'

  'No - there may yet be a chance.'

  'What, then?'

  Kane's dark eyes picked over the walls of the room, the great throne, the pillars and the bolted iron doors. Then he said, 'I wish I knew.'

  Morjin, hating to be ignored, waved Atara's arrow at me and shouted again: 'Lay down your sword and I will spare your woman!'

  'No!' Atara cried out to me. 'You must never surrender!'

  'Do it!' Morjin hissed at me. 'Now!'

  'No!' Atara said again. 'The sword is his death - can't you see how he fears it?'

  Morjin tore his gaze from my flashing sword to stare at Atara. And then he screamed at her, 'And what do you fear, scryer? Not death, I think. And scarcely pain.

  Something worse. What is it you see when you look at my eyes now? Look as long as you can, scryer - look deep.'

  Atara looked at him in utter loathing and contempt, and then spat the blood from her broken lip straight into his eyes.