David Zindell - The Lightstone

I clinked goblets with my friends, and took a sip of the wine. The tang of the grapes touched my tongue, along with the fainter tastes of chocolate and oranges. We all stood about drinking and laughing with that nervous relief that comes after a narrow escape from death.

Then the King gave another signal, and the sky over the Elu Gardens filled with a booming like thunder. All at once, fireworks burst into the air like lightning splitting the night. Flowers of blue light opened outward in perfect spheres; millions of red and silver sparks spun through space and outshone the very stars. Flick, perhaps mistaking these lights for Timpum, spun with them. I saw him as a swirl of silver against the line of trees at the edge of the Gardens. Farther to the east, in the districts of the city running down to the river and beyond it, more fireworks were exploding: from the rooftops of buildings and above the various great squares and out above the dark islands at the mouth of the river. I was afraid they might set the nearby houses on fire, but Tria was a city of stone. And that night, it was a city of happy people, for the King had commanded that free bread and wine be distributed to them so that the whole populace might help him celebrate. The distant roar of their cheering spread out from the West Wall to the East Wall, and from the docks along the river to the Varkoth Gate, for now the sky above the whole of the city blazed like a fiery umbrella of light.

As I stood there with my friends, Maram admitted that he had never seen such a sight in all his life. None of us,. I thought, had. It called us to hope that the Lightstone might someday be regained, even as we had vowed it would. Toward that end, we began discussing our dreams of finding it.

'When I set out from Mesh,' Maram said, looking out at the fireworks, 'all i wanted was to reach Tria safely. I never really thought about the Lightstone as existing somewhere, ah, you know, in a place where someone could actually go and find it But now it's now. And now I suppose we do have to go looking for it. But who has any idea of where to look?'

At this, Alphanderry smiled at us and said, 'I know where.' We all turned toward him as his large eyes Iit up with a different kind of fireworks. He said, 'You see, I know where Sartan Odinan hid the Gelstei.'

And then, as three great, red flowers of fire burst in the air above us and my heart boomed like thunder, he smiled again as he told us where the Lightstone might be found.

Near Senta in the faraway reaches of the Crescent Mountains, there is a series of caverns whose walls are lined with colored crystals Some are violet or emerald and hang like pendants from the caves' glittering ceilings; some shine like sapphires and arise in great blue pillars from the floors. All the crystals, whatever their shape or hue, vibrate like chimes in the wind. In truth, they sing. For centuries, it is said, men and women from across Ea have come to the caverns to listen to these singing crystals and add their own voices to the music that pours out of them. For it is also said that the crystals will record any words that fall upon them so long as they are true and sung with the fire of one's soul.

Upon entering the caverns, all but the deaf hear a million voices trolling out the words of living languages and those long dead. The seven caverns resonate with ancient ballads, love songs, canticles, carols and the death songs of those who have come to say goodbye to the earth that bore them. Their walls, ashimmer with a radiance that also pours from the crystals, echo with plaints and whispers, with cries and prayers and exaltations. The great sound of it has been known to drive men mad. But others have found there a deep peace and an answer to the great mystery of life. For in the Singing Caves of Senta, people hear only what they are ready to hear. Even a deaf man, it is said, might hear the Galadin speaking to him, for the voices of the angels are not carried upon the wind alone and can sometimes be heard as a soundless music deep inside the heart.

All this Alphanderry told us on the lawn of King Kiritan's palace as we watched the fireworks. He told us as well of an Hesperan minstrel – his name was Venkatil – who had journeyed to Senta to learn the secrets of the caves. There, almost by chance, Venkatil had listened in wonder to the words of an old ballad that told of where Sartan Odinan had brought the Lightstone. Some months later, when he had heard that there would be a great quest to find it, he had set sail for Tria only to be shipwrecked in Terror Bay off Galda.

'I met Venkatil in the forest west of Ar,' Alphanderry told us. 'He'd been set upon by robbers and mortally wounded. But before he died, he sang me the words to the ballad. They were in Old Ardik but their meaning was clear enough: "If you would know where the Gelstei was hidden, go to the Blue Mountains and seek in the Tower of the Sun."'

That particular Tower of the Sun, as Alphanderry told us, was also known by its more ancient name: the Tur-Solonu. Once the greatest of Ea's oracles, it had lain in ruins since Morjin had destroyed it in his first rise to power during the Age of Swords.

'Just so,' Kane muttered upon hearing what Alphanderry had to say. 'The Tur-Solonu is destroyed. There's nothing there but a heap of burnt stones. Why should we waste our time there?'

'Because,' Alphanderry said, 'the Singing Caves have never been known to tell anything but the truth.'

'So, it's gobbledegook they tell!' Kane said with inexplicable vehe-mence. 'I've been to the Caves, and I know. There may be truth somewhere in the babble you hear there, but who could ever know what it is?'

We debated the course of our journey long into the night. Kane and Maram both doubted the wisdom of exploring a dead oracle, and Master Juwain seemed inclined to agree with them. But Liljana pointed out that Sartan Odinan might indeed have brought the Lightstone to the Tur-Solonu, in order to hide it in a place that even Morjin might not think to search.

Such an accursed site, whose ruins were said to be haunted by the ghosts of the many servers murdered there, would likewise be avoided by anyone making the quest. With knights journeying to every other oracle on Ea to find clues as to where the Lightstone was hidden, no one -especially not Morjin's priests or spies – would suspect our objective. And it was as good a place to start as any.

Atara, whose eyes took on the faraway glister of the stars, spoke the name of the Tur-Solonu in a strange voice. She looked to me for affirmation that we should journey there. But I hesitated a long time while I listened to the wind sweeping above the lawn's soft grasses.

'If we can't decide,' Maram said, 'perhaps we should take a vote.'

'No, there's to be none of that on this quest,' Kane said. 'We must agree, as one company, what we should do. And if we can't all agree, then one of our company must set our course.'

He proposed then that I lead us. It was I, he said, who had set out for Tria alone only to draw everyone else to me. It was I whom Morjin sought and would first be killed if he found us. And it was I who bore the markof Valoreth. To my surprise everyone agreed with him. At first I protested this decision, for it seemed to me that as elders, either Kane, Liljana or Master Juwain should more properly bear the burden of leadership. But something inside me whispered that perhaps Kane was right after all. I had a strange sense that if I did as he said, I would be completing a pattern woven of gold and silver threads and as ancient as the stars. And so I reluctantly bowed my head to my she friends and accepted their charge. And then we set the rules for our company. These were simple and few. I was not to command as would a ship's captain or a lord. At all times, I was to ask the counsel of my friends in reaching any decision that must be made. And at any juncture in our journey, either along roads winding through dense forests or the even darker paths that lead down through the soul, any of us would be allowed to leave the company at any time, lor freely we had come together as brothers and sisters, and freely we must all follow our hearts.