David Zindell - The Lightstone

Five years before, at the great tournament in Taron, in a game of chess, I had humiliated him in a crushing defeat that had taken only twenty-three moves. It wasn't enough that he had won the gold medal in the fencing competition and had acquitted himself honorably in the horsemanship and archery competitions; it seemed he had to be preeminent at everything, for he took insult easily, especially from those who had bested him. It was said that he had fought fifteen men in duels – and left all fifteen dead to pools of blood. One of his brothers. Lord Issur, shared the table with him, along with Lord Mestivan and Lord Nadhru and other prominent Ishkans whom Ravar pointed out to me.

'Do any of them look like your assassin?' Ravar asked me.

'No,' I said. 'It's hard to tell – the man's face was hooded.'

And then, even as I closed my eyes and opened myself to the hum of hundreds of voices, I felt the same taint of wrongness that. I had in the woods. The red, twisting worms of someone's hate began eating their way up my spine. From what man in the hall this dreadful sensation emanated, however, I couldn't tell.

At last, the wine having been poured, my father lifted up his goblet and stood to make the opening toast. All eyes in the hall turned his way; all voices trailed off and then died into silence as he began to speak.

'Masters of the Brotherhood,' he began, 'princes and lords, ladies and knights, we would like to welcome you to this gathering tonight. It's a strange chance that brings King Kiritan's emissaries to Mesh at the same time that King Hadaru sends his eldest son to honor us. But let us hope that it's a good chance and a sign of good times to come.'

My father, I thought, had a fine, strong voice that rang from the stones of the hall.

He fairly shone with strengtrjjioth in the inner steel of his soul and in his large, long hands that could still grip a sword with great ferocity. At fifty-four he was just entering the fullest flower of manhood, for the Valari age more slowly than do other peoples – no one knows why. His long black hair, shot with strands of snowy white, flowed out from beneath a silver crown whose points were set with brilliant white diamonds. Five other diamonds, arrayed into the shape of a star, shimmered from a great, silver ring. It was the ring of a king, and someday Asaru would wear it if no one killed him first.

'And so,'my father continued, 'in the hope of finding the way toward the peace that all desire, we invite you to take salt and bread with us -and perhaps a little meat and ale as well.'

My father smiled as he saigmis, to leaven the stiffness of his formal speech. Then he motioned for the grooms to bring out what he had called a 'little meat' In truth, there were many platters laden with steaming hams andftasted beef, along with elk, venison and other game. There were fowls almost too numerous to count: nicely browned ducks, geese, pheasants and quail – though of course no swans. It seemed that hunters such as Asaru and I had slaughtered whole herds and flocks that day. The grooms served baskets heaped with black barley bread and the softer white breads, aged cheeses, butter, jams, apple pies, honeycomb and pitchers of frothing black beer. There was so much food that the long wooden tables fairly groaned beneath its weight

Although I was very hungry, my belly seemed a knot of acid and pain, and I could hardly ea| And so I picked at my food as I looked out into the hall. Along the walls were tapestries depicting famous battles that my people had fought and many portraits of my ancestors, ine light of hundreds of candles illuminated the faces of Aramesh, Duramesh, and the great Elemesh who had utterly crushed the Sarni mm Battle of the Song River. In their ancient countenances I saw traits that my brothers shared to this day: Yarashan's pride, Karshur's strength, Jonathay's almost unearthly calm and beauty. There was much to admire in these kings, who were a reminder of the debt that we owed to those who give us life.

My brothers seemed all too aware of this debt of blood. Between bites of wild turkey or bread, washed down with drafts of beer, they spoke of their willingness to make war with the Ishkans should it become necessary to fight. They spoke of the causes for this war, too: the killing of the Ishkan crown prince in a duel with my grandfather two generations earlier, and my grandfather's own death at the Battle of the Diamond River. Yarashan, who fancied himself a student of history (although he had studied only lineages and battles), brought up the War of the Two Stars early in the Age of Law in which Mesh and Ishka had taken opposing sides. The Ishkans had fought my ancestors over the possession of the Lightstone; we had badly defeated them at the Raaswash, where their king, Elsu Maruth, had been killed. It was the greatest of ironies, I thought, that this healing vessel had been the source of woe for so long.

' The Ishkans will never forget that battle,' I heard Asaru say to Ravar. 'But in the end, it will all come down to the mountain.'

Everyone, of course, knew of which mountain he spoke: Mount Korukel, one of the great guardian peaks that stood upon the bor-der between Mesh and Ishka just beyond the feeder streams of the Upper Raaswash River. The Ishkans were pressing their old demand that the border of our two kingdoms should exactly bisect Mount Korukel, while we of the swan and stars claimed the whole mountain as Meshian soil.

'But Korukel is ours,' Yarashan said as he used a napkin to neatly wipe the beer from his lips. In his outward form, he was almost as beautiful a man as Jonathay and even prouder than Asaru.

What was half a mile of rock against men's lives, I wondered? Well, if many of those rocks were diamonds, it was a great deal indeed. For the lives of men – the Valari warriors of each of the Nine Kingdoms – had been connected to the fabulous mineral wealth of the Morning Mountains for thousands of years. From their silver we made our emblems and the gleaming rings with which we pledged our lives; from its iron we made our steel. And from the diamonds we found deep underground and sometimes sparkling in the shallows of clear fountain streams, we made our marvelous suits of armor. In the Age of Swords, before the Brotherhoods had broken with the Valari, it had been the Brothers who had learned to work these hardest and most beautiful of stones; they had discovered the secret of affixing them to corslets of black leather and then taught us this art. While it was not true that this diamond-encrusted armor afforded the Valari invulnerability in battle – an arrow or a well-aimed spear thrust could find a chink between the carefully set diamonds – many were the swords that had broken upon it The mere sight of a Valari army marching into battle and glittering in their ranks as if raimented with millions of stars had struck terror into our enemies for most of three long ages. They called us the Diamond Warriors, and said that we could never be defeated by force of arms alone, but only through treachery or the fire of the red gelstei.

And recently a great new vein of diamonds had been discovered running through the heart of Mount Korukel. Naturally, the Ishkans wanted to mine it for themselves.

When the last pie had been eaten and nearly everyone's belly groaned from much more than a little meat, it came time for the rounds of toasting. It would have been more sensible, of course, to hold this drinking fest after discussing the rather serious business that the Alonians and Ishkans had come for. But we Valari honored our traditions, and the end of a meal was the time for paying one's respects to guests and hosts alike.

The first to stand that day was Count Dario. He was a compact man who moved with quick, deft gestures of his arms and hands. He took up a goblet of black beer and presented it toward my father, saying ' To King Shamesh, whose hospitality is overmatched only by his wisdom.' A clamor of approval rang through the hall, but Prince Salmelu, like the swordsman he was, took advantage of the opening that Count Dario had unwittingly presented him. Like an uncaged bear, he stood, stretched and planted his feet wide apart on the floor. He fingered the many colored battle ribbons tied to his long hair with his right hand before resting it on the hilt of his sword. Then with his left hand, he raised his goblet and said, ' To King Shamesh.