David Zindell - The Lightstone

The silence that filled the chamber then was as deep as the sea.

'This must be it,' I said, staring into Alkaladur's bright silver and listening to the pearl bowl sing. 'But how can it be?'

My heart beat seven times in rhythm with Atara's, Maram's and Kane's. And men Atara, staring at the bowl as if transfixed by its splendor, whispered to me, 'Val, I can see it! It's insidel'

As we kept our eyes on the gleaming bowl, she told us that the pearl formed only its veneer; somehow, she said, the ancients had layered over this lustrous substance like enamel over lead.

'But it's no base metal that's inside,' she said. 'It's gold or something very like gold -

I'm sure of it.'

'If it's gold, then it must be the true gold,' I said.

Kane's eyes were now black pools that drank in the bowl's light. 'So, we must break it open,' he told rat. 'Strike it with your sword Val.'

'Bur what about the Lord librarian's second rule?' I asked.

Maram wiped the sweat from his flushed face. 'We weren't to harm any of the books, Lord Grayam said.'

'But surely the spirit of his rule was that we weren't to harm any-thing here.'

'Ah, surely,' Maram said, 'this is the time to abide by the letter of his rule?'

'Perhaps we should bring the cap to him and let him decide.'

Atara who had a keener sense of right and wrong than I, nodded at the cup, and told me, 'If you were lord of Silvassu and your castle was about to fall by siege, would you want to be troubled by such a decision?'

'No, of course not.'

'Then shouldn't we abide by the highest rule?' she asked. And then she quoted from Master Juwam's book 'Act with regard to others as you would have them act with regard to you.'

I was quiet while I gripped my sword, looking at the bowl.

'Strike, Val,' Kane told me. 'Strike. I say.'

And so I did. Without waiting for doubt to freeze my limbs, I swung Alkaladur in a flashing arc toward the bowl Kane had taught me to wield my sword with an almost perfect precision; I aimed it so that its edge would cut the pearl to a depth of a tenth of an inch, but no more. The impossibly sharp silustria sliced right into the soft pearl. This thin veneer split away more easily than the shell of a boiled egg. Pieces of pearl fell with a tinkle onto the marble stand. And there upon it stood revealed a plain, golden bowl.

'Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord!'

Kane, ignoring the stricken look on Maram s face, picked it up. It took him only a moment to peel away the pieces of pearl that still clung to the inside of the bowl. Its gleaming surface was as perfect and unmarked as the silustria of my sword.

'It a the Lightstone!' Maram cried out

A strangeness fell over Kane then. His face burned with wonder, doubt, joy, bitterness and awe. After a very long time, he handed the bowl to me. And the moment that my hands closed around it, I felt something like a sweet liquid gold pouring into my soul.

'I wish Alphanderry was here to see this.' I said.

The coolness of the bowl's gold seemed to open my mind; I could hear inside myself each note of Alphanderry's last song.

As Atata next took the bowl, I saw Flick whirling above us as he had at the sound of Arphanderry's music. His exaltation was no less than my own. Then Maram's fat fingers closed around the bowl and he cried out again, louder now: 'The Lightstone!

The Lightstone!'

We held quick council and decided that we must find Liljana and Master Juwain. But it was they who found us. At the sound of footsteps in the adjoining chamber with its poetry books, Maram quickly tucked the bowl into one of his tunic's pockets and very guiltily began sweeping the shards of pearl off the stand into his other pocket.

When Liljana followed Master Juwain into the room, however, he breathed a sigh of relief and broke off hiding the signs of our desecration. He brought out the bowl and told them, 'I've found the Lightstone! Look! Look! Behold and rejoice!'

As Master juwain's large gray eyes grew even larger, I again beheld this golden bowl and drank in its beauty. It was one of the happiest moments of my life,

'So this is what you've been shouting about,' Master Juwain said, staring at the bowl.

'We've been looking all over for you – did you know it's past midday?'

In this windowless room, time seemed lost in the hollows of the bowl that Maram held up triumphantly. In defense at missing our rendezvous by King Eluli's statue, he said again, 'I've found the Gelstei!'

'What do you mean, you found it?' Atara asked him.

'Well, I mean, ah, I was the first to pick it up. The first to see it.'

'Were you the first to see it?' Atara asked him.

She went on to say that Kane was the first to pick it up after I had cut away the pearl, and who could say who had first laid eyes upon it? Then she told him that it was ignoble to fight over who should receive credit for finding the Lightstone.

'I don't think that anyone has found the Lightstone,' Master Juwain said.

Maram looked at him in such disbelief that he nearly dropped the bowl. Atara and I clasped hands as if to reassure each other that Master juwain had ruined his sight in reading his books all day. And Kane just stared at the bowl, his black eyes full of mystery and doubt.

Master luwain took the bowl from Maram as Liljana stepped closer. He looked at us and said, 'Have you put it to the test?'

'It is the Gelstei, sir,' I said. 'What else could it be?'

'If it's the true gold,' he told me, 'nothing could harm it in any way. Nothing could scratch it – not even the silustria of your sword.'

'But Val has already struck his sword against it!' Maram said, 'And see, there is no mark!'

In truth, though, Alkaladur's edge had never quite touched the bowl. Because I had to know if it really was the Lightstone, I now brought out my sword again. And as Master Juwain held the bowl firmly in his hands, I drew the sword across the curve of the bowl. And there, cut into the gold, was the faintest of scratches.

'I don't understand!' I said. The sudden emptiness in the pit of my belly felt as if I had fallen off a cliff.

'I'm afraid you've found one of the False Gelstei,' he told me. 'Once upon a time, more than one such were made.'

He went on to say that in the Age of Law, during the hundred-year reign of Queen Atara Ashtoreth, the ancients had made quests of their own. And perhaps the greatest of these was to recapture in form the essence of the One. And so they had applied all their art toward fabricating the gold gelstei. After many attempts, the great alchemist, Ninlil Gurmani, had at last succeeded in making a silver gelstei with a golden sheen to it. Although it had none of the properties of the true gold, it was thought that the Lightstone might take its power from its shape rather than its substance alone. And so this gold-seeming silustria was cast into the form of bowls and cups, in the likeness of the Cup of Heaven itself. But to no avail.

'I'm afraid there is only one Lightstone,' Master Juwain told me.

'So,' Kane said, glowering at the little bowl that he held. 'So.'

'But look!' I said, pointing my sword at the bowl. 'Look how it brightens!'

The silver of my sword was indeed glowing strongly. But Master Juwain looked at it and slowly shook his head. And then he asked me, 'Don't you remember Alphanderry's poem?'

The silver sword, from starlight formed,

Sought that which formed the stellar light,

And in its presence flared and warmed

Until it blazed a brilliant white.

'It warms,' he said, 'it flares, but there's nothing of a blazing brilliance, is there?'

In looking at my sword's silvery sheen, I had to admit that there was not.

'This bowl is of silustria,' Master Juwain said. 'And a very special silustria at that.

And so your sword finds a powerful resonance with it. It's what pointed you toward this room, away from where the Lightstone really lies.'