David Zindell - The Lightstone

My heart beat out its thundering affirmation of this dreadful decision. There comes a time when a life not willingly risked for the love of others is no longer worth living. 'I will go to Argattha,' I said. 'Who will come with me?' Now more flames appeared in the other windows of the south wing, and then in those of the other wings, as well.

When it became clear that Count Ulanu's men had fired the Library, Maram called out, 'The books! Everyone trapped inside! How can he do this? How, Val, how?'

He fell against me, weeping and clutching at the rings of my mail to keep from falling down in despair. I forced myself to stand like a wall, or else I would have fallen, too

– and never to arise again.

'Oh no!' Liljana said, looking down at the burning Library, 'it can't be!'

Her arms found their way around Atara, who was now sobbing bitterly and silently as she pressed her face against Liljana's chest.

'I should never have used my firestone,' Maram gasped out. ' All the burning led only to this. I swear I'll never turn fire against men again.' Master Juwain had both hands held against the sides of his head as he stared down at the horror before us. He seemed unable to move, unable to speak.

'So,' Kane said, with death leaping like dark lights in his eyes. As the fire found the millions of books that the Librarians had collected over the centuries, a great column of flame shot high into the air. It seemed to carry the cries of the damned and the dying up toward the heavens. I smelled the sweet-bitter boil of death ill the sudden burning that swept through me like an ocean of bubbling kirax. Fire ravished me. It blazed like starlight in my heart and hands and eyes.

'So,' Kane said as I turned to look at him, 'I will go with you to Argattha.'

I bowed my head to him, once, fiercely, as our hands locked together. Then I looked at Master Juwain, who said, 'I will go, too.'

'So will I,' Liljana said, gazing at me in awe of what we must do.

'And I,' Atara said softly. Her eyes found mine; in their depths was a blazing certainty that she would not leave my side.

Maram finally pulled away from me and forced himself to stop sobbing. I saw the flames from the Library reflected in the water of his dark eyes – and something else.

'And I,' he said, 'would want to go with you, too, if only I -'

He suddenly stopped speaking as he drew in a long breath. For a long few moments, he stood looking at me. He blinked at the bitter smoke as if remembering a promise that he had made to himself. He pulled himself up straight, shook out his brown curls, and stood for a moment like a king.

'I will go with you,' he told me with steel in his voice. 'I'd follow you into hell itself, Val, which is certainly where we are going.'

I clasped his hand in mine to seal this troth as our hearts beat as one.

After that, we all turned to behold the destruction of the Library. There was no desire to utter another word, no need to speak the prayers that would burn forever in our hearts. The fire, fed by many books and bodies, raged high into the sky and seemed to fill all the world, and that was hell enough.

And so, that very night, we went up into the mountains. We turned our horses east and picked our way across the rocky slopes of Mount Redruth. We had no track to follow, only the gleam of my sword and the glimmer of the stars. These points of white and blue grew more vivid as we left Khaisham's glowing sky behind us and climbed higher. Bright Solaru of the Swan Constellation gave me hope, as did the brilliant swath of stars called the Sparkling Stairs. They reminded me that there were better places in the One's creation where men did not kill each other with steel and flame.

As the night deepened, it grew cooler, and I surrounded myself in my cloak, which my mother had made of lamb's wool and embroidered with silver. It gave good warmth, as did those of my companions. But not enough to please Kane. His eyes cut through the dark ahead of us, peering out at the ghostly white shapes of the greater mountains rising up to the east. And he said, 'We'll need thicker clothing than this before long.'

'But it's still summer,' Maram said, walking his horse near him.

'In the deeper mountains, it's already fall,' Kane said, pointing ahead of us. 'And in the high mountains, winter. Always winter.'

His words quickened the chill in the air. They brought us back to the dangers all about us. These were numerous and deadly. Pursuit by Cout Ulanu's men was the least of them. Although we listened for the sound of his warriors hurrying after us, it would be morning at the earliest before there would be enough light for them to follow our tracks. More worrisome, at the moment, was losing our way in the dark and plunging off an unexpected cliff. Or having one of the horses break a leg on the jagged rocks of the uncertain ter-rain, and thus being forced make a mercy killing.

Certainly there were bears about, as Maram imagined seeing behind every tree. And we all looked for the shapes of the dreaded Frost Giants lying in wait for us, perhaps just behind the next ridge, or the one behind that.

All that night, however, we saw no sign of these fearsome creatures. Nor did we catch sight of the twinkling form of Flick. This dispirited all of us, not as much as had Alphanderry's death, but enough. Maram supposed that Flick had the good sense not to enter a land guarded by bears and man-eating giants. I wondered if the evil of what had happened in Khaisham had simply driven him away. I was almost ready to say a requiem for him when he suddenly reappeared just before dawn. As the Morning Star showed brightly in the east, he winked into a fiery incandescence that reminded me of the sparks thrown up by the library's burning. I took this as his own manner of saying a requiem -or at least a remembrance of all those who had died that night in the hellish flames.

'Flick, my little friend!' Maram cried out when he saw him spinning through the grayness of the twilight. 'You've come back to us!'

'Maybe he's been with us all along, and we just couldn't see him,' Atara said.

Liljana, leaning against her horse, said, 'It's strange, isn't it, that Alphanderry did see him just before he died? How can that be?'

We looked at each other in puzzlement and wonder; the world was full of mysteries.

'Ah, I'm tired,' Maram yawned. 'Too tired to think about such things now. I think I'd better lie down before I fall down.'

We were all exhausted. We were at the end of our second sleepless night; none of us, except perhaps Kane, could pass another day without at least a few hours of rest. As for myself, my body hurt from a dozen bruises gained in battle. My shoulder, into which the Blue had swung his axe, was the worst of these torments.

With the coolness of the night and the muscles' inevitable stiffening, it ached so badly that Master Juwain had to rig a sling to take up the weight of my arm. And yet it was nothing against the aching I felt in my heart whenever I thought of Alphanderry hanging from his cross and all the Librarians who had died before my eyes. From such ghastly visions, I and all my friends longed for surcease.

And so we found a level place in a hollow between two ridges and set out our sleeping furs for a quick nap. Kane insisted on remaining awake to keep watch over us, and none of us argued with him. I fell off into a sleep troubled with images of fire and terrible screams. And it wasn't Morjin who sent these dreams to me, only the demons of war that had fought their way deep into my mind.

We awoke beneath a bright sun to vistas of icy mountains rising up before us. While Liljana went to work on our breakfast we held a quick council and decided that we had eluded whatever pursuit that Count Ulanu had sent after us – if indeed he had sent anyone at all. Kane thought it possible that the Library had been fired before our escape route through the crypt had been discovered, and Atara agreed. Perhaps, she said, the Library had collapsed into a smoking ruin, forever sealing off access to the escape tunnel and the steel door that guarded it.