David Zindell - The Lightstone

My heart ached with a sudden, fierce desire to slay this particular dragon.

'A scryer,' she said, 'a true scryer must never turn back from ascending the tree. But the heights bring her too close to the sun. To the light. After a while, it burns and blinds – blinds her to the things of the world. Her world grows ever brighter. And so she lives more for her visions than for other people. And living thus, she dies a little and grows ugly in her soul. Old, ugly, shriveled. And that is why people grow to hate her.'

I pressed her hand against my wrist so that she could feel the beating of my heart there. I said, 'Do you think I could ever hate you?'

'I'd want to die if you did,' she said.

In the dark I found her eyes as I took a deep breath. I said, 'There must be a way.'

There must be a way that she could stand beneath this brilliant, inner sun and return in all her beauty beajing its light in her hands.

'Atara,' I whispered.

I knew that for me, too, there was a way that the valarda could not only open others' hearts to me, but mine to them.

'Atara,' I said again.

What is it to love a woman? It is just love, as all love is: warm and soft as the down of a quilt yet hard and flawless like a diamond whose sheen can never be dimmed. It is sweeter than honey, more quenching of thirst than the coolest mountain stream.

But it is also a song of praise and exaltation of all the wild joy of life. It makes a man want to fight to the death protecting his beloved just so this one bit of brightness and beauty, like a perfect rose, will remain among the living when he has gone on.

Through the hands and eyes it sings, calling and calling – calling her to open up the bright petals of her soul and be a glory to the earth.

I touched the tears gathering at the corner of Atara's eye and then wiped away my own. I looked at her a long time as she looked at me. She grasped my hand and pressed it against her wet cheek. At last she smiled and said, 'Thank you.'

Then she took the white gelstei out of her pocket She held it so that its polished curves caught the faint light raining down from the sky. Inside it were stars, an infinitude of stars. For a moment, her eyes were full of them as they seemed to grow almost as big as her crystal sphere. And then she disappeared into it as if plunging through an icy lake into a deeper world.

I waited there on the cold snow for her to return to me; I waited a long time. The constellations wheeled slowly about the heavens. The wind fell down from the sky with a keening that cut right through me. It sent icy shivers along my veins and set my heart to beating like a great red drum.

'Atara,' I whispered, but she didn't hear me.

Somewhere behind me, Maram snored and one of the horses nickered softly. These sounds of the earth seemed a million miles away.

'Atara,' I said again, 'please come back'

And at last she did. With a great effort, she ripped her eyes from her crystal to stare at me. There was death all over her beautiful face, now tightening with a sudden, deep anguish. Something worse than death haunted her eyes and set her whole body to trembling. She shook so badly that her fingers opened and the gelstei fell down into the snow.

'Oh, Val!' she sobbed out.

Then she fell weeping against me and I had to hold her up to keep her from collapsing altogether. I was afraid that I would have to carry her back to our camp.

But she was Atara Ars Narmada of the Manslayer Society, after all, and it wasn't in her to allow herself such weakness for very long. After a few moments, she gathered up her dignity and stood away from me. She dried her tears with the edge of her cloak. Then she bent to retrieve her scryer's sphere from the snow.

I waited for her to tell me what she had beheld inside it. But all she said was, 'Do you see? Do you see?'

I saw only that she had been stricken by some terrible vision and was afraid that she was now mutilated in her soul. Whatever this affliction was, I wanted to share it with her.

'Tell me what you saw, then.'

'No… I never will.'

'But you must.'

'No, I must not.'

'Please, tell me.'

She stared out at the snow-white contours of the mountains around us. Then she looked at me and said, 'It's so hard to make you understand. To make you see. Just talking about this one thing can change. everything. There are so many paths, so many futures. But only one that can ever be. We can choose which one. In the end, we always choose. I can, Val. That's what makes this seeing so hard. I blink my eyes just one time, and the world isn't the same. Master Juwain once said that if he had a lever long enough and a place to stand, he could move the world. Well, I've been given this gift, this incredible lever of mine. Shouldn't I want to use it to preserve what is most precious to me and save your life? And yet, how should I use it if in saving you, you are lost? And the world along with you?'

She had told me almost too much; more than this I did not wish to hear. And so I gave voice to what my soul whispered to be true: 'There must be a way.'

'A way,' she said, her voice dying into the bitterness of the wind.

If there was a way she would never tell it to me for fear of what might befall. And yet, I knew that she had found some gleam of hope in the dragon-blackened tree inside her. Her eyes screamed this to me; her pounding heart could not deny it. But it was a terrible hope that was tearing her apart.

'Do you see?' she asked me. 'Do you see why scryers are stoned and driven off to live in the ruins of ancient towers?'

'That is not what I see, Atara.'

She stood before me with a new awareness of life: prouder, deeper, fiercer, more tender, more passionate and devoted to truth – and this was a beauty of a wholly different order. This was her grace, to transform the terrible into a splendor that shone forth from deep inside her. And she, who could see so much, could not see this. And so I showed it to her. With my eyes and with my heart, which was like a mirror wrought of the purest silustria, I showed her this beautiful woman.

'Valashu,' she said to me.

What is it to love a woman? It is this: that if she hurts, you hurt even more to see her in pain. It is your heart stripped of protective tissues and utterly exposed: soft, raw, impossibly tender; if a feather brushed against it, it would be the greatest of agonies.

And yet also the greatest of joys, for this, too, it love: that through its fiery alchemy, what was once two miraculously becomes one.

We gazed at each other through the darkness, locking as we called to each other – calling and calling. My heart fed with fire. swelled like the sun. Suddenly it broke open in a blaze of light. It broke her open, too. She called to me, and we closed the distance between ourselves like two warriors rushing to battle. She flew into my arms, and I into hers. Our mouths met in a fury to breathe in and taste each other's souls; in our haste and artlessness we bruised our lips with our teeth, bit, drew blood. We were like wild animals, clawing and pulling at each other, and yet like angels, too. In the heat of her body was a fierce desire that I tear her open to reveal the beautiful woman she really was. And that I should join her in that secret place inside her. She called me to fill her with light, with love, with burning raindrops of life. Only then could she feel all of the One's glory pouring itself out through her, as well. Only then could we both drive back death.

Valashu.

I felt her hand against my chest, pressing the cold rings of my armor against my heart. She suddenly pulled her lips away from mine. She fought herself away from me, and stood hack a few paces, trembling and sweating and gasping for breath.

'No!' she suddenly sobbed out. 'This can't be!'