David Zindell - The Lightstone

'Val! Val!' Maram cried out. 'Val – my fingers are frozen!'

Mine almost were. I tried to bring forth my bow and string it, but my fingers were too numb for such work. So were Atara's. I saw her behind me attempting to fit an arrow to her bowstring; but she was shivering so badly and her hands were so stiff that she couldn't quite nock it. Kane didn't even bother to try his bow. He drew his sword from its sheath, and a moment later, so did I.

I waited in the blinding snow for the Frost Giants to complete their charge. Then, I was certain, we would fight our last battle before finding one of the numerous deaths that Atara had seen two nights before in her cold, crystal sphere.

It is strange that compassion can be a force powerful enough almost to stop the turning of the world. Maram, standing by my side, his frozen fingers fumbling in his pocket finally managed to draw forth his red crystal. He held it clamped between his hands, pointing it at the Frost Giants. His terrified voice wheezed in my ears, 'Val – should I burn them?'

And then, as he remembered his vow never again to turn fire against men, his hands shook and he couldn't quite use it. His hesitation saved our lives,

'Hrold!' one of the frost Giants suddenly called out. 'Hrold now!'

The white-furred men halted twenty feet from us in a ring around us. Their spiked clubs wavered in the air.

The Frost Giant who had spoken, a vastly thick man with a broken nose and eyes the color of a frozen waterfall, pointed at Maram's crystal and said, 'It is a firestone.'

The man next to him in the circle peered through the snow at us and said, 'Are you sure, Ymiru?'

Ymiru slowly nodded his head. Then his large blue eyes squinted as they fixed on the sword that I held ready at my side. With the moment of my death at hand, Alkaladur began shimmering with a soft silver light.

'And that is sarastria,' he said. His huge, deep voice rumbled out into the pass like thunder. 'it must be sarastria.'

Sarastria. I thought Silustria. The Frost Giants spoke familiar words with a strange turning of the tongue, but I could still understand what they said.

'Little man,' Ymiru said, pointing his club at me, 'how came you to find sarastria?'

It astonished me that this savage seeming Frost Giant should know anything at all about the silver gelstei – or the firestones. I looked at him and said, 'It was acquired on a journey.'

'What kind of journey?'

I traded quick looks with Kane and Atara; I was reluctant to tell these strange men of our quest.

'Come!' Ymiru roared out, raising up his club. 'Speak now! And speak truthfully or else you and your friends will soon find death.'

I had a strange sense that I could trust this giant man – to do exactly as he said. And so I opened my cloak to show him the gold medallion that King Kiritan had placed there. I told him of the great gathering in Tria and of our vows to seek the Lightstone.

'You speak of the Galastei, yes?' Ymiru said. His eyes lit up with a sudden fire, and so did those of his companions. 'You speak of the golden cup made by the Galadin and brought down from stars? It is a marvelous substance, this gold galastei, this Stone of Light Inside it is the secret of making all other galastei – and the secret of making itself.'

He went on to say that the Lightstone was the very radiance of the One made manifest – and therefore that which moved the very stars and earth and all that occurred upon it.

'But for one entire elu, the Lightstone has been lost,' Ymiru said, losing himself in his thoughts. 'And so all hope for Ea has been lost, too.'

He paused to take a deep breath and then let it out in a cloud of steam. Then, returning to the matter at hand, he continued, 'And now, you say, you hope it will be found. You've made vows to find it But find it where? Surely not in land of the Ymanir!'

'No, not in your land,' Kane said from behind me. 'We seek only to cross it as quickly as we can.'

'So you say. But cross it towards the east? That is land of Asakai.'

At the mention of this name, the Ymaniris' hands tightened around their clubs. Their savage faces grew even more savage and pulled into masks of hate.

I didn't want to tell Ymiru that we proposed to cross Sakai and enter Argattha to seek the Lightstone. I doubted that he would believe me; even more, I feared that he would.

'Perhaps they're really of Asakai,' a young-looking man near Ymiru said. 'Perhaps they're spies returning home.'

'No, Havru,'Ymiru said. 'They come from Yrakona, I am sure. They're not Morjin's kind.'

The giant young man named Havru, whose chin pointed like a spur of rock, shook his club at us and growled out, 'It's said that Morjin's kind have the power to seem like other kind. Shouldn't we kill them to be certain?'

Across the circle, a man with a reddish tint to his fur bellowed, 'Yes, kill them! Take the galastei, and let's be done!'

Others picked up his cry as they began thumping their clubs into the snow and calling out, 'Kill them! Kill them!'

'Hrold! Hrold now!' Ymiru shouted back at them, raising up his club.

Altaru, standing to the left of me, trembled as he shook his head at the falling snow and beat his hoof downward. Any of the Ymanir attacking me, I thought, would find themselves assaulted with the four terrible clubs attached to the ends of his legs.

'Hrold, Askir!' Ymiru said again to the man with the reddish fur.

But then, across the circle from him, a one-eyed giant let loose a tremendous cry and shook his club at us. He shouted, 'If they be Morjin's men, I'll break their bones to dust!'

This so alarmed Maram that he cringed and called out to me, 'Val! It's as I said!

They mean to kill us and eat us! They really do!'

The Ymanir may have been savages, but they were still men, with the same range of feelings as had other men. Ymiru turned his face toward Maram, and I could feel in him the same quick rush of emotions that surged through many of the Ymanir: astonishment, insult horror. Then their mood shifted yet again as Ymiru's pale lips pulled back in a sad, savage smile. He pointed his club at Maram and called out to his companions: 'You may have any of the others you want. But the fat one is mine!'

'Val!'

Ymiru's smile had now been taken up by the young Havru, who said, 'But, sir, that is unfair of you. Our rations have been thin, and I'm very hungry. I could get at least ten meals from him.'

'Ten?' a sardonic man named Lodur half-shouted. 'He's fat enough for twenty, I should think.'

'Let's roast him over coals!' another man said.

'No, let's make a soup of him!'

'All right,' Havru laughed out wickedly, 'but let's save his bones for our bread.'

All at once, the twenty Ymanir fell into a long and thunderous laughter. But there was no malice in their huge voices, only a vast amusement. They were only having a joke with Maram, and with us.

'Savages!' Maram shouted at them when he realized this. His face reddened as he wiped the sweat from it. 'It's cruel sport you make.'

'Cruel?' Ymiru coughed out. 'Was it any crueler than your suggestion that we are eaters of men?'

Maram didn't know what to say to this. He looked from Ymiru to me and then back at Ymiru as he stammered out, 'Well I had heard that… ah, that is to say, the Yarkonans believe that you are killers of men and -'

'Hrold your tongue!' Ymiru said, cutting him off. 'We're certainly killers of men: any who serve the Great Beast. And any who would enter our land without our leave.'

He suddenly motioned to Askir and two other men, who walked around the outside of the circle of the Ymanir and came over to him. While we stood shivering in the driving wind, they gathered in close with each other and conferred in low, rumbling tones.