David Zindell - The Lightstone

'I've never imagined seeing such a thing,' Maram added, blinking his eyes. He looked up at Ymiru and asked, 'Did your people make this? How could they have?'

How, indeed, I wondered, staring down at the great sculptures of the Garden of the Gods? How could naked giants with spiked clubs have built a greater glory than had even the ancient architects of Tria during the great golden Age of Law? How could anyone?

'Yes, we did – that is who we Ymanir are,' Ymiru said proudly. 'We are workers of living stone; we are mountain shapers and gardeners of the earth.'

He went on to say that the Ymanir's greatest delight was in making things out of things. They especially loved coaxing out of the earth the secret and beautiful forms hidden there. Ymiru told us that his people were devoted to discovering how to forge substances of all kinds, and none more so than the gelstei crystals.

'But the secret of their making has been lost to us for most of an age,' he said sadly.

'At least the making of the greater galastei.'

'In other lands,' Master Juwain told him, 'it has been forgotten how to forge even the lesser gelstei.'

'So much has been lost,' Ymiru said bitterly. 'And that is why the Urdahir, some of them, seek the secret of the ultimate making.'

'And what is that?' Maram asked, staring at the jeweled mountain called Alumit.

'Why, the making of the golden crystal of the Galastei itself,' Ymiru said. 'That is why we, too, seek the cup you call the Lightstone. We believe that only the Lightstone itself will ever reveal the secret of how it was created.'

With this secret, he told us, the Ymanir could not only reforge the great gelstei crystals of old and a new Lightstone, but the very world itself.

That was a strange thought to take with us on our descent to the city. We followed a well-marked track that cut through the pass's snowfields and wound down through the treeline of the mountain beneath us. It was nearly dark before we came out of the mouth of a narrow canyon onto Alundil's heights. Immediately upon setting foot in this enchanting city, with its graceful houses and stands of silver shih trees, I had a strange sense of simultaneously walking my horse down a quiet street and standing a thousand miles high. The sweep of the great spires seemed to draw my soul up toward the stars. In this marvelous place, I was still very much of the earth and on it, never more so – and yet I felt myself suddenly opened like a living crystal that is transparent to other worlds and other realms. Lovely was my home in the Morning Mountains, and magical were the woods of the Lokilani, got in no other place on Ea had I felt myself to be so great and noble a being as I did here.

We proceeded through the streets and onto one of the city's broad avenues, all of which were deserted, likewise, no fire or light brightened the windows of the houses and buildings that we passed. Maram, somewhat vexed at this strangeness, asked Ymiru if his people had once been more numerous. Had they, he asked, abandoned this part of the city for other districts?

'Yes, once the Ymanir were a much greater people,' he told us. His voice was heavy with a bitter sadness. 'Once, we claimed nearly all of the mountains as our home. But when the Great Beast took the Black Mountain, he sent a plague to kill the Ymanir.

The survivors were too few to hrold. He drove us off, into the westernmost part of our realm -into Elivagar. He and his Red Priests did dreadful things to our hrome.

And thus sacred Sakai became Asakai, the accursed land.'

He went on to tell us that even before Morjin's rise, there had never been enough of his people to fill a city so large as Alundil. And as large as it was, it would grow only larger, for the Ymanir continued to add to it stone by stone and tower by tower as they had for thousands of years,

'I don't understand,' Maram said, blowing out his breath into the cold, darkening air.

'If Alundil is already too big for your people, why build it bigger?'

'Because,' Ymiru said, 'Alundil is not for us.'

The clopping of the horses' hooves against the stone of the street suddenly seemed too loud. Ymiru, Havru and Askir – and the other Ymanir – suddenly stood as straight and proud as any of the sculptures in the Garden of the Gods.

The look on Maram's face suggested that he was now totally mystified, as were the rest of us. And so Ymiru explained, 'Long ago, our scryers looked toward the stars and beheld cities on other worlds. It is our greatest hope to recreate on earth these visions that they saw.'

'But why?' Maram asked.

'Because someday the Star People will come again,' Ymiru said. 'They will come to earth and find prepared for them a new hrome.'

It was upon hearing this sad history and sad dreams of the future that Ymiru and the others took us to meet with their Elders. As Ymiru had said, Alundil was not for the Ymainr and so his people had built their own town in the foothills east of the valley.

This consisted mostly of great, long, stone houses arrayed on winding streets. The Ymanir had applied only a little of their art in raising up these constructions. None were of the marvelous living stone that farmed the buildings of the dark city below.

Rather, they were made of blocks of granite, cut with great precision and fitted together in sweeping arches that enclosed large spaces, The Ymanir, we soon found, liked open spaces and built their houses accordingly.

They had built their great hall this way, too. We approached this castle-like building along a rising road, lined with many Ymanir who had left their houses to witness the unprecedented arrival of strangers in their valley. Hundreds of these tali, white-furred people stood as straight and silent as the spruce trees that also lined the road. I caught a scent of the deep feelings that rumbled through them: anger, fear, curiosity, hope. There was a great sadness about them, and yet a fierce pride as well.

We tethered our horses to some trees outside the great hall. Inside it we all understood, the Ymanir called the Urdahir were waiting to decide our fate.

Ymiru, Havru and Askir escorted us inside the hall where their Elders had gathered – along with many more of the Ymanir, too. A good two hundred of them were lined up by mats woven of the wonderfully soft goat hair that we had encountered the night before in Ymiru's mountain hut. They faced nine aged men and women who stood near similar mats on a stone dais at the front of the room. We were shown to the place of honor – or inquisition -just below this dais. We joined Ymiru on the floor there as everyone in the room sat down together in the fashion of his people: our legs folded back beneath us, sitting back on our heels with our spines straight and our eyes slightly lowered as we waited for the Elders to address us.

This they wasted no time in doing. After asking Ymiru our names, the centermost and eldest of the Urdahir introduced himself as Hrothmar. Then he presented the four women to his left: Audhumla, Yvanu, Ulla and Halda. The men, to his right, were: Burri, Hramjir, Hramdal and Yramu. They all turned slightly toward Hrothmar, allowing him to speak on their behalf,

'By now,' he said, his gruff old voice carrying out into the hall, 'every-one in Elivagar knows of Ymiru's extraordinary audacity in breaking our law by bringing these six strangers here. And everyone thinks he knows certain facts concerning this matter: that the little fat man known as Maram Marshayk bears with him a red galastei, while Sar Valashu Elahad bears a sword of sarastria. And that these same two and their companions seek the Galastei. We are met here to deter-mine if these facts are true – and to uncover others. And to discuss them. All may help us in this truthsaying. And all may speak in their turn.'