David Zindell - The Lightstone

Hrothmar paused a moment to catch his breath. With his much-weathered and wrinkled skin about his sad old eyes, few of the Ymanir in the hall had more years than he. And none had greater height or stature, not even the giant guards who stood around the walls of the hall bearing their great borkors at their sides.

'And first to speak,' he wheezed out 'shall be Burri. He'll speak for the law of the Ymanir.'

The man sitting next to him, who had an angry look to his long, lean face, stroked the silver-white fur of his beard as he looked down at us. Then he said, 'The law, in this matter, is simple. It says that any Ymanir who discovers strangers entering our land without the Urdahir's permission shall immediately put them to death. This should have been done. It was not. And therefore, also according to the law, Ymiru and all the guard of the South Pass, should be put to death.'

Ymiru, listening quietly near me, seemed suddenly to sit up very straight. I hadn't realized the terrible risk that he had taken merely in sparing our lives.

Burri stared at Ymiru with his cold, blue eyes and said, 'Have you no respect for the law that you break it the first chance that you get?'

His gaze turned on Atara, Kane and me as he added, 'And you, strangers – you drew weapons to oppose Ymiru's execution of the law. And thus are yourselves in violation of it. It would have been easier if you had allowed Ymiru to do his duty.

Why didn't you?'

It surprised me when Liljana stood up and answered for us. She brushed back her gray hair and looked up at the Urdahir, her round face filling with a steely obstinacy.

To Burri, she sad, 'Do you mean that we should have allowed Ymiru to kill us out of hand?'

'Yes, little woman, I do mean that,' he told her in a voice that fell like a club. 'Thus you would have spared yourselves the false hope of your continued existence.'

Liljana smiled at his thinly veiled threat; her coolness beneath Burri's savage gaze lent me the forbearance to keep my hand away from my sword. Then Liljana nodded at him and said, 'If we had acquiesced in our own murders, by our law, we would become murderers, too.'

'Do you carry your own law with you, then, into others' lands?'

'We carry it in our hearts,' Liljana said, pressing her hand between her breasts.

'There, too, we carry something greater than the law. And that is life. Is the law made to serve life, or life to serve the law?'

'The law of the Ymanir,' Burri told her, 'is made to serve the Ymanir. And so each of us must serve it.'

'And this is for the good of your people, yes?'

'It is for my people's life,' he growled at her.

Liljana stared out into the immense room, with its stone walls covered with marvelous golden hangings and sweeping arches high overhead. Built into recesses of the columns that supported this great vault were glowstones giving off a soft, white light. The walls themselves at intervals often feet, were set with blocks of hot slate, which radiated a steady heat. And these lesser gelstei were not the only ones visible in the room that night. Many of the Ymanir wore warders about their necks; more than a few sported dragon bones, and at least one old woman rolled a music marble between her long, furry hands. Not even in Tria had I seen so many surviving works of the ancient alchemists. From what Ymiru had said, I thought that these gelstei might not be so ancient. For the Ymanir had surely preserved the art of forging them. They had as much pride in this, I sensed, as they did sadness in being slaughtered by the Red Dragon and driven into this lost corner of their ancient realm.

They were a strange people and a great one; I could not blame them for savagely enforcing laws that preserved what little they had left.

Liljana's round face fell soft and kind as she gathered in all her compassion and looked back up at Burri. She said, 'The lowest law is the law of survival, and even the beasts know this. But a human being knows much more: that she may not live at the sacrifice of her people.' 'Just so,' Burri growled again.

'And so each of us must obey the law of her people.'

'Just so, just so.'

'And a people,' Liljana went on, smiling at him, 'may not live at the sacrifice of their world. And so any people's law must always give way before the higher law.'

Burri, not liking to be swayed by Liljana's relentless calm, suddenly lost his temper and thundered down at her: 'And how do you know of the Ymanir's higher law?'

'I know,' she said, 'because the higher law is the same for all peoples. It is just the Law of the One.'

Burri suddenly stood up to his full height of eight feet. His hands opened and closed as if they longed to grip a borkor. He turned toward the other elders and said, 'We all knew that Ymiru would invoke the higher law. And so he has, through this little woman. But what could possibly persuade us of the need? The fact that two of the strangers bear greater galastei? That they are seekers of the Galastei? The Red Dragon's priests are seekers of the same and have come to us with firestones in their hands – to burn us. And so no one has ever objected to us sending them to their fate.'

Liljana waited for him to finish speaking and said simply, 'We are not the Red Dragon's priests.'

'But how do we know this?' Burri said, looking out at the hundreds of Ymanir in the hall. 'The Red Dragon has set clever traps for us before. And who among us be more clever than he? No, no, we Ymanir are clever with our hands, but not in this way. And so we've made our law. And so we should use it.'

'Before hearing what we have to say?' Liljana asked him.

'We've all heard the cleverness of your words, little woman,' Burri said to her. 'Must we hear more?'

He turned to look at Hramjir, a gnarled old man with only one arm. He spoke to him, and to the other Elders, saying, 'Hrothmar has told us that all should be allowed to speak. But I say this be folly. Let us not wonder if the strangers speak lies. Such doubt be a poison to the heart. Let us execute the law, now, before it be too late.'

With a glance at the guards along the walls and by the door, he called for the Elders to decide our fate then and there. And this, also by the Ymanir's law, they were forced to do. And so they gathered in a circle and put their heads together as they conferred in their long, low, rumbling voices. And then they took their places again on their mats, and Hrothmar stared down at us as he waited for silence in the room.

'Burri has spoke for the Ymanir's law,' he told us. 'And Ulla and Hramjir would see this law immediately executed. But most of us would not. Therefore, we'll call on others to speak for other concerns. Audhumla will speak for the Law of the One.'

Now Audhumla, an old and rather small woman, for the Ymanir – she couldn't have been an inch over seven feet – smoothed back the silky white fur of her face. Then in a raspy voice she said, 'The essence of this law be simple: that throughout the stars the One must unfold in the glory of creation. The Ymanir's part in this be also simple: We are to prepare the way for the Elijin's and Galadin's coming to earth. This be why we be. Only then will Ea be restored to her place in the creation of the true civilization, which has been lost for six long ages.'

She paused to take a breath and continued, 'If the strangers' lives are to be spared in consideration of the higher law, if our lives are to be put at risk in sparing theirs, it must be shown that they also have a place in our purpose. Or have an equally great purpose of their own.'

Here a young man behind us – I gathered he was a friend of Ymiru's – stood up and said, 'But it has already been told that the strangers seek the Galastei. What could be a greater purpose than that?'

'If it be true,' Audhumla said to him. 'If it be true.'