David Zindell - The Lightstone

'If it be true,' Hrothmar added, 'that would still not be enough. The strangers would still have to show that they had a chance to find it.'

He turned his penetrating gaze upon me and asked 'Sar Valashu -will you now speak for your people?'

Maram, sitting next to me, nudged me in the ribs to stand up. Atara, Master Juwain and Liljana each looked at me and smiled encouragingly! Kane's black eyes buried themselves in mine. I felt him urging me to speak, and speak well. I felt also that if the Ymanir guards should ever come at us with their borkors, he would not honor my promise to keep our swords sheathed in the Ymanir's land.

'Yes,' I said, standing before the Elders. 'I will speak for us.'

And so I did. While the glowstones shone on sempiternally through the night, I told the Ymanir a tale such as they had never heard before. I began it six long ages past, when Aryu had killed Elahad and had stolen the Lightstone. Its history, much of it unknown to the Ymanir, I then recounted, much as King Kiritan had when he had gathered the thousands of knights in his hall and called the great quest. My part in this, and my friends', I explained with as much candor as I could. I told of the black arrow and the kirax that had poisoned my blood; I even told them of Ayondela Kirriland's prophecy and pointed out the scar that had saved us from the Lokilani's arrows. The hundreds of men and women in the room fell into a deep silence as I went on with the story of our long journey that had taken us across most of Ea to the Library at Khaisham. What we had found there, however, I did not tell. It would be very dangerous, I thought, to announce the Lightstone's hiding place to so many people.

'Your story,' Burri said, shaking his head when I had finished, 'be too fantastic to be true.'

'It be too fantastic not to be true,' Yvanu countered. She was the youngest of the Urdahir and a beautiful woman, whose long white fur about her head and neck had been twisted into long braids.

All the Elders were now staring at me, as was everyone else in the room. Still shaking his head, Burri said to me, 'How will we ever know if you speak the truth?'

'You'll know,' I said softly. 'If you listen, you'll know.'

But Burri, like many people, did not wish to listen to his own heart. He pointed his clublike finger at me and demanded, 'But where are the proofs of your story? Let us see the proofs.'

I met eyes with each of my friends then, and they brought forth their gelstei. The sudden sight of Maram's firestone and Atara's crystal sphere, no less Liljana's little blue whale, Master Juwain's varistei and Kane's black stone, stunned everyone in the room. Nowhere on Ea are any people so in awe of the gelstei as are the Ymanir.

'And where be the sarastria, then?' Burn asked.

Ymiru gave me permission to draw my sword, and this I did. As I swept it toward the east, its silver length gleamed with a deep light.

'Do you see?' Ymiru said, standing to face Burri. 'Their story must be true.'

All at once, a hundred giant men and women called out that a miracle had befallen the Ymanir, and that our lives should be spared. But this wasn't good enough for Burri.

'We must know if these stones truly be the greater galastei,' he said, pointing down at what we held in our hands. 'They must be put to the test.'

But it was hard to test Maram's red crystal with no sun to fire it. And hard, too, to test the powers of my friends' other gelstei. And so Burri had to satisfy himself with Hrothmar's suggestion: that a diamond be brought forth to see if Alkaladur's blade could mark it. Ulla, the oldest of the Urdahir, sacrificed the perfection of her wedding ring for this test.

She held out her hand to me and bade me come forward with my sword. She watched utterly spellbound as I set its edge and cut the diamond.

'It is the silver,' she exclaimed, holding up her ring for all to see. Then her old eyes fixed on my sword. 'The silver will lead to the gold.'

At first I thought she knew the words of the song that Alphanderry had sung after I had gained Alkaladur. And then many of the Ymanir in the room began murmuring their ancient belief that the secrets of the silver gelstei would lead to the making of the gold.

'This be a very great thing that you've been given,' Hrothmar said to me, staring at my sword. 'Who would ever have thought, that a stranger would bring the silver galastei into our land?'

The gleam in Burri's eyes as they fell upon my sword told me that he didn't want it ever to leave his land.

'The silver galastei,' he muttered, 'what do these strangers know of it? What do they truly know of any of the galastei?'

'We know this,' I told him, sheathing my sword. 'W'e know that the silver has sometimes led to covetousness of the gold.'

So saying, I reached into the pocket of my tunic and drew forth the False Gelstei that we had found in the Library. I moved across the dais and set it into Burri's outstretched hand. 'The Galastei! It is the Galastei!' many voices cried out at once.

But Burri, who had a more practiced eye, held the goldish cup beneath the glowstones' light. As I explained what it was, he nodded his long head in acceptance of the truth.

'In ages past,' he said, looking at the cup in amazement 'it's said that the Ymanir made many such cups. Perhaps even this very one.'

'If that is so,' I said, 'then perhaps it would he fitting that you keep it, for your people.'

Burn's icy blue eyes froze into mine. He said, 'You can't buy our mercy.'

I felt my spine stiffen with pride; I felt my father in me as words that he would have spoken formed themselves upon my lips: 'In my land, when a gift is given, we usually just say "thank you." And it is not your mercy that we seek – only justice.'

But I knew that such a speech would not convince Burri that I truly wanted to help his people. My rebuke wounded him. His fingers closed angrily about the cup, and it nearly disappeared in his huge hand.

'There be much of the strangers' story for which we can never have proofs,' he called out. 'His claim of descent from this Elahad. This twinkling Timpum being that only the strangers can see. This golden-voiced minstrel -'

'We saw Khaisham burn,' a stout man said as he stood to address the room. 'My brother and I were returning from the South Reach, and we saw the fire.'

'Do not interrupt me again!' Burri thundered at him. He turned to stare down at the other elders. 'Do you see how the strangers have already put us off our manners?

Should they also put us off doing justice?'

'We shall do justice,' Hrothmar assured him. 'After we know the truth.'

'But we can never know the truth here!'

Just then, Audhumla brought forth a bluish stone about the size of an eagle's egg. It looked something like lapis, and she rolled it between her thin, graceful hands. And then she said, 'You're wrong, Burri. We shall soon know the truth of the strangers' story.'

After asking Burri and me to sit back down, she announced to the Elders, and to the assembled Ymanir in the hall, that she held a truth stone in her hands.

'But that can't be!' Burri said. 'We haven't made a truth stone for a thousand years.'

'No, we haven't,' Audhumla said. 'This be a family heirloom.'

In the discussion that followed, I learned that the truth stones were a kind of lesser gelstei related to Liljana's blue gelstei. Although they did not allow sight into another's mind, they were able to record certain impressions from it, such as falseness or truth.

Burri looked at Audhumla doubtfully, and with ill-concealed loath-ing. 'There hasn't been a truthsayer among us for a thousand years.' 'None except the women of my family.'

'If that be true,' Burri said, 'then why haven't they made themselves known?'

'So that the hateful can cast scorn upon them?'