David Zindell - The Lightstone

Liljana's eyes, I noticed, filled with tears as she said this.

'Scorn would be the least that a truthsayer would deserve,' Burri said, 'if she failed to use her gift for her people.'

'And how should she use it if, for a thousand years, no stranger has come among us to be tested?'

The Elders again gathered in a circle to discuss this unexpected turn. Then they took their places on their mats, and Hrothmar's voice carried out into the room: 'We believe the truth of what Audhumla has told us, if nothing else. And so we've agreed to allow Sar Valashu to be tested this way, if he be willing.'

With two hundred Ymanir suddenly looking at me, and my six friends as well, I saw that I had little choice. And so I said, 'Then test me, if you will.'

Audhumla bade me to come forward again and kneel before her on the dais. She held her blue stone out to me, cupped in her hands. I placed my hand upon it. It was warm from the heat of Audhumla's body, and felt more porous that the crystal of the greater gelstei. It seemed to drink in my sweat and the pulsing of the blood that beat through my hand. I remembered that such gelstei were also called touchstones because they seemed to touch all of one's flesh straight through to the heart.

I looked straight into Audhumla's eyes and said, 'All that I have told tonight is true.'

I took my hand away and watched Audhumla's much larger hands close upon the stone. Her eyes closed as she stroked it; she was like a mother gathering in her child's emotions from the touch of a tear-stained cheek.

At last she looked at me and said, 'All that you have told is true. But you have not told all that is true.'

The two hundred Ymanir in the hall waited for her to say more. But she had no more to say. Hrothmar, however, did. This wise old man needed no gelstei, lesser or greater, to discern the part of my story that I had left incomplete.

'Sar Valashu,' he said to me, 'you have told that you and your companions have sought the Lightstone across the length of Ea. But you have not told why you entered our land to seek it.'

No, I thought, I hadn't. But I saw that I finally must. And so I took a deep breath and told them about Master Aluino's journal. Then I admitted that my friends and I had vowed to journey into Sakai and enter the underground city of Argattha.

For a long time, no one in the hall spoke. No one even moved. I felt the great hearts of the hundreds of Ymanir beating out a great thunder of astonishment.

At last, Hrothmar found his voice and spoke for all his people even Burri. He said to me, 'Even the bravest of the Ymanir seldom go any more into Asakai, where once we went so freely. Either you and your companions are mad or you are possessed of a great courage. And I do not believe you are mad.'

A roar of voices cascaded through the room like a suddenly unleashed flood.

Hrothmar let his people speak for quite a while. Then he held up his hand for silence.

'The strangers have brought us the greatest chance that we Ymanir have ever had,' he said in his grave, deep voice. 'And the greatest peril, too. How are we to decide their fate – and our own?'

He paused to rub his tired eyes. Then he said, 'Let us not try to make this decision tonight. Let us reflect and sleep and dream. And let us all gather before first light in the great square, that we might call upon the wisdom of the Galadin to help us.'

He dismissed the assemblage and stood, as did everyone else. Then the men who had guarded the hall escorted us to Ymiru's house at the edge of the town, where we had been offered quarters. Compared with the other Ymanir houses on the wooded slopes nearby, it was a small affair of stacked stone and rough-hewn beams – but quite large enough to accommodate us.

Ymiru proved an excellent host. He laid out extra sleeping mats by the fire that he lit in the hearth. There, too, he set out a block of cheese that it might soften so we could dip crusts of bread. into it for our evening meal. He drew baths for us and later poured our tea into small blue cups with his huge hand. He seemed glad for our company and bemused that his fate seemed to have tied itself up with ours.

'When I awoke yesterday, it was a morning like any other,' he told us as he joined us by the fire. 'And now here I sit with six little people, talking about the Lightstone.'

He went on to say that the next morning would come soon enough and that we should get a good night's rest to prepare us for what was to come.

'I don't think I'll sleep at all,' Maram said, as he cast his eyes around the room to catch sight of a bottle of brandy or beer.'That Burri gave us a bad enough time today.' Ymiru's eyes fell sad, and he surprised us, saying, 'Burri be a good man. But he has many fears.'

He explained that once, years ago, he and Burri, along with others in the hall, had lived in the same village in the East Reach near Sakai. And then one day, Morjin had sent a battalion to annihilate it.

'We were too few to hrold,' he told us. He took a sip of the bitter tea in his cup. 'I lost my wife and sons in the attack; Burri lost much more. The Beast's men murdered his daughters and grandchildren, his mother and brothers, too. And the Ymanir lost part of Elivagar. Burri has vowed that we won't lose any more.'

After that he fell into a deep silence from which he could not be roused. He brought out a song stone, a little sphere of swirling hues; he sat listening to the voice of his dead wife long after Maram – and Atara, Liljana and Master Juwain – had gone to sleep.

It was cold the next morning when we gathered at the appointed hour in Alundil's great square. The city's empty towers and buildings were even darker than the sky, which was hung with many stars. Ten thousand men, women and children crowded shoulder to shoulder facing a great spire just to the west of the square. At the head of them were Hrothmar and Burri and the others of Urdahir. We stood with Ymiru near them, ringed by thirty Ymanir gripping borkors in their massive hands. The sharp wind falling down from the icy mountains all around us seemed not to touch them. But it pierced us nearly to the bone. I stood between Atara and Master Juwain, shivering as they did, waiting with them and our other companions, for what we didn't know.

'Why are we meeting here?' Maram asked for the tenth time.

And for the tenth time, Ymiru answered him, saying, 'You will see, little man, you will see.'

Now many of the Ymanir behind us had turned to look out above the spire to the east of the square. There, above the Garden of the Gods, above the icy eastern mountains, the sky was beginning to lighten with the rising of the sun. There, too, the Morning Star shone, brightest of all the heavens' lights. It cast its radiance upon us, touching Alundil's houses and spires, illuminating the faces of all who gazed upon it.

Through the dear air and straight across the valley streaked this silver light, where it fell upon the shimmering face of Alumit. It was still too dark to make out the colors of this great mountain that seemed to overlook the whole of the world. I wondered yet again how it had come to be. Ymiru had told us that his ancestors had raised up the sculptures of the Garden of the Gods; but it seemed that the building of an entire mountain had been beyond even the ancient Ymanir. Ymiru believed that once, long ago, the Galadin had come to earth to work this miracle. As he believed that someday they would come again.

As the wind quickened and our breaths steamed out into the air, the eastern sky grew even brighter. The rising of the sun stole the stars' light one by one until only the Morning Star remained shining. Then it too, disappeared into the blue-white glister at the edge of the world. We waited for the sun to crest the mountains behind us.

Ahead of us, to the west of the square above the spire, Alumit's great, white peak caught the sun's first rays before the valley below it did. Its pointed crown of ice and snow began glowing a deep red. Soon this fire fell down the slopes of the mountain and drew forth its colors. Again 1 marveled at the crystals from which it was wrought, the sparkling blues that seemed to pour forth from sapphire, the reds of ruby and a deep, vivid, emerald green.