David Zindell - The Lightstone

'Then how do you hope to find this tunnel of yours?'

'Because there be a verse,' Ymiru said. 'Words that have survived where paper or clay have not.'

'What is it, then?'

Ymiru cleared his throat, and then recited for us six ancient lines: Beneath the Diamond's icy walls,

Where brightest sunlight never falls;

Beside the Ogre's knobby knee:

The cave that leads to liberty.

The rock there marked with iron ore

Which points the way to Morjin's door.

We sat there listening to the wind shriek across the high mountains around us. It seemed to carry the whisperings of the frozen rocks and echoes ten thousand years old.

'So,' Kane said, pointing his finger at Ymiru's map, 'this Diamond that the verse tells of must be Skartaru's north face.'

The black mountain's north face, I saw, was indeed shaped like a standing diamond three miles high, with great buttresses to either side seeming to hold it up.

'That is confirmed by the verse's next line,' Master Juwain said.

'But what about the Ogre?' Liljana asked, looking at the map's dark clay. 'I don't see any such formations beneath the north face.'

'No, the scale be too small,' Ymiru said. 'And so we can deduce that this Ogre rock formation will be rather small, in relation to the rest of the mountain. We won't be able to find the cave until we actually stand beneath it.'

'We won't find anything,' Kane said, 'if the verse doesn't tell true.'

'I believe that it be true,' Ymiru said.

Maram took another swig of his kalvaas, then asked him, 'This matter of the verse, ah, your people making escape tunnels, making Argattha itself – why didn't you tell us all this before now?'

'I didn't want to arouse false hrope.'

I sat beneath the stars of the bright Owl constellation, which I could see reflected in the silver of my sword. Then I looked up and said, 'Isn't there another reason, Ymiru?'

Ymiru looked straight at me then, but seemed not to see me. His great heart was booming like a drum.

The ancient Ymanir,' I said to him, 'sought the true gold beneath Skartaru, but they also sought something else, didn't they?'

'Yes,' he finally said, as everyone stared at him. 'You see, beneath the White Mountains, the earth currents are very strong – the strongest on all of Ea. And they touch the currents of other worlds.'

Kane's black eyes seemed to flare up in the firelight and fall upon Ymiru like hot coals. I remembered him telling us how the telluric currents of all worlds were interconnected.

'My ancestors believed,' Ymiru said, 'that if they could open the currents beneath Skartaru, they might open doors to other worlds. The worlds of the Galadin. They built Argattha to welcome them to Ea.'

'And who,' I asked Ymiru, 'suggested to the ancient Ymanir that such doors might be opened?'

'Morjin did.'

If my sword had shattered into a. thousand pieces just then, I would have been able to see the whole of it from a single glittering shard. I found Ymiru's eyes in the dark and said to himy 'Seeking the true gold was never Morjin's real purpose either, was it?'

'No,' Ymiru whispered. As the wind cut at us with icy knives, we waited for him to say more. Then he looked down at his map and told us, 'Morjin wanted to open a door to the Dark World where the Baaloch, Angra Mainyu, is imprisoned. And he came dose, we believe, so very close.'

I could hardly bear Kane's presence just then, so deep and dark was the well of hate that opened inside him.

He knows, I thought. Somehow, he knows.

'And what do you believe,' Kane growled at Ymiru, 'kept Morjin from opening this door?'

'Kalkamesh did,' Ymiru said. 'And Sartan Odinan. When they took the Lightstone out of the dungeon where it was kept, they took away Morjin's greatest chance of freeing the Baaloch.' 'How so?' Master luwain asked.

'Because the Lightstone,' Ymiru said, 'is attuned to the galastei and all things of power, but especially to the telluric currents. With it, Morjin almost certainly would have been able to see exactly where In the earth beneath Skartaru he must send his slaves to dig.'

All this time, even as Atara stared silently into her crystal, Liljana had been nearly as quiet. But now she fingered her blue gelstei and turned to Ymiru, saying, 'When I stood beneath Alumit and its colors changed, I thought I heard the voices of the Galadin. Speaking to me, speaking to everyone. There was a warning about Angra Mainyu, I think. A warning told of in a great prophecy.'

Now Atara finally looked up from her gleaming sphere at Ymiru as she waited for him to speak.

'Yes, there be a great, great prophecy,' Ymiru said. 'An old proph ecy – ages old.

The Elders know of this. They have heard the Galadin speak of it.'

He went on to tell us what the grandfathers and grandmothers of the Urdahir had gleaned from the otherworldly voices that poured out of Alumit's singular color. He said that ages ago, when the Star People discovered Ea, their greatest scryer, Midori Hastar, had prophesied two paths for this sparkling new world: either it would give birth to the Cosmic Maitreya who would lead all worlds everywhere to a glorious destiny, or else it would descend into the darkest of worlds and bring forth a dark angel who would free the Baaloch, thus loosing upon the entire universe a great evil and possibly destroying it.

'The Galadin,' Ymiru told us, 'took a terrible chance in sending the Lightstone to Ea.

And the dice they shook six ages ago are tum bling still.'

I felt my heart beating in rhythm with Ymiru's and with the deeper pulsing of the earth. My sword gleamed in my hand as the distant stars called to me. I saw in their shimmering lights a grand design that had long awaited completion. Some great event, I sensed, had been coming for untold years, set into motion ages of ages ago with the force of whole worlds tumbling through space. I knew then that I and my friends, must face Morjin in Argattha. For that, too, was one of the virtues of the silver gelstei, that it let me see the way that my fate was aligned with the much greater fate of the world and the whole universe itself

'You should have told us,' Atara said to Ymiru. 'You should have told us before this.'

'I'm sorry,' Ymiru said, 'I should have. But I didn't want to crush your hrope.'

Maram was now drunk on the potent kalvaas – but not quite drunk enough to suit him. He took another swallow of it, belched and sighed out, 'Ah, to think we've come this far for nothing.'

'What do you mean, little man?'

'Well, surely in light of what you've told us, the risk of entering Argattha is too great.

Surely you can see that. If we should find the Lightstone, and Morjin finds us, then. .. ah, I don't like to think about then.'

'I can't see that,' Atara said, squeezing her white gelstei in her hand. 'We've known for many miles that we were taking a great risk.'

Master Juwain nodded his lumpy head, agreeing with her. To Maram, and all of us, he said, 'The Galadin, in their wisdom, sent the Lightstone to Ea, hoping for the best.

So we should hope, too.'

'So we should,' Liljana added. 'It's not upon us to weigh this risk down to the last grain. Only to take it.'

Maram took yet another pull of his drink. He looked at me and asked, 'Does that mean we are still going to Argattha?'

'Ha!' Kane said, clapping him on the back, 'it means just that.'

'Does it, Val?' Maram asked me.

'Yes,' I said, 'it does.'

With the exception of Ymiru, who insisted on staying awake to take the first watch, we all retired to our furs. But I, at least, could not sleep. Great things had been told that night. Far beneath Skartaru's pointed summit, in the bowels of the earth, Morjin labored long and deep to free the Dark Lord from his prison on the world of Damoom. And now we must labor to find the door into Argattha. What we would find on the other side, I thought, not even the Galadin themselves could know.