David Zindell - The Lightstone

And so, as Ymiru led forth, tapping the bow ahead of him like a blind man, we followed him one by one out onto the invisible bridge. With Maram and Iolo right behind him, we kept as straight a line as we could. Our lives depended on this discipline and exactitude. Ymiru discovered that the bridge wasn't very wide: little more than the width of a couple of horses. And it had no rails that we could grasp onto or keep us from slipping over its edge. It was, quite simply, just a huge span of some flawlessly clear crystal that had stood here for perhaps a thousand years.

For the first half of our crossing, we walked up a gradually curving slope. The horses' hooves dopped against the unseen glisse as they might any stone. We tried not to look down at what our boots were touching, for beneath the bridge, straight down hundreds of feet, were many rocks and boulders that had fallen into the gorge and piled up along the river's banks. It was all too easy to imagine our broken bodies dashed upon them. The wind – the icy, merciless wind of the Wailing Way – howled through the gorge and cut at us like some great battle-axe, threatening to drive us over the edge. It set the bridge swaying through space with a sicking motion that recalled the pitching and rolling of Captain Kharald's ship.

'Oh,' Maram gasped ahead of me as he clutched his belly with his free hand, 'this is too much!'

'Steady!' I called out to him from behind Master Juwain and Liljana. 'We're almost across.'

In truth, we were just cresting the highest part of the bridge, with the river directly below us.

'Oh,' Maram groaned, 'perhaps I shouldn't have drunk that kalvaas before trying this.'

My anger as he said this was an almost palpable thing. It seemed to reach out from me unbidden, like an invisible hand, and slap him across the face. 'But you'll wreck your balance!' I called to him.

'I only had a nip,' he called back. 'Besides, I thought I needed courage more than coordination.'

It seemed, as I watched him stepping daintily behind Ymiru, that he had coordination enough to complete the crossing. He moved quite carefully, with a keen awareness of what lay beneath him. And then, as he grabbed at his churning belly yet again and the wind hit the bridge with a tremendous gust at the same moment, his foot slipped on the glisse as against ice. He lost his balance – as the rest of us nearly did, too. He grabbed at Iolo's reins to steady himself, but just then Alphanderry's spirited horse stamped and whinnied and shook his head. This was enough to further throw Maram off his center. With a great cry and terror in his eyes, with his arms and legs flailing like windmills, he began his plunge into space.

He surely would have died if Ymiru hadn't moved very quickly to grab him. I watched in disbelief as Ymiru's great hand shot out and locked onto Maram's hand.

For a moment, he held him dangling and kicking in mid-air. Maram, despite what Ymiru liked to call him, was no little man. He must have weighed in at a good eighteen stone. And yet Ymiru hauled him back onto the bridge as easily as he might a sack of potatoes.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram gasped, falling against Ymiru and grabbing on to him. 'Oh, my Lord – thank you, thank you!'

Almost as quickly, Ymiru had moved to grasp Iolo's reins with his other handgnd steady him. Now he pressed these leather straps into Maram's hand and told him,

'Here, take your hrorse.'

Maram did as he was bade, and he stroked Iolo's trembling side as it to calm him – and himself. And then he gathered up the best ot his courage, turned to Ymiru and said, 'Thank you, big man. But I m afraid we both missed a great chance.'

'And what be that?'

'To see if I could really fly.'

We completed the rest of the crossing without further incident. When we reached the far side of the gorge, Maram let loose a great shout of triumph and insisted on drinking a little kalvaas to celebrate. My nerves were so frayed that I agreed to this indulgence. Maram smiled, glad to be forgiven his foolishness., and passed me his cup. The disgusting brew was just as greasy and rancid as it always was. But at that moment, with out feet firmly planted on ground that we could see, it tasted almost like nectar.

That was the last great obstacle we faced along the Wailing Way. Five days later, after traversing a good part of the Nagarshath to the south of the headwaters of the Blood River, we came out around the curve of a mountain through some foothills to behold the great golden grasslands of the Wendrush. To the east of us, as far as the eye could see, was a rolling plain opening out beneath a cloudless blue sky. There antelope gathered in great herds and lions hunted them. There, too, the tribes of the Sarni rode freely over the wind-rippled grass, hunting the antelope – and each other.

Many times before, faring west from the kel keeps of Mesh's mountains, I had lost myself in the vast sweeps of this country. And now I wondered what it would be like to ride across it, five hundred miles, toward Vashkel and Urkel and the other mountains I knew so well.

'That way be your hrome,' Ymiru said as we gathered on the side of a great hill.

Then he turned and pointed to the south of us, where the easternmost mountains of the Nagarshath edged the grasslands. 'And that be Skartaru.'

The sight of this grim, black mountain struck an icy dread deep into my bones. If Alumit had been made by the Galad in, Skartaru might have been carved by the Baaloch himself. It was a great mound of basalt, cut with sharp ridges and points like the blades of knives. Snow and glaciers froze its upper slopes; sheer walls of forbidding rock formed its lower ones. I marveled at Ymiru's feat of navigation, for he had brought us out on the side of a mountain just to the north and east of it. From this vantage, we had a good look at two of its faces. The filmed east face was shaped like an almost perfect triangle, save that near its higher reaches, a notch seemed to have been cut from it between its two great peaks. Far beneath the higher and nearer of these – a great pointed horn of black rock three miles high – a road led out of one of Argattha's gates and sliced across the Wendrush. Along this road, I thought, the ancient Valari had been crucified after the Battle of Tarshid. And a thousand feet above the gate, on the east face's sun-baked rock, Morjin had crucified the great Kalkamesh for taking the Lightstone from him.

I stared at this glowing black sheet, and almost unbidden, the ancient words formed upon my lips:

The lightning flashed, struck stone, burned white -

The prince looked up into the light;

Upon Skartaru nailed to stone

He saw the warrior all alone.

'It doesn't seem possible,' I whispered to the wind.

'What doesn't?' Maram asked me. 'That Kalkamesh could have sur vived such torture?'

'Yes, that,' I said. 'And that Telemesh could have climbed that wall at night and brought Kalkamesh down.'

I was not the only one struck with the marvel of this great feat. Liljana and Atara stared at the mountain's east face, while Ymiru pointed his furry finger at it and Master Juwain shook his head. And as for Kane, his black eyes were so full of fire that they might have melted the mountain itself. Sometimes I could sense the swell of the passions and hates that streamed inside him. But now there was only a burning, bottomless abyss.

'Skartaru,' he growled. 'The Black Mountain.'

He tore his eyes from its east face and pointed at the darker north one. 'There's the Diamond,' he said.

A few miles from where we stood, across some grassy buttes where the plains came up against the mountains, we had a good view of the long-sought Skartaru's north face. As shown by Ymiru's map, this was a towering diamond of black rock, at least three miles high, framed on either side by enormous, humped buttresses. We looked between them for the rock formation told of as the Ogre. But either we were too far away or lacked the proper angle for viewing, because we couldn't discern it.