David Zindell - The Lightstone

'It be there, I'm sure of it,' Ymiru said. 'But we've got to get closer.'

So began the final leg of our journey toward Argattha. We might simply have ridden straight across the mounded grasslands toward the valley that cut beneath Skartaru's north face. But such exposure, so near to the enemy's secret city, would have been a great foolishness. As it was standing here on the side of a mountain above the lands of the Zayak tribe of the Sarni – and in clear sight of Argattha – we were taking a great risk And so we decided on the longer, and relatively safer, route toward our objective. This would keep us close to the mountains, hugging their curve toward the south and through their foothills. It would take us over wooded slopes and around rocky ridges, past the mouths of two small canyons giving out onto the Wendrush's plain. And so it would take us much longer. But now that we had come so near to our fate, whatever that might be, none of us felt much hurry to meet it.

We spent the rest of the day walking through the foothills. Here, so close to Argattha, every flight of a bird and every sound was a call to grip our weapons more tightly. Atara, who had the best eyes of any of us, kept a tense vigil, watching the ridgelines above us, peering far out on the plains of the Wendrush. Kane brought up the rear of our company, and he seemed able to sense danger through every pore of his skin. And yet despite Skartaru's looming presence and the dread that crushed down upon us like immense, black boulders from its heights, our luck held good.

We reached a little canyon to the north of the mountain without sighting anyone.

Here, in this grassy hollow where only a single ridge blocked the way toward Skartaru's north face, we came to the moment that I had been dreading almost more than entering the mountain. For here we decided that we must set the horses free.

'Ah, perhaps one of us should remain with them,' Maram said, looking about the canyon.

Actually, it was more of a great bowl scooped out of the side of the mountain to the west, with ridges framing it to the north and south. A few trees ran around the curve of these ridges, but in between was a half mile of good grass.

'Hmmph,' Atara said to Maram, 'has coming so close to Argattha made you forget the prophecy?'

'I know, I know,' he said, 'the seven of us must go forth… to where we must go.

But what will happen to the horses? And what will happen to us should our quest prove a success and we return to find the horses gone?'

He suggested that we should perhaps hobble the horses or even picket them so that they remained in the valley.

'No, there are wolves and lions about,' I said, looking down into the plain. 'If we tie the horses, they'd be unable to run or defend themselves. And if we don't return…'

Maram watched my face for sign of despair, and then asked, 'But what are we to do?'

I moved quickly to ungird Altaru's saddle and remove his harness. When he was free of these encumbrances and naked as an animal should be, I faced him stroking his neck and looking into his eyes. In these large, brown orbs was something deep and ancient that brought a mist to mine. I stood there breathing my love for him into his nostrils while he gave voice to the covenant of friendship that had always been between us.

'Stay with the other horses,' I told him as he nickered softly. 'Don't let them leave this valley – do you understand?'

He nickered again, this time louder, and I was seized with a strange, soaring sense that somehow he did understand

It took Atara and the others only a few moments to loose their horses, too. We hid the saddles and tack in some bushes beneath the nearby trees. After taking up our weapons and some supplies, we turned to leave the horses grazing on the canyon's brown grass.

We might have done well to wait for night and approach Skartaru under the cover of darkness. But we needed to find the Ogre and the cave leading into Argattha, and for this we needed light And so in the day's last hours, we crossed the ridge to the south and then made our way across the narrow canyon cutting beneath the mountain's north face. We found what cover we could among the trees and stony outcroppings there. Now Skartaru loomed so high and huge above us that it blocked the sun and most of the sky. Its black rock seemed the whole of the world; looking at this stark and terrible face, I could almost feel Kalkamesh's blood running down its jags and cracks, even as the cries of those still trapped inside the underground city sounded from inside it.

We walked almost straight up a rocky slope toward the base of the Diamond. We expected to be caught at any moment But except for a few birds and deer keeping a watch for lions, the valley seemed empty of anyone except us.

'Look!' Ymiru said in a low voice that broke into the quiet air like thunder. He pointed at a great hump of rock five hundred feet high swelling out the Diamond's dark wall. 'Does that look like an Ogre to anyone?'

'Almost,' Liljana said. 'But it's hard to tell from this angle.'

We changed the course of our hike slightly toward the west. After a couple of hundred yards, we came to the very bottom of the Diamond's lower point in a hollow pressed between the north face's two immense buttresses. And there, jutting out of this dread face, the hump of rock did indeed look like an ogre kneeling down on one knee.

We rushed up to this knob-like prominence, looking for the cave told of in Ymiru's verse. But no cave, to either side of it could we find. The black rock of the Diamond was scarred with many cracks, but otherwise unmarked. Even though we spread out along the wall searching more carefully, we found no sign of any cave.

'But it must be here!' Ymiru said, pounding the cold rock with his great fist.

Maram, breathing deeply against the day's exertions, leaned back against what must have been the Ogre's knee and sighed, 'Well, who's ready to try one of Argattha's gates?'

Liljana fixed her eyes upon the mountain's rock; suddenly she spoke to both of them, saying, 'Don't you give up so soon. Don't you remember the verse's last two lines?'

Even as she said this, Atara, standing back from the wall, descried a vein of red running through the black rock. Now we all stood back as she pointed at it. It was surely iron ore, I thought, and it ran in jagged bands that pointed like an arrow straight toward the base of the wall just to the right of the Ogre's knee.

'But there be no cave there!' Ymiru said, 'There be nothing but rock.'

'Only rock,' Kane muttered. Then he stepped back toward the wall and began moving his hands over it. 'And smooth rock at that, eh? Ymiru, come here and look at this! Tell me if you've ever seen a mountain's rock so smooth.'

Ymiru joined him there, as did the rest of us. And then Ymiru said, 'It looks like the rock that the ancients cut through the passes of the Wailing Way.'

'So, cut with firestones,' Kane said. 'Melted out of the mountains -as this mountain has been melted down over the cave.'

He told us them that Morjin, perhaps after making other escape tunnels from Argattha, must have sealed off this one.

'But why?' Maram asked. 'Just to confound us, no doubt.'

'Who knows why?' Kane said, rapping his knuckles against the wall. 'Maybe too many knew about this. But I'd wager our lives we'll find the cave behind this rock.'

We all looked at each other in the grim certainty that we were wagering our lives here. And then Ymiru, after first casting quick glances up and down the valley, began tapping his borkor at various points along the wall. When he reached the place beneath the bands of iron ore, the reverberations from the rock sounded slightly hollow.

'There be something behind here,' he said.

Now he raised his iron-shod club straight back and struck the wall a tremendous blow. The rock rang as if hammered by a god. Chips of black basalt sprayed out into the air. But if Ymiru had hoped to break through to the hidden cave, he failed.