David Zindell - The Lightstone

I turned to see him pointing at a massive desk on which many books lay open.

There, too, set out as if Morjin had been studying them, were warders, wish stones, dragon bones and other lesser gelstei. I saw three precious music marbles as well as a sleep stone, with its many swirling colors that looked something like a fire agate.

Maram took a step straight toward the desk, perhaps intending to touch or take one of these treasures. But i grabbed his elbow and said, 'We don't have time for this.'

Kane, moving quickly, swept up a few bloodstones glowing with a dreadful red light and pocketed them. Then he pointed his sword at a large stand next to the desk. He snarled out, 'So, we have time for this, then.'

I saw that the stand, which looked something like a brazier, held six large eggs thrice the size of an eagle's. Before I could stop him, Kane crossed the room and thrust his sword straight through one of the eggs, breaking open the leathery shell. Five more times he thntst out and when he was done, the steel of his sword dripped with a thick, blood-orange yolk. Thus did he destroy the eggs of Angraboda, one of the dragons that Morjin had summoned here from Damoom.

'But there were seven eggs!' Daj whispered as he crossed the room to where Kane stood snarling down at the broken, oozing mass of shells.

'Seven, eh? Are you sure?'

Daj nodded his head, looking about the room, as did Kane. He stalked across it to wipe his sword contemptuously on the silk coverings of Morjin's bed.

'Kane, there's no time!' I said, making for the door with the great tree. 'We've got to go!'

'You go,' he said, casting his eyes about the room. 'This is a rare chance.'

'To destroy an egg?'

'Yes, that,' he said, stabbing his sword into one of the bed's feather pillows. 'And to destroy Morjin.'

Now he looked at the door on the north wall that led to the rest of the palace; he gazed fiercely at the tapestry covering the door by which we had entered the room.

And then he said, 'So, I'll wait here for him. And when he comes, I'll send him back to the stars.'

Liljana, who had a cooler head than mine, went over to him and touched his sword arm. 'You might wait days then. And what are we to do while you wait to make this murder?'

'Complete your quest.'

'But what if we need your help?'

'You won't,' he snapped. Then his savage gaze fell upon her. 'I know that you want him dead almost as badly as I do.'

'Perhaps,' Liljana said, looking away from him. 'But not as badly as I want to find what we came here to find.'

I, too, found it hard to bear the fire in Kane's blazing eyes just then. But I stared straight at him and said a single word: 'Pease.'

There was a moment when I thought he would turn inward to that burning ocean of hate that pulled him ever downward into the hell of his own being. But once, near a little clearing littered with the bodies of the gray men that we had slain, he had pledged his sword to my service so long as I sought the Lightstone. The deep, knowing touch of our eyes told me that he remembered this promise. And that he would keep it

'All right,' he said, pointing his sword toward the east door that led to Morjin's throne room, let's finish this damn quest of yours then!'

I stepped over and twisted the knob of the door, which was unlocked and pulled open like any other. Behind it was a hallway, draped with flowing silks, that ran straight east I led the way into it and then Kane shut the door behind us.

We marched forward for a distance of a few hundred yards. No other doors or passages gave out onto this new tunnel. On either side of us and above us, Daj said, were the rooms of Morjin's palace that could only be reached from his room through its north door. Many people, I sensed, were all about us through thin walls of rock.

As we hurried along, my breath came more quickly in bursts that seemed to burn my nostrils and mouth. And yet the air was cold, as was the rock beneath the thin, silk wall coverings. The door at the opposite end of the hallway was cold, too. We came upon it in a rush of driving feet and beating hearts. Like the door to Morjin's room, it was cast of bronze and unlocked.

With a last look back at Kane and the others, I pushed it open. And then I stepped out into Morjin's throne room.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram whispered in my ear. 'Oh, my Lord!'

We stood along the west wall of one of the largest enclosed spaces I had ever beheld. The vast chamber, carved out of solid rock, must have been three hundred feet high and nearly as long and wide. Immense pillars rose up from the floor like giant stone trees and fluted out to support the dark ceiling high above. Everything about this cold, vaulted hall seemed dark, with its acres of bare, black basalt Yet Morjin and the hall's makers had applied all their art toward filling it with light. In the walls and ceiling were set many hundreds of glowstones, throwing out their soft, silky sheen. The pillars were jacketed in gold leaf, which reflected this radiance out into the hall Various statues, encrusted with rubies, sapphires and other gems, added to the glitter. And yet it was not quite enough to reach into the farthest corners and drive away the shadows. In the midst of all this ancient and hideous splendor hung an air of dread that seemed to ooze from the exposed rock along the ceiling, floor and walls; here echoed the memory of torments as old as the ages and the future cries of hopelessness and doom.

For a moment I pressed back against the bronze door to still my dizziness and orient myself. 1 noted the three closed gates, along the east, north and west walls.

Opposite the door to Morjin's rooms where we gathered, at the center of the hall and toward its southern end, stood a great throne. It had been built, it seemed, in imitation or mockery of the king's throne in Tria. Six broad steps led up to it, and eacs step was framed at either end by the sculptures of Gashur and Zun and other Galadin who had become as monsters. The greatest of these was the coiled, red dragon monument to Angra Mainyu into which the throne itself was set. When Morjin took his place on this seat of power, his head would be framed just below the huge dragon's head, which looked out into the room with golden eyes carved out of two huge amber stones.

Leaving the door behind us open should we have to beat a hasty retreat, we moved out into the great hall as we began what I hoped would be the final moments of the quest. But even as Alkaladur's blade shone with a new light, my hope faded. For in truth, the silustria blazed too brightly. It whatever direction I pointed it – north, east, south and west – I could detect not the slightest change in its luminosity. I knew from this frightful radiance that the Lightstone must be very close – so close that my silver sword could lead us no farther. But how we were otherwise to find it in so vast a space, I didn't know.

For there were a thousand places where Sartan Odinan might have set down a little golden cup. Behind the throne, and in other parts of the room, there were altars, cabinets and pedestals that might have been the Lightstone's resting place. And cold braziers, lamp stands, benches, shelves and even the plinths of the great stone pillars holding up the ceiling. Along the huge walls themselves – carved with dragons, demons and a huge bas-relief of the Baaloch and the dark angels imprisoned with him on Damoom – there were recesses and rocky projections, any one of which might have hidden the Lightstone.

'Well?' Maram said to me as we walked out into the room.

'It's here,' I said. 'But it's so close, my sword can't tell us where.'

'Then how are we to find it?' He stopped by the line of pillars running down the hall to the right of the throne. He bent to feel along a pillar's massive, square-cut plinth, tapping his hands along the stone like a blind man. 'My Lord – we can't just hope we'll stumble across it!'