David Zindell - The Lightstone

We worked our way straight across the hall, passing between the throne and an evil-looking, circular area with several great standing stones arising from the floor.

We came to the line of pillars running down the hall to the left of the throne. And there, suddenly, Flick appeared. His small, scintillating form, now throwing out sparks of silver and gold, shot straight up into the air like fireworks. He whirled about ecstatically, then dived down like a firebird and began weaving his way in and out of the mighty pillars in streaks of violet flame.

'Do you think he knows where it is?' Maram asked. 'Do you think he is trying to tell us?'

Flick looped in and out of the pillars and then spun directly over the circular area with its standing stones, which looked to be used for rituals. Flick, I thought, certainly knew where the Lightstone was. And more, it seemed he was drinking in its presence through every sparkling bit of his being and growing ever brighter. But I sensed that he couldn't simply tell us where it had been hidden. For whatever Mick really was, it couldn't have occurred to him that for my friends and me. the lightstone remained invisible.

It was the greatest torment of Argattha to stand so close to the Lightstone, almost to feel its numinous presence charging the air as before a storm, but not be able to see it.

Daj, watching us look across the room as Flick streaked about must have thought we had fallen mad. He could not make out the Timpum's fiery shape. And so he was the first of us to behold another sight.

'Val – over there!' he suddenly cried as he pulled on my arm. He pointed across the ritual area at the gate on the west side of the hall. 'They're coming!'

And even as my eyes fell upon the gate's iron doors, they flew open, swinging inward. Many guards, dressed in mail and yellow livery stained with angry, red dragons, charged into the hall. Many of them bore swords and halberds in their hands; some had long, thrusting spears. Their captains arrayed them in four lines, two on either side of the doorway. Almost without thinking, I took a quick count of their numbers: there were about twenty-five of them in each line.

'So,' Kane muttered. Just then the door to Morjin's private chamber by which we had entered the hall slammed shut 'Four of us against a hundred – so.'

Without any more prompting, Maram ran over to the gate on the east wall behind the pillars where we gathered. He pounded against it but it was locked. 'Trapped!' he cried out. 'Now we're truly trapped!' So we were. As Maram quickly rejoined us and we stood with our backs to the pillars, there came a flurry of motion from outside the open gate to the throne room. And then a man dressed in a golden tunic, trimmed with black fur and emblazoned with a ferocious, red dragon, strode through the doorway. He was almost tall and bore himself with an unshakeable air of command.

His close-cropped hair shone like gold while the beauty of his form and face seemed almost too perfect. His eyes appeared golden, too. For he was, of course, Morjin the Fair – the Lord of Lies and the Great Beast who had so often Come for me with his daws and illusions in the worst of my nightmares.

'Ah, my friend,' Maram said to me as we pressed back against the pillars, preparing for a last stand. 'This is the end – finally, the end.'

Morjin took another step forward, before pausing to beckon with his hand to his guards. He stared across the room straight at me – and at Kane, Maram, Liljana and Daj. There was utter triumph in his hideously beautiful eyes. And then, without a word, his face fell into a mask of hate as he and his guards began marching toward us.

Morjin left half of his men to guard the open gate while he deployed the fifty othera around the ritual area facing us. I had supposed that he and his guards would simply charge us when they drew close enough. But it seemed that he had other plans.

'Back toward the wall!' Maram hissed at me.

I was reluctant to retreat from the line of the pillars to the wall, for there we would be trapped with no room to maneuver. And Morjin seemed loath to force this retreat.

He stood at the center of the circular area staring at us across some seventy feet of the bare stone floor, and his guards stood there, too.

'No, hold here,' I said to Maram,' 'Let's see what he's waiting for.'

A moment later, six red-robed men walked through the gate, down the line of the guards posted there and crossed the room to join Morjin. They were of various ages, heights and colorings, but they all had the long, lean, hungry look of wolves.

'The Red Priests!' Kane snarled out. 'Damn their eyes!'

Even as he said this, I felt a sharp stab of despair at the base of my skull, and men that I dreaded even more than these drinkers of blood entered the room. There were thirteen of them, all wearing hooded gray cloaks over their gray garments. Their faces were as gray as rotting flesh, while their eyes – what little we could see of them

– were like cold gray marbles empty of life. There was nothing inside them, I thought, except a ravenous desire to drink our lives and our very souls.

'Oh, no!' Maram muttered as he stood trembling beside me. 'The Stonefaces!'

Liljana held one hand protectively over Daj's heart, while she gripped her gelstei in the other. She watched the thirteen Grays take their place inside the circle with Morjin. She said, 'It is they. I'm almost certain it was they who gave us away.'

Hearing this, Maram whispered, 'Then perhaps our friends are still safe. Perhaps they'll find a way to -'

'Hold your noise!' Kane snapped at him. 'And guard your thoughts!'

The leader of the Grays, a tall man with a pitiless contempt stamped into his stony face, turned his cold gaze upon me. A terrible fear suddenly pinned me back against the pillar as if a dozen lances of ice had pierced my body.

And then Liljana brought her little figurine up to her head, engaging his mind, fighting him and his dreadful company for all our sakes, and the lances suddenly snapped as I felt a new life returning to my chilled limbs.

'Liljana,' I said, looking at her. 'Can you hold them?'

Liljana stood valiantly facing the Grays. Her wise, willful eyes fought off their soul-sucking stares. Sweat poured down her deeply creased face. And she gasped out, 'I think I can… for a while.'

Mighty was the power of the blue gelstei, I thought, and mighty was the mind of Liljana Ashvaran. A surge of hope shot through me then. But not for us: I could only pray that Atara and the others would discover that we had been taken and that Liljana's valor would give them time to flee Argattha.

And then, as if Morjin could read my mind, he turned toward the still-open gate. His gloat of victory disfigured his fine face. My heart almost broke to see two guards dragging Atara into the throne room in chains. Another likewise led Master Juwain toward the ritual area. And then five men, each pulling at long chains like leads on a mad dog, strained to jerk the furiously struggling Ymiru into the room. Five more men followed him with chains pulled tight around the shackles binding his huge wrist, neck and waist. His black Saryak's robe had been stripped from him. Blood stained his fur where the shackles cut into him. It took all the strength of these ten large men to control him and move him toward the circle where Morjin stood with his priests, guards and the terrible Grays.

Seeing the guards manhandle Atara, I lifted up Alkaladur and took a step forward. Its blade radiated my hate. And then Morjin, his eyes fixed fearfully on my bright sword, finally spoke to me. His words rang out like steel into the hall: 'If you come any closer, Valashu Elahad, she will be killed.'

The Red Priests swarming over Atara, I saw, had jeweled knives fastened onto their belts. And the Grays, of course, had their knives drawn: gray-steel daggers as sharp as death. The guards deployed around the circle pointed their swords, halberds and spears at Kane and me.