David Zindell - The Lightstone

'You take it,' he said to me. 'Guard it for the Maitreya. So, guard it with your life – that is your fate.'

I gave the cup to Maram to hold, and his large hand closed around it.

'Some wounds,' Kane said, 'only he can heal.' I reached out to grasp Kane's hard hand in mine as I helped him to his feet. Then he let go of me and pulled himself up tall and straight. The tears in his eyes were gone. I looked deep into their bright, black depths; as had been the Lightstone, they were full of stars.

'Valashu,' he said, smiling at me.

For millennia he had waged the bitterest of wars against himself, but angels cannot so easily be killed. A broken man had knelt before me, but here rose up another. The lines of his face seemed to lose their hardness and rigidity. Years fell from him, untold years, and I saw him as he must have been in his youth when he had walked with the One. His skin gleamed all golden like the sun, and his white hair had taken on the silver tones of silustria; a crown of light surrounded his head and fell about his shoulders like a lion's mane set on fire. He seemed raimented all in glorre, while his whole being was transparent to the hopes and dreams of a deeper world. A man he truly was, like the first man to walk the earth and perhaps the last.

And yet he was also something more, for here he stood all noble, wise, beautiful and radiant, blazing like a star, as one of the great Elijin.

But only for a moment. He moved over to Atara and laid his hand on her face to turn her toward him. Then, with infinite gentleness, he touched his thumbs into the hollows of her eyes. And the angel fire passed into her and out of him.

'Val!' Atara cried out. 'I know where the passageway is!'

Once, speaking of Morjin, Kane had asked what could be greater than the power to make others see what is not. And here, in this beautiful woman restored for a moment to her vision, the only answer: the power to help them see what really is.

Maram gave the Lightstone to Ymiru, who stood holding it in his single hand a few moments before turning it over to Liljana. Then Maram, looking at Kane in awe, said,

'Lord Kalkin, you are -'

'Don't say that name again!' Kane told him. Much of the light had now gone out of him; with its passing, Kane had returned to us – but never quite the same Kane again.

'So, you'll call me as you have, do you understand?'

'All right, then,' Maram said.

Kane smiled grimly as he bent to pick up his sword.

Liljana, after gazing into the Lightstone as long as she dared, gave the cup to Master Juwain, who held it only a moment before placing it in Atara's hands. While Daj stood close to Liljana, looking on in awe. Flick suddenly appeared and looped around the cup as if spinning out strands of a silvery cocoon of light.

'So, the second quest ends,' Kane said, casting one last look at the Lightstone. As a great noise of pounding boots and shaking steel sounded from outside the hall, his eyes flashed around the throne room's three gates. 'And it will be the end of us if we don't find our way out of here soon. It sounds as if they're bringing up the whole damn army!'

'Come,' Atara said softly, talcing my hand.

She gave the Lightstone back to me, and I returned it to its resting place beneath my armor. Then she led us over to the wall behind the throne. There, set into the fearsome face of a carving of Angra Mainyu, she found the hidden door. It took only a few moments to open it.

'Come,' she said again, this time taking Daj's hand. 'Let's go home.'

Then she turned into the tunnel beyond the open door and bravely led the way into the bright, black darkness.

The passageway took us straight toward the southeast for a distance of a few hundred yards. It gave onto a much larger corridor running east and west. Just at the juncture, however, we found our way blocked by lines of iron bars running from the ceiling down into the floor. An iron door, like one leading from a jail cell, was set into the middle of the bars.

'Locked!' Maram cried out as he rushed forward to try it. 'Then we're Still trapped in this forsaken place!'

None of us knew how long it would be before Morjin's men burst into the throne room behind us and found their way to this secret passage.

'Hrold your noise!' Ymiru said softly, stepping up to the bars.

Then he brought forth his purple gelstei and worked its magic upon them. Its violet light transformed the crystal within the iron into a softer substance – soft enough so that Ymiru's great strength, with Maram, Kane and me helping, sufficed to bend them. Daj danced through this opening, and as for the rest of us, only Ymiru had much trouble squeezing through.

'There!' he huffed out after leaving shreds of white fur upon the rough iron bars.

'We're not trapped! I'll never allow myself to be trapped and taken again.'

'But how did Morjin take you?' Maram asked him.

'It was bad chance,' he said. 'After Val killed the dragon, we made it back past the old throne room and up to the seventh level without much trouble. Then we ran into that company of Grays.'

The Grays, as he explained, had scented out the secrets of their minds, and had used their frightful minds to freeze them with fear until Morjn's guards – and Morjin himself – could be summoned to bind them in chains.

'It was hrorrible,' Ymiru said, nodding at Atara and Master Juwain. 'We fought them as hard as we could, with the light meditations, but how long can one hrold against such creatures? And then Morjin suggested taking us into the throne room; he said that the torture of our bodies might help the Grays break into our minds.' 'Are you sure they didn't?' Kane asked him.

'I think not,' Master Juwain said, stepping up to Ymiru. 'When Morjin discovered that you and Val had broken into the throne room, he was very keen to have the Grays turn their minds toward you.'

'So, then it's possible that the enemy doesn't know how we entered Argattha?'

'It's likely,' Master Juwain said. 'I heard Morjin give orders to double the guard at the city's gates. He berated the captain of his guards for allowing a giant such as Ymiru to pass through un challenged.'

'Then they will likely look for us at these gates,' Maram said. 'If we can find our way back as we came, we may yet have time to make our escape.'

'A little time, perhaps,' Kane said. 'But we must hurry.' And so hurry we did, out onto the larger corridor, which was lit with numerous glowstones set at intervals into the black, basalt walls. To the west as Kane told us, the corridor led back toward Morjin's palace. And to the east, this bore through solid rock would take us straight through the mountain to the window carved into its side known as Morjin's Porch.

'But how did you know that?' Daj asked him. 'If this is the way toward Morjin's Porch, only Lord Morjin is ever allowed to use it.'

'Not ever, lad,' Kane said grimly as he stared down the corridor. 'Once, a long time ago, one named Kalkamesh was taken this way and crucified to the face of the mountain.' Daj, who apparently hadn't heard this story, stared at Kane in awe. 'If I remember aright,' Kane said, 'it also leads to Morjin's Stairs.'

As Daj had told us, Morjin's Stairs would lake us down to Argattha's lower levels, perhaps as far down as the abandoned first level – though not even Daj or Ymiru could say where it might give out. 'Can you see where?' Kane asked Atara.

Atara, who could 'see' well enough to keep from stumbling along this dim corridor, shook her head and told us, 'It's too far.'

'Let's find out, then,' Kane said.

We had no trouble in finding Morjin's Stairs about a quarter mile to our left. They spiraled deep into the dark mountain, turning around and around, and down and down for hundreds of feet. After a while, we came to a landing giving out onto a tunnel, which we supposed led to the secret tunnel system and sanctuaries on the sixth level. It was quiet in that direction. This gave us good hope as we turned the other way and resumed our journey down the endlessly winding stairs Thus we passed openings to the fifth, fourth, third and second levels There, as we had prayed, the stairs didn't end; they led us another five hundred feet down to the first level of Argattha.