David Zindell - The Lightstone

Their long, black hair, tied with brighdy colored battle ribbons won in other contests, flowed out from beneath their helms and streamed out behind them.

Around their ankles they wore silver bells which sounded the jangling rhythm of their carefully measured steps. This high-pitched ringing had been known to unnerve whole armies and put them to flight before a single arrow was fired or spear clashed against shield. But our enemy that day were Ishkans, and they sported silver bells of their own, as did all the Valari in battle. And every man on the field, Ishkan or Meshian, warrior or king, was dressed in a suit of the marvelous Valari battle armor: supple black leather encrusted with white diamonds across the chest and back, covering the neck, and gleaming along the arms and legs down to the diamond-studded boots.

The brilliance of so many thousands of men, each sparkling with a covering of thousands of diamonds, dazzled the eye. Who had ever seen so many diamonds displayed in one place? The wealth of the Morning Mountains was spread out on the snowy field below us – and not just her gemstones. For it was men, I thought, and the women who would grieve for them, who were the true treasure of this land.

Warriors such as Asaru, pure of heart and noble-souled, born of the fertilest and finest soil – these were the only diamonds that had true worth. And they mustn't, I knew, be squandered.

'Come on!' I said to Maram and Master Juwain. I urged Altaru forward down the hill.

'It's nearly too late.'

Already, on the battlefield ahead of us through the trees, the archers behind the opposing lines were loosing their arrows. The whine of these hundreds of shafts shivered the air; their points clacked off armor in a cacophony of steel striking stone.

Soon enough, some of these arrows would drive through the chinks between the diamonds and find their way into flesh.

I rode hard for the edge of the woods and the quickly narrowing gap between the two advancing armies. Maram, clinging to his bounding horse, somehow managed to catch up to me. He pointed through the trees off to the right, towards my father's standard and his cavalry. And he gasped out, 'Your lines are that way! What are you trying to do?' 'Stop a battle,' I said.

And with that I drew forth the Lightstone and charged out onto the field. I held it high above my head. The sun filled the cup with its radiance, and it gave back this splendor a thousandfold. A sudden blaze poured out of it, drenching the warriors of both armies in a brilliant golden sheen. More than twenty thousand pairs of eyes turned my way. With Maram to my right, and Master Juwain to my left, we rode straight past the lines of men to either side of us as down a road. Thus did Lord Harsha's prediction come true as we found ourselves in the middle of the battlefield in front of both advancing armies.

'Hold!' I cried out to the warriors around me as Altaru galloped through the snow.

'Hold now!'

An arrow, shot from behind the Ishkans' ranks, whistled past my ear. Then I heard one of the Ishkans shout, 'It's the Elahad – back from the dead!'

Many men were now giving voice to their amazement. I recog nized Lord Harsha's gruff old voice booming out above others of the knights grouped around my father,

'They've returned! The questers have returned! The Lightstone has been found!'

Suddenly the trumpets stopped blowing and the drums fell silent. The captains calling out the cadences up and down the lines gave the order for a halt. The silver bells bound around the warriors' legs ceased their eerie jingling as the twenty thousand men along the Ishkan and Meshian lines drew up waiting to see what their kings would next command.

I stopped Altaru at the middle of the field. Master Juwain and Maram joined me there. The Lightstone was now like the sun itself in my hand. It was a call for a truce, the like of which hadn't been seen among the Valari for three thousand years.

My father, along with Lansar Raasharu, Lord Tomavar, Lord Harsha and several other lords and master knights, was the first to ride toward us beneath a fluttering white flag. A few moments later, King Hadaru gathered up his most trusted lords and called for one of his squires to hold up a white flag as well. Then he, too, led his men slowly toward us. It was not quite the thundering charge that either the Meshian knights or the Ishkans had anticipated.

'Stop the battle, you said!' Maram muttered at me, holding his hand to his chest.

'Stop my heart, I say!'

My father had signaled for Asaru to join the parlay; now he broke from the ranks to the east down by the river and urged his dark brown stallion across the field. It took him only a few minutes to canter across the half mile that separated us. As he drew closer and the Lightstone's radiance showed the long, hawk's nose and the noble face that I had nearly given up hope of seeing again, my heart soared and tears filled my eyes.

Then my father, who had drawn up with his lords in a half circle around Master Juwain, Maram and me, called out my name, and his voice touched my soul, 'Sar Valashu, my son – you have returned to us. And not with empty hands.'

He sat straight and grave in his sparkling armor as he regarded the Lightstone with marvel and me even more so. We were like new men to each other. His black eyes, so like Kane's in their brilliance, found mine, and embraced my entire being with gladness and love. In his fierce gaze burned a certainty that he had not lived his life in vain.

As King Hadaru and the Ishkans formed up on the other side of me facing him, my father studied my torn cloak and nearly ragged surcoat.

Then he asked me, 'Where is the shield that I gave you when you set out on your journey?'

'Gone, Sire,' I told him. 'Consumed in dragon fire.'

At this, even the greatest lords of both Ishka and Mesh gasped out their amazement as if they were still unbloodied boys. They all pressed closer. No one seemed to know if what I had said should be taken literally.

'Dragon fire, is it? King Hadaru said. He sat all bearlike and irritable on top of his huge horse as he looked at me skeptically. His great beak of a nose pointed straight at me as if threatening to pry out the truth. 'And where did you fight this dragon?'

'In Argttha,' I said.

This name, dreadful and ancient, loosed in the lords another round gasps and cries.

All their eyes now lifted up and fixed on the golden cup still pouring forth its fight from above my hand. 'It was in Argattha,' Maram said, 'that we found the Lightstone.' Prince Salmelu nudging his horse closer to his father, held his hand covering his eyes as he shook his head. The scar running down the side of his race to his weak chin burned a goldish red. Then he tore his gaze from the Lightstone.

His cold, dark eyes fell upon me in challenge. He looked at me with a great hate that had only grown in poisonousness during the months since I had wounded him in our duel.

'Is it your claim, then,' he said to me in a bitter voice, that this is the Lightstone?'

'There's no claim to me made,' I told him. 'It is, as you can see, the cup that our ancestors brought to earth.'

He pressed his horse a few paces forward as if to get a better look at the cup that I held. His ugly, furtive eyes showed but little of its light. 'And you claim to have entered the forbidden city and brought forth this cup?' Salmelu asked me.

'In fulfillment of our quest yes,' I said to him.

'What proofs can you give us, then?' he called out to me. 'Why should we believe the word of a man who has dishonored himself in fighting duels that he didn't have the courage to finish?'

Despite my resolve to keep a cool head, I suddenly found myself gripping Alkaladur's hilt. And Salmelu moving slightly more slowly due to the wounds I had cut into his arms and chest, curled his fingers around his kalama.