David Zindell - The Lightstone

'You're in love, my friend,' he quietly said to me. 'At last, in love.'

His words caught me completely by surprise. The truth often does. It is astonishing how we can deny such things even when it is in our eyes and hearts. 'You think I'm in love?' I said stupidly. 'With Atara?'

'No, with your pack horse, whom you've been watching all morning.' He shook his head at my doltishness.

'But I thought it was you who loved her.'

'But what made you think that?'

'Well, she's a woman, isn't she?'

'Ah, a woman she is. And I'm a man. So what? A stallion smells a mare in heat, and it's inevitable that the inevitable will happen. But love, Val?'

'Well, she's a beautiful woman.'

'Beautiful, yes. So is a star. Can you touch one? Can you wrap your arms around such a cold fire and clasp it to your heart?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'If you can't why should you think I cant?'

'Because you're different from me,' he said simply. 'You were born to worship such impossible lights.'

He went on to say that the very feature I loved most about Atara unnerved him completely. 'The truth is, my friend, I can't bear looking at her damn eyes. Too blue, too bright – a woman's eyes should flow into mine like coffee, not dazzle me like diamonds.'

I looked down at the two diamonds of my knight's ring but couldn't find anything to say.

She loves you, you know,' he suddenly told me.

'Did she say that?'

'Ah, no, not exactly. In fact, she denied it. But that's like denying the sun.'

'You see,' I said. 'She couldn't possibly love me. No one could love another so soon.'

'You think not? When you were born, did you need more than a moment to love the world?'

'That's different,' i said.

'No, my friend, it's not. Love is. Sometimes I think it's the only thing in the world that really is. And when a man and a woman meet, either they open themselves to this heavenly fire, or they do not.'

Again I looked at the stones of my ring shining in the bright morning light like two stars.

'Aren't you aware of the way Atara listens to you when you speak of even little things?' Maram asked. 'When you walk into a clearing, don't you see the way her eyes light up as if you were the sun?' 'No, no,' I murmured, 'it's not possible.'

'It is possible, damn it! She told me she was drawn to your kindness and that wild thing in your heart you always try to hide. She was really just saying that she loved you.' 'No, it's not possible,' I said again.

'Listen, my friend, and listen well!' Here Maram grasped my arm as if his fingers might convince me of what his words could not. 'You should tell her that you love her. Then ask her to marry you, before it's too late.'

'You say that?' I couldn't believe what I had heard. 'How many women have you asked to marry you, then?'

'Listen,' he said again. 'I may spend the rest of my life looking for the woman who was meant for me. But you, by rare good chance and the grace of the One – you've found the woman who was meant for you.' We made camp that night off the side of the road in a little clearing where a great oak had fallen. A stream ran through the forest only fifty yards from our site; it was a place of good air and the clean scents of ferns and mosses. Maram and Master Juwain drifted off to sleep early while I insisted on staying awake to make the night's first watch, la truth, with all that Maram had said to me, I could hardly sleep. I was sitting on a flat rock by the fire and looking out at the stars when Atara came over and sat beside me. 'You should sleep, too,' I told her. 'The nights are growing shorter.' Atara smiled as she shook her head at me. In her hands she held a couple of stones and a length of wood, which she intended to- shape into a new arrow, 'I promised myself I'd finish this,' she said. We spoke for a while of the Sarni's deadly war arrows which could pierce armor and their great bows made of layers of horn and sinew laminated to a wooden frame.

Atara talked of life on the Wendrush and its harsh, unforgiving ways. She told me about the harsh, unforgiving Sajagax, the great war chief of the Kurmak. But of her father, she said little. I gathered only that he disapproved of her decision to enter the Mansiayer Society.

'For a man to see his daughter take up arms,' I said, 'must come as a great shock.'

'Hmmph,' she said. 'A warrior who has seen many die in battle shouldn't complain about such shocks.'

'Are you speaking of me or your father?'

'I'm speaking of men,' she said. 'They claim they are brave and then almost faint at the sight of a woman with a bow in bet hands or bleeding a little blood.'

'That's true,' I said, smiling. 'For me to see my mother or grandmother wounded would be almost unbearable.'

Atara's tone softened as she looked at me and said, 'You love them very much, don't you?'

'Yes, very much.'

'Then you must be glad,' she said, 'that you Valari forbid women to become warriors.'

'No, you don't understand,' I told her. 'We don't forbid women this. It's just the opposite: all our women are warriors.'

I went on to say that the first Valari were meant to be warriors of the spirit only. But in an imperfect world, we Valari men had had to learn the arts of war in order to preserve our purity of purpose, which we saw as being realized in women. It was only the Valari women, I said, who had the freedom to embody our highest aspirations. Where men were caught up with the mechanisms of death, the women might further the glories of life. It was upon women to approach all the things of life

– growing food, healing, birthing, raising children – with a warrior's passion and devotion to flowingness, flawlessness and fearlessness.

'Women,' I said, 'are the source of life are they not? And thus it is taught that they are a perfect manifestation of the One'

And thus, I said, among the Valari, it was also taught that women might more easily find serenity and joy in the One. Women were seen It more easily mastering the meditative arts, and were very often the instructors of men. Of the three things a Valari warrior is taught – to tell the truth; to wield a sword; to abide in the One – his mother was responsible for the first and the last.

I stopped talking then, and listened to the stream flowing through the forest and the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. Atara was quiet for a few moments while she regarded me in the fire's light. And then she told me, 'I've never known a man like you.'

I watched as she drew the length of wood between the two grooved pieces of sandstone that she held in her hand, smoothing and straightening the new arrow.

Then I said, 'Who has ever seen a women like you? In the Morning Mountains, the women shoot different kinds of arrows into men's hearts.'

She laughed at this in her spirited way, and then told me that healing, birthing, and raising children were indeed important and women were very good at them. But some women were also good at war, and this was a time when much killing needed to be done.

'A time comes to cut wheat and harvest it,' she said. 'Now it's time for the more bloody harvest of cutting men.'

She went on to say that for three long ages, men had ravaged the world, and now it was time for them to reap what they had sowed.

'No, there must be another way,' I told her. I drew my sword and watched the play of starlight on its long blade. 'This isn't the way the world was meant to be.'

'Perhaps not,' she said, staring at this length of steel. 'But it's the way the world will be until we make it differently.'

'And how will we do that?' I wondered.

She fell quiet for a long time as she sat looking at me. And then she said,

'Sometimes, late at night or when I look into the waters of a still pool, I can see it.

Almost see it. There is a woman there. She has incredible courage but incredible grace, too. There hasn't been a true woman on Ea since the Age of the Mother.