David Zindell - The Lightstone

'We should begin at the beginning,' Pualani told us in a voice as rich as the wine she poured us. Her deeply-set eyes caught up some of the color of the emerald necklace she wore, and I thought that she was not only beautiful but wise. 'We would all like to know how you found your way into our wood, and why.'

Since I – or rather Altaru – had led our way here, Master Juwain, Maram and Atara all looked at me to answer her.

'The "why" of it is easy enough to tell,' I said. 'We were fleeing our enemies, and our path took us here.'

I told her something of the Stonefaces who had been pursuing us for many miles through the wilds of Alonia. Of Kane I said nothing, nor did I relate my dream of Morjin.

'Well Sar Valashu that is a beginning,' Pualani said. 'But only the very beginning of the beginning, yes? You've told us the circumstances of your flight into the Forest but not why you've come to us. But perhaps you don't yet know. Too bad. And sad to say, neither do we.'

Maram, after taking yet another pull of his wine, looked at her and slurred out, 'Not everything has a purpose, my Lady.'

'But of course, all things do,' she told him. 'We just have to look for it.'

'You might as well look for the reason that birds sing or men drink wine.'

She smiled at him and said, 'Birds sing because they're glad to be alive, and men drink wine because they're not.'

'Perhaps that's true,' Maram said, squeezing his cup. 'But it tells us nothing of the purpose of my drinking this excellent wine of yours.'

'Perhaps the purpose is to teach you the value of sobriety.'

'Perhaps,' he muttered, licking the wine from his mustache.

Pualani turned toward me and said, 'Why don't we put aside the purpose of your coming here and try to understand just how you entered our woods.'

'Well, we walked into them,' I told her.

'Yes, of course – but how did you do this? No one just walks into the Forest.'

She explained that just as some peoples built walls of stone to protect their kingdoms, the Lokilani had constructed a different kind of barrier around their woods. She told us very little of how they did this. She hinted at the power of the great trees to keep strangers away and at a secret that the Lokilani shared with each other but not with us.

'Here the power of the earth is very great,' she said. 'It repels most people. Even many of the. bears, wolves and higher beasts. A man walking in our direction would find that he doesn't want to walk this way. His path would take him in a great circle around the Forest or away from it.'

'Perhaps it would,' I said, remembering the sensations I had felt the day before. 'But if he came close enough, he would see the great trees.'

'Men come close to many things they never see,' Pualani said as she smiled mysteriously. 'Looking toward the Forest from the outside, most men would see only trees.'

'But what if they were looking for the Forest?'

'Men look for many things they never find,' she said. 'And who knows even to look?

Even a Lokilani, upon leaving our woods, can forget what real trees are like and have a hard time finding his way back in.'

'Our coming must have been a wild chance, then.'

'No one comes here by chance, Sar Valashu. Few come at all.'

I pointed off toward a tree a hundred yards away where a young woman stood with a strung bow and arrow. I said, 'Your people don t hunt animals – what do they hunt, then?'

Pualani's face clouded for a moment as she exchanged dark looks with Elan and Danali. Then she said, 'For many years, the Earthkiller has sent his men to try to find our Forest. A few have come close, and these we've had to send back to the stars.'

'Who is this Earthkilier, then?'

'The Earthkiller is the Earthkiller,' she said simply. 'This is known from the ancient of days: he cuts trees to burn in his forges. He cuts wounds in the earth to steal its fire.

By forge and fire he seeks the making of that which can never be made.'

Her words sounded familiar to me, as they must have to Master Juwain. I nodded at him as he pulled out his Saganont Elu and read from the Book of Fire: He hates the flowers soft and white,

The grass, the forest's gentle breath,

For all that lives and leaps with light

Recalls the bitterness of death.

With axe and pick and poison flame

He wreaks his spite upon the land;

His armies burn and hack and maim

The ferns and flowers, soil and sand.

And down through rocky vein and bore

With evil eye and sorcery

He plumbs the earth for golden ore

In search of immortality.

Thus wounding earth to steal her fire

And feeding trees to forge and flame,

He turns upon himself his ire

And burns his soul with bitter blame.

For golden cups that blaze too bright

Make hateful, mortal men afraid,

And that which makes the stellar light,

In love, cannot itself be made.

When he had finished, Pualani sighed deeply and said, 'It-would seem that your people know of the Earthkiller, too.'

'We call him the Red Dragon,' Master Juwain said.

'You have named him well, then,' Pualani said. Then she pointed at his book and asked, 'But what is this animal skin encasing the white leaves crawling with bugs?'

We were all astonished that Pualani had never seen a book. Just as it astonished her and all the Lokilani when Master Juwain explained how the sounds of language could be represented by letters and read out loud.

'Your people bring marvels into our woods,' she said. 'And you bring great mysteries, too.'

She took a sip of wine and slowly swallowed it. Then she smiled at me and continued, 'When you approached the Forest, we thought the Earthkiller must have sent you. And so we sent Danali and the others to greet you. We couldn't have known that you would be wearing the mark of the Ellama.'

'What is this Ellama?' I asked her, touching the scar on my forehead.

'The Ellama is the Ellama,' she said. 'And the lightning bolt is sacred to him. And so it has been sacred to us for years beyond reckoning. This is the fire that connects the earth to the heavens, where the Ellama walks with the rest of his kind.'

'With the Star People?' I asked.

'Some think of them as people,' she said. 'But just as people such as you and I are also animals, we are something more. And so it is with them who are more than human, the Bright Ones, the Galad a'Din.'

'You mean, the Galadin?'

'You say words strangely. But yes, I mean they who walk among the stars. When Danali saw the mark on you, he wondered if it was perhaps the Ellama who really sent you to us.'

Maram suddenly dug his elbow into me as if. to impel me to claim such exalted origins. Atara and Master Juwain both looked at me to see what I would say. Surely, I thought, the truth was a sacred thing. But life was more sacred still. If claiming to be the Galadin's emissary would keep the Lokilani from sending us back to them, shouldn't I then lie just this one time?

'We are emissaries,' I told Pualani. I watched her eyes deepen like cups that drank in my every word. If truth was a dear stream that replenished the soul, then wasn't a lie like poison? 'We're emissaries from Mesh and Delu, and from the Brotherhood and the Kurmak to the court of King Kiritan in Tria. He has called a quest to find the Lightstone, and we are journeying there to answer it and represent our peoples.'

While Danali poured more wine and the Lokilani at the other tables grew quiet, I told of how Count Dario had come to my fathers castle on the first day of Ashte to announce the great quest. Something in Pualani eyes made me want to relate as well the story of the assasin's arrow and all that had occurred since that dark afternoon.

And so, I told them of my duel with Salmelu and the Black Bog; I told them of Kane and the Lord of Illusions and the stone-faced gray men who had nearly driven us mad.