David Zindell - The Lightstone

Our vision of the Timpum did not fade with the coining of the new day. If anything, in the fullness of the sunlight, their fiery forms seemed only brighter. It was impossible to look at them very long and imagine a life without them.

After a delicious breakfast of fruits and nutbread, Atara and I held council with Master Juwain and Maram. We stood by a stream not far from our house, inhaling the fragrance of cherry blossoms and marveling at the splendor of the woods.

'We must decide what to do,' I said to them. 'By my count, tomorrow will be the first of Soldru, and that gives us only seven more days to reach Tria.'

'Ah, but do we even want to go to Tria?' Maram asked as he stared at an astor sapling. That is the question.'

'There's very much to be learned here,' Master Juwain agreed. 'Very much more still to be seen.'

Atara smiled, and her eyes shone like diamonds. She said. 'That's true – and I would like to see it. But I've pledged myself to journey to Tria, and so I must go.'

'Perhaps we could stay here only a few more days,' Maram said. 'Or a few more months. Tria will still be there in Ioj or Valte.'

'But we would miss the calling of the quest,' Atara said.

'So what if we do? The Lightstone has been lost for three thousand years, likely it will remain lost for three more months.'

'Unless, by chance,' I said, 'some knight finds it first'

'By a miracle, that would be,' Maram said.

I pointed at the crown of lights that had floated from the top of my head and now hovered nearby over a blackberry bush. There, among the little ripe fruits, twinkled many Timpum that looked something like fireflies.

'Does it seem to you that the world lacks miracles?' I asked.

'No, perhaps it doesn't,' he admitted. His large eyes gleamed as if he were intoxicated – not with wine or even women but with pure fire.

'There's one miracle that I would like explained,' Master Juwain said to me. 'What happened last night between you and Atara?'

I looked at Atara a long moment before she answered him. 'After I ate the timana,' she said, 'I saw the Timpum almost immediately. It was like a flash of fire. It was so beautiful that I wanted to hold it forever – but can one hold the sun? I felt myself burning up like a leaf caught in the flames. And then I couldn't breathe, and I thought I was dying. Everything was so cold. It was like I had been buried alive in a crystal cave, so cold and hard, and every-thing growing darker. I would have died if Val hadn't come to take me back.'

'And how did he do that?' Master Juwain asked.

Again, Atara looked at me, and she said, 'I'm still not sure. Somehow I felt what he felt for me. All his love, his life – I felt it breaking open the cave like lightning and burning into me.'

Now Master Juwain and Maram looked at me, too, as the bluebirds sang and the Timpum glittered all about us. And Master Juwain said, 'That sounds like the valarda.'

Master Juwain's use of this word, utterly unexpected, fell out of the air like lightning and nearly broke me open. How did he know the name of my gift that Morjin had spoken to me? For many miles, I had wondered about this strange name, as I wondered about Master Juwain now. But he just smiled at me in his kindly but proud way, as if he knew almost everything there was to know.

It seemed that the time had finally come to explain about my gift, which they had already suspected lay behind my sensing of the Stonefaces and the other strangenesses of my life. And so I told them everything about it. I said that I had been born breathing in others' sufferings and their joys as well. I revealed my dream of Morjin and how he had prophesied that one day I would use my gift to make others feel my pain.

'It would appear,' Master Juwain said, looking from Atara to me, 'that you also have the power to make people feel much else.'

'Perhaps,' I said. 'But this is the first time this has happened. It's hard to know if it could ever happen again.'

'You say you are able to close yourself to others' emotions. Then surely it follows that you should be able to open them to yours.'

'Perhaps,' I said again. I didn't tell him that in order to do this, first I would have to open myself to the passions that blazed inside me, and that this was more terrifying than facing a naked sword.

'You should have come to us long ago,' Master Juwain told me. 'I'm sure we would have been able to help you.'

'Do you really think so?'

The Brotherhoods taught meditation and music, herbology and heal-ing and many other things, but so far as I knew they knew nothing of this sense that both blessed and tormented me.

'Your gift is very rare, Val, but not unique. I read about it in a book years ago. I'm sure that there must be other books that could instruct you in its development and use.'

'Does one learn to play the flute from a book?' I asked him. I shook my head and smiled sadly. 'No, unless there is another who shares my affliction, there is only one thing that can help me.'

'You mean the Lights'tone, don't you?'

'Yes, the Lightstone – it's said to be the cup of healing.'

If I could feel the fires that burned wide others and touch them with my own, then surely that meant there was a wound in my soul that allowed these sacred and very private flames to pass back and forth. This one time, perhaps, they had touched Atara and brought her back from the darkness. But what if the next time, through rage or hate, whatever was inside me flashed like real lightning and struck her dead?

Maram, who always understood so much without being told, came up to me and placed his hand above my heart. 'I think that this gift of yours must be like living with a hole in your chest. But Pualani healed you of the wound that Salmelu made.

Perhaps she can heal this wound, too.'

Later that day, I went to Pualani's house to ask her about this. And there, inside a long door garlanded with white and purple flowers, she took my hand and told me,

'In the world, there are many sights that are hard to bear. Would you wish to be healed of the holes in your eyes so that you didn't have to see them?'

She went on to say that my wound, as I thought of it, was surely the gift of the Ellama. I must learn to use it, she said, as I would my eyes, my ears, my nose or any other part of me. If finding the Lightstone would help me in this, then I should seek it with all my heart.

That night in our house, I told Maram and Master Juwain that I must leave for Tria the next day.

'There will be knights from all the free kingdoms there,' I explained. 'Scryers and minstrels, too. One of them might tell of a crucial clue that would lead to the Lightstone.'

'I agree,' Atara said. 'In any case, King Kiritan will call all the questers to make vows together, and we should be there to receive his blessings.'

Master Juwain saw the sense of both these arguments, and agreed that we should all continue on to Tria together. Maram, when he saw that our minds were made up, reluctantly said that he would come with us as well.

'If you go without me,' he said, 'I'll never find either the strength or courage to leave these woods.' 'But what about Iolana?' I asked him. 'Don't you love her?' 'Ah, of course I do,' he said. 'I love the wine that the Lokilani serve, too. But there are many fine wines in the world, if you know what I mean.'

Maram's fickleness obviously vexed Atara, who said, 'I know little of wines. But there can't be another fruit on all of Ea like the timana.'

'And that is my point exactly,' Maram said. 'When I find the one wine that is to lesser vintages as the timana is to the more common fruits, I shall drink it and no other.'

The next morning I put on my cold armor and told Pualani that we would be leaving.