David Zindell - The Lightstone

With Kane's help, my friends carried me into the trees. They found a nice dry spot beneath an old oak, and there they reestablished our camp. Atara laid out our sleeping skins while Maram got a fire going and Master Juwain went to work on making some tea. Kane brought over the packs from the dead horses. And then he went off into the woods to look for Altaru and the two sorrels. We heard his sharp whistles through the trees.

Sometime later he returned holding the reins of a big bay, which I took to be his horse. Altaru, Tanar and the sorrels followed them. I was as glad to see Altaru as he was me. He walked over to where I lay and bent his great head down to nuzzle me.

Then Kane tethered him and the three other horses to a nearby tree.

'So, Valashu Elahad,' he said, looking down at me. 'I've wandered the wilds of Alonia looking for you. And now that I've found you, you're nearly dead.'

He spoke the truth. The coldness cutting through me was worse than that with which the gray men had touched me. I lay against the earth without the strength to rise.

Having killed again, I wanted to die. But seeing the concern on Maram's face and the love on Atara's as they gathered around me, I wanted to live even more.

Maram laid his big hand on my head and said, 'Once before he recovered from something as bad as this.'

'Yes, after he killed Morjin's assassin,'Kane said. He seemed to know all about me – and much else besides. 'But that was before the Grays went to work on him.'

'Do you mean the Stonefaces?' Maram said. He pointed toward the meadow where the bodies of the gray men lay in the dawn's half-light.

'No – I mean the Grays,' Kane said. ‘That is their name.'

'Who are they, men?'

'Servants of the Great Beast,' he growled out. 'They have the gift of speaking to themselves and others without using their tongues.'

Maram looked at Atara and Master Juwain as if they had never heard of such men before. Neither had I.

'They can see without using their eyes and smell the scent of others' minds,' Kane went on. 'That's how they tracked you all the way from Anjo.'

As the wind rose and the night began to fade, he told us that no one knew the Grays' true origins. 'It's said that the Great Beast bred them during the Age of Swords as one might breed horses. So, he looked for those with the gift of touching others' minds. Then he culled the weakest of them that the strongest might breed true.'

'But their faces, so gray,' Atara said, shuddering as she looked out into the field.

'Their eyes, too. No men on Ea have such eyes.'

'They don't, eh?' Kane said. Then he pointed up at the setting moon. 'It's also said that Morjin summoned the Grays from other worlds ages ago. From worlds even darker than this one.'

I stared out at the dim meadow as I lay looking at the Grays. Nothing could be darker, I thought, than the lightless world pulling me down into the cold earth.

'The Grays' favored method of killing,' Kane said, 'is to weaken their victims over many days. To drain them even as they drained you. Then, when they're too weak to move, they come for them with their knives.'

Master Juwain had finally finished preparing his tea, which he man-aged to make me drink with Maram's and Atara's help. Then, to Kane, he said, 'But we weren't so weak that we couldn't have fought them off. There was something else, wasn't there?'

Kane looked down at his fist for a while before opening it to reveal the black stone.

He said, 'So, there was something else. The baalstei.' 'What's that?' Maram asked.

'The black gelstei,' Master Juwain said, staring at Kane's open hand. 'Can that truly be one of the great stones?'

Kane gazed at the stone, which seemed a crystal like the darkest obsidian. 'It is a gelstei,' he said. 'It's known that Morjin keeps at least three of the black stones.'

He told us that the black gelstei were very rare and very powerful. Originally created to control the terrible fire of the red gelstei, they had a much darker side. For the Grays and some of the priests of the Kallimun used them to dampen the life fires of their victims and weaken their wills. Thus they could be used to enslave others by mastering their very minds. Used ruthlessly, as by the Grays, they could blow out the ineffable flame, causing disease, degeneration and ultimately death.

'It may be,' Kane said, 'that at first the Grays were trying only to weaken Val.'

'For what reason?' Maram asked.

'Why, to make him into a ghul,' Kane said. He spoke of the darkest things as casually as Maram might the weather. 'Morjin would relish a slave such as Val, eh?

But certainly after you fought off the Grays for so long and vanished into the Lokilani's wood, they intended to kill him – and all of you. They had no more time to do otherwise.'

He told us that the Grays had most likely attacked us physically in desperation before they were really ready. We had entered the parts of Alonia where it was dangerous for the Grays to ride openly. Certainly they would never seek to work their evil against us once we had reached Tria. For there the noise of thousands of minds would drown out the whispers of the Gray's poisonous voices. The Grays, he said, almost never sought their victims in large cities or during the day when people were awake.

'You seem to know a great deal about these Grays,' Maram said as he eyed Kane suspiciously.

'That I do,' Kane said, his black eyes burning. 'I know that your friend might very well die if we don't help him.'

His words seemed to blunt Maram's curiosity for the moment. I, too, had a hundred questions for Kane, but I was too weak to move my lips to ask them.

Master Juwain bent over me then, feeling my forehead and testing the pulses in my wrists and other places along my body. Then he said, 'I've given him a tisane of karch and bloodroot. Perhaps I should have added some angel leaf as well.'

'That's unlikely to do much good,' kane muttered. 'It may warm him a little, but his real problem is the valarda eh?'

Now Master Juwain and Maram – Atara. too – looked at Kane in surprise. No one hade said anything to him of my gift.

'Val has had the life nearly sucked out of him,' Kane said. 'We must help him light the sacred fire again, eh?'

'Yes, but how?' Master Juwain asked. 'I'm afraid I've had no exrperience with this.'

'Neither have I,' Kane admitted. 'At least not for a long time. But just as Val has nearly died in touching the dead, he can be made well in feeling the fire of the living.'

So saying, he bade Master Juwain and Maram to remove my armor. As the sun rose over the meadow and the birds brightened the morning with their songs, they laid my body bare. I felt the sun's warm rays touching the skin of my chest. And then I felt my friends' hands there too, as well as Kane's large, blunt hand. Together, the four of them made a circle of their hands over my heart. I heard Kane telling me that I must partake of the life they had to give me. This I tried to do. But I was too weak to open very far the door that I usually kept closed. Only the faintest of flames passed from them into me to warm my icy blood.

'It's not enough,' Kane said. 'He's still as cold as death.'

Just then, Flick appeared from behind the oak tree and streaked straight toward Master Juwain. He spun about just above the pocket of his robes. The swirls of his little form lit up as of a smiling face.

'Eh, what's this?' Kane said, looking at Fick.' It's one of the Timpimpiri!'

'You can see him?' Maram said.

'As clearly as I can see your fat nose. But I never hoped to find one in woods such as these.'

Master Juwain, touched by Flick's numinous light, seemed suddenly to remember something. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sparkling green jewel that Pualani had given him. He said, 'The queen of the Lokilani told me that this emerald was to be used for healing.'