David Zindell - The Lightstone - The Silver Sword - Part Two

I was waiting to see the gelstei glow with its soft, healing light. Even Kane, despite his despair, was looking at the stone as if hoping it would begin shining like a magical emerald. What happened next, I thought, amazed us all. A rare fire suddenly leaped in Master Juwain’s eyes. And then viridian flames almost too bright to behold shot from both ends of the gelstei; they circled to meet each other beneath it before shooting like a stream of fire straight into Atara’s wound. She cried out as if struck again with a burning arrow. But the green fire kept filling up the hole in her chest, and soon her eyes warmed with the intense life of it. A few moments later, the last of the fire swirled about the opening of the wound as if stitching it shut with its numinous light. As it crackled and then faded along her pale skin, we blinked our eyes, not daring to believe what we saw. For Atara was now breathing easily, and her flesh had been made whole.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram sighed out from above us. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

It seemed that neither Count Ulanu nor his men witnessed this miracle, for Liljana’s and Master Juwain’s backs blocked their view of it. And before them unfolded a miracle of another sort. For now, at last, as Alphanderry stood in all his glory facing down the vanguard of an entire army, his tongue found the turnings of the language that he had sought all his life. Its sounds flowed out of him like golden drops of light. And words and music became as one, for now Alphanderry was singing the Song of the One. In its eternal harmonies and pure tones, it was impossible to lie, impossible to see the world other than as it was because every word was a thought’s or a thing’s true name.

And truth, I knew as I held Atara’s hand and listened to Alphanderry sing, was really just beauty – a terrible beauty almost impossible to bear. Nothing like it had been heard on Ea since the Star People first came to earth ages ago. With every passing moment, Alphanderry’s words became clearer, sweeter, brighter. They dissolved time as the sea does salt, and hatred, pride and bitterness. They called us to remember all that we had lost and might yet be regained; they reminded us who we really were. Tears filled my eyes, and I looked up astonished to see Kane weeping, too. The stony Blues had belted their axes for a moment so that they might cover their faces. Even Count Ulanu had fallen away from his disdain. His misting eyes gave sign that he was recalling his own original grace. It seemed that he might have a change of heart and renounce the Kallimun and Morjin, then and there with all the world witnessing his remaking.

In the magic of that moment in the Kul Moroth, all things seemed possible. Flick, near Alphanderry, was spinning wildly, beautifully, exultantly. The walls of stone around us echoed Alphanderry’s words and seemed to sing them themselves. High above the world, the clouds parted and a shaft of light drove down through the pass to touch Alphanderry’s head. I thought I saw a golden bowl floating above him and pouring out its radiance over him as from an infinite source.

And so Alphanderry sang with the angels. But he was, after all, only a man. One single line of the Galadin’s song was all that he could call forth in its true form. After a while, his voice began to falter and fail him. He nearly wept at losing the ancient, heavenly connection. And then the spell was broken.

Count Ulanu, still sitting on his war horse in his battle armor, shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had heard. It infuriated him to see what a dreadful sculpture he had made of himself from the sacred clay with which the One had provided him. His wrath now fell upon Alphanderry for showing him this. And for standing between him and the rest of us. A snarl of outrage returned to his face; he drew his sword as his knights pointed their lances at Alphanderry. The Blues, with unfeeling fingers, gripped their axes and readied themselves to advance upon him.

OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLLL!

At last, with the howls of the Blues drowning out the final echoes of Alphanderry’s music, I grabbed up my sword and leaped to my feet. Kane gripped his gelstei as his wild black eyes fell upon Maram’s red crystal.

‘I’ll burn them!’ Maram called out. ‘I will, I will!’

The clouds above the pass broke apart even more, and rays of light streamed down and touched Maram’s firestone. It began glowing bright crimson.

Alphanderry, who had marched many yards down the pass away from us, turned and looked up toward his right. Something seemed to catch his eye. For a moment, he recaptured his joy and something of the Star People’s lost language as he cried out: ‘ Ahura Alarama! ’

‘What?’ I shouted, gathering my strength to run to his side.

‘I see him!’

‘See who ?’

‘The one you call Flick.’ He smiled like a child. ‘Oh, Val … the colors!’

Just then, even as Count Ulanu spurred his horse forward, Maram’s gelstei flared and burned his hands. He screamed, jerking the blazing crystal upwards. A great stream of fire poured out of it and blasted the boulders along the pass’s walls. Kane was now working urgently with his black crystal to damp the fury of the firestone. But it drew its power from the very sun and fed the fires of the earth. The ground around us began shaking violently; I went down to one knee to keep from falling altogether. Stones rained down like hail, and one of them pinged off my helmet. Then came a deafening roar of great boulders bounding down the pass’s walls. In only a few moments, the rockslide filled the defile to a height of twenty feet. A great mound stood between Alphanderry and the rest of the company, cutting off his escape. And keeping us from coming to his aid. We couldn’t even see him.

But we could still hear him. As the dust choked us and settled slowly down, from beyond the heaped-up rubble I heard him singing what I knew would be his death song. For I knew that Count Ulanu, who spared no mercy for himself, would find none for him.

My hand gripped the hilt of my sword so fiercely that my fingers hurt; my arm hurt even as I felt Count Ulanu’s arm pull back and his sword thrust downward. Alphanderry’s terrible cry easily pierced the rocks between us. It pierced the whole world; it pierced my heart. My sword fell from my hand, even as I clasped my chest and fell myself. A door opened before me, and I followed Alphanderry through it.

I walked with him through the dark, vacant spaces up toward the stars.

The city of Khaisham was built on a strong site where the plains of Yarkona come up against the curve of the White Mountains. Directly to its east was Mount Redruth, an upfolding of great blocks of red sandstone that looked like pieces of a rusted iron breastplate. Mount Salmas, to the east and north, was more gentle in its rise toward the sky and slightly higher, too. Its peak pushed its way above the treeline like a bald, rounded pate. Out from the gorge between these two mountains rushed a river: the Tearam. Its swift flow was diverted into little channels along either side of it in order to water the fields to the north and west of the city. The city itself was built wholly to the south of the river. A wall following its curves formed the city’s northern defenses. It rose up just above the Tearam’s banks and ran east into the notch between the mountains. There it turned south along the steep slopes of Mount Redruth for a mile before turning yet again west through some excellent pasture. The wall’s final turning took it back north toward the river. This stretch of mortared stone was the wall’s longest and its most vulnerable – and therefore the most heavily defended. Great round towers surmounted it along its length at five-hundred-foot intervals. The south wall was likewise protected.