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

‘It’s here,’ I said to my companions. ‘The Lightstone must be here.’

‘If it is,’ Kane informed me gravely, ‘we’d better go look for it as soon as you’re able to walk. Much has happened these last few days while you’ve slept with the dead.’

So saying, he sent for the Lord Librarian that we might hold council and discuss Khaisham’s peril – and our own.

While we waited in that sunny room, with its flowering plants along the windows and its rows of white-blanketed beds, Kane reassured me that the horses were well tended and that Altaru had taken no wound or injury in our flight across Khaisham from the pass. Maram admitted to having to leave his lame sorrel behind; it was his hope that some shepherd might find him and return him before we left Khaisham. If he took any joy from inheriting and riding Alphanderry’s magnificent Iolo, he gave no sign.

Soon the door to the infirmary opened, and in walked a tall man wearing a suit of much-scarred mail over the limbs of his long body. His green surcoat showed an open book, all golden and touched with the sun’s seven rays. His face showed worry, intelligence, command and pride. He had a large, jutting nose scarred across the middle and a long, serious face with a scar running down from his eye into his well-trimmed gray beard. His hands – long and large and well-formed – were stained with ink. His name was Vishalar Grayam, the Lord Librarian, and like his kindred, he was both a scholar and a warrior.

After we had been presented to each other, he shook my hand, testing me and looking at me for a long time. And then he said, ‘It’s good that you’ve come back to us, Sar Valashu. You’ve awakened none too soon.’

He went on to tell me what had happened since our passage of the Kul Moroth. Count Ulanu, he said, disbelieving that the mysterious rockslide might keep him from his quarry, had sent many of his men scrambling over it. They had all perished on Kane’s and Maram’s swords. Kane had then led the retreat from the pass, and Count Ulanu hadn’t been able to pursue us. By the time he had raced his men south to the Kul Joram, our company had nearly reached Khaisham’s gates.

Count Ulanu had then sent for his army, still encamped near Tarmanam in Virad. It had taken his men four days to march across to eastern Yarkona, pass through the Kul Joram and encamp outside of Khaisham. Now the forces of Aigul and Sikar, and the Blues, were preparing to besiege the city’s outer walls.

‘And if that isn’t bad enough,’ the Lord Librarian told us, ‘we’ve just had grievous news. It seems that Inyam and Madhvam have made a separate peace with Aigul. And so we can’t expect any help from that direction.’

And worse yet, he told us, was what he had heard about the domains of Brahamdur, Sagaram and Hansh.

‘We’ve heard they’ve agreed to send contingents to aid Count Ulanu,’ he said. ‘They’re being brought up as we speak.’

‘Then it seems all of Yarkona has fallen,’ Maram said gloomily.

‘Not yet,’ Lord Grayam told him. ‘We still stand. And so does Sarad.’

‘But will Sarad come to your aid?’ I asked him. I tried to imagine the Ishkans marching out to aid Mesh if the combined tribes of the Sarni tried to invade us.

‘No, I doubt if they will,’ the Lord Librarian said. ‘I expect that they, too, in the end, will do homage to Count Ulanu.’

‘Then you stand alone,’ Maram said, looking toward the window like a trapped beast.

‘Alone, yes, perhaps,’ the Lord Librarian said. He looked from Kane to Atara and then me. Lastly, he fixed Maram with a deep look as if trying to see beneath his surface fear and desperation.

‘Then will you make peace with the Count yourselves?’ Maram asked him.

‘We would if we could,’ the Lord Librarian said. ‘But I’m afraid that while it takes two to make peace, it only takes one to make war.’

‘But if you were to surrender and kneel to –’

‘If we surrendered to Count Ulanu,’ the Lord Librarian spat out, ‘he would enslave those he didn’t crucify. And as for our kneeling to him, we Librarians kneel to the Lord of Light and no one else.’

He went on to tell us that the Librarians of Khaisham were devoted to preserving the ancient wisdom, which had its ultimate source in the Light of the One. Theirs was the task of gathering, purchasing and collecting all books and other artifacts which might be of value to future generations. Much of their labor consisted of transcribing old, crumbling volumes and illuminating new manuscripts. They worked gold leaf into paper and vellum, and spent long hours in their calligraphy, penning black ink to white sheets with devout and practiced hands. Perhaps their noblest effort was the compilation of a great encyclopedia indexing all books and all knowledge – which was still unfinished, as Lord Grayam sadly admitted. But their foremost duty was to protect the treasures that the Library contained. And so they took vows never to allow anyone to desecrate the Library’s books or to forsake guarding the Library, even unto their deaths. Toward this end, they trained with swords almost as diligently as with their pens.

‘You’ve taken vows of your own,’ he said, nodding toward my medallion. ‘You’re not the first to come here looking for the Lightstone, though none has done so for quite some time.’

He told us that once, many had made the pilgrimage to Khaisham, often paying princely sums for the right to use the Library. But now the ancient roads through Eanna and Surrapam were too dangerous, and few dared them.

‘Master Juwain,’ he said to me, ‘has already explained that you’ve brought no money for us. Poor pilgrims you are, he tells me. That’s as may be. But you have my welcome to use the Library as you wish. Any who have fought Count Ulanu as you have are welcome here.’

From what he said then, it was clear that he regarded Master Juwain, Maram and Liljana as scholars, and esteemed Kane, Atara and me as warriors protecting them.

‘We are fortunate to be joined by a company of such talents,’ he said, searching in the softness of Maram’s face for all that he tried to conceal there. ‘I would hope that someday you might tell of what happened in the Kul Moroth. How very strange that the ground should shake just as you passed through it! And that rocks should have blocked Count Ulanu’s pursuit. And such rocks! The knights I sent there tell me that many of them were blackened and melted as if by lightning.’

Maram turned to look at me then. But neither of us – or our other companions – wished to speak of our gelstei.

‘Well, then,’ Lord Grayam said, ‘you’re good at keeping your own counsel, and I approve of that. But I must ask your trust in three things in order that you might have mine. First: If you find here anything of note or worth, you will bring it to me. Second: You will take great care not to harm any of the books, many of which are ancient and all too easy to harm. Third: You will remove nothing from the Library without my permission.’

I touched the medallion hanging from my neck and told him, ‘When a knight takes refuge in a lord’s castle, he doesn’t dispute his rules. But you must know that we’ve come to claim the Lightstone and take it away to other lands.’

The Lord Librarian bristled at this. His bushy eyebrows pulled together as his hand found the hilt of his sword. ‘Does a knight in your land then enter his lord’s castle to claim his lord’s most precious possession?’

‘The Lightstone,’ I told him, remembering my vows, ‘is no one’s possession. And we seek it not for ourselves but for all Ea.’

‘A noble quest,’ he sighed, relaxing his hand from his sword. ‘But if you found the Cup of Heaven here, don’t you think it should remain here where it can best be guarded?’