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

Yes, I thought, as I listened to my heart and the pulsing of the world, it is true.

‘Ah, no, no,’ Maram muttered, ‘this is too, too bad, to think that the Lightstone was left in Argattha.’

DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!

I looked at the False Gelstei sitting on its stand. I gripped the hilt of my sword as Maram said, ‘Then the quest is over. There is no hope.’

I looked from him to Master Juwain and Liljana, and then at Atara and Kane. No hope could I see on any of their faces; there was nothing in their hearts except the beat of despair.

We stood there for a long time, waiting for what we knew not. Atara seemed lost within some secret terror. Even Master Juwain’s pride at his discovery had given way to the meaning of it and a deepening gloom.

And then footfalls sounded in the adjoining chamber. A few moments later, a young Librarian about twelve years old came into the room and said, ‘Sar Valashu, Lord Grayam bids you and your companions to take shelter in the keep. Or to join him on the walls, as is your wish.’

Then he told us that the attack of Count Ulanu’s armies had begun.

We retreated through the Library’s halls and chambers to the infirmary, where I retrieved my helmet and Atara her bow and arrows. There we said goodbye to Master Juwain and Liljana. Master Juwain would be helping the other healers who would tend the Librarians’ inevitable battle wounds, and Liljana decided that she could best serve the city by assisting him. I tried not to look at the saws, clamps and other gleaming steel instruments that the healers set out as I embraced Master Juwain. He told me, and all of us, ‘Please don’t let me see that any of you have returned to this room until the battle is won.’

The young page who had found us earlier escorted Kane, Maram, Atara and me out of the Library and through the gates of the inner wall. He led the way through the narrow city streets, which were crowded with anxious people hurrying this way and that. Many were women clutching screaming babies, with yet more children in tow, on their way to take refuge in the Library’s keep or grounds behind its inner wall. But quite a few were Librarians dressed as Kane and I were in mail, and bearing maces, crossbows and swords. Still more were Khaisham’s potters, tanners, carpenters, papermakers, masons, smiths and other tradesmen. They were only poorly accoutered and armed, some bearing nothing more in the way of weaponry than a spear or a heavy shovel. At need, they would take their places along the walls with the Librarians – and us. But they would also keep the fighting men supplied with food, water, arrows and anything else necessary to withstanding a siege.

The flow of these hundreds of men, with their carts and braying donkeys, swept us down across the city to its west wall. This was Khaisham’s longest and most vulnerable, and there atop a square mural tower near its center stood the Lord Librarian. He was resplendent in his polished mail and the green surcoat displaying the golden book over his heart. Other knights and archers were with him on the tower’s ledge, behind the narrow stone merlons of the battlements that protected them from the enemy’s arrows and missiles. We followed the page up a flight of steps until we stood at the top of the wall behind the slightly larger merlons there. And then we walked up another flight of steps, adjoining and turning around and up into the tower itself.

‘I knew you would come,’ the Lord Librarian said to us as we crowded onto the tower’s ledge.

‘Yes,’ a nearby Librarian with a long, drooping mustache said, ‘but will they stay?’

He turned to look down and out across the pasture in front of the wall, and there was a sight that would have sent even brave men fleeing. Three hundred yards from us, across the bright green grass that would soon be stained red, Count Ulanu had his armies drawn up in a long line facing the wall. Their steel-jacketed shields, spears and armor formed a wall of its own as thousands of his men stood shoulder to shoulder slowly advancing upon us. To our left, half a mile away where Khaisham’s walls turned back toward Mount Redruth, I saw yet more lines of men marching across the pasture to the south of the city. And to the right, in the fields across the Tearam, stood companies of Count Ulanu’s cavalry and other warriors. These men, blocked by the river’s rushing waters, would make no assault upon the walls, but they would wait with their lances and swords held ready should any of Khaisham’s citizens try to flee across it. Behind us to the east of the city, Lord Grayam said, between the east wall and Mount Redruth on ground too rough for siege towers or assaults, yet more of the enemy waited to cut off the escape of anyone trying to break out in that direction.

‘We’re surrounded,’ Lord Grayam told us. He ran his finger along his scarred face as he watched the Count’s army march toward us. ‘So many – I had never thought he’d be able to muster so many.’

Out on the plain below us, I counted the standards of forty-four battalions. Ten bore the hawks and other insignia of Inyam and another five the black bears of Virad. There were masses of Blues, too, at least two thousand of them, huddled and naked and holding high their axes – and letting loose their bone-chilling howls.

OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLLLL!

‘We should have sent for aid to Sarad,’ Lord Grayam said. ‘And we might have if we’d had more time. Too late, always too late.’

From out across the rolling pasture came the terrible sound of the enemy’s war drums. It set the very stones of the walls to vibrating:

DOOM, DOOM, DOOM! DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

‘No, that wasn’t it,’ Lord Grayam said to a knight nearby whom I took to be one of his captains. ‘I was too proud. I thought that we could stand alone. And now but for Sar Valashu and his companions, we do.’

Maram looked down at the advancing armies and took a gulp of air as if it were a potion that might fortify him. He seemed to be having second thoughts about joining the city’s defense. Then he belched and said, ‘Ah, Lord Grayam, as you observed before, I’m no warrior, only a student of the Brotherhoods and –’

‘Yes, Prince Maram?’

Maram noticed that all the men at the top of the tower were looking at him. So were those along the wall below.

‘– and I really shouldn’t remain here, if I would only get in your way. If I were to join the others in the keep, then –’

‘You mean, the women and the children?’ Lord Grayam asked.

‘Ah, yes, the … noncombatants. As I was saying, if I were to join them, then …’

Maram’s voice trailed off; he noticed Kane had his black eyes fixed on him as did I my own.

Again he gulped air, belched and rolled his eyes toward the heavens as if asking why he was always having to do things that he didn’t want to do. And then he continued, ‘What I mean is, ah, although I’m certainly no swordmaster, I do have some skill, and I believe my blade would be wasted if I had to wait out this battle in the keep – unless of course you , sir, deem my inexpertise to be dangerous to the coordination of your defenses and would –’

‘Good!’ Lord Grayam suddenly called out, wasting no more time. ‘I accept the service of your sword, at least for the duration of the siege.’

Maram shut his mouth then, having woven a web of words in which he had caught himself. He seemed quite disgusted.

‘All of you,’ Lord Grayam said, ‘Sar Valashu, Kane, Princess Atara – we’re honored that you would fight with us, of your own choice.’

In truth, I thought, listening to the booming of the drums, we had little choice. Our escape was cut off. And because the Librarians had succored us, especially me, in a time of great need, it would be ignoble of us to forsake them. And perhaps most importantly, Alphanderry’s cruel murder needed to be avenged.