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

‘Ah, I’d take a thousand stings for honey,’ he said before cramming into his mouth a huge chunk of comb. ‘In all the world, there’s nothing sweeter except a woman.’

He rubbed some honey over the stings along his hands and face, and then we returned to the others to share this treasure.

We all gorged on the succulent goat meat and honey, Maram most of all. After he had finished stuffing his belly, he fell asleep on top of the dewed bracken near some thick bushes that Kane called pink spira. The rays of sun playing over his honey-smeared face showed a happy man.

We let him finish his nap while we broke our makeshift camp. After our waterbags had all been filled and the horses packed, we made ready to mount them and ride back to the road. And then, just as Liljana pointed out that it wouldn’t do to leave Maram sleeping, we heard him murmuring behind us as if dreaming: ‘Ah, Lailaiu, so soft, so sweet.’

I turned to go fetch him, but immediately stopped dead in my tracks. For what my eyes beheld then, my mind wouldn’t quite believe: There, across the glade, in a break in the bushes above Maram and bending over him, crouched a large, black she-bear. She had her long, shiny snout pressed down into Maram’s face as she licked his lips and beard with her long, pink tongue. She seemed rather content lapping up the smears of honey that the careless Maram had left clinging there. And all the while, Maram murmured in his half-sleep, ‘Lailaiu, ah, Lailaiu.’

I might have fallen down laughing at my friend’s very mistaken bliss. But bears, after all, were bears. I couldn’t imagine how this one had stolen out of the bushes upon Maram without either Kane or the horses taking notice. As it was midsummer, I feared that she had young cubs nearby.

Slowly and quietly, I reached out to tap on the elbow of Kane, who had his back to the bear as he tightened the cinch of his horse. When he turned to see what I was looking at, his black eyes lit up with many emotions at once: concern, hilarity, contempt, outrage and blood-lust. Quick as a wink, he drew forth his bow, strung it and fit an arrow to its string. This movement alerted the others as to Maram’s peril – and the horses, too. Altaru, facing the wind, finally turned to see the bear; he suddenly reared up as he let loose a tremendous whinny. Liljana’s gelding and Master Juwain’s sorrel, Iolo and Fire – all the horses added their voices to the great chorus of challenge and panic splitting the air. We had all we could do to keep hold of their reins and prevent them from running off. With Kane’s bay stamping about and threatening to split his skull with a flying hoof, he couldn’t get off a shot. And it was good that he didn’t. For just as Maram finally awakened and looked up with wide eyes into the hairy face of his new lover, the bear started at the sudden noise and peered across the glade as if seeing us for the first time. She seemed more astonished than we were. It took her only a moment to gather her legs beneath her and bound off into the bushes.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram called out upon realizing what had happened. He sprang up and raced to the lake’s edge, where he knelt to wash his face. Then he said, ‘Oh, my Lord – I was nearly eaten!’

Atara, keeping an eye out for the bear’s return, walked up to him and poked a finger into his big belly. ‘Hmmph, you’re half a bear yourself. I’ve never seen anyone eat honey the way that you do. But the next time, perhaps you should be more careful how you eat it.’

That day we climbed to the greatest heights of our mountain crossing. This was a broad saddle between two great peaks, where lush meadows alternated with spire-like conifers. Thousands of wildflowers in colors from blazing pink to indigo brightened the sides of the road. Marmots and pikas grazed there, and looked at us as if they had never seen our kind before. But as they fed upon the grasses and seeds they found among the flowers, they kept a close watch for the eagles and ravens who hunted them. We watched them, too. Maram wondered if the Great Beast could seize the souls of these circling birds and turn them into ghuls as he had the bear at the beginning of our journey.

‘Do you think he’s watching us, Val?’ Maram asked me. ‘Do you think he can see us?’

I stopped to draw my sword and watch it glow along the line to the east. Its fire was of a faint white. In the journey from Swan Island, I had noticed that other things beside the Lightstone caused it to shine. In the glint of the stars, its radiance was more silver, while the stillness of my soul seemed to produce a clearer and brighter light.

‘It’s strange,’ I said, ‘but ever since Lady Nimaiu gave me this blade, the Lord of Lies seems unable to see me, even in my dreams.’

I looked up at a great, golden eagle gliding along the mountain wind, and I said, ‘There’s no evil in these creatures, Maram. If they’re watching, it’s only because they’re afraid of us.’

My words seemed to reassure him, and we began our descent through the eastern half of the Crescent Range with good courage. For another three days, beneath the strong mountain sun, we rode on without incident. The road held true, taking us down the folded slopes and around the curve of lesser peaks. As we lost elevation and made our way east, the land grew drier, the forest more open. We crossed broad bands of white oak and ponderosa pine, interspersed with balsamroot and phlox and other smaller plants. Many of the birds and animals who lived here were strange to me. There was a chipmunk with yellow stripes and a bluejay who ate acorns. We saw four more bears, smaller and of a grayish hue to their fur that lent them great dignity. They must have wondered why we hurried through their domain when the glories of the earth in midsummer ripened all around us.

And then, on the first day of Soal, with most of the great Crescent Range at our backs, we came out of a cleft in the foothills to see a vast plain opening to the east. It was like a sea of grass, yellow-green, and colored with deeper green lines where trees grew along the winding watercourses. Another hour’s journey down some slopes of ponderosa pine and rocky ridges would take us down into it.

‘Eanna,’ Kane said, pointing down into this lovely land. ‘At least, this was once part of the ancient kingdom. But we’re far from Imatru, and I doubt if King Hanniban holds any sway here.’

What peoples or lords we might find in the realm below us, he didn’t know. But he admonished us to be wary, for out on the plain we would have no cover, either from men or the wolves and lions who hunted the antelope there.

‘Wolves!’ Maram exclaimed. ‘Lions! – I think I’d rather keep company with the bears.’

But all that first day of our journey across Eanna, neither his fears nor Kane’s took form to bring us harm. We left the road only a couple of miles from the mountains. It turned south, whether toward some lost city in this pretty country or toward nowhere, none of us could say. The Red Desert, Kane told us, lay not so very far in that direction, and its drifting vermilion sands and dunes had swallowed up more than one city over the millennia. We were lucky, he said, that Alkaladur seemed to point us along a path above this endless wasteland, for other than the fierce tribes of the Ravirii, no one could survive the desert’s murderous sun for very long.

As it was, we felt a whiff of its heat even hundreds of miles north of the heart of it. But after the freezing rains of the mountains, we welcomed this sudden warming of the air, for it was dry like the breath of the stars and clean, and did not smother us. It did not last long, either, giving way soon after noon to gentle breezes that swept through the swaying grasses and touched our faces with the scents of strange new plants and flowers. And at night, beneath the constellations that hung in the heavens like a brilliant, blazing tapestry, it fell quite cool – not so much that it chilled our bones, but rather that bracing crispness that sharpens all the senses and invites the marvel of the infinite.