David Zindell - The Lightstone - The Ninth Kingdom - Part One

It seemed almost a foolish thing to begin such a long journey with night falling fast and deep all around us. But I knew that the moon would soon be up, and there would be light enough for riding along the well-made North Road that led toward Ishka. With the wind at my back and visions of golden cups blazing inside me, I thought that I might be able to ride perhaps until midnight. Certainly the seventh day of Soldru would come all too soon, and I wanted very badly to be in Tria with the knights of the free lands when King Kiritan called the great quest. Six hundred miles, as the raven flies, lay between Silvassu and Tria to the northwest. But I – we – would not be traveling as a bird flying free in the sky. There would be mountains to cross and rivers to ford, and the road toward that which the heart most desires is seldom straight.

And so we rode north through the gently rolling country of the Valley of the Swans. After an hour or so, the moon rose over the Culhadosh Range and silvered the fields and trees all about us. We rode in its soft light, which seemed to fill all the valley like a marvelous shimmering liquid. The farmhouses we passed sent plumes of smoke curling up black against the luminous sky. And in the yards of each of those houses, I thought, no matter how tiring the day’s work had been, warriors would be practicing at arms while their wives taught their children the meditative discipline so vital to all that was Valari. Only later would they take their evening meal, perhaps of cheese and apples and black barley bread. It came to me that I would miss these simple foods, grown out of Meshian soil, rich in tastes of the star-touched earth that recalled the deepest dreams of my people. I wondered if I were seeing my homeland for the last time even while strangely beholding it as if for the first time. It came to me as well that a Valari warrior, with sword and shield and a lifetime of discipline drilled into his soul, was much more than a dealer of death. For everything about me – the rocks and earth, the wind and trees and starlight – were just the things of life, and ultimately a warrior existed only to protect life and the land and people that he loved.

We made camp late that night in a fallow field by a small hill off the side of the road. The farmer who owned it, an old man named Yushur Kaldad, came out to greet us with a pot of stew that his wife had made. Although he hadn’t been present at the feast, he had heard of my quest. After giving us permission to make a fire, he wished me well and walked back through the moonlight toward his little stone house.

‘It’s a lovely night,’ I said to Maram as I tied Altaru to the wooden fence by the side of the field. There was thick grass growing all about the fence, which would make the horses happy. ‘We don’t really need a fire.’

Maram, working with Master Juwain, had already spread the sleeping furs across the husks of old barley that covered the cool ground. He moved off toward the rocks at the side of the road, and told me, ‘I’m worried about bears.’

‘But there aren’t many bears in this part of the valley,’ I told him.

‘Not many ?’

‘In any case, the bears will leave us alone if we leave them alone.’

‘Yes, and a fire will help encourage them to leave us alone.’

‘Perhaps,’ I told him. ‘But perhaps it would only give them a better light to do their work in case they get really hungry.’

‘Val!’ Maram called out as he stood up with a large rock in either hand. ‘I don’t want to hear any more talk of hungry bears, all right?’

‘All right,’ I said, smiling. ‘But please don’t worry. If a bear comes close, the horses will give us warning.’

In the end, Maram had his way. In the space around which our sleeping furs were laid out, he dug a shallow pit and circled it with rocks. Then he moved off toward the hill where he found some dried twigs and branches among the deadwood beneath the trees and with great care he arrayed the tinder and kindling into a pyramid at the center of the pit. Then from his pocket he produced a flint and steel, and in only a few moments he coaxed the sparks from them into a cone of bright orange flames.

‘You have a talent with fire,’ Master Juwain told him. He dropped his gnarly body onto his sleeping fur and began ladling out the stew into three large bowls. Despite his years, he moved with both strength and suppleness, as if he had practiced his healing arts on himself. ‘Perhaps you should study to be an alchemist.’

Maram’s sensuous lips pulled back in a smile as he held his hands out toward the flames. His large eyes reflected the colors of the fire, and he said, ‘It has always fascinated me. I think I made my first fire when I was four. When I was fourteen, I burned down my father’s hunting lodge, for which he has never forgiven me.’

At this news, Master Juwain rubbed his lumpy face and told him, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be an alchemist.’

Maram shrugged off his comment with a good-natured smile. He clicked his fire-making stones together, and watched the sparks jump out of them.

‘What is the magic in flint and steel?’ he asked, speaking mostly to himself. ‘Why don’t flint and quartz, for instance, make such little lights? And what is the secret of the flames bound up in wood? How is it that logs will burn but not stone?’

Of course, I had no answers for him. I sat on my furs watching Master Juwain pulling at his jowls in deep thought. To Maram, I said, ‘Perhaps if we find the Lightstone, you’ll solve your mysteries.’

‘Well, there’s one mystery I’d like solved more than any other,’ he confided. ‘And that is this: How is it that when a man and a woman come together, they’re like flint and steel throwing out sparks into the night?’

I smiled and looked straight at him. ‘Isn’t that one of the lines of the poem you recited to Behira?’

‘Ah, Behira, Behira,’ he said as he struck off another round of sparks. ‘Perhaps I should never have gone to her room. But I had to know.’

‘Did you …?’

I started to ask him if he had stolen Behira’s virtue, as Lord Harsha feared, but then decided that it was none of my business.

‘No, no, I swear I didn’t,’ Maram said, understanding me perfectly well. ‘I only wanted to tell her the rest of my poem and –’

‘ Your poem, Maram?’ We both knew that he had stolen it from the Book of Songs, and so perhaps did Master Juwain.

‘Ah, well,’ Maram said, flushing, ‘I never said outright that I had written it, only that the words came to me the first moment I saw her.’

‘You parse words like a courtier,’ I said to him.

‘Sometimes one must to get at the truth.’

I looked at the stars twinkling in the sky and said, ‘My grandfather taught me that unless one tries to get at the spirit of truth, it’s no truth at all.’

‘And we should honor him for that, for he was a great Valari king.’ He smiled, and his thick beard glistened in the reddish firelight. ‘But I’m not Valari, am I? No, I’m just a simple man, and it’s as a man that I went to Behira’s room. I had to know if she was the one.’

‘What one, Maram?’

The woman with whom I could make the ineffable flame. Ah, the fire that never goes out.’ He turned toward the fire, his eyes gleaming. ‘If ever I held the Lightstone in my hands, I’d use it to discover the place where love blazes eternally like the stars. That’s the secret of the universe.’

For a while, no one spoke as we sat there eating our midnight meal beneath the stars. Yushur had brought us an excellent stew full of succulent lamb, new potatoes, carrots, onions and herbs; we consumed it down to the last drop of gravy, which we mopped up with the fresh bread that Master Juwain had brought down from the Sanctuary. To celebrate our first night together on the road, I had cracked open a cask of beer. Master Juwain had taken only the smallest sip of it, but of course Maram had drunk much more. After his first serving, as his rumbling voice built castles in the air, I rationed the precious black liquid into his cup. But as the time approached for sleeping, it became apparent that I hadn’t measured out the beer carefully enough.