The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  In the north courtyard that day there was a riot of activity. Various wagons laden with foodstuffs had pulled up to the storehouses where the cooks’ apprentices rushed to unload them. From the wheelwright’s workshop came the sound of hammered steel, while the chandlers were busy dipping the last of the night’s tapers. Squires such as Joshu ran about completing errands assigned by their lords. We had to ride carefully through the courtyard lest our horses trample them, as well as the children playing with wooden swords or spinning tops along the flagstones. When we reached the stables, we dismounted and gave the tending of the horses over to Joshu. He took Altaru’s reins in his hands as if his life depended on the care with which he handled the great, snorting stallion – as it very well did. There, in front of the stalls smelling of freshly spread straw and even fresher dung, we said our goodbyes. Asaru and Lord Harsha would accompany Behira to the kitchens to unload the wagon before attending to their business with the steward and King. And Maram and I would seek out Master Juwain.

  ‘But what about your head?’ Behira said to Maram. ‘It needs a proper dressing.’

  ‘Ah,’ Maram said as his voice swelled with anticipation, ‘perhaps we could meet later in the infirmary.’

  At this, Lord Harsha stepped between the wagon and Maram, and stood staring down at him. ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ he said to him. ‘Isn’t your Master Juwain a healer? Well, let him heal you, then.’

  Asaru moved closer to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘Please give Master Juwain my regards,’ he said.

  And then, as his eyes flashed like a dark sky crackling with lightning, he added, Tonight there will be a feast to be remembered.’

  Maram and I crossed the courtyard then, and walked through the middle ward which was full of chickens squawking and running for their lives. After passing through the gateway to the west ward, we found the arched doorway to the Adami Tower open. I went inside and fairly raced up the worn steps that wound up through the narrow staircase; Maram, however, puffed along behind me at a slower pace. I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that the stairs spiraled clockwise as they rose to the tower’s upper floors. This allowed a defender to retreat upwards while wielding his sword with his right hand, whereas an attacker would have to lean around the corner in the wrong direction to wield his. I couldn’t help noticing as well the castle’s ever-present smell: rusting iron and sweating stone and the sharpness of burning tallow that over the centuries had coated the walls and ceilings with layers of black smoke.

  Master Juwain was in the guest chamber on the highest floor. It was the grandest such room in the castle – indeed, in all of Mesh – and many would argue that it should have been reserved for the Ishkan prince or even King Kiritan’s emissaries. But by tradition, whenever a master of the Brotherhoods was visiting, he took up residence there.

  ‘Come in,’ Master Juwain’s voice croaked out after I had knocked at the door to his chamber.

  I opened this great, iron-shod slab of oak and stepped into a large room. It was well-lit, with the shutters of its eight arched windows thrown open. In most other rooms of the castle, this would have let in gusts of cold air along with sunlight. But the windows here were some of the few to be fitted with glass panes. Even so, the room was rather cool, and Master Juwain had a few logs burning in the fireplace along the far wall. This, I thought, was an extravagance. As were the chamber’s other appointments: the tiled floor, covered with Galdan carpets; the richly-colored tapestries; the shelves of books set into the wall near the great, canopied bed. As far as I knew, there was only one other true bed in the castle, and there my father and mother slept. The whole of the chamber bespoke a comfort at odds with the Brotherhoods’ ideal of restraint and austerity, but the great Elemesh had proclaimed that these teachers of our people should be treated like kings, and so they were.

  Valashu Elahad – is that you?’ Master Juwain called out as I entered the room. He was as short and stocky as I remembered, and one of the ugliest men I had ever seen.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, bowing. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

  He was standing by one of the windows and looking up from a large book that he had been reading; he returned my bow politely and then stepped over to me. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. ‘It’s been almost two years.’

  To look upon Master Juwain was to be reminded at first of vegetables – and not the most attractive ones at that. His head, large and lumpy like a potato, was shaved smooth, the better to appreciate the puffy ears that stood out like cauliflowers. His nose was a big, brown squash, and of his mouth and lips, it is better not to speak. He clasped me on the shoulder with a hand as tough as old tree roots. Although he was first and foremost a scholar – perhaps the finest in all of Ea – he liked nothing better than working in his garden and keeping close to the earth. Although he might advise kings and teach their sons, I thought he would always be a farmer at heart.

  ‘To what honor,’ he asked, ‘shall I attribute this visit after being ignored for so long?’

  His gaze took in the rain-stained cloak that Asaru had lent me as he looked at me deeply. The saving feature of his face, I thought, were his eyes: they were large and luminous, all silver-gray like the moonlit sea. There was a keen intelligence there and great kindness, too. I have said that he was an ugly man, and ugly he truly was. But he was also one of those rare men transformed by a love of truth into a being of great beauty.

  ‘My apologies, sir,’ I told him. ‘But it was never my intention to ignore you.’

  Just then Maram came wheezing and panting into the room. He bowed to Master Juwain and then said, ‘Please excuse us, sir, but we needed to see you. Something has happened.’

  While Master Juwain paced back and forth rubbing his bald head, Maram explained how we had fought for our lives in the woods that afternoon. He conveniently left out the part of the story in which he had shot the deer, but otherwise his account was reasonably accurate. By the time I had spoken as well, the room was growing dark.

  ‘I see,’ Master Juwain said. His head bowed down in deep thought as he dug his foot into the priceless carpet. Then he moved over to the window and gazed out at Telshar’s white diamond peak. ‘It’s growing late, and I want to get a good look at this arrow you’ve brought me. And your wounds as well. Would you please light the candles, Brother Maram?’

  While I tightly gripped the black arrow, still wrapped in my torn shirt, Maram went over to the fireplace where he stuck a long match into the flames to ignite it. Then he went about the room lighting the many candles in their stands. As the soft light of the tapers filled the room, I reflected on the fact that some two thousand candles would be burned throughout the castle before the night was through.

  ‘Here, now,’ Master Juwain said as his hand closed on Maram’s arm. He pulled him over to the writing table, which was covered with maps, open books and many papers. There he sat him down in the carved, oak chair. ‘We’ll look at your head first.’

  He went over to the basin by one of the windows and carefully washed his hands. Then, from beneath the bed, he retrieved two large wooden boxes which he set on the writing table. In the first box, as I saw when he opened it, were many small compartments filled with unguents, bottled medicines and twists of foul-smelling herbs. The second box contained various knives, probes, clamps, scissors and saws – all made of gleaming Godhran steel. I tried not to look into this box as Master Juwain lifted out a roll of clean white cloth and set it on the table.

  It didn’t take him very long to clean Maram’s wound and wrap his head with a fresh dressing. But for me, standing by the window and looking out at the night’s first stars as I tried not to listen to Maram’s groans and gasps, it seemed like an hour. And then it was my turn.

  After pulling back Asaru’s cloak, I took Maram’s place on the chair. Master Juwain’s hard, gnarly fingers gently probed my bruised chest and then touched my side along the thin red line left by the arrow.

  ‘It’s hot,’
Master Juwain said. ‘A wound such as this shouldn’t be so hot so soon.’

  And with that, he dabbed an unguent on my side. The greenish cream was cool but stank of mold and other substances that I couldn’t identify.

  ‘All right,’ Master Juwain said, ‘now let’s see the arrow.’

  As Maram crowded closer and looked on, I unwrapped the arrow and handed it to Master Juwain. He seemed loath to touch it, as if it were a snake that might at any moment come alive and sink its venomous fangs into him. With great care he held it closer to the stand of candles burning by the table; he gazed at the coated head for a long time as his gray eyes darkened like the sea in a storm.

  ‘What is it?’ Maram blurted out. ‘Is it truly poison?’

  ‘You know it is,’ Master Juwain told him.

  ‘Well, which one?’

  Master Juwain sighed and said, ‘That we shall soon see.’

  He instructed us to stand off toward the open window, and we did as he bade us. Then, from the second box, he produced a scalpel and a tiny spoon whose bowl was the size of a child’s fingernail. With a meticulousness that I had always found daunting, he used the scalpel to scrape off a bit of the bluish substance that covered the head of the arrow. He caught these evil-looking flakes with a sheet of white paper, then funneled them into the spoon.

  ‘Hold your breath, now,’ he told us.

  I drew in a draft of clean mountain air and watched as Master Juwain covered his nose and mouth with a thick cloth. Then he held the spoon over one of the candles. A moment later, the blue flakes caught fire. But strangely, I saw, they burned with an angry, red flame.

  Still holding the cloth over his face, Master Juwain set down the spoon and joined us by the window. I could almost feel him silently counting the seconds to every beat of my heart. By this time, my lungs were burning for air. At last Master Juwain uncovered his mouth and told us, ‘Go ahead and breathe – I think it should be all right now.’

  Maram, whose face was red as an apple, gasped at the air streaming in the window, and so did I. Even so, I caught the faintness of a stench that was bitter beyond belief.

  ‘Well?’ Maram said, turning to Master Juwain, ‘do you know what it is?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Master Juwain said. There was a great sadness in his voice. ‘It’s as I feared – the poison is kirax.’

  ‘Kirax,’ Maram repeated as if he didn’t like the taste of the word on his tongue. ‘I don’t know about kirax.’

  ‘Well, you should,’ Master Juwain said. ‘If you weren’t so busy with the chambermaids, then you would.’

  I thought Master Juwain was being unfair to him. Maram was studying to become a Master Poet, and so couldn’t be expected to know of every esoteric herb or poison.

  ‘What is kirax, sir?’ I asked him.

  He turned to me and grasped my shoulder. There was a reassuring strength in his hand and tenderness as well. And then he said, ‘It’s a poison used only by Morjin and the Red Priests of the Kallimun. And their assassins.’

  He went on to say that kirax was a derivative of the kirque plant, as was the more common drug called kiriol. Kiriol, of course, was known to open certain sensitives to others’ minds – though at great cost to themselves. Kirax was much more dangerous: even a small amount opened its victim to a flood of sensations that overwhelmed and burned out the nerves. Death came quickly and agonizingly as if one’s entire body had been plunged into a vat of boiling oil.

  ‘You must have absorbed a minuscule amount of it,’ Master Juwain told me. ‘Not enough to kill but quite sufficient to torment you.’

  Truly, I thought, enough to torment me even as my gift tormented me. I looked off at the candles’ flickering flames, and it occurred to me that the kirax was a dark, blue, hidden knife cutting at my heart and further opening it to sufferings and secrets that I would rather not know.

  ‘Do you have the antidote?’ I asked him.

  Master Juwain sighed as he looked at his box of medicines. ‘I’m afraid there is no antidote,’ he said. He told Maram and me that the hell of kirax was that once injected, it never left the body.

  ‘Ah,’ Maram said upon hearing this news, ‘that’s hard, Val – that’s too bad.’

  Yes, I thought, trying to close myself from the waves of pity and fear that poured from Maram, it was very bad indeed.

  Master Juwain moved back over to the table and gingerly picked up the arrow. ‘This came from Argattha,’ he said.

  At the mention of Morjin’s stronghold in the White Mountains, a shudder ran through me. It was said that Argattha was carved out of the rock of a mountain, an entire city built underground where slaves were whipped to work and dreadful rites occurred far from the eyes of civilized men.

  ‘I would guess,’ Master Juwain told me, ‘that the man you killed was sent from there. He might even be a full priest of the Kallimun.’

  I closed my eyes as I recalled the assassin’s fiercely intelligent eyes.

  ‘I’d like to see the body,’ Master Juwain said.

  Maram wiped the sweat from his fat neck as he pointed at the arrow and said, ‘But we don’t know that the assassins are Kallimun priests, do we? Isn’t it also possible that one of the Ishkans has gone over to Morjin?’

  Master Juwain suddenly stiffened with anger as he admonished Maram: ‘Please do not call him by that name.’ Then he turned to me. ‘It worries me even more that the Lord of Lies has made traitor one of your own countrymen.’

  ‘No,’ I said, filling up with a rare anger of my own. ‘No Meshian would ever betray us so.’

  ‘Perhaps not willfully,’ Master Juwain said. ‘But you don’t know the deceit of the Lord of Lies. You don’t know his power.’

  He told us then that all men, even warriors and kings, knew moments of darkness and despair. At such times, when the clouds of doubt shrouded the soul and the stars did not shine, they became more vulnerable to evil, most especially to the Master of Minds himself. Then Morjin might come for them, in their hatred or in their darkest dreams; he would send illusions to confuse them; he would seize the sinews of their will and control them at a distance as with a puppeteer pulling on strings. These soulless men were terrible and very deadly, though fortunately very rare. Master Juwain called them ghuls; he admitted to his fear that a ghul might be waiting in the great hall to take meat with us that very night.

  To steady my racing heart, I stepped over to the window to get a breath of fresh air. As a child, I had heard rumors of ghuls, as of werewolves or the dreaded Gray Men who come at night to suck out your soul. But I had never really believed them.

  ‘But why,’ I asked Master Juwain, ‘would the Lord of Lies send an assassin – or anyone else – to kill me with poison?’

  He looked at me strangely, and asked, ‘Are you sure the first assassin was shooting at you and not Asaru?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how could you be sure? Didn’t Asaru say that he felt the arrow pass through his hair?’

  Master Juwain’s clear, gray eyes fell upon me with the weight of twin moons. How could I tell him about my gift of sensing what lay inside another’s heart? How could I tell him that I had felt the assassin’s intention to murder me as surely as I did the cold wind pouring through the window?

  ‘There was the angle of the shot,’ I tried to explain. There was something in the assassin’s eyes.’

  ‘You could see his eyes from a hundred yards away?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. And then, ‘No, that is, it wasn’t really like seeing. But there was something about the way he looked at me. The concentration.’

  Master Juwain was silent as he stared at me from beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. Then he said, ‘I think there’s something about you, Valashu Elahad. There was something about your grandfather, too.’

  In silence I reached out to close the cold pane of glass against the night.

  ‘I believe,’ Master Juwain continued, ‘that this something might have something to do with why the Lord of Lies is
hunting you. If we understood it better, it might provide us with the crucial clue.’

  I looked at Master Juwain then and I wanted him to help me understand how I could feel the fire of another’s passions or the unbearable pressure of their longing for the peace of the One. But some things can never be understood. How could one feel the cold light of the stars on a perfect winter night? How could one feel the wind?

  ‘The Lord of Lies couldn’t know of me,’ I said at last. ‘He’d have no reason to hunt the seventh son of a faraway mountain king.’

  ‘No reason? Wasn’t it your ancestor, Aramesh, who took the Lightstone from him at the Battle of Sarburn?’

  ‘Aramesh,’ I said, ‘is the ancestor of many Valari. The Lord of Lies can’t hunt us all.’

  ‘No? Can he not?’ Master Juwain’s eyebrows suddenly pulled down in anger. ‘I’m afraid he would hunt any and all who oppose him.’

  For a moment I stood there rubbing the scar on my forehead. Oppose Morjin? I wanted the Valari to stop fighting among ourselves and unite under one banner so that we wouldn’t have to oppose him. Shouldn’t that, I wondered, be enough?

  ‘But I don’t oppose him,’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re too gentle of soul for that,’ Master Juwain told me. There was doubt in his voice, and irony as well. ‘But you needn’t take up arms to be in opposition to the Red Dragon. You oppose him merely in your intelligence and love of freedom. And by seeking all that is beautiful, good and true.’

  I looked down at the carpet and bit my lip against the tightness in my throat. It was the Brothers who sought those things, not I.

  As if Master Juwain could read my thoughts, he caught my eyes and said, ‘You have a gift, Val. What kind of gift, I’m not yet sure. But you could have been a Meditation Master or Music Master. Or possibly even a Master Healer.’