The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  When it grew dark, Kane and I further entertained him with another round of swordplay. Then it came time for sleep, which none of us managed very well. The merciless whining in our ears, I thought, was the song of the Vardaloon, and it kept us turning and slapping at the air far into the night.

  We arose the next morning in very low spirits. All of our hands and faces were puffy from mosquito bites – all of us except Kane. He gazed out at the forest from behind his tough, unmarked face and explained, ‘These little beasts drink blood for breakfast. Well, some blood is too bad even for them, eh?’

  After we had saddled the horses, we held council and decided it was time we left the path. It was taking us ever farther into the Vardaloon toward the west, whereas we needed to cut off northwest to reach the Bay of Whales.

  ‘The going will be rougher,’ I said, looking off at the wall of green in that direction. ‘But there may be higher ground that way, and so fewer mosquitoes.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Maram called out as he waved his hand about his head. ‘Nothing could be worse than these accursed mosquitoes.’

  In our three days of travel from the Tur-Solonu, we must have come some fifty miles. That meant we had another fifty miles ahead of us before the Vardaloon gave out on the open country said to surround the Bay of Whales. If we found no swamps or large rivers to cross and rode hard, we might reach it in only two more days.

  We rode as hard as we could. But the horses, drained of blood, moved off slowly, and we couldn’t bring ourselves to drive them faster. As I had hoped, the ground rose away from the path, and it seemed that the swarms of mosquitoes grew thinner. The undergrowth, however, did not. We forced our way through some hobblebush and thickets of a dense shrub with pointed leaves. These scratched the horses’ flanks and pulled at our legs. In a few places, we had to hack our way through with swords to keep the branches out of our faces.

  Thus we endured the long morning. It was dark beneath the smothering cover of the trees – darker than in any woods I had ever been. The shroud of green above us almost completely blocked out the sun. In truth, we couldn’t tell if the sun shone at all that day or whether clouds lay over the world, for the leaves were so thick we could see nothing of the sky.

  ‘It’s too damn dark here,’ Maram said as we paused to take our lunch in a relatively clear space beneath an old oak tree. ‘Not as dark as the Black Bog, but dark enough.’

  He looked down at the red crystal he held in his much-bitten hand as if wondering how he might ever find enough light to fill it. Then he said, ‘At least the mosquitoes aren’t so bad here. I think the worst is …’

  His voice suddenly died off as a look of horror came over his swollen face. His hand darted toward his other wrist, where his fingers closed like pincers, and he plucked something off him and cast it quickly to the ground. Then he jumped to his feet as he shuddered and began brushing wildly at his trousers and feeling with his panicked hands through his thick brown beard and hair.

  ‘Ticks!’ he cried out. ‘I’m covered with ticks!’

  We all were. The undergrowth here, it seemed, was infested with these loathsome insects. They were rather large ticks, flat and hard with tiny black heads. They clung to our garments and worked their way through their openings to find flesh to attach themselves. They crawled along our scalps beneath our hair.

  We all jumped up then, and beat at our clothes to drive the ticks off us. Then we paired off to search through each other’s hair. Atara carefully ran her fingers through my hair. She found at least seven ticks, which she pulled off me and threw back into the bushes. Then I parted her soft blonde hair lock by lock and returned the favor. Master Juwain tended Liljana (for once I was envious of his bald head), while Alphanderry and Maram groomed each other like monkeys. Only Kane, the odd man out, seemed unconcerned with what might be hiding on his body. But he had great care for the horses. He went among them, laying his rough hands on their jumping hides, and combing through their hair as he began pulling off ticks by the tens and twenties.

  ‘Let’s ride,’ he said when we had finished. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  I led the way through the woods, trying to keep a more or less straight line toward the northwest. But this way led through yet more undergrowth. We all looked down at the leaves of the bushes, hoping to espy any ticks there and pull our legs out of the way before they could cling to us. It was thus that our attention was turned in that direction. And so we did not see what hung from the branches above us until it was too late.

  ‘What was that?’ Maram shouted. He clapped his hand to his neck and sat bolt upright in his saddle. Val, did you throw something at me?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it must be –’

  ‘I can feel it,’ Maram said, now pulling frantically at the collar of his shirt. ‘Oh, my Lord, no, no – it can’t be!’

  But it was. Just then, as Maram looked up into the trees to see what had fallen on him, a dozen leeches dropped down upon his face and neck. They were black, wormy things at least four inches long – segmented, with bloated bodies thick in the middle but tapering off toward their sucking parts at either end. They fell upon the rest of us as well. They hung lengthwise from the branches above us in the hundreds and thousands like so many swaying seedpods. And as we passed beneath them they rained down upon us in streams of hungry, writhing flesh.

  ‘I’ve got to get this off!’ Maram shouted as he pulled at his shirt. ‘I’ve got to get them off me!’

  ‘No, not here!’ I called back. Even as I felt something smooth and warm moving down my neck beneath my mail, I pulled my cloak around my head to cover myself from the leeches. ‘Ride, Maram! Everyone ride until we’re out of this!’

  We pressed our horses then, but the undergrowth caught at their legs and kept them from moving very fast. They were weak, too, from being eaten by mosquitoes, as were we. We rode as hard as we could for a long while, perhaps an hour, and in all that time the leeches in the trees never stopped falling on us and trying to find their way inside our clothes. They drummed against my cloak and bounced off Altaru’s sides – those that didn’t fasten to his sweating black hide. After a while, I forgot to check the bushes for ticks. And I almost didn’t notice the mosquitoes that still danced around my face.

  ‘This is unbearable!’ Maram called out from beside me. We had long since broken order, and now we rode as we could, strung out in a ragged line beneath the trees. ‘I’ve got to get my clothes off! I can feel these bloodsuckers attached to me!’

  We all could. I could feel the shuddering skin of my companions as my own. This was my gift and my glory – now my hell. Their horror of the leeches and their other sufferings only multiplied mine. Maram, especially, was fighting back panic, and everyone except Kane was near to despair.

  ‘Atara,’ I said as we stopped to catch our breaths, ‘can you see our way out of this?’

  She sat on her big roan mare, looking down into the crystal sphere that she held in her hands. For all of our journey from the mountains, she had struggled with her newly found skills of scrying. More than once, I thought, she had gazed with terror upon futures that she did not wish to see. But away from the time-annihilating fires of the Tur-Solonu, these visions seemed to come at their own calling, not hers. And so she looked up from her gelstei and smiled grimly. ‘I see leeches everywhere. But I didn’t need to be a scryer to see that.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got to try to get them off us,’ I said to her. I climbed down from Altaru and asked the others to dismount as well. ‘Kane, Alphanderry, Master Juwain – please come here.’

  While they approached me across the damp bracken, I whipped off my cloak and shook it out. Then, holding one corner of it above my head, I asked my three friends each to take a corner while Maram stood under it to disrobe.

  ‘But, Val, your cloak!’ Maram called out. ‘You’ve nothing to cover yourself!’

  ‘Hurry!’ I told him. I stood with my eyes closed as a leech dropped down the back of my neck. ‘Please h
urry, Maram!’

  I think that Maram had never moved so quickly to take off his clothes in all his life, not even at the invitation of Behira or other beauties. In a few moments, he stood bare to the waist, his big hairy belly and chest bare to the world. But my cloak, like a shield, protected him from the falling leeches. And so Liljana was able to join him beneath the makeshift canopy to cut away those that had already attached themselves along his sides and back. When she had finished, she rubbed one of Master Juwain’s ointments into the half-dozen wounds, which oozed copious amounts of blood. That was the strange thing about leech bites, the way they wouldn’t easily stop bleeding.

  ‘All right, Atara,’ I said, ‘you next.’

  Maram dressed himself, taking care to pull his cloak so tightly around him that any leech would have to work very hard to force its way inside. Then Atara took his place as Liljana cut at her with her knife. I tried not to look upon the splendor of her naked body. And so it went, each of us taking our turns one by one. Even Kane submitted to her ministrations. But he took no more care of the leeches fastened to him than he would twigs fallen into his hair. He dipped his finger into the blood dripping down his deep chest and said to me, ‘So – it’s as red as yours, eh?’

  At last it came my turn. Atara helped me strip off my armor and its underpadding. While Maram held up my corner of my cloak, Liljana cut more than a dozen leeches from me. Then I quickly dressed, and when I had finished, my friends let my cloak fall around me so that I was well covered against further assault.

  Maram, looking around the forest at the many leeches that still hung from the trees, shook his head and said, This can’t be natural.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not,’ Kane admitted.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Kane’s eyes swept the walls of green around us. ‘There’s a rumor that once Morjin went into the heart of the Vardaloon. To breed things. Leeches, so we’ve seen, and mosquitoes and ticks – anything that drinks blood as do his filthy priests. It’s said he had a varistei, that he used it in essays of this filthy art.’

  ‘Are you saying that it was he who made these things?’ Maram asked.

  ‘No, not made, as the One makes life,’ Kane said. ‘But made them to be especially numerous and vicious.’

  ‘But why would he do that?’

  Why?’ Kane grumbled. ‘Because he’s the Crucifier, that’s why. He’s the bloody Red Dragon. It’s always been his way to torment living things until they find the darkest angels of their natures. And then to use them in his service.’

  Kane’s words disturbed us all, and as we set out again, we rode in silence thinking about them. After a while, Kane pulled his horse over toward me, and in a low voice, said, ‘You lead well, Valashu Elahad. So, taking off your cloak – that was a noble gesture.’

  A noble gesture – well, perhaps, I thought. But I wouldn’t get very far on gestures alone or on merely putting up a good face. Soon, after a few more miles of this accursed forest, its creatures would slowly suck away my life and then my spirits would sink as low as Maram’s.

  That night, for me, was the worst of our journey since the Grays had attacked us. We made camp on the side of a low hill which I had thought might catch a bit of breeze to drive away the mosquitoes. But at dusk our whining friends came out in full force; there were many leeches here, and as I pulled off Altaru twenty ticks swollen as big as the end of my thumb, his sufferings touched me deeply. Another thing touched me, too. And that was a sense that something was once again hunting me. I thought it could smell my blood, which ran from the leech bites and stained my clothes. It was a dark thing that sought me through the forest, and it had the taste of Morjin.

  23

  For a long time I sat beneath the trees wondering what else the Red Dragon might have made. I said nothing of my speculations to my companions. They teetered on the brink of despair, and any news of yet another bloodthirsty creature pursuing us might push them over. To distract them from their torments – and me from mine – I called on Alphanderry to sing us a song.

  ‘And what shall I play for you?’ he said as we all sat between the five smoky fires that Maram had made.

  ‘Something uplifting,’ I said. ‘Something that will take us far from here.’

  He brought out his mandolet and tuned it with his puffy, bitten fingers. And then he began singing of the Cup of Heaven, of how the Galadin had forged it around a distant star long before it had come to Ea. At first, his words were Ardik, which we all knew fairly well. But soon he lapsed into that strange tongue that none of us understood. Its flowing vowels poured out of him like a sweet spring from the earth; its consonants filled the night like the ringing of silver bells. It seemed impossible to grasp with the mind alone, for it changed from moment to moment like the rushing of a moonlit river. It was musical in its very essence, as if it could never be spoken but only sung.

  ‘That was lovely,’ Atara said when he had finished.

  We all agreed that it was – all of us except Kane, who sat staring at the fire as if he longed for its flames to burn him away.

  ‘But what does it mean?’ Maram asked. He watched as Flick did incandescent turns just above Alphanderry’s head. ‘Where did you learn this language?’

  ‘But I’m still learning it, don’t you see?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Maram said, slapping at a mosquito.

  Again, Alphanderry smiled, and he said, ‘As I sing, if my heart is open, my tongue finds its way around new sounds. And I know the true ones by their taste. Because there is really only one sound and one taste. The more I sing, the sweeter the sounds and the closer I come to it. And that is why I seek the Lightstone.’

  He went on to say that he believed the golden cup would help him recreate the original language and music of the angels, both Elijin and Galadin. Then would be revealed the true song of the universe and the secret of singing the stars and all of creation into light.

  ‘Someday,’ he said, ‘I will find it, and then I will make real music’

  The music he made that night, I thought, was very fine as it was, for it poured from him like an elixir that gave both hope and strength. For a while, I paid no mind to the tightening of my belly that told me that something was coming for me through the forest. Instead, I looked off into the dark spaces between the trees. And there, sitting on top of a gnarly root or simply set down into the earth, I saw the Lightstone. It gleamed in many places even more brightly than it had in the Tur-Solonu. It gave me to remember why I had set out on the quest and why, at all costs, it must be found.

  Moments of faith, when they fire the soul, seem as if they will last forever. And yet they do not. The morning brought a moist heat along with the mosquitoes, and we set out through the sweltering woods with a heaviness of limb and soul. Even the Vardaloon’s many flowers – the snakeroot and ironweed, the baneberry and wild ginger – brought us no cheer. It was hard to stay wrapped in our rough wool cloaks; soon, I thought, we would have to choose between the leeches or heat stroke. I kept smelling the stifling air and looking for any sign that we might be drawing near the ocean. But I knew that we hadn’t come as far as I had hoped. The Bay of Whales might still be two days away – or more. And two days, through these leech-infested woods that went on and on, mile after mile, might as well be forever.

  It was the seeming endlessness of the Vardaloon that oppressed me almost more than anything else. The whole world had become a vast tangle of trees, steaming bracken and bushes that tore at us and sheltered bloodsucking things. Although my mind knew very well that we must eventually come out upon the sea, the itch of my much-stung skin and the sweat burning along my leech bites told me otherwise. And even if we did survive this slow draining of our blood and somehow reached the Sea People, I couldn’t guess how they might be able to help us, for they hadn’t been known to speak to men and women for thousands of years. We might very well find the Bay of Whales a dead end from which we would have no retreat – unless we wanted to go back through the
Vardaloon.

  Around mid-afternoon, as the ground rose and the elms and maples began to give way before many more oaks, chestnuts and poplars, my sense of something hunting me rose as well. I knew that the dark thing that Mithuna had spoken of was coming closer. I tried to guess what it might be. Another bear that Morjin had made a ghul? A pack of maddened wolves trained to the taste of human blood? Or had Morjin somehow found us in this wild land and set another company of Grays upon us? I shuddered to think I might feel the helplessness of frozen limbs yet again as when I stood beneath the Grays’ long knives and soulless eyes.

  I nearly lost hope then. The sight of my companions slumped on their horses dispirited me even more. Maram’s sullenness had deepened to an anger at the world – and me – for bringing him to such a dreadful place. Atara was haunted by what she saw in her scryer’s sphere – and sickened by what awaited us in the trees. Her usually bright eyes seemed glazed with the certainty of our doom. Master Juwain couldn’t find the strength even to open his book, while Alphanderry had lapsed into an unnerving silence. Liljana, stubborn and tough as she was, appeared determined to go on toward her inevitable death. I thought that she pitied herself and regretted even more that none of us would live to appreciate her sacrifice. Only Kane seemed untouched by this desolation – but, then, sometimes he hardly seemed human anyway. Hate was his shield against the evils of the Vardaloon, and he surrounded himself with it so that none of us dared even to look at him.

  My friends’ despair touched me deeply, and I wanted to make it go away. But first I had to make my own go away. No noble gesture would do.

  ‘These damn trees,’ Maram grumbled as he rode near me, ‘there’s no end to them! We’ll never find our way out of here!’

  I stared off into the gloom of the forest as I remembered that a light beyond light always shone within each of us to show the way. And so I said, ‘Yes, we will.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s impossible we’ll ever come out of these woods.’