The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom

by David Zindell

  ‘Father!’ he cried out in a terrible voice that seemed to shake all the world. In this one sound were many deep emotions: astonishment, longing, relief and bitter hate. For only a moment, it seemed that a howl of grief answered him from far away. And then he died. He toppled backward to the ground like a tree and lay still among the ferns and flowers.

  I was very weak, as if it had been my blood that he had drunk. Yet I managed to get up and go over to Maram. Atara and the others joined me there, too. Master Juwain found that the wounds to Maram’s neck were not as grave as we had feared. It seemed that the beast-man had only pierced the vein there to take his meal. Maram, he said, had most likely fainted from the loss of blood.

  ‘I hope that is the worst of it,’ he said, looking through the woods at the body of the beast-man. ‘Human bites are more poisonous than a snake’s.’

  He brought out his gelstei then and reached deep to find its healing fire. After a while, Maram opened his eyes, and we helped him sit up.

  ‘Ah, Atara, you killed him!’ Maram said as he looked into the woods. ‘Good! Good! I guess that puts” your count at twenty-two.’

  The beast-man’s last word troubled us, for he was so fell and hideous that we did not wish to see his father. And so when we heard something else crashing through the trees behind us, we jumped to our feet as we took up our weapons with trembling hands.

  But it was only Kane. He came running at us through the bushes gripping his bow and arrows. He stopped before the body of the creature Atara had killed and stared down at it for a long moment. And then he growled out, ‘I came upon his spoor a couple of miles from here. So, I was too late.’

  Enough strength had returned to me that I was able to walk up to him and touch his shoulder. I asked, ‘Do you know who this is?’

  Kane slowly nodded his head. ‘His name is Meliadus. He’s Morjin’s son.’

  At this news, Atara shuddered, and so did I. Atara’s gaze turned inward as if she were seeing some private vision that terrified her.

  Master Juwain stepped up to Kane and cleared his throat. ‘A son, you say? The Red Dragon had a son? But no one has ever told of that!’

  ‘I myself thought it only a rumor until today,’ Kane said, pointing at Meliadus. ‘He’s an abomination. You can’t begin to understand how great an abomination.’

  He went on to tell us what was whispered about Morjin: that long ago, at the beginning of the Age of the Dragon, he had gone into the Vardaloon to breed a race of invincible warriors from his own flesh. Meliadus had been the first of this race – and the last. For Meliadus, upon growing to manhood and beholding the hideousness of his form, had conceived a terrible hate for his creator and had risen up against him. According to Kane, he had nearly killed Morjin, who had fled the Vardaloon and had left the vast forest to the vengeance of his mighty son.

  ‘Once,’ Kane said, waving his hand at the dark trees around us, ‘the Vardaloon was a paradise. It’s said that many people lived here. Meliadus must have been jealous of them. He must have hunted them down, man by man, tribe by tribe.’

  Maram, sitting back against Liljana and Alphanderry, managed to cough out, ‘But how is that possible? He can’t have lived all that time!’

  Master Juwain rubbed his bald head thoughtfully and told him, ‘There’s only one explanation: Morjin must have bestowed upon him his own immortality.’

  ‘Immortality – ha!’ Kane said. He moved over to Meliadus, and with the help of his knife, pried apart the fingers of his left hand. There he found a stone, which he brought over for us to see.

  What is it?’ Maram asked.

  The stone was a crystal, like in shape to Master Juwain’s green gelstei. But its color was brown, and it was riven with many cracks so that it looked more like a withered leaf.

  ‘It’s a varistei,’ Kane said. ‘Possibly the same one that Morjin used to make his mosquitoes and leeches – and Meliadus.’

  We all stared at this ugly crystal. And then Maram said, ‘But that can’t be a gelstei!’

  ‘Can it not?’ Kane said to him. ‘You think the gelstei are immortal, but only the Lightstone truly is. The varistei especially are living crystals. And they can die, even as you see.’

  ‘But what killed it?’ Maram asked.

  ‘He did,’ Kane said, pointing again at Meliadus. ‘He took the blood of men and women for hundreds of years, and that sustained him, in part. But he also took the life of this crystal.’

  Master Juwain held out his hand to examine the brown crystal. Kane gave it to him, and Master Juwain asked, ‘If this had no life left to give, what would Meliadus have done?’

  ‘So, he would have continued sucking the blood out of deer and suchlike – and anyone who chanced to enter the Vardaloon,’ Kane said. ‘Then someday, and soon, he would have come out of it and crossed into other lands looking for another varistei.’

  The thought of Meliadus ravaging the wilds of Alonia and finding the Forest of the Lokilani made my belly clutch up with dread. Unless the Lokilani were as keen shots as Atara, Meliadus might have slaughtered every last one of them.

  I looked at Kane and asked, ‘You said the Lord of Lies was Meliadus’ father. But who was his mother, then?’

  ‘That is not told,’ Kane said. ‘Likely Morjin got his son out of one of the tribeswomen who used to live here.’

  The memory of the bleeding young woman whom Maram had taken beneath his cloak still burned in my mind. As did the growling bear. I told Kane about this, and we all looked at him as he said, ‘Morjin must have bestowed upon Meliadus one thing at least. And that is his power of illusion. Or some small part of it, anyway. It would seem that Meliadus was able to shape only the image of how he appeared to you.’

  Maram blushed in embarrassment at the way Meliadus had fooled him. But he was glad to be alive, and he said, ‘Ah, I don’t understand why Meliadus didn’t just kill all of us once we had taken him inside our camp.’

  ‘That should be obvious,’ Kane snapped at him. ‘Meliadus needed the blood of the living to go on living himself. After he had finished with you, he would have come back for the rest of us one by one.’

  I stood there breathing in the smell of blood that stained Maram’s clothes and the dead leaves of the forest floor. I listened to the chirping of some birds, and wondered if they were the same ones that had tried to dip their beaks into us.

  ‘If not for Atara’s marksmanship,’ Kane said, staring at the arrows that stuck out of Meliadus’ eyes, ‘he would have made meals of us all – all the way to the Bay of Whales.’

  His words reminded us that we still had a journey to make and a quest to fulfill. The question now arose as to what we should do with Meliadus. Maram favored leaving him for the wolves. But as Master Juwain observed, they would only break their teeth against Meliadus’ iron-hard hide.

  “Why don’t we bury him?’ I said. “Whatever else he was, he was a man first, and should be buried.’

  We all agreed that it would be best to put him into earth and so at least return him to his mother. Liljana went to get the shovels then, and we dug at the tough, root-laced ground of the forest until we had a hole big enough to lay him in. We all stood for a moment looking at the feathered shafts embedded in what seemed the only human part of him. Arrows were dear to Atara, but these she did not retrieve. Then we covered him with dirt so that no one would ever have to see what a monster Morjin had made from a man.

  Much later, as we gathered between the fires breathing in smoke, I sat holding the hilt-shard of what had once been my sword. It almost seemed that the ruin of this magnificent weapon had been too great a price to pay for my life. For a moment I felt as if it hadn’t been a piece of steel that had broken against Meliadus but my very soul. And then I looked off into the woods toward his grave. There I saw the Lightstone shining out of the darkness and reminding me that the deepest fire that burned inside everyone was as inextinguishable as the light of the stars.

  24

  That night, I had my
first dream of Morjin in nearly a month. He appeared to me with his unearthly beauty and golden, dragon’s eyes; he told me that he had found me again and would never leave my side. A price, he said, must be paid for the slaying of his son. He would send other fell beings to hunt us down, and if they failed to take us, he would come for us himself.

  I awoke drenched in sweat and beleaguered by a cloud of mosquitoes. Leeches still hung swaying from the surrounding trees. With Meliadus’ death, the worst of the Vardaloon had perished, but we still remained in the thick of that horrible wood. And so, in the quiet of the cool, damp morning, we saddled our horses and determined to ride out of it as fast as we could.

  We traveled all that day north and west toward the unseen ocean. We kept hoping to catch a glint of water through the wall of green before us. But the hills rose and fell like steps leading nowhere, and the forest covering them allowed only a rare few glimpses of the sky. Dusk found us fighting through some clumps of winged blackthorn and stands of yellow poplar. And so we were forced to spend yet another night in the company of our bloodsucking friends. That there seemed fewer of them in this part of the woods, I almost didn’t notice. I lay awake most of the night, listening for worse things than mosquitoes.

  In truth, I mourned the loss of my sword. Without it I felt naked and alone. How was I to defend my friends if a real bear should attack us or some servant of Morjin’s surprise us in a fury of pounding hooves and well-tempered steel? My kalama was irreplaceable, I knew, for only the smiths of faraway Godhra made such wondrous swords. And even if I were willing to slide a lesser blade into my sheath, where would I find even a broadsword or longsword in the wild lands so many miles from any kingdom or civilized place?

  ‘I’ll give you my sword, if you wish,’ Kane said to me the next morning as we were preparing for yet another day of our journey. ‘It’s a kalama, too.’

  ‘Thank you, but no,’ I said to him. His concern astonished me. ‘Your sword is your soul, and you can’t just give it to anyone.’

  ‘But you’re not anyone, eh?’

  I climbed on top of Altaru and touched the upraised lance holstered at his side. ‘A knight has other weapons, yes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  I looked down at the long blade buckled to his waist and said, ‘Besides, we’ll all ride more easily knowing that Ea’s greatest swordsman still has his.’

  Eight miles of hard travel that morning brought us to the crest of a line of hills. And there the Vardaloon suddenly ended. We felt this mostly as a cooling of the earth and a change in the air, for there were still many trees about us. But these were mostly white oak, magnolia and sycamore, and no leeches infested them. Neither did the wind stir with mosquitoes. Liljana, who had the keenest nose of us all, said that she could smell the faint, far-off scent of the sea. This good news caused us to make our way forward with renewed spirit. We were so excited that we didn’t stop for lunch, and ate a cold meal of cheese and battle biscuits in our saddles.

  Soon the hills began to grow smaller, and we came to a more open country. The woods were broken with fields and flats of hawthorn, elderleaf and highbush blueberry. And then, after another six or seven miles, we topped the last of the hills. And there, below us, windswept dunes were piled up east and west as far as the eye could see. Beyond them shone the blue waters of the Great Northern Ocean.

  ‘Oh, my Lord – we did it!’ Maram said as we rode down to the dunes. When we reached these castle-like mounds of sand, he practically fell from his horse and kissed the ground. We’re saved!’

  After whooping like a wild dog and throwing up handfuls of sand, he remounted, and we rode across the dunes toward the sea. Although we were all eager to stand before this great water, we had to make our way carefully along the dunes’ shifting slopes. Master Juwain, who had been raised on the islands of the Elyssu, pointed out the various strange plants growing there and told me their names: the beach rose and the rounded shrubs of the beach plum; the matlike dusty miller, with its tiny yellow flowers, and the blue-eyed grasses rippling in the wind.

  After we had ridden down the last of the dunes, we came out upon a wide, sandy beach. There was much seaweed and many shells along the high-tide line. The air smelled of salt and carried the sound of the crashing surf. The sun was a great, golden chariot rolling down the clear blue sky toward the west. Because of the lateness of the hour, we decided to go no further that day. Of course, with the ocean only a hundred yards away, there was really nowhere else to go.

  ‘Unless,’ as Master Juwain observed, pointing out toward the sea, ‘this isn’t the Bay of Whales after all.’

  ‘It must be,’ Maram said, coming down off his horse.

  Kane stood on the sand with his hand above his eyes, shielding them from the water’s fierce glare. He seemed lost in memories as deep as the sea.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked, coming up next to him.

  Kane’s hard hand swept out to the right and then the left. The coast here runs east and west. So it would be with the most inland part of the Bay of Whales.’

  ‘And so it would be with the coast on either side of the Bay of Whales,’ Master Juwain put in. He had studied his maps as well as any man, and was prepared to give us a geography lesson. ‘If we came too far to the north, then the Bay of Whales will still lie to the west of us.’

  ‘We didn’t come too far north,’ I assured him.

  ‘And if we came too far west,’ he said, looking at me, ‘we will have overshot the Bay altogether. In that case, it would lie to the east.’

  Kane’s thick white hair rippled in the wind as he said, ‘The Bay can’t be more than sixty miles at its widest, eh? If this is the Bay and we ride west, the beach should begin curving toward the north soon enough.’

  ‘But if it isn’t,’ Master Juwain said, ‘we’ll ride many miles to no good end. And then have to turn back.’

  We stood there for several minutes debating what course to set the next day. Then Liljana came forward and laughed at us as if we were squabbling children.

  ‘Of course this is the Bay,’ she told us.

  ‘But how do you know?’ Maram asked, looking at her in surprise.

  ‘Because,’ she said, her nostrils quivering as she gazed out at the sea, ‘I can smell the whales.’

  We all smiled at this wild claim. But after remembering how she had saved me from Baron Narcavage’s poisoned wine, I wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Why don’t we make camp and decide tomorrow which way to turn,’ I said. ‘We’ll think better if we’re not so tired.’

  Maram, I saw, was still exhausted from what Meliadus had done to him, and all of our faces were haggard and cut from our passage through the Vardaloon. I had seen warriors, after months of siege and starvation, who had looked better than we did.

  And so we spread out our furs on the soft sand and helped Maram gather driftwood for a fire. Kane, foraging farther down the beach for logs or bushes with which to fortify our camp, came upon many blue crabs trapped in a tide pool between two belts of sand. He gathered up a hundred of these strange-looking beasts in his cloak and brought them back for Liljana to cook. Master Juwain dug up some clams from the hardpack near the ocean, and these he presented to Liljana as well. She added them to the stew that she was already cooking in her pot. Many of the crabs, however, she saved to be roasted on spits over the fire. It seemed to take hours for her to prepare this unusual meal. But when she had finished, all our mouths were watering. We sat around the fire cracking the crabs with stones and devouring the succulent meat. We mopped up the stew with some bread that Liljana made, and washed it all down with mugfuls of brown beer. In all my life, I had never had a finer feast.

  The next morning, I awoke early to the harsh cries of seagulls fighting over the shells of the crabs. We spent a few hours in the shallows washing the blood from our clothing and bathing our wounded bodies. Master Juwain said that sea salt was good for mosquito bites and other hurts of the skin. The water was cold and rimed our cl
othing, but we all welcomed its healing touch.

  After that, we gathered on the beach and looked out across the ocean for the Sea People. All we saw, however, were sparkling waters broken only by waves. Master Juwain brought out his varistei and pointed it at the rolling blue swells in the hope of sensing any kind of life. But all he found in the water were more crabs. Atara looked into her crystal sphere for a long time, but if she saw anything there resembling these mighty swimmers, she didn’t say. Alphanderry took up his mandolet and sang to the sea in the sweetest of voices, but no one sang back.

  ‘Ah, perhaps this isn’t the Bay of Whales after all,’ Maram said. ‘Or perhaps the Sea People don’t come here anymore.’

  His words were as heavy as the sea itself. We stood staring out at the gleaming horizon as we thought about them. No one seemed to know what to do.

  And then a strange look fell over Liljana’s face. With great excitement, she began stripping off her still-moist tunic. When she had uncovered herself, she began walking quickly down toward the water. Modesty demanded that I look away from her, but I was afraid that her usual good sense had left her, for I felt in her an urge to swim far out into the surf. So I watched her dive into the breaking waves. She was a stocky woman, big-breasted with wide hips, and still quite strong for her years. She swam straight out to sea with measured strokes, and I marveled at her skill and power.

  ‘Liljana, what are you doing?’ Maram called to her. But the booming surf swept away his voice, and she seemed not to hear him. And so he turned to me and asked, ‘Val – what is she doing?’

  But I couldn’t tell him. I could only watch as she swam farther out to sea.