The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One

Salmelu gave me barely enough time to return to my chair before firing his sneering words back at me: ‘Perhaps young Valashu has been spending too much time with the Brothers and the women. And perhaps it’s well that his grandfather is no longer alive to spread the foolishness of myths and old wives’ tales.’

Again, as if I had drunk a cup full of kirax, a wave of hatred came flooding into me. My eyes hurt so badly that I could hardly bear to keep looking at Salmelu. But I couldn’t tell if this poisonous emotion originated from myself or him. Certainly, I thought, he had hated me since the moment I had bested him at chess. How deep did this hate reach? I wondered. Could it be that this prince of Ishka was the man who had shot the arrow at me?

‘You should be careful,’ my father warned Salmelu, ‘of how you speak of a man’s ancestors.’

‘Thank you, King Shamesh, for sharing your wisdom,’ Salmelu said, bowing with exaggerated punctilio. ‘And you should be careful of what decision you make here tonight. The lives of many warriors and women depend on this famous wisdom.’

As my father caught his breath and stared out at the great wooden beams that held up the roof of the hall, I wondered why the Ishkans had really come to our castle. Did they wish to provoke a war, here, this very night? Did they truly believe that they could defeat Mesh in battle? Well, perhaps they could. The Ishkans could field some twelve thousand warriors and knights to our ten, and we couldn’t necessarily count on our greater valor to win the day as we had at the Diamond River. But I thought it more likely that Salmelu and his countrymen were bluffing: trying to cow us into ceding them the mountain by displaying their eagerness to fight. They couldn’t really want war, could they? Who, I wondered, would ever want a war?

My father asked everyone to sit then, and so we did. He called for the council to continue, and various lords and ladies spoke for or against war according to their hearts. Lord Tomavar, a long-faced man with a slow, heavy manner about him, surprised everyone by arguing that the Ishkans should be allowed to keep their part of the mountain. He said that Mesh already had enough diamonds to supply the armorers for the next ten years and that it wouldn’t hurt to give a few of them away. Other lords and knights – and many of the women – agreed with him. But there were many more, such as the fiery Lord Solaru of Mir, who did not.

Finally, after the candles had burned low in their stands and many hours had passed, my father held up his hand to call an end to the debate. He sighed deeply and said, ‘Thank you all for speaking so openly, with reason as well as passion. But now it is upon me to decide what must be done.’

As everyone waited to hear what he would say and the room fell quiet, he took another deep breath and turned toward Salmelu. ‘Do you have sons, Lord Salmelu?’ he asked him.

‘Yes, two,’ he said, cocking his head as if he couldn’t grasp the point of the question.

‘Very well, then as a father you will understand why we are too distraught to call for war at this time.’ Here he paused to look first at Asaru and then at me. ‘Two of my sons were nearly murdered today. And one of the assassins still walks free; perhaps he’s among us in this room even now.’

At this, many troubled voices rumbled out into the hall as men and women cast nervous glances at their neighbors. And then Salmelu rebuked my father, saying, ‘That’s no decision at all!’

‘It’s a decision not to decide at this time,’ my father told him. ‘There’s no need to hurry this war, if war there must be. The snows are not yet fully melted from the passes. And we must determine the extent of the diamond deposits before deciding if we will cede them or not. And an assassin remains to be caught.’

My father went on to say that the end of summer, when the roads were dry, would be soon enough for battle.

‘We’ve come here to bring you King Hadaru’s request,’ Salmelu said, staring at my father, ‘not to be put off.’

‘And we’ve given you our decision,’ my father told him.

‘That you have,’ Salmelu snapped out. ‘And it’s a dangerous decision, King Shamesh. You would do well to reflect upon just how dangerous it might prove to be.’

Truly, I thought, my father was taking a great chance. For thousands of years, the Valari had made war upon each other, but never toward the ends of conquest or the enslavement of the defeated. But if a king tried to avoid a formal war such as the Ishkans had proposed, then he ran a very real risk that a war of ravage, rapine and even annihilation might break out.

‘We live in a world with danger at every turn,’ my father told Salmelu. ‘Who has the wisdom always to see which of many dangers is the greatest or the least?’

‘So be it, then,’ Salmelu snarled out, looking away from him.

‘So be it,’ my father said.

This pronouncement answered the first of the requests asked of him that night. But no one seemed to remember that a second remained to be made. For a long time, various lords and knights looked at their empty goblets while Salmelu stared at Lord Nadhru in the shame of having failed to wrest an immediate decision from my father. I could almost feel the hundreds of hearts of the men and women in the hall beating like so many war drums. And then Count Dario finally stood to address us.

‘King Shamesh,’ he called out, ‘may I speak now?’

‘Please do – it has grown very late.’

Count Dario touched the golden caduceus shining from his tunic, then cast his voice out into the hall. ‘We do live in troubled times with dangers at every turn,’ he said. ‘Earlier today, two princes of Mesh went hunting for deer in a quiet wood only to find someone hunting them instead. And I have watched the noblest lords of Ishka and Mesh nearly come to blows over past grievances that no one can undo. Who has the wisdom to overcome this discord? Who has the power to heal old wounds and bring peace to the lands of Ea? I know of no such man now living, neither king nor Brother nor sage. But it is said that the Lightstone has this power. And that is why, with the Red Dragon uncaged once again, it must be found.’

He paused to take a deep breath and look around the room as my father nodded at him to continue.

‘And it will be found,’ he said. ‘Before the snows of next winter come, men and women will behold the Cup of Heaven as in ancient times. This is the prophecy that the great scryer, Ayondela Kirriland, gave us before she was murdered. It is why King Kiritan has sent messengers into all the free lands.’

Although it was not Salmelu’s place to speak, he looked Count Dario up and down with his dark eyes and snapped out, ‘What are the words of this prophecy, then?’

Count Dario paused as if counting the beats of his heart. I thought that he couldn’t have expected to encounter such rudeness among the Valari. And then, as all eyes turned his way and I held my breath, he told us, ‘Her words are these: “The seven brothers and sisters of the earth with the seven stones will set forth into the darkness. The Lightstone will be found, the Maitreya will come forth, and a new age will begin.”’

A new age, I thought as I gazed at the empty stand behind our table where once the Lightstone had shone. An age without killing or war.

‘My King,’ Count Dario continued, ‘has asked for all knights wishing to fulfill the prophecy to gather in Tria on the seventh day of Soldru. There he will give his blessing to all who vow to make this quest.’

‘Very well,’ my father finally said, looking at him deeply. ‘And a very noble quest this is.’

Count Dario, not knowing my father, took this as a sign of encouragement. He smiled at him and said, ‘King Kiritan has asked that all kings of the free lands send knights to Tria. He would make this request of you, King Shamesh.’

My father nodded his head respectfully then looked across the hall at Lord Harsha, Lord Tomavar and his seneschal, Lansar Raasharu. He said, ‘Very well, but before this decision is made, we would like to hear counsel. Lord Raasharu, what do you have to say?’

Lord Raasharu was a solid, cautious man renowned for his loyalty to my family. He had long, iron-gray hair, which he brushed back from his plain face as he stood and said, ‘Sire, how can we trust the prophecies of foreign scryers? The oracles of Alonia are known to be corrupt. Are we to risk the lives of knights on the words of this Ayondela Kirriland?’

As soon as he had sat back down, Lord Tomavar arose to take his place. In his slow, ponderous voice, he looked at my father and said, ‘Risk the lives of our knights? Wouldn’t it be more like throwing them away? Can we afford to do this at a time when the Ishkans are demanding our diamonds?’

Now Lord Tanu, a fierce, old warrior whose four diamonds flashed brilliantly from his ring, said simply, ‘This quest is a fool’s errand.’

His sentiment seemed to be that of most of the lords and knights in the hall. For perhaps another hour, my countrymen arose one by one to speak against King Kiritan’s request. And nearly all this time, I sat staring at the empty granite stand behind my father’s chair.

‘Enough,’ my father finally said, raising his hand. He turned to address Count Dario. ‘We said earlier that hearing King Hadaru’s request first might help us decide King Kiritan’s request. And so it has. It seems that we of Mesh are all agreed on this, at least.’

He paused a moment and turned to point at the empty stand. ‘Other kings have sent knights to seek the Lightstone – and few of these knights have ever returned to Mesh. The Lightstone is surely lost forever. And so even one knight would be too many to send on this hopeless quest.’

Count Dario listened as many lords and knights rapped their warrior’s rings against the tables in affirmation of my father’s decision. Then his face clouded with puzzlement as he half-shouted, ‘But once your people fought the Lord of Lies himself for the Lightstone! And brought it back to your mountains! I don’t understand you Valari!’

‘It may be that we don’t understand ourselves,’ my father said gravely. ‘But as Lord Tanu has said, we know a fool’s errand when we hear of one.’

All present in the hall fell silent in respect of Count Dario’s obvious disappointment. It was so quiet that I could almost hear the beating of my heart. The candles in their stands near the wall had now burned very low; this changed the angle of the rays of light cast against the great banner there so that the silver swan and the seven silver stars seemed to shimmer with a new radiance.

‘It is not a fool’s errand,’ Count Dario said proudly, ‘but the greatest undertaking of our time.’

‘If my words offended you, please accept my apologies,’ my father said.

‘So, then, you do not believe Ayondela’s prophecy?’

‘Over the ages the scryers have made thousands of prophecies, but how many have ever been fulfilled?’

‘So then, you will send no knights to Tria?’

‘No, no knights will be sent,’ my father said. ‘However, no one who truly wants to go will be kept from going.’

Although I listened to my father speak, I did not really hear him. For on the wall behind our table, scarcely ten feet from my throbbing eyes, the largest of the banner’s seven stars suddenly began gleaming brightly. It cast a stream of light straight toward the surface of the dusty stand. The silvery light touched the white granite, which seemed to glow with a soft, golden radiance. I remembered then the ancient prophecy from the Epics of the Saganom Elu: that the silver would lead to the gold.

I looked at my father as he called out to the many tables below ours: ‘Is there anyone here who would make this quest?’

All at once, the many whispering voices grew quiet, and almost everyone’s gaze pulled down toward the floor. Their lack of interest astonished me. Couldn’t they see the silver star blazing like a great beacon from the center of the banner? What was wrong with them that they were blind to the miracle occurring before their eyes?

I turned back toward the stand then, and my astonishment made my breath stop and my heart catch in my throat. For there, on top of the stand, a golden cup was pouring its light out into the hall. It sat there as clear for all to see as the goblets on the tables before them.

The Lightstone will be found, I heard my heart whisper. A new age will begin.

Ravar, who must have seen me staring at the stand as if drunk with the fire of angels, suddenly began staring, too. But all he said was, ‘What are you looking at, Val? What’s the matter?’

‘Don’t you see it?’ I whispered to him.

‘See what?’

‘The Lightstone,’ I said. ‘The golden cup, there, shining like a star.’

‘You’re drunk,’ he whispered back to me. ‘Either that or you’re dreaming.’

Now Count Dario, who also appeared not to see the Lightstone where it shimmered from its ancient stand, suddenly called out to the knights and nobles in the room: ‘Is there anyone here who will stand tonight and pledge himself to making this quest?’

While Lord Harsha scowled and traded embarrassed looks with Lord Tomavar, most of the knights present, both Ishkan and Meshian, kept staring at the cold floorstones.

‘Lord Asaru,’ Count Dario called out, turning toward my brother, ‘You are the eldest of a long and noble line. Will you at least make the journey to Tria to hear what my King has to say?’

‘No,’ Asaru told him. ‘It’s enough for me to hear what my king has said: that this is no time for hopeless quests.’

Count Dario closed his eyes for a moment as if praying for patience. Then he looked straight at Karshur as he continued his strategy of singling out the sons of Shavashar Elahad.

‘Lord Karshur,’ he said, ‘will you make this journey?’

Karshur, sitting between the Queen Mother and Jonathay, gathered in his great strength as he looked at Count Dario. And then, in a voice that sounded like an iron door closing, he said, ‘No, the Lightstone is lost or destroyed, and not even the most adamant knight will ever find it.’

As Count Dario turned to query Yarashan, to the same result, I looked out toward the far wall at the most recent of my ancestors’ portraits to have been hung there. The bright eyes of my grandfather, Elkamesh, stared back at me out of bold face bones and a mane of flowing white hair. The painter, I thought, had done well in capturing the essence of his character. I couldn’t help being moved by this man’s courage and devotion to truth. And above all, by his gift of compassion. The love that he had always held for me seemed still to live in dried pigments of black and white. If my grandfather were here in the flesh, I thought, he would understand my distress in seeing what no one else could see. If he sat beside me at my family’s table, even as the loyal Jonathay and Ravar did, he would probably see it, too.

‘Sar Mandru,’ I heard Count Dario say to the last of my brothers, ‘will you be in Tria on the seventh day of Soldru?’

‘No,’ Mandru said, gripping fiercely the sheath of his sword in his three fingers, ‘my duty lies elsewhere.’

Now Count Dario paused to take a breath as he looked at me. All of my brothers had refused him, and I, too, felt the pangs of my loyalty to my father pressing at my heart.

‘Valashu,’ he finally asked, ‘what does the last of King Shamesh’s sons say?’

I opened my mouth to tell him that I had my duty as did my brothers, but no words came out. And then, as if seized by a will that I hadn’t known I possessed, I pushed back my chair and rose to my feet. In less than a heartbeat, it seemed, I crossed the ten feet to where the Lightstone gleamed like a golden sun on its ancient stand. I reached out to grasp it with both hands. But my fingers closed upon air, and even as I blinked my eyes in disbelief, the Lightstone vanished into the near-darkness of the hall.

‘Valashu?’

Count Dario, I saw, was looking at me as if I had fallen mad. Asaru had pushed back his chair, and had turned to look at me, too.

‘Will you make the journey to Tria?’ Count Dario said to me.

Along my spine, I suddenly felt the red worms of someone’s hate gnawing at me as I had earlier. I longed to be free of my gift that left me open to such dreadful sensations. And so again I turned to stare at the stand that had held the Lightstone for so many thousands of years and for so few moments that night. But it did not reappear.

‘Valashu Elahad,’ Count Dario asked me formally, ‘will you make this quest?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered to myself, ‘I must.’

‘What? What did you say?’

I took a deep breath and tried to fight back the fear churning in my belly. I touched the lightning-bolt scar on my forehead. And then, in a voice as loud and clear as I could manage, I called out to him and all the men and women in the hall: ‘Yes, I will make the quest.’

Some say that the absence of sound is quiet and peace; but there is a silence that falls upon the world like thunder. For a moment, no one moved. Asaru, I noticed, was staring at me as if he couldn’t believe what I had said, as were Ravar and Karshur and my other brothers. In truth, everyone in the hall was staring at me, my father the most intently of all.

‘Why, Valashu?’ he finally asked me.

I felt the deeper question burning inside him like a heated iron: Why have you disobeyed me?

And I told him, ‘Because the Lightstone must be found, sir.’

My father’s eyes were hard to look at then. But despite his anger, his love for me was no less real or deep than my grandfather’s had been. And I loved him as I did the very sky and wanted very badly to please him. But there is always a greater duty, a higher love.

‘My last born,’ he suddenly called out to the nobles in the hall, ‘has said that he will journey to Tria, and so he must go. It seems that the House of Elahad will be represented in this quest, after all, if only by the youngest and most impulsive of its sons.’

He paused to rub his eyes sadly, and then turned toward Salmelu and said, ‘It would be fitting, would it not, if your house were to send a knight on this quest as well. And so we ask you, Lord Salmelu, will you journey to Tria with him?’

My father was a deep man, and very often he could be cunning. I thought that he wished to weaken the Ishkans – either that or to shame Salmelu in front of the greatest knights and nobles of our two kingdoms. But if Salmelu felt any disgrace in refusing to make the quest that the least of Shamesh’s sons had promised to undertake, he gave no sign of it. Quite the contrary. He sat among his countrymen rubbing his sharp nose as if he didn’t like the scent of my father’s intentions. And then he looked from my father to me and said, ‘No, I will not make this quest. My father has already spoken of his wishes. I would never leave my people without his permission at a time when war threatened.’

My ears burned as I looked into Salmelu’s mocking eyes. It was one of the few times in my life that I was to see my father outmaneuvered by an opponent.

‘However,’ Salmelu went on, smiling at me, ‘let it not be said that Ishka opposes this foolish quest. As our kingdom offers the shortest road to Tria, you have my promise of safe passage through it.’

‘Thank you for your graciousness, Lord Salmelu,’ I said to him, trying to keep the irony from my voice. ‘But the quest is not foolish.’

‘No? Is it not? Do you think you will ever recover what the greatest Valari knights have failed even to find?’ He pointed toward the empty stand behind me. ‘And even if by some miracle you did manage to gain the Lightstone, could you ever keep it? I think not, young Valashu.’

Even more than resenting Mesh’s keeping the Lightstone in this castle for three millennia, the Ishkans reviled us for losing it. The story was still told in low voices over fires late at night: how many centuries ago, King Julumesh had brought the Lightstone from Silvassu to Tria to give into the hands of Godavanni Hastar, the Maitreya born at the end of the Age of Law. But Godavanni had never been able to wield the Lightstone for the good of Ea. For Morjin had broken free from Castle of Damoom, and he managed to slay Godavanni and steal the Cup of Heaven once again. King Julumesh and his men had been killed trying to guard it, and the Ishkans had blamed Mesh ever since.

‘We will not speak of the keeping of that which is yet to be regained,’ my father told Salmelu. ‘It may be that the Lightstone will never be found. But we should at least honor those who attempt to find it.’

So saying he arose from his chair and walked toward me. He was a tall man, taller even than Asaru, and for all his years he stood as straight as a spruce tree.

‘Although Valashu is the wildest of my sons, there is much to honor in him tonight,’ he said. He pointed at Raldu’s body, which still lay stretched out on the cart at the center of the hall. ‘A few hours ago he fought and killed an enemy of Mesh – and this with only a knife against a mace. Possibly he saved my eldest son’s life, and Brother Maram’s as well. We believe that he should be recognized for his service to Mesh. Is there anyone here who would speak against this?’

My father had managed to save face by honoring my rebelliousness instead of chastising it, and it seemed that Salmelu hated him for that. But he sat quietly sulking in his chair all the same. Neither he nor Lord Nadhru nor any of the other Ishkans spoke against me. And, of course, none of my countrymen did either.

‘Very well,’ my father said. He reached inside the pocket of his tunic and removed a silver ring set with two large diamonds. They sparkled like the points of his crown and the five diamonds of his own ring. ‘I won’t have my son going to Tria as a warrior only. Val, come here, please.’

I stood up from my chair and went over to where he waited for me by the banner at the front of the hall. I knelt before him as he bade me. I noticed my mother watching proudly, but with great worry, too. Asaru’s eyes were gleaming. Maram looked on with a huge smile lighting up his face; one would have thought that he congratulated himself for somehow bringing about this honor that no one could have anticipated. And then, before my family and all the men and women in the hall, my father pulled the warrior’s ring from my finger and replaced it with the ring of a full knight. I sensed that he had kept this ring in his pocket for a long time, waiting for just such an occasion.

‘In the name Valoreth,’ he said, ‘we give you this ring.’

My new ring felt cold and strange on my finger. But the heat of my pride was quickly warming it up.

My father then drew his sword from its sheath. It was the marvelous Valari kalama: a razor-sharp, double-edged sword that was light enough and well-enough balanced for a strong man to swing with one hand from horseback, and long and heavy enough to cut mail when wielded with two hands. Such swords had struck terror even into the Sarni tribes and had once defeated the Great Red Dragon. The sword, it is said, is a Valari knight’s soul, and now my father brought this shimmering blade before me. With the point held upward as if to draw down the light of the stars, he pressed the flat of the blade between my eyes. The cold steel sent a thrill of joy straight through me. It made me want to polish my own inner sword and use it only to cut through the darkness that sometimes blinded me.

‘May you always see the true enemy,’ my father told me, repeating the ancient words of our people. ‘May you always have the courage to fight it.’

He suddenly took the sword away from me and lifted it high over his head. ‘Sar Valashu Elahad,’ he said to me, ‘go forth as a knight in the name of the Shining One and never forget from where you came.’

That was all there was to the ceremony of my being knighted. My father embraced me, and signaled to his guests that the feast had come to an end. Immediately Asaru and my brothers gathered close to congratulate me. Although I was glad to receive the honor which they had long since attained, I was dreadfully afraid of where my pledge to recover the Lightstone might take me.