The Lightstone

Chapter 21

With the healing of the discord between Alphanderry and Kane, our company began working as a whole. Do the fingers of one's hand fight over which holes of a flute to cover when making music? No, and neither could we dispute with one another if we were to complete our quest. That we might be nearing the end of our journey, I didn't want to doubt. Already, since leaving my father's castle, we had been on the road some fifty days. And for most of them, I had been growing more and more homesick. The coming into our company of Alphanderry, with his quick smiles and playfulness, reminded me of my brother, Jonathay. My six companions, who every day were growing closer to my heart, reminded me of my six brothers left behind in Mesh. They would have been proud, I thought, to see us riding forth into the wilds of Alonia, united in our purpose like a company of knights.

As we drew closer to the mountains, the land through which we rode rose into a series of low hills running north and south. Kane told us that we had entered the ancient realm of Viljo; some seventy miles to the southwest he said, Morjin had begun his rise to tyranny among the headwaters of the Istas River. There, in the year 2272 of the Age of Swords, he had founded the Order of the Kallimun. He had attracted six disciples to him, and then many more. Only ten years before this, he had made off with the Lightstone from the island where Aryu had hidden it; after that he used it in secret to attract converts at an astonishing rate. He persuaded many of Viljo's nobles to join him. But most took up arms against him – only to be defeated at the Battle of Bodil Fields. There, on that defiled ground, the Red Dragon had ordered the captured nobles slaughtered and had instituted the blood-drinking rites meant to lead to immortality.

'It's said that Morjin himself gained immortality from the Lightstone,' Kane told us.

'But he wouldn't suffer anyone else to behold it. So, he was afraid someone would steal it from him.'

And there had been those who almost did. A rebellion led by outcast knights had nearly succeeded in defeating him. For a time, Morjin had brought the Lightstone to the Tur-Solonu and had gone into hiding. But the scryers who dwelt at the oracle there had betrayed him; Morjin had barely escaped the Tur-Solonu fighting for his life. In revenge, four years later, when he had crushed the rebellion and captured the Tur-Solonu he had ordered the scryers to be crucified and the Tower of the Sun destroyed.

'It's said that the scryers' blood poisoned the laid about the Tur-Solonu, that nothing would ever grow there again,' Kane told us.

We had paused to eat a quick lunch on the side of a hill. From its grassy slopes, we had a good view of the mountains, now quite close to us in the west. Only a few miles away, one of the tributaries of the Istas ran down from them through the forest like a blue snake slithering through a sea of green. Just to the north was a spur of low peaks. If we followed the line of this spur, Kane said, we would find the ruins of the Tur-Solonu in the notch where it jutted out from the main body of the Blue Mountains.

'It can't be more than forty miles from here,' Kane said. 'If we ride steady, we should reach the ruins by sunset tomorrow.'

'Sunset!' Maram cried out as he drew a mug of beer from one of the casks. 'Just in time to greet the scryers' ghosts when they come out to haunt the ruins at night!'

We rode hard that day and the next into the notch in the mountains. Their wooded slopes rose to our right and left; in places bare rock shone in the sun to remind us of their bones, but they were mostly covered with trees and bushes all the way up their slopes. Like a huge funnel of granite and green, they directed us toward the notch's very apex, where the Tur-Solonu had been built late in the Age of the Mother, nearly a whole age before its destruction. I kept looking for the remnants of this tower through the canopies of the trees around us. All I saw, however, was a wild forest that might someday swallow up the very mountains themselves. If men and women had ever lived in this country, there was no sign of them, not even a fallen-in hut or gravestone to mark their lives and deaths.

And then, through a break in the trees, we saw it: the Tower rose up above the notch's floor like a great chess piece broken in half. Even in its destruction, it was still a mighty work, its remains standing at least a hundred and fifty feet high. The white stone facing us was cracked and scarred with streaks of black; in places, it seemed to have been melted and fused into great, glistening flows that hung down its curved sides like drips of wax. I wondered immediately if Morjin had used a firestone to destroy it. But the first firestones, I thought, had been created only a thousand years later in the Age of Law.

'I'm afraid that is true,' Master Juwain said as we looked out at the ancient Tower of the Sun. 'Petram Vishalan forged the first of the red gelstei in Tria in the year 1319.'

The first red gelstei that anyone knew about,' Kane muttered to us, 'Don't forger that it was Morjin, as Kadar the Wise,, who spread the relb over the Long Wall and melted it for Tulumar's hordes to overrun Alonia long before that.'

'Are you saying that the Red Dragon forged a firestone and told no one of it?'

Master Juwain in asked.

'So – how else to explain what we see?' Kane said, pointing at the tower.

'Perhaps an earthquake,' Master Juwain said. 'Perhaps the eruption of a volcano would -'

'No – it's told that Morjin destroyed the Tur-Solonu,'

Master Juwain removed his leather-bound book from his cloak and patted it reassuringly. 'But it is not told in the Saganom Elu.'

'Books!' Kane snarled out with a sudden savagery. 'Books can tell whatever the damn fools who write them believe. Most books should be burned!'

Kane stood glaring at the book that Master Juwain held in his strong, old hand. The look of horror on Master Juwain's face suggested that he might as well have called for the burning of babies.

'If the Red Dragon forged firestones during the Age of Swords,' Master Juwain said,

'then why didn't he use them in his conquest of Alonia? And later, against Aramesh at the Battle of Sarburn?'

'I didn't say that he forged firestones,' Kane said. 'Perhaps he made only one – the one that destroyed this Tower.'

For a while, he stood arguing with Master Juwain in plain sight of the Tur-Solonu.

The first red gelstei, he said, were known to be very dangerous to use: sometimes their fire turned against the one who wielded them, or the stones even exploded in their faces. Thus had Petram Vishalan died in 1320 – a fact that Kane gleefully pointed out was recorded in the Saganom Elu.

'Perhaps we'll never know what destroyed the Tower,' I said, looking at its jagged shape through the woods. 'But perhaps we should complete our journey and search there before it grows too late.'

And so we rode through the woods straight for the Tur-Solonu. The trees again obscured it from view, but soon we crested a little hill and there the trees gave way to barren ground. We came out onto a wedge-shaped desolation some three miles wide – but growing ever narrower toward the point of the notch where the spur met the main mountains. Walls of rock rose up on either side of us; the Tur-Solonu was now a great broken mass directly to the north at the middle of the notch. I wondered if the scorched-looking land about us was truly poisoned after all, for little grew there except a few yellowish grasses and some lichens among the many rocks. As we drew closer to the Tower, waves of heat seemed to emanate from the ground; Flick flared more brightly while Altaru suddenly whinnied, and I felt a strange tingling run up his trembling legs and into me. I had a sense that we were coming into a place of power and treading over earth that was both sacred and cursed.

The first ruins we came upon occupied an area about a half mile south of the tower.

Much of the blasted stone there lay upon the ground in rectangular patterns or still stood as broken walls. We guessed it to be the remains of buildings, perhaps dormitories and dining halls and other such structures that the ancient scryers must have used. We dismounted, and began walking slowly among the mounds of rattling rock.

If the Lightstone lay buried beneath it, I thought, we might dig for a hundred years before uncovering it.

'But there is no reason that Sartan Odinan would have hidden it here,' Master Juwain said. He pointed straight toward the Tur-Solonu to the north, and then due east a quarter of a mile where stood the scorched columns of what must have been the scryers' temple. 'Surely he would have hidden it there. Or perhaps inside the Tower itself.'

Atara, standing with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun, pointed at another fallen-in structure a quarter mile due west of the Tower. It stood – if that was the right word – next to a swift stream running down from the mountains. 'What is that?' she asked.

'Probably the ruins of the baths,' Kane said. 'At least, that was my guess the first time I came here.'

'You never did tell us why you came here,' Atara said, fixing her bright eyes upon him.

'No, I didn't, did I?' Kane said. He gazed at the Tower, and it seemed he might retreat into one of his deep, scowling silences. And then he said, 'When I was younger, I wanted to see the wonders of the world. So, now I've seen them.'

Maram was now walking slowly among the shattered buildings; he paused from time to time as he looked back and forth toward the tower as if measuring angles and distances with his quick brown eyes. After a while, he said, 'Well, there's still much of the ruins we haven't seen. It's growing late – why don't we begin our search before it grows too late?'

'But where should we begin?' Master Juwain asked.

'Surely in the Temple,' Liljana said. Although her face remained calm and controlled as it usually was, I knew that she was tingling inside with I a rare impatience.

'But what about the Tower?' Master Juwain asked. 'Shouldn't we climb it and see what is there?'

For a time, as the sun dropped quickly behind the mountains, the two of them argued as to where we should direct our efforts. Finally, I held up my hand and said,

'Such explorations will likely take longer than the hour of light we have left. Why don't we leave them until tomorrow?'

These were some of the hardest words I had ever spoken. If the others were trembling inside to find the Lightstone that very day, I was on fire.

'Why don't we walk around the Tower first,' I said, 'and see what we can see?'

The others reluctandy agreed to this, and so we began leading the horses in a wide spiral around the Tower. Soon we came to a circle of standing stones about four hundred yards from it. That is, some of the stones were still standing, while most were scorched and lying flat on the grass as if some impossibly strong wind had blown them over. Each stone was cut of granite, and twice the height of a tall man.

The entire area was also peppered with smaller stones, likewise melted, which we took to be the broken remains of the Tower, There were many of them, all of a white marble nowhere visible in the rock of the surrounding mountains.

'Look!' Maram said, pointing at the ground closer to the Tower. 'There are more stones over there.'

A hundred yards closer in toward the Tower, we found another circle of the larger stones half-buried in the grass. Only a few of these were still standing. They were covered with splotches of green and orange lichens that seemed to have been growing for thousands of years.

No sooner had we begun walking around these stones, than Maram descried yet a third circle of them fallen down closer still to the Tower. We moved from stone to stone around toward the east in the direction of the temple. Neither I nor any of the others was sure what we might be looking for among them if not the Lightstone itself. But their configuration was intriguing. Master Juwain believed they had been set to mark the precession of the constellations or some other astrological event.

Liljana, however, questioned this. With one of her mysterious smiles that hid more than it revealed, she said, 'The ancient scryers, I think, cared more about the earth than they did the stars.'

Maram, who was in no mood for learned disputes, continued leading the way around the circle. Soon we found ourselves to the north of the Tur-Solonu, directly along the line leading toward the apex of the notch. Without warning, Maram began walking toward the second circle as he studied the fallen stones and the scorch marks on the few standing ones with great care. When he reached the wide ring of stones, he stopped to point at a huge stone overturned and sunken into the ground.

It lay by itself exactly at the midpoint between the second and third circles. It was thrice as long as any of the other stones and must have once stood nearly forty feet high.

'Look there's something about this stone!' he said. Again, he stood measuring distances with his eyes. He was breathing hard now, and his face was flushed.

Inside, he was all pulsing blood and pure, sweet fire. 'This is the place – I know it is!'

So saying, he hurried over to one of the packhorses and unslung the axe that it carried. With the axe in his hands and a wild gleam in his eyes, he rushed back to the end of the great stone and there fell upon it with a fury of motion most unlike him.

'Hold now! What are you doing?' Kane yelled at him. He rushed over and grabbed Maram from behind. 'You fat fool – that's good steel you're mining!'

Maram managed one last swipe with the axe before Kane's grip tightened around him. By then it was too late: the axe's edge was already notched and splintered from chopping into cold, hard stone.

'Let me go!' Maram shouted, kicking at the ground like a maddened bull, 'Let me go, I said!'

And then the impossible happened: he broke free from Kane's mighty armlock. He raised the axe above his head, and I was afraid he might use it to brain the astonished Kane.

It's here!' Maram shouted. 'A couple more good blows ought to free it!'

'What is here?' Kane growled at him.

'The gelstei,' Maram said. 'The firestone. Can't you see that when this stone was still standing, the Red Dragon must have mounted the red gelstei on top of it to bum down the Tower?'

Suddenly, we all did see this. Looking south toward the Tur-Solonu and all the other structures and stones in the notch, we could all see to our minds the blasts of fire that must have once erupted from this spot.

'Well, even if you're right,' Kane said to him, 'why should you think the firestone is still here?'.

'How do I know my heart is here?' Maram said, thumping the flat of the axe against his ches. t Then he pointed at the end of the: stone, which was all bubbled and fused as if it had once been touched by a great heat. 'It is here. Can't you see it must have melted itself into the stone?'

Again, he raised up the axe, and again Kane called to him, 'Hold, now! If you must have at it, don't ruin our axe beyond all repair.'

'What should I use then – my teeth?'

Kane strode over to the second packhorse. where he found a hammer and one of the iron stakes we used to picket the horses. He gave them to Maram and said, 'Here use these.'

With his new tools, Maram set to work, panting heavily as he hammered the stake's iron point against the stone, little gray chips flew into the air as iron rang against iron; dust exploded upward and powdered Maram all over. Twice, he missed his mark, and the hammer's edge bloodied his knuckles. But he made no complaint hammering now with a rare purpose that I had seen in him only in his pursuit of women.

We all moved in close to see what this furious work might uncover. But it was growing dark, and Maram was bent close to the stone, using his large body for leverage. So that we wouldn't be blinded by the flying stone chips – as we were afraid Maram might be – we stepped back to give him more room to work and wait for him either to give up or announce that he had found the fabled firestone,

'Ha – look at him!' Kane said as he pointed at Maram. 'A starving man wouldn't work so hard digging up potatoes.'

All at once, with a last swing of the hammer and a great cry, Maram freed something from the rock. Then he held up a great crystal about a foot long and as red as blood.

It was six-sided, like the cells of a honeycomb, and pointed at either end. It looked much like an overgrown ruby – but we all knew that it must be a firestone.

'So,' Kane said, staring at it. 'So.'

'It is one of the tuaoi stones,' Master Juwain said as he gazed at it in wonder. 'It would seem that the Lord of Lies really did make a red gelstei.'

Alphanderry, ducking as Maram carelessly swung the point of the crystal in his direction, laughed out 'Hoy, don't point that at me!'

I stood beneath the night's first stars and watched as Flick appeared and described a fiery spiral along the length of the gelstei. With such a crystal I thought Morjin had once burned Valari warriors even as he had destroyed the Tur-Solonu.

'The seven brothers and sisters of the earth,' Liljana said quietly. 'The seven brothers and sisters with the seven stones will set forth into the darkness.'

The words of Ayonldela Kirriland's prophecy hung in the falling darkness like the stars themselves. Seven gelstei Ayondela had spoken of, and now we had three: Master Juwain's varstei, Kane's black stone and a red crystal that might burn down even mountains.

'Prophecies,' Kane muttered. 'Who could ever know what hasn't yet happened? Why should we believe the words of this dead scryer?'

Despite his bitterness the light in his eyes told me that he desperately wanted to betieve them.

'Is this, he asked, pointing at the firestone, 'the reason we've jour-neyed half the way across Ea to a dead oracle?'

His deep voice rolled one as if he were speaking his doubts to the wind. And it seemed that the wind answered him. A different voice deeper in its purity if not tone, poured down the mountain slope to the west and floated across the field of stones.

'And who is it who has journeyed half the way across Ea to tell us that our oracle is dead?'

We all whirled about to see six white shapes appear in the darkness from behind the standing stones. Kane and I whipped free our swords even as Maram shouted,

'Ghosts! this place is haunted with ghosts!'

His eyes went wide, and he held out his crystal in front of him as he might a short sword.

Then the 'ghosts' began moving toward us. In the twilight they seemed almost to float over the grass. Soon we saw that they were women, each with long hair of varying color; they each wore plain white robes that gleamed faintly: the robes, I saw, of scryers.

'Who are you?' their leader said again to Kane. She was a tall woman with dark hair and a long, sad face. 'What are your names?'

'Scryers,' Kane spat out 'If you're scryers, you tell me, eh?'

Kane's rudeness appalled me, and I quickly stepped forward and said, 'My name is Valashu Elahad. And these are my companions.'

I presented each of my friends in turn. When I came to Kane, he practically cut me off and asked the scryer, 'So, what is your name, then?'

'I'm called Mithuna,' she said. She turned to the five women who accompanied her and said. 'And this is Ayanna, Jora, Twi, Tiras and Songljian'

All of us, even Kane, bowed to the women one by one. And then Mithuna looked at Kane with her dark eyes and said, 'As you can see. the oracle of the Tur Solonu is not dead,'

'Ha – I see a broken towers and scattered stones,' Kane said. 'And six women dressed up in white robes.' .'It's said that men and women see what they want to see,' Mithuna told him. 'Which is why they don't truly see.'

'Scryer talk,' Kane muttered. 'So it is with all the oracles now.'

'We speak as we speak,' Mithuna said. 'And you hear what you will hear.'

'Once,' Kane said, 'this oracle spoke the wisdom of the stars.'

'And you doubt that it still speaks this wisdom. So it is that the wind must blow; so the sun must rise and fall and the ages pass.'

She told us then what had happened in this very place in an age long past. After Morjin had destroyed the Tower of the Sun with the very crystal that Maram held in his hands, he had ordered the scryers who served the oracle to be crucified. But a few of them had eluded Morjin's murderous priests and had escaped into the surrounding mountains. There they had built a refuge in secret. And when Morjin and his men had finally abandoned the Tur-Solonu, the scryers had returned to the ruins to stand beneath the stars. The scryers grew old and died as all must do, but as the years passed, others had joined them. Thus had Mithuna's predecessors established a true and secret oracle in the ruins of the Tur-Solonu. And so, century after century, age after age, scryers from across Ea had come to this sacred site to seek their visions and listen for the voices of the Galadin on the stellar winds.

'But how would they know to come here?' I asked her.

'How did you know to come, Valashu Elahad?'

A savage look in Kane's eyes warned me to say nothing of our quest, and so for the moment I kept my silence.

'Surely,' she said, 'you came because you were called.'

I closed my eyes and listened to my heart beating strongly. Deeper, beneath my feet, the very earth seemed to beat like a great drum calling men to war.

'There is something about this place,' I said as I looked at her.

'Something, indeed,' she said. 'There is no other like it in all Ea.'

Here, she said, beneath the ground upon which we stood, the fires of the earth whirled in patterns that burned away time. Nowhere else in the world did the telluric currents well so deeply and connect the past to the future.

'This is why the standing stones were set into the ground,' she told us. 'This is why the Tur-Solonu was built, to draw up the fires from the earth.'

As Mithuna told of this, Master Juwain rubbed his bald head thought-fully, then said,

'The Brotherhoods have suspected for a long time that there was a great earth chakra in the Blue Mountains. We should have sent someone to search it out long ago.'

'And now they have sent you,' Mithuna said. 'But I'm sorry to tell you that only scryers ever see visions here. Many are called but few are chosen.'

Here she smiled at Atara and her eyes were like windows to other worlds. 'Thank you for making the journey. We can only hope that it is the One who has sent you to us.'

Atara looked at me, and I looked at her, and then to Mithuna she said, 'But I'm no scryer!' 'Aren't you?'

'No, I'm a warrior of the Manslayer Society! I'm Atara Ars Narmada daughter of King-'

'It's all right,' Mithuna said, reaching out to grasp Atara's hand. 'Few know who they really are.'

A wild look flashed across Atara's face then. Her eyes fell upon me for reassurance as she said, 'I saw the spider spinning her web, and there were the gray men, too, but that must have all been chance. It must have been, mustn't it?'

I said nothing as I looked for the diamonds of her eyes in the failing light.

'And even if it wasn't chance,' she went on, 'I've seen so very little. That doesn't make me a scryer, does it?'

Maram, who was laughing softly to himself as he gripped his red crystal, said to her,

'Now I understand how you always win at dice.' 'But I'm just lucky!' Atara protested.

Mithuna stroked Atara's hand and told her, 'You have seen so very little of what there is to see. If you had been trained… Oh, dear child, you've sacrificed much to forsake such training.'

Atara withdrew her hand and then looked at it as if trying to understand her fate from its many lines.

'It's dangerous to look into the future without being trained,' Mithuna said.

'Dangerous to look at all And that is why you've come to us, so that we can help you.'

'No,' Atara said, 'I came here to look for the Lightstone. We all did.'

She touched the gold medallion that King Kiritan had given her; she spoke of the great quest upon which many knights had set out. Then she nodded toward Alphanderry and told Mithuna what his dead friend had heard in the Singing Caves.

'The lightstone,' Mithuna said. She traded quick looks with Ayanna, who had white hair and a deeply lined face, and was the oldest of the scryers. 'Always the Lightstone.'

Here Kane smiled savagely and said, 'Ha – you didn't see that eh?

'No scryer has ever seen the Lightstone,' she said, staring back at him. 'At least, not in our visions.'

'But why not?' Atara asked her.

Now Mithuna favored the young and almond-eyed Songlian with one of her faraway gazes before turning back to Atara. 'Because, dear child, all that is or ever will be flows out of a single point in time, and there the Lightstone always is. To look there is like looking at the sun.'

'Paradoxes, mysteries,' Kane spat out. 'You scryers make a mystery of everything.'

'No, it is not we who have made things so,' Mithuna reminded him.

In the light given off by Flick's twinkling form, Kane's face filled with both resentment and longing.

'The Singing Caves,' Alphanderry said to Mithuna, 'spoke these words: "If you would know where the Gelstei was hidden, go to the Blue Mountains and seek in the Tower of the Sun."

'The Singing Caves always speak the truth,' Mithuna said. She pointed at Maram's red crystal and smiled. 'There is the gelstei.'

'Hoy, there it is,' Alphanderry agreed. 'But it is not the Gelstei.'

'It is difficult, isn't it, to know of which gelstei the Caves spoke?'

'But when one speaks of the Gelstei, what is always meant is the Lightstone.'

'Always?'

Kane, who was growing angrier by the moment, scowled as he looked about the starlit ruins and the dark mountains that towered above us.

'Are you saying that the Lightstone wasn't hidden here?' I asked.

'No,' Mithuna said, shaking her head, 'I wouldn't say that. Morjin hid it here long ago.'

'But it is not hidden here now?'

'No, I wouldn't say that either,' she said mysteriously. 'The Lightstone still is here.

But if you truly want to recover it and hold it in your hands, you'll have to journey somewhere else.'

'So,' Kane muttered to the wind. 'Scryers.'

But I wasn't about to give up so easily. I said to Mithuna, 'So the Lightstone is here, somewhere, somehow – but it isn't here, as well?'

'Is the Tur-Solonu here?' she asked pointing at the broken tower above us. 'Are you here, Valashu Elahad? What would a scryer have said to this ten thousand years ago? What would she say ten thousand years hence?'

I took a deep breath as I asked, 'If the Lightstone is here, have you seen it, with your eyes?'

'No one sees the Lightstone with just the eyes,' Mithuna said. 'The eyes won't hold it anymore than hands will light.'

'But how do you know it isn't somewhere among these ruins, then?

'Because,' she said, 'although I cannot see where it is, I can see where it is not.'

'But I thought you said it was everywhere.'

'That is true – it is everywhere and nowhere' I was beginning to see why Kane hated scryers. Was Mithuna I wondered, willfully confounding us? Talking with her was like trying to eat the wind.

'We've come a very long way, Mistress Mithuna, I told her. 'A great deal may depend on our finding the Lightstone. Would you mind if we searched the ruins for it?'

Mithuna's face fell sad; almost as if speaking to herself she said, 'Should I mind the rising of tomorrow's sun? What should be shall be.'

She turned to Atara and said, 'It's growing late – will you sit with us tonight beneath the stars?'

Atara brushed back the hair from her eyes and stood up straight like the warrior she was. She said, 'Are you inviting my friends as well?'

'I'm sorry,' Mithuna said, 'but only scryers may see our refuge.'

'Do you mean, see with the eyes or… see?'

This made Mithuna smile, and she said, 'You see, you really are a scryer.'

She turned as if to make ready to leave, which prompted Maram to hold up his hand and say, 'No, don't go just yet! We've brandy and beer and Ea's finest minstrel to help us appreciate it. Won't you share this with us?'

He held the crystal carelessly so that it stuck straight out from his body. All his attention was turned on Mithuna, and I knew that he wanted to share much more with her than beer.

Mithuna looked at him a long time, then said, 'It was foretold that a man in red would find the firestone that destroyed the Tur-Solonu. I, myself, saw you in one of my visions.'

'You saw me, did you?' Maram said. His smile suggested that he had seen her in his dreams. 'And what did you see?'

'What do you mean? I saw you with the firestone.'

'And is that all?'

'Should there be more?' Mithuna asked as her eyes brightened.

'Oh, yes, indeed there should be,' Maram said as he gripped his crystal more tightly.

'Did you see my heart filling up with the fire of the sun? Did you see this fire pouring out of the gelstei?'

'I saw it melting the hardest rock,' she said with a smile.

'Did you? And did you, ah, see the earth shake, volcanoes erupting?'

'It is said that the firestones of old caused such cataclysms,' Mithuna admitted.

'They were very powerful,'

'Powerful, yes,' Maram said, holding his crystal pointing almost straight up. 'I suspect none of us knows just how powerful.'

'That is a dangerous thing,' Mithuna said, stretching her finger toward the firestone.'We do know that.'

'Yes, but surely one can learn how to use it.' 'Perhaps some can. But can you?'

'Do you doubt me?' Maram said with a hurt look. 'Perhaps I should leave it where I found it?'

'No, surely it is yours to do with as you will.'

'Should I give it to you, then, Mistress Mithuna?'

'And what would I do with a firestone?'

'I wish I could, ah, give you something.'

Mithuna's face suddenly fell serious as if the whole weight of the world were pulling at it. In a sad voice, she said, 'Then give me your promise that you'll learn to use this stone wisely.'

'I do promise you that,' Maram said, glancing at the broken Tur-Solonu. Then his eyes covered her as he smiled. 'More wisely than did the Red Dragon.'

'Don't joke about such things,' she told him. Now she pointed fiercely at the firestone. 'You should know that a doom was laid upon this crystal: that it would bring Morjin's undoing. That is why he left it here.'

We all looked at the firestone more closely. And then Kane asked, 'And who laid this doom?'

'Her name was Rebekah Lorus,' Mithuna said. 'She was mistress of the murdered scryers.'

'Now that would be a strange justice,' Kane said, 'if the very gelstei that Morjin made unmade him.'

'But he didn't make it,' Mithuna said.

'What? Didn't make it, eh? Then who did?'

'A man named Kaspar Saranom. He was one of Morjin's priests.'

'And how do you know this?'

'Kaspar destroyed the Tur-Solonu at Morjin's command. The scryers who came before us have told of this for six thousand years.'

She went on to say that Morjin had never learned the art of mak-ing the red gelstei, for after nearly being killed creating the relb, he had grown deathly afraid of all such crystals. And so he had left their making to others. Kaspar Saranom had been the first on Ea to forge a firestone. That he had forged only one, Mithuna seemed certain.

'After the Tower was destroyed,' Mithuna said, 'Morjin wanted Kaspar to burn down every town from here to Tria. But Kaspar refused. For his defiance, Morjin had him crucified along with the scryers.'

Here Master Juwain came forward and said, 'This is news indeed. Then Kaspar Saranorn, not Petram, was the first to have made the red gelstei. His name will be remembered.'

'Ha,' Kane said, 'it's greater news that Morjin didn't know the art of making the flrestones. We can hope he never learned it.'

'Then this stone,'Master Juwain said, daring to touch Maram's crystal, 'would be the first firestone ever made.'

'. So – and we can hope it's the last remaining earth.'

We all looked at the firestone in a new light as Maram held it out and marveled at it.

'it's growing late,' Mithuna said again. 'Will you come with us, Atara?'

'No,' Atara said,'I'll stay with my friends.'

'Then we'll return tomorrow,' Mithuna said, 'Good night.' And with that, she gathered her sister scryers around her, lad they walked off into the deep shadows of the mountains.

'A beautiful woman,' Maram said to me after she was gone. 'How long do you think it's been since she did more than, ah, look at a man?'

'She's a scryer of an oracle,' I told him. 'Therefore she must have taken vows of celibacy.'

'Well, so have I.'

'Ha!' Kane said, stepping up to him. 'You might as well try to love this crystal as a scryer!'

Maram look down at the firestone in his hand and muttered, 'Ah, well perhaps I will.'

We camped that night by the stream where the ancient scryers had built their baths.

It was a long, dark night of dreams and brilliant stars. The wind blew unceasingly down from the mountains to the north. Altaru and the other horses were restless, more than once whinnying and pulling at their picket stakes. In the dark notch of the Tur-Soloru, the rains gleamed faintly in the starlight like bleached and broken bones defying time.

Atara, lying on top of the inconstant earth with its whirling and numinous fires, sweated and turned in a sleep that wasn't quite sleep. Her murmurs and cries kept me awake most of the night Nightmares I had suffered through with her before as she had with me. But this was something different. I felt something vast and bottomless as the sea pulling her down into its onstreaming currents. There, in the turbid darkness, Atara screamed silently in fascination and fear, and I wanted to scream, too.

We were all grateful the next day for the rising of the sun. When I asked Atara what she had seen in her sleep, she looked at me strangely as an uncharacteristic coldness came over her. Then she told me, 'If I had been blind from birth and asked you to describe the color of the sky to me, what would you say?'

I looked above the mountains, with their silvery rocks and emerald trees sparkling in the sun. There the sky was a blue dome growing bluer by the moment.

'I would say that it is the deepest of colors, the softest and the kindest, too. In the blue of morning, we find ourselves soaring with hope; in the blue of night, with infinite possibilities. In its opening out onto everything, we remember who we really are.'

'Perhaps you should have been a minstrel instead of a warrior,' she said with a wan smile. 'I'm sure I can't do as well.'

'Why don't you try?'

'All right, then,' she said. The sleeplessness that haunted her face convinced me that she had seen something much worse than ghosts. 'You spoke of remembrance, but who are we really? Infinite possibilities, yes, but only one can ever be. The one that shall be is the one that should be. But all of them are, always, and we are… so delicate. Like flowers, Val. Which is the one you will pick for me and tell me that you love me? And which is the one that can stand beneath the light of the sun?'

Already, I thought, she was beginning to talk like a scryer, and I didn't like it. To bring her back to the world of wind and grass and standing stones gleaming red beneath the rising sun, I suggested eating some of the delicious breakfast that Liljana was cooking, and this we did.

After that, we climbed the cracked stone steps of the Tur-Solonu to look for the Lightstone. It was cool and dark inside that broken tower, and except for the faint radiance streaming off Flick's spinning form, we wouldn't have been able to see very much. As it was, there was nothing much to see – nothing more interesting than a few cobwebs and the bones of some poor beast who had dragged itself inside the door to die there in peace. The Tower, much to our disappointment, held no rooms that might be explored, for it was only a series of steps winding up inside a tube of marble. The ancient scryers had used it only as means of standing closer to the stars.

There was nowhere in its stark interior that Sartan Odinan could have hidden a golden cup.

'Perhaps there are secret recesses,' Maram said as he tapped the wall with the pommel of his sword. We were all gathered in the stairwell about seventy feet up inside the Tower. The outer wall curved dark and smooth around us, while the inner wall was like a pillar rising up as the Tower's core. 'Perhaps one of the stones is loose, and there Sartan hid the Lightstone.'

But try as we might, we could find no loose stone in the walls or steps of the well-made Tur-Solonu. We tested every one of them all the way to the top of the Tower, which was broken and open to the sun high above the mountains.

It's not here,' I said, looking out over the standing stones below us. To the east the ruins of the temple gleamed white in the harsh light. 'Sartan could not have hidden it here.'

Maram joined me upon the topmost unbroken step to stare out above the cracked and melted outer wall. He pointed at the temple's ruins below us and said, 'Perhaps there, then.'

'No, it won't be there,' I said. The taste of disappointment, I thought, was as bitter as the molds growing across the exposed stones. 'The words that Ventakil heard in the Caves told us to seek in the Tower of the Sun.'

'But shouldn't we at least go and see?' Maram asked.

'Of course we will,' I said. 'What else can we do?'

After breaking to eat a simple lunch of bread and cheese that Mithuna and the other scryers brought us, we spent the whole afternoon picking among the temple's ruins.

If the Tower had suggested no possible places where a plain, golden cup could have been hidden, the scattered stones of the temple provided too many. Many sections of the walls had cracked and fallen down into great heaps of rubble; the Lightstone might have been buried in any one of them. During the centuries since Sartan had brought the Lightstone out of Argattha, wind had driven grit and soil into the cracks between the fallen stones, in some places, almost covering them altogether. And mow grass grew in the soil, making a patchwork of green seams and turf among the many irregular-shaped mounds. Excavating any one of them could take many days, and there were many, many such mounds.

'Oh, my Lord, it's hopeless,' Maram said to me as we gathered near one of the temple's few standing pillars. The six scryers, with Mithuna at their center, stood off a few paces near a great slab of stone. 'What shall we do?'

Now Master Juwain and Liljana looked toward me with discourage-ment coloring their faces, while Alphanderry sat on a stone merrily munching on a handful of nuts.

Kane stood staring at one of the mounds as if his eyes were firestones that might burn open the very ground. And Atara, next to me, was staring out into the nothingness of the deep blue sky.

'It's not hopeless,' I said to Maram. 'It can't be hopeless.'

Maram swept his hand out toward the remains of the temple and said, 'Shall we all take up shovels and start digging, then?'

'If all else fails, yes.'

'We'd dig for a hundred years.'

'Better that,' I said, 'than giving up.'

At the prospect of so much work, Maram groaned and Alphanderry ate another nut Then Maram pointed his red crystal at one of the mounds and said, 'Perhaps I could melt the rock with this until the Lightstone was uncovered.'

'But wouldn't you melt it along with the rock?' Alphanderry asked.

'No,' Maram told him. 'It's said that nothing can harm the Lightstone in any way. It's said that even diamond won't scratch it.'

'But what if the sayings are wrong?'

Maram stared across the ruins of the temple as if realizing the folly of what he had suggested. And then Mithuna stepped forward and said to Atara, 'It would seem that your quest here has ended.'

Atara suddenly broke off staring at the sky. To Mithuna, she said, 'But how can it be since we haven't found what we came here to find?'

'Perhaps you have, Atara,' Mithuna said, smiling at her. 'Perhaps you should remain here with us.'

Atara looked at Mithuna for a long time, and I was afraid that she might accept her invitation. Our quest, at that moment, certainly seemed hopeless. Freely we had all joined together to seek the Lightstone, and freely any of us might leave the company

– so we had agreed before setting out from Tria.

And then Atara turned toward me as her bright blue eyes filled with tears and a deeper thing. It was all warm and shimmering and more adamantine than diamond.

'No,' Atara finally said to Mithuna, 'I'll remain with my friends.'

'What should be shall be,' Mithuna said 'In the end, we choose our futures.'

Atara looked over at the Tur-Solonu where it rose up a few hundred yards away. Her eyes grew dry and clear as diamonds and gleamed with a wild light. She pointed at it and said, 'Inside there is the future. I should have seen that all along.'

Without another word she began walking quickly toward the Tower, and we all followed her. It didn't take very long for us to wind our way among the standing stones and those lying down in the grass.

'You were right,' Atara said to Mithuna as we approached the Tower's door. 'The Lightstone is here.'

She stepped inside the door and so did I. And almost immediately I saw what I had missed before. On the Tower's inner wall, high up to the left, ran a jagged crack almost a foot wide. And wedged into it was a plain golden cup shining with a beautiful light.

'Atara!' I cried out. 'Atara, look!'

But the crack was high enough above the dusty floor that only a tall man could look into it. Or reach into it with arm and hand. This I now did, scraping the skin off my knuckles as I jammed my hand into the rock to feel for the cup. But even though I turned and twisted about and ran my whole arm up and down the crack my fingers dosed around nothing but cold marble and air.

'What are you doing?' Atara asked, coming over to my side. Kane, Maram and Liljana crowded inside the doorway. The others, along with the scryers, stared at me from outside to see if I had fallen mad.

A moment later, I withdrew my bleeding hand and stood back from the wall so that I could better see inside the crack. But the golden cup was gone.

'It was here!' I said. 'The Lightstone was here!'

Again, I thrust my arm into the crack, but it was as empty as the space between the stars.

'I don't understand!' I half-shouted, looking into the crack again.

Mithuna stepped inside the doorway then and touched my shoulder. She said,

'Scryers often see things that others do not.'

'But they don't see things that are not do they?'

'That's true,'she said.

'Besides, I'm no scryer.'

'No, you're not,' she said. Her face drew out long and sad as she admitted, 'I don't understand this either.'

Atara took my bloody hand in hers as she used her other to touch the bottom of the crack. She said, 'The lightstone isn't here, Val.' 'Where is it then?'

She let go of my hand suddenly as she pointed toward the stairs and said, 'It's there.'

Without warning, she broke away from me and began climbing the stairs. In truth, she practically bounded up them three at a time. There was nothing to do except follow her.

And so we all raced up the winding stairs, Mithuna and Kane following me, while Maram puffed heavily behind him. Liljana, Alphanderry and Master Juwain were slower to begin their ascent but climbed the more quickly to catch up. And the five scryers waited for us outside.

When Atara reached the broken opening that was now the top of the Tower, she paused on the highest step to gasp for air. I stood just below her, gasping too. For there, poised on the melted marble of the outer wall, was the Lightstone.

'Atara,' I said as before, 'look!'

I lunged forward to grasp it before it could disappear, but it sud-denly winked into nothingness before my hands could close around it.

'Atara, please come down!' Mithuna suddenly called. She was stand-ing with Kane and Maram just below me. In the narrow space of the stairwell, there was room for three people on any step, but no more. Now Master Juwain, Liljana and Alphanderry crowded in behind Maram and looked up at Atara.

'The Singing Caves did speak the truth,' Atara said. She carelessly rested her hand against the Tower's broken outer wall as she looked out at the mountains and sky.

"If you would know where the Gelstei was hidden," Alphanderry reminded us, "go to the Blue Mountains and seek in the Tower of the Sun."

'If we would know,' Atara said. She stood with the wind whipping her hair about her face. 'If I would.'

She suddenly held her hands out toward the earth as she lifted back her head and gazed straight up into the sky. If her third eye was a door, she flung it wide open then. I felt her do this. And so, it seemed, did Mithuna.

'No, Atara – you don't know what you're doing!' Mithuna said.

But Atara was a warrior and as wild as the wind. She opened herself utterly to the invisible fires that streamed up through the Tur-Solonu. And then she let out a soft cry as her eyes rolled back into her head. She lost her balance and teetered at the edge of the Tower's wall. I moved quickly then to grab her back and clasp her to me; if I hadn't, she would have fallen to her death.

'Take her down from here!' Mithuna told me. 'Please!'

I lifted Atara in my arms and followed the others down through the Tower. Atara's eyes were now staring out at nothing, and she was breathing raggedly. I lost count of the Tower's steps, but there were many of them. By the time we reached the bottom, my arms were trembling with the weight of her body.

'Bring her over there!' Mithuna said, pointing at a standing stone in the direction of the temple. I and the others followed her a hundred yards over the swishing grass, where we sat Atara back against the huge stone.

'Atara!' Mithuna said, as she knelt beside her.

I knelt by her other side and tried to call her back to the world even as I had after she had eaten the timana. But the trance into which she had fallen, it seemed, was too deep.

Now Mithuna reached into the pocket of her robe and removed a clear, crystalline ball the size of a large apple. She pressed it into Atara's hands. The crystal, which sparkled like a diamond, caught the light ot the sun and cast its brilliant colors into Atara's eyes.

'What's the matter with her?' Maram asked. He stood with Kane and the others peering above the half-circle that the scryers made around Atara. 'Will she be all right?'

'Quiet now!' Kane barked at him. 'Quiet, I say!'

At that moment, Flick appeared above Atara's head and spun about with a slowness that I took to be concern.

And then little by little, as all our breaths came and went like the whooshing of the wind, the light returned to Atara's eyes. She sat staring deep into the crystal.

'What is that?' Maram whispered to Master Juwain as he pointed at the crystal 'A scryer's sphere?'

'A scryer's sphere indeed,' Master Juwain whispered back. 'Usually they're made of quartz – and more rarely, diamond.'

'That's no diamond, I think,' Liljana said as she pressed closer to look at the sphere.

Something inside her seemed to be sniffing at it as she might a glass of wine.

Just then a shudder ran through Atara's body as her eyes blinked and she looked away from the crystal She turned toward Mithuna and said, 'Thank you.'

She looked at me for a long moment and smiled before turning her gaze on Kane, Maram, Liljana, Alphanderry and Master Juwain.

'That's a kristei, isn't it?' Liljana said to Mithuna as she pointed at the crystal. 'A white gelstei.'

'It is a kristei,' Mithuna said. 'It was brought here long ago and has been passed down among us from hand to hand.'

The white gelstei, I remembered, were the stones of seeing. Through the clarity of such crystals, a server might apprehend things far away in space or time. It was said that during the Age of Law, each scryer had her own kristei. But now, only a very few did.

'Looking into the future,' Mithuna explained, 'is like gazing up into a tree that grows out toward the stars and has no end. The possibilities are infinite. And so it is easy to become lost in the branches of such visions. The kristei helps a scryer find the branch she is seeking. And find her way back to the earth.'

That was as clear an explanation of scrying as I was ever to hear from a scryer.

Everyone looked at Atara then as I asked her, 'What did you see?'

'The Sea People,' she told me. 'Wherever I looked for the Lightstone, I saw them.'

'Do they have the Lightstone, then?'

'That's hard to say. I couldn't see that.'

'Do you think they might know where it is, then?'

'Perhaps,' she said. 'I only know that all the paths I could find led toward them.'

'Yes, but led where?'

Atara didn't know. The paths to the future, she said, were not like those that led through the lands of Ea. Although she'd had a clear vision of the Sea People, she couldn't tell us where we might find them.

'I'm afraid that no one knows anymore where the Sea People live,' Master Juwain said.

'We know,' Mithuna said. 'You'll find them at the Bay of Whales.'

We all looked at her as Maram let loose a long groan. The Bay of Whales lay at the edge of the Great Northern Ocean at least a hundred miles northwest across the great forest known as the Vardaloon.

'Are you sure they're there?' Maram asked Mithuna. 'Have you seen them?'

'Songlian has,' Mithuna said. She nodded at the shy young woman who smiled at us in affirmation of past visions. 'We've known about the Sea People for some time.'

Atara turned toward me and smiled, and I traded a knowing look with Kane. And Maram groaned again, louder this time, and said, 'Oh, no, my friends, please don't tell me that you're thinking of journeying to this Bay of Whales!'

We were thinking exactly that. It now seemed certain that we wouldn't find the Lightstone at the Tur-Solonu.

'But I'd hoped we would end our quest here!' Maram said. 'We can't just go tramping all over Ea!'

'Not all over Ea,' I said. 'Only a few more miles.'

We were all disappointed that we had gained nothing more in the Tower than a vision as to where the Lightstone might still be found. But none of us – not even Maram – was ready to break his vows and abandon the quest so soon. And so we held a quick council and decided to set out for the Bay of Whales the next day.

'I believe that would be your wisest course,' Mithuna told us.

Atara, who had now gained the strength to stand up, handed the crystal sphere back to her and said, 'Thank you for lending me this.'

Mithuna reached out her hands, and squeezed Atara's fingers the more tightly around the sphere. She said, 'But, dear child, this is our gift to you. If you really hope to find the Cup of Heaven, you'll need this more than I.'

The sunlight glazing off the crystal was so bright that it dazzled all of our eyes. For a moment, it seemed that Atara might disappear through its sparkling surface. And then she said, 'No, this is too much.'

'Please take it,' Mithuna insisted. 'It's time the kristei passed on.'

Atara continued staring at the stone. At last she said. 'Thank you.'

This made Mithuna smile. She cast a long, sad look at the broken Tower and told us. 'It's said that when the Lightstone is found, the kristei will come into its true power, which is not merely to see the future but to create it. Then the Tur-Solonu will be raised up again. Then a new age will begin: the Age of Light we have all seen and yet feared could never come in be.'

With that, she leaned forward and kissed Atara upon the forehead. She told us that she and the other scryers would come to say goodbye to us the next morning, and then she walked off with them into the mountains.

For a while as the sun dropped down toward their rounded peaks, we all stood staring at Atara's crystal sphere. There I saw the reflection of the ruined Tower. But there, too in the shimmering substance of the white gelstei, in my deepest dreams, flickered the form of the Tower as it had once been and might be again: tall and straight and standing like an unbroken pillar beneath the brilliant stars.