The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One

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.