The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One

‘What about that?’ Maram asked, pointing at my side where the arrow had touched me.

‘Why, it’s only a scratch,’ Asaru said. He soaked a cloth with some of the brandy that he carried in a wineskin, and then swabbed it over my skin.

I looked down at my throbbing side. To call the wound left by the arrow a scratch was to exaggerate its seriousness. Truly, no more than the faintest featherstroke of a single red line marked the place where the arrow had nicked the skin. But I could still feel the poison working in my veins.

‘It’s cold,’ I whispered. ‘Everywhere, cold.’

Now Asaru examined the arrow, which was fletched with raven feathers and tipped with a razor-sharp steel head like any common hunting arrow. But the steel, I saw, was enameled with some dark, blue substance. Asaru’s eyes flashed with anger as he showed it to Maram.

He said, They tried to kill me with a poison arrow.’

I blinked my eyes at the cold crushing my skull. But I said nothing against my brother’s prideful assumption that the arrow had been meant for him and not me.

‘Do you think it was the Ishkans?’ Maram asked.

Asaru pointed at the assassin’s body and said, That’s no Ishkan.’

‘Perhaps they hired him.’

They must have,’ Asaru said.

‘Oh, no,’ I murmured. ‘No, no, no.’

Not even the Ishkans, I thought, would ever kill a man with poison. Or would they?

Asaru quickly, but with great care, wrapped my torn and tainted jacket and shirt around the arrow’s head to protect it from the falling rain. Then he took off his cloak and put it on me.

‘Is that better?’ he asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said, lying to him despite what I had been taught. ‘Much better.’

Although he smiled down at me to encourage me, his face was grave. I didn’t need my gift of empathy to feel his love and concern for me.

This is hard to understand,’ he said. ‘You can’t have taken enough poison to paralyze you this way.’

No, I thought, I couldn’t have. It wasn’t the poison that pinned me to the earth like a thousand arrows of ice. I wanted to explain to him that somehow the poison must have dissolved my shields and left me open to the assassin. But how could I tell my simple, courageous brother what it was like to feel another die? How could I make him understand the terror of a cold as vast and black as the emptiness between the stars?

I turned my head to watch the rain beating down on the assassin’s bloody chest. Who could ever escape the great emptiness? Truly, I thought, the same fate awaited us all.

Asaru placed his warm hand on top of mine and said, ‘If it’s poison, Master Juwain will know a cure. We’ll take you to him as soon as the rain stops.’

My grandfather had once warned me to beware of elms in thunder, but we took shelter beneath that great tree all the same. Its dense foliage protected us from the worst of the rain as we waited out the storm. As Asaru tended Maram’s wounded head, I heard him reassuring Maram that it rains hard in the Morning Mountains, but not long.

As always, he spoke truly. After a while the downpour weakened to a sprinkle and then stopped. The clouds began to break up, and shafts of light drove down through gaps in the forest canopy and touched the rain-sparkled ferns with a deeper radiance. There was something in this golden light that I had never seen before. It seemed to struggle to take form even as I struggled to apprehend it. I somehow knew that I had to open myself to this wondrous thing as I had my brother’s love or the inevitability of my death.

The stealing of the gold …

And then there, floating in the air five feet in front of me, appeared a plain golden cup that would have fit easily into the palm of my hand. Call it a vision; call it a waking dream; call it a derangement of my aching eyes. But I saw it as clearly as I might have a bird or a butterfly.

I was only dimly aware of Asaru kneeling by my side as he touched my throbbing head. Almost all that I could see was this marvelous cup shimmering before me. With my eyes, I drank in its golden light. And almost immediately, a warmth like that of my mother’s honey tea began pouring into me.

‘Do you see it?’ I asked Asaru.

‘See what?’

The Lightstone, I thought. The healing stone.

For this, I thought, Aryu had risen up and killed his brother with a knife even as I had killed the assassin. For this simple cup, men had fought and murdered and made war for more than ten thousand years.

“What is it, Val?’ Asaru asked, gently shaking my shoulder.

But I couldn’t tell him what I saw. After a while, as I leaned back against the solidity and strength of the great elm, the coldness left my body. I prayed then that someday the Lightstone would heal me completely so that the terror of my gift would leave me as well and I would suffer the pain of the world no more.

Although I was still very weak, I managed to press my hands down into the damp earth. And then to Asaru’s and Maram’s astonishment – and my own – I stood up.

Somehow I staggered over to where the assassin lay atop the glistening bracken. While my whole body shook and I gasped with the effort of it, I pulled my knife out of his chest and cleaned it. Then I closed the assassin’s cold blue eyes. In my own eyes, I felt a sudden moist pain, My throat hurt as if I had swallowed a lump of cold iron. Somewhere deeper inside, my belly and being heaved with a sickness that wouldn’t go away. There, I knew, the cold would always wait to freeze my breath and steal my soul. I vowed then that no matter the cause or need, I would never, never kill anyone again.

In the air above me – above the assassin’s still form – the Lightstone poured out a golden radiance that filled the forest. It was the light of love, the light of life, the light of truth. In its shimmering presence, I couldn’t lie to myself: I knew with a bitter certainty that it was my fate to kill many, many men.

And then, suddenly, the cup was gone.

‘What are you staring at?’ Asaru asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ I told him. ‘Nothing at all.’

Now a fire burned through me like the poison still in my veins. I struggled to remain standing. Asaru came over to my side. His strong arm wrapped itself around my back to help me.

‘Can you walk now?’ he asked.

I nodded and Asaru smiled in relief. After I had steadied myself, Asaru called Maram over to check his wounded head. He poked his finger into Maram’s big gut and told him, Your head is as hard as your belly is soft. You’ll be all right.’

‘Ah, yes, indeed, I suppose I will – as soon as you bring back the horses.’

For a moment, Asaru looked up through the fluttering leaves at the sun. He looked down at the dead assassin. And then he turned to Maram and told him, ‘No, it’s getting late, and it wouldn’t do to leave either of you alone here. Despite what Val says, there may be others about. We’ll walk out together.’

‘All right then, Lord Asaru,’ Maram said.

Asaru bent down toward the assassin. And then, with a shocking strength, he hoisted the body onto his shoulder and straightened up. He pointed deeper into the woods. ‘You’ll carry back the deer,’ he told Maram.

‘Carry back the deer!’ Maram protested. Asaru might as well have appointed him to bear the whole world on his shoulders. ‘It must be two miles back to the horses!’

Asaru, straining under the great mass of the assassin’s body, looked down at Maram with a sternness that reminded me of my father. He said, You wanted to be a warrior – why don’t you act like one?’

Despite Maram’s protests, beneath all his fear and fat, he was as strong as a bull. As there was no gainsaying my brother when he had decided on an action, Maram grudgingly went to fetch the deer.

You look sick,’ Asaru said as he freed a hand to touch my forehead. ‘But at least the cold is gone.’

No, no, I thought, it will never be gone.