The Lightstone

Chapter 37

Ymiru, Havru and Askir escorted us inside the hall where their Elders had gathered – along with many more of the Ymanir, too. A good two hundred of them were lined up by mats woven of the wonderfully soft goat hair that we had encountered the night before in Ymiru's mountain hut. They faced nine aged men and women who stood near similar mats on a stone dais at the front of the room. We were shown to the place of honor – or inquisition -just below this dais. We joined Ymiru on the floor there as everyone in the room sat down together in the fashion of his people: our legs folded back beneath us, sitting back on our heels with our spines straight and our eyes slightly lowered as we waited for the Elders to address us.

This they wasted no time in doing. After asking Ymiru our names, the centermost and eldest of the Urdahir introduced himself as Hrothmar. Then he presented the four women to his left: Audhumla, Yvanu, Ulla and Halda. The men, to his right, were: Burri, Hramjir, Hramdal and Yramu. They all turned slightly toward Hrothmar, allowing him to speak on their behalf,

'By now,' he said, his gruff old voice carrying out into the hall, 'every-one in Elivagar knows of Ymiru's extraordinary audacity in breaking our law by bringing these six strangers here. And everyone thinks he knows certain facts concerning this matter: that the little fat man known as Maram Marshayk bears with him a red galastei, while Sar Valashu Elahad bears a sword of sarastria. And that these same two and their companions seek the Galastei. We are met here to deter-mine if these facts are true – and to uncover others. And to discuss them. All may help us in this truthsaying. And all may speak in their turn.'

Hrothmar paused a moment to catch his breath. With his much-weathered and wrinkled skin about his sad old eyes, few of the Ymanir in the hall had more years than he. And none had greater height or stature, not even the giant guards who stood around the walls of the hall bearing their great borkors at their sides.

'And first to speak,' he wheezed out 'shall be Burri. He'll speak for the law of the Ymanir.'

The man sitting next to him, who had an angry look to his long, lean face, stroked the silver-white fur of his beard as he looked down at us. Then he said, 'The law, in this matter, is simple. It says that any Ymanir who discovers strangers entering our land without the Urdahir's permission shall immediately put them to death. This should have been done. It was not. And therefore, also according to the law, Ymiru and all the guard of the South Pass, should be put to death.'

Ymiru, listening quietly near me, seemed suddenly to sit up very straight. I hadn't realized the terrible risk that he had taken merely in sparing our lives.

Burri stared at Ymiru with his cold, blue eyes and said, 'Have you no respect for the law that you break it the first chance that you get?'

His gaze turned on Atara, Kane and me as he added, 'And you, strangers – you drew weapons to oppose Ymiru's execution of the law. And thus are yourselves in violation of it. It would have been easier if you had allowed Ymiru to do his duty.

Why didn't you?'

It surprised me when Liljana stood up and answered for us. She brushed back her gray hair and looked up at the Urdahir, her round face filling with a steely obstinacy.

To Burri, she sad, 'Do you mean that we should have allowed Ymiru to kill us out of hand?'

'Yes, little woman, I do mean that,' he told her in a voice that fell like a club. 'Thus you would have spared yourselves the false hope of your continued existence.'

Liljana smiled at his thinly veiled threat; her coolness beneath Burri's savage gaze lent me the forbearance to keep my hand away from my sword. Then Liljana nodded at him and said, 'If we had acquiesced in our own murders, by our law, we would become murderers, too.'

'Do you carry your own law with you, then, into others' lands?'

'We carry it in our hearts,' Liljana said, pressing her hand between her breasts.

'There, too, we carry something greater than the law. And that is life. Is the law made to serve life, or life to serve the law?'

'The law of the Ymanir,' Burri told her, 'is made to serve the Ymanir. And so each of us must serve it.'

'And this is for the good of your people, yes?'

'It is for my people's life,' he growled at her.

Liljana stared out into the immense room, with its stone walls covered with marvelous golden hangings and sweeping arches high overhead. Built into recesses of the columns that supported this great vault were glowstones giving off a soft, white light. The walls themselves at intervals often feet, were set with blocks of hot slate, which radiated a steady heat. And these lesser gelstei were not the only ones visible in the room that night. Many of the Ymanir wore warders about their necks; more than a few sported dragon bones, and at least one old woman rolled a music marble between her long, furry hands. Not even in Tria had I seen so many surviving works of the ancient alchemists. From what Ymiru had said, I thought that these gelstei might not be so ancient. For the Ymanir had surely preserved the art of forging them. They had as much pride in this, I sensed, as they did sadness in being slaughtered by the Red Dragon and driven into this lost corner of their ancient realm.

They were a strange people and a great one; I could not blame them for savagely enforcing laws that preserved what little they had left.

Liljana's round face fell soft and kind as she gathered in all her compassion and looked back up at Burri. She said, 'The lowest law is the law of survival, and even the beasts know this. But a human being knows much more: that she may not live at the sacrifice of her people.' 'Just so,' Burri growled again.

'And so each of us must obey the law of her people.'

'Just so, just so.'

'And a people,' Liljana went on, smiling at him, 'may not live at the sacrifice of their world. And so any people's law must always give way before the higher law.'

Burri, not liking to be swayed by Liljana's relentless calm, suddenly lost his temper and thundered down at her: 'And how do you know of the Ymanir's higher law?'

'I know,' she said, 'because the higher law is the same for all peoples. It is just the Law of the One.'

Burri suddenly stood up to his full height of eight feet. His hands opened and closed as if they longed to grip a borkor. He turned toward the other elders and said, 'We all knew that Ymiru would invoke the higher law. And so he has, through this little woman. But what could possibly persuade us of the need? The fact that two of the strangers bear greater galastei? That they are seekers of the Galastei? The Red Dragon's priests are seekers of the same and have come to us with firestones in their hands – to burn us. And so no one has ever objected to us sending them to their fate.'

Liljana waited for him to finish speaking and said simply, 'We are not the Red Dragon's priests.'

'But how do we know this?' Burri said, looking out at the hundreds of Ymanir in the hall. 'The Red Dragon has set clever traps for us before. And who among us be more clever than he? No, no, we Ymanir are clever with our hands, but not in this way. And so we've made our law. And so we should use it.'

'Before hearing what we have to say?' Liljana asked him.

'We've all heard the cleverness of your words, little woman,' Burri said to her. 'Must we hear more?'

He turned to look at Hramjir, a gnarled old man with only one arm. He spoke to him, and to the other Elders, saying, 'Hrothmar has told us that all should be allowed to speak. But I say this be folly. Let us not wonder if the strangers speak lies. Such doubt be a poison to the heart. Let us execute the law, now, before it be too late.'

With a glance at the guards along the walls and by the door, he called for the Elders to decide our fate then and there. And this, also by the Ymanir's law, they were forced to do. And so they gathered in a circle and put their heads together as they conferred in their long, low, rumbling voices. And then they took their places again on their mats, and Hrothmar stared down at us as he waited for silence in the room.

'Burri has spoke for the Ymanir's law,' he told us. 'And Ulla and Hramjir would see this law immediately executed. But most of us would not. Therefore, we'll call on others to speak for other concerns. Audhumla will speak for the Law of the One.'

Now Audhumla, an old and rather small woman, for the Ymanir – she couldn't have been an inch over seven feet – smoothed back the silky white fur of her face. Then in a raspy voice she said, 'The essence of this law be simple: that throughout the stars the One must unfold in the glory of creation. The Ymanir's part in this be also simple: We are to prepare the way for the Elijin's and Galadin's coming to earth. This be why we be. Only then will Ea be restored to her place in the creation of the true civilization, which has been lost for six long ages.'

She paused to take a breath and continued, 'If the strangers' lives are to be spared in consideration of the higher law, if our lives are to be put at risk in sparing theirs, it must be shown that they also have a place in our purpose. Or have an equally great purpose of their own.'

Here a young man behind us – I gathered he was a friend of Ymiru's – stood up and said, 'But it has already been told that the strangers seek the Galastei. What could be a greater purpose than that?'

'If it be true,' Audhumla said to him. 'If it be true.'

'If it be true,' Hrothmar added, 'that would still not be enough. The strangers would still have to show that they had a chance to find it.'

He turned his penetrating gaze upon me and asked 'Sar Valashu -will you now speak for your people?'

Maram, sitting next to me, nudged me in the ribs to stand up. Atara, Master Juwain and Liljana each looked at me and smiled encouragingly! Kane's black eyes buried themselves in mine. I felt him urging me to speak, and speak well. I felt also that if the Ymanir guards should ever come at us with their borkors, he would not honor my promise to keep our swords sheathed in the Ymanir's land.

'Yes,' I said, standing before the Elders. 'I will speak for us.'

And so I did. While the glowstones shone on sempiternally through the night, I told the Ymanir a tale such as they had never heard before. I began it six long ages past, when Aryu had killed Elahad and had stolen the Lightstone. Its history, much of it unknown to the Ymanir, I then recounted, much as King Kiritan had when he had gathered the thousands of knights in his hall and called the great quest. My part in this, and my friends', I explained with as much candor as I could. I told of the black arrow and the kirax that had poisoned my blood; I even told them of Ayondela Kirriland's prophecy and pointed out the scar that had saved us from the Lokilani's arrows. The hundreds of men and women in the room fell into a deep silence as I went on with the story of our long journey that had taken us across most of Ea to the Library at Khaisham. What we had found there, however, I did not tell. It would be very dangerous, I thought, to announce the Lightstone's hiding place to so many people.

'Your story,' Burri said, shaking his head when I had finished, 'be too fantastic to be true.'

'It be too fantastic not to be true,' Yvanu countered. She was the youngest of the Urdahir and a beautiful woman, whose long white fur about her head and neck had been twisted into long braids.

All the Elders were now staring at me, as was everyone else in the room. Still shaking his head, Burri said to me, 'How will we ever know if you speak the truth?'

'You'll know,' I said softly. 'If you listen, you'll know.'

But Burri, like many people, did not wish to listen to his own heart. He pointed his clublike finger at me and demanded, 'But where are the proofs of your story? Let us see the proofs.'

I met eyes with each of my friends then, and they brought forth their gelstei. The sudden sight of Maram's firestone and Atara's crystal sphere, no less Liljana's little blue whale, Master Juwain's varistei and Kane's black stone, stunned everyone in the room. Nowhere on Ea are any people so in awe of the gelstei as are the Ymanir.

'And where be the sarastria, then?' Burn asked.

Ymiru gave me permission to draw my sword, and this I did. As I swept it toward the east, its silver length gleamed with a deep light.

'Do you see?' Ymiru said, standing to face Burri. 'Their story must be true.'

All at once, a hundred giant men and women called out that a miracle had befallen the Ymanir, and that our lives should be spared. But this wasn't good enough for Burri.

'We must know if these stones truly be the greater galastei,' he said, pointing down at what we held in our hands. 'They must be put to the test.'

But it was hard to test Maram's red crystal with no sun to fire it. And hard, too, to test the powers of my friends' other gelstei. And so Burri had to satisfy himself with Hrothmar's suggestion: that a diamond be brought forth to see if Alkaladur's blade could mark it. Ulla, the oldest of the Urdahir, sacrificed the perfection of her wedding ring for this test.

She held out her hand to me and bade me come forward with my sword. She watched utterly spellbound as I set its edge and cut the diamond.

'It is the silver,' she exclaimed, holding up her ring for all to see. Then her old eyes fixed on my sword. 'The silver will lead to the gold.'

At first I thought she knew the words of the song that Alphanderry had sung after I had gained Alkaladur. And then many of the Ymanir in the room began murmuring their ancient belief that the secrets of the silver gelstei would lead to the making of the gold.

'This be a very great thing that you've been given,' Hrothmar said to me, staring at my sword. 'Who would ever have thought, that a stranger would bring the silver galastei into our land?'

The gleam in Burri's eyes as they fell upon my sword told me that he didn't want it ever to leave his land.

'The silver galastei,' he muttered, 'what do these strangers know of it? What do they truly know of any of the galastei?'

'We know this,' I told him, sheathing my sword. 'W'e know that the silver has sometimes led to covetousness of the gold.'

So saying, I reached into the pocket of my tunic and drew forth the False Gelstei that we had found in the Library. I moved across the dais and set it into Burri's outstretched hand. 'The Galastei! It is the Galastei!' many voices cried out at once.

But Burri, who had a more practiced eye, held the goldish cup beneath the glowstones' light. As I explained what it was, he nodded his long head in acceptance of the truth.

'In ages past,' he said, looking at the cup in amazement 'it's said that the Ymanir made many such cups. Perhaps even this very one.'

'If that is so,' I said, 'then perhaps it would he fitting that you keep it, for your people.'

Burn's icy blue eyes froze into mine. He said, 'You can't buy our mercy.'

I felt my spine stiffen with pride; I felt my father in me as words that he would have spoken formed themselves upon my lips: 'In my land, when a gift is given, we usually just say "thank you." And it is not your mercy that we seek – only justice.'

But I knew that such a speech would not convince Burri that I truly wanted to help his people. My rebuke wounded him. His fingers closed angrily about the cup, and it nearly disappeared in his huge hand.

'There be much of the strangers' story for which we can never have proofs,' he called out. 'His claim of descent from this Elahad. This twinkling Timpum being that only the strangers can see. This golden-voiced minstrel -'

'We saw Khaisham burn,' a stout man said as he stood to address the room. 'My brother and I were returning from the South Reach, and we saw the fire.'

'Do not interrupt me again!' Burri thundered at him. He turned to stare down at the other elders. 'Do you see how the strangers have already put us off our manners?

Should they also put us off doing justice?'

'We shall do justice,' Hrothmar assured him. 'After we know the truth.'

'But we can never know the truth here!'

Just then, Audhumla brought forth a bluish stone about the size of an eagle's egg. It looked something like lapis, and she rolled it between her thin, graceful hands. And then she said, 'You're wrong, Burri. We shall soon know the truth of the strangers' story.'

After asking Burri and me to sit back down, she announced to the Elders, and to the assembled Ymanir in the hall, that she held a truth stone in her hands.

'But that can't be!' Burri said. 'We haven't made a truth stone for a thousand years.'

'No, we haven't,' Audhumla said. 'This be a family heirloom.'

In the discussion that followed, I learned that the truth stones were a kind of lesser gelstei related to Liljana's blue gelstei. Although they did not allow sight into another's mind, they were able to record certain impressions from it, such as falseness or truth.

Burri looked at Audhumla doubtfully, and with ill-concealed loath-ing. 'There hasn't been a truthsayer among us for a thousand years.' 'None except the women of my family.'

'If that be true,' Burri said, 'then why haven't they made themselves known?'

'So that the hateful can cast scorn upon them?'

Liljana's eyes, I noticed, filled with tears as she said this.

'Scorn would be the least that a truthsayer would deserve,' Burri said, 'if she failed to use her gift for her people.'

'And how should she use it if, for a thousand years, no stranger has come among us to be tested?'

The Elders again gathered in a circle to discuss this unexpected turn. Then they took their places on their mats, and Hrothmar's voice carried out into the room: 'We believe the truth of what Audhumla has told us, if nothing else. And so we've agreed to allow Sar Valashu to be tested this way, if he be willing.'

With two hundred Ymanir suddenly looking at me, and my six friends as well, I saw that I had little choice. And so I said, 'Then test me, if you will.'

Audhumla bade me to come forward again and kneel before her on the dais. She held her blue stone out to me, cupped in her hands. I placed my hand upon it. It was warm from the heat of Audhumla's body, and felt more porous that the crystal of the greater gelstei. It seemed to drink in my sweat and the pulsing of the blood that beat through my hand. I remembered that such gelstei were also called touchstones because they seemed to touch all of one's flesh straight through to the heart.

I looked straight into Audhumla's eyes and said, 'All that I have told tonight is true.'

I took my hand away and watched Audhumla's much larger hands close upon the stone. Her eyes closed as she stroked it; she was like a mother gathering in her child's emotions from the touch of a tear-stained cheek.

At last she looked at me and said, 'All that you have told is true. But you have not told all that is true.'

The two hundred Ymanir in the hall waited for her to say more. But she had no more to say. Hrothmar, however, did. This wise old man needed no gelstei, lesser or greater, to discern the part of my story that I had left incomplete.

'Sar Valashu,' he said to me, 'you have told that you and your companions have sought the Lightstone across the length of Ea. But you have not told why you entered our land to seek it.'

No, I thought, I hadn't. But I saw that I finally must. And so I took a deep breath and told them about Master Aluino's journal. Then I admitted that my friends and I had vowed to journey into Sakai and enter the underground city of Argattha.

For a long time, no one in the hall spoke. No one even moved. I felt the great hearts of the hundreds of Ymanir beating out a great thunder of astonishment.

At last, Hrothmar found his voice and spoke for all his people even Burri. He said to me, 'Even the bravest of the Ymanir seldom go any more into Asakai, where once we went so freely. Either you and your companions are mad or you are possessed of a great courage. And I do not believe you are mad.'

A roar of voices cascaded through the room like a suddenly unleashed flood.

Hrothmar let his people speak for quite a while. Then he held up his hand for silence.

'The strangers have brought us the greatest chance that we Ymanir have ever had,' he said in his grave, deep voice. 'And the greatest peril, too. How are we to decide their fate – and our own?'

He paused to rub his tired eyes. Then he said, 'Let us not try to make this decision tonight. Let us reflect and sleep and dream. And let us all gather before first light in the great square, that we might call upon the wisdom of the Galadin to help us.'

He dismissed the assemblage and stood, as did everyone else. Then the men who had guarded the hall escorted us to Ymiru's house at the edge of the town, where we had been offered quarters. Compared with the other Ymanir houses on the wooded slopes nearby, it was a small affair of stacked stone and rough-hewn beams – but quite large enough to accommodate us.

Ymiru proved an excellent host. He laid out extra sleeping mats by the fire that he lit in the hearth. There, too, he set out a block of cheese that it might soften so we could dip crusts of bread. into it for our evening meal. He drew baths for us and later poured our tea into small blue cups with his huge hand. He seemed glad for our company and bemused that his fate seemed to have tied itself up with ours.

'When I awoke yesterday, it was a morning like any other,' he told us as he joined us by the fire. 'And now here I sit with six little people, talking about the Lightstone.'

He went on to say that the next morning would come soon enough and that we should get a good night's rest to prepare us for what was to come.

'I don't think I'll sleep at all,' Maram said, as he cast his eyes around the room to catch sight of a bottle of brandy or beer.'That Burri gave us a bad enough time today.' Ymiru's eyes fell sad, and he surprised us, saying, 'Burri be a good man. But he has many fears.'

He explained that once, years ago, he and Burri, along with others in the hall, had lived in the same village in the East Reach near Sakai. And then one day, Morjin had sent a battalion to annihilate it.

'We were too few to hrold,' he told us. He took a sip of the bitter tea in his cup. 'I lost my wife and sons in the attack; Burri lost much more. The Beast's men murdered his daughters and grandchildren, his mother and brothers, too. And the Ymanir lost part of Elivagar. Burri has vowed that we won't lose any more.'

After that he fell into a deep silence from which he could not be roused. He brought out a song stone, a little sphere of swirling hues; he sat listening to the voice of his dead wife long after Maram – and Atara, Liljana and Master Juwain – had gone to sleep.

It was cold the next morning when we gathered at the appointed hour in Alundil's great square. The city's empty towers and buildings were even darker than the sky, which was hung with many stars. Ten thousand men, women and children crowded shoulder to shoulder facing a great spire just to the west of the square. At the head of them were Hrothmar and Burri and the others of Urdahir. We stood with Ymiru near them, ringed by thirty Ymanir gripping borkors in their massive hands. The sharp wind falling down from the icy mountains all around us seemed not to touch them. But it pierced us nearly to the bone. I stood between Atara and Master Juwain, shivering as they did, waiting with them and our other companions, for what we didn't know.

'Why are we meeting here?' Maram asked for the tenth time.

And for the tenth time, Ymiru answered him, saying, 'You will see, little man, you will see.'

Now many of the Ymanir behind us had turned to look out above the spire to the east of the square. There, above the Garden of the Gods, above the icy eastern mountains, the sky was beginning to lighten with the rising of the sun. There, too, the Morning Star shone, brightest of all the heavens' lights. It cast its radiance upon us, touching Alundil's houses and spires, illuminating the faces of all who gazed upon it.

Through the dear air and straight across the valley streaked this silver light, where it fell upon the shimmering face of Alumit. It was still too dark to make out the colors of this great mountain that seemed to overlook the whole of the world. I wondered yet again how it had come to be. Ymiru had told us that his ancestors had raised up the sculptures of the Garden of the Gods; but it seemed that the building of an entire mountain had been beyond even the ancient Ymanir. Ymiru believed that once, long ago, the Galadin had come to earth to work this miracle. As he believed that someday they would come again.

As the wind quickened and our breaths steamed out into the air, the eastern sky grew even brighter. The rising of the sun stole the stars' light one by one until only the Morning Star remained shining. Then it too, disappeared into the blue-white glister at the edge of the world. We waited for the sun to crest the mountains behind us.

Ahead of us, to the west of the square above the spire, Alumit's great, white peak caught the sun's first rays before the valley below it did. Its pointed crown of ice and snow began glowing a deep red. Soon this fire fell down the slopes of the mountain and drew forth its colors. Again 1 marveled at the crystals from which it was wrought, the sparkling blues that seemed to pour forth from sapphire, the reds of ruby and a deep, vivid, emerald green.

At last the sun broke over the flaming ridgeline to the east. The air warmed, slightly, as the morning grew brighter. And still we waited, facing this great Mountain of the Morning Star. And then, to the thunder of ten thousand hearts and the rising of the wind, the colors of the mountain began to change. Slowly its jewel-like hues deepened and grew even more splendid. They seemed to flow into each other, red into yellow, orange into green, miraculously transforming into a single color like nothing I had ever dreamed. It was not a blending or a tessellation of colors, but one solid color – though perhaps not so solid at all, for in staring at it, I seemed to fall into it and become aware of infinite depths. How could this be, I wondered? How could there exist in the world an entirely new color of the spectrum that no one ever saw? It was as different from red or green as those colors are from violet or blue.

And yet I could only describe it to myself in terms of the more common colors, for that was the only way I could make sense of such an amazing thing: it had all the fire of red, the brightness and expansiveness of yellow, the deep peace of the purest cobalt blue.

'How is this possible?' I heard Maram whisper behind me. 'Oh, my Lord, how can this be?'

I shook my head as I stared at the great mountain, now wholly shimmering with a single hue, at once like living gold and cosmic scarlet, like the secret blue inside blue that people do not usually see.

'What is it?' Maram gasped, directing his words at Ymiru. 'Tell me before I fall mad.'

'It be glorre,' Ymiru said to him. 'It be the color of the angels.'

Glorre, I thought, glorre – it was so beautiful that I wanted to drink this color into my deepest self; it was almost too real to be real. And yet it was real, the truest and loveliest thing I had ever beheld. I melted into it; I felt it washing through my entire being, carrying into every part of me the clear, sweet, numinous taste of the One that is just the essence of all things.

'But yesterday,' Maram gasped out, 'the mountain didn't appear so!'

'No, it did not,' Ymiru agreed. 'It takes on this color only once each day, in the light of the Morning Star – with the rising of the sun.'

Atara stared at Alumiit as intensely as she ever had her scryer's sphere. Behind her, Master Juwain asked Ymiru, 'Has it always taken on this color?'

'No, only for the last twenty years,' Ymiru said. 'Ever since the earth entered the Golden Band.'

'I see,' Master Juwain said, rubbing his bald head. 'Yes, I see.' Liljana looked upon the mountain in awed silence while Kane stood stricken beside her. His fathomless eyes were fixed on the glorre of the mountain. He didn't move; he seemed not even to breathe. If one of the Ymanir had fallen on him with a club just then, I did not think that he would have drawn his sword to defend himself.

'The mountain speaks to those who listen,' Ymiru said softly. 'As we must listen now.'

The silence that descended upon the square was a strange and beautiful thing. We stood with ten thousand Ymanir looking up at the sacred Alumit to the west, and not a single child fidgeted or called for his mother to take him home. I tried to listen with the same concentration as did they. As I my eyes drank in this mountain of a numinous hue seen only in the stars, I became aware of voices singing as from far away. Fair but almost impossibly near: every building in the city seemed suddenly to vibrate with these sweet sounds, which I felt resonating inside me. It was like the ringing of bells and gentle laughter carried along the wind. The music reminded me of that which Alphanderry had sung in the Kul Moroth. I tried to understand the words that formed up in my mind, breaking like the crest of a wave always just beyond my reach. And yet I knew that I could always keep them within me, in my heart and hands, if only I had the courage to hold onto them.

Others, however, were more practiced or gifted at such apprehension. Liljana stood with her gelstei pressed to her forehead over her third eye. The little blue whale seemed to have deepened to the color of glorre. Liljana's eyes, wide open, flicked about with the little movements of one who is deep in dream. 'What does she see?'

Maram whispered to me.

'You might better ask yourself,' Ymiru told him, 'what she hears.' We soon had our answer. As the sun rose still higher, in the sky, Liljana's hand fell down to her side.

She smiled at Master Juwain in her peacable way, and then turned to Atara and me.

She said, 'They're waiting for us, you know. On many, many worlds, the Star People are waiting for us to complete the quest.' The nine E0lders of the Urdahir, led by Hrothmar, turned our way.

The guards around us pulled aside to allow hirn room to step for ward.

'They are waiting,' he told us. 'As are the Elijin and Galadin themselves. We feared that it would be so.'

He sighed as he pulled at the white fur of his chin and looked at me. 'Sar Valashu, we believe that you and your friends must try to enter Argattha and recover the Lightstone. If you agree, we'd like to help you.'

Audhumla and Yvanu, standing just behind him, smiled as he said this; Hramjir and Hramdal nodded their massive heads while even Burri seemed to have been moved by the wonder of what he had just heard.

Maram muttered something about the madness of fordng Argattha's gates, and Hrothmar, not quite understanding him, nodded his head gravely, saying 'Then you may remain here as our guests for as long as you live – or until the Star People return.'

I couldn't help smiling at Maram's consternation. To Hrothmar I said, 'We would welcome whatever help you have to give us.'

'Very good,' his huge voice rumbled out. He looked from Atara to Liljana, and then at Kane, Maram, Master Juwain and me. 'The prophecy you told us spoke of the seven brothers and sisters with the seven stones of the greater galastei. And seven you were until you lost the minstrel in Yrakona. Therefore, you need one more to complete your company. And so we must ask that we send one of our people with you to Argattha.'

I knew from the set of his hard, blue eyes that there could be no disputing this demand. I looked toward the edge of the square at the guards, with their fearsome borkors. Either we accepted one of these giants into our company, I thought, or we must remain here forever.

'Who would you send with us then?' I asked him.

He turned to Ymiru and said, 'I have seen in you a desire to make this journey. It would be fitting, wouldn't it, that after breaking the lower law, you should fulfill the higher?'

'Yes,' Ymiru said, 'it would.'

'Will you show the little people the way through Asakai?'

'Yes, I will.'

Hrothmar looked at me. 'Well, Sar Valashu – will you take Ymiru into your company?'

I met eyes with Ymiru and smiled at him. 'Gladly,' I said.

Then I reached out to grasp Ymiru's huge hand with mine. Now, as the sun rose higher and the glorre of Alumit began to break apart into its usual, brilliant colors, the thousands of people in the square all turned their attention on, Ymiru and the nine Elders – and us.

'But we've still only six gelstei,' Maram pointed out. 'How can Ymiru come with us without a gelstei?'

Hrothmar's sudden grin seemed bigger than the sky. I noticed then that he was holding a small, jeweled box in his hand. He gripped this tightly next to his furry hip.

Then he lifted it up and said to us, 'You have found six of the galastei on your journey; now we would like to give you the seventh.'

And with that, he opened the box. He pulled out a large, square-cut stone, clear and bright and purple as wine.

'This be a lilastei,' he said, handing it to Ymiru. 'It be the last one remaining to our people. Take it with our blessing. For with you goes the hope of our people.'

Ymiru held the gelstei up to the sun. Its bright rays passed through it and fell upon the ground. The stone there seemed to soften in the deep violet light.

'Thank you,' Ymiru said.

Maram came forward then and took Ymiru's free hand. 'This is a lucky day for us.

With you by our side, we'll be more like seventeen than seven.'

Atara was the next to welcome Ymiru into our company, followed by Liljana and Master Juwain. And then Kane stepped up to him. He clasped hands with Ymiru, fiercely, like a tiger testing the strength of a bear. He said nothing to him. But the fire of fellowship in his bright eyes said more than words ever could.

Hrothmar swept his hand toward the seven of us and said, 'Your courage in undertaking this journey cannot be questioned. But we must ask you to find an even greater courage within yourselves: that should fate fall against you, you will seek death before revealing to the Beast the secrets of Alundil.'

Ymiru agreed to this grim demand with a bow of his head. As did Master Juwain, Liljana and I. Atara smiled with a chilling acceptance of what must be. And Maram, his face flushed with fear, looked at Hrothmar and said, 'Set your mind at ease. I'll gladly seek death before torture.'

Hrothmar turned to Kane and asked, 'And you, keeper of the black stone?'

Kane looked toward the east in the direction that we soon must travel. In his black eyes was death and defiance. He said, 'No torture of Morjin's will ever make me speak.'

So great was the will that steeled his being that Hrothmar did not question him further.

'Very good,' Hrothmar said, to him and to us. Then he embraced us one by one and gave us his blessing. Hramjir, with his one arm, did likewise as well as he could, followed by Audhumla, Yvanu and the other Urdahir. Burri was the last to approach us. After wrapping me up in a mound of living fur, he took out the cup that I had given him. He looked down at me and said, 'Thank you for your gift, Sar Valashu.

We have lost our last lilastei only to gain one of the greatest of the silver galastei.'

Then he turned to Ymiru and told him, 'I was wrong about the little people. And about you.'

He embraced Ymiru with an unexpected tenderness. Then shocked us all, saying,

'I'm sorry, my son.'

From the mist that gathered in Burri's blue eyes, and Ymiru's, I knew that even the hardest ice could melt and be broken.

To direct my attention elsewhere, Burri suddenly pointed above the square toward Alumit. There, limned against the last patch of glorre to light up the mountain, Flick danced ecstatically through the air, whirling and diving, describing incendiary arcs.

His being blazed with silver, scarlet and gold – and now, too, with glorre. I must have been blind, I thought, never to have beheld this dazzling color within him. As others were now beholding it as well. At least a hundred of the Ymanir nearby had their long fingers aimed at him, and their large eyes seemed suddenly larger with wonder.

And Burri, perhaps, held the most wonder of all.

'I think you did tell one lie, Sar Valashu,' he said to me. 'You told that the Timpum twinkled. But these lights – they be a glorious thing.'

Glorious indeed, I thought, watching Flick spin beneath the shining mountain that the Galadin had made. As Burri and the other Elders began wishing usigfell on our journey, it gave me hope to enter another mountain whose faces were as hard as iron and whose color was as black as death.