The Lightstone

Chapter 33

We retreated through the Library's halls and chambers to the infirmary, where I retrieved my helmet and Atara her bow and arrows. There we said goodbye to Master Juwain and Liljana. Master Juwain would be helping the other healers who would tend the Librarians' inevitable battle wounds, and Liljana decided that she could best serve the city by assisting him. I tried not to look at the saws, clamps and other gleaming steel instruments that the healers set out as I embraced Master Juwain. He told me, and all of us, 'Please don't let me see that any of you have returned to this room until the battle is won.'

The young page who had found us earlier escorted Kane, Maram, Atara and me out of the Library and through the gates of the inner wall. He led the way through the narrow city streets, which were crowded with anxious people hurrying this way and that. Many were women clutching screaming babies, with yet more children in tow, on their way to take refuge in the Library's keep or grounds behind its inner wall. But quite a few were Librarians dressed as Kane and I were in mail, and bearing maces, crossbows and swords. Still more were Khaisham's potters, tanners, carpenters, papermakers, masons, smiths and other tradesmen. They were only poorly accoutered and armed, some bearing nothing more in the way of weaponry than a spear or a heavy shovel. At need, they would take their places along the walls with the Librarians -and us. But they would also keep the fighting men supplied with food, water, arrows and anything else necessary to withstanding a siege.

The flow of these hundreds of men, with their carts and braying donkeys, swept us down across the city to its west wall. This was Khaisham's longest and most vulnerable, and there atop a square mural tower near its center stood the Lord Librarian. He was resplendent in his polished mail and the green surcoat displaying the golden book over his heart. Other knights and archers were with him on the tower's ledge, behind the narrow stone merlons of the battlements that protected them from the enemy's arrows and missiles. We followed the page up a flight of steps until we stood at the top of the wall behind the slightly larger merlons there.

And then we walked up another flight of steps, adjoining and turning around and up into the tower itself.

'I knew you would come,' the Lord Librarian said to us as we crowded onto the tower's ledge.

'Yes,' a nearby Librarian with a long, drooping mustache said, 'but will they stay?'

He turned to look down and out across the pasture in front of the wall, and there was a sight that would have sent even brave men fleeing. Three hundred yards from us, across the bright green grass that would soon be stained red, Count Ulanu had his armies drawn up in a long line facing the wall. Their steel-jacketed shields, spears and armor formed a wall of its own as thousands of his men stood shoulder to shoulder slowly advancing upon us. To our left, half a mile away where KhaishanVs walls turned back toward Mount Redruth, I saw yet more lines of men marching across the pasture to the south of the city. And to the right, in the fields across the Tearam, stood companies of Count Ulanu's cavalry and other warriors. These men, blocked by the river's rushing waters, would make no assault upon the walls, but they would wait with their lances and swords held ready should any of Khaishan's citizens try to flee across it. Behind us to the east of the city, Lord Grayam said, between the east wall and Mount Redruth on ground too rough for siege towers or assaults, yet more of the enemy waited to cut off the escape of anyone trying to break out in that direction.

'We're surrounded,' Lord Grayam told us. He ran his finger along his scarred face as he watched the Count's army march toward us. 'So many – I had never thought he'd be able to muster so many.'

Out on the plain below us, I counted the standards of forty-four battalions. Ten bore the hawks and other insignia of Inyam and another five the black bears of Virad.

There were masses of Blues, too, at least two thousand of them, huddled and naked and holding high their axes and letting loose their bone-chilling howls.

OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLLLL!

'We should have sent for aid to Inyam,' Lord Grayam said. 'And we might have if we'd had more time. Too late, always too late.'

From out across the rolling pasture came the terrible sound of the enemy's war drums. It set the very stones of the walls to vibrating: DOOM, DOOM, DOOM! DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

'No, that wasn't it,' Lord Grayam said to a knight nearby whom I took to be one of his captains. 'I was too proud. I thought that we could stand alone. And now but for Sar Valashu and his companions, we do.'

Maram looked down at the advancing armies and took a gulp of air as if it were a potion that might fortify him. He seemed to be having second thoughts about joining the city's defense. Then he belched and said, 'Ah, Lord Grayam, as you observed before, I'm no warrior, only a student of the Brotherhoods and -'

'Yes, Prince Maram?'

Maram noticed that all the men at the top of the tower were looking at him. So were those along the wall below.

'- and I really shouldn't remain here, if I would only get in your way. If I were to join the others in the keep, then -'

'You mean, the women and the children?' Lord Grayam asked.

'Ah, yes, the… noncombatants. As I was saying, if I were to join them, then…'

Maram's voice trailed off; he noticed Kane had his black eyes fixed on him as did I my own.

Again he gulped air, belched and rolled his eyes toward the heavens as if asking why he was always having to do things that he didn't want to do. And then he continued,

'What I mean is, ah, although I'm certainly no swordmaster, I do have some skill, and I believe my blade would be wasted if I had to wait out this battle in the keep – unless of course you, sir, deem my inexpertise to be dangerous to the coordination of your defenses and would -'

'Good!' Lord Grayam suddenly called out, wasting no more time. 'I accept the service of your sword, at least for the duration of the siege.'

Maram shut his mouth then, having woven a web of words in which he had caught himself. He seemed quite disgusted.

'All of you,' Lord Grayam said, 'Sar Valashu, Kane, Princess Atara -we're honored that you would fight with us, of your own choice.'

In truth, I thought, listening to the booming of the drums, we had little choice. Our escape was cut off. And because the Librarians had succored us, especially me, in a time of great need, it would be ignoble of us to forsake them. And perhaps most importantly, Alphanderry's cruel murder needed to be avenged.

DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

Maram, gulping again, drew his sword as he looked out one of the crenels of the battlements. He muttered, 'At least there's a good wall between us and them.'

But the wall, I thought, as I looked down at the Librarians lined up along it, might not provide as much safety as Maram hoped. It was neither very thick or high; the red sandstone its masons had built with was probably too soft to withstand very long a bombardment of good, granite boulders, if the Count's armies had the siegecraft to hurl them. The mural towers, being square instead of round, were also more vulnerable, and the wall had no machicolation: no projecting stone parapet at its top from which boiling oil or lime might be dropped down upon anyone assaulting it.

Even now, in the last moments before the battle, the city's carpenters were hurriedly nailing into place hoardings over the lip of the wall to extend it outward toward the enemy. But these covered shelters were few and protected the walls only near the great towers at either side of the vulnerable gates. Since they were made of wood, fire arrows might ignite them. To forestall this calamity, the carpenters were also nailing wet hides over them.

'Sar Valashu,' Lord Grayam said to me as he placed his arm around the Librarian next to him, 'allow me present my son, Captain Donalam.'

Captain Donalam, a sturdy-looking man about Asaru's age, grasped my hand firmly and smiled as if to reassure me that Khaisham had never been conquered: if not because of her walls, then due to the valor of her scholar-warriors. Then he excused himself, and walked down the tower's stairs to the wall, where he would command the Librarians waiting for him there.

We, too, took our leave of the Lord Librarian. There was little room for us along the crowded ramparts in the tower. We walked down the stairs, thirty feet to the wall, and took our places behind the battlements. Maram bemoaned being that much closer to the enemy. And with every passing moment, as the drums beat out their relentless tattoo and the first arrows began hissing through the air, the enemy marched closer to us.

As they drew in upon the city in their lines of flashing steel, the nervousness in my belly felt as if I had swallowed whole mouthfuls of butterflies. I counted the standards of twenty-nine of Aigul's battalions. Among them fluttered the much larger standard of Count Ulanu's whole army, the yellow banner stained blood-red with its great, snarling dragon. Near it, on top of his big brown horse, was Count Ulanu himself. The knights of his vanguard rode with him. Soon enough, I thought, they would let the lines of their men advance forward past them to prosecute the very dangerous assault of the walls. But for the moment, Count Ulanu had the point of honor as the thousands of men on both sides of the wall turned their gazes upon him.

'Damn him!' Kane growled out beside me. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his soul!'

Everyone could see that we had hard work ahead of us. Four great siege towers, as high as the walls and with great iron hooks to latch onto them, were being rolled slowly forward across the grass. They were shielded with planks of wood and wet hides; the moment they came up against the walls, many men would mount the stairs inside them and come pouring over the top. Three battering rams, each aimed at one of the west wall's gates, rolled toward us, too. But the most fearsome of the enemy's weapons were the catapults that had now ceased their advance and had begun heaving boulders at the city. One of these was a mangonel, which flung its missiles in a low arc against the wall itself. Even as I drew in a deep breath and grasped the hilt of my sword, a great boulder soared across the pasture and crashed into the wall a hundred yards to the south, shattering its battlements in a shower of stone.

Now it begins, I thought, with a terrible pulling inside me. Again and. always, it begins.

As I did before any battle, I built up walls around me. These were as high as the stars and as hard as diamond; they were as thick as the mountains that keep peoples apart. My will was the stone that formed them, and my dread of what was to come was the mortar that cemented them in place. Already, the screams of men hit by flying rocks or pierced with arrows filled the air. But their agonies couldn't touch me.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out, hunched behind his stone merlon next to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'

Now the archers along the walls, working with crossbows or long-bows, firing from the arrow slits at the centers of the merlons, shot out great sheets of arrows at Count Ulanu's men. Warriors began falling, in their ones and tens, clutching their chests and bellies. And the enemy's archers returned our fire in great black clouds of whining bolts that arched high and fell almost straight down upon the walls in a clatter of steel points breaking upon stone and too often finding their marks in a throat or a hand or an eye.

'Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord!'

Most of the arrows, however, at this range were wasted. The battle-ments provided good cover from their trajectory. More worrisome were the shots fired off by the enemy's most skilled bowmen as their armies drew closer. Perhaps one in ten of these arrows, screaming through the air in straight lines, streaked right through the arrow slits. An archer standing only ten yards from me was killed by one of these. I tried not to look as he practically jumped back from the battlements, a feathered shaft sticking out of his opened mouth and look of vast surprise in his eyes.

There is no pain, I told myself. Now there is only killing and death.

We had skilled archers of our own, and none so fine as Atara. She stood beside me, firing off arrows at a rate that the nearby crossbowmen couldn't match. And few could match the range of her powerful double-curved horn bow, and none her accuracy. Every one of her shots struck some man of Aigul or Virad or one of the naked Blues. Some deflected of a curve of armor or a shield; some found their mark in a shoulder or leg, and so did not kill. But as the moments of terror passed, with missiles shrieking out from and toward the walls, she slowly raised her count of the enemy she had slain.

'Thirty-two!' I heard her call out just after her bowstring had twanged yet again. And then, a few minutes later, 'Thirty-three!'

Kane, Maram and I might have taken our chances in mis missile duel, but there were too few bows to be spared and even fewer arrows. In any case, the battle would not be decided by archers. When I dared to look out from the crenel beside me, I saw the many men behind the enemy's front lines bearing long ladders. I saw that the Count's armies, even as they tried to batter open the gates, would try to take the city by escalade. It was the most dangerous kind of assault, the most desperate. But then Count Ulanu must be desperate to invest Khaisham before I and the rest of our company found a way to escape.

I was certain that it was his rage to capture us that had led him to these tactics. I knew this, as I knew many things now since gaining my silver sword. And Kane seemed to know too. While Atara fired off her arrows and Maram cowered behind the battlements muttering prayers to the heavens, Kane looked at me and said, 'There can be no surrender for us, do you understand?'

'Yes,' I told him. And then, as a great rock crashed into the wall below us and set the stones to shaking, I said, 'They're going to try to scale the walls.'

'So, damn them,' he said. He looked down the long expanse of the wall and counted its defenders, who were all too few. He stood dangerously exposed, looking through the crenel as he counted the enemy. 'So, Count Ulanu has the men – if he has the will to waste them,'

'He has the will,' I said.

As his armies' lines drew closer, their drums boomed even louder now: DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

Now a new terror fell upon us as the Aigul archers began shooting off flaming arrows, trying to set the hoardings above the gates, and the gates themselves, on fire.

This tactic rankled Maram. He clearly regarded this fulminous substance as his prerogative. Astonishing both Kane and me, he suddenly stood straight up as he reached his hand into his pocket.

'Fire, is it?' he said, taking out his red crystal. 'I'll give them fire!' Kane moved as if to grab Maram's arm, then checked himself. He looked at me, and our eyes told each other that if there was ever a time for using the red gelstei's flame against living flesh, this was it.

'Be careful!' Kane hissed at him. 'Remember what happened in the Kul Moroth.'

It was exactly this memory, I thought, which moved Maram to expose himself in the crenel. He knew, as did everyone, what would happen if we did not make a good defense here. And he suddenly saw that he had the power to harm the enemy grievously.

'I'll be careful,' Maram muttered, gripping his crystal. 'Careful to aim this at Count Ulanu's ugly face.'

As Maram positioned the crystal and the sun's rays fell upon it, a lancet of fire suddenly streaked out through the air. It fell upon one of Count Ulanu's knights and cut through the mail covering him. He fell screaming from his horse, trying to claw off the rings of molten steel burning into his chest.

'Ai, a firestone!' another knight called out fifty yards from the wall as he looked up at Maram. 'They have a firestone!'

This cry, picked up by others along the enemy's lines, practically halted the whole army's advance. Count Ulanu's warriors tried to cover themselves with their shields; they crouched behind their mantelets, those little rolling walls of wood that gave good protection against arrows if not fire. More than a few of them tried to duck down behind those warriors in front of them.

'Ai, a firestone! A firestone!' came their terrified cries.

The Librarians along the wall seemed only slightly less frightened by what they beheld in Maram's hand. They stared at him in amazement. Then Lord Grayam called down from the tower above us: 'It's a good thing you stood with us after all, Prince Maram. I wondered about the Kul Moroth. The angel fire you've been given to wield may yet win this batde!'

But I was not so sure of this. Firestones, as I had learned from my grandfather's stories, were notoriously difficult to wield in battle. And Maram's was an old stone with an uncertain hand upon it. It took a long time in drinking in the sun's rays before spitting them back out as fire. And despite Maram's boast, he had yet to learn to aim his crystal with anything like an archer's precision with bow and arrow. The next bolt of flame loosed from his stone shot out and burned through the grass dozens of yards from Count Ulanu or any of his men.

'Have pity on the poor moles!' Atara called to him, smiling as she reached for more arrows.

Count Ulanu, too, saw that the terror of Maram's crystal might be worse than its sear. With his captains, he rode along his lines, calling out encouragements and urging his men forward.

'To the walls!' his voice carried out over the corpse-strewn pasture. 'Be quick now, and we'll take them this very day!'

Archers on top of the walls fired their arrows at the Count; one of these whining shafts, shot by Atara, struck his shield and embedded itself there. But Count Ulanu seemed undeterred by this hail of death. Along with the knights of his guard, he bravely charged forward into it. Then his warriors from Aigul followed him, and a whole host of the screaming Blues ran toward us, too.

OWRRULLL! OWRRULLL!

'So,' Kane said. 'So.'

A tremendous blast from Maram's firestone burned a swath through one of Aigul's advancing companies. Twenty men fell like charred scarecrows. The men around them screamed and halted. But when no further fire issued forth, their captains got them moving again. They sprinted with their ladders straight toward the wall.

The enemy had more ladders than we did men. The moment these long wooden constructions touched the wall, the Librarians tried to push them away with forked poles. Many were the attackers that fell off, crying out as they thudded to the ground and perhaps breaking an arm or a leg. But many more fought their way up to the crenels. Here they were met with spear or mace or sword. The thousands of fierce, individual battles up and down the walls would determine whether the city was taken in this first assault

Kane, working furiously at the crenel next to mine, stabbed out his sword six times, and six of the enemy's warriors flew out into space with mortal wounds reddening their bodies. Atara, to my right, stood firing arrows right into the faces of anyone who showed themselves at the top of their ladders. And Maram stood behind me, still trying to get a flame from his glowing crystal. OWRRULLL!

One of the Blues came bounding up the ladder below my crenel with the dexterity of a great, squat ape. His face, stained a dark blue from the berries of the kirque plant, showed no emotion other than a rage to rip and rend. His blue eyes fixed on mine like fishhooks. Foam gathered about his mouth as he let loose a terrible cry. He ducked beneath the thrust of my sword and nearly caught me with his axe. But I backed away, and its steel edge scraped along the sandstone of the merlon, sending out sparks. My next thrust drove deep into his muscle-knotted arm, nearly severing it. He took as little notice of this spurting wound as I might a mosquito bite. With a dreadful quickness, he grabbed his axe with his other hand and swung it at me, all in one motion. Its edge bit almost through the mail covering my shoulder, shocking me and bruising the flesh beneath down to the bone. His next blow might have taken off my head if I hadn't swung my sword first, taking off his. Unbelievably, he stood headless at the mouth of the crenel for at least three heartbeats before toppling back from the wall.

There is no pain, I told myself. I stood blinking away the Blue's blood from my eyes and gasping for air. There is no pain.

Only my grip on Alkaladur kept me from falling off the rampart behind the battlements to the street below. My sword's shimmering silustria drew strength from the earth and sky, and I drew strength from it. Now other Blues showed themselves in the crenel in which I stood; my silver sword cut through their naked bodies as if through plums. Some of Count Ulanu's knights followed them up the ladder. I had only a little more difficulty in cutting through their mail and killing them one by one.

But many of the Librarians along the walls had less success than Kane and I. Many had fallen, hacked apart, bleeding and crying out their death agonies. Fifty yards down the wall to the left, a squadron of Blues had broken through their defenses.

They were rampaging about the battlements, swinging their axes at anything that moved and howling hideously.

'How are we to kill them if they don't know themselves when they are already killed?' a Librarian near me cried.

From the tower high above the batdements, Lord Grayam's strong voice suddenly called down to us: 'Atara Ars Narmada! Our archers are fallen! Come up here now!'

Atara wasted no time in hurrying up the tower stairs in response to his summons.

From this vantage high above the walls, she could shoot her arrows down at the Blues who now held an entire section of the wall.

Now, to the left and right, two of the great siege towers had nearly been brought up flush with the walls. And one of the battering rams already had. A hundred yards from us, Count Ulanu's warriors had positioned it in front of the centermost of the west wall's gates. It looked almost like a small chalet, with its steeply pointed triangular frame covered in a housing of wooden planks and wet hides. Inside it, hung on chains from the sturdy frame, was a great tree trunk whose head was black iron cast into the shape of a ram. The men inside the housing swung the log back and forth so that the ram's head struck the wooden gate, again and again, back and forth, threatening to shatter it into splinters.

DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three. ..

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said beside me. 'They're going to break in!'

He positioned his red crystal beneath the rays of the waning sun, but nothing happened.

'What's wrong with this stone!' he wailed out And then, in a much softer voice,

'What's wrong with me?'

And still the great ram beat against the gates, DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three, four…

From the left came the yowling of the Blues, and from above us in the tower, the twang of Atara's bowstring as she fired arrows over our heads at them.

OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLL!

There is no pain, I told myself, hacking apart a young knight who had won through to the battlements. There is only killing and death. 'I'm out!' I heard Atara call down to someone in the street below the walls.

And then someone else cried out, 'More arrows! Send up more arrows!'

One of the city's tradesmen, climbing halfway up the wall's steps from the street below, heaved a sheaf of arrows up to me. I grabbed it by the binding cord, and ran up the tower steps to deliver them to Atara.

'Are you all right?' I said to her, looking her over for wounds.

'I'm fine, Val,' she said. Then she looked at my blood-spattered surcoat and mail and asked, 'Are you all right?'

'For now,' I said, cutting the cord around the sheaf of arrows.

As she fit one to her bowstring, Lord Grayam came over to me holding a long bow.

He asked, 'Can you work one of these as you wield your sword?'

'No,' I said, 'but I can shoot.'

'Good – then aim your arrows at those Blues on the wall!'

For a moment, I turned to look at the battalions of Count Ulanu's men far below us crashing against the city's walls like steel waves. They stood bravely beneath the hail of our missiles, their shields held high, waiting to take their turns ascending ladders and die upon our swords – or deal out death themselves. A great many of them were massed beneath the section of wall that the Blues had taken. They were pouring up the numerous ladders there, trying to turn the stream of men that had topped the wall into a flood.

From the tower's vantage, Atara began shooting her arrows into the Blues with a deadly accuracy. I did, too. Where I had once pulled aside my bow to keep from wounding a deer, I now found myself firing feathered shafts into men's naked bellies and throats. Astonishingly, many of the Blues fought on even with half a dozen arrows sticking out of them. If it hadn't been for the valor of the Librarians on the wall, braving the Blues' ferocious axes as they counter-attacked them along the battlements from the north and south, that section of the wall might have been lost to the enemy's assault.

'Push them off!' Lord Grayam called down to his knights. 'Push them off and they'll lose heart!'

A hail of arrows aimed at the tower – at Lord Grayam and us – struck against its battlements, sending up chips of stone. And then a great boulder, hurled by the mangonel, nearly found its mark. It crashed into the wall just where it joined the tower, and broke a hole there. When the dust had settled and the tower stopped shaking, I looked down to see that the boulder had destroyed the stone stairway leading from the tower down to the walls.

DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three, four, DOOM! two, three

…

And still the battering ram worked against the city's gates. I heard Maram gasp out a curse from thirty feet below me. Then I watched as he leaned out of a vacant crenel near Kane and held his crystal pointed toward the ram. A red fire that quickly built into swirling crimson flames leapt out from it. The flames fell upon the ram's housing like the breath of a dragon. In only moments, the wet hides nailed to the ram's frame steamed and began burning away as the wood beneath ignited in a great torment of fire. Screams split the air as the men inside it began burning, too.

'Ai! Ai! Ai!' they cried. 'Ai! Ai! Ai!'

More than one of Count Ulanu's men, upon witnessing this horror, turned to flee from the wall. Then ten more broke, and twenty, and soon whole companies from Aigul and Inyam were turning and running. Count Ulanu and his captains rode upon them, striking them with the flats of their swords and trying to turn back the tide of this uncalled retreat. But when men lose the courage to fight, there is little their leaders can do to make them.

'I'll give them fire!' Maram called out from the wall below the tower. 'I will!'

Just then his crystal flared a bright ruby red as a shaft of fire shot forth. It struck the siege tower, which had just been hooked onto the wall. Flames enveloped it, trapping fifty men inside its great height of crackling wood. I tried not to listen to their screams.

Suddenly the enemy's bugles along the burning pasture sounded a loud tattoo as Count Ulanu finally gave the order for a retreat. His men, who had mounted their ladders with so much bloodlust, now couldn't be kept from practically flying back down them. They left the companv of Blues stranded on top of the wall. Although these nearly nerveless men fought valiantly, Atara's and my arrows picked them off one by one, and Lord Grayam's knights quickly finished them, closing in from north and south along the wall as they retook this blood-slicked section of it.

For the moment, the enemy's attack failed and the world seemed to stand still. All I could hear was the cries and pleading of the wounded, and the long, dark, terrible shrieking inside me. Then I took note of a tremendous clamor coming from the south of the city. A knight on top of a wounded horse came galloping through the streets from that direction. He stopped just beneath our tower and called up to Lord Grayam.

'My Lord!' he gasped, 'the Sun Gate is broken! Captain Nicolam is holding the entrance, but we are too few! He begs you to send more men!'

It took only a moment for Lord Grayam to call down to his son, Captain Donalam, to lead half a company of knights to this new crisis along the south wall. Kane, who had a sense for where the battle was to be the fiercest, looked up toward me and smiled savagely as he favored me with a quick nod of his head. Then he gripped his bloody sword and joined Captain Donalam's knights. They climbed down the wall to the street and began running behind the knight on his wounded horse. I would have gone with them, but the tower's steps were broken, and I had no good way down to them.

Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom…

Out on the pasture before the west wall, the enemy's war drums were booming again.

Count Ulanu rode among his badly mauled battalions, screaming out orders and trying to reform his men. Surely, I thought, his heralds must have told him of the breaching of the Sun Gate. And so surely it wouldn't be long before he marched his thousands against the wall again.

'No, no,' Maram called out below me, seeming to read my thoughts, 'I'll burn him with starfire – I will!'

Flushed with the hubris of his recent triumphs, he stood leaning out between two of the battlements' arrow-scarred merlons. He pointed his gelstei toward Count Ulanu five hundred yards from us out on the pasture below. The slanting rays of the sun touched the fire-stone. It began to glow again, hellishly hot, it seemed to me. Ten thousand enemy warriors waited to see if its fire would fall upon them. Then Maram let out a painful cry as the sear of his stone burned his hand. He wailed as his fingers opened against his will, and he let go of it. It fell straight down in front of the wall like a shooting star.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried. 'Oh, my Lord!'

'The firestone!' one of Lord Grayam's knights called out. 'He's dropped the firestone!'

Doom, doom, doom…

The bright crystal, now quickly cooling to a blood red, lay on the green grass of the pasture beneath the wall. A hundred of the Librarians had seen Maram drop it. And ten thousand of the enemy had.

'Maram Marshayk!' Lord Grayam called out next to me. He looked, down from the tower at Maram almost alone beneath us. 'The gelstei! You've got to retrieve the gelstei!'

Maram peered over the crenel at the firestone where it lay among the bodies of fallen warriors thirty feet below him. He sadly shook his head and muttered, 'No, no – not I.'

Far out on the pasture, Count Ulanu had called up his archers who brought their bows to bear on our section of the wall.

'Maram!' I shouted, looking down at him. My eyes picked apart the broken masonry of the tower's stairway to see if there was any way I could climb down to him. There wasn't. 'Maram, you must not let them gain the firestone! Go now!'

'No!' Maram shouted back at me, 'I can't!'

'You can! You must!'

'No, no,' he said angrily. 'How could you ask this of me?'

Behind Count Ulanu, ten of his knights gathered in their horses' reins and turned their shining helms toward us.

'Maram!'

'No! No!'

Several Librarians near Maram chose that moment to haul themselves up over the battlements and climb down the outside of the wall on the ladders that Count Ulanu's men had left there. Arrows killed them. They fell down on top of the heaps of the dying and the dead.

'Maram!' I called out again.

'No, no! I won't go! Are you mad?'

He pulled back behind his merlon just as a rain of arrows clacked against the wall.

Atara, standing next to me on the tower's ledge, looked down at Maram and said,

'He'll never do it.'

'Yes,' I said to her, 'he will.'

Lord Grayam tapped me on the shoulder and pointed across the pasture where a company of cavalry had now gathered two hundred yards behind the archers to charge toward the wall. He started to call for five more of his Librarians, to Maram's left, to go down to the gelstei. But Atara stayed his command. With a strange light in her eyes, she said, 'No, it must be Maram, if it's anyone.'

'Maram!' I called again. ‘The seven brothers and sisters of the earth with the seven -'

'Now we're only six and Alphanderry is dead! And I will be, too, if you ask me to go down there! How can you?'

How could I ask him this, I wondered? And then another thought, as dear and hard as a diamond: How could I not? I knew that the success of the quest depended on his regaining the firestone, as might the fate of Khaisham and much more. The whole world, I sensed, turned upon this moment.

'Maram!' I called out, but there was a silence below me.

It is a terrible thing to lead others in battle. Maram and my com-panions had elected me to lead us on our quest, and lead I must. But since there was no way I could go down to the firestone myself, I had to persuade him to do so. I wanted to give him all my courage then. But all I could do was to show him his own.

'Maram,' I said, though I did not speak with breath and lips. I drew Alkaladur and held it shining in the sun. Strangely, although I had killed many men with it, its silver blade was unstained, for the silustria was so smooth and hard that blood would not cling to it. Maram couldn't help seeing himself in its mirrored brightness. I opened my heart to him then and touched him with the valarda, this gift of the angels. My sword cut deep into him. And there, inside his own heart, he found a sword shimmering as bright as any kalama, if not so keenly honed.

'Damn you!' Maram called out to me. But his eyes told me just the opposite. And then, in a softer voice which I could barely hear, he muttered, 'All right, all right, I'll go!'

He turned to look out at what he must do, the muscles along his great body tensing as he gathered in all his strength. For a moment I thought he was ready to go up and over the wall. And then he quickly pulled him-self back behind the safety of the merlon. And still the drums along the enemy's lines beat almost as loud as my heart: Doom, doom, doom!

'I can't do this,' he said to himself. And then a moment later, 'Oh yes, you can, my friend.'

Again he faced the open crenel, and again he pulled back as he cried out, 'Am I mad?'

And still a third time he rushed to the crenel. He put his hands upon the chipped stone there, gathered in his breath, looked out… and heaved up his breakfast in a bitter spew. And then, to my pride and his own, he pulled himself up and turned facing the wall to let himself down the ladder there.

'Atara!' I cried, sheathing my sword and grabbing up my bow. 'Shoot now! Shoot as you've never shot before!'

Maram was climbing down the ladder with amazing speed as Count Ulanu's knights thundered across the pasture straight toward him. Atara's bow sang out, and so did mine – and those of the Librarians along the wall. Five knights fell from their horses with arrows sticking out of them. But the enemy's archers were now firing off arrows of their own. One of these struck Maram in his rump; he cried out in anger but kept climbing down the ladder. Then he suddenly let go of it and jumped the final five feet to the ground. He scooped up his crystal and leaped back toward the ladder.

Atara's bowstring twanged again, and another knight fell. I killed one, too – as did many of the archers along the wall. Thus the company of knights charging Maram melted beneath this hot rain of arrows. Only one of them managed to close the last twenty yards, slowing his horse as he neared the wall.

'Maram!' I called down to him. 'Behind you!'

Maram, about to be robbed of his treasure and perhaps his life, whipped out his sword even as he turned and ducked beneath the knight's lance. Then he lunged forward and stabbed his sword into the knight's thigh. In its quickness and ferocity, it was a move worthy of Kane.

Just then one of Atara's arrows burned down and took the knight through his throat.

He clung desperately to his horse even as Maram turned to race back up the ladder.

'I'm saved!' he cried out. 'I'm saved!'

But he had spoken too soon. At that moment, an arrow whined through the air and buried itself in the other half of his fat rump. It seemed to push him even more quickly up the ladder. So it was, with feathered shafts sticking out of either of his hindquarters, he reached the top of the wall and heaved himself up over the crenel.

Taking care to jump immediately behind one the merlons, he held up the firestone triumphantly.

'Behold!' he said to me. 'Behold and rejoice!'

Then he gazed lovingly at the crystal in his hand as he said, 'Ah, my beauty – did you really think I'd let anyone else have you?'

From the top of the tower, Lord Grayam called down to him, 'Thank you, Maram Marshayk!'

Other Librarians nearby by took up the cry: 'Maram Marshayk! Maram Marshayk!'

In a moment, their exultation spread up and down the wall so that knights and archers were now cheering out: 'Ma-ram! Ma-ram! Ma-ram! Ma-ram!…'

The sound of so many voices lifted up in praise carried out across the pasture to where Count Ulanu sat on his horse. Hundreds of his men lay slaughtered beneath the wall, and only a few moments before, a whole company of his finest cavalry had perished. One of his siege towers and battering rams were now nothing but charred beams. And still Maram had his firestone. So when the enemy's bugles sounded again and Count Ulanu began pulling back his lines to make camp for the night, no one was surprised.

'Ma-ram! Ma-ram! Ma-ram!..'

A rope ladder was called for and cast up to the Lord Librarian – and to Atara and me. We climbed down it and embraced Maram, taking care with his wounds. The blood dripping down his legs caused him to turn and look back at the arrows embedded in him. And then he gasped in outrage and pain, 'Oh, my Lord, I'll never sit down again!'

'It's all right,' I said to him, I'll carry you, if I must.'

'Will you?'

I gripped his hand in mine with great joy as I watched him holding his red crystal in the other. I said, 'Thank you, Maram.'

In his soft brown eyes was a fire brighter than anything I had seen lighting up his gelstei. 'Thank you, my friend,' he told me.

Lord Grayam came forward and clasped his hand, too. 'You would do well, Prince Maram, to repair to the infirmary – with the other warriors wounded here today.'

Maram managed a painful but proud smile. 'We won, Lotd Grayam.'

Lord Grayam stared down through the ruins of the wall at the bloody ground beneath us. He said, 'Yes, we won the day.'

But the Librarians, too, had lost many men, and the Sun Gate had been breached.

Tomorrow, I thought, would be another day of battle and even more terrible. pasture to where Count Ulanu sat on his horse. Hundreds of his men lay slaughtered beneath the wall, and only a few moments before, a whole company of his finest cavalry had perished. One of his siege towers and battering rams were now nothing but charred beams. And still Maram had his firestone. So when the enemy's bugles sounded again and Count Ulanu began pulling back his lines to make camp for the night, no one was surprised.

'Ma-ram! Ma-ram! Ma-ram!..'

A rope ladder was called for and cast up to the Lord Librarian – and to Atara and me. We climbed down it and embraced Maram, taking care with his wounds. The blood dripping down his legs caused him to turn and look back at the arrows embedded in him. And then he gasped in outrage and pain, 'Oh, my Lord, I'll never sit down again!'

'It's all right,' I said to him, I'll carry you, if I must.'

'Will you?'

I gripped his hand in mine with great joy as I watched him holding his red crystal in the other. I said, 'Thank you, Maram.'

In his soft brown eyes was a fire brighter than anything I had seen lighting up his gelstei. 'Thank you, my friend,' he told me.

Lord Grayam came forward and clasped his hand, too. 'You would do well, Prince Maram, to repair to the infirmary – with the other warriors wounded here today.'

Maram managed a painful but proud smile. 'We won, Lord Grayam.'

Lord Grayam stared down through the ruins of the wall at the bloody ground beneath us. He said, 'Yes, we won the day.'

But the Librarians, too, had lost many men, and the Sun Gate had been breached.

Tomorrow, I thought, would be another day of battle and even more terrible.