The Lightstone - Hardcover

Zindell, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765311291 ISBN 13: 9780765311290

Publisher: Tor Books, 2006

Synopsis

On the island continent of Ea it is a dark time of chaos and war. Morjin, immortal fallen angel and Lord of Lies, seeks to enslave the entire world. His dreaded assassins are everywhere and land after land falls under his evil power.

The one thing that has the potential to destroy him is an object that has been lost for ages: the fabulous Lightstone that legend tells was crafted by the ancient Star people. A call is sent out by one of the major rulers still free of Morjin's grip to all those who oppose the dreaded sorcerer. It is nothing less than a quest to find the Lightstone and give Men hope after ages of despair. It is a quest that none have seen the like of in ten generations. And most believe is doomed to fail.

What hero is man enough, brave enough...or foolish enough to embark on such a mad quest?

Valashu Elahad, the seventh and youngest Valeri prince of the royal house of Mesh is such a man. With his faithful companion Maram by his side Valashu will journey to the farthest reaches of Ea to try and reclaim this mystical object, to free the world of Morjin's evil and save his people from sure destruction. Along the way he will discover truths about friendship, courage...and love.

And the terrible truth about the being who threatens to sunder his world.

About this title

About the Author:

David Zindell's short story "Shanidar" was a prize-winning entry in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. In addition to The Lightstone, he is the author of several critically acclaimed novels: Neverness, The Broken God, and The Wild. He resides in Colorado.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

THE LIGHTSTONE (Chapter 1)

On clear winter nights, I have stood on mountains just to be closer to the stars. Some say that these shimmering lights are the souls of warriors who have died in battle; some say that at the beginning of time, Arwe himself cast an infinite number of diamonds into the sky to shine forever and defeat the darkness of night. But I believe the stars are other suns like our own. They speak along the blood in fiery whisperings of ancient dreams and promises unfulfilled. From there long ago our people came to earth bearing the cup called the Lightstone; to there we would someday return as angels holding light in our hands.

My grandfather believed this, too. It was he who taught me the stories of the Great Bear, the Dragon, and the other constellations. It was he who named me after the bright Morning Star, Valashu. He always said that we were born to shine. A Valari warrior, he once told me, should polish first his soul and then his sword. For only then can he see his fate and accept it. Or fight against it, if he is one of the few men marked out to make their own fate. Such a man is a glory and gift to the earth. Such a man was my grandfather. But the Ishkans killed him all the same.

Elkasar Elahad would have found it a strange fate indeed that on the same day King Kiritan's messengers came from Alonia to announce a great quest for the Lightstone, a whole company of knights and nobles from Ishka rode in to my father's castle to negotiate for peace or call for war. In the warmth of one of the loveliest springs that anyone could remember, with the snows melting from the mountains and wildflowers everywhere abloom, the forests surrounding Silvassu teemed with boar and deer and other animals that might be killed for food. My father's steward, upon counting the castle's guests that day, grumbled that the kitchens would require much food if any feast were to be made. And so my brothers and I, along with other knights, were called to go out and hunt for it. After all, even the murderers of a king must eat.

Just after noon I rode down from the hills upon which our ancient city is built with my eldest brother, Lord Asaru. My friend Maram and one of my brother's squires rode with us as well. We were a small hunting party, perhaps the smallest of the many to fill the woods that day. I was glad for such company, for I cared nothing for the sport of hounds yelping and men on snorting horses running down a fear-maddened pig. As for Asaru, he was like our father, King Shamesh: stern, serious, and focused on his objective with an astonishing clarity of purpose. His soul had not only been polished but sharpened until it cut like the finest Godhran steel. He had said that we would take a deer, and for that we needed small numbers and stealth. Maram, who would have preferred the pageantry of hunting with the other knights, followed him anyway. In truth, he followed me. As he liked to say, he would never desert his best friend. As he didn't like to say, he was a coward who had once seen what the razorlike tusks of a boar could do to a man's groin. It was much safer to hunt a deer.

It was a warm day, and the air smelled of freshly turned earth and lila blossoms. Every quarter of a mile or so, a stout farmhouse stood out among fields demarcated by lines of low stone walls. There was new barley in the ground and the golden sun in the sky. As we passed farther into the Valley of the Swans, the farmland gave out onto miles of unbroken forest. At the edge of a field, where the ancient oaks rose up like a wall of green, we drew up and dismounted. Asaru handed the reins of his horse to his young squire, Joshu Kadar. Joshu didn't like being left to tend the horses, and he watched impatiently as Asaru drew out his great yew bow and strung it. For a moment I was tempted to give him my bow and let him hunt the deer while I waited in the sun. I hated hunting almost as much as I did war.

And then Asaru, tall and imperious in his flowing black cloak, handed me my bow and pointed at the forest. He said, "I didn't think you would agree to go out today."

"How could I not, since you promised our father we would bring back a deer?"

"A deer," Asaru said. "Only one deer."

The questioning in his large eyes seemed to ask me why I couldn't be like any other warrior and prince. Why, I asked myself, couldn't I be? Why couldn't I simply let loose a steel-tipped arrow and slaughter a beautiful and innocent animal?

"There must be," I said, "hundreds of stags here."

Asaru peered off through the trees and said, "There must be. But there is good game closer to the castle. Why these woods, Val?"

"Why not?" I countered. Asaru, knowing how I felt about such blood-sport, had given me my choice of where to hunt that day. Although he had remained silent during our ride down from the castle, he must have known where I was leading him. "You know why," I said more gently, looking at him.

And he looked at me, fearless as all Valari would hope to be. His eyes were those of the Valari kings: deep and mysterious, as black as space and as bright as stars. He had the bold face bones and long hawk's nose of our ancient line. His skin, burnt brown in the hot spring sun, was like weathered ivory, and he had a great shock of glossy black hair, long and thick and blowing wild in the wind. Although he was very much a man of blood and steel and other elements of the earth, there was something otherworldly about him, too. My father said that we looked enough alike to be twins. But of the seven sons of Shavashar Elahad, he was the firstborn and I was the last. And that made all the difference in the world.

He drew closer and stood silently regarding me. Where I insisted on wearing a leather hunting jacket and a homespun shirt and trousers of a deep forest green, he was resplendent in a cloak and a black tunic embroidered with the silver swan and the seven silver stars of the royal house of Mesh. He would never think to be seen in any other garments. He was the tallest of my brothers, taller than I by half an inch. He seemed to look down at me, and his bright black eyes fell like blazing suns on the scar cut into my forehead above my left eye. It was a unique scar, shaped like a lightning bolt. I think it reminded him of things that he would rather not know.

"Why do you have to be so wild?" he said in a quickly exhaled breath.

I stood beneath his gaze, listening to the thunder of my heart.

"Here, now!" a loud voice boomed out. "What's this? What are you talking about?"

Maram, seeing the silent communication flowing between us, came up clutching his bow and making nervous rumbling noises in his throat. Though not as tall as Asaru, he was a big man with a big belly that pushed out ahead of him as if to knock any obstacles or lesser men from his path.

"What should I know about these woods?" he asked me.

"They're full of deer," I said, smiling at him.

"And other animals," Asaru added provocatively.

"What animals?" Maram asked. He licked his thick, sensuous lips. He rubbed his thick, brown beard where it curled across his blubbery cheeks.

"The last time we entered these woods," Asaru said, "we could hardly move without stepping on a rabbit. And there were squirrels everywhere."

"Good, good," Maram said, "I like squirrels."

"So do the foxes," Asaru said. "So do the wolves."

Maram coughed to clear his throat, then swallowed a couple of times. "In my country, I've only ever seen red foxes--they're not at all like these huge gray ones of yours that might as well be wolves."

Maram was not of Mesh, not even of the Nine Kingdoms of the Valari. Everything about him was an affront to a Valari's sensibilities. His large brown eyes reminded one of the sugared coffee that the Delians drink and were given to tears of rage or sentimentality as the situation might demand. He wore jeweled rings on each of the fingers of his hamlike hands; he wore the bright scarlet tunic and trousers of the Delian royalty. He liked red, of course, because it was an outward manifestation of the colors of his fiery heart. And even more, he liked standing out and being seen, especially in a wood full of hungry men with bows and arrows. My brothers believed that he had been sent to the Brotherhood school in the mountains above Silvassu as a punishment for his cowardly ways. But the truth was he had been banished from court due to an indiscretion with his father's favorite concubine.

"Do not," Asaru warned him, "hunt wolves in Mesh. It's bad luck."

"Ah, well," Maram said, twanging his bowstring, "I won't hunt them if they won't hunt me."

"Wolves don't hunt men. It's the bears that you have to watch for."

"Bears?"

"This time of year, especially the mothers with their cubs."

"I saw one of your bears last year. I hope I never see another."

I rubbed my forehead as I caught the heat of Maram's fear. Of course, Mesh is famed for the ferociousness of its huge brown bears, which drove the much gentler black bears into gentler lands such as Delu ages ago.

"If the Brothers don't expel you and you stay with us long enough," Asaru said, "you'll see plenty of bears."

"But I thought the bears kept mostly to the mountains."

"Well, where do you think you are?" Asaru said, sweeping his hand out toward the snowcapped peaks that surrounded us.

In truth, we stood in the Valley of the Swans, largest and loveliest of Mesh's valleys. Here the Kurash flowed through gentle terrain into Lake Waskaw, where the swans came each spring to swim through clear waters.

But all around rose the great white crests of the Morning Mountains: Arakel, Vayu, and sacred Telshar, on whose lower slopes my grandfather's grandfathers had built the Elahad castle. Once I had climbed this luminous mountain. From the summit, looking north, I had seen the cold white mountains of Ishka. But, of course, all my life I have tried not to look in that direction.

Now Maram followed the line of Asaru's outstretched hand. He looked into the dark, waiting forest and muttered, "Ah, where am I, indeed? Lost, lost, truly lost."

At that moment, as if in answer to some silent supplication of Maram's, there came the slow clip-clop of a horse's hooves. I turned to see a white-haired man leading a draft horse across the field straight toward us. He wore a patch over his right eye and walked with a severe limp, as if his knee had been smashed with a mace or a flail. I knew that I had seen this old farmer before, but I couldn't quite remember where.

"Hello, lads," he said as he drew up to us. "It's a fine day for hunting, isn't it?"

Maram took in the farmer's work-stained woolens, which smelled of horse manure and pigs. He wrinkled up his fat nose disdainfully. But Asaru, who had a keener eye, immediately saw the ring glittering on the farmer's gnarled finger, and so did I. It was a plain silver ring set with four brilliant diamonds: the ring of a warrior and a lord at that.

"Lord Harsha," Asaru said upon recognizing him, "it's been a long time."

"Yes, it has," Lord Harsha said. He looked at Asaru's squire, then at Maram and me. "Who are your friends?"

Asaru presented Joshu and then nodded toward Maram, saying, "And this is Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu. He's a student of the Brothers."

Lord Harsha peered out at him with his single eye. "Isn't it true that the Brothers don't hunt animals?"

"Ah, that is true," Maram said, gripping his bow. "We hunt knowledge. I've come along only to protect my friend in case we run into any bears."

Now Lord Harsha turned his attention toward me, and he looked back and forth between me and my brother. The light of his eye bore into my forehead like the rays of the sun.

"You must be Valashu Elahad," he said.

Just then Maram's face reddened in anger on my behalf. I knew that he didn't approve of the Valari system of honors and rank. It must have galled him that an old man of no noble blood, a mere farmer, could outrank a prince.

I looked down at the ring I wore. In it was set neither the four diamonds of a lord nor the three of a master--nor even the two sparkling stones of a full knight. A single diamond stood out against the silver: the ring of a simple warrior. In truth, I was lucky to have won it. If not for some skills with the sword and bow that my father had taught me, I never would have. What kind of warrior hates war? How is it that a Valari knight--or rather, a man who only dreamed of being a knight--should prefer playing the flute and writing poetry to trials of arms with his brothers and countrymen?

Lord Harsha smiled grimly at me and said, "It's been a long time since you've come to these woods, hasn't it?"

"Yes, sir, it has," I said.

"Well, you should have paid your respects before trampling over my fields. Young people have no manners these days."

"My apologies, sir, but we were in a hurry. You see, we got a late start."

I didn't explain that our hunting expedition had been delayed for an hour while I searched the castle for Maram--only to find him in bed with one of my father's chambermaids.

"Yes, very late," Lord Harsha said, looking up at the sun. "The Ishkans have already been here before you."

"Which Ishkans?" I asked in alarm. I noticed that Asaru was now staring off into the woods intently.

"They didn't stop to present themselves either. But there were five of them--I heard them bragging they were going to take a bear."

At this news, Maram gripped his bow even more tightly. Beads of sweat formed up among the brown curls of hair across his forehead. He said, "Well, then--I suppose we should leave these woods to them."

But Asaru only smiled, as if Maram had suggested abandoning all of Mesh to the enemy. He said, "The Ishkans like to hunt bears. Well, it's a big wood, and they've had more than an hour to become lost in it."

"Please see to it that you don't become lost as well," Lord Harsha said.

"My brother," Asaru said, looking at me strangely, "is more at home in the woods than in his own castle. We won't get lost."

"Good. Then good luck hunting." Lord Harsha nodded his head at me in a curt bow. "Are you after a bear this time, too?"

"No, a deer," I said. "As we were the last time we came here."

"But you found a bear all the same."

"It might be more accurate to say the bear found us."

Now Maram's knuckles grew white around his bow, and he looked at me with wide eyes. "What do you mean a bear found you?"

Because I didn't want to tell him the story, I stood there looking off into the woods in silence. And so Lord Harsha answered for me.

"It was ten years ago," he said. "Lord Asaru had just received his knight's ring, and Val must have been what--eleven? Ten?"

"Ten," I told him.

"That's right," Lord Harsha said, nodding his head. "And so the lads went into the woods alone after their deer. And then the bear--&quo...

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0765311291
• ISBN 13: 9780765311290
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416