The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One. David Zindell
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Название: The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One
Автор: David Zindell
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Сказки
isbn: 9780007396597
isbn:
‘This is the time,’ Master Juwain said again as he turned toward me. The time for the ending of war. And perhaps the time that the Lightstone will be found as well. I’m sure that King Kiritan’s messengers have come bearing the news of just such a prophecy.’
I gazed out at the stars and there, too, I felt a rushing of a wind that carried the call of strange and beautiful voices. The leldra, I knew, communicate the Law of the One not just in golden rays of light but in the deepest whisperings of the soul.
‘If the Lightstone is found,’ I said, wondering aloud, ‘who would ever have the wisdom to use it?’
Master Juwain looked up at the stars, too, and I sensed in him the fierce pride that had taken him from the fields of a farm on the Elyssu to a mastership in the greatest of Brotherhoods. I expected him to tell me that only the Brothers had attained the purity of mind necessary to plumb the secrets of the Lightstone. Instead, he turned to me and said, ‘The Maitreya would have such wisdom. It is for him that the Galadin sent the Lightstone to earth.’
Outside the window, high above the castle and the mountains, the stars of the Seven Sisters and other constellations gleamed brightly. Somewhere among them, I thought, the immortal Elijin gazed upon this cosmic glory and dreamed of becoming Galadin, just as the Star People aspired to advancement to the Elijik order. There, too, dwelled Arwe, Ashtoreth and Valoreth, and others of the Galadin. These great, angelic beings had so perfected themselves and mastered the physical realm that they could never be killed. They walked on other worlds even as men did the fields and forests of Mesh; in truth, they walked freely between worlds, though never yet on earth. Scryers had seen visions of them, and I had sensed their great beauty in my longings and dreams. It was Valoreth himself, my grandfather once told me, who had sent Elahad to Ea bearing the Lightstone in his hands.
For a while, as the night deepened and the stars turned through the sky, we stood there talking about the powers of this mysterious golden cup. I said nothing of my seeing it appear before me in the woods earlier that day. Although its splendor now seemed only that of a dream, the warmth that had revived me like a golden elixir was too real to doubt. Could the Lightstone itself, I wondered, truly heal me of the wound that cut through my heart? Or would it take a Maitreya, wielding the Lightstone as I might a sword, to accomplish this miracle?
I believe that I might have found the courage to ask Master Juwain these questions if we hadn’t been interrupted. Just as I was wondering if those of the orders of the Galadin and Elijin had once suffered from the curse of empathy even as I did, footsteps sounded in the hallway and there came a loud knocking at the door.
‘Just a moment,’ Master Juwain called out.
He stepped briskly across the room and opened the door. And there, in the dimly lit archway, stood Joshu Kadar breathing heavily from his long climb up the stairs.
‘It’s time,’ the young squire gasped out. ‘Lord Asaru has asked me to tell you that it’s time for the feast to begin.’
‘Thank you,’ Master Juwain told him. Then he moved back to the desk where he had left the arrow. He carefully wrapped it in my shirt again and asked, ‘Are you ready, Val?’
It seemed that the answers that I sought to the great riddles of life would have to wait. And so, with Joshu in the lead, I followed Maram and Master Juwain out into the cold, dark hallway.
We entered the great hall to the blare of trumpets announcing the feast. Along the room’s north wall, hung with a great, black banner emblazoned with the swan and stars of the royal house of Mesh, three heralds stood blowing their brass horns. The sound that reverberated through the huge room and out into the castle was the same that I had twice heard calling the Valari to battle. Indeed, the knights of Mesh – and those of Ishka – crowded through the doorways five abreast and moved toward their various tables as if marching to war.
I found Asaru and my brothers standing by their chairs at my family’s table along the north wall; there, too, my mother and grandmother waited for me to take my place, as did my father. I’m sure that he didn’t like it that I was among the last to arrive. He stood tall and grave in a black tunic that was much like the one that I had hastily fetched from my rooms – only clean and embroidered with a freshly polished silver swan and seven bright, silver stars. As he watched me climb the steps to the dais upon which our table stood, his bright, black eyes blazed like stars; there was reproof in his fierce gaze, but also concern and much else as well. Although Shavashar Elahad was the hardest man I knew, the well of his emotions ran as deep as the sea.
When all the guests had finally found their places, my father pulled out his chair and sat down, and everyone did the same. He took the position of honor at the center of the table, with my mother at his immediate right and my grandmother on his left. And on her left, in order, sat Karshur, Jonathay and Mandru, the fiercest of all my brothers. Where the other Valari knights in the room were content to wear their swords buckled to their waists, Mandru always carried his scabbarded in his three-fingered left hand, ready to draw at a moment’s notice should he need to defend his honor – or his kingdom’s. He sat looking down the table in silent communication with Asaru, who must have told him what had occurred earlier in the woods. Asaru sat to the right of my mother, Elianora wi Solaru, who was tall and regal in her brightly embroidered gown – and said to be the most beautiful woman in the Nine Kingdoms. Her dark, perceptive eyes moved from Asaru to Yarashan, who sat on Asaru’s right, and then down the line of the table from the silent and secretive Ravar to me. As the youngest and least distinguished member of my family, I sat at the far right near the end of the table. There I had hoped to lose myself in the clamor and vastness of the room. But there was no eluding my mother’s strength, goodness and grace. She was the most alive being I had ever known, and the most loyal, too, and she looked at me as if to say that she would gladly lay down her life to protect me should the unknown assassin try to kill me again.
‘Do you see him here?’ Ravar whispered to me. The fox-faced Ravar was older than I by three years and shorter by almost a head. I had to bend low to hear what he was saying.
I looked out at the sea of faces in the room as I tried to identify that of the assassin who had escaped us. At the table nearest the dais, on the right, sat the Brothers who were visiting the castle that night. Master Juwain was there, of course, accompanied by Master Kelem, the Music Master, and Master Tadeo and some twenty other Brothers besides Maram. I knew all of them by name, and I was sure that none of them could have drawn a bow against me.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same for King Kiritan’s emissaries, who had taken the next two tables. All of them – the knights and squires, the minstrels and grooms – were strangers to me. Count Dario, the King’s cousin, I recognized only by description and his emblem: he wore the gold caduceus of House Narmada on his blue tunic, and his carefully trimmed hair and goatee seemed like red flames shooting from his head.
At the left of the room, next to the Ishkan tables where I tried not to look, were the first of the Meshian tables. There I saw Lord Harsha beaming proudly at Behira, and Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu talking with their wives. Lansar Raasharu, my father’s seneschal, sat there, too, along with Mesh’s other greatest lords. If any of these old warriors were traitors, I thought, then I couldn’t be sure СКАЧАТЬ