The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One. David Zindell

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      He raised his goblet toward Behira. Forgetting that he was supposed to wait until after the toast before drinking, he took a huge gulp of beer. And all the while, Behira sat next to her father flushing with embarrassment. But it was clear that Maram’s attentions delighted her, for she smiled back at him, glowing with an almost tangible heat.

      ‘Brother Maram,’ Lord Harsha suddenly called out in his gravelly old voice, ‘this isn’t the place for your poetry.’

      But Maram ignored him, too, and began his poem:

       Star of my soul, how you shimmer Beyond the deep blue sky, Whirling and whirling – you and I whisperlessly Spinning sparks of joy into the night.

      I stared at the rings glittering from Maram’s fingers and the passion pouring from his eyes. The words of his poem outraged me. For it wasn’t really his poem at all; he had stolen the verse of the great but forgotten Amun Amaduk and was passing it off as his own.

      Lord Harsha pushed back his chair and called out even more strongly, ‘Brother Maram!’

      Maram would have done well to heed the warning in Lord Harsha’s voice. But by this time he was drunk on his own words (or rather Amun’s), and with childlike abandon began the second stanza of the poem:

       From long ago we came across the universe: Lost rays of light, we fell among strange new flowers And searched in fields and forests Until we found each other and remembered.

      Now Lord Harsha, gritting his teeth against the pain of his broken knee, suddenly rose to his feet. With surprising speed, he began advancing down the row of tables straight at Maram. And still Maram continued reciting his poem:

       Soul of my soul, for how few moments Were we together on this wandering earth In the magic of our love Dancing in the eyelight, breathing as one?

      Suddenly, with a sound of fury in his throat, Lord Harsha drew his sword. Its polished steel pointed straight at Maram, who finally closed his mouth as it occurred to him that he had gone too far. And Lord Harsha, I was afraid, had gone too far to stop, too. Almost without thinking, I leaped up from my chair, crossed the dais, and jumped down to the lower level of the guests’ tables. My boots hit the cold stone with a loud slap. Then I stepped in front of Maram just as Lord Harsha closed the distance between them and pointed the tip of his sword at my heart.

      ‘Lord Harsha,’ I said, ‘will you please excuse my friend? He’s obviously had too much of your fine beer.’

      Lord Harsha’s sword lowered perhaps half an inch. I felt his hot breath steaming out of his nostrils. I was afraid that at any moment he might try to get at Maram by pushing his sword through me. Then he growled out, ‘Well, then he should remember his vows, shouldn’t he? Particularly his vow to renounce women!’

      Behind me, I heard Maram clear his throat as if to argue with Lord Harsha. And then my father, the King, finally spoke.

      ‘Lord Harsha, would you please put down your sword? As a favor to me.’

      If Maram had been Valari then there would have been a death that night, for he would have had to answer Lord Harsha’s challenge with steel. But Maram was only a Delian and a Brother at that. Because no one could reasonably expect a Brother to fight a duel with a Valari lord, there was yet hope.

      Lord Harsha took a deep breath and then another. I felt the heat of his blood begin to cool. Then he nodded his head in a quick bow to my father and said, ‘Sire, as a favor to you, it would be my pleasure.’

      Almost as suddenly as he had drawn his sword, he slipped it back into his sheath. When the King asked you to put down your sword – or take it up – there was no choice but to honor his request.

      ‘Thank you,’ my father called out to him, ‘for your restraint.’

      ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to him, ‘for sparing my friend.’

      Then I turned to look at Maram as I laid my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down into his chair. From the nearby table of Valari masters and their ladies, I swept up two goblets of beer and gave one to Lord Harsha.

      ‘To brotherhood among men,’ I said, raising my goblet. I looked from my family’s table to that of Master Juwain, and then back across the room to the table of the Ishkans. ‘In the end, all men are brothers.’

      I listened with great hope as echoes of approval rang out to the clinking of many glasses. And then Maram, my stubborn, irrepressible friend, looked up at my father and said, ‘Ah, King Shamesh – I suppose this isn’t the best time to finish my poem?’

      My father ignored him. ‘The time for making toasts is at an end. Lord Harsha, would you please take your seat so that we might move on to more important matters?’

      Again Lord Harsha bowed, and he walked slowly back through the rows of tables to his chair. He sat down next to his greatly relieved daughter, whom he looked at sternly but with an obvious love. And then a silence fell over the room as all eyes turned toward my father.

      ‘We have before us tonight the emissaries of two kings,’ he said, nodding his head at Salmelu and then Count Dario. ‘And two requests will be made of us here tonight; we should listen well to both and neither let our hearts shout down the wisdom of our heads nor our heads mock what our hearts know to be true. Why don’t we have Prince Salmelu speak first, for it may be that in deciding upon his request, the answer to Count Dario’s will become obvious.’

      Without smiling, he then nodded at Salmelu, who eagerly sprang to his feet.

      ‘King Shamesh,’ he said in a voice that snapped out like a whip, ‘the request of King Hadaru is simple: that the border of our kingdoms be clearly established according to the agreement of our ancestors. Either that, or the King asks that we set a time and place for battle.’

      So, I thought, the ultimatum that we had all been awaiting had finally been set before us. I felt the hands of three hundred Meshian warriors almost aching to grip the hilts of their swords.

      ‘The border of our kingdoms is established thusly,’ my father told Salmelu. ‘The first Shavashar gave your people all the lands from Mount Korukel to the Aru River.’

      This was true. Long, long ago in the Lost Ages before the millennia of recorded history, it was said that the first Shavashar Elahad had claimed most of the lands of the Morning Mountains for his kingdom. But his seventh son, Ishkavar, wanting lands of his own to rule, had despaired of ever coming into this great possession. And so he had rebelled against his own father. Because Shavashar refused to spill the blood of his favorite son, he had given him all the lands from Korukel to the Aru, and from the Culhadosh River to the grassy plains of the Wendrush. Such was the origin of the kingdom that came to be called Ishka.

      ‘From Mount Korukel,’ Salmelu snapped at my father. “Which you now claim for your own!’

      My father stared down at him with a face as cold as stone. Then he said, ‘If a man gives his son all his fields from his house to a river, he has given him only his fields – not the house or the river.’

      ‘But mountains,’ Salmelu said, repeating the old argument, ‘aren’t СКАЧАТЬ