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

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СКАЧАТЬ as for our wolves, ah, well, we hunted out most of them long ago.’

      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,’ Asaru assured him. ‘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,’ Maram said. ‘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 had driven 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 snow-capped peaks all around 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. Here there were other lakes, too, where the swans came each spring to hatch their young and swim through clear blue waters.

      But across the valley twenty miles due east, Mount Eluru stood like a vast pyramid of granite and ice. Beyond it were still greater peaks of the Culhadosh Range, which separates the kingdoms of Waas and Mesh. In the distance to the south forty-five miles as a raven flies, was the hazy wall of the Itarsu in whose narrow passes my ancestors had more than once slaughtered invading Sarni armies from the great gray plains beyond. Behind us above the hills from where we had ridden that day, just to the west of the bear-infested woods that we proposed to enter, were three of the greatest and most beautiful peaks of the Central Range: Telshar, Arakel and Vayu. These were the mountains of my soul; here, I thought, was the heart of the Morning Mountains and possibly of all Ea. As a boy I had played in their forests and sung songs to their silent, stony faces. They rose up like gods just beyond the houses and battlements of Silvassu: the shining Vayu a few miles to the south, Arakel west just across the swift Kurash river, and Telshar the Great 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 Raaskel and Korukel glittering beyond the Diamond River, and beyond these guardian peaks, 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, finally recognizing him, ‘it’s been a long time.’

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

      ‘Excuse me,’ Asaru said. ‘May I present Joshu Kadar of Lashku?’

      Lord Harsha nodded his head at my brother’s squire and told him, ‘Your father is a fine man. We fought against Waas together.’

      Young Joshu bowed deeply as befit his rank, and then stood silently basking in Lord Harsha’s compliment.

      ‘And this,’ Asaru continued, ‘is Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu. He’s a student of the Brothers.’

      Lord Harsha peered out at him with his single eye and said, ‘Isn’t it true that the Brothers don’t hunt animals?’

      ‘Ah, that is true,’ Maram said, gripping his bow, ‘we hunt knowledge. You see, 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 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 around my finger. 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 СКАЧАТЬ