The Lightstone: The Silver Sword: Part Two. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ screamed to his knights scarcely a dozen yards from me. ‘Can’t you take one damned Valari!’

      Perhaps his men could have taken us but for Kane’s fury and the suddenly unleashed terror of my sword. Then, too, they were disadvantaged by trying to cripple and capture us rather than kill. With knights now pressing us on all sides, I urged Altaru toward Count Ulanu. But Liljana, with Master Juwain still holding out the shield to protect her right side while Kane bulled his way forward on her left, had already reached him. She struck her sword straight out toward his sneering face. The point of it managed to slice off the tip of his nose even as one of his knights’ horses knocked into hers. Blood streamed from this rather minor gash. But it was enough to unnerve Count Ulanu – and his men.

      ‘The Count is wounded!’ one of his captains cried out. ‘Retreat! Protect the Count! Take him to safety!’

      Although it hadn’t been Count Ulanu who ordered this ignoble retreat, he made no move to gainsay his knight’s command. He himself led the flight back down the hill. Two of his knights guarded his back as he turned his horse’s tail to us – and paid with their lives. Kane’s sword took one of them clean through the forehead while I pushed the point of mine straight through the other’s armor into his heart. And suddenly the battle was over.

      ‘Do we pursue?’ Maram called out, reining in his horse at the top of the hill. He was either battle-drunk, I thought, or mad. ‘I’ll give them a taste of fire, I will!’

      So saying, he drew out his gelstei and tried to loose a bolt of flame upon Count Ulanu and his retreating knights. But although the crystal warmed to a bright scarlet, it never came fully alive.

      ‘Hold!’ I called out. ‘Hold now!’

      Atara, who had her bow raised, fired off an arrow which split the mail of one of the retreating knights. He galloped away from us with a feathered shaft sticking out of his shoulder.

      ‘Hold, please!’

      With the three men I had killed lying rent and bleeding on the grass, I could barely keep from falling, too. Kane had dispatched two knights and the other two Blues. Atara had added two more men to her tally, while Maram, Alphanderry, Liljana and Master Juwain had done extraordinarily well in beating off the assault of armored knights without taking any wounds themselves. But now the agony of the slain took hold of my heart. A doorway showing only blackness opened to my left. The nothingness there beckoned me deeper toward death than I had ever been. To keep from being pulled inside, I held onto Alkaladur as tightly as I could. Its numinous fire opened another door through which streamed the light of the sun and stars. It warmed my icy limbs and brought me back to life.

      ‘Val, are you wounded?’ Master Juwain asked as he came up to me. Then he turned to take stock of the corpse-strewn hummock and called out to the rest of our company, ‘Is anyone wounded?’

      None of us were. I sat on top of the trembling Altaru, gaining strength each moment as I watched the last of Count Ulanu’s men disappear over the same ridge from which they had come.

      ‘What now, Val?’ Liljana said to me as she wiped the Count’s blood from the tip of her sword. ‘Do we pursue?’

      ‘No, we’ve had enough of battle for one day,’ I said. ‘And we don’t know how close the rest of the Count’s army is.’

      I looked up at the blazing sun and then out across Yarkona’s rocky hills, calculating time and distances. To Liljana, to my other battle-sickened friends, I said, ‘Now we flee.’

      They needed no further encouragement to put this hill of carnage behind us. We eased the horses down its slopes into the grassy trough through which we had been riding when the Count had surprised us. And then, wishing to cover ground quickly, we urged them to a fast canter toward the east. The pass into Khaisham called the Kul Joram, I guessed, lay a good twenty-five or thirty miles ahead of us. And beyond that, we would still need to ride another twenty miles to reach the Librarians’ city.

      We kept up a good pace for most of five miles, but then one of the pack horses threw a shoe, and we had to go more slowly as the sun-scorched turf gave way to ground planted with many more rocks. Here, too, there was a little ring-grass and sage pushing through the dirt, which the horses’ hooves powdered and kicked up into the air. It was dry and hot, and the glazy blue sky held not the faintest breath of wind. The horses sweated even more profusely than did we. They kept driving onward through the murderous heat, snorting at the dust, making choking sounds in their throats and gasping until their nostrils and lips were white with froth. When we came across a little stream running down from the mountains, we had to stop to water them lest our dash across the burning plain kill them.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered to Altaru as he bent his shiny black neck down to the stream. ‘Only a few more miles, old friend, only a few more.’

      Alphanderry, gazing back in the direction from which we had come, spoke to all of us, saying, ‘I’m sorry, but this is all my fault. If I hadn’t opened my mouth to sing, we’d never have been discovered.’

      I walked up to him and laid my hand on the damp, dark curls of his head. I told him, ‘They might have found us in any case. And without your songs, we’d never have had the courage to come this far.’

      ‘How far have we come?’ Master Juwain said, looking eastward. ‘How far to this Kul Joram?’

      Liljana brushed back the hair sticking to her face as she caught my eye. ‘There’s something I must tell you, something else I saw in the Count’s filthy mind. After Tarmanam, he sent a force to the Kul Joram to hold it for his army’s advance into Khaisham.’

      Maram, bending low by the stream to examine the hooves of his tiring sorrel, suddenly straightened up and said, ‘Oh, no – this is terrible news! How are we to cross into Khaisham, then?’

      ‘Don’t you give up hope so easily,’ Liljana chided him. ‘There is another pass.’

      ‘The Kul Moroth,’ Kane spat out as he gazed into the wavering distances. ‘It lies twenty miles north of the Kul Joram. It’s an evil place, and much narrower, but it will have to do.’

      Maram pulled at his beard as he fixed Liljana with a suspicious look. ‘I thought you promised that you’d never look into another’s mind without his permission? This was a sacred principle, you said.’

      ‘Do you think I’d have let that treacherous Count nail you to a cross because of a principle?’ Liljana said. ‘Besides, I promised you, not him.’

      Master Juwain came up to look into my eyes and said, ‘It seems that you’re growing ever more able to put up shields against others’ agonies.’

      ‘No, it’s just the opposite,’ I said, thinking of the three men I had slain. ‘Each time a man goes over now, it carries me deeper into the death realm. But the valarda, even as it opens me to this void, also opens me to the world. To all its pain, yes, but to its life as well. The sword that Lady Nimaiu gave me only aids in this opening. When I wield it truly, it’s as if the soul of the world pours into me.’

      So saying, I drew Alkaladur and held it gleaming faintly toward the east.

      ‘Then the sword lends you a certain protection against the vulnerabilities of your gift.’

      ‘No, it is not so, sir. Someday when I kill, the death realm will grab hold of me so tightly that I’ll never return.’

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