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

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СКАЧАТЬ Librarians, he told us, and there had been many generations of them since the Lightstone had become lost at the beginning of the Age of the Dragon long ago. That his generation might be the last of these devout scholar-warriors seemed not to enter his mind. And so he turned his faith from his pens to the steel of his sword; he excused himself and marched off toward his duty atop the city’s walls.

      Our search took us through this vast hall, with its even vaster silences and echoes of memory, into an eastern off-wing. And then into a side wing, where we found hall upon hall of nothing but paintings, mosaics and friezes depicting the Lightstone and scenes from its long past. And still my sword seemed to point us east. And so we passed into a much smaller, cubical chamber filled with vases from the Marshanid dynasty; these, too, showed the Lightstone in the hands of various kings and heroes out of history.

      At last, however, we came to an alcove off a small room lined with painted shields. We determined that we had reached this wing’s easternmost extension. We could go no farther in this direction. But I was sure that the Lightstone, wherever it was hidden, lay still to the east of us. Alkaladur gleamed like the moon when pointed toward the alcove’s eastern window, and not at all when I swept it back toward the main body of the Library or any of the room’s artifacts.

      ‘So, we must try another wing,’ Kane said to me. Maram and Atara, standing near him above an ancient Alonian ceremonial shield, nodded their heads in agreement. ‘If your sword still shows true, then let’s find our way to the east wing.’

      Our search thus far had taken up the whole morning and part of the afternoon. Now we spent another hour crossing the Library’s centermost section, also called the great hall. It dwarfed even the south wing, and was filled with so many towering islands of books and soaring bridges that I grew dizzy looking up at them. I was grateful when at last we passed into the east wing; in its cubical proportions, it was shaped identically to the others. One of its off-wings led us to a hall giving out on a side wing where the Librarians had put together an impressive collection of lesser gelstei. These were presented in locked cabinets of teak and glass. Atara gasped like a little girl to see so many glowstones, wish stones, angel eyes, warders, love stones and dragon bones gathered into one place. We might have lingered there a long time if Alkaladur hadn’t pointed us down a long corridor leading to another side wing. The moment that we stepped into this chamber, with its many rare books of ancient poetry, my sword’s blade warmed noticeably. And when we crossed into an adjoining room filled with vases, chalices, jewel-encrusted plates and the like, the silustria flared so that even Atara and Maram noticed its brightness.

      ‘Is it truly here, Val?’ Maram said to me. ‘Can it be?’

      I swept my sword from north to south, behind me and past the room’s four corners. It grew its brightest whenever I pointed it east, toward a cracked marble stand on which were set two golden bowls, to the left and right, on its lowest shelves. Two more crystal bowls gleamed on top of the next higher ones, and at the stand’s center on its highest square of marble sat a little cup that seemed to have been carved out of a single, immense pearl.

      ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram cried out. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

      Being unable to restrain himself – and wishing to be the first to lay his hands on the Lightstone and thus determine its fate according to our company’s rules – he rushed forward as fast as his fat legs would carry him. I was afraid that in his excitement and greed, he would crash into this display. But he drew up short inches from it. He thrust out his hands and grasped the golden bowl to his right. Without even bothering to examine it, he lifted it high above his head, a wild light dancing in his eyes.

      ‘Be careful with that!’ Kane snapped at him. ‘You don’t want to drop it and dent it!’

      ‘Dent the gold gelstei?’ Maram said.

      Atara, whose eyes were even sharper than her tongue, took a good look at the bowl in his hands and said, ‘Hmmph! If that’s the true gold, then a bull’s nose ring is more precious than my mother’s wedding band.’

      Much puzzled, Maram lowered the bowl and turned it about in his hands. His brows narrowed suspiciously as he finally took notice of what was now so easy to see: the bowl was faintly tarnished and scarred in many places with fine scratches and wasn’t made of gold at all. As Atara had hinted, it was only brass.

      ‘But why display such a common thing?’ Maram asked, embarrassed at his gullibility.

      ‘Common, is it?’ Kane said to him.

      He walked closer to Maram and took the bowl from him. Then he picked up a much-worn wooden stick still lying on the shelf near where the bowl had been. With the bowl resting in the flat of one callused hand, he touched the stick to the rim of the bowl and drew it round and round in slow circles. It set the bowl to pealing out a beautiful, pure tone like that of a bell.

      ‘So, it’s a singing bowl,’ he said as he set it back on its stand. He nodded at the crystal bowls at the next highest level. ‘So are those.’

      ‘What about the one that looks like pearl?’ Maram called out.

      Not waiting for an answer, he picked up the pearly cup from the stand’s highest level and tried to make music from it using the same stick as had Kane. After failing to draw forth so much as a squeak, he put it back in its place and scowled as if angry that it had disappointed him.

      ‘It seems that this bowl,’ he said, ‘is for the beauty of the eye and not the ear.’

      But I was not so sure. Just as I brought my sword closer to it and aligned its point directly toward its center, it began glowing very strongly. I thought that I could hear this pearly bowl singing faintly, with a soaring music that recalled Alphanderry’s golden voice.

      ‘There’s something about this bowl,’ I said. I took a step closer, and now Alkaladur began to hum in my hands.

      Atara picked up the iridescent bowl and wrapped her long fingers around it. She said, ‘It’s heavy – much heavier than I would think a pearl of this size would be.’

      ‘Have you ever seen a pearl so large?’ Maram asked her. ‘My Lord, it would take an oyster the size of a bear to make one so.’

      Atara set this beautiful bowl back in its place. She stared at it with a penetrating sight that seemed to arise from a source much deeper than her sparkling blue eyes. And so did Kane.

      ‘Can it be?’ Maram said. Then he turned his head back and forth as if shaking sense into himself. ‘No, of course it can’t be. The Lightstone is of gold. This is pearl. Can the gold gelstei shimmer like pearl?’

      ‘Perhaps,’ Atara said, ‘the Gelstei shimmers as one wishes it to.’

      The silence that filled the chamber then was as deep as the sea.

      ‘This must be it,’ I said, staring into Alkaladur’s bright silver and listening to the pearl bowl sing. ‘But how can it be?’

      My heart beat seven times in rhythm with Atara’s, Maram’s and Kane’s. And then Atara, staring at the bowl as if transfixed by its splendor, whispered to me, ‘Val, I can see it! It’s inside!’

      As we kept our eyes on the gleaming bowl, she told us that the pearl formed only its veneer; somehow, she said, the ancients had layered over this lustrous substance like enamel over lead.

      ‘But it’s no base metal that’s inside,’ she said. ‘It’s gold or something СКАЧАТЬ