“No, it cannot be. Tomorrow may be worlds away. I must go at once. The rumors must not be allowed to persist if I can stop them, for they would eat away my soldiers’ hearts. A soldier needs his heart if he is to fight for his homeland. I must go.”
Leaning heavily on their arms, he stumbled toward the door. When they reached it, Eskevar squared his shoulders and raised his head. “I will walk alone,” he said, and went out.
When he had gone, Alinea turned tearfully to Biorkis. “He should never have gone into battle, Biorkis. He was just getting better. He exerted himself overmuch and has not recovered his strength, and . . . and, oh, now I fear he never will!” She buried her face in her hands. “If Durwin were here, he would know what to do,” she sobbed.
Biorkis wrapped one arm around her slim shoulders and comforted her. “Yes, Durwin would know what to do, but he is not here. We will have to think what he would do in our place, and then do it.”
“I am sorry,” sniffed Alinea. She raised her eyes to the kindly old priest’s. “I did not mean to belittle you. Your help has been most valuable. I just—”
“Say no more. I, too, wish Durwin were here. He has far more knowledge of the world and men than I. I have been too long on my mountain, removed from the ways of mortals, and I feel old and useless. Let us hope that Durwin will return soon.”
“Let us pray that he does.”
“Yes, my lady. By all means let us pray that he does.”
Eskevar went out from the eastern tower and strode along the battlements in the cold, mocking light of the star. His great cloak swept like a huge, dark wing after him, the silver dragon device glittering in the strange light. Theido and Ronsard marched gravely by his side, and when they had reached the midpoint along the inner curtain battlements, Eskevar stopped and looked down at the ranks of soldiers that had been assembled to hear him speak.
As he looked down upon them, seeing their fearful faces turned upward to his, seeking strength there, and wisdom and assurance, he felt very old and tired. They were sapping him, he thought, and it was as if he felt his strength ebbing away even as he gazed down upon them. He felt too tired, too used up, to speak.
But they were waiting, watching him. His men were watching and waiting for him to banish their fears. How could he do that, he wondered, when he could not banish his own? What words were there? What magic could make it happen?
Without knowing what he would say, Eskevar opened his mouth and began to speak, his voice falling down from on high like the voice of a god.
He spoke and heard his voice echoing back into the small places of the inner ward. Murmurs arose in response to his words, and Eskevar feared he had said something wrong, that he had run afoul of his own purpose. But he spoke on, oblivious to the words that tumbled from his mouth unbidden. They are right, he thought bitterly. The king is insane. He is babbling like an idiot from the battlements and does not know what he is saying.
The murmurs changed gradually to shouts and then to cheers. As Eskevar’s last words died away, the inner ward yard erupted in shouts of acclaim and hearty cheers and battle cries. Then suddenly the soldiers were singing an ancient battle song of Mensandor, and somehow he, Eskevar, was moving through the thronging soldiers, touching them and being touched by them.
The Dragon King stood among his troops, bewildered by their cheers and high acclaim. He was humbled, realizing he did not know what he had said; he was gratified, knowing that his words had been the right ones.
The cheers and songs had not run their courses when they were interrupted by a sound not heard in Askelon for five hundred years. Boom! The sound rolled away like hollow thunder. Boom! Boom! It came again, and all around the Dragon King became silent. The cheering stopped; the singing shrank away. Boom! Boom! Boom!
The Ningaal had brought a battering ram to the gates of Askelon. The siege war had begun.
50
I can scarcely believe it still,” Quentin said, flexing his arm. “It is as if it had never been injured at all. Better even! And look; the skin is not withered, and the muscle is firm.”
Toli, standing near as Durwin unwrapped the bandages and removed the splints, replied, “I can well believe it. The stories of old were true ones. The Healing Stone still exists.”
The two glowing lumps of rock shimmered like fiery white coals fresh from the fire as they lay beside the black pool. Durwin finished examining Quentin’s arm and satisfied himself that, indeed, it was whole and healthy once more. “So it is!” the hermit said, still prodding Quentin’s arm with his fingers. “Your arm is healed most wonderfully. If I had not set it myself, I would say that it was never broken.”
Durwin cocked his head to one side and observed Quentin closely. “I see nothing now that would prevent you from lifting the Zhaligkeer. Do you?”
With a thrill like the touch of a spark to the skin, Quentin remembered all his old misgivings, which he had succeeded in putting far out of his mind. In an instant they all rushed back upon him like a flood, quenching his excitement of the moment. Something like fear grabbed him in his gut and squeezed with an iron grip.
“Do you still think I am the one?”
“Why do you fear? You have already chosen to follow the Most High. This is the way he has set for you. Do not turn away from it.”
Quentin stood looking at the blazing stones. “But the prophecy . . . It is . . .” Words failed him.
“You think that you will be alone? Is that it? Ha! You will not rid yourself of us that easily. We will be ever at your side. Do not think the Most High makes his servants tread only lonely paths. His ways are more clearly seen with the help of others of like spirit. He has given us to you, as you have been given to us, that we might help each other.”
“Take it, Quentin. It is for you.” Durwin threw out a hand toward the white stones, and Quentin slowly, reluctantly bent toward them and picked them up.
“Yes, I will take it. I will claim the Zhaligkeer.” So saying, he lifted the stones high over his head as if he already had a sword in his hands. “Inchkeith! Let us begin. Time is drawing short. There is a sword to be made!”
But when they looked around, Inchkeith was not to be seen.
Boom! Boom! The sound of the ram against the gates thundered on and on. The peasants who had crowded into Askelon to escape the enemy screamed in terror at every dreadful knell. The outer wards were roiling in panic.
Archers had mounted to the gatehouse barbican and were endeavoring to pick off the Ningaal plying the massive battering ram against the drawn bridge of the castle. Occasionally an arrow would strike home, and an enemy warrior would tumble off the narrow plank they had thrown over the chasm that divided the end of the ramp from the castle; despite this annoyance the Ningaal were not greatly hindered. They were protected by the ironclad roof over their implement, and any unlucky wretch who chanced to show himself too openly was replaced in a trice by another. So the drumming continued on and on and on.
“Call off the archers,” said Theido, gazing down from the battlements. “We may as well save our arrows. They are not going to prevail against the gate. No one ever has.”
“We could pour fire down upon them,” suggested Rudd, wearing a worried expression. “That would get rid of them.”
“And it would also burn down our own gates!” snapped Ronsard irritably.
“I do not think even fire would harm those gates,” mused Theido, shaking his head. “But I could be wrong. Still, it would be better not to take an unnecessary chance. We will wait to see what they try next.
“They cannot tunnel beneath the walls, for they rise out of solid rock, and the mountain is stone as well. The postern gate is well protected, and the maze of walls leading to it prevents the use of a ram such as this. Our archers can keep them at bay there, too. My guess is they must find a way through that gate and that gate alone, for there is no other way into Askelon Castle.”
As he finished speaking, the Ningaal took up their pounding again. Boom! Boom! Th
e timbers of the gate shuddered with each massive blow, but held firm.
Theido turned away from the battlement, and Ronsard followed him, after instructing his officers to bring him word if the situation should change in any way.
“Theido, I would talk with you awhile,” he said, falling into step beside his friend. “Let us go inside where we may speak freely.”
They strode to a nearby barbican and went inside, ascending to a higher platform of the round turret to look out over the plain and the city below. From that lofty vantage they could see the better part of one side of the castle and a portion of the second side. The Ningaal had indeed surrounded the castle on all sides, being most heavily deployed around the main gates and throughout the town. They had set fire to sections of the city, and the smoke swept up in black columns to streak the sky above.
“It is an evil day.” Ronsard turned a careworn visage to his friend. “How is Eskevar faring?”
“He is the same. No change.”
Eskevar had nearly collapsed when the sound of the ram commenced. It was as if each blow had been so aimed as to strike directly at the king’s heart. It was only with difficulty that the two knights had led their sovereign away without the soldiers witnessing his fall. Upon gaining the security of the tower, they had all but carried him to his chambers. Biorkis and Alinea had been in attendance since then, and the knights had returned to watch through the day-bright night as the Ningaal strove to batter down the doors.
“Will he ride, do you think?” asked Ronsard.
“Why do you ask me? You have stood with him in battle enough times to know. But we are under siege! Why does everyone insist upon talking about battlefields and riding?” Theido snapped. After a long, silent moment in which Ronsard merely looked back at him sadly, Theido sighed. “Forgive me, my friend. I am tired. I have not slept in three days—one cannot even tell day from night anymore! I am tired.”
“Go and rest. Let me take your watch. You yourself have said that nothing will happen soon. Have something to eat, and lay yourself down a little. You will feel better.”
“Yes, perhaps I should do that.” Theido turned his eyes away toward the north. “They should be coming. They should have been here by now.”
“They will come. And do not forget that Quentin, Toli, and Durwin are abroad. Theirs is some errand that will make good; of that I am certain.”
“So I believe. I only hope they are in time.” He smiled briefly and gripped Ronsard by the shoulder. “Thank you. I will rest a bit as you suggest. It has been a long time since I endured a siege. I have forgotten my manners almost completely.”
“You have forgotten nothing, my friend. Go now, and I will send for you if anything changes.”
When Theido had gone and his footsteps descending from the barbican could no longer be heard, Ronsard settled himself against the stone crenellation of the turret. He looked long and hungrily to the north for the shining armies he hoped he would see riding to their rescue. But the far vista shimmered instead with the heat of the summer sun. Nothing moved out on the plain.
Still, the knight watched and waited, and his thoughts became a prayer, turning toward the new god he had so recently elected to serve.
“God Most High,” Ronsard mumbled, “I do not have the knowledge of your ways that others do. But if you need a strong sword, here I am.” There was a long lapse before he spoke again. “I know not how to pray in seemly words. I have never been a man of prayers. But I believe you helped me once, long ago, so I pray you will listen to me once again. Lead us against this terrible host which gathers at our gates and seeks to destroy us. And if it is my lot to die, so be it. But let me face the moment like a true knight and seek to save another’s life before my own.”
He prayed on, pouring out his heart as the words came to him, and would have continued praying but for the alarm that brought him instantly to his feet and sent him off to meet a new disaster.
51
They found Inchkeith huddled behind a hill of stone far away from the pool. All wondered at his odd behavior in hiding and the look of fear that twisted his features as he raised his eyes to meet them.
“What is wrong, Inchkeith? Why did you disappear like that?” asked Quentin. The master armorer peered at his discoverers with a distrustful look. His hands trembled as he worked up the nerve to speak.
“Do not make me touch it! I beg you, sirs! Do not make me touch it!” He hid his face in his hands once more, and his shoulders shook as if he were sobbing.
“This is very strange,” remarked Quentin, turning to Toli and Durwin. The hermit gazed with narrowed eyes upon the huddled body of the deformed man.
“I think I know what ails him. He is afraid to touch the blazing white lanthanil; he has seen its power and what it can do. He saw your arm healed, and he fears what it might do to him.”
“But,” Quentin spluttered in amazement, “certainly you are wrong here, Durwin. If anything, he should rejoice and rush to take it into his hands that he might be healed of his crippling deformity. I would, and so would anyone else, I think.”
“Would you?” asked Durwin. His bushy eyebrows arched high as they would go. “Think again. His twisted spine cripples him, yes. But he has lived his life with it and has come to accept it and himself for what he is. His spirit has risen above his physical limitations in the beauty of his craft. There is strong pride in that.”
“To be healed, to be made strong and whole again—what can be the harm of that?” Quentin shook his head slowly from side to side. The thing was a mystery to him.
“Quentin, have you never had a flaw of some sort, a hurt that you carried with you?” Quentin’s brow wrinkled sharply. “You cursed it and fretted over it and longed to cast it aside, and yet you secretly caressed it and held it close lest it should somehow slip away. For that weakness was part of you, and however hateful it was, it defined you; you took strength from it. With it, you knew who you were; without it, who could say what you would be?”
Quentin answered slowly. “Perhaps it is as you say, Durwin. When I was a child, I held many childish flaws and weaknesses as virtues. But I put them away when I became a man.”
“Ah, yes. But your weaknesses were not of the same kind as Inchkeith’s. His is not so easily put aside. How much more must he fear losing the thing—ugly as it is—that has given him such comfort all the long years of his life? It is no wonder that he shrinks away from the Healing Stone. For though he would give anything in his power to be made straight and strong, he would give much more to remain as he is.”
Quentin turned to regard Inchkeith where he sat a little way off, still huddled and trembling. There were no words to describe the pitiful picture that met his gaze. Sadly, he turned away from it.
“Go and ready yourselves for another dive,” suggested Durwin. “I will talk to him a little and convince him that whether he touches the stone or not, the decision is his. We will not think less of him for refraining if that, in the end, is how he chooses. Go on, now. We will be along directly.”
Quentin and Toli did as Durwin told them and returned to the pool. “Look how they shine, Toli,” marveled Quentin as he knelt before the two lumps of glowing rock. “Have you ever seen anything like it? It is as if they burn with an inner fire. They should be hot to the touch, but they are cool.”
“They possess very great power. Of that there is no doubt. I understand now why the Ariga closed off the mine and concealed what was left of the white lanthanil in the pool. The temptation to wield such power must drive men mad.”
Quentin nodded silently. “I wonder what else the stone can do?” he asked at last. His bright face shone in the aura of the stones.
“We shall see, Kenta. You have been chosen to carry the Shining One; you will find out.”
In a moment Durwin came, leading a sheepish Inchkeith toward them. “Very well, shall we continue? We have much work to do and have only begun.”
“One moment, Durwin. Please, I would speak.” Inc
hkeith held up his hand. “I am ashamed of my behavior, and you would do a kindness to a foolish old man if you would banish it from your minds. I am sorry to have embarrassed my friends so. I promise I will embarrass you no further.”
“Think no more on it, Master Inchkeith,” replied Quentin happily. “I assure you, it is already forgotten, and you shall never hear of it from our lips again.”
They all returned to work as before and threw themselves into their labors. The energizing force of the ore-bearing stones that Quentin and Toli brought up allowed the two divers to remain underwater for greater periods of time, and before long a fair-sized pile of the shining stone was heaped beside the pool.
When the heap had grown to the size of a pyramid half a man high, Inchkeith called a halt to the diving. “This is enough for our purpose, I believe. If this magic stone is similar to other ores I have worked, we should have enough to make a sword and a scabbard and chain, too.”
Quentin and Toli dragged themselves out of the frigid water and dried themselves. Inchkeith left them to hobble to the forge at the far end of the cavern. “Bring the lanthanil when you are ready. I will begin firing the crucible.”
Filling Inchkeith’s empty tool chest with ore, Quentin and Toli carried it to the forge, where, using fuel he had found neatly stored away beside the forge, Inchkeith had a fire roaring and ready. Durwin busied himself preparing food for them, as it appeared there would be no sleep for any of them for some time.
When Toli and Quentin had filled the crucible with ore, it was rendered into the fire, where a curious transformation took place. The stones did not crack and release their ore as the stones bearing copper and iron do. Instead, they were slowly melted away like ice in the spring when plunged into running water. Using a long rod, Inchkeith poked and stirred the molten lanthanil, causing the impurities to flame into hot ash and ascend to the chimney of the furnace. With long tongs he introduced new ore into the crucible and kept his ceaseless vigil at the fire, maintaining a constant temperature.