The Lightstone

'Ah, it's a wonderful world, isn't it?'

'Wonderful, ye,' Master Juwain admitted to him. 'But you should be careful of these midnight walks of yours. One night you might find yourself plunging off the parapets.'

Maram smiled at this, and so did I. Then he said, 'I've never been afraid of heights or of falling. To fall in love with a woman is the sweetest of deaths.'

'As you've fallen for Chaitra?'

'Have I fallen for Chaitra?' Maram asked as he pulled at his thick brown beard. 'Ah, well, I suppose I have.'

'But she's a widow,' Master Juwain said. 'And a newly made one at that. Didn't the Duke say that her husband had been killed last month in a skirmish with Adar?'

'Yes, sir, he did say that.'

"Don't you think it's cruel, then, to take walks in the starlight with a bereaved woman and then leave her alone the next day?'

'Cruel? Cruel, you say?' Maram was wide awake now, and he seemed genuinely aggrieved. ' The wind off Arakel in Viradar is cruel. Cats are cruel to mice, and bears

– such as the one we fought at the Gate – live only to make me suffer. But a man's love for a woman, if it be true, can never be cruel.' 'No,' Master Juwain agreed, 'love can't be.' Maram rode on a few paces, all the while muttering that he was always misunderstood. And then he said,' Please listen to me a moment. I would never think to dispute with you the declensions of the pronouns in Ardik or the declinations of the constellations in Soldru. Or almost anything else.

But about women.. ah, women. Widows, especially. ' There s only one way to truly console a widow. The Brotherhood teaches us to honor our vows but that compassion is more sacred yet. Well to make a woman sing where previously she has been weeping is the soul of compassion. When I close my eyes and smell the perfume that, clings to my lips, I can hear Chaitra singing still.'

As I closed my eyes for a moment to listen to the chirping of the sparrows in the fields around us, I could almost hear Maram singing along with them. He seemed truly happy. And I had no doubt that Chaitra was doing the day's knitting with a song on her lips as well.

Maram's worldly ways obviously vexed Master Juwain, I thought that he might upbraid him in front of me or perhaps lay upon him some harsh punishment. But instead he gave up on instilling in Maram the Brotherhood's virtues – at least for the moment. He sighed as he turned to me and said, 'You young people these days do as you will, don't you?'

'Are you speaking of Kane?' I asked him.

'I'm afraid I am,' he said. 'Why did you refuse his company?'

I looked out at a nearby hill where a young shepherd stood guarding his sheep against marauding wolves; I thought a long time before giving him a truthful answer to his question.

'There's something about Kane,' I said. 'His face, his eyes – the way he moves the knife in his hands. He… burns. Raldu's accomplice put a bit of kirax in my blood, and that still burns like fire. But in Kane, there's more than a little bit of hell. He hates so utterly. It's as if he loves hating more than he could ever love a friend. How could anyone trust a man like that?'

Master Juwain rode next to me, thinking about what I had said. Then he sighed and rubbed the back of his head, which gleamed like a large brown nut in the bright sunlight. He said, 'You know that Kane has Duke Rezu's trust.'

'Yes, the Duke has need of men with quick swords,' I said. For a moment I listened to the thump of our horses' hooves against the stony soil. 'It's strange, isn't it that this Kane showed up at the Duke's castle at the same time we escaped from the bog.'

'Perhaps it's just a coincidence,' Master Juwain said.

'You taught me not to believe in coincidence, sir,' I said to him.

'What do you believe about Kane, then?'

'He hates the Lord of Lies, that much seems certain,' I said. 'But why does he hate him so much?'

'I'm afraid it's only natural to hate that which is pure hate itself 'Perhaps,' I said. 'But what if it's more than that?'

'What then?'

' There's something about Kane,' I said again. 'What if it was he who shot at me in the forest? And then somehow followed me into Anjo?' 'You think that it was Kane who tried to assassinate you?' Master Juwain asked. He seemed genuinely astonished. 'I thought we had established that it was the Lord of Lies who wished you dead. As you've observed, Kane hates him. Why should he then serve him?'

'That is what's puzzling me, sir. Perhaps the Lord of Lies has made a ghul of him. Or perhaps he has captured Kane's family and threatens them with death or worse.'

'Now that is a dark thought,' Master Juwain said. 'I'm afraid there's something dark about you, Valashu Elahad, to be thinking such thoughts on such a beautiful morning.'

I was afraid of the same thing, and I lifted up my face to let the bright sun drive away the coldness gnawing at my insides.

'Well,' Master Juwain continued, 'it's said that ghuls sometimes retain enough of their souls to hate their master. As for your other hypothesis, who knows? The Lord of Lies is certainly capable of doing as you said – and much worse.'

Master Juwain stopped to let his horse eat some grass. He began pulling at the folds of flesh beneath his chin. Then he said, 'But I don't think either hypothesis accounts for what I've seen of our mysterious Kane.' 'What do you think then, sir?'

He sat there on his horse on the middle of a gently rising hill, all the while regarding me with his large gray eyes. And then he asked, 'What do you know of the different Brotherhoods, Val?' 'Only what you taught me, sir.' And that, I thought, was not very much. I knew that early in the Age of Law, in a time of rebirth known as the Great Awakening, the Brotherhood had finally come out from behind the Morning Mountains to open schools across all of Ea. The different schools took on different names according to the colors of the gelstei that were to become the soul of that brilliant civilization; each school specialized in pursuing knowledge that related to its particular stone, and eventually became its own Brotherhood. Thus the Blue Brotherhood concerned itself with communications of all sorts, especially languages and dreams, while the Red Brotherhood sought understanding of the secret fire that blazed inside rocks and earth and all things. And so on. While each of the seven new Brotherhoods eventually opened schools of their own across the whole continen, some were much stronger in certain lands: The Silver Brotherhood predominated in far-off Surrapam while the Green Brotherhood came to its fullest flowering in the forest academies of Acadu. For two thousand years, the Brotherhoods had led civilization's rise into a golden age. And then, with the release of Morjin from his prison on the Isle of Damoom and his stealing of the Light stone, had come the fall.

All during the Age of the Dragon, the various Brotherhoods had dwindled or were destroyed by Morjin's assassin-priests. The closing of the Silver Brotherhood's school in Surrapam that Master Juwain had lamented over dinner was among the last of these. Now, only the original Brotherhood remained to spread the light of truth throughout Ea. Although its Brothers had been the first to make vows to preserve the wisdom of the stars and raise up humanity to its birthright, they called themselves the Last Brotherhood.

'All of the Brotherhoods have been destroyed' I said to Master Juwain. 'All except one.'

'Hmmm, have they indeed?' Master luwain said, 'What do you know of the Black Brotherhood?'

'Only that they were once strongest in Sakai. And that when the Kallimun priests established their fortress in Argattha, they hunted down the Brothers and razed every one of their schools to the ground. The Black Brotherhood was completely destroyed early in the Age of the Dragon.'

Maram, taking an interest in our conversation, nudged his horse forward to hear better what we were saying.

Master Juwain turned about in his saddle, left and right, scanning the empty hills around us. And then, in a much-lowered voice, he said, 'No, the Black Brotherhood was never destroyed. The Kallimun only drove them out of Sakai into Alonia.'