Lord of Lies

This time, he had much less trouble opening it. The Lightstone flared with a sudden radiance as the thought stone's colors seemed to catch fire. I saw these colors swirling in bright patterns in the black circles at the centers of Master Juwain's eyes. So intently did he stare at this little gelstei that it seemed he might never move again.

'I see, I see,' he whispered. And then, after some moments, while my heart beat quickly, he said, 'Brother Maram, please give me number nineteen.'

Without turning his head, he handed Maram the little stone, which Maram set back in its place before retrieving the one that Master Juwain had requested. He pressed it into Master Juwain's hand. And for what seemed a long time, Master Juwain stared at this thought stone, too.

'Number eighty-two!' Master Juwain finally called out. 'Third drawer!'

And so it went for the rest of the day and far into the night, Master Juwain calling for specific thought stones and Maram delivering them faithfully — even as I stood in front of Master Juwain holding up the brilliant Lightstone.

At last, Maram patted his rumbling belly and suggested that we should take our evening meal. Master Juwain then broke off his researches. He looked across the large, circular room at the blazing candles that he had only grudgingly permitted Maram to light. And then he told us, 'The thought stones were indexed, perhaps thousands of years ago. But the system has been lost — until today.'

He began to explicate this system but I held up my hand to stop him. 'Excuse me, sir, but we've little time. What did you discover?'

'Much less than we'd hoped, I'm afraid,' he said. 'That is, the thought stones do contain a great deal of knowledge. But most of this is recorded in the Saganom Elu.'

'Is there nothing new, then? Nothing that might be able to help us?'

'Only bits and pieces,' he said. 'Only hints.'

'Tell me, then.'

'Well, there this,' he said. 'There are passages indicating that the Maitreya is one who must make a great sacrifice.'

'Of his life?' I asked.

Master Juwain's news did not accord with the Saganom Elu's Book of Remembrance, where it was written that: 'The Maitreya will gain the greatest prize; he will reach out and take the whole world in his hands.'

Master Juwain shook his head and told me, 'No, I had no sense that the Maitreya must die for others, not exactly. Only that he must forsake some great thing.'

'Is it love, then? Marriage?'

'No, I don't think so. It has something to do, rather, with the Lightstone.'

I squeezed the golden cup that I still held In my hand. 'But the Lightstone was meant for the Maitreya. How, then, should he give it up?'

'I'm not sure he must. I'm not sure he can.'

'What do you mean?'

'Do you remember the passage from the Beginnings? ' 'The Ughtstone is the perfect jewel within the lotus found inside the human heart.' '

'A beautiful metaphor,' I said.

'Beautiful, yes — and perhaps something more.' Master Juwain gazed above us at the dome's clear windows that let in the light of the stars. 'You see, there are the infinities.'

'Sir?'

He looked back at me and showed me the thought stone. He said, 'This little gelstei is a finite thing, as is the knowledge it contains — as are all things. The One, of course, is infinite. But the Lightstone, somehow, is both.'

Now all of us, even Maram, stared at the golden contours of the Lightstone as if seeing it for the first time.

'And as with the Lightstone,' Master Juwain continued, 'so with the Maitreya. We know that he is the one who has a perfect resonance with it. There is a sense that in order for this to be so, he must sacrifice his finiteness — his very humanity.'

I gripped the Lightstone so tightly that it hurt my fingers. I shook my head because I did not know what Master Juwain s words could mean. I said, 'If only there was more.'

'I'm afraid that's all I gleaned from this first pass. But if I'd had more time.. '

His voice died off into the library's half-light.

'Yes?' I said to him.

'Well you see,' he said, 'there was one stream of recordings, more like a rill, actually, that I might have followed. A hint of a hint about some great store of knowledge concerning the Lightstone.'

I looked out the window at the great constellations wheeling slowly about the heavens. I said to him, 'We have all of tonight — and tomorrow, too, if need be. If you are willing, sir.'

The gleam in Master Juwain's luminous eyes told me that he was more than willing. When Maram groaned that we could not possibly go on without sustenance, I sent him to retrieve a loaf of barley bread and some goat's cheese from the stores that the Guardians had shared out for their dinner. And then, after we had eaten, Maram returned to retrieving thought stones for Master Juwain as our old friend set to work.

Thus we passed the rest of the night. As Master Juwain gained proficiency at opening and reading the stones, this strange business went more quickly. At times he called out the numbers of new stones so suddenly that Maram was hard put to replace the old one before drawing forth the new. He puffed and sweated as drawers slid open and slammed shut and the marble-like thought stones rattled in their wooden pockets. Finally, near dawn, Master Juwain gave back to Maram the last of a long sequence of stones. He looked at us and smiled. Although his eyes were red with weariness, he was almost hopping with excitement.

'I believe,' he told us, 'that there is a gelstei containing the true knowledge of the Lightstone. A gelstei unlike any other. It's called an akashic crystal.'

'That name is unfamiliar to me,' I said.

'Akashic is a word meaning 'great memories'. It seems that the knowledge contained in this crystal, compared to an ordinary thought stone, is as an ocean to a pond.'

I considered this as I gazed at the little stone that Maram had yet to put away.

'It may be,' Master Juwain continued, 'that the akashic crystal holds the wisdom of the Elder Ages.'

The ancient stones of which the library was made suddenly seemed small and cold. The Brotherhood school, built in the Age of the Mother, was many thousands of years old — almost as old as any building on Ea. And yet it was said that even this great span of time was really very little. As a year is to an age, so is an entire age of Ea to one of the Elder Ages, before Elahad and the Star People bore the Lightstone to earth.

'But how could it?' I asked. 'The knowledge that Elahad and his kindred brought with them perished with them. This is known. This you taught me, even when I was a boy.'

Master Juwain sighed and said, 'It would seem that some of what is known is known wrongly.'

'Then how do you know,' I asked, pointing at Maram's thought stone 'that the knowledge contained in this gelstei and the others, is true?'

'I don't,' Master Juwain said. 'It must be tested, as all knowledge and supposition must be. But it has been tested, many times, by the ancients who placed it there. And I have tested it against all that I know and have experienced, and through reason. There is a certain flavor to that which is fact and another to wild fancies.'

I bowed my head to him that this was so. I told him, 'If you believe it's true, that's good enough for me.'

'I believe that the wisdom of the Elder Ages was preserved. Somehow. And that, once a time, this akashic crystal did exist. The question is, does it still? And where might it be found?'

'Not in Khaisham, I hope,' Maram put in. 'When I think of all the books that burned there, the people, too … and the gelstei, so many, too many, too bad.'

For a moment, Maram lost himself in memories of that horrible night in which Count Ulanu the Cruel had ordered the destruction of one of Ea's greatest wonders. But Master Juwain, I saw, was looking toward the future instead of the past. His eyes were bright with dreams.