something much worse than ghosts. 'You spoke of remembrance, but who are we really? Infinite possibilities, yes, but only one can ever be. The one that shall be is the one that should be. But all of them are, always, and we are… so delicate. Like flowers, Val. Which is the one you will pick for me and tell me that you love me? And which is the one that can stand beneath the light of the sun?'
Already, I thought, she was beginning to talk like a scryer, and I didn't like it. To bring her back to the world of wind and grass and standing stones gleaming red beneath the rising sun, I suggested eating some of the delicious breakfast that Liljana was cooking, and this we did.
After that, we climbed the cracked stone steps of the Tur-Solonu to look for the Lightstone. It was cool and dark inside that broken tower, and except for the faint radiance streaming off Flick's spinning form, we wouldn't have been able to see very much. As it was, there was nothing much to see – nothing more interesting than a few cobwebs and the bones of some poor beast who had dragged itself inside the door to die there in peace. The Tower, much to our disappointment, held no rooms that might be explored, for it was only a series of steps winding up inside a tube of marble. The ancient scryers had used it only as means of standing closer to the stars.
There was nowhere in its stark interior that Sartan Odinan could have hidden a golden cup.
'Perhaps there are secret recesses,' Maram said as he tapped the wall with the pommel of his sword. We were all gathered in the stairwell about seventy feet up inside the Tower. The outer wall curved dark and smooth around us, while the inner wall was like a pillar rising up as the Tower's core. 'Perhaps one of the stones is loose, and there Sartan hid the Lightstone.'
But try as we might, we could find no loose stone in the walls or steps of the well-made Tur-Solonu. We tested every one of them all the way to the top of the Tower, which was broken and open to the sun high above the mountains.
It's not here,' I said, looking out over the standing stones below us. To the east the ruins of the temple gleamed white in the harsh light. 'Sartan could not have hidden it here.'
Maram joined me upon the topmost unbroken step to stare out above the cracked and melted outer wall. He pointed at the temple's ruins below us and said, 'Perhaps there, then.'
'No, it won't be there,' I said. The taste of disappointment, I thought, was as bitter as the molds growing across the exposed stones. 'The words that Ventakil heard in the Caves told us to seek in the Tower of the Sun.'
'But shouldn't we at least go and see?' Maram asked.
'Of course we will,' I said. 'What else can we do?'
After breaking to eat a simple lunch of bread and cheese that Mithuna and the other scryers brought us, we spent the whole afternoon picking among the temple's ruins.
If the Tower had suggested no possible places where a plain, golden cup could have been hidden, the scattered stones of the temple provided too many. Many sections of the walls had cracked and fallen down into great heaps of rubble; the Lightstone might have been buried in any one of them. During the centuries since Sartan had brought the Lightstone out of Argattha, wind had driven grit and soil into the cracks between the fallen stones, in some places, almost covering them altogether. And mow grass grew in the soil, making a patchwork of green seams and turf among the many irregular-shaped mounds. Excavating any one of them could take many days, and there were many, many such mounds.
'Oh, my Lord, it's hopeless,' Maram said to me as we gathered near one of the temple's few standing pillars. The six scryers, with Mithuna at their center, stood off a few paces near a great slab of stone. 'What shall we do?'
Now Master Juwain and Liljana looked toward me with discourage-ment coloring their faces, while Alphanderry sat on a stone merrily munching on a handful of nuts.
Kane stood staring at one of the mounds as if his eyes were firestones that might burn open the very ground. And Atara, next to me, was staring out into the nothingness of the deep blue sky.
'It's not hopeless,' I said to Maram. 'It can't be hopeless.'
Maram swept his hand out toward the remains of the temple and said, 'Shall we all take up shovels and start digging, then?'
'If all else fails, yes.'
'We'd dig for a hundred years.'
'Better that,' I said, 'than giving up.'
At the prospect of so much work, Maram groaned and Alphanderry ate another nut Then Maram pointed his red crystal at one of the mounds and said, 'Perhaps I could melt the rock with this until the Lightstone was uncovered.'
'But wouldn't you melt it along with the rock?' Alphanderry asked.
'No,' Maram told him. 'It's said that nothing can harm the Lightstone in any way. It's said that even diamond won't scratch it.'
'But what if the sayings are wrong?'
Maram stared across the ruins of the temple as if realizing the folly of what he had suggested. And then Mithuna stepped forward and said to Atara, 'It would seem that your quest here has ended.'
Atara suddenly broke off staring at the sky. To Mithuna, she said, 'But how can it be since we haven't found what we came here to find?'
'Perhaps you have, Atara,' Mithuna said, smiling at her. 'Perhaps you should remain here with us.'
Atara looked at Mithuna for a long time, and I was afraid that she might accept her invitation. Our quest, at that moment, certainly seemed hopeless. Freely we had all joined together to seek the Lightstone, and freely any of us might leave the company
– so we had agreed before setting out from Tria.
And then Atara turned toward me as her bright blue eyes filled with tears and a deeper thing. It was all warm and shimmering and more adamantine than diamond.
'No,' Atara finally said to Mithuna, 'I'll remain with my friends.'
'What should be shall be,' Mithuna said 'In the end, we choose our futures.'
Atara looked over at the Tur-Solonu where it rose up a few hundred yards away. Her eyes grew dry and clear as diamonds and gleamed with a wild light. She pointed at it and said, 'Inside there is the future. I should have seen that all along.'
Without another word she began walking quickly toward the Tower, and we all followed her. It didn't take very long for us to wind our way among the standing stones and those lying down in the grass.
'You were right,' Atara said to Mithuna as we approached the Tower's door. 'The Lightstone is here.'
She stepped inside the door and so did I. And almost immediately I saw what I had missed before. On the Tower's inner wall, high up to the left, ran a jagged crack almost a foot wide. And wedged into it was a plain golden cup shining with a beautiful light.
'Atara!' I cried out. 'Atara, look!'
But the crack was high enough above the dusty floor that only a tall man could look into it. Or reach into it with arm and hand. This I now did, scraping the skin off my knuckles as I jammed my hand into the rock to feel for the cup. But even though I turned and twisted about and ran my whole arm up and down the crack my fingers dosed around nothing but cold marble and air.
'What are you doing?' Atara asked, coming over to my side. Kane, Maram and Liljana crowded inside the doorway. The others, along with the scryers, stared at me from outside to see if I had fallen mad.
A moment later, I withdrew my bleeding hand and stood back from the wall so that I could better see inside the crack. But the golden cup was gone.
'It was here!' I said. 'The Lightstone was here!'
Again, I thrust my arm into the crack, but it was as empty as the space between the stars.
'I don't understand!' I half-shouted, looking into the crack again.
Mithuna stepped inside the doorway then and touched my shoulder. She said,
'Scryers often see things that others do not.'
'But they don't see things that are not do they?'
'That's true,'she said.
'Besides, I'm no scryer.'
'No, you're not,' she said. Her face drew out long and sad as she admitted, 'I don't understand this
