either.'
Atara took my bloody hand in hers as she used her other to touch the bottom of the crack. She said, 'The lightstone isn't here, Val.' 'Where is it then?'
She let go of my hand suddenly as she pointed toward the stairs and said, 'It's there.'
Without warning, she broke away from me and began climbing the stairs. In truth, she practically bounded up them three at a time. There was nothing to do except follow her.
And so we all raced up the winding stairs, Mithuna and Kane following me, while Maram puffed heavily behind him. Liljana, Alphanderry and Master Juwain were slower to begin their ascent but climbed the more quickly to catch up. And the five scryers waited for us outside.
When Atara reached the broken opening that was now the top of the Tower, she paused on the highest step to gasp for air. I stood just below her, gasping too. For there, poised on the melted marble of the outer wall, was the Lightstone.
'Atara,' I said as before, 'look!'
I lunged forward to grasp it before it could disappear, but it sud-denly winked into nothingness before my hands could close around it.
'Atara, please come down!' Mithuna suddenly called. She was stand-ing with Kane and Maram just below me. In the narrow space of the stairwell, there was room for three people on any step, but no more. Now Master Juwain, Liljana and Alphanderry crowded in behind Maram and looked up at Atara.
'The Singing Caves did speak the truth,' Atara said. She carelessly rested her hand against the Tower's broken outer wall as she looked out at the mountains and sky.
'If you would know where the Gelstei was hidden,' Alphanderry reminded us, 'go to the Blue Mountains and seek in the Tower of the Sun.'
'If we would know,' Atara said. She stood with the wind whipping her hair about her face. 'If I would.'
She suddenly held her hands out toward the earth as she lifted back her head and gazed straight up into the sky. If her third eye was a door, she flung it wide open then. I felt her do this. And so, it seemed, did Mithuna.
'No, Atara – you don't know what you're doing!' Mithuna said.
But Atara was a warrior and as wild as the wind. She opened herself utterly to the invisible fires that streamed up through the Tur-Solonu. And then she let out a soft cry as her eyes rolled back into her head. She lost her balance and teetered at the edge of the Tower's wall. I moved quickly then to grab her back and clasp her to me; if I hadn't, she would have fallen to her death.
'Take her down from here!' Mithuna told me. 'Please!'
I lifted Atara in my arms and followed the others down through the Tower. Atara's eyes were now staring out at nothing, and she was breathing raggedly. I lost count of the Tower's steps, but there were many of them. By the time we reached the bottom, my arms were trembling with the weight of her body.
'Bring her over there!' Mithuna said, pointing at a standing stone in the direction of the temple. I and the others followed her a hundred yards over the swishing grass, where we sat Atara back against the huge stone.
'Atara!' Mithuna said, as she knelt beside her.
I knelt by her other side and tried to call her back to the world even as I had after she had eaten the timana. But the trance into which she had fallen, it seemed, was too deep.
Now Mithuna reached into the pocket of her robe and removed a clear, crystalline ball the size of a large apple. She pressed it into Atara's hands. The crystal, which sparkled like a diamond, caught the light ot the sun and cast its brilliant colors into Atara's eyes.
'What's the matter with her?' Maram asked. He stood with Kane and the others peering above the half-circle that the scryers made around Atara. 'Will she be all right?'
'Quiet now!' Kane barked at him. 'Quiet, I say!'
At that moment, Flick appeared above Atara's head and spun about with a slowness that I took to be concern.
And then little by little, as all our breaths came and went like the whooshing of the wind, the light returned to Atara's eyes. She sat staring deep into the crystal.
'What is that?' Maram whispered to Master Juwain as he pointed at the crystal 'A scryer's sphere?'
'A scryer's sphere indeed,' Master Juwain whispered back. 'Usually they're made of quartz – and more rarely, diamond.'
'That's no diamond, I think,' Liljana said as she pressed closer to look at the sphere.
Something inside her seemed to be sniffing at it as she might a glass of wine.
Just then a shudder ran through Atara's body as her eyes blinked and she looked away from the crystal She turned toward Mithuna and said, 'Thank you.'
She looked at me for a long moment and smiled before turning her gaze on Kane, Maram, Liljana, Alphanderry and Master Juwain.
'That's a kristei, isn't it?' Liljana said to Mithuna as she pointed at the crystal. 'A white gelstei.'
'It is a kristei,' Mithuna said. 'It was brought here long ago and has been passed down among us from hand to hand.'
The white gelstei, I remembered, were the stones of seeing. Through the clarity of such crystals, a server might apprehend things far away in space or time. It was said that during the Age of Law, each scryer had her own kristei. But now, only a very few did.
'Looking into the future,' Mithuna explained, 'is like gazing up into a tree that grows out toward the stars and has no end. The possibilities are infinite. And so it is easy to become lost in the branches of such visions. The kristei helps a scryer find the branch she is seeking. And find her way back to the earth.'
That was as clear an explanation of scrying as I was ever to hear from a scryer.
Everyone looked at Atara then as I asked her, 'What did you see?'
'The Sea People,' she told me. 'Wherever I looked for the Lightstone, I saw them.'
'Do they have the Lightstone, then?'
'That's hard to say. I couldn't see that.'
'Do you think they might know where it is, then?'
'Perhaps,' she said. 'I only know that all the paths I could find led toward them.'
'Yes, but led where?'
Atara didn't know. The paths to the future, she said, were not like those that led through the lands of Ea. Although she'd had a clear vision of the Sea People, she couldn't tell us where we might find them.
'I'm afraid that no one knows anymore where the Sea People live,' Master Juwain said.
'We know,' Mithuna said. 'You'll find them at the Bay of Whales.'
We all looked at her as Maram let loose a long groan. The Bay of Whales lay at the edge of the Great Northern Ocean at least a hundred miles northwest across the great forest known as the Vardaloon.
'Are you sure they're there?' Maram asked Mithuna. 'Have you seen them?'
'Songlian has,' Mithuna said. She nodded at the shy young woman who smiled at us in affirmation of past visions. 'We've known about the Sea People for some time.'
Atara turned toward me and smiled, and I traded a knowing look with Kane. And Maram groaned again, louder this time, and said, 'Oh, no, my friends, please don't tell me that you're thinking of journeying to this Bay of Whales!'
We were thinking exactly that. It now seemed certain that we wouldn't find the Lightstone at the Tur- Solonu.
'But I'd hoped we would end our quest here!' Maram said. 'We can't just go tramping all over Ea!'
'Not all over Ea,' I said. 'Only a few more miles.'
We were all disappointed that we had gained nothing more in the Tower than a vision as to where the Lightstone might still be found. But none of us – not even Maram – was ready to break his vows and abandon the quest so soon. And so we held a quick council and decided to set out for the Bay of Whales the next day.
'I believe that would be your wisest course,' Mithuna told us.
Atara, who had now gained the strength to stand up, handed the crystal sphere back to her and said, 'Thank you for lending me this.'
Mithuna reached out her hands, and squeezed Atara's fingers the more tightly around the sphere. She said,
