garments and dripping hair. Its light was incredibly sweet, and as we looked out into the long, green valley, we saw that the world was incredibly beautiful and good.
The Maii sitting on the grass all applauded our feat. In their front ranks, I noticed Piliri, Rhysu and their children smiling at us.
Then Lady Nimaiu came forward and addressed us, saying, 'Only in purification can there be truth, beauty and goodness. And the love from which they flow. Do you still seek these qualities, Sar Valashu Elahad?'
Although she directed this question to me, it was clear that she expected me to speak for all of us. The soft wind just then found its way through the wet kirtle plastered to my body; it seemed as cold and bracing as the lake itself.
'We do,' I said. I sensed that Lady Nimaiu was testing me, or rather calling me to embrace the truth which the lake's waters had set so clearly before me. And so I told her, 'We seek the gold gelstei that is called the Lightstone. We seek the Cup of Heaven that is said to hold these things inside it.'
At this, Maram began moaning; only the presence of Lailaiu as one of the temple attendants quieted him. Liljana was reluctant to translate my words, but I nodded at her to do so, and she did. And then I showed Lady Nimaiu my medallion and explained the meaning of the various symbols cast into it.
'It is good that you've given us the truth so freely,' Lady Nimaiu said, walking among the others of our company to examine their medallions as well. 'Allow me to return the favor: yesterday we consulted with the Sea People. They told us of your reason for coming here, that you seek this shining thing you call a gelstei.'
That the Maii seemed able to speak with the Sea People astonished me, as it did Liljana. She stared at Lady Nimaiu, her hazel eyes full of wonder and envy. She glanced at her figurine and muttered, 'As it was in the Age of the Mother – then they needed no blue gelstei to talk with the whales.'
Although she left this untranslated, Lady Nimaiu seemed to under-stand her all the same. She nodded at her and said, 'But the Sea People know nothing of a golden cup. Nor do we. There is none such on this island.'
I sensed that Lady Nimaiu was telling the truth, at least so far as she knew it. The disappointment I felt then was a palpable thing, as if an acid fruit had lodged in my throat. It didn't help that my friends' dashed hopes flooded into me as well.
'Perhaps the Lightstone was hidden here long ago,' I said, 'and the Maii have forgotten it.'
I couldn't help glance at the temple, so great was the bitterness burning inside me.
'I can tell you that you won't find it there,' she said. 'But now you are free to look, in the temple or anywhere else that you please.'
This news was small consolation, as little satisfying as a promise of delectable foods given a hungry man in place of a meal. I looked at Atara then, and saw that she, too, had almost abandoned her desire to search the temple. I looked at Maram, now lost in the depths of Lailaiu's eyes, and at Master Juwain, Liljana and Alphanderry. I saw Kane drop his gaze and scowl his frustration at the earth. We had journeyed too long and too far, I thought, and now it seemed that our quest must end here, on this lost island at the edge of the world.
'Now that you have tasted the Mother's tears,' Lady Nimaiu went on, 'you also are free to remain with us as long as you'd like. We would like this, that you live with the Maii forever.'
I had no power of mindspeaking, but I knew that my friends were all thinking of the vow we had made that our seeking the Lightstone would not end unless illness, wounds or death struck us down first. But couldn't the body, while not exactly stricken, grow exhausted of a succession of life-draining wounds? Couldn't the soul sicken? Couldn't hope die?
Lady Nimaiu glanced back at forth between Atara and me. Her face was as warm as the sun itself as she told us, 'You may make your homes here; you may marry, if that pleases you, either among us or each other. The Mother would smile upon your children and call them Maii.'
Atara looked at me, and the longing in her eyes hurt worse than any poison or sword that had been put into my flesh.
'Ah, I think I understand,' Maram murmured, still gazing at Lailaiu. 'I think perhaps the Aryans did come here to conquer. And the Maiians conquered them.'
For a while we stood there in silence, which spread to the crowds of Maii behind us.
Now the sun, higher in the sky, was working to dry our garments. Out on the lake, the many swans there floated peacefully beneath its showers of light.
'Perhaps the golden cup is on this island, somewhere,' Alphanderry said. 'I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life here searching for it.'
'Nor I,' Master Juwain said. His clear gray eyes were now full of the sky's puffy white clouds.
'Nor I,' Liljana admitted.
Kane, whom I expected to upbraid us for our faithlessness, lost his fathomless gaze in the blue waters of the lake.
'Atara,' I said, turning toward her, 'we have made vows. And you more than the rest of us.'
I expected this noble woman to affirm that vows must always be fulfilled. Instead she said, 'A vow is a sacred thing. But life is more sacred still. And I've never felt so alive as I do here.'
'Have you seen us remaining here, then?'
I was sure that she would confuse me with some sort of scryers' talk as to the different paths into the future tangling like the limbs of a thornbush. Instead, she surprised me, saying, 'Yes, I have. If we chose this, our lives would be long and happy, blessed with many children. The rest of Ea might go up in flames, but here there would be only peace.'
Only peace, I thought looking out into the green pastures of the valley.
Wasn't peace what I truly wanted? Wasn't this really why I had set out to find the Lightstone in the first place?
I noticed Lady Nimaiu studying my face, but I feared that I wouldn't find the answers I sought in her soft, dark eyes which reminded me so much of my mother's.
I didn't know where to look to find the wisdom that would decide my path. And then I chanced to see Flick glittering above the waters of the lake. His form was that of a whirling, white spiral of stars.
'Our children,' I said to Atara, 'would know peace here, yes?'
'Yes, they would,' she assured me.
'But what of their children? And their children's children? How long before the Dragon finds this island and destroys everything here?'
'A hundred years, perhaps,' Atara said. 'Perhaps a thousand, or perhaps never – I don't know.'
'And what of the rest of Ea?' I asked. 'What of the Wendrush and Alonia and Mesh?'
Atara had no answer for this; she just stared at me with her diamond-clear eyes that opened upon the future.
Then I heard inside myself the undying voice, whispering in fire. The same flame, I knew, burned inside Atara and my other friends.
'I can't remain here,' I told her.
Atara's eyes filled with a terrible sadness. Then she said, 'Nor I.'
'Nor I,' Liljana said, looking at Master Juwain.
'Nor I,' he said as well. 'I'm afraid the Lightstone will be found – if not by us or others who stood with us in Tria, then by the Red Dragon.'
And so it went, each of our company passing the ineffable flame back and forth as we remembered our purpose and reforged our wills to fulfill it. Even Maram broke off gazing at Lailaiu and said, 'I hate to leave this island, but it seems I must.'
I turned to Lady Nimaiu and said, 'Your offer that we may stay here is beyond mere graciousness. But we must continue our quest.'
'To find this gelstei that you call the Lightstone?'
'Yes, the Lightstone,' I said.
'But why would you risk your life for such a thing?'
I heard in her words a question beneath the obvious question, and I sensed that I was somehow being tested again. And so I asked myself for the thousandth time why this golden cup must be found. The answer, I was now certain, lay not in pleasing my father or brothers nor even winning Atara as my wife. As for my being healed of the valarda and the kirax that quickened my gift, what did the sufferings of a single man matter? If only I could find the
