I gripped his hand in mine with great joy as I watched him holding his red crystal in the other. I said, 'Thank you, Maram.'
In his soft brown eyes was a fire brighter than anything I had seen lighting up his gelstei. 'Thank you, my friend,' he told me.
Lord Grayam came forward and clasped his hand, too. 'You would do well, Prince Maram, to repair to the infirmary – with the other warriors wounded here today.'
Maram managed a painful but proud smile. 'We won, Lord Grayam.'
Lord Grayam stared down through the ruins of the wall at the bloody ground beneath us. He said, 'Yes, we won the day.'
But the Librarians, too, had lost many men, and the Sun Gate had been breached.
Tomorrow, I thought, would be another day of battle and even more terrible.
Chapter 34
Soon after that a messenger arrived to give Lord Grayam news that made his face blanch and set his hand to trembling: The enemy had been thrown back from the Sun Gate, but in its defense Captain Nicolam had been killed and Captain Donalam and several knights captured. The gate itself was ruined beyond repair; Kane and a hundred knights stood in a line behind it in case Count Ulanu should order a night assault of the city.
'They've taken my son,' Lord Grayam said. In his quavering voice, there was sadness, outrage and great fear. 'And if we try to hold as we did today, tomorrow they'll take the city.'
He issued orders then to abandon the outer wall – and with it most of Khaisham. So many Librarians had fallen that day, he said, that there were just too few left to hold this extended perimeter. It was an agonizing decision to have to make, but a good one, or so I judged.
And so all the citizens of Khaisham not killed or captured by Count Ulanu's men retreated behind the city's inner wall. In its height and defenses, it was much like the outer wall; it surrounded the Library on all sides, its easternmost sections being almost flush with the outer wall where it turned along the contours of Mount Redruth. To the north, west and south of the inner wall, between its blocks of red sandstone and the houses of the city, an expanse of ground five hundred yards wide had been left barren of any buildings or structures. This provided a clear field of fire for Lord Grayam's archers, who quickly took up their stations behind the wall's battlements. It also kept any enemy from mounting an assault upon the wall from any convenient window or rooftop. That there had never been an assault of any kind upon the inner wall in all the thousands of years since the Library had been built cheered no one.
We took Maram to the infirmary to have his wounds tended. Atara and I half-carried him there, with his thick arms thrown across our shoulders. Master Juwain drew the arrows as he had with Atara. But when he brought forth his green gelstei to heal him further, he had only a partial success. The varistei glowed with only with a dull light as did Master Juwain himself. With the infirmary's beds filled with moaning warriors who had been hacked and maimed, it had been a very long day for him. Although he staunched the bleeding of Maram s wounds, they still required bandages But at least Maram could still walk, if not sit very easily, ft was more than most of the wounded could manage.
'Ah, thank you, sir, It's not so bad,' Maram said with surprising fortitude. He reached back his hand to pat himself where the arrows had pierced him. 'It's still very sore, but at least I won't be laid up here.'
I looked about this place of carnage and anguish that the infirmary had become. Its smells of medicinal teas and ointments assaulted my senses. I built up my inner walls even higher Although I couldn't wait to get back to the open air of the battlements, it surprised me that Maram felt the same. Courage, once found, does not very quickly melt away.
We said goodbye to Master Juwain and liljana and left them to a sleepless night of tending the wounded. Then we walked back through the Library. Almost everyone in Khaisham not dead or stationed along the walls had crowded into it. It was a vast place indeed, but it had been built to house millions of books, not thousands of people. It pained me to see aisle upon aisle of old men, women and children camped out there, trying to rest upon little straw mats that they had put down to cover the cold stone floor. It seemed that no yard of floor space in the Library's center hall or any of its wings was unoccupied. Even the walkways circling the great islands of books, at least at the lower levels, had been taken over by brave souls who didn't mind trying to sleep on a narrow bed of stone suspended thirty or fifty feet in space.
It was good to exit the Library through the great arched doorways of its west wing and breathe fresh air again. We crossed a courtyard crammed with food carts, piles of planking, barrels of water, oil, nails and other things. Sheaves of arrows were stacked like wheat And everywhere masons and carpenters hurried to and fro beneath the orange blaze of torches to prepare the inner walls for the next day's assault.
We took our places behind the battlements of the west wall. There we found one of Lord Grayam't knights speaking in low tones to Kane. It was very dark there, the only illumination being the fire of the torches in the courtyard below and the far-off glimmer of the stars. It would't do to give the enemy's archers targets to shoot at if Count Ulanu should move them into range during the night.
'So,' Kane said, pointing out at the strip of dark, barren ground that separated the walls from the rest of the city. 'They'll at least try to move their siege engines in as close as they can before morning.'
I looked across the barren ground down toward the houses of the city. With no one left to light their hearths they were strangely dark. Beyond them, in the thicker dark, farther to the west, I could just make out the lines of the outer wall. While we had been in the infirmary with Maram, Count Ulanu's engineers had breached its gates.
The sounds of him bringing up his army lent a chill to the air. There came a squeaking of the axles of many carts and wagons, and iron-shod wheels rolling over the paving atones of the empty streets. Thousands of boots striking stone, jangling steel, whinnying horses, hateful shouts and the incessant howling of the Blues – this was the cacophony we had to endure those long houis after dusk in place of the nightingale's song or other music.
After a while, Lord Grayam walked down the battlements toward us and approached Kane. He told him. 'Thank you for your work at the gate. It's said that but for your sword, the enemy would have broken through.'
'So, my sword, yes,' Kane said, nodding his head. 'And those of a hundred others, Captain Donalam's foremost among them.'
In the dim torchlight I thought I caught a gleam of water in both Grayam's eyes. 'I've been told that my son was stunned by an axe-blow and thus taken before he could regain his wits.'
Kane, who didn't like to lie, lied to Lord Crayam now. I sensed both untruth and a terrible sadness in him as his dark eyes filled with a rare compassion.
'I'm sure he never regained his wits,' he said. 'I'm sure he sleeps with the dead.'
'Let us hope so,' Lord Grayam said, swallowing against the lump in his throat.
'There's little enough hope left for us now.'
To cheer him, and myself, I finally told him of what we had found in the Library earlier that day. I brought forth the False Gelstei and pressed the little bowl into his hands. As the night deepened, Kane and Maram recounted the story of Master Juwain finding Master Aluino's journal. And then Atara, whose memory was like a glittering net that seemed to gather in all things, quoted from it almost word for word.
'Is it possible that Master Aluino told true?' lord Grayam exclaimed. 'That the Lightstone is still in Argattha?'
He turned the False Gelstet about in his hands as if it might provide an answer to his question. And then he said to us, 'This is why we fight. And this is why we must prevail tomorrow at any cost. Do you see what treasures we have here? How can we let them be lost?'
He thanked me for telling him of our find and delivering the cup to him, according to our promise. And then he told us, 'You're truly noble all of you. With such virtue on our side, we might yet win this battle.'
Time is strange. That night near the ides of Soal, as measured by the sands of an hourglass, was rather short as summer nights are. But as measured by the sufferings of the soul, it seemed to drag on forever. Count Ulanu's men were determined that none of us should sleep. The half-moon rose to the Blues' relentless howls, which grew louder and more ferocious as the world turned past midnight. From the darkness beyond the wall came a clamor of
