“Oooy!” Jodi breathed. “Rokhaset, these are just beautiful!”
I had to agree. The medallions were shaped—or maybe grown—transparent crystals with traces of glittering metal in them that looked like gold, surrounding a core of what had to be solid silver, covered with intricate designs that looked like completed versions of the symbols we’d seen on the Throne Room walls. I wondered if silver gave them problems to work, or if it was just the ferromagnetics that did. Overshadowing all the other features, though, was the crystal set in the very center. It, too, was transparent, but it didn’t merely pass light; it radiated light, a soft but unmistakable polychromatic glow that pulsed and flickered gently like a candle in the gentlest of breezes. As I admired it in the slowly-gathering dusk, I realized the whole medallion had a faint glow to it, though nothing like the glorious luminance from that central stone.
“What is that stone, Rokhaset? It’s incredible!”
“I am surprised, Jodi Goldman, Clinton Slade. How can you not recognize the stones over which we nearly shed blood? They are H’adamant, of course. The only appropriate choice.”
“Okay,” I said, “but what’d you do to ’em to make ’em glow like that?”
Rokhaset froze, looking almost comical. “Glow? Clinton Slade, I assure you—we have done nothing to them at all, save to shape them so they are faceted in a way that would reflect the light pleasingly for your eyes.”
“But . . . these look nothing at all like Jodi’s diamond! Well, yeah, they’re both transparent, but . . .”
I trailed off, a chill going down my spine as I realized what I was saying.
“Clinton Slade,” Rokhaset said, with a quiet intensity that showed how serious he was, “Look carefully at me and tell me what you see.”
We stared at Rokhaset. “Oh, my,” Jodi whispered.
In the dimming light, looking hard at Rokhaset, we could see that he glowed like our medallions. It was dim, yet with a sense of being contained—like being in a dark room and seeing the glow under the door from the brightly-lit hall beyond.
It was only then that I glanced at my watch, remembering just when we’d started eating. Twilight? At this time of night it ought to be damn near pitch black. Yet it only seemed to be late twilight—easy enough to see in, even if the shadows were pretty thick under the trees.
“Nowë Ro’vahari,” Rokhaset said in a tone of reverence. “Such things are mentioned in legends, from before the Makurada Demagon, but how they happened none could say. Perhaps the mikhsteri H’adamant, combined with the change in our peoples, has done this itself; perhaps the treacherous attack of the Lisharithada ruler, or our desperate treatments of its effects on you, has wrought this transformation. But somehow Nowë has seen fit to make you turan, at least in some way, as we do.”
“Then I gotta apologize, Rokhaset. I thought you were overreacting when you realized we couldn’t see what happened when H’adamant died. Now . . . I think maybe y’all almost didn’t get mad enough.”
I wondered what else had changed about us. “I sure hope there aren’t any nasty side-effects waiting. Don’t want to go blind around metal, that’s for sure.”
“It is as Nowë wills it, Clinton Slade. Yet it would seem to me that her blessing is, for you, working as your normal sight, only . . . more so. It should, therefore, not be so sensitive to H’kuraden as ours, if at all.”
“I’m going to have to get to the lab!” Jodi exclaimed. “Clint, an entirely new sensing modality—even if we’re the only ones with it, just imagine what we could learn this way!”
“Whoa, whoa. One thing at a time. The important thing is that this solves our trading problem.”
Rokhaset laughed. “We spoke and the World heard us, and answered. So it has ever been, Clinton Slade, in the times when it was crucial. Nowë is pleased with you, Jodi Goldman, Clinton Slade. It is important to Her that we be friends. So She has provided.”
I was starting to realize that our pragmatic friend was also about as religious as a preacher. But if he wanted to see this as a miracle, what’d it matter? Heck, he might even be right! “Let’s just hope it doesn’t wear off.”