Diamond Warriors

Chapter 1

On clear summer nights, I have stood on desert sands in awe of the stars. From these countless radiant points, my ancestors believed, comes all that is good, beautiful and true. The Lightstone had its source there. The stars make light itself and that secret, irresistible force which warms angels' hearts and illuminates all things. What man could ever hold this most brilliant of fires? Only one who can endure burning. And one who wills with all his heart that the stars must go on shining forever and can never die.

They shone upon my grandfather and upon Elahad and the ancient Valari who came to earth from other worlds; and still they shone upon my world, even though the Great Red Dragon named Morjin threatened to make war upon all Ea's lands and call down that black and starless night without end. In the spring of the fourth year since I had set out to seek the Lightstone and defy Morjin, the stars guided me home. Late into evenings filled with the calls of meadowlarks and the fragrance of new flowers, my companions and I ventured across savage lands, setting our course by Aras and Solaru and the heavens' other bright lights. And at dawn we journeyed toward the Great Eastern Sun: the Morning Star for which my grandfather had named me Valashu. This fiery orb still rose each day over the mountains of Mesh and the dwellings of my people. Where Morjin called my brothers and sisters demons from hell that must be nailed up on crosses or burned alive, I knew them as noble warriors of the sword — and spirit — who remained true Valari. It was upon me to return to them in order to seize my fate and become their king.

On the first day of Soldru, on a warm afternoon, my seven companions and I rode through the Valley of the Swans below my family's ancient, burned-out castle. Our way took us through a thick and ancient wood. Here grew tall oaks and elms through which I had run as a child. Wild grape and honeysuckle twined themselves around the trunks of these great trees, while ferns blanketed the forest floor. Many flowers brightened this expanse of green and sweetened the air: bluets and trillium and goldthread, whose white sepals gleamed like stars. Each growing thing, it seemed, greeted me like an old friend to which I had long ago pledged my life. So it was with the warblers and the sparrowhawks calling out from branch or sky, and the rabbits, voles and badgers who made their abodes beneath them. Our procession through the trees startled a stag feeding on the bracken; just before he sprang away, his large, dark eye fixed on my eyes and called to me as if we were brothers. He did not, I sensed, worry that his forest home might soon be destroyed and the whole world with it. This great being cared nothing for the struggles and aspirations of men, and knew only that it was good to be alive.

'Ah, another deer.' Next to me, from on top of a big, brown horse, my friend Maram watched the stag bounding off through the trees. He was himself a big man, with a thick beard and soft brown eyes which easily filled with worry. 'These woods are still full of deer.'

We rode along a few paces, and our horses' hooves cracked through old leaves and twigs.

'And where there are deer,' he went on, 'there are certainly bears. These huge, brown bears of yours whose like I have seen in no other land.'

I turned in my saddle to look after Daj and Estrella riding behind us. Daj's gaze met mine, and his black curls fell over his face as he inclined his head to me. Although he couldn't have been much older than twelve years, he held himself straight and proud as if he were a knight who knew no fear. Already he had slain more men than had most knights — and sent on as well an evil creature more powerful than any man. Estrella, of an age with him, guided her pony along in silence. Although she could make no words with her throat and lips, her dark eyes and lively face seemed almost infinitely expressive and full of light. Behind her rode Master Juwain and Liljana, who might have been the children's grandparents. They wore the same hooded traveling cloaks that we all did, even Atara, who brought up the rear. This beautiful woman — my betrothed — hated the itch of woven wool against her sunburned skin, for she had lived too long on the plains of the Wendrush with the savage Sarni warriors, who usually wore silks or beaded skins, when they wore garments at all. She was herself a warrior, of that strange society of women known as the Manslayers. As she pressed her knees against the flanks of her great roan mare, Fire, she gripped one of the great, double-curved Sarni bows. A white blindfold bound her thick blond hair and covered the hollows beneath her brows. It was a great miracle of her life that although Morjin had taken her eyes, sometimes by the virtue of her second sight she could still see. If a bear charged out of the bracken at us, I thought, she could put an arrow straight through its heart.

'Bears,' I said, turning back toward Maram, 'rarely hunt deer — only if they come upon one by chance.'

'Like that bear that came upon you?' He pointed at my face and added, 'The one who gave you that?'

I pressed my finger against the scar cut into my forehead. This mark, shaped like a lightning bolt, had actually been present from my birth, when the midwife's tongs had ripped my skin. The bear, who had nearly killed my brother Asaru and me during one of our forays into the woods, had only deepened it.

'I doubt if it is my fate,' I said, smiling at him, 'to see us attacked here by a bear.'

'Ah, fate,' Maram said, shaking his great, bushy head. 'You speak of it too much these days, and contemplate it too deeply, I think.'

'Perhaps that is true. But we've avoided the worst that might have befallen us and come to our journey's end without mishap.'

'Almost to our journey's end,' he said, waving his huge hand at the trees ahead of us. 'If you're right, we've still five miles of these gloomy woods to endure. If you hadn't insisted on this longcut, we might already have been sitting at Lord Harsha's table with Behira, putting down some roasted beef and a few pints of your good Meshian beer.'

I cast him a long, burning look. He knew well enough the reasons for our detour through the woods, and had in fact agreed upon them. But now that he could almost smell his dinner and taste his dessert, it seemed that he had conveniently forgotten them.

'All right, all right,' he said, turning his head away from me to gaze off through the trees. 'Why indeed take any chances when we have come so far without mishap? It's just that now I'm ready to enjoy the comforts of Lord Harsha's house, it seems that the farmland hereabouts — and the rest of your kingdom — surely holds fewer perils than do these woods.'

'It is not my kingdom,' I reminded him. 'Not yet. And whoever wins Mesh's throne, you may be sure that this wood will remain near the heart of his realm.'

Far out on the grasslands of the Wendrush, as we had taken meat and fire with the chieftain of the Niuriu, Vishakan, we had heard disquieting rumors that Mesh's greatest lords were contending with each other to gain my father's vacant throne. War, it seemed, threatened. Vishakan himself told me that Morjin had stolen the souls of some of my own countrymen — and had turned the hearts of others with threats of crucifixion and promises of glory and everlasting life for anyone who followed him. The Lord of Lies had pledged a thousand-weight of gold to any man who brought him my head. So it was that my companions and I had entered Mesh in secret. Twenty-two kel keeps, great fortresses of iron and stone, encircled the whole of the kingdom and guarded the passes through the mountains. But I knew unexplored ways around three of them — and through the country of the Sawash River and past Arakel, Telshar and the other great peaks of the Central Range. And, of course, through the fields and forests of the Valley of the Swans. So it was that we had come nearly all the way to Lord Harsha's little stone chalet without stopping at an inn or a farmhouse.

'The heart of your realm,' Maram said to me, 'surely lies with the hearts of those who know you. There can't be many in this district who will fail to acclaim you when the time comes.'

'No, perhaps not many.'

'And there can't be any who have gone over to the Red Dragon, despite what that barbarian chieftain said. Surely it will be safe to show ourselves here. After all, we don't have to give out our names.'

I only smiled at this. Even in the best of times. Mesh saw few strangers from other lands. Maram and my other friends would stand out here like rubies and sapphires in a tapestry woven of diamonds. The Valari are a tall people, with long, straight black hair, angular faces like the planes of cut stone, dark ivory skin and bright black eyes. None of us looked anything like that — none of us, of course, except myself.

'As soon as we show ourselves,' I told Maram, 'the word will spread that Valashu Elahad and his companions have returned to Mesh. We should hear what Lord Harsha advises before that moment comes.'

We rode on for a while, into a small clearing, and then Bstrella, who was good at finding things, espied a bush near its edge bearing ripe, red raspberries. She nudged her horse over to it, then dismounted. Her joyful smile seemed an invitation for all of us to join her in a midafternoon refreshment. And so the rest of us dismounted as well, and began plucking the soft, little fruits.

'These,' Maram said, as he filled his mouth with a handful of raspberries, 'would make a good meal for any bear.'

'And you,' I said, poking his big belly with a smile, 'would make a better one.'

Master Juwain, a short man with a large head as bald as a walnut, stepped over to me. His face, I thought, with his large gray eyes, had always seemed as luminous as the moonlit sea. He looked at me deeply, then said, 'We are close to the place that the bear attacked you, aren't we?'

'Yes, close,' I said, staring off through the elms. Then I turned back to smile at him. 'But you aren't afraid of bears, too, are you, sir?'

'I'm afraid of you, Valashu Elahad. That is, afraid for you.' He pointed a gnarly finger at me as he fixed me with a deep, knowing look. 'Most of us flee from that which torments us, but you must always seek out the thing you most dread and go poking it with a stick.'

I only laughed at this as I reached back to grip the hilt of my sword, slung over my shoulder. I said, 'But, sir, I have no stick — only this blade. And I'm sure I won't have to use it today against any bear.'

Daj, munching on some raspberries, returned my smile in confidence that I had spoken the truth, and so did Estrella. They pressed in close to me, not to take comfort from the protection of my sword — not just — but because such nearness gladdened all our hearts. Then I noticed Atara standing next to the raspberry bush as she held her bow in one hand and her scryer's sphere of clear, white gelstei with her other. The sun's light poured down upon her in a bright shower. Her beautiful face, as perfectly proportioned as the sculptures of the angels, turned toward me. She smiled at me, too: but coldly, as if she had seen some terrible future that she did not wish to share. All she said to me was: 'The only bear you'll find here today is the one that nearly killed you years ago. It still lives, doesn't it?'

Yes, I thought, as my fingers tightened around the hilt of my sword, the bear called out from somewhere inside me — and in some strange way, from somewhere in these woods. Even as Asaru, who had saved me from the bear, still lived on as well. My mother and grandmother, and all my murdered family, seemed to take on life anew in the stems of the wildflowers and in the breath of the leaves of the new maple trees. My father, I knew, would always stand beside me like the mountains of the land that t loved.

Liljana, who could not smile, came up to me and grasped my hand. Her iron-gray hair framed her pretty lace, which too often fell stern and forbidding. But despite her relentless and domineering manner she could be the kindest of women, and the wisest, too. She said to me, 'You've always been drawn to these woods, haven't you?'

Her calm, hazel eyes filled with understanding. She didn't need to call on the power of her blue gelstei to read my mind — or rather, to know what grieved my heart.

Across the clearing through the shadowed gloom of the elms, I heard a tanager trilling out notes that sounded much like a robins song shureet, shuroo. I looked for this bird but I could not see it. It seemed that this wood, above all other places, held answers to the secret of my past and the puzzle of my future. There dwelled a power here that called to me like a song of fire racing along my blood.

'Drawn, yes,' I said to Liljana. I felt a nameless dread working at my insides like ice water. 'And repelled, too.'

'Well.' Maram said, wiping a bit of raspberry juice from his lip, 'I wish you had been repelled a little more that day Salmelu shot you with his filthy arrow. But who would have thought a Valari prince would go over to the Dragon and hire out as one of his assassins? And use the filthiest of poisons? Does it still burn you, my friend?'

I pressed my hand to my side in remembrance of that day when Salmelu's poisoned arrow had come streaking out of the tree — not so very far from here. The scratch that it had left in my skin had long since healed but I would forever feel the kirax poison like a heated iron sizzling deep into every fiber of my body.

'Yes, it burns,' I said to him.

'Well, then perhaps we should take greater care here. If a prince of Ishka can turn traitor, then I suppose a Meshian can — though I've always thought your countrymen preserved the soul of the Valari, so to speak.'

I suddenly recalled Lansar Raasharu, my father's greatest lord who had lost his soul and his very humanity to Morjin through a hate and a leaf that I knew only too well.

And I said, 'No one is immune from evil.'

'No one except you.'

I felt my throat tighten in anger as I said 'Myself least of all Maram. You should know that.'

'I know what I saw during this last Journey of ours. Who else but you could have led us out of the Skadarak?'

I did not need to close my eyes to feel the blighted forest called the Skadarak pulling me down into an icy cold blackness that had no bottom. Sometimes, when I looked into the black centers of Maram's eyes — or my own — I felt myself hurtling down through empty space again.

'Do not,' I told him, 'speak of that place.'

'But you kept yourself from falling — and all of us as well! And then, at the farmhouse with Morjin, when everything was so impossibly dark, he might have seized your will and made you into a filthy ghul. But as you always do, you found that brightness inside yourself that he couldn't stand against, and you — '

'It is one thing to keep from falling into evil,' I told him. 'And it is another to succeed in accomplishing good. Why don't we try to keep our sight on the task ahead of us?'

'Ah, this impossible task,' Maram muttered, shaking his head.

'Don't you speak that way!' Lilian a scolded him with a wag of her finger. 'The more you doubt, the harder you make it for Val to become king.'

'It's not his kingship that I doubt,' Maram said. 'At least, I don't doubt it on my good days. But even supposing that Val can win Mesh's warriors and knights where he couldn't before, what then? That is the question I've asked myself for a thousand miles.'

So had I asked myself this question. And I said to Maram simply, 'Then Morjin must be defeated.'

'Defeated? Well, I suppose he must, yes, but defeated how?'

Master Juwain rubbed at the back of his brown-skinned head, then sighed out: 'The closer that we have come to our journey's end, the more sure I have become of what our course should be. I told this to Val years ago: that evil cannot be vanquished with a sword, and darkness cannot be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light. And now. the brightest of lights has come into the world.'

He spoke, of course, of Bemossed: a slave whom we had rescued out of Hesperu on the darkest of all our journeys. A simple slave — and perhaps the great Maitreya and Lord of light long prophesied for Ea and all the other worlds of Eluru, I couldn't help smiling in joy whenever I thought of this man whom I loved as a brother.

It gladdened my heart to know that he was well-hidden in the fastness of the White Mountains — in the safest place on Earth, And guarded from Morjin by Abrasax and the Seven: the Masters of the Great White Brotherhood whose virtues in healing, meditation and the other ancient arts exceeded even those of Master Juwain.

'Morjin retains the Lightstone,' Master Juwain continued, 'but Bemossed keeps him from twisting it toward his purpose. Soon, I think, with Bemossed so well-instructed, he will be able to grasp the Lightstone's radiance, if not the cup itself. And then.. '

Liljana caught his gaze and said, 'Please don't mind me — go on.'

'And then,' Master Juwain said, 'Bemossed will bring this radiance into all lands. Men will feel an imperishable life shining within them like a star. Truth will flourish. So will courage. Men will no longer listen to the lies of wicked kings and the Kallimun priests who serve Morjin. They will resist these dark ones with their every thought and action — and eventually they will cast them down. Then new kings will follow Val's example here in creating a just and enlightened realm, and they will rebuild our Brotherhood's schools in every land. The schools will be open to all: not just to kings' and nobles' sons, and the gifted. Then the true knowledge will flourish along with the higher arts, as it was in the Age of Law. And as it came to be during the reign of Sarojin Hastar, there will be a council of kings, and a High King, and all across Ea, men will turn once more toward the Law of the One.'

While Master Juwain paused in his speech to draw in a breath of air, Liljana kept silent as she stared at him.

'And then,' Master Juwain said, 'we will finally build the civilization that we were sent here from the stars to build. In time, through the great arts and the Maitreya's splendor, men will become more than men, and we will rejoin the Elijin and Galadin as angels out in the stars. And then the Galadin will make ready a new creation and become the luminous beings we call the Ieldra, and the Age of Light will begin.'

Master Juwain, I thought, had spoken simply and even eloquently of the Great Chain of Being and its purpose. But his words failed to stir Liljana. She stood with her hands planted on her wide hips as she practically spat out at him: 'Men, kings, laws — and this becoming that keeps you always looking to the stars! Your order's old dream. In the Age of the Mother, women and men needed no laws to live in peace on this world — no law other than love of the world. And each other. Why become at all when we are already so blessed? So alive? If only we could remember this, there would be a quickening of the whole earth, and men such as Morjin wouldn't live out another season. We would rid ourselves of his kind as nature does a rabid dog or a rotten tree.'

Most of the time, Liljana seemed no more than a particularly vigorous grandmother who had a talent for cooking and keeping body and soul together. But sometimes, as she did now in the strength that coursed through her sturdy frame and the adamantine light that came over her face, she took on the mantle of the Materix of the Maitriche Telu.

Atara stepped between Liljana and Master Juwain, and she held her blindfolded head perfectly still. Then she said, 'The Age of the Mother decayed into the Age of Swords because of the evil that men such as Morjin called forth. And Morjin himself put an end to the Age of Law and brought on these terrible times. So long as he draws breath, he will never suffer kings such as Val to arise while he himself is cast down.'

'No, I'm afraid you are right,' Master Juwain said, nodding his head at her. 'And here we must look to Bemossed, too. I believe that he is the Maitreya. And so I must believe that somehow he will heal Morjin of the madness that possesses him. I know this is his dream.'

And I knew it, too, though it worried me that Bemossed might blind himself to the totality of Morjin's evil and dwell too deeply on this healing that Master Juwain spoke of. Was it truly possible, I wondered? Could the Great Beast ever atone for the horrors that he had wreaked upon the world — and himself — and turn back toward the light?

It took all the force of my will and the deepest of breaths for me to say, 'I would see Morjin healed, if that could be. But I will see him defeated.'

'Oh, we are back to that, are we?' Maram groaned. He looked at me as he licked his lips. 'Why can't it be enough to keep him at bay, and slowly win back the world, as Master Juwain has said? That would be a defeat, of sorts. Or — I am loath to ask this — do you mean he must be defeated defeated, as in — '

'I mean utterly defeated, Maram. Cast down from the throne he falsely claims, reviled by all as the beast he is, imprisoned forever.' I gripped my sword's hilt as a wave of hate burned through me. 'Or killed, finally, fittingly, and even the last whisper of his lying breath utterly expunged from existence.'

As Maram groaned again and shook his head, Master Juwain said to me, 'That is something that Kane might say.'

My friends stood around regarding me. Although I was glad for their companionship, I was keenly aware that we should have numbered not eight but nine. For Kane, the greatest of all warriors, had ridden off to Galda to oppose Morjin through knife, sword and blood, in any way he could.

'Kane,' I told Master Juwain, 'would say that I should stab my sword through Morjin's heart and cut off his head. Then cleave his body into a thousand pieces, burn them and scatter the ashes to the wind.'

Maram's ruddy face blanched at this. 'But how, Val? You cannot defeat him in battle.'

'We defeated him in Argattha, when we were outnumbered a hundred against nine,' I told him. 'And on the Culhadosh Commons when he sent three armies against us. And we defeated his droghuls and his forces in the Red Desert — and in Hesperu, too.'

'But that was different, and you know it!' Maram's face now heated up with anger — and fear. 'If you seek battle, none of the Valari kings will stand with you. And even if they did, Morjin will call up all his armies, from every one of his filthy kingdoms. A million men, Val! Don't tell me you think Mesh's ten thousand could prevail against that!'

Did I truly think that? If I didn't, then I must at least act as if I did. I looked at Atara, whose face turned toward me as she waited for me to speak. Then it came to me that bravura was one thing, while truly believing was another. And knowing, with an utter certainty of blood and breath that I could not fail to strike down Morjin, was of an entirely different order.

'There must be a way,' I murmured.

'But, Val,' Master Juwain reminded me, 'it has always been your dream to bring an end to these endless battles — and to war, itself.' For a moment I closed my burning eyes because I could not see how to defeat Morjin other than through battle. But neither could I imagine any conceivable force of Valari or other free people defeating Morjin in battle. Surely, I thought, that would be death.

'There must be a way,' I told Master Juwain. I drew my sword then. My hands wrapped around the seven diamonds set into its black jade hilt while I gazed at Alkaladur's brilliant blade. 'There is always a way.'

The silver gelstei of which it was wrought flared with a wild. white light. Somewhere within this radiance, I knew, I might grasp my fate — if only I could see it.

'You will never,' Master Juwain said, 'bring down Morjin with your sword.'

'Not with this sword, perhaps. Not just with it.'

'Please,' Master Juwain said, stepping closer to lay his hand on my arm, 'give Bemossed a chance to work at Morjin in his way. Give it time.'

A shard of the sun's light reflected off my sword's blade, and stabbed into my eyes. And I told Master Juwain, 'But, sir — I am afraid that we do not have much time.'

Just then, from out of the shadows that an oak cast upon the raspberry bush, a glimmer of little lights filled the air. They began whirling in a bright spray of crimson and silver, and soon coalesced into the figure of a man. He was handsome of face and graceful of body, and had curly black hair, sun-browned skin and happy eyes that seemed always to be singing. We called him Alphanderry, our eighth companion. But we might have called him something other, for although he seemed the most human of beings, he was in his essence surely something other, too. At times, he appeared as that sparkling incandescence we had known as Flick; but more often now he took shape as the beloved minstrel who had been killed nearly three years previously in the pass of the Kul Moroth. None of us could explain the miracle of his existence. Master Juwain hypothesized that when the great Galadin had walked the earth ages ago, they had left behind some shimmering part of their being. But Alphanderry, I thought, could not be just pure luminosity. I could almost feel the breath of some deep thing filling up his form with true life; a hand set upon his shoulder would pass through him and send ripples through his glistening substance as with a stone cast into water. Day by day, as the earth circled the sun and the sun hurtled through the stars, it seemed that he might somehow be growing ever more tangible and real.

'Hoy!' he laughed out, smiling at Master Juwain and me. As it had once been with my brother, Jonathay, something in his manner suggested that life was a game to be played and enjoyed for as long as one could, and not taken too seriously. But today, despite his light, lilting voice, his words struck us all with their great seriousness: 'Hoy, time, time! — it runs like the Poru river into the ocean, does it not? And we think that, like the Poru, it is inexhaustible and will never run out.'

'What do you mean?' Master Juwain asked, looking at him.

Alphanderry stood — if that was the right word — on a mat of old leaves and trampled ferns covering the ground. And he waved his lithe hand at me, and said, 'Val is right, and too bad for that. We don't have as much time as we would like.'

But how do you know?' Master Juwain asked him. 'I just know,' he said. 'We can't let Bemossed bear the entire burden of our hope.'

'But our hope, in the end, rests upon the Lightstone. And the Maitreya. As you saw, Bemossed has kept Morjin from using it.'

'I did see that, I did,' Alphanderry said. 'But what was will not always be what is.'

Atara, I saw, smiled coldly at this, for Alphanderry suddenly sounded less like a minstrel than a server.

'Did you think it would be so easy?' he asked Master Juwain.

'Easy? No, certainly not,' Master Juwain said. 'But I believe with all my heart that as long as Bemossed lives, Morjin will never be able to use the Cup of Heaven to free the Dark One.'

The hot Soldru sun burned straight down through the clearing with an inextinguishable splendor. And yet, upon Master Juwain's mention of the Dark One — also known as Angra Mainyu, the great Black Dragon — something moved within the unmovable heavens, and I felt a shadow fall over the sun. It grew darker and darker, as if the moon were eclipsing this blazing orb. In only moments, an utter blackness seemed to devour the entire sky. I believed with all my heart that if Angra Mainyu, this terrible angel, were ever freed from his prison on Damoom, then he would destroy not only my world and its bright star, but much of the universe as well.

Master Juwain's brows wrinkled in puzzlement as he looked up at the sky to wonder what I might be gazing at. So did my other friends, who seemed not to be afflicted by my wild imaginings.

'The Seven,' Master Juwain said, turning back towards Alphanderry. 'aid Bemossed with all their powers. And so Bemossed's power grows.'

'So does Morjin's,' Alphanderry said. 'For Angra Mainyu aids him.'

'Even so, I believe that Bemossed will resist Morjin's lies and his vile attacks.'

'I pray he will: I fear that he may not. For Angra Mainyu himself has lent all his spite toward assaulting Bemossed's body, mind and soul.'

Master Juwain's brows pulled even tighter with worry. 'But how do you know this? And how can that be? The greatest of the Galadin have bound him on Damoom, and have laid protections against such things.'

'No shield is proof against all weapons,' Alphanderry said. 'Angra Mainyu has had ages of ages to battle those who bind him. The shield you speak of has cracked. And things will only get worse.'

'What do you mean?'

'Some time this autumn,' Alphanderry said, 'there will be a great alignment of planets and stars. Damoom and its star will perfectly conjunct the earth. Toward that day, Angra Mainyu's malice will rain down upon Ea ever more foul and deadly. And on that day, if Morjin should prevail and cripple Bemossed, or kill him, he will loose the Dark One upon the universe, and ail will be destroyed.'

The sun blazed down upon us, and from somewhere in the woods, the tanager continued trilling out its sweet song. We stood there in silence staring at Alphanderry. And then Master Juwain asked him again, 'But how could you know this?'

'I do not know… how I know,' Alphanderry said. 'As I stand here, as I speak, the words come to my lips, like drops of dew upon the morning grass — and i do not know what it will be that I must tell you. But my words are true.'

So it had been, I thought, in the Kul Moroth, when Alphanderry had recreated the perfect and true words of the angels — and for a few glorious moments had sung back an entire army bent on killing us all.

'And these words, above all others,' he said to us in his beautiful voice. 'Listen, I know this must be, for it is the essence of all that we strive for; The Lightstone must be placed in the Maitreya's hands. In the end, of course, there is no other way.'

He had said a simple thing, a true thing, and as with all such, it seemed obvious once it had been spoken. My heart whispered that it must be I who delivered the golden cup to the Maitreya. But how could I, I wondered, unless I first wrested it from Morjin in that impossible battle I could not bear to contemplate?

I held my sword up to the sun, and I felt something within its length of bright silustria align perfectly with other suns beyond Ea's deep blue sky. My fate, shaped like the dark world of Damoom, seemed to come hurtling out of black space straight toward me. In the autumn, I knew, it would find its way here and drive me down against the hard earth. Despite all my hopes and dreams, I could no more avoid it than I could the blood burning through my eyes or taking my next breath.

'Val — what is wrong?' Maram asked me. 'What do you see?'

I saw the forests of Mesh blackened by fire, and her mountains melted down into a hellish, glowing slag. I saw Maram fallen dead upon a vast battlefield, and my other companions, too. Atara lay holding her hands over her torn, bleeding belly, from which our child had been taken and ripped into pieces. I saw myself: as cold as stone upon the reddened grass, unmoving and waiting for the carrion birds. And something else, the worst thing of all. As I stood there beneath the trees staring into my sword's mirrored surface, I gasped at the dread cutting through my innards like an ice-cold knife, and I wanted to scream out against the horror that I could not bear.

And at that moment, in the air near the center of the clearing, a dark thing appeared. Altaru, my great, black warhorse, whinnied terribly and reared up to kick his hooves at the air. I jumped back and swept my sword into a ready posture, for I feared that Morjin had somehow sent a vulture or some kind of deadly creature to devour me — either that or I had fallen mad.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out, drawing out his sword, too. 'What is that?' Daj asked, hurrying to my side. 'Hoy!' Alphanderry cried out in alarm. 'Hoy! Hoy!' Once, Morjin had sent illusions to torment me, but the darkness facing me seemed as real as a river's whirlpool. It hovered over the ferns and flowers like a spinning blackness. My eyes had trouble holding onto it. It shifted about, and seemed to have no definite size or shape, for at one moment it appeared as a smear of char and at the next as a mass of frozen ink. I felt it fixing its malevolence on me. I took a step closer to it and positioned my sword, and it floated closer and seemed to mirror my movements as it positioned itself before me. A vast and terrible cold emanated from it, and seized hold of my heart. It called to me in a dark voice that I could not bear to hear.

'What is it?' Daj shouted again.

And Alphanderry, in a voice filled with awe, told him, 'It is the Ahrim.'

I did not have time to speculate on this strange name or wonder at the dark thing's nature, for it suddenly shot through the air straight toward me. I whipped my sword up to stop it. The gleam of my bright blade seemed to give it pause. Like a whirl of smoke, it spun slowly about in the air three feet from my face. Somehow, I thought, it watched and waited for me. I felt sick with hopelessness and a mind-numbing dread. Although it did not seem to bear for me any kind of human hate, I hated it, for I sensed that the Ahrim was that soul-destroying emptiness which engendered pure hate itself. 'Valashu Elahad,' it seemed to whisper to me.

I gripped my sword and shook my head. The dark thing had no form nor face nor lips with which to move the air, and yet I heard its voice speaking to me along a strange and sudden wind. And then, in a flash, it shifted yet again, and its secret substance took on the lineaments of a face I knew too well: that of Salmelu Aradar. It was an ugly face, nearly devoid of a chin or any redeeming feature. His great beak of a nose pointed at me, as did his black and headike eyes. I hated the way he looked at me, deep into my eyes, and so I brought up my sword to block his line of sight. And his head, like a cobra's swayed to the right, and I repositioned my sword, and then again to the left as he seemed to seek access in that direction to the dark holes in my eyes. And so it went, our motions playing off each other, almost locked together, faster and faster as it had been during our duel of swords in King Hadaru's hall when Salmelu had nearly killed me, and I had nearly killed him.

'Valashu,' he whispered again, 'I wish you had seen your mother's eyes when we crucified and ravished her in your father's hall.'

A dark fire leaped in my heart then, and I fought with all my will to keep it from burning out of my arms and hands into my sword. But my restraint availed me nothing. Salmelu roared out in triumph, and then he was Salmelu no more. The blackness of his being metamorphosed yet again, this time into a thing of scales, wings and a savagely swaying tail.

'The dragon!' Daj cried out from beside me. 'The dragon returns!'

I set my hand on Daj's shoulder, and shouted to Liljana, 'Take the children into the trees!'

I could not spare a moment to watch liljana gather up Daj and Estrella and carry out my command. The Ahrim, now shaped as a dragon, even as Daj had said hung in the air before me with an almost delicate poise. It seemed to feed on the fire inside me, and make it its own; in mere moments it grew into a raging, red beast fifty feet to length. I recognized this terrible dragon as Angraboda, into whose belly I had once plunged my sword in the deeps of Argattha. And now Angraboda regarded me with her fierce, cold, vengeful eyes. Then her leather wings beat at the air in a thunder of wind as the flew straight up toward the sun. She grew vaster and vaster and ever darker, and her bloated body blocked out the sun's light and seemed to fill all the sky. She opened her mighty jaws to spit down fire at me and burn me into nothingness. And I felt the hateful fire building inside me, inciting me into a madness to destroy her.

ANGRABODA!

From a thousand miles and years away, I heard myself cry out this name as I readied myself to slay this beast yet again. But dragons cannot be harmed by such fire; only the fulgor of the red gelstei or the stars can pierce through their iron-like scales to a dragon's heart. And so I drew in a deep breath and willed the fire within me to blaze hotter, purer and brighter until I could not hold it anymore, and it poured out into my sword. For one perfect moment, Alkaladur flared with all the brilliance of a star. Maram and Master Juwain cried out in pain at this fierce light. And so did the dragon. Then her jaws closed, and so did her great, golden eyes, and for a moment thought that I had slain her. But the Ahrim, I sensed, might be unkillable. All at once the dragon's immensity dissolved again into a blackness that sifted down through the air like soot. And as it fell to earth, the powdery-like particles of its essence reassembled themselves into the form of yet another man — or rather, a once-bright being who was something more than a man.

'Elahad,' he called out to me in a strong, beautiful voice that carried all the command of death. 'The common murderer who would be king.'

Morjin, for such the Ahrim had now become, stood before me and bowed his gold-haired head to me. His golden eyes twisted screws of hate into my eyes, and I could not look away from him, nor could I lift my sword to block his fearful gaze. From somewhere off in the trees, Daj shouted out in detestation and dread of his old master. Atara, to my right, fitted an arrow to her bowstring and loosed it at him. But the arrow sailed right through his shadowed substance as if it were a cloud.

He paid her no attention, but only continued to stare at me. He appeared as he had been in his youth before his fall: fine of feature, golden-skinned and graceful in his bearing. The compassion in his eyes gleamed almost like gold.

'Morjin!' I shouted out. At last, I managed to raise up my sword. His smile chilled me. Then he opened his mouth and breathed at me, almost as if he were blowing a kiss. No fire shot forth to scorch me, but only a bit of blackness from which he was made. I lifted my sword still higher, but I moved in vain, for it flowed around my bright blade as oil would a stick. And then his breath fell upon my head and arms, smothering me, blinding me. An unbearable cold burned through my skin deep into my bones. I stood as for an hour inside a lightless and airless cavern, gasping and coughing for breath.

'Valashu Elahad, look at me!' his hateful voice commanded. All at once, the black fog cleared from around my head, and I could not keep myself from staring at him. 'You cannot defeat me.'

My fingers seemed frozen around the hilt of my sword, with all my joints locked and shrieking in pain. I could not even blink my eyes. My heart, though, still beat within me, quick and hard and hurtful, almost as with a will of its own. At last I found my will, and I raised back my sword.

'Val, do not!' Atara called out from somewhere near me. 'Do not!'

I could not listen to her. I looked on in loathing as Morjin smiled at me and his features took on their true cast to reveal the hideous man that he had become: sagging flesh all pale with rot, stringy white hair and bloodshot eyes raging with hate. I struck out with my sword then, driving the gleaming point straight into his face. Nothing stopped this murderous thrust; it was as if I drove my sword through pure black air. And yet I felt a resistance to my sword's silustria and its cutting edges, not of flesh and bone, but of spite and pain and cold. I fought this piercing numbness, and pulled back my sword. I stared at it in fury, for somehow the Ahrim's substance had turned it black, like frozen iron. Then I stared at Morjin in horror, for even as I watched, his face became as my own, only blackened and twisted with hate. 'You cannot defeat me,' he said to me again. Or perhaps it was the Ahrim that spoke these words to me, or myself — I could not tell. But some irresistible force moved the features of the thing standing before me.

There is a fear so terrible and deep that it turns one's insides into a mass of sickened flesh and makes it seem that life cannot go on another moment. I stood there shaking and sweating and wanting to vomit up my very bowels. I knew that the dark thing standing before me had the power to kill me — and worse. But I seemed to have no power over it.

'Val, fight!' Maram shouted out from my left. I was vaguely aware that he had sheathed his sword and taken out his firestone, for the long ruby crystal caught the sun's rays in a glint of red light. And then, guided by Maram's hand and heart, the crystal drank up the sun's blaze and gave it out as a bolt of pure fire that streaked straight into the Ahrim. I felt the heat of this blast but the Ahrim felt nothing. The face that seemed so very much my own just smiled at Maram as the black cavern of its mouth seemed ready to drink up more of Maram's fire and his very life — and the lives of Master Juwain and Atara, too.

'Yes, Val, fight!' Atara called out to me, as she stood in a spray of crushed flowers by my side.

I stared at the dreadful thing wearing my face, and I wanted to fight it with every beat of my heart and down to my last breath. But how could I destroy something that was already nothing?

'You know the way!' Atara called to me again. 'As it was at the farmhouse with the droghul!'

I glanced off into the trees, where Estrella stood looking at me. She seemed to have no fear of the Ahrim, but a great and terrible concern for me. I could feel her calling out to me in silence that I must always remember who I really was.

Then the Ahrim moved nearer to me — drawn, I sensed, by my blood and the kirax burning through it. Burning, yes, always hot and hateful, but something in this bitter poison seemed to awaken me to the immensity of pain that was life. And not just my own, but that of the trees standing around me tall and green, and the birds that made their nests among them, and the bees buzzing in the flowers, and everything. But life is much more than suffering. In all the growing things around me, I felt as well a wild joy and overflowing delight in just being alive. This was my gift, to sense in other creatures and people their deepest passions; Kane had once named this magic connection of mine as the valarda.

'Valashu,' the Ahrim seemed to whisper to me as it raised up its arm and opened out its fingers to me. 'Take my hand.'

But Atara's words sounded within me, too, as did Estrella's silence and the song of the tanager piping out sweet and urgent from somewhere nearby. I finally caught sight of this little bird across the clearing to my right perched high in the branches of a willow tree. It was a scarlet tanager, all round and red like the brightest of flowers. In the way it cocked its head toward me and sang just for me, it seemed utterly alive. Its heart beat even more quickly than did my own, like a flutter of wings, and it called me to take joy in the wild life within myself. There, too, I remembered, blazed a deep and unquenchable light.

'Valashu Elahad.'

The Ahrim, I sensed, like a huge, blood-blackened tick wanted my life. Very well, then I would give it that, and something more.

'Val!' Maram cried out to me. 'Do what Atara said! What are you waiting for?'

At the farmhouse, Morjin had been unable to bear my anguish of love for my murdered family. What was it, I wondered, that the Ahrim could not bear? Its Immense and terrifying anguish seemed to pour out through its black eyes and outstretched hand.

'Now, Val!' Master Juwain called to me. He stood staring at the Ahrim as he lifted his glowing, emerald crystal toward me in order to quicken the fires of my life.

Kane had told me, too, that I held inside my heart the greatest of weapons. It was what my gift became when I turned my deepest passion outward and wielded the valarda to open others' hearts and brighten their souls. As I wielded it now. With Master Juwain feeding me the radiance of his green gelstei, and my other friends passing to me all that was beautiful and bright from within their own beings, I struck out at the Ahrim. Master Juwain believed that darkness could never be defeated by the sword, but he meant a length of honed steel and destruction, and not a sword of light.

ELAHAD!

For what seemed an age, all that was within me passed into the Ahrim in a blinding brilliance. But it was not enough. The Ahrim did not disintegrate into a shower of sparks, nor shine like the sun, nor did it disappear back into the void, like a snake swallowing its own tail. I sensed that I had only stunned it, if that was the right word, for it suddenly shrank into a ball of blackness and floated over toward an oak tree at the edge of the clearing. It seemed still to be watching me.

'You have no power over me!' I shouted at it. But my angry words seemed to make it grow a bit larger and even blacker, if that was possible.

Atara came up to me then, and laid her hand on my ice-cold hands, still locked onto the hilt of my sword. And she said to me, 'Do not look at it. Close your eyes and think of the child that someday we'll make together.'

I did as she asked, and my heart warmed with the brightest of hopes. And when I opened my eyes, the Ahrim had disappeared.

'But where did it go?' Maram asked, coming over to me. 'And will it return?'

Daj came running out of the trees toward me, followed by Liljana and Estrella. All my friends gathered around me. And I told them, 'It will return. In truth, I am not sure it is really gone.'

As I stood there trying to steady my breathing, I still felt the dark thing watching me, from ail directions — and from my insides, as if it could look out at me through my very soul.

'But what is it?' Daj asked yet again. He turned toward Alphanderry, who had remained almost rooted to the clearing's floor during the whole time of our battle. 'You called it the Ahrim. What does that mean?'

'Hoy, the Ahrim, the Ahrim — I do not know!'

'I suppose the name just came to you?' Maram said, glaring at him.

'Yes, it did. Like — '

'Drops of blood on a cross!' Maram snapped. 'That thing is evil.'

'So are all of Morjin's illusions,' Liljana said. 'But that was no illusion.'

'No, certainly not,' Master Juwain said. Now he, too, touched his hand to my hands. He touched my face and told me, 'Your fingers are frozen — and your nose and cheeks are frostbitten.'

I would have looked at myself in Alkaiadur's shimmering surface, but the silustria was an ugly black and 1 could see nothing.

'It was so cold,' I said. 'So impossibly cold.'

I watched as the sun's rays fell upon my sword and the blade slowly brightened to a soft silver. So it was with my dead-white flesh: the warm spring air thawed my face and hands with a hot pain that flushed my skin. Master Juwain held his green crystal over me to help the healing along. Soon I found that I could open and close my fingers at will, and I did not worry that they would rot with gangrene and have to be cut off. But forever after, I knew, I would feel the Ahrim's terrible coldness burning through me, even as I did the kirax in my blood.

A sudden gleam of my sword gave me to see a truth to which I had been blind. And I said to Alphanderry, with much anger, 'You do know things about the Ahrim, don't you? It has something to do with the Skadarak, doesn't it?'

At the mention of this black and blighted wood at the heart of Acadu, Alphanderry hung his head in shame. And then he found the courage to look at me as he said, 'It was there, waiting.- Val. During our passage, it attached itself to you. It has been following you ever since.'

'Following!' I half-shouted. 'All the way to Hesperu. and back, to the Brotherhood's school? And then here, to my home? Why could I not ice it? And why could Abrasax not see it — he who can see almost everything?'

Again, Alphanderry shrugged his shoulders.

'But how is it,' I demanded, 'that you can see it?'

It was Daj who answered for him. He passed his hand through Alphanderry's watery-like form, and said, 'But how not, since they are made of the same substance!'

Master Juwain regarded the glimmering tones that composed Alphanderry's being. He said, 'Similar, perhaps, but certainly not the same.'

I waved my hand at such useless speculations, and I called out to Alphanderry, 'But why did you never tell me of this thing?'

The look on his face was that of a boy stealing back to his room after dark. He said to me simply, 'I didn't want to worry you, Val.'

'Oh, excellent, excellent!' Maram muttered, shaking his head. 'Well, I am worried enough for all of us, now. What I wonder is why that filthy Ahrim, whatever it is, attacked us here? And more important, what will keep it away?'

But none of us, not even Alphanderry, had an answer to these questions. As it was growing late, it seemed the best thing we could do would be to leave these strange woods behind us as soon as possible.

'Come,' I said, clapping Maram on the shoulder. 'Let's go get some of that roast beef and beer you've been wanting for so long.'

After that, I pulled myself up onto Altaru's back, and my friends mounted their horses, too. I pointed the way toward Lord Harsha's farm with all the command and assurance that I could summon. But as we rode off through the shadowed trees, I felt the dark thing called the Ahrim still watching me and still waiting, and I knew with heaviness in my heart that it would be no easy task for me to become king.