The Lightstone

Chapter 12

Early the next morning my nightmares began again. I came screaming out of sleep convinced that the ground beneath my sleeping furs had opened up and I was plunging into a black and bottomless abyss. My cries of terror awoke myself and everyone else. Master Juwain came over to where I lay by the fire's glowing embers and rested his hand on my forehead. 'Your fever has returned,' he told me. 'I'll make you some tea.' While he went off to fetch some water and prepare his bitter brew, Atara soaked a cloth in the cool water of the stream and returned to press it against my head. Her fingers – callused from years of pulling a bowstring – were incredibly gentle as she brushed back my sweat-soaked hair. She was quiet, her full lips pressed together with her concern.

'Do you think his wound is infected?' Maram said to Master Juwain. 'I thought it was getting better.'

'Let's see,' Master Juwain said as the water for the tea was heating. 'Let's get your mail off, Val.'

They helped strip me bare to the waist, and then Master Juwain removed my bandage to examine my wound. He probed it gently, and pronounced that it was healing again and looked clean enough. After bandaging my side and helping me dress, he sat by his pot of boiling water and looked at me in puzzlement. 'Do you think it's the kirax?' Maram asked.

'I don't think so,' Master Juwain said. 'But it's possible.' 'And what,' Atara asked, 'is kirax?'

Master Juwain turned to me as if wondering how much he should tell her. In answer, I nodded my head. 'It's a poison,' Master Juwain said. 'A terrible poison.'

He went on to recount how an assassin's arrow had wounded me in the woods outside Silvassu. He explained how the priests of the Kallimun sometimes used kirax to slay horribly at Morjin's bidding.

'Oh, but you make evil enemies, don't you?' Atara said to me. 'It would seem so,' I said. Then I smiled at Master Juwain, Maram and her. 'But; also the best of friends.' Atara returned my smile then asked, 'But why should Morjin wish you dead?'

That was one of the questions of my life I most wanted answered. Because I had nothing to say, I shrugged my shoulders and stared off at the glow of the dawn in the east.

'Well, if he does wish you dead and this man Kane is the one he has sent after you, I have a present for him.' So saying, Atara drew forth an arrow from her quiver and pointed it west toward Argattha. 'Morjin's assassins aren't the only ones who can shoot arrows, you know.'

After that I drank my tea and ate a little breakfast. Although my fever faded with the coming of the day, a dull headache remained to torment me. Some big, dark clouds moved over the land from the north, and I could almost feel the pressure of them smothering the forest. Before we could even put away our cooking pots and break camp, it started to rain a steady drumming of cold drops that drove down through the trees and beat against my head. Matter Juwain pointed out that we would stay drier in the woods than on the open road, he suggested remaining these another day in order to recover our strength. 'No,' I said. 'We can rest when we get to Tria.'

Master Juwain, who could sometimes be cunning, shook his head at me and said,

'You're tired, Val. So are the horses.'

In the end it was the condition of the horses that decided me. We had pressed them hard for many miles, and they hadn't had a good feed of grain since Duke Gorador's castle. Although they had found grass along our way, this wasn't enough to keep them fat and happy – especially Altaru, who needed some oats in his belly to keep his huge body driving forward. I realized that for a couple of days, he had been telling me that he was hungry, but I hadn't been listening And so I consented to Master Juwain's suggestion. Against Maram's protests, I led him and the other horses most of the oats that we had been reserving far our morning porridge. As I reminded Maram, we still had some cheese and nuts, and quite a few battle biscuits.

And so we remained there for the rest of the day. The rain seemed only to come down harder with each passing hour. We sat huddled beneath the meager shelter of the trees listening to its patter against the leaves. I was very grateful for the cloak that my mother had made for me, I kept it wrapped tightly about me. as I did the white wool scarf my grandmother had knitted. To pass, the time, I took out Jonathay's chess set, I played some games with Maram and then Atara. It surprised me that she beat me every time, for I hadn't known the Sarni studied such civilized games. I might have blamed my poor play on my throbbing head, but I didn't want to diminish Atara's victory.

'Would you like to play me?' Atara asked Maram after I had lost my fourth game.

'You've been sitting out a while.'

'No, thank you,' Maram said. 'It's more fun watching Val lose.'

Atara began setting up the pieces for a new game as Maram shivered miserably beneath his red cloak and said, 'I'm cold, I'm weary, I'm wet. But at least this rain should keep the bears holed up. There hasn't been any sign of them – has there?'

'No,' I said to encourage him. 'The bears don't like rain.'

'And there's been no sign of Kane or anyone else – has anyone seen any sign?'

Both Master Juwain and Atara reassured him that, except for the rain, the woods had been as silent as they were wet. I wanted to reassure him as well. But I couldn't – nor could I comfort myself. For ever since I had awakened from my nightmare, I'd had a gnawing sensation in my belly that some beast was hunting for me, sniffing at the air and trying to catch my scent through the pouring rain. As the grayness of the afternoon deepened, this sensation grew stronger. And so I resolved to. break camp and travel hard at first light no matter rain or fever or the tiredness of the horses.

That night I had worse nightmares. My fever returned, and Master Juwain's tea did little to cool it But as I had promised myself, in the morning we set out on the road.

It was grim work plodding over the drenched paving stones through the rain. The whole world narrowed to this tunnel of stone cutting east through the dark green woods and the even darker gray sky. Master Juwain said that in Alonia, it sometimes rained like this for days without end. Maram wondered aloud how it was that the sky could hold whole oceans among its cold currents of air. Atara said that on the Wendrush, it rained fiercely but rarely so steadily as this. Then, to cheer us, she began singing a song meant to charm the rain away.

Just before dusk, as we were making camp in the dripping woods, the rain finally broke. My fever didn't. It seemed to be centered in my head, searing all my senses, cooking my brain. I had no evil dreams that night only because I couldn't sleep. I lay awake on the cold, sodden earth toss-ing and turning and hoping that the sky might clear and the stars would come out. But the clouds remained thick and heavy long past midnight; through the long hours of darkness, the sky seemed lower than it should be. Morning's thin light showed a gray mist lying over the tops of the trees. It was a bad day for travel, I thought, but travel we must.

'You're still hot,' Master Juwain told me as he tested my head. 'And you're so pale, Val – I'm afraid you're growing weaker.'

In truth, I was so weak that I could hardly hold the mug of tea that Maram gave me or move my mouth to speak. But I had to warn them of my feeling of being followed because it was growing ever stronger. 'Someone is coming for us,' I said. 'Maybe Kane – maybe others.' This news alarmed Maram almost as much as it surprised Atara. Her blonde eyebrows arched as she asked, 'But we've seen no sign of anyone since the hills. Why should you think someone is pursuing us?' 'Val has a sense about such things,' Master Juwain tried to explain. Atara cast me a long, penetrating look and then nodded her head as if she understood. She seemed to see me as no one ever had before; she both believed me and believed in me, and I loved her for that.

'Someone is coming for us, you say,' Maram muttered as he stood by the fire scanning the woods. 'Why didn't you tell us, Val?'

I, too, stood staring off through the woods; I hadn't told them anything because I had doubted what I had sensed, even as I doubted it now. Only two days before, in my joy at rinding Atara, I had opened myself to the whole world and had been stricken by the beauty of the sun and the sky, by the sweetness of the flowers and the trees and the wind. But what if my gift, quickened by the kirax in my blood, had also opened me to other things? What if I were picking up on every fox in the forest stalking the many rabbits and voles? What if I could somehow sense the killing instinct of every bear, racoon and weasel – as well as every fly-catching frog and worm-hunting bird and all the other creatures around us? Might I not have mistaken this flood of natural urges for a feeling that someone was hunting me? And yet it was the sheer unnaturalness of what I now felt that filled me with dread. Something slimy and unclean seemed to want to fasten itself to the back of my neck and suck the fluids from my spine; something like a clot of worms gnawed continually at my belly.

I was afraid that if I let them, they would eat their way up through my heart and head and bleed away my very life. And so, because I was afraid that this horrible thing might be coming for Atara and the others, too, I decided that it was long past time that I warned them of the danger.

'My apologies for not telling you sooner,' I said to Maram. 'But I had to be sure.

There is a wrongness here.'

Maram, who remembered very well our near-death at the Telemesh Gate, drew in a quick breath and asked, 'Do you think it's another bear?'

'No this is different. No beast could make me feel this way.' 'No beast except the Red Dragon,' he muttered.

'If its men who are pursuing us,' Master Juwain said, 'then shouldn't we be on our way as soon as possible?'

'If it is men,' Atara said, slinging on her quiver, 'then as soon as they show themselves, my arrows will pursue them.'

She wondered if we shouldn't find a place of concealment by the side of the road and simply wait for whoever might be riding after us. But I couldn't countenance shooting at men from behind trees as my would-be assassin had shot at me. And I couldn't bear more killing in any case. Because our pursuers might still be untold miles away, it seemed the safest course to ride west as quickly as we could.

And ride we did For most of the first hour what day's journey, we moved along at a swift canter. Our horses' hooves struck the road in a three-beat rhythm of iron against stone, clop-clip-clop, again and again. When they grew tired, we slowed to a trot. At last we broke for a rest as Atara dismounted and pressed her ear to road to listen for the sound of other hooves.

'Do you hear anything?' Maram called to her from the side of the road. 'What do you hear?'

'Nothing except you,' Atara told him. 'Now please be quiet.'

But after a few moments, she stood up and slowly shook her head.

'Let's ride, then,' Maram said. 'I don't like the look of this wood.'

I smiled then because I thought it wasn't the trees or any growing thing that disturbed him. Some miles back, we had entered a hilly country again – but nothing so rugged or high as the tors along the gap of the Shoshan Range. Here the hills were low and rounded, and were covered in chestnut yellow poplar, black ash and oak. In the broad valley through which we rode grew stands of beech, walnut, sycamore, elm and silver maple. Many of these giants of the forest were clothed in honeysuckle and wild grape. In truth, it was a lovely wood, sweet with fruits and singing birds, and I lamented that only man could bring any evil into it.

We rode through the rest of the day. Around noon, the sun boiled away the last of the mist, and the sky cleared to a hazy blue. It grew quite hot, and humid, too, with the earth's moisture flavoring the air like a fermy soup. I was hot from a fever that had now spread from my head into the rest of my body. Beneath my layers of surcoat, mail and underpadding, I began to sweat. For a long while, 1 suffered this torment as I had been taught. But then the worms in my belly seemed to ignite like writhing tendrils of flame; my skin felt like a tunic soaked in oil and set on fire. I wanted to pull off this wrapping of burning flesh, along with all my clothing and armor, and jump into the stream that ran by the roadside. Instead, I fixed my gaze on the white blister or the sun as it slowly made its way toward the west. I might have screamed at the agony of it all if I hadn't remembered that Valari warriors are not allowed to give voice to such pain.

We made camp that night in a grove of elms by a stream half a mile from the road.

We risked no fire until it grew dark and the smoke from the damp wood we found would not be seen. Our meal that evening was as cold and cheerless as it was sparse: upon opening our food bags, we found that half our biscuits and all our cheese had grown a thick, green fur of mold. Although Master Juwain cut away as much of it as he could, neither Atara nor Maram had much appetite for what remained.

And I had none. Since I didn't have the strength to chew the leathery dried meat that Atara urged upon me, I sat back against a tree drinking some cool water. Although I insisted on staying awake to take the first watch – and perhaps the other watches as well – I almost immediately fell asleep. I never felt my friends' hands lifting me onto my bed of furs by the small fire.

I was vaguely aware that I was writhing and sweating there on the ground for most of the night. At times I must have dreamed. And then suddenly I found myself somehow awakening many miles away in a large room with rich furnishings. I stood by a magnificently canopied bed marveling at the gilded chests and wardrobes along the walls. There I saw three long mirrors, framed in ornate gold as well. The ceiling was like a chessboard, with squares of finely carved white wood alternating with the blackest ebony; an intricately woven carpet showing the shapes of many animals and men covered the floor. I couldn't find any window or door. I stood sweating in fear because I couldn't imagine how I had come to be there.

And then the mirror opposite me began rippling like still water into which someone had thrown a stone. A man stepped out of it. He was slightly above average height slim and well-muscled, with skin as fair as snow. His short hair shone like spun gold, and the fine features of his face radiated an almost unearthly beauty. I gasped to behold his eyes, for they were all golden, too. He was elegantly dressed, in a golden tunic trimmed with black fur. Across the chest the tunic was embroidered with an emblem that drew my eyes and held them fast: it was the coiled shape of a large and ferocious red dragon.

You're standing on my head,' he told me in a strong, deep voice. 'Please get your muddy boots off it.'

I looked down to see that I was indeed standing on the eyes of a red dragon woven into the wool at the center of the carpet. I instantly found myself moving backward. No king I ad ever known – neither King Hadaru nor even my father – spoke with such command as did this beautiful man.

'Do you know who I am?' he asked me.

'Yes,' I said. I was sweating fiercely now; I wanted to close my eyes and scream, but I couldn't look away from him. 'You're the Red Dragon.' 'I have a name,' he said.

'You know what it is – say it.'

'No,' I told him. 'I won't.'

'Say it now!'

'Morjin,' I said, despite my resolve. 'Your name is Morjin.' 'Lord Morjin, you should call me. And you are Valashu Elahad. Son of Shavashar Elahad, who is of the line of Elemesh, Aramesh and Telemesh. Do you know what these men did to me?'

'Yes – they defeated you.'

'Defeated? Do I look defeated?' Morjin positioned himself by one of his mirrors as he adjusted the folds of his tunic. He stood very straight, and his face took on a fierce and implacable countenance. It seemed that he was searching for fire and iron there and finding both in abundance. He looked into his own golden eyes for a long time. And then he turned to me and said, 'No, in the end, it was I who defeated them.

They are dead and I am still alive.'

He took a few steps closer to me and said, 'But they did defy me. Even as you have, Valashu Elahad.'

'No,' I said, 'no, no.'

'No… what?'

'No, Lord Morjin.'

'You killed one of my knights, didn't you?'

'No, that's not true – are assassins knights?'

'You put your knife into him. You killed this man, and so you owe him a life. And since he was my man, you owe me your life.'

'No, that's a lie,' I said. 'You're the Lord of Lies.'

'Am I?'

'You're the Lord of Illusions, the Crucifier, the Great Beast.'

'I'm only a man, like you.'

'No-that's the worst lie of all! You're nothing like me.'

Morjin smiled, revealing small white teeth as lustrous as pearls. He asked me, 'Have you never lied, then?'

'No – my mother taught me not to lie. My father, too.'

'That is the first lie you've told me, Valashu. But not the last.'

'Yes, it is!' I said, I pressed my hand to my throbbing head. 'I mean, no, it isn't – I wasn't lying when I said it's wrong to lie.'

'Is it really?' he asked me. He took another step closer and said, 'It pleases me that you lie to me. Why not be truthful about what all men do? You honor the truth, don't you? You're an Elahad aren't you? Then listen to this truth that I give to you freely: He who best knows the truth is most able to tell a falsehood. Therefore the man best at lying is the most true.'

'That's a lie!' I half-shouted. But my head hurt so bad I could hardly tell what was true and what was not. 1 tried to close my ears to the music that poured off Morjin's silver tongue. I tried to close my eyes and heart to him, but he just stood there smiling at me nicely as if he were my brother or best friend.

'Is this a lie then, Valashu? That there must be truth between us? That we already know the truth about each other, deep in our hearts?'

'No – you know nothing about me!'

'Don't I?'

Morjin pointed his long finger at my chest and said, 'I know that you're in love.

Show her to me, please.'

I closed my eyes as 1 shook my head. In my mind there appeared a blazing image of Atara clasping hands with me, and I quickly shut it away in the stone-walled keep of my heart as I would the most precious of treasures.

'Thank you,' Morjin told me. 'I might have foreseen the irony of a Valari knight falling for a Sarni warrior. Do you congratulate yourself on the nobility of your making friends with your enemy?'

'No!'

'Well, she's a beautiful woman, in an animal kind of way. But then, you like riding horses, don't you?'

'Damn you!' I told him. I moved my hand to draw my sword, but I found that I wasn't wearing it.

'My apologies, that wasn't kind of me,' he said. 'And as you'll see, I'm really the kindest of men. 'But the truth is, this woman is as far beneath you as an earthworm.'

'I love her!'

'Do you? Or do you only love the benefits of loving her? When a man burns for a woman, all other hurts disappear, don't they? Tell me, Valashu, did you save her from my men out of love or so that you wouldn't have to suffer the agony of her violation and death?'

I made a fist to strike him then, but then he smiled as if to remind me of my vow not to harm others.

'You tell yourself that you honor truth, but sometimes it's too painful to face, isn't it?

And so, like all men, you tell yourself lies.' Morjin's fine hands moved dramatically to emphasize his point; it seemed that such bright fires burned inside him that he couldn't stop moving- 'But please, do not chastise yourself. These little lies enable us to go on livingAnd life precious is it not? The most precious gift of the One?

And therefore a lie told in the service of the One is a noble thing'

I stood there pressing my hands over my temples and ears. It felt like some beast was trying to break its way into my head.

'You've been told that I'm evil, but some part of you doubts this.' Morjin nodded his head at me, and I suddenly found myself nodding my head, too. 'It's a great suffering for you, isn't it, this doubt of yours? And most of all, I think, you doubt yourself.'

Again, I nodded my head.

'But wouldn't it be good to live without this doubt?' he asked me.

Yes, yes, I thought, it would be very good.

'How is evil known, then?' he asked. 'Is evil the light that shines from the One?'

'No, of course not – it's just the opposite,' I said. And then I quoted from the laws:

"'Darkness is the denial of the One; darkness is the illusion that all things are separate from the light of the One."

'You understand,' he said kindly. 'Please don't separate yourself from the gifts I bring you, Valashu.'

I slowly shook my head, which throbbed with a deep agony at every beat of my heart.

'Please don't deny me.'

Now Morjin took the final step toward me and smiled. I was suddenly aware that he smelled of roses. I tried to move back, but found that I didn't want to. I told myself that I mustn't be afraid of him, that he had no power to harm me. Then he reached out his hand, which was long and beautiful with tapering fingers. He touched his forefinger to the scar on my forehead; the tip of it was warm, and I could almost feel it glowing with a deep radiance. He traced this finger slowly along the zig-zags of the scar, sinuously impressing it into me. He smiled warmly as he then cupped the whole of his hand around my head. Despite the delicacy of his fingers, I sensed that there was iron there and that he had the strength to crush my skull like an eggshell. But instead he only touched my temples with exquisite sensitivity and breathed deeply as if drawing my pain into him. And suddenly my headache was gone. 'There,' he said, stepping away from me. He waited a moment for me to speak, then told me, 'You're deciding if your Valari manners permit you to thank me, aren't you? Is it so hard to say the words, then?' 'To the Lord of Lies? To the Crucifier?'

'Men have called me that – they don't understand.'

'They understand what they see,' I said.

'And what do you see, young Valashu?'

Again he smiled, and the room lit up as with the rising of the sun.

For a moment I couldn't help seeing him as an angel of light, as what I imagined the Elijin to be.

'They understand what you do,' I said. 'You've enslaved half of Ea and tortured everyone who has opposed you.'

'Enslaved? When your father accepts homage from a knight is that enslavement?

When he punishes a man for treason, is that torture?' 'My father,' I said, 'is a king.'

'And I am a king of kings,' he said. 'My realm is Sakai – and all the lands east, west, north and south. A long time ago, the land that you and your friends are traveling through belonged to me, and will once again.'

'By what right?'

'By the right of what is right,' he told me. 'Do you remember the words written in your book?'

He pointed at my hand, and I suddenly saw that I was holding Master Juwain's copy of the Saganom Elu. I hadn't been aware that I held it.

Morjin's face grew bright as he quoted from the Commentaries: '"'The Lord called Morjin far excels the rest of mankind."'

'But you've left something out!' I accused him. 'Isn't the full passage: "The Lord Morjin far excels the rest of mankind in doing evil."7

'Of course not,' he said. 'My enemies added those words after I had been imprisoned on Damoom and there was no one to gainsay their lies.'

I stood there watching the quick and elegant motions of his hands as he tried to convince me. I didn't know what to say.

'I'm more than seven thousand years old,' he told me. 'And I didn't come by my immortality by accident'

'No – you gained immortality by stealing the Lightstone.'

'But how can a man steal what is his?'

'What do you mean? The Lightstone belongs to all of Ea.'

'It belongs to him who made it.'

I searched his face for the truth and his golden eyes seemed so bright and compelling that I didn't know what to think.

The Lightstone,' I finally said, 'was brought here by Elahad and the Star People ages ago.'

At this, Morjin laughed softly. But there was no mockery in his voice only irony and sadness. He said, 'You must know, Val – can I call you that – you must know that is only a myth. I made the Lightstone myself late in the Age of Swords.'

'But all the histories say that you stole it, and that Aramesh won it back at the Battle of Sarburn!'

'The victors of that battle wrote the histories they wanted to write.' he said. 'And Aramesh was victorious – until death took him in its claws.'

Here I couldn't help staring at the claws of the dragon embroidered on his tunic

'The Lightstone belongs to me,' he told me. 'And you must help me regain it.'

'No, I won't.'

'You will,' he told me. 'Scrying isn't the greatest of my talents, but I'll tell you this: someday you'll deliver it into my hands.'

'No, never.'

'You owe me your life,' he told me. 'A man who doesn't repay his debts is a thief, is he not?'

'No – there is no debt.'

'And still you deny me!' he thundered. Suddenly, he smacked his fist into his open hand. His face grew red and hard to look at. 'Just as you still shelter one who is worse than a thief.'

'What do you mean?'

"Who is that standing behind you?' he said, pointing his finger at me.

'What do you mean – there's no one behind me!'

But it seemed that there was. I turned to see a boy standing in the shadow that I cast upon the carpet. He was about six years old, with bold face bones, a shock of wild black hair and a scar shaped like a lighting bolt cut into his forehead.

'There,' Morjin said, stabbing at him with his long finger. 'Why are you trying to protect him?'

Morjin tried to step around me then to get at the boy. When I raised my arm to stop him, he touched my side with something sharp. I looked down to see that his finger had grown a long black daw tipped with a bluish substance that looked like kirax.

My whole body began burning, and I suddenly couldn't move.

'Come here, Valashu,' Morjin said. Quick as a snapping turtle, he grabbed up the boy and stood shaking him near the wall. But the boy spat in his face and managed to bite off his clawlike finger. Morjin looked at the gaping wound in his hand and said to me, 'You'll have to help me now.'

'No, never!' I said again through my clenched teeth.

'Give me the arrow!' Morjin told me.

With one hand pitining the struggling boy against the wall he reached out his other hand to me. I saw then that I really wasn t holding Master Juwain's book in my hand but an arrow fletched with raven feathers and tipped with a razor-sharp steel.

It was the arrow that the unknown assassin had shot at me in the forest. 'Thank you,'

Morjin said, taking it from me. He suddenly plunged it into the boy's side, and we both screamed at the burning pain of it In j moments, the kirax froze the boy's limbs so that he couldn't move.

'Do you have the hammer?' Morjin said to me. 'Do you have the nails?'

He turned from the boy, and took from me the three iron spikes that I held in my left hand and the heavy iron maul in my right. I saw then that I had been mistaken, that there really was a door giving out into the room: it was a thick slab of oak set into the wall just next to the boy. Morjin used the hammer to nail his hands and legs to it. I couldn't hear the ringing of iron against iron, so loud were the boy's screams.

'There,' he said when he had finished crucifying him. He smiled sadly at me and continued,'And now you must give me what is mine.'

'No!' I cried out. 'Don't do this!'

'A king,' he said to me, 'must sometimes punish, even as your father punished you.

And a warrior must sometimes slay in pursuit of a noble end even as you have slain.'

'But the boy! He's done nothing – he's innocent!'

'Innocent? He's committed a crime worse than treason or murder.'

'What is this crime?' I gasped.

'He coveted the Lightstone for himself,' he said simply. 'He couldn't bear the gift that the One bestowed upon him, and so when he heard his grandfather speak of the golden cup that heals all wounds, he dreamed of keeping it for himself?'

'No – that's not true!'

Morjin moved closer to the boy and let the blood streaming from his pierced hand run into his open mouth.

'No, don't,' I said.

'You must help me,' he said to me.

'No.'

'You must do me homage, Valashu Elahad, son of kings. You must surrender to me what is mine.'

The whole of my body below my neck couldn't move, but I could still shake my head.

'You must open your heart to me, Valashu. Only then will you find peace.'

His eyes now began to burn like two golden suns. Long black claws like those of a dragon grew from his hands in place of fingers.

'Don't hurt him!' I cried out. 'You can't hurt him!'

'Can't I?'

'No, you can't – this is only a dream.'

'Do you think so?' he asked. 'Then see if you can wake up.'

So saying, he turned to the terrified boy and made cooing sounds of pity as he tore him apart. When he was finished, he held the boy's still-beating heart in his claws so that I could see it.

You killed him! I wanted to scream. But the only sound that came from my ravaged throat was a burning sob.

'It's said that if you die in your dreams,' he told me, 'you die in life.'

He looked at the throbbing heart and said, 'But no, Val, I haven't killed him, not yet.'

And with that, he placed the heart back into the boy's chest and sealed the wound with a kiss from his golden lips. The boy opened his eyes then and stared at Morjin hatefully.

'Do you see?' he said to me with a heavy sigh. 'I can't demand that you open your heart to me. Such gifts must be truly given.'

I bit my lip then and tasted blood. The dark, salty liquid moistened my burning throat, and I cried out, 'That will never happen!'

'No?' he asked me angrily. 'Then you will truly die.'

Now his head grew out from his body, huge and elongated and red and covered with scales. His eyes were golden-red and glowed like coals. His forked tongue flicked out once as if tasting the fear in the air. Then he opened his jaws to let out a gout of fire that seared the boy from his head to his bloody feet. The boy screamed as his flesh began to char; Morjin screamed out his hatred in his fiery roar. And I screamed too as I pleaded with him to stop.

But he didn't stop. He let the fire pour out of his fearsome mouth as if venting ages of bitterness and hate. I felt my own skin beginning to blister; I knew that Morjin would soon renew it with the touch of his lips so that he could burn me again and again until I finally surrendered to him or died. I sensed that if I fought against this terrible burning, it would go on forever. And so I surrendered to it. I let its heat burn deep into my blood; I felt it burning the kirax in my blood. And suddenly I found myself able to move again. I swung my fist like a mace at the side of Morjin's head; it was like striking iron. But it stunned him long enough so that I could rush through the flames streaming from his mouth to the blackened, bloody door. The boy was now all black and twisted and screaming for me to help him. I somehow wrenched him free from the door with a great tearing of flesh and bones. And then, holding him close to me where I could feel as my own the wild beating of his heart and his screams, I opened the door.

I opened my eyes then to see Atara bending over me and pressing cool, wet cloth against my head, which she held cradled in her lap. was lying back against my sweat-soaked sleeping furs near the fire. I took me a moment to realize that I was screaming still. I closed my mouth then and bit my bloody lip against the burning in my body. Master Juwain, brewing up some more tea, held my hand in his, testing my pulse. Maram sat beside me pulling at his thick beard in concern.

'We couldn't wake you,' he told me. 'But you were screaming loud enough to wake the dead.'

I squeezed Atara's hand to thank her for her watching over me, and then I sat up. I found that I was still clutching my other hand against my heart, but the wounded boy I thought to find there was gone.

'Are you all right now?' Maram asked me.

I blinked my eyes against the burning there. I looked out at the trees, which were immense gray shapes in the faint light filtering through the forest. The crickets were chirping in the bushes, and a few birds were singing the day's first songs. It was that terrible time between death and morning when the whole world struggled to fight its way out of night.

I stood up, wincing against the flames that still scorched my skin. I took a step away from the fire.

It's still night,' Atara said. 'Where are you going?'

'Down to the stream, to bathe,' I said. I wanted to wash away the charred skin from my hands and let the stream's rushing waters cool my burning body.

'You shouldn't go alone,' she told me. 'Here, let me get my bow -'

'No!' I said. 'It will be all right – I'll take my sword.'

So saying, I bent to grab up my kalama, which I always kept sheathed next to my bed when I was sleeping. And then I walked off by myself toward the stream.

It was eerie moving through the gray-lit woods. I imagined I saw dark gray shapes watching me through the trees. But when I looked more closely I saw that they were only bushes or shrubs: arrowwood and witch hazel and others whose names I couldn't quite remember, I plodded along the forest floor and crunched over twigs and old leaves. I smelled animal droppings and ferns and the sweaty remnants of my own fear.

And then suddenly I broke free from the trees and came upon the stream. It gurgled along its rocky course like a silver ribbon beneath the stars. I looked up at the glowing sky in deep gratitude that I could see these blazing points of light. In the east, the Swan constellation was just rising over the dark rim of the forest. Near it shone Valashu, the Morning Star – so bright that it was almost like a moon. I kept my eyes fixed upon this familiar star that gave me so much hope even as I bent to lave the stream's cool water over my head.

And then I felt a cold hand touch my shoulder. For a moment I was angry because I thought that Maram or Atara had followed me But when I turned to tell them that I really did want to be alone, I saw that the man standing beside me was Morjin.

'Did you really think you could escape me?' he asked.

I stared at his golden hair and his great golden eyes, now touched with silver in the starlight. The claws were gone from his hands, and he was wearing a wool traveling cloak over his dragon-emblazoned tunic.

'How did you come here?' I gasped.

'Don't you know? I've been following you since Mesh.'

I gripped the hilt of my sword as I stared at him. Was this still a dream, I wondered?

Was it an illusion that Morjin had cast like a painter covering a canvas with brightly-colored pigments? He was the Lord of Illusions, wasn't he? But no, I thought, this was no illusion. Both he and the fiery words that hissed from his mouth seemed much too real.

'I must congratulate you on finding your way out of my room,' he said. 'It surprises me that you did, though it pleases me even more.'

'It pleases you? Why?'

'Because it proves to me that you're capable of waking up.'

He gave me to understand that much of what had passed in my dream had been only a test and a spur to awaken my being. This seemed the greatest of the lies that he had told me, but I listened to it all the same.

'I told you that I was kind,' he said. 'But sometimes compassion must be cruel.'

'You speak of compassion?'

'I do speak of it because I know it better than any man.'

He told that my gift for feeling others' sufferings and joys had a name, and that was valarda. This meant both the heart of the stars and the passion of the stars. Here he pointed up at the Morning Star and the bright Solaru and Altaru of the Swan constellation. All the Star People, he said, who still lived among these lights had this gift. As did Elahad and others of the Valari who had come to Ea long ago. But the gift had mostly been lost during the savagery of many thousands of years. Now only a few blessed souls such as myself knew the terrible beauty of valarda.

'I know it, too,' he told me. 'I have suffered from the valarda for a long time. But there is a way to make the suffering end.'

'How?' I asked.

He cupped his hands in front of his heart then, and they glowed with a soft golden radiance like that of a polished bowl. He said, 'Do you burn, Valashu? Does the kirax from my arrow still torment you? Would you like to be cured of this poison and your deeper suffering as well?'

'How?' I asked again. Despite the coolness spraying up from the stream, my whole body raged with fever.

'I can relieve you of your gift,' Morjin told me. 'Or rather, the pain of it.'

Here he pointed at the kalama that I still held sheathed in my hand. 'You see, the valarda is like a double-edged sword. But so far, you've known it to cut only one way.'

He told me that a true Valari, which was his name for the Star People, could not only experience others' emotions but make them feel his own.

'Do you hate, Valashu? Do you sometimes clench your teeth against the fury inside you? I know that you do. But you can forge your fury into a weapon that will strike down, your enemies. Shall I show you how to sharpen the steel of this sword?'

'No!' I cried out. That is wrong! It would be twisting the bright blade that the One himself forged. The valarda may be double-edged, as you say. But I must believe that it is sacred. And I would never pervert it by turning it inside-out to harm anyone.

No more than I would use my kalama to kill anyone.'

'But you will kill again with that sword,' he said, pointing at my kalama. 'And with the valarda, as well. You see, Valashu, inflicting your own pain on others is the only way not to feel their pain – and your own.'

I closed my eyes for a moment as I looked inside for this terrible sword that Morjin had spoken of. I feared that I might find it. And this was the worst torment I had ever known.

'What you say, all that you say, is wrong,' I gasped out. 'It's evil.'

'Is it wrong to slay your enemies, then? Isn't it they who are evil for opposing your noblest dream?'

'You don't know my dream.'

'Don't I? Isn't it your dearest hope to end war? Listen to me, Valashu, listen as you've never listened before: there is nothing I desire more than an end to these wars.'

I listened to the rushing of the stream and the words from his golden lips. I was afraid that he might be telling me the truth. He went on to say that many of the kings and nobles of Ea loved war because it gave them the power of life and death over others. But they, he said, were of the darkness while dreamers such as he and I were of the light

'It's death itself that's the great enemy,' he said. 'Our fear of it. And that is why we must regain the Lightstone. Only then can we bring men the gift of true life.'

'It is written in the Laws,' I said, 'that only the Elijin and the Galadin shall have such life.'

Morjin's eyes seemed to blaze out hatred into the dim gray light of the dawn. He told me, 'All the Galadin were once Elijin even as the Elijin were once men. But they have grown jealous of our kind. Now they would keep men such as you from making the same journey that they once did.'

'But I don't seek immortality,' I told him.

'That,' he said softly, 'is a lie.' 'All men die,' I said.

'Not all men,' he told me, smoothing the folds from his cloak.

'It's no failing to fear death,' I said. 'True courage is -'

'Lie to me if you will, Valashu, but do not lie to yourself.' He grasped my arm, and his delicate fingers pressed into me with a frightening strength. 'Death makes cowards of us all. You may think that true courage is acting rightly even though afraid. But you act not according to what is right but because you are afraid of your fear and wish to expunge it by facing it like a wild man.'

I didn't know what to say to this, so I bit my lip in silence.

'True courage,' he said, 'would be fearlessness. Isn't this what you Valari teach?'

'Yes,' I admitted, 'it is.'

He smiled as if he knew everything about the Valari. And then he spoke the words to a poem I knew too well:

And down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark The dying of the light, The neverness of night

'There is a way to keep the light burning,' he told me as he gently squeezed my shoulder. 'Let me show you the way.'

His eyes were like windows to other worlds from which men had journeyed long ago

– and on which men who were more than men still lived. I felt his longing to return there. It was as real as the wind or the stream or the earth beneath my feet. I felt his immense loneliness in the bittersweet aching of my own. Something unbearably bright in him called to me as if from the wild, cold stars. I knew that I had the power to save him from a dread almost as dark as death even as I had saved Atara from the hill-men. And this knowledge burned me even more terribly than had his dragon fire or the kirax in my veins.

'Let me show you,' he said, forming his hands into a cup again. A fierce golden light poured out of them, almost blinding me.

'Servants I have many,' he told me. 'But friends I have none.'

I felt him breathing deeply as I drew in a quick, ragged breath.

'I will make you King of Mesh and all the Nine Kingdoms,' he told me. 'Kings I have as vassals, too, but a king of kings who comes to me with an open heart and a righteous sword – that would be a wondrous thing.'

I gazed at the light pouring from his hands, and for a moment I couldn't breathe.

'Help me find the Lightstone, Valashu, and you will live forever. And we will rule Ea together, and there will be no more war.'

Yes, yes, I wanted to say. Yes, 1 will help you.

There is a voice that whispers deep inside the soul. All of us have such a voice.

Sometimes it is as clear as the ringing of a silver bell; sometimes it is faint and far-off like the fiery exhalations of the stars. But it always knows. And it always speaks the truth even when we don't want to hear it.

'No,' I said at last.

'No?'

'No, you lie,' I told him. 'You're the Lord of Lies.'

'I'm the Lord of Ea and you will help me!'

I gripped the hilt of the sword that my father had given me as I slowly shook my head.

'Damn you, Elahad! You damn yourself to death, then!'

'So be it,' I told him.

'So be it,' he told me. And then he said, 'I will tell you the true secret of the valarda: the only way you will ever expiate your fear of death is to make others die. As I will make you die, Elahad!'

The hate with which he said this was like lava pouring from a rent in the earth, I realized then that fear of death leads to hatred of life. Even as my fear of Morjin led me to hate him. I hated him with black bile and clenched teeth and red blood suddenly filling my eyes; I hated him as fire hates wood and darkness does light.

Most of all, I hated him for lying to me and playing on my fears and making me sick to my soul with a deep and terrible hate.

It took only a moment for his dragon's head to grow out from his body and for his claws to emerge. But before his jaws could open, I whipped my kalama from its sheath. I plunged the point of it. through the dragon embroidered on his tunic, deep into his heart. It was as if I had ripped out my own heart. The incredible pain of it caused me to scream like a wounded child even as my sword shattered into a thousand pieces; each piece lay burning with an orange-red light on the ground or hissed into the stream and sent up plumes of boiling water. I watched in horror as Morjin screamed, too, and his face fell away from the form of a dragon and became my own. Clots of twisting red worms began to eat out his eyes, my eyes, and his whole body burst into flames. In moments his face blackened into a rictus of agony.

And then the flames consumed him utterly, and he vanished into the nothingness from which he had come.

For what seemed a long time, I stood there by the stream waiting for him to return.

But all that remained of him was a terrible emptiness clutching at my heart. My fever left me; in the darkness of the dawn, I was suddenly very cold. Inside me beat the words to another stanza of Morjin's poem that I could never forget: The stealing of the gold.

The evil knife, the cold.

The cold that freezes breath

The nothingness of death.