Diamond Warriors

And when he wakes

The fire leaps

About the Maitreya

One thing is known:

That to himself

He always is known

When the moment comes

To claim the Lightstone.

A dying scryer had told me that Estrella would show me the Maitreya. Was it possible, I wondered, that a thousand times she had? I felt in my heart that it was true, and all at once it seemed the hardness of the Lightstone that had hurt my fingers fell away; its brilliance that had burned my eyes became an exquisite light that bathed them. The ache of my grip vanished as the image came to me of another hand reaching out with unique power to bring forth from the Lightstone all that was good and bright and beautiful.

'Estrella is coming,' said Atara, 'to claim the Lightstone.' I felt in my heart that it was true, and so did Morjin.

NOOOOO!

From behind the protection of his knights, Morjin screamed at the sky.

Kane had once told me that Morjin kept a black gelstei. But this dark angel kept inside himself dark fires as well, and he now unleashed upon us all the force of his black and bottomless hate:

VALARI! DIE VALARIIII!

Morjin's droghul had assaulted my companions and me with a voice that chilled the blood and froze the limbs unmoving with terror — and killed. This Morjin, it seemed, the real Morjin who had come to earth so long ago, wielded this weapon with an even greater rage. He bellowed out in a voice of death:

DIEIIII! AIYIYARIII!

Something hard as iron struck a blow to my forehead; blood spurted from my nose, and, I feared, my very brains. I felt an acid eating through my stomach into my heart, and I could not breathe. Images came to me, not as memories but as sights and sounds and smells assaulting all my senses and my deepest self: the anguish in my grandmother's eyes as she pulled at the spikes that Morjin's men had driven through her hands; the screams of men dying at the Culhadosh Commons; the stench of hundreds of corpses rotting in the hot Yarkonan sun. I knew that I had to fight off the burning poison of Morjin's malice — either that, or die.

AIYIYARIII!

But others proved more vulnerable to Morjin's murderous voice. In Hesperu, his droghul had been able to direct it at only one man at any moment; now I feared that the real Red Dragon might find a way to strike down half my army. His breath seemed to burn out like thunder and fire. It fell upon Sar Kanshar, Sar Iandru and Jurald Evar, formed up in front of me. Sar Kanshar, maddened, threw himself onto the lance of Jessu the Lion-Heart, sitting next to him. Then Sar Iandru and Jurald Evar pluged from their horses to the ground, screaming as they grabbed at their chests. So did Manathar the Bold and Sar Jurgarth and a dozen other knights. And all the while Morjin's voice built louder, deeper and even more full of spite.

AIYIYARIII!

Soon I thought, as I sweated and bled and fought to breathe, Morjin would slay all of us. His army, I feared, must be about to break mine. How long could Maram stand against a great dragon that could turn circles in the air and swoop down upon him vomiting out fire? How long could my knights bear up, here at the top of the hill once the Red Knights had completed their encirclement of us and added the killing power of their swords and lances to Morjin's voice of death? I suddenly despaired that I could not use the Lightstone to slay our enemies. .

And then, as from another world, I heard Alphanderry's voice rising in song above the crucifier's howl, filling the air above the hilltop. While we had stood tortured by the power of Morjin's black gelstei, Estrella and Daj had ridden up between my massed knights toward me, followed by Liljana and Alphanderry, and the Seven. They appeared to be untouched by the killing sound of Morjin's hatred. Alphanderry sat on top of his horse facing Morjin, and this strange, beautiful being who had been born in Galda and reborn in one of the earth's Vilds, chanted out a beautiful music.

Kane moved his horse closer to Alphanderry. His face had lost its savage lines and taken on almost an innocence. He seemed to drink in Alphanderry's song with his ears and his heart as if it were elixir recalling him to his youth. Something, with the weight of the whole world, moved inside him.

Alphanderry's throat and golden lips formed no words, but only the most pure and powerful of tones. His song rang out like millions of perfectly attuned bells. It resonated with the varicolored crystals that Abrasax and the Seven held vibrating in the palms of their hands; the great gelstei picked up the sound of Alphanderry's voice and gave it back to the world, amplified a thousandfold. The melody that he summoned from some shimmering and infinite source built ever higher, deeper and sweeter until it drowned out Morjin's death voice and utterly negated it. For Morjin screamed out all his hate of the world, while Alphanderry poured forth precisely the opposite. And so, as Morjin glared at Alphanderry in a wrath of bitterness, the golden minstrel sang out joyously, even as I imagined the Ieldra must once have sung the planets and stars into creation. There is a chance! I thought as Morjin fell silent. There must always be a way.

'Now, Val,' Atara called out to me. 'Give the Lightstone to Estrella.'

Estrella had ridden up close to me but she sat frozen in her saddle, gazing at Bemossed. The way she looked at him nearly tore out my heart. I felt her longing and love, and something more, a deep, driving desire that he should return to life. And even deeper, a kind of dream that a part of Bemossed always would live, as did some inextinguishable essence within the rippling grasses and the bloodstained rocks beneath the cross, for that was how she saw the world. I wondered then if the Lightstone could be used to revive Bemossed? Could the Seven, through their gelstei, find their way into the center of the Cup of Heaven and release its nearly infinite powers?

I called to her, and Estrella tore her gaze from away from her murdered friend. A great change had come over her. It was as if she stood fearless before a burning, infinite sea.

When the moment comes To claim the Lightstone.

Inside her heart, I thought, she wakes. In looking at Estrella then, she seemed to exult in all life's beauty — and in its horror, too. I suddenly remembered thousands of impressions and acts, like seeds of light, that Estrella had planted in me over long years of struggle, terror and war, her quick, wild eyes which saw so much and so deeply. On top of her little pony next to me, she radiated a beauty like that of a star. For the first time, I saw her not as a girl but a lovely young woman. I could almost feel her calling the Lightstone to her. In this silent song of her soul, as clean and natural as the wind, I sensed no hunger for fame or power, or even any desire, for herself. Rather, I thought, she saw the Lightstone as a part of herself, like an arm or an eye or a hand.

'So,' Kane said, his eyes blazing. 'So.'

Then Master Juwain, for once dwelling in the knowingness of his heart rather than the strife of his head, nodded to me.

'I agree,' Abrasax said from behind him.

'And I,' Master Matai said. 'Give her the cup.'

An incandescence of flame filled the sky above the Hill of Fire. What, I wondered, could even a Maitreya do against a dragon and all the forces of the Great Beast who had unleashed it?

As I reached out to set the Lightstone into Estrella's hand, it seemed that all time and history was an arrow streaking straight toward one moment and one place.

NOOOOOO!

The moment that her fingers touched the golden cup, a dazzling radiance began pouring from it. Like a fountain it streamed straight up into the sky. It fell into the whirling blackness as water into a hole, and suddenly the great vault of the heavens grew clear and blue again.

Then the radiance began pouring from Estrella. It swelled out like a ball of fire that did not burn, until both Estrella and the cup itself seemed to disappear within. Brighter and hotter it grew, like the sun, until I thought it might incinerate the whole top of the hill and all who stood upon it.