Diamond Warriors

And then the blazing splendor grew utterly clear, like the air on top of a mountain. Estrella came back into view, sitting quietly on her horse. She seemed the same happy being that she had always been, but something more, too, for her face and every particle of her radiated a deep and inextinguishable light. With her eyes so bright and open, she seemed utterly awake, utterly aware — and at one with the whole world and even all the terrible things taking place on the battlefield.

Kane suddenly cried out to me, 'Val! Your sword!'

He pointed at Alkaladur, which I held shining in my hand. His eyes lit up as if he suddenly remembered why he had been born.

'Look!' he shouted. 'Look — and you will see the lines that I inscribed there!'

The fiery glyphs burned into my sword appeared exactly the same as I had seen them in the Vild:

With his eye of compassion

He saw his enemy

Like unto himself

Then, in the brilliance streaming out of the cup in Estrella's hand, the last three lines suddenly flared out and burned themselves into my mind:

And he knew love

And his enemy

Was vanquished

'No!' I shouted out. 'It cannot be!'

Morjin, thirty yards from me and protected by lines of his Red Knights, raised his sword as if to signal someone. On the east side of the hill, Count Ulanu signaled back to him that his Yarkonan cavalry was almost ready.

'It must be!' Kane shouted back to me. 'And you must find the way.'

'No — there is no way! How can you, of all men, ask this of me?'

Kane made no answer to this. He nudged his horse close to Estrella. He gazed at her for an endless moment and at the Lightstone she held close to her chest. Then she reached out to touch her fingers to the lids above Kane's black, blazing eyes. I felt the golden cup's radiance pouring into him like a river of light. It seemed to soothe the burning deeps of him and yet also to vasten him, his eyes and his hands and his great heart, every fiber of his body and the very sinews of his soul. I could almost hear the chains that had bound him for so long, with an unbearable pressure, suddenly burst. Then a man who was much more than a man turned his shining face toward me. He had wings, this being did, and he laughed out with a wild joy that shook the very sky because at last he was free.

'How can you, Kane?' I said to him again.

'It is not Kane,' he said, looking at me, 'who asks you.'

Because I could not bear the brightness of his eyes, I bowed my head to read again the words inscribed into my sword.

'In Hesperu,' he said to me, 'you almost found the way. But you held back.'

'Yes — because not even the Maitreya could do what you want me to do!'

'Is that so? You can do this thing!'

'No,' I murmured, staring down at the blade that I clenched in my hand. 'I am the King of Swords.'

His face fell fierce as of old and blazed once more with his relentless will. And he told me: 'And Alkaladur is the Sword of Love!'

'This,' I said, pointing my flaring blade at Morjin, 'I will strike into the Dragon, if I can!'

'So you will, Valashu Elahad. For the two swords are one and the same.'

Then he told me why he had forged a bit of silustria into the blade called Alkaladur so many thousands of years ago.

'I have been waiting,' he said to me, 'for the one who can wield it.'

And upon his words, the silver gelstei of my sword blazed a more brilliant glorre than I had ever seen.

Morjin, behind his massed knights, beheld it, too. I felt waves of dread washing through him. He raised up his sword as he stared lout at me.

'All right,' I finally said to Kane. 'I will!'

But I did not know how I could do such an impossible thing. I thought it the crudest turning of my life that I, who had hated Morjin so utterly, must now find a way to love him.

Chapter 24

I was not, however, left alone to complete this task. The Seven, assembled near me, held their colored crystals out toward me. Alphanderry had never ceased his marvelous singing, and now the seven great gelstei sang back as if with the voices of the Ieldra themselves. Kane, his face shining like a star, gazed at me with a will toward utter triumph, and I sensed Ashtoreth and Valoreth and the greatest of the Galadin looking out through his brilliant eyes. Liljana and Daj, too, seemed to know what must be done. Atara sat on top of her red mare as if staring straight into my heart. Her heart beat in perfect rhythm with mine, fast and hard and full of sweet hurt. She could not contain her ardor for me, and for life itself. So it was with Maram, standing on top of a hill a mile away, as he desperately battled a dragon. I knew that he would let loose every bit of fire within him and do even the most loathsome of things in order to save me. As for Estrella, she smiled at me with all the warmth of the sun. She moved closer to me, cupping the Lightstone in her hands. Within its golden hollows gathered the flames passed on by all my friends and many beings, in colors of crimson and orange, yellow and green, blue and indigo and the deepest and brightest of violet.

'You will die, Valari!' Morjin shouted out to me. 'Now you will die!'

Once, outside of a tumbledown cottage in Hesperu, I had held within my grasp the greatest weapon in the universe. Why had I been so afraid to use it?

Because, I told myself, you fear the same thing Morjin fears.

I remembered the Elijin queen, Ondin, advising me that I must wish for Morjin's healing and all good things for him — he, who was the worst man I had ever known! Such a desire, I knew, if it could be summoned at all, must come from my heart. It must take life not only as a force, conscious and willed, but as a feeling as poignant as breath and as urgent as the blood burning through my brain and every part of my body. But I could not feel such a thing for anyone unless I opened myself to feeling my way into him. But he is all foulness and filth! I thought. He is vomit and pus and poison!

'Be strong!' Kane called out to me. 'Strong as silustria, I say!'

He grasped hold of my arm, and I felt ten million years of his will to triumph against the most terrible of foes streaming into me. He is a torturer! I thought, staring at Morjin. A crucifier, a blood-drinker, a murderer!

I could not open myself to the valarda without, in some way, finding myself alive and aware within another. And worse, letting him live and draw breath within me. But how could I ever do such a thing?

Because, I told myself, I am a murderer, too.

Inside myself, like everyone, I had always held a dragon's egg waiting to hatch. And I fought with all the fierceness of my breath to keep it from eating the best part of me alive.

With his eye of compassion He saw his enemy. .

In looking at Morjin across a few dozen yards of the battlefield's bloodstained grass, what did I see? That long ago before the Dragon had consumed him, this hateful and hideous man had been born a gentle soul — the gentlest and sweetest. And that, with all his heart, he wanted this bright, self-murdered being to be reborn.