Diamond Warriors

ahead.

'Die, Valari!'

Altaru whinnied out a challenge and reared up to strike his hooves into Morjin's white stallion, his teeth gnashed the air as he tried to bite Morjin or his stallion — I cuold not be sure which. It took a moment to steady him and position him next to Morjin's huge mount, side by side. Then Morjin's sword smashed down against mine. A shock of pain ran up through my arm bones; I did not know how Morjin called upon such a terrible strength. Again and again, we swung our swords against each other, slashing and parrying, thrusting and trying to cut our way through. My sword's silustria rang from the quick, powerful blows that he rained down upon me.

'Elahad!' I heard Salmelu shout out from my left. Steel clashed against wood as Daj furiously parried Salmelu's sword with his lance, 'I will cut off your woman's head and hand it to you! The boy's, too!'

I had no time to take in the battle raging next to me. I gasped and sweated and grunted with the great effort of keeping Morjin from splitting my flesh. Our horses screamed and pushed at each other, and our swords burned the air. I should, I thought, have been able to vanquish him. I had the better blade; I had youth and fire and recent practice in such deadly duels from all the combats that my war with Morjin had forced upon me. Above all, I had Kane as my teacher, and every lesson that this matchless old warrior had ever drilled into my nerves and bones lived on with every lightning stroke and thrust of my sword. But Morjin, some legends told, was the greatest swordsman ever to walk upon Ea. He had killed thousands of his enemy, sword to sword. He had a fount of power that only the Elijin could call upon. And he had his hate.

'Valari!' he shouted to me. Our swords slammed together and then sprang back. 'I will kill you and everything else on this world before I will ever become your ghul!'

We battled on with hundreds of other knights cutting and cursing at each other in a great circle at the lop of the hill. The muscles in my arm burned from the great effort of swinging my sword; the sun's rays stabbed like daggers into my eyes. Morjin threw himself at me with an almost reckless rage, as if he did not care that I might slash him open so long as he could slaughter me. And Estrella. He kept looking over toward her, standing beneath the cross. I felt his furious will to tear her apart. With a ringing of steel, he managed to slide his sword away from mine and slice it down against my shield arm, nearly breaking it. Then he stabbed it at my face. I jerked back my head in time to keep him from piercing my brains — but his sword's point drove into my cheek and scored the bone beneath. I gasped at the jolt of pain that shot through my head, and I blinked against the blood that worked its way into my eye. I counterattacked with all the fury that I could find, but it was not enough. Why, I wanted to shout to the wind, could I not kill this man?

And the wind whispered back: Because you do not want to see something beautiful perish from the earth.

Love, I knew then, could destroy as easily as it could create. if I let it, my regard for Morjin would slow my sword and steal the blood from my heart. Then he would slay me. His men would overwhelm the nearly defenseless Kane, and cut down Atara, Joshu Kadar, Lord Avijan and all my other knights fighting so heroically upon this hill. They would slaughter Abrasax and Master Juwain and all the Seven. And Alphanderry and Liljana. too. After Morjin had clawed the Lightstone from Estrella's fingers, would he then put her on a cross next to Bemossed?

'No!' I called out him. 'It is you who must die!'

I knew that he must. He seemed to know it, too. I saw it in his red anguished eyes and felt it in his blood as an unbearable burning that had grieved him for too many thousands of years. His whole being trembled as if haunted with his life and all the dreadful deeds that he had done. He fell at me slashing his sword in a frenzy and a fearful will to seize his fate.

'One hundred!' Atara cried out to the sky. Her duel with Salmelu had carried her ahead of me, and I caught sight of her jerking her bloody saber from Salmelu's throat. It seemed that somehow Daj had directed her precisely where to cut him. Then she called to me: 'Val! If you kill him. '

I did not hear the rest of her words, for her vision of what would befall me had long since found its home inside my heart: If you kill him, you kill yourself!

I knew that I would. It did not matter. My grandfather had once told me that some men are marked out to make their own fate.

And so I called upon all the radiance still pouring from the cup in Estrella's hand and the light coursing through my sword. A vast will, as fiery as Kane's, blazed through me. I swung Alkaladur at Morjin, once, twice, ten times, seeking for advantage with a controlled fury that Kane had burned deep into my soul. I finally beat aside Morjin's sword in a ringing of silustria against steel. His eyes opened wide, drinking in the light in mine. Love, I knew, might be the most beautiful force in the universe, but it was also the most terrible.

'Strike!' Kane shouted as from a million miles away.

And then a closer and deeper voice as Atara called to me in despair: 'Val!'

I rose up, standing in my stirrups as I lifted the Bright Sword toward the heavens. Then, before Morjin could move his sword back to cover himself, I swung Alkaladur's blade down against Morjin's shoulder with a tremendous force. The silustria split his armor and sliced through his body at a slant, cracking bones and tearing his lungs. With a shock of agony, I felt it cleave his heart. Then it drove down through his belly toward his opposite hip, nearly cutting him in two.

No Elijin, not even Kane, could survive such a wound. Morjin died in a torrent of blood, staring at me. Then his torn body plummeted from his horse to the ground with a great crash.

I gasped as I waited for the agony to sweep me away. Strangely, however, I felt no pain. I gazed down at the ground, and there, hovering over Morjin's still form, a dark cloud took shape as a man. It had a head the size and shape of Morjin's, and so with its legs, torso and arms. I could not make out any feature of its face, lost within a black nothingness. The Ahrim — for such I knew it was — suddenly reached out its hand to me and grasped hold of my hand. I could not let go, and neither could I resist it. I felt Morjin calling to me from wherever he had gone, and Bemossed, and my father and my mother, my brothers, too, and all the thou-sands of men dead or dying upon this field. Down, I fell, down and down through a dark hole that opened through the ground. It seemed to have no bottom.

And as I fell through a terrible cold, faces appeared, glowing out of the gloom. I stared into the eyes of Raldu, the assassin, and at a shaggy hill-man of Alonia and at one of the hideous Grays. There must have been hundreds of these men: all those I had ever put to the sword. I had not realized that I had slain so many. And then, as I fell and fell, I saw that there were really millions of them. For the One had brought me forth — some flaming part of my soul — as a warrior countless times on countless worlds. And I had killed uncountable multitudes since the beginning of time. When I looked at the dead more closely, it astonished me to see that each of their faces was really my own.

And then I looked no more. There was nothing to see, nor did anything exist by which it might be seen. I heard nothing and I felt nothing, for I was nothing. The darkness deepened down into an even more utter blackness that went on and on forever. Valashu.

And then there was light. As hate contains the seed of love and the black gelstei holds a firestone's flames, the neverness that had devoured me gave birth to a dazzling darkness. Faint, at first, it slowly grew brighter. And then quickly brighter and still brighter until it swelled outward and blazed like a sun. And then ten thousand suns, ten million of millions and all the stars in the universe pouring out an impossibly perfect splendor. I could not perceive it, as the eye takes hold of a flower's beauty. I could only be it, utterly interfused, for as it opened out and out into an infinite glory, the light and I were one.

'Valashu.'

I heard Estrella calling to me, but I thought that I must be dreaming, for Estrella could not speak. I felt a hand pressing down upon my chest, and my heart beating against it. My breath burned past my lips like a fiery wind. Then a fierce light filled my eyes. The sun — Ea's sun, warm and bright — sent its golden rays streaming down upon me. I blinked my eyes and squinted and gasped. Bemossed's blood-streaked body hung upon the cross just above me. I tried to sit up, but several hands pushed me back to the earth. Breaking metal and a terrible screaming filled the air.

'Val!' Atara called to me. She knelt by my side, while Estrella crouched down next to her.

'You live!' Master Juwain cried out from above rne. 'You were dead, but now you live!'

He explained that after I had fallen from my horse, the Seven and Liljana had dragged my body to the foot of the cross. My heart had stopped, and so had my breath. No skill of Master Juwain nor even the life-strengthening powers of the Seven's gelstei had been able to revive me. But Estrella had.