Diamond Warriors

pressed it to my chest. 'And here it abides.'

I couldn't help remembering the famous words from the Beginnings: The Lightstone is the perfect jewel inside the lotus found inside the human heart.

'And you,' he told me, 'are King Valamesh, the King of Swords — and the Lord of Light!'

I shook my head aphis. 'No, I am a Valari, and we are never Lords of Light! The Urudjin confirmed that, too. You told me so yourself, and berated me for ever supposing that I might be the Maitreya!'

He fell silent as he stared at me; he seemed to be looking through the centers of my eyes to the end of the universe.

'Kane told you that,' he finally said to me. 'But he did not know. Not even Kalkin knew, not really, until this night.'

Again, I shook my head. 'But Kane could not have been so wrong! Neither could the Urudjin!'

'No, they could not have been so wrong. And they weren't: as regards the ages that have passed. But in the Age of Light, all will become as Maitreyas.'

'No,' I said, turning my head back and forth, 'it cannot be!'

Kalkin nodded at Estrella. 'She tried, a hundred times, to show you yourself. But you would not look.'

'Because there is nothing to see!'

'No, that is not why. There is something that you dread more than once you did death.'

Beneath his fierce gaze, I stood up as straight as I could, until I imagined the points of my crown pushed up against the very heavens. And so I tried to pretend that there was nothing I still feared.

'During the battle,' he said to me, 'you saw just how like Morjin you truly are. And so you think that the Maitreya could not be touched with such evil.'

'She could not!' I said, motioning toward Estrella.

Kalkin's large, hard hand reached out to seize hold of mine. And he told me: 'We are all born of the same mother. And for all of us, acting in the world, it is not possible to be wholly good. You know this, in your heart. And it is there that you must fight your last battle.'

Then he told me, not in words, but in the fire of his eyes, what my heart knew to be true: that I feared in being less than perfect I would become sullied and broken and wholly evil, and thus lose all restraint and fall as far as Morjin and Angra Mainyu had. And so I would kill my soul.

His hand pressed against mine, and his eyes caught up the shimmer of the evening's first stars as he said to me: 'But at the heart of everything there is only one Light, and it can never die.'

'No, perhaps not,' I said to him. 'But men and women can. And men can do such terrible deeds … so easily.'

'So they can,' he said to me. 'But so they also can find the strength to do such marvelous things.'

I felt an infinite and indestructible force coursing deep within his hand. It seemed unstoppable, too, like the bright rising of the sun after a long, dark night.

I looked at him and said, 'Why couldn't you have put your sword into Morjin? Why couldn't Kane? He was a thousand times stronger than I.'

'Because,' he said to me, 'slaying Morjin was your fate.' 'Yes,' I said, glancing at Estrella, 'I slew an angel to save the Maitreya. I did evil in a good cause like any tyrant.'

'No — you slew a beast to save a little girl. You did what you had to do, like any true man.'

We stood there on the lawn in sight of many thousands, gripping each other's hand and searching out the truth in each other's eyes. And then, in a low, deep voice, he said to me: 'A true man, Valashu. A king of kings. A greathearted being who, in the end, came to have the highest regard for his enemy. How could such a man deny who he really is?'

And then he added:

With his heart of compassion He knew himself Like unto a star. .

No, I thought, it could not be possible!

How could I accept the truth of what he had told me? What if he was mistaken? The Elijin, after all, made errors just the same as other men.

Then he looked up along the fiery beacon still shooting up through the sky. And he said to me, 'The Galadin are waiting to welcome you, Valashu. As they are all of Erathe's peoples.'

I looked at him deeply. Who, I wondered, was my fierce and flawed friend to speak for the Galadin?

He smiled as he let go of me, then held out his hand before me. I looked down at his open palm. There, one moment, it held nothing more substantial than air. And in the next, I saw a small golden object gleaming next to his skin. It was a timana, and I did not know how Kalkin had come by one of these sacred fruits. But I felt certain that his summoning of it had not been a trick of legerdemain but a much deeper magic. 'Take this,' he told me. Maram, looking on from across the grass, called out, 'Do I see what I think I see?'

He led my other friends over to us with an easy assurance that I would always welcome his company. Then he touched his finger to the golden fruit and said, 'It is a timana!'

And Ymiru said. 'That be a pretty thing — almost too pretty to eat.'

'How did you obtain it?' Master Juwain asked Kalkin. 'I did not think the trees that the Lokilani planted could bear fruit so soon.'

But my mysterious friend did not answer him. He produced another timana, and then another and yet others, and gave one to each of my friends, even to Daj and Estrella who had now come of age to eat the flesh of the angels.

'Thank you, Lord Elijin,' Lord Harsha said, holding up his timana before his gleaming eye.

Alphanderry, cupping his timana lightly in his fingers, looked at Kalkin as if seeing him for the first time. Then he spoke out in his beautiful minstrel's voice, which also rang with the much deeper tones of those who had sent this strange being to earth: 'You are mistaken, Lord Harsha. This one is no longer of the Elijik Order.'

Lord Harsha gazed at Kalkin in wonderment, as did we all. I did not know what my friends saw then. But I suddenly perceived Kalkin as I imagined that Abrasax could: a great angel whose substance and soul poured forth bright flames of purest glorre. They encompassed him like a robe of fire, yes, but even more like a luminous cloak billowed out by the wind. Valari kings wore diamonds, as I did in the great gleaming stone set into the circle of silustria that Kalkin had given me. But he stood crowned in starlight and bearing bright jewels of grace and goodness shining upon his soul. A vast wisdom blazed within his eyes.

'Three times,' Alphanderry said to him, 'you surrendered the Lightstone to an heir of Adar where you might have tried to keep it for yourself. And now the Elahad guards it for the Shining One, and we have come to the ending of the ages, when all shall be restored. And so it has finally come time for the last to become the first.'

Kalkin bowed his head to Alphanderry, and the splendor of Aras, Varshara, Solaru and all the heavens' brightest stars seemed to gather in his countenance. Then he looked at Estrella. and told me, 'The Lightstone is to be kept by her. But its light belongs to everyone.'

Estrella smiled at me as if I could no longer refuse to see the bright being that she had tried for so long to show me. A soft radiance streamed out of the golden cup in her hand and warmed my heart. I felt it all sweet and good inside me, and I knew that I held the power to say yes or no to the terrible beauty of life — and to myself And so I held within myself another power as well.

'Atara,' I said, stepping over to her. She stood cradling our young son in her arms and turning her head left and right as if seeking for the source of my voice. 'Atara, Atara.'

I moved up close enough that I could feel her breath upon my face. Then I laid my hands over the white cloth binding her. All that was within me came pouring out in a bright blaze that warmed my hands. I felt it filling up the hollows where her eyes had once been. Then suddenly, with a murmur of astonishment, Atara gave me our son to hold. Her fingers, always so sure and steady even in the most desperate of battles, trembled as she worked to pull off her blindfold. Now it came my turn to cry out in wonder — and in delight. For Atara gazed straight at me through a pair of perfect eyes, all beautiful and blue and sparkling like diamonds, just as I had remembered them to be.

'Val!' she cried out to me. She worked her fingers across her eyelids, pressing almost frantically, as if only by touch could she confirm the impossible thing that had happened to her. 'I can see. . so much!'

She laughed as she clapped her hands to the sides of my face, then looked deep into my eyes. She kissed me. She turned to smile at Estrella, and at Kalkin, and our other friends, and then laughed again as she saw Maram