would speak of a rising wind that rang with sacred songs and the voices of grandmothers and great-grandfathers who had long since passed on.
And then, even as Estrella held the Lightstone above her head, thousands of points of light began piercing the inky blueness along the eastern horizon. All at once, the whole of the sky from east to west lit up with a vivid glorre.
'The Star People are coming!' Daj cried out, pointing upward.
'They
We of the earth had been waiting eighteen thousand years for the Bright Ones to return, but we had not been able to open the door in order to welcome them.
'So,' Kalkin said, smiling up at the sky. 'So.' We all watched as the points of light grew bigger and brighter; each one opened out like a luminous flower falling down to earth. They drew closer and closer until they floated down toward the bridges and buildings of the city. Now each dazzling sphere seemed more like a dolphin cutting the surf along the crest of a wave, only instead of gleaming with water, they blazed with a flame that opened the sky and moved back the air. I thought I could perceive, at the centers of these thousands of bursts of angel fire, radiant beings who looked much like Valari: men and women of the Star People, and Elijin led by the beautiful Ondin, and even the Galadin themselves.
'Look, Val!' Atara said to me, pointing her finger like an arrow up toward the deepest part of the sky. 'Do you see the star?'
I saw the star. I did not know how that could be possible. Against a shimmer of pure glorre, it flared more brilliantly than any other light in all the heavens, even Aras and Solaru. I knew that Atara must have descried it in the same moment that she had Estrella on the battlefield, but only now could be certain that what she had beheld then would actually come to be.
I listened as Atara told our son that someday he would journey out into the stars. He would bear a great sword, and guard Estrella and the Lightstone. He would fight the same battle that his father had and so the Dark Angel, Angra Mainyu, would at last be defeated. And healed. And then Asangal, whole once again, would gladly find his ending as the greatest of the Galadin. The ending that was only a beginning: for out of the incandescence of his being would blaze a whole new universe, the light of which Atara and I now perceived as the brightest of stars.
'Oh, Val!' Atara said, pressing closer to me. 'My love, my life, my beautiful, beautiful king! — we really
I did not know how Atara and I — and Kalkin and Maram and Estrella and everyone else who had fought along with us — had brought into being this impossible world illumed by such a perfect light. And yet we had. Some would call it a miracle, and others fate. My grandfather would have said that a few valorous warriors had made their own fate, and that of the earth and the stars that shone down upon it. Through our blood and tears, we had done this great thing, through the risk of our lives and our hopes and our songs and our deepest dreams.
And so on a perfect autumn evening I stood on a lawn on top of the highest hill of the earth's greatest city, looking up at the sky and dreaming, along with the woman I loved and my son and my friends — and the many thousands of warriors who had fought to make me a king. Millions of lights brightened the heavens. I found my grandfather's star among them and whispered to him, in fire and in love, that the promise of life had been fulfilled. And one day I told him, when his great-grandson had grown to be a man, we would venture out past the Great Bear and the Dragon and the other constellations to the bright heart of creation. Always as warriors, yes, but as angels, too, born of fire, burning for life and forever blazing like beautiful stars.
