Diamond Warriors

And in that terrible, terrible moment — an eyeblink in time — the Ahrim attacked me.

Like a filthy blanket steeped in poison, it fell out of nowhere down around my head. It closed in over my face, nearly smothering me; it burned my eyes like acid. And then the light of the stars disappeared, and I found myself standing alone inside an utter blackness.

Chapter 11

Somehow, I managed to stumble back through my tent and to find my bed. I fell onto it. Given all that had occurred over the past four days, none of those present — Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad and Joshu Kadar — thought this strange. I asked Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad to leave me. Then I bade Joshu Kadar to go find Master Juwain.

Alone in my tent I tried to summon the fierce light inside myself by which I had twice driven off the Ahrim. But either I could not find it or else my life fires had burned too low. I pressed my hands against the pain stabbing into my eyes, and then opened them. I could not make out any of the things of my pavilion: the council and map tables; my small clothes chest and a larger one full of treasure; the candles in their stands and the braziers full of hot coals. All was lost into a blackness as total as a cave's deepest depths.

There came a moment when I despaired. I shook my head from side to side in a wild, terrified fury. But it did nothing to dispel the Ahrim. I seemed only to find within myself a deeper blackness inside the blackness, if that were possible.

Finally, Master Juwain came into my tent and knelt by the side of my bed. He asked me, 'Val, what is wrong?'

I turned my head toward the sound of his voice and said, 'I am blind.'

I tried to explain what had happened. I asked him for his help. Only a few days before, however, he had tried to use his green gelstei to heal my afflicted throat, to no avail.

'What attacks you is beyond my power to drive away,' he told me. 'Beyond the power of our friends, as well. That, I think, has been proven. But on that first day in the woods, it seemed that in opening yourself to what power we do possess, it helped you find your own.'

I nodded my head at this. 'But on that day, Atara had not left me.'

'True — and I can only imagine how much her love for you strengthens you. But you have two friends, now, who weren't with us in the woods.'

'Kane,' I murmured. 'Bemossed.'

'Indeed. Kane seems to know things about the Ahrim. And Bemossed is Bemossed.'

Again, I nodded my head. 'Please summon them, then. And Liljana. Maram, too, of course — and the children. I want all my friends by my side.'

At this, Alphanderry somehow came into being within my tent — or so Master Juwain told me. I could not see him any more than I could Master Juwain or anything else.

'And please ask Joshu Kadar to come back inside,' I said to Master Juwain. 'He will have to know what has happened to me, but no one else must.'

'But what of Abrasax and the other Masters?'

'All right,' I said, 'bring them with you, too, but no one else.'

The Guardians standing outside my tent during that watch — Sar Jonavar, Sar Shivalad, Sar Kanshar and Siraj the Younger — must have thought it strange that I summoned my old friends to me so late at night. But kings must sometimes take council at odd hours, and so I hoped that my actions would cause my warriors no suspicion or distress.

A little later, everyone I had sent for gathered by my bedside as I had requested. Kane pressed his rough old hand to my forehead, taking care to avoid the plaster that Master Juwain had set over my reopened scar. And he told me, 'I know less about the Ahrimana than you might hope. It partakes of Angra Mainyu's being — this I have said. It has escaped from Damoom, where the Baaloch is still bound, eh? And so I must wonder if anything can bind it. I think not. At least not here on Ea. For in a way, the Ahrimana has not really escaped at all, but merely made its way from the darkest of the Dark Worlds to one that has been falling into shadow for a long time.'

'But two times, now,' Master Juwain said to him, 'Val did drive it away.'

'So,' Kane said. 'So he did — through the light of the sword he holds inside himself. When it blazes brightly enough, the Ahrimana can no more abide it than Angra Mainyu can the radiance of Star-Home.'

'But it is dead within me,' I said to Kane. 'Either dead or blackened like a piece of charred wood. I cannot find it.'

'That is because,' Kane said in a pitiless tone that chilled me, 'your blindness is not just of the eyes but the soul.'

Abrasax, usually a much kinder man, took my hand in his and said to me, 'You must somehow open your third eye so that your other two might see. In this, we can help you perhaps a little, but no more.'

I sensed him and the other Masters taking out their seven Great Gelstei in order to call forth the fires along my spine's seven chakras and brighten their flames. Although their magic gave me new strength, it failed to lift the blindness from me.

I heard Kane draw in an angry gasp of breath. Then his great regard for me filled his voice as his manner softened and he said, 'So dark — so damnably dark. I have said that Ea is almost a Dark World, and it is. But there are bright things here, and the soul of Valashu Elahad is only one.'

I sensed him looking at Bemossed then. Even through my panic at having been blinded, I felt the vast weight of expectation that people had fastened around Bemossed's neck like a collar made of lead.

Then Bemossed pressed his warmer and softer hand to the side of my face. And out of the darkness above me, he told me: 'I had dreams just before Master Juwain woke me. The most evil of dreams yet. I could feel Morjin, all his twisted desire. Somehow, he lends his power to the Ahrim and guides it. And sics it on Val as he might a hound. He has learned that Val has become a king — I am sure of this. And he is desperate to destroy him.'

After that, with infinite gentleness, Bemossed touched his fingers to my closed eyelids, to my temples and the back of my head. For more than an hour, he tried with the full force of his soul to heal me. But he could not drive the Ahrim away.

'I am sorry, Valashu,' he said to me at last. 'I have told you before that I can't really heal people. Only, somehow and sometimes, help them to heal themselves.'

His words seemed to touch off deep emotions in Kane, who said, 'So, it's not healing that Val really needs — it's freedom from that filthy thing!'

I heard him pick up my unsheathed sword, which then he pressed into my open hand. 'The Sword of Sight, this is called. In the end, it might be that you, yourself, will have to see your way free.'

I closed my hand around Alkaladur's diamond-set hilt. It seemed strange how I could feel the shape of the swans carved into its black jade through the skin of my palm. Still lying flat on my back, I gripped my sword with both hands and pointed it straight up toward the roof of my tent and the stars beyond.

And through the dark came a softly glowing white light. I could see the faint, flaring outline of my sword's blade against a wall of blackness.

'There is something!' I cried out, to Kane and my other friends. 'There is something!'

I managed to lever myself up and rise from my bed. Then, after nearly knocking over a brazier, I found my way to the center of the tent. I told everyone to stand clear, then I swept out my sword toward the south, west, north and east. It flared even more brightly. A band of silver shimmered before my eyes. It was the only thing in all the world that I could see.

And then, as if lightning flashed out of a dark night, I knew a thing. I called out to my friends: 1 must go there.'

'Go where?' Kane said to me.

To the wood,' I told him. 'The place where the Ahrim first found me.'

'There? But why? There's nothing there but deer and trees.'

'I don't why, Kane. I only know that I must go — and go now!'