Diamond Warriors

Alkaladur! Alkaladur!

The Brightest Blade, the Sword that Shone,

Which men have named the Opener.

Was meant for one and one alone.

'Then the great Maitreya,' I said, 'must the one for whom the

true Alkaladur was intended. The verse tells that none of the

ancients could wield it.'

'None could,' Ondin said, with even greater sadness. 'Just as you

have not yet learned to wield the sword you hold in your hands.'

I raised up my silver sword a little higher. And I said, 'But what does this have to do with that?'

'No one knows. Perhaps no one,' Ondin turned to look at Kane. 'You forged Valashu's sword and gave it its name. Why did you call it Alkaladur?'

For a long moment, Kane stood in a cold silence staring at me and what I held in my hands. Then he snapped at Ondin, 'So, it's a sword, of silustria, most luminous of all substances — as the true Alkaladur was to be a sword of light. What else should I have called it, eh?'

'You make a mystery out of your creation,' Ondin told him.

'So what if I do, then? Creation, itself, is mysterious, eh?'

Ondin gazed at him, then finally turned away to touch her finger to my sword's blade. She said to me, 'Ashtoreth sent me to tell you that this must somehow be used in the battle against Angra Mainyu and Morjin.'

She lifted her hand away from my sword and set it down upon my tunic over my heart. 'And this. And you must find the way to use them.'

'But I do not know how!'

'You said that, too, when you were a boy learning the songs I taught you. You will learn how.'

'But who will be my teacher then? Will you leave the Forest and remain on Ea?'

'No, Valashu — you know I cannot,' She looked at Bemossed. 'But you will have the greatest of teachers. You will come into your power when the Maitreya comes into his.'

I gripped my hands more tightly around Alkaladur's hilt; I could almost feel the sun's light coursing through it.

'You will face Morjin, soon,' she told me. 'And then, if you are a warrior of the spirit and a true king, you will find a way to forgive him. You must desire his healing and only good for him — even his happiness. And in the end, with ail your heart, you must find a way to — '

'No!' I cried out. 'I will slay Morjin, for that is my fate!'

'But Valashu, you cannot know — '

'I do know!' I shouted at her. 'Ashtoreth and all the Galadin, and you, yourself, might be capable of finding inside such a benevolent and selfless soul force. But I am not so noble!'

'You are — '

'I am not the one who can do this thing!' I shouted at her.

Her face grew stern as she looked at me. 'You are King Valamesh.'

I pointed my bright blade straight toward the heart of the sun. 'Yes, I am now King of Mesh — and this is my sword. And Morjin is my enemy.'

Ondin just smiled at this, with an immense sadness that flooded over fee like the tide of the sea. Then she said to me, 'You are right: that is your sword. And its inscription was graven there for you.'

'What do you mean?' I asked, angling the sword slightly so that the light played over the silver blade. Its surface gleamed as unmarked as the most perfect of mirrors. 'Alkaladur bears no inscription!'

'Does it not?'

I gazed more deeply at my sword. 'If it does, then time has worn it away.'

'From silustria, Valashu?'

My sword's silustria, I knew, was so hard that not even thousands of years of its immersion in the sea had left the slightest mark upon it.

'But what is inscribed there?' I asked her.

'I do not know what is inscribed there. Only that it is inscribed there.'

'Inscribed how, then? I can see nothing.'

'No? Can you not? Then look, Valashu!'

Kane, three paces from me, stood still as a mountain as he gazed at my sword.

Then I looked, too. I looked at the smooth, shining silustria with a will to see behind its surface and the habits of my eye and mind. I must, I thought, let my the whole of my awareness blaze forth. I must drive myself to perceive something deeper within the silver gelstei and to grasp it with all the force of my soul in a sort of astonished touching of…

'It flares!' I cried out. 'The letters — they flare!'

From within the sword's bright surface near the hilt, curved glyphs suddenly leaped out from the silustria with an even brighter light. They formed and flared like etchings made from a silvery flame: Vas Sama Yeos Valarda. .'

Abrasax, almost without thought, translated these words from the ancient Ardik:

With his eye of compassion He saw his enemy Like unto himself

As he spoke, I studied the luminous glyphs graven into my sword near the hilt — but leaving the patch of silustria nearest it unmarked.

Then Ondin said to me, 'With your eye, Valashu. Look! There is more to the inscription.'

I looked at my bright sword with all the power I could find within myself to look. But the patch of silustria beneath the inscription remained as smooth as glass.

'I cannot see anything else!' I said. 'What are the lines, then?'

'I cannot tell you. It is known only that the sword's maker inscribed six lines.'

Here she turned toward Kane and asked him, 'Can you tell us what they are?'

Kane shifted his attention from my sword to Ondin, and gazed at her with a fierce, deep longing. He seemed to fight back tears with a terrible savagery toward himself. I sensed in him, however, no desire for her, as a man desires a woman, but only the keenest of urges to behold her as she truly was and to embrace that luminous part of her hidden so deeply from his sight.

'So, I cannot tell you,' he finally said. 'I have forgotten them.'

Ondin nodded at Anouhe, still holding the cup of green liquor. 'Then perhaps you should drink from her cup.'

I felt something flash inside Kane, and I feared that he might strike out at Ondin. Instead, in a voice both gentle and anguished, he said, 'No — it would not help.'

Ondin took a step closer to him, and with a sad smile, touched his face. I stared at the two of them in amazement. I had never seen Kane let anyone make free with his person or tender him this sort of kindness.

'Someday,' she told him, 'you will remember.'

Then she withdrew her hand and looked back at me. She tapped her finger just above the hilt of my sword. 'Just as you will find the last three lines inside yourself, and then see them written here.'

She drew in a long breath of the glade's flower-scented air. 'The time is coming, Valashu. Ashtoreth bids me to tell you that just as Angra Mainyu has sent the dark thing to attack you, the Ieldra will shower upon Ea their blessed light.'

Abrasax, who seemed as well-schooled in astrology as the Brotherhood's Master Diviner, pointed up into the sky to the left of the sun. 'The Golden Band still strengthens. Never have I seen it flare so.'

To most people, most of the time, the radiance that the Ieldra sent out to all worlds of the universe remained