Diamond Warriors

could almost feel his breath burning over his lips like the warm wind that blew across the steppe.

'So,' he finally said in a strange, deep voice, 'once there was a king: you know his name. On Erathe this was, oldest of the Civilized Worlds. Long ago. Long past long ago, for the king came to his throne at the end of the Valari Satra, at a time when some men had put away their swords to polish bright their spirits, but before the first men became more than men. He called himself Valari, for in his youth he had been a traveler among the stars, bringing Civilization to the worlds of the stars. He became great, in his body and being. In his spirit, Valashu. He ruled Erathe by right of all that was true and good. So, he thought of himself as good. Others did, too.'

He paused to gaze at his sword, and it seemed that he was peering straight through its steel into another world.

'And so one day,' he continued, 'the Lightstone's guardian returned the Cup of Heaven to Erathe, where it had first appeared within our universe, long past in the Ardun Satra. Ramshan, they called this guardian. A descendant of the first guardian, Adar, who was your ancestor, eh? And with Ramshan, Dauidun, the Maitreya of that time. For all of that age, the Maitreyas had journeyed from world to world, so as to quicken Eluru's barbaric peoples and raise them up to be worthy of joining what we called Civilization. Daiudun journeyed to Erathe to see if its king might be worthy of being raised up to a higher order of beings that had never quite been — at least not within Eluru. And so the Shining One used the Cup of Heaven to test this great and glorious king.'

Kane's hands tightened around the hilt of his sword, and then he broke off staring at it to look at me.

'The king,' he murmured, 'opened his heart to the Lightstone's splendor. His whole being, eh? I have said that the lightstone holds no power to make anyone immortal. So, this is true. But the king — he held such power within himself, do you understand? He had gained it, through a long life of discipline and deeds so hard they would have broken most men. And so the Lightstone only quickened what he had called forth to quicken. In the end, with the blessings of the Ieldra, he raised himself up to become the first of the Elijin.'

'Kalkin,' I said, heedless of the wind that blew that name toward Kane's ears.

'Yes, he,' he said. 'The Law of the One, for greater beings, demanded great things of him. His first charge was to vow never to take human life. And his second charge was to help others to gain his high estate. And so he left Erathe to journey out to the stars, so as to carry out this noble mission. Many were the Valari whom he guided into the Elijik order. So, even the great ones: Valoreth, Ashtoreth, Arwe, Urwe and Arkoth. And Varkoth, too, and Manwe and Marsul. And the greatest of all these Elijin, the one called Asangal. He, who would become the first and greatest of the Galadin.'

I looked up at the heavens for the star that shone down upon the world of Damoom, where Angra Mainyu had been bound. I wondered if any of the damned Galadin and Elijin who followed him could see the once-bright being called Asangal bound within this Dark One.

And then Kane went on: 'For a long time, the Elijin went among the stars, helping to awaken the most advanced of the Star People so that they could join their order. Too, the Ieldra sent the Elijin as messengers to troubled worlds. They had to work by the power of persuasion, or by touching men's auras with theirs and strengthening them — even as the Seven do with their little stones, eh? So, to the world of Kush the Ieldra sent the one named Kalkin. One of its kings, a proud barbarian, would not heed Kalkin's counsel. He drew his sword and commanded Kalkin to kneel to him. To abase himself to this small, small man whose life would soon blow out like a candle in the wind! But Kalkin himself burned with pride, and none more so, eh? And so a madness seized him, and he fell upon this barbarian king and killed him with his own sword.'

Kane drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out. I felt a quick and terrible pain slice through him. Then he said to me, 'Kalkin was not the first of his order to fall, but he was the greatest. Because his remorse was also great, the Ieldra did not cast him out of the Elijin. And so he lost only his grace and not his immortality. But upon him the Ieldra laid a doom: that of all the Elijin then walking the stars, he would not be the first to be raised up to the Galadik order, but the last — and not in any case until the ending of the ages. It should have been a sentence of death, eh? But Kalkin vowed not to die.'

Again, Kane broke off speaking, and he stood nearly motionless in the starlight. His large hands still gripped his sword; I thought that they were shaped no differently than the hands of any other man. The features of his fierce face reminded me of the portraits of my forebears hanging in my father's hall, while the colors of pride, longing, wrath and exaltation that brightened his being were as my own. His eyes, however, blazed with a vast and fiery will that did not seem quite human.

I could hardly bear to look at him as I shook my head and whispered: 'It cannot be possible! The great ages were hundreds of thousands of years long, perhaps millions — I do not know! You cannot have survived so long. Chance alone — '

'It is not chance that rules me!' he suddenly roared out, cutting me off. 'It is the One!'

He took his hand away from his sword, and he glared at it as if looking through the dark for his lifeline. Then he added in a whisper, 'And it is myself. I could not allow myself to die, do you see? Kalkin couldn't. And so he, who should have been first, had to wait and watch through an entire age as the Elijin satra ended and Asangal advanced to the Galadik order. And then Ashtoreth and Valoreth, all the others, by dint of strengthening their spirits, and through service and the Ieldra's grace. Indestructible they became, as well as immortal. And great, beyond any glory that you can imagine. And yet. And yet. They still remembered Kalkin, who had helped them become who they were. Kalkin, whose remorse at slaying the barbarian king had shaken the very heavens! That proud, proud angel who never quite turned his face away from the One. Only he, the Galadin said, the king who knew the way of swords, could ever really understand the even prouder Asangal's fall into evil and so ttake the lead in the battle to heal him.'

As if to assuage the burning inside him, Kane pressed his sword's blade to his forehead. I did not know what to make of what he had said. His words hinted at madness and marvels and truths almost too terrible to tell. I felt sure that he had not, in any way, lied to me. And yet I sensed that he had left out some vital part of his story.

'I have often wondered,' I said, probing him, 'what it would be like to be immortal.'

'So — to be immortal how?'

'But how many ways are there?'

'There is this way,' he said, thumping his hand against his chest. 'To live forever, in one's body, on and on and on. That is Morjin's way, and Angra Mainyu's. And as with power, those who most desire it are the least worthy to possess it. Fools, all. In their pursuit of it, they are like men swimming across the ocean for a million years in search of water.'

'I have always thought,' I said to him, 'that Morjin searched for something more.'

'So, he would like to. But he could never quite apprehend, thus believe in, the realm of the soul.' His hand swept up toward the heavens' millions of lights, shining down as they did every night upon their sons and daughters still living on earth. 'Not for Morjin the immortality of the stars, or in doing great works, or in children, or in people's remembrance of their ancestors. And not even in the One's own remembrance of all that has been created and passed on.'

'So it is written in the Saganom Elu,' I said. 'In the most beautiful of words. But Morjin, I think, would need much more than words.'

'So — so would you, eh? But this, at least, is proven. What other meaning can we make of Alphanderry's return to us? You saw him die in the Kul Moroth. Has he come back from there, or from some other place?'

I thought about this as I gazed up at the fiery furnace called Aras. The brilliant spirals of stars whirling around it seemed to point toward a deep mystery at the center of all things. And I said to Kane, 'Most men when they die, they die. They do not come back.'

Even as I said this, I could not help thinking of the words of the angels, which one of the Urudjin had spoken in King Kiritan's hall:

The Fearless Ones find day in night

And in themselves the deathless light,

In flower, bird and butterfly,

In love: thus dying do not die.