Diamond Warriors

straight in the eye. I sensed her choosing her words carefully so as to discompose him: 'I have seen you here, Morjin. You and Val. It will be as it is and always was: you and he, chained to the same terrible, terrible fate. In your spite for each other, and even more in — '

'Have you seen this?' he cried out, cutting her off.

He reached into his saddle's pocket and drew forth a plain, golden cup. I gasped to behold once more the Lightstone's splendor, and so did Maram, Ymiru, Sajagax and others gathered there at the center of the field. But Atara seemed to sit within a cloud of confusion, for she had no eyes with which to perceive it and no scryer's vision had ever encompassed this loveliest of all things.

'Now who claims the Cup of Heaven!' Salmelu shouted out with all the cruelty he could command.

'So,' Kane muttered, staring at the brilliant gold gelstei. I could feel him aching to draw his sword and cut it from Morjin's hand.

Then Morjin called out, to him and all of us, but especially to Atara: 'Valashu Elahad and I are chained together! And this shall be the hammer that forges the links!'

With that, he held out the cup toward me. Its soft golden hue suddenly flared to a deep and angry amber. The silver gelstei might seek the gold, but it seemed that the gold could also seek the silver. The long blade strapped to my side fairly quivered; I sensed the Lightstone pulling at my sword's silustria as a lodestone draws in iron. I had always hoped that the Lightstone, though it might command every other kind of gelstei, would have no power over the silver.

'Can you feel it?' Morjin said to me.

Despite myself — or perhaps because I wanted to deny the truth of things — I clasped my hand to Alkaladur's hilt. I had always called upon this marvelous sword to give me strength to bear the death agonies that I dealt out to others, and even more, to cool the heat of the kirax that poisoned my blood.

'Can you feel him?' Morjin asked me, pointing with his other hand toward Bemossed. At that moment, with his golden hammer, Morjin battered down the Walls of aloneness protecting me, and all Bemossed's agony came burning into me.

'There is a cure for the fire of the kirax,' Morjin said to me. 'A cure for all that grieves you. Do you remember what it is?'

To inflict my own suffering on others, I thought. But how can I do such a thing?

'You must open your heart to me,' he told me. 'You must direct that sword you keep inside toward those who defy me.'

'No,' I gasped against the pain tearing through me.

'You will serve me, Valashu!'

'No!'

I stared up at the Owl's Hill, and I felt Bemossed weakening in his final fight for life, even as Morjin's hold over the Lightstone grew stronger.

'Valashu, together you and I can — '

'No!' I shouted at him. 'Never!'

My voice seemed to fall upon my friends and Morjin's counselors with the force of a storm wind, for their faces grew grave with distress and they clung to their horses. But it left Morjin untouched.

'And still you deny me!' he thundered at me. He pointed behind him at the vast army lined up across the steppe. 'In the face of death and the destruction of all you hold dear, you deny me! So be it. If you won't accept the cure for what mars you, you will have the curse!'

Then his hand tightened around the Lightstone. I felt myself hurled as if into a pool of boiling oil. Its bubbling heat stripped the flesh from my bones and ate away my mouth and my eyes. I could not see, nor could I draw breath. Morjin had warned me that Bemossed's death throes would become mine, multiplied a thousandfold. I did not know if the immense pain piercing me to the core was only a tenth of that which Bemossed suffered — or ten thousand times as great. But it seemed to go on and on forever.

'Let go of your sword!' Maram called out to me.

I could not let go of my sword. I sweated inside my armor from every pore as my whole body shook; I gasped for air and bit my tongue and tasted blood. I did not want to let go of my sword. How could I fight Morjin without it?

'Do not let got,' Kane called out to me. 'Do not!'

I gripped Alkaladur's black jade hilt carved with a great swan and set with diamonds, even more tightly. Then the torture unmanning me eased, a little. I did not know if Bemossed, nailed to his cross, found just enough will to contend with Morjin over the mastery of the Lightstone and all its powers. Or if I might hold a strength of my own to resist Morjin. 'This parlay,' I gasped out to him, 'is over!' Morjin smiled at me, and I knew with a searing certainty why he had called me to meet with him here between our two armies. An inextinguishable agony — to say nothing of Morjin's hate for me and mine for him — clung to me like a robe of fire.

'It is over,' Morjin said to me. His red eyes gleamed like pools of blood. 'And now it is time for you, and all of yours, to die.'

Without another word, but watchful of Atara's and Sajagax's bows, he wheeled his horse about and rode back toward his army. His counselors followed him. I heard Sajagax mutter: 'It is too bad I filled my quiver this morning with long-range arrows and not armor-piecing ones. Truce or no, I would slay that snake!'

'If you did,' Atara said to him, 'then Morjin's men would surely slay Bemossed.'

I sat gasping for breath as I fought for the will not to fall down screaming; it was like breathing in pure flame. I looked up at the top of the Owl's Hill. How much longer, I wondered, did Bemossed have to live? How much longer did any of us?

Then, with these thoughts trying to work their way through the blaze of pain that clouded my mind, I led my friends back toward our lines and battle.

Chapter 22

Just as we reached that place where I had to part with Ymiru — he, to return to the center of our lines and I to our wing — I paused to tell him what he and the Ymaniri must now do. Then I rode back with Kane and Maram to rejoin our cavalry, while Sajagax and Atara continued on to take their places leading their Sarni warriors,

'King Mohan!' I cried out as we drew up to the massed knights on our right flank. Our enemy's drums had begun beating out the challenge to war once again. 'Lord Avijan! Lord Sharad — to me!'

Those I had called for, with Lord Manthanu, Lord Noldashan and others, galloped over to me to hold council. And I gasped out to them: 'We must change our order of battle! King Mohan, you will take command here of our cavalry.'

This fierce man, resplendent in his diamond armor, nodded his head to me. Although obviously pleased — and honored — he waited for me to say more, for he did not understand my decision.

'Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad!' I called out, turning to my cavalry lords. 'We will lead the Meshian knights back behind our lines to our center.'

Both of these great warriors seemed puzzled. According to all the Valari knew of making war, heavy horse had no place at the center of the battlefield hemmed in by masses of spear and shield men.

'We must break through,' I said. 'We must lead a charge up the Owl's Hill, and rescue Bemossed.'

'Sire,' Lord Sharad called back, looking at me deeply, 'you are not yourself!'

Now King Mohan cast me a penetrating look as if to wonder if what had transpired with Morjin had driven me mad. With the robe of fire searing my soul I wondered that as well. I had no time to explain that the fate of much more than Ea might depend upon keeping Bemossed alive. All I could say to my warriors was: 'The Maitreya cannot die!'

'But, Sire,' Lord Avijan said to me, glancing up at the lone cross

towering over the battlefield 'surely Bemossed is as one already dead.'

'No!' I shouted. 'There is still much life in him — I can feel it!'