air, choked, breathed water.
The salt burned my lungs even as the cold took me deeper and crushed the life from me.
And then the darkness of the sea gave way to a stinging gliste, and I realized that I was not falling into its depths after all but rather caught in the cleft between two mountains as a blizzard raged all about me. Still I struggled to breathe as the liquid wind froze my limbs and needles of ice pierced my flesh. The pain of it grew so great so that I was sure that cold steel knives were tearing into me.
And then I was being torn open – with the shouts of fierce, blue-skinned warriors who had somehow surrounded me and forced me up against a mountain wall. Their gleaming axes beat aside my father's shield and chopped through my armor into my belly. I opened my mouth to scream at the incredible agony of it all but then another axe caught me in the face, and I had no mouth with which to utter any sound, not even the faintest whisper of how terrified I was of death.
And so it went. The Lord of Lies had promised me a thousand deaths. But as I stood there on the bow of the rolling ship with Morjin's hand touching my forehead, it seemed that I died a thousand times a thousand times.
'Do you see, Valashu?' he said to me. 'Do you see?'
For what seemed hours, as the moon dropped its chill radiance down upon us, I fought not to behold the terrible visions that Morjin gave me. But I didn't fight hard enough. Not even the fierce will to battle that I had learned from Kane was enough drive them or him away.
Finally, Morjin took his hand away from me. He stood beneath millions of stars hanging like knives above our heads. And in the saddest of voices, he said to me,
'Now you have seen your fate. But know that there is one, and only one, who can change it. And only one way that I will be persuaded to let you live.'
So saying, he looked down at my hands, which I saw were grasping a plain golden cup. Before I could blink at my astonishment, he took this cup from me and held it so that I could look inside.
And there, in its shimmering depths that were deeper than the sea, I saw myself standing on top of the world's highest mountain before a great, golden throne.
Morjin, sitting on top of this throne, came down off it and extended his hand toward me. Then he pointed east and west, north and south, at Delu and Surrapam, at Sunguru and Alonia and all the other kingdoms of the world. All these, he said, he would give me to rule. He would give me Atara as my queen, and I would reign for a thousand years as Ea's High King.
For a long time, I stared into the golden cup he held before me. I saw the Red Desert bloom with flowers and the Vardaloon changed into a paradise. I saw warriors in the thousands laying down their swords and peace brought to all lands.
When I finally looked up, I saw that Morjin had changed as well. If possible, he was even more beautiful than before. His golden eyes had softened with an immense compassion, and in place of his dragon-embroidered tunic, he seemed clothed in an unearthly radiance of many colors. Without him idling me so, I knew that he had been made from a man into one of the great Elijin themselves.
'For three ages,' he told me, 'in a hard and terrible world, I've had to do hard and terrible things. Many times I've slain men, even as you have, Valashu Elahad.'
The suffering I saw in his sad and beautiful eyes was real ft made my eyes burn and touched me more deeply than I could bear. Only the golden cup, which poured out a healing light like the coolest and sweetest of waters, kept me from falling down and weeping.
'But soon the Lightstone will be found,' he told me as he looked down into the cup.
'The old world will be destroyed and a new one created. And you and Atara ~ all your children and grandchildren – will live your lives in a world that knows only peace.'
Only Morjin knew how badly I wanted the things that he showed me. But it was all a lie. The most terrible of lies, I thought, is that which one desperately wants to be true.
'You're close, aren't you?' Morjin said to me.
I shut my eyes as I slowly shook my head back and forth.
'Yes, so very close now to finding it,' he said. 'Open your eyes to me that I might see where you are.'
I wanted with a terrible longing to open my eyes and see the world transformed into a place of beauty and light.
'Open your eyes, please – it's growing late and the morning will soon be upon us.'
I stood at the bow of the heaving ship, trying to listen to the wind instead of his golden voice. I knew that I couldn't fight him much longer.
'The stars, Valashu. Let me look at the same stars that you see.'
My hand closed about the hilt of my sword, but I remembered that it was broken.
And so, at last, I opened my eyes to look upon the stars rising in the east. Master Juwain had once told me that darkness couldn't be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light. And there, just above the dark line of the horizon, blazed a white star that was brighter than any other. I fixed my eyes upon this single shimmering light that was called Valashu, the Morning Star. As I opened myself to its radiance, it suddenly filled the sky like the sun. It consumed me utterly. And I vanished into it like a silver swan soaring into that sacred fire that has no beginning or end.
'Damn you, Elahad!' I heard Morjin's voice cursing me as from far away. But when I turned to look at him, he was gone.
I gripped the railing along the topsides as I gasped and gave thanks for my narrow escape. I breathed in the smell of the sea and the pungency of pitch that sealed the seams of the creaking ship. Although the night's constellations still hung in the sky like twinkling signposts, there was a red sheen in the east that heralded the rising of the sun.
When I returned to my companions where we had spread out our sleeping furs along the deck, I found that Kane was awake. He was always awake, it seemed. Or perhaps it was more true to say that he seldom slept.
'What is it?' he murmured to me as I sat down on my fur. 'You look like you've seen a ghost.'
'Worse,' I whispered back to him. 'Morjin.'
Many times, Master Juwain had warned me not to say this accursed name; now the mere utterance of it seemed to rouse him from his sleep. Of course, he liked to rise early anyway, and the ship's open deck was now glowing in the day's first light.
I told them both what had happened while I had stood alone by the railing. And Master Juwain said, 'You did well, Val. The Morning Star, you say? Hmmm, an interesting variation of the light meditations I've taught you.'
Kane's eyes were black pools darker than the night-time sea. They searched along the deck and behind the towering masts as if looking for Morjin. And then he said, 'It disturbs me how much he knows of his son's death. He's growing stronger, I think.'
Both he and Master Juwain agreed that I must continue my medita-tions. As well, I must practice the art of guarding the doorway to my dreams.
'And we must practice swords,' Kane told me. 'Not all our battles against Morjin, I think, will be with his damned illusions and lies.'
When I pointed out that I had no sword to cross against his, he said, 'So, why don't you make one, then? I'm sure Captain Kharald can spare a bit of wood.'
As it happened, Captain Kharald was only too glad to provide me with a piece of a broken old spar that one of his men fetched from the hold – for a price. He said that good oak was valuable, broken or not and asked for a silver piece in payment. But silver we had none, only the gold coins in Atara's purse, any one of which would have bought a whole forest of oaks. And so we settled on shaving a coin's rim, and giving these gold splinters to Captain Kharald. Such debasement of royal coinage, of course, was a crime. Or would have been if the coin had been Alonian. But as it was stamped with the head of King Angand of Sunguru, who was Morjin's ally, no one on board seemed to mind.
I spent most of the morning whittling the hard oak spar. While the sails above me filled with a good following wind and the Snowy Owl fairly flew through the water, I shaved off long strips of wood with my dagger – the same blade that I had put into Raldu's heart. It wasn't the best tool for such work, but its Godhran steel cut well enough. By the time the fierce Marud sun was high above us and heating up the deck I had a wooden sword as long as a kalama. Wood being lighter than steel, I had made it much thicker than the blade I was used to in order to preserve its heft. But its balance was good and it handled quite well – indeed so well that I held my own against Kane for
