Morjin paused to stare at me as he gathered in his breath. He was working himself up into a frenzy of spite. And now his all hate fell upon me like an infected wound bursting with pus.
'Look at the Valari standing there!' he said to his priests. 'So tall in his arrogance!
The long sword. The black eyes – who has ever seen such eyes outside nightmares where demons haunt the dark? Many have said that the Valari have made a pact with demons. But I say they are demons themselves – fiends from hell. They are a plague upon the world; they are a stab in the back of the body of humanity; they are a corruption of all that is good and true. It's in their blood, like poison. The taint goes back to the beginning of time. But it will have an ending, in time, an antidote of fire and steel. Haven't I foretold that if war comes, this last war we've all been dreading, that the Valari race will disappear from the face of the earth? That race of warlords and savages has on its conscience the dead of every great conflict in Ea's history.
Would it be too much to ask that they be given new homes in the Red Desert or on trees that shall grow out of the ground in entire forests to accommodate them?'
Once before, I thought, after the battle of Tarshid, Morjin had put a thousand Vaiari warriors on such 'trees.' And now he proposed the slaughter of the whole Valari people. Or did he?
'It's not entirely disadvantageous,' he went on, 'that rumor attributes to us the plan for carrying out this fate. Terror can be a salutary thing.'
How, I wondered, could Morjin speak with such passion and con viction when he must have known the enormity of his deceit? In looking at my sword's shining silustria, a terrible thought came to me. People believe what they see others believing most strongly. Long ago, Morjin had perfected those expressions, gestures and intonations of voice designed to convince his followers that he believed his own lies.
And after hundreds of years, this greatest of deceits had worked an evil alchemy upon Morjin: it had overcome him and his sense of the real so that he truly did believe his lies. This communicated to his audiences like lightning. And thus shocked into frenzies of false faith, his listeners returned his passion to him and further strengthened his own belief.
His own lies had possessed him, I thought. And so he had made of himself a ghul.
For a moment, I was moved to pity him. But the gleam to his golden eyes told me that he would use any such emotions against me. As he now used his gift of valarda to further enchant and enslave his people.
Again he pointed at me as he thundered: 'The arrogance of the Valari! Who else could steal the Lightstone and keep it behind their mountains for most of an age? Is there a greater crime than this in all of history?'
I felt Morjin's hate beating at me like a hammer, directly from his heart to mine – as it beat at his guards and Grays and everyone else gathered in the hall.
Morjin stepped over to one of his priests, a young man whose handsome face was marred with patches of scar as if it had been burned by heated iron. I thought that he might possibly be the least cruel of the Red Priests. Morjin said to him, 'Lord Uilliam, if such criminals came into your care, what would you recommend be done with them?'
Morjin's eyes touched Lord Uilliam's; his tongue seemed to shoot invisible streams of relb at Lord Uilliam so that the young man's tongue caught up the flames of malice, and he said, 'Purify them with fire!'
Morjin breathed out the fire of his approval and set the young man's blood burning with a raging desire to punish his enemies.
'Oh, oh!' I heard Maram moan next to me. He stood by the great black pillar, looking at Atara and the bloody Ymiru as he squeezed his mined crystal.
Morjin next addressed an older priest whose long, narrow face and great beak of a nose gave him the appearance of a vulture. 'Lord Yadom, if such criminals were persuaded to tell of clues that helped you recover the Lightstone, what would you do with it?'
'I would bring it to you, Sire.'
'But what if I had been abducted for torture and imprisoned?'
Lord Yadom clearly understood that Morjin was testing him. And so he said, 'Then I would wait for your release.'
'What if you waited thirty years?'
'The Kallimun waited a hundred times as long for your release from Damoom.'
'Yes, but then you didn't have the Lightstone. Wouldn't you use it to free your own king?'
'I would want to Sire,' Yadom said with apparent sincerity. 'But the Lightstone is not to be used this way.'
Morjin stared at him and then called out into the hall: 'Wise Yadom! Is anyone wiser than the first of my priests?'
Even as he said this, his golden eyes seemed to swell like suns. And Yadom swelled with overweening pride, like a flower too full of nectar. Morjin's faith in Yadom that he beamed forth was so pleasurable that it made my whole body shudder.
And so it went as he paced about the room, here pausing to question one of his guards, there nodding at one of the Grays or his priests. He played to his people: with cunning words that fell easily off his silver tongue, with long, soulful looks, with veiled threats and promises and deceits. One man he flattered; another he frightened; too many his malice opened like a black knife and set loose their animal ferocity. I hated how Morjin perverted the gift we both had been given: he played men like instruments, plucking at their heartstrings as if he were a twisted minstrel making the most evil of music.
Morjin nodded across the hall at one of his guards, who brought a brazier heaped with hot coals into the ritual circle. He set it down in front of Atara, Ymiru and Master Juwain, and then thrust a pincers and three long, pointed irons into the coals to heat them.
'The Lightstone will soon be recovered,' Morjin shouted. 'Haven't I foretold that this is the time when it will again foe seen in this hall? And what should be done with this cup when it returns to its rightful place?'
One of his guards, an old soldier with a grim face and a strange hunger in his eyes. knew the right answer to this question, And he called out, 'Pour from it eternal lift!'
Now every pair of eyes in the hall fixed on Morjin. His men looked at him with its almost electric anticipation.
'Eternal life!' Morjin suddenly cried out. 'This is the gift that the Lightstone may bestow upon men and its true purpose. But is it a gift for everyone? Can a beast appreciate a flute or a book placed into its paws? No, and so it is that only those chosen to recieve the true gold of the Lightstone will ever know immortality.'
As Kane stared at Morjin defiantly. I suddenly understood that the powerful seek power for its own sake because it gives them the illusion that they have power over death.
But fear of death, I thought, leads to hate of life.
With these few words, whispered inside my mind, I knew that I had condemned myself should the door that I most feared he flung open before me. For Morjin, with all his vainglory and hate, was like a mirror reflecting back at me a shape that I did not warn to see.
'And who are these chosen?' Morjin continued. He nodded sternly at lord Uilliam and Lord Yadom. 'They are the priests who have served the Kallimun so faithfully; they are my guards and soldiers who have given their lives for a greater purpose, and so it is only fining that they shall have greater life themselves.'
Morjin, the sorcerer who had lived thousands of years, stood before his men as the living embodiment that what he promised was poss ible.
'And who,' he quietly asked 'shall be the one to pour the nectar of immortality from the golden cup? Only the Maitreya. But who is this man? That will be determined only when the Lightstone is placed in his hands.'
So saying, he reached his hands out to the hundred and twenty men who bad followed him into the room. In their many eyes was a terrible lust for the Lightstone and all that Morjin had vowed to give them. And then- a remarkable thing occurred, Aa if light itself were pouring out of his hands, he used the valarda to to touch all who gazed upon him with bliss.
'So' Kane muttered next to me. There came a rumbling sound of hate from deep inside his throat. 'So.'
All people have love and longing to the One, for that is our source, at once father and mother and breath of the infinite in which we take our being. And Morjin had tried to fool people into turning this love onto him. in his smile was the false promise of all joy and happiness, but in the end he would bring the world only sorrow and death.
Now he turned to me and said, 'You've taken a vow to seek the Lightstone. And now you can fulfill it by
