'You'll see her die, but not until you've died a thousand times.' And with that, he stepped over to the brazier and removed the glowing pincers.
'Damn you!' I screamed at him.
'Damn you, Valari, for making me do this!' He looked at the pincers' red-hot iron and shouted, 'I'll tear out her vile tongue and roast on the coals! I'll send lepers to ravish her! I'll give her to the rats and let you watch as they eat what's left of her face!'
The thirteen Grays, with their cold eyes and long knives, stood in the circle of death with Morjin waiting to see what he would do. The six priests of the Kallimun looked pitilessly at Atara as they must have many other victims. The hundred guards ringing the circle waited with their swords and spears and axlike halberds. The whole world, it seemed, waited for me to speak or move.
'You must not surrender!' Atara suddenly called to me. She stood tall and brave and eyeless in eternity.
'In a moment, I'll tear out your tongue,' Morjin promised her. 'But first you will call for the Elahad to surrender.'
He took a step closer to her as I gripped my sword more tightly. Once before, in the land of nightmare, he had told me that the valarda was a double-edged sword. He, himself, could now only cut and kill with his. But it haunted him that I might still be able to open myself to others' joys and sufferings. Hating me for the grace that he had long ago lost, he fell into a sickening fury. I sensed that he wanted to test my compassion for Atara. It was his will torture her terribly and for a long time. Because he hated her, yes, but more because he wanted to break me utterly. He wanted me perverted, crushed in spirit, enslaved. He wanted me to kneel before him in the sight of all the men gathered in the hall almost as much as he wanted the Lightstone itself.
'Atara,' I whispered.
What is hate? It is a wall ten thousand feet high surrounding the castle of despair.
Since the moment that Morjin had blinded Atara, I had built this wall higher and higher so that I would not have to know what she really suffered. But now she had turned toward me, and in looking at the blood pooling in her eye hollows and dripping down her cheeks, her face emptied of all hope of that which she most deeply desired, this wall of stone suddenly split asunder as if the earth beneath it had cracked open. And I cried out in the greatest anguish I had ever known, for the love that bound Atara and me together was the greatest I had ever known.
'Hold!' I shouted to Morjin. 'Take me instead of Atara!' The world, I knew, was a place of infinite suffering, infinite pain. In the end I was the weakest of our company.
I could bear Atara's torture much less than she herself. 'Throw down, then!' Morjin called to me, turning away from Atara I shook myself free from Kane, who stared at me, waiting to see what I would do. And I shouted at Morjin, 'First free Atara!' I looked at Master Juwain bound to his stone and at Ymiru pulling with his only whole arm against his chain. 'Free my friends, too. Let them leave Argattha!'
'No,' Morjin said to me. 'First throw down and step forward into our circle, and then I shall do as you ask.'
He stared at me, smiling triumphantly.
'Val, don't do it,' Liljana said to me, pulling on my arm. 'He lies!'
'So, his promise is worth rat dung,' Kane growled out.
I called out to Morjin, 'What surety do we have that you will keep your word?'
'I am King of Ea, and what more surety can there be?' he said. 'It is we who need surety, Valari. How is it to be believed that a proud Valari knight will go willingly to his death with no sword in his hand?'
I knew that he didn't believe that I would give my life in Atara's place, especially if it meant first untold days of hideous torture. And yet, he willed and wanted with every fiber of his being that I should make this surrender. His red eyes filled with a raging bloodlust that was terrible to behold.
How can I do what I must do? I asked myself.
Kane had said that there still might be a chance for us, and now I saw that there was.
But not for me. I might buy my friends' lives with mine. Morjin had given his word before his priests and men, and there! was a chance that he might keep it.
'Val!' Atara called to me.
What is love? It is the warm, healing breath of life that melts the bitterest ice. It is the hot pain of joy in one's heart impossible to quench. It is the fire of the stars that burns clean the soul. It is a simple thing -the simplest thing in the world.
'Atara,' I whispered as I looked at her. Her bloody, mutilated face, I thought, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.'
I stood there facing the circle where Atara and my friends were bound, and my hands sweated to feel the diamonds in Alkaladur's hilt for the last time. There was a sickness in my belly; my chest ached with a crushing pain. Death waited there for me. My old enemy was cold and black and terrifying; it was a terrible emptiness that had no end. It didn't matter. In looking at Atara look toward me, so full of love, so full of light, I suddenly wanted to die for her. I burned with a fierce desire to accept any torment and annihilation in order to keep her living in the land of light.
'Well, Valari?' Morjin called out to me.
I glanced at him and nodded my head. Even if there was only one chance in ten thousand that he would spare Atara and my friends, I had to take it.
And then, even as I bent to lay Alkaladur down upon the dark stone of this vast, dark hall, at the darkest moment of my life, the Bright Sword began shining with an intense radiance that I also felt inside myself. At that moment, the world was strangely full of light. For I, and I alone, suddenly saw the Lightstone everywhere: on top of pedestals and gleaming golden in the recesses of the rocky walls; on the altar near the throne and on tables and even shimmering amidst the red-hot coals in the brazier into which Morjin had cast his offering of flesh. The whole of the throne room blazed with a brilliant golden light. It blinded me to the Lightstone's true presence as surely as my flaws of fear and faithlessness had always blinded me to myself. 'Valari!' Morjin called to me. And then Alkaladur flared silver-white, more brightly than it ever had before. In the mirror of the polished and perfect silustria of my sword, I saw who I really was: Valashu Elahad, son of Shavashar Elahad, who was the direct descendent of Telemesh and Aramesh and all the kings of Mesh going back to the grandsons of Elahad himself. In me still burned the soul of the Valari we who long ago had brought the Lightstone to earth. The Valari, I suddenly remembered, were once guardians of the Lightstone, and would someday be again.
'Damn you, Valari, throw down now or I'll take your woman's tongue!'
But what or who were we to guard the Lightstone for? Not for glory or the ending of pain. Not for invulnerability or immortality or power. Not for the victory of the Maitriche Telu or the vengeance of Kane. Nor for great kings such as Kiritan who would give their daughters to triumphant warriors, nor even for wise queens such as the Lady of the Lake. And certainly not for false Maitreyas such as Morjin who would use it to work great evil instead of good.
The Lightstone is for one and one only, I thought. The true Maitreya told of in the great prophecy, the Lightbringer who mill arise from Ea to defeat the Lord of Darkness and lead all the worlds into a new age.
To gain this cup and guard it so that I could place it in the Maitreya's hands was my purpose; it was my deepest desire and fate. What is love? It is the radiance of the One; it is the blazing of the Morning Star in the eastern sky that calls men to wake up. All my life, it seemed, I had worked to polish and sharpen the sword of my soul, rubbing away the rust and honing the steel finer and finer to put on it an exceedingly keen edge. And now, through a love beyond love, with the hand of the One bestowing this final grace, the polishing was at last completed and nothing of myself remained. And yet, paradoxically, everything. And so the true sword was revealed. It cut with an infinitely fine edge and was impossibly bright. I suddenly stood straight and gripped Alkaladur more tightly. And with the deeper sword that the One had placed in my heart, I finally slew the great dragon whose names are Vanity and Pride. The evil of my hate left me. And then both swords, the one that I held in my hand and the other inside me, blazed like suns. The light was so intense that it completely outshone the illusions all around me and made the thousands of Lightstones that I saw simply disappear. And in this luminous state, my eyes finally opened and drank in the sight of the Lightstone.
As the songs had told, it was just a plain golden cup that would easily fit into the palm of my hand. And as Sartan Odinan had told, it still remained in the vast, dark hall where he had set it down thousands of years before. Even as Morjin and his priests shielded their eyes against the sheen of my sword, I looked to the south of the ritual circle at the great throne. And there, on top of the eye of the coiled red dragon that framed the throne, the
