Lightstone waited all golden and glorious as it always had.
'Valari!' Morjin called to me.
I somehow knew that if I could only hold the Lightstone in my hands, everything would come out all right. And so I broke from our shelter by the pillars and sprinted for the throne at the same moment that Morjin's voice filled the hall.
'Guards!' he called out. 'He's trying to run away!'
The hundred men of his Dragon Guard, no less his Red Priests and the murderous Grays, waited for him to order an attack. But Morjin, confused at my seeming cowardice, all the while realizing that there was something here that he didn't quite see, hesitated a heartbeat too long.
And in that moment, Flick suddenly appeared. From out of the hall's dark depths he streaked like a bolt of lightning straight toward the ritual circle. As I ran, I looked back over my shoulder to see Flick fall upon Morjin's face in swirls of white and violet sparks. Morjin, his eyes wide with astonishment, dropped the iron pincers to the floor and used his hands to try to beat Flick's fiery form away from his head.
And he gasped out, 'Damn you, Valari! What is this trick of yours?'
It took me only a few seconds to reach the steps to the throne. I bounded up them, taking but little notice of the statues of the fallen Galadin that stared silently at me from their sides. I stood on the hard stone before the seat of the throne itself. I rested my sword there. And then I reached out and grasped the Lightstone in my hands.
Upon its touch, at once cool as grass and warm as Atara's cheek, Morjin's cries and the dark glitter of the hall faded away as in the passing of a dream. A deeper world blazed forth. Everything seemed touched with a single color, and that was glorre.
The cup overflowed with shimmering cascades of light that fell over my hands and arms and every part of me. I felt its incredible sweetness through my skin and brightening my blood. Suddenly the cup began ringing with a single, pure note like a great golden bell. Then the gold gelstei of which the Lightstone was wrought turned transparent, and there was an astonishing clarity. Inside it were swirling constellations of stars – all the stars in the universe. Their light was impossibly deep; it was more brilliant and beautiful than anything I had ever beheld. I dissolved like salt into this infinite clear sea of radiance. And at last I knew the indestructible joy and bottomless peace of diving deep into the shimmering waters of the One.
When I returned to the throne room a single moment and ten thousand years later, I knew why the Lightstone's touch had killed Sartan Odinan. For the gold gelstei, far from healing my hurts, quickened my gift of valarda almost infinitely. Inside the cup was all of creation, and so long as I held it, I was open to all of its joy and pain.
Infinite pain, I whispered. And then, as I felt within myself the polishing of the true substance of which I was wrought, there came a greater realization: But infinite capacity to bear it.
And so I finally understood words that I had read once in the Saganom Elu: 'To drink in the world's suffering, you must become the ocean; to bear the burning of the fire, you must become the flame.'
I grasped the Lightstone, and all fear left me. And I smiled to see that I was holding only a small golden cup in my hand.
The others saw it, too. But only for a moment As the face of everyone in the hall turned toward me, the gold of the Lightstone fell clear as a diamond crystal and began radiating light like the sun. Brighter and brighter grew this light until it poured out like the starfire of ten thousand suns. It dazzled the very soul, and for a few moments, blinded every pair of eyes in the hall save my own.
Morjin was especially stricken by this terrible and beautiful light. He stood at the center of the black circle on top of the dragon's open mouth, gasping in terror because he was suddenly more blind than Atara. And then, finally, with a sickening jolt, he realized why my friends and I had really entered Argattha. He saw that the brilliance of my sword had come not from my hate but from a deeper resonance that he had long been denied. And so he opened his mouth and let loose a terrible cry that filled all the hall:
VALARIII!
His raw, outraged voice shook the stones of the pillars to the sides of the throne even as he shook his head about and howled like a mad dog. His hatred was a terrible thing. It blasted out into the hall like the fire of a furnace from hell. He hated me, and all of us, with a black, bitter fury for keeping this secret from him. And even more, he hated his own blindness that had lasted thirty centuries and lasted still.
'Guards!' he screamed. 'Kill the Valari! Take the Lightstone!' I saw that the Lightstone's radiance was now beginning to fade and would soon return to a simple golden sheen. After taking a last look at it, I tucked the little cup down beneath my mail shirt over my heart. And then, lifting up my bright, long sword, I hurried down the steps of the throne and rushed forward to do battle to defend it.
Chapter 45
To be cast into darrkncss is the crulest of fates. Morjn's sudden blindness struck terror into him. He waved his had in front of his face and screamed out, 'Guards! To me! To me!' Like writhing, sightless insects, his guards stumbled about and man aged to swarm around Morjin and protect him with their frantically waving spears.
More than one of these steel-tipped shafts pierced a hand or eye of a neighboring guard, and their screams fell out into the hall as well. I sensed that I had only moments before they regained their vision. And so 1 sprinted from the throne straight across the hall toward the circle where Atara, Ymiru and Master fuwain were bound.
Three guards, no doubt hearing the pounding of my boots against the floor, stabbed out their spears blindly to stop me. I parried their clumsy thrusts and cut them down.
And then I pushed my way through other guards until I came to the standing stone holding up Atara. I swung Alkaladur twice, with great precision; its incredibly sharp silustria cut clean through her chains in a shriek of snapping iron. I wrapped my arm around her back as I led her over to Master Juwam's and Ymiru's stones and likewise freed them.
Four more guards tried to hinder me – or perhaps they were only fleeing into me in their blindness. I reddened my sword in the warm, wet sheaths of their bodies. I led Atara over to the part of the circle where our weapons and gelstei had been heaped.
And then the still-blind
Master Juwain and Ymiru.
It took only a moment for me to grab up Ymiru's great war club and press it into his remaining hand. He suddenly regained his vision even as his huge fingers closed around the haft.
'Now there be blood!' he roared out as his eyes leaped with light. He stood glaring at the nearby guards as I tucked his violet crystal into the pouch on his belt. 'Now they'll know what real hrorror be!'
As Master Juwain espied his green gelstel lying on the bloodstained floor, Ymiru raised up his club and began laying about Morjin's guards with a terrifying ferocity.
Flesh and bones broke like eggshells with a sickening crunch as gouts of flesh sprayed out into the air. Four more men fell like bludgeoned chickens. The gargoyles carved into the walls and pillars of the hall – to say nothing of the statues of the fallen Galadin – smiled their hideous smiles to behold a bloody horror that would make even stone itself quail.
And all the while, Morjin kept screaming out, 'Guards! To me! To me!'
'Master Juwain!' I said as he held his crystal in front of Atara's face to stop the bleeding there. 'Stay close!'
Blood still trickled from his ruined ear, and he nodded his head. 'Atara!' I said, putting her sword into her hand. 'Stay by me!' I worried that she would be too weak to stand; I didn't quite see how I could protect both her and the Lightstone in the battle that was building around us. And then she astonished me by moving precisely to gather up her bow and arrows as if she could sense how they lay on the floor. She strapped on her quiver and then turned her eyeless head toward me, saying, 'No, Val
– stay with the others. I've men to slay.'
She smiled grimly and broke away from me; she took off at a run, dodging or stabbing guards who tried to block her way. When she had fought clear of the circle, she began running straight for Morjin's throne.
