waiting their turn to enter the passageway beyond. Kane fell upon them, all the while stabbing and slashing and howling out his frustration that Morjin was escaping him.
'Let him go!' I shouted. 'It would be your death to follow him!'
Not even Kane, I thought, could fight his way through such a narrow passageway held by so many men.
'I don't care!' Kane roared. 'Morjin must die!'
Perhaps Morjin would die of his dreadful wound, but it was too late to inflict any other. In order to save Kane's life, I came up behind him and wrapped my arm like an iron band across his chest. He surged against me like an enraged tiger. By the time he again broke free, the last of the guards fled into the passageway, and the door slammed shut in our faces.
MORJ1NNN!
Kane screamed out his great enemy's name as he leaped forward to pound the pommel of his sword against the heavy, locked door. Then he whirled about facing me. There was blood in his eyes and dripping from his sword.
'What's wrong with you!' he shouted at me, pointing at the door. 'We might have killed them all!'
From across the hall to the east, from on top of the throne, Atara's clear voice called out, 'No – if we had pursued them there, they would have killed all of us.'
'So you say, scryer,' Kane snarled out.
I looked over at the throne to behold Atara. But she, who had seen clearly enough to shoot her arrows across the dim hall into our enemy's throats or eyes, seemed now to be suddenly and completely blind. She fumbled and groped about with her hands as she tried to climb down from the throne. I ran across the hall to help her. Kane ran after me. And then a few moments later, Maram, Liljana and the others joined us there as well, and we gathered beneath the steps to the throne. 'We're trapped!'
Maram cried as he turned about to look at the room's locked gates. 'We kill a hundred men, and we're still trapped!'
I stood with my arm around Atara's back, helping her stand. She had spent nearly the last of her strength. Her bloody, beautiful head rested heavily on my shoulder.
'So, not quite a hundred,' Kane said. He stood looking toward the standing stones and the carnage that we had wrought. Across the blood-soaked ritual circle, the hacked and torn bodies of our enemies lay everywhere. 'And not quite enough – never enough death for them.'
But it was more than enough death for me. As I gazed at those whom I had slain, only my grip on Alkaladur's diamond-set hilt kept me from falling down and joining them.
'I'm sorry,' Atara said to Kane. She managed to lift up her head and orient her face toward him. 'But I saw… that is, I knew that Val needed to remain alive. You, too, Kane, and myself- all of us. We all must live to guard the Lightstone for the Maitreya.'
Upon these words I removed the Lightstone from beneath my armor. It seemed more than a lifetime ago that I had put it there. And it seemed almost a dream that I had finally found it after all. Only the warm hard ness of the little golden cup in my hand reassured me that it was real. 'So,' Kane muttered. His black eyes were bright as moons as they drank in the cup's golden sheen. His thirst for its light, I thought was nearly infinite. 'So.'
He broke his gaze and turned toward Atara. He said, 'Morjin and others have killed every Maitreya born on Ea. Killing him was the best hope we had of putting this cup in the next Maitreya's hands.'
'Hrope,' Ymiru said bitterly. He leaned over his bloody war club as he turned his attention from the wonder of the Lightstone to the room's great bronze gates. 'How long will it be before more guards are summoned? Or before the Red Priests call up the whrole army from the first level?'
Maram, tearing his eyes from the Lightstone, looked at me and asked, 'Is there no way out of here, then?'
'There is a way out,' Liljana said staring at the Lightstone. She wiped her sword on a tunic torn from one of the dead and sheathed it. 'A secret passage leading from the throne room – I saw this to Morjin's mind.'
'Where is it then?' Maram shouted at her.
'I saw that it is,' t=she told him, 'but not where it is.'
I looked at Daj, who was standing slightly behing Liljana. He still held his killing spear in his little hands. 'Do you know where this passage is?' I asked him
'No, Lord Morin never spoke of it,' he said. Then his courage finally failed him, and he began trembling and said, 'I want to go home!'
As Liljana put her arm around him and pulled him closer, she said to Atara, 'Have you seen the door to thst passage, my dear?'
'No, I… can see nothing now,' Atara murmured, shaking her head.
Maram ran over to the wall near the door to Morjin's chambers and began searching it for the telltale cracks that might demarcate a secret door. But the throne room's acres of walls were everywhere cracked and carved with fissures and swirls that formed the shapes of dragons and other beasts, and so it seemed that Maram had set himself a hopeless task. Master Juwain moved up in front of Atara with his varistei held over the crown of her head. A brilliant green light poured out of it as of a rain shower that has taken on the color of new spring leaves. It gave her new life.
But it failed to restore her vision.
Liljana laid her hand on Atara's shoulder as she addressed Master Juwain saying, 'If Atara can't find her way to visions of the otherworld, then perhaps you can restore her sight of this one.'
'I?' Master Juwain said 'How?'
'By growing new eyes for her.'
Master Juwain looked at his crystal as he sadly shook his head. He told her, 'As I've said before, I'm afraid my gelstei hasn't that power.'
'Not by itself, perhaps. But the Lightstone must have that power.'
She turned straight toward Kane and recited the lines from the Song o f Kalkamesh and Telemesh:
The lightning flashed, struck stone, burned clear The prince beheld through rain and tear
The hands that held the golden bowl,
The warrior's hands again were whole
'Kalkamesh,' she told him, 'had touched the Lightstone before his torture – before Telemesh freed him by cutting him away from his crucified hands. But he grew new hands, didn't he?'
'So,' Kane said as his eyes darkened. 'So the old songs say.' 'Kalkamesh,' she said again, 'gained this power thusly, didn't he?'
'How should,' know?' Kane muttered, shaking his head.
'Didn't he?'
'No,' Kane snarled, 'you're wrong – you know nothing.'
'I know what I see.' So saying, Liljana pointed at the side of Kane's head. There, during the ferocity of the battle, the bandage that Master Juwain had fixed after the earlier battle with the knights beneath Skartaru's north face had come loose. I stared through the dim light near the throne, and gasped at what I saw. For beneath Kane's white hair, where the knight's sword had sheared off his ear, a small, pink, new ear the size of a child's was growing from his head. 'Kalkamesh,' Liljana said, staring at him. 'You are he.'
'No,' Kane murmured, shaking his head. 'No.'
'Morjin spoke to you as if you'd known him long ago. As you spoke to him.'
'No, no,' Kane said.
'And the way you looked at him! Your hate. Who could ever hate him so much?'
Kane looked at Atara and then me but said nothing.
'And the way you fight!' Liljana continued. 'Who could ever fight as Kalkamesh did?'
Kane bowed his head to me and said, 'Valashu Elahad can.'
I returned his bow, then asked him, 'Are you really Kalkamesh?'
'No,' he said as he stared at the Lightstone. 'That is not my name.'
'Then what is your name? Your true name? It's not Kane, is it?' 'No, that is not my name either.'
I waited for him to say more as my heart pounded like the distant hammering that I could hear from beyond the throne room's doors. A battle a thousand times fiercer than the one we had just fought raged inside him.
'My name,' he whispered, 'is Kalkin.'
