'And still you deny me!' he thundered. Suddenly, he smacked his fist into his open hand. His face grew red and hard to look at. 'Just as you still shelter one who is worse than a thief.'
'What do you mean?'
'Who is that standing behind you?' he said, pointing his finger at me.
'What do you mean – there's no one behind me!'
But it seemed that there was. I turned to see a boy standing in the shadow that I cast upon the carpet. He was about six years old, with bold face bones, a shock of wild black hair and a scar shaped like a lighting bolt cut into his forehead.
'There,' Morjin said, stabbing at him with his long finger. 'Why are you trying to protect him?'
Morjin tried to step around me then to get at the boy. When I raised my arm to stop him, he touched my side with something sharp. I looked down to see that his finger had grown a long black daw tipped with a bluish substance that looked like kirax.
My whole body began burning, and I suddenly couldn't move.
'Come here, Valashu,' Morjin said. Quick as a snapping turtle, he grabbed up the boy and stood shaking him near the wall. But the boy spat in his face and managed to bite off his clawlike finger. Morjin looked at the gaping wound in his hand and said to me, 'You'll have to help me now.'
'No, never!' I said again through my clenched teeth.
'Give me the arrow!' Morjin told me.
With one hand pitining the struggling boy against the wall he reached out his other hand to me. I saw then that I really wasn t holding Master Juwain's book in my hand but an arrow fletched with raven feathers and tipped with a razor-sharp steel.
It was the arrow that the unknown assassin had shot at me in the forest. 'Thank you,'
Morjin said, taking it from me. He suddenly plunged it into the boy's side, and we both screamed at the burning pain of it In j moments, the kirax froze the boy's limbs so that he couldn't move.
'Do you have the hammer?' Morjin said to me. 'Do you have the nails?'
He turned from the boy, and took from me the three iron spikes that I held in my left hand and the heavy iron maul in my right. I saw then that I had been mistaken, that there really was a door giving out into the room: it was a thick slab of oak set into the wall just next to the boy. Morjin used the hammer to nail his hands and legs to it. I couldn't hear the ringing of iron against iron, so loud were the boy's screams.
'There,' he said when he had finished crucifying him. He smiled sadly at me and continued,'And now you must give me what is mine.'
'No!' I cried out. 'Don't do this!'
'A king,' he said to me, 'must sometimes punish, even as your father punished you.
And a warrior must sometimes slay in pursuit of a noble end even as you have slain.'
'But the boy! He's done nothing – he's innocent!'
'Innocent? He's committed a crime worse than treason or murder.'
'What is this crime?' I gasped.
'He coveted the Lightstone for himself,' he said simply. 'He couldn't bear the gift that the One bestowed upon him, and so when he heard his grandfather speak of the golden cup that heals all wounds, he dreamed of keeping it for himself?'
'No – that's not true!'
Morjin moved closer to the boy and let the blood streaming from his pierced hand run into his open mouth.
'No, don't,' I said.
'You must help me,' he said to me.
'No.'
'You must do me homage, Valashu Elahad, son of kings. You must surrender to me what is mine.'
The whole of my body below my neck couldn't move, but I could still shake my head.
'You must open your heart to me, Valashu. Only then will you find peace.'
His eyes now began to burn like two golden suns. Long black claws like those of a dragon grew from his hands in place of fingers.
'Don't hurt him!' I cried out. 'You can't hurt him!'
'Can't I?'
'No, you can't – this is only a dream.'
'Do you think so?' he asked. 'Then see if you can wake up.'
So saying, he turned to the terrified boy and made cooing sounds of pity as he tore him apart. When he was finished, he held the boy's still-beating heart in his claws so that I could see it.
You killed him! I wanted to scream. But the only sound that came from my ravaged throat was a burning sob.
'It's said that if you die in your dreams,' he told me, 'you die in life.'
He looked at the throbbing heart and said, 'But no, Val, I haven't killed him, not yet.'
And with that, he placed the heart back into the boy's chest and sealed the wound with a kiss from his golden lips. The boy opened his eyes then and stared at Morjin hatefully.
'Do you see?' he said to me with a heavy sigh. 'I can't demand that you open your heart to me. Such gifts must be truly given.'
I bit my lip then and tasted blood. The dark, salty liquid moistened my burning throat, and I cried out, 'That will never happen!'
'No?' he asked me angrily. 'Then you will truly die.'
Now his head grew out from his body, huge and elongated and red and covered with scales. His eyes were golden-red and glowed like coals. His forked tongue flicked out once as if tasting the fear in the air. Then he opened his jaws to let out a gout of fire that seared the boy from his head to his bloody feet. The boy screamed as his flesh began to char; Morjin screamed out his hatred in his fiery roar. And I screamed too as I pleaded with him to stop.
But he didn't stop. He let the fire pour out of his fearsome mouth as if venting ages of bitterness and hate. I felt my own skin beginning to blister; I knew that Morjin would soon renew it with the touch of his lips so that he could burn me again and again until I finally surrendered to him or died. I sensed that if I fought against this terrible burning, it would go on forever. And so I surrendered to it. I let its heat burn deep into my blood; I felt it burning the kirax in my blood. And suddenly I found myself able to move again. I swung my fist like a mace at the side of Morjin's head; it was like striking iron. But it stunned him long enough so that I could rush through the flames streaming from his mouth to the blackened, bloody door. The boy was now all black and twisted and screaming for me to help him. I somehow wrenched him free from the door with a great tearing of flesh and bones. And then, holding him close to me where I could feel as my own the wild beating of his heart and his screams, I opened the door.
I opened my eyes then to see Atara bending over me and pressing cool, wet cloth against my head, which she held cradled in her lap. was lying back against my sweat-soaked sleeping furs near the fire. I took me a moment to realize that I was screaming still. I closed my mouth then and bit my bloody lip against the burning in my body. Master Juwain, brewing up some more tea, held my hand in his, testing my pulse. Maram sat beside me pulling at his thick beard in concern.
'We couldn't wake you,' he told me. 'But you were screaming loud enough to wake the dead.'
I squeezed Atara's hand to thank her for her watching over me, and then I sat up. I found that I was still clutching my other hand against my heart, but the wounded boy I thought to find there was gone.
'Are you all right now?' Maram asked me.
I blinked my eyes against the burning there. I looked out at the trees, which were immense gray shapes in the faint light filtering through the forest. The crickets were chirping in the bushes, and a few birds were singing the day's first songs. It was that terrible time between death and morning when the whole world struggled to fight its way out of night.
I stood up, wincing against the flames that still scorched my skin. I took a step away from the fire.
It's still night,' Atara said. 'Where are you going?'
'Down to the stream, to bathe,' I said. I wanted to wash away the charred skin from my hands and let the
