On my seventh birthday, my father had taken me on my first hunting trip into the woods behind Lord Harsha's farm. Two of my brothers, Asaru and Yarashan, had come with us. They had each put arrows into the same deer at the same moment, and then argued over whose had killed it. And as they stood beneath the elms disputing with each other and my father judged their deeds, I had wandered off. I made my way deeper into the woods, drawn by the call of a scarlet tanager - and something else. I remembered thinking that I could walk to the end of the woods and right up the slopes of Mount Eluru to the very stars. Instead, I had somehow walked straight into the Forest. Now, as I looked around the glade at the silvery astor trees and the glowing stellulars, I relived my wonder at beholding this magical place for the first time sixteen years before.
'I did come here!' I shouted in astonishment. I looked at Aukai. 'You were here! You taught me how to listen to the animals, and call them to me!'
Aukai smiled hugely as he nodded his head and whistled like a wood thrush.
'And you,' I said, turning to Anouhe, 'gave me a drink that you told me would keep me from dying, should I ever take any wounds that became infected.'
She, too, smiled as I pressed my hand to my side where Salmelu's sword had driven through me during our duel. I noticed that Abrasax, Master Virang and Bemossed were looking at me in amazement.
'And you,' I said, bowing my head to Ondin, 'were waiting for me here. You played the flute with me and taught me three songs! You told me that music would quicken my spirit.'
I remembered leaving the Forest and walking away from it holding the flute that Ondin had given me: the very same one that I had years later passed on to Estrella. This beautiful girl smiled as she now took out this slip of wood and held it up to the shining sun.
'And it has quickened it,' Ondin said to me. 'As much else has, too. You have such a bright spirit, Valashu Elahad. So bright, and so strong.'
'But why did I forget this place?' I asked her. 'And forget you?'
Ondin looked down at the Cup of Remembrance, as she called it, that I still held in my hand. Then she nodded at Anouhe to take it and told me, 'Because I asked this wise one to give you to drink from the Cup of Oblivion.'
'But why?'
'Because,' Ondin explained, 'in looking upon the glory of this place, you did not want to return to your woods. And since you had to return, we took away your memory of the Forest so that it would not haunt you.'
'But why did I have to go back? I might have remained here and spent my whole life making music with the birds.'
Ondin smiled at this. 'You said the same thing when you were seven years old. But you had to go back to Ea to fulfill your fate, which you would have found impossible to do if you lamented the darkness all around you while always longing for the brightness of the Forest.'
'My fate, you say? But what do you know of that? Can not a man make his own fate?'
I noticed Ondin looking at the sword I had strapped over my shoulder, and I felt its weight pulling at me.
'Your fate,' she told me, 'was to fight - and fight you have done.'
'Yes, I have. But always with an eye toward the end of war, when I would have time to make music again.'
'And that time is coming. When war shall end, or all things shall end. And you have your part to play in that.'
'Yes, but what part?' I asked her.
I was never to know if Ondin possessed the gift of looking into others' minds as Liljana could. But she seemed able to look into my soul - and those of Abrasax, Master Virang, Bemossed and Kane. She seemed to sense, all in a moment, the nature of the argument that divided us as to how Morjin must be fought.
'You are Valashu ni al'Adar,' she told me, 'descendant of the Lightstone's first Guardian and one of the first Valari. And the Valari were once warriors of the spirit, and must be again.'
'Others have told me that,' I said to her. I drew out my bright blade from its sheath. 'But fate, it seems, has also called me to be a warrior of the sword.'
'So it seems,' she said, smiling at me. 'But not just any sword.'
I pressed my hand to my chest and said, 'That which I hold inside myself is not enough to defeat Morjin as people wish.'
'No? Do you know that, Valashu? I have come here to tell you that the true Alkaladur has not yet been fully forged. And so no one has ever wielded it as it should be wielded.'
I thought of the great War of the Stone that the angels (and many Valari) had fought across the heavens for a million years, and one of its most terrible moments: when the Amshahs, led by Kalkin, had tried to touch Angra Mainyu with a splendid light and return him to the Law of the One. In an amphitheater outside of Tria, one of the ghostly Urudjin had recited these verses to us, and more recently, Kane:
In ruth the warrior went to war,
A host of angels in his train:
Ten thousand Amshahs, all who swore
To heal the Dark One's bitter pain.
With Kalkin, splendid Solajin
And Varkoth, Set and Ashtoreth –
The greatest of the Galadin
Went forth to vanquish fear of death.
And Urukin and Baradin,
In all their pity, pomp and pride:
The brightest of the Elijin
In many thousands fought and died.
Their gift, valarda, opened them:
Into their hearts a fell hate poured;
This turned the warrior's stratagem
For none could wield the sacred sword.
Alkaladur! Alkaladur!
The Brightest Blade, the Sword that Shone,
Which men have named the Opener,
Was meant for one and one alone.
Kane, the very warrior spoken of in the verse, stared at Ondin with bottomless black eyes full of pain. And I said to her, 'If the tale is a true one, then all the angels, even Ashtoreth herself, could not together forge what you call the true Alkaladur. Angra Mainyu turned the force of their souls back upon them! And slew all those who could be slain! And so why should you speak to me as if I can have anything to do with Alkaladur's forging, much less wielding it as you desire?'
She watched the sun's light play on my sword's silver blade, and she said to me, 'But you must know that you must have something to do with its forging. As all who follow the Law must. There will come a day when the Amshahs, in our millions, will again strike the soul force into Angra Mainyu's heart.'
As she spoke these words, Kane ground his jaws together, and his whole being seemed to writhe with fire.
'But you failed once,' I said to Ondin. 'Why, then? Why couldn't the ancient Maitreyas heal Angra Mainyu?'
'That is not know,' Ondin told us sadly. 'But the great Maitreya, who will lead all worlds into the Age of Light, has yet to come forth.'
At this Estrella's large deep eyes seemed to catch up Bemossed's brightness and give it back a hundredfold. Then everyone else looked at him, too.
And Ondin, feeling the weight of our expectation, said to us, 'I am the messenger of Ashtoreth, but not even she knows who this great Maitreya will be. All we can say is that the Maitreya has not yet quickened and come into his power.'
Her words did not distress Bemossed. He smiled at Ondin as if at least one person existed who understood him.
I thought again of the verse's refrain:
Alkaladur! Alkaladur!
The Brightest Blade, the Sword that Shone,
Which men have named the Opener.
Was meant for one and one alone.
'Then the great Maitreya,' I said, 'must the one for whom the
true Alkaladur was intended. The verse tells that none of the
ancients could wield it.'
'None could,' Ondin said, with even greater sadness. 'Just as you
have not yet learned to wield the sword you hold in your hands.'
I raised up my silver sword a little higher. And I said, 'But what does this have to do with that?'
'No one knows. Perhaps no one,' Ondin tur
ned to look at Kane. 'You forged Valashu's sword and gave it its name. Why did you call it Alkaladur?'
For a long moment, Kane stood in a cold silence staring at me and what I held in my hands. Then he snapped at Ondin, 'So, it's a sword, of silustria, most luminous of all substances - as the true Alkaladur was to be a sword of light. What else should I have called it, eh?'
'You make a mystery out of your creation,' Ondin told him.
'So what if I do, then? Creation, itself, is mysterious, eh?'
Ondin gazed at him, then finally turned away to touch her finger to my sword's blade. She said to me, 'Ashtoreth sent me to tell you that this must somehow be used in the battle against Angra Mainyu and Morjin.'
She lifted her hand away from my sword and set it down upon my tunic over my heart. 'And this. And you must find the way to use them.'
'But I do not know how!'
'You said that, too, when you were a boy learning the songs I taught you. You will learn how.'
'But who will be my teacher then? Will you leave the Forest and remain on Ea?'
'No, Valashu - you know I cannot,' She looked at Bemossed. 'But you will have the greatest of teachers. You will come into your power when the Maitreya comes into his.'
I gripped my hands more tightly around Alkaladur's hilt; I could almost feel the sun's light coursing through it.
'You will face Morjin, soon,' she told me. 'And then, if you are a warrior of the spirit and a true king, you will find a way to forgive him. You must desire his healing and only good for him -even his happiness. And in the end, with ail your heart, you must find a way to -'
'No!' I cried out. 'I will slay Morjin, for that is my fate!'
'But Valashu, you cannot know -'
'I do know!' I shouted at her. 'Ashtoreth and all the Galadin, and you, yourself, might be capable of finding inside such a benevolent and selfless soul force. But I am not so noble!'
'You are -'
'I am not the one who can do this thing!' I shouted at her.
Her face grew stern as she looked at me. 'You are King Valamesh.'
I pointed my bright blade straight toward the heart of the sun. 'Yes, I am now King of Mesh - and this is my sword. And Morjin is my enemy.'
Ondin just smiled at this, with an immense sadness that flooded over fee like the tide of the sea. Then she said to me, 'You are right: that is your sword. And its inscription was graven there for you.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, angling the sword slightly so that the light played over the silver blade. Its surface gleamed as unmarked as the most perfect of mirrors. 'Alkaladur bears no inscription!'
'Does it not?'
I gazed more deeply at my sword. 'If it does, then time has worn it away.'
'From silustria, Valashu?'
My sword's silustria, I knew, was so hard that not even thousands of years of its immersion in the sea had left the slightest mark upon it.
'But what is inscribed there?' I asked her.
'I do not know what is inscribed there. Only that it is inscribed there.'
'Inscribed how, then? I can see nothing.'
'No? Can you not? Then look, Valashu!'
Kane, three paces from me, stood still as a mountain as he gazed at my sword.
Then I looked, too. I looked at the smooth, shining silustria with a will to see behind its surface and the habits of my eye and mind. I must, I thought, let my the whole of my awareness blaze forth. I must drive myself to perceive something deeper within the silver gelstei and to grasp it with all the force of my soul in a sort of astonished touching of...
'It flares!' I cried out. 'The letters - they flare!'
From within the sword's bright surface near the hilt, curved glyphs suddenly leaped out from the silustria with an even brighter light. They formed and flared like etchings made from a silvery flame: Vas Sama Yeos Valarda. . .'
Abrasax, almost without thought, translated these words from the ancient Ardik:
With his eye of compassion He saw his enemy Like unto himself
As he spoke, I studied the luminous glyphs graven into my sword near the hilt - but leaving the patch of silustria nearest it unmarked.
Then Ondin said to me, 'With your eye, Valashu. Look! There is more to the inscription.'
I looked at my bright sword with all the power I could find within myself to look. But the patch of silustria beneath the inscription remained as smooth as glass.
'I cannot see anything else!' I said. 'What are the lines, then?'
'I cannot tell you. It is known only that the sword's maker inscribed six lines.'
Here she turned toward Kane and asked him, 'Can you tell us what they are?'
Kane shifted his attention from my sword to Ondin, and gazed at her with a fierce, deep longing. He seemed to fight back tears with a terrible savagery toward himself. I sensed in him, however, no desire for her, as a man desires a woman, but only the keenest of urges to behold her as she truly was and to embrace that luminous part of her hidden so deeply from his sight.
'So, I cannot tell you,' he finally said. 'I have forgotten them.'
Ondin nodded at Anouhe, still holding the cup of green liquor. 'Then perhaps you should drink from her cup.'
I felt something flash inside Kane, and I feared that he might strike out at Ondin. Instead, in a voice both gentle and anguished, he said, 'No - it would not help.'
Ondin took a step closer to him, and with a sad smile, touched his face. I stared at the two of them in amazement. I had never seen Kane let anyone make free with his person or tender him this sort of kindness.
'Someday,' she told him, 'you will remember.'
Then she withdrew her hand and looked back at me. She tapped her finger just above the hilt of my sword. 'Just as you will find the last three lines inside yourself, and then see them written here.'
She drew in a long breath of the glade's flower-scented air. 'The time is coming, Valashu. Ashtoreth bids me to tell you that just as Angra Mainyu has sent the dark thing to attack you, the Ieldra will shower upon Ea their blessed light.'
Abrasax, who seemed as well-schooled in astrology as the Brotherhood's Master Diviner, pointed up into the sky to the left of the sun. 'The Golden Band still strengthens. Never have I seen it flare so.'
To most people, most of the time, the radiance that the Ieldra sent out to all worlds of the universe remained invisible. Now, however, Abarasax aimed his ringer at a patch of cloudless sky far beyond which lay Ninsun at the center of all things. And suddenly, I thought, I beheld what he did: the sky's blueness seemed to break open to reveal the deeper color behind. It was glorre, the one color that possessed the qualities and attributes of all the others while shimmering with its own marvelous and unique splendor.
Without knowing why I did what I did, I raised up Alkaladur straight toward this band of glorre. My sword's silustria grew almost clear then. It seemed to draw down the onstreaming glorre and drink it in. And then, as with the flash of lightning, my sword showered out a brilliance of this color. Its radiance fell upon all of us, and brought a gleam to our eyes and hope to our hearts.
To Alphanderry, it brought much more. We all watched in wonder as he stood near my glistering sword as beneath a water-fall. He raised back his head and opened his mouth as if he wanted to let the Ieldra's light run down his throat deep into his being. His hands closed about the glorre-filled air, almost as might a real hand of flesh and blood. At last, I lowered my sword, and the glade returned its more usual hues of silver, gold and green. But Alphanderry did not return to the same substance he had been. He laid his hand on top of my hand, and the warmth of his skin burned me; I felt hard bones beneath, and the blood of life streaming through him all warm and good, and I shook my head in astonishment because I knew that somehow he had been made again as real as any other man.
'It is a miracle,' Bemossed said, putting his hand to Alphanderry's wrist. 'A true miracle - and not the kind that men say I make.'
'As it has been promised, Minstrel,
' Ondin said to Alphanderry, 'you have been restored to yourself.'
Alphanderry - and all of us - bowed our heads in awe.
Then Kane, his eyes filling with tears, moved over to Alphanderry and embraced him. His hands thumped with great force and sound against Alphanderry's back as he cried out: 'My little friend, my little friend! Ha - you are alive!'
Thus did Alphanderry, killed in the pass of the Kul Moroth, rejoin his companions of old, and both Kane and I wept without restraint.
Then Ondin told us that her work here had been completed and that she must go. 'And you must, too,' she said to me.
I knew that I must. I asked her, 'But what of the Ahrim, then? It will be waiting for me when I leave these woods, won't it?'
Ondin nodded her head at this. 'It will always be waiting for you, Valashu. Just as we will be waiting for you to defeat it, once and for all.'
We both looked at the flaming inscription sealed into my sword's silustria. Then she smiled at me and added, 'Farewell, mighty King. Until we meet again.'
Without another word she inclined her head as if to bid us all goodbye. Then she turned and walked from the glade as she had come.
Kane, now exultant, moved over to his horse, where he retrieved the mandolet that he had inherited from Alphanderry. He gave it into Alphanderry's hands and said, 'Now you can play this again!'
And play Alphanderry did. For the rest of that morning, as we took one last meal with Anouhe, Aukai and a few other of the Lokii, Alphanderry plucked the strings of his mandolet as he sang out in his poignant, beautiful voice the very lyrics which had brought down the wrath of Morjin's men in the Kul Moroth: La valaha eshama halla, lais arda alhalla . ..
Now it brought only smiles to our faces.
Chapter 12
It proved less difficult to leave the Lokii's Forest than it had been to enter it. The seven of us came out into the woods where we had left our companions - but a quarter mile Farther to the east. We heard Maram and the others shouting for us through the oaks and maples. We shouted back at them, and soon met up near a great silver maple tree.
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