Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  'Morjin,' I said, 'should never even have touched his hand to the Lightstone. It truly is like a star, as Atara has told. I can feel... how it burned him. How its brilliance blinded him to many things. And rather than nourishing his soul and illuminating him, his soul fed it. I do not think he could bear the darkness. And the emptiness. And that is why he could not quite bear to murder Bemossed. He hoped, until the very end, that Bemossed might find a way to heal him.'

  'But he did murder Bemossed!' Maram said. 'And would have murdered Estrella. Why? Since he recognized, before anyone else, that she was the Maitreya, too?'

  'Because,' I told him, 'Morjin was also the Red Dragon, and that one did not want Morjin to be healed.'

  At least, I went on to say, the great Red Dragon, missing scales over his heart, would never expose that tender place to such as Estrella or Bemossed. Then I admitted one of my worst fears of the Beast that I had fought for so long: that Morjin would have tried to torture out of Bemossed the mystery of what it meant to be the Maitreya. But one might as well torture a flower to reveal the secret of its beauty.

  'Morjin,' I told everyone, 'could have chosen life. But that was his deepest flaw, that he always found it so painful to live.'

  I did not add that in this, if nothing else, Morjin and I were as brothers.

  'And that is what we have always taught,' Abrasax said. 'That in the end, our hearts are free.'

  Master Storr nodded his head at this. 'And freely it was that Morjin chose not to unbind the Dark One. The door to Damoom stood almost open. We all saw that. Another moment and . . .'

  He sighed as he looked up at the sky above the Detheshaloon. If Morjin hadn't seethed with a fury to be lord of all creation, one who was vastly more powerful than he would have destroyed half the universe in pursuit of just such an insane ambition.

  'Morjin could have won,' I said. 'But in wanting to win so much more than the world, he lost everything.'

  I stared across the hill at the small stone marking Morjin's grave. Did he, I wondered, now walk the land of the dead as I had? Did some bright part of him dwell with the infinite splendor beyond death, forever?

  Maram, who always sensed so much about me, looked at me and said, 'He lost his soul. But you would have helped him find it again, wouldn't you, Val? With your heart of compassion. Though I still don't see how it is possible that you could have loved him.'

  'I didn't, Maram - not as I love you,' I told him. 'In truth, I never stopped hating him. But in the end, I did see that he and I are not so different from each other, and that is a kind of love.'

  I noticed Maram staring at my sword where I had set it down beside me on the grass. I drew the blade from its scabbard then. Alkaladur's silver gelstei, so near the Lightstone, blazed a deep and fiery glorre.

  'And in the end,' Maram said, gazing at it, 'you killed him with that sword. As in a way, if I understand things right, you killed a part of Morjin just before the end with that other sword of yours. But I still don't see the connection between the two. Daj said that Kane told you that the two swords are one and the same.'

  Maram looked up at Kane as if hoping he might shed more light on this matter. But our mysterious friend stood unmoving and staring at the granite cross above Bemossed's grave as if his bright black eyes could bore through solid stone.

  'Kane!' Maram called out to him. 'What did you mean by that?'

  There came no answer from this greatest of all swordsmen who would never take up a steel sword again.

  'Kane!' Maram said once more.

  And then a deep and powerful voice cracked out like a bolt of thunder: 'Do not say that name!'

  The one we had called Kane edged into the circle between Estrella and me. The late sun caught his torn diamond armor, and seemed to set it - and him - on fire.

  'I am Kalkin!' he shouted out. His hand pointed at Bemossed's gravestone and then swept out around the top of the Owl's Hill. 'Kane died here - and long, long past his time. You will not find his body, but you must bury him all the same.'

  He stomped his boot, hard, against the earth. Then he reached out toward Estrella and held his hands over the Lightstone as if warming them before a fire. Without asking my permission, he took my sword from me, though with grace and gentleness, as if he knew that I would not mind.

  'This,' he said, pointing Alkaladur at the Lightstone, 'Kalkin forged so as to focus the power of that. I made it so, long ago, as a spectacle focuses light.'

  In his hands, my sword's silver gelstei blazed brilliantly - though in truth, no more so than it had at my touch, many times. Kane or Kalkin, as I must now call him, suddenly gave the sword back to me. He rested his hand on top of Estrella's head, then told us:

  'Once, long, long ago, from, the end of the Ardun Satra through the Valari and Elijin Satras and even into the present great age, the Maitreyas brought the Lightstone to the universe's worlds. Ashvar, we called the first of these Shining Ones, and the first of the ancient Valari to act as the Maitreya's and Lightstone's Guardian was named Adar. The Maitreyas, through the Lightstone, brought illumination to people and helped them overcome their fear if death. And so helped them to walk the path of the angels. Liljana has spoken of how things were meant to unfold. But what should have happened, in Eluru, as in other universes, was that men and women would awaken to our purpose as stewards of the earth and heavens. Then, through time, even the dirt beneath our feet would shimmer as through an enchantment and the very stars would come alive.'

  Kalkin paused to drink in the Lightstone's radiance through his deep, black eyes. Then he sighed and went on: 'Asangal's fall overturned the natural order of things. When he became Angra Mainyu, he brought a darkness to match the Maitreya's light. To overmatch it, almost - or so I feared for too long. We tried to heal Asangal once, in the time leading to the Battle of Tharharra. We failed. The Amshahs did. Solajin and Set, Varkoth and Varshan and Iojin: all the Galadin, Elijin and Valari led by Ashtoreth and Valoreth. And with them, the Maitreya of that time, Dawud Mansur. Thousands and thousands of years before I made the blade that Valashu holds, we tried to strike the true Alkaladur into Angra Mainyu. Through Dawud, we tried. But Angra Mainyu twisted the Sword of Light into the Fire of Death, and turned it back upon the Amshahs to slay millions.'

  Kalkin stood close to Estrella, looking into the golden cup in her hands as if looking down through countless ages, dark and bright. Then Daj asked the question to which I thought my life must prove the answer: 'But so many angels - and a Maitreya! Why did they fail?'

  'Because,' Kalkin said, 'although most people who stand before the Maitreya and Lightstone are ravished by their radiance, Angra Mainyu has made himself as impenetrable as stone. And so with Yama and Kadaklan and Zun. And Morjin. These, who will not open themselves to the light, must be pierced by it - straight to the heart. And that is why I forged the sword that Valashu holds, to strike Alkaladur true and deep.'

  As I raised up my bright sword to the sun, Kalkin told of what had happened here at the top of the Owl's Hill: at a crucial moment in history, millions of beings across the stars - including even the Seven and my companions - had fired the furnaces of their hearts and forged anew the Sword of Love. This great soul force they had passed to Estrella, who gathered it within the infinite golden hollow of the Lightstone and then poured it into me.

  'On the day of the battle,' he said. 'Master Matai tells us that the stars and planets perfectly aligned with Ea. But this world had to await another conjunction, too: the Lightstone had to find its way into the hands of the Great Maitreya - and one who could wield the Silver Sword had to find the way to strike Morjin.'

  Daj thought about this for a moment, then asked 'But why couldn't Estrella wield the Lightstone and Val's sword? She is the Maitreya! If Val found a way to love Morjin, couldn't she?'

  'So she could have, lad,' Kalkin said. 'But still she could not have wielded Val's sword. It was made for the hands, and heart, of a warrior.'

  'But you are a warrior! Kane was. The greates
t warrior who has ever been! Why couldn't he wield the very sword that he had made?'

  Kalkin stood gazing down at Morjin's gray headstone. Then he said: 'Because Kane could never have opened his heart to the Red Dragon.' 'But Val could!'

  'Yes,' Kalkin said, looking at me. 'Indeed, he could. Val is not the source of the true Alkaladur, but in him the valarda is strong. His blood burned the same as Morjin s blood, and so he knew how and where to strike. Too, he is the descendent of Adar, and therefore fated to be a Guardian of the Lightstone. A true warrior, of the spirit, and thus far greater than Kane.'

  He smiled his old, savage smile, and his white teeth flashed in the sunlight. Then he bowed his head to me and called out: 'He is Valamesh, King of Swords!'

  For what seemed a long while, he gazed at me, and my other friends did, too. I listened to the roaring of a lion out on the steppe and the wind whispering through the grasses from out of the west. I stared at the thousands of stones pushing up from the steppe, and I thought: I am the King of Swords, yes. And I will never have to slay another man again!

  Then our talk turned toward the difficult days that lay ahead of us, in Tria and in lands across Ea. Finally, with the sun melting a golden-red across the far horizon, Liljana stood up and invited us all to eat dinner together. Everyone joined her in making the short journey back down the hill and across the battlefield to my pavilion near the river - almost everyone. For Atara, still sitting next to me, clasped my hand in hers, and asked to remain a few more moments.

  'Val,' she said to me when we were alone, 'I am blind now, but I think I was even blinder when I had my vision. I saw you kill Morjin a million times! And a million times more, I saw you dead. But never - never! - that you would return to me!'

  I pressed my fingers to her wrist, and felt the blood pulsing there. And I told her, 'I had to return. Life is ... so sweet.'

  'And so sorrowful, too. I never knew, until the terrible, terrible moment after you came back, at the end of the battle, how hard it must have been for you to bear the valarda all these years,'

  I touched my lips to her wrist, then said to her, 'But it was a joy, even more. Do you know what it is like to sit beside your beloved and feel every sweet and good thing inside?'

  'Oh, Val,' she said, pulling my hand up to her mouth to kiss my fingers, 'I almost do!'

  I looked down at the glowing tents of the armies still encamped by the river. And I said, 'Tomorrow we'll leave for Tria. Who knows what we will find there? Not all the Alonians have acclaimed me, and it might be hard to persuade their countrymen that a Valari should sit on Alonia's throne.'

  'You,' she said, squeezing my hand, 'could persuade almost anyone of almost anything.'

  'Could I persuade you of what I have dreamed of since the moment I first saw you? The King of Swords, they call me. The king needs a queen.'

  'The Queen of Alonia,' she said.

  Her face fell grave and bitter. She had always held a troubled love for her father. King Kiritan, and for his people, and she must have wondered if the Alonians really would accept his daughter as their queen.

  'Are you suggesting a marriage of -expedience?' she asked me.

  'No - you know I am not,' I told her. And then, 'Only a marriage of the heart.'

  'But I can't marry at all now, no matter what my heart might wish.'

  'Why not? A hundred men you set out to slay in battle, and you have fulfilled that vow. You are free.'

  'Am I free from this?' she said, touching her fingers to the white cloth binding her face.

  'Only if you want to be,' I said, resting my fingers there, too. Then I laid my hand on her belly and asked her, 'And what of this? What if you are carrying our child?' 'What if I am?'

  'Have you seen that, Atara? You must have - you saw almost everything.'

  'Perhaps I did. But now I can see nothing.'

  I tried to feel through her leather armor and the flesh beneath for that tiny seed of life that might be quickening inside her. But no matter what Kalkin had said about the valarda being strong in me, I did not have that power.

  'In the Valley of the Sun, you promised to marry me,' I told her. I took out the handkerchief enfolding a single strand of one of her golden hairs, and I pressed it into her palm. 'It is time.'

  'Is it, truly?' she asked, squeezing the handkerchief.

  'Will you marry me?' I asked her again.

  Now she pressed her hand on top of mine. She turned her face toward the north, perhaps orienting herself by the warmth of the setting sun's rays upon her cheek. I thought that she must be listening to the wind - and perhaps for a faint pulse of life from within her womb.

  'I would love to marry you,' she said. 'So much that I almost can't bear it.'

  Then she shook her head sadly and added, 'But I just don't know if it really is the right time. Let us go to Tria, and we shall see.'

  She kissed me then, and fire leaped through me, but we did not lie together as we had before the battle. If she would not marry me, after all, then such ecstasy would all too soon become a torment. But if she did consent to be my queen, we would have the rest of our lives to return to our star and dance beneath its light. Until we reached Tria, I would have to content myself with this bright and beautiful hope.

  Chapter 26

  Historians would record that on the tenth day of Ashvar in the year 2815 of the Age of the Dragon, the victorious army of King Valamesh entered the City of Light. It should have been a radiant moment of bells ringing and people rejoicing in the streets. But it was not.

  The Red Dragon had visited all his fire and wrath upon Ea's oldest human habitation. His soldiers had almost completely razed three quarters of the city, putting to the torch anything constructed of wood. They had used a stonecrusher to shatter granite houses to rubble and great buildings, too: the Tur-Tisander; the Tower of the Morning Star; the Old Sanctuary of the Maitriche Tern; the Hastar Palace; the Sarojin and Eluli Bridges - and many many other structures. The wall surrounding the city, they had smashed in several places. From the Poru River west, past the once-great Varkoth Gate and then north toward the Manwe Gate, the whole wall lay in ruins. The docks along the river, both its east and west banks, had been reduced to a broken black char. Miraculously, however, one of the greatest works of architecture ever cast up on Ea remained unharmed. The Star Bridge - also called the Golden Band - still spanned the Poru in a single, glorious arch made of living stone. Perhaps Morjin's stonecrusher had no power to pierce to the heart of this marvelous substance, fabricated during the great Age of Law. Or perhaps Morjin, with time pressing at him, had felt himself forced to march from the city before he could wreak his full vengeance upon her.

  On the day we entered the city, the foul weather of late autumn moved in over Tria from the Northern Ocean in a mass of gray rain clouds that would block out sight of the sun for days on end. Then too, the Trians would not easily come to welcome a Valari as their High King. King Kiritan had once told me that I might marry Atara when I brought the Lightstone into his hall. This I had once done but too late for Alonia's great king to give me his daughter's hand, as one of Morjin's creatures had murdered him. Even if King Kiritan had lived, however, he could not have presided over any such union within his hall for Morjin had reduced the huge Narmada Palace - and all the buildings on its grounds - to broken bits of stone. With some regret and much reluctance, I ordered my army to encamp there, at the top of the highest of Tria's seven hills. The Trians, I reasoned, had become used to casting their gazes in that direction to behold the seat of Alonia's power and glory. It might comfort them to see that Ea's High King, although an outlander from Mesh, had at least restored law and order.

  With winter soon coming on, both were badly needed in a place that had fallen nearly into lawlessness. And even more, the Trians - those who hadn't fled the ruins of their city - required food, shelter, clean water and the other necessities of life. Too many of them shivered beneath crude coverings of animal hides draped over blackened poles as their only pro
tection against Ashvar's icy rains. The cries of babies wailed out day and night from these acres of squalid half-tents as their mothers' milk dried up. Long before spring, I feared, many men, women and children would begin starving to death.

  'So it must have been in Surrapam after the Hesperuks devastated it,' Maram said to me late in Ashvar as we stood on the scorched grass of the palace grounds looking out over the city. 'I've always regretted having to flee that poor land and leaving the Surrapamers to such a fate.'

  I had, too, and so before King Thaddeu had marched away from the Detheshaloon, I had made him promise to send aid to Surrapam to repair a part of the damage wrought by his father's murderous ambition. All Ea's people, now, I told Maram, would have to help each other.

  Toward that end, I asked Lord Harsha to oversee the rebuilding of Ea's docks. This practical farmer and proud warrior had a great talent for dealing with almost anything of the material world. He sent his quartermasters galloping across the countryside outside the city to locate supplies of lumber. Soon, along both the Poru's muddy banks, the sound of saws tearing through wood ripped out into the cold, wet air. The new quays and docks, smelling of sap and tar, took form and pushed out into the river. Then bilanders and barks and other sailing ships made their way in from the sea and past the rocky island of Damoom to tie up in Tria's new harbor. They came from Delu, the Elyssu, Nedu and even faraway Thalu, and brought with them grain, oil, salt, furs, iron, wood - and a thousand other needful things. King Kurshan, still encamped with his warriors and the other Valari at the heart of the city, nevertheless managed to get word to his kingdom's people that the Lagashuns should send out a small fleet of ships to Tria. That did not prove so grand or impossible a venture as sailing through the waters of the Northern Passage and up to the stars. But the sacks of barley in the holds of the Lagashun ships kept many from starving - and that seemed a miracle enough.