'Damn you!' he shouted. He wiped his sleeve across his face and blinked furiously.
He shook the arrow at her and cried out, 'Is this one of the arrows you shot into my son's eyes?'
I stood almost unable to breathe watching the rage flow into Morjin's face as I remembered the deadly accuracy of Atara's arrows in the darkness of the Vardaloon.
'Meliadus,' Atara said clearly for all to hear, 'was a monster.'
'HE WAS MY SON!'
Morjin screamed this so loudly that the rock of the archways three hundred feet above the circle rang with his anguish and wrath. He suddenly reached out with his left hand and grabbed Atara's long hair. He slammed her head back against the standing stone and held it there. And then, with blinding speed, he stabbed the arrow's barbed point into her left eye. It took only a moment for him to rip it free and plunge the bloody steel straight through, the center of her right eye.
I surged forward then to kill as many priests and guards as I could in my rage to get at Morjin. But Kane suddenly grabbed me from behind and wrapped his iron arm around my throat. Maram grabbed my right arm; Liljana held fast to my left. From somewhere behind me, I heard Daj screaming and cursing and gasping out his fear of Morjin, all at once.
Morjin didn't even pause to glance at me. He cast down the bloody arrow. And then, like a bird of prey, like a rabid cat, like the demon he truly was, he fell upon Atara with all his fury and hate. He spat and hissed as he drove his clawlike fingers into her face. He stood fastened to her, shaking and snarling and gouging, pulling ferociously, tearing at her - driving his fingers beneath her brows and tearing out her eyes. He suddenly jumped back and held the bloody orbs up for all to see. Then he crossed over to the brazier and cast these lumps of flesh into the burning coals.
For a long time, it seemed, my world went dark, and I could not see for the terrible burning that blinded my own eyes. A high, hideous scream broke upon the hall. At first I thought it was Atara giving voice to what Morjin had done to her; then I realized that the sound had been torn from deep inside me. When I could finally see again, it was not by virtue of the glowstones' dim light but only the hate that filled my heart and head and utterly possessed me. I looked over at the circle to see Atara shaking and sobbing as she wept blood instead of tears from her reddened eye hollows. Morjin stood holding a cup to her cheek, catching the blood that flowed out of them. More blood - a whole ocean of it, it seemed - flowed off Atara's chin in streams. It fell to the floor and ran through the dark grooves cut into the stone there; it disappeared into the dragon's open mouth like water gurgling down a hole.
Kane's arm was an iron collar bound around my throat; his body behind me was a pillar of stone that I could not break or pull down. And his breath in my ear was the red-hot flame of vengeance: 'Damn Morjin and all his kind!'
Now Morjin stood back from Atara and gazed at her ruined face. He took a drink from the cup that he held in his bloody hands. Then he passed it to Lord Yadom, who likewise drank from it before passing it on to another priest.
With great effort, Atara pulled back her head and oriented it facing Morjin, as if she could smell or sense his presence. Her heart beat with her contempt for him. And then an incredible thing happened. I perceived Morjin as she had, just before her blinding. The mask of illusion was suddenly ripped away from him, and he stood revealed as he truly was: no longer beautiful in face and form, but rather terrible and ghastly to behold. His eyes were not golden at all. They were a sickly red, with pigments of ocher and iron settled into the irises, while the whites were bloodshot as if he was never able to sleep. His pale, mottled skin was likewise disfigured with a webwork of broken blood vessels. There were pouches under his eyes, and much of his limp, grayish hair had fallen out. In the skin that drooped from his neck and in his predatory countenance was a ravenous hunger for vitality and lost love.
I knew that I would never be able to see him otherwise again. As his tongue darted out like a snake's and he licked the blood from his lips, I saw something else: that he had blinded Atara not because of Meliadus but because she had seen through the veil of his most precious illusion and had shown him in the mirror of her eyes what an evil being he truly was. He knows! I suddenly realized. All this time, he has hnown! Somewhere, beneath the lies and trickeries that he crafted for himself and others, lived a man who knew very well the wrong of what he did - and chose to do it anyway. And why? Because people were less than animals to him.
What is hate? It is a black abyss full of fire hotter than a dragon's breath. It is a poison that burns a thousand times as painfully as kirax. It is a black and bitter bile that gathers at the center of one's being, seething to a boil. It is a stabbing pain in the heart, a pressure in the head, a gathering in of all the world's anguish and an overwhelming desire to make another suffer as you have. It is lightning. But not the thunderbolt of illumination, but rather its opposite which maims and burns and blinds. And its name is valarda.
MORJIN!
As he had once promised I would, I struck out at him with the gift that the angels had bestowed upon me. Something very like a thunderbolt of pure, black hate shot out from my heart along the line of my sword and struck his heart. It staggered him.
He gasped as he stared at me in astonishment. He dropped to one knee, gasping and clutching at his chest, even as Kane held me from behind and kept me from collapsing in the sudden agony of what I had done to him.
'Oh, Valari!' Morjin gasped as he struggled to breathe.
I, myself, had stopped breathing. For few moments, I think, my heart stopped beating, too, and I nearly died. And then, as Morjin regained his strength, I felt hate pouring into my limbs again and firing up my being.
'Oh, Valari!' Morjin said again as he stood up and gazed at me. On his pale, fell face was a look of utter triumph. 'That is the last time you'll catch me off-guard. You're stronger than I would have believed, but there's much you have to learn. Shall I show you how it's done?'
So saying, he whirled upon Atara and fixed her with his terrible red eyes. A storm of hate gathered inside him. His heart beat in rhythm with mine. 'No!' I cried.
'Then throw down your sword!'
'No!' I cried again.
'What befalls your woman now,' he said, pointing at her, 'is upon you.'
'No, that's not true!'
'You'll see her die, but not until you've died a thousand times.' And with that, he stepped over to the brazier and removed the glowing pincers.
'Damn you!' I screamed at him.
'Damn you, Valari,for making me do this!' He looked at the pincers' red-hot iron and shouted, 'I'll tear out her vile tongue and roast on the coals! I'll send lepers to ravish her! I'll give her to the rats and let you watch as they eat what's left of her face!'
The thirteen Grays, with their cold eyes and long knives, stood in the circle of death with Morjin waiting to see what he would do. The six priests of the Kallimun looked pitilessly at Atara as they must have many other victims. The hundred guards ringing the circle waited with their swords and spears and axlike halberds. The whole world, it seemed, waited for me to speak or move.
'You must not surrender!' Atara suddenly called to me. She stood tall and brave and eyeless in eternity.
'In a moment, I'll tear out your tongue,' Morjin promised her. 'But first you will call for the Elahad to surrender.'
He took a step closer to her as I gripped my sword more tightly. Once before, in the land of nightmare, he had told me that the valarda was a double-edged sword. He, himself, could now only cut and kill with his. But it haunted him that I might still be able to open myself to others' joys and sufferings. Hating me for the grace that he had long ago lost, he fell into a sickening fury. I sensed that he wanted to test my compassion for Atara. It was his will torture her terribly and for a long time. Because he hated her, yes, but more because he wanted to break me utterly. He wanted me perverted, crushed in spirit, enslaved. He wanted me to kneel before him in the sight of all the men gathered in the ha
ll almost as much as he wanted the Lightstone itself.
'Atara,' I whispered.
What is hate? It is a wall ten thousand feet high surrounding the castle of despair.
Since the moment that Morjin had blinded Atara, I had built this wall higher and higher so that I would not have to know what she really suffered. But now she had turned toward me, and in looking at the blood pooling in her eye hollows and dripping down her cheeks, her face emptied of all hope of that which she most deeply desired, this wall of stone suddenly split asunder as if the earth beneath it had cracked open. And I cried out in the greatest anguish I had ever known, for the love that bound Atara and me together was the greatest I had ever known.
'Hold!' I shouted to Morjin. 'Take me instead of Atara!' The world, I knew, was a place of infinite suffering, infinite pain. In the end I was the weakest of our company.
I could bear Atara's torture much less than she herself. 'Throw down, then!' Morjin called to me, turning away from Atara I shook myself free from Kane, who stared at me, waiting to see what I would do. And I shouted at Morjin, 'First free Atara!' I looked at Master Juwain bound to his stone and at Ymiru pulling with his only whole arm against his chain. 'Free my friends, too. Let them leave Argattha!'
'No,' Morjin said to me. 'First throw down and step forward into our circle, and then I shall do as you ask.'
He stared at me, smiling triumphantly.
'Val, don't do it,' Liljana said to me, pulling on my arm. 'He lies!'
'So, his promise is worth rat dung,' Kane growled out.
I called out to Morjin, 'What surety do we have that you will keep your word?'
'I am King of Ea, and what more surety can there be?' he said. 'It is we who need surety, Valari. How is it to be believed that a proud Valari knight will go willingly to his death with no sword in his hand?'
I knew that he didn't believe that I would give my life in Atara's place, especially if it meant first untold days of hideous torture. And yet, he willed and wanted with every fiber of his being that I should make this surrender. His red eyes filled with a raging bloodlust that was terrible to behold.
How can I do what I must do? I asked myself.
Kane had said that there still might be a chance for us, and now I saw that there was.
But not for me. I might buy my friends' lives with mine. Morjin had given his word before his priests and men, and there! was a chance that he might keep it.
'Val!' Atara called to me.
What is love? It is the warm, healing breath of life that melts the bitterest ice. It is the hot pain of joy in one's heart impossible to quench. It is the fire of the stars that burns clean the soul. It is a simple thing -the simplest thing in the world.
'Atara,' I whispered as I looked at her. Her bloody, mutilated face, I thought, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.'
I stood there facing the circle where Atara and my friends were bound, and my hands sweated to feel the diamonds in Alkaladur's hilt for the last time. There was a sickness in my belly; my chest ached with a crushing pain. Death waited there for me. My old enemy was cold and black and terrifying; it was a terrible emptiness that had no end. It didn't matter. In looking at Atara look toward me, so full of love, so full of light, I suddenly wanted to die for her. I burned with a fierce desire to accept any torment and annihilation in order to keep her living in the land of light.
'Well, Valari?' Morjin called out to me.
I glanced at him and nodded my head. Even if there was only one chance in ten thousand that he would spare Atara and my friends, I had to take it.
And then, even as I bent to lay Alkaladur down upon the dark stone of this vast, dark hall, at the darkest moment of my life, the Bright Sword began shining with an intense radiance that I also felt inside myself. At that moment, the world was strangely full of light. For I, and I alone, suddenly saw the Lightstone everywhere: on top of pedestals and gleaming golden in the recesses of the rocky walls; on the altar near the throne and on tables and even shimmering amidst the red-hot coals in the brazier into which Morjin had cast his offering of flesh. The whole of the throne room blazed with a brilliant golden light. It blinded me to the Lightstone's true presence as surely as my flaws of fear and faithlessness had always blinded me to myself. 'Valari!' Morjin called to me. And then Alkaladur flared silver-white, more brightly than it ever had before. In the mirror of the polished and perfect silustria of my sword, I saw who I really was: Valashu Elahad, son of Shavashar Elahad, who was the direct descendent of Telemesh and Aramesh and all the kings of Mesh going back to the grandsons of Elahad himself. In me still burned the soul of the Valari -
we who long ago had brought the Lightstone to earth. The Valari, I suddenly remembered, were once guardians of the Lightstone, and would someday be again.
'Damn you, Valari, throw down now or I'll take your woman's tongue!'
But what or who were we to guard the Lightstone for? Not for glory or the ending of pain. Not for invulnerability or immortality or power. Not for the victory of the Maitriche Telu or the vengeance of Kane. Nor for great kings such as Kiritan who would give their daughters to triumphant warriors, nor even for wise queens such as the Lady of the Lake. And certainly not for false Maitreyas such as Morjin who would use it to work great evil instead of good.
The Lightstone is for one and one only, I thought. The true Maitreya told of in the great prophecy, the Lightbringer who mill arise from Ea to defeat the Lord of Darkness and lead all the worlds into a new age.
To gain this cup and guard it so that I could place it in the Maitreya's hands was my purpose; it was my deepest desire and fate. What is love? It is the radiance of the One; it is the blazing of the Morning Star in the eastern sky that calls men to wake up. All my life, it seemed, I had worked to polish and sharpen the sword of my soul, rubbing away the rust and honing the steel finer and finer to put on it an exceedingly keen edge. And now, through a love beyond love, with the hand of the One bestowing this final grace, the polishing was at last completed and nothing of myself remained. And yet, paradoxically, everything. And so the true sword was revealed. It cut with an infinitely fine edge and was impossibly bright. I suddenly stood straight and gripped Alkaladur more tightly. And with the deeper sword that the One had placed in my heart, I finally slew the great dragon whose names are Vanity and Pride. The evil of my hate left me. And then both swords, the one that I held in my hand and the other inside me, blazed like suns. The light was so intense that it completely outshone the illusions all around me and made the thousands of Lightstones that I saw simply disappear. And in this luminous state, my eyes finally opened and drank in the sight of the Lightstone.
As the songs had told, it was just a plain golden cup that would easily fit into the palm of my hand. And as Sartan Odinan had told, it still remained in the vast, dark hall where he had set it down thousands of years before. Even as Morjin and his priests shielded their eyes against the sheen of my sword, I looked to the south of the ritual circle at the great throne. And there, on top of the eye of the coiled red dragon that framed the throne, the 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, h
is 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.'
The Lightstone Page 100