Flowingness: This desperate fight of guards screaming and hacking and spinning about had a logic and pattern that was not mine to control. But as in a storm at sea, there was a still point around which all the winds of violence whirled, and this quiet place was inside of me. And so I became one with the pattern of the battle, moving among men like water, always flowing down the red channels of death toward the great Red Dragon whose name was Morjin.
As Kane and my other, friends battled beside me and guarded my back, I fought my way closer to him. Now only two tall guards, aiming spears at me, stood between us.
I looked past them and locked eyes with him; he waited to slash his sword into me.
His snarl of rage promised endless torments, but he no longer had the power of illusion to make me feel them, nor would he ever again. His hideousness stunned me.
Now that we were so near each other, I knew that he didn't really smell roses as his illusions suggested. Rather, he gave off the sick reek of fear, fouler than a bloody flux, putrid as death. It hit like the blow of a war hammer deep into my belly. My bones ached with the urge to destroy this twisted being. From the circle of the carved stone beneath us came the gurgle of me blood of many dead men being sucked down the drain of the dragon's mouth; grounded out like a roaring from deep inside the mountain itself.
'Morjin!' I cried out even as I cut my way through these last two guards.
And his cry joined mine in echoing from the cold stone of the hall, 'Valari!'
We crossed swords then, and my greater fury bore him back into the guards massed about him. The sharp edge of a halberd slammed into the mail covering my side, but I scarcely felt it. A spear thrust at my face, and I pulled back my head to let it slip harmlessly past a couple of inches from my eyes. I raised back my sword.
'Val!' From on top of the throne, Atara's strong, clear voice rang out like a bell through the hall. 'You mustn't kill him!'
I suddenly remembered the prophecy that the death of Morjin would be the death of Ea.
'Val.'
It was said by some that Morjin was the finest swordsman on Ea. And perhaps he was. But now his hatred of me and the rigidness of his lust to take my head betrayed him. I felt his murderous intentions deep in my throat, and ducked beneath the vicious slash of his sword at the last moment. And then, rising quickly, I saw my chance. I thrust my sword over the shoulder of a quickly closing guard into Morjin's neck. It was a terrible wound, a mortal wound - but it failed to kill him.
'His fate is yours,' Atara called to me. 'If you kill him, you kill yourself!'
'I don't care!' I cried out.
I knew what she said was true. I stood in the land of death with all the men I had slain. If I now killed Morjin, this great immortal being with whom I was connected by the poison in my blood and the dark weave of fate, I would never leave it. Already, with the muscles and veins of Morjin's neck ripped open into a bloody hole, I could barely stand, barely see. Again, I raised back my sword.
'Val, if you kill yourself, you kill me!'
Atara's warning seemed to crack the stone of the mountain and stop the earth itself from turning. I suddenly knew something else: that Atara's blinding had shocked her to a wholly new level of scrying. Thus, even though eyeless, she had been able to
'see' to fire her arrows into Morjin's guards. I sensed that she was seeing things both far and near in space and time. And now she fired a different kind of arrow into me.
Even as I hesitated and Morjin's guards closed in and came between us, she called out that she loved me more than life. If I died, she told me, she would die, too.
Her words tore open my heart. How much more must this beautiful, tortured woman be made to lose? I looked through the ring of guards to see Morjin choking on his blood and gasping for breath. His eyes closed even as his guards tried desperately to bear him back away from me.
'Atara,' I whispered.
My sword lowered as I cast a terrible look at the nearby guards to warn them away from me. I knew that I couldn't kill Morjin. It was the strangest and bitterest turning of fate that out of compassion for the one I most loved, I must spare Morjin's life.
'Damn it Val!' Kane thundered from my right. 'You're letting him get away!'
He started after the mass of guards, many fewer in number now who were bearing Morjin's gravely wounded body toward the southwest corner of the room. There, one of his guards had finally managed to open the door to his chambers. I suddenly grabbed Kane's arm and looked into his furious black eyes. I'd had enough of killing for one day.
'Damn you!' Kane said again. 'If you can't kill him, I will!'
He wrenched his arm free from my grip to pursue Morjin. He ran across the hall, savagely cutting down the few guards who tried to stop him. I ran after him. By the time I reached his side, however, the guards and remaining priests had succeeded in dragging Morjin through the open doorway. A dozen guards stood in front it, 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.'
He drew himself up as straight as a king and pointed his sword at the door to Morjin's chambers. And a single, terrible cry broke from his throat like thunder and shook the hall:
'KALKIN!'
'Do you hear that, Morjin! My name is Kalkin, and I've come to return you to the stars!'
It hurt my ears to hear him shout this name; it hurt my heart. As the hall fell silent again, we all looked at him in amazement And then Master Juwain, who had a better memory than any of us, turned to him and said, 'The Damitan Elu speaks of Kalkin.
He was one of the heroes of the first Lightstone quest.'
I suddenly remembered King Kiritan telling of this in his great hall-of how Morjin had led heroes on the first quest, only to fall mad upon beholding the Lightstone and slaying Kalkin and all the others - all except the immortal Kalkamesh.
As Master Juwain began recounting this ancient tale, Kane shook his sword at him and cut him off. He said, 'I've warned you that many of these ancient histories do not tell true. Morjin never led that quest. And he did not kill Kalkin, as you can see.'
'I don't know what I see,' Master Juwain said, looking at him strangely. 'If you're not Kalkamesh, then whatever happened to him?'
'I happened to him!' Kane said. 'Do you understand? After the first quest, Kalkin became Kalkamesh. And an age later, after the Sarburn, when Kalkamesh cast Alkaladur into the sea, he became Kane, do you understand?'
As I looked down at my sword, my amazement deepened. And then I squeezed the Lightstone more tightly in my hand as I asked him, 'But if you are really Kalkin, didn't the touch of this cup bestow upon you immortality?'
Kane, or the man that I had known by that name, began pacing about like a caged tiger as he cast quick, ferocious glances at the doors of the hall. He suddenly stopped and snarled out 'Listen, damn you, and listen well - we haven't much time.'
He stared down at the blackish blood pooled on the floor as if looking far into the past. Then he looked up and said, 'Once there was a band of brothers, a sacred band.'
He nodded at Master Juwain and went on, 'We were not of any of your Brotherhoods; ours was much older. So, much older, much more glorious, I, you -
you can't understand .. .'
From beyond the hall's western gate came a pounding as of many boots against stone. We all pressed closer to Kane to hear what he had to tell us.
'I will say their names, for they should be heard at least once in every age,' Kane said. 'There were twelve of us: Sarojin, Averin, Manjin, Balakin and Durrikin. And Iojin, Mayin, Baladin, Nurijin and Garain.' 'That's only ten,' Maram pointed out.
'The eleventh was myself,' Kane said. He pointed at the door to Morjin's chambers.
'And you know the name of the twelfth.'
Now many voices shouted from beyond the hall's eastern doors. I knew that we should be searching for the secret passage that Liljana had spoken of. But the gleam of my sword, in whose silver I saw reflected the Lightstone, gave me to understand that it was somehow more important to listen to Kane.
'We came to Tria early in the Age of Swords,' Kane told us. 'So, it was a savage time, even worse than this. Manjin was killed in a Sarni raid. Mayin was murdered
on the Gray Prairies looking for clues as to where Aryu had taken the Lightstone.
Nurijin, Dunikin, Baladin, and Sarojin, Balakin, too, and then even Iojin, sweet beloved Iojin - all killed. All except Garain and Averjin, who set out with Morjin and Kalkin on a ship captained by Bramu Rologar to seek the Lightstone.'
Kane paused to stare at the cup that I held, and then continued, 'And find it we did.
The Lightstone was made to be found. But on the voyage back to Tria, Morjin enlisted the aid of Captain Rologar and his men to kill Averin and Garain. So, and Kalkin, too. But Kalkin was harder to kill, eh? So, he killed Captain Rologar and four of his men and damned himself, do you understand? He killed, in violence to his soul, killed men, before Morjin stabbed him in the back and cast him into the sea.'
Now, beyond the hall's northern door, came a clamor as of shields banging together.
I knew that I, or all of us, should begin cutting arrows out of the dead in the event that Atara miraculously regained her second sight.
Instead, I nodded at Kane and asked him, 'But how did Kalkin live to tell such a tale?'
'The dolphins saved him. They were friends with men, once upon a time.'
'But that still doesn't explain Kalkin's immortality,' I pointed out.
Master Juwain, ever the student of history, caught Kane's eyes and said, 'You've recounted that Kalkin and his band of brothers came to Tria early in the Age of Swords. But the first quest took place late in that age, didn't it?'
'So,' Kane said, his eyes flashing, 'so.'
'Hundreds of years later,' Master Juwain said. 'But if Kaikin and Morjin, and the others as well, lived all that time, then they didn't gain their immortality by touching -'
'The Lightstone has no such power!' Kane suddenly shouted, cutting him off.
'Haven't I made that clear?'
'Then how,' Master Juwain asked, 'did Kalkin become immortal?'
'The way that men do,' Kane told htm. 'By becoming more than men.'
It was as if a cold wind had fallen down from the nighttime sky and found the flesh along the back of my neck. A shiver, like a lightning bolt made of ice, ran up and down my spine. I stood staring at Kane waiting for him to say more.
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