The Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  AIYIYARIII!

  But others proved more vulnerable to Morjin’s murderous voice. In Hesperu, his droghul had been able to direct it at only one man at any moment; now I feared that the real Red Dragon might find a way to strike down half my army. His breath seemed to burn out like thunder and fire. It fell upon Sar Kanshar, Sar Iandru and Jurald Evar, formed up in front of me. Sar Kanshar, maddened, threw himself onto the lance of Jessu the Lion-Heart, sitting next to him. Then Sar Iandru and Jurald Evar plunged from their horses to the ground, screaming as they grabbed at their chests. So did Manathar the Bold and Sar Jurgarth and a dozen other knights. And all the while Morjin’s voice built louder, deeper and even more full of spite.

  AIYIYARIII!

  Soon, I thought, as I sweated and bled and fought to breathe, Morjin would slay all of us. His army, I feared, must be about to break mine. How long could Maram stand against a great dragon that could turn circles in the air and swoop down upon him vomiting out fire? How long could my knights bear up, here at the top of the hill, once the Red Knights had completed their encirclement of us and added the killing power of their swords and lances to Morjin’s voice of death? I suddenly despaired that I could not use the Lightstone to slay our enemies …

  And then, as from another world, I heard Alphanderry’s voice rising in song above the crucifier’s howl, filling the air above the hilltop. While we had stood tortured by the power of Morjin’s black gelstei, Estrella and Daj had ridden up between my massed knights toward me, followed by Liljana and Alphanderry, and the Seven. They appeared to be untouched by the killing sound of Morjin’s hatred. Alphanderry sat on top of his horse facing Morjin, and this strange, beautiful being who had been born in Galda and reborn in one of the earth’s Vilds, chanted out a beautiful music.

  Kane moved his horse closer to Alphanderry. His face had lost its savage lines and taken on almost an innocence. He seemed to drink in Alphanderry’s song with his ears and his heart as if it were elixir recalling him to his youth. Something, with the weight of the whole world, moved inside him.

  Alphanderry’s throat and golden lips formed no words, but only the most pure and powerful of tones. His song rang out like millions of perfectly attuned bells. It resonated with the varicolored crystals that Abrasax and the Seven held vibrating in the palms of their hands; the great gelstei picked up the sound of Alphanderry’s voice and gave it back to the world, amplified a thousandfold. The melody that he summoned from some shimmering and infinite source built ever higher, deeper and sweeter until it drowned out Morjin’s death voice and utterly negated it. For Morjin screamed out all his hate of the world, while Alphanderry poured forth precisely the opposite. And so, as Morjin glared at Alphanderry in a wrath of bitterness, the golden minstrel sang out joyously, even as I imagined the Ieldra must once have sung the planets and stars into creation.

  There is a chance! I thought as Morjin fell silent. There must always be a way.

  ‘Now, Val,’ Atara called out to me. ‘Give the Lightstone to Estrella.’

  Estrella had ridden up close to me but she sat frozen in her saddle, gazing at Bemossed. The way she looked at him nearly tore out my heart. I felt her longing and love, and something more, a deep, driving desire that he should return to life. And even deeper, a kind of dream that a part of Bemossed always would live, as did some inextinguishable essence within the rippling grasses and the bloodstained rocks beneath the cross, for that was how she saw the world. I wondered then if the Lightstone could be used to revive Bemossed? Could the Seven, through their gelstei, find their way into the center of the Cup of Heaven and release its nearly infinite powers?

  I called to her, and Estrella tore her gaze from away from her murdered friend. A great change had come over her. It was as if she stood fearless before a burning, infinite sea.

  When the moment comes

  To claim the Lightstone.

  Inside her heart, I thought, she wakes. In looking at Estrella then, she seemed to exult in all life’s beauty – and in its horror, too. I suddenly remembered thousands of impressions and acts, like seeds of light, that Estrella had planted in me over long years of struggle, terror and war, her quick, wild eyes which saw so much and so deeply. On top of her little pony next to me, she radiated a beauty like that of a star. For the first time, I saw her not as a girl but a lovely young woman. I could almost feel her calling the Lightstone to her. In this silent song of her soul, as clean and natural as the wind, I sensed no hunger for fame or power, or even any desire, for herself. Rather, I thought, she saw the Lightstone as a part of herself, like an arm or an eye or a hand.

  ‘So,’ Kane said, his eyes blazing. ‘So.’

  Then Master Juwain, for once dwelling in the knowingness of his heart rather than the strife of his head, nodded to me.

  ‘I agree,’ Abrasax said from behind him.

  ‘And I,’ Master Matai said. ‘Give her the cup.’

  An incandescence of flame filled the sky above the Hill of Fire. What, I wondered, could even a Maitreya do against a dragon and all the forces of the Great Beast who had unleashed it?

  As I reached out to set the Lightstone into Estrella’s hand, it seemed that all time and history was an arrow streaking straight toward one moment and one place.

  NOOOOOO!

  The moment that her fingers touched the golden cup, a dazzling radiance began pouring from it. Like a fountain it streamed straight up into the sky. It fell into the whirling blackness as water into a hole, and suddenly the great vault of the heavens grew clear and blue again.

  Then the radiance began pouring from Estrella. It swelled out like a ball of fire that did not burn, until both Estrella and the cup itself seemed to disappear within. Brighter and hotter it grew, like the sun, until I thought it might incinerate the whole top of the hill and all who stood upon it.

  And then the blazing splendor grew utterly clear, like the air on top of a mountain. Estrella came back into view, sitting quietly on her horse. She seemed the same happy being that she had always been, but something more, too, for her face and every particle of her radiated a deep and inextinguishable light. With her eyes so bright and open, she seemed utterly awake, utterly aware – and at one with the whole world and even all the terrible things taking place on the battlefield.

  Kane suddenly cried out to me, ‘Val! Your sword!’

  He pointed at Alkaladur, which I held shining in my hand. His eyes lit up as if he suddenly remembered why he had been born.

  ‘Look!’ he shouted. ‘Look – and you will see the lines that I inscribed there!’

  The fiery glyphs burned into my sword appeared exactly the same as I had seen them in the Vild:

  With his eye of compassion

  He saw his enemy

  Like unto himself

  Then, in the brilliance streaming out of the cup in Estrella’s hand, the last three lines suddenly flared out and burned themselves into my mind:

  And he knew love

  And his enemy

  Was vanquished

  ‘No!’ I shouted out. ‘It cannot be!’

  Morjin, thirty yards from me and protected by lines of his Red Knights, raised his sword as if to signal someone. On the east side of the hill, Count Ulanu signaled back to him that his Yarkonan cavalry was almost ready.

  ‘It must be!’ Kane shouted back to me. ‘And you must find the way.’

  ‘No – there is no way! How can you, of all men, ask this of me?’

  Kane made no answer to this. He nudged his horse close to Estrella. He gazed at her for an endless moment and at the Lightstone she held close to her chest. Then she reached out to touch her fingers to the lids above Kane’s black, blazing eyes. I felt the golden cup’s radiance pouring into him like a river of light. It seemed to soothe the burning deeps of him and yet also to vasten him, his eyes and his hands and his great heart, every fiber of his body and the very sinews of his soul. I could almost hear the chains that had bound him for so long, with an unbearable pressure, suddenly bu
rst. Then a man who was much more than a man turned his shining face toward me. He had wings, this being did, and he laughed out with a wild joy that shook the very sky because at last he was free.

  ‘How can you, Kane?’ I said to him again.

  ‘It is not Kane,’ he said, looking at me, ‘who asks you.’

  Because I could not bear the brightness of his eyes, I bowed my head to read again the words inscribed into my sword.

  ‘In Hesperu,’ he said to me, ‘you almost found the way. But you held back.’

  ‘Yes – because not even the Maitreya could do what you want me to do!’

  ‘Is that so? You can do this thing!’

  ‘No,’ I murmured, staring down at the blade that I clenched in my hand. ‘I am the King of Swords.’

  His face fell fierce as of old and blazed once more with his relentless will. And he told me: ‘And Alkaladur is the Sword of Love!’

  ‘This’ I said, pointing my flaring blade at Morjin, ‘I will strike into the Dragon, if I can!’

  ‘So you will, Valashu Elahad. For the two swords are one and the same.’

  Then he told me why he had forged a bit of silustria into the blade called Alkaladur so many thousands of years ago.

  ‘I have been waiting,’ he said to me, ‘for the one who can wield it.’

  And upon his words, the silver gelstei of my sword blazed a more brilliant glorre than I had ever seen.

  Morjin, behind his massed knights, beheld it, too. I felt waves of dread washing through him. He raised up his sword as he stared out at me.

  ‘All right,’ I finally said to Kane. ‘I will!’

  But I did not know how I could do such an impossible thing. I thought it the cruelest turning of my life that I, who had hated Morjin so utterly, must now find a way to love him.

  24

  I was not, however, left alone to complete this task. The Seven, assembled near me, held their colored crystals out toward me. Alphanderry had never ceased his marvelous singing, and now the seven great gelstei sang back as if with the voices of the Ieldra themselves. Kane, his face shining like a star, gazed at me with a will toward utter triumph, and I sensed Ashtoreth and Valoreth and the greatest of the Galadin looking out through his brilliant eyes. Liljana and Daj, too, seemed to know what must be done. Atara sat on top of her red mare as if staring straight into my heart. Her heart beat in perfect rhythm with mine, fast and hard and full of sweet hurt. She could not contain her ardor for me, and for life itself. So it was with Maram, standing on top of a hill a mile away, as he desperately battled a dragon. I knew that he would let loose every bit of fire within him and do even the most loathsome of things in order to save me. As for Estrella, she smiled at me with all the warmth of the sun. She moved closer to me, cupping the Lightstone in her hands. Within its golden hollows gathered the flames passed on by all my friends and many beings, in colors of crimson and orange, yellow and green, blue and indigo and the deepest and brightest of violet.

  ‘You will die, Valari!’ Morjin shouted out to me. ‘Now you will die!’

  Once, outside of a tumbledown cottage in Hesperu, I had held within my grasp the greatest weapon in the universe. Why had I been so afraid to use it?

  Because, I told myself, you fear the same thing Morjin fears.

  I remembered the Elijin queen, Ondin, advising me that I must wish for Morjin’s healing and all good things for him – he, who was the worst man I had ever known! Such a desire, I knew, if it could be summoned at all, must come from my heart. It must take life not only as a force, conscious and willed, but as a feeling as poignant as breath and as urgent as the blood burning through my brain and every part of my body. But I could not feel such a thing for anyone unless I opened myself to feeling my way into him.

  But he is all foulness and filth! I thought. He is vomit and pus and poison

  ‘Be strong!’ Kane called out to me. ‘Strong as silustria, I say!’

  He grasped hold of my arm, and I felt ten million years of his will to triumph against the most terrible of foes streaming into me.

  He is a torturer! I thought, staring at Morjin. A crucifier, a blood-drinker, a murderer!

  I could not open myself to the valarda without, in some way, finding myself alive and aware within another. And worse, letting him live and draw breath within me. But how could I ever do such a thing?

  Because, I told myself, I am a murderer, too.

  Inside myself, like everyone, I had always held a dragon’s egg waiting to hatch. And I fought with all the fierceness of my breath to keep it from eating the best part of me alive.

  With his eye of compassion

  He saw his enemy…

  In looking at Morjin across a few dozen yards of the battlefield’s bloodstained grass, what did I see? That long ago before the Dragon had consumed him, this hateful and hideous man had been born a gentle soul – the gentlest and sweetest. And that, with all his heart, he wanted this bright, self-murdered being to be reborn.

  But he cannot bear it! That which he most desires, he most abhors.

  Then Estrella, with Bemossed’s torn body still hanging from the cross above us, held out the Lightstone to me. The little cup seemed to draw down the sun’s golden radiance and the blueness of the sky with an ingathering of colors. Stars shone there, too, in all their dazzling millions. Their radiance built, hotter and ever brighter, like unto the very splendor of creation itself. It was said that the Lightstone could hold the whole universe inside, but I did not know how much longer it could contain this brilliant angel fire.

  ‘Strike, Val!’ Kane called out to me. ‘Only you know the way!’

  What is it to love a man? Surely this: that your blood interfuses with his blood, in fire. That despite his terrible crimes, you want with all your heart and the force of your spirit for him to live as he should have lived, and all should live: bright, joyous and whole.

  ‘Valari!’

  Then Estrella, through the Lightstone, poured into me a resplendent and indestructible force. To call it love was to say everything about it, and yet too little. It was the shining hope of countless Galadin, Elijin and Star People watching and waiting on their spinning worlds throughout the universe; it was Atara’s dream of bearing our child, and the very breath of the Ieldra, too. Within its overflowing radiance there gathered the primeval impulse of the stars to shine upon each other and call all of creation to a vaster and deeper life. It held a promise that no man or woman lived in vain and that all would be remembered and redeemed. And that no one, not even the most vile and estranged, could ever be alone.

  ‘Valari!’ Morjin cried out to me again.

  I could not keep within myself this terrible and beautiful force. The sound of spears clashing against shields and men screaming out their death throes made it burn ever brighter; the agony in Morjin’s voice ripped it out of my heart. Straight through my blood it blazed and into my hand. As with other swords, I knew I must wield it truly, cutting apart Morjin’s shield, beating back his sword, driving it through armor. Alkaladur, the bright length of silustria that Kane had forged so long ago, shimmered with a perfect and clear light beyond glorre. Then the true Alkaladur, forged by the angels in the heart of the stars, streaked out like lightning and struck deep into Morjin.

  The great Red Dragon fell silent as he twisted about with a bone-jerking violence on top of his horse. He coughed and gasped and let go of his sword. He let go of others’ minds then, too, for Zahur Tey and many Red Knights near him cried out in dismay as Morjin lost the power of illusion over them. Horrible he was to behold, with his blood-red eyes and dead gray skin, and Zahur Tey’s face screwed up in disgust. And yet something beautiful dwelled within Morjin, too, like a candle lit up inside a dark cave.

  ‘Valashu,’ he said to me.

  With the angel fire still streaming from my sword and the clangor of battle splitting the air, I heard his voice like a whisper upon the wind. It held all the pain in the world and a plea that I might somehow take it from him. Yea
rs fell away from him then. His hideous face relaxed and softened, and flashes of gold brightened his eyes. I could almost see him as the beautiful being that he had once been: a man who would wish that hate should leave him and Atara be healed and deserts made green again. I felt within him a longing to call me his brother, as brothers we truly were. He seemed to want to hold out his hand to me.

  There is a way, I wanted to tell him. There is always a way.

  Then he looked deep into my eyes, and he cringed, as if looking into the sun. He gnashed his teeth together as he shook his head at me.

  Why, I asked the wind, can he not bear it?

  Fear, like a drink of poison, seized hold of him. His face tightened and began burning with his old malice, toward me and everything that might forge a bond with others and weaken him. No man, I thought, could resist the sword that I pushed through his heart. But the Red Dragon, through the force of his will, twisted it and transmuted this healing light into the most terrible of flames.

  ‘No!’ he shouted out to me. ‘I will not let you make me your ghul!’

  Then one of his knights handed him back his sword, and Morjin pointed it at me – or perhaps Estrella – as his head lifted backward and he screamed out into the air:

  VALARI! AIYIYARIII!

  He kicked his spurs into his horse’s flank, and blood reddened the beast’s white hide. His horse leaped forward with a terrible scream; so did Zahur Tey’s mount next to Morjin, and so with Salmelu, and hundreds of other Red Knights. On the east side of the hill, Count Ulanu led a charge against the warriors I had deployed in a circle protecting Bemossed.

  I pushed at Estrella’s horse, urging her closer to the cross from where Liljana was calling to her and Daj. There, too, Master Juwain and the Seven, with Alphanderry, took shelter behind my knights.