Diamond Warriors

Chapter 23

I could barely keep seated on top of my horse; only Altaru's great hold on life, it seemed, kept me from plunging down to the bloodstained grass and joining Bemossed wherever he had gone. The world before me and everything in it fell black; I had to fight just to go on breathing.

NOOOOOOOO!

The scream inside me, that was me, seemed to go on forever. Then I felt Kane's iron fingers clamping around my arm and pulling at me.

'Let it pass through you!' he said to me. 'Let it go into your sword!'

I raised up Alkaladur then, and I felt all my anguish emptying into it. I swept it out in front of me. The sound of men screaming drove back the blackness filling my eyes, and I beheld an incredible sight: on the hill above us, the Red Knights were clapping their hands to their chests or heads and crying out in their own agony. Many dropped their lances and swords; some fell from their horses and lay writhing on the ground. Closer to Morjin, the Blues howled in pain and weakness, unable to lift up their axes. Just above them, at the foot of the cross, Morjin stood as if stunned by the blow of a hammer. He blinked his red eyes as the lance slipped from his hand and Bemossed's blood dripped down and spattered off his helm. Then he staggered about like a man drunk on too much wine.

'Now is our chance!' Kane shouted out.

Through the waves of grief sickening me, I saw that we did have a chance — but to do what? With Bemossed dead, there could be no hope of ever defeating Angra Mainyu.

'Now, Val — now!'

I nodded my head and clamped my hand more lightly around the hilt of my sword. Then I led forward straight into the Red Knights massed in front of us. I cut down everyone in my path; few managed even to raise up their weapons to defend themselves. My Guardians, those who hadn't been stricken too badly by Bemossed's death, followed. As for Kane, beside me, I had never seen him fight with such a furious will to strike his sword into men and murder them. His black eyes blazed with the heat of madness. He had no pity for the enemy, for they had none for him, or us. With every yard that we battled on, higher up the hill, it seemed that the Red Knights recovered a little more and coun-terattacked us with an increasing savagery and desperation. But it was not enough. Again and again, Kane's sword flashed out to rip through flesh, and so it was with mine. We, and the warriors who rode with us, worked a slaughter upon any and all who opposed us. We slew the Red Knights still seated on their horses, then mowed down the line of men protecting Morjin. The thirty Blues then flung themselves at Kane and me. Their axes, though, were like lead weights in their hands, and their hands and limbs had lost much of their terrible strength. One of them — a man as thick as a bull — managed to work in close to me and let fall his axe against my leg. But the blow failed to penetrate the diamondi sheathing me, or even break my thigh bone. I killed the man with a quick slash to the side of his bare neck. I had never really understood why the Blues went into battle naked. When they failed to chop down men with their fearsome axes, their enemies might work a horrible butchery upon them, as Kane and I did now: swinging our swords to slit open bellies and split their faces, severing arms and heads, slashing and thrusting and cleaving through their cyanine-tinted skin to cut them to pieces. At last, Kane and I, with the help of Lord Avijan and Joshu Kadar, had killed them all. And there, beneath the bloody cross, stood Morjin.

'To me!' he shouted out. 'To me!'

Around the curve of the hill, to the left, men pushed their horses galloping up toward him. Zahur Tey led fifty Red Knights, and with them rode the Red Priest known as Igasho.

'To me!' Morjin shouted again, this time in my direction. 'Come to me, Elahad, and I will make you my ghul!'

Now Morjin stood up straight and found the strength to draw his sword. I could feel the power returning to him, as pulsing artery fills a limb with life. With Bemossed dead, it seemed that nothing could keep Morjin from wielding the Lightstone to command all the other gelstei — and the world. He thrust this small golden cup out to me as if to seize control of my sword. 'Do not let go!' Kane shouted at me. 'Alkaladur is yours!' It seemed, however, that Morjin hadn't fully recovered or gained enough power to work his will though my sword's silver gelstei. As at the parlay before the battle, he could not make me use my sword to do his evil deeds. And neither could he keep me from wielding it.

And so I called Altaru to charge forward, and in almost a single motion of my bounding horse and my own inflamed body, I leaned out and swept my sword against Morjin's outstretched arm. The blade's silustria, hardest substance on earth, cleaved through a great ruby affixed to the gauntlet protecting Morjin's hand and wrist. I heard it crack, like a lightning bolt. My sword drove down through Morjin's wrist, severing muscles, tendons and bones, and the force of the blow struck off Morjin's hand and sent the lightstone flying from his fingers. I watched in amazement as Kane, coming up quickly, reached out and snatched the golden cup from the air.

'To Lord Morjin!' Zahur Tey called out from twenty yards away as he and his Red Knights charged toward us. 'Protect our king!' Blood spurted from the arteries I had opened at the end of Morjin's arm. He gasped from the shock of it, and staggered. I swung my sword again, this time to kill him, but by some miracle or terrible instinct for survival, he got his sword up in time to parry mine. Steel rang out against silustria, once, twice — and then Zahur Tey came up and pushed his horse almost straight into Altaru. I had to sweep out my sword against Zahur Tey's stabbing lance, or he would have impaled me. And then, with a splintering of wood, immediately to beat back the lances of two other Red Knights as they fell against me, too. I killed one of these with a thrust through the throat, and the other by splitting open his forehead. I turned back toward Morjin then, but it was too late: the Red Knights had closed in on him to protect him and bear him back away from me. I saw Salmelu pull him up onto the saddle of a riderless horse, even as another man twisted a cord around Morjin's arm.

'BEMOSSED!' I cried out.

I nudged Altaru over to the foot of the cross, and I reached out to lay my hand on the spike piercing Bemossed's feet. His flesh, exposed to the blazing sun, was still warm. His head hung down upon his chest; I could not bear the sight of his empty eyes. I lamented then that I had lost a friend while all the world had lost a Maitreya.

'Sire!' Lord Vikan shouted at me from ten yards down the hill. He pointed back toward the center of the battlefield. 'They have

broken us!'

I turned to see a great mass of Hesperuk spearmen pushing through a huge fracture in the Alonian and Eannan lines. All our reserves, it seemed, had been thrown in to stop this advancing block of bronze and steel to no avail.

'Lord Kane!' I heard Joshu Kadar call out. His shout drew my attention back to the top of the hill, where the Red Knights protecting Morjin had formed up into a half-circle facing my knights and me. 'Give the cup to King Valamesh!'

It is said that the Lightstone can be all things to all people: a talisman drawing good fortune; a vessel containing the secret of life; a golden mirror showing one's soul. Kane sat on top of his horse, unmoving, as he had remained since taking hold of the Lightstone. He stared at the little cup as if transfixed by its beauty. A radiance shone upon his face, and from deep within. Any of the Red Knights might have fallen against him then and knocked him to the ground. But I did not think they would have been able to tear the Lightstone from Kane's grasp.

'Surrender!' I called out. I pointed my sword at the Red Knights sheltering Morjin. An unspoken truce had befallen the men gathered beneath Bemossed's dead body — I did not know why. 'We have broken your lines! We have dismembered you! And we have the Lightstone!'

I tried to speak these words without laughing in bitterness. For Morjin had broken my lines, and my deepest hope, too. And soon, because he was Morjin, an angel of the Elijin, he would recover from his wound.

'You surrender!' he shouted back at me. The knights ahead of him moved aside so that he could face me. Now on top of his great white horse, he sat up straight as any king, one arm bound

with a bandage while with the other he shook his sword at me.

'We still have four men to every one of yours! And a dragon!'

Although I could not turn away from him just then, a flash of flame from the Hill of Fire down by the river caused me worry that Maram could not last long doing battle against Yormungand.

'And we,' Morjin continued, looking at Kane, 'will take back the Lightstone!'

'No!' Kane shouted at him. 'You will never touch this again!'

Although he feared to charge Kane, Morjin did not shrink from gazing into Kane's terrible eyes. No man, I thought, could match Kane's strength, but Morjin was the Red Dragon, and the claws of his covetousness pulled at the little cup with a dreadful, ripping force. I felt Kane being drawn into something even more terrible than himself. High above us, the whirling blackness grew even blacker. I sensed a door to a deeper darkness begin to open.

'You,' Morjin snarled at him, 'will not keep me from it!'

Then Kane's immense will, like the calling of the earth, pulled him back to the world. He pressed the Lightstone to his lips. Its radiance caused his face to shine like a star. He turned to look me. 'No, not I!' he shouted back to Morjin.

Then he rode closer to me, and gave the Lightstone into my hand. 'You are its rightful guardian,' he told me.

Truly, I was — but who was I to guard it for? And how could I possibly guard it? In looking up at the black hole in the sky about to touch down to earth, I knew that neither I nor Kane nor even the Seven could stop Morjin from opening the door to Damoom, for it was already too late.

But Morjin, now looking up at the sky, too, suddenly cried out: 'I could free him — but I will not! No man is my master! Who should rule the stars? Only he who can command their very light and make it his own! Who is meant to be the Marudin and rule all of the Galadin and Elijin and the other orders? Not the one whom the Galadin defeated and bound like a slave, but only he who has the power.'

For the benefit of the men who followedhim, no less me and mine, he declaimed that he had assembled upon this field an invincible force. He would win the battle, he said, and reclaim the Lightstone for the last time. Then the rightful Lord of Ea would go forth to lead all of Eluru into the Age of Light.

In looking about the war-torn steppe, I feared that he would win the battle. From our vantage on top of the hill, I could see most of the field. On our left flank, it seemed that the enemy's Sarni had pushed back ours, while the heavy cavalry of Uskudar and Hesperu tore into the arrays of knights led by King Hadaru. The Hesperuk phalanxes had cracked open our center, and the Yarkonan battalions had moved up against Ymiru's and Lord Tomavar's men. My Meshians were too busy working their spears and kalamas against these thousands of reinforcements to turn against the Hesperuks, as I had originally planned. On our right, although the warriors of Kaash, Waas and Athar held strong against the great numbers massed before them, the Ikurian horse had nearly overwhelmed King Mohan's cavalry, which were already weakened. Soon, I thought, they would turn our flank, unless Sajagax and his warriors could come to their aid. But I had cause to worry that they too had been decimated.

'Surrender the Lightstone to me!' Morjin shouted. 'Surrender, Elahad, and I will spare all who followed you here!'

The thousands of Red Knights, those my warriors and I hadn't killed, massed behind Morjin and deployed around the curves of the hill. When it came to combat again, I did not see how we could defeat them.

The man for whom I should have guarded the Lightstone could do nothing against Morjin or the atrocities he had wrought. But I could. I could use the Lightstone as Morjin had, to bend men to my will and force them to give me their allegiance. I would persuade some of our enemy's captains and kings to come over to me, and to fall against those who did not. I might even wield the golden cup to strike death into the most willful of my enemies, as Morjin would have done his — but for Bemossed; I would certainly slay Morjin. I would put to the sword all who remained to stand against me, here on this battlefield and across Ea. I would claim dominion over the world, and I would become the King of Swords and Lord of War. But men would call me the Silver Swan, and that name would become more dreaded than the Red Dragon. And all that I did to reorder the realms of men and women to make a paradise on earth, no matter how terrible, would be for those I loved and for Ea. I told myself that I might not fall so far into evil as Morjin had.

NO!

The hardness of the Lightstone hurt my fingers; its brilliance burned my eyes. I ached to keep a grip on it and force from it all that was good and bright and beautiful. Aryu, I thought, must have told himself the same thing when he had slain Elahad and stolen it so long ago.

'Val!' It was Atara's voice. She shouted out my name and jotted me free of the Lightstone's spell. Thirty Manslayers came charging up the hill with the stout Karimah riding in front of Atara, holding the reins of her horse.

How had she come to be here? with a broken-off arrow embedded in the leather armor near her shoulder and a half dozen feathered shafts sticking out of her horse, it seemed that, she must have fought her way behind the enemy's line to this hill. Could it be that the three thousand woman warriors of the Manslayer Society had been reduced to the thirty riding with her?

'Estrella!' she called to me. 'She is the Maitreya!'

I stared at her in astonishment. Her words made no sense to me.

'I have come here to tell you this!' she said, pushing her horse up to me. She fumbled through the air and finally managed to lay her hand on my arm. 'I have seen Estrella, with the Lightstone!' 'But no scryer has ever seen the Lightstone in any vision! Or the Maitreya.'

'But I have!' Atara said. 'But all the Maitreyas have been male. All the prophecies speak of the Maitreya as "he."'

'I don't care about the prophecies! Estrella is the Shining One!'

Morjin, from behind the wall of Red Knights protecting him, glared at Atara with a strange silence. His face seemed a mask of corruption and hate.

'He knows!' Atara suddenly cried out. 'He can see her, and it burns his mind!'

I sat on Altaru, holding my sword in one hand and the Lightstone in the other. Once a time, before I had lost the cup to Morjin, Estrella had often stood in its presence and had even held it in her hands. She had seemed to take as little interest in it as she might a teacup. My sword suddenly flared a bright glorre, and lines from the ancient verse flashed through my mind:

The Shining One

In innocence sleeps

Inside his heart

Angel fire sleeps

And when he wakes

The fire leaps

About the Maitreya

One thing is known:

That to himself

He always is known

When the moment comes

To claim the Lightstone.

A dying scryer had told me that Estrella would show me the Maitreya. Was it possible, I wondered, that a thousand times she had? I felt in my heart that it was true, and all at once it seemed the hardness of the Lightstone that had hurt my fingers fell away; its brilliance that had burned my eyes became an exquisite light that bathed them. The ache of my grip vanished as the image came to me of another hand reaching out with unique power to bring forth from the Lightstone all that was good and bright and beautiful.

'Estrella is coming,' said Atara, 'to claim the Lightstone.' I felt in my heart that it was true, and so did Morjin.

NOOOOO!

From behind the protection of his knights, Morjin screamed at the sky.

Kane had once told me that Morjin kept a black gelstei. But this dark angel kept inside himself dark fires as well, and he now unleashed upon us all the force of his black and bottomless hate:

VALARI! DIE VALARIIII!

Morjin's droghul had assaulted my companions and me with a voice that chilled the blood and froze the limbs unmoving with terror — and killed. This Morjin, it seemed, the real Morjin who had come to earth so long ago, wielded this weapon with an even greater rage. He bellowed out in a voice of death:

DIEIIII! AIYIYARIII!

Something hard as iron struck a blow to my forehead; blood spurted from my nose, and, I feared, my very brains. I felt an acid eating through my stomach into my heart, and I could not breathe. Images came to me, not as memories but as sights and sounds and smells assaulting all my senses and my deepest self: the anguish in my grandmother's eyes as she pulled at the spikes that Morjin's men had driven through her hands; the screams of men dying at the Culhadosh Commons; the stench of hundreds of corpses rotting in the hot Yarkonan sun. I knew that I had to fight off the burning poison of Morjin's malice — either that, or die.

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 pluged 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 burst. 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 lout 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 crudest turning of my life that I, who had hated Morjin so utterly, must now find a way to love him.