Diamond Warriors

Chapter 25

Then Estrella set her hand over my heart, and the pain that pierced me there went away. She touched the wound that Morjin had torn into my cheek; she turned to lay her hands on Maram's charred hand and upon Atara's bloody shoulder and her face. After that, Estrella went among the wounded, touching men's pierced bellies, hacked limbs and smashed heads. Many of these found their wounds suddenly healed; many of the dying, she kept from going over to the land of the dead. But she could not, it seemed, bring anyone back from that mysterious place, as she had me. Even a Maitreya, I thought, could work only so many miracles. And with tens of thousands of men and women lying upon the grass, it must have broken her heart that she had the power to help only a very few of them.

We began the burials that day. With such a great death coming upon the steppe, the sky above the battlefield filled with clouds of carrion birds. I had to ask Sajagax to set his warriors driving off the lions, wolves and jackals that would have taken away those who had fallen. The Sarni, of course, preferred such a fate and found great honor that their bodies should nourish other living things. But even the Sarni saw that too many of their warriors had died and could not be disposed of in such a way. And so they worked as hard as anyone, from the Dragon's army or my own, digging down through the steppe's tough sod. We arrayed the graves in ever widening rings of mounded earth and stone that spread out down the gentle slopes of the Owl's Hill. Near the top, we buried Morjin where he had died. And at the very top, after we had taken down the cross and wrapped Bemossed's body in a shroud that Liljana made, we set our friend deep into the earth. Maram used his red gelstei against the rocks of the Detheshaloon to cut a great stone in the shape of a cross. We mounted it over the head of Bemossed's grave to mark what happened here. Because I thought both Bemossed and I, in the end, had found the same truth, I asked Maram to burn into the stone the same words that the battle had burned into my soul:

With his eye of compassion

He saw his enemy

Like unto himself;

And he knew love -

And his enemy

Was vanquished.

A great many animals — mostly horses and elephants — had perished along with the men who had ridden them here, but these we did not bury. No one wanted to dig a grave large enough to accommodate an elephant. Then, too, Morjin had driven his vast army hundreds of miles across the Wendrush far from his base and easy supply, and it seemed that his men had gone to short rations and had nearly starved. They reluctantly butchered the mounts that had carried them into battle. I overheard one of my men say with great bitterness that if Morjin's followers could drink a man's blood, then surely they could eat a horse's flesh.

One beast we could not bury, nor could anyone think of how we might cut up the corpse and dispose of it. In truth, the dragons that had come to earth from Charoth could hardly be considered animals, and Yormungand had proved as cunning as many men. A terrible enemy he might have been, poison-hearted and vengeful, but I did not want to see this huge being rot inside his iron-hard scales beneath the hot sun.

And so Kane, now recalling long-forgotten lore, instructed Ymiru in some of the deeper properties of the purple gelstei that Ymiru had inherited from his father. Ymiru then used the lilastei against the dragon's body as Jezi Yaga had with the purple crystals set into her eye hollows: to turn flesh into stone. For ages to come, travelers and pilgrims would espy from afar a great dragon rock at the top of the Hill of Fire.

On the evening of the day following the battle, Lord Harsha brought me a report of the dead. A final count of those slain of the Dragon army had not yet been made, but Lord Harsha., with a face as heavy as stone, informed me that Ishka had lost 3.000 of her 15,000 warriors, while the Atharians had suffered nearly as grievously. As for the Meshians, Lord Harsha said, we who had sacrificed so much to cut a hole in the Hesperuk and Sakayan phalanxes, the casualty list was even longer. He told me of the thousands killed in Lord Tomavar's battalions alone, and I held up my hand to stop him, saying, 'Bring me not numbers but names!'

Lord Harsha did, and the names of those Meshians who had died beneath the Detheshaloon's rocks would forever burn in my mind: Sar Kanshar; Lord Ramjay; Shakadar Eldru; Juvalad the Fair… There seemed almost no end to them. Lord Sharad had fallen in a heroic attempt to keep the Red Knights from cutting off our rear guard, and it saddened me to hear of Lord Tanu's death, beneath the Sakayan's spears. This crabby old man had challenged me for Mesh's kingship and had been hard to like, but easy to respect, for he had been a great warrior who had given everything for Mesh. Many wept at his demise, and surprisingly, Sar Jonavar was one of these, though he could not say why. With Lord Tanu in mind, I ordered more stones cut from the mound of the Detheshaloon. On the slabs set above the graves of the men of the Nine Kingdoms, I ordered names inscribed, and these words: Here lies a Valari warrior. Then, upon gazing up at the Owl's Hill and all the graves of the soldiers who had fought for Morjin, I ordered the names of our former enemy to be inscribed on their headstones, too.

It finally came time to decide the fate of those who had followed Morjin. Many of my warriors, Lord Tomavar foremost among them, still saw the men of the Dragon army as our enemy. At the least, they held them to account for unleashing a terrible war upon Ea and committing countless atrocities. Atara agreed with him. On the second night after the battle, she said to those gathered above the river to advise me: 'Many of Morjin's captains are murderers. And the kings who swore oaths to him have much blood upon them. How can we just send them back to their lands?'

'I am a murderer, too,' I said to Atara. I pointed out at the thousands of white stones marking the graves dug out of the Wendrush's yellowed grass. 'And upon my hands, there is an ocean of blood.'

'But, Val,' she said to me. 'It is not the same. You never ordered a child crucified! Or a man mutilated for refusing to acclaim you as the Maitreya. Or … a thousand other crimes. And so how can you suffer the criminals to live?'

I looked across the starlit steppe at the thousands of campfires to the men from Hesperu, Sunguru, Sakai and the others who had worn the Dragon's colors. And I said to Atara, and to my other friends: 'I am less concerned with punishing the guilty than with protecting the innocent.'

I told her that any campaign to root out the worst of Morjin's torturers and executioners would only ignite the war anew and tear apart the former Dragon Kingdoms.

'King Angand and the others,' I said, 'did not surrender to me as criminals to a magistrate but offered their allegiance as kings to a High King. I will hold them to their oaths.'

'They should have surrendered!' Sajagax called out hoarsely. A great white scarf bound his wounded neck. 'We would have won the battle! It was the arrows that made the difference.'

He nodded his head at the one-eyed Lord Harsha, and thanked him for keeping his Sarni well-supplied with the long range arrows that his warriors had used to gain advantage over the Marituk, Zayak, Mansurii and Janjii tribes in the east and the other enemy Sarni tribes in the west. Then he went on to say that his warriors surely would have turned both the enemy's flanks, while the timely arrival of Vareva Tomavar and her thousand Meshian women shored up our army's center.

'And so our enemy,' Sajagax went on, 'should be treated as vanquished. Too many of them, I think, care not for their kings' oaths — and care nothing for the Law of the One!'

At this, I laid hold of the sword strapped to my side. And I told Sajagax: 'They will come to care. I will hold everyone to the Law.'

I went on to say that, in the time to come, I would require all of Ea's kings to stand before their people as I had. The wicked ones, along with their captains and counselors, would be cast down. And new kings would be chosen.

Ymiru, who had lost three hundred of his five hundred warriors in the the gap torn into the Hesperuk phalanx, sadly shook his head at this. 'But, Val, what of Morjin's blood-drinking priests? They are unhroly!'

Kane, standing up straight and tall next to Ymiru, looked at him with eyes as old as time. He nodded his head as he rested his hand on Ymiru's great, furry arm. 'The Red Priests are that, and worse. And so the evil that they have done will not be undone overnight.'

No, I thought, the new age that Atara had dreamed of but never quite believed in would not come upon Ea fully realized in a year, or even a hundred years. But it would surely come, I said, even as a great and irreversible change had befallen the world and those who lived upon it.

It was to explain the new way for Ea that I called a council of kings and chiefs the next day. We met in my pavilion, and I stood to address King Angand and King Orunjan, King Mohan and King Aryaman and Vishakan and Bajorak and all the others. And this is what I told them:

'For all the ages of recorded history and the Lost Ages before them, there has been discord on Ea — ever since my ancestor, Aryu, slew Elahad and stole the Lightstone. How many lives had to be paid to atone for this murder? Millions. How many more men, women and children shall suffer death due to the evil of a world that was not of their making? Not a single one, I swear, if I can help it.'

For the Lightstone, I said, had at last been delivered into the hands of the great Maitreya, and the terrible chance that the Galadin had taken in sending the Lightstone to Ea had been redeemed. We could at last begin building the great civilization that the Star People had been sent to earth to create. Toward this end all the kings in every land and all Ea's peoples must direct their efforts. All who had fought upon the plains below the Detheshaloon, even those who had followed Morjin, must pledge their swords to fulfilling the Law of the One.

It surprised King Mohan and Sajagax that I would allow our former enemy to keep their arms and armor, but I explained that there might be discord in the realms to the south and that brigands and outlaws would need to forestalled. Just as we Valari would hold on to our kalamas in case any king or rebellious lord tried to turn back toward the Way of the Dragon. It was a paradox, I said, that we had fought a war to end war. And that now we must keep our swords to keep men from using their swords. The greatest sword of all, of course, I held sheathed inside me, and no one wished to feel it cut them open again as it had here at the Detheshaloon. The valarda, I thought, would now awaken in all people across the world — but not overnight, as Kane had observed, I wished with all my heart that men and women should come to take delight in each other's joy rather than suffering the agony of another's wounds in battle. But I must stand ready to use Alkaladur's double-edged blade to cut, as needed, either way.

'I shall,' I said, nodding at Kane, 'send emissaries into all lands. The Brotherhoods will open new schools again. And the Sisterhood will raise up Temples of Life and teach alongside the Brothers. We shall build roads: from Alonia in the north to Karabuk in the south; from Galda in the east to Hesperu in the uttermost west — and everywhere.'

Then I told the assembled kings of the fate of the Kallimun, which had concerned Ymiru: 'The Red Priests' fortresses and torture chambers shall be torn down, stone by stone. And the Red Priests shall take the lead in cutting new stones and laying down the new roads.'

I summoned to my tent Arch Uttam, as evil a man as I had ever known. Many wished for his death. So, once, had I. But now I forced myself to wish that his life should make that of others better. And so I also summoned Sar Ludar Jarlath to stand with kings. Sar Ludar had been a stonecutter in Silvassu, and he had shaped many of the headstones pushing up from the grass of the battlefield. I asked him to show Arch Uttam his hands. Ludar's knuckles were nicked and bloodied from the hard labor of swinging a mallet against a chisel and, from time to time, inevitably missing and striking iron across flesh.

'You,' I said to Arch Uttam, grabbing hold of his hand, 'have cut a young woman's throat and drunk her blood. Now you shall cut stone instead and give your blood that women and men shall travel freely among Ea's kingdoms.'

Arch Uttam bowed his head at this, and so did Arch Yadom and the other Red Priests whom I had called to my tent. Although they obviously hated being sentenced to such lowly work, they must have expected a painful execution as payment for their terrible crimes.

'And all people shall travel freely,' I went on. I turned and bowed my head to Estrella, standing next to me. 'For a time, the Maitreya will reside in Tria, with the Lightstone. Any and all who wish will make the pilgrimage to stand before the Cup of Heaven. And when it is safe again, the Maitreya will journey with the Lightstone's Guardians into all lands.'

I gazed out at Ea's proud kings and chieftains to see how they received my words. All of them, I thought, even the most murderous of them — especially they — must long for a better world in some quiet chamber of their hearts, even if they still did not quite believe in it. Could I make them believe? No, I thought, I could not. But Estrella could. For her, and just such a purpose, the Lightstone had been sent to earth. The next day, the armies began dispersing to the four corners of the world. Sajagax promised to help provision them and to escort them across the plains of the Wendrush. He assigned warriors from various tribes to march with the various armies, north, east, south and west, to ensure that they did not forget what had happened at the Detheshaloon and did not fall into mischief along the way. By the time morning dawned on the fifth day following the battle, only Sajagax's Kurmak warriors and the armies of Alonia and the Nine Kingdoms remained, encamped along the river.

On a cool, clear afternoon, I called another meeting, this time on top the Owl's Hill. I wanted to take council with my friends, that we might see our way into an unknown world and discuss the hundreds of tasks that must be done if it was ever to take shape. And even more, I wanted to understand what had occurred upon the battlefield.

We gathered in a circle on the torn grass between Bemossed's grave and Morjin's. Atara grasped hold of my arm, and I helped her take her place beside me. Abrasax and Master Juwain, with the rest of the Seven and Ymiru, positioned themselves nearest to Morjin's headstone while I sat across from them, with Atara, Maram and Daj to my right and Estrella, Liljana and Alphanderry on my left. Kane, who had never liked sitting, stood silently just behind me, with his back nearly touching Bemossed's huge headstone. In the days since the battle, he had wandered about the Detheshaloon saying almost nothing to anyone, and I wondered if he might ever speak again.

'Thank you for coming here,' I said, looking out at my friends. 'And thank you. . for everything. If not for each, of you, in a hundred ways, I never would have lived to see this day.'

From the top of the hill, I had a clear view across the golden Wendrush for miles in every direction except to the northwest, where the rocks of the Detheshaloon blocked out a good part of the sky. On almost a straight line with this skull-like mass and our hill, to the southeast I could plainly make out the dragon rock on top of the Hill of Fire. I marveled yet again that Maram had somehow slain Yormungand. Even as I marveled at him. Estrella's magic touch had restored his burnt hand and face to his usual ruddy hue, and the beginning of a heavy new beard shaded his chin and cheeks. He seemed happy. And proud. He took advantage of the moment to recount his great deed.

'Ah, Val,' he said to me, looking toward the southeast, too. 'I wish you could have seen me! I stood my ground on top of that damn hill, though any sane man would have run away. And I wanted to run, a thousand times, as you must know. But a thousand times more, I wanted to kill that damn dragon. For if I hadn't, he surely would have killed you.'

He told me, and all of us, that during his battle with Yormungand, the dragon kept trying to burn Maram's mind even as he flew at Kim spitting out fire. Yormungand, Maram said, hoped to terrify Maram into dropping his red gelstei so that he might incinerate Maram and then turn upon me.

'That thought consumed him,' Maram said. 'He wanted to see you — ah, please excuse me, my friend — he wanted to watch you fry like a chicken. For your slaying his mother, yes, but also because Morjin commanded him to. The Red Dragon had some kind of poisonous hold over the real dragon's heart. I felt it, as surely as I did the dragon's flames. Yormungand would have burned you, or crushed you to a pulp. And then turned on Estrella. I saw this in Yormungand's mind! When Estrella rode up to you in the middle of the battle, Morjin must have realized that she was the Maitreya — and commanded Yormungand to kill her, above all others on the field.'

As everyone looked at Estrella, Daj slapped his hand against Maram's arm, and said, 'But the dragon couldn't get to her, could he? He didn't dare to! Tell us how you kept Yormungand away from Estrella and burned the dragon's wings!'

Daj, I thought, perhaps many times over the past few days, had heard Maram tell his story. But I had been too busy to sit down with my friend over a horn of beer and listen to him.

'Well,' Maram continued, showing everyone his red crystal, 'for a long while, I couldn't lay any fire at all upon the dragon. He kept circling above the hill, flying away and then coming back to dive at me. Each time he did, I cast a thunderbolt at him — at his damn wings! His scales are hard to burn through, but his wings are no tougher than leather. My plan was to burn them off entirely, and then finish the dragon after he fell. But with each bolt of fire, just before I took aim, Yormungand saw it in my mind — I know he did. And so he veered, right or left, up or down, and pulled his damn wings out of the way.'

'And each time you tried to burn the dragon,' Daj said, 'the dragon tried to burn you!'

'Ah, so he did,' Maram said. He made a motion as if to pull at his beard, and then seemed to remember that the dragon had singed the hairs from his face. 'And he did burn me, too bad. If I hadn't cast down my knight's shield on the way up to the top of the hill and picked up a great shield dropped by some poor Waashian infantryman, he would have burned me to the death. As it was, the dragon fire melted the steel right off my shield — and nearly melted the skin off me. I was sure, then, that he was going to kill me.'

Maram paused in his story and looked at me as if in expectation that I might ask him what had happened next. I obliged him, saying, 'What saved you, then?'

'Liljana did,' Maram said, glancing across the circle to bow his head to her. 'She put some fire of her own into the dragon's mind.'

Liljana's soft, round face lit up as if in remembrance. She showed us her little blue figurine. 'Oh, I would hardly call it fire. I only had to distract the beast at a critical moment.'

'And distract him she did,' Maram told us. 'Then I burned the wings off that dragon! It was the fall I think, that killed him.'

He paused to turn his head back and forth as if shaking himself out of a bad dream. Then he looked over at me as he cried out: 'We won, Val! We really won!'

With a loud grunt, he pushed himself up to his feet and crossed the circle to stand before Liljana. With a great puff of air, he leaned down to plant a loud kiss upon her forehead. He smiled so hugely that I wondered if it hurt his raw, red face.

And then, to my astonishment and that of nearly everyone else, Liljana smiled back at him. She, who had lost the ability to smile, or so we had all thought, somehow managed to do this impossible thing.

'Liljana!' Master Juwain spoke out, smiling too. 'It is good to have you back!'

Although Liljana's lips remained turned up to brighten her face, she began weeping without restraint. We all bowed our heads in honor of this miracle.

'What I would like to know,' Maram finally said, directing his words at Atara, 'is how you recognized Estrella as the Maitreya? The dragon didn't let that slip into your mind, did he?'

'Hmmph — he had no thought of me at all, I'm sure.' Atara sat next to me with a fresh white cloth binding her face. Another bandage padded her wounded shoulder, which Estrella had been unable to heal. She spoke to us in a calm, clear voice that rang out over the hill's many graves: 'But something did burn me, like the hottest of fires. That is. it burned away a part of me. This. . is hard to talk about. Hard to explain in a way that will make sense to you. But this seeing that a scryer does has everything to do with her will. And no scryer has ever seen the Maitreya, or the Lightstone, because both dwell at the center of time, which is all fire and flame, like the heart of a sun. And so terribly, terribly bright. It seems that no scryer can ever journey there. I don't think any scryer ever had: it would be like staring and staring at the sun. And burning, as flesh melts beneath fire. During the battle, with my sisters falling in the arrow storm, I thought of Val and I looked where I shouldn't have. Where I couldn't, really. But I did! Somehow. Then I melted. I found myself … not looking into the star and seeing, but being it. Pure flame, I was. And then everything grew clear, so impossibly clear. I saw the Lightstone shining in Estrella's beautiful beautiful hand. But I knew that Val couldn't see this, and so I had to ride to tell him.'

Of that heroic ride, blind, at the head of the Manslayers across the battlefield, she would not speak, for almost all of her sisters had been slain and the Manslayers were no more. It seemed a horrific price for warning me that I must give the Lightstone to Estrella. As did Atara's plunge into darkness. For she told us that her gazing at the brightest thing in all the universe had destroyed her second sight once and for all, and that she would never have visions of the future or faraway places again.

I could not bear to think of her as utterly and hopelessly blind, but she had no pity for herself. She reached across my chest and extended her fingers to Estrella, sitting on my other side. And she said, 'I saw the Lightstone in this young woman's hand, and that is vision enough for ten lifetimes.'

While Estrella held the Lightstone shining like a little sun, she clasped hold of Atara's fingers with her other hand. It pained me that although she had healed many warriors of many dreadful wounds, she had not been able to restore speech to herself.

'Ah,' Maram said, looking at her, 'I still can't quite believe that the Maitreya could be a girl.'

At this. Master Juwain rubbed the back of his bald head, and looked at Estrella, too. His ugly face grew so bright that it seemed almost beautiful. Then, with much embarrassment, he said, 'I'm afraid that I am partly to blame for that. We of the Brotherhood are. Many verses, in the Saganom Elu and other sources of the ancient prophecies, speak of the Maitreya. And always as 'he' or 'him.' But in the ancient Ardik from which the prophecies have been translated, the pronouns referring to the Maitreya are always of the indeterminate gender, for which there is no really good translation. And so, considering that the known Maitreyas have all been male, it seemed most logical to choose the masculine pronouns.'

'Your logic,' Liljana said to him. 'But didn't I hint, more than once, that the Maitreya might be a woman?'

'You did,' Master Juwain admitted. But I am sorry to say that I thought you were joking.'

'Joking!' she said as her face fell stern again. 'When have I ever made light of such matters?'

They might have reopened one of their old arguments if Abrasax had not held up his hand for peace. And then said to them, 'Logic is logic, and everywhere the same, but the results of reasoning can only be as valid as one's premises. There is much that we have assumed that is clearly not true. And foremost of these assumptions, as pertains to this matter is that man and woman are so different from each other as to require different pursuits of knowledge, and even different ways.'

He went on to say that now that the true Maitreya had come forth, the Brotherhood and Sisterhood must find a way to unite and lead the way for all of Ea.

'Very good, and I am all for unions of men and women, as everyone knows,' Maram called out. 'And I suppose that the Maitreya will bring in this luminous age that everyone hopes for. But what makes one a Maitreya? Why Estrella? And why didn't we see the signs that she was the Shining One?'

None of us, not even Abrasax or Kane, had any easy answers to his question. Master Matai, the Brotherhood's greatest diviner, spoke of the designs of the stars under which Estrella had been born and fate, while Master Virang attributed Estrella's deepest nature to the Ieldra's grace. Then Atara, always practical, squeezed Estrella's hand again and said to Maram: 'But of course we did have signs — and many of them. But as Pualani told us in the first Vild, people look at many things they fail to see.'

'Ah, I suppose so,' Maram murmured, eyeing Estrella. 'But didn't Val once say that on our journey to Tria, he gave the girl the Lightstone to hold? And that it had absolutely no effect upon her?'

'No effect that I could see,' I said.

'It might be,' Abrasax observed, 'that this contact with the Lightstone proved crucial to Estrella — and all of Ea. It might have been the sunlight that quickened the seed of who Estrella was meant to be.'

'The great Maitreya,' Master Yasul said, staring at Estrella as if he had waited his whole life for this moment. 'The greatest and last, of all the Maitreyas.'

Liljana, sitting next to Estrella, rested her hand on her leg and smiled as if she, too, had long looked forward to this fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. Then her face fell sad and thoughtful as she looked at me.

'We should all be amazed at the way things have unfolded. We all wondered if the world would have been better if the Lightstone had remained buried in Argattha for another thousand years. How many times, Val, have you regretted that you recovered the Lightstone — only to lose it back to Morjin? And then lost your whole family? And so many of your people? Of course, nothing can ever justify such murders or take the pain of them away — how could it? But if what Abrasax says is true, then everything depended on our rescuing the Lightstone out of Argattha — everything. And so I have to wonder if things happened just as they were meant to happen.'

It was a strange thing for her to say. I considered her words as I gazed out at the thousands of headstones pushing up from the grass all around us. For the moment, I found myself transported back to another battlefield, upon which my father and brothers had died.

Then Maram, looking past me at the greatest of all the carved stones adorning the Detheshaloon, called out: 'But what I still don't understand is Bemossed. He was the Maitreya, too, wasn't he? A true Maitreya, and not just another man of talents who wanted to be more than he was.'

'I am sure that he was,' Master Matai said. His golden-hued face pointed past Bemossed's stone cross, up toward the sky. 'Just as I am sure that more than one Maitreya was born at the end of the Age of the Dragon. But here, too, language has misled us. We speak, most often, of the Maitreya, prophesied for this time. But, of course, there have been many Maitreyas throughout the ages. In the ancient Ardik, there is no distinction between the definite and indefinite article. And so we might reasonably translate the prophecies as referring to a Maitreya, who will bring in the new age.'

Abrasax nodded his hoary head at this, and told us: 'I, too, am sure that Bemossed was a Maitreya. As time went on, his aura flared like that of no other man I have ever seen. But it did not blaze, as Estrella's now does. I think we asked too much of him. It is most logical to assume that he never quite reached the moment of his quickening, when he would come into his full power.'

'And yet,' Master Storr said, tapping his finger against his freckled cheek, 'he found power enough to keep Morjin from using the Lightstone until almost the very end.'

'And that is another thing I don't understand,' Maram broke in, 'Once Bemossed had gone to Morjin, Morjin might have killed him whenever he pleased — and so gained full control of the Lightstone. But he waited. Why?'

'Isn't that obvious?' Atara asked him. She patted the grass beneath Bemossed's headstone. 'How else could he have drawn Val into the trap upon this hill?'

'But Morjin hesitated even once Val had fought his way up here. Why did he not strike sooner?'

I waited to see who might respond to this. The answer, I thought, shone out as clear as starlight from Estrella's lovely face. But because she remained mute, I had to speak for her.

'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 greatest 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.