The Lightstone

Chapter 44

Morjin left half of his men to guard the open gate while he deployed the fifty othera around the ritual area facing us. I had supposed that he and his guards would simply charge us when they drew close enough. But it seemed that he had other plans.

'Back toward the wall!' Maram hissed at me.

I was reluctant to retreat from the line of the pillars to the wall, for there we would be trapped with no room to maneuver. And Morjin seemed loath to force this retreat.

He stood at the center of the circular area staring at us across some seventy feet of the bare stone floor, and his guards stood there, too.

'No, hold here,' I said to Maram,' 'Let's see what he's waiting for.'

A moment later, six red-robed men walked through the gate, down the line of the guards posted there and crossed the room to join Morjin. They were of various ages, heights and colorings, but they all had the long, lean, hungry look of wolves.

'The Red Priests!' Kane snarled out. 'Damn their eyes!'

Even as he said this, I felt a sharp stab of despair at the base of my skull, and men that I dreaded even more than these drinkers of blood entered the room. There were thirteen of them, all wearing hooded gray cloaks over their gray garments. Their faces were as gray as rotting flesh, while their eyes – what little we could see of them

– were like cold gray marbles empty of life. There was nothing inside them, I thought, except a ravenous desire to drink our lives and our very souls.

'Oh, no!' Maram muttered as he stood trembling beside me. 'The Stonefaces!'

Liljana held one hand protectively over Daj's heart, while she gripped her gelstei in the other. She watched the thirteen Grays take their place inside the circle with Morjin. She said, 'It is they. I'm almost certain it was they who gave us away.'

Hearing this, Maram whispered, 'Then perhaps our friends are still safe. Perhaps they'll find a way to -'

'Hold your noise!' Kane snapped at him. 'And guard your thoughts!'

The leader of the Grays, a tall man with a pitiless contempt stamped into his stony face, turned his cold gaze upon me. A terrible fear suddenly pinned me back against the pillar as if a dozen lances of ice had pierced my body.

And then Liljana brought her little figurine up to her head, engaging his mind, fighting him and his dreadful company for all our sakes, and the lances suddenly snapped as I felt a new life returning to my chilled limbs.

'Liljana,' I said, looking at her. 'Can you hold them?'

Liljana stood valiantly facing the Grays. Her wise, willful eyes fought off their soul-sucking stares. Sweat poured down her deeply creased face. And she gasped out, 'I think I can… for a while.'

Mighty was the power of the blue gelstei, I thought, and mighty was the mind of Liljana Ashvaran. A surge of hope shot through me then. But not for us: I could only pray that Atara and the others would discover that we had been taken and that Liljana's valor would give them time to flee Argattha.

And then, as if Morjin could read my mind, he turned toward the still-open gate. His gloat of victory disfigured his fine face. My heart almost broke to see two guards dragging Atara into the throne room in chains. Another likewise led Master Juwain toward the ritual area. And then five men, each pulling at long chains like leads on a mad dog, strained to jerk the furiously struggling Ymiru into the room. Five more men followed him with chains pulled tight around the shackles binding his huge wrist, neck and waist. His black Saryak's robe had been stripped from him. Blood stained his fur where the shackles cut into him. It took all the strength of these ten large men to control him and move him toward the circle where Morjin stood with his priests, guards and the terrible Grays.

Seeing the guards manhandle Atara, I lifted up Alkaladur and took a step forward. Its blade radiated my hate. And then Morjin, his eyes fixed fearfully on my bright sword, finally spoke to me. His words rang out like steel into the hall: 'If you come any closer, Valashu Elahad, she will be killed.'

The Red Priests swarming over Atara, I saw, had jeweled knives fastened onto their belts. And the Grays, of course, had their knives drawn: gray-steel daggers as sharp as death. The guards deployed around the circle pointed their swords, halberds and spears at Kane and me.

'Chain her!' Morjin commanded his guards. He turned his golden eyes upon Master Juwain and the raging Ymiru. 'Chain them, too!'

Guards came forward with hammers then, and beat at our freinds' chains with a dreadful clang of metal against metal. They bound them to the iron rings sunk into the standing stones. With the cruel chains pulling their arms straight out from their sides, they could barely move.

My fear for Atara – and for Master Juwain, Ymiru and all of us -almost chained me back against the pillar. I could only gaze helplessly into Atara's clear blue eyes as I held my sword at my side and waited for Morjin to speak.

The Lord of Lies seemed steeped in thought as he paced around the circle. He had ordered Ymiru's club and Atara's bow and arrows, like the key to Daj's shackles, placed on the floor just beyond their reach. There too lay Master Juwain's varistei, Ymiru's purple gelstei and Atara's crystal sphere. Now Morjin came over and held his hands above the gelstei as if to draw up their power. He glanced at Ymiru's great, iron-shod club and nudged it with his boot. He bent to slip a feathered arrow from Atara's quiver; he stood staring at the sharp, steel point. Then, as if remembering other times when he had held court here, he looked down at the dark etchings in the floor. I suddenly took keen note of what I had so far scarcely perceived: that the stonework of the ritual area was carved with a great coiled dragon. The dragon's head formed the very center of the circle, and its mouth was open as if to swallow the blood that must run through the grooves in the dark, sticky stone.

'All right then,' he called out as the doors closed, 'we may begin.'

His voice, as I remembered from my nightmares, was clear and strong like the ringing of a silver bell. But now that we had finally met in the flesh, here in the fastness of his hall, he seemed to have abandoned all desire to charm or persuade me. His smiles were chill and full of malice, as little alluring as the stare of a snake.

His manner was brusque and cruel as if he had come to mete out justice with an iron hand.

'Stay where you are, Valari!' he suddenly commanded me 'I would speak with you but I don't wish to shout!'

He summoned twenty of his guards and his Red Priests to walk slowly toward us where we stood by the line of pillars. They drew up forty feet away with ten guards on either side of him. I knew that he wanted something from me.

'So,' Kane muttered, 'so.'

I could feel Kane's large body tensing to spring forward like a tiger's even as I trembled to hold back my own. His black eyes flashed fire at Morjin as he calculated numbers and distances. He held himself in check only because it was obvious that Morjin could retreat under cover to the circle before we could get at him.

Morjin turned to nod at the fiercest-looking of his priests, a man with the black skin of Uskudar and the dark, hungry eyes of the damned. He spoke to this priest, and to his other men, saying, 'Well, Lord Salmalik, it's as I've foretold. The enemy has sent assassins to murder me.'

He pointed a long, elegant finger back toward the circle at Ymiru and said, 'It's obvious that the Ymanish led them here. No doubt out of vengeance, bearing his people's false claim. Do you see what comes of the bitterness of believing ancient lies?'

'It be you who lies!' Ymiru roared out as he lunged against his chains. 'Argattha be our hrome!'

Morjin nodded at a guard, who slammed the butt end of his spear into Ymiru's face, smashing his teeth and bloodying his lips. He shook his dazed head slowly back and forth as Morjin continued to address him:

'Your people were paid good gold for the work they did here,' he said. 'And they did good work, it's true, but there is much we've improved upon.'

Ymiru stared down at the dragon carved into the floor, then cast his eyes upon the dragon throne. Finally he turned to look at the Red Dragon himself as he said,

'You've taken a hroly place and made it into something hrorrible!'

Again Morjin nodded at his guard. This time the man thrust the point of his spear into Ymiru's side, tearing open a bloody hole in his fur. 'Thus to assassins,' Morjin called out.

His golden eyes now fell upon Master Juwain. 'For ages, the Brother hoods have opposed us. And now the Great White Brotherhood sends one of its Masters – a Master Healer, no less – to slay rather than mend body and soul together.'

Master Juwain stared fearlessly at Morjin and opened his mouth as if to gainsay this lie. But, mindful of the guard's bloody spear, he decided that there was little point in disputing Morjin. 'If he touches him,' Maram said, looking at Master Juwain, 'I'll…'

His voice suddenly died as he looked down at the red crystal in his hand. The cracked firestone was now useless and couldn't summon forth even a wooden match's worth of flame.

Now Morjin pointed the arrow that he still held at Atara. He called out, 'Princess Atara Ars Narmada, daughter of the usurper of the realm that still belongs to us! The Manslayer who must have seen me dead beneath her assassin's arrows! Well, scryer, what future do you see now?'

I, too, wondered what Atara saw; she stared at the figures of the fallen Galadin carved into the walls, and her eyes were full of hor ror.

I recalled the last part of Ayondela Kirriland's prophecy, that the dragon would be slain. Well, the dragon named Angraboda had been slain, but Morjin must have feared that the prophecy really spoke of him. Could it be, I wondered, that he truly thought we were assassins? Was it possible that he didn't know our real reason for entering Argattha? He mustn't know then, I thought. At all costs, he mustn't know.

Morjin turned away from Atara toward us where we took shelter beneath the pillars.

He pointed at Daj, and spoke with great bitterness: 'Well, young Dajarian, I've been merciful, but this time for you, it's the cross.'

Daj pulled back behind Liljana, who was still fighting off the Grays. He began trembling as he cast his eyes about the room like a trapped fawn.

'And Prince Maram Marshayk,' Morjin said, looking at my best friend. 'Why you have joined this conspiracy is a mystery to me.'

'Ah, it's a mystery to me as well,' Maram muttered. He, too, trembled to flee, but he held his ground bravely even so.

'And Liljana Ashvaran,' Morjin said, watching her stare down the leader of the Grays. 'At least your motives are more obvious, witch.'

He added his dreadful stare to that of the Grays, trying to beat open her mind. And I shouted, 'Leave her alone! She's just a poor widow!'

Morjin suddenly smiled at me and said, 'Is that what you've thought? She's the Materix of the Maitriche Telu. The ruling witch herself.'

Liljana's eyes were fixed on the Grays, but some flicker of pride fired up inside her then, and I knew that Morjin had told true. 'Well, witch, did you keep this a secret from your companions?' Kane, I thought from the look on his face, might have known Liljana's true rank. And so might have Atara. But this news clearly amazed Maram, Master Juwain and Ymiru – as it did me.

Morjin nodded at the priest named Salmalik and said, 'Maitriche Telu, do you see?

Poisoners and assassins, all of them. If not for men such as you, they would have murdered their way to the rule of Ea long ago.' At being singled out for praise, Lord Salmalik swelled with pride. But Morjin hadn't saved his accolades for him alone. He walked among his priests and guards, here smiling at an old priest as if giving thanks for long service, there placing his hand on a young man's arm to show his gratitude for his risking his life on Morjin's behalf. The Lord of Lies, I saw, was a great seducer who made a show of his preeminence and played to his people's desires with all the skill of a magician. At a nod from Morjin, the leader of the Grays suddenly looked away from Liljana. And she turned to me and said, 'I am the Materix of the Maitriche Telu. Perhaps I should have told you – I'm sorry, Val.'

Liljana, I thought, had given me a dozen clues that this was so. Why hadn't I seen this? 'And we have killed,' she went on, 'but only when we've had to.'

My amazement only deepened. The Maitriche Telu, it was said, had secret sanctuaries and chapter houses in almost every land. If Morjin was more powerful than any king, even King Kiritan, then Liljana was the most powerful woman in Ea.

'But Morjin lies,' she told me, 'when he says that we desire rule. We seek only to restore Ea to the ancient ways.'

'You might want to be careful whom you call a liar, old witch,' Morjin snapped at her. He pointed at another iron ring on the side of the standing stone to which Atara was bound. 'It's an evil tongue you have, and I might decide to tear it out.'

Liljana pointed her figurine at the Grays and said, 'Of course you speak of such things – that's the only way you have to silence me.'

Morjin turned back toward the Grays' leader. Something seemed to pass back and forth unspoken between them. And then, as if explaining this exchange to his Red Priests and guards, Morjin said to him, 'Soon enough you shall have the witch's blue gelstei. And the black stone that was stolen from your brother.'

Now Morjin whirled about facing Kane. Their eyes locked together like red-hot iron rings hammered into a chain. Emotions as fiery and deep as a volcano's molten rock blasted out into the room. It was impossible for me to tell whose hate was vaster, Morjin's or Kane's.

'You,' Morjin said to him. 'You dare to come here again.'

'So, I do dare.'

'What is it you call yourself now – "Kane"?'

'What is it you call yourself now – King of Kings? Ha!'

Morjin stood before his priests and snapped at Kane, 'I should have torn out your tongue long ago!'

'Do you think it wouldn't have grown back in the mouths of ten thousand others to tell the truth of who you really are?'

'Be careful of what you say!'

'So, I'm free to speak as I will.'

'For the moment,' Morjin's face flushed with rage, and he pointed at the iron rings sticking out the side of Ymiru's stone. He said, 'When you're chained there, who will set you free?'

'Ask that,' Kane said, pointing his sword at Morjin, 'after you've put me there.'

Morjin stared so hard at Kane that his eyes seemed to redden from burst blood vessels. And he demanded, 'Give me the stone!'

Kane held up the black gelstei that he had cut from the Gray's forehead in Alonia on the night of the full moon. And then he snarled out, 'Take it from me!'

My old suspicions of Kane came flooding back into me. I wondered for the thousandth time at his grievance against Morjin. It seemed they had known each other long ago in another place.

Morjin saw me looking at Kane, and he turned his spite upon me. He said, 'You've taken a madman into your company, Valari.' 'Do not speak so,' I told him, 'of my friends.' 'Kane, your friend?' Morjin sneered. He pointed at Alkaladur, which I held gleaming by my side. 'He's no more your friend than that is your sword.'

I knew from the pounding of his heart that he feared this bright blade as he did death. It seemed that he could hardly bear to look at it. 'Alkaladur,' he said softly.

'How did you find it?' 'It was given to me,' I told him.

I sensed that the sword's shimmering presence made him recall dark moments in dark ages long past, as well as visions yet to come. I knew, as he did, that it had been foretold that the sword would bring his death.

'Surrender the sword to me, Valari!' he suddenly shouted. 'Surrender it, now!'

This sudden command, breaking from his throat like a clap of thunder, shocked every nerve in my body. His golden eyes dazzled me; the tremendous power of his will beat at my bones, almost breaking my will to keep hold of my sword. 'Surrender and save yourself!' he told me. 'And save your friends.' What need, I wondered, had Morjin of his Grays when he had his own mind and malice to poison others? As his eyes found mine, the hatred that poured out of him smothered me like burning pitch.

The Red Dragon, in the flesh, was far worse than in any of my illusions or dreams.

Only my resolve to oppose him – magnified by the shielding powers of my sword – kept me from falling down and groveling at his feet.

'Do you see how strong the Valari are?' Morjin said, turning to the leader of the Grays. Then he looked at Salmalik and his other Red Priests. 'And so the savages send one of their strongest to murder me.'

I stared at him down the length of the shining sword that I pointed at him. I did badly want to murder him. How could I deny this? 'Conspirators, thieves and murderers,' he said. 'They defiled my chambers. And they would have trapped and tortured me there, if they could have.'

This, of course, was a lie. But how could I deny it without giving away our purpose?

Lord Salmalik caught Morjin's eye and said, 'Torture, Sire?'

Morjin nodded his head and spoke to all gathered in the room: 'These seven, save the Ymanish, all journeyed to Tria to the lure of Kiritan's illicit summons. They've made quest for the Lightstone across half of Ea. I'm certain that they've gathered clues as to where it was hidden.'

He doesn't know! I thought. He truly doesn't know that the Lightstone lies somewhere in this room!

'And these clues,' he continued, 'led them here. To me. They must have thought that I possess the key clue to their stealing of what is rightfully mine. And so they came to torture this knowledge from me.'

I held myself very still, staring at him. And he said to me, 'Do you deny this, Valari?'

No, I thought, I couldn't. But neither could I affirm such a lie. And so held myself cloaked in silence.

'Do you see how proud the Valari is?' Morjin said to Salmalik. 'Proud and vain – it is the curse of his kind. Telemesh. Aramesh. Elemesh. Murderers, all. How many have been slaughtered in wars because of them? Because they, who are savages at heart, put their glory above others? Descendants of Elahad they claim to be! Elahad, whom the Valari claim brought the Lightstone to Ea. Elahad, the murderer of his own -'

'Elahad did bring the Lightstone to Ea!' I shouted. 'The Valari were its guardians!'

'Be quiet while I'm speaking!' Morjin roared at me. He turned to look back at the ritual area and touch eyes with his guards, who stood in rapt attention. 'Do you see how the Valari twists this false claim of guardianship into an excuse to break into my home and torture me? From such a people, are any outrages impossible?'

'You lie!' I said to him.

Morjin paused to stare at me as he gathered in his breath. He was working himself up into a frenzy of spite. And now his all hate fell upon me like an infected wound bursting with pus.

'Look at the Valari standing there!' he said to his priests. 'So tall in his arrogance!

The long sword. The black eyes – who has ever seen such eyes outside nightmares where demons haunt the dark? Many have said that the Valari have made a pact with demons. But I say they are demons themselves – fiends from hell. They are a plague upon the world; they are a stab in the back of the body of humanity; they are a corruption of all that is good and true. It's in their blood, like poison. The taint goes back to the beginning of time. But it will have an ending, in time, an antidote of fire and steel. Haven't I foretold that if war comes, this last war we've all been dreading, that the Valari race will disappear from the face of the earth? That race of warlords and savages has on its conscience the dead of every great conflict in Ea's history.

Would it be too much to ask that they be given new homes in the Red Desert or on trees that shall grow out of the ground in entire forests to accommodate them?'

Once before, I thought, after the battle of Tarshid, Morjin had put a thousand Vaiari warriors on such 'trees.' And now he proposed the slaughter of the whole Valari people. Or did he?

'It's not entirely disadvantageous,' he went on, 'that rumor attributes to us the plan for carrying out this fate. Terror can be a salutary thing.'

How, I wondered, could Morjin speak with such passion and con viction when he must have known the enormity of his deceit? In looking at my sword's shining silustria, a terrible thought came to me. People believe what they see others believing most strongly. Long ago, Morjin had perfected those expressions, gestures and intonations of voice designed to convince his followers that he believed his own lies.

And after hundreds of years, this greatest of deceits had worked an evil alchemy upon Morjin: it had overcome him and his sense of the real so that he truly did believe his lies. This communicated to his audiences like lightning. And thus shocked into frenzies of false faith, his listeners returned his passion to him and further strengthened his own belief.

His own lies had possessed him, I thought. And so he had made of himself a ghul.

For a moment, I was moved to pity him. But the gleam to his golden eyes told me that he would use any such emotions against me. As he now used his gift of valarda to further enchant and enslave his people.

Again he pointed at me as he thundered: 'The arrogance of the Valari! Who else could steal the Lightstone and keep it behind their mountains for most of an age? Is there a greater crime than this in all of history?'

I felt Morjin's hate beating at me like a hammer, directly from his heart to mine – as it beat at his guards and Grays and everyone else gathered in the hall.

Morjin stepped over to one of his priests, a young man whose handsome face was marred with patches of scar as if it had been burned by heated iron. I thought that he might possibly be the least cruel of the Red Priests. Morjin said to him, 'Lord Uilliam, if such criminals came into your care, what would you recommend be done with them?'

Morjin's eyes touched Lord Uilliam's; his tongue seemed to shoot invisible streams of relb at Lord Uilliam so that the young man's tongue caught up the flames of malice, and he said, 'Purify them with fire!'

Morjin breathed out the fire of his approval and set the young man's blood burning with a raging desire to punish his enemies.

'Oh, oh!' I heard Maram moan next to me. He stood by the great black pillar, looking at Atara and the bloody Ymiru as he squeezed his mined crystal.

Morjin next addressed an older priest whose long, narrow face and great beak of a nose gave him the appearance of a vulture. 'Lord Yadom, if such criminals were persuaded to tell of clues that helped you recover the Lightstone, what would you do with it?'

'I would bring it to you, Sire.'

'But what if I had been abducted for torture and imprisoned?'

Lord Yadom clearly understood that Morjin was testing him. And so he said, 'Then I would wait for your release.'

'What if you waited thirty years?'

'The Kallimun waited a hundred times as long for your release from Damoom.'

'Yes, but then you didn't have the Lightstone. Wouldn't you use it to free your own king?'

'I would want to Sire,' Yadom said with apparent sincerity. 'But the Lightstone is not to be used this way.'

Morjin stared at him and then called out into the hall: 'Wise Yadom! Is anyone wiser than the first of my priests?'

Even as he said this, his golden eyes seemed to swell like suns. And Yadom swelled with overweening pride, like a flower too full of nectar. Morjin's faith in Yadom that he beamed forth was so pleasurable that it made my whole body shudder.

And so it went as he paced about the room, here pausing to question one of his guards, there nodding at one of the Grays or his priests. He played to his people: with cunning words that fell easily off his silver tongue, with long, soulful looks, with veiled threats and promises and deceits. One man he flattered; another he frightened; too many his malice opened like a black knife and set loose their animal ferocity. I hated how Morjin perverted the gift we both had been given: he played men like instruments, plucking at their heartstrings as if he were a twisted minstrel making the most evil of music.

Morjin nodded across the hall at one of his guards, who brought a brazier heaped with hot coals into the ritual circle. He set it down in front of Atara, Ymiru and Master Juwain, and then thrust a pincers and three long, pointed irons into the coals to heat them.

'The Lightstone will soon be recovered,' Morjin shouted. 'Haven't I foretold that this is the time when it will again foe seen in this hall? And what should be done with this cup when it returns to its rightful place?'

One of his guards, an old soldier with a grim face and a strange hunger in his eyes. knew the right answer to this question, And he called out, 'Pour from it eternal lift!'

Now every pair of eyes in the hall fixed on Morjin. His men looked at him with its almost electric anticipation.

'Eternal life!' Morjin suddenly cried out. 'This is the gift that the Lightstone may bestow upon men and its true purpose. But is it a gift for everyone? Can a beast appreciate a flute or a book placed into its paws? No, and so it is that only those chosen to recieve the true gold of the Lightstone will ever know immortality.'

As Kane stared at Morjin defiantly. I suddenly understood that the powerful seek power for its own sake because it gives them the illusion that they have power over death.

But fear of death, I thought, leads to hate of life.

With these few words, whispered inside my mind, I knew that I had condemned myself should the door that I most feared he flung open before me. For Morjin, with all his vainglory and hate, was like a mirror reflecting back at me a shape that I did not warn to see.

'And who are these chosen?' Morjin continued. He nodded sternly at lord Uilliam and Lord Yadom. 'They are the priests who have served the Kallimun so faithfully; they are my guards and soldiers who have given their lives for a greater purpose, and so it is only fining that they shall have greater life themselves.'

Morjin, the sorcerer who had lived thousands of years, stood before his men as the living embodiment that what he promised was poss ible.

'And who,' he quietly asked 'shall be the one to pour the nectar of immortality from the golden cup? Only the Maitreya. But who is this man? That will be determined only when the Lightstone is placed in his hands.'

So saying, he reached his hands out to the hundred and twenty men who bad followed him into the room. In their many eyes was a terrible lust for the Lightstone and all that Morjin had vowed to give them. And then- a remarkable thing occurred, Aa if light itself were pouring out of his hands, he used the valarda to to touch all who gazed upon him with bliss.

'So' Kane muttered next to me. There came a rumbling sound of hate from deep inside his throat. 'So.'

All people have love and longing to the One, for that is our source, at once father and mother and breath of the infinite in which we take our being. And Morjin had tried to fool people into turning this love onto him. in his smile was the false promise of all joy and happiness, but in the end he would bring the world only sorrow and death.

Now he turned to me and said, 'You've taken a vow to seek the Lightstone. And now you can fulfill it by helping us to recover it. You must help us, Valari.'

I gripped my sword more tightly as I fought off the waves of bliss that he beamed at me. It was strange to think that he wanted my hate and fear less than he did my love.

'Surrender your sword,' he again commanded me. 'Surrender your self.'

'No,' I said, my heart beating fast like a bird's.

'You must surrender, Valari.'

He stood before me with his fingers outstretched as if waiting for me to place my sword in his hands. His eyes called to me. I knew that he required the surrender of my will and all my adoration so that he might counterfeit a sense of the One within himself.

'Is it death you want?' he asked me. His eyes now seemed as golden as the Lightstone itself. 'Or life?'

I took a few deep breaths to slow the racing of my heart. And then I said, 'It's not upon you to give me either.'

'Is it not? That we shall see.'

I lifted my sword back behind my head in readiness should Morjin send his guards against us. And I told him, 'I'll never surrender to you!'

My contempt for Morjin was in my eyes for all to behold. Even if I hadn't possessed the gift of valarda, not a man in the hall would have been spared feeling my defiance.

'Damn you, Valari!' he suddenly thundered at me. His face contorted into a mask of ugliness as rage took hold of him. If he couldn't have love, he was ready to embrace hate. 'Never surrender, you say? That too, we shall see.'

He shook Atara's arrow at me, and then pointed its head back at the circle directly at Master Juwain. He shouted, 'What is it you know about the Lightstone?'

'What?' Master Juwain said as if he didn't quite understand the question.

'Didn't you hear me?' Morjin roared out. Upon beckoning Lord Uilliam to follow him, he turned and strode back into the circle. He plucked one of the irons from the brazier and handed it to Lord Uilliam. 'Master Juwain's ear is stopped with wax

– clean it out.'

As Lord Uilliam gazed at the iron's glowing red point, Morjin com-manded the guards still posted near the door to join the others around the circle. They took their places there, and Lord Uilliam looked over at Master luwain, sweating and biting his lip as he pulled at the chains that bound him to the standing stone.

'Put it in his ear!' Morjin commanded.

Lord Uilliam still hesitated, and he said, 'But he's just an old man!'

'Do it?' Morjin hissed.

'I can't, Sire.'

Morjin grabbed the iron from Lord Uilliam's trembling hand and pointed it at Master Juwain. He said, 'He is old, but is he a man?'

I didn't know what he meant; I didn't want to know. Beside me, Maram now had his sword drawn, as did Liljana and Kane. I was ready to charge forward in an effort to cut our way through to Master Juwain – and to Ymiru and Atara. But we were only four against a hundred.

'Be strong,' Kane said to me. 'You must be strong now, eh?'

Morjin now turned to Lord Uilliam; it seemed for a moment that he might put the iron in him for failing to do his bidding. But he surprised me. He drew up closer to the young man, and laid his arm about his shoulder as he bent his head to whisper in his ear. From seventy feet away, I could not hear what he said to him. But I had a keen sense that he was trying to persuade his priest that Master Juwain was not really a man at all but some kind of beast.

'It's hard, I know,' Morjin called out so that everyone could hear him. Compassion seemed to pour from him like rain.

'Sire?' Lord Uilliam said as Morjin gave him back the iron. He looked at Master Juwain.

I looked at him, too. His face, tight with fear, seemed even uglier than it usually did.

It was all twisted and knotted with lumps, bristly like a boar's and scarcely human.

'Do as I've commanded you!' Morjin said to Lord Uilliam.

And then his eyes fell upon Lord Uilliam, and he breathed the terrible fire of his wrath into him. Lord Uilliam suddenly stiffened as if he could feel the heat of the iron up through his hand and all throughout his body. He turned to step closer to Master Juwain. As one of the guards slammed Master Juwain's head back against the standing stone and held it clamped there, Lord Uilliam pushed the burning point of the iron into the opening of Master Juwain's ear. There came a hising and the stench of burnt flesh.

Lord Uilliam snarled and gnashed his teeth together; he kept pushing the iron deeper, twisting it, reaming it around in circles as his hate poured out of him.

'Master Juwain!' Maram called out, and he burst into tears.

The pain burning through my head was so great that I could barely keep standing.

But the sheer valor with which Master Juwain faced his torture sent a thrill of strength shooting through me. Not once did he cry out for mercy. His whole body quivered with the shock of what the priest was doing to him. Although his face contorted with agony, I saw that it was really beautiful after all – beautiful with a luminous will that overmatched Morjin's and kept him from surrendering his soul to him.

'Master Juwain!' Maram cried out again. 'Master Juwain!'

True men, I thought looking at Maram, didn't need the gift of valarda to suffer another's pain.

At last, the iron's point quenched in Master Juwain's blood, Lord Uilliam stood away from him. His face was white; he held the iron in his trembling hand. He could barely stand himself. Morjin stepped closer to him, and wrapped his arm around his back to help hold him up.

'Well done, my priest,' Morjin told him. He touched his finger to the iron's bloody point; then he touched his finger to his tongue. 'Have I not said many times that the priests of the Kallimun must do the hard things and so sacrifice themselves for the sake of Ea?'

After Lord Uilliam could stand on his own again, Morjin shook his fist at Master Juwain and shouted, 'Is this what you wanted? That you, a master healer, should cause such sickness in my priest's soul?'

But I did not think that Master Juwain could hear him, even with his remaining good ear. His head had fallen down against his chest, and the weight of his body pulled against the chains binding him.

'Where is the Lightstone?' Morjin screamed at him. He stepped over and slapped Master Juwain's face. 'What have you learned about it?'

Master Juwain finally opened his eyes and lifted up his head. His gray eyes blazed with defiance. And he told Morjin, 'Only that you'll never have from it what you wish.'

Again Morjin slapped Master Juwain's face, which snapped his head back against the great stone. He looked at the greatly enlarged red hole in Master Juwain's ear. And he said to him, 'I would be doing you a favor to order your death. But until I know where the Lightstone is, I'm not permitted to extend such mercies.'

He motioned for his six priests to gather around him. He stood talking to them in hushed tones as the thirteen silent Grays waited nearby and the hundred guards circled the ritual area with the steel of their swords and spears. It was a mortar of torture and blood-crime that bound this evil brotherhood together. It was well for them, I thought that they hid their secrets inside the windowless vaults of a black mountain.

'Val,' Maram whispered to me as he stared at the standing stones. He was sweating even more profusely than Master Juwain. 'Stab your sword into my heart – I don't think I have the courage to fall on mine.'

'Be strong!' Kane called to him. 'Strong as stone now, I say!'

Maram closed his eyes then. It was said that the Brotherhood taught meditations that could forever still the beating of one's heart. But it seemed that Maram had been too busy with other pursuits to learn them. 'I can't,' he finally said, looking at me. 'I can't will myself to die.'

'Will them to die!' Kane growled out, pointing his sword at Morjin and his priests.

Now Morjin stepped over to Atara and looked at her and a new terror struck into me. Atara looked back at htm boldly, her eyes as clear as diamonds. There was a terrible fear in their bright blue depths, but something else as well. It seemed that she was seeing the future and trying to surrender herself to what must be. This was her will, as a warrior and a woman, to fulfill her purpose in being bom on such a savage world as Ea.

'Don't you ever look at me like that!' Morjin suddenly raged at her. He slapped her face with his left hand, turning her head, and then backhanded her, turning her head again. But she summoned up all her courage and held her head up proudly as she continued to sure at him. I sensed that she was seeing something in him that no one else could see.

'Damn you!' he snarled out, slapping her again and bloodying her mouth. Then he whirled about to face me. 'And damn you, Valari!'

He paused to catch his breath. Then he called out, 'Lay down your sword!'

I turned to catch Kane's stare and said, 'Let's charge them now and make an end to this.' Kane eyed the hundred guards waiting around the circle, and he said.

'It would be our death.'

'There's no help for that now.'

'No – there may yet be a chance.'

'What, then?'

Kane's dark eyes picked over the walls of the room, the great throne, the pillars and the bolted iron doors. Then he said, 'I wish I knew.'

Morjin, hating to be ignored, waved Atara's arrow at me and shouted again: 'Lay down your sword and I will spare your woman!'

'No!' Atara cried out to me. 'You must never surrender!'

'Do it!' Morjin hissed at me. 'Now!'

'No!' Atara said again. 'The sword is his death – can't you see how he fears it?'

Morjin tore his gaze from my flashing sword to stare at Atara. And then he screamed at her, 'And what do you fear, scryer? Not death, I think. And scarcely pain.

Something worse. What is it you see when you look at my eyes now? Look as long as you can, scryer – look deep.'

Atara looked at him in utter loathing and contempt, and then spat the blood from her broken lip straight into his eyes.

'Damn you!' he shouted. He wiped his sleeve across his face and blinked furiously.

He shook the arrow at her and cried out, 'Is this one of the arrows you shot into my son's eyes?'

I stood almost unable to breathe watching the rage flow into Morjin's face as I remembered the deadly accuracy of Atara's arrows in the darkness of the Vardaloon.

'Meliadus,' Atara said clearly for all to hear, 'was a monster.'

'HE WAS MY SON!'

Morjin screamed this so loudly that the rock of the archways three hundred feet above the circle rang with his anguish and wrath. He suddenly reached out with his left hand and grabbed Atara's long hair. He slammed her head back against the standing stone and held it there. And then, with blinding speed, he stabbed the arrow's barbed point into her left eye. It took only a moment for him to rip it free and plunge the bloody steel straight through, the center of her right eye.

I surged forward then to kill as many priests and guards as I could in my rage to get at Morjin. But Kane suddenly grabbed me from behind and wrapped his iron arm around my throat. Maram grabbed my right arm; Liljana held fast to my left. From somewhere behind me, I heard Daj screaming and cursing and gasping out his fear of Morjin, all at once.

Morjin didn't even pause to glance at me. He cast down the bloody arrow. And then, like a bird of prey, like a rabid cat, like the demon he truly was, he fell upon Atara with all his fury and hate. He spat and hissed as he drove his clawlike fingers into her face. He stood fastened to her, shaking and snarling and gouging, pulling ferociously, tearing at her – driving his fingers beneath her brows and tearing out her eyes. He suddenly jumped back and held the bloody orbs up for all to see. Then he crossed over to the brazier and cast these lumps of flesh into the burning coals.

For a long time, it seemed, my world went dark, and I could not see for the terrible burning that blinded my own eyes. A high, hideous scream broke upon the hall. At first I thought it was Atara giving voice to what Morjin had done to her; then I realized that the sound had been torn from deep inside me. When I could finally see again, it was not by virtue of the glowstones' dim light but only the hate that filled my heart and head and utterly possessed me. I looked over at the circle to see Atara shaking and sobbing as she wept blood instead of tears from her reddened eye hollows. Morjin stood holding a cup to her cheek, catching the blood that flowed out of them. More blood – a whole ocean of it, it seemed – flowed off Atara's chin in streams. It fell to the floor and ran through the dark grooves cut into the stone there; it disappeared into the dragon's open mouth like water gurgling down a hole.

Kane's arm was an iron collar bound around my throat; his body behind me was a pillar of stone that I could not break or pull down. And his breath in my ear was the red-hot flame of vengeance: 'Damn Morjin and all his kind!'

Now Morjin stood back from Atara and gazed at her ruined face. He took a drink from the cup that he held in his bloody hands. Then he passed it to Lord Yadom, who likewise drank from it before passing it on to another priest.

With great effort, Atara pulled back her head and oriented it facing Morjin, as if she could smell or sense his presence. Her heart beat with her contempt for him. And then an incredible thing happened. I perceived Morjin as she had, just before her blinding. The mask of illusion was suddenly ripped away from him, and he stood revealed as he truly was: no longer beautiful in face and form, but rather terrible and ghastly to behold. His eyes were not golden at all. They were a sickly red, with pigments of ocher and iron settled into the irises, while the whites were bloodshot as if he was never able to sleep. His pale, mottled skin was likewise disfigured with a webwork of broken blood vessels. There were pouches under his eyes, and much of his limp, grayish hair had fallen out. In the skin that drooped from his neck and in his predatory countenance was a ravenous hunger for vitality and lost love.

I knew that I would never be able to see him otherwise again. As his tongue darted out like a snake's and he licked the blood from his lips, I saw something else: that he had blinded Atara not because of Meliadus but because she had seen through the veil of his most precious illusion and had shown him in the mirror of her eyes what an evil being he truly was. He knows! I suddenly realized. All this time, he has hnown! Somewhere, beneath the lies and trickeries that he crafted for himself and others, lived a man who knew very well the wrong of what he did – and chose to do it anyway. And why? Because people were less than animals to him.

What is hate? It is a black abyss full of fire hotter than a dragon's breath. It is a poison that burns a thousand times as painfully as kirax. It is a black and bitter bile that gathers at the center of one's being, seething to a boil. It is a stabbing pain in the heart, a pressure in the head, a gathering in of all the world's anguish and an overwhelming desire to make another suffer as you have. It is lightning. But not the thunderbolt of illumination, but rather its opposite which maims and burns and blinds. And its name is valarda.

MORJIN!

As he had once promised I would, I struck out at him with the gift that the angels had bestowed upon me. Something very like a thunderbolt of pure, black hate shot out from my heart along the line of my sword and struck his heart. It staggered him.

He gasped as he stared at me in astonishment. He dropped to one knee, gasping and clutching at his chest, even as Kane held me from behind and kept me from collapsing in the sudden agony of what I had done to him.

'Oh, Valari!' Morjin gasped as he struggled to breathe.

I, myself, had stopped breathing. For few moments, I think, my heart stopped beating, too, and I nearly died. And then, as Morjin regained his strength, I felt hate pouring into my limbs again and firing up my being.

'Oh, Valari!' Morjin said again as he stood up and gazed at me. On his pale, fell face was a look of utter triumph. 'That is the last time you'll catch me off-guard. You're stronger than I would have believed, but there's much you have to learn. Shall I show you how it's done?'

So saying, he whirled upon Atara and fixed her with his terrible red eyes. A storm of hate gathered inside him. His heart beat in rhythm with mine. 'No!' I cried.

'Then throw down your sword!'

'No!' I cried again.

'What befalls your woman now,' he said, pointing at her, 'is upon you.'

'No, that's not true!'

'You'll see her die, but not until you've died a thousand times.' And with that, he stepped over to the brazier and removed the glowing pincers.

'Damn you!' I screamed at him.

'Damn you, Valari, for making me do this!' He looked at the pincers' red-hot iron and shouted, 'I'll tear out her vile tongue and roast on the coals! I'll send lepers to ravish her! I'll give her to the rats and let you watch as they eat what's left of her face!'

The thirteen Grays, with their cold eyes and long knives, stood in the circle of death with Morjin waiting to see what he would do. The six priests of the Kallimun looked pitilessly at Atara as they must have many other victims. The hundred guards ringing the circle waited with their swords and spears and axlike halberds. The whole world, it seemed, waited for me to speak or move.

'You must not surrender!' Atara suddenly called to me. She stood tall and brave and eyeless in eternity.

'In a moment, I'll tear out your tongue,' Morjin promised her. 'But first you will call for the Elahad to surrender.'

He took a step closer to her as I gripped my sword more tightly. Once before, in the land of nightmare, he had told me that the valarda was a double-edged sword. He, himself, could now only cut and kill with his. But it haunted him that I might still be able to open myself to others' joys and sufferings. Hating me for the grace that he had long ago lost, he fell into a sickening fury. I sensed that he wanted to test my compassion for Atara. It was his will torture her terribly and for a long time. Because he hated her, yes, but more because he wanted to break me utterly. He wanted me perverted, crushed in spirit, enslaved. He wanted me to kneel before him in the sight of all the men gathered in the hall almost as much as he wanted the Lightstone itself.

'Atara,' I whispered.

What is hate? It is a wall ten thousand feet high surrounding the castle of despair.

Since the moment that Morjin had blinded Atara, I had built this wall higher and higher so that I would not have to know what she really suffered. But now she had turned toward me, and in looking at the blood pooling in her eye hollows and dripping down her cheeks, her face emptied of all hope of that which she most deeply desired, this wall of stone suddenly split asunder as if the earth beneath it had cracked open. And I cried out in the greatest anguish I had ever known, for the love that bound Atara and me together was the greatest I had ever known.

'Hold!' I shouted to Morjin. 'Take me instead of Atara!' The world, I knew, was a place of infinite suffering, infinite pain. In the end I was the weakest of our company.

I could bear Atara's torture much less than she herself. 'Throw down, then!' Morjin called to me, turning away from Atara I shook myself free from Kane, who stared at me, waiting to see what I would do. And I shouted at Morjin, 'First free Atara!' I looked at Master Juwain bound to his stone and at Ymiru pulling with his only whole arm against his chain. 'Free my friends, too. Let them leave Argattha!'

'No,' Morjin said to me. 'First throw down and step forward into our circle, and then I shall do as you ask.'

He stared at me, smiling triumphantly.

'Val, don't do it,' Liljana said to me, pulling on my arm. 'He lies!'

'So, his promise is worth rat dung,' Kane growled out.

I called out to Morjin, 'What surety do we have that you will keep your word?'

'I am King of Ea, and what more surety can there be?' he said. 'It is we who need surety, Valari. How is it to be believed that a proud Valari knight will go willingly to his death with no sword in his hand?'

I knew that he didn't believe that I would give my life in Atara's place, especially if it meant first untold days of hideous torture. And yet, he willed and wanted with every fiber of his being that I should make this surrender. His red eyes filled with a raging bloodlust that was terrible to behold.

How can I do what I must do? I asked myself.

Kane had said that there still might be a chance for us, and now I saw that there was.

But not for me. I might buy my friends' lives with mine. Morjin had given his word before his priests and men, and there! was a chance that he might keep it.

'Val!' Atara called to me.

What is love? It is the warm, healing breath of life that melts the bitterest ice. It is the hot pain of joy in one's heart impossible to quench. It is the fire of the stars that burns clean the soul. It is a simple thing -the simplest thing in the world.

'Atara,' I whispered as I looked at her. Her bloody, mutilated face, I thought, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.'

I stood there facing the circle where Atara and my friends were bound, and my hands sweated to feel the diamonds in Alkaladur's hilt for the last time. There was a sickness in my belly; my chest ached with a crushing pain. Death waited there for me. My old enemy was cold and black and terrifying; it was a terrible emptiness that had no end. It didn't matter. In looking at Atara look toward me, so full of love, so full of light, I suddenly wanted to die for her. I burned with a fierce desire to accept any torment and annihilation in order to keep her living in the land of light.

'Well, Valari?' Morjin called out to me.

I glanced at him and nodded my head. Even if there was only one chance in ten thousand that he would spare Atara and my friends, I had to take it.

And then, even as I bent to lay Alkaladur down upon the dark stone of this vast, dark hall, at the darkest moment of my life, the Bright Sword began shining with an intense radiance that I also felt inside myself. At that moment, the world was strangely full of light. For I, and I alone, suddenly saw the Lightstone everywhere: on top of pedestals and gleaming golden in the recesses of the rocky walls; on the altar near the throne and on tables and even shimmering amidst the red-hot coals in the brazier into which Morjin had cast his offering of flesh. The whole of the throne room blazed with a brilliant golden light. It blinded me to the Lightstone's true presence as surely as my flaws of fear and faithlessness had always blinded me to myself. 'Valari!' Morjin called to me. And then Alkaladur flared silver-white, more brightly than it ever had before. In the mirror of the polished and perfect silustria of my sword, I saw who I really was: Valashu Elahad, son of Shavashar Elahad, who was the direct descendent of Telemesh and Aramesh and all the kings of Mesh going back to the grandsons of Elahad himself. In me still burned the soul of the Valari we who long ago had brought the Lightstone to earth. The Valari, I suddenly remembered, were once guardians of the Lightstone, and would someday be again.

'Damn you, Valari, throw down now or I'll take your woman's tongue!'

But what or who were we to guard the Lightstone for? Not for glory or the ending of pain. Not for invulnerability or immortality or power. Not for the victory of the Maitriche Telu or the vengeance of Kane. Nor for great kings such as Kiritan who would give their daughters to triumphant warriors, nor even for wise queens such as the Lady of the Lake. And certainly not for false Maitreyas such as Morjin who would use it to work great evil instead of good.

The Lightstone is for one and one only, I thought. The true Maitreya told of in the great prophecy, the Lightbringer who mill arise from Ea to defeat the Lord of Darkness and lead all the worlds into a new age.

To gain this cup and guard it so that I could place it in the Maitreya's hands was my purpose; it was my deepest desire and fate. What is love? It is the radiance of the One; it is the blazing of the Morning Star in the eastern sky that calls men to wake up. All my life, it seemed, I had worked to polish and sharpen the sword of my soul, rubbing away the rust and honing the steel finer and finer to put on it an exceedingly keen edge. And now, through a love beyond love, with the hand of the One bestowing this final grace, the polishing was at last completed and nothing of myself remained. And yet, paradoxically, everything. And so the true sword was revealed. It cut with an infinitely fine edge and was impossibly bright. I suddenly stood straight and gripped Alkaladur more tightly. And with the deeper sword that the One had placed in my heart, I finally slew the great dragon whose names are Vanity and Pride. The evil of my hate left me. And then both swords, the one that I held in my hand and the other inside me, blazed like suns. The light was so intense that it completely outshone the illusions all around me and made the thousands of Lightstones that I saw simply disappear. And in this luminous state, my eyes finally opened and drank in the sight of the Lightstone.

As the songs had told, it was just a plain golden cup that would easily fit into the palm of my hand. And as Sartan Odinan had told, it still remained in the vast, dark hall where he had set it down thousands of years before. Even as Morjin and his priests shielded their eyes against the sheen of my sword, I looked to the south of the ritual circle at the great throne. And there, on top of the eye of the coiled red dragon that framed the throne, the Lightstone waited all golden and glorious as it always had.

'Valari!' Morjin called to me.

I somehow knew that if I could only hold the Lightstone in my hands, everything would come out all right. And so I broke from our shelter by the pillars and sprinted for the throne at the same moment that Morjin's voice filled the hall.

'Guards!' he called out. 'He's trying to run away!'

The hundred men of his Dragon Guard, no less his Red Priests and the murderous Grays, waited for him to order an attack. But Morjin, confused at my seeming cowardice, all the while realizing that there was something here that he didn't quite see, hesitated a heartbeat too long.

And in that moment, Flick suddenly appeared. From out of the hall's dark depths he streaked like a bolt of lightning straight toward the ritual circle. As I ran, I looked back over my shoulder to see Flick fall upon Morjin's face in swirls of white and violet sparks. Morjin, his eyes wide with astonishment, dropped the iron pincers to the floor and used his hands to try to beat Flick's fiery form away from his head.

And he gasped out, 'Damn you, Valari! What is this trick of yours?'

It took me only a few seconds to reach the steps to the throne. I bounded up them, taking but little notice of the statues of the fallen Galadin that stared silently at me from their sides. I stood on the hard stone before the seat of the throne itself. I rested my sword there. And then I reached out and grasped the Lightstone in my hands.

Upon its touch, at once cool as grass and warm as Atara's cheek, Morjin's cries and the dark glitter of the hall faded away as in the passing of a dream. A deeper world blazed forth. Everything seemed touched with a single color, and that was glorre.

The cup overflowed with shimmering cascades of light that fell over my hands and arms and every part of me. I felt its incredible sweetness through my skin and brightening my blood. Suddenly the cup began ringing with a single, pure note like a great golden bell. Then the gold gelstei of which the Lightstone was wrought turned transparent, and there was an astonishing clarity. Inside it were swirling constellations of stars – all the stars in the universe. Their light was impossibly deep; it was more brilliant and beautiful than anything I had ever beheld. I dissolved like salt into this infinite clear sea of radiance. And at last I knew the indestructible joy and bottomless peace of diving deep into the shimmering waters of the One.

When I returned to the throne room a single moment and ten thousand years later, I knew why the Lightstone's touch had killed Sartan Odinan. For the gold gelstei, far from healing my hurts, quickened my gift of valarda almost infinitely. Inside the cup was all of creation, and so long as I held it, I was open to all of its joy and pain.

Infinite pain, I whispered. And then, as I felt within myself the polishing of the true substance of which I was wrought, there came a greater realization: But infinite capacity to bear it.

And so I finally understood words that I had read once in the Saganom Elu: 'To drink in the world's suffering, you must become the ocean; to bear the burning of the fire, you must become the flame.'

I grasped the Lightstone, and all fear left me. And I smiled to see that I was holding only a small golden cup in my hand.

The others saw it, too. But only for a moment As the face of everyone in the hall turned toward me, the gold of the Lightstone fell clear as a diamond crystal and began radiating light like the sun. Brighter and brighter grew this light until it poured out like the starfire of ten thousand suns. It dazzled the very soul, and for a few moments, blinded every pair of eyes in the hall save my own.

Morjin was especially stricken by this terrible and beautiful light. He stood at the center of the black circle on top of the dragon's open mouth, gasping in terror because he was suddenly more blind than Atara. And then, finally, with a sickening jolt, he realized why my friends and I had really entered Argattha. He saw that the brilliance of my sword had come not from my hate but from a deeper resonance that he had long been denied. And so he opened his mouth and let loose a terrible cry that filled all the hall:

VALARIII!

His raw, outraged voice shook the stones of the pillars to the sides of the throne even as he shook his head about and howled like a mad dog. His hatred was a terrible thing. It blasted out into the hall like the fire of a furnace from hell. He hated me, and all of us, with a black, bitter fury for keeping this secret from him. And even more, he hated his own blindness that had lasted thirty centuries and lasted still.

'Guards!' he screamed. 'Kill the Valari! Take the Lightstone!' I saw that the Lightstone's radiance was now beginning to fade and would soon return to a simple golden sheen. After taking a last look at it, I tucked the little cup down beneath my mail shirt over my heart. And then, lifting up my bright, long sword, I hurried down the steps of the throne and rushed forward to do battle to defend it.