The Lightstone

Chapter 45

To be cast into darrkncss is the crulest of fates. Morjn's sudden blindness struck terror into him. He waved his had in front of his face and screamed out, 'Guards! To me! To me!' Like writhing, sightless insects, his guards stumbled about and man aged to swarm around Morjin and protect him with their frantically waving spears.

More than one of these steel-tipped shafts pierced a hand or eye of a neighboring guard, and their screams fell out into the hall as well. I sensed that I had only moments before they regained their vision. And so 1 sprinted from the throne straight across the hall toward the circle where Atara, Ymiru and Master fuwain were bound.

Three guards, no doubt hearing the pounding of my boots against the floor, stabbed out their spears blindly to stop me. I parried their clumsy thrusts and cut them down.

And then I pushed my way through other guards until I came to the standing stone holding up Atara. I swung Alkaladur twice, with great precision; its incredibly sharp silustria cut clean through her chains in a shriek of snapping iron. I wrapped my arm around her back as I led her over to Master Juwam's and Ymiru's stones and likewise freed them.

Four more guards tried to hinder me – or perhaps they were only fleeing into me in their blindness. I reddened my sword in the warm, wet sheaths of their bodies. I led Atara over to the part of the circle where our weapons and gelstei had been heaped.

And then the still-blind

Master Juwain and Ymiru.

It took only a moment for me to grab up Ymiru's great war club and press it into his remaining hand. He suddenly regained his vision even as his huge fingers closed around the haft.

'Now there be blood!' he roared out as his eyes leaped with light. He stood glaring at the nearby guards as I tucked his violet crystal into the pouch on his belt. 'Now they'll know what real hrorror be!'

As Master Juwain espied his green gelstel lying on the bloodstained floor, Ymiru raised up his club and began laying about Morjin's guards with a terrifying ferocity.

Flesh and bones broke like eggshells with a sickening crunch as gouts of flesh sprayed out into the air. Four more men fell like bludgeoned chickens. The gargoyles carved into the walls and pillars of the hall – to say nothing of the statues of the fallen Galadin – smiled their hideous smiles to behold a bloody horror that would make even stone itself quail.

And all the while, Morjin kept screaming out, 'Guards! To me! To me!'

'Master Juwain!' I said as he held his crystal in front of Atara's face to stop the bleeding there. 'Stay close!'

Blood still trickled from his ruined ear, and he nodded his head. 'Atara!' I said, putting her sword into her hand. 'Stay by me!' I worried that she would be too weak to stand; I didn't quite see how I could protect both her and the Lightstone in the battle that was building around us. And then she astonished me by moving precisely to gather up her bow and arrows as if she could sense how they lay on the floor. She strapped on her quiver and then turned her eyeless head toward me, saying, 'No, Val

– stay with the others. I've men to slay.'

She smiled grimly and broke away from me; she took off at a run, dodging or stabbing guards who tried to block her way. When she had fought clear of the circle, she began running straight for Morjin's throne.

How is it possible! I wondered. How is it possible that the sightless can see?

I had no time to ponder this mystery. Even as Atara bounded up the throne's steps, leaped upon the seat of the throne and climbed up the face of the dragon to stand on top of its head, the sight began returning to our enemies, one by one. A few were so bold as to attack Ymiru or me, and these quickly died. But soon the entire host of Morjin's guard would be able to see us and direct their spears and halberds in a coordinated assault And then they would surely cut us down.

'To me!' a strong voice called out like the roar of a lion. 'Val, to me!'

Across the circle, at its edge in the direction of the pillars and the hall's eastern gate, Kane had also regained the use of his eyes. He had wasted no time or pity in butchering Morjin's men; at least seven of them lay dead beneath his dripping sword.

His efforts, however, weren't directed against these spear carriers and halberd wielders. It seemed that he was trying to slash his way toward Morjin, who stood near the center of the ritual area ringed by several circles of still-dazzled guards. 'Val, kill the Grays first, if you can!' Kane shouted.

Between Morjin and Kane gathered the thirteen Grays. These dreadful men might have paralyzed any and all of us but for the wrath of Liljana, who fought by Kane's side along with Maram. She held her blue gelstei up beore her. I could almost feel it resonating with the Lightstone close to my heart and gaining great power. It seemed to flow forth an ethereal radiance like that of a hot blue star. So fierce was Liljana's attack upon the Grays' minds that they grabbed their heads and howled in helplessness. And Kane howled out as well. 'To me!' And then, with Maram fighting frantically by his side and covering him. he finally broke througth the ring of guards around the Grays and began matching their long knives with his much longer sword.

It took him only a few moments to slaughter all of them.

As the last of them fell, Liljana joined Kane in fixing her eyes on Morjin. And the Great Beast suddenly bellowed out, 'Get out of my mind, witch!'

I could almost feel the blast of pure mental fire that Morjin directed Liljana. For a moment she stood utterly stricken. It was as if she stood writhing in the midst of all the flames of hell. And then she turned on him a terrible fire of her own.

Now many more of Morjin's guards were able to see, and they closed ranks to protect their lord. Kane, Maram and Liliana were forced to retreat back a few dozen yards toward the throne. Ymiru and I, with Master Juwain behind us, fought our way around the edge of the circle and joined them a hundred feet from the throne and about as far from the line of pillars to the east. It was an exposed position with the bare black stone of the floor all around us. Behind us rose the dragon throne, upon which Atara now stood holding her great curved bow. Ahead of us was the mass of guards shielding Morjin inside the circle. For us, I saw, further retreat would be futile; soon Morjin's men would drive us back to the corner of the room. And so I called for us to form up into a five pointed star: I stood facing Morjin, with Kane on my right and Ymiru on my left. Maram and Liljana stood farther back with Master Juwain in the star's center.

At that moment, Atara loosed the first of her arrows. It burned through the air and struck through the face of a tall guard standing in front of Morjin. Atara cried out,

'Sixty-one!' Then, in quick succession three more arrows sang out and found their marks in the guards surrounding Morjin. She would have slain the great Red Dragon himself if Morjin and his priests hadn't ducked down beneath their shields of living flesh. 'Atara!' I cried out. 'Kill the captains firs!'t I didn't understand how Atara's arrow found these four steel-clad men. It took her only six more shots to send them on to the stars. As death rained down all about Morjin and he cowered at the center of the circle, his naked fear beat out into the room.

He was perhaps the last person in the hall to regain his sight. As he finally did. and one of his priests pointed out where Atara stood on top of his throne with her great bow like an angel of death, he shouted 'Kill her!'

'Kane!' I called out. None of Morjin's captains remained standing to lead the charge against Atara. In only moments, Morjin would see his strategy for victory, he would deploy perhaps twenty of his remaining seventy guards to charge the throne and slay Atara. Then, freed from the murderous flight of her arrows, he would be able to order the rest of his guards against us. They would soon flank us in a well-coordinated assault and annihilate us. 'Everyone,' I called again, 'attack!'

I led forth into the clot of men gathered around Morjin and his priests. Four guards stabbed their spears toward me I swung Alkaladur and cut through the shafts of all the spears in a single stroke; on the backstroke, I took off the head of one of these guards and cut clean through another's arm deep into his chest. Kane, at my right, quickly butchered two more as Ymiru's club fell straight down and crushed a halberd-bearing guard to a bloody pulp.

A few guards, on their own initiative, had tried to circle around us. Liljana stabbed one of these through the neck while Maram worked his sword against the sword and spear of two others. I sensed a great strength flowing into him. He cut and parried and thrust all the while grunting like a bear. Although his gelstei was cracked, the presence of the Lightstone seemed to cause some of its fire to ignite his heart and limbs. He suddenly snarled as he drove his sword clean through the opposing swordsman's chest. And then whipping it free, he turned to parry a spear thrust and bury his sword in its owner's eye.

We had slain many but many more stood before us. The stone eyes of Angra Mainyu looking out upon the battle might have recorded that we were still badly outnumbered. But I knew that the numbers favored us. For we were more than six warriors against sixty. Kane fought beside me with the strength and fury of ten men, and all that he had taught me came out in the speed and precision of my sword which flashed and cut as if I wielded ten swords in my hands. My father was there beside me as well, and his weapons master, Lansar Rashaaru, and Asaru, Karshur, Yarashan and all my brothers. My mother fought with me like a lioness, calling out encouragements and warnings, protecting me, urging me to live at all costs and return home to her. In truth, the entire host of the Valari was in the hall that day, the Ishkans with the Meshians, the Waashians and the warriors of Kaash, and it was as if we slashed ten thousand bright steel kalamas into the soul of our ancient enemy.

Panic in battle, is a terrible thing. The victors strike it into the vanquished in the furious dash of steel against steel in the lionlike roar of their hearts and in the blaze of their eyes. It spreads among the doomed like a disease: here a guard cries out in dismay while another sprays his neighbor in a fountain of blood; there a halberd wavers in the air and a spearman pulls back behind the imagined safety of others around him while many others begin falling back as well and even a few break and run. Panic also communicates from commander to commanded like wildfire through dry grass. When a king, on the field of battle, loses heart, he has no hope of victory.

Even as Ymiru's club crumpled steel and my sword cut through the guards' armor as if it were cloth, as Atara's arrows sizzled through the air and struck down guards and priests like lightning falling from the heavens, Morjin was seized with a great fear of death. I felt it come quivering alive within his chest and then spread out in waves through the men bunched around him. In truth, they now fought like maddened beasts rather than men. They bunched and screamed and swarmed about Morjin.

And his voice rose above the clamor of the spears and clashing steel: 'Retreat!

Retreat to the gate!'

A commander who cannot view all of his forces arrayed against the enemy will find battle to be a vast, boiling doud of unknowing. For a warrior caught in the thick of flashing swords and blood, battle is a tunnel of fire. I, who held the Bright Sword in my hands, suddenly saw the ferocious fight through Morjin's throne room as from the vantage of an eagle high above and as a fiercely struggling knight swinging sword against sword – all at once. And I saw this with an astonishing darity. In front of me, the mass of men moved a few yards toward the southwest, and I knew that Morjin intended to flee through the door leading to his private chambers rather than through the room's west gate. Already one of his priests had broken from the drde to run and open this door. Although the tightly pressed guards prevented my view of his flight, I heard his boots pounding against the floor even as Atara's bowstring sang out its twanging tune of death. And so I 'saw' him dutch his chest against the arrow sticking out of it and fall to the floor. Likewise I became aware of Liljana behind me slipping her sword through a guard's defenses and thrusting its steel point through the mail covering his belly.

His scream was as strangled and deep as the knot of his suddenly pierced intestines.

Nearby, Maram matched swords against sword with a master warrior. The clanging of steel reverberated with rythms in my blood as Maram fought with a fury and skill I hadn't known he possessed. In truth, in that moment with his brilliant sword and his heart of fire, he fought like a Valari knight. He suddenly killed his man with a quick thrust and then turned to cross swords with another.

In this most desperate of battles, we even had help from two unexpected sources. At the center of the star whose five points were Kane, Liljana, Maram, Ymiru and I, Master Juwain stood with his green gelstei blazing and pouring new life into our tired limbs and souls. And as we inched slowing toward the door leading to Morjin's rooms, Daj suddenly darted out from behind a pillar and grabbed up a cast-off spear. He went forth mercilessly finishing off the wounded and dying where they lay sprawled and groaning on the floor. One guard, outraged at his temerity, closed and swung his halberd at his head. Daj dropped low, beneath the blow even as he thrust up with the spear. It drove straight into the guard's groin. In the wrath of his awful scream, the guard's backstroke would have split open Dai's brains if Ymiru hadn't come up and brained him with his terrible club.

'Val!' Kane called out to my right. His sword flashed and a hand flew though the air nearby. 'Don't let Morjin escape!'

I was closer to him than was Kane. Now, through the mass of men in front of me, I caught glimpses of Morjin's golden tunic. He still crouched low, taking cover behind his frantically battling guards. But as Atara fired off the last of her arrows and her mighty bow fell silent, he stood up straight and drew his sword. His eyes found mine across ten yards of the blood-slick floorstone. His hatred poured out of them and something more: he tried to murder me with a sudden blast of the valarda. The shining silustria of my sword, however, shielded me from this deadly assault – as it did my companions. And as I raised Alkaladur high above my head, he looked upon it and saw his death.

I fought with a rare fury to kill him then. But this came not from a desire for vengeance. The only way for me to guard the Lightstone was to slay my enemies, not in fear, anger or hate, but only in knowledge, prowess and necessity, even out of love – a vast and terrible love beyond love that would destroy such diseased beings as Morjin so that new and greater life could be. He was a poisonous serpent who must be slain if I was to protect others. And more, he was a cracked vessel who could not hold light but only darkness. He had lived ages too long, and it was long past time that the One made a new cup out of this particular day.

It was the destroying wrath of the One itself that fell upon me and blazed forth through the lightning strokes of my sword. I swung Alkaladur and struck off a guard's head; I lunged and drove its point through the mail covering a guard's chest, clean through his body and into the chest of the guard pressed up close behind him.

In wrenching its blade free, I killed two more. A few moments later, another guard tried to parry a quick blow. My sword cut the steel of his – and then cut straight down through his shoulder, cleaving his body in two. The terror of my sword caused the guards behind him to panic. But they were bunched around Morjin too close simply, to flee.

At last, I understood the Valari ideal of fearlessness, flawlessness and flowingness, not just with my head, but in the exquisite pressure of the black jade of my sword's hilt against my hands, and in the surging of my heart and deep in my soul.

Fearlessness: I was at one with the death that I dealt out, and so with the wild joy of life that poured into me. If I saw that a guard's spear thrust might be taken square upon my armor, I didn't flinch from it, but rather trusted to the strength of its steel rings forged by the master armorers of Mesh. Thus I was free to thrust and cut myself, like a whirlwind whipping a silver blade among my foes, lunging and parrying and killing – all the time dancing the wild and delicate dance of death.

Flawlessness: In the grace bestowed upon me, nothing could pierce the perfect diamond clarity of my awareness and will to fulfill my fate. All of my soul was in my sword, and my sword was in me, and so I cut my way through steel and flesh straight toward Morjin.

Flowingness: This desperate fight of guards screaming and hacking and spinning about had a logic and pattern that was not mine to control. But as in a storm at sea, there was a still point around which all the winds of violence whirled, and this quiet place was inside of me. And so I became one with the pattern of the battle, moving among men like water, always flowing down the red channels of death toward the great Red Dragon whose name was Morjin.

As Kane and my other, friends battled beside me and guarded my back, I fought my way closer to him. Now only two tall guards, aiming spears at me, stood between us.

I looked past them and locked eyes with him; he waited to slash his sword into me.

His snarl of rage promised endless torments, but he no longer had the power of illusion to make me feel them, nor would he ever again. His hideousness stunned me.

Now that we were so near each other, I knew that he didn't really smell roses as his illusions suggested. Rather, he gave off the sick reek of fear, fouler than a bloody flux, putrid as death. It hit like the blow of a war hammer deep into my belly. My bones ached with the urge to destroy this twisted being. From the circle of the carved stone beneath us came the gurgle of me blood of many dead men being sucked down the drain of the dragon's mouth; grounded out like a roaring from deep inside the mountain itself.

'Morjin!' I cried out even as I cut my way through these last two guards.

And his cry joined mine in echoing from the cold stone of the hall, 'Valari!'

We crossed swords then, and my greater fury bore him back into the guards massed about him. The sharp edge of a halberd slammed into the mail covering my side, but I scarcely felt it. A spear thrust at my face, and I pulled back my head to let it slip harmlessly past a couple of inches from my eyes. I raised back my sword.

'Val!' From on top of the throne, Atara's strong, clear voice rang out like a bell through the hall. 'You mustn't kill him!'

I suddenly remembered the prophecy that the death of Morjin would be the death of Ea.

'Val.'

It was said by some that Morjin was the finest swordsman on Ea. And perhaps he was. But now his hatred of me and the rigidness of his lust to take my head betrayed him. I felt his murderous intentions deep in my throat, and ducked beneath the vicious slash of his sword at the last moment. And then, rising quickly, I saw my chance. I thrust my sword over the shoulder of a quickly closing guard into Morjin's neck. It was a terrible wound, a mortal wound – but it failed to kill him.

'His fate is yours,' Atara called to me. 'If you kill him, you kill yourself!'

'I don't care!' I cried out.

I knew what she said was true. I stood in the land of death with all the men I had slain. If I now killed Morjin, this great immortal being with whom I was connected by the poison in my blood and the dark weave of fate, I would never leave it. Already, with the muscles and veins of Morjin's neck ripped open into a bloody hole, I could barely stand, barely see. Again, I raised back my sword.

'Val, if you kill yourself, you kill me!'

Atara's warning seemed to crack the stone of the mountain and stop the earth itself from turning. I suddenly knew something else: that Atara's blinding had shocked her to a wholly new level of scrying. Thus, even though eyeless, she had been able to

'see' to fire her arrows into Morjin's guards. I sensed that she was seeing things both far and near in space and time. And now she fired a different kind of arrow into me.

Even as I hesitated and Morjin's guards closed in and came between us, she called out that she loved me more than life. If I died, she told me, she would die, too.

Her words tore open my heart. How much more must this beautiful, tortured woman be made to lose? I looked through the ring of guards to see Morjin choking on his blood and gasping for breath. His eyes closed even as his guards tried desperately to bear him back away from me.

'Atara,' I whispered.

My sword lowered as I cast a terrible look at the nearby guards to warn them away from me. I knew that I couldn't kill Morjin. It was the strangest and bitterest turning of fate that out of compassion for the one I most loved, I must spare Morjin's life.

'Damn it Val!' Kane thundered from my right. 'You're letting him get away!'

He started after the mass of guards, many fewer in number now who were bearing Morjin's gravely wounded body toward the southwest corner of the room. There, one of his guards had finally managed to open the door to his chambers. I suddenly grabbed Kane's arm and looked into his furious black eyes. I'd had enough of killing for one day.

'Damn you!' Kane said again. 'If you can't kill him, I will!'

He wrenched his arm free from my grip to pursue Morjin. He ran across the hall, savagely cutting down the few guards who tried to stop him. I ran after him. By the time I reached his side, however, the guards and remaining priests had succeeded in dragging Morjin through the open doorway. A dozen guards stood in front it, waiting their turn to enter the passageway beyond. Kane fell upon them, all the while stabbing and slashing and howling out his frustration that Morjin was escaping him.

'Let him go!' I shouted. 'It would be your death to follow him!'

Not even Kane, I thought, could fight his way through such a narrow passageway held by so many men.

'I don't care!' Kane roared. 'Morjin must die!'

Perhaps Morjin would die of his dreadful wound, but it was too late to inflict any other. In order to save Kane's life, I came up behind him and wrapped my arm like an iron band across his chest. He surged against me like an enraged tiger. By the time he again broke free, the last of the guards fled into the passageway, and the door slammed shut in our faces.

MORJ1NNN!

Kane screamed out his great enemy's name as he leaped forward to pound the pommel of his sword against the heavy, locked door. Then he whirled about facing me. There was blood in his eyes and dripping from his sword.

'What's wrong with you!' he shouted at me, pointing at the door. 'We might have killed them all!'

From across the hall to the east, from on top of the throne, Atara's clear voice called out, 'No – if we had pursued them there, they would have killed all of us.'

'So you say, scryer,' Kane snarled out.

I looked over at the throne to behold Atara. But she, who had seen clearly enough to shoot her arrows across the dim hall into our enemy's throats or eyes, seemed now to be suddenly and completely blind. She fumbled and groped about with her hands as she tried to climb down from the throne. I ran across the hall to help her. Kane ran after me. And then a few moments later, Maram, Liljana and the others joined us there as well, and we gathered beneath the steps to the throne. 'We're trapped!'

Maram cried as he turned about to look at the room's locked gates. 'We kill a hundred men, and we're still trapped!'

I stood with my arm around Atara's back, helping her stand. She had spent nearly the last of her strength. Her bloody, beautiful head rested heavily on my shoulder.

'So, not quite a hundred,' Kane said. He stood looking toward the standing stones and the carnage that we had wrought. Across the blood-soaked ritual circle, the hacked and torn bodies of our enemies lay everywhere. 'And not quite enough – never enough death for them.'

But it was more than enough death for me. As I gazed at those whom I had slain, only my grip on Alkaladur's diamond-set hilt kept me from falling down and joining them.

'I'm sorry,' Atara said to Kane. She managed to lift up her head and orient her face toward him. 'But I saw… that is, I knew that Val needed to remain alive. You, too, Kane, and myself- all of us. We all must live to guard the Lightstone for the Maitreya.'

Upon these words I removed the Lightstone from beneath my armor. It seemed more than a lifetime ago that I had put it there. And it seemed almost a dream that I had finally found it after all. Only the warm hard ness of the little golden cup in my hand reassured me that it was real. 'So,' Kane muttered. His black eyes were bright as moons as they drank in the cup's golden sheen. His thirst for its light, I thought was nearly infinite. 'So.'

He broke his gaze and turned toward Atara. He said, 'Morjin and others have killed every Maitreya born on Ea. Killing him was the best hope we had of putting this cup in the next Maitreya's hands.'

'Hrope,' Ymiru said bitterly. He leaned over his bloody war club as he turned his attention from the wonder of the Lightstone to the room's great bronze gates. 'How long will it be before more guards are summoned? Or before the Red Priests call up the whrole army from the first level?'

Maram, tearing his eyes from the Lightstone, looked at me and asked, 'Is there no way out of here, then?'

'There is a way out,' Liljana said staring at the Lightstone. She wiped her sword on a tunic torn from one of the dead and sheathed it. 'A secret passage leading from the throne room – I saw this to Morjin's mind.'

'Where is it then?' Maram shouted at her.

'I saw that it is,' t=she told him, 'but not where it is.'

I looked at Daj, who was standing slightly behing Liljana. He still held his killing spear in his little hands. 'Do you know where this passage is?' I asked him

'No, Lord Morin never spoke of it,' he said. Then his courage finally failed him, and he began trembling and said, 'I want to go home!'

As Liljana put her arm around him and pulled him closer, she said to Atara, 'Have you seen the door to thst passage, my dear?'

'No, I… can see nothing now,' Atara murmured, shaking her head.

Maram ran over to the wall near the door to Morjin's chambers and began searching it for the telltale cracks that might demarcate a secret door. But the throne room's acres of walls were everywhere cracked and carved with fissures and swirls that formed the shapes of dragons and other beasts, and so it seemed that Maram had set himself a hopeless task. Master Juwain moved up in front of Atara with his varistei held over the crown of her head. A brilliant green light poured out of it as of a rain shower that has taken on the color of new spring leaves. It gave her new life.

But it failed to restore her vision.

Liljana laid her hand on Atara's shoulder as she addressed Master Juwain saying, 'If Atara can't find her way to visions of the otherworld, then perhaps you can restore her sight of this one.'

'I?' Master Juwain said 'How?'

'By growing new eyes for her.'

Master Juwain looked at his crystal as he sadly shook his head. He told her, 'As I've said before, I'm afraid my gelstei hasn't that power.'

'Not by itself, perhaps. But the Lightstone must have that power.'

She turned straight toward Kane and recited the lines from the Song o f Kalkamesh and Telemesh:

The lightning flashed, struck stone, burned clear The prince beheld through rain and tear

The hands that held the golden bowl,

The warrior's hands again were whole

'Kalkamesh,' she told him, 'had touched the Lightstone before his torture – before Telemesh freed him by cutting him away from his crucified hands. But he grew new hands, didn't he?'

'So,' Kane said as his eyes darkened. 'So the old songs say.' 'Kalkamesh,' she said again, 'gained this power thusly, didn't he?'

'How should,' know?' Kane muttered, shaking his head.

'Didn't he?'

'No,' Kane snarled, 'you're wrong – you know nothing.'

'I know what I see.' So saying, Liljana pointed at the side of Kane's head. There, during the ferocity of the battle, the bandage that Master Juwain had fixed after the earlier battle with the knights beneath Skartaru's north face had come loose. I stared through the dim light near the throne, and gasped at what I saw. For beneath Kane's white hair, where the knight's sword had sheared off his ear, a small, pink, new ear the size of a child's was growing from his head. 'Kalkamesh,' Liljana said, staring at him. 'You are he.'

'No,' Kane murmured, shaking his head. 'No.'

'Morjin spoke to you as if you'd known him long ago. As you spoke to him.'

'No, no,' Kane said.

'And the way you looked at him! Your hate. Who could ever hate him so much?'

Kane looked at Atara and then me but said nothing.

'And the way you fight!' Liljana continued. 'Who could ever fight as Kalkamesh did?'

Kane bowed his head to me and said, 'Valashu Elahad can.'

I returned his bow, then asked him, 'Are you really Kalkamesh?'

'No,' he said as he stared at the Lightstone. 'That is not my name.'

'Then what is your name? Your true name? It's not Kane, is it?' 'No, that is not my name either.'

I waited for him to say more as my heart pounded like the distant hammering that I could hear from beyond the throne room's doors. A battle a thousand times fiercer than the one we had just fought raged inside him.

'My name,' he whispered, 'is Kalkin.'

He drew himself up as straight as a king and pointed his sword at the door to Morjin's chambers. And a single, terrible cry broke from his throat like thunder and shook the hall:

'KALKIN!'

'Do you hear that, Morjin! My name is Kalkin, and I've come to return you to the stars!'

It hurt my ears to hear him shout this name; it hurt my heart. As the hall fell silent again, we all looked at him in amazement And then Master Juwain, who had a better memory than any of us, turned to him and said, 'The Damitan Elu speaks of Kalkin.

He was one of the heroes of the first Lightstone quest.'

I suddenly remembered King Kiritan telling of this in his great hall-of how Morjin had led heroes on the first quest, only to fall mad upon beholding the Lightstone and slaying Kalkin and all the others – all except the immortal Kalkamesh.

As Master Juwain began recounting this ancient tale, Kane shook his sword at him and cut him off. He said, 'I've warned you that many of these ancient histories do not tell true. Morjin never led that quest. And he did not kill Kalkin, as you can see.'

'I don't know what I see,' Master Juwain said, looking at him strangely. 'If you're not Kalkamesh, then whatever happened to him?'

'I happened to him!' Kane said. 'Do you understand? After the first quest, Kalkin became Kalkamesh. And an age later, after the Sarburn, when Kalkamesh cast Alkaladur into the sea, he became Kane, do you understand?'

As I looked down at my sword, my amazement deepened. And then I squeezed the Lightstone more tightly in my hand as I asked him, 'But if you are really Kalkin, didn't the touch of this cup bestow upon you immortality?'

Kane, or the man that I had known by that name, began pacing about like a caged tiger as he cast quick, ferocious glances at the doors of the hall. He suddenly stopped and snarled out 'Listen, damn you, and listen well – we haven't much time.'

He stared down at the blackish blood pooled on the floor as if looking far into the past. Then he looked up and said, 'Once there was a band of brothers, a sacred band.'

He nodded at Master Juwain and went on, 'We were not of any of your Brotherhoods; ours was much older. So, much older, much more glorious, I, you – you can't understand…'

From beyond the hall's western gate came a pounding as of many boots against stone. We all pressed closer to Kane to hear what he had to tell us.

'I will say their names, for they should be heard at least once in every age,' Kane said. 'There were twelve of us: Sarojin, Averin, Manjin, Balakin and Durrikin. And Iojin, Mayin, Baladin, Nurijin and Garain.' 'That's only ten,' Maram pointed out.

'The eleventh was myself,' Kane said. He pointed at the door to Morjin's chambers.

'And you know the name of the twelfth.'

Now many voices shouted from beyond the hall's eastern doors. I knew that we should be searching for the secret passage that Liljana had spoken of. But the gleam of my sword, in whose silver I saw reflected the Lightstone, gave me to understand that it was somehow more important to listen to Kane.

'We came to Tria early in the Age of Swords,' Kane told us. 'So, it was a savage time, even worse than this. Manjin was killed in a Sarni raid. Mayin was murdered on the Gray Prairies looking for clues as to where Aryu had taken the Lightstone.

Nurijin, Dunikin, Baladin, and Sarojin, Balakin, too, and then even Iojin, sweet beloved Iojin – all killed. All except Garain and Averjin, who set out with Morjin and Kalkin on a ship captained by Bramu Rologar to seek the Lightstone.'

Kane paused to stare at the cup that I held, and then continued, 'And find it we did.

The Lightstone was made to be found. But on the voyage back to Tria, Morjin enlisted the aid of Captain Rologar and his men to kill Averin and Garain. So, and Kalkin, too. But Kalkin was harder to kill, eh? So, he killed Captain Rologar and four of his men and damned himself, do you understand? He killed, in violence to his soul, killed men, before Morjin stabbed him in the back and cast him into the sea.'

Now, beyond the hall's northern door, came a clamor as of shields banging together.

I knew that I, or all of us, should begin cutting arrows out of the dead in the event that Atara miraculously regained her second sight.

Instead, I nodded at Kane and asked him, 'But how did Kalkin live to tell such a tale?'

'The dolphins saved him. They were friends with men, once upon a time.'

'But that still doesn't explain Kalkin's immortality,' I pointed out.

Master Juwain, ever the student of history, caught Kane's eyes and said, 'You've recounted that Kalkin and his band of brothers came to Tria early in the Age of Swords. But the first quest took place late in that age, didn't it?'

'So,' Kane said, his eyes flashing, 'so.'

'Hundreds of years later,' Master Juwain said. 'But if Kaikin and Morjin, and the others as well, lived all that time, then they didn't gain their immortality by touching -'

'The Lightstone has no such power!' Kane suddenly shouted, cutting him off.

'Haven't I made that clear?'

'Then how,' Master Juwain asked, 'did Kalkin become immortal?'

'The way that men do,' Kane told htm. 'By becoming more than men.'

It was as if a cold wind had fallen down from the nighttime sky and found the flesh along the back of my neck. A shiver, like a lightning bolt made of ice, ran up and down my spine. I stood staring at Kane waiting for him to say more.

'It was the Galadin who sent us here to recover the Lightstone,' he told us. 'For them, who were immortal and could not be killed, Ea was deemed too perilous. For us, who were merely immortal, this world proved to be perilous enough, eh?'

How was it possible, I wondered? How was it possible that this man who stood before us grim, angry, pained and still dripping with the blood of those whom he had slain – could be one of the blessed Elijin?

'Five men Kalkin put to the sword, eh? But we were forbidden to kill men. And so in breaking with the Law of the One, Kalkin broke with the One, perhaps forever.'

Kane stared at the cup in my hand, and there was an immense and endless blackness inside him waiting to be filled with light. How long he had been waiting, I thought!

For he, who had once held the Lightstone and had beheld its perfect radiance even as I had, had been cast into a lightless void and had endured a dark night of the soul that had lasted nearly seven thousand years.

Maram, suddenly understanding this, gazed at Kane in awe. 'No wonder you fought so hard to bring us here to recover the Lightstone.'

'Ha!' Kane called out. 'I never thought we would find the Lightstone here. I never believed the account of Master Aluino's journal. I knew Sartan Odinan, and I never thought it possible that his greed would have permitted him simply to drop the Lightstone down on top of Morjin's damn throne.'

Maram looked at him nervously and said, 'If that's true, then you must have wanted

– '

'Revenge!' Kane cried out. He raised up his bloody sword and swept it about the hall. 'I came here to put this into Morjin's treacherous heart! Does anyone deserve death more? What's one more murder against all those I have slain?'

'Perhaps,' I said, remembering Atara's warning, 'one too many.'

"You say that?' growled at me, looking at my sword. 'How many have you slain with that today?'

'Too many,' I said as I looked about the hall. Then I held Alkaladur out toward him and said, 'If you are really Kalkamesh, then you forged this sword. And so it is yours.'

'No, it's yours now. You're better at killing with it than I ever was,'

'But if you were to take it back, the silver gelstei might -'

'It's not your damn bloody sword I want!' he thundered at me. There was a strange, faraway look in his eyes – and the faint fire of madness, too. 'It's not the silver gelstei that I want.'

Now the red flames in his eyes built hotter as he stared at the Lightstone. His voice filled with anger and a choking desire as he pointed at the cup and called out 'So, Morjin has escaped me, eh? But it seems that fate has put the Lightstone in my hands.'

'In Val's hands,' Maram said, stepping forward. 'That was the rule we made in Tria, that whoever found the Lightstone would have final say as to what would be done with it.'

'So,' Kane said, taking a step closer to me. His knuckles were white around the hilt of his sword. 'So.'

'You pledged your sword to Val's service!' Maram reminded him.

'So I did,' Kane said. 'I pledged it only so long as he sought the Lightstone. Well, the Lightstone has been found, and so he seeks it no longer.'

I didn't know if Kane had fallen so far that he would kill me to claim the Lightstone; I didn't know if I could kill him, even in its defense. I doubted that I could kill him.

Despite his words of praise as to my prowess with the Bright Sword that he had forged, he was an angel of death who gripped in his hands a killing sword of his own.

'Kalkin,' I said to him.

'Don't call me that!'

'No matter how many you kill, even Morjin, even Angra Mainyu himself, it will never bring back the light.'

'Damn you!'

We met eyes suddenly, and the anguish that I saw in him cut open my heart. I knew then that I could never kill this brave blessed man whom I loved.

Without a further glance at my sword, I quickly sheathed it. I looked deep into Kane's black eyes, so like my own. As the Valari were sons and daughters of the Star People, so were the Elijin – in transcendence and immortality. Kane, I thought, was Valari in his soul, and something more.

I held the Lightstone out to him then. I said, 'Take it. If you will promise to guard and keep it for the Maitreya, then I would have the Lightstone go with you.'

Kane stepped forward and reached out to grasp the Lightstone with his left hand.

My hand, suddenly freed from this slight weight, suddenly, felt a thousand times heavier.

'So,' he whispered, 'so.'

He stood looking back and forth between the cup in his left hand and the sword in his right. He blinked his eyes in rhythm with the beating of my heart. His belly tightened into a hard knot, and his hands, first the left and then the right, began to tremble. 'Kalkin,' I said.

With a great effort, he broke off gazing at the Lightstone and looked at me. His grim mouth could make no words, but his heart spoke to me all the same. In the quiet deep thunder of the blood that we shared, in the touching of each other's unfathomable suffering and pain, his soul cried out that I had offered him something more precious than a small, golden cup, and that was friendship and trust What is it to love a man? This above all: that you want with all the polished silver of your being to show him the glory of his own.

Now Kane's jaws clamped shut as if he were trying to bite back the worst of pains. I felt him swallowing against a hard knot in his throat that would not be dislodged. A great pressure built in his chest and burned up through his eyes. He took a long, deep look at the Lightstone.

'Valashu,' he gasped.

He suddenly cast his sword clanging down upon the bare rock floor. I felt tears burning in my eyes a moment before his filled as well. And then, at last, the storm broke. He lifted the Lightstone up high and threw back his head. His mouth opened wide as he let loose a terrible sound: 'KALKIN!' No torture of Morjin's could have torn such a cry of agony and despair from a man. He fell down to his knees before me, weeping for himself and the world. In his wracking sobs was all his grief at losing Alphanderry to death – and much, much else that he had held inside for years beyond counting. His breath burst out so violendy that the stone of the hall seemed to shake and the very heavens open up even through miles of rock and ice. For a moment his tears, and my own, flowed so freely that they seemed almost to wash away the blood spilled here this terrible day.

I rested my hand on top of his thick, white hair as he reached his hand behind my leg and pressed his forehead against the hard rings of steel covering my knee. The tremors ripping through his powerful body took a long time to subside. At last, when he had grown quiet again, as I listened to Atara's pained breaths breaking out into the air behind me and to Maram weeping like a child, he looked up at me. He pulled away from me, slightly, and pressed the Lightstone back into my hand.

'You take it,' he said to me. 'Guard it for the Maitreya. So, guard it with your life – that is your fate.'

I gave the cup to Maram to hold, and his large hand closed around it.

'Some wounds,' Kane said, 'only he can heal.' I reached out to grasp Kane's hard hand in mine as I helped him to his feet. Then he let go of me and pulled himself up tall and straight. The tears in his eyes were gone. I looked deep into their bright, black depths; as had been the Lightstone, they were full of stars.

'Valashu,' he said, smiling at me.

For millennia he had waged the bitterest of wars against himself, but angels cannot so easily be killed. A broken man had knelt before me, but here rose up another. The lines of his face seemed to lose their hardness and rigidity. Years fell from him, untold years, and I saw him as he must have been in his youth when he had walked with the One. His skin gleamed all golden like the sun, and his white hair had taken on the silver tones of silustria; a crown of light surrounded his head and fell about his shoulders like a lion's mane set on fire. He seemed raimented all in glorre, while his whole being was transparent to the hopes and dreams of a deeper world. A man he truly was, like the first man to walk the earth and perhaps the last.

And yet he was also something more, for here he stood all noble, wise, beautiful and radiant, blazing like a star, as one of the great Elijin.

But only for a moment. He moved over to Atara and laid his hand on her face to turn her toward him. Then, with infinite gentleness, he touched his thumbs into the hollows of her eyes. And the angel fire passed into her and out of him.

'Val!' Atara cried out. 'I know where the passageway is!'

Once, speaking of Morjin, Kane had asked what could be greater than the power to make others see what is not. And here, in this beautiful woman restored for a moment to her vision, the only answer: the power to help them see what really is.

Maram gave the Lightstone to Ymiru, who stood holding it in his single hand a few moments before turning it over to Liljana. Then Maram, looking at Kane in awe, said,

'Lord Kalkin, you are -'

'Don't say that name again!' Kane told him. Much of the light had now gone out of him; with its passing, Kane had returned to us – but never quite the same Kane again.

'So, you'll call me as you have, do you understand?'

'All right, then,' Maram said.

Kane smiled grimly as he bent to pick up his sword.

Liljana, after gazing into the Lightstone as long as she dared, gave the cup to Master Juwain, who held it only a moment before placing it in Atara's hands. While Daj stood close to Liljana, looking on in awe. Flick suddenly appeared and looped around the cup as if spinning out strands of a silvery cocoon of light.

'So, the second quest ends,' Kane said, casting one last look at the Lightstone. As a great noise of pounding boots and shaking steel sounded from outside the hall, his eyes flashed around the throne room's three gates. 'And it will be the end of us if we don't find our way out of here soon. It sounds as if they're bringing up the whole damn army!'

'Come,' Atara said softly, talcing my hand.

She gave the Lightstone back to me, and I returned it to its resting place beneath my armor. Then she led us over to the wall behind the throne. There, set into the fearsome face of a carving of Angra Mainyu, she found the hidden door. It took only a few moments to open it.

'Come,' she said again, this time taking Daj's hand. 'Let's go home.'

Then she turned into the tunnel beyond the open door and bravely led the way into the bright, black darkness.