Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  Or so I thought until I saw Alphanderry suddenly take form to stand in a spray of crimson flowers almost as bright as his mysterious being, which seemed somehow much more luminous and real than it had ever been before.

  Kane saw me looking about, and called to to me: 'You can see again!'

  'Yes,' I told him, 'the Ahrim left me suddenly. I think it is gone.'

  I cast about trying to sense it, perhaps hiding in the lee of one of the great trees. But the brightness of this wood made even shadow seem light. 'But what happened?' I said to Kane. 'Where are the others?'

  Beneath the silvery bough of one the astors high above us, we gathered to hold council: Abrasax, Master Virang, Bemossed, Alphanderry and myself. And Estrella. Although our passage into these wondrous trees had not cured her of her muteness, she could say more with a smile and a brightening of her eyes than most people could with a whole stream of words.

  'So, this happened,' Kane said. 'I was looking for the Vild, and suddenly found myself within it.'

  'So it was with me,' Abrasax said. The intense sunlight seemed to set his white hair and beard on fire. 'I was looking, as a Master Reader is trained to look. There should be an aura to any Vild, different from other woods. And then, of a moment, instead of the wood where the Ahrim attacked Val, I saw this.'

  Off through the silver and golden shimmer of astor trees, I noticed gardens of emeralds and diamonds that the Vild's people cultivated, along with dozens of other gems and even gelstei themselves. Birds as bright as parrots flew from tree to tree. Timpum -in all their swirling, scintillating, many-colored millions - hung about nearly every branch, twig and leaf. Never had I seen these luminous beings blaze so brilliantly.

  It turned out that all of us had experienced a sort of ripping away of our bodies and souls to find ourselves suddenly riding our horses through this glorious wood. Even Kane, who must have experienced almost everything that could be experienced, seemed distressed. Estrella, however, simply gazed up in wonder above the trees at the fiery red sun. She evinced no fear at how she had come to be in this place; in truth, she seemed utterly at home here, as in some strange way she did everywhere.

  It was Bemossed who asked the questions that pressed most keenly on all our minds: 'But where are the others, then? Did they remain behind? And if so, why?'

  At this, Kane shrugged his shoulders then scowled at the sky. Not even Grandmaster Abrasax, wise in all lore, had an answer for him.

  'And if they did make their way here,' Bemossed continued, 'is it possible that they came out into a different part of this wood?'

  No one knew. The Vild seemed to spread out for miles around us in all directions. So open were the spaces between the giant trees that one could say that no path led through them - or that a thousand did.

  'We must search for our friends then,' I said. I turned toward Kane. 'You have the most woodcraft, and so it might be best if you ...'

  I did not finish my sentence. For at that moment, from behind a tree nearby, a small, muscular man stepped out to greet us. He had the leaf-green eyes and curly hair of many of his people, whom I had first known as the Lokilani and Kane called by their more ancient name: the Lokii. He wore an emerald necklace which hung down upon his brown-skinned chest and a skirt woven of some kind of gleaming fiber, but nothing else. I expected him to speak with that strange lilt to his words, as had the other Lokii in the other Vilds. Instead he ddressed us in an almost formal manner, as might an envoy sent from a great king.

  'Valashu Elahad,' he said, stepping closer, 'you have come here again - and now as King Valamesh. Allow me to present myself: my name is Aukai.'

  Although he did not bow to me, for such was not the Lokii's way, he might as well have. I dismounted then, and so did the others. And I said to Aukai with astonishment: 'But how do you know who I am? For I never have come here before.'

  At this, he just smiled. And then his hand swept out, pointing through the trees as he said, 'There is a forest beyond here that the Forest sometimes touches upon. You have come there, three times now, at least, for that is your fate. As you have come here.'

  'But how do you know this, then?'

  'I know because I know. And because it was foretold.'

  'Foretold by whom?'

  Aukai looked from Abrasax to Master Virang, and then at Bemossed before his gaze finally settled on Kane. And he said to me, 'The messenger told of your coming, Valashu Elahad.'

  'And what messenger is this?'

  'Her name is Ondin.' He paused as he looked at me more deeply. 'She is of the El Alajin.'

  'One of the Elijin, here!' I said. 'But they are not permitted to come to Ea!'

  Aukai used his bare toe to dig at the golden leaves spread out over the earth. And he said to me, 'But you do not now stand on Ea.'

  At this, I looked up at the sun, almost as deeply red as a ruby. And I said to Aukai, 'But where do we stand, then?'

  'In the Forest, of course.'

  'Yes - but where is the Forest?'

  In the third Vild, I had fallen into a magic pool only to emerge dripping wet upon the Star People's world of Givene. I wondered if once again I had made a passage to the stars,

  'The Forest,' Aukai said to me, 'is where it is. Sometimes it is one place, and sometimes another. But always it is where one wills it to be.'

  Abrasax, I noticed, paid keen attention to Aukai's words, and so did Master Virang. Bemossed, though, looked up at the sun. To my amazement, it now shone as yellow-golden as the sun I had known all my life.

  'I am sorry,' Aukai said to me, 'I have confused you, and I did not mean to. But some things are hard to explain. Let me try again.'

  He drew in a breath of the wood's bracing air as he watched Estrella touching a small, five-pointed flower. Its white petals radiated a soft white light, and we would later learn that the Lokii named this wonder as a stellular.

  'In truth,' Aukai told us, 'it might be most accurate to say that the Forest always just is. And it always is upon the world you call Ea. But it also exists upon Lahale, where the El Alajin dwell.'

  He paused to let us consider what he had said. Kane, I saw, stared at Aukai so intently that I could feel the raw, red hammering of his heart.

  And then Master Virang asked the question that anyone, and not just a Master of the Brotherhood, would wonder at: 'But how can your wood be two places at once?'

  'In the same way that yout thoughts can dwell with two things at once,' Aukai told him. 'And your awareness, and your will. Above all, your will to be aware. That was how all of you found your way here.'

  He told us that the attainment of a certain awareness would allow one to perceive the Forest and enter it. In a way, one called the Forest into the world and 'set' it either on Ea or Lahale.

  'Then would it be possible,' Master Virang asked, his almond eyes sparkling, 'for one of us to set the Forest on Lahale and walk out onto the world of the Elijin?'

  Aukai looked at Kane for a moment before he said, 'It would be possible - someday, perhaps, if a man attained the awareness of the Immortal Ones. But not I, nor my people. Nor you, I think.'

  'I think not, too,' Master Virang said sadly. 'But clearly the Elijin whom you call Ondin can set the Forest on Lahale. Can all of their order?'

  'All who wish to. But why should they come to our Forest, or call it to them, when theirs is even brighter and spreads out across almost their whole world?'

  'Why, indeed,' Master Virang said as he watched the light of the stellular fill up Estrella's hand with its warm sheen. And then he asked: 'But if the people of Ea cannot pass to Lahale, can the Elijin pass to Ea?'

  'Some can. But it is difficult,' Aukai sighed as he seemed to look through the trees for the wood in which the Ahrim had attacked me. 'To set the Forest on Ea requires entering into a lower awareness, and only some of the El Alajin are willing to put themselves in such jeopardy. And even those the Shining Ones have forbidden to walk upon Ea.'

  I thought of my friends, whom I feared we had left b
ehind, on Ea. I asked Aukai about this.

  'They have not entered the Forest, that I know,' Aukai said. 'I do not think they will. It was foretold that seven of you would come, and seven of you are here.'

  'Seven,' I said, watching Altaru browse on a bit of grass, 'and our horses, too.'

  I thought it strange that an animal should be able to pass into the Lokii's wood, but then I recalled that it had been my wise, black stallion who had found his way (and ours) into the first of the Vilds. Altaru's awareness, I thought, in its own way might be higher than that of most men - or at least deeper and more primeval. But that did not explain how my other companions' mounts had managed to 'set' the forest so that they could enter it as well.

  Aukai did not have a very satisfactory explanation for this. All that he could manage to tell us was: 'When a man and horse move together, there must be a sharing of awareness. Or perhaps your horses, being as one with you, were able to enter the Forest with you. I do not really know.'

  I nodded my head as I considered this. Then I asked him, 'There was a thing attached to me even more completely than was my horse. A dark thing. And yet it seems not to have made the passage to this place.'

  'Yes, the Ahrimana,' Aukai said with great distaste. 'For a long time, it has wandered the world, seeking entrance to the Forest. But it cannot bear to behold the trees here. And much else. And so it can never enter the Forest. It is bound to Ea, and finds its home most readily in the darkest of places.'

  I did not like to consider the implications of his words, although they accorded closely enough with what Kane had told me.

  'But come,' Aukai finally said, holding out his hand to me. He smiled at Bemossed and Estrella, and the rest of us. 'Your other companions will be waiting for you when the time comes for you to leave. Now is the time for other things. You must eat and restore yourself. And then speak with the El Alajin.'

  It seemed that we hid no better choice than to go where Aukai beckoned us. He led the way through the great astor trees, and my friends and I led our horses by their reins as we walked along in wonder. I felt so glad at being able to see again that I almost forgot the exhaustion that weighed down every particle of my body. Our journey, though, took us a good seven miles, or so I guessed, and by the time we neared the end of it, I was almost sleeping on my feet. The weariness cramping my stomach and other muscles made me doubt if I would be able to eat any of the foods that Aukai's people had prepared for us.

  However, as in the other Vilds, the Lokii set out a feast of the most delicious things. On a large lawn within a great circle of astors, we met the rest of Aukai's people: some five hundred men, women and laughing children, who had come here to greet us. As we had before, we sat at one of the leaf-woven mats that served as tables. Aukai presented to us some of the most honored of the Lokii: a man named Kele, and three small but striking women: Anouhe, Sharais and Eilai - and others. Anouhe had a spray of wispy white hair and an air of kindness about her that reminded me of my grandmother. We ate of the bounty of the Forest, and then afterward Anouhe passed around a bowl full of golden timanas. These sacred fruits, which the astors bore only once every seven years, afforded lasting visions of the Timpum to all who tasted them who did not then die from the power and beauty of the experience. Daj and Estrella, of course, as children, were still not permitted to put their teeth to the timanas, but Abrasax and Master Virang took great wonder from what they ate and then beheld. And I took great strength from a clear, sweet drink that Anouhe poured just for me: the sap taken from a young astor tree. Miraculously, like a cool wind blowing everything clean, it drove away my body's weariness and cleared the haze from my head. When it grew dark and the stars came out, I almost didn't want to sleep - for the fifth straight night. But sleep I must, as Anouhe told me, for on the morrow Ondin would come to the Forest, and I must face her with a freshness of the eye and the spirit.

  I awoke just after dawn to find the glade nearly deserted. The sun's golden light wanned the leaves of the astors and illumined the forms of my friends resting beside me. All except for Kane, that is. He stood watching over us as silently as the silver-barked trees all around us. Off perhaps fifty paces, Aukai and Anouhe gathered at the center of the glade as if waiting for someone. From a bush nearby, a lark sang out its morning song.

  My friends and I then roused ourselves and bathed in a nearby stream. I put on a clean tunic embroidered with the silver swan and seven stars of the Elahads - and of my distant ancestors long before Elahad had come to earth. We breakfasted on some fresh fruit. And then we walked out into the center of the glade to join Aukai and Anouhe.

  Abrasax, who had a mind every bit as sharp and curious as Master Juwain's, asked Aukai, 'Will the Elijin come here into this place as we did into the Forest?'

  'She will come into the Forest as you did,' Aukai told him. 'But into what part of it, not even the Immortal Ones can know. And so, most likely, we will have to wait for Ondin to walk here.'

  And so wait we did. While the trees around us brightened with whole flocks of birds and uncountable numbers of Timpum, we looked for the great Elijin to appear. The summer sun, sometimes yellow and sometimes red, rose above the crowns of the trees. The glade filled with a warm and vivid light.

  And then, from out of the east, I saw a white form moving against the woods' colors of silver, gold and green. Ondin, I knew this must be, a women who was also something more - and yet she walked toward us with an animal grace that hinted of great power. Then she stepped closer, and I thought rather of a waterfall flowing across smooth rocks and sparkling in the sun. By the time she entered the glade so that I could look upon her in all her glory, she seemed more like the sun itself: brilliant, beautiful and beaming out all the hope and warmth of life.

  She carried herself perfectly straight, though perfectly naturally and without obvious effort. She wore nothing more than a white gown, which covered her tall, lithe body from neck to knee. Her long hair, black as jet, fell down past her shoulders. Her aquiline nose seemed to split the sun's rays and scatter this radiance across her face so that her ivory skin gleamed. I could not say that in the loveliness and symmetry of her features she was more beautiful than the most beautiful of Valari women: Vareva or my mother, for instance. But in Ondin gathered a power and grace that seemed otherworldly in its perfection. It stunned my eyes and caused me to stare at her in wonder.

  As Ondin drew up close to us, Aukai took charge of making the presentations. Then Ondin spoke to each of us in turn, pronouncing our names in her rich, ringing voice as if to honor us. I could not keep myself from staring at her, for I felt sure that I had seen her before, if only in my dreams.

  'Grandmaster Abrasax,' she said, smiling at him. 'I have hoped my path would cross yours.'

  She seemed even wiser than this wisest of men. I could not guess her age: she might have been thirty years old - or thirty thousand.

  'Alphanderry - famed minstrel,' she said, addressing the sparkling form of my old companion as if he were a real man. And then, more mysteriously: 'You have come so far, and have only a little farther to go.'

  Then she turned to Kane. After gazing at him deeply, she uttered a single name that seemed to echo through the glade and the vast, open spaces of time: 'Kalkin.'

  Kane, his black eyes blazing, clamped his hand to his sword's hilt as he suddenly thundered at her: 'Do not call me by that name!'

  'I call you as you are,' she told him in a voice that rang out sweet but sure, 'and not as you wish you could cease to be.'

  I had never known anyone or anything able to intimidate Kane. But as Ondin stared back at him with eyes every bit as black and brilliant as his own, I felt a strange fear come alive within him. It seemed that he could not bear to look upon her. And so he stared down at his hard, clenched hand as if in disappointment and dread.

  Then Abrasax, trying to be kind, said to Kane, 'Bright she is, indeed, but no more so than you. In truth -'

  'Say no more!' Kane snarled at him. 'I won't hear it, do you
understand?'

  Abrasax bowed his head to Kane, then looked at him as if he did understand my savage friend's most terrible wounds.

  Ondin did not press matters with Kane - but neither did she let his dark mood gloom her. She finally turned to me, and her smile was like a honey tea warming my heart. And she said to me, 'Valashu Elahad, ni al'Adar - you have changed.'

  I stood still gazing at the marvel of her, as did everyone else. Abrasax, I thought, the Brotherhood's Master Reader, might have spoken of the perfect progression of the fires that whirled within each of Ondin's chakras, the colors of each ingathering and then strengthening each other so as to cast a brilliant aura about her being. I however, had no such talent. Even so, I could not help sensing her splendor, for it seemed at once both numinous and utterly real.

  'You speak,' I said to her, 'as if you had seen me before - and not in a scryer's visions.'

  I wondered how Ondin - and Aukai - seemed to know so much about me and the world of Ea beyond this Vild.

  'But we have met bofore!' Ondin said to me,

  'Where, then? In the dreamworld?'

  'No, here. In this very place. When you were seven years old.'

  I stared at her as if she had told me that I really had wings and could fly.

  'You do not remember, I know,' she said. 'But it is time that you should remember.'

  She nodded at Anouhe, who now held a wooden cup full of a bright green liquor that might have been the juice of crushed grass. Anouhe gave the cup to Ondin, who inhaled its fragrance and then handed it to me.

  'There is no danger in this,' Ondin told me, 'but only remembrance. Drink, Valashu, and know what has truly been.'

  Because I wanted to solve the mystery that Ondin had presented me - and because I trusted her - I put the cup to my lips and took a drink. The liquor tasted at once sweet and peppery, cool and bitter. I could not guess from what fruits or plants Anouhe had brewed it.

  Upon swallowing, the liquor streaked like fire straight down through my insides. Before it even reached my belly, it seemed, I did feel myself flying, as if a catapult had flung me straight up into the sky's empty space. There came a moment of blinding brilliance. And then, as if a fireflower had opened inside my mind fully formed, I remembered what Ondin had hinted to me: