‘Valashu!’ he cried out to me. ‘I am sorry! I thought I was so …’
His words died into the spasm of writhing that tore through his naked body. What had he wanted to tell me? That he had thought himself untouchable? And blessed and beloved, of the angels and men?
‘I thought I was … beautiful!’ he finally gasped out. ‘I thought Morjin could see me … and so himself. But I was wrong. I am nothing.’
Another spasm seized hold of him as more blood ran out of the hole in his side. Then, with the last of his strength, he raised up his head like a king so that he could gaze out above the masses of men and horses gathered on the hilltop to meet eyes with me.
‘It is all for nothing, Valashu. It is all nothing … so dark.’
Those were the last words he spoke to me. I watched the light go out of his eyes. Then, as if an axe had cut the muscles at the back of his neck, his head dropped down toward his chest. So died Bemossed, the man I had called the Shining One and Lord of Light, who was no blood of mine, but in spirit was truly my brother.
‘NO!’ I cried out as my heart broke open.
Flame and lightning flashed to the south, from the Hill of Fire. High above us, the spinning black thing blighted the blueness of the sky. It grew vaster and even darker, like a funnel cloud’s whirlwind about to descend and sweep everything away. A freezing cold fell down upon the earth.
23
Icould barely keep seated on top of my horse; only Altaru’s great hold on life, it seemed, kept me from plunging down to the bloodstained grass and joining Bemossed wherever he had gone. The world before me and everything in it fell black; I had to fight just to go on breathing.
NOOOOOOOO!
The scream inside me, that was me, seemed to go on forever. Then I felt Kane’s iron fingers clamping around my arm and pulling at me.
‘Let it pass through you!’ he said to me. ‘Let it go into your sword!’
I raised up Alkaladur then, and I felt all my anguish emptying into it. I swept it out in front of me. The sound of men screaming drove back the blackness filling my eyes, and I beheld an incredible sight: on the hill above us, the Red Knights were clapping their hands to their chests or heads and crying out in their own agony. Many dropped their lances and swords; some fell from their horses and lay writhing on the ground. Closer to Morjin, the Blues howled in pain and weakness, unable to lift up their axes. Just above them, at the foot of the cross, Morjin stood as if stunned by the blow of a hammer. He blinked his red eyes as the lance slipped from his hand and Bemossed’s blood dripped down and spattered off his helm. Then he staggered about like a man drunk on too much wine.
‘Now is our chance!’ Kane shouted out.
Through the waves of grief sickening me, I saw that we did have a chance – but to do what? With Bemossed dead, there could be no hope of ever defeating Angra Mainyu.
‘Now, Val – now!’
I nodded my head, and clamped my hand more tightly around the hilt of my sword. Then I led forward, straight into the Red Knights massed in front of us. I cut down everyone in my path; few managed even to raise up their weapons to defend themselves. My Guardians, those who hadn’t been stricken too badly by Bemossed’s death, followed. As for Kane, beside me, I had never seen him fight with such a furious will to strike his sword into men and murder them. His black eyes blazed with the heat of madness. He had no pity for the enemy, for they had none for him, or us. With every yard that we battled on, higher up the hill, it seemed that the Red Knights recovered a little more and counterattacked us with an increasing savagery and desperation. But it was not enough. Again and again, Kane’s sword flashed out to rip through flesh, and so it was with mine. We, and the warriors who rode with us, worked a slaughter upon any and all who opposed us. We slew the Red Knights still seated on their horses, then mowed down the line of men protecting Morjin. The thirty Blues then flung themselves at Kane and me. Their axes, though, were like lead weights in their hands, and their hands and limbs had lost much of their terrible strength. One of them – a man as thick as a bull – managed to work in close to me and let fall his axe against my leg. But the blow failed to penetrate the diamonds sheathing me, or even break my thigh bone. I killed the man with a quick slash to the side of his bare neck. I had never really understood why the Blues went into battle naked. When they failed to chop down men with their fearsome axes, their enemies might work a horrible butchery upon them, as Kane and I did now: swinging our swords to slit open bellies and split their faces, severing arms and heads, slashing and thrusting and cleaving through their cyanine-tinted skin to cut them to pieces. At last, Kane and I, with the help of Lord Avijan and Joshu Kadar, had killed them all. And there, beneath the bloody cross, stood Morjin.
‘To me!’ he shouted out. ‘To me!’
Around the curve of the hill, to the left, men pushed their horses galloping up toward him. Zahur Tey led fifty Red Knights, and with them rode the Red Priest known as Igasho.
‘To me!’ Morjin shouted again, this time in my direction. ‘Come to me, Elahad, and I will make you my ghul!’
Now Morjin stood up straight and found the strength to draw his sword. I could feel the power returning to him, as a pulsing artery fills a limb with life. With Bemossed dead, it seemed that nothing could keep Morjin from wielding the Lightstone to command all the other gelstei – and the world. He thrust this small golden cup out to me as if to seize control of my sword.
‘Do not let go!’ Kane shouted at me. ‘Alkaladur is yours!’
It seemed, however, that Morjin hadn’t fully recovered or gained enough power to work his will though my sword’s silver gelstei. As at the parlay before the battle, he could not make me use my sword to do his evil deeds. And neither could he keep me from wielding it.
And so I called Altaru to charge forward, and in almost a single motion of my bounding horse and my own inflamed body, I leaned out and swept my sword against Morjin’s outstretched arm. The blade’s silustria, hardest substance on earth, cleaved through a great ruby affixed to the gauntlet protecting Morjin’s hand and wrist. I heard it crack, like a lightning bolt. My sword drove down through Morjin’s wrist, severing muscles, tendons and bones, and the force of the blow struck off Morjin’s hand and sent the Lightstone flying from his fingers. I watched in amazement as Kane, coming up quickly, reached out and snatched the golden cup from the air.
‘To Lord Morjin!’ Zahur Tey called out from twenty yards away as he and his Red Knights charged toward us. ‘Protect our king!’
Blood spurted from the arteries I had opened at the end of Morjin’s arm. He gasped from the shock of it, and staggered. I swung my sword again, this time to kill him, but by some miracle or terrible instinct for survival, he got his sword up in time to parry mine. Steel rang out against silustria, once, twice – and then Zahur Tey came up and pushed his horse almost straight into Altaru. I had to sweep out my sword against Zahur Tey’s stabbing lance, or he would have impaled me. And then, with a splintering of wood, immediately to beat back the lances of two other Red Knights as they fell against me, too. I killed one of these with a thrust through the throat, and the other by splitting open his forehead. I turned back toward Morjin then, but it was too late: the Red Knights had closed in on him to protect him and bear him back away from me. I saw Salmelu pull him up onto the saddle of a riderless horse, even as another man twisted a cord around Morjin’s arm.
‘BEMOSSED!’ I cried out.
I nudged Altaru over to the foot of the cross, and I reached out to lay my hand on the spike piercing Bemossed’s feet. His flesh, exposed to the blazing sun, was still warm. His head hung down upon his chest; I could not bear the sight of his empty eyes. I lamented then that I had lost a friend while all the world had lost a Maitreya.
‘Sire!’ Lord Vikan shouted at me from ten yards down the hill. He pointed back toward the center of the battlefield. ‘They have broken us!’
I turned to see a great mass of Hesperuk spearmen pushing through a huge fracture
in the Alonian and Eannan lines. All our reserves, it seemed, had been thrown in to stop this advancing block of bronze and steel, to no avail.
‘Lord Kane!’ I heard Joshu Kadar call out. His shout drew my attention back to the top of the hill, where the Red Knights protecting Morjin had formed up into a half-circle facing my knights and me. ‘Give the cup to King Valamesh!’
It is said that the Lightstone can be all things to all people: a talisman drawing good fortune; a vessel containing the secret of life; a golden mirror showing one’s soul. Kane sat on top of his horse, unmoving, as he had remained since taking hold of the Lightstone. He stared at the little cup as if transfixed by its beauty. A radiance shone upon his face, and from deep within. Any of the Red Knights might have fallen against him then and knocked him to the ground. But I did not think they would have been able to tear the Lightstone from Kane’s grasp.
‘Surrender!’ I called out. I pointed my sword at the Red Knights sheltering Morjin. An unspoken truce had befallen the men gathered beneath Bemossed’s dead body – I did not know why. ‘We have broken your lines! We have dismembered you! And we have the Lightstone!’
I tried to speak these words without laughing in bitterness. For Morjin had broken my lines, and my deepest hope, too. And soon, because he was Morjin, an angel of the Elijin, he would recover from his wound.
‘You surrender!’ he shouted back at me. The knights ahead of him moved aside so that he could face me. Now on top of his great white horse, he sat up straight as any king, one arm bound with a bandage while with the other he shook his sword at me. ‘We still have four men to every one of yours! And a dragon!’
Although I could not turn away from him just then, a flash of flame from the Hill of Fire down by the river caused me worry that Maram could not last long doing battle against Yormungand.
‘And we,’ Morjin continued, looking at Kane, ‘will take back the Lightstone!’
‘No!’ Kane shouted at him. ‘You will never touch this again!’
Although he feared to charge Kane, Morjin did not shrink from gazing into Kane’s terrible eyes. No man, I thought, could match Kane’s strength, but Morjin was the Red Dragon, and the claws of his covetousness pulled at the little cup with a dreadful, ripping force. I felt Kane being drawn into something even more terrible than himself. High above us, the whirling blackness grew even blacker. I sensed a door to a deeper darkness begin to open.
‘You’ Morjin snarled at him, ‘will not keep me from it!’
Then Kane’s immense will, like the calling of the earth, pulled him back to the world. He pressed the Lightstone to his lips. Its radiance caused his face to shine like a star. He turned to look me.
‘No, not I!’ he shouted back to Morjin.
Then he rode closer to me, and gave the Lightstone into my hand. ‘You are its rightful guardian,’ he told me.
Truly, I was – but who was I to guard it for? And how could I possibly guard it? In looking up at the black hole in the sky about to touch down to earth, I knew that neither I nor Kane nor even the Seven could stop Morjin from opening the door to Damoom, for it was already too late.
But Morjin, now looking up at the sky, too, suddenly cried out: ‘I could free him – but I will not! No man is my master! Who should rule the stars? Only he who can command their very light and make it his own! Who is meant to be the Marudin and rule all of the Galadin and Elijin and the other orders? Not the one whom the Galadin defeated and bound like a slave, but only he who has the power.’
For the benefit of the men who followed him, no less me and mine, he declaimed that he had assembled upon this field an invincible force. He would win the battle, he said, and reclaim the Lightstone for the last time. Then the rightful Lord of Ea would go forth to lead all of Eluru into the Age of Light.
In looking about the war-torn steppe, I feared that he would win the battle. From our vantage on top of the hill, I could see most of the field. On our left flank, it seemed that the enemy’s Sarni had pushed back ours, while the heavy cavalry of Uskudar and Hesperu tore into the arrays of knights led by King Hadaru. The Hesperuk phalanxes had cracked open our center, and the Yarkonan battalions had moved up against Ymiru’s and Lord Tomavar’s men. My Meshians were too busy working their spears and kalamas against these thousands of reinforcements to turn against the Hesperuks, as I had originally planned. On our right, although the warriors of Kaash, Waas and Athar held strong against the great numbers massed before them, the Ikurian horse had nearly overwhelmed King Mohan’s cavalry, which were already weakened. Soon, I thought, they would turn our flank, unless Sajagax and his warriors could come to their aid. But I had cause to worry that they too had been decimated.
‘Surrender the Lightstone to me!’ Morjin shouted. ‘Surrender, Elahad, and I will spare all who followed you here!’
The thousands of Red Knights, those my warriors and I hadn’t killed, massed behind Morjin and deployed around the curves of the hill. When it came to combat again, I did not see how we could defeat them.
The man for whom I should have guarded the Lightstone could do nothing against Morjin or the atrocities he had wrought. But I could. I could use the Lightstone as Morjin had, to bend men to my will and force them to give me their allegiance. I would persuade some of our enemy’s captains and kings to come over to me, and to fall against those who did not. I might even wield the golden cup to strike death into the most willful of my enemies, as Morjin would have done his – but for Bemossed. I would certainly slay Morjin. I would put to the sword all who remained to stand against me, here on this battlefield and across Ea. I would claim dominion over the world, and I would become the King of Swords and Lord of War. But men would call me the Silver Swan, and that name would become more dreaded than the Red Dragon. And all that I did to reorder the realms of men and women to make a paradise on earth, no matter how terrible, would be for those I loved and for Ea. I told myself that I might not fall so far into evil as Morjin had.
NO!
The hardness of the Lightstone hurt my fingers; its brilliance burned my eyes. I ached to keep a grip on it and force from it all that was good and bright and beautiful. Aryu, I thought, must have told himself the same thing when he had slain Elahad and stolen it so long ago.
‘Val!’ It was Atara’s voice. She shouted out my name and jolted me free of the Lightstone’s spell. Thirty Manslayers came charging up the hill with the stout Karimah riding in front of Atara, holding the reins of her horse.
How had she come to be here? With a broken-off arrow embedded in the leather armor near her shoulder and a half dozen feathered shafts sticking out of her horse, it seemed that she must have fought her way behind the enemy’s lines to this hill. Could it be that the three thousand woman warriors of the Manslayer Society had been reduced to the thirty riding with her?
‘Estrella!’ she called to me. ‘She is the Maitreya!’
I stared at her in astonishment. Her words made no sense to me.
‘I have come here to tell you this!’ she said, pushing her horse up to me. She fumbled through the air and finally managed to lay her hand on my arm. ‘I have seen Estrella, with the Lightstone!’
‘But no scryer has ever seen the Lightstone in any vision! Or the Maitreya.’
‘But I have!’ Atara said.
‘But all the Maitreyas have been male. All the prophecies speak of the Maitreya as “he.”’
‘I don’t care about the prophecies! Estrella is the Shining One!’
Morjin, from behind the wall of Red Knights protecting him, glared at Atara with a strange silence. His face seemed a mask of corruption and hate.
‘He knows!’ Atara suddenly cried out. ‘He can see her, and it burns his mind!’
I sat on Altaru, holding my sword in one hand and the Lightstone in the other. Once a time, before I had lost the cup to Morjin, Estrella had often stood in its presence and had even held it in her hands. She had seemed to take as little interest in it as she might a teacup. My sword suddenly fla
red a bright glorre, and lines from the ancient verse flashed through my mind:
The Shining One
In innocence sleeps
Inside his heart
Angel fire sleeps
And when he wakes
The fire leaps
About the Maitreya
One thing is known:
That to himself
He always is known
When the moment comes
To claim the Lightstone.
A dying scryer had told me that Estrella would show me the Maitreya. Was it possible, I wondered, that a thousand times she had?
I felt in my heart that it was true, and all at once it seemed the hardness of the Lightstone that had hurt my fingers fell away; its brilliance that had burned my eyes became an exquisite light that bathed them. The ache of my grip vanished as the image came to me of another hand reaching out with unique power to bring forth from the Lightstone all that was good and bright and beautiful.
‘Estrella is coming,’ said Atara, ‘to claim the Lightstone.’
I felt in my heart that it was true, and so did Morjin.
NOOOOO!
From behind the protection of his knights, Morjin screamed at the sky.
Kane had once told me that Morjin kept a black gelstei. But this dark angel kept inside himself dark fires as well, and he now unleashed upon us all the force of his black and bottomless hate:
VALARI! DIE VALARIIII!
Morjin’s droghul had assaulted my companions and me with a voice that chilled the blood and froze the limbs unmoving with terror – and killed. This Morjin, it seemed, the real Morjin who had come to earth so long ago, wielded this weapon with an even greater rage. He bellowed out in a voice of death:
DIEIIII! AIYIYARIII!
Something hard as iron struck a blow to my forehead; blood spurted from my nose, and, I feared, my very brains. I felt an acid eating through my stomach into my heart, and I could not breathe. Images came to me, not as memories but as sights and sounds and smells assaulting all my senses and my deepest self: the anguish in my grandmother’s eyes as she pulled at the spikes that Morjin’s men had driven through her hands; the screams of men dying at the Culhadosh Commons; the stench of hundreds of corpses rotting in the hot Yarkonan sun. I knew that I had to fight off the burning poison of Morjin’s malice – either that, or die.
The Diamond Warriors Page 48
