The Diamond Warriors

It took all the force of my will and the deepest of breaths for me to say, ‘I would see Morjin healed, if that could be. But I will see him defeated.’

‘Oh, we are back to that, are we?’ Maram groaned. He looked at me as he licked his lips. ‘Why can’t it be enough to keep him at bay, and slowly win back the world, as Master Juwain has said? That would be a defeat, of sorts. Or – I am loath to ask this – do you mean he must be defeated defeated, as in –’

‘I mean utterly defeated, Maram. Cast down from the throne he falsely claims, reviled by all as the beast he is, imprisoned forever,’ I gripped my sword’s hilt as a wave of hate burned through me. ‘Or killed, finally, fittingly, and even the last whisper of his lying breath utterly expunged from existence.’

As Maram groaned again and shook his head, Master Juwain said to me, ‘That is something that Kane might say,’

My friends stood around regarding me. Although I was glad for their companionship, I was keenly aware that we should have numbered not eight but nine. For Kane, the greatest of all warriors, had ridden off to Galda to oppose Morjin through knife, sword and blood, in any way he could.

‘Kane,’ I told Master Juwain, ‘would say that I should stab my sword through Morjin’s heart and cut off his head. Then cleave his body into a thousand pieces, burn them and scatter the ashes to the wind.’

Maram’s ruddy face blanched at this. ‘But how, Val? You cannot defeat him in battle.’

‘We defeated him in Argattha, when we were outnumbered a hundred against nine,’ I told him. ‘And on the Culhadosh Commons when he sent three armies against us. And we defeated his droghuls and his forces in the Red Desert – and in Hesperu, too.’

‘But that was different, and you know it!’ Maram’s face now heated up with anger – and fear. ‘If you seek battle, none of the Valari kings will stand with you. And even if they did, Morjin will call up all his armies, from every one of his filthy kingdoms. A million men, Val! Don’t tell me you think Mesh’s ten thousand could prevail against that!’

Did I truly think that? If I didn’t, then I must at least act as if I did. I looked at Atara, whose face turned toward me as she waited for me to speak. Then it came to me that bravura was one thing, while truly believing was another. And knowing, with an utter certainty of blood and breath that I could not fail to strike down Morjin, was of an entirely different order.

‘There must be a way,’ I murmured.

‘But, Val,’ Master Juwain reminded me, ‘it has always been your dream to bring an end to these endless battles – and to war, itself.’

For a moment I closed my burning eyes because I could not see how to defeat Morjin other than through battle. But neither could I imagine any conceivable force of Valari or other free people defeating Morjin in battle. Surely, I thought, that would be death.

‘There must be a way,’ I told Master Juwain. I drew my sword then. My hands wrapped around the seven diamonds set into its black jade hilt while I gazed at Alkaladur’s brilliant blade. ‘There is always a way.’

The silver gelstei of which it was wrought flared with a wild, white light. Somewhere within this radiance, I knew, I might grasp my fate – if only I could see it.

‘You will never,’ Master Juwain said, ‘bring down Morjin with your sword.’

‘Not with this sword, perhaps. Not just with it.’

‘Please,’ Master Juwain said, stepping closer to lay his hand on my arm, ‘give Bemossed a chance to work at Morjin in his way. Give it time.’

A shard of the sun’s light reflected off my sword’s blade, and stabbed into my eyes. And I told Master Juwain, ‘But, sir – I am afraid that we do not have much time.’

Just then, from out of the shadows that an oak cast upon the raspberry bush, a glimmer of little lights filled the air. They began whirling in a bright spray of crimson and silver, and soon coalesced into the figure of a man. He was handsome of face and graceful of body, and had curly black hair, sun-browned skin and happy eyes that seemed always to be singing. We called him Alphanderry, our eighth companion. But we might have called him something other, for although he seemed the most human of beings, he was in his essence surely something other, too. At times, he appeared as that sparkling incandescence we had known as Flick; but more often now he took shape as the beloved minstrel who had been killed nearly three years previously in the pass of the Kul Moroth. None of us could explain the miracle of his existence. Master Juwain hypothesized that when the great Galadin had walked the earth ages ago, they had left behind some shimmering part of their being. But Alphanderry, I thought, could not be just pure luminosity. I could almost feel the breath of some deep thing filling up his form with true life; a hand set upon his shoulder would pass through him and send ripples through his glistening substance as with a stone cast into water. Day by day, as the earth circled the sun and the sun hurtled through the stars, it seemed that he might somehow be growing ever more tangible and real.

‘Hoy!’ he laughed out, smiling at Master Juwain and me. As it had once been with my brother, Jonathay, something in his manner suggested that life was a game to be played and enjoyed for as long as one could, and not taken too seriously. But today, despite his light, lilting voice, his words struck us all with their great seriousness: ‘Hoy, time, time! – it runs like the Poru river into the ocean, does it not? And we think that, like the Poru, it is inexhaustible and will never run out.’

‘What do you mean?’ Master Juwain asked, looking at him.

Alphanderry stood – if that was the right word – on a mat of old leaves and trampled ferns covering the ground. And he waved his lithe hand at me, and said, ‘Val is right, and too bad for that. We don’t have as much time as we would like.’

‘But how do you know?’ Master Juwain asked him.

‘I just know,’ he said. ‘We can’t let Bemossed bear the entire burden of our hope.’

‘But our hope, in the end, rests upon the Lightstone. And the Maitreya. As you saw, Bemossed has kept Morjin from using it.’

‘I did see that, I did,’ Alphanderry said. ‘But what was will not always be what is.’

Atara, I saw, smiled coldly at this, for Alphanderry suddenly sounded less like a minstrel than a scryer.

‘Did you think it would be so easy?’ he asked Master Juwain.

‘Easy? No, certainly not,’ Master Juwain said. ‘But I believe with all my heart that as long as Bemossed lives, Morjin will never be able to use the Cup of Heaven to free the Dark One.’

The hot Soldru sun burned straight down through the clearing with an inextinguishable splendor. And yet, upon Master Juwain’s mention of the Dark One – also known as Angra Mainyu, the great Black Dragon – something moved within the unmovable heavens, and I felt a shadow fall over the sun. It grew darker and darker, as if the moon were eclipsing this blazing orb. In only moments, an utter blackness seemed to devour the entire sky. I believed with all my heart that if Angra Mainyu, this terrible angel, were ever freed from his prison on Damoom, then he would destroy not only my world and its bright star, but much of the universe as well.

Master Juwain’s brows wrinkled in puzzlement as he looked up at the sky to wonder what I might be gazing at. So did my other friends, who seemed not to be afflicted by my wild imaginings.

‘The Seven,’ Master Juwain said, turning back towards Alphanderry, ‘aid Bemossed with all their powers. And so Bemossed’s power grows.’

‘So does Morjin’s,’ Alphanderry said. ‘For Angra Mainyu aids him.’

‘Even so, I believe that Bemossed will resist Morjin’s lies and his vile attacks.’

‘I pray he will; I fear that he may not. For Angra Mainyu himself has lent all his spite toward assaulting Bemossed’s body, mind and soul.’

Master Juwain’s brows pulled even tighter with worry. ‘But how do you know this? And how can that be? The greatest of the Galadin have bound him on Damoom, and have laid protections against such things.’

‘No shield is proof against all weapons,’ Alphanderry said. ‘Angra Mainyu has had ages of ages to battle those who bind him. The shield you speak of has cracked. And things will only get worse.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Some time this autumn,’ Alphanderry said, ‘there will be a great alignment of planets and stars. Damoom and its star will perfectly conjunct the earth. Toward that day, Angra Mainyu’s malice will rain down upon Ea ever more foul and deadly. And on that day, if Morjin should prevail and cripple Bemossed, or kill him, he will loose the Dark One upon the universe, and all will be destroyed.’

The sun blazed down upon us, and from somewhere in the woods, the tanager continued trilling out its sweet song. We stood there in silence staring at Alphanderry. And then Master Juwain asked him again, ‘But how could you know this?’

‘I do not know … how I know,’ Alphanderry said. ‘As I stand here, as I speak, the words come to my lips, like drops of dew upon the morning grass – and I do not know what it will be that I must tell you. But my words are true.’

So it had been, I thought, in the Kul Moroth, when Alphanderry had recreated the perfect and true words of the angels – and for a few glorious moments had sung back an entire army bent on killing us all.

‘And these words, above all others,’ he said to us in his beautiful voice. ‘Listen, I know this must be, for it is the essence of all that we strive for: The Lightstone must be placed in the Maitreya’s hands. In the end, of course, there is no other way.’

He had said a simple thing, a true thing, and as with all such, it seemed obvious once it had been spoken. My heart whispered that it must be I who delivered the golden cup to the Maitreya. But how could I, I wondered, unless I first wrested it from Morjin in that impossible battle I could not bear to contemplate?

I held my sword up to the sun, and I felt something within its length of bright silustria align perfectly with other suns beyond Ea’s deep blue sky. My fate, shaped like the dark world of Damoom, seemed to come hurtling out of black space straight toward me. In the autumn, I knew, it would find its way here and drive me down against the hard earth. Despite all my hopes and dreams, I could no more avoid it than I could the blood burning through my eyes or taking my next breath.

‘Val – what is wrong?’ Maram asked me. ‘What do you see?’

I saw the forests of Mesh blackened by fire, and her mountains melted down into a hellish, glowing slag. I saw Maram fallen dead upon a vast battlefield, and my other companions, too. Atara lay holding her hands over her torn, bleeding belly, from which our child had been taken and ripped into pieces. I saw myself: as cold as stone upon the reddened grass, unmoving and waiting for the carrion birds. And something else, the worst thing of all. As I stood there beneath the trees staring into my sword’s mirrored surface, I gasped at the dread cutting through my innards like an ice-cold knife, and I wanted to scream out against the horror that I could not bear.

And at that moment, in the air near the center of the clearing, a dark thing appeared. Altaru, my great, black warhorse, whinnied terribly and reared up to kick his hooves at the air. I jumped back and swept my sword into a ready posture, for I feared that Morjin had somehow sent a vulture or some kind of deadly creature to devour me – either that or I had fallen mad.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram cried out, drawing out his sword, too.

‘What is that?’ Daj asked, hurrying to my side.

‘Hoy!’ Alphanderry cried out in alarm. ‘Hoy! Hoy!’

Once, Morjin had sent illusions to torment me, but the darkness facing me seemed as real as a river’s whirlpool. It hovered over the ferns and flowers like a spinning blackness. My eyes had trouble holding onto it. It shifted about, and seemed to have no definite size or shape, for at one moment it appeared as a smear of char and at the next as a mass of frozen ink. I felt it fixing its malevolence on me. I took a step closer to it and positioned my sword, and it floated closer and seemed to mirror my movements as it positioned itself before me. A vast and terrible cold emanated from it, and seized hold of my heart. It called to me in a dark voice that I could not bear to hear.

‘What is it?’ Daj shouted again.

And Alphanderry in a voice filled with awe, told him, ‘It is the Ahrim.’

I did not have time to speculate on this strange name or wonder at the dark thing’s nature, for it suddenly shot through the air straight toward me. I whipped my sword up to stop it. The gleam of my bright blade seemed to give it pause. Like a whirl of smoke, it spun slowly about in the air three feet from my face. Somehow, I thought, it watched and waited for me. I felt sick with hopelessness and a mind-numbing dread. Although it did not seem to bear for me any kind of human hate, I hated it, for I sensed that the Ahrim was that soul-destroying emptiness which engendered pure hate itself.

‘Valashu Elahad,’ it seemed to whisper to me.

I gripped my sword and shook my head. The dark thing had no form nor face nor lips with which to move the air, and yet I heard its voice speaking to me along a strange and sudden wind. And then, in a flash, it shifted yet again, and its secret substance took on the lineaments of a face I knew too well: that of Salmelu Aradar. It was an ugly face, nearly devoid of a chin or any redeeming feature. His great beak of a nose pointed at me, as did his black and beadlike eyes. I hated the way he looked at me, deep into my eyes, and so I brought up my sword to block his line of sight. And his head, like a cobra’s, swayed to the right, and I repositioned my sword, and then again to the left as he seemed to seek access in that direction to the dark holes in my eyes. And so it went, our motions playing off each other, almost locked together, faster and faster as it had been during our duel of swords in King Hadaru’s hall when Salmelu had nearly killed me, and I had nearly killed him.

‘Valashu,’ he whispered again, ‘I wish you had seen your mother’s eyes when we crucified and ravished her in your father’s hall.’

A dark fire leaped in my heart then, and I fought with all my will to keep it from burning out of my arms and hands into my sword. But my restraint availed me nothing. Salmelu roared out in triumph, and then he was Salmelu no more. The blackness of his being metamorphosed yet again, this time into a thing of scales, wings and a savagely swaying tail.

‘The dragon!’ Daj cried out from beside me. ‘The dragon returns!’

I set my hand on Daj’s shoulder, and shouted to Liljana, ‘Take the children into the trees!’

I could not spare a moment to watch Liljana gather up Daj and Estrella and carry out my command. The Ahrim, now shaped as a dragon, even as Daj had said, hung in the air before me with an almost delicate poise. It seemed to feed on the fire inside me, and make it its own; in mere moments it grew into a raging, red beast fifty feet in length. I recognized this terrible dragon as Angraboda, into whose belly I had once plunged my sword in the deeps of Argattha. And now Angraboda regarded me with her fierce, cold, vengeful eyes. Then her leather wings beat at the air in a thunder of wind as she flew straight up toward the sun. She grew vaster and vaster and ever darker, and her bloated body blocked out the sun’s light and seemed to fill all the sky. She opened her mighty jaws to spit down fire at me and burn me into nothingness. And I felt the hateful fire building inside me, inciting me into a madness to destroy her.

ANGRABODA!

From a thousand miles and years away, I heard myself cry out this name as I readied myself to slay this beast yet again. But dragons cannot be harmed by such fire; only the fulgor of the red gelstei or the stars can pierce through their iron-like scales to a dragon’s heart. And so I drew in a deep breath and willed the fire within me to blaze hotter, purer and brighter until I could not hold it anymore, and it poured out into my sword. For one perfect moment, Alkaladur flared with all the brilliance of a star. Maram and Master Juwain cried out in pain at this fierce light. And so did the dragon. Then her jaws closed, and so did her great, golden eyes, and for a moment I thought that I had slain her. But the Ahrim, I sensed, might be unkillable. All at once the dragon’s immensity dissolved again into a blackness that sifted down through the air like soot. And as it fell to earth, the powdery-like particles of its essence reassembled themselves into the form of yet another man – or rather, a once-bright being who was something more than a man.

‘Elahad,’ he called out to me in a strong, beautiful voice that carried all the command of death. ‘The common murderer who would be king.’

Morjin, for such the Ahrim had now become, stood before me and bowed his gold-haired head to me. His golden eyes twisted screws of hate into my eyes, and I could not look away from him, nor could I lift my sword to block his fearful gaze. From somewhere off in the trees, Daj shouted out in detestation and dread of his old master. Atara, to my right, fitted an arrow to her bowstring and loosed it at him. But the arrow sailed right through his shadowed substance as if it were a cloud.

He paid her no attention, but only continued to stare at me. He appeared as he had been in his youth before his fall: fine of feature, golden-skinned and graceful in his bearing. The compassion in his eyes gleamed almost like gold.

‘Morjin!’ I shouted out. At last, I managed to raise up my sword.

His smile chilled me. Then he opened his mouth and breathed at me, almost as if he were blowing a kiss. No fire shot forth to scorch me, but only a bit of blackness from which he was made. I lifted my sword still higher, but I moved in vain, for it flowed around my bright blade as oil would a stick. And then his breath fell upon my head and arms, smothering me, blinding me. An unbearable cold burned through my skin deep into my bones. I stood as for an hour inside a lightless and airless cavern, gasping and coughing for breath.

‘Valashu Elahad, look at me!’ his hateful voice commanded. All at once, the black fog cleared from around my head, and I could not keep myself from staring at him. ‘You cannot defeat me.’

My fingers seemed frozen around the hilt of my sword, with all my joints locked and shrieking in pain. I could not even blink my eyes. My heart, though, still beat within me, quick and hard and hurtful, almost as with a will of its own. At last I found my will, and I raised back my sword.

‘Val, do not!’ Atara called out from somewhere near me. ‘Do not!’

I could not listen to her. I looked on in loathing as Morjin smiled at me and his features took on their true cast to reveal the hideous man that he had become: sagging flesh all pale with rot, stringy white hair and bloodshot eyes raging with hate. I struck out with my sword then, driving the gleaming point straight into his face. Nothing stopped this murderous thrust; it was as if I drove my sword through pure black air. And yet I felt a resistance to my sword’s silustria and its cutting edges, not of flesh and bone, but of spite and pain and cold. I fought this piercing numbness, and pulled back my sword. I stared at it in fury, for somehow the Ahrim’s substance had turned it black, like frozen iron. Then I stared at Morjin in horror, for even as I watched, his face became as my own, only blackened and twisted with hate.

‘You cannot defeat me,’ he said to me again.

Or perhaps it was the Ahrim that spoke these words to me, or myself – I could not tell. But some irresistible force moved the features of the thing standing before me.

There is a fear so terrible and deep that it turns one’s insides into a mass of sickened flesh and makes it seem that life cannot go on another moment. I stood there shaking and sweating and wanting to vomit up my very bowels. I knew that the dark thing standing before me had the power to kill me – and worse. But I seemed to have no power over it.

‘Val, fight!’ Maram shouted out from my left.

I was vaguely aware that he had sheathed his sword and taken out his firestone, for the long ruby crystal caught the sun’s rays in a glint of red light. And then, guided by Maram’s hand and heart, the crystal drank up the sun’s blaze and gave it out as a bolt of pure fire that streaked straight into the Ahrim. I felt the heat of this blast, but the Ahrim felt nothing. The face that seemed so very much my own just smiled at Maram as the black cavern of its mouth seemed ready to drink up more of Maram’s fire and his very life – and the lives of Master Juwain and Atara, too.

‘Yes, Val, fight!’ Atara called out to me, as she stood in a spray of crushed flowers by my side.

I stared at the dreadful thing wearing my face, and I wanted to fight it with every beat of my heart and down to my last breath. But how could I destroy something that was already nothing?

‘You know the way!’ Atara called to me again. ‘As it was at the farmhouse with the droghul!’

I glanced off into the trees, where Estrella stood looking at me. She seemed to have no fear of the Ahrim, but a great and terrible concern for me. I could feel her calling out to me in silence that I must always remember who I really was.

Then the Ahrim moved nearer to me – drawn, I sensed, by my blood and the kirax burning through it. Burning, yes, always hot and hateful, but something in this bitter poison seemed to awaken me to the immensity of pain that was life. And not just my own, but that of the trees standing around me tall and green, and the birds that made their nests among them, and the bees buzzing in the flowers, and everything. But life is much more than suffering. In all the growing things around me, I felt as well a wild joy and overflowing delight in just being alive. This was my gift, to sense in other creatures and people their deepest passions; Kane had once named this magic connection of mine as the valarda.

‘Valashu,’ the Ahrim seemed to whisper to me as it raised up its arm and opened out its fingers to me. ‘Take my hand.’

But Atara’s words sounded within me, too, as did Estrella’s silence and the song of the tanager piping out sweet and urgent from somewhere nearby. I finally caught sight of this little bird across the clearing to my right, perched high in the branches of a willow tree. It was a scarlet tanager, all round and red like the brightest of flowers. In the way it cocked its head toward me and sang just for me, it seemed utterly alive. Its heart beat even more quickly than did my own, like a flutter of wings, and it called me to take joy in the wild life within myself. There, too, I remembered, blazed a deep and unquenchable light.

‘Valashu Elahad.’

The Ahrim, I sensed, like a huge, blood-blackened tick, wanted my life. Very well, then I would give it that, and something more.

‘Val!’ Maram cried out to me. ‘Do what Atara said! What are you waiting for?’

At the farmhouse, Morjin had been unable to bear my anguish of love for my murdered family. What was it, I wondered, that the Ahrim could not bear? Its immense and terrifying anguish seemed to pour out through its black eyes and outstretched hand.

‘Now, Val!’ Master Juwain called to me. He stood staring at the Ahrim as he lifted his glowing, emerald crystal toward me in order to quicken the fires of my life.

Kane had told me, too, that I held inside my heart the greatest of weapons. It was what my gift became when I turned my deepest passion outward and wielded the valarda to open others’ hearts and brighten their souls. As I wielded it now. With Master Juwain feeding me the radiance of his green gelstei, and my other friends passing to me all that was beautiful and bright from within their own beings, I struck out at the Ahrim. Master Juwain believed that darkness could never be defeated by the sword, but he meant a length of honed steel and destruction, and not a sword of light.