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Now Kane stood facing me, and he paused to draw in a deep breath. His eyes burned into mine as he said, ‘But it is the Ieldra, not the Galadin – not even Angra Mainyu – who are given the power of creation. And so no Galadin has the power to uncreate any other. Angra Mainyu, though, will never believe this, just as he will not accept that any power might be beyond his grasp, not even the very splendor of the One. So. So. The Ieldra, at last, at the end of all things when time has run out and there is no more hope, will be forced to make war upon Angra Mainyu, lest the evil that he has unleashed upon Eluru spill over into other universes: those millions that exist beyond ours and those countless ones that are yet to be. But Angra Mainyu was the first of the Galadin, and the greatest, and so as long as the stars shed their light upon creation, he, too, cannot be harmed. Knowing this, the Ieldra will be forced to put an end to their creation. In fire the universe came to be, and in fire the universe and all within will be destroyed. And so Eluru, and all its worlds and beautiful stars, will be no more.’
Kane finished speaking and stood still again. For a moment, I could not move, nor could our other friends. Daj and Estrella, in their short years, had seen and heard many terrible things, but Kane’s warning as to the horrible end of the War of the Stone seemed to strike terror into them. They sat next to each other, holding hands and staring at the stream. Above this pale water, Flick appeared, and the lights within his luminosity pulsed as in alarm. Above him, the forbidding walls of the Kul Kavaakurk grew ever darker. Their exposed rock ran along the gorge, east and west, in layers. How long, I wondered, had it taken for the stream to cut down through the skin of the earth? Each layer, it seemed, was as a million years, and as the stream had cut deeper and deeper, the War had gone on, layer upon layer. And not just the War of the Stone, but the war of all life against life, to triumph and dominate, to be and to become greater. And not just on Ea or Eluru but in all universes in all times, without end. Were all peoples everywhere, I wondered, afflicted with war? Was it possible that all worlds and universes, as seemed the fate of ours, might be doomed?
It was Maram, the most fearful of us and consequently the most hopeful, who could not bear to think of such an end. He loved the pleasures of life too much to imagine it ever ceasing – even for others. And so he looked at Kane and said, ‘But Angra Mainyu was defeated once, and so might be again. And it was you who defeated him!’
‘No, it was not I,’ Kane said as a strange light filled his eyes. ‘And I’ve told you before, he was not defeated. From Damoom, he still works his evil on all of Eluru.’
‘But he was bound there,’ Maram persisted. ‘And so might be again.’
‘No, he will not be,’ Kane told us. ‘Once, on Erathe, on the plain of Tharharra long ago, there was a battle – the greatest of all battles. A host of the Amshahs pursued Angra Mainyu and his Daevas there. Ashtoreth and Valoreth forbade this violence, but Marsul and others of the Galadin would not heed them. And neither would Kalkin.’
Kane, who had once borne this noble name, stood up tall and straight as the light of the night’s first stars rained down upon him.
‘A hundred thousand Valari died that day,’ Kane said to us. ‘And as many of the Elijin. So, Elijin slaying Valari and other Elijin, against the Law of the One, and Galadin such as Marsul and Varkoth slaying all – this was the evil of that day. A victory Maram calls it! Ha! Many of the Amshahs fell mad after that. Darudin threw himself on his sword in remorse, and so with Odin and Sulujin and many others. But it is not so easy for the living to expunge the stain of such an atrocity, eh? Many there were who bore the shadow of Tharharra on their souls.’
Kane paused in his account of this ancient history before known history. He began pacing about like a tiger again in front of the fire, and his hand clenched and unclenched like a beating heart.
‘And so,’ he said, ‘once a time the Amshahs came to Erathe; they will not come to Ea, especially if the Baaloch and his Daevas are loosed upon it. The danger is too great. Ea is a Dark World, now – almost a Dark World. Here, Morjin turned from the fairest of men into the most foul. Here, even the brightest of the Amshahs might come under Angra Mainyu’s spell, and how could the stars above us abide even one more fallen Galadin? And then, too, there is the Black Jade.’
Almost without thought, my hand fell upon my sword. Seven diamonds, like stars, were set into its hilt, carved out of true black jade, which might be dug up from the earth like any other stone. But the jade of which Kane spoke was the black gelstei, rarest of the rare, wrought in furnaces long ago from unknown substances and with an art long since lost. And not just any black gelstei.
Kane paused in his pacing to set his bow on top of the logs of the breastwork. Then he brought forth a flat, black stone, shiny as obsidian, and held it gleaming dully in the palm of his hand. And he said to us, ‘This baalstei is small, eh? And yet the one that Kalkin used upon Angra Mainyu was no larger – in size. But it had great power, like unto the dark of the moon, for in it was bound all the blackness of space and the great emptiness that lies inside all things.’
He stood still for a moment as he stared up at the sky. Then he continued: ‘You can’t imagine its power, for in a way, the Black Jade is the Lightstone’s shadow. I spoke of how the Ieldra might be forced to unmake the universe, but I say the Black Jade is the greater dread. For even men, such as Morjin, might use it to steal the very light from this world: all that is bright and good.’
Maram thought about this as he gazed at Kane. Then he asked him, ‘But why didn’t you tell us that the black gelstei you used on Angra Mainyu had power beyond any others?’
‘Because,’ Kane said, ‘I didn’t want to frighten you. So, I didn’t want to frighten myself. To wield it was to touch upon a cold so terrible and vast that it froze one’s soul in ice as hard as diamond. To wield it too long was to be lost in a lightless void from which there could be no escape. Angra Mainyu himself, early in the War of the Stone, forged this cursed stone we call the Black Jade. There will never be another like it. Long ago, it was lost. And so once the Baaloch is freed, no one will ever bind him again.’
Maram stood up from the fire to get a better look at the black crystal seemingly welded to Kane’s hand. And he asked: ‘If Angra Mainyu made the great baalstei, how did Kalkin come by it?’
‘So, how did Kalkin come by it, eh?’ Kane said. He spoke his ancient name as if intoning a requiem for a long lost friend. ‘That is a story that I won’t tell here, unless you’d like to remain in this cursed gorge for a month, and then half a year after. Let’s just say that the Lightstone wasn’t the only gelstei that the Amshahs and the Daevas fought over.’
‘But how was it lost, then?’
Kane clamped his jaws together with such force that I heard the grinding of his teeth. Then he said, ‘That story is even longer. I can tell you only that Angra Mainyu’s creatures regained it. Some say that it was brought to Ea, to await his coming.’
Again, I stared at the chasm’s layers of rock, now nearly black with the fall of night. It seemed that in ages without end, on uncountable worlds, anything might happen – and almost everything had. It seemed as well that the folds of the earth might conceal many dark things, even one as dark and terrible as the ancient black gelstei.
Kane suddenly made a fist, and the small crystal seemed to vanish. When he opened his hand again, there was nothing inside it except air.
And I asked him, ‘Do you believe the baalstei was brought to Ea?’
‘Where else would it have been brought if not here?’
My mysterious friend, I thought, possessed all the evasive arts of a magician. Somewhere on his person, no doubt, he had secreted the black gelstei. Just as somewhere in his soul he kept hidden even more powerful things.
‘You told us once,’ I said to him, ‘that the Galadin sent Kalkin to Ea. Along with Morjin, and ten others of the Elijin?’
Kane’s eyes grew brighter and more pained as he said, ‘Yes – Sarojin and Baladin, and the others. I have told you their names.’
‘Yes, you have. But you haven’t told us why you were sent here? Why, if Ea was so perilous for your kind?’
‘It was a chance,’ he said, looking up at the night’s first stars. ‘A last, desperate chance. The Lightstone had been sent here long before, and that was chance enough.’
And this supreme gamble on the part of Ashtoreth and the other Galadin on Agathad had nearly succeeded: Kalkin, in the great First Quest, had led the others of his order to recover the lost Lightstone. But then Morjin had fallen mad; he had murdered Garain and Averin to claim the Lightstone for himself. And Kalkin, in violation of the Law of the One, had killed five of Morjin’s henchmen, and in a way, slain himself as well. Now only Kane remained.
‘So, you see how it went for the Elijin who came to Ea,’ Kane said. ‘How much worse would it be for any Galadin to come to this cursed place?’
At this, Liljana’s kind face tightened in anger. She patted the ground beneath her, and snapped at Kane: ‘Such things you say! I won’t listen to such slander! The earth is our mother, the mother of us all – even you!’
As Kane regarded Liljana, I felt a strange, cold longing ripple through him.
‘Liljana is right,’ Master Juwain said. ‘You can’t blame Ea for corrupting Morjin. Neither can you blame the black gelstei.’
And Kane said, ‘The greatest of scryers foretold that Ea would give rise to a dark angel who would free the Baaloch.’
‘Either that,’ Master Juwain reminded him, ‘or give birth to the last and greatest Maitreya, who will lead all Eluru into the Age of Light.’
For a moment, Kane stared down at his clenched fists. Then he looked at Master Juwain and said, ‘I know you are right. It is not soil or even black gelstei that poisons men, but their hearts. What lies within.’
He reached down to scoop up a handful of dirt. He said to us, ‘And that is the hell of it, eh? What being, born of earth, does not suffer? Grow old and die?’
‘The Galadin do not,’ I said to him.
‘You think not, eh? So, the Bright Ones grow old in their souls. And in the end, it is their fate, too, to die.’
The brilliance of his eyes recalled the most beautiful, yet terrible, part of the Law of the One: that each of the Galadin, at the moment of a Great Progression, in the creation of a new universe, was destined to die into light – and thus be reborn as one of the numinous Ieldra.
‘And as for suffering, Valashu,’ he said to me, ‘despite what you have suffered, you cannot know. How many times have you swatted a mosquito?’
For a moment, his question puzzled me. My skin fairly twitched as I recalled the clouds of mosquitoes that had drained my blood in the Vardaloon. And I said, ‘Hundreds. Thousands.’
‘Could you have killed them so readily if they had been human beings? Do you think they suffered as men do?’
I, who had already killed many tens of men with my bright sword, said, ‘I know they did not.’
‘Just so,’ Kane said to me. ‘The pain that men, women and children know, compared to that of the Galadin, is minuscule. And yet it is no small thing, eh? And that in the end, is what poisoned Angra Mainyu’s sweet, sweet, beautiful heart.’
Kane’s words were like a bucket of cold water emptied upon me. I sat by the fire, blinking my eyes as a chill shot down my spine. I said to him, ‘I never thought to hear you speak such words of the Dark One.’
And he told me: ‘Angra Mainyu was not always Angra Mainyu, nor was he always evil. So, he was born Asangal, the most beautiful of men, and when still a man, it is said that he loved all life so dearly that he would not swat mosquitoes. And more, that once he saw a dog in excruciating pain from an open wound being eaten with worms. Asangal resolved to remove the worms, but could not bear for them to die. And so he licked out the worms with his own tongue so as not to crush them, and he let them eat his own flesh.’
At this, Daj’s face screwed up in disgust, and Maram shook his head. And Kane went on:
‘Asangal so loved the world that he thought he could take in all its pain. But after he became an Elijin lord and then was elevated as the first of the Galadin, the pain became an agony that he could not escape. In truth, like a robe of fire, it drove him mad. He began to question the One’s design in calling forth life only to suffer so terribly; as the ages passed into ages, it seemed to him particularly cruel that all beings should be made to bear such torment, only, at the end of it all, to die. Love thwarted turns to hate, eh?, for one of the Galadin no less than a man, and so it was with him. So, he began to hate the One. And in hating, he began to feel himself as other from the One and the Ieldra’s creation, and so he damned the One and creation itself.
‘And then, for the first time, a terrible fear seized hold of him. It gnawed at him, worse than worms of fire, for he knew that he had only damned himself. He could not bear to believe that he must someday die, as the Galadin do, in becoming greater. As the evil that he made inside his own heart worked at him, he could not bear to believe that any being, not the greatest of the Ieldra, not even the One, was greater than himself. For how could they be if they suffered to exist a universe as flawed and hurtful as ours? And so he resolved to gather all power to himself to remake the universe: in all goodness, truth and beauty, without suffering, without war, and most of all, without death. Toward this magnificent end, out of his magnificent love for all beings, or so he told himself, he would storm heaven and make war against the Ieldra, against all peoples and all worlds opposing him. So, even against the One.’
Kane stood closer to me now, looking down at me, and his face flashed with reddish lights from the fire’s writhing flames.
‘Do you see?’ he said to me. ‘It is possible to be too good, eh?’
‘Perhaps,’ I told him. I smiled, but there was no sweetness in it, only the taste of blood. ‘But I’m in no danger of that, am I?’
‘Damn it, Val, you might have killed Morjin!’
I stood up to face him and said, ‘Yes, I might have. And what then? Would one of his priests have used the Lightstone to free Angra Mainyu anyway? Or might I have regained it – only to become as Morjin? And then, in the end, been made to free Angra Mainyu myself?’
‘You ask too many questions,’ he growled. He pointed at my sheathed sword. ‘When you held the answer in your hand!’
My fingers closed around Alkaladur’s hilt, and I said, ‘Truly, I held something there.’
‘Damn you, Val!’ he shouted at me. ‘Damn you! Would you loose the Baaloch upon us!’
I looked down to see Daj set his jaw against the trembling that tore through his slight body. Master Juwain’s face had gone grave, and his eyes had lost their sparkle, and so it was with Maram and Liljana. It came to me then that our hope for fulfilling our quest hung like the weight of the whole world upon a strand as slender as one of Atara’s blond hairs. In truth, it seemed that there was no real hope at all. And if that were so, why not just ask Master Juwain to prepare a potion for all of us that we might die, here and now, in peace? Was death so terrible as I had feared? Was it really a black neverness, freezing cold, like ice? Was it a fire that burned the flesh forever? Or was it rather like a beautiful song and the brightest of lights that carried one upward toward the stars?
No, I heard myself whisper. No.
I glanced at Estrella, who looked up at me in dread. And yet, miraculously, with so much trust. Her quick, lovely eyes seemed to grab hold of mine even more fiercely than Kane grasped my arm. So much hope burned inside her! So much life spilled out to fill up her radiant face! Who was I to resign myself and consign her to its ending? No, I thought, that would be ignoble, cowardly, wrong. For her sake, no less my own, I would at least act as if there somehow might be hope.
I said to Kane, ‘Not even the greatest of scryers can see all ends.’
‘So, I think you can see your own end. And long for it too much, eh?’
I shook my head at this, and told him, ‘Last year, at the Tournament when Asaru lay abed with a wounded shoulder, King Mohan spoke these words to me: “A man can never be sure that his acts will lead to the desired result; he can only be sure of the acts, themselves. Therefore each act must be good and true, of its own.”’
‘A warrior’s code, eh? Act nobly, always with honor, and smile at death, if that is the result. The code of the Valari.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘better death than life lived as Morjin lives, or as one of his slaves.’
Kane regarded Daj and Estrella a moment before turning back to me. He said, ‘But we’re not speaking of the death of a lone warrior, or even an entire army, but that of the whole world and all that is!’
‘I … know.’
‘Do you really? What, then, is good? Where will you find truth? Do you know that, as well?’
‘I know it as well as I can. Is it not written in the Law of the One?’
‘So, so,’ he murmured, glaring at me.
‘Is it not written that a man may slay another man only in defense of life? And is it not also written that the Elijin may not slay at all?’
‘So, so.’
‘And yet you slay so gladly. As you would have had me slay Morjin!’
At this he gripped the hilt of his sword and smiled, showing his long white teeth. But there was no mirth on his savage face.
‘You are one of the Elijin!’ I said to him.
‘No, Kalkin was of the Elijin,’ he told me. ‘I am Kane.’
I held out my hand to him and said, ‘If I gave you this sword that is inside me, would you slay with it? What law for the valarda, then?’
‘I … don’t remember.’
His eyes smoldered with a dark fire almost too hot to bear. I felt his heart beating in great, angry surges inside him. It came to me then that there were those who could not abide their smallness, and they feared mightily obliteration in death. But those, like Kane, who turned away from their greatness dreaded even more the glory of life. How long had this ancient warrior stood alone in shadows and dark chasms, away from all others, even from himself? Was it not a terrible thing for a man to forget who he really was?
‘I know,’ I said to him, ‘that the valarda was not meant for slaying.’
‘So – you know this, do you?’
‘Somewhere,’ I said, ‘it must be written in the Law of the One.’
Kane stared at me as through a wall of flame. His jaws clenched, and the muscles of his windburnt cheeks popped out like knots of wood. It seemed that the veins of his neck and face could not contain the bursts of blood coursing through him.
Then he whipped his sword from its sheath and shouted at me, ‘Then damn the One!’
His words seemed to horrify him, as they did the rest of us. Daj sat looking at him in awed silence. Even Estrella seemed to wilt beneath his fearsome countenance.
Then Kane murmured, ‘What I meant to say was that Asangal damned the One. Angra Mainyu did – do you understand?’
I looked down at my open hand. A bloody spike pierced the palm through the bones. The agony of this iron nail still tore through me, as did that of the other nails driven through my mother’s hands and feet. And I said to Kane, ‘Yes – I do understand.’
I felt the hard hurt of his sword pressing into his own hand. He did not want to look at me, but he could not help it. His eyes said what his lips would not: I am damned. And so are you.
‘No, no,’ I told him. I took a step closer and covered his hand with mine. ‘Peace, friend.’
As gently as I could, I peeled back his fingers from his sword’s hilt, then took it away from him. He stood like a stunned lamb as he watched me slide it back into its sheath.
‘Valashu,’ he whispered to me.
I clasped hands with him then, and stood looking at him eye to eye. His blood burned against my palm with every beat of his great, beautiful heart. Such a wild joy of life surged inside him! Such a brilliance brightened his being, like unto the splendor of the stars! What was the truth of the valarda, I wondered? Only this: that it was a sword of light, truly, but something much more. It passed from man to man, brother to brother, as the very stars poured out to each other their fiery radiance, onstreaming, shining upon all things and calling to that deeper light within that was their source.
‘Kalkin,’ I said to him, whispering his name. For a moment, as through veil rent with a lightning flash, I looked upon a being of rare power and grace. But only for a moment.
‘No, no,’ he murmured. ‘You promised.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said.
‘No, it is I who am sorry. What do I really know of the valarda, eh? Perhaps you were right to try to keep that sword within its sheath.’
His gaze, it seemed, tore open my heart. I said to him, ‘If Angra Mainu is defeated, I do not believe that it will be by my hand, or yours, or even that of Ashtoreth and Valoreth.’
‘Perhaps you are right. Perhaps.’
‘And so with Morjin.’
