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I stared at the sky in the west over the mountains leading to Skartaru, and in my mind’s eye, I saw a great hourglass full of sparkling sands like unto stars. And with every breath that I drew and every word wasted in speculation – with every minute, hour and day that passed – the sands fell and crashed and darkened like burnt-out cinders as Morjin gained mastery of the Lightstone.
‘We cannot wait until next year,’ I said. ‘And we are agreed that our best hope of finding the Maitreya lies in reaching the Brotherhood school.’
‘In that case,’ Maram said, ‘our dilemma remains: do we flee or fight?’
Atara had now finished her stew, and she sat quietly between Liljana and Master Juwain as the fire’s orange light danced across her blindfolded face. Sometimes, I knew, she could ‘see’ the grasses and grasshoppers and other features of the world about her, and other times she was truly blind. Just as sometimes she could see the future – or at least its possibilities.
‘Atara,’ I asked her, ‘what do you think we should do?’
‘Flee,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how well these Red Knights can ride.’
She waited as my heart drummed five times, then turned toward me as she declared, ‘You would rather see how well they can fight.’
I said nothing as I gripped the hilt of my sword.
‘I must tell you, Val,’ she said to me, ‘that it is not certain that the warriors who ride with us will fight just because you ask them to.’
I pointed out across the steppe and said, ‘Fifty men, Red Knights and Zayak, pursue us. And your warriors are Manslayers, are they not?’
‘Indeed they are,’ she said. Now it was her turn to grip the great unstrung bow that she had set by her side. ‘And indeed they will fight – if I ask them. But Bajorak and his warriors are another matter.’
‘He agreed to escort us to the mountains.’
‘Yes, and so he will certainly fight if we are attacked. So far, though, we are only followed.’
‘In this country,’ I said, ‘with this enemy, it is the same thing.’
Liljana made a show of collecting our empty bowls and serving us some succulent bearberries for dessert. During dinner she had not said very much. But now, as she often did, she cut me to the quick with only a few words: ‘I think you love to hate this enemy too much,’ she told me.
For a moment I looked down at my sword’s hilt, at the diamond pommel and the smaller diamonds set into the black jade. Then I met eyes with Liljana and said, ‘How should I not hate them? They might be the very same knights who put nails through my mother’s hands and feet!’
‘They might be,’ she admitted. ‘But would you then throw yourself upon their lances and put nails through my heart?’
Because I could not bear to look at Liljana just then, I returned to my vigil, staring out across the steppe at our enemy’s fires. I muttered, ‘How did they find us and who leads them? What do they intend?’
Kane scowled at this and spat out, ‘What does Morjin ever intend?’
‘I must know,’ I said. I looked around the circle at my friends. ‘We must know, if we are to reach a decision.’
‘Some things,’ Master Juwain said, ‘are unknowable.’
I turned to Liljana and asked, ‘What of your crystal?’
‘And other things,’ Master Juwain continued, looking from me to Liljana, ‘are better left unknown.’
Liljana reached into her tunic’s inner pocket and brought out a small figurine cast into the form of a whale. It had the luster of lapis and the hint of the ocean’s deep currents. Long ago, in another age, it had been forged of blue gelstei.
‘Are you asking,’ she said to me, ‘that I should look into the minds of these Red Knights?’
Just then, out of the blackness beyond the fire, Flick appeared like a tiny, whirling array of stars. His colors of crimson, silver and blue, throwing out sparks, also pulsed in patterns that I took to be a warning. What was this strange being who had followed me across the length of Ea, I wondered? Was he truly a messenger of the Galadin, a little bit of starlight and angel fire? Or did he possess a will all his own, and therefore his own life and his own fate?
Master Juwain, upon glancing at Flick, turned to Liljana and commanded her, ‘No, do not use your gelstei!’
Then he brought out his own gelstei: the emerald healing crystal that he had gained on our first quest. He held it up to the fire, letting the flickering light pour through its green-tinged translucency. Although it was hard to tell in the deep of night, a darkness seemed to have fallen over the crystal, as if it were steeped in shadow.
‘It’s too dangerous!’ he said to Liljana. ‘Now that the Dragon has regained the Lightstone, too damned dangerous! Especially for you.’
Maram regarded Master Juwain in shock, and so did I, for we had never heard him curse before. Liljana sat looking at her gelstei, cupped in her hands. As if she were holding a newborn, she swayed rhythmically back and forth.
‘I won’t believe that Morjin can use the Lightstone to taint this crystal,’ she said. ‘How can that which is most fair abide anything foul?’
‘Surely the foulness,’ I said, ‘arises from Morjin himself and our weakness in resisting him. He desecrates everything he touches.’
I turned to look at the white cloth binding Atara’s face. I couldn’t help remembering how Morjin, with his own fingers, had torn out her eyes.
‘So, every abomination, every degradation of the spirit,’ Kane said, gazing at Liljana’s blue stone. ‘But things aren’t as simple as you think, eh? Don’t be so sure you understand Morjin – or the Lightstone!’
‘I understand that we must fight him – and not with swords,’ Liljana said.
She was a wise woman, but a willful one, too. And so she clasped her figurine between her fingers and brought it up to the side of her head.
‘No,’ Master Juwain called out again, ‘do not!’
Once, in the depths of Argattha where the very rocks stank of rotting blood and terror, Liljana had touched minds with Morjin. And now, even as Estrella could not speak, Liljana would never smile again.
The moment that the gelstei touched her temple, she cried out in betrayal and pain. The crystal seemed to burn her like a heated iron, and she dropped it onto the grass. Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing the whites.
‘Liljana!’ I cried out. ‘Liljana!’
It took me a moment to realize that not only I had called to her, but Maram, Master Juwain and Atara – even Daj and Kane. And then Atara sidled closer to Liljana and wrapped her arm around her back as she cradled Liljana’s drooping head against her breasts. Estrella took Liljana’s hand between hers and squeezed it tightly. Their little comforts must have worked a quick magic on Liljana, for soon her eyes regained their focus, and she gathered herself together and forced herself to sit up straight again. She drew in ten deep breaths, and let each of them out, slowly. She wiped the sweat from her sodden hair. Finally she retrieved her blue gelstei. In her open hand it glinted, and she sat staring at it.
Then she cried out: ‘He is there!’
‘Morjin!’ I called back to her. ‘Damn him! Damn him!’
Daj rose up to one knee and leaned over to get a better look at Liljana’s crystal. He asked, ‘How, then? Where, then – here?’
‘He is everywhere!’ Liljana gasped. ‘Watching, always watching.’
She closed her fist around her stone and put it back in her pocket. Atara still embraced her, and now they both swayed together back and forth, back and forth.
Although I hated the need of it, I put to Liljana the question that must be asked: ‘Were you able to open the minds of the Red Knights?’
‘No!’ she snapped at me. And then, more gently, ‘He was waiting for me, Morjin was. Waiting to open up my mind. To twist his soul and his sick sentiments into me. Like snakes, they are, cold, and full of venom. I … cannot say. You cannot know.’
I could know, I thought. I did know. When I closed my eyes, the bodies of my mother and grandmother, nailed to wood, writhed inside me. Only, they were not cold, but warm – always too warm as they cried out in their eternal anguish, burning, burning, burning ….
‘I’m sorry,’ Liljana said to Master Juwain, ‘but you were right.’
Master Juwain sighed as he knotted his small, hard fingers together. ‘I’m afraid it’s too dangerous for any of us to use our gelstei, now.’
‘And dangerous not to,’ I said. ‘Atara can still see, sometimes, with her gift, but without my eyes, I would be blind.’
And with that, I drew my sword from its sheath. Even in the thick of the night, the long blade gleamed faintly. The silustria from which it was wrought, like living silver, caught the stars’ light and gave it back manyfold. It was harder than diamond and double-edged and sharp enough to cut steel. Alkaladur, men called it, the Sword of Sight that could cut through the soul’s dark confusions to release the secret light within. The immortal Kalkin had forged it at the end of the Age of Swords, and it had once defeated Morjin. The silver gelstei was said to be one of the two noble stones; it was also said that the gold gelstei that formed the Lightstone had resonance with the silver but no power over it.
‘Put it away!’ Master Juwain said to me as he pushed out his palm. ‘Use it in battle with the enemy, if you must, but until then, put it back in its sheath.’
I held my beautiful sword straight up, pointing toward the stars. A lovely, silver light spilled down the blade and enveloped my arm; it built around me like a luminous sea and flowed out to bathe the grasses and the cottonwood trees and the other things of the world.
‘Valashu!’ Master Juwain said to me.
And I said to him, ‘Liljana is right: the enemy is here, and everywhere. And the battle never ends.’
I turned to look north and west, toward Skartaru where Morjin dwelled. Although I could not see the Black Mountain among the lesser white peaks leading up to it, I felt it pulling at my mind and memory, and darkening my soul. Then suddenly, my sword darkened, too. I held before me a length of gelstei no brighter than ordinary burnished steel.
‘Damn him!’ I whispered. ‘Damn him!’
Now I pointed my sword toward Skartaru, and the blade began to glow and then flare in resonance with the faroff Lightstone – but not as brightly as it once had.
‘He is there,’ I murmured. ‘There he sits on his filthy throne with the Lightstone in his filthy hand, watching and waiting.’
How could the world abide such a being as Morjin and all his deeds? How could the mountains, the wind, the stars? The same bright orbs poured down their radiance on Skartaru as they did the Wendrush and the mountains of my home. Why? And why shine at all? My eyes hurt from staring so hard as I brooded over the conundrum of a star: if it let fire consume itself, it would burn out into blackness. So it was with me. Soon enough I would be dead. A Sarni arrow would find my throat or I would freeze to death crossing the mountains. Or, more likely, one of Morjin’s armies would trap me in some land near or faraway, and then I would be taken and crucified. I would descend to that dark, cold realm where I had sent so many, and that was only justice. But it seemed wrong to me, terribly and dreadfully wrong, that with my death, the bright memory of my mother, father and brothers that lived inside me would perish, too. And so those I loved most would truly die, and Morjin would have twice murdered my family and stolen them from the world.
‘Valashu!’ Master Juwain called to me again.
Where, I wondered, did the light of a candle’s flame go when the wind blew it out? Could it be that the land of the dead was not fell but rather as cool and quiet as a long, peaceful sleep? Why should Morjin keep me in this world of iron nails, crosses and fire even one more day?
‘Valashu – your sword!’
I squeezed my sword’s hilt of black jade, carved with swans and set with seven diamonds. Once, I had sliced the sharp blade through Morjin’s neck, but by the evil miracle of his kind, he had lived. My aim, the next time, must be true. I would plunge the star-tempered point straight through his heart. Atara had once prophesied that if I killed Morjin, I would kill myself. So, just so, as Kane would say.
‘Damn him!’ I whispered as I pointed my sword toward Argattha. ‘Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!’
I would cut off Morjin’s head and mount it on a pike for all to behold. I would hack his body into pieces and pour pitch upon them and set them on fire. I would feel the heat of the flames upon my face, burning, burning, burning …
‘Valashu!’ Master Juwain, Liljana and Atara cried out as one.
When my vision suddenly cleared, I gasped to see that my silver sword seemed to have caught fire. Blue flames clung to the silustria along its whole length like a hellish garment, while longer orange and red ones twisted and leaped and blazed with a searing heat. So violent was this fire that I dropped my sword upon the ground. The grass there was too green to easily ignite, but Liljana and Daj hastened to douse it with water even so. We all watched with amazement as the flames raced up and down my sword’s blade, cooled, faded and then finally died.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram called out. ‘Oh, my Lord!’
‘I didn’t know your sword could burn like that!’ Daj said to me.
‘Neither did I,’ Master Juwain told me.
And neither did I. Even Kane, who had once been Kalkin, the great Elijin lord who had forged this sword with his own two hands and all the art of the angels, stared at it mysteriously. His black eyes seemed as cold as the space between the stars. He held himself utterly still.
‘Like hell, that was,’ he finally said. He turned to stare at me.
‘Like hate, it was,’ Master Juwain said to me. Again he pushed his palm toward my cast-down sword. ‘Surely its fire came out of that which consumes you.’
Daj, who was bright beyond his years, studied my sword and asked, ‘Did it? Or did it burn because Lord Morjin is gaining control of the Lightstone?’
Liljana patted his head at his perceptiveness, then looked at me as she said, ‘In the end, of course, it might be the same question.’
‘Whatever the answer,’ Master Juwain said to me, ‘it is certain that the Lord of Lies is learning the Lightstone’s secrets. Your hate will not deter him. Put your sword away.’
I leaned forward to wrap my fingers around Alkaladur’s hilt. The black jade was as cool as grass. But the blade’s silustria still emanated a faint heat, like a paving stone after a long summer day.
‘Surely this is damned,’ I said as I lifted up my sword. ‘As I am damned.’
Liljana slapped her hand into her palm, then shook her head violently as she waggled her finger at me. ‘Don’t you ever say that!’
She edged past Daj and Estrella and knelt before me, and she laid her hand on top of mine. Her voice grew soft and gentle as she told me, ‘You are not damned! You, of all people. And you, of all people, must never think that of yourself.’
I smiled at her kindness, but she did not smile back. I let go of Alkaladur for a moment to squeeze her hand. And then I grasped yet again the sword that would carve my fate.
‘Morjin is poisoning the gelstei,’ I said. ‘Or trying to.’
Once, I remembered, in a wood near my home, Morjin’s priest named Igasho had shot at me an arrow tipped with kirax. The poison had found its way into my blood, where it would always work its dark enchantment. I wondered if this evil substance that connected me to Morjin was slowly killing me after all. As I fiercely gripped my sword, I felt the kirax burning my stomach, liver and lungs with every breath, and stabbing like red-hot needles through my eyes and brain.
‘Damn him!’ I said again, shaking my sword at the heavens.
In the west, clouds were moving in, blocking out the stars. Lightning rent the sky there, and thunder shook the earth. Far out on the steppe, wolves howled their strange and mournful cries. There, too, our enemy’s campfires burned on and on through the night.
‘And damn them, too!’ I said, stabbing my sword at the Red Knights who followed us.
I watched with dread as my silver sword again burst into flame. And then something dark and dreadful as a dragon burned through my hand, arm and chest, straight into my heart.
‘He is here!’ I cried out as I sprang up to my feet.
‘Who is here?’ Master Juwain asked me. Now he stood up, too, and came over to me, and so did the others.
‘Morjin is – he rides with the Red Knights!’ I said.
‘Morjin, here?’ Kane shouted. His eyes flared like fire-arrows out toward the steppe. ‘Impossible!’
Atara stood by my side, but well away from my burning blade. She put her hand on my shoulder to gentle me, and she said, ‘Your sword shone much as it ever did when you pointed it toward Argattha, and so the Lightstone must still be there. And so, as you have said yourself, must Morjin.’
‘No, he is here, a mile away across the grass!’
‘Atara is right,’ Master Juwain said to me. He rested his hand on my other shoulder. ‘Think, Val: the Dragon would never leave the Lightstone out of his clutches, even for moment, not even to ride after you.’
‘And if he did hunt you,’ Atara added, ‘he would have come out of Argattha at the head of his whole army, and not leading a couple of dozen knights.’
As lightning lit the mountains and fire sheathed my sword, my friends tried to reason with me. I could hardly listen. For I felt Morjn’s presence too near me. The flames of his being writhed and twisted as they ever did, in shoots of madder, puce and incarnadine, and other colors that recalled his tormented soul.
‘I know it is he!’ I said, to Atara and my other friends.
