Diamond Warriors (23 page)

Arch Igasho had been born Prince Salmelu Aradar of Ishka into one of the most ancient and noble of Valari lines. All through his youth, he had trained at the sword like any other Valari warrior. But somehow his soul had sickened, and he had surrendered both sword and soul to Morjin. My blood still burned with the kirax that Salmelu had fired into me with his assassin's arrow. In reward for his service, Morjin had made Salmelu a full priest of the Kallimun, and then elevated him again and again.

'You mustn't underestimate this man,' Abrasax said to Kane and me. 'He nearly destroyed you in Hesperu. As he nearly killed all of us - as he did our Brothers.'

'Ha!' Kane said again. 'Igasho is a traitor and a worm, for he lives on Morjin's droppings when he could have been a king in his own right. He
failed
to kill Val with his damned arrow, as he did in Hesperu - even as he did with you.'

'He did,' Abrasax agreed, 'but each time he came very close. The Red Dragon must hope that the next time he will succeed.'

'In a way, he
did
succeed,' Master Storr said. 'Our school is destroyed, and some of the brightest souls of our generation. Our books are ashes. Morjin would count this as a victory.'

Abrasax made a fist as he fought for words that must have been hard for him to say: 'Books can always be rewritten and new generations will arise to replace the old. No treasure is beyond being restored. Except one, I fear. This age is almost over, and if it comes to an end without the Maitreya taking the Lightstone in his hands, then
all
will come to end, forever. For Bemossed, it has been so close - as close as that hair you keep folded in your pocket, Valashlu Elahad.'

I looked at Atara, sitting straight and motionless to my right. I did not know how Abrasax had learned of this great treasure I kept close to my heart, Master Reader of the Brotherhood though he might be. Then this very perceptive man let out a pained breath as he told us of how Bemossed had almost died.

'Our young friend,' Abrasax said, 'was already weak from fighting Morjin for too long. Our struggle to escape the valley weakened him further, and our flight through the mountains even more. And that was not the worst of things.'

'What could be worse than that?' Maram asked. Then his face seemed to drain of blood as he answered his own question: 'The Grays, then - the damn Grays!'

'The Grays indeed,' Abrasax told us.

He went on to say that these soulless men, whose eyes were as hard and dead as pieces of stone, had listened for the murmur-ings of Bemossed's mind and had followed him for many days through the mountains and then out onto the grasslands of the Wendrush. And all the while their leader had used a black gelstei to suck away the very fires of Bemossed's life so that he had sickened nearly to his death.

'It was that way when the Grays pursued us across Alonia,' Maram said with a shudder. 'At the end of things, they put their cold claws into our minds so that we couldn't move. And then came to suck out our souls!'

Maram, I thought, remembering, spoke dramatically but not inaccurately.

'Only Kane's coming saved us then,' Maram told Abrasax. 'But I should think that the powers of the Seven would have saved
you.'

'We do have our skills,' Abrasax said with a note of mystery shading his voice. 'Which is why we are even here to tell you how Master Okuth saved Bemossed's life at the sacrifice of his own.'

I remembered very well old Master Okuth's iron-gray hair and heavy head resembling that of an ox. But it seemed that he had possessed the soul of an angel. For as the Seven had fled with Bemossed barely beyond the knives of the Grays and swords of Igasho's men, Master Okuth had employed all his powers to keep Bemossed from failing and falling off his horse. And at the end, when Bemossed could go no further. Master Okuth had used his green heart stone to pour his own life fires into Bemossed as if giving him his own blood. This greatest of all kindnesses had killed Master Okuth - even as it gave Bemossed the strength to go on.

'We buried Master Okuth in the Sarni way,' Abrasax said, 'on a knoll above the Astu River. And then we rode on.'

'But how did you escape then?' Maram asked. 'From the
Grays!'

Abrasax pulled at his white beard as if deciding how much he should tell us. Then he nodded his head for Master Nolashar to speak.

In answer, Master Nolashar took out a flute little different than the one I had once given to Estrella. Although he wore his hair cut short, like Kane's, and he now practiced with this instrument rather than the sword, he had been born a Valari many years ago - into which land he had never said. His large eyes gazed with great intensity out of a stark and stem face. Yet deep down he seemed a happy man, as why shouldn't he be? For he had spent most of his life in the study of music which had been my first and greatest dream.

'The Grays,' he said, 'listen for the sounds of the soul in the minds of those they hunt. Other sounds can overwhelm these and confuse them. In particular, music.'

Maram gazed at him with doubt coloring his face. 'Are you telling us that you threw the Grays off your trail by playing your
flute?'

'No, Sar Maram, I am
not
telling you that. There are many ways of making music.'

The tones of his smooth voice hinted at much more than he would say. Had he, with his bright sun stone, led the Seven to call up enchanting melodies out of their gelstei and cast this unearthly music across the steppe to madden the Grays? Or a vastly deeper sound that might have utterly deafened them? It seemed that Master Nolashar, too. liked to keep his secrets.

'Let us just say,' he told us, 'that in the end the Grays and soldiers rode in one direction, while we rode in another.'

I nodded my head at this, then looked down the long table at Bemossed. He sat as within a cloud of melancholy, and seemed to hold on to this dark mood as he might an old friend. I felt torment and self-doubt eating at his insides, and I thought I knew why.

'Master Okuth,' I said to him, 'was a very good man.'

'He was like my father!' Bemossed said with tears filling his eyes. 'As I
think
my father must have been. He died trying to protect me, too.'

'And that was surely the best thing he ever did. As he would have wanted to tell you. And so with Master Okuth.'

Bemossed looked down at his long hands, which had performed so many loathsome tasks during his years as a despised Hajarim slave. Then he said, 'In Hesperu, they flavor wine with oranges, cloves, pepper and honey. Fire wine, they call it. It is like an elixir of the angels - I was allowed to taste it once, and I got drunk on it. That is how it was with Master Okuth. He gave me his life! Even as it emptied from him, I felt it filling me up, like fire, so hot, so sweet. And now his bones lie cold and picked white on the grass of the Wendrush while here I sit with my blood still beating sweetly through me.'

'Fathers,' I told him, remembering, 'die for their sons. That is life.'

'No, that is death,' he murmured to me.

'Master Okuth would not have wanted to hear you say that.'

'No, Valashu - I know you are right. And I know I must honor Master Okuth in living, as best I can, as I was born to do. It is just that. . .'

His voice vanished into the quiet of the tent: from outside came the muffled cries of many men drinking and celebrating.

'What is it, friend?' I asked him.

He seemed to fight back some deep dread inside him, and a warmer thing, too. Then he said, 'It is just that one shouldn't pour wine into a cracked vessel.'

At this, Abrasax and the other masters looked at him with deep concern. So did my companions, and so did I.

'Once,' I said to him, 'I thought wrongly that I was the Maitreya. And people therefore thought wrongly of me that I would be without flaws. But, like any other man, I was only -'

'No, I am not speaking of
common
faults. Jealousy, stubbornness, uncertainty - these I know as well as anyone.' He paused to draw in a long breath as he looked at me. 'But there is something else. Something that I can't even tell you because I can't quite see it myself. A
wrongness.
The Maitreya, you call me, the Shining One. But I can't always hold this light that I should be able to hold. I can't always
be
it, even though it is always there and in some strange way I can't ever
not
be it. And when I can't there is a kind of darkness, inside the light. It goes on and on, forever. It... is hard to describe. But Master Okuth knew, I think. And Morjin.'

'Morjin!' I called out, nearly shouting.

'I have fought with him for what seems forever,' he said. 'It is killing me, Valashu!'

I sensed something dark and dreadful pulling at him inside, and he seemed immensely tired and older than the twenty-three years he supposed himself to be. Then I remembered lines from an old verse:

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.

The Maitreya he must be, I thought. He
must
be. But I wondered if circumstances - and my own desperate purpose - had forced him to take on this mantle before he had fully awakened. The verse hinted at a kind of quickening and self-knowing that would occur only when the Maitreya set hands upon the Lightstone. It tormented me that in losing the Lightstone to Morjin, I might have kept Bemossed from his fate.

'You are safe here,' I told him, not quite knowing what to say. I looked down at my new ring, and then pointed in the direction of the square outside the tent. 'As safe, now, as anywhere on Ea. Fifteen thousand warriors stand ready to fight to the death to protect you.'

'King Valamesh,' he said to me with a forced smile, 'I do not want a single warrior to fight and die for me.'

'Nor I,' I told him. 'But I will never let Morjin harm you.'

'Is that power now yours, great King?'

He sat gazing at me, then he drew out of his pocket a small, shining bowl that had been made in the image of the Lightstone. It was an ancient work of silver gelstei, tinted gold; through the power of this vessel Bemossed could sense the vastly greater power of the distant Lightstone and contend with Morjin over its mastery.

'Every day,' he told me, 'I wake up and take this cup into my hands, and my battle with Morjin begins anew. At night, when I am able to sleep, I keep it close to my heart as I fight with him in my dreams. Every hour, every minute - every moment that I push against his will, he harms me.'

I sat gripping the hilt of the work of silver gelstei that had been given to me. Liljana kept her blue gelstei safe, as did Master Juwain his varistei, and my other friends their stones. Only through Bemossed's struggle with Morjin, I knew, could we use our gelstei without Morjin wielding the Lightstone to pervert and control them. As only Bemossed's sacrifice kept Morjin from freeing the Dark One from Damoom.

'You must be strong,' I said to him. I heard myself speaking as a king, and I hoped Bemossed would not hate me for that. 'As you truly are - as strong as steel.'

'You do not understand,' he said, looking down at his cup.

His long lashes were like dark curtains falling over his eyes. And I told him, 'In Senta, in the Singing Caves, I listened as the Morjin of old lamented his murdering of an angel: his best friend. And more than once, Liljana has touched minds with the Beast.'

'You do not understand,' Bemossed said again, now looking up at me. 'It is not his mind that I must face. It is his soul. And the crack through
it
is so black and deep it could swallow up the stars. It goes on and on forever.'

Something inside him seemed bruised, as if he had taken too many blows from a mace. I drew in a deep breath as I listened to swords clashing in practice rounds and men singing outside. And I said to him: 'It will not be forever that you must fight Morjin this way. I returned to Mesh just so that you would not have to fight him alone.'

'Fifteen thousand warriors have acclaimed you, and that is a great thing. But Morjin, it is said, commands a million men.'

I looked down at my sword, and I said, 'We
will
prevail over Morjin. There must be a way.'

'Not
that
way,' Bemossed said, pointing at Alkaladur.

'You have only to be strong a little longer,' I told him, not really wanting to hear his words.
'We
must.'

'Yes, friend, we must.'

I drew my sword a few inches from its scabbard so that I might see its gleaming blade.

'You would still kill him,' he said to me. 'Kill him and cut the Lightstone from his hands.'

'And you would still heal him,' I said, looking up at him.

'And why not? He is a man like any other.'

'No, not like
any
other.'

'His deepest desire is to be made whole.'

'No - not his
deepest
desire.'

'He
is
a man,' he told me, 'even as you are.'

'No, he is a beast.'

Bemossed rubbed his tired face as he stared off toward the roof of the tent. Then he said to me: 'Somewhere on Ea, there is a man who has been faithful, dutiful and kind all his life. A
good
man, Valashu. And for no reason that anyone else can see, his soul will sicken and then one day something within him will break. He might strangle his wife in a jealous rage or even slay his best friend arguing over the rights to a stream dividing their lands. And ever after, set out on a life of murder and outlawry.
That
man, I tell you, is more dangerous than Morjin would be if only he turned back to the light.'