David Zindell - Diamond Warriors

'And each time you tried to burn the dragon,' Daj said, 'the dragon tried to burn you!'

'Ah, so he did,' Maram said. He made a motion as if to pull at his beard, and then seemed to remember that the dragon had singed the hairs from his face. 'And he did burn me, too bad. If I hadn't cast down my knight's shield on the way up to the top of the hill and picked up a great shield dropped by some poor Waashian infantryman, he would have burned me to the death. As it was, the dragon fire melted the steel right off my shield — and nearly melted the skin off me. I was sure, then, that he was going to kill me.'

Maram paused in his story and looked at me as if in expectation that I might ask him what had happened next. I obliged him, saying, 'What saved you, then?'

'Liljana did,' Maram said, glancing across the circle to bow his head to her. 'She put some fire of her own into the dragon's mind.'

Liljana's soft, round face lit up as if in remembrance. She showed us her little blue figurine. 'Oh, I would hardly call it fire. I only had to distract the beast at a critical moment.'

'And distract him she did,' Maram told us. 'Then I burned the wings off that dragon! It was the fall I think, that killed him.'

He paused to turn his head back and forth as if shaking himself out of a bad dream. Then he looked over at me as he cried out: 'We won, Val! We really won!'

With a loud grunt, he pushed himself up to his feet and crossed the circle to stand before Liljana. With a great puff of air, he leaned down to plant a loud kiss upon her forehead. He smiled so hugely that I wondered if it hurt his raw, red face.

And then, to my astonishment and that of nearly everyone else, Liljana smiled back at him. She, who had lost the ability to smile, or so we had all thought, somehow managed to do this impossible thing.

'Liljana!' Master Juwain spoke out, smiling too. 'It is good to have you back!'

Although Liljana's lips remained turned up to brighten her face, she began weeping without restraint. We all bowed our heads in honor of this miracle.

'What I would like to know,' Maram finally said, directing his words at Atara, 'is how you recognized Estrella as the Maitreya? The dragon didn't let that slip into your mind, did he?'

'Hmmph — he had no thought of me at all, I'm sure.' Atara sat next to me with a fresh white cloth binding her face. Another bandage padded her wounded shoulder, which Estrella had been unable to heal. She spoke to us in a calm, clear voice that rang out over the hill's many graves: 'But something did burn me, like the hottest of fires. That is. it burned away a part of me. This. . is hard to talk about. Hard to explain in a way that will make sense to you. But this seeing that a scryer does has everything to do with her will. And no scryer has ever seen the Maitreya, or the Lightstone, because both dwell at the center of time, which is all fire and flame, like the heart of a sun. And so terribly, terribly bright. It seems that no scryer can ever journey there. I don't think any scryer ever had: it would be like staring and staring at the sun. And burning, as flesh melts beneath fire. During the battle, with my sisters falling in the arrow storm, I thought of Val and I looked where I shouldn't have. Where I couldn't, really. But I did ! Somehow. Then I melted. I found myself … not looking into the star and seeing, but being it. Pure flame, I was. And then everything grew clear, so impossibly clear. I saw the Lightstone shining in Estrella's beautiful beautiful hand. But I knew that Val couldn't see this, and so I had to ride to tell him.'

Of that heroic ride, blind, at the head of the Manslayers across the battlefield, she would not speak, for almost all of her sisters had been slain and the Manslayers were no more. It seemed a horrific price for warning me that I must give the Lightstone to Estrella. As did Atara's plunge into darkness. For she told us that her gazing at the brightest thing in all the universe had destroyed her second sight once and for all, and that she would never have visions of the future or faraway places again.

I could not bear to think of her as utterly and hopelessly blind, but she had no pity for herself. She reached across my chest and extended her fingers to Estrella, sitting on my other side. And she said, 'I saw the Lightstone in this young woman's hand, and that is vision enough for ten lifetimes.'

While Estrella held the Lightstone shining like a little sun, she clasped hold of Atara's fingers with her other hand. It pained me that although she had healed many warriors of many dreadful wounds, she had not been able to restore speech to herself.

'Ah,' Maram said, looking at her, 'I still can't quite believe that the Maitreya could be a girl.'

At this. Master Juwain rubbed the back of his bald head, and looked at Estrella, too. His ugly face grew so bright that it seemed almost beautiful. Then, with much embarrassment, he said, 'I'm afraid that I am partly to blame for that. We of the Brotherhood are. Many verses, in the Saganom Elu and other sources of the ancient prophecies, speak of the Maitreya. And always as 'he' or 'him.' But in the ancient Ardik from which the prophecies have been translated, the pronouns referring to the Maitreya are always of the indeterminate gender, for which there is no really good translation. And so, considering that the known Maitreyas have all been male, it seemed most logical to choose the masculine pronouns.'

'Your logic,' Liljana said to him. 'But didn't I hint, more than once, that the Maitreya might be a woman?'

'You did,' Master Juwain admitted. But I am sorry to say that I thought you were joking.'

'Joking!' she said as her face fell stern again. 'When have I ever made light of such matters?'

They might have reopened one of their old arguments if Abrasax had not held up his hand for peace. And then said to them, 'Logic is logic, and everywhere the same, but the results of reasoning can only be as valid as one's premises. There is much that we have assumed that is clearly not true. And foremost of these assumptions, as pertains to this matter is that man and woman are so different from each other as to require different pursuits of knowledge, and even different ways.'

He went on to say that now that the true Maitreya had come forth, the Brotherhood and Sisterhood must find a way to unite and lead the way for all of Ea.

'Very good, and I am all for unions of men and women, as everyone knows,' Maram called out. 'And I suppose that the Maitreya will bring in this luminous age that everyone hopes for. But what makes one a Maitreya? Why Estrella ? And why didn't we see the signs that she was the Shining One?'

None of us, not even Abrasax or Kane, had any easy answers to his question. Master Matai, the Brotherhood's greatest diviner, spoke of the designs of the stars under which Estrella had been born and fate, while Master Virang attributed Estrella's deepest nature to the Ieldra's grace. Then Atara, always practical, squeezed Estrella's hand again and said to Maram: 'But of course we did have signs — and many of them. But as Pualani told us in the first Vild, people look at many things they fail to see.'

'Ah, I suppose so,' Maram murmured, eyeing Estrella. 'But didn't Val once say that on our journey to Tria, he gave the girl the Lightstone to hold? And that it had absolutely no effect upon her?'

'No effect that I could see,' I said.

'It might be,' Abrasax observed, 'that this contact with the Lightstone proved crucial to Estrella — and all of Ea. It might have been the sunlight that quickened the seed of who Estrella was meant to be.'

'The great Maitreya,' Master Yasul said, staring at Estrella as if he had waited his whole life for this moment. 'The greatest and last, of all the Maitreyas.'