David Zindell: Diamond Warriors

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 headike 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 to 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 the 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 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.