David Zindell - Black Jade

Bemossed blinked as if he could not hold the moisture filling up his eyes. He said to me, 'Even yourself, Valashu?'

'Can you stop it?' I said to him. 'What is a Maitreya good for?'

Why, I wondered, had fate chosen Bemossed as the Shining One, and not me? The answer burned along the blade that stabbed through the center of my being: because I was damned. Because I was who I was.

There came a shout from across the field, and I looked out to see a third red-robed priest leading a packhorse up between the ranks of knights toward Lord Mansarian. Something seemed to be slung over the horse's back; I hoped it was not a packet of arrows and a bow. It nearly maddened me to have to wait here to see how Lord Mansarian would attack us — and to know what I would do. I felt this uncertainty torturing not just myself, but my friends as well. The battle had not yet begun, but the battle raged as it always had inside each of us.

I felt this most excruciatingly in Estrella. She seemed lost in a dark cavern of pain that had no bottom or end. Her heart beat quickly and agonizingly, as if she were fleeing from a bloodthirsty beast. And then everything inside her grew utterly still as if she had plunged deep into cool waters. An image came into my mind: that of a brilliant silver lake. She opened her eyes then and looked at me. She looked at Bemossed. Her whole being gleamed like a perfect mirror. Bemossed gazed at her in wonder. He stared and stared, deep into the eyes of this glorious girl, but even more at the great shining wonder of himself.

'Look, they move!' Maram cried out. He came hurrying over to the wall to grab up his bow. 'They're coming!'

I turned to see one of Lord Mansarian's warriors ride forward bearing a white banner of truce. Then came Lord Mansarian and a line of six knights. Morjin and the three priests rode behind the knights, using them as a shield in case we should fail to honor the truce and begin shooting arrows at them.

'Why should they even want to parlay?' Kane snarled out. He lifted up his bow. 'So, we'll speak to them with arrows through

their throats!'

'Are we trucebreakers, now?' I shouted at him. 'Must we commit every abomination?'

'The only abomination is in letting Morjin and his creatures live!'

Our enemy rode a dozen yards closer. Kane nocked an arrow to his bowstring, and so did Maram. Just then Alphanderry appeared and stood with us behind the wall.

'Look!' Daj cried out. 'Look at Bemossed!'

As Bemossed stared at Estrella, his face shone in the onstreaming rays of the sun. Everything about him shone: his eyes, his lips, his great, throbbing heart. He stood in a shimmer of glorre. I could hardly believe what I saw. Bemossed took his arm out of his sling and cast down this bit of cloth. He smiled. His eyes grew as bril-liant as the stars. He seemed to behold himself as he had always longed to be.

'Hoy!' Alphanderry sang out. 'La neshama halla!'

Bemossed looked out at our enemy, and I felt in him no fear. He looked at the sky and the earth; he looked at me. He seemed utterly without doubt. A bright, shining hope lit his smile, and more, the sureness of triumph. I knew then that Ea had not just a dark and false king of kings, but a new Lord of Light.

'La neshama halla jai Maitreya!'

In the air in front of him, a plain golden cup appeared. It seemed at once to be as hard as diamond and without true substance, like light. Bemossed reached out with his bandaged arm to grasp this cup. The moment that his fingers closed around it, my sword blazed a bright glorre. Then a dazzling radiance filled up every corner of the cottage, and swelled outward and upward to illuminate the green hills around us and the deep blue of the sky. Strangely, our enemy, riding ever closer, seemed unable to perceive this splendid light.

'The gelstei!' Maram shouted. He seemed stunned as by a hammer blow to his head. He ran over to the horses, and removed his firestone from the waterskin encasing it. He held it up for us all to see. 'My gelstei — look, it cools!'

Liljana and Master Juwain took out their gelstei then,too.

'I won't break the truce,' Maram sighed out, tucking the fire-stone down into the pocket of his trousers. He came back over to me. 'I think you Valari are right, after all. All that really matters is honor — to honor the glory of life. And so if I must die, I must die, too bad.'

Liljana pointed at the gray-cloaked man who rode with the three priests behind Lord Mansarian. 'I doubt if that is really Morjin. He wouldn't trust us to keep the truce. I was wrong, Val. Don't waste the best of yourself on him.'

'I agree,' Master Juwain told me. He seemed able to breathe more easily. 'It is likely some sort of trap.'

Atara moved up next to me, and she reached out blindly to lay her hand on my chest. And she said, 'Do what you were born to do, but not this murder.'

Our enemy came even closer, within the long range of our arrows, and now even Kane put down his bow. He turned to gaze at Bemossed with great dread, and yet with an intense longing, too. I knew that he wanted to weep and laugh and roar out all his wild joy of life, all at once. Finally he said to me, 'Do not use the valarda to slay. Remember the two wolves, Val. Remember who you really are.'

At this, Bemossed smiled. He held out his hand to me.

'Valashu Elahad!' someone called out from far away. The voice sounded raspy, like that of Lord Mansarian. 'Liljana Ashvaran! Maram Marshayk! Atara Ars Narmada! We know that these are your real names!'

And then a deeper, richer voice reverberated across the field. It was bright like silver and as cruel as steel. It rang with a will toward torment and vengeance, and left no doubt who in the body of men riding toward us held command. Too often, in my dreams and in my waking hours, I had trembled with loathing as I listened to the fell, deceptive, deadly voice of Morjin.

'Valashu Elahad!' the man in the gray cloak cried out to me. 'It has been too long — too long since I said farewell to your mother, and to Mesh!'

I turned away from Bemossed then. I could not take his outstretched hand. I noticed Daj staring at my fiery sword.

At a distance of two hundred yards. Lord Mansarian called for a halt and sent the knight bearing the white banner cantering toward us. He rode straight up to the cottage. He drew up in front of our wall, and said to us, 'You are offered a truce, that Lord Mansarian might discuss with you the terms of your surrender.'

'Terms!' I shouted. 'We all know the terms here: our deaths, or yours!'

The knight looked at Bemossed standing next to me. He said, 'Lord Mansarian has asked me to assure you that he will do all he can to spare the life of the Hajarim. Will you speak with him?'

Kane, standing on my other side, snarled in my ear: 'It's a trap!

Don't let that Morjin thing come any closer!'

I fought to quiet the wild pounding of my heart. I remembered how Lord Mansarian had protected Bemossed at our performance for King Arsu — likely at great risk to himself. I said to Kane, 'He might spare him.'

'He won't, damn it! Don't let them close, I say!'

'No,' I whispered. 'I want them all as near as they can be.' I nodded at the knight. 'All right — tell Lord Mansarian that he can approach us, and we will honor the truce.'

But the knight shook his head at this. He sat holding up the white banner, and he said, 'First, put down your bows and come out from behind that wall. My lord will not meet beneath the threat of your arrows.'

'All right,' I said again. 'We will come out — twenty yards only.' I nodded to Kane and Maram, and we began walking toward the door. And the knight pointed at Atara, and said, 'The princess, too.'