David Zindell - Black Jade

'Morjin!' I cried. 'You kill too easily! Know, then, what it was like for me when you killed my family!'

I drew my sword and pointed it at him. Its silver blade flared with a brilliant flame. If the valarda was the gift of empathy, I thought, then Alkaladur was the weapon of compassion. Not this length of silustria, sharper than any razor, whose diamond-bright polish drove the sunlight into Morjin's eyes. But the true Alkaladur, wrought of a purer substance, as radiant as the stars. The Sword of Light shone within me, as yet only half-forged. All that I had suffered had gone into its making. All that my friends had suffered with me infused its essence as well. Even now, as Liljana, Master Juwain and the children looked on from behind the wall of the cottage, and Kane, Maram and Atara stood by my side, I felt all their courage, kindness and great will toward life. They seemed to pass these fundamental forces to me through their eyes and in their throbbing hearts, in flames of red, orange and yellow, green and blue, indigo and violet. The whole world seemed to pass its fire to me. Somehow, Bemossed seemed to weave it all together into a pure, white blaze that streaked through my sword and me straight up into the sky. Hotter and brighter, it built, until it flared a brilliant glorre. Then this perfect color gave way to a single, clear, indestructible light. And so at the last, Bemossed's love for me, no less Morjin's hate, had put into my hand the greatest weapon in the universe.

'Damn you, Elahad!'

All the fire and force of my soul I poured into this sword. Alkaladur blazed like the sun. Across the distance between us, it struck into Morjin's heart. He gasped and grabbed his chest; he raged and cursed and wept. He stared at me with his golden eyes, now wild and maddened with anguish. I almost couldn't bear it. He had told me once that the only way I would ever free myself from suffering would be to inflict even greater suffering upon another. It was not so. As I drove the Sword of Light deeper and deeper into Morjin, my agony burned through me, and all of Morjin's incredible pain, too. I thought that it might kill me. It killed something in Morjin. I felt him longing desperately for some impossible thing: perhaps that he and the world could somehow be different. I felt him longing for something even more. He looked at me strangely. He cringed away from me as a black, bottomless terror took hold of him. I knew then that there was one thing that he feared above all else.

'Elahad!' he screamed out to me.

He continued screaming until his voice grew hoarse. He ranted and bit his tongue, and spat out a bloody froth. He sweated; from nearly twenty yards away, I could smell his foulness and fear. He told of how he would torture me in a dozen hideous ways. The debasement of this powerful man to a snarling, suffering, craven beast stunned all of us looking on.

And then Morjin returned to himself — or perhaps he found sustenance and strength in the being of his droghul. He drew in a deep breath, and stood up straight. He wiped the blood from his mouth. He turned to Lord Mansarian, and said, 'The truce is over. You have heard the Elahad say that they will not surrender. Therefore you will attack, and kill them all.'

'All except the Hajarim,' Lord Mansarian said, looking at Bemossed.

Morjin looked at him, too. But Bemossed's bright face seemed only to drive him to a new- fury. 'Especially the Hajarim! You are to kill him outright, or deliver him, bound in chains, to me!'

'That was not what you promised!' Lord Mansarian rasped out.

Arch Uttam turned toward this grim, red-caped man in astonishment. So did Atuan and Roarian, and Lord Mansarian's other captains. It seemed that they had never dared to think that any soldier of Hesperu would openly contradict the great Red Dragon.

'You must have misunderstood me,' Morjin said to Lord Mansarian. His silver voice trembled with dismissal and undertones of threat, too.

'I misunderstood nothing,' Lord Mansarian said. 'The Hajarim was to be given to me, for whatever corrective that I might contrive.'

'He will be crucified!' Morjin snarled out. 'Alive or dead.'

'But Hajarim are never crucified!' Lord Mansarian reminded him.

'This one,' Morjin said, pointing at Bemossed, 'will be crucified. You have my promise.'

Lord Mansarian looked at me, and I sensed that some part of my suffering over my family's death called him to remember the slaughter of his own. He met eyes with Bemossed, and I felt his intense gratitude for what this man had done. And something more. As Bemossed smiled at him. Lord Mansarian's dark, doomed soul began to sparkle with hope once again.

'No,' Lord Mansarian told Morjin.

'No? You say this to me?'

Morjin's ferocious will beat down upon Lord Mansarian like a battle axe. Lord Mansarian stood there sweating. But he finally found the courage to say, 'The Hajarim saved my daughter's life. And so I owe him his life.'

'You owe him nothing! You owe me everything!'

Lord Mansarian let out a long sigh, and then traded looks with Atuan. Remorse gnawed at his eyes. He seemed suddenly unable to bear Morjin's lies and spite. Then he said to him, 'All that I have done in King Arsu's service is wrong. I will not dishonor myself, ever again.'

'You are wrong!' Morjin shouted at him. 'All honor is to be found in loyalty: to your king, and to his king!'

As the tone of command reverberating through Morjin's voice grew almost too great to resist. Lord Mansarian hesitated. And Arch Uttam warned him, 'Be careful of what you say, warrior. You speak errors. Major and Mortal.'

'I speak the truth,' Lord Mansarian said. 'And I have no king.'

At this, Morjin spat on the grass in front of Lord Mansarian and told him, 'You, and all of the Crimson Companies who are gathered upon this ground today, are under King Arsu's command! And therefore mine!'

'Are they?' Lord Mansarian said, nodding at Roarian. 'Let us see about that.'

He turned and hurried over to his horse. He quickly mounted, as did Roarian and Atuan. They pointed their horses facing away from the cottage.

Now Morjin's whole body trembled as his jaws clamped together with great enough force to break his teeth. He spat again, in a spray of blood, straight at me. His face contorted with rage as he screamed, 'Damn you, Elahad!'

Then he and his priests, with the four other captains and the banner-bearer, climbed onto their mounts. They all whipped their horses to a gallop, and began a wild race with Lord Mansarian back toward the lines of Lord Mansararian's red-caped knights.

'Ah, I suppose the truce is over,' Maram said as he looked from Kane to me. 'What do we do now?'

'Go back,' I said. 'Let us go back inside the house.'

I placed my hand on Bemossed's shoulder to urge him to haste. But he stood facing our enemies across the field as if he would not be moved.

'You have already worked one miracle today,' I said to him. 'I know what you want, and I want it, too. But as long as Morjin lives, he'll drive men to war.'

'You do not know that, Valashu. If I held the Lightstone — '

'So,' Kane growled out to him, 'you'll hold the Lightstone only if you live. Which you won't if you stand here dreaming impossible dreams, eh?'

He turned back toward the cottage. So did Maram, who took Atara's hand. Then Bemossed looked down upon Taitu's body and called out, 'Wait! Let us not leave the boy here like this to be trampled by horses.'

I nodded my head, and we quickly wrapped up Taitu again in the tarp — now his shroud. We bore him back into the cottage. Kane immediately grabbed up his bow and nocked an arrow to its string.

'They are within range,' he said as he looked out over the crumbled cottage wall.