David Zindell - The Lightstone

And then I felt a cold hand touch my shoulder. For a moment I was angry because I thought that Maram or Atara had followed me But when I turned to tell them that I really did want to be alone, I saw that the man standing beside me was Morjin.

'Did you really think you could escape me?' he asked.

I stared at his golden hair and his great golden eyes, now touched with silver in the starlight. The claws were gone from his hands, and he was wearing a wool traveling cloak over his dragon-emblazoned tunic.

'How did you come here?' I gasped.

'Don't you know? I've been following you since Mesh.'

I gripped the hilt of my sword as I stared at him. Was this still a dream, I wondered?

Was it an illusion that Morjin had cast like a painter covering a canvas with brightly-colored pigments? He was the Lord of Illusions, wasn't he? But no, I thought, this was no illusion. Both he and the fiery words that hissed from his mouth seemed much too real.

'I must congratulate you on finding your way out of my room,' he said. 'It surprises me that you did, though it pleases me even more.'

'It pleases you? Why?'

'Because it proves to me that you're capable of waking up.'

He gave me to understand that much of what had passed in my dream had been only a test and a spur to awaken my being. This seemed the greatest of the lies that he had told me, but I listened to it all the same.

'I told you that I was kind,' he said. 'But sometimes compassion must be cruel.'

'You speak of compassion?'

'I do speak of it because I know it better than any man.'

He told that my gift for feeling others' sufferings and joys had a name, and that was valarda. This meant both the heart of the stars and the passion of the stars. Here he pointed up at the Morning Star and the bright Solaru and Altaru of the Swan constellation. All the Star People, he said, who still lived among these lights had this gift. As did Elahad and others of the Valari who had come to Ea long ago. But the gift had mostly been lost during the savagery of many thousands of years. Now only a few blessed souls such as myself knew the terrible beauty of valarda.

'I know it, too,' he told me. 'I have suffered from the valarda for a long time. But there is a way to make the suffering end.'

'How?' I asked.

He cupped his hands in front of his heart then, and they glowed with a soft golden radiance like that of a polished bowl. He said, 'Do you burn, Valashu? Does the kirax from my arrow still torment you? Would you like to be cured of this poison and your deeper suffering as well?'

'How?' I asked again. Despite the coolness spraying up from the stream, my whole body raged with fever.

'I can relieve you of your gift,' Morjin told me. 'Or rather, the pain of it.'

Here he pointed at the kalama that I still held sheathed in my hand. 'You see, the valarda is like a double-edged sword. But so far, you've known it to cut only one way.'

He told me that a true Valari, which was his name for the Star People, could not only experience others' emotions but make them feel his own.

'Do you hate, Valashu? Do you sometimes clench your teeth against the fury inside you? I know that you do. But you can forge your fury into a weapon that will strike down, your enemies. Shall I show you how to sharpen the steel of this sword?'

'No!' I cried out. That is wrong! It would be twisting the bright blade that the One himself forged. The valarda may be double-edged, as you say. But I must believe that it is sacred. And I would never pervert it by turning it inside-out to harm anyone.

No more than I would use my kalama to kill anyone.'

'But you will kill again with that sword,' he said, pointing at my kalama. 'And with the valarda, as well. You see, Valashu, inflicting your own pain on others is the only way not to feel their pain – and your own.'

I closed my eyes for a moment as I looked inside for this terrible sword that Morjin had spoken of. I feared that I might find it. And this was the worst torment I had ever known.

'What you say, all that you say, is wrong,' I gasped out. 'It's evil.'

'Is it wrong to slay your enemies, then? Isn't it they who are evil for opposing your noblest dream?'

'You don't know my dream.'

'Don't I? Isn't it your dearest hope to end war? Listen to me, Valashu, listen as you've never listened before: there is nothing I desire more than an end to these wars.'

I listened to the rushing of the stream and the words from his golden lips. I was afraid that he might be telling me the truth. He went on to say that many of the kings and nobles of Ea loved war because it gave them the power of life and death over others. But they, he said, were of the darkness while dreamers such as he and I were of the light

'It's death itself that's the great enemy,' he said. 'Our fear of it. And that is why we must regain the Lightstone. Only then can we bring men the gift of true life.'

'It is written in the Laws,' I said, 'that only the Elijin and the Galadin shall have such life.'

Morjin's eyes seemed to blaze out hatred into the dim gray light of the dawn. He told me, 'All the Galadin were once Elijin even as the Elijin were once men. But they have grown jealous of our kind. Now they would keep men such as you from making the same journey that they once did.'

'But I don't seek immortality,' I told him.

'That,' he said softly, 'is a lie.' 'All men die,' I said.

'Not all men,' he told me, smoothing the folds from his cloak.

'It's no failing to fear death,' I said. 'True courage is -'

'Lie to me if you will, Valashu, but do not lie to yourself.' He grasped my arm, and his delicate fingers pressed into me with a frightening strength. 'Death makes cowards of us all. You may think that true courage is acting rightly even though afraid. But you act not according to what is right but because you are afraid of your fear and wish to expunge it by facing it like a wild man.'

I didn't know what to say to this, so I bit my lip in silence.

'True courage,' he said, 'would be fearlessness. Isn't this what you Valari teach?'

'Yes,' I admitted, 'it is.'

He smiled as if he knew everything about the Valari. And then he spoke the words to a poem I knew too well:

And down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark The dying of the light, The neverness of night

'There is a way to keep the light burning,' he told me as he gently squeezed my shoulder. 'Let me show you the way.'

His eyes were like windows to other worlds from which men had journeyed long ago

– and on which men who were more than men still lived. I felt his longing to return there. It was as real as the wind or the stream or the earth beneath my feet. I felt his immense loneliness in the bittersweet aching of my own. Something unbearably bright in him called to me as if from the wild, cold stars. I knew that I had the power to save him from a dread almost as dark as death even as I had saved Atara from the hill-men. And this knowledge burned me even more terribly than had his dragon fire or the kirax in my veins.

'Let me show you,' he said, forming his hands into a cup again. A fierce golden light poured out of them, almost blinding me.

'Servants I have many,' he told me. 'But friends I have none.'

I felt him breathing deeply as I drew in a quick, ragged breath.

'I will make you King of Mesh and all the Nine Kingdoms,' he told me. 'Kings I have as vassals, too, but a king of kings who comes to me with an open heart and a righteous sword – that would be a wondrous thing.'

I gazed at the light pouring from his hands, and for a moment I couldn't breathe.

'Help me find the Lightstone, Valashu, and you will live forever. And we will rule Ea together, and there will be no more war.'

Yes, yes, I wanted to say. Yes, 1 will help you.