David Zindell - The Diamond Warriors

‘Drawn, yes,’ I said to Liljana. I felt a nameless dread working at my insides like ice water. ‘And repelled, too.’

‘Well,’ Maram said, wiping a bit of raspberry juice from his lip, ‘I wish you had been repelled a little more that day Salmelu shot you with his filthy arrow. But who would have thought a Valari prince would go over to the Dragon and hire out as one of his assassins? And use the filthiest of poisons? Does it still burn you, my friend?’

I pressed my hand to my side in remembrance of that day when Salmelu’s poisoned arrow had come streaking out of the trees – not so very far from here. The scratch that it had left in my skin had long since healed, but I would forever feel the kirax poison like a heated iron sizzling deep into every fiber of my body.

‘Yes, it burns,’ I said to him.

‘Well, then perhaps we should take greater care here. If a prince of Ishka can turn traitor, then I suppose a Meshian can – though I’ve always thought your countrymen preserved the soul of the Valari, so to speak.’

I suddenly recalled Lansar Raasharu, my father’s greatest lord, who had lost his soul and his very humanity to Morjin through a hate and a fear that I knew only too well. And I said, ‘No one is immune from evil.’

‘No one except you.’

I felt my throat tighten in anger as I said, ‘Myself least of all, Maram. You should know that.’

‘I know what I saw during this last journey of ours. Who else but you could have led us out of the Skadarak?’

I did not need to close my eyes to feel the blighted forest called the Skadarak pulling me down into an icy cold blackness that had no bottom. Sometimes, when I looked into the black centers of Maram’s eyes – or my own – I felt myself hurtling down through empty space again.

‘Do not,’ I told him, ‘speak of that place.’

‘But you kept yourself from falling – and all of us as well! And then, at the farmhouse with Morjin, when everything was so impossibly dark, he might have seized your will and made you into a filthy ghul. But as you always do, you found that brightness inside yourself that he couldn’t stand against, and you –’

‘It is one thing to keep from falling into evil,’ I told him. ‘And it is another to succeed in accomplishing good. Why don’t we try to keep our sight on the task ahead of us?’

‘Ah, this impossible task,’ Maram muttered, shaking his head.

‘Don’t you speak that way!’ Liljana scolded him with a wag of her finger. ‘The more you doubt, the harder you make it for Val to become king.’

‘It’s not his kingship that I doubt,’ Maram said. ‘At least, I don’t doubt it on my good days. But even supposing that Val can win Mesh’s warriors and knights where he couldn’t before, what then? That is the question I’ve asked myself for a thousand miles.’

So had I asked myself this question. And I said to Maram simply, ‘ Then Morjin must be defeated.’

‘Defeated? Well, I suppose he must, yes, but defeated how ?’

Master Juwain rubbed at the back of his brown-skinned head, then sighed out: ‘The closer that we have come to our journey’s end, the more sure I have become of what our course should be. I told this to Val years ago: that evil cannot be vanquished with a sword, and darkness cannot be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light. And now, the brightest of lights has come into the world.’

He spoke, of course, of Bemossed: a slave whom we had rescued out of Hesperu on the darkest of all our journeys. A simple slave – and perhaps the great Maitreya and Lord of Light long prophesied for Ea and all the other worlds of Eluru. I couldn’t help smiling in joy whenever I thought of this man whom I loved as a brother. It gladdened my heart to know that he was well-hidden in the fastness of the White Mountains – in the safest place on Earth. And guarded from Morjin by Abrasax and the Seven: the Masters of the Great White Brotherhood whose virtues in healing, meditation and the other ancient arts exceeded even those of Master Juwain.

‘Morjin retains the Lightstone,’ Master Juwain continued, ‘but Bemossed keeps him from twisting it toward his purpose. Soon, I think, with Bemossed so well-instructed, he will be able to grasp the Lightstone’s radiance, if not the cup itself. And then …’

Liljana caught his gaze and said, ‘Please don’t mind me – go on.’

‘And then,’ Master Juwain said, ‘Bemossed will bring this radiance into all lands. Men will feel an imperishable life shining within them like a star. Truth will flourish. So will courage. Men will no longer listen to the lies of wicked kings and the Kallimun priests who serve Morjin. They will resist these dark ones with their every thought and action – and eventually they will cast them down. Then new kings will follow Val’s example here in creating a just and enlightened realm, and they will rebuild our Brotherhood’s schools in every land. The schools will be open to all: not just to kings’ and nobles’ sons, and the gifted. Then the true knowledge will flourish along with the higher arts, as it was in the Age of Law. And as it came to be during the reign of Sarojin Hastar, there will be a council of kings, and a High King, and all across Ea, men will turn once more toward the Law of the One.’

While Master Juwain paused in his speech to draw in a breath of air, Liljana kept silent as she stared at him.

‘And then ,’ Master Juwain said, ‘we will finally build the civilization that we were sent here from the stars to build. In time, through the great arts and the Maitreya’s splendor, men will become more than men, and we will rejoin the Elijin and Galadin as angels out in the stars. And then the Galadin will make ready a new creation and become the luminous beings we call the Ieldra, and the Age of Light will begin.’

Master Juwain, I thought, had spoken simply and even eloquently of the Great Chain of Being and its purpose. But his words failed to stir Liljana. She stood with her hands planted on her wide hips as she practically spat out at him: ‘Men, kings, laws – and this becoming that keeps you always looking to the stars! Your order’s old dream. In the Age of the Mother , women and men needed no laws to live in peace on this world – no law other than love of the world. And each other. Why become at all when we are already so blessed? So alive ? If only we could remember this, there would be a quickening of the whole earth, and men such as Morjin wouldn’t live out another season. We would rid ourselves of his kind as nature does a rabid dog or a rotten tree.’

Most of the time, Liljana seemed no more than a particularly vigorous grandmother who had a talent for cooking and keeping body and soul together. But sometimes, as she did now in the strength that coursed through her sturdy frame and the adamantine light that came over her face, she took on the mantle of the Materix of the Maitriche Telu.

Atara stepped between Liljana and Master Juwain, and she held her blindfolded head perfectly still. Then she said, ‘The Age of the Mother decayed into the Age of Swords because of the evil that men such as Morjin called forth. And Morjin himself put an end to the Age of Law and brought on these terrible times. So long as he draws breath, he will never suffer kings such as Val to arise while he himself is cast down.’

‘No, I’m afraid you are right,’ Master Juwain said, nodding his head at her. ‘And here we must look to Bemossed, too. I believe that he is the Maitreya. And so I must believe that somehow he will heal Morjin of the madness that possesses him. I know this is his dream.’