Diamond Warriors (55 page)

And then Kane went on: 'For a long time, the Elijin went among the stars, helping to awaken the most advanced of the Star People so that they could join their order. Too, the Ieldra sent the Elijin as messengers to troubled worlds. They had to work by the power of persuasion, or by touching men's auras with theirs and strengthening them - even as the Seven do with their little stones, eh? So, to the world of Kush the Ieldra sent the one named Kalkin. One of its kings, a proud barbarian, would not heed Kalkin's counsel. He drew his sword and commanded Kalkin to kneel to him. To abase himself to this small, small
man
whose life would soon blow out like a candle in the wind! But Kalkin himself burned with pride, and none more so, eh? And so a madness seized him, and he fell upon this barbarian king and killed him with his own sword.'

Kane drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out. I felt a quick and terrible pain slice through him. Then he said to me, 'Kalkin was not the first of his order to fall, but he was the greatest. Because his remorse was also great, the Ieldra did not cast him out of the Elijin. And so he lost only his grace and not his immortality. But upon him the Ieldra laid a doom: that of all the Elijin then walking the stars, he would not be the first to be raised up to the Galadik order, but the last - and not in any case until the ending of the ages. It should have been a sentence of death, eh? But Kalkin vowed not to die.'

Again, Kane broke off speaking, and he stood nearly motionless in the starlight. His large hands still gripped his sword; I thought that they were shaped no differently than the hands of any other man. The features of his fierce face reminded me of the portraits of my forebears hanging in my father's hall, while the colors of pride, longing, wrath and exaltation that brightened his being were as my own. His eyes, however, blazed with a vast and fiery will that did not seem quite human.

I could hardly bear to look at him as I shook my head and whispered: 'It cannot be possible! The great ages were hundreds of thousands of years long, perhaps millions - I do not know! You cannot have survived so long. Chance alone -'

'It is not
chance
that rules me!' he suddenly roared out, cutting me off. 'It is the One!'

He took his hand away from his sword, and he glared at it as if looking through the dark for his lifeline. Then he added in a whisper, 'And it is myself. I could not
allow
myself to die, do you see? Kalkin couldn't. And so he, who should have been first, had to wait and watch through an entire age as the Elijin satra ended and Asangal advanced to the Galadik order. And then Ashtoreth and Valoreth, all the others, by dint of strengthening their spirits, and through service and the Ieldra's grace. Indestructible they became, as well as immortal. And great, beyond any glory that you can imagine. And yet. And yet. They still remembered Kalkin, who had helped them become who they were. Kalkin, whose remorse at slaying the barbarian king had shaken the very heavens! That proud, proud angel who never quite turned his face away from the One. Only he, the Galadin said, the king who knew the way of swords, could ever really understand the even prouder Asangal's fall into evil and so ttake the lead in the battle to heal him.'

As if to assuage the burning inside him, Kane pressed his sword's blade to his forehead. I did not know what to make of what he had said. His words hinted at madness and marvels and truths almost too terrible to tell. I felt sure that he had not, in any way, lied to me. And yet I sensed that he had left out some vital part of his story.

'I have often wondered,' I said, probing him, 'what it would be like to be immortal.'

'So - to be immortal
how?'

'But how many ways are there?'

'There is
this
way,' he said, thumping his hand against his chest. 'To live forever, in one's body, on and on and on. That is Morjin's way, and Angra Mainyu's. And as with power, those who most desire it are the least worthy to possess it. Fools, all. In their pursuit of it, they are like men swimming across the ocean for a million years in search of water.'

'I have always thought,' I said to him, 'that Morjin searched for something more.'

'So, he would
like
to. But he could never quite apprehend, thus believe in, the realm of the soul.' His hand swept up toward the heavens' millions of lights, shining down as they did every night upon their sons and daughters still living on earth. 'Not for Morjin the immortality of the stars, or in doing great works, or in children, or in people's remembrance of their ancestors. And not even in the One's own remembrance of all that has been created and passed on.'

'So it is written in the Saganom Elu,' I said. 'In the most beautiful of words. But Morjin, I think, would need much more than words.'

'So - so would you, eh? But this, at least, is proven. What other meaning can we make of Alphanderry's return to us? You
saw
him die in the Kul Moroth. Has he come back from there, or from some other place?'

I thought about this as I gazed up at the fiery furnace called Aras. The brilliant spirals of stars whirling around it seemed to point toward a deep mystery at the center of all things. And I said to Kane, 'Most men when they die, they die. They do not come back.'

Even as I said this, I could not help thinking of the words of the angels, which one of the Urudjin had spoken in King Kiritan's hall:

The Fearless Ones find day in night

And in themselves the deathless light,

In flower, bird and butterfly,

In love: thus dying do not die.

Kane looked at me as if he could peer into my soul, if not my mind. 'And most men when they live, they do not truly live. And so like Morjin and his master, they are already as ones dead. There is only one
true
immortality, Valashu. I have spoken of this before: it is the breath that holds the winds of all worlds within it, the stillness between heartbeats, the joy of a flower. The perfect moment, bright as ten thousand suns, that goes on and on forever.
This
is the indestructible life that the Shining One would show us.'

I thought of other words that the Urudjin had spoken about the universe's Maitreyas, and I now recited them to Kane:

They bring to them the deathless light,

Their fearlessness and sacred sight;

To slay the doubts that terrify:

Their gift to them to gladly die.

Then I said to Kane, 'The Shining Ones
are
that they might thus help the Galadin, and others, overcome their fear of death, yes?'

'So, they
gladly
die - and thus truly live, eternally.'

I stepped closer to Kane, and pressed my hand against his chest. 'This one, whom I have called Kane - I have not seen
him
quail before any enemy, in any battle, not even when it seemed certain that he must die.'

'Ha!' he called out. 'When one of the Blues swings an axe at my head, my heart beats as quickly as any man's!'

'But you never panic. You never think of running when you must fight. And you do not, do you, dread the dark? The never-ness. When the light dies and there is only a cold nothing forever.'

'But the light cannot die, Valashu. And so, no, I do not fear
that.'

'But what of the other one, then? Was Kalkin so afraid of being cast out of the Elijin that he had to make a vow never to die?'

'No - fear was never Kalkin's failing.'

He thrust the point of his sword upwards, then called out: 'He
dreamed
of the day when he would become one of the Galadin. So bright they are! Like fireflowers that never dim, like stars come down from the sky. The Galadin make the whole earth sing! Songs of glory, Valashu, such a ringing splendor that I cannot say! And yet in the end, as I've told, they must die - like the Shining Ones, gladly so, to die in their bodies. Into light!
This
splendor, bright as all the stars from the Seven Sisters to the Great Bear, the fire that breathes into being whole new universes of stars, I have only imagined. So it was with Kalkin. And so no, he did not fear such a fate.'

I stood listening to the crickets chirping in the grass and the breath that fell heavy and quick from my lips. From below our little hill, the sound of thousands of Valari chanting out the old epics had given way to a single voice flowing out across the steppe:

Sing ye songs of glory.

Sing ye songs of glory.

That the light of the One

Will shine upon the world.

I knew then that my friends had finished their dinner and that Liljana must have used her blue gelstei to cast Alphanderry's music out along the river for all to hear.

'Kalkin did not fear death,' I said to Kane, 'and yet he still vowed not to die. Why, then?'

But Kane did not answer me. He stood staring off at the stars as if remembering a time when he had walked upon them.

I turned my gaze toward the sword that he had once made. The Sword of Fate, men called it. The Sword of Sight. Within its shimmering silustria I suddenly saw a thing. 'There was more to Kalkin's vow, wasn't there?' I said to him.

He slowly nodded his head to me. 'So - there was.'

'Tell me, then.'

Again he nodded his head, and I felt a terrible anguish working at him. And he said to me: 'I have spoken of flowers and music and other prettinesses, eh? The One's light that shines through all things. But the world is also swords and blood and fire. Sheer hell, I say. It can be a torment to live through a single moment, let alone a day or a whole lifetime - or more. It is
hard
just drawing a breath. And harder still for one to breathe life into oneself as an Elijin or a Galadin, for as an angel's being is vastly greater than a man's, so is his suffering. So, Kalkin had many flaws and did many wrongs, but he had one great virtue, eh? He was
strong.
And so he vowed to remain within life as long as he had to. To walk through the deeps of the world, where all is filth and fire, nails and screaming - so to find light in the darkest of places.
Not
to bring this light to others, for so the Maitreyas come forth with the Cup of Heaven. But only to help men and women, even the lowest, walk the path from the earth to the stars. Not until all who could had become Elijin and Galadin would he be free to leave the world. And so the first would truly be last - so Kalkin vowed to the sun and the earth, and to the Ieldra who had sung them into existence; so he promised himself and even the One.'

He fell into silence, and I could not help staring at him. The world turned no more quickly toward the east than it ever did, and yet for a moment the stars seemed to whirl past me in a blur of light. Kane stood within this radiance staring back at me.

'That was a noble vow,' I finally said to him.

'So, it was,' he admitted, nodding his head. 'Much later, during the War of the Stone, the Galadin said that through the very act of making it, Kalkin had healed himself - and so he might find the way to heal Angra Mainyu.'

I thought about this, then asked him the same question that I had Ondin in the Vild: 'But in the end, he failed, as the Amshahs who followed him failed. Why, then?'

'That
I have journeyed across the stars for half a million years to this place to understand.'

I pointed my sword out toward the fire-brightened rocks of the Detheshaloon, and I said, 'I thought you came here to kill Morjin.'

But Kane made no response to this. I felt his eyes burning like coals as he looked at me.

From the direction of the Owl's Hill more than a mile away came a sound that might have been the howling of a wolf - or perhaps the battle cry of one of the dreadful Blues who had climbed to its top in order to demoralize our encampment:

 
OWRULLL!

And I said to Kane, 'Swords and axes hold no terror for you, nor fire nor crosses, nor even death. What is it you
do
fear, then?'

I knew that he did not want to answer me. His jaws clamped shut with such force that I felt his teeth grinding together. His hands locked around the hilt of his sword.

'Tell me,' I said to him as the sword that I held suddenly glistened.

There is a force, like a river of light, that runs through all things. I felt it rushing inside me, sweeping both Kane and me away.

'Tell me,' I said again, gazing at him.

'Damn you!' he finally growled out. 'I fear nothing! Nothing except that bright one - do not speak his name! He is
too
bright, eh? Too damn blessed and beloved of the One. He can dwell in the stillness so
easily.
In the light, Valashu. Far from all the dark and desperate things that must be done in this world if such as Morjin is to be defeated!'

He seemed to fight against the immense pull of the world in order to keep from falling; I felt an immense tiredness working at his bones and every part of him. How was it possible, I wondered? How, for untold ages of men, had he lived fearing that the angel would break out from the walls of forgetfulness that he had built around himself? And year after year, century upon century, found the will to renew the war against himself and do battle yet again? He dreaded beyond any dread I had ever known that the unbound angel would weaken and destroy him. But this was his deepest hope, too, because the angel was a much greater and more powerful being.

'Kalkin,' I said, sensing a deep light streaming through the sword that he had once made.

'Be silent!' he growled at me. 'And do not look at me that way!'

I shook my head at this, and called to him again: 'Kalkin.'

]'Damn your eyes! And damn that sword of yours!'

I felt every muscle in his body burning so as to move him to strike his sword into me. 'Kane,' I said to him, 'is the greatest warrior ever to have been raised up from any world, and he would never desert me. But will
Kalkin
ride beside me tomorrow, too?' This question seemed to hang in the air like the ringing of a silver bell. So did the music that Alphanderry gave to the world: