But then her happiness seemed to melt away as I said to her, 'I cannot take every warrior with me, and so leave Mesh defenseless. Many will remain, and you must be one of them.'
At this, she had no choice but to bow her head in acceptance of what I had said.
'But I charge you with a task,' I said to her. 'Other women feel as you do. Behira Harsha, for one. I fear they will train at arms no matter what their king says. Seek them out, then. Train them as warriors against the day we all fear will come.'
Vareva looked at me with hope brightening her face again. 'Thank you, Sire. I shall train a whole battalion of warriors such as the world has never seen!'
Then she turned about and left my tent, and another warrior came forward to tell me his name. And another, and another after that, and then a thousand others. And so the day passed into yet another night.
The next morning, to the sound of birds chittering in the meadows, Maram came into my tent. He bulled his way past the warriors lined up at the entrance and indicated that he wished to speak with me. We stepped off into the corner, where he murmured to me: 'Two full days and one whole night - and here you still are! You cannot continue this way!'
'I
can
continue!' I told him.
I had to fight the urge to lay my hand upon his huge shoulder for support.
'Ah, well, maybe you can,' he said, looking deep into my eyes. 'But you
shouldn 't.
It is too much - too, too much.'
'I have faced worse trials before, Maram.
We
have.'
'At need, we have. In the Red Desert, you drove yourself harder than any man would a slave - even as you drove me. And it kept us alive. But this isn't necessary.'
I looked off toward the tent's entranceway, where I could see a dozen men in diamond armor standing miserably in the rain.
'Some might say,' he told me, 'that this is only a new king's vanity. A great show without true meaning.'
'Do
you
say that, then?'
'I? No, I don't, and I am a man who knows about vanity. But I
do
say that you are overzealous. Nearly killing yourself to prove your worthiness as a king.'
I fought to keep myself from yawning and rubbing the sleep from my dry, itching eyes; I fought not to go over to my canopied bed and collapse into unknowingness.
'And more,' Maram went on, 'this desperate learning of names has the taint of thaumaturgy. As if in holding on to one of your men's names, you can magically keep him from dying when his time comes.'
His words worked their way into my hot, pounding brain, and I found myself forced to consider them. Finally, I said to him, 'You know me too well, old friend.'
'Then break off and sleep! Just this one day! And tomorrow finish your task, or the next!'
I slowly shook my head at this. 'A day will come when I must face Morjin. On that day, I will not be able to break off and sleep, no matter how tired I am.'
'But you can't prepare for
that
like
this.
It is madness to
-'
'The day
will
come,' I said to him again. 'And when it does, no matter what I do, many of the men I have greeted in this tent will die. But how many, then? If it is not to be
all
of them, then I fear that we will have to fight such as the Valari have never fought before. As
men
have never fought. We are so few, and our enemy is so many. We cannot defeat them through force of arms alone - this the wisest of the wise has told me. All we will have, in the end, is our spirits. And if our spirits are to be as one, and we are to die for each other - and live! - then I must know who my warriors are, and they must know me.'
Maram, suddenly understanding, nodded his head to me. He sighed, long and deeply, as he looked at me. Then he drew his sword and with great sadness said, 'Sire, I am Maram Marshayk, son of Santoval Marshayk, of Delarid. I pledge my sword to you, in life and in death!'
After he had gone, I spent the rest of that morning, afternoon and evening as I had the days before. It seemed to me that I must have spoken with fifteen million men, and not fifteen thousand. I finally summoned Lord Tanu, and asked him, 'How many more?'
'Nearly a thousand, Sire.'
'And is that all, then?'
Lord Tanu hesitated as his old face tightened with weariness. It seemed that he had slept little, either, over the past days.
'There are only the warriors,' he said to me, 'who refused to stand for you on the day you were acclaimed - eighty-nine of them. It was thought that you wouldn't want to know
their
names.'
As a king, of course, I now had the right to command every man in Mesh, and not just those who had acclaimed me. But I would rather lead them. And so I said to Lord Tanu, and to Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad also present and bending over the map table: 'It takes courage to stand against the enemy in battle. But it takes a deeper and truer courage to stand out by keeping to one's convictions when almost everyone is taking a different course. I do not know why the men you have spoken of failed to stand for me. Their reasons are their reasons. But
those
men I especially want to honor. I can tell you that when battle finally comes, none will stand more valiantly.'
As I had requested of Lord Tanu, he made it be. I endured the last hours of my vigil greeting the last of my warriors. I learned the names of those who had refused to stand for me but now must follow me to war: Ianadar Elshan, Yarsar Ralvalam, Juvalad the Elder, Marsavay of Mir... and all eighty-five others.
At last, there came a moment when the open flaps at the front of my tent revealed only the campfires of my army flickering in the dark and the vast, starry sky. I stepped outside beneath these glistening lights. I had spoken with more than fifteen thousand men. As I pointed my sword toward the bright heavens, I felt a brighter thing burning behind my eyes, and I knew that all fifteen thousand of their names blazed somewhere inside me.
It was a moment of great triumph. I dared to think, for one shining instant in time, that my warriors and I could wield our swords as one and utterly vanquish Morjin. I
willed
this to be, with all the might of my mind and the force of my heart.
And then I chanced to think of Atara riding blindly across the plains somewhere in the dark world to the west. In my utter exhaustion, fighting the leaden pain in my eyes and to keep from collapsing onto the trampled grass, I let my desire to defeat Morjin descend into a wrath for vengeance. I saw myself gouging out
his
eyes as he had Atara's; I wanted to repay him death for death, and hate for hate. I longed for this one, last battle to the very bottom of my soul. I knew that this terrible urge was as beneath me as I should be beyond it. But I couldn't seem to help it. It came welling up through me like a dark dream through sleep. And in that terrible, terrible moment - an eyeblink in time - the Ahrim attacked me.
Like a filthy blanket steeped in poison, it fell out of nowhere down around my head. It closed in over my face, nearly smothering me; it burned my eyes like acid. And then the light of the stars disappeared, and I found myself standing alone inside an utter blackness.
Somehow, I managed to stumble back through my tent and to find my bed. I fell onto it. Given all that had occurred over the past four days, none of those present - Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad and Joshu Kadar - thought this strange. I asked Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad to leave me. Then I bade Joshu Kadar to go find Master Juwain.
Alone in my tent I tried to summon the fierce light inside myself by which I had twice driven off the Ahrim. But either I could not find it or else my life fires had burned too low. I pressed my hands against the pain stabbing into my eyes, and then opened them. I could not make out any of the things of my pavilion: the council and map tables; my small clothes chest and a larger one full of treasure; the candles in their stands and the braziers full of hot coals. All was lost into a blackness as total as a cave's deepest depths.
There came a moment when I despaired. I shook my head from side to side in a wild, terrified fury. But it did nothing to dispel the Ahrim. I seemed only to find within myself a deeper blackness inside the blackness, if that were possible.
Finally, Master Juwain came into my tent and knelt by the side of my bed. He asked me, 'Val, what is wrong?'
I turned my head toward the sound of his voice and said, 'I am blind.'
I tried to explain what had happened. I asked him for his help. Only a few days before, however, he had tried to use his green gelstei to heal my afflicted throat, to no avail.
'What attacks you is beyond my power to drive away,' he told me. 'Beyond the power of our friends, as well. That, I think, has been proven. But on that first day in the woods, it seemed that in opening yourself to what power we
do
possess, it helped you find your own.'
I nodded my head at this. 'But on that day, Atara had not left me.'
'True - and I can only imagine how much her love for you strengthens you. But you have two friends, now, who weren't with us in the woods.'
'Kane,' I murmured. 'Bemossed.'
'Indeed. Kane seems to know things about the Ahrim. And Bemossed is Bemossed.'
Again, I nodded my head. 'Please summon them, then. And Liljana. Maram, too, of course - and the children. I want all my friends by my side.'
At this, Alphanderry somehow came into being within my tent - or so Master Juwain told me. I could not see him any more than I could Master Juwain or anything else.
'And please ask Joshu Kadar to come back inside,' I said to Master Juwain. 'He will have to know what has happened to me, but no one else must.'
'But what of Abrasax and the other Masters?'
'All right,' I said, 'bring them with you, too, but no one else.'
The Guardians standing outside my tent during that watch - Sar Jonavar, Sar Shivalad, Sar Kanshar and Siraj the Younger - must have thought it strange that I summoned my old friends to me so late at night. But kings must sometimes take council at odd hours, and so I hoped that my actions would cause my warriors no suspicion or distress.
A little later, everyone I had sent for gathered by my bedside as I had requested. Kane pressed his rough old hand to my forehead, taking care to avoid the plaster that Master Juwain had set over my reopened scar. And he told me, 'I know less about the Ahrimana than you might hope. It partakes of Angra Mainyu's being - this I have said. It has
escaped
from Damoom, where the Baaloch is still bound, eh? And so I must wonder if anything can bind
it.
I think not. At least not here on Ea. For in a way, the Ahrimana has not really escaped at all, but merely made its way from the darkest of the Dark Worlds to one that has been falling into shadow for a long time.'
'But two times, now,' Master Juwain said to him, 'Val
did
drive it away.'
'So,' Kane said. 'So he did - through the light of the sword he holds inside himself. When it blazes brightly enough, the Ahrimana can no more abide it than Angra Mainyu can the radiance of Star-Home.'
'But it is dead within me,' I said to Kane. 'Either dead or blackened like a piece of charred wood. I cannot find it.'
'That is because,' Kane said in a pitiless tone that chilled me, 'your blindness is not just of the eyes but the soul.'
Abrasax, usually a much kinder man, took my hand in his and said to me, 'You must somehow open your third eye so that your other two might see. In this, we can help you perhaps a little, but no more.'
I sensed him and the other Masters taking out their seven Great Gelstei in order to call forth the fires along my spine's seven chakras and brighten their flames. Although their magic gave me new strength, it failed to lift the blindness from me.
I heard Kane draw in an angry gasp of breath. Then his great regard for me filled his voice as his manner softened and he said, 'So dark - so damnably dark. I have said that Ea is almost a Dark World, and it is. But there
are
bright things here, and the soul of Valashu Elahad is only one.'
I sensed him looking at Bemossed then. Even through my panic at having been blinded, I felt the vast weight of expectation that people had fastened around Bemossed's neck like a collar made of lead.
Then Bemossed pressed his warmer and softer hand to the side of my face. And out of the darkness above me, he told me: 'I had dreams just before Master Juwain woke me. The most evil of dreams yet. I could
feel
Morjin, all his twisted desire. Somehow, he lends his power to the Ahrim and guides it. And sics it on Val as he might a hound. He has learned that Val has become a king - I am sure of this. And he is desperate to destroy him.'
After that, with infinite gentleness, Bemossed touched his fingers to my closed eyelids, to my temples and the back of my head. For more than an hour, he tried with the full force of his soul to heal me. But he could not drive the Ahrim away.
'I am sorry, Valashu,' he said to me at last. 'I have told you before that I can't really heal people. Only, somehow and sometimes, help them to heal themselves.'
His words seemed to touch off deep emotions in Kane, who said, 'So, it's not
healing
that Val really needs - it's freedom from that filthy thing!'
I heard him pick up my unsheathed sword, which then he pressed into my open hand. 'The Sword of Sight, this is called. In the end, it might be that you, yourself, will have to see your way free.'
I closed my hand around Alkaladur's diamond-set hilt. It seemed strange how I could feel the shape of the swans carved into its black jade through the skin of my palm. Still lying flat on my back, I gripped my sword with both hands and pointed it straight up toward the roof of my tent and the stars beyond.
And through the dark came a softly glowing white light. I could see the faint, flaring outline of my sword's blade against a wall of blackness.
'There is something!' I cried out, to Kane and my other friends. 'There is something!'