‘And then, for the first time, a terrible fear seized hold of him. It gnawed at him, worse than worms of fire, for he knew that he had only damned himself. He could not bear to believe that he must someday die, as the Galadin do, in becoming greater. As the evil that he made inside his own heart worked at him, he could not bear to believe that any being, not the greatest of the Ieldra, not even the One, was greater than himself. For how could they be if they suffered to exist a universe as flawed and hurtful as ours? And so he resolved to gather all power to himself to remake the universe: in all goodness, truth and beauty, without suffering, without war, and most of all, without death. Toward this magnificent end, out of his magnificent love for all beings, or so he told himself, he would storm heaven and make war against the Ieldra, against all peoples and all worlds opposing him. So, even against the One.’
Kane stood closer to me now, looking down at me, and his face flashed with reddish lights from the fire’s writhing flames.
‘Do you see?’ he said to me. ‘It is possible to be too good, eh?’
‘Perhaps,’ I told him. I smiled, but there was no sweetness in it, only the taste of blood. ‘But I’m in no danger of that, am I?’
‘Damn it, Val, you might have killed Morjin!’
I stood up to face him and said, ‘Yes, I might have. And what then? Would one of his priests have used the Lightstone to free Angra Mainyu anyway? Or might I have regained it – only to become as Morjin? And then, in the end, been made to free Angra Mainyu myself?’
‘You ask too many questions,’ he growled. He pointed at my sheathed sword. ‘When you held the answer in your hand!’
My fingers closed around Alkaladur’s hilt, and I said, ‘Truly, I held something there.’
‘Damn you, Val!’ he shouted at me. ‘Damn you! Would you loose the Baaloch upon us!’
I looked down to see Daj set his jaw against the trembling that tore through his slight body. Master Juwain’s face had gone grave, and his eyes had lost their sparkle, and so it was with Maram and Liljana. It came to me then that our hope for fulfilling our quest hung like the weight of the whole world upon a strand as slender as one of Atara’s blond hairs. In truth, it seemed that there was no real hope at all. And if that were so, why not just ask Master Juwain to prepare a potion for all of us that we might die, here and now, in peace? Was death so terrible as I had feared? Was it really a black neverness, freezing cold, like ice? Was it a fire that burned the flesh forever? Or was it rather like a beautiful song and the brightest of lights that carried one upward toward the stars?
No, I heard myself whisper. No.
I glanced at Estrella, who looked up at me in dread. And yet, miraculously, with so much trust. Her quick, lovely eyes seemed to grab hold of mine even more fiercely than Kane grasped my arm. So much hope burned inside her! So much life spilled out to fill up her radiant face! Who was I to resign myself and consign her to its ending? No, I thought, that would be ignoble, cowardly, wrong. For her sake, no less my own, I would at least act as if there somehow might be hope.
I said to Kane, ‘Not even the greatest of scryers can see all ends.’
‘So, I think you can see your own end. And long for it too much, eh?’
I shook my head at this, and told him, ‘Last year, at the Tournament when Asaru lay abed with a wounded shoulder, King Mohan spoke these words to me: “A man can never be sure that his acts will lead to the desired result; he can only be sure of the acts, themselves. Therefore each act must be good and true, of its own.”’
‘A warrior’s code, eh? Act nobly, always with honor, and smile at death, if that is the result. The code of the Valari.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘better death than life lived as Morjin lives, or as one of his slaves.’
Kane regarded Daj and Estrella a moment before turning back to me. He said, ‘But we’re not speaking of the death of a lone warrior, or even an entire army, but that of the whole world and all that is!’
‘I … know.’
‘Do you really? What, then, is good? Where will you find truth? Do you know that, as well?’
‘I know it as well as I can. Is it not written in the Law of the One?’
‘So, so,’ he murmured, glaring at me.
‘Is it not written that a man may slay another man only in defense of life? And is it not also written that the Elijin may not slay at all?’
‘So, so.’
‘And yet you slay so gladly. As you would have had me slay Morjin!’
At this he gripped the hilt of his sword and smiled, showing his long white teeth. But there was no mirth on his savage face.
‘You are one of the Elijin!’ I said to him.
‘No, Kalkin was of the Elijin,’ he told me. ‘I am Kane.’
I held out my hand to him and said, ‘If I gave you this sword that is inside me, would you slay with it? What law for the valarda, then?’
‘I … don’t remember.’
His eyes smoldered with a dark fire almost too hot to bear. I felt his heart beating in great, angry surges inside him. It came to me then that there were those who could not abide their smallness, and they feared mightily obliteration in death. But those, like Kane, who turned away from their greatness dreaded even more the glory of life. How long had this ancient warrior stood alone in shadows and dark chasms, away from all others, even from himself? Was it not a terrible thing for a man to forget who he really was?
‘I know,’ I said to him, ‘that the valarda was not meant for slaying.’
‘So – you know this, do you?’
‘Somewhere,’ I said, ‘it must be written in the Law of the One.’
Kane stared at me as through a wall of flame. His jaws clenched, and the muscles of his windburnt cheeks popped out like knots of wood. It seemed that the veins of his neck and face could not contain the bursts of blood coursing through him.
Then he whipped his sword from its sheath and shouted at me, ‘Then damn the One!’
His words seemed to horrify him, as they did the rest of us. Daj sat looking at him in awed silence. Even Estrella seemed to wilt beneath his fearsome countenance.
Then Kane murmured, ‘What I meant to say was that Asangal damned the One. Angra Mainyu did – do you understand?’
I looked down at my open hand. A bloody spike pierced the palm through the bones. The agony of this iron nail still tore through me, as did that of the other nails driven through my mother’s hands and feet. And I said to Kane, ‘Yes – I do understand.’
I felt the hard hurt of his sword pressing into his own hand. He did not want to look at me, but he could not help it. His eyes said what his lips would not: I am damned. And so are you.
‘No, no,’ I told him. I took a step closer and covered his hand with mine. ‘Peace, friend.’
As gently as I could,