Black Jade. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes recalled the most beautiful, yet terrible, part of the Law of the One: that each of the Galadin, at the moment of a Great Progression, in the creation of a new universe, was destined to die into light – and thus be reborn as one of the numinous Ieldra.

      ‘And as for suffering, Valashu,’ he said to me, ‘despite what you have suffered, you cannot know. How many times have you swatted a mosquito?’

      For a moment, his question puzzled me. My skin fairly twitched as I recalled the clouds of mosquitoes that had drained my blood in the Vardaloon. And I said, ‘Hundreds. Thousands.’

      ‘Could you have killed them so readily if they had been human beings? Do you think they suffered as men do?’

      I, who had already killed many tens of men with my bright sword, said, ‘I know they did not.’

      ‘Just so,’ Kane said to me. ‘The pain that men, women and children know, compared to that of the Galadin, is minuscule. And yet it is no small thing, eh? And that in the end, is what poisoned Angra Mainyu’s sweet, sweet, beautiful heart.’

      Kane’s words were like a bucket of cold water emptied upon me. I sat by the fire, blinking my eyes as a chill shot down my spine. I said to him, ‘I never thought to hear you speak such words of the Dark One.’

      And he told me: ‘Angra Mainyu was not always Angra Mainyu, nor was he always evil. So, he was born Asangal, the most beautiful of men, and when still a man, it is said that he loved all life so dearly that he would not swat mosquitoes. And more, that once he saw a dog in excruciating pain from an open wound being eaten with worms. Asangal resolved to remove the worms, but could not bear for them to die. And so he licked out the worms with his own tongue so as not to crush them, and he let them eat his own flesh.’

      At this, Daj’s face screwed up in disgust, and Maram shook his head. And Kane went on:

      ‘Asangal so loved the world that he thought he could take in all its pain. But after he became an Elijin lord and then was elevated as the first of the Galadin, the pain became an agony that he could not escape. In truth, like a robe of fire, it drove him mad. He began to question the One’s design in calling forth life only to suffer so terribly; as the ages passed into ages, it seemed to him particularly cruel that all beings should be made to bear such torment, only, at the end of it all, to die. Love thwarted turns to hate, eh?, for one of the Galadin no less than a man, and so it was with him. So, he began to hate the One. And in hating, he began to feel himself as other from the One and the Ieldra’s creation, and so he damned the One and creation itself.

      ‘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!’

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