The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ would have laughed at this, I thought, if she had been able to laugh. Instead she said to me, ‘Perhaps I should have just spoken of what I know, with my very first breath, but I wanted to prepare you first. I don’t want you to give up hope.’

      My heart seemed to be having trouble pushing my blood through my veins. Finally I said to her, ‘Just tell me, then.’

      ‘All right,’ she said, drawing in a deep breath. ‘I believe that the Brotherhood school has been destroyed.’

      I gazed straight at her, trying to make out the black centers of her eyes. I felt as bereft of speech as Estrella.

      ‘It would have happened around the end of Ashte,’ she told me.

      I continued gazing at her, then I finally found the will to say: ‘You mean the Brotherhood school of the Seven, don’t you? But no place in the world is safer! Morjin could not have found it!’

      I thought of the magic tunnels through the mountains surrounding the Valley of the Sun, and I shook my head.

      ‘But he has found it,’ she told me as she covered my hand with hers. ‘Somehow, he has.’

      ‘But the Seven, and those that came before them, have kept the school a secret for thousands of years. And Bemossed has had scarcely half a year of sanctuary there. How could Morjin suddenly have found it?’

      The answer, I thought, was built into the very words of my question. Bemossed, contending with Morjin for mastery of the Lightstone over a distance of a few hundred miles, touching upon the very filth of Morjin’s soul, must somehow have drawn down Morjin upon him.

      ‘Is he dead, then?’ I asked Liljana. ‘Have you come to tell me that Bemossed is dead?’

      ‘I came to tell you not to give up hope,’ she said, squeezing my hand. ‘And so if I knew the Shining One was dead, how could there be hope?’

      I considered this for a moment as I looked at her. ‘But you cannot tell me that he is not dead.’

      She sighed as she held up her crystal to the lanterns’ light. ‘I cannot tell you very much for certain at all.’

      She went on to say more about her personal quest to explore the mysteries of her blue gelstei and gain mastery over it. In the Age of the Mother, she told me, in the great years, the whole continent of Ea had been knitted together by women in every land speaking mind to mind through the power of the blue gelstei. The Order of Brothers and Sisters of the Earth had trained certain sensitive people to attune to the lapis-like crystals, cast into the form of amulets, pendants, pins and figurines. Some had gained the virtue of detecting falseness or veracity in others’ words, and these were called truthsayers. Others found themselves able to speak in strange languages or remember events that had occurred long before their birth or give others great and beautiful dreams. Only the rarest and most adept in the ways of pure consciousness, however, learned to hear the whisperings and thoughts of another’s mind. No one knew why those most talented at mindspeaking had always been women. With the breaking of the Order into the Brotherhood and that secret group of women that became the Maitriche Telu, men had almost completely lost knowledge of the blue gelstei while any woman possessing even a hint of the ability to listen to another’s thoughts was reviled as a witch.

      ‘I know that the time is coming,’ Liljana said to me, ‘when the whole world will be one as it was in the Age of the Mother. We will make it so: those who still keep the blue gelstei or have the will to try to attune themselves to one, whether they hold the sacred blestei in hand, or not. I have not spoken to you of this, but I have been trying to seek out these women. If we could pass important communications from city to city and land to land at the speed of thought, we would gain a great advantage over Morjin.’

      I nodded my head at this, then said, ‘Assuming that he himself does not have this power.’

      ‘He is a man,’ she huffed out with a wave of her hand as if that said everything.

      ‘He is a man,’ I said, ‘who somehow managed to control his three droghuls’ every thought and motion from a thousand miles away.’

      ‘Yes, droghuls,’ she said. ‘Creatures made from his own mind and flesh.’

      ‘Kane,’ I said to her, ‘believes that Morjin keeps a blue gelstei.’

      ‘Even if he does, and is able to project his filthy illusions through it, that does not mean that he can speak mind to mind with other men.’

      Some deep tension in her throat made me look at her more closely as I said to her, ‘Only men dwelled at the Brotherhood’s school. How, then, did you come by your knowledge of its destruction?’

      ‘It was Master Storr,’ she told me. ‘I believe he kept a blestei.’

      I remembered very well the Brotherhood’s Master Galastei: a stout, old man with fair, liver-spotted skin and wispy white hair. A suspicious man, who spent his life in ferreting out secrets, whether of men and women or ancient crystals forged ages ago.

      ‘I was casting my thoughts in that direction,’ she continued. ‘I know I touched minds with him – it was only an hour ago! When the full moon rises and the world dreams, that is the best time to try to speak with others far away. Somewhere to the west, on the Wendrush, I think, the moon rose over Abrasax and Master Storr – perhaps the other Masters as well. And, I pray, over Bemossed. They were fleeing.’

      She went on to explain that she had only had a moment to make out all that Master Storr wanted to tell her.

      ‘Somehow Morjin must have learned the secret of the tunnels,’ she said, ‘for he sent a company of Red Knights through one of them – right down through the valley. There was a battle, I think. A slaughter The younger brothers tried to stand before the Red Knights while the Seven escaped.’

      I pressed my finger to the warm teapot as I said, ‘But how could they escape? Only one tunnel gives out into the valley – surely the Red Knights would have guarded the entrance.’

      ‘I can’t say – you know how strange those tunnels were. Perhaps there was another entrance. Or another tunnel.’

      I thought about this for a few moments. ‘But did the Red Knights pursue the Seven? And did Bemossed escape with them?’

      ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see that in Master Storr’s mind.’

      ‘But wouldn’t he have wanted to tell you that particular tiding, above all others?’

      ‘Of course he would have – I think.’ Liljana rubbed at her temple as she looked down at her little blue stone. ‘Speaking with another this way is not like sitting down to table to have a chat with a friend. At least, I don’t think it is. There has been no one to teach me this art, and I’m really like a child playing with matches. And Master Storr is even more artless than I. He is only a man – and a very confused one at that. At least he seemed so when we managed to attune our two gelstei. We had only a moment, you know. A single moment and a flood of images, as in a dream, fire and blood and bewilderment, you see, trying to make sense of it all. To really hear what was in Master Storr’s mind. It was like trying to drink from a raging river. In fact …’

      Her voice died off into the sound of the crickets chirping СКАЧАТЬ