The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ truthful with you, as I always try to be, I have to consider the possibility that what I touched upon in Master Storr’s mind was a dream.’

      ‘A nightmare, you mean,’ I said, taking a deep breath of air. I looked at Liljana. ‘Then it is possible that nothing of what you told me actually happened.’

      ‘No, it happened – of course it did. I know it in my heart.’

      Here she pressed her hand to her chest and then reached out to pour the tea into our cups.

      ‘It might indeed have been a nightmare,’ she told me. ‘But if so, then Master Storr was dreaming of these terrible things that Morjin did to the Brothers and their school.’

      ‘But how do you know that Master Storr wasn’t just dreaming of that which he most feared would befall?’

      ‘I don’t know how I know – I just do. There is a difference. It is like the taste of salt versus the description of saltiness. But since I can’t expect you to appreciate this, as a mindspeaker does, I thought that I should tell you all.’

      I sat sipping my tea and hoping that the chamomile might drive away the burning ache in my throat. I gazed at the clusters of the lilacs on the bushes along the garden’s wall. It was strange, I thought, that even in the intense light of the moon, their soft purple color had vanished into the darker tones of the night.

      ‘Have you tried again?’ I said to Liljana as I looked up at the sky. ‘We have hours of moonlight left, don’t we?’

      ‘I have tried and tried,’ she told me. ‘And then tried thrice more. But Master Storr, I have to tell you, is not much of a mindspeaker – whether or not he dreams or wakes. And neither am I.’

      ‘Once,’ I told her, ‘you looked into a dragon’s mind. And into Morjin’s.’

      ‘Yes, into his. But he burned me, Morjin did,’ she said with a terrible sadness.

      ‘I know he did,’ I told her. ‘But before he did, there was a moment, wasn’t there? When you saw the great Red Dragon, and he saw you. And was afraid of you, as it was with the dragon called Angraboda.’

      ‘He was afraid,’ she admitted. ‘But I was terrified.’

      ‘Terrified, perhaps – as much as you ever allow yourself to be. But that has never kept you from looking into dark places, has it? Or going into them.’

      Now she took a turn sipping her tea before she finally said to me, ‘I’m not sure I want to know what you mean.’

      I reached out and took hold of her hand. I glanced at her gelstei, then asked her, ‘Now that Bemossed has driven back Morjin’s mind from your crystal and given its power back to you, have you ever thought of using it to try to look into Morjin’s mind again?’

      She suddenly snapped her hand from my grasp, and covered up her gelstei. She said, ‘But I have promised never to look into a man’s mind without his permission!’

      ‘Yes, you have,’ I told her. ‘But Morjin is more a beast than a man, or so you have said. You wouldn’t keep that promise for his sake.’

      ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she agreed, squeezing her blue stone. ‘But what you suggest is so dangerous.’

      Truly, I thought, it was: like a double-edged sword, Liljana’s talent could cut two ways. If she touched minds with Morjin, he could tear from her some essential knowledge or secret as she could from him. And Morjin could again ravage her mind, or do to her even worse things.

      Even so, I stared at her through the wan light and said, ‘I have to know, Liljana.’

      ‘No, no, you don’t,’ she murmured, shaking her head.

      ‘I have to know if Bemossed still lives,’ I said. ‘And Morjin would know that, if anyone does.’

      ‘Yes, Morjin,’ she said.

      I felt her throat burning as with a desire for revenge, even as her soft eyes filled with pleading, compassion and great hope. I did not pursue my suggestion that she seek out the foul, rat-infested caverns of Morjin’s mind. Although I suspected that she herself might dare to contend with him mind to mind once more, someday, this impulse must come from her, according to her sense of her own power – otherwise Morjin might very well seize her will and make her into a ghul. If I loved her, I thought, how could I violate her soul with any demand that might lead toward such a terrible fate?

      ‘I’m sure,’ she said, suddenly warming toward me, ‘that I would have felt it in Master Storr’s mind if Bemossed had been killed.’

      I did not know if that was true – or if she only wanted it to be true, and so believed it. But I needed her to tell me that Bemossed still lived, and make me believe it. And so she did, and so I loved her, for she was almost like my own mother, who had been able to make me believe in most anything, myself most of all.

      ‘My apologies,’ I told her, ‘for bringing up the matter of Morjin.’

      She waved her hand at this, and looked at me deeply. ‘Don’t give it another thought.’

      ‘I think about little else. I know it is upon me to face him – someday, somehow. But first, I’m sorry to say, I wanted you to find out where he is the most vulnerable, as it was with Angraboda. Or even to put a little poison in his mind and let it work.’

      The look in her eyes grew even warmer and brighter as I said this. She almost smiled, then. That was her magic, I thought, to love me despite my weaknesses and darkest dreams. She was like a tree with very deep roots, and something about her seemed to enfold my life with all the vitality of fresh running sap and a crown of shimmering green leaves.

      ‘If I were Morjin,’ she said to me, ‘I would not want you as my enemy’

      ‘If you were Morjin,’ I told her, ‘the world would not need Bemossed to restore it.’

      Although she could not smile, she could still frown easily enough, which she now did. ‘The Sisterhood, I should tell you, has always taught that it will be a woman who will bring new life to the world – even as a mother does with a child. I admit that it is strange for me to think of Bemossed as the Maitreya, though I don’t see how he cannot be.’

      I couldn’t help smiling at this. Each Maitreya throughout the ages had been a man, as the Saganom Elu had told, and never, I thought, had a man been born into the world as splendid as Bemossed.

      ‘He will come here’ I told her. ‘If you are right and the Brotherhood school is destroyed, Bemossed will want the Seven to bring him here.’

      ‘But how do you know that?’

      In answer, I drew my sword from its scabbard, which I had set down by the side of the table. Alkaladur’s silver blade shimmered in the light of the stars.

      ‘I know,’ I told her, echoing the words that she had spoken to me. ‘They will try to make their way here, to these mountains, and so Mesh must be made safe.’

      ‘Then you will do what you must do to make it so. As you always do. I saw that in you the first СКАЧАТЬ