The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

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      He had said a simple thing, a true thing, and as with all such, it seemed obvious once it had been spoken. My heart whispered that it must be I who delivered the golden cup to the Maitreya. But how could I, I wondered, unless I first wrested it from Morjin in that impossible battle I could not bear to contemplate?

      I held my sword up to the sun, and I felt something within its length of bright silustria align perfectly with other suns beyond Ea’s deep blue sky. My fate, shaped like the dark world of Damoom, seemed to come hurtling out of black space straight toward me. In the autumn, I knew, it would find its way here and drive me down against the hard earth. Despite all my hopes and dreams, I could no more avoid it than I could the blood burning through my eyes or taking my next breath.

      ‘Val – what is wrong?’ Maram asked me. ‘What do you see?’

      I saw the forests of Mesh blackened by fire, and her mountains melted down into a hellish, glowing slag. I saw Maram fallen dead upon a vast battlefield, and my other companions, too. Atara lay holding her hands over her torn, bleeding belly, from which our child had been taken and ripped into pieces. I saw myself: as cold as stone upon the reddened grass, unmoving and waiting for the carrion birds. And something else, the worst thing of all. As I stood there beneath the trees staring into my sword’s mirrored surface, I gasped at the dread cutting through my innards like an ice-cold knife, and I wanted to scream out against the horror that I could not bear.

      And at that moment, in the air near the center of the clearing, a dark thing appeared. Altaru, my great, black warhorse, whinnied terribly and reared up to kick his hooves at the air. I jumped back and swept my sword into a ready posture, for I feared that Morjin had somehow sent a vulture or some kind of deadly creature to devour me – either that or I had fallen mad.

      ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram cried out, drawing out his sword, too.

      ‘What is that?’ Daj asked, hurrying to my side.

      ‘Hoy!’ Alphanderry cried out in alarm. ‘Hoy! Hoy!’

      Once, Morjin had sent illusions to torment me, but the darkness facing me seemed as real as a river’s whirlpool. It hovered over the ferns and flowers like a spinning blackness. My eyes had trouble holding onto it. It shifted about, and seemed to have no definite size or shape, for at one moment it appeared as a smear of char and at the next as a mass of frozen ink. I felt it fixing its malevolence on me. I took a step closer to it and positioned my sword, and it floated closer and seemed to mirror my movements as it positioned itself before me. A vast and terrible cold emanated from it, and seized hold of my heart. It called to me in a dark voice that I could not bear to hear.

      ‘What is it?’ Daj shouted again.

      And Alphanderry in a voice filled with awe, told him, ‘It is the Ahrim.’

      I did not have time to speculate on this strange name or wonder at the dark thing’s nature, for it suddenly shot through the air straight toward me. I whipped my sword up to stop it. The gleam of my bright blade seemed to give it pause. Like a whirl of smoke, it spun slowly about in the air three feet from my face. Somehow, I thought, it watched and waited for me. I felt sick with hopelessness and a mind-numbing dread. Although it did not seem to bear for me any kind of human hate, I hated it, for I sensed that the Ahrim was that soul-destroying emptiness which engendered pure hate itself.

      ‘Valashu Elahad,’ it seemed to whisper to me.

      I gripped my sword and shook my head. The dark thing had no form nor face nor lips with which to move the air, and yet I heard its voice speaking to me along a strange and sudden wind. And then, in a flash, it shifted yet again, and its secret substance took on the lineaments of a face I knew too well: that of Salmelu Aradar. It was an ugly face, nearly devoid of a chin or any redeeming feature. His great beak of a nose pointed at me, as did his black and beadlike eyes. I hated the way he looked at me, deep into my eyes, and so I brought up my sword to block his line of sight. And his head, like a cobra’s, swayed to the right, and I repositioned my sword, and then again to the left as he seemed to seek access in that direction to the dark holes in my eyes. And so it went, our motions playing off each other, almost locked together, faster and faster as it had been during our duel of swords in King Hadaru’s hall when Salmelu had nearly killed me, and I had nearly killed him.

      ‘Valashu,’ he whispered again, ‘I wish you had seen your mother’s eyes when we crucified and ravished her in your father’s hall.’

      A dark fire leaped in my heart then, and I fought with all my will to keep it from burning out of my arms and hands into my sword. But my restraint availed me nothing. Salmelu roared out in triumph, and then he was Salmelu no more. The blackness of his being metamorphosed yet again, this time into a thing of scales, wings and a savagely swaying tail.

      ‘The dragon!’ Daj cried out from beside me. ‘The dragon returns!’

      I set my hand on Daj’s shoulder, and shouted to Liljana, ‘Take the children into the trees!’

      I could not spare a moment to watch Liljana gather up Daj and Estrella and carry out my command. The Ahrim, now shaped as a dragon, even as Daj had said, hung in the air before me with an almost delicate poise. It seemed to feed on the fire inside me, and make it its own; in mere moments it grew into a raging, red beast fifty feet in length. I recognized this terrible dragon as Angraboda, into whose belly I had once plunged my sword in the deeps of Argattha. And now Angraboda regarded me with her fierce, cold, vengeful eyes. Then her leather wings beat at the air in a thunder of wind as she flew straight up toward the sun. She grew vaster and vaster and ever darker, and her bloated body blocked out the sun’s light and seemed to fill all the sky. She opened her mighty jaws to spit down fire at me and burn me into nothingness. And I felt the hateful fire building inside me, inciting me into a madness to destroy her.

       ANGRABODA!

      From a thousand miles and years away, I heard myself cry out this name as I readied myself to slay this beast yet again. But dragons cannot be harmed by such fire; only the fulgor of the red gelstei or the stars can pierce through their iron-like scales to a dragon’s heart. And so I drew in a deep breath and willed the fire within me to blaze hotter, purer and brighter until I could not hold it anymore, and it poured out into my sword. For one perfect moment, Alkaladur flared with all the brilliance of a star. Maram and Master Juwain cried out in pain at this fierce light. And so did the dragon. Then her jaws closed, and so did her great, golden eyes, and for a moment I thought that I had slain her. But the Ahrim, I sensed, might be unkillable. All at once the dragon’s immensity dissolved again into a blackness that sifted down through the air like soot. And as it fell to earth, the powdery-like particles of its essence reassembled themselves into the form of yet another man – or rather, a once-bright being who was something more than a man.

      ‘Elahad,’ he called out to me in a strong, beautiful voice that carried all the command of death. ‘The common murderer who would be king.’

      Morjin, for such the Ahrim had now become, stood before me and bowed his gold-haired head to me. His golden eyes twisted screws of hate into my eyes, and I could not look away from him, nor could I lift my sword to block his fearful gaze. From somewhere off in the trees, Daj shouted out in detestation and dread of his old master. Atara, to my right, fitted an arrow to her bowstring and loosed it at him. But the arrow sailed right through his shadowed substance as if it were a cloud.

      He paid her no attention, but only continued to stare at me. He appeared as he had been in his youth before his fall: fine of feature, golden-skinned and graceful in his bearing. The compassion in his eyes gleamed almost like gold.

      ‘Morjin!’ СКАЧАТЬ