The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

hot and hateful, but something in this bitter poison seemed to awaken me to the immensity of pain that was life. And not just my own, but that of the trees standing around me tall and green, and the birds that made their nests among them, and the bees buzzing in the flowers, and everything. But life is much more than suffering. In all the growing things around me, I felt as well a wild joy and overflowing delight in just being alive. This was my gift, to sense in other creatures and people their deepest passions; Kane had once named this magic connection of mine as the valarda.

      ‘Valashu,’ the Ahrim seemed to whisper to me as it raised up its arm and opened out its fingers to me. ‘Take my hand.’

      But Atara’s words sounded within me, too, as did Estrella’s silence and the song of the tanager piping out sweet and urgent from somewhere nearby. I finally caught sight of this little bird across the clearing to my right, perched high in the branches of a willow tree. It was a scarlet tanager, all round and red like the brightest of flowers. In the way it cocked its head toward me and sang just for me, it seemed utterly alive. Its heart beat even more quickly than did my own, like a flutter of wings, and it called me to take joy in the wild life within myself. There, too, I remembered, blazed a deep and unquenchable light.

      ‘Valashu Elahad.’

      The Ahrim, I sensed, like a huge, blood-blackened tick, wanted my life. Very well, then I would give it that, and something more.

      ‘Val!’ Maram cried out to me. ‘Do what Atara said! What are you waiting for?’

      At the farmhouse, Morjin had been unable to bear my anguish of love for my murdered family. What was it, I wondered, that the Ahrim could not bear? Its immense and terrifying anguish seemed to pour out through its black eyes and outstretched hand.

      ‘Now, Val!’ Master Juwain called to me. He stood staring at the Ahrim as he lifted his glowing, emerald crystal toward me in order to quicken the fires of my life.

      Kane had told me, too, that I held inside my heart the greatest of weapons. It was what my gift became when I turned my deepest passion outward and wielded the valarda to open others’ hearts and brighten their souls. As I wielded it now. With Master Juwain feeding me the radiance of his green gelstei, and my other friends passing to me all that was beautiful and bright from within their own beings, I struck out at the Ahrim. Master Juwain believed that darkness could never be defeated by the sword, but he meant a length of honed steel and destruction, and not a sword of light.

       ELAHAD!

      For what seemed an age, all that was within me passed into the Ahrim in a blinding brilliance. But it was not enough. The Ahrim did not disintegrate into a shower of sparks, nor shine like the sun, nor did it disappear back into the void, like a snake swallowing its own tail. I sensed that I had only stunned it, if that was the right word, for it suddenly shrank into a ball of blackness and floated over toward an oak tree at the edge of the clearing. It seemed still to be watching me.

      ‘You have no power over me!’ I shouted at it. But my angry words seemed to make it grow a bit larger and even blacker, if that was possible.

      Atara came up to me then, and laid her hand on my ice-cold hands, still locked onto the hilt of my sword. And she said to me, ‘Do not look at it. Close your eyes and think of the child that someday we’ll make together.’

      I did as she asked, and my heart warmed with the brightest of hopes. And when I opened my eyes, the Ahrim had disappeared.

      ‘But where did it go?’ Maram asked, coming over to me. ‘And will it return?’

      Daj came running out of the trees toward me, followed by Liljana and Estrella. All my friends gathered around me. And I told them, ‘It will return. In truth, I am not sure it is really gone.’

      As I stood there trying to steady my breathing, I still felt the dark thing watching me, from all directions – and from my insides, as if it could look out at me through my very soul.

      ‘But what is it?’ Daj asked yet again. He turned toward Alphanderry who had remained almost rooted to the clearing’s floor during the whole time of our battle. ‘You called it the Ahrim. What does that mean?’

      ‘Hoy, the Ahrim, the Ahrim – I do not know!’

      ‘I suppose the name just came to you?’ Maram said, glaring at him.

      ‘Yes, it did. Like –’

      ‘Drops of blood on a cross!’ Maram snapped. ‘That thing is evil.’

      ‘So are all of Morjin’s illusions,’ Liljana said. ‘But that was no illusion.’

      ‘No, certainly not,’ Master Juwain said. Now he, too, touched his hand to my hands. He touched my face and told me, ‘Your fingers are frozen – and your nose and cheeks are frostbitten.’

      I would have looked at myself in Alkaladur’s shimmering surface, but the silustria was an ugly black and I could see nothing.

      ‘It was so cold,’ I said. ‘So impossibly cold.’

      I watched as the sun’s rays fell upon my sword and the blade slowly brightened to a soft silver. So it was with my dead-white flesh: the warm spring air thawed my face and hands with a hot pain that flushed my skin. Master Juwain held his green crystal over me to help the healing along. Soon I found that I could open and close my fingers at will, and I did not worry that they would rot with gangrene and have to be cut off. But forever after, I knew, I would feel the Ahrim’s terrible coldness burning through me, even as I did the kirax in my blood.

      A sudden gleam of my sword gave me to see a truth to which I had been blind. And I said to Alphanderry, with much anger, ‘You do know things about the Ahrim, don’t you? It has something to do with the Skadarak, doesn’t it?’

      At the mention of this black and blighted wood at the heart of Acadu, Alphanderry hung his head in shame. And then he found the courage to look at me as he said, ‘It was there, waiting, Val. During our passage, it attached itself to you. It has been following you ever since.’

      ‘Following!’ I half-shouted. ‘All the way to Hesperu, and back, to the Brotherhood’s school? And then here, to my home? Why could I not see it? And why could Abrasax not see it – he who can see almost everything?’

      Again, Alphanderry shrugged his shoulders.

      ‘But how is it,’ I demanded, ‘that you can see it?’

      It was Daj who answered for him. He passed his hand through Alphanderry’s watery-like form, and said, ‘But how not, since they are made of the same substance!’

      Master Juwain regarded the glimmering tones that composed Alphanderry’s being. He said, ‘Similar, perhaps, but certainly not the same.’

      I waved my hand at such useless speculations, and I called out to Alphanderry, ‘But why did you never tell me of this thing?’

      The look on his face was that of a boy stealing back to his room after dark. He said to me simply, ‘I didn’t want to worry you, Val.’

      ‘Oh, excellent, excellent!’ Maram muttered, shaking his head. ‘Well, I am worried enough for all of us, now. What I wonder is why that filthy Ahrim, whatever it is, attacked us here? And more important, what will keep it away?’

      But none of us, not even Alphanderry, had an answer to these questions. As it was growing late, it seemed the best thing we could do would be to leave these strange woods behind us as soon as possible.

      ‘Come,’ I said, clapping Maram on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go get some of that roast beef and beer you’ve been wanting for so long.’

      After that, I pulled myself up onto Altaru’s back, and my friends mounted their horses, too. I pointed the way toward Lord Harsha’s farm with all the command and assurance that I could summon. But as we rode off through the shadowed trees, I felt the dark thing called the Ahrim still watching me and still waiting, and I knew with heaviness in my heart