Diamond Warriors Read Online Free PDF Page A

and pain and cold. I fought this piercing numbness, and pulled back my sword. I stared at it in fury, for somehow the Ahrim's substance had turned it black, like frozen iron. Then I stared at Morjin in horror, for even as I watched, his face became as my own, only blackened and twisted with hate. 'You cannot defeat me,' he said to me again. Or perhaps it was the Ahrim that spoke these words to me, or myself - I could not tell. But some irresistible force moved the features of the thing standing before me.
    There is a fear so terrible and deep that it turns one's insides into a mass of sickened flesh and makes it seem that life cannot go on another moment. I stood there shaking and sweating and wanting to vomit up my very bowels. I knew that the dark thing standing before me had the power to kill me - and worse. But I seemed to have no power over it.
    'Val, fight!' Maram shouted out from my left. I was vaguely aware that he had sheathed his sword and taken out his firestone, for the long ruby crystal caught the sun's rays in a glint of red light. And then, guided by Maram's hand and heart, the crystal drank up the sun's blaze and gave it out as a bolt of pure fire that streaked straight into the Ahrim. I felt the heat of this blast but the Ahrim felt nothing. The face that seemed so very much my own just smiled at Maram as the black cavern of its mouth seemed ready to drink up more of Maram's fire and his very life - and the lives of Master Juwain and Atara, too.
    'Yes, Val, fight!' Atara called out to me, as she stood in a spray of crushed flowers by my side.
    I stared at the dreadful thing wearing my face, and I wanted to fight it with every beat of my heart and down to my last breath. But how could I destroy something that was already nothing?
    'You know the way!' Atara called to me again. 'As it was at the farmhouse with the droghul!'
    I glanced off into the trees, where Estrella stood looking at me. She seemed to have no fear of the Ahrim, but a great and terrible concern for me. I could feel her calling out to me in silence that I must always remember who I really was.
    Then the Ahrim moved nearer to me - drawn, I sensed, by my blood and the kirax burning through it. Burning, yes, always 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