Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  Chapter 9

  For the next three hours, I put my lips to many cups of brandy raised up to acknowledge the many men who insisted on toasting their new king. I walked among my warriors, looking into their eyes and asking their names. Too, I gathered Joshu Kadar, Sar Shivalad, Sar Kanshar and the other knights whom I had come to call my 'Guardians.' Now that they had made me king, in honor of their greatest aspirations, I formally declared them to be the 'Guardians of the Lightstone.' Then it came time to adjourn to my pavilion. My companions all followed me inside, along with Abrasax and the Masters of the Brotherhood. Bemossed, of course, came with them, and I invited Vareva to speak with us as well. I sat at the head of the long council table, with my companions on one side facing the Seven and Vareva on the other. Bemossed took his place at the end of the table opposite from me.

  'I still can't quite believe that you are alive and safe here,' I said to him. I gazed at his bright, restless face, and it seemed that I could not get enough of looking at him.

  'But I can believe that you are now king,' he said with a smile. 'Even when you first came to me in your guise as a poor flutist, it seemed that you must be something more. We've come a long way from Hesperu, haven't we?'

  'We have,' I agreed, glancing at the ring that sparkled around my finger. 'And you have come a long way from the Valley of the Sun. What happened, friend?'

  As Bemossed rubbed at his tired eyes, his gaze seemed to turn inward. I sensed in him many troublesome things: shame, grief, dread and an overwhelming sense of failure. He finally looked at Abrasax to speak for him.

  'We had hoped,' Abrasax said in his clear, forceful voice, 'that we had more time. But in the end, the Red Dragon proved too clever. And too powerful.'

  He told us, simply, that Morjin had at last discovered the location of the Brotherhood's school that he had been seeking for so long. Then one of Morjin's Kallimun priests had led a whole battalion of soldiers and a company of the terrible Grays into the lower reaches of the White Mountains. This priest - whose name was Arch Igasho - had managed to unlock the secrets of the tunnel that gave into the Valley of the Sun. Then Morjin's men had fallen upon the school with fire and steel and all the evil power of the black gelstei wielded by the leader of the Grays.

  'They cut down everyone who tried to reason with them,' Abrasax told us in a heavy voice. 'And they burned everything that could be burned. They found the library, and put torches to the books.'

  Master Juwain, nearly stricken by this terrible news, asked him, 'But they can't have burned the vedastei!'

  At the mention of these magical books, made of some sort of gelstei that could call ancient knowledge to its crystal pages as of light out of thin air, Abrasax sadly shook his head. And he told us, 'The fire grew so hot it melted the vedastei's crystal. There is nothing left but ashes.'

  I stared down at the floor of my tent. With the burning of the millions of books of the Library at Khaisham and now this even greater desecration, it seemed that la had suffered a burning away of wisdom that might plunge the whole world into a Dark Age without end.

  'But how could you have verified this?' Master Juwain said to Abrasax. 'Surely you did not remain to see the books destroyed?'

  Abrasax's thick beard and hair seemed like a corona of white as he nodded his head for Master Storr to speak. Master Storr sat staring down at his liver-spotted hands. His old, fair face, burned red from his recent travels, grew tighter and tighter as if he could not bring himself to answer Abrasax's silent request.

  Then finally he looked up and told us: 'We did see the books destroyed. With this.'

  So saying, Master Storr, the Brotherhood's Master Galastei, drew forth a sphere of white gelstei no different than Atara's. And he said to us in his tight, fussy voice: 'We managed to rescue many of the gelstei. I haven't a scryer's ability to see into the future. But sometimes I have seen things far away in space - or not so very far away. This crystal gave sight of what the Red Dragon's men did to our school.'

  He held up the clear ball to the light streaming through the pavilion's black silk. I was afraid that if I looked into it too deeply, I would see writhing flames and men screaming in agony.

  'You must have taken a blue gelstei, as well,' Liljana said to him. She held up her little whale figurine, 'I know I touched minds with you through this.'

  Master Storr nodded his head slowly. 'That was a stroke of good fortune, I think. I wanted you to know that Bemossed was safe.'

  Master Juwain sat looking at the clear crystal in Master Storr's hands. 'But what of the Great Gelstei then? Are they safe?'

  In answer, Master Matai, an Old Galdan whose white curls fell over a browned, noble face, drew out of his pocket a small, translucent sphere, ruby in color. Master Virang kept a similar stone, tinted golden-orange, while Master Nolashar, the Music Master, had a yellow sun stone, which he raised up gleaming above the council table. I feared that with Master Okuth's death his green heart stone had been lost, but it was not so. Master Storr held it in keeping for the Brotherhood's new Master Healer, whoever that might be; he also still guarded his own purple stone. Master Yasul's mahogany skin cracked into dozens of lines as he smiled and showed us a round, azure gelstei. Abrasax, of course, kept the last and most powerful of these seven stones: a clear bit of crystal no bigger than a marble. In his hand, it seemed insignificant, as did the crystals of the others. But I couldn't help thinking that with great gelstei similar in kind, if not size, at the beginning of time, the Ieldra had summoned a beautiful music that sang the very stars into creation.

  'At least, then, Grandfather,' Master Juwain said to Abrasax, 'you have preserved your greatest treasures.'

  Abrasax's wise, worn face grew sad beyond bearing as if he had lived not just a hundred and forty-seven years but a million. 'No, our greatest treasures lie dead in the Valley of the Sun. Most of our Brothers fell beneath the soldiers' swords. And those who were captured, Arch Igasho ordered crucified.'

  Now Master Juwain bowed his head in shame and grief. It seemed that he had almost forgotten his quest to escape the ideals and abstractions of his head in order to feel with his heart.

  Abrasax closed his hand around the Seventh, as his gelstei was called, and he put it away. Then he said, 'We had hope the moment would never come, but we had prepared for it a long time. Our Brothers all died believing their sacrifice was to the good. And we should believe it, too.'

  Here he looked at Bemossed, and smiled sadly. Kind, the Brotherhood's Grandmaster might be, and compassionate, too, but I felt a will as hard as diamond buried deep inside him. It seemed that he could accept the sacrifice of others - and even encourage it - if that served his highest purpose. It was a lesson, I thought, that a king must take to heart.

  'But how,' Maram asked, 'did you escape, since only one tunnel leads in and out of the valley? Surely the soldiers would have guarded it.'

  'Indeed, they did,' Abrasax said. 'But we slipped past them, so to speak.'

  He looked at Master Virang, the Meditation Master, who showed us one of his mysterious smiles. I remembered how, when my companions and I had first come into the Valley of the Sun, this small and lively man had somehow concealed the school's buildings from our sight. It seemed just possible that through his great control over his mind, and that of his enemies, he had somehow cast a cloak of invisibility over the Seven and Bemossed, and caused the soldiers not to see them.

  'Let us say,' he told us by way of explanation, 'that most men cannot keep their attention where they should. And so they do not see what they should see. And so we were able to hide in plain view of the soldiers - so to speak.'

  'As you hid today, out beyond the square?' I asked him.

  Master Virang shrugged his shoulders as he touched the wool of the cloak enfolding him. 'For that we needed little more than this.'

  His words caused Kane to scowl, and my savage friend said, 'All right - keep your secrets, then. But tell us this: how did igasho get through the tunnel? Did Morjin give him a gelstei
that unlocked it?'

  'He must have,' Master Storr said. 'As he must have given him another gelstei that gave him sight of our school.'

  'Ha - I wouldn't have thought that the damned Igasho, as he calls himself now, could have such skill with such stones.'

  Arch Igasho had been born Prince Salmelu Aradar of Ishka into one of the most ancient and noble of Valari lines. All through his youth, he had trained at the sword like any other Valari warrior. But somehow his soul had sickened, and he had surrendered both sword and soul to Morjin. My blood still burned with the kirax that Salmelu had fired into me with his assassin's arrow. In reward for his service, Morjin had made Salmelu a full priest of the Kallimun, and then elevated him again and again.

  'You mustn't underestimate this man,' Abrasax said to Kane and me. 'He nearly destroyed you in Hesperu. As he nearly killed all of us - as he did our Brothers.'

  'Ha!' Kane said again. 'Igasho is a traitor and a worm, for he lives on Morjin's droppings when he could have been a king in his own right. He failed to kill Val with his damned arrow, as he did in Hesperu - even as he did with you.'

  'He did,' Abrasax agreed, 'but each time he came very close. The Red Dragon must hope that the next time he will succeed.'

  'In a way, he did succeed,' Master Storr said. 'Our school is destroyed, and some of the brightest souls of our generation. Our books are ashes. Morjin would count this as a victory.'

  Abrasax made a fist as he fought for words that must have been hard for him to say: 'Books can always be rewritten and new generations will arise to replace the old. No treasure is beyond being restored. Except one, I fear. This age is almost over, and if it comes to an end without the Maitreya taking the Lightstone in his hands, then all will come to end, forever. For Bemossed, it has been so close - as close as that hair you keep folded in your pocket, Valashlu Elahad.'

  I looked at Atara, sitting straight and motionless to my right. I did not know how Abrasax had learned of this great treasure I kept close to my heart, Master Reader of the Brotherhood though he might be. Then this very perceptive man let out a pained breath as he told us of how Bemossed had almost died.

  'Our young friend,' Abrasax said, 'was already weak from fighting Morjin for too long. Our struggle to escape the valley weakened him further, and our flight through the mountains even more. And that was not the worst of things.'

  'What could be worse than that?' Maram asked. Then his face seemed to drain of blood as he answered his own question: 'The Grays, then - the damn Grays!'

  'The Grays indeed,' Abrasax told us.

  He went on to say that these soulless men, whose eyes were as hard and dead as pieces of stone, had listened for the murmur-ings of Bemossed's mind and had followed him for many days through the mountains and then out onto the grasslands of the Wendrush. And all the while their leader had used a black gelstei to suck away the very fires of Bemossed's life so that he had sickened nearly to his death.

  'It was that way when the Grays pursued us across Alonia,' Maram said with a shudder. 'At the end of things, they put their cold claws into our minds so that we couldn't move. And then came to suck out our souls!'

  Maram, I thought, remembering, spoke dramatically but not inaccurately.

  'Only Kane's coming saved us then,' Maram told Abrasax. 'But I should think that the powers of the Seven would have saved you.'

  'We do have our skills,' Abrasax said with a note of mystery shading his voice. 'Which is why we are even here to tell you how Master Okuth saved Bemossed's life at the sacrifice of his own.'

  I remembered very well old Master Okuth's iron-gray hair and heavy head resembling that of an ox. But it seemed that he had possessed the soul of an angel. For as the Seven had fled with Bemossed barely beyond the knives of the Grays and swords of Igasho's men, Master Okuth had employed all his powers to keep Bemossed from failing and falling off his horse. And at the end, when Bemossed could go no further. Master Okuth had used his green heart stone to pour his own life fires into Bemossed as if giving him his own blood. This greatest of all kindnesses had killed Master Okuth - even as it gave Bemossed the strength to go on.

  'We buried Master Okuth in the Sarni way,' Abrasax said, 'on a knoll above the Astu River. And then we rode on.'

  'But how did you escape then?' Maram asked. 'From the Grays!'

  Abrasax pulled at his white beard as if deciding how much he should tell us. Then he nodded his head for Master Nolashar to speak.

  In answer, Master Nolashar took out a flute little different than the one I had once given to Estrella. Although he wore his hair cut short, like Kane's, and he now practiced with this instrument rather than the sword, he had been born a Valari many years ago - into which land he had never said. His large eyes gazed with great intensity out of a stark and stem face. Yet deep down he seemed a happy man, as why shouldn't he be? For he had spent most of his life in the study of music which had been my first and greatest dream.

  'The Grays,' he said, 'listen for the sounds of the soul in the minds of those they hunt. Other sounds can overwhelm these and confuse them. In particular, music.'

  Maram gazed at him with doubt coloring his face. 'Are you telling us that you threw the Grays off your trail by playing your flute?'

  'No, Sar Maram, I am not telling you that. There are many ways of making music.'

  The tones of his smooth voice hinted at much more than he would say. Had he, with his bright sun stone, led the Seven to call up enchanting melodies out of their gelstei and cast this unearthly music across the steppe to madden the Grays? Or a vastly deeper sound that might have utterly deafened them? It seemed that Master Nolashar, too. liked to keep his secrets.

  'Let us just say,' he told us, 'that in the end the Grays and soldiers rode in one direction, while we rode in another.'

  I nodded my head at this, then looked down the long table at Bemossed. He sat as within a cloud of melancholy, and seemed to hold on to this dark mood as he might an old friend. I felt torment and self-doubt eating at his insides, and I thought I knew why.

  'Master Okuth,' I said to him, 'was a very good man.'

  'He was like my father!' Bemossed said with tears filling his eyes. 'As I think my father must have been. He died trying to protect me, too.'

  'And that was surely the best thing he ever did. As he would have wanted to tell you. And so with Master Okuth.'

  Bemossed looked down at his long hands, which had performed so many loathsome tasks during his years as a despised Hajarim slave. Then he said, 'In Hesperu, they flavor wine with oranges, cloves, pepper and honey. Fire wine, they call it. It is like an elixir of the angels - I was allowed to taste it once, and I got drunk on it. That is how it was with Master Okuth. He gave me his life! Even as it emptied from him, I felt it filling me up, like fire, so hot, so sweet. And now his bones lie cold and picked white on the grass of the Wendrush while here I sit with my blood still beating sweetly through me.'

  'Fathers,' I told him, remembering, 'die for their sons. That is life.'

  'No, that is death,' he murmured to me.

  'Master Okuth would not have wanted to hear you say that.'

  'No, Valashu - I know you are right. And I know I must honor Master Okuth in living, as best I can, as I was born to do. It is just that. . .'

  His voice vanished into the quiet of the tent: from outside came the muffled cries of many men drinking and celebrating.

  'What is it, friend?' I asked him.

  He seemed to fight back some deep dread inside him, and a warmer thing, too. Then he said, 'It is just that one shouldn't pour wine into a cracked vessel.'

  At this, Abrasax and the other masters looked at him with deep concern. So did my companions, and so did I.

  'Once,' I said to him, 'I thought wrongly that I was the Maitreya. And people therefore thought wrongly of me that I would be without flaws. But, like any other man, I was only -'

  'No, I am not speaking of common faults. Jealousy, stubbornness, uncertainty - these I know as well as an
yone.' He paused to draw in a long breath as he looked at me. 'But there is something else. Something that I can't even tell you because I can't quite see it myself. A wrongness. The Maitreya, you call me, the Shining One. But I can't always hold this light that I should be able to hold. I can't always be it, even though it is always there and in some strange way I can't ever not be it. And when I can't there is a kind of darkness, inside the light. It goes on and on, forever. It... is hard to describe. But Master Okuth knew, I think. And Morjin.'

  'Morjin!' I called out, nearly shouting.

  'I have fought with him for what seems forever,' he said. 'It is killing me, Valashu!'

  I sensed something dark and dreadful pulling at him inside, and he seemed immensely tired and older than the twenty-three years he supposed himself to be. Then I remembered lines from an old verse:

  The Shining One

  In innocence sleeps

  Inside his heart

  Angel fire sleeps

  And when he wakes

  The fire leaps.

  About the Maitreya

  One thing is known:

  That to himself

  He always is known

  When the moment comes

  To claim the Lightstone.

  The Maitreya he must be, I thought. He must be. But I wondered if circumstances - and my own desperate purpose - had forced him to take on this mantle before he had fully awakened. The verse hinted at a kind of quickening and self-knowing that would occur only when the Maitreya set hands upon the Lightstone. It tormented me that in losing the Lightstone to Morjin, I might have kept Bemossed from his fate.

  'You are safe here,' I told him, not quite knowing what to say. I looked down at my new ring, and then pointed in the direction of the square outside the tent. 'As safe, now, as anywhere on Ea. Fifteen thousand warriors stand ready to fight to the death to protect you.'

  'King Valamesh,' he said to me with a forced smile, 'I do not want a single warrior to fight and die for me.'

  'Nor I,' I told him. 'But I will never let Morjin harm you.'