Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  'Your way,' Abrasax said to Kane, 'has always been the sword - whether of silustria or steel.'

  'Not always,' Kane reminded him.

  At this, Abrasax bowed bis head as if to honor Kane. Then he told him: 'But you can never defeat Angra Mainyu this way. He was the greatest of the Galadin, and so you cannot even harm him.'

  'No, I cannot - not that way,' Then quick as a breath, Kane drew his kalama from its sheath. 'But I can destroy Morjin this way. Or Val can. And so the Lightstone might be regained and given to the Maitreya.'

  He looked at Bemossed sitting quietly at the end of the table, and so did everyone else.

  'I will not,' Bemossed told him. 'have men go marching out to war on my account.'

  'On your account,' Kane growled out, 'men will come here marching to war, whether you will it or not.'

  He went on to tell us what he had learned in Galda: that armies gathered and everywhere men spoke of Morjin and the coming great crusade.

  'I am almost sure that Morjin went to Galda,' he told us. 'To put down the rebellion, yes, but even more to drive the Galdans to war. Now that Bemossed has come here, which he will certainly learn, he will send soldiers to hunt him down. He cannot allow the Valari to unite around such a great light. But he won't strike straight at Mesh, with a small force, as before. He will march with all his armies, and surround the Nine Kingdoms. And then he will annihilate the Valari, once and for all.'

  His words clearly distressed Abrasax, who pressed his fingers against the snowy hair covering his temple. He seemed to be fighting a battle within himself - I guessed between discretion and the telling of the truth. In the end, truth prevailed.

  'After we eluded the Grays,' he told us, 'we fled across the Wendrush into the Niuriu's lands. There we learned evil tidings.'

  He pressed his fingers into his neck below his ear. Those of the Brotherhood, I knew, were masters of revitalizing the body through touching upon critical points where the body's deep flames whirled.

  'The Red Dragon,' he told us, 'has conquered Eanna. He sent a great fleet up through the Dragon Channel. It defeated the Eannan navy. His Hesperuk and Sungurun armies then landed outside of Ivalo in the west, while King Ulanu and his soldiers attacked up from Yarkona in the southeast. They split the kingdom in two, and finally brought King Hanniban to battle - and nearly destroyed him. On the eighth of Ashte, this was. King Hanniban has fled with a thousand of his men to Alonia. It is thought that the Red Dragon might next send his armies there.'

  'So, that is the way of things, then,' Kane said. 'With Eanna gone, there's nothing to stop the Hesperuk fleet from sailing straight through the Dolphin Channel into Tria.'

  'But that is exactly the Beast's plan!' Vareva called out. For all the time we had sat together, this strong, lovely woman had remained quiet, listening politely to all that transpired. Now, however, she told us of things that she had too long held inside. 'In Argattha, one of Morjin's priests said this! They called him Arch Yadom - sometimes Lord Yadom. It was said that Morjin trusted no man more.'

  My jaws clenched as I looked at Vareva. I remembered too well the filthy torturer of whom she spoke: a man with a long skull and hooked nose that made him seem like a vulture.

  Kane, always alert for subterfuge, caught Vareva in his dark gaze. 'Morjin trusted no man more, and this I believe. But then why should we trust what Arch Yadom told you? Perhaps this is exactly what he wanted you to believe - and to tell us.'

  'Are you saying that the Beast allowed me to escape?'

  'How else do you think you found your way out? Of Argattha?'

  Vareva shook her head so violently that her long, black hair whipped into the face of Master Matai, sitting beside her. And she called out, 'No, no, no - I know Lord Yadom would not let me escape. He was in love with me! A vile priest of the Kallimun, it is true, and it was a vile and twisted love, if I can even call it that. But when he was drunk, he used to whisper things to me. And at other times. He told me that if I didn't do exactly as he said, he would split me in two - as Morjin planned to split the Nine Kingdoms in two! After Morjin conquered Alonia, the Dragon Armies would march south to -'

  'All right,' Kane growled, cutting her off, 'then Yadom must have let you go at Morjin's command.'

  'No, you don't know how it was!' Vareva slammed the flat of her hand against the table with such force the wood rang out. 'After Arch Yadom was done with me, I was to have been given to Morjin. He had prepared a torture for me - he would not say what and so ruin the surprise. It was some new kind of crucifixion, I think. He had promised to show all his priests what he planned for the Valari.'

  Kane stared at her hard, without compassion, or so it seemed. I sensed Vareva holding back her tears as she stared right back at him. Finally I stood up and grasped Kane's arm.

  'Enough!' I said to him. 'What Vareva has told us agrees with the Grandmaster's tidings and your own guess as to Morjin's strategy.'

  'So it does. But what if Morjin has a deeper strategy, eh?'

  Again, he turned to look at Vareva. Then I gripped his arm even more tightly and called out: 'Enough, Kane! She has suffered enough!'

  It turned out that after Vareva's escape from Argattha, she had walked straight across the burning grasslands of the Wendrush for more than four hundred miles. She had eaten insects or carrion, when she could find it, and when she couldn't, nothing at all. Miraculously, she had neither drowned crossing rivers nor been devoured by lions or bitten by poisonous snakes. But even as she had drawn within sight of the Morning Mountains, her tide of fortune had turned the other way, for she had been captured by warriors of the Yarkut clan of the eastern Urtuk - the very same clan which had once cut off my uncle, Ramashan's, head and sent it back to Mesh in a basket to show their contempt for all Valari emissaries. The Yarkut had held a fierce debate over what to do with Vareva. Some of their warriors called for her to be held for ransom, while others fought for the right to take her as a concu-bine; a few warriors wanted nothing more than to burn her at the stake and make wagers as to how long it would take her to scream. It was even as she faced these dire circumstances that Abrasax and the other masters, with Bemossed, had also approached Mesh's mountains.

  'Thank you, Sire,' Vareva said as she bowed her head to me. She cast Kane a long, angry look. 'I have suffered enough at the hands of men, but no more. I do not know what would have happened to me if the Brothers, and Bemossed, had not come along.'

  It turned out, too - this is the story as Vareva told it - that Bemossed and the others had walked right into the Yarkut's encampment as if out of a mirage. Bemossed had stunned the Yarkut's headman, Barukurk, by simply asking for Vareva to accompany him and the Seven on their journey. The fierce Yarkut warriors whispered that Bemossed had somehow laid an enchantment on Barukurk. A few of them told of how Barukurk couldn't help staring at Bemossed; he was like a captive, they said, who had been staked out with his eyelids cut off beneath a blazing sun. Barukurk had then stunned everyone by giving Bemossed a ring of gold, and escorting Varveva, the Brothers and Bemossed to the very foot of the mountains.

  'It is a time for miracles,' Vareva said. Then she clasped the hilt of her sword as she turned to bow her head to Kane. 'But I agree with my King's old companion. They will never come to pass unless we can keep the Shining One safe.'

  Abrasax's great head nodded, too. But he did not so much bow in agreement with this as he did look down in defeat. At last he turned to gaze at me. 'I think, then, that you have decided on war, King Valamesh.'

  'War, yes,' I said to him. I looked at the deadly weapon I still held in my hands. I looked down the length of the table at Bemossed, so trusting, so bright and utterly vulnerable. 'But a war of the sword or a war of the spirit, I do not know.'

  After that, we concluded our council. Soon I would have to go back outside with the others to rejoin the festivities. It should have been the greatest day of my life, full of song and celebration. For the first time, however, I felt the great weight of kingship fall upon me
. I gazed at the five bright diamonds set into the ring my father had once worn, and I heard a voice whispering to me that I would yet kill many more men with my sword on the long and seemingly endless road to war.

  Chapter 10

  Early the next morning, with the sun's first rays warming the mountains' white ridgelines to the east, Atara and her sister Manslayers made ready to leave on their journey. I said goodbye to her down by the river behind our encampment. I stood holding her for what seemed an hour, listening to the rushing waters ring against great, smoothed boulders. Finally, she stood back from me and said, 'You have gained what you sought... King Valamesh. I am so proud of you.'

  I looked back at my warriors' thousands of brightly colored tents flapping in the morning breeze. And I said, 'I have gained what I sought, yes. But not what I most wanted.'

  'And what is that, truly?'

  'You know,' I whispered to her. 'You have always known.'

  'And you have always had what you most desired,' she said as she took my hand. 'As you always will.'

  I gripped her warm fingers in mine as I gathered up the courage to say to her: 'I am afraid that I will never see you again.'

  'But you will!' she told me with a smile. Then her face fell beautiful and grave. 'You must. The important question is: will I see you again? Will I, Val?'

  And with that, she kissed my lips with a desperate blaze of passion, as fiery as the rising sun. Then she adjusted her blindfold, grabbed up her bow and mounted her horse. I watched her ride off with the other Manslayers who had come to Mesh to take her away.

  Later, I sent out envoys to each of the other Nine Kingdoms: Ishka, Waas, Kaash, Anjo, Taron, Athar and Lagash. They were to tell the Valari kings that the Maitreya had come forth and that the Valari must at last unite behind this Shining One. I had little hope for the success of their missions. My plea mmst surely fall upon deaf ears, I thought for only two years before I had made a similar argument - with the assertion that I must he the Maitreya.

  By strange chance, even as one of my envoys pounded down the road leading cast toward Kaash, an envoy from that kingdom rode toward the west and found his way into our encampment. Lord Zandru the Hammer seemed astonished to discover that I had returned to Mesh to be acclaimed king only the day before. When I learned the purpose of his visit, I immediately called for a council in my pavilion. I invited to sit at my table the greatest lords in Mesh; Lord Harsha, Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad - Lord Jessu and Lord Manthanu, too. And Lord Noldashan. I did not yet know what place Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar would take in my army, and yet no important strategy could be discussed without them. And so with Lord Eldru and Lord Ramjay, and even with Lord Ramanu, Lord Bahram and Lord Kharashan. The Seven, now only six, I also asked to hear Lord Zandru's tidings. My companions, of course, would not leave my side. As for Bemossed, he had now become the bright star around which all peoples and events on Ea would whirl. I would never allow him to leave my side.

  Lord Zandru, a huge, barrel-chested man with long arms like those of an ape, sat opposite me at the end of the table. He had a face as blunt as the black war hammer emblazoned on his white surcoat. His words, too, for an envoy, were blunt, for he wasted no time getting to the point of his mission, calling out in a deep, almost braying voice: 'King Valamesh, Lords of Mesh - Kaash needs your help!'

  He told us that after two years of threats and feints, King Sandarkan had finally ordered Waas to complete preparations to make war against Kaash. There was to be a battle. Lord Zandru said, for King Talanu Solaru - my mother's eldest brother - would not cede to Waas the Arjan Land taken from Waas generations before. But at that time, Kaash had been strong and Waas weak. Now, as Lord Zandru told us, the Kaashans had lost too many warriors in battles against the Atharians. and so were few while the Waashians were many.

  'King Talanu can probably put the battle off until mid-Marud.' Lord Zandru sold us. 'But it will come to battle, and we will lose. And so we will lose the Arjan Land anyway. But all Kaash's lords and warriors agree with King Talanu on one thing: it is better to lose some dirt and rocks, and a little blood, than our honor.'

  At this, Lord Tomavar rapped his lord's ring upon the edge of the table with a sharp clack as if to command everyone to look at him. It might have been thought that after his defeat the day before, he would have hidden himself inside silence. But as always, he liked to charge into the heart of the battle, whether of swords and spears or words.

  'Lord Zandru!' he called out. 'Not two years ago, Mesh lost more than four thousand warriors because Kaash would not help us -and whole rivers of blood! Why, then, should we help you!'

  'Because,' Lord Avijan said to him in his cool, controlled voice, 'we can. And more, because we should. After King Sandarkan has safeguarded his rear against Kaash, he will be free to ally with the Ishkans and turn against us.'

  'Damn the Ishkans!' Lord Ramjay said.

  'Damn the Waashians, too!' Lord Kharashan called out. 'They killed my boy at the Red Mountain!'

  For a while, as everyone drank cups of chicory coffee and the day deepened toward night, I let these battle-hardened warriors speak their thoughts and debate strategy. I said very little, while my companions said less and the Seven and Bemossed nothing at all.

  Finally, I held up my hand for silence. Everyone looked at me. It was my duty as a king to listen to my counselors and consider their words. But it was also my duty to rule.

  'We cannot know,' I said, 'how the day would have gone at the Culhadosh Commons if the Kaashans had come to our aid. But is there anyone here who wished that they would not have come? As we looked to them, they now look to us, with desperate hope. As they failed us, with good reason, are we to look for better reason and so fail them?'

  Lord Tomavar banged his whole hand against the table as he practically shouted: 'But they did fail us, reason or no, and so I say that we should see to our own -'

  I looked at Lord Tomavar then. As I had in the square outside the day before, I looked deep inside him, and suddenly his face reddened as he fell into a shamed silence.

  'My apologies, Sire,' he said, bowing his head to me. 'When I see a breach in the lines in front of me, I can rush in too quickly.'

  'And so you helped my father win more than one battle,' I told him. Then I nodded at Lord Zandru. 'But the Kaashans, please remember, are not our enemies but our allies. And that is why we shall help them.'

  As Lord Zandru's face brightened, I explained that we would need every ally that we could find for the great struggle soon to come. Every lord at my table bowed his head in acceptance of this.

  'Very well . . . Sire,' Lord Tanu said. His crabby old face seemed to have trouble forcing out this last word. But once he had spoken it, he seemed to accept its reality as he must the changing of summer into autumn. 'We have the warriors already gathered. And so since we have decided upon this campaign, let us march east with all due speed.'

  Lord Harsha sat rubbing his single eye, then sighed out to Lord Tanu, 'Well, speed we might all wish for, but an army doesn't march on air. We've made no plans for such a campaign. We've set in no stores.'

  'How long would it take to gather them?' I asked him.

  'I don't know - a week, maybe more.'

  'And maybe less,' I told him with a smile, 'if Lord Harsha was given the charge of gathering them. Do what you can, old friend. As Lord Tanu has said, we must march like the very wind.'

  I stood up then to adjourn our council. Kane took me aside, and growled in my ear, 'So, we march to Kaash - and Kaash is a hundred leagues that much closer to Galda, eh? Where Morjin still might be!'

  He fell silent as Maram came up to us, too. Then Maram said to me, 'It's finally begun, hasn't it? This is the end, then, the last day of peace I will ever know. Well, Val, then I promise you that I will not fail you and will remain with you until the ugly, bitter end. The very, very end.'

  After that, in the days that followed, there seemed little to do except to go about the countryside buying up beef, pork, barley,
wheat, peas and other provender with which to victualize our army. We had to put in whole mountains of hay for all our hundreds of horses, and find wagons to carry this great mass of supplies. Lord Harsha proved as patient and efficient in finding food as he had been in growing it. On the second day, when I saw that he had much more talent for this task than I, I left it all to him. Then I set myself a task which nearly everyone told me would be impossible.

  'I would meet the men who pledged to you,' I told Lord Tomavar. We stood with my other counselors by the side of the square watching hundreds of warriors drilling at their nightly sword practice. 'And your men, too, Lord Tanu. And yours. Lord Avijan. Every warrior who would march with me, I would learn his name.'

  My father, it was said, had known five thousand warriors by name. And so that evening I retreated to my pavilion while Lords Tomavar, Tanu and Avijan - Lords Kharashan, Ramanu and Bahram, as well - set to organizing the fulfillment of my unusual request. The call came for the warriors to line up outside my tent, and this they hastened to do with a great curiosity and rare enthusiasm. I stood inside ten feet back from my tent's opened flaps as the warriors entered, one by one. The first man to greet, Yarkash the Bold, hailed from Lashku, and had strongly supported Lord Tomavar until a couple of days before. He was a tall, thickly-muscled knight, with a scar nearly splitting his chin in two. He wore his diamond battle armor, and bore a bright sun emblazoned upon his surcoat. I stood with my sword drawn, and he approached me with quick, sure strides. Then he stopped before me, and with a form that we had arranged, he drew his sword and said to me: 'Sire, I am Yarkash Jurmanu, son of Suladar Jurmanu. I pledge my sword to you, in life and in death.'

  I pressed my palm to the flat of his blade, And bowed my head in acceptance of his service. And then I said to him: 'I am Valashu Elahad, son of Shavashar Elahad. And I pledge my sword to you, in life and in death.'

  I held out Alkaladur for him to touch as well. Maram and Master Juwain, looking on, both drew in a quick breath at this, for in all the time that I had kept this sword, I had allowed no one to put his flesh to it - except my enemies, in wounding or death.