Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  'Now is the time,' Abrasax added, moving closer to Maram. 'You must not let the currents get caught up in that overly-worked second chakra of yours.'

  Maram rested his hand just above his belt: the very place in his body from which he had summoned those fires that had too often gotten him into trouble. Then I remembered lines from a verse that he had composed:

  But 'low the belly burns sweet fire,

  The sweetest way to slake desire.

  In clasp of woman, warmth of wine

  A honeyed bliss and true divine.

  I am a second chakra man;

  I take my pleasure where I can;

  At tavern, table or divan –

  I am a second chakra man.

  'This is surely a day,' Abrasax told him, 'for opening all your chakras. And we shall help you.'

  As at the Brotherhood's school, the Seven positioned themselves around Maram. With Master Okuth dead, Abrasax asked Master Juwain to stand in his place. He gave him Master Okuth's old gelstei: the emerald crystal that was one of the seven Great Gelstei. Each of the other Masters held one of these ancient stones toward Maram.

  What followed was no exercise or mere discipline designed toward the perfection of Maram's body and being. The whole world, it seemed, depended on what now transpired. I watched as the various gelstei came alive in the Seven's hands; their radiating colors, I imagined, found a perfect resonance inside each of Maram's chakras. I wondered if Abrasax could perceive a river of light, like a rainbow, flowing inside him? Whatever invisible fires filled Maram, the flames that suddenly erupted from his red crystal split the air for all to see. The heat of this lightning burned the very rain into steam.

  'It flares!' Daj cried out, pointing at Maram. He kept back from Maram with Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and others. 'As it did when Maram scorched the dragon, it flares!'

  The thousands of warriors held up back around the curve of the mountain must have wondered at these unexpected fireworks.

  'All right then!' Maram cried out. 'Stand back! Stand back, I say!'

  He, himself, could not heed his own warning. He planted himself at the edge of the shelf, gripping his firestone in both hands as if holding on for his life. His crystal brightened to an almost blinding crimson color as fire continued to pour out of its point in what seemed a dense and incredibly hot stream. Maram directed it against the mass of the rockslide. Mud and stones, in nearly an instant melted and ran down the slopes in a glowing orange lava. The water in the ground heated into steam and exploded up into the air like a boiling fountain. It carried with it tons of hot grit and ash, which the wind and rain washed back upon us. All standing upon the shelf soon found themselves coated with this grime. The very earth seemed to hiss, crack and scream as Maram directed his terrible fire at it.

  So thick did the cloud of ash and steam grow that he had to cease his efforts occasionally to let it subside - else we would all have choked to death. And Maram would not have been able to see where to lay his flames. Three times these flames nearly got out of control and threatened to consume us all in an explosion that might have sundered the very mountain. Such, the ancients warned, was the power of the firestones. But all the while that Maram swept his red crystal back and forth along the mountain's slope, Kane stood by him holding in his hand his dark crystal. It damped the worst of the firestone's burning light and kept it under control. For just such a purpose, as Kane had told us, the ancients had fabricated the black gelstei.

  At last, after some hours, Maram lowered his red stone and looked out upon his work. After the rain had swept the air clean, we could all see the channel he had cut along the mountain's side. It seemed a path made of solid rock.

  'Behold!' Maram's voice boomed out like thunder. 'Behold and rejoice: Sar Maram's Passage!'

  He seemed well-pleased to name his creation, and even more pleased with himself. We all rejoiced then, as he had suggested. We gave thanks, too, for the driving rain, which sizzled off the hot rock along Maram's newly-made track, even as it cooled it enough so that men could move down it without burning their feet.

  So it was that Maram cleared the way for our army to continue on around Mount Ihsan and come out behind the Waashians at the Rajabash - if only we could now drive ourselves to march quickly enough.

  Chapter 13

  It is impossible for a man, burdened by more than fifty pounds of armor, weapons, clothing, water and food, to run more than a short distance. Even so, I pressed my warriors to such a fast walk that others might have called it a run. For all the rest of that day, I led my army around the slopes of Mount Ihsan. We had some good luck when the rain stopped in the late afternoon. We must have covered ten miles of some of the Morning Mountains' most rugged terrain by the time dusk fell upon the world. When we came out into the forested hills northwest of Harban, we were all so exhausted we were ready to crawl off beneath the trees and drop onto the bracken. But we could not sleep just yet. The Kaashan and Waashian armies would meet on the battlefield early the next morning, and we still had another fifteen miles to march in order to reach it.

  The track that we had been following, as Lord Zandru told us, found its end in Harban. From there, a good road led down along the Rajabash to the proposed battlefield. But we could not set out on this route, for surely King Sandarkan would have left warriors behind in Harban to secure his rear. Therefore we needed to march cross-country - and now at night.

  Lord Zandru found a woodcutter who knew of a track that would take us a good way through the forest toward the battlefield. When the moon and stars came out, we had just enough light to make our way through the ghostly trees. Lord Zandru, after dropping back to observe the heavy motions of Lord Tanu's and Lord Tomavar's warriors as they trudged along, said to me, 'Your men are already spent, and even if you come to the battlefield in time, they won't be able to fight.'

  'They won't have to fight,' I told him. 'But only appear ready to fight.'

  Lord Avijan, hearing this as we rode along through the starlit trees, turned to Maram and said, 'If the warriors cannot lift their shields and work their spears, then you can strike down our enemy with that sorcerer's stone of yours.'

  'Could I?' Maram asked, taking out his firestone and holding it up to the thin light sifting down through the crowns of the trees. 'Ah, I suppose I could. But I won't You see, I've taken a vow never again to burn men with its fire.'

  I commanded my army to halt only once that night, for a break of half an hour. It was a dangerous thing to do, for it seemed that no one could remain awake to rouse the others when the time came I no one, that is, except Kane. I wondered for the thousandth time at his inexhaustible vitality. He seemed no more tired by our mountain's passage than he would have been after a walk in the woods.

  Just after dawn, we came out into the pastureland along the Rajabash, below Harban but to the north of the battlefield. Now that we marched in the open, I commanded Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar to keep a tight formation and to be ready to deploy from columns into lines at a moment's notice. We hurried across the rolling, grassy ground full of sheep and cattle. I sent outriders ahead of us. King Sandarkan's scouts would probably spot them, as they surely would our thousands of warriors before we drew up close enough to fall upon the Waashians' rear. But by then it would be too late.

  I led my army's vanguard down along the Rajabash River, gleaming an icy blue off to our left. Our hundreds of horses churned up the dew-damp grass. Behind them marched Lord Tomavar's and Lord Tanu's warriors, now wearing their ankle bells again. The tinkling of silver spilled out into the cool morning air.

  At last, I urged Altaru up and over a hummock, and saw the battlefield spread out below us. About two miles away, King Talanu had drawn up his army into glittering lines that stretched from the Rajabash across the pasturage, where he had anchored them against a wooded hill. A half mile closer to us gathered the Waashians. Their diamond armor gleamed as brilliantly as did that of the Kaashans and my own warriors. But King Sandarkan had arrayed them in an u
nusual and desperate formation: as a huge, open square, fronted by perhaps three thousand foot and as many on each of the other three sides. He had posted cavalry on each point of the square, and the most forward of these knights faced the Kaashans while those in the rear had their lances pointed toward us. In short order, I saw to it that my army deployed as did the Kaashans, from the river in the east to the hills in the west. I rode with the vanguard to the right, pressed almost up against the hills; the rear guard took up its post to protect my army's left flank along the river. Then we advanced. Our drummers beat their great war drums and added to the thunder that the Kaashans' made; the jangle of thousands of silver bells spread out across the valley. Our warhorses, eager for battle, let out terrible whinnies. Yard by yard we moved down the meadow closer to the Waashians. In truth, we closed in upon them like a jaw of diamond and steel that would soon tear into them and grind them against the Kaashans' lines.

  The battle, however, never took place. King Sandarkan now held an impossible position; his army's square formation gave evidence that his outriders had indeed warned him of our approach - but too late for him to retreat. And now, when he beheld my men's numbers, he must have realized that it would be hopeless to fight. As I had intended as far back as Mesh, he would have no choice but to surrender and ask for terms. If he did not, he and his entire army would be annihilated.

  It did not take long for him to send out a herald holding up a white banner of truce. I saw another such gallop out toward the Kaashans' lines. 1 halted my men to receive the herald. We spoke for a few moments, and then I sent him back to his king - and sent one of my own to King Talanu, as he did to me. In this way, with heralds racing back and forth across the battlefield, we arranged a parley of the three kings and their captains down by the river.

  I asked Lords Avijan, Sharad, Tanu and Tomavar to come with me, as well as Kane and my other friends. I asked Bemossed and the Seven, too. And, of course, Lord Zandru. It would be an unusual company for such a meeting, but these were unusual times.

  King Talanu ordered a great canopy set up above the banks of the raging Rajabash and three chairs placed beneath it in the shade of the sun. I watched him ride out from his lines toward this meeting place. My uncle was now an old man - almost too old to hold a horse's reins and wield a sword, let alone command an army. Despite the pains of his joints and old wounds, however, he held himself proud and straight as if he would let nothing in the world bend him. He was thick through the shoulders and chest as my brother Karshur had been, and I had never known a man with such large, strong hands - except, perhaps, for Sajagax. Nineteen brightly-colored battle ribbons festooned his shining white hair, and I knew of no other warrior in the Morning Mountains who sported so many. Over his diamond armor, he wore a bright blue surcoat showing the white tiger of Kaash.

  'Greetings, nephew!' he called out as our horses drew closer to each other. 'Welcome and bless you, honored King Valamesh!'

  I dismounted and would have helped him do the same if he hadn't waved me off. I could feel a sharp stabbing pain in his shoulder, elbow and crippled right foot as he struggled down from his horse. Two men - Prince Viromar and Lord Yarwan - hovered near him, but he eschewed their attentions. With difficulty he walked over beneath the canopy and sat down in the middle chair. He beckoned for me to take the one to his right.

  'This is a great day,' he said to me. 'Perhaps the greatest in Kaashan history since Kaash and Mesh threw back the invasion from Delu a thousand years ago.'

  At the time he spoke of, Delu had been nearly the strongest Kingdom on Ea instead of one of the weakest. In fact, it had been one of Maram's own ancestors, King Kasturn, who had led Delu to her age of ascendence. Maram seemed to take an uneasy pride in this, for he hung back behind me with my captains and other friends, and he gazed at King Talanu with conflicting emotions lighting up his face.

  'I have things to tell you before King Sandarkan arrives,; King Talanu said in his straightforward way. 'First, I regret with all my heart not marching to Mesh when your father called for us to come. I did not think we could arrive in time - and we couldn't have, as events proved. But more, King Sandarkan made maneuvers against Kaash, and I felt that I couldn't let him ravage my kingdom. I was wrong. No Valari, not even King Sandarkan, would commit the atrocities that Morjin did against Mesh. It took the torture of my own sister and too many of your countrymen for me to see that Morjin is our true enemy. Even though I knew it, in my heart, I was afraid to fight him.'

  Here he placed his great, scarred hand across his chest and looked at me. And his captains, standing behind him nearer the river, looked at him with the poignant reverence they held for their old king.

  'Anyone who knows the Red Dragon,' I said to my uncle, 'is afraid to fight him. But what other choice do we have?'

  'What choice, indeed? At least we won't have to fight the Waashians, though I must tell you that many of my knights looked forward to washing their swords in our enemy's blood.'

  Behind me I could almost feel my other uncle, Prince Viromar, directing his rancor toward the Waashians in their diamond block out in the middle of the field, and so it was with my cousin, Lord Yarwan, a bold-looking man with a great hawk's nose and a bloody eye for vengeance. And with several other of the Kaashan lords standing there, too. All of us, I thought, waited to see how long it would take King Sandarkan to force himself to ride out and face his defeat.

  'But it is best to avoid bloodshed, as I have always said,' King Talanu told me. He shifted about in his chair the better to look into my eyes. 'When Lord Yulsua's messenger arrived to tell us that you were coming, we all rejoiced, for victory seemed at hand. But I must tell you that when your Lord Harsha confirmed that you had taken the route around the mountain, many despaired.'

  Lord Harsha, standing off to my right as he conferred with Lord Tanu, bowed his head to me as if to inform me that our baggage train had arrived safely behind the Kaashans' lines.

  'We nearly despaired as well,' I said to him. Then I told him something of our journey and Maram's great feat in cutting a way across Mount Ihsan's slope.

  'A great feat, indeed,; King Talanu said. 'And I mean the whole of your march: it will go down as one of history's great ones. As will this victory today. What you have done is both brilliant and bold.'

  I bowed my head to him, and looked at Maram, Master Juwain, Master Storr and Abrasax. 'I have had great help from great companions,'

  Then I turned to gaze off down by the river, where Kane stood talking to one of the men who had ridden out with King Talanu from the Kaashans' lines. This stranger wore a stained traveling cloak instead of diamond armor, and was too short and thick to be a Valari. Although I could not get a good look at his face, he seemed familiar to me.

  'Ah, at last!' Maram's voice boomed out as he pointed toward the Waashians' army. 'He comes!'

  From between the warriors forming one wall of the Waashians' square, a short column of knights rode out across the field. A herald flying the white banner of truce kept pace with another holding up King Sandarkan's standard: two crossed silver swords against a black field. King Sandarkan, a tall reedy man, wore a black surcoat emblazoned with the same charge. Three of his captains - Lords Telsar, Rayadan and Araj - followed behind him. King Sandarkan led them straight up to our canopy, where he dismounted and sat down on the chair to King Talanu's left.

  My uncle spent only the barest moments dispensing with the formal politenesses. He greeted King Sandarkan, as did I, and he asked after the health of King Sandarkan's family. Then he barked out at him in his gruff, old voice: 'Are we agreed that you have come to surrender?'

  King Sandarkan's thin face tightened with such tension that it seemed his skin collapsed around his bones. And then he gritted his teeth and forced out, 'I am here to offer my army's surrender.'

  'Good. Then let us agree upon the terms.'

  'Let us agree,' King Sandarkan said, in his dry, raspy voice, 'but I can tell you that I will never ask my warriors to surrender their
swords or their armor.'

  'That has not been asked, and may not be. But you must know that you are in no position to insist on the point.'

  'My army,' King Sandarkan said, pointing out into the field, 'still holds position. And we will fight to the death before giving up our swords.'

  'We are met here so that we might avoid needless deaths. But since you have made your surrender, you must know that you must give up something.'

  'What is it you want, then?'

  'First,' King Talanu said, holding up a blunt finger, 'that Waas pay Kaash a weight of diamonds to compensate for the expense of my kingdom being threatened and having to prepare for battle these last two years.'

  'How great a weight?'

  'A bushel of bluestars. Or three hundred bushels of armor-grade whites.'

  'Very well, then.'

  King Talanu pulled at one of the ribbons tied to his long white hair as he studied King Sandarkan. He said, 'Second: You will agree to make common cause with Kaash if there should be war between Kaash and Athar. Eight thousand warriors you will agree to lead to Kaash's defense.'

  'Very well - Athar is Waas's enemy, too.'

  'Third,' King Talanu said, 'you will recognize Kaash's reclaiming of the Arjan Land. You will sign a paper stating that the Arjan Land is to belong to Kaash until the end of the world - or until the Star People return to earth.'

  Now King Sandarkan hesitated. His long, predatory face fairly trembled with old grievances and desires. He shouted out: 'But the Arjan Land is ours! My own ancestors shed their blood so that -'

  'This term,' King Talanu said, cutting him off, 'is not subject to dispute. Every warrior you have led onto the field today will shed his blood if Waas's king does not agree to it.'