Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  'You must know where we march,' I told him, 'and how desperate is our hope of victory.'

  Prince Thubar only smiled at this as if I had suggested to him a particularly challenging game. His hand swept out toward his small army, and he said, 'We are all desperate men - as are all who know what the Red Dragon will do to Delu if you fail.'

  'We must not fail,' I told him. 'But even if we defeat our enemy, will you not find it dangerous to march back down this road again? Will not King Santoval regard your pledge to me as treachery and rebellion?'

  'It is no treachery,' he told me, 'to serve one's lord by fighting that lord's enemy, even if he has foolishly forbidden it. And as for rebellion, if ever my men and I do return home, King Santoval would incite open revolt in trying to punish those who risked their lives for Delu.'

  I nodded my head at this, then smiled. 'All right then - you shall march with the Valari, and let no one say that the Delians are afraid of Morjin!'

  We clasped hands at this, and then invited Prince Thubar to take dinner with my captains and me in my tent. As we made our way back toward the center of our encampment, with its many cooking fires sending up smoke plumes into the sky, Kane took me aside. And he said to me, 'Three thousand foot and half a thousand knights this Delian prince brings us - some will count us fortunate for adding to our army, eh? But how many of them have made secret vows to the Order of the Dragon?'

  'None, we must hope,' I told him. 'I trust Prince Thubar - and his judgment of his men.'

  'Would you stake everything on such trust? If an assassin fell upon you or Bemossed, then . . .'

  He lapsed into silence. His black eyes seemed to gather up the darkness of the falling night.

  'Once,' I said to him, clapping my hand against his shoulder, 'you told me that you were an assassin of assassins. With you by my side, I will have no cause to fear any of Prince Thubar's men. Nor even Morjin's.'

  Kane smiled, showing his long, white teeth. 'Still, it is a chance.'

  'It is,' I agreed. 'But too much caution, now, will be worse than too much audacity.'

  Kane, I sensed, must have agreed with this, for he turned to stare at Prince Thubar's soldiers as if defying any of them to move against me.

  In the morning, we began the march across the eastern range of the Morning Mountains. The white peaks pushing into the sky ahead of us did not rise so high as those of the White or even the Crescent Mountains. Even so, they were steep and rugged, blanketed in thick forests, and the passage through them might have proved arduous if not for the ancients who had built the Nar Road. This band of brick and stone wound through valleys and around the sides of mountains at an easy grade for most of its miles; it spanned gorges and rivers in great, arched bridge, that still stood in good repair after many centuries. It made me wonder at the glories of the past ages; what would it be like, I asked the wind blowing off the glaciers above me, if all roads on Ea could be made as well as this one, and connect every realm to every other in a free passage of people, goods and knowledge?

  For ten days, the men of Mesh, Kaash and Delu and our thousands of horses pounded up the road while our wagons' iron-rimmed wheels ground on and on. Little of Soal's heat found its way into these heights. It rained often, and twice great storms seemed to come out of nowhere and shake the very mountains in lightning flashes and earsplitting cracks of thunder.

  My warriors' spirits held good and true. At night over blazing campfires, Meshians mingled with the Kaashans without quarrel and both armies of Valari welcomed Prince Thubar's Delian soldiers with politeness if not a quick and easy warmth. Too many times in the past, when Delu had been strong, we Valari had had to throw back the invading forces of one ambitious Deilan king or another. Memories could no more easily be expunged than ink set into white paper. Still I thought, new memories could be written. Toward this end, I invited Prince Thubar to sit at my table during our councils, and for my Valari warriors to share food and song with the Delians. I marveled at the capacity of these strangers for feasting and drinking, laughing at crude jokes and weeping at sentimental stories - and then being able to rouse themselves from their beds after staying up half the night throwing dice. Master Juwain reminded me that different peoples practice different ways, and I thought that two peoples could hardly be as different from each other as the Delians and the Valari. The ways of these effusive, sensual men were completely at odds with those of the Morning Mountains, but we would march together with a single purpose - and fight side by side when the time came for battle.

  Just before we reached the frontier to Athar, smallest of the Nine Kingdoms in size if not in deeds, two envoys sent from afar intercepted my army. Many of my men shook their heads in wonder at them, for they were Sarni warriors and women at that: Sonjah and Aieela of the Manslayer society. I had met them once in Mesh nearly two years previously: just before Morjin's armies ravaged my homeland. Now, as then, they had been sent bearing tidings.

  I dismounted and walked with them away from the vanguard through a pasture at the side of the road. Kane came with me, and King Viromar and Prince Thubar - and others. Sonjah, dressed in steel-studded leather and wearing gold bangles about her heavy, naked limbs, seemed as barbaric as any Sarni man. So did Aieela, who was younger and slighter of build, though more fearsome in her aspect, for she glowered at men from out of a scarred face and would not deign to speak to them. Both she and Sonjah wore quivers full of arrows and gripped double-curved bows in their hands. They seemed awkward on foot, away from their horses.

  Sonjah, tall and serious, stood before me and looked me straight in the eye without bowing. As with Liljana, she seemed to have been robbed of the ability to smile.

  'Valashu Elahad,' she said to me. 'King Valamesh, as they call you now - greetings once again. We have ridden a long way to find you.'

  'Greetings,' I told her. 'But how did you find me here? You must have set out on your journey before we turned north and west on ours.'

  Sonjah's blue eyes danced with lights even if her mouth remained as stiff as an old piece of leather. Then she said to me. 'Atara, the imakla one, told that you would be coming up this road on this day. We Manslayers have chosen her Chiefess, She asked us to inform you of this.'

  I inclined my head to acknowledge her service in making such a dangerous journey - for it is always a great chance for a Sarni warrior to brave the lands of the Valari. I did not, however, admit that I already had news of Atara's new honor. I thought it unwise to tell anyone except my friends of Morjin's letter to me.

  'Is Atara well?' I asked.

  'She is well enough.' Sonjah said. 'She recovers from a saber wound gained in battle with the Marituk.'

  I fought to keep my heart from racing and the blood from draining from my face. I said, 'Then are the Manslayers at war with the Marituk?'

  'Not yet. It was a skirmish only. The Marituk test the Manslayers' strength - and that of the Kurmak with whom we have allied.'

  'Brave women,' I said, looking from her to Aieela. 'If you have allied with the Kurmak, then you have pitted yourself against Morjin.'

  At this, Sonjah spat on the ground then shrugged her shoul-ders. 'It had to go one way or the other. Morjin has sent gold to each of the tribes or tried to. He will buy what allies he can, or win them through fear. But some remain unafraid.'

  'The Manslayers,' I said.

  Although Sonjah held her face expressionless, Aieela smiled savagely in her place.

  'We, yes,' Sonjah told me. 'And Sajagax. He is a great warrior and a greater chieftain, perhaps the greatest Sarni since Tulumar - and I thought I would never say such a thing of a Kurmak. I might have hoped that we Urtuk would take the lead against Morjin, but my tribe remains divided, and so the honor falls to Sajagax and all those who would answer his call.'

  'Then his call has been answered?'

  Sonjah strummed her thumb across her bowstring, and nodded her head. 'It has, and the tribes gather to his standard.'

  'Which tribes, then?'

  'S
o far, the Adirii and the Niuriu. We expect the Danladi to ride soon. Perhaps the Urtuk beyond the Poru. And perhaps my people as well.'

  It seemed strange to hear Sonjah speak of the eastern Urtuk this way, for I knew that her first allegiance must lie with the Manslayers and only secondly with the clans and kin of her homeland.

  Lord Tanu, who stood next to me, cast his suspicious old eyes on Sonjah. He had led his warriors in more than one battle with the eastern Urtuk, and was not inclined to trust anyone from this tribe so readily.

  'If the Sarni gather openly against Morjin,' Lord Tanu said, 'then Sajagax invites Morjin to move against him.'

  Sonjah shrugged her shoulders again. 'What must be, must be.'

  'But Sajagax,' I said, 'has no hope of winning such a contest! Most of the Sarni will side with Morjin. And the Red Dragon already marches at the head of an army hundreds of thousands strong.'

  Sonjah pointed at the long line of warriors strung out on the road behind us. 'There march three armies, not so strong in numbers, but they are mostly Valari. And more Valari you will find in the lands through which we have ridden. Atara has spoken of this.'

  Again, I felt my blood rushing through me. 'Has she foreseen an alliance of my people, then?'

  'Who has not foreseen this. King Valamesh? But it is one thing to see it, and another to make it be. This, Atara says, lies in your hands. And in your heart.'

  I stood breathing in the scent of grass as I gazed off across the pasture to the west. I said, 'We will make an alliance - and then we will march across the Nine Kingdoms to where Sajagax and the Sarni gather!'

  My words caused Sonjah finally to smile. Her even, white teeth gleamed in the sunlight as she laughed out, 'Atara told that you would say that. Sajagax, too, has declared that you would not fail him. He has sent the call to every free kingdom in your name.'

  'In my name!' I called out.

  'In the name of King Valamesh. Sajagax knows that the Free Kingdoms will not come to the aid of the Kurmak and their allies, for the sake of Sajagax.'

  'But will they come for my sake?'

  'Sajagax says yes. That once, you nearly forged an alliance of the Free Kingdoms. And that now, if Sajagax believes in you, the free kings and all their peoples will have to, as well.'

  I looked toward the west as the wind blew across my face. Sonjah turned that way, too, and when she gazed upon Bemossed standing in close on the grass nearby, her smile widened.

  'Sajagax also says,' she added, 'that warriors from across the world will come to honor the true Maitreya.'

  I heard the awe in her voice as she said this, and so must have Bemossed. After looking long and deeply at the deadly bow that she held, he walked off by himself farther into the pasture.

  'A great battle we will fight, King Valamesh!' Sonjah said to me. 'You are the rightful Guardian of the Lightstone, and you will cut it from Morjin's hand! And then give it to the Shining One! It is said that the light of the Cup of Heaven will resurrect the dead!'

  I felt sure that Bemossed overheard her speak these words, and that he doubted if the Maitreya, even wielding the Lightstone, could have such power. And that he remained resolved that no one should ever die for his sake, not even in one inevitable and final battle.

  'Where,' I asked Sonjah, 'does Sajagax wait for the Sarni to gather?'

  'Where the Rune River turns south toward the Snake. On the plain beneath the rocks of the Detheshaloon.'

  Upon her pronouncement of this name, something inside me seemed to darken as of a sky during a storm. I felt a whirlwind tear through me and lightning split me open.

  'The Detheshaloon,' I murmured. I gripped hold of my sword to give me strength. I knew then that this must be the place that Atara had seen in her terrible visions.

  'We are to take you there, if you are willing,' Sonjah told me. 'Sajagax will be waiting for you there. And, I hope, Atara.'

  The whole world, I thought, waited for the Valari to march to this killing plain in the middle of the Wendrush. I remembered Alphanderry's warning to me in the wood where the Ahrim had first struck; I thought again of Master Matai's calculation of a great alignment of planets and stars on the eighth of Valte. The whole universe, it seemed, waited upon a single, fiery moment when all time and history would be fulfilled.

  'We are willing,' I told Sonjah, speaking for my captains and my warriors looking on from the road. 'Let us march to this Detheshaloon!'

  At this, Sonjah clasped hold of my hand and smiled at me again. But her sunburnt face held no mirth or humor, only a grim acceptance of what the Sarni allied with Sajagax and the Valari must try to accomplish against the armies of the Red Dragon.

  Chapter 17

  And march we did. Sonjah and Aieela were both glad to turn their steppe ponies around and to ride at the head of our armies west back toward the Wendrush. At a cup-shaped gap between two rounded mountains, later that day, we came to the pass guarding the frontier to Athar. As I had sent envoys ahead to warn King Mohan of my intention to lead my army through his realm, the Atharians stationed at the fortress overlooking the pass took no alarm from my thousands of knights and warriors. Even so, the Atharians seemed loath to let two strange Valari armies and a few battalions from Delu just march across their kingdom, no matter how noble our stated purpose. King Mohan resented our passage much more bitterly, as we discovered four days later.

  Near the eastern reaches of Athar, in a rolling country of green pastures and orchards, King Mohan led the Atharian army forth from Gazu to meet mine coming up the Nar Road. His knights and warriors had donned their diamond armor and their silver ankle bells. He arrayed his cavalry and his battalions of foot in gleaming lines on either side of the road. To continue our journey as we had come, we would have to march straight between thousands of warriors pointing their long spears at us.

  King Mohan sat on top of a white stallion, waiting along with his captains at the road's center. He, too, wore full battle armor, which included a great helm bearing a single black ostrakat plume. His golden surcoat gleamed with a great blue horse; a banner held by one of his knights displayed this emblem as well.

  I rode forward alone to meet with him, as he did me. We stopped with our two horses facing each other across a couple of yards. King Mohan's small, compact body fairly trembled with a barely contained passion for strife. He was a hard man and sharp in his purpose, like a piece of flint chipped into the shape of an arrowhead. A terrible pride deformed his fine and noble features as he stared at me.

  'King Valamesh,' his whiplike voice cracked out without pause for greetings or niceties, 'you have entered my realm without my leave, and that is an act of war.'

  Some men take their measure of other men by the forcefulness with which their foes are willing to oppose even the most casual aggression. King Mohan, I thought, gave his grudging affections only to those who were willing to risk everything by standing up to him.

  'It is an act of war!' I called back to him. I heard his captains behind him and his warriors lined up nearby draw in deep breaths in surprise at my words. 'As you know, we march to war against the Red Dragon and all who follow him. We cannot turn back! We cannot let anyone, not even the Valari's most fearless king, turn us back. And so it would have been dishonest to ask for your leave if we were not willing to accept your refusal. Your blessings, however, we do ask for. And even more, your warriors and their swords.'

  King Mohan gripped his horse's reins in his hard, little hands as he stared at me for a long time. He finally looked away from me, at the thousands of warriors lined up for miles behind me. It would, of course, be just as disastrous for him to provoke a battle here as it would be for me.

  'Any man,' he told me, 'who would go up against the Red Dragon has my blessings, for Morjin is a false king and a crucifier who should be punished for his crimes. I see that now. And so I will let you pass through Athar unhindered. I will give you grain for your army. The swords of my army, though, you may not have, for they are needed elsewhere.'

/>   'No need in all the world, at this time, can be so urgent as defeating Morjin.'

  'That has always been your will.'

  'Not mine alone: it is the will of the world.'

  'So you say. So you have always said, as you have always spoken of the world's fate as if it is your privilege to interpret it for others.'

  'Morjin,' I half-shouted, 'has burned Tria! At this moment he marches down the Nar Road toward the Nine Kingdoms! What is your sword for, and those of your warriors, if not to fight him?'

  'My sword,' he said, laying his hand on the hilt of the kalama strapped to his side, 'is for fighting my enemies. I have many.'

  'No enemy is an enemy like Morjin.'

  'Is Morjin my enemy? Or only yours?'

  'A king might ask that question if he has been given diamonds and gold to deny the truth concerning such an enemy!'

  At this, King Mohan's blood rose, and he drew his sword half an inch from its scabbard. His face knotted in fury as he shouted at me, 'Are you saying that I have taken the Crucifier's bribes?'

  'Have you?'

  'No! And a true king, if he be Valari, would not ask another king such a question!'

  King Mohan trembled on the brink of drawing free his sword. I knew that my anger had driven me to wrong him. And so I told him, 'My apologies, King Mohan. I never thought that you, of all Valari, would accept such a tainted treasure.'

  'You should not think that of any Valari. Not even King Waray would sully himself so. We know, now, who and what Morjin really is.'