My father, I thought, had a fine, strong voice that rang from the stones of the hall.
He fairly shone with strengtrjjioth in the inner steel of his soul and in his large, long hands that could still grip a sword with great ferocity. At fifty-four he was just entering the fullest flower of manhood, for the Valari age more slowly than do other peoples - no one knows why. His long black hair, shot with strands of snowy white, flowed out from beneath a silver crown whose points were set with brilliant white diamonds. Five other diamonds, arrayed into the shape of a star, shimmered from a great, silver ring. It was the ring of a king, and someday Asaru would wear it if no one killed him first.
'And so,'my father continued, 'in the hope of finding the way toward the peace that all desire, we invite you to take salt and bread with us -and perhaps a little meat and ale as well.'
My father smiled as he saigmis, to leaven the stiffness of his formal speech. Then he motioned for the grooms to bring out what he had called a 'little meat' In truth, there were many platters laden with steaming hams andftasted beef, along with elk, venison and other game. There were fowls almost too numerous to count: nicely browned ducks, geese, pheasants and quail - though of course no swans. It seemed that hunters such as Asaru and I had slaughtered whole herds and flocks that day. The grooms served baskets heaped with black barley bread and the softer white breads, aged cheeses, butter, jams, apple pies, honeycomb and pitchers of frothing black beer. There was so much food that the long wooden tables fairly groaned beneath its weight
Although I was very hungry, my belly seemed a knot of acid and pain, and I could hardly ea| And so I picked at my food as I looked out into the hall. Along the walls were tapestries depicting famous battles that my people had fought and many portraits of my ancestors, ine light of hundreds of candles illuminated the faces of Aramesh, Duramesh, and the great Elemesh who had utterly crushed the Sarni mm Battle of the Song River. In their ancient countenances I saw traits that my brothers shared to this day: Yarashan's pride, Karshur's strength, Jonathay's almost unearthly calm and beauty. There was much to admire in these kings, who were a reminder of the debt that we owed to those who give us life.
My brothers seemed all too aware of this debt of blood. Between bites of wild turkey or bread, washed down with drafts of beer, they spoke of their willingness to make war with the Ishkans should it become necessary to fight. They spoke of the causes for this war, too: the killing of the Ishkan crown prince in a duel with my grandfather two generations earlier, and my grandfather's own death at the Battle of the Diamond River. Yarashan, who fancied himself a student of history (although he had studied only lineages and battles), brought up the War of the Two Stars early in the Age of Law in which Mesh and Ishka had taken opposing sides. The Ishkans had fought my ancestors over the possession of the Lightstone; we had badly defeated them at the Raaswash, where their king, Elsu Maruth, had been killed. It was the greatest of ironies, I thought, that this healing vessel had been the source of woe for so long.
' The Ishkans will never forget that battle,' I heard Asaru say to Ravar. 'But in the end, it will all come down to the mountain.'
Everyone, of course, knew of which mountain he spoke: Mount Korukel, one of the great guardian peaks that stood upon the bor-der between Mesh and Ishka just beyond the feeder streams of the Upper Raaswash River. The Ishkans were pressing their old demand that the border of our two kingdoms should exactly bisect Mount Korukel, while we of the swan and stars claimed the whole mountain as Meshian soil.
'But Korukel is ours,' Yarashan said as he used a napkin to neatly wipe the beer from his lips. In his outward form, he was almost as beautiful a man as Jonathay and even prouder than Asaru.
What was half a mile of rock against men's lives, I wondered? Well, if many of those rocks were diamonds, it was a great deal indeed. For the lives of men - the Valari warriors of each of the Nine Kingdoms - had been connected to the fabulous mineral wealth of the Morning Mountains for thousands of years. From their silver we made our emblems and the gleaming rings with which we pledged our lives; from its iron we made our steel. And from the diamonds we found deep underground and sometimes sparkling in the shallows of clear fountain streams, we made our marvelous suits of armor. In the Age of Swords, before the Brotherhoods had broken with the Valari, it had been the Brothers who had learned to work these hardest and most beautiful of stones; they had discovered the secret of affixing them to corslets of black leather and then taught us this art. While it was not true that this diamond-encrusted armor afforded the Valari invulnerability in battle - an arrow or a well-aimed spear thrust could find a chink between the carefully set diamonds - many were the swords that had broken upon it The mere sight of a Valari army marching into battle and glittering in their ranks as if raimented with millions of stars had struck terror into our enemies for most of three long ages. They called us the Diamond Warriors, and said that we could never be defeated by force of arms alone, but only through treachery or the fire of the red gelstei.
And recently a great new vein of diamonds had been discovered running through the heart of Mount Korukel. Naturally, the Ishkans wanted to mine it for themselves.
When the last pie had been eaten and nearly everyone's belly groaned from much more than a little meat, it came time for the rounds of toasting. It would have been more sensible, of course, to hold this drinking fest after discussing the rather serious business that the Alonians and Ishkans had come for. But we Valari honored our traditions, and the end of a meal was the time for paying one's respects to guests and hosts alike.
The first to stand that day was Count Dario. He was a compact man who moved with quick, deft gestures of his arms and hands. He took up a goblet of black beer and presented it toward my father, saying ' To King Shamesh, whose hospitality is overmatched only by his wisdom.' A clamor of approval rang through the hall, but Prince Salmelu, like the swordsman he was, took advantage of the opening that Count Dario had unwittingly presented him. Like an uncaged bear, he stood, stretched and planted his feet wide apart on the floor. He fingered the many colored battle ribbons tied to his long hair with his right hand before resting it on the hilt of his sword. Then with his left hand, he raised his goblet and said, ' To King Shamesh.
May he find the wisdom to do what we all wish for in walking the road toward peace.'
As I touched my lips to my beer, he flashed me a quick, hard look as if testing me with a feint of his sword.
I knew that 1 should have thought of an Immediate rejoinder to his thinly veiled demand. But the maliciousness in his eyes held me to my chair. Instead, it was my usually unimaginative brother, Karshur, who stood and raised his goblet
'To King Shamesh,' he said in a voice that sounded like boulders roll-ing down a mountain. He himself was built like an inverted mountain as if successive slabs of granite had been piled higher and deeper from his thick legs to his massive shoulders and chest. 'May he find the strength to do what he has to do no matter what others may wish.'
As soon as he had returned to his chair, Jonathay stood up beside him. He had all of our mother's beauty and much of her grace as well. He was a fatalistic but cheerful man who liked to play at life, most especially at war - though with skillful and deadly effect. He laughed good-naturedly as if enjoying this duel of words. 'To Queen Elianora, may she always find the patience to endure men's talk of war.'
All at once, from the tables throughout the hall, the many women there raised their goblets as if by a single hand and called out, 'Yes, yes, to Queen Elianora!'
As a nervous laughter spread from table to table, my mother stood and smoothed out the folds of her black gown. Then she smiled kindly. Although she directed her words out into the hall, it seemed that she was speaking right at Salmelu.
'To all our guests this evening,' she said, 'thank you for making such long journeys to honor our home. May the food we've all shared nourish our bodies, and may the good company we bring open our hearts so that we act out of the true courage of compa
ssion rather than fear.'
So saying, she turned to Salmelu and beamed a smile at him. In her bright eyes there was only an open desire for fellowship. But her natural grace seemed to infuriate Salmelu rather than soothe him. He sat deathly still in his chair gripping the hilt of his sword as his face flushed with blood. Although Salmelu had stood sword to naked sword with fifteen men in the ring of honor, he couldn't seem to bear the gentleness of my mother's gaze.
Because it would have been unseemly for him to stand again while others waited to make their toasts, he cast a quick, ferocious look at Lord Nadhru as if to order him to speak in his place. And so Lord Nadhru, a rather angry young man who might have been Salmelu's twin in his insolent nature if not appearance, sprang up from his chair.
'To Queen Elianora,' he said, looking over the rim of his goblet. 'We thank her for reminding us that we must always act with courage, which we promise to do. And we thank her for welcoming us into her house, even as she was once welcomed herself.'
This, I thought, was the Ishkans' way of reminding her that she was as much of an outsider in the castle as they were, and therefore that she had no real right to speak for Mesh. But of course this was just Pure spite on their part. For Elianora wi Solaru, sister of King Talanu of Kaash, had chosen freely to wed my father and not their greedy, old king.
And so it went, toast after toast, both Ishkans and Meshians casting words back and forth as if they were velvet-covered spears. All this time my father sat as still and grave in his chair as any of our ancestors in the portraits lining the walls. Although he kept most of the fire from his eyes, I could feel a whole stew of emotions boiling up inside him: pride, anger, loyalty, outrage, love. One who didn't know him better might have thought that at any moment he might lose his patience and silence his attackers with a burst of kingly thunder. But my father practiced self-restraint as others did wielding their swords. No man, I thought, asked more of himself than he.
In many ways he embodied the Valari ideal of flowingness, flawlessness and fearlessness. As I, too, struggled to keep my silence, he suddenly looked at me as if say, 'Never! let the enemy know what you're thinking.'
I believe that my father might have allowed this part of the feast to continue half the night so that he might better have a chance to study the Ishkans - and his own countrymen and sons. But the toasting came to a sudden and unexpected end, from a most unexpected source.
'My lords and ladies!' a strong voice suddenly bellowed out from below our table, ' I would like to propose a toast.'
I turned just in time to see Maram push back his chair and stand away from the Brothers' table. How Maram had acquired a goblet full of beer in plain sight of his masters was a mystery. And clearly it was not his first glass either, for he used his fat, beer-stained fingers to wipe the dried froth from his mustache as he wobbled on his feet. And then he raised his goblet, spilling even more beer on his stained tunic.
' To Lord Harsha,' he said, nodding toward his table. 'May we all thank him for providing this wonderful drink tonight.'
That was a toast everyone could gladly drink to; all at once hundreds of goblets, both of glass and silver steel, clinked together, and a grateful laughter pealed out into the room. I looked across the hall as Lord Harsha shifted about in his chair.
Although he was plainly embarrassed to have been singled out for his generosity, he smiled at Maram all the same. If Maram had left well enough alone and sat back down, he might even have gained Lord Harsha's favor. But Maram, it seemed could never leave anything alone.
'And now I would like to drink to love and beautiful women,' he said. He turned to Behira, fairly drinking in the sight of her as if the sensibilities of the hundreds of people looking on didn't matter. 'Ah, the love of beautiful women - it's what makes the world turn and the stars shine, is it not?'
Master Juwain looked up at Maram but Maram ignored his icy stare.
'It's to the most beautiful woman in the world that I would now like to dedicate this poem, whose words came into my mind like flowers opening the first moment I saw her.'
He raised his goblet toward Behira. Forgetting that he was supposed to wait until after the toast before drinking, he took a huge gulp of beer and all the while, Behira sat next to her father flushing with embarrassment. But it was clear that Maram's attentions delighted her, for she smiled back at him, glowing with an almost tangible heat.
'Brother Maram,' Lord Harsha suddenly called out in his gravelly old voice, 'this isn't the place for your poetry.'
But Maram ignored him, too, and began his poem:
Star of my soul, how you shimmer
Beyond the deep blue sky,
Whirling and whirling - you and I whisperlessly Spinning sparks of joy into the night.
I stared at the rings glittering from Maram's fingers and the passion pouring from his eyes. The words of his poem outraged me. For it wasn't really his poem at all; he had stolen the verse of the great but forgotten Amun Amaduk and was passing it off as his own.
Lord Harsha pushed back his chair and called out even more strongly, 'Brother Maram!'
Maram would have done well to heed the warning in Lord Harsha's voice. But by this time he was drunk on his own words (or rather Amun's), and with childlike abandon began the second stanza of the poem:
From long ago we came across the universe:
Lost rays of light, we fell among strange new flowers And searched in fields and forests
Until we found each other and remembered.
Now Lord Harsha, gritting his teeth against the pain of his broken knee suddenly rose to his feet. With surprising speed, he began advanc-ing down the row of tables straight at Maram. And still Maram continuedreciting his poem: Soul of my soul, for how few moments
Were we together on this wandering earth
In the magic of our love
Burning in the eyelight, breathing as one?
Suddenly, with a sound of fury in his throat,- Lord Harsha drew his sword. Its polished steel pointed straight at Maram, who finally closed his mouth as it occured to him that he has gone too far. And Lord Harsha, I was afraid, had gone too far to stop, too. Almost without thinking, I leaped up from my chair, crossed the dais, and jumped down to the lower level of the guests' tables. My boots hit the cold stone with a loud slap. Then I stepped in front of Maram just as Lord Harsha closed the distance between them and pointed the tip of his sword at my heart.
'Lord Harsha,' I said, 'will you please excuse my friend? He's obviously had too much of your fine beer.'
Lord Harsha's sword lowered perhaps half an inch. I felt his hot breath steaming out of his nostrils. I was afraid that at any moment he might try to get at Maram by pushing his sword through me. Then he growled out, 'Well, then he should remember his vows, shouldn't he? Particularly his vow to renounce women!'
Behind me, I heard Maram clear his throat as if to argue with Lord Harsha. And then my father, the king, finally spoke.
'Lord Harsha, would you please put down your sword? As a favor to me.'
If Maram had been Valari then there would have been a death that night, for he would have had to answer Lord Harsha's challenge with steel. But Maram was only a Delian and a Brother at that. Because no one could reasonably expect a Brother to fight a duel with a Valari lord, there was yet hope.
Lord Harsha took a deep breath and then another. I felt the heat of his blood begin to cool. Then he nodded his head in a quick bow to my father and said, 'Sire, as a favor to you, it would be my pleasure.' Almost as suddenly as he had drawn his sword, he slipped it back into his sheath. When the king asked you to put down your sword -or take it up - there was no choice but to honor his request. ' Thank you,' my father called out to him, 'for your restraint.' ' Thank you,' I whispered to him, 'for sparing my friend.' Then I turned to look at Maram as I laid my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down into his chair. From the nearby table of Valari masters and their ladies, I swept up two goblets of beer and gave one to Lord Harsha.
/> 'To brotherhood among men,' I said, raising my goblet. I looked from my family's table to that of Master Juwain, and then back across the room to the table of the Ishkans. 'In the end, all men are brothers.' I listened with great hope as echoes of approval rang out to the clinking of many glasses. And then Maram, my stubborn, irrepressible friend, looked up at my father and said, 'Ah, King Shamesh - I suppose this isn't the best time to finish my poem?'
My father ignored him. ' The time for making toasts is at an end. Lord Harsha, would you please take your seat so that we might move on to more important matters?'
Again Lord Harsha bowed, and he walked slowly back through the rows of tables to his chair. He sat down next to his greatly relieved daughter, whom he looked at sternly but with an obvious love. And then a silence fell over the room as all eyes turned toward my father.
'We have before us tonight the emissaries of two kings,' he said, nodding his head at Salmelu and then Count Dario. 'And two requests will be made of us here tonight; we should listen well to both and neither let our hearts shout down the wisdom of our heads nor our heads mock what our hearts know to be true. Why don't we have Prince Salmelu speak first, for it may be that in deciding upon his request, the answer to Count Dario's will become obvious.'
Without smiling, he then nodded at Salmelu, who eagerly sprang to his feet.
'King Shamesh,' he said in voice that snapped out like a whip, 'the request of King Hadaru is simple: that the border of our kingdoms be clearly established according to the agreement of our ancestors. Either that, or the king asks that we set a time and place for battle.'
So, I thought, the ultimatum that we had all been awaiting had finally been set before us. I felt the hands of three hundred Meshian warriors almost aching to grip the hilts of their swords.
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