Liljana set out before us yellow rushk cakes with honey and muffins made of fine white flour. She had roasted three kinds of meat: some little steppe chickens and a tenderloin of sagosk and a whole ham that she had reserved just for this night. She had also used a few jars of strawberry preserves to bake some pies. Daj loved strawberries, and so did Maram.
‘I made a blackberry tart, too, for Kane,’ she told us. ‘If he ever arrives.’
‘Ah, well,’ Maram said, ‘he probably had business elsewhere.’
‘He has had all day to take counsel with captains and kings. But what could be more important than spending this evening with his friends? If Val and Atara can come to dinner on time, why can’t Kane?’
For a long moment, I stood staring across the table at Atara. Then I looked at Liljana and said, ‘Not two hours ago, fifty men rode into camp. They had escaped out of Alonia, and I’m sure they are of the Black Brotherhood – and maybe the last. A man named Idris led them. He said that he would speak only with Kane.’
Liljana let her irritation radiate out of her like heat from one of her frying pans. ‘Well, if that is true, then Kane should speak with him later. There will be time enough for dealing with spies after we’ve eaten. It would be a shame for Kane to let all this food go to waste.’
I looked at the feast spread out on the council table. ‘Kane said that if he came late, we should begin without him.’
‘Well, perhaps we should. Since he is absorbed in such urgent matters.’
Liljana then bade us all to sit down, and this we did. It was good to share such a meal on such a night with good friends. Maram, of course, ate with great appetite, as did Daj and Alphanderry, to say nothing of Ymiru, and their eager consumption of the dishes that Liljana had set before us pleased her greatly. Abrasax and the other masters showed more restraint, according to their way, and they would not overfill themselves. Abrasax said that soon the Seven must retire to prepare themselves for the next morning, and they could not let indulgence in food clog their bellies and brains. As for me, I could scarcely eat. I kept gazing across the table at Atara. I could feel her concentrating all her desire upon me instead of her dinner. Never, I thought, had I seen her look so beautiful – and yet so sad. I had only to glance at her to feel the wildest of hope burning through me and the most desperate of despair, too.
Our anguish must have communicated itself to Bemossed. All during dinner, he hardly put more than a crust of bread into his mouth. He drank none of the black Sarni beer that Liljana poured into our cups. I felt something inside him growing tighter and tighter, like a bow bent too far and about to snap. Even so, he would not let any distress interfere with the enjoyment of our company. He tried to smile as often as he could, especially at Estrella, with whom he had always shared a silent understanding. He watched as Atara sat with her hands folded across her belly, and her great joy of life became his. He seemed to find some singular essence within each of us and to savor it the way another man might the richness of a sagosk steak or the sweetness of honey.
Maram, who must have sensed the terrible sorrow welling up out of Bemossed, finally pushed a cup of beer at him and said, ‘You’ll find that your food slides down more easily if you first lubricate your throat with a little of this.’
To please Maram, I thought, Bemossed took a sip from his cup and then ate a bite out of a muffin. But he said nothing.
Almost immediately, Master Juwain spoke out to Maram in order to fill up the silence: ‘And you’ll find that too much beer encourages stuffing yourself like a pig.’
‘So what if it does?’ Maram countered. ‘I’m only fortifying myself for tomorrow. And as for beer, truly, I’ve had only a little.’
‘You’ve had three cups worth,’ Atara put in.
I stared at the clean white cloth encircling her face. Despite her blindness and preoccupation with me, she could be the most observant of women.
‘Three small cups, to a man such as I,’ Maram said, ‘is like three drops to another’
‘Hmmphh – you overestimate your resistance to this drink. Just as you underestimate the importance of your resisting.’
‘Well,’ Maram said, pulling at his beard as he studied her, ‘resistance can be a difficult thing, can’t it?’
I felt Atara suddenly soften within the cloud of silence that came over her. She sat as if staring straight at me.
‘And as for importance,’ Maram added, ‘I’m no more needed here than anyone else so foolish as to have come so far to face an army of half a million men.’
Atara slowly shook her head at this. ‘But you are, Maram. I should tell you that a great, great deal will depend on you tomorrow.’
‘Upon me? What, then? What do you possibly think I can do against so many? And what have you seen in your scryer’s crystal that you should tell me?’
Atara, however, would say no more, and Maram knew her well enough not to press her in this matter. Instead, he rapped his double-diamond ring against his cup and said, ‘All right, then – I will drink no more beer tonight. And not another drop, I swear, until Morjin is defeated.’
Liljana looked at him curiously then, and she stood up to begin setting fresh cups onto the table. When she had finished, she brought out a bottle of wine and told us: ‘King Waray sent this over earlier, with his compliments. It is Galdan, and should go well with our dessert.’
As Estrella began cutting one of the pies and serving us, Liljana uncorked the bottle. Maram, sitting across the table from where Liljana stood, held out his cup so that she might fill it more easily, or so he said.
‘No,’ she told him, ‘you’ve just promised to forgo spirits.’
‘I promised to forgo beer only – not wine, and a special vintage at that.’
‘Would you drink before Val does?’ she scolded him. She moved over to me and poured a stream of the dark red wine into my cup. ‘This is a gift from one king to another, and you should count yourself fortunate to share in it.’
Liljana made no move to fill Maram’s cup – or anyone else’s. She stood watching me as if she wished me to praise her for acquiring the wine for what might be our last meal together. She waited for me to sip from my cup and indicate that the wine was good.
I reached out to lift up the cup. Just then I heard the hoofbeats of a horse pounding against the turf outside the tent. A moment later, Kane rushed in. He looked from my hand to Liljana, standing above me gripping the bottle of wine, and then quickly back at me. And he shouted out: ‘Don’t drink that – it is poisoned!’
Liljana stared at him as if she didn’t want to believe what she had just heard. So did Master Juwain, and so did I.
‘Poisoned!’ I called back to him. ‘But King Waray sent us this wine! He would not have come so far with his whole army just to poison me!’
‘Unless,’ Maram observed, ‘he wished to replace you at the last moment as warlord.’
‘No,’ I said, looking down into the dark wine, ‘no Valari king would ever poison another.’
Even as I said this, I remembered Salmelu Aradar, who had born the son a king.
‘So, maybe no Valari would,’ Kane growled out. He stepped closer to me, and the fury filling his thick body made me think of a tiger ready to kill. ‘But I did not say that the poisoner was Valari. Who knows more about poison than she who trained to detect such filthy things, eh?’
He fixed his savage gaze upon Liljana, once King Kiritan’s food taster, who had saved him from more than one poisoned meal. The force of Kane’s blood pulsing through his throat impelled me to jump up and grab hold of him.
‘You are speaking of Liljana!’ I told him. ‘How can you say this of her? She has been a good friend to you, and like a mother to me!’
‘She is first the Materix of the Maitriche Telu!’ Kane said. ‘Those women would sacrifice their own sons and daughters to make what they will of the world.’
He told us then what he had learned from Idris, who had ridden from Tria with the knights of the Black
Brotherhood to deliver this news: that the scryers of the Maitriche Telu had prophesied that Valashu Elahad would be the one to lead Ea into a new age. The Maitriche Telu hoped that this would be the Age of the Mother reborn, and so when I first came to Tria on the quest to recover the Lightstone, Liljana had attached herself to me in order to help nurture, guide and protect me. But because the Maitriche Telu also feared that the coming times might see a new Age of the Sword, or worse, the very destruction of the earth, Liljana stood ready to murder me should I prove to be the long-dreaded King of Swords.
‘So,’ Kane said to me, looking down where I had rested Alkaladur against the side of the table, ‘you have proved that in summoning the Valari armies here and making yourself warlord. And in much else.’
His logic, however, failed to persuade Master Juwain. Although the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood had long been estranged, Master Juwain did not want to think such ill of Liljana, for he said to Kane: ‘If Liljana wished Val dead, then she might have made him so a thousand times these past years. Why should she wait until now to poison him?’
‘Because,’ Kane said, ‘it took her time to determine that Val must be the king her Sisterhood has feared. And because at no other moment would his death wreak such havoc. Think, Juwain! The Valari kings would renew their old quarrels, and fall at each other’s throats. Perhaps they’d even draw swords against each other here on this field, eh? Sajagax would then be forced to try to take command, but the Valari would never yield to him. Never! Instead of one army facing Morjin, there would be ten. They’d be like fingers clawing about with no head to guide them. And so Morjin would cut one away from another, and destroy them – utterly.’
As he glared at Liljana, she glared right back at him with resentment, anger and a great sadness filling up her soft, round face. And then Atara pulled herself away from visions of the future to the tragedy of the present moment. In a cold, commanding voice, she called out to Kane: ‘Put away your doubts – Liljana is no poisoner! How could you think that she would want Morjin to triumph?’
‘So, how could I?’ he snarled at her. Then he whipped about to face Liljana. ‘How could you want that, eh, witch? This is how, I say: what Morjin would bring to the world is not what the Maitriche Telu has schemed for ten thousand years to make be. Not nearly. But it would be better than Ea’s utter destruction in war. There would be a kind of peace, eh? All men and women would be slaves, or worse, Morjin’s ghuls. Almost all. Your sisters would still try to work their plots and poisons in secret. They’d try to wait – another ten thousand years, if they had to. They’d wait and wait and wait, and someday they’d hope to murder Morjin and make the world their own.’
I stared at Kane, horrified by his terrible words, and so it was with Maram, Ymiru, Master Juwain and Abrasax. Bemossed seemed frozen within a vast silence. I sensed Estrella wanting to weep in outrage and hurt at Kane’s attacking Liljana.
And then Kane continued his diatribe: ‘You must think Morjin is a fool, eh? A man, who can be twisted about and won to your ways, like other men. Fool, you! You’ve deceived yourself, Liljana. You’ve looked into Morjin’s mind once too often, and so he has deceived you. So. So – he’s put his filthy poison in your mind, eh? How long have you been his ghul? Long enough, I say, to have betrayed us already. It was you, wasn’t it, who gave away the Brotherhood’s school? And not by mistake, but of your own will? And now you would murder Val. But that will never be.’
He moved to break free from my grip on him, and to draw his sword. But I clamped my hands on him with greater force, even as Liljana calmly picked up my cup and took a drink from it.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said to Kane. ‘So very wrong – there is no poison in this wine.’
Maram watched her as if waiting for her muscles to seize up and her face to turn blue as she choked and died. But she just stood there breathing deeply and glaring at Kane.
And then he shouted: ‘It is poisoned, I say! You would have prepared the antidote and taken it, against just such a moment as this!’
Liljana shook her head with great sorrow. Then she turned to me and said, ‘Kane’s spy told truly about the prophecy concerning the King of Swords. And you are he – I am certain of this. But even if I knew that you would bring ten million years of war to the world, how could I ever poison you? How could I hope to see a new Age of the Mother if I must bring it in by murdering the man who is like my own son?’
Through the tears filling her large brown eyes I felt her love for me like a burst of warm sunlight. I let go of Kane’s arm, and reached out to take the cup from her. Before Kane could stop me, I drank from it deeply, down to the last drop of wine.
‘It is not poisoned!’ I said to Kane. I felt the wine, sweet and good, warming my insides. ‘Come, forget what has happened! Sit with us and eat. Liljana has only wanted to make us the best meal that she could.’
Liljana fought hard not to break out weeping openly. And Kane waged a much deeper war within himself, for he stood there grinding his jaws together as the tendons popped out on his neck. A dark light blazed through his eyes. He seemed like a mountain about to crack open and to touch the whole earth with his fire.
Then Bemossed stood up and came over to him. I looked on in amazement, for it seemed that he held in his hand a small golden cup. It caught the light of the candles in a soft shimmer. Bemossed gazed at Kane as he touched the fingers of his other hand to the side of Kane’s head. Almost immediately, the agony tearing through Kane seemed to drain away. His eyes cleared to a deep black, all sheeny with tears.
‘I … am sorry,’ he said, nodding to Liljana. ‘So damned sorry.’
Without another word, he turned and stormed from the tent. I heard him ride away into the night.
When I looked back at Bemossed, I could make out only air cupped within his hand. And he said to me, ‘Do you see, Valashu? This battle is driving us mad even before we fight it.’
‘And that is why,’ I told him, ‘we must never fight another.’
He glanced at my sword leaning against the side of the table, and said, ‘Kane, I fear, believes he is damned to fight forever.’
‘Kane will be all right now. I know he will.’
‘Will he? Will you?’
I thought of all that had happened between Atara and me scarcely an hour before and the blackened Tree of Life that I had seen within her crystal. Was there truly any hope, I wondered? This question, and Bemossed’s, filled my mind as I turned to stare at my sword. Alkaladur’s blade, buried within its scabbard, burned with etched characters that I could not quite read.
‘It will all be over tomorrow,’ I murmured.
Bemossed laid his hand on mine and asked, ‘Can you think of nothing except this murder you make in your heart, again and again?’
‘Morjin,’ I told him, ‘must be destroyed. You know that.’
‘I know that he is a man, like you. Like me.’
‘No – he is nothing like you! You hold light in your hand, always, even when you hold nothing! And Morjin blackens the brightest and most beautiful thing in all the universe. Even as he has devoured himself
‘Kane, too,’ he said, ‘is sure that Morjin is damned.’
I did not like the note of longing that filled his voice just then. I said to him, ‘No man knows Morjin as Kane does’
‘Does he, really? Does he know himself?’ He smiled painfully, and squeezed my hand. ‘You should go to him, Valashu. He’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Can we speak later, then?’
Again, he smiled at me. ‘Yes, later. Now go and speak to the man who has fought so hard to see you made king.’
We clasped hands, and I felt his blood coursing deep within him. His eyes, strange and sad, filled with a piercing light.
Then Atara stood up and moved over to the end of the table. She took hold of my sword, and held it out to me.
‘You will need this,’ she told me. ‘As we need Kane. Without him tomorrow, I can see no chance at all.’
I strapped on my sword, and squeezed her hand. And then, after promising Liljana that I would return soon for a taste of her pie, I turned to walk out into the night.
20
Outside my tent, Joshu Kadar and Sar Jonavar, with Sar Kanshar and Sar Shivalad, stood keeping watch over me. I told them that I must walk alone through our encampment. I asked after Kane, and Joshu Kadar informed me that he had ridden east, along the line of campfires stretching for two miles down the river. I moved off through the lanes of tents in that direction. The music of flutes and men singing flowed out into the air. I greeted my warriors, who bent over little fires roasting sausages on spits or sagosk steaks or whatever else Lord Harsha had managed to procure for their dinner. Greasy plumes of smoke spiraled up into a sky glowing blue-black. The moon, waxing full, reflected a silver light onto the grasslands about us, and set the river’s waters to sparkling. I looked up at Aras, Solaru and Varshara, outshining all the other stars in the heavens and so bright that they seemed to blaze like little suns. They pointed the way toward that place on earth where I thought that Kane might have gone.
This was a small hill to the east of the Meshian tents and just to the north of the river. This nameless hump of ground rose up almost in line with the distant Owl’s Hill across the steppe and the much greater rocks of the Detheshaloon. Other warriors I queried confirmed that Kane had indeed ridden his horse up the hill’s grassy slopes. I followed him, on foot. It did not take me long to hike up to the top, where I found Kane standing beneath the stars.
He held a diamond-dusted sharpening stone, the one that had once belonged to my brother, Mandru, and that I had passed on to Kane. He drew it down the edge of his sword in long strokes that set the steel to ringing. As I came up close to him, he said to me, ‘Have you come to help me prepare for tomorrow, then?’
‘Is that what you are doing up here?’
He looked at me through the thin light. ‘I am sorry for what passed with Liljana – will you forgive me?’
The Diamond Warriors Page 41