The Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  ‘Ask that of her.’

  ‘I will,’ he muttered. And then, ‘There are always battles to be fought, eh?’

  I pointed toward the camfires to the north and said, ‘Yes – and that is our enemy.’

  ‘So they are,’ he muttered again. ‘The Ikurian horse, at least, have good armor: some of the best mail made outside the Nine Kingdoms. If Morjin places them on his left wing, as you think he will, we’ll have a hard work cutting through it.’

  ‘Everything,’ I said to him, ‘will be a hard work tomorrow.’

  ‘At least you’ll have a chance to take your revenge for the Ikurians killing Asaru.’

  ‘Bemossed,’ I told him, ‘would not like to hear you speak like that.’

  He looked down the hill, back toward the Meshian encampment, where my pavilion stood out in the light of the moon and stars. He muttered, ‘He is like a flower, the most beautiful of flowers. So easy to trample or cut. Morjin would pluck him in a moment just to watch him wither.’

  ‘Bemossed is stronger than you know.’

  ‘There is strength, and there is strength. The sight of a perfect cherry blossom can make even the mightiest of warriors weep, eh? But for how long does a blossom hold its splendor of perfection? A day, Valashu. No more than a single day.’

  ‘If what you have told of the Maitreya is true, then Bemossed’s day has not yet come. At his quickening, when he finally holds the Lightstone in his hands, then –’

  ‘That is why we must fight tomorrow,’ Kane broke in. ‘Despite what Bemossed would have us do.’

  I turned north, toward the great blaze of our enemy’s campfires spread out beneath the Detheshaloon, and I said, ‘Half a million men – Maram believes we have no chance against so many.’

  I said nothing of what I had seen inside Atara’s crystal.

  ‘So – we have a chance.’ Kane paused in his scraping his diamond stone against his sword in order to look across the steppe’s starlit grasses. ‘He is out there, somewhere, Morjin is. He can be killed, with steel, like any other man. You have forced him out of Argattha to take a terrible chance. You and Bemossed have. And that is our chance.’

  I smiled grimly and said, ‘Who is it who wishes to take revenge?’

  He smiled, too, and his white teeth shone in the moonlight. ‘I would as soon see your sword pierce his heart as I would mine.’

  I drew Alkaladur then, and watched the heavens’ radiance play upon its long blade. How many men, I wondered yet again, had I slain with this shining sword? How many more must I cleave and send bloodied to earth?

  ‘I have hated this kind of killing,’ I said to him, ‘as I have hated nothing else.’

  ‘So – but you have loved it, too, eh?’

  Kane’s savage gaze locked onto me in a silent understanding. Who knew better than he the terrible joy of fighting for one’s life that made a man feel so utterly alive?

  ‘Yes, I have loved it,’ I admitted. ‘And that is why I have hated it. And why war must end. There must be another way to such exaltation that does not degrade us so.’

  Kane did not dispute this. But he growled out to me: ‘Worry about being degraded after you’ve killed Morjin!’

  ‘A chance,’ I told him, staring at Alkaladur’s silvery blade, ‘one chance more slender than the edge of this. Master Juwain was right when he told me that swords alone will never be enough. Tomorrow, the Seven will have their work to do, too. And Alphanderry – and of course, Bemossed. Even Maram.’

  I drew in a deep breath smelling of sunburnt grass and roasting flesh. Tomorrow, I thought, the day would wax long and hot, for tonight the air blew too warm across the glistering steppe. Then I said to Kane, ‘And you – you must do what you were born to do.’

  ‘So,’ he said in time with a long rasp of stone against steel, ‘so I must.’

  ‘I do not mean killing men, Kane.’

  ‘No? What is it that you think I must do, eh?’

  I looked up at the bright constellations standing out like diamonds against the black silk of the sky. Their onstreaming light pointed toward mysteries long lost to the ages, the great ages of the universe that the angels called satras. Kane, I thought, was himself a mystery nearly as deep as the other universes beyond the stars.

  I lifted my sword higher, and I willed the words etched into its blade to flare forth. Alkaladur’s silustria suddenly shone with fiery white characters: Vas Sama Yeos Valarda Sola Paru…And I said to Kane, ‘You made this sword, and you cut these letters into it – what is the rest of the inscription?’

  Kane stared at the blade that I held gleaming beneath the sky, and he shook his head. ‘I told you, I have forgotten.’

  ‘Have you really?’ I asked him. ‘Has Kalkin forgotten, then?’

  His hand locked around his sword’s hilt as he shouted at me: ‘You promised not to say that name!’

  I drew in a deep breath to slow the beating of my heart. I said to him, ‘You are who you are. And you –’

  ‘I am no longer he, I say! I am this one, whom you see standing here, and no one else!’

  The wind, blowing down from the Detheshaloon, whipped his white hair about his savage face.

  ‘But how is it possible,’ I asked him, ‘to forget?’

  ‘How is it that you don’t remember the day your mother breathed life into you and named you Valashu?’

  Now it was my turn to shake my head. ‘But you have lived through … so much. Kalkin has. It was he who took the lead in the war against Angra Mainyu, wasn’t it? Over Varkoth and Marsul – even Ashtoreth? Why, then? Why did one of the Elijik order take precedence over the greatest of the Galadin?’

  ‘Why do the stars shine, damn it!’ he growled at me. ‘Who set the world turning day into night, you tell me!’

  He stared at my sword, and it seemed to flare even brighter. I said to him, ‘You know. I know you know.’

  ‘I know nothing!’

  Now I stared back at him, looking for the bright being that he had never quite been able to hide from me.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said to him.

  ‘Don’t look at me that way, damn it!’

  ‘Don’t lie to me – we’ve come too far for that!’ I lowered my sword, slightly, in case the madness seized Kane again, and he saw me as his enemy, as he had Liljana. ‘At the beginning of the War of the Stone, you journeyed to another world. The angels name it Agathad, yes? And we call it Skol, where the Galadin dwell. And you led Ashtoreth and Valoreth, all the others, in forging the true Alkaladur, didn’t you? To heal Angra Mainyu. This is told! As you love me, tell me why!’

  Kane put away his sharpening stone, and stood away from his horse. He held his sword with both hands, then ran his finger down the flat of the kalama’s long blade. He looked at me. The stars’ light set his hair ashimmer, and his eyes. I saw him searching for something within me, and within himself. His heart beat, hard – once, twice, thrice, a hundred times. It swelled with the hurt of trying to contain the great force of life that surged through him. I could almost feel his breath burning over his lips like the warm wind that blew across the steppe.

  ‘So,’ he finally said in a strange, deep voice, ‘once there was a king: you know his name. On Erathe this was, oldest of the Civilized Worlds. Long ago. Long past long ago, for the king came to his throne at the end of the Valari Satra, at a time when some men had put away their swords to polish bright their spirits, but before the first men became more than men. He called himself Valari, for in his youth he had been a traveler among the stars, bringing Civilization to the worlds of the stars. He became great, in his body and being. In his spirit, Valashu. He ruled Erathe by right of all that was true and good. So, he thought of himself as good. Others did, too.’

  He paused to gaze at his sword, and it seemed that he was peering straight through its steel into another world.

  ‘And so one day,’ he continued, ‘the Lightstone’s guardian returned the Cup of Heaven to Erathe, where it had first appeared within our universe
, long past in the Ardun Satra. Ramshan, they called this guardian. A descendant of the first guardian, Adar, who was your ancestor, eh? And with Ramshan, Dauidun, the Maitreya of that time. For all of that age, the Maitreyas had journeyed from world to world, so as to quicken Eluru’s barbaric peoples and raise them up to be worthy of joining what we called Civilization. Daiudun journeyed to Erathe to see if its king might be worthy of being raised up to a higher order of beings that had never quite been – at least not within Eluru. And so the Shining One used the Cup of Heaven to test this great and glorious king.’

  Kane’s hands tightened around the hilt of his sword, and then he broke off staring at it to look at me.

  ‘The king’ he murmured, ‘opened his heart to the Lightstone’s splendor. His whole being, eh? I have said that the Lightstone holds no power to make anyone immortal. So, this is true. But the king – he held such power within himself, do you understand? He had gained it, through a long life of discipline and deeds so hard they would have broken most men. And so the Lightstone only quickened what he had called forth to quicken. In the end, with the blessings of the Ieldra, he raised himself up to become the first of the Elijin.’

  ‘Kalkin,’ I said, heedless of the wind that blew that name toward Kane’s ears.

  ‘Yes, he,’ he said. ‘The Law of the One, for greater beings, demanded great things of him. His first charge was to vow never to take human life. And his second charge was to help others to gain his high estate. And so he left Erathe to journey out to the stars, so as to carry out this noble mission. Many were the Valari whom he guided into the Elijik order. So, even the great ones: Valoreth, Ashtoreth, Arwe, Urwe and Arkoth. And Varkoth, too, and Manwe and Marsul. And the greatest of all these Elijin, the one called Asangal. He, who would become the first and greatest of the Galadin.’

  I looked up at the heavens for the star that shone down upon the world of Damoom, where Angra Mainyu had been bound. I wondered if any of the damned Galadin and Elijin who followed him could see the once-bright being called Asangal bound within this Dark One.

  And then Kane went on: ‘For a long time, the Elijin went among the stars, helping to awaken the most advanced of the Star People so that they could join their order. Too, the Ieldra sent the Elijin as messengers to troubled worlds. They had to work by the power of persuasion, or by touching men’s auras with theirs and strengthening them – even as the Seven do with their little stones, eh? So, to the world of Kush the Ieldra sent the one named Kalkin. One of its kings, a proud barbarian, would not heed Kalkin’s counsel. He drew his sword and commanded Kalkin to kneel to him. To abase himself to this small, small man whose life would soon blow out like a candle in the wind! But Kalkin himself burned with pride, and none more so, eh? And so a madness seized him, and he fell upon this barbarian king and killed him with his own sword.’

  Kane drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out. I felt a quick and terrible pain slice through him. Then he said to me, ‘Kalkin was not the first of his order to fall, but he was the greatest. Because his remorse was also great, the Ieldra did not cast him out of the Elijin. And so he lost only his grace and not his immortality. But upon him the Ieldra laid a doom: that of all the Elijin then walking the stars, he would not be the first to be raised up to the Galadik order, but the last – and not in any case until the ending of the ages. It should have been a sentence of death, eh? But Kalkin vowed not to die.’

  Again, Kane broke off speaking, and he stood nearly motionless in the starlight. His large hands still gripped his sword; I thought that they were shaped no differently than the hands of any other man. The features of his fierce face reminded me of the portraits of my forebears hanging in my father’s hall, while the colors of pride, longing, wrath and exaltation that brightened his being were as my own. His eyes, however, blazed with a vast and fiery will that did not seem quite human.

  I could hardly bear to look at him as I shook my head and whispered: ‘It cannot be possible! The great ages were hundreds of thousands of years long, perhaps millions – I do not know! You cannot have survived so long. Chance alone –’

  ‘It is not chance that rules me!’ he suddenly roared out, cutting me off. ‘It is the One!’

  He took his hand away from his sword, and he glared at it as if looking through the dark for his lifeline. Then he added in a whisper, ‘And it is myself. I could not allow myself to die, do you see? Kalkin couldn’t. And so he, who should have been first, had to wait and watch through an entire age as the Elijin satra ended and Asangal advanced to the Galadik order. And then Ashtoreth and Valoreth, all the others, by dint of strengthening their spirits, and through service and the Ieldra’s grace. Indestructible they became, as well as immortal. And great, beyond any glory that you can imagine. And yet. And yet. They still remembered Kalkin, who had helped them become who they were. Kalkin, whose remorse at slaying the barbarian king had shaken the very heavens! That proud, proud angel who never quite turned his face away from the One. Only he, the Galadin said, the king who knew the way of swords, could ever really understand the even prouder Asangal’s fall into evil and so take the lead in the battle to heal him.’

  As if to assuage the burning inside him, Kane pressed his sword’s blade to his forehead. I did not know what to make of what he had said. His words hinted at madness and marvels and truths almost too terrible to tell. I felt sure that he had not, in any way, lied to me. And yet I sensed that he had left out some vital part of his story.

  ‘I have often wondered,’ I said, probing him, ‘what it would be like to be immortal.’

  ‘So – to be immortal how?’

  ‘But how many ways are there?’

  ‘There is this way,’ he said, thumping his hand against his chest. ‘To live forever, in one’s body, on and on and on. That is Morjin’s way, and Angra Mainyu’s. And as with power, those who most desire it are the least worthy to possess it. Fools, all. In their pursuit of it, they are like men swimming across the ocean for a million years in search of water.’

  ‘I have always thought,’ I said to him, ‘that Morjin searched for something more.’

  ‘So, he would like to. But he could never quite apprehend, thus believe in, the realm of the soul.’ His hand swept up toward the heavens’ millions of lights, shining down as they did every night upon their sons and daughters still living on earth. ‘Not for Morjin the immortality of the stars, or in doing great works, or in children, or in people’s remembrance of their ancestors. And not even in the One’s own remembrance of all that has been created and passed on.’

  ‘So it is written in the Saganom Elu,’ I said. ‘In the most beautiful of words. But Morjin, I think, would need much more than words.’

  ‘So – so would you, eh? But this, at least, is proven. What other meaning can we make of Alphanderry’s return to us? You saw him die in the Kul Moroth. Has he come back from there, or from some other place?’

  I thought about this as I gazed up at the fiery furnace called Aras. The brilliant spirals of stars whirling around it seemed to point toward a deep mystery at the center of all things. And I said to Kane, ‘Most men when they die, they die. They do not come back.’

  Even as I said this, I could not help thinking of the words of the angels, which one of the Urudjin had spoken in King Kiritan’s hall:

  The Fearless Ones find day in night

  And in themselves the deathless light,

  In flower, bird and butterfly,

  In love: thus dying do not die.

  Kane looked at me as if he could peer into my soul, if not my mind. ‘And most men when they live, they do not truly live. And so like Morjin and his master, they are already as ones dead. There is only one true immortality, Valashu. I have spoken of this before: it is the breath that holds the winds of all worlds within it, the stillness between heartbeats, the joy of a flower. The perfect moment, bright as ten thousand suns, that goes on and on forever. This is the indestructible life that the Shining One would show us.’

 
; I thought of other words that the Urudjin had spoken about the universe’s Maitreyas, and I now recited them to Kane:

  They bring to them the deathless light,

  Their fearlessness and sacred sight;

  To slay the doubts that terrify:

  Their gift to them to gladly die.

  Then I said to Kane, ‘The Shining Ones are that they might thus help the Galadin, and others, overcome their fear of death, yes?’

  ‘So, they gladly die – and thus truly live, eternally.’

  I stepped closer to Kane, and pressed my hand against his chest. ‘This one, whom I have called Kane – I have not seen him quail before any enemy, in any battle, not even when it seemed certain that he must die.’

  ‘Ha!’ he called out. ‘When one of the Blues swings an axe at my head, my heart beats as quickly as any man’s!’

  ‘But you never panic. You never think of running when you must fight. And you do not, do you, dread the dark? The neverness. When the light dies and there is only a cold nothing forever’

  ‘But the light cannot die, Valashu. And so, no, I do not fear that.’

  ‘But what of the other one, then? Was Kalkin so afraid of being cast out of the Elijin that he had to make a vow never to die?’

  ‘No – fear was never Kalkin’s failing.’

  He thrust the point of his sword upwards, then called out: ‘He dreamed of the day when he would become one of the Galadin. So bright they are! Like fireflowers that never dim, like stars come down from the sky. The Galadin make the whole earth sing! Songs of glory, Valashu, such a ringing splendor that I cannot say! And yet in the end, as I’ve told, they must die – like the Shining Ones, gladly so, to die in their bodies. Into light! This splendor, bright as all the stars from the Seven Sisters to the Great Bear, the fire that breathes into being whole new universes of stars, I have only imagined. So it was with Kalkin. And so no, he did not fear such a fate.’

  I stood listening to the crickets chirping in the grass and the breath that fell heavy and quick from my lips. From below our little hill, the sound of thousands of Valari chanting out the old epics had given way to a single voice flowing out across the steppe: