The Diamond Warriors

I pressed my finger to the warm teapot as I said, ‘But how could they escape? Only one tunnel gives out into the valley – surely the Red Knights would have guarded the entrance.’

‘I can’t say – you know how strange those tunnels were. Perhaps there was another entrance. Or another tunnel.’

I thought about this for a few moments. ‘But did the Red Knights pursue the Seven? And did Bemossed escape with them?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see that in Master Storr’s mind.’

‘But wouldn’t he have wanted to tell you that particular tiding, above all others?’

‘Of course he would have – I think.’ Liljana rubbed at her temple as she looked down at her little blue stone. ‘Speaking with another this way is not like sitting down to table to have a chat with a friend. At least, I don’t think it is. There has been no one to teach me this art, and I’m really like a child playing with matches. And Master Storr is even more artless than I. He is only a man – and a very confused one at that. At least he seemed so when we managed to attune our two gelstei. We had only a moment, you know. A single moment and a flood of images, as in a dream, fire and blood and bewilderment, you see, trying to make sense of it all. To really hear what was in Master Storr’s mind. It was like trying to drink from a raging river. In fact …’

Her voice died off into the sound of the crickets chirping somewhere in the garden. I waited for her to say more, but she only gazed up at the white disk of the moon.

‘In fact,’ she said in a trancelike rush of words, ‘if I am to be completely truthful with you, as I always try to be, I have to consider the possibility that what I touched upon in Master Storr’s mind was a dream.’

‘A nightmare, you mean,’ I said, taking a deep breath of air. I looked at Liljana. ‘Then it is possible that nothing of what you told me actually happened.’

‘No, it happened – of course it did. I know it in my heart.’

Here she pressed her hand to her chest and then reached out to pour the tea into our cups.

‘It might indeed have been a nightmare,’ she told me. ‘But if so, then Master Storr was dreaming of these terrible things that Morjin did to the Brothers and their school.’

‘But how do you know that Master Storr wasn’t just dreaming of that which he most feared would befall?’

‘I don’t know how I know – I just do. There is a difference. It is like the taste of salt versus the description of saltiness. But since I can’t expect you to appreciate this, as a mindspeaker does, I thought that I should tell you all.’

I sat sipping my tea and hoping that the chamomile might drive away the burning ache in my throat. I gazed at the clusters of the lilacs on the bushes along the garden’s wall. It was strange, I thought, that even in the intense light of the moon, their soft purple color had vanished into the darker tones of the night.

‘Have you tried again?’ I said to Liljana as I looked up at the sky. ‘We have hours of moonlight left, don’t we?’

‘I have tried and tried,’ she told me. ‘And then tried thrice more. But Master Storr, I have to tell you, is not much of a mindspeaker – whether or not he dreams or wakes. And neither am I.’

‘Once,’ I told her, ‘you looked into a dragon’s mind. And into Morjin’s.’

‘Yes, into his. But he burned me, Morjin did,’ she said with a terrible sadness.

‘I know he did,’ I told her. ‘But before he did, there was a moment, wasn’t there? When you saw the great Red Dragon, and he saw you. And was afraid of you, as it was with the dragon called Angraboda.’

‘He was afraid,’ she admitted. ‘But I was terrified.’

‘Terrified, perhaps – as much as you ever allow yourself to be. But that has never kept you from looking into dark places, has it? Or going into them.’

Now she took a turn sipping her tea before she finally said to me, ‘I’m not sure I want to know what you mean.’

I reached out and took hold of her hand. I glanced at her gelstei, then asked her, ‘Now that Bemossed has driven back Morjin’s mind from your crystal and given its power back to you, have you ever thought of using it to try to look into Morjin’s mind again?’

She suddenly snapped her hand from my grasp, and covered up her gelstei. She said, ‘But I have promised never to look into a man’s mind without his permission!’

‘Yes, you have,’ I told her. ‘But Morjin is more a beast than a man, or so you have said. You wouldn’t keep that promise for his sake.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she agreed, squeezing her blue stone. ‘But what you suggest is so dangerous.’

Truly, I thought, it was: like a double-edged sword, Liljana’s talent could cut two ways. If she touched minds with Morjin, he could tear from her some essential knowledge or secret as she could from him. And Morjin could again ravage her mind, or do to her even worse things.

Even so, I stared at her through the wan light and said, ‘I have to know, Liljana.’

‘No, no, you don’t,’ she murmured, shaking her head.

‘I have to know if Bemossed still lives,’ I said. ‘And Morjin would know that, if anyone does.’

‘Yes, Morjin,’ she said.

I felt her throat burning as with a desire for revenge, even as her soft eyes filled with pleading, compassion and great hope. I did not pursue my suggestion that she seek out the foul, rat-infested caverns of Morjin’s mind. Although I suspected that she herself might dare to contend with him mind to mind once more, someday, this impulse must come from her, according to her sense of her own power – otherwise Morjin might very well seize her will and make her into a ghul. If I loved her, I thought, how could I violate her soul with any demand that might lead toward such a terrible fate?

‘I’m sure,’ she said, suddenly warming toward me, ‘that I would have felt it in Master Storr’s mind if Bemossed had been killed.’

I did not know if that was true – or if she only wanted it to be true, and so believed it. But I needed her to tell me that Bemossed still lived, and make me believe it. And so she did, and so I loved her, for she was almost like my own mother, who had been able to make me believe in most anything, myself most of all.

‘My apologies,’ I told her, ‘for bringing up the matter of Morjin.’

She waved her hand at this, and looked at me deeply. ‘Don’t give it another thought.’

‘I think about little else. I know it is upon me to face him – someday, somehow. But first, I’m sorry to say, I wanted you to find out where he is the most vulnerable, as it was with Angraboda. Or even to put a little poison in his mind and let it work.’

The look in her eyes grew even warmer and brighter as I said this. She almost smiled, then. That was her magic, I thought, to love me despite my weaknesses and darkest dreams. She was like a tree with very deep roots, and something about her seemed to enfold my life with all the vitality of fresh running sap and a crown of shimmering green leaves.

‘If I were Morjin,’ she said to me, ‘I would not want you as my enemy’

‘If you were Morjin,’ I told her, ‘the world would not need Bemossed to restore it.’

Although she could not smile, she could still frown easily enough, which she now did. ‘The Sisterhood, I should tell you, has always taught that it will be a woman who will bring new life to the world – even as a mother does with a child. I admit that it is strange for me to think of Bemossed as the Maitreya, though I don’t see how he cannot be.’

I couldn’t help smiling at this. Each Maitreya throughout the ages had been a man, as the Saganom Elu had told, and never, I thought, had a man been born into the world as splendid as Bemossed.

‘He will come here’ I told her. ‘If you are right and the Brotherhood school is destroyed, Bemossed will want the Seven to bring him here.’

‘But how do you know that?’

In answer, I drew my sword from its scabbard, which I had set down by the side of the table. Alkaladur’s silver blade shimmered in the light of the stars.

‘I know,’ I told her, echoing the words that she had spoken to me. ‘They will try to make their way here, to these mountains, and so Mesh must be made safe.’

‘Then you will do what you must do to make it so. As you always do. I saw that in you the first time we met.’

I smiled again as I looked up at the stars. To Liljana, I pointed out Valura and Solaru – and then Icesse, Hyanne and the other stars of the Mother’s Necklace, high in the sky in this season of the year.

‘If Alphanderry is right,’ I said, ‘about Damoom’s star conjuncting the earth this fall, we have so little time to accomplish what we must accomplish.’

‘But we do have time, still.’

‘Time,’ I said, gazing at the bright silustria of my sword. ‘Already, a thousand warriors have answered Lord Avijan’s call. And in another six or seven days, there will be a thousand more.’

‘And you will win them as you did the others’ Liljana told me. ‘And then somehow, Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu.’

‘I must win them. Or win against them. Otherwise, Bemossed might as well try to find refuge in Argattha as here.’

‘But what is your plan, Val? You have yet to confide it to me.’

My sword glistered with the lights of the constellations shining above us – and seemed to await the clusters of stars soon to rise. And I said to Liljana, ‘That is because I still don’t know. Ask me again in another week.’

‘All right,’ she said to me, ‘but for now, why don’t you finish your tea and try to sleep? Tomorrow can only bring you better tidings than I did tonight.’

Liljana, though adept at many arts, proved to be no scryer. Late the next morning, a messenger galloped up to the castle bearing tidings that no one wanted to hear: Lord Tanu had assembled his men and had marched out of Godhra along the North Road. Four thousand warriors he had called up to fight for him on foot, while three hundred knights rode beneath his banner. Only yesterday, this army had crossed the Arashar River and passed through Hardu, and was now making its way toward Mount Eluru and Lord Avijan’s castle where many fewer warriors so far had gathered to me.

5

This news set the castle into a fury of activity. Lord Avijan immediately sent out emissaries to speak with Lord Tanu. He ordered the castle’s walls manned and extra provisions brought inside. Then, some hours later when he deemed all was secured, he summoned the greatest lords and knights to a war council in his great hall.

‘Lord Tanu has moved more quickly than even I would have thought possible,’ he told us.

I sat at one end of the great table at the front of the hall facing Lord Avijan at the other. In between us along one side of the table were Lord Harsha, Lord Sharad and Lord Noldashan – Sar Jessu and Sar Vikan, too. My companions took their places along the table’s other side with Lord Manthanu, a thick and jowly man who had arrived only the day before. This great knight regarded me with puzzlement clouding his long face; he pulled at one of the battle ribbons tied to his long gray hair as if wondering if the tides of war would sweep him away so soon.

‘It is upon me,’ Lord Avijan said, looking up the table at me, ‘to see to the defenses of my lands and my castle. As it is upon us to advise you, Lord Elahad. But if you are to be king, in the end you must decide what we should do about Lord Tanu.’

I inclined my head to him, then said, ‘To begin with, we don’t know why Lord Tanu is marching up the North Road.’

‘He isn’t on his way to invade Ishka!’ Sar Vikan called out.

I smiled at this as the others laughed grimly. Then I said, ‘It seems that there is little doubt as to where Lord Tanu is leading his army. But we don’t yet know his intentions.’

‘To raze Lord Avijan’s castle and see you murdered!’ Sar Vikan cried out again. ‘And all of us who support you. That is his intention!’

‘Here, now!’ Lord Harsha said, banging the table with his hand. ‘There’s no need for such talk! Lord Tanu is no murderer, and he is certainly not so stupid as to waste his army trying to take this castle.’

At this, Lord Sharad studied the keep’s thick walls, and said, ‘If not take it, then perhaps lay siege.’

I slowly nodded my head at this as I looked at Lord Avijan. I asked him, ‘How long could you hold out against Lord Tanu’s army?’

‘Not so long as we could have a few days ago,’ Lord Avijan said. He pointed out into the hall, whose many tables would soon be filled with hungry men eating their dinner. ‘A thousand warriors have answered your call, Lord Elahad, and that is a great many to feed. Our stores might last four months.’

‘Four months!’ Sar Jessu said. His thick black eyebrows pulled together. ‘That is a long time to lay siege. Lord Tanu might give up.’

‘He won’t give up,’ Lord Avijan said. ‘No knight in Mesh is more tenacious. You have fought under him, and should know that.’

‘Then even if he doesn’t, anything might happen in the meantime,’ Sar Jessu said. ‘Lord Tomavar might move against Lord Tanu. Or the Waashians might move against all of us.’

Here Sar Jessu turned toward me, and so did Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and everyone else. And I told them, ‘We cannot afford to wait four months – not even one. Whatever we do, we cannot remain holed-up here behind these walls. That is what Lord Tanu wants.’

Sar Vikan, a fiery and impulsive man, called out to me, ‘But you have said that you don’t know his intentions!’

I looked at Atara, whose blindfolded face was like a clear glass giving sight of the future. I looked at Liljana, whose relentless gaze reminded me that I must always try to look into my enemies’ minds and try to think as they did – even as my father had taught me.

‘My apologies for misspeaking,’ I told Sar Vikan. ‘But surely, as Lord Harsha has said, Lord Tanu will not waste his men attacking the castle. Therefore his strategy must be to keep us immobilized here – and to divide Lord Avijan’s forces.’

‘Your forces, now, Lord Elahad,’ Lord Avijan said.

‘We shall see,’ I said, inclining my head to him. ‘Lord Tanu can encamp his army outside the castle and block the pass leading to it. He would keep the rest of your men from joining us. And threaten them. Would they then still keep their oath to you?’

‘Certainly they would!’ Lord Avijan said. ‘They are good men, with true hearts!’

Sar Vikan, who now finally saw the line of my argument, asked Lord Avijan, ‘But if you released them from their oaths, as you released us, in such circumstances, would they then pledge their swords to Lord Elahad?’

At this, Lord Avijan looked down at the table and said nothing – and so said everything.

‘Lord Tanu would divide us,’ Lord Manthanu said to me in his deep, gravely voice. ‘And that might be the end of your chances, Lord Valashu. In my district, many warriors remain unpledged to anyone – as it is throughout Mesh. They wait to see what you will do. A victory of any sort will encourage them. But a defeat …’

He did not finish his sentence, nor did I wish him to. I did not want to think in terms of victory over my own countrymen, if that meant driving them down with swords.

Lord Noldashan rubbed at his tired eyes and said to me with a deep anxiety, ‘If you won’t stand to be besieged, does that mean that you will take the field against Lord Tanu?’

‘If he does,’ Lord Sharad said boldly, ‘Lord Elahad will find a way to outmaneuver our enemy as it was at the Culhadosh Commons!’

‘We’ll cut down any of Lord Tanu’s men who stand against us!’ Sar Vikan called out.

At this, Lord Harsha banged his fist against the table and shouted, ‘Enemy! Cut down! Have none of you listened to what Lord Valashu has been saying these last days? We cannot weaken ourselves so!’

Both Lord Sharad and Sar Vikan looked down in shame. Then I said to them, ‘No one can blame you for letting such great spirit impel you toward battle. But this must not be against Lord Tanu, nor Lord Tomavar – not if we can help it. So long as I am alive, I will not see Meshian slaying Meshian.’

Lord Avijan, perhaps the most intelligent and purposeful of the warriors at the table, asked me, ‘If you won’t stand a siege nor take the field, what will you do?’

At this fundamental question, I noticed Master Juwain looking at me keenly – along with everyone else. And I said, simply, ‘I will talk with Lord Tanu. Tomorrow, I will ride down into the pass, and try to reason with him.’

All during our council, Maram had remained uncharacteristically quiet. I worried that his beer guzzling had finally addled his wits. But now he licked his lips as he looked at me and said, ‘But Lord Tanu will be bringing his whole damn army through that pass! You can’t ride down into that river of swords! It’s too dangerous!’

I smiled at this, and I said, ‘We shall fly a banner of truce, and Lord Tanu will have to respect that. In any case, Sar Maram, I have to know.’

‘Know what…Lord Elahad?’

‘I must know what Lord Tanu truly intends.’ I paused to draw in a breath and look around the table. ‘Is he willing that we should slay each other just so that he might become king?’

Much later, after we had eaten dinner and I finally had a chance to speak with my companions about the destruction of the Brotherhood school, Lord Avijan’s emissaries returned to the castle in the dead of night. They made report of Lord Tanu’s intentions – or rather, his stated purpose in marching toward Mount Eluru. Lord Tanu, they said, had taken it upon himself to ensure Mesh’s safety. And so on the morrow, he would arrive to inspect the soundness of Lord Avijan’s castle, with or without Lord Avijan’s leave.

The next morning, as I had promised, I made ready to go forth and speak with Lord Tanu. I asked my friends to accompany me. Although we would be riding under a banner of truce – along with Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and the other knights who had become my war counselors – I did not want to chance the children’s safety in the midst of many angry men with quick and deadly swords. Daj protested my decision, reminding me of how he had slain the third droghul and taken far greater risks before: ‘Estrella and I rode with you all the way to Hesperu, and back, and you won’t allow us to ride a couple more miles?’

Estrella brushed the curls from her dark, liquid eyes, and she looked at me as if to tell me once more that our lives were bound together, and wherever I went, she must go as well. In her quiet, sweet way, she could be a very willful girl – now almost a young woman. Even so, I had to tell her that she must remain in the castle.

In the cool air blowing off the mountains, we rode out of the castle’s south gate and down the narrow road that cut through the green hills and meadows toward the pass. I took the lead, with Lord Avijan at my one side and Sar Vikan at my other. To this fierce knight, perhaps the most bellicose of all the men in my train, I had appointed the task of holding up the white banner of truce. Just behind him rode Sar Joshu Kadar, who had taken charge of the banner showing the silver swan and seven stars of the Elahads. Then came Lord Harsha, Lord Sharad, Lord Manthanu and Jessu the Lion-Heart – followed by Lord Noldashan and his son, Sar Jonavar. I had asked other five other young knights to join us, too: Sar Shivalad, Viku Aradam, Sar Kanshar, Siraj the Younger and Jurald Evar. My companions kept pace with them only a few yards behind, with Atara pushing her horse to an easy trot in the rear. Although we expected no attack from this direction, nor at all, Atara could whip about in her saddle and fire off an arrow at any pursuer in the blink of an eye.

Our course took us into a long taper of grassy land wedged between the Lake of the Ten Thousand Swans to our right and Mount Eluru to our left. As we moved further into the pass, this taper grew narrower and narrower. Finally, we came to that place where the road cut through a band of grass only ten yards wide. There we came to a halt. We had a nearly perfect day to wait for Lord Tanu and his army. The sky above us shone a deep and dazzling blue, with a few white clouds moving slowly along a cool breeze. This slight wind, however, failed to ripple the lake’s silvery waters, which had fallen as clear and still as a mirror. In its perfect sheen, I saw the reflection of Mount Eluru: a great and nearly symmetrical cone of green, tree-covered slopes, blue rock and white ice pushing straight up into the heavens.

After some time had passed and the sun rose over Mount Eluru’s eastern ridgeline, Maram rode forward to speak with me. As we had no privacy at the head of fourteen diamond-armored knights, we urged on our horses a few dozen more yards, and closer to the lake.

And then Maram held up his firestone to the glaring sunlight, and said, ‘Do you remember the Kul Moroth? A single blast from this, and I filled up that damn pass with enough rocks to stop an army.’

He looked up at the smooth, steep slopes of Mount Eluru above us; they were not so steep, however, that any of the few large rocks or boulders sticking out of the ground could easily be dislodged and rolled down into the pass.

‘I think I see the direction of your worries,’ I said to him.

‘Do you?’ he said, pointing his firestone down the road through the pass. ‘At Khaisham, I used this to set men on fire, like torches. But never again. I won’t use this against men, Val.’

‘You won’t have to,’ I said to him. ‘There will be no violence here today’

‘Oh, no? Why can’t I believe that? I have a bad feeling about you meeting Lord Tanu here.’

I waved my hand at this. ‘You have had other bad feelings before.’

‘Yes, I have,’ he said. ‘And most of them have proved out even worse than I had feared.’

‘It will be all right,’ I told him. ‘I have known Lord Tanu all my life, and he is a man I can reason with.’

‘Is this a day for reason, then?’ He shook his head then gazed at me. ‘I will not summon fire out of this stone, but ever since Liljana told you about Bemossed, you’re practically burning up with this rage to become king. That makes a bad situation urgent. And urgency, in my sad experience, too often leads to violence.’

I laid my hand on the diamonds encrusting his arm. ‘We have faced more urgent situations before.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but one never knows about these things. A mole’s little hole can trip a horse and break a man’s neck. A single match can set a whole grassland on fire. What might a few ill-considered words do? It is all too much, do you see? Alphanderry told us, in effect, that we had until this fall to succeed or fail, once and for all. I’m telling you, Val, that I don’t have it in me to go on any longer than that, as we have gone through one hell after another these past three years.’

My hand tightened around his arm, and I smiled at him. ‘You say that? The man who crossed half the Red Desert by himself to save me?’

‘I do say that!’ he called out as he pulled away from me. He looked at the knights gathered behind us with the flag of truce barely rippling in the soft wind. ‘We could die here today, as easily as anywhere. Your Sar Vikan and Sar Jessu seem eager enough to draw swords.’

‘It will not be a day for swords’ I reassured him as I patted Alkaladur’s scabbard, slung on my back. Then I added, ‘At least, not kalamas.’

‘Well, if it is,’ he said, staring at Jessu the Lion-Heart, ‘I won’t be of much use. Not against Valari knights. And they know that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, your countrymen all see me as a complainer and a coward.’

‘No, you are wrong – it is just the opposite,’ I told him. ‘You have succeeded in two great quests. And taken a second in wrestling at the tournament and a third in archery. And above all, you slew half a dozen Ikurians at the Culhadosh Commons. To my people, you are a true Valari knight. They regard you as a hero, Maram.’