The Diamond Warriors

‘The whole Tanu clan,’ Sar Jessu said, ‘is outraged over what they are calling the abduction of Zenshar’s children. They’ve put out the word to their smithies, and are refusing to sell swords to anyone who would follow Lord Tomavar.’

The best swords in the world, of course, have always been forged in Godhra, and every Meshian warrior aspires to wield one and invest it with his very soul.

‘And worse,’ Sar Jessu went on, ‘the Tanus have pressured the armorers not to sell to the Tomavar clan. The Tomavars have no diamond mines of their own, or so the Tomavars whine, and so how can they make their own armor?’

‘Diamonds, always diamonds,’ Lord Harsha muttered. ‘It’s been scarcely two years since we nearly went to war with the Ishkans over Mount Korukel’s diamond mines.’

‘But Valashu Elahad,’ Joshu Kadar said to him, ‘returned with the Lightstone and cooled the Ishkans’ blood!’

At this, Sar Shivalad and Sar Viku Aradam and other knights gazed at me as if they were looking for something within me. I felt the whole room practically roiling with strong passions: wonder, doubt, elation and dread.

Lord Avijan bowed his head to me, then said, ‘The Elahad did return, it’s true, but now that the Lord of Lies has regained the Lightstone, the Ishkans’ blood is rising again. Already they have taken a part of Anjo, and have defeated Taron in battle.’

And this, as he was too kind to say, had been the inevitable result of my failure in Tria to unite the Valari against Morjin.

But I must never, I told myself, fail again.

‘Pfahh – the Ishkans!’ Sar Vikan called out to Lord Avijan. ‘You think about them too much.’

‘King Hadaru,’ Lord Avijan reminded him, ‘remains a merciless man – and a cunning one.’

‘Yes, but he has been wounded, and some say the wound rots him to his death.’

‘Some do say that,’ Lord Avijan admitted. ‘But I would not hold my breath waiting for the Ishkan bear to die.’

The story he now told angered everyone, and saddened them, too, for it was only a continuation of the ancient tragedy of our people. After the conclave in Tria where I had slain Ravik Kirriland before thousands, the Valari kings had lost faith in me – and in themselves. Seeing no hope for peace, they had fallen back upon war. Old grievances had festered, and new ambitions fired their blood. In the course of only a few months, Athar had attacked Lagash, while King Waray of Taron had begun plotting against Ishka and King Hadaru. King Waray had tried to help the duchies and baronies of Anjo unite against Ishka – with the secret agenda of trying to make Anjo a client state and so strengthening Taron. But King Hadaru had sniffed out King Waray’s plans, and had marched the strongest army in the Nine Kingdoms into Taron. He defeated King Waray at the Battle of the Broken Tree, where a lance had pierced him. As punishment he had not only annexed part of Anjo but was now demanding that King Waray surrender up territory as well – either that or a huge weight of diamonds in blood payment for the warriors that King Hadaru had lost.

‘But has King Hadaru,’ I said to Lord Avijan, ‘made any move toward Mesh?’

‘Not yet,’ Lord Avijan said. ‘Surely he waits for us to weaken ourselves first.’

‘It is a pity,’ Sar Vikan said, ‘that we didn’t make war upon the Ishkans on the Raaswash. Then we might have weakened them.’

I felt many pairs of eyes searching for something in my eyes, weighing and testing. And I said to Sar Vikan, ‘No, that is not the war we must fight.’

‘But what of Waas, then?’ Lord Avijan asked me. ‘There bodes a war that we might not be able to avoid.’

I turned toward the hall’s eastern window, now dark and full of stars. In that direction only twenty-five miles away across the Culhadosh River lay Waas, where I had fought in my first battle at the Red Mountain. King Sandarkan, as Lord Avijan now told us, burned to avenge the defeat that my father had dealt him. He said that there were signs that King Sandarkan might be planning to lead the Waashians in an attack against Kaash.

‘If they do,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘we must aid them. It is a matter of honor.’

How could I disagree with him? King Talanu Solaru of Kaash was my uncle, and Kaash was Mesh’s ancient ally, and so how could ties of blood and honor be ignored?

‘We cannot march to Kaash’s aid,’ Lord Avijan said, ‘if we are busy fighting ourselves. Surely King Sandarkan is counting on this. Surely he will defeat the Kaashans, for they are too few, and then he will annex the Arjan Land and extract a promise from King Talanu that Kaash won’t come to our aid if Waas then attacks us.’

Joshu Kadar slapped his hand against his sword’s scabbard and said, ‘But we defeated Waas handily once, and can again!’

Lord Harsha sighed at this and said, ‘Little good that will do us, lad, for we’ll only weaken ourselves further, and then King Hadaru will surely lead the Ishkans here.’

‘Or else,’ Lord Avijan said, ‘Waas won’t attack alone but will ally with the Ishkans to put an end to Mesh once and for all.’

‘At least,’ Lord Sharad added, nodding his head at me, ‘that is our best assessment of matters as they now stand.’

For a few moments no one spoke, and the hall fell quiet. Everyone knew that, from more than one direction, Mesh faced the threat of defeat. And everyone looked to me to find a way to escape such a fate.

‘When you left Mesh last year,’ Lord Avijan said to me, ‘you could not have known how things would fall out. But you should not have left.’

I stood away from the table behind me to ease the stiffness in my legs. Then I looked out at the knights and warriors standing around me, and said, ‘My apologies, but I had to. There are things you don’t know about. But now you must be told.’

With everyone pressing in closer, I drew in a deep breath and wondered just how much I should divulge to them? I thought I might do best to conjure up some plan by which we Meshians might prevail against the more familiar enemies: the Ishkans and the Waashians, the Sarni tribes in their hordes of horse warriors – even ourselves. And so save ourselves. But I had vowed never to lie again, and more, to tell the truth so far as it could be told. Were my fellow warriors strong enough, I wondered, to hold the most terrible of truths within their hearts? In the end, either one trusted in men, or did not.

‘For thousands of years,’ I said to them, ‘Mesh has had enemies. And where necessary we defeated them – all except one. And his name is Morjin.’

‘But we defeated him at the Sarburn!’ Sar Vikan called out.

‘Three thousand years ago we did,’ Lord Avijan said. ‘With the help of all the Valari kingdoms.’

‘And at the Culhadosh Commons!’ Sar Jessu cried out to me. ‘Upon your lead, we crushed an army that outnumbered us four to one!’

His words caused most of the warriors present to cry out and strike their swords’ pommels against the tables in great drumming of steel against wood. Then I held up my hand and said to them, ‘Those were great victories, it is true, won by the most valorous of warriors. But they were not defeats, as the Red Dragon must be defeated. He has other armies, and greater than the ones we faced. What good does it do to strike off a serpent’s head if two more grow back in its place?’

I told them then of our journey to Hesperu and of our triumphant quest to find the Maitreya. A great light, I said, we had found in the far west, but along the way we had endured great darkness, too. Morjin had wrought horrors everywhere – and now was planning to work the greatest of evils: to loose the Dark One upon Ea. I feared that this doom would prove too great a terror for many of the warriors staring at me to contemplate. Who really wanted to believe, or could believe, that the whole world – and the very universe itself – might be destroyed down to the last grain of sand?

‘As always,’ I said to them, ‘Morjin remains the true enemy’

My words gave the warriors pause. All through Lord Avijan’s great hall, I saw brave men looking at each other in a dreadful silence.

‘For now,’ I continued, ‘the man called Bemossed, who must be the Maitreya, keeps Morjin from using the Lightstone to free the Dark One. But he needs our help, as we need his.’

At this, a white-haired warrior named Lord Noldashan turned to me and said, ‘You appear to know things that it seems would be hard for any man to know. May it be asked how you have come by such knowledge?’

‘Only through great suffering!’ Maram called out from beside me. ‘And through great fortune, if that is the right word.’

Because it pained me to think of the torture that I had led Maram to endure in the Red Desert, and in other places, I laid my hand on his knee and squeezed it. And then I said to Lord Noldashan, and the others: ‘It was Kane who told me about the Dark One named Angra Mainyu. And I do not doubt his word, for much of what he related is hinted at in the last three books of the Saganom Elu.’

‘An old book,’ Lord Sharad said with a smile. ‘Almost as old as Lord Noldashan – and myself.’

But Lord Noldashan, it seemed, could not be moved from his intense seriousness. He nodded at Master Juwain, and called out in his raspy voice: ‘The Brotherhood teaches that much of what is written in the Valkariad and the Trian Prophecies can be taken in different ways. And even more so with the Eschaton. How, then, should we take this doom that Lord Valashu’s companion has told of? This Kane is a mysterious man – and an outlander, as we should not forget.’

‘He is the greatest warrior I have ever known!’ Lord Sharad called back. ‘I was there when he slew the Ikurians beneath the Mare’s Hill, and I have never seen a sword worked so!’

‘Lord Sharad tells true,’ Sar Vikan said. ‘I fought near Sar Kane, and when his blood is up, he seems less a man than an angel of battle.’

Upon these words, I struggled to keep my face still and my gaze fixed straight ahead. I hoped my companions, too, would keep the secret of Kane’s otherworldly origins.

‘Man or angel,’ Lord Noldashan said, ‘Sar Kane might well have come by his knowledge through great quests, with a true heart, and yet have learned things that are not true.’

‘They are true!’ I suddenly called out. The force of my voice seemed to strike Lord Noldashan and others as with the blow of a war hammer. I fought to control myself. In some dark room of Lord Avijan’s castle, I sensed, perhaps even in the great hall itself, the Ahrim waited for me – and perhaps for everyone. ‘Angra Mainyu still dwells on Damoom, and he turns his dark gaze on Ea. But even if he were only legend, there is still Morjin. He exists, as we all know. And so do his armies.’

The men standing around me considered this. Then Lord Sharad looked at me and said, ‘I think I have to believe what Kane has told, though I am loath to. But why hasn’t Kane returned with you from your last quest to tell us himself?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘he has gone into Galda.’

‘Galda! But why?’

‘Because,’ I told him, ‘we heard that Morjin might have gone there.’

And this, I said, was a consequence of our battle with Morjin and his creatures in Hesperu. I explained more about the worst of the enemies that we had faced on our quest: the three droghuls that Morjin had sent to destroy my companions and me. As with any ghul made from a man, I said, Morjin seized the droghuls’ minds and caused them to work his will, as if they were puppets being pulled by strings. But the droghuls were particularly deadly, for Morjin had made these dreadful beings from his own flesh, in his likeness, and had imbued them with a part of his power. After we – actually young Daj – had slain the third of the droghuls, a rumor had shot across the world that Morjin himself had been slain. And so Morjin had been compelled to come out of the stone city of Argattha to show himself and prove that he still lived. He had gone through the Dragon Kingdoms one by one, finally leading an army from Karabuk into Galda, where brave knights had revolted against Morjin upon the false news of his death.

‘Kane,’ I told Lord Sharad, ‘went down into Galda so that he might take part in the rebellion.’

‘You mean,’ Lord Harsha said with a distasteful look, ‘he went to put an arrow into Morjin’s back, if he can.’

I smiled sadly at this. ‘Kane would be more likely to use a knife. But, yes, he went to Galda to slay Morjin – if he can. And if Morjin is really there.’

‘And if he is not?’ Lord Avijan asked me.

‘Wherever Morjin is,’ I said, ‘his plans will go ahead unless we do kill him. What happened in Hesperu has delayed him, but no more. Already, it is said, he has ordered a great fleet up from Sunguru and Hesperu to attack Eanna. If it takes him a hundred years, he will conquer Ea’s free lands one by one until he has the Nine Kingdoms surrounded. But it will not take him a hundred years.’

As I paused to take a sip of beer, a half dozen speculations and arguments broke out among the warriors standing around me. The hall filled with the stridor of angry and confused voices. And then Lord Avijan turned to Maram and asked, ‘You are from Delu – will the Delians fight if the Red Dragon attacks them?’

‘Will we fight?’ Maram called out. ‘Of course we will! Ah, that is, a few knights and diehards will fight, while my father tries to make terms. He is no fool, and he’ll no more want to stand isolated against the Red Dragon than would any other king – even, I might add, King Hadaru or King Waray, or any of the Valari kings.’

Here he glanced at me as if wishing that I would proclaim that Mesh would never go alone against the Red Dragon. But I looked down into my beer and said nothing.

‘And what of the Sarni tribes?’ Lord Avijan asked, turning toward Atara. ‘Has the Manslayer had news of her people?’

Next to me, Atara nodded her head at this, and her white blindfold moved up and down like a signal banner. ‘The Kurmak will never make terms with Morjin, so long as Sajagax is chief – and I think my grandfather still has a good few years left to him. He will call for the other tribes to ride with him in battle, if battle there must be. The Niuriu might join with him. Perhaps the Danladi, too, and the central Urtuk. I cannot say about the Adirii, for their clans are divided. But I believe that the Manslayers will decide for Sajagax, should the Red Dragon ever attack him.’

She did not add that the fierce women warriors of the Manslayer Society, who came from all the tribes, favored making Atara their Chiefess, and Atara would certainly lead them in aid of Sajagax, if she could.

Now Master Juwain let out a long sigh as he clamped his gnarly hands around his beer mug – filled with apple cider. And he said, ‘There are other ways of opposing the Red Dragon than through war.’

While the warriors listened with the great reverence they held for Masters of the Brotherhood, Master Juwain told them of much the same plan for the peaceful defeat of Morjin that he had put forth two days before in the wood where we had fought the Ahrim.

‘The Maitreya,’ he said, ‘will light a fire in men’s hearts that the Red Dragon cannot put out. In the end it will consume him.’

‘This is our hope,’ I added. ‘But the Maitreya must first live long enough to pass on this flame.’

‘The Maitreya!’ Sar Jessu cried out, looking at me. ‘Always, the Maitreya! Once, we believed that you were the great Shining One.’

At this, a hundred warriors stared straight at me. I, too, had shared in their delusion. In truth, I had engendered it.

‘We believed,’ Sar Jessu went on, ‘that the Maitreya would lead us to victory. But now we don’t want to believe in miracles – it is enough to believe in you!

Again, the warriors around me struck their swords against the wooden tables.

Then Lord Harsha’s single eye swept around the hall as he regarded the warriors sternly. And he reminded them, ‘The Shining One will come forth, as has been promised in the Trian Prophecies and the Progressions. Is he, then, the man Bemossed that Lord Elahad has told of? I would like to believe he is. But whoever he is, flame or no, we must look to our own swords for our defense, as we always have!’

So saying, he whipped free his long, shining kalama, and saluted me. Lord Avijan inclined his head to him, and said, ‘That is my thought, too. But what, indeed, is the best course for defending Mesh?’

‘There is only one course for us,’ Sar Jessu called out. ‘And it is as Lord Valashu has said: we must stop Morjin!’

‘But stop him how?’ Sar Shivalad said, turning his great, cleft nose toward Lord Harsha. ‘That is the question we must decide.’

‘That it is, lad,’ Lord Harsha said. ‘And here I’m in agreement with Master Juwain. Let us make Mesh strong again, as it was in the reign of King Shamesh. Then let us remember that we have destroyed or thrown back every army that tried to invade our land – even Morjin’s.’

‘But what of the Lightstone?’ Sar Shivalad asked him.

And Lord Noldashan broke in, crying out, ‘Let Morjin keep it! It is a cursed thing, and it nearly destroyed our land!’

His vehemence stunned me, and I looked from Lord Noldashan to his son, Sar Jonavar, beside him. He was a tall, well-made knight, perhaps a few years older than I, and he stood gripping his gauntleted hand around the hilt of his sword as he looked at me in great turmoil.

‘No, it is just the opposite,’ I said to Lord Noldashan. ‘The Lightstone holds marvels and miracles. In the hands of the Maitreya –’

‘It nearly destroyed you!’ Lord Noldashan shouted. ‘Do not dream of leading us on impossible expeditions to win it back!’

‘Do not,’ Lord Sharad said, moving closer to Lord Noldashan, ‘speak to Lord Valashu so. Remember why you’ve come here!’

‘To make Valashu Elahad King of Mesh!’ Lord Noldashan said. ‘Not to follow him on a fool’s mission!’

‘I would follow him to the end of the earth!’ Lord Sharad cried out.

‘And I!’ Lord Jessu said.

‘And I!’ Joshu Kadar said.

‘So would I,’ Sar Vikan said, drawing his sword, ‘if it meant a chance to put this through Morjin’s neck! I would think that Lord Noldashan, of all knights, would want his vengeance!’

As Lord Noldashan faced Sar Vikan and moved his hand onto his sword’s hilt, I remembered that Lord Noldashan had a second son, Televar, whom I did not see anywhere in the hall.

‘Peace, honored knight!’ I said to Lord Noldashan as I held up my hand. ‘Let us sit together and drink our beer – and cool our heads!’

‘Peace!’ Lord Noldashan cried out. ‘Have you truly returned to bring peace, Lord Elahad? Or only to bring more blood, as you did a year ago when you practically called down the Red Dragon upon us?’

‘Do not speak to Lord Valashu so!’ Lord Sharad said again. ‘Remember yourself, Lord Knight!’

‘I remember,’ Lord Noldashan said with a rising anger, ‘whole streams on the Culhadosh Commons running red with our warriors’ blood!’

‘Pfahh, blood!’ Sar Vikan spat out. ‘When has a true warrior been afraid of spilling it?’

The moment that these words left Sar Vikan’s mouth, his face tightened in horror, as if he could not believe that he had spoken them. But it was too late. Quick as a bird, Lord Noldashan drew his sword five inches from its scabbard before Lord Avijan and others closed in and managed to clamp their hands around Lord Noldashan’s arm.

‘This warrior,’ Lord Noldashan said to Sar Vikan as he struggled against those who held him, ‘would not be afraid to see your blood spilled here!’

His challenge filled my belly with a sickness as if I had eaten splinters of iron. As other warriors came up to restrain Sar Vikan from drawing his sword and setting off an inescapable duel, I felt many people looking at me. Maram and Master Juwain – and my other companions, too – were clearly distressed to witness things falling out so badly. I felt them wondering what I wondered: why had we returned to Mesh at all if we could not even keep my own countrymen from killing each other?

‘Stop!’ I called out to Lord Noldashan and Sar Vikan. ‘Let go of your swords! We are all one people here!’

My voice fell upon them with the force of a battering ram, stunning them into motionlessness. But it did not, I sensed, touch their hearts.

Lord Avijan finally let go of Lord Noldashan, and he said to me, ‘Lord Noldashan has cause for grieving and grievance, and few men more. And he raises an important question, Lord Elahad: is it your purpose to go against Morjin or to protect Mesh?’

‘But they are the same thing!’ I called out. ‘Mesh will never be safe so long as Morjin draws breath!’

I looked around the hall at the tens of warriors weighing my words. The older ones such as Lord Noldashan and Lord Harsha, had grown to manhood in an era when the Sarni and the other Valari kingdoms posed the greatest threat to Mesh. They held a more cautious sentiment, shared by such prominent warriors as Lord Tanu: that Mesh had repelled Morjin once, and could again if we had to. They believed that the Dragon, as with bears, would be likely to leave us alone if we left him alone. Although they would fight like angels of battle, to use Lord Sharad’s words, if Morjin did try to invade our land again, they had no liking to march out of Mesh to make war against him. Others, such as Lord Avijan, desired vengeance for Morjin’s desecration of Mesh and believed that he must somehow be defeated, though they, too, feared to seek him out and bring him to battle. A smaller number of men – and these were mostly younger knights such as Joshu Kadar, Sar Shivalad and their friends – burned with the fever of our generation to annihilate Morjin from the face of the earth and make the world anew.

‘Morjin,’ I finally said to Lord Avijan, and to everyone, ‘must be destroyed. How that is to be remains unclear. But until he is destroyed, we will never bring peace to the world.’

‘You’ Lord Noldashan said to me, ‘if we follow you, will bring only death.’

I could tell from the grave faces of such prominent warriors as Lord Kanshar and Sar Juladar, even Lord Harsha, that many of the men gathered in the hall feared that Lord Noldashan had spoken truly – as I feared it even more. But I must, I thought, at all costs hide my disquiet. The gazes of a hundred warriors burned into me, and I thought that I must gaze right back at them, bravely and boldly, and betray not the slightest doubt or hesitation. Every moment that I stood among them, in field, forest or a great lord’s castle, with my every word or gesture, I must surround myself as with a gleaming shield of invincibility. How, I wondered, was this possible? How had my father ever managed to last a single day as king?

Lord Noldashan stared straight at me, and continued his indictment: ‘You would bring death, I think, Lord Elahad. Even as you brought it to Tria – and so destroyed all hope of an alliance of the Valari. And without an alliance, how could you ever hope to destroy the Red Dragon?’

In Tria, I thought, we had been so close to uniting. The Valari kings had nearly had the very stars within their grasp. But in the end, I had failed them.

‘How many of our warriors fell at the Great Battle?’ Lord Noldashan went on. ‘How many of our women and children died at the Red Dragon’s command?’

From somewhere in the hall I caught a sense of the great darkness that pulled me always down. Again, I saw my mother and grandmother nailed to planks of wood. And again, I saw a great grassland covered with tens of thousands of broken and bleeding bodies.

‘How many, Lord Elahad?’ Lord Noldashan asked me. ‘How many of our people must die for your impossible dream?’

I tried to speak then, but I could not, and so I took a sip of beer to moisten my bone-dry throat. Then I looked at Sar Jonavar standing in close to his father, and I said to Lord Noldashan, ‘You had another son, didn’t you? Did he fall at the Commons?’