The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

whole forest of warriors and knights. It’s time new seeds were planted and new trees were grown.’

      I considered this as I studied the way that Joshu looked at Behira. I sensed in him a burning passion – but not for her.

      ‘Sar Joshu,’ I asked, ‘have you ever been in love?’

      He looked down at his hands, and he said simply, ‘Yes, Lord Valashu.’

      As Behira took charge of finally passing around the roasted chickens, blueberry muffins, mashed potatoes and asparagus that she had prepared for dinner, it came out that Joshu had indeed known the kind of all-consuming love that makes the very stars weep – and he still did. It seemed that he had been smitten by a young woman named Sarai Garvar, of the Lake Country Garvars. But a great lord had married her instead.

      ‘My father was to have spoken with her father, Lord Garvar, after the battle,’ Joshu told us. Although he shrugged his shoulders, I felt his throat tighten with a great sadness. ‘But my father died, my brothers, too, and so it nearly was with me. And so I lost her to another. Everyone knows how bitter Lord Tanu was when the enemy killed his wife during the sack of the Elahad castle. So who can blame him for wanting to take a new wife? And who can blame Lord Garvar for wanting to make a match with one of Mesh’s greatest lords?’

      Lord Tanu, of course, had been not only my father’s second-in-command but held large estates around Godhra, and his family owned many of the smithies there. As Joshu had said, who could blame any father for wanting to join fortunes with such a man?

      ‘But Lord Tanu is old!’ Behira suddenly called out as she banged a spoonful of potatoes against her plate. She seemed outraged less for Joshu’s sake than for Lord Tanu’s new wife. ‘And Sarai is only my age!’

      ‘Here, now!’ Lord Harsha said, laying his hand upon her arm. ‘Mind the crockery, will you? Your mother made it herself out of good clay before you were born!’

      Behira looked down at the disk of plain earthenware before her, and she fell into a silence. And I said to Joshu, ‘Then if any man should appreciate Maram’s feelings in this matter, it is you.’

      ‘I do,’ he agreed, nodding his head sadly to Maram. ‘But Lord Harsha is right: how can any man’s feelings count at a time such as this?’

      Although I sensed his sympathy for Maram, there was steel in him too, and great stubbornness. I knew that, having lost one prospective bride, he would not easily surrender what Lord Harsha had rightly deemed as a good match.

      For a while we busied ourselves eating the hearty food that Behira had prepared us. For dessert, she brought out a cherry pie and cheese, and made us chicory tea as well. But Maram wanted something stronger than this – stronger even than the black beer that he had been swilling all through dinner. And so he announced that he had to retrieve a gift from the barn; he nudged my knee beneath the table to indicate that I should follow him.

      We stepped out into a warm spring night full of chirping crickets and twinkling stars. We lit the lantern that Lord Harsha had given us, then went into the barn, with its smells of cattle and chicken droppings. We rummaged around in the saddlebags that we had placed on the straw near our horses’ stalls. And Maram said to me, ‘This is not the homecoming I had imagined.’

      I nodded my head at this, then asked him: ‘But can you really blame Lord Harsha for wanting what is best for Behira?’

      ‘I am best for her!’ Maram half-bellowed. Then his voice softened as he said, ‘I love her – this time, I’m really sure that I do.’

      I tried not to smile at this, and I said, ‘But you have put off the wedding, again and again. Some might take this as a sign that you don’t really want to marry her’

      ‘That doesn’t mean I’m ready to let that little squire take her!’

      ‘Sar Joshu,’ I told him, ‘is a full knight now, and a good man.’

      ‘I don’t care if he’s a damn angel! He doesn’t love Behira as I do, and she doesn’t love him! Will you help with this, Val?’

      I thought about this for a while then said, ‘You’re my best friend, but what I won’t do is to help you make Behira into an old maid.’

      ‘But I will marry her, if I can, as soon as our business here is done – I swear I will!’

      ‘Will you?’

      He found his sword resting upon a bale of hay, and drew it out of its scabbard. He laid his hand on the flat of the blade and said, ‘I swear by all that I honor that I will marry Behira!’

      I gripped his wrist, and urged him to sheathe his sword. Then I pointed at the bottle of brandy that Maram had pulled out of his saddlebags and set on top of the hay, too. I took his hand and placed it on the bottle.

      ‘Swear by all that you love,’ I told him, ‘that you will marry her’

      ‘Ah, all right then – I do, I do!’

      ‘Swear by me, Maram,’ I said, looking at him.

      In the lantern’s flickering light, Maram looked back at me, and finally said, ‘Sometimes I think you ask too much of me, but I do swear by you.’

      ‘All right then,’ I said, clapping him on the shoulder. I retrieved the lantern from its hook on one of the barn’s wooden supports. ‘I will do what I can. It may be that there is something that Sar Joshu desires much more than marriage.’

      We went back into the house, and Maram presented the brandy to Lord Harsha as a gift. He told him, ‘It’s the last of the finest vintage I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve been saving this bottle for you for at least a thousand miles.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Lord Harsha said, holding up the bottle to the room’s candles. Then, with a wry smile, he asked, ‘Will you help me drink it?’

      After Behira had retrieved some cups from the adjacent great room and Lord Harsha had poured a bit of brandy into each, I gave them presents, too. For Behira I had silk bags full of rare spices: anise, pepper, cardamom, clove. To Lord Harsha I gave a simple steel throwing knife. He hefted it in his rough hands and promised to add it to his collection of swords, knives, maces, halberds and other weapons mounted on the wall of his great room. When I told him the story behind the knife, he sat looking at me and shaking his head.

      ‘This was Kane’s, and he wanted you to have it,’ I said to him. ‘When we were made captive in King Arsu’s encampment, one of Morjin’s High Priests made Kane cast the knife at Estrella and split an apple placed on top of her head.’

      Lord Harsha’s hand closed around the knife’s handle as he regarded Estrella in amazement – and concern.

      But Estrella remained nearly motionless nibbling on a gooey cherry that she had plucked from a slice of pie. Her large, dark eyes filled with a strange light. In the past, she had suffered greater torments than that which the Kallimun priest, Arch Uttam, had inflicted on her. It was her grace, however, to dwell in the present, most of the time, and here and now she seemed to be happy just sitting safe and sound with those she loved.

      ‘Well, you have stories to tell,’ Lord Harsha called out, ‘and we must hear them. Let’s drink a toast to your safe return from wherever it was that the stars called you.’

      So saying, he lifted up his cup, and we all joined him in drinking Maram’s brandy.

      ‘All right,’ he said, ‘it’s clear that you haven’t come home just to see Maram happily wed to my daughter’

      It came time to give an account of our journey. I said that we had set forth into the wilds of Ea on a quest to find the Maitreya. Many parts of our story I could not relate, or did not want to. It wouldn’t do for Lord Harsha – or anyone – to learn the location of the Brotherhood’s school or of the greatest of the gelstei crystals that they kept there. Of the terrible darkness I had found within myself in our passage of the Skadarak