The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

in the light of some impossibly bright sun. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision, and his breath rasped out: ‘And I am sorry for yours. I should not have said what I said. You are not to blame for what Morjin did to our land. In truth, it is as Sar Jessu has told, that without you, the battle would have been lost. I know this in my heart.’

      I squeezed his hand, hard, and held on tightly to keep myself from weeping. I did not succeed. Through the blur of water filling my eyes, I saw Lord Noldashan gazing at me with a terrible, sweet sadness, and so it was with Lord Harsha and Lord Avijan and many others. But within them, too, burned a great dream.

      ‘You are not to blame for Morjin’s deeds,’ Lord Avijan affirmed, inclining his head to me. ‘As for your own deeds, we shall honor them in the telling and retelling, down to our grandchildren’s grandchildren – and beyond, when our descendants know of Morjin only by the tale of how we Valari vanquished him, leaving to legend only his evil name.’

      Sar Vikan then came forward and said to Lord Noldashan, ‘Well, sir, I am certainly to blame for what I said to you. I wish I could unsay it. But I since I cannot, I will ask your forgiveness.’

      ‘And that you shall have,’ Lord Noldashan said, clasping his hand. ‘As I hope I shall have yours for forgetting that we are brothers in arms.’

      At this, Lord Harsha called out his approval, and so did Sar Jessu and dozens of other warriors.

      Then Lord Noldashan turned back to me as he laid his arm around Sar Jonavar’s shoulders. ‘Despite my misgivings, I came here tonight because my son has great hope for you. And because I loved your father and Lord Asaru. An oath, too, I gave to Lord Avijan, but he has released me from it. What, then, should I now do?’

      ‘Only what you must do,’ I told him.

      Lord Noldashan continued gazing into my eyes, and then said, ‘My head speaks one thing to me, and my heart another. It is the right of a warrior to stand for one who would be king – or not to stand. But once this one is king, no one may gainsay him.’

      I felt something vast and deep move inside Lord Noldashan. Then he glanced at Lord Sharad, before looking back to me and smiling grimly. ‘Very well, then, Lord Elahad, I will follow you past the very end of the earth, to the stars or hell, if that is our fate.’

      As he bowed deeply to me, a hundred warriors drummed the hilts of their swords against the tables. Then Lord Avijan stepped forward, and held up his hand. He called for fresh pots of beer to be brought up from his cellar. When everyone’s cup had been filled anew, he raised his cup and cried out: ‘To Lord Valashu Elahad, heir of the Elahads, Guardian of the Lightstone, and the next king of Mesh!’

      I sipped my thick, black beer, and I found it sweet and bitter and good. I smiled as Alphanderry came forth and everyone hailed this strange minstrel. Tomorrow, I thought, we must meet in council again to lay our plans for my gaining my father’s throne – and for Morjin’s eventual defeat. But now we had a few moments for camaraderie and cups clinked together, and singing songs of glory and hope far into the night.

       4

      In that time of year when the wild asparagus growing along the hillsides and roads reached its peak and the lilacs laid their sweet perfume upon fields and gardens, the call for warriors who would support my claim to Mesh’s throne – and perhaps much more – went out into every part of the land. They came to Lord Avijan’s castle, in twos and threes, and sometimes tens and twenties, riding up in full diamond armor and bearing the bright emblems of their families. Most of them lived in the country near the Valley of the Swans and Mount Eluru, but many also arrived from the north, in the mountains near the two Raaswash rivers, and from the southern highlands below Lake Waskaw. Fewer hailed from the hills around Godhra, for there Lord Tanu held sway, as did Lord Tomavar in the Sawash River valley and its three largest cities: Pushku, Lashku and Antu. But a warrior had the right to give his oath to whom he wished, and at least ten men from Pushku had braved Lord Tomavar’s anger by rallying for me. And fifty-two men – led by the long-faced Lord Manthanu – had journeyed all the way from Mount Tarkel above the Diamond River in the far northwest.

      Soon the number of warriors overflowing the grounds of Lord Avijan’s castle had swelled to more than one thousand. Lord Avijan’s stewards worried about finding food for this growing army. But as the Valley of the Swans between Silvassu and Lake Waskaw held some of Mesh’s richest farmland, to say nothing of woods full of deer, it seemed that no hour passed without a few wagons full of barley, beef and salted pork rolling up through the pass between Mount Eluru and the sparkling lake below it.

      My companions and I kept busy during this period of waiting. While Master Juwain and Liljana tried to further the children’s education, contending with each other as to exactly which subjects they should teach Daj and Estrella, and how, I greeted the arriving warriors one by one. The most distinguished of them joined Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and other great knights in taking council where we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar. Although I asked Maram to attend these meetings, he insisted on attending to the matter of exploring the capaciousness of Lord Avijan’s beer cellars. As he put it, ‘These countrymen of yours drink like an army of parched bulls, and I’d at least like a little taste of beer before it’s all gone.’

      Although Master Juwain had practically given up lecturing him about the evils of strong drink, Liljana kept scolding him whenever she had the chance. On the third day of our stay at Lord Avijan’s castle, she took Maram aside and said to him, ‘We all know that bad times are coming. You should spend your days helping Val, as we all try to do – either that or learning more about your firestone.’

      Now that Bemossed kept Morjin from using the Lightstone, or so we prayed, those of us possessing gelstei found ourselves free to discover new depths and powers of these ancient crystals.

      ‘Bad times are coming,’ Maram said to Liljana, ‘and that is exactly the point. The only way to fight the bad is with the good, and right now I can think of nothing better than to fortify myself against the evils of the future with some good Meshian beer.’

      He might have added that beautiful young women would have served best of all to drive back his fears, but in the overcrowded castle he never knew when Lord Harsha might come around the corner of some cold stone corridor and take him to task for mocking his professed love for Behira.

      Of all of us, I thought, Atara had the hardest work with her gelstei, for the kristei’s deepest virtue was said to be not merely the seeing of the future but its creation. But how could a single woman, through the force of her will alone, contend with Morjin’s great fury to destroy all who defied him, to say nothing of his master, Angra Mainyu?

      At one of our councils, after she had told Lord Manthanu of her grandfather, Sajagax’s, strategy to persuade a few Sarni tribes to oppose Morjin, Lord Manthanu asked her to give the assembled warriors a good omen. They had talked that evening of cutting apart Morjin’s best knights with their fearsome kalamas, and their spirits were running high. Atara did not wish to discourage these brave men, but neither would she speak anything but the truth. And so, in her scryer’s way, she told them: ‘Then it will be as you wish, and your swords will cleave the armor of even the best knights of Morjin’s Dragon Guard.’

      She did not, however, reveal how many of them might live to fulfill this gruesome prophecy, and they could not bring themselves to ask her.

      But it is not the way of fortune to progress in one direction forever: the cresting wave crashes into sand even as day passes into night. On the seventh of Soldru, after a long day of hunting, sword practice, councils and feasting on roasted venison, I retired to the rooms that Lord Avijan had appointed for me in the southern corner of the keep. They gave out into a small garden full of herbs, roses and bushes heavy with lilac blossoms. I sat on one of the stone benches there to listen to the crickets chirping and watch the stars come out. It was the only place in Lord Avijan’s castle where I could find a space of solitude