The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

      She went on to explain that she had only had a moment to make out all that Master Storr wanted to tell her.

      ‘Somehow Morjin must have learned the secret of the tunnels,’ she said, ‘for he sent a company of Red Knights through one of them – right down through the valley. There was a battle, I think. A slaughter The younger brothers tried to stand before the Red Knights while the Seven escaped.’

      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,’