The Diamond Warriors. David Zindell

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?’