Lord Harsha, utterly taken aback by this outburst, stared at her
and said, 'But if you don't marry, what do you think you will do?'
Behira looked at Atara sitting quietly as well-balanced and
straight as one of her arrows. And Behira said, 'The Sarni women,
some of them, become warriors.'
'The Sarni are savages!' Lord Harsha shouted. Then I felt shame burning his face as he looked at Atara and said, 'Forgive me, Princess!'
'It's all right,' Atara said with a cold smile. 'Sometimes we are savages - and worse.'
'Do you see?' Lord Harsha said to Behira. 'Do you see?' Behira turned to look down the table at me. Then she told her father, 'I see a man who would become King of Mesh, and not be content merely to keep the roads in good repair and hold feasts. If Lord Elahad wins the throne, then there will be war - a war such as we've never seen. And we Valari women are supposed to be warriors aren't we? With the whole world about to spill its blood, you can't just expect us to sit around and hope for our men to return and bestow upon us babies!'
Lord Harsha forced himself to breathe in and out ten times before he made response to this: 'Our women are warriors: warriors of the spirit. Who teaches our children to meditate, and so ennobles them with the grace and power of the One? Who teaches them to tell the truth? It's the truth I'll tell you now, as your mother would have if she were still alive: our women are the keepers of the very flame that makes us Valari.'
Behira placed her hand across her breast as she looked at me and said, 'This flame burns for a better world, as it is with Lord Valashu. Whatever spirit I have, I wish to use in his service helping him to win. Then, father, it might be safe to wed and bring a child into the world.'
Lord Harsha, who had finally borne too much, banged his fist against the table and thundered: 'You will wed when I say you will and whom I choose as your husband!'
At this, Behira burst into tears. But she soon gathered up her pride, and stood up from her chair. With an almost violent clacking of the crockery, she began stacking up our dirty plates. And she announced, 'I'm going to do the dishes, and then go for a walk outside. Atara, will you help me? Liljana?'
Without another word, these three very willful women cleared the table and then disappeared into the kitchen, shutting the door behind them. Their voices hummed beyond it like the buzzing of bees from within a hive. Then Lord Harsha gazed at me with accusation lighting up his eye.
'You have returned, Lord Elahad, to lead us to war,' he said, 'for now there is war even in my own house. These are had times indeed - the worst times I've ever seen!'
For a while he sat sipping his brandy and rubbing at his temple. Then I smiled and said to him, 'Tomorrow I'll talk with Behira -it will all come out all right. There is always a way.'
'Hearing you say this,' Lord Harsha told me, 'I do believe it.'
'I am no scryer,; I said, 'but your family shall have the lands that I spoke of, and you shall have many grandchildren as well.' 'I want to believe that, too,' he sighed out, reaching for the brandy bottle. 'Well, let us make a toast to children then.'
The fiery taste of brandy lingered on my lips that night long after we all had left the table and had gone off to our beds. For hours I lay tossing and turning and dreaming of children: Behira's brood of boys and girls playing happily in Lord Harsha's wheat-fields, and Daj and Estrella and the son or daughter whom Atara would someday bear for me. All the children in the world. Although it seemed a vain and vainglorious thing to imagine that their future and very lives depended upon my deeds, the painful throbbing of my heart told me that this was so. Tomorrow, I thought, and in the days that followed, I must do that which must be done in order to become king and finally defeat Morjin. Even if it seemed impossible, I must believe that there was always a way.
Chapter 3
Lord Harsha and Joshu rode out early the next morning. Along with my companions, I whiled away the hours resting and reading and eating the good, hearty foods that Behira prepared for us. As promised, I took her aside and tried to reason with her. I reminded her that Valari ways were different from those of the Sarni, and that the Valari women have never marched into battle. A sword, I told her, would always be a man's weapon, while a woman made better use of her soul. And I had need of her father's sword and all his concentration on the task at hand. I asked her to give her word that she would not anger her father by openly decrying marriage or refusing to wed. If she helped me in this way, I said, I would help her in whatever way I could. We clasped hands to seal our agreement. And then she went off to ask Atara to teach her how to work her great horn bow and fire off her steel-tipped arrows.
We waited all that day, and a little longer. The following morning, just before noon, Lord Harsha returned at the head of fifteen knights whose great horses pounded the little dirt lane into powder. All had accoutered themselves for war: they bore long, double-bladed kalamas and triangular shields and wore suits of splendid diamond armor. I recognized most of them from the charges emblazoned on their surcoats. Sar Shivalad bore a red eagle as his emblem, while Sar Viku Aradam's surcoat showed three white roses on a blue field. I stood with my friends outside Lord Harsha's house watching them canter up to us in clouds of dust. As they calmed their mounts and the dust cleared, a sharp-faced man called Sar Zandru pointed at me and called out: 'It is the Elahad! He lives -as Lord Harsha has said.'
He and the other knights dismounted, then bowed their heads to me. They came up to clasp my hand and present themselves, where presentations were needed. I knew some of these knights quite well: Sar Shivalad, with his fierce eyes and great deft nose, and Kanshar, Siraj the Younger, Ianaru of Mir and Jurald Evar. Others had familiar faces: Sar Yardru, Sar Barshar and Vijay Iskaldar. Sar Jessu and I had practiced at swords when we were children running around the battlements of my father's castle; I had last seen him at the Culhadosh Commons leading his warriors into the gap in our lines that might have destroyed the whole army - and Mesh along with it. For his great valor and even greater deed, he should have been rewarded with a ring showing four brilliant diamonds instead of the three of a master knight. But only a Valari king has the power to make a knight into a lord.
'Valashu Elahad,' he said, stepping up to me and squeezing my hand. He was a stocky man whose lively eyes looked out from beneath the bushiest black eyebrows I had ever seen. 'Forgive me for pledging to Lord Avijan, for I would rather have given my oath to you - as we all would.'
'There is nothing to forgive,' I said, returning his clasp. I brought his hand up before my eyes. 'I only wish I could have given you the ring you deserve.'
When I praised him for saving Mesh from defeat in the Great Battle, he told me, 'But I only fought as everyone did. It was you who had the foresight and courage to let the gap remain open until our enemy was trapped inside. You have a genius for war. Lord Valashu. I have told this to all who would listen.'
'And you have the heart of a lion,' I told him, looking at the red lion emblazoned on his white surcoat and shield. 'I shall call you "Jessu the Lion-Heart," since I cannot yet call you "Lord Jessu.''
He smiled as he bowed his head to me. The other knights approved of this honor, for they drew out their kalamas and clanged their steel pommels against their shields. And they called out, 'Jessu the Lion-Heart! Jessu the Lion-Heart!'
I looked around for Joshu Kadar, but could not see him. When I asked Lord Harsha about this, he told me, 'The lad has gone off to retrieve his armor and his warhorse, and should meet up here soon.'
He told me that he had preserved my armor, and Maram's too, and he led the way inside his house up to his room. There, from within a great, locked chest, he drew out three suits of armor reinforced with steel along the shoulders and studded with bright diamonds. After we, too, had accoutered ourselves, Lord Harsha handed me my old surcoat, folded neatly and emblazoned with a great silver swan and seven silver stars. He said to me, 'You'll want to wait, I suppose, to wear this?'
'No,' I sai
d taking it from him. I pulled it over my head so that the surcoat's black silk fell down to my knees, with the swan centered over my heart. 'I am tired of skulking about in secret, as you said. I will go forth beneath my family's arms.'
Lord Harsha smiled at this. At the very bottom of the chest, he found a great banner also showing my emblem. He said to me, 'There is no force that can molest us between here and Lord Avijari's castle, and so why not ride as the Elahad you are? In any case, the news that you have returned will spread through all Mesh soon enough.' When we went back outside, we found that Joshu Kadar had arrived decked out in heavy armor and bearing on his shield the great white wolf of the Kadars. It came time to say goodbye to Behira, for she would be staying home in order to milk the cows and hoe the fields Sand, I guessed, to take up one of Lord Harsha's swords and practice the ancient forms out in the yard, since there would be no one looking over her shoulder, in disapproval of such an unwomanly act.
'Farewell,' Behira said to Maram, standing by his horse with him and clasping his hand. She gave him a blueberry tart that she had baked that morning. 'This will sustain you on at least the first leg of your new adventure.'
'I pray that it will be my last adventure,' he said, squeezing her hand. 'Just as I pray that someday you will be my wife.'
Behira smiled nicely at this as if she wanted to believe him. She had little gifts as well for Joshu Kadar and her father, and for the children. Master Juwain and Liljana had brought our horses and remounts out from the barn into the yard. Atara sat on top of Fire, while Daj climbed up onto a bay named Brownie and Estrella rode a white gelding we called Snow. They formed up behind Lord Harsha and the fifteen knights - now seventeen counting Joshu Kadar and Maram. Lord Harsha insisted that I take my place at the head of the knights, and so I did. Then, in two columns, we set out down the road.
We had fine weather for travel, with a warm, westerly wind and blue skies full puffy white clouds. Bees buzzed in the wild-flowers growing along the barley and wheat fields, and cows cawed in the cherry orchards. After turning past a farm belonging to a widow named Jereva and her two crippled sons, we made our way east toward Mount Eluru and the white-capped peaks of the Culhadosh range that shone in the distance. The ground rose steadily into a hillier country, and after six or seven miles, the farms began giving way to more orchards, pastures full of sheep and cattle, and patches of forest. The road, like every other in Mesh, had been made of the best paving stones and kept in good repair. Our horses' hooves drummed against it in a clacking, rhythmic pace, and we made good distance without too much work. Twenty-four miles it was from Lord Harsha's farm to Lord Avian's castle, straight through the heartland of what had once been my father's realm. And at nearly every house or field that we passed, men, women and children paused in their labors to watch us pound down the road.
At the edge of a pear orchard, a hoary warrior raised his hand to point at my father's banner streaming in the breeze as he called out to his grandson: 'Look - the swan and stars of the Elahad!'
He was too old and infirm to do more than wish us well, but we came across other warriors who wanted to take part in our expedition. Those who owned warhorses - and whom Lord Harsha or the other knights could vouch for - I asked to join us. By the time the sun began dropping toward the mountains behind us, we numbered thirty-three strong.
About eight miles from Lord Avijan's castle, we turned onto a much narrower road leading north. This took us through a band of pasture with the Lake of the Ten Thousand Swans to our left and the steep slopes of Mount Eluru rising almost straight up to the right. In one place, only a strip of grass ten yards wide separated the sacred mountain's granite walls from the icy blue waters of the lake. Lord Avijan's ancestors had built the Avijan castle farther up through the pass in a cleft between two spurs of Mount Eluru's northern buttress. In all the world, I could think of few castles harder to reach or possessing such great natural defenses.
We approached the castle up a very steep and rocky slope that would have daunted any attacking army. A shield wall fronted with a moat and protected by many high towers, surrounded the castle's yards and shops, with the great keep rising up like a stone block beneath the much greater mass of Mount Eluru behind it.
Lord Avijan, followed by a retinue of twenty knights, met us on the drawbridge that, was lowered over black waters. He had decked himself out in full armor, and sat upon a huge gray stallion. His blue surcoat showed a golden boar. He was a tall man with a long, serious face that reminded me of a wolfhound. At twenty-six years of age, he was young to be a lord, but my father had found few men in Mesh so skilled at leading a great many knights in wild but well-organized charges of steel-clad horses.
'Lord Elahad!' he called out to me in a strong, stately voice. 'Welcome home to Mesh - and to my home. My castle is yours for as long as you need it. And my warriors and knights are yours to command, for as you must have been told, they have taken oaths to me, and it is my command that they should support you in becoming king.'
This, I thought, was Lord Avijan's way of apologizing for a thing that he had no need to apologize for. A proud and intelligent man with little vanity, he came from a long and honored line of warriors. His grandfather had married my great-grandfather's youngest sister, and so we counted ourselves as kin. This distant tie of blood, however, formed no basis for his claim on Mesh's throne. That came from his skill at arms, his coolness of head on the battlefield and his good judgment off it - and the way he inspired courage and loyalty in the men whom he led.
'Thank you, Lord Avijan,' I told him. I nudged Altaru closer to him so that I could clasp his hand. 'But it is my wish that you release your warriors from their oaths. I would have them follow me, or not, according to their hearts. And then, if it is my fate to become king, they may make their oaths to me.'
Lord Avijan bowed his head at this, and then so did the knights lined up in the tunnel of the tower behind him. They drew out their kalamas to salute me, then struck them against their shields in a great noise of steel against steel. And one of them - a knight I recognized as Tavish the Bold - cried out: 'You will become king, and we will follow you to the end of all battles, oaths or no oaths!'
Lord Avijan then invited all of us to a feast. After we had ridden into the castle and given our horses to the care of the stableboys, we settled into whatever rooms or quarters that Lord Avijan had appointed for us. Half an hour later, we gathered in Lord Avijan's great hall, on the first floor of the keep. Many long tables laden with roasted joints of meat and hot breads filled this large space; many stands of candles had been set out to light it and hundreds of little, flickering flames cast their fire into the air. The great wood beams high above us were blackened with generations of soot. A hundred knights and warriors joined us there, for word of my arrival had gone ahead of me. Many til these tall powerful men I had known since my childhood. I paid my respects to a master knight named Sar Yulmar, and to Sar Vikan, whom I had led into battle at the Culhadosh Commons. Also to Lord Sharad, a very tall and lean man with hair as gray as steel, who had taken command of Asaru's battalion after my brother had been killed. He had gained great renown at the Battle of Red Mountain against Waas, and fourteen years before that, at the Diamond River, where the Ishkans had practically murdered my grandfather. Despite his years, he had a gallant manner and didn't mind taking risks in the heat of battle.
We all filled our bellies with good food that night, and then it came time to fill our souls with good conversation. We might have hoped for many rounds of toasts, entertaining stories told and minstrels singing out the great, ancient tales. But as Lord Avijan's grooms went around filling and refilling the warriors' cups with thick, black beer, our talk turned toward serious matters. Soon it became clear that our gathering would be less a celebration than a council of war.
After Lord Avijan's young children had been sent off to bed, he and I came down off the dais at the front of the room where we had taken the table of honor. I insisted that all present should be hon
ored equally that night, and so near the center of the hall I found a table littered with empty cups and spilled beer, and I leaned back against it. Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and others gathered around informally, sitting on tables or the long benches nearby - or standing all crowded-in close. Atara sat on one side of me as if she were my queen, while Maram pressed his huge body up against my other side. Master Juwain and my other companions took their places at the other end of the table. More than a few of the warriors looking on must have thought it strange that we included Daj and Estrella in our discussion, but that was because they did not know these two remarkable children.
'Let me say, first and last,' I told the warriors gathered around me, 'that you do me a great honor in corning forth for me alter all that has happened - and in such perilous times. I will never forget this, and no matter what befalls, I will stand by you to my last breath.'
'You will stand as king - that is what will befall!' Sar Vikan barked out. He, himself, stood a good few inches shorter than most Valari, but what he lacked in height he made up in the power of his thickly muscled body. His square-cut face seemed animated with a rage of restlessness streaming through him.
'When Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar hear that you have returned, they will surely step aside.'
'They will not step aside!' Lord Sharad said. He leaned against the table opposite me, and pulled at one of the battle ribbons tied to his long, gray hair. 'Let us, at least, be clear about that.'
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