The Diamond Warriors

by David Zindell

  Sajagax’s fierce words caused Morjin’s pallid face to drain of all blood. I imagined, however, that Morjin’s men perceived him through the colored glass of illusion as a mighty and sanguine warrior who stared down Sajagax with a vast self-assurance beaming from an implacable countenance. Morjin had only to nod at Gorgorak for this great chief of the Marituk to speak in Morjin’s stead:

  ‘You will do nothing if I put an arrow into you first!’

  ‘Brave words!’ Sajagax shouted at Gorgorak with a voice like a lion’s roar. Then he pointed out into the steppe. ‘Let us see if your deeds can match them! Within the hour, my warriors will ride against yours. Let us first, at a distance fit for Sarni chieftains, loose our arrows at each other. Let him who survives take the other’s horses, wives and lands, and thus settle matters between the Kurmak and the Marituk!’

  But Gorgorak, usually so bold, made no answer to this. He just sat staring at Sajagax with his little blue eyes. On all the Wendrush, it was said, no one could outshoot Sajagax.

  Now Morjin turned the force of his will upon Arch Uttam, and his overawed Red Priest could not help but deliver more of Morjin’s words:

  ‘If it is battle you seek,’ Arch Uttam told Sajagax, ‘then it is battle you shall have! And at the end of it, when you are brought before the Lord of Ea in chains, we will tear out your liver and you will watch us feed it to the dogs before you die!’

  Kane, who had liked Sajagax from their first meeting, growled out to Arch Uttam: ‘Ha! Save your words for when you do have him in chains!’

  Arch Uttam’s skull-like face fixed on Kane. ‘We should have put you in chains when we had the chance! I would have torn out much more than your liver!’

  He said this with a seething glee, then turned to stare at Atara. She sat on her red mare, gripping her bow and remaining quiet behind the white blindfold that bound her face.

  ‘And you,’ Arch Uttam said to her, ‘this time we will flay you alive. We will make a puppet of your skin to display in Lord Morjin’s hall!’

  Arch Yadom, who looked almost like Arch Uttam’s evil twin, had been the chief of the priests who had tortured my companions in Argattha. He smiled at Atara and added, ‘But you, unfortunately, will not be able to watch as we strip you to the meat.’

  His cruelty proved too much for Ymiru, who stood behind me gripping his borkor in the only hand that remained to him. He raised up this fearsome weapon, and shook it at Arch Yadom as his huge voice boomed out: ‘This, to you, if we meet again on this field, though you be no warrior and hide behind your ugly robes! And you be mistaken if you think you will ever return to Argattha. It belongs to the Ymaniri, and it be a hroly place. After your master surrenders, we will wash it clean with fire and build it anew!’

  Now Count Ulanu, who called himself King Ulanu, took his turn to speak Morjin’s spite. He glowered at me and snapped: ‘It will be you who surrenders – and right now, or we will slaughter all of you, as it was with the Librarians at Khaisham!’

  Before I could respond to this, Kane called out to him: ‘Have you wondered, Ulanu, as you stared into the mirror, what you will look like without any nose at all? If a woman could disfigure you, what do suppose an army of Valari warriors will do?’

  I could feel the blood pounding through Count Ulanu’s face and flushing it purple. And he shouted to Kane, ‘I am King Ulanu! And I, myself, will cut off Liljana Ashvaran’s nose – and her ears, eyes and evil mouth! And carve up the children she now protects, as well!’

  Kane stared at him as if regarding a piece of offal. ‘A king who takes pleasure in massacring innocents is no king but only a butcher.’

  ‘Do you remember the Kul Moroth?’ Count Ulanu snarled at Kane. ‘It was with pleasure that I had my Blues chop down your minstrel and crucify him! And even greater pleasure, after you fled the Library, that we took his body out of the crypt where you had deserted him. I gave his liver to –’

  ‘Every abomination!’ Kane suddenly shouted out. ‘Every degradation of all that is human!’

  For a moment, Count Ulanu watched Kane carefully as he might a chained tiger. He glanced at Morjin, in confidence that his master would somehow keep Kane from springing at him. And then he continued his taunts: ‘Some parts of your minstrel’s body I gave to my Blues to do with as they would. But I put his head in a jar of wine, that I might look at it from time to time. After Lord Morjin crucifies you, it will be my pleasure to show it to you.’

  Kane’s eyes blazed black as burning pitch; for a moment I thought that, truce or no truce, he might draw his sword and fall upon Count Ulanu. But he surprised me, for an icy calm came over him, like clear air in the deep of winter. In a strange voice he said to Count Ulanu, ‘One man thinks he is the slayer and another man the slain. But both might be wrong, eh? When you die, though, Ulanu, I think you will truly die.’

  None of our enemy seemed to know what to make of his mysterious words, not even Morjin, for he must not have learned of Alphanderry’s return to us. The Red Dragon waved his hand at Count Ulanu as if brushing him aside, and he said to Kane: ‘A cat has nine lives, and how many have you had … Kane? You must know that you have lived your last one. I, however, shall give it back to you on the sole condition that you persuade your friend to surrender.’

  As Morjin turned to look at me with his dreadful red eyes, I wondered yet again why he had called this parlay. It could not be, could it, just that he hoped to strike terror into my men and weaken them for the coming battle?

  One of those, at least, who had ridden with me, would not be terrorized. King Hadaru had lost all patience with such talk. He drew himself up straight on top of his horse, then he patted the hilt of his sword and called out: ‘Why do we waste words? We all know that there will be no surrender – before the battle. And as for after, when the Valari’s kalamas have done their work, let us see who still stands to call for surrender!’

  ‘It will not be you!’ Salmelu shouted at him. He sat within his red-tinged armor glaring at the man he had once called father. I had always thought Salmelu, with his great beak of a nose and weak chin, almost as ugly in his person as in his soul. ‘And when you stand no more, Lord Morjin will give me Ishka to rule, and I shall sit on your throne in the Wooden Palace!’

  I felt a great sadness, like a shadow across the moon, come over King Hadaru. He would not speak to his son, nor even look at him, for to him Salmelu had long since joined the dead. And so instead, he said to Morjin, ‘I should have burned my palace before I marched from Ishka. As on the Raaswash I should have slain the one you turned away from me.’

  ‘Do not despair, King Hadaru,’ Morjin told him. ‘When all is done here, we’ll march east and I shall burn your palace – and all the Nine Kingdoms, as I did Tria. The lands of the Morning Mountains, I will then give to my faithful priest, Arch Igasho, to build anew and rule as king.’

  At this, Salmelu beamed like a boy given a prize at a fair. Could he not see, I wondered, that Morjin lied to him? That even the Great Beast hated a traitor, and after the battle had been fought, would not give Salmelu even the dirt clotted to his horse’s hooves?

  ‘He will use you,’ I said to Salmelu. ‘After you have helped fight your own people, he will cast you aside like a broken arrow.’

  Salmelu’s gauntleted hand clenched into a fist, which he shook at me as he cried out, ‘It was only evil chance that my arrow did not pierce you to the quick! But you still feel the burn of the kirax, don’t you?’

  I stared straight into his beadlike eyes as I told him: ‘What I feel is nothing against the shame of seeing a Valari prince serve the Red Dragon.’

  His hand clamped onto the hilt of his sword. ‘It was evil chance, too, that you cut me in the circle of honor. But when we next meet in battle, I shall serve you with cold steel!’

  At this, Maram whipped free his red gelstei and said, ‘Not if I serve you with fire first!’

  I wondered if he had forgotten his vow never again to use his firestone against human flesh? More li
kely, I thought, he counted on Salmelu – and Morjin – not knowing that he had made such a vow.

  At the sight of the ruby crystal, Morjin’s face tightened in fear and hate. With a peculiar edge to his voice, he said to Maram, ‘Let us see who burns here today’

  I couldn’t help gazing up at Bemossed, naked to the heat of the waxing sun and the anguish ripping through his body

  ‘Surrender,’ Morjin said to me, ‘and I will give you the slave.’

  ‘No,’ I told him, shaking my head. ‘You will never do that.’

  ‘Surrender to me, Valashu, or I will make you my slave. Here and now, as we speak.’

  ‘No – you do not have that power’

  ‘Don’t I? I will make you my ghul – the most beloved of all those I command. And the first thing you do will be to kill that vixen you call your woman!’

  At this, he turned his poisonous gaze upon Atara, sitting quietly on the back of her horse.

  ‘No,’ I told Morjin, ‘you are mad.’

  ‘Am I, Valashu?’

  ‘Let Bemossed go,’ I said, looking up at the top of the Owl’s Hill. ‘Perhaps he can help you.’

  For a single heartbeat of time, I wished this impossible thing that I had said might be true. I could feel Morjin feeling this desire within me. It caused his face to contort with rage, and he snarled at me: ‘I will help him to die in agony!’

  Yes, I thought, he would. How long will he try to keep Bemossed alive?

  ‘As I will make you die,’ Morjin cried out to me, ‘this very day!’

  Atara nudged her horse a few feet closer to Morjin, then turned her face so that she seemed to look him straight in the eye. I sensed her choosing her words carefully so as to discompose him: ‘I have seen you here, Morjin. You and Val. It will be as it is and always was: you and he, chained to the same terrible, terrible fate. In your spite for each other, and even more in –’

  ‘Have you seen this?’ he cried out, cutting her off.

  He reached into his saddle’s pocket and drew forth a plain, golden cup. I gasped to behold once more the Lightstone’s splendor, and so did Maram, Ymiru, Sajagax and others gathered there at the center of the field. But Atara seemed to sit within a cloud of confusion, for she had no eyes with which to perceive it and no scryer’s vision had ever encompassed this loveliest of all things.

  ‘Now who claims the Cup of Heaven!’ Salmelu shouted out with all the cruelty he could command.’

  ‘So’ Kane muttered, staring at the brilliant gold gelstei. I could feel him aching to draw his sword and cut it from Morjin’s hand.

  Then Morjin called out, to him and all of us, but especially to Atara: ‘Valashu Elahad and I are chained together! And this shall be the hammer that forges the links!’

  With that, he held out the cup toward me. Its soft golden hue suddenly flared to a deep and angry amber. The silver gelstei might seek the gold, but it seemed that the gold could also seek the silver. The long blade strapped to my side fairly quivered; I sensed the Lightstone pulling at my sword’s silustria as a lodestone draws in iron. I had always hoped that the Lightstone, though it might command every other kind of gelstei, would have no power over the silver.

  ‘Can you feel it?’ Morjin said to me.

  Despite myself – or perhaps because I wanted to deny the truth of things – I clasped my hand to Alkaladur’s hilt. I had always called upon this marvelous sword to give me strength to bear the death agonies that I dealt out to others, and even more, to cool the heat of the kirax that poisoned my blood.

  ‘Can you feel him?’ Morjin asked me, pointing with his other hand toward Bemossed.

  At that moment, with his golden hammer, Morjin battered down the walls of aloneness protecting me, and all Bemossed’s agony came burning into me.

  ‘There is a cure for the fire of the kirax,’ Morjin said to me. ‘A cure for all that grieves you. Do you remember what it is?’

  To inflict my own suffering on others, I thought. But how can I do such a thing?

  ‘You must open your heart to me,’ he told me. ‘You must direct that sword you keep inside toward those who defy me.’

  ‘No,’ I gasped against the pain tearing through me.

  ‘You will serve me, Valashu!’

  ‘No!’

  I stared up at the Owl’s Hill, and I felt Bemossed weakening in his final fight for life, even as Morjin’s hold over the Lightstone grew stronger.

  ‘Valashu, together you and I can –’

  ‘No!’ I shouted at him. ‘Never!’

  My voice seemed to fall upon my friends and Morjin’s counselors with the force of a storm wind, for their faces grew grave with distress and they clung to their horses. But it left Morjin untouched.

  ‘And still you deny me!’ he thundered at me. He pointed behind him at the vast army lined up across the steppe. ‘In the face of death and the destruction of all you hold dear, you deny me! So be it. If you won’t accept the cure for what mars you, you will have the curse!’

  Then his hand tightened around the Lightstone. I felt myself hurled as if into a pool of boiling oil. Its bubbling heat stripped the flesh from my bones and ate away my mouth and my eyes. I could not see, nor could I draw breath. Morjin had warned me that Bemossed’s death throes would become mine, multiplied a thousandfold. I did not know if the immense pain piercing me to the core was only a tenth of that which Bemossed suffered – or ten thousand times as great. But it seemed to go on and on forever.

  ‘Let go of your sword!’ Maram called out to me.

  I could not let go of my sword. I sweated inside my armor from every pore as my whole body shook; I gasped for air and bit my tongue and tasted blood. I did not want to let go of my sword. How could I fight Morjin without it?

  ‘Do not let go!’ Kane called out to me. ‘Do not!’

  I gripped Alkaladur’s black jade hilt, carved with a great swan and set with diamonds, even more tightly. Then the torture unmanning me eased, a little. I did not know if Bemossed, nailed to his cross, found just enough will to contend with Morjin over the mastery of the Lightstone and all its powers. Or if I might hold a strength of my own to resist Morjin.

  ‘This parlay,’ I gasped out to him, ‘is over!’

  Morjin smiled at me, and I knew with a searing certainty why he had called me to meet with him here between our two armies. An inextinguishable agony – to say nothing of Morjin’s hate for me and mine for him – clung to me like a robe of fire.

  ‘It is over,’ Morjin said to me. His red eyes gleamed like pools of blood. ‘And now it is time for you, and all of yours, to die.’

  Without another word, but watchful of Atara’s and Sajagax’s bows, he wheeled his horse about and rode back toward his army. His counselors followed him. I heard Sajagax mutter: ‘It is too bad I filled my quiver this morning with long-range arrows and not armor-piecing ones. Truce or no, I would slay that snake!’

  ‘If you did,’ Atara said to him, ‘then Morjin’s men would surely slay Bemossed.’

  I sat gasping for breath as I fought for the will not to fall down screaming; it was like breathing in pure flame. I looked up at the top of the Owl’s Hill. How much longer, I wondered, did Bemossed have to live? How much longer did any of us?

  Then, with these thoughts trying to work their way through the blaze of pain that clouded my mind, I led my friends back toward our lines and battle.

  22

  Just as we reached that place where I had to part with Ymiru – he, to return to the center of our lines and I to our wing – I paused to tell him what he and the Ymaniri must now do. Then I rode back with Kane and Maram to rejoin our cavalry, while Sajagax and Atara continued on to take their places leading their Sarni warriors.

  ‘King Mohan!’ I cried out as we drew up to the massed knights on our right flank. Our enemy’s drums had begun beating out the challenge to war once again. ‘Lord Avijan! Lord Sharad – to me!’

  Those I had called for, with Lord Manthanu, Lord Noldashan and others, gal
loped over to me to hold council. And I gasped out to them: ‘We must change our order of battle! King Mohan, you will take command here of our cavalry.’

  This fierce man, resplendent in his diamond armor, nodded his head to me. Although obviously pleased – and honored – he waited for me to say more, for he did not understand my decision.

  ‘Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad!’ I called out, turning to my cavalry lords. ‘We will lead the Meshian knights back behind our lines to our center.’

  Both of these great warriors seemed puzzled. According to all the Valari knew of making war, heavy horse had no place at the center of the battlefield hemmed in by masses of spear and shield men.

  ‘We must break through,’ I said. ‘We must lead a charge up the Owl’s Hill, and rescue Bemossed.’

  ‘Sire,’ Lord Sharad called back, looking at me deeply, ‘you are not yourself!’

  Now King Mohan cast me a penetrating look as if to wonder if what had transpired with Morjin had driven me mad. With the robe of fire searing my soul, I wondered that as well. I had no time to explain that the fate of much more than Ea might depend upon keeping Bemossed alive. All I could say to my warriors was: ‘The Maitreya cannot die!’

  ‘But, Sire,’ Lord Avijan said to me, glancing up at the lone cross towering over the battlefield, ‘surely Bemossed is as one already dead.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘There is still much life in him – I can feel it!’

  ‘But even supposing we break through, when the Red Dragon perceives our objective, surely he will give the command to slay him.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted again. ‘Anything might happen in battle. We might throw the enemy into confusion. Morjin himself might be killed, or wounded, and the command never given.’

  Maram wiped the sweat from his face, and said to me: ‘But can’t you see it’s a trap? That is just what Morjin will want you to think, and do!’

  ‘It can’t be helped, Maram.’

  ‘Can it not? Morjin uses Bemossed just to get to you! And if we lose you, we lose everything. Don’t let him kill you! If you must attempt this madness, choose another to lead the charge!’