The Diamond Warriors Read online

  ‘He is cut!’ someone at the edge of the circle called out, pointing at me. ‘The Elahad has been cut!’

  ‘First blood to Lord Tomavar!’

  As if a signal had been given, Lord Tomavar stood back from me, breathing hard. He stared at my face. I pressed my hand to my forehead, wet with blood. By wild chance, it seemed, his sword must have reopened the lightning bolt scar etched into my skin. So intent had I been on keeping myself from getting killed that I hadn’t even felt the wound.

  ‘Val!’ Kane called out to me. ‘Val!’

  He didn’t have to say anything other than my name for me to know what he meant: I could not go on fighting like this. In a way, I was not really fighting at all, but only fencing with Lord Tomavar. He certainly sensed this. He stared at the blood dripping down my forehead. And then, like a wolf incited to kill, he came at me again.

  And again we cut and thrust and moved across the grass in a frenzy of whipping arms and straining legs. Once, twice, thrice, we came together in a clash of steel against silustria, sprang apart, then clashed again. My breath burst from my lungs and nearly caught in my throat. My arms ached with a smoldering flame. Ten times I avoided the edge of his blade by a hair; ten times its point burned past my neck, my chest, my eyes, by the whisper of a breath. Each time his muscles tightened and bunched to unleash his fury at me, I felt the pain of it in my own body a moment before he moved. But my gift of valarda would not save me forever. Sooner or later, as Kane had said, Lord Tomavar’s sword would cut its way past the silvery arc of mine, and that would be that.

  ‘Val!’ Kane cried out again.

  I could feel Kane’s savage soul calling for me to kill Lord Tomavar. But even as Lord Tomavar’s kalama nearly cleaved my head in two, I knew that I could not kill him. I could not even wound him and then break off fighting, as I had with Salmelu in King Hadaru’s hall, for that unwanted mercy had only brought down upon me shame and King Hadaru’s wrath. All duels were to the death – so said the ancient codes of the Valari. Only the life’s blood could satisfy honor, unless of course the challenger had a change of heart and formally apologized to the challenged. But such miracles were as rare as the rising of the sun at midnight.

  ‘Val!’

  We battled on and on beneath the heat pouring down from the sky and the eyes of thousands of warriors. I could only hope to exhaust Lord Tomavar so that he collapsed and broke. But it seemed that I must break first. My sword, once so light, now grew as heavy as a mallet made of lead. Every muscle in my body burned with a terrible, deep fire. My belly knotted and spasmed as I fought for breath. I coughed, hard, against the dark thing choking my throat. Most duels lasted only seconds, but my desperate combat with Lord Tomavar had already gone on longer than any duel in living memory – so I heard someone cry out from afar.

  ‘He is cut again! The Elahad is!’ another knight shouted. ‘Second blood as well to Lord Tomavar!’

  I could barely feel the new wound where the edge of Lord Tomavar’s blade, as we locked together face to face, pushing and sweating and straining, had bloodied me. Amazingly – unbelievably – the steel had cut open my forehead again. Drops of blood flew out into the air as I twisted my head out of the way of one of Lord Tomavar’s vicious thrusts; more blood found its way into my eye, stinging and half-blinding me. I knew that I could not go on this way much longer.

  ‘Fight, Lord Elahad!’ I head Joshu Kadar cry out. ‘Kill Lord Tomavar, if you would be king!’

  His words seemed to enrage Lord Tomavar. And shame him, too, for he would gain little honor in slaying an opponent who refused to slay him. And his shame touched upon some deep guilt, whether of his failure to prevent Morjin from ravaging my father’s castle or his betrayal of my father in trying claim his throne, I could not say. But I felt building inside him a guilt and grief so terrible that he desired death – and wanted to kill me in order to drive it back. Up to this point, he had fought with a cool and fluid fury, as flawless in execution as any Valari warrior could hope for. But now hate broke through his blood and poisoned his eyes. He swung his sword at me, again and again, as might a madman, in a shocking burst of anger and steel; he attacked with such recklessness and rage to kill that there could be no defense – other than to attack him back.

  ‘Valashu!’

  Then, in the slash and burn of Lord Tomavar’s sword, his immense anguish cut me to the heart, and his hate became my hate – and something more. Deep beneath my throat built an immense, black storm, as within a small room and wholly contained by it. At its center raged a whirlwind.

  ‘Strike, now!’

  At last, when I opened the door to hate’s brilliant reflection and its ultimate source, lightning flashed and drove away the dark thing choking me. As Kane had called for, I struck Alkaladur straight into Lord Tomavar’s heart: but not the gleaming length of silustria that I gripped in my sweating hands, only the blade made of a finer and brighter substance that men called the Sword of Truth. I found my voice again, and shouted out to him words that rang out like thunder: ‘I did not usurp my father! I did not betray the castle to Morjin! And I am sorry about your wife! You have my promise that I will do all that I can to help get her back!’

  Lord Tomavar stood ten feet away from me across the blood-dewed grass. He gasped for breath, and pressed his free hand to his chest as if he might drop of a blood stroke. His sword dipped down toward the ground. The madness, I saw, had gone out of his eyes. Then he called back to me in amazement: ‘You speak truly, Lord Elahad! I know you do!’

  In the ring around us, the knights and warriors stared at him, stunned.

  ‘I was wrong to say what I did to you!’ he shouted. ‘I should not have challenged you! I give you my apology, freely, that all should hear and know: I, Gorvan Tomavar, have wronged you, and am in your debt!’

  Now Lord Vishand, Lord Avijan and Lord Harsha – and many others – looked at Lord Tomavar as if struck dumb with shock. Hundreds of warriors gathered around the square closest to us, as they finally understood what was happening, let loose cheers of relief and wonderment. I saw Maram choking back tears and Atara smiling mysteriously. Kane simply stood like one of the shining mountains to the east. Above all of us, the hot morning sun blazed down.

  ‘And I should not have challenged you for your father’s throne!’ Lord Tomavar continued. ‘Please forgive me!’

  And with that, he cast his sword upon the grass. He stepped up to me. Then he knelt down, and bowed his head as he broke out sobbing. All standing around him stared at this extraordinary sight as if they could not believe what they saw.

  ‘A challenge has been made, and a challenge has been withdrawn,’ Lord Tanu finally cried out, stepping inside the ring. ‘Honor has been defended and satisfied. The duel is over’

  As the knights surrounding us broke apart and regrouped into twos and threes and Master Juwain came up to bandage my cut head, Lord Tomavar looked up at me through his dark, moist eyes. And he asked me, ‘Will you really help me find my wife?’

  Before I could answer him, even as the warriors picked up his words and passed them back through the ranks edging the square, a tall figure dressed in a hooded traveling cloak stepped onto the field. A glint and jangle of metal hinted at steel mail concealed beneath woven wool. I wondered at the audacity of this person. By the agreement of the truce, only Lord Tanu’s or Lord Tomavar’s counselors, or my own, were to be allowed into the square. At the quick approach of this intruder, who might have been a rogue knight, Sar Jalval drew his sword and stepped in front of Lord Tomavar as if to protect his lord.

  ‘Your wife needs no finding!’ a high-pitched and angry voice cried out. Then the knight pulled back the hood of the traveling cloak – and the helmet of mail beneath that. ‘At last I have found you!’

  Before us, shaking out her long, raven hair, stood one of the loveliest women in the Morning Mountains. She was tall, with flawless skin the color of dark ivory and large, dark eyes that shone like twin moons. In her, I thought, gathered all t
hat was best and brightest of the Valari people.

  ‘Vareva!’ Lord Tomavar shouted, pushing himself up to his feet. ‘You are alive!’

  He made a move to cross the grass and embrace her, but Vareva clasped her hand to the sword belted to her side and cried out, ‘Stay back, my lord! Stay back – please!’

  Lord Tomavar halted his charge and stood staring at her, utterly stupefied as if someone had smashed a mace into his brains. Everyone on the field gathered around us and made a second ring of warriors acting as witnesses that day. Lord Manamar Tanu gazed at his daughter, clearly chagrined and confused as to what he should do.

  ‘But how did you come to be here?’ Lord Tomavar asked her. ‘And how long have you been back in Mesh?’

  ‘Long enough to hear that you had taken up arms against the son of the man you revered and called “Sire.”’

  ‘But, dear wife, there are things you don’t understand,’ he huffed out. ‘Things have happened that you know nothing about!’

  Her pained gaze fell upon him with a strong brew of emotions: ire, grief, resentment and adoration. Then she called out in a clear voice: ‘I know this: that Valashu Elahad did not desert the castle as you, and others, have accused! I was there, you know. Before the castle fell and they killed almost everyone and took the rest of us away, I heard Lord Lansar Raasharu say that King Shamesh was dead, and that Asaru was now king and had sent Lord Raasharu to summon Val. Valashu Elahad speaks the truth! Lansar Raasharu was a ghul! I heard Morjin say this himself! To his filthy priests, in the Stone City, that foul, foul beast of a man boasted that he had suborned the noblest man in Mesh!’

  Her words stunned the warriors, knights and lords standing around her. No one had ever dreamed that Vareva – or anyone else – would ever return out of Argattha to confirm the truth of what had happened in my father’s castle on that most terrible of days.

  ‘You were in the … presence of the Red Dragon?’ Lord Tomavar finally stammered out to her.

  ‘I served him in his throne room,’ Vareva said, with loathing and shame burning up her face. ‘Morjin took great pride in sporting his Valari slaves. As he did in boasting of how he had deceived everyone in Tria. Everyone in the world, almost, accuses Valashu Elahad of slaying an innocent man! But Ravik Kirriland was no innocent! He was a Kallimun priest, sent to murder Atara Ars Narmada!’

  At the mention of this perfidy, of which Kane had told my friends and me many months ago, Atara bowed her blindfolded head toward Vareva.

  ‘And so all the defamations people have made against Lord Valashu are false!’ Vareva cried out. ‘And everything that he has said is true!’

  As she had spoken, I noticed Liljana holding her blue gelstei out toward Vareva with one hand while pressing her other hand to her temple. Then far out across the field, deep within the ranks of Lord Tomavar’s men, an unseen warrior cried out: ‘Valashu Elahad has told true! Lord Tomavar’s wife confirms this! I can hear her words plain as a robin’s song!’

  Then others standing even farther back, out of easy reach of a spoken voice, made murmurs of amazement that they could understand Vareva as well. All at once it seemed as if all fifteen thousand warriors gathered around the square were affirming this and nodding their heads. Later, I would overhear men speaking of a miracle: of how they heard the voices of us at the center of the square clearly and distinctly, as if we stood right next to them. It would seem that Liljana had discovered a new power of her blue gelstei.

  ‘Dear Vareva,’ Lord Tomavar said, ‘I am sorry. I give you my apology, as I did to Lord Valashu.’

  I felt the hearts of more than ten thousand Valari warriors beating as one, and suddenly changing directions in their passion, as with the shift of a great flock of birds in flight. I wondered if Lord Tomavar could sense this as well.

  ‘But why, dear wife,’ Lord Tomavar continued, gazing at Vareva, ‘did you not come forth sooner and speak of these things?’

  ‘I was about to,’ Vareva told him, ‘when you drew on Lord Valashu. Then it was too late. I did not think that your pride would allow you to apologize, even if you knew the truth of things.’

  At this, Lord Tomavar bowed his head in shame.

  ‘Then, too,’ Vareva continued, ‘I knew that Lord Valashu would defeat you, as how could he not? I wanted him to, don’t you see? Because how can I be your “dear” wife, or any wife at all, after all that has happened?’

  It seemed that Lord Tomavar could not bear to look at her, and so he stared at my sword instead. His black eyes grew brighter and sadder as he studied his reflection as if finally seeing himself as he really was. Then he looked at me, and I felt his heart opening to the vast sea of suffering that Vareva held inside herself. I had a strange sense that he had come alive, in some small part, to my gift of valarda.

  ‘I am sorry’ Lord Tomavar said again, finally turning back to Vareva.

  ‘And I am sorry, too,’ she said to him.

  ‘I am sorry – but tell me that you no longer love me, then!’

  ‘I cannot tell you that!’ she cried out. ‘But what is love against the dark thing that eats at all of us? That waits inside like a beast?’

  Lord Tomavar’s eyes brimmed with tears as he gazed at her with a rare tenderness. Then she broke down sobbing. After she had regained control of her spasming belly, she gasped out to him, ‘I always said that you had the soul of an angel! But I hated you for losing it and going against Lord Elahad. It was as if you were already dead! And why did you leave me to Morjin? You should have come after me! You should have! Valashu Elahad went into Argattha once, and he would have come after the woman he loved!’

  At this, Lord Tomavar turned back to gaze at my sword again. So great was the grief ripping through him that I knew he wanted to die. But his pride would not let him take his own life or cast it away. Earlier he had spoken of a debt to me, and debts must be repaid. And he owed Vareva more than his life.

  ‘I cannot undo what has been done,’ he called out in a deep yet quavering voice. ‘But I can do, now, what should be done – it is all that anyone can do.’

  So saying, this very flawed man, whose essential nobility and faithfulness my father had always counted on, drew himself up tall and straight, and moved over to me. He set his hand upon the flat of my sword and cried out for everyone to hear: ‘I stand for Valashu Elahad as king! I call for every warrior who has pledged to me to be free to stand as well!’

  He turned toward Vareva yet again. His gaze burned with a promise that he would try to redeem himself in service to me. And more, with a plea to win her back as his wife.

  ‘I stand for Valashu Elahad, too,’ Vareva said, taking a step toward me.

  ‘You cannot!’ Sar Jalval called back from the ring of men around us. ‘You are a woman, and no warrior!’

  ‘I am a warrior!’ Vareva shouted at him. She drew forth her sharp, shining sword. ‘My father taught me how to use this! With it, I slew three of Morjin’s guards and made my escape! Many there are standing upon this field who have not slain so many of our enemy!’

  Everyone looked at Manamar Tanu then, and this fierce knight nodded his head as he admitted, ‘It is true – I instructed my daughter in the sword. I should not have, but she was always a willful girl, and I could not refuse her.’

  He paused a moment, then added, ‘But she is right about who should be king of Mesh. I stand for Valashu Elahad, too!’

  He drew his sword and moved over to me. Then Lord Tanu freed his bright kalama and called out to me, ‘I was very wrong about you. And so I will stand for you as well. All who have pledged to me are free to stand for you, as they will!’

  I stood waiting for someone, or anyone, to speak.

  ‘Valashu Elahad!’ a powerful voice brayed out. I turned toward Lord Ramjay, Lord Tanu’s greatest captain. On the field of the Culhadosh Commons, after the battle, he had spoken against me the most strongly. ‘In Tria, with this secret sword you carry inside, you slew a man who has proved to be not an innocent – so Vare
va Tomavar has told us. If you become king, what will you do with this great power of yours?’

  I looked at Alkaladur, shimmering in the sunlight. And then, as I held this beautiful blade in one hand and my handkerchief containing Atara’s golden hair in my other, I heard my voice crack out like thunder: ‘Only this: I will call upon every particle of my being to defeat Morjin! And I will call upon you. You are Valari, descended all from Elahad himself and his brethren from the stars. We are brothers and sisters, warriors of the sword and the spirit. If our spirits are one, then the very fire of the stars shall be ours. If we are one, even if there is only one chance in all the universe of what we most desire, we shall set our sight on that and nothing else, and make it be.’

  I told them, too, that if fate called me, I would die for them, as all must die for their dream.

  For a while it seemed that no one moved. Liljana’s blue crystal carried my words out for all to take in, not just with their ears but with a deeper sense. My passion to fight Morjin became their passion, not because I struck it into them as I had the truth with Lord Tomavar, but because they opened their hearts to me. Did the valarda, I wondered, dwell within all women and men, waiting to be awakened?

  ‘Very well!’ Lord Ramjay suddenly shouted as he drew his sword. ‘Then I, too, will stand for Valashu Elahad!’

  ‘And I!’ Sar Shagarth shouted back.

  ‘And I stand for Valashu Elahad!’ Sar Jalval and Lord Vishand called out, as with one voice.

  For a while, Liljana’s crystal gave me to hear hundreds of conversations that had broken out around the square like the rumbles of a storm. I listened as warriors recounted my victories where I had led in battle: over Baron Narcavage and his assassins in King Kiritan’s garden; over Morjin and his guards in his throne room when my friends and I had claimed the Lightstone; over the rogue Akhand clan of the Adirii tribe on the Wendrush; over the treacherous Duke Malatam and his five hundred knights at Shurkar’s Notch in Alonia; and, of course, over Morjin’s three armies at the Culhadosh Commons, which many now claimed that we won only because of me. Then Lord Tanu, finally deeming that enough had been said, held up his hand and called for the warriors to make their way to the various edges of the square: north, if they would stand for either the Lords Ramanu, Bahram and Kharashan; south if they favored Lord Tanu; west for Lord Tomavar; and east if they wanted me to be king. The warriors, however, ignored him. As one, almost all of them, from every direction, broke ranks and rushed into the square, crying out, ‘Valashu Elahad – Valashu Elahad for king!’