The Diamond Warriors Read online

  I looked at Atara, sitting straight and motionless to my right. I did not know how Abrasax had learned of this great treasure I kept close to my heart, Master Reader of the Brotherhood though he might be. Then this very perceptive man let out a pained breath as he told us of how Bemossed had almost died.

  ‘Our young friend,’ Abrasax said, ‘was already weak from fighting Morjin for too long. Our struggle to escape the valley weakened him further, and our flight through the mountains even more. And that was not the worst of things.’

  ‘What could be worse than that?’ Maram asked. Then his face seemed to drain of blood as he answered his own question: ‘The Grays, then – the damn Grays!’

  ‘The Grays indeed,’ Abrasax told us.

  He went on to say that these soulless men, whose eyes were as hard and dead as pieces of stone, had listened for the murmurings of Bemossed’s mind and had followed him for many days through the mountains and then out onto the grasslands of the Wendrush. And all the while their leader had used a black gelstei to suck away the very fires of Bemossed’s life so that he had sickened nearly to his death.

  ‘It was that way when the Grays pursued us across Alonia,’ Maram said with a shudder. ‘At the end of things, they put their cold claws into our minds so that we couldn’t move. And then came to suck out our souls!’

  Maram, I thought, remembering, spoke dramatically but not inaccurately.

  ‘Only Kane’s coming saved us then,’ Maram told Abrasax. ‘But I should think that the powers of the Seven would have saved you.’

  ‘We do have our skills,’ Abrasax said with a note of mystery shading his voice. ‘Which is why we are even here to tell you how Master Okuth saved Bemossed’s life at the sacrifice of his own.’

  I remembered very well old Master Okuth’s iron-gray hair and heavy head resembling that of an ox. But it seemed that he had possessed the soul of an angel. For as the Seven had fled with Bemossed barely beyond the knives of the Grays and swords of Igasho’s men, Master Okuth had employed all his powers to keep Bemossed from failing and falling off his horse. And at the end, when Bemossed could go no further, Master Okuth had used his green heart stone to pour his own life fires into Bemossed as if giving him his own blood. This greatest of all kindnesses had killed Master Okuth – even as it gave Bemossed the strength to go on.

  ‘We buried Master Okuth in the Sarni way,’ Abrasax said, ‘on a knoll above the Astu River. And then we rode on.’

  ‘But how did you escape then?’ Maram asked. ‘From the Grays?’

  Abrasax pulled at his white beard as if deciding how much he should tell us. Then he nodded his head for Master Nolashar to speak.

  In answer, Master Nolashar took out a flute little different than the one I had once given to Estrella. Although he wore his hair cut short, like Kane’s, and he now practiced with this instrument rather than the sword, he had been born a Valari many years ago – into which land he had never said. His large eyes gazed with great intensity out of a stark and stern face. Yet deep down he seemed a happy man, as why shouldn’t he be? For he had spent most of his life in the study of music, which had been my first and greatest dream.

  ‘The Grays,’ he said, ‘listen for the sounds of the soul in the minds of those they hunt. Other sounds can overwhelm these and confuse them. In particular, music.’

  Maram gazed at him with doubt coloring his face. ‘Are you telling us that you threw the Grays off your trail by playing your flute?’

  ‘No, Sar Maram, I am not telling you that. There are many ways of making music.’

  The tones of his smooth voice hinted at much more than he would say. Had he, with his bright sun stone, led the Seven to call up enchanting melodies out of their gelstei and cast this unearthly music across the steppe to madden the Grays? Or a vastly deeper sound that might have utterly deafened them? It seemed that Master Nolashar, too, liked to keep his secrets.

  ‘Let us just say’, he told us, ‘that in the end the Grays and soldiers rode in one direction, while we rode in another.’

  I nodded my head at this, then looked down the long table at Bemossed. He sat as within a cloud of melancholy, and seemed to hold on to this dark mood as he might an old friend. I felt torment and self-doubt eating at his insides, and I thought I knew why.

  ‘Master Okuth,’ I said to him, ‘was a very good man.’

  ‘He was like my father!’ Bemossed said with tears filling his eyes. ‘As I think my father must have been. He died trying to protect me, too.’

  ‘And that was surely the best thing he ever did. As he would have wanted to tell you. And so with Master Okuth.’

  Bemossed looked down at his long hands, which had performed so many loathsome tasks during his years as a despised Hajarim slave. Then he said, ‘In Hesperu, they flavor wine with oranges, cloves, pepper and honey. Fire wine, they call it. It is like an elixir of the angels – I was allowed to taste it once, and I got drunk on it. That is how it was with Master Okuth. He gave me his life! Even as it emptied from him, I felt it filling me up, like fire, so hot, so sweet. And now his bones lie cold and picked white on the grass of the Wendrush while here I sit with my blood still beating sweetly through me.’

  ‘Fathers,’ I told him, remembering, ‘die for their sons. That is life.’

  ‘No, that is death,’ he murmured to me.

  ‘Master Okuth would not have wanted to hear you say that.’

  ‘No, Valashu – I know you are right. And I know I must honor Master Okuth in living, as best I can, as I was born to do. It is just that …’

  His voice vanished into the quiet of the tent; from outside came the muffled cries of many men drinking and celebrating.

  ‘What is it, friend?’ I asked him.

  He seemed to fight back some deep dread inside him, and a warmer thing, too. Then he said, ‘It is just that one shouldn’t pour wine into a cracked vessel.’

  At this, Abrasax and the other masters looked at him with deep concern. So did my companions, and so did I.

  ‘Once,’ I said to him, ‘I thought wrongly that I was the Maitreya. And people therefore thought wrongly of me that I would be without flaws. But, like any other man, I was only –’

  ‘No, I am not speaking of common faults. Jealousy, stubbornness, uncertainty – these I know as well as anyone.’ He paused to draw in a long breath as he looked at me. ‘But there is something else. Something that I can’t even tell you because I can’t quite see it myself. A wrongness. The Maitreya, you call me, the Shining One. But I can’t always hold this light that I should be able to hold. I can’t always be it, even though it is always there and in some strange way I can’t ever not be it. And when I can’t, there is a kind of darkness, inside the light. It goes on and on, forever. It … is hard to describe. But Master Okuth knew, I think. And Morjin.’

  ‘Morjin!’ I called out, nearly shouting.

  ‘I have fought with him for what seems forever,’ he said. ‘It is killing me, Valashu!’

  I sensed something dark and dreadful pulling at him inside, and he seemed immensely tired and older than the twenty-three years he supposed himself to be. Then I remembered lines from an old verse:

  The Shining One

  In innocence sleeps

  Inside his heart

  Angel fire sleeps

  And when he wakes

  The fire leaps.

  About the Maitreya

  One thing is known:

  That to himself

  He always is known

  When the moment comes

  To claim the Lightstone.

  The Maitreya he must be, I thought. He must be. But I wondered if circumstances – and my own desperate purpose – had forced him to take on this mantle before he had fully awakened. The verse hinted at a kind of quickening and self-knowing that would occur only when the Maitreya set hands upon the Lightstone. It tormented me that in losing the Lightstone to Morjin, I might have kept Bemossed from his fate.

  ‘You are safe here,’ I tol
d him, not quite knowing what to say. I looked down at my new ring, and then pointed in the direction of the square outside the tent. ‘As safe, now, as anywhere on Ea. Fifteen thousand warriors stand ready to fight to the death to protect you.’

  ‘King Valamesh,’ he said to me with a forced smile, ‘I do not want a single warrior to fight and die for me.’

  ‘Nor I,’ I told him. ‘But I will never let Morjin harm you.’

  ‘Is that power now yours, great King?’

  He sat gazing at me, then he drew out of his pocket a small, shining bowl that had been made in the image of the Lightstone. It was an ancient work of silver gelstei, tinted gold; through the power of this vessel Bemossed could sense the vastly greater power of the distant Lightstone and contend with Morjin over its mastery.

  ‘Every day,’ he told me, ‘I wake up and take this cup into my hands, and my battle with Morjin begins anew. At night, when I am able to sleep, I keep it close to my heart as I fight with him in my dreams. Every hour, every minute – every moment that I push against his will, he harms me.’

  I sat gripping the hilt of the work of silver gelstei that had been given to me. Liljana kept her blue gelstei safe, as did Master Juwain his varistei, and my other friends their stones. Only through Bemossed’s struggle with Morjin, I knew, could we use our gelstei without Morjin wielding the Lightstone to pervert and control them. As only Bemossed’s sacrifice kept Morjin from freeing the Dark One from Damoom.

  ‘You must be strong,’ I said to him. I heard myself speaking as a king, and I hoped Bemossed would not hate me for that. ‘As you truly are – as strong as steel.’

  ‘You do not understand,’ he said, looking down at his cup.

  His long lashes were like dark curtains falling over his eyes. And I told him, ‘In Senta, in the Singing Caves, I listened as the Morjin of old lamented his murdering of an angel: his best friend. And more than once, Liljana has touched minds with the Beast.’

  ‘You do not understand,’ Bemossed said again, now looking up at me. ‘It is not his mind that I must face. It is his soul. And the crack through it is so black and deep it could swallow up the stars. It goes on and on forever.’

  Something inside him seemed bruised, as if he had taken too many blows from a mace. I drew in a deep breath as I listened to swords clashing in practice rounds and men singing outside. And I said to him: ‘It will not be forever that you must fight Morjin this way. I returned to Mesh just so that you would not have to fight him alone.’

  ‘Fifteen thousand warriors have acclaimed you, and that is a great thing. But Morjin, it is said, commands a million men.’

  I looked down at my sword, and I said, ‘We will prevail over Morjin. There must be a way.’

  ‘Not that way,’ Bemossed said, pointing at Alkaladur.

  ‘You have only to be strong a little longer,’ I told him, not really wanting to hear his words. ‘We must.’

  ‘Yes, friend, we must’

  I drew my sword a few inches from its scabbard so that I might see its gleaming blade.

  ‘You would still kill him,’ he said to me. ‘Kill him and cut the Lightstone from his hands.’

  ‘And you would still heal him,’ I said, looking up at him.

  ‘And why not? He is a man like any other’

  ‘No, not like any other’

  ‘His deepest desire is to be made whole.’

  ‘No – not his deepest desire.’

  ‘He is a man,’ he told me, ‘even as you are.’

  ‘No, he is a beast’,

  Bemossed rubbed his tired face as he stared off toward the roof of the tent. Then he said to me: ‘Somewhere on Ea, there is a man who has been faithful, dutiful and kind all his life. A good man, Valashu. And for no reason that anyone else can see, his soul will sicken and then one day something within him will break. He might strangle his wife in a jealous rage or even slay his best friend arguing over the rights to a stream dividing their lands. And ever after, set out on a life of murder and outlawry. That man, I tell you, is more dangerous than Morjin would be if only he turned back to the light.’

  Now I had to consider what Bemossed had told me. Finally I said to him: ‘But he won’t turn back, and that is what is so terrible about Morjin. He likes doing evil.’

  Bemossed said nothing to this as he looked at me. His hands tightened around the silver gelstei called the False Lightstone.

  ‘I think,’ I said to him, pointing at the cup, ‘that you have already begun trying to heal him through that.’

  He nodded his head to me. ‘As this touches upon the Lightstone, it opens upon Morjin’s soul.’

  ‘And so the reverse must be.’

  His eyes grew sad and anguished as he said, ‘Yes, I know that is how Morjin found me and the Brothers’ school.’

  For a while he descended into that dark, watery part of himself from which he took too great a comfort. Then he looked over at Estrella, sitting quietly as she fairly drank in each of his words. She smiled at him, as if his essential goodness couldn’t help but make her happy. Her warm, lively face seemed to remind him of the incredible brightness of his own being and draw out of him something even warmer.

  ‘Don’t be afraid for me,’ he finally told me. He seemed to brighten like a sunrise, for that, too, was his power and delight. ‘As you said, there is always a way’

  Now he, too, smiled, and I wondered that I had ever worried that Morjin might find a way to destroy him. He sat up taller and straighter as a new strength poured into him from some secret source. His radiant face made me recall the three signs by which a Maitreya might be recognized: steady abidance in the One; looking upon all with an equal eye; unshakable courage at all times.

  I felt my heart beating out great bursts of my life as I looked at him, and he looked at me – and looked deep inside me. At last, he asked me: ‘What ails you, Valashu?’

  I glanced around the tent for any sign of the dark thing that had hounded me since my return to Mesh. Although I could not see it, a black cloud seemed to hang over my head no matter which direction I turned to look toward the future. I had not wanted to speak so soon of my deepest affliction and add yet another stone to the great weight pulling Bemossed down. But the time had come, I saw, when I must tell of the Ahrim.

  ‘It is like a great nothing,’ I said to Bemossed and the Masters of the Brotherhood, ‘that holds more power than everything: all the suns and stars across the universe.’

  Bemossed listened as I described my battle with the Ahrim in the wood near Lord Harsha’s farm, and then my struggle to speak out the truth of things not an hour ago. He turned the whole of his awareness upon my words, the dread breaking from my eyes, the anguish in my heart. Who could not love a man who put aside his own sufferings in order to uplift another? As Bemossed’s whole being seemed to grow brighter and brighter, I realized the essential thing about him: that he must find a way to heal those he cared about – either that, or die. And that he could bring the most splendid of lights to others, but not to himself.

  ‘I am sorry that I said you did not understand what it is like with Morjin,’ he told me. ‘In the end, I think, we face the same evil.’

  Abrasax nodded his head at this. Then he said to me, ‘This thing you have told of remains unknown to us. But it is clear that you must fight it even as you did Morjin in Hesperu.’

  ‘I will fight Morjin with this’ I said, unsheathing Alkaladur and holding it shining up toward the apex of the tent.

  Abrasax smiled at this in his mysterious way. Then he asked me, ‘Can you tell me in truth that the sword you hold in your hand and the one you carry inside are not the same?’

  ‘Of course they are not the same,’ I said, looking at Alkaladur’s luminous silustria.

  ‘Perhaps not the same, then. But not entirely two, either.’

  I thought about this as I gazed at the blade that had been named the Sword of Fate. I knew that in some strange way, Abrasax must be right.

  ‘I have said many t
imes,’ he told me, ‘that Morjin will never be defeated through force of arms alone. But there must be a way to defeat him – even as you did Lord Tomavar.’

  At the sound of his voice, my sword grew brighter.

  ‘Can that be?’ I whispered. ‘Can that truly be?’

  ‘It must be,’ Abrasax told me. ‘I can see no other hope for victory.’

  My hands tightened around the diamonds set into my sword’s hilt. And I shook my head. ‘But Morjin is not Lord Tomavar.’

  ‘No, he is not. But you will not fight him alone.’

  He turned to look at Bemossed, and so did I. Then he continued, ‘You and Bemossed have seemed at odds today. But you must remember that you are as brothers, and do fight the same battle. He will help you, if you let him, Valashu. As we will help him.’

  I met his gaze and thought of the seven Great Gelstei that he and the other Masters of the Brotherhood kept. I wanted to believe what he told me.

  ‘The time is coming,’ he said, ‘when everything and all of us will be put to the test.’

  Here he nodded at Alphanderry, who occupied one of the table’s chairs, not as a man of flesh and blood pressing against wood, but rather as a gleaming substance contained by it.

  ‘Your messenger’s warning to you concurs with what we know,’ he went on. ‘Master Matai?’

  He turned to the Brotherhood’s Master Diviner. Despite his years, Master Matai seemed possessed of an innocence and a great gratitude for the wisdom his discipline had brought him. He said to us: ‘I have been plotting the movements of the heavens all my life. The planets and stars all gather toward a great moment. If my calculations are correct, then the alignment that your friend told of will occur on the eighth day of Valte.’

  On that day, he said, Ea and Damoom would perfectly come into conjunction with Agathad where the greatest of the Galadin dwelled by the silver lake known as Skol. Then out of Ninsun, at the center of the universe, the Ieldra’s radiance would pour out in a golden light upon these three fated planets, whether in creation or destruction not even the angels could say.

  ‘There is nearly infinite power in the Golden Band,’ Master Matai told us. ‘And if Morjin can use the Lightstone to seize upon it and free Angra Mainyu, then …’