The Diamond Warriors Read online

  ‘I can continue!’ I told him.

  I had to fight the urge to lay my hand upon his huge shoulder for support.

  ‘Ah, well, maybe you can,’ he said, looking deep into my eyes. ‘But you shouldn’t. It is too much – too, too much.’

  ‘I have faced worse trials before, Maram. We have.’

  ‘At need, we have. In the Red Desert, you drove yourself harder than any man would a slave – even as you drove me. And it kept us alive. But this isn’t necessary.’

  I looked off toward the tent’s entranceway, where I could see a dozen men in diamond armor standing miserably in the rain.

  ‘Some might say,’ he told me, ‘that this is only a new king’s vanity. A great show without true meaning.’

  ‘Do you say that, then?’

  ‘I? No, I don’t, and I am a man who knows about vanity. But I do say that you are overzealous. Nearly killing yourself to prove your worthiness as a king.’

  I fought to keep myself from yawning and rubbing the sleep from my dry, itching eyes; I fought not to go over to my canopied bed and collapse into unknowingness.

  ‘And more,’ Maram went on, ‘this desperate learning of names has the taint of thaumaturgy. As if in holding on to one of your men’s names, you can magically keep him from dying when his time comes.’

  His words worked their way into my hot, pounding brain, and I found myself forced to consider them. Finally, I said to him, ‘You know me too well, old friend.’

  ‘Then break off and sleep! Just this one day! And tomorrow finish your task, or the next!’

  I slowly shook my head at this. ‘A day will come when I must face Morjin. On that day, I will not be able to break off and sleep, no matter how tired I am.’

  ‘But you can’t prepare for that like this. It is madness to –’

  ‘The day will come,’ I said to him again. ‘And when it does, no matter what I do, many of the men I have greeted in this tent will die. But how many, then? If it is not to be all of them, then I fear that we will have to fight such as the Valari have never fought before. As men have never fought. We are so few, and our enemy is so many. We cannot defeat them through force of arms alone – this the wisest of the wise has told me. All we will have, in the end, is our spirits. And if our spirits are to be as one, and we are to die for each other – and live! – then I must know who my warriors are, and they must know me.’

  Maram, suddenly understanding, nodded his head to me. He sighed, long and deeply, as he looked at me. Then he drew his sword and with great sadness said, ‘Sire, I am Maram Marshayk, son of Santoval Marshayk, of Delarid. I pledge my sword to you, in life and in death!’

  After he had gone, I spent the rest of that morning, afternoon and evening as I had the days before. It seemed to me that I must have spoken with fifteen million men, and not fifteen thousand. I finally summoned Lord Tanu, and asked him, ‘How many more?’

  ‘Nearly a thousand, Sire.’

  ‘And is that all, then?’

  Lord Tanu hesitated as his old face tightened with weariness. It seemed that he had slept little, either, over the past days.

  ‘There are only the warriors,’ he said to me, ‘who refused to stand for you on the day you were acclaimed – eighty-nine of them. It was thought that you wouldn’t want to know their names.’

  As a king, of course, I now had the right to command every man in Mesh, and not just those who had acclaimed me. But I would rather lead them. And so I said to Lord Tanu, and to Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad also present and bending over the map table: ‘It takes courage to stand against the enemy in battle. But it takes a deeper and truer courage to stand out by keeping to one’s convictions when almost everyone is taking a different course. I do not know why the men you have spoken of failed to stand for me. Their reasons are their reasons. But those men I especially want to honor. I can tell you that when battle finally comes, none will stand more valiantly’

  As I had requested of Lord Tanu, he made it be. I endured the last hours of my vigil greeting the last of my warriors. I learned the names of those who had refused to stand for me but now must follow me to war: Ianadar Elshan, Yarsar Balvalam, Juvalad the Elder, Marsavay of Mir … and all eighty-five others.

  At last, there came a moment when the open flaps at the front of my tent revealed only the campfires of my army flickering in the dark and the vast, starry sky. I stepped outside beneath these glistening lights. I had spoken with more than fifteen thousand men. As I pointed my sword toward the bright heavens, I felt a brighter thing burning behind my eyes, and I knew that all fifteen thousand of their names blazed somewhere inside me.

  It was a moment of great triumph. I dared to think, for one shining instant in time, that my warriors and I could wield our swords as one and utterly vanquish Morjin. I willed this to be, with all the might of my mind and the force of my heart.

  And then I chanced to think of Atara riding blindly across the plains somewhere in the dark world to the west. In my utter exhaustion, fighting the leaden pain in my eyes and to keep from collapsing onto the trampled grass, I let my desire to defeat Morjin descend into a wrath for vengeance. I saw myself gouging out his eyes as he had Atara’s; I wanted to repay him death for death, and hate for hate. I longed for this one, last battle to the very bottom of my soul. I knew that this terrible urge was as beneath me as I should be beyond it. But I couldn’t seem to help it. It came welling up through me like a dark dream through sleep. And in that terrible, terrible moment – an eyeblink in time – the Ahrim attacked me.

  Like a filthy blanket steeped in poison, it fell out of nowhere down around my head. It closed in over my face, nearly smothering me; it burned my eyes like acid. And then the light of the stars disappeared, and I found myself standing alone inside an utter blackness.

  11

  Somehow, I managed to stumble back through my tent and to find my bed. I fell onto it. Given all that had occurred over the past four days, none of those present – Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad and Joshu Kadar – thought this strange. I asked Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad to leave me. Then I bade Joshu Kadar to go find Master Juwain.

  Alone in my tent, I tried to summon the fierce light inside myself by which I had twice driven off the Ahrim. But either I could not find it or else my life fires had burned too low. I pressed my hands against the pain stabbing into my eyes, and then opened them. I could not make out any of the things of my pavilion: the council and map tables; my small clothes chest and a larger one full of treasure; the candles in their stands and the braziers full of hot coals. All was lost into a blackness as total as a cave’s deepest depths.

  There came a moment when I despaired. I shook my head from side to side in a wild, terrified fury. But it did nothing to dispel the Ahrim. I seemed only to find within myself a deeper blackness inside the blackness, if that were possible.

  Finally, Master Juwain came into my tent and knelt by the side of my bed. He asked me, ‘Val, what is wrong?’

  I turned my head toward the sound of his voice and said, ‘I am blind.’

  I tried to explain what had happened. I asked him for his help. Only a few days before, however, he had tried to use his green gelstei to heal my afflicted throat, to no avail.

  ‘What attacks you is beyond my power to drive away,’ he told me. ‘Beyond the power of our friends, as well. That, I think, has been proven. But on that first day in the woods, it seemed that in opening yourself to what power we do possess, it helped you find your own.’

  I nodded my head at this. ‘But on that day, Atara had not left me.’

  ‘True – and I can only imagine how much her love for you strengthens you. But you have two friends, now, who weren’t with us in the woods.’

  ‘Kane,’ I murmured. ‘Bemossed.’

  ‘Indeed. Kane seems to know things about the Ahrim. And Bemossed is Bemossed.’

  Again, I nodded my head. ‘Please summon them, then. And Liljana. Maram, too, of course – and the children. I want all my friends by m
y side.’

  At this, Alphanderry somehow came into being within my tent – or so Master Juwain told me. I could not see him any more than I could Master Juwain or anything else.

  ‘And please ask Joshu Kadar to come back inside,’ I said to Master Juwain. ‘He will have to know what has happened to me, but no one else must.’

  ‘But what of Abrasax and the other Masters?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘bring them with you, too, but no one else.’

  The Guardians standing outside my tent during that watch – Sar Jonavar, Sar Shivalad, Sar Kanshar and Siraj the Younger – must have thought it strange that I summoned my old friends to me so late at night. But kings must sometimes take council at odd hours, and so I hoped that my actions would cause my warriors no suspicion or distress.

  A little later, everyone I had sent for gathered by my bedside as I had requested. Kane pressed his rough old hand to my forehead, taking care to avoid the plaster that Master Juwain had set over my reopened scar. And he told me, ‘I know less about the Ahrimana than you might hope. It partakes of Angra Mainyu’s being – this I have said. It has escaped from Damoom, where the Baaloch is still bound, eh? And so I must wonder if anything can bind it. I think not. At least not here on Ea. For in a way, the Ahrimana has not really escaped at all, but merely made its way from the darkest of the Dark Worlds to one that has been falling into shadow for a long time.’

  ‘But two times, now,’ Master Juwain said to him, ‘Val did drive it away.’

  ‘So,’ Kane said. ‘So he did – through the light of the sword he holds inside himself. When it blazes brightly enough, the Ahrimana can no more abide it than Angra Mainyu can the radiance of Star-Home.’

  ‘But it is dead within me’ I said to Kane. ‘Either dead or blackened like a piece of charred wood. I cannot find it.’

  ‘That is because,’ Kane said in a pitiless tone that chilled me, ‘your blindness is not just of the eyes but the soul.’

  Abrasax, usually a much kinder man, took my hand in his and said to me, ‘You must somehow open your third eye so that your other two might see. In this, we can help you perhaps a little, but no more.’

  I sensed him and the other Masters taking out their seven Great Gelstei in order to call forth the fires along my spine’s seven chakras and brighten their flames. Although their magic gave me new strength, it failed to lift the blindness from me.

  I heard Kane draw in an angry gasp of breath. Then his great regard for me filled his voice as his manner softened and he said, ‘So dark – so damnably dark. I have said that Ea is almost a Dark World, and it is. But there are bright things here, and the soul of Valashu Elahad is only one.’

  I sensed him looking at Bemossed then. Even through my panic at having been blinded, I felt the vast weight of expectation that people had fastened around Bemossed’s neck like a collar made of lead.

  Then Bemossed pressed his warmer and softer hand to the side of my face. And out of the darkness above me, he told me: ‘I had dreams just before Master Juwain woke me. The most evil of dreams yet. I could feel Morjin, all his twisted desire. Somehow, he lends his power to the Ahrim and guides it. And sics it on Val as he might a hound. He has learned that Val has become a king – I am sure of this. And he is desperate to destroy him.’

  After that, with infinite gentleness, Bemossed touched his fingers to my closed eyelids, to my temples and the back of my head. For more than an hour, he tried with the full force of his soul to heal me. But he could not drive the Ahrim away.

  ‘I am sorry, Valashu,’ he said to me at last. ‘I have told you before that I can’t really heal people. Only, somehow and sometimes, help them to heal themselves.’

  His words seemed to touch off deep emotions in Kane, who said, ‘So, it’s not healing that Val really needs – it’s freedom from that filthy thing!’

  I heard him pick up my unsheathed sword, which then he pressed into my open hand. ‘The Sword of Sight, this is called. In the end, it might be that you, yourself, will have to see your way free.’

  I closed my hand around Alkaladur’s diamond-set hilt. It seemed strange how I could feel the shape of the swans carved into its black jade through the skin of my palm. Still lying flat on my back, I gripped my sword with both hands and pointed it straight up toward the roof of my tent and the stars beyond.

  And through the dark came a softly glowing white light. I could see the faint, flaring outline of my sword’s blade against a wall of blackness.

  ‘There is something!’ I cried out, to Kane and my other friends. ‘There is something!’

  I managed to lever myself up and rise from my bed. Then, after nearly knocking over a brazier, I found my way to the center of the tent. I told everyone to stand clear, then I swept out my sword toward the south, west, north and east. It flared even more brightly. A band of silver shimmered before my eyes. It was the only thing in all the world that I could see.

  And then, as if lightning flashed out of a dark night, I knew a thing. I called out to my friends: ‘I must go there.’

  ‘Go where?’ Kane said to me.

  ‘To the wood,’ I told him. ‘The place where the Ahrim first found me.’

  ‘There? But why? There’s nothing there but deer and trees.’

  ‘I don’t why, Kane. I only know that I must go – and go now!’

  At this, Maram came over and grabbed my arm. ‘But you can’t go now! You are beyond being exhausted. Go back to bed, eat a good meal, drink a little brandy, sleep. Who knows? – you might wake up to find the Ahrim gone.’

  I shook my head at this. ‘No, it will not be gone. And there is no time. We will march in two more days, and I cannot lead my men to war if I am blind.’

  ‘At least wait until dawn,’ Maram said to me. ‘It’s nearly pitch black outside.’

  I thought of Atara again, and I suddenly sensed at least a small part of what her life had become. And I told Maram, ‘For me, it will still be dark in the morning. And it is better that we should go now, that the warriors will not behold their king’s blindness.’

  I issued commands then. It was Abrasax who came up with the story that we would tell everyone to explain my headlong rush out into the black of night: I was to go on a meditation retreat into the mountains in order to seek a vision toward victory. My friends, along with the Seven and Bemossed, were to help prepare me for a great battle. In its way, it was true enough.

  Joshu Kadar led my great stallion up to the very opening of my tent. I tried not to fumble as I mounted him; I sat on Altaru’s great back with all the sureness that I could muster. My friends had their horses brought up, too. So did the Abrasax and the rest of the Seven. Although Sar Jonavar and the other Guardians on duty that night must have thought it strange to see us prepare for an outing at such an hour, they said nothing. Neither did Lord Avijan, still awake, who came out of his tent nearby. I was now their king, and they did not like to question me.

  I left it to Maram and Kane to lead the way out of our encampment, with me riding close behind them, and the others following me. As we proceeded down the lanes that I could not see, I felt the eyes of many men looking upon me. I prayed that they would not be able to make out the staring emptiness of my eyes – or at least would not wonder at it if they did. I had feared that I would not be able to ride blind. I needn’t have. Altaru, always so aware of my every nuance of motion and the fires of my heart, seemed to sense my impairment and that he would have to see his way through the night for both of us. I told him simply to follow Maram and his big brown horse, and this he did. All I had to do was to keep my legs wrapped around his sides and not fall off.

  It was strange journeying through the dark. The dark was nothing, in itself, and yet it seemed to envelop me like an evil substance that I could feel with every particle of my being. Every motion and shift in location seemed a threat to my very life. I had to fight my urge, again and again, to call for a halt so that I might find a little peace in stillness. How, I wondered, had Atara eve
r learned to bear her blindness? How could anyone? Never, not even in the lightless tunnels of Argattha, had I felt so vulnerable. I wanted nothing more than to go back to my bed and lie there in safety beneath the blankets that my mother had once embroidered – and to remain there for the rest of my life.

  We rode at a decent pace for a couple hours back along the route we had taken from Lord Avijan’s castle. The sun finally rose and warmed my face. Its light, however, failed to touch my eyes, even slightly. I heard birds’ wings beating the air above flower-scented fields, and then the drumming of our horses’ hooves as we crossed the bridge over the roaring Arashar River. Twice I dozed, and only the snap of my head dropping down to my chest kept me from falling off Altaru’s back. After the third time that I nodded off, in the lake country outside of Hardu, Maram insisted that we stop so that I could rest. I slept for a couple of hours in a fallow wheatfield off the side of the road. It seemed that I had found one good thing, at least, in being blind: that I would be able to sleep as easily during full day as I could at night.

  And then it came time to go. Kane, who had taken charge of our little expedition, shook me awake and said to me, ‘For you it might make no difference, but I want to find my way into these woods of yours while it’s still light enough to see.’

  Our course took us along the excellent North Road, up through Silvassu and below my family’s burned-out castle that I could not see. Despite my sleeping break, we made excellent time, covering a distance of nearly five miles each hour. So it was that early in the afternoon, we turned down the smaller roads leading past many farms to the wood that I sought. The closer that we came to this place where I had fought a bear so many years before, the brighter my sword flared. This length of almost infinitely sharp silustria remained the only thing that I could see.