The Diamond Warriors Read online

  Xadharax, staring at Sajagax across the firepit, did not remark upon this. He just sat with his chin buried deep within his jowls. But he must have felt shame for what his rogue warriors had done and a desire to redeem the Adirii in choosing the right side in the coming war.

  ‘And at the Battle of Shurkar’s Notch, with my help,’ Sajagax continued, ‘Valashu Elahad defeated an Alonian duke and a greater force of knights. And lost no man, Kurmak or Valari, killed! And at the Battle of the Asses’ Ears, he led Manslayers and Danladi warriors under Bajorak against the Zayak and the Red Knights. And defeated them as well.’

  ‘Three battles,’ Tringax scoffed. ‘You have led us to victory in thirty-three.’

  ‘But never so great a one as the Seredun Sands. I have not the Elahad’s brilliance in battle.’

  ‘You do!’ Tringax protested. ‘It is wrong for you to elevate this Valari king at your expense and those of the warriors who –’

  ‘Enough!’ Sajagax roared out, slapping his hand against his great bow. ‘I am Sajagax, chieftain of the Kurmak and victor of thirty-three battles, even as you say, and no one will call me a modest man! But the Elahad is to be warlord! I say. It was he who first dreamed of making an alliance against the Red Dragon.’

  ‘And he who destroyed our main chance of it with his lie that he was the Maitreya!’

  ‘He was only mistaken,’ Sajagax said. ‘Sometimes the world takes time to reveal a man’s fate. And it is the Elahad’s fate to be Guardian of the Lightstone and Protector of the Lord of Light. Is that not why we gather here, to fight for the Shining One?’

  At this, Sajagax laid his hand on Bemossed’s shoulder. And Bemossed stared into the fire’s writhing flames.

  ‘I, for one, fight because a warrior must fight!’ Tringax shouted out. ‘And to make Morjin’s men bleed their guts out, and to see the Crucifier’s eyes eaten by the ants!’

  The Sarni, I knew, revered the truth – and the speaking of it – even above their horses.

  ‘I fight to make my children safe!’ Yaggod called out. ‘My sons will ride freely beneath the sky hunting lions if I have to kill a thousand of our enemy!’

  ‘I fight for plunder!’ Braggod said. ‘How much gold will Morjin’s army bring to the battle?’

  ‘And I fight for glory,’ old Urtukar told us. ‘A man can never have enough of it, and it is good to go back to the earth with his sons honoring his name.’

  Sajagax nodded his head at this as he stroked his bow. ‘Those are all good reasons. But what good is gold in a world of the dead? How will our children ever be safe unless we make a new world? And how shall we ever accomplish that unless we bring the Law of the One to all lands?’

  ‘My father,’ Tringax said, staring at Sajagax, ‘taught me the Law of the One: “Be strong! Bear no shame! Seek glory! Live free or die!”’

  For a while he went on reciting truths that he had learned as a child. When he had finished, Trahadak the Elder, the headman of the Zakut clan, rubbed his leathery old face, then declaimed as if speaking for Sajagax himself: ‘There is a new Law now! Or rather, an old Law that we understand in a new light. And Sajagax was born to bring it to the Wendrush and to all peoples: “Be strong and protect the weak! Bear no shame of any evil act! Seek the glory of the One!”’

  As he continued speaking, Tringax seemed to want to open himself to this new way that Sajagax strove to bring to his people. But as with a stone immersed in water, little of what Trahadak said really penetrated Tringax’s heart or touched his savage sensibilities. Seeing this, a young warrior named Darrax shouted at Tringax: ‘What is wrong with you? Can’t you see that there is more to life than slaying your enemies and gathering gold and women to yourself? Is your glory more important than that of your tribe? Or the glory of the One?’

  Parthalak, another young warrior, nodded his head at this as he said to Tringax: ‘I will teach my children that a man is the greatest who controls himself and gives his life that his tribe might have greater life. And that the Light of the One should shine upon the world!’

  ‘And I will teach that, too!’ a warrior named Alphax called out.

  ‘And I!’ another shouted. ‘He who brings the Law of the One to the world will bring alive the One’s light in himself. How can such a light ever die? So Sajagax has taught us! So I believe!’

  And so, I thought, did most of the fearsome warriors who would follow Sajagax into battle.

  Then Sajagax looked across the fire and said to Tringax: ‘I have only one fate, and no man will keep me from it. So it is with Valashu Elahad and what he was born to do. It is good for a warrior to fight, Tringax. And even better to slay our enemy. But it is best of all to shed our blood on thirsty soil and to die for the Shining One and what he will bring to the world. Such a warrior, I say, is imakla and dies not when he dies.’

  As Tringax knelt by the fire considering Sajagax’s paradoxical words, Bemossed rose up to his feet. Although slight of build and soft in his manner – and worn with exhaustion – within him blazed a fierceness that put to shame even the most warlike of the Sarni.

  ‘Blood nourishes only when kept in one’s veins,’ he told everyone. ‘I want men to live for me. That is, not for me. Only for that which passes through me and truly quenches parched soil.’

  And with that, a brilliant light gathered in his eyes, and he looked at Tringax. The savage young warrior froze as if a hammer had struck his head. And in that moment, I sensed, Tringax’s heart finally opened, and he found himself wanting to die for this gentle man.

  Seeing this, Bemossed’s face fell heavy with an immense sadness. He turned to Sajagax to thank him for his hospitality. Then he excused himself and walked off into the night.

  And Sajagax called out in his huge voice: ‘Let us then live for the Shining One, even as he has said! And how better to accomplish that than by killing as many of our enemy as we can?’

  He called for everyone’s horn to be filled afresh with bubbling black beer. Then he raised up his horn and said, ‘Death to Morjin, and all who bow to him! Victory to Valashu Elahad and all who follow him! Victory, and life!’

  The Sarni warriors sitting on their sagosk skins clinked horns with each other – and with the Valari lords who accompanied me. They spilled much beer onto the ground and drank even more. The sound of their exultation echoed onto the steppe, as did their accolade: ‘Live free and long, King Valamesh – Warlord of the Valari and the Sarni!’

  The next day, the warriors of the Eastern Urtuk rode into our encampment, and the day following that, all the fighting men of the Central Urtuk tribe. And then on the 18th of Ioj, the Niuriu under Vishakan arrived from the southwest, swelling the numbers of the Sarni who would fight beneath Sajagax’s standard to nearly thirty-five thousand. Vishakan had once aided me on my journey home to Mesh with the Lightstone, and he greeted me as he might one of his own sons. He told us to look for the Danladi, keeping pace across the steppe only a day’s ride behind him. When the sun rose above the blazing grasslands the following morning, many cheered to see the five thousand warriors of the Danladi tribe making their way toward us just south of the river. And I cheered when the Danladi’s new chieftain urged his horse between the long lines of campfires toward my pavilion, for I saw that it was Bajorak, my old friend.

  Although rather short for a leader of the Sarni, Bajorak commanded his warriors’ intense loyalty through his keen intelligence and fierce fighting spirit. Three scars marked his face, which many would have called handsome. When he saw me waiting to greet him, he dismounted with great dignity and came up to me. He clasped my hand and said, ‘Greetings, Valashu Elahad! When last we parted after killing the Zayak and Morjin’s knights, you told me that we would meet again in a better time and place.’

  ‘I always hoped we would,’ I told him, squeezing his hand.

  ‘I doubted it not.’ He looked up at the rocks of the Detheshaloon and added, ‘Though I must wonder if this is truly a better place.’

  ‘Any place is good whe
re two friends can stand together against the Red Dragon.’

  He flashed me a bright smile, but due to the scars cut into his face, it seemed more of a scowl. And he said, ‘Look at you! The hunted wanderer I knew has become a king!’

  ‘And you,’ I said, ‘a chieftain.’

  His scowl suddenly deepened. ‘And there are many Danladi who did not want to see a headman of the Tarun clan lead them. But in the end, the warriors followed me.’

  I remembered that after the great Artukan had died, his son, Garthax, had become chieftain of the Danladi. But many of the warriors hated Garthax for dealing with Morjin and pocketing the Red Dragon’s gold; they even whispered that the Red Dragon had paid Garthax to assassinate Artukan, who had died in a terrible agony.

  ‘It was finally proved!’ Bajorak told me. ‘Garthax got drunk one night and bragged to his third wife of what he had done. He poisoned his own father! They put a hot iron to Garthax’s liver, and he finally confessed. Then they cut off his eyelids and his manhood, and staked him out in the sun. The yellow-jackets ate at him all day. I was not there to hear it, but they say he died screaming louder than his father.’

  He fell silent for a moment, then added, ‘And so the Danladi warriors now ride with me, and I ride with Sajagax – and so with you.’

  Again we clasped hands, and I said, ‘And I am glad for that. As will be my men.’

  Bajorak’s blue eyes sparkled at this. He turned to look farther down the river, where the rows of my army’s tents stretched off to the east.

  ‘But how many men are we speaking of?’ he asked me. ‘I do not see an army as large as Sajagax promised would gather here.’

  ‘That is because the men of the Free Kingdoms have not yet arrived. And neither have the rest of the Valari.’

  Bajorak must have heard something in my voice that troubled him, for he asked me, ‘But will they come, Valashu? Do you truly think they will come?’

  I nodded my head to him, and told him, ‘Yes, they will come – I know they will.’

  Bajorak’s spirits brightened the next day when one of Sajagax’s outriders galloped into our encampment with the news of an army marching toward us from the east. But this proved not to be the warriors of the Nine Kingdoms, but rather the combined forces of Nedu, Thalu and the Elyssu, who marched with more than ten thousand outcast knights from Alonia – under Belur Narmada, Baron Maruth of the Aquantir, and others – and a few hundred from Surrapam. As well came King Hanniban, who claimed to reign in exile. Upon the fall of Eanna, he had assembled a fleet to lead five thousand of his countrymen and the others of the Free Kingdoms on a great voyage around the Bull’s Horn and through the dangerous Straights of Storm into the Alonian Sea. They had put to shore at Adra, in Taron, and then marched into Anjo and crossed over the mountains through the same Goshbrun Pass as had my warriors. And so found their way here.

  King Hanniban, thick in his body and heavy with years, had once exercised all his ruthlessness to keep me from being acclaimed as leader of the Free Kingdoms. But now, having been chastened at losing his realm and nearly his life to the armies of the Red Dragon, he desired vengeance upon Morjin. I sensed, too, that he wanted to see the Lightstone reclaimed and placed in the hands of the Maitreya. As he said when he met with me in my tent: ‘This is the time when the world must be reborn – or die for all time. It is said that men, too, will be reborn, if they stand beneath the radiance of the Cup of Heaven. But if they do not, if they take from the gold gelstei darkness instead of light, as Morjin does, then they will surely die – for all time. The Great Darkness is so close now, is it not, King Valamesh?’

  King Aryaman of Thalu, a great warrior as tall and blond as even the largest of the Sarni, patted his huge axe as he put things more simply: ‘If we cut the Lightstone from Morjin’s hand, we shall win. If not, every one of us will die – and the whole world along with us.’

  Altogether these two kings – along with King Theodor of the Elyssu and King Tal of Nedu – had added almost fifteen thousand more men to my army.

  ‘But that is not enough,’ Maram said to me later as he quaffed down a horn of Sarni beer when we were alone together. ‘Not nearly enough.’

  And then, on the 22nd of Ioj, we gained a great and unexpected ally – great in the spirit of battle, if not numbers. From out of the west came a band of warriors whom the Sarni at first mistook for animals walking on two legs. They had never seen, as few had, the extraordinary men called the Ymaniri. All of them stood more than eight feet tall and were thick as boulders in limb and body. Silky white fur covered them from head to unshod feet. I rode out to greet these five hundred giants, led by my old companion, Ymiru. A mesh of a metal too fine to be steel covered a leather armor encasing him. With his single hand (for a dragon had torn off his left arm in Argattha) he gripped a huge, iron-shod club called a borkor. His ice-blue eyes looked out above a broken nose, and they filled with great warmth as he saw me riding across the steppe toward him.

  ‘Val!’ he shouted at me in a voice like a volcano’s rumble. ‘We meet again!’

  I dismounted and stepped over to him. I let my hand be engulfed within his huge fingers. Then I looked behind him at the shaggy men gripping their borkors and I said, ‘Yes – to fight Morjin together, again.’

  ‘It be my fondest hrope!’ he told me. ‘That, and seeing your furless face once more before I die.’

  I smiled at this, then said, ‘I never expected to see you here. It must be four hundred miles from the mountains across the open steppe – and through the country of the Zayak and Janjii at that.’

  ‘And bad country it be. Nothing but grass and more grass, without a single mountain to hold the eye or point the way back hrome. And no place to hide when the little yellow-haired men attacked us.’

  Some of my knights and a handful of Kurmak warriors, including Tringax and Braggod, had ridden out with me to behold the strange sight of the Ymaniri marching into our encampment. At Ymiru’s characterizing of the Sarni as ‘little,’ Braggod’s face flushed an angry red. He said nothing, however, as Ymiru stood nearly at the same height as Braggod sat on top his horse.

  ‘I think they were Zayak,’ Ymiru added. ‘They loosed arrows at us as if they were hunting sagosk. But the arrows broke against this.’

  So saying he ran his finger across the tiny links of his armor, which he called keshet. It seemed that the Ymanir had made this marvelous material – which proved to be nearly as soft as woven silk and bright as silver – with the aid of a purple gelstei.

  ‘And then we charged them,’ he went on. ‘The yellowhairs didn’t know that we Ymaniri can run as fast as sagosk, for a short way. They were too late turning around their hrorses. And so we went to work with these.’

  He seemed deeply sad as he raised up his borkor, as did many of the men behind him. Then he said, ‘But can we not go somewhere we can hrold council? There be much we need to discuss.’

  We went back to my tent, where we met with our companions of old, along with Estrella. This magical girl proved to be even more of a wonder to Ymiru than he was to her. When we told of her talent for finding concealed things and summoning rain from a cloudless sky, he laid his huge hand on top of her head and said, ‘It be too bad that she can’t summon an earthquake to swallow up Morjin’s army in a fiery hrole. And so I suppose we’ll have to fight.’

  A sudden enthusiasm blew through him like a wind. He patted his borkor and added, ‘But that, I suppose, be why we came here, yes?’

  ‘But how did you come here?’ Maram asked him. He gave Ymiru a great beer-filled horn, which Ymiru drank down like a cup of milk. ‘How could you possibly have known to come to this forsaken place?’

  Ymiru smiled at Liljana, and I caught a flash of his big white teeth. ‘It was the Materix of the Maitriche Telu who called us here. Through Audhumla.’

  I remembered well this seven-foot-tall woman who sat with the other elders of Urdahir who ruled the Ymanir. It had been Audhumla, through the virtue of her blue truth sto
ne, who had verified the story of my companions’ and my quest to find the Lightstone – and so saved us from being put to death as unwelcome strangers to the Ymanir’s land.

  ‘The truth stone be a powerful galastei,’ Ymiru told us, ‘though not so deep as Liljana’s blue crystal. Audhumla can use it to hear the truths or lies that people speak, though not to eavesdrop their thoughts. Not usually. But Audhumla has been open to Liljana’s thoughts, spoken across the world through the virtue of her galastei. It was Liljana – late in Ashte this was – who called the Ymanir to war against the Red Dragon.’

  At this, Maram and my other friends stared at Liljana in amazement. And Master Juwain said to her, ‘But that was before we set out for Kaash and Delu! How could you have known to call the Ymanir to war when we didn’t know yet that there would be a war – at least, not when and where the war’s great battle would be fought?’

  ‘She knew,’ Kane growled out as if Liljana were a thief caught with a stolen jewel, ‘because she has looked into Morjin’s mind! Is that not so?’

  Liljana met Kane’s furious gaze with the softness of her round, pretty face, as with the moon throwing back the sun’s fire. And she said to him, ‘I only looked into his mind for a moment. And not the Red Dragon’s mind – only that of his High Priest, Arch Yadom. Morjin has entrusted him with a blue gelstei.’

  Kane stared at her as if the heat of his gaze might burn away her words to reveal the truth or a lie.

  And Master Juwain said to her, ‘But you shouldn’t look into anyone’s mind. Even those of your sisters. Morjin might be waiting for just such a move. And so it is a peril to your mind. And even more, to your soul.’

  ‘And even more perilous not to look!’ Liljana shot back.

  ‘But think of what he took from you in Argattha! And what he might take still!’