Diamond Warriors

Chapter 12

It proved less difficult to leave the Lokii's Forest than it had been to enter it. The seven of us came out into the woods where we had left our companions — but a quarter mile Farther to the east. We heard Maram and the others shouting for us through the oaks and maples. We shouted back at them, and soon met up near a great silver maple tree.

'What happened?' Maram bellowed out to us. 'One moment, we were all riding along together, and then the next. .'

His voice died off into the twitterings of the birds as he gazed at me. 'Val! You can see again!'

As I sat on top of my horse beneath the maple's pointed and shining leaves, I could see perfectly Maram's heavily bearded face, happy with relief. Through the greenery of the trees, I could make out some red clusters of sumac nearly a hundred yards away. I could not, however, detect any sign of the Ahrim.

'Then you are free,' he said, 'and you…'

Again, Maram stopped speaking as he looked at Alphanderry sitting on top of his horse as he plucked at his shiny mandolet. And then Maram shouted, 'Alphanderry! Is it really you? What happened?'

Abrasax took charge of giving an account of how we had come to enter the Lokii's wood and our meeting with Ondin. Maram — along with Master Juwain, liljana, Daj and Joshu Kadar — listened in wonderment to his words.

'Strange,' Master Juwain said, pulling at his ruined ear. 'Everything you have told us, so strange. And strangest of all, perhaps, is this matter of time, it seems that you spent nearly a whole

day with the Lokilani, but to us, you went missing only moments ago.'

He had no explanation for this mystery, nor did Abrasax, Master Virang or any of us. But Daj seemed more interested in something else. He said to us, 'Each of the Vilds seems larger on the inside than the outside, in whatever part of the world we have found them — but how can that be?'

No one could explain this, either. And no one wanted to venture a guess as to how we seven had entered the Vild while our other companions had been left behind. Liljana, however, saved the better part of her amazement for the miracle of Alphanderry's return. She nudged her horse up to his, and leaned over and planted a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek. 'You are as alive as you ever were, and who knew that the Ieldra had such power? But, since you do live and breathe, you'll soon be hungry again, just like any other man. So why don't we leave these woods and find a place where I can cook you a good meal?'

On our way back to the army's encampment, that evening and part of the next day, Liljana had more than one chance to prepare sustaining foods and serve Alphanderry once again. We rode back across the middle of Mesh, down the North Road and through Hardu, crossing the Arashar River in midafternoon. I looked for the Ahrim through wood and glen and along the roadside for every mile of our journey. Although I could find no sign of it, I felt its presence lurking behind nearly every tree, bush and farmhouse. Our entrance into the camp created a stir. A rumor, it seemed, had circulated among my army that I had been stricken blind. As I rode down the lanes of tents toward my billowing, black pavilion, I did my best to dispel it. Warriors in their thousands lined my way to greet me; I met eyes with as many of them as I could, and I called out hundreds of names: 'Ramaru of Ki; Barshan Nolaru; Skymar Yuval; Juladan the Bold. .' I knew then, to my amazement, that I had not stood inside my tent for days greeting these men in vain. They now greeted me in high spirits, and I guessed that they would pass around a new rumor: that my quest for a vision had been successful, and soon I would lead them out of Mesh to war.

We marched at dawn on the 26th of Soldru, a day of intense sunshine and bright, blue skies. The captains of my army — Lord Tanu, Lord Tomavar, Lord Sharad and Lord Avijan — gave me a report of our numbers: ten thousand and eighty-nine men. Although more than fifteen thousand had stood for me in our encampment's square, I had to leave many behind for Mesh's defense. And many warriors were too old or too crippled with old wounds, taken at the Culhadosh Commons and at other battles, to set out with us.

It was a smaller army than most that my father had fielded. I thought, however, that we would fight just as well, and perhaps even better, since we would be contending not just for our own lives but; those of our people — and perhaps everyone in the world.

I led forth, with Joshu Kadar riding beside me and holding the Elahad banner, with its silver swan and stars. Lord Avijan's companies of knights formed my vanguard, nearly four hundred strong; their gleaming shields showed blue bulls and golden eagles and hundreds of other charges against fields of white, black or red. I assigned Lord Shared's three hundred cavalry to guard our rear, they would have a boring, dusty duty of looking after the many wagons in our vulnerable baggage train — more wagons than I would have guessed that Lord Harsha could have assembled and filled with supplies considering the short notice that I had given him. Between the train and the vanguard marched the Meshian foot: more than nine thousand warriors clad in brilliant diamond armor. With each step, the jangling of the silver bells fastened around their ankles rang out in a great nerve piercing sound. Lord Tanu commanded seven battalions of them, and Lord Tomavar likewise. Although Lord Avijan still mistrusted Lord Tomavar, and had argued against giving him such an important command, I kept faith with my father's judgment in this. As much as possible, I wished to preserve the order of battle that had led us to victory at the Culhadosh Commons.

Maram and Kane, of course, rode with me in the van, while Master Juwain and Liljana kept pace with Abrasax and the ether Masters of the Brotherhood farther back. It seemed odd that they should accompany us on our way to battle. But I could not bear to leave Bemossed ill-guarded in Mesh, and where the Maitreya went, they would go as well. I told myself that each of the Seven possessed skills that we might need — if only I could prevail upon these willful old men to employ them in my service. One last time, I tried to persuade Daj and Estrella that they would both be better off taking up residence at Lord Harsha's farm with Behira. But they persuaded me — with the sheer, soaring force of their spirits — that they must follow me to the end of our road. They feared their own deaths, I thought, much less than I did. In the end, king or no, I had to relent. I knew the limits of my power.

Our route took us back through Hardu, and then down the North Road (here called the South Road) through Godhra. In this city of smithies, the smoke from thousands of coal fires filled the air and stung our eyes. Many people turned out to watch us march past. They cast roses upon the warriors and shouted out their blessings. It seemed that all of Mesh now knew what we intended to accomplish, and why.

It was fifty miles, altogether, down the good road from Hardu to the Sky Pass in Mesh's southernmost mountain range. We made this distance in three days; I might have pressed my army to even greater speed, but I did not want to tire my men too sorely at the very beginning of our campaign. Then, too, the road from Godhra climbed steeply up to the pass, and with the wagons full of stores and creaking slowly along, the oxen had a long, hard work of pulling them. No other way out of Mesh took a traveler up so high. By the time we reached the great stone kel keep guarding it, the terrain about us was all barren tundra, ice, rocks and snow. Some clouds formed up, and it rained upon us: icy pellets of water that caused ten thousand men to wrap themselves tightly in their cloaks. We were all glad, I thought, after we had descended the pass and came out into the broader — and drier — valley below. But there, at the end of the valley, where the foothills gave way to the rolling grasslands of the Wendrush, we found ourselves at the very edge of the country claimed by the Sarni's Mansurii tribe: one of Mesh's oldest and fiercest enemies.

We made camp with the mountains to our backs on this foreign soil. I ordered our rows of tents to be surrounded by a moat and earthen stockade. My warriors had a bitterly hard time employing picks and shovels to break through the steppe's tough sod to the black earth beneath. But I would not needlssly expose my army to attack by the Mansurii's horse archers. On another campaign across the Wendrush, two years before, I had discovered just how vulnerable even the best knights in the world could be to armor-piercing arrows fired at a distance by the galloping Sarni. In truth, I knew I took a great chance in leading my men through this land. But only one other route led to Kaash, and that would have taken us through Waas.

'And we can't cross Waas, if we are to surprise the Waashians,' I overheard one warrior telling another that night around one of our many campfires. 'I'd rather risk a battle with the Mansurii, who might never notice us, than call down the Waashians to face us on their own ground.'

It pleased me that my captains had passed along my intentions to the warriors. I wanted each of them to understand our strategy so that they could march into battle like men, instead of ants, even as they fought like killer angels. That night, in my pavilion, I gathered with my captains and other lords around my map table. I traced my finger along the curve of the mountains, bending north and east up toward Waas, and then back south and around to form Kaash's border with the Mansurii. If we marched straight for Kaash, we would have a journey of ninety miles across the open spaces of the Wendrush. If we kept within easy retreat of the mountains, however much safer that might be, we would add miles to our journey.

'Will spending a few extra days really bring us to Kaash too late?' Lord Tanu asked.

'It might,' Lord Zandru told him. His long, apelike arm swept out toward the map. 'I have said that King Talanu can probably maneuver and delay things until the middle of Marud. But King Sandarkan might be able to bring him to battle sooner.'

'Then time is of the essence,' Lord Sharad said.

'In any case,' Lord Tomavar added, 'cleaving the mountains near Waas might not prove so very safe: what if we are spotted?'

As had become my habit, I let the lords of Mesh speak from their hearts. In the end, though, I had to speak from mine, as well as follow it — along with ten thousand men.

'Tomorrow,' I told them, 'we will send out riders to look for the Mansurii. Even if their warriors detect us, it will take them some time to assemble their clans and attack us. If we move quickly enough, we could reach Kaash before they call up their full strength.'

'How quickly, then?' Lord Harsha asked me, gazing at me with his single eye.

'Three days,' I told him. 'Four, at the most.'

'But, Sire, the wagons are still nearly full,' he told me. 'The oxen will have a hard time of things, and the men almost as bad. You'll march their legs off.'

Kane answered for me then. He caught up Lord Harsha in his fierce gaze and growled out, 'March their legs off? Ha — that's better than cutting them off when they rot from the filth that the Mansurii spread on their damn arrows!'

We set out early the next morning across the trackless steppe, driving the oxen as hard as we dared. The wagons bumped and lurched over the grassy, uneven ground. The jangling of the warriors' silver bells drove up flocks of birds and herds of gazelles bounding from our path. In the distance, lions roared, though none of us in the vanguard or farther back had the privilege of laying eyes on these noble beasts. But neither did we, or our outriders, espy any of the Mansurii, and we all gave thanks for that.

Along our way, Estrella stopped to pick some white yarrow growing in sprays across the sun-seared grass. She bound them up and gave them to Bemossed. She could not explain, in words, the purpose of her gift. But those of us who knew her understood well enough: she tried in her own quiet way to inspirit him. For even as my warriors marched forth to distant battles, Bemossed continued fighting his nightly and hourly battle with Morjin. This great struggle seemed to wear away at him. No matter how much good food Liljana tried to urge into him, he had little appetite, and seemed to be growing thinner. His flesh hung dark and bruised beneath his eyes, and he rode along under the hot sun as if trying to bear its fiery weight upon his shoulders.

Alphanderry, as well, tried to cheer him. Especially at nights, around a blazing campfire, he took out his mandoiet and played stirring, ancient epics. He composed songs of his own, singing straight to Bemossed's soul. This helped, a little. What nourish-ment Bemossed failed to find in salted beef or barley bread, he seemed to take in music, I remembered the songs that Ondin had taught me so many years before, and I added my voice to Alphanderry's, and we sang out ancient harmonies that pleased the warriors and finally brought a gleam to Bemossed's eyes. I remembered that the Ieldra, at the beginning of time, had sung the whole universe into being, and on those star-filled nights on the steppe with the lions roaring and ten thousand warriors singing along with us about the miracle of creation, all things seemed possible.

During the days and nights of our march to Kaash, I reflected often on the words etched into my sword: Vas Sama Yeos Valarda. What would it mean truly to see my enemy as myself? What would I do if I could? I wondered, with every mile of grass that my great stallion trampled beneath his hooves, at the powers of my sword — and even more at the deepest impulses of my soul.

Three days and a morning it took us to cross the pocket of grassland pressed up against the curve of the Morning Mountains between. Mesh and Kaash. Our luck held good. Our outriders sighted not a single Mansurii warrior, nor did I lose any of my warriors to sunstroke, exhaustion, the flux, or any of a hundred other maladies that strike down men on the march. Three oxen, only, dropped beneath the great weights they pulled. Lord Harsha had them butchered and roasted, and my tradition-loving Meshian warriors put tooth to this fresh meat with much greater gusto than they had exhibited toward the antelope and gazelles that the hunters had brought in.

Lord Zandru the Hammer, riding a large white gelding, steered us straight toward the opening in the southwest curve of the mountains known as the Lion's Gate. Tall, white-capped peaks rose up to either side of this narrow and rocky gap. The Kaashans had built a great fortress on a hill overlooking the Lion's Gate. Lord Zandru, with Lord Avijan, Lord Noldashan and other knights, rode up to this heap of stones to inform the fortress' commander that the Meshians had come to answer Kaash's call. The commander — a Lord Yulsun — seemed both surprised and delighted to learn this news. He opened the Lion's Gate to our army, in a manner of speaking, and we encamped that night on pasturage along a river to the north of the fortress.

Lord Yulsun, according to protocol, invited my captains and me to take meat in his fortress. But because I did not want to leave my men, I invited into our encampment Lord Yulsun and as many of his warriors as could leave their duties. I had my council table set up on the grass outside between four blazing fires, and there I sat at dinner with Lord Yulsun, Lord Zandru and my captains and the other greatest lords of Mesh.

Lord Yulsun, a spare, old warrior who had lost one eye and part of his cheek bone from a Mansurii arrow, wasted no time in niceties. He was hard, blunt man used to speaking his mind.

'King Valamesh,' he said, addressing me with a grave formality, 'no one in Kaash expected you to gain your father's throne. And for you to march to our aid at a moment's notice, when we failed to march to yours — this is a very great thing. Who would have thought it possible?'

'Sometimes,' I said, thinking of my father, 'it seems that everything is possible.'

'Perhaps it is,' he told me, 'for the one who gained the Lightstone out of Argattha and tried to bring our people together in alliance. But then King Shamesh was a great man, and so why should we not expect even greater things of his son?'

I bowed my head to acknowledge his kind words. And I looked around the table at my captains, and I told Lord Yulsun: 'We cannot let Waas defeat you. Our two kingdoms have been allies for ages, and we cannot let your misfortune of two years ago break that bond.'

'I wish King Talanu were present to hear you say that! Your uncle would be proud of you, Valashu Elahad, if you don't mind my saying that. And pleased to see you leading ten thousand men. With our six thousand, we will surely outnumber the Waashians. If you can move quickly enough, we have a great chance to defeat them once and for all.'

He told us that King Sandarkan's Waashians were marching down from Charoth, and that King Talanu had called up nearly every available warrior to throw them back. Their armies were to meet in battle along the west bank of the Rajabash River just south of a village called Harban.

'I scouted that place two years ago,' Lord Zandru said to Lord Yulsun. 'It is a good battleground, with a pasturage of ten miles along the river, and almost two miles wide, rising up to the forest beneath Mount Ihsan.'

In Kaash, most mountainous of the Nine Kingdoms, clear and level ground on which a battle could be decently fought was almost as rare as water in the middle of the Red Desert.

'Has a date been set for the battle yet?' Lord Zandru asked.

'Yes,' Lord Yulsun told him, nodding his head. 'The sixteenth of Marud.'

Lord Zandru turned to me. 'King Valamesh — it is a hundred miles from here northeast to Harban. Tomorrow will be the fifth, will it not? And so that gives us eleven days to cover a hundred miles.'

Lord Zandru, in his zeal to lead reinforcements to his king, neglected to mention the obvious, which Maram now pointed out: 'Ah, but you're speaking of mountain miles, aren't you? It might be a hundred miles for a bird to fly from here to Harban, but how far is it really!'

In the mountains, as my father had taught me, over rugged terrain that bent and twisted, rose and fell, a hundred miles' journey equaled twice or thrice that of a route taken across flatter country.

Lord Zandru had no numbers to offer to Maram. but he did try to encourage him, saying, 'There is a road that leads from the Lion's Gate through the Ice Mountains to the Rajabash River.'

'The Ice Mountains — oh, excellent!' Maram said. 'I suppose the peaks there did not acquire their name by accident? No? I thought not. Well, I hope it is a good road.'

'As good as any in Kaash,' Lord Zandru told him. He turned toward me. 'If the weather holds, you should have time to make the march and meet up with your uncle south of Harban. When the Waashians learn of this, they will either have to retreat back to Waas or face defeat.'

'Defeat,' I murmured. It had come that time in our meal when the plates of food were taken away and pitchers of beer set on the table. 'But can there be a defeat without defeat?

'What do you mean, King Valamesh?' Lord Zandru asked, fixing me with a puzzled look.

'Is the road you spoke of the only one that leads to Harban?'

'Well no — there is a track around the backside of Mount Ihsan that gives out to the north of Harban. But you could never get a wagon over it, and even the horses would have a hard work of that route.'

'But it is passable, is it not?'

'It is — but why would you want to pass that way? It would add twenty miles to your journey.'

'Oh, no!' Maram said to me with sudden understanding. 'I hope you're not thinking what I think you're thinking.. Sire, isn't it enough to defeat the Waashians? Or turn them back?'

'No, it is not enough,' I said. 'Not nearly enough.'

I turned to look at Kane, sitting to my right. His black eyes glistered with the same fire I felt blazing inside me.

'Tomorrow,' I said to Lord Zandru, 'I would ask you to lead us toward Harban and the track that you have told of. We must march like the very wind.'

We all drank to that; in short order Maram downed not only one large mug of beer, but three more as well. His voice had begun to thicken as he came up to me and said, 'All right, my daring friend, tomorrow we will march — the beginning of the last leg of the march we've been making toward that place that we're loath to speak of. You know where I mean. That very, inevasible, inevitable place. I can see it, can't you? Well, I've promised to follow you there, and I will.'

With that he drank another mug of the golden-brown Kaashan beer, and then another. The Kaashan and Meshian knights regarded his capacity for holding his drink with great respect, and Maram took an obvious pride in this. But they would respect him even more, he must have known, if he stopped himself from drinking himself into a stupor that would slow him down the next day of impair his ability to fight. And so, finally, knowing himself as well as he did, he pushed his froth-stained mug away from him. And in his loud, beery voice, he announced: 'I've drunk to our commit-ment to reaching the end of the road, and that is the end. . for me. For Maram Marshayk. the end of brandy and beer. This promise I make, upon my honor, in respect of yours: Sar Maram will take no more drink until Morjin is defeated!'

Lord Noldashan and Joshu Kadar — and many others — cheered Maram's sacrifice, and not a few made similar pledges of their own. But I had already marched with Maram for too many miles to take too much encouragement from his new vow. I caught Master Juwain looking at me as if to ask: 'Can a fish give up swimming in water?'

The next morning, Lord Yulsun sent a messenger galloping ahead of us to inform King Talanu to expect us on the battlefield near the ides of Marud. Then I commanded my captains to form up the warriors, and I led them out of the Lion's Gate and up the road toward Harban.

For the next nine days we marched at a brutal pace. The road, while not quite as sound as those that my father had maintained, was built of good stone and well-drained against the frequent summer rains that came up and drenched the forest spread over most of Kaash. The road led around the curves of high mountains, through green, grassy valleys and up and over the sides of tree-covered hills. The Kaashans made a hard living from the farms carved out of this rugged country, and had little food to spare a foreign and hungry army. But what little they had, they gave to us in order that we might preserve our stores for our march and the coming battle. In village after village, they welcomed us with open hearts and cheered us on; in a little town called Yarun, they urged upon us leaves of the khakun bush. The bitter green leaves, when chewed, would impart great stamina and strength to a man, or so they said.

Great strength we all needed. While I tried to take care with my men's feet, to say nothing of their legs, we had to keep driving forward, even if a hundred or more warriors dropped by the way. But so tough and well-trained were the men I led that only a few could not bear up under the constant pounding of boots against stone. And Master Juwain, inside his creaking wagon that a team of oxen pulled along, using his green gelstei freely, was able to heal them and restore them to their battalions. He, himself, drove himself nearly to exhaustion. When the power of his varistei faded and then failed him, he relied on needles to lance the blood blisters afflicting my men's raw feet and the herbs and ointments that he employed to great effect. Abrasax, I thought, and the other Masters of the Brotherhood took note of his devotions, and they must have seen in him the same rare skill for healing that had perished with Master Okuth when he had sacrificed his life tor Bemossed.

Maram, true to his word, touched no spirits in all those long days. But finally, on the evening of the 13th when we came to a village called Anan beneath the slopes of Mount Ihsan, he had great trouble resisting the brandy that the villagers broke out and poured for us. He took up a cup of his favorite drink and held It for a long few moments beneath his nose. Then he made a great show of passing it along as he called out 'Morjin is certainly not yet defeated, and neither are the Waashians, And so I suppose the fragrance of this blessed liquor will have to sustain me until they are.'

The road through Anan, I saw, curved off east through a forest of elms, beeches and oaks as it made its way up around the white, rocky hugeness of Mount Ihsan at the heart of the great peaks of the Ice Mountains. We might yet follow it, and so meet up in good time with King Talanu's forces by the Rajabash River. Or we might take the track that Lord Zandru pointed out to my captains and me at the edge of Anan. It led higher up around the western and northern buttresses of Mount Ihsan. through stands of aspen and spruce, and carved into bare earth, or so Lord Zandru told us.

'But one horse only and no more than two men at a time can make their way up this,' he said to us. 'You will be half a day even getting your army moving forward. King Valamesh.'

'Thank you,' I said, pointing off to the left, 'but that is the way we must go.'

'It will be a long two-day march to the battlefield — if the weather is good. And weather or no, the men will have to sleep in the woods off the side of the track, where they can.'

'Very well — then tonight we shall pitch our tents here on the best ground that we can find and take as much rest as we can.'

'But what will you do tomorrow, King Valamesh? With your baggage train?'

I summoned Lord Harsha and said to him, 'Will you see to it that the wagons are taken up the road that they might be waiting for us by the Rajabash?'

His single eye burned with discontent. 'I will if I must, Sire. But that will bring us out behind the Kaashan lines, and I will have to ride with them on the day of the battle, and not with my countrymen.'

'On that day,' I told him, bowing my head to Lord Zandru, 'the Kaashans will be as our countrymen.'

Then I issued orders that my warriors each take only enough food for the two-day march around Mount Ihsan. And their weapons and armor, of course. Everything else — the tents, extra clothing and food — would have to make the journey with Lord Harsha and the baggage train.

Marud's fourteenth day gave us a morning of crystal-clear air and the scents of the evergreen trees and flowers wafting down from Mount Ihsan's slopes. To the sounds of ten thousand men strapping shields and swords over their backs, horses stamping and snorting, and water poured on campfires sending up a hissing steam, I mounted Altaru. To the protests of Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and Joshu Kadar, and other knights in my vanguard, I insisted on leading forward at the very head of the long column of our army. I rode straight through Anan and onto the track that pushed through the dense woods to the northeast. Four hundred mounted knights kept close behind me, followed by Lord Tomavar's and Lord Tanu's nine thousand foot, and then the three hundred knights of Lord Sharad's rear guard. Although it did not take half the morning to get everyone moving up the track, as Lord Zandru had feared, it took long enough, and I soon found my army spread out for more than three miles along it behind me.

For most of the rest of the day, our march through the summer woods might have seemed a pleasant hike, if not for the gradual rising of the track and our urgency. Birds in great numbers called out to each other from branch to branch, and deer and elk had the good sense to go bounding off through the trees so as to avoid our hunters' arrows. The sound of thousands of boots grinding against stones swelled outward through the forest and echoed off walls of bare rock around those steep parts of the mountain where few trees would grow. I did not fear my men giving the alarm. Almost no one lived in these wilds of Kaash, and those who did would never betray us to the Waashians. Even so, I commanded my men to remove the bells from around their ankles. Although I thought it unlikely that King Sandarkan would send any scouts down this path from the north, I did not want the tinkling of silver to alert them from afar and give them more time to escape from Kane and other knights whom I would have to send after them.

We camped that night off the side of the track, on semi-level ground beneath great trees or perched precariously on rocky slopes, even as Lord Zandru had said. Our luck had held good. The evening began warmly enough, or rather, with as much warmth as ever found its way to Kaash's high mountains. Our small campfires gave us good comfort, and we scarcely needed to wrap ourselves in our cloaks except for the hardness of the stony earth beneath us- But then, a couple of hours after midnight, a storm blew in. Dark clouds devoured the moon and stars, and a cold rain fell upon us like waves of the icy sea. Then, we desperately needed our cloaks, and more. The rain doused our fires and left us in nearly total blackness. Many of my men had to endure this misery in whatever spot they had laid down that night, for movement along the slopes above or below the track might prove fatal. I, however, had the good fortune of encamping with my friends on a saddle of earth almost perfectly flat. The few trees above us gave us little protection against the slanting rain. But at least we didn't have to worry about an icy torrent sweeping us down the side of the mountain.

'Ah,' Maram said to me as we sat huddled together for warmth, 'I'm tired, wet and cold. So damn cold — I've never been this cold before.'

He spoke in low tones so that Sar Shivalad, Joshu Kadar, Siraj the Younger and my other Guardians huddled nearby could not hear him. But Kane, Liljana, Master Juwain, Daj, Estrella and Alphanderry, pressed up close, must have made out his every word, despite the great noise of the rain. I heard Alphanderry chuckling with amusement, and sensed Kane smiling through the dark even as I did.

And then Liljana's voice cracked out into the nearly-drowned air: 'You were as cold as a man could stand when we crossed the Crescent Mountains into Eanna, and then in the Nagarshath, too. And last year, coming down from the White Mountains into Acadu.'

'Yes, yes, I was,' Maram's voice spilled out into the rain. 'But this is worse.'

'Why is it that each hardship you endure is worse than the last?'

'Why indeed? I suppose that is the nature and perversity of suffering: the more we endure, the more we are able to endure, if you know what I mean. And so the more we must suffer, and do. In the end, we become nothing more than a single, raw nerve utterly exposed to all the world's outrages. Even if a strong nerve, it is true. And so it is the very strongest among us who must live through the worst of hells.'

I thought about this as I listened to Kane's deep, disturbed breathing beside me. Had I ever known a man so strong or who had endured such incredible torments? Then I looked through the dark for Bemossed, who was trying to sleep with the Brotherhood's Masters only twenty yards from us, but I could not see him.

'And that is why,' Maram added, 'a man needs a bit of brandy at such times to numb his nerves. Ah, one might even say that the strongest of men need the strongest of brandy.'

'Drink if you must, then,' I told him. 'I'm sure you must have a bottle stowed in your saddlebags.'

'Must I? Well I suppose I have. But I have also made a vow.'

'Which you have broken before, at lesser need.'

'So what if I have? A vow should be like a signpost that keeps a man pointed on the right path, and not a dungeon's cell imprisoning him. That being said, I won't drink so long as there are men spread out in this damn rain with nothing to warm them. I won't ease my own suffering only to watch as others freeze to death.'

I smiled at this and told him: 'The warriors you speak of are men of the mountains. They won't die tonight.'

'No? Well, perhaps they won't quite die. But they'll wish they did. And then, the day after tomorrow, supposing that we can get down off this damn mountain, we'll have to face the Waashians. And then. .'

He did not finish his sentence. His words died into the pounding of the torrential rain.

Somehow we did all survive that bitterly cold night. In the morning, still freezing in the pouring rain, my men marched onward again with nothing more to put into their bellies than a little dried beef and cold battle biscuits. I led the way along the treacherous track. We had to go much slower, especially around the slopes of Mount Ihsan's great buttresses, for the track in many places became little more than slips of mud hiding stones that could turn a man's ankle or lame a horse's hoof. Lord Zandru did not have a good memory of this route, but he offered his anticipation that the track would dip down into more level country after only a couple more miles of snaking through some of the mountain's steepest terrain.

I placed much hope in this, for our delay had already put to the question our timely arrival on the battlefield south of Harban. And then, after I had ridden Altaru up and around another sparsely wooded saddle, I came out suddenly upon one of Mount Ihsan's steepest slopes. And my hope washed away. For I saw ahead me, for a stretch of about half a mile, that the entire side of the mountain had come down in a rockslide that had completely buried the track.

I dismounted and stood on a large shelf of earth gazing in despair ahead at me. Lord Zandru dismounted, too, and came up to me; so did Lord Avijan, Lord Noldashan, Kane, Liljana and my other friends.

'This is the end, then,' Lord Zandru sighed out. He was one of those men who are quick to see in any event the worst possible outcomes. 'We have taken a chance and lost.'

'No, there must be a way,' I said. 'There is always a way.'

The rain seemed suddenly to beat down even harder. It did not take much of an eye to see that even a mountain goat would not have dared the mud and rocks spread out above and below the track — or rather, where the track had once been.

'I can't see any other way,' Master Juwain said to me, scanning the steep and rugged side of the mountain. 'Unless you turn the army around and go back a few miles and try bushwhacking across the ground lower down. But that would take another day, at least, and the horses could not negotiate such terrain in any case.'

'No, we can't go back now,' I told him. I grasped the hilt of my sword to give strength to my trembling hand and stop the shivering ripping through me. And then a thought came to me. 'Perhaps we can clear a path.'

'Through that?' Lord Zandru said, pointing at the mass of sodden earth churned up ahead of us. 'It would take a thousand men working with picks and shovels for three days. And then who is to say another slide wouldn't bury your army as it marched past?'

My men, I thought, could build a good route along this slope, for my father had well-trained them to such work, as he had me. But Lord Zandru was right about one thing: we did not have enough time.

'Maram!' I called out. 'Could you clear a way? With your firestone?'

Maram, always eager for a chance at heroics that did not cost him too much effort or risk of his life, strode over to stand beside me. He took out his great red gelstei, nearly a foot long. Raindrops broke like a waterfall against the ruby crystal.

'I don't know,' he shouted through the rain. 'I haven't used it very much since Argattha — and never for so great a work as this.'

He glanced back at the dull diamond gleam of ten thousand men spread out in a line for three miles across the rocky buttresses of Mount Ihsan. Then he glanced up at the dark, closed-in sky.

'In any case,' he said, 'there is too little light. I'd be lucky to get a few sparks out of my stone, let alone the fire needed to melt through rock.'

'You could try,' I said to him. 'With a firestone no bigger than yours, Telemesh built the way between Mesh and Ishka.'

Maram must have clearly remembered the day that we had passed through the mile-long Telemesh Gate, melted out of the rock between Mounts Raaskel and Korukel, for he smiled hugely. Then he said, 'But it took Telemesh six days to cut his channel, or so it is said.'

'Telemesh,' I told him, 'boiled into the air a good part of a mountain. You have much less to do: merely to clear away a little mud and a few rocks.'

Again, he looked out at the collapsed slope ahead of us. Then he nodded his head and called out: 'Very well — I shall try! Stand back, now! Stand back as Maram Marshayk makes a new path!'

Maram stood at the edge of the shelf, perhaps four hundred yards from the place where the track disappeared into the mass of the rockslide. He gathered in all his concentration as he pointed his crystal at the collapsed slope. Then he let loose a stream of fire at it.

The flames that he summoned from his gelstei, however, while much more than a few sparks, were much less than was needed to melt anything larger than a pebble. After half an hour of such fruitless work, he threw up his hands in frustration.

'There is too little light,' he said again, looking up at the sky. 'This is hopeless.'

Master Storr, the Master Galastei, stepped up to Maram then. He had his sopping cloak pulled tightly around his old, freckled face. He told him, 'I have made a study of the firestones. Although I have not been so fortunate as to have one to work with, much is written about them in the old texts. You say it is too dark, that your crystal cannot drink in the sun's fires, and so give them back-But what of the fires of the earth?'

He spoke, of course, of the telluric currents that burned most heatedly beneath Ea's mountains — the very same earth fires that Morjin would use to free Angra Mainyu.

'I'm sure,' Master Storr told Maram, 'that you could learn to summon them, with our help.'

He explained to Maram that the 'feel' of the telluric currents would be more subtle than that of the sun's blazing rays. And so Maram would have to open himself to these deep flames and pass them up through his body into his firestone.

'Now is the time,' Abrasax added, moving closer to Maram. 'You must not let the currents get caught up in that overly-worked second chakra of yours.'

Maram rested his hand just above his belt: the very place in his body from which he had summoned those fires that had too often gotten him into trouble. Then I remembered lines from a verse that he had composed:

But 'low the belly burns sweet fire,

The sweetest way to slake desire.

In clasp of woman, warmth of wine

A honeyed bliss and true divine.

I am a second chakra man;

I take my pleasure where I can;

At tavern, table or divan -

I am a second chakra man.

'This is surely a day,' Abrasax told him, 'for opening all your chakras. And we shall help you.'

As at the Brotherhood's school, the Seven positioned themselves around Maram. With Master Okuth dead, Abrasax asked Master Juwain to stand in his place. He gave him Master Okuth's old gelstei: the emerald crystal that was one of the seven Great Gelstei. Each of the other Masters held one of these ancient stones toward Maram.

What followed was no exercise or mere discipline designed toward the perfection of Maram's body and being. The whole world, it seemed, depended on what now transpired. I watched as the various gelstei came alive in the Seven's hands; their radiating colors, I imagined, found a perfect resonance inside each of Maram's chakras. I wondered if Abrasax could perceive a river of light, like a rainbow, flowing inside him? Whatever invisible fires filled Maram, the flames that suddenly erupted from his red crystal split the air for all to see. The heat of this lightning burned the very rain into steam.

'It flares!' Daj cried out, pointing at Maram. He kept back from Maram with Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and others. 'As it did when Maram scorched the dragon, it flares!'

The thousands of warriors held up back around the curve of the mountain must have wondered at these unexpected fireworks.

'All right then!' Maram cried out. 'Stand back! Stand back, I say!'

He, himself, could not heed his own warning. He planted himself at the edge of the shelf, gripping his firestone in both hands as if holding on for his life. His crystal brightened to an almost blinding crimson color as fire continued to pour out of its point in what seemed a dense and incredibly hot stream. Maram directed it against the mass of the rockslide. Mud and stones, in nearly an instant melted and ran down the slopes in a glowing orange lava. The water in the ground heated into steam and exploded up into the air like a boiling fountain. It carried with it tons of hot grit and ash, which the wind and rain washed back upon us. All standing upon the shelf soon found themselves coated with this grime. The very earth seemed to hiss, crack and scream as Maram directed his terrible fire at it.

So thick did the cloud of ash and steam grow that he had to cease his efforts occasionally to let it subside — else we would all have choked to death. And Maram would not have been able to see where to lay his flames. Three times these flames nearly got out of control and threatened to consume us all in an explosion that might have sundered the very mountain. Such, the ancients warned, was the power of the firestones. But all the while that Maram swept his red crystal back and forth along the mountain's slope, Kane stood by him holding in his hand his dark crystal. It damped the worst of the firestone's burning light and kept it under control. For just such a purpose, as Kane had told us, the ancients had fabricated the black gelstei.

At last, after some hours, Maram lowered his red stone and looked out upon his work. After the rain had swept the air clean, we could all see the channel he had cut along the mountain's side. It seemed a path made of solid rock.

'Behold!' Maram's voice boomed out like thunder. 'Behold and rejoice: Sar Maram's Passage!'

He seemed well-pleased to name his creation, and even more pleased with himself. We all rejoiced then, as he had suggested. We gave thanks, too, for the driving rain, which sizzled off the hot rock along Maram's newly-made track, even as it cooled it enough so that men could move down it without burning their feet.

So it was that Maram cleared the way for our army to continue on around Mount Ihsan and come out behind the Waashians at the Rajabash — if only we could now drive ourselves to march quickly enough.