Diamond Warriors

Chapter 19

For three days, the Red Dragon's army marched toward the Rune River. Sajagax led his Sarni warriors on a long maneuver to circle behind the columns of our enemy and harry them from their rear. But the Sarni under Morjin — led by the Marituk and the Zayak — parried each of Sajagax's attacks and covered the Dragon's advance. In truth, they nearly fell into full battle with Sajagax's warriors. This did not discourage Sajagax. As he told me on a bright Valte day, with the sun baking the grasslands: 'It is as we hoped: our enemy seems short of long-range arrows. And their warriors seem badly led, for I think that each of the tribes' chieftains honors none as a great chieftain, but looks only to Morjin to tell them what to do. And what does Morjin, surrounded by his Dragon Guard and his wagons, know of the contingencies of battle far out on the steppe and how we Sarni really fight? And so I care not that his Sarni outnumber mine.'

Still as even Sajagax admitted, the true test of things would come only when our two armies faced each other in full strength on the field. We could not stop the Red Dragon's men from drawing nearer and setting up their tents in a vast encampment opposite ours four miles to the north of the river. In back of our enemy's line of campfires, the stark rocks of the Detheshaloon loomed like a vast, cracked skull. A much smaller prominence rose up two miles to the south of it and nearer to our encampment. Sajagax's warriors called this mound of earth the Owl's Hill, for one night they had heard a great horned owl hooing from its heights. When battle finally came, I thought, Morjin's armies would advance upon the river and form lines just beneath this little hill. Perhaps Morjin would ride up its gentle, grassy slopes and survey the field from its rounded top. If my warriors prevailed in driving back our enemy, they would have to attack uphill, at least on this one small sector of the field. I accepted this slight hindrance. For we held a much greater advantage in being able to draw up our lines with the river to our backs. In the heat of the day, with the sun beating down upon us like a fire iron, my men would have access to fresh water while Morjin's men would not.

At dusk on the seventh of Valte, with the Dragon army's camp-fires filling the northern horizon with a hellish orange glow, I took a moment to stand outside my tent with Altaru so that I might comb down my huge horse. Joshu Kadar and a few of my Guardians waited in front of one of our campfires nearby — but not too close. They knew that even a king sometimes needed a space of privacy.

'Old friend,' I said to my mount as I drew the brush across his shiny black coat, 'have you had enough grass to eat? Enough oats? Tomorrow will be a hard day.'

I continued working the brush along his flank, speaking to him in low tones. He nickered softly, and I felt the great muscles along his back and hindquarters fairly surging with life as if in anticipation of a great work soon to come.

'A hard day,' I said again. 'Our enemy has no honor, and they will try to pierce you with lances and swords.'

He turned his head to regard me with his great, dark eye as if to tell me that he would never let me down.

'And there will be elephants — they will try to knock you to earth and trample you. The Sunguruns have fifty of them and the Hesperuks at least two hundred more.'

I went on to inform him that we would unlikely to encounter any of the Hesperuk elephants, as we would take our post at the head of the Meshian, Waashian, Kaashari and Atharian cavalry on our right wing, with Sajagax leading half his Sarni farther to the right to protect our flank.

'I am sure,' I said, 'that Morjin will place the Hesperu army at his center to break our center. Other than the Dragon Guard, they are his best men. And so shall place the Alonians and Eannans opposite them, for they are my weakest warriors. The Hesperuks will break though, I think, or at least push the Alonians back. And then, when half of Morjin's army has poured into a space too small, I will send in our reserve and command the Valari to close in from the sides to slaughter them.'

I felt my heart beating in time to Altaru's. I sighed because I had employed a similar stratagem to defeat our enemy at the Culhadosh Commons, and I thought it unlikely to work again. 'Morjin,' I told him, shaking ray head, 'did not take the field at the Commons, but he will have studied deeply on what happened there. And at the Sarburn. Tomorrow, I think, he will make no major mistakes, it will not be a day for brilliance in battle — only

bravery, or not.'

Again, Altaru nickered, and I smelled the thick, fermy scent emanating from him. I stroked the long, muscular column of his neck.

'Are you brave enough for one last battle, my friend?' I asked him. 'Just one more time of the steel screaming madness, I promise you, and then we can rest.'

As the afternoon's last light bled from the sky. I kept working the brush over this great animal. I assured him that there must be a way to victory — but only if each man and horse in our lines fought with a heart of fire. I lamented, for the thousandth time, the smallness of my own heart, which I had too often had to keep closed lest the sufferings of others crush me under. What would it be like, I wondered, not only to give my blood to Altaru and my other friends, but the deepest blaze within me?

I might have stood there ail night whispering my doubts to the world, but just then Atara rode her lithe red mare down the main lane leading up to my tent. Her white blindfold flashed in the deepening gloom. She sat straight and grave beneath her great lion-skin cloak, lined with satin and trimmed with black fur. But I could feel the great effort that it cost her to hold this proud posture, for her side ached with a fierce, throbbing pain from a saber cut taken in battle with the Marituk.

'Val,' she said as she drew up close, 'Liljana will serve dinner in an hour — and after that you will have much to do. Can we not go somewhere where we can talk?'

In truth, with all the councils over the past days, I had not had a moment alone with her. 'Where, then?' I asked her.

She pointed south, past the river. 'Out there., on the grass.' I nodded my head at this. I did not think my Guardians would like me to ride alone out onto the barren steppe where Morjin might have sent outriders to circle around and spy out our encampment, especially since I wore my tunic only and no armor. But some risks had to he taken.

And so, I nodded my head to Atara, and quickly saddled my horse. Then we turned to ride pass the rows of tents; we splashed across the river; which at this time of year wound its way across the grasslands as a brown trickle scarcely deeper than a man's knee. It did not take us long to gallop a couple of miles out onto the open steppe, where we found a gentle rise of ground and took shelter in its lee. We dismounted, then Atara removed her cloak and spread it out over the rustling grass. We sat upon it, looking out at the darkening world.

For a while we spoke of the starry sky and the soughing west wind, which promised hot, clear weather the following day. Then our talk turned toward the battle: 'You take a chance,' she said to me, 'in engaging Morjin with the river at your back.'

I shrugged my shoulders at this. 'We have discussed this in council. The river is shallow enough that we can retreat across it in good order, if we must. But if we must retreat, then the battle will in any case be lost — and then it won't matter.'

Atara, sitting next to me with her knee pressing against mine, slowly nodded her head. Her blindfold gleamed in the starlight.

'Have your kings and captains decided what to do about the elephants then? I'm sorry I missed the council earlier, but I wanted to verify that the Hesperuks really have two hundred and twenty of them.'

'Kane,' I said to her, 'faced war elephants long ago. He has told the warriors what they must do to fight against them.'

She smiled grimly at this. 'I am glad that I will lead the Manslayers against men only tomorrow, and not elephants.'

She took out her scryer's sphere, and sat rolling it between her long, lithe hands. I felt in her a quaking fear as if she had seen in her crystal some great and dreadful beast.

'You didn't invite me here,' I said to her, 'to talk about elephants.'

'No,' she said squeezing her crystal. 'Tomorrow, Morjin will unleash something upon us — some terrible, terrible thing.'

'What, then? Is it a firestone or a new kind of gelstei?'

'I don't know,' she said, lifting up her glimmering sphere. 'He keeps it from me. I look and look, in here, but all is dark.'

'Well, whatever it is, we'll destroy it! As we will the Red Dragon.'

The wrath she heard in my voice must have alarmed her, for she removed her right hand from her crystal and laid it on top of mine. 'You will seek him out on the field, won't you?'

I shook my head at this. 'Only if fate puts him in my path. It will be enough if we can drive off the Ikurian Horse, and circle around the Dragon's army from the right.'

On our right I would charge with the Guardians and the best of our knights against the Ikurians. On the left, I told myself, King Hadaru would have a very hard task leading the combined Ishkan, Anjori, Taron and Lagashun cavalry against Morjin's heavy horse if they were to break through and complete the double encirclement that I envisioned.

'You seem sure,' she told me, 'that Morjin will set his Ikurians against our right.'

'As sure as I am that tomorrow will not be a day for my vengeance alone.'

'Truly?' she said. Her lips pulled up into a cold smile. 'lie to me, if you will, Val, but not yourself.'

'What would you have me do?' I asked her. With one hand, I squeezed her fingers, while I rested my other hand on top of the hilt of my sword, which I had set down in the grass beside me. 'I cannot turn away from him.'

'No, you cannot. But Kane will keep by your side, through all the Ikurians' lances and swords — even through fire. Can you not let him slay Morjin?'

I turned to look toward the north, where the rising ground behind us blocked most of the glare of the Dragon Army's encampment. And I said, 'You are brave to talk of us slaying anyone with our enemy outnumbering us more than four to one.'

'What should I talk of then? What I have seen in my kristei? It is no different, here and now, than it was in Argattha.'

I lived again, in a blaze of memory, the anguish in the words that Atara had cried out to me in Morjin's throne room soon after he had taken out her eyes: If you kill him, you kill yourself.

'Didn't you once tell me,' I said to her, 'that no scryer can see all things?'

I remembered, as well, the ancient prophecy that 'The death of Morjin would be the death of Ea.'

'No scryer can see everything,' Atara said to me. Then her hand suddenly tightened around mine. 'But all scryers see something they know will be — unless something else is done to make it not be. But it never is, Val, never, never. Because men like you believe that whatever is, is, and always must be — and so go rushing madly toward their fate.'

I let her soft, grave voice play over again and again inside me. Then I said to her, 'My fate is my fate. So many will die tomorrow. It can't matter if I am one of them.'

'Can't matter?' she cried out. 'It matters to those who follow you, as it does to all Ea. And to me — it matters, so terribly, terribly.'

I remembered another thing that she had said to me in Argattha: If you kill yourself, you kill me.

She began shaking then, deep tremors that rose up from her belly and ripped through the whole of her body. Her hand suddenly opened to seize hold of mine, and she dropped her sphere, which rolled a few feet across the grass. Upon realizing how careless she had been with this priceless gelstei, she turned her head right and left, as if trying to orient herself toward it. But I sensed that her second sight had left her, at least for the moment, and so she sat utterly blind.

She reached out to pat the grass around her. I placed my hand on her arm to stay her, then bent to retrieve her crystal. In the instant that my fingers closed around the cold white gelstei, I cried out in agony because it was as if I had grasped hold of a lightning bolt. A fierce white flash tore through me, and I beheld the same fearful thing that had terrified Atara: the great Tree of Life that grew out toward the future in all its infinite branchings. And each branch, I saw, every one of the tiniest shoots and sprigs, had been charred, as if by dragon fire. The whole of the tree stood utterly blackened beneath the dying light of the stars.

I gave this accursed crystal back to Atara. The touch of it seemed to reawaken her sight, as horrible and unwanted as it might be.

'Morjin!' I cried out. 'He will win tomorrow, won't he?'

'Val, I-'

'You always spoke as if we had a chance! But we never really did, did we?'

'Please don't be angry with me,' she told me as her hand tightened around mine. 'But I had to act as if there really is hope, don't you see?'

'Why, then?'

'Because hope is our duty. It is the deepest courage — truly, truly. And then, of course, you, with your beautiful, beautiful eyes and all your dreams. .'

Her voice softened to a whisper, then failed altogether. It took her a few moments to gather in her breath again and say to me, 'I couldn't bear to see you lose hope, Val. Should I let the sun lose its light?'

I sat listening to the crickets chirping nearby and the roaring of a lion farther out on the grass. And I rapped my diamond ring against her crystal and said, 'But you can't keep this future from happening, can you?'

'Can't I? Don't we, in the end, choose our futures?'

'I always thought we could. But if every path leads only to destruction and doom, what is there to choose?'

'But I can't see everything! There must a chance — at least one! beautiful beautiful chance.'

'There must be,' I said, feeling the quick pulsing of the vein along her wrist. 'But what if there isn't?'

'If there isn't, if the tree is truly withered beyond hope, then the One must be able to breathe life back into it. Somehow, this impossible grace — it must be possible. I have to believe that. And so must you.'

I touched my sword's scabbard, which covered the inscription etched into the silustria. I asked her, 'Have you seen all of what is written here?'

'No, I haven't,' she told me, shaking her head. 'But I have seen you seeing it. There will come a moment — I know there will.'

'And then?'

'And then I don't know!'

She began shaking again as if from cold, although the evening continued warm. The wind, moving slowly across the earth, carried the distant booming of our enemy's war drums. I lifted up Atara's hand to press my lips to her skin, and I could almost hear the deeper drumming of her heart.

'Tomorrow,' she told me, 'when I lead the Manslayers against the Marituk, our arrows will sweep them from the field — I know they will. But we will have to ride far afield, so very, very far. I can't see how our paths will cross during the battle, Val.'

'No — neither can I,' I said, kissing her fingers.

'And after the battle, it will be. . after.'

I suddenly could not bear the sight of her crystal sphere, nor the visions that she saw within it. And so I took it from her and buried it beneath the edge of her cloak.

'And now,' she murmured, 'it is now. For you and me, this is the only moment that ever is, don't you see?'

And with that, she kissed my hand, then pulled my arm around her to draw me closer. She kissed my mouth, my nose, my eyes, then returned to pressing her lips against mine with a fierce desire. She pulled at me with her hands and the force of her quick, hot inhalations as if she wanted to breathe my very soul into her.

'I want your child, Val,' she murmured. 'At least, its beginning inside me.'

'A child you will never live to see?'

'I don't know that,' she said. And then, 'Do you really love me?'

I felt her hands all warm and urgent against mine.

'Atara,' I finally said to her, sitting back to gasp for air, 'we only ever have this moment — that is true. But if we win tomorrow, we will have millions of moments — all the nights of our lives — for love.'

'Are you asking me, then, to keep inside what I can't bear to keep inside … as a faith in victory?'

'Faith, yes,' I said to her. 'We've come so far on almost nothing else. And we will need all our faith tomorrow.'

'I know you are right: we must at least act as if we can win,' she told me. I felt the chill of duty and acceptance begin to take hold of her. 'What could love possibly matter at a time like

this?'

She folded her hands across her lap, and held her head utterly still. I listened to her deep breathing, even as I knew she listened to me. I sensed the hurt of her side where she had been wounded and adeeper pain within her chest. Her dreadful vision, I thought, had hollowed out her heart, nearly emptying her of hope. I felt this in my heart as a coldness and a darkness that sent terror shooting through me. I wanted to grasp hold of her then and never let go; I wanted to fill up this black nothing with all the fire and light I could find.

Without either of us speaking a word, at the same moment, our hands reached out toward each other. They met in the space between us, and our fingers twined and then suddenly locked together in the shock of knowing what we must do. I pulled at her, fiercely, even as she pulled at me; the force of our tensed limbs and bodies drew us together with a greater shock of lips bruising against lips in a kiss so savage with years of longing that it seemed that we were trying to devour each other. I smelled myrrh and musk in her hair, and tasted blood on her tongue. Her hand tightened around mine with such a terrible need that I thought our fingers might break.

Then we let go of each other, she to lift off my tunic and I to tear away the leather armor encasing her belly and breasts. When we had made ourselves naked, we fell at each other again in a fever to press skin against skin as if our desire could sear our flesh together as one. She lay back against her furry cloak and opened herself to me: her arms, her legs and that bright, beautiful thing deep inside her that had pierced my heart the moment I had first set eyes upon her. I knew I had to be careful lest I aggrieve the raw, red wound still seaming her side. But she didn't want me to take care, and she had none for herself. And so we pulled at each other like ravenous beasts, sweating and moaning and breathing in each other's breaths as if we could never get enough of each other. But we were like angels, too, for in our blaze of passion, we called each other higher and higher, where the deepest radiance pours as from an inexhaustible source.

For a moment, we returned to our star. It pulled us straight into its fiery heart, burning away time and the grasses of the steppe all around us, annihilating whole armies and the very world itself. And then we both screamed together as one: I because I could not bear the ecstasy passing back and forth between us like a lightning bolt, and she to feel me filling her up with love and light and burning raindrops of life.

Afterward, we lay holding each other. The soft beauty of her body, no less the sweetness of her soul, held me as within a dream that I had never quite dared to dream. It came to me that I had been a fool: wasting my blood and breath fighting a war to end war and living for a higher purpose. What could be more exalted, I asked myself, than the wild joy that Atara and I had made together? Was this not the will of the One and a song to all of creation? Was it not the One's deepest desire to pour itself out through us in a brilliant blaze of divine love?

Lions, Atara told me, when it comes their time, mate nearly continually for most of a day. We did not have a whole day together, only part of an hour. And really, only a moment: it was all anyone ever had. We spent it loving with all the fire and delight we could find. Then, after our hour was done and we had to ride back to our encampment, we both wept because it seemed that we would never come together as a man and a woman again.

When we walked through the opening to my tent, Liljana had just finished setting out dinner on the council table. Our friends — all except Kane — stood by the chairs there, as did the Seven. Liljana took one look at Atara and me, and seemed instantly to sniff out what had happened between us. Her manner was one of deep concern, but warm and welcoming, too. She beamed her blessings at us, and then insisted that we fill ourselves with some good food.

'I was afraid that your duties would keep you elsewhere,' she said to us as we took our places at the table. 'But I'm so glad you are here. After tomorrow, who knows when we'll have a chance to sit down to a meal together again?'

Liljana set out before us yellow rushk cakes with honey and muffins made of fine white flour. She had roasted three kinds of meat: some little steppe chickens and a tenderloin of sagosk and a whole ham that she had reserved just for this night. She had also used a few jars of strawberry preserves to bake some pies. Daj loved strawberries, and so did Maram.

'I made a blackberry tart, too, for Kane,' she told us. 'If he ever arrives.'

'Ah, well,' Maram said, 'he probably had business elsewhere.'

'He has had all day to take counsel with captains and kings. But what could be more important than spending this evening with his friends? If Val and Atara can come to dinner on time, why

can't Kane?'

For a long moment, I stood staring across the table at Atara. Then I looked at Liljana and said, 'Not two hours ago, fifty men rode into camp. They had escaped out of Alonia, and I'm sure they are of the Black Brotherhood — and maybe the last. A man named Idris led them. He said that he would speak only with Kane.'

Liljana let her irritation radiate out of her like heat from one of her frying pans. 'Well, if that is true, then Kane should speak with him later. There will be time enough for dealing with spies after we've eaten. It would be a shame for Kane to let all this food go to waste.'

I looked at the feast spread out on the council table. 'Kane said that if he came late, we should begin without him.'

'Well, perhaps we should. Since he is absorbed in such urgent matters.'

Liljana then bade us all to sit down, and this we did. It was good to share such a meal on such a night with good friends. Maram, of course, ate with great appetite, as did Daj and Alphanderry, to say nothing of Ymiru, and their eager consumption of the dishes that Liljana had set before us pleased her greatly. Abrasax and the other masters showed more restraint, according to their way, and they would not overfill themselves. Abrasax said that soon the Seven must retire to prepare themselves for the next morning, and they could not let indulgence in food clog their bellies and brains. As for me, I could scarcely eat. I kept gazing across the table at Atara. I could feel her concentrating all her desire upon me instead of her dinner. Never, I thought, had I seen her look so beautiful — and yet so sad. I had only to glance at her to feel the wildest of hope burning through me and the most desperate of despair, too. Our anguish must have communicated itself to Bemossed. All during dinner, he hardly put more than a crust of bread into his mouth. He drank none of the black Sarni beer that Liljana poured into our cups. I felt something inside him growing tighter and tighter, like a bow bent too far and about to snap. Even so, he would not let any distress interfere with the enjoyment of our company. He tried to smile as often as he could, especially at Estrella, with whom he had always shared a silent understanding. He watched as Atara sat with her hands folded across her belly, and her great joy of life became his. He seemed to find some singular essence within each of us and to savor it the way another man might the richness of a sagosk steak or the sweetness of honey.

Maram, who must have sensed the terrible sorrow welling up out of Bemossed, finally pushed a cup of beer at him and said, 'You'll find that your food slides down more easily if you first lubricate your throat with a little of this.'

To please Maram, I thought, Bemossed took a sip from his cup and then ate a bite out of a muffin. But he said nothing.

Almost immediately, Master Juwain spoke out to Maram in order to fill up the silence: 'And you'll find that too much beer encourages stuffing yourself like a pig.'

'So what if it does?' Maram countered. 'I'm only fortifying myself for tomorrow. And as for beer, truly, I've had only a little.'

'You've had three cups worth,' Atara put in.

I stared at the clean white cloth encircling her face. Despite her blindness and preoccupation with me, she could be the most observant of women.

'Three small cups, to a man such as I,' Maram said, 'is like three drops to another.'

'Hmmphh — you overestimate your resistance to this drink. Just as you underestimate the importance of your resisting.'

'Well,' Maram said, pulling at his beard as he studied her, 'resistance can be a difficult thing, can't it?'

I felt Atara suddenly soften within the cloud of silence that came over her. She sat as if staring straight at me.

'And as for importance,' Maram added, 'I'm no more needed here than anyone else so foolish as to have come so far to face an army of half a million men.'

Atara slowly shook her head at this. 'But you are, Maram. I should tell you that a great, great deal will depend on you tomorrow.'

'Upon me? What, then? What do you possibly think I can do against so many? And what have you seen in your scryer's crystal that you should tell me?'

Atara, however, would say no more, and Maram knew her well enough not to press her in this matter. Instead, he rapped his double-diamond ring against his cup and said, 'All right, then — I will drink no more beer tonight. And not another drop, I swear, until Morjin is defeated.'

Liljana looked at him curiously then, and she stood up to begin setting fresh cups onto the table. When she had finished, she brought out a bottle of wine and told us: 'King Waray sent this over earlier, with his compliments. It is Galdan, and should go well with our dessert.'

As Estrella began cutting one of the pies and serving us, Liljana uncorked the bottle. Maram, sitting across the table from where liljana stood, held out his cup so that she might fill it more easily, or so he said.

'No,' she told him, 'you've just promised to forgo spirits.'

'I promised to forgo beer only — not wine, and a special vintage at that.'

'Would you drink before Val does?' she scolded him. She moved over to me and poured a stream of the dark red wine into my cup. 'This is a gift from one king to another, and you should count yourself fortunate to share in it.'

Liljana made no move to fill Maram's cup — or anyone else's. She stood watching me as if she wished me to praise her for acquiring the wine for what might be our last meal together. She waited for me to sip from my cup and indicate that the wine was good.

I reached out to lift up the cup. Just then I heard the hoofbeats of a horse pounding against the turf outside the tent. A moment later, Kane rushed in. He looked from my hand to Liljana, standing above me gripping the bottle of wine, and then quickly back at me. And he shouted out: 'Don't drink that — it is poisoned!'

Liljana stared at him as if she didn't want to believe what she had just heard. So did Master Juwain, and so did I.

'Poisoned!' Icalled back to him. 'But King Waray sent us this wine! He would not have come so far with his whole army just to poison me!'

'Unless,' Maram observed, 'he wished to replace you at the last moment as warlord.'

'No,' I said, looking downinto the dark wine, 'no Valari king would ever poison another.'

Even as I said this, I remembered Salmelu Aradar, who had born the son a king.

'So, maybe no Valari would,' Kane growled out. He stepped closer to me, and the fury filling his thick body made me think of a tiger ready to kill. 'But I did not say that the poisoner was Valari. Who knows more about poison than she who trained to detect such filthy things, eh?'

He fixed his savage gaze upon Liljana, once King Kiritan's food taster, who had saved him from more than one poisoned meal. The forrce of Kane's blood pulsing through his throat impelled me to jump up and grab hold of him.

'You are speaking of Liljana!' I told him. 'How can you say this of her? She has been a good friend to you, and like a mother to me!'

'She is first the Materix of the Maitriche Telu!' Kane said. 'Those women would sacrifice their own sons and daughters to make what they will of the world.'

He told us then what he had learned from Idris, who had ridden from Tria with the knights of the Black Brotherhood to deliver this news: that the scryers of the Maitriche Telu had prophesied that Valashu Elahad would be the one to lead Ea into a new age. The Maitriche Telu hoped that this would be the Age of the Mother reborn, and so when I first came to Tria on the quest to recover the Lightstone, Liljana had attached herself to me in order to help nurture, guide and protect me. But because the Maitriche Telu also feared that the coming times might see a new Age of the Sword, or worse, the very destruction of the earth, Liljana stood ready to murder me should I prove to be the long-dreaded King of Swords.

'So,' Kane said to me, looking down where I had rested Alkaladur against the side of the table, 'you have proved that in summoning the Valari armies here and making yourself warlord. And in much else.'

His logic, however, failed to persuade Master Juwain. Although the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood had long been estranged, Master Juwain did not want to think such ill of Liljana, for he said to Kane: 'If Liljana wished Val dead, then she might have made him so a thousand times these past years. Why should she wait until now to poison him?'

'Because,' Kane said, 'it took her time to determine that Val must be the king her Sisterhood has feared! And because at no other moment would his death wreak such havoc. Think, Juwain! The Valari kings would renew their old quarrels, and fall at each other's throats. Perhaps they'd even draw swords against each other here on this field, eh? Sajagax would then be forced to try to take command, but the Valari would never yield to him. Never! Instead of one army facing Morjin, there would be ten. They'd be like fingers clawing about with no head to guide them. And so Morjin would cut one away from another, and destroy them — utterly.'

As he glared at Liljana, she glared right back at him with resentment, anger and a great sadness filling up her soft, round face. And then Atara pulled herself away from visions of the future to the tragedy of the present moment. In a cold, commanding voice, she called out to Kane: 'Put away your doubts — Liljana is no poisoner! How could you think that she would want Morjin to triumph?'

'So, how could I?' he snarled at her. Then he whipped about to face Liljana. 'How could you want that, eh, witch? This is how, I say: what Morjin would bring to the world is not what the Maitriche Telu has schemed for ten thousand years to make be. Not nearly. But it would be better than Ea's utter destruction in war. There would be a kind of peace, eh? All men and women would be slaves, or worse, Morjin's ghuls. Almost all. Your sisters would still try to work their plots and poisons in secret. They'd try to wait — another ten thousand years, if they had to. They'd wait and wait and wait, and someday they'd hope to murder Morjin and make the world their own.'

I stared at Kane, horrified by his terrible words, and so it was with Maram, Ymiru, Master Juwain and Abrasax. Bemossed seemed frozen within a vast silence. I sensed Estrella wanting to weep in outrage and hurt at Kane's attacking Liljana.

And then Kane continued his diatribe: 'You must think Morjin is a fool eh? A man, who can be twisted about and won to your ways, like other men. Fool you! You've deceived yourself, Liljana. You've looked into Morjin's mind once too often, and so he has deceived you. So. So — he's put his filthy poison in your mind, eh? How long have you been his ghul? Long enough. I say, to have betrayed us already. It was you, wasn't it, who gave away the Brotherhood's school? And not by mistake, but of your own will? And now you would murder Val. But that will never be.'

He moved to break free from my grip on him, and to draw his sword. But I damped my hands on him with greater force, even as Liljana calmly picked up my cup and took a drink from it.

'You're wrong,' she said to Kane. 'So very wrong — there is no poison in this wine.'

Maram watched her as if waiting for her muscles to seize up and her face to turn blue as she choked and died. But she just stood there breathing deeply and glaring at Kane.

And then he shouted: 'It is poisoned, I say! You would have prepared the antidote and taken it against just such a moment as

this!'

Liljana shook her head with great sorrow. Then she turned to me and said, 'Kane's spy told truly about the prophecy concerning the King of Swords. And you are he — I am certain of this. But even if I knew that you would bring ten million years of war to the world, how could I ever poison you? How could I hope to see a new Age of the Mother if I must bring it in by murdering the man who is like my own son?'

Through the tears filling her large brown eyes I felt her love for me like a burst of warm sunlight. I let go of Kane's arm, and reached out to take the cup from her. Before Kane could stop me, I drank from it deeply, down to the last drop of wine.

'It is not poisoned!' I said to Kane. I felt the wine, sweet and good, warming my insides. 'Come, forget what has happened! Sit with us and eat. Liljana has only wanted to make us the best meal that she could.'

Liljana fought hard not to break out weeping openly. And Kane waged a much deeper war within himself, for he stood there grinding his jaws together as the tendons popped out on his neck. A dark light blazed through his eyes. He seemed like a mountain about to crack open and to touch the whole earth with his fire.

Then Bemossed stood up and came over to him. I looked on in amazement, for it seemed that he held in his hand a small golden cup. It caught the light of the candles in a soft shimmer. Bemossed gazed at Kane as he touched the fingers of his other hand to the side of Kane's head. Almost immediately, the agony tearing through Kane seemed to drain away. His eyes cleared to a deep black, all sheeny with tears.

'I … am sorry,' he said, nodding to Liljana. 'So damned sorry.'

Without another word, he turned and stormed from the tent. I heard him ride away into the night.

When I looked back at Bemossed, I could make out only air cupped within his hand. And he said to me, 'Do you see, Valashu? This battle is driving us mad even before we fight it.'

'And that is why,' I told him, 'we must never fight another.'

He glanced at my sword leaning against the side of the table, and said, 'Kane, I fear, believes he is damned to fight forever.'

'Kane will be all right now. I know he will.'

'Will he? Will you?'

I thought of all that had happened between Atara and me scarcely an hour before and the blackened Tree of Life that I had seen within her crystal. Was there truly any hope, I wondered? This question, and Bemossed's, filled my mind as I turned to stare at my sword. Alkaladur's blade, buried within its scabbard, burned with etched characters that I could not quite read.

'It will all be over tomorrow,' I murmured,

Bemossed laid his hand on mine and asked, 'Can you think of nothing except this murder you make in your heart, again and again?'

'Morjin,' I told him, 'must be destroyed. You know that.'

'I know that he is a man, like you. Like me.'

'No — he is nothing like you! You hold light in your hand, always, even when you hold nothing! And Morjin blackens the brightest and most beautiful thing in all the universe. Even as he has devoured himself.'

'Kane, too,' he said, 'is sure that Morjin is damned.'

I did not like the note of longing that filled his voice just then. I said to him, 'No man knows Morjin as Kane does.'

'Does he, really? Does he know himself?' He smiled painfully, and squeezed my hand. 'You should go to him, Valashu. He'll be waiting for you.'

'Can we speak later, then?'

Again, he smiled at me. 'Yes, later. Now go and speak to the man who has fought so hard to see you made king.'

We clasped hands, and I felt his blood coursing deep within him. His eyes, strange and sad, filled with a piercing light.

Then Atara stood up and moved over to the end of the table. She took hold of my sword, and held it out to me.

'You will need this,' she told me. 'As we need Kane. Without him tomorrow, I can see no chance at all.'

I strapped on my sword, and squeezed her hand. And then, after promising Liljana that I would return soon for a taste of her pie, I turned to walk out into the night.