Diamond Warriors

Chapter 21

I walked alone back through the lines of the campfires toward my pavilion. The great noise of our army had quieted as men finished their dinners and lay down to try to sleep, most of them outside their tents beneath the stars. As I made my way along, I greeted those warriors who had remained awake, calling out their names: 'Yuravay; Sharam; Durrivar of Ki; Naviru Elad. . ' There seemed almost no end to my homeland's ten thousand warriors whom I had led here, nor to the hours of the night. I came upon one man, Sunjay of Godhra, who sat trying to tie a battle ribbon to his long black hair. It was only his second ribbon, for he had fought at the Seredun Sands but had been too young to take up arms at the Culhadosh Commons the year before. Usually, ribbons were awarded only after a battle, but because I feared that none of my warriors might survive the coming day, I wanted them to be honored for their valor in merely showing up on this field to fight. All knew what a desperate fight it would be. And so young Sunjay's fingers trembled as he tried to work his red-colored ribbon into a knot.

'Sunjay, son of Torshan!' I called out to him. He was a rather gangly youth whose smooth, comely face still bore a look of innocence. 'Here, let me help you.'

I stepped over to him, moving around the sleeping forms of his companions. He bowed his head to me, and I quickly knotted the ribbon in his hair. And he told me, 'Thank you, Sire.'

'Thank you,' I said to him, 'for marching with me down such a long road. But tomorrow, we'll come to the end of it.'

'Yes, tomorrow,' he said, bowing his head again.

I sensed the emptiness of his churning belly, and said to him, 'Have you not had anything to eat?'

'We were given given antelope livers and steaks for dinner,' he told me, 'but I had no stomach for meat, if you know what I mean. Before I sleep, I shall try to eat a few battle biscuits.'

I asked him if he might have more of an appetite for pie, and his eyes brightened. I promised him that I would send out some of the strawberry pie that Liljana had been saving for me. And then I told him, 'Don't worry, lad, you will do well tomorrow. When the time comes, don't be afraid of yourself.'

He smiled at me as if astonished that I could sense his deepest fear. I set my hand on his shoulder, on the steel plate reinforcing his diamond armor, and I felt our regard for each other passing back and forth like a torch. Then I bid him goodnight, and moved off toward my pavilion as I spoke the names of other countrymen: 'Darshur the Bold; Telamar, son of Zandru; Suladad Yuval; Shanidar of Silvassu. .'

Too many of my men, I thought, were barely men who had yet to see their twentieth year. How cruel, I thought, that they should be cut down in the finest flush of life before they had the chance to marry and sire their own children. I must have greeted two hundred of them before I realized with a shock that I, too, was a young man with hopes and dreams.

When I finally reached my pavilion and lay down, I could not sleep, and so I spent the few remaining hours meditating instead. Just before dawn, Abrasax came inside my pavilion to lay his hand on my arm and shake me into a painful consciousness.

'Valashu,' he said in a low, grave voice, 'I must tell you something.'

I sat up from my sleeping furs to see Abrasax's great, white-haired head limned in the glow of the candles.

'What is it, Grandfather?' I said to him.

'It is Bemossed — he is gone, and no one can find him.'

He went on to explain that an hour before, Bemossed had left the tent that he shared with Abrasax and the Seven. Bemossed, too, as Abrasax related, had been unable to sleep, and so he had gone outside to look upon the last of the night's stars.

'When he did not return,' Abrasax informed me, 'Master Virang and the others helped me to search for him — helped in vain.'

'But he must be somewhere!' I said. 'He cannot have left the encampment!'

But neither could Abrasax and the Seven, as Abrasax admitted, search the entire grounds where the warriors of sixteen kingdoms and six Sarni tribes gathered for battle. But I, as their warlord, could. At least I could pass the word to the kings who followed me to order their captains and company commanders to make a search. Such was the virtue of an army.

The sun was rising over the steppe in the east as their reports came to me: no one seemed able to locate Bemossed, not my Meshians near the center of our encampment, nor anyone else from the Ishkans in the west to the Atharians in the east. And then, even as our enemy's great war drums began booming out the challenge for battle. Lord Tanu came into my pavilion with five sentries: Gorvan of Lashku; Sorashan; Vikadar, son of Ramadar; Barshar of Ki; and Karathar Eldru. It seemed that they had been stationed ten paces from each other along a picket line to the north of our encampment. Lord Tanu's sour face grew bitter as he informed me: 'All of these men were found sleeping at their posts! They tell that Bemossed gave them coffee to help them stay awake — and that the coffee must have been poisoned with a sleeping potion! They remember speaking for a while with the Maitreya, and then nothing more!'

Kane, who stood listening to this report along with my other friends and the Seven, ground his jaws together and then growled out, 'Bemossed employed the same stratagem in Hesperu to make me sleep and so escape into the wilderness.'

'Well, then,' Lord Tanu said, 'it seems that it is no fault of my men that he has escaped his duty on the eve of battle.'

And Bemossed's duty, according to Lord Tanu, was to inspirit the warriors to face what would soon come. Although he did not quite call Bemossed a coward, the word seemed to hang upon his tongue like a curse.

'But where did he escape to?' Maram asked. 'If he wished to flee, why did he poison the sentries to the north of our encampment? why not flee across the river to the south, or east, away from our enemy?'

'Perhaps,' Lord Tanu said, 'he has gone over to the enemy — though I would not have wanted to believe that of him. But then the Lord of Lies has a way of turning men, doesn't he?'

I too, feared that Bemossed had crossed the broad strip of grass separating our encampment from Morjin's. But I found myself hoping with a blood-pounding desperation that he had, in fact, gone off into the steppe because he could not bear to face the horror of another battle.

'I have asked Sajagax,' I told everyone, 'to send out riders to search for Bemossed. If he did flee, he cannot have gone far.'

As the sun rose even higher, however, and my warriors finished their breakfasts and gave a last polish to their armor, Sajagax's outriders returned one by one to report that they had been unable to find any sign of Bemossed. It seemed that he might really have gone over to the enemy — either that or simply vanished into the grass.

Finally, Sajagax himself, accoutered for battle and clutching his great bow, strode into my pavilion and announced to me, 'We cannot find him! And the word of his desertion spreads among the men like a plague. What are we to do, Valashu?'

'What can we do?' I said. The distant tattoo of our enemy's drums seemed to boom out with even greater force. I thought I heard the sound of trumpets blaring along the wind. 'Let us form up for battle.'

I clasped Sajagax's huge arm, and told him that after he had driven off or defeated the Sarni tribes arrayed against him, I would meet him upon the center of the field over Morjin's corpse. Then he struck his huge fist against my shoulder and stormed out to gather up his warriors.

All along the river, our trumpeters began sounding the call to assemble. The Valari — along with the warriors from Thalu, Nedu and the other Free Kingdoms — began crowding between the rows of tents in thousands as they took their places in their companies and battalions. Just before we marched out away from our encampment, I lingered inside my pavilion to say farewell to the Seven, and to Liljana, Daj and Estrella.

'Promise me,' I said to Abrasax, 'that if the battle goes ill, you will flee with the children before it is too late.'

I repeated my request to him that the Seven should try to take refuge in one of Ea's Vilds, where Daj and Estrella might possibly live out a good part of their lives even if Morjin destroyed the rest of the world. Although Abrasax would make no promises, he at least nodded his head in acknowledgment of my concern.

Just before I donned my great helm, with its crest of white swan plumes, I bent down to embrace Estrella. Her warm, dark eyes seemed to reach out to hold onto me. I knew that she would choose to remain here and die by my side if we were defeated. This lovely child who had journeyed so far with me through so many dangers seemed suddenly not so much of a child at all. I felt within her a great movement, as with a mass of charged air before a storm. I had always marveled at her deep and — mysterious accord with life. Could she now foresee, I wondered, her own death? Or mine? It had been prophesied that she would show the Maitreya, and I wished that she might now point the way to where Bemossed had gone and tell me that he was safe from harm.

'Take care of the children,' I said to Liljana. I kissed Estrella's forehead, then clasped Daj's hand. 'Do not let them out of your sight.'

I embraced Liljana, and kissed her, too. And then it was time to go.

I led the way up from the river at the head of a column of the Meshian knights. Our horses' hooves beat against the earth, and the morning sun set our diamond armor on fire. Kane kept pace by my right side, with Maram at my left, followed by Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad and hundreds of others. We rode east, just past the hill where I had crossed swords with Kane only hours before. Slightly to the north of this little hump of ground, we met up with the mounted knights of Athar, Kaash and Waas, led by King Mohan, King Viromar and King Sandarkan. We massed together in long lines of stamping horses bearing warriors with long lances and gleaming shields. The rest of our army formed up with us as their anchor point: to our left and west, stretching out across the golden grasslands, the foot warriors of Athar took their places in glittering ranks five deep, followed by those of Waas, Kaash and Mesh. The white-haired giants called Ymaniri, led by Ymiru, framed the Alonians and Eannans at our center with the Thalunes farther to the west. Then came the Valari of Taron, Lagash, Anjo and Ishka. At the end of our lines, King Hadaru gathered with the combined cavalry of those same four kingdoms to anchor our army in the west. The distance from the swan and stars that my banner-bearer held aloft to the flapping red cloth showing the white bear of Ishka, as I estimated, must be nearly, five miles. Behind our lines, in two groups, stood our archers; between them waited the scant reserves from Nedu, Surrapam, Delu and the Elyssu. Beyond the lines of foot and cavalry — spread out over the steppe even farther to the west — the warriors of the Niurui, Urtuk and Danladi tribes assembled in one of the much looser and more flexible formations favored by these horse archers. So it was with the Kurmak, Adirii and the Manslayers just to the east of my cavalry. I saw Sajagax on top of his stallion a few hundred yards away waiting at the head of eight thousand warriors; Atara, her white blindfold flashing in the sun, led more than three and a half thousand women of her Sisterhood.

'It will be a hot day,' Maram said from beside me as he looked up at the sun, 'if we have to wait too much longer to engage. This is the part of battle that I hate most of ail the waiting.'

Even as he spoke, the drums of Morjin's army thundered with even greater force. Trumpets blared, and the cries of war elephants bellowed out across the steppe. So did the eerie howls of the Blues. I watched as, more than a mile away, our enemy formed up for battle. So many men, howevex could not so quickly assemble into their lines.

'Half a million men,' Lord Sharad said from off to my right. He shook his head, encased in a shining steel helmet. 'Let us see if Morjin packs them twenty ranks deep.'

'Or extends his lines,' Lord Avijan said, 'miles to either side of us.'

For a few moments, they reopened the debate that we had argued during our councils. Lord Noldashan, with Lords Manthanu and Jessu the Lion-Heart farther back, sat on their heavily armored mounts listening to them speculate. So did Joshu Kadar, Siraj the Younger, Sar Vikan, Sar Shivalad and my other Guardians. Sar Jonavar, I thought, would not be able to lament after today that he had missed the greatest of battles. Farther along the front line of our cavalry, I saw King Sandarkan and King Viromar waiting to see how things would fall out. King Mohan, sitting beneath the standard of the blue horse of Athar, also looked our way.

'So,' Kane growled out into the warm morning wind, 'Morjin has enough men to build his ranks ten deep and to flank us.'

But so long as Sajagax's Sarni could rove the grasslands on either of our flanks firing their long-range arrows, as Kane observed Morjin would be unlikely to extend his lines too far and so expose them to a hail of death.

'Sajagax will hold his own against Morjin's Sarni,' Maram said. 'Ah, he must. And if he does, I suppose it will be our fate to ride against those damn Ikurians again.'

We all waited to see how Morjin would set his order of battle. Soon I watched the black eagles of the Ikurian standard bearers move forward at the head of a great mass of armored knights, who took their places on Morjin's left flank opposite us. Morjin's heavy cavalry, I guessed, would outnumber ours by more than three to one. To the west of these fierce warriors, with their broad-bladed swords and fur-trimmed helms, stood the phalanxes of Sunguru, broken at intervals by fifty great, trumpeting elephants. And then came the impressed soldiers of Eanna who were almost like slaves, and the Sakayans in ranks twenty deep and seventy thousand strong. Their battalions formed just beneath the slopes of the Owl's Hill to their rear. I could not see clearly the army of Hesperu lined up beyond them on a swell of grass farther to the west. But riders brought me a report of the hundred thousand Hesperuk soldiers in bronze, fish-scaled armor. King Arsu, these messengers said, sat inside a kind of castle perched on the back of a great bull elephant with bronze-shod tusks more than ten feet long. Other lords and knights, with archers, rode atop other elephants at the front of the Hesperuk phalanxes. Then came the tiny armies of impressed Surrapam and Alonian soldiers, and the vastly larger army of Uskudar, led by King Orunjan. A horde of Blues with their fearsome axes gathered next to a great mass of more heavy cavalry from various Dragon Kingdoms; these thousands of heavy horse formed the Dragon Army's anchor in the west. As with our army, Morjin's Sarni would range across the steppe on either flank, fighting Sajagax's warriors. Behind our enemy's lines, Morjin had stationed archers and reserves, as had I. Most of these, it seemed, were Yarkonans: some of the very same men that Count Ulanu had led against my companions and me at Khaisham. I knew that Kane longed to take vengeance for the Yarkonans' burning of the Great Library and massacre of the people trapped inside. I did, too, but I had more concern for Morjin and his Dragon Guard. My messengers could not tell me on what part of the field they might be waiting for us. They guessed that they must be hidden by our enemy's lines, perhaps behind the Owl's Hill near the center of the field.

Where is he? I wondered as I set my hand upon the hilt of my sword. I remembered the saying that the silver gelstei would lead to the gold. Where is the Great Beast who stole the Lightstone?

Maram, beside me, ran his finger down beneath the mail covering his neck. His face was sweating, and he seemed to want nothing more than to drink a horn of cool beer. He gazed out at the great multitude of our enemy arrayed upon the Wendrush's trampled grass, and he said, 'So many — if the gates of hell had opened to disgorge a swarm of demons, I do not think there could be so many.'

'They are only men,' I said, pointing out across the field. 'And you are forgetting one thing about them.'

'Ah, what is that?'

'In all their multitude, there is not a single man named Maram Marshayk.'

This caused Maram to laugh, a sound that the warriors around him picked up and passed back and forth along the lines as they recounted the deeds of my best friend. They badly needed such encouragement. Bemossed's desertion, I sensed, had worked at their spirits like a leech draining a body of blood.

My stallion stamped his hoof against the turf, and I reached down to stroke his tensed neck beneath the armor that covered it. And I murmured to him, 'Just one more time, old friend. Just one more charge.'

Kane, to my right on top of the Hell Witch, stared out at our enemy with an immense will to destroy them. And I said to him, 'Such great numbers — not even at the Sarburn did Morjin and Aramesh command so many. I have never stood at a place of such a great battle as this.'

For moment it seemed that Kane's blood ran through his veins as cold as ice water. Then his black eyes flashed in the sun as he looked at me. 'No, you are wrong. For you have stood at the center of the Tar Harath.'

'The Tar Harath?' I said, puzzled. I remembered with a bitter pain that sun-seared hell at the heart of the Red Desert. 'Men do not even go into that place. No battle ever could have been fought there.'

'You are wrong about that, too. For once the Tar Harath was a grassland such as this. And it had a different name, taken after the site of the great battle.'

'What battle?' I asked him. 'So — we called it Tharharra.'

Tharharra, I thought, the Tar Harath. Could it be possible? The Battle of Tharharra, that had been the greatest of all the ages? There, once a time, a host of Galadin, Elijin and Star People led by Kalkin and Marsul had defeated a vast army of Daevas under Angra Mainyu. Marsul had wrested the Lightstone from Angra Mainyu himself, while Manwe and other Galadin had bound the Dark One on Damoom.

'But the verse we heard in the amphitheater,' I said in astonishment, 'told that Tharharra was fought on Erathe, out in the stars!' Kane pointed up at the sun and said, 'We dwell, always, in the stars.'

Then his hand swept out across the grassy steppe east and west as he added: 'This is Erathe. That is what we named our world long ago — long, long ago. I was its king, Valashu. When I was born, the White Mountains stood lower and the Morning Mountains higher. The stars were different, too.'

He looked up at the sky, whose deep blue shimmer hid the great spirals of lights spread throughout the universe. Then he sighed and said, 'But men are not different — and so once again we must fight. But this will be my last battle.'

I turned to meet eyes with him in a silent understanding.

'Your time is coming, too,' he added.

I tightened my grip around my sword to draw strength from it. Then I drew Alkaladur and gave the command to advance. Trumpets rang out. In an unbroken line stretching five miles across the steppe, the men from the Free Kingdoms marched toward our enemy. Our cavalry kept pace on either flank, while Sajagax ordered his Sarni warriors to begin maneuvering for advantage on both wings even farther out across the grass. The terrible jangle of silver bells worn by sixty-five thousand Valari warriors seemed to shiver the air; the thunder of our drums shook the very earth. We drew within half a mile of our enemy, but their massed formations remained unmoving, like immense blocks of bronze and steel upon which we must surely break.

And then, as we narrowed the distance to four hundred yards, there came a great and hideous howl from the Owl's Hill. At precisely that moment, a terrible pain ripped through the center of my right hand, and I nearly dropped my sword. I looked out above our enemy's lines to see a band of Blues gathered upon the hill's top. A second howl split the morning's peace as my left hand, fastened around of the straps of my shield, burned as if pierced with a heated iron. Upon the third howl that fell upon my advancing warriors like an evil breath, I nearly fainted from the spike of agony that tore through the bones of my feet. Then I watched in horror, as did tens of thousands of my men, as the Blues at the top of the hill raised up a lone wooden cross.

'It is Bemossed!' I gasped out to Kane. My eyes burned as I stared across the field, trying to make out the face of the tiny figure nailed up on crossed beams for entire armies to behold.

'I know it us he!'

And Kane, I thought, knew it, too. His jaws clamped shut with such force that it seemed he might have bitten through steel plate; the fire in his eyes and shooting through his trembling body might have caused him to sweat blood.

'So,' he finally growled out. 'So.'

I sheathed my sword and took hold of his arm. I was afraid he might fall into a furv and charge alone straight toward the Owl's Hill. And I was afraid that I might join him.

'It is the Maitreya!' one of my warriors down the line to the west cried out, pointing up and out. 'Look — it is the Shining One!'

There comes a moment when we know that doom is upon us, and cannot be averted. Even so, we try to deny it. As Kane shook his head in bitterness and despair, I sat on top of. Altaru trying to stop tears from flooding my eyes. I did not warn to believe what my heart knew must be true.

'The Mataeya!' hundreds of voices cried out all at once. 'It is Bemossed!'

I called for a halt then, for at that moment a herald bearing a white flag rode out from our enemy's lines across the field. I sent out a herald of my own to meet with him. This man — his name was Sar Garash — soon returned to report that Morjin had requested a parlay,

'A parlay!' Maram called out to me. 'A trap, more likely. You can't let yourself get close to that crucifying snake, Val. Don't go!'

'Ha!' Kane shouted as he laid hold of his sword, 'If it's to be a trap, then let us spring it and put an end to Morjin for all time!'

'No, Kane,' I told him. 'You know we cannot.'

And we couldn't, I said, because if we slew Morjin, then surely Morjin's men would finish off Bemossed. Too, the one who met with us at the center of the field might not be Morjin himself, but only one of his droghuls whom we could not distinguish in appearance from the real Morjin. And last, I told Kane, we could not murder Morjin here beneath the sacred banner of truce because I was now a Valari king who could not do such a thing.

'Six counselors are to ride out with Morjin,' I said to Kane, 'and I am to bring as many.'

I turned to Maram, sweating in the building heal of the morning, and he huffed out: 'Not I! You have kings at your command Val.'

'But you are a prince among men,' I told him, 'and a hero whom the minstrels will sing of for ages. Come, friend, and let us finally write the ending to this song!'

Maram was weeping as he nodded his head at me. I did not know if he shed tears for himself or for Bemossed — and all of Ea.

'Kane,' I said, turning to my right, 'you will come, too, yes?'

The blaze in Kane's dark eyes told me that nothing could stop him.

For my other counselors, I choose Ymiru, Atara, Sajagax and King Hadaru. It took some time for my messengers to ride forth and summon them to me. Then, beneath a white flag held aloft by one of my heralds, we moved out to confront our enemy. We met Morjin and his counselor at the center of the field. Atop a snow-white horse, the Red Dragon rode easily and with an air of authority, as if the very grass and all the earth beneath him were his to command. I could almost feel the force of his fell desires emanating from him with a terrible heat. He wore an armor of mail and steel plate stained a bright carmine and encrusted with glittering rubies, in mockery of the diamonds that we Valari bore. Two of his retinue were similarly accoutered: a great, squat, black-bearded Ikurian named Zahur Tey, who proved to be Lord of the Dragon Guard, and my old enemy, Prince Salmelu of Ishka — now named Arch Igasho. Two other Kallimun priests hung by Morjin's sides: Arch Uttam, who had nearly put my companions and me to death in Hesperu, and Arch Yadom. Both had the gaunt, hollowed-out look of cadavers that had been eaten at by wolves; they wore long yellow robes in place of armor, for they were no warriors. The fifth of Morjin's followers, however, in his youth, had been a great warrior who had fought his way to become chief of the Marituk tribe. But over the years Gorgorak had grown nearly as great in girth as in reputation due to his fondness for food and beer. His once-golden hair had gone gray, and his little blue eyes buried deep within his puffy red face stared out at me in challenge. Right behind him rode Count Ulanu, now acclaimed as Yarkona's king. He had a hard, foxlike face framed by a neatly shaped beard. Ulanu the Handsome he had once been called — until Liljana had cut off the end of his nose in a battle preceding the siege of the great Library. As he drew closer, he glared at me with poisonous dark eyes as if to transfer his hate for Liljana onto me.

I did not need to look at Morjin to feel his great malice burning him up like a disease. I had not seen him, in the flesh, since I had put my sword through his neck in Argattha. Through the grace of his kind he had recovered from this mortal wound, and more, he had called upon the darkest of sources to invigorate his body with a terrible new life. Through the power of the illusions he cast, others saw him as a golden-eyed angel. But I would always see him as an old, old man whose sagging skin had gone gray with corruption. His smell was all foulness and fear, rage and hate.

He halted far enough away that I could not easily hurry forward to strike at him with my sword, but close enough for me to make out the webwork of broken veins that made his eyes seem like pools of blood. The others drew up behind him.

'King Valamesh!' he called out to me, formally and politely. 'I would like to thank you for making parlay with me!'

His voice, like a battering ram, struck straight into my chest with a power I had not remembered. Save for Alphanderry, I had never heard anyone put tone to words more beautifully.

'Morjin!' I called back to him. 'I do not know what we have to discuss — unless it is your surrender!'

I could almost feel Kane smiling savagely at this just behind me. But what I had said, and even more the manner in which I had said it, only infuriated Morjin.

'I did not give you leave to call me familiar!' he shouted at me. 'I am King Morjin of Sakai, Lord Emperor of Ea and Lord of Light!'

'You are the Lord of Lies!' I said. 'Why should I listen to anything of what you have to say here?'

In answer, Morjin turned to point at the cross rising up from the Owl's Hill and framed by the great, skull-like rocks of the Detheshaloon. I could not call out to Bemossed, nailed up in the air so far away, but my whole being burned to ask him a single question: Why did you go to our enemy?

'The Hajarim slave,' Morjin said, turning back to me, 'is a false Maitreya. I promised you he would be punished, and his agony has only begun. But it is upon you to end it.'

'How so … Lord of Light?'

Morjin could not abide sarcasm, and his face darkened with rancor. 'Surrender to me, here and now, your sword. Command your men to lay down their swords. Their bows, too. Command them then to return to their encampment. Do these things, and despite what I have written to you, I will spare their lives. I will see that the Hajarim is taken down from the cross and given to your healers.'

He lies! I told myself. He is the Lord of Lies, the Crucifier, the Red Dragon, the Great Beast!

And upon this thought, as I gazed up at Bemossed with his hands stretched out to the world, I knew why he had deserted in the dead of night. Out of a strange pride that knew nothing of vanity and conceit, but only the foolishness of compassion, he had gone to Morjin with a desperate hope thnt he might somehow heal this dark angel.

'Do as I say,' Morjin told me, 'and we can avoid this battle that no one wants. And I will let even you have your life.'

Could Morjin, I wondered, really think that I might believe him and set up my men to be slaughtered? Why had he really called this parlay?

'I, for one, do want battle!' Sajagax suddenly shouted, shaking his bow at Morjin. 'You have laid waste Kurmak lands and ravaged my people! We will have our revenge! I care not for any of your threats and lies! Nor your slave army: the One will give us strength today and keep our sight true. If Valashu Elahad had not asked otherwise, right here I would put an arrow through your eye!'

Sajagax's fierce words caused Morjin's pallid face to drain of all blood. I imagined, however, that Morjin's men perceived him through the colored glass of illusion as a mighty and sanguine warrior who stared down Sajagax with a vast self-assurance beaming from an implacable countenance. Morjin had only to nod at Gorgorak for this great chief of the Marituk to speak in Morjin's stead:

'You will do nothing if I put an arrow into you first!'

'Brave words!' Sajagax shouted at Gorgorak with a voice like a lion's roar. Then he pointed out into the steppe. 'Let us see if your deeds can match them! Within the hour, my warriors will ride against yours. Let us first, at a distance fit for Sarni chieftains, loose our arrows at each other. Let him who survives take the other's horses, wives and lands, and thus settle matters between the Kurmak and the Marituk!'

But Gorgorak, usually so bold, made no answer to this. He just sat staring at Sajagax with his little blue eyes. On all the Wendrush, it was said, no one could outshoot Sajagax.

Now Morjin turned the force of his will upon Arch Uttam, and his overawed Red Priest could not help but deliver more of Morjin's words:

'If it is battle you seek,' Arch Uttarn told Sajagax, 'then it is battle you shall have! And at the end of it, when you are brought before the Lord of Ea in chains, we will tear out your liver and you will watch us feed it to the dogs before you die!'

Kane, who had liked Sajagax from their first meeting, growled out to Arch Uttam: 'Ha! Save your words for when you do have him in chains!'

Arch Uttam's skull-like face fixed on Kane. 'We should have put you in chains when we had the chance! I would have torn out much more than your liver!'

He said this with a seething glee, then turned to stare at Atara. She sat on her red mare, gripping her bow and remaining quiet behind the white blindfold that bound her face.

'And You,' Arch Uttam said to her, 'this time we will flay you alive. We will make a puppet of your skin to display in Lord Morjin's hall!'

Arch Yadom, who looked almost like Arch Uttam's evil twin, had been the chief of the priests who had tortured my companions in Argattha. He smiled at Atara and added, 'But you, unfortunately, will not be able to watch as we strip you to the meat.'

His cruelty proved too much for Yrniru, who stood behind me gripping his borkor in the only hand that remained to him. He raised up this fearsome weapon, and shook it at Arch Yadom as his huge voice boomed out: 'This, to you, if we meet again on this field, though you be no warrior and hide behind your ugly robes. And you be mistaken if you think you will ever return to Argattha. It belongs to the Ymaniri, and it be a hroly place. After your master surrenders, we will wash it clean with fire and build it anew!'

Now Count Ulanu, who called himself King Ulanu, took his turn to speak Morjin's spite. He glowered at me and snapped: 'It will be you who surrenders — and right now, or we will slaughter all of you, as it was with the Librarians at Khaisham!'

Before I could respond to this, Kane called out to him: 'Have you wondered, Ulanu, as you stared into the mirror, what you will look like without any nose at all? If a woman could disfigure you, what do suppose an army of Valari warriors will do?'

I could feel the blood pounding through Count Ulanu's face and flushing it purple. And he shouted to Kane, 'I am King Ulanu! And I, myself, will cut off Liljana Ashvaran's nose — and her ears, eyes and evil mouth! And carve up the children she now protects, as well!'

Kane stared at him as if regarding a piece of offal. 'A king who takes pleasure in massacring innocents is no king but only a butcher.'

'Do you remember the Kul Moroth?' Count Ulanu snarled at Kane. 'It was with pleasure that I had my Blues chop down your minstrel and crucify him! And even greater pleasure, after you fled the Library, that we took his body out of the crypt where you had deserted him. I gave his liver to — '

'Every abomination!' Kane suddenly shouted out. 'Every degradation of all that is human!'

For a moment, Count Ulanu watched Kane carefully as he might a chained tiger. He glanced at Morjin, in confidence that his master would somehow keep Kane from springing at him. And then he continued his taunts: 'Some parts of your minstrel's body I gave to my Blues to do with as they would. But I put his head in a jar of wine, that I might look at it from time to time. After Lord Morjin crucifies you, it will be my pleasure to show it to you.'

Kane's eyes blazed black as burning pitch; for a moment I thought that, truce or no truce, he might draw his sword and fall upon Count Ulanu. But he surprised me, for an icy calm came over him like clear air in the deep of winter. In a strange voice he said to Count Ulanu, 'One man thinks he is the slayer and another man the slain. But both might be wrong, eh? When you die, though, Ulanu, I think you will truly die.'

None of our enemy seemed to know what to make of his mysterious words, not even Morjin, for he must not have learned of Alphanderry's return to us. The Red Dragon waved his hand at Count Ulanu as if brushing him aside, and he said to Kane: 'A cat has nine lives, and how many have you had … Kane? You must know that you have lived your last one. I, however, shall give it back to you on the sole condition that you persuade your friend to surrender.'

As Morjin turned to look at me with his dreadful red eyes, I wondered yet again why he had called this parlay. It could not be, could it, just that he hoped to strike terror into my men and weaken them for the coming battle?

One of those, at least, who had ridden with me, would not be terrorized. King Hadaru had lost all patience with such talk. He drew himself up straight on top of his horse, then he patted the hilt of his sword and called out: 'Why do we waste words? We all know that there will be no surrender — before the battle. And as for after, when the Valari's kalamas have done their work, let us see who still stands to call for surrender!'

'It will not be you!' Salmelu shouted at him. He sat within his red-tinged armor glaring at the man he had once called father. I had always thought Salmelu, with his great beak of a nose and weak chin, almost as ugly in his person as in his soul. 'And when you stand no more, Lord Morjin will give me Ishka to rule, and I shall sit on your throne in the Wooden Palace!'

I felt a great sadness, like a shadow across the moon, come over King Hadaru. He would not speak to his son, nor even look at him, for to him Salmelu had long since joined the dead. And so instead, he said to Morjin, 'I should have burned my palace before I marched from Ishka. As on the Raaswash I should have slain the one you turned away from me.'

'Do not despair, King Hadaru,' Morjin told him. 'When all is done here, we'll march east and I shall burn your palace — and all the Nine Kingdoms, as I did Tria. The lands of the Morning

Mountains, I will then give to my faithful priest, Arch Igasho, to build anew and rule as king.'

At this, Salmelu beamed like a boy given a prize at a fair. Could he not see, I wondered, that Morjin lied to him? That even the Great Beast hated a traitor, and after the battle had been fought, would not give Salmelu even the dirt clotted to his horse's hooves?

'He will use you,' I said to Salmelu. 'After you have helped fight your own people, he will cast you aside like a broken arrow.'

Salmelu's gauntleted hand clenched into a fist, which he shook at me as he cried out, 'It was only evil chance that my arrow did not pierce you to the quick! But you still feel the burn of the kirax, don't you?'

I stared straight into his beadlike eyes as I told him: 'What I feel is nothing against the shame of seeing a Valari prince serve the Red Dragon.'

His hand clamped onto the hilt of his sword. 'It was evil chance, too, that you cut me in the circle of honor. But when we next meet in battle, I shall serve you with cold steel!'

At this, Maram whipped free his red gelstei and said, 'Not if I serve you with fire first!'

I wondered if he had forgotten his vow never again to use his firestone against human flesh? More likely, I thought, he counted on Salmelu — and Morjin — not knowing that he had made such a vow.

At the sight of the ruby crystal, Morjin's face tightened in fear and hate. With a peculiar edge to his voice, he said to Maram, 'Let us see who burns here today.'

I couldn't help gazing up at Bemossed, naked to the heat of the waxing sun and the anguish ripping through his body.

'Surrender,' Morjin said to me, 'and I will give you the slave.'

'No,' I told him, shaking my head. 'You will never do that.'

'Surrender to me, Valashu, or I will make you my slave. Here and now, as we speak.'

'No — you do not have that power.'

'Don't I? I will make you my ghul — the most beloved of all those I command. And the first thing you do will be to kill that vixen you call your woman!'

At this, he turned his poisonous gaze upon Atara, sitting quietly on the back of her horse.

'No,' I told Morjin, 'you are mad.'

'Am I, Valashu?'

'Let Bemossed go,' I said, looking up at the top of the Owl's Hill. 'Perhaps he can help you.'

For a single heartbeat of time, I wished this impossible thing that I had said might be true. I could feel Morjin feeling this desire within me. It caused his face to contort with rage, and he snarled at me: 'I will help him to die in agony!'

Yes, I thought, he would. How long will he try to keep Bemossed alive?

'As I will make you die,' Morjin cried out to me, 'this very day!'

Atara nudged her horse a few feet closer to Morjin, then turned her face so that she seemed to look him straight in the eye. I sensed her choosing her words carefully so as to discompose him: 'I have seen you here, Morjin. You and Val. It will be as it is and always was: you and he, chained to the same terrible, terrible fate. In your spite for each other, and even more in — '

'Have you seen this?' he cried out, cutting her off.

He reached into his saddle's pocket and drew forth a plain, golden cup. I gasped to behold once more the Lightstone's splendor, and so did Maram, Ymiru, Sajagax and others gathered there at the center of the field. But Atara seemed to sit within a cloud of confusion, for she had no eyes with which to perceive it and no scryer's vision had ever encompassed this loveliest of all things.

'Now who claims the Cup of Heaven!' Salmelu shouted out with all the cruelty he could command.

'So,' Kane muttered, staring at the brilliant gold gelstei. I could feel him aching to draw his sword and cut it from Morjin's hand.

Then Morjin called out, to him and all of us, but especially to Atara: 'Valashu Elahad and I are chained together! And this shall be the hammer that forges the links!'

With that, he held out the cup toward me. Its soft golden hue suddenly flared to a deep and angry amber. The silver gelstei might seek the gold, but it seemed that the gold could also seek the silver. The long blade strapped to my side fairly quivered; I sensed the Lightstone pulling at my sword's silustria as a lodestone draws in iron. I had always hoped that the Lightstone, though it might command every other kind of gelstei, would have no power over the silver.

'Can you feel it?' Morjin said to me.

Despite myself — or perhaps because I wanted to deny the truth of things — I clasped my hand to Alkaladur's hilt. I had always called upon this marvelous sword to give me strength to bear the death agonies that I dealt out to others, and even more, to cool the heat of the kirax that poisoned my blood.

'Can you feel him?' Morjin asked me, pointing with his other hand toward Bemossed. At that moment, with his golden hammer, Morjin battered down the Walls of aloneness protecting me, and all Bemossed's agony came burning into me.

'There is a cure for the fire of the kirax,' Morjin said to me. 'A cure for all that grieves you. Do you remember what it is?'

To inflict my own suffering on others, I thought. But how can I do such a thing?

'You must open your heart to me,' he told me. 'You must direct that sword you keep inside toward those who defy me.'

'No,' I gasped against the pain tearing through me.

'You will serve me, Valashu!'

'No!'

I stared up at the Owl's Hill, and I felt Bemossed weakening in his final fight for life, even as Morjin's hold over the Lightstone grew stronger.

'Valashu, together you and I can — '

'No!' I shouted at him. 'Never!'

My voice seemed to fall upon my friends and Morjin's counselors with the force of a storm wind, for their faces grew grave with distress and they clung to their horses. But it left Morjin untouched.

'And still you deny me!' he thundered at me. He pointed behind him at the vast army lined up across the steppe. 'In the face of death and the destruction of all you hold dear, you deny me! So be it. If you won't accept the cure for what mars you, you will have the curse!'

Then his hand tightened around the Lightstone. I felt myself hurled as if into a pool of boiling oil. Its bubbling heat stripped the flesh from my bones and ate away my mouth and my eyes. I could not see, nor could I draw breath. Morjin had warned me that Bemossed's death throes would become mine, multiplied a thousandfold. I did not know if the immense pain piercing me to the core was only a tenth of that which Bemossed suffered — or ten thousand times as great. But it seemed to go on and on forever.

'Let go of your sword!' Maram called out to me.

I could not let go of my sword. I sweated inside my armor from every pore as my whole body shook; I gasped for air and bit my tongue and tasted blood. I did not want to let go of my sword. How could I fight Morjin without it?

'Do not let got,' Kane called out to me. 'Do not!'

I gripped Alkaladur's black jade hilt carved with a great swan and set with diamonds, even more tightly. Then the torture unmanning me eased, a little. I did not know if Bemossed, nailed to his cross, found just enough will to contend with Morjin over the mastery of the Lightstone and all its powers. Or if I might hold a strength of my own to resist Morjin. 'This parlay,' I gasped out to him, 'is over!' Morjin smiled at me, and I knew with a searing certainty why he had called me to meet with him here between our two armies. An inextinguishable agony — to say nothing of Morjin's hate for me and mine for him — clung to me like a robe of fire.

'It is over,' Morjin said to me. His red eyes gleamed like pools of blood. 'And now it is time for you, and all of yours, to die.'

Without another word, but watchful of Atara's and Sajagax's bows, he wheeled his horse about and rode back toward his army. His counselors followed him. I heard Sajagax mutter: 'It is too bad I filled my quiver this morning with long-range arrows and not armor-piecing ones. Truce or no, I would slay that snake!'

'If you did,' Atara said to him, 'then Morjin's men would surely slay Bemossed.'

I sat gasping for breath as I fought for the will not to fall down screaming; it was like breathing in pure flame. I looked up at the top of the Owl's Hill. How much longer, I wondered, did Bemossed have to live? How much longer did any of us?

Then, with these thoughts trying to work their way through the blaze of pain that clouded my mind, I led my friends back toward our lines and battle.