Diamond Warriors

'She called you back!' he said to me. 'She put her hand upon you, and your heart started beating again!'

As I looked up Estrella, smiling at me, Master Juwain went on to declaim that this was a miracle and irrefutable proof that she was the Maitreya. I could hardly hear him, for the sound of clashing steel and men screaming drowned out his words. I forced myself to sit up. All around us, at the top of the hill, the Red Knights and the Yarkonans had finally encircled my warriors and pressed them inward into an even tighter ring. With Morjin hacked to pieces, his Red Knights worked even more ferociously to exact revenge. So did Count Ulanu. He led his Yarkonans against my knights. His ugly face contorted in wrath as he tried to cut his way through in order to kill all of us, and his old enemy Liljana first and foremost. But just then, Liljana brought her blue gelstei up to her head. She must have put something into his mind that maddened him, for he suddenly looked at her and screamed and fell from his horse. His own men trampled him under, crushing him to death with another hideous scream. But it was not enough to keep his men from pressing on.

Nor could Kane turn back the tide of battle. Now fighting on foot, the better to protect Estrella, he whirled his broken pike about like a magician's staff, felling many, but he could not beat back an entire army. Neither could the bloody kalamas wielded by Lord Avijan, Joshu Kadar — and many others — as they sliced into the masses of men pressing them. Soon, I knew, the Red Knights would close in upon the cross and annihilate me and mine.

'My sword!' I heard my voice croak out. 'Where is my sword?'

Atara pressed Alkaladur's hilt into my hand, and my fingers closed around it. A surging of blood through my veins, like the Poru in flood, gave me the strength to stand up. Then Atara swept up her saber and turned to face our enemy.

'No,' I told her, laying my hand on her arm, all bloody from the arrow that had pierced her and her butchery of Salmelu. 'You have slain your hundredth man.' I looked out across the war-torn steppe below the Detheshaloon, and I saw many thousands of men still slaying each other, pushing spears and swords past shields. And women, too. At the center of the field, where the enemy poured through the broken Alonian lines, I saw a battalion of Valari knights appear as if from nowhere and ride forward into the gap. The diamond armor of these hundreds of knights sparkled in the sun. I caught sight of a great blue rose against a white surcoat and other emblems that I did not recognize; I suddenly realized that somehow Vareva Tomavar and the woman warriors she had trained had found their way to the battle. Their kalamas gleamed like shards of silver. The tremendous tumult nearly deafened me; the sun's red flash off bronze and steel nearly burned out my eyes. I could not tell who was winning the battle.

'Estrella!' I called turning to this lovely young woman who had shown me so much. 'Will you help me again?'

Her smile was like a warm ocean washing through me. She nodded her head as if she had been waiting all her life for me to ask her this question. He hands grew bright from the radiance pouring out of the cup that she held.

I raised my sword up to the sky, aligning it with stars that I could not see but only sense. I pointed it toward the Seven Sisters and Agathad, where the Galadin dwelled, and Ninsun, source of the Golden Band at the center of all things. Then I brought Alkaladur down and swept it out across the battlefield, from our lines of knights and warriors in the west to the trampled grass in the east, where Sajagax's Sarni had now nearly routed the enemy's tribes. It was strange to think that Morjin's death had done nothing to dismay the men whom he had led here but had only caused them to fall against my men with an even greater savagery.

But I will give them dismay, I thought. That — and much, much more. For I had brought back from the land of the dead a great gift. 'Val!' Atara cried out from next to me. 'Your sword!' Once again, the Lightstone poured out an impossibly bright radiance. So did my sword. All the fire of life that blazed within me flashed out of it. The valarda was that force which opened one man or women to another, heart to heart. At the heart of all things, I knew, there shimmered but one light. It was this splendor that interconnected all beings together as one.

There is nothing to fear.

Truly, there was not. But so long as flesh burned with life, there would always be much to suffer. Now, as men battling in both the Dragon army and mine thrust steel through flesh, they suffered themselves the terrible agonies that they inflicted on each other. The screams of the wounded and dying, in thousands, were joined by the shrieks of those who would cleave or slay them. No man could strike another without feeling the white-hot pain of a spear or axe or arrow or sword ripping through him. So it has always been with me. And so now I gladly — but with great grieving — shared my gift with them.

They cannot bear it!

Who, I wondered, could? For I, who had called upon my sword to help me endure the torments of those I had slain, had in the end driven myself down into death. Perhaps only Kane, I thought, of any man on earth or the stars, had the strength to drink in the anguish of those he struck down and keep on fighting.

But our enemy — and my warriors — could not keep on doing battle themselves. Sar Shivalad, after slashing open a Red Knight's neck, grabbed his own neck and fell gurgling from his horse. So it was with Lord Manthanu after he had swung his mace to brain a man, and with Lord Avijan, Joshu Kadar and many others. And so with our enemy. Zahur Tey, after he had stabbed Sar Zenshar, shook his head and cast down his lance. He did not mean it as an act of surrender — only that he would not, and could not, fight anymore. A dozen of his men followed his lead. And then thirty more, and then three hundred and a thousand. My knights began throwing down their weapons, too. And suddenly, like a wave spreading down and outward from the top of the hill where Bemossed hung crucified, the ringing of steel against steel slowly faded and died as all of the tens of thousands of men on the battlefield ceased fighting.

'Val!' Atara cried out again. Her face radiated a deep joy. 'I never saw!'

Truly, I did not think that she had ever looked upon this moment. But she had willed it to be, with all the force of her soul and the sacrifice of her flesh and the power of her white gelstei.

Then Estrella held the Lightstone high above her head. Its splendor, like unto that of creation itself, neither dazzled the eye nor burned but seemed to illuminate all things as from within. The golden cup grew even brighter, and its radiance fell across the miles of warriors spread across the plains; it fell across the whole world in a clear, numinous flower of light that blossomed outward and connected earth to the heavens.

There came a moment when no one moved. It seemed that it was no longer possible for anyone to move again, if their motions should be the stabbing of spears and the swinging of swords. All the men gathered beneath the Detheshaloon, almost turned to look up at the Lightstone. Awe shone upon the faces of my Valari warriors and those of our former enemies, too. I felt them burning with a new will toward life. In the Lightstone's onstreaming glory, even the blood-soaked earth and the bodies of the dead and dying seemed transformed with a luminous and terrible purpose. Men and women gazed at the shimmering Lightstone as if wondering why they had been called into life and called into battle. I saw great warriors such as Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and Zahur Tey break down weeping, for the men whom they had killed and for each other — and for themselves.

Then the kings and chieftains who had fought that day, as if called to the top of the Owl's Hill rode out away from their armies to the foot of Bemossed's cross, where I stood with Estrella and my friends. King Angand of Sunguru, his bloody blue surcoat showing a reddened white heart with wings, kept pace next to King Thaddeu. Hesperu's new sovereign had succeeded King Arsu, killed when the elephant he had been riding fell upon him. No king came forth from the nearby Yarkonans, for none would claim Count Ulanu's illicit crown. But King Orunjan, one of the greatest of the Dragon Kings, approached the cross to speak for Uskudar. He had reddish-brown skin and a nose as straight as a ruler; he stood tall, straight and proud. The chieftains of the Sarni tribes who had fought for Morjin made their way up the hill too, but not Gorgorak, for Sajagax had sought him out during the battle, and had put an arrow through his heart.

It gladdened my heart to see that the great Sajagax, by a miracle, had survived the battle. He rode up to the cross with five broken arrows sticking out of various parts of him: two through his shoulder and one through each thigh while a fifth had embedded itself in his neck. I did not know how he managed to climb down off his horse and to stand next to Vishakan and Bajorak and the other Sarni chieftains who had followed him here. I did not know — then — that during the battle the warriors of the Janjii tribe in the east and the Siofok in the west had gone over to Sajagax, and that all the Sarni would soon be persuaded to make him their Great Chief, as Tulamar had been before him long ago.

Of the Valari kings, all came forth save for King Sandarkan and King Hadaru, who had died trying save one of his knights from the axes of the Blues. Prince Issur had immediately taken command of the Ishkans as their new lord. A pike had pierced King Mohan's arm and a saber added yet another wound to King Kurshan's fearsome face,