Diamond Warriors

He saw his enemy

Like unto himself;

And he knew love -

And his enemy

Was vanquished.

A great many animals — mostly horses and elephants — had perished along with the men who had ridden them here, but these we did not bury. No one wanted to dig a grave large enough to accommodate an elephant. Then, too, Morjin had driven his vast army hundreds of miles across the Wendrush far from his base and easy supply, and it seemed that his men had gone to short rations and had nearly starved. They reluctantly butchered the mounts that had carried them into battle. I overheard one of my men say with great bitterness that if Morjin's followers could drink a man's blood, then surely they could eat a horse's flesh.

One beast we could not bury, nor could anyone think of how we might cut up the corpse and dispose of it. In truth, the dragons that had come to earth from Charoth could hardly be considered animals, and Yormungand had proved as cunning as many men. A terrible enemy he might have been, poison-hearted and vengeful, but I did not want to see this huge being rot inside his iron-hard scales beneath the hot sun.

And so Kane, now recalling long-forgotten lore, instructed Ymiru in some of the deeper properties of the purple gelstei that Ymiru had inherited from his father. Ymiru then used the lilastei against the dragon's body as Jezi Yaga had with the purple crystals set into her eye hollows: to turn flesh into stone. For ages to come, travelers and pilgrims would espy from afar a great dragon rock at the top of the Hill of Fire.

On the evening of the day following the battle, Lord Harsha brought me a report of the dead. A final count of those slain of the Dragon army had not yet been made, but Lord Harsha., with a face as heavy as stone, informed me that Ishka had lost 3.000 of her 15,000 warriors, while the Atharians had suffered nearly as grievously. As for the Meshians, Lord Harsha said, we who had sacrificed so much to cut a hole in the Hesperuk and Sakayan phalanxes, the casualty list was even longer. He told me of the thousands killed in Lord Tomavar's battalions alone, and I held up my hand to stop him, saying, 'Bring me not numbers but names!'

Lord Harsha did, and the names of those Meshians who had died beneath the Detheshaloon's rocks would forever burn in my mind: Sar Kanshar; Lord Ramjay; Shakadar Eldru; Juvalad the Fair… There seemed almost no end to them. Lord Sharad had fallen in a heroic attempt to keep the Red Knights from cutting off our rear guard, and it saddened me to hear of Lord Tanu's death, beneath the Sakayan's spears. This crabby old man had challenged me for Mesh's kingship and had been hard to like, but easy to respect, for he had been a great warrior who had given everything for Mesh. Many wept at his demise, and surprisingly, Sar Jonavar was one of these, though he could not say why. With Lord Tanu in mind, I ordered more stones cut from the mound of the Detheshaloon. On the slabs set above the graves of the men of the Nine Kingdoms, I ordered names inscribed, and these words: Here lies a Valari warrior. Then, upon gazing up at the Owl's Hill and all the graves of the soldiers who had fought for Morjin, I ordered the names of our former enemy to be inscribed on their headstones, too.

It finally came time to decide the fate of those who had followed Morjin. Many of my warriors, Lord Tomavar foremost among them, still saw the men of the Dragon army as our enemy. At the least, they held them to account for unleashing a terrible war upon Ea and committing countless atrocities. Atara agreed with him. On the second night after the battle, she said to those gathered above the river to advise me: 'Many of Morjin's captains are murderers. And the kings who swore oaths to him have much blood upon them. How can we just send them back to their lands?'

'I am a murderer, too,' I said to Atara. I pointed out at the thousands of white stones marking the graves dug out of the Wendrush's yellowed grass. 'And upon my hands, there is an ocean of blood.'

'But, Val,' she said to me. 'It is not the same. You never ordered a child crucified! Or a man mutilated for refusing to acclaim you as the Maitreya. Or … a thousand other crimes. And so how can you suffer the criminals to live?'

I looked across the starlit steppe at the thousands of campfires to the men from Hesperu, Sunguru, Sakai and the others who had worn the Dragon's colors. And I said to Atara, and to my other friends: 'I am less concerned with punishing the guilty than with protecting the innocent.'

I told her that any campaign to root out the worst of Morjin's torturers and executioners would only ignite the war anew and tear apart the former Dragon Kingdoms.

'King Angand and the others,' I said, 'did not surrender to me as criminals to a magistrate but offered their allegiance as kings to a High King. I will hold them to their oaths.'

'They should have surrendered!' Sajagax called out hoarsely. A great white scarf bound his wounded neck. 'We would have won the battle! It was the arrows that made the difference.'

He nodded his head at the one-eyed Lord Harsha, and thanked him for keeping his Sarni well-supplied with the long range arrows that his warriors had used to gain advantage over the Marituk, Zayak, Mansurii and Janjii tribes in the east and the other enemy Sarni tribes in the west. Then he went on to say that his warriors surely would have turned both the enemy's flanks, while the timely arrival of Vareva Tomavar and her thousand Meshian women shored up our army's center.

'And so our enemy,' Sajagax went on, 'should be treated as vanquished. Too many of them, I think, care not for their kings' oaths — and care nothing for the Law of the One!'

At this, I laid hold of the sword strapped to my side. And I told Sajagax: 'They will come to care. I will hold everyone to the Law.'

I went on to say that, in the time to come, I would require all of Ea's kings to stand before their people as I had. The wicked ones, along with their captains and counselors, would be cast down. And new kings would be chosen.

Ymiru, who had lost three hundred of his five hundred warriors in the the gap torn into the Hesperuk phalanx, sadly shook his head at this. 'But, Val, what of Morjin's blood-drinking priests? They are unhroly!'

Kane, standing up straight and tall next to Ymiru, looked at him with eyes as old as time. He nodded his head as he rested his hand on Ymiru's great, furry arm. 'The Red Priests are that, and worse. And so the evil that they have done will not be undone overnight.'

No, I thought, the new age that Atara had dreamed of but never quite believed in would not come upon Ea fully realized in a year, or even a hundred years. But it would surely come, I said, even as a great and irreversible change had befallen the world and those who lived upon it.

It was to explain the new way for Ea that I called a council of kings and chiefs the next day. We met in my pavilion, and I stood to address King Angand and King Orunjan, King Mohan and King Aryaman and Vishakan and Bajorak and all the others. And this is what I told them:

'For all the ages of recorded history and the Lost Ages before them, there has been discord on Ea — ever since my ancestor, Aryu, slew Elahad and stole the Lightstone. How many lives had to be paid to atone for this murder? Millions. How many more men, women and children shall suffer death due to the evil of a world that was not of their making? Not a single one, I swear, if I can help it.'

For the Lightstone, I said, had at last been delivered into the hands of the great Maitreya, and the terrible chance that the Galadin had taken in sending the Lightstone to Ea had been redeemed. We could at last begin building the great civilization that the Star People had been sent to earth to create. Toward this end all the kings in every land and all Ea's peoples must direct their efforts. All who had fought upon the plains below the Detheshaloon, even those who had followed Morjin, must pledge their swords to fulfilling the Law of the One.

It surprised King Mohan and Sajagax that I would allow our former enemy to keep their arms and armor, but I explained that there might be discord in the realms to the south and that brigands and outlaws would need to forestalled. Just as we Valari would hold on to our kalamas in case any king or rebellious lord tried to turn back toward the Way of the Dragon. It was a paradox, I said, that we had fought a war to end war. And that now we must keep our swords to keep men from using their swords. The greatest sword of all, of course, I held sheathed inside me, and no one wished to feel it cut them open again as it had here at the Detheshaloon. The valarda, I thought, would now awaken in all people across the world — but not overnight, as Kane had observed, I wished with all my heart that men and women should come to take