Diamond Warriors

'So she could have, lad,' Kalkin said. 'But still she could not have wielded Val's sword. It was made for the hands, and heart, of a warrior.'

'But you are a warrior! Kane was. The greatest warrior who has ever been! Why couldn't he wield the very sword that he had made?'

Kalkin stood gazing down at Morjin's gray headstone. Then he said: 'Because Kane could never have opened his heart to the Red Dragon.' 'But Val could!'

'Yes,' Kalkin said, looking at me. 'Indeed, he could. Val is not the source of the true Alkaladur, but in him the valarda is strong. His blood burned the same as Morjin s blood, and so he knew how and where to strike. Too, he is the descendent of Adar, and therefore fated to be a Guardian of the Lightstone. A true warrior, of the spirit, and thus far greater than Kane.'

He smiled his old, savage smile, and his white teeth flashed in the sunlight. Then he bowed his head to me and called out: 'He is Valamesh, King of Swords!'

For what seemed a long while, he gazed at me, and my other friends did, too. I listened to the roaring of a lion out on the steppe and the wind whispering through the grasses from out of the west. I stared at the thousands of stones pushing up from the steppe, and I thought: I am the King of Swords, yes. And I will never have to slay another man again!

Then our talk turned toward the difficult days that lay ahead of us, in Tria and in lands across Ea. Finally, with the sun melting a golden-red across the far horizon, Liljana stood up and invited us all to eat dinner together. Everyone joined her in making the short journey back down the hill and across the battlefield to my pavilion near the river — almost everyone. For Atara, still sitting next to me, clasped my hand in hers, and asked to remain a few more moments.

'Val,' she said to me when we were alone, 'I am blind now, but I think I was even blinder when I had my vision. I saw you kill Morjin a million times! And a million times more, I saw you dead. But never — never! — that you would return to me!'

I pressed my fingers to her wrist, and felt the blood pulsing there. And I told her, 'I had to return. Life is … so sweet.'

'And so sorrowful, too. I never knew, until the terrible, terrible moment after you came back, at the end of the battle, how hard it must have been for you to bear the valarda all these years,'

I touched my lips to her wrist, then said to her, 'But it was a joy, even more. Do you know what it is like to sit beside your beloved and feel every sweet and good thing inside?'

'Oh, Val,' she said, pulling my hand up to her mouth to kiss my fingers, 'I almost do!'

I looked down at the glowing tents of the armies still encamped by the river. And I said, 'Tomorrow we'll leave for Tria. Who knows what we will find there? Not all the Alonians have acclaimed me, and it might be hard to persuade their countrymen that a Valari should sit on Alonia's throne.'

'You,' she said, squeezing my hand, 'could persuade almost anyone of almost anything.'

'Could I persuade you of what I have dreamed of since the moment I first saw you? The King of Swords, they call me. The king needs a queen.'

'The Queen of Alonia,' she said.

Her face fell grave and bitter. She had always held a troubled love for her father. King Kiritan, and for his people, and she must have wondered if the Alonians really would accept his daughter as their queen.

'Are you suggesting a marriage of — expedience?' she asked me.

'No — you know I am not,' I told her. And then, 'Only a marriage of the heart.'

'But I can't marry at all now, no matter what my heart might wish.'

'Why not? A hundred men you set out to slay in battle, and you have fulfilled that vow. You are free.'

'Am I free from this?' she said, touching her fingers to the white cloth binding her face.

'Only if you want to be,' I said, resting my fingers there, too. Then I laid my hand on her belly and asked her, 'And what of this? What if you are carrying our child?' 'What if I am?'

'Have you seen that, Atara? You must have — you saw almost everything.'

'Perhaps I did. But now I can see nothing.'

I tried to feel through her leather armor and the flesh beneath for that tiny seed of life that might be quickening inside her. But no matter what Kalkin had said about the valarda being strong in me, I did not have that power.

'In the Valley of the Sun, you promised to marry me,' I told her. I took out the handkerchief enfolding a single strand of one of her golden hairs, and I pressed it into her palm. 'It is time.'

'Is it, truly?' she asked, squeezing the handkerchief.

'Will you marry me?' I asked her again.

Now she pressed her hand on top of mine. She turned her face toward the north, perhaps orienting herself by the warmth of the setting sun's rays upon her cheek. I thought that she must be listening to the wind — and perhaps for a faint pulse of life from within her womb.

'I would love to marry you,' she said. 'So much that I almost can't bear it.'

Then she shook her head sadly and added, 'But I just don't know if it really is the right time. Let us go to Tria, and we shall see.'

She kissed me then, and fire leaped through me, but we did not lie together as we had before the battle. If she would not marry me, after all, then such ecstasy would all too soon become a torment. But if she did consent to be my queen, we would have the rest of our lives to return to our star and dance beneath its light. Until we reached Tria, I would have to content myself with this bright and beautiful hope.

Chapter 26

Historians would record that on the tenth day of Ashvar in the year 2815 of the Age of the Dragon, the victorious army of King Valamesh entered the City of Light. It should have been a radiant moment of bells ringing and people rejoicing in the streets. But it was not.

The Red Dragon had visited all his fire and wrath upon Ea's oldest human habitation. His soldiers had almost completely razed three quarters of the city, putting to the torch anything constructed of wood. They had used a stonecrusher to shatter granite houses to rubble and great buildings, too: the Tur-Tisander; the Tower of the Morning Star; the Old Sanctuary of the Maitriche Tern; the Hastar Palace; the Sarojin and Eluli Bridges — and many many other structures. The wall surrounding the city, they had smashed in several places. From the Poru River west, past the once-great Varkoth Gate and then north toward the Manwe Gate, the whole wall lay in ruins. The docks along the river, both its east and west banks, had been reduced to a broken black char. Miraculously, however, one of the greatest works of architecture ever cast up on Ea remained unharmed. The Star Bridge — also called the Golden Band — still spanned the Poru in a single, glorious arch made of living stone. Perhaps Morjin's stonecrusher had no power to pierce to the heart of this marvelous substance, fabricated during the great Age of Law. Or perhaps Morjin, with time pressing at him, had felt himself forced to march from the city before he could wreak his full vengeance upon her.

On the day we entered the city, the foul weather of late autumn moved in over Tria from the Northern Ocean in a mass of gray rain clouds that would block out sight of the sun for days on end. Then too, the Trians would not easily come to welcome a Valari as their High King. King Kiritan had once told me that I might marry Atara when I brought the Lightstone into his hall. This I had once done but too late for Alonia's great king to give me his daughter's hand, as one of Morjin's creatures had murdered him. Even if King Kiritan had lived, however, he could not have presided over any such union within his hall for Morjin had reduced the huge Narmada Palace — and all the buildings on its grounds — to broken bits of stone. With some regret and much reluctance, I ordered my army to encamp there, at the top of the highest of Tria's seven hills. The Trians, I reasoned, had become used to casting their gazes in that direction to behold the seat of Alonia's power and glory. It might comfort them to see that Ea's High King, although an outlander from Mesh, had at least restored law and order.