Diamond Warriors

'Do you see?' Lord Harsha said to Behira. 'Do you see?' Behira turned to look down the table at me. Then she told her father, 'I see a man who would become King of Mesh, and not be content merely to keep the roads in good repair and hold feasts. If Lord Elahad wins the throne, then there will be war — a war such as we've never seen. And we Valari women are supposed to be warriors aren't we? With the whole world about to spill its blood, you can't just expect us to sit around and hope for our men to return and bestow upon us babies!'

Lord Harsha forced himself to breathe in and out ten times before he made response to this: 'Our women are warriors: warriors of the spirit. Who teaches our children to meditate, and so ennobles them with the grace and power of the One? Who teaches them to tell the truth? It's the truth I'll tell you now, as your mother would have if she were still alive: our women are the keepers of the very flame that makes us Valari.'

Behira placed her hand across her breast as she looked at me and said, 'This flame burns for a better world, as it is with Lord Valashu. Whatever spirit I have, I wish to use in his service helping him to win. Then, father, it might be safe to wed and bring a child into the world.'

Lord Harsha, who had finally borne too much, banged his fist against the table and thundered: 'You will wed when I say you will and whom I choose as your husband!'

At this, Behira burst into tears. But she soon gathered up her pride, and stood up from her chair. With an almost violent clacking of the crockery, she began stacking up our dirty plates. And she announced, 'I'm going to do the dishes, and then go for a walk outside. Atara, will you help me? Liljana?'

Without another word, these three very willful women cleared the table and then disappeared into the kitchen, shutting the door behind them. Their voices hummed beyond it like the buzzing of bees from within a hive. Then Lord Harsha gazed at me with accusation lighting up his eye.

'You have returned, Lord Elahad, to lead us to war,' he said, 'for now there is war even in my own house. These are had times indeed — the worst times I've ever seen!'

For a while he sat sipping his brandy and rubbing at his temple. Then I smiled and said to him, 'Tomorrow I'll talk with Behira — it will all come out all right. There is always a way.'

'Hearing you say this,' Lord Harsha told me, 'I do believe it.'

'I am no scryer, I said, 'but your family shall have the lands that I spoke of, and you shall have many grandchildren as well.' 'I want to believe that, too,' he sighed out, reaching for the brandy bottle. 'Well, let us make a toast to children then.'

The fiery taste of brandy lingered on my lips that night long after we all had left the table and had gone off to our beds. For hours I lay tossing and turning and dreaming of children: Behira's brood of boys and girls playing happily in Lord Harsha's wheat-fields, and Daj and Estrella and the son or daughter whom Atara would someday bear for me. All the children in the world. Although it seemed a vain and vainglorious thing to imagine that their future and very lives depended upon my deeds, the painful throbbing of my heart told me that this was so. Tomorrow, I thought, and in the days that followed, I must do that which must be done in order to become king and finally defeat Morjin. Even if it seemed impossible, I must believe that there was always a way.

Chapter 3

Lord Harsha and Joshu rode out early the next morning. Along with my companions, I whiled away the hours resting and reading and eating the good, hearty foods that Behira prepared for us. As promised, I took her aside and tried to reason with her. I reminded her that Valari ways were different from those of the Sarni, and that the Valari women have never marched into battle. A sword, I told her, would always be a man's weapon, while a woman made better use of her soul. And I had need of her father's sword and all his concentration on the task at hand. I asked her to give her word that she would not anger her father by openly decrying marriage or refusing to wed. If she helped me in this way, I said, I would help her in whatever way I could. We clasped hands to seal our agreement. And then she went off to ask Atara to teach her how to work her great horn bow and fire off her steel- tipped arrows.

We waited all that day, and a little longer. The following morning, just before noon, Lord Harsha returned at the head of fifteen knights whose great horses pounded the little dirt lane into powder. All had accoutered themselves for war: they bore long, double-bladed kalamas and triangular shields and wore suits of splendid diamond armor. I recognized most of them from the charges emblazoned on their surcoats. Sar Shivalad bore a red eagle as his emblem, while Sar Viku Aradam's surcoat showed three white roses on a blue field. I stood with my friends outside Lord Harsha's house watching them canter up to us in clouds of dust. As they calmed their mounts and the dust cleared, a sharp-faced man called Sar Zandru pointed at me and called out: 'It is the Elahad! He lives — as Lord Harsha has said.'

He and the other knights dismounted, then bowed their heads to me. They came up to clasp my hand and present themselves, where presentations were needed. I knew some of these knights quite well: Sar Shivalad, with his fierce eyes and great deft nose, and Kanshar, Siraj the Younger, Ianaru of Mir and Jurald Evar. Others had familiar faces: Sar Yardru, Sar Barshar and Vijay Iskaldar. Sar Jessu and I had practiced at swords when we were children running around the battlements of my father's castle; I had last seen him at the Culhadosh Commons leading his warriors into the gap in our lines that might have destroyed the whole army — and Mesh along with it. For his great valor and even greater deed, he should have been rewarded with a ring showing four brilliant diamonds instead of the three of a master knight. But only a Valari king has the power to make a knight into a lord.

'Valashu Elahad,' he said, stepping up to me and squeezing my hand. He was a stocky man whose lively eyes looked out from beneath the bushiest black eyebrows I had ever seen. 'Forgive me for pledging to Lord Avijan, for I would rather have given my oath to you — as we all would.'

'There is nothing to forgive,' I said, returning his clasp. I brought his hand up before my eyes. 'I only wish I could have given you the ring you deserve.'

When I praised him for saving Mesh from defeat in the Great Battle, he told me, 'But I only fought as everyone did. It was you who had the foresight and courage to let the gap remain open until our enemy was trapped inside. You have a genius for war. Lord Valashu. I have told this to all who would listen.'

'And you have the heart of a lion,' I told him, looking at the red lion emblazoned on his white surcoat and shield. 'I shall call you 'Jessu the Lion-Heart,' since I cannot yet call you 'Lord Jessu.''

He smiled as he bowed his head to me. The other knights approved of this honor, for they drew out their kalamas and clanged their steel pommels against their shields. And they called out, 'Jessu the Lion-Heart! Jessu the Lion-Heart!'

I looked around for Joshu Kadar, but could not see him. When I asked Lord Harsha about this, he told me, 'The lad has gone off to retrieve his armor and his warhorse, and should meet up here soon.'

He told me that he had preserved my armor, and Maram's too, and he led the way inside his house up to his room. There, from within a great, locked chest, he drew out three suits of armor reinforced with steel along the shoulders and studded with bright diamonds. After we, too, had accoutered ourselves, Lord Harsha handed me my old surcoat, folded neatly and emblazoned with a great silver swan and seven silver stars. He said to me, 'You'll want to wait, I suppose, to wear this?'

'No,' I said taking it from him. I pulled it over my head so that the surcoat's black silk fell down to my knees, with the swan centered over my heart. 'I am tired of skulking about in secret, as you said. I will go forth beneath my family's arms.'

Lord Harsha smiled at this. At the very bottom of the chest, he found a great banner also showing my emblem. He said to me, 'There is no force that can molest us between here and Lord Avijari's castle, and so why not ride as the Elahad you are? In any case, the news that you have returned will spread through all Mesh soon enough.' When we went back outside, we found that Joshu Kadar had arrived decked out in heavy armor and bearing on his shield the great white wolf of the Kadars. It came time to say goodbye to Behira, for she would be staying home in order to milk the cows and hoe the fields Sand, I guessed, to take up one of Lord Harsha's swords