Diamond Warriors

After that, we concluded our council. Soon I would have to go back outside with the others to rejoin the festivities. It should have been the greatest day of my life, full of song and celebration. For the first time, however, I felt the great weight of kingship fall upon me. I gazed at the five bright diamonds set into the ring my father had once worn, and I heard a voice whispering to me that I would yet kill many more men with my sword on the long and seemingly endless road to war.

Chapter 10

Early the next morning, with the sun's first rays warming the mountains' white ridgelines to the east, Atara and her sister Manslayers made ready to leave on their journey. I said goodbye to her down by the river behind our encampment. I stood holding her for what seemed an hour, listening to the rushing waters ring against great, smoothed boulders. Finally, she stood back from me and said, 'You have gained what you sought… King Valamesh. I am so proud of you.'

I looked back at my warriors' thousands of brightly colored tents flapping in the morning breeze. And I said, 'I have gained what I sought, yes. But not what I most wanted.'

'And what is that, truly?'

'You know,' I whispered to her. 'You have always known.'

'And you have always had what you most desired,' she said as she took my hand. 'As you always will.'

I gripped her warm fingers in mine as I gathered up the courage to say to her: 'I am afraid that I will never see you again.'

'But you will!' she told me with a smile. Then her face fell beautiful and grave. 'You must. The important question is: will I see you again? Will I, Val?'

And with that, she kissed my lips with a desperate blaze of passion, as fiery as the rising sun. Then she adjusted her blindfold, grabbed up her bow and mounted her horse. I watched her ride off with the other Manslayers who had come to Mesh to take her away.

Later, I sent out envoys to each of the other Nine Kingdoms: Ishka, Waas, Kaash, Anjo, Taron, Athar and Lagash. They were to tell the Valari kings that the Maitreya had come forth and that the Valari must at last unite behind this Shining One. I had little hope for the success of their missions. My plea mmst surely fall upon deaf ears, I thought for only two years before I had made a similar argument — with the assertion that I must he the Maitreya.

By strange chance, even as one of my envoys pounded down the road leading cast toward Kaash, an envoy from that kingdom rode toward the west and found his way into our encampment. Lord Zandru the Hammer seemed astonished to discover that I had returned to Mesh to be acclaimed king only the day before. When I learned the purpose of his visit, I immediately called for a council in my pavilion. I invited to sit at my table the greatest lords in Mesh; Lord Harsha, Lord Avijan and Lord Sharad — Lord Jessu and Lord Manthanu, too. And Lord Noldashan. I did not yet know what place Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar would take in my army, and yet no important strategy could be discussed without them. And so with Lord Eldru and Lord Ramjay, and even with Lord Ramanu, Lord Bahram and Lord Kharashan. The Seven, now only six, I also asked to hear Lord Zandru's tidings. My companions, of course, would not leave my side. As for Bemossed, he had now become the bright star around which all peoples and events on Ea would whirl. I would never allow him to leave my side.

Lord Zandru, a huge, barrel-chested man with long arms like those of an ape, sat opposite me at the end of the table. He had a face as blunt as the black war hammer emblazoned on his white surcoat. His words, too, for an envoy, were blunt, for he wasted no time getting to the point of his mission, calling out in a deep, almost braying voice: 'King Valamesh, Lords of Mesh — Kaash needs your help!'

He told us that after two years of threats and feints, King Sandarkan had finally ordered Waas to complete preparations to make war against Kaash. There was to be a battle. Lord Zandru said, for King Talanu Solaru — my mother's eldest brother — would not cede to Waas the Arjan Land taken from Waas generations before. But at that time, Kaash had been strong and Waas weak. Now, as Lord Zandru told us, the Kaashans had lost too many warriors in battles against the Atharians. and so were few while the Waashians were many.

'King Talanu can probably put the battle off until mid-Marud.' Lord Zandru sold us. 'But it will come to battle, and we will lose. And so we will lose the Arjan Land anyway. But all Kaash's lords and warriors agree with King Talanu on one thing: it is better to lose some dirt and rocks, and a little blood, than our honor.'

At this, Lord Tomavar rapped his lord's ring upon the edge of the table with a sharp clack as if to command everyone to look at him. It might have been thought that after his defeat the day before, he would have hidden himself inside silence. But as always, he liked to charge into the heart of the battle, whether of swords and spears or words.

'Lord Zandru!' he called out. 'Not two years ago, Mesh lost more than four thousand warriors because Kaash would not help us — and whole rivers of blood! Why, then, should we help you!'

'Because,' Lord Avijan said to him in his cool, controlled voice, 'we can. And more, because we should. After King Sandarkan has safeguarded his rear against Kaash, he will be free to ally with the Ishkans and turn against us.'

'Damn the Ishkans!' Lord Ramjay said.

'Damn the Waashians, too!' Lord Kharashan called out. 'They killed my boy at the Red Mountain!'

For a while, as everyone drank cups of chicory coffee and the day deepened toward night, I let these battle- hardened warriors speak their thoughts and debate strategy. I said very little, while my companions said less and the Seven and Bemossed nothing at all.

Finally, I held up my hand for silence. Everyone looked at me. It was my duty as a king to listen to my counselors and consider their words. But it was also my duty to rule.

'We cannot know,' I said, 'how the day would have gone at the Culhadosh Commons if the Kaashans had come to our aid. But is there anyone here who wished that they would not have come? As we looked to them, they now look to us, with desperate hope. As they failed us, with good reason, are we to look for better reason and so fail them?'

Lord Tomavar banged his whole hand against the table as he practically shouted: 'But they did fail us, reason or no, and so I say that we should see to our own — '

I looked at Lord Tomavar then. As I had in the square outside the day before, I looked deep inside him, and suddenly his face reddened as he fell into a shamed silence.

'My apologies, Sire,' he said, bowing his head to me. 'When I see a breach in the lines in front of me, I can rush in too quickly.'

'And so you helped my father win more than one battle,' I told him. Then I nodded at Lord Zandru. 'But the Kaashans, please remember, are not our enemies but our allies. And that is why we shall help them.'

As Lord Zandru's face brightened, I explained that we would need every ally that we could find for the great struggle soon to come. Every lord at my table bowed his head in acceptance of this.

'Very well. . Sire,' Lord Tanu said. His crabby old face seemed to have trouble forcing out this last word. But once he had spoken it, he seemed to accept its reality as he must the changing of summer into autumn. 'We have the warriors already gathered. And so since we have decided upon this campaign, let us march east with all due speed.'

Lord Harsha sat rubbing his single eye, then sighed out to Lord Tanu, 'Well, speed we might all wish for, but an army doesn't march on air. We've made no plans for such a campaign. We've set in no stores.'

'How long would it take to gather them?' I asked him.

'I don't know — a week, maybe more.'

'And maybe less,' I told him with a smile, 'if Lord Harsha was given the charge of gathering them. Do what you can, old friend. As Lord Tanu has said, we must march like the very wind.'

I stood up then to adjourn our council. Kane took me aside, and growled in my ear, 'So, we march to Kaash — and Kaash is a hundred leagues that much closer to Galda, eh? Where Morjin still might be!'

He fell silent as Maram came up to us, too. Then Maram said to me, 'It's finally begun, hasn't it? This is the