Diamond Warriors

Now King Sandarkan turned to gaze at me with black, burning eyes full of jealously and resentment. And he called out to King Talanu: 'No other Valari king has been asked to accept such terms!'

And King Talanu looked at me as he told him: 'No other Valari king has so underestimated his enemy and let himself be trapped to face total defeat.'

I could feel King Sandarkan's face burning. His long limbs bent like those of a praying mantis as he pointed at me and said, 'Very well — so long as I live, Waas will not make war against Mesh.'

He drew in five deep breaths and asked King Talanu: 'Are those all your terms?'

'They are,' King Talanu said.

King Sandarkan bent forward as if readying himself to stand up and flee from this place of shame. And then King Talanu held out his palm toward King Sandarkan. 'But we are not finished here.'

'How not, then?'

King Talanu looked at me, and then back at King Sandarkan. He said, 'King Valamesh has marched here at great sacrifice and risk, and it is he whom Kaash must thank for victory. Therefore he has the right to demand of you his own terms.'

In response to King Talanu's logic. King Sandarkan stared at me with a smoldering resentment.

'Very well,' King Sandarkan said. 'What does Mesh's new king demand of Waas?'

While I sat there deep in thought, studying King Sandarkan's craggy, troubled face, Kane came up to me. He had no compunc-tion in interrupting a conclave of kings.

'I must speak to you,' he told me. The fire in his dark eyes put an urgent heat into my own. 'This cannot wait.'

'We cannot wait,' King Sandarkan said, glaring at him, 'while this rogue knight whom the Elahad calls his friend delays matters here.'

'Please excuse me, King Sandarkan,' I said with all the politeness that I could find. 'Kane is not given to alarms, and I must hear him out.'

So saying, I stood up and walked with him down to the river. He presented the man he had been speaking with, and I suddenly realized where I had last seen him: in Mesh, after the Battle of the Culhadosh Commons. He wore a suit of steel mail beneath his cloak; his broad, heavily bearded face seemed to bear only hardness and threat. Kane gave his name as Hadrik. He did not have to say outright that Hadrik was a Master of the Black Brotherhood, which Kane employed to oppose Morjin and achieve his deepest purpose.

'Hadrik has come up out of Galda,' he said to me. 'He thought to find me in Mesh, and followed the track of your army here.'

Hadrik bowed his head to verify this. Then, in a voice as raw and rageful as any that I had ever heard, he told me what he had told Kane: 'Morjin left Galda late in Ashte to return to Argattha — I have spent the lives of my last ten men proving this. He moves, the Dragon does! The hour of our doom has finally come.'

As if he could not bear another word of speech, he shook his head as he turned and stalked off down to the very edge of the roaring water twenty yards farther down. He was a strange man, I thought, and one of the deadliest-looking I had ever seen.

'He is the last of his kind,' Kane said, nodding at him. 'All the others perished in Galda's torture chambers or nailed to crosses.'

He hung his head as if staring down through the earth and the turbid sediments of time. Then he looked up at me with his black, blazing eyes. 'So. So, Valashu. This is the hour. On the third of Ashte, Morjin called up the Uskadans to Argattha. On the day that you became king, he ordered the armies of Uskudar and Sakai to march north, toward Alonia. He leads them in the open, as of old! The Zayak and Marituk tribes ride with him, the Janjii, too. He has broken the Long Wall. Perhaps with fire, perhaps by opening up the earth — do not know. As we speak, he marches up the Poru toward Tria.'

My heart drummed at the triple-time against my chest bones. And I gasped out, 'To Tria! But why he would spend his forces against the Alonians when they would do his work for him fighting among themselves? Unless he cannot wait.'

'So — he cannot.'

'Then he will have sent his fleet from Eanna, with the armies of Hesperu, Sunguru and Yarkona embarked upon his ships. Morjin will take Tria, then, and make it safe for them to land.'

'So — he will,'

'Five armies Morjin will then command — and how many men? Four hundred thousand? Five?'

'So,' Kane murmured, gazing at me.

'Then it will be as you said,' I told him. 'Morjin will attack down the Nar Road and invade the Nine Kingdoms.'

'So, just so. And I have worse news to give you. He will try to split the Nine Kingdoms in two, as we discussed in Mesh.'

He told me then the rest of the tidings that Hadrik had ridden so far to tell him: that upon the news of my coronation, Morjin had ordered a great fleet bearing the armies of Galda and Karabuk to prepare to set sail across the Terror Bay and land in Delu. The Dragon Lords would easily defeat Delu's army in battle — or more likely cow King Santoval into surrendering without a fight. And then, after forcing King Santoval to swear allegiance to Morjin, they would incorporate Delu's army into theirs and attack the Nine Kingdoms from the east.

'Your people's lands,' Kane said to me, 'will be caught between a hammer and an anvil. Even if by some miracle you do lead the Valari to make alliance.'

'Who leads the enemy's force?' I asked Kane.

'Karabuk's own king, Mansul the Magnificent.'

'And how many men does he have?'

'With the Galdans, perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand. If he can defeat Delu, he will have eighty thousand more.'

I stood by the gushing river considering this. Then Kane said to me, 'You have been thinking of mounting a raid into Galda and slaying Morjin, haven't you?'

'Yes,' I told him, staring at the river's spray. And then, 'Can we be sure of Hadrik, that Morjin has truly left Galda?'

'We can be sure. Morjin marches on Tria. And then soon, surely by summer's end, he will turn east and south toward the Nine Kingdoms.'

'With his army of half a million men?'

'So, Val.'

'And if I united the Valari and marched against Morjin, then King Mansul's force would attack unopposed across the Nine Kingdoms and take us from the rear.'

'So.'

I pressed my hand against the newly-made scar cutting my forehead as I contemplated what seemed to be an impossible situation. I felt myself trapped, even as King Sandarkan was. But my warriors and I faced an enemy who would never offer us terms.

'There must be a way out,' I said to Kane. 'There must be.'

And with that, I returned to the canopy and sat back down with King Talanu and King Sandarkan. I said, 'As always, we Valari dispute with ourselves while our real enemy endeavors to destroy us.'

Then I related the news that Hadrik had brought.

'Unless we act immediately,' I said, 'the Galdan and Karabuk armies will invade Delu, and Delu will fall.'

King Sandarkan, glad for any distraction from his present woes. stabbed his bony finger into the air as he said, 'If what that rogue knight told is true, Delu will fall no matter how we act. But that is not our business.'

'Not our business!' I cried out.

'No,' he said, 'the Valari must look to the good of the Valari.'

'But Morjin would destroy the Valari!'

King Sandarkan cast his resentful gaze upon me. 'The Red Dragon would certainly destroy you — and Mesh. But that is not really Waas's business either, is it?'

My throat choked up with such anger that I shouted at him: 'How can you be so blind? Perhaps Morjin will fall against Mesh first. And then after he slaughters my countrymen, he will turn