Diamond Warriors

King Sandarkan made no farewell either to King Talanu or myself. He stood up with a jolting abruptness. With his captains, he rode back toward his army still standing in its square formation at the center of the field.

And then my uncle said to me: 'Some men, even Valari kings, are ignoble.'

I took in the gleam of King Sandarkan's emblem, with its two silver swords. What would it be like, I wondered, truly to see my enemy as myself?

Then I said, 'No, King Sandarkan is noble enough, even if he doesn't know it. But how should I expect him to call up his nobility when I can't even find my own?'

In the face of the great defeat that I had just suffered, I knew that this question would torment me on the long road to Delu, and beyond.

Chapter 14

After the Waashians had left the field to begin their march back to Waas, my army and that of King Talanu remained encamped by the Rajabash River. For four days, I rested my exhausted men while Lord Harsha worked with King Talanu's quartermasters to ensure that we would have enough stores for our journey into Delu. Along the river for three miles, the warm summer air filled with the smells of beef being smoked over oak fires and new battle biscuits roasting. Lord Harsha grumbled that he could not calculate how many provisions our two armies would need because he did not know how far or for how long we must march.

'We will march as far as we must,' I told him one evening as the men gathered around their campfires and listened to Alphanderry sing. 'We will march until Morjin is defeated, and if our provisions run out, we will have to find more along the way.'

The feeding of our armies was only one of my concerns; as the day approached when we must set out upon the road, the question arose as to who should lead them.

'You are the eldest,' I said to King Talanu in my tent later that evening. 'You have fought in a score of battles and have led your warriors in almost as many.'

'I am the eldest,' my uncle said. 'But I think I am too old.'

In truth, my uncle was much the most ancient of the Valari kings. My mother's father, King Yuravay, had sired him nearly seventy-five years before.

'There is still good wisdom here,' he told me, tapping a gnarled finger against his head. 'But my brain does not work as well as it once did. And therefore I am not so clever or quick.'

He looked around at Lord Sharad and Lord Tanu and my other captains, and at Prince Viromar and Lord Yarwan and his captains, too. Then, he said to me: 'What you propose to accomplish will require both quickness and cleverness, and more, daring and brilliance. These are qualities that you possess, King Valamesh. And have put to good use defeating the Red Dragon's forces again and again.'

I bowed my head to acknowledge his honoring of me. 'And therefore,' he continued, 'It is you who should lead our armies. And those of the other Vaiari kingdoms, if ever you can unite them. Once you almost did.'

None present disputed his assertion that I should be warlord of the combined armies of Kaash and Mesh. To seal the new covenant between us, King Talanu called for brandy to be poured into everyone's cup. Everyone toasted my new status then — except for Maram, who loudly reaffirmed that he would touch no spirits until Morjin stood defeated.

'And that great day,' Maram called out as if trying to convince himself more than the grim warriors around him, 'will surely come now that King Valamesh leads the Valari!'

But I, of course, now led only a fraction of the Valari. And although on the morrow I would ride at the head of two armies into Delu, I still did not know where I must lead them.

After King Talanu had returned to his encampment and my captains went off to their beds, I requested that my friends hold council with the Seven to help decide this matter. We took our places at my long table, where Liljana served us tea instead of brandy. I sat sipping from a small blue cup as I looked from Master Juwain to Kane and then at Abrasax.

'I told King Sandarkan,' I said to everyone, 'that we know the plans of the Galdan fleet, but that is not quite true. Hadrik rode from Galda to inform us that the Galdans will soon sail, but he did not know when. And he did not know where our enemies' armies will land.'

I wished that Hadrik had agreed to sit at our council. But this strange knight seemed loath to bear the company of other human beings. I might have tried to command his presence here, but I was not his king, and he called no man master, not even Kane. He roamed our encampment like a lone wolf, and I did not know what role he would play on our march to Delu — that is if he consented to ride with us at all.

'The where and the when,' I said to Abrasax and to everyone. 'If we knew that, we would gain a great advantage over our enemies.'

'As to the where,' Maram said, swirling his tea in his cup, 'we might make a good guess. Surely our enemy will make use of the beaches along the White Coast.'

He, born of Delu, spoke of that stretch of white sand beaches that began about a hundred miles southwest of Delarid and ran for seventy miles back toward the Morning Mountains and Delu's border with Kaash.

'Even if they do,' Kane said, 'we don't know which beach to concentrate on.'

'But we can send out scouts,' Maram said. 'Val can lead the armies as close as he can, and when the scouts make report, we can fall upon our enemy in a lightning stroke.'

I smiled sadly at this because I knew that I would not be likely to bring up our armies very close to our enemy's landing point — not if we had to cover seventy miles of beaches. The lightning stroke that Maram envisioned would degenerate into a slow thrust that our enemy would see coming from miles away.

I turned to Master Matai, sitting next to Abrasax, and I said, 'Can the Master Diviner help us?'

Master Matai's golden skin gleamed in the soft light given off by the stands of candles around the tent. So did his soft brown eyes as he regarded me. 'You ask a good question, King Valamesh: can I help you? Can I, really?'

'So,' Kane said to him, 'you must keep a kristei, or make use of the Master Galastei's stone. What futures have you seen in your crystal sphere, eh?'

'I am a diviner, it is true,' Master Matai said with a grave formality. 'But I am no scryer. And even if I were and could tell you exactly which beach the men you call your enemy will embark upon, should I then point it out to you so that you can fall upon them with your swords?'

'They are the enemy!' Kane snarled out.

'They are men,' Master Matai said, 'who are compelled to fight beneath the Red Dragon's standard. And many of them are from Galda, which I once called home.'

While I remained quiet out of respect for the immense tragedy that had befallen the once-proud kingdom of Galda, Kane wasted not even a glimmer of a tear on useless sentiment. He said to Master Matai: 'Compelled, ha! Your own Brotherhood teaches that all men and women may choose between the light and the dark. In the end, our wills are free!'

'Our wills are free,' Abrasax said, intervening on Master Matai's behalf. 'And we do have to choose between the dark and the light. But that choice is difficult at times of twilight, when all the world seems as gray as an ice-fog.'

Then he went on to reaffirm the Brotherhood's ancient stand against war.

'Master Matai,' he told us, 'should not have asked if we can help Valashu Elahad. But rather, may we? Are we permitted to?'

'You've helped before,' Kane said,

'We helped him to find the Maitreya,' Abrasax said, nodding at Bemossed, who sat at the end of the table between Estrella and Liljana. 'We helped him to recover from his wounds, to his body and soul.'

'And so helped him to become king. And now that he is king, you shilly-shally in helping him to fulfill his purpose as a king.'

'And what is that purpose?' Master Storr broke in. 'To bring on a war that will burn up the world?'

'No,' Kane said. 'To fight a war that is not of our making, that we cannot avoid. And then, in victory, to end