Diamond Warriors

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At last, no one stood before him — or indeed before the knights around me or any other Valari warrior on the field. A few of our enemy fled across the shallows in frantically-rowed skiffs; we could not prevent their escape into the ships that had brought them here, nor that of the small fraction of their army that had never come ashore. The greatest part of the Karabuk and Galdan armies, however, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand men, lay dead in hacked and twisted heaps upon the beach. The incoming tide lapped over their bodies. The waters of the Terror Bay ran red with their blood. . he saw his enemy like unto himself.

'Valari!' a knight shouted out from nearby me. I turned to see Lord Avijan holding up his bloody sword. 'Victory to the Valari!' Ten thousand warriors picked up his cry:

'Valari! Valari! Valari!'

Then Viku Aradam, who had fought the whole battle with an arrow embedded in his shoulder, raised up his sword toward me and called out: 'King Valamesh! victory to King Valamesh!'

I sat on Altaru at the water's edge as I gasped for breath and tried to keep my huge warhorse from trampling our fallen enemy. Now, across the entire length of the beach, both Meshians and Kaashans pointed their swords toward me. With one voice, the thousands of warriors of both armies called out: 'Valamesh! Valamesh! Victory to King Valamesh!'

Soon I would learn of the Valari who had fallen that day upon the Seredun Sands: sixty-three killed and slightly more than twice that number wounded. Lord Harsha called this the greatest victory in all Valari history, if not in the criticalness of its result, then in a brilliant defeat of our enemy at little cost. I, however, took little joy from the acclaim that he and many others wished to shower upon me. For even two hundred Valari killed and wounded were too many, and as for our enemy, they had still been men, had they not?

I thought about this as I gazed across the beach to that vantage point on Magda's wooded slope where Bemossed had stood during the entire course of the battle. From half a mile away, I could not make out the features of his face. I felt, however, the sickness that gripped his belly and devoured his soul. He seemed stricken to his very core. For a long time then, and from different directions, we stared out at the evil thing that my warriors and I had done.

Chapter 16

Later that day, we buried King Talanu at the north end of the beach between the black rocks called the Pillars of Heaven. I never learned if King Darrum the Great's bones lay interred there, too. But in consideration of the fallen Valari that we placed beneath the ground nearby and the blood that they had shed, we would always regard the Seredun Sands as Valari soil.

The Karabukers and the Galdans we did not bury, for there were too many of them and we were too exhausted. My warriors and I watched their ships sail away with the remnants of their army. Perhaps, I thought, once we had marched off, they would return and make proper graves for their countrymen.

Although I wanted to leave that place of death as soon as possible, I had matters to attend to, and so did the warriors of my army. We kept our encampment behind the three hills, which blocked the sight — and smell — of the beach. Within an hour, I sent envoys riding northeast up the coast toward Delarid to tell King Santoval Marshayk of what had happened here. I sent envoys to the west, as well: to Athar, Lagash and Taron, and all the Nine Kingdoms. I wanted the whole world to know that a handful of brave Valari had utterly destroyed one of the Red Dragon's great armies.

I spent most of that evening with the wounded in the healing pavilion speaking with them and learning of their deeds. I gritted my teeth as I watched twelve warriors lose their hold on life and make the journey to the stars. The healers stood helpless to keep them from going over. Even Master Juwain could do nothing for them.

'I dare not use my gelstei,' he said to me much later outside the healing pavilion. He gripped his green crystal as he gazed off to the east. The moonlight showed three peaceful hills covered with bushes and dark trees, but no hint of the beach beyond them. 'With Bemossed fallen ill all of us should keep our crystals quiet.'

Master Juwain then led the way into Bemossed's tent, lit with candles. Kane, Daj, Estrella, Liljana and Alphanderry all gathered around his still form. Abrasax and the other masters of the Seven stood above them. Bemossed lay on his sleeping furs with his eyes open; he seemed to be staring up at the flickering flame shadows dancing across the tent's ceiling. But I sensed that he stared at nothing,

'Has he spoken yet?' Master Juwain asked Liljana.

Liljana shook her head. In her hands she held a cup of soup that she had been unable to get Bemossed to swallow.

'He won't speak,' Liljana said. 'He won't eat and he won't drink.'

'He just lies there,' Daj added. 'It's as if something has sucked out his soul.'

Something has, I thought. Someone has.

'Some men,' Kane said as he rested his hand on Bemossed's curly hair, 'cannot bear battle.'

'You mean slaughter,' Liljana snapped at him. She bent down to kiss Bemossed's forehead. 'This man has battled Morjin night and day for months. And for all we know, battles him still, even at this moment.'

Master Juwain held his gelstei over Bemossed's chest. Then he sighed and said, 'We can only hope that is so. I fear that he might be lost in the gray land between worlds. Until we do know, however, we must assume that Morjin has gained the freedom to use the Lightstone — and therefore that we cannot use our stones.'

'We cannot not use them,' Kane growled out as he stroked Bemossed's hair. 'At least not for long. And we cannot allow Bemossed to remain half-dead, not unless we are willing to throw our victory away and watch Morjin set fire to the world.'

Abrasax, his white hair nearly brushing against the top of the tent, held out the clear stone of the seven Great Gelstei entrusted to his keeping. 'That fire might take a while to ignite. We might yet have time.'

'And we might not!' Kane said. 'How long, when the moment comes, will it take for Morjin to open the gates to Damoom? So, less than a flash of an instant.'

'But what can we do?' Abrasax asked him. 'Other than that which we are doing?'

'I don't know!' Kane half-shouted. 'That's the hell of it: not knowing what to do!'

After that, I went inside my pavilion to write a letter to the grandfather of Sar Dovaru Andar, who had died protecting Lord Avijan from the Galdan pikemen. I knew old Lord Andar well for he had been friends with my grandfather.

I sat for a long while at my council table, staring at the sheets of white paper laid out before me. A bottle of black ink seemed to wait for me to pick up my quill and dip it down into the dark liquid. But what should I say to the crippled Lord Andru, who had already lost two sons and a daughter in Morjin's invasion of Mesh? That Sar Dovaru had died a good death, fighting his enemy lance to spear and recklessly throwing himself forward against three Galdan pikemen? And that in dying he had been spared becoming the executioner of their nearly unarmed countrymen?

I should have known better than to immerse myself in the darkness that waited always inside me. For just as I allowed myself a moment of despair at the depravity of man, the Ahrim found me. This greater darkness seemed to come out of nowhere and fall upon me like an ice-fog. It concentrated all its essence in my right hand. I felt my flesh freezing, my fingers curling into my palm in agony. Arrows of ice drove up my arm, through my shoulder and deep into my chest. I gasped for breath. Then there came a tingling and a fierce burning, as of a limb being thawed after suffering frostbite. A terrible fire burned my muscles and blood. The heat of it seared into my nerves and then seized hold of them.

My hand, of its own will it seemed, gripped the quill and pushed its point down into the ink bottle. And then pressed the quill to the first sheet of paper. My fingers moved, and I began to scratch out words that were not of my making. I knew then whose will it really was that caused me to write a message to myself so full of lies and hate: