Diamond Warriors

straight and grave beneath her great lion-skin cloak, lined with satin and trimmed with black fur. But I could feel the great effort that it cost her to hold this proud posture, for her side ached with a fierce, throbbing pain from a saber cut taken in battle with the Marituk.

'Val,' she said as she drew up close, 'Liljana will serve dinner in an hour — and after that you will have much to do. Can we not go somewhere where we can talk?'

In truth, with all the councils over the past days, I had not had a moment alone with her. 'Where, then?' I asked her.

She pointed south, past the river. 'Out there., on the grass.' I nodded my head at this. I did not think my Guardians would like me to ride alone out onto the barren steppe where Morjin might have sent outriders to circle around and spy out our encampment, especially since I wore my tunic only and no armor. But some risks had to he taken.

And so, I nodded my head to Atara, and quickly saddled my horse. Then we turned to ride pass the rows of tents; we splashed across the river; which at this time of year wound its way across the grasslands as a brown trickle scarcely deeper than a man's knee. It did not take us long to gallop a couple of miles out onto the open steppe, where we found a gentle rise of ground and took shelter in its lee. We dismounted, then Atara removed her cloak and spread it out over the rustling grass. We sat upon it, looking out at the darkening world.

For a while we spoke of the starry sky and the soughing west wind, which promised hot, clear weather the following day. Then our talk turned toward the battle: 'You take a chance,' she said to me, 'in engaging Morjin with the river at your back.'

I shrugged my shoulders at this. 'We have discussed this in council. The river is shallow enough that we can retreat across it in good order, if we must. But if we must retreat, then the battle will in any case be lost — and then it won't matter.'

Atara, sitting next to me with her knee pressing against mine, slowly nodded her head. Her blindfold gleamed in the starlight.

'Have your kings and captains decided what to do about the elephants then? I'm sorry I missed the council earlier, but I wanted to verify that the Hesperuks really have two hundred and twenty of them.'

'Kane,' I said to her, 'faced war elephants long ago. He has told the warriors what they must do to fight against them.'

She smiled grimly at this. 'I am glad that I will lead the Manslayers against men only tomorrow, and not elephants.'

She took out her scryer's sphere, and sat rolling it between her long, lithe hands. I felt in her a quaking fear as if she had seen in her crystal some great and dreadful beast.

'You didn't invite me here,' I said to her, 'to talk about elephants.'

'No,' she said squeezing her crystal. 'Tomorrow, Morjin will unleash something upon us — some terrible, terrible thing.'

'What, then? Is it a firestone or a new kind of gelstei?'

'I don't know,' she said, lifting up her glimmering sphere. 'He keeps it from me. I look and look, in here, but all is dark.'

'Well, whatever it is, we'll destroy it! As we will the Red Dragon.'

The wrath she heard in my voice must have alarmed her, for she removed her right hand from her crystal and laid it on top of mine. 'You will seek him out on the field, won't you?'

I shook my head at this. 'Only if fate puts him in my path. It will be enough if we can drive off the Ikurian Horse, and circle around the Dragon's army from the right.'

On our right I would charge with the Guardians and the best of our knights against the Ikurians. On the left, I told myself, King Hadaru would have a very hard task leading the combined Ishkan, Anjori, Taron and Lagashun cavalry against Morjin's heavy horse if they were to break through and complete the double encirclement that I envisioned.

'You seem sure,' she told me, 'that Morjin will set his Ikurians against our right.'

'As sure as I am that tomorrow will not be a day for my vengeance alone.'

'Truly?' she said. Her lips pulled up into a cold smile. 'lie to me, if you will, Val, but not yourself.'

'What would you have me do?' I asked her. With one hand, I squeezed her fingers, while I rested my other hand on top of the hilt of my sword, which I had set down in the grass beside me. 'I cannot turn away from him.'

'No, you cannot. But Kane will keep by your side, through all the Ikurians' lances and swords — even through fire. Can you not let him slay Morjin?'

I turned to look toward the north, where the rising ground behind us blocked most of the glare of the Dragon Army's encampment. And I said, 'You are brave to talk of us slaying anyone with our enemy outnumbering us more than four to one.'

'What should I talk of then? What I have seen in my kristei? It is no different, here and now, than it was in Argattha.'

I lived again, in a blaze of memory, the anguish in the words that Atara had cried out to me in Morjin's throne room soon after he had taken out her eyes: If you kill him, you kill yourself.

'Didn't you once tell me,' I said to her, 'that no scryer can see all things?'

I remembered, as well, the ancient prophecy that 'The death of Morjin would be the death of Ea.'

'No scryer can see everything,' Atara said to me. Then her hand suddenly tightened around mine. 'But all scryers see something they know will be — unless something else is done to make it not be. But it never is, Val, never, never. Because men like you believe that whatever is, is, and always must be — and so go rushing madly toward their fate.'

I let her soft, grave voice play over again and again inside me. Then I said to her, 'My fate is my fate. So many will die tomorrow. It can't matter if I am one of them.'

'Can't matter?' she cried out. 'It matters to those who follow you, as it does to all Ea. And to me — it matters, so terribly, terribly.'

I remembered another thing that she had said to me in Argattha: If you kill yourself, you kill me.

She began shaking then, deep tremors that rose up from her belly and ripped through the whole of her body. Her hand suddenly opened to seize hold of mine, and she dropped her sphere, which rolled a few feet across the grass. Upon realizing how careless she had been with this priceless gelstei, she turned her head right and left, as if trying to orient herself toward it. But I sensed that her second sight had left her, at least for the moment, and so she sat utterly blind.

She reached out to pat the grass around her. I placed my hand on her arm to stay her, then bent to retrieve her crystal. In the instant that my fingers closed around the cold white gelstei, I cried out in agony because it was as if I had grasped hold of a lightning bolt. A fierce white flash tore through me, and I beheld the same fearful thing that had terrified Atara: the great Tree of Life that grew out toward the future in all its infinite branchings. And each branch, I saw, every one of the tiniest shoots and sprigs, had been charred, as if by dragon fire. The whole of the tree stood utterly blackened beneath the dying light of the stars.

I gave this accursed crystal back to Atara. The touch of it seemed to reawaken her sight, as horrible and unwanted as it might be.

'Morjin!' I cried out. 'He will win tomorrow, won't he?'

'Val, I-'

'You always spoke as if we had a chance! But we never really did, did we?'

'Please don't be angry with me,' she told me as her hand tightened around mine. 'But I had to act as if there really is hope, don't you see?'

'Why, then?'

'Because hope is our duty. It is the deepest courage — truly, truly. And then, of course, you, with your beautiful, beautiful eyes and all your dreams. .'

Her voice softened to a whisper, then failed altogether. It took her a few moments to gather in her breath again and say to me, 'I couldn't bear to see you lose hope, Val. Should I let the sun lose its light?'