Diamond Warriors

can't Kane?'

For a long moment, I stood staring across the table at Atara. Then I looked at Liljana and said, 'Not two hours ago, fifty men rode into camp. They had escaped out of Alonia, and I'm sure they are of the Black Brotherhood — and maybe the last. A man named Idris led them. He said that he would speak only with Kane.'

Liljana let her irritation radiate out of her like heat from one of her frying pans. 'Well, if that is true, then Kane should speak with him later. There will be time enough for dealing with spies after we've eaten. It would be a shame for Kane to let all this food go to waste.'

I looked at the feast spread out on the council table. 'Kane said that if he came late, we should begin without him.'

'Well, perhaps we should. Since he is absorbed in such urgent matters.'

Liljana then bade us all to sit down, and this we did. It was good to share such a meal on such a night with good friends. Maram, of course, ate with great appetite, as did Daj and Alphanderry, to say nothing of Ymiru, and their eager consumption of the dishes that Liljana had set before us pleased her greatly. Abrasax and the other masters showed more restraint, according to their way, and they would not overfill themselves. Abrasax said that soon the Seven must retire to prepare themselves for the next morning, and they could not let indulgence in food clog their bellies and brains. As for me, I could scarcely eat. I kept gazing across the table at Atara. I could feel her concentrating all her desire upon me instead of her dinner. Never, I thought, had I seen her look so beautiful — and yet so sad. I had only to glance at her to feel the wildest of hope burning through me and the most desperate of despair, too. Our anguish must have communicated itself to Bemossed. All during dinner, he hardly put more than a crust of bread into his mouth. He drank none of the black Sarni beer that Liljana poured into our cups. I felt something inside him growing tighter and tighter, like a bow bent too far and about to snap. Even so, he would not let any distress interfere with the enjoyment of our company. He tried to smile as often as he could, especially at Estrella, with whom he had always shared a silent understanding. He watched as Atara sat with her hands folded across her belly, and her great joy of life became his. He seemed to find some singular essence within each of us and to savor it the way another man might the richness of a sagosk steak or the sweetness of honey.

Maram, who must have sensed the terrible sorrow welling up out of Bemossed, finally pushed a cup of beer at him and said, 'You'll find that your food slides down more easily if you first lubricate your throat with a little of this.'

To please Maram, I thought, Bemossed took a sip from his cup and then ate a bite out of a muffin. But he said nothing.

Almost immediately, Master Juwain spoke out to Maram in order to fill up the silence: 'And you'll find that too much beer encourages stuffing yourself like a pig.'

'So what if it does?' Maram countered. 'I'm only fortifying myself for tomorrow. And as for beer, truly, I've had only a little.'

'You've had three cups worth,' Atara put in.

I stared at the clean white cloth encircling her face. Despite her blindness and preoccupation with me, she could be the most observant of women.

'Three small cups, to a man such as I,' Maram said, 'is like three drops to another.'

'Hmmphh — you overestimate your resistance to this drink. Just as you underestimate the importance of your resisting.'

'Well,' Maram said, pulling at his beard as he studied her, 'resistance can be a difficult thing, can't it?'

I felt Atara suddenly soften within the cloud of silence that came over her. She sat as if staring straight at me.

'And as for importance,' Maram added, 'I'm no more needed here than anyone else so foolish as to have come so far to face an army of half a million men.'

Atara slowly shook her head at this. 'But you are, Maram. I should tell you that a great, great deal will depend on you tomorrow.'

'Upon me? What, then? What do you possibly think I can do against so many? And what have you seen in your scryer's crystal that you should tell me?'

Atara, however, would say no more, and Maram knew her well enough not to press her in this matter. Instead, he rapped his double-diamond ring against his cup and said, 'All right, then — I will drink no more beer tonight. And not another drop, I swear, until Morjin is defeated.'

Liljana looked at him curiously then, and she stood up to begin setting fresh cups onto the table. When she had finished, she brought out a bottle of wine and told us: 'King Waray sent this over earlier, with his compliments. It is Galdan, and should go well with our dessert.'

As Estrella began cutting one of the pies and serving us, Liljana uncorked the bottle. Maram, sitting across the table from where liljana stood, held out his cup so that she might fill it more easily, or so he said.

'No,' she told him, 'you've just promised to forgo spirits.'

'I promised to forgo beer only — not wine, and a special vintage at that.'

'Would you drink before Val does?' she scolded him. She moved over to me and poured a stream of the dark red wine into my cup. 'This is a gift from one king to another, and you should count yourself fortunate to share in it.'

Liljana made no move to fill Maram's cup — or anyone else's. She stood watching me as if she wished me to praise her for acquiring the wine for what might be our last meal together. She waited for me to sip from my cup and indicate that the wine was good.

I reached out to lift up the cup. Just then I heard the hoofbeats of a horse pounding against the turf outside the tent. A moment later, Kane rushed in. He looked from my hand to Liljana, standing above me gripping the bottle of wine, and then quickly back at me. And he shouted out: 'Don't drink that — it is poisoned!'

Liljana stared at him as if she didn't want to believe what she had just heard. So did Master Juwain, and so did I.

'Poisoned!' Icalled back to him. 'But King Waray sent us this wine! He would not have come so far with his whole army just to poison me!'

'Unless,' Maram observed, 'he wished to replace you at the last moment as warlord.'

'No,' I said, looking downinto the dark wine, 'no Valari king would ever poison another.'

Even as I said this, I remembered Salmelu Aradar, who had born the son a king.

'So, maybe no Valari would,' Kane growled out. He stepped closer to me, and the fury filling his thick body made me think of a tiger ready to kill. 'But I did not say that the poisoner was Valari. Who knows more about poison than she who trained to detect such filthy things, eh?'

He fixed his savage gaze upon Liljana, once King Kiritan's food taster, who had saved him from more than one poisoned meal. The forrce of Kane's blood pulsing through his throat impelled me to jump up and grab hold of him.

'You are speaking of Liljana!' I told him. 'How can you say this of her? She has been a good friend to you, and like a mother to me!'

'She is first the Materix of the Maitriche Telu!' Kane said. 'Those women would sacrifice their own sons and daughters to make what they will of the world.'

He told us then what he had learned from Idris, who had ridden from Tria with the knights of the Black Brotherhood to deliver this news: that the scryers of the Maitriche Telu had prophesied that Valashu Elahad would be the one to lead Ea into a new age. The Maitriche Telu hoped that this would be the Age of the Mother reborn, and so when I first came to Tria on the quest to recover the Lightstone, Liljana had attached herself to me in order to help nurture, guide and protect me. But because the Maitriche Telu also feared that the coming times might see a new Age of the Sword, or worse, the very destruction of the earth, Liljana stood ready to murder me should I prove to be the long-dreaded King of Swords.

'So,' Kane said to me, looking down where I had rested Alkaladur against the side of the table, 'you have proved that in summoning the Valari armies here and making yourself warlord. And in much else.'

His logic, however, failed to persuade Master Juwain. Although the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood had long been estranged, Master Juwain did not want to think such ill of Liljana, for he said to Kane: 'If Liljana wished Val dead, then she might have made him so a thousand times these past years. Why should she wait until