Just as I was lifting the goblet to my lips, however, Liljana suddenly rushed toward me, crying out, 'No, it is poison – don't drink it!'
The certainty in her voice shocked me; I whirled around toward her to see if she might have fallen mad. Many things happened then almost in the same moment.
Baron Narcavage, standing to the other side of me, looked toward King Kiritan and cried out, 'To me!' He drew a long dagger and lunged at my throat even as Liljana knocked the goblet from my hand. Alphanderry, who was nearer to me than any of my friends, suddenly jumped between me and the Baron. He grabbed at the Baron's knife arm with both hands and stood locked in a desperate struggle with him. If not for his inexplicable courage, the knife would surely have torn open my throat.
For that was surely the Baron's true intention. I saw it clearly now in the way his face fell into a fury of hate as he clubbed Alphanderry's head with his other hand, ripped free his knife and lunged at me again. Now, however, Liljana was close enough to grab his arm. She held onto it with all the tenacity of a hound, even as he cursed at her, beat at her with his other arm and knocked her about Then I struck out with my fist straight into his bearded face. I felt my knuckles almost break against his thick jawbone. But he seemed invulnerable to pain and possessed of insane strength. He shook his knife arm free and aimed another lunge toward my throat. He would have killed me if Kane hadn't come up then and run him through with his sword. The Baron fell dead to the grass. Alphanderry stood dazed, shaking his bleeding head.
From the trees planted across the palace grounds, the nightingales sang their songs.
Then I became aware of a great clamor toward the fountains. Spears clashed against shields; swords crossed with swords, and the sound of outraged steel rang out to a great chorus of curses and shouts. Knights and ladies were running away in great numbers, even as the King's guards fell upon one another. At first, I thought they had fallen mad. And then I saw the King slash his sword toward one of his dukes while five of his guards fought fiercely to protect him from the others. They were trying to kill the King, I realized. And other men – all with badges bearing the oaks and eagles of House Narcavage – were running toward us to kill the Queen.
Or so I thought, for it didn't occur to me that they might be coming to kill me. There were nearly thirty of these knights; they appeared out of the throngs of panicked people like vultures from the clouds. Their swords were drawn and gleaming in the moonlight. 'To me!' the Baron had called out, and now I understood to whom he had been calling. His men must have seen him fall, for their faces were masks of determination and hate as they came at us.
Queen Daryana cried out as she saw her husband fighting for his life and positioned herself near Alphanderry for the protection he offered, as did Liljana and Master Juwain. The rest of us stared at our attackers as we decided what to do.
We had no one to lead us, or rather too many: Sar Yarwan, Sar lanar and the other five Valari knights – and Kane, Maram, Atara and myself. The leading of others into battle, my father once told me, is a strange thing. It depends not so much on rank or authority, but rather on the courage to see what must be done and the mysterious ability to communicate one's faith that victory is not only possible but inevitable. For only a moment, we stood there confused by the violence that Baron Narcavage had unleashed. And then I looked at the two diamonds shining like stars from my ring. A light flashed in my eyes, and in my heart, and I suddenly called out: 'Form a circle!
Protect the Queen!'
For another moment, my command hung in the air. And then, as on the drill field, Sar Yarwan and the other Valari knights formed up into a circle around Queen Daryana. Savages the King had called us, and savages we were: savages whose swords were our souls, and we called kalamas.
We drew them now just in time to meet the attack of Baron Narcavage's men. Kane stood to my right, and Atara and Maram to my left – all of us facing outward, Sar Yarwan guarded the point of the circle directly across and in back of me. We were only eleven against some thirty knights. And yet when our swords were done flashing and stabbing and rending flesh, all of them lay dead or dying in the grass.
As I stood gasping for breath, I realized that the Baron's knights had not attacked us at random. A good number of them had come directly at me. And there, within a few yards of me and Kane's bloody sword, they sprawled in twisted heaps. I was almost certain that I had slain four of them myself. Their death agonies built inside me like great, cresting waves. But strangely, they never quite broke upon me and crushed me down into the icy dark. Perhaps it was because I remembered how Master Juwain and my friends had healed me after the battle with the Grays; perhaps I was able to open myself to the life fires blazing through Kane and Atara and everyone around me. Or perhaps I was only learning to keep closed the door to death and others' sufferings.
Even so, the great pain of it drove me to my knees and then caused me to collapse, moaning. Queen Daryana must have thought the Baron's men had run me through, for she suddenly called out, 'Over here! A man is wounded!'
For a moment, I couldn't imagine to whom she might be calling. Then, through the cold clouds of death touching my eyes, I saw a great number of the King's guards running toward us. I was afraid that they, too, were traitors come to kill the Queen; even if they weren't, I was afraid that Kane and the Valari knights would see them as such and begin the battle anew. But then the Queen cried out that my friends and I had saved her life. She called for everyone to put aside their swords, and this they did.
For what seemed an eternity, confusion reigned across the blood-spattered lawns of the palace grounds. Trumpets sounded while horses thundered across the grass some distance away. I heard women wailing and men screaming that the King had been killed. Then Queen Daryana took charge, calling out commands with a coolness that stilled the panic in the air. She deployed guards to see that the palace gates were closed to prevent any of the plotters from slipping away. Other guards she sent to hunt down any of the Baron's men who might be hiding around the palace. She ordered that the bodies of the slain be taken away and their blood washed with buckets of water into the earth. And she sent messengers to call up many new guards from the garrison that manned the city walls.
Word soon came that the King had only been wounded and borne away into the palace. He had called for Queen Daryana to come to his side.
'Your father isn't badly wounded,' Queen Daryana said to Atara. 'But it seems that your Valari knight might be. Please stay with him until I return.'
As Atara nodded her head, the Queen gathered up five guards and hurried off toward the palace.
Other guards drew up in a protective wall around us. King Kiritan's thousands of guests still milled about the fountains; despite their panic over Baron Narcavage's plot, they had nowhere to flee. But it seemed that most of the Baron's knights had died in attacking our circle. As for the traitorous guards, they had all been killed, too
– or so it was hoped.
While the Valari knights gathered some yards away, Alphanderry and Liljana drew in closer above me. They watched Kane, Atara, Maram and Master Juwain kneel in a circle by my side. My friends removed my armor, as they had in the woods near the meadow where we had killed the Grays, and laid their hands upon me. So great was the power of their touch that I immediately felt a familiar fire warming me inside.
Then Master Juwain drew out his green crystal and placed it over my chest. He and the others positioned their bodies to shield the sight of this healing from the guards and others looking on.
Very soon, I was able to stand up and move about again. In a low voice, Master Juwain marveled that he had hardly needed his green crystal to help revive me.
'Thank you, sir,' I said to him as I put on my armor again. I nodded to each of my friends. 'Thank you, all of you.'
I noticed Alphanderry looking at me curiously as if wondering why I had needed my friends' ministrations at all. He smiled at me in great relief, and my eyes asked him why he had risked his life for me as if he were my brother.
Because, his soft brown eyes answered me, all men are brothers.
Master Juwain's order, of course, taught this ideal of a higher love for all beings, even strangers. But Alphanderry's selfless act was the first time I had seen it embodied so unrestrainedly.
'Thank you,' I said to him. Then I turned to Liljana Ashvaran, whose courage had been no less than his. 'Thank you, too.'
Liljana bowed her head to me and smiled. Then she pointed at Master Juwain's pocket, where he had returned his green gelstei. In a voice pitched soft and low so that none of the guards or other onlookers might hear, she said, 'I think you have one of the stones told of in the prophecy.'
