Diamond Warriors (50 page)

'But that is not enough,' Maram said to me later as he quaffed down a horn of Sarni beer when we were alone together. 'Not nearly enough.'

And then, on the 22nd of Ioj, we gained a great and unexpected ally - great in the spirit of battle, if not numbers. From out of the west came a band of warriors whom the Sarni at first mistook for animals walking on two legs. They had never seen, as few had, the extraordinary men called the Ymaniri. All of them stood more than eight feet tall and were thick as boulders in limb and body. Silky white fur covered them from head to unshod feet. I rode out to greet these five hundred giants, led by my old companion, Ymiru. A mesh of a metal too fine to be steel covered a leather armor encasing him. With his single hand (for a dragon had torn off his left arm in Argattha) he gripped a huge, iron-shod club called a borkor. His ice-blue eyes looked out above a broken nose, and they filled with great warmth as he saw me riding across the steppe toward him.

'Val!' he shouted at me in a voice like a volcano's rumble. 'We meet again!'

I dismounted and stepped over to him. I let my hand be engulfed within his huge fingers. Then I looked behind him at the shaggy men gripping their borkors and I said, 'Yes - to fight Morjin together, again.'

'It be my fondest hrope!' he told me. 'That, and seeing your furless face once more before I die.'

I smiled at this, then said, 'I never expected to see you here. It must be four hundred miles from the mountains across the open steppe - and through the country of the Zayak and Janjii at that.'

'And bad country it be. Nothing but grass and more grass, without a single mountain to hold the eye or point the way back hrome. And no place to hide when the little yellow-haired men attacked us.'

Some of my knights and a handful of Kurmak warriors, including Tringax and Braggod, had ridden out with me to behold the strange sight of the Ymaniri marching into our encampment. At Ymiru's characterizing of the Sarni as 'little,' Braggod's face flushed an angry red. He said nothing, however, as Ymiru stood nearly at the same height as Braggod sat on top his horse.

'I think they were Zayak,' Ymiru added. 'They loosed arrows at us as if they were hunting sagosk. But the arrows broke against
this.'

So saying he ran his finger across the tiny links of his armor, which he called
keshet.
It seemed that the Ymanir had made this marvelous material - which proved to be nearly as soft as woven silk and bright as silver - with the aid of a purple gelstei.

'And then we charged them,' he went on. 'The yellowhairs didn't know that we Ymaniri can run as fast
as
sagosk, for a short way. They were too late turning around their hrorses. And so we went to work with
these.'

He seemed deeply sad as he raised up his borkor, as did many of the men behind him. Then he said, 'But can we not go somewhere we can hrold council? There be much we need to discuss.'

We went back to my tent, where we met with our companions of old, along with Estrella. This magical girl proved to be even more of a wonder to Ymiru than he was to her. When we told of her talent for finding concealed things and summoning rain from a cloudless sky, he laid his huge hand on top of her head and said, ]It be too bad that she can't sumon an earthquake to swallow up Morjin's army in a fiery hrole. And so I suppose we'll have to fight.'

A sudden enthusiasm blew through him like a wind. He patted his borkor and added, 'But that, I suppose, be why we came here, yes?'

'But how
did
you come here?' Maram asked him. He gave Ymiru a great beer-filled horn, which Ymiru drank down like a cup of milk. 'How could you possibly have known to come to this forsaken place?'

Ymiru smiled at Liljana, and I caught a flash of his big white teeth. 'It was the Materix of the Maitriche Telu who called us here. Through Audhumla.'

I remembered well this seven-foot-tall woman who sat with the other elders of Urdahir who ruled the Ymanir. It had been Audhumla, through the virtue of her blue truth stone, who had verified the story of my companions' and my quest to find the Lightstone - and so saved us from being put to death as unwelcome strangers to the Ymanir's land.

'The truth stone be a powerful galastei,' Yrniru told us, 'though not so deep as Liljana's blue crystal. Audhumla can use it to hear the truths or lies that people speak, though not to eavesdrop their thoughts. Not usually. But Audhumla has been open to Liljana's thoughts, spoken across the world through the virtue of
her
galastei. It was Liljana - late in Ashte this was - who called the Ymanir to war against the Red Dragon.'

At this, Maram and my other friends stared at Liljana in amazement. And Master Juwain said to her, 'But that was before we set out for Kaash and Delu! How could you have known to call the Ymanir to war when
we
didn't know yet that there would be a war - at least, not when and where the war's great battle would be fought?'

'She knew,' Kane growled out as if Liljana were a thief caught with a stolen jewel, 'because she has looked into Morjin's mind! Is that not so?'

Liljana met Kane's furious gaze with the softness of her round, pretty face, as with the moon throwing back the sun's fire. And she said to him, 'I only looked into his mind for a moment. And
not
the Red Dragon's mind - only that of his High Priest, Arch Yadom. Morjin has entrusted him with a blue gelstei.'

Kane stared at her as if the heat of his gaze might burn away her words to reveal the truth or a lie.

And Master Juwain said to her, 'But you shouldn't look into
anyone's
mind. Even those of your sisters. Morjin might be waiting for just such a move. And so it is a peril to
your
mind. And even more, to your soul.'

'And even more perilous
not
to look!' Liljana shot back.

'But think of what he took from you in Argattha! And what he might take still!'

'I am not so afraid of Morjin as you might think. Perhaps it might avail us more to consider what
I
might do to
him.'

'But, Liljana, the Dragon still has the Lightstone, and you have only -'

'I have what I have. We all must fight Morjin in our own way.'

Her words disturbed all of us, and myself not the least. I remembered back in Mesh asking her to use her gift against Morjin in much the same way as she obviously had. I said to her, 'But if you knew that Morjin would march on Sajagax before falling against the Nine Kingdoms, why didn't you tell me?'

Liljana shrugged her shoulders at this. 'I would have, but we were moving west in any case. And then Sajagax sent Sonjah to find you, and made the matter moot.'

'Perhaps,' I said to her, 'but you should have told me even so.' Her voice softened as she said, 'I know I should have - I am sorry.'

But this wasn't good enough for Kane, who growled out. 'She'll give our plans away, damn it!'

'No, I won't,' Liljana told him. 'But what is there to give away, really? Morjin knows that we wait for him here to do battle.'

'But he does not know our numbers, yet, or our order of battle!'

'I don't know that myself,' Liljana said. 'Neither, I think, does Val.'

I rubbed my aching head. 'Nor will I, until I receive report of

Morjin's numbers and how his army is composed. But when I do set the order of battle, Liljana, Morjin must
not
know.'

Again Liljana shrugged her shoulders. 'Of course he must not. And that is why, before the Seredun Sands, I did refuse to look into anyone's mind, even as Master Juwain has said.'

'And that be a good thing,' Ymiru put in, 'for a man's mind be a private place and hroly.'

He sighed, letting out a great breath like the wind. Then, looking at me, he added, 'Still, I'd like to know what be in the minds of the Valari kings. Will they draw swords against Morjin? You once promised me they would, Val.'

'And they will,' I reassured him. 'I know they will.'

'Well they had better come soon,' Ymiru murmured with a sad shake of his head. 'Otherwise, I don't think there be much hrope.'

But the next day dawned and dusked without a hint of any Valari marching forth to join us. Then, on the day following that, one of Atara's Manslayers rode into our encampment to report that Morjin's army approached from the northwest. Although the Manslayers, she said, had still not made a good count of our enemy's numbers, Atara estimated that Morjin's army might fall upon our position here within ten days, if they moved quickly enough.

'Ten days!' Maram called out in dismay when he heard this. 'Even if I could drink ten horns of beer each day, that would make only a hundred horns until
the
day, when there will be no more beer. A hundred horns - it seems too, too little to fill a man such as I.'

For eight days, as Ioj ended and Valte took hold of the Wendrush with warm weather and clear blue skies, Maram drank a great quantity of beer, though no one kept track of the number of horns. And then, on the third of Valte, just after dawn, one of Sajagax's outriders galloped into our encampment shouting out the news: 'They come! The Valari - they come!'

From thousands of tents strung out along the river, and from around thousands of campfires, men hurried forth in a great multitude to look out across the steppe. I stood with Sajagax, Vishakan, Bajorak, King Hanniban - and many, many others - gazing toward the red, rising sun. We waited perhaps half an hour, and then a great glitter brightened the sere grass of a rise some miles to the east. I watched in wonder as columns of men, some on horses and others on foot, came pouring over this hump of ground and drew closer. The slanting sun showed the standards of six armies: the blue horse of King Mohan's line, which had ruled Athar for centuries; the white Tree of Life sacred to Lagash; King Sandarkan's two crossed silver swords; the gold dragon worn by King Danashu of Anjo; King Waray's white, winged horse; and most marvelous of all, the great white bear of Ishka, resplendent against a blood-red field. I did not have time to wonder if King Hadaru had finally died and Prince Issur had taken command of my countrymen's most ancient enemy. For just then, Ymiru pointed his furry finger at the sparkle of lights in the east, and his vast voice boomed out across the steppe: 'Look, it be the bright ones! The diamond warriors - they come!'

A thousand others picked up his cry as they called out, too: 'The Valari! The Valari! The diamond warriors are coming!'

Maram pressed his hand against his head, which must have throbbed from many days of drinking beer. In a voice still thick with sleep, he muttered to me, 'Ah, well, six more armies of your Valari. With Mesh and Kaash that makes eight, only eight, too bad.'

He stood with everyone else watching these thousands of warriors covered in bright diamond armor march closer. Then he said to me, 'Your Nine Kingdoms are strangely named, for there are only eight of them, or I have forgotten how to count. One of them must have been annihilated in some ancient war and lost to history.'

I looked on as the vanguard of the Ishkan army drew within a hundred yards of our encampment. I could now see plainly that King Hadaru himself, and not Prince Issur, sat on a large white warhorse leading the Ishkans - and the other armies. I smiled at Maram and told him: 'No, the ninth kingdom was not lost. It is
here,
on this field today.'

Maram rubbed his bleary eyes then cast me a puzzled look. 'I don't understand.'

My hand swept out toward the warriors approaching us, and then I pointed at the crowded lanes between the tents of the Kaashans and Meshians. And I said,
'We
are the ninth kingdom. Eight kingdoms there are, truly, as you have counted - as there have always been. But as it was at the Sarburn, when the Valari come together there is only one kingdom, and we call that the ninth one. For once, the Nine Kingdoms defeated Morjin, and we might do so again.'

'The diamond warriors,' Maram muttered, looking out to the east. 'The damned diamond warriors.'

I smiled again, this time more deeply. I touched the two diamonds of the ring that sparkled around Maram's finger, and I told him: 'Do not forget that
you
are Valari, now, too.'

That evening, after the six arriving armies made camp along the river on ground that Sajagax had reserved for them, I called a meeting of the Valari kings. We gathered with our captains in my tent, and for the first time since the disastrous conclave in Tria, we sat at table to discuss how we might fight Morjin. And so we finally had the miracle that Maram had prayed for.

It took some time of arguing matters of war before I learned how this had come to pass. It turned out the King of Athar had been the first of the six Valari sovereigns to have a change of heart. Soon after I had left King Mohan and his army arrayed along the Nar Road, he had ridden without escort up into Lagash. Alone, he had climbed Mount Ayu, where he found King Kurshan sitting in meditation, and he told King Kurshan of his intention to lead the Atharian army out to the Detheshaloon - and so leave Athar defenseless against Lagash. He then asked King Kurshan to suspend the formalities of Sharshan and join with him in waging a much more serious kind of war, against the Valari's true enemy. King Kurshan had then surprised King Mohan in calling for a peace between Lagash and Athar. As the singular King Kurshan had said to King Mohan: 'I would have spent my army in making war against Athar only because Athar made war against Lagash. But it is my navy that must be the glory of my realm. Someday, when we have defeated the Red Dragon, my ships will sail through the waters of the Northern Passage to the stars, where there is no war.'

King Mohan's act, I thought, took more courage than any deed that this fearsome warrior had ever done on the field of battle. With both the Atharians and Lagashuns ready for war, the two kings had immediately led their armies up the Nar Road and into Taron. When King Waray rode down from his palace and saw yet more columns of Valari marching west, his heart finally opened. Across his realm - and those of the other Valari kingdoms - warriors in their thousands called for their kings to honor Kaash's and Mesh's victory at the Seredun Sands by fighting for a more lasting triumph against Morjin's main force. King Waray, still in awe of how Bemossed had healed his daughter, finally gave in to this call. And so had King Sandarkan. After King Talanu and I had out-maneuvered the Waashians by the Rajabash River, King Sandarkan had been consumed by shame - and it grieved him the most sorely that he had failed to join with the Kaashans and Meshians in annihilating Morjin's armies on the coast of Delu. As he told us over dinner in my tent: 'One time only a man might turn away from doing what is right and be forgiven, but not twice.' And so, at King Waray's invitation, he had led the Waashians into Taron, where they gathered with the armies of Taron. Athar and Lagash. And then the combined forces of these four kingdoms had crossed into Anjo, toward the Wendrush.