David Zindell - Diamond Warriors

'Have you seen that, Atara? You must have — you saw almost everything.'

'Perhaps I did. But now I can see nothing.'

I tried to feel through her leather armor and the flesh beneath for that tiny seed of life that might be quickening inside her. But no matter what Kalkin had said about the valarda being strong in me, I did not have that power.

'In the Valley of the Sun, you promised to marry me,' I told her. I took out the handkerchief enfolding a single strand of one of her golden hairs, and I pressed it into her palm. 'It is time.'

'Is it, truly?' she asked, squeezing the handkerchief.

'Will you marry me?' I asked her again.

Now she pressed her hand on top of mine. She turned her face toward the north, perhaps orienting herself by the warmth of the setting sun's rays upon her cheek. I thought that she must be listening to the wind — and perhaps for a faint pulse of life from within her womb.

'I would love to marry you,' she said. 'So much that I almost can't bear it.'

Then she shook her head sadly and added, 'But I just don't know if it really is the right time. Let us go to Tria, and we shall see.'

She kissed me then, and fire leaped through me, but we did not lie together as we had before the battle. If she would not marry me, after all, then such ecstasy would all too soon become a torment. But if she did consent to be my queen, we would have the rest of our lives to return to our star and dance beneath its light. Until we reached Tria, I would have to content myself with this bright and beautiful hope.

Historians would record that on the tenth day of Ashvar in the year 2815 of the Age of the Dragon, the victorious army of King Valamesh entered the City of Light. It should have been a radiant moment of bells ringing and people rejoicing in the streets. But it was not.

The Red Dragon had visited all his fire and wrath upon Ea's oldest human habitation. His soldiers had almost completely razed three quarters of the city, putting to the torch anything constructed of wood. They had used a stonecrusher to shatter granite houses to rubble and great buildings, too: the Tur-Tisander; the Tower of the Morning Star; the Old Sanctuary of the Maitriche Tern; the Hastar Palace; the Sarojin and Eluli Bridges — and many many other structures. The wall surrounding the city, they had smashed in several places. From the Poru River west, past the once-great Varkoth Gate and then north toward the Manwe Gate, the whole wall lay in ruins. The docks along the river, both its east and west banks, had been reduced to a broken black char. Miraculously, however, one of the greatest works of architecture ever cast up on Ea remained unharmed. The Star Bridge — also called the Golden Band — still spanned the Poru in a single, glorious arch made of living stone. Perhaps Morjin's stonecrusher had no power to pierce to the heart of this marvelous substance, fabricated during the great Age of Law. Or perhaps Morjin, with time pressing at him, had felt himself forced to march from the city before he could wreak his full vengeance upon her.

On the day we entered the city, the foul weather of late autumn moved in over Tria from the Northern Ocean in a mass of gray rain clouds that would block out sight of the sun for days on end. Then too, the Trians would not easily come to welcome a Valari as their High King. King Kiritan had once told me that I might marry Atara when I brought the Lightstone into his hall. This I had once done but too late for Alonia's great king to give me his daughter's hand, as one of Morjin's creatures had murdered him. Even if King Kiritan had lived, however, he could not have presided over any such union within his hall for Morjin had reduced the huge Narmada Palace — and all the buildings on its grounds — to broken bits of stone. With some regret and much reluctance, I ordered my army to encamp there, at the top of the highest of Tria's seven hills. The Trians, I reasoned, had become used to casting their gazes in that direction to behold the seat of Alonia's power and glory. It might comfort them to see that Ea's High King, although an outlander from Mesh, had at least restored law and order.

With winter soon coming on, both were badly needed in a place that had fallen nearly into lawlessness. And even more, the Trians — those who hadn't fled the ruins of their city — required food, shelter, clean water and the other necessities of life. Too many of them shivered beneath crude coverings of animal hides draped over blackened poles as their only protection against Ashvar's icy rains. The cries of babies wailed out day and night from these acres of squalid half-tents as their mothers' milk dried up. Long before spring, I feared, many men, women and children would begin starving to death.

'So it must have been in Surrapam after the Hesperuks devastated it,' Maram said to me late in Ashvar as we stood on the scorched grass of the palace grounds looking out over the city. 'I've always regretted having to flee that poor land and leaving the Surrapamers to such a fate.'

I had, too, and so before King Thaddeu had marched away from the Detheshaloon, I had made him promise to send aid to Surrapam to repair a part of the damage wrought by his father's murderous ambition. All Ea's people, now, I told Maram, would have to help each other.

Toward that end, I asked Lord Harsha to oversee the rebuilding of Ea's docks. This practical farmer and proud warrior had a great talent for dealing with almost anything of the material world. He sent his quartermasters galloping across the countryside outside the city to locate supplies of lumber. Soon, along both the Poru's muddy banks, the sound of saws tearing through wood ripped out into the cold, wet air. The new quays and docks, smelling of sap and tar, took form and pushed out into the river. Then bilanders and barks and other sailing ships made their way in from the sea and past the rocky island of Damoom to tie up in Tria's new harbor. They came from Delu, the Elyssu, Nedu and even faraway Thalu, and brought with them grain, oil, salt, furs, iron, wood — and a thousand other needful things. King Kurshan, still encamped with his warriors and the other Valari at the heart of the city, nevertheless managed to get word to his kingdom's people that the Lagashuns should send out a small fleet of ships to Tria. That did not prove so grand or impossible a venture as sailing through the waters of the Northern Passage and up to the stars. But the sacks of barley in the holds of the Lagashun ships kept many from starving — and that seemed a miracle enough.

On the darkest day of the year, Atara informed me that she was carrying our child. I wanted to rejoice and call for a thousand bottles of brandy to be emptied in celebration. I wanted to set a date for our wedding, too. But Atara, her voice heavy with sorrow, said to me, 'Let us wait, Val, for winter to end, and then we shall see.'

When Triolet came and spring beckoned, we began to build Tria anew. On a cool, blustery day, Kalkin stood with me on top of the rabble that had once been King Kiritan's palace. He stamped his boot against the pulverized stone and said to me, 'The new city will rise up out of the old. Just as your ancestors built Tria on top of an even more ancient city.'

'But I thought that the Star People founded Tria,' I said to him.

Kalkin's gaze seemed to tear open the ground. 'When Elahad led the Valari here to what he supposed was a virgin world, Ea was already old beyond old, as I've told you. Erathe, we once called it. And if we dug down deeply enough through this, we would find the ruins of Trialune.'

He went on to say that it was in Trialune that a great king had ruled the world before he had become the first of the Elijin.

'Build well,' he said, looking up at me. 'Make yourself a city that will be a glory to the earth and stars.'