David Zindell - Diamond Warriors

Beneath a low sky showing only a few patches of blue between huge white clouds, Maram, Ymiru and I walked with Abrasax across the grounds of the new temple being built in the eastern city on the ruins of the ancient one. Master Matai and Master Juwain and the others who had called themselves the Seven accom-panied us. But now Liljana, and several other Sisters of what had been the Maitriche Telu joined us, too, and these wise men and women as yet had taken no special name for themselves.

We moved slowly among workmen chiseling away at blocks of white granite and sending stone chips and dust out into the air. Others cut stained glass and glisse for the windows, while ten huge Ymaniri worked with their lilastei shaping and growing the huge crystals that would form the substance of the temple. Much of this immense structure had already been set into place, with its six glittering walls made of living stone and its golden domes sweeping up into the sky. I called that a miracle, too. For even in the Great Age of Law, such buildings had taken fifty or a hundred years to complete. But they had not had the Ymaniri to build them.

At the center of the grounds lay an immense ruby crystal, more than two hundred feet in length. It was the greatest red gelstei ever fabricated on Ea, exceeding in every dimension even the powerful crystal that had once surmounted the Star Tower. I did not know by what art the Ymaniri could possibly raise it up and set it in place on top the temple's highest spire.

'Now this is a firestone!' Maram said as he paused before it to run his hand along its cool, gleaming surface. 'What flames it will gather inside!'

'What flames will you gather inside?' Liljana asked, moving up to him. 'If you come to us to do this work that you say you wish to do?'

'Only the hottest!' Maram said with a smile and waggle of his hips.

'Do not joke about that!' Liljana said, her face as stern as stone. But I could feel her fighting back a smile. 'Abrasax and Master Juwain can help you open what they call the body's chakras, as they offered to once before. But as I told you once before, when a woman awakens the Volcano, as Behira will, under my guidance, it will take a true man coming alive to his whole being in order to bear such a heat.'

'Ah, a true man, you say? Taking to himself a true woman in this blaze of passion that you speak of? Are you trying to discourage me?'

Now Liljana did smile, with great kindness and warmth. And she told Maram: 'I'm only trying to prepare you for the sort of marriage that hasn't been seen on Ea since the Age of the Mother, and perhaps not even then.'

'Well, can anyone really prepare for marriage?' He smiled again at her, then turned to bow his head to Master Juwain. 'It will be enough that both of you help me as you can. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for that. Over these past years, I've given you a thousand reasons not to help me.'

'But ten thousand more,' Master Juwain said, 'that we want to see you happy.'

'Of course we do!' Liljana told him. 'How should you think that we wouldn't do all that we can for one who is like our own son?'

With Abrasax, Yrniru and the others looking on, she leaned forward to kiss Maram, which caused his red face to grow even redder. Then he said to her and Master Juwain: 'And you are like parents to me. My mother is dead and my father would not come to my wedding, even if I wished him to. Will you stand in their place when Behira and I make our vows?'

Liljana looked at Master Juwain as if she could see into his mind without really looking. With one motion, almost, they reached out and took hold of each other's hand. Then they looked at Maram, and almost with a single voice, they said: 'We would be happy to.'

Then they both offered to stand at my wedding, too. As Master Juwain put it to me: 'Now that Tria is on the mend, you deserve to put your own life in order and to be happy, Val.'

As I gazed out at the city in which Atara would soon reign as my queen, I could not find any reason to dispute him. Soon, at last, I would take up my flute and make music again — and for the rest of my life. I would play to the star that Atara and I called our own. I only hoped that, somehow, I could find a way to make Atara happy, too.

I was a season of weddings and talk of such even for those who weren't quite ready to make such a union. Joshu Kadar told me that he wished to journey back to Mesh and ask Sarai Garvar to be his wife. With Lord Tanu fallen in battle, he could see no impediment to marrying the woman whom he had never stopped loving, and neither could I. The war had made many widows who would desire new husbands and widowers who mourned their wives, not just in Alonia or the Nine Kingdoms, but all across Ea. If spring could bring new life to the world, then why shouldn't men and women bring a little happiness to each other?

On a bright day in Soldru, in sight of thousands, I married Atara, even as Maram did Behira. Alonia's great nobles gathered to witness the ceremony and bring us gifts. So did Sajagax, who gave Atara and me a great weight of gold and a lesser amount to Maram and Behira. Lord Harsha looked on proudly as his only daughter finally gained her heart's desire. I wished, of course, that my father and mother, and all my family, had lived to share such a triumph with me. But Master Juwain and Liljana stood with me, as they had promised, as did Ymiru, Daj, Estrella and Alphanderry and Kalkin. No man, I thought, could ever have a more devoted or beloved family. They watched with great gladness as I slipped a silver ring around Atara's finger, and so at last made peace between the lines of Aryu and Elahad and rejoined them as one.

Just before midnight on the ides of Marud, Atara gave birth to our son. We named him Elkasar, after my grandfather. Liljana said that he was long and a little too lean, but he seemed possessed of a great health and zest for life, and he grew quickly. His eyes, as Liljana described them to Atara, soon took on a bright, black sheen like those of his father, and his hair grew out almost pure sable. But he had Atara's square, open face and her long hands and her sportive temperament. She took to calling him her 'little lion,' for he roared fiercely when he grew hungry and seemed to eat with a ferocious appetite. And Atara nursed him with great gladness, holding him against her breast and pouring her milk into him. She sang to him in her clear, beautiful voice, and used her fingers to comb back his dark hair, and I thought that I had never seen a mother love a child with such sweetness and fire.

And yet, as the days passed, a deep sadness seized hold of Atara and would not let go. Liljana spoke of the mothers' melancholy which often befell a woman after she had given birth, but this was something different. Atara, warrior that she would always remain, tried to be brave and so she stopped lamenting that she would never lay eyes upon our son, for there seemed no help for her fate. She did all that she could to raise up her spirits: going riding with Sajagax through the Narmada Green in the morning; singing with Alphanderry in the afternoon; lying with me on the grass of the Elu Gardens at night as I called out the names of the stars. She even took the first taste of the first batch of Maram's brandy, though drink of any sort no longer pleased her and she put tooth to food only because she needed to keep up her milk and her strength. I did not know what could done for her. Neither did Liljana or Master Juwain, who had no potions or magic to cure such a malady. Estrella often held the Lightstone near Atara's heart, and seemed sad herself that its radiance failed to touch her.

Toward the end of summer, as Atara grew thinner and ever quieter, I went to Ymiru to speak with him about her, for I thought that he was a man who might understand her, suffering as he did from sudden and deep glooms. His white-furred face knotted in concentration as I described how Atara wanted to stop eating. And then he told me: 'My moods come and go like the storms of the earth herself, and sometimes dark clouds and snow blacken the world, but afterwards, there always be blue skies and the sun shining brightly. But it be something else with Atara. I think her soul be sick. And that be a hrorrible thing, like being sucked down a dark hrole. I want to believe that the Maitreya will find a way to heal her. I suppose we can only wait and hrope.'