David Zindell - The Diamond Warriors

‘At least,’ Lord Sharad added, nodding his head at me, ‘that is our best assessment of matters as they now stand.’

For a few moments no one spoke, and the hall fell quiet. Everyone knew that, from more than one direction, Mesh faced the threat of defeat. And everyone looked to me to find a way to escape such a fate.

‘When you left Mesh last year,’ Lord Avijan said to me, ‘you could not have known how things would fall out. But you should not have left.’

I stood away from the table behind me to ease the stiffness in my legs. Then I looked out at the knights and warriors standing around me, and said, ‘My apologies, but I had to. There are things you don’t know about. But now you must be told.’

With everyone pressing in closer, I drew in a deep breath and wondered just how much I should divulge to them? I thought I might do best to conjure up some plan by which we Meshians might prevail against the more familiar enemies: the Ishkans and the Waashians, the Sarni tribes in their hordes of horse warriors – even ourselves. And so save ourselves. But I had vowed never to lie again, and more, to tell the truth so far as it could be told. Were my fellow warriors strong enough, I wondered, to hold the most terrible of truths within their hearts? In the end, either one trusted in men, or did not.

‘For thousands of years,’ I said to them, ‘Mesh has had enemies. And where necessary we defeated them – all except one. And his name is Morjin.’

‘But we defeated him at the Sarburn!’ Sar Vikan called out.

‘Three thousand years ago we did,’ Lord Avijan said. ‘With the help of all the Valari kingdoms.’

‘And at the Culhadosh Commons!’ Sar Jessu cried out to me. ‘Upon your lead, we crushed an army that outnumbered us four to one!’

His words caused most of the warriors present to cry out and strike their swords’ pommels against the tables in great drumming of steel against wood. Then I held up my hand and said to them, ‘Those were great victories, it is true, won by the most valorous of warriors. But they were not defeats, as the Red Dragon must be defeated. He has other armies, and greater than the ones we faced. What good does it do to strike off a serpent’s head if two more grow back in its place?’

I told them then of our journey to Hesperu and of our triumphant quest to find the Maitreya. A great light, I said, we had found in the far west, but along the way we had endured great darkness, too. Morjin had wrought horrors everywhere – and now was planning to work the greatest of evils: to loose the Dark One upon Ea. I feared that this doom would prove too great a terror for many of the warriors staring at me to contemplate. Who really wanted to believe, or could believe, that the whole world – and the very universe itself – might be destroyed down to the last grain of sand?

‘As always,’ I said to them, ‘Morjin remains the true enemy’

My words gave the warriors pause. All through Lord Avijan’s great hall, I saw brave men looking at each other in a dreadful silence.

‘For now,’ I continued, ‘the man called Bemossed, who must be the Maitreya, keeps Morjin from using the Lightstone to free the Dark One. But he needs our help, as we need his.’

At this, a white-haired warrior named Lord Noldashan turned to me and said, ‘You appear to know things that it seems would be hard for any man to know. May it be asked how you have come by such knowledge?’

‘Only through great suffering!’ Maram called out from beside me. ‘And through great fortune, if that is the right word.’

Because it pained me to think of the torture that I had led Maram to endure in the Red Desert, and in other places, I laid my hand on his knee and squeezed it. And then I said to Lord Noldashan, and the others: ‘It was Kane who told me about the Dark One named Angra Mainyu. And I do not doubt his word, for much of what he related is hinted at in the last three books of the Saganom Elu .’

‘An old book,’ Lord Sharad said with a smile. ‘Almost as old as Lord Noldashan – and myself.’

But Lord Noldashan, it seemed, could not be moved from his intense seriousness. He nodded at Master Juwain, and called out in his raspy voice: ‘The Brotherhood teaches that much of what is written in the Valkariad and the Trian Prophecies can be taken in different ways. And even more so with the Eschaton. How, then, should we take this doom that Lord Valashu’s companion has told of? This Kane is a mysterious man – and an outlander, as we should not forget.’

‘He is the greatest warrior I have ever known!’ Lord Sharad called back. ‘I was there when he slew the Ikurians beneath the Mare’s Hill, and I have never seen a sword worked so!’

‘Lord Sharad tells true,’ Sar Vikan said. ‘I fought near Sar Kane, and when his blood is up, he seems less a man than an angel of battle.’

Upon these words, I struggled to keep my face still and my gaze fixed straight ahead. I hoped my companions, too, would keep the secret of Kane’s otherworldly origins.

‘Man or angel,’ Lord Noldashan said, ‘Sar Kane might well have come by his knowledge through great quests, with a true heart, and yet have learned things that are not true.’

‘They are true!’ I suddenly called out. The force of my voice seemed to strike Lord Noldashan and others as with the blow of a war hammer. I fought to control myself. In some dark room of Lord Avijan’s castle, I sensed, perhaps even in the great hall itself, the Ahrim waited for me – and perhaps for everyone. ‘Angra Mainyu still dwells on Damoom, and he turns his dark gaze on Ea. But even if he were only legend, there is still Morjin. He exists, as we all know. And so do his armies.’

The men standing around me considered this. Then Lord Sharad looked at me and said, ‘I think I have to believe what Kane has told, though I am loath to. But why hasn’t Kane returned with you from your last quest to tell us himself?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘he has gone into Galda.’

‘Galda! But why?’

‘Because,’ I told him, ‘we heard that Morjin might have gone there.’

And this, I said, was a consequence of our battle with Morjin and his creatures in Hesperu. I explained more about the worst of the enemies that we had faced on our quest: the three droghuls that Morjin had sent to destroy my companions and me. As with any ghul made from a man, I said, Morjin seized the droghuls’ minds and caused them to work his will, as if they were puppets being pulled by strings. But the droghuls were particularly deadly, for Morjin had made these dreadful beings from his own flesh, in his likeness, and had imbued them with a part of his power. After we – actually young Daj – had slain the third of the droghuls, a rumor had shot across the world that Morjin himself had been slain. And so Morjin had been compelled to come out of the stone city of Argattha to show himself and prove that he still lived. He had gone through the Dragon Kingdoms one by one, finally leading an army from Karabuk into Galda, where brave knights had revolted against Morjin upon the false news of his death.

‘Kane,’ I told Lord Sharad, ‘went down into Galda so that he might take part in the rebellion.’

‘You mean,’ Lord Harsha said with a distasteful look, ‘he went to put an arrow into Morjin’s back, if he can.’

I smiled sadly at this. ‘Kane would be more likely to use a knife. But, yes, he went to Galda to slay Morjin – if he can. And if Morjin is really there.’

‘And if he is not?’ Lord Avijan asked me.

‘Wherever Morjin is,’ I said, ‘his plans will go ahead unless we do kill him. What happened in Hesperu has delayed him, but no more. Already, it is said, he has ordered a great fleet up from Sunguru and Hesperu to attack Eanna. If it takes him a hundred years, he will conquer Ea’s free lands one by one until he has the Nine Kingdoms surrounded. But it will not take him a hundred years.’