David Zindell - The Diamond Warriors

I pressed my finger against the scar cut into my forehead. This mark, shaped like a lightning bolt, had actually been present from my birth, when the midwife’s tongs had ripped my skin. The bear, who had nearly killed my brother Asaru and me during one of our forays into the woods, had only deepened it.

‘I doubt if it is my fate,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘to see us attacked here by a bear.’

‘Ah, fate,’ Maram said, shaking his great, bushy head. ‘You speak of it too much these days, and contemplate it too deeply, I think.’

‘Perhaps that is true. But we’ve avoided the worst that might have befallen us and come to our journey’s end without mishap.’

‘ Almost to our journey’s end,’ he said, waving his huge hand at the trees ahead of us. ‘If you’re right, we’ve still five miles of these gloomy woods to endure. If you hadn’t insisted on this long cut, we might already have been sitting at Lord Harsha’s table with Behira, putting down some roasted beef and a few pints of your good Meshian beer.’

I cast him a long, burning look. He knew well enough the reasons for our detour through the woods, and had in fact agreed upon them. But now that he could almost smell his dinner and taste his dessert, it seemed that he had conveniently forgotten them.

‘All right, all right,’ he said, turning his head away from me to gaze off through the trees. ‘Why indeed take any chances when we have come so far without mishap? It’s just that now I’m ready to enjoy the comforts of Lord Harsha’s house, it seems that the farmland hereabouts – and the rest of your kingdom – surely holds fewer perils than do these woods.’

‘It is not my kingdom,’ I reminded him. ‘Not yet. And whoever wins Mesh’s throne, you may be sure that this wood will remain near the heart of his realm.’

Far out on the grasslands of the Wendrush, as we had taken meat and fire with the chieftain of the Niuriu, Vishakan, we had heard disquieting rumors that Mesh’s greatest lords were contending with each other to gain my father’s vacant throne. War, it seemed, threatened. Vishakan himself told me that Morjin had stolen the souls of some of my own countrymen – and had turned the hearts of others with threats of crucifixion and promises of glory and everlasting life for anyone who followed him. The Lord of Lies had pledged a thousand-weight of gold to any man who brought him my head. So it was that my companions and I had entered Mesh in secret. Twenty-two kel keeps, great fortresses of iron and stone, encircled the whole of the kingdom and guarded the passes through the mountains. But I knew unexplored ways around three of them – and through the country of the Sawash River and past Arakel, Telshar and the other great peaks of the Central Range. And, of course, through the fields and forests of the Valley of the Swans. So it was that we had come nearly all the way to Lord Harsha’s little stone chalet without stopping at an inn or a farmhouse.

‘The heart of your realm,’ Maram said to me, ‘surely lies with the hearts of those who know you. There can’t be many in this district who will fail to acclaim you when the time comes.’

‘No, perhaps not many.’

‘And there can’t be any who have gone over to the Red Dragon, despite what that barbarian chieftain said. Surely it will be safe to show ourselves here. After all, we don’t have to give out our names.’

I only smiled at this. Even in the best of times, Mesh saw few strangers from other lands. Maram and my other friends would stand out here like rubies and sapphires in a tapestry woven of diamonds. The Valari are a tall people, with long, straight black hair, angular faces like the planes of cut stone, dark ivory skin and bright black eyes. None of us looked anything like that – none of us, of course, except myself.

‘As soon as we show ourselves,’ I told Maram, ‘the word will spread that Valashu Elahad and his companions have returned to Mesh. We should hear what Lord Harsha advises before that moment comes.’

We rode on for a while, into a small clearing, and then Estrella, who was good at finding things, espied a bush near its edge bearing ripe, red raspberries. She nudged her horse over to it, then dismounted. Her joyful smile seemed an invitation for all of us to join her in a midafternoon refreshment. And so the rest of us dismounted as well, and began plucking the soft, little fruits.

‘These,’ Maram said, as he filled his mouth with a handful of raspberries, ‘would make a good meal for any bear.’

‘And you,’ I said, poking his big belly with a smile, ‘would make a better one.’

Master Juwain, a short man with a large head as bald as a walnut, stepped over to me. His face, I thought, with his large gray eyes, had always seemed as luminous as the moonlit sea. He looked at me deeply, then said, ‘We are close to the place that the bear attacked you, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, close,’ I said, staring off through the elms. Then I turned back to smile at him. ‘But you aren’t afraid of bears, too, are you, sir?’

‘I’m afraid of you , Valashu Elahad. That is, afraid for you.’ He pointed a gnarly finger at me as he fixed me with a deep, knowing look. ‘Most of us flee from that which torments us, but you must always seek out the thing you most dread and go poking it with a stick.’

I only laughed at this as I reached back to grip the hilt of my sword, slung over my shoulder. I said, ‘But, sir, I have no stick – only this blade. And I’m sure I won’t have to use it today against any bear.’

Daj, munching on some raspberries, returned my smile in confidence that I had spoken the truth, and so did Estrella. They pressed in close to me, not to take comfort from the protection of my sword – not just – but because such nearness gladdened all our hearts. Then I noticed Atara standing next to the raspberry bush as she held her bow in one hand and her scryer’s sphere of clear, white gelstei with her other. The sun’s light poured down upon her in a bright shower. Her beautiful face, as perfectly proportioned as the sculptures of the angels, turned toward me. She smiled at me, too: but coldly, as if she had seen some terrible future that she did not wish to share. All she said to me was: ‘The only bear you’ll find here today is the one that nearly killed you years ago. It still lives, doesn’t it?’

Yes, I thought, as my fingers tightened around the hilt of my sword, the bear called out from somewhere inside me – and in some strange way, from somewhere in these woods. Even as Asaru, who had saved me from the bear, still lived on as well. My mother and grandmother, and all my murdered family, seemed to take on life anew in the stems of the wildflowers and in the breath of the leaves of the new maple trees. My father, I knew, would always stand beside me like the mountains of the land that I loved.

Liljana, who could not smile, came up to me and grasped my hand. Her iron-gray hair framed her pretty face, which too often fell stern and forbidding. But despite her relentless and domineering manner, she could be the kindest of women, and the wisest, too. She said to me, ‘You’ve always been drawn to these woods, haven’t you?’

Her calm, hazel eyes filled with understanding. She didn’t need to call on the power of her blue gelstei to read my mind – or, rather, to know what grieved my heart.

Across the clearing, through the shadowed gloom of the elms, I heard a tanager trilling out notes that sounded much like a robin’s song: shureet, shuroo . I looked for this bird, but I could not see it. It seemed that this wood, above all other places, held answers to the secret of my past and the puzzle of my future. There dwelled a power here that called to me like a song of fire racing along my blood.