David Zindell - The Diamond Warriors

I reached out and took hold of her hand. I glanced at her gelstei, then asked her, ‘Now that Bemossed has driven back Morjin’s mind from your crystal and given its power back to you, have you ever thought of using it to try to look into Morjin’s mind again?’

She suddenly snapped her hand from my grasp, and covered up her gelstei. She said, ‘But I have promised never to look into a man’s mind without his permission!’

‘Yes, you have,’ I told her. ‘But Morjin is more a beast than a man, or so you have said. You wouldn’t keep that promise for his sake.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she agreed, squeezing her blue stone. ‘But what you suggest is so dangerous .’

Truly, I thought, it was: like a double-edged sword, Liljana’s talent could cut two ways. If she touched minds with Morjin, he could tear from her some essential knowledge or secret as she could from him. And Morjin could again ravage her mind, or do to her even worse things.

Even so, I stared at her through the wan light and said, ‘I have to know, Liljana.’

‘No, no, you don’t,’ she murmured, shaking her head.

‘I have to know if Bemossed still lives,’ I said. ‘And Morjin would know that, if anyone does.’

‘Yes, Morjin ,’ she said.

I felt her throat burning as with a desire for revenge, even as her soft eyes filled with pleading, compassion and great hope. I did not pursue my suggestion that she seek out the foul, rat-infested caverns of Morjin’s mind. Although I suspected that she herself might dare to contend with him mind to mind once more, someday, this impulse must come from her, according to her sense of her own power – otherwise Morjin might very well seize her will and make her into a ghul. If I loved her, I thought, how could I violate her soul with any demand that might lead toward such a terrible fate?

‘I’m sure,’ she said, suddenly warming toward me, ‘that I would have felt it in Master Storr’s mind if Bemossed had been killed.’

I did not know if that was true – or if she only wanted it to be true, and so believed it. But I needed her to tell me that Bemossed still lived, and make me believe it. And so she did, and so I loved her, for she was almost like my own mother, who had been able to make me believe in most anything, myself most of all.

‘My apologies,’ I told her, ‘for bringing up the matter of Morjin.’

She waved her hand at this, and looked at me deeply. ‘Don’t give it another thought.’

‘I think about little else. I know it is upon me to face him – someday, somehow. But first, I’m sorry to say, I wanted you to find out where he is the most vulnerable, as it was with Angraboda. Or even to put a little poison in his mind and let it work.’

The look in her eyes grew even warmer and brighter as I said this. She almost smiled, then. That was her magic, I thought, to love me despite my weaknesses and darkest dreams. She was like a tree with very deep roots, and something about her seemed to enfold my life with all the vitality of fresh running sap and a crown of shimmering green leaves.

‘If I were Morjin,’ she said to me, ‘I would not want you as my enemy’

‘If you were Morjin,’ I told her, ‘the world would not need Bemossed to restore it.’

Although she could not smile, she could still frown easily enough, which she now did. ‘The Sisterhood, I should tell you, has always taught that it will be a woman who will bring new life to the world – even as a mother does with a child. I admit that it is strange for me to think of Bemossed as the Maitreya, though I don’t see how he cannot be.’

I couldn’t help smiling at this. Each Maitreya throughout the ages had been a man, as the Saganom Elu had told, and never, I thought, had a man been born into the world as splendid as Bemossed.

‘He will come here’ I told her. ‘If you are right and the Brotherhood school is destroyed, Bemossed will want the Seven to bring him here.’

‘But how do you know that?’

In answer, I drew my sword from its scabbard, which I had set down by the side of the table. Alkaladur’s silver blade shimmered in the light of the stars.

‘I know ,’ I told her, echoing the words that she had spoken to me. ‘They will try to make their way here, to these mountains, and so Mesh must be made safe.’

‘Then you will do what you must do to make it so. As you always do. I saw that in you the first time we met.’

I smiled again as I looked up at the stars. To Liljana, I pointed out Valura and Solaru – and then Icesse, Hyanne and the other stars of the Mother’s Necklace, high in the sky in this season of the year.

‘If Alphanderry is right,’ I said, ‘about Damoom’s star conjuncting the earth this fall, we have so little time to accomplish what we must accomplish.’

‘But we do have time, still.’

‘Time,’ I said, gazing at the bright silustria of my sword. ‘Already, a thousand warriors have answered Lord Avijan’s call. And in another six or seven days, there will be a thousand more.’

‘And you will win them as you did the others’ Liljana told me. ‘And then somehow, Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu.’

‘I must win them. Or win against them. Otherwise, Bemossed might as well try to find refuge in Argattha as here.’

‘But what is your plan , Val? You have yet to confide it to me.’

My sword glistered with the lights of the constellations shining above us – and seemed to await the clusters of stars soon to rise. And I said to Liljana, ‘That is because I still don’t know. Ask me again in another week.’

‘All right,’ she said to me, ‘but for now, why don’t you finish your tea and try to sleep? Tomorrow can only bring you better tidings than I did tonight.’

Liljana, though adept at many arts, proved to be no scryer. Late the next morning, a messenger galloped up to the castle bearing tidings that no one wanted to hear: Lord Tanu had assembled his men and had marched out of Godhra along the North Road. Four thousand warriors he had called up to fight for him on foot, while three hundred knights rode beneath his banner. Only yesterday, this army had crossed the Arashar River and passed through Hardu, and was now making its way toward Mount Eluru and Lord Avijan’s castle where many fewer warriors so far had gathered to me.

This news set the castle into a fury of activity. Lord Avijan immediately sent out emissaries to speak with Lord Tanu. He ordered the castle’s walls manned and extra provisions brought inside. Then, some hours later when he deemed all was secured, he summoned the greatest lords and knights to a war council in his great hall.

‘Lord Tanu has moved more quickly than even I would have thought possible,’ he told us.

I sat at one end of the great table at the front of the hall facing Lord Avijan at the other. In between us along one side of the table were Lord Harsha, Lord Sharad and Lord Noldashan – Sar Jessu and Sar Vikan, too. My companions took their places along the table’s other side with Lord Manthanu, a thick and jowly man who had arrived only the day before. This great knight regarded me with puzzlement clouding his long face; he pulled at one of the battle ribbons tied to his long gray hair as if wondering if the tides of war would sweep him away so soon.

‘It is upon me,’ Lord Avijan said, looking up the table at me, ‘to see to the defenses of my lands and my castle. As it is upon us to advise you, Lord Elahad. But if you are to be king, in the end you must decide what we should do about Lord Tanu.’

I inclined my head to him, then said, ‘To begin with, we don’t know why Lord Tanu is marching up the North Road.’