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‘But if they make war upon each other,’ I said, ‘then they would make Mesh like Anjo!’
Lord Harsha shrugged his shoulders as his face fell sad and grave. He muttered into his cup of brandy: ‘These are bad times, the worst of times, so who can blame an old man for wanting to see his daughter well-wed and give his grandson his first sword? Now, in your father’s day, and your grandfather’s, no one would ever have thought that –’
‘Lord Harsha,’ I said, with greater force. ‘Will Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu take up arms against me?’
With a jerk of his head, Lord Harsha downed the last of his brandy and sighed out, ‘I don’t know. Lord Tanu will be cautious, as always. Once he makes up his mind about something, though, he can strike fast and hold on like a bulldog. And Lord Tomavar …’
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Lord Tomavar is burning for vengeance now. Full of the blood madness, do you understand? His warriors captured thirty of the Urtuk – and Lord Tomavar accused them of helping Morjin escape across the steppe with Vareva. And so he had them hacked to death.’
‘But that is not our way!’
‘No, it is not,’ he said. He let loose an even deeper sigh. ‘And so what will he do when you come forth to claim your father’s crown? That I don’t want to know, lad.’
The sound of steel forks against earthen plates full of pie rang out into the narrow room, and echoed off the stone walls. I noticed Liljana concentrating all her attention on Behira and Joshu, while Master Juwain looked at me as if admonishing me to find a way of peace in a world full of hate and vengeful swords.
‘What needs to be decided,’ Lord Harsha finally said to me, ‘is what you will do. Will you go to war for your father’s throne, Valashu Elahad?’
Would I draw my sword against my countrymen, I wondered? I sat considering this while I gripped Alkaladur’s hilt. As Lord Harsha had said, only one man could be king of Mesh.
‘There must be a way without war,’ I said to Lord Harsha, and everyone. ‘If I could step aside and see Lord Avijan crowned king, I would. Or even Lord Tomavar or Lord Tanu. But from what has been said here tonight, this is not possible.’
‘No,’ Lord Harsha agreed, ‘such a grace on your part might only make the situation worse.’
Atara, who had said little all during dinner, now drew forth her sparkling crystal, and told us: ‘Neither Lord Tanu nor Lord Tomavar will ever be king. Nor Lord Avijan. It must be Val – or no one.’
I tried not to smile at Atara’s seeming assurance. Most of the time, she refrained from saying such things. I could not tell if her words were a true prophecy or whether she wished the mere force of her statement to bring about the future that she willed to be.
I drew my sword a few inches out of its scabbard, and the flash of silustria warmed my blood. And I said, ‘It must be me. I never wanted this, but what other choice is there?’
‘But Val,’ Maram said, ‘what will you do? Coming forth now will be dangerous – even more dangerous than we had thought. And what if Kane’s worries prove out, and you find that some of your countrymen have joined the Order of the Dragon?’
At the mention of this secret society of blood drinkers and murderers who followed Morjin, Lord Harsha said, ‘It is bad enough to know that Prince Salmelu went over to the Red Dragon, and is now a filthy priest who calls himself by the filthy name of Igasho. For even one Valari in all the Nine Kingdoms to turn traitor this way is a disgrace.’
He tapped his sword and said, ‘Despite what I said earlier, I won’t believe that any man of Mesh would ever dishonor himself so – I won’t! And the warriors of the Valley of the Swan are as true as diamonds.’
‘Yes,’ Maram agreed with a nod of his head, ‘but will they be true to Val?’
‘Nine of ten will be – perhaps more.’
‘But what of Lord Tanu, then? His army is only a two-day march away. And Lord Tomavar? How long would it take him to lead his six thousand here – a couple of days more?’
How long, indeed, would the hot-headed Lord Tomavar need to march his army from the northwest down across our small kingdom?
Lord Harsha frowned at this as he rubbed the lines creasing his face. He had never been a quick thinker or a brilliant one, but once he decided on a thing, his reasoning usually shone with good common sense.
‘We had thought,’ I said to him, ‘that we might send out a call to those who would follow me to assemble at my father’s castle.’
Lord Harsha slowly shook his head at this. ‘That won’t do, lad. The castle is all burned out, and it would take a week even to get the gates working again. And Lord Tanu might move before you had enough warriors to man the walls.’
He drummed his thick fingers on the table as he looked at me.
‘What do you suggest then?’ I asked him.
‘Let’s do this,’ he said, looking at Joshu Kadar. ‘Sar Joshu and I will ride out tomorrow and gather up those we absolutely trust. We’ll escort you to Lord Avijan’s castle, where you’ll be safe. And then we’ll put out the word that Valashu Elahad has returned to Mesh. Two thousand warriors have sworn oaths to Lord Avijan, and another thousand, at least, look to the weather vane to see which way the wind will blow. Let’s see how many will declare for you.’
I thought about this for a while as I traded glances with Maram, Master Juwain and Liljana. Atara inclined her head toward me. Then I told Lord Harsha: ‘Very well, then, it will be as you have said.’
Our decision so stirred Joshu that he whipped forth his sword and raised it up toward me. ‘Tomorrow morning I will speak with Viku Aradam and Shivalad and a dozen others! I know they’ll all ride with you, Sire!’
This word seemed to hang in the air like a trumpet’s call. And Lord Harsha banged the table with his fist, and turned his angry eye on Joshu.
‘Here, now – that won’t do!’ he snapped. ‘You may call Lord Valashu “Sire” when the warriors have acclaimed him, but not before!’
Joshu bowed his head in acquiescence of Lord Harsha’s admonishment. Lord Harsha, as he should have known, was a stickler for the ancient forms, and he believed that a king must always draw his power from the will of the warriors whom he led.
‘All right, then,’ Lord Harsha said as he stood up from the table and picked up the brandy bottle. He went around the table filling up everyone’s cup. He returned to his place and raised his own as he said, ‘To Valashu Elahad – may he become the next in the unbroken line of Elahad kings and protect our sacred realm!’
After we had clinked cups and sipped our brandy, Behira stared across the table at Joshu and said, ‘Then tomorrow you’ll ride off again?’
At this, Joshu turned toward me. I sensed that he didn’t want to wed Behira half as much as he burned to take his revenge for what had happened upon the Culhadosh Commons. As our eyes met, I felt a bright flame come alive within him.
‘I must serve Lord Valashu,’ he told her. ‘There will be war – if not against Lord Tanu or Lord Tomavar, then against the Waashians when Lord Valashu becomes king. Or the Urtuk will invade in force, and the Mansurii with them. Perhaps Morjin himself will march against Mesh again. And when he does, I must ride with Lord Valashu.’
‘If he is your king, then you must,’ Lord Harsha agreed. ‘And so must I. And that is why we should arrange a wedding while we can.’
I felt Maram’s knee pressing against mine beneath the table, and I said to Lord Harsha, ‘I am afraid there will be war. Why not let the question of your daughter’s marriage wait until greater matters are settled?’
‘Do you mean, wait until one of Morjin’s knights puts a spear through Joshu’s other lung?’ Lord Harsha said bluntly.
As my father had once told me, sometimes problems worked out best if left alone. And death solved all of life’s problems.
‘Or Sar Maram,’ Lord Harsha said. ‘I would no more see him lying bloodied on the battlefield than I would Sar Joshu.’
In the dark corner of the room above Maram’s head, I caught a sense of a deeper darkness. The Ahrim, I knew, followed Maram as it did me.
‘I understand your concern,’ I said to Lord Harsha, ‘and I will do what I can to ease it. Do you know of the estate my family holds along the Kurash River?’
‘The lands by the Old Oaks?’ Lord Harsha said. ‘Five hundred acres of the best bottomland?’
‘Yes, those,’ I said. ‘It shall be my present to Behira at her wedding.’
Lord Harsha nodded his head at this as he regarded me. Ever a practical man, he said, ‘You’re even more generous than your father, lad. But suppose that neither Sar Joshu nor Sar Maram survive what is to come? Suppose – may the stars forbid it – that you yourself do not?’
‘Then,’ I told him, ‘let these lands be held in dower for Behira to whomever she might marry.’
‘Generous, indeed!’ Lord Harsha called out. Again he lifted up his cup. ‘Well, let us drink to that!’
At this, Maram smiled at me in gratitude. We raised our cups, even Master Juwain, though he would drink no intoxicants. Behira, however, sat still and stolid, refusing to touch her cup.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lord Harsha asked her.
And in a clear, strong voice, she said, ‘What if I don’t want to marry?’
Lord Harsha sat in a stunned silence staring at her. ‘Not marry – what do you mean?’
‘I mean, father, that I’m not sure I want to marry anyone.’
Her words struck Lord Harsha speechless, and he glared at her.
Then Behira looked down the table at Liljana, and caught her eye. Usually Liljana stayed out of such business, but something in Behira must have moved her, for she said, ‘There are other things a young woman can do besides marry.’
Her words caused Lord Harsha to turn his black blazing eye upon her. And he commanded Behira, ‘You won’t listen to such outlandish talk!’
But he wasn’t the only one in the Harsha family who could summon up the more wrathful emotions. Behira shook her head at her father and without warning exploded into what might have been a tantrum if it hadn’t been so well-reasoned: ‘Oh, won’t I? And why not? Why must I marry? Because you want grandsons, father? More meat to skewer on our enemies’ swords? I won’t see my children killed this way – I won’t! All this talk tonight of people dying and noble men defending Mesh while I wait and wait yet again for Maram or Joshu or someone else to return someday and favor me with their precious seeds – as if I’m no more than a field of dirt to plant them in! Well, what if I don’t want to wait?’
Lord Harsha, utterly taken aback by this outburst, stared at her and said, ‘But if you don’t marry, what do you think you will do?’
Behira looked at Atara sitting quietly as well-balanced and straight as one of her arrows. And Behira said, ‘The Sarni women, some of them, become warriors.’
‘The Sarni are savages!’ Lord Harsha shouted. Then I felt shame burning his face as he looked at Atara and said, ‘Forgive me, Princess!’
‘It’s all right,’ Atara said with a cold smile. ‘Sometimes we are savages – and worse.’
‘Do you see?’ Lord Harsha said to Behira. ‘Do you see?’
Behira turned to look down the table at me. Then she told her father, ‘I see a man who would become King of Mesh, and not be content merely to keep the roads in good repair and hold feasts. If Lord Elahad wins the throne, then there will be war – a war such as we’ve never seen. And we Valari women are supposed to be warriors aren’t we? With the whole world about to spill its blood, you can’t just expect us to sit around and hope for our men to return and bestow upon us babies!’
Lord Harsha forced himself to breathe in and out ten times before he made response to this: ‘Our women are warriors: warriors of the spirit. Who teaches our children to meditate, and so ennobles them with the grace and power of the One? Who teaches them to tell the truth? It’s the truth I’ll tell you now, as your mother would have if she were still alive: our women are the keepers of the very flame that makes us Valari.’
Behira placed her hand across her breast as she looked at me and said, ‘This flame burns for a better world, as it is with Lord Valashu. Whatever spirit I have, I wish to use in his service helping him to win. Then, father, it might be safe to wed and bring a child into the world.’
Lord Harsha, who had finally borne too much, banged his fist against the table and thundered: ‘You will wed when I say you will and whom I choose as your husband!’
At this, Behira burst into tears. But she soon gathered up her pride, and stood up from her chair. With an almost violent clacking of the crockery, she began stacking up our dirty plates. And she announced, ‘I’m going to do the dishes, and then go for a walk outside. Atara, will you help me? Liljana?’
Without another word, these three very willful women cleared the table and then disappeared into the kitchen, shutting the door behind them. Their voices hummed beyond it like the buzzing of bees from within a hive. Then Lord Harsha gazed at me with accusation lighting up his eye.
‘You have returned, Lord Elahad, to lead us to war,’ he said, ‘for now there is war even in my own house. These are bad times indeed – the worst times I’ve ever seen!’
For a while he sat sipping his brandy and rubbing at his temple. Then I smiled and said to him, ‘Tomorrow I’ll talk with Behira – it will all come out all right. There is always a way’
‘Hearing you say this,’ Lord Harsha told me, ‘I do believe it.’
‘I am no scryer,’ I said, ‘but your family shall have the lands that I spoke of, and you shall have many grandchildren as well.’
‘I want to believe that, too,’ he sighed out, reaching for the brandy bottle. ‘Well, let us make a toast to children then.’
The fiery taste of brandy lingered on my lips that night long after we all had left the table and had gone off to our beds. For hours I lay tossing and turning and dreaming of children: Behira’s brood of boys and girls playing happily in Lord Harsha’s wheatfields, and Daj and Estrella and the son or daughter whom Atara would someday bear for me. All the children in the world. Although it seemed a vain and vainglorious thing to imagine that their future and very lives depended upon my deeds, the painful throbbing of my heart told me that this was so. Tomorrow, I thought, and in the days that followed, I must do that which must be done in order to become king and finally defeat Morjin. Even if it seemed impossible, I must believe that there was always a way.
3 (#ulink_764f686f-8bca-55ad-8c3b-4a94aff8d814)
Lord Harsha and Joshu rode out early the next morning. Along with my companions, I whiled away the hours resting and reading and eating the good, hearty foods that Behira prepared for us. As promised, I took her aside and tried to reason with her. I reminded her that Valari ways were different from those of the Sarni, and that the Valari women have never marched into battle. A sword, I told her, would always be a man’s weapon, while a woman made better use of her soul. And I had need of her father’s sword and all his concentration on the task at hand. I asked her to give her word that she would not anger her father by openly decrying marriage or refusing to wed. If she helped me in this way, I said, I would help her in whatever way I could. We clasped hands to seal our agreement. And then she went off to ask Atara to teach her how to work her great horn bow and fire off her steel-tipped arrows.
We waited all that day, and a little longer. The following morning, just before noon, Lord Harsha returned at the head of fifteen knights whose great horses pounded the little dirt lane into powder. All had accoutered themselves for war: they bore long, double-bladed kalamas and triangular shields and wore suits of splendid diamond armor. I recognized most of them from the charges emblazoned on their surcoats. Sar Shivalad bore a red eagle as his emblem, while Sar Viku Aradam’s surcoat showed three white roses on a blue field. I stood with my friends outside Lord Harsha’s house watching them canter up to us in clouds of dust. As they calmed their mounts and the dust cleared, a sharp-faced man called Sar Zandru pointed at me and called out: ‘It is the Elahad! He lives – as Lord Harsha has said.’
He and the other knights dismounted, then bowed their heads to me. They came up to clasp my hand and present themselves, where presentations were needed. I knew some of these knights quite well: Sar Shivalad, with his fierce eyes and great cleft nose, and Kanshar, Siraj the Younger, Ianaru of Mir and Jurald Evar. Others had familiar faces: Sar Yardru, Sar Barshar and Vijay Iskaldar. Sar Jessu and I had practiced at swords when we were children running around the battlements of my father’s castle; I had last seen him at the Culhadosh Commons leading his warriors into the gap in our lines that might have destroyed the whole army – and Mesh along with it. For his great valor and even greater deed, he should have been rewarded with a ring showing four brilliant diamonds instead of the three of a master knight. But only a Valari king has the power to make a knight into a lord.
‘Valashu Elahad,’ he said, stepping up to me and squeezing my hand. He was a stocky man whose lively eyes looked out from beneath the bushiest black eyebrows I had ever seen. ‘Forgive me for pledging to Lord Avijan, for I would rather have given my oath to you – as we all would.’
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ I said, returning his clasp. I brought his hand up before my eyes. ‘I only wish I could have given you the ring you deserve.’
When I praised him for saving Mesh from defeat in the Great Battle, he told me, ‘But I only fought as everyone did. It was you who had the foresight and courage to let the gap remain open until our enemy was trapped inside. You have a genius for war, Lord Valashu. I have told this to all who would listen.’
‘And you have the heart of a lion,’ I told him, looking at the red lion emblazoned on his white surcoat and shield. ‘I shall call you “Jessu the Lion-Heart,” since I cannot yet call you “Lord Jessu.”’
He smiled as he bowed his head to me. The other knights approved of this honor, for they drew out their kalamas and clanged their steel pommels against their shields. And they called out, ‘Jessu the Lion-Heart! Jessu the Lion-Heart!’
I looked around for Joshu Kadar, but could not see him. When I asked Lord Harsha about this, he told me, ‘The lad has gone off to retrieve his armor and his warhorse, and should meet up here soon.’
He told me that he had preserved my armor, and Maram’s too, and he led the way inside his house up to his room. There, from within a great, locked chest, he drew out three suits of armor reinforced with steel along the shoulders and studded with bright diamonds. After we, too, had accoutered ourselves, Lord Harsha handed me my old surcoat, folded neatly and emblazoned with a great silver swan and seven silver stars. He said to me, ‘You’ll want to wait, I suppose, to wear this?’
‘No,’ I said taking it from him. I pulled it over my head so that the surcoat’s black silk fell down to my knees, with the swan centered over my heart. ‘I am tired of skulking about in secret, as you said. I will go forth beneath my family’s arms.’
Lord Harsha smiled at this. At the very bottom of the chest, he found a great banner also showing my emblem. He said to me, ‘There is no force that can molest us between here and Lord Avijan’s castle, and so why not ride as the Elahad you are? In any case, the news that you have returned will spread through all Mesh soon enough.’
When we went back outside, we found that Joshu Kadar had arrived decked out in heavy armor and bearing on his shield the great white wolf of the Kadars. It came time to say goodbye to Behira, for she would be staying home in order to milk the cows and hoe the fields – and, I guessed, to take up one of Lord Harsha’s swords and practice the ancient forms out in the yard, since there would be no one looking over her shoulder in disapproval of such an unwomanly act.
‘Farewell,’ Behira said to Maram, standing by his horse with him and clasping his hand. She gave him a blueberry tart that she had baked that morning. ‘This will sustain you on at least the first leg of your new adventure.’
‘I pray that it will be my last adventure,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘Just as I pray that someday you will be my wife.’
Behira smiled nicely at this as if she wanted to believe him. She had little gifts as well for Joshu Kadar and her father, and for the children. Master Juwain and Liljana had brought our horses and remounts out from the barn into the yard. Atara sat on top of Fire, while Daj climbed up onto a bay named Brownie and Estrella rode a white gelding we called Snow. They formed up behind Lord Harsha and the fifteen knights – now seventeen counting Joshu Kadar and Maram. Lord Harsha insisted that I take my place at the head of the knights, and so I did. Then, in two columns, we set out down the road.
We had fine weather for travel, with a warm, westerly wind and blue skies full of puffy white clouds. Bees buzzed in the wildflowers growing along the barley and wheat fields, and crows cawed in the cherry orchards. After turning past a farm belonging to a widow named Jereva and her two crippled sons, we made our way east toward Mount Eluru and the white-capped peaks of the Culhadosh range that shone in the distance. The ground rose steadily into a hillier country, and after six or seven miles, the farms began giving way to more orchards, pastures full of sheep and cattle, and patches of forest. The road, like every other in Mesh, had been made of the best paving stones and kept in good repair. Our horses’ hooves drummed against it in a clacking, rhythmic pace, and we made good distance without too much work. Twenty-four miles it was from Lord Harsha’s farm to Lord Avijan’s castle, straight through the heartland of what had once been my father’s realm. And at nearly every house or field that we passed, men, women and children paused in their labors to watch us pound down the road.
At the edge of a pear orchard, a hoary warrior raised his hand to point at my father’s banner streaming in the breeze as he called out to his grandson: ‘Look – the swan and stars of the Elahad!’
He was too old and infirm to do more than wish us well, but we came across other warriors who wanted to take part in our expedition. Those who owned warhorses – and whom Lord Harsha or the other knights could vouch for – I asked to join us. By the time the sun began dropping toward the mountains behind us, we numbered thirty-three strong.
About eight miles from Lord Avijan’s castle, we turned onto a much narrower road leading north. This took us through a band of pasture with the Lake of the Ten Thousand Swans to our left and the steep slopes of Mount Eluru rising almost straight up to the right. In one place, only a strip of grass ten yards wide separated the sacred mountain’s granite walls from the icy blue waters of the lake. Lord Avijan’s ancestors had built the Avijan castle farther up through the pass in a cleft between two spurs of Mount Eluru’s northern buttress. In all the world, I could think of few castles harder to reach or possessing such great natural defenses.
We approached the castle up a very steep and rocky slope that would have daunted any attacking army. A shield wall, fronted with a moat and protected by many high towers, surrounded the castle’s yards and shops, with the great keep rising up like a stone block beneath the much greater mass of Mount Eluru behind it.
Lord Avijan, followed by a retinue of twenty knights, met us on the drawbridge that was lowered over black waters. He had decked himself out in full armor, and sat upon a huge gray stallion. His blue surcoat showed a golden boar. He was a tall man with a long, serious face that reminded me of a wolfhound. At twenty-six years of age, he was young to be a lord, but my father had found few men in Mesh so skilled at leading a great many knights in wild but well-organized charges of steel-clad horses.
‘Lord Elahad!’ he called out to me in a strong, stately voice. ‘Welcome home to Mesh – and to my home. My castle is yours for as long as you need it. And my warriors and knights are yours to command, for as you must have been told, they have taken oaths to me, and it is my command that they should support you in becoming king.’
