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This, I thought, was Lord Avijan’s way of apologizing for a thing that he had no need to apologize for. A proud and intelligent man with little vanity, he came from a long and honored line of warriors. His grandfather had married my great-grandfather’s youngest sister, and so we counted ourselves as kin. This distant tie of blood, however, formed no basis for his claim on Mesh’s throne. That came from his skill at arms, his coolness of head on the battlefield and his good judgment off it – and the way he inspired courage and loyalty in the men whom he led.
‘Thank you, Lord Avijan,’ I told him. I nudged Altaru closer to him so that I could clasp his hand. ‘But it is my wish that you release your warriors from their oaths. I would have them follow me, or not, according to their hearts. And then, if it is my fate to become king, they may make their oaths to me.’
Lord Avijan bowed his head at this, and then so did the knights lined up in the tunnel of the tower behind him. They drew out their kalamas to salute me, then struck them against their shields in a great noise of steel against steel. And one of them – a knight I recognized as Tavish the Bold – cried out: ‘You will become king, and we will follow you to the end of all battles, oaths or no oaths!’
Lord Avijan then invited all of us to a feast. After we had ridden into the castle and given our horses to the care of the stableboys, we settled into whatever rooms or quarters that Lord Avijan had appointed for us. Half an hour later, we gathered in Lord Avijan’s great hall, on the first floor of the keep. Many long tables laden with roasted joints of meat and hot breads filled this large space; many stands of candles had been set out to light it, and hundreds of little, flickering flames cast their fire into the air. The great wood beams high above us were blackened with generations of soot. A hundred knights and warriors joined us there, for word of my arrival had gone ahead of me. Many of these tall, powerful men I had known since my childhood. I paid my respects to a master knight named Sar Yulmar, and to Sar Vikan, whom I had led into battle at the Culhadosh Commons. Also to Lord Sharad, a very tall and lean man with hair as gray as steel, who had taken command of Asaru’s battalion after my brother had been killed. He had gained great renown at the Battle of Red Mountain against Waas, and fourteen years before that, at the Diamond River, where the Ishkans had practically murdered my grandfather. Despite his years, he had a gallant manner and didn’t mind taking risks in the heat of battle.
We all filled our bellies with good food that night, and then it came time to fill our souls with good conversation. We might have hoped for many rounds of toasts, entertaining stories told and minstrels singing out the great, ancient tales. But as Lord Avijan’s grooms went around filling and refilling the warriors’ cups with thick, black beer, our talk turned toward serious matters. Soon it became clear that our gathering would be less a celebration than a council of war.
After Lord Avijan’s young children had been sent off to bed, he and I came down off the dais at the front of the room where we had taken the table of honor. I insisted that all present should be honored equally that night, and so near the center of the hall I found a table littered with empty cups and spilled beer, and I leaned back against it. Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and others gathered around informally, sitting on tables or the long benches nearby – or standing all crowded-in close. Atara sat on one side of me as if she were my queen, while Maram pressed his huge body up against my other side. Master Juwain and my other companions took their places at the other end of the table. More than a few of the warriors looking on must have thought it strange that we included Daj and Estrella in our discussion, but that was because they did not know these two remarkable children.
‘Let me say, first and last,’ I told the warriors gathered around me, ‘that you do me a great honor in coming forth for me after all that has happened – and in such perilous times. I will never forget this, and no matter what befalls, I will stand by you to my last breath.’
‘You will stand as king – that is what will befall!’ Sar Vikan barked out. He, himself, stood a good few inches shorter than most Valari, but what he lacked in height he made up in the power of his thickly muscled body. His square-cut face seemed animated with a rage of restlessness streaming through him. ‘When Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar hear that you have returned, they will surely step aside.’
‘They will not step aside!’ Lord Sharad said. He leaned against the table opposite me, and pulled at one of the battle ribbons tied to his long, gray hair. ‘Let us, at least, be clear about that.’
‘Then we will make them step aside!’ Sar Vikan snapped as he grasped the hilt of his sword. ‘Just as we will make known the truth about Valashu Elahad – at last. Who, hearing this, will try to hold his warriors to oaths made under false knowledge and great duress?’
‘Well, lad, it is one thing to hear the truth,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘and another to take it to heart. Here’s the truth that I know: Lord Tanu has hardened his heart to the plight of our kingdom, and Lord Tomavar has lost his altogether – and his head!’
Although he had not spoken with humorous intent, his words caused the fierce warriors standing around us to laugh. But any levity soon gave way to more serious passions as Lord Avijan said, ‘If we allow it, Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar will tear the realm apart – that has been obvious from the first. But we must not allow it!’
‘But our choices,’ protested Sar Jessu, who was sitting next to him, ‘are growing fewer. And things between Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu are only growing worse.’
‘Truly, they are,’ Lord Avijan said. ‘And all over mere matters of marriage.’
These ‘mere’ matters, it seemed, had fairly exploded with pure vitriol. The first, and ostensibly the most trivial, concerned a brooch. Lord Tanu’s cousin, Manamar Tanu, was the father of Vareva, whom Lord Tanu had arranged to marry to Lord Tomavar in order to strengthen the bonds between these two prominent families. Now that more than a year had passed since Vareva’s abduction, according to our law, Manamar had declared Vareva dead. He had asked Lord Tomavar for the return of a beautiful diamond brooch that his wife, Dalia, had given to Vareva as a wedding gift. Manamar held that the marriage agreement called for the return of this brooch should Vareva either die or produce no issue. The brooch, he said, had passed down in Dalia’s family for generations, and Dalia now wished to give it to her second daughter, Ursa. But Lord Tomavar claimed that the law was vague concerning such declarations of decease, and said that in any case his beloved Vareva could not be dead. The brooch, he said, was dear to him, and he would not surrender it unless Manamar Tanu took it from him by the victor’s right in battle.
‘Lord Tomavar challenged Sar Manamar to a duel!’ Lord Avijan said. ‘In effect, he did. For the time being, Lord Tanu has forbidden Sar Manamar to go up against Lord Tomavar. But if he wishes for a cause of war, he has only to let his cousin impale himself on Lord Tomavar’s sword.’
‘And that, I fear,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘would be the result of such a duel. I was there at the tournament in Nar twenty years ago when Lord Tomavar won a third at the sword.’
‘Twenty years ago!’ Joshu Kadar called out from behind me.
‘Don’t let Lord Tomavar’s age fool you, lad. We old wolves might get longer in the tooth with the years, but some of us get longer in the reach of our swords, too. I’ve seen Lord Tomavar’s kalama at work, and there are few knights in all of Mesh who could stand up to him.’
Here he looked at me, and so did Lord Avijan and everyone else. In Nar, only two years before, I had won a first at the sword and had been declared the tournament’s champion.
‘A brooch,’ I said, ‘a simple brooch.’
It seemed the most foolish thing in the world that two families could tear themselves apart over a piece of jewelry – and take a whole kingdom along with it.
‘Well,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘it is a diamond brooch, said to be made of the finest Ice Mountain bluestars – haven’t we Valari always fought each other over diamonds?’
‘That we have,’ Lord Avijan said sadly. ‘But Meshians have never fought Meshians.’
‘And now Zenshar Tanu is dead – just two weeks ago on Moonday,’ Sar Jessu put in. ‘And so who can see a chance for peace?’
This was the second matrimonial matter that Lord Avijan had spoken of. Some years before, Sar Zenshar Tanu, Lord Tanu’s youngest nephew, had married Lord Tomavar’s niece, a headstrong young woman named Raya. During the Great Battle, Sar Zenshar had taken an arrow through his leg. Although the arrow had been successfully drawn and Raya had cared for him with great devotion, the wound had festered and had poisoned his blood. Sar Zenshar, to the horror of all, had taken a whole year rotting, withering and dying. After the funeral, as Zenshar had neither father nor brothers, Lord Tanu had taken charge of Raya and her children. But Raya had declared that she would not live under the command of a man who had become her uncle’s enemy. And so in the middle of the night, she put her children onto the backs of swift horses and fled through the Lake Country and the Sawash River Valley to Pushku, where Lord Tomavar had his estates. And so she had broken the final chain that linked the two families together.
‘The whole Tanu clan,’ Sar Jessu said, ‘is outraged over what they are calling the abduction of Zenshar’s children. They’ve put out the word to their smithies, and are refusing to sell swords to anyone who would follow Lord Tomavar.’
The best swords in the world, of course, have always been forged in Godhra, and every Meshian warrior aspires to wield one and invest it with his very soul.
‘And worse,’ Sar Jessu went on, ‘the Tanus have pressured the armorers not to sell to the Tomavar clan. The Tomavars have no diamond mines of their own, or so the Tomavars whine, and so how can they make their own armor?’
‘Diamonds, always diamonds,’ Lord Harsha muttered. ‘It’s been scarcely two years since we nearly went to war with the Ishkans over Mount Korukel’s diamond mines.’
‘But Valashu Elahad,’ Joshu Kadar said to him, ‘returned with the Lightstone and cooled the Ishkans’ blood!’
At this, Sar Shivalad and Sar Viku Aradam and other knights gazed at me as if they were looking for something within me. I felt the whole room practically roiling with strong passions: wonder, doubt, elation and dread.
Lord Avijan bowed his head to me, then said, ‘The Elahad did return, it’s true, but now that the Lord of Lies has regained the Lightstone, the Ishkans’ blood is rising again. Already they have taken a part of Anjo, and have defeated Taron in battle.’
And this, as he was too kind to say, had been the inevitable result of my failure in Tria to unite the Valari against Morjin.
But I must never, I told myself, fail again.
‘Pfahh – the Ishkans!’ Sar Vikan called out to Lord Avijan. ‘You think about them too much.’
‘King Hadaru,’ Lord Avijan reminded him, ‘remains a merciless man – and a cunning one.’
‘Yes, but he has been wounded, and some say the wound rots him to his death.’
‘Some do say that,’ Lord Avijan admitted. ‘But I would not hold my breath waiting for the Ishkan bear to die.’
The story he now told angered everyone, and saddened them, too, for it was only a continuation of the ancient tragedy of our people. After the conclave in Tria where I had slain Ravik Kirriland before thousands, the Valari kings had lost faith in me – and in themselves. Seeing no hope for peace, they had fallen back upon war. Old grievances had festered, and new ambitions fired their blood. In the course of only a few months, Athar had attacked Lagash, while King Waray of Taron had begun plotting against Ishka and King Hadaru. King Waray had tried to help the duchies and baronies of Anjo unite against Ishka – with the secret agenda of trying to make Anjo a client state and so strengthening Taron. But King Hadaru had sniffed out King Waray’s plans, and had marched the strongest army in the Nine Kingdoms into Taron. He defeated King Waray at the Battle of the Broken Tree, where a lance had pierced him. As punishment he had not only annexed part of Anjo but was now demanding that King Waray surrender up territory as well – either that or a huge weight of diamonds in blood payment for the warriors that King Hadaru had lost.
‘But has King Hadaru,’ I said to Lord Avijan, ‘made any move toward Mesh?’
‘Not yet,’ Lord Avijan said. ‘Surely he waits for us to weaken ourselves first.’
‘It is a pity,’ Sar Vikan said, ‘that we didn’t make war upon the Ishkans on the Raaswash. Then we might have weakened them.’
I felt many pairs of eyes searching for something in my eyes, weighing and testing. And I said to Sar Vikan, ‘No, that is not the war we must fight.’
‘But what of Waas, then?’ Lord Avijan asked me. ‘There bodes a war that we might not be able to avoid.’
I turned toward the hall’s eastern window, now dark and full of stars. In that direction only twenty-five miles away across the Culhadosh River lay Waas, where I had fought in my first battle at the Red Mountain. King Sandarkan, as Lord Avijan now told us, burned to avenge the defeat that my father had dealt him. He said that there were signs that King Sandarkan might be planning to lead the Waashians in an attack against Kaash.
‘If they do,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘we must aid them. It is a matter of honor.’
How could I disagree with him? King Talanu Solaru of Kaash was my uncle, and Kaash was Mesh’s ancient ally, and so how could ties of blood and honor be ignored?
‘We cannot march to Kaash’s aid,’ Lord Avijan said, ‘if we are busy fighting ourselves. Surely King Sandarkan is counting on this. Surely he will defeat the Kaashans, for they are too few, and then he will annex the Arjan Land and extract a promise from King Talanu that Kaash won’t come to our aid if Waas then attacks us.’
Joshu Kadar slapped his hand against his sword’s scabbard and said, ‘But we defeated Waas handily once, and can again!’
Lord Harsha sighed at this and said, ‘Little good that will do us, lad, for we’ll only weaken ourselves further, and then King Hadaru will surely lead the Ishkans here.’
‘Or else,’ Lord Avijan said, ‘Waas won’t attack alone but will ally with the Ishkans to put an end to Mesh once and for all.’
‘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.’
As I paused to take a sip of beer, a half dozen speculations and arguments broke out among the warriors standing around me. The hall filled with the stridor of angry and confused voices. And then Lord Avijan turned to Maram and asked, ‘You are from Delu – will the Delians fight if the Red Dragon attacks them?’
‘Will we fight?’ Maram called out. ‘Of course we will! Ah, that is, a few knights and diehards will fight, while my father tries to make terms. He is no fool, and he’ll no more want to stand isolated against the Red Dragon than would any other king – even, I might add, King Hadaru or King Waray, or any of the Valari kings.’
Here he glanced at me as if wishing that I would proclaim that Mesh would never go alone against the Red Dragon. But I looked down into my beer and said nothing.
‘And what of the Sarni tribes?’ Lord Avijan asked, turning toward Atara. ‘Has the Manslayer had news of her people?’
Next to me, Atara nodded her head at this, and her white blindfold moved up and down like a signal banner. ‘The Kurmak will never make terms with Morjin, so long as Sajagax is chief – and I think my grandfather still has a good few years left to him. He will call for the other tribes to ride with him in battle, if battle there must be. The Niuriu might join with him. Perhaps the Danladi, too, and the central Urtuk. I cannot say about the Adirii, for their clans are divided. But I believe that the Manslayers will decide for Sajagax, should the Red Dragon ever attack him.’
She did not add that the fierce women warriors of the Manslayer Society, who came from all the tribes, favored making Atara their Chiefess, and Atara would certainly lead them in aid of Sajagax, if she could.
Now Master Juwain let out a long sigh as he clamped his gnarly hands around his beer mug – filled with apple cider. And he said, ‘There are other ways of opposing the Red Dragon than through war.’
While the warriors listened with the great reverence they held for Masters of the Brotherhood, Master Juwain told them of much the same plan for the peaceful defeat of Morjin that he had put forth two days before in the wood where we had fought the Ahrim.
‘The Maitreya,’ he said, ‘will light a fire in men’s hearts that the Red Dragon cannot put out. In the end it will consume him.’
‘This is our hope,’ I added. ‘But the Maitreya must first live long enough to pass on this flame.’
‘The Maitreya!’ Sar Jessu cried out, looking at me. ‘Always, the Maitreya! Once, we believed that you were the great Shining One.’
At this, a hundred warriors stared straight at me. I, too, had shared in their delusion. In truth, I had engendered it.
‘We believed,’ Sar Jessu went on, ‘that the Maitreya would lead us to victory. But now we don’t want to believe in miracles – it is enough to believe in you!
Again, the warriors around me struck their swords against the wooden tables.
