Diamond Warriors by David Zindell Read Free Book Online Page B

room and Lord Harsha had poured a bit of brandy into each, I gave them presents, too. For Behira I had silk bags full of rare spices: anise, pepper, cardamom, clove. To Lord Harsha I gave a simple steel throwing knife. He hefted it in his rough hands and promised to add it to his collection of swords, knives, maces, halberds and other weapons mounted on the wall of his great room. When I told him the story behind the knife, he sat looking at me and shaking his head.
    'This was Kane's, and he wanted you to have it,' I said to him. 'When we were made captive in King Arsu's encampment, one of Morjin's High Priests made Kane cast the knife at Estrella and split an apple placed on top of her head.'
    Lord Harsha's hand closed around the knife's handle as he regarded Estrella in amazement - and concern.
    But Estrella remained nearly motionless nibbling on a gooey cherry that she had plucked from a slice of pie. Her large, dark eyes filled with a strange light. In the past, she had suffered greater torments than that which the Kallimun priest, Arch Uttam, had inflicted on her. It was her grace, however, to dwell in the present, most of the time, and here and now she seemed to be happy just sitting safe and sound with those she loved.
    'Well, you have stories to tell,' Lord Harsha called out, 'and we must hear them. Let's drink a toast to your safe return from wherever it was that the stars called you.'
    So saying, he lifted up his cup, and we all joined him in drinking Maram's brandy. 'All right,' he said, 'it's clear that you haven't come home just to see Maram happily wed to my daughter.'
    It came time to give an account of our journey. I said that we had set forth into the wilds of Ea on a quest to find the Maitreya. Many parts of our story I could not relate, or did not want to. It wouldn't do for Lord Harsha - or anyone - to learn the location of the Brotherhood's school or of the greatest of the gelstei crystals that they kept there. Of the terrible darkness I had found within myself in our passage of the Skadarak I kept silent, although I did speak of the Black Jade buried in the earth there and how this evil thing called out to capture one's soul. Likewise I did not want to have to explain to Behira that the round scars marking Maram's cheek and body had been torn into him by the teeth of a monstrous woman called Jezi Yaga. Nothing, however, kept me from telling of our journey through the Red Desert and crossing of the hellish and uncrossable Tar Harath. Behira listened in wonderment to the story of the little people's magic wood hidden in the burning sands of the world's worst wasteland - and how this Vild, as we called it, had quickened Alphanderry's being so that he could speak and dwell almost as a real man. She wanted to hear more of the Singing Caves of Senta than I could have related in a month of evenings. At last though, I had to move on to our nightmarish search through Hesperu: nearly the darkest and worst of all the Dragon kingdoms. It was there, I told Behira and her father, in a village called Jhamrul, that we had come across a healer named Bemossed.
    'With a laying on of his hand,' I said to Lord Harsha, 'he healed a wound to Maram's chest that even Master Juwain could not heal. In Bemossed gathers all that is best and brightest in men. It is almost certain that he is the Maitreya.'
    Lord Harsha sipped his brandy as he looked at me. He said, ' Once before you believed another was the Maitreya.'
    Truly I had: myself. And the lies that I had told myself – and others I had inexorably brought Morjin's armies down upon my land and had nearly destroyed all that I loved.
    'Once,' I said to Lord Harsha, 'I was wrong. This time I am not.'
    Now Lord Harsha took an even longer pull at his brandy as his single eye fixed upon me. And he said to me, 'Something has changed in you, Lord Elahad. The way you speak - I cannot doubt that you tell the truth.'
    'Then do not doubt this either: when it is safe, the Maitreya will come