And with that, he cast his sword upon the grass. He stepped up to me. Then he knelt down, and bowed his head as he broke out sobbing. All standing around him stared at this extraordinary sight as if they could not believe what they saw.
'A challenge has been made, and a challenge has been withdrawn,' Lord Tanu finally cried out, stepping inside the ring. 'Honor has been defended and satisfied. The duel is over.'
As the knights surrounding us broke apart and regrouped into twos and threes and Master Juwain came up to bandage my cut head. Lord Tomavar looked up at me through his dark, moist eyes. And he asked me, 'Will you really help me find my wife?'
Before I could answer him, even as the warriors picked up his words and passed them back through the ranks edging the square, a tall figure dressed in a hooded traveling cloak stepped onto the field. A glint and jangle of metal hinted at steel mail concealed beneath woven wool. I wondered at the audacity of this person. By the agreement of the truce, only Lord Tanu's or Lord Tomavar's counselors, or my own, were to be allowed into the square. At the quick approach of this intruder, who might have been a rogue knight, Sar Jalval drew his sword and stepped in front of Lord Tomavar as if to protect his lord.
'Your wife needs no finding!' a high-pitched and angry voice cried out. Then the knight pulled back the hood of the traveling cloak - and the helmet of mail beneath that. 'At last
I
have found
you
!'
Before us, shaking out her long, raven hair, stood one of the loveliest women in the Morning Mountains. She was tall, with flawless skin the color of dark ivory and large, dark eyes that shone like twin moons. In her, I thought, gathered all that was best and brightest of the Valari people.
'Vareva!' Lord Tomavar shouted, pushing himself up to his feet. 'You are alive!'
He made a move to cross the grass and embrace her, but Vareva clasped her hand to the sword belted to her side and cried out, 'Stay back, my lord! Stay back - please!'
Lord Tomavar halted his charge and stood staring at her, utterly stupefied as if someone had smashed a mace into his brains. Everyone on the field gathered around us and made a second ring of warriors acting as witnesses that day. Lord Manamar Tanu gazed at his daughter, clearly chagrined and confused as to what he should do.
'But how did you come to be here?' Lord Tomavar asked her. 'And how long have you been back in Mesh?'
'Long enough to hear that you had taken up arms against the son of the man you revered and called "Sire."'
'But, dear wife, there are things you don't understand,' he huffed out. 'Things have happened that you know nothing about!'
Her pained gaze fell upon him with a strong brew of emotions: ire, grief, resentment and adoration. Then she called out in a clear voice: 'I know this: that Valashu Elahad did not desert the castle as you, and others, have accused! I was there, you know. Before the castle fell and they killed almost everyone and took the rest of us away, I heard Lord Lansar Raasharu say that King Shamesh was dead, and that Asaru was now king and had sent Lord Raasharu to summon Val. Valashu Elahad speaks the truth! Lansar Raasharu
was
a ghul! I heard Morjin say this himself! To his filthy priests, in the Stone City, that foul, foul beast of a man boasted that he had suborned the noblest man in Mesh!'
Her words stunned the warriors, knights and lords standing around her. No one had ever dreamed that Vareva - or anyone else - would ever return out of Argattha to confirm the truth of what had happened in my father's castle on that most terrible of days.
'You were in the ... presence of the Red Dragon?' Lord Tomavar finally stammered out to her.
'I served him in his throne room,' Vareva said, with loathing and shame burning up her face. 'Morjin took great pride in sporting his Valari slaves. As he did in boasting of how he had deceived everyone in Tria. Everyone in the world, almost, accuses Valashu Elahad of slaying an innocent man! But Ravik Kirriland was no innocent! He was a Kallimun priest, sent to murder Atara Ars Narmada!'
At the mention of this perfidy, of which Kane had told my friends and me many months ago, Atara bowed her blindfolded head toward Vareva.
'And so all the defamations people have made against Lord Valashu are false!' Vareva cried out. 'And everything that he has said is true!'
As she had spoken, I noticed Liljana holding her blue gelstei out toward Vareva with one hand while pressing her other hand to her temple. Then far out across the field, deep within the ranks of Lord Tomavar's men, an unseen warrior cried out: 'Valashu Elahad has told true! Lord Tomavar's wife confirms this! I can hear her words plain as a robin's song!'
Then others standing even farther back, out of easy reach of a spoken voice, made murmurs of amazement that they could understand Vareva as well. All at once it seemed as if all fifteen thousand warriors gathered around the square were affirming this and nodding their heads. Later, I would overhear men speaking of a miracle: of how they heard the voices of us at the center of the square clearly and distinctly, as if we stood right next to them. It would seem that Liljana had discovered a new power of her blue gelstei.
'Dear Vareva,' Lord Tomavar said, 'I am sorry. I give you my apology, as I did to Lord Valashu.'
I felt the hearts of more than ten thousand Valari warriors beating as one, and suddenly changing directions in their passion, as with the shift of a great flock of birds in flight. I wondered if Lord Tomavar could sense this as well.
'But why, dear wife,' Lord Tomavar continued, gazing at Vareva, 'did you not come forth sooner and speak of these things?'
'I was about to,' Vareva told him, 'when you drew on Lord Valashu. Then it was too late. I did not think that your pride would allow you to apologize, even if you knew the truth of things.'
At this, Lord Tomavar bowed his head in shame.
'Then, too,' Vareva continued, 'I knew that Lord Valashu would defeat you, as how could he not? I
wanted
him to, don't
you
see? Because how can I be your "dear" wife, or any wife at all, after all that has
happened?'
It seemed that Lord Tomavar could not bear to look at her, and so he stared at my sword instead. His black eyes grew brighter and sadder as he studied his reflection as if finally seeing himself as he really was. Then he looked at me, and I felt his heart opening to the vast sea of suffering that Vareva held inside herself. I had a strange sense that he had come alive, in some small part, to my gift of valarda.
'I am sorry,' Lord Tomavar said again, finally turning back to Vareva.
'And I am sorry, too,' she said to him.
'I am sorry - but tell me that you no longer love me, then!'
'I cannot tell you that!' she cried out. 'But what is love against the dark thing that eats at all of us? That waits inside like a beast?'
Lord Tomavar's eyes brimmed with tears as he gazed at her with a rare tenderness. Then she broke down sobbing. After she had regained control of her spasming belly, she gasped out to him, 'I always said that you had the soul of an angel! But I
hated
you for losing it and going against Lord Elahad. It was as if you were already dead! And why did you leave me to Morjin? You should have come after me! You
should
have! Valashu Elahad went into Argattha once, and
he
would have come after the woman he loved!'
At this, Lord Tomavar turned back to gaze at my sword again. So great was the grief ripping through him that I knew he wanted to die. But his pride would not let him take his own life or cast it away. Earlier he had spoken of a debt to me, and debts must be repaid. And he owed Vareva more than his life.
'I cannot undo what has been done,' he called out in a deep yet quavering voice. 'But I
can
do, now, what
should
be done - it is all that anyone can do.'
So saying, this very flawed man, whose essential nobility and faithfulness my father had always counted on, drew himself up tall and straight, and moved over to me. He set his hand upon the flat of my sword and cried out for everyone to hear: 'I stand for Valashu Elahad as king! I call for every warrior who has pledged to me to be free to stand as well!'
He turned toward Vareva yet again. His gaze burned with a promise that he would try to redeem himself in service to me. And more, with a plea to win her back as his wife.
'I stand for Valashu Elahad, too,' Vareva said, taking a step toward me.
'You cannot!' Sar Jalval called back from the ring of men around us. 'You are a woman, and no warrior!'
'I
am
a warrior!' Vareva shouted at him. She drew forth her sharp, shining sword. 'My father taught me how to use this! With it, I slew three of Morjin's guards and made my escape! Many there are standing upon this field who have not slain so many of our enemy!'
Everyone looked at Manamar Tanu then, and this fierce knight nodded his head as he admitted, 'It is true - I instructed my daughter in the sword. I should not have, but she was always a willful girl, and I could not refuse her.'
He paused a moment, then added, 'But she is right about who should be king of Mesh. I stand for Valashu Elahad, too!'
He drew his sword and moved over to me. Then Lord Tanu freed his bright kalama and called out to me, 'I was
very
wrong about you. And so
I
will stand for you as well. All who have pledged to me are free to stand for you, as they will!'
I stood waiting for someone, or anyone, to speak.
'Valashu Elahad!' a powerful voice brayed out. I turned toward Lord Ramjay, Lord Tanu's greatest captain. On the field of the Culhadosh Commons, after the battle, he had spoken against me the most strongly. 'In Tria, with this secret sword you carry inside, you slew a man who has proved to be
not
an innocent - so Vareva Tomavar has told us. If you become king, what will you do with this great power of yours?'
I looked at Alkaladur, shimmering in the sunlight. And then, as I held this beautiful blade in one hand and my handkerchief containing Atara's golden hair in my other, I heard my voice crack out like thunder: 'Only this: I will call upon every particle of my being to defeat Morjin! And I will call upon you. You are Valari, descended all from Elahad himself and his brethren from the stars.
We
are brothers and sisters, warriors of the sword and the spirit. If our spirits are one, then the very fire of the stars shall be ours. If
we
are one, even if there is only one chance in all the universe of what we most desire, we shall set our sight on that and nothing else, and make it be.'
I told them, too, that if fate called me, I would die for them, as all must die for their dream.
For a while it seemed that no one moved. Liljana's blue crystal carried my words out for all to take in, not just with their ears but with a deeper sense. My passion to fight Morjin became
their
passion, not because I struck it into them as I had the truth with Lord Tomavar, but because they opened their hearts to me. Did the valarda, I wondered, dwell within all women and men, waiting to be awakened?
'Very well!' Lord Ramjay suddenly shouted as he drew his sword. 'Then I, too, will stand for Valashu Elahad!'
'And I!' Sar Shagarth shouted back.
'And I stand for Valashu Elahad!' Sar Jalval and Lord Vishand called out, as with one voice.
For a while, Liljana's crystal gave me to hear hundreds of conversations that had broken out around the square like the rumbles of a storm. I listened as warriors recounted my victories where I had led in battle: over Baron Narcavage and his assassins in King Kiritan's garden; over Morjin and his guards in his throne room when my friends and I had claimed the Lightstone; over the rogue Akhand clan of the Adirii tribe on the Wendrush; over the treacherous Duke Malatam and his five hundred knights at Shurkar's Notch in Alonia; and, of course, over Morjin's three armies at the Culhadosh Commons, which many now claimed that we won only because of me. Then Lord Tanu, finally deeming that enough had been said, held up his hand and called for the warriors to make their way to the various edges of the square: north, if they would stand for either the Lords Ramanu, Bahram and Kharashan; south if they favored Lord Tanu; west for Lord Tomavar; and east if they wanted me to be king. The warriors, however, ignored him, As one, almost all of them, from every direction, broke ranks and rushed into the square, crying out, 'Valashu Elahad - Valashu Elahad for king!'
As they pressed in closer. Lord Tanu turned about estimating numbers. And then he shouted: 'It is done! The warriors acclaim Valashu Elahad as our king!'
'Valashu Elahad!' ten thousand men called out at once. 'The Elahad for king!'
'Elahad! Elahad! Elahad!'
Then Lord Arajay Solval looked down at my bare hand, still gripping my sword, and he said, 'But there is no ring!'
I, too, looked down at my hand. In Hesperu, Kane had broken apart my lord's ring for its four diamonds so that we might purchase a slave named Bemossed. Every king of Mesh, for ages, had worn on his finger a ring of five brilliant and perfect diamonds.
'Lord Elahad,' Lord Solval announced, 'cast down his father's ring upon the Culhadosh Commons, and so there is no ring!'
'No, you are wrong!' Lord Harsha's gruff voice blared out. He stepped closer to me, and reached out his fist. When he opened his hand, everyone could see sparkling at its center my father's old ring. 'I kept this on that terrible day against
this
great day, which I always hoped would come.'
So saying, after I gave Kane to hold my sword, Lord Harsha grasped my hand and slid the ring down upon my finger. It fit perfectly. I held up my hand for everyone to see the five bright diamonds, once worn by my father and my grandfather's grandfathers.
'With this ring,' Lord Harsha intoned, repeating the ancient formula, 'go forth in the name of the Shining One as King of Mesh and never forget from where you came.'
'Valashu Elahad!' Lord Avgan shouted. 'King of Mesh - King Valamesh!'