Lord of Lies (22 page)

'But this cannot be,' I said to them. 'Your grievances are ancient. The very mountains have changed their faces in this time, but you have not. How are we to ride together this way? Is there an Ishkan knight who can'te tell of sorrows more recent at the Meshians' hands or a man of Mesh who hasn't suffered the loss of kinsmen in one of our wars? My own grandfather was killed along that very same river scarcely ten years ago, and so were many others.'

Sar Ianashu, a violent man whose cheek muscles were popping beneath his taut ivory skin, finally opened his mouth as.if to gainsay me But then he thought better of such rashness and bit his lip. I was now his lord. He had made vows and would not break them. He bowed his head in shame, and so did Skyshan.

By this time, King Hadaru had walked down the road to see what trouble had befallen us. He watched in silence, both jealous that I should so address one of his knights and glad to see that I had calmed this little dispute even as he might have done. Then he returned to his place at the head of our columns. When it came time to get back on our horses, Asaru walked up to me and said, 'This cannot go on. Ishkans and Meshians, together - this is impossible.'

And I said to him, 'No, it will be all right.'

'But, Val, how can you be sure?'

'Because,' I said, 'either one believes in men or one does not.'

Despite my brave words, I kept a wary watch upon my men as we resumed our journey. But Sar Ianashu's and Skyshan's outburst seemed to let the bad blood between them rather than inflaming it. That night, we had a happy camp within sight of the mighty Culhadosh river. I gave the Lightstone into Sar Ianashu's keeping; Sar Ianashu surprised everyone by lending Skyshan his sharpening stone, which was a very fine one made of pressed diamond dust. After that they clasped hands and pledged their companionship. They both knew that, although I had made no threats, any more fighting would result in their expulsion from the Guardians. What would it avail for them to satisfy some point of honor a thousand years old if they must suffer such shame.

While our dinner of fresh lamb was sizzling over our cooking tires, I gave Estrella what was to become the first of a series of riding lessons. She hated sitting all day by herself in a creaking wagon. With a few motions of her hands and her eager eyes, she indicated that she wished to ride next to me. And so I chose out a gentle mare from our string of remounts and sat Estrella upon her. With her skinny legs gripping the mare's brown sides, she seemed almost too small to ride a full-sized horse. And she could not speak to this fine animal as others might, with soft words and comforting tones that found resonance in the mare's easy nickers. Estrella, however, spoke to her in other ways. Her graceful hands caressed the mare's mane and communicated her faith that the mare would not hurt her. It seemed to me, watching how Estrella's quick, dark eyes met the dark eye of the mare's great turned head, that she immediately loved this beast and that the mare knew this with an animal's instinct. As I led both horse and girl about the fields along the river, I thought that it wouldn't be long before Estrella could ride with the knights and others of our company.

After dinner, I discovered that King Hadaru was a fine storyteller. He invited Asaru and me, and several others, over to his campfire to share some very good and very rare Galdan brandy. He recounted the deeds of the Ishkans' ancestors at the Battle of Rainbow Pass in the year 37 of the Age of Swords, which marked the first time that the Valari had defeated an invading Sarni army and had fought with a people other than themselves. Then, to the nightly ritual of warriors running their sharpening stones along their swords, he recited some ancient verses that were close to every Valari's heart:

A sword becomes a warrior's soul,

Its shining steel through pains made keen,

His strength and valor keep it whole,

His faith and honor keep it clean.

A warrior's soul becomes his sword:

It cuts through darkness, pain and fright;

Its diamond-brilliance points him toward

The brilliant, pure and single light.

When he finished, he raised his glass to me and told me, 'Some day, I would know more about this sword it's said you carry inside
you,
Valashu Elahad.'

Early the next morning we crossed the Culhadosh River, greatest of the waters that drain the Morning Mountains, And so we passed into Taron, the most populous of the Nine Kingdoms. It was a fair country with many farms spread a ong the Culhadosh. Out of this rich black soil the Taroners grew barley and oats, wheat and rye - and not a few warriors and knights who had pledged their swords to King Waravin Nar. We met a small squadron of these who were on their way to the tournament. Their shields showed blue boars and black ravens and other devices unfamiliar to me. If the Taroners were chagrined to see such a large body of outland knights riding free through their land they gave no sign of it. But their leader, a Lord Kladaru, remarked the strangeness of Ishkans accompanying Meshians, saying. 'If this is truly the end of the age, as has been prophesied, then this must be the first of its miracles.'

After King Hadaru proudly called up Sar Marjay, one of his nephews, to bring forth the Lightstone, Lord Eladaru blinked his eyes and said, 'It seems I misspoke. Meshians surrendering the guardianship of the Lightstone to an Ishkan - surely
this
must be the greatest of miracles. The next thing you know, maybe King Kurshan really will find a way to sail the stars.'

Lord Eladaru bid us a safe journey, then gathered up his men and rode on ahead of us. I watched them disappear along the road that wound up and around the low, green hills to the east

We, with our heavy baggage train, followed them more slowly. We passed through fields of sunflowers and apple orchards, and then some miles of rolling pasturage given over to the grazing of goats and sheep. Toward the end of our first day in Taron, the finely paved road turned into a track of packed dirt. As there had been no rain for the past few days, the hot sun had dried out its surface. The horses' hooves, no less the wheels of the wagons, pulverized the dirt and sent up thick clouds of dust. Trailing behind King Hadaru and his Ishkan knights became a torment of stinging eyes and grit coating our lips and teeth. We had to cover our faces with our scarves so as not to choke. Maram complained about riding behind King Hadaru. As he wiped at his beard and blinked his powdered eyes, he said, 'Now that we're in Taron, the Ishkans should trail us. Let them eat
our
dust.'

On our second day in Taron, Maram had good cause to wish lor the previous day's dust: toward noon, some thick, dark clouds came out of the west and let loose a downpour lasting for hours. The rain turned the road into a bog of sticky mud and potholes like little brown ponds. Twice, one of the wagons got stuck in this mire. Our pace slowed as the horses slogged along; I listened to the squish and suck of their hooves against the mud as I blinked my eyes against the slanting rain. The gray sky seemed too low, too heavy. The rain was too moist and nearly smothered me. I felt something cold, wet and dark sniffing at my insides like the snout of some fell beast. I felt a pulling there in my belly as if sharp teeth were tearing into me while long claws hooked into my back. This odious sensation seemed to emanate from somewhere behind me; it reminded me of the time that the dreadful Grays had pursued Maram, Master Juwain, Atara and me through the wilds of Alonia. Only now, on this muddy road in the open country whatever was pursuing me seemed to have no hate for me, but only a fierce will to rend and destroy.

We made camp that night in well-drained meadow above the road. After Estrella's riding lesson, I held council in my tent with Maram and Master Juwain - and with my brothers, too. 1 told them of my misgivings. And Maram immediately sighed out, 'Oh, no, not the Stonefaces! I'd rather face Morjin himself again than them. If it
is
them, too bad for us.'

'It will be all right,' I said to him. I remembered too well the unclean sense of how the Grays wanted to suck out my soul and torment me. This
didn't feel
like them.'

'Well, what did it feel like?'

'Like someone behind me wanted to murder me.'

Yarashan, who had little liking for the new Guardians, didn't hesitate to sawOne of the Ishkans, then?'

'It can't be,' I said. 'Whoever is pursuing me, in his wish to slay
.
.. there is so much
power!

Yarashan shook his handsome head skeptically. This strange gift I had of sensing others' emotions disturbed him, the more so because he seemed to lack it. 'It
could
be one of the Ishkans, Val. King Hadaru chose them himself, didn't he? What if he's set one of them to murder you?'

He went on to say that King Hadaru could not want me to be the Maitreya. Even though King Hadaru had spoken nobly about uniting the Valari, very likely he himself wished to be the one to lead an alliance against Morjin. If I were killed, then King Hadaru might contrive a way to use the new Guardians to give him control of the Lightstone.

'You've a keen mind for plots and strategies,' I said to Yarashan. My brother beamed as if he had just beaten me in another game of chess and was proud to explicate my mistakes. 'What you say makes good sense - except for one thing.'

'And what is that?'

'King Hadaru is no murderer who would set an assassin upon me.'

'Can you be sure of that?'

'As sure as I am of Ianashu and the new Guardians. As sure as I am of Skyshan and Sunjay and the Guardians that I chose myself.'

Yarashan looked at Asaru as if in frustration of my naivete. And Asaru said, 'There is another possibility. The ghul may have followed us from Mesh.'

I shuddered at this suggestion as I looked out the flap of my tent at the darkening hills around us. If a ghul was hiding in the pastures or woods nearby, I could not sense him.

'We should post extra guards tonight,' Asaru continued. 'And we should post guards around
your
tent, Val. Men we can trust beyond doubt in case one of the Ishkans
is
an assassin.'

Each night, since we had set out on the road, it had become our custom that the Lightstone return to my hand and be kept in my tent at the center of our camp.

'No, there will be no guards around my tent,' I told Asaru. 'What would we tell them? That we mistrust the Ishkans, who are now their companions? And what would the Ishkans think of their calling as Guardians when they discovered that we of Mesh sought to guard ourselves against
them
?'

Master Juwain, who had been silent until now, sighed as he rubbed the back of his head. 'Very well, then, since the rain has stopped, I'll sit outside my tent as if taking a bit of fresh air. If anyone approaches
your
tent, Val, I'll find a way to detain him and give the alarm.'

'Ah, do you intend to sit up all night?' Maram asked him.

'Are you volunteering to relieve me and take a shift?'

Maram, who had been proposing no such thing, or so I thought, looked back and forth between Master Juwain and my brothers. Their unyielding black eyes fixed upon him as if to ask whether he was truly a Valari knight in spirit, as the two diamonds of his ring proclaimed him to be.

'I suppose it wouldn't hurt me to lose a little sleep tonight,' Maram finally said. He clapped me on my shoulder with his huge hand. 'I wouldn't sleep very well in any case knowing that a ghul was stalking my best friend.'

It was arranged then that Maram would take the second of the night's shifts. Asaru and Yarashan, whose tent was pitched next to mine, would keep watch during the last hours of the night.

And so everyone except Master Juwain retired to his bed. I spread out my sleeping furs inside my large pavilion; next to me I laid my chess board and the wooden box containing thirty-two ivory and ebony pieces. And on top of it I set the Lightstone. I lay back to look up at the stars through the open flap in the roof of my tent. I felt outside among the many Guardians for the cold knives of a desire to murder me; I felt nothing. I was certain that I would be unable to sleep. It pained me to think of Master Juwain sitting up for hours outside his tent while I tossed about here futilely trying for a bit of rest. Then I remembered a meditation that he had once taught me in the heart of the Vardaloon, when clouds of mosquitoes had whined in my ear for endless dark hours. I closed my eyes to practice it. My mind cleared as time began to dissolve. The little noises of the camp and the chirping of the crickets in the fields outside faded away; inside me there was a spreading calm and a desire to lose myself in the timeless realm of the One.

I was more tired than I knew; I must have dozed off quickly and slept for hours. I was not quite aware of what awakened me. Perhaps it was the swirl of little lights as Flick spun furiously about in the dark spaces above me For a moment I lay suspended in that netherworld of unknowing, not quite able grasp onto the sights, sounds and smells of the earth, or even the sense of my own existence. And then consciousness came flooding into me like the crush of an icy river. I gasped for breath, and a surge of fear caused my heart to begin beating wildly. I opened my eyes to see the cloaked figure of one of the Guardians moving toward me. He held a mace in his apraised hand. Seeing that I suddenly saw him, he leaped forward in one furious motion and whipped the mace straight down toward my head.

My whole body convulsed with a terrible urge to escape this sudden death. I jerked my head away from the descending mace even as I rolled to my side and grabbed the Lightstone. I was not quite quick enough; the iron mace grazed the side of my head and stunned me. The knight above me raised back the mace again as he fell upon me; by some miracle I grabbed his arm so that he could not brain me. With his other hand, he grabbed at my hand that held the Lightstone. Thus locked together, he bore his weight down upon me, raging at me like a lion, twisting and pulling and trying to push his mace into my teeth even as he drove his knee at my belly. I smelled the sweat-stained leather of his battle armor and the essence of lilacs steaming off the white scarf tied around his neck. As we rolled about in this death struggle, he kept trying to bring his mace to bear. The insane power of his body and being shocked me. It could only be another moment before he fought free of my weakening grip and split my head open. I finally cried out with all the force of my lungs: 'No!'