Lord of Lies (39 page)

'Sometimes, that is true,' I said. 'But sometimes we're savages.'

'You
are
savages of the sword/ she said to me/ifcruly, truly. And yet at other times so gentle. So quiet, inside. You sing songs to the stars! And I think the stars, sometimes, sing back to you. In light, in fire. And this fire! It burns so brightly in you. So hot, so clean, so sweet.'

At that moment I was almost glad that she could not let her eyes find mine, for I did not know if I could bear what I would see there.

'And
that',
she said, breathing deeply, 'is why it is good that we don't make our camp with yours or take our meals together. In any case, what would
your
women ,say if Lord Harsha or the others had their way?'

'Lord Harsha,' I told her, 'is many years a widower. And the Guardians have no women.'

'So much the worse,' she said. 'But do you mean, no wives or no one to whom they have pledge their troths?'

'No wives. We have pledges, of course. We have our hopes.'

Here I reached out and clasped her hand in mine.This beautiful hand - long and delicate and yet strong from years of working her bow - seemed stiff and cold as if the fire's warmth had touched only her skin but had failed to penetrate deeper inside. Gently, but with unrelenting force, she pulled her hand away from mine.

'No, no, you shouldn't touch me,' she told me.

'Why - because you're a Manslayer who puts knives to men? Or because you're
imakla?'

'Because I cannot bear to be touched this way. And neither can you.'

'Has nothing changed, then?'

'Should it have?'

'Yes,' I said, 'truly it
should
have.'

I thought of Master luwain's hurrying to my father's castle to show me his star charts and of what had later occurred between Baltasar and me in the great hall. I thought of Estrella sitting by a little moun-tain stream and sipping water in all her innocence from a small golder cup.

'I still have my vow,' Atara reminded me.

'You've slain seventy-one men,' I said, 'yet you've only loathing to slay another.'

'And yet I must if war comes, as it seems it must.'

'But war must not come,' I told her. 'We must not let it. And as for your vow, you made it to the Manslayer Society, didn't you?'

'Yes - and to myself.'

'But there are always higher vows, aren't there? Merely in being born, you made a vow to life and to the One, who gave you life.'

She finally picked up her cup of brandy and took a long sip. She said, 'Do we honor life then by breaking our vows?'

'The old age and the old ways are nearly finished, Atara. This is a time of
new
life - and so for making new vows.'

'To you, then?'

'Yes, to me - to us and all the world. To the new life we'll bring forth.'

'But I'm still blind,' she said. 'Nothing will ever change that.'

I gazed off at the sky, at the constellations spread out across the heavens like a shimmering tapestry of diamonds and black silk. Solaru, Aras and Varshara, the brightest of the stars, poured down their clear, lovely light.

'If this is truly a new age,' I told her, 'then it is truly a time for new hopes.'

She pulled at the cloth binding her face and said, 'Morjin took my hope when he took my eyes.'

'Yet you have your sight - greater than it was before.'

'It is not the same,' she said. 'When
you
see, as I once did, the sun touches a thing: a stone, a flower, a child. The whole world . . . gives back the light into our eyes, touching us, in glory. Everything is so bright, so warm, so sweet. But now, what you call this sight of mine - it is so cold. It is like trying to touch the world through the iciest of waters.'

'You have your hands,' I told her. 'You have your heart - a heart of fire. No woman could love a child as you could.'

'A child, Val?'

'Our sons. Our daughters.'

'No,' she said, shaking her head. 'That can't be, don't you see?'

'But why?'

'Because it's all buried beneath this shroud,' she said, touching the white cloth. 'Because ... in the light of a mother's eyes, a newborn learns to be human.'

I said nothing as I turned to stare into the fire. Flames still worked at a good-sized log, blackening it, and the coals beneath seemed hellishly hot, covered with ash and glowing a deep red. I remembered the coals of another fire in Argattha that had burned Atara's eyes to char; my hands could almost feel the hard edges of the box that Salmelu had delivered to me out of that forsaken place. If we learned to be human from our mothers, who was it that later taught us to be beasts?

'There's always a way,' I murmured. 'There's got to be away.'

'Your way of hopes and miracles?'

'Miracles, yes, if you call them that.'

'What
should
I call this wild hope of yours then? What should I call
you?
Lord Valashu? Lord of Light?'

I nodded toward her scryer's crystal, but she seemed not to perceive this slight motion. I asked her, 'What have seen in your kristei, Atara?'

'Too much,' she said.

'Have you seen the Maitreya, then?'

'I've seen many people . . . who must have held the Lightstone. Who
will
hold it, almost certainly, and always
are.
But there will come a moment. Then there will be one who will make the cup shine as no one else can. Him I cannot see. No scryer can. In the same way it's impossible to see the Lightstone, we're blind to him in this moment, for their fates are as one.'

'Have you seen who the Maitreya is
not,
then? Is it possible that I could be he?'

'Do you wish to be?' she asked. She sat very still, and her voice was full of longing and mystery.

'It's said that if the Maitreya fails to come forth, then a Bringer of Darkness will claim the Lightstone instead. And yet this might not be the worst of such a failure.'

'What could be worse than this?'

'That the Maitreya would then also fail to bring forth miracles.'

Atara took another sip of brandy, and I felt the fiery liquid clutch and burn inside her chest. She took a deep breath and held it for a moment. The long, deep pain she held inside herself made me want to weep.

'You must know that these miracles you desire,' she said to me, 'I also desire. Desperately, desperately. But I mustn't, don't you see? And you mustn't either.'

'But shouldn't I desire what should be?'

'Do you
know
what should be, then?' The cold anger in her voice cut me like a knife.

'My grandfather,' I said to her, 'believed that a man can make his own fate.'

She smiled sadly at this and said, 'You have dreams. Miracles – you would work this beautiful thing you hold inside on moments yet to be. And on yourself. But, Val, you should know that the future has as many plans for us as we do for it.'

'Tell me of these plans, then.'

'Tell yourself. Listen to your heart.'

'But what of
your
heart?' I said. 'Do you remember the passage from the
Healings? "If we bring forth what is inside ourselves, what we bring forth will save us. If we do not bring forth what is inside ourselves, what we do not bring forth will destroy us."'

As Atara sat breathing softly and the fire crackled and moaned, I brought forth the Lightstone which I had earlier taken from Skyshan. Atara must have sensed if not seen it. She shook her head even as a ripple of dread tore through her. She murmured, 'No Val, not this, please!'

'There's always a way,' I said to her. 'There must be a way.'

'No - not
this
way.'

A child, I thought, is born perfectly formed out of her mother as her mother is from the earth. And the earth, and all the earths and all the stars, take their being from the One, as all things do. And the One's essence, this divine will to create, was just love. In the One's fiery heart was the secret of creation itself. And didn't all human beings hold some of this bright flame inside? In the
Healings
it was also written that the Lightstone is the perfect jewel inside the lotus found inside the human heart'. Might not this jewel, I wondered, be used to quicken this flame until it blazed like a star? And might not Atara once again bring forth the perfectly formed being that she held inside herself?

'Atara,' I whispered. I cupped my hands beneath the Lightstone and held it between us. I felt its radiance penetrate my diamond armor and fill up my chest like the sun; I felt her heart beating in perfect rhythm with my own. For a moment, we were like two stars giving out light to each other in brilliant golden pulses. 'Atara, Atara.'

And then she shook her head as something seized her with a terrible will. It seized me and seemed yank me away from her; it ripped my heart from my chest. And then there was only darkness. Inside me there was a hole, black and bottomless as empty space. The cold was so bitter and deep that I wanted to cry out in anguish.

'No, no,' Atara said, 'this mustn't be!'

As the Lightstone fell quiescent once more, I squeezed it between my hands until my fingers hurt. I said, 'Why Atara, why?'

In the fire's red light, her face filled with both resolve and a silent anguish of her own. And she asked me, 'What if you fail in this miracle?'

'What if the sun should fail to rise on the morrow?'

'So sure you are of yourself! But if you fail, this sureness will turn to despair.'

'I won't let it.'

'Can you help it? Could you help the despair that would then finish me? You, with your
valarda
and the way you've always looked at me?'

Could
I help it, I wondered? Could I hear to live if the brightest star in all the heavens suddenly died and shone no more?

'It would kill your dream,' she said to me softly. 'And so it would kill you, the finest part. How could I let that be?'

My eyes filled with a moist stinging pain too great to hold in. And I gasped out, 'How you love me!'

'More than you could ever believe. Almost as much as you love me.'

'And that is why,' I said, 'I would take the chance.'

'Yes,
you would risk it, for yourself. And so might I for myself. But we do not live for ourselves, alone.'

I stared at the white cloth covering her face I wanted almost more than life to rip it from her and see revealed the two brilliant blue eyes that had once shone there.

'The Maitreya, men call you,' she said to me. 'But if you fail to work this miracle, what will you call yourself?'

'Would that matter, then?'

'More than you could ever believe.'

'If I fail, I fail. It must be put to the test. I must know.'

'Yes, indeed you must,' she said. 'But not by such proofs. Do you need it proven to yourself that you are alive? That deep inside, you are beautiful and sweet and good?'

'But how; will I know, then, who I truly am?'

'As with anyone, that is for you - and you alone - to discover.'

I gazed through the fire's wavering flames at the many Guardians laid out on their sleeping furs in silent rows. Beyond them others stood watch against the line of trees down by the river. I listened to this dark rushing water and to the crickets chirping in the grass; I listened, to the wolves howling far out on the steppe and to the faint far-off whisperings of the stars.

'This I know,' I said to her. 'Nothing about the future matters to me unless you are there to look at me as you once did.'

'Please, don't say such things. What of your friends and family What of your people? The whole world?'

'The world can take care of itself,' I said. 'It always has.'

At this, she shook her head almost violently, then held her hand out toward the north, and then east and west. She turned for a moment as she beckoned south, toward the river. Her hand swept upward as if reaching out to the stars, and she faced me once again. The Golden Band grows ever brighter. 'Sometime I can see it. It's not really golden of course. It has no color, but if it did, I would describe it as glorre it's all softness and shimmer and carries inside it an infinity of hues. Infinity, itself. It. . . touched me. You were right that my sight grows greater. And that is why I must tell you what I
must
tell you. Fate lies balanced on a sword's edge infinitely sharper than that of the knife Karimah put to lord Harsha.
Your
fate, and that of the world. If you turn from it all will fall into darkness.'

With a deep sigh, she set down her kristei and held out her hand to me. 'Please, may I have the Lightstone?'

I extended the golden cup straight toward her. For a moment she fumbled about, trying to find it in the cool air of the night. Then I leaned closer and pressed it into her hand.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Now you take this.'

She gave me her crystal, and I held it in my hands not knowing what she wished of me.

'Look into it!' she told me.

'But this is a scryer's sphere. Am I a scryer then?'

'Look into it!' she said again.

With the fire giving out just enough light with which to see, I looked into the kristei. It was of white gelstei and as clear as my sword's diamond pommel. There was nothing inside it.

Atara drew in a deep breath even as the Lightstone came alive in her hands. A clear, deep radiance spilled from the cup and spread outward to envelop me. It illumed the crystal sphere. Suddenly, with a gasp, I saw myself inside staring back at myself. I shuddered and blinked my eyes, for the eyes I saw boring into me were so black and bright with dreams that I couldn't help pitying their owner. I tried to put down the sphere then, but I could not because I found myself holding my sword instead. I tried to look away from the sphere, but I could not; through its clear surface I beheld myself holding the sphere as I sat with my back to a crackling woodfire, with the warriors of our encampment lying still behind me. I cried out in fear. No one heard me. The sphere's glittering surface suddenly hardened, and the world of my birth disappeared. All around me and above was a cold, curving brilliance like that of a minor. With a shock, I realized that somehow the sphere had seized me and held me captive inside it. Everything felt cold then, like an icy blue inside blue, like a sky behind the sky I felt myself falling down and down into a shimmering neverness. Its depths were infinite. It opened outward and upward and inward, forever. For an endless moment I hung suspended in space like a feather buoyed upon the wind. I could see outward in any direction to the end of the world. There was an immense clarity. I looked down a million miles as from the height of a star. Below me blazed a city by the sea. I beheld the great white Tower of the Sun and the Tower of the Moon; the palace of the Narmada kings sat on top of a hill overlooking a great river. The city, I knew, was Tria, and it was all on fire: the palaces and houses and gardens spread across its seven hills. Men and women, burning like human torches, ran screaming through its streets. I screamed out that this must not be, but still no one heard me. I reached out toward this City of Light and found that I still held my sword. Blood flowed down its silvery length and drenched my hand. I tried to rub it away with my other hand, but it would not come off. It was, I knew, the blood of an innocent: perhaps a child who had got in the way of my killing wrath. For my fury to destroy the evil one who had set fire to the city filled me with a terrible burning of my own. My bright sword suddenly leapt with a terrible flame that ignited the fields and the forests around Tria. Faster than I could believe, it spread outward to the grasses of the Wendrush and the Morning Mountains and the sands of the Red Desert until all of Ea was on fire. There was no help for it; it burned with a fury that consumed even naked rock, down to the very bones of the earth itself. The world blazed and blazed in the vastness of space until only a small charred sphere remained and the fire burned itself out. And then the light died, too, and a darkness fell across the heavens like an impenetrable black smoke and smothered the radiance of the stars.