Lord of Lies (52 page)

'We truly do,' I told him.

Sajagax again made the sign of the circle with his finger. Then he gathered in all his courage and waved his hand at Flick as he might try to ward off a cloud of flies. We all watched as his hand swept through Flick's sparkling lights without disturbing them in any way.

'All right,' he said. 'Speak, imp. Tell me of the Law of the One.'

At that moment, Flick's radiance coalesced into the shape of Alphanderry's face. I gasped to see Alphanderry's curly black hair large brown eyes and fine features now woven of light instead of flesh. It was as if our old friend stared luminously out of the dark air before us.

Sajagax jerked back his hand as if from a flame. And his eyes opened wide with astonishment as words poured forth from Flick's glowing mouth: 'Speak imp. Tell me of the Law of the One.'

Sajagax tried to making his warding sign yet again, but he couldn't seem to make his arm move. He stared at Flick, dumbfounded, as we all were. For the voice that had boomed out into the night was
not
that of our dead minstrel but the gravelly blare of Sajagax himself,

'Alphanderry was a great mimic,' Maram reminded me. 'Do you remember how he made fun of King Kiritan?'

I nodded my head because I remembered very well And Sajagax shook his fist at Flick and said, 'Well, he better not make fun of me.'

And Flick stared right back at him and said, 'He better not make fun of me.'

Sajagax forced a smile and tried to put on a bold face. He muttered, 'Never ask an imp to tell you the Law of the One.'

And then a moment later, still speaking in Sajagax's voice, Flick amazed us yet further, saying, 'To tell you the Law of the One: "Be strong and protect the weak. Work your will in accordance with the higher will. Keep your word as you would the truth. Seek the glory of the One." '

And so it went, Flick adding to or altering slightly the words that Sajagax himself had already spoken. I heard him command the great Kurmak chieftain to honor both his father
and
his mother. And he finished by saying, "Live free and die gladly into the light of the One."'

For a while no one spoke as we stared at Flick's numinous new face The sounds of the world suddenly seemed too loud: the popping and hissing of the wood in the fire; the crickets' chirping; the wolves far out on the steppe howling at the moon. Many of my men, sitting around fires in front of their tents, sensed that something extraordinary was occurring between me and my friends. They looked our way. But it seemed that Flick was not visible to them from such distances.

Then Master Juwain turned to me and said, 'I think that Flick might be able to do more than simply mimic our words, Val.'

'Val,' Flick said, now in Master Juwain's voice, and he looked up at the stars.

'Val
!' Master Juwain cried out. 'Do you see? Look where he's looking!
Val
- this
is
the Galadin's word for star!'

Master Juwain set down his copy of the
Saganom Elu
and brought out his journal. He opened it to the first page and said,
'Arda
!'

And Flick replied,
'Arda',
as he looked through the fire's wavering flames straight at Lord Raasharu's chest,

'All right, then,' Master Juwain said, smiling happily,
'arda
is "fire" or "heart", as I thought. Now then, we have
halla,
which could be harmony or beauty or -'

'Halla!
Flick repeated, and he looked at Atara sitting straight and still next to me, as cold and beautiful as chiseled marble. Then Flick's soft brown eyes fell upon Estrella, and his face lit up with a beauty of his own as he repeated one more time:
'Halla!

This testing of words continued for some time. Sajagax poured more brandy into our mugs, and we sat sipping this sweet, old liquor as we listened to Flick speak. After a while, Flick seemed to grow tired of this labor. He closed his mouth and stared at Master Juwain. A twinkle of lights danced in his eyes. His face came alive with all of Alphanderry's old playfulness. And then, in Alphanderry's own voice, he sang out with heartpiercing beauty whole shimmering streams of song. When he had finished, even Sajagax had tears in his eyes. Then Flick smiled at him and laughed softly, and he winked once again into neverness. But his lovely voice lingered: it seemed to hang in the air like the after-tones of silver bells.

Master Juwain, who had been scribbling furiously in his journal, put down his quill and said to me, 'Too much, too quickly - do you remember anything of what he said?'

'Yes,' I told him. When I closed my eyes, I could hear Alphanderry's song inside my heart. 'I remember.'

'Good. Well, we still have some hours before dawn' Master Juwain again picked up his quill. 'Let's get to work, shall we?'

I yawned and looked up at the Swan constellation shining above the horizon. 'Whatever Flick really is, sir,
I'm
still a man and have to sleep.'

'We all do,' Sajagax agreed as he looked at me strangely. 'Summer nights are short, and at dawn we'll ride hard for Alonia. And you Valari will be hard put to keep up with us. We don't want you falling off your horses.'

He grabbed his brandy bottle and leaned over to kiss Atara goodnight. Then he stood up and muttered, 'Horses! What was it that imp said to me? "Honor your horse - and all the creatures of the earth"' But how can anyone honor the worms and blowflies alongside the horse?'

And with that, he stood up and summoned Thadrak and Orox, and they walked back to the Kurmak's encampment. All the next day, during our hot, long ride by the river, Flick did not return to enchant or mystify us. But I called up his words for Master Juwain to record in his journal. It amazed me that he managed to write with such a neat hand sitting on top of his swaying horse His need to learn the Galadin's language, 1 thought, was nearly as great as my own.

We covered a good distance that morning, for the Sarni always rode swiftly, and we who guarded the Lightstone desired to reach Tria as soon as we could. Some of my knights complained of the monotony of our journey; the world was flat here, nothing more than endless miles of yellow and green grassland beneath a sheeny blue sky. There was little to engage the eye. Bees buzzed among the wildflowers, and we caught sight of some lions fighting over an antelope they had killed. I worried that my men, irritated by the heat and bloodflies that bit their faces, might themselves take to fighting: Meshians against Ishkans, Waashians against Taroners, Atharians against Lagashuns. But the truce that we had forged during our journey from King Hadaru's hall and tempered since the tournament held true. It touched my heart to see Kaashans and Anjoris treating each other with goodwill, as if they were brothers. It helped, I knew, that we Valari were all strangers in a strange land here, where the wind blew wild and fierce across the sere emptiness of the Wendrush. If it came to battle, we must fight as one - or die as knights of separate kingdoms. That there was something more in their giving up old grievances, Lord Raasharu reminded me during a brief rest along the bank of the Poru.

'You are the Lord of Light,' he said to me as his long face brightened with reverence.

I shook my head as I told him, 'That is still not proven.'

'The more you doubt yourself, Lord Valashu, the less others do.'

I looked off at Sar Avram and Shivathar and my other knights up and down the river watering their horses in the Poru's turbid flow. Sar Jarlath, who had come so dose to death in the battle with the Adirii, smiled at me and waved his hand in salute. To Lord Raasharu, I said, 'They might do well to doubt. Much depends on the truth or falseness of that which they call me.'

'The men love you,' he said to me simply. 'They do not doubt this, any more than they doubt that you love them.'

His words pierced my heart like so many swords. My father had once said that leading men as a band of brothers was the greatest of joys - and that leading them to their deaths in battle was the greatest anguish.

'They would follow you, you know,' he said to me, 'even if you weren't the Maitreya.'

I carried this thought with me as we resumed our journey. Most of the time I rode at the head of our columns, exchanging words with Master Juwain. I kept watching Sajagax and his warriors, who rode easily and skillfully ahead of us. The Kurmak, at least, had no love of me or my knights. Perhaps, in their fierce way, they loved or honored Sajagax, for they were all of Tharkat clan, as was he. Certainly they feared him. He had demanded of each of them that they give their word not to fight with my men. It was to this, more than anything, that I attributed the uneasy peace between our two companies.

But the Kurmak continued to fight or contend among themselves. From time to time, a pair of them would shout at each other or break from their ragged formation to gallop across the grass in a race. They shot their arrows at lions and sometimes charged singly toward a pride of them, vying with each other to see who could come the closest before these great beasts either charged them or fled. They whistled and cursed and laughed at each other's jokes. A few of Sajagax's most willful warriors guzzled beer, even during the day, and their loud, brash songs of challenge to the sky frightened the birds away.

Once, as I rode next to Atara, I asked her why she had left Alonia to live with her grandfather among these rude, wild people. And Atara told me, 'We Sarni
are
violent, it is true. But so it is almost everywhere. On the Wendrush, at least, if a warrior wishes to kill you, he will do so openly and honesdy. We do not plot and scheme or poison each other, either in body or mind. We keep our word and our laws, as cruel as you might think they are. We like singing and dancing. And we love life, Val. Despite what my grandfather said about the flies and worms, if he were forced to spend much time in a castle or some grand house of marble, he would go mad, as would any of my people.'

Later that day, we came to the place where the Poru was joined by the Astu. This great river, fed by the Blood, the Jade and other waters that streamed down from the White Mountains, added to the Poru's flow and swelled it so that the distance from its east bank to the west was nearly a mile. Sajagax and the Kurmak now took to scanning this mighty brown river, and both its wooded banks, for directly across it was the land of the Marituk. Only the bravest and most determined of warriors, I thought, would dare swim their horses and themselves through treacherous currents that had drowned more than one raiding party. The Marituk were such warriors. And so were the Kurmak. When we camped that evening and treated Sajagax to some of the succulent antelope that one of my knights had killed, I overheard Orox begging Sajagax to add a little fun to our journey and strike out toward the west in order steal women, horses and gold.

But Sajagax had not won thirty-three battles and great wealth by being so easily diverted from his purpose. He had given me his word that he would ride with me to Tria, and so ride we did, as straight and quickly as an arrow flies, or so the Sarni like to say. By noon the next day, with the sun like a hot orange fire turning the world into a furnace, we neared the northern bounds of the Kurmak's country. We had to turn a few miles toward the east for here the Poru overflowed its banks, making a mire of the steppe's long grasses and soil. The cause of this, I soon learned, was not any natural configuration or depression of the earth. The hand of man alone had wrought a structure -the greatest on earth - that blocked the river like a dam. And this massive work of granite and mortar was called the Long Wall.

From miles away, we saw it cutting across the steppe like an upraised scar of stone. Towers, every fifty yards, surmounted its endless line of battlements, biting at the sky like teeth to the east and west for as far as the eye could see. Alonian soldiers stood garrison duty in the towers, though few were stationed here, for Alonia and the Sarni were not presently at war. But the Alonians dreaded the Sarni, as they always had. Late in the Age of the Mother, King Yarin Marshan the Great had drawn a line from the southern end of the Blue Mountains six hundred miles east to the Gap in the Morning Mountains. All the lands to the north, he had claimed for Alonia. But the kings who had succeeded him had not been able to hold back the tide of the Sarni's swelling numbers. After nearly a thousand years of war and rapine, King Shurkar Eriades had gained enough power to begin building the Wall along the Line of Yarin. Two hundred years it took for the Alonians to complete it. By 1124 in the Age of Swords, the Alonians thought themselves well-protected against the yellow-haired hordes of the south.

But the Wall had a weakness, and that was the Poru river. Indeed, the original Wall had a break in it a mile wide, for its makers had built it only to the points, east and west, where the Poru overflowed its banks during the spring floods. But the Sarni found that they could mount autumn and winter attacks along the corridors to either side of the Poru when the river went down. A few of these, despite the heroics of the Alonian soldiers defending the corridors, were successful. And so the Alonians labored another fifty years to extend the Wall to the Poru's east and west banks, driving pylons deep into the muddy earth to support its great weight of stone. And still the Sarni had continued their aggressions, building boats and rafts and simply floating their armies down the river into Alonia. And so finally, the Alonians had spent another hundred years - and thousands of lives - planting their pylons into the bedrock beneath the river itself. They then built the Wall out over the river like a massive bridge. Three feet only, during the Poru's lowest flow, separated the base of the Wall from the waters of the river. And when it was in flood or running high, during the spring and the summer raiding season, the base of the Wall was submerged, impeding the river's flow so that spilled over its banks and created a mire three miles wide.

As we drew closer to the Wall, Sajagax halted his horse on a low rise and sat staring at it. A short while later, with my Guardians behind me, I drew up to him, and he said, 'There it is, Lord Valashu. A dunghill made of stone.'