Lord of Lies (60 page)

'Aulara, Auliama',
the ghost said yet again.

What happened then was hard to understand. My consciousness seemed to divide in two like a silk cloth torn by the wind. All the while, I remained aware of the amphitheater and all it contained: the rustling leaves of the elms, the ghost talking to me, the hard stone bench beneath the even harder stones that encased my legs. And yet I found myself in other places, too: soaring through the sky like an eagle above primeval forests, standing on a burning plain, floating in the dark sea of space that envelops other worlds. All that I experienced occurred within time, like grains of sand falling through an hourglass one by one, but time itself seemed to open into a bright infinity that contained all things. I smelled flowers whose scents were utterly strange to me. I felt the earth of distant worlds through the paws of animals for which I had no name.

I listened to the moans of women giving birth and the clash of steel against steel and the rapture of a silver swan singing its death song. I heard a great deal and saw much more.

And this is what I saw: by the shore of a blue ocean on some watery world, a great host of men and women gathered. There must have been a million of them. They were raimented in garments finer than silk, and fillets of silver encrusted with emeralds and diamonds shimmered against their dark hair. The music that poured from their lips gave me to know that they were of the Galadin. Their eyes and hands, shining from within, told me this, too.

They interlocked hands as they danced in ever-widening circles around a golden cup that floated in the air. And as they danced, they sang and the cup gleamed and grew ever brighter. Time passed, perhaps a day, perhaps a thousand years, and then their voices joined into one and filled the world with a single, heartpiercing chord. The flames of their beings suddenly brightened beyond belief and passed around their circles from man to woman as quick as breath - and passed into the shimmering cup, back and forth, from them to it and it to them. The little cup flared so brightly that it outshone the sun. Then a ball of fire exploded outward from its center into space and consumed the Galadin and their world. The light of the great event filled all the universe.

And out of this pure and infinite light, the first gelstei crystallized like the colors of the rainbow falling out of the sky. They were seven in kind, and they sparkled more splendidly than rubies, sapphires and diamonds. And as they poured out great pulses of violet or red, yellow or blue, they vibrated like a mandolet's strings in seven fundamental notes. This music of creation, almost too bright and too beautiful, fell upon the expanding sphere of fire and interfused every part of it. And so the Galadin, who had now become much more, sang the new universe into being.

And out of this angel fire, stars were born. There were millions of millions of them. And from the substance of these luminous orbs, countless worlds formed in this lovely new universe that as yet had no name. And still the Ieldra sang, and from the world's blue oceans and rich, fecund earth arose the fishes and flowers, the whales and butterflies and trees, and all the other forms of life. And finally, men and women, who possessed minds to wonder at the mystery of themselves and to find their purpose in the great play of creation.

And so they planted seeds in the ground and harvested and made flour into bread, as men do; they dug up iron from the same ground and forged it into hoes and ploughshares. They quarreled over who owned this ground, and then made swords instead, and they slew each other in great numbers until their various earths ran red with rivers of blood.

But they were strong, these first men and the women they took as wives. The great song of life fired their beings; the music of memory carried them forward into the brilliant future. Out of the red, roaring oceans inside them came children and their children's children, in numbers too great for swords to cut down. They built cities in which to live and walls around their palaces and great, soaring towers.

And then to the greatest of these worlds, Erathe, the leldra sent the Lightstone. It found its way into the hands of a man with fire in his eyes and a great, blazing heart. People called him Maitreya, the Lord of Light.

He journeyed from city to city and land to land, bringing light wherever he went. And men put down their gleaming swords and polished their souls instead. And glorious cities greater even than Tria filled all the lands until all of the world shined with the splendor of a great civilization and peace at last reigned on Erathe. Then men, tall men with bright, black eyes, looked toward the stars. The boldest of them walked from world to world bearing the Lightstone and giving it into the hands of other great-hearted beings who arose from their various earths. These, too, filled with cities as true civilization spread across the heavens.

At last, after many millions of years, the Lightstone returned to Erathe. There, one of the Shining Ones claimed it and brought it before the throne of a great king, a Starwalker who had journeyed to the center of the universe where the great geistei were kept and had gained great powers of the body, mind and soul. And this mighty warrior came down from his golden throne and knelt before this one. The radiance that poured from the Cup of Heaven washed away the last of the king's ephemerality and quickened the flames of his being so that his lifefire could never die of its own. And when he straightened yet again, the stars themselves crowned him in light, and there stood the first of the universe's immortals.

The king then gave up his throne to visit other worlds and help others prepare to make the same journey as had he. And the Lightstone followed him, always borne by the sons and grandsons of the tall, bright-eyed men. And the Cup of Heaven was given to other Shining Ones, who raised up other kings and queens to the order of the Elijin. And the greatest of these - Ashtoreth, Valoreth, Arwe, Urwe, Artu, Mainyu, Arkoth, Varkoth and Ahura - came to preserve the Lightstone's radiance inside themselves so that they shone and no particle of their beings could be harmed in any way.

And so the great Galadin went forth and summoned others of their kind to the world of Agathad, also known as Skol. And there they waited to fulfill their destiny. At the end of the ages, they would gather by the shores of a silver lake, and sing, and set free the bright infinity within themselves in an explosion into light. They would become beings of pure light: the Ieldra of the new universe to which they would give birth. And life would continue on its journey toward the One: ageless, indestructible, indwelling deep inside the depths of all things.

And all this, as the stars poured down their radiance into the amphitheater and I sat frozen to the bench beneath me, I saw and sensed and tried to understand.

The Maitreyas truly are Bringers of Light,
I thought.
And they are the
Makers of Angels.

And then, like two pieces of silk knitted into a whole cloth again, my consciousness was made one, and I returned to staring out at the amphitheater's layers of leaves and glittering walls - and at the ghost who stared right back at me.

'Ah,
that
was like a drunkard's dreams,' Maram said as he rubbed his eyes. Where before he had shivered, now beads of sweat formed up on his fat forehead. 'Did everyone else see what I did?'

For a while, as the constellations turned slowly above us, we sat there exchanging accounts of what we had seen. They were much the same. Our understanding of them, however, was not.

'The men who guarded the Lightstone,' Sajagax said to me, 'seemed much like you Valari. But why? Who chose
them
for this glory?'

Maram nodded at me and said, 'And what of the king, then? Certainly
he
must have been Valari. He looked like you, my friend.'

The king still stood out in my mind's eye, at once as strange as the distant world of Erathe and utterly familiar: he might have been my brother, my father, myself.

'It was the first Shining One who bore Valashu's aspect,' Lord Raasharu said. 'For surely it is not the cast of a man's face or the color of his eyes that contains his essence, but his heart and soul.'

This provoked yet more comment, from Sar Hannu and Sar Varald and the other knights, who were inclined to believe that the ghost's sole purpose in giving us these visions was to show me my destiny as the Maitreya.

There is much that we still don't comprehend,' Master Juwain said. 'The movement of man is always toward the One, even as we of the Brotherhoods have always taught. But it seems that this rise can be hindered, or even forestalled altogether. From other sources, we know of Angra Mainyu's fall and the War of the Stone. But we were told nothing of this tonight. How is the Lightstone to be used and why did the ancient Maitreyas fail with the Dark One?'

No sooner had this question left his lips than the ghost stepped forward and said,
'Aulara, Auliama.'
Then he began singing out a song that filled all the amphitheater and shook the very stone surrounding us.

'No, wait!' Master Juwain called out, glancing up at the sky. 'That may not be the question that would be best to ask. It is growing late, and there are other things of vital importance that must be .. '

His voice died before the vastly greater voice of the ghost as it became clear that this mysterious being intended to answer Master Juwain's question whether he liked it or not. I listened to the ghost, enraptured, even though I could understand little of what he was saying. For a single word repeated again and again, and that was
Alkaladur.

Again I drew my sword and held it pointed toward the stars. Its silustria rang out like a bell and seemed to sing in harmony with the ghost's music.

'What is he saying?' Maram called out in a voice nearly as big as the ghost's. 'I don't understand any of it.'

Master Juwain, gazing at the ghost said to him. 'There's too much, too fast, for
me
to understand either. But I believe that he is telling the story of Angra Mainyu's fall and the attempt of the Galadin and Eltjin to heal him of his madness.'

'Then why doesn't he tell it in words that make sense?' Maram bellowed out.

At this, the ghost suddenly ceased singing and stared at Maram. Then he smiled and began reciting:

When first the Dragon ruled the land.

The ancient warrior came to Skol.

He sought for healing with his hand,

And healing fire burned his soul.

The sacred spark of hope he held,

It glowed like leaves an emerald green;

In heart and hand it brightly dwelled:

The fire of the Galadin.

He brought this flame into a world

Where flowers blazed like stellulars,

Where secret colors flowed and swirled

And angels walked beneath the stars.

To Star-Home thus the warrior came,

Beside the ancient silver lake.

By hope of heart, by fire and flame,

A sacred sword he vowed to make.

Alkaladur
!
ABtaladur
!

The Sword of Love, the Sword of Light,

Which men have named Awakener

From darkest dreams and fear-filled night.

No noble metal, gem or stone –

Its blade of finer substance wrought,

Of essence pure as love alone,

As Strong as
hope, as quick as
thought.

Valarda, like molten steel,

Like tears, like waves of singing light,

Which angel fire has set its seal

And breath of angels polished bright.

Ten thousand years it took to make

Beneath their planet's shining sun;

Ten thousand angels by the lake:

Their souls poured forth their fire as one.

In strength surpassing adamant,

Its perfect beauty diamond-bright,

No gelstei shone more radiant:

The sacred sword was purest light. . .

As the ghost continued reciting verses that reminded me of others that Alphanderry had once spoken to me, I gazed at my shining sword. The one who forged it, I thought, had named it after another sword, made many ages ago not of silustria but
valarda
- a sword of the soul.
The true Alkaladur.
A hundred questions sprang into my mind. Why couldn't one of the Maitreyas heal Angra Mainyu? And was the ancient warrior of whom the ghost spoke the same as the warrior mentioned in Alphanderry's epic: Kalkin, the immortal Elijin who had somehow become Kane, my companion and friend? And if so, why had Kalkin taken the lead in this quest over the much greater Galadin such as Ashtoreth and Valoreth?

I listened as the ghost told of the great war between the Amshahs, who sought to preserve the Law of the One, and the Daevas who followed Angra Mainyu:

In ruth the warrior went to war,

A host of angels in his train:

Ten thousand Amshahs, all who swore

To heal the Dark One's bitter pain.

With Kalkin, splendid Solajin

And Varkoth, Set and Ashtoreth –

The greatest of the Galadin

Went forth to vanquish fear of death.

And Urukin and Baradin,

In all their pity, pomp and pride:

The brightest of the Elijin

In many thousands fought and died.

Their gift, valarda, opened them:

Into their hearts a fell hate poured;

This turned the warrior's stratagem

For none could wield the sacred sword.

Alkaladur
!
Alkaladur
!

The Brightest Blade, the Sword that Shone,

Which men have named the Opener,

Was meant for one and one alone.