Lord of Lies (68 page)

As he stood staring at me with his piercing, blue eyes, someone from the mob behind him cried out, 'Maitreya! Lord of Light!'

Two of the guards immediately drove into the mob gripping their heavy spears and using their shields to shove people aside. They closed in on a large, shaggy peasant, whose gray wool tunic was eaten with holes. I could not hear what the guards said to him. But the man suddenly bowed his head as the guards pressed him from either side and escorted him down the line of guards and out of the hall.

King Kiritan did not deign to turn and witness this chastisement. His square, stern face was stamped with his will to order his realm and all that his prideful eyes looked upon. He stood stiffly and almost too straight; his large, well-made head seemed to push the nine points of his golden crown up toward the heavens as if in challenge. He was splendidly attired, in his white ermine mantle and his blue tunic embroidered with gold lions. In his golden hair was a little more silver than I remembered, and his red beard was shot full of gray; even so, he seemed somehow even more vital and powerful, as if the great events of the last year had ignited a fire in him and called him to greatness. I couldn't help staring at the circular scar on his cheek, where Queen Daryana had once bitten him in one of their disputes. She, at least, held no awe for Ea's foremost king.

Following his lead, we all sat at his round table, and the others in the hall took their places. Liljana and Daj walked over to a table in the third row to my right, behind a table of King Kiritan's retainers and in front of a dozen richly dressed merchants. Maram contented himself with joining Lansar Raasharu, Baltasar and the other Guardians at a table that had been set aside for them along the aisle back toward the hall's southern doors. They were in good company though, for the knights in the retinues of the Valari kings shared the tables nearby. On the opposite side of the aisle, Master Juwain greeted others of his Brotherhood whom King Kiritan had summoned to the conclave. Atara might have shared a table with Orox and Sajagax's warriors or taken an empty seat next to Count Dario and the other Narmadas; instead, she decided to sit with her mother. Many people watched with amazement as she strode straight down the lane between the tables. And then, suddenly, her second sight seemed to fail her, and she was reduced for the last few paces to feeling her way with her unstrung bow, tapping its horn-hard end against the floorstones and the edges of the tables.

King Kiritan glanced at his daughter without compassion, and then returned to staring straight at me. He called out, 'We have heard that you have brought the Lightstone here, as you vowed to do. Let us see it, then!'

The hall grew quiet. And so I stood and drew it forth. I held it high above my head.

'It
is
the Lightstone!' someone cried out. 'Truly it is!'

I saw that King Aryaman was staring at me as a wolf might his prey. King Hanniban, a thickset and ruthless man renowned for his cunning in having survived Kallimun plots for most of his seventy years, regarded me as he pulled at his snowy beard. It was said that he thought about death too much, and feared it mightily. It was said, too, that he drank mothers' milk at his meals in order to forestall the ravages of old age. His greed to lay his old hands upon the Lightstone sickened me. I could almost hear him calculating how to relieve me of my burden.

'We must congratulate you,' King Kiritan said to me, 'on stealing this from the Red Dragon's throne room. Now, deliver it to us, as you also vowed.'

I moved not an inch as I stared right back at him. And then I told him, 'I made no such vow. None of us did who entered Argattha or undertook the Quest.'

'You swore to seek the Lightstone for all of Ea and not yourself!'

'And here it is,' I said, 'brought through mountains, steppes and forests, guarded by great knights from brigands and treacheries, for Ea, and not for myself.'

'That is not what we have heard,' King Kiritan told me. 'Even now, here in this hallowed house of Ea's High Kings, the safest of all places, you grip the golden cup as if it were an heirloom of
your
house that you claim by right.'

I glanced at Baron Monteer and then Count Muar, a rapier-thin man whose deadly stare gave one the impression that he could strike as quickly as a snake. Absent from the table of these great lords was Baron Narcavage, who had been killed the year before on King Kiritan's own lawn in a plot to assassinate King Kiritan - and me. I looked farther out into the room, at the heavily armored guards lined up behind the throne and posted by the four doors. Any one of these, I thought, any one of the knights and nobles sitting at the tables or the tradesmen standing and staring at me might be the Skakaman, Noman, in disguise. How many hundreds of men and women, in their coverings of cloaks, bright tunics, armor and flesh were gathered in this great hall, the safest of all places?

'Nothing has yet been claimed,' I said once again, turning back to King Kiritan. 'And I
am
the Lord Guardian of the Lightstone, and so it is upon me to see that it is placed in the hands of the Maitreya.'

'Maitreya,' he snapped out. 'Lord Guardian. Who appointed you so? By what right? And from whom do you guard the Lightstone? King Marshayk? King Kaiman? Ourselves?'

Next to King Hadaru, King Kaiman nodded his red-haired head toward me. And next to
him,
King Santoval Marshayk, who looked much like an older and even fatter Maram, flashed a jolly smile at me, showing his brown, sugar-eaten teeth.

Without warning, from behind me, Baltasar suddenly leapt up from his table and pointed his finger at Duke Malatam. He cried out, 'We guard the Lightstone from your own back-stabbing lords, King Kiritan!'

Duke Malatam's face flushed bright red. Count Muar's hand fell upon the hilt of his sword. Lansar Raasharu, without rising, reached out to grasp his impetuous son's arm and pull him back to his seat. And King Kiritan barked out, 'Duke Malatam has journeyed here to make apologies for his misjudgment. He shall himself be judged at the appropriate time. In any case, we are not in Tarlan but in Tria.'

He continued staring at the Lightstone as he addressed me, 'If you truly guard this for all of Ea, Valashu Elahad, then allow all of Ea to behold it - and to hold it in our hands, even as you do.'

So saying, he nodded at Prince Viromar, sitting to my right, and at King Danashu next to him.

It seemed that I had no choice but to pass on the Lightstone, and so this I did. Prince Viromar took the cup from me and studied it for a few moments before giving it to King Danashu. The Valari kings were no strangers to its radiant warmth, and they did not linger over it. Quickly the cup made its way to King Sandarkan and King Waray, who hesitated only a moment before setting it into King Aryaman's hands. It seemed lost there. King Aryaman was bigger even than Sajagax, with a bushy red beard, yellow hair and eyes as blue and cold as ice. His arms were as thick as most men's thighs, the better to swing the axe that was buckled to his waist. An old wound to his lip made him seem that he was sneering at others, even when he was not. He was the strong king of an island people ravaged and weakened by centuries of blood-feuds, and I could feel in him a raging desire to make Thalu great again.

'The Cup of Heaven!' he called out in a voice like rolling thunder 'What a great weapon has been given us, if only we have the wit to use it.'

He gripped the little cup so hard that it seemed he might crumple it. But one might as well try to crush a diamond. With a heavy sigh, he passed the cup to King Tal, said to be a great scholar of the gelstei and perhaps the most intelligent of Ea's kings. He looked at it for a long while, turning it around and around in his long, lithe hands. Then he gave it to King Hanniban. This old man held it close to his mouth as if he could drink in its light with his bluish lips. It took all his will, it seemed, to turn it over to King Kiritan.

The moment that this aspiring King of Kings touched the lightstone, I nearly whipped out my sword and lunged across the table at him. For I felt
his
will to claim the Lightstone for himself as surely as I did the wild beating of my heart against my ribs. All of his vainglory and lust for power - and his malice toward me - beat against me like a battering ram. It crushed the air from me, and for a moment I could not draw breath.

'Very good, Valashu Elahad,' he said to me. His blue eyes were now lit up like glowing sapphires. 'Very good.'

He glanced toward the hall's west door at a tall, scarred graybeard decked out in full armor and gripping the hilt of his sword. 1 took him to be the captain of the guard. The way that King Kiritan looked at him sent a thrill of fear shooting through me.

'Indeed,' he said, speaking to King Aryaman, and to everyone present, 'the Lightstone
has
been given us to be used for a great purpose - the greatest of purposes.'

His rough, strong hands folded around the golden cup as if making a prayer. It seemed that he was waiting for something.

My attention was drawn to a young man sitting at the Narmada table and I knew without being told that this must be Joakim, the blacksmith's son. He was about my age, and his hamlike hands were blackened from coal dust. He seemed uncomfortable in a new tunic stretched too tight across his massive chest and shoulders. His thick forehead, broad face and dull, brown eyes gave him something of the appearance of an ox. His easy smile was full of longing and wonder as he gazed at the Lightstone.

I sensed King Kiritan's awareness of him, and I expected that he might turn and address him. But he ignored him. Instead, he gripped the Lightstone even more tightly, and called out into the hall: 'Surely it is the will of the One that the Lightstone has returned to Tria, where it belongs. Its promise has drawn Ea's free kings here, to make alliance. What a great thing this is! When we called the Quest a year ago on our birthday, we knew that fate would deliver it into our hands. Many of you made vows to regain the Lightstone for all of Ea - but how is all of Ea to use this greatest of all the gelstei? Surely one, and only one, can wield it in Ea's name.'

'The Maitreya!' Baltasar suddenly cried out again leaping up from his chair. Only Lansar Raasharu's steely grip on his arm kept him from drawing his sword. 'This we all know: the Lightstone is for the Maitreya!'

'Indeed, indeed,' King Kiritan said, 'but until he comes forth, others must use it as best they can.'

Now I pushed back my chair with a harsh, stuttering of wood against smooth stone, and I stood up, too. I called out to King Kiritan: 'No, others may
not
use the Lightstone as you say.'

'You
say this, who has used it to draw your Valari kings here?'

'It is one thing,' I said, 'to call others to gather around a great light. It is another to wield this light oneself.'

The sound of another chair scraping over the floor broke out into the quiet of the hall. And Count Muar stood and called out, 'Prince Valashu confuses the issue! By what right do the Valari keep the Lightstone? By
force,
I say, they keep it - as I've said before. And by force alone they will be compelled to surrender it!'

His words caused all the Guardians to spring up and clasp the hilts of their swords. And Baltasar shouted at Count Muar, 'Are you calling for a battle? Then battle you shall have!'

King Kiritan turned his bright gaze from me to regard the fierce King Mohan and King Kurshan, and the other Valari kings, whose hands also gripped their swords. The knights in their retinues, sitting at their tables, looked toward them for sign that they should draw and set upon Count Muar and his men - or upon anyone who challenged a Valari's honor. On the lawn outside the palace, all my other Guardians stood ready to battle to the death, if only I could call to them. Even Sajagax and his warriors seemed unprepared to see King Kiritan appropriate the Lightstone.

'When the time comes, the Lightstone
will
be taken by force,' King Kiritan said, gripping the cup between his hands. 'But by the force of reason, fate, even love. Until then, it will be guarded as it has been. No one has suggested otherwise.'

And with that, he glared at me even as he passed the Cup of Heaven to Sajagax. He motioned for Count Muar to take his seat, and we all joined him in sitting back down in our chairs.

Sajagax traced his calloused finger around the contours of the golden cup as he regarded King Kiritan. Although King Kiritan had reserved the place of honor for him, I knew that Sajagax took little honor in sitting to King Kiritan's immediate right. 'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer' - this was a cherished Sarni maxim, no less that of the more civilized Alonians. King Kiritan had wed Sajagax's daughter only to blunt the arrows of one of his deadliest, enemies, and he had never ceased treating Daryana as something of a barbarian. Sajagax's love for Daryana, with her still-golden hair and bright, blue eyes full of adoration for her father, was like an arrow piercing my own heart. I wondered if King Kiritan suspected that Sajagax regarded Daryana as too good for him, and not the opposite.

'Reason,' Sajagax said to King Kiritan in his bull's horn of a voice, 'is a great, good thing. It was reason, was it not, that impelled us to ally our lands by marriage when a thousand years of bad blood would have it otherwise. And thus reason should prevail in leading others into alliance with us in order to bring this light that Valashu Elahad speaks of into
all
lands. And to bring the Law of the One. Why else has the Cup of Heaven come to us? I care not to hear more arguments as to claims and rights. Prince Valashu has spirited this gelstei out of Argattha and guarded it successfully so far. Let him continue to guard it until the Maitreya comes forth.'

So saying, he gave the Lightstone to King Theodor, who rather quickly passed it on to King Santoval Marshayk. This great whale of a man was the largest in the room - indeed, in almost any room. He was the only king besides Kiritan to wear a crown: a splendid working of gold set with large rubies on each of its points. His fingers were heavy with fat and jeweled rings; his jewel-embroidered silks glittered almost like Valari battle armor. Even as he examined the Lightstone, he nibbled on a honey cake, which he washed down with copious amounts of mulled wine. His face was as red as a beet. Jasson had told me that he had brought with him part of his harem, and had taken over several rooms of the palace. He was, I thought, what Maram might have become if not for the grace of the One.