Lord of Lies (73 page)

'Valashu Elahad,' Count Dario told me in a voice as heavy as lead, 'this conclave has come to an end, and you have no place in the company of kings. Leave Tria before the sun sets tonight. Leave Alonia as quickly as your horse will carry you. Do not return.'

He drew in a deep breath as he pointed at the pocket of my cloak into which I had placed the Lightstone. And then he added, 'Take that cursed thing from our land.'

After that, there was nothing to say and little to do. Kane, sword in hand, stood by my side flashing deadly looks at any and all who would dare challenge me. Master Juwain bent to scoop up the pieces of his shattered crystal, then pressed close to me, as did Maram. Liljana, with Daj and Estrella close behind, came over to me and met my eyes with a sweet, motherly look that told me she would always see good in me, even when I could not see it in myself. Atara finally broke away from Queen Daryana. She stepped up to me and gently touched my wounded palm. It made me weep to feel the warmth that had returned to her and passed into to me, hand to hand.

Then Lord Raasharu, Lord Harsha, Sar Shivathar, Skyshan of Ki, Sar Jural ad and Sar Kimball raised up Baltasar's body to their shoulders. Sunjay Naviru, with Sar Jarlath and Lord Noldru, formed a vanguard ahead of them. At my command, they stepped forward with drawn swords, and my friends and I followed them bearing Baltasar's body down the long aisle and out of the hall.

O
n the lawn outside the palace, we said goodbye to Sajagax and Queen Daryana. King Kiritan's death had at last freed her from her despised marriage vows, and she had decided to return with her father to her childhood home.

'There's no point in my trying to rule,' she explained, standing up straight and regal. 'The barons would never accept a Kurmak as their sovereign.'

As Sajagax's warriors brought up their horses and my knights gathered around us, Maram said to her, 'But what of Atara, then? She is King Kiritan's daughter as well as yours.'

Daryana looked at Atara, who was embracing Karimah in farewell, and she said, 'Yes, Atara is our daughter. The Alonians might once have bowed to a High Queen, but that was in another age.'

'Then who will rule Alonia?'

Daryana waved her hand in front of her as if warding away a hornet. 'Perhaps Count Dario. Perhaps Baron Maruth. I care not. Let the Five Families and the barons fight with Kiritan's bastards over the throne.'

Just then one of her servants came out of the palace bearing a gem-encrusted box. I presumed it contained Queen Daryana's jewelry: all that she would be taking with her from Alonia. She grasped the box and said to Atara, 'Besides, our people will need me now.'

Sajagax laid his muscular, sun-burned arm about her shoulders as he looked at Atara and said, 'As I warned Valashu, in the event of the conclave's failure, there will be trouble with the Marituk. Trouble all across the Wendrush. We'll ride south as quickly as we can. Won't you ride with us?'

'No,' Atara said, standing by my side and squeezing my hand. 'I'll ride with Val. My place is with him, now.'

Sajagax stepped forward to kiss Atara, and so did Daryana. They took their leave of each other in the brusque Kurmak way. Then Sajagax clasped my hand and said, 'You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened here. Fate is fate, is it not? But we're still free, and we still have our bows - and swords. Let us use them to fight Morjin and bring the Law of the One into all lands.'

He grinned at me, then mounted his horse and added, 'You'd better ride quickly, too, Valashu. No matter Count Dario's words, I trust these Alonians not at all. And your Valari kings hardly more. Maybe we'll meet again in better times. Until then, death to our enemies - and seek the glory of the One! Farewell, my Valari friend!'

And so we parted ways with the great Sajagax and his wild, yellow-haired warriors. They rode out of Tria as they had come. I gathered the Guardians to me and prepared to leave the city by a different route. And then Liljana surprised me, announcing that she and Daj would accompany me, too.

'I didn't fail you on the road to Argattha, did I?' she said to me. 'Did you think I'd desert you now just because the road ahead seems a dark one? No, no, of
course
I'm coming with you!'

We hastened to leave Tria then. With my columns of knights behind me, my friends and I made our way across the city down broad avenues lined with people who had turned out to witness my disgrace. No one cheered me. No one cast rose petals onto the streets. Our retreat took us down to the Poru and across the great Star Bridge, gleaming golden in the late sun. Near the ruins of the Old Sanctuary of the Maitriche Telu, we stopped at a large house for Liljana to retrieve a few cooking pots and other essentials she might need on our journey. And then we passed the city's walls through the Ashtoreth Gate, which slammed shut behind us as the Trians sealed in their city against the fall of night The Nar Road lay before us, for hundreds of miles, through deep forests and across mountains. As Liljana had said, it seemed a dark way, its worn paving stones already fading to shades of gray and black as the day's light failed all around us.

I learned much later that with the deaths of Noman, Ravik Kirriland and Baltasar (and King Kiritan, whose body was never found), the great conclave did indeed come to an end, even as Count Dario had said. But for the next few days, most of the kings lingered on in Tria as King Waray tried to rally the Valari kings and persuade the others to sit once more in good faith at King Kiritan's round table. But then King Mohan quarreled with King Kurshan, and they nearly came to blows. King Kurshan rode off with his retinue, as did King Sandarkan, who had renewed the old dispute with Prince Viromar over the Arjan land. King Waray himself had to take the defensive when King Hadaru accused him of conspiring against him and Ishka. In the end, the old Ishkan bear stormed out of the palace threatening war with Taron. Things went not much better with King Aryaman and King Tal, and the other kings. They left Tria in betrayal and anger, never to return. And as for Count Muar and Baron Maruth,
they
each vowed to return at the head of their domains' armies should Count Dario press his claim to Alonia's throne.

Late the next day, thirty miles from Tria outside the town of Sarabrunan, we buried Baltasar on a little knoll covered with oaks. He would rest in good company. For all about us, beneath the woods and grass, were buried the ten thousand Valari who had fallen at the Battle of the Sarburn two entire ages before. Beneath some moss, I found a white stone that had once marked the grave of one of these men. Time had nearly worn smooth the ancient headstone. I called for a hammer and used a sharp tent stake to renew the lettering cut into the hard granite:
Here lies a Valari warrior.
Sunjay Naviru declaimed that I should chisel Baltasar's name and feats into the stone, but Lansar Raasharu would not hear of this. He said that his son would have more honor lying in the ground as did the other heroes who had fought against Morjin and defeated him. And so I planted the stone above Baltasar's grave and said a prayer for his soul.

That night, we camped in a fallow field beneath the Hill of the Dead, as the knoll had once been called. We dug a deep moat around our rows of tents and made a palisade of sharpened stakes driven into the loamy earth. Sunjay Naviru posted one of the Guardians at every twenty paces to watch for Belur Narmada's knights - or anyone else who might have thought to pursue us. My men ate a cold, quick meal and hurried off to their beds. They bade me goodnight with deep looks of mourning. It was a quiet, cheerless camp, and I listened in vain for the singing of the Sarni warriors who had accompanied us along many miles of our journey toward Tria.

After we had eaten the last of our cheese, bread and dried sagosk, I sat for a long time with my friends around a fire outside my pavilion. I asked Lansar Raasharu to join us in council, but he said that we companions who had faced Morjin in Argattha should take our tea and brandy together. He told me that
he
would face Morjin alone on the Hill of the Dead, keeping a vigil above Baltasar's grave. I knew exactly what he meant, for in the end, each of us must face evil and the great neverness alone. And so I allowed this noble man to draw his sword and walk into the dark woods outside our camp.

The sky was clear that night, and many stars burned down through the blackness above us. The village a few miles away scented the air with the smells of woodsmoke and roasting meats; I listened to some dogs barking and the rushing of a nearby stream. It was good to sit with Master Juwain, Maram, Atara, Liljana and Kane, as we had so many times on our quest. We all missed Ymiru's great, brooding presence, but Daj's lively company made up for his absence, a little. At the last moment Estrella joined us, too. It raised my spirits to be surrounded by my old friends, even if it did seem to me that the world had come to an end.

I had many questions for Kane, and he answered many - but many more of them he did not, for that was his way. This gruff, growling wolf of a man had long since abandoned any niceties or etiquette that did not suit him. If he chose not to respond to a query, he would neither evade nor apologize but simply glare at one as if in warning. So it was that he would not tell us of his hunt for the two Skakamen, Elman and Urman, that he had tracked down and killed. Nor would he tell us how he had discovered that Morjin had unleashed them upon Ea. His reticence, in this matter, rankled Maram. He kept sipping from his cup of brandy, and he finally looked at Kane and muttered, 'Ah, but you keep too many secrets.'

"That I do,' Kane said, sipping from his own mug. 'There's much that you don't need to know.'

'Don't need to know!' Maram cried out. 'That skulking Noman nearly killed us all! You say that Morjin summoned the Skakamen from Khutar. What if he summons more of them?'

'That
is unlikely,' Kane said, gazing up at the sky. He stabbed his thick finger toward the Bear constellation and added, 'Earlier this year, there was an alignment of the planets and stars. This created a door that Morjin was able to open. So, the next such alignment of Ea and Khutar won't occur for another five hundred and twenty-three years.'

At this mention of stellar alignments, Master Juwain turned his good ear toward Kane in hope that he might say more about this art of descrying earthly events in the movements of the stars. But Kane had no mind for such arcane talk. He leaned over and squeezed Maram's knee as he said, 'Will you sleep better tonight knowing that Noman was after Val and not you?'

'No,' Maram said, 'I won't. 'It was all too close - too, too close.'

'That it was.'

'Even your arrival in King Kiritan's hall - I dread what might have happened if you hadn't unmasked Noman, so to speak. How did you recognize him?'

Kane's harsh, handsome face pulled into a scowl as he said, 'How does one wolf recognize another in the middle of a pack of dogs?'

So bright did his eyes flare just then that it was hard to look at him.

'But if you
could
recognize Noman,' Maram persisted, 'if this Skakaman
knew
this, then I don't understand why he hadn't issued orders to King Kiritan's guards to bar you from the hall?' 'Let's just say,' Kane growled out, 'that Noman had good reason to think that I was dead.'

Then he smiled at the sky, showing his long, white teeth to the glittering heavens as he called out, 'Ha, but I'm not dead, am I? It's Noman who is dead, thanks to Valashu Elahad.'

He turned to look at me. I touched the hilt of my sword, and I told him, 'Twice he nearly killed me. And then, in King Kiritan's hall .. .' I fell silent as I listened to the crickets chirping in the grass and gazed into Kane's blazing eyes. And he said to me, 'So, I sent the letter to Liljana to warn you. And I killed two horses riding straight through to Tria. Elman was to have mimed and murdered King Kiritan. If I had known that
Noman
would find a way to contrive such a foul crime at the last moment, I'd have warned Atara, too -and King Kiritan.'

The fire's flames seemed to dance in the white cloth covering Atara's face. I could tell that she struggled to keep her jaw from trembling. It tormented her that she had not even been able to stand over her father's grave.

To Kane, she said, 'If I couldn't see the danger, there's really no reason that you should have.'

'Well, I
should have'
Kane said. 'If one plays chess with the Red Dragon, it's perilous to overlook any possible move.'

'What I don't understand,' Maram said, 'is how Noman could have foreseen so much? All right, all right, so he found a way to get close to King Kiritan, to stick a knife in his back and bury the body in the gardens somewhere outside the palace - ah, excuse me, Atara, for speaking so bluntly. But how could he know that Master Juwain would challenge his reading of that old chronicle? And summon that ghost out of his crystal and condemn Val for all to hear? Master Juwain didn't know it himself!'

It saddened me to see Master Juwain take out the shards of his akashic crystal and sit holding them piled up in his rough hands.

With the breaking of this wondrous gelstei, all its colors had died, and each individual shard glowed dully like a chunk of gray glass.

'So, Noman could
not
have foreseen this,' Kane said. 'The Skakamen are clever - but not
that
clever. First of all, I doubt that Balakin ever wrote any such chronicle and left if for the Narmadas to collect. Likely Noman had a book of genealogies or some such and was only pretending to read from it. He needed only to challenge Val's claim. Ha, it's strange, isn't it, that he was able to do this by twisting the truth to his purpose?'

Although it was a cool night for midsummer, I was sweating beneath my diamond armor. I wiped my forehead as I shifted about on my cloak, but I said nothing.

'As for Master Juwain's crystal,' Kane continued, 'Noman had some good luck and some bad. The ghost's reciting of the verses played right into Noman's strategy. But in any case, he certainly meant to challenge Val as he did - and to incite the Valari kings into drawing their swords. That was to be an excuse for seizing Val, and the Lightstone. Likely Val would have been put to the sword in some foul dungeon, or even there in the hall. There might have been war between the Nine Kingdoms and Alonia. Morjin's disciple would have sat upon Alonia's throne, unknown to all. And Morjin would have regained the Lightstone.'