Lord of Lies (85 page)

I began walking slowly around my slain people, toward the dais at the end of the hall. As I neared it, I had to step over a small wall of Morjin's knights and the Guardians who had fought them. Sunjay Naviru, in death, looked younger and smaller than I had remembered. Skyshan of Ki had fallen next to him, and Sar Kimball, Lord Noldru and many others. I climbed up the dais, where there were more of the enemy; a ring of dead Guardians fairly surrounded the white granite stand.

The Lightstone no longer rested upon it. In its place had been set a square of paper, topped by a piece of gold. I grasped both in my hand and tucked them down into my armor.

Maram came up to me and said, 'Maybe one of our knights secreted the cup on his person. Or had time to hide it, somewhere.'

I swept my sword down toward my dead knights. It glowed only dully. I pointed Alkaladur south, in the direction that Morjin would have ridden with the thousands of his Dragon Guard in order to escape from Mesh with the Lightstone. And its blade flared a bright silver.

'No, it is gone,' I said.

A shudder ripped through me as I tried not to fall writhing to the floor. It was as if one of Morjin's knights had chopped my legs out from under me and then gutted me with his sword.

Kane came over and placed his hand on my shoulder. 'So, then, we'll take it back! We'll ride after them and kill the Dragon!'

Atara shook her head at this. 'No, that's impossible, now.'

'You
say that?' he growled out.

'Yes, I do. This was well-planned. Morjin is hours gone from here. We willl never overtake him.'

'We
must
overtake him.'

'He will have had fresh horses stationed in relays all along his way,' Atara said, holding her hand against her blindfold. 'Our horses are all exhausted and would have trouble galloping a mile.'

'But Lord Avijan still commands a battalion of knights!'

'Half a battalion, now,' Atara said. 'And they, too, are exhausted. I doubt if they have the will to pursue Morjin.'

I wrapped my hand tightly around my sword as I struggled to find the will to keep standing. I stared at the stand's bare granite where once the Lightstone had shone so splendidly. Then I cried out, 'But why did this have to happen!'

The echo of my words off the hall's cold stones, falling like thunder upon the dead, was my only answer.

Kane stepped over to the dais and rolled over one of the bodies there. I ground my teeth together as I stared at the face of Lansar Raasharu.

'It was he who did this,' I said to Kane. 'Somehow, he killed the guards at the gates, and opened them to Morjin.'

'So,' Kane said: 'So.'

'He was a ghul,' I murmured. '
He
was the one that Kasandra warned of.'

'No,' Maram forced out, shaking his head, 'not Lansar - it can't be.'

'He always hated Morjin,' I said. 'Too much, for too long. And then, when I struck down Ravik and Noman killed Baltasar, the hate, too terrible - like a robe of fire, you see. It maddened his soul. And then Morjin seized him.'

Kane slowly nodded his head. His black eyes searched for something in mine. 'Yes, it would be like that.'

'And I made it worse,' I said. 'I encouraged Lansar to believe that I was the Maitreya. And so he had already surrendered part of his will to me.'

'So, it was
his
will to do this,' Kane told me.

'Why didn't I see it?' I said, looking at the wounds in Lansar's body where Morjin must have stabbed him with his own sword.

'Please, don't blame yourself,' Atara said, moving over to my side.

'Why didn't I see
any
of it?' I said, looking at my sword.

There came a knocking at the door leading into the keep, and I shouted for whoever it was to go away. And I heard Master Juwain's voice call back to me, 'Val, open the door!'

I sent Maram to open it. I turned to see Master Juwain and Liljana walk into the room. Their robes showed almost as much blood as the garments of the dead.

'Why are you here, sir?' I said to Master Juwain. I gazed at Liljana. 'There must be wounded from the battle to attend to. Thousands of them.'

'I'm afraid there are,' Master Juwain said. 'But there are other healers. We heard that the castle had been overrun. And so we came here to attend to the women and children.'

I stared at the black banner covering my mother and grandmother. 'Then you've come in vain. They're all dead.'

But in this, I was wrong. Again, someone knocked at the door, and again Maram went to open it. And Daj and Estrella ran into the room.

'What?' I cried out.

Estrella hurried up to Atara and buried her face against her leather armor as she burst out weeping. Daj clasped my hand in his, and his eyes filled with a wild light.

'We hid beneath the wine cellars,' he explained to me. 'In the chambers there.'

'But there are no chambers beneath the wine cellars!' I said.

But it seemed that there were: secret chambers, as Daj told me, built long ago. Somehow, Estrella had discovered them. Like a rat, Daj had once survived in the dark, tunneled earth beneath Argattha. And now he and Estrella had miraculously survived again.

'At first we tried hiding in the granary, with the others,' Daj told me. 'But then, when Lord Morjin's men started killing everyone and taking slaves, we had to find a better place.'

'He took
slaves?'
I said to him.

Daj nodded his head. 'Dasha. Priara. Lord Tomavar's wife. Other women.'

'Dasha Ambar?' Maram cried out. Tears sprang-into his eyes. 'Then I'll never go riding with her again! Ah, too bad, too bad. But at least she was spared. These beautiful, beautiful women, still alive.'

'No,' I said to him, clenching my fist, 'they're worse than dead.'

I looked out into the hall, at the still and silent people lying there. The faces of all those I had seen fail that day on the Culhadosh Commons burned like writhing flames in my mind.

'So many dead,' I murmured. I thought of all the women and children taking refuge in Lashku and Godhra and in Mesh's other cities and towns. I thought of all those in the other cities and realms of Ea, and I said, 'So many waiting to die.'

Atara slid her hand over mine and said, 'Val, you -'

'I killed them all!' I shouted.

'No, you mustn't blame -'

'It is upon me!' I said, pulling my hand away from hers. 'If I hadn't gone to Tria, and killed Ravik Kirriland there, the Valari kings would have sent help to Mesh. Morjin would never have dared to invade us.'

'But you can't know that!'

I was hardly listening to her. I said. 'I was warned of a ghul. I thought it was me. But it was I who
made
Lansar into what he became.'

'No, no.'

'My father was right: I should never have left the castle.'

Any why
did
I leave? Because I thought that Asaru had called for me? Or because I was all too glad to have a chance to ride out and kill Morjin?

'So many dead,' I whispered, looking about the hall.

And suddenly, their souls called to me from that dark and dreadful place that I had always turned away from, and I wanted to join them. Asaru's dying breath burned from my lips. So did that of Mandru and Yarashan, and all my brothers. My mother cried out my name as spears pierced her limbs and belly. And my father. The son of Elkasar Elahad and all of my ancestors, even
the
Elahad, himself - calling, calling like wolves lost in an endless night. Surely the moment had finally come to end their proud and ancient line that went back to Adar in the mists of the beginning of time?

So much death,
I thought as I gazed at the black shroud covering my grandmother.
So much evil.

I hated this dark twisting of the soul as I hated Morjin - as I hated myself. I, freely, of my own will, had chosen to believe that I was the Maitreya. And death had descended upon this wrong as surely as night follows day.

'I knew,' I whispered. 'I always knew.'

Smoke wafted into the room, and I could hardly breathe. I choked on the stench of blood and charred flesh. The end of the world, in a hellish conflagration hotter than the sun, seemed to hang in the air. Cold knives pierced my belly, groin and throat - every part of me. My heart was a swollen sack of poison ready to burst open. There was too much pain. I had brought much of it into the world. I was a murderer, truly, and the punishment for murder was death.

I walked away from my friends, looking for a crack in the floor-stones. I never again wanted to see a child hacked into pieces with a sword. Never to see the terror in a man's eyes when I fell upon him with
my
sword, never to smell his fear or to hear his shrieks: all that I desired was to join my brother Guardians in peace, quiet and nothingness.

'No, Val, no!' Atara cried out. I I finally found a good place to wedge the hilt of my sword so that I
could
fall upon it. I moved to do so. But Kane was too quick for me. He leapt across the room like a tiger and grabbed me from behind. He was strong, like a beast, like an angel, so unbelievably strong. His arms encircled me like iron bands.

Maram and Liljana came forward to help hold me, too. Master Juwain pried my fingers open while Atara took hold of my sword. After Kane had let go of me, she gave it to him. He stood holding the bright blade that he had forged long ago. 'So, Val,' he murmured as he stared at me.

'I have another sword,' I told him. 'With it, I killed Ravik Kirriland.' The hate built inside me, hotter and hotter, deeper and deeper. It was like a fire out of the heart of the stars that nothing, least of all I, could resist.

Then Daj stepped closer, and the shackle marks on his wrists reminded me that many had suffered more than I. In the blaze of Kane's bright, black eyes was the assurance that there was no pain so great that a man could not bear it. Maram, I knew, wanted to tell me that we still had many a glass of beer to drink together. Atara touched my hand in love. It was with love and gratitude for her life that Estrella looked at me - and with something more. For she was truly the mirror of my soul. And in this magical child I saw myself, for all my failings: wild, noble and free. Master Juwain and Liljana, too, came up to me, and they rested their hands over my heart. Then Flick appeared out of nothingness, and Alphanderry's bright face shimmered in the air. My friends all surrounded me like a ring of angels. And then they took away my other sword.

'Live,' Kane said to me. 'Promise me that you'll live.' I felt within my hands and heart the life that the One had given me, still pouring through me like a glorious flame. Who was I to put it out?

'All right,' I told him. 'I promise.'

Kane's hand smacked into mine, and then squeezed me, hard, as if testing my resolve. He pulled me up so close to him that I could feel his eyes burning into mine. And he murmured, 'So, Val, so.'

A moment later, he broke away from me. 'Ha!' he cried out. Then he gave me back Alkaladur.

In its silvery substance I saw his savage, smiling face - and my own. I said to him, 'You would have killed me with this, wouldn't you?'

And he growled out, 'Yes, I would have. As it was for Lansar, so it is for you. If you have given up, if you had despaired, utterly – Morjin would have made a ghul of you. Can you not feel his presence in this

room?'

I looked from one end of the hall to the other, and I nodded. 'Now that he holds the Lightstone,' he said, 'his power will be even greater. We must all watch for each other and guard our souls.'

I walked back over to the dais where the Guardians had given their lives, if not their souls, in defense of that which I had forsaken. I laid my hand on Sunjay's forehead. I said, 'I have done such a great wrong.'

'Yes,' Kane told me, 'you have. And your punishment is to live.' I bowed my head in acceptance of this judgment. Once, I had tried to defy the will of the One in trying to rid the world of suffering. Now I would no longer try to flee from my own.

I gazed deep into the silustria of my sword, and I saw a terrible thing: that it was not only my own wrongs for which I must atone, but those of all people who had come before me, on this world and others, back through the ages great and small to the first Ardun who had come forth into being. For my life had been forged in fires that were ignited millennia, even millions of years, before. I had not made the world; I had only tried to live in it. This was not my fate alone. This was the tragedy and glory of life, that all people touched upon each other in their deeds and must suffer the agonies and joys of each other.

Kane came over to me and said, 'We should go, now. There's much to be done.'

'No, I'll never leave this place,' I told him.

I looked about the quiet hall. In the hundreds of bodies of the Guardians near the stand on the dais, I saw my own crumpled form where I should have joined them. A part of me, I knew, would always remain with them. But the part of me that still lived had duties to perform. It came to me then that the dead cannot weep for the dead - only the living can. And with this thought, all that I had been holding inside broke me open. I sheathed my sword, then fell against Kane's chest and began sobbing like a little boy. 'Val,' he said to me. 'Val.'

My other friends moved over to help hold me up. And that was a true miracle. For as Atara's hand found mine and Maram's great arm pressed into my back, my friends all surrounded me, and they fell against each other sobbing, too.

After a while, I stood back and looked at Kane. With his fierce, beautiful face, softened with his regard for me, he reminded me of my grandfather. And Master Juwain was like unto my father, as Liljana was my mother, and Estrella and Daj were the little sister and brother that I would never have now. In Maram I must find all of Asaru's faithfulness, Karshur's strength, Jonathans laughter, Yarashan's bravura and even his blessed vainglory. And Atara. Her long, gentle hand held all my hope for the future and the new family we might call forth upon the earth.

'We should go,' Kane said to me again. 'Go out and rejoin the army.' 'Yes,' I said. 'Perhaps we
might
still overtake Morjin.'