Lord of Lies

by David Zindell

  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.'

  At the mention of this little cup that had caused so much trouble, I drew it forth and sat staring into its golden hollows.

  'The Beast meant to destroy you, Val,' Kane said to me. 'And not just your life but your honor - the legend that has grown around you.'

  'Well,' I said, squeezing the Lightstone's hard gelstei, 'at least my life still remains. And this.'

  But my self-pity seemed only to anger Kane. If I expected him to tell me, as Sajagax had, that I shouldn't blame myself for what had happened, then I would have been a fool. As a volcano trembles with fire, Kane fairly seethed with blame for me - and for himself.

  'What in all the blazes of heaven were you thinking?' he suddenly shouted at me. So violent was the pent-up passion that erupted from him that two of the Guardians at the edge of the camp turned to regard him in alarm. But Kane ignored them; he sat facing me as his black eyes glistered with a barely-controlled fury. 'Valashu Elahad, the great Shining One - the Maitreya! Ha! You were supposed to guard the Lightstone for him! It was this realization, wasn't it, that rendered the Lightstone visible to you in the first place? How could you have been so wrong?'

  As he continued glaring at me, Master Juwain rattled the ragged bones of his ruined crystal in his hands, and he said, 'I'm afraid that I encouraged Val to believe that he was the Maitreya. You see, there were so many signs: Aos and Niran at the midheaven, conjuncting the sun. Siraj in the Ram constellation, the stars . . .'

  His voice died into the crackling of the fire and into Kane's thunderous silence. And then Liljana leaned forward and shook her finger at Kane. 'Don't you speak that way to Val! If you knew that he couldn't have been the Maitreya, why didn't you warn him?'

  With Kane fixing his brightblack eyes upon me as a tiger might stare down another of his kind, it seemed that he had heard nothing of what our friends had said. He seemed to be asking me, in a howl of outrage, again and again: how could I have been so wrong? And so I finally held the Lightstone out toward the Hill of the Dead as I told him, 'I wanted to end war. The suffering. . . of everyone. Even death.'

  Kane's breath suddenly b
urst from him as if a sword had pierced his lungs. His face softened, and so did the light in his eyes.

  'Yes, of course you would have wanted that,' he said at last. 'I should have known you would. I should have spoken of this before. Perhaps Maram is right that I do keep too many secrets.'

  He took a sip of brandy and held it in his mouth a moment before swallowing. I could almost feel the dark liquor burning all the way down his throat. And then he said, 'That ghost told truly. Ghost, ha! He is one of the Urudjin who dwell in the realm of the Alama Almithral. They are the keepers of memory and time. So, there is a story that comes out of the beginning of time. An old, old story that goes back to the Ardun Satra before the mountains were born. There was a world, it's said. Erathe was its name. And there the Lightstone was sent and came to Ashvar, who was the first Maitreya. He used it to raise up Erathe's people to the order of the Valari. The greatest of these, their king, was named Adar. And it was he who became the Lightstone's first guardian.'

  He took another sip of brandy as he stared at the golden cup that I held. 'Adar was the first man to walk the stars. Man, ha! You Valari have always been something more. So. So. After Ashvar finished his work on Erathe, Adar led a host of Valari knights to other worlds -and they brought the Lightstone with them. Theirs it was to find other Maitreyas and set it into their hands. And so they did. Adar finally died, as men do, but the guardianship of the Lightstone passed to his firstborn, Shakhad, then to his son, on and on, through the great ages and the small, as the Elijin were raised up from the Valari and the Galadin from them. And always the Lightstone passed to one of Adar's descendants - as guardians, never Maitreyas. His line has never failed. Elahad was of it. And so are you, Valashu.'

  The little cup in my hand suddenly seemed as heavy as the moon. I could hardly believe what Kane had told me. And so I said to him, 'All those millennia of millennia, father to son, son to grandson - it seems impossible.'

  'We're all miracles of creations,' Kane said, sweeping his blunt hand around the circle. 'Each of us was born of a mother and grandmother, going back in an unbroken line to the first days when the Ardun arose from Eluru's many earths.'

  'Yes, it must be so,' I said, thinking of my mother and grandmother, 'But you must be wrong that the Lightstone passed always to one of Adar's descendants. There was Angra Mainyu. There was Morjin.'

  'Must I be wrong?' Kane said to me as dark lights flashed inside him. 'So. So. You must be told. Mainyu, too, was of the line of Adar.'

  I drew in a sharp, quick breath. In King Kiritan's hall, Ashtoreth's messenger had said this to me: Angra Mainyu once held the same dream as do you. He, too, wanted to end death, suffering itself. He deceived himself, as have you, Valashu.

  'No, no,' I murmured. 'It's not possible. Angra Mainyu was the greatest of the Galadin.'

  'So he was before he fell. But before that, long, long ago, he was of the Elijin. And before that he was born of the Valari, even as you were.'

  'But he stole the Lightstone - so you told me!'

  'That he did.' Kane eyed the gleaming golden cup that I held. 'You see, he gave up any claim to its guardianship when he became an Elijin. So it must be. The highest orders are not permitted to use the Lightstone, nor even to touch it.'

  I noticed that the fingers of both his hands had drawn into fists. I could feel the muscles trembling in his arms up through his tense shoulders and quick, savage body.

  'But you have touched the Lightstone yourself,' I whispered to him. 'More than once!'

  'Yes, I have.'

  'But you are yourself of the Elijin! Your true name is -'

  'Be quiet now!' he snarled, cutting me off. He glanced over his shoulder at the knights keeping watch on the Hill of the Dead. 'We will not speak that name - so you promised me!'

  'My apologies,' I said, looking at him. The veins along his muscular neck stood out as if they could not bear the pressure of the blood beating through them. I wanted to take away the torment of his fierce, pounding heart. 'But the ghost - he of the Urudjin - he told us of the Battle of Tharharra. It was you, wasn't it, who defeated Angra Mainyu? And then took the Lightstone from Marsul?'

  I looked into Kane's black, unfathomable eyes. As the light of the crackling fire played in their liquid centers, his gaze fell cold and strange. I felt inside him a vast distance, like the ocean of space between the earth and the stars.

  'Was it I?' he said in a low, mournful voice. He opened his hands and stared down in them. 'Was it truly I? It was so long ago, you can't imagine the years, working at him I wind and water do the face of a mountain. What remains of the child you once were, Valashu? What was the shape of your face before you were born? I have a memory of the one you speak of, I think. A memory of memory. He was one of the great ones, once. He dwelled on other worlds, beyond the stars.' Kane sighed as he clapped his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. Then he brought out the dark, oval stone that he had cut from the forehead of the leader of the Grays who had once pursued us through the nearby country. And he told us, 'I didn't defeat Angra Mainyu. He is not defeated. I used a black gelstei similar to this one to suck the life from him, for a moment only while Manwe and others bound him on Damoom.'

  I tapped my fingernail against the rim of the Lightstone, and I said, 'But in the end, you did surrender this to Valakam?'

  'Yes,' he said, gazing at the golden cup.

  'And on the first Quest, in the Age of Swords, you regained this for one of Elahad's descendants to guard?'

  'Yes.'

  'And in Argattha, you might have claimed this for yourself, yet you gave it back to me?'

  'So. So I did,' he murmured, looking at me. 'You are its rightful guardian.'

  'No,' I said, shaking my head. 'I should give this to my father for safe-keeping. Or perhaps Asaru - one of my brothers.'

  Kane edged between Maram and the fire, and knelt before me. He grasped my wrist then. His hand bruised me like iron, like some evil device that one might find in a dungeon. And he told me, 'I won't hear such talk from you! Do you understand? This is no time for that!' He sighed again as he let go of me. And then he said, 'Do you remember the story of the eagle and the sun?'

  'No,' I said, 'that story is not told in Mesh.'

  He returned to his place between Maram and Master Juwain, and retrieved his cup of brandy. He took a sip from it. And then he drew in a deep breath and said, 'Once there was an eagle, one of the sky lords of the Crescent Mountains, whose gift it was to fly higher than any of his kind. He hated night, as all eagles do, for then he could not hunt or even see to fly. And so one day he set forth to soar up to the sun, to sink his talons into the golden orb and bring it back to earth so that there would never be night again. But the sun set his feathers on fire. And like a shooting star, he fell burning back to earth.' He took another drink of brandy, and then continued the story: 'As fate would have it, he fell in with a flock of ducks. His shame was so great that he did not want even to look toward the sky. And so he resolved to learn to swim like a duck. He waddled like a duck he quacked like a duck. Even after his feathers grew back, he flew like a duck, low over lakes and marshes.'

  Kane stopped speaking suddenly as his bright eyes blazed into mine

  'And is that the end of the story?' I asked.

  'No, it is not - you know it is not. You see, the eagle was not a duck, and never could be. One day he woke up and heard the far-off cry of his kind, and he remembered who he really was. And he flew back to the mountains to take his place in the aeryies there, among the rocks shining in the sun.'

  He paused to pick up the bottle of brandy and refill his mug. And then he gazed at me.

  'Ah,' Maram said, holding out his own mug, 'I suppose the moral of the story is that if we're not careful, we'll all wind up as dead ducks.'

  'Fat fool!' Kane said, grinning savagely. Then he looked at me and said. 'In the end, it doesn't matter how far we fall - only how high we rise again.'

  I thought about this for a moment, then said to him, 'Are you sp
eaking of me or yourself?'

  'Perhaps both of us,' he admitted. He looked at me so intently that I could hardly hold his gaze. 'So, you must decide if you are an eagle or a duck. And you must decide soon. I've news for you that you won't want to hear.'

  'What news, then?' I asked him.

  'I learned this only last week: on the 11th of Marud, an army bearing the standards of the Red Dragon marched east out of Argattha.'

  'East!' I cried out. 'East! But we had thought that Morjin would strike out west, against the Ymanir!'

  'So we did. But that was before you set out to Tria to claim the Lightstone.'

  'But Morjin couldn't have hoped to intercept me on the Wendrush!'

  'No, he was too late for that, and his army is mostly foot. They could never have caught you.'

  'Then why march at all? What is his objective?'

  'So, east of Sakai is the land of the Niuriu. They've opposed Morjin for many years. If he could defeat them, he could move against the main Urtuk clans, and the whole center of the Wendrush might collapse.'

  My eyes tore into him as I said, 'You do not believe that Morjin has led an army east at this time solely to attack the Niuriu.'

  'No, not solely,' he told me. 'East of the Niuriuland lies Mesh.'

  My heart beat inside me like one of the great war kettles that my kingdom's drummers struck when marching into battle 'How many are his men?'

  'That is uncertain. Perhaps twenty-five thousand.'

  'Twenty-five thousand,' I repeated. 'And is it certain that Morjin leads them?'

  'No, that also is unknown.'

  'He could not defeat my people with such an army,' I said 'Not Valari.'

  'Perhaps not, but he could slay many.'

  'But he would risk losing everything. Would he do that, truly?'