Lord of Lies

by David Zindell

  'He might if one of the slain was Valashu Elahad.'

  As Kane caught me with a blazing look, I listened to the wood hissing and popping in the fire.

  'Think of this as a game of chess,' he said to me. 'Morjin could not have known what would happen in Kiritan's hall.'

  'No,' I said, thinking of Ravik Kirriland and Baltasar. 'What if Noman had failed to murder King Kiritan and I had claimed the Lightstone? What if the kings had pledged themselves to the Alliance?'

  'In that case,' Kane said, 'Morjin would have done well to spend an army in order to weaken what would have been the core of the forces arrayed against him. And in order to unsettle you.'

  'Then that,' I said, 'only betrays his desperation.'

  'So, desperate the Dragon has been ever since you nearly killed him and made off with that little trinket you're holding.'

  I looked down at the golden cup that it seemed I could not let go.

  'But he's something more than desperate,' Kane went on. 'Or something less. It was always likely that the Alliance would fail. What if it did?'

  'Then,' Maram said, stating the obvious, 'it would be as it is now.'

  'Just so,' Kane said, looking at me. 'The question is, what should be our next move in this little game we've been playing with Morjin?'

  I wrapped my hands tightly around the lightstone and I said, 'Everything depends upon this "trinket". We must hurry back to Mesh and keep it safe there.'

  At this, Maram's face blanched as if a demon had drained him of blood. 'Go back to Mesh? Ride right into the jaws of the Dragon? Are you mad?'

  'My home stands to be invaded, Maram. My duty lies there.'

  'Your duty,' he said to me, 'is first as lord Guardian of the Lightstone. Take it to some safe place!'

  Liljana looked up from a tunic that she was embroidering, and she said, 'And where would this safe place be? We've traveled from one end of Ea to the other, and were nearly killed at every mile along the way.'

  'Even the Nine Kingdoms will be dangerous for us,' Master Juwain said. 'King Hadaru will certainly challenge Val's right as Lord Guardian, now. And let us not forget that the Red Dragon has offered a million-weight of gold to anyone who will deliver the Lightstone to him. Such a sum would tempt anyone to betray us.'

  Maram took a huge gulp of brandy, then blurted out, 'It would not tempt the Lokilani! What of the Vild? The wood of Pualani and Danali - and Iolana - lies not far from here. We could hide there for years!'

  'So,' Kane said, 'we could hide there - if we could find it. But we could not hide forever. Eventually, Morjin would deduce where we had disappeared to. After he'd conquered Alonia, he'd burn her forests to the ground to uncover the Lokilani's wood and take back the Lightstone.'

  As Maram muttered a profanity into his cup, I grasped his arm and said. 'Take heart, my friend. We're not under Morjin's spears yet. His army set out only twenty days ago. It's unlikely that they could make much more than fifteen miles per day, especially if they bear siege-craft in their baggage train. Their march might have taken them as far as the Niuriuland. They'll have to fight Vishakan's warriors to get through it. And after that, it's another two hundred and fifty miles to Mesh - and more for them to fight their way through the passes and push through to the Valley of the Swans. All right then. We have time to return home, if we ride quickly. No army has ever successfully invaded Mesh. And my father's castle has never been taken. The Lightstone will be safe there - as safe as any place on Ea.'

  'Ah, so you say,' Maram muttered as he looked at me. 'But has it occurred to you that Morjin will expect you to reason precisely as you have? Kane speaks of a game of chess! Well, what moves does Morjin plan that you haven't foreseen? What if he's suborned another of Alonia's damned dukes? Do we know we won't have to fight another army along the Nar Road? And what if he sets the Stonefaces upon us again or some other evil creatures? And what if -'

  'We've taken worse chances than this before,' I said, cutting him of before he terrified himself to death. 'The Lightstone will be safe inside my father's casde. We could withstand a siege there for years.'

  'You think so?' Maram said, shaking off my hand. He reached into the pocket of his cloak and removed his ruined firestone. 'And what if the Dragon bears one of these with which to burn down your castle's walls?'

  'That,' Kane said, pointing at Maram's cracked, red crystal 'was the last remaining firestone on Ea.'

  'Are you sure?'

  Kane paused to take a drink of brandy and then said, 'Reasonably sure.'

  After that for the next hour or so, we debated what we should do. We finally decided that my first impulse would be the best we would ride like the wind back to Mesh and deliver the Lightstone to my father's hall. The Guardians would stand around it a diamond wall of the finest Valari knights surrounded by the great impregnable walls of the Elahad castle. I would send out a call to all the Nine Kingdoms to send other knights to join us. Morjin's army, fighting so far from its base on sacred Meshian soil, would be defeated. And as in ancient times, the Lightstone would blaze like a beacon of hope for all of Ea's peoples.

  'If it was my fate not to be the Maitreya,' I said, holding up the golden cup, 'then surely it is upon me to see that this calls forth the Maitreya.'

  After that for a long time, I sat by the fire thinking about the days to come. I played over and over in my mind all of Morjin's possible moves, determining to make no blunder in my own moves. I must not lose this game, I told myself. I could not believe that the future was set like words chiseled into stone. It was possible, I thought, that the Valari kingdoms would send aid to Mesh - and then there would no battle Even so, as I stared into the fire's red flames, I felt fate hammering at my soul, trying to beat into me an acceptance of that which must be.

  Chapter 30

  We broke camp early the next day before first light. We rode, if not quite as quickly as the wind, quick enough to feel the morning mist whipping back our hair and moistening our eyelashes. In truth, we could not keep up such a punishing pace for long without ruining our horses. As it was our beasts were already thin from our journey, and we had scant fodder for them and few enough rations for ourselves. When we came to Suma around midafternoon the day following that, we stopped in this ancient city to replenish both. I purchased two stout wagons and filled them with bags of oats, wheels of cheese, dried apples, rye flour and other foods we would need to fuel our flight from Alonia. Not even Maram suggested trying to find an inn for the night. We took to the road again as soon as we could. When darkness came, we camped in a great clearing beneath a starry sky. The forest before us stretched on to the south and east for hundreds of miles.

  And in the days that dawned after that, with each mile that we trod, as the iron wheels of the wagons ground against the paving stones and our horses' hooves beat against the road, I tried to sense in wind, earth and aether any sign that we were being followed. In four hard days of travel from Tria, we put some hundred and thirty miles behind us. We passed from Old Alonia into that wild country of forest and hills claimed by no duke, baron or other lord. I felt sure that no battalion of knights or marauders pursued us. And yet something did. Baltasar's death hung heavy upon my soul like an iron shroud that had not been buried with him. So did that of Ravik Kirriland. The dying shrieks of many others, from the past and future, filled the air whenever I listened deeply enough or drew my sword. Each morning we rode east into the sun, and this fiery orb cast a long shadow behind me. The faster I rode, the faster it moved after me, like my black cloak with its swan and stars billowing out behind me. Could any man, I wondered, ever escape his fate? With the earth spinning beneath me and turning day into night, and night into day, I felt myself only hunying toward mine. On the sixth of Soal, we found ourselves winding through the misty tors where Atara and I had once fought off the fierce hill men trying to rob and ravish her. Perhaps the memory of the violence that we had visited upon those barbaric men stirred Atara to memories of the future - or visions of faraway things. For
just as we were passing a bald prominence above the swathe of oaks to the south of us, Atara froze in her saddle and faced in that direction. I drew in beside her, and the columns of knights behind us came to a halt.

  And Atara clapped her hand to her blindfold and cried out, 'Oh, Val, there's been a battle! There is a battle, it's being fought now, or soon will be. On the Wendrush. Just east of the Red Hills, between the Two Rivers. The Niuriu warriors, the arrow storm, so many dead, so many dying. Morjin! I see him! He does lead his army. On a great white stallion. I count nearly thirty thousand spears behind him. And the Urtuk ride with them! I count seven standards: bear, hawk, badger, lion, wolf, otter and eagle. Seven clans of the eastern Urtuk! Damn them! Damn them for going over to Morjin!'

  As quickly as it had come, her vision seemed to leave her. She slumped in her saddle and seemed to collapse like a bellows emptied of air. And she murmured, 'The victory is to the Dragon! The way to Mesh stands open before him.'

  I reached out my hand to grasp hers and squeeze some courage into her. But I had little to spare. I hated the brittleness in my voice as I said, 'Will the Urtuk ride with Morjin to Mesh? Are they riding with him?'

  'I don't know,' she to,ld me. 'I can't see that. I can't... see.'

  With the sudden failing of her second sight, the panic that always accompanied her helplessness seeped into me. Dread filled all my limbs like cold, stagnant water. That evening, when we made camp in the tall trees off the side of the road, Estrella helped Atara hunt in the underbrush for some madder. They found a few of these plants growing beside a stream, and dug them out of the ground. With Liljana's help, Atara boiled their roots in an iron kettle and rendered out of them a dark, red dye. She then rubbed this foul-smelling liquid over the shafts, feathers and points of two of her arrows. And when she had finished staining them, as with blood, she held up one in either hand and said, 'This is for Morjin's right eye. And this is for his left.'

  The day after that we passed through the gap in Morning Mountains, and for the next four days we rode through a wild country of tangled forest that had long ago been emptied of people. Nothing, it seemed, could halt our charge homeward or even impede us. In several places great trees had fallen across the road; we brought out axes and chopped through them. For three days straight, it rained driving sheets of water from dark clouds blown in from the Alonian Sea to the east. We rode straight through this cold, shivering misery. When we came to the lowlands near the border of Anjo and the road flooded out we abandoned the wagons and forced our way around the flood through the dense forest.

  On the 12th of Soai we crossed the Santosh River into Anjo. I had worried that some of my Anjori knights, upon seeing their home again, might wish to abjure their vows and remain in this land of rolling plains, pastures and green hills leading up into the snowy heights of the Morning Mountains. But no one did. These men who had ridden with me for so many miles and had stood by me as we fought our enemies together sensed that something was troubling me. How could they not when my heart leaked my dread as if pierced with spears? When we made camp that night in an abandoned field in the domain of Yarvanu, ruled by Count Rodru, Sar Valkald came up to me and told me, 'It's good to walk this soil again, and it would be even better to see my lather and mother, too. But they are of Daksh, and we will not be passing their way. No matter. My vows were made gladly, and will gladly be kept - all the way to Mesh, or anywhere the Lightstone goes.'

  Sunjay Naviru, upon overhearing Sar Valkald's pledge, took me aside and reassured me: 'All the Guardians feel as he does, Val. No one blames you for what happened in Tria.'

  'Do they not hate me for striking down Lord Ravik?'

  'Hate you? It is just the opposite. They are sad that you slew an innocent man, it is true. But that is war. They grieve your loss of glory. In the end, though, it doesn't matter to them if you are the Maitreya. They know who you really are.'

  As I looked into Sun jay's face, so faithful and bright I gave thanks for having such a good friend, and I missed Baltasar all the more And I wanted to reassure Sun jay as he had me. But how could If What could I say to this sweet vital man who seemed marked out for suffering and death? What could I say to anyone?

  Although Master fuwain had warned against bringing the Lightstone into any of the Nine Kingdoms, we had no difficulty passing through Anjo. We had ridden ahead of King Danashu, King Hadaru and the other kings, and so we preceded the news of the debacle in King Kiritan's hall. We told little of this to any of the travelers that we encountered on our way, nor even to a company of Count Rodru's knights whose task it was to patrol the road. I said only that the Red Dragon threatened invasion and that my father had called me home to Mesh. I asked for aid, and I received it: in oats for our horses and supplies for my men, if not in stout-hearted knights girded for war. So it was when we passed into Vishal, ruled by Baron Yashur, and in

  Onkar whose lord was Count Atanu. If either of these great nobles had been tempted by Morjin's million-weight of gold, they did not betray themselves - or me. Perhaps they simply did not have time to summon a force great enough to wrest the Lightstone from my knights. In any case, we came to the juncture of the Nar Road and the North Road without incident. There we turned toward King Danashu's domain of Jathay. It took us two and a half days to put the rest of Anjo behind us. Late in the morning of the 16th of Soal, we crossed the Aru-Adar bridge into Ishka.

  Ninety miles as the raven flies it was across this beautiful land to the border of Mesh - and more for us because the road bent far to the east toward Loviisa. After passing through a hilly country between Lake Osh and a spur of mountains to our left, and then through some rich farmland glowing green in the strong Soal sun, we came to Ishka's greatest city two days later. Sar Jarlath galloped ahead of us to ask for supplies and tell of our need for haste. Prince Issur, whom King Hadaru had appointed as regent, rode out with Lord Mestivan and ten knights to meet us. We held quick counsel on horseback by a clear stream running down to the Tushur River. We told Prince Issur that Morjin and his army were likely marching upon Mesh even as we spoke. This was news to him. As he told us, none of the sentries who kept watch over the Wendrush had sighted any armies, be they Sami or of Sakai.

  'If you're right about the Red Dragon,' Prince Issur said to me, 'then please excuse my abruptness, but there's much to be done Messengers need to be sent to the fortresses, and our battle lords must be alerted and knights called up. Morjin might just as easily be marching on Ishka.'

  'That is unlikely,' I said. 'His quarrel, for the present is with Mesh.'

  'Yes, but what if Mesh is defeated?' he said. He rubbed between his large nose and his eyes, which were as black as coal.

  'Mesh would be less likely to be defeated,' I told him, 'if you have battalions to spare reinforcing us. Do you?'

  The suggestion that Ishka might ride to Mesh's aid seemed to astonish Prince Issur. His eyes widened, and he looked at me as if to make sure that my adventures in strange lands hadn't whittled away my good sense. Then he told me, 'Even if we did have such forces, it is not upon me to commit them. My father, you say, still remains in Tria?'

  'He was there when we departed,' I said.'It may be that he is returning home.'

  I began to tell him of the conclave's evil happenings, but it seemed that Sar Jarlath already had. Prince Issur cast me a cold, penetrating look as if he had never really believed that I could be the Maitreya. 'It is upon me to prepare Ishka for the worst. That cannot include weakening our forces. My father, I believe, would want things so.'

  'Your father,' Lord Mestivan said to him, 'would want the Lightstone to remain here, where it would be safe.'

  Then Lord Mestivan turned to stare at me. His hand, I saw, hovered almost casually near the hilt of his sword. So did Sar Jarlath's hand and Sar Ianashu's and those of the other Ishkans who had taken vows as Guardians. But it was toward Lord Mestivan and the ten knights with him that they directed their ire. It brought tears to my eyes to think that they might be willing to fight their ow
n countrymen in the Lightstone's defense - and in mine.

  'Sometimes it's hard to know my father's wishes,' Prince Issur said to Lord Mestivan. 'Certainly if the Lightstone remained here, it might tempt the Red Dragon to turn north. Therefore let Lord Valashu take it to the Elahad castle as quickly as he can.'

  Prince Issur and many of the Ishkans, I thought, would not be sorry to see Mesh humbled or even beaten in battle. And as for me, they seemed secretly glad that the disaster in Tria had brought me down from the heavenly heights into the realm where mere mortals were forced to live.

  We hurried on our way then. From Loviisa, the road wound west through some more farmland and then turned south toward the mountains separating Ishka and Mesh. We pressed our horses all the harder now, for I felt time pressing at me like a great, lead weight. I led my friends and the Guardians, in their three sparkling columns, pounding down the road. On the 20th of Soal we began the steep climb up toward the pass between Raaskel and Korukel. The forest about us gradually changed from oak and elm to towering spruce trees pointed I like great, green spears up toward the sky. When I saw that we could not make it through the pais by dusk, I called for a halt. We made camp just below treeline between two rocky ridges. There a swift, clear stream ran over rounded stones. As my men set to pitching the tents and making the fortifications, I took a few moments to sit alone beside the stream. I stared up through the trees at the pass: a great cleft rut through solid rock. It was thus that Kane found me, with mv sword drawn and pointing toward it.

  May I join you?' he said as he sat on a large boulder across from me. He followed my gaze, and said, -You're wondering what you'll find on the other side, eh?'

  I nodded my head as my sword flared brighter.

  'So, you'll find what you'll find; he said to me. 'And then you'll do what you must do.'

  'Yes, but what is that? As you said, I've been so wrong, I don't ever want to be wrong again.'