Lord of Lies

by David Zindell

  'Lansar!' I called out as he came to a halt. 'What is it?'

  I looked closely at him, to make sure that it really was Lansar, that some enemy knight hadn't stripped the surcoat from his dead body and donned it to deceive us. But the same homely and noble face that I had known all of my life looked out from beneath his helm. His dark eyes burned with pain; the gold of his surcoat, I saw, was soaked with blood.

  'You're wounded!' I cried out.

  'Yes, a Sarni arrow,' he called back. 'But never mind that now. You must be told: your father has fallen.'

  As the guards from the gate tower came out and gathered next to Maram behind me, I stood there on the bridge above the river. I could not breathe; I could not move against the agony of the terrible spear that Lansar had thrust into my heart.

  'My father is dead,' I whispered. 'My father is dead.' The rushing of the river swept my words away, but not before one of the guards behind me cried out: 'The king is dead!'

  From within the gate tower, I heard this dreaded phrase echoing from the stones there, and then I heard shouts from the west ward and deeper inside the castle: 'The king is dead! The king is dead!'

  'How?' I asked Lansar. I stood there shaking my head. His sorrowful face was a blur in front of my eyes. 'How ... did he fall?'

  'In a charge against the Galdan knights.'

  'And the battle?'

  'Nearly lost. Asaru is king, now. He sent me to tell you this: you are to ride to the battle, as quickly as you can. Your sword is needed, now.' I drew Alkaladur and pointed it toward the southeast. Its long blade blazed like a streak of molten silver. My eyes burned as the features of the world seemed to form up into a face that I both loathed and longed to behold: the proud, gloating face of Morjin.

  'If Asaru needs my sword,' I said, 'he shall have that, and more.'

  Lansar forced his lips into a grim smile. 'It will be as it was when you were boys. How often did you play that game where the two of you held the Telemesh Gate alone against a whole battalion of Ishkans?'

  I tried to smiled, too, but I could not. I told him, 'You remember things that I had forgotten.'

  'I remember the story of how you and a few friends slew nearly a hundred men in Argattha.' Here he looked at Maram. 'Asaru remembers this, too. He has asked that you and Maram join him on the field - with a company of knights.'

  I nodded my head, and hurried back into the castle. I called out to a squire to summon Sar Vikan, and to another to prepare Altaru for battle. I raced across the middle ward and into the great hall. Lansar and Maram followed me. Fifty of the Guardians stood on the dais speaking in hushed tones as I cried out, 'Sunjay Naviru! My father is slain, and Asaru is now king! I must go to him immediately! You will take charge of the Guardians!'

  Sunjay bowed his head to me, and there was no pride in his new command, only acceptance. 'Who will take charge of the castle?' he asked.

  I looked at Lansar, standing tall and grave next to the great pillars that held up the roof. My father, I thought, had trusted no man more. And so I said, 'Lord Raasharu, if he is able.'

  Lansar rubbed his bloody side and said, 'I'll have to be.'

  I turned to say goodbye to Skyshan of Ki, and I grasped hands with Sar Jarlath. Then I stepped over to the Lightstone. I took the golden cup in my hands and pressed my face against it. I set it back on its stand. Its radiance seared my lips as if I had kissed the sun.

  Sar Vikan hurried into the room then. He was a compact, energetic man who was an excellent horseman and quick with his sword. I explained to him what must be. As he went off to assemble the company of knights who would ride with us down to the battlefield, I turned to Maram. He neither protested this dreaded new duty nor bemoaned his fate. He just looked at me with his sorrowful eyes as if it were his father who had died. I never loved him so much as I did then.

  At last my mother came into the room, leading Nona by the arm. I hugged them both to me. My grandmother stood there in silence stroking my fevered hand. My mother, whose insides had just been ripped out, held herself tall and straight like the queen she was. Her eyes held back a whole ocean of tears. She looked at me as if seeing me for the last time.

  'Asaru needs me,' I said to her. 'You know how it has always been between us.'

  She bowed her head and pressed her lips to my hand. She clasped it in hers so tightly that the force of her long fingers squeezed mine together, bruising the bones against the silver and diamonds of my ring.

  'Please, Mother, don't worry. After the battle is won, I will return to you. I promise.'

  'Go then, if you must,' she finally choked out. For a moment, I thought that she wanted to tell me that war was stupid, ugly and evil and that I shouldn't throw my life away against the enemy's swords. But in the end she was Talanu Solaru's daughter and Shavashar Elahad's wife - and a Valari warrior down to her bones. And so she told me, 'Go and slay Morjin, if you can. Avenge your father's death.'

  I let go of her hand and rushed out into the middle ward, where Sar Vikan sat on top of his armored warhorse, with a hundred and fifty other knights and their mounts. The women and children there made room for us; the news of my father's death quieted even the most boisterous of boys, who stood in silence gripping their wooden swords as they gazed at me. Squires brought out Maram's horse and Altaru, my huge black stallion, jacketed in steel and digging his great hoof into the ground. I climbed upon him. I checked to make sure that my long lance was secure in its holster. Then I led forth into the west ward, and the castle's gates were thrown open. We pounded across the bridge in a single column of glittering diamonds and heaving horseflesh. So loud was the beat of iron against wood and paving stones that it almost drowned out the clanging of the gates being slammed shut behind us.

  Good roads led down from Silvassu to the village of Balvalam. We were to follow them almost the whole way to the battlefield. I had to restrain Altaru from winding himself in a gallop. He must have felt my blood lashing at my veins, for his surging body seemed driven by my terrible urge for haste. Battles could be won or lost in minutes, and this one had been raging for at least an hour. It took us only part of an hour to leave Silvassu's houses far behind us and race through the woods south of the farms along the Kurash. We rode mostly downhill, and that gave us more speed. The trees to the left and right seemed to fly past us. The sky's bright blueness beckoned ahead like the end of a dark tunnel - or rather like a doorway into fire, agony and death

  Fire consumed me now. The robe of fire that I called my fate blazed around all my limbs and burned me down to the bone. It maddened me with grief and a raging desire for revenge. My hatred of Morjin, like the kirax in my blood, drove me on and on, whether toward triumph or doom, I almost didn't care.

  'Morjin,' I whispered to myself, again and again. 'Morjin, Morjin.' About a mile from Balvalam, we turned off to our left down a path through the woods, for the reports told that the deserted village was held by the enemy. Now we had to make our way more slowly through the oaks that grew across the low hills, and that was a torment. But this shortcut was the only way to reach the Culhadosh Commons quickly. We heard the clamor of the battle a mile away, through the trees. The blaring of horns, the clash of steel against steel, men and horses screaming - it all seemed to merge into a single, terrible sound that shook the very earth.

  We came out of the woods just to the north of Balvalam Hill. Some called it the Mare's Hill - no one knew why. Culhadosh Commons spread out east of this grassy prominent two and a half miles of green pasture ending at another great wall of woods. Masses of men thrusting spears and swords at each other covered much of it. I had some good height above the clashing armies, and I could see much of the battlefield. Asaru's knights, just below Balvalam Hill, drove against the more numerous Ikurian horse: a great melee of maces beating against shields, shivered lances and flashing swords that fell against both men and beast. To their left, a slender strand of diamond-clad warriors extended east almost all the way to the woods. These eight battalions of Meshian foo
t, led by Lord Tanu, were stretched very thin, into only three ranks. They faced much deeper blocks of the enemy all across this long front: ten thousand Galdan heavy infantry trying to break the joint between Asaru's knights and the Meshian line; eight thousand mercenaries to the east of them using their ten ranks of spears to beat against my people's shields; a great swarm of naked Blues ululating their hideous war cries as they swung their axes against steel and flesh. In the very middle of the field, two thousand of the Dragon Guard worked furiously to cut a hole through our center. They were supported to the left by more mercenaries and another great mass of Galdan foot soldiers. On the far left of the field, nearest the woods, the Galdan heavy horse fell against the rest of the Meshian knights. They would have been cut to pieces but for the support of the Sarni warriors, firing arrows point blank into the faces of my countrymen, meeting our terrible kalamas with their sabers and dying themselves. Somewhere in this haze of glittering diamonds, steel and brightly colored blazons, my father had fallen. Lord Avijan would be leading our knights now, or perhaps Lord Harsha, if they hadn't fallen, too.

  'Father,' I whispered, gazing out at all this carnage. 'Father.'

  Sar Vikan and Maram came up to me as our company of knights drew up behind us. We held quick council, deciding what we should do.

  'The center is hard-pressed,' Sar Vikan called out, pointing at the Meshian line, which was beginning to bow back toward us under the great weight of men massed in front of it.

  'Yes,' I called back, 'but there is still a reserve.'

  I drew Sar Vikan's attention to the single battalion of warriors two thousand yards to our left and standing a few hundred yards behind our lines. They were under Lord Eldru's command. I thought I could make out the red and white of his charge gleaming in the sun.

  'It seems,' Sar Vikan said, holding up his hand to shield his eyes, 'that Radomil Makan holds back the Galdans, too.'

  The enemy, I saw, had reserves of their own, at least twenty times more numerous than ours. Culhadosh Commons spread out to the south, too, down a gentle slope toward a little winding water called the Clear Brook, and beyond. Grouped along this stream, half a mile beyond the killing zone, was the greater part of the Galdan light infantry, nearly twenty thousand strong. A thousand archers gathered to the right of them, behind a curve in the stream. And further to the west, just where the stream bent back toward the village of Balvalam, the Galdan light horse assembled in neat lines with a battalion of the light infantry behind them.

  'Look!' Maram cried out. 'I do believe they're going to attack!'

  Directly in front of them was grouped the very far right of Asaru's knights, pushed up against the lowest part of Balvalam Hill only four hundred yards from us. And farther up its slopes, most of our archers had been stationed. They stood behind a fence of stakes pounded into the ground, with their sharpened ends pointing outward, toward the enemy. The archers wore only light armor and were without shields, and were vulnerable to attack - which is why they had taken a position on ground that would be difficult to attack. But it seemed that the Galdans were going to try.

  A horn blared out, and the Galdans began moving forward. How long, I wondered, would it take them to charge across half a mile of clear ground?

  'What shall we do, Lord Valashu?' Sar Vikan shouted at me. I could hardly make out his words against the tumult of shields banging at fields, axes splitting steel, and men and horses screaming as they died. I stared out across the battlefield, west to east, north to south. I looked for a flashing yellow banner, with its great, red dragon, that might tell me where Morjin was. I looked for the red and gold of Morjin's surcoat and his steel armor, said to be stained red like that of his Dragon Guard. Two thousand of these masterful warriors fought on foot, still working furiously at our center, but where were the rest of them? Perhaps, i thought, Morjin was holding them in reserve to the far southeast, where the Clear Brook disappeared into the woods. At any moment a horn might sound, and these men might come crashing out of the trees in a charge that would cave in our army's entire left flank.

  'Val, what shall we do?' I heard Maram say.

  I looked for Kane, where the fighting was the thickest, but all across the field men were hacking at men with a fury that seemed to grow more desperate with every moment. I looked for Atara, too. Morjin might be in hiding, waiting to charge against our left, but our right flank was being attacked even as we stood watching.

  'Forward!' I called out, drawing my long lance. 'Half speed, and stay together!'

  It wouldn't do to charge recklessly up Balvalam Hill, where its uneven ground could trip a horse and send both horse and rider crashing down with a snap of broken limbs. The Galdans, however, had different considerations. In the face of the arrows that the archers began firing into them, they galloped up the south slope of the hill as quickly as they could. Some of their mounts did stumble and break their legs - and the necks of their riders. More screamed as they fell out of their saddles with arrows sticking out of them. But they were brave men. They kept charging up toward the archers, with the Galdan light infantry running behind them.

  In truth, they were no match, man for man, with the Meshian archers, who now laid down their bows and drew their swords. But they were many, and our archers were few. Now the Galdan horse came pouring around the ends of the stake fence, as with a stream splitting in two. The archers met them with flashing kalamas; steel ran red as my countrymen slashed upward at the Galdans who were trying to stick their lances into them. My knights and I pounded closer, up the grassy slope from the north. Both Galdans and Meshians were dying by the tens and twenties - but more Meshians, for the light infantry had finally forced their way through the fence and were falling upon the archers with shield and spear. In front of us loomed a mob of men screaming and shouting out challenges as they hacked and stabbed at each other. Fifty yards only separated us from them. And then suddenly we were upon them, and the world narrowed into a corridor of rearing horses, red lance points and Galdans in their flimsy leather armor throwing themselves at me.

  Within the first minute, I lost my lance through the ribs and back-bone of one of these. I drew Alkadur then, and my sword's silver gelstei gave me the strength to bear the agony that ripped through me. I swung this bright blade, once, twice, thrice - and three Galdans fell dead or dying to the ground. Maram fought to my right, working his lance against two horsemen opposing him. I heard him bellow out: 'Come! Come! Test your lances against Five-Horned Marant?' He stabbed one of his enemies through the face just as the lance of the other took him in the chest. But the point crunched against the diamonds of Maram's armor, and failed to penetrate. Maram pulled his lance out of the first horseman's cheek and thrust it through the other's groin. So it went ail around me, with Sar Vikan and our company of knights. Many of these had drawn their kalamas. and they slashed through the Galdan's armor as if it was paper. Founts of blood sprayed out into the air. The ground began to thicken with hacked limbs, torn bodies and men crying out as they held their hands over their necks or bleeding bellies.

  Then a horn blared, signaling the Galdans to retreat. Many of them, however, had already broken; they cast aside their shields and ran back down the hill. Some of the archers pursued them and buried their kalamas in their backs. The Galdan horse fled in better order, and more quickly. I was tempted to ride after them, all the way down to the village and around the wing of Morjin's entire army. But the captain of the archers called for a halt just as I became aware of a new crisis in the middle of the battlefield.

  'Lord Valashu!' the captain cried out. He was a tall man with a sharp nose and chin like the crags of a mountain. He stood grasping his dripping sword as he said to me, 'Where did you come from?'

  All around us the surviving archers were sheathing their swords and taking up their bows again. Sar Vikan and Maram, with our knights, formed up on the side of the hill behind me.

  'You seemed hard-pressed,' I said to the captain. I did not want to tell him or his archers that t
heir king had been slain.

  'Hard-pressed and worse,' he said. He wore in his silver ring the three diamonds of a master knight, and I suddenly remembered that his name was Sar Yulmar. 'We might have died to a man keeping the Galdans front coming behind your brother's knights.'

  At the base of the hill only twenty five yards away, the knights at the very edge of Asaru's command were battling against the Ikurians a broad-faced, thickset people from the central plateau of Sakai. Farther down the line of this mass of snorting horses and shouting men, two hundred yards to the east, I caught sight of a swan and stars blazing bright silver in the fierce morning light. Asaru sat on top of his gray stallion slashing his sword against two enemy knights in front of him. He, too, was hard-pressed, as were his hundreds of knights. I wanted desperately to ride down to them, to find Yarashan and join him in fighting to Asaru's side so that we might turn back the flood of these skilled and relentless Ikurians. But then Sar Vikan called to me, and pointed farther east, at the center of the Meshian line.

  'Lord Valashu!' he said. 'They're about to break!'

  The massed ranks of the Dragon Guard and the Blues, I saw, with phalanxes of mercenaries to either side of them, had pushed deeply into Lord Tanu's and Lord Tomavar's battalions. Our whole line, from Lord Avijan's command in the east to Asaru's knights, had now bent so far backward that it was near to buckling. It was like a long, curved wall of diamonds holding back a flood of steel. In several places only a single rank of warriors kept the enemy from breaking through.

  I glanced behind me, taking the measure of the knights in our company. Maybe seven of a hundred and fifty had fallen. I looked back toward the center of our line. Somewhere, in all this fury of swords hacking apart shields and men dying, Mandru led a company of warriors in Lord Tomavar's battalion, as did Jonathay in Lord Tanu's.