I felt something vast and deep move inside Lord Noldashan. Then he glanced at Lord Sharad, before looking back to me and smiling grimly. 'Very well, then, Lord Elahad, I will follow you past the very end of the earth, to the stars or hell if that is our fate.'
As he bowed deeply to me, a hundred warriors drummed the hilts of their swords against the tables. Then Lord Avijan stepped forward, and held up his hand. He called for fresh pots of beer to be brought up from his cellar. When everyone's cup had been filled anew, he raised his cup and cried out: 'To Lord Valashu Elahad, heir of the Elahads, Guardian of the Lightstone, and the next king of Mesh!'
I sipped my thick, black beer, and I found it sweet and bitter and good. I smiled as Alphanderry came forth and everyone hailed this strange minstrel. Tomorrow, I thought, we must meet in council again to lay our plans for my gaining my father's throne - and for Morjin's eventual defeat. But now we had a few moments for camaraderie and cups clinked together, and singing songs of glory and hope far into the night.
Chapter 4
In that time of year when the wild asparagus growing along the hillsides and roads reached its peak and the lilacs laid their sweet perfume upon fields and gardens, the call for warriors who would support my claim to Mesh's throne - and perhaps much more - went out into every part of the land. They came to Lord Avijan's castle, in twos and threes, and sometimes tens and twenties, riding up in full diamond armor and bearing the bright emblems of their families. Most of them lived in the country near the Valley of the Swans and Mount Eluru, but many also arrived from the north, in the mountains near the two Raaswash rivers, and from the southern highlands below Lake Waskaw. Fewer hailed from the hills around Godhra, for there Lord Tanu held sway, as did Lord Tomavar in the Sawash River valley and its three largest cities: Pushku, Lashku and Antu. But a warrior had the right to give his oath to whom he wished, and at least ten men from Pushku had braved Lord Tomavar's anger by rallying for me. And fifty-two men - led by the long-faced Lord Manthanu - had journeyed all the way from Mount Tarkel above the Diamond River in the far northwest.
Soon the number of warriors overflowing the grounds of Lord Avijan's castle had swelled to more than one thousand. Lord Avijan's stewards worried about finding food for this growing army. But as the Valley of the Swans between Silvassu and Lake Waskaw held some of Mesh's richest farmland, to say nothing of woods full of deer, it seemed that no hour passed without a few wagons full of barley, beef and salted pork rolling up through the pass between Mount Eluru and the sparkling lake below it.
My companions and I kept busy during this period of waiting. While Master Juwain and Liljana tried to further the children's education, contending with each other as to exactly which subjects they should teach Daj and Estrella, and how, I greeted the arriving warriors one by one. The most distinguished of them joined Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and other great knights in taking council where we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar. Although I asked Mararn to attend these meetings, he insisted on attending to the matter of exploring the capaciousness of Lord Avijan's beer cellars. As he put it, 'These countrymen of yours drink like an army of parched bulls, and I'd at least like a little taste of beer before it's all gone.'
Although Master Juwain had practically given up lecturing him about the evils of strong drink, Liljana kept scolding him whenever she had the chance. On the third day of our stay at Lord Avijan's castle, she took Maram aside and said to him, 'We all know that bad times are coming. You should spend your days helping Val, as we all try to do - either that or learning more about your firestone.'
Now that Bemossed kept Morjin from using the Lightstone, or so we prayed, those of us possessing gelstei found ourselves free to discover new depths and powers of these ancient crystals.
'Bad times are coming,' Maram said to Liljana, 'and that is exactly the point. The only way to fight the bad is with the good, and right now I can think of nothing better than to fortify myself against the evils of the future with some good Meshian beer.'
He might have added that beautiful young women would have served best of all to drive back his fears, but in the overcrowded castle he never knew when Lord Harsha might come around the corner of some cold stone corridor and take him to task for mocking his professed love for Behira.
Of all of us, I thought, Atara had the hardest work with her gelstei, for the kristei's deepest virtue was said to be not merely the seeing of the future but its creation. But how could a single woman, through the force of her will alone, contend with Morjin's great fury to destroy all who defied him, to say nothing of his master, Angra Mainyu?
At one of our councils, after she had told Lord Manthanu of her grandfather, Sajagax's, strategy to persuade a few Sarni tribes to oppose Morjin, Lord Manthanu asked her to give the assembled warriors a good omen. They had talked that evening of cutting apart Morjin's best knights with their fearsome kalamas, and their spirits were running high. Atara did not wish to discourage these brave men, but neither would she speak anything but the truth. And so, in her scryer's way, she told them: 'Then it will be as you wish, and your swords will cleave the armor of even the best knights of Morjin's Dragon Guard.'
She did not, however, reveal how many of them might live to fulfill this gruesome prophecy, and they could not bring themselves to ask her.
But it is not the way of fortune to progress in one direction forever: the cresting wave crashes into sand even as day passes into night. On the seventh of Soldru, after a long day of hunting, sword practice, councils and feasting on roasted venison, I retired to the rooms that Lord Avijan had appointed for me in the southern corner of the keep. They gave out into a small garden full of herbs, roses and bushes heavy with lilac blossoms. I sat on one of the stone benches there to listen to the crickets chirping and watch the stars come out. It was the only place in Lord Avijan's castle where I could find a space of solitude and listen to the whisperings of my soul.
Some time before midnight, with the moon waxing all silvery and full, Liljana found me there walking along the lilac hedges. Although she had brought me some tea, I could tell at once that serving me a soothing drink had little to do with the purpose of her visit. As she set out the pot and cups on one of the tables near the garden's great sundial, I could almost feel her willing her hand not to tremble. Even so the cups rattled against the hard stone with such force that it seemed they might break.
'What is wrong?' I asked her, taking her by her arm and urging her to sit down with me.
'Does there have to be anything wrong,' she said, 'for me to bring you a little fresh chamomile tea?'
'No, of course not,' I told her. 'But something is troubling you, isn't it?'
She nodded her head as she took out her gelstei. In the light of the moon, I could barely make out the blue tones of this little whale-shaped figurine. And then she said to me, 'I have terrible tidings.'
Something in her voice pierced me like an icy wind.
'What tidings?' I asked her. Without thinking, I grabbed hold of her arm. 'Are the children all right? Is Master Juwain?'
'They are fine,' she told me, 'but -'
'Is it Kane, then? Has word come of his death?'
It did not seem possible, I thought, that this invincible warrior who had survived countless wars in every corner of the world over thousands of years had finally gone back to the stars. Nor did I wish to believe that Maram, in a drunken stupor, had stumbled down the stairs after exiting some young woman's bedchamber and broken his neck. Most of all I could not bring myself to think of any violence harming even a single hair of Atara's head.
'No, we're all safe here tonight,' Liljana said to me. 'But others, in places that we had thought were safe, are not. Or so I think.'
Her round, pretty face could hide a great deal when she wished, and she could hold herself calm and careful even when delivering the most disastrous of news. Such was her training as the Materix of the Maitriche Telu. It occurred to me for the thousandth time how glad I wa
s to have this wise and relentless woman as my companion and not my enemy.
I sat on my hard stone seat breathing deeply and waiting for her to say more. I looked around at the roses and lilacs of the starlit garden for sign of the Ahrim - and then back at Liljana to see if she might tell me that this terrible thing had gained some dreadful new power. I reininded myself that if I would rule over Mesh, I must first and always rule myself.
'I came to tell you tidings,' she said to me again as she rotated her little figurine between her fingers, 'but I cannot tell you with absolute certainty that these tidings are true.'
'You speak more mysteriously,' I told her, 'than does a scryer.'
She would have laughed at this, I thought, if she had been able to laugh. Instead she said to me, 'Perhaps I should have just spoken of what I know, with my very first breath, but I wanted to prepare you first. I don't want you to give up hope.'
My heart seemed to be having trouble pushing my blood through my veins. Finally I said to her, 'Just tell me, then.'
'All right,' she said, drawing in a deep breath. 'I believe that the Brotherhood school has been destroyed.'
I gazed straight at her, trying to make out the black centers of her eyes. I felt as bereft of speech as Estrella.
'It would have happened around the end of Ashte,' she told me.
I continued gazing at her, then I finally found the will to say: 'You mean the Brotherhood school of the Seven, don't you? But no place the world is safer! Morjin could not have found it!'
I thought of the magic tunnels through the mountains surrounding the Valley of the Sun, and I shook my head.
'But he has found it,' she told me as she covered my hand with hers. 'Somehow, he has.'
'But the Seven, and those that came before them, have kept the school a secret for thousands of years. And Bemossed has had scarcely half a year of sanctuary there. How could Morjin suddenly have found it?'
The answer, I thought, was built into the very words of my question. Bemossed, contending with Morjin for mastery of the Lightstone over a distance of a few hundred miles, touching upon the very filth of Morjin's soul, must somehow have drawn down Morjin upon him.
'Is he dead, then?' I asked Liljana. 'Have you come to tell me that Bemossed is dead?'
'I came to tell you not to give up hope,' she said, squeezing my hand. 'And so if I knew the Shining One was dead, how could there be hope?'
I considered this for a moment as I looked at her. 'But you cannot tell me that he is not dead.'
She sighed as she held up her crystal to the lanterns' light. 'I cannot tell you very much for certain at all.'
She went on to say more about her personal quest to explore the mysteries of her blue gelstei and gain mastery over it. In the Age of the Mother, she told me, in the great years, the whole continent of Ea had been knitted together by women in every land speaking mind to mind through the power of the blue gelstei. The Order of Brothers and Sisters of the Earth had trained certain sensitive people to attune to the lapis -like crystals, cast into the form of amulets, pendants, pins and figurines. Some had gained the virtue of detecting falseness or veracity in others' words, and these were called truthsayers. Others found themselves able to speak in strange languages or remember events that had occurred long before their birth or give others great and beautiful dreams. Only the rarest and most adept in the ways of pure consciousness, however, learned to hear the whisperings and thoughts of another's mind. No one knew why those most talented at mindspeaking had always been women. With the breaking of the Order into the Brotherhood and that secret group of women that became the Maitriche Telu, men had almost completely lost knowledge of the blue gelstei while any woman possessing even a hint of the ability to listen to another's thoughts was reviled as a witch.
'I know that the, time is coming,' Liljana said to me, 'when the whole world will be one as it was in the Age of the Mother. We will make it so: those who still keep the blue gelstei or have the will to try to attune themselves to one, whether they hold the sacred blestei in hand, or not. I have not spoken to you of this, but I have been trying to seek out these women. If we could pass important commu-ncations from city to city and land to land at the speed of thought, we would gain a great advantage over Morjin.'
I nodded my head at this, then said, 'Assuming that he himself does not have this power.'
'He is a man,' she huffed out with a wave of her hand as if that said everything.
'He is a man,' I said, 'who somehow managed to control his three droghuls' every thought and motion from a thousand miles away.'
'Yes, droghuls,' she said. 'Creatures made from his own mind and flesh.'
'Kane,' I said to her, 'believes that Morjin keeps a blue gelstei.' 'Even if he does, and is able to project his filthy illusions through it, that does not mean that he can speak mind to mind with other men.'
Some deep tension in her throat made me look at her more closely as I said to her, 'Only men dwelled at the Brotherhood's school. How, then, did you come by your knowledge of its destruction?'
'It was Master Storr,' she told me. 'I believe he kept a blestei.'
I remembered very well the Brotherhood's Master Galastei: a stout, old man with fair, liver-spotted skin and wispy white hair. A suspicious man, who spent his life in ferreting out secrets, whether of men and women or ancient crystals forged ages ago.
'I was casting my thoughts in that direction,' she continued. 'I know I touched minds with him - it was only an hour ago! When the full moon rises and the world dreams, that is the best time to try to speak with others far away. Somewhere to the west, on the Wendrush, I think, the moon rose over Abrasax and Master Storr - perhaps the other Masters as well. And, I pray, over Bemossed. They were fleeing.'
She went on to explain that she had only had a moment to make out all that Master Storr wanted to tell her.
'Somehow Morjin must have learned the secret of the tunnels,' she said, 'for he sent a company of Red Knights through one of them - right down through the valley. There was a battle, I think. A slaughter. The younger brothers tried to stand before the Red Knights while the Seven escaped.'
I pressed my finger to the warm teapot as I said, 'But how could they escape? Only one tunnel gives out into the valley - surely the Red Knights would have guarded the entrance.'
'I can't say - you know how strange those tunnels were. Perhaps there was another entrance. Or another tunnel.'
I thought about this for a few moments. 'But did the Red Knights pursue the Seven? And did Bemossed escape with them?'
'I don't know. I couldn't see that in Master Storr's mind.'
'But wouldn't he have wanted to tell you that particular tiding, above all others?'
'Of course he would have - I think.' Liljana rubbed at her temple as she looked down at her little blue stone. 'Speaking with another this way is not like sitting down to table to have a chat with a friend. At least, I don't think it is. There has been no one to teach me this art, and I'm really like a child playing with matches. And Master Storr is even more artless than I. He is only a man - and a very confused one at that. At least he seemed so when we managed to attune our two gelstei. We had only a moment, you know. A single moment and a flood of images, as in a dream, fire and blood and bewilderment, you see, trying to make sense of it all. To really hear what was in Master Storr's mind. It was like trying to drink from a raging river. In fact. . .'
Her voice died off into the sound of the crickets chirping somewhere in the garden. I waited for her to say more, but she only gazed up at the white disk of the moon.
'In fact,' she said in a trancelike rush of words, 'if I am to be completely truthful with you, as I always try to be, I have to consider the possibility that what I touched upon in Master Storr's mind was a dream.'
'A nightmare, you mean,' I said, taking a deep breath of air. I looked at Liljana. 'Then it is possible that nothing of what you told me actually happened.'
'No, it happened - of course it did. I know it i
n my heart.'
Here she pressed her hand to her chest and then reached out to pour the tea into our cups.
'It might indeed have been a nightmare,' she told me. 'But if so, then Master Storr was dreaming of these terrible things that Morjin did to the Brothers and their school.'
'But how do you know that Master Storr wasn't just dreaming of that which he most feared would befall?'
'I don't know how I know - I just do. There is a difference. It is like the taste of salt versus the description of saltiness. But since I can't expect you to appreciate this, as a mindspeaker does, I thought that I should tell you all.'
I sat sipping my tea and hoping that the chamomile might drive away the burning ache in my throat. I gazed at the clusters of the lilacs on the bushes along the garden's wall. It was strange, I thought, that even in the intense light of the moon, their soft purple color had vanished into the darker tones of the night.
'Have you tried again?' I said to Liljana as I looked up at the sky. 'We have hours of moonlight left, don't we?'
'I have tried and tried,' she told me. 'And then tried thrice more. But Mastet Storr, I have to tell you, is not much of a mindspeaker - whether or not he dreams or wakes. And neither am I.'
'Once,' I told her, 'you looked into a dragon's mind. And into Morjin's.'
'Yes, into his. But he burned me, Morjin did,' she said with a terrible sadness.
'I know he did,' I told her. 'But before he did, there was a moment, wasn't there? When you saw the great Red Dragon, and he saw you. And was afraid of you, as it was with the dragon called Angraboda.'
'He was afraid,' she admitted. 'But I was terrified.'
'Terrified, perhaps - as much as you ever allow yourself to be. But that has never kept you from looking into dark places, has it? Or going into them.'
Now she took a turn sipping her tea before she finally said to me, 'I'm not sure I want to know what you mean.'
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