Lord of Lies ec-2

by David Zindell

  'And what of Kane?' I asked.

  'Kane left Tria in great urgency five months ago.'

  'Business with this Black Brotherhood of his?'

  'I don't know — he wouldn't say.'

  'Did he say when he might return?'

  'I don't know that either. I hope in time for the conclave.'

  I hoped this, too. There were many questions I wished to ask this strange, immortal man. He might have answers for me that not even the akashic crystal could tell me. It was with the thought of this fantastical gelstei, and him, that I ended our little sojourn by the river and climbed onto my horse. We still had many miles to go.

  We reached the lake early that afternoon, cresting a rise to behold an expanse of glittering blue beneath a perfectly clear and deep blue sky. The lake seemed to be many miles wide, but we could not see very far out into it, for a wall of mist rose up from its surface in a thick swathe of gray.

  'The Lake of Mists,' Baltasar called out from behind me. 'Surely this must be it.'

  Surely it was. At least, that is what the men and women who lived near the lake called it. They were short and thick set with curly black hair and skins nearly as dark as burnt grass. They made their village of little huts hewn of cottonwood; they used the lake's water to irrigate fields won in bitter battle with their hoes against the steppe. It seemed that they grew only one crop: a yellow grain called rushk. Atara called them the Dirt Scrapers; she said that they had come up from the south, perhaps from Uskudar, two thousand years before at the time of the Great Death. The Kurmak allowed them to live here in exchange for a tribute paid in sacks of rushk, which was said to be nearly as sustaining as meat. The Kurmak also protected them from the Adirii and other enemies.

  'Ah, they don't seem very grateful of their protectors,' Maram said to me as we rode across the narrow band of their fields. Several of the lake men, stripped to the waist and sweating in the sun, paused in their labor to watch the Manslayers ride past them. They glared at these warrior women with their dark eyes and gripped their hoes as if wishing they might put their blades into the Manslayers instead of hacking at weeds in their fields.

  Some of these people, to our good fortune, did not scrape dirt at all, but were fishermen. Following the Manslayers, we rode straight down to lake's shore where an old man bent over caulking his beached boat. The joints of his hands were swollen with a lifetime of grinding work, and were much-scarred — probably from the many fishhooks that had caught in them. Karimah, quirt in hand, demanded his name and he said that he was called Tembom.

  'Well, Tembom,' she told him, 'we have need to borrow your boat for the day, and perhaps more.'

  Tembom straightened up his creaky body and stared at me — and the men that I led — as if he had never seen Valari knights before, which he undoubtedly hadn't.

  'But why would you need my boat, Mistress?' he asked her.

  'Why would you ask me why?' Karimah said, snapping the quirt against her hand.

  While the Manslayers edged the shore and sat haughtily on their horses and my knights waited behind me to see what would transpire, Tembom looked out at the lake's quiet blue waters and the mist that rose up from it perhaps a mile away. He said, 'If it's fish you want, we have a good catch of carp, Mistress.'

  Karimah's blue eyes flashed at him and she snapped, 'My lady and her friends are going fishing after more than carp. Now we'll need your boat.'

  I, of course, had told Karimah nothing of my purpose in seeking a boat, and neither had Atara. But Karimah must have guessed much, for her eyes were like glittering gelstei as she stared out into the lake.

  Maram liked boats even less than I did, and he dismounted to come up close and take a better look at this one. 'Well, she seems sturdy enough to hold up even if we're lost in that mist for a few hours.'

  Tembom's old eyes widened with alarm. 'But my lord, we never sail out that far. The mist is cursed.'

  'How so?'

  'It's said that any who sail into it do not return.'

  'Cursed, you say? But when was the last time anyone fished there?'

  'I don't know. Not in my lifetime or that of my father.'

  Tembom stared out toward the center of the lake and shuddered. 'When I was a boy, my uncle, Jarom, said that he didn't care about curses. On a day as peaceful as this, he rowed into the mist gland it ate him alive, along with his boat.'

  He rested his hand on the boat's rails as he might the head of a child. I fished a few gold coins from my purse and handed them to him, saying, 'If we don't return, use these to buy another boat.'

  Karimah edged her horse right up to the boat, and whipped her leather quirt against it with a quick crack. She said to me, This man should not receive gold for rendering a rightful service.'

  'He owes me no service,' I said to her. 'In any case, he must be indemnified against the chance that his boat will be lost.'

  'But what of the chances we Kurmak take in protecting him? Hai — pay your gold coins to us, I say.'

  But I had already given gold to Trahadak the Elder for safe passage across the Kurmak's country, and I wasn't ready to surrender up any more. Then Atara took Karimah aside to confer with her for a few moments. And Karimah said to me, 'Very well, then, we'll wait here with your Valari until you return. But please see that you do return. Atara is more precious to me than any gold.'

  And with that she smiled as she stroked Atara's long hair. It seemed that she could tender little kindnesses to those she loved as happily as she could put her knife or her arrows into her enemies.

  I lost no time in seeing to it that the boat was emptied of its nets, gaffs and other fishing gear. We stowed beneath its weathered seats enough supplies for several days. Then I took the Lightstone from Sar Ianashu and stood on the sandy beach with Lord Raasharu, Baltasar, Lord Harsha and others who were close to my heart.

  'You will be in command,' I said to Baltasar. 'Take care that none of the Guardians speaks with Karimah's women.'

  'Guardians', Baltasar huffed out. 'What are we to guard then, if you take the Lightstone out into that accursed mist?'

  'Guard the shore against our return,' I said, dapping him on his shoulder. I glanced at the Manslayers sitting on their ponies, at their golden hair and long, tanned arms bound in shining gold. I smiled as I added, 'And guard yourselves against yourselves'.

  I was loathe to leave Altaru behind, for I well-remembered how this noble animal had led us to the first Vild through the trackless tangle of Alonian forest But there was no way my great stallion could stand inside 1 little fishing boat. As it was, there was barely room for Master Juwain, Maram, Atara and me — and for Estrella, too, for at the last moment, as I stood in the shallows pushing the boat out into the lake, she broke away from Behira and splashed through the water up to my side.

  'All right, all right,' I laughed out as Estrella jumped into my arms. I remembered for the thousandth time Kasandra's prophecy — and now Atara's. 'We won't leave you here.'

  I lifted her into the boat, and then climbed in myself. I sat with her near the stern. Maram, to my surprise, volunteered to pull the oars, and he settled into the deep seat in the middle of the boat. Atara and Master Juwain, up near the bow, faced outward toward the center of the lake and the omnipresent gray mist that covered it.

  To the sound of little waves lapping against the boats sideboards and the long, wooden oars dipping into water with steady rhythm, Maram rowed us out into the lake. It was a calm day, and a clear one; except for our uncertainty as to what we would find in this lake, it seemed that we had little to fear except the radiance of the sun, which in the middle of Marud was hot, constant and fierce.

  My diamond armor threw back much of its light in a splendid display, and I could be thankful that I was wearing it instead of my much hotter steel mail. But I was quite hot enough. I sweated in saltwater streams that stung my neck and trickled down my back and sides. The sun burned my face. It seemed to suck the moisture straight out of my boots and leggings, which had soake
d through when I had pushed off the boat. The still air was like a blast from an oven searing my eyes.

  And then Maram rowed us straight into the wall of mist, and it immediately fell cold. It was like being wrapped in a blanket soaked with ice water. I began shivering, and so did Estrella. I covered her with my wool cloak, but it didn't seem to help very much. The mist dewed our hair and clung to our garments in a slick of moisture. It filled our nostrils and mouths with every breath we drew. There was no escaping it. 1 turned my head right and left, but this cold, gray cloud seemed equally dense in all directions. It lay so thickly about the lake that 1 could barely see Atara and Master Juwain near the prow as they drew on their cloaks and shivered, too.

  'I can't see a damn thing!' Maram complained as he paused and pulled up the oars. 'I can't see where to row!'

  'You can see me', I said to him from only a few feet away. Even so close, there was a moist, smothering grayness between us that seemed to steal the clarity and substance from Maram's considerable form. 'Keep rowing, straight ahead, and we'll be all right.'

  'But what is straight, then?'

  In answer, I placed my fingertips together like the roof of a chalet and pushed my arms out straight toward the prow of the boat.

  'Are you sure, Val? Do you remember how your sense of direction failed you in the Black Bog?'

  'This isn't the Black Bog,' I said. 'We set out from the north side of the lake. If Master Juwain's verse tells true, the island must be at the lake's center, toward the south.'

  Maram turned to look behind him into the swirling mist, and he said, 'And you're sure that way is south?'

  'As sure as a swan flying toward Mesh at the fall of winter.'

  'Well, you've always had this uncanny sense. Of course, it did fail again when we approached the first Vild, didn't it?'

  'Just row, my friend,' I said to him, 'and we'll be all right.'

  With a grunt of doubt, Maram went back to working his oars. The sleek wooden blades dipped into the water again and again. Other than this soft sound, it was almost deathly quiet. The whoosh of Maram's breath bubbling out into the air seemed almost as loud as a storm wind.

  'It's colder here,' he said suddenly, 'Do you feel it Val?' Out of nowhere, the mist grew suddenly thicker, as if it were a wall of cold water pushing against us. It chilled my bones. Something in the air and in the gray lake beneath us — some strange, unsettling and powerful thing — seemed to warn us away in a shiver of dread that tore through the deepest parts of our bodies.

  'Accursed mist!' Maram muttered. 'This can't be natural.'

  'You know it's not,' Master juwain said to him from the front of the boat. His voice sounded thin and distant. 'We know the Lokilani protect their Vilds with barriers beyond mists or walls of trees.'

  'Invisible barriers,' Maram muttered. 'But felt keenly enough by the heart and soul. Atara! Can you see anything?'

  'Less than you,' she said pulling at the blindfold across her face.

  Estrella, sitting next to me on the moist wood of our seat, pushed herself against the hardness of my armor as I pulled my cloak more tightly about us. I brought forth the Lightstone in the hope that its radiance might show our way through the ever-thickening mist. In my cold hands, the little cup poured forth a glossy, golden light. But the tiny particles of mist threw it back into my face and scattered it so that the air surrounding the boat scintillated and dazzled the eye, making it even harder to see.

  'Put it away!' Maram cried out, letting go his oar to cover his face. 'It's no help here!'

  I did as he asked, and sat in the darkening grayness as the swells of water beneath us moved the boat gently up and down. The reek of rotten old fish emanated from the boat's creaking boards; the mist seemed to grab this stench, smothering us with it and nauseating us.

  'Row, then,' I said to Maram. 'What else is there to do?'

  For a while, Maram rowed with as much effort and as steadily as he dared. His fat cheeks puffed out with every stroke, and his beard headed up with moisture, whether from sweat or the mist, it was hard to tell. After a while, he stopped and asked me, 'How long do you think I've been rowing?'

  Water lapped against the boat's sideboards, and I said, 'Not long enough.'

  'At least an hour, I should say. If I've pulled true, why haven't we reached this damn island yet?'

  'We will, soon, just keep rowing.'

  With a soft curse, Maram began working the oars again. And each time he heaved his massive body backward in completion of a stroke, he muttered something under his breath.

  Time passed. In this neverland of icy mist that devoured the sun, it was hard for me to tell exactly how much time. It might have be minutes; it might have been days. And then I listened more closely to the words Maram forced out with his heavy breath, and I heard him say, 'Five hundred eighty-one, five hundred eighty-two. .'

  'What are you doing?' I asked him.

  He shook his head against the brown curls plastered to his face and told me, 'Counting strokes. If each stroke requires three seconds, then after twelve hundred strokes, well, that's an hour.'

  'Yes, very good,' Master Juwain called out from behind him. 'But supposing each stroke requires two seconds or four. Then — '

  'It doesn't matter,' Maram said. 'I'm just trying to get an idea of how long I've been at this. There's something strange about time here. Can you feel it? It seems like I've been rowing for five days.'

  He went back to work with the oars and back to his count. After an even longer time — he didn't say what number he had reached — he shipped oars and slumped forward, resting his head on his hand.

  'I'm tired,' he said. 'I'm cold. Val, how about a bit of brandy?'

  I brought out a bottle of brandy and poured some into a cup. I handed it to him; he drank it in three quick swallows, then returned the cup to me for another round.

  'There's something very wrong here,' he announced. 'I'm sure we're caught in a current. Doesn't anyone feel the boat moving?'

  We all kept a silence as we felt for motion of wood over water. It seemed to me that we were moving, backward toward the north.

  'Yes, yes, a current, of course,' Master Juwain said. 'In the Vilds, the telluric currents are very strong.'

  I tried to imagine these invisible, firelike flows that knotted and gathered in certain places in the earth. Like the wheels of light that concentrated at certain points along the body's spine, Master Juwain called them chakras. The great earth chakras, as he now explained to us, could not only open doors to other worlds but work wonders on the forms and substance of this one.

  'How else are mountains raised up?' he asked us. 'Why does the ground shake and split apart in some places on earth but not others? And so with the currents of the sea — or even a lake.'

  'Very well,' Maram said to him, 'but I had never heard that anyone could wield these earth currents to move wind and water.'

  'Neither have I,' Master Juwain said. 'I should very much like to meet these Lokilani and learn their arts.'

  'We'll meet them soon enough,' I said. 'If there's a current here we can row out of it.'

  So thick was the mist blinding us that we could not test the water's movement by casting slivers of wood out into the lake. There was a slight wind, but this shifted about strangely, and it was difficult to tell lithe current caused it by pushing us through the air. It was enough I hoped, to sense the current's flow: away from the island and toward the north. All we had to do was to row hard against it.

  This we now did. I gave Maram a rest and exchanged places with him. I began working the oars as quickly as I could, lifting them out of the water and dipping down as I pushed forward, only to lower them into the lake a moment later and pull backward against its dark, dense grayness with all the power in my legs, arms and back. Again and again, I heaved against the current; I gasped in cold, wet air through my mouth and gave it back in hot bursts of breath. The boat seemed to sail through the water. And yet it seemed that we moved nowhere.

&nb
sp; After a long time, I gave up. I shipped oars and rested my arms on my legs as I fought to breathe against the mist that was choking me.

  'It's not so easy, is it?' Maram grumbled at me. 'Row out of the current, you say. Row out of this damned mist, I say. Let's return to shore while we still can.'

  I sat up straight and looked off into the mist past the boat's stern, in the direction from which we had come if we had rowed straight. That way must be north, I told myself. Therefore the boat's prow should still be pointed south.

  'For pity's sake, take us out of this!' Maram said to me. 'Turn the boat around, Val.'

  As my heart thumped inside my chest and pushed pulsing currents of blood up into my throbbing head, it seemed that water beneath us was slowly turning the boat around — and around and around. Or perhaps it was the turning of the world itself that I felt or some fiery current swirling deep Side it. Whatever it was, some strange and irresistible force seemed to take hold of me deep inside, spinning me about and obliterating my sense of direction.

  'We're lost, aren't we?' Maram said.

  I looked past his great shoulders at the wall of gray behind him. I looked to the right and left, and the grayness swirled no less densely in those directions. Which way was south? There was mist in my mind, and I could not see it.

  'Take heart, my friend,' I said to Maram. 'At least this isn t as bad the Black bog.'