I squeezed the Lightstone's smooth, glowing gelstei, said to be the hardest and most impenetrable of substances. I whispered to Master Juwain, 'I must know this, sir. Keep searching in your crystal, if you will.'
'I certainly will Val. But I must tell you the search might last years.'
'Years,' I whispered. 'I'm no Immortal, you know.'
Master Juwain looked at ase strangely and said. 'Perhaps not.'
'And the world won't wait forever.'
'That it certainly will not,' he said. His face fell troubled and grave. 'The Cosmic Maitreya, the Great Shining One, must come forth and soon. The age is ending, Val. Not just the Age of the Dragon, here on Ea, but the Galadin Satra itself. There must be a progression, a great progression.'
'What do you mean, sir?'
He sighed and held his hands out from his chest. 'When a man, with the aid of the great gelstei that we call the seven openers, becomes an Elijin, that is a progression. And so with the passage of the Galadin, as when Marsul freed the light inside himself in transcending his human form. But once in every universe there comes a moment toward which all time and history has pointed. This is a Great Progression. The word for this has been carried down as the Valkariad.'
I thought about this name, which was one and the same as the epic preceding the penultimate book of the Saganom Elu. I said, 'I thought that meant "the passage of the stars" '
'That is one translation. A better one might be. "the creation of the stars." For at the moment of the Valkariad, all the Ardun of the universe are raised up to the Valari order, even as the Valari become Elijin and the Elijin advance as Galadin. And the Galadin, as we saw in the amphitheater, transcend themselves in creating a new universe.'
'We did see that,' I said. 'But how can that be possible? The Galadin are only finite beings, yes?'
'True, true. But just as all beings and all things arise from the infinite One, all things contain the seed of the Infinite inside themselves.'
I thought of the bag of timana seeds that Ninana had given me. Each one. if planted in the right soil would magically burst forth into a great astor tree. But even these golden glories were as nothing against the splendor of the stars.
'The Valkariad is coming,' he said to me. 'Angra Mainyu and the War of the Stone have delayed this moment, but it must come, and soon.'
'And then?' I asked.
'And then.' he said simply,'the Age of Light shall begin.'
I lay back against the earth, trying to ignore the discomfort of my armor's diamonds grinding into my back. The tent's air steamed with the smells of wet wool and Maram's beery breath, but I paid this no mind. For inside myself, I felt quickening a bright, silver seed. There were stars there, a whole universe of stars. When I closed my eyes for a moment, I walked the heavens' incandescent heights.
And then, even as I looked out into the tent again. Flick appeared in a swirl of gold and glorre. I smiled at him and said, 'Well, little Flick, what do you think about this business of men becoming angels?'
I didn't really expect any kind of an answer. And so it surprised me, and Master Juwain, when a sweet voice like the piping of a bird issued from Flick's sparkling form, and he told me, 'Beware the Skakaman!'
I blinked my eyes in incomprehension, and then he was gone.
' "Beware the Skakaman," ' I whispered. I turned to Master Juwain, 'Do you know what that means?'
But he only shook his head as he patted his colored crystal. 'Perhaps I'll find that word in here.'
'Perhaps you will,' I said to him. 'But not now. We both must sleep, or else go out and stand watch in place of Sar Hannu and Sar Varald.' Master Juwain put away his crystal then, and the tent fell dark as a cavern deep inside the earth. Sleep claimed him first while I listened to the rain breaking against the tent roof and the quieter beating of my heart. Then I passed into a lightless land that wasn't quite life and wasn't quite death. Nightmares tormented me. A black shape, as indistinct as a shadow, seemed to take hold of me and pull me down in to a dreadful coldness. There was a gurgling, like rain running off the tent and being sucked down a hole. I couldn't breathe. I knew, somehow, that I lay sweating and writhing on the ground, unable to wake up.
And then, at last, I did come awake, to the sound of a long, deep scream. It took me a moment to realize that I had cried out in my sleep with a terrible pain that ripped open my throat.
'Val, what is it?' Maram said. He knelt next to me, shaking my shoulder. It seemed that my cry had awakened him — and everyone else.
'Valashu!' A voice like that of a sagosk bull bellowed from outside our tent. 1 tried to shake the sleep from my head as Sajagax called out yet again: 'Valashu! Atara! Everyone! Weapons ready! We are attacked!' I whipped Alkaladur from its sheath and leaped up as I practically tore through the opening of the tent. Outside, the day's first light pushed through sodden grayness still smothering the world. Sajagax I saw, was standing off in the trees, staring down at something as he gripped the hilt of his saber. I began running toward him. I was only dimly aware of Lansar Raasharu, Master Juwain and Maram bursting from our tent even as Atara, Karimah and Estrella hurried out of theirs. I drew up beside Sajagax. Although it was hard to see through the twilight, I made out the form of Sar Shevan sprawled on the wet, rotting leaves. I knew without looking that he was dead. The gorget had been ripped away from his throat, which was slashed open. His eyes were as empty as balls of glass.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out as he joined us. 'Oh, my Lord!'
He gripped a drawn kalama, as did Lansar Raasharu, who stood beside him. Karimah came up clutching her bow while Atara had a saber, as did her grandfather. Master Juwain held nothing more deadly than a wet stick that wouldn't serve to drive off a dog. But it was he, with his clear, gray eyes, who espied Juradan the Younger lying dead in a pool of blood a dozen paces deeper into the woods. A quick search through the bracken nearby turned up the bodies of Sar Ishadar and Sar Varald, who had likewise been murdered.
And then Estrella came running up to me. She grabbed my arm and pulled at me, all the while pointing at the woods on the opposite side of the clearing. I turned, dreading what I would see. But there was nothing there, it seemed, except trees. And then Estrella broke away from me. Before I could catch her, she bound off like a young doe and sprinted across the clearing. I followed her as quickly as I could; so did everyone else. She led us straight to the last of my fallen Guardians. Sar Hannu lay in a clump of bloodstained lilies. But he was still alive, and his dark, haunted eyes found mine and would not let go.
'Sar Hannu!' I cried. I dropped to my knee, and lay my hand on him. His throat, too, had been cut, but along the windpipe and not across it. 'Who did this to you?'
With the last of his strength, his bloody hand locked onto mine. And he gasped out, 'You. . did.'
And then he died. Not even Master Juwain's green gelstei or Estrella's frantic, pounding hands could bring him back to life.
'What did he mean?' Maram asked me as he stood over us. The falling rain beat against Sar Hannu's dosed eyes and washed his blood into the earth. 'Does he blame you for leading him here, to his death?'
'Yes, that must be it,' I said. And I thought: As he should.
'But what killed him then? An assassin? No, no — how could any assassin lure five Valari knights into the woods and slit their throats?'
Sajagax and Karimah looked at each other as they made warding circles with their fingers. Nearby, Atara stood in the rainy dawn with her blindfolded face turned toward the woods as if looking for something that no one could see.
'Something,' Maram said, 'from the amphitheater must have taken form and followed us here. If you hadn't awakened when you did, surely it would have murdered you — and maybe all of us.'
Beware the Skakaman, Flick had said to me. I did not want to believe that any of the beings who had lit up the amphitheater could be evil. Nor did I want to believe that they could take form and go stalking about the earth, even as Maram had suggested.
&nb
sp; 'If it was a ghost that murdered them,' I said to Maram, 'it seems unlikely that it would have refrained from entering our tent to murder me just because I screamed.' 'Then what did murder them?' he asked.
But I had no answer for him, neither did Master Juwain or anyone else. We stood there in the pouring rain staring down at Sar Hannu's torn body in the cold, gray light of the dawn.
'We should ride now, as quickly as we can,' Sajagax said. 'Whatever did this might return.'
I pointed my sword toward the looming trees and said, 'I pray that he does.'
'Come Valashu,' he said, taking my arm. 'Let's leave this cursed place.'
'No, we can't leave our friends unburied.'
'Let us then strip off their armor and bury them as we Sarni do.'
'No,' I said again. 'They are Valari knights and will be buried in their armor, with their swords over their hearts.'
It took us all morning to do as I had said, for we only had two shovels among us and I would not consent to making shallow graves that some scavenger might easily dig up. As it was, the task that I had appointed us would have been impossible if the ground of the clearing hadn't been free of tree roots and softened by the rain. I regretted only that we had no headstones to mark the places on earth where these five Guardians of the Lightstone would rest in eternity.
We broke camp with rain beating against our covered heads. We rode away from that place of slaughter as quickly as we could. The gurgling of water running down the road's gutters reminded me how terrible it was to have one's throat cut and die.
For most of four hours we kept up a quick pace. Baltasar and the Guardians, if they had fled for Tria, were likely halfway to the city by now and might be impossible to overtake. I didn't care. I wanted to charge up the road, sweeping from my path any impossibilities or obstacles. I couldn't help hoping that whatever murdered my knights would try to waylay us for in the clear light of the day, I wouldi draw Alkaladur and cleave him in two, whatever dread substance he was made of.
Late in the afternoon we came to a village straddling both sides of the road. There wasn't much of it: blacksmith's forge, a carpenter's shop, and a mill above a swift-running stream — and perhaps thirty little stone houses. As we slowed to a walk, one of the villagers cam out of her house with some cakes to sell. She called out to a man blowing glass over a glowing kiln inside: 'Look, Amman, more Valari — Sarni, too!'
I halted before her doorway, and the others drew up behind me. I called down a greeting to this little woman, whose fine wool tunic and silver bracelets suggested that she and her husband made a excellent living selling their goods to wayfarers. I asked her, 'Have you seen our friends? Did they pass this way?'
'Early this morning, my lord,' the woman said. 'But they've not yet left Silver Glade, which is what we call our village. They've set up in Harbannan's wheat field by the river.'
She pointed up the road where a little bridge spanned the silver water that she called a river. The mill stood to the right of the road on the water's far bank. If there was a wheat field to the left, the curve of the road and the houses obscured it.
I thanked the woman and gave her a coin for her cakes. Then I urged Altaru forward, and we cantered down the village's main street, followed by Sajagax and the others. A few moments later, we pounded across the bridge. There the road turned to the left, and the houses gave out onto an expanse of ripening wheat. And there, on a triangular field between the road and the river, my scores of Guardians were drawn up on their horses in a long line as if for battle. Across the road, in an apple orchard, Orox and Thadrak and all of Sajagax's warriors gathered beneath the trees with their bows strung and their sharp, blue eyes fixed on the road.
'Baltasar!' I called out as I crossed the field. I could easily make out the blue rose that stood out from the gold of his surcoat. He waited on top of his horse at the center of the line. Sunjay Naviru sat nearby, and so did Sar Kimball, Lord Noldru, Lord Harsha and many others whom I was glad to see. 'What are you doing here?'
I pulled up in front of my Valari knights, with Sajagax and Lansar Raasharu, who looked at Baltasar as if afraid his son had taken leave of his senses. Atara and Karimah joined us there, too, and a few moments later, Thadrak and Zekii galloped in from across the road and greeted Sajagax with puzzled looks.
'What are we doing here?' Baltasar said to me. 'What are you doing here, Lord Valashu?'
'What do mean?' I asked him. I didn't know whether to be dumb founded or furious with the actions of my hot-headed friend, 'Why did you desert us?'
Now it was Baltasar's turn to regard me as if I had fallen mad. He blurted out, 'But you commanded me to!'
'What do you mean?' I said again.
'Outside the bald rock in the woods, you commanded me to lead the Guardians and the Kurmak here!'
'Never!' I told him. 'Why would I do such a thing.'
'Because, you said that you had discovered inside a great treachery.'
'What treachery, then?'
'That Duke Malatam had gathered a new army and was pursuing us again.' Baltasar looked back and forth between me and Sajagax, who was glaring at him. 'You commanded me to intercept the Duke's army here, in this village. You were to take the Lightstone into Tria by a different route. That's what you said.'
'Someone might have said that,' I told him. 'But it was not I.'
'But it was you!' Baltasar said. 'You came up to me outside the rock. I saw you. So did Sunjay, Skyshan, Adamar — everyone. You stood two feet from me, face to face!'
Along the line of my knights, Sunjay Naviru and Lord Noldru nodded their heads gravely in affirmation of what Baltasar had said. They all stared at me as if to assure themselves that I really was Valashu Elahad.
'But how could I have come up to you outside the amphitheater?' I asked Baltasar. 'Since the Guardians were posted across the entranceway?'
'Well, you said that you had found a secret entrance.'
At this, Maram shot me a swift, knowing look and muttered, 'Ah, what did I say? What did I say?'
'You told me,' Baltasar went on, 'that you had come out on the side of the rock opposite us. And then you circled the rock and approached us from the woods. And commanded us to ride toward Silver Glade immediately.'
'No, it was not I,' I said again. 'It was something else.'
I motioned for the Guardians to break their formation and gather around me. Then I told them everything that had happened inside the amphitheater and since then.
'But this is terrible!' Baltasar said to me. 'What if Sar Maram is right? What if some ghost from the amphitheater took on your form and commanded me to desert you? And then followed to slay you and steal the Lightstone?'
Beware the Skakaman! I thought. I was almost convinced that Maram's fear had somehow been made real.
'Perhaps,' Sunjay said, 'it was only an illusion sent by the Lord of Illusions himself.'
He touched the warder stone that hung from his neck, and so did many other knights around us. And Master Juwain said, 'I don't think these gelstei failed to protect you.'
'No,' I said agreeing with him. 'What happened to Sar Hannu and the others was no work of illusion. Someone struck cold steel into them.'
At the mention of the murdered Guardians, the men around me bowed down their heads. Lord Noldru, I saw, was weeping, for Sar Varald had been his friend.
'What are we to do, then?' Baltasar asked me.
Although the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing, soon it would be dark. I looked about the wheat field and the orchard across the road. I said, 'It's late, and so we shall camp here for the night — after we've paid Farmer Harbannan for trampling his wheat. Tomorrow, we'll ride into Tria.'
The camp we made then was the strongest of our entire journey. Deep moats we dug in poor Harbannan's field, and we gathered wood from a nearby stand of oaks to build up a stockade around our rows of tents. I issued a password, Alumit, that anyone approaching my pavilion must know. I gave orders that anyone resembling me should be
examined to make sure he was wearing the gold medallion of the Quest and that of the Tournament Champion. Master Juwain and Maram volunteered to act as my safe-keepers, that everyone might see that I had not left their presence — and that they had not left mine
I dined with them and Atara inside my pavilion that evening. I desired only the companionship of those who had borne the uncertainties of the Quest with me. And so I regarded it as the working of fate when I heard a faint clopping of hooves along the road and then two visitors announced themselves at the perimeter of our encampment. For they proved to be friends I loved as mother and brother Liljana Ashvaran and a little boy named Daj, whom we had brought out of Argattha.
Chapter 26
The Guardians posted behind the stockade would not let them pass. After being summoned, I hurried out of my pavilion and down the rows of tents to see two figures dressed in traveling cloaks and standing by their horses outside the stockade in the swishing wheat. Twilight was darkening the world, but I could still make out Liljana's pretty, round face and Dajarian's sharper features. The months since the Quest had wrought changes upon them. Liljana's once-plump form had thinned, and her cheeks seemed gaunt and hollowed. Daj, however, stood half a head taller and had filled out, probably from Liljana's sumptuous cooking. In his fine tunic, cleaned up as he was, he seemed almost a different boy. From beneath a mop of black hair, his almond eyes looked out at me and met mine with great gladness.
'Val!' he called to me. And then, impulsive as always, he blurted out, 'Your armor really is made of diamons!'
Liljana nodded at him in a kindly way, then turned to me. 'Well — are you going to keep an old woman waiting all night in the dark?'
Liljana, I thought, was hardly old. Although her hair was gray as iron and her skin deeply creased, she was only of middling years and still robust. She possessed a strength of body and spirit that a much younger woman might have envied. Indeed, many did, for she was the Materix of that secret Sisterhood known as the Maitriche Telu.
Lord of Lies ec-2 Page 48
