Lord of Lies. David Zindell

turned toward Estrella. She stood in the shelter of my mother’s bosom silently sipping from the cup of warm milk and nutmeg that my mother had given her. Kasandra had said that this girl would show me the Maitreya. Without words to mar the way she saw the world and interpreted it to others, her whole being was a beautiful mirror like the silustria of my sword. This, I thought, was her gift. She smiled at me with her innocent and beautiful face, and in the quick, clear brightness there, it seemed that she was showing me myself just as I was.

      Then I remembered the words of Morjin’s letter: You cannot be this Maitreya, either. But Morjin was the Lord of Lies. I suddenly knew that he truly did fear that I was the Maitreya. And so, it seemed, I must truly be.

      ‘All right,’ I finally said, holding up my sword. I smiled at my good friends, at Sunjay Naviru, and at Skyshan of Ki and at others. ‘All right. In eleven days, the tournament in Nar will begin. All the kings of the Valari or their seneschals will be there. Let this be the test of things, then: if I can persuade them to journey to Tria, there to meet in conclave with the kings of the Free Kingdoms and make alliance against Morjin, I will claim the Lightstone.’

      At this news, Baltasar and Sunjay – Jonathay, too, and others – let loose a cheer. Asaru smiled at me and told me that he was glad that I would be accompanying Yarashan and him to Nar. But Lord Tanu remained skeptical. He pulled at his sour face and asked, ‘And just how will you accomplish this miracle?’

      ‘With all the force of my heart, sir.’ I went on to explain that I would compete at sword and at bow, and at all the tournament’s other competitions. ‘If I do well enough, or am even declared champion, then the kings will have to listen to me.’

      ‘If you’re declared champion,’ Asaru said with a smile, ‘you’ll have to defeat me first, little brother.’

      ‘And me,’ Yarashan put in as pride stiffened his handsome face.

      I smiled at both of them as I bowed my head. Then I turned to Master Juwain. ‘The tournament’s champion, whoever he is, may ask of King Waray a boon. If fortune should favor me, I would ask that the Brotherhood school might be reopened.’

      Master Juwain squeezed the thought stone in his hand. He was nearly as eager as I to enter the Brotherhood school and discover what knowledge its companion stones might hold.

      ‘Very well,’ Lord Tanu said to me. ‘You young knights always want to go to tournaments. But is it fitting that the Knight of the Swan and the Guardian of the Lightstone himself should abandon his charge to go off seeking glory?’

      ‘No, it is not,’ I said to him. I held my hand out toward the Lightstone. ‘And that is why we will have to take it with us.’

      As I now explained to Lord Tanu, no less my father and Lansar Raasharu and everyone else, there were good reasons for risking the Lightstone by taking it on the road. First, I had vowed that all the Valari kingdoms would share in its radiance. Second, if King Waray should grant me or another Meshian knight the boon of entering the Brotherhood’s school, the Lightstone would be needed to open any thought stones. Third, although there was obvious danger in taking the Lightstone out of the Elahad castle, there was perhaps an equal danger in keeping it here, as the night’s events had proved. And fourth, if it should be proven that I was the Maitreya, the Lightstone must be close at hand for me to claim.

      When I had completed my argument, everyone remained silent and looked at my father to see what he might say. He gazed at me for many moments before he finally spoke: ‘It is hard to imagine losing this great light that has come into our castle so soon after gaining it.’

      ‘We have each of us given our word, sir. Shouldn’t we honor this?’

      ‘Are you asking my permission to remove from my hall the greatest treasure in the world? And to take from my kingdom a hundred of its finest knights?’

      He nodded at Baltasar as his radiant eyes looked past the Lightstone at the Guardians who stood around it. And then he turned back toward me.

      ‘Yes, your permission, sir,’ I said to him.

      ‘Is that truly mine to give?’

      ‘Should not a king command his own son?’

      ‘His son, yes,’ he said as he regarded me strangely. He bowed his head to me, slightly, then continued, ‘A king is charged with the safeguarding of his kingdom and ordering its affairs – and so commanding those who follow him. But he has a greater charge as well, and that is to the kingdom of the earth and all of life. This realm, however, he does not rule. If he should lose his son to this higher realm, how then should he presume to command him?’

      A sharp pain filled my throat as I looked at my father. The great passages of life were always sad. I could find no words to say to him.

      ‘Very well, then, Valashu,’ he finally forced out. ‘Take the Lightstone with you to Nar, if you must. But be careful, my son.’

      He leaned forward to embrace me and then kissed my forehead.

      ‘Will you come, too, sir?’ I asked him.

      He glanced at the Lightstone and shook his head. ‘No, that’s impossible, now. The Red Dragon has spoken of marching armies into Mesh. There’s much to be done if these armies are to be kept away.’

      I bowed to him deeply and then met his bright gaze.

      ‘And now,’ my father said to everyone, ‘it is more than late. Let us retire to our rooms or take breakfast, as we will. Later there will be much to do.’

      And with that, he put his arm around my mother to escort her and Estrella from the hall. Everyone else except the Guardians who would stand near the Lightstone through the morning prepared to leave as well. I remained for a few moments staring at this sacred cup that had caused so many to sully themselves and make murder. Then I went off to take a few hours of rest.

       7

      That afternoon the bodies of the scryers and the slave girls were laid to earth on a grassy knoll on the slopes of Telshar above the castle. There I buried as well the box that Salmelu had given me. I stood with my family and friends beneath a cloudy sky and listened to my father vow vengeance toward the one who had so defiled his kingdom. Never again, I thought, would he extend hospitality toward the emissaries of Morjin.

      Late the next day, a messenger brought word of the Red Priests. It seemed that they had managed to keep ahead of the knights that my father had sent in pursuit of them; they had ridden straight across Mesh and into Waas before the kel keep that guarded the frontier could be alerted. Thus they made their escape. For the Waashians would allow no knight of Mesh into their realm, nor even suffer them to tell of Salmelu’s infamy. This was according to King Sandarkan’s command. Only a few years before, at the Battle of Red Mountain, we of the Swan and Stars had badly defeated the Waashians, and King Sandarkan still held great bitterness toward Mesh.

      Neither did the search of the castle uncover the ghul. But then, that is a ghul’s nature, to remain hidden inside another’s mind or dwell deep within the flesh of a faithful nurse or a groom or even a friend. Now that it had come time to prepare for the Nar tournament, I was relieved to be putting behind me the castle’s many residents and the many more town-dwellers who journeyed back and forth from Silvassu every day. It gave me some small comfort that I could choose my companions from those I was certain could not be a ghul. Baltasar and the hundred Guardians I trusted with my life – and more importantly, with the Lightstone. Lansar Raasharu, of course, was beyond reproach, as were my brothers, Asaru and Yarashan. Master Juwain would be riding at my side, as he had on the great Quest. And it turned out that Maram would be coming with us, too.

      ‘Well, Val,’ he said to me after a long day of laying in supplies and attending to the many details of organizing an expedition, ‘you didn’t really think I’d let you go off alone on another adventure, did you?’

      ‘You’re