Lord of Lies. David Zindell

that had nearly destroyed Mylene, he had slain the Lightstone’s guardian and had stolen the Cup of Heaven. He persuaded a great host of angels to his purpose, for there are always those who will challenge the will of the One. Among the Galadin who followed him were Yama, Gashur, Lokir, Kadaklan, Yurlunggur and Zun. And among the Elijin: Zarin, Ashalin, Shaitin, Nayin, Warkin and Duryin. They called themselves the Daevas, and they fled to the world of Damoom.

      Then befell a great and terrible war, the War of the Stone, that was fought on thousands of worlds across the universe and lasted tens of thousands of years. Ashtoreth and Valoreth had led those angels still faithful to the Law of the One against Angra Mainyu. Master Juwain could tell us very little of this war. But it seemed that somehow Ashtoreth and the faithful Amshahs had finally prevailed. The Lightstone had been regained, and Angra Mainyu and his dark angels had been bound on Damoom.

      ‘And there, on this darkest of the Dark Worlds, Angra Mainyu still dwells to this day,’ Master Juwain said. He looked up at the clouds that hid the night’s stars. ‘And now he is master only of his own doom.’

      I wasn’t so sure of this. One of the reasons that Morjin wished to regain the Lightstone was to use it to free Angra Mainyu from his prison.

      ‘In a way,’ Master Juwain went on, ‘we may think of Angra Mainyu and Morjin as ghuls themselves.’

      ‘Morjin, a ghul?’ Maram said.

      ‘Certainly. For it is part of the Law of the One that you cannot harm another without harming yourself. All the evil that the Red Dragon has done has possessed him with evil. And so now his own evil purpose enslaves him.’

      I couldn’t help thinking of Kane, he of the black eyes like burning coals and a soul as deep and troubled as time itself. Kane, who was once Kalkin, one of the immortal Elijin sent to Ea with Morjin and other angels who had been killed long ago. Kane, I knew, had slain thousands, and he burned with a terrible purpose that consumed him with hate. And yet he still held within his savage heart a bright and beautiful thing that was hate’s very opposite. By what grace, I wondered, did he retain his essential humanity and the freedom of his soul?

      I spoke of this to Master Juwain and Maram, and then I said, ‘It’s hard to understand why one man falls and another does not.’

      ‘Surely there always remains for each of us a choice.’

      ‘Yes – but why does one man choose evil and another good?’

      ‘That, in the end, will always remain a mystery. But the path toward bondage and evil is well known.’

      He went on to say that just as Morjin had enslaved others through greed, lust, envy and wrath, these evils had captured him as well.

      ‘Fear and hate are even worse,’ he said. ‘Hate is like a tunnel of fire. It burns away all the beauty of creation. It concentrates and attaches the will to one thing, and one thing only: the object that is to be destroyed. Is there any slavery more abject than this?’

      ‘Kane,’ I said, staring at the fire, ‘hates so utterly.’

      ‘Yes, and if he does not let go of it, one day it will destroy him – utterly.’

      In the fire’s hot orange flames, I saw Atara’s beautiful eyes all torn and bloody – and burning, burning, burning. To Master Juwain, I said, ‘It is not so easy … to let go.’

      ‘Do you see? Do you see? But we must turn away from these dark things if we are ever to be free.’

      ‘Is that possible?’ I wondered aloud. ‘To be truly free?’

      ‘It must be possible,’ Master Juwain said. ‘But if the One is the essence of freedom, then it follows that only a man completely open to the will of the One could be completely free.’

      ‘Ah, the will of the One, indeed!’ Maram put in after taking a pull at his brandy. ‘That still sounds like slavery to me.’

      While Flick spun by the fire and the Guardians stood watch over us, I pondered this deep and paradoxical mystery. How, I asked myself, could any man know and work the will of the One?

      ‘Is this what a Maitreya is, then?’ I asked.

      ‘I wish I could tell you,’ Master Juwain said.

      I wished that Estrella were awake and sitting by the fire with me so that I might see the answers that I sought somehow reflected in her eyes.

      ‘Was there nothing about this,’ I asked Master Juwain, ‘in your gelstei?’

      Master Juwain brought out the thought stone and held it up to the fire. ‘There was only a hint that the Maitreya has some vital part to play in man’s journey toward the One.’

      I wished that Kane hadn’t gone off on some secret mission to uncover the plans of the Red Dragon. If he were sitting here now, I thought, he might simply tell me what the Maitreya was meant for. And more, being of the Elijin and having lived long enough to know other Maitreyas in other ages, he might tell me if I could be this Shining One.

      After that we went off to our beds. I slept fitfully, being disturbed by dreams of Kane stalking the Red Priests in darkness and killing them with his quick and savage knife. I was very glad when the new day dawned all clear and bright. The meadowlarks singing in the hills around us cheered me; the silvery spheres of dew on the grass caught the sky’s blueness and the rays of the golden sun.

      We traveled all that day up the North Road through the steadily rising hills. Toward noon it grew quite warm, but the sun did not heat up our armor as much as it would mail, for steel drinks in heat and light, while diamond scatters it in a resplendent fire of many colors. It was a glorious sight to see the hundred Guardians of the Lightstone formed up into three columns and riding forth all with the same bright purpose. The miles vanished beneath the clopping of the horses’ hooves. In the late afternoon, we entered the thicker forest that covers the mountains to the north. We passed through the pretty town of Ki, and made camp outside it near a stand of oaks.

      On our next day’s journey, the road rose steeply toward the pass between Ishka and Mesh. The horses drawing the wagons had hard work to keep driving themselves against the ancient paving stones; the horses that bore us snorted and sweated, and were grateful when we stopped to give them rest and exchange them for our remounts. Finally we came to that great cut of rock called the Telemesh Gate. One of my ancestors, using a great firestone, had melted it out of the granite in the saddle between Mount Raaskel and Mount Korukel. On my last journey into Ishka, Maram, Master Juwain and I had been attacked here. Out the dark mouth of the Gate, a great, white bear had charged down upon us and had nearly torn us to pieces. It remained still unclear as to whether this bear was an animal ghul made by Morjin to murder us. Altaru, remembering his battle with the bear, let loose a tremendous whinny as we drew nearer the Gate. I had to pat his sweating black neck and reassure him that any bear mad enough to charge our company would be impaled on the Guardians’ long lances.

      I was less sure of what we would find on the other side of the Gate, for King Hadaru’s knights had lances of their own, and many more than did we. And so I commanded my men to keep tight their columns, and keep even tighter their lips, and I led them straight into the den of an even greater bear.

       8

      And so we crossed into Ishka. We wound our way down from the pass through fir forests smelling of flowers and fresh spring sap. A few miles farther, on a hill beside the road, we came upon the great fortress that guarded this approach into Ishka. Lord Shadru was its commander. When his lookouts in their towers espied our company advancing into his king’s realm, he alerted his trumpeters to sound the alarm and rode out to meet us in force.

      This proved to be two hundred Ishkan knights, part of the garrison stationed at this important fortress. Lord Shadru, a stout old man whose face had once been burnt with red-hot sand in the siege of a castle in Anjo, led his knights straight up to us. He