Lord of Lies

Chapter 9

In the morning, everyone assembled in the lane in front of the palace. King Hadaru, wearing a red tunic emblazoned with the great white bear* of the Aradars, sat astride a big gelding. His standard-bearer held aloft a fluttering banner with the same charge. Prince Issur and Lord Nadhru rode next to the king. Fifty knights, King Hadaru's private guard, took their places behind them, followed by a considerable baggage train. Asaru and Yarashan chafed at having to trail after this company, but protocol demanded that we yield precedence to a king in his own realm. And so the Guardians and I lined up much as before, only now there were twenty more of us. I went among these Ishkan knights learning their names and those of their fathers. In appearance, they were little different than the knights of Mesh. They wore diamond battle armor glittering in the morning light. Their surcoats and shields, bordered with white bears, showed their various charges. I noted the black lion against the white field of Sar Kimball and the gold sunburst of Sar Ianashu, a slender and hirsute young man, who was Lord Solhtar's second son. As marks of cadence, to each of their charges, had been added a small golden cup. I considered letting the new Guardians ride together as a single squadron within our company. But they must become used to us, and we to them, and the sooner the better. And so I positioned Sunjay Naviru next to a Sar Avram and Sivar of Godhra next to Sar Jarlath, and so on. It would be many long miles, I thought, before these proud knights accepted each other in companionship, much less love. In truth, we would be lucky if we didn't tear into each other with mistrustful eyes and words — or even our swords.

The first hour of our journey took us down through the houses and shops of Loviisa, the largest of Ishka's cities, though still quite small. The cool air smelled of baking bread and coal smoke from the many smithies. The armorers here made good steel — though not quite so fine, I thought, as did my countrymen in Godhra. Our route led through winding streets back to the North Road, which gave onto a stout bridge spanning the raging Tushur river. Just beyond this dangerous water, in a square lined with several inns, we came to the intersection of the King's Road. This was a well-paved band of stone wide enough for six horses to ride down it side by side. It curved east through Ishka into Taron, all the way to Nar. King Hadaru led his knights onto it. And we who guarded the Lightstone followed them.

We had a fine day for travel, with many drifting white clouds to steal some of the heat from the bright spring sun. It was noisier than I would have liked, however, as the hooves of so many horses sounded a continual percussion of iron against stone, and the wagons' iron-shod wheels ground particles of grit into dust. It pleased me to hear the knights in my company keeping up a low hum of conversation or even singing one of the battle songs that all the Valari know. In truth, there were moments when both Meshians and Ishkans became too intoxicated with the passion of these old verses, and then their voices seemed to vie with each other in loudness and stridency rather than harmonizing. There were moments, too, when I thought I caught a rumble of discord or a brief flurry of heated words from the knights behind me. But that was the worst of things, and I gave thanks for that. The hours and miles passed uneventfully as we all kept the peace.

But later that afternoon, a quarrel broke out and threatened to turn into a brawl. We had stopped to water the horses at one of the little rivers that flowed down from the low range of mountains to the north of Loviisa. As I watched Altaru drinking his fill of the icy water, a shout rang out behind me; I turned to see Skyshan push the heel of his hand against Sar Ianashu's chest and nearly knock him off his feet. Then Sar Ianashu reached for his sword even as Tavar Amadan grabbed his arm to restrain him and Sar Jarlath knocked his shoulder into Tavar.

'Hold!' I cried out. I saw, all in an instant, that the Ishkans of King Hadaru's guard on the road ahead of us were all gripping the hilts of their swords. And so were Baltasar, Sunjay Naviru and other knights of Mesh. 'Hold, now, before it's too late!'

I ran down the road and threw my body between Sar Ianashu and Skyshan. 1 pulled them apart and shouted, 'Are you Valari knights? Are you Guardians of the Lightstone?'

My fury, if not my words, cut into them like a sword and seemed to empty them of breath. Tempers cooled, then. I stood listening to these men's explanations. It turned out that their quarrel was ancient. The ancestors of both of them had lived along the Diamond River, on opposite sides. Once a time — 939 years ago to be precise — one of Skyshan's great-grandsires had fought a duel with one of Sar Ianashu's over a woman who had both Meshian and Ishkan blood. Both men had been killed. The resulting feud had lasted a hundred years until the Diamond shifted its course, and Sar Ianashu's ancestors had been forced to move to another site higher in the Shoshan range of mountains. For reasons that I was not able to determine, both Sar Ianashu and Skyshan had decided to renew this feud after all these many centuries.

'But this cannot be,' I said to them. 'Your grievances are ancient. The very mountains have changed their faces in this time, but you have not. How are we to ride together this way? Is there an Ishkan knight who can'te tell of sorrows more recent at the Meshians' hands or a man of Mesh who hasn't suffered the loss of kinsmen in one of our wars? My own grandfather was killed along that very same river scarcely ten years ago, and so were many others.'

Sar Ianashu, a violent man whose cheek muscles were popping beneath his taut ivory skin, finally opened his mouth as.if to gainsay me But then he thought better of such rashness and bit his lip. I was now his lord. He had made vows and would not break them. He bowed his head in shame, and so did Skyshan.

By this time, King Hadaru had walked down the road to see what trouble had befallen us. He watched in silence, both jealous that I should so address one of his knights and glad to see that I had calmed this little dispute even as he might have done. Then he returned to his place at the head of our columns. When it came time to get back on our horses, Asaru walked up to me and said, 'This cannot go on. Ishkans and Meshians, together — this is impossible.'

And I said to him, 'No, it will be all right.'

'But, Val, how can you be sure?'

'Because,' I said, 'either one believes in men or one does not.'

Despite my brave words, I kept a wary watch upon my men as we resumed our journey. But Sar Ianashu's and Skyshan's outburst seemed to let the bad blood between them rather than inflaming it. That night, we had a happy camp within sight of the mighty Culhadosh river. I gave the Lightstone into Sar Ianashu's keeping; Sar Ianashu surprised everyone by lending Skyshan his sharpening stone, which was a very fine one made of pressed diamond dust. After that they clasped hands and pledged their companionship. They both knew that, although I had made no threats, any more fighting would result in their expulsion from the Guardians. What would it avail for them to satisfy some point of honor a thousand years old if they must suffer such shame.

While our dinner of fresh lamb was sizzling over our cooking tires, I gave Estrella what was to become the first of a series of riding lessons. She hated sitting all day by herself in a creaking wagon. With a few motions of her hands and her eager eyes, she indicated that she wished to ride next to me. And so I chose out a gentle mare from our string of remounts and sat Estrella upon her. With her skinny legs gripping the mare's brown sides, she seemed almost too small to ride a full-sized horse. And she could not speak to this fine animal as others might, with soft words and comforting tones that found resonance in the mare's easy nickers. Estrella, however, spoke to her in other ways. Her graceful hands caressed the mare's mane and communicated her faith that the mare would not hurt her. It seemed to me, watching how Estrella's quick, dark eyes met the dark eye of the mare's great turned head, that she immediately loved this beast and that the mare knew this with an animal's instinct. As I led both horse and girl about the fields along the river, I thought that it wouldn't be long before Estrella could ride with the knights and others of our company.

After dinner, I discovered that King Hadaru was a fine storyteller. He invited Asaru and me, and several others, over to his campfire to share some very good and very rare Galdan brandy. He recounted the deeds of the Ishkans' ancestors at the Battle of Rainbow Pass in the year 37 of the Age of Swords, which marked the first time that the Valari had defeated an invading Sarni army and had fought with a people other than themselves. Then, to the nightly ritual of warriors running their sharpening stones along their swords, he recited some ancient verses that were close to every Valari's heart:

A sword becomes a warrior's soul,

Its shining steel through pains made keen,

His strength and valor keep it whole,

His faith and honor keep it clean.

A warrior's soul becomes his sword:

It cuts through darkness, pain and fright;

Its diamond-brilliance points him toward

The brilliant, pure and single light.

When he finished, he raised his glass to me and told me, 'Some day, I would know more about this sword it's said you carry inside you, Valashu Elahad.'

Early the next morning we crossed the Culhadosh River, greatest of the waters that drain the Morning Mountains, And so we passed into Taron, the most populous of the Nine Kingdoms. It was a fair country with many farms spread a ong the Culhadosh. Out of this rich black soil the Taroners grew barley and oats, wheat and rye — and not a few warriors and knights who had pledged their swords to King Waravin Nar. We met a small squadron of these who were on their way to the tournament. Their shields showed blue boars and black ravens and other devices unfamiliar to me. If the Taroners were chagrined to see such a large body of outland knights riding free through their land they gave no sign of it. But their leader, a Lord Kladaru, remarked the strangeness of Ishkans accompanying Meshians, saying. 'If this is truly the end of the age, as has been prophesied, then this must be the first of its miracles.'

After King Hadaru proudly called up Sar Marjay, one of his nephews, to bring forth the Lightstone, Lord Eladaru blinked his eyes and said, 'It seems I misspoke. Meshians surrendering the guardianship of the Lightstone to an Ishkan — surely this must be the greatest of miracles. The next thing you know, maybe King Kurshan really will find a way to sail the stars.'

Lord Eladaru bid us a safe journey, then gathered up his men and rode on ahead of us. I watched them disappear along the road that wound up and around the low, green hills to the east

We, with our heavy baggage train, followed them more slowly. We passed through fields of sunflowers and apple orchards, and then some miles of rolling pasturage given over to the grazing of goats and sheep. Toward the end of our first day in Taron, the finely paved road turned into a track of packed dirt. As there had been no rain for the past few days, the hot sun had dried out its surface. The horses' hooves, no less the wheels of the wagons, pulverized the dirt and sent up thick clouds of dust. Trailing behind King Hadaru and his Ishkan knights became a torment of stinging eyes and grit coating our lips and teeth. We had to cover our faces with our scarves so as not to choke. Maram complained about riding behind King Hadaru. As he wiped at his beard and blinked his powdered eyes, he said, 'Now that we're in Taron, the Ishkans should trail us. Let them eat our dust.'

On our second day in Taron, Maram had good cause to wish lor the previous day's dust: toward noon, some thick, dark clouds came out of the west and let loose a downpour lasting for hours. The rain turned the road into a bog of sticky mud and potholes like little brown ponds. Twice, one of the wagons got stuck in this mire. Our pace slowed as the horses slogged along; I listened to the squish and suck of their hooves against the mud as I blinked my eyes against the slanting rain. The gray sky seemed too low, too heavy. The rain was too moist and nearly smothered me. I felt something cold, wet and dark sniffing at my insides like the snout of some fell beast. I felt a pulling there in my belly as if sharp teeth were tearing into me while long claws hooked into my back. This odious sensation seemed to emanate from somewhere behind me; it reminded me of the time that the dreadful Grays had pursued Maram, Master Juwain, Atara and me through the wilds of Alonia. Only now, on this muddy road in the open country whatever was pursuing me seemed to have no hate for me, but only a fierce will to rend and destroy.

We made camp that night in well-drained meadow above the road. After Estrella's riding lesson, I held council in my tent with Maram and Master Juwain — and with my brothers, too. 1 told them of my misgivings. And Maram immediately sighed out, 'Oh, no, not the Stonefaces! I'd rather face Morjin himself again than them. If it is them, too bad for us.'

'It will be all right,' I said to him. I remembered too well the unclean sense of how the Grays wanted to suck out my soul and torment me. This didn't feel like them.'

'Well, what did it feel like?'

'Like someone behind me wanted to murder me.'

Yarashan, who had little liking for the new Guardians, didn't hesitate to sawOne of the Ishkans, then?'

'It can't be,' I said. 'Whoever is pursuing me, in his wish to slay … there is so much power!

Yarashan shook his handsome head skeptically. This strange gift I had of sensing others' emotions disturbed him, the more so because he seemed to lack it. 'It could be one of the Ishkans, Val. King Hadaru chose them himself, didn't he? What if he's set one of them to murder you?'

He went on to say that King Hadaru could not want me to be the Maitreya. Even though King Hadaru had spoken nobly about uniting the Valari, very likely he himself wished to be the one to lead an alliance against Morjin. If I were killed, then King Hadaru might contrive a way to use the new Guardians to give him control of the Lightstone.

'You've a keen mind for plots and strategies,' I said to Yarashan. My brother beamed as if he had just beaten me in another game of chess and was proud to explicate my mistakes. 'What you say makes good sense — except for one thing.'

'And what is that?'

'King Hadaru is no murderer who would set an assassin upon me.'

'Can you be sure of that?'

'As sure as I am of Ianashu and the new Guardians. As sure as I am of Skyshan and Sunjay and the Guardians that I chose myself.'

Yarashan looked at Asaru as if in frustration of my naivete. And Asaru said, 'There is another possibility. The ghul may have followed us from Mesh.'

I shuddered at this suggestion as I looked out the flap of my tent at the darkening hills around us. If a ghul was hiding in the pastures or woods nearby, I could not sense him.

'We should post extra guards tonight,' Asaru continued. 'And we should post guards around your tent, Val. Men we can trust beyond doubt in case one of the Ishkans is an assassin.'

Each night, since we had set out on the road, it had become our custom that the Lightstone return to my hand and be kept in my tent at the center of our camp.

'No, there will be no guards around my tent,' I told Asaru. 'What would we tell them? That we mistrust the Ishkans, who are now their companions? And what would the Ishkans think of their calling as Guardians when they discovered that we of Mesh sought to guard ourselves against them?'

Master Juwain, who had been silent until now, sighed as he rubbed the back of his head. 'Very well, then, since the rain has stopped, I'll sit outside my tent as if taking a bit of fresh air. If anyone approaches your tent, Val, I'll find a way to detain him and give the alarm.'

'Ah, do you intend to sit up all night?' Maram asked him.

'Are you volunteering to relieve me and take a shift?'

Maram, who had been proposing no such thing, or so I thought, looked back and forth between Master Juwain and my brothers. Their unyielding black eyes fixed upon him as if to ask whether he was truly a Valari knight in spirit, as the two diamonds of his ring proclaimed him to be.

'I suppose it wouldn't hurt me to lose a little sleep tonight,' Maram finally said. He clapped me on my shoulder with his huge hand. 'I wouldn't sleep very well in any case knowing that a ghul was stalking my best friend.'

It was arranged then that Maram would take the second of the night's shifts. Asaru and Yarashan, whose tent was pitched next to mine, would keep watch during the last hours of the night.

And so everyone except Master Juwain retired to his bed. I spread out my sleeping furs inside my large pavilion; next to me I laid my chess board and the wooden box containing thirty-two ivory and ebony pieces. And on top of it I set the Lightstone. I lay back to look up at the stars through the open flap in the roof of my tent. I felt outside among the many Guardians for the cold knives of a desire to murder me; I felt nothing. I was certain that I would be unable to sleep. It pained me to think of Master Juwain sitting up for hours outside his tent while I tossed about here futilely trying for a bit of rest. Then I remembered a meditation that he had once taught me in the heart of the Vardaloon, when clouds of mosquitoes had whined in my ear for endless dark hours. I closed my eyes to practice it. My mind cleared as time began to dissolve. The little noises of the camp and the chirping of the crickets in the fields outside faded away; inside me there was a spreading calm and a desire to lose myself in the timeless realm of the One.

I was more tired than I knew; I must have dozed off quickly and slept for hours. I was not quite aware of what awakened me. Perhaps it was the swirl of little lights as Flick spun furiously about in the dark spaces above me For a moment I lay suspended in that netherworld of unknowing, not quite able grasp onto the sights, sounds and smells of the earth, or even the sense of my own existence. And then consciousness came flooding into me like the crush of an icy river. I gasped for breath, and a surge of fear caused my heart to begin beating wildly. I opened my eyes to see the cloaked figure of one of the Guardians moving toward me. He held a mace in his apraised hand. Seeing that I suddenly saw him, he leaped forward in one furious motion and whipped the mace straight down toward my head.

My whole body convulsed with a terrible urge to escape this sudden death. I jerked my head away from the descending mace even as I rolled to my side and grabbed the Lightstone. I was not quite quick enough; the iron mace grazed the side of my head and stunned me. The knight above me raised back the mace again as he fell upon me; by some miracle I grabbed his arm so that he could not brain me. With his other hand, he grabbed at my hand that held the Lightstone. Thus locked together, he bore his weight down upon me, raging at me like a lion, twisting and pulling and trying to push his mace into my teeth even as he drove his knee at my belly. I smelled the sweat-stained leather of his battle armor and the essence of lilacs steaming off the white scarf tied around his neck. As we rolled about in this death struggle, he kept trying to bring his mace to bear. The insane power of his body and being shocked me. It could only be another moment before he fought free of my weakening grip and split my head open. I finally cried out with all the force of my lungs: 'No!'

From far away, it seemed, I heard the sound of swords being drawn from their sheaths. And then someone called out: 'It came from the pavilion! It must be Lord Valashu!'

The knight above me at last succeeded in pushing the mace into my throat. I slid my hand down toward the mace's wooden shaft and latched onto it. But I couldn't quite rip it from his grasp, and he pressed the mace downward with a sickening force. I choked and gasped for breath, even as the knight tried to rip the Lightstone from my hand. But I gripped onto the little cup with the last of my strength.

'Lord Valashu, we're coming!'

Suddenly, this murderous knight let go both my hand and the mace He sprang up and lunged for the opening of the tent. Through the red haze of my stunned senses, as I struggled to breathe, I saw him open his mouth and call out: 'He's getting away!'

Then he rushed from my tent even as Sunjay Naviru and two other Guardians rushed in. They came right up to the side of my sleeping furs. While one of the Guardians held up an oil lamp, Sunjay began checking me for wounds. I struggled to sit up; I struggled to speak, but for a moment I could not. I pointed toward the tent's opening. Sunjay laid his hand on my chest and said, 'It's all right, Val. You'll be all right — whoever did this to you won't get away.'

Sunjay, I suddenly realized, believed that the knight who had tried to murder me was in hot pursuit of a would-be assassin. The two other Guardians in my tent, and the many others in the camp, must have believed this, too, for I heard a dozen voices pick up the cry: 'He's getting away!'

I shook my bleeding head back and forth as hard as I dared. I finally found my voice and croaked out, 'He tried to murder me!'

'Who did, Val?'

'The one.. who was here.' I realized with a start that I recognized the man who had left me holding his mace — and the Lightstone. 'The one you let get away: it was Sivar of Godhra.'

Sunjay burned with anger and shame to learn that he had been fooled by such a ruse. I burned with disbelief that one of my own, the faithful Sivar, could have betrayed me and then had the cleverness to fool Sunjay in order to make his escape.

I shook off the pain in my pounding head. I sat up and pulled on my diamond-studded boots. And then I ran from my tent, out into the camp which had come alive with men holding torches and shouting while others were ripping open their teat flaps to see if we had been attacked in the middle of the night. To the east, from the nearby encampment of King Hadaru and the Ishkans, came the flash of torches being lit and the cries of knights fearing a plot against their king.

'Search the camp!' I called out as I drew my sword. 'Find Sivar!'

It didn't take long for the Guardians to fulfill this command for the camp was small and there was no place to hide except inside the tents or underneath them. A quick search turned up only one surprising thing: that Maram seemed to have fallen asleep outside his tent. Not

even the clamor of a hundred and twenty knights hurrying about

sufficed to awaken him.

And then one of the sentries to the north remembered seeing Sivar near the stockade just after all the shouting had begun. An examination of this wooden fence revealed some displaced branches where someone must have climbed over it. The sentry, Omaru Tarshan, was aghast that he had failed in his duty. But I eased his shame, pointing out that the stockade and the sentries had been meant to keep enemies from infiltrating the camp and not murderous Guardians from escaping.

Then King Hadaru and his knights arrived to reinforce us. King Hadara made his way into our camp and called out to me, 'What has happened?'

'One of my knights fell mad,' I said. 'He tried to steal the Lightstone.'

After that, I ordered a search of the surrounding pasturage. Men holding bright torches spread out in a widening circle across the still-dark grass. A short while later, from a copse of mulberry to the north, one of the Guardians cried out that he had found Sivar. I led a charge toward these trees with twenty of the Guardians and King Hadaru close behind me. I followed the torchlight of the first Guardian into the copse. And there, fallen on his back next to one of the trees, I saw Sivar. He clutched a bloody dagger and stared at nothing because his throat had been cut from ear to ear. It seemed that he had died by his own hand.

'Here, now — what's this?' King Hadaru cried out as he came up to me. 'Look, then, a Meshian has turned traitor!'

'No,' I said, 'he was no traitor — not exactly.'

Asaru and Yarashan, with Lansar Raasharu, Baltasar and Sunjay joined me beneath the mulberry trees, with their darkly fluttering and coarsely-toothed leaves. Then Master Juwain came panting up to us followed by Lord Harsha, who limped along as quickly as he could. When his single eye looked past the light of the torches to take in Sivar's fallen form, he called out, 'This is terrible! My grand-nephew, whom I recommended as Guardian myself — how can this be?

'Because he as a ghul,' I said. My heart ached with a sharp pain because there could no longer be any doubt of this. 'It must have been Sivar who used the sleep stone on the Guardians at the castle. He must have waited for this night, for a second chance to steal the Lightstone.'

I brought forth the golden cup to show everyone that it remained safe. But neither it nor anything, it seemed to me, would ever be safe again.

Lansar Raasharu's noble face was now a mask of anger. He pointed down at Sivar and said 'But if this man was a creature of Morjin's why did he kill himself!'

'To keep from being captured and questioned,' I said. 'In any case, once I had recognised him, he was useless to Morjin.'

'Yes, but hy kill himself here? Could not the accursed Cruecifier simply have commanded him to cut his own throat in your tent?'

We all looked at each other then. It seemed that the hand of Morjin lay heavy about us even from a thousand miles away, pressing down like a mailed fist upon this little stand of trees and reaching out to rip open the fabric of our tents in the encampments below us.

It was Master Juwain who had an answer for Lord Raasharu. He nodded his bald head toward him and said, 'Sometimes a ghul retains enough of his soul to hate his master, even to break free, for a few moments. It may have been so with Sivar. Until the Red Dragon found him hiding here in these trees.'

I held up my hand as if to ward off Morjin's evil eye. With Sivar dead I knew that Morjin had no way to perceive this place or anywhere else nearby. But in that dark moment, with the blood filling the dark opening in Sivar's throat, it seemed that Morjin could look into any part of the world that he willed.

'A ghul,' Master Juwain said, his voice heavy with sadness. He turned to examine the gash that Sivar's mace had torn along the side of my head. 'It's a miracle he didn't kill you, Val.'

'He… was so powerful,' I said.

I didn't add that Sivar, moving to Morjin's will, had been possessed by all of his sorcerous strength.

'Here, Val,' Master Juwain said to me. 'Let me look at your eyes.'

As one of the Guardians held up a torch, a bright lancet of light stabbed straight through my eyes into my head. The kirax with which Morjin had once poisoned me seemed to flare up in my blood as if Moriin himself had breathed his fiery breath into me. It was like acid eating into every nerve in my body, making this pain a hundred times worse.

'Damn him!' Lansar called out as if my hatred of Morjin had becone his own. 'Damn Morjin for doing this!'

After Master Juwain had finished testing me to concussion. Lansar Raasharu looked at me in thankfulness that I would be all right. I wondered if he might have possessed some part of my gift. His devotion to me was like a shield held up to protect me, leaving himself uncovered, and I loved him for that.

'And damn Sivar for betraying us!' he added.

I looked down at Sivar's body and said; 'No, let's not damn him for he has damned himself. It might be so with any man.'

'With any man who is weak, perhaps. With any man who is faithless and turns away from the Law of the One.'

I said nothing as I looked down into Sivar's dead eyes. Even great angels such as Angra Mainyu, I thought, had turned away from the One.

'What shall we do now, Lord Valashu?' Lansar asked me.

'Let's bury him,' I said. 'Before Sivar was a ghul, he was Sar Sivar, whom many of us loved.'

After that, one of Sivar's friends wrapped his body in his cloak, and six of the Guardians bore him back to camp to prepare for burial. King Hadaru and his knights went back to the Ishkan encampment, there to take a little rest in what remained of the night. I retired into my lent. Master Juwain met me there with some hot tea to soothe my savaged throat. Then he went to work stitching up the gash along the side of my head while I spoke with Asaru and Yarashan about the night's calamity. After a little while, Maram poked his head inside and joined us, too. Yarashan tore into him for failing asleep on his watch and nearly getting me killed. But Maram had kept many long watches through many long nights on our quest across Ea; I knew that he hadn't simply allowed himself to nod off. Maram confirmed this, filling in another piece of the puzzle of how Morjin had nearly worked my doom.

'I didn't fall asleep,' he huffed at Yarashan. 'Near the end of my watch, Sivar approached me with a cup of brandy. He said that he couldn't sleep, either, with all the excitement of the tournament beginning the day after tomorrow. He asked if he could join me in a little nightcap before sleeping. And why not, I thought, since I had only a few minutes left before I was to wake up Lord Asaru? Sivar was really a kind man, everyone said that about him, and I was grateful for this little kindness. But the brandy must have been poisoned with a sleeping potion. I remember talking with him about the lance-throwing competition … and then there was nothing.'

His suspicions were proved when he retrieved his cup for Master Juwain's examination. Master Juwain took one sniff of the still-moist brandy residue and pronounced, 'Nightstalk. The Kailimun use such potions. Probably Salmelu or one of the Red Priests supplied Sivar with it — along with the sleep stone that dropped the Guardians in King Shamesh's hall,'

For a while Master Juwain, with Maram and Asaru, speculated as to how Morjin had made a ghul of Sivar. Did Morjin have spies in Mesh who had somehow marked out Sivar as weak in the will? Had Sivar delved into the dark mysteries of the mind only to find the Red Dragon waiting for him in the deepest and most desolate of caverns? Nobody knew. After a while, Yarashan gave up trying to fathom the unfathomable and said to me, 'At least the ghul has been exposed and killed — we can be thankful for that.'

But Maram, who understood me better than almost anyone, looked at me and said, 'Ah, Val, the prophecy, too bad.'

'The prophecy? Which prophecy?' Yarashan asked. Although he was an intelligent man, he was not a particularly sensitive one. 'The scryer said that a ghul would undo Val's dreams. Well, she was wrong. Val fought him off, like a true Elahad, and so the ghul was made to undo himself.'

'No, Yarashan,' I said. The night's events had nearly ripped out my insides. 'I. . was so certain of Sivar. Of all the Guardians. Their hearts, their beings: so bright. This was the dream. But how can I be certain of anything ever again?'

How could I, I wondered, ever claim the mantle of the Maitreya if I couldn't be certain even of myself?

Yarashan, of course, had no answers for me. And neither did Maram or Asaru, or even Master Juwain. We stayed up talking for the rest of the night. At last, with the sun rising like a ball of fire over the green hills to the east, it came time to break camp. A burial remained to be made. Tournament competitions must be faced, and if possible, won. And above all, Morjin, the Crucifier, the Lord of Lies, must be opposed at all moments with all the force and purity of our hearts — or else we might end up as had Sivar of Godhra, a man without a soul who was doomed to wander lost among the stars until the end of time.