Lord of Lies

Chapter 16

I wanted to race over to her, — to clasp hands with her and embrace her. I wanted to kiss her full lips and the cloth covering the hollows where her eyes used to be, I did not. I was the commander of nearly two hundred knights exhausted from battle. And she, it seemed was the chief of her sister warriors. They were Sarni, and we were Valari, and although we had fought the same enemy that day, there was yet no love between us. All gathered there beneath the darkening clouds stared at Atara and me as they waited to see what we would do. 'Atara!' I called out to her. 'Atara Ars Narmada!'

She shook her head slightly and called back to me: 'Here, I'm just "Atara the Blind", Lord Valashu — Lard of Light.'

She smiled at me as she always had when playing with words or having fun. But beneath her welcome was a formality that I was unused to and a hint of coldness that immediately chilled my heart. 'How did you find us here?' I asked her. 'Why were we attacked?'

'Good questions, Lord Valashu. But why don't we answer them after? There's much to be done if you don't want to leave your fallen for the wolves.'

With night coming on, the rich greens of the steppe and the sky's patches of blue bled away into a solid gray that spread across the heavens and covered the earth like a shroud. Soon it would be too dark to see our companions where they lay in the long grass. We must find them and bury them before the wolves and other scavengers swarmed around them. And, it seemed, we must also bury the bodies of our enemy.

'We must have slain a hundred of them,' Lord Harsha said, 'so it will be hard work. But the dead are dead, Sarni or no. and they must be buried.'

'No, they must not he buried,' Atara called out to him. She nudged her mare, whose name was Fire, closer to us. It unnerved Lord Harsha, I sensed, to see the blind Atara unerringly guide her horse around the bodies of the slain Sarni, 'At least, they must not be buried as you Valari bury men. Here we have different ways.'

The Sarni, in fact, do not dig graves in the very tough turf of the steppe, instead, they divest their dead of all weapons, ornaments and clothing, and lay them on the grass with their eyes open to the sky and their arms opened outward as an offering to any beast who would take them. Naked a man came into the world, and naked he must go out of it.

'Barbaric,' Lord Harsha said to Atara when he discovered this. 'It's wrong to let your companions be devoured by wolves.'

'Is it better,' Atara asked him, 'to let them be devoured by the worms?'

Lord Harsha, who was unused to being faced down by women, particularly not one so young as Atara, allowed his hand instinctively to rest on the hilt of his sword. And almost instantly, the bows of ninety of Atara's sister Manslayers were raised and their arrows pointed at him.

'Come,' I said, riding over to Lord Harsha, I rested my hand on his arm and watched as he relaxed his fingers. 'We've enough burying to do already, however we're to do it. Let the Valari bury the Valari, and the Sarni attend the Sarni.'

We worked far into the night. While Atara and her Manslayers rode about the steppe looking for the enemy we had killed and six of their own, we of the Morning Mountains located our companions and bore them across our horses back toward the river. There, in hard soil bound with many roots, we began digging graves: twenty-one altogether, for two more knights had died from their wounds. We drew the arrows from the bodies of our companions. We bathed them and anointed them in oil. After placing their hands around their swords, we wrapped them in their cloaks and laid them in the ground. Then we gathered and gave voice to songs of mourning, to exalt and remember and sing their souls up toward the stars.

And all this we had to accomplish in the deepness of night with wood fires blazing so that we could see, with Guardians posted in case our enemy should return. The Manslayers made camp fifty yards from ours. Our own camp that night we had to lay out without the tradi-tional moat and stockade. With the sky clearing toward midnight, we erected only one tent: the pavilion where Master Juwain went to work on the wounded. He drew many arrows, and filled many holes in flesh, with his healing powders and the light of his green gelstei. It was a miracle that no more of my men died. But in addition to the twenty-one Guardians who would remain here forever by the river's bend, at least four more would keep them company until they were well enough to ride again. When it finally came time for sleeping, it seemed that many of us needed company and talk even more. I sat with Atara and a middling-old woman named Karimah by a fire stoked with logs of deadwood. lord Raasharu and Baltasar joined us there, with Sunjay Naviru, Lord Harsha and Maram. Lord Harsha held an old bottle of brandy, which he poured into cups and gave out to us. Baltasar watched with amaze-ment as Atara reached her hand straight out and grasped her cup with all the precision of a diamond cutter. But his wonder at this feat quickly gave way to anger, for he was was still wroth over the death of Sar Viku, who had been as a brother to him.

'Alter we've visited this lake of yours, Val,' he said to me, 'we should lay waste Trahadak's encampment and slay those who escaped us today.'

Atara laughed at this in a voice that was clear and clean and sweet. She said to Baltasar, 'if you rode into Trahadak's encampment with lances and drawn swords instead of gold, it would be you who was slain. Trahadak is Kurmak, and Zakut at that.'

'Whatever he is, he's a treacherous dog.'

Atara smiled at this and told him, 'You should be careful how you speak of men on the Wendrush. We of the Manslayers might speak of a man this way, of course, but you should not. And you should know that we eat dogs here. And if Trahadak heard of your slur, he'd roast and eat you'.

Baltasar paled at this, for every child in the Morning Mountains is told stories of the Sarni's cruelties. Then he stroked the hilt of his sword and said, 'He would first be greeted by steel, as he was today.'

'Indeed? Tell me, Sar Baltasar, at the Zakut's encampment you paid tribute to Trahadak yourself, didn't you?'

Now Baltasar's hand tightened around his kalama's grip as he huffed out, 'We Valari pay tribute to no one. The gold was a gift to honor Trahadak for his hospitality.'

'Very well, a gift then,' Atara said, smiling. 'But you sat as close to Trahadak as you and I sit now, did you not.'

Baltasar, who sipped from a cup of brandy with only his father and Maram between me and Atara, nodded his head.

'Very well,' Atara continued, 'then you know Trahadak's face well as my own. Tell me, brave knight, did you see him on the field today?'

'Of course. That is, it must have been he who led that cowardly retreat. The truth is, it's hard to tell. All you Sarni look alike.'

This caused Karimah to burst into laughter. She scooted even closer to Atara and pressed the side of her face against Atara's cheek. Then she laughed out, 'Oh, yes, and we of the Manslayers, who are all sisters, especially look alike. I'm sure you can't tell Atara from me.'

We all had a good laugh at this. Where Karimah's long hair was bleached almost white from many years of sun, Atara's hair shone like living gold. Karimah's face was plump and pretty, except for the round scars on either side where an arrow must once have driven straight through her cheeks; Atara's face was square and smooth and beautiful. In her arms and body, Karimah was almost stout enough to have been Maram's sister. But Atara was long and lithe, clean-limbed and a wonder to look upon, even with the white cloth breaking the perfection of her countenance.

Baltasar, seeing these two women together, flushed with heat as if he had sat too close to the fire. He said, 'What I meant was, with your faces painted blue, who could tell one Sarni from another?'

'We certainly can,' Atara said to Baltasar. 'And that is why I must tell you that it was not Trahadak or any Zakut that we fought today. Nor any clan of the Kurmak, who always keep their word. No, the men we killed were Adirii.'

While I traded knowing glances with Lord Raasharu and Baltasar's face flushed an even angrier red, Atara went on to tell us that a band of warriors of the Adirii's Akhand clan had crossed the Snake River and invaded the Kurmak's country to hunt us.

'But how did they know to find us here?' I asked. 'And the Adirii, for them to ride through Kurmak country, risking war and slaughter, they must have been desperate.'

Desperate for gold, I suddenly thought. Desperate to steal the gold gelstei.

In her eerie way, Atara turned her head toward me as if she could see me and look into my heart. 'All the Sarni on the Wendrush know to find you here, or soon will. The Red Dragon has many spies, and word of your route toward Tria has preceded you and spreads like a wildfire.'

'But this is terrible news!' Maram cried out. He took a long drink of his brandy, and then another.

'No, Maram, perhaps not so terrible as you fear,' Atara reassured him. 'The Red Dragon, it's true, has promised a great weight of gold to anyone who will deliver the Lightstone to him. The Akhand clan must have learned of this and fallen mad with greed. For them to have crossed the Snake, they broke the truce between our tribes and the will of the Adirii's chieftain, Xadharax, who loathes Morjin nearly as much as do we Kurmak.'

Now it was Baltasar's turn to drink deeply of his brandy. To Atara, he said, 'My apologies, my lady — it was wrong of me to have impugned Trahadak, who treated me well.'

He treated you more than well. When he learned that your company would be making its way toward the lake, he sent messengers to alert our Society where we were encamped scarcely half a day's ride away'

'But if Trahadak knew the Adirii were after us, why didn't he send his own warriors to intercept them?'

Atara held a cup of brandy in her hand, but she did not drink of it. She said, 'Because Trahadak didn't know. Indeed, when Sajagax learns of what happened here today, he will be hard put to keep Trahadak from leading all the Zakut across the Snake against those greedy Akhand.'

'But why then,' Baltasar persisted, 'did Trahadak alert you?'

Atara smiled at him. 'Because he knew Valashu Elahad and I were companions on the great Quest.'

'Very well, my lady, but why did you ride here with so many of your sisters? How did you know to find us here?'

It was the same question that I had first asked her. While a sliver of moon spilled a little light down upon us and the wolves out on the steppe howled out their long, soulful hungers, I looked at Atara to see what she would say. And so did everyone else.

In answer to Baltasar's question, Atara brought forth a clear crystal as round as a child's ball. The white gelstei caught the fire's flames and sparks in little flickers of orange and red. Inside its polished curves, for the briefest flash of a moment, I thought I glimpsed an entire world burning up in bright flames.

'You're a scryer,' Baltasar said. He nodded his head as if a great mystery had been made clear to him. 'We've all heard that one of Val's companions was a scryer. But who has ever heard of a scryer without eyes who yet can see?'

Atara's entire being seemed to chill as if she had drunk deeply from an icy stream. She said, 'Can I see? Sometimes it seems I almost can. And sometimes …'

Her voice died off into the night. The brandy I sipped burned my throat down into my chest; it reminded me that while Atara could often 'see' the forms and features of the earth down to the thinnest blade of grass a hundred yards behind her, at other times she was truly blind — as blind as if the hand of fate had cast her into a black cave.

'Scryers, it's said,' Baltasar went on, 'can see things distant in time. But whoever knew they can see things near in space?'

'Few scryers can,' Atara told him.

'Is that why the chief of the Akhand called you imakla? What does that mean?'

It meant, as I remembered, that Atara was not entirely of this world, that she rode with the immortal warriors of ages past and could not be touched by the hand or arrows of man.

'Please,' Atara said as she put down her brandy and squeezed her crystal sphere, 'let's speak of other things.'

Atara's cup was still full, while Karimah's was as dry as bone. Seeing this, Lord Harsha stood up and limped over to her. From his bottle, he poured forth a few ounces of brandy into her cup. Then he stoppered the bottle with a cork, and laid his hand on Karimah's bare arm, saying, 'Perhaps then we should speak of the beauty of the Sarni women. Perhaps we should make a toast to this and — '

Almost quicker than belief, Karimah drew forth a dagger and held its razor edge to Lord Harsha's wrist. With a smile on her jolly face, she said to him, 'Take your hand from me, Lord Knight, or you shall lose it as you have your eye.'

Lord Harsha's single eye blinked with astonishment. With surprising speed of his own, he jerked back his hand as if from a heated iron. Then he coughed out, 'Forgive me — I forgot myself. It seems that my son-in-law's flirtatious ways have corrupted me.'

Here he nodded at Maram, who mumbled, 'Son-in-law, is it? I thought I was still a free man, at least until next spring, when it might be a good time for a wedding. And as for my ways, I make poems, too, but I'm never accused of corrupting anyone when he is moved to recite verse.'

Karimah smiled at this and turned back to Lord Harsha, and said, 'You are certainly forgiven, then.'

But this wasn't quite good enough for Lord Harsha, who went on to explain, 'You see, it was only my intention to honor your beauty. So fair you are! In the Morning Mountains, we have no women like you.'

Karimah's smile grew broader and bolder. 'Well, you certainly may honor my beauty — from a distance. Indeed, I'd be honored if you did.'

'Then are you imakla, too?'

'I? No, Lord Knight, but I am a warrior of the Manslayers.'

'Then are men forbidden to touch you?'

'Forbidden? Do you mean by law? No — there is no law. There is only this.' Here Karimah held up her dagger, and her smile showed her strong, white teeth. 'It is we who forbid men this. Or not, as we please.'

Maram, who was now a little drunk, couldn't help making a little joke. 'And I must tell you, my, ah. . father-in-law, that what pleases them usually is not. They may not marry or bear children.'

'Not until we've slain a hundred of our enemies,' Karimah said.

'And how many have you slain, then?' Lord Harsha asked her.

'In my life? After today, eighteen.' 'It is more than most Valari knights ever account for.' 'Perhaps — I wouldn't know,' Karimah said. 'But it is fifty-three fewer than Atara the Blind has sent to the wolves.'

Karimah brushed back the hair from Atara's face as if to array her in splendor so that we all might honor her for this rare and terrible feat. But after Argattha, Atara no longer took pride in slaying men. She sat pressing the white gelstei against her forehead, and she sighed out 'Please, may we speak of other things?'

'Let's speak of sleep, then,' Lord Harsha said. 'It's been a day of battle, and who knows what tomorrow will bring? Maram, are you coming to bed?'

'Soon,' Maram said, yawning. 'As soon as I've finished my brandy. And perhaps had a little more.'

'You've had enough already,' Lord Harsha said to him as he tucked the brandy bottle inside his cloak. After nodding at Karimah, he looked back at Maram and said, 'But at least this is one night we won't have to worry about you wandering into the women's quarters.' So saying, Lord Harsha limped off toward a nearby fire where Behira and Estrella lay sleeping. Shortly thereafter, Lord Raasharu and Baltasar said goodnight as well, and so did Sunjay Naviru. As promised, Maram drank down the last dram of brandy before belching and ambling off to bed. Karimah, however, seemed reluctant to leave Atara alone with me. She stroked Atara's hand and said, 'My dear one, the wolves will be out tonight, the lions, too. If the darkness falls about you, how will you find your way back to us?'

'If I fall blind, truly blind,' Atara said, 'I'm sure that Lord Valashu will accompany me.'

Karimah looked at me long and deeply as she might search the Wendrush's dark grasses for lions. Then she kissed Atara's hand and said, 'Very well, then. We'll be waiting for you.'

And with that, she stood up and walked off toward the Manslayers' campfires glowing against the shadowed steppe away from the river. 'Your Lord Harsha,' Atara said to me, 'should be careful of Karimah.'

'Do you mean, careful of his hands or careful of her knife?'

'I mean, careful of her heart. As long as we make our camp close to yours, there will be a danger for both our people.'

'But surely your sisters must often encounter men.'

'Yes, of course — but not men such as you Valari.'

'Are we so different from your Sarni warriors, then?'

'Yes, you are different. You have no care for counting your cattle or your gold, or boasting of the women you possess.'

'We do not think of ourselves as possessing our women. Is a woman a thing to be owned?'

'Do you see?' Atara said as she faced me. 'Do you see?'

I remained silent for a moment as I gazed at her golden skin and her long, golden hair. Then I said, 'We're warriors, Atara. We slay men, too.'

'Yes, you slay your enemies with such terrible, terrible fierceness, but not because you love killing — only to protect those you love.'

'Sometimes, that is true,' I said. 'But sometimes we're savages.'

'You are savages of the sword/ she said to me/ifcruly, truly. And yet at other times so gentle. So quiet, inside. You sing songs to the stars! And I think the stars, sometimes, sing back to you. In light, in fire. And this fire! It burns so brightly in you. So hot, so clean, so sweet.'

At that moment I was almost glad that she could not let her eyes find mine, for I did not know if I could bear what I would see there.

'And that', she said, breathing deeply, 'is why it is good that we don't make our camp with yours or take our meals together. In any case, what would your women,say if Lord Harsha or the others had their way?'

'Lord Harsha,' I told her, 'is many years a widower. And the Guardians have no women.'

'So much the worse,' she said. 'But do you mean, no wives or no one to whom they have pledge their troths?'

'No wives. We have pledges, of course. We have our hopes.'

Here I reached out and clasped her hand in mine.This beautiful hand — long and delicate and yet strong from years of working her bow — seemed stiff and cold as if the fire's warmth had touched only her skin but had failed to penetrate deeper inside. Gently, but with unrelenting force, she pulled her hand away from mine.

'No, no, you shouldn't touch me,' she told me.

'Why — because you're a Manslayer who puts knives to men? Or because you're imakla?'

'Because I cannot bear to be touched this way. And neither can you.'

'Has nothing changed, then?'

'Should it have?'

'Yes,' I said, 'truly it should have.'

I thought of Master luwain's hurrying to my father's castle to show me his star charts and of what had later occurred between Baltasar and me in the great hall. I thought of Estrella sitting by a little moun-tain stream and sipping water in all her innocence from a small golder cup.

'I still have my vow,' Atara reminded me.

'You've slain seventy-one men,' I said, 'yet you've only loathing to slay another.'

'And yet I must if war comes, as it seems it must.'

'But war must not come,' I told her. 'We must not let it. And as for your vow, you made it to the Manslayer Society, didn't you?'

'Yes — and to myself.'

'But there are always higher vows, aren't there? Merely in being born, you made a vow to life and to the One, who gave you life.'

She finally picked up her cup of brandy and took a long sip. She said, 'Do we honor life then by breaking our vows?'

'The old age and the old ways are nearly finished, Atara. This is a time of new life — and so for making new vows.'

'To you, then?'

'Yes, to me — to us and all the world. To the new life we'll bring forth.'

'But I'm still blind,' she said. 'Nothing will ever change that.'

I gazed off at the sky, at the constellations spread out across the heavens like a shimmering tapestry of diamonds and black silk. Solaru, Aras and Varshara, the brightest of the stars, poured down their clear, lovely light.

'If this is truly a new age,' I told her, 'then it is truly a time for new hopes.'

She pulled at the cloth binding her face and said, 'Morjin took my hope when he took my eyes.'

'Yet you have your sight — greater than it was before.'

'It is not the same,' she said. 'When you see, as I once did, the sun touches a thing: a stone, a flower, a child. The whole world. . gives back the light into our eyes, touching us, in glory. Everything is so bright, so warm, so sweet. But now, what you call this sight of mine — it is so cold. It is like trying to touch the world through the iciest of waters.'

'You have your hands,' I told her. 'You have your heart — a heart of fire. No woman could love a child as you could.'

'A child, Val?'

'Our sons. Our daughters.'

'No,' she said, shaking her head. 'That can't be, don't you see?'

'But why?'

'Because it's all buried beneath this shroud,' she said, touching the white cloth. 'Because … in the light of a mother's eyes, a newborn learns to be human.'

I said nothing as I turned to stare into the fire. Flames still worked at a good-sized log, blackening it, and the coals beneath seemed hellishly hot, covered with ash and glowing a deep red. I remembered the coals of another fire in Argattha that had burned Atara's eyes to char; my hands could almost feel the hard edges of the box that Salmelu had delivered to me out of that forsaken place. If we learned to be human from our mothers, who was it that later taught us to be beasts?

'There's always a way,' I murmured. 'There's got to be away.'

'Your way of hopes and miracles?'

'Miracles, yes, if you call them that.'

'What should I call this wild hope of yours then? What should I call you? Lord Valashu? Lord of Light?'

I nodded toward her scryer's crystal, but she seemed not to perceive this slight motion. I asked her, 'What have seen in your kristei, Atara?'

'Too much,' she said.

'Have you seen the Maitreya, then?'

'I've seen many people. . who must have held the Lightstone. Who will hold it, almost certainly, and always are. But there will come a moment. Then there will be one who will make the cup shine as no one else can. Him I cannot see. No scryer can. In the same way it's impossible to see the Lightstone, we're blind to him in this moment, for their fates are as one.'

'Have you seen who the Maitreya is not, then? Is it possible that I could be he?'

'Do you wish to be?' she asked. She sat very still, and her voice was full of longing and mystery.

'It's said that if the Maitreya fails to come forth, then a Bringer of Darkness will claim the Lightstone instead. And yet this might not be the worst of such a failure.'

'What could be worse than this?'

'That the Maitreya would then also fail to bring forth miracles.'

Atara took another sip of brandy, and I felt the fiery liquid clutch and burn inside her chest. She took a deep breath and held it for a moment. The long, deep pain she held inside herself made me want to weep.

'You must know that these miracles you desire,' she said to me, 'I also desire. Desperately, desperately. But I mustn't, don't you see? And you mustn't either.'

'But shouldn't I desire what should be?'

'Do you know what should be, then?' The cold anger in her voice cut me like a knife.

'My grandfather,' I said to her, 'believed that a man can make his own fate.'

She smiled sadly at this and said, 'You have dreams. Miracles — you would work this beautiful thing you hold inside on moments yet to be. And on yourself. But, Val, you should know that the future has as many plans for us as we do for it.'

'Tell me of these plans, then.'

'Tell yourself. Listen to your heart.'

'But what of your heart?' I said. 'Do you remember the passage from the Healings? "If we bring forth what is inside ourselves, what we bring forth will save us. If we do not bring forth what is inside ourselves, what we do not bring forth will destroy us."'

As Atara sat breathing softly and the fire crackled and moaned, I brought forth the Lightstone which I had earlier taken from Skyshan. Atara must have sensed if not seen it. She shook her head even as a ripple of dread tore through her. She murmured, 'No Val, not this, please!'

'There's always a way,' I said to her. 'There must be a way.'

'No — not this way.'

A child, I thought, is born perfectly formed out of her mother as her mother is from the earth. And the earth, and all the earths and all the stars, take their being from the One, as all things do. And the One's essence, this divine will to create, was just love. In the One's fiery heart was the secret of creation itself. And didn't all human beings hold some of this bright flame inside? In the Healings it was also written that the Lightstone is the perfect jewel inside the lotus found inside the human heart'. Might not this jewel, I wondered, be used to quicken this flame until it blazed like a star? And might not Atara once again bring forth the perfectly formed being that she held inside herself?

'Atara,' I whispered. I cupped my hands beneath the Lightstone and held it between us. I felt its radiance penetrate my diamond armor and fill up my chest like the sun; I felt her heart beating in perfect rhythm with my own. For a moment, we were like two stars giving out light to each other in brilliant golden pulses. 'Atara, Atara.'

And then she shook her head as something seized her with a terrible will. It seized me and seemed yank me away from her; it ripped my heart from my chest. And then there was only darkness. Inside me there was a hole, black and bottomless as empty space. The cold was so bitter and deep that I wanted to cry out in anguish.

'No, no,' Atara said, 'this mustn't be!'

As the Lightstone fell quiescent once more, I squeezed it between my hands until my fingers hurt. I said, 'Why Atara, why?'

In the fire's red light, her face filled with both resolve and a silent anguish of her own. And she asked me, 'What if you fail in this miracle?'

'What if the sun should fail to rise on the morrow?'

'So sure you are of yourself! But if you fail, this sureness will turn to despair.'

'I won't let it.'

'Can you help it? Could you help the despair that would then finish me? You, with your valarda and the way you've always looked at me?'

Could I help it, I wondered? Could I hear to live if the brightest star in all the heavens suddenly died and shone no more?

'It would kill your dream,' she said to me softly. 'And so it would kill you, the finest part. How could I let that be?'

My eyes filled with a moist stinging pain too great to hold in. And I gasped out, 'How you love me!'

'More than you could ever believe. Almost as much as you love me.'

'And that is why,' I said, 'I would take the chance.'

'Yes, you would risk it, for yourself. And so might I for myself. But we do not live for ourselves, alone.'

I stared at the white cloth covering her face I wanted almost more than life to rip it from her and see revealed the two brilliant blue eyes that had once shone there.

'The Maitreya, men call you,' she said to me. 'But if you fail to work this miracle, what will you call yourself?'

'Would that matter, then?'

'More than you could ever believe.'

'If I fail, I fail. It must be put to the test. I must know.'

'Yes, indeed you must,' she said. 'But not by such proofs. Do you need it proven to yourself that you are alive? That deep inside, you are beautiful and sweet and good?'

'But how; will I know, then, who I truly am?'

'As with anyone, that is for you — and you alone — to discover.'

I gazed through the fire's wavering flames at the many Guardians laid out on their sleeping furs in silent rows. Beyond them others stood watch against the line of trees down by the river. I listened to this dark rushing water and to the crickets chirping in the grass; I listened, to the wolves howling far out on the steppe and to the faint far-off whisperings of the stars.

'This I know,' I said to her. 'Nothing about the future matters to me unless you are there to look at me as you once did.'

'Please, don't say such things. What of your friends and family What of your people? The whole world?'

'The world can take care of itself,' I said. 'It always has.'

At this, she shook her head almost violently, then held her hand out toward the north, and then east and west. She turned for a moment as she beckoned south, toward the river. Her hand swept upward as if reaching out to the stars, and she faced me once again. The Golden Band grows ever brighter. 'Sometime I can see it. It's not really golden of course. It has no color, but if it did, I would describe it as glorre it's all softness and shimmer and carries inside it an infinity of hues. Infinity, itself. It. . touched me. You were right that my sight grows greater. And that is why I must tell you what I must tell you. Fate lies balanced on a sword's edge infinitely sharper than that of the knife Karimah put to lord Harsha. Your fate, and that of the world. If you turn from it all will fall into darkness.'

With a deep sigh, she set down her kristei and held out her hand to me. 'Please, may I have the Lightstone?'

I extended the golden cup straight toward her. For a moment she fumbled about, trying to find it in the cool air of the night. Then I leaned closer and pressed it into her hand.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Now you take this.'

She gave me her crystal, and I held it in my hands not knowing what she wished of me.

'Look into it!' she told me.

'But this is a scryer's sphere. Am I a scryer then?'

'Look into it!' she said again.

With the fire giving out just enough light with which to see, I looked into the kristei. It was of white gelstei and as clear as my sword's diamond pommel. There was nothing inside it.

Atara drew in a deep breath even as the Lightstone came alive in her hands. A clear, deep radiance spilled from the cup and spread outward to envelop me. It illumed the crystal sphere. Suddenly, with a gasp, I saw myself inside staring back at myself. I shuddered and blinked my eyes, for the eyes I saw boring into me were so black and bright with dreams that I couldn't help pitying their owner. I tried to put down the sphere then, but I could not because I found myself holding my sword instead. I tried to look away from the sphere, but I could not; through its clear surface I beheld myself holding the sphere as I sat with my back to a crackling woodfire, with the warriors of our encampment lying still behind me. I cried out in fear. No one heard me. The sphere's glittering surface suddenly hardened, and the world of my birth disappeared. All around me and above was a cold, curving brilliance like that of a minor. With a shock, I realized that somehow the sphere had seized me and held me captive inside it. Everything felt cold then, like an icy blue inside blue, like a sky behind the sky I felt myself falling down and down into a shimmering neverness. Its depths were infinite. It opened outward and upward and inward, forever. For an endless moment I hung suspended in space like a feather buoyed upon the wind. I could see outward in any direction to the end of the world. There was an immense clarity. I looked down a million miles as from the height of a star. Below me blazed a city by the sea. I beheld the great white Tower of the Sun and the Tower of the Moon; the palace of the Narmada kings sat on top of a hill overlooking a great river. The city, I knew, was Tria, and it was all on fire: the palaces and houses and gardens spread across its seven hills. Men and women, burning like human torches, ran screaming through its streets. I screamed out that this must not be, but still no one heard me. I reached out toward this City of Light and found that I still held my sword. Blood flowed down its silvery length and drenched my hand. I tried to rub it away with my other hand, but it would not come off. It was, I knew, the blood of an innocent: perhaps a child who had got in the way of my killing wrath. For my fury to destroy the evil one who had set fire to the city filled me with a terrible burning of my own. My bright sword suddenly leapt with a terrible flame that ignited the fields and the forests around Tria. Faster than I could believe, it spread outward to the grasses of the Wendrush and the Morning Mountains and the sands of the Red Desert until all of Ea was on fire. There was no help for it; it burned with a fury that consumed even naked rock, down to the very bones of the earth itself. The world blazed and blazed in the vastness of space until only a small charred sphere remained and the fire burned itself out. And then the light died, too, and a darkness fell across the heavens like an impenetrable black smoke and smothered the radiance of the stars.

Darkness smothered me and stole the light from my eyes. For what seemed a million years, I was blind. And then 1 felt myself once again holding in my hand a small crystal sphere. A glimmer of its white gelstei broke through the blackness enveloping me. And then there were stars once more: the bright lights of the Swan and the Seven Sisters and all the other constellations filled the sky above the steppe. The leaves of the cottonwoods along the river fluttered in their radiance. Atara's white cloth reflected the dancing red flames of the fire. She still sat holding the Lightstone in her cupped hands. Her face was white and grave. 'Do you see?' she said to me softly. 'Do you see?'

I coughed at the dryness in my throat as I shivered. I gripped the kristei in my hand and stared into its clear depths.

'Did I see?' asked her. 'Did I see the same vision you saw?

'One of them — there are millions of others. Millions of millions.'

'But how is that possible?'

'It seems that the white gelstei not only quickens a scryer's visions but records them.'

'I didn't know it had that power.'

'Few do, even scryers. I didn't know myself until tonight. Until I quickened it with the Lightstone.'

I gazed at the golden cup gathering in the lights of the heavens. Who knew what other wonders this little vessel might work? Who knew how it could be made to work them?

'This future you showed me,' I said to her. 'Is this what I am supposed to fear if I fail to heal you?'

'Oh, no,' she said. 'It is what will befall if you succeed — and are then led to believe you are the Maitreya when you are not.'

I looked down into the crystal again, and I gasped to see Atara looking back at me. Her lovely face filled the whole of the spheres luminous interior. Her blindfold was gone. In its place were two eyes as clear and sparkling as blue diamonds. And then my exaltation blazed out from deep inside me. It fell upon her like a dragon's red relb and burst into flame. The screaming of her eyes was worse than any sound I had ever heard. It took only a moment for the fire to burn her flesh down to the bone so all that remained was skull encased in char.

'Enough!' I cried out as I thrust the sphere away from me. One of the Guardians posted by the river looked my way, but I held up my hand to signal that everything was all right — even if it really wasn't. 'Take back your crystal, Atara. I would see no more.'

I gave the kristei back into her hand, and she returned the Lightstone to me. For a while we sat facing each other, saying nothing.

'You were right about one thing,' I finally said. 'These visions of yours, this way of seeing — it's too dear, too cold.'

Something of this terrible cold, I knew, would remain with me It bit into my bones and recalled the ice mountains of the Nagarshath.

'You do see,' she said to me. 'This is the world where I live now.'

'But, Atara, there's another world.'

'Your world,' she said bitterly. 'And whether you're the Maitreya or not, you must do what you can save it.'

All the coldness inside her seemed to come pouring out all at once. She made herself cold, toward me. And then she was no longer a woman of golden skin and warm breath and dreams; she was a scryer encased in the eternal freeze of glacier ice. 'Atara, Atara,' I said to her.

'No, Val — we will not speak of this again!'

I bowed my head to her, and then tucked the Lightstone back inside my armor. Perhaps she was fight, after all. For we both knew that if either of us weakened, I might risk all the fires of the heavens and hell to make her whole again.

'It's growing late,' she said to me.

The frigid tone of her voice was almost more than I could bear; it was more than she could bear, for I felt in her an intense desire to fall weeping against me — if only she'd still had tears with which to weep. I wept then to see this noble being hold herself so straight and still. Her restraint made me love her all the more. I longed for a sword to swing and crack open the icy tomb of this sacrifice that had stolen her away from me.

'Tomorrow we'll have to rest here,' I said. 'But the next day, we'll journey on to the lake.'

'To find this akashic crystal of yours?'

'Yes.'

If not a sword, I thought, then perhaps this great thought stone that might hold the key toward apprehending my fate.

'It's growing late,' she said again. 'We should go to bed.' She stood up abruptly and started off in the direction of the Manslayers' camp. But she tripped over a fresh log, and it was all I could do to rise up and catch her, to keep her from falling face-first into the fire. I took her cold hand in mine, and she said to me, 'It seems that I might need help after all.'

And so we walked away from the fire around the rows of the sleeping Guardians, out into the steppe. We passed the dark, mounded graves of other Guardians who had fallen in battle only hours before. Their sleep was much deeper, and they would not arise to greet the new day. We had not been able to inscribe stones and set them into the places on earth where they lay. And so I silently whispered their names: Karashan and Aivar, Jushur and Jonawan, and those of their eighteen companions. I promised them that their sacrifice in risking the wilds of the Wendrush should not be in vain. I promised myself, and Atara, that I would find the akashic crystal and make it yield its secrets. I knew no other way. For as she had told me, it was upon me, and me alone, to pierce through to the heart of the mystery of my life.