Lord of Lies

Chapter 29

On the lawn outside the palace, we said goodbye to Sajagax and Queen Daryana. King Kiritan's death had at last freed her from her despised marriage vows, and she had decided to return with her father to her childhood home.

'There's no point in my trying to rule,' she explained, standing up straight and regal. 'The barons would never accept a Kurmak as their sovereign.'

As Sajagax's warriors brought up their horses and my knights gathered around us, Maram said to her, 'But what of Atara, then? She is King Kiritan's daughter as well as yours.'

Daryana looked at Atara, who was embracing Karimah in farewell, and she said, 'Yes, Atara is our daughter. The Alonians might once have bowed to a High Queen, but that was in another age.'

'Then who will rule Alonia?'

Daryana waved her hand in front of her as if warding away a hornet. 'Perhaps Count Dario. Perhaps Baron Maruth. I care not. Let the Five Families and the barons fight with Kiritan's bastards over the throne.'

Just then one of her servants came out of the palace bearing a gem-encrusted box. I presumed it contained Queen Daryana's jewelry: all that she would be taking with her from Alonia. She grasped the box and said to Atara, 'Besides, our people will need me now.'

Sajagax laid his muscular, sun-burned arm about her shoulders as he looked at Atara and said, 'As I warned Valashu, in the event of the conclave's failure, there will be trouble with the Marituk. Trouble all across the Wendrush. We'll ride south as quickly as we can. Won't you ride with us?'

'No,' Atara said, standing by my side and squeezing my hand. 'I'll ride with Val. My place is with him, now.'

Sajagax stepped forward to kiss Atara, and so did Daryana. They took their leave of each other in the brusque Kurmak way. Then Sajagax clasped my hand and said, 'You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened here. Fate is fate, is it not? But we're still free, and we still have our bows — and swords. Let us use them to fight Morjin and bring the Law of the One into all lands.'

He grinned at me, then mounted his horse and added, 'You'd better ride quickly, too, Valashu. No matter Count Dario's words, I trust these Alonians not at all. And your Valari kings hardly more. Maybe we'll meet again in better times. Until then, death to our enemies — and seek the glory of the One! Farewell, my Valari friend!'

And so we parted ways with the great Sajagax and his wild, yellow-haired warriors. They rode out of Tria as they had come. I gathered the Guardians to me and prepared to leave the city by a different route. And then Liljana surprised me, announcing that she and Daj would accompany me, too.

'I didn't fail you on the road to Argattha, did I?' she said to me. 'Did you think I'd desert you now just because the road ahead seems a dark one? No, no, of course I'm coming with you!'

We hastened to leave Tria then. With my columns of knights behind me, my friends and I made our way across the city down broad avenues lined with people who had turned out to witness my disgrace. No one cheered me. No one cast rose petals onto the streets. Our retreat took us down to the Poru and across the great Star Bridge, gleaming golden in the late sun. Near the ruins of the Old Sanctuary of the Maitriche Telu, we stopped at a large house for Liljana to retrieve a few cooking pots and other essentials she might need on our journey. And then we passed the city's walls through the Ashtoreth Gate, which slammed shut behind us as the Trians sealed in their city against the fall of night The Nar Road lay before us, for hundreds of miles, through deep forests and across mountains. As Liljana had said, it seemed a dark way, its worn paving stones already fading to shades of gray and black as the day's light failed all around us.

I learned much later that with the deaths of Noman, Ravik Kirriland and Baltasar (and King Kiritan, whose body was never found), the great conclave did indeed come to an end, even as Count Dario had said. But for the next few days, most of the kings lingered on in Tria as King Waray tried to rally the Valari kings and persuade the others to sit once more in good faith at King Kiritan's round table. But then King Mohan quarreled with King Kurshan, and they nearly came to blows. King Kurshan rode off with his retinue, as did King Sandarkan, who had renewed the old dispute with Prince Viromar over the Arjan land. King Waray himself had to take the defensive when King Hadaru accused him of conspiring against him and Ishka. In the end, the old Ishkan bear stormed out of the palace threatening war with Taron. Things went not much better with King Aryaman and King Tal, and the other kings. They left Tria in betrayal and anger, never to return. And as for Count Muar and Baron Maruth, they each vowed to return at the head of their domains' armies should Count Dario press his claim to Alonia's throne.

Late the next day, thirty miles from Tria outside the town of Sarabrunan, we buried Baltasar on a little knoll covered with oaks. He would rest in good company. For all about us, beneath the woods and grass, were buried the ten thousand Valari who had fallen at the Battle of the Sarburn two entire ages before. Beneath some moss, I found a white stone that had once marked the grave of one of these men. Time had nearly worn smooth the ancient headstone. I called for a hammer and used a sharp tent stake to renew the lettering cut into the hard granite: Here lies a Valari warrior. Sunjay Naviru declaimed that I should chisel Baltasar's name and feats into the stone, but Lansar Raasharu would not hear of this. He said that his son would have more honor lying in the ground as did the other heroes who had fought against Morjin and defeated him. And so I planted the stone above Baltasar's grave and said a prayer for his soul.

That night, we camped in a fallow field beneath the Hill of the Dead, as the knoll had once been called. We dug a deep moat around our rows of tents and made a palisade of sharpened stakes driven into the loamy earth. Sunjay Naviru posted one of the Guardians at every twenty paces to watch for Belur Narmada's knights — or anyone else who might have thought to pursue us. My men ate a cold, quick meal and hurried off to their beds. They bade me goodnight with deep looks of mourning. It was a quiet, cheerless camp, and I listened in vain for the singing of the Sarni warriors who had accompanied us along many miles of our journey toward Tria.

After we had eaten the last of our cheese, bread and dried sagosk, I sat for a long time with my friends around a fire outside my pavilion. I asked Lansar Raasharu to join us in council, but he said that we companions who had faced Morjin in Argattha should take our tea and brandy together. He told me that he would face Morjin alone on the Hill of the Dead, keeping a vigil above Baltasar's grave. I knew exactly what he meant, for in the end, each of us must face evil and the great neverness alone. And so I allowed this noble man to draw his sword and walk into the dark woods outside our camp.

The sky was clear that night, and many stars burned down through the blackness above us. The village a few miles away scented the air with the smells of woodsmoke and roasting meats; I listened to some dogs barking and the rushing of a nearby stream. It was good to sit with Master Juwain, Maram, Atara, Liljana and Kane, as we had so many times on our quest. We all missed Ymiru's great, brooding presence, but Daj's lively company made up for his absence, a little. At the last moment Estrella joined us, too. It raised my spirits to be surrounded by my old friends, even if it did seem to me that the world had come to an end.

I had many questions for Kane, and he answered many — but many more of them he did not, for that was his way. This gruff, growling wolf of a man had long since abandoned any niceties or etiquette that did not suit him. If he chose not to respond to a query, he would neither evade nor apologize but simply glare at one as if in warning. So it was that he would not tell us of his hunt for the two Skakamen, Elman and Urman, that he had tracked down and killed. Nor would he tell us how he had discovered that Morjin had unleashed them upon Ea. His reticence, in this matter, rankled Maram. He kept sipping from his cup of brandy, and he finally looked at Kane and muttered, 'Ah, but you keep too many secrets.'

"That I do,' Kane said, sipping from his own mug. 'There's much that you don't need to know.'

'Don't need to know!' Maram cried out. 'That skulking Noman nearly killed us all! You say that Morjin summoned the Skakamen from Khutar. What if he summons more of them?'

'That is unlikely,' Kane said, gazing up at the sky. He stabbed his thick finger toward the Bear constellation and added, 'Earlier this year, there was an alignment of the planets and stars. This created a door that Morjin was able to open. So, the next such alignment of Ea and Khutar won't occur for another five hundred and twenty-three years.'

At this mention of stellar alignments, Master Juwain turned his good ear toward Kane in hope that he might say more about this art of descrying earthly events in the movements of the stars. But Kane had no mind for such arcane talk. He leaned over and squeezed Maram's knee as he said, 'Will you sleep better tonight knowing that Noman was after Val and not you?'

'No,' Maram said, 'I won't. 'It was all too close — too, too close.'

'That it was.'

'Even your arrival in King Kiritan's hall — I dread what might have happened if you hadn't unmasked Noman, so to speak. How did you recognize him?'

Kane's harsh, handsome face pulled into a scowl as he said, 'How does one wolf recognize another in the middle of a pack of dogs?'

So bright did his eyes flare just then that it was hard to look at him.

'But if you could recognize Noman,' Maram persisted, 'if this Skakaman knew this, then I don't understand why he hadn't issued orders to King Kiritan's guards to bar you from the hall?' 'Let's just say,' Kane growled out, 'that Noman had good reason to think that I was dead.'

Then he smiled at the sky, showing his long, white teeth to the glittering heavens as he called out, 'Ha, but I'm not dead, am I? It's Noman who is dead, thanks to Valashu Elahad.'

He turned to look at me. I touched the hilt of my sword, and I told him, 'Twice he nearly killed me. And then, in King Kiritan's hall.. ' I fell silent as I listened to the crickets chirping in the grass and gazed into Kane's blazing eyes. And he said to me, 'So, I sent the letter to Liljana to warn you. And I killed two horses riding straight through to Tria. Elman was to have mimed and murdered King Kiritan. If I had known that Noman would find a way to contrive such a foul crime at the last moment, I'd have warned Atara, too — and King Kiritan.'

The fire's flames seemed to dance in the white cloth covering Atara's face. I could tell that she struggled to keep her jaw from trembling. It tormented her that she had not even been able to stand over her father's grave.

To Kane, she said, 'If I couldn't see the danger, there's really no reason that you should have.'

'Well, I should have' Kane said. 'If one plays chess with the Red Dragon, it's perilous to overlook any possible move.'

'What I don't understand,' Maram said, 'is how Noman could have foreseen so much? All right, all right, so he found a way to get close to King Kiritan, to stick a knife in his back and bury the body in the gardens somewhere outside the palace — ah, excuse me, Atara, for speaking so bluntly. But how could he know that Master Juwain would challenge his reading of that old chronicle? And summon that ghost out of his crystal and condemn Val for all to hear? Master Juwain didn't know it himself!'

It saddened me to see Master Juwain take out the shards of his akashic crystal and sit holding them piled up in his rough hands.

With the breaking of this wondrous gelstei, all its colors had died, and each individual shard glowed dully like a chunk of gray glass.

'So, Noman could not have foreseen this,' Kane said. 'The Skakamen are clever — but not that clever. First of all, I doubt that Balakin ever wrote any such chronicle and left if for the Narmadas to collect. Likely Noman had a book of genealogies or some such and was only pretending to read from it. He needed only to challenge Val's claim. Ha, it's strange, isn't it, that he was able to do this by twisting the truth to his purpose?'

Although it was a cool night for midsummer, I was sweating beneath my diamond armor. I wiped my forehead as I shifted about on my cloak, but I said nothing.

'As for Master Juwain's crystal,' Kane continued, 'Noman had some good luck and some bad. The ghost's reciting of the verses played right into Noman's strategy. But in any case, he certainly meant to challenge Val as he did — and to incite the Valari kings into drawing their swords. That was to be an excuse for seizing Val, and the Lightstone. Likely Val would have been put to the sword in some foul dungeon, or even there in the hall. There might have been war between the Nine Kingdoms and Alonia. Morjin's disciple would have sat upon Alonia's throne, unknown to all. And Morjin would have regained the Lightstone.'

At the mention of this little cup that had caused so much trouble, I drew it forth and sat staring into its golden hollows.

'The Beast meant to destroy you, Val,' Kane said to me. 'And not just your life but your honor — the legend that has grown around you.'

'Well,' I said, squeezing the Lightstone's hard gelstei, 'at least my life still remains. And this.'

But my self-pity seemed only to anger Kane. If I expected him to tell me, as Sajagax had, that I shouldn't blame myself for what had happened, then I would have been a fool. As a volcano trembles with fire, Kane fairly seethed with blame for me — and for himself.

'What in all the blazes of heaven were you thinking?' he suddenly shouted at me. So violent was the pent-up passion that erupted from him that two of the Guardians at the edge of the camp turned to regard him in alarm. But Kane ignored them; he sat facing me as his black eyes glistered with a barely-controlled fury. 'Valashu Elahad, the great Shining One — the Maitreya! Ha! You were supposed to guard the Lightstone for him! It was this realization, wasn't it, that rendered the Lightstone visible to you in the first place? How could you have been so wrong?'

As he continued glaring at me, Master Juwain rattled the ragged bones of his ruined crystal in his hands, and he said, 'I'm afraid that I encouraged Val to believe that he was the Maitreya. You see, there were so many signs: Aos and Niran at the midheaven, conjuncting the sun. Siraj in the Ram constellation, the stars. .'

His voice died into the crackling of the fire and into Kane's thunderous silence. And then Liljana leaned forward and shook her finger at Kane. 'Don't you speak that way to Val! If you knew that he couldn't have been the Maitreya, why didn't you warn him?'

With Kane fixing his brightblack eyes upon me as a tiger might stare down another of his kind, it seemed that he had heard nothing of what our friends had said. He seemed to be asking me, in a howl of outrage, again and again: how could I have been so wrong? And so I finally held the Lightstone out toward the Hill of the Dead as I told him, 'I wanted to end war. The suffering. . of everyone. Even death.'

Kane's breath suddenly burst from him as if a sword had pierced his lungs. His face softened, and so did the light in his eyes.

'Yes, of course you would have wanted that,' he said at last. 'I should have known you would. I should have spoken of this before. Perhaps Maram is right that I do keep too many secrets.'

He took a sip of brandy and held it in his mouth a moment before swallowing. I could almost feel the dark liquor burning all the way down his throat. And then he said, 'That ghost told truly. Ghost, ha! He is one of the Urudjin who dwell in the realm of the Alama Almithral. They are the keepers of memory and time. So, there is a story that comes out of the beginning of time. An old, old story that goes back to the Ardun Satra before the mountains were born. There was a world, it's said. Erathe was its name. And there the Lightstone was sent and came to Ashvar, who was the first Maitreya. He used it to raise up Erathe's people to the order of the Valari. The greatest of these, their king, was named Adar. And it was he who became the Lightstone's first guardian.'

He took another sip of brandy as he stared at the golden cup that I held. 'Adar was the first man to walk the stars. Man, ha! You Valari have always been something more. So. So. After Ashvar finished his work on Erathe, Adar led a host of Valari knights to other worlds — and they brought the Lightstone with them. Theirs it was to find other Maitreyas and set it into their hands. And so they did. Adar finally died, as men do, but the guardianship of the Lightstone passed to his firstborn, Shakhad, then to his son, on and on, through the great ages and the small, as the Elijin were raised up from the Valari and the Galadin from them. And always the Lightstone passed to one of Adar's descendants — as guardians, never Maitreyas. His line has never failed. Elahad was of it. And so are you, Valashu.'

The little cup in my hand suddenly seemed as heavy as the moon. I could hardly believe what Kane had told me. And so I said to him, 'All those millennia of millennia, father to son, son to grandson — it seems impossible.'

'We're all miracles of creations,' Kane said, sweeping his blunt hand around the circle. 'Each of us was born of a mother and grandmother, going back in an unbroken line to the first days when the Ardun arose from Eluru's many earths.'

'Yes, it must be so,' I said, thinking of my mother and grandmother, 'But you must be wrong that the Lightstone passed always to one of Adar's descendants. There was Angra Mainyu. There was Morjin.'

'Must I be wrong?' Kane said to me as dark lights flashed inside him. 'So. So. You must be told. Mainyu, too, was of the line of Adar.'

I drew in a sharp, quick breath. In King Kiritan's hall, Ashtoreth's messenger had said this to me: Angra Mainyu once held the same dream as do you. He, too, wanted to end death, suffering itself. He deceived himself, as have you, Valashu.

'No, no,' I murmured. 'It's not possible. Angra Mainyu was the greatest of the Galadin.'

'So he was before he fell. But before that, long, long ago, he was of the Elijin. And before that he was born of the Valari, even as you were.'

'But he stole the Lightstone — so you told me!'

'That he did.' Kane eyed the gleaming golden cup that I held. 'You see, he gave up any claim to its guardianship when he became an Elijin. So it must be. The highest orders are not permitted to use the Lightstone, nor even to touch it.'

I noticed that the fingers of both his hands had drawn into fists. I could feel the muscles trembling in his arms up through his tense shoulders and quick, savage body.

'But you have touched the Lightstone yourself,' I whispered to him. 'More than once!'

'Yes, I have.'

'But you are yourself of the Elijin! Your true name is — '

'Be quiet now!' he snarled, cutting me off. He glanced over his shoulder at the knights keeping watch on the Hill of the Dead. 'We will not speak that name — so you promised me!'

'My apologies,' I said, looking at him. The veins along his muscular neck stood out as if they could not bear the pressure of the blood beating through them. I wanted to take away the torment of his fierce, pounding heart. 'But the ghost — he of the Urudjin — he told us of the Battle of Tharharra. It was you, wasn't it, who defeated Angra Mainyu? And then took the Lightstone from Marsul?'

I looked into Kane's black, unfathomable eyes. As the light of the crackling fire played in their liquid centers, his gaze fell cold and strange. I felt inside him a vast distance, like the ocean of space between the earth and the stars.

'Was it I?' he said in a low, mournful voice. He opened his hands and stared down in them. 'Was it truly I? It was so long ago, you can't imagine the years, working at him I wind and water do the face of a mountain. What remains of the child you once were, Valashu? What was the shape of your face before you were born? I have a memory of the one you speak of, I think. A memory of memory. He was one of the great ones, once. He dwelled on other worlds, beyond the stars.' Kane sighed as he clapped his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. Then he brought out the dark, oval stone that he had cut from the forehead of the leader of the Grays who had once pursued us through the nearby country. And he told us, 'I didn't defeat Angra Mainyu. He is not defeated. I used a black gelstei similar to this one to suck the life from him, for a moment only while Manwe and others bound him on Damoom.'

I tapped my fingernail against the rim of the Lightstone, and I said, 'But in the end, you did surrender this to Valakam?'

'Yes,' he said, gazing at the golden cup.

'And on the first Quest, in the Age of Swords, you regained this for one of Elahad's descendants to guard?'

'Yes.'

'And in Argattha, you might have claimed this for yourself, yet you gave it back to me?'

'So. So I did,' he murmured, looking at me. 'You are its rightful guardian.'

'No,' I said, shaking my head. 'I should give this to my father for safe-keeping. Or perhaps Asaru — one of my brothers.'

Kane edged between Maram and the fire, and knelt before me. He grasped my wrist then. His hand bruised me like iron, like some evil device that one might find in a dungeon. And he told me, 'I won't hear such talk from you! Do you understand? This is no time for that!' He sighed again as he let go of me. And then he said, 'Do you remember the story of the eagle and the sun?'

'No,' I said, 'that story is not told in Mesh.'

He returned to his place between Maram and Master Juwain, and retrieved his cup of brandy. He took a sip from it. And then he drew in a deep breath and said, 'Once there was an eagle, one of the sky lords of the Crescent Mountains, whose gift it was to fly higher than any of his kind. He hated night, as all eagles do, for then he could not hunt or even see to fly. And so one day he set forth to soar up to the sun, to sink his talons into the golden orb and bring it back to earth so that there would never be night again. But the sun set his feathers on fire. And like a shooting star, he fell burning back to earth.' He took another drink of brandy, and then continued the story: 'As fate would have it, he fell in with a flock of ducks. His shame was so great that he did not want even to look toward the sky. And so he resolved to learn to swim like a duck. He waddled like a duck he quacked like a duck. Even after his feathers grew back, he flew like a duck, low over lakes and marshes.'

Kane stopped speaking suddenly as his bright eyes blazed into mine

'And is that the end of the story?' I asked.

'No, it is not — you know it is not. You see, the eagle was not a duck, and never could be. One day he woke up and heard the far-off cry of his kind, and he remembered who he really was. And he flew back to the mountains to take his place in the aeryies there, among the rocks shining in the sun.'

He paused to pick up the bottle of brandy and refill his mug. And then he gazed at me.

'Ah,' Maram said, holding out his own mug, 'I suppose the moral of the story is that if we're not careful, we'll all wind up as dead ducks.'

'Fat fool!' Kane said, grinning savagely. Then he looked at me and said. 'In the end, it doesn't matter how far we fall — only how high we rise again.'

I thought about this for a moment, then said to him, 'Are you speaking of me or yourself?'

'Perhaps both of us,' he admitted. He looked at me so intently that I could hardly hold his gaze. 'So, you must decide if you are an eagle or a duck. And you must decide soon. I've news for you that you won't want to hear.'

'What news, then?' I asked him.

'I learned this only last week: on the 11th of Marud, an army bearing the standards of the Red Dragon marched east out of Argattha.'

'East!' I cried out. 'East! But we had thought that Morjin would strike out west, against the Ymanir!'

'So we did. But that was before you set out to Tria to claim the Lightstone.'

'But Morjin couldn't have hoped to intercept me on the Wendrush!'

'No, he was too late for that, and his army is mostly foot. They could never have caught you.'

'Then why march at all? What is his objective?'

'So, east of Sakai is the land of the Niuriu. They've opposed Morjin for many years. If he could defeat them, he could move against the main Urtuk clans, and the whole center of the Wendrush might collapse.'

My eyes tore into him as I said, 'You do not believe that Morjin has led an army east at this time solely to attack the Niuriu.'

'No, not solely,' he told me. 'East of the Niuriuland lies Mesh.'

My heart beat inside me like one of the great war kettles that my kingdom's drummers struck when marching into battle 'How many are his men?'

'That is uncertain. Perhaps twenty-five thousand.'

'Twenty-five thousand,' I repeated. 'And is it certain that Morjin leads them?'

'No, that also is unknown.'

'He could not defeat my people with such an army,' I said 'Not Valari.'

'Perhaps not, but he could slay many.'

'But he would risk losing everything. Would he do that, truly?'

'He might if one of the slain was Valashu Elahad.'

As Kane caught me with a blazing look, I listened to the wood hissing and popping in the fire.

'Think of this as a game of chess,' he said to me. 'Morjin could not have known what would happen in Kiritan's hall.'

'No,' I said, thinking of Ravik Kirriland and Baltasar. 'What if Noman had failed to murder King Kiritan and I had claimed the Lightstone? What if the kings had pledged themselves to the Alliance?'

'In that case,' Kane said, 'Morjin would have done well to spend an army in order to weaken what would have been the core of the forces arrayed against him. And in order to unsettle you.'

'Then that,' I said, 'only betrays his desperation.'

'So, desperate the Dragon has been ever since you nearly killed him and made off with that little trinket you're holding.'

I looked down at the golden cup that it seemed I could not let go.

'But he's something more than desperate,' Kane went on. 'Or something less. It was always likely that the Alliance would fail. What if it did?'

'Then,' Maram said, stating the obvious, 'it would be as it is now.'

'Just so,' Kane said, looking at me. 'The question is, what should be our next move in this little game we've been playing with Morjin?'

I wrapped my hands tightly around the lightstone and I said, 'Everything depends upon this "trinket". We must hurry back to Mesh and keep it safe there.'

At this, Maram's face blanched as if a demon had drained him of blood. 'Go back to Mesh? Ride right into the jaws of the Dragon? Are you mad?'

'My home stands to be invaded, Maram. My duty lies there.'

'Your duty,' he said to me, 'is first as lord Guardian of the Lightstone. Take it to some safe place!'

Liljana looked up from a tunic that she was embroidering, and she said, 'And where would this safe place be? We've traveled from one end of Ea to the other, and were nearly killed at every mile along the way.'

'Even the Nine Kingdoms will be dangerous for us,' Master Juwain said. 'King Hadaru will certainly challenge Val's right as Lord Guardian, now. And let us not forget that the Red Dragon has offered a million-weight of gold to anyone who will deliver the Lightstone to him. Such a sum would tempt anyone to betray us.'

Maram took a huge gulp of brandy, then blurted out, 'It would not tempt the Lokilani! What of the Vild? The wood of Pualani and Danali — and Iolana — lies not far from here. We could hide there for years!'

'So,' Kane said, 'we could hide there — if we could find it. But we could not hide forever. Eventually, Morjin would deduce where we had disappeared to. After he'd conquered Alonia, he'd burn her forests to the ground to uncover the Lokilani's wood and take back the Lightstone.'

As Maram muttered a profanity into his cup, I grasped his arm and said. 'Take heart, my friend. We're not under Morjin's spears yet. His army set out only twenty days ago. It's unlikely that they could make much more than fifteen miles per day, especially if they bear siege-craft in their baggage train. Their march might have taken them as far as the Niuriuland. They'll have to fight Vishakan's warriors to get through it. And after that, it's another two hundred and fifty miles to Mesh — and more for them to fight their way through the passes and push through to the Valley of the Swans. All right then. We have time to return home, if we ride quickly. No army has ever successfully invaded Mesh. And my father's castle has never been taken. The Lightstone will be safe there — as safe as any place on Ea.'

'Ah, so you say,' Maram muttered as he looked at me. 'But has it occurred to you that Morjin will expect you to reason precisely as you have? Kane speaks of a game of chess! Well, what moves does Morjin plan that you haven't foreseen? What if he's suborned another of Alonia's damned dukes? Do we know we won't have to fight another army along the Nar Road? And what if he sets the Stonefaces upon us again or some other evil creatures? And what if — '

'We've taken worse chances than this before,' I said, cutting him of before he terrified himself to death. 'The Lightstone will be safe inside my father's casde. We could withstand a siege there for years.'

'You think so?' Maram said, shaking off my hand. He reached into the pocket of his cloak and removed his ruined firestone. 'And what if the Dragon bears one of these with which to burn down your castle's walls?'

'That,' Kane said, pointing at Maram's cracked, red crystal 'was the last remaining firestone on Ea.'

'Are you sure?'

Kane paused to take a drink of brandy and then said, 'Reasonably sure.'

After that for the next hour or so, we debated what we should do. We finally decided that my first impulse would be the best we would ride like the wind back to Mesh and deliver the Lightstone to my father's hall. The Guardians would stand around it a diamond wall of the finest Valari knights surrounded by the great impregnable walls of the Elahad castle. I would send out a call to all the Nine Kingdoms to send other knights to join us. Morjin's army, fighting so far from its base on sacred Meshian soil, would be defeated. And as in ancient times, the Lightstone would blaze like a beacon of hope for all of Ea's peoples.

'If it was my fate not to be the Maitreya,' I said, holding up the golden cup, 'then surely it is upon me to see that this calls forth the Maitreya.'

After that for a long time, I sat by the fire thinking about the days to come. I played over and over in my mind all of Morjin's possible moves, determining to make no blunder in my own moves. I must not lose this game, I told myself. I could not believe that the future was set like words chiseled into stone. It was possible, I thought, that the Valari kingdoms would send aid to Mesh — and then there would no battle Even so, as I stared into the fire's red flames, I felt fate hammering at my soul, trying to beat into me an acceptance of that which must be.