Lord of Lies

Chapter 34

After the burials, we took shelter on Lord Harsha's farm eight miles farther up the valley. Forest surrounded his fields on three sides, affording us a sense of isolation. Atara, Liljana and Estrella settled into one room of Lord Harsha's stout, stone house, while Maram, Kane, Master Juwain, and Daj shared two others. 1 spread out my cloak on some clean straw in the barn, next to the stalls of Lord Harsha's gray mare and his other horses. Behira, having finished with her duties with the wounded from the battle, prepared us meals of good, solid Meshian fare: bacon, eggs and hotcakes in the morning; beef and barley soup for lunch; lamb roasts with herbs and potatoes for supper. I could hardly eat any of it. Liljana, who helped with the cooking, kept urging upon me these tasty viands; she told me that I must at least try to strengthen my body for what was to come.

'It's an old saying of our Sisterhood,' she told me. 'Nourish the body, and the spirit will flourish.'

And I told her: 'We of Mesh say that the spirit alone gives the body life.'

I thought of my grandmother's fierce will to speak with me before she died, and I knew this was true.

For most of five days, I lay as one dead in the half-darkness of the barn, listening to the chickens squawk, breathing in the scent of straw, manure and old wood. I watched a spider weave an elaborate web between the rafters above me. I tried not to think of what I had seen in the ruins of my family's burnt-out castle. I dwelled on all the deeds of my life. My friends, in their wisdom, left me alone.

And then, on a cloudy day with the first chill of autumn in the air, I roused myself and went to work. I saw to Altaru's shoeing and changed the poultice where a sword had scored his flank during the batde. I began gathering in stores: dried beef and dried plums; cheeses as yellow as old paper; year-old hickory nuts; and battle-biscuits almost hard enough to drive nails. My friends watched in silence as I made these preparations. And then, when Maram could bear it no longer, he caught me out behind the barn oiling my old suit of mail that I had retrieved from my rooms in the castle.

'What are you doing?' he asked me.

'What does it look like I'm doing?' I said. Heavy rings of steel jangled in my hands as I examined them for any broken or weak links. 'I cannot remain in Mesh.'

Maram, too, had put aside his diamond armor; he stood before me wearing a plain half-tunic and trousers, topped with a leather hunting jacket. He looked every inch a Valari knight at his leisure.

'But where are you going?' he asked me.

And I told him: 'To Argattha.'

He shook his head as he looked out to the west and watched the clouds in the sky building thicker and darker. 'Ah, Val, Val, it's a bad season to be setting out on any journey. But this — surely you know this is madness?'

'I don't care.'

'But I do care,' he told me. 'You promised Kane to stay alive.'

'No, the spirit of the promise was that I would not kill myself. And I won't.'

'But you're throwing your life away!'

'Am I? Are you a scryer then, that you can see the future?'

'But you'll never even get past the guards at Argattha's gates! They'll shackle you in chains and drag you before Morjin. And before you die, he'll — '

'I'm not afraid any more, Maram.'

He slapped his fist into his hand as his fat cheeks puffed out. 'No? No? Are you proud of that? To be without fear is to be without hope.'

'Hope,' I murmured, shaking my head.

'I know, I know,' he told me. 'But what else can we do but try to find a good outcome to all the horrible things that have happened?'

'Life isn't a story,' I said to him. 'It doesn't have a happy ending.'

'Don't say that, Val. We're all involved in a great story, as old as time, whose ending hasn't yet been written.'

I looked down at the rings of oily steel in my hands, and I said, 'Perhaps it hasn't. But it's not hard to see what that ending now must be.'

'Are you a scryer?' he said to me. Then he grasped my arm and told me, 'I am afraid enough for both of us. And so I won't let you go.'

'How will you stop me?'

'I won't let you go … alone.'

His courage caused me gasp against the shock of pain that stabbed through my chest. I gazed into his eyes, all soft and brown and shining with his regard for me.

'No, you can't come with me,'I told him. 'It would be your death.'

'And how will you stop me, my friend?'

He smiled at me, and for a few moments, we stood there taking each other's measure. Then a gray, cold drizzle began sifting down from the sky; I covered my suit of armor with my cloak and told him, 'I won't let you go to Argattha.'

Later that day, as I walked through the woods beyond the stone wall at the edge of Lord Harsha's fields, I came upon a great, old elm tree that had once been felled by lightning. I sat upon its moss-covered trunk. Rain pattered against leaves and soaked into my cloak. Atara found me there, staring at the dark trees all about me as I rubbed the scar on my forehead.

'Maram told me I might find you here,' Atara said to me. 'He told me where you're thinking of going.'

She pulled her lionskin cloak more tightly around her shoulders as she sat down beside me. I said to her, 'If he tires of being a Valari knight, he can always find work as a spy.'

She smiled at this, then took my hand. 'It's cold, here, Val. Why don't you come in out of the rain and sit by the fire?'

I shook my head as I pointed at the mat of dripping ferns spread across the ground. 'This is the spot where the bear nearly killed me He nearly killed Asaru, too. All my life, Asaru told everyone that I'd saved his life.'

She said nothing as she oriented her head facing the place that I had pointed out. I wondered if she could 'see' me as a young boy plunging my knife into the huge, brown bear's back in a frantic effort to keep the beast from mauling Asaru.

'Where the Ikurians were upon me,' I said to her, 'he gave me back my life. But not in repayment. Only. . in love. You should have seen the look in his eyes, just before he died. He didn't care that he would have made a better king than I.'

Her hand tightened around mine, and its warmth flowed into me.

'I can't believe I'll never talk to him again,' I said. 'My mother, my father, all of them — I can't believe they're really gone.'

Atara's blindfold, I saw, was wet with rain, if not tears. I thought it cruel that she could never weep again, just as Liljana could not laugh.

'What was the point of us going to Argattha,' I asked her, 'if it all came to this?'

'I don't know, Val.'

'But you're suppose to see everything.'

'I wish I could.'

'So many dead,' I murmured. 'And in the end, we only succeeded in giving the Lightstone back to Morjin. I did.'

'You mustn't blame yourself.'

'Who should I blame then? Kane, for not seeing all of Morjin's plots and perfidies? You? The One for creating the world?'

'Please, do — blame us, if that would be easier for you.'

I squeezed her hand, and pressed it to my forehead. 'I'm sorry,' I told her.

'And I'm sorry, too,' she said. 'But not even a scryer can make out all ends. Something good may yet come of what has happened in a way that we can't see.'

'Something good,' I said, shaking my head. 'I should have done better to have claimed the Lightstone from the very beginning.'

'Please, don't say that.'

'Why not? If I had come forth as the Maitreya, that day with Baltasar in my father's hall, I might have united the Valari without even going to Tria. Morjin would never have attacked Mesh, and the Lightstone would be mine.'

'And what then?' she asked me. 'You know the prophecy. Would they come to call you the Great Silver Swan? Would you have that name become a curse, like the Red Dragon?'

'At least,' I told her, 'my people would still be alive.'

'There are some things more terrible than death,' she said, rubbing at her blindfold. 'Do you doubt that you could become as Morjin — or worse?'

I recalled the look on Ravik Kirriland's face as I had struck him down. I sat there in silence, listening to the rain.

'You would have brought great evil to the world,' she said to me. 'Great destruction and death.'

'Could the suffering that entailed have been any worse?'

'I don't know. I don't know how to measure such a thing. Do you?'

I pressed my fingers against her wrist, where I could feel her heart sending out pulses of blood like an anguished and savage thing. I said, 'There's no end to suffering.'

'No, perhaps not,' she said. 'But I must believe it has a purpose.'

I smiled grimly as I recalled Morjin's letter, and said, 'To torment us into hating the One so that we might become as angels?'

She smiled, too, as she shook her head. 'No, Val. But there is some-thing strange about suffering. It carves the soul, hollows it out — and in the end leaves room for it to hold more joy.'

'You say that?'

I stared at her blindfold, and I wondered what the hollows beneath it held inside their scoops of darkness?

'I do say that,' she told me. 'I have to make myself believe that there is still hope for all of us.'

'Have you been talking to Maram, then?'

She let go of my hand and brought out her scryer's sphere. Drops of rain broke against the white gelstei, and ran in streaks down the curves of the crystal.

'Have you seen these joys with which you hope we'll be blessed?' I asked her.

She smiled as she- shivered against the cold of the rain. And then she told me, 'Many believe that the kristei was forged to show visions of the future. But its true power is to create it.'

That was all she said to me, then. She stood up to make the short journey back to Lord Marsha's house. She left me sitting on my soggy log; she left me to wonder how a little ball of dear crystal — no less a man — could create anything good at all.

The next day the rain deepened, and I spent most of it in the barn, hunched beneath my cloak and brooding upon things to come, late in the afternoon, the peace of Lord Harsha's farm was broken when a rider dressed all in black came galloping up the road. I hurried out of the barn to see Kane emerge from the house and walk up to confer with this stranger. That he was no Valari I could tell immediately: he was rather short and thick, and his broad face and dense black beard reminded me of the Ikurians, But his eyes were bright blue, and his skin was fair, and I could not guess what land he called home. An air of danger and darkness surrounded him. I was sure that he was a master of the mysterious Black Brotherhood.

Kane, however, did not present this man to me — or to any of us. The tension in Kane's brutal body and flashing black eyes warned us away. The rider did not remain to partake of Lord Harsha's hospitality. As soon as he had finished his business, without a word of greeting to any us, he pulled his horse about and rode off again into the rain.

That evening, like a king issuing a summons, Kane insisted that I come inside the house to take dinner with everyone else. My curiosity overcame my moroseness. I sat at Lord Harsha's long table with my friends, and feasted on roasted pork, peas and potatoes. I forced myself to eat the apple pie and cheese that Behira served for desert. Then, when we were all full. Lord Harsha called us into his great room to sit by the fire. On the andirons were piled several logs throwing out flames and a comforting heat above the fire, many cups rested on the cracked oak of the mantle. Lord Harsha informed us that his wife, Sarai, had made them from good Meshian clay. He invited us to sit on the floor, which was covered with bearskins and cushions. His eye gleamed as he began filling the cups from a bottle of old brandy. Two cups, of course, would have been enough for him and Behira, but once his house had held many more: his three sons, killed in various battles, a daughter taken by a fever before her fifth birthday, and another daughter who had died with Sarai in childbirth. Lord Harsha's mother and aunt, too, were long gone, but he took pride in displaying on the walls the bright tapestries they had once woven from the wool of the sheep that he kept on his north pasture. He was a prideful man, and the toast that he proposed as we all raised our cups was both a proud and a poignant one: 'May our land always be blessed with sons as valorous as those who fought and fell at the Culhadosh Commons, and with daughters strong and wise enough in spirit to raise up true Valari warriors.'

He sighed and sipped his brandy as he patted Behira's hand. Then he looked across the bearskins at Maram and said, 'loj is gone and Valte is racing by. The months pass almost as quickly as the years. And still we're no nearer to setting a date for the wedding, are we?'

'Ah, no, sir, I have to say we're not,' Maram choked out. He nodded at Behira as he smiled his most sheepish smile. 'And now, with all that's happened. . well, you see, I couldn't take vows with the whole world turned upside down.'

'There you're wrong, lad,' Lord Harsha said to him. 'There will be many marriages this season, as sad as it is. Too many widows will need husbands now, and too many widowers will need new wives.'

In his farmer's way, he spoke of life always engendering more life, of apple trees bearing fruit and new shoots of barley growing out of winter's dead fields. I couldn't blame him for wanting to bring more children into his land — and into his house.

'Then it wouldn't do to make Behira a widow so soon,' Maram told him. 'The wedding will have to wait until I return — if I do.'

He told everyone then that I was setting out for Argattha, and that he would follow me to the end.

At this, Lord Harsha fixed me with his bright eye and asked, 'Then you really do intend to go back to that evil place?'

'Yes,' I told him. 'I do.'

'My daughter and I accompanied you to Tria, but this is no journey for us.' He turned back to Maram and said, 'There are crops to be raised here, and a land to be healed. We'll be waiting for you when you do return.'

He might have added that there was a new king to be chosen and a kingdom to protect, but he would not speak of such things in front of me.

'Now that we've dispensed with that,' he said sadly, 'it's time that Lord Kane gave us the news he's been waiting to tell us.'

Kane peered out over the edge of his cup, gazing first at Estrella, who edged up close to my side, and then at me. Daj was to my right, and then Liljana, Maram and the others. We all sat in a circle, holding council as we had many times during the quest.

'There's news from Alonia,' Kane said. 'There's been war between Tarlan and the Aquantir, and Baron Monteer has declared Iviendenhall an independent domain. And Count Dario leads the Narmadas in fighting the Hastars and the Marshans for the throne.'

Atara, sitting between Maram and Master Juwain, faced the fire without a word, and I watched the light of its orange flames play across her impassive face.

'And I've learned the truth about Ravik Kirriland,' he said, looking at me. 'An innocent, you called him, Val. Ha! He was a Kallimun priest, as I suspected from the first. In the middle of the melee; he was to have plunged a poisoned needle into Atara's neck to murder her so that she could not give Noman away. So, your instincts were right. And so you did not slay an innocent man.'

I stared at the scar on my hand that my teeth had torn in my anguish over Ravik. I felt my heart beating with new life. Kane's words were like a magic incantation that lifted away a great stone crushing my chest.

'Are you sure?' I asked him. I did not want to know how his black knight had come by this knowledge, but I needed to be certain it was true.

'So, I am sure,' he told me. 'You were the innocent one.'

I smiled sadly as I shook my head. Other stones still pressed down upon me with the weight of worlds, and I would never be innocent again.

'So, Val, so.'

His eyes flashed with a knowing light, and I marveled that he could tell me so much with three simple words with a single, luminous look.

'This changes nothing,' I said to him. 'I'm still going to Argattha.'

'You're determined, eh? Well, I've also had news about that hellhole. Morjin has hung new gates, of iron and thicker by thrice, over the entranceways. Packs of dogs he has posted there. And squadrons of knights now patrol every approach to the black mountain.'

I looked at my scabbarded sword, which I had set down upon the bearskin beside me. I said, 'Morjin anticipates me. From the beginning, he has outthought me — and outfought me.'

'What if he has? He has great cunning and even greater power: Skakamen and whole armies at his command.' Kane paused to take a drink of brandy, then continued, 'So, we lost this battle, but we nearly killed him in Argattha, didn't we? There will be other battles to come.'

'And that,' I said, 'is why I'm going back to Argattha.'

'That,' he said, 'is precisely why you mustn't. Morjin has seen into your mind, Val. Don't you think it's time you tried seeing into his?'

At this, Liljana shook her head with so much force that her gray hair whipped the side of Maram's face. And she said to me, 'Look into his mind? Don't you dare try! There's nothing there but snakes, hissing, rats disappearing down holes and dark, twisted things.'

The look of kindness that came into Kane's eyes then surprised me, as it did when he spoke to Liljana with a rare gentleness: 'You were warned against using your gelstei to enter Morjin's mind. And it nearly destroyed you, I know. But we're all warriors, eh? Val proposes to fight Morjin. So, the first rule of war is to know your enemy.'

He turned to me and said, 'Don't you think it's time you read his letter?'

'But how did you know he left me a letter?'

'I saw you put it inside your armor.'

'How do you know I haven't read it?'

'Have you?' he asked, staring at me.

I noticed Lord Harsha and Master Juwain, and everyone else, staring at me, too. And so I shrugged my shoulders and pulled Morjin's letter out of the pocket of my cloak. The memory of finding it in the Lightstone's place on the stand still scorched my mind. As before, with Morjin's first letter, in my parents' chambers, Master Juwain advised me not to open it. But at last I gathered in my courage, and used my knife to break the red seal. I slid out the square of paper inside, unfolded it, and began reading its neatly penned lines out loud:

My Dearest Valashu,

Forgive the brevity of this note, but I write in haste, and there is still much to be done in this little castle of yours. I'm sure you understand.

As I promised, I have taken back the cup you stole from me. If you can be true to the logic of the beliefs you profess, you will rejoice that this is so. You have sought to place the Lightstone in the hands of the Maitreya, and that you have done. You will have ascertained that you are not and could never be this Lord of Light If you had believed me when I advised you of this some time ago, you might have avoided the ugly events of the past month. The death of an innocent man is upon you, as is the defeat of your army and the destruction of all who sought refuge in your castle.

Your mother, you will want to know, died well. After my knights had finished with her, when it came time to put her on the wood, she told me that she would never give me the satisfaction of making her cry for mercy — or even cry out at all. In all my years, which have been many, I've seen few go beneath the nails in silence. Your mother, though, was true to her word. You Valari are strong, and the Elahads the strongest of all.

And you, dear Valashu, if you choose to live, will be a very volcano of strength. I predict that you will so choose. Hate will drive you deeper into life. I do not expect that you will come to thank me for this. Nor thank me for impelling you to find the fire to slay Lord Ravik and all the others that you will want to dispatch with a great, if fearsome, joy. You are who you are. And so I also predict that you will return to Argattha. I shall be waiting for you. Towards this end, I have taken leave to appropriate several of your garments, that my hounds might become acquainted with your scent. I will leave with this letter a piece of gold in repayment for them. After all, I am not a thief.

You will also have ascertained that I keep my promises. Do you remember what I wrote to you previously about the Maitreya's obligation to show the world the terrible truth of things? That truth, I'm afraid, in the event of your incredible presumption in claiming the Lightstone for yourself, has become even more terrible. You have tempted many to speak against me and to make treason against their lord. They shall all be crushed. So shall the evil that you have engendered. Think of this when you behold the forests of crosses that spring up from the soil of Mesh, Ishka, Taron and the other Valari kingdoms. That is, you may dwell upon the suffering you have brought the world, if you live long enough, which I suspect you will not. That is too bad. I would have liked for you to have sired children out of the beautiful Atara so that you might some day know the agony I endured after you murdered my beloved son, Meliadus. But sons and daughters you will have none.

You have scorned all my offers of peace, aid and recompense for the service you owe me. There will be no more. Your life is now forfeit. The million-weight of gold that I promised for the return of the Lightstone shall now be paid to anyone who brings me your head. Of course, I would rather mount the whole of you upon a cross in the hall that you defiled. We've much still to discuss, and I would like to thank you fate to face for inspiring me to visit this pretty land of yours. If only you'd allow me that opportunity, I shall be forever grateful.

Faithfully, Morjin, King of Sakai and Lord of Ea

After I had finished reading, I leaned over past Estrella and cast the letter into the fire. I watched the writhing orange flames devour it I listened to the hissing of the logs and to my own ragged breath. Then my senses died into a screaming light that threw out sparks like hot, hammered iron. In the deeps of my mind, I shouted the name of my tormenter with all the hate inside me: MORJIN!

When I could see again, when the sound of Atara weeping softly and the sight of Maram choking on his brandy broke upon my ears and eyes, I pressed my fists to the sides of my face and cried out: 'I … am sorry! But sometimes, the fury, almost like a madness — there's no controlling it.'

Liljana, who was weeping, too, as she pulled Daj against her bosom, wiped her eyes and said to me: 'Well, you'd better learn to control it. Else you'll kill us all, if don't kill yourself first.'

Everyone in the circle except Kane was reeling from the terrible thing that had torn me open. But even as the black stone that he bore could] absorb the fire of the red gelstei, his blazing black eyes seemed to drink in all my hatred for Morjin.

'I'm sorry,' I said again. 'But that is another reason I must go to Argattha. . alone.'

'No, Val,' Kane said to me, 'you mustn't go at all.'

'But you said yourself that I should try to see into his mind. I think I have. And more, I've felt what is in his heart. He fears me.'

His eyes flicked toward my sword as he said, 'I'm sure he does. You're a fearsome man, eh? But that won't stop him from capturing and crucifying you.'

'I'm not afraid of that,' I told him.

His dark eyes, and all the tension in his great body which had once been nailed to Skartaru's black rock, told me that I should be afraid of such torture.

Master Juwain rubbed at his ruined ear, and he sat studying me as he might a puzzle. And he said to me, 'The Red Dragon still lies to you. And why? So that hatred will continue to blind you.'

'There is no getting past that now, sir,' I said to him. 'I will hate him, always, no matter what he says or doesn't say.'

'But can't you see that is what he wants? He's woven a web for you, and invites you to your doom.'

'Everyone dies,' I said. 'And doom is upon us all.' I went on to say that with Morjin's recapture of the Lightstone, it would be only a matter of time before he summoned Angra Mainyu from Damoom and unleashed an unstoppable evil that would destroy the world.

'My killing Morjin,' I said, 'might be the slimmest of chances. But it is our only chance.'

'No, Val,' Master Juwain said to me. 'There is one other.' I looked into his gray eyes, waiting for him to say more 'Before the akashic stone was broken,' he told me, 'I learned this about the Maitreya: that he might possibly be able to wield the Lightstone from afar.'

'Go on,' I said, nodding my head to him.

'If we could find him, and bring him to one of the Brotherhood's sanctuaries, we might forestall the Dragon from using the Lightstone.'

'That… does not seem possible.'

'It must be possible. We know the Maitreya has been born, somewhere on Ea. I was wrong, so terribly wrong, to convince us both that he must be you. But it would be even more wrong, now, if we didn't try to seek out this man.'

I looked around the circle at the faces of my friends. I knew that none of them, not even Kane, favored a mission to murder Morjin.

'I'm sorry,' I said to them, 'but I've lost faith in this Shining One. And so I still must go to Argattha.'

'Then,' Master Juwain told me with a sigh, 'if that is what you truly decide, I will go with you.'

'And I, as well,' Liljana said. 'As it was before your chances will be greater with all of us behind you.'

Maram, I saw, was sweating now, even though he sat farthest from the fire But his jaw was set with resolve and he fought to keep the terror from his eyes. He reassured me that he would stand by my side Atara told me much the same thing. And Kane's lips pulled back into a savage smile and he said, 'So, Val, so.'

Then Daj, upon exchanging looks with Estrella, traced his finger along the swan-carved hilt of my sword; And he told me, 'We're coming with you, too.'

'Who is?' I asked him in astonishment.

'Estrella and I.'

'No, you can't — you're both too young.'

Daj regarded me with his sad, dark eyes, which had seen sights that would have wilted most grown men. 'We're not too young for Lord Morjin to kill, are we? No one is. We were supposed to be safe in the castle. But no place is safe now — you said so yourself.'

Estrella's face fairly danced with lively expressions as Daj nodded his head. Then he said to me, 'I know the tunnels on Argattha's lower levels, and Estrella might be able to find another entrance that Lord Morjin doesn't know about. It's our only chance, Val.'

I slowly shook my head, marveling at the courage of this boy.

Then Estrella smiled at me, and I could not bear the brightness of it. Her trust in me was like a lump of pain in my throat that all my swallowing could not dislodge. She pressed into my side, and grabbed my arm as if she would never let go.

And Daj said to me, 'We both feel safest with you.'

I wiped my stinging eyes; it felt as if hot cinders from the fire had gotten into them.

'No, I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I can't let you come with me.'

I turned to look at Liljana, Maram, Atara, Master Juwain and Kane. 'I'm sorry, but there are already too many deaths upon me, and so I must go alone.'

I stood up and bade everyone goodnight. Then I walked out into cold rain to return to my bed of straw in the barn.

A few days later, when the weather had cleared, I finished the last of my preparations. One task remained to be completed. And so I filled a rucksack with some rations and personal things. In the crisp-ness of an autumn morning at dawn, I set out to climb Mount Telshar. Kane caught me coming out of the barn, and I saw that he had a rucksack of his own — and a large coil of rope. And he said to me, 'If I can't come with you to Argattha, at least I can see that you get up and down this mountain without breaking your neck.'

For a long time I looked through the half-light at this deep and powerful man before nodding my head and saying, 'All right.'

We spent most of the morning crossing the valley's forests and farms. The chittering of many birds greeted the rising sun. The leaves of the trees showed bright colors: oranges and yellows and vivid reds. In the fields, cattle lowed and golden barley waited to be cut.

We paused by a stream to eat a lunch of cheese, scallions and fresh bread that Behira had baked for me. Then we made our way up through the forest that blanketed Telshar's lower slopes. We followed the tinkling stream higher and higher, through crunching leaves and clear air that smelled sweet and clean. The walking was mostly easy, though the path steepened toward the end of the day. When dusk touched the trees with the first shades of darkness, we were glad to come across the first of the stone huts built into Telshar's flank. We mounded leaves inside, and spread our cloaks on top of them. For dinner that night, we had ham sandwiches and apples. We slept to the sound of the wind shushing through the trees and the wolves howling somewhere below us.

Early the next morning we set out through a frost that sparkled the forest's fallen leaves. Just before breaking out of the treeline, we gathered some wood, and slung these cumbersome bundles on our backs. I put a few stones in my rucksack as well. Half a mile farther on we came out upon naked rock, cold wind and brilliant sunshine. We climbed all that day, past the second hut, into air that grew thinner and thinner, and here we worked very hard, sweating in the sun and gasping for breath. Our route up the mountain's rocky slope was long but not particularly dangerous, and so we did not make much use of Kane's rope. When we found the third and last hut, rising up from the snowfields of Telshar's upper reaches, we unburdened ourselves of the wood and lightened our rucksacks of almost everything except a few apples and shelled nuts, and the six flat stones I carried. The weather held true, with clear skies and little bitterness to the air, and that was good, for already our feet were cold inside our stiff leather boots from crunching through old crusts of snow. And so we decided to finish our ascent in what remained of the afternoon.

I reached the summit first, with Kane only a few steps behind me. I unroped and stood staring at the beautiful thing that my people had built there. On Telshar's very highest point, many stones had been piled into a cairn, nearly half again my height and shaped like a pyramid. And on each stone rested a silver ring. Into many of them was set a single diamond; other bands showed two or three of these sparkling gems, and a few gleamed with the four diamonds of a lord. The rays of the setting sun fell upon this cairn so that the whole of it shimmered like a small mountain of brilliant lights.

I edged up dose to it, blinking my eyes against the diamonds' fire. I opened my rucksack and took out the six stones. Careful not to dislodge any of those already piled there, I reached high above my head and set them in place at the top of the cairn. Then I brought out my brothers' rings. Ravar's and Mandru's I set on two of the stones, and so with those of Jonathay, Yarashan and Karshur. I rested Asaru's ring, with its four shining diamonds, on the highest stone at the top of the cairn. From mountains these slips of silver and gems had been mined, and to the sacred mountain we called Telshar they had returned.

'You Valari,' Kane said, gazing at the cairn, 'are a strange people And a beautiful one.'

We laid our rucksacks on the snow, and sat down on them to eat some apples and nuts and take a little rest. After a while, I brought out the silken bag of astor seeds that Ninana had given me. Would the time ever come, I wondered, to plant them? I shook my head, and gave the seeds into Kane's hand for safekeeping.

He clenched the bag in his fist. Then he sniffed at the air and said, 'We'd better not linger. If a storm comes up, it would go badly for us.'

Soon enough, I thought, winter's storms would sweep down from the north and heap snow upon Telshar's summit, and bury the diamond-encrusted cairn, until spring uncovered it again. But now, here, at the top of the world, the sky was perfectly clear in every direction. Although it wasn't yet dark enough for the stars to come out, already in the east, above the mountains along the Culhadosh River, a great and glowing moon rose into the immense blue dome of the sky. To the south, far beyond Silvassu and the shining white granite of the castle, the verdant Lake Country opened up toward the Shoshan range, which curved fifty miles west and north around Lake Marash, forming a purple and white wall against the sweeps of the grassland beyond lost into the haze of the darkening distances. It seemed that from this great height, I could look down upon all of Mesh. The beauty of my land made we want to weep. Great swathes of color burst across the hills and valleys below: bands of yellow where the aspen trees edged up the mountains, and blazes of red, orange and green lower down. Scarely a stone's throw from Telshar, the deep cut in the earth of the Gorgeland showed the Arashar River's silvery sheen. I couldn't help wondering if I was seeing it for the last time.

'It's all so lovely,' Kane said, looking out toward the west. 'All of Ea, so lovely.'

I munched on an apple as I followed the line of his gaze. Beyond the mountains of my home, the Wendrush reached out into that part of the world where it seemed it was always night. For beyond the grasslands, nearly six hundred miles away, rose the Black Mountain called Skartaru.

'Some places on Ea,' I said to him, 'are less lovely than others.'

He smiled, showing his long, white teeth. Then he said, 'Surely you know that you haven't even a slim chance of slaying Morjin?'

'I know,' I told him. 'But before I die, I want him to feel what is inside me.'

'Then you hate him that much, eh?'

'Yes — don't you?'

'Hate him?' he cried out. He made a fist around a handful of snow, and his eyes burned like coals. 'So, I hate him as fire does wood, as steel does flesh. If I could, I'd cut off his head and crush it between stones like grain beneath a gristmill — then put a torch to the wound so that he couldn't grow another. I'd cut his bodv into pieces and feed them to the rats that infest his foul hole in the earth. I'd burn every book that mentions his name. No man deserves death more than he. And yet. And yet. He is a man, even as you are. He has hopes and dreams and a sense of how he might have been good and might still be. You cannot defeat him. If you can't under-stand this.'

I sat upon my lumpy rucksack as I dug my heels into the snow of Telshar's summit and listened to the wind. It was an incredible thing for him to tell me.

'Defeat him?' I said as I looked at him. 'I just want to fight him.'

'So, Val — so do I. To fight him and win.'

'But there is no winning,' I said. 'Once I thought there was, but I was wrong.'

'Were you? You nearly killed Morjin in his hall, and the day may come when you have that chance again.'

'No, he is too powerful now. And soon Angra Mainyu will stand beside him. No, there is no winning, not that way.'

'Then why fight at all?' he asked me

'Because in just fighting,' I said, 'we win something. There's never a final victory, only the struggle to attain it. And that is the only virtue. It's the only way in which good can triumph.'

Kane lifted back his head and looked up at the night's first start. A sudden coldness fell over him, and 1 felt his whole being trembling with longing for distant lights that would always remain just out of his reach.

'I believe,' he said to me in a strange, deep voice, 'in a victory so final and complete that even the stones buried miles down to the muck of the earth will sing with joy and light.'

I shook my head at this, not quite wanting to credit what I had just heard. And I blurted out: 'But evil can't be defeated!'

And he smiled and told me, 'Neither can good.'

Far below us, as night stole the light from the world and darkness crept across Mesh, the houses of Silvassu were beginning to glow a soft orange from candles and fires lit within. All across my beautiful land, mothers would be serving meals and weeping at the absence of their sons, and fathers would be raging at the fate of daughters carried away to Argattha.

'Morjin,' I said to Kane, 'is so evil.'

Again he surprised me, saying in a soft voice, 'But there are no evil men, Val. Only evil deeds.'

'Truly,' I said, 'but some men choose, again and again, to do the worst of deeds.'

'So — just so. And that is why we must strive, again and again, every moment, to do good.'

I looked past the castle and then toward the south at the darkening green of the Culhadosh Commons. I said, 'I've failed, too often.'

'So have I,' he told me.

'In Tria, I wanted so terribly to defeat him. And so I lied.'

'Morjin's whole life is a lie.'

'Yes,' I said. 'But we can't fight lies with lies, or hate with hate. Not unless we are to become like Morjin. And that is why he'll win.'

'No, he won't. He mustn't. Don't give up.'

'Sometimes,' I said, 'I don't care. I think of my grandmother and my mother, Estrella, too. And Atara — Atara. Suffering is. It's way the world will always be. And in the end, we all lose … everything. And so why should I care if I lie to gain advantage over our enemies or stab them in the back with a poisoned knife? Or torture them as they have me? Why should I care about anything at all?'

'Because if you don't,' he said, looking at me, 'you'll lose your soul.'

'Sometimes, I'm not sure I care about that, either.'

'So,' he told me. 'So it was with Morjin — and Angra Mainyu, too.'

I thought of Morjin as he once had been and perhaps still imagined himself to be: a man with golden eyes and a smile like the sun, beautiful in form and face. And now he was little more than sack of sickly flesh surrounding a core of corruption, foul dreams and a will to destroy his enemies that took its power from his terrible hate. The waste of it all made me want to weep. The anguish of his life built inside my chest with a sharp, pulsing pain that would not go away. And I hated myself for pitying, even for a moment, this dreadful man.

'I've been so close,' I said to Kane, 'too often, so terribly close.'

'So have I,' he told me.

'Why?' I said to him. 'Why do we choose what we choose?'

Although it was falling colder, with many stars now stabbing their bright, twinkling swords through the sky's blackness, he plunged his fingers down through the crusty old snow and seized a handful of it to hold it against his forehead. Then he stared down into the Valley of the Swans as if listening to all the sounds of the world.

And he said to me, 'Two wolves fight within your heart now. One wolf is vengeful and howls with hate. The other wolf is compassionate and wise.'

'Yes, that is true,' I said, pressing my palm against my chest 'But which wolf will win the fight?'

'The one you feed.'

I, too, gazed down into the valley that had given me birth. The light of the stars and the rising moon showed a gentle and peaceful land of farm houses, fields and silent forests.

'So many dead,' I murmured, repeating these words like a chant. 'So many dead.'

Kane looked back at me and said, 'Sometimes the worst defeats open the door to the greatest victories.'

I rubbed the scar on my forehead against the hot; angry pain that burned into me there. 'You can say that because it wasn't your family that was lost.'

'All people are my family, Val.' Starlight rained down upon him, and his face seemed as sad and distant as the moon. 'And I've list them a thousand times a thousand generations.'

His dark eyes drank me in, and I gasped to behold the unfathomable depths inside him. Everything was there: whirling constellations and blazing suns and worlds without end. The growling of a lion devouring his prey half-alive and the scream of a woman giving birth to her son. The song of a child singing to a butterfly. He grabbed my hand of a sudden, hard, and smiled as he held on to me with all his might. Something passed into me then. Not his unquenchable will to life, but a calling and quickening of my own.

I did not know if suffering could truly leave the soul open to more joy. But, like fire, it could burn away all of a man's conceits, desires and delusions so that only a greater and deeper will remained. Somewhere, in the charred ruins inside me, in the deepest chamber of my heart, there was a light. It blazed with all my will toward the beautiful, the good, the true. And, unless I let it, it could never go out.

'So many stars,' I said, looking up at the sky.

Their soft radiance bathed the cairn and all its rings in a silvery shimmer. Light poured down upon the mountain and touched its luminous fingers to the white granite of the Elahad castle and the white stones marking the place along the Kurash River where we had put my mother and grandmother, and everyone else Morjin had slaughtered, into the earth.

'So many stars.'

If I did feed the compassionate wolf, I wondered, what would it be. Only love.

'Father,' I whispered. 'Mother.'

As softly as I could, I spoke the names of Nona, Karshur, Yarashan, Jonathay, Mandru and Ravar. And Asaru. I listened for their voices in the rising wind. And then, far below, a wolf called out its strange and beautiful song, and all my hatred left me.

I drew my sword then, and held it up toward the sky. It came alive with a light of its own, and it seemed both to feed the fire in the diamonds of the thousands of rings and to gather it back into itself. Alkaladur, the Sword of Sight, suddenly blazed as bright as the moon, the snow and the stars. And I saw, clearly, the whole design of my life, what I should have seen all along: tomorrow or the day following that, I would leave the Morning Mountains to seek the one they called the Lord of Light. My friends would come with me — all of them. As Kasandra had foretold, Estrella would show this Shining One to me, wherever he was. And then, some day, somehow, I would win back the Lightstone and place it in his hands.

We know, I thought, we always know.

And that was the great mystery of it all, that no matter our confusions and the lies we told ourselves, we always knew good from evil, right actions from wrong. And if only we had the courage to listen and follow our hearts, we might suffer or die, but we would never betray the great promise of life.

When I told this to Kane, he let loose a great howl of laughter and pressed the bag of astor seeds back into my hand. He leapt up, pulling me to my feet along with him. And he pointed above his head and told me, 'An eagle flies only as high as the sky. But a silver swan, reborn from its funeral pyre, flies to the stars.'

I could not share his joy at my decision. Tomorrow, I knew, or soon, in the days that were to come, I would hate again. I would kill, in fury, with my sacred sword. I would weep and rage and gnash my teeth at the terrible pain that would never go away. For that, too, was the mystery of life. But now I stood in the cold snow on top of a mountain in the deep of night. I felt the sighing of the fir trees below me and the very breath of the world rise in both mourning and exalta-tion. And then, for a moment, the souls of the dead bore me up like a great and beautiful swan toward the stars, and that was enough.

'Come,' Kane said to me, pulling at my hand. 'It's late and it's cold, and we've half a mile of a mountain to get down in the dark — it will go badly for us if we get lost.'

It was hardly dark, I thought. The moon illuminated Telshar's upper reaches and showed the track back down to our hut.

'We won't get lost,' I told him.

I bent to pick up the rope and tie it around my waist again. Then I turned to walk back down the mountain. I would wander my mother earth, always seeking my master, my brother, my other self who could hold the secret light in his hands. I would wander for a year or all the days of my life, never lost, knowing that the fiery and brilliant stars would always point the way.