Lord of Lies

Chapter 5

Maram and Master Juwain hastened to catch up to me as I made my way out into the quiet hallway. They had begun this long night's quest for knowledge with me, they said, and they would end it by my side as well. I was glad for their company, for the long hallway seemed too empty and too dark. Only a few oily torches remained burning. The sound of our hoots striking cold stone echoed off the walls. We passed between the servants' quarters and the kitchens, as we had come; when we reached the infirmary, we turned down another hallway. There, the pungent smell of medicines mingled with a deeper odor of sickness, sweat and blood. As we moved past the classroom and Nona's empty room, this odor grew only stronger. It seemed not to emanate from the sanctuary to the right, or the guest quarters to the left where King Kurshan and his daughter had taken up residence. I was afraid to discover its source, even as I pushed my way through a moat of fear and pain that chilled my limbs like icy water.

At last, we came to the stairwell at the keep's southwest corner. We entered, one by one, this dark tube of stone that twisted up toward the higher floors. My father had told me that the scryers had been given rooms on the third floor. We climbed up and up into the dark silence, turning always toward the left as the narrow steps spiraled upward. It was cold and close in that dim space; the smell of Maram's sweat and brandy-sweetened breath fairly nauseated me. He was puffing and grunting behind me, moving as quickly as he could. But he was not quite quick enough, for the fear now pierced through to my heart and drove me up the stairs two and then three at a time.

'Slow down!' he gasped out. 'You're killing me! Ah, have mercy, my friend!'

I did not slow down. We passed by the exit to the second door, where the Alonians and the Ishkans had taken quarters. We climbed ever higher. We finally reached the arched doorway that gave out onto the third floor. As I pushed out into the quiet hallway, the mortared stones along the walls seemed to be screaming at me. A sharp pain, with the savagery of cold steel, ripped into my belly. I drew my sword and began running past the closed doors of my father's guests.

'Come!' I gasped. Maram and Master Juwain were close behind me, and began running, too. 'It's this door — it must be!'

At the end of the hallway, we came to a door darkened with torch-smoke and reinforced with bands of black iron. I rapped the diamond pommel of my sword against the dense wood and waited. My heart beat ten times, quick as a frightened bird's, before I knocked at the door again, this time louder. I waited another few moments, and then tried turning the doorknob, but it was locked.

'Come!' I said to Maram. I rammed my shoulder against the door with such force that the hard wood drove the rings of my mail armor into my flesh almost down to the bone. 'Help me break this open!' 'But, Val — they're old women!' Maram said. 'They might have taken a draught to help them sleep,' Master Juwain added.

'Come!' I said again. They're not sleeping! Help me!' Maram finally sighed his consent, and added his great bulk in battering at the door. On our second attempt, it burst inward in a scream of splinters and tormented iron. It was nothing against the scream in my eyes, in my belly and lungs. For the hall's dim torchlight showed a small, simple room filled with carnage. The iron-sick smell of blood drove like a hammer against my head. Sprays of blood moistened one wall; the red imprints of boots darkened the floor-stones. On one of the beds sprawled two of the scryers, whose names I had not learned. Their throats had been cut, and rivers of blood had flowed out over their white robes and white wool blankets. On the other bed was Kasandra. Someone had cut open her belly. She lay on her back with her eyes staring up at the ceiling, and it seemed that she was dead.

Master Juwain hurried to her side and placed his rough old fingers against her throat to feel for a pulse.

'Ah, too bad,' Maram gasped out. He held his hands over his own belly as if to protect this massive, food-filled outswelling — or to keep from vomiting. 'Ah, I'd thought we were through with this kind of thing, too bad, too bad.'

My heart throbbed inside me as I gripped my sword and cast my eyes about the room's sparse furnishings, looking for any sign of the men who had worked such an evil deed.

'These poor women!' Maram said. 'Ah, but what kind of scryers could they have been if they let themselves be murdered in their sleep?'

They're not all murdered,' Master Juwain said, touching Kasandra's withered face. 'Not yet. This one is still alive.'

I knew that she was. I could feel her faint breathing as a whisper deep inside my throat.

'Can you help her, sir?' Master Juwain gently prodded the wound to her belly. Someone, like a ravening wolf, had ripped out most of its contents, which lay strewn upon the blankets beneath her like bloody white snakes. 'Help her live through this, Val?'

'No, help her live … a while longer. I must speak with her;

Master Juwain nodded his head grimly and said, 'I'll try.'

He wiped his hands on the hem of Kasandra's robes. From his pocket, he removed the green gelstei crystal that looked so much like a long and bright emerald. With its magic, he had once healed Atara of a mortal arrow wound to her lungs. But he had never been able mend such terrible mutilations as one that would soon kill Kasandra.

While Master Juwain positioned the varistei over Kasandra's heart, I knelt by the other side of the bed and took Kasandra's hand in mine. Her skin was as soft as fine leather and still warm.

'Maram!' I called out softly. 'Guard the door! Whoever did this might return.'

With a grumble, Maram drew his sword and positioned himself by the door. But he turned his gaze toward the crystal in Master Juwain's skilled hands. So he must have perceived the clean light that streamed out of the crystal and fell upon Kasandra's chest like a shower of tiny, shimmering emeralds.

'Ah,' Maram said. 'Ah, poor, poor woman.'

A terrible shiver tore through Kasandra's body, and she coughed, once, as her breath rattled in her throat. A faint light filled her eyes. She had no strength to turn her head; nor even to cry out against the agony that I had called her back from the door of death to suffer. But I knew that she could see me, even so. She had been looking for me to come to her rooms, watching and waiting.

'Valashu Elahad,' she gasped out.

I leaned closer to her and asked, 'Who did this to you?'

'The one … called Salmelu.'

'But why? You said that a ghul would undo my dreams. Who is this ghul? Did Salmelu kill you to keep you from telling me?'

'Because … he is … he killed my sisters and. .'

Her voice died off into a burning exhalation as her frail old body shuddered with another wave of anguish. And Master Juwain said to me, 'Too much, Val, for mercy's sake, ask her one question at a time!'

I swallowed hard against the anguish in my throat. I asked, 'Who is this ghul, then?'

'His name … I don't know,' Kasandra said. 'His face, though, is as noble as yours.'

'But what about the last part of your prophecy? You said that a man with no face would show me my own. Who is this man?'

'Who is anyone?'

'Does he have a name?'

'He is no man … I know.. '

Although her voice died off into nothingness, it seemed that she was trying to scream something at me. I asked, 'Will this man show me the face of the Maitreya?'

'No, the slave girl will show you the Maitreya.'

'What slave girl? What is her name?'

'Estrella.'

This strange name seemed to hang in the air like a star in the midst of blackness. I gripped Kasandra's hand in mine as tightly as I dared. And then I asked her, 'But am I the Maitreya?'

Kasandra's lips did not move, nor did breath warm her lips. I knew that she was ready to walk through the door to that lightless land even the bravest of warriors feared to tread. I gripped the hilt of my sword in my right hand. And then Kasandra drew in a long breath as if gathering the last of her strength. And she gasped out, 'You are …'

These words, too, seemed to hang in the air. You are, I thought. I am. I looked down at Kasandra to ask her to finish her sentence, if indeed she already hadn't. But the light in her tormented eyes suddenly died, and she would speak no more, ever again. Where, I wondered, did the light go when the light went out?

Master Juwain shook his head at me, and put away his green crystal. He reached out and closed Kasandra's eyes.

'Val,' he said, 'there's nothing — '

'No,' I said softly. 'No, no, no.'

Because Kasandra was pulling me down into death with her, I let go her hand. I retreated inside the walls of the castle of aloneness that had protected me for so long. I stood away from the bed, and held out my sword. Its dark silver flashed with a sudden light.

He killed my sisters, Kasandra had said to me. His face is as noble as your own. He is no man. .

On the floor beneath me were the bloody bootprints of a man, or men. The pattern of these red defilements seemed burned into the stone.

I know that you keep the Cup of Heaven locked and guarded in your castle as in ancient times, Morjin had written me. It is a beautiful thing, is it not? The most beautiful in all the world.

My sword flared again, this time more brightly. I held it pointing down toward the east in the direction of the great hall where the Guardians stood protecting the Lightstone. Alkaladur blazed with a wild radiance that burned deep into my eyes.

'Master Juwain!' I cried out. 'Go back to my father's room! Ask the King — Asaru, too, my brothers — to come to the great hall!'

'Val, what is it?' Master Juwain asked me.

But 1 was already running for the door. I paused there only a moment to call out to Maram, 'Go to the Guardians' barracks! Rouse Baltasar! Tell him that a ghul has been sent to steal the Lightstone!'

I had no breath to say more. I sprinted out into the hallway. Our noise of broken doors and shouts must have roused this floor's guests. Two of them — old Lord Garvar's widow and a minstrel from Thalu — had opened their doors halfway to see if the castle might be under attack. I told them to lock themselves inside their rooms. And then, sword in hand, I ran past them toward the stairwell.

I fairly bounced down the twisting stairs like a suddenly released stone. It was a miracle that I negotiated the worn granite slabs without stumbling and breaking my neck. Only seconds, it seemed, sufficed for me to reach the archway into the first floor's hallway. I ran down this deserted corridor as quickly as I could. At the kitchens, I turned right, and sprinted down the shorter corridor connecting the keep to the great hall. Its doors were open, and so I had no trouble passing inside.

There, in this vast, dim space still smelling of beer and roasted meat, I saw an astonishing thing: the thirty Guardians lay in various positions about the dais at the front of the room. Their faces were peaceful, and they all appeared to be sleeping. The Lightstone remained on its stand above them. Its shimmering presence seemed to call forth a new surge of radiance from my sword.

The debt must be repaid, Morjin had written me. You will serve me — in life or in death.

'Adamar! Viku! Skyshan!' I called out to three of the Guardians, to no effect I ran toward the dais and then bounded up its steps. I picked my way around the splayed arms and legs of the downed Guardians. The hand of the Guardian nearest the Lightstone seemed to beckon me — or someone — closer.

'Skyshan!' I called out again as I knelt and tried to shake this large, young man awake. 'Skyshan!'

After a few moments, I gave up and rose to my feet. I stood with my sword held ready as I steeled myself to guard the Lightstone — in life or in death.

I waited for the faint sound of boots along the corridor or the creak of doors being opened. Hot sweat trickled down my sides beneath my armor. My breath came in quick bursts, and my heart beat like a war drum. I looked out into the hall at the rows of tables and empty chairs. I glanced up at the portraits of my ancestors along the walls; their grave faces looked down at me as if to take my measure. My grandfather, Elkasar Elahad and his father, Aradam, and his grandfather — all the kings of Mesh going back many generations seemed to be waiting with me in the hall. One of the oldest of the portraits was of Julamar Elahad, who had been King of Mesh when last the Lightstone had resided on this stand three thousand years before. His ancient eyes, brilliant as stars, seemed to fix upon me and to ask me if I would give the Lightstone into the Maitreya's hands, even as he had. He asked me if I would die trying to wrest the Lightstone back from Morjin and his murderous priests, even as he had, too.

As my heart beat out the moments of my life in quick, hot surges that tore through my veins, the whole world seemed to wait with me there in the quiet hall. I felt someone watching me. It seemed that he was far away — or perhaps very near. In all that large space, with its smooth walls of stone, there were few places to hide: behind the pillars holding up the ceiling or in the darkened recesses of the south doors. I listened for the rustle of clothing or mail armor from these places; I felt for the beating of another's heart or the quiet steaming of his breath.

All at once, an overpowering desire to sleep flooded into me My arms felt unbelievably heavy, as if they were encased not in steel but in lead. I had to fight to keep my eyes open. My head was like a great weight that kept falling toward my chest.

I must not, I may not, I silently prayed. Please don't let me fall asleep.

A glint of silver sliced the air above me. Flick appeared in a shower of sparks. This mysterious being began looping through the air, around and around both me and the Lightstone, as if weaving a fence of light. Or trying to paint a beguiling pattern of scarlet and silver streaks that might keep me awake.

I raised high my long and brilliant sword and cried out. 'Alkaladur!' The Awakener, men called it. Through its silver gelstei ran a secret pulse that beat in rhythm to my own true pulse. It reminded me that the deepest part of myself remained always awake and always aware, and would remain standing even when I died.

At last, from faroff in the depths of the castle, came the sound of footsteps that I had been dreading. I turned toward the open doorway by which I had entered the hall. My eyes burned as I waited to see who would appear in the rectangular darkness there. My hands seemed fused with the hilt of my sword.

'Valashu!' a strong voice called to me. 'Valashu Elahad!' My heart surged with joy to see my father charge into the room. He had his shining kalama in hand. Asaru, Karshur and my other brothers, with Lansar Raasharu, followed closely behind him. A few moments later, even as my father hurried up the steps of the dais to join me, Master Juwain appeared in the doorway, too.

'What is this?' Master Juwain cried out when he saw the forms of the sleeping Guardians. 'What poison? What potion?'

'What sorcery, you mean?' Asaru said as he gained the dais and tried to rouse his friends.

Just then came a much louder sound of pounding boots and jangling steel from outside the hall to the east. Suddenly, with a crash of wood, the doors were thrown open, and Baltasar and Maram led seventy mail-clad knights into the room. I smiled to see the grim faces of Shivathar and Artanu of Godhra and others who were like brothers to me. They started straight for the dais. But then 1 held out my hand and shouted, 'Stay, Baltasar! Guard the doors and stand your distance until we discover the nature of this sorcery!'

While Master Juwain knelt among the fallen Guardians looking for sign of what might have stricken them, Karshur stood like a mountain above him. He yawned and said, 'Perhaps Master Juwain is right — it's some sleeping potion.'

'No,' I said, 'it cannot be.'

I explained that it was one of my rules that the Guardians on duty should never all eat of the same food together nor take the same drink. Ravar, my cleverest brother, rubbed his fox-like face as he said, 'Then it must be something else. Let us search the hall.'

And so it was done. My brothers and the Guardians still on their feet spread out through the hall as if beating through grass to flush a rabbit. They picked through the rows of tables but paid closest attention to the dais itself. In the end, it was Ravar who discovered the source of what had stricken the Guardians. With a flick of his knife, he wedged out a piece of loose mortar between two of the dais floor-stones. And in the recess between them, his quick fingers found — small, glassy sphere like an agate or a child's marble.

'I see, I see,' Master Juwain said as Ravar gave it to him. He rolled it between his rough old hands as his gray eyes came alive with a new light. This is surely a sleep stone. One of the lesser gelstei, and quite rare. Whoever hid it here must have remained close by, or else it could not have been used to so great an effect.'

His hand swept out and down toward the sleeping Guardians. 'The traitor,' Asaru said. 'Salmelu — it must have been he.'

'Damn him!' Lord Raasharu cried out as he came up upon the dais. 'We had word that he and the other priests left the castle only half an hour ago. In the middle of the night! We thought that he was fleeing only out of shame.'

My father stepped forward and shook his head. He pointed his sword at the Lightstone. 'Why flee at all before gaining that which he had come to steal?'

I traded glances with Maram and Master Juwain, and then told my father and everyone else what had happened in the scryers' chamber. 'He fled to avoid your justice, sir.'

My father's eyes flashed with a dark fire as the flames of wrath built inside him.

'Ah, well,' Maram said, 'it seems that Salmelu couldn't count on his position to shield him from punishment.'

'An emissary who murders old women is no emissary,' my father said. I felt him willing his heart to cool down. 'But what was Salmelu, then? A priest who has defiled my house? A thief? Was it he who used the sleep stone?'

'No, it was not,' I said. 'The scryer spoke of a ghul with a noble face. That cannot have been Salmelu.'

I looked at my father as he traded glances with Asaru, and Lansar Raasharu nodded at Ravar. And then suddenly everyone gathered there was regarding everyone else with questioning eyes. Who, I wondered, had more noble faces than did my friends and family?

'No, none of us is this ghul,' I said. I had gazed upon the flames of being of each man in the hall, and I was as sure of this as I was that the sun would rise in the east in a couple more hours. 'It must be another.'

'But who, then?' Ravar asked. He pointed down at the crack in the dais. 'Someone hid the sleep stone here. Was it a groom bringing drink to the Guardians? Or a knight friendly to them whom they allowed to approach too close?'

I shook my head. Neither I nor anyone else had answers to his questions. 'It's not to be believed that any Meshian could ever so betray his people.'

'No, it is not,' Lord Raasharu agreed. His long face seemed to darken with a sudden shadow. 'And yet Salmelu betrayed his people — and of his own free will.'

My father, standing above the sleeping Guardians with his sword in hand, suddenly swept it in broad arc from east to west. 'Well search the castle, then. Let us see if anyone is where he shouldn't be, or if an intruder hides close to the hall.'

As he commanded, so it was done. My father summoned his private guard, and they joined his knights in searching not only the castle's keep, but the Swan Tower and the other towers, too, as well as north, middle and west wards. The sleep stone was given into the charge of three Guardians, who removed it for safekeeping to Master Juwain's rooms in the Adami Tower. The remaining Guardians joined my father and me — and all the rest of us — in watching as Master Juwain tried to rouse the thirty knights who remained sleeping.

After perhaps a half hour had elapsed, one of my father's men entered the hall bearing more dreadful news. This sad-faced squire, whose name was Amadu Sankar, hurried up to my father and gasped out, 'The servants of the Red Priests — they've all been murdered! They lie dead in Lord Salmelu's rooms!'

'More defilement!' my father called out. 'Is there no end to this man's crimes?'

Karshur, the thickest of my brothers in body as well as mind, rubbed his solid jaw and cried out, 'But why would he do such a thing?'

My father, who had already sent knights in pursuit of Salmelu and the other priests, said to him, 'His servants would have slowed him. If my knights ride him down before he escapes from Mesh. .'

My father did not finish his sentence. There was death in his dark eyes as he slowly shook his head.

I suddenly remembered Kasandra's last words to me: The slave girl will show you the Maitreya. Could she have meant, I wondered, one of Salmelu's slaves?

I turned to Amadu Sankar and asked, 'Are you sure all the servants were dead?'

'They … must have been, Lord Valashu,' Amadu said. His young face was full of horror. 'They were all gutted like rabbits.'

A dreadful hope surged inside me. I stepped over to Master Juwain and said, 'It may be with the servants as it was with Kasandra. Will you come with me to their rooms, sir?'

'If I must,' Master Juwain agreed, nodding his head.

'And you, Maram?' I said, turning to my best friend.

'Must I?' he said as he looked at me. And then, upon perceiving the fire in my eyes, he grumbled, 'Ah, well, then — I suppose I must.' I took my leave of my father, and led Master Juwain and Maram back into the keep. Salmelu and his party had been given rooms on the fifth floor. We hurried as quickly as we could back up the stairs to this great height. Maram complained that his heart hurt from such an exertion, while Master Juwain saved his breath and worked at the spiral of steps in quiet determination.

Two doors down from the large room at the fifth floor's northwest corner and the smaller one adjoining it where Salmelu and the six other priests had taken residence, we found the room of their servants. There were eight of them, all girls, ranging in age from about nine to thirteen. And, even as Amadu had told us, they were all dead. It looked as if they had been roused off their straw pallets and driven into the comer of the room, and there slaughtered. They lay almost in a heap, some of them on top of others, their arms stretched this way and that, their long hair — black and brown and blonde — soaked in the blood that had been torn from their young bodies. Screams had been torn from their throats, too, and this desperate sound of the dying still hung in the air.

While Master Juwain went among the girls' bodies with his green crystal, Maram stood by the door questioning the guards posted there. I walked about the room, careful not to step in the pools of blood staining the cold stone floor. I stepped over the stand of an overturned brazier; I gazed at a tapestry that one of the girls must have pulled off the wall in a frantic effort to find escape from Salmelu and his murderous priests. But in this room of death, stark and narrow, there was nowhere to hide.

'The squire was right,' Master Juwain said, kneeling over one of the girls. With great weariness, he shook his head. 'There's nothing to be done here, Val.'

Maram walked over to me and laid his hand upon my shoulder. 'Let's leave these poor lambs to be buried, my friend.'

'Wait,' I told him, shaking my head. It seemed that I could still hear one of the girls screaming in agony — or rather, crying out for help.

I turned toward the room's only window, along the north wall. It was small and square, and open to the night wind blowing down from the mountains. I hurried over to it. Outside, the great, dark shape of Telshar stood outlined against the black and starry sky. I grasped the window's sill, and stuck my head out into the cool air to look out over it. Along the north side, the keep was built flush with the castle's great walls; it was a straight drop down more than a hundred feet to the rocks forming the steep slope upon which the castle was built. No one, I thought, could survive a fall from such a height. And no one, not even a young girl frantic to escape from a priest's evil knife, could climb so far down the castle's smooth granite walls.

'Here, Val,' Maram said to me as he joined me by the window. 'Such a sight would make any man sick.'

He placed his hand on my shoulder again. When he saw that I was in no danger of losing my dinner, he said, 'Let's get away from here.'

'Wait!' I said again. 'Give me a moment.'

The smell of pine trees and fear stirred something inside me A soft voice, urgent yet sweet, seemed to be calling me as if from the stars I pushed my head outside the window again, and twisted about to gaze up through the darkness. And there, some twenty feet higher up toward the tooth-like battlements, a small shape seemed fastened to the wall.

'A torch!' I cried out. 'Someone bring me a torch!'

One of the guards went out into the hallway and returned a few moments later bearing a torch in his hand. He gave this oily, flaring length of wood to me, and I thrust it out the window as I again craned my neck about to gaze up the castle's wall. And now I could see, faintly, what my heart had known to be true: by some miracle, a young girl had managed to climb out the window and claw her way up the windswept wall.

'What is it Val?' Maram said to me. 'What do you see?'

The girl, perhaps nine years old, stood with her bare, bloody feet wedged into a narrow joint between the wall's white stones. Her hands had found a vertical crack and were jammed inside it. It seemed unbelievable that she had remained stuck to the wall thus for more than an hour. She was trembling, from cold and exhaustion, and was near the end of her strength. She looked straight down at me, the black curls of her hair falling about her frightened face. Through the dark, her eyes found mine and called to me with the last desperate fire of hope. Her certainty that I would not leave her to die here touched me deep inside and brought the burn of tears to my eyes. The wild beating of her heart was a sharp pain that stabbed into my own.

'The priests are gone!' I called up to her. 'Can you climb down?'

She shook her head slowly as if fearful that a more strenuous motion would loosen her precarious hold upon the wall. I felt the cold, rough knurls of the cracked granite through her sweating hands; I felt the slight muscles along her forearms bunching and burning and growing weaker with each of her quick, painful breaths. I knew that she could not climb back down toward the window, not even an inch

'Let me see!' Maram called to me. He pulled me back into the room and tore the torch from my hand. And then it was his turn to look outside I heard him mutter, 'Ah, poor little lamb — too bad, too bad.'

He pushed back from the window, careful not to let the wind blow the torch's flames into his face. He turned to look at me as he shook his head. 'Ah, Val, what can we do?' Master Juwain and the two guards had now joined us by the window. I looked at them, and at Maram, and said, 'We have to bring her down.'

'Ah, Val — but how?'

One of the guards suggested sending for a rope and lowering it to the girl from the battlements high above.

'No, there is no time,' I said. 'We'll have to climb up to her.'

'Climb this wall?' Maram said. 'Who will climb it?'

In answer, I unbuckled my sword and pressed it into his hand. It was first time since it had been given to me that I allowed it out of my reach.

'Are you mad?' Maram said to me. 'Let us at least search for a rope first before you — '

'No, there is no time!' I said again. I knew that the girl outside who had looked slight into my soul would soon lose her hold. 'Help me, Maram.'

I reached to pull at the rings of steel encasing me, but the sudden and silent plaint that sounded inside me told me that I didn't even have time to remove my armor. I moved over to the window again and gripped the cold sill.

'But, Val!' Maram protested, 'she's a slave. And you are … who you are.'

But who was I, really? While the guard held the torch for me, I again stuck my head out the window to descry my route up to the girl. She gazed down at me. And her dark, wild eyes showed me that I was a man who couldn't let a young girl simply fall to her death.

With everyone's help, I backed up and out the window, gripping the edge of the casement above it as I pushed my feet against the sill. The darkness of night fell upon me; the cold wind rattled my hair against the wall's ancient stone. Through empty space I stared down at the rocks far below. My belly tightened, and for a moment it seemed I might lose my dinner after all. How could I climb this naked wall? How could any man? Once each spring, I knew, my father walked around the entire castle inspecting it for any crack or exposed joint in its stones. Such flaws in the masonry were always mended, making it impossible for an enemy to scale the walls. But here, a hundred feet up, it seemed that no such repairs had been made for a hundred years. Who could have thought to prevent a simple slave girl, in blinding fear, from climbing out a window upon cold, cracked stone?

I drew in a quick breath and turned my gaze upward. The guard held the torch out the window, and its fluttering vellow light revealed a crack above my head. 1 reached up and thrust my fingers into it. I found another crack with my left hand. And then, as I fit the toe of my boot into a narrow joint in the stone to the right of the window I slowly pulled myself up. Two feet, gained this way, and then a couple more as I pulled and pushed against other cracks and other joints.

It was desperate hard work in the dead of the night, and a single slip would kill me. My hands were slick with sweat; the rough granite soon abraded the flesh from my knuckles and left them bloody I suddenly remembered the story of how Telemesh had fought his way up the face of Skartaru, the black mountain, to rescue an ancient warrior bound there. Lines of verse came unbidden into my mind:

Through rain and hail he climbed the wall Still wet with bile, blood and gall. .

I fought my way up another foot and then another. The torch's light soon weakened so that I could barely make out the features of the stonework above me. 1 nearly slipped, and tore my fingernails to the quick on a little lip of granite. The immense black weight of the sky seemed to lie upon my shoulders and push me back toward the earth.

Where dread and dark devour light, He climbed alone into the night.

But I was not alone. As if in answer to my silent supplication, Flick joined me there beneath the stars. His whirling, fiery form showed a crack about three feet above me that 1 would have missed. And the girl kept looking at me with wild hope. She called no encouragement, with her lips. But her eyes, clear and deep, kept calling me and urging me upward. They reminded me that I had a greater strength than ever knew. This connection of sight and soul was like an invisible rope tied between us and joining our fates together as one.

At last I drew up by her side. My fingers clawed a little crack; the tips of my boots had bare purchase on a broken joint of stone. The trembling of my body was almost as great as the girl's. I felt her heart beating wildly a couple of feet from mine. The wind carried her scent of fear and freshly-soaped hair over my face. Through the dark I looked at her and said, 'Grab onto me!'

She shook her head. I knew that she didn't have the strength to let go her hold without falling. 'Wait a moment!' I said. I looked about and espied a wider and deeper crack a little above me. I jammed my whole hand into it. Its sharp knurls bruised my bones. When I was sure of my hold, I reached out with my other hand to wrap it around the girl's narrow waist. Then, in one carefully coordinated motion, I helped her up and onto my back, even as she threw her arms around my neck and locked her bare legs around my waist. In this way, carrying her piggyback like the little sister I had never had, I began climbing back toward the window.

'Val!' Maram called up to me as he stuck his head out the window and held the torch high. 'Careful now! Only a little farther and I'll have you!'

It was much harder climbing downward. I had trouble seeing where to put my feet and finding holds for my hands. Although the girl was as slight as a swan, her weight, added to that of my armor, was a crushing force that burned my tormented muscles and pulled me ever down toward the hard and waiting earth. Twice, I nearly slipped. If not for Flick's guiding light, I would never have found holds in time to keep us from plunging to our deaths.

'Val! Val!'

And yet there was something about the girl that was not a grief but a grace. Her breath, quick and sweet, was like a whisper of warm wind in my ear. In it was all the hope and immense goodness of life. It poured out of her depths like a fountain of fire that connected both of us to the luminous exhalations of the stars. In the face of such a strong and beautiful will to live, how could I ever lose my own strength and let us fall? And so there, beneath the black vault of the heavens, for many moments that seemed to have no end, we hung suspended in space like two tiny particles of light.

As promised, when we reached the window Maram grabbed onto us, and he and the others helped us back into the room. The girl stood facing me as we regarded each other in triumph. Then she cast a long look at her murdered friends in the corner of the room. She burst into tears, and buried her face against my chest. I wrapped one arm around her back as I covered her eyes with my other hand, and I began weeping, too.

Master Juwain touched my shoulder and said, 'Val, this is no place to linger.'

I nodded my head. I was now trembling as badly as the girl. I looked down at her and asked, 'What is your name?'

But she didn't answer me. She just stood there looking at me with her sad, beautiful eyes. One of the guards came up to me as I was buckling on my sword.

He said, 'It seems that the Red Priests' servants were all mute Lord Valashu.'

'No doubt so that they couldn't tell of their masters' filthy crimes' Maram added.

I bit my lip, then asked the girl, 'Was it Salmelu — Igasho — who did all this?'

The sudden dread that seized her heart told me that it was.

'Do you know if Salmelu kept company with a ghul? Might he have secreted such a man in the castle to steal the Lightstone?' But in answer, she only shrugged her shoulders.

'Come, Val,' Master Juwain said to me again.

I started moving the girl toward the door, but then stopped suddenly. I said to her, 'Your name is Estrella, isn't it?'

She smiled brightly at me, and nodded her head.

'I must ask you something.' I bent over and whispered in her ear, 'Do you know who the Maitreya is? Is it I?'

It seemed a senseless thing to ask a nine-year-old slave girl who could not even speak. And she looked at me with her dark, almond eyes as if my words indeed made no sense.

Master Juwain cast me a sharp look as if to ask me why I still doubted what was almost certainly proven. And I said to him, 'I must know, sir.'

'Very well, but do you have to know it right now?'

The sight of the murdered girls was like a poisoned knife cutting open my belly. Around my neck I felt an invisible noose, fashioned by Morjin, inexorably tightening. My whole being burned with the desire to have answered a single question.

'There's so little time,' I said to him. Will you come with me, now, sir, to see what wisdom your gelstei might hold?'

Master Juwain nodded his assent, and so I went out into the hall. The guards remained behind to wait for those who would prepare the dead girls for burial. I did not know what to do with Estrella. When I mentioned giving her over to the care of a nurse, she threw her arms around my waist and would not let go until I promised not to leave her.

'All right then,' i said to her. 'If you're to show me the Maitreya, perhaps you can show me other things as well.'

And so I took her hand in mine, and led her and my friends back down to the great hall to stand before the Lightstone.