Lord of Lies (43 page)

'
Who
allows this, then? If you have no queen, is there another with whom we should speak? A man or woman of power? A sorceress?'

I tried to explain my mystification at the barriers that had nearly kept us from the island, and to determine who had summoned them. Ninana listened to me patiently as she gazed up at me. Then she touched the fabric of her skirt and told me, 'It takes only two hands to weave the angel moss into our garments. But it takes many hands - many, many - to weave the mist around the Forest.'

'Very well,' I said, smiling at the Lokilani encircling us. 'But we have so many questions, and we can't speak with all of you.'

'You
must
speak with all of us. And we must speak with you. We have many questions to ask you, too.'

Ninana watched as one of the Lokilani children, a little boy, danced around Flick's silvery swirl, all the while clapping hands and singing and piping out sounds of delight.

'Come, now, come,' Ninana said to us. 'We've agreed that you shall sit with us in the Forest and take refreshment with us, if you are willing.'

Like a flock of birds suddenly changing direction, the Lokilani all turned away from the lake and began walking toward the woods. We followed them. When we reached the line of the trees, the air suddenly fell cooler and quieter, almost alive in itself like the great green sentinels all around us. Giant oaks and elms predominated here, but there were silver maples, too, and many groves of fruit trees laden with apples, pears, cherries and long blue fruits, bright as lapis pendants, which I had never seen. There were more flowers than I had remembered from the first Vild: goldthread, queen's lace, periwinkles, and tiny white starflowers that grew in bright sprays across the forest floor. There, too, out of the earth, grew amethysts and rubies, sapphires and perfect diamonds as big as a man's fist. We had to watch where we stepped for fear of trampling these pretty jewels with our boots. The Lokilani, however, seemed to follow invisible lines through and around the trees. With precision, and yet with naturalness and grace, their leathery feet found their way across the carpet of gold leaves laid oot before us. Many of these had been shed by the splendid astor tree, whose fluttering leaves seemed to have soaked in the essence of the sun so that their canopies shone like clouds of gold, even at night. The astors' fruit, the sacred timanas, were golden, too: all round and brilliant like dusters of little suns.

But the loveliest of light to grace the Forest were those of the Timpum. There were thousands of these twinkling beings, millions. They came in as many kinds as the squirrels, deer, bluebirds and other animals of hoof and wing that dwelled here. No flower unfolded its bright petals without one or more Timpum hovering over it like an even brighter butterfly woven of pure glister and radiance. No tree there was, however great, that did not emanate an aura in glowing curtains of green and gold, violet and silver and blue. As we walked deeper into the woods, Flick made acquaintance with his brethren beings, and he whirled with them in an ecstatic dance of white and scarlet sparks, and some part of his brilliance seemed to pass into them, and theirs into him. The Vild quickened him and made new his splendor with a living presence that was a marvel to behold.

About two miles from the beach, we came to a place were hundreds of mats woven from long shiny leaves had been laid out in a grove of astor trees. On each mat were set bowls of food: fruits, greens, nuts and other nourishment provided by the Forest. Maram eyed the pitchers of berrr wines, which he had learned to like better than beer or brandy. He also drank in the beauty of the young Lokilani women as they took their places around the various mats with the men and children. I felt his belly rumbling in anticipation of the feast, even as his blood burned for more fleshy pleasures.

'Ah, Val,' he murmured to me. We sat down with our friends across from Ninana and two other Lokilani women whose breasts were, as he put it, as ripe and perfect pears. 'I think I've finally come home.'

'Careful, my friend,' I said to him, 'and remember why we're here.'

'Can not a man as large as I contain multiple purposes?' I smiled at him and said, 'Is that why you agreed to this little quest with so little complaint?'

'Indeed it is. Since I've risked death venturing here, shouldn't I, ah, now enjoy the sweetest fruits of life?'

He smiled at the pretty woman across from him, whose name proved to be Kielii. Then he added, 'I'd like to see Lord Harsha interrupt
this
feast.'

Just then Aunai joined us with a muscular young man he presented as Taije, who turned out to be Kielii's husband. When Maram learned this, he seemed crestfallen. But only for a moment. Upon looking about the woods at all the women kneeling around their mats, he said, 'Ah, well, a bee doesn't forego flowers just because all the nectar has been gathered from the first one he sees.'

I looked about us, too, trying to descry any sign of the Lokilani's village. Through the spreading astors and out between the great columnar trunks of the oaks beyond, I saw nothing that looked like a human habitation. When I asked Ninana where her people's houses were, she looked at me in puzzlement.

'And what is
house?
' she asked me.

I tried to explain the kinds of structures in which all people everywhere lived at least part of their lives. 'Even your cousins in Alonia make houses,' I said.

'Is that true?' Ninana said. 'It has been long - long past long - since any of us has journeyed there.'

'But where do you take shelter when winter comes?'

'Here there is no winter.'

'But what about when it rains and falls cold?'

'Here it rains only when we wish it to rain - and then we bathe or wait beneath the tallest trees to keep dry.'

'But where do you sleep, then?'

Ninana waved her hand toward the mosses blanketing the ground. 'We sleep wherever we fall tired.'

Maram, growing irritable at the sight of all the delicacies spread out before him that he hadn't yet been able to sample, growled out, 'But what of the beaife then? Don't you wish for a good fire at night and a stout wall to keep them away?'

But his words only mystified Ninana and the others. This necessitated another long round of explanations that delayed our meal even further. I tried to tell Ninana how other peoples made fire, which she had seen kindled only by lightning. And Maram tried to describe the eating habits of his huge, hairy friends.

'The beare here,' Ninana said at last, 'eat as we do. Do
your
bears really kill animals to eat them?'

'Sometimes,' Maram said.

'Do they eat people?'

'Not if we can help it,' he said with a nervous smile.

Ninana bent over to confer with Kielii; their soft, lilting words flowed back and forth between them like the music of a brook. And then Ninana asked us, 'Do your
people
eat people?'

'No!' Maram and I said upon the same breath. But then, upon recalling the horrors of Argattha, I added, 'Only in the house of the Red Dragon. Your cousins call him the Earthkiller.'

Ninana's face fell grave as she said, 'The Mora'ajin - yes, we know this one. He lives inside a mountain like a worm. He would eat up the very earth, itself, if he could.'

As Atara's hands clutched at the leaves beneath us, I traded quick looks with Master Juwain. It was astonishing that the Lokilani could know so little - and so much.

'But come!' Ninana said, gazing at Atara. 'Our talk has turned sad, too sad, and now it is time to eat and be happy. Later we will speak of these dark things, if we must.'

All around the grove, the hundreds of Lokilani at their little leaf tables had already begun their meal. So then did we. We feasted on foods so sweet and full of life it was as if an elixir filled our bellies and hot spring sap coursed through our veins. Maram drank many bowls of elderberry wine but strangely seemed to fall only a little drunk. We talked of many things: of the ways of their cousins' Vild and the towers of Tria and the dolphins that swam in the sea and sang songs to those who would listen. At last it came time to pass around a bowl laden with ripe timanas. Estrella was not of age to partake in this part of the feast, but the rest of us were ready to eat this sacred, if dangerous, fruit. Once, its sweet, numinous taste had nearly killed Atara. But now that she and all of us had survived this initiatory vision, we had nothing to fear.

And so we feasted on the flesh of the angels, as the Lokilani called the golden fruit. And our vision was renewed. The Timpum appeared to us with even greater brightness and presence than before. Atara was the first to notice a new thing about Flick. To his usual swirls of silver, scarlet and blue had been added a brilliant tinge that we had tirst beheld deep within the crystal faces of Alumit, the Mountain ot the Morning Star. We called this color glorre. It was as distinct from all other colors as blue was from red. It was as if the resplendent steps of the rainbow led to this numinous hue, a secret color that contained the essence of all others and was somehow both their source and culmination. Most men and women could not see it. Certainly none of the Lokilani ever had.

'Look!' Aunai cried out jumping to his feet. 'Look at the Timpirum that the Big People brought!'

Bright bursts of glorre now rippled through Flick's being like waves of water catching the light of the sun. He whirled about beneath the astors as if drawing their unearthly beauty into him.

'The colors!' Aunai cried out. 'The colors!'

All at once, the Lokilani at the other tables rose to their feet to catch sight of the wonder that Aunai pointed out to them. Flick now hovered ten feet above my head, and so the hundreds of men and women in the grove were able to look in amazement upon his vivid swirls of glorre.

'A new color!' Aunai cried out. 'How is this possible?'

I, myself, wondered this, too. Had our eating of the timana made clear to us what had so far remained invisible? Or had the Vild so strengthened the flames of Flick's being that he was now able to bring forth this brightest and loveliest of colors?

Even as I sat motionless gazing at Flick, many of the Lokilani came over to our table to get a better look at him. In the light of their wondering eyes, the bits of glorre sparkling within him blazed ever more brilliantly.

'You bring miracles here,' Aunai said again. He turned to look at Ninana. 'As you said it would be.'

Ninana used a leaf to wipe a bit of timana juice from her lips. Then she looked me and explained, 'Some of us knew of one of these miracles. It was why we allowed you to come here.'

'Knew
how?
' I asked her. 'Are you scryers, then?'

'And what are scryers?'

I stole a quick glance at Atara, then turned back to Ninana. 'Can you see the future?'

'No, no - we see only what
is.
The Timpirum, sometimes, if we look very; very hard, show us what we need to see.'

'Show you . . .
how?
'

'Even as your Timpirum has shown us all the color you call glorre.' Ninana paused to moisten her lips with a sip of elderberry wine. Then she said to me, 'Won't you show us this
other
miracle you keep hidden, Vala'ashu Elahad? The jewel that gives the golden light?'

I looked into Ninana's wise old eyes, amazed yet again by what she knew. Then, with hundreds of the Lokilani crowding about our table, I reached inside my armor where I had tucked the small cup that I had brought out of Argattha. I stood up and held the Lightstone high for all to see. It flared in my hand. At first its radiance was golden, even as Ninana had said, but soon the light grew more intense, deepening to a brilliant white.

'Too bright! Too bright!' Aunai said, shielding his eyes with his hands. 'The jewel is too bright!'

As night had fallen several hours before, the world about us should have been dark. But the Timpum lit up the woods like countless candles, and the astors' canopies were like great, glowing domes above us. And in my hand I held a blazing star. At first its light dazzled almost everyone. But soon its brilliance deepened even more so that it fell perfectly clear - as clear as the air on a crisp winter day. One by one, the Lokilani were able to look upon the Lightstone without taking hurt through their eyes. But their hearts ached with the sweet strife of wonder, as did Estrella's, Atara's and mine. For just then Flick soared into this clear light, and the flames of his entire being blazed deep with a singular color, and that was glorre. Other Timpum, drawn to him like bright-hued moths, danced about with him in the vast silence that fell over the woods. Some of Flick's fire passed into them. Sprays of glorre brightened their forms, too. And then these Timpum spun off to rejoin their brethren deeper in the woods, passing on the flame from one to another like a fire spreading outward through dry grass. It took only moments, it seemed, for all the millions of Timpum in the Forest to come alive with this lovely angel fire.

After a while the Lightstone quiesced, and the Lokilani could see that it was just a plain golden bowl, and not a jewel as Ninana had said. Flick quiesced as well. He returned to a bright whirling of silver and scarlet sparks. But within his little form remained many brilliant bands of glorre. So it was with the other Timpum illumining the silent woods.

'A very great miracle,' Ninana said, gazing at the Lightstone as I sat down again. 'May I hold this jewel, Vala'ashu?'

I gave the Lightstone into her little hands, and she squeezed it a moment before passing it to Aunai. I told her something of the tale of how we had fought our way into Argattha to wrest the Lightstone from Morjin's throne room.

'You've given much, so very, very much, to find this Jewel of Light,' she said to me. She studied Atara's blindfold for a moment before turning her gaze on me as if looking deep into my heart. 'But why, why?'

I tried to tell her of the Star People's purpose in sending the Lightstone to earth. I told her of the battles that had been fought over the ages to claim it. I said that the golden cup held inside it the fate of Ea and all her peoples, even the Lokilani.