Lord of Lies (66 page)

I looked at Liljana and said. 'To heal yes - but heal
how
? To take away people's hatred? To end war?'

Master Juwain nodded toward me and said, 'In the amphitheater, the ghost spoke of healing Angra Mainyu of his fear of death. What great beings we all would be if this evil were lifted from our hearts!'

I felt my own heart beating hard and quick. And then Liljana told me, 'People are saying that the Maitreya will heal the crippled and the ill.'

I glanced at Atara, but if she was aware that I was looking at her, she gave no sign of if.

'King Kiritan,' Liljana said, 'has invited the blacksmith's son, Joakim, to stay at the palace. No one knows why.'

'We heard a story,' Maram said, 'that this Joakim had healed the blind.'

Now we all looked at Atara. She pulled at the cloth binding her face but said nothing.

'That
story,' Liljana said, 'has been embellished. In Joakim's village, they claim only that he healed an old man of an eye catarrh and straightened the legs of a girl with rickets. But this might be enough for King Kiritan to put him forth as the Maitreya.'

I squeezed the Cup of Heaven between my hands and watched its golden contours catch the lamp's flickering light. I asked, 'What sort of man is Joakim?'

'I should hardly call him a
man
,' Liljana said. 'He's still a beardless boy, really, and simple like his fellow villagers. Some
say simple-minded
.'

'Then he would not be one to be considered to lead the Alliance?'

'Hardly.'

Maram picked up the brandy bottle and refilled his cup. He said, 'How convenient for King Kiritan.'

Master Juwain nodded his head, then asked Liljana, 'Then is King Kiritan to use this story to discredit Val? His own emissary has witnessed Val's healing of Baltasar's spirit. Surely this miracle should weigh against any mere healing of the flesh.'

As he spoke, he turned his green gelstei between his rough, old fingers. I had seen him use this crystal to mend a fatal wound that an arrow had drilled into Atara's lung - all in a matter of moments. But how many times, I wondered, had he failed to heal her of her blindness?

'I don't know what the King intends,' Liljana said. 'But stories are only stories. King Kiritan - and all the kings - might want it proved to their eyes that Val is who he claims to be.'

'So far,' I said, gazing at the Lightstone, 'nothing is claimed.'

'So far,' she said wryly. Then she searched my face and asked, 'What is it
you
intend, Val?'

I took a deep breath and held it a moment before saying, 'The Lightstone holds the powers of all the other gelstei, yes? Thus it has the power to heal. I
know
that it does.'

'Go on,' Liljana said, fixing her large eyes upon me. I looked at Estrella, who was smiling at Daj, and then at Atara sitting so still and grave as she waited for fate to unfold. I said, 'It's not a question of bending King Kiritan to my will, or to anyone's. He must be won. It must be proven to him that I am the Maitreya.' 'Go on,' Liljana said again.

'If I could make Estrella speak again or Atara to see, then -' 'No, Val!' Atara said suddenly, cutting me off. 'Not this way! Not in my father's hall!'

'I must know,' I said to her as gently as I could. I felt the Lightstone giving a soft, warm radiance into my hands. If I had touched a piece of coal just then, I thought, it would light up like the sun. 'Everyone must know. Surely the time has come.'

It nearly broke my heart to see Atara clenching her hands as she silently shook her head.

'It may be,' I said, 'that King Kiritan thinks to bring forth this blacksmith's boy as a sort of champion to make his challenge. But what if it were I who first challenged him?'

'That's it, Val,' Maram said after gulping down some more brandy. 'Take the battle to the enemy!'

I did not like thinking of King Kiritan as the 'enemy.' But the principle that Maram espoused was sound enough. If I were the one to issue the challenge, then it would take much of wind out of King Kiritan's sails.

Master Juwain tapped his fingernail against his green crystal. He bowed his head toward Atara. 'What you propose is dangerous! To give eyes once more to Atara might be beyond the ability of even the Maitreya.'

'Perhaps,' I said. Then I turned toward Estrella. 'But Liljana has told that Morjin has darkened a part of this girl's mind. I
know
that the Lightstone can be used to brighten it again.'

Master Juwain rubbed his smooth head and frowned at me. 'Even if you're right, Val, even if you
are
the Maitreya, which I believe with all my heart, I'm afraid it will take time to learn to use the Lightstone once you've claimed it. There is still much we have to learn.'

So saying, he put away his varistei and took out the akashic crystal instead. Its swirls of gold and glorre, I knew, contained much wisdom. But surely the Lightstone held the very secrets of the universe.

'What if you
fail
?' he asked me.

I looked into the gleaming surface of the Lightstone and saw a bright being of adamantine resolve looking back at me 'I won't fail,' I said.

'But what if you do?'

'If I fail. I fail. Then the kings, will have to choose another to lead the Alliance.'

Master Juwain gazed at me. Finally, he said, 'There are still some hours between now
and
tomorrow. Will you at least reconsider your plan?'

And Liljana added, 'Please do think about this carefully.'

Atara's cold, beautiful face, as I looked across our circle, reminded me that no one could see all the consequences of an act. Eveen Estrella seemed unsure whether she wished to be made whole again. Daj assured me that she desired with all her heart to be able to talk to birds and sing songs to the sunrise. But then he added that she could do that, in her own way, already. As I gazed at this luminous and happy child, playing with the curls of her dark hair. I wondered, who was I to think of taking her from her secret silent garden into the wider world where people might twist her utterances to their own ends and ensnare her in webs of words and yet more words?

'I wish Kane were here,' I said, turning to Liljana, 'He, of all men, would know about the Maitreya. Have you seen him, then?'

'Not since Viradar, when he left Tria without warning me,' she told me. 'But that brings me to the second reason I've come here tonight. I have a letter for you.'

She reached into the pocket of her cloak and removed a square of ivory paper, sealed with a bubble of blood-red wax. She handed it to me and said. 'This arrived two weeks ago. The man who delivered it said that I was to give it to you before you entered the conclave. He said it was urgent that you read it as soon as possible.'

'This man,' I said, pressing my finger against the letter's hard seal 'was he of the Black Brotherhood?'

'I believe so. But he wasn't any more eager to tell me about himself than I was to tell him about
myself, i
f you know what I mean.'

She drummed her fingers against her palm, waiting for me to open it, I sensed that she was near the end of her patience. The letter was addressed to me in a bold, clear hand. I drew out my dagger and broke the seal. The letter was a single sheet of paper dated the 30th of Ashte, 2813 - barely a week before Salmelu and the Red Priest had defiled my father's hall and I had set out for the tournament at Nar. The words set into the paper in black ink, on both sides, were also bold, but less clear, as if Kane had written them in great haste. This is what I read:

Valashu,

I am sending copies of this to Liljana in Tria and to your father's castle, for it is vital that you know why I have taken to the road agian. I am not sure where this letter will find you, but find you it must. For you are in great danger. Morjin has recovered from the wound that you dealt him, as I said he would. He seeks his revenge. I have learned that he has summoned three assassins from the world of Khutar. You must know their nature, for they are not human - not just human. They are called the Skakamen. You may think of them as the Half-Elijin: they who have gained some of the virtues of greater beings but have been denied immortality due to a sickness of the soul. Even so, they possess great hardiness, strength, cunning and the ability to heal their flesh of almost any wound. So, they have the power to shape their own flesh as they will. Thus they can take on the shape of the victims that they hunt and slay
-
or any shape at all.

The first of these assassins, Elman, I have hunted, and I have sent him back to the stars. I have found the trail of the second assassin, Urman, and him I will pursue as well. The third assassin has eluded me. His name is Noman. Beware this Skakaman, for he will use all his wiles to murder you and steal the Lightstone. Trust no one
!
Watch your back
!
Look into the hearts of everyone, even those closest to you
!
If any bear you ill will, slay him out of hand before he slays you
!

I will help you execute this Skamman, too. I expect that you will make the journey to Tria, with all the others who would join against Morjin. Look for me there. Look to the Lightstone and guard it for the Maitreya. Morjin must not gain it back
!
That he has summoned three Skakamen from Khutar without its aid bodes ill. So, he must be close, very close, to being able to open a portal to Damoom and freeing Angra Mainyu as well.

Know that if he succeeds, it will be the end of everything. I may have led you to believe that with the Baaloch's defeat, the War of the Stone was concluded. It was not. The war goes on, and has been fought on other worlds all during the ages of Ea. I believe that it will be won - or lost - here on our world within the next few years. You cannot know the peril. You have been told of the Dark Worlds. But the Ieldra will never allow the whole of Eluru to darken. Just as the universe was created in the progression of Galadin into the Ieldra, the Ieldra will be forced to destroy their handiwork if the Galadin fail to lead a great progression into the Age of Light.

And so the Lightstone must be placed in the Maitreya's hands, and soon. And so we must bring Morjin down at any cost.

At
any cost!

Kane

'Well,' Maram said to me when I looked up from the sheet of paper that I was clenching,
'another
letter. Aren't you going to read it to us?' I took a sip of brandy to moisten my throat. And then I did as Maram had requested. After I had finished, I sat gazing at the lamp's little light.

'Dark worlds, indeed!' he cried out. 'The end of all things! Too much! Too much!'

Again, he refilled his cup with brandy, and downed it in nearly a single gulp. He wiped the tears from his eyes and coughed out, 'A Skakaman, too! Well, now we know what killed our poor knights. A shape-shifter, as in the old tales! Ah, well I suppose that's better than a ghost.'

Daj and Estrella sat holding hands as they stared at each other in dread of this new horror that had been unleashed upon their world. Atara stared off into a dark landscape of her own that I did not wish to behold. And Master Juwain tapped his finger against Kane's letter and said to me, 'I see, I see. It's all made clear now. All that has happened for ill since that night in your father's castle was wrought by this Noman.'

He went on to say that Noman must have entered Mesh disguised as one of Salmelu's emissaries. No doubt Salmelu murdered Kasandra and the scryers, in part to keep them from explaining their prophecy that a man with no face would show me my own, and so give Noman away. It was certainly Noman, he said, who used a sleep stone to incapacitate the Guardians; only my timely arrival kept him from stealing the Lightstone from my father's hall that very night. And it was Noman who had nearly assassinated me outside of Nar.

'The Skakaman,' Master Juwain said to me, 'must have followed us from Silvassu. And when we made camp, he must have followed Sivar of Godhra into the copse where he went to collect firewood. And there murdered him. And there mimed him, taking on his form. And then returned to camp to murder
you.'

I looked at the Lightstone where I had set it down in front of me. I rubbed my head where Noman, disguised as Sivar, had nearly brained me with his mace. Then I looked up and said, 'Then I wasn't wrong about Sivar! He was no ghul!'

'No, he was not,' Master Juwain agreed. 'He was just another knight whose face Noman stole. As he stole
your
face, Val. He must have followed us to the amphitheater and tricked Baltasar and the Guardians away from their post. And then followed us. It wouldn't have been hard for him to lure Sar Varald and the others into the woods, to their doom, if they thought he was you.'

Maram poured some more brandy into my cup, then asked the question on all our minds: 'Do you think he's still miming you? And if he's not, who is he now?'

None of us wished to venture a guess. But Atara suddenly turned toward me and said, 'He'll murder and mime someone in my father's palace.'

'Have you
seen
this, Atara?' I asked.

'Only with the eye of reason,' she said with a grim smile. 'Morjin will want to keep you from claiming the Lightstone - at any cost. And so he'll want Noman to strike you down before you can unite the kings against him. Where better to murder you except in the palace, or in its grounds?'

Where, indeed, I wondered as I looked at the blindfold encircling her head? And then I asked her, 'But what does this Noman look like when he's
not
miming another?'

'I don't know,' she told me. 'I can
almost
see him. Almost.' We all fell quiet for a few moments and sat sipping our brandy. And then Maram muttered, 'Ah, this is too much, too much.'

'Courage, my friend,' I said, clapping him on his shoulder. 'Three times Noman has failed to murder me and steal the Lightstone. I
know
that he will fail again.'