Lord of Lies

by David Zindell

  'Do you know what should be, then?' The cold anger in her voice cut me like a knife.

  'My grandfather,' I said to her, 'believed that a man can make his own fate.'

  She smiled sadly at this and said, 'You have dreams. Miracles – you would work this beautiful thing you hold inside on moments yet to be. And on yourself. But, Val, you should know that the future has as many plans for us as we do for it.'

  'Tell me of these plans, then.'

  'Tell yourself. Listen to your heart.'

  'But what of your heart?' I said. 'Do you remember the passage from the Healings? "If we bring forth what is inside ourselves, what we bring forth will save us. If we do not bring forth what is inside ourselves, what we do not bring forth will destroy us."'

  As Atara sat breathing softly and the fire crackled and moaned, I brought forth the Lightstone which I had earlier taken from Skyshan. Atara must have sensed if not seen it. She shook her head even as a ripple of dread tore through her. She murmured, 'No Val, not this, please!'

  'There's always a way,' I said to her. 'There must be a way.'

  'No - not this way.'

  A child, I thought, is born perfectly formed out of her mother as her mother is from the earth. And the earth, and all the earths and all the stars, take their being from the One, as all things do. And the One's essence, this divine will to create, was just love. In the One's fiery heart was the secret of creation itself. And didn't all human beings hold some of this bright flame inside? In the Healings it was also written that the Lightstone is the perfect jewel inside the lotus found inside the human heart'. Might not this jewel, I wondered, be used to quicken this flame until it blazed like a star? And might not Atara once again bring forth the perfectly formed being that she held inside herself?

  'Atara,' I whispered. I cupped my hands beneath the Lightstone and held it between us. I felt its radiance penetrate my diamond armor and fill up my chest like the sun; I felt her heart beating in perfect rhythm with my own. For a moment, we were like two stars giving out light to each other in brilliant golden pulses. 'Atara, Atara.'

  And then she shook her head as something seized her with a terrible will. It seized me and seemed yank me away from her; it ripped my heart from my chest. And then there was only darkness. Inside me there was a hole, black and bottomless as empty space. The cold was so bitter and deep that I wanted to cry out in anguish.

  'No, no,' Atara said, 'this mustn't be!'

  As the Lightstone fell quiescent once more, I squeezed it between my hands until my fingers hurt. I said, 'Why Atara, why?'

  In the fire's red light, her face filled with both resolve and a silent anguish of her own. And she asked me, 'What if you fail in this miracle?'

  'What if the sun should fail to rise on the morrow?'

  'So sure you are of yourself! But if you fail, this sureness will turn to despair.'

  'I won't let it.'

  'Can you help it? Could you help the despair that would then finish me? You, with your valarda and the way you've always looked at me?'

  Could I help it, I wondered? Could I hear to live if the brightest star in all the heavens suddenly died and shone no more?

  'It would kill your dream,' she said to me softly. 'And so it would kill you, the finest part. How could I let that be?'

  My eyes filled with a moist stinging pain too great to hold in. And I gasped out, 'How you love me!'

  'More than you could ever believe. Almost as much as you love me.'

  'And that is why,' I said, 'I would take the chance.'

  'Yes, you would risk it, for yourself. And so might I for myself. But we do not live for ourselves, alone.'

  I stared at the white cloth covering her face I wanted almost more than life to rip it from her and see revealed the two brilliant blue eyes that had once shone there.

  'The Maitreya, men call you,' she said to me. 'But if you fail to work this miracle, what will you call yourself?'

  'Would that matter, then?'

  'More than you could ever believe.'

  'If I fail, I fail. It must be put to the test. I must know.'

  'Yes, indeed you must,' she said. 'But not by such proofs. Do you need it proven to yourself that you are alive? That deep inside, you are beautiful and sweet and good?'

  'But how; will I know, then, who I truly am?'

  'As with anyone, that is for you - and you alone - to discover.'

  I gazed through the fire's wavering flames at the many Guardians laid out on their sleeping furs in silent rows. Beyond them others stood watch against the line of trees down by the river. I listened to this dark rushing water and to the crickets chirping in the grass; I listened, to the wolves howling far out on the steppe and to the faint far-off whisperings of the stars.

  'This I know,' I said to her. 'Nothing about the future matters to me unless you are there to look at me as you once did.'

  'Please, don't say such things. What of your friends and family What of your people? The whole world?'

  'The world can take care of itself,' I said. 'It always has.'

  At this, she shook her head almost violently, then held her hand out toward the north, and then east and west. She turned for a moment as she beckoned south, toward the river. Her hand swept upward as if reaching out to the stars, and she faced me once again. The Golden Band grows ever brighter. 'Sometime I can see it. It's not really golden of course. It has no color, but if it did, I would describe it as glorre it's all softness and shimmer and carries inside it an infinity of hues. Infinity, itself. It. . . touched me. You were right that my sight grows greater. And that is why I must tell you what I must tell you. Fate lies balanced on a sword's edge infinitely sharper than that of the knife Karimah put to lord Harsha. Your fate, and that of the world. If you turn from it all will fall into darkness.'

  With a deep sigh, she set down her kristei and held out her hand to me. 'Please, may I have the Lightstone?'

  I extended the golden cup straight toward her. For a moment she fumbled about, trying to find it in the cool air of the night. Then I leaned closer and pressed it into her hand.

  'Thank you,' she said. 'Now you take this.'

  She gave me her crystal, and I held it in my hands not knowing what she wished of me.

  'Look into it!' she told me.

  'But this is a scryer's sphere. Am I a scryer then?'

  'Look into it!' she said again.

  With the fire giving out just enough light with which to see, I looked into the kristei. It was of white gelstei and as clear as my sword's diamond pommel. There was nothing inside it.

  Atara drew in a deep breath even as the Lightstone came alive in her hands. A clear, deep radiance spilled from the cup and spread outward to envelop me. It illumed the crystal sphere. Suddenly, with a gasp, I saw myself inside staring back at myself. I shuddered and blinked my eyes, for the eyes I saw boring into me were so black and bright with dreams that I couldn't help pitying their owner. I tried to put down the sphere then, but I could not because I found myself holding my sword instead. I tried to look away from the sphere, but I could not; through its clear surface I beheld myself holding the sphere as I sat with my back to a crackling woodfire, with the warriors of our encampment lying still behind me. I cried out in fear. No one heard me. The sphere's glittering surface suddenly hardened, and the world of my birth disappeared. All around me and above was a cold, curving brilliance like that of a minor. With a shock, I realized that somehow the sphere had seized me and held me captive inside it. Everything felt cold then, like an icy blue inside blue, like a sky behind the sky I felt myself falling down and down into a shimmering neverness. Its depths were infinite. It opened outward and upward and inward, forever. For an endless moment I hung suspended in space like a feather buoyed upon the wind. I could see outward in any direction to the end of the world. There was an immense clarity. I looked down a million miles as from the height of a star. Below me blazed a city by the sea. I beheld the great white Tower of the Sun and the Tower of t
he Moon; the palace of the Narmada kings sat on top of a hill overlooking a great river. The city, I knew, was Tria, and it was all on fire: the palaces and houses and gardens spread across its seven hills. Men and women, burning like human torches, ran screaming through its streets. I screamed out that this must not be, but still no one heard me. I reached out toward this City of Light and found that I still held my sword. Blood flowed down its silvery length and drenched my hand. I tried to rub it away with my other hand, but it would not come off. It was, I knew, the blood of an innocent: perhaps a child who had got in the way of my killing wrath. For my fury to destroy the evil one who had set fire to the city filled me with a terrible burning of my own. My bright sword suddenly leapt with a terrible flame that ignited the fields and the forests around Tria. Faster than I could believe, it spread outward to the grasses of the Wendrush and the Morning Mountains and the sands of the Red Desert until all of Ea was on fire. There was no help for it; it burned with a fury that consumed even naked rock, down to the very bones of the earth itself. The world blazed and blazed in the vastness of space until only a small charred sphere remained and the fire burned itself out. And then the light died, too, and a darkness fell across the heavens like an impenetrable black smoke and smothered the radiance of the stars.

  Darkness smothered me and stole the light from my eyes. For what seemed a million years, I was blind. And then 1 felt myself once again holding in my hand a small crystal sphere. A glimmer of its white gelstei broke through the blackness enveloping me. And then there were stars once more: the bright lights of the Swan and the Seven Sisters and all the other constellations filled the sky above the steppe. The leaves of the cottonwoods along the river fluttered in their radiance. Atara's white cloth reflected the dancing red flames of the fire. She still sat holding the Lightstone in her cupped hands. Her face was white and grave. 'Do you see?' she said to me softly. 'Do you see?'

  I coughed at the dryness in my throat as I shivered. I gripped the kristei in my hand and stared into its clear depths.

  'Did I see?' asked her. 'Did I see the same vision you saw?

  'One of them - there are millions of others. Millions of millions.'

  'But how is that possible?'

  'It seems that the white gelstei not only quickens a scryer's visions but records them.'

  'I didn't know it had that power.'

  'Few do, even scryers. I didn't know myself until tonight. Until I quickened it with the Lightstone.'

  I gazed at the golden cup gathering in the lights of the heavens. Who knew what other wonders this little vessel might work? Who knew how it could be made to work them?

  'This future you showed me,' I said to her. 'Is this what I am supposed to fear if I fail to heal you?'

  'Oh, no,' she said. 'It is what will befall if you succeed - and are then led to believe you are the Maitreya when you are not.'

  I looked down into the crystal again, and I gasped to see Atara looking back at me. Her lovely face filled the whole of the spheres luminous interior. Her blindfold was gone. In its place were two eyes as clear and sparkling as blue diamonds. And then my exaltation blazed out from deep inside me. It fell upon her like a dragon's red relb and burst into flame. The screaming of her eyes was worse than any sound I had ever heard. It took only a moment for the fire to burn her flesh down to the bone so all that remained was skull encased in char.

  'Enough!' I cried out as I thrust the sphere away from me. One of the Guardians posted by the river looked my way, but I held up my hand to signal that everything was all right - even if it really wasn't. 'Take back your crystal, Atara. I would see no more.'

  I gave the kristei back into her hand, and she returned the Lightstone to me. For a while we sat facing each other, saying nothing.

  'You were right about one thing,' I finally said. 'These visions of yours, this way of seeing - it's too dear, too cold.'

  Something of this terrible cold, I knew, would remain with me It bit into my bones and recalled the ice mountains of the Nagarshath.

  'You do see,' she said to me. 'This is the world where I live now.'

  'But, Atara, there's another world.'

  'Your world,' she said bitterly. 'And whether you're the Maitreya or not, you must do what you can save it.'

  All the coldness inside her seemed to come pouring out all at once. She made herself cold, toward me. And then she was no longer a woman of golden skin and warm breath and dreams; she was a scryer encased in the eternal freeze of glacier ice. 'Atara, Atara,' I said to her.

  'No, Val - we will not speak of this again!'

  I bowed my head to her, and then tucked the Lightstone back inside my armor. Perhaps she was fight, after all. For we both knew that if either of us weakened, I might risk all the fires of the heavens and hell to make her whole again.

  'It's growing late,' she said to me.

  The frigid tone of her voice was almost more than I could bear; it was more than she could bear, for I felt in her an intense desire to fall weeping against me - if only she'd still had tears with which to weep. I wept then to see this noble being hold herself so straight and still. Her restraint made me love her all the more. I longed for a sword to swing and crack open the icy tomb of this sacrifice that had stolen her away from me.

  'Tomorrow we'll have to rest here,' I said. 'But the next day, we'll journey on to the lake.'

  'To find this akashic crystal of yours?'

  'Yes.'

  If not a sword, I thought, then perhaps this great thought stone that might hold the key toward apprehending my fate.

  'It's growing late,' she said again. 'We should go to bed.' She stood up abruptly and started off in the direction of the Manslayers' camp. But she tripped over a fresh log, and it was all I could do to rise up and catch her, to keep her from falling face-first into the fire. I took her cold hand in mine, and she said to me, 'It seems that I might need help after all.'

  And so we walked away from the fire around the rows of the sleeping Guardians, out into the steppe. We passed the dark, mounded graves of other Guardians who had fallen in battle only hours before. Their sleep was much deeper, and they would not arise to greet the new day. We had not been able to inscribe stones and set them into the places on earth where they lay. And so I silently whispered their names: Karashan and Aivar, Jushur and Jonawan, and those of their eighteen companions. I promised them that their sacrifice in risking the wilds of the Wendrush should not be in vain. I promised myself, and Atara, that I would find the akashic crystal and make it yield its secrets. I knew no other way. For as she had told me, it was upon me, and me alone, to pierce through to the heart of the mystery of my life.

  Chapter 17

  I had hoped that all the wounded would be able to ride when we set out two days later. But despite Master Juwain's best efforts, the four Guardians who bore the worst wounds would have to remain here at least a few days while they recuperated. I saw to it that they were well-provisioned, and I appointed four others to nurse them and guard them against wolves and lions - or the return of vengeful Adirii. They were to follow us to the lake, if they could. But if we failed to rendezvous there, they were to return to their respective kingdoms in the Morning Mountains. It would not do for wounded knights to go trotting off after us across the endless miles of the Wendrush.

  Thus our company was reduced to 165 Guardians. With the sun caught like a knot of fire in a notch in the mountains behind us, we formed up as we had before. I rode at the head of our center column, with Maram and Lord Raasharu to either side, and Estrella right behind me. It pained me that she had to endure the dangers of our journey. But during the battle, she had evidenced no sign of terror or panic. I attributed this to an inner strength that I was only beginning to understand. To see her sitting on her horse so peacefully in the morning's quiet, with the long grass swaying in the breeze and sparkling with dew, one might have thought that she was hardened to suffering and death. I knew she wasn't. As we passed the graves of the fallen Guardians, a dew of te
ars filled her eyes, and she wept in silence.

  The ninety Manslayers, on their rugged steppe ponies, rode a hundred yards ahead of us as a vanguard. That morning, Atara did not lead them. Indeed, it was Karimah who led her, for Atara's blindness did not evaporate with the rising of the sun. Karimah held a string tied to Fire's bridle, and this fine mare seemed to understand that she must trail after Karimah and bear Atara patiently. Atara, 1 sensed, had little patience with the darkness embracing her. 1 dreaded that the Adirii might return and catch her in such a helpless state. But neither Atara nor the other Manslayers seemed to fear this. As Atara had told me the day before, 'The Adirii took a great enough risk in hunting you. But to seek battle against Valari and Sarni - well, that would be madness.'

  In truth, although the battle had cost us dearly, I had learned in my bones a great and agonizing lesson: that the only way the Valari could defeat the Sarni on the steppe was with the help of other Sarni.

  Later that morning, when we took a break by the river to water the horses, I rode up to Atara and spoke of this. We found a place of privacy beneath a gnarly old cottonwood, and I remarked the wonder of our two peoples riding as one, I asked her if it was possible that her grandfather, Sajagax, might be persuaded to attend the conclave in Tria. For if Morjin could behold the greatest Sarni chieftain sitting peacefully at table with the sovereigns of the Free Kingdoms, then he might truly fear an alliance.

  'Sajagax detests cities,' she said to me, 'but it is possible.'

  'Is it likely?' I asked her. 'Have you seen this, then?'

  'I mustn't speak to you any more about what I have or haven't seen.'

  'But there's so much that I must know,' I said to her. 'This prophecy of Kasandra's. What did she mean that a man with no face would show me my own? And that Estrella would show me the Maitreya?'

  Atara fell silent as she leaned back against the deep creases of silver bark. Then she said, 'A scryer shouldn't speak of another scryer's visions.'

  'Please, Atara. For Estrella's sake, if not mine. It torments me to have to take her into danger.'