Lord of Lies

and then made swords instead, and they slew each other in great numbers until their various earths ran red with rivers of blood.

But they were strong, these first men and the women they took as wives. The great song of life fired their beings; the music of memory carried them forward into the brilliant future. Out of the red, roaring oceans inside them came children and their children's children, in numbers too great for swords to cut down. They built cities in which to live and walls around their palaces and great, soaring towers.

And then to the greatest of these worlds, Erathe, the leldra sent the Lightstone. It found its way into the hands of a man with fire in his eyes and a great, blazing heart. People called him Maitreya, the Lord of Light.

He journeyed from city to city and land to land, bringing light wherever he went. And men put down their gleaming swords and polished their souls instead. And glorious cities greater even than Tria filled all the lands until all of the world shined with the splendor of a great civilization and peace at last reigned on Erathe. Then men, tall men with bright, black eyes, looked toward the stars. The boldest of them walked from world to world bearing the Lightstone and giving it into the hands of other great-hearted beings who arose from their various earths. These, too, filled with cities as true civilization spread across the heavens.

At last, after many millions of years, the Lightstone returned to Erathe. There, one of the Shining Ones claimed it and brought it before the throne of a great king, a Starwalker who had journeyed to the center of the universe where the great geistei were kept and had gained great powers of the body, mind and soul. And this mighty warrior came down from his golden throne and knelt before this one. The radiance that poured from the Cup of Heaven washed away the last of the king's ephemerality and quickened the flames of his being so that his lifefire could never die of its own. And when he straightened yet again, the stars themselves crowned him in light, and there stood the first of the universe's immortals.

The king then gave up his throne to visit other worlds and help others prepare to make the same journey as had he. And the Lightstone followed him, always borne by the sons and grandsons of the tall, bright-eyed men. And the Cup of Heaven was given to other Shining Ones, who raised up other kings and queens to the order of the Elijin. And the greatest of these — Ashtoreth, Valoreth, Arwe, Urwe, Artu, Mainyu, Arkoth, Varkoth and Ahura — came to preserve the Lightstone's radiance inside themselves so that they shone and no particle of their beings could be harmed in any way.

And so the great Galadin went forth and summoned others of their kind to the world of Agathad, also known as Skol. And there they waited to fulfill their destiny. At the end of the ages, they would gather by the shores of a silver lake, and sing, and set free the bright infinity within themselves in an explosion into light. They would become beings of pure light: the Ieldra of the new universe to which they would give birth. And life would continue on its journey toward the One: ageless, indestructible, indwelling deep inside the depths of all things.

And all this, as the stars poured down their radiance into the amphitheater and I sat frozen to the bench beneath me, I saw and sensed and tried to understand.

The Maitreyas truly are Bringers of Light, I thought. And they are the Makers of Angels.

And then, like two pieces of silk knitted into a whole cloth again, my consciousness was made one, and I returned to staring out at the amphitheater's layers of leaves and glittering walls — and at the ghost who stared right back at me.

'Ah, that was like a drunkard's dreams,' Maram said as he rubbed his eyes. Where before he had shivered, now beads of sweat formed up on his fat forehead. 'Did everyone else see what I did?'

For a while, as the constellations turned slowly above us, we sat there exchanging accounts of what we had seen. They were much the same. Our understanding of them, however, was not.

'The men who guarded the Lightstone,' Sajagax said to me, 'seemed much like you Valari. But why? Who chose them for this glory?'

Maram nodded at me and said, 'And what of the king, then? Certainly he must have been Valari. He looked like you, my friend.'

The king still stood out in my mind's eye, at once as strange as the distant world of Erathe and utterly familiar: he might have been my brother, my father, myself.

'It was the first Shining One who bore Valashu's aspect,' Lord Raasharu said. 'For surely it is not the cast of a man's face or the color of his eyes that contains his essence, but his heart and soul.'

This provoked yet more comment, from Sar Hannu and Sar Varald and the other knights, who were inclined to believe that the ghost's sole purpose in giving us these visions was to show me my destiny as the Maitreya.

There is much that we still don't comprehend,' Master Juwain said. 'The movement of man is always toward the One, even as we of the Brotherhoods have always taught. But it seems that this rise can be hindered, or even forestalled altogether. From other sources, we know of Angra Mainyu's fall and the War of the Stone. But we were told nothing of this tonight. How is the Lightstone to be used and why did the ancient Maitreyas fail with the Dark One?'

No sooner had this question left his lips than the ghost stepped forward and said, 'Aulara, Auliama.' Then he began singing out a song that filled all the amphitheater and shook the very stone surrounding us.

'No, wait!' Master Juwain called out, glancing up at the sky. 'That may not be the question that would be best to ask. It is growing late, and there are other things of vital importance that must be.. '

His voice died before the vastly greater voice of the ghost as it became clear that this mysterious being intended to answer Master Juwain's question whether he liked it or not. I listened to the ghost, enraptured, even though I could understand little of what he was saying. For a single word repeated again and again, and that was Alkaladur.

Again I drew my sword and held it pointed toward the stars. Its silustria rang out like a bell and seemed to sing in harmony with the ghost's music.

'What is he saying?' Maram called out in a voice nearly as big as the ghost's. 'I don't understand any of it.'

Master Juwain, gazing at the ghost said to him. 'There's too much, too fast, for me to understand either. But I believe that he is telling the story of Angra Mainyu's fall and the attempt of the Galadin and Eltjin to heal him of his madness.'

'Then why doesn't he tell it in words that make sense?' Maram bellowed out.

At this, the ghost suddenly ceased singing and stared at Maram. Then he smiled and began reciting:

When first the Dragon ruled the land.

The ancient warrior came to Skol.

He sought for healing with his hand,

And healing fire burned his soul.

The sacred spark of hope he held,

It glowed like leaves an emerald green;

In heart and hand it brightly dwelled:

The fire of the Galadin.

He brought this flame into a world

Where flowers blazed like stellulars,

Where secret colors flowed and swirled

And angels walked beneath the stars.

To Star-Home thus the warrior came,

Beside the ancient silver lake.

By hope of heart, by fire and flame,

A sacred sword he vowed to make.

Alkaladur! ABtaladur!

The Sword of Love, the Sword of Light,