Lord of Lies

myself, I felt quickening a bright, silver seed. There were stars there, a whole universe of stars. When I closed my eyes for a moment, I walked the heavens' incandescent heights.

And then, even as I looked out into the tent again. Flick appeared in a swirl of gold and glorre. I smiled at him and said, 'Well, little Flick, what do you think about this business of men becoming angels?'

I didn't really expect any kind of an answer. And so it surprised me, and Master Juwain, when a sweet voice like the piping of a bird issued from Flick's sparkling form, and he told me, 'Beware the Skakaman!'

I blinked my eyes in incomprehension, and then he was gone.

' 'Beware the Skakaman,' ' I whispered. I turned to Master Juwain, 'Do you know what that means?'

But he only shook his head as he patted his colored crystal. 'Perhaps I'll find that word in here.'

'Perhaps you will,' I said to him. 'But not now. We both must sleep, or else go out and stand watch in place of Sar Hannu and Sar Varald.' Master Juwain put away his crystal then, and the tent fell dark as a cavern deep inside the earth. Sleep claimed him first while I listened to the rain breaking against the tent roof and the quieter beating of my heart. Then I passed into a lightless land that wasn't quite life and wasn't quite death. Nightmares tormented me. A black shape, as indistinct as a shadow, seemed to take hold of me and pull me down in to a dreadful coldness. There was a gurgling, like rain running off the tent and being sucked down a hole. I couldn't breathe. I knew, somehow, that I lay sweating and writhing on the ground, unable to wake up.

And then, at last, I did come awake, to the sound of a long, deep scream. It took me a moment to realize that I had cried out in my sleep with a terrible pain that ripped open my throat.

'Val, what is it?' Maram said. He knelt next to me, shaking my shoulder. It seemed that my cry had awakened him — and everyone else.

'Valashu!' A voice like that of a sagosk bull bellowed from outside our tent. 1 tried to shake the sleep from my head as Sajagax called out yet again: 'Valashu! Atara! Everyone! Weapons ready! We are attacked!' I whipped Alkaladur from its sheath and leaped up as I practically tore through the opening of the tent. Outside, the day's first light pushed through sodden grayness still smothering the world. Sajagax I saw, was standing off in the trees, staring down at something as he gripped the hilt of his saber. I began running toward him. I was only dimly aware of Lansar Raasharu, Master Juwain and Maram bursting from our tent even as Atara, Karimah and Estrella hurried out of theirs. I drew up beside Sajagax. Although it was hard to see through the twilight, I made out the form of Sar Shevan sprawled on the wet, rotting leaves. I knew without looking that he was dead. The gorget had been ripped away from his throat, which was slashed open. His eyes were as empty as balls of glass.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out as he joined us. 'Oh, my Lord!'

He gripped a drawn kalama, as did Lansar Raasharu, who stood beside him. Karimah came up clutching her bow while Atara had a saber, as did her grandfather. Master Juwain held nothing more deadly than a wet stick that wouldn't serve to drive off a dog. But it was he, with his clear, gray eyes, who espied Juradan the Younger lying dead in a pool of blood a dozen paces deeper into the woods. A quick search through the bracken nearby turned up the bodies of Sar Ishadar and Sar Varald, who had likewise been murdered.

And then Estrella came running up to me. She grabbed my arm and pulled at me, all the while pointing at the woods on the opposite side of the clearing. I turned, dreading what I would see. But there was nothing there, it seemed, except trees. And then Estrella broke away from me. Before I could catch her, she bound off like a young doe and sprinted across the clearing. I followed her as quickly as I could; so did everyone else. She led us straight to the last of my fallen Guardians. Sar Hannu lay in a clump of bloodstained lilies. But he was still alive, and his dark, haunted eyes found mine and would not let go.

'Sar Hannu!' I cried. I dropped to my knee, and lay my hand on him. His throat, too, had been cut, but along the windpipe and not across it. 'Who did this to you?'

With the last of his strength, his bloody hand locked onto mine. And he gasped out, 'You. . did.'

And then he died. Not even Master Juwain's green gelstei or Estrella's frantic, pounding hands could bring him back to life.

'What did he mean?' Maram asked me as he stood over us. The falling rain beat against Sar Hannu's dosed eyes and washed his blood into the earth. 'Does he blame you for leading him here, to his death?'

'Yes, that must be it,' I said. And I thought: As he should.

'But what killed him then? An assassin? No, no — how could any assassin lure five Valari knights into the woods and slit their throats?'

Sajagax and Karimah looked at each other as they made warding circles with their fingers. Nearby, Atara stood in the rainy dawn with her blindfolded face turned toward the woods as if looking for something that no one could see.

'Something,' Maram said, 'from the amphitheater must have taken form and followed us here. If you hadn't awakened when you did, surely it would have murdered you — and maybe all of us.'

Beware the Skakaman, Flick had said to me. I did not want to believe that any of the beings who had lit up the amphitheater could be evil. Nor did I want to believe that they could take form and go stalking about the earth, even as Maram had suggested.

'If it was a ghost that murdered them,' I said to Maram, 'it seems unlikely that it would have refrained from entering our tent to murder me just because I screamed.' 'Then what did murder them?' he asked.

But I had no answer for him, neither did Master Juwain or anyone else. We stood there in the pouring rain staring down at Sar Hannu's torn body in the cold, gray light of the dawn.

'We should ride now, as quickly as we can,' Sajagax said. 'Whatever did this might return.'

I pointed my sword toward the looming trees and said, 'I pray that he does.'

'Come Valashu,' he said, taking my arm. 'Let's leave this cursed place.'

'No, we can't leave our friends unburied.'

'Let us then strip off their armor and bury them as we Sarni do.'

'No,' I said again. 'They are Valari knights and will be buried in their armor, with their swords over their hearts.'

It took us all morning to do as I had said, for we only had two shovels among us and I would not consent to making shallow graves that some scavenger might easily dig up. As it was, the task that I had appointed us would have been impossible if the ground of the clearing hadn't been free of tree roots and softened by the rain. I regretted only that we had no headstones to mark the places on earth where these five Guardians of the Lightstone would rest in eternity.

We broke camp with rain beating against our covered heads. We rode away from that place of slaughter as quickly as we could. The gurgling of water running down the road's gutters reminded me how terrible it was to have one's throat cut and die.

For most of four hours we kept up a quick pace. Baltasar and the Guardians, if they had fled for Tria, were likely halfway to the city by now and might be impossible to overtake. I didn't care. I wanted to charge up the road, sweeping from my path any impossibilities or obstacles. I couldn't help hoping that whatever murdered my knights would try to waylay us for in the clear light of the day, I wouldi draw Alkaladur and cleave him in two, whatever dread substance he was made of.

Late in the afternoon we came to a village straddling both sides of the road. There wasn't much of it: blacksmith's forge, a carpenter's shop, and a mill above a swift-running stream — and perhaps thirty little stone houses. As we slowed to a walk, one of the villagers cam out of her house with some cakes to sell. She called out to a man blowing glass over a glowing kiln inside: 'Look, Amman, more Valari — Sarni, too!'

I halted before her doorway, and the others drew up behind me. I called down a greeting to this little woman, whose fine wool tunic and silver bracelets suggested that she and her husband made a excellent living selling their goods to wayfarers. I asked her, 'Have you seen our friends? Did they pass this way?'

'Early this morning, my lord,' the woman said. 'But they've not yet left Silver Glade, which is what we call our village. They've set up in Harbannan's wheat field by the river.'

She pointed up the road where a little bridge spanned the silver water that she called a river. The mill stood to the right of the road on the water's far bank. If there was a wheat field to the left, the curve of the road and the houses obscured it.

I thanked the woman and gave her a coin for her cakes. Then I urged Altaru forward, and we cantered down the village's main street, followed by Sajagax and the others. A few moments later, we pounded across the bridge.