Lord of Lies

There the road turned to the left, and the houses gave out onto an expanse of ripening wheat. And there, on a triangular field between the road and the river, my scores of Guardians were drawn up on their horses in a long line as if for battle. Across the road, in an apple orchard, Orox and Thadrak and all of Sajagax's warriors gathered beneath the trees with their bows strung and their sharp, blue eyes fixed on the road.

'Baltasar!' I called out as I crossed the field. I could easily make out the blue rose that stood out from the gold of his surcoat. He waited on top of his horse at the center of the line. Sunjay Naviru sat nearby, and so did Sar Kimball, Lord Noldru, Lord Harsha and many others whom I was glad to see. 'What are you doing here?'

I pulled up in front of my Valari knights, with Sajagax and Lansar Raasharu, who looked at Baltasar as if afraid his son had taken leave of his senses. Atara and Karimah joined us there, too, and a few moments later, Thadrak and Zekii galloped in from across the road and greeted Sajagax with puzzled looks.

'What are we doing here?' Baltasar said to me. 'What are you doing here, Lord Valashu?'

'What do mean?' I asked him. I didn't know whether to be dumb founded or furious with the actions of my hot-headed friend, 'Why did you desert us?'

Now it was Baltasar's turn to regard me as if I had fallen mad. He blurted out, 'But you commanded me to!'

'What do you mean?' I said again.

'Outside the bald rock in the woods, you commanded me to lead the Guardians and the Kurmak here!'

'Never!' I told him. 'Why would I do such a thing.'

'Because, you said that you had discovered inside a great treachery.'

'What treachery, then?'

'That Duke Malatam had gathered a new army and was pursuing us again.' Baltasar looked back and forth between me and Sajagax, who was glaring at him. 'You commanded me to intercept the Duke's army here, in this village. You were to take the Lightstone into Tria by a different route. That's what you said.'

'Someone might have said that,' I told him. 'But it was not I.'

'But it was you!' Baltasar said. 'You came up to me outside the rock. I saw you. So did Sunjay, Skyshan, Adamar — everyone. You stood two feet from me, face to face!'

Along the line of my knights, Sunjay Naviru and Lord Noldru nodded their heads gravely in affirmation of what Baltasar had said. They all stared at me as if to assure themselves that I really was Valashu Elahad.

'But how could I have come up to you outside the amphitheater?' I asked Baltasar. 'Since the Guardians were posted across the entranceway?'

'Well, you said that you had found a secret entrance.'

At this, Maram shot me a swift, knowing look and muttered, 'Ah, what did I say? What did I say?'

'You told me,' Baltasar went on, 'that you had come out on the side of the rock opposite us. And then you circled the rock and approached us from the woods. And commanded us to ride toward Silver Glade immediately.'

'No, it was not I,' I said again. 'It was something else.'

I motioned for the Guardians to break their formation and gather around me. Then I told them everything that had happened inside the amphitheater and since then.

'But this is terrible!' Baltasar said to me. 'What if Sar Maram is right? What if some ghost from the amphitheater took on your form and commanded me to desert you? And then followed to slay you and steal the Lightstone?'

Beware the Skakaman! I thought. I was almost convinced that Maram's fear had somehow been made real.

'Perhaps,' Sunjay said, 'it was only an illusion sent by the Lord of Illusions himself.'

He touched the warder stone that hung from his neck, and so did many other knights around us. And Master Juwain said, 'I don't think these gelstei failed to protect you.'

'No,' I said agreeing with him. 'What happened to Sar Hannu and the others was no work of illusion. Someone struck cold steel into them.'

At the mention of the murdered Guardians, the men around me bowed down their heads. Lord Noldru, I saw, was weeping, for Sar Varald had been his friend.

'What are we to do, then?' Baltasar asked me.

Although the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing, soon it would be dark. I looked about the wheat field and the orchard across the road. I said, 'It's late, and so we shall camp here for the night — after we've paid Farmer Harbannan for trampling his wheat. Tomorrow, we'll ride into Tria.'

The camp we made then was the strongest of our entire journey. Deep moats we dug in poor Harbannan's field, and we gathered wood from a nearby stand of oaks to build up a stockade around our rows of tents. I issued a password, Alumit, that anyone approaching my pavilion must know. I gave orders that anyone resembling me should be examined to make sure he was wearing the gold medallion of the Quest and that of the Tournament Champion. Master Juwain and Maram volunteered to act as my safe-keepers, that everyone might see that I had not left their presence — and that they had not left mine

I dined with them and Atara inside my pavilion that evening. I desired only the companionship of those who had borne the uncertainties of the Quest with me. And so I regarded it as the working of fate when I heard a faint clopping of hooves along the road and then two visitors announced themselves at the perimeter of our encampment. For they proved to be friends I loved as mother and brother Liljana Ashvaran and a little boy named Daj, whom we had brought out of Argattha.

Chapter 26

The Guardians posted behind the stockade would not let them pass. After being summoned, I hurried out of my pavilion and down the rows of tents to see two figures dressed in traveling cloaks and standing by their horses outside the stockade in the swishing wheat. Twilight was darkening the world, but I could still make out Liljana's pretty, round face and Dajarian's sharper features. The months since the Quest had wrought changes upon them. Liljana's once-plump form had thinned, and her cheeks seemed gaunt and hollowed. Daj, however, stood half a head taller and had filled out, probably from Liljana's sumptuous cooking. In his fine tunic, cleaned up as he was, he seemed almost a different boy. From beneath a mop of black hair, his almond eyes looked out at me and met mine with great gladness.

'Val!' he called to me. And then, impulsive as always, he blurted out, 'Your armor really is made of diamons!'

Liljana nodded at him in a kindly way, then turned to me. 'Well — are you going to keep an old woman waiting all night in the dark?'

Liljana, I thought, was hardly old. Although her hair was gray as iron and her skin deeply creased, she was only of middling years and still robust. She possessed a strength of body and spirit that a much younger woman might have envied. Indeed, many did, for she was the Materix of that secret Sisterhood known as the Maitriche Telu.

'Sar Avram! Sar Tavar!' I called out to the sentries. 'These are my friends — let them through!'

Sar Tavar, a long-faced knight, stared past the thin logs of the stockade and shook his head doubtfully. 'What if the thing from the amphitheater has taken on this woman's form?'

Liljana's forhead creased with puzzlement. I felt her bristling with anger at being kept waiting for what must have seemed no good reason. But I sensed her resolve to control this impulse and sort things out in a calm, careful and even relentless way. The flames of her being blazed with a bright will toward goodness, truth and beauty, and if she were realty a skulking murderer in disguise, then I might as well give up all hope, for the world had ended and the sun would not rise on the morrow.

'Let her pass,' I said to Sar Tavar again.

Sar Tavar and Sar Avram reluctantly pulled open the stockade's rudi-mentary gate, and Liljana and Daj stepped inside. Just then, Master Juwain, Maram and Atara came hurrying up behind us. Liljana greeted them