Lord of Lies

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.'

I smiled at him, and felt all my bright hope for the future passing into him and warming his insides with a fire more sustaining than that of the brandy.

'All right, all right' he said, 'courage I shall have, or at least act as if I have. What else is there to do?'

He smiled back at me and clasped my hand with his fat, strong fingers.

'It's late,' Liljana announced, looking at us. 'We should all go to bed and get some rest for tomorrow.'

As it seemed there was nothing more to say, we took Liljana's words to heart and bade each other goodnight. Atara kissed Liljana, and went out to rejoin Karimah. An extra tent was found for Liljana and Daj, while Estrella went off to sleep next to Lord Harsha and Behira. Master Juwain and Maram spread out their sleeping furs inside my pavilion. Despite the need, I slept poorly that night. I mourned Sar Hannu and Sar Varald, and the other fallen Guardians. I wondered whose face Noman would take on next? And most of all, I lay awake looking out at the stars and dreaming of the fulfillment of all my plans in Ea's most ancient city. Kings were waiting for me there All of time and history, it seemed, was waiting for me to enter Tria and finally claim the Lightstone.

Chapter 27

On a brilliantly clear morning, with the sun pouring down like liquid gold upon my columns of knights, we passed through Tria's Varkoth Gate. Its immense, iron doors, wrought with the likeness of the great Galadin for which it was named, were flung open, and once again we looked upon the City of Light. Ahead of us rose three of Tria's seven hills, covered with fine marble houses and gardens and palaces — and the Tower of the Sun and the Tower of the Moon. These great spires were cast of living stone, which shimmered in the early sunlight like the whitest and purest of pearls. Indeed, much of the city was raimented in this glorious substance. It seemed to breathe its radiance into the very air so that Tria's thousands of buildings sent streamers of light, like invocations, toward the heavens.

This ancient place, I thought, bespoke humanity's highest aspirations and hopes — as well as our failings. On top of Tria's greatest hill stood King Kiritan's enormous palace, with its nine golden domes gleaming above the emerald trees and lawns of the nearby Elu Gardens. But to reach this lofty abode, we first had to pass through a district of tenements and dark alleys whose rotting timbers suggested that nothing ever built on Ea could attain to the eternal. That was the way of things in Tria, splendor amid squalor, nobles living elbow to elbow with beggars, the perfume of flowering trees tainted with the reek of rubbish and ordure that people dumped into the gutters of the streets.

I who had once beheld the rainbow hues of Alundil, the jeweled City of the Stars high in the White Mountains, knew that much more than this was possible. For I had seen the dwellings of the Star People, there and in my dreams. These, no less the Lightstone, I brought with me toward the conclave of the kings. My spirits soared like a flock of swans. Although the deaths of my five Guardians saddened me, I knew that they had died protecting the Lightstone, even as they had vowed. And now I must live to fulfill my fate.

From the moment that our columns of horses clopped up the street leading from the Varkoth Gate, Trians in their hundreds and thousands came out of their houses and lined the way. Rich and poor dressed in silks or rags, they crowded in close to witness the astonishing sight of Sarni warriors and Valari knights in our diamond armor entering their city together. An old man shaking a tin cup cried out I that the Maitreya had come among them again, as the ancient prophecies had foretold. Well-dressed women bearing baskets of flowers cast rose petals at me and onto the street ahead of me. They clamored for a glimpse of the Lightstone as they ran up to me and laid their hands on my legs or tugged at the fabric of my surcoat.

Liljana gave me to understand that King Kiritan had forbidden such displays. But many of our welcomers were of the houses of the Hastars, Eriades, Kirrilands and Marshans: four of the ancient Five Families who, for thousands of years, had contended with the Narmadas for the throne. And so they ignored the wishes of their king. They opened their hearts to me. And I, who had passed so hopefully through the walls of their city, finally threw open the gates in the walls surrounding my own heart. I drank in the cheering of the multitudes as a parched man might water. It seemed that I could not get enough of this wondrous sound. In the cries of those who swarmed around me was an ageless and beautiful yearning. I felt this great dream inside myself, ennobling me and washing clean all my fears. As the Trians' joy raised me up to the greatest heights, where I could almost lay my hand upon the sun, I felt myself immortal.

For most of an hour we climbed up Hastar Hill, with its fine palaces, and then made our way through Eluli Square and up the higher Narmada Hill overlooking the whole of the city. I gazed out upon miles of gleaming buildings offset by spaces of green. The great Star Bridge, also called the Golden Band, spanned the Poru, which divided the city into east and west. Far out in the glimmering blue bay into which the river emptied loomed the skull-shaped island of Damoom. For all the Age of Law, Morjin had been imprisoned there. I knew that soon he would be thrown down and brought there again — either that, or slain. From the thousands of people crowding the streets, I heard demands for deliverance from Morjin's evil that had lain so heavily upon the world for so long. And so I promised them, and myself, that I would never rest until the Red Dragon was utterly defeated.

At last we crested the hill and came to a gate set into the low wall surrounding the King's palace. A small army of guards dressed in the blue-and-gold livery of the House Narmada met us there, for word ot our arrival had gone ahead. Although these grim-faced guards did not cast rose petals or give voice to cheers, their eyes seemed to sparkle and shower me with hope. But they were watchful and wary, too, at the sight of so many Valari knights and Sarni warriors making their way toward the great dwelling of their king.

Waiting with them was a herald named Jasson, who escorted us along the oak-lined road leading to the palace. This small, punctilious man informed us that we had missed most of this morning's proceedings. As we rode with him past lush lawns covered with chirping sparrows, he also warned us not to trample King Kiritan's precious grass; anyone caught hunting the King's deer in the woods of the nearby Narmada Green, he said, would be put to death. This injunction, with all the other rules and protocols that he laid upon us, provoked Sajagax's proud warriors. When we dismounted in front of the white colonnades of the palace, Baldarax and Thadrak stalked about the grail gripping their bows and threatening to shoot arrows into any of the grooms who came to take their horses.