Lord of Lies

the palace threatening war with Taron. Things went not much better with King Aryaman and King Tal, and the other kings. They left Tria in betrayal and anger, never to return. And as for Count Muar and Baron Maruth, they each vowed to return at the head of their domains' armies should Count Dario press his claim to Alonia's throne.

Late the next day, thirty miles from Tria outside the town of Sarabrunan, we buried Baltasar on a little knoll covered with oaks. He would rest in good company. For all about us, beneath the woods and grass, were buried the ten thousand Valari who had fallen at the Battle of the Sarburn two entire ages before. Beneath some moss, I found a white stone that had once marked the grave of one of these men. Time had nearly worn smooth the ancient headstone. I called for a hammer and used a sharp tent stake to renew the lettering cut into the hard granite: Here lies a Valari warrior. Sunjay Naviru declaimed that I should chisel Baltasar's name and feats into the stone, but Lansar Raasharu would not hear of this. He said that his son would have more honor lying in the ground as did the other heroes who had fought against Morjin and defeated him. And so I planted the stone above Baltasar's grave and said a prayer for his soul.

That night, we camped in a fallow field beneath the Hill of the Dead, as the knoll had once been called. We dug a deep moat around our rows of tents and made a palisade of sharpened stakes driven into the loamy earth. Sunjay Naviru posted one of the Guardians at every twenty paces to watch for Belur Narmada's knights — or anyone else who might have thought to pursue us. My men ate a cold, quick meal and hurried off to their beds. They bade me goodnight with deep looks of mourning. It was a quiet, cheerless camp, and I listened in vain for the singing of the Sarni warriors who had accompanied us along many miles of our journey toward Tria.

After we had eaten the last of our cheese, bread and dried sagosk, I sat for a long time with my friends around a fire outside my pavilion. I asked Lansar Raasharu to join us in council, but he said that we companions who had faced Morjin in Argattha should take our tea and brandy together. He told me that he would face Morjin alone on the Hill of the Dead, keeping a vigil above Baltasar's grave. I knew exactly what he meant, for in the end, each of us must face evil and the great neverness alone. And so I allowed this noble man to draw his sword and walk into the dark woods outside our camp.

The sky was clear that night, and many stars burned down through the blackness above us. The village a few miles away scented the air with the smells of woodsmoke and roasting meats; I listened to some dogs barking and the rushing of a nearby stream. It was good to sit with Master Juwain, Maram, Atara, Liljana and Kane, as we had so many times on our quest. We all missed Ymiru's great, brooding presence, but Daj's lively company made up for his absence, a little. At the last moment Estrella joined us, too. It raised my spirits to be surrounded by my old friends, even if it did seem to me that the world had come to an end.

I had many questions for Kane, and he answered many — but many more of them he did not, for that was his way. This gruff, growling wolf of a man had long since abandoned any niceties or etiquette that did not suit him. If he chose not to respond to a query, he would neither evade nor apologize but simply glare at one as if in warning. So it was that he would not tell us of his hunt for the two Skakamen, Elman and Urman, that he had tracked down and killed. Nor would he tell us how he had discovered that Morjin had unleashed them upon Ea. His reticence, in this matter, rankled Maram. He kept sipping from his cup of brandy, and he finally looked at Kane and muttered, 'Ah, but you keep too many secrets.'

'That I do,' Kane said, sipping from his own mug. 'There's much that you don't need to know.'

'Don't need to know!' Maram cried out. 'That skulking Noman nearly killed us all! You say that Morjin summoned the Skakamen from Khutar. What if he summons more of them?'

'That is unlikely,' Kane said, gazing up at the sky. He stabbed his thick finger toward the Bear constellation and added, 'Earlier this year, there was an alignment of the planets and stars. This created a door that Morjin was able to open. So, the next such alignment of Ea and Khutar won't occur for another five hundred and twenty-three years.'

At this mention of stellar alignments, Master Juwain turned his good ear toward Kane in hope that he might say more about this art of descrying earthly events in the movements of the stars. But Kane had no mind for such arcane talk. He leaned over and squeezed Maram's knee as he said, 'Will you sleep better tonight knowing that Noman was after Val and not you?'

'No,' Maram said, 'I won't. 'It was all too close — too, too close.'

'That it was.'

'Even your arrival in King Kiritan's hall — I dread what might have happened if you hadn't unmasked Noman, so to speak. How did you recognize him?'

Kane's harsh, handsome face pulled into a scowl as he said, 'How does one wolf recognize another in the middle of a pack of dogs?'

So bright did his eyes flare just then that it was hard to look at him.

'But if you could recognize Noman,' Maram persisted, 'if this Skakaman knew this, then I don't understand why he hadn't issued orders to King Kiritan's guards to bar you from the hall?' 'Let's just say,' Kane growled out, 'that Noman had good reason to think that I was dead.'

Then he smiled at the sky, showing his long, white teeth to the glittering heavens as he called out, 'Ha, but I'm not dead, am I? It's Noman who is dead, thanks to Valashu Elahad.'

He turned to look at me. I touched the hilt of my sword, and I told him, 'Twice he nearly killed me. And then, in King Kiritan's hall.. ' I fell silent as I listened to the crickets chirping in the grass and gazed into Kane's blazing eyes. And he said to me, 'So, I sent the letter to Liljana to warn you. And I killed two horses riding straight through to Tria. Elman was to have mimed and murdered King Kiritan. If I had known that Noman would find a way to contrive such a foul crime at the last moment, I'd have warned Atara, too — and King Kiritan.'

The fire's flames seemed to dance in the white cloth covering Atara's face. I could tell that she struggled to keep her jaw from trembling. It tormented her that she had not even been able to stand over her father's grave.

To Kane, she said, 'If I couldn't see the danger, there's really no reason that you should have.'

'Well, I should have' Kane said. 'If one plays chess with the Red Dragon, it's perilous to overlook any possible move.'

'What I don't understand,' Maram said, 'is how Noman could have foreseen so much? All right, all right, so he found a way to get close to King Kiritan, to stick a knife in his back and bury the body in the gardens somewhere outside the palace — ah, excuse me, Atara, for speaking so bluntly. But how could he know that Master Juwain would challenge his reading of that old chronicle? And summon that ghost out of his crystal and condemn Val for all to hear? Master Juwain didn't know it himself!'

It saddened me to see Master Juwain take out the shards of his akashic crystal and sit holding them piled up in his rough hands.

With the breaking of this wondrous gelstei, all its colors had died, and each individual shard glowed dully like a chunk of gray glass.

'So, Noman could not have foreseen this,' Kane said. 'The Skakamen are clever — but not that clever. First of all, I doubt that Balakin ever wrote any such chronicle and left if for the Narmadas to collect. Likely Noman had a book of genealogies or some such and was only pretending to read from it. He needed only to challenge Val's claim. Ha, it's strange, isn't it, that he was able to do this by twisting the truth to his purpose?'

Although it was a cool night for midsummer, I was sweating beneath my diamond armor. I wiped my forehead as I shifted about on my cloak, but I said nothing.

'As for Master Juwain's crystal,' Kane continued, 'Noman had some good luck and some bad. The ghost's reciting of the verses played right into Noman's strategy. But in any case, he certainly meant to challenge Val as he did — and to incite the Valari kings into drawing their swords. That was to be an excuse for seizing Val, and the Lightstone. Likely Val would have been put to the sword in some foul dungeon, or even there in the hall. There might have been war between the Nine Kingdoms and Alonia. Morjin's disciple would have sat upon Alonia's throne, unknown to all. And Morjin would have regained the Lightstone.'

At the mention of this little cup that had caused so much trouble, I drew it forth and sat staring into its golden hollows.

'The Beast meant to destroy you, Val,' Kane said to me. 'And not just your life but your honor — the legend