Lord of Lies

I wandered for a long time among the heaps and-twists of bodies. Later there would be a count of them, but all I knew was that there were too many thousands of them. In truth, even one man killed this way was too many — unless he was Morjin. I looked for him everywhere. Had he somehow escaped this dreadful battlefield? I looked across the Culhadosh Commons, from one end to the other. Nearby a young man lay moaning as he clapped his hands to his belly, trying to keep his insides from spilling out. Farther away, the horses of the enemy were grazing peacefully where they could find a clear patch of grass. Lord Tanu and other lords were calling out to reform their battalions, trying to bring order, if not sense, to the madness that had befallen here.

Then a rider picked his way among the dead and found me where I stood above Asaru's body. He said to me, 'Lord Valashu, King Shamesh calls for you.'

I stared at him as if he had spoken words to me out of a cruel dream. I told him, 'My father is dead.'

'No, his wounds are mortal, but he still lives,' the messenger informed me. He pointed toward the woods to the east of the battlefield. 'I am to take you to him.'

I shook my head in amazement. Hadn't Lansar Raasharu seen my father die? Perhaps he had only assumed the worst And reported this to Asaru, and me. Such mistakes were often the result of the fog of battle.

I mounted my horse then, and followed the messenger across the field. We came to a place next to the woods ringed by many lords and knights. And at the center of this ring, my father sat back against a tree. Someone had removed his helm. His long black and silver hair, tied with many battle ribbons, spilled across his shoulders. His eyes were closed as he coughed up blood and gasped for breath. A bright red froth bubbled from the great hole in his armor over his chest. He held his long, bloody sword across his knees. I dismounted, and the knights made way for me as I walked forward and knelt by my father's side. He opened his eyes and looked at me. It seemed to take a great effort for him to speak my name: 'Valashu.'

Lord Harsha stepped up to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. His cheek was bleeding where a saber had nearly taken out his remaining eye. He pointed at my father's chest and said simply, 'A Galdan lance.'

'But we've got to get him to Master Juwain!' I said. 'He's healed such wounds before!'

'Your father wouldn't allow it,' Lord Harsha told me, shaking his head. 'Not while the battle was still being fought.'

My father reached out and grasped my hand. He said to me, 'I told you not to come.'

'But I thought you'd been slain! Lord Raasharu told me that Asaru was king and had sent for me!'

A spasm tore through my father's body as he worked to breathe. Then he gasped out, 'Lord Raasharu. . was not himself.'

His eyes cleared and touched mine. And suddenly I knew. I saw the evil tapestry that Morjin had woven for me, all of a piece.

'Asaru is dead,' my father said to me. 'All of my sons, gone.. except you.'

He let go of his sword as he smiled at me. With all the strength left in him, he pulled off his ring, with its five bright diamonds. He pressed it into my hand and said, 'Now you must be king.'

I squeezed this heavy circlet of silver in my fist. I shook my head. 'No, there is still time!'

'No, there is no time'

I held his hand as his breath sucked in and out, in and out, growing weaker and weaker. Then he raised his finger to point over my shoulder, west, toward Telshar, Arakel and the other mountains. And he said to me, 'You should never have left the castle.'

He coughed, once, very hard, and his whole body shuddered. He gripped his sword with one hand and my hand with his other. For a moment, his eyes grew incredibly bright, like stars. He gazed at me as if he had finally come home. And then he died.

I kissed his hand and laid it upon his sword. I kissed his lips. I stood up slowly. I pulled off my surcoat and laid it over him. I could not weep for him, not yet. I could not grieve for Asaru, or Yarashan or any other warrior of Mesh who had fallen here today. For the battle was not yet over. In truth, it was only beginning. I turned to look up the grassy slope of Culhadosh Commons, where the hills beyond blocked a clear line of sight of my father's castle high above Silvassu. It was my castle now, I told myself, what was left of it. I stared up at the great plume of smoke that my father had pointed out to the west, and I watched it rise like the souls of the dead into the sky.

Chapter 33

In my flight back toward Silvassu, with the smoke billows above the castle looking ever larger, I paused only long enough to remove the heaving moldings of armor that were hampering Altaru's motions. Even lightened this way he had a hard time of it, for the going was mostly uphill, and he was already tired. I pressed him hard, even so. By the time we pounded up to the castle's south gate, he was nearly lathered. I, myself, could hardly breathe when I saw that the drawbridge was down and the iron gates hung open.

We had to pick our way across the bridge, for much of it was char and other parts were still burning. I gagged on the smell of oil with which its stout timbers had been soaked. As we entered the castle, I gagged on the smell of death. Just inside the gates lay the bodies of a dozen Meshian warriors. All of them, it seemed, had been killed by slashes to their throats. In the west ward, the dead were everywhere. Many of these were of the Dragon Guard, whose red armor had been cut open by dreadful kalama strokes. I noticed with grim satisfaction that these ravagers outnumbered the dead Meshians who had fought them here. But I could do nothing except rage helplessly at the sight of all the women, children and old men who had been slaughtered like animals. Hundreds of them lay in pools of blood near the garden wall's gate leading into the middle ward. It seemed that they had been cut down trying to flee toward the safety of the keep.

The much larger middle ward held even more bodies. The garments of some of these had been doused in oil and set aflame. I was not sure that all of them had been dead when Morjin's men immolated them. Carts and wagons were smoldering, too, and bales of straw, barrels, heaps of spears and wooden swords, the timbers in the blacksmith's shop — any and all things that could be set on fire.

The gates to the keep had been battered into splinters and also put to the torch. Many knights had died trying to defend it. I dismounted Altaru and made my way inside. It was a charnel house. The stones in the halls were soaked with the blood of the many dead who had fallen there. More of my countrymen lay in bloody heaps in the various rooms. In the armory swords and spears had been snapped into pieces and cast upon a pile of corpses. The treasury was empty. In my room across the hall, I found Lord Rathald and his family. Lord Rathald, it seemed, had been killed trying to protect his daughter and his grandchildren, who were gathered in the corner behind his cold form. He still gripped his bloody kalama. I did not know why the Dragon Guard who had killed him left it in his hand.

Now I could bear my dread no longer, and I burst out into the hallway. I stumbled over a long line of bodies as I ran toward my parent's rooms crying out as loud as I could: 'Mother! Nona! Mother!' But the rooms were empty. I searched as well in the adjoining servants' quarters, and in the library and the kitchens. I called out for my mother and grandmother, many times. And then I swallowed my gorge and went into the great hall.

And there I found them. Two of the great, long tables had been shorn of their legs, and then upended and bound with ropes against the stone pillars holding up the roof. And my mother and grandmother had been fixed to these tables with nails. My mother was dead. Her tunic was torn with many bloody gashes; to either side of her, the table's wood was riven with deep slits. It seemed that the Dragon Guard, after they had crucified her, had used her for target practice with their spears.

But they had shown no such mercy to my grandmother: I saw to my amazement that she still lived. Blood oozed from her palms and bare feet; her breath barely filled her frail, old body as she struggled to speak to me.

'Valashu!' she gasped out.

I came up to her and kissed her feet. Great spikes of iron had been pounded through flesh and bones, deep into the table's wood.

'We've got to get you down from there!' I called to her. Her head had dropped upon her chest, and I looked up into her milky, blind eyes. 'Please, help me,' she said to me.