Lord of Lies

try to flee from my own.

I gazed deep into the silustria of my sword, and I saw a terrible thing: that it was not only my own wrongs for which I must atone, but those of all people who had come before me, on this world and others, back through the ages great and small to the first Ardun who had come forth into being. For my life had been forged in fires that were ignited millennia, even millions of years, before. I had not made the world; I had only tried to live in it. This was not my fate alone. This was the tragedy and glory of life, that all people touched upon each other in their deeds and must suffer the agonies and joys of each other.

Kane came over to me and said, 'We should go, now. There's much to be done.'

'No, I'll never leave this place,' I told him.

I looked about the quiet hall. In the hundreds of bodies of the Guardians near the stand on the dais, I saw my own crumpled form where I should have joined them. A part of me, I knew, would always remain with them. But the part of me that still lived had duties to perform. It came to me then that the dead cannot weep for the dead — only the living can. And with this thought, all that I had been holding inside broke me open. I sheathed my sword, then fell against Kane's chest and began sobbing like a little boy. 'Val,' he said to me. 'Val.'

My other friends moved over to help hold me up. And that was a true miracle. For as Atara's hand found mine and Maram's great arm pressed into my back, my friends all surrounded me, and they fell against each other sobbing, too.

After a while, I stood back and looked at Kane. With his fierce, beautiful face, softened with his regard for me, he reminded me of my grandfather. And Master Juwain was like unto my father, as Liljana was my mother, and Estrella and Daj were the little sister and brother that I would never have now. In Maram I must find all of Asaru's faithfulness, Karshur's strength, Jonathans laughter, Yarashan's bravura and even his blessed vainglory. And Atara. Her long, gentle hand held all my hope for the future and the new family we might call forth upon the earth.

'We should go,' Kane said to me again. 'Go out and rejoin the army.' 'Yes,' I said. 'Perhaps we might still overtake Morjin.'

'You must be king now, Val.'

I brought out the ring that my father had given me. I shook my head. 'No, I cannot be king.'

'You must be. You must take the throne.' 'No, I've brought only destruction upon Mesh. And death.'

'And now you must bring new life.'

'No — I'll renounce the kingship.'

Atara squeezed my hand and said to me, 'Is this too, how you think to punish yourself?'

I drew in a deep breath as I stood gazing at the cloth binding her face.

'Don't you dare punish your people this way!' Liljana scolded me. 'What do you think your father would say?'

Master Juwain smiled at me and bowed his bald head. 'I'm afraid Liljana is right. If you refuse the throne, you'll only bring chaos upon Mesh.'

Maram smiled at me, too, and said, 'Ah, King Valamesh — that's what they'll call you, isn't it? It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?' Daj told me that he wanted some day to enlist in my service as a knight, and without words, Estrella told me much the same thing. And then Kane said to me, 'Only you can be king, Val.'

I bowed my head to the inevitable. 'All right then, if this is what must be, I will.' I put my father's ring on my finger. It fit me well. It pained me to walk with my friends out of the hall, leaving my grandmother and mother unattended — and everyone else. But we had already spent too much time letting Morjin get away. We gathered our horses in the middle ward and met up with Sar Vikan, who informed me that everyone who had taken shelter on the upper floors of the keep. and elsewhere in castle, had been put to the sword. For the moment, it seemed, there was nothing to do except rejoin the army, as Kane had said. And so we mounted our horses, and I led the way out of the westgate and across the charred bridge, back down to the Culhadosh Commons where I would stand before the warriors of Mesh to be acclaimed as king.

It was late in the afternoon when we reached the battlefield. The sun was dropping toward the mountains, but its heat still seared the thousands of men laying upon the grass. Those who had survived the battle worked quickly to prepare the dead for burial. In the sky, the carrion birds gathered and flew in slow, lazy circles.

Lord Tanu had taken command of the army. I found him at the center of the field conferring with Lord Tomavar, Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and Lord Sharad, who now led the knights of Asaru's battalion. We rode straight up to them past the blood-spattered warriors and knights of Mesh.

'Lord Tanu!' I called out as we drew up before them. 'Lord Avijan! We must mount a pursuit before it is too late.'

Lord Tanu's crabby face tightened into a frown. Despite the tiredness of his old. body, he pulled back his shoulders and stood up straight, which made him seem almost like a tall man.

'Lord Valashu,' he said, 'we've decided that there will be no pursuit. It will soon be dark, and our warriors have no will for it.' The faces of those about me, I saw, were haggard and haunted. As they went about their business of wrapping the dead in shrouds, their limbs trembled with, exhaustion. Their every motion seemed a burden and a pain.

'But how can we just let the enemy get away?' Lord Harsha put in. It seemed that he had been making this argument for hours. 'They will be as tired as we are!'

Lord Tanu shook his head at him, then turned toward me to recount the logic of his decision. He said that the remnants of the enemy were mostly Galdans and Sarni. The Sarni we would never catch, and as for the Galdans, why should we waste the life of even one more warrior hunting them down?

'They will certainly flee Mesh now,' he said, 'and return to Galda, if they can. Their army is broken, and pose us no threat.'

'But what of Morjin?' I said. 'And the Dragon Guard?'

Sar Vikan had already sent word to Lord Tanu of the ravaging of the castle. And so he had learned that Dashira, his faithful wife who had believed that I must be the Maitreya, had been butchered. Lord Tanu's old face screwed up with hate as he said, 'We would ride after them, if we could. But we've had reports that they had remounts stationed along the South Road. There isn't a horse within five miles of here who has the strength to catch up with them.'

Some men find in the murder of their loved ones a terrible rage for vengeance; others wish only for an end to their anguish. I knew that Lord Tanu's sons rode with Lord Avijan. Perhaps he could not suffer them to risk their lives a second time this day.

'But we must try!' I said. 'Morjin has carried off the Lightstone!' Lord Tanu trembled with a barely contained fury as he pointed first at the dead spread out across the field and then back toward the smoking castle. And he snarled out, 'The Lightstone? The Lightstone? That cursed thing has brought only ruin upon our land!'

'No, you're wrong,' I said to him. I turned to look at Lord Avijan, whose strong, youthful face burned with a desire foffevenge. I said to him, 'Do your knights lack the will to pursue Morjin?'

'Not those who saw your father slain,' he told me. 'We would ride with you, if we could.'

I nodded at Lord Sharad, a tall, spare man whose gray hair was caked with blood. 'And you, Lord Knight?'

'After what we saw when you slew the Ikurians after they killed your brother? We would ride with you to the end of the earth.'

'Very well,' I said, to him and to Lord Avijan. 'Then us make ready.'

'Hold!' Lord Tanu said, sticking his palm straight out. 'It has been decided that we will not pursue the enemy — and this includes Morjin.'

'And whose decision was this?'

'Mine.'

'Very well. But a new decision has been made.'

'No, Lord Valashu, it has not.'

'No?' I said, holding up my hand to show him my five-diamonded ring. 'Who is in command here?'

'As long as the warriors haven't acclaimed you, I am.' The light sparking from the white stones in my ring stabbed into my eyes, and I called out, 'Assemble the warriors, then.'

It was a bad time to dispense with formalities, but the ancient laws must be obeyed. And so Lord Tanu gave the order for the army to come together upon the northern section of the pasture, which the battle had left almost