Lord of Lies

We rode all day at an easy pace so as not to tire the horses. That night we camped in the hilly country toward the northern end of the valley. On some nearly level pasturage well- watered by a swift stream, we laid out our rows of tents. Upon considering the warcraft I had learned from my mysterious friend, Kane, and from my father, I insisted that our fettle camp be fortified by a moat and a stockade. This rudimentary fence was little more than some sharpened stakes pounded into the moist earth and logs and brush piled up to form a breastwork. Nevertheless, with Guardians stationed every twenty paces, we would be well protected against any thrieves or murderers who might try to steal upon us in the middle of the night.

My tent, a large pavilion of black and silver silk in which the Lightstone would reside each night; covered a patch of moist grass in the middle of the camp. It was large enough to accommodate numerous people and Estrella gave signs of wanting to lay out her sleeping furs inside and share it with me. But that would have been unseemly. For however much I thought of her as my sister, she remained a young girl of no true relation. And so I arranged a compromise: Lord Harsha and Behira would have the tent next to mine and Estrella would sleep with them. We would take our meals, with Master Juwain and Maram, around a common campfire. If Estrella should cry out in the darkness, in her soundless way, her plaint might awaken me so that I could go to her and lead her out of the land of nightmare.

Our dinner that first night on the road to Nar was plentiful and good: beef and barley soup mopped up with a black rye bread thick with butter; roasted lamb and mushrooms; asparagus shoots picked from the shoulders along the road; apple pie that my mother had packed with a block of aged, yellow cheese. All this provender gave us good cheer against the fine, misting rain. The beer and brandy poured into our cups helped raise our spirits, too. I sipped this fine liquor by our fire, with Master Juwain and Maram on my right, while Estrella, Behira and Lord Harsha sat in a half-circle to my left. My two brothers, at the fire nearest us, held a little war council as they discussed their strategies for excelling at the tournament. Between the rows of tents around us, Baltasar, Sunjay Naviru, Sivar of Godhra, and all the other Guardians except the sentries, gathered around fires of their own.

For a couple of hours, I talked with Lord Harsha and Maram about the tournament and other worldly affairs. And all this time, I couldn't help stealing quick glances at Estrella. She seemed to pay no attention to these matters of great moment which so concerned me and my friends; perhaps she didn't understand our talk of statecraft or just didn't care. During dinner, she ate with abandon as if she had been starved and couldn't get enough of food, and of life itself. Later she played with a little doll sewn out of some bright bits of cloth. Behira, that truly kind young woman whom Maram so foolishly declined to marry, had given it to her as a present. It seemed the only possession that Estrella had ever been allowed to keep as her own. It drew all of her attention. For this, too, was her gift, the way that a picked flower or a brightly color bird and all the things of life absorbed her utterly. I watched as her dark, almond eyes seemed to melt into the doll's silken substance. I wondered at her origins. With her light brown skin and finely-boned face, she might have been Hesperuk, Galdan or Sung — or some marrying of all three. She was less pretty than beautiful. Her body was as slender as a willow; her slightly crooked nose suggested that someone had once broken it. What a mystery she was! What a mystery all human beings were! Argattha, I knew, had broken men as strong as bulls and yet here this little sprig of humanity sat in a soft spring mist happily playing with her doll as if none of the world's horrors could touch her.

After Lord Harsha and Behira had taken her off to bed, I remarked this inextinguishable quality of hers.

'Her soul … is so free,' I marveled. 'After a life in bondage, she's still so wild at heart. Like a sparrowhawk — like the wind.'

'People survive slavery in different ways,' Master Juwain said to me. 'I think that she retreats inside herself.'

'No, it is more than that,' I said. I told him, and Maram, that Estrella seemed able to look into a thing and perceive some part of its fiery essence as her own, and so to take refuge there. 'She sees things, sir. And what she sees, she reflection her eyes, in her soul.'

'You're quite taken with her, aren't you?'

'She has a gift,' I said. 'Whether it's to show me the Maitreya or simply show the sun on a sunless day, who could know?'

'Yes, a gift,' Master Juwain agreed as he scratched his bald head. Soft lights began dancing in his eyes as if I had just given him a key piece to a puzzle. 'There is something about her. Consider how she found her way up the castle's wall in pitch blackness.'

I thought about this as I gazed through the fire's flames at the blue and yellow tent into which Estrella had retired for the night. I said, 'Perhaps she felt for the cracks in the stone.'

'Yes, but felt with her hands or with a different sense? Perhaps she has the second sight.'

'Like a scryer?'

'No, not exactly. A scryer's gift is to perceive things hidden in time.'

'Some scryer,' I said, thinking of Atara, 'can also see things hidden in space.'

'Yes, and there clairvoyance is wed with prophecy. But I'm thinking that perhaps Estrella is gifted otherwise.'

He went on to tell of a talent so rare that it had only an ancient name little used any more: that of a seard. A seard, he said, had a knack for finding lost things — by becoming, in spirit that very thing. I gazed at the sparks in the flames before me. They reminded me of Flick's fiery form whirling about nearby. I said, 'A curious thing happened this morning, sir. When I was packing my chess set. I discovered that one of the white knights was missing. I couldn't imagine how I'd lost it. But Estrella found it for me in Yarashan's room. It seems that he had borrowed it without telling me to replace a missing piece in his set. But how did Estrella even know to look there?'

Maram took a sip of brandy and said, 'Curious, indeed, my friend. But it's even more curious to think of a seard becoming a piece of carved ivory — or anything else. If she's to find the Maitreya for us, is she to become him as well, then?'

'Only in spirit, as I've said,' Master Juwain told Maram. He eyed Maram's glass of vanishing brandy as if to admonish him that such strong drink could cloud both memory and the wits. 'I would think that a seard might find the Maitreya through a transparency of the soul that nobody else would possess. By seeing him in a way that nobody else could.'

'Ah, you're speculating, sir,' Maram said, needling him. 'That I am. But how else is one to make sense of Kasandra's prophecy?'

I poked the fire with a charred stick, and this sent up even more sparks. I said, 'The true miracle is that Argattha didn't crush this gift from her. And that Morjin — or his priests — didn't discover it and use her as a sort of living lodestone to point the way to the Maitreya.'

'As you would use her?' Maram said, now needling me.

'It is different,' I told him. 'As different slavery and freedom. If Estrella follows me, this is her will and not mine.'

'One can only hope so,' Maram said to me.

Master Juwain pulled at his lumpy chin and said, 'I'm afraid it isn't always so easy to distinguish slavery from freedom. Or to tell a slave from one who is free.'

'How so, sir?' I asked.

'Consider Estrella, then,' Master Juwain said. 'She is starved her whole life of the one thing that a young girl most needs. And then you save her from death, but even more, you give her the sweetest thing in life. You, who loves so freely and fiercely, as your mother has said. You never count the cost, do you, Val, when you give your heart to a friend?'

'Are you saying that what is between Estrella and me, this thing that is so pure and good, this love, enslaves her?'

'No, love can never enslave — it is just the opposite. But our need for love, burning us up like a fever, that can enslave. For that which we most desire pulls at us and captures us, like moths around a flame.'

'But Estrella doesn't seem. . captured.'

'No, I admit that she does not. She has great strength. She still retains her freedom, as she did in Argattha.'

'What do you mean?' Maram asked. 'The filthy priests captured her and forced her to their will.'