Lord of Lies

was a creature of Morjin's why did he kill himself!'

'To keep from being captured and questioned,' I said. 'In any case, once I had recognised him, he was useless to Morjin.'

'Yes, but hy kill himself here? Could not the accursed Cruecifier simply have commanded him to cut his own throat in your tent?'

We all looked at each other then. It seemed that the hand of Morjin lay heavy about us even from a thousand miles away, pressing down like a mailed fist upon this little stand of trees and reaching out to rip open the fabric of our tents in the encampments below us.

It was Master Juwain who had an answer for Lord Raasharu. He nodded his bald head toward him and said, 'Sometimes a ghul retains enough of his soul to hate his master, even to break free, for a few moments. It may have been so with Sivar. Until the Red Dragon found him hiding here in these trees.'

I held up my hand as if to ward off Morjin's evil eye. With Sivar dead I knew that Morjin had no way to perceive this place or anywhere else nearby. But in that dark moment, with the blood filling the dark opening in Sivar's throat, it seemed that Morjin could look into any part of the world that he willed.

'A ghul,' Master Juwain said, his voice heavy with sadness. He turned to examine the gash that Sivar's mace had torn along the side of my head. 'It's a miracle he didn't kill you, Val.'

'He… was so powerful,' I said.

I didn't add that Sivar, moving to Morjin's will, had been possessed by all of his sorcerous strength.

'Here, Val,' Master Juwain said to me. 'Let me look at your eyes.'

As one of the Guardians held up a torch, a bright lancet of light stabbed straight through my eyes into my head. The kirax with which Morjin had once poisoned me seemed to flare up in my blood as if Moriin himself had breathed his fiery breath into me. It was like acid eating into every nerve in my body, making this pain a hundred times worse.

'Damn him!' Lansar called out as if my hatred of Morjin had becone his own. 'Damn Morjin for doing this!'

After Master Juwain had finished testing me to concussion. Lansar Raasharu looked at me in thankfulness that I would be all right. I wondered if he might have possessed some part of my gift. His devotion to me was like a shield held up to protect me, leaving himself uncovered, and I loved him for that.

'And damn Sivar for betraying us!' he added.

I looked down at Sivar's body and said; 'No, let's not damn him for he has damned himself. It might be so with any man.'

'With any man who is weak, perhaps. With any man who is faithless and turns away from the Law of the One.'

I said nothing as I looked down into Sivar's dead eyes. Even great angels such as Angra Mainyu, I thought, had turned away from the One.

'What shall we do now, Lord Valashu?' Lansar asked me.

'Let's bury him,' I said. 'Before Sivar was a ghul, he was Sar Sivar, whom many of us loved.'

After that, one of Sivar's friends wrapped his body in his cloak, and six of the Guardians bore him back to camp to prepare for burial. King Hadaru and his knights went back to the Ishkan encampment, there to take a little rest in what remained of the night. I retired into my lent. Master Juwain met me there with some hot tea to soothe my savaged throat. Then he went to work stitching up the gash along the side of my head while I spoke with Asaru and Yarashan about the night's calamity. After a little while, Maram poked his head inside and joined us, too. Yarashan tore into him for failing asleep on his watch and nearly getting me killed. But Maram had kept many long watches through many long nights on our quest across Ea; I knew that he hadn't simply allowed himself to nod off. Maram confirmed this, filling in another piece of the puzzle of how Morjin had nearly worked my doom.

'I didn't fall asleep,' he huffed at Yarashan. 'Near the end of my watch, Sivar approached me with a cup of brandy. He said that he couldn't sleep, either, with all the excitement of the tournament beginning the day after tomorrow. He asked if he could join me in a little nightcap before sleeping. And why not, I thought, since I had only a few minutes left before I was to wake up Lord Asaru? Sivar was really a kind man, everyone said that about him, and I was grateful for this little kindness. But the brandy must have been poisoned with a sleeping potion. I remember talking with him about the lance- throwing competition … and then there was nothing.'

His suspicions were proved when he retrieved his cup for Master Juwain's examination. Master Juwain took one sniff of the still-moist brandy residue and pronounced, 'Nightstalk. The Kailimun use such potions. Probably Salmelu or one of the Red Priests supplied Sivar with it — along with the sleep stone that dropped the Guardians in King Shamesh's hall,'

For a while Master Juwain, with Maram and Asaru, speculated as to how Morjin had made a ghul of Sivar. Did Morjin have spies in Mesh who had somehow marked out Sivar as weak in the will? Had Sivar delved into the dark mysteries of the mind only to find the Red Dragon waiting for him in the deepest and most desolate of caverns? Nobody knew. After a while, Yarashan gave up trying to fathom the unfathomable and said to me, 'At least the ghul has been exposed and killed — we can be thankful for that.'

But Maram, who understood me better than almost anyone, looked at me and said, 'Ah, Val, the prophecy, too bad.'

'The prophecy? Which prophecy?' Yarashan asked. Although he was an intelligent man, he was not a particularly sensitive one. 'The scryer said that a ghul would undo Val's dreams. Well, she was wrong. Val fought him off, like a true Elahad, and so the ghul was made to undo himself.'

'No, Yarashan,' I said. The night's events had nearly ripped out my insides. 'I. . was so certain of Sivar. Of all the Guardians. Their hearts, their beings: so bright. This was the dream. But how can I be certain of anything ever again?'

How could I, I wondered, ever claim the mantle of the Maitreya if I couldn't be certain even of myself?

Yarashan, of course, had no answers for me. And neither did Maram or Asaru, or even Master Juwain. We stayed up talking for the rest of the night. At last, with the sun rising like a ball of fire over the green hills to the east, it came time to break camp. A burial remained to be made. Tournament competitions must be faced, and if possible, won. And above all, Morjin, the Crucifier, the Lord of Lies, must be opposed at all moments with all the force and purity of our hearts — or else we might end up as had Sivar of Godhra, a man without a soul who was doomed to wander lost among the stars until the end of time.

Chapter 10

Nar was the largest city in the Nine Kingdoms; it spread out across the rolling, green country to the west and north of the Iron Hills, where its founders had delved for ore and built forges to make steel. To this day plumes of smoke rise over the shops of the Smithy District along the hills; there could be found the Street of Shields and the famous Street of Swords that was the ancient heart of Nar. We made our way east toward this oldest part of the city for the King's Road took us straight toward a juncture there with two other highways: the Adra Straight, which led north out of the city across Taron's tree-covered plains, and the great Nar Road running from Tria all the way into Delu and bisecting Nar from the northwest to the southeast. It was said that once a wall had surrounded the city, but we saw no sign of it. The Narangians boasted that their swords were their walls. No enemy had beleaguered Nar since Athar had conquered much of Taron in the ninth century of the Age of Swords.

Word that the Lightstone was being brought into the city must have preceded us, for the people of Nar lined the road from the very outskirts to the west and on into the Valari District, where many knights and lords had fine stone houses. That morning, I had given the Lightstone to Tavar Amadan; as we rode along, he held high the shining cup for all to see. Great lords such as Siravay Jurshan stood in front of the shops with carpenters and bakers and other tradesmen, all of whom wore on their fingers the diamond rings of knights or simple warnors. And all of them — and many women and children, too — cheered as we passed by. And that was a rare and beautiful thing in this kingdom, for the thousands of Taroners to shower their accolades upon an armed company of Ishkans and Meshians riding into their midst.

After a while, we passed the old Tournament Grounds, which long ago had been abandoned and given over