Lord of Lies

In the sudden quiet of Master Juwain's chamber, twenty-one years after the day that my grandmother had told of, my breathing had stopped yet again. Master Juwain and Maram were staring me. My grandmother seemed to be staring at me too.

'The Morning Star burned brightly that day,' she continued. 'It shone almost like a second sun from before dawn all through the morning, as it does once every hundred years. And so my grandson was named Valashu, after that beautiful star.'

Master Juwain stood up and marched over to the desk. He gathered up the parchment and a similar one that had lain concealed beneath it. After tucking a large, musty book beneath his arm, he marched back toward us.

'Maram,' he called, 'please clear the table for me.' I helped Maram clear the pots and cups from the tea table. Then Master Juwain spread both parchments on top of it, side by side. He stepped back over to the desk and returned with a few more books to hold them down.

'Look,' he said, pointing at the first horoscope that we had already studied. Then he traced his ringer around the circle and symbols of the second parchment. As we could see, the array was nearly the same. 'I confess that I guessed what the Queen Mother has just disclosed today. And so before I left for Nar, I asked Master Sebastian to work up this second horoscope.'

Now his finger trembled with excitement as he touched two small symbols written at the edge of the circle described upon the second parchment. 'Here, of course, is the Morning Star, as on the first horoscope. But here, too — look closely — the stars of the Swan are rising in the east at Vat's earlier and true hour of birth'

Master Juwain straightened and stood like a warrior who has vanquished a foe. He said, 'There are other changes to the horoscope, but this is the critical one. Master Sebastian has advised me that the effect of the Swan, thing would be to exalt and raise the purity of Val's entire horoscope. He has said that these are certainly the stars of a Maitreya.'

I couldn't help staring at the two parchments. The late sun through the windows glared off their whitish surface and stabbed into my eyes.

'It's possible isn't it,' I said, 'that many men, at many times, would have a similar horoscope?'

'No, not many men, Val.'

Master Juwain now brought forth the book from beneath his arm As he opened it and began turning its yellow pages with great care, I noticed the title, written in ancient Ardik: The Coming Of The Shining One. At last, he reached the page he had been seeking. He smiled as he set down the book next to the second parchment.

'I found this in the library of the Brotherhoods sanctuary at Nar. It was always a rare book, and with the burning of Khaisham's Library, it might be the last copy remaining in the world.' He tapped his finger against the symbol-written circle inscribed on the book's open page. 'This is the horoscope of Godavanni the Glorious. Look, Val, look!'

Godavanni had been the greatest of Ea's Maitreyas, bom at the end of the great Age of law three thousand years before. He had also been, as I remembered, a great King of Kings. I gasped in wonder because the two horoscopes, Godavanni's and mine, were exactly the same.

'No,' I murmured, 'it cannot be.'

For my grandmother's sake, Master Juwain explained again the features of my horoscope — and Godavanni's. Then he turned to Maram and said, 'You see, our quest to find the new Maitreya might already be completed.'

'Ah, Val,' Maram said as he pulled at his beard and gazed at me. 'Ah, Val, Val.'

My grandmother reached out her hand and squeezed mine. Then she set it on top of the parchments, rumbling to feel the lines of the symbols written on them.

'Here,' I said, gently pressing her fingertip against the rays denoting the Morning Star. 'Is this what you wanted?'

There was both joy and sadness in her smile as she turned to face me. Her ivory skin was so worn and old that it seemed almost trans parent. The smell of lilacs emanated from her wispy white hair. The cataracts over her eyes clouded their deep sable color, but could not conceal the bright thing inside her, almost too bright to bear. He breath poured like a warm wind from her lips, and I could feel the way that she had breathed it into me at my birth, pressing her lips over mine I could feel the beating of her heart. There was a sharp pain there. It hurt me to feel her hurting so, with sorrow because she was blind and could not look upon me in what seemed my hour of glory. My eyes filled with water and burning salt a moment before hers did, too. And then, as if she knew well enough what had passed between as she reached out her hand to touch away the tears on my cheek that she could not see.

'It was this way with your grandfather, too,' she said. 'You have his gift.'

She gave voice to a thing that we had never spoken of before, for many years it had remained our secret. During the quest, however, Master Juwain and Maram — and my other companions — had discov ered what my grandmother called my gift: that what others feel I feel as well. If I let myself, their joy became my joy, their love flowed into me like the warm, onstreaming rays of the sun. But I was open to darker passions as well: hatred, pain, fury, fear. For my gift was also a curse. How many times on the journey to Argattha, I wondered, had Master Juwain and Maram watched me nearly die with every enemy I had sent on to the otherworld in the screaming agony of death?

My grandmother, as if explaining to Master Juwain and Maram some thing that she thought it was time for them to know, smiled sadly and said, 'It was this way with Valashu from his first breath: it was as if he were breathing in all the pain in the world. It was why, at first, he failed to quicken and almost died.'

For what seemed an hour, I sat next to her in silence holding her hand in mine. And then, to Master Juwain and Maram, to me — to the whole world — she cried out: 'He's my grandson and has the heart of an angel — shouldn't this be enough?'

My gift, this mysterious soul force within me, had a name, an ancient name, and that was valarda. I remembered that this meant the 'heart of the stars.'

As Master Juwain looked down at the two parchments, and Maram's soft, brown eyes searched in mine, 1 kissed my grandmother's fore head, then excused myself. 1 stood up and moved over to the open window. The warm wind brought the smell of pine trees and earth into the room. It called me to remember who I really was. And that could not be, I thought, the Maitreya, Was I a great healer? No, I was a knight of the sword, a great slayer of men. Who knew as well as I did the realm of death where I had sent so many? In the last moment of life, each of my enemies had grasped at me and pulled.me down toward that lightless land. I remembered li nes of the poem that had tormented me since the day I had killed Morjin's assassin in the woods below the castle:

The stealing of the gold,

The evil knife, the cold -

The cold that freezes breath,

The nothingness of death.

And down into the dark,

No eyes, no lips, no spark

The dying of the light,

The neverness of night.

Even now, in the warmth of a fine spring day I felt this everlasting cold chilling my limbs and filling me with dread. The night that knows no end called to me, even as the voices of the dead carried along the wind. They spoke to me in grave tones, telling me that I waited to be one of them — and that I could not be the Shining One, for he was of the sun and earth and all the things of life. A deeper voice, like the fire of the far-off stars, whispered this inside me, too. I did not listen. For just then, with my quick breath burning my lips and Telshar's diamond peak so beautiful against the sky, I recalled the words to another poem, about the Maitreya:

To mortal men on planets bound

Who dream and die on darkened ground,

To bold and bright Valari knights

Who cross the starry heavens' heights,