Lord of Lies

a moment before he looked away. And he said, 'Perhaps we could put our house together, at least for as long as it takes to ride to Tria and then home again.'

'King Hadaru,' I said, turning toward the old Ishkan bear. 'Do you agree?'

King Hadaru fastened his hard eyes upon me as he pulled at the battle ribbons in his white hair. 'I do agree, at least to journey to Tria. You've earned your chance to speak there in favor of an alliance.'

Now only King Waray remained uncommitted to the conclave of all of Ea's Free Kingdoms. I stood beneath the stands as the gold medallion that he had bestowed upon me pulled at my neck. And I asked him, 'King Waray, will you journey to Tria?'

And without hesitation, this suave, cunning king smiled at me as if I were a son who had honored him, and he said, 'Of course I will. Together we'll make a procession into Tria that hasn't been seen for three thousand years.'

And with that, the thousands of people in the pavilion let loose a great cheer. Baltasar and the other Guardians stood together in the stands, and they cried out, 'Maitreya! Claim the Lightstone!'

They made a procession of their own, nearly a hundred and twenty of them, down into the pavilion's floor. Then Sharash of Pushku, whose turn it was to keep the Lightstone that day, approached me, holding high the golden cup.

'Lord of Light!' he cried out to me. 'Claim the Lightstone!' A hundred voices from the stands called out as well, 'Claim it! Claim the Cup of Heaven!'

I stood there for a long time looking at this golden cup that showered its light upon the many men and women tiiere. I waited for the pavilion to grow quiet. I looked up at Estrella, who sat with Lord Harsha. She seemed bright and happy as she smiled at me and waited to see what I would do.

At last, I motioned for Sharash to lower the Lightstone And then I called out as loudly as I could, 'After the conclave is successfully concluded and an alliance is made, then — and only then — I will claim the Lightstone.'

Out of the silence that fell across the stands. King Waray said to me, 'Is there nothing you would ask for yourself, as is a champion's right?'

His broad smile hid the churning inside him, and I knew it cost him a great deal to ask me this. And I smiled at Master Juwam before turning back to King Waray and saying, 'I would ask only that the Brotherhood's school be reopened and that Master Juwam be allowed to complete his research there.'

'Of course,' King Waray said, as his hands clenched into fists. 'It will be my pleasure to grant you this. Now why don't we all retire to our tents to prepare for the feast tonight?'

As he made his way from the stands and out of the pavilion, many people followed him. Many more, however, came down to congratulate me To Yarashan and Baltasar, to Lord Raasharu, Skyshan and Sunjay Naviru, I showed my champion's medallion. It was a great moment made poignant only by Asaru's absence. But Maram's hand thumping on my back and the deep quiet of Estrella's dark eyes gave me to hope that I would fulfill all my dreams, and soon.

Chapter 14

I spent most of the next day in my tent with Asaru, tending his wound and recounting the events of the tournament, especially the sword competition which he had not been able to watch. With Master Juwain filling his torn body with the green gelstei's magic light, he seemed to gain strength every hour. By the time the following morning dawned clear and bright, Master Juwain felt confident of my brother's recovery.

'I've done all I can for Asaru,' he said to me as he took me outside. 'Now he'll have to heal of his own light — and by the One's grace.'

'Thank you,' I said to him as I looked off at the rising sun.

'And now we should go up to the school. With King Waray's prohibition, it might take many days to search through the thought stones.'

King Waray, even as I had feared, had forbidden Master Juwain to remove any artifact from the Brotherhood's sanctuary.

'We don't have many days,' I said to him. 'We should leave for Tria as soon as we can.'

With time pressing at us, Master Juwain and five others of his Brotherhood organized a little expedition to reopen their school in the hills above Nar. The Guardians and I joined them, for it seemed certain that the Lightstone would be needed to open any gelstei Master Juwain might find. To our numbers was added a company of Taron knights under the command of a Lord Evar. They would escort us to the school and make certain that King Waray's wishes were obeyed.

And so later that day we left Yarashan, Lord Harsha, Behira and Estrella behind with Asaru, and we rode out from the Tournament Grounds. With the fifty Taroners in the lead, we made our way through the smoky Smithy District up into the green hills overlooking the city. The Brotherhood school — a collection of old stone buildings spread out across the top of one of these broad hills — rose up before us as if the very bones of the earth had been exposed by wind and weather and the relentless wear of time. I liked the feeling of this ancient site. As with other Brotherhood schools, there was a quiet magnificence here and a harmony with heaven and earth that suggested an eternal quest for mysteries. The library formed the center part of the Brother's sanctuary. It was fronted by perfectly proportioned columns beyond which loomed its great wooden doors. Lord Evar, a tall man almost as gaunt and grim as King Sandarkan, drew forth a great iron key and made a show of formally unlocking these ancient doors.

While the five other masters went off to attend to various duties and the Guardians stood watch before the doors, Master Juwain showed Maram and me into the library. It was nothing so grand as the immense Library of Khaisham and collection of books that had perished in flames. But with its many aisles and shelves of musty, leather-bound volumes and manuscripts resting in the quiet beneath its great dome, I guessed that it held more books than all of Silvassu. Along its curved walls were many cabinets containing relics that the Brothers had rescued over the ages. Master Juwain, with a key that a Master Tavian had given him, approached one of these cabinets and unlocked one of its long, flat drawers. He slid it out halfway to reveal many opalescent stones which rested in pockets scooped into the wood. In front of each pocket was inscribed a number. Each stone ran with shifting colors that ranged from ruby to bright violet; each of them seemed nearly identical to the stone that Master Juwain had opened in my father's castle and which he now drew forth.

'Do you see?' he told Maram and me as he turned the stone between his fingers. 'It's as I said: there were too many to remove to Mesh.'

I looked deeper into the drawer and saw that there were ten rows of ten stones — or should have been, for near the back of the drawer, one stone was missing from the ninth row.

'But how did you choose this stone?' Maram asked him.

'By chance,' Master Juwain said. He tapped his finger against the three drawers below the opened one. 'These, too, contain gelstei believed to hold knowledge of the Lightstone. 1 had to pick one of them and test it.'

'Four hundred stones,' I said, shaking my head.

'Three hundred and fifty-three, to be precise,' Master Juwain told me. 'The fourth drawer is only half full.'

'Even so, to open and read all of them would be like reading as many books, wouldn't it?'

'Yes, but it may be that the knowledge in the stones is indexed and cross-referenced, as in the books of the better libraries. If so, then I might be able to follow a stream of knowledge to the: one we seek.'

'Any knowledge about the Lightstone, you should seek,' I said to him. 'About the Maitreya. Now, if you will, please begin.'

As in the great hall of my father's castle, Master Juwain used his varistei to prepare his head and heart for the task before him. Then I brought forth the Lightstone. Master Juwain set his thought stone back into its place in the drawer and removed another one. His gnarled fingers squeezed it tightly as he held it before the Lightstone.