Lord of Lies

In truth, although the battle had cost us dearly, I had learned in my bones a great and agonizing lesson: that the only way the Valari could defeat the Sarni on the steppe was with the help of other Sarni.

Later that morning, when we took a break by the river to water the horses, I rode up to Atara and spoke of this. We found a place of privacy beneath a gnarly old cottonwood, and I remarked the wonder of our two peoples riding as one, I asked her if it was possible that her grandfather, Sajagax, might be persuaded to attend the conclave in Tria. For if Morjin could behold the greatest Sarni chieftain sitting peacefully at table with the sovereigns of the Free Kingdoms, then he might truly fear an alliance.

'Sajagax detests cities,' she said to me, 'but it is possible.'

'Is it likely?' I asked her. 'Have you seen this, then?'

'I mustn't speak to you any more about what I have or haven't seen.'

'But there's so much that I must know,' I said to her. 'This prophecy of Kasandra's. What did she mean that a man with no face would show me my own? And that Estrella would show me the Maitreya?'

Atara fell silent as she leaned back against the deep creases of silver bark. Then she said, 'A scryer shouldn't speak of another scryer's visions.'

'Please, Atara. For Estrella's sake, if not mine. It torments me to have to take her into danger.'

'It can't be helped,' she told me. 'What will be will be. The girl will be with you to the end.'

'To the end of what?' My life? Until I claimed the Lightstone or reached the darkest of places, wherever and whatever that was?

But Atara would say no more; indeed she had told me too much already. For a few minutes, as our hundreds of horses up and down the stony banks of the river lowered their heads and drank up belly-fuls of sweet, clear water, we spoke of other things. She gave me news of our companions on the Quest. Liljana continued to reside in Tria and plot the downfall of Morjin. As head of the Maitriche Telu, she was gathering Sisters from all across Ea to their secret sanctuary there. And against thousands of years of tradition, she had begun to instruct Daj in their witches' ways. The little boy that we had rescued out of Argattha had flourished under Liljana's care. His starved body had filled out from the nourishing foods that Liljana cooked him; and his starved mind had filled up with knowledge that the Maitriche Telu had preserved and kept secret ever since the Age of the Mother.

'And what of Kane?' I asked.

'Kane left Tria in great urgency five months ago.'

'Business with this Black Brotherhood of his?'

'I don't know — he wouldn't say.'

'Did he say when he might return?'

'I don't know that either. I hope in time for the conclave.'

I hoped this, too. There were many questions I wished to ask this strange, immortal man. He might have answers for me that not even the akashic crystal could tell me. It was with the thought of this fantastical gelstei, and him, that I ended our little sojourn by the river and climbed onto my horse. We still had many miles to go.

We reached the lake early that afternoon, cresting a rise to behold an expanse of glittering blue beneath a perfectly clear and deep blue sky. The lake seemed to be many miles wide, but we could not see very far out into it, for a wall of mist rose up from its surface in a thick swathe of gray.

'The Lake of Mists,' Baltasar called out from behind me. 'Surely this must be it.'

Surely it was. At least, that is what the men and women who lived near the lake called it. They were short and thick set with curly black hair and skins nearly as dark as burnt grass. They made their village of little huts hewn of cottonwood; they used the lake's water to irrigate fields won in bitter battle with their hoes against the steppe. It seemed that they grew only one crop: a yellow grain called rushk. Atara called them the Dirt Scrapers; she said that they had come up from the south, perhaps from Uskudar, two thousand years before at the time of the Great Death. The Kurmak allowed them to live here in exchange for a tribute paid in sacks of rushk, which was said to be nearly as sustaining as meat. The Kurmak also protected them from the Adirii and other enemies.

'Ah, they don't seem very grateful of their protectors,' Maram said to me as we rode across the narrow band of their fields. Several of the lake men, stripped to the waist and sweating in the sun, paused in their labor to watch the Manslayers ride past them. They glared at these warrior women with their dark eyes and gripped their hoes as if wishing they might put their blades into the Manslayers instead of hacking at weeds in their fields.

Some of these people, to our good fortune, did not scrape dirt at all, but were fishermen. Following the Manslayers, we rode straight down to lake's shore where an old man bent over caulking his beached boat. The joints of his hands were swollen with a lifetime of grinding work, and were much-scarred — probably from the many fishhooks that had caught in them. Karimah, quirt in hand, demanded his name and he said that he was called Tembom.

'Well, Tembom,' she told him, 'we have need to borrow your boat for the day, and perhaps more.'

Tembom straightened up his creaky body and stared at me — and the men that I led — as if he had never seen Valari knights before, which he undoubtedly hadn't.

'But why would you need my boat, Mistress?' he asked her.

'Why would you ask me why?' Karimah said, snapping the quirt against her hand.

While the Manslayers edged the shore and sat haughtily on their horses and my knights waited behind me to see what would transpire, Tembom looked out at the lake's quiet blue waters and the mist that rose up from it perhaps a mile away. He said, 'If it's fish you want, we have a good catch of carp, Mistress.'

Karimah's blue eyes flashed at him and she snapped, 'My lady and her friends are going fishing after more than carp. Now we'll need your boat.'

I, of course, had told Karimah nothing of my purpose in seeking a boat, and neither had Atara. But Karimah must have guessed much, for her eyes were like glittering gelstei as she stared out into the lake.

Maram liked boats even less than I did, and he dismounted to come up close and take a better look at this one. 'Well, she seems sturdy enough to hold up even if we're lost in that mist for a few hours.'

Tembom's old eyes widened with alarm. 'But my lord, we never sail out that far. The mist is cursed.'

'How so?'

'It's said that any who sail into it do not return.'

'Cursed, you say? But when was the last time anyone fished there?'

'I don't know. Not in my lifetime or that of my father.'

Tembom stared out toward the center of the lake and shuddered. 'When I was a boy, my uncle, Jarom, said that he didn't care about curses. On a day as peaceful as this, he rowed into the mist gland it ate him alive, along with his boat.'

He rested his hand on the boat's rails as he might the head of a child. I fished a few gold coins from my purse and handed them to him, saying, 'If we don't return, use these to buy another boat.'

Karimah edged her horse right up to the boat, and whipped her leather quirt against it with a quick crack. She said to me, This man should not receive gold for rendering a rightful service.'

'He owes me no service,' I said to her. 'In any case, he must be indemnified against the chance that his boat will be lost.'

'But what of the chances we Kurmak take in protecting him? Hai — pay your gold coins to us, I say.'

But I had already given gold to Trahadak the Elder for safe passage across the Kurmak's country, and I wasn't ready to surrender up any more. Then Atara took Karimah aside to confer with her for a few moments. And Karimah said to me, 'Very well, then, we'll wait here with your Valari until you return. But please see that you do return. Atara is more precious to me than any gold.'

And with that she smiled as she stroked Atara's long hair. It seemed that she could tender little kindnesses to those she loved as happily as she could put her knife or her arrows into her enemies.

I lost no time in seeing to it that the boat was emptied of its nets, gaffs and other fishing gear. We stowed beneath its weathered seats enough supplies for several days. Then I took the Lightstone from Sar Ianashu and stood on the sandy beach with Lord Raasharu, Baltasar, Lord Harsha and others who were close to my heart.

'You will be in command,' I said to Baltasar. 'Take care that none of the Guardians speaks with Karimah's women.'

'Guardians', Baltasar huffed out. 'What are we to guard then, if you take the