Lord of Lies

long as the masts of a ship, were planted in the ground as the main supports. The guy ropes, I saw, were braided silk. The entire floor was lined with rich and intricate carpets, mostly of blue and gold, for Sajagax was fond of these colors. I looked for a chair or any furniture that might be construed as a throne. But Sajagax required nothing of the sort; indeed he had as much disdain chairs and other decadances as did my father. With a painful stiffness due to many old wounds, he sat down against aground of cushions near the tent's center. His captains sat in a half-circle to his right, while Maram, Lord Harsha, Lord Raasharu Baltasar, Sunjay, Atara and I took our places to his left. Other prominent Kurmak warriors sat in similar circles throughout the tent, as did the rest of the Guardians. The question arose of what to do with Master Juwain, for he bore no weapon and was therefore counted no warrior. Tringax, a young man with bellicose blue eyes, suggested that Master Juwain should dine with the women and children. But I stared at him coldly, and informed him that Master Juwain had stood by my side the length and breadth of Ea and had fought his way into Argattha, a place that even the boldest of the Kurmak warriors might not dare to go. In the end, Tringax relented, and Sajagax invited Master Juwain to sit with us.

The feast began abruptly, with no speeches of welcome or fanfare. The Sarni, given to the extravagant in their possessions, were simple in their taking of food and drink. They cared little for delicacies and not at all for the fine art of cooking. What mattered to them, it seemed, was the abundance of meat. And of bread and beer and bowls of mare's milk, for this is most of what the Sarni consumed. Beautiful young women wearing long silk robes served us legs of lamb, roasted sagosk livers and other steaming victuals on great golden platters. Many of them bore bruises on their faces and on their naked arms, and they were subservient in their manner. Baltasar mistook them for slaves. He was astonished, as I was, when Sajagax told us that they were his newer wives. Sajagax only laughed at our outraged Valari sensibilities. He slapped one of these wives on her rear as he bellowed out, 'What need have we of slaves when we have women?'

Atara, I saw, sat quietly sipping from a goblet of wine as Baltasar and others looked at her. I said to Sajagax, 'But women are the mothers of your children! The mothers of you and all your warriors!'

Sajagax laughed againls he tore off a huge chunk from a lamb's leg with his strong white teeth. 'Yes, and that is what woman are good for.'

'We Valari,' Lord Raasharu said sternly, 'believe that women are meant for much more.'

'Yes, they are good at cooking and gathering sagosk dung, and some of them can even sing.'

Now Baltasar, picking up on his father's reproach, said to Sajagax, 'If a man spoke thusly in the Morning Mountains, he would have to sleep with his sword instead of his wife.'

'Do you fear your women, then?' Sajagax asked. 'You, who are always so fearless in battle?'

'We don't fear them,' Baltasar said. 'But we don't command them, either. Does one command the sun to shine?'

'No, but a man was made to master his women. And women were made to be mastered.'

Sajagax looked down at his great hand, thick with callus and scars along his knuckles. It was then that we learned that a Sarni warriors who refused to beat his wife was called a man without a manhood.

I looked at Atara again and said, ''Some women, it seems, are not so easy to master.'

'Indeed, they are not,' Sajagax said, smiling at his granddaughter, 'That's the beauty of the world, isn't it? Most women are sheep but a few are born to be lionesses.'

'From all you've said, it seems surprising that the lions would let them be.'

'Let them?' Sajagax called out. 'Does one let the sun shine? No one lets a women become a warrior.'

I bowed my head toward Atara, and then glanced at Karimah and three others of their Society who sat with the warriors in another circle. 1 said, 'The Manslayers are few; your warriors are many. Surely you could keep these women picking up dung, if you chose to.'

'Could we? At what price? Have you ever tried to make a Manslayer pick up dung. Lord Valashu?'

I admitted that I had not. And then Sajagax continued, 'If we tried to do this, then we would have to sleep with our swords at the ready — and our bows and arrows, too.'

I smiled at him and said, 'Do you fear your women, then?'

Sajagax laughed heartily and clapped me on my shoulder to acknowledge that I had scored a point in this verbal jousting that the Sarni relished. And he said to me, 'The Manslayers are warriors. They claim for themselves, out of strength, the right to kill. Thus they make others fear them. They fear death not. Thus they are twice feared. They escape from having to pick up dung by their willingness to die and to deal death. And in this, as with all warriors, they claim their freedom.'

In his rough, old voice I heard echoes of the words that Morjin had written to me. I said to him, 'Then is it only the strong who can be free?'

He took a long drink if wine from his goblet as he nodded his head. 'That too, is the beauty of the world, its terrible beauty The strong do as they will; the weak do as they must.'

For a few moments I thought about this as he waited to see what I would say. Finally I spoke, and the answer I gave him was what I might have told Morjin himself if he were sitting with us.

'It is the will of those who are truly strong,' I said, 'to protect the weak. They fear neither death nor other men. Only being unkind.'

But kindness among the Sarni, as I saw, was regarded less a virtue than a boon of the victor toward the vanquished. Their warriors were even more brutal with each other than with their women. Their continual verbal sparring often turned violent; twice during the feast, two of Sajagax's men came to blows, standing and smashing at each other's faces with their fists. Such unseemly displays would never occur in Valari society without swords being drawn in a duel to the death. I watched in amazement as these yellow-haired barbarians quickly spent their fury and then returned to their places, eyeing each other malevolently. They bore each other deep grudges in this testing of their manhood. They, and all who witnessed their combat, would remember who had bested whom. And so it went all their lives. The strongest of them became captains over warriors and chieftains over clan or tribe. In their bluffing and bullying of each other, I better understood a Sarni saying that Atara had told me earlier:

'Every tribe against every tribe; every clan against the tribe; every family against the clan; every man against his family. And all the tribes against the kradak.'

The Sarni's enmity for me and my men boiled barely beneath the surface like a geyser that might erupt at any moment Sajagax's warriors stared at the glittering armor of my knights as if counting the diamonds there and mentally adding these white gems to their treasure chests. So it had gone for ages. How many times had the Sarni invaded the Morning Mountains hoping to seize our vital mineral wealth? No other people had made war against the Valari so often or with such savagery. And now, here in Sajagax's tent, the Kurmak fired different kinds of arrows at us. Fell words flew from the lips of these wild warriors and stung my men like so many barbs. I overheard one warrior at a nearby circle taunting Sar Hannu of Anjo: 'You look familiar. Weren't you one of the knights who fled from my company at the Battle of the Crooked Field?'

This, I told myself, was only more testing; in anticipation of this, I had issued strict orders that my men should not trade insult for insult, nor under any circumstances draw their swords. Lord Raasharu and my other counselors feared that Sajagax might use such an inci-dent to provoke a battle — and then after I and ail the Guardians lay slaughtered on Sajagax's blood-drenched carpets, Sajagax would claim the Lightstone for himself.

When at last the time for singing and serious drinking was at hand, Sajagax called to see the Lightstone. Sar Elkald of Taron stood and came over to hand the golden cup to me. And then I gave it to Sajagax to hold.

'Beautiful,' Sajagax said as his eyes lit up. The cup seemed lost in his huge hand. 'But so small.'

His hot breath steamed out into the even hotter air of his tent. I could see his image, all fierce with longing, reflected from the numerous golden sheets hung from the tent's walls. Threads of gold showed in the tapestries also displayed there, and the tent's great poles likewise were sheathed with this most precious of metals. So rich were these furnishings, it made one wonder what was left to lock away in Sajagax's treasury.

'So this is the true gold,' he said to me as he gazed at the cup. 'Let us hear the story of how you gained it.'

Maram, his face flushed with wine, was only too happy to stand and give an account of the great Quest. He told Sajagax and the Kurmak warriors of all our battles, paying particular attention to his heroics at Khaisham and