Lord of Lies

would you ride with so many armed knights into my domain?'

I looked about us where the Guardians were finishing breakfast or busy folding up their tents. Sunjay Naviru and Skyshan of Ki — and others — kept a close watch on Duke Malatam's knights as they, too, worked at their tough, dried meat.

'Please, young lord,' Duke Malatam said. 'Won't you allow an old and faithful quester of the Lightstone a glimpse of it once before he dies?'

He sat all hopeful and still as his medallion reflected the sun's bright rays into my eyes. How could 1 refuse such a heartfelt plea? He might be both conceited and avid for glory, but hadn't the Lightstone been made precisely to cure men of such ills? 'Sar Ianashu!' I called out This tough young knight came hurrying over to us. I asked him to bring forth the Lightstorte, and this he did. 'Splendid!' Duke Malatam cried out as Sar Ianashu held up the golden cup. It seemed almost as bright as the sun. 'May I hold it?'

I hesitated a long moment as I looked upon Sar lanashu's noble face. If I could allow a knight of Ishka to hold the Lightstone, why not a great duke of Alonia who had once vowed to seek it unless illness, wounds or death struck him down first — and above all, to seek it for all of Ea and not himself?

I nodded at Sar Ianashu, and he placed the Lightstone into the Duke's moist little hands. He sat staring at it as if peering through a portal to a finer and more beautiful world. 'Splendid, splendid — I've never seen anything so splendid. I would have died if only I could have gained this to bring others light. And I'd die right now, a thousand times, if only I could see this used to undo the Dragon's darkness. Isn't this what the Cup of Heaven is for? It's for the Shining One, who would give his life that others might have greater life. This is written in the Saganom Elu — I'm an educated man, and I know. And I know that he will come forth. He will be the bravest of men, the best of men. A Lord of Battles, perhaps. A master of war who will make war against the Great Darkness itself.'

He chattered on and on like the meadowlarks in the pasture singing their morning songs. But the morning was quickly passing, and soon the little yellow-breasted birds would fall silent. And soon we must take to the road again if we were to bring the Lightstone into Tria before it was too late

And so I gently pried the cup from Duke Malatam's sweating hands. I gave it back to Sar Ianashu. The Duke had the dazed look of one who has been struck on the helmet by a mace. I said to him, 'Thank you for the pleasure of your company, but now we really must be on our way.'

Duke Malatam slowly came to his senses. He then offered to supply us with fresh meat, flour and other provisions. I was tempted to top off our saddlebags with this food. But as we would have to return to Tiamar and spend half the day going about the butchers and millers to do this, I politely declined.

'Very well, then, Lord Valashu,' Duke Malatam said to me. After we had finished the last work of breaking camp, we all stood by our horses. The Duke clasped my hand in his and told me, 'May you go with the One.'

I wished him well, too, and mounted Altaru. Estrella, Maram, Atara and my other friends, with the Guardians, formed up behind me. Ahead, Sajagax and his blond warriors were already waiting on the road. The Kurmak nudged their horses to a quick walk, and so did we. Duke Malatam led his thirty knights in the opposite direction, back toward Tiamar.

We rode in silence for most of two miles as the air began heating up and our horses' hooves rattled the worn paving stones of the road. I looked past the green, checkerboard country behind us, and the Duke and his knights were nowhere to be seen. Ahead of us, the road seemed to curve north and west through a steaming land of canals and farms.

Sajagax confirmed this a few minutes later when he rode back to have a word with me. He pulled at the gold wire twining his mustache and said, 'I remember this from my last journey through this country, more than twenty years ago now. The kradaks built their cursed road as close to the river as they could. But it bends back to the west ahead of us, to avoid the hills to the north. If we rode straight toward the northwest, we could cut across this bend — and cut a few miles from our journey.'

He left it unsaid that we could also leave the cultivated strip along the river for the more open land of the Wendrush.

Lord Harsha's single eye surveyed the rolling country to the left of us, and he said, 'Duke Malatam seemed too keen to delay us. It won't hurt for us to take a path that he might not anticipate.'

'All right,' I said, agreeing to this proposal. 'Let us then keep a watch behind us as well as ahead.'

And so we left the road. Sajagax, almost gleefully, led the way through a cabbage field, and he didn't care if his warriors' horses kicked to pieces what the Sarni considered to be a stinking vegetable. After a few miles of trampling black dirt and splashing through shallow canals, the farms gave out, and we came to the open steppe. Even I breathed a sigh of happiness at the sight of the sea of grass opening before us.

But we had not ventured very far out upon it when a familiar feeling began eating at my spine. A sharp sensation like pinpricks horripilated the flesls at the back of my neck. I knew, with a sudden dread, that someone was following me.

Sajagax seemed to know this, too. Perhaps he possessed something of my gift of valarda. Perhaps the cries of the hawks above us alerted him to approaching dangers or the wind carried faint scents to his nostrils, for more than once he paused and sniffed the air behind him as might an old lion. His clear blue eyes fixed on me as I too often turned in my saddle to look across the undulating acres of grass behind us. He sent scouts to ride back along the line of our route. And then, once again, he urged his horse back to me and my columns of Valari knights. He suggested that we ride off a dozen yards so that we might confer together.

'You're as nervous as antelope,' he said to me as we walked our horses parallel to the columns of Guardians. 'I haven't seen you like this.'

'We're being followed,' I said to him. 'By whom remains uncertain.'

Sajagax nodded his head and glanced behind us. 'I think it is Duke Malatam. To behold the Lightstone is to love it like life itself, but he loved it more than anyone should, if you know what I mean.'

I stopped for a moment and tried to feel through Altaru's sturdy legs for any shaking of the earth; I looked behind us for any sign of a dust plume rising into the clear blue sky. To Sajagax, I said, 'Do you ever grow tired of battle?'

Sajagax seemed to swell like a bellows ready to deliver a blast of air into a furnace. 'Ask me if I grow tired of living. Should I want to give up that which stirs the greatest life within me? I love battle as all men should: as the sun loves the world, as a man does a woman.'

At this, I looked off at Atara riding next to Karimah as the columns of my knights passed by us. The beating of my heart was a deep pain inside me. Sajagax followed the line of my eyes, and he breathed out a heavy sigh.

'Sometimes I do grow tired,' he admitted. For a moment he sat slumped on his horse, deflated and spent like an old man. 'There's been so much slaughter. Eleven of my sons. Seventeen grandsons. My first wife.'

'Isn't Freyara your first wife?'

'No, when I was a young man like you, I took a bride from the Haukut clan. Her name was Aliaqa.'

Sajagax wiped the sweat stinging his eyes, and a great sadness came over him.

'Was she killed in battle, then?'

'No, a Marituk warrior stole her from my tent,' He sighed again and then forced himself to sit up straight as a red rage began building inside him. 'Torok was his name. I swam the Poru and then followed his track a hundred miles to where his family had their camp. Four days I spent waiting for my moment. And then I took my Aliaqa back.'

'And Torok, his family — they didn't follow you?'

'No, I had driven off their horses. But when Torok saw me riding off with Aliaqa, he fired an arrow into her back. To spite me. To take from me my greatest treasure. He could have fired his arrow at me.'

I reached out and clasped his hard hand in mine. Tears filled his eyes. He squeezed back with such a fierce grip that I feared my hand might break.

'After I gave Aliaqa back to the world,' he continued, 'I waited four more days. I returned to their camp. When everyone was sleeping, I cut through their tent, which belonged to Torok's brother. His name I never learned, but I put my sword through him first. I woke up Torok so that he knew who it was that killed him. The noise woke