'Hold now!'
An arrow, shot from behind the Ishkans' ranks, whistled past my ear. Then I heard one of the Ishkans shout, 'It's the Elahad – back from the dead!'
Many men were now giving voice to their amazement. I recog nized Lord Harsha's gruff old voice booming out above others of the knights grouped around my father,
'They've returned! The questers have returned! The Lightstone has been found!'
Suddenly the trumpets stopped blowing and the drums fell silent. The captains calling out the cadences up and down the lines gave the order for a halt. The silver bells bound around the warriors' legs ceased their eerie jingling as the twenty thousand men along the Ishkan and Meshian lines drew up waiting to see what their kings would next command.
I stopped Altaru at the middle of the field. Master Juwain and Maram joined me there. The Lightstone was now like the sun itself in my hand. It was a call for a truce, the like of which hadn't been seen among the Valari for three thousand years.
My father, along with Lansar Raasharu, Lord Tomavar, Lord Harsha and several other lords and master knights, was the first to ride toward us beneath a fluttering white flag. A few moments later, King Hadaru gathered up his most trusted lords and called for one of his squires to hold up a white flag as well. Then he, too, led his men slowly toward us. It was not quite the thundering charge that either the Meshian knights or the Ishkans had anticipated.
'Stop the battle, you said!' Maram muttered at me, holding his hand to his chest.
'Stop my heart, I say!'
My father had signaled for Asaru to join the parlay; now he broke from the ranks to the east down by the river and urged his dark brown stallion across the field. It took him only a few minutes to canter across the half mile that separated us. As he drew closer and the Lightstone's radiance showed the long, hawk's nose and the noble face that I had nearly given up hope of seeing again, my heart soared and tears filled my eyes.
Then my father, who had drawn up with his lords in a half circle around Master Juwain, Maram and me, called out my name, and his voice touched my soul, 'Sar Valashu, my son – you have returned to us. And not with empty hands.'
He sat straight and grave in his sparkling armor as he regarded the Lightstone with marvel and me even more so. We were like new men to each other. His black eyes, so like Kane's in their brilliance, found mine, and embraced my entire being with gladness and love. In his fierce gaze burned a certainty that he had not lived his life in vain.
As King Hadaru and the Ishkans formed up on the other side of me facing him, my father studied my torn cloak and nearly ragged surcoat.
Then he asked me, 'Where is the shield that I gave you when you set out on your journey?'
'Gone, Sire,' I told him. 'Consumed in dragon fire.'
At this, even the greatest lords of both Ishka and Mesh gasped out their amazement as if they were still unbloodied boys. They all pressed closer. No one seemed to know if what I had said should be taken literally.
'Dragon fire, is it? King Hadaru said. He sat all bearlike and irritable on top of his huge horse as he looked at me skeptically. His great beak of a nose pointed straight at me as if threatening to pry out the truth. 'And where did you fight this dragon?'
'In Argttha,' I said.
This name, dreadful and ancient, loosed in the lords another round gasps and cries.
All their eyes now lifted up and fixed on the golden cup still pouring forth its fight from above my hand. 'It was in Argattha,' Maram said, 'that we found the Lightstone.' Prince Salmelu nudging his horse closer to his father, held his hand covering his eyes as he shook his head. The scar running down the side of his race to his weak chin burned a goldish red. Then he tore his gaze from the Lightstone.
His cold, dark eyes fell upon me in challenge. He looked at me with a great hate that had only grown in poisonousness during the months since I had wounded him in our duel.
'Is it your claim, then,' he said to me in a bitter voice, that this is the Lightstone?'
'There's no claim to me made,' I told him. 'It is, as you can see, the cup that our ancestors brought to earth.'
He pressed his horse a few paces forward as if to get a better look at the cup that I held. His ugly, furtive eyes showed but little of its light. 'And you claim to have entered the forbidden city and brought forth this cup?' Salmelu asked me.
'In fulfillment of our quest yes,' I said to him.
'What proofs can you give us, then?' he called out to me. 'Why should we believe the word of a man who has dishonored himself in fighting duels that he didn't have the courage to finish?'
Despite my resolve to keep a cool head, I suddenly found myself gripping Alkaladur's hilt. And Salmelu moving slightly more slowly due to the wounds I had cut into his arms and chest, curled his fingers around his kalama.
'Val,' Master Juwain reminded me with an urgent whisper, 'If you truly wish to stop this battle, this is no place for pride.' 'Perhaps not pride,' I. told him, 'but certainly honor.' Then I fought to turn away from the ever- beckoning and burning black pool of hatred that would conume me if I let it, my father's clear voke rang out. 'Sar Valaahu, on this day no knight on all of Ea has more honor than you.'
His words washed through me like a thrill of cold water. I suddenly let go of my sword. But my father's praise only inflamed Salmelu and deepened his spite. And so, before two kings and the assembled lords of Ishka and Mesh with the thousands of warriors of two armies waiting in their lines and looking on, he sneered at me, saying,
'And still you lack the courage to test whether the swordstroke that cut me so dishonorably was skill or only evil luck!'
I took a deep breath and said, 'We haven't journeyed to the end of Ea and returned here today to make more tests – only to tell of what we've seen.'
I informed the assembled lords then of the battle for Surrapam and the conquest of Yarkona by Count Ulanu and his dreadful Blues. I spoke of the armed might that Morjin was assembling behind the rocky shield of Skartaru. And then I called for a peace between Ishka and Mesh. I said that the Valari must now join together and renounce our petty squabbles, duels and formal combats. For someday Morjin would recover from the wound that I had dealt him. And someday we would have to fight a war without rules or mercy, a terrible war to determine the fate of the world – and perhaps much else.
'A great scryer named Atara Ars Narmada has told that we can die bravely as Ishkans and Meshians,' I called out. 'Or live as Valari.'
Salmelu nudged his horse a step closer as he pointed at the Lightstone. He said,
'And still Sar Valashu will say anything to avoid battle. How should we believe anything of what he has told us? How do we know that this is really the cup of our ancestors and not just one of the False Lightstones told of in the ancient chronicles?
Or even some glowstone gilded over to fool us?'
Truly, a poisonous serpent was Salmelu. And the time had come to pull his fangs.
'Those who serve the Lord of Lies,' I said to him, 'will hear lies in the truth that others tell.'
As Salmelu froze in a hateful stare, all the Ishkan lords except King Hadaru grabbed at the hilts of their swords. He sat beneath the white flag held by his squire, looking at Salmelu and the others as if to remind them that we had gathered here in sacred truce. Then he turned toward me. In a deathly calm voice, he asked, 'Do you accuse my son of treachery?'
'Treachery, yes, and more,' I said. I looked straight into Salmelu's black, boiling eyes. 'It was he who shot the poison arrow at me in the woods. He is an assassin, sent by the Red Dragon to -'
I had expected that Salmelu might not be able to bear the shame of his iniquity. And so I was prepared for him to whip free his sword and deliver an underhanded cut at me. But at the last moment even as he screamed and spurred his horse straight at me, I was seized within sudden premonition that if I drew forth Alkaladur to defend myself, I would touch off the very battle that I had come here to prevent. 'Damn you, Elahad!' he screamed at me again.
He aimed his kalama in a silvery flash at my hand holding the Lightstone; its razor-sharp edge easily would have cleaved off my arm. But I suddenly gripped the cup tightly and turned it into the plane of his swordstroke. The
