Lord of Lies (81 page)

I spent those days of waiting in prowling about the castle and discussing the enemy's strengths and weaknesses with Sunjay Naviru and the Guardians, as well as with Sar Vikan, Sar Araj, Sar Jovan and the other captains in charge of the castle's defenses. Five companies of knights and warriors my father had left behind to man the battlements. Some thought that these were too many, that my father could have made better use of them on the field facing the Sakayans spear to spear and shield to shield. Others argued that they were too few. Whenever I walked through the wards and beheld the mothers reassuring their children that everything would be all right, it seemed that ten thousand warriors lined up along the walls could not be enough to protect Mesh's greatest treasure.

On the evening of the fourteenth, I took my dinner in the great hall with my mother and grandmother, and with Lord Rathald and his family, who shared our table. Lord Tomavar's young wife, Vareva, joined us, too. We had fresh lamb that night, all bloody and red the way we Meshians liked it. There were peas and mashed potatoes, as well, and blueberries with cream. It seemed that it might be the last such feast we would have, for everyone was saying that the battle would begin the next day. But Vareva hardly touched her meal. She was only twenty-three and beautiful, even for a Valari, with shiny, sable hair, ivory skin and eyes so large and full of light that people would find excuses to engage her in conversation just so that they might look upon her. It was something of a scandal that Lord Tomavar had married such a young woman after Vareva's husband had fallen at the battle of the Red Mountain. But it seemed that both of them had married for love. Lord Tomavar, more than once, had endured the laughter of his former rivals when they had caught him picking wildflowers for Vareva to put in her hair. And Vareva, more than once, had been heard to say: 'What do I care if my husband is older than I when he has the hands of a sculptor and the soul of an angel?' It was Vareva who helped me understand how hard it was on the women left behind when their men went off to battle.

When I told her that she should try to eat and gather her strength, she pressed her palm into her belly and said to me, 'Lord Valashu, you were gone on your first journey for how long? Half a year?'

'Yes,' I told her, 'that's right.'

'And on how many of those days were you close to death? Thirty? Sixty?'

'Perhaps,' I said.

Vareva looked down the table at my mother, who had piped between bites of blueberries. And she told me, 'Your mother died, a little, every day that you were gone. And a thousand times every night.'

That night I could not sleep for worrying what the next day might bring to my brothers and countrymen. A messenger from my father had informed me earlier that our army had set up on good ground below the Kurash River, near the village of Balvalam only five miles from the castle. There, on the morrow, on the Culhadosh Commons where only a week before many sheep had grazed on its acres of grass, the warriors of Mesh would stand and bleed the ground red with the blood of our enemies - either that or die themselves.

The ides of Ioj dawned clear and bright with the last of summer's warmth. I was up early, and I put on my battle armor in the quiet of Yarashan's room. As the roosters in their coops gave call, I mounted the stairs to the Swan Tower and stood in the crenel between two thick merlons gazing out at the countryside beyond Silvassu. The warriors stationed there did not speak to me. I shielded my eyes against the sun's fiery glister as it rose over the mountains to the east. The fields and forests below the Kurash were shrouded in haze and seemed as peaceful as a meadowlark singing its morning song. But I knew that only five miles away, obscured by green hills and a swathe of woods, my father's army would be marching out of its camp and lining up to face the hordes of men that Morjin had summoned out of Galda and Argattha.

I listened for the booming of the great kettle drums, but Culhadosh Commons was too far away, and the pounding of blood in my ears was too loud. The streets and yards of Silvassu below were quiet, and so were the houses, for my people had deserted the city to take refuge in the castle or in the mountains to the west. I listened for the sound of silver bells fastened to the ankles of my father's warriors and jangling out into the stillness of the morning. But all I could hear was the squealing of a pig being slaughtered, the sawing of wood, and hammers beating against ringing iron in the shops off the middle ward as the casde awakened and people went about their business. The glowing charcoal of their cooking fires sent plumes of dark smoke into the air. Along the battlements, my warriors stood ready to light fires of their own, beneath cauldrons of oil or sand, should the enemy appear and attack the castle. I leaned out over the crenel and breathed in deeply; my nostrils and throat burned as I recalled the smell of a battlefield's blood that could drive both men and beasts mad. I kept gazing off toward the Culhadosh Commons. The land grew greener and brighter as the sun rose higher in the sky. The air began to heat up; so did the steel plates reinforcing the shoulders of my armor. Sweat slicked my skin down my sides and stung my eyes.

And then, out of the east, a rider appeared. I squinted, trying to make out the details of his tiny form as he made his way up the River Road toward the castle. He drew closer. Just as he entered Silvassu and the houses blocked my line of sight, I caught a glimpse of his colors-a great blue rose shining out from a gold field. Now that Baltasar was dead, this could only be the charge of Lord Lansar Raasharu.

I nearly flew down the Swan Tower's long spiral of stairs in my haste to know why he had returned to the castle. I ran across the middle ward, dodging around pots of bubbling porridge and boys playing with wooden swords. Maram happened to be taking breakfast there with a woman named Ursa. He followed me as 1 crossed the west ward and then shouted out for the guards in the gate tower to open the sally port set into the locked gates. This they did. I greeted Lansar as his horse galloped across the bridge over the Kurash River.

'Lansar!' I called out as he came to a halt. 'What is it?'

I looked closely at him, to make sure that it really
was
Lansar, that some enemy knight hadn't stripped the surcoat from his dead body and donned it to deceive us. But the same homely and noble face that I had known all of my life looked out from beneath his helm. His dark eyes burned with pain; the gold of his surcoat, I saw, was soaked with blood.

'You're wounded!' I cried out.

'Yes, a Sarni arrow,' he called back. 'But never mind that now. You must be told: your father has fallen.'

As the guards from the gate tower came out and gathered next to Maram behind me, I stood there on the bridge above the river. I could not breathe; I could not move against the agony of the terrible spear that Lansar had thrust into my heart.

'My father is dead,' I whispered. 'My father is dead.' The rushing of the river swept my words away, but not before one of the guards behind me cried out: 'The king is dead!'

From within the gate tower, I heard this dreaded phrase echoing from the stones there, and then I heard shouts from the west ward and deeper inside the castle: 'The king is dead! The king is dead!'

'How?' I asked Lansar. I stood there shaking my head. His sorrowful face was a blur in front of my eyes. 'How ... did he fall?'

'In a charge against the Galdan knights.'

'And the battle?'

'Nearly lost. Asaru is king, now. He sent me to tell you this: you are to ride to the battle, as quickly as you can. Your sword is needed, now.' I drew Alkaladur and pointed it toward the southeast. Its long blade blazed like a streak of molten silver. My eyes burned as the features of the world seemed to form up into a face that I both loathed and longed to behold: the proud, gloating face of Morjin.

'If Asaru needs my sword,' I said, 'he shall have that, and more.'

Lansar forced his lips into a grim smile. 'It will be as it was when you were boys. How often did you play that game where the two of you held the Telemesh Gate alone against a whole battalion of Ishkans?'

I tried to smiled, too, but I could not. I told him, 'You remember things that I had forgotten.'

'I remember the story of how you and a few friends slew nearly a hundred men in Argattha.' Here he looked at Maram. 'Asaru remembers this, too. He has asked that you and Maram join him on the field - with a company of knights.'

I nodded my head, and hurried back into the castle. I called out to a squire to summon Sar Vikan, and to another to prepare Altaru for battle. I raced across the middle ward and into the great hall. Lansar and Maram followed me. Fifty of the Guardians stood on the dais speaking in hushed tones as I cried out, 'Sunjay Naviru! My father is slain, and Asaru is now king! I must go to him immediately! You will take charge of the Guardians!'

Sunjay bowed his head to me, and there was no pride in his new command, only acceptance. 'Who will take charge of the castle?' he asked.

I looked at Lansar, standing tall and grave next to the great pillars that held up the roof. My father, I thought, had trusted no man more. And so I said, 'Lord Raasharu, if he is able.'

Lansar rubbed his bloody side and said, 'I'll have to be.'

I turned to say goodbye to Skyshan of Ki, and I grasped hands with Sar Jarlath. Then I stepped over to the Lightstone. I took the golden cup in my hands and pressed my face against it. I set it back on its stand. Its radiance seared my lips as if I had kissed the sun.

Sar Vikan hurried into the room then. He was a compact, energetic man who was an excellent horseman and quick with his sword. I explained to him what must be. As he went off to assemble the company of knights who would ride with us down to the battlefield, I turned to Maram. He neither protested this dreaded new duty nor bemoaned his fate. He just looked at me with his sorrowful eyes as if it were
his
father who had died. I never loved him so much as I did then.

At last my mother came into the room, leading Nona by the arm. I hugged them both to me. My grandmother stood there in silence stroking my fevered hand. My mother, whose insides had just been ripped out, held herself tall and straight like the queen she was. Her eyes held back a whole ocean of tears. She looked at me as if seeing me for the last time.

'Asaru needs me,' I said to her. 'You know how it has always been between us.'

She bowed her head and pressed her lips to my hand. She clasped it in hers so tightly that the force of her long fingers squeezed mine together, bruising the bones against the silver and diamonds of my ring.

'Please, Mother, don't worry. After the battle is won, I will return to you. I promise.'

'Go then, if you must,' she finally choked out. For a moment, I thought that she wanted to tell me that war was stupid, ugly and evil and that I shouldn't throw my life away against the enemy's swords. But in the end she was Talanu Solaru's daughter and Shavashar Elahad's wife - and a Valari warrior down to her bones. And so she told me, 'Go and slay Morjin, if you can. Avenge your father's death.'

I let go of her hand and rushed out into the middle ward, where Sar Vikan sat on top of his armored warhorse, with a hundred and fifty other knights and their mounts. The women and children there made room for us; the news of my father's death quieted even the most boisterous of boys, who stood in silence gripping their wooden swords as they gazed at me. Squires brought out Maram's horse and Altaru, my huge black stallion, jacketed in steel and digging his great hoof into the ground. I climbed upon him. I checked to make sure that my long lance was secure in its holster. Then I led forth into the west ward, and the castle's gates were thrown open. We pounded across the bridge in a single column of glittering diamonds and heaving horseflesh. So loud was the beat of iron against wood and paving stones that it almost drowned out the clanging of the gates being slammed shut behind us.

Good roads led down from Silvassu to the village of Balvalam. We were to follow them almost the whole way to the battlefield. I had to restrain Altaru from winding himself in a gallop. He must have felt my blood lashing at my veins, for his surging body seemed driven by my terrible urge for haste. Battles could be won or lost in minutes, and this one had been raging for at least an hour. It took us only part of an hour to leave Silvassu's houses far behind us and race through the woods south of the farms along the Kurash. We rode mostly downhill, and that gave us more speed. The trees to the left and right seemed to fly past us. The sky's bright blueness beckoned ahead like the end of a dark tunnel - or rather like a doorway into fire, agony and death

Fire consumed me now. The robe of fire that I called my fate blazed around all my limbs and burned me down to the bone. It maddened me with grief and a raging desire for revenge. My hatred of Morjin, like the kirax in my blood, drove me on and on, whether toward triumph or doom, I almost didn't care.

'Morjin,' I whispered to myself, again and again. 'Morjin, Morjin.' About a mile from Balvalam, we turned off to our left down a path through the woods, for the reports told that the deserted village was held by the enemy. Now we had to make our way more slowly through the oaks that grew across the low hills, and that was a torment. But this shortcut was the only way to reach the Culhadosh Commons quickly. We heard the clamor of the battle a mile away, through the trees. The blaring of horns, the clash of steel against steel, men and horses screaming - it all seemed to merge into a single, terrible sound that shook the very earth.

We came out of the woods just to the north of Balvalam Hill. Some called it the Mare's Hill - no one knew why. Culhadosh Commons spread out east of this grassy prominent two and a half miles of green pasture ending at another great wall of woods. Masses of men thrusting spears and swords at each other covered much of it. I had some good height above the clashing armies, and I could see much of the battlefield. Asaru's knights, just below Balvalam Hill, drove against the more numerous Ikurian horse: a great melee of maces beating against shields, shivered lances and flashing swords that fell against both men and beast. To their left, a slender strand of diamond-clad warriors extended east almost all the way to the woods. These eight battalions of Meshian foot, led by Lord Tanu, were stretched very thin, into only three ranks. They faced much deeper blocks of the enemy all across this long front: ten thousand Galdan heavy infantry trying to break the joint between Asaru's knights and the Meshian line; eight thousand mercenaries to the east of them using their ten ranks of spears to beat against my people's shields; a great swarm of naked Blues ululating their hideous war cries as they swung their axes against steel and flesh. In the very middle of the field, two thousand of the Dragon Guard worked furiously to cut a hole through our center. They were supported to the left by more mercenaries and another great mass of Galdan foot soldiers. On the far left of the field, nearest the woods, the Galdan heavy horse fell against the rest of the Meshian knights. They would have been cut to pieces but for the support of the Sarni warriors, firing arrows point blank into the faces of my countrymen, meeting our terrible kalamas with their sabers and dying themselves. Somewhere in this haze of glittering diamonds, steel and brightly colored blazons, my father had fallen. Lord Avijan would be leading our knights now, or perhaps Lord Harsha, if they hadn't fallen, too.