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‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I overheard Count Dario claiming that you are really Alonian.’
‘Why, that’s not true! My grandmother was the daughter of the old Baron Monteer of Iviendenhall before King Kiritan’s father conquered it and added it to his realm. Does that make me Alonian?’
‘They’re saying other things, too. About the Maitreya.’
Maram fell silent as my grandmother squeezed his arm and Master Juwain looked at me. Then Master Juwain rubbed the back of his bald head and asked Jasmina, ‘And what are they saying about the Shining One?’
‘That he has almost certainly been found. In a village near Adavam. They say that he’s the son of a blacksmith and has made miracles: healing the blind and turning lead into gold.’
Adavam, I remembered, lay only fifty miles from Tria, and was clearly within the bounds of Old Alonia.
‘But have these miracles been verified?’ Master Juwain asked. ‘In Galda, before it fell, came stories of a shepherd removing growths from people’s bodies with his bare hands. We sent Brother Alexander to investigate. It turned out that the shepherd was showing his poor patients sheep offal through sleight of hand.’
Jasmina grimaced as if such trickery disgusted her. Then she said, ‘Who can trust the Galdans? Or the Alonians? It seems to me more likely that the Maitreya would be one of those who found the Lightstone.’
Here she smiled at Maram, and again his face flushed bright red. He coughed out, ‘No, no – I’m no Maitreya! Do diamonds bleed? Can you make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?’
‘Only in Alonia,’ Jasmina said with a little laugh. Then she bowed her head to me and laid her hand on my arm. ‘But if not Sar Maram, then perhaps you, Lord Valashu. Many are saying this, that you were the first to touch the golden cup, and much of its light passed into you.’
Maram removed Jasmina’s hand from my arm and stood holding her questing fingers in his. ‘Val, the Maitreya? No, no – he can’t be!’
‘But why not?’
‘Why, ah, because he just can’t’. Maram paused to take a deep breath as he looked at me. ‘The one you speak of, my lady, would be more like the wind than the mountains and rivers over which it blows. He would have fire in his veins, not blood. And it would be a cold fire, I think, like that of the stars. Too pure, too … evanescent. How could such a one ever bring himself to slay his enemies or love a woman? I’ve seen Val’s blood, you know, too many times, too bad. It’s as red and hot as mine.’
At that moment, Maram’s face fell rigid, and he dropped Jasmina’s hand as if it were a hot coal. I turned to see Lord Harsha and Behira enter the hall. They made their way straight toward us with surprising speed, considering the lameness of Lord Harsha’s smashed leg, which caused him to limp badly. Despite his age, he was still straight and sturdy, and as hard as the rocks in the fields he still plowed with his own hands. A black eye patch stood out against the long white hair that flowed from his square head; his single eye, like a black diamond, gleamed at Maram, upon whom he advanced with his hand gripping the hilt of his kalama.
‘Oh, no!’ Maram muttered. And then, as Lord Harsha and his daughter drew up to us, Maram called out, ‘Good evening, my lord. Behira, I’ve never seen you look so beautiful.’
Behira, who was as plump and pretty as a well-fed swan, was dressed in a white silk gown that failed to conceal her large breasts and even larger hips. Her raven-black hair spilled over her shoulders nearly down to her waist. Her oval face, usually quite pleasant to look at, was now marred by some of the darker passions. I knew her to be generous of heart and sweet as the honey that Maram loved, but she was also quite spirited, and there was within her more than a little of her father’s steel, sharpened to a razor edge.
‘Jasmina,’ she said, ‘has Maram invited you yet to our wedding? We were considering making vows at the end of Soal – what do you think?’
Valari women wield weapons only at times of life and death, but at that moment Behira’s black eyes were daggers that tore Jasmina open. Jasmina allowed that Soal would indeed be a good month for marriage. Then she excused herself and moved off toward a table of young knights.
‘Ah, Behira,’ Maram said as she turned her cutting gaze on him. ‘We were just discussing the Maitreya.’ He coughed into his hand, twice, and then extended it toward Behira as if to present her to me. Then he said, ‘Do you see, Val? Why should one look to the stars when there is such beauty on earth? Do you want heaven? Then I say you’d be more likely to find it in a woman’s kiss – at least a woman such as my beloved.’
‘Here now,’ Lord Harsha said, moving forward between his daughter and Maram. ‘We’ll not speak of that until we’ve spoken of a date. What about Soal, Sar Maram?’
‘Ah, Soal is a good month,’ Maram said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘Of course, Ioj might be even better, with the aspen leaves going gold, or even Valte after the harvest is –’
‘The question must be asked,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘are you looking for a better match than my daughter?’
‘No, no – of course not!’
‘Then why all these flirtations of yours?’
‘My flirtations? Ah, Lord Harsha, you don’t understand – it is they who flirt with me.’
‘Well it must stop.’ Lord Harsha was as blunt as a river stone. ‘Do you wish to wound my daughter’s heart beyond all repair?’
Maram turned to look at Behira, whose bright eyes were fixed upon him. ‘I would rather,’ he said, ‘that my own heart were torn out.’
‘That can be accomplished,’ Lord Harsha said, his fist tightening around the hilt of his sword.
Seeing this, Maram blanched and blurted out, ‘I love Behira!’
‘Perhaps – but how is she to know that?’
‘But Lord Harsha, don’t you see? It is the very extravagance of the attentions of the widows of your realm that is the measure of my love and devotion to your daughter. It is that way with women, isn’t it? That the more a man loves one woman, the more others will see seducing him as a challenge?’
Lord Harsha, who was steady and true of mind, was not especially quick or clever. He stuck to his main point, saying, ‘Then the sooner you are wed, the better. Today is the sixth of Soldru. The sixth of Marud will not be too soon for the wedding. One month, Sar Maram.’
The look in Maram’s eyes just then was that of an animal caught in a trap. He pulled at the collar of his red tunic as if struggling to breathe, then gasped out, ‘One month! But Lord Harsha, with the news I’ve just had and all my duties, that is far too little –’
‘What duties? Trying to outdrink any man in Mesh? And what news are you speaking of?’
Maram’s eyes fell upon me and brightened as if seeing a way out of such sudden – and final – matrimony. He said, ‘Why, the news about Val. Master Juwain believes that he is likely the Maitreya.’
Lord Harsha had a great respect for authority, and great regard for the Brotherhood and Master Juwain. He listened quietly as Master Juwain recounted the evidence cited earlier in the Adami tower. Master Juwain admitted that his hope for me was not yet proven beyond doubt, and he asked Lord Harsha not to speak of my horoscope to anyone. Like a warrior receiving battle orders from his king, Lord Harsha agreed to this. Then he nodded his hoary head toward me, saying, ‘It’s always been clear that there is something remarkable about Val.’
‘Yes, there is,’ Maram said, laying his hand on my shoulder. ‘And that is why, my lord, we should not be too quick to set a date. You see, I’ve allegiance to Val, and who knows where fate might take us if he truly is the Maitreya?’
In his relief in possibly postponing his wedding yet again, and in his pride for me, his big voice boomed out into the hall a little too loudly. It drew the attention of two off-duty Guardians: my friends, Sunjay Naviru and Baltasar Raasharu. They smiled and walked toward us, followed by a tall, dignified man whose long face and white teeth reminded me of a warhorse. This was Lord Lansar Raasharu, Baltasar’s father – and my father’s trusted seneschal. I knew of no warrior braver in battle or more loyal to my family than he. Although the deepest of passions sometimes gloomed his heart, he had resolved to carry himself at all times as if his essentially melancholic nature would never master him.
‘Lord Raasharu!’ I said as he came up to me. ‘Sunjay! Baltasar!’
Lansar Raasharu bowed his head to me, but Sunjay and Baltasar took turns in embracing me. Sunjay was bright of manner and expression, like a shooting star; from his well-formed mouth poured forth a steady stream of friendly words and smiles. Baltasar was a more difficult man. His lively, black eyes spoke of intelligence and restlessness of the soul; his ruddy cheeks gave evidence of his fiery blood. He was quick to take insult and even quicker to forgive – as quick as he was to love and be loved. All my life, it seemed, he had been like a seventh brother to me. He had all of Asaru’s grace and Karshur’s strength of purpose; while his quicksilver laughter reminded me of Jonathay, his pride burned hotter than did even Yarashan’s.
After Maram had blurted out the topic of conversation, Baltasar flashed a bright smile at me and said, ‘It was hard enough to get used to calling you “Lord Valashu” – and now it seems you’re to be called “Lord of Light” as well?’
‘Please,’ I told him, ‘it will be enough if you call me “friend”.’
Baltasar’s hand darted out to clasp mine. For a moment, our eyes locked together, and in the light of recognition that passed between us, I relived the Battle of Red Mountain against Waas. On that broken and bloody field, Baltasar had recklessly attacked three knights trying to impale me with their lances – and had taken a grievous wound to his neck in driving them off. His valor had saved my life. After the battle, my father had honored him with the double-diamond ring of a full knight. And his father, the noble Lord Raasharu, had looked upon him as if Baltasar was the great joy of his life. Even as he looked upon him now.
‘All right, friend,’ Baltasar said to me in the warm glow of his father’s countenance. ‘But can it really be true that you’re this Maitreya that everyone is talking about?’
His hand gripped mine more tightly as if trying to squeeze the answer to this question out of me. I squeezed back, not in affirmation, but only to keep him from breaking my finger bones.
‘It’s said,’ Baltasar continued, gazing at me, ‘that the Maitreya will be a bringer of peace. But how can there ever be peace in this world?’
‘There must be peace,’ I told him. ‘Godavanni the Glorious –’
‘Godavanni was High King in an age when people thought that war had ended forever. It’s said that he never lifted his sword against any man. But in the end, Morjin murdered him, and war began again.’
As Baltasar formed the sounds of the Red Dragon’s name, he let go of my hand to touch the gem he wore over his heart. Dangling from a steel chain around his neck was a small stone, blood-red in color like a carnelian. It was called a warder, and it bore the power to deflect poisonous thoughts or curses directed at its wearer. It also rendered one invisible to scryers and mindspeakers; most especially, it was proof against the illusions that the Lord of Lies sent to madden his enemies. As one of the lesser gelstei, it was both powerful and rare, but even so, all of the Guardians wore one.
‘If war can begin,’ I told Baltasar, ‘it can end.’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Never so long as Morjin is left undefeated – all his evil, all his lies.’
‘But evil can’t be vanquished with a sword, Baltasar.’
‘You say that, who have vanquished so many with your sword?’
My hand fell down upon my sword’s hilt, with its diamond pommel and swan-carved hilt of black jade. I swallowed against the pain in my throat as I said, ‘Darkness can’t be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light.’
‘Are these the words of the Lord of Light, then?’
They were, in fact, words that Master Juwain had spoken to me on the night when I had vowed to recover the Lightstone. Now he stood near me beaming his approval that I had taken to heart the deepest of his lessons. Maram, Behira, Lord Harsha and Lord Raasharu – and others – pressed in close to hear what we might say next.
‘You should know, Val,’ Baltasar confided to me, ‘that many are saying the Maitreya would be a great warlord. Like Aramesh. That he would unite the Valari and lead us to victory over the Red Dragon. Then this Age of Light of which you dream might begin.’
Red flames seemed to dance in his eyes as he glanced at the knights and warriors gathered around us. I remembered the words from the Trian Prophecies: ‘He shall be the greatest warrior in the world.’
I said to him, ‘You love war too much, Baltasar.’
‘As I love life itself, dear friend. What else calls to life so deeply as the duty to surrender it in protecting family and friends?’
I might have agreed with him – with the qualification that the Valari were meant to be warriors of the spirit only. But just then, to the sound of trumpets announcing the beginning of the feast, my father, mother and brothers entered the hall from its western portal.
Lord Harsha cried out, ‘The King!’ as hundreds of people turned to watch Shavashar Elahad make his way toward the front of the room where my family’s table was set. My father was a tall man whose black tunic, showing the swan and stars of our house, draped in clean lines about his large and powerful frame. Despite his years, he moved with a flowing grace that even a young knight might envy; his black eyes seemed filled with starlight and blazed with that fearlessness to which all Valari aspired. Many there were who could not bear the brilliance of his gaze and said that he was too hard on men: whether they be his enemies or those who had sworn him allegiance. But many more loved him precisely because he called them to find the best part of themselves and polish their souls until they sparkled like diamonds.
As he and my mother, with my brothers, took their places at table, ten warriors escorting a group of yellow-robed men appeared in the western portal. A silence befell the hall. All eyes turned toward these men, for they were Morjin’s emissaries: the hated Red Priests of the Kallimun. I, and many others, struggled to get a good look at these seven priests who had been locked in their rooms in the keep for the last three days. But the great cowls of their robes hid their faces. The warriors led them to the table next to that of the Alonians. There, scarcely twenty feet from my father’s withering gaze, they were seated.
And then the silence was suddenly broken as one of the knights near me cried out, ‘Must we take meat with them? Send them back to Sakai!’
And then Vikadar of Godhra, one of the fiercest knights in Mesh, shouted, ‘Send them back to the stars!’
His call for the priests to be executed out of hand gained the immediate approval of the more bloodthirsty in the hall. Next to me, Baltasar stood staring at the priests, and I could almost feel the heat of his ire beating through his veins. Many others burned for vengeance as well. But my father cooled the passions running through the hall with a sudden lifting of his hand. His bright eyes caught up Vikadar in reproach to remind him of one of Mesh’s most sacred laws: that anyone who willfully killed an emissary should himself be put to death.
‘It is said,’ my father called out in his strong, clear voice, ‘that these emissaries have been sent by Morjin to sue for peace. Very well – we shall hear what they have to say. But only after we’ve all taken meat.’
This was a signal that everyone still standing should take their seats. While Maram went off to join Lord Harsha and Behira at their table with Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar, Master Juwain made his way toward his fellows of the Brotherhood. Sunjay and Baltasar sat with the other off-duty Guardians in the second tier of tables from the front of the hall. Upon taking my grandmother’s arm in mine, I walked with her to our family’s table where I pulled out her chair next to my father. I sat at the right end of the table next to my brother, Ravar. He had the face of a fox, and his dark, quick eyes flickered from my father to the cowled faces of the Red Priests at their table before us. His sharp and secretive smile reminded me that our father would not be moved by fear of Morjin’s men, which would be the same as admitting to fear of the Red Dragon himself.
It was strange eating our supper beneath the dais on which stood the Lightstone, guarded by thirty Knights of the Swan. Nevertheless, eat we all did: fishes and fowls, joints of mutton and whole suckling pigs roasted brown and sheeny with fat. There were loaves of black barley bread, too, and pies and puddings – and much else. The feast began with talk of war on the Wendrush. A minstrel from Eanna brought rumor that Yarkona had finally fallen, conquered in Morjin’s name by Count Ulanu the Cruel, who had been made that tormented realm’s new king. From the various tables lined up through the hall came the buzz of many voices. Although it was impossible to follow so many streams of conversation, I heard more than one person speak of the Maitreya. Some feared that unless the Shining One came forth soon to lay hands upon the Lightstone, its radiance would fade and it might even turn invisible again. Others, citing verses from the Saganom Elu, gave voice to forebodings of some great disaster that would befall Ea if the Maitreya wasn’t found and united with the golden cup. Too many of those present, I thought, cast quick, longing looks toward me before turning back to their neighbors to speak in hushed tones or taking up knives again to cut their meat.
Finally, after the last bit of gravy had been mopped up with the last crust of bread and every belly was full, brandy and beer were poured, and it came time for the many rounds of toasting. I watched Maram, sitting between Behira and the dour, old Lord Tanu, down glass after glass of thick, black beer. At our table, my family drank with less abandon. Next to me, Ravar nursed his single brandy, while next to him, the dashing Yarashan, who had once boasted that he could outdrink any man in Mesh, contented himself with two slow beers. Karshur, Jonathay and Mandru did likewise. Asaru, his fine and noble face alert for the verbal sparring with the emissaries that soon must come, drank only a single glass. And my father joined Nona and my mother, the beautiful Elianora wi Solaru, in taking only one small sip of beer with each toast.
After all honors and compliments had been made, it came time for that part of the feast that was less a gathering in good company than it was like battle and war. And so my father again held up his hand for silence. Then he called out into the hall: ‘We will now hear from the emissaries and all who wish to voice their concerns.’
The first to speak that night would be Prince Issur. As he pushed back his chair and stood to address my father, everyone turned toward the Ishkan table to hear what he would say.
3 (#ulink_5782fbf1-f2db-5f5d-9a41-5f015222496b)
Prince Issur was a rather homely-looking man with a narrow forehead and a nose too big for his face. But he was spirited and prudent, and I knew him to be capable of a sort of harsh justice, and even kindness. His long hair, tied with five battle ribbons, hung down over his bright red surcoat showing the great white bear of the Ishkan royal house.
‘King Shamesh,’ he said to my father, ‘King Hadaru bids me to remind you of your promise made on the field of the Raaswash: that the Lightstone is to be shared among all the Valari. More than half a year now the Cup of Heaven has resided here in Silvassu. King Hadaru bids me to ask you when it might be brought to Ishka?’
Despite the reasonableness of the man’s voice, some of King Hadaru’s arrogance and demanding ways shaded the words of his emissary. A murmur of discontent rumbled from the warriors and knights in the hall. Almost all of them had stood upon the field of the Raaswash when the delicate peace between Ishka and Mesh had been made. They must have recalled, as I did, how King Hadaru’s eldest son, Salmelu, had been exposed there as a betrayer of all the Valari and had been driven off forever from the Nine Kingdoms. If Prince Issur, however, suffered from the shame of his brother’s treason, he gave no sign of it.
Finally, my father nodded at Prince Issur and said, ‘The Lightstone shall be brought into Ishka, and the other kingdoms, soon.’
‘Soon,’ Prince Issur repeated as if the word had a sour taste. ‘Do you mean within a month, King Shamesh? Another half a year? Or might “soon” mean another century or even an age lasting three thousand years?’
Once, at the end of the Age of Swords, the great Aramesh had wrested the Lightstone from Morjin and had brought it back to this very castle, where my ancestors had kept it all during the long Age of Law.
‘Soon means soon,’ my father said to Prince Issur with a soft smile. ‘Arrangements are being made for that which you desire. May a little more patience be asked of King Hadaru?’
My father, I thought, was a wise man and deep. He knew very well, as did I, that the Ishkans had come to Mesh seeking to set a date for the Lightstone to be brought to King Hadaru’s palace in Loviisa. He knew, too, that the Ishkans expected to be put off with all the forcefulness for which my father was famed. Thus his gentle manner disarmed Prince Issur.
‘Perhaps a little more patience, then,’ Prince Issur said, flushing from the intensity of my father’s gaze. ‘Shall we say before autumn’s first snow?’
‘Autumn is less than half a year away,’ my father said. ‘With the Red Dragon on the march again and kingdoms going up in flames, it will come soon enough – all too soon.’
He motioned for Prince Issur to take his seat; despite himself, Prince Issur did so. Although he must have been aware that my father had made no real commitment, he would take back to Ishka the impression that my father desired the same thing as did King Hadaru. And, truly, my father did. The duties of kingship might demand that he remain flexible in his strategies, but he would never stoop to deception or outright lies.
Even so, I knew that he hated having to make such oblique responses, that it went against his honest nature. He turned toward me then, and flashed me a quick look as if to say, ‘Do you think it is hard being King? What must it be like, then, to be the Maitreya?’
As I sat pondering this mystery, I became aware of the many people covertly watching me, as they had all through the feast. I felt as well a smoldering malevolence directed at me; it stirred me to memory of another night just before the quest when Prince Issur’s brother, Salmelu, had sat with the Ishkans silently beating me to death with his hateful heart. I hadn’t known then that he had gone over to Morjin, that he was the assassin who had fired a kirax-tipped arrow at me in a dark wood. Despite the sensitivity of my gift, I hadn’t been able to determine which of the hundreds of faces concealed the wish to make me dead.
My father’s eyes now fell upon the Alonian table, and he called out, ‘Count Dario – will you speak for Alonia?’
Count Dario, a small, dapper man, stood up quickly as his fingers smoothed the red hairs of his moustache and goatee. Then he bowed his head to my father. ‘King Shamesh, you have sent emissaries to all the Free Kingdoms to call for a conclave here in Silvassu that we might make alliance to oppose Morjin. But King Kiritan bids me to inform you that this cannot be. The conclave must be held in Tria. King Kiritan has sent word to each of the Free Kingdoms that the conclave will commence on the twenty-eighth of Marud. What do you say to this?’
I felt anger surge through my father’s chest as he said, ‘That your king must have a great grievance against me that he would insult me so.’
Lord Harsha and Lord Tanu – and many others across the hall – angrily nodded their heads in support of my father’s outrage.
Count Dario now shot me a quick, sharp look. Then he stabbed his short finger toward the Lightstone as he turned back to my father and said, ‘Last year, on the seventh of Soldru in Tria, on the night that King Kiritan called the Quest, all the knights who would recover the Lightstone vowed to seek it for all of Ea and not themselves. The Cup of Heaven was to be brought into Tria, from where the questers went forth. King Kiritan would ask King Shamesh why this has not been done?’
While Count Dario awaited my father’s answer, Maram suddenly arose and wobbled on his beer-weakened legs. He was drunk enough to forget all protocol – but not so drunk that he was willing to let Count Dario’s words stand unchallenged.
‘King Shamesh!’ he called out, ‘may I speak?’ Without waiting for permission, he turned toward Count Dario and continued, ‘I stood with the knights who made vows at your king’s birthday party; I stood with Master Juwain Zadoran and Lord Valashu Elahad, who are here this night. I remember vowing that our quest to find the Lightstone would not end unless illness, wounds or death struck us down first. Well, illness of the soul anyone will suffer if they go into Argattha. Of wounds we had many, and death struck down the fairest of us in the Kul Moroth. Even so, our quest didn’t end, as all can see. We did vow to seek the Lightstone for all of Ea. But we never said that we would deliver it to King Kiritan, who remained safe behind his kingdom’s walls.’
Maram, puffing and sweating from his little speech, suddenly dropped back into his chair. I thought that he was rather pleased that he had slurred only a few of his words.
Count Dario seemed to be fighting back a smile as he bowed his head toward Maram. ‘All the questers must be honored, especially those who went into Argattha and returned. I would not presume to gainsay Prince Maram. But I must strongly declare that it was understood the Lightstone was to be brought to Tria. This was the spirit of the questers’ vows.’
From the dais above our table, where the thirty Guardians stood glaring at Count Dario, the Lightstone’s radiance poured down upon my father’s black and silver hair. He calmly regarded Count Dario, and there was steel in his voice as he said, ‘Surely those who made vows are best able to interpret their spirit. Even so, we are all agreed that the Lightstone is for all of Ea, even as you have heard. Soon it will be brought to Ishka – soon.’
‘Then are we also agreed that it will be brought to Tria soon after?’
‘That may be.’
‘King Kiritan would ask you to agree that the Lightstone should be kept in Tria, where it will be safest.’
