Читать книгу The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom: Part One - David Zindell, David Zindell - Страница 9

It was late afternoon by the time we broke free from the forest and rejoined Joshu Kadar at the edge of Lord Harsha’s fields. The young squire blinked his eyes in amazement at the load slung across my brother’s back; he had the good sense, however, not to beleaguer us with questions just then. He kept a grim silence and went to fetch Lord Harsha as my brother bade him.

The horses, however, practiced no such restraint. Joshu had them tied to a couple of saplings beyond the wall surrounding Lord Harsha’s field; at the smell of fresh blood they began whinnying and stomping the ground as they pulled at the trees with almost enough force to uproot them. Maram tried to calm them but couldn’t. They were already skittish from the bolts of lightning that had shaken the earth only an hour before.

I walked over to Altaru and laid my hand on him. His wet fur was pungent with the scent of anger and fear. As I stroked his trembling neck, I pressed my head against his head and then breathed into his huge nostrils. Gradually, he grew quieter. After a while, he looked at me with his soft brown eyes and then gently nudged my side where the arrow had burned me with its poison.

The gentleness of this great animal always touched me even as much as it astonished me. For Altaru stood eighteen hands high and weighed some two thousand pounds of quivering muscle and unyielding bone. He was the fiercest of stallions. He was one of the last of the black war horses who run wild on the plains of Anjo. For a thousand years, the kings of Anjo had bred his line for beauty no less than battle. But after the Sarni wars, when Anjo had broken apart into a dozen contending dukedoms, Altaru’s sires had escaped into the fields surrounding the shattered castles, and Anjo’s great horsebreeding tradition had been lost. From time to time, some brave Anjori would manage to capture one of these magnificent horses only to find him unbreakable. So it had been with Altaru: Duke Gorador had presented him as a gift to my father as if to say, ‘You Meshians think you are the greatest knights of all the Valari; well, we’ll see if you can ride this horse into battle.’

This my father had tried to do. But nothing in his power had persuaded Altaru to accept a bit in his mouth or a saddle on his back.

Five times he had bucked the proud king to the ground before my father gave up and pronounced Altaru incorrigibly wild.

As I knew he truly was. For Altaru had never seen a mare whom he didn’t tremble to cover or another stallion he wouldn’t fight. And he had never known a man whose hand he didn’t want to bite or whose face he didn’t want to crush with a kick from one of his mighty hooves. Except me. When my father, in a rare display of frustration, had finally ordered Altaru gelded, I had rushed into his stall and thrown myself against his side to keep the handlers away from him. Everyone supposed that I had fallen mad and would soon be stomped into pulp. But Altaru had astonished my father and brothers – and myself – by lowering his head to lick my sweating face. He had allowed me to mount him and race him bareback through the forest below Silvassu. And ever since that wild ride through the trees, for five years, we had been the best of friends.

‘It’s all right,’ I reassured him as I stroked his great shoulder, ‘everything will be all right.’

But Altaru, who spoke a language deeper than words, knew that I was lying to him. Again he nuzzled my side and shuddered as if it was he who had been poisoned. The fire in his dark eyes told me that he was ready to kill the man who had wounded me, if only we could find him.

A short time later, Joshu Kadar returned with Lord Harsha. The old man drove a stout, oak wagon, rough-cut and strong like Lord Harsha himself. A few hours had worked a transformation on him. Gone were the muddy workboots and homespun woolens that he wore tending his fields. Now he sported a fine new tunic, and I couldn’t help noticing the sword fastened to his sleek, black belt. After he had stopped the wagon on the other side of the stone wall, he stepped down and smoothed back his freshly washed hair. He gazed for a long moment at the dead deer and the assassin’s body spread out on the earth. Then he said, ‘The king has asked me to contribute the beverage for tonight’s feast. Now it seems we’ll be carrying more than beer in my wagon.’

While Asaru stepped over to him and began telling of what had happened in the woods, Maram peeled back the wagon’s covering tarp to reveal a dozen barrels of beer. His eyes went wide with the greed of thirst, and he eyed the contents of the wagon as if he had discovered a cave full of treasure.

With his fat knuckles, he rapped the barrels one by one. ‘Oh, my beauties – have I ever seen such a beautiful, beautiful sight?’

I was sure that he would have begged Lord Harsha for a bowl of beer right there if not for the grim look on Lord Harsha’s face as he stared at the dead assassin. Maram stared at him, too. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Maram called for Joshu to help him lift the assassin’s body into the wagon. The sweating and puffing Maram moved quickly as with new strength, and then loaded in the deer by himself. Only his anticipation of later helping to drain these barrels, I thought, could have caused him to take such initiative.

Thank you for sparing an old man’s joints,’ Lord Harsha told him, patting his broken knee. ‘Now if you will all accompany me, we’ll collect my daughter and be on our way. She’ll be joining us for the feast.’

So saying, Lord Harsha drove the groaning wagon across his fields while we followed him on horseback to his house. There, a rather plump, pretty woman with raven-dark hair stood in the doorway and watched us draw up. She was dressed in a silk gown and a flowing gray cloak gathered in above her ample breasts with a silver brooch. This was to be her first appearance at my father’s castle, I gathered, and so she naturally wanted to be seen wearing her finest.

Lord Harsha stepped painfully down from his wagon and said, ‘Lord Asaru, may I present my daughter, Behira?’

In turn, he presented this shy young woman to me, Joshu Kadar and Maram. To my dismay, Maram’s face flushed a deep red at the first sight of her. I could almost feel his desire for her leaping like fire along his veins. Gone from him completely, it seemed, was any thought of beer.

‘Oh, Lord, what a beauty!’ he blurted out. ‘Lord Harsha – you certainly have a talent for making beautiful things.’

It might have been thought that Lord Harsha would relish such a compliment. Instead, his single eye glared at Maram like a heated iron. Most likely, I thought, he wished to present Behira at my father’s court to some of the greatest knights of Mesh; he would take advantage of the night’s gathering to make the best match for her that he could – and that certainly wouldn’t be a marriage to some cowardly outland prince who had forsworn wine, women and war.

‘My daughter,’ Lord Harsha coldly informed Maram, ‘is not a thing. But thank you all the same.’

He limped over to his barn then, and returned a short time later leading a huge, gray mare. Despite the pain of his knee, he insisted on riding to my father’s castle with all the dignity that he could command. And so he gritted his teeth as he pulled himself up into the saddle; he sat straight and tall like the battle lord he still was, and led the way down the road followed closely by Asaru, Joshu and myself. Behira seemed happy at being left to drive the wagon, while Maram was very happy lagging behind the rest of us so that he could talk to her.

‘Well, Behira,’ I overheard him say above the clopping of the horses’ hooves, ‘it’s a lovely day for such a lovely woman to attend her first feast. Ah, how old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?’

Behira, holding the reins of the wagon’s horses in her strong, rough hands, looked over at me as if she wished that it was I who was lavishing my attention on her. But women terrified me even more than did war. Their passions were like deep, underground rivers flowing with unstoppable force. If I opened myself to a woman’s love for only a moment, I thought, I would surely be swept away.

‘I’m afraid we have no such women as you in Delu,’ Maram went on. ‘If we did, I never would have left home.’

I looked away from Behira to concentrate on a stand of oak trees by the side of the road. I sensed that, despite herself, she was quite taken by Maram’s flattery. And probably Maram impressed her as well. After Alonia, Delu was the greatest kingdom of Ea, and Maram was Delu’s eldest prince.

‘Well, you should have let a woman tend your wound,’ I heard Behira say to him. I could almost feel her touching the makeshift bandage that my brother had tied around Maram’s head. ‘Perhaps when we get to the castle I could look at it.’

‘Would you? Would you?’

‘Of course,’ she told him. The outlander struck you with a mace, didn’t he?’

‘Ah, yes, a mace,’ Maram said. And then his great, booming voice softened with the seductiveness of recounting his feats. ‘I hope you’re not alarmed by what happened in the woods today. It was quite a little battle, but of course we prevailed. I had the honor of being in a position to help Val at the critical moment.’

According to Maram, not only had he scared off the first assassin and weakened the second, but he had willingly taken a wound to his head in order to save my life. When he caught me smiling at the embellishments of his story – I didn’t want to think of his braggadocio as mere lies – he shot me a quick, wounded look as if to say, ‘Love is difficult, my friend, and wooing a woman calls for any weapon.’

Perhaps it did, I thought, but I didn’t want to watch him bring down this particular quarry. Even as he began speaking of his father’s bejeweled palaces and vast estates in far-off Delu, I nudged Altaru forward so that I might take part in other conversations.

Val,’ Asaru said to me as I pulled alongside him, ‘Lord Harsha has agreed that no one should know about all this until we’ve had a chance to speak with the King.’

I was silent as I looked off at the rolling fields of Lord Harsha’s neighbors. Then I said, ‘And Master Juwain?’

‘Yes. Speak with him while he attends your wound, but no one else,’ Asaru said. ‘All right?’

‘All right,’ I said.

We gave voice then to questions for which we had no answers: Who were these strange men who had shot poisoned arrows at us? Assassins sent by the Ishkans or some vengeful duke or king? How had they crossed the heavily guarded passes into Mesh? How had they picked up our trail and then stalked us so silently through the forest?

And why, I wondered above all else, did they want to kill me?

With this thought came the certainty that it had been my death they had sought and not Asaru’s. Again I felt the wrongness that I had sensed earlier in the woods. It seemed not to emanate from any one direction but rather pervaded the sweet-smelling air itself. All about us were the familiar colors of my father’s kingdom: the white granite farm houses; the greenness of fields rich with oats, rye and barley; the purple mountains of Mesh that soared into the deep blue’ sky. And yet all that I looked upon – even the bright red firebirds fluttering about in the trees – seemed darkened as with some indelible taint.

It touched me as well. I felt it as a poison burning in my blood and a coldness that sucked at my soul. As we rode across this beautiful country, more than once I wanted to call a halt so that I could slip down from my saddle and sleep – either that or sink down into the dark, rain-churned earth and cry out at the terror that had awakened inside me.

And this I might easily have done but for Altaru. Somehow he sensed the hurt of my wounded side and the deeper pain of the death that I had inflicted upon the assassin; somehow he moved with a slow, rhythmic grace that seemed to flow into me and ease my distress rather than aggravate it. The surging of his long muscles and great heart lent me a badly needed strength. The familiar, fermy smell steaming off his body reassured me of the basic goodness of life. I had no need to guide him or even to touch his reins, for he knew well enough where we were going: home, to where the setting sun hung above the mountains like a golden cup overflowing with light.

So it was that we finally came upon my father’s castle. This great heap of stone stood atop a hill which was one of several ‘steps’ forming the lower slope of Telshar. The right branch of the Kurash River cut around the base of this hill, separating the castle from the buildings and streets of Silvassu itself. At least in the spring, the river was a natural moat of raging, icy, brown waters; the defensive advantages of such a site must have been obvious to my ancestors who had entered the Valley of the Swans so long ago.

As I looked out at the castle’s soaring white towers, I couldn’t help remembering the story of the first Shavashar, who was the great-grandson of Elahad himself. It had been he who had led the Valari into the Morning Mountains at the beginning of the Lost Ages. This was in the time after the Hundred Year March when the small Valari tribe had wandered across all of Ea on a futile quest to recover the golden cup that Aryu had stolen. Shavashar had set the stones of the first Elahad castle and had begun the warrior tradition of the Valari, for it was told that the first Valari to come to Ea – like all the Star People – were warriors of the spirit only. It was Shavashar who forged my people into warriors of the sword. It was he who had foretold that the Valari would one day have to fight ‘whole armies and all the demons of hell’ to regain the Lightstone.

And so we had. Thousands of years later, in the year 2292 of the Age of Swords – every child older than five knew this date – the Valari had united under Aramesh’s banner and defeated Morjin at the Battle of Sarburn. Aramesh had wrested the Lightstone from Morjin’s very hands and brought this priceless cup back to the security of my family’s castle. For a long time it had resided there, acting as a beacon that drew pilgrims from across all of Ea. These were the great years of Mesh, during which time Silvassu had grown out into the valley to become a great city.

I heard Asaru’s voice calling me as from far away.

‘Why have you stopped?’

In truth, I hadn’t noticed that I had stopped. Or rather, Altaru, sensing my mood, had pulled up at the edge of the road while I gazed off into the past. Before us farther up the road, along the gentle slope leading up to the castle, fields of barley glistened in the slanting light where once great buildings had stood. I remembered my grandfather telling me of the second great tragedy of my people: that in the time of Godavanni the Glorious, Morjin had again stolen the Lightstone, and its radiance had left the Morning Mountains forever. And so, over the centuries, Silvassu had diminished to little more than a backwoods city in a forgotten kingdom. The stones of its streets and houses had been torn up to build the shield wall that surrounded the castle, for the golden age of Ea had ended and the Age of the Dragon had begun.

‘Look,’ I said to Asaru as I pointed at this great wall. Atop the mural towers protecting it, green pennants fluttered in the wind. This was a signal that the castle had received guests and a feast was to be held.

‘It’s late,’ Asaru said. “We should have been home an hour ago. Shall we go?’

Maram pulled up by my side then as the wagon creaked to a halt behind me. Lord Harsha, still sitting erect in his saddle, rubbed his head above his eye-patch as his mare pawed the muddy road.

And I continued staring at this great edifice of stone that dominated the Valley of the Swans. The shield wall, a hundred feet high, ran along the perimeter of the entire hill almost flush with its steep slopes. Indeed, it seemed to arise out of the hill itself as if the very earth had flung up its hardest parts toward the sky. Higher even than this mighty wall stood the main body of the castle with its many towers: the Swan Tower, the Aramesh Tower with its ancient, crenelated stonework, the Tower of the Stars. The keep was a massive cube of carefully cut rocks as was the adjoining great hall. And all of it – the watchtowers and turrets, the gatehouses and garden walls – had been made of white granite. In the falling sun, the whole of the castle shimmered with a terrible beauty, as even I had to admit. But I knew too well the horrors that waited inside: the catapults and sheaves of arrows tied together like so many stalks of wheat; the pots of sand to be heated red-hot and poured through the overhanging parapets on any enemy who dared to assault the walls. Truly, the castle had been built to keep whole armies out, if not demons from hell. And not, it seemed, the Ishkans. My father had invited them to break bread with us in the castle’s very heart. There, in the great hall, I would find them waiting for me, and perhaps my would-be assassin as well.

‘Yes,’ I finally said to Asaru, ‘let’s go.’

I touched my ankles to Altaru’s side, and the huge horse practically leapt forward as if to battle. We started up the north road that cut through an apple orchard before curving around the edge of Silvassu’s least populated district; its slope was the most gentle of the three roads leading into the castle and therefore the easiest for the horses pulling the heavy wagon to negotiate. A short while later we passed through the two great towers guarding the Aramesh Gate and entered the castle.

In the north courtyard that day there was a riot of activity. Various wagons laden with foodstuffs had pulled up to the storehouses where the cooks’ apprentices rushed to unload them. From the wheelwright’s workshop came the sound of hammered steel, while the chandlers were busy dipping the last of the night’s tapers. Squires such as Joshu ran about completing errands assigned by their lords. We had to ride carefully through the courtyard lest our horses trample them, as well as the children playing with wooden swords or spinning tops along the flagstones. When we reached the stables, we dismounted and gave the tending of the horses over to Joshu. He took Altaru’s reins in his hands as if his life depended on the care with which he handled the great, snorting stallion – as it very well did. There, in front of the stalls smelling of freshly spread straw and even fresher dung, we said our goodbyes. Asaru and Lord Harsha would accompany Behira to the kitchens to unload the wagon before attending to their business with the steward and King. And Maram and I would seek out Master Juwain.

‘But what about your head?’ Behira said to Maram. ‘It needs a proper dressing.’

‘Ah,’ Maram said as his voice swelled with anticipation, ‘perhaps we could meet later in the infirmary.’

At this, Lord Harsha stepped between the wagon and Maram, and stood staring down at him. ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ he said to him. ‘Isn’t your Master Juwain a healer? Well, let him heal you, then.’

Asaru moved closer to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘Please give Master Juwain my regards,’ he said.

And then, as his eyes flashed like a dark sky crackling with lightning, he added, Tonight there will be a feast to be remembered.’

Maram and I crossed the courtyard then, and walked through the middle ward which was full of chickens squawking and running for their lives. After passing through the gateway to the west ward, we found the arched doorway to the Adami Tower open. I went inside and fairly raced up the worn steps that wound up through the narrow staircase; Maram, however, puffed along behind me at a slower pace. I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that the stairs spiraled clockwise as they rose to the tower’s upper floors. This allowed a defender to retreat upwards while wielding his sword with his right hand, whereas an attacker would have to lean around the corner in the wrong direction to wield his. I couldn’t help noticing as well the castle’s ever-present smell: rusting iron and sweating stone and the sharpness of burning tallow that over the centuries had coated the walls and ceilings with layers of black smoke.

Master Juwain was in the guest chamber on the highest floor. It was the grandest such room in the castle – indeed, in all of Mesh – and many would argue that it should have been reserved for the Ishkan prince or even King Kiritan’s emissaries. But by tradition, whenever a master of the Brotherhoods was visiting, he took up residence there.

‘Come in,’ Master Juwain’s voice croaked out after I had knocked at the door to his chamber.

I opened this great, iron-shod slab of oak and stepped into a large room. It was well-lit, with the shutters of its eight arched windows thrown open. In most other rooms of the castle, this would have let in gusts of cold air along with sunlight. But the windows here were some of the few to be fitted with glass panes. Even so, the room was rather cool, and Master Juwain had a few logs burning in the fireplace along the far wall. This, I thought, was an extravagance. As were the chamber’s other appointments: the tiled floor, covered with Galdan carpets; the richly-colored tapestries; the shelves of books set into the wall near the great, canopied bed. As far as I knew, there was only one other true bed in the castle, and there my father and mother slept. The whole of the chamber bespoke a comfort at odds with the Brotherhoods’ ideal of restraint and austerity, but the great Elemesh had proclaimed that these teachers of our people should be treated like kings, and so they were.

Valashu Elahad – is that you?’ Master Juwain called out as I entered the room. He was as short and stocky as I remembered, and one of the ugliest men I had ever seen.

‘Sir,’ I said, bowing. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

He was standing by one of the windows and looking up from a large book that he had been reading; he returned my bow politely and then stepped over to me. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. ‘It’s been almost two years.’

To look upon Master Juwain was to be reminded at first of vegetables – and not the most attractive ones at that. His head, large and lumpy like a potato, was shaved smooth, the better to appreciate the puffy ears that stood out like cauliflowers. His nose was a big, brown squash, and of his mouth and lips, it is better not to speak. He clasped me on the shoulder with a hand as tough as old tree roots. Although he was first and foremost a scholar – perhaps the finest in all of Ea – he liked nothing better than working in his garden and keeping close to the earth. Although he might advise kings and teach their sons, I thought he would always be a farmer at heart.

‘To what honor,’ he asked, ‘shall I attribute this visit after being ignored for so long?’

His gaze took in the rain-stained cloak that Asaru had lent me as he looked at me deeply. The saving feature of his face, I thought, were his eyes: they were large and luminous, all silver-gray like the moonlit sea. There was a keen intelligence there and great kindness, too. I have said that he was an ugly man, and ugly he truly was. But he was also one of those rare men transformed by a love of truth into a being of great beauty.

‘My apologies, sir,’ I told him. ‘But it was never my intention to ignore you.’

Just then Maram came wheezing and panting into the room. He bowed to Master Juwain and then said, ‘Please excuse us, sir, but we needed to see you. Something has happened.’

While Master Juwain paced back and forth rubbing his bald head, Maram explained how we had fought for our lives in the woods that afternoon. He conveniently left out the part of the story in which he had shot the deer, but otherwise his account was reasonably accurate. By the time I had spoken as well, the room was growing dark.

‘I see,’ Master Juwain said. His head bowed down in deep thought as he dug his foot into the priceless carpet. Then he moved over to the window and gazed out at Telshar’s white diamond peak. ‘It’s growing late, and I want to get a good look at this arrow you’ve brought me. And your wounds as well. Would you please light the candles, Brother Maram?’

While I tightly gripped the black arrow, still wrapped in my torn shirt, Maram went over to the fireplace where he stuck a long match into the flames to ignite it. Then he went about the room lighting the many candles in their stands. As the soft light of the tapers filled the room, I reflected on the fact that some two thousand candles would be burned throughout the castle before the night was through.

‘Here, now,’ Master Juwain said as his hand closed on Maram’s arm. He pulled him over to the writing table, which was covered with maps, open books and many papers. There he sat him down in the carved, oak chair. ‘We’ll look at your head first.’

He went over to the basin by one of the windows and carefully washed his hands. Then, from beneath the bed, he retrieved two large wooden boxes which he set on the writing table. In the first box, as I saw when he opened it, were many small compartments filled with unguents, bottled medicines and twists of foul-smelling herbs. The second box contained various knives, probes, clamps, scissors and saws – all made of gleaming Godhran steel. I tried not to look into this box as Master Juwain lifted out a roll of clean white cloth and set it on the table.

It didn’t take him very long to clean Maram’s wound and wrap his head with a fresh dressing. But for me, standing by the window and looking out at the night’s first stars as I tried not to listen to Maram’s groans and gasps, it seemed like an hour. And then it was my turn.

After pulling back Asaru’s cloak, I took Maram’s place on the chair. Master Juwain’s hard, gnarly fingers gently probed my bruised chest and then touched my side along the thin red line left by the arrow.

‘It’s hot,’ Master Juwain said. ‘A wound such as this shouldn’t be so hot so soon.’

And with that, he dabbed an unguent on my side. The greenish cream was cool but stank of mold and other substances that I couldn’t identify.

‘All right,’ Master Juwain said, ‘now let’s see the arrow.’

As Maram crowded closer and looked on, I unwrapped the arrow and handed it to Master Juwain. He seemed loath to touch it, as if it were a snake that might at any moment come alive and sink its venomous fangs into him. With great care he held it closer to the stand of candles burning by the table; he gazed at the coated head for a long time as his gray eyes darkened like the sea in a storm.

‘What is it?’ Maram blurted out. ‘Is it truly poison?’

‘You know it is,’ Master Juwain told him.

‘Well, which one?’

Master Juwain sighed and said, ‘That we shall soon see.’

He instructed us to stand off toward the open window, and we did as he bade us. Then, from the second box, he produced a scalpel and a tiny spoon whose bowl was the size of a child’s fingernail. With a meticulousness that I had always found daunting, he used the scalpel to scrape off a bit of the bluish substance that covered the head of the arrow. He caught these evil-looking flakes with a sheet of white paper, then funneled them into the spoon.

‘Hold your breath, now,’ he told us.

I drew in a draft of clean mountain air and watched as Master Juwain covered his nose and mouth with a thick cloth. Then he held the spoon over one of the candles. A moment later, the blue flakes caught fire. But strangely, I saw, they burned with an angry, red flame.

Still holding the cloth over his face, Master Juwain set down the spoon and joined us by the window. I could almost feel him silently counting the seconds to every beat of my heart. By this time, my lungs were burning for air. At last Master Juwain uncovered his mouth and told us, ‘Go ahead and breathe – I think it should be all right now.’

Maram, whose face was red as an apple, gasped at the air streaming in the window, and so did I. Even so, I caught the faintness of a stench that was bitter beyond belief.

‘Well?’ Maram said, turning to Master Juwain, ‘do you know what it is?’

‘Yes, I know,’ Master Juwain said. There was a great sadness in his voice. ‘It’s as I feared – the poison is kirax.’

‘Kirax,’ Maram repeated as if he didn’t like the taste of the word on his tongue. ‘I don’t know about kirax.’

‘Well, you should,’ Master Juwain said. ‘If you weren’t so busy with the chambermaids, then you would.’

I thought Master Juwain was being unfair to him. Maram was studying to become a Master Poet, and so couldn’t be expected to know of every esoteric herb or poison.

‘What is kirax, sir?’ I asked him.

He turned to me and grasped my shoulder. There was a reassuring strength in his hand and tenderness as well. And then he said, ‘It’s a poison used only by Morjin and the Red Priests of the Kallimun. And their assassins.’

He went on to say that kirax was a derivative of the kirque plant, as was the more common drug called kiriol. Kiriol, of course, was known to open certain sensitives to others’ minds – though at great cost to themselves. Kirax was much more dangerous: even a small amount opened its victim to a flood of sensations that overwhelmed and burned out the nerves. Death came quickly and agonizingly as if one’s entire body had been plunged into a vat of boiling oil.

‘You must have absorbed a minuscule amount of it,’ Master Juwain told me. ‘Not enough to kill but quite sufficient to torment you.’

Truly, I thought, enough to torment me even as my gift tormented me. I looked off at the candles’ flickering flames, and it occurred to me that the kirax was a dark, blue, hidden knife cutting at my heart and further opening it to sufferings and secrets that I would rather not know.

‘Do you have the antidote?’ I asked him.

Master Juwain sighed as he looked at his box of medicines. ‘I’m afraid there is no antidote,’ he said. He told Maram and me that the hell of kirax was that once injected, it never left the body.

‘Ah,’ Maram said upon hearing this news, ‘that’s hard, Val – that’s too bad.’

Yes, I thought, trying to close myself from the waves of pity and fear that poured from Maram, it was very bad indeed.

Master Juwain moved back over to the table and gingerly picked up the arrow. ‘This came from Argattha,’ he said.

At the mention of Morjin’s stronghold in the White Mountains, a shudder ran through me. It was said that Argattha was carved out of the rock of a mountain, an entire city built underground where slaves were whipped to work and dreadful rites occurred far from the eyes of civilized men.

‘I would guess,’ Master Juwain told me, ‘that the man you killed was sent from there. He might even be a full priest of the Kallimun.’

I closed my eyes as I recalled the assassin’s fiercely intelligent eyes.

‘I’d like to see the body,’ Master Juwain said.

Maram wiped the sweat from his fat neck as he pointed at the arrow and said, ‘But we don’t know that the assassins are Kallimun priests, do we? Isn’t it also possible that one of the Ishkans has gone over to Morjin?’

Master Juwain suddenly stiffened with anger as he admonished Maram: ‘Please do not call him by that name.’ Then he turned to me. ‘It worries me even more that the Lord of Lies has made traitor one of your own countrymen.’

‘No,’ I said, filling up with a rare anger of my own. ‘No Meshian would ever betray us so.’

‘Perhaps not willfully,’ Master Juwain said. ‘But you don’t know the deceit of the Lord of Lies. You don’t know his power.’

He told us then that all men, even warriors and kings, knew moments of darkness and despair. At such times, when the clouds of doubt shrouded the soul and the stars did not shine, they became more vulnerable to evil, most especially to the Master of Minds himself. Then Morjin might come for them, in their hatred or in their darkest dreams; he would send illusions to confuse them; he would seize the sinews of their will and control them at a distance as with a puppeteer pulling on strings. These soulless men were terrible and very deadly, though fortunately very rare. Master Juwain called them ghuls; he admitted to his fear that a ghul might be waiting in the great hall to take meat with us that very night.

To steady my racing heart, I stepped over to the window to get a breath of fresh air. As a child, I had heard rumors of ghuls, as of werewolves or the dreaded Gray Men who come at night to suck out your soul. But I had never really believed them.

‘But why,’ I asked Master Juwain, ‘would the Lord of Lies send an assassin – or anyone else – to kill me with poison?’

He looked at me strangely, and asked, ‘Are you sure the first assassin was shooting at you and not Asaru?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how could you be sure? Didn’t Asaru say that he felt the arrow pass through his hair?’

Master Juwain’s clear, gray eyes fell upon me with the weight of twin moons. How could I tell him about my gift of sensing what lay inside another’s heart? How could I tell him that I had felt the assassin’s intention to murder me as surely as I did the cold wind pouring through the window?

‘There was the angle of the shot,’ I tried to explain. There was something in the assassin’s eyes.’

‘You could see his eyes from a hundred yards away?’

‘Yes,’ I said. And then, ‘No, that is, it wasn’t really like seeing. But there was something about the way he looked at me. The concentration.’

Master Juwain was silent as he stared at me from beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. Then he said, ‘I think there’s something about you, Valashu Elahad. There was something about your grandfather, too.’

In silence I reached out to close the cold pane of glass against the night.

‘I believe,’ Master Juwain continued, ‘that this something might have something to do with why the Lord of Lies is hunting you. If we understood it better, it might provide us with the crucial clue.’

I looked at Master Juwain then and I wanted him to help me understand how I could feel the fire of another’s passions or the unbearable pressure of their longing for the peace of the One. But some things can never be understood. How could one feel the cold light of the stars on a perfect winter night? How could one feel the wind?

‘The Lord of Lies couldn’t know of me,’ I said at last. ‘He’d have no reason to hunt the seventh son of a faraway mountain king.’

‘No reason? Wasn’t it your ancestor, Aramesh, who took the Lightstone from him at the Battle of Sarburn?’

‘Aramesh,’ I said, ‘is the ancestor of many Valari. The Lord of Lies can’t hunt us all.’

‘No? Can he not?’ Master Juwain’s eyebrows suddenly pulled down in anger. ‘I’m afraid he would hunt any and all who oppose him.’

For a moment I stood there rubbing the scar on my forehead. Oppose Morjin? I wanted the Valari to stop fighting among ourselves and unite under one banner so that we wouldn’t have to oppose him. Shouldn’t that, I wondered, be enough?

‘But I don’t oppose him,’ I said.

‘No, you’re too gentle of soul for that,’ Master Juwain told me. There was doubt in his voice, and irony as well. ‘But you needn’t take up arms to be in opposition to the Red Dragon. You oppose him merely in your intelligence and love of freedom. And by seeking all that is beautiful, good and true.’

I looked down at the carpet and bit my lip against the tightness in my throat. It was the Brothers who sought those things, not I.

As if Master Juwain could read my thoughts, he caught my eyes and said, ‘You have a gift, Val. What kind of gift, I’m not yet sure. But you could have been a Meditation Master or Music Master. Or possibly even a Master Healer.’

‘Do you really think so, sir?’ I asked, looking at him.

‘You know I do,’ he said in a voice heavy with accusation. ‘But in the end, you quit.’

Because I couldn’t bear the hurt in his eyes, I turned to stare at the fire, which seemed scarcely less angry and inflamed. Of all my brothers, I had been the only one to attend the Brotherhood school past the age of sixteen. I had wanted to study music, poetry, languages and meditation. With great reluctance my father had agreed to this, so long as I didn’t neglect the art of the sword. And so for two happy years, I had wandered the cloisters and gardens of the Brotherhood’s great sanctuary ten miles up the valley from Silvassu; there I had memorized poems and played my flute and sneaked off into the ash grove to practice fencing with Maram. Though it had never occurred to my father that I might actually want to take vows and join the Brotherhood, for a long time I had nursed just such an ambition.

‘It wasn’t my choice,’ I finally said.

‘Not your choice?’ Master Juwain huffed out. ‘Everything we do, we choose. And you chose to quit.’

‘But the Waashians were killing my friends!’ I protested. ‘Raising spears against my brothers! The king called me to war, and I had to go.’

‘And what have all your wars ever changed?’

‘Please do not call them my wars, sir. Nothing would make me happier than to see war ended forever.’

‘No?’ he said, pointing at the dagger that I wore on my belt. ‘Is that why you bear arms wherever you go? Is that why you answered your father’s call to battle?’

‘But, sir,’ I said, smiling as I thought of the words from one of his favorite books, ‘isn’t all life a battle?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a battle of the heart and soul.’

‘Navsa Adami,’ I said, ‘believed in fighting with other weapons.’

At the mention of the name of the man who had founded the first Brotherhood, Master Juwain grimaced as if he had been forced to drink vinegar. Perhaps I shouldn’t have touched upon the old wound between the Brotherhoods and the Valari. But I had read the history of the Brotherhoods in books collected in their own libraries. In Tria, the Eternal City, in the 2,177th year of the Age of the Mother, which ever after would be called the Dark Year, Navsa Adami had been among those who suffered the first invasion of the Aryans. The sack of Tria had been terrible and swift, for in that most peaceful of ages, the Alonians possessed hoes and spades for digging in their gardens but no true weapons. Navsa Adami had been bound in chains and forced to watch the violation and murder of his own wife on the steps of the Temple of Life. The Aryan warlord had then razed the great Temple and destroyed the Garden of the Earth as the slaughter began. And Navsa Adami, along with fifty priests, had escaped and fled into the Morning Mountains, vowing revenge.

This exile became known as the First Breaking of the Order. For the Order had been founded to use the green gelstei crystals to awaken the lands of Ea to a greater life whereas Navsa Adami now wished to bring about the Aryans’ death. And so, in the mountains of Mesh, he founded the Great White Brotherhood to fight the Aryans by any means the Brothers could find. With him he brought a green gelstei meant to be used for healing and furthering the life forces; Navsa Adami, however, had planned to use it to breed a race of warriors to fight the Aryans and overthrow their reign of terror. But he found in Mesh men who were already warriors; it became his hope to unite the Valari and train us in the mystic arts so that we would one day defeat the Aryans and bring peace to Ea. And this, at the Battle of Sarburn, we had nearly done. As a consequence of this the Brotherhoods, early in the Age of Law, had forever renounced violence and war. They had pleaded with the Valari to do the same. The Valari knights, though, fearing the return of the Dragon, had kept their swords sharpened and close to their hands. And so the bond between the Brotherhoods and the Valari was broken.

I had thought to score a point by invoking the name of Navsa Adami. But Master Juwain let his anger melt away so that only a terrible sadness remained. Then he said softly, ‘If Navsa Adami were alive today, he would be the first to warn you that once the killing begins, it never ends.’

I turned away as his sadness touched my eyes with a deep, hot pain. I suddenly recalled the overpowering wrongness that I had sensed earlier in the woods; now a bit of this wrongness, in the form of kirax and perhaps something worse, would burn forever inside me.

I wanted to look at Master Juwain and tell him that there had to be a way to end the killing. Instead, I looked into myself and said, There’s always a time to fight.’

Master Juwain stepped closer to me and laid his hand on mine. Then he told me, ‘Evil can’t be vanquished with a sword, Val. Darkness can’t be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light.’

He looked at me with a new radiance pouring out of him and said, ‘This is truly a dark time. But it’s always darkest just before the dawn.’

He let go of me suddenly and walked over to his desk. There his hand closed on a large book bound in green leather. I immediately recognized it as the Saganom Elu, many passages of which I had memorized during my years at the Brotherhood’s school.

‘I think it’s time for a little reading lesson,’ he announced, moving back toward Maram and me. His fingers quickly flipped through the yellow, well-worn pages, and then he suddenly dropped the book into Maram’s hands. ‘Brother Maram, would you please read from the Trian Prophecies. Chapter seven, beginning with verse twenty-six.’

Maram, who was as surprised as I was at this sudden call to scholarship, stood there sweating and blinking his eyes. ‘You want me to read now, sir. Ah, shouldn’t we be getting ready for the feast?’

‘Indulge me if you will, please.’

‘But you know I’ve no talent for ancient Ardik,’ Maram grumbled. ‘Now, if you would ask me to read Lorranda, which is the language of love and poetry, why then I would be delighted to –’

‘Please just read us the lines,’ Master Juwain interrupted, ‘or we will miss the feast.’

Maram stood there glowering at him like a child asked to muck out a stable. He asked, ‘Do I have to, sir?’

‘Yes, you do,’ Master Juwain told him. ‘I’m afraid that Val never had the time to learn Ardik as well as you.’

Truly, I had left the Brotherhood’s school before mastering this noblest of languages. And so I waited intently as Maram took a deep breath and ground his finger into the page of the book that Master Juwain had set before him. And then his huge voice rolled out into the room: ‘Songan erathe ad valte kalanath li galdanaan … ah, let me see … Jin Ieldra, song Ieldra –’

‘Very good,’ Master Juwain broke in, ‘but why don’t you translate as you read?’

‘But, sir,’ he said, pointing at a book on the writing table, ‘you already have the translated version there. Why don’t I just read from that?’

Master Juwain tapped the book that Maram was holding and said, ‘Because I asked you to read from this.’

‘Very well, sir,’ Maram said, rolling his eyes. And then he swallowed a mouthful of air and continued, ‘When the earth and stars enter the Golden Band … ah, I think this is right … the darkest age will end and a new age –’

‘That’s very good,’ Master Juwain interrupted again. ‘Your translation is very accurate but …’

Yes, sir?’

‘I’m afraid you’ve lost the flavor of the original. The poetry, as it were. Why don’t you put the words to verse?’

Now sweat began pouring down Maram’s beard and neck. He said, ‘Now, sir? Here?’

‘You’re studying to be a Master Poet, aren’t you? Well, poets make poems.’

‘Yes, yes, I know, but without time to make the music and to find the rhymes, you can’t really expert me to –’

‘Do your best, Brother Maram,’ Master Juwain said with a broad smile. ‘I have faith in you.’

Strangely, this immensely difficult prospect seemed suddenly to please Maram. He stared at the book for quite a long while as if burning its glyphs into his mind. Then he closed his eyes for an even longer time. And suddenly, as if reciting a sonnet to a lover, he looked toward the windows and said:

When earth alights the Golden Band,

The darkest age will pass away;

When angel fire illumes the land,

The stars will show the brightest day.

The deathless day, the Age of Light;

Ieldra’s blaze befalls the earth;

The end of war, the end of night

Awaits the last Maitreya’s birth.

The Cup of Heaven in his hand,

The One’s clear light in heart and eye,

He brings the healing of the land,

And opens colors in the sky.

And there, the stars, the ageless lights

For which we ache and dream and burn,

Upon the deep and dazzling heights –

Our ancient home we shall return.

‘There,’ he said, wiping the sweat from his face as he finished. With a trembling hand, he gave the book back to Master Juwain.

‘Very good,’ Master Juwain told him. ‘We’ll make a Brother of you yet.’

He motioned us over to the window. He pointed up at the stars, and in a voice quavering with excitement, he said, ‘This is the time. The earth entered the Golden Band twenty years ago, and I believe that somewhere on Ea, the Maitreya, the Shining One, has been born.’

I looked out at the Owl constellation and other clusters of stars that shimmered in the dark sky beyond Telshar’s jagged peak. It was said that the earth and all the stars turned about the heavens like a great, diamond-studded wheel. At the center of this cosmic wheel – at the center of all things – dwelt the Ieldra, luminous beings who shone the light of their souls on all of creation. These great, golden beacons streamed out from the cosmic center like rivers of light, and the Brothers called them the Golden Bands. Every few thousand years, the earth would enter one of them and bask in its radiance. At such times the trumpets of doom would sound and mountains would ring; souls would be quickened and Maitreyas would be born as the old ages ended and the new ones began. Although it was impossible to behold this numinous light with one’s eyes, the scryers and certain gifted children could apprehend it as a deep, golden glow that touched all things.

‘This is the time,’ Master Juwain said again as he turned toward me. The time for the ending of war. And perhaps the time that the Lightstone will be found as well. I’m sure that King Kiritan’s messengers have come bearing the news of just such a prophecy.’

I gazed out at the stars and there, too, I felt a rushing of a wind that carried the call of strange and beautiful voices. The leldra, I knew, communicate the Law of the One not just in golden rays of light but in the deepest whisperings of the soul.

‘If the Lightstone is found,’ I said, wondering aloud, ‘who would ever have the wisdom to use it?’

Master Juwain looked up at the stars, too, and I sensed in him the fierce pride that had taken him from the fields of a farm on the Elyssu to a mastership in the greatest of Brotherhoods. I expected him to tell me that only the Brothers had attained the purity of mind necessary to plumb the secrets of the Lightstone. Instead, he turned to me and said, ‘The Maitreya would have such wisdom. It is for him that the Galadin sent the Lightstone to earth.’

Outside the window, high above the castle and the mountains, the stars of the Seven Sisters and other constellations gleamed brightly. Somewhere among them, I thought, the immortal Elijin gazed upon this cosmic glory and dreamed of becoming Galadin, just as the Star People aspired to advancement to the Elijik order. There, too, dwelled Arwe, Ashtoreth and Valoreth, and others of the Galadin. These great, angelic beings had so perfected themselves and mastered the physical realm that they could never be killed. They walked on other worlds even as men did the fields and forests of Mesh; in truth, they walked freely between worlds, though never yet on earth. Scryers had seen visions of them, and I had sensed their great beauty in my longings and dreams. It was Valoreth himself, my grandfather once told me, who had sent Elahad to Ea bearing the Lightstone in his hands.

For a while, as the night deepened and the stars turned through the sky, we stood there talking about the powers of this mysterious golden cup. I said nothing of my seeing it appear before me in the woods earlier that day. Although its splendor now seemed only that of a dream, the warmth that had revived me like a golden elixir was too real to doubt. Could the Lightstone itself, I wondered, truly heal me of the wound that cut through my heart? Or would it take a Maitreya, wielding the Lightstone as I might a sword, to accomplish this miracle?

I believe that I might have found the courage to ask Master Juwain these questions if we hadn’t been interrupted. Just as I was wondering if those of the orders of the Galadin and Elijin had once suffered from the curse of empathy even as I did, footsteps sounded in the hallway and there came a loud knocking at the door.

‘Just a moment,’ Master Juwain called out.

He stepped briskly across the room and opened the door. And there, in the dimly lit archway, stood Joshu Kadar breathing heavily from his long climb up the stairs.

‘It’s time,’ the young squire gasped out. ‘Lord Asaru has asked me to tell you that it’s time for the feast to begin.’

‘Thank you,’ Master Juwain told him. Then he moved back to the desk where he had left the arrow. He carefully wrapped it in my shirt again and asked, ‘Are you ready, Val?’

It seemed that the answers that I sought to the great riddles of life would have to wait. And so, with Joshu in the lead, I followed Maram and Master Juwain out into the cold, dark hallway.