David Zindell - Lord of Lies

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.