David Zindell - Lord of Lies

'Have you seen these joys with which you hope we'll be blessed?' I asked her.

She smiled as she- shivered against the cold of the rain. And then she told me, 'Many believe that the kristei was forged to show visions of the future. But its true power is to create it.'

That was all she said to me, then. She stood up to make the short journey back to Lord Marsha's house. She left me sitting on my soggy log; she left me to wonder how a little ball of dear crystal — no less a man — could create anything good at all.

The next day the rain deepened, and I spent most of it in the barn, hunched beneath my cloak and brooding upon things to come, late in the afternoon, the peace of Lord Harsha's farm was broken when a rider dressed all in black came galloping up the road. I hurried out of the barn to see Kane emerge from the house and walk up to confer with this stranger. That he was no Valari I could tell immediately: he was rather short and thick, and his broad face and dense black beard reminded me of the Ikurians, But his eyes were bright blue, and his skin was fair, and I could not guess what land he called home. An air of danger and darkness surrounded him. I was sure that he was a master of the mysterious Black Brotherhood.

Kane, however, did not present this man to me — or to any of us. The tension in Kane's brutal body and flashing black eyes warned us away. The rider did not remain to partake of Lord Harsha's hospitality. As soon as he had finished his business, without a word of greeting to any us, he pulled his horse about and rode off again into the rain.

That evening, like a king issuing a summons, Kane insisted that I come inside the house to take dinner with everyone else. My curiosity overcame my moroseness. I sat at Lord Harsha's long table with my friends, and feasted on roasted pork, peas and potatoes. I forced myself to eat the apple pie and cheese that Behira served for desert. Then, when we were all full. Lord Harsha called us into his great room to sit by the fire. On the andirons were piled several logs throwing out flames and a comforting heat above the fire, many cups rested on the cracked oak of the mantle. Lord Harsha informed us that his wife, Sarai, had made them from good Meshian clay. He invited us to sit on the floor, which was covered with bearskins and cushions. His eye gleamed as he began filling the cups from a bottle of old brandy. Two cups, of course, would have been enough for him and Behira, but once his house had held many more: his three sons, killed in various battles, a daughter taken by a fever before her fifth birthday, and another daughter who had died with Sarai in childbirth. Lord Harsha's mother and aunt, too, were long gone, but he took pride in displaying on the walls the bright tapestries they had once woven from the wool of the sheep that he kept on his north pasture. He was a prideful man, and the toast that he proposed as we all raised our cups was both a proud and a poignant one: 'May our land always be blessed with sons as valorous as those who fought and fell at the Culhadosh Commons, and with daughters strong and wise enough in spirit to raise up true Valari warriors.'

He sighed and sipped his brandy as he patted Behira's hand. Then he looked across the bearskins at Maram and said, 'loj is gone and Valte is racing by. The months pass almost as quickly as the years. And still we're no nearer to setting a date for the wedding, are we?'

'Ah, no, sir, I have to say we're not,' Maram choked out. He nodded at Behira as he smiled his most sheepish smile. 'And now, with all that's happened. . well, you see, I couldn't take vows with the whole world turned upside down.'

'There you're wrong, lad,' Lord Harsha said to him. 'There will be many marriages this season, as sad as it is. Too many widows will need husbands now, and too many widowers will need new wives.'

In his farmer's way, he spoke of life always engendering more life, of apple trees bearing fruit and new shoots of barley growing out of winter's dead fields. I couldn't blame him for wanting to bring more children into his land — and into his house.

'Then it wouldn't do to make Behira a widow so soon,' Maram told him. 'The wedding will have to wait until I return — if I do.'

He told everyone then that I was setting out for Argattha, and that he would follow me to the end.

At this, Lord Harsha fixed me with his bright eye and asked, 'Then you really do intend to go back to that evil place?'

'Yes,' I told him. 'I do.'

'My daughter and I accompanied you to Tria, but this is no journey for us.' He turned back to Maram and said, 'There are crops to be raised here, and a land to be healed. We'll be waiting for you when you do return.'

He might have added that there was a new king to be chosen and a kingdom to protect, but he would not speak of such things in front of me.

'Now that we've dispensed with that,' he said sadly, 'it's time that Lord Kane gave us the news he's been waiting to tell us.'

Kane peered out over the edge of his cup, gazing first at Estrella, who edged up close to my side, and then at me. Daj was to my right, and then Liljana, Maram and the others. We all sat in a circle, holding council as we had many times during the quest.

'There's news from Alonia,' Kane said. 'There's been war between Tarlan and the Aquantir, and Baron Monteer has declared Iviendenhall an independent domain. And Count Dario leads the Narmadas in fighting the Hastars and the Marshans for the throne.'

Atara, sitting between Maram and Master Juwain, faced the fire without a word, and I watched the light of its orange flames play across her impassive face.

'And I've learned the truth about Ravik Kirriland,' he said, looking at me. 'An innocent, you called him, Val. Ha! He was a Kallimun priest, as I suspected from the first. In the middle of the melee; he was to have plunged a poisoned needle into Atara's neck to murder her so that she could not give Noman away. So, your instincts were right. And so you did not slay an innocent man.'

I stared at the scar on my hand that my teeth had torn in my anguish over Ravik. I felt my heart beating with new life. Kane's words were like a magic incantation that lifted away a great stone crushing my chest.

'Are you sure?' I asked him. I did not want to know how his black knight had come by this knowledge, but I needed to be certain it was true.

'So, I am sure,' he told me. 'You were the innocent one.'

I smiled sadly as I shook my head. Other stones still pressed down upon me with the weight of worlds, and I would never be innocent again.

'So, Val, so.'

His eyes flashed with a knowing light, and I marveled that he could tell me so much with three simple words with a single, luminous look.

'This changes nothing,' I said to him. 'I'm still going to Argattha.'

'You're determined, eh? Well, I've also had news about that hellhole. Morjin has hung new gates, of iron and thicker by thrice, over the entranceways. Packs of dogs he has posted there. And squadrons of knights now patrol every approach to the black mountain.'

I looked at my scabbarded sword, which I had set down upon the bearskin beside me. I said, 'Morjin anticipates me. From the beginning, he has outthought me — and outfought me.'

'What if he has? He has great cunning and even greater power: Skakamen and whole armies at his command.' Kane paused to take a drink of brandy, then continued, 'So, we lost this battle, but we nearly killed him in Argattha, didn't we? There will be other battles to come.'

'And that,' I said, 'is why I'm going back to Argattha.'

'That,' he said, 'is precisely why you mustn't. Morjin has seen into your mind, Val. Don't you think it's time you tried seeing into his?'

At this, Liljana shook her head with so much force that her gray hair whipped the side of Maram's face. And she said to me, 'Look into his mind? Don't you dare try! There's nothing there but snakes, hissing, rats disappearing down holes and dark, twisted things.'