David Zindell - Lord of Lies

I looked around the circle at the faces of my friends. I knew that none of them, not even Kane, favored a mission to murder Morjin.

'I'm sorry,' I said to them, 'but I've lost faith in this Shining One. And so I still must go to Argattha.'

'Then,' Master Juwain told me with a sigh, 'if that is what you truly decide, I will go with you.'

'And I, as well,' Liljana said. 'As it was before your chances will be greater with all of us behind you.'

Maram, I saw, was sweating now, even though he sat farthest from the fire But his jaw was set with resolve and he fought to keep the terror from his eyes. He reassured me that he would stand by my side Atara told me much the same thing. And Kane's lips pulled back into a savage smile and he said, 'So, Val, so.'

Then Daj, upon exchanging looks with Estrella, traced his finger along the swan-carved hilt of my sword; And he told me, 'We're coming with you, too.'

'Who is?' I asked him in astonishment.

'Estrella and I.'

'No, you can't — you're both too young.'

Daj regarded me with his sad, dark eyes, which had seen sights that would have wilted most grown men. 'We're not too young for Lord Morjin to kill, are we? No one is. We were supposed to be safe in the castle. But no place is safe now — you said so yourself.'

Estrella's face fairly danced with lively expressions as Daj nodded his head. Then he said to me, 'I know the tunnels on Argattha's lower levels, and Estrella might be able to find another entrance that Lord Morjin doesn't know about. It's our only chance, Val.'

I slowly shook my head, marveling at the courage of this boy.

Then Estrella smiled at me, and I could not bear the brightness of it. Her trust in me was like a lump of pain in my throat that all my swallowing could not dislodge. She pressed into my side, and grabbed my arm as if she would never let go.

And Daj said to me, 'We both feel safest with you.'

I wiped my stinging eyes; it felt as if hot cinders from the fire had gotten into them.

'No, I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I can't let you come with me.'

I turned to look at Liljana, Maram, Atara, Master Juwain and Kane. 'I'm sorry, but there are already too many deaths upon me, and so I must go alone.'

I stood up and bade everyone goodnight. Then I walked out into cold rain to return to my bed of straw in the barn.

A few days later, when the weather had cleared, I finished the last of my preparations. One task remained to be completed. And so I filled a rucksack with some rations and personal things. In the crisp-ness of an autumn morning at dawn, I set out to climb Mount Telshar. Kane caught me coming out of the barn, and I saw that he had a rucksack of his own — and a large coil of rope. And he said to me, 'If I can't come with you to Argattha, at least I can see that you get up and down this mountain without breaking your neck.'

For a long time I looked through the half-light at this deep and powerful man before nodding my head and saying, 'All right.'

We spent most of the morning crossing the valley's forests and farms. The chittering of many birds greeted the rising sun. The leaves of the trees showed bright colors: oranges and yellows and vivid reds. In the fields, cattle lowed and golden barley waited to be cut.

We paused by a stream to eat a lunch of cheese, scallions and fresh bread that Behira had baked for me. Then we made our way up through the forest that blanketed Telshar's lower slopes. We followed the tinkling stream higher and higher, through crunching leaves and clear air that smelled sweet and clean. The walking was mostly easy, though the path steepened toward the end of the day. When dusk touched the trees with the first shades of darkness, we were glad to come across the first of the stone huts built into Telshar's flank. We mounded leaves inside, and spread our cloaks on top of them. For dinner that night, we had ham sandwiches and apples. We slept to the sound of the wind shushing through the trees and the wolves howling somewhere below us.

Early the next morning we set out through a frost that sparkled the forest's fallen leaves. Just before breaking out of the treeline, we gathered some wood, and slung these cumbersome bundles on our backs. I put a few stones in my rucksack as well. Half a mile farther on we came out upon naked rock, cold wind and brilliant sunshine. We climbed all that day, past the second hut, into air that grew thinner and thinner, and here we worked very hard, sweating in the sun and gasping for breath. Our route up the mountain's rocky slope was long but not particularly dangerous, and so we did not make much use of Kane's rope. When we found the third and last hut, rising up from the snowfields of Telshar's upper reaches, we unburdened ourselves of the wood and lightened our rucksacks of almost everything except a few apples and shelled nuts, and the six flat stones I carried. The weather held true, with clear skies and little bitterness to the air, and that was good, for already our feet were cold inside our stiff leather boots from crunching through old crusts of snow. And so we decided to finish our ascent in what remained of the afternoon.

I reached the summit first, with Kane only a few steps behind me. I unroped and stood staring at the beautiful thing that my people had built there. On Telshar's very highest point, many stones had been piled into a cairn, nearly half again my height and shaped like a pyramid. And on each stone rested a silver ring. Into many of them was set a single diamond; other bands showed two or three of these sparkling gems, and a few gleamed with the four diamonds of a lord. The rays of the setting sun fell upon this cairn so that the whole of it shimmered like a small mountain of brilliant lights.

I edged up dose to it, blinking my eyes against the diamonds' fire. I opened my rucksack and took out the six stones. Careful not to dislodge any of those already piled there, I reached high above my head and set them in place at the top of the cairn. Then I brought out my brothers' rings. Ravar's and Mandru's I set on two of the stones, and so with those of Jonathay, Yarashan and Karshur. I rested Asaru's ring, with its four shining diamonds, on the highest stone at the top of the cairn. From mountains these slips of silver and gems had been mined, and to the sacred mountain we called Telshar they had returned.

'You Valari,' Kane said, gazing at the cairn, 'are a strange people And a beautiful one.'

We laid our rucksacks on the snow, and sat down on them to eat some apples and nuts and take a little rest. After a while, I brought out the silken bag of astor seeds that Ninana had given me. Would the time ever come, I wondered, to plant them? I shook my head, and gave the seeds into Kane's hand for safekeeping.

He clenched the bag in his fist. Then he sniffed at the air and said, 'We'd better not linger. If a storm comes up, it would go badly for us.'

Soon enough, I thought, winter's storms would sweep down from the north and heap snow upon Telshar's summit, and bury the diamond-encrusted cairn, until spring uncovered it again. But now, here, at the top of the world, the sky was perfectly clear in every direction. Although it wasn't yet dark enough for the stars to come out, already in the east, above the mountains along the Culhadosh River, a great and glowing moon rose into the immense blue dome of the sky. To the south, far beyond Silvassu and the shining white granite of the castle, the verdant Lake Country opened up toward the Shoshan range, which curved fifty miles west and north around Lake Marash, forming a purple and white wall against the sweeps of the grassland beyond lost into the haze of the darkening distances. It seemed that from this great height, I could look down upon all of Mesh. The beauty of my land made we want to weep. Great swathes of color burst across the hills and valleys below: bands of yellow where the aspen trees edged up the mountains, and blazes of red, orange and green lower down. Scarely a stone's throw from Telshar, the deep cut in the earth of the Gorgeland showed the Arashar River's silvery sheen. I couldn't help wondering if I was seeing it for the last time.