David Zindell - The Lightstone

'Val,' Master Juwain reminded me with an urgent whisper, 'If you truly wish to stop this battle, this is no place for pride.' 'Perhaps not pride,' I. told him, 'but certainly honor.' Then I fought to turn away from the ever-beckoning and burning black pool of hatred that would conume me if I let it, my father's clear voke rang out. 'Sar Valaahu, on this day no knight on all of Ea has more honor than you.'

His words washed through me like a thrill of cold water. I suddenly let go of my sword. But my father's praise only inflamed Salmelu and deepened his spite. And so, before two kings and the assembled lords of Ishka and Mesh with the thousands of warriors of two armies waiting in their lines and looking on, he sneered at me, saying,

'And still you lack the courage to test whether the swordstroke that cut me so dishonorably was skill or only evil luck!'

I took a deep breath and said, 'We haven't journeyed to the end of Ea and returned here today to make more tests – only to tell of what we've seen.'

I informed the assembled lords then of the battle for Surrapam and the conquest of Yarkona by Count Ulanu and his dreadful Blues. I spoke of the armed might that Morjin was assembling behind the rocky shield of Skartaru. And then I called for a peace between Ishka and Mesh. I said that the Valari must now join together and renounce our petty squabbles, duels and formal combats. For someday Morjin would recover from the wound that I had dealt him. And someday we would have to fight a war without rules or mercy, a terrible war to determine the fate of the world – and perhaps much else.

'A great scryer named Atara Ars Narmada has told that we can die bravely as Ishkans and Meshians,' I called out. 'Or live as Valari.'

Salmelu nudged his horse a step closer as he pointed at the Lightstone. He said,

'And still Sar Valashu will say anything to avoid battle. How should we believe anything of what he has told us? How do we know that this is really the cup of our ancestors and not just one of the False Lightstones told of in the ancient chronicles?

Or even some glowstone gilded over to fool us?'

Truly, a poisonous serpent was Salmelu. And the time had come to pull his fangs.

'Those who serve the Lord of Lies,' I said to him, 'will hear lies in the truth that others tell.'

As Salmelu froze in a hateful stare, all the Ishkan lords except King Hadaru grabbed at the hilts of their swords. He sat beneath the white flag held by his squire, looking at Salmelu and the others as if to remind them that we had gathered here in sacred truce. Then he turned toward me. In a deathly calm voice, he asked, 'Do you accuse my son of treachery?'

'Treachery, yes, and more,' I said. I looked straight into Salmelu's black, boiling eyes. 'It was he who shot the poison arrow at me in the woods. He is an assassin, sent by the Red Dragon to -'

I had expected that Salmelu might not be able to bear the shame of his iniquity. And so I was prepared for him to whip free his sword and deliver an underhanded cut at me. But at the last moment even as he screamed and spurred his horse straight at me, I was seized within sudden premonition that if I drew forth Alkaladur to defend myself, I would touch off the very battle that I had come here to prevent. 'Damn you, Elahad!' he screamed at me again.

He aimed his kalama in a silvery flash at my hand holding the Lightstone; its razor-sharp edge easily would have cleaved off my arm. But I suddenly gripped the cup tightly and turned it into the plane of his swordstroke. The gold of the gelstei – of the Gelstei – met cold steel in a shiver of shrieking metal. His sword shattered into pieces, and he stared down in disbelief at the hilt-shard sticking out from his spasming fist.

'Hold!' King Hadaru called out, spurring his horse forward. He motioned to Lord Issur, Lord Nadhru and Lord Mestivan. 'Hold him, now! Let it not be said that we Ishkans are trucebreakers!'

As the Ishkan lords and knights swarmed around Salmelu, grabbing at him and the reins of his horse, King Hadaru himself wrested the broken sword from his son's hand. He spat on it and cast it to the ground. Then he raised back his gauntleted hand and struck Salmelu across the face. And he raged at him, 'Trucebreaker! You have dishonored yourself in the sight of both friend and foe!'

My father, sitting on his horse between Asaru and Lord Harsha, stared at the livid welt raised up on the side of Salmelu's face. He had little liking for this man, but even less desire to see a king savage his own son.

'And you!' King Hadaru said, whirling about on top of his horse to point at me. 'You bring no honor to yourself if you cast careless words at one whom you have already wounded! He who provokes the breaking of a truce may be called a trucebreaker himself!'

'None of my words has been careless, King Hadaru,' I said. 'Your son has called for war with Mesh at the command of the Red Dragon. He was to weaken your realm and my father's. His reward, after the Red Dragon had sent his armies to conquer us, was to have been the overlordship of both Mesh and Ishka – and eventually all of the Nine Kingdoms.'

'No, no,' King Hadaru said, his red face falling white with a cold, deadly wrath, 'that is not possible!'

Although I pitied him, and his pain was like a great, hard knot in my chest, I looked at him and said, 'Your son is one of the Kallimun.'

Now a terrible silence descended upon all those assembled beneath the flapping white flags and spread out like death across the battlefield. For a moment, no one dared to move.

'Who has ever heard a Valari knight speak such evil of another?' King Hadaru said, staring at me. 'How could you possibly know such a thing?'

'Because,' I said, 'one of my companions saw this in Morjin's mind.'

'Proof!' Salmelu suddenly screamed out. 'He has no proofs!'

King Hadaru pointed at him and commanded, 'Hold him!'

Lord Issur and Lord Nadhru, who had their horses pressed up close to Salmelu's, gripped his arms while Lord Mestivan dismounted and pulled him offhis horse. Then three other Ishkan lords dismounted as well, and helped Lord Mestivan subdue the furiously struggling Salmelu.

'There are proofs,' I said to King Hadaru. I gave the Lightstone to Maram to hold, then climbed down from Altaru and stepped over to Salmelu. 'Watch closely.'

I pulled out the bloodstone that Kane had given me. Its dreadful red light fell upon Salmelu's face. And there, at the center of Salmelu's forehead, was revealed a tattoo of a coiled, red dragon.

'It's the mark of the Kallimun,' I said. 'The Red Priests affix it to their own with an invisible ink. The bloodstones bring it out into view. Thus do the Red Priests know each other.'

'It's a trick!' Salmelu cried out, shaking his head back and forth. 'An evil trick of this gelstei!'

'Salmelu's murder of me,' I said, ignoring him, 'was to have been his final initiation into Morjin's priesthood.'

The Ishkan lords murmured among themselves and cast Salmelu looks of loathing.

Lansar Raasharu pressed his horse forward as he stared at him. Then he turned toward me and said, 'But Sar Valashu, this cannot be! I've already told that I saw Prince Salmelu in the woods by Lake Waskaw on the afternoon you say he shot at you.'

Lord Raasharu had told this to Asaru and me, if no other, and it was courageous of him to declaim before two kings what he supposed was the truth – even if it aided Salmelu.

'You did not see Prince Salmelu there as you thought,' I told him. 'When he failed at my murder, the Lord of Lies sent an illusion to the most trusted man in Mesh so that suspicion wouldn't fall upon his priest.'

'What you say disquiets me greatly,' Lord Raasharu said. 'To think that the Lord of Lies could make me see what is not.'

'It has disquieted me, as well,' I told him.