David Zindell - The Lightstone - The Ninth Kingdom - Part One

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.