Lord of Lies

But I could not be still. For something bright and terrible was moving inside me. Once, in the lightless depths of Argattha, Morjin had told me that my gift of valarda was like a double-edged sword: as well as being opened by others’ emotions, I might wield mine against men to cut and control. Master Juwain had taught me that I must learn to use the valarda, for good, as I might my hands or eyes. But my hands trembled to grasp the hilt of my sword and make murder; my eyes were as blind and blackened with hate as Atara’s.

‘Val!’ a familiar voice cried out from across the hall. ‘Oh, Val!’

A black, blazing hatred for Salmelu and Morjin built hotter and hotter inside me. As the valarda opened me to the men and women in the hall, and them to me, they felt this, too. They looked at me in loathing and awe. But a hundred feet away, Baltasar Raasharu arose from his chair and looked toward me as if awaiting my command.

‘Do you see?’ Salmelu cried out again as he began walking down the rows of tables toward Baltasar. He was that curious type of coward who must continually prove his bravery by goading others. ‘Valashu Elahad would even have his friends murder for him. And so he would throw their lives away – as he did with the minstrel in the Kul Moroth.’

At last, I could hold the agony no longer. My eyes found Baltasar’s, and the burning steel of my fury for Salmelu struck straight into my young friend’s heart. His sword flashed forth as he cried out and leapt toward Salmelu. Probably Salmelu had calculated that the knights at the nearby tables would grab hold of him. But Baltasar moved too quickly to be so easily stopped.

It was the Lightstone that saved Salmelu’s life – and Baltasar’s. (And perhaps my own.) As I twisted and turned against my brothers’ frantic hands, the little cup began shining more brightly from its stand behind me. In its sudden, clear radiance, I saw many things: that Baltasar would truly die for me, not because I wished it, but because he loved me even more than he hated Salmelu or his dreadful lord. And so he would not let me be the one to slay Salmelu. The Lightstone cast its splendor on his noble face, and I saw in him the finest flower of Valari knighthood about to cut down Salmelu – and thus be cut down by the failing of my heart.

Baltasar.

The One’s creations, I saw, were so beautiful. The promise of life was so sweet and good and great. And yet, in the world, so much evil, so much pain. I couldn’t understand it; I knew I never would. And yet I would give anything, tear out my own heart, to keep the promise for Baltasar, and for everyone: to see them become the great beings we were born to be.

‘Baltasar!’ I cried out.

The Lightstone blazed with a sudden brilliance like a star. As it burned brighter and brighter, its radiance worked in me a miracle much greater than the transmutation of lead into gold. For, in one magical moment, it turned my hatred of Salmelu and Morjin into an overpowering love for Baltasar. How could I hold such a beautiful thing? And how could my brothers now hold me? My whole being filled with a force that gave me the strength of ten men. It poured through me like a golden fire. As I broke free from Asaru’s grasp, I raised up my silver sword and pointed it at Baltasar. He had finally closed with Salmelu, and his sword lifted high above his head to cut him in two.

‘Baltasar!’ I cried out again.

But this was no sound from my throat nor name made by my lips, but only the peal of the bright and beautiful thing inside me. Like a lightning bolt directed by my sword, it suddenly flashed forth from me and streaked across the room. I felt it break open Baltasar’s heart. Everyone in the hall, my father and brothers, my mother and grandmother – even Salmelu himself – felt this, too. Baltasar felt it most deeply of all. The steel mask of fury melted from him. He hesitated as he turned toward me, and his face was all golden in the Lightstone’s overpowering radiance. We regarded each other in wonder, and something more.

‘The Sword of Light!’ a woman called out, pointing toward me.

I looked down to see that the silustria of my sword was flaring brightly – almost as brightly as the sword of valarda inside me. But soon, even as the wildly gleaming Lightstone began to fade, so did both swords, in my hand and heart.

‘The Sword of Love!’

I lowered my sword called Alkaladur and sheathed it at the same moment that Baltasar put away his. His smile fell upon me like the rising of the sun.

‘Oh, Val!’ he whispered.

Everyone in the hall was staring at me. From Lord Harsha’s table, Maram and Behira regarded me proudly, and even old Lord Tanu seemed to have forgotten his mistrust of all things. Master Juwain quietly bowed his head to me, and so did Asaru, Karshur and my father. My mother’s gaze held only adoration for me, while Count Dario looked at me in fear. The faces of too many knights and nobles were full of awe – as was Salmelu’s. For a moment, his whole being seemed wiped clean of the spite that poisoned him. He stared at me as if he couldn’t quite believe what had happened. But then, as the Lightstone faded back to its appearance as a small, golden cup, Salmelu returned to his hateful self. His ugly face took on its familiar lines of envy, arrogance and malice.

‘You,’ he said to me with a shame that burned his face, ‘have drawn on one who no longer bears a sword of his own. But perhaps some day I will again, and then we’ll see whose sword is quicker.’

He marched through the hall straight up to my table. From another pocket in his yellow robes, he removed a sealed letter and slammed it down on the table before me. ‘This is for you! From Lord Morjin!’

And with that, he gathered together his fellow priests and stormed out of the hall.

In that great room, with its many great personages, there was a silence that lasted many long moments. And then Lansar Raasharu, the foremost lord in Mesh, stood up.

‘You have saved my son from a terrible dishonor,’ he said as he bowed his head to me. Then he glanced at my father’s stern face and added, ‘And death.’

He went on to say that what he had witnessed, and felt, that night was nothing less than a miracle.

‘Baltasar has always been too wild, too quick with his sword – and you have stayed his hand.’ Lord Raasharu now turned away from me so that his words might carry out into the hall. ‘Has it not been told in the ancient prophecies that the Maitreya will be known by just such miracles? What could be greater than the healing of the hatred in a man’s heart?’

Not hating at all, I thought as I recalled the sword that I had put into Baltasar’s hand.

Lord Raasharu’s strong voice called out to the hundreds in the hall who listened raptly: ‘Only a short while ago, we have had another prophecy, from the Galdan scryer: that Valashu would find the Maitreya in the darkest of places. What could be darker than finding this Lord of Light inside the dark cavern of one’s own heart?’

He turned back to me, and bowed his head again, this time more deeply. ‘Lord Valashu – Lord of Light. You are he. You must be. The way the Lightstone flared when you called to it, so bright, almost impossible.’

He looked up at the Lightstone shimmering on its stand and I heard him whisper, ‘I never knew, I never knew.’

Awe colored the faces of many men and women turned toward me. I heard Lord Tanu’s wife, Dashira, call out, ‘Lord of Light!’ while three of the Guardians standing near the Lightstone on the dais above me spoke as one, saying, ‘Maitreya!’ Others took up this call, too, and through the hall rang shouts of, ‘Maitreya! Maitreya! Maitreya!’

This single name, repeated again and again, was sweeter than honey and more intoxicating than whole barrels of brandy.

‘Lord Valashu, claim the Lightstone!’ Lord Raasharu said to me. Many loud voices, and Lord Raasharu’s the loudest of all, began urging me on toward what seemed my fate. They almost drowned out a much quieter voice whispering inside me. How could I be the Maitreya, I asked myself? I, who had trembled with murderous wrath only moments before? My father, his bright eyes fixed on me, seemed to be asking me this same question.

And then Master Juwain smiled at me with the happiness of hope fulfilled even as Baltasar came forward and stood at the end of my table. He pulled me up from my chair and embraced me; he kissed my forehead and said, ‘My life is yours – thank you, friend.’

‘Thank you,’ I said to him. If not for his wild charge toward Salmelu, I might have charged instead. And my father would have had to order my death. ‘My life is yours, again. How can it be repaid?’

He smiled and didn’t hesitate as he said, ‘Claim the Lightstone.’

I smiled, too, as I slowly nodded my head. Then I clasped his hand in mine. To the acclaim of Lord Raasharu and Lord Tomavar – and many others – I turned and mounted the dais behind me. The Guardians in their gleaming suits of mail made two rows on either side of the Lightstone. I stepped straight toward the stand holding up the golden bowl. I felt Alkaladur, at my side, resonating with it. I felt inside for a like resonance of my heart, which it was said was the endowment of the Maitreya – and the Maitreya alone.

All my life, I whispered to myself.

All my life I had longed for one thing above all else. But it was the greatest of ironies that I, whose heart was so open to others, was forced by fate to stand apart from them. For if I did not, their lusts and passions would burn through me and annihilate me utterly. And so I had to climb through a stark and terrible inner landscape to the top of the highest mountain in the world. There the air was cold and thin and bitter. There I breathed the pain of being ever alone. All my life I had known that there must be a cure for the gift that afflicted me, if only I had the courage to find it.

And now, as I stood upon the hard stone dais in my father’s hall, I gazed at a little bowl that seemed to hold within its golden hollows all the secrets of life. I knew that it might be used to touch into life the infinite seeds of brotherhood waiting to burst forth inside all men – and so to touch that infinite tree that shone with the light of the One. And then the pain of being would vanish in a deeper flame, and the promise of life would at last be fulfilled. And no man or woman would ever stand alone again.

‘Lord of Light!’ someone called out as if from far away. Another voice joined his, and then two, ten and a hundred more. In the rawness of their throats was an aching to come together as a great and beautiful force. ‘Lord of Light! Lord of Light! Lord of Light!’

To want to see men and women standing tall as oaks, the sun rising warm upon their faces, whole, happy and unafraid; to see them healed of suffering in the light of that deep joy which pours itself out through their hearts and unites them in glory with all things; to want this for myself and all those I loved, and for everyone – was this so wrong?

‘Claim it, Valashu!’ someone else called to me. ‘Claim the Lightstone!’

Five feet in front of me, on its white granite stand, the little cup of gold gelstei was waiting for me to lay my hands upon it. The thirty Guardians to either side of me were waiting with their eyes grown bright as stars; in the hall behind me, my father and friends and hundreds of others were gazing at me in silent expectation. Even the portraits of my ancestors along the cold stone walls seemed to be looking down at me and demanding that I fulfill my fate.

About the Maitreya one thing is known, I suddenly remembered. That to himself, the Maitreya always is known.

‘I must be he,’ I whispered to myself. ‘I must be.’

And then fear struck me to the core as my hands began to sweat and I remembered other words from the Saganom Elu: If a man comes forth in falseness as the Shining One concealing darkness in his heart, if he claims the Lightstone for his own, then he shall become a new Red Dragon, only mightier and more terrible.

‘So much evil in the world,’ I whispered. ‘So much pain.’

At last, I stepped forward and placed my hands around the curve of the bowl. Its cool golden surface seemed instantly to sear my flesh. It was like trying to grasp the fiery substance of a star. The pain was so great I could hardly hold it. But beneath the pain, a deeper and more beautiful thing.

I turned as I lifted the Lightstone high for all to see. And then I called out into the hall: ‘It is not yet determined who the Maitreya really is. There are tests still to be made. As far as I know, I am only the Lightstone’s Guardian, a Knight of the Swan.’

So saying, I set the Lightstone back on its stand. I looked down at my hands to see if they had been charred black. But the flesh of my palms and fingers showed only its familiar ivory tones and remained untouched.