Lord of Lies

Asaru refilled my glass and pressed it into my hand. He said, ‘Morjin feeds you poisoned meat and you still seek to take sustenance from it? You did the right thing burning it. Now forget about the letter.’

‘How can I? He said –’

‘He said many evil things. Predators and prey, indeed.’ He nodded at our father, and continued, ‘We Valari are taught to protect the weak, not eat them.’

I smiled at this, and so did everyone else. It was one of the rare moments when my serious brother made a joke. But too much had happened that night for us to sustain a mood of levity.

‘It may be,’ my father told me, ‘that the real purpose in Morjin’s writing this letter was to confuse you.’

‘Then it seems he has succeeded.’

My grandmother, who knew me very well, turned her cataract-clouded eyes toward me and said, ‘You are not as confused as he.’

‘Thank you for saying that, Nona. If only it were true.’

‘It is true!’ she said. Her back stiffened as she sat up very straight. I knew that if Morjin had managed to invade this very room, she would have thrown her frail, old body upon him to defend me. ‘This Red Dragon speaks of love and power. Well, he may know everything about the love of power. But he’ll never understand anything about the power of love.’

Her smile as she nodded at me warmed my heart.

‘There’s only one love that Morjin could be capable of,’ my mother added, looking at me. ‘And that is that he loves to hate. And how he hates you, my son!’

‘Even as I hate him.’

‘And such passion has always been your greatest vulnerability,’ she went on. Her soft, graceful face fell heavy with concern. ‘You’ve always loved others too ardently – and so you hate Morjin too fiercely. But your hatred for each other binds you together more surely than marriage vows.’

My mother’s soft, dark eyes melted into mine and then she said an astonishing thing: ‘Morjin uses hate to try to compel your love, Valashu. He hates all things but himself most of all. He wishes that you were the Maitreya so that you might heal him of this terrible hate.’

My confusion grew only deeper and murkier, like a mining pit filled with sediments and sludge. ‘But he has said that I cannot be the Maitreya!’

‘Yes, but this must be only another of his lies.’

Master Juwain nodded his head as he sighed out: ‘There’s a certain logic to his letter. It indicates that he believes becoming the Maitreya is open to superior beings who wield the Lightstone with power. Certainly he fears Val wielding it this way. It seems that he has written his whole letter toward the end of convincing Val that he cannot be the Maitreya.’

I touched Master Juwain’s arm and said, ‘But what if I cannot?’

‘No, Val, you mustn’t believe this. I’m afraid that the Lord of Lies is only trying to discourage you from your fate.’

As the candles burned lower, we talked far into the night. Each of us had our own fears and dreams, and so we each felt drawn by different conclusions as to what my fate might truly be. Asaru, I thought, was proud merely to see me become a lord at such a young age and would have been happy if my title remained only Guardian of the Lightstone. My father looked at me as if to ask whether I was one of those rare men who made their own fate. Nona, her voice reaching out like a gentle hand to shake me awake, asked me the most poignant of questions: ‘If you weren’t born to be the Maitreya, who were you born to be?’

It was Maram who made the keenest comment about Morjin and his letter. Although not as deep as my father, he was perhaps more cunning. And it seemed that his two slow glasses of brandy had done little to cloud his wits.

‘Ah, Val, my friend,’ he said to me as he lay his arm around my shoulders. The heavy bouquet of brandy fell over my face. ‘What if Morjin is playing a deep game? The “Lord of Lies”, he’s called – and so everyone expects him to manipulate others with lies. But what if, this one time, he’s telling you the truth?’

‘Do you think he is?’

‘Do I think he is? Does it matter what I think? Ah, well, we’re best friends, so I suppose it does. All right, then, what I think is that Morjin could use the truth as readily as a lie to poison your mind. Do you see what I mean? The truth denied acts as a lie.’

‘Go on,’ I said, looking at him.

‘All right – Morjin has said that you cannot be the Maitreya. Perhaps he knows that you could never accept such a truth, even if it is the truth, and so you’d think it must be a lie. And so you’d be tempted to believe just the opposite. Therefore, isn’t it possible that Morjin is trying to lead you into falsely believing that you’re the Maitreya?’

‘But why would he do that?’

‘Ah, well, that is simple. If you believe yourself to be the Maitreya – never mind the prophecies – you would neglect to find and protect the true Maitreya. And then Morjin might more easily murder him.’

What Maram had said disturbed me deeply. That he might have great insight into Morjin’s twisted mind disturbed me even more. It came to me then that I would never find the answers I sought in trying to parse Morjin’s words and motives – or anyone else’s. And so, at last, I drew my sword from its sheath. I held it pointing upwards, and sat looking at its mirrored surface. The Sword of Truth, men called it. In Alkaladur’s silver gelstei, I should have been able to perceive patterns and true purposes. But the light of the candles was too little, and I couldn’t even see myself – only the shadowed face of a troubled man.

‘Valashu,’ my grandmother called to me.

I looked away from the sword to see her smiling at me. Her desire to ease my torment was itself a torment that I could hardly bear.

‘Valashu,’ she said again, with great gentleness. ‘You must remember that it is one thing to take on the mantle of the Maitreya. But it is quite another being this man. You’ll always be just who you are. And that will be as it should.’

‘Thank you, Nona,’ I said, bowing my head to her.

My father had always looked to her for her wisdom, without shame, as he was looking at her now. And then he turned to me and said, ‘Nona is right. But soon enough, you will have to either claim this mantle or not. If you are the Maitreya and fail to take the Lightstone, then, as has been prophesied, as has happened before, a Bringer of Darkness will.’

My hands were sweating as I squeezed the black jade hilt of my sword. I felt trapped as if in a deep and lightless crevasse, with immense black boulders rolling down upon me from either end.

I looked at my father and said, ‘Morjin spoke of great consequences if the Lightstone is not returned to him. Do you think he could mount an invasion of Mesh?’

‘No, not in full force, not this month or even this summer. He would have to gather armies from one end of Ea to the other and then march them across the Wendrush, fighting five tribes of the Sarni along the way. We have time, Valashu. Not much, but we have time.’

‘Time to unite the Valari,’ I said. ‘Time even to journey to Tria and meet in conclave with the kings of the Free Kingdoms.’

Asaru shook his head at this. ‘Who but Aramesh ever united the Valari? Who ever could?’

My father’s bright eyes found mine as he said, ‘The Maitreya could.’

Because I could not bear to look at him just then, I stared at my two hands, right and left, wrapped around my sword. I said, ‘No one really knows, sir, what the Maitreya is.’

‘Many believe that he would be the greatest warlord the Valari has ever known.’

‘No one knows who he is,’ I said.

‘Many believe him to be you.’

A single flicker of light fell off from my sword like a shard of silver. It stabbed into my eyes; it pierced cold and clean straight down to my heart. There, it seemed, in the silence between its quick and violent beats, I heard someone whispering to me.

‘I must know,’ I suddenly called out. I slipped my sword back into its sheath and picked up the box that Morjin had sent to me. I bowed my head to my father and said, ‘Sir, may I be excused?’

Even as he nodded and gave his consent, I pushed myself to stand up.

‘It is very late,’ he said. ‘It seems we’ll accomplish little more tonight. But where are you going?’

‘To the scryers’ room,’ I said.

‘At this hour? Kasandra is an old woman, Val.’