Lord of Lies

‘She … is not sleeping, sir. She is waiting for me.’

She is calling to me, I thought as my heart pounded against the bones of my chest. She wants to tell me something.

I said to my father, to my mother and to Maram and everyone, ‘Kasandra said that I would find the Maitreya in the darkest of places. If Morjin has set traps for me, she might have seen them. I must know before it’s too late.’

And with that, I tucked the box beneath my arm and moved off toward the door.

5 (#ulink_07bc22e1-16cc-5698-be0f-f019d206f311)

Maram and Master Juwain hastened to catch up to me as I made my way out into the quiet hallway. They had begun this long night’s quest for knowledge with me, they said, and they would end it by my side as well. I was glad for their company, for the long hallway seemed too empty and too dark. Only a few oily torches remained burning. The sound of our boots striking cold stone echoed off the walls. We passed between the servants’ quarters and the kitchens, as we had come; when we reached the infirmary, we turned down another hallway. There, the pungent smell of medicines mingled with a deeper odor of sickness, sweat and blood. As we moved past the classroom and Nona’s empty room, this odor grew only stronger. It seemed not to emanate from the sanctuary to the right, or the guest quarters to the left where King Kurshan and his daughter had taken up residence. I was afraid to discover its source, even as I pushed my way through a moat of fear and pain that chilled my limbs like icy water.

At last, we came to the stairwell at the keep’s southwest corner. We entered, one by one, this dark tube of stone that twisted up toward the higher floors. My father had told me that the scryers had been given rooms on the third floor. We climbed up and up into the dark silence, turning always toward the left as the narrow steps spiraled upward. It was cold and close in that dim space; the smell of Maram’s sweat and brandy-sweetened breath fairly nauseated me. He was puffing and grunting behind me, moving as quickly as he could. But he was not quite quick enough, for the fear now pierced through to my heart and drove me up the stairs two and then three at a time.

‘Slow down!’ he gasped out. ‘You’re killing me! Ah, have mercy, my friend!’

I did not slow down. We passed by the exit to the second floor, where the Alonians and the Ishkans had taken quarters. We climbed ever higher. We finally reached the arched doorway that gave out onto the third floor. As I pushed out into the quiet hallway, the mortared stones along the walls seemed to be screaming at me. A sharp pain, with the savagery of cold steel, ripped into my belly. I drew my sword and began running past the closed doors of my father’s guests.

‘Come!’ I gasped. Maram and Master Juwain were close behind me, and began running, too. ‘It’s this door – it must be!’

At the end of the hallway, we came to a door darkened with torch-smoke and reinforced with bands of black iron. I rapped the diamond pommel of my sword against the dense wood and waited. My heart beat ten times, quick as a frightened bird’s, before I knocked at the door again, this time louder. I waited another few moments, and then tried turning the doorknob, but it was locked.

‘Come!’ I said to Maram. I rammed my shoulder against the door with such force that the hard wood drove the rings of my mail armor into my flesh almost down to the bone. ‘Help me break this open!’

‘But, Val – they’re old women!’ Maram said.

‘They might have taken a draught to help them sleep,’ Master Juwain added.

‘Come!’ I said again. ‘They’re not sleeping! Help me!’

Maram finally sighed his consent, and added his great bulk in battering at the door. On our second attempt, it burst inward in a scream of splinters and tormented iron. It was nothing against the scream in my eyes, in my belly and lungs. For the hall’s dim torchlight showed a small, simple room filled with carnage. The iron-sick smell of blood drove like a hammer against my head. Sprays of blood moistened one wall; the red imprints of boots darkened the floorstones. On one of the beds sprawled two of the scryers, whose names I had not learned. Their throats had been cut, and rivers of blood had flowed out over their white robes and white wool blankets. On the other bed was Kasandra. Someone had cut open her belly. She lay on her back with her eyes staring up at the ceiling, and it seemed that she was dead.

Master Juwain hurried to her side and placed his rough old fingers against her throat to feel for a pulse.

‘Ah, too bad,’ Maram gasped out. He held his hands over his own belly as if to protect this massive, food-filled outswelling – or to keep from vomiting. ‘Ah, I’d thought we were through with this kind of thing, too bad, too bad.’

My heart throbbed inside me as I gripped my sword and cast my eyes about the room’s sparse furnishings, looking for any sign of the men who had worked such an evil deed.

‘These poor women!’ Maram said. ‘Ah, but what kind of scryers could they have been if they let themselves be murdered in their sleep?’

‘They’re not all murdered,’ Master Juwain said, touching Kasandra’s withered face. ‘Not yet. This one is still alive.’

I knew that she was. I could feel her faint breathing as a whisper deep inside my throat.

‘Can you help her, sir?’

Master Juwain gently prodded the wound to her belly. Someone, like a ravening wolf, had ripped out most of its contents, which lay strewn upon the blankets beneath her like bloody white snakes. ‘Help her live through this, Val?’

‘No, help her live … a while longer. I must speak with her.’

Master Juwain nodded his head grimly and said, ‘I’ll try.’

He wiped his hands on the hem of Kasandra’s robes. From his pocket, he removed the green gelstei crystal that looked so much like a long and bright emerald. With its magic, he had once healed Atara of a mortal arrow wound to her lungs. But he had never been able to mend such terrible mutilations as the one that would soon kill Kasandra.

While Master Juwain positioned the varistei over Kasandra’s heart, I knelt by the other side of the bed and took Kasandra’s hand in mine. Her skin was as soft as fine leather and still warm.

‘Maram!’ I called out softly. ‘Guard the door! Whoever did this might return.’

With a grumble, Maram drew his sword and positioned himself by the door. But he turned his gaze toward the crystal in Master Juwain’s skilled hands. So he must have perceived the clean light that streamed out of the crystal and fell upon Kasandra’s chest like a shower of tiny, shimmering emeralds.

‘Ah,’ Maram said. ‘Ah, poor, poor woman.’

A terrible shiver tore through Kasandra’s body, and she coughed, once, as her breath rattled in her throat. A faint light filled her eyes. She had no strength to turn her head, nor even to cry out against the agony that I had called her back from the door of death to suffer. But I knew that she could see me, even so. She had been looking for me to come to her rooms, watching and waiting.

‘Valashu Elahad,’ she gasped out.

I leaned closer to her and asked, ‘Who did this to you?’

‘The one … called Salmelu.’

‘But why? You said that a ghul would undo my dreams. Who is this ghul? Did Salmelu kill you to keep you from telling me?’

‘Because … he is … he killed my sisters and …’

Her voice died off into a burning exhalation as her frail old body shuddered with another wave of anguish. And Master Juwain said to me, ‘Too much, Val. For mercy’s sake, ask her one question at a time!’

I swallowed hard against the anguish in my throat. I asked, ‘Who is this ghul, then?’

‘His name … I don’t know,’ Kasandra said. ‘His face, though, is as noble as yours.’

‘But what about the last part of your prophecy? You said that a man with no face would show me my own. Who is this man?’

‘Who is anyone?’

‘Does he have a name?’

‘He is no man … I know …’

Although her voice died off into nothingness, it seemed that she was trying to scream something at me. I asked, ‘Will this man show me the face of the Maitreya?’

‘No, the slave girl will show you the Maitreya.’

‘What slave girl? What is her name?’

‘Estrella.’

This strange name seemed to hang in the air like a star in the midst of blackness. I gripped Kasandra’s hand in mine as tightly as I dared. And then I asked her, ‘But am I the Maitreya?’

Kasandra’s lips did not move, nor did breath warm her lips. I knew that she was ready to walk through the door to that lightless land even the bravest of warriors feared to tread. I gripped the hilt of my sword in my right hand. And then Kasandra drew in a long breath as if gathering the last of her strength. And she gasped out, ‘You are …’