Lord of Lies. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ ancient Ardik: The Coming Of The Shining One. At last, he reached the page he had been seeking. He smiled as he set down the book next to the second parchment.

      ‘I found this in the library of the Brotherhood’s sanctuary at Nar. It was always a rare book, and with the burning of Khaisham’s Library, it might be the last copy remaining in the world.’ He tapped his finger against the symbol-written circle inscribed on the book’s open page. ‘This is the horoscope of Godavanni the Glorious. Look, Val, look!’

      Godavanni had been the greatest of Ea’s Maitreyas, born at the end of the great Age of Law three thousand years before. He had also been, as I remembered, a great King of Kings. I gasped in wonder because the two horoscopes, Godavanni’s and mine, were exactly the same.

      ‘No,’ I murmured, ‘it cannot be.’

      For my grandmother’s sake, Master Juwain explained again the features of my horoscope – and Godavanni’s. Then he turned to Maram and said, ‘You see, our quest to find the new Maitreya might already be completed.’

      ‘Ah, Val,’ Maram said as he pulled at his beard and gazed at me. ‘Ah, Val, Val.’

      My grandmother reached out her hand and squeezed mine. Then she set it on top of the parchments, fumbling to feel the lines of the symbols written on them.

      ‘Here,’ I said, gently pressing her fingertip against the rays denoting the Morning Star. ‘Is this what you wanted?’

      There was both joy and sadness in her smile as she turned to face me. Her ivory skin was so worn and old that it seemed almost transparent. The smell of lilacs emanated from her wispy white hair. The cataracts over her eyes clouded their deep sable color, but could not conceal the bright thing inside her, almost too bright to bear. Her breath poured like a warm wind from her lips, and I could feel the way that she had breathed it into me at my birth, pressing her lips over mine. I could feel the beating of her heart. There was a sharp pain there. It hurt me to feel her hurting so, with sorrow because she was blind and could not look upon me in what seemed my hour of glory. My eyes filled with water and burning salt a moment before hers did, too. And then, as if she knew well enough what had passed between us, she reached out her hand to touch away the tears on my cheek that she could not see.

      ‘It was this way with your grandfather, too,’ she said. ‘You have his gift.’

      She gave voice to a thing that we had never spoken of before. For many years it had remained our secret. During the quest, however, Master Juwain and Maram – and my other companions – had discovered what my grandmother called my gift: that what others feel, I feel as well. If I let myself, their joy became my joy, their love flowed into me like the warm, onstreaming rays of the sun. But I was open to darker passions as well: hatred, pain, fury, fear. For my gift was also a curse. How many times on the journey to Argattha, I wondered, had Master Juwain and Maram watched me nearly die with every enemy I had sent on to the otherworld in the screaming agony of death?

      My grandmother, as if explaining to Master Juwain and Maram something that she thought it was time for them to know, smiled sadly and said, ‘It was this way with Valashu from his first breath: it was as if he were breathing in all the pain in the world. It was why, at first, he failed to quicken and almost died.’

      For what seemed an hour, I sat next to her in silence holding her hand in mine. And then, to Master Juwain and Maram, to me – to the whole world – she cried out: ‘He’s my grandson and has the heart of an angel – shouldn’t this be enough?’

      My gift, this mysterious soul force within me, had a name, an ancient name, and that was valarda. I remembered that this meant ‘the heart of the stars’.

      As Master Juwain looked down at the two parchments, and Maram’s soft, brown eyes searched in mine, I kissed my grandmother’s forehead, then excused myself. I stood up and moved over to the open window. The warm wind brought the smell of pine trees and earth into the room. It called me to remember who I really was. And that could not be, I thought, the Maitreya. Was I a great healer? No, I was a knight of the sword, a great slayer of men. Who knew as well as I did the realm of death where I had sent so many? In the last moment of life, each of my enemies had grasped at me and pulled me down toward that lightless land. I remembered lines of the poem that had tormented me since the day I had killed Morjin’s assassin in the woods below the castle:

      The stealing of the gold, The evil knife, the cold – The cold that freezes breath, The nothingness of death. And down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark. The dying of the light, The neverness of night.

      Even now, in the warmth of a fine spring day, I felt this everlasting cold chilling my limbs and filling me with dread. The night that knows no end called to me, even as the voices of the dead carried along the wind. They spoke to me in grave tones, telling me that I waited to be one of them – and that I could not be the Shining One, for he was of the sun and earth and all the things of life. A deeper voice, like the fire of the far-off stars, whispered this inside me, too. I did not listen. For just then, with my quick breath burning my lips and Telshar’s diamond peak so beautiful against the sky, I recalled the words to another poem, about the Maitreya:

      To mortal men on planets bound Who dream and die on darkened ground, To bold and bright Valari knights Who cross the starry heavens’ heights, To all: immortal Elijin As well the quenchless Galadin, He brings the light that slays the Lie: The light of love makes death to die.

      ‘“It is said that the Maitreya shall have eternal life”,’ I whispered, quoting from the Book of Ages of the Saganom Elu.

      It was also said that he would show this way to others. How else, I wondered, did men gain the long lives of the Star People and learn to sail the glittering heavens? And how did the Star People advance to the order of the immortal Elijin, and the Elijin become the great Galadin, they who could not be killed or harmed in any way? Men called these beings angels, but they were of flesh and blood – and perhaps something more. Once, in the depths of the black mountain called Skartaru, I had seen a great Elijin lord unveiled in all his glory. Had the hand of a Maitreya once touched him and passed on the inextinguishable flame?

      Master Juwain stood up and came over to me, laying his hand on my arm. I turned to him and asked, ‘If I were the Maitreya, wouldn’t I know this?’

      He smiled as he hefted his copy of the Saganom Elu and began thumbing through its pages. Whether by chance or intuition, he came upon words that were close to the questioning of my heart:

       The Shining One In innocence sleeps Inside his heart Angel fire sleeps And when he wakes The fire leaps About the Maitreya One thing is known: That to himself He always is known When the moment comes To claim the Lightstone.

      ‘But that’s just it, sir,’ I said to him. ‘I don’t know this.’

      He closed his book and looked deep into my eyes. He said, ‘In you, Val, there is such a fire. And such an innocence that you’ve never seen it.’

      ‘But, sir, I –’

      ‘I think we do know,’ he told me. ‘The evidence is overwhelming. First, there is your horoscope, the Swan rising, which purifies – wasn’t it only by purifying yourself that you were able to find the Lightstone? And you are the seventh son of a king СКАЧАТЬ