By the same author
NEVERNESS
A Requiem for Homo Sapiens
THE BROKEN GOD THE
WILD
WAR IN
HEAVEN
The Lightstone
Lord of Lies
Voyager
Black Jade
Book Three of the Ea Cycle
David
Zindell
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the people closest to this book, who made it possible: My daughters, who journeyed with me on many long and magical walks through Ea and helped generate this story with their pointed-questions blazing imagination, dreams and delight. My agent, Donald Maass, for his great enthusiasm, brilliant suggestions and help in fine-tuning the story. And Jane Johnson and Joy Chamberlain, whose inspired editing, unstinting support and sheer hard work in the face of great pressure brought this book to life
Voyager
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
Published by Voyager 2005
135798642
Copyright © David Zindell 2005
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback
ISBN 0 00 224759 3
Trade Paperback ISBN 0 00
224760 7
Typeset in Giovanni by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Limited, St Ives plc
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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perrmssion of the publishers.
Maps: Ea
Chapter 1 Chapter
16 Chapter 31 Appendices
Chapter 2 Chapter
17 Chapter 32
Chapter 3 Chapter
18 Chapter 33
Chapter 4 Chapter
19 Chapter 34
Chapter 5 Chapter
20 Chapter 35
Chapter 6 Chapter
21 Chapter 36
Chapter 7 Chapter
22 Chapter 37
Chapter 8 Chapter
23 Chapter 38
Chapter 9 Chapter
24 Chapter 39
Chapter
10 Chapter 25 Chapter 40
Chapter
11 Chapter 26 Chapter 41
Chapter
12 Chapter 27 Chapter 42
Chapter
13 Chapter 28 Chapter 43
Chapter 1 Back Table of Content Next
Each man and woman is a star. As long as we are alive, my grandfather
used to say, we must endure burning if we are to give light. As for the dead,
only the dead know if their eternal flame is a glory or an anguish. In the
heavens they shine through the dark nights of the ages in uncountable numbers.
There, since I was a child, my grandfather has dwelled with Aras and Solaru and
the other brightest lights. There, my mother and father, my grandmother and
brothers, have joined him, sent on by the deadly lies and misdeeds of
one they loved. Some day, it is said, a man will come forth and impel the stars
to end their vast silence, and then these splendid orbs will sing their long,
deep, fiery songs to those who listen. Will this Shining One, with the
Lightstone in his hands, cool the tormented hearts of mien, the living and the
dead? I must believe that he will. For it is also said that the Lightstone
gathers all things to itself. Within its luminous center dwells the earth and
men and women and all the stars - and the blackness between them that allows
them to be seen.
The Lightstone,
however, was as far from this Shining One's grasp as the sun was from mine.
With the Red Dragon's ravaging of my father's castle to steal the golden cup,
men and women in every land were looking toward the Dragon's stronghold of
Argattha with fevered and fearful eyes. In Surrapam, the victorious armies of
King Arsu stood ready to conquer Eanna and the other Free Kingdoms of the far
west, and crucify their peoples in the Dragon's name. In Alonia, mightiest of
realms, quarrelsome dukes and lords slew each other to gain King Kiritan's
vacant throne. Across the Morning Mountains of my home, the Valari kings fought
as always for ancient grudge and glory. A great rebellion in Galda had ended
with ten thousand men being mounted on crosses of
wood. The Wendrush was a sea of grass running red with the blood of the Sarni
tribes. Too many of these fierce warriors had surrendered their independence to
declare for the Red Dragon, whose name was Morjin. As scryers had foreseen in
terrible visions, it seemed that the whole world was about to burn up in a holocaust
that would blacken the very stars.
And
yet, as the scryers had also told somewhere on Ea lived the Shining One: the
last Maitreya who might bring a light so pure and sweet that it would put out
this all-consuming fire. I sought
this great-souled being. My friends - heroes, all of the Quest to find
the Lightstone - sought him. too. Our new quest, by day and by night, took us
ever farther from the green valleys and snowcapped mountains of my homeland.
To the west we journeyed, following the fiery arc of Aras and Varshara and the
other bright stars of the ancient constellations where they disappeared beyond
the dark edge of the heavens. And
others followed us. Early in Ashte in the year 2814 of the Age of the Dragon, a squadron of
Morjin's famed Dragon Guard and
their Sarni allies pursued us across the Wendrush's rolling steppe. Our enemies seemed not to
care that we were under the escort
of forty-four Sarni warriors of the Danladi tribe; for three days, as we approached the great,
icy, stone wall of the White Mountains,
they had ridden after us like shadows through the Danladi's country - always keeping at a
distance that neither threat-
ened
nor invited attack. And for three nights, they had built their campfires and cooked their dinners
scarcely a mile from the sites
that we chose to lay our sleeping furs. When the third night fell upon the world and the wind shifted
and blew at us from the north,
we could smell the smoky char of roasting meat and other more disturbing scents.
On a
swell of dark grass at the edge of our camp, I stood with my friend Kane gazing
out to the northwest at the orange glow of our enemy's campfires. Kane's
cropped, white hair was a silvery sheen beneath a round, silver moon. He stared
off into the starlit distances, and his lips pulled back from his white teeth
in a fearsome grimace. His large, savage body trembled with a barely-contained
fury. I could almost hear him howling out his hate, like a great, white wolf of
the steppe lusting to rend and slay.
'So.
Val, so,' he said to rne. 'We must decide what we are to do about these
crucifiers, and soon.'
He
turned his gaze upon me then. As always, I saw too much of myself in this
vengeful man, and of him in me. His bright, black eyes were like a mirror of my
own. He was nearly as tall as I; his nose was that of a great eagle, and
beneath his weathered ivory skin, the bones of his face stood out boldly.
Between us was a like-ness that others had remarked: of form, certainly, for he
looked as much a Valari warrior as had my father and brothers. But our deeper
kinship, I thought, was not of the blood but the spirit. Now that my family had
all been slaughtered, I sometimes found the best part of them living on in his
aspect: strange, wild, beautiful and free.
I
smiled at him and then turned back toward our enemy's camp-fires. One of our
Sarni escort, after earlier riding close enough to take an arrow through the
arm, had put their numbers at fifty: twenty-five Zayak warriors under some
unknown chief or headman and as many of the Red Knights, with their dragon
blazons and their iron armor, tinctured red as with blood.
'We
might yet outride them,' I said to Kane. 'Perhaps tomorrow, we should put it to
the test.'
We
could not, of course, so easily escape the Zayak warriors, for none but a Sarni
could outride a Sarni. The Red Knights, however, encased in heavy armor and
mounted on heavy horses, moved more slowly. Of our company, only Kane and I,
with our friend, Maram, wore any kind of real armor: supple mail forged of
Godhran steel that was lighter and stronger than anything Morjin's blacksmiths
could hammer together. Our horses, I thought, were better, too: Fire, Patience
and Hell Witch, and especially my great, black warhorse, Altaru, who stood off
a hundred paces with our other mounts taking his fill of the steppe's new, sweet grass.
'Well
then,' Kane said to me, 'we must test it before we reach the mountains.'
He
pointed off toward the great, snow-capped peaks that glinted beneath the
western stars. As he held out his thick finger, his mail likewise glinted from
beneath his gray, wool traveling cloak, similar in cut and weave to my own.
'So,
then - fight or flee,' he growled out. 'And I hate to
flee.' As we pondered our course, mostly in silence, a great bear of a man
stood up from the nearby campfire and ambled over to hear what we were
discussing. He tried to skirt the inevitable piles of horse or sagosk dung, and
other imagined dangers of the dark grass, all the while sipping from a mug of
sloshing brandy. I drank in the form of my best friend, Maram Marshayk. Once a
prince of Delu and an honorary Valari knight of great renown, fate had reduced
him to accompanying me into Ea's wild lands
as
outcasts.
'Ah, I
heard Kane say something about fleeing,' he said to us. A belch rumbled up from
his great belly, and he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 'My father
used to say that whoever runs away lives to fight again another day.'
His
soft eyes found mine through the thin light as his thick, sensuous lips broke
into a smile. Upon taking in the whole of his form - the dense, curly beard
which covered his heavy face, no less his massive chest, arms and legs - I
decided that it would be a bad idea to try to outride the Red Knights. No
weight of their armor, be it made of steel plate, could match the mass of
muscle and fat that padded the frame of Maram Marshayk.
'If we
flee,' Kane said to him, poking his finger into Maram's belly, 'are you willing
to be left behind when your horse dies of exhaustion?'
It was
too dark to see Maram's florid face blanch, but I felt the blood drain from it,
even so. He looked out toward our enemy's campfires, and said, 'Would you
really leave me behind?'
'So, I
would,' Kane growled out. His dark eyes drilled into Maram. 'At need, I'd
sacrifice any and all of us to fulfill this quest.'
Maram
took a long pull of brandy as he turned to regard Kane. 'Ah, a sacrifice is it,
then? Well, I won't have that on your conscience. If a sacrifice truly
needs to be made, I'll turn to cross lances with the Red Knights by myself.'
I
looked back and forth between Maram and Kane as they glared at each other. I
did not think that either of them was quite telling the truth. I rested my hand
on Maram's shoulder as I caught Kane's gaze. And I said, 'No one is going to be
left behind. And we will fulfill this quest, as we did the first.'
Just
then Master Juwain, sitting with our other friends by the fire, finished
writing something in one of his journals and came over to us. He was as small
as Maram was large and as ugly as Kane was well-made. His head somewhat
resembled a walnut, and a misshapen one at that: all lumpy and bald with a
knurled nose and ears that stuck out too far. But I had never know a man whose
eyes were so intelligent and clear. Like the rest of us, he wore a gray
traveling cloak, though he refused to bind his limbs in steel rings of carry any
weapon more deadly than the little knife he used to sharpen his quills.
'Come,' he said as
he grasped Maram's wrist. 'If we're to hold council, let us all sit together.
Liljana is nearly finished making dinner.'
I
looked over toward the fire where a plump, matronly woman bent over a pot of
bubbling stew. A girl about ten years old sat next to her making cakes on a
griddle while a boy slightly older poked the fire with a long, charred stick.
'Excellent,'
Maram agreed, 'we'll eat and then we'll talk.'
'You
would talk more cogently,' Master Juwain told him, 'if you would take your
drink after you eat. Or forbear it altogether.'
With
fierce determination, Master Juwain suddenly clamped his knotted fingers around
Maram's mug. His small hands were surprisingly strong, from a lifetime of
disciplines and hard work, and he managed to pry free the mug from Maram's
thick palm.
Maram
eyed the mug as might a child a candy that has been taken from him. He said, 'I
have forborne my brandy these last three days, waiting for the Red
Knights to attack us, too bad. As for talk, cogent as it is clever, please
don't forget that I'm now called Five-Horned Maram.'
Once, a
lifetime ago it seemed, Maram had been an adept of the Great White Brotherhood
under the tutelage of Master Juwain, and everyone had called him 'Brother
Maram.' But he had long since abjured his vows to forsake wine, women and war.
Now he wore steel armor beneath his cloak and bore a sword that was nearly as
long and keen as my own. Less than a year before, in the tent of Sajagax, the
Sarni's mightiest chieftain, he had become the only man in memory to down five
great horns of the Sarni's potent beer - and to remain standing to tell
everyone of his great feat.
Kane
continued glaring at Maram, and again he poked his steely finger into his
belly. He said, 'You'd do well to forbear brandy and bread, at least for
a while. Are you trying to kill yourself, as well as your horse?'
In
truth, ever since the Battle of Culhadosh Commons and the sack of my father's
castle, Maram had been eating enough for two men and drinking more than enough
for five.
'Forbear,
you say?' he muttered to Kane. 'I might as well forbear life itself.'
'But you're
growing as fat as a bear.'
Maram
patted his belly and smiled. 'Well, what I am? Haven't you seen a bear eat when
winter is coming?'
'But
it's Ashte - another month, summer will be upon us!'
'No, my
friend, there you're wrong,' Maram told him, with a shake of his head and
another belch. 'Wherever we journey it will be winter - and deep winter at
that, for we'll be deep into this damn new quest. Do you remember the last time
we went tramping all across Ea? I nearly starved to death. And so is it not the
soul of prudence that I should fortify myself against the deprivations that
are sure to come?'
Kane
had no answer against this logic. And so he snapped at Maram: 'Fortify yourself
then, if you will. But at least forbear your brandy until there's a better time
and place to drink it.'
So
saying, he took the mug from Master Juwain and moved to empty its contents onto
the grass.
'Hold!'
Maram cried out. 'It would be a crime to waste such good brandy!'
'So,'
Kane said, eyeing the dark liquor inside the mug. 'So.'
He
smiled his savage smile, as if the great mystery of life's unfairness pleased
him almost as much as it pained him. Then, with a single, quick motion, he put
the mug to his lips and threw down the brandy in three huge gulps.
'Forbear
yourself, damn you!' Maram called out to him.
'Damn me? You
should thank me, eh?'
'Thank
you why? For saving me from drunkenness?'
'No -
for taking a little pleasure from this fine brandy of yours.'
Kane
handed the mug back to Maram, who stood looking into its hollows.
'Ah,
well, I suppose one of us should have savored it,' he said to Kane. 'It
pleases me that it pleased you so deeply, my friend. Perhaps someday I can
return the favor - and save you from becoming a drunk.'
Kane
smiled at this as Maram began laughing at the little joke he had made, and so
did Master Juwain and I. One mug of brandy had as much effect on the quenchless
Kane as a like amount of water would on all the sea of grasses of the Wendrush.
I
looked at Kane as I tapped my finger against Maram's cup. I said, 'Perhaps we
should all forbear brandy for a while.'
'Ha!'
Kane said. 'There's no need that I should.'
'The
need is to encourage Maram to remain sober,' I said. I couldn't help smiling as
I added, 'Besides, we all must make sacri-fices.'
Kane
looked at Maram for an uncomfortably long moment, and then announced, 'All
right then, if Maram will vow to forbear, so shall I.'
'And so
shall I,' I said.
Maram
blinked at the new moisture in his eyes; I couldn't quite tell if our little
sacrifice had moved him or if the prospect of giving up his beloved brandy made
him weep. And then he clapped me on the arm as he nodded at Kane and said, 'You
would do that for me?'
'We
would,' Kane and I said with one breath.
'Ah,
well that pleases me more than I could ever tell you, even if I had a
whole barrel full of brandy to loosen my tongue/ Maram paused to dip his fat
finger down into the mug, moistening it with the last few drops of brandy that
clung to its insides. Then he licked his finger and smiled. 'But I must say that
I would wish no such deprivation upon my friends. Just because I suffer doesn't
mean that the rest of the world must, too.'
I
glanced at the campfires of our enemies, then I turned back to look at Maram.
'In these circumstances, we'll gladly suffer with you.'
'Very
well,' Maram said. Then he nodded at Master Juwain. 'Sir, will you be a witness
to our vows?'
'Even
as I was once before,' Master Juwain said dryly.
'Excellent,'
Maram said. 'Then unless it be needed for, ah, medicinal purposes, I vow to
forbear brandy until we find the one we seek.'
'Ha!'
Kane cried out. 'Rather let us say that unless Master Juwain prescribes brandy
for medicinal purposes, we shall all forbear it.'
'Excellent
excellent,' Maram agreed, nodding his head. He held up his mug and smiled.
'Then why don't we all return to the fire and drink one last toast to our
resolve?'
'Maram!'
I half-shouted at him.
'All
right, all right!' he called back. The breath huffed out of him, and for a
moment he seemed like a bellows emptied of air. 'I was just, ah, testing your
resolve, my friend. Now, why don't we all go have a taste of Liljana's fine
stew. That, at least, is still permitted, isn't it?'
We all
walked back to the fire and sat down on our sleeping furs set out around it. I
smiled at Daj, the dark-souled little boy that we had rescued out of Argattha
along with the Lightstone. He smiled back, and I noticed that he was not quite
so desperate inside nor small outside as when we had found him a starving slave
in Morjin's hellhole of a city. It was a good thing, smiling, I thought. It
lifted up the spirit and gave courage to others. I silently thanked Maram for
making me laugh, and I resolved to sustain my gladness of life as long as I could.
This was the vow I had made, high on a sacred mountain above the castle where
my mother and grandmother had been crucified. Daj, sitting next to me, jabbed
the glowing end of his fire-stick toward me and called out, 'At ready! Let's
practice swords until it's time to eat!'
He
moved to put down his stick and draw the small sword I had given him when we
had set out on our new quest. His enthusiasm for this weapon both impressed
and saddened me. I would rather have seen him playing chess or the flute, or even
playing at swords with other boys his age. But this savage boy. I
reminded myself, had never really been a boy. I remembered how in Argattha he
had fought a dragon by my side and had stuck a spear into the bodies of our
wounded enemies.
'It is
nearly time to eat,' Liljana called out to us- Her heavy breasts moved
against her thick, strong body as she stirred the succulent-smelling stew. 'Why
don't you practice after dinner?'
Although
her words came out of her firm mouth as a question, sweetly posed, there was no
question that we must put off our swordwork until later. Beneath her bound,
iron-gray hair, her pleasant face betrayed an iron will. She liked to bring the
cheer and good order of a home into our encampments by directing cooking,
eating and cleaning, even talking, and many other details of our lives. I might
be the leader of our company on our quest across Ea's burning steppes and icy
mountains, but she sought by her nature to try to lead me from within. Through
countless kindnesses and her relentless devotion, she had dug up the secrets
of my soul. It seemed that there was no sacrifice that she wouldn't make for me
- even as she never tired, in her words and deeds, of letting me know how much
she loved me. At her best, however, she called me to my best, as
warrior, dreamer and man. Now that the insides of my father's castle had been
burnt to ashes, she was the only mother I still had.
'There
will be no swordwork tonight,' I said, to Liljana and Daj, 'unless the Red
Knights attack us. We need to hold council.'
'Very
well then, but I hope you're not still considering attacking them.' Liljana
looked through the steam wafting up from the stew, straight at Kane. She shook
her head, then called out, 'Estrella, are those cakes ready yet?'
Estrella,
a dark, slender girl of quicksilver expressions and bright smiles, dapped her
hands to indicate that the yellow rushk cakes - piled high on a grass mat by
her griddle - were indeed ready to eat. She could not speak, for she, too, had
been Morjin's slave, and he had used his black arts to steal the words from her
tongue. But she had the hearing of a cat; in truth, there was something feline
about her, in her wild, triangular face and in the way she moved, instinctually
and gracefully, as if all the features of the world must be sensed and savored.
With her black curls gathered about her neck, her lustrous skin and especially
her large, luminous eyes, she possessed a primeval beauty. I had never known
anyone, not even Kane, who seemed so alive.
Almost
without thought, she plucked one of the freshest cakes from the top of the
piles and placed it in my hand. It was still quite hot, though not enough to
burn me. As I took a bite out of it, her smile was like the rising sun.
'Estrella,
you shouldn't serve until we're all seated,' Liljana instructed her.
Estrella
smiled at Liljana, too, though she did not move to do as she was told. Instead,
seeing that I had finished my cake, she gave me another one. She delighted in
bringing me such little joys as the eating of a hot, nutty rushk cake. It had
always been that way between us, ever since I had found her clinging to a cold,
castle wall and saved her from falling to her death. And countless times since
that dark night, in her lovely eyes and her deep covenant with life, she had
kept me from falling into much worse.
'The
girl never minds me,' Liljana complained. 'She always does just as she
pleases.'
I
smiled because what she said was true. I watched as Estrella tried to urge one
of the cakes into Liljana's hand. She seemed not to resent Liljana's stern
looks or scolding; indeed, Liljana's oppressive care for her and her desire to
teach her good manners obviously pleased her, as did almost everything about
the people she loved. Her will to be happy, I thought, was even greater than
Liljana's urge to remake the world as the paradise it had been in the Age of
the Mother. It must have vexed Liljana that our quest depended utterly upon
this wild, magical child.
'She
was a slave of the Red Priests,' Kane said to Liljana. 'So who can blame her
for not wanting to be your slave, too?'
As
Liljana paused in stirring the stew to glare at Kane, more wounded by his cruel
words than angry. Master Juwain cleared his throat and said, 'The closer we've
come to Argattha, it seems, the more she has relished her freedom.'
We
were, I tought, much too close to Morjin's dark city, carved out of the dark
heart of the black mountain called Skartaru. Our course across the Wendrush had
inevitably brought us this way. And it seemed that it had inevitably brought
the knights of Morjin's Dragon Guard upon our heels. As Estrella began passing
out rushk cakes to everyone, Liljana called for Atara to sit down, and she
began ladling the stew into wooden bowls. From out of the darkness at the edge
of our encampment where our horses were hobbled, a tall woman appeared and
walked straight toward us. And that, I thought, was a miracle, because a white
cloth encircled her head, covering the hollows which had once held the
loveliest and most sparkling pair of sapphire-blue eyes. Atara Ars Narmada,
daughter of the murdered King Kiritan and Sajagax's beloved granddaughter,
moved with all the prowess of the princess and the warrior-woman that she was.
In consideration of our quest, she had cast off the lionskin cloak that she
usually wore in favor of plain gray woolens. Gone were the golden hoops that
had once encircled her lithe arms and the lapis beads bound to her long, golden
hair. Few, outside of the Wendrush, would recognize her as one of the Sarni.
But in her hand she gripped the great, double-curved bow of the Sarni archers,
and the Sarni knew her as the great imakla warrior of the Manslayer
Society. I knew her as a scryer who had great powers of sight, in space and
time, and most of all, as the only woman I could ever love.
'Vanora,
Suri and Mata,' she told me, naming three of her sisters of the Manslayers,
'will take watches tonight, so we won't have to worry about the Zayak trying to
steal the horses.'
For the
thousandth time that day, I looked back in the direction where our enemy
gathered. As Atara knew very well, I worried about much more than this.
She sat
down between Liljana and Master Juwain, and picked up a bowl of stew. Before
permitting herself to taste any of it, she continued her report: 'Karimah has set
patrols, so there won't be any surprises. Bajorak has, too.'
In the
deepening night, the steppe's grasses swayed and glowed beneath the stars.
There, crickets chirped and snakes slithered, hunting rabbits or voles or other
prey. There, forty yards to our left, Bajorak and some thirty Danladi warriors
sat around their fires roasting sagosk joints over long spits. And forty yards
to our right, Karimah and her twelve Manslayers - women drawn from half a dozen
of the Sarni tribes - prepared their own dinner. It was our greatest strategic
weakness, I thought, that the Manslayers disdained camaraderie with the Danladi
men. And that both contingents of our Sarni escort neither really liked nor
trusted us.
'I would sleep
better tonight,' Maram told her, 'if the enemy weren't so close.'
'Hmmph,
you sleep better than any man I've ever known, enemy or no enemy,' Atara said
to him. 'But fear not, we Sarni rarely fight night battles. There won't be any
attack tonight.'
'Are
you speaking as a Sarni warrior or a scryer?'
In
answer, Atara only smiled at him, and then returned to her dinner.
'Ah,
well,' Maram continued, 'I should tell you that it's not the Zayak who
really concern me, at least not until daybreak - and then I shall fear
their arrows, too bad. No, it's those damn Red Knights. What if they charge
straight into our encampment while we're sleeping?'
'They
won't do that,' Atara reassured him.
'But
what if they do?'
'They
won't.' Atara looked up at the bright moon. 'They fear arrows as much as you
do. And there's enough light that they would still make good targets, at least
at short range.'
I
touched the hilt of my sword, sheathed beside me, and I said, 'We can't count
on this.'
'In
three days,' Atara said, 'they've kept their distance. They haven't the numbers
to prevail.'
'And
that is precisely the point,' I said. 'Perhaps they are waiting for
reinforcements.'
'So,
just so,' Kane said as he squeezed his bowl of stew between his calloused
hands. 'And so, if there must be battle, we should take it to them before
it's too late.'
For
three days and nights, I thought, my friends and I had been arguing the same
argument. But now the mountains were drawing nearer, and a decision must be
made,
'We may not
have the numbers to prevail, either,' Atara said. She positioned her head
facing Estrella and Daj, who sat across the fire from her. 'And what of the
children?'
The
children, of course, were at risk no matter what course we chose: attacking our
enemy would only expose them to recapture or death all the sooner. It was that
way with all children everywhere, even in lands far away and still free. With
Morjin in control of the Lightstone, uncontested, it would only be a matter of
time before everyone on Ea was either put on crosses or enslaved.
'I can
fight!' Daj suddenly announced, drawing out his small blade.
We all
knew that he could. We all knew, too, that Estrella had a heart of pure fire.
Her great promise, however, was not in fighting the enemy with swords but with
a finer and deeper weapon. As her dark, almond eyes fixed on me, I felt in her
an unshakeable courage - and her unshakeable confidence in me to lead us
the right way.
'We
must either fight or flee,' I said. 'But if we do flee, flee where?'
'We
could still go into the mountains,' Maram said. 'But farther south of the Kul Kavaakurk. And
then we could turn north toward
the Brotherhood school. We'll lose our enemy in the mountains.'
'We'll
lose ourselves,' Master Juwain put in. 'Try to remember, Brother Maram, that -'
'Sar Maram,'
Maram said, correcting him. He held up his hand to show the double-diamond ring
that proclaimed him a Valari knight.
'Sar
Maram, then,' Master Juwain said with a sigh. 'But try to remember that this
school has remained a secret from the Lord of Lies only because our Grandmaster
has permitted knowledge of it to very few. No map shows its location. I may be
able to find it -but only from the gorge called the Kul Kavaakurk.'
For the
thousandth time, I scanned the ghostly, white wall of mountains to the west of
us. Could we find this secret school of the Great White Brotherhood? And
if by some miracle we did reach this place of power deep within the maze of
mountains of the lower Nagarshath, would we find the Grandmaster still alive?
And more importantly, would he - or any of the Brotherhood's masters - be able
to tell us in which land the Maitreya had been born? For it was said that this
great Shining One might be able to wrest the Lightstone from Morjin, if not in
the substance of the golden bowl, then at least in the wielding of it.
'There must
be such a gorge,' I told Master Juwain. 'We will certainly find it, if not
tomorrow, then the next day.'
'We
would find it the easier,' Atara said, 'if we took Bajorak into our confidence.
Surely he would know what gorges or passes give out onto the Danladi's
country.'
'He
might know,' Master Juwain agreed. 'But he might not know it by that name. And
if we can help it, he must not know that name.'
He went
on to say that Bajorak, under torture or the seduction of gold, might betray
the name to Morjin. And that might key ancient knowledge of clues as to
the school's whereabouts.
'If the
Red Dragon discovered our greatest school so close to Argattha,' he told us,
'that would be a greater disaster than I can tell.'
The
fire, burning logs of cottonwood that we had found by a stream, crackled and
hissed. I stared into the writhing flames as I marvelled at the
near-impossibility of pis new quest. There were too many contingencies that
must fall in our favor if we were to succeed. Would Estrella, I wondered, when
the time came, really be able to show us the Maitreya, a had been prophesied?
And if she did. was it not the slenderest of hopes that we would be able to
spirit him to safety before Morjin succeeded in murdering him?
'All
right,' I said, 'we cannot go south, as Maram has suggested. Our choices, then,
are either to turn and attack or to lead the way into this Kul Kavaakurk and
hope that we can lose our enemy before we betray the way to the school.'
Master
Juwain's lips tightened in dismay because either alternative was repugnant to
him.
'Or,'
Maram put in, 'we could still try to outride the Red Knights. If you're
concerned about me lagging and can't bear to see me make a stand against them,
I could always turn off in another direction and try to meet up with you
later.'
I
leaned over to grasp his arm, and I said, 'No, you'd only make yourself easy
prey, and I couldn't bear that. Whatever we do, we'll all stay
together.'
'Then
perhaps we should make our way to Delu and stay there until next year.'
He went
on to say that his father, King Santoval Marshayk, would provide us shelter -
and perhaps even a ship and crew to sail the lands of Ea in search of the
Maitreya.
I
stared at the sky in the west over the mountains leading to Skartaru, and in my
mind's eye, I saw a great hourglass full of sparkling sands like unto stars.
And with every breath that I drew and every word wasted in speculation - with
every minute, hour and day that passed - the sands fell and crashed and darkened
like burnt-out cinders as Morjin gained mastery of the-Lightstone.
'We
cannot wait until next year,' I said. 'And we are agreed that our bell hope of
finding the Maitreya lies in reaching the Brotherhood school.'
'In
that case,' Maram said, 'our dilemma remains: do we flee or fight?'
Atara had
now finished her stew, and she sat quietly between Liljana and Master Juwain as
the fire's orange light danced across her blindfolded face. Sometimes, I knew,
she could 'see' the grasses and grasshoppers and other features of the world
about her, and other times she was truly blind. Just as sometimes she could see
the future - or at least its possibilities.
'Atara,'
I asked her, 'what do you think we should do?' 'Flee,' she said. 'Let's see how
well these Red Knights can ride.'
She
waited as my heart drummed five times, then turned toward me as she declared,
'You would rather see how well they can fight.'
I said
nothing as I gripped the hilt of my sword.
'I must
tell you, Val,' she said to me, 'that it is not certain that the warriors who
ride with us will fight just because you ask them to.'
I
pointed out across the steppe and said, 'Fifty men, Red Knights and Zayak,
pursue us. And your warriors are Manslayers, are they not?'
'Indeed
they are,' she said. Now it was her turn to grip the great unstrung bow that
she had set by her side. 'And indeed they will fight - if I ask them. But
Bajorak and his warriors are another matter.'
'He
agreed to escort us to the mountains.'
'Yes,
and so he will certainly fight if we are attacked. So far, though, we are only
followed.'
'In
this country,' I said, 'with this enemy, it is the same thing.'
Liljana
made a show of collecting our empty bowls and serving us some succulent
bearberries for dessert. During dinner she had not said very much. But now, as
she often did, she cut me to the quick with only a few words: 'I think you love
to hate this enemy too much,' she told me.
For a
moment I looked down at my sword's hilt, at the diamond pommel and the smaller
diamonds set into the black jade. Then I met eyes with Liljana and said, 'How
should I not hate them? They might be the very same knights who put
nails through my mother's hands and feet!'
'They
might be,' she admitted. 'But would you then throw yourself upon their lances
and put nails through my heart?'
Because
I could not bear to look at Liljana just then, I returned to my vigil, staring
out across the steppe at our enemy's fires. I muttered, 'How did they find us
and who leads them? What do they intend?'
Kane
scowled at this and spat out, 'What does Morjin ever intend?'
'I must
know,' I said. I looked around the circle at my friends. 'We must know,
if we are to reach a decision.'
'Some
things,' Master Juwain said, 'are unknowable.'
I
turned to Liljana and asked, 'What of your crystal?' 'And other things,' Master
Juwain continued, looking from me to Liljana, 'are better left unknown.'
Liljana
reached into her tunic's inner pocket and brought out a small figurine cast
into the form of a whale. It had the luster of lapis and the hint of the
ocean's deep currents. Long ago, in another age, it had been forged of blue
gelstei.
'Are
you asking,' she said to me, 'that I should look into the minds of these Red
Knights?'
Just
then, out of the blackness beyond the fire. Flick appeared like a tiny,
whirling array of stars. His colors of crimson, silver and blue, throwing out
sparks, also pulsed in patterns that I took to be a warning. What was this
strange being who had followed me across the length of Ea, I wondered? Was he
truly a messenger of the Galadin, a little bit of starlight and angel fire? Or
did he possess a will all his own, and therefore his own life and his own fate?
Master
Juwain, upon glancing at Flick, turned to Liljana and commanded her, 'No, do
not use your gelstei!'
Then he
brought out his own gelstei: the emerald healing crystal that he had gained on
our first quest. He held it up to the fire, letting the flickering light pour
through its green-tinged translucency. Although it was hard to tell in the deep
of night, a darkness seemed to have fallen over the crystal, as if it were
steeped in shadow.
'It's
too dangerous!' he said to Liljana. 'Now that the Dragon has regained the
Lightstone, too damned dangerous! Especially for you.'
Maram
regarded Master Juwain in shock, and so did I, for we had never heard him curse
before. Liljana sat looking at her gelstei, cupped in her hands. As if she were
holding a newborn, she swayed rhythmically back and forth.
'I
won't believe that Morjin can use the Lightstone to taint this crystal,' she
said. 'How can that which is most fair abide anything
fouler.
'Surely
the foulness,' I said, 'arises from Morjin himself and our weakness in
resisting him. He desecrates everything he touches.'
I
turned to look at the white cloth binding Atara's face. I couldn't help
remembering how Morjin, with his own fingers, had torn out her eyes.
'So,
every abomination, every degradation of the spirit,' Kane said, gazing at
Liljana's blue stone. 'But things aren't as simple as you think, eh? Don't be
so sure you understand Morjin - or the Lightstone!'
'I understand
that we must fight him - and not with swords,' Iiljana said.
She was
a wise woman, but a willful one, too. And so she clasped her figurine between
her fingers and brought it up to the side of her head.
'No,'
Master Juwain called out again, 'do not!'
Once,
in the depths of Argattha where the very rocks stank of rotting blood and
terror, Liljana had touched minds with Morjin. And now, even as Estrella could
not speak, Liljana would never smile again.
The
moment that the gelstei touched her temple, she cried out in betrayal and pain.
The crystal seemed to burn her like a heated iron, and she dropped it onto the
grass. Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing the whites. 'Liljana!' I
cried out. 'Liljana!'
It took
me a moment to realize that not only I had called to her, but Maram, Master
Juwain and Atara - even Daj and Kane. And then Atara sidled closer to Liljana
and wrapped her arm around her back as she cradled Liljana's drooping head
against her breasts. Estrella took Liljana's hand between hers and squeezed it
tightly. Their little comforts must have worked a quick magic on Liljana, for
soon her eyes regained their focus, and she gathered herself together and
forced herself to sit up straight again. She drew in ten deeps breaths, and let
each of them out, slowly. She wiped the sweat from her sodden hair. Finally she
retrieved her blue gelstei. In her open hand it glinted, and she sat staring at
it. Then she cried out: 'He is there!' 'Morjin!' I called back to her. 'Damn
him! Damn him!' Daj rose up to one knee and leaned over to get a better look at
Liljana's crystal. He asked, 'How, then? Where, then Where?' 'He is
everywhere!' Liljana gasped. 'Watching, always watching.' She closed her fist
around her stone and put it back in her pocket. Atara still embraced her, and
now they both swayed together back and forth, back and forth.
Although
I hated the need of it, I put to Liljana the question that must be asked: 'Were
you able to open the minds of the Red Knights?'
'No!'
she snapped at me. And then, more gently, 'He was waiting for me, Morjin was.
Waiting to open up my mind. To twist his soul and his sick sentiments
into me. Like snakes they are, cold, and full of venom. I . . cannot say. You
cannot know.'
I could
know, I thought. I did know. When I closed my eyes, the bodies of my mother
and grandmother, nailed to wood, writhed inside me. Only, they were not cold,
but warm - always too warm as they cried out in their eternal anguish,
burning, burning, burning....
I'm
sorry,' Liljana said to Master Juwain, 'but you were right.'
Master
Juwain sighed as he knotted his small, hard fingers together. 'I'm afraid it's
too dangerous for any of us to use our gelstei, now.'
'And
dangerous not to,' I said. 'Atara can still see, sometimes, with her gift, but
without my eyes, I would be blind.'
And
with that, I drew my sword from its sheath. Even in the thick of the night, the
long blade gleamed faintly. The silustria from which it was wrought, like
living silver, caught the stars' light and gave it back manyfold. It was harder
than diamond and double-edged and sharp enough to cut steel. Alkaladur, men
called it, the Sword of Sight that could cut through the soul's dark confusions
to release the secret light within. The immortal Kalkin had forged it at the
end of the Age of Swords, and it had once defeated Morjin. The silver gelstei
was said to be one of the two noble stones; it was also said that the gold
gelstei that formed the Lightstone had resonance with the silver but no power
over it.
'Put it
away!' Master Juwain said to me as he pushed out his palm. 'Use it in battle
with the enemy, if you must, but until then, put it back in its sheath.'
I held
my beautiful sword straight up, pointing toward the stars. A lovely, silver light spilled down
the blade and enveloped my arm; it
built around me like a luminous sea and flowed out to
bathe
the grasses and the cottonwood trees and the other things of the world.
'Valashu!'
Master Juwain said to me.
And I
said to him, 'Liljana is right: the enemy is here, and everywhere. And
the battle never ends.'
I
turned to look north and west, toward Skartaru where Morjin dwelled. Although I
could not see the Black Mountain among the lesser white peaks leading up to it,
I felt it pulling at my mind and memory, and darkening my soul. Then suddenly
my sword darkened, too. I held before me a length of gelstei no brighter
than ordinary burnished steel.
'Damn
him!' I whispered. 'Damn him!'
Now I
pointed my sword toward Skartaru, and the blade began to glow and then flare in
resonance with the faroff Lightstone - but not as brightly as it once had.
'He is
there,' I murmured. 'There he sits on his filthy throne with the Lightstone in
his filthy hand, watching and waiting.'
How
could the world abide such a being as Morjin and all his deeds? How could the
mountains, the wind, the stars? The same bright orbs poured down their radiance
on Skartaru as they did the Wendrush and the mountains of my home. Why? And why
shine at all? My eyes hurt from staring so hard as I brooded over the conundrum
of a star: if it let fire consume itself, it would burn out into blackness. So
it was with me. Soon enough I would be dead. A Sarni arrow would find my throat
or I would freeze to death crossing the mountains. Or, more likely, one of
Morjin's armies would trap me in some land near or faraway, and then I would be
taken and crucified. I would descend to that dark, cold realm where I had sent
so many, and that was only justice. But it seemed wrong to me, terribly and
dreadfully wrong, that with my death, the bright memory of my mother, father
and brothers that lived inside me would perish, too. And so those I loved most
would truly die, and Morjin would have twice murdered my family and stolen them
from the world.
'Valashu!'
Master Juwain called to me again.
Where,
I wondered, did the light of a candle's flame go when the wind blew it out?
Could it be that the land of the dead was not fell but rather as cool and quiet
as a long, peaceful sleep? Why should Morjin keep me in this world of iron
nails, crosses and fire even one more day?
'Valashu
- your sword!'
I
squeezed my sword's hilt of black jade, carved with swans and set with seven
diamonds. Once, I had sliced the sharp blade through Morjin's neck, but by the
evil miracle of his kind, he had lived. My aim, the next time, must be true. I
would plunge the star-tempered point straight through his heart. Atara had once
prophesied that if I killed Morjin, I would kill myself. So, just so, as Kane
would say.
'Damn
him!' I whispered as I pointed my sword toward Argattha. 'Damn him! Damn him!
Damn him!'
I would
cut off Morjin's head and mount it on a pike for all to behold. I would hack
his body into pieces and pour pitch upon them and set them on fire. I would
feel the heat of the flames upon my face, burning, burning, burning. . .
'Valashu!' Master Juwain, Liljana and Atara cried out as one.
When my
vision suddenly cleared, I gasped to see that my silver sword seemed to have
caught fire. Blue flames clung to the silustria along its whole length like a
hellish garment, while longer orange and red ones twisted and leaped and blazed
with a searing heat. So violent was this fire that I dropped my sword upon the
ground. The grass there was too green to easily ignite, but Liljana and Daj
hastened to douse it with water even so. We all watched with amazement as the
flames raced up and down my sword's blade, cooled, faded and then finally died.
'Oh, my
Lord!' Maram called out. 'Oh, my Lord!'
'I
didn't know your sword could burn like that!' Daj said to me.
'Neither
did I,' Master Juwain told me.
And
neither did I. Even Kane, who had once been Kalkin, the great Elijin lord who
had forged this sword with his own two hands and all the art of the angels,
stared at it mysteriously. His black eyes seemed as cold as the space between
the stars. He held himself utterly still.
'Like
hell, that was,' he finally said. He turned to stare at me.
'Like hate,
it was,' Master Juwain said to me. Again he pushed his palm toward my
cast-down sword. 'Surely its fire came out of that which consumes you.'
Daj,
who was bright beyond his years, studied my sword and asked, 'Did it? Or did it
burn because Lord Morjin is gaining control of the Lightstone?'
Liljana
patted his head at his perceptiveness, then looked at me as she said, In the
end, of course, it might be the same question.'
'Whatever
the answer,' Master Juwain said to me, 'it is certain that the Lord of Lies is
learning the Lightstone's secrets. Your hate will not deter him. Put your sword
away.'
I
leaned forward to wrap my fingers around Alkaladur's hilt. The black jade was
as cool as grass. But the blade's silustria still emanated a faint heat, like a
paving stone after a long summer day.
'Surely
this is damned,' I said as I lifted up my sword. 'As I am damned.'
Liljana
slapped her hand into her palm, then shook her head violently as she waggled
her finger at me. 'Don't you ever say that!'
She
edged past Daj and Estrella and knelt before me, and she laid her hand on top
of mine. Her voice grew soft and gentle as she told me, 'You are not damned!
You, of all people. And you, of all people, must never think that of yourself.'
I
smiled at her kindness, but she did not smile back. I let go of Alkaladur for a
moment to squeeze her hand. And then I grasped yet again the sword that would
carve my fate.
'Morjin
is poisoning the gelstei,' I said. 'Or trying to.'
Once, I
remembered, in a wood near my home, Morjin's priest named Igasho had shot at me
an arrow tipped with kirax. The poison had found its way into my blood, where
it would always work its dark enchantment. I wondered if this evil substance
that connected me to Morjin was slowly killing me after all. As I fiercely
gripped my sword, I felt the kirax burning my stomach, liver and lungs with
every breath, and stabbing like red-hot needles through my eyes and brain.
'Damn
him!' I said again, shaking my sword at the heavens.
In the
west, clouds were moving in, blocking out the stars. Lightning rent the sky
there, and thunder shook the earth. Far out on the steppe, wolves howled their
strange and mournful cries. There, too, our enemy's campfires burned on and on
through the night.
'And
damn them, too!' I said, stabbing my sword at the Red Knights who followed us.
I
watched with dread as my silver sword again burst into flame. And then
something dark and dreadful as a dragon burned through my hand, arm and chest,
straight into my heart.
'He is
here!' I cried out as I sprang up to my feet.
'Who is
here?' Master Juwain asked me. Now he stood up, too, and came over to me, and
so did the others.
'Morjin
is - he rides with the Red Knights!' I said.
'Morjin,
here?' Kane shouted. His eyes flared like fire-arrows out toward the steppe.
'Impossible!'
Atara
stood by my side, but well away from my burning blade. She put her hand on my
shoulder to gentle me, and she said, 'Your sword shone much as it ever did when
you pointed it toward Argattha, and so the Lightstone must still be there. And
so, as you have said yourself, must Morjin.'
'No, he
is here, a mile away across the grass!'
'Atara
is right,' Master Juwain said to me. He rested his hand on my other shoulder.
'Think, Val: the Dragon would never leave the Lightstone out of his clutches,
even for moment, not even to ride
after you.'
'And if
he did hunt you,' Atara added, 'he would have come out of Argattha at
the head of his whole army, and not leading a couple of dozen knights.'
As
Lightning lit the mountains and fire sheathed my sword, my friends tried to
reason with me. I could hardly listen. For I felt Morjin's presence too
near me. The flames of his being writhed and twisted as they ever did, in
shoots of madder, puce and incarnadine, and other colors that recalled his
tormented soul.
'I know
it is he!' I said, to Atara and my other friends.
Then
Liljana moved closer and told me, 'Your gift betrays you. As mine betrayed me.'
All my
life, It seemed, I had felt others' passions, hurts and joys as my own. Kane
called this gift the valarda: two hearts beating as one and lit from
within as with the fire of a star. He had also said it was impossible that
Morjin should be here, in our enemy's encampment scarcely two thousand yards
away. But it seemed impossible that the malice, decay and spite I felt
emanating from that direction could have its source in any man except Morjin.
'Do you
remember Argattha?' I said to Liljana. 'There Morjin soaked his skin with the
essence of roses to cover the smell of his rotting flesh. But he could not
cover the stench of his soul. I. . . smell it here.'
Liljana
pointed at my sword, at the flames that still swirled up and down its length.
And she said to me, 'Is that really what you smell?'
I
noticed that Flick, spinning like a top in the air beyond my reach, seemed to
be keeping his distance from me.
Liljana
brushed past Master Juwain, and laid her hand over the steel rings that encased
my chest. And she said, 'I think you hate Morjin so much that you always sense
him close now. Here, in your own heart.'
I held
my breath against the pain that her words caused me. My sword dipped lower, and
its flames began to recede.
'There
is a great danger for you here, Val,' Master Juwain said to me. 'Do you
remember the prophecy?: "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.""
'But
that's just it, sir!' I said to him. 'I have proved that I am not the
Maitreya!'
'Yes,
you have. But have you proved that you could not become like unto the
Red Dragon?'
I watched the flames working at my sword, and
I could not breathe.
'Do you
not remember your dream?' Master Juwain asked me.
I
slowly nodded my head. Once, in the innocence of my youth, I had vowed to bring
an end to war.
'But
there's no help for it!' I gasped out. 'The more I have sought not to
kill, the more I have killed. And the more war I have brought upon us!'
Master
Juwain squeezed my shoulder, and then pointed out toward the Red Knights'
campfires. And he told me, 'Killing, even at need, is an evil of itself. But
killing when there may be no need is much worse. And killing as you feel
compelled to kill, in vengeance and hate ... that is everything you've been
fighting against.'
'But
there's no help for that either!' I said. I blinked my eyes against my sword's
searing flames. 'Ten thousand men Morjin crucified in Galda! He is poisoning
the world!'
I went
on to say that Morjin would use the Lightstone to master men: their lusts,
fears and dreams, even as he was trying with our gelstei. And then soon,
perhaps in another year, perhaps less, all of Ea would be lost - and much more.
'You
know,' I said to Master Juwain. 'You know what will happen, in the end.'
'I do
not know about ends,' Master Juwain said. 'I only know that it is
as it ever was: if you use evil to fight evil, then you will become evil.'
'Yes,'
I said, gripping my sword, 'and if I do not, the whole world will fall to evil
and be destroyed.'
It grew
quiet in our encampment after that. The fire made little crackling sounds, and
from out on the grasslands an owl hooed faintly, but none of us spoke. I stood
staring at my burning sword. It was strange how the blue and red flames licked
at the bright silustria but did not seem to really touch it.
Then
Liljana said to me, 'Morjin has long tried to make a ghul of you. It may be
that, through your sword, he could seize your will.'
'No, I
won't let him,' I said. Then I smiled grimly. 'But if he does, then Kane will
have to kill me - if he can.'
'Ah,
Val, Val!' Maram said to me as sweat beaded on his fat cheeks. He cast his eyes
upon Kane. 'Don't make jokes, not at a time like this!'
No one,
I thought, not even Liljana, could read the look on Kane's face just then. He
stood as still as death, gazing at my sword as his hand rested on the hilt of
his own. Like coals, his black, blazing eyes seemed to burn open the night.
And
then this strange man said a strange thing: 'Hate is just the left hand of
love, eh? And so with evil and good. So - Val hates Morjin, even as Morjin
hates him. Don't be so sure what will come of it.'
I
pointed Alkaladur toward the Red Knights a mile away I said, 'There Morjin
watches us and waits. Let us end things now if we can.'
Kane
followed my gaze, and I felt his insides churning with an unusual disquiet.
'Don't be so sure he is there. The Lord of Lies has laid traps for us before,
eh? Let us ride tomorrow, for the mountains, as fast as we can.'
Master
Juwain nodded his head at this and said, 'Yes, surely he has conjured up
confusions, somehow. Let us ride, as Kane has said.'
Maram,
naturally, agreed with this course of action, and so did Liljana, Atara and
even Daj. It was not Estreila's way to pit her will against mine or even to
make a vote by painting towards or away from the Red Knights. But she knew with
a quiet certainty that she had a part to play in our decision. She came up dose
to me, heedless of my burning sword. Against the curve of the dark world, with
her fine features and wisps of black hair, she seemed small and slight. She
stood gazing at me, her lovely eyes looking for something bright and beautiful
in my own. She was a seard, I remembered, gifted with finding things and
the secrets inside them; a dying scryer had once promised me that she would
show me the Maitreya. Since the night I had met her, it been both a grace and a
torment that she had also shown me myself.
'Don't
look at me like that!' I said to her. I stabbed my sword out toward the steppe.
'If Morjin is there, he won't expect us to attack. When we do, you and
Daj will ride with Liljana and Master Juwain toward the mountains. You'll be
safe there. After we've won, we'll meet up with you. And then it will all be
over... everything. We'll regain the Lightstone, and much else besides.'
Evil, I
know, speaks in the most seductive of voices. It plays to our lusts, fears,
delusions and hates. There is always a part of us that wants to heed this
voice. But there is always a deeper voice, too, which we might take to heart if
only we would listen. As Estrella looked at me with so much trust, I heard it
whispering, like the songs of the stars: that war could be ended; that I
could grip my sword with hate's right hand; that darkness could always be
defeated by shining a bright enough light. 'Estrella,' I whispered, 'Estrella.'
I would
give anything, I thought that she should grow into womanhood without the blight
of murder and war.
Then
she called back to me in her silent way, with a smile and a flash of her eyes.
She placed one hand over ay heart and the other upon my hand that held my
sword. I watched as its fires
dimmed
and died.
'All
right, we won't attack - not tonight, not like this,' I said. I slid my sword
back into its sheath. 'But if Morjin is out there, it will come to
battle, in the end.'
After
that, I sat back down with my friends to finish our dessert of fresh berries.
Maram brought out his brandy bottle; I heard him muttering to himself,
commanding himself not to uncork it. He licked his lips as he held himself
proud and straight. In the west, lightning continued to torment the sky, but
the threatened storm never came. As I watched our enemy's campfires burning
with a hazy orange glow, far into the night, the wolves on the dark grass about
us howled to the stars.
Chapter 2 Back Table of Content Next
The sun, at the breaking of the morning, reddened the green grasslands in the east like a great blister of flame. We rose at first light and ate a quick, cold breakfast of dried sagosk and battle biscuits. I pulled myself on top of my great, black warhorse, Altaru, as my friends did their mounts. The twelve Manslayers formed up behind us to cover our rear. Their captain was Karimah, a fat, jolly woman who was almost as quick with her knife as she was with her arrows, which she could fire with a deadly accuracy while turning in her saddle. Bajorak and his thirty warriors took their places on their lithe steppe ponies ahead of us, as a vanguard. If we were attacked from the rear, he and his men could quickly drop back to support Karimah and the Manslayers. But as he had told me the day before: 'The danger in that direction is known, and I scorn the Zayak, even more the Crucifier's knights. But who knows what lies ahead?'
As we pushed our horses to a
quick trot and then a canter, I watched this young headman of the Tarun clan.
Although he was not tall, as the Sarni headmen and chieftains usually are, he
had an air of fierceness that might easily intimidate a larger man. His
handsome face was thrice-scarred: an arrow wound and two saber cuts along his
cheeks had the effect of pulling his lips into a sort of permanent scowl. Like
his warriors, he wore much gold: around his thick, sunburned arms and wrists
and encircling his neck. Unlike the men he led, however, the leather armor
encasing his barrel chest was studded with gold instead of steel. A golden
fillet, woven with bright blue lapis beads, held back his long, blond hair and
shone from his forehead. His senses were as keen as a lion's, and as we pounded
across the grasslhe turned to regard me with his bright blue eyes. I liked his
eyes: they sparkled with intelligence and spirit.
They seemed to say to me: 'All right, Valashu Elahad, we'll test these enemy
knights - and you and yours, as well.'
For most of an
hour, as the sun rose higher into a cobalt sky, we raced across the steppe.
Bajorak and his warriors fanned out in a great V before us, like a flock of
geese, while the Manslayers kept close behind us. Our horses' hooves - and
those of our remounts and our packhorses - drummed against the green grass and
the pockets of bitterbrush. Meadowlarks added their songs to the noise of the
world: the chittering of grasshoppers and snorting horses and lions roaring in
the deeper grass. I felt beneath me my stallion's great surging muscles and his
great heart. He would run to his death, if I asked him to. Atara, to my right,
easily guided her roan mare, Fire. It was one of those times when she could
'see' the hummocks and other features of the rolling ground before us. Then
came Daj and Estrelia, who were light burdens for their ponies. What they
lacked in stamina, they made up for in determination and skill. Master Juwain
and Liljana followed close behind, and Maram struggled along after them. His
mounds of fat rippled and shook beneath his mail as he puffed and sweated and
urged his huge gelding forward. Kane, on top of a bad-tempered mare named the
Hell Witch, kept pace at the end of our short column. He seemed to be readying
himself to stick the point of his sword into either Maram's or his horse's fat
rump if they should lose courage and lag behind. But we all rode well and
quickly -though not quite quickly enough to outdistance our enemy.
As we galloped
along, I turned often to study these two dozen Red Knights, flanked by as many
of the Zayak warriors. At times, a hummock blocked my line of sight, and they
were lost to me, and I hoped that we might truly outride them. And then they
would crest some swell of earth, and the sun would glint off their carmine-colored
armor, giving the lie to my hope. They seemed always to keep about a mile's
span between us; I could not tell if they held this close pursuit easily or
were hard put to keep up. Fear and hate, I sensed, drove them onward. I felt
Morjin's ire whipping at them, even as I imagined I heard the crack of their
silver-tipped quirts bloodying their horse's sides.
'Damn him!' I
whispered to myself. 'Damn him!'
After a
while we slowed our pace, and so did our pursuers. Then we stopped by a winding
stream to water our panting horses, and change them over with our remounts.
Bajorak rode up to me, and so did Karimah and Atara. Bajorak nodded at Maram
and said, 'You kradaks ride well even the fat one, I'll give you that.'
Maram's face, red
and sweaty from his exertions, now flushed with pride.
Then Bajorak
turned to look farther down the stream where the Red Knights had also paused to
change horses. 'Well indeed but not well enough, I think. The Crucifier's men
will not break chase. Their horses are as good as yours, and they have more
remounts.'
It was Bajorak's
way, I thought, to speak the truth as plainly as he knew how.
'We still might
outrun them,' I said.
'No, you won't.
You'll only ruin your horses.'
Bajorak dismounted
and came over to lay his hand on Altaru's sweating side. It amazed me that my
ferocious stallion allowed him this bold touch. But then it is said that the
Sarni warriors love horses more than they do women, and Altaru must have sensed
this about him.
'If all you
kradaks had horses like him,' Bajorak said, stroking Altaru, 'it
might be a different matter. I've never seen his like. You still haven't told
me where you found him.'
'This isn't the
time for tales,' I said. I shielded my eyes from the sun's glare as I took in
the red glint of our enemy's armor a mile away.
Bajorak spat on
the ground and said. 'The cursed Red Knights won't move unless we do. Why, I
wonder, why?'
I said nothing as
I continued studying the twenty-five knights and the Zayak warriors who stood
by the stream to the east of us.
'You haven't told
me, either,' he went on, 'why you wish to cross our lands and what you seek in
the mountains?'
At this, Kane
stepped up and growled at him: 'Such knowledge would only burden you. We've
paid you good gold that we might ride in silence, and that's burden enough,
eh?'
Bajorak's blue
eyes flashed, and so did the fillet of gold binding his hair and his heavy
golden armlets. And he said, 'The gold you gave us is only a weregild to pay
for my men's lives should there be battle between us and Morjin's men - or
anyone else. But it is not why we agreed to ride with you.'
I knew this, and
so did Kane. I grasped his steely arm to restrain him. And Bajorak, while blood
was up, went on to state openly what had so far remained unspoken: 'I owe a
debt to the Manslayers, and debts must be repaid.'
He nodded
at Karimah, and this stout, matronly woman gripped her bow as she nodded back.
'When Karimah came
to me,' he said, looking at me, 'and asked that we should escort your company
across our lands, I thought she had fallen mad. Kradaks should be killed out of
hand - or at least relieved of the burdens of their horses, weapons and
goods. Hai, but these kradaks were different, she said. One of them was
Valashu Elahad, who had ridden with Sajagax to the great conclave in Tria and
would have made alliance against the Crucifier. The Elahad, who had
taken the Lightstone out of Argattha and whom everyone was saying might be the
Maitreya.'
As he had spoken,
two of his captains had come over, bearing their strung bows. One of them,
Pirraj, was about Bajorak's height, but the other, whose name was Kashak, was a
giant of a man and one of the largest Sarni warriors 1 had ever seen.
'And with the
Elahad,' Bajorak went on, 'rode Atara Manslayer, Sajagax's own granddaughter,
the great imakla warrior. She, the blind one, who has slain seventy-nine
men! And so might become the only woman of her Society in living memory to gain
her freedom.'
Here Bajorak's
sensual lips pulled back to reveal his straight white teeth. It was a smile
meant to be charming, but due to the thick scars on his cheeks, seemed more of
a leer. All the women of the Manslayers, when they entered their Society, took
vows to slay a hundred of their enemy before they would be free to marry. Few,
of course, ever did. But those who fulfilled this terrible vow had almost free
choice of husbands among the Sarni men, who would be certain to sire out of
them only the strongest and fiercest of sons. As Bajorak's desire pulled at his
blood, my own passion surged inside me: hot, angry, wild and pained. I glared
at him as I gripped the hilt of my sword. Then it was Kane's turn to wrap his
hand around my arm and restrain me.
'And so,' Bajorak
said, looking at Pirraj and Kashak, 'my warriors and I agreed to Karimah's
strange request. We were curious. We wanted to see if all kradaks are like them.'
He pointed to the
Red Knights down the stream. Then his clear blue eyes cut into me, testing me.
And I said,
testing him, 'Do you think we're alike? The Red Knights are our enemies, as
they are yours. What is strange is that you allow them to ride freely across
your lands - the Zayak, too.'
'You say,' he muttered. He shot me a keen,
knowing look. 'I think you want us to attack them, yes?'
'I have not said
that, have I?'
'You say
it with your eyes,' he told me.
I continued
scanning the glints of red armor along the river looking for a standard that
might prove the presence of Morjin
'If we attacked
them,' I asked Bajorak, 'would you join?'
'Nothing would
please me more,' he said, causing my hope to rise. And then my sudden elation
plummeted like a bird shot with an arrow as he continued, 'But we may not attack
them.'
'May not? They are crucifiers! They are Zayak,
from across Jade River!'
'They are,' he
said, turning to spit in their direction, 'and Morjin has paid for their safe
passage of our lands.'
This was news to
us. We crowded closer to hear what Bajorak might say.
'In the darkness
of the last moon,' he told us, 'the Red Knights came to Garthax with gold. He
is greedy, our new chieftain is. Greedy and afraid of Morjin. And so Garthax
allowed the Crucifier's knights to range freely across our country, from the
Jade River to the Oro, from the Astu to the mountains in the west. They are
not to be attacked, curse them! And curse Morjin for defiling the Danladi's
country!'
His warriors,
savage-seeming men, with faces painted blue, braided blond hair and moustaches
hanging down beneath their chins, nodded their heads in agreement with
Bajorak's sentiments.
'Was it Morjin,
himself, then,' I asked Bajorak, 'who paid this gold to Garthax? Does he lead
the Red Knights?'
'I have not heard
that,' he told me. 'Were it so, we would attack them no matter if Morjin had
paid Garthax a mountain of gold.'
'It will come to
that, in the end!' Kashak barked out. Blue crosses gleamed on his sunburned
cheeks to match the smoldering hue of his eyes. 'Let us ride against them now,
with these kradaks!'
'And break our
chieftain's covenant?'
'A chieftain who
makes covenant with the Crucifier is no chief-ten! Let us do as we please.'
Bajorak, too,
shared Kashak's zeal for battle. But he had a cool head as well as a fiery
heart, and so to Kashak and his other men he called out: 'Would you commit the
Tarun clan to going against our chieftain? If we break the covenant, it will
mean war with Garthax.'
'War, yes, with him,'
Pirrax said, shaking his bow. 'We're warriors, aren't we?'
Now Atara stepped
forward, and her white blindfold gleamed in the strong sunlight. Her face was
cold and stern as she addressed these fierce men of the Tarun clan: 'It's wrong
for warriors to make war against their chieftain. Can not Garthax be persuaded
to return this gold?'
Bajorak shook his
head. 'You do not know him.'
'I know what my
grandfather, Sajagax, said of Garthax's father: that Artukan was a great
chieftain who would never scrape before Morjin. Does a lion sire a snake?'
'Garthax,' Bajorak
said, 'is not his father's son.'
'Have you tried
helping him to be?'
It was one of
Atara's graces, I thought that she tried ever to remake men's natures for the
good.
'Help him?'
Bajorak said. 'You do not understand. Ganhax quarreled with Artukan over
the question of . nether we should treat with Morjin. And two days later
Artukan died while drinking his beer . . .of poison!'
'Poison!' Atara cried out. 'That cannot
be!'
'No, no one wanted
to believe it - certainly not I,' Bajorak told her. 'But it is said that upon
taking the first sip of his beer, Artukan cried out that his throat was on
fire. One of his wives offered him water, but Artukan said that this burned his
lips. Everything . . . burned him. No one could touch him. It is said that he
put out his own eyes so that he would not have to bear the torment of light.
His skin turned blue and then black, like dried meat. He screamed, like a
kradak burnt at the stake. It took him a whole day to die.'
Master Juwain's
faced paled, and then he said to Bajorak, 'If what you tell is true, then
surely the poison was kirax.'
Surely it was, I
thought as my heart pushed my flaming blood through my veins. And surely thus I
would have died, too, if only the assassin sent by Morjin had managed to bury
his arrow even a tenth of an inch into my flesh.
'I do not know
this poison, kirax,' Bajorak said to Master Juwain.
And Master Juwain
told him, 'It is used only by the Red Priests of the Kallimun. And by Morjin.'
Bajorak s gaze
flashed from Master Juwain to Kashak and Pirraj, and he made a warding sign
with his finger as he cried out. 'Treachery! Abomination! If Garthax really was
in league with the Red Priests, if he is then. . .'
'Then his eyelids
should be cut off, and he should be staked out in the sun for the ants and the
yellowjackets to eat!'
These terrible
words came from Atara. and I felt my heart nearly break against my chest bones
to hear her pronounce the age-old punishment that the Sarin meted out to
poisoners. 'He should be unmanned,' she added, 'and his parts given to the
vultures!'
It was one of
Atara's griefs, I knew, that when her hopes for men failed, she could fall icy
cold and full of judgment, like a killer angel.
'If true,'
Bajorak said, nodding his head, 'what you say should be done. But we know not
that it is true. Only that, from what we've learned of Garthax, it could
be.'
'Then until it is
proved,' Atara said, 'he is still your chieftain. And so you must persuade him
with words to break this covenant with Morjin, rather than with arrows and
flaying knives.'
'Words,'
Bajorak spat out. He looked from Atara to Kane and then at me. 'Valashu
Elahad, all of you, rode with Sajagax to Tria to unite the free peoples against
Morjin, with words. And what befell? Alonia is in flames, and in the Morning
Mountains, the Elahad's own Valari make war with each other. And on the
Wendrush! The Zayak ride openly into our country! It is said that the Marituk
have allied with the Dragon, the Janjii, too! And so the Tukulak and the Usark,
and other tribes, soon will. They think to choose the winning side before it is
too late. They have no sense of themselves! Whatever side the Sarni choose will
be victorious. And that is why we Tarun, and the other Danladi clans, must
choose another chieftain, before it is too late. And we shall make our votes
with these!'
So saying, he
reached into his quiver and drew out a long, feathered shaft. With one smooth,
quick motion, he nocked it to his bowstring, drew it back to his ear and loosed
it toward the Red Knights and the Zayak warriors. His great horn bow unbent
with a crack like thunder. The arrow whined through the air and buried itself in
the grass a few hundred yards away. Not even Sajagax, I thought, could shoot an
arrow a mile.
Bajorak's eyes
gleamed, but he sighed. 'Atara Manslayer is right,' he said. 'Until Garthax's
treachery is proven, he is still our chieftain. And so his cursed covenant
will be honored.'
Much of what he
had told me we had learned while in winter camp with Karimah and the
Manslayers, for the Wendrush is Ea's crossroads, and news flows as freely as
the great sagosk herds over its windswept plains. I had not, however, known
about the Marituk's alliance with Morjin. They were a great tribe, and so this
was evil tidings - but no surprise. In Tria, I had nearly claimed the
Lightstone for myself; I had spoken a lie and slain a man, and as with a stone
cast into a black water, these evil deeds had rippled outward to touch many
peoples and many lands.
'And so,' Bajorak
continued, looking from the Red Knights back at me, 'we shall not attack our
enemy. They know this. It is why they ride so impudently.'
'But what if they
attack us?' Maram wanted to know. It was a question that he could not
stop asking Bajorak - and himself.
'They won't,'
Bajorak told him. 'They haven't the numbers ... yet.'
'Yet?' Maram
called out. 'Ah, I don't like the sound of that, not at all. What do you mean, yet?'
'I believe,'
Bajorak said, 'that these are not the only companies of Red Knights or Zayak
that Garthax has allowed into our country.'
At this Maram
craned his neck about, scanning the horizon. And all the while he muttered,
'Oh, too bad, too bad!'
Bajorak ignored
him and looked straight at me. He said, 'Until Karimah came to me asking us to
escort you, I could not imagine what these companies were seeking in our
lands.'
I said nothing as
I watched the Red Knights, who seemed to be waiting for us to remount so that
they might renew the chase.
'But I do not
understand,' he went on, 'why they are seeking you.'
'Surely that is
simple,' I told him. 'We are Morjin's enemies. Surely he would pay much gold to
anyone who brings him our heads.'
I rested my hand
on the hilt of my sword; I looked into Bajorak's eyes to see if he desired this
gold badly enough to betray us. But I saw there only a blazing hatred of Morjin
and a fierce pride.
Then Bajorak
looked away from me toward our enemy. 'Perhaps they do want to kill you.
But perhaps they are seeking the same thing as you.'
His perceptiveness
vexed me, and I told him, 'We have not said that we are seeking anything.'
He smiled as best
he could and said, 'No, you say little, with your lips, Valashu Elahad. But your
eyes sing like the minstrels. I have never seen a man who desires as you
do.'
'Perhaps,' I told
him, 'we desire nothing more than to cross your lands.'
He pointed at the
snowy peaks in the west, 'To go into the wild mountains where no one dwells?'
'Perhaps
we wish to dwell there.'
He held out his
hand toward Estrella and Daj. 'It is strange that you take children with you on
such a journey.'
'Is it strange to
want to find a place where they might come of age in peace?'
Bajorak's face
softened as he said, 'No, that is not strange - if any such place exists. But
if it did exist, surely you would not seek it in the Sarni's lands so
close to Sakai.'
'We go where we
must,' I told him. 'Will you help us?'
'We would help you
better if you helped us.'
'We ride together,'
I said. 'If our enemy attacks you, we will fight them.'
'That is good. But
I would be even better if you trusted us.'
'We've trusted you
with our lives.'
'Yes, but not with
that which impels you to risk your lives.'
'As Kane has told
you, that would be an unnecessary burden.'
'You say. But the greater burden is not knowing
where we are going or why. It puts my men at risk. And I do not spend their lives
as readily as I do gold.'
As the sun's light
broke upon the fillet binding his forehead, I pressed my finger hard into the
little zags of the scar that cut mine like a lightning bolt. And I said, 'You
have pledged to ride with us, even so. Will you keep your pledge?'
Bajorak looked
back and forth between Pirraj and Kashak as anger clouded his eyes. He shook
his bow at me and snapped out: 'We Tarun are no pledge-breakers! Hai, but you
are a hard man, Valashu Elahad. And a willful one! Let us ride then, if that is
your wish!'
And with that, he
jumped back on his horse, and with Pirraj and Kashak, galloped back to the bend
in the river where most of his warriors were gathered.
Liljana stood with
her arms thrown protectively around Daj and Estrella. And she scolded me: 'You
were barely cordial to him. I've never seen you be so hard.'
I watched as
Karimah returned to the Manslayers, who were getting ready to ride again, fend
I said, 'We know little of this Bajorak and his true intentions. And you've
been able to tell me little.'
She clapped her
hand to her pocket where she had secreted her blue gelstei. 'Would you have me try
to tell you?'
'As you tried with
the Red Knights?'
Liljana's
heavy eyebrows pulled into a frown. 'You're hard with me, too - cruel hard.
What have I done to make you so?'
The hurt in her
eyes stabbed straight into me. I took her hand in mine and said, 'My apologies,
Liljana. You've done nothing. Now why don't we see if we can lose these damn
knights before the sun reaches noon?'
After that we set
out as before and continued our race acrossthe Wendrush. We drove our remounts
too hard; I felt fire in the lungs of these great beasts and spreading
out along their blood to torment their bunching muscles and
straining joints. It grew hot, not quite so sweltering as in Marud or
Soal, but too hot for early
Ashte. The sun
rose higher and shot its golden flames at us. I sweated beneath
layers of wool, mail and leather underpadding. The wind in my face
carried some of this moisture away, but did
little to cool my sodden
body. I turned to see the others working hard as well. Maram, on top of his
bounding brown gelding, puffed and grunted and sweated like a pig. Kane
sweated, too, for he was attired no differently. As always, though,
he made no complaint. His black eyes seemed to say to me that
the Red Knights following us in their thicker armor suffered even
worse than we.
The riding quickly
became a misery. Biting black flies buzzed around our eyes and ears. I watched
Bajorak leading his more lightly-clad warriors ahead of us. Would he honor his
word, I wondered? Or did he hope to use us as bait, inviting an attack by other
companies of Red Knights and Zayak who would join our pursuers? Perhaps, I
thought, Bajorak would then call down a host of Tarun warriors that he might
have secreted somewhere among the steppe's long grasses. He would annihilate
his enemy and use this incident as a reason to mount a rebellion against
Garthax. And he would not care if my friends and I - kradaks, all, except for
Atara - happened to be annihilated, too.
My father had once
told me that a king should strive to dwell inside others' skins and perceive
the world as they did. It should have been easy for me to know the truth about
Bajorak, easier than it was for Liljana. But it was harder. In the shallows of
the Great Northern Ocean, I had once seen an oyster which closed itself inside
its shell when disturbed. So it was with me and my gift. All my life I had
avoided the harsh touch of others' passions. And why? Because, like grit in the
eyes, it hurt. And even more, because I was afraid. Bajorak had said that
Garthax was not his father's equal. Neither, I thought, was I mine.
And so I rode on and on, watching the
glints of gold about Bajorak ahead of me and turning to gaze at the red smear
of Morjin's knights and the Zayak warriors on their ponies pounding after us
across the sunlit plain. We did not escape them all that long day. We were
only three miles from the mountains when at last we stopped to make camp by a
stream that flowed down from these heights. And as with the night before, our
enemy set up their tents only a mile away.
We were all tired and sore from the cruel
day's work, and so none of us had much enthusiasm for tending the horses,
gathering wood and water, making the fire, and other such things. As usual when
the sun went down, Liljana took charge. She insisted on preparing us a hot
meal, and it was good to sit down with our bowls of bloody sagosk meat, whose
juices we mopped up with fresh rushk cakes. These Liljana made herself, for she
had excused both Daj and Estrella from their chores. The children were so weary
and worn that they could hardly hold their bowls to eat their dinners. The sun
had burnt their faces, and dust dirtied their hair. Although Daj would not
allow himself to whine as other children did, much less to weep, I knew that
the hard riding had chafed him, nearly flaying the flesh from his legs.
Estrella was in even worse condition. She sat very still, fighting to keep her
eyes open. Even the slightest motion caused her to wince in pain.
'Ah, that was a day!' Maram sighed out as
he worked at a piece of hastily roasted meat. 'The hardest ride we've had since
Count Ulanu chased us to Khaisham.'
I remembered that day too well. It had
ended with an arrow shot through Atara's lung and the death of our friend,
Alphanderry. I suddenly could not bear the iron tang of my meat, and I put down
my knife and bowl.
'Ah, oh - oh, my poor, poor aching body!'
Maram groaned. He moved stiffly to bring out lis brandy bottle, and he caught
Master Juwain's eye. 'Surely sir, this is a night for prescribing a little
restorative drink?'
'Surely it is not,' Master Juwain told
him, taking the bottle and putting it away. 'At least, not that kind of
drink. I shall make us all a tea that will soothe rather than numb us.'
So saying,
he found some herbs in his medicine chest and brewed up a pot of tea. The hot
drink, sweetened with honey, stole some of the hurt from our limbs. Upon
sipping it, Daj and Estrella almost immediately lay down opon their furs.
Liljana sat between them, stroking their hair and singing them to sleep. After
a while her dulcet voice murmured out above the crackle of the fire as she said
to me: 'We cannot travel tomorrow as we did today. They're children, Val.'
Because her words disturbed me, I stood up
to walk by the stream. I paused beneath a huge old cottonwood tree as I looked
out at our enemy's campfires. Across the stream Karimah had posted sentinels
who would sit on their horses all night guarding us from attack. Kane found me
there, staring at their dark, ghostly forms as I listened to the water gurgling
over rounded rocks.
'You shouldn't be alone here,' he told me
as he stood with his hand on the hilt of his sword. His eyes searched the grass
for stalking lions, no less Zayak warriors.
'I shouldn't have brought Daj and Estrella
with us,' I told him. 'All on such a narrow chance.'
'You know the need,' he growled out. 'You
did the right thing.'
'Did I? Or have I only stolen from them
the few days of peace they might have had before . . . before there is no
peace, for anyone?'
'You take too much upon yourself.'
'No, too little,' I said. 'Daj is as tough
as a diamond, but Estrella suffers. Inside, even more than out. I. . . cannot
tell you. She sees too deeply inside of things. There are places she's
terrified to go. And it's as if I am taking her into the worst of these
places, back into a black tunnel that has no end.'
'Is it her suffering that grieves you or
your own?'
'But there is no difference!' I said.
'Especially with her, it is one.'
'She is a radiant child,' he told me. 'I
have seen many moments when her joy, too, became your own.'
'Even then,' I said, listening to the
stream, 'it is like drinking too much wine too quickly.'
Kane stared up at the stars, and his voice
grew strange and deep as he told me, 'The valarda is the gift of the
One. You have yet to learn how to use it.'
'It is a curse!' I said, shaking my head.
'It is an affliction, like a pox upon the skin, like a rupture of the heart.'
At this, he grabbed my arm and shook me as
a lion might a lamb. And he growled out, 'You might as well complain that life
is a curse. And that light is an affliction because it carries into your eyes
all the ugliness and evil of the world!'
'Yes,' I said, feeling the fire inside me.
'It must have been like that for Artukan when the kirax made him gouge out his
own eyes.'
Now Kane
squeezed my arm so hard I thought my bones might break. 'Tell that to
Atara, why don't you? Let her hear you damn your eyes, and hers, and see what
she will say!'
I pulled away from him, and looked past
the cottonwood's dark fluttering leaves at the sky. I found the Seven Sisters
and the Dragon and other twinkling constellations. The stars there were so
bright, so beautiful. Which ones, I wondered, burned with the light of my
father and my mother and all the rest, of my slaughtered family?
'You saw!' I said to Kane.
'In Tria, you stood and saw with your own eyes as I struck down Ravik with my
"gift"!'
'So - so I did. The valarda is a
double-edged sword, eh?'
It was bad enough that others' dreads and
exaltations should flood into me. But why, I wondered, should my passions
strike into them when I lost my head - especially my killing passions?
'I murdered a man!' I shouted at
him.
'No, you killed a Kallimun priest who
would have killed Atara.'
'You don't understand!'
'Don't I? So, I've seen you kill rabbits
and rock goats for food, and how many of our enemy have you sent on with that
sword you wear? Killing is only killing, eh? It doesn't matter how we
kill, only who.'
The stream purled in darkness, and the
wind rustled the steppe's grasses, and the whispering inside me told me that
Kane was wrong.
'It must matter,' I said. 'Just as
everything we do matters.'
'These are hard times, Val. So, we must do
hard things.'
'Hard things, yes.'
'Would it be so hard for you to tell
Bajorak that we seek a great treasure in the mountains beyond the Oro River?
And that in finding it, we would fight Morjin's gold with our own? Is that not
close to the truth?'
I smiled at this as I listened to my heart
drumming inside me. I said, 'I have learned. . . that the smallest of lies can
grow, like a rat's bite beginning a plague of death.'
'We need Bajorak on our side, you know.'
'I will not lie to him.'
'But you cannot tell him the truth about
our purpose! What if he is captured, eh? What if he sells our secrets for
gold?'
'I trust him no more than you do.'
'Do you trust him to fight, if it comes to
that? So. it would not take much, at need, for you to push him into battle.'
I ground
my teeth at the fury I felt for Morjin seething inside me. How hard would it be
to touch Bajorak - or anyone - with a little of this flame?
'No; I will not,' I said to Kane.
'No? No matter what befalls? No matter
which of your friends is threatened? What else won't you do, then?'
I drew in a deep breath and held it until
my lungs burned. And then I said, 'I will not torture. I will
not sacrifice innocents, not to save you or me, or even the children. I
will not use the valarda . . . as I would my sword, to strike
terror or maim. And never again to kill.'
As Kane glared at me through the near-darkness,
I drew Alkaladur and watched the play of starlight along its length.
'So,' he said, gazing at it, 'in such
goodness, in such purity of truth, you think to fight Morjin and all his evil
deeds?'
I smiled sadly as I shook my head. 'I am
neither good, nor pure, nor am I renowned as an exemplar of the truth. Who,
then, am I to fight evil?'
'Ha - is that not itself an evil
question?'
I said to him, 'I don't understand you!
Once, on top of a mountain, you told me that I could not fight Morjin your way
without losing my soul!'
'So - perhaps I lied.'
'No, you did not!'
His voice softened then as he told me,
'Listen to me, my young friend: we do what we have to do, eh? Just don't
be so sure it's always easy to know what is evil and what is not.'
And with that, he stalked off back toward
our encampment. I waited with my drawn sword, watching the
world turn into darkness. I breathed in the smells of grass and
woodfire and the fresh blood of a lion's kill wafting on the wind. I sensed
many things. The horses standing in their small herd nearby were all exhausted
and would have a hard time when morning came. I quivered with the fear of the
field mice as they looked for the owls who hunted them, and my heart leaped
with the gladness of the wolves as they followed the scent of their prey. And
in all this immense anguish and zest, I thought, in all this incessant struggle
and striving there was no evil but only the terrible beauty of life. It was too
much for me to take in, too much for any man. And yet I must, for the stars,
too, had a kind of life: deeper and wilder and infinite in duration. How, I
wondered, would I ever feel my mother's breath upon my face or hear Asaru
laughing again if I could not open myself to this eternal flame?
Just then Atara appeared out of the glare
of our campfire and walked closer to me. Then she called out: 'Val, your face -
your sword!'
To be open to love, I knew, is to be
vulnerable to hate.
'Morjin is out there,' I said to her. My
sword glowed red like an ember as I pointed it toward our enemy. 'Can you
"see" him?'
Atara drew out her scryer's crystal and
stood rolling it between her hands. She said, 'Everywhere I look now, Morjin is
there. It is why I am loath to look.'
'Your gift,' I told her, 'is a curse. As
is mine.'
I went on to relate my conversation with
Kane. She came up close to me and grasped my hand. 'No, it is just the
opposite. Kane was right: you have yet to learn how to use the valarda.'
I wrenched free my hand and said, 'If I
could, I would cut it out of me, the way I've cut off others' hands and carved
out their hearts.'
'No - please don't say that!'
'Such terrible things I have done! And
what is yet to come?'
I stared at the Red Knights' campfires,
then Atara touched my cheek to turn my face toward her. And she said to me, 'I
don't know what is to come, strange though you might think it. But I know what
has been. And I know where I have been, with my gift.'
She held up her gelstei: a little white
sphere gleaming beneath the white circle of the moon. 'I've tried to tell you
what it is like to see as I have seen. To live. Such glory! So much light!
Truly, there are infinite possibilities, the dreams of the stars waiting to be
made real. I've seen them all, inside this crystal. And here, for too long, I
have dwelled. It is splendid, beyond the beating of a butterfly's wings or the
sun rising over the sea. But it is cold. It is like being frozen in ice at the
top of a mountain as high as the stars. And all the time, I am so utterly,
utterly alone.'
'A curse,' I said softly as I covered her
crystal with my hand.
'No! You
don't see! The price of such beauty has been such terrible
isolation - almost too terrible to bear. But I have borne it, even
gloried in it, because of you. Your gift. You are such a gift, Valashu.
You have a heart of fire, and it is so brilliantly, brilliantly beautiful! Is
there any ice it could not melt? No, I know - only you. You bring me back into
the world, where everything is warm and sweet. I don't want to know what it
would be like to live without you. You are the one being with whom I do not
feel alone.'
Her hand was warm against mine. Because
she had no eyes, she could not weep. And so I wept for her instead.
'Kane has suggested,' I finally told her,
'that I should use the valarda to manipulate Bajorak. Like a puppeteer pulling
on strings.' She smiled sadly and shook her head. 'Kane is so knowing. But
sometimes, so willfully blind.'
'How should I use the valarda,
then?'
'You know,' she said to me. Her voice was as cool and gentle as
the wind. 'You've always known, and you always will know, when the time
comes.'
I looked out at the millions of stars
shimmering through the night. The black sky could hold their splendor, but how
could any man?
'And now,' she said to me, 'you should get
some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day, and a bad one, I think. Come to bed,
Val.'
She pulled at my hand to lead me back to
our camp. But I let go of her to grip my sword, and I told her, 'In a moment.'
I watched her walk back to the fire as she
had come, and I marvelled yet again that she could find
her way without the use of her eyes. I wondered then how I would
ever find my own way to whatever end awaited me. I gazed at
Alkaladur, whose silustria glistered with dark reds and violets. The
Sword of Fate, men called it. How should I point it, I wondered,
toward all that was good, beautiful and true? I wondered, too, if I
would ever be free of the valarda. I had spoken of using my sword to
make a brutal surgery upon myself, but I might as well try to
cut away my face, my limbs and all my flesh - no less my memories and
dreams - and hope to remain Valashu Elahad.
'So, just so,' I whispered.
And with
this sudden affirmation, my heart opened, and my sword filled with the light of
the stars. Then, to my astonishment, its substance began radiating a pure and
deep glorre. This was the secret color inside all others, the true color that
was their source. It flared with all the fire of red and shone as numinously as
midnight blue, and yet these essencese - and those of the other colors it
contained - were not just multiple and distinct but somehow one. Kane called it
the color of the angels, and said that it belonged far away across the heavens,
in the splendor of the constellations near the Golden Band, but not yet here on
earth. For most men had neither the eyes nor the heart to behold it.
'So bright,' I whispered. 'Too bright.' I
too, could not bear the beauty of this color for very long. And so as the world
continued its journey into night and carried the brilliant stars into the west,
I watched as the glorre bled away, and the radiance of my sword dimmed and
died.
I returned to the fire after that and lay down on my furs to sleep. But I could not. As my sword remained within its sheath, waiting to be drawn, I knew that the glorre abided somewhere inside me. But would I ever find the grace to call upon it?
Chapter 3 Back Table of Content Next
The next day's dawn came upon the world with a red, unwelcome glare. We ate a hasty breakfast of rushk cakes smeared in jelly and some goose eggs that Liljana had reserved for especially difficult work. And our riding that morning, while not nearly so fast or jolting as that of the previous day, was difficult enough. We set out parallel to the mountains, and our course here took us southeast over ground humped with many hummocks and rocky crests. We crossed streams all icy cold and swollen into raging brown torrents that ran down from the great peaks above us. All of us, I thought, rode stiffly. We struggled to keep our tired horses moving at a good pace. Often I wondered at the need, for no matter how quickly or slowly we progressed, our enemy in their carmine-colored armor kept always a mile's distance behind us.
'Surely they don't intend to attack us,' Maram puffed out as he nudged his horse up beside me. 'Unless Bajorak is right and they are only waiting for reinforcements.'
Toward this contingency, Bajorak had sent forth outriders to search the grassy swells and sweeps of the Wendrush.
'Of course,' Maram added, 'it seems most likely that they only intend to follow us into the mountains.'
'We cannot go into the mountains,' I told him, 'so long as they do follow us.'
'Ah, it seems we cannot go at all unless we find this Kul Kavaakurk. Where is this gorge, then? How do we know it really exists?'
Maram kept on
complaining at the uncertainties of our new quest as his eyes searched the
folds and fissures of the rocky earth to our right. His voice boomed out into
the morning, and Master Juwain caught wind of our
conversation. He rode up to us and told Maram, 'It surely does exist.'
'Ah,
sir, but you are a man of faith.'
'I have
faith in our Brotherhood's lore.'
'But,
sir,' Maram reminded him, 'it is our Brotherhood no longer.'
'And
that is precisely why you are ignorant of this lore.'
'Lore
or fables?'
'The
Way Rhymes are certainly no fables,' Master Juwain said. 'They are as true as
the stories in the Great Book of the Ages. But they are not for the common
man.'
He went
on to speak of that body of esoteric knowledge entrusted only to the masters of
the Brotherhood. As he often did when riding - or sitting, standing or even
sleeping - he clutched in his hand his travelling volume of the Saganom Elu.
'Ah,
well,' Maram said to him, 'one of the things that I could never abide about the
Brotherhood was this madness for books.'
'A love
for books, you mean.'
'No, it
is more of a bibliolatry.'
'But
the Way Rhymes are recorded in no book!'
'And that
is precisely the point,' Maram said, needling him. 'The Brotherhood makes
an idol of the very idea of a book.'
Master
Juwain's homely face screwed up in distress. 'It is one of the noblest ideas of
man!'
'So
noble that you withhold this lore from men? Should not all that is best and
most true be recorded in the Saganom Elu?'
Now
Master Juwain's lips tightened with real pain. And he held up his worn book as
he tried to explain to Maram: 'But all is recorded there! You must
understand, however, that this rendering of the Saganom Elu is
only for men. It is said that the Elijin have a truer telling of things, recorded
on tablets of gold. And the Galadin as well have theirs, deeper and truer
still, perhaps etched in diamond or read in starfire, for they are deathless
and cannot be harmed, and so it must be with their writings. And the Ieldra!
What can any man say of those whose being is pure light? Only this: that their
knowledge must be the brightest reflection of the one and true Saganom
Elu, the word of the One which existed before even the stars - and which
was never created and therefore cannot be destroyed.'
For a whle, as our
horses made their way over the uneven ground at a bone-bruising trot, Master
Juwain continued to wax eloquent as his ideals soared. And then Maram rudely
brought him back to earth.
'What I
always detested about the Brotherhood,' Maram said, 'was that you always kept
secrets from lesser men - even from aspirants such as I when I, ah, still aspired
to be other than I am.'
'But
we've had to protect our secrets!' Master Juwain told him. 'And so protect
those who are not ready for them. Is a child given fire to play with? What
would most men do if given the power of the Red Dragon?'
I
turned in my saddle to look at the Red Knights trailing us as if bound to our
horses with chains. I wondered yet again if Morjin rode with them; I wondered
what he would do with the unfathomable power of the Lightstone.
Maram
must have sensed the trajectory of my concerns, for he said to Master Juwain:
'And so like precious gems, like gelstei hidden in lost castles, you encode
these precious secrets in your rhymes?'
'Even
as we encode the way to our greatest school.'
Maram
sighed at this, and he sucked at his lip as if wishing for a drink of brandy.
'Tell me again the verses that tell of this school.'
Now it
was Master Juwain's turn to sigh as he said, 'You've an excellent ear for verse
when you put yourself to it.'
'Ah,
well, I suppose I should put myself since you have honored me with this
precious lore that you say is no fable.'
'It is
not a question of honor,' Master Juwain told him. 'If I fall before we reach
the school, at least one of us must know the verse. Now listen well and try to
remember this:
Between the Oro and the Jade
Where
sun at edge of grass is laid.
Between
the rocks like ass's ears
The Kul
Kavaakurk gorge appears.
Maram
nodded his head as his fat lips moved silently. Then he looked at Master Juwain
and said, 'Well, the first two lines are clear enough, but what about the
third? What about these "ass's" ears?'
'Why,
that is certainly clear as well, isn't it? Somewhere, at the edge of the steppe, we will find
two rocks shaped like an ass's ears framing the way toward the Kul Kavaakurk.'
'Why two
rocks, then?' Master Juwain cast Maram a strained look as if he were being as dull and difficult as an ass.
He
said, 'How many ears does an ass
have?'
'No
more than two, I hope, or I would not want to see such a beast. But what if the
line you told me was instead:
Between
the rocks like asses' ears
That
could mean two asses or three, and so there could be four rocks or six - or
even more.'
As
Master Juwain pulled at his ruined ear, the one into which Morjin's priest had
stuck a red-hot iron, he gazed at the mountains to the west. And he said, 'I'm
afraid I hadn't thought of that.'
'And that
is the problem with these Way Rhymes of yours. Since none of them are
written down, how are we to make such distinctions?'
Master
Juwain fell quiet as we trotted along. Then he thumped his book yet again and
said to Maram, 'The words in here are meant to be clear for any man to read.
But the words in the Way Rhymes are only for the masters of the Brotherhood.
And any master would know, as you should know, to apply Jaskar the
Wise's Scales to any conundrum.'
'Scales?'
Maram said. 'Are we now speaking of fish?'
'Now
you are being an ass!' Master Juwain snapped out.
'Ah,
well, I must confess,' Maram said, 'that I do not remember anything about this
Jaskar the Wise or his scales.'
'Jaskar
the Wise,' Master Juwain reminded him, 'was the Master Diviner and then
Grandmaster of the Blue Brotherhood in the Age of Law. But never mind for right
now who he was. We are concerned with the principle that he elucidated:
that when faced with two or more equally logical alternatives, the simplest
should be given the greatest weight.'
'And so
we are to look for an ass's ears, and so two rocks and not four, is
that right?'
'I
believe that is right.'
Maram
covered his heavy brows with his hand as he scanned the great wall of the
Nagarshath along our way. And he said, 'I haven't seen anything that
looks like ears, those of an ass or any other beast, and we've come at least a
hundred and forty miles from the Jade.'
'And
we've still another forty until we reach the Oro. And so we can deduce that
we'll come across this landmark between here and there.'
Maram
looked behind at our pursuers and said, 'Closer to to here would be
better than closer to there. I'm getting a bad feeling about all this. I
hope we find these damn donkey's ears, and soon.'
After
that we rode even faster through the swishing grasses along the mountains, and
so did the men who followed us. I, too, had a bad feeling about them, and it
grew only hotter and more galling as the sun rose higher above us. I turned
often to make sure that Karimah and her Manslayers covered our rear, just as I
watched Bajorak and his Danladi warriors fanned out ahead of us. After brooding
upon Master Juwain's and Maram's little argument and all that my friends had
said to me the night before, I finally pushed Altaru forward at a gallop so
that I might hold counsel with this strong-willed headman of the Tarun
clan.
After
pounding across the stone-strewn turf and accidentally trampling the nest of a
meadowlark, I came up to Bajorak. He held up his hand and called for a halt
then. When he saw the look in my eyes, he led me away from Pirraj and the huge
Kashak and his other warriors. He reined in his horse near a large boulder
about fifty yards from his men. And he said to me, 'What is it, Valashu
Elahad?'
For a
moment I studied this great Sarni warrior, with his limbs, neck and head
encircled in gold and his face painted with blue stripes like some sort of
strange tiger. Most of all I looked deeply into his dazzling blue eyes. And then
I asked him: 'Do you know of two rocks, along the mountains, shaped like an
ass's ears? There would be a span between them - and possibly a stream or a
river.'
His
eyes grew brighter and even harder, like blue diamonds, as he stared at me. And
he answered my question with a question: 'Is that where we are to escort you
then?'
'Perhaps,'
I told him.
His
fine face pulled into a scowl, and he snapped his braided, black quirt against
his hand. 'I know not of any ass's ears, and I care not.'
I
couldn't keep down my disappointment, and he must have felt this for his eyes
softened as he said, 'But there are two great rocks like unto those you
describe, about ten miles south of here. We call them the Red Shields. If that
is your destination, however, you would have had a hard time finding it.'
'Why
so?'
'Because
the Shields face east, and we approach them from the northwest. From our
vantage, we will see only their edges - and the rocks and trees on the slopes
behind them.'
I
continued gazing at him, and I finally asked, 'Do these shields, then, guard a
gorge cutting through the mountains?'
He
shrugged his shoulders. 'I know not. No Sarni would ever journey into the
mountains to find out.'
He
turned to snap his quirt toward the mountain and asked me, 'What is the name of
this gorge?'
Our
eyes locked together, and something inside him seemed to
push at
me, as I pushed at him. I said, 'If you've no care for gorges, you would have
even less for its name.' Now he whipped the quirt against his hand so hard that
it instantly raised up a red welt - but no redder and hotter than his anger at
me. He seemed to bite back words that he might regret speaking. He turned away
from my gaze to look at the mountains and then behind us at the Red Knights,
who had also paused to take a rest. Then his eyes moved toward my friends,
grouped together in front of the Manslayers; I knew with a painful leap of my
blood that he was watching Atara.
'What
have I done,' he asked, 'to make you scorn me so?'
And I
blurted out: 'I do not scorn you, only the way that you look at one .., whom
you should not look at at all.'
Astonishment
poured out of him like the sweat that shone from his brow and beaded up on his
golden fillet. And he said to me, 'Atara is a great warrior, and more, imakla!
And even more, a beautiful woman. How should a man look at such a woman, then.'
Not in
lust, I thought, fighting at the knot of pain rising up in my throat. Not
in such terrible desire.
He
turned back to me, and his astonishment only deepened. And he half-shouted 'You
are Valari, and she is Sarni - half-Sarni! And she is your companion in arms
who has yet to fulfill her vow! You cannot be betrothed to her!'
'No, we
are not betrothed,' I forced out. 'But we are promised to each other.'
'Promised
how, then?'
I
watched Atara giving Estrella a drink from her water horn, and I said,
'Promised with our hearts.'
I did not really expect this savage Danladi
warrior to understand such deep and tender sentiments, for the Sarni beat
their women when they displease them and rarely show them kind-ness. And so he
astonished me once more when he said. 'I am sorry, Valashu, I will not look at
her again. But I too, know what it is to love this woman.'
I
glared and him and said. 'My father taught me that one should not mistake lust
for love.'
'No,
one should not,' he agreed. 'But it surprises me to hear a Valari speak of
love.'
'I have
heard,' I told him, 'that you Sarni speak of love only for your horses.'
He
patted the neck of his brown stallion as he smiled sadly. 'That is because you
know little about us.'
Some
hurt in his voice - seething and keen and covered with layers of scar - made me
feel my way past my jealousy deeper into his being. And what I sensed pulsing
inside him so fiercely was only love. Love for Atara, love for his family, for
his horses or the beautiful land over which they rode, I could not tell. It
didn't matter. For this bright flame filled my blood and broke me open, and I could
never scorn him again.
'And
you,' I said to him, 'know little about us.'
His
eyes softened, and he looked at me strangely as he said, 'I have heard what the
Red Dragon did to your land. What he did to your mother and grandmother.'
My eyes
filled with a hot stinging, and the green grasses of the steppe beyond
Bajorak's wild, mournful face grew blurry. I swallowed against the lump in my
throat and could not speak.
Now he
wiped at his own eyes, and his throat seemed raw and pained as he said, 'When I
was twelve years old, the Zayak crossed the Jade to raid for women. They
surprised us, and many were taken. My mother, my sister, too - Takiyah was her
name. But they would not consort with the Zayak, and so their chieftain,
Torkalax, scourged them with his quirt and gave them to Morjin. But they would
not be slaves in Argattha either, and they tried to kill themselves to keep
Morjin's priests from possessing them. It mattered not. The filthy Red Priests
ravished them all the same. And then Morjin crucified them for the crime of
trying to steal the use of their bodies from the priests. It is said that he
set them in his great hall as an example to others. A gem seller who did
business with my father brought us the news of their torture. And on that day
my father made me vow that I would never make peace with the Zayak or with
Morjin.'
Out on
the steppe, a lion roared and a meadowlark chirped angrily - perhaps the same
bird whose nest Altaru had destroyed. And I said to Bajorak, 'Our enemy is one
and the same, and so they should be no quarrel between us.'
'No
quarrel, perhaps. But the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend. Were it
so, we would make cause with the Marituk, who hate the Zayak as much as we do.'
'It is
hard,' I said to him, 'for a Valari and a Sarni to be friends.' 'And yet you
and the Manslayer call each other "friend", if nothing more.'
I saw
him searching for something in my eyes as he gazed at me. And I searched for
something in him. I found it beneath his gold-studded armor in the sudden surge
of his blood. It was the promise of life, the very pulse of the world and
breath of the stars. When I opened my heart to him, I felt it beating strong,
wild and true.
'Freinds,'
he told me, 'do not keep secrets from each other.'
'No,
they do not,' I said.
It came
to me then that I had a sort of Scales of my own, for I gave great weight to
what my heart told me was true. One either had faith in men, or not. As Bajorak
looked at me so openly, without entreaty or guile, I knew that I trusted him
and that he would never betray me.
'The
name of the gorge we seek,' I told him, 'is the Kul Kavaakurk.'
I went
on to explain the nature of our quest. Only the Maitreya, I said to him, could
contend with Morjin for mastery of the Lightstone. We had no idea where on Ea
to search for this great-souled being, but the Grandmaster of the Great White
Brotherhood in their ancient school in the mountains above us might know.
'It is
a small hope,' I said to him. 'But unless the Maitreya is found, it won't
matter if the Danladi or Kurmak or Valari refuse to make peace with Morjin. For
Morjin and all his allies will make war against us and destroy us one by one.'
'No,
that will not be,' he said. 'Morjin may indeed destroy us. But not one
by one.'
And
with that, he leaned out away from his horse and extended his calloused hand
toward me. I grasped it in mine, and we sat there for a few moments testing
each other's resolve. With a gladness that he could not contain, he looked at
me and smiled as he said, 'Friend.'
I
smiled, too, and nodded my head. 'Friend.'
Each
telling of the truth, I suddenly knew, was like a whisper that might grow into
a whirlwind.
'It is
a strange thing you do,' he said to me, 'seeking this Maitreya instead of gold, women or war. And
you, a great warrior, or so it's
said.'
'I've
seen enough war to last to the end of my days if I lived another ten thousand years.'
And
Bajorak surprised me once more, saying, 'So have I.' I took in the paint on his
face, the saber thrust through his braided gold belt and the great horn bow
strapped to his back. I said to him, 'I have never heard a Sarni warrior speak
so.'
Again
he smiled, an expression made difficult by the scars cutting his cheeks. And he
said, 'I have wives and daughters, and I would not see them violated by any
man. I have a son. I would hear him make music.'
My eyes
filled with amazement as I smiled at him. 'Promise me, Valashu Elahad, that you
will not tell anyone what I have told you here. For me to speak of love is one
thing. But if my warriors heard me speak of ending war, they would think me
mad.'
'All
right,' I said, clasping hands with him again, 'I promise.' He nodded his head
to me, once, fiercely, and then turned his horse about and rode back to his
warriors. And I returned to my friends, who were gathered in a circle on top of
their horses between the Bajorak's Danladi and our Manslayer rear guard.
'Well?'
Maram called out to me as I came up to them. 'What was all that about?'
Kane,
however, needed no account of my meeting with Bajorak to know what had
transpired. His black eyes were like two disks of heated iron as he said to me,
'So, you told him.' 'Yes,' I said. 'I had to.'
'You had
to?' The muscles beneath his wind-burnt jaws popped out as if he were
working at a piece of meat. I knew that he was furious with me. 'Ha! - we will
see what comes of this. Your fate is your fate, eh? Some men wait for theirs,
but you have to go rushing in, like a child into a dragon's den.'
After that we continued our journey toward the
place that Bajorak had told of. Five miles we put behind us in less than an
hour before pausing to water the horses at a little stream trickling through
the grass. I kept a watch on our enemy, and wondered yet again why they took
such pains to keep their distance from us.
'It
must be,' I said to Atara as she sipped from her water horn, 'that Morjin does
not wish me to catch sight of his face.'
'Perhaps,'
she told me. Maram, liljana and Kane stood next to her along the stream
listening to what she had to say. 'But consider this as well: If it really is
Morjin, he must know, or guess, our mission. It would be hard for him, I
think, so terribly, terribly hard to decide between letting us lead him to the
Maitreya and killing us while he had the chance.'
'He has
little chance,' I said. 'And if he comes too close, it is we who shall kill
him.'
But
fate was to prove me wrong on both these counts Just as we bent low to refill
our horns in the ice-cold water, I saw Bajorak farther down the stream,
suddenly put away his horn and throw his hand to his forehead like a visor. He
looked out toward the east, where a grassy rise blocked sight of the flatter
country there. A few moments later, a dappled horse and a Sarni warrior charged
up over the rise and galloped straight toward us. I recognized the man as
Ossop, one of the outriders that Bajorak had sent to keep watch on our flank.
We
mounted quickly, and Kane, Atara and I rode over to learn why Ossop returned in
such haste. Karimah and one of her Manslayers met there in front of Bajorak as
well, just as Ossop called out: 'They come, out of the east, and five miles
behind me!'
He
pulled up and gasped out that another company of Red Knights, fifteen strong,
and twenty-five more Zayak warriors were quickly bearing down upon us.
I
turned to look for them, but could see little more than the windswept rise
running parallel to the eastern horizon. To the northwest, the Red Knights who
had trailed us so far were remounting their horses. And so were the twenty-five
Zayak warriors who rode with them.
'Now
we've no choice!' I said, looking at our enemy. 'It's too late to attack them,
and so we must flee!'
I pointed
at two long strips of red rock marking the front range of the White Mountains
five miles away. If these were truly the edges the Ass's Ears - or the
Red Shields - Bajorak was right that they appeared very different from this
point of view.
'Hold!'
Kashak called out to Bajorak. Although this huge man had a savage look about
him, with his ferocious blue eyes and bushy blond, overhanging brows, I sensed
in him little that was actually cruel. But he was quite capable of dealing with
life's cruelties in a businesslike and almost casual way. 'Hold, I say! We
agreed to escort the kradaks to the mountains, and so we have done. If we
remain here, trapped between two forces and these cursed rocks, we'll be
slaughtered along with them. Let us therefore leave them to what must befall.'
My
heart took a long time between beats as I waited to hear what Bajorak would say
to this. But he hesitated not a moment as he called back to Kashak: 'We shall
not leave them!'
'But we
have earned our gold, and our contract has been fulfilled.'
'No -
the spirit of it has not!'
'I say
it has.'
'You say!
But who is headman of the Tarun, you or I?'
Bajorak
locked eyes with Kashak, and so fierce and fiery was his gaze that Kashak
quickly looked away.
'There
is no time!' Bajorak called out, to Pirraj and his other warriors. He began
issuing orders as he rearrayed his men to cover us on our left flank along the
line of our flight. Then he snapped his quirt near his horse's ear and shouted,
'Let us ride!'
Without
a backward glance at Kashak, he urged his horse straight toward the two red
rocks five miles away. Kashak paused only a moment to regard me with his bleak,
blue eyes. Freely had this Sarni warrior chosen to ride with Bajorak, and
freely he might choose to ride elsewhere. But he would not desert his headman
and friends in the face of battle. He said to me, without rancor or resentment:
'It always comes to this, does it not? I hope you're good at fighting, Valari.
Well, we shall see.' And with that, he whipped his quirt against his horse's
side and galloped off to rejoin his kith and kin.
My
friends and I took only a few moments longer to urge our mounts forward and
gain speed across the uneven terrain. Karimah and her twelve Manslayers rode
close behind us, like a shield of flaxen-haired women and bounding horseflesl.
And behind them, scarcely a mile away, the Red Knights charged at us, and they
seemed intent at last upon closing the distance between us. I heard them
blowing their warhorns and felt the beating of their horses' hooves upon grassy
ground; I felt, too, the beating of the heart of the man who was their master.
He pushed his men forward with all his spite and will, even as my blood pushed
at me with a fierce, quick fire that I had learned to hate.
So
began our wild flight toward the mountains. I rode beside Daj and close to
Estrella, for I worried that she might be too tired to sustain such a chase.
But she kept her horse moving quickly and showed no sign of slumping into
exhaustion or falling off. Master Juwain and Liljana watched her, too; they
were now experienced campaigners, if not warriors, and they rode nearly as
well as the Danladi to our left and the Manslayers behind us. Maram, though,
labored almost as heavily as his sweating horse. I felt the strain in his great
body as a bone-crushing weariness in my own. It did not surprise me that the
Red Knights seemed to gain on us. But they did not gam much: perhaps a hundred
yards with every mile that we covered. And we put these miles behind us
quickly, with the wind whipping at our faces, to the drumming of hooves against
the ground. A mile of grassy terrain vanished behind us, and then two and
three. The rocks called the Ass's Ears loomed larger and larger. This close to
them, I could see more than just their edges. It seemed that Master Juwain's
Way Rhymes had told true, for the rocks were indeed like great, elongated
triangles of stone rising up into the sky. Behind them, layers of the White
Mountains built up into even greater heights toward the clouds. Between them
flowed a stream. A rocky ridge ran along the Ear to the north nearest us. A
smaller ridge across the stream seemed to protect the approach to the second
and southern Ear. The ground between the great rocks, I saw, was broken and
strewn with boulders: very bad terrain for any horse to negotiate at speed.
Bajorak,
upon studying the lay of the land here, saw its obvious advantages for defense
- though he came to a different conclusion than I as to what our strategy
should be. With only a mile to cover before we reached this gateway into the
mountains, he dropped back to me and shouted out above the pounding and
snorting of our horses: 'My warriors and I will dismount and set up behind that
ridge!'
Here,
with a lifetime of coordinating such motions to the beat and bound of his
horse, he held out his finger pointing steadily toward the northern ridge.
'Any
who try to force their way between the Shields, we will kill with arrows!' he
shouted. 'You will have time to escape into this Kul Kavaakurk Gorge - if there
really is such a gorge!'
As
Altaru charged forward with rhythmic surges of his great muscles, I gazed
between the red rocks, at the rushing stream. If this narrow gap opened into a
gorge, I could not tell, for great boulder and the curves of the mountains'
wooded slopes obscured it.
'No!' I
called back to Bajorak. 'You have chosen not to desert us, and so we will not
desert you!'
'Don't
be a fool!' he said. 'Think of the children! Think of the Shining One!'
Even
though each moment of our dash across the steppe seemed to jolt any thoughts
from my mind, I was thinking of both Daj and Estrella, as well as the need of
our quest. I did not, however, have
time to argue with Bajorak - or the heart to dispirit him. For I was sure that
if my friends and I fled with the children into the mountains, Bajorak's
warriors would inevitably be overwhelmed, and then Morjin and his Red Knights
would trap us in the gorge.
'Here
is what we'll do!' I called back fo him, 'As you have said you will set up with
your warriors behind the ridge - all except Kashak and his squadron!'
I
quickly shouted out the rest of the hank- plan that I had devised. It seemed
that Bajorak might dispute with me over who would take command here. But after
gazing into my eyes for a long moment, he looked away and nodded his head as he
said, 'All right.'
We
continued our charge toward the Ass's Ears, slowing to a trot and then a quick
walk as the ground broke up and rose steeply, I turned to see that the Red
Knights and the Zayak warriors had halted about half - mile behind us. Clearly,
they saw that they could not overtake us before we established ourselves behind
the rocky ridge. Clearly, too, they awaited the arrival of the new companies
of Red Knights and Zayak that Ossop had told of.
When
the ground grew too rotten for riding, we dismounted and led our horses along
either side of the wooded stream. It was a hard work over rocks and up
shrub-covered slopes, but neces sity drove us to move like demons of speed.
Bajorak and twenty-three of his warriors turned up behind the rocky ridge and
deployed at the wall-like crest along its length, as would archers behind a
castle's battlements. They hated fighting on foot, away from their horses
tethered behind them, but there was no help for it. I led the rest of our force
- Karimah's Manslayers, Kashak's seven warriors and my friends - behind the
smaller ridge fronting the second Ass's Ear to the south. The trees there and
humps of ground obscured our movement from our enemy, or so I prayed.
While
Kashak stood with his men behind some trees and Karimah waited with her
Manslaying women nearby, I turned to speak with my companions and friends. I
called Liljana closer to me. I whispered to her. 'Here is what we must do.'
I
cupped my hands over her ears and she slowly nodded her head. Then she brought
forth her blue gelstet cast into a whale-shaped figurine. She held this
powerful crystal up to the side of her head. With a gasp that tore through me
like a spear puncturing my lungs, she suddenly grimaced and cried out in pain.
Then she jerked her hand away from her head and opened it. The blue gelstei
gleamed in the strong sun. As Liljana's eyes cleared-she stared at me and
said. 'It is done.'
After
that I called Master Juwain, Daj and Estrella over as well.
I said
to Master Juwain: 'You and Liljana will take the children into the mountains.
We will follow when we can. And if we can't it will be upon you to find the
Brotherhood school - and the Maitreya.'
'No!'
Daj cried out, laying his hand upon the little sword that he wore. 'I want to
stay here with you and fight!'
Estrella,
too, did not like this new turn of things. She came up to my side and wrapped
her arms around my waist, and would not let go.
'Here,
now,' I said as I pulled away her hands as gently as I could. 'You must go with
Master Juwain - everything depends upon it.'
She
shook the dark curls out her eyes and looked up at me. The bright noon
light glinted off her fine-boned cheeks and the slightly crooked nose that must
have once been broken. She smiled at me, and I felt all her trust in me pouring
through me like a river of light. I promised her that I would rejoin her and
Daj in the mountains, and soon. Then I lifted her up to kiss her goodbye.
'Karimah!'
I called out, motioning this sturdy woman over to us. Despite her bulk, she
came at a run, gripping her strung bow. 'Would you be willing to appoint two of
your warriors to escort Master Juwain and the children into the mountains, a
few miles perhaps, until they find a safe place?'
'I
will, Lord Valashu,' she agreed. She pulled at her jowly chin as she looked at
me. 'But no more than two - we shall need the rest of my sisters here before
long.'
She
turned to choose two of her sister Manslayers for this task. I quickly said
goodbye to Master Juwain, Liljana and Daj. And so did Maram, Atara and Kane. I
watched as a young lioness of a woman named Surya led the way up the stream
between the Ass's Ears. My friends, walking their horses beside them, hurried
after her and so did another of the Manslayers whose name I did not
know.
A few
moments later, they disappeared behind the curve of a great sandstone buttress
and were lost to our view. Then I turned back toward the Wendrush to complete
our preparations for battle.
Chapter 4 Back Table of Content Next
To the sound of battle horns
blaring out on the grasslands that we could not quite see. I called everyone
closer to me. Karimah and Atara crowded in close, with Kashak and two Danladi
warriors, between Maram and Kane. And I said to them, 'The Zayak are fifty in
number, and Morjin will appoint at least three dozen of them to ride against
Bajorak's men along the ridge, keeping them pinned with arrows. The rest of the
Zayak, with his forty Red Knights, he will send up along this stream.'
Here I pointed at the water
cutting between Bajorak's ridge and the one that we hid behind. 'He will try to
flank Bajorak and come up behind him. But we shall meet him here with arrows
and swords.'
So saying I drew Alkaladur;
Kashak's men and many of the Manslayers gasped to behold its brilliance, for
they had never seen a sword like it.
Kashak, fingering his taut
bowstring, asked me: 'How do you know that is what Morjin will do?'
Now I pointed behind us,
where the Ass's Ears rose up above what I presumed was the way to the Kul
Kavaakurk. And I said to Kashak, 'Morjin cannot go into the mountains until he
clears Bajorak from the ridge.'
'Then he might decide not to
go into the mountains. Or to besiege our
position.'
'No, he will be afraid that I
and my companions will escape him,' I said. 'And so, despite the cost, he will
attack - and soon.'
Kashak's bushy brows knitted
together as he shot roe a suspicious-look. 'You seem to know a great deal about
this filthy Crucifier.'
'More than I would ever want to know,' I said, watching
the slow smolder of flames build within my sword. He looked at the
rocky, sloping ground over which Morjin's men would charge, if they came this
way, and he said, 'Why did you ask Bajorak for me and my squadron to stand with
you, when I spoke in favor of abandoning you?'
'Because,'
I said, smiling at him, 'you did speak of this. And having decided to
remain even so, you will fight like a lion to prove your valor.'
Kashak's
eyes widened in awe, and he made a warding sign with his finger. He stared at
me as if he feared that I could look into his mind.
'I will
fight like a pride of lions!' he called out, raising up his bow.
I
smiled at him again, and we clasped hands like brothers. One either believes in
men or not.
A horn
sounded, but the swells of earth separating us from the steppe beyond muffled
the sound of it. The two forces of our enemy, I thought, would be meeting up on
the grassy slope below the ridges and preparing to attack us.
'We
should see how they deploy,' Kashak said to me. He pointed toward the ridge
above us. 'We could steal up to those rocks and see if you are right.'
I
nodded my head at this. And so leaving Kashak's men behind with Kane, Atara,
Maram and the Manslayers, Kashak and I picked our way up the ridge running in
front of the second of the Ass's Ears. As we neared the crest, we dropped down
upon our bellies and crept along the ground for the final few yards like
snakes. With the taste of dirt in my mouth, I peered around the edge of a rock,
and so did Kashak. And this is what we saw:
Out on
the steppe, a quarter mile away, some forty of the Zayak warriors were arrayed
in a long line below the ridge to the left of us where Bajorak had set up with
his Danladi. They gripped then-thick, double-curved bows in preparation for a
charge and an arrow duel. The ten remaining Zayak, dismounted, gathered along
the stream with the two score Red Knights, who would also fight on foot. I
looked for the leader of these knights, encased in their armor of
carmine-tinged mail and steel plate, but I could not make him out.
'It is
as you said!' Kashak whispered to me. 'It is as if you can look into Morjin's
mind!'
No, I
thought, I had no such gift. But Liljana did. At my request she had used her
blue gelstei one last time, seemingly to seek out the secrets of Morjin's mind
- and his intentions for the coming battle. And she had, in this invisible duel
of thoughts and diamond-hard will, with great cunning, let him see our intentions:
our company's flight into the mountains with the Manslayers as an escort. That
Kane, Maram, Atara and I remained behind, lying in wait with Kashak's men and
the rest of the Manslayers, she had not let Morjin see, or so I hoped.
It was a ruse that might work one time - but one time only.
Then
one of the Red Knights below us raised up his arm, and another horn rang out
its bone-chilling blare. The forty Zayak on their horses began their charge
toward Bajorak and his warriors. And the Red Knights - bearing drawn maces or
swords - began moving at the double-pace up between the two ridges.
'They
come!' Kashak whispered to me.
I
remained frozen to the ground, gripping a rock with one hand and my sword in
the other. The entire world narrowed until I could see neither mountain nor sky
nor rocks running along the edge of the gray-green grasslands. I had eyes for
only one man: he who led the Red Knights up along the stream cutting between
the two ridges. His yellow surcoat blazed with a great red dragon. I felt the
fury of the sun heating up my sword and a wild fire inside me, and I knew that
this man was Morjin.
'Lord
Valashu, they come!' Kashak whispered more urgently.
He
pulled at my cloak, and I nodded my head. We scuttled crablike down the slope
a dozen yards before rising to a crouch and then running back down to join our
companions.
There
were too few trees here to provide cover for all the Sarni. Kashak's warriors
grumbled at being ordered to hide behind them, while Karimah's Manslayers
almost rebelled at being asked to lie down behind some raspberry bushes. I
stood with Kane, Maram and Atara behind a rock the size of a wagon. We waited
for our enemy to appear in the notch down and around the curve of the stream.
'Oh,
Lord, my Lord!' Maram sighed out to me. He fingered the edge of his drawn
sword: a Valari kalama like the one that Kane held to his lips as he whispered
fell words and then kissed its brilliant steel. 'That Kashak was right, wasn't
he? It seems always to come to this.'
I
looked up to my left past the stream, at the ridge where Bajorak waited with
his warriors. The curve of the ground obscured the sight of most of his small
force, but I knew they were ready because I could see three of the Danladi
nearest us. They pulled back their bowstrings as they sighted their arrows on
the Zayak who would be riding uphill against them.
'Why,
Val why?' Maram murmured to me. 'I should be sitting by a stream in the Morning
Mountains, preparing to eat a picnic lunch that my beloved has made for me.
Look at this lovely day! Ah, why, why, why
did I ever consent to leave Mesh?'
'Shhh!'
Kane whispered fiercely to him. 'You'll give us away!'
I
smiled sadly, for Maram was right about one thing: it was a beautiful day. In
the hills behind us, birds Here singing. The sun rained down a bright light
upon the reddish rocks and the silvery green leaves of the cottonwood trees.
Below us, along either bank of the stream and up the rocky slopes, millions of
small white flowers grew. Atara called them Maiden's Breath. A soft breeze
rippled their delicate petals, which shimmered in the sunlight. It occurred to
me that I should be picking a bouquet for Atara, rather than gripping a
long sword in which gathered reddish-orange flowers of flame.
We
heard our enemy before we saw them, for as they advanced up the stream, they
made a great noise: of boots kicking at rocks; of grunts and hard breath
puffing out into the warm air; of interlocking rings of mail jangling and
grinding against the sheets of steel plate that covered their shoulders,
forearms and chests. And of twanging bowstrings, as well, as Bajorak's warriors
upon the ridge rained down arrows upon them. Steel points broke against steel
armor and shields with a clanging terrible to hear. A few of these must have
broken through to the flesh beneath for the air below the towering Ass's Ears
rang with the even more terrible screams of men struck down or dying. I
wondered if Bajorak's men were concentrating on the Red Knights or the more
vulnerable Zayak warriors in their flimsy leather armor. And then our enemy
rounded the curve of the stream and charged up the flower-covered slopes
straight toward us.
They
did not see us until it was too late. I waited until they came close enough to
smell their acrid sweat, and then I shouted out: 'Attack!'
Kashak's
men stepped out from behind the trees at the same momenlthat Karimah's
Manslayers lifted their bows over the tops of the raspberry bushes. With Atara,
these archers were twenty in number, and they loosed their arrows almost as
one. The first volley, fired at such short range, killed a dozen of the Red
Knights and the Zayak. A few arrows glanced off red armor, but many found their
marks through the Zayaks' throats or chests, or straight through the Red
Knights' vulnerable faces. I shouted at Kashak's men to keep to the cover of
the trees, but in this one matter they I did not heed me. They were Sarni
warriors, used to battle on the open steppe, and they thought it shameful to
hide behind trees. The second volley found our enemy better prepared; the
knights covered their faces with their shields, while the Zayak warriors loosed
arrows of their own at us. I grunted in pain as a long, feathered shaft
slammed into my shoulder but failed to penetrate my tough Godhran armor. There
was no third volley. With our two small forces so close to each other, our
enemy's leader shouted out for his men to close the distance and charge into us
where the fighting would be hand to hand.
With a
chill that shot down my spine, I recognized this voice as belonging to Morjin.
It was a strong voice, almost musical in its tone, and it vibrated with
sureness and command. And with malevolence, vanity and a hunger for cruelty
that made my belly twist with hot acids and pain. His face was Morjin's, too:
not, however, the aged, haunted countenance with the blood-red eyes and
grayish, decaying flesh that I knew to be his true face, but rather that of his
youth. He was fine and fair to look upon. His eyes were all clear and golden,
and sparkled like freshly minted coins. His thick hair, the color of Atara's,
spilled out from beneath his carmine helm. Although not quite a large man, he
moved with a power that I felt pulsing out across three dozen yards of ground.
In truth, he fairly quavered with all the fell vitality of a dragon.
Was it
possible, I wondered, that he had somehow regained the power to deceive me with
the same illusions that he cast over other men? Or had he found in the
Lightstone a way to renew himself? There was something strange about him, in
the way he moved and scanned the flower-covered slopes before him. He seemed to
apprehend the rocks and trees and the men standing beside them both from
close-up and from far away, like an ever-watchful angel of death. His gaze
found mine and seared me with his hate. The flames of his being writhed in
flares of madder, puce and incarnadine - and with other colors that I could
not quite behold. The burning sickness inside me told me that this must be
Morjin.
Without warning, Atara loosed an arrow at him. But he
moved his head at the same moment that her bowstring cracked, and the arrow
whined harmlessly past him. He pointed his finger at her then. Atara gave a
gasp, and slumped back against our rock. I could feel her second sight leave
her. She shook her bow at Morjin in her helplessness and rage at being made
once more truly blind.
'Kill
the witch!' he shouted to his men. Now he pointed at me.
'Kill
the Valari!!'
'Morjin!'
I shouted back at him. 'Damn you Morjin!'
I
rushed at him then even as he charged at me. But his Red Knights close by,
those still standing, would not let him take straight-on the fury of my sword.
A few of them crowded ahead of him as a vanguard. I cut down the foremost with
a slash through his neck. Blood sprayed my face, and I cried out in the agony
of the man I had killed. I was only dimly aware of other combats raging aroud
me as Kashak's warriors and the Manslayers ran down the slopes with flashing
sabers to meet the advance of the Red Knights and the Zayak. Some part of me
saw steel biting into flesh and bright red showers raining down upon the snowy
white blossoms at our feet. I heard arrows whining out upon the ridge above us,
and curses and screams, and I knew that Bajorak's men were fighting a fierce
battle with the mounted Zayak. But I had eyes only for Morjin. I fought my way
closer to him, shivering the shield of a knight with a savage thrust. I felt
Maram on my left and Kane on my right, stabbing their swords into the Red
Knights who swarmed forward to protect their lord. The world dissolved into a
glowing red haze. And then I killed another of his vanguard, and Morjin
suddenly stood unprotected in front of me.
'Mother!'
I cried out. 'Father! Asaru!'
I
raised high my bright silver blade, dripping with blood. And then one of
Kashak's warriors - or perhaps it was a Manslayer -nearly robbed me of my
vengeance. A bow cracked, and an arrow streaked forth. But as before with
Atara, Morjin moved out of the way at the instant the bolt was loosed at him.
He must, I knew, possess some sort of uncanny sense of when others were intending
to deal him a death blow. As I did, too. We were brothers in our blood, I
thought, bound to each other in the quick burn of the kirax poison no less than
in our souls' bitter hate.
'Morjin!'
'Elahad!'
I swung
my sword at him. He parried it with a shocking strength. Steel rang against
silustria, and I felt a terrible power run down my blade into my arms and
chest, and nearly shiver my bones. Once, twice, thrice we clashed, pushed
against each other and then sprang apart. Maram knocked against my left side as
he grunted and gasped and tried to kill the knight in front of him. on my
right, Kane's sword struck out with a rare passion to rend and destroy. He
wanted as badly as I to kill Morjin. But fate was fate and it was I who rushed
in to slay the dragon.
MORJINNN!
I
stabbed Alkaladur's brilliant point at his neck, but he parried that thrust as
well and then nearly cut off my head. He sliced his sword at me, again and
again, with a prowess I had encountered in no other man except Kane. The
flashing of our blades nearly blinded me; the ringing of steel rattled my
skull. This was not the same Morjin that I had fought in Argattha. In
his cuts and savage thrusts there was a recklessness, as if he willed himself
to lay me open but had little care for his own flesh. This made him vastly more
formidable. Twice he missed running me through by an inch. As his sword burned
past my head yet again, his contempt blazed out at me. There was something
strange, I sensed, in his hate. It was not immediate, like the blast of an open
furnace, like mine for him, but rather like the sun's flares as viewed through
a dark glass. It had enough fire, though, to kill me if I let it.
'Look
at the Valari!' I heard someone shout above the tumult of the battle. 'His
sword. It burns!'
Blue and
red flames ran along my shining blade and blazed only brighter and hotter as I
whipped it through the air. The fiery brilliance of my sword dazzled Morjin.
Fear ran like molten steel in his eyes, and I knew that I had it within me to
slay him. And he knew it, too. With a boldness born of desperation, he gripped
his sword with one hand and suddenly thrust at me: quick, low and deep. I moved
aside, slightly, and felt his sword scrape past the armor that covered my
belly. And then, like a lightning flash, I brought Alkaladur down against his
elbow. The silustria fairly burned through steel, muscle and bone, and struck
off his arm. The hellish heat seared his flesh; I heard blood sizzling and
smelled his cauterized veins. He screamed at me then as he reached for his
dagger with the only arm that remained to him.
'Lord
Morjin is wounded!' someone called out. 'To him! To him! Kill the Valari!'
I
raised back my sword to send Morjin into the heart of some distant star, where
he would burn forever. But just then one of the Zayak loosed an arrow at me. I
pulled back my head at the very moment that it would have driven through my
face - right into the path of another arrow aimed by another Zayak. This arrow
struck the mail over my temple at the wrong angle to penetrate but with enough
force to stun me. A bright white light burst through my eyes, and the world
about me blurred. I felt Kane to my right and Maram beside me working furiously
with their swords to protect me from the maces and swords of the nearby Red
Knights. When my vision finally cleared, I saw other knights closing around
Morjin as they bound his arm with twists of rawhide to keep him from bleeding
to death and bore him back down the stream, away from the battle.
'Morjin!'
I cried out. 'Damn you - you won't escape'!' With my friends, I hacked and
stabbed at the wall of knights in front of us. On either side of the stream,
arrows sizzled out and sabers flashed as the Manslayers and Danladi threw
themselves at the Red Knights and the Zayak. As promised, Kashak fought like a
pride of lions. In this close combat against the Red Knights, his thinner sword
and lighter armor proved a disadvantage, as with the other Sarni. But Kashak
made up for this with a rare fierceness and strength. He towered over the Red
knights, calling out curses as his saber slashed through wrists or throats with
a savagery that shocked our enemy. He closed with one of them, and he used his
great fist like a battering ram, driving it into the man's face with a
sickening crunch that I heard above the din of the battle. I heard Kane, as
well, growling and cursing to my right even as a howl of rage built inside me.
I cried out to Morjin, in a hot, red, silent wrath, my vow that he would never
get away.
And as
his paladins bore him down the rocky banks of the stream, away from the high
ground in front of the Ass's Ears, he screamed back at me: 'You won't escape me,
Elahad! All you Valari! He is nearly free! The Baaloch is! And when
he walks the earth again, we shall crucify all your kind, down to the last
woman and child!'
Deep
within my memory burned the image of my mother and grandmother, nailed to wood.
I suddenly killed one of the Red Knights in front of me with a quick thrust of
my sword, and then another. My friends threw themselves at these champions of
Morjin, and so did the Manslayers and Kashak's Danladi. We had cut down more
than a score of them, and their bleeding bodies crushed the white flowers about
the stream and reddened its waters. Even so they still outnumbered us, for they
had killed too many of us as well. And yet it was we who pushed them back, with
beating sabers and long swords, ever backward down the stream and over broken
ground out from the saddle between the two ridges. Through the shifting gaps in
the mass of men before me, I watched as four of the Red Knights bore Morjin
toward a bend in the stream where our enemy had left their horses. To our left,
the Zayak who had ridden against Bajorak along the ridge were in full retreat,
galloping back down toward the steppe, it would be only a matter of moments, I
saw, before Morjin mounted his horse and joined them.
'Morjin!'
I cried out, yet again. 'Morjin!'
I could
not get at him. Swords flashed in front of me like a steel fence. I howled out
my rage at being thwarted. Atara, wandering the battlefield blindly as she felt
her way over rocks or dead bodies with the tip of her useless bow, moved closer
to me, perhaps drawn by the sound of my voice. She held her unused saber in her
hand, and I knew that she would fight to her death to try to protect me. Two of
the Red Knights, like jackals, moved in on her to take advantage of her
sightlessness. But I moved even more quickly. I cleaved the first of these knights
through the helm, and the second I split open with a thrust through his chest.
He died burning with a lust to lay his hands about Atara's throat and drag this
helpless woman down into darkness with him.
I fell
mad then. I threw myself at the Red Knights and the Zayak warriors, who were
slowly retreating over the swells of ground that flowed down to the grasslands
of the Wendrush. I cursed and gnashed my teeth and howled like a wolf; I struck
out with my fearsome sword, again and again, at arms, bellies, throats, and
faces. Steel shrieked and terrible cries split the air. Hacked and headless men
dropped before me. The living, in ones and twos, began to break and run. One of
the knights threw down his sword and begged for quarter. In my killing frenzy,
however, I could not hear his words or perceive the surrender in his eyes. I
sent him on without pity, and then another and yet another. And then, suddenly,
no more of the enemy remained standing near me -only Kashak, Maram and Kane,
who were gasping for breath and spattered with blood. Kashak's warriors, the
few who hadn't fallen, gathered behind us, with the remaining Manslayers and
Atara.
'They're
getting away!' Kane shouted at me. He pointed his bloody sword out toward the
open steppe. 'He is getting away. . . again!'
Morjin's
four paladins, I saw, were grouped around their lord and their horses galloped
over the swaying grasses, away from the mountains. They were already far out on
the Wendrush, to the east The Red Knights and the few Zayak who had survived
the slaughter had mounted their horses and hurried after them, soon to be
joined by the Zayak who had ridden against Bajorak.
'He won't get away!' I shouted. 'Let us ride
after him!'
Our horses,
however, were nowhere near at hand. Bajorak ran down from the ridge then and
came np to us. He said, 'Six of my men have fallen and four of Kashak's. And
six of the Manslayers. We are only thirty, now.'
He went
on to tell that we had slain some thirty of the Red Knights and all but two of
the Zayak who had followed Morjin up the stream. With the Zayak that Bajorak's
men had felled with arrows, we had accounted for more than fifty of our enemy.
'But
they still outnumber us,' Bajorak told me. 'And if we pursue them, there will
be no surprise.'
'I
don't care!'
'Morjin
has the distance now!'
'Growing
greater by the moment, as we stand here!'
'There
may be other companies, other Red Knights and Zayak,' Bajorak told me. 'We have
a victory. Morjin might not survive the wound you dealt him. You're free to
complete your quest.'
'I
don't care!' I shouted again. I pointed my flaming sword toward the east.
'There is our enemy!'
Bajorak
slowly shook his head. 'I will not pursue him. And neither will my warriors.'
'It is Morjin!'
I shouted in rage. 'And so he will survive, to kill and crucify
again!'
So hot
did the fire swirling about my sword grow that Bajorak stepped away from me,
and so did Kashak. But Kane, with a terrible wildness in his eyes, pointed
toward Morjin racing away from us and shouted, 'He won't survive, damn
him! Kill him, Val! You know the way!'
As I
met eyes with Kane, we walked together through a land burning up in flames. And
yet, despite the fire and the terrible heat, it was a dark land, as black and
hideous as charred flesh.
'Kill
him!' Kane called out as he pointed at Morjin. 'He is weak, now! This is your
chance!'
In my
hands I held a sword that flared hotter and hotter as I stared out at Morjin's
shrinking form. Fire burned my face and built to a raging inferno inside me. I
held there another sword, finer and yet even more terrible. It was pure
lightning, all the fury and incandescence of the stars. With it I had slain
Ravik Kirriland. I knew that I had only to strike out with this sword of fire
and light to slay Morjin now.
'So -
kill him! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!'
Father! I
cried out silently. Mother! Nona! Asaru!
'No,
Val!' Atara called out to me, stumbling across the uneven ground. She found her
way to my side and laid her hand on my shoulder. 'Not this way!' 'Do it!' Kane
howled at me.
Could I slay
Morjin with the valarda, of my own will? Could I tell a thunderbolt where to
strike?
'He is
getting away, damn it! You are letting him get away!'
No, a voice
inside me whispered. No, no, no.
'Kill
him, now!'
'No, I
won't!' I howled back at Kane. 'He crucified your own mother!'
MORJINNN!
I cried
out this name with all the agony of my breath, like a blast of fire. My hate
for Morjin swelled to the point where I could not control it, where I did not want
to control it. Could I stop a whirlwind from blowing? No, I could not, and
so finally the lightning tore me open. I felt all my evil rage flash straight
out toward the tiny, retreating figure of Morjin as he galloped across the open
grasslands. But it was too late. The sword of wrath, I sensed, struck him and
stunned him, but did not kill. I watched helplessly as he made his escape
toward the curving edge of the world. 'It is too far!' Kane shouted at me. 'You
waited too long!' I bowed my head in shame that I had failed to kill Morjin -
and in even greater shame that, in the perversion of my sacred gift, I almost
had.
'Damn
him!' Kane shouted.
I
lowered my sword and watched as its flames slowly quiesced. With a ringing of
silustria against steel, I slid it back into its sheath. And then I turned to
Kane and said, 'If I can help it, I won't use the valarda to slay.'
He stared
at me for a moment that seemed to last longer than the turning of the earth
into night. His eyes were like hell to look upon. And he shouted at me; 'You won't?
Then it is you who are damned!' He watched as Morjin's red form
vanished into the shimmering nothingness of the horizon. Then he threw his
hands up to the sky, and stalked off up the stream where the dead lay like a
carpet leading to a realm that none would wish to walk.
Neither Bajorak nor Kashak, nor even Karimah,
understood what had transpired between us, for they knew little of the nature
of my gift. But they realized that they had witnessed here something
extraordinary. Kashak stared at Alkaladur's hilt, with its black jade grip and
diamond pommel, and he said to me, 'Your sword - it burned! But didn't burn!
How is that possible?'
He made
a warding sign with his finger as Bajorak stared at me too. And Bajorak said to
me, 'Your face. Valari! It is burnt!'
I held
my hand to my forehead; it was painful and hot as if a fever consumed me.
Karimah told me that my face was as red as a cherry, as if I had been staked
out all day in the fierce summer sun. She produced a leather bag containing an
ointment that the fair-skinned Sarni apply as proof against sunburns. Atara
took it from her, and dipped her fingers into it. Her touch was cool and gentle
against my outraged flesh as she worked the pungent-smelling ointment into my
cheek.
'Come,'
I said pulling away from her. 'Others have real wounds that need tending.'
So it
was with any battle. Bajorak's men had taken arrows through faces, legs or
other pans of the body, and Kashak's warriors and the Manslayers had sword cuts
to deal with. But these tough Sarni warriors were already busy binding up their
wounds. In truth, there was little for me and my friends to do here except
stare at the bodies of the dead.
I
pointed at the hacked men lying on top of the pretty white flowers called
Maiden's Breath, and I said, 'They must be buried.'
'Yes,
ours will be,' Bajorak said to me. 'The Manslayers and our warriors, even the
Zayak, we shall take out onto the steppe and bury in our way. As for Morjin's
men, I care not if they rot here in their armor.'
'Then
we,' I said, looking at Maram, 'will dig graves for them here.'
Maram,
exhausted and bloody from the battle, looked at me as if I had truly fallen
mad.
And
Bajorak said to me, 'No, the ground here is too rocky for digging. And there is
no time. You must hurry after your friends.'
He
pointed up the stream where it disappeared between the two towering Ass's Ears.
'Go now, while you can - ten of my warriors have died that you might go where
you must. Honor what they gave here, lord.'
'And
you?'
Bajorak
nodded at Kashak, and then at his warriors still guarding the ridge
above with bows and arrows. And he said, 'We shall remain here in case Morjin
returns. But I do not think that he will return.'
I looked up the stream at the many Red Knights that we
had killed. They would remain here unburied to rot in the sun. So, then, I thought,
that was war. I closed my eyes as I bowed down my head.
'Go,'
Bajorak said to me again, pressing his hand against my chest.
'All
right,' I said, looking at him. 'Perhaps we'll meet again in a better time and a better place.'
'I
doubt it not,' he said to me. He clasped my hand in his. 'Farewell, then,
Valari.'
'Farewell,
Sarni,' I told him.
Then I put my arm across Atara's shoulders and turned
toward the mountains. Somewhere, in the heap of rocks to the west, Master
Juwain and Liljana would waiting with the children for us. And Kane, I prayed,
would be, too.
Chapter 5 Back Table of Content Next
We collected our horses and then made our way up the stream into the gap between the Ass's Ears. We caught up to my grim-faced friend about half a mile into the mountains. He said nothing to me. Neither did he look at me. He rejoined our company with no further complaint, taking his usual post behind us to guard our rear. Kane, I thought, might bear a cold anger at me like a sword stuck through his innards, but he would never desert me.
The way up the stream was rocky and broken, and so we walked our horses and remounts behind us. We had no need to track our friends, for the slopes of the foothills here were so steep and heavily wooded that a deer would have had trouble crossing them, and so there was only one direction Master Juwain and the others could have traveled: along the stream, farther into the mountains. These prominences rose higher and higher before us. Although not as immense as the peaks of the upper Nagarshath to the north, they were great enough to chill the air with a cutting wind that blew down from their snow-covered crests. It was said that men no longer lived in this part of the White Mountains - if indeed they ever had. It was also said that no man knew the way through them. This, I prayed, could not be true, for if Master Juwain could not lead us through the Kul Kavaakurk Gorge and beyond, we would be lost in a vast, frozen wilderness.
For about a mile,
as the stream wound ever upward, we saw no sign of this gorge. But then the slopes to either
side of us grew deeper and steeper until another mile on they rose up
like walls around us. Higher and higher
they built, to the right and left, until soon it was clear that we had
entered a great gorge. Looking to the west, where this deep deli through the
earth cut its way like a twisting snake, we could see
no end of it. Surely, I thought we must soon overtake our friends, for there
could be no way out of this stone-walled deathtrap except at either end.
'Ah, I
don't like this place,' Maram grumbled as he kicked his way along the
stone-strewn bank of the stream. He puffed for air as he gazed at the layers of
rock on the great walls rising up around us. 'Can you imagine how it would go
for us if we were caught here?'
'We won't
be caught here,' I told him. 'Bajorak will protect the way into the gorge.'
'Yes,
he'll protect that way,' Maram said, pointing behind us. Then he whipped
his arm about and pointed ahead. 'But what lies this way?'
'Surely
our friends do,' I told him. 'Now let's hurry after them.'
But we
could not hurry as I would have liked, not with the ground so rotten - and not
with Atara still blind and stumbling over boulders that nearly broke her knees.
Even with Maram adding her horses to the string he led along and with me taking
her by the hand, it was still a treacherous work to fight our way through the gorge.
And a slow one. With the day beginning to wane and no sign of our friends, it
seemed that they might be travelling quickly enough to outdistance us.
And
then, as we came out of a particularly narrow and deep part of the gorge, we
turned into a place where the stream's banks suddenly widened and were covered
with trees. And there, behind two great cottonwoods, with a clear line of sight
straight toward us, Surya and the other Manslayer stood pointing their drawn
arrows at our faces. Their horses, and those of our friends, were tethered
nearby.
Then
Surya, a high-strung and wiry woman, gave a shout, saying, 'It's all right -
it's only Lord Valashu and our Lady!'
Surya
eased the tension on her bow and stepped out from behind the tree, and so did
the other Manslayer, whose name proved to be Zoreh. And then from behind trees
farther up the gorge, Master Juwain, Liljana, Daj and Estrella appeared, and
called out to us in relief and gladness.
'The
battle has been won!' I called back to them as they hurried along the stream
toward us. 'The Red Knights will not pursue us here!'
Daj let
loose a whoop of delight as he came running down the stream, dodging or jumping
over stones with the agility of a rock goat. A few moments later, Estrella
threw her arms around me, and pressed her face against my chest. Liljana came
up more slowly She took in the blood on our armor and garments. She gazed at my
face and said, 'You are burnt, as from fire.'
Her
gaze lowered to fix upon my sheathed sword, and she slowly shook her head.
Because
Surya and Zoreh were staring at me, too, I gave them a quick account of the
battle. I said nothing, however, of my sword's burning or my failure to kill
Morjin.
'We
must go, then,' Surya told us. 'Six of our sisters are dead, and we must go.'
She
turned to Atara and gazed at her blindfolded face as if trying to understand a
puzzle. Then she embraced her, kissing her lips. 'Farewell, my imakla one. We
shall all sing to the owls, that your other sight returns soon. But if it does
not, who will care for you? Must you go off with these kradaks?'
'Yes, I
must,' Atara told her, squeezing my hand in hers.
'Then
we shall sing to the wind, as well, that fate,will blow you back to us.'
And
with that, she and Zoreh gathered up their horses and turned to begin the walk
back down the gorge. We watched them disappear around the rocks of one of its
turnigs.
We
decided to go no farther that day. We were all too tired, from battle and from
too many miles of hard traveling. Surya had found a place that we could defend
as well as any. Four archers, I thought, firing arrows quickly at the bend
where the gorge narrowed behind us, could hold off an entire company of Red
Knights. We had here good, clear water, even if it was little more than a
trickle. Above the stream, the ground between the trees was flat enough to lay
out our sleeping furs in comfort. There was grass for the horses, too, and
plenty of deadwood for a fire.
Despite
our exhaustion, we fortified our camp with stones and a breastwork of logs.
'Liljana brought out her pots to cook us a hot meal, while Atara and Estrella
took charge of washing the blood from pur garments in the stream and mending
them in the places where an arrow or a sword had ripped through them. We gathered
around the fire to eat our stew and rushk cakes in the last hour of the day.
But here, at the bottom of the gorge where the stream spilled over rocks, it
was already nearly dark. The sunlight had a hard time fighting its way down to
us, and the walls of the gorge had fallen gray with shadow.
Although
we had much to discuss and I desired
Kane's counsel, this ancient warrior stood alone behind the breastwork gazing
down the stream in the direction from which our enemies would come at us, if
they came at all. His strung bow and quiver full of arrows were close at hand
as he ate his stew in silence.
'Ah,
what I would most like to know,' Maram said as he licked at his lips, 'is what
will become of Morjin?'
He sat
with the rest of us around the fire. From time to time, he poked a long stick
into its blazing logs.
'Unless
he bled to death, which seems unlikely,' Master Juwain said, 'he will recover
from his wound. A better question might be: what has become of him? If
Val is right that it really was Morjin.'
'It must
have been Morjin,' I said. 'Changed, somehow, yes. He is something more ...
and something less. There was something strange about him. But I know it was
he.'
'Unless
he has an evil twin, it was he,' Maram agreed.
'But
how do we really know that?' Master Juwain asked. 'He is the Lord of Illusions,
isn't he? Perhaps he has regained the power to put into our eyes the same
images with which he fools other people.'
Liljana
shook her head at this. 'No, what we faced earlier was no illusion. Morjin's
mind is powerful - so horribly powerful, as none know better than I. But he
cannot, from hundreds of miles away in Argattha, cast illusions that fool so
many through the course of an entire battle. And he cannot have fooled me.'
'No,' I
said, fingering my cloak, spread out on a rock near the fire to dry. I had felt
the blood from Morjin's severed arm soak into it, and the red smear of it still
stained the collar. 'No, he has a great strength now. I felt this in his arms,
when we were locked together sword to sword.'
'Could
this not, then, have been the old Morjin drawing strength from the
Lightstone?' Master Juwain asked. 'And drawing from it as well the means to
deceive you about his form?'
'No,' I
said, touching the hilt of my sword, 'I know that he has lost the power
of illusion over me. And the Lightstone is all beauty and truth. There is
nothing within it that could help engender illusions and lies.'
For the
span of a year, after my friends and I had rescued the Lightstone out of
Argattha, the golden bowl had been like a sun showering its radiance upon us. I
missed the soft sheen of it keenly, nearly as much as I did my murdered family.
Since the day that Morjin had stolen it back, I had known no true days, only an
endless succession of moments darkened as when the moon eclipses the sun.
'Then,' Master Juwain sighed out, 'we have dispensed with several hypotheses.
And so we must consider that Morjin has indeed found a way to rejuvenate
himself.'
'I
didn't think the Lightstone had that power,' Maram said.
'Neither
did I,' Master Juwain admitted.
'But
what of the akashic crystal?' Atara asked. 'Was there no record within it of
such things?'
Master
Juwain sighed again as his face knotted up in regret. With the breaking in Tria
of the great akashic crystal, repository of much of the Elijin's lore concerning
the Lightstone, Master Juwain's hope of gaining this great knowledge had broken
as well.
'There might
have been such a record within it,' Master Juwain said. 'If only I'd had
more time to look for it.'
'Then
you don't really know,' Atara said, pressing him.
Master
Juwain squeezed the wooden bowl of stew between his hands as if his fingers
ached for the touch of a smoother and finer substance. 'No, I suppose I don't.
But I spent many days searching through the akashic stone, following many
streams of knowledge. One gets a sense of the terrain this way, so to speak.
And everything I've ever learned about the Lightstone gives me to understand
that it cannot be used to make one's body and being young again. In truth, it
is quite the opposite.'
'What
do you mean, sir?' I asked him.
'Consider
what we do know about the Lightstone,' he said, looking at me and the
others. 'Above all, that it is to be used by the Maitreya, and by him only. But
used how? Of this, we still have barely a glimmer. "In the Shining
One's hands, the true gold; in the Cup of Heaven, men and women shall drink in
the light of the One." Indeed, indeed -but what does this really mean? We
know that the Maitreya is thus to help man walk the path of the Elijin
and Galadin, and so on to the Ieldra themselves, ever and always toward the
One. And in so doing, the Maitreya will be exalted beyond any man: in grace, in
vitality, in the splendor of his soul. But now let us consider what befalls
when the Lightstone is claimed by one who is not the Maitreya. Let us
consider Morjin. Clearly, he has used the Lightstone to try to gain mastery
over all the other gelstei - even as he has tried to enslave men's souls and
make himself master of the world. He searches for the darkest of knowledge! And
so he holds in his hands not the true gold but something rather like a lead
stone that pulls him ever and always down into a lightless chasm. And so he has
utterly debased himself: in his body, in his mind, in his soul. He is immortal,
yes, and so he cannot die as other men do. But we have all seen his scabrous
flesh, the deadness of his eyes, the rot that slowly blackens his insides. All
his lusting for the Lightstone and struggle to master it has only withered him.
And so how can he use this cup to make himself young again?'
I
considered long and deeply what Master Juwain had said as I looked through the
fire's writhing flames and gazed at the darkening walls of the chasm called
the Kul Kavaakurk. How close had I been to claiming the Lightstone for
myself? As close as the curve of my fingers or the whispering of my breath - as
close as the beating of my heart.
Maram
cast a glance at the silent, motionless Kane standing like a stone carving
above us, and he said, 'Didn't our grim friend tell us in Argattha that the Lightstone
had no power to make one young again?'
I
touched the hilt of my sword, and I recalled exactly what Kane had told us in
Morjin's throne room when he stood revealed as one of the Elijin: that the
Lightstone did not possess the power to bestow immortality. I told this
to Maram, and to the others, who sat around the fire quietly eating their
dinner.
Then
Maram nodded at Master Juwain and said, 'Then it might be possible that
Morjin has rejuvenated himself.'
'It is
possible,' Master Juwain allowed. 'No man knows very much about the
Lightstone.'
He
looked up at Kane, and so did everyone else. But still Kane said nothing.
'We
know,' Liljana said, 'that Morjin can draw a kind of strength from the
Lightstone, as he does in feeding off others' fear or adulation 1 or even in
drinking their blood. And so I suppose we must assume he has found a way to
renew himself, if only for a time.'
'I
suppose we must,' Master Juwain said with another sigh. 'Unless we can find
another explanation.'
The
fading sunlight barely sufficed to illuminate Kane's fathomless black eyes. He
seemed, in silence, to explain to us a great deal: above all that the distance
between the Elijin and mortal men was as vast as the black spaces between the
stars. As always, I sensed that he knew much more than he was willing to reveal
about the world and about himself - even to himself.
'Ah, well,' Maram
said, looking up at Kane, 'Morjin fought like a much younger man, didn't
he? In truth, like no man I have ever seen except Val - or Kane. He has a power
now that he didn't have in Argattha. Perhaps many powers. He pointed at
Atara, and struck her blind!'
Atara
paused in eating her stew to hold up her spoon I front of the white cloth
covering her face. She said, 'But I am already blind.'
'You
know what I mean.'
She
brought out her scryer's sphere and sat rolling it between her long, lithe
ringers. 'Morjin has power over my gelstei now, nothing more.'
'But
your second sight -'
'My
second sight comes and goes, like the wind, as it always has. Surely it was
just evil chance, what happened on the battlefield.'
'Evil,
indeed,' Maram said, looking at her. 'But what if it was more than chance?'
Atara
shook her head violently. Then she clapped her hands over her blindfold and
said, 'Morjin took my eyes and with them my first sight. Isn't that enough?'
Because
there was nothing to say to this, we sat around the fire eating our stew. The
knock and scrape of our spoons against our wooden bowls seemed as loud as
thunder.
And
then I took her hand and said to her, 'Please promise me that if the next
battle comes upon us with the wind blowing the wrong way, you'll find a safe
place and remain there.'
'I should
have, I know,' she said to me, pressing her hand into mine. 'But I was sure
that my sight would return, at any moment, so sure. Then, too, they were so
many and we so few. I heard you calling out, to me it seemed. I thought you
needed my sword.'
'I need
much more than your sword,' I told her.
In the
clasp of her fingers around mine was all the promise that I could ever hope
for.
Maram,
sitting nearby, cast us a wistful look as if he might be to thinking of his
betrothed, Behira. And he said, 'It vexes me what Morjin said about the
Baaloch. Can it be true that he is so close to freeing Angra Mainyu?'
'He
would lie,' said, 'just to vex me. And to strike terror into you,
and everyone else.'
'He
would,' Master Juwain agreed. 'But as we have seen before, he has no need of
lies when the truth will serve him better.'
'But
how can we know the truth about this?' I asked. 'Didn't you once teach me that
Morjin possessed the Lightstone for thirty years at the end of the Age of
Swords? And then for nearly ten times as long when the Age of Law fell to the
Age of the Dragon? If he didn't free Angra Mainyu then why should we
fear that he
will now?'
'Because,'
Master Juwain told me, 'that was then, and this is now. The first time
he claimed the Lightstone, he used it in desperate battle to conquer Alonia. And
the second time, to overthrow the order of the Age of Law, which everyone had
thought eternal. Now that he has nearly conquered all of Ea, he will surely use
it to bring his master here from Damoom.'
'If he
can, he will,' I said, still not wanting to believe the worst. 'But why should
we think that he can?'
Atara's
hand suddenly tightened around mine as she said, 'But, Val, I have seen this,
and have spoken of it before!'
What
Atara had 'seen' we all knew to be true: that beneath the buried city of Argattha,
far beneath the mountain, Morjin had driven his slaves to digging tunnels deep
into the earth. And there, through solid rock, as with the lightning-like
pulses that coursed along a man's nerves and through the chakras along his
spine, ran the fires of the earth. Master Juwain called them the telluric
currents. Their power was very great: if Master Juwain was right, the
Lightstone could be used to direct them, as with the flames of a blacksmith's
furnace, to touch upon the currents of the world of Damoom. And then the door
behind which Angra Mainyu was bound, tike an iron gate, might be burnt open.
And then Angra Mainyu, the Dark One, would be set free from his prison and
loosed upon Ea.
'Morjin
is close,' Atara told me, 'so very close to cutting open the
right tunnel The wrong tunnel. Now that he has the Lightstone, it will
be months, not years, before he sees clear where to dig.'
Daj,
who had been a slave in the mines below Argattha's first level, nodded his head
at this. 'It might be even sooner. I once heard Lord Morjin tell one of his
priests that the Baaloch would be freed within a year. And that was before he
took back the Lightstone.'
'Well,
then, Morjin either was wrong or he lied,' Maram said to Daj. 'It's been more
than a year since we freed you from Argattha.'
'Morjin
didn't lie,' Liljana said, 'when I touched minds with him. He couldn't lie,
then. He believes that he will free Angra Mainyu, and soon,'
Master
Juwain rubbed at the back of his bald head as he told us: 'It has been a year
and a half since we took the Lightstone out of Argattha. And in that time,
Morjin must have lain long abed recovering from the first wound that Val dealt
him. And then, many months planning and leading the invasion of Mesh. And now-'
'And
now,' Maram said hopefully, 'we've tempted him out of Argattha, along with the
Lightstone no doubt, and so we've delayed the worst of what he can do yet
again.'
'Perhaps,'
Master Juwain said. 'But now that Val has wounded him again, hell return to
Argattha and to his greatest chance.'
'And
that,' I said, looking up through the gorge at the mountains beyond, 'is why
we must find the Maitreya, and soon.'
I felt
my heart beating hard against my ribs. Would even the Maitreya, I wondered, be
able to keep Morjin from using the Lightstone?
'Ah,
well, even if we fail,' Maram said, 'must we give up all hope? If what we
learned outside of Tria is true, then once before Angra Mainyu walked other
worlds freely, and yet in the end was defeated. He is only one man, isn't he,
even if he is one of the Galadin.'
At
this, Maram looked hopefully toward Kane, for it had been Kane, long ago and on
another world, who had immobilized Angra Mainyu so that the Lightstone might be
wrested from him.
A light
flashed in Kane's eyes as from far away. His gaze fell upon Maram. In a voice
as harsh as breaking steel, he laughed out: 'Ha - only a man, you say! Only one
of the Galadin, eh? Fool! What would you do if this man faced you upon
the battlefield or came at you in a dark glade? Die, you would - of fright. And
you would be fortunate to be dead. You have seen the Grays! They are terrible,
aren't they? They nearly sucked out your soul, didn't they? And yet they are as
children happily playing games in a flowered field compared to the one you
speak of.'
'I wish
I hadn't,' Maram said, pulling at the mail that covered his throat. 'Must we
really speak of this?'
'So, we
must speak of it,' Kane growled out. His face had fallen fierce, like
that of a tiger, and yet there was much in its harsh lines that was sad, noble and
exalted. 'This one time we shall, and never again. I have heard and seen today
too much uncertainty. And too much pity, for ourselves. Master Juwain has told
of the fires of the earth, these telluric currents that our enemy seeks to
wield. Val dreads the flames of his sword. Fire and flame - ha! I shall tell
you of fire! There is that in each of us that must utterly burn away. Lirjana's
pride at besting Morjin: at least this one time. Maram's self-indulgence,
Atara's desire to be made whole again, and Val's rage for vengeance. So, and my
own. The grief we all suffer from the poisoning of our gelstei. It is nothing. We
are nothing. In the face of what comes, none of our lives matters. Except
that we all do matter, utterly, and so long as we live and draw breath,
everything that we do - every word, thought and act - must be keener and strike
truer than even Val's sword. For if we fail, Morjin will use the Lightstone as
we all fear and open the way to Damoom.'
As Kane
spoke, he paced back and forth behind the log breastwork gripping his strung
bow. His fierce eyes danced about, now flicking toward the bend in the stream,
now falling upon us. From time to time, he scowled as he looked up at the
darkening sky.
'And
then,' he told us, 'he will come, with fire. Who of us will be able to
bear even the sight of him? For his eyes are like molten stone, his flesh is
red as heated iron, his hair is a wreath of flames. His mouth opens like a pit
of burning pitch that devours all things. Angra Mainyu, men call him now. He is
the Baaloch, the Black Dragon - but stronger than any thousand dragons. Do you
hate, Valashu? It is as a match flame compared to the roaring furnace inside
Morjin - and that is nothing against the hell that torments Angra Mainyu, like
unto the fire of the stars. For he has been denied the stars. Ages and ages,
the Galadin have bound him in darkness on Damoom, he who was once the greatest
of the Galadin, and the most fair. So. So. He will burn to take his vengeance
upon Ashtoreth and Valoreth and all their kind. Ha, all our kind as
well.
'Where
will we be when Morjin delivers the cup into his hands? Wherever we are, even
on the most distant isle across the seas, we will feel the earth shake and see
clouds of smoke darken the air as the fire mountains burst forth. When Angra
Mainyu lays grip upon Ea's telluric currents, he will not care if the very
earth is riven in two. First he will free the others bound with him on his dark
world: Gashur, Yurlungurr, Yama, Zun. A host of Galadin, and Elijin, too I those
who still survive. They will follow in Angra Mainyu's train. He will take his
first vengeance upon Ea and her peoples: we who have denied him the Lightstone
for so long. In every land wooden crosses will sprout up like mushrooms. The
Baaloch will breathe upon those to which Valari are nailed, and they will burst
into flame. He will feast upon flesh, not as a lion upon lambs - not only - but
as a master wears the sinews of his slaves down to the bone. All men will be
his ghuls, ready to twitch or sine or mouth his thoughts, at his whim. When he
has finished subduing Ea, not even a blade of grass will dare poke itself above
the ground unless he wills it.
'And
then he turn his blazing eyes upon the heavens. They who follow him will lend
him all their strength. Time nearly beyond reckoning they have had to prepare
for such a day. Stars, beyond counting, they will claim. Then the Baaloch will
seize the stellar currents, bound inside pure starfire. Ten thousand men, it's
said, Morjin nailed to crosses in Galda. Ten thousand worlds will burn
up in flame when Angra Mainyu makes war again upon Ashtoreth and Valoreth and
the other Amshahs who still dwell across the stars on Agathad. But the Galadin
are the inextinguishable ones, eh? Diamond will not pierce them, no fire can
scorch them, nor age steal the beauty of their form. And so, as in ages past,
ages of ages, Angra Mainyu will try to use the Lightstone to wrest the
great fire, the angel fire, from the Ieldra themselves.'
Now
Kane stood facing me, and he paused to draw in a deep breath. His eyes burned
into mine as he said, 'But it is the Ieldra, not the Galadin - not even Angra
Mainyu - who are given the power of creation. And so no Galadin has the power
to uncreate any other. Angra Mainyu, though, will never believe this,
just as he will not accept that any power might be beyond his grasp, not even
the very splendor of the One. So. So. The Ieldra, at last, at the end of all
things when time has run out and there is no more hope, will be forced to make
war upon Angra Mainyu, lest the evil that he has unleashed upon Eluru spill
over into other universes: those millions that exist beyond ours and those
countless ones that are yet to be. But Angra Mainyu was the first of the
Galadin, and the greatest, and so as long as the stars shed their light upon
creation, he, too, cannot be harmed. Knowing this, the Ieldra will be forced to
put an end to their creation. In fire the universe came to be, and in fire the
universe and all within will be destroyed. And so Eluru, and all its worlds and
beautiful stars, will be no more.'
Kane
finished speaking and stood still again. For a moment, I could not move, nor
could our other friends. Daj and Estrella, in their short years, had seen and
heard many terrible things, but Kane's warning as to the horrible end of the
War of the Stone seemed to strike terror into them. They sat next to each
other, holding hands and staring at the stream. Above this pale water, Flick
appeared and the lights within his luimnous pulsed as in alarm. Above him, the
forbidding walls of the Kul Kavaakurk grew ever darker. Their exposed rock ran
along the gorge, east and west, in layers. How long, I wondered, had it taken
for the stream to cut down through the skin of the earth? Each layer, it
seemed, was as a million years, and as the stream had cut deeper and deeper,
the War had gone on, layer upon layer. And not just the War of the Stone, but
the war of all life against life, to triumph and dominate, to be and to become
greater. And not just on Ea or Eluru but in all universes in all times, without
end. Were all peoples everywhere, I wondered, afflicted with war? Was it
possible that all worlds and universes, as seemed the fate of ours, might be
doomed?
It was
Maram, the most fearful of us and consequently the most hopeful, who could not
bear to think of such an end. He loved the pleasures of life too much to
imagine it ever ceasing - even for others. And so he looked at Kane and said,
'But Angra Mainyu was defeated once, and so might be again. And it was you who
defeated him!'
'No, it
was not,' Kane said as a strange light filled his eyes. 'And I've told you
before, he was not defeated. From Damoom, he still works his evil on all of
Eluru.'
'But he
was bound there,' Maram persisted. 'And so might be again.'
'No, he
will not be,' Kane told us. 'Once, on Erathe, on the plain of Tharharra long
ago, there was a battle - the greatest of all battles. A host of the Amshahs
pursued Angra Mainyu and his Daevas there. Ashtoreth and Valoreth forbade this
violence, but Marsul and others of the Galadin would not heed them. And neither
would Kalkin.'
Kane,
who had once borne this noble name, stood up tall and straight as the light of
the night's first stars rained down upon him.
'A
hundred thousand Valari died that day,' Kane said to us. 'And as many of the
Elijin. So, Elijin slaying Valari and other Elijin, against the Law of the One,
and Galadin such as Marsul and Varkoth slaying all - this was the evil of that
day. A victory Maram calls it! Ha! Many of the Amshahs fell mad after that.
Darudin threw himself on his sword in remorse, and so with Odin and Sulujin and
many others. But it is not so easy for the living to expunge the stain of such
an atrocity, eh? Many there were who bore the shadow of Tharharra on their
souls.'
Kane paused
in his account of this ancient history before known history. He began pacing
about like a tiger again in front of the fire, and his hand clenched and
unclenched like a beating heart.
'And
so,' he said, 'once a time the Amshahs came to Erathe; they will not come to
Ea, especially if the Baaloch and his Daevas are loosed upon it. The danger is
too great. Ea is a Dark World now - almost a Dark World. Here, Morjin
turned from the fairest of men into the most foul. Here, even the brightest of
the Amshahs might come under Angra Mainyu's spell, and how could the stars
above us abide even one more fallen Galadin? And then, too, there is the Black
Jade.'
Almost
without thought my hand fell upon my sword. Seven diamonds, like stars, were
set into its hilt, carved out of true black jade, which might be dug up from
the earth like any other stone. But the jade of which Kane spoke was the black
gelstei, rarest of the rare, wrought in furnaces long ago from unknown
substances and with an an long since lost. And not just any black
gelstei.
Kane
paused in his pacing to set his bow on top of the logs of the breastwork. Then
he brought forth a flat, black stone, shiny as obsidian, and held it gleaming
dully in the palm of his hand. And he said to us, 'This baalstei is small, eh?
And yet the one that Kalkin used upon Angra Mainyu was no larger - in
size. But it had great power, like unto the dark of the moon, for in it was
bound all the blackness of space and the great emptiness that lies inside all
things.'
He
stood still for a moment as he stared up at the sky. Then he continued: 'You
can't imagine its power, for in a way, the Black Jade is the Lightstone's
shadow. I spoke of how the Ieldra might be forced to unmake the universe, but I
say the Black Jade is the greater dread. For even men, such as Morjin, might
use it to steal the very light from this world: all that is bright and
good.'
Maram
thought about this as he gazed at Kane. Then he asked him, 'But why didn't you
tell us that the black gelstei you used on Angra Mainyu had power beyond any
others?'
'Because,'
Kane said, 'I didn't want to frighten you. So, I didn't want to frighten
.myself. To wield it was to touch upon a cold so terrible and vast that it
froze one's soul in ice as hard as diamond. To wield it too long was to
be lost in a lightless void from which there could be no escape. Angra Mainyu
himself, early in the War of the Stone, forged this cursed stone we call the
Black Jade. There will never be another like it. Long ago, it was lost. And so
once the Baaloch is freed, no one will ever bind him again.'
Maram stood up
from the fire to get a better look at the black crystal seemingly welded to
Kane's hand. And he asked: 'If Angra Mainyu made the great baalstei, how did
Kalkin come by it?'
'So,
how did Kalkin come by it, eh?' Kane said. He spoke his ancient name as
if intoning a requiem for a long lost friend. 'That is a story that I
won't tell here, unless you'd like to remain in this cursed gorge for a month,
and then half a year alter, Let's just say that the Lightstone wasn't
the only gelstei that the Amshahs and the Daevas fought over.' 'But how was it lost, then?'
Kane
clamped his jaws together with such force that I heard the grinding of his
teeth. Then he said. 'That story is even longer. I can tell you only
that Angra Mainyu's creatures regained it. Some say that it was brought to Ea,
to await his coming.'
Again,
I stared at the chasm's layers of rock; now nearly black with the fail of
night, it seemed that in ages without end, on uncountable worlds, anything
might happen - and almost every-thing had. It seemed as well that the folds of
the earth might conceal many dark things, even one as dark and terrible as the
ancient black gelstei.
Kane
suddenly made a fist, and the small crystal seemed to vanish. When he opened
his hand again, there was nothing inside it except air.
And I
asked him, 'Do you believe the baalstei was brought to Ea?'
'Where
else would it have been brought if not here?'
My
mysterious friend, I thought, possessed all the evasive arts of a magician.
Somewhere on his person, no doubt, he had secreted the black gelstei. Just as
somewhere in his soul he kept hidden even more powerful things.
'You
told us once,' I said to him, 'that the Galadin sent Kalkin to Ea. Along with
Morjin, and ten others of the Elijin?'
Kane's
eyes grew brighter and more pained as he said, 'Yes -Sarojin and Baladin, and
the others. I have told you their names.'
'Yes,
you have. But you haven't told us why you were sent here? Why, if Ea was
so perilous for your kind?'
'It was
a chance,' he said, looking up at the night's first stars. 'A last, desperate
chance. The Lightstone had been sent here long before, and that was chance
enough.'
And
this supreme gamble on the part of Ashtoreth and the other Galadin on Agathad
had nearly succeeded: Kalkin. in the great
First Quest, had led the others of his order to recover the lost
Lightstone. But then Morjin had fallen mad: he had murdered Garain and Averin
to claim the Lightstone for himself- And Kalkin, in violation of the Law of the
One, had killed five of Morjin's henchmen, and in a way. slain himself as well.
Now only Kane remained.
'So,
you see how it went for the Elijin who came to Ea' Kane said. 'How much worse
would it be for any Galadin to come to this cursed place?'
At
this, Liljana's kind face tightened in anger. She patted the ground beneath
her, and snapped at Kane: 'Such things you say! I won't listen to such slander!
The earth is our mother, the mother of us all - even you!'
As Kane
regarded Liljana, I felt a strange, cold longing ripple through him.
'Liljana
is right,' Master Juwain said. 'You can't blame Ea for corrupting Morjin.
Neither can you blame the black gelstei.'
And
Kane said, 'The greatest of scryers foretold that Ea would give rise to a dark
angel who would free the Baaloch.'
'Either
that,' Master Juwain reminded him, 'or give birth to the last and greatest
Maitreya, who will lead all Eluru into the Age of Light.'
For a
moment, Kane stared down at his clenched fists. Then he looked at Master Juwain
and said, 'I know you are right, it is not soil or even black gelstei that
poisons men, but their hearts. What lies within.'
He
reached down to scoop up a handful of dirt. He said to us, 'And that is the
hell of it, eh? What being, born of earth, does not suffer? Grow old and die?'
'The
Galadin do not,' I said to him.
'You
think not, eh? So, the Bright Ones grow old in their souls. And in the end, it is
their fate, too, to die.'
The
brilliance of his eyes recalled the most beautiful, yet terrible, part of the
Law of the One: that each of the Galadin, at the moment of a Great Progression,
in the creation of a new universe, was destined to die into light - and thus be
reborn as one of the numinous Ieldra
'And as
for suffering, Valashu,' he said to me, 'despite what you have suffered
you cannot know. How many times have you swatted a mosquito?'
For a
moment his question puzzled me. My skin fairly twitched as 1 recalled the
clouds of mosquitoes that had drained my blood in the Vardaloon. And I said,
'Hundreds. Thousands.'
'Could
you have killed them so readily if they had been human beings? Do you think
they suffered as men do?'
I, who had already
killed many tens of men with my bright sword said, 'I know they did
not.'
'Just
so,' Kane said to me. 'The pain that men, women and children know, compared to
that of the Galadin, is minuscule. And yet it is no small thing, eh? And that
in the end, is what poisoned Angra Mainyu's sweet, sweet, beautiful heart.'
Kane's
words were like a bucket of cold water emptied upon me. I sat by the fire,
blinking my eyes as a chill shot down my spine. I said to him, 'I never thought
to hear you speak such words of the Dark One.'
And he
told me: 'Angra Mainyu was not always Angra Mainyu, nor was he always evil. So,
he was born Asangal, the most beautiful of men, and when still a man, it is
said that he loved all life so dearly that he would not swat mosquitoes.
And more, that once he saw a dog in excruciating pain from an open wound being
eaten with worms. Asangal resolved to remove the worms, but could not bear for
them to die. And so he licked out the worms with his own tongue so as not to
crush them, and he let them eat his own flesh.'
At
this, Daj's face screwed up in disgust, and Maram shook his head. And Kane went
on:
'Asangal
so loved the world that he thought he could take in all its pain. But after he
became an Elijin lord and then was elevated as the first of the Galadin, the
pain became an agony that he could not escape. In truth, like a robe of fire,
it drove him mad. He began to question the One's design in calling forth life
only to suffer so terribly; as the ages passed into ages, it seemed to him
particularly cruel that all beings should be made to bear such torment, only,
at the end of it all, to die. Love thwarted turns to hate, eh? For one of the
Galadin no less than a man, and so it was with him. So, he began to hate the
One. And in hating, he began to feel himself as other from the One and the
Ieldra's creation, and so he damned the One and creation itself.
'And
then, for the first time, a terrible fear seized hold of him. It gnawed at him,
worse than worms of fire, for he knew that he had only damned himself. He could
not bear to believe that he must someday die, as the Galadin do, in becoming
greater. As the evil that he made inside his own heart worked at him, he could
not bear to believe that any being, not the greatest of the Ieldra, not
even the One, was greater than himself. For how could they be if they suffered
to exist a universe as flawed and hurtful as ours? And so he resolved to gather
all power to himself to remake the universe: in all goodness, truth and beauty,
without suffering, without war, and most of all, without death. Toward this
magnificent end, out of his magnificent love for all beings, or so he told
himself he would storm heaven and make war against the leldra, against all
peoples and all worlds opposing him. So, even against the One.'
Kane
stood closer to me now, looking down at me, and his face flashed with reddish
lights from the fire's writhing flames. 'Do you see?' he said to me. 'It is
possible to be too good, eh?'
'Perhaps,'
I told him. I smiled, but there was no sweetness in it, only the taste of
blood. 'But I'm in no danger of that, am I?'
'Damn
it, Val, you might have killed Morjin!'
I stood
up to face him and said, 'Yes, I might have. And what then? Would one of his
priests have used the Lightstone to free Angra Mainyu anyway? Or might I have
regained it - only to become as Morjin? And then, in the end, been made to free
Angra Mainyu myself?'
'You
ask too many questions,' he growled. He pointed at my sheathed sword. 'When you
held the answer in your hand!'
My
fingers closed around Alkaladur's hilt, and I said, 'Truly, I held something
there.'
'Damn
you, Val!' he shouted at me. 'Damn you! Would you loose the
Baaloch upon us!'
I
looked down to see Daj set his jaw against the trembling that tore through his
slight body. Master Juwain's face had gone grave, and his eyes had lost their
sparkle, and so it was with Maram and Liljana. It came to me then that our hope
for fulfilling our quest hung like the weight of the whole world upon a strand
as slender as one of Atara's blond hairs. In truth, it seemed that there was no
real hope at all. And if that were so, why not just ask Master Juwain to
prepare a potion for all of us that we might die, here and now, in peace? Was
death so terrible as I had feared? Was it really a black neverness, freezing
cold, like ice? Was it a fire that burned the flesh forever? Or was it rather
like a beautiful song and the brightest of lights that carried one upward
toward the stars?
No, I heard
myself whisper. No.
I
glanced at Estrella, who looked up at me in dread. And yet. miraculously, with
so much trust. Her quick, lovely eyes seemed to grab hold of mine even more
fiercely than Kane grasped my arm. So much hope burned inside her! So much life
spilled out to fill up her radiant face! Who was I to resign myself and consign
her to its ending? No, I thought, that would be ignoble, cowardly,
wrong. For her sake, no less my own. I would at least act as if there somehow
might be hope. I said to Kane, 'Not even the greatest of scryers can see all
ends.'
'So, I
think you can see your own end. And long for it too much, eh?'
I shook
my head at this, and told him, 'Last year, at the Tournament when Asaru lay
abed with a wounded shoulder, King Mohan spoke these words to me: "A man
can never be sure that his acts will lead to the desired result; he can only be
sure of the acts, themselves. Therefore each act must be good and true, of its
own.'
'A
warrior's code, eh? Act nobly, always with honor, and smile at death, if that
is the result. The code of the Valari.'
'Yes,'
I said, 'better death than life lived as Morjin lives, or as one of his
slaves.'
Kane
regarded Daj and Estrella a moment before turning back to me. He said, 'But
we're not speaking of the death of a lone warrior, or even an entire army, but
that of the whole world and all that is!'
'I ...
know.'
'Do you
really? What, then, is good? Where will you find truth? Do you know that,
as well?'
'I know
it as well as I can. Is it not written in the Law of the One?'
'So,
so,' he murmured, glaring at me.
'Is it
not written that a man may slay another man only in defense of life? And is it
not also written that the Elijin may not slay at all?'
'So,
so.'
'And
yet you slay so gladly. As you would have had me slay Morjin!'
At this
he gripped the hilt of his sword and smiled, showing his long white teeth. But
there was no mirth on his savage face.
'You
are one of the Elijin!' I said to him.
'No,
Kalkin was of the Elijin,' he told me. 'I am Kane.'
I held
out my hand to him and said, 'If I gave you this sword that is inside me, would
you slay with it? What law for the valarda, then?'
'I ...
don't remember.'
His
eyes smoldered with a dark fire almost too hot to bear. I felt his heart
beating in great, angry surges inside him. It came to me then that there were those
who could not abide their smailness, and they feared mightily obliteration in
death. But those, like Kane, who turned away from their greatness dreaded even
more the glory of life. How long had this ancient warrior stood alone in
shadows and dark chasms, away from all others, even from himself? Was it not a
terrible thing for a man to forget who he really was?'
'I
know,' I said to him, 'that the valarda was not meant for slaying-'
So -
you know this, do you?'
'Somewhere,'
I said. 'It must be written in the Law of the One.'
Kane
stared at me as through a wall of flame. His jaws clenched. and the muscles of
his windburnt cheeks popped out like knots of wood. It seemed that the veins of
his neck and face could not contain the bursts of blood coursing through him.
Then he
whipped his sword from its sheath and shouted at me. 'Then damn the One!'
His
words seemed to horrify him, as they did the rest of us. Daj sat looking at him
in awed silence. Even Estrella seemed to wilt beneath his fearsome countenance.
Then
Kane murmured, 'What I meant to say was that Asangal damned the One.
Angra Mainyu did - do you understand?'
I
looked down at my open hand. A bloody spike pierced the palm through the bones.
The agony of this iron nail still tore through me, as did that of the other
nails driven through my mother's hands and feet. And I said to Kane, 'Yes - I do
understand.'
I felt
the hard hurt of his sword pressing into his own hand. He did not want to look
at me, but he could not help it. His eyes said what his lips would not: I
am damned. And so are you. 'No,
no,' I told him. I took a step closer and covered his hand with mine. 'Peace,
friend.'
As
gently as I could, I peeled back his fingers from his sword's hilt then took it
away from him. He stood like a stunned lamb as he watched me slide it back into
its sheath.
'Valashu,'
he whispered to me.
I clasped hands
with him then, and stood looking at him eye to eye. His blood burned against my
palm with every beat of his great, beautiful heart. Such a wild joy of life
surged inside him! Such a brillance brightened his being, like unto the
splendor of the stars! What was the truth of the valarda, I wondered?
Only this: that it was a sword of light, truly, but something much more. It passed
from man to man, brother to brother, as the very stars poured out to each other
their fiery radiance, onstreaming, shining upon all things and calling to that
deeper light within that was their source.
'Kalkin,'
I said to him, whispering his name. For a moment, as through veil rent with a
lightning flash, I looked upon a being of rare power and grace. But only for a
moment. 'No, no,' he murmured. 'You promised.' 'I am sorry,' I said.
'No, it
is I who am sorry. What do I really know of the valarda, eh? Perhaps you were
right to try to keep that sword within its sheath.'
His
gaze, it seemed, tore open my heart. I said to him, 'If Angra Mainu is
defeated, I do not believe that it will be by my hand, or yours, or even that
of Ashtoreth and Valoreth.' 'Perhaps you are right. Perhaps.' 'And so with
Morjin.' 'So, so.'
'Only
the Maitreya,' I said, 'can keep him from using the Lightstone. And I do not
believe I will ever be allowed to lay eyes upon this Shining One if I use the
valarda to slay.'
Then he
smiled at me, a true smile, all warm and sweet like honey melting in the sun.
'So, there will be no slaying tonight, let us hope. Peace, friend.'
He
stepped back over to the breastwork and picked up his bow again. His smile grew
only wider as his eyes filled with amusement, irony and a mystery that I would
never quite be able to apprehend.
After that it grew dark, and then nearly as black as a moonless eve, for here at the bottom of the gorge, there was very little light. Its towering walls reduced the heavens to a strip of stars running east and west above us. But one of these stars, I saw, was bright Aras. After all the work of washing the dishes and settling into our camp was completed, with Atara singing Estrella to sleep and Kane standing watch over us, I lay back against my mother earth to keep a vigil upon this sparkling light. It blazed throughout the night like a great beacon, and I wondered how this star of beauty and bright shining hope could ever be put out.
Chapter
6 Back Table of Content Next
I did not welcome my awakening the next morning. My battle wounds - mostly bruises from edged weapons or maces that had failed to penetrate my mail - hurt. The cold wind tunneling down the gorge set my stiff body to shivering, and that hurt even more. No ray of sun warmed the gorge directly for the first few hours of the day, as we ate our breakfast and broke camp with a slowness and heaviness of motion. Ail of us, except Kane, perhaps, were exhausted. It would have been good to remain there all day before a crackling fire, eating and resting, but we needed to gain as much distance as we could from the gorge's entrance at the gateway to the Wendrush. And so we loaded our horses and drank one of Master Juwain's teas to drive the weariness from our bodies. Then we set forth into the gorge, winding our way around walls of naked rock deeper into the Kul Kavaakurk's shadows.
As we kicked our way over the rattling stones
along the river-bank, I looked back behind us often and listened for any sign
of pursuit.
I sniffed at the cool air and reached out with a deeper sense, as well. I heard water rushing along its course and smelled spring
leaves fluttering in the wind, but the only eyes upon us were those of the squirrels or the birds singing
in the branches of the gorge's many
trees. No one, it seemed, followed us. Nothing sought to harm us. The
only enemy we faced that morning, I thought,
dwelled within. The horror of what lay behind us in the previous day's
butchery haunted all of us, even those who had not actually witnessed the battle. We feared what lay ahead in the vast unmapped reaches of the lower Nagarshath.
Fear, in truth, was the worst of all
our inner demons, for who among us did not gaze up at the sky and wonder if the
Dark One could devour the very sun?
It was
after dinner that evening when Maram finally let fear take hold of him. He rose
up from the campfire to tend his horse's bruised hoof, or so he said. But I
followed him and found him in the stand of trees where the horses were
tethered, rummaging through the saddlebags of Master Juwain's remount. Quick as
a weasel stealing eggs, he prized out a bottle of brandy and uncorked it. I ran
over to him and slapped my hand upon his wrist with such force that I nearly
knocked the bottle from his hand. And I shouted at him, 'What of your vow?'
And he
shouted back at me, 'What of your vow, then?'
I
clamped my fingers harder around his massive wrist as he struggled to bring the
mouth of the bottle up to his fat lips. And I asked him, 'What vow?'
'Ah,
what you said when we first met, that ours would be a lifelong friendship. What
kind of friend keeps his friend from drinking away his pain?'
'The
kind who would keep him from a greater pain.'
'You
speak as if we have endless moments left to us.'
'Our
whole lives, Maram.'
'Yes,
our whole lives, as long as they will be. But how long will they be?
Didn't you hear anything of what was said last night? Months we have,
until Morjin frees Angra Mainyu, perhaps only days. And so why not allow me
what little joy I can find in this forsaken place?'
I let
go his arm and stood facing him. 'Drink then, if that is what you must do!'
'I
shall! I shall! Only, do not look at me like that!'
I
continued staring through the twilight into his large, brown eyes.
'Ah,
damn you, Val!' he said more softly. 'I'll do what I want, do you understand?
What I choose. And what I choose now is not to drink after all. You've
ruined the moment, too bad.'
So
saying, he put the cork back in the bottle and sealed it with an angry slap of
his hand. He tucked it back into Master Juwain's saddlebag. Then he stood
beneath the gorge's towering wall staring at me.
Our
shouts drew the others. They stood around us in a half-circle as Maram said, by
way of explanation, 'All that talk last night of Angra Mainyu and worlds ending
in fire - it was too much!'
Kane
eyed the poorly tied strings of the saddlebag but did not comment upon them.
Then he said, 'Perhaps it was.'
There
was a kindness in his voice that I had heard only rarely. His black eyes held
Maram in the light of compassion, and that was rarer still.
'There
are only six of us against Morjin and all his armies!' Maram cried out. 'Eight,
if we count the children! How can we possibly keep the Dragon at bay while we
find the Maitreya?'
'We
were one fewer,' Kane said, 'when we found our way into Argattha.'
'But
Morjin is stronger now, isn't he? I saw this. So damn strong. And there
is Angra Mainyu, too.'
Kane
regarded him as a deep light played in his eyes. And then he snarled out,
'Strong, you say? Ha, they are weak!'
His
words astonished us. I stared at him as I shook my head. He was a man, I
thought, who could hold within fierce contradictions, like two tigers in rut
locked inside the same small cage.
'So,
weak they are,' he growled out again. 'Who are the strong, then, the truly
powerful? They who follow the Law of the One, even though their faithfulness
leads to their death. They who bring the design of the One into its fullest
flowering, for in creation lies true life. But Morjin and his master create
nothing. They fear everything, and their own feebleness most of all. So,
fearing, thus they hate, and in hating chain themselves to all that is hateful
and foul. Daj escaped from Argattha, Estrella, too, but how can the two Dragons
ever break free from the hellhole that they have made for themselves with every
nail they have pounded into flesh and every eye they have gouged out? From the
very chains that they have forged to make themselves slaves? So. So. Knowing
this, they would cloak their slave souls in royal robes and seek to conquer
others, as proof of their power over life - and death. But the truly free can
never be conquered, eh? At least not conquered in their souls. The stars
can all die, their radiance, too, but not the light of the One. It is this
that terrifies Angra Mainyu, and Morjin, too. And that is why, in the end,
we'll win.'
His
words stunned Maram more than they soothed him. But for the moment, at least,
they drove back the demons that impelled him to find solace in his brandy
bottle. He stood proud and tall staring at Kane, transformed from a drunkard
into a Valari knight. And he said, 'Do you really think we can win?'
'So, we
must win - and so we will.'
Kane, I thought, understood the nature of evil better
than any man. But it was the nature of evil, the truly horrible thing about it,
that understanding alone would not keep evil from devouring a man alive.
'We will
win,' Master Juwain affirmed, looking at Maram, 'so long as we do not let
down our guard. Have you been practicing the Light Meditations?'
'Ah,
perhaps not as often as I should,' Maram said.
'Well,
what about the Way Rhymes, then? Memorizing them would be a better balm than
brandy.'
'Ah,
I'm too tired, and it's too late. My brain aches almost as much as my poor
body.'
'Then
I'll prepare you a tisane that will wake you up.'
'Ah,
what if I don't want to wake up?'
Master
Juwain rubbed the back of his shiny head as he regarded Maram. He seemed at a
loss for words.
It was
Liljana who came to his rescue. She waggled her finger at Maram, then poked it
below his ribs as she said, 'How many nights have I stayed up cooking and
cleaning so that you might go to bed with a full belly? Master Juwain
has asked you to memorize his verses, and so you should, for our sakes,
if not your own.'
Everyone
looked at Maram then, and he held up his hands in defeat - or in victory,
depending on one's point of view.
'All
right, all right,' he said, 'I'll learn these silly rhymes, if that's what you
all want. It will easier than everyone nagging me all the time.'
Master
Juwain's smile lasted only as long as it took Maram to add, 'I'll begin
tomorrow, then.'
Kane
suddenly took a step closer to him and stood staring at him like a great cat
tensing to spring. I knew that he was only testing Maram, and would never lay
hands upon him. Maram, however, was not so sure of this.
'All
right, all right,' he said again with a heavy sigh. He turned to Master Juwain.
'What verses for tonight, then?'
At
Master Juwain's prompting, I heard Maram recite:
At
gorge's end, a wooded vale...
And so
it went as we returned to our places around the fire and drank the spicy teas that
Master Juwain made for us. It was much to his purpose that we should learn the
Way Rhymes, too, and so we took turns intoning the verses and correcting each
other when we made mistakes. We did not continue our practice quite as long as
Master Juwain might have wished, for we all were quite tired.. But when
it came time to retire for the night, we took the words into sleep, and perhaps
into our dreams. And that was a good thing, I thought, for the essence of the
Way Rhymes was the promise that if a man took one step after another, in the
right direction, he would always reach his journey's end.
The
next day dawned clear, as we could tell from the band of blue that slowly
brightened above us. We continued our long walk through the gorge, over loose
stone and through stands of cottonwood trees that gradually showed a sprinkling
of elms and oaks the deeper we penetrated into the White Mountains. Twenty
miles, at least, we had travelled since our battle with Morjin and his Red
Knights. None of us knew the length of the Kul Kavaakurk, for Master Juwain's
rhymes did not tell of that. But here, deep in this cleft in the earth, where
the wind whooshed as through a bellows' funnel and tore at our hair and
garments, the gorge seemed to go on and on forever.
And
then, abruptly, as we rounded yet another bend in the stream, the gorge opened
out into a broad valley. A forest covered its slopes, gentle and undulating to
the north but still quite steep to the south of the river. For the first time
in two days, we had all the sun we could hope for; its warm rays poured down
upon rock, earth and leaf, and filled all the great bowl before us. Smaller
mountains, cloaked in oak and birch with aspens and hemlock higher up, edged
the rim of this bowl; beyond rose the great white peaks of the Nagarshath. The
valley continued along the line of the gorge, toward the west, and it seemed
that our course should be to follow the river straight through it. But there
were other exits from the valley that we might choose: clefts and saddles between
the slopes around us, through which smaller streams flowed down into the river.
Any one of these, I thought, might lead us up toward the Brotherhood's school,
though the way would obviously be difficult and dangerous.
'Well,'
Master Juwain said to Maram as we walked out into the valley, 'what is our
way?'
And
Maram recited:
At
gorge's end, a wooded vale;
Its
southern slopes show shell-strewn shale.
Toward
setting sun the vale divides;
To left
or right the seeker strides.
Recall
the tale or go astray:
King
Koru-Ki set sail this way.
Maram
stood next to his horse licking his lips as he glanced to the left. He said,
'Ah, who devised these rhymes, anyway? "Its southern slopes sow
hell-strewn shale." Now there's a tongue-twister for you! I can hardly say
it!'
'But
it's not so hard!' Daj said, laughing at him. Then quick as a twittering bird,
he piped out perfectly:
Its
southern slopes skew shell-strewn shale.
Master
Juwain beamed a smile at him and patted his head. And then he said to Maram,
'The Rhymes aren't supposed to be easy to say but to memorize - hence
the rhythm and rhyme. The alliteration, too.'
'Well,
at least I did memorize it,' Maram said. 'Little good that it would do
me if you weren't here to interpret for us.'
The Way
Rhymes, of course, might be meant to be easy to memorize, but they were
designed so that only the Brotherhood's adepts and masters might resolve them
correctly. Thus did the Brotherhood guard its secrets.
'Come,
come,' Master Juwain said to him. 'These lines are as transparent as the air in
front of your nose.'
Maram
pointed at the turbulent water rushing past us and muttered, 'You mean, as
clear as river mud.'
'What
don't you understand? Clearly, we've passed the Ass's Ears and the Kul
Kavaakurk, and have come out into this valley, as the verse tells. Look over
there, at the rock! Surely that is shale, is it not?'
We all
looked where he pointed, across the river at the nearly vertical slopes to the
south of us. The rock there was dark, striated and crumbly, and certainly
appeared to be shale.
'I'm
sure you're right,' Maram said to him. 'You know your stones. But does it bear shells?
Who would want to cross the river to find out?'
Kane
coughed out a deep curse then, and mounted his horse. He drove the big bay out
into the river, which looked to be swift enough to sweep a man away but not so
huge a beast. In a few mighty surges, his horse crossed to the other bank and
soaked the stone there with water running off his flanks. Kane then rode up
through the trees a hundred yards before dismounting and making his way up the
steep slope on foot. We saw him disappear behind a great oak as he approached a
slab of shale.
'He's as mad as Koru-Ki himself,' Maram said, watching
for him. 'He'd cross an ocean just to see what was on the other side.'
A few
moments later, Kane returned as he had gone, bearing a huge smile on his face.
'Well?'
Maram said. 'Did you see any of these shells-in-shale?' 'Many,' Kane told him
as his smile grew wider.
'I
don't believe you - you're lying!'
'Go see
for yourself,' Kane said, pointing across the river
'Do you
think I won't?' Maram eyed the swift water that cut through the valley and
shook his head. 'Ah, perhaps I won't, after all. It's enough that one of
us risked his life proving out those silly lines. You did see shells,
didn't you? She sells? I mean, sea shells?'
'I've
told you that I did. What more do you want of me?'
'Well,
it wouldn't have hurt to bring back one of these shelled rocks, would it?'
Kane
laughed at this and produced a flat, thick piece of slate as long as his hand.
He gave it to Maram. All of us gathered around as Maram stared at the grayish
slate and fingered the little, stonelike shells embedded within it.
'Impossible!'
Maram said. 'I saw shells like these on the shore of the Great Northern Sea!'
'But
then how did they get into this rock?' Daj asked him.
Kane
stood silently staring at the rock as the rest of us examined it more closely.
Not even Master Juwain had an answer for him.
'Perhaps,'
Atara said, 'there really was once a great flood that drowned the whole
world, as the legends tell.'
Kane's
black eyes bored into the rock, and he seemed lost in endless layers of time.
He finally said to us, 'So, the earth is stranger than we know. Stranger than
we can know. Who will ever plumb all her mysteries?'
'Well,'
Maram said, hefting the rock and then tucking it into his saddlebag, 'this is
one mystery I'll keep for myself, if you don't mind. If I ever return home, I
can show this as proof that I found sea shells at the top of a
mountain!'
I
smiled at this because it was not Maram who had found the rock, nor had it
quite been taken from a mountain's top. It cheered me to know, however, that he
still contemplated a homecoming. And so he held inside at least some hope.
'Your
way homeward,' Master Juwain said to him, 'lies through this valley. Are we
agreed that we must traverse it?'
'Toward
the setting sun,' Maram said, pointing to the west. 'But I can't see if the
valley truly divides there.'
I stood
with my hand shielding my eyes as I peered up the valley. It seemed to come to
an end upon a great wedge of a mountain rising up to the west. But it was a
good thirty miles distant, and the folds and fissures of the mountains along
the valley's rim blocked a clear line of sight.
'Then
let us go on,' Atara said, 'and we shall see what we shall see.'
A faint
smile played upon her lips, and it gladdened my heart to know that she could
joke about her blindness. Then she mounted her horse and said, 'Come, Fire!'
She guided her mare along the strip of grass that paralleled the river, and it
gladdened me even more to see that her second sight had mysteriously returned
to her.
And so
we followed the river into the west. It was a day of sunshine and warm spring
breezes. Wildflowers in sprays of purple and white blanketed the earth around
us where the trees gave way to acres of grass. It seemed that we were all alone
here In this quiet, beautiful place. Our spirits rose along with the terrain,
not so high, perhaps, as the great peaks shining in the distance, bui high
enough to hope that we might have at least a day or (wo of surcease from battle
and travail.
And so
it came to be. We made camp that first night in the valley on some good, grassy
ground above the river. While Kane, Maram and I worked at fortifying it, and
Liljana, Estrella and Daj set to preparing our dinner, Atara went off into the
woods to hunt. Fortune smiled upon her, for she returned scarcely an hour later
with a young deer slung across her shoulders. That night we made feast on
roasted venison, along with our rushk cakes and basketfuls of raspberries that
Estrella found growing on bushes in the woods. Master Juwain chanted the Way
Rhymes to Maram, and later Kane brought out the mandolet that he had inherited
from Alphanderry. It was a rare thing for him to play for us. and lovely and
strange, but that night he plucked the mandolet's strings and sang out songs in
a deep and beautiful voice. He seemed almost happy, and that made me happy,
too. Songs of glory he sang for us, tales of triumph and the exaltation of all
things at the end of time. He held inside a great sadness, as deep and
turbulent as oceans, and this came out in a mournful shading to his melodies.
But there, too, in some secret chamber of his heart, dwelled a fire that was
hotter and brighter than anything that Angra Mainyu
could ever hope to wield. As he sang, this ineffable flame seemed
to push his words out into the valley where they rang like silver bells, and
then up above the snow-capped mountains through clear, cold air straight toward
the brilliant stars.
With
the liking of this immortal music, Flick burst forth out of the darkness above the
mandolet's vibrating strings. At first this strange being appeared as a silvery
meshwork, impossibly finespun, with millions of clear tiny jewels like unlit
diamonds sewn into it. Strands of fire streamed from these manifold points
throughout the lattice, making the whole of his form sparkle with a lovely
light. The longer that Kane played, the brighter this light became. I watched
with a deep joy as the radiance summoned out of neverness many colors: scarlet
and gold, forest green and sky blue - and a deep and shimmering glorre. And
still Kane sang, and now the colors scintillated and swirled, then mingled,
deepened and coalesced into the form and face of Alphanderry. And then our
lost companion stood by the fire before us. His brown skin and curly black hair
seemed almost real, as did his fine features and straight white teeth, revealed
by his wide and impulsive smile. Even more real was his rich laughter, which
recalled the immortal parts of him: his beauty, gladness of life and grace.
Once before, in Tria, this Alphanderry, as messenger of the Galadin, had
come into being in order to warn me of a great danger.
'Ahura
Alarama,' I said, whispering Flick's true name. And then, 'Alphanderry.'
'Valashu
Elahad,' he replied. 'Val.'
Kane
stopped singing then, and put aside his mandolet to stare in amazement at his
old friend.
'He
speaks!' Daj cried out. 'Like he did in King Kiritan's hall!'
The boy
came forward, and with great daring reached out to touch Alphanderry. But his
hand, with a shimmer of lights, passed through him.
Alphanderry
laughed at this as he pointed at Daj and said, 'He speaks. But I don't remember
seeing him in King Kiritan's hall.'
So
saying, he reached out to touch Daj, but his hand, too, passed through him as
easily as mine would slice air. Then he laughed again as he turned toward
Estrella. His eyes were kind and sad as he said, 'But the girl still doesn't
speak, does she?'
Estrella,
her eyes wide with wonder, spoke entire volumes of poetry in the delight that
brightened her face.
'But
where did you come from?' I asked Alphanderry. 'And why are you here?'
'Where
did you come from, Val?' he retorted. 'And why are any of us here?'
I
waited for him to answer what might be the essential ques-tion of life. But all
he said to me was, 'I am here to sing. And to
play.'
And
with that, he reached for the mandolet, but his fingers passed through it. It
was as hard, I thought, for such a being to grasp a material thing as it was
for a man to apprehend the realm of spirit.
'So,'
Kane said, plucking the mandolet's strings, 'I will play for you, and you will
sing.'
And so
it was. We all sat around listening as Kane called forth sweet, ringing notes
out of the mandolet and Alphanderry sang out a song so beautiful that it
brought tears to our eyes. The words, however, poured forth in that musical
language of the Galadin that even Master Juwain had difficulty understanding.
And so when Alphanderry finally finished, he looked at Master Juwain and translated
part of it, reciting:
The
eagle lifts his questing eye
And wings his way toward sun and sky;
The
whale dives deep the ocean's gloam –
Always
seeking, always home.
The
world whirls round through day and night;
All
things are touched with dark and light;
The
dusk befalls on lights decay;
The
dying dark turns night to day.
The One
breathes out, creates all things:
The
blossoms, birds and star-struck kings;
With
every breath all beings yearn
To sail
the stars and home return.
The
dazzling heights light deep desire;
Within
the heart, a deeper fire.
The
road toward heavens' starry crown
Goes
ever up but always down.
As Kane
put down the mandolet, Alphanderry looked at Master Juwain and smiled.
'Am I
to understand,' Master Juwain asked him, 'that these words were intended for
me?'
It was
one of the glories of Alphanderry's music that each person listening thought that
he sang especially for him.
'Let's
just say,' Alphanderry told him, 'that there might be a sentiment in this song
that a master of the Brotherhood would do well to take to heart. Especially if
that master guided his companions on a quest through the dark places in the
world.'
'Were
you sent here to tell me this?' Master Juwain asked him.
In
answer, Alphanderry's smile only widened.
'Who
sent you, then? Was it truly the Galadin?'
Now
sadness touched Alphanderry's face, along with the amusement and a deep
mystery. And he said to Master Juwain, and to all of us, 'I wish I could stay
to answer your questions. To sing and laugh - and even to eat Liljana's fine
cooking again. Alas, I cannot.'
He
looked skyward, where Icesse and Hyanne and the other glittering stars of the
Mother's Necklace had just passed the zenith. In that direction, I thought, lay
Ninsun, the dwelling place of the Ieldra - and the light that streamed out of
it in the glorre-filled rays of the Golden Band.
'But if
you could remain only a few moments longer,' Master Juwain persisted, 'you
might tell me if -'
'I can
tell you only what I have,' Alphanderry said with a brilliant smile. And then
he added:
The
road toward heavens' starry crown Goes ever up but always down.
He
reached out to touch Master Juwain's hand, but this impulsive act served only
to brighten Master Juwain's leathery skin, as with starlight. And then
Alphanderry dissolved back into that brilliant whirl of lights we knew as
Flick. Only his smile seemed to linger as Flick, in turn, vanished once again
into neverness. 'Ah, how I do miss our little friend,' Maram said,
staring at the dark air.
Kane, I
saw, stared too, and his dark eyes wavered as if submerged in water.
'But I
wonder what he meant,' Maram continued, turning to Master Juwain, 'His verses
are even more a puzzlement that your Way Rhymes.'
Master
Juwain held his hands out to the hissing fire. His fingers curled as if
grasping at its heat.
'It is
possible,' he finally said, 'that Alphanderry sang verses of the true Way
Rhymes.'
'The true
Rhymes?' Maram said.
'Perhaps
I should have said, "the deeper Rhymes". The higher ones. Just as
there are verses that tell the way to many places on Ea, there are those that
describe man's journey toward the One.'
He went
on to explain that the path to becoming an Elijin, and so on toward the Galadin
and Ieldra, was almost infinitely more difficult than merely finding the
Brotherhood's secret sanctuary
'Our
order,' Master Juwain explained, 'has spent most of ten thousand years trying
to learn and teach this way. But we have understood only little, and taught
less. The Elijin surely know, the Galadin, too. But they do not speak to us.'
Everyone
looked at Kane then. But he sat by the fire as cold and silent as stone.
'At
least,' Master Juwain went on, 'the angels do not speak to us, we of Ea.
Surely on other worlds, they share with the Star People and the eternal
Brotherhood the songs that I have called the true Way Rhymes.'
'Why
are they so favored, then?' Maram asked, looking up at the sky.
'It is
not that they are favored,' Mas|er Juwain told him. 'It is rather that we, of
Ea, are not. You see, the true Way Rhymes are perilous to hear. Consider the
lesser Rhymes I've taught you. If learned incorrectly or in the wrong order,
they could lead one off the edge of a cliff. This is even more pertinent of the
higher Rhymes that would guide a man on the journey to becoming an Elijin, or
an Elijin to becoming a Galadin.'
The
fear that flooded into Maram's face recalled the fall of Angra Mainyu - and
that of Morjin.
'I
notice that you say, "guide a man on this journey",' Liljana
carped at Master Juwain. Her voice was as sharp as one of her cooking knives.
'It was
a figure of speech,' Master Juwain told her. 'Of course women must walk the
same path as men.'
'Oh, must
we, then?' Liljana's soft face shone with the steel buried deep inside her.
Then she added, 'You mean, walk behind men.'
'No,
not at all,' Master Juwain said. 'You are to be by our sides.'
'How
gracious of you to accept our company.'
Master
Juwain rubbed the back of his neck as he sighed out, 'I meant only that our way
lies onward, together.'
'Oh,
does it really?'
Liljana
moved closer to Master Juwain and knelt by his side. She placed her thumb
against the tips of her other fingers and held them cocked and pointing at him.
From deep inside her throat issued a hissing sound remarkably like that of an
adder. And then quick as any viper, she struck out with a snap of her arm and
wrist, touching her pointed fingers against the lower part of Master Juwain's
back.
'Your
way, I think,' she said to him, 'is that of the serpent.'
'And
your way is not?'
'There
are serpents and there are serpents,' she told him. 'Ours is of the great
circle of life, and we name her Ouroboros.'
What
followed then, as the fire burnt lower and the night darkened, was a long
argument as to the different paths open to man - or to woman. Liljana spoke of
the sacred life force that dwelled inside everyone, and of the arts that the
Maitriche Telu had found to quicken and deepen it. Master Juwain's main concern
was of transcendence and the way back toward the stars. I did not pretend to
follow all the turnings of their contentions and justifications, for there was
much in what they said that was esoteric, legalistic and even petty. I
understood that their dispute went back to the breaking of the Order of Sisters
and Brothers of the Earth long ago in the Age of the Mother. And like siblings
of the same family who had set out on different paths in life, they quarreled
all the more fiercely for sharing a mutual language and deep knowledge of each
other. Both spoke of the serpent as the embodiment of life's essential fire.
Both taught the opening of the body's chakras: the wheels of light that whirled
within every man, woman and child. But each put different names to these things
and understood their purpose differently.
Master
Juwain, noticing how closely Daj followed their argument, turned to him to
explain: 'We of the Brotherhood teach the way of the Kundala. At birth, it lies
coiled up inside each of us. There is a Rhyme that tells of this:
Around
the spine the serpent sleeps.
Within
its heart a fire leaps.
The
serpent wakes, remembers, yearns –
And up
the spine, like fire, it burns.
And
through the chakras, one by one,
Until
it blazes like the sun,
And
then bursts forth, a crown of light:
An
angel soars the starry height.
'This
is man's path,' he said to Daj, 'and it is a straight one, though difficult and
perilous. Seven bodies we each possess, corresponding to each of the seven
chakras along the spine, and they each in turn must awaken.'
At this
Daj's eyes widened, and he looked down at his slender hand as he patted his
chest. He said, 'How can we have more than one body?'
Master
Juwain smiled at this and said, 'We have only one phys-ical body, it's
true. But we have as well the body of the passions, associated with the second
chakra, which we call the svadhisthan, and the mental body as well.'
'I
never knew they were called "bodies". It sounds strange.'
'But
you undertand that a boy could never become a man until they are fully
developed?'
In
answer, Daj rolled his eyes as if Master Juwain had asked him the sum of two
plus two.
Master
Juwain, undeterred, went on: 'I'm afraid that most men do not progress beyond
these three bodies, nor do they ever develop them fully. The physical body, for
instance, can be quickened so as to heal any wound, even regenerating a severed
limb. It is potentially immortal.'
At
this, we all looked at Kane. But he said nothing, and neither did we.
'But
what is the fourth body, then?' Daj asked him.
'That
is our dream body, also called the astral. It is the bridge between matter and
spirit, and it is awakened through the anahata, the heart chakra.'
So
saying, Master Juwain reached over and laid his gnarly hand across Daj's chest.
'Then,
higher still,' he went on, 'there is the etheric body, which forms the template
for our physical one and our potential for perfection, and then the celestial.
There lies our sixth sight, of the infinite. The highest body is the ketheric,
associated with the sahas-tara chakra at the crown of the head.'
Here
Master Juwain stroked Daj's tousled hair and went on to say that each of the bodies
emanated an aura of distinctive color: red from the first chakra, orange from
the second and so on to the sixth chakra, which radiated a deep violet light.
The highest chakra, when fully quickened, poured forth a fountain of pure white
light.
At this,
Daj exchanged smiles with Master Juwain and recited:
And
through the chakras, one by one,
Until
it blazes like the sun,
And
then bursts forth, a crown of light:
An angel soars the starry height.
'Yes,
that is way of it,' Master Juwain said as his voice filled with excitement.
'When we have fully awakened, every part of us, the Kundala streaks upward and
joins us to the heavens like a lightning bolt. And then as angels we walk the
stars.'
Liljana
scowled at this as she eyed Master Juwain's hand resting on top of Daj's head.
Then she huffed out, 'The serpent does not so much break through as to light up
our being from within. And then, when we have come fully alive, like our mother
earth turning her face to the sun, we can drawn down the fire of the stars.'
Here
she sighed as she shot Master Juwain a scolding look and added, 'And as you
should know, the serpent's name is Ouroboros.'
She
went on to tell of this primeval imago, sacred to her order. Ouroboros, she
said, dwelled inside each of us as a great serpent biting its own tail. This
recalled the great circle of life, the way life lived off of other life,
killing and consuming, and yet continuing on through the ages, always
quickening in its myriads of forms and growing ever stronger. Ouroboros, she told
us, shed its skin a million times a million times, and was immortal.
'There
is in each of us,' she said, 'a sacred flame that cannot be put out. It is like
a ring of fire, eternal for it is fed by the fires of both the heavens and the
earth. And our way must be to bring this fire into every part of our beings,
and so into others - and to everything. And so to awaken all things and bring
them deeper into life.'
So far,
Atara had said very little. But now she spoke, and her words streaked like
arrows toward Master Juwain and Liljana, and were straight to the point:
'Surely the spirit of Alphanderry's song was that both your ways are important,
and indeed, in the end, are one and the same.'
Kane
smiled at this in an unnerving silence.
And
Maram willfully ignored the essence of what Master Juwain and Liljan had to
say, muttering, 'Ah, I've never understood all of this damn snake symbolism.
Snakes are deadly, are they not. And the great snakes - the dragons - are
evil.'
Master
Juwain took it upon himself to try to answer this objection. He rubbed the
back of his bald pate as he said, 'Snakes are deadly only because they have so
much power in their coils, and therefore life. And the dragon we fought in
Argattha was evil; as are all beings and things that Morjin and Angra
Mainyu have corrupted. But the dragon itself? I should say it is pure fire. And
fire might be used to torture innocents as well as to light the stars.'
I
thought his answer a good one, but Maram said, 'Well, I for one will never like
those slippery, slithering beasts. Whether they be found in old verses and
books, or in long grass beneath the unwary foot.'
Liljana
shot him a sharp look and said, 'You're just afraid of them, aren't you?'
'Well, what if I am?'
'Your
fear does neither you nor the rest of us any good. Perhaps if you had spent
more time practicing Master Juwain's lessons and moving into the higher
chakras, you wouldn't be as troubled as you are.'
'But I
thought you scorned Master Juwain's way?'
'Scorned?
I can't afford such sentiments. We do disagree about certain things,
that's all.'
The
Sisters of the Maitriche Telu, as I understood it, also taught the quickening
of the body's chakras, but they numbered and named these wheels of light
differently: Malkuth, Yesod, Tiphereth and seven others. Strangely, Liljana
called the highest chakra, Keter, which corresponded almost exactly with the
Brotherhood's ketheric body, associated with the crown chakra at the top of the
head.
'You
dwell too often,' Liljana told Maram, 'in the first chakra, in fear of your
precious life. This impels a movement into the second chakra, in a blind urge
to beget more life. And there, as we've all seen, you dwell much too
often and wantonly.'
'Ah,
well, what if I do?' Maram snapped at her.
Master
Juwain, allying himself for the moment with Liljana, added to her criticism,
saying, 'Such indulgence fires your second chakra at the expense of the others
and traps you there. It leaves you vulnerable to lust - and to drunkenness and
the other vices that aid and abet it.'
Maram
cast his gaze toward the horses, where the brandy was safely stowed within the
saddlebags. He licked his lips and said, 'Ah, that's what I can't stand about
the Brotherhood and all your ways. You're too damn dry. With your damn dry
breath you'd blow out the sweetest of flames in favor of lighting these higher
torches of yours. And why? So you can spend your days - and nights - in anguish
over a transcendence that may never come? That's no way to live, is it? If I
had a bottle in hand I'd make a toast to drunkenness in the sweet, sweet here
and now - and a hundred more to lust!'
Again
he eyed the saddlebags as if hoping that Master Juwain or I might retrieve a
bottle and rescue him from his vow And then he shook his head and muttered,
'Well, if I can't drink to what's best in life, I'll sing to it. Abide a moment
while I make the verses - abide!'
Here he
held out his right hand as he placed his other hand over his closed eyes. His
lips moved silently, but from time to time he would call out to us, 'Abide,
only a few moments more - I almost have it.'
As Kane
heaped a couple more logs on the fire, we all sat around listening to its
crackle and hiss, and looking at Maram. At last he took his hand away from his
thick brows and looked at us. He smiled hugely. And then he rose to his feet
and rested his hands on his hips as he stared at Master Juwain and called out
in his huge, booming voice:
The
higher man seeks higher things:
Old
tomes, bright crystals, angel's wings.
He
lives to crave and pray accrue
The
good, the beautiful, the true.
And
there he slithers, coils and dwells
In
higher hues of higher hells;
In
sixth or seventh wheels of light –
There's
too much pain in too much sight.
But
'low the belly burns sweet fire,
The
sweetest way to slake desire.
In
clasp of woman, warmth of wine
A honeyed bliss and true divine.
I am a
second chakra man;
I take
my pleasure where I can;
At tavern, table and divan –
I am a
second chakra man.
As
Maram sang out these verses, and others that flew out of his mouth like uncaged
birds, he would strike the air with his fist and then lewdly waggle his hips at
each refrain. He finally finished and stood limned against the fire grinning at
us. No one seemed to know what to say.
And
then Kane burst out laughing and clapped his hands, and so did we all. And
Atara said to him, 'Hmmph, if you had remained with the Kurmak and taken wives
as my grandfather suggested, these second chakra powers of yours would have
been put to the test.'
'How
many wives, then?'
'Great
chieftains take ten or even twenty, but it's said that only a great, great man
such as Sajagax could satisfy them.'
Here
she smiled at Liljana, who added, 'Our order has discovered that when a woman
awakens the Volcano, which we call Netzach, it would take ten or twenty men to
match her fire.'
'Do you
think so?' Maram said with a wink of his eye and yet another gyration of his
hips. 'I should tell you that my, ah, greatness has never thoroughly
been put to the test. Perhaps I'm a fool for even considering marriage with
Behira only and cleaving to Valari customs.'
'Would
you rather try our Sarni ways?' Atara asked him.
'In
this one respect, I would. I'd take twenty wives, if I could. And I would, ah,
entertain all of them in one night.'
'My tribemates?'
Atara said. 'They would kill you before morning.'
'So you
say.'
Atara
laughed out, 'And you would have them call you "Twenty-Horned Maram"
I suppose?'
'Just
so, just so. It would create a certain curiosity about me, would it not?'
'That
it would. And you'd be happy satisfying this curiosity with other women who weren't
your wives, wouldn't you?'
'Ah,'
he said with a rumble of his belly and a contented belch, 'at least someone understands
me.'
'I
understand that if you practice your ways on the women of my tribe,
their husbands and fathers will draw their swords and make you into No-Horned
Maram.'
In the
wavering firelight, Maram's happy face seemed to blanch. And he muttered,
'Well, I don't suppose I'd make a very good Sarni warrior. I'll have to
practice on other women I meet along the way.'
Atara
fingered the saber by her side. And this fierce young maiden told him, 'If
you must - but just don't think of practicing on me.'
At
this, Maram held up his hands in helplessness as if others were always
conspiring to think the worst of him. His gaze fell upon Liljana, who said to
him, 'I should warn you that if you brought your horns to a practiced matron of
the Maitriche Telu she would likely kill you - with pleasure. Perhaps
you'll find a nice harridan somewhere in these mountains.'
The
ghostly white peaks of the Nagarshath gleamed faintly beneath the stars. It
seemed that there were no other human beings, much less willing women, within a
thousand miles.
'Maram
would do better,' Master Juwain said, 'to practice the Rhymes I've taught him.
Now, why don't we all retire and get a good night's sleep? Tomorrow we'll
journey up this valley and see what lies at the end of it.'
He
smiled at Maram and added. 'Tell me, again, won't you, the pertinent Rhyme?'
And,
again, Maram dutifully recited:
At
gorge's end, a wooded vale;
Its
southern slopes show shell-strewn shale.
Toward
setting sun the vale divides;
To left
or right the seeker strides.
Recall
the tale or go astray:
King
Koru-Ki set sail this way.
Except
for Kane, who took the first and longest of the night's watches, we all wrapped
ourselves in our cloaks and lay down on our sleeping furs. Maram spread out
next to me, and I listened to him intoning verses for much of the next hour.
But they were not those that Master Juwain hoped for. I smiled as I
drifted off to sleep with the sound of my incorrigible friend chanting out:
I'm a
second chakra man
I take
my pleasure where I can ...
Chapter 7 Back Table of Content Next
The river wound through woods and meadows, and I couldn't help thinking of it as a mighty brown snake. No great rocks or other obstacles blocked our way. The ground was good here, easy on the horses' hooves, and provided all the fodder they needed to carry us higher into this beautiful country. By noon, the place where the valley came up against the mountain at its end was clearly visible; by late afternoon we reached the divide told of in the Way Rhyme. To the left of the mountain, the valley split off toward the south. And to the right was a great groove in the earth running between the rocky prominences north of us.
We all sat on our horses as we considered the next leg of our journey. Master Juwain, upon studying the lay of the land, turned to Daj and said:
Recall the tale or go astray: King Koru-Ki set sail this way.
'Well, young Dajarian - which way is that?'
And Daj told him: 'North, I think. Didn't King Koru-Ki set out to find the Northern Passage and the way to the stars?'
'You know he did,' Liljana said to him. 'Didn't I teach you that the ancients believed that the waters of all worlds flow into each other? And that there is a passage to other worlds at the uttermost north of ours?'
As Daj looked at Liljana, he slowly nodded his head.
'Very good, then,' Master Juwain said. He smiled at Maram. 'We'll turn north, tomorrow - are we agreed?'
'Ah, we were agreed before we
reached this place. This Rhyme, at least, was easy to unravel.'
'Indeed
it was. But the Rhymes grow more difficult, the nearer we approach our
destination. Let's make camp here tonight and ponder them.'
And so
we did. That evening, after dinner, I heard Maram repeating the verses to the
Way Rhymes as well as those of his epic doggerel that he insisted on adding to.
Over the next few days, as we continued our journey, the Way Rhymes, at least,
guided us through the maze of mountains, valleys and chasms that made up this
section of the lower Nagarshath. Through forests of elm and oak, and swaths of
blue spruce, we rode our horses up and up - and then down and down. But as the
miles vanished behind us, it became clear that our way wound more up than down,
and we worked on gradually higher. Each camp that we made, it seemed, was
colder than the preceding one. On our fourth day after the King's Divide, as we
called it, it rained all that afternoon and turned to snow in the evening. We
spent a miserable night heaping wood on the fire and huddling as close to its
leaping flames as we dared, swaddled in our cloaks like newborns. The next
day, however, the sun came out and fired the snow-dusted rocks and trees with a
brilliance like unto millions of diamonds. It did not take long for spring's
heat to melt away this fluffy white veneer. We rode up a long valley full of
deer, voles and singing birds, and we basked in Ashte's warmth.
And
then, just past noon, we came upon a landmark told of by the Rhymes. Master
Juwain pointed to the right as he said, 'Brother Maram, will you please give us
the pertinent verses?'
And
Maram, making no objection to being so addressed, said:
Upon a
hill a castle rock.
Abode
of eagle, kite and hawk.
From
sandstone palisades espy
A
tri-kul lake as blue as sky.
As
Altaru lowered his head to feed upon the rich spring grass blanketing the
ground, I sat on top of his broad back and stroked his neck. And I gazed up at
the hill under study. A jagged sandstone ridge ran along its crest up to some
block-like rocks at the very top, giving it the appearance of a castle's
battlements.
'This
is surely the place,' Maram said, holding his hand against his forehead. 'But I
see no eagles here.'
And
then Daj, who had nearly the keenest eyes of all of all of us, pointed to the
left of the hill at a dark speck gliding through the air and said, 'Isn't that
a hawk?'
And
Kane said, 'So, it is, lad - and a goshawk at that.'
'If I
were an eagle,' I said, looking at the crags around us, 'I think I would make
my aerie here.'
'If you
were an eagle,' Maram told me, pointing to the north, 'you wouldn't have to
climb that hill to spy out the terrain beyond it, as the verse suggests.'
'You
mean, we wouldn't have to climb it, don't you?'
'I? I?'
Maram said. He rested his hands upon his belly and looked at me. 'Surely you're
not suggesting that I dismount and haul my poor, tired body up that -'
'Yes, I
am.'
'But
such ascents were made for eagles or rock goats, not bulls such as I.'
'Bulls,
hmmph,' Atara said from on top of her horse. 'You eat enough for an elephant.'
Maram
ignored this jibe and said to me, 'You are the man of the mountains.'
'Yes,'
I said, 'and so I'll go with you. And then you can recite for me the
next verse.'
Maram
sighed at this as he grudgingly nodded his head. We decided then that Maram,
Master Juwain and I would climb the hill while Liljana and the others worked on
preparing lunch for our return.
Our
hike up the hill proved to be neither as long or arduous as Maram feared. Even
so, he puffed and panted his way up a deer trail and then cursed as he nearly
turned an ankle on some loose rocks in a mound of scree. To hear him grunting
and groaning, one might have thought he was about to die from the effort. But I
was sure he suffered so loudly mainly to impress me. And to remind both him and
me of the great sacrifices that he was willing to make on my behalf.
At
last, we gained the crest, where the wind blew quickly and cooled our
sweat-soaked garments. We stood resting against the sandstone ridge that topped
it. We looked out to the northwest where a great massif of snow-covered peaks
rose up along the horizon like an impenetrable white fortress. But between
there and here lay a country of rugged hills and lakes that pooled beneath
them. All of them were blue. Which one might be the lake told of in the Rhyme,
I could not say.
'A
tri-kul lake,' Maram intoned, looking out below us. 'Very well, but what is
that? A "kul" is a pass or a gorge, and I can't say that any of these
lakes is surrounded by three such, or even one.'
'Are
you sure the verse told of a tri-kul lake?' Master Juwain asked him.
'Are
you saying I misheard the Rhyme?'
'Indeed
you did. The word in question is drakul.'
'But
why didn't you correct me before this?'
'Because,'
Master Juwain said, 'I wanted to give you a chance to puzzle through the Rhymes
yourself. Our goal will never be won through memory alone.'
'But
what is a drakul then? I've never heard of such a thing.'
'Are
you sure? Think back to your lessons in ancient Ardik.'
'Do you
mean, try to remember lessons in that dry, dry tongue that I tried to forget,
even years ago?'
Master
Juwain sighed and rubbed his head, now covered with a wool cap. And he said,
'Why don't you give me the next verses, then? How many times have I told you
that clues to a puzzle in one verse might be found in those before or after
it?'
'Very
well,' Maram said. And he dutifully recited:
The
Lake's two tongues are rippling rills
That
twist and hiss past saw-toothed hills;
A cold
tongue licks the setting sun.
But
your course cleaves the shining one.
'No,
no,' Master Juwain said to him. 'You've misheard the final line here, too. It
should be: "Your course cleaves the shaida one".'
'Shaida?'
Maram called out. His great voice was sucked up by the howling wind. 'But what
is that?'
'Think
back on your lessons - do you not remember?'
'No.'
Master Juwain
dragged his fingernails across the rough sandstone beneath his hand, then
turned to me. 'Val, do you remember?'
I
thought for a moment and said, 'Shaida is a word from a much older language
that was incorporated into ancient Ardik, wasn't it? Didn't it have something
to do with dragons?'
Master
Juwain smiled as he nodded his head. And then here, at the top of this windy
hill, where hawks circled high above us he took a few minutes to repeat a
lesson that he must have taught us when we were boys. Two paths, he told us,
led to the One. The first path was that of the animals and growing things, and
it was a simple one: the primeval harmony of life. The second path, however,
was followed only by man - and the dragons. Only these two beings. Master Juwain
said, pitted themselves against nature and sought to dominate or master it: man
with all his intelligence and yearning for a better world and the dragon with
pride and fire. Indeed, because men forged iron ore into steel ploughshares or
swords and wielded the coruscating fury of the firestones themselves,
our way also was called the Way of the Dragon. It was a hard way,
perilous and cruel for it led to
war and discord with the world - and seemingly even with the One. But out of
such strife. Master Juwain claimed like the great Kundalini working his way up
through the chakras, would eventually emerge a higher harmony,
'The
Star People surely know a paradise that we can only imagine, the Elijin and
Galadin, too,' Master Juwain told us. 'That is, they would if not for Angra
Mainyu and those who followed him. Their way, I'm afraid, is still our way, and
we call it the Left Hand Path.'
Here he
nodded at Maram. 'And now you have all the clues you need to unlock these
verses.'
Maram
thought for a long few moments, pulling at his beard as he looked out at the
blue sky and the even bluer lakes gleaming beneath it. And then he pointed west
at the longest of them and said, 'All right, then, surely we are to espy a drakul
lake, and of all these waters, only that one looks very much like a dragon
-or a snake. And, see, two streams lead down into it, or rather away from it,
past those saw-toothed hills. They do look something like tongues, I suppose.
And so I would say that we're to follow the southernmost stream, to the left.'
'Very
good.' Master Juwain said, nodding his head. 'I concur.'
Our
course being set, we hiked back down the hill and sat down to a lunch of fried
goose eggs and wheat bread toasted over a little fire. Then we checked the
horses' loads and led them around the base of the hill topped by the castle
rock. We worked our way through thick woods, and up and down the ravines that
grooved the hill's slopes. Finally we came out into the valley of the lakes on
the other side. We made camp that evening in clear sight of the dragon lake to
the west of us. Its two tongues, of dusk-reddened water, caught; the fire of
the setting sun.
It took us most of the next day to
reach this lake, for we had to forge on past other hills, lakes and ground
grown boggy from all the water that collected here. But reach it we did, and we
began our trek through the dense vegetation of its southern shore. We paused
for the night in a copse of great birch trees. We smelled the faint reek of a
skunk and listened to the honking of the geese and the beating wings of other
waterfowl out on the lake. The next day we walked on until we came to the
stream told of in the Rhymes. We followed this rushing rill toward its source
south, and then curving west and north. The hills around us grew ever higher.
In this way, over the next two days, we made a miles-wide circle and came up
behind the great massif that we had sighted from the sandstone castle. And
then, as the Rhymes also told, we came upon a road that snaked back and forth
still higher, winding up through barren tundra toward what seemed a snow-locked
pass between two of the massif's mountains.
'Ah, I
don't like the look of this,' Maram said as we stood by our horses looking up
at the white peaks before us. 'It's too damn high!'
'But we
don't have to go over the pass,' Daj said, 'just through it.'
'I
don't care - it's still too high. It will be cold up there, cold enough to
freeze our breath, I think. And what if there are bears?'
He went
on complaining in a like manner for a while before he turned his disgruntlement
to the road we must follow up to the heights. It was an ancient road and seemed
once to have been a good one, built of finely-cut granite stones taken from the
rock around us. Some of these stones, though worn, were still jointed
perfectly. But time and ice and snow had riven many of the stones and reduced
the road in places to no more than a path of rubble. Below us the road simply
vanished into a wall of forest and the dark earth from which it grew. We could
detect no sign of where this road might come from. Above us the road led on:
through the mountains, we hoped, and straight to the Brotherhood's secret
school.
'Well,
I suppose we should camp here for the night,' Maram said.
'No,
I'm afraid we must go up as high as we can,' Master Juwain told him, pointing
at the great saddle between the two mountains. 'You have the verses - give them
to me, please.'
Maram
nodded grudgingly, then recited:
Approach the wall
round Ashte's ides –
There wait till
dark of night subsides;
If sky is clear,
at day's first light
Go deep into a
darker night.
'But we
have approached the wall!' Maram said to Master Juwain.
'Not
close enough. The essence of these verses, I think, is that we must be ready to
move quickly at the right moment. Now let us go on.'
And so
we did. Our slog up the road was long and hard, though not particularly
dangerous. As Maram had worried, it grew colder. The road passed through a
swath of pines and broke out from tree-line into tundra. Ragged patches of snow
blanketed the side of the mountain and covered the road in several places. We
had to break through the crust and work against the snow's crunching, cornlike
granules. Our feet, even through our boots, smarted sharply and then grew numb.
The wind drove at us from the west in cruel, piercing gusts. But the sky, at
least, was a great, blue dome and remained perfectly clear in all directions.
And the sun comforted us for while - until it dropped behind the sharp-ridged
peaks of the mountains farther to the west. Then it grew truly cold, enough to
ice our sweaty garments and find our flesh beneath them. By the time we set to
making camp at the crest of the road, we were all miserable and shivering.
Maram
pointed at the pass, where the road disappeared into a dark tunnel cut through
the white wall above us. And he said, 'We would be warmer if we slept inside there.'
'We
would,' Daj agreed, 'but the Rhyme says that we're supposed to wait out here.'
'The
damn Rhymes,' Maram muttered. 'They make no sense.' 'But that's just it,' Daj
said, 'we're supposed to make sense of them.'
Atara
began unloading some faggots of wood from one of the packhorses, and she said
to Maram, 'It would be warmer in the tunnel. If there are any bears on
this mountain, I'm sure they've made lair there.'
'Bears?'
Maram said. 'No, no - surely they've come out of their winter sleep and have
gone down to feed on berries or trout. Surely they have. They at least
have sense.'
He set
to unloading wood and building a fire with a fervor that kept away his
gut-churning fear of bears. But he must have remembered the great white bear
that had attacked us on a similar pass in the Morning Mountains - as did Master
Juwain and I. We said nothing of this maddened animal that Morjin had made into
a ghul, for we did not wish to frighten the children, or ourselves. I prayed
that no ghul-bears - nor snow tigers nor any other beasts directed by Morjin -
would find us here. It was enough that we still had to fight our way through
this rugged terrain and through the Rhymes that were our map to it.
We sat
for most of thjnight by the fire. The ground here was too steeply sloped and
rocky for reclining, and too cold, too And so we made cushions of over sleeping
furs and huddled together with our cloaks thrown over us as a sort of woolen
tent. Estrella sat between me and Atara, and fell asleep with her head resting
against my side. Maram's back pressed firmly and warmly against my own. In this
way, we propped each up and kept away the worst of the cold.
I slept
only a little that night, and Master Juwain and Kane did not sleep at all. At
times, in low voices, they discussed the meaning of the Way Rhymes; at other
times they sat in silence as they looked up at the stars. I kept watch
on these bright points of light as best I could. But I must have dozed, for I
awakened in the deep of night to the weight of Kane's hand gently shaking my
shoulder. He stood above me uncloaked, and he pointed up at the constellations
spread across the heavens.
'Look,
Val,' he murmured. 'The Ram is about to set.'
In the
biting cold, we roused the others and broke camp. This required little more
work than heaping a few handfuls of snow upon the fire's coals and tying our
rolled-up sleeping furs to the backs of the horses. We breakfasted on some
battle biscuits and a little cold water to wash them down. And then we waited.
As the
last stars of the Ram set behind the western horizon, a faint light suffused
the world and touched the mountains around us with an eerie sheen. At a nod
from Master Juwain, we lit the torches that we had readied for this moment. And
then without wasting another breath, we set out up the road and into the
tunnel.
None of
us knew what we would find there. The tunnel's stark-ness and long straight
lines were almost a disappointment. The road through it seemed good and solid,
and the horses' hooves clopping against the paving stones sent echoes
reverberating up and down around us. The light cast by our oily torches showed
a tube seemingly melted through the mountain's rock. The curving walls and
ceiling above us gleamed all glassy and black, like sheets of obsidian more than
fused granite. Maram guessed that the Ymanir must have once burned this tunnel
with great firestones, for those shaggy giants had once ranged through most of
the White Mountains and had built through them underground cities, invisible
bridges and other garvels. Surely, I thought, this tunnel must be one of them.
As we made our way down its gentle slope, I could see no end to it. Who but the
Ymanir, I wondered, could carve a miles-long tunnel out of solid rock?
'How I do
miss Ymiru,' Maram called out into the cold, still air. 'He was a broody
man, it's true, but the only one I've ever known bigger and stronger than I. A
great companion, he was, too. If he were here, I'm sure he could explain
the mystery of this damn tunnel and what we'll find when we come out on the
other side.'
'But we
have the Rhyme for that,' Master Juwain said to him. 'Why don't you recite it?'
'Ah, you
recite it,' Maram said to him. 'My head has never worked right at this
accursed hour.'
'All
right,' Master Juwain told him. And then he intoned:
And
through the long dark into dawn,
The
road goes down, yet up: go on!
'Shhh,
quiet now!' Kane called out to us in a low voice. 'We know nothing about this
place or what might dwell here.'
His
words sobered us, and we moved on more quickly, and more quietly, too. It was
freezing cold in this long tube through the earth, though mercifully there was
no wind. After a few hundred yards or so we came upon yellowish bones strewn
across the tunnel's floor and heaped into mounds. At the sight of them, Maram
began shaking. The bones did not, however, look to be human; I whispered to
Maram and the others that a snow tiger must have holed up here, dragging inside
and devouring his kills. This did little to mollify Maram. As he walked his
horse next to mine, he muttered, 'Snow tigers, is it? Oh, Lord, they're even
worse than bears!'
The smell of the
bones was old and musty, and I did not sense here the presence of snow tigers
or any other beings besides ourselves. And yet something about this tunnel
seemed strange, almost as if the melted rock that lined it sensed our presence
and was in some way alive. As we moved farther into it, I felt a pounding from
down deep, as of drums - but even more like the beating of a heart. I wondered,
as did Master Juwain, if the tunnel's obsidian coating might really be some
sort of unknown gelstei. All the gelstei resonated with each other in some way,
however faint, and a disturbing sensation tingled through the hilt of my sword.
It traveled up my arm and into my body, collecting in the pit of my belly where
it burned. It impelled me to lead on through the smothering darkness even more
quickly.
'Val,'
Maram whispered to me through the cold air, 'I feel sick - like I did in the
Black Bog.'
'It's
all right,' I whispered back. 'We're nearly through.'
'Are
you sure? How can you be sure?'
We
journeyed on for quite a way, how far or how long I couldn't quite tell. Our
torches burnt down and began flickering out one by one. We had brought no oil
with which to renew them And then, at last, with the horses' iron-shod hooves
striking out a great noise against cold stone, we sighted a little patch of
light ahead of us. We fairly ran straight toward it. Our breath burst from our
lungs, and the patch grew bigger and bigger. And then we came out of the tunnel
into blessed fresh air.
We
gathered on a little shelf of rock on the side of the mountain. A cold wind
whipped at our faces. Spread out before us, to the north and east, was some of
the most forbidding country I had ever seen. Far out to the horizon gleamed
nothing but great jagged peaks covered with snow and white rivers of ice that
cut between them. No part of this terrible terrain seemed flat or showed a
spray of green.
'This can't
be the Valley of the Sun!' Maram cried out. 'No one could live here!'
In
truth, even a snow tiger or a marmot would have had a difficult time surviving
in this ice-locked land. Snowdrifts covered the road before us; this little
span of stone seemed to dip down along the spine of a rocky ridge before rising
again and disappearing into the rock and snow of another mountain.
'We
must have made a mistake,' Maram said. 'Either that or the Rhymes misled us.'
'No, we
made no mistake,' Master Juwain huffed out into the biting wind. 'And the
Rhymes always tell true.'
And
Maram said:
And
through the long dark into dawn
The
road goes down, yet up: go on!
'Well,'
he continued, 'we went through that damn tunnel and if we go on any farther,
we'll freeze to death. There's nothing left of this road, and I wouldn't follow
it if there were. And there are no more Rhymes!'
But
there were. As Kane again warned Maram to silence, Master Juwain said, 'Yes, be
quiet now - we have little time.'
And then he
recited:
Through
mountains' notch, a golden ray:
The
rising sun will point theway.
Before
this orb unveils full face
Go on
into a higher place.
'Into that?
Mararm cried out, pointing at the icy wasteland before us. 'I won't. We
cant. And why should we hurry to our doom, anyway?'
'Shhh,
quiet now,' Kane said to him. 'Quiet.'
He
watched as Master Juwain lifted his finger toward two great peaks to the east
of us. The notch between them glowed red with the radiance of the sun about to
rise.
'This
is why we were to come here near Ashte's ides,' Master Juwain said. 'You see,
on this date, the declination of the sun, the precise angle of its rays as it
rises ...'
His voice died into the howling wind as the
first arrows of sunlight broke from the notch and streaked straight toward us.
So dazzling was this incandescence that we had to shield our eyes and look away
lest we be struck blind.
'And
so,' Master Juwain went on, 'the sun's rays should illuminate exactly that part
of this land leading on to our destination. Let us look for it before it is too
late.'
'I can't look for anything at all,' Maram
said, squinting and blinking against the sun's fulgor. 'I can't see anything
- it's too damn bright!'
'Hurry!'
Liljana said to Master Juwain. She stood by her horse gripping its reins. 'If
these Rhymes of yours have any worth, we must hurry. What did you say are the
next verses? The last ones?' And Master Juwain told her:
If
stayed by puzzlement or pride
Let Kundalini
be your guide;
But
hasten forth or count the cost.
Who
long delays is longer lost.
'The
Kundala always rises,' Master Juwain said. 'Rises straight to its goal. But I
can see no way to go up here, unless it is over the top of that mountain.'
Still
shielding his eyes, he pointed straight ahead of us. And Liljana asked
him, 'Are you sure you've remembered the verses correctly?'
'Are you sure your
name is Liljana Ashvaran?'
I had
rarely heard such peevishness in his voice - or pride. And then, as the sun
pushed a little higher above the mountain's notch and flared even brighter, a
sick look befell Master Juwain's face. I saw it drain the color from his skin,
and so did Liljana,
'Well?'
she said to him, 'What is it?'
And
Master Juwain, who honored truth above almost all else said, 'There is a small
chance I may have rendered the lines inexactly. But it doesn't matter.'
'Oh,
doesn't it? Why not, then?'
The
lines may have been:
If
stayed by puzzlement or pride
Let
sacred serpent be your guide.
He
cleared his throat as he looked at Liljana, and said, 'To my order, of
course, the sacred serpent and the Kundala are one and the same.'
'But
what if the verses' maker knew the deeper way of things?' Liljana asked him.
'What if his sacred serpent was instead Ouroboros?'
'Impossible!'
Master Juwain called out.
Now the
sun had risen like a red knot of fire almost entirely above the notch. We could
not look upon its blazing brilliance,
'Impossible!'
Master Juwain said again.
He
turned around toward the mountain behind us. Although the dawn was lightening
it seemed to me to be growing only darker, for our hope of finding our way was
quickly evaporating before the fury of the sun.
And
then I heard Master Juwain whisper the words that Alphanderry had sung to us on
a magical night;
The
dazzling heights light deep desire;
Within
the heart, a deeper fire.
The
road toward heavens' starry crown
Goes ever up but always down.
'Back!'
Master Juwain suddenly cried out. He pointed at the mouth of the tunnel and the
snow of the mountain around it. The sun's fiery rays had set the whole of it to
glowing, 'Back. now before it's too late!'
He
turned his horse to lead him into the runnel. And Maram shouted, 'Are you mad?
It's black as night in there! I'm not going back inside unless we find a way to
relight the torches!'
I
reached out and snatched the reins of his horse from his hand, and followed
after Master Juwain. Atara grabbed Maram's empty-hand to pull him after us.
Then, quickly, came Liljana, Estrella and Daj. Kane, as usual, guarded our
rear.
And so
we went back into the tunnel. The moment we set foot within, it came alive. The
glassy walls glowed, changed color to a translucent white and then poured forth
a milky light. It was more than enough with which to see. There were few
features, however, to catch the eye. The tunnel's floor seemed the same
cut-stone road that we had trod before. The air was cold, and lay heavy about
us as we pushed on through this long scoop through the earth.
'Val, I
feel sick!' Maram said to me. 'My head is spinning, as if I'd drunk too much
wine.'
I felt
as he did, and so did the others, although they did not complain of it. But
there seemed nothing to do except to follow Master Juwain deeper into the cold
air of this mysterious tunnel.
And
then the air around us was suddenly no longer cold. The walls and ceiling
seemed to pulse unnervingly, even if the light they shed was steady and clean.
I looked back behind me to reassure Maram that everything would be all right.
But even as I opened my mouth to speak to him, his form wavered and dissolved
into a spray of tiny lights before coalescing and solidifying again.
'Oh,
Lord!' Maram called out as he stared at me in amazement. 'Oh, Lord - let us
leave this place as quickly as we can before we all evanesce and there's
nothing left of us forever!'
Just
then Altaru let loose a long, bone-chilling whinny. He shook his great head,
struck stone with his hoof hard enough to send up sparks and then reared up and
beat the air with his hooves. He nearly brained Master Juwain, and it was all I
could do to hold onto his reins.
'Lo,
friend!' I called to him as I stroked his neck. 'Lo, now!'
The
other horses, too, began either to whinny or nicker in disquiet. And Kane
called to me: 'Let's tie blindfolds around them as we did when we crossed the
Ymanir's bridge over the gorge!'
And as
he said, it was done. With our dread working at us like a hot acid, it did not
take us long to cut some strips from a bolt of cloth and bind them over the
horses' eyes.
After that, we moved on even more quickly. I tried not to look at Master Juwain's flickering form, nor that of Maram or the .pulsing, hollowed-out walls of the tunnel. I pulled at Altaru's reins and concentrated the rhythm of his hooves beating against stone. I tried to ignore those moments when this rhythm broke and my horse's great hooves seemed to beat against nothing more than air. I did not want to listen to Maram's complaint that he could find no sign of the bones that littered the tunnel near its entrance. For I had eyes, now, only for its exit. As this circle of light grew larger and brighter, we all broke into a run. Master Juwain was the first of us to breach the tunnel's mouth and step outside. I followed after him a moment later. And I cried out in awe and delight. The serpent, it seemed, had indeed swallowed its own tail. For spread out below us was not the rugged terrain and long road by wich we had originally entered the tunnel but a beautiful green valley. And somewhere, perhaps near its center along the blue river below us, there must stand a collection of old stone buildings that would be the Brotherhood's ancient school.
Chapter 8 Back Table of Content Next
For a long while, however, we stood on a mantle of ground near the tunnel's mouth looking in vain for this fabled school. Kane set out along the heights to our left to see what he could see, while Master Juwain picked his way along the rocks to our right. They returned to report that they could descry no sign of the school, or indeed, of any human habitation.
'Perhaps,' Master Juwain said, pointing at the folded, forested terrain below us, 'the school Is hidden. The lay of the land might conceal it.' 'Then let us find a better vantage to look for it.' Kane said.
'As long as that vantage lies lower and not higher,' Maram said, 'It's damn cold on these heights.'
We began making our way down the rugged slope into the valley. We found a line of clear patches through the trees that might or might not have been part of an ancient path. After an hour, we came out around the curve of a great swell of ground, and we gathered on a long, clear ridge that afforded an excellent view of almost the entire valley. All we could see were trees and empty meadows and the river's bright blue gleam.
'Perhaps your Rhymes misled us after all,' Maram complained to Master Juwain.
Master Juwain's jaws tightened
as he readied a response to Ma ram's
incessant faithlessness. And then, from below us, through the trees,
there came the faint sound of someone singing. I
could make out a pleasant melody but none of the words. Although it seemed unlikely that an enemy would cheerfully alert us, Kane and I drew our swords even so.
A few moments later, a small old man worked his way up the path
into view. He wore plain, undyed woolens and leaned upon a shepherd's crook as if it were a walking staff. I saw
that he had the wheat-colored skin and almond eyes of the Sung. Long thick
white hair framed his wrinkled face. Despite his obvious age, he moved with the
liveliness of a much younger man.
'Greetings, strangers!' he called to us in a rich,
melodious voice 'You look as if you've come a long way.'
His words caused Master Juwain to rub the back of his
head as he scrutinized this old man. He said to him, 'A stranger's way is
always long.'
'Unless, of course,' the old man said, smiling, 'he is
no stranger to the Way.'
Now Master Juwain smiled, too, and he bowed to the old
man. Having completed the ancient formula by which those of the Brotherhood
recognize and greet others of their order in chance encounters in out of the
way places, the two of them strode forward to embrace each other. Master Juwain
gave his name and those of the rest of us. And the old man presented himself as
Master Virang.
'You did well,'
he told Master Juwain, bowing back to him, 'to find your way here. My brethren
will be eager to learn why you have brought outsiders to our valley.'
He cast a deep, penetrating look at Kane and me, as we
faced him with our swords still drawn. I had a sense that he could peel back
the layers of my being and nearly read my mind. And Maram said to him, 'Then
this I the Valley of the Sun? We weren't sure, for we saw nothing that looked
like a school. You don't dwell underground, do you?'
He shuddered as
he said this. Since the Ymanir, who might have carved the mysterious tunnel
above us, had also built the underground city of Argattha in these same
mountains, it seemed a likely surmise.
His question, though, made Master Virang smile. 'No,
we are men, not moles, and so we dwell as most men do.' 'Dwell where, then?' Maram asked. 'I
could swear that there isn't a hut or even an outhouse in all this valley.'
'Could you?'
Master Virang kept
one of his hands inside his pocket as he looked at Maram strangely. Then he
looked at me. The space behind my eyes tingled in a way that seemed both
pleasant and disturbing. I found myself, of a sudden, able to make out the
trees in the distance with a greater clarity. It was as if I had emerged from a
pool of blurry water into cold, crisp air.
'Ah, I could swear it,' Maram muttered. 'We've
looked everywhere.'
'Indeed?' Master Virang asked. 'But did you look down there?'
So saying, he pointed the tip of his staff straight down the slope below us
toward the most open part of the valley, where the river ran through its heart.
The air overlaying this green, sunny land began to shimmer. And then I gripped
my sword in astonishment, for out of the wavering brilliance a few miles away,
along the banks of the river, many white, stone buildings appeared. So distinctly
did they stand out that it seemed impossible we had failed to perceive them.
'Sorcery!' Maram cried out, even more astonished than
1. He shook his head at Master Virang, and took a step back from him. 'You hide
your school beneath the veil of illusion!'
Liljana, too, seemed disquieted by the sudden sight of
the school - and even more so by Master Virang. In her most acid of voices, she
said to him, 'We had not heard that the masters of the Great White Brotherhood
had learned the arts of the Lord of Illusions.' But Master Virang only matched
her scowl with a smile. He said to her, 'To compel others to see what is not is
indeed illusion, and that is forbidden to us, as it is to all men. But to help
them apprehend what is - this is true vision and the grace of the One.'
He bowed his head to Liljana and added, 'Our school is
real enough, after all. You are tired and travel-worn - will you accept our
hospitality?'
Although he posed this invitation as a question,
politely and formally, there could be no doubting what our answer would be. All
of us, I thought, bore misgivings as to how the Brotherhood's school had been
hidden from us. Even more, though, we were curious to learn its secrets and
ways.
And so Master Virang twirled his staff in his hand as
he led us back along the path. He fairly jumped from rock to rock like a
mountain goat. The rest of us, trailing our horses, moved more slowly. It took
us most of the rest of the morning to hike down into the valley and to come out
of the forest onto the school's grounds, laid out above the river. We walked
through apple orchards, ash groves and rose gardens, and fields of rye, oats
and barley. The Valley of the Sun was as warm and bright as its name promised,
especially near the ides of Ashte with the full bloom of spring greening the
land. A ring of great, white mountains entirely surrounded it and guarded it
from the worst winds and snow. This refuge deep within the Nagarshath range was
nothing so splendid and magnificent as the Ymanir's crystal city, Alundil,
beneath the Mountain of the Morning Star. But it shone with a quiet beauty and
was pervaded by a deep peace. It seemed to exist out of time and to take no
part in the ways and wars of the world. We all sensed that it concealed ancient
secrets. The two hundred or so Brothers who dwelled here worked hard but
happily in getting their sustenance from the land. We passed these simple men
dressed in simple woolen tunics, laying to in the fields with hoes or dipping
candles or working hot iron in the blacksmith's shop. Others tended sheep in
pastures on the hillsides or attended to the dozen other occupations necessary
for the thriving of what amounted to a small town. But the Brothers' main
occupations, as we would learn, remained the ancient disciplines, or callings,
of the Great White Brotherhood. And each of these seven callings was
exemplified by a revered master, and indeed, by the Grandmaster of the
Brotherhood himself.
Master Virang, who proved to be the Meditation Master,
helped us to settle into two of the school's guest houses just above the river.
Liljana, Atara and Estrella took up residence in the smaller of them, while the
rest of us set up in the other. There, in these steeply-roofed stone hostels
that reminded me of the chalets of my home-, we spent hours soaking our cold,
bruised bodies in hot water and washing away the grime of our journey. It was
good to put on fresh tunics, and even better to sit down to a hot meal. Master
Virang saw to it that we were served chicken soup and fresh bread for lunch,
and cheese and berries, too. He left us alone to eat these heartening foods,
but then returned an hour later to spirit away Master Juwain to a private
meeting with the Grandmaster.
What they discussed all during that long afternoon we
could only wonder. Master Juwain rejoined us only at the end of the day, when
we gathered with the entire community of Brothers for a feast in the Great
Hall. We were so busy, however, exchanging pleasantries with the curious
Brothers that Master Juwain could not find a moment to confer with the rest of
us. His face seemed tight and troubled, and I wondered if the Grandmaster had
given him ill tidings or perhaps had chastened him for leading our company
here.
I did not have to wait long to find out the answers to
these questions - and to others that vexed me even more sorely. After the
feast, we were summoned to take tea with The Seven, as the Brotherhood's
masters were called. On a clear, lovely night we adjourned to one of the nearby
buildings. Here, from time to time,
in a little stone conservatory, the Grandmaster came
to dwell in solitude
or sit with the Music or Meditation Masters, or others with whom he wished to speak. Indeed, the
circular space where we met
with them had much the air of a meditation chamber. White wool carpets and many cushions
covered the floor across its
length and breadth. Vases of fresh flowers had been set into recesses built into the walls.
These curves of white granite were carved
with various symbols:
pentagram, gammadion and caduceus; sun and eagle, swan and star. In various
places, some ancient
artisan had chiselled the Great Serpent in the form of a lightning boh - and of a dragon
swallowing Its tail The twelve
pillars supporting the dome above us also showed cut glyphs. The light from the room's many candles
illumined the shapes of the Archer,
Ram, Dolphin, and nine other signs of the zixiiac. The dome itself was smooth and featureless
save for twelve round windows letting
in the light of the stars.
This radiance seemed to gather within the hollows of a
goldish bowl, set upon a marble pedestal beneath the northernmost window. In
size and shape, if not shimmer, the bowl seemed like unto the Lightstone
itself. I sensed immediately that ii must be a work of silver gelstei, for I
felt the silustria of my sword fairly singing to it. It must be, I thought, one
of the False Lightstones forged in the Age of Law. Once, in the Library of
Khaisham. my friends and I had come across a similar vessel of silver gelstei,
shaped and tinted as the Lightstone in a vain attempt to capture its
powers. Like all the silver gelstei, though, this cup would resonate with the
true gold, and so was still a very great treasure.
The conservatory's only items of furniture were three
low tea tables, inlaid with tiny triangles of lapis, shell and jet, and set
with little round tea cups. As my companions and I entered the room, the
Grandmaster and his Brothers stood up from behind them to greet us. In Tria I
had sat at table with kings, but these seven masters of the Great White
Brotherhood seemed possessed of no less presence and authority.
Tallest of the Seven, and the most striking, was the
Grandmaster himself. His name was Abrasax, but because the Brothers found it
too much of a mouthful to address him as Grandmaster Abrasax, most of them
called him, simply, Grandfather.
His age, I thought, was hard to tell. A corona of curly white hair
covered his head and flowed in waves down his cheeks and chin to form a rather
magnificent beard. His seamed and weathered skin made for rather a stark
contrast with it, for it was as brown as a tanned bull's hide. According to
Master Juwain, Abrasax's father had been a chieftain of the Tukulak tribe and
his mother a Karabuk maiden taken captive as concubine. In Abrasax, I thought,
gathered the comeliest features of both the Sarni and Karabuk peoples. He had
the long, well-shaped head of the Sarni and a solid and symmetrical face. His
muscular hands fairly radiated strength; I could easily imagine them working
one of the Sarni's stiff war bows, if not the great bow of Sajagax himself. But
his nose flared like a delicate and perfect triangle, and so, I guessed, it
must have been with his mother and her kin. His eyes were large and liquid like
a horse's eyes, full of gentleness and grace. And full of wisdom, too. And
something else. In the way he looked at me, with sweetness and fire, I had a
deep, disturbing sense that he could perceive things in me that others had
never seen - not Atara or Kane, or even my mother, father or my own grandfather.
He motioned for me to sit opposite from him at the
center-most table. I lowered myself onto a plump cushion, with Master Juwain to
my right and Liljana to my left. Master Virang sat to the right of Abrasax, and
Master Matai, the Master Diviner, joined us as well. The two other tables were
pulled up close to ours, end to end, making for what seemed one long table.
Maram and Kane took places at the one to my right, and so, across from them,
did Master Okuth and Master Storr. To my left, Atara, Estrella and Daj sat
facing Master Yasul and Master Nolashar, the Music Master. I couldn't help
staring at this middling-old man. His hair was cropped short like that of most
of the Brothers, but was as straight and black as my own. Too, he had the long
nose and black eyes of many of my people. His name and quiet, alert bearing
proclaimed him as a Valari warrior, at least by lineage and upbringing. But
now, it seemed, he trained with the flute or mandolet instead of the sword, and
made music instead of war.
As soon as we all had settled into our places, the
doors opened behind us, and six young Brothers entered bearing big, blue pots
of tea. They set them down before us, along with smaller pots ofj cream and
bowls full of honey. I took my tea plain, in the Valari way, and so did Master
Nolashar. But most of the others set to pouring in cream and stirring their tea
with little silver spoons that tinkled against the sides of their cups. The
Brotherhood makes use of scores of teas, blended from hundreds of herbs, and
the one I first
sipped that night was as sweet as cherries, as fiery as brandy, and as cool and bracing as fresh
peppermint. Abrasax
waited for the young Brothers to finish their work and leave. He smiled at Daj and Estrella in a
kindly way. Then his face fell
stern, and he looked at the rest of us, one by one, and most keenly at Master Juwain as he said,
'I would like first and foremost, to welcome you all to our school. It has been
nearly a hundred
years since anyone outside our order has taken refuge here, for our rules are necessarily strict
and we do not usually break
them. Master Juwain, however, has explained the need that drove him to lead outsiders here,
and I am in agreement with his
decision, as are the rest of us. As long as you abide by our rules, you may remain as long as you would
like.'
His voice was deep and strong and sure of
itself. But there was no pride or veiled threat in it, as with a king's voice,
only curiosity and an insistence on the truth. And so, with all the candor that
I could summon, I bowed my head to him and said, 'Thank you, Grandfather. If we
could, we would remain in this beautiful place for a year. But as Master Juwain
will have told you, we have urgent business elsewhere, and we would ask of you
not only your hospitality but your help.'
Abrasax exchanged a quick look with Master Virang, and
then Master Storr, a rather stout man with fair, freckled skin and eyes as blue
and clear as topaz gems. And then Abrasax said, 'You shall certainly have our
hospitality; as for our help in your quest, we are met here tonight to decide
if we can help you, and more, if such help would be wise.'
His obvious doubt concerning us seemed to pierce Maram
like a spearpoint and my prickly friend took a sip of tea, and then muttered,
'The whole world is about to burn up in dragon fire, and the Masters of the Brotherhood
must sit and debate whether they will help us?'
Abrasax just gazed at him. 'You must understand,
Brother Maram. that a great deal is at stake. Indeed, as you say, the whole
world.'
'Please. Grandfather.' Maram said, 'I'm a Brother no
longer and you should call me Sar Maram.'
'All men are brother,'Abrasax reminded him, 'but it
will be as you've asked, Sar Maram then.'
Maram
nodded his head as if this name pleased him very well - even II Master
Juwain and a couple of the other masters present clearly disapproved of
it. Maram looked around the table at the pots of tea, and I could almost feel
his fierce desire that they should contain brandy or other spirits instead.
'Few
men,' he told Abrasax as he nodded at me, 'whether they are Brothers or not,
have seen what we've seen or fought so hard to free Ea from the Red Dragon's
claws.'
'You have
fought hard, it's true,' Abrasax agreed. 'But ferocity at arms, even of
will, can never be enough to defeat the Dragon. Even as we speak, he moves to
seize his moment. Has Master Juwain told you the tidings?'
'No,'
Maram grumbled, shaking his head, 'he hasn't had the chance.'
'Evil
tidings we've had out of Alonia,' Abrasax told us. 'Count Dario Narmada is
dead, murdered by one of Morjin's Kallimun. Baron Maruth has proclaimed the
Aquantir's independence, and so with Baron Monteer in Iviendenhall and Duke
Parran in Jerolin. In Tria, Breyonan Eriades has allied with the Hastars to
hunt down all Narmadas of King Kiritan's sept.'
Abrasax
looked at Atara and said, 'I'm sorry, Princess.'
Atara
turned her grave, beautiful face toward him. 'I'm sorry, too. My father's
father reconquered the dukedoms and baronies you speak of and made Alonia great
again. Count Dario might have held the realm together. No one else is
strong enough.'
'Not
even King Kiritan's only legitimate child?'
Atara
touched the white cloth binding her face and said, 'A woman, and a blind one at
that? No, I am Atara Manslayer, now - no one else.'
'Then
it must be said that Alonia is no more.'
Atara
laughed bitterly. 'Morjin will hardly even need to send an army marching north
to reduce her to ashes.'
Abrasax
massaged the deep creases around his eyes, then said, 'Galda has fallen,
Yarkona and Surrapam, too. In all lands, our schools are being found out and
burned down one by one. Our Brothers, put to the sword. And yet the evilest
tidings of all have come out of Argattha.'
His
words piqued Liljana's intense interest, and her plump, round face turned
toward him as she asked, 'And how have these tidings come to you, then?'
Abrasax
looked deep into her eyes and told her, 'We will be as forthcoming with you as
we hope you will be with us. You see, for a very long time now, we have kept a
secret school within Argattha. But not five months ago, it was discovered, and
the last of our order there, Brother Songya, was captured and crucified. We
will try to re-establish the school, but. . .'
A silence
fell over the tea tables and spread out into the room. I gazed up at the
flowers in the stands and the ancient glyphs cut beneath the stone ceiling. The
round windows there glistened with starlight.
'Before
Brother Songya died,' Abrasax went on, 'he sent word of the excavations beneath
the city. There is, as you know, a great earth chakra there - the greatest on
Ea. Morjin's slaves have nearly driven tunnels straight down into the heart of it.
The digging has been stopped only by a great seam of quartz that breaks
picks and shovels. If Morjin had a firestone, all would be lost. All is nearly
lost, as it is.'
'Do not
speak so, Grandfather,' Master Yasul said to him. The Master Remembrancer was
an old man with skin as dark as mahogany and tight little curls of white hair
capping his bald head. He might have hailed from Karabuk or Uskudar, but seemed
so at home in this quiet room as to have been born here. 'We still have hope.'
Abrasax
picked up his cup to take a long sip of tea. Then he looked around the tables.
'We must at least act as if there is hope. But I have said that this is
a night for openness, and we cannot turn away from the truth. The Red Dragon
needs only to gain a little more mastery of the Lightstone to open the great
chakra. When its fires break free . . .'
His
voice choked off as he looked at Master Yasul and Master Juwain. Then he said,
'The first faint flames have already broken free. It cannot be long
before he unleashes the Baaloch upon the world.'
At the
mention of Morjin's master, Angra Mainyu, the Great Beast, we all fell into a
deep silence as we sipped our tea. Then Master Juwain said to Abrasax: 'But
what of the Maitreya, Grandfather? Isn't it clear that he must be found
and aided so that he can keep the Red Dragon from using the Lightstone?'
Abrasax
pulled at his long beard. 'No, that is not so clear as you might wish. With
your help, Valashu Elahad gained the Lightstone only to lose it to the Red
Dragon. If we lost the Maitreya as well, then there truly would be no hope.'
At
this, I drew in a quick breath and said, 'If fate leads us to find the Shining
One, we will not lose him.'
I
stared at Abrasax as he and the other six masters stared back at me. Abrasax motioned toward
Master Matai. He had the soft curls and golden complexion of many Galdans, and
his sharp brown eyes seemed to perceive a great deal. And Abrasax said, 'Our
Master Diviner believes that these are the last days of the age, and that the
Valkariad is surely near.'
With
reverence and longing he spoke the name of that great moment at the end of
history when all men and women would ascend to becoming greater beings: Ardun
into Star People, and Star People into Elijin, who would take their rightful
places as newly crowned Galadin. And the Galadin themselves would become as
gods in the glory of a new creation.
'The
Age of Light must be at hand,' Abrasax said. 'Either that or the
Skardarak, when all the stars shall be put out and it will grow cold and dark
forever.'
He drew
in a deep breath, held it and then let it out slowly in a whoof of wind. Then
he said, 'And even as we see two possibilities, and only two, for the world,
so we have only two choices open to us now: to entrust Master Juwain and his
companions with the quest to find the Maitreya, or not. Let us now speak
truthfully with one another so that we might make this choice. Master Yasul?'
The
Master Remembrancer pulled at the dark folds of skin beneath his narrow jaw as
he regarded me. He said, 'Valashu Elahad speaks of his desire, and that of his
friends, to make a quest to find the Maitreya, but is this their true calling?
They are a strange company, and we must be sure of whom Master Juwain has
brought to us.'
'And
who is it, then, whom Master Juwain has brought to us?' Master Storr
asked. His blue eyes sparkled in the strong candle-light. I wondered what land
had given him birth: Nedu? Thalu? Eanna? The Master Galastei ran his blunt hand
through his wispy white hair and coughed out, 'A claimant to the throne of
Delu, an heir to Kiritan's branch of the House Narmada, and the sole surviving
son of the Valari's greatest king. Beware the pride of princes, I say. Beware
their true purpose. And this lordless knight, Kane. All of them, of the
sword.'
I
rested my hand on the hilt of my sword, which I had set by my side. I looked at
Kane who had taught me to wield this terrible weapon with a single-minded will
to destroy any and all who stood against me.
'And
then there is Liljana Ashvaran,' Master Storr said. His cool blue eyes fixed on
the woman who was as my mother. 'Master
Juwain has told us little more than that she is a noble of Alonia who joined
Valashu and the others on the great Quest. An unusual calling, isn't it, for
one of her age, rank and gender?'
In
truth, I knew of no other matron, noble or not, who had set out into the wilds
of Ea in pursuit of the Lightstone.
Liljana's
pretty round face grew as intense and reflective as a full moon. To Master
Storr, she said, 'Why should you think that noble impulses are so unusual?
Your order, I've been told, exists to quicken that which is noblest in
everyone.'
Master
Storr blinked at Liljana's riposte. He exchanged pained looks with Master Yasul
and the others. I gathered that he wasn't used to being addressed by women - or
anyone - so sharply.
Then he
pointed his teaspoon at Liljana. 'Surely what is noblest is not the
keeping of secrets from those who would help you.'
'And
what secrets do you think I keep?'
Master
Storr did not respond. His eyes grew even colder, like glacier ice, as he gazed
at her with a greater and greater vehemence. Liljana thrust her hand inside the
pocket of her tunk, and her jaw tightened in defiance. Finally, she
removed her fist from her tunic and shook it at him. 'You will not,' she
told him. 'You will not.'
'Will I not?'
Master Storr said to her.
In
answer, her soft brown eyes summoned up such an intense heat that he
finally blinked and looked away.
Liljana
turned toward Abrasax and said, 'Your Master Galastei tries to use this to
read my mind!'
So
saying, she opened her hand to reveal her blue crystal.
'He
tries to seize control of it - and me!' she said. 'Like the Red Dragon
himself!'
'No - I
only wanted to know what you conceal from us,' Master Storr called out. 'As
Master Matai has said, we must be sure of you.'
'Not this
way! You have no right.'
'I am the
Master of the Gelstei.'
'Not my
gelstei. Would you steal my journal as well, and force the lock to read
its pages?'
'I will
make no apologies,' Master Storr said, 'Too much is at stake; and we must do
what we must do.'
'Is
that the way of the Masters of the Brotherhood, then? Is that noble?'
They
might have contended thus all night if Abrasax hadn't finally held up his hand
and said to Liljana, 'Master Storr has fought too many battles with the Red
Dragon, and is sometimes overzealous in protecting the Brotherhood. You are
right, forcing another's mind is not our way. I do apologize, for
all of us. But Master Storr also is right that too much is at stake, and so
there can be no secrets within this room.'
Liljana
sat facing Abrasax. She must have perceived that of all the Seven, he studied
her the most intently. She gazed back at him with all the force of her will, as
if commanding him to fix his attention elsewhere. But not even Liljana, it
seemed, could stare down the Grandmaster.
'Your
Sisters,' he said to her, 'have always kept too much hidden.'
'My . .
Sisters?' Liljana coughed out. It was one of the few times I had ever seen her
at a loss for words.
'Do you
deny,' Abrasax asked her, 'that you are of the Sisterhood?'
'But
why would you think that?'
'I am a
Master Reader, am I not? Your chakras, each of them, give off flames - how
should I not be able to read their colors? And to perceive that your
aura shimmers like that of one who has been trained in the ways of the
Maitriche Telu?'
Liljana
looked at Kane and Master Juwain briefly before glancing at me. She seemed,
somewhere inside herself, to cast off a heavy cloak. Then she held her head
high as she told Abrasax: 'I am the Materix of the Maitriche Telu.'
The
Seven, all except Abrasax seemed to draw in a single, hissing breath. Master
Yasul leaned over to confer in low tones with Master Nolashar, while Master
Matai exchanged resentful looks with Master Virang. And then Master Storr
called out: 'So this is her secret! And a dark one it is, too!'
In
silence he stared at Liljana, and so did Master Matai and the others - even the
gentle-faced Master Okuth.
But if
they thought to intimidate or even shame Liljana, then they did not know her.
The more they beamed their disapproval and dread at her, the brighter and
stronger she seemed to grow. And then she told them, 'Others have called my
Sisters and me "witch" before.'
'No one
has called you that,' Master Storr said. 'Not with your lips, perhaps, but you
say it with your eyes.' Master Storr rubbed at his temples a moment before
asking Liljana: 'Do you deny that in times past you nearly succeeded in
inserting one of your Sisters into Morjin's chambers as a concubine? With the
intention of poisoning him, as the Maitriche Telu once poisoned King Daimon and
many others?'
'King
Daimon Hastar,' Liljana said to Master Storr, 'was nearly as evil as Morjin.
After his untimely death, Alonia enjoyed nearly fifty years of prosperity and
good rule.'
'Poisoners,'
Master Storr muttered. And then more softly: 'Witch.'
'We did
what we had to do! When your ways failed to educate and uplift, we
were left to deal with one bloodthirsty tyrant after another!'
I looked to my right to see Kane smiling
savagely as his lips pulled back from his long, white teeth.
Master
Storr tried to ignore him, and he snapped at Liljana: 'And your way has been
poison, seduction, even the violation of men's minds!'
'No,
that has not been our way - you know nothing about us!' Liljana turned toward
Abrasax, and for what seemed an hour she gazed at him, and he at her. His
understanding seemed to pour out from him and embrace her. Tears filled her
eyes. She was the hardest woman I had ever known, but sometimes the softest,
too. Finally Abrasax rose from his cushion and circled the tables until he
stood above her. He reached down to grasp her hand and pull her up facing him.
With his fingertips, he wiped the tears from her cheek. And then, as we all
looked on in astonishment, he bent down to kiss her moist eyelids. To Master
Storr and the rest of the Seven, and to all of us, he said, 'War will come soon
enough, but let us not allow it into this room. Once, we of the Brotherhood and
the Sisters of the Maitriche Telu were as brothers and sisters. I would
have it so again.'
He
squeezed Liljana's hand and bowed his head to her. Then, fixing Master Storr
with a stem look, he returned to his place.
The
room fell quiet, and for a while, the seven Masters of the Brotherhood sat
drinking their tea. Strong sentiments like invisible currents passed between
them. At last, Master Storr looked at me and said, 'War, of the spirit, at the
very least, Valashu Elahad and his companions must wage, if they make this new
quest. Theirs will be a dangerous journey. And one danger we should
speak of now, since Liljana Ashvaran has already hinted of it. I would ask to
see the rest of their gelstei.'
I
nodded my head at his request, and drew Alkaladur from its sheath. My sword's
silvery silustria gleamed in the starlight. Then Master Juwain brought forth
his emerald varistei. Liljana set her little blue whale upon her table while
Atara sat cupping her scryer's sphere inside her hands. Kane scowled as he
reached into his pocket and showed Master Storr his baalstei, cut into the
shape of a flat, black eye. And then Maram gently laid his firestone, red as a
ruby and as long as his forearm, on his table.
'Ah, my
poor, poor crystal,' he said, gazing at the webwork of fine cracks running
through it. 'Ruined in battle with that damn dragon.'
Abrasax
just stared at him. 'That battle, I think, will prove to be as nothing
against the battle you still must fight against the Red Dragon.'
'Ah, I
don't want to fight at all,' Maram muttered. Something in Abarasax's manner
seemed to encourage Maram to open himself to him. 'It's nearly ruined me, you
see. The madness of the world: her stupidities and cruelties. If only I had
time enough for love! If only I could heal this beautiful crystal, I might find
the way to heal my heart.'
I'm not
sure,' Abrasax said to him, looking around the room, 'that we all see the
connection.'
Maram
gazed longingly at his crystal. 'To use the red gelstei is to summon and
concentrate fire. Ah, to direct it toward a single target, you see. So with
love, and therefore the heart. If my heart were made whole again, I might find
the great love I was born for.' Abrasax smiled as he again stood up from the
table. He stretched back. His shoulders and drew in a deep breath. Then he
walked around Master Okuth and Master Storr sitting at their table with Maram,
who turned toward him. Abrasax held his hands above Maram's head for a moment
before bringing them down over his shoulders and then his sides. And he said,
'You have a great heart, Sar Maram Marshayk. Flames fill it with a bright green
radiance. But they would burn brighter - much brighter - if they weren't so
concentrated here, lower down in your svadhisthan chakra.'
With
that he rested his hand on Maram's belly and smiled at him.
'Ah,'
Maram said, nodding at me, 'I suppose this isn't a good time for a recitation
of "A Second Chakra Man"?'
'No,' I
said to him, 'I suppose it is not.'
Abrasax's
eyebrows pulled together in concern as he pushed against Maram's belly and told
him: 'Between here and your heart chakra is where your sun makes its orbit. And
a great whirl of fire it is, blazing orange with streaks of viridian and
crimson.'
As
Abrasax's hand continued pressing against Maram, I could almost see this fiery
orb that he spoke of.
'There
is nothing wrong with your heart,' Abrasax told Maram.
'And
you do have time for love - all the time in the world. But what I it
that you love, above all else?'
Maram
glanced at me nervously and then turned back to Abrasax as he said, 'There is a
woman. Somewhere in the world, a woman who can take in my heart and, ah, all
of me. The one whose hips and breasts swell like the mountains and seas,
like the very curves of the earth: she, whose desire is as boundless as my own.
Some men seek the most beautiful of women, others the kindest or the most pure.
But I dream of the most passionate.' At
this Abrasax cleared his throat and said to him, 'You must be careful what you
wish for. Careful even of what you whisper inside your mind. The earth listens.
There are powers there that no one fully understands. Her fires feed ours, and
what we create inside ourselves, we can bring into being.'
He
pressed his hand against Maram's chest, then walked around the tables again to
return to his cushions. He sat gazing at Maram, who wrapped his huge hand
around his red crystal and lowered his eyes to study the fine cracks marring
it.
'All of
them,' Master Storr said, looking from Maram to Liljana, 'must be careful with
their gelstei. Each time they use the sacred crystals, Morjin will use the
Lightstone to find his way farther into them and twist their power toward his
will.'
I gazed
into the silustria of my sword, and so did my friends study their gelstei.
'Indeed,'
Master Storr continued, eyeing our crystals, too, 'I counsel that they
surrender their gelstei to us for safekeeping.'
At
this, Maram's hand closed around the cut planes of his fire-stone while I
gripped the hilt of my sword more tightly.
'Surrender
this to you?' Maram said, holding his long, red crystal pointing at
Master Storr. 'You might as well ask me to cut off, ah, more personal parts of
myself so that they don't lead me into troubles.'
'I
know,' Atara said, turning her sphere between her hands, 'that this came to me
for a purpose.'
Kane's
response was the simplest and most direct of all of us. He held up his black stone for all to see
and then closed his fist
around
it as he called out, 'Ha!'
Abrasax
sighed as he looked at Master Storr and said, 'I told you this would be the way of things, as
you of all of us should understand.'
Master
Storr bowed his head, but said nothing as he turned his attention back to the
gleam of our crystals. And Abrasax said to us, 'So it goes. Everywhere on Ea,
Morjin finds his way into men's minds, and so gains control of their arms,
voices and eyes. And no one is willing to give them up either just to
thwart him. But I counsel you: if you use your gelstei, Morjin will slowly
seize control of them.'
'Even
my sword?' I said, holding up its blade so as to catch the room's candlelight.
'The
silver gelstei,' Master Storr said to me, 'would be last of your crystals to be perverted, if
indeed it truly can be perverted. It is possible that only the Maitreya,
having gained full mastery of the
Lightstone, could touch upon the silustria of your sword – and then only for the highest of
purposes. But I don't really know. Therefore I, too, counsel not using it.'
Kane
smiled at this as he gripped his large hands together and said, 'And have you followed your
own counsel, then?'
'What
do you mean?' Master Storr said.
Kane
pointed toward the waist of Master Storr, and then at Master Okuth and Abrasax. 'What is it you
keep inside your pockets?'
At
this, Abrasax smiled at Master Storr in a knowing way, and then looked at Kane. 'You have keen
perceptions - from where do they
come? What is that you keep inside yourself
?'
Abrasax's
smile deepened as he studied Kane. I knew that my mysterious friend hated being singled out
for scrutiny in this way. His
glare fell hot with a barely-contained fury. And then he stood up to face the Grandmaster of the
Brotherhood. It took
a brave man to hold Kane's gaze, as Abrasax did. I didn't need to be a reader to see the fire
that seemed to leap straight out
of
Kane's black eyes. As the candles flickered in their stands and the other Masters drew in deep
breaths or held them inside, Abrasax
continued staring at Kane. The Grandmaster's eyes grew brighter, like moonlit oceans, and I
fancied that I saw this radiance touch his hair and beard and spill down over
his tunic in flows
of scarlet, orange and other colors. And yet it was nothing against the splendor that enveloped
Kane. He stood as beneath a rainbow.
Its hues clung to his body like a robe of fire and slowly deepened and brightened into a
shimmering brilliance. White light crowned his savage head, and so did flashes of glorre.
I stared at him,
awestruck. I couldn't believe what my eyes or some other sensing organ told me must be true.
It lasted only a moment, this piercing
vision into the heart of Kane's being. And then I blinked my eyes, and it was gone. I saw my
old friend standing before me as he usually did: fiercely, willfully, joyfully
- with challenge toward Abrasax or anything in the world that might try to
thwart or even contain him.
The
others of the Seven, with my companions, sat gazing at Kane in wonderment.
Master Storr shook his head as he called out, 'No, it cannot be! Not this rogue
knight!'
Then
Abrasax bowed to Kane and said, 'I never thought to live so long that my path
would cross yours, Lord Elijin.'
Again,
Master Storr said, 'It cannot be!'
Abrasax
drew in a deep breath. He looked from Master Storr to Master Matai, and then at
Kane. 'It surely is. This man is no rogue knight. It is, as the Master Diviner
and I have deduced, now beyond argument that one of the Old Ones of the Elijik
Order journeyed with this company into Argattha. And has found the way into our
valley. His name, of old, was -'
'I am,'
Kane growled out, interrupting him, 'not the one you speak of. Once I was,
perhaps, but now I am Kane.'
'Kane,
then,' Abrasax said to him. 'But you were, were you not, sent to Ea along with
eleven others of your order to find and safeguard the Lightstone for the
Maitreya?'
'So,'
Kane said, glaring at him.
'And of
those eleven, only one other survives - Morjin.'
'So,'
Kane said again.
Abrasax
and the others of the Seven sat staring up at Kane. I noticed Master Storr's
hard blue eyes drilling into him as he regarded him with dread. He called out,
'If this is that one, then he has fallen nearly as far as the Red
Dragon. How can we be sure that if we help him to find the Maitreya, he won't
fall even farther?'
Kane,
not deigning to respond to the Master Galastei's terrible doubt, stood as still
as a granite carving.
'How can we be sure what any man or woman will
do, in the end?' Abrasax asked, looking at his fellows. 'Master Juwain tells
that in Argattha, Kane gave back the Lightstone to Valashu when he might have
kept it for himself. Can all of us say that we would have surrendered it
so faithfully? Surely Kane has passed the most vital test.'
His
reasoning seemed to persuade even Master Storr, who inclined his head toward
Kane. And Kane growled out to Abrasax, 'And what of the Brotherhood's Masters,
then? You speak of keeping no secrets, and yet you keep some very powerful
baubles hidden inside your pockets, eh?'
Abrasax
smiled at Master Storr. 'Did I not tell you that we could not conceal things
from one of the Elijin?'
And
with that he nodded at Master Matai, who reached into his pocket and brought
out a small crystal sphere that shone like a ruby. The First, he named it.
Master Virang likewise showed us a stone, which he called the Second, which
gleamed golden-orange in hue. And so with Master Nolashar and his bright yellow
sun stone and Master Okuth's green heart stone, and then Master Yasul's and
Master Storr's crystals - colored blue and purple -whose names were the Fifth
and the Sixth. And then, finally, Abrasax drew forth a marble-like sphere as
clear and brilliant as a diamond. It was, he told us, the Seventh; the last and
highest of the crystals called the Great Gelstei.
'Your
crystals,' he said to us, 'are powerful and rare, but on all of Ea there are no
other gelstei like these, for they were not made on earth.'
He went
on to say that only the angels, and the Galadin at that, could possibly possess
the art of forging the Great Gelstei. Then he held up his clear stone and
showed it to Kane. 'The Elijin who were sent here brought these with them,
didn't they?'
'So,'
Kane growled out. 'Nurijin, Mayin and Baladin were the stones' keepers. And
Manjin, Durrikin, Sarojin - Iojin, too. And all of them killed over the years
on this cursed world. I had thought the stones lost.'
He drew
in a long, pained breath and said to Abrasax, 'It must have been a great work
to seek these out and bring them here.' 'The work of ages,' Abrasax told him.
'Many Brothers died in this quest.'
'As you
will die if you continue to use them.' 'The Red Dragon, we believe,' Abrasax
said, 'does not yet know that we keep them. And use them we must, at least
tonight. There are tests still to be made.'
He sat
cupping his clear stone in his hand. It shimmered a soft white, even as the
crystals of the other Masters radiated colors of crimson and orange, up through
a glowing violet.
'We
have questions for the girl,' Abrasax said, looking at Estrella. Then he turned
to me. 'And for you, Valashu Elahad.'
The
room fell quiet, and I nodded at Estrella and then Abrasax. I sat gripping the
hilt of my sword as I waited for the seven Masters of the Brotherhood to test
me somehow - if not in actual combat, then perhaps in a trial of the soul.
Chapter 9 Back Table of Content Next
Abrasax oriented his long, stately body toward Estrella, sitting almost motionlessly on her cushion by her table. For a long time he regarded her in silence. His liquid brown eyes seemed to empty of all thoughts, even questions, even as they filled with a strange and piercing light. The round crystal resting in his open palm gleamed like a little star. Those of the other masters seemed to resonate with it, gathering radiance from it and feeding it back to Abrasax's stone, all at once.
At last, the Grandmaster's eyes regained their normal focus. And in his deep, strong voice, he announced, 'This girl's aura is like none I have ever seen. So pure: as if the flames of her chakras flow toward one color, in one direction. And bright it is - so very bright.'
Abrasax continued gazing at Estrella, who sat peacefully on her big red cushion gazing back at him. Estrella's happy smile seemed to warm Abrasax's heart, and his whole face pulled into a smile, highlighting the deep lines around his eyes.
'Strange,' he murmured as he looked at her. 'There is indeed something strange about this girl.'
'Then is it possible,' Master Storr asked, 'that she is truly a seard?'
Abrasax nodded his head. 'I'm certain that she is. Master Juwain has identified her correctly.'
'But what is a seard?' Daj asked from his place next to Estrella. It was the first time that evening he had dared to speak. 'Master Juwain tried to explain it, but I didn't really understand.'
'I'm not sure that
I fully understand, either,' Abrasax said. 'But from the accounts in the Book of Illuminations, it is clear that
seards are great and pure souls, gifted with being able to see deeply
into all things and all people, and most especially
the Maitreya I believe that Estrella might perceive the Shining One where
others could not, perhaps not even himself.'
He went
on to say that where I might be the fated guardian of the Lightstone, and
therefore of the Maitreya, a seard such as Estrella was his herald.
'Then,
Grandfather,' Master Matai said, 'you must believe Kasandra's prophecy will
prove true, that the girl will show the Maitreya?'
'I
believe the prophecy. She would be drawn to him like a fire moth finding its
mate across many miles.'
Although
I could not behold Estrella's aura just then as Abrasax did, she seemed the
brightest being in the room, and her eyes outshone even the silustria of my
sword.
'It's a
pity,' Master Matai said, 'that she cannot speak to us. I would like to know
where she was born, and when. A seard's stars would be close to those of a
Maitreya.'
It is
a pity that she cannot speak,' Master Okuth said. He was a smallish man who
seemed to hold inside his kind green eyes whole rivers of compassion. 'For
pity's sake, and her own, I would like a chance to heal her of her affliction.'
Master
Juwain held up his varistei and said to him, 'More than once, before the Red
Dragon regained the Lightstone, I tried to use this to heal Estrella - in vain.
Of course, I am only a Master Healer; you are the Master Healer.'
'I
believe you have done as much as any of us can do,' Master Okuth told him. 'At
least until the Maitreya is found and comes into his power. My power is
now constraint I am entrusted with a green gelstei, as are you, but the Red
Dragon knows that we keep this stone, and I do not dare to use it.'
'Then
how do you propose to heal Estrella?'
'In
truth, I don't. At least not here, and not tonight. But it may be that through
the Great Gelstei, she could speak to us in a way that we can understand, for a
short while.'
'And
the cost to the girl? What if she doesn't want to speak?'
All
eyes now turned on Estrella, sitting calmly as she nibbled on a cake crumb and
regarded Master Okuth.
'There
should be no cost,' Master Okuth said.
'Just
the opposite,' Master Matai said. 'Those whose chakras have been opened by the
Great Gelstei feel strengthened and enlivened.'
'And
you believe that engendering speech,' Master Juwain said to Master Okuth, 'is
it merely a matter of opening the girl this way?'
'It is
indeed more complicated than that,' Master Okuth told us. 'Much more
complicated. But let us just say that the power of the seven Openers projects
through sound and resonates with the secret music that inheres in all things.'
Kane
scowled at this, and looked at me. 1 knew that my savage friend hated it when
the Brothers spoke so esoterically.
'You
have my promise,' Abrasax assured us, 'that this test will leave Estrella
unharmed. But will she consent to it?'
Estrella
looked at him with complete trust. Then she quickly nodded her head.
'Good,'
Abrasax said. 'Then why don't we begin?'
He held
his hand, cupping his clear gelstei, out toward Estrella. The other Masters did
likewise with their crystals. Estrella sat very straight and still, not knowing
what to expect. She seemed at once curious and bemused by the powers of these
seven old men and their mysterious crystals.
As we
all waited, breathing deeply, the seven Openers began to luminesce. I sensed,
rather than saw, the seven wheels of light along Estrella's spine scintillating
in response to the gelstei's touch. The red of the First, Master Matai's stone,
seemed to give its fire to Estrella's lowest chakra even as something deep
inside Estrella called out to it. And this calling we all heard as a single,
clear, plangent note. It played back and forth between Estrella and the
gelstei. The other Masters with their stones likewise opened Estrella's other
chakras, and a beautiful music poured out into the chamber's cool air. I could
almost see the colors of this music. Master Storr's gleaming purple stone, I
thought, struck deep chords with some secret organ of speech within Estrella's
head. Master Yasul's gelstei, the Fifth, as blue as a sapphire, blazed more
brightly than did any of the others. It seemed to summon a bright song from
within Estrella's throat. Without warning, she began laughing out loud: a
delightful sound like the tinkling of bells. And then her mouth opened as
perfectly formed words began pouring from her lips like a silver stream:
'I've
wanted to talk so badly, to tell you things, Val Maram Atara, everyone,
to tell you everything, and now there is all the time in the world, but so
little time. Now, I can speak again, and that's a miracle but it won't
last because nothing does and yet everything. . .'
She
continued chattering on in a like way as we all sat listening in amazement. Her
voice was sweet, passionate and perfectly clear It flowed with a musical
quality, bright as the notes of a flute. It partook of Atara's diction and
phrasing, and Liljana's, too, as if she patterned her speech after that of
these two women whom she adored. And yet, this torrent of sound fairly soared with
a wild joy that was all her own. It seemed that she wanted to cram the entire
world into a few, quick, rushing breaths:
' . .
it's all so beautiful, and I'm so grateful, Val - Val, Val, Val! - so grateful
to you for saving my life. For life. I've wanted so badly to sing with
you, and Kane, our bright, bloody, beautiful Kane, and all of you, to sing and
laugh: to laugh at Maram and his silly, stupid, wonderful jokes. To weep with
Atara. No eyes, no tears, no hope, it seems, but love - love, love, love! There
is so much to say. But so little, really, only one thing, and I should
be glad I can speak again, almost as I did inside, not in words but in a kind
of music that gives birth to words. Do you know what I mean? It's like the
singing of the birds: so pretty, so pure, so here. . . and now, and yet
always and forever. This beautiful, beautiful thing - it sings me! I
am so happy! And so I can't help singing, too, to the birds and the sky and the
world, and everything sings back, in rubies and rainbows, in songs to the sun,
and sometimes even in silence. The silence. It's pulling me back, soon,
too soon, but don't feel sorry for me, please! These fires that the old men's
gelstei lit inside me flare like little suns, but soon they will fade, I can
feel it, quickly burning out but never quite out. Because it always
blazes, even in dark things: black gelstei and burnt crosses and hate. Val! -
even in the dead! In your father and mother, and mine, wherever they are,
because no one is ever really dead and there is a light that always
shines, the light, the light, the light. . .'
As the
candles' flames cast dancing shadows on the room's graven walls, we all sat
regarding Estrella. At last, she seemed to run out of things to say. She sat
peacefully on her cushion with her fingers laced together. I could not tell if
she had fallen quiet for a moment or had returned to the deeper silence of the
mute. And then Abrasax nodded his head and said to her. 'That was remarkable.'
'Yes,
remarkable,' Master Storr agreed. But his voice swelled with a patronizing
tone, and he seemed to regard Estrella as if she might be simpleminded. He said
to her, 'I'm sure that we were all touched by your .. . enthusiasm. But I'm not
sure that any of our questions
has been answered.'
'But
you haven't asked me any questions yet!' she said to him. She smiled at him,
and then laughed softly, and I felt her voice box vibrating like the strings of
a mandolet.
'You
must know, child, what we wish to know.'
Estrella
looked at the Brotherhood's seven masters, who studied her every expression.
She said, 'I think you want to know everything.'
Even
the sour, serious Master Storr smiled at this. 'No, not everything - at
least not tonight. But we would like to learn more concerning the Maitreya. Can
you not tell us anything about him?'
'But I
already did!'
Master
Storr rubbed at his eyes and stared at her. 'To speak once again after so long
a silence must be a strain on you. On your throat, on your lungs ... even on
your mind. I'm not sure that we all understood what you said.'
Her
response to this was to smile at him as if she felt very sorry for his
inability to apprehend the most simple of things.
'And
so,' Master Storr continued, as his face reddened, 'we still have questions
that we would -'
'But
why don't you just ask them, then?'
Master
Storr drew in a long breath as he squeezed his fingers around his purple
crystal. And he said to Estrella: 'You are a seard - this seems beyond any
doubt. But how is it that a seard can recognize the Maitreya?'
'How
should I know,' she said, 'since I haven't recognized him yet?'
'But
you must have some idea!'
Estrella
brushed back the dark curls from around her eyes and glanced at Abrasax. 'How
do you recognize the Grandfather when you meet him walking down a path?'
'But I know
him! I've known him, now, for nearly fifty years!'
'I've
known the Shining One for fifty thousand years. As long as the stars have
shined. Really, forever.'
Master
Storr waved his hand in the air, and shook his head. He seemed to give up hope
of understanding anything that she told him.
And
then Master Matai steered the questioning along a different tack as he asked
her, 'Can you tell me where you were born, and when?'
'I'm
sorry, but I don't remember. Perhaps it was in the Dark City.'
'In
Argattha? But didn't anyone ever tell you how old you are?'
'No, I
don't think they did. Does it matter?' 'It might help in corroborating the
Maitreya's horoscope.' 'But if
you've drawn up his horoscope, you already know how old he is and where
he was born!'
Now it
was Master Matai's turn to throw up his hand in frustration.
Then
Abrasax said to her, 'Estrella, do you have any idea where the Maitreya might
be found?'
With a
quick, glad motion, she nodded her head.
'Where,
then?'
And she
told him, 'Here.'
'Here?'
Abrasax said. 'Do you mean, on Ea? In these mountains?'
'No, here,
with us in this room, I hope. He is.'
Abrasax's
eyebrows pulled together. He seemed as mystified by Estrella as were Master
Matai and Master Storr. He asked her, 'But who is the Maitreya, then?'
Without
hesitation, she looked at me and said, 'Val is.'
My
heart suddenly pounded inside my chest with hard, painful beats. I did not want
to believe what I had heard her say.
And
neither, it seemed, did Abrasax. He said to Estrella, 'You were with Valashu in
Tria when it was finally proved that he could not be the Maitreya. And
now you are telling us that he is?'
'Yes,
he is,' Estrella said smiling at me. She turned to look at the table to the
right of mine. 'And so is Maram.'
'Sar
Maram Marshayk!' Abrasax said.
Maram's
eyes widened in astonishment as he patted his overstuffed belly and belched.
'Yes,
he - he is!' Estrella said. 'And Master Storr, too.'
The
Master Galastei shook his head as he looked at Abrasax. And then Master Okuth,
sitting next to him as he held out his green crystal, announced, 'The girl is
tiring, and so we should conclude the test.'
'The
girl is more than tired,' Master Storr said. 'She suffers from delusion.'
'No,
only from confusion, I think,' Master Okuth said. 'We know that the Red
Dragon, in making her mute, did mischief to her mind. Our gelstei have let her
summon up words but it seems have not undone the harm. There is something about
her words and our understanding of them, and vice versa, that doesn't quite go
together. It is like oil and water.'
'Her
words,' Master Storr said, speaking in front of Estrella as if she were only
one of the room's ornaments, 'are as unreliable as thin ice over a pond. I do
not see how we can trust her to! recognize the Maitreya.'
Liljana,
sitting next to me, had finally had enough of Master Storr's rudeness. She
leaned over to the table next to her, and threw her arm around Estrella as she
said, 'You speak of words, and yet fail to use them precisely. Kasandra
prophesied that Estrella would show the Maitreya, not merely recognize
him.'
'I'm
not sure I see the difference,' Master Storr said.
'I'm
not sure you do,' Liljana said, drawing Estrella closer as she glared at
Master Storr. 'And so who is deluded?'
At
this, Abrasax held up his hand as if to ask for peace. He said, 'And I'm not
sure that words, or any understanding of them, will help Estrella fulfill the
prophecy. Her mind might or might not have been harmed, but not her eyes
and certainly not her heart.'
'Then
why don't we,' Master Storr huffed out, 'conclude the test as we had agreed?'
Abrasax
inclined his head at this, and said to Estrella, 'Are you willing?'
'Yes, I
am,' Estrella said, nodding back to him. She slumped on her cushion, slightly,
and rubbed at her eyes. 'But I am tired. I'd like to talk and talk all
night, and maybe you'd understand, but I'm so so tired, and it was all
so bright and warm inside, but now its getting cold, and it hurts, and so will
you please give me back the silence?'
'But
there is more,' Master Storr said, 'that she might tell us and-'
'Please
- it hurts!' Estrella said. 'It hurts, it hurts, it hurts .. .'
Abrasax
regarded her only for a moment before bowing his head to her. Then he closed
his fingers around his clear gelstei, which seemed to quiesce and lose its
light. The other Masters took this as a cue to put away their stones. Estrella
immediately sat up straighter. I felt her plunge into a deep, silent pool. Her
face lit up with a smile of contentment that spoke more than entire rivers of
words.
Then
Abrasax motioned to Master Storr, who reached down by his side. He lifted up a
cracked, ebony box and showed it to us. He called for Estrella's table to be
cleared. After Liljana and I helped Masters Nolashar and Yasul move tea cups
and plates to our table, Master Storr stood up and stepped over to set the box
in front of Estrella. With great reverence, he opened it. One by one, he took
out various artifacts: a glass pen, a jade spoon, a chess piece (the- white
king) carved out of ancient ivory, a plain gold ring. He stood gazing at the
items gleaming faintly on the table.
'One of
these things,' he said to Estrella, 'once belonged to the last Maitreya,
Godavanni the Glorious. Can you recognize which one? Or, that is, show it
to us?'
His
face hardened into an iron-like mask, so as not to give hint which item this
might be. So it was with the other Masters. They hardly dared to breathe as
they waited to see what Estrella would do.
As
quick as the beating of a bird's wings, she clapped her hands together. Her
face brightened as she smiled with delight. Then, without hesitation, her hands
swept forward and closed around the wooden box.
'Excellent!'
Master Virang cried out. 'Most excellent!'
'A
seard, indeed,' Master Nolashar said.
Master
Storr's lips tightened as if someone had forced a sour cherry into his mouth.
He looked from Estrella to Liljana, and said, 'You didn't, Materix of the
Maitriche Telu, teach this girl to read minds, did you?'
In
answer, Liljana only glared at him. Master Storr clearly didn't like what he
must have seen in her mind, for he turned away from her and stared at
the box cupped in Estrella's hands. 'It
is known,' he announced, 'that Godavanni kept three song stones inside this
box. The stones have long since been lost, and perhaps the songs as well, but
at least we still have this.'
Estrella
set the box back on the table, and smiled at him. And then Abrasax said to
Master Storr, 'This is enough, do you agree? I believe the girl will show
us the Maitreya.'
Master
Storr rubbed his jaw as he stood eyeing the box. 'I am coming to believe that,
too. But the question that must be answered above all others is: can Valashu
Elahad lead her to him?'
And with
that, he turned to regard me.
'Tell
me where he might be found,' I said to Master Storr, 'and I will lead Estrella
there, along with the rest of my friends - and even yourself if you don't trust
file.'
'Bold
words. Prince Valashu,' Master Storr said. 'We have heard now you put yourself
forward as the Maitreya, with great boldness, and claimed the Lightstone for
yourself. To what purpose, we must wonder? You would have made yourself warlord
of a grand alliance, commander of a hundred thousand swords, a king of kings -
is it your hope now that finding the Maitreya will help You claim this
authority?'
The
look of scorn of Master Storr's face made me grind my teeth. Wrath filled my
heart then, and to the seven old masters gazing at me I said, 'What man can say
in truth that his purpose is as pure as damask, unstained by any desire for the
good regard of other men or influence upon them? Who can declare that every act
of his life has flown straight and true as an arrow toward a single target? Did
you, Master Storr, Master of the Gelstei, join the Brotherhood solely out of a
love for knowledge and service, with no thought at all of excelling and being
recognized for your efforts? Do you never doubt if your study of the gelstei
conceals a deeper urge to control and wield them? You have heard a great deal
about me, it seems, but know very little. I am of the sword, as you have said.
I would break it into pieces, if I could. All swords, everywhere. There was a
time when I wanted nothing more than to enter the Brotherhood, as you were
privileged to do, to play the flute and spend my life making music. But I had
duties: to my family, to my father, to my land. To all lands. Fate called me to
recover the Lightstone, with the help of my friends, and then to see it stolen by
the Crucifier. Was there not one moment when I desired to lead armies against
him and see him cut into pieces? Do I never long, now, by force of arms
to cut the Cup of Heaven from his bloody hand? If I said no, you would hear the
lie in my voice. Hear, then, the truth: six brothers I had, and I would have
shouted in gladness if any of them had become king of Mesh before me. A mother,
father and grandmother I had, and they are all dead because of me. Four
thousand of Mesh's bravest warriors, too. Everyone knows this. I am an outcast,
now. And so I cannot hope to be king of Mesh, let alone lord of a great
alliance. All that remains to me is to try to stop the Red Dragon from doing
the worst. It is why I think and feel and breathe. I do not dare even to hope
that a time may come when I can cast this into the sea and take up the
flute once more.'
So
saying, I lifted up my sword, and looked at the seven Masters who regarded me.
Master Storr stared at me with his cold, blue eyes, and I sensed that he saw
only my fury to defeat Morjin.
Abrasax,
however, saw other things. He studied me from across our table as he pulled at
his beard. 'We know there were signs that you were the Maitreya.'
'Yes,'
I said, 'there were signs.'
'But
you ignored, didn't you, the even stronger sign of the truth inside yourself?'
I held
my breath in disquiet that he could read me so keenly.
Then I
said, 'Yes, I always knew. But I didn't want to know I wanted. . .to
make everything right. And so I claimed the Lightstone.'
And
upon this crime, destruction and death had followed like an evil wind. Abrasax,
I thought, understood this very well, as he understood me. He had no need to
act as my accuser and judge when I had already condemned myself so damnably.
But he was not ready to see me act as my own executioner. I felt forgiveness
pouring out of him, and something else, too: an admonition that hatred of
myself could destroy me more surely than any weapon or poison of Morjin's.
Abrasax's eyes were soft yet unyielding upon my face. Looking into these deep,
umber orbs made me want to trust him without question.
'I didn't
know,' I told him, 'who the Maitreya is. Or what he is. And despite what
Estrella has told us tonight so beautifully, I still don't.'
I
looked over at Estrella to see if my words disappointed her, but she just
smiled at me.
'Master
Juwain,' Abrasax said, 'has given an account of the akashic crystal that you
found in the little people's wood. It is too bad that it was broken: you might
have gained the knowledge that you sought. But there are other crystals.'
I
looked across the room at the golden, False Lightstone resting on its marble
pedestal beneath the window; I looked at the seven Masters of the Brotherhood
who kept hidden the Great Gelstei. I said, 'Do you possess an akashic crystal,
then?'
'No, we
don't,' Abrasax told me. 'But there is this.'
So
saying, he drew forth a book from beneath the pile of cushions behind him and
showed it to me. Its cover seemed made of some shiny, hard substance like
lacquered wood. Bright golden glyphs shone from it, but I could not read them,
for they were of a script unfamiliar to me. Abrasax laid the book on our table.
He opened it, and my eyes fairly burned with surprise, for its pages were like
none I had even seen. Abrasax riffled through them, and I thought that there
must be thousands of them, each thinner than a piece of rice paper and as clear
as a window pane. It seemed that Abrasax's strong fingers must easily rip or
fracture these tinkling, tissue-like wisps. When I expressed my fear of this,
he smiled and said, 'The pages are quite sturdy. Here, try turning them
yourself.'
I put
my thumb and finger to one of the pages; it felt strangely cool to the touch
and as tough as old parchment.
'I read
this long ago,' Abrasax said. 'After speaking with Master Juwain earlier, I
asked Brother Kendall to retrieve it from the library that we might make
reference to it tonight.'
'You
read it how?' Maram called out. 'The pages have no letters!'
'Do
they not?' Abrasax asked him with a smile. 'Perhaps you are just not looking at
them right.'
And
with that, he opened the book to a page he had marked, and he held his hand
over it. Then Maram gave a little gasp of astonishment, and so did I, for the
clear crystal of the page suddenly took on an albescent tone as of the white of
an egg being fried. Hundreds of glyphs, like little black worms, popped into
view and crowded the page in many columns.
'Sorcery!'
Maram called out to Abrasax. He thumped his hand down upon our table near the
book, 'I would accuse you of sorcery, as I did Master Virang, but I suppose
that you'll just tell me, ah, that you're only helping me to see what was
already there to see?'
Abrasax
exchanged smiles with Master Virang, then turned his attention back to Maram
and the book. 'No, this time the explanation is simpler, for the writing was not
there to see. Only one who possesses the key to the book can unlock it and
bring the script into sight.'
'But
you made no move to unlock it, unless waving your hand like a conjuror
constitutes such. Where is the key?'
Abrasax
pointed his finger at his forehead and told Maram, 'Inside here. Each book is
keyed to open to a phrase, which must be memorized and held inside the mind or
sometimes spoken.'
'Like
one of the Way Rhymes?'
Abrasax
nodded his head at this. 'The Brotherhood must protect its secrets. And its
treasures.'
'But I
never heard that the Brotherhood kept such treasures!' Maram said as he
regarded the book in wonder.
'Neither,'
Master Juwain said, studying it as well, 'did I.'
'But
what is its secret?' Maram asked. 'Obviously, the pages are made of some
sort of gelstei - what sort, and how do you make it?'
'It is
called the vedastei,' Abrasax informed him as he ran his finger
down the page's glyphs. 'And I did not say that we made this - only that
we protect it. And cherish it for what it contains. It is that knowledge,
of the Maitreya, that concerns us now.'
He
cleared his throat and pressed his finger at the writing near the middle of the
page as he read to us: '"He is the Shining One who dwells in two worlds;
he is the light inside darkness, and the life that knows no death." '
Against
one of the windows above us, I saw Flick spinning about in a whirl of silver lights.
I remembered how, in Tria, the Galadin had sent this luminous being to bring me
word of the Maitreya in verses that I now recited to Abrasax:
The
Shining Ones who live and die
Between
the whirling earth and sky
Make
still the sun, all things ignite -
And
earth and heaven reunite.
The
Fearless Ones find day in night
And in
themselves the deathless light,
In
flower, bird and butterfly,
In
love: thus dying, do not die.
I
finished speaking and nodded at Abrasax. He tapped his book as he said to me,
'Do not these words concord with your verses and what Estrella has told us
tonight?'
Without
warning, Maram thumped his hand upon the table, rattling our cups. He looked at
Abrasax and grumbled out, 'Estrella said nothing of two worlds. I, for
one, know this world, and that should be enough, shouldn't it? And yet
you of the Brotherhood are never satisfied unless you can speak of another.'
Abrasax's
response to this was to flip through the pages of the book. He must have found
the passage that he was seeking, for he suddenly nodded his head. He said to
Maram, 'These words were written by Master Li of the Avasian Brotherhood.'
'The
Avasian Brotherhood? Ah, I've never heard of such.'
'That
is because,' Abrasax said, without further explanation, 'it existed on another
world, that of Varene, many ages ago. Now listen, for this bears most
pertinently on the matter of the Maitreya.'
His
eyes gleamed as he pulled at his fluffy white beard. Then he read to us:
'
"Two realms there are: the One and the manifold. The first is causeless,
inextinguishable, infinite - and some say as blissful as the sun's light on a
perfect spring day. The second realm is created, and all things that dwell
there suffer, age and die. It is all nails and fire, beauty that fades, a few
moments of sweetness and noble dreams. Some call this the world, and others
hell. It is man's path to strive ever upward, toward the heavens, toward the
sun. But to go beyond the world toward the One, we must go beyond ouselves. It
is almost like dying, is it not? A newborn ceases to exist in becoming a child,
as a child does in becoming a man. And as all men must do if they are to walk
the path of angels. And then, the greatest death of all when the Galadin perish
in their bodies and die into light in the creation of a new universe. Who has
utter faith in the goodness of such a sacrifice? Who would not fear that such a
path might lead to the utter obliteration of one's being?" '
Abrasax
finished reading and looked at me. 'And yet we must not fear. Overcoming fear
is the cardinal task of any warrior, be he of the sword or the spirit. Many
fail. Even the angels.'
He
paused to take a drink of tea and moisten his throat. Then he said to me, 'In
Tria, you learned the truth of Angra Mainyu, didn't you?'
I
shrugged my shoulders at this. I glanced at Kane. 'Can any man know very much
about the Galadin?'
'We
know this, I think,' Abrasax said. 'Angra Mainyu, and too many of his
kind, came to dread the Galadin's fate. And so he clung to his form as a leech
does to living flesh. And so rather than becoming infinitely greater in giving
himself to the universe, he tries to suck the blood from all things and take
the universe into himself - and so becomes infinitely less.'
I
considered this for a moment, then asked him, 'And the Maitreya?'
'The
Maitreya is sent to heal those such as the Dark One and to keep others from
falling as he has.'
I
remembered the blood rushing from my father's lips as he died, and all the
thousands of men lying still upon the reddened grass of the Culhadosh Commons.
I felt Morjin's baleful eyes nailing me to a fiery cross, and all the while my
heart drummed with a dreadful sickness inside my chest. And I said to Abrasax,
'Is that possible?'
'It must
be possible.' He glanced over at Estrella sitting happily at her table.
'The Maitreya, in great gladness of life, is sent to show all beings the
shining depths of themselves that can never die. And that, ultimately, the two
realms are one and the same.'
Maram
seemed not to like what he was hearing, for he knocked the bottom of his tea
cup against the tiled table as if to announce his annoyance. He caught
Abrasax's attention and asked him, 'Are you saying that when we when pass into
this infinite realm of yours, that some part of us keeps on shining? And that
therefore, there is no true death?'
'That,'
Abrasax told him, 'is my belief.'
Maram
gazed into his empty teacup as he muttered, 'And therefore, I suppose, there
is nothing to fear.'
'You
understand, then,' Abrasax said, smiling at him.
'I
understand that there is nothing to fear, and that is precisely what I do
fear: the great, black void at the end of life that swallows us all. You
say this neverness is full of light. The Shining Ones, if we're to believe you,
say this in their gladness. Ah, all your books say it, too. But who, I ask you,
has ever returned from the land of the dead to tell of it?'
Abrasax
seemed to have no answer to this; for a moment he turned his attention to sipping
his tea. Then his eyes grew hard and bright, and he called out: 'Master Virang!
Master Matai! Master Storr!'
He
issued instructions for a repositioning of the tables and of everyone in the
room. Atara, Estrella and Daj moved over to join the rest of our company at our
two tables, while the Seven took their places with Masters Yasul and Nolashar
at theirs. The artifacts still resting there were put back into the treasured
ebony box - all except the ivory chess piece. This carved, ancient 'king', four
inches long, Abrasax set precisely at the center of the table. Then he and the
other masters once again brought forth their seven round crystals. They sat in
a circle holding out these stones around the chess piece.
'I must
now say more about the Great Gelstei,' Abrasax told us. 'Is there anyone who
does not remember the account of creation in the Beginnings?'
'Do you
mean,' Daj piped in, 'how the Ieldra sang the universe into existence?'
He
beamed with pride at his recently acquired knowledge as Abrasax smiled and
nodded his head at him. And then Abrasax said. 'The account in the Saganom
Elu is poetic and magisterial and certainly true. But not all has been told
there. Exactly how, we might ask, did the Ieldra bring the One's design
into its full flowering?'
He
looked at Kane and added, 'You must surely know.'
'So - I
have forgotten, if ever I did know.'
Abrasax
smiled sadly, and then he told us that many books in the Brotherhood's library
contained knowledge as to this arcane subject. He related an amazing story,
part of which had been revealed to my companions and me the year before in the
amphitheater of the Urudjin outside of Tria: 'Seven colors there are, and they
create all the beauty of the world and all that we see. And the seven notes
that we summon out of trumpet or mandolet ring out the melodies of all music.
So with the seven Openers and the creation of the world. The gelstei that
crystallized out of the primeval fire were infinitely greater than these little
stones that we of the Brotherhood are privileged to keep. And they opened up
all the infinite possibilities of life. For as the Ieldra sang, the great
crystals vibrated like the strings of a harp, and brought into being and form
all things.'
Maram
gazed at the gelstei shining in the Masters' hands. He asked, 'Are you saying
that these stones partake of the power of the mythical gelstei?'
'They
are not mythical,' Abrasax told him. 'They exist somewhere, out in the
stars, beyond Agathad.'
'But do
they still have the power to create?'
'Yes -
and to uncreate. Even as these stones do.'
He
nodded at Master Matai, whose red crystal lit up like a glowing demon's eye.
Then Master Virang's stone, the Second, flared with an orange fire, and so with
the other Masters' gelstei in a progression of hues. As Abrasax's clear stone
spat out a fierce white light, the crystals all began pouring forth sound as
well. It might have been called music, but the harsh tones and shrills that
vibrated from the crystals filled the chamber with a terrible stridor more like
a wail of death than a song. It built louder and ever more jangling upon ear
and nerve until I felt compelled to throw my hands over my ears. I watched in
amazement as the ivory of the chess piece seemed to lose its substance and
began wavering in the candles' soft light. And then, suddenly, with a skreak
like breaking metal, it vanished into thin air.
'Sorcery!'
Maram cried out. He moved over to the Masters' table, and rudely wedged his
body between Master Yasul and Master Storr, He ran his hand around the table's
bare surface where the chess piece had sat.
'It's
gone!' Daj cried out. 'The king is gone - but where?'
'Ah,
gone into nothing,' Maram muttered. 'Into hell. It would seem it has been
annihilated, like a man's soul when life's candle blows out.'
The
seven Masters seemed to meditate upon their gelstei. And Abrasax said to Daj,
and to Maram, 'Wait.'
A few
moments later, with a chiming like that of struck bells, the chess piece winked
back into plain view. I sat blinking my eyes. Maram reached out to snatch it up
with his fat fingers before it disappeared again. 'More sorcery! he cried out.
He gripped the carved ivory hard! in his hand as if to reassure himself that it
was real.
And
Abrasax said to him, 'Don't be so sure you know what existence is - or isn't.'
Maram
waved his hand at this. 'I think you must have somehow hidden from our sight
what was there all along. And then caused us to see it once again.'
Abrasax
held out his hand to take the chess piece from Maram as he shook his head. He
showed us all the gleaming white king.
'No,
that was not the way of things,' he said. 'This, for a moment was truly
unmade. But our gelstei, being small, possess only a small power. We of the
Seven possess even less. It is not the province of man to unmake
things.'
'So,'
Kane growled out. His black eyes seemed to grow even blacker, like two bits of
neverness that might swallow up not only a chunk of carved ivory but entire
worlds.
'And it
is not,' Abrasax said, looking from Kane to Maram, 'the province of the Elijin,
or even the Galadin. To the Ieldra, and only to the Ieldra, is given the power
to create and uncreate.'
'I wish
the Ieldra would just uncreate Angra Mainyu,' Maram said. 'And Morjin I
and every other evil creature in the world.'
'That
is not the way of things, either,' Abrasax told him, giving him back the chess
piece. 'The Ieldra, according to the One's design, sing the universe into
creation. But once it is created, no single part may be unmade. All is
necessary. Nothing may be subtracted just because it seems to be hateful or
bad.'
I sat
watching Maram twirl the chess piece between his fingers, and I said, 'If
Morjin got his hands on those gelstei of yours, he'd try to use them to
subtract us from the world. And much else that he hates.'
Abrasax
nodded his head at this. 'And with Angra Mainyu, it would be much worse. Once
freed from Damoom, he would try to use the Lightstone to seize the greatest of
the Great Gelstei and unmake the Ieldra themselves. He would, I think, fail.
But out of his failure would come cataclysm and fire, and he would cause the
Ieldra to have to destroy all things.'
I
turned to look out the chamber's windows up at the faraway stars. And I said,
'But why? I don't understand.'
'I'm
not sure I do either,' Abrasax said with a heavy sign. 'At least not completely. It seems to me,
though, that the Ieldra abide the evil of the world because out of it,
sometimes, comes great good. But once all is fallen into darkness,
forever, what would be the purpose of making everything suffer without
ademption or end?'
What,
indeed? I wondered, as I thought of my mother hanging all broken and bloody
from a plank of wood.
As
Maram continued playing with the chess piece, Abrasax looked at me and said, 'I
think we have an answer to both Sar Maram's question and yours. If this king
can return from the realm of the unmade, then so can a prince vanquish his fear
of death -and so in dying, will not die. But only, I believe, with the help of
the Maitreya.'
'If you
do believe that,' I said to him, 'then for love of the world help us to
find him!'
At
this, Master Storr's fingers closed around his gelstei, and he said. 'It is for
love of the world - and much, much else - that we must be sure of you. Wine
poured into a cracked cup not only is wasted but helps destroy the cup.'
'I will
not fail!' I half-shouted at Master Storr.
'Bold
words,' he said to me. 'But what if you do fail?'
The
room fell quiet as he and the others of the Seven sat regarding me. And then
Master Okuth said, 'If the Maitreya is slain or falls into Morjin's hands, then
we see no hope of Angra Mainyu ever being healed. And so no hope for Ea and all
the other worlds of Eluru.'
'The
risk is great beyond measure,' Master Virang said to me. 'And not just to the
world, but to yourself. If you fall into Morjin's hands, or fall as his
master did, then -'
'But we
have to take the chance!' I cried out. 'Or else we might as well be dead already!'
For a
while everyone sat quite still. The smell of various teas steeping in hot water
filled the air. Then Abrasax looked at me with unnerving percipience, and said,
'Your manner, Valashu, the fire of your eyes, all you have dared and done -
this bespeaks the attainment of the highest Valari ideal. And yet I think you
find your valor in being drawn to that which you most dread.'
I said
nothing as I tried to return his relentless gaze.
'You
would wish,' he continued, 'for others to see you as fearless, as you would
like to see yourself. But you fear this never-ness that Prince Maram has told
of so terribly, don't you?'
I could
hardly look at him as I nodded my head and said, 'Yes.'
'And
you fear, too,' Abrasax said as the others of the Seven bent closer to me,
'that Morjin will be the one to damn you to exile in this lightless land?'
Yes,
yes, yes! And as I feared, so I hated; and as I hated my heart ached with a
black, bitter wrath that poisoned my blood and darkened everything I held
inside as beautiful and good. How I longed to take a sword to this dreadful
disease that consumed me! But I could not, as I might rid myself of a rotting
limb, simply cut it out.
'And
most of all,' Abrasax said, looking at me deeply, 'you fear your hatred of
Morjin.'
'It is
killing me!' I called out.
The
fury that poured out of me beat against Liljana, Master Juwain and the others
sitting close to me with the force of a raging river. It caught up the seven
Masters, as well. Their faces fell ashen and sick, and Master Storr gripped the
edge of his table as if to keep himself from being swept away. And then Master
Juwain placed his hand on the center of my back, and I drew in three long, deep
breaths.
'You
see,' Abrasax said to me, 'your hate is a terrible thing, and we fear it, too.'
'I'm
sorry,' I finally gasped out. 'I would have done better to have been born a
lamb or made a gelding!'
Abrasax's
smile was like a cold bucket of water splashed in my face. And he said, 'Do not
mistake lack of passion for virtue. We must celebrate all the passions, as we
do life itself.'
'Even
hate?'
'Yes,
even that. The virtuous man is not one who doesn't hate, but he who is
in full control of it, as he is all his passions, directing it toward a good
end - and by good means.'
I
traded dark looks with Kane then, for Abrasax had pierced to the heart of the
conundrum that tormented me. Then I looked back at the Grandmaster and said.
'Too often it seems that if I don't give back Morjin evil for evil, he'll win.
And if I do fight this way, evil will still win.'
'It is
difficult, I know,' he told me. 'But you must find the way to make use of these
blazing passions of yours, even the ugly and evil inside yourself, toward a
higher end - even as the One does in creating the world. Pour fire the wrong
way against a lump of coal and it will burn up and crumble into ashes. Wield
fire as the earth does, however, as the sun and stars do, and you will make a
diamond. This self-creation is the path of the angels; it is their
fundamental duty and test.'
He came
over to my table to pour some tea into my cup, and his steady gaze seemed to
remind me that I held the keys to two opposing kingdoms inside my heart: either
the wild joy of life or the
rage for death. Master
Storr, who had recovered from my carelessness, pointed his finger at me and
said, 'We've all felt this passion of Prince Valashu tonight. Will it, in Tria,
he slew a man. How long beforehe slays again?'
'Never!'
I cried out inside the cold castle of my mind. And then, to Master Storr and
the others, I said, 1 have vowed never again to use the valarda this way. And
Morjin lives because of
this!'
It
might have been more accurate to say that Morjin had survived our last battle
because of my hesitation - or because I could no more control my gift than I
could a thunderstorm.
'It is
strange that Morjin left Argattha at this time,' Abrasax said to me. 'Indeed,
there is something very strange about your encounter with him. I must believe
that it is for the best that you did not slay Morjin with this secret sword of
yours. All my understanding of the Law of the One is that the valarda is to be
used only for the highest of purposes.'
Yes, I
thought, it should be. To sense in others their deepest desires, to dream their
dreams, to share with them my own, - how I had longed for this! Yet too often
the valarda had been a curse. I felt my heart pressing up against my throat as
I said, 'All my life, I have suffered others' passions. And now, it seems, I
have learned to inflict mine upon them - even to slay.'
Abrasax
regarded me a moment before saying, 'Surely you must suspect that your
sentiments and passions, as powerful as they are, are not sufficient to
kill another person?'
I
looked at him in alarm and waited for him to say more.
'Haven't
you ever wondered,' he asked me, 'at the true nature of the valarda?'
'Only
as long as I could think and feel!' I told him.
'Then
haven't you ever sensed that your openness to others is only the beginning of
openness to much more? Indeed, I believe it leads to the identity with
others, ultimately with the entire world. As with the Maitreya.'
'But I
am not the Maitreya!'
'No,
you are not,' he told me. 'But already you have wielded some of the power that
must be his. Through him would flow the great soul force, the deepest fires of
the world. Such a force, Valashu, can be used either for great evil or great
good.'
He went
on to say that, ultimately, this angel fire could be used to destroy whole
universes, as the Ieldra were sometimes forced
to do, or to create new ones.
He
finished speaking and poured himself yet another cup of tea. And I said, 'If
what you've told us is true, then the Maitreya would possess the valarda in
much greater measure than I.'
'Perhaps.
But I should say rather than possessing the valarda, the Maitreya, in his
essence, is valarda, for he would be as a window letting in the light of
all things.'
Above
us, the twelve round windows filled with the faint sheen of the stars. The dome
above us seemed to catch the exhalations of the Seven as they looked at me.
'The
Maitreya,' I said to Abrasax, and to everyone, 'must be able to draw
forth the light from the Cup of Heaven. And we must find him before Morjin
does.'
Master
Virang's discipline was meditation, not mind-reading, but I sensed that he
exactly echoed Abrasax's thoughts as he asked me, 'Do you seek the Shining One
to keep Morjin from using the Lightstone or for more personal reasons?'
'Both,'
I told him truthfully.
Two
flames, I thought, burned inside my heart. The first was reddish-black, and
would destroy me if I let it. The other flame was as blue as the sky and
connected me to all the lights of the heavens.
'If we
are to help you, we must be sure of you,' Master Storr told me again. 'Sure, at
least, that you can use the valarda for good, and not ill. Will you allow us to
test this?'
I
nodded my head as I looked at him. 'if you must.'
'Good,'
Master Storr said. 'Then please stand up.'
I did
as he asked, and moved off to the side of the tables beneath the chamber's
dome. The Seven gathered around me. Each of them held one of the Great Gelstei
out toward my chest.
'Ah,
just don't make him disappear,' Maram called out from his cushion below
me.
Abrasax
smiled at this as his open hand showed a little colored sphere. So it was with
Master Yasul, Master Matai and the others of the Seven. Each of them,
especially Master Storr, gazed at me intently. I felt their eyes pierce me like
hot needles at many places through my body. Their hands, now glowing with the
radiance of their crystals, seemed to reach inside me and open me to the whirls
of light up and down my spine.
'It
burns, does it not?' Abrasax said to me. His eyes filled with concern for me
even as his crystal flared with a white luster. 'Your belly is where you feel
it, isn't it? All your hatred of the Red Dragon?'
Deep
within my belly, down behind my navel, the red flame raged hot as molten stone.
For a moment, I perceived it as Abrasax did: as red as burning blood and shot
with streaks of orange darkening to black, like smoke. I sensed that it would
soon kill me, if I let it.
'There
is a saying,' Abrasax told me. 'Words as old as the stars: "If you would
be freed from burning, you must become fire."'
With
that, the crystals of the Seven glistened in a rainbow brilliance. Wheels of
fiery light whirled along my spine in colors to match the hues pouring from their
crystals. The red flame in my deepest part built hotter and hotter. It might, I
knew, burn up the whole world with my hellish hate if I let it. It consumed me,
now, almost, being drawn up into my chest with every beat of my heart. But
there, too, gathered the other flame, pure and blue, like Arras and Solaru and
the brightest of the stars.
If you
would be freed from burning, you must become fire.
I
closed my eyes then, and I felt the hot flickers of the red flame feed the
blazing of the blue. I willed this to be. It grew brighter and brighter.
I did. My whole being, out from my center into my arms and legs, feet
and hands, fairly shimmered and sang with a surging new life. And then, in a
rush of joy, a fountain of violet flame seemed to shoot up through my belly,
heart and throat, flaring to pure white as it filled the bright, black spaces
behind my eyes. For an endless moment I did disappear, into a fire so
brilliant that it touched the whole world with an infinite light.
At
last, I returned to myself. I sensed a quickness of breath and rushing blood
inside Abrasax, and I opened my eyes to see as he did. And I gasped in
astonishment. For the auras of the Seven and Atara and Kane, and all those in
the room, impinged on each other, and flowed, swirled and shimmered in a cloud
of light. This living radiance seemed to be drawn to me as water to an opening
in the earth and to change hues as it brightened into a numinous and dazzling
glorre. I drew my sword then, and held it pointing up toward the apex of
the dome. Alkaladur, too, blazed with this perfect color.
'Fire,
indeed,' Abrasax said.
Then he
put away his gelstei, and so did Master Storr and the others, and the auras of
everyone gathered there vanished from my sight. But my sword's silustria
continued burning with an ineffable flame.
'Do you
see?' Abrasax said, to Master Virang and Master Storr. 'Do you see? It is as
Master Juwain told about Prince Valashu.'
Everyone
watched as the glorre illuminating my sword slowly faded to a silvery sheen. I
sheathed Alkaladur as I looked at Abrasax.
'That
is enough of testing for one night,' he said, smiling at me
Master
Storr looked down at Maram swigging his tea and said! 'But what of the others?'
'Valashu
is their leader,' Abrasax told him. 'As he goes, so go they. If he can overcome
the worst of himself as he has here tonight, then I believe that they will,
too.'
'You
speak of him,' Master Storr said, eyeing me, 'almost as if he is the
Maitreya!'
'No,
Valashu is not the Shining One,' he said. 'But I believe their fates are
interwoven, as threads in a tapestry. Surely it is upon the Prince of Elahad to
lead the way to him. Do you agree. Master Matai?'
The
Master Diviner, standing across from me, smiled at Abrasax. And then, in turn,
as Abrasax queried the other masters, each of them gave his assent. Even Master
Storr reluctantly nodded his head.
'I
suppose we must trust Valashu and his friends,' he affirmed.
In the
end, I thought, either one has faith in another or not.
'Yes,
we must trust them with all our power to trust,' Abrasax said. 'And give them
all our help. All the signs point one way.'
'Ah,
but which way?' Maram asked as he fingered his beard. 'That is the
question of the moment, is it not?'
Abrasax
smiled at this, then called out, 'Master Matai - will you show us the
parchment?'
The
Seven moved back over to the empty table, and my friends and I gathered around
them. Master Matai produced a large, yellowed parchment, which he unrolled and
laid upon the table for all of us to examine. On its glossy surface were
inscribed a great circle and various symbols marking the position of the
planets and stars at the hour of my birth. It was, I saw, a copy of my horoscope,
which Master Sebastian of the school in Mesh had prepared scarcely a year
before.
Master
Matai ran his finger over a hornlike glyph representing the sign of the Ram,
and he said, 'As Master Sebastian and Master Juwain elucidated in Mesh,
Valashu's horoscope is nearly identical with that of Godavanni. Valashu's stars,
as they determined, are those of a Maitreya.'
'Then
you should not blame him,' Maram half-shouted, 'for having believed that he
might be the Maitreya!'
Master
Matai shot him a sharp look and shook his head to silence him. And then he went
on: 'As we say, the stars impel; they do not compel. There are always other
signs. And there are other stars.'
'I'm
afraid I still don't understand,' Master Juwain said, resting his elbows on the
table to examine the horoscope, 'where Master Sebastian went wrong.'
'That
is because he didn't,' Master Matai said. 'On all of Ea, there is hardly a
better diviner, especially when it comes to astrology. No, Master Sebastian
made no error, at least of commission. But it must be said that
an omission has been made, and a critical one at that.'
So
saying, he brought forth a second parchment and unrolled it on top of mine.
'Always,
at the end of ages, the Maitreyas are born,' he told us. 'And at the end of this
age, the last age that will give birth to the Age of Light, or so we hope,
the stars are so strong. I have studied this for years, and for years I
believed the Maitreya's star would rise over the Morning Mountains. But I have
found a brighter one that rose in another land. Twenty-two years ago, now, at
the same time that the Golden Band flared as it never had before and has done
only once since.'
I
glanced at the date that Master Matai had inked onto the parchment: the ninth
of Triolet in the year 2792 - the same day as my birth.
Master
Juwain studied the symbols inscribed in the great circle, and he asked, 'And
for which land has this horoscope been prepared?'
'Hesperu.
In the Haraland, in the north, somewhere below the mountains, to the east of
Ghurlan but west of the Rhul River.'
'Hesperu!'
I wanted to cry out. I could think of few lands of Ea so far away, and none so
difficult to reach.
'But we
can't journey there!' Maram bellowed. 'It's impossible!'
'So, it
would be difficult, not impossible,' Kane said, his eyes gleaming.
He went
on to tell us that we could complete our transit of the White Mountains and
cross the vast forest of Acadu. And then choose between two routes: the
southern one through the Dragon Kingdoms, or the northern route across the Red
Desert
'Oh,
excellent!' Maram said. 'Then we'll have our choice between being put up on
crosses or dying of thirst in the desert.'
I
turned to look at Maram. I didn't want him to frighten the children - and
himself.
'But
think, Val!' he said to me. 'Even if the Maitreya was born in Hesperu,
he might long since have gone elsewhere. Or been taken as a slave or even
killed. It's madness, I say, to set out to the end of the earth solely
according to another astrological reckoning.'
I
waited for the blood to leave his flushed face, and then I asked him, 'But what
else can we do?'
'Ah, I
don't really know,' he muttered. 'Why must we do anything? And if we do
do something, wouldn't it be enough to work in concert with the
Brotherhood? Surely the Grandmaster has alerted the schools in Hesperu to look
for the Maitreya. Let them find him, I say.'
Master
Juwain looked over his shoulder at Maram and asked him, 'Have you forgotten
Kasandra's prophecy?'
'You
mean, that Val would find the Maitreya in the darkest of places?'
Hesperu,
I thought, under the terror of King Arsu and the Kallimun, no less Morjin,
seemed just about the darkest place on Ea.
'There
is more that you should know,' Master Matai said as he pressed his finger
against one of the symbols linked onto the parchment. 'The Maitreya's star, I
believe, will burn brightly but not long.'
I
looked at Maram as he looked at me. Sometimes decisions are made not in the
affirmation of one's lips but in the silence of the eyes.
'But
we'll die reaching Hesperu!' he moaned. 'Oh, too bad, too bad!'
And
with that he hammered his fist on the table behind him hard enough to rattle
the teacups and to shake from them a few dark, amber drops. 'Why can't I have
at least one glass of brandy before I'm reduced to worm's meat? Are there no
spirits in this accursed place?'
'There
are those that you carry inide your hearts,' Abrasax told him with a smile.
Maram
waved his thick hand at Abrasax's attempt to encourage him, and he turned
toward me. 'Can't you see it, Val? It's madness, this new quest of ours,
damnable and utter madness!'
'Then
you must be mad, too,' I told him, 'to be coming with us.'
'Am I
coming with you? Am I?'
'Aren't
you?'
'Ah, of
course I am, damn it! And that's the hell of it, isn't it? How could I ever
desert you?'
We
returned to our original tables then. Abrasax began a long account of how one
of the ancient Maitreyas, on another world during the age-old War of the Stone,
had sung to a star called Ayasha to keep it from dying in a blaze of light. We
drank many cups of tea. Finally, it grew late. Through one of the windows, I
saw the stars of the Dragon descending toward the west. And yet Kane still sat
spellbound as he listened to Abrasax's flowing voice, and so did Daj and
Estrella. But whereas Kane could remain awake for nights on end, and perhaps
longer, the children began yawning with their need for sleep.
'I
think that is enough for one night,' Abrasax said. He closed the crystal-paged
book from which he had been reading. I sheathed my sword, and my companions hid
away their gelstei. 'Tomorrow you must begin preparing for a long journey, and
we must help you.'
He
turned to look at Atara, Daj and Estrella, and all the rest of us, one by one.
At last he rested his gaze on me. 'I believe with all my heart that you will
find the Maitreya, as has been prophesied. And I also believe that what will
befall then will be ruled by your heart. Remember, Valashu, creation is
everything. It is what we were born for.'
He
stood up slowly, and stepped over to the pedestal holding up the cup of silver
gelstei. After lifting it with great care, he brought it back to our table and
set it down. And then he enjoined us: 'Escort the Shining One back to us, here,
and we shall help him, too. We shall place this in his hands, if not the true
gold. And then we shall see who is truly master of the Lightstone.'
After
that we went back to our hostels to rest. For hours I lay awake with my hand on
the hilt of Alkaladur, by the side of my bed. A bright flame still blazed
inside me. I wanted to pass it on like a strengthening elixir to Atara,
sleeping in the little house next to mine, and to Estrella, Liljana, and
everyone. I couldn't help hoping that we might bring something beautiful into
creation, even though I knew that before us lay an endless road of blood,
destruction and death.
Chapter 10 Back Table of Content Next
We spent the next days resting and preparing tor what Maram kept calling our 'mad quest', in the warmth of the brightening spring, we feasted on good, solid food to build up our bodies against the trials that would soon come. We tried to strengthen our minds and spirits as well. Master Juwain passed many hours in the school's library studying maps and reading accounts of the lands that we must pass. Liljana held counsel with Abrasax in an unprecedented effort to combine the resources of the Sisterhood and Brotherhood. Master Nolashar taught Estrella and me secret songs to play on our flutes and drive evil humors away. We all sat in the stone conservatory with Master Virang, who guided us through meditations so as to enliven our auras. This unseen radiance, like an armor woven of light, might protect us against the malice and lies of the Red Dragon - against even cold and hunger and the depredations of our own despair.
Alter nearly a week of this practice, the other masters joined us in these meditations, and the Grandmaster, too. The Seven brought forth their crystals and used them to quicken our chakras' fires. As Abrasax told us. this would help open us to the angel fire and greater life.
'That is the power and purpose of the Great Gelstei,' he told us one fine morning with the larks singing in the nearby cherry orchard. 'At least, the purpose of these small stones that we are Privileged to keep. We use them with you as we believe the Star People do: in the creation of angels.'
'Ah. yes,' Maram said as he patted his overstuffed belly and let loose a
rude belch, 'I am rather like an angel aren't I? Five-Horned Maram will
become Maram of the Golden Wings. Soon, soon, I know,
lesser men will have to bow to me and address me as "Lord Elijin".'
Abrasax shook
his head in reproach for his sarcasm, and told him, 'You need not worry about
taking on that burden just now. The Way is very long - long even for the Star
People, and we have rediscovered only part of it.'
He looked at Kane as if in hope that he might say more
about this ancient path that human beings walked toward the heavens. But Kane
just stared at the conservatory's stone walls in silence.
'I must say,' Maram grumbled out, as he pressed his
hand against his belly, solar plexus, heart and throat, 'that I feel little
different than I did before we began this work.'
'That is because,' Master Storr chided him, 'your
fires are blocked and trapped within
your second chakra.'
At this, Maram shot Master Storr a belligerent look,
and wantonly waggled his hips. Master Storr stared back at him in disdain.
Abrasax, however, was kinder. He smiled at Maram and
said, 'Give it time.'
'Ah, time,' Maram muttered. 'How much of it do 1 have
left before the candle burns out?'
He sighed as he stood up and gazed out the
conservatory's window at the setting sun. Then he turned to Abrasax and said,
'You seem to have had all the time in the world. Grandfather, and yet that
hasn't kept old age from snowing white hair on you, if you'll forgive me for
speaking so bluntly.'
Abrasax smiled at this. 'I will forgive you, Sar
Maram, but things are not always as they seem. Just how old do you think I am?'
Maram gazed at Abrasax, and I could almost hear him
mentally subtracting ten years from his assessment in an effort to repay
Abrasax's kindness: 'Ah, seventy, I should guess/
Abrasax's smile widened. He said, 'I was born
in the year that the Red Dragon destroyed the Golden Brotherhood and captured
the False Gelstei. That was -'
'2647!' Maram cried out. 'But that is impossible! That
would make you a hundred and forty-seven years old!'
'Please, Sar Maram - a hundred and forty-six. Abrasax
said with a grin. 'I won't have my next birthday until Segadar.'
'But that is impossible!' Maram said again. He looked
from Abrasax to Kane. 'Only the Elijin are immortal and -'
'We of the Seven,'
Abrasax said, interrupting him, 'have not gained immortality - only
longevity. And other things.'
'Ah, what things?' Maram asked with great
interest.
In answer, Abrasax stepped over to him, and he laid
his long, wrinkled hands on Maram's sides along his chest And then he lifted
him as he might a child, straight up into the air. Maram although obviously no
angel, did for a moment appear to be flying. He whooped as he beat his arms
like wings. I blinked my eyes in disbelief, for with all the eating he had been
doing during the past week, he must have weighed twenty stone.
Abrasax set him down, and Maram stared at him as if he
too couldn't believe what had just happened. He said to him, 'You look like an
old bird, but you're as strong as a bear!'
'Thank you, I think,' Abrasax told him.
Maram clasped Abrasax's hand as if to test its
strength. Abrasax squeezed back, and Maram winced and coughed out, 'Did I say a
bear? A bull, you are, a veritable old bull. And all this from the work
you do with your little crystals? What other, ah, powers have you
gained?'
Abrasax smiled at this and said, 'What powers would you
most like to gain?'
'Do you need to ask? A bull has only two horns, but I
have five! A veritable dragon, I am, and oh how I burn! And so I would
strengthen those fires that burn the most pleasurably.'
'There is more to life, Sar Maram, than pleasure. And
there is more to pleasure than this little tickle in the loins that you pursue
so ardently.'
'Yes, there is beer and brandy,' Maram said. 'And that
which bestirs me down there is no little thing - it is more like dragon fire!'
Abrasax said nothing to this as he studied Maram with
his keen eyes.
'Pure dragon fire, I tell you! And I can direct it as
I will, no matter what Master Storr says about me being blocked!'
'Can you? Then perhaps you wouldn't mind if we put it
to the test?'
'What kind of test?'
'One that should prove more enjoyable than one of your drinking duels.'
'Truly? Truly?' Maram smiled as he considered this.
'Then when do we
begin?'
Abrasax stepped over to Master Okuth to murmur
something in his
ear. Master Okuth bowed, excused himself, and left the room. We waited with the other Masters
around the tea tables for him to go about his business, whatever it was. Half
an hour later, he returned. He produced a small vial containing some dark,
reddish substance, which he poured into Maram's cup of tea and stirred with a
little silver spoon. Then he gave the cup to Maram to drink.
'Ah, I must say,' Maram called out, sniffing his tea,
'that this potion of yours seems suspiciously like blood.'
'It is a tincture made from the pineal gland of the
adil serpent,' Master Okuth told him. 'It will help dissolve your blockage so
that the kundala can rise within you.'
Maram sniffed it again. 'Are you sure it won't poison
me? Ah, like a snake's venom, paralyzing me?'
'It will only paralyze your resistance.'
I gazed at Maram, waiting for him to drink, or not -
as did Kane, Master Juwain and Liljana. The Masters of the Brotherhood studied
him as well. And then Maram, challenged once again to drink as part of a trial,
shrugged his shoulders and downed the red-tinged tea.
'Aach!' he cried out, coughing. 'Ohhh - oh, my Lord,
that was vile!'
He looked to Master Okuth for sympathy for his
sufferings. But Master Okuth just looked at him sternly as he brought out his
small, green heart stone. The other Masters held out their gelstei as well, and
they beckoned for Maram to stand up and gathered around him.
Then Abrasax instructed Maram: 'You must try
visualizing that which you most love. Hold this image inside yourself, and let
it call to you.'
'Ah, you mean visualize her whom I love. Make her
call to me.'
'No, Sar Maram,' Abrasax said. 'I do not mean
that. We have other potions and other exercises designed for the realization of
fancies and dreams. You have told us that you are a man of this world. There is
something in this world - something that you've held in hand and heart -
that you love above all else. Hold it in your heart now. And in your mind. Let
it call to your life's deepest fire and draw it upward, even as the kundalini
strikes upward, toward the heavens.'
Maram smiled at me then, and I understood that he took
great satisfaction in keeping secret whatever it was that he found most to
love. Was it Behira, I wondered? The Galdan brandy that Vishakan, chief of the
Niuriu, had once poured for him? The smell of the earth on the most perfect day
of his life? I thought that I would never know.
Then Maram closed his eyes, and the Great Gelstei of
the Seven began to sing to Maram in a rainbow of fire. The Masters worked their
magic upon Maram for most of an hour. Finally, there came a moment when I felt
something inside of Maram break open I sensed a great gout of flame moving up
from his first and second chakras into his third, fourth and higher ones, as
with companions passing from hand to hand a bright torch. Hotter and hotter it
grew, like the sun in Soldru. At last Maram opened his eyes, and looked
straight at me in triumph. He let out a shout of delight that shook the stones
of the dome above us. His face seemed to light up as with fireworks as he cried
out, 'It's as if the ecstasy of my loins is burning throughout my whole body
and brain! You were right, Grandfather: this is more enjoyable than
beer, or even brandy!'
'Even more enjoyable,' Atara prodded him, 'than
women?'
'Ah, perhaps, perhaps.' Maram breathed deeply and
raggedly as he held his hand over his heart. Then his eyes glazed with doubt.
'But it's almost too pleasurable, if you know what I mean.'
Liljana, whose Maitriche Telu possessed other means of
igniting the body's fires, said to him, 'And now you know why my sisters are
dreaded.'
'Dreaded or desired?'
Liljana pointed her finger at him as she shook her
head. 'It's good that we've taken shelter here rather than at one of our sanctuaries.
If you weren't careful, my sisters would kill you with just such pleasure.'
'Truly? Well, I must die sometime, I suppose, and I
can think of no better way.'
Whatever fate awaited us on our quest, however, during
our final days at the Brotherhood's school, we had only thought and feeling for
more life. As the spring quickened and the warm sun poured down its light into
the valley - and the Seven continued pouring their gelstei's radiance into us -
we gained strength like the new shoots of the cherry trees fairly singing with
sap. My companions and I all felt more vital. We found ourselves needing less
sleep, and during our waking hours we seemed more awake Although we did not
gain the miraculous regenerative powers of Kane, whose flesh I had once seen
regrow a severed ear. Abrasax told us that we might bear up beneath insults and
wounds would kill lesser beings.
'But it is your spirits, I believe, that will suffer
the greatest trials,' he told us one fine morning. It was to be our last day in
the valley of the Sun, and we had gathered with the Masters in the cherry
orchard beneath a tree covered in snowy blossoms. 'The Lord of Lies will attack
them, and more, try to drink your very souls. We must speak of this now. If
your path is to take you through Acadu, there is one danger that you must avoid
above all others.'
Maram's face blanched while Master Juwain sat on the
white-petaled grass with his hands folded like a closed book. And Master Juwain
said, 'And what is that. Grandfather?'
Abrasax looked at Master Juwain for a long moment as
his lips pressed together. Then he said, 'I would like to give you a full
account of this. Would you be willing to come with me into the library?'
'Of course,' Master Juwain told him.
'Estrella,' Abrasax said, turning toward the girl,
'there is a book that I believe will tell more than I can about this danger. It
is, in a way, lost in the library's stacks. Would you help me locate it?'
Estrella smiled as she nodded her head.
The rest of us, curious as to how this new mystery
might unfold, stood up and followed Abrasax as he led us toward the library.
This building rose up near the center of the Brotherhood's grounds, and was
made of the same white stone as every other building in the valley. Tall
pillars fronted it. Its rear wall fairly pushed into the side of a hill.
Although larger even than the great hall, it wasn't nearly so grand as the
library of King Kiritan's palace - to say nothing of the vast, burnt-out
Library of Kaisham.
We followed Abrasax and the other masters up the seven
stairs leading to the doorway and into the library's single room. There,
sitting at long wooden tables, a dozen Brothers bent over reading old tomes; a
dozen more worked hard to preserve the knowledge of the oldest and most fragile
of them, transcribing words onto new paper with ink-blackened quills. This
scratching sound filled the quiet room. The many dusty, crumbling books stacked
on the shelves along the four walls seemed to await renewal at the Brothers'
hands. I counted some seven thousand of them. As we learned, every one of them
had been indexed and accounted for. I did not understand how one of them could
have been lost.
I looked in vain for the marvelous, crystal-paged
books like the one from which Abrasax had read that night in the conservatory.
I wondered if the Brothers might keep them locked away somewhere in a cabinet,
but Abrasax did not say anything about this.
He led us straight across the room to the far wall. Between two of the
great shelves rising six feet above our heads, there hung a tapestry depicting
one the greatest events of Eaean history: King Julamesh giving the Lightstone
into the hands of Godavanni the Glorious. With great care, Abrasax moved aside
this tapestry to reveal a small door set into the wall's stone. Without a word
of explanation, he opened the door, which swung inward on creaking hinges to
the passage beyond.
'Ah, secret doors and dark passages,' Maram said with
a nervous cough. 'This reminds me too much of Argattha. Where are you taking
us, Grandfather?'
Abrasax paused to turn and smile at us. 'Why, into the
library.'
'What do you mean?' Maram said, waving his hand at one
of the ink-stained Brothers hard at work on a book. 'What do you call this
place?'
'It is only the reading room,' Abrasax told him. He
turned to step through the doorway into the passage beyond. 'This is the
library.'
We followed him down an unlit stone corridor. A soft
radiance suffused the opening twenty yards ahead of us. The Masters passed through
this opening, out into the chamber beyond, and then so did I. I shook my head
in disbelief. My belly fairly fluttered up into my throat as if I had jumped
off a cliff into a pool, for I found myself gazing out into a vast, open space
so deep that I did not want to look down for its bottom. I gathered with my
friends and the Masters in a sort of loggia affording a view of this immense
cavern. It was good that stone railings had been built at the edge of the
loggia; otherwise it would have been easy for anyone, sick with the heights, to
step off the edge and plunge downward-
'Oh, Lord!' Maram said as he looked out over the
railing. 'Oh, Lord!'
The loggia proved to be part of the uppermost tier
carved into the rock of this cylindrical pit and running around its circumference.
It seemed half a mile, as a bird might fly, straight across to the tier's other
side. There were many, many tiers: two hundred eighty-four, as Abrasax told us.
Bands of rock separated each tier, and glowed with a pearly substance that
could only be some sort of gelstei. It provided a soft, white light that
illumined the entire library and its many books.
There must have been millions of them. Each tier,
twelve feet high, contained ten shelves which had been carved as even deeper
recesses into the cavern's solid rock. As with any library, books packed each
shelf. Abrasax led us out of the loggia into the first tier, and I ran my hand
across the bindings of the old books. All were of leather and paper, and seemed
no different from any of the other books that I had read. And they were all, in
this section of this tier, as I could see from their titles, copies of various
versions of the Saganom Elu or commentaries upon it. I had never dreamed
that so much could have been written about this Book of Books, neatly arrayed
on smooth, granite shelves curving off nearly to infinity.
'I can see,' Master Juwain said to Abrasax, 'how a
book might become lost here. If all the levels contain as many volumes as this
one, there must be more than thirty million books!'
'There are forty million, ten thousand and
forty-three,' Abrasax informed us with a smile. 'To be precise.'
'But that is more than the Great Library held!'
'It is. But we Brothers have had longer to collect our
books than did Khaisham's Librarians.'
'But how did you acquire so many, Grandfather?
And where are the crystal books that you call the vedastei? And who built your
library, and how was it made?'
Master Juwain had other questions for Abrasax, which
Abrasax tried to answer as he led us back into the loggia, and then down a
flight of stone stairs connecting to a loggia on the second tier.
'None of us,' Abrasax said, nodding at Master Storr
and Master Yasul, 'has been able to determine who built this library. When our
order established itself here in the Age of Law, Grandmaster Teodorik
discovered the library much as you see it today. It is possible that the
Aymaniri - they call themselves the Ymanir now - melted out this cavern with
firestones even before they built Agarttha. Or it might be older still: much,
much older. Some of us believe it might be a wonder from the Elder Ages.'
'But the books,' Master Juwain said, 'cannot date from
the Elder Ages!'
We had passed down to the eighth tier, and Master
Juwain's hand swept out as he pointed outside the loggia at ancient tomes
recording the Epic of Kalkamesh, the Gest ofNodin and Yurieth and
other famous narratives, which were very much part of Eaean history.
'No, you are correct,' Abrasax said to Master Juwain. 'These
books we have gathered from across the world like any others. But it may be
that the vedastei are not of this world.'
He led us down ten more tiers, and the sound of our
boots slapping against stone steps vanished into the immense open space of the
library. I could almost hear Maram formulatmg his complaints as to the
inevitable climb back up the many stairways. He must have wondered, as did I,
if the library's makers had indeed been angels who could simply fly from tier
to tier. It would have required hours, I thought, to retrieve a book from the
lowest tiers and make the arduous climb back up into the reading room. As I
watched Master Yasul and Master Virang follow Abrasax effortlessly down the
stairways, it came to me that Brothers had endless hours and years to go about
their work - and nearly bottomless stamina.
We made our way down to the twentieth and then the
twenty-fifth tier. Here the books of leather and paper gave way to those made
from crystal. Abrasax told us that most of the books on these levels, as far as
the Brothers had been able to determine, were of poetry and songs. At last we
came out into a loggia on the thirty-third tier. Abrasax led the way out Onto
this narrow curve of stone. We walked in near-silence past shelves of the
marvelous vedastei. I could not guess at their subjects, for I could not read
the script engraved into their colored and lacquered covers.
'Ah, I've never seen so many damn books!' Maram murmured
to me. 'Not even in the Great Library.'
We moved through two more of the twelve loggias on
this tier. Then we came out upon a section of shelves, all of whose books bore
the same title. Abrasax pulled one of them off its shelf, and he traced his finger
along the golden characters etched into its blue cover. Then he said to us a
single word: 'Skaadarak.'
'Do you mean, the Skardarak?' Master Juwain
said to him, carefully pronouncing the name of the great doom at the end of
time when the universe would fall into a final dark age.
'Perhaps,' Abrasax said. 'You see, we have been able
to translate the book's title, but its contents remain unknown to us.'
He opened the book and flipped through its hundreds of
fine crystal pages. They remained as blank as sheets of ice.
'But can't you just unlock it?' Maram called out.
'We cannot. We have tried, and we shall continue to
try, but we have been able to discover keys for only a fraction of the
vedastei.'
He went on to tell us that the Brothers had discovered
word keys for perhaps three thousand of the vedastei, and most of these were
located on the higher tiers.
'All these books,' he said as his hand swept along the
shelf, 'are a mystery to us.'
He looked out over the stone railing down into the
glowing pit that made up the rest of the library. 'The books below this level
remain unread, and all are vedastei, going down to the one hundred and
twenty-first level.'
'And below that?' Master Juwain asked.
'Below that, there are no books.'
'But you said that there were two hundred and
eighty-four levels?'
'There are, indeed. And most of their shelves stand
empty.'
'But why? Did the library's makers hope to acquire so many
more books?'
'We don't know,' Abrasax said. Then he held up his
precious vedastei. 'Just as we don't know what lies within this book.'
Master Juwain nodded his head at this, and said, 'If
the vedastei were truly written in the Elder Ages and brought to Ea, then how
is it you believe that one of them might tell of some danger of the Acadian
forest of our time?'
Master Yasul, the Brotherhood's greatest remembrancer,
answered for Abrasax, saying, 'It may be that some of the vedastei were not
actually written. With a few of the books that we have managed to open,
we've had the experience of the text changing upon different readings,
according to different knowledge that we were seeking and different questions
that we held in our minds. Indeed, it might be more accurate to say that we
don't read the vedastei as much as they read us.'
He went on to say that the vedastei might somehow
transmit the Akashic Records, which was a sort of memory of all that had ever
occurred in the universe.
'Ah, there are certain things that should never
be recorded,' Maram said as he eyed the book that Abrasax held in his hand.
'And never read by another, if you know what I mean.'
Abrasax smiled at Maram. 'You needn't fear that anyone
will learn of your exploits in this book - unless it is your valor in
facing the unknown.'
Abrasax put it back on its shelf, then turned to
Estrella, who stood with Daj near the railing as they looked out into the
library. He said to her, 'We have reason to believe that one of these books
entitled, Skaadarak, contains the knowledge we seek. Would you be
willing to try to locate it for us?'
Estrella looked at the book-stuffed shelves opposite
the railing, and she made a motion with her fingers and cocked her head. And
Daj translated for her, saying to us: 'Estrella would like to know how many of
these Skaadarak books there are?'
'Nearly three hundred,' Abrasax told us. Then he
showed us the place where the first of the books in question was shelved, and
he moved along the tier a dozen feet and tapped his finger against the spine of
the last of the books, gleaming a dark red on one of the middle shelves.
Estrella smiled as she nodded her head. Then she began
walking slowly in front of the shelves of books. What she was looking for she
could not say, and we could not guess, for the covers of the books were all
etched with the same fine script. At last, she came to a halt. Her eyes beamed
brightly as gazed at the line of books just above her head. Then her hand
darted out to grasp one of the vedastei there. Abrasax helped her pull it off
the shelf. Its cover, carved with brilliant red glyphs, shone as black as
obsidian.
'A seard, indeed,' Master Matai said, bowing his head
to her.
Master Storr, however, looked at Estrella doubtfully,
as if she might have picked this book at random with the hope that no one would
ever know the difference.
Abrasax lifted back the cover to show us its clear,
empty pages. And Master Juwain asked him, 'But if you don't possess the key,
how will you ever open it?'
'A seard,' Abrasax said, smiling at Estrella, 'might
be able to find more than just things. We have elucidated, over the
centuries, hundreds of keys to these books, and many are related to another or
are even nearly identical.'
He drew in a long breath, and then recited:
To gain the gelstei's mastery,
To free the perfect memory
From Heaven's ageless library,
The perfect word will prove the key.
'Estrella - can you tell us if any of these words are
close to the ones we seek?'
But Estrella just shook her head as she stared at the
book. 'But what of this rhyme, then? Listen:
The Master Reader sought the key
To Heaven's unbound folio;
A million words he spoke, then he
Said, 'Open' -
and it was so.
Estrella held out her hands helplessly as she again
shook her head. And Maram groaned, 'This could take all day!'
So it went for the many other keys that Abrasax wished
to test as he recited to her verse after verse. She seemed to warm to only a
couple of them. Although it did not take Abrasax quite all day to run
through his list of rhymes, it took long enough. We stood there for what seemed
hours packed together on a ribbon of stone between the tier's shelved books and
the railing that kept us from plunging down nearly half a mile to the library's
lowest level. Our legs grew crampy, and we shifted our weight from foot to foot
even as Abrasax's deep voice spilled out into the immense cavern.
'But this is impossible!' Maram finally called out to
Abrasax. 'We might as well set monkeys to scribbling on paper in that room of
yours upstairs in the hope that one of them will eventually chance upon the
right rhyme.'
'Nothing is impossible, Sar Maram,' Abrasax said.
'Estrella has indicated that two or three of the rhymes might lead to the key
to this book. We've had less to go on with other keys and other books. There
are references to be checked, permutations of words to be made. In time -'
'But how much time do we have?' Maram said.
'Aren't we supposed to set out tomorrow? I, for one, want to get this mad quest
over with as soon as we can, if we truly must go off questing again. Can't you
just tell us what kind of danger we must avoid in Acadu without giving a
complete account of it?'
Abrasax sighed as he traded looks with Master Virang
and Master Matai. He said, 'I suppose I'll have to.'
He drew in a long breath as he pressed his finger
against the scarlet characters graven into the book's cover. And then he told
us, 'I believe that Skaadarak is the root word of two others: the
Skardarak, when all will grow dark forever. And a place of darkness in Acadu
that the people there call the Skadarak.'
In the quiet of the library's endless stacks of
books, this word seemed to hang in the still, musty air. We all waited for
Abrasax to say more. Then Maram finally called out, 'But what is the
Skadarak, then?'
'It is,' Abrasax said, 'a blackness of the earth's
aura so abysmally black that light cannot escape it. There is a dark thing
there, like a hole through the world's soul. It blackens the very earth.'
'A thing?' Maram cried out. 'What kind of thing?'
Abrasax looked at the book in his hand, and then at
Master Storr. He said, 'Unfortunately, we don't really know. We have only
stories and our reading of the earth's aura. Those whom we have sent into Acadu
to shed light on this mystery have not returned.'
'Oh, excellent!' Maram said. 'I suppose this dark
mystery of yours swallowed them up as with the Black Bog?'
'I believe,' Abrasax said, 'that what lies near the
heart of Acadu is worse than the Black Bog. You see, it calls to people.'
'Oh, excellent, excellent!'
Master Juwain thought about this, then asked, 'But
what could have caused the Skadarak? An opening to one of the Dark Worlds? Some
sort of gelstei?'
'I know of no gelstei,' Master Storr said, 'that has
such power.'
'But what of the black?' Master Juwain asked, looking
at Kane.
And Master Storr said, 'I've never heard of a black
gelstei that can call to people as the Skadarak is said to do.'
Liljana, ever the most practical of our company, said
to Abrasax, 'If you know where this place is, then surely we can avoid it. If
it calls to us, then we won't listen.'
Abrasax nodded his hoary head and told her, 'North of
Varkeva near the Ea River it lies, or so we believe. We also believe that each
of you has the power not to listen. And that, in the end, is the heart
of our battle with the Red Dragon and the Dark One bound on Damoom.'
He let out a long sigh as he turned to Master Juwain.
'You, Master Healer, over the years have most counseled turning a deaf ear to
Morjin's words. And why? Because it is you who most wants to hear them.'
Master Juwain rubbed at his bald head a moment before
saying, 'Yes, I'm afraid you are right, Grandfather. I've always thought that
the Red Dragon, as with any man, would intimate what he really knows in what he
says or writes. The secret knowledge that he must possess, you see.'
'That which you speak of is a dark knowledge,' Abrasax
told him.
'And how could it be otherwise, for how can we truly
understand the light without the knowing of the dark?'
'I think you've always been too curious about this
dark.'
'Yes, you are right. It is my vice.'
'Promise me, then, that you will continue to fight
against it.'
'Very well, Grandfather.'
Abrasax smiled at him, and said, 'All of you, as you
approach the Skadarak, will grow more vulnerable. Especially through your
gelstei.'
He turned to look at Atara. 'You, Princess, must be
careful of what you see in your crystal
if you really must look. Morjin will try to build a perfect world and show it
to you. And trap you within it. Thus has he seduced kings and even wise men.'
Atara stood up straight and stiffly, and a coldness
came over her as she gripped her scryer's sphere and said, 'The Lord of Lies
gave up the power to seduce me when he took my eyes. But I shall take your
counsel to heart, Grandfather.'
Abrasax sighed again, and then addressed Liljana and
Kane, and each of us, in turn, warning of the ways that Morjin might strike at
us through our crystals and our weaknesses to twist us to his will as he had so
many others. Then he patted the black book that Estrella had found on its
shelf, and he told us, 'I will take this back to my chambers and meditate upon
it. Perhaps I will find the key that will open it, and be able to tell you
more.'
I said nothing as I looked at Abrasax and promised myself
that whatever the Skadarak truly was, and wherever it lay, I must lead my
companions away from it at all costs.
'Go now,' Abrasax said to us. 'Go and sit outside in
the cherry orchard or walk in the sun, as you will. Enjoy this day in peace.'
And so we did. We all left the library as we had come.
Abrasax retired with his book to his chambers, and the other Masters left us
alone to go about their business. That afternoon, my companions and I wandered
the grounds of the school making our goodbyes with those of the Brothers whom
we had come to know. They gave us gifts: jars of apple butter and rare teas and
spices for our food, and other such things to sustain us on our journey. We
went to bed early that evening and awoke just before dawn on the twenty-third
of Ashte. The sky was a clear and luminous blue that promised fine weather for
travel.
Abrasax and the rest of the Seven gathered in the yard
outside the stables to see us off. As the cocks crowed and new season's insects
let loose a noise of buzzing and clicks, the Grandmaster apologized to us for
being unable to unlock the book that told of the Skadarak.
'I remained awake all night,' he told us, 'but some of
the books have taken months or even years to open - those that we have been
able to open.'
'It's all right, Grandfather,' I said. 'Surely the
Skadarak can't be any worse than Argattha, and we survived that.'
I regretted my words almost the moment that I spoke
them. I felt Atara stiffen inside as I awaiting a mortal blow. Although she had
truly survived Argattha, even as I had said, something within her had died.
"Try to remember,' Master Virang said to me,
'that the Skadarak will only be one of the dangers you face, and perhaps not
the worst. It is a long way to the end of your quest, and you must armor
yourself against the Lord of Illusions' assaults.'
'We would have a better chance,' Master Juwain said to
Master Virang and then Abrasax, 'if you would come with us to Hesperu. Will you
reconsider your decision?'
It seemed almost silly to think of these seven old men
setting out on a perilous journey through Ea's wilds. But then I recalled how
easily Abrasax had lifted Maram off the ground and Master Virang's ease at
climbing steep hills, and I thought that it would be the essence of wisdom for
any or all of them to accompany us.
'I'm sorry,' Abrasax told us, looking out into the
valley, 'but our place is here.'
Then his eyes grew mysterious and deep as he tried to
explain: 'Just as the body has higher chakras and realms of being, so does the
earth. It is in these realms, above all others, that we must battle the Red
Dragon's evil - and we can only do this from a place of great power, where the
earth's fires burn the brightest.'
Master Juwain bowed his head in acceptance of this,
and Abrasax took his hand and said, 'Just be sure to keep your fires
burning, and we shall look forward to your return with the one who burns the
most brightly of all.'
He smiled then, and clasped each of our ands in turn
and kissed our brows, even Kane's. And then he told us, 'Farewell, and may you
walk in the light of the One.'
I climbed on top of Altaru, whose coat was like a
black sheen in the early morning light. He drove his hoof into the earth impatiently.
My friends mounted their horses, too; our remounts and packhorses, heavily
laden with supplies, were strung out behind us. A young student had also
brought out a couple of nags from the stable. Master Storr and one of his
adepts, a Brother Lorand, would be accompanying us so that they might show us
the way out of the valley.
Our slow ride toward the mountains took only a few
hours, and we savored each of them, drinking in the warmth of the sun and the
sweetly scented air. Flowers grew in sprays of pink and purple along our way.
From somewhere in the woods around us, a lark piped out its high, tinkling
song. Never in my life, I thought, had a day seemed so lovely and bright. Kane
rode his big brown horse beside me, fairly beaming out his fierce will to
triumph against any odds. And yet I was keenly aware that our high spirits
could not last. Whenever the shadow of such doubts fell across my heart, all of
Kane's assurances of victory, as well as my own fierce hopes, seemed utterly in
vain, the foolish longings of desperate men who refused to admit defeat.
We made our way back to the tunnel as we had come,
winding back and forth up a steep slope. The horses' hooves kicked at loose
rocks and sent them rattling down the road. Just outside the tunnel's entrance,
where an arch of precisely cut stone invited us inward and onward, we paused to
take a drink of water and eat
some currants.
'Ah, here we are again at another entranceway,' Maram
said, squinting at the sun in the east. 'But it's well past dawn, isn't it?'
Master Storr's fair skin was flushed from our ride,
and he ran his fingers back through his wispy hair. He smiled at Maram and
said, 'The sun at dawn at the ides of Ashte is only one of the things that
animates the tunnel's gelstei. There is the light of the Seven Sisters,
conjuncting the moon. And there is this.'
He removed from his pocket a crystal about as long as
his finger. It was opaque, with a reddish patina that reminded me of rust.
'What is it?' Maram asked. 'One of your secret
gelstei?'
'It's a key,' Master Storr told him. 'And yes, it is a
gelstei.'
He pointed it toward the tunnel, and we watched as the
dark circle before us filled with a milky white light. I felt a pulsing, as
from deep inside the tunnel's rock - and along my veins as my heart began
beating more quickly.
'Well, why don't we go inside?' Master Storr said.
'The way in is easy enough.'
'Ah, I don't like this,' Maram said. 'I don't like
this at all. We can find our way in easily enough, it's true.
It's finding the way out that worries me.'
Master Storr handed the crystal to Brother Lorand, a
reedy young man with a long, narrow head and a serious look stamped into his
face. And Master Storr instructed him, 'Hold your concentration as I've taught
you. We wouldn't want to leave Brother Maram behind.'
His rather pitiless smile, showing his small, yellowed
teeth, did nothing to reassure Maram, or the rest of us. But Master Storr was
not a cruel man - only a cautious, difficult and guarded one. As we set forth
into the tunnel, he explained to us certain of its secrets that he had so far
withheld: 'There are seventeen such tunnels throughout this part of the White
Mountains, as far as we've been able to determine. The Grandmaster thinks it
most likely that the Aymaniri built them. But Master Yasul and I are more
inclined to believe that they are a Work of the Elder Ages, like the library.
All that we have really divined of them is that they connect to other tunnels
through other mountains.'
'But connect how?' Maram asked. 'And how can
that be possible?'
Master Storr regarded Maram with his hard blue eyes
and said, 'How should that not be possible? All things are connected in
their deepest part, in their hearts, to each other. That is why we call the One
as we do, and not the Two or the Three.'
This was almost the first time we had heard Master
Storr make any attempt at humor, and we all smiled at him. Then Maram continued
his questioning: 'If all things are connected to everything, then that really
explains nothing. How is it that I should still be standing in this lost valley
in your company, as pleasant as it is, instead of enjoying a glass or two of
good Meshian beer with my beloved, merely at a click of my fingers?'
So saying, he snapped his middle finger against his
thumb, and looked about as if disappointed that this rude gesture hadn't magically
transported him from the valley.
Master Storr kept on staring at him, and said, 'The
key, of course, is in discovering how things are connected. We know, for
instance, that Ea touches upon other worlds in places of power such as the
Vilds or where the earth fires have been disturbed or concentrated.'
'Such as the Black Bog? Kane told that in our passage
through that accursed swamp, we were walking on other worlds.'
'So you were - and Dark Worlds at that. The Black Bog
is known to lead into such places, just as the ocean, toward the North Star,
flows into the seas of the worlds where the Star People dwell.'
'Then you believe the legend of King Koru-Ki?'
Master Storr's eyes gleamed as he said, 'All worlds
are connected by water, on the physical plane, as they are by the aethers on
the others.'
'But that still doesn't explain the tunnel.'
Master Storr, I thought, did not like Maram's
impatience to learn the truth of things, and a note of irritation crept into
his voice:
'As I've said, there are other ways of making these
connections. Whoever built this tunnel must have forged a gelstei that opened
up the earth chakra over which the tunnel was built. And so
directed its fires to open other chakras in other
places so that a passage might be made.'
'Then is it possible to pass to other worlds this
way?'
'Not through this tunnel at least so far as we've been
able to discover. But there may be other tunnels through other mountains
somewhere on Ea that lead to the Star People's worlds.'
'But might it be possible,' Maram asked, 'to pass to
another part of this World through this tunnel? Ah, perhaps to journey
to Hesperu in a click of a moment?'
Again, he snapped his fingers, and again Master Storr
looked at him with disapproval. He said to Maram, There are no tunnels like
these that we know of in Hesperu, or indeed outside of the White Mountains. But
if you discover any such on your journey, you must be sure to let me know.'
'I shall, I shall,' Maram muttered as he looked into
the tunnel's glowing mouth. 'But I still don't understand how walking into here
will result in our walking out there - when 'there' is not just one
other tunnel, but any one of seventeen.'
'Haven't you been listening to anything of what I've
told you?' Master Storr asked him. 'There is really only one tunnel,
interconnected in its seventeen parts. But connected how? Geometrically, yes,
certainly, in ways that we don't fully understand. But we know they are also
connected through thought and will. This is the key, Sar Maram. When you were
looking for our school and went back inside the tunnel, which the sun had
brought to life, its gelstei sensed your desire to reach us, and so brought you
out into our valley. If you had willed a different destination and held it
strongly enough in your minds, you would have found that place instead.'
'Ah, but what if the tunnel came alive, and we willed nothing?'
Maram's voice boomed out and disappeared into the curved, pulsing walls of
gelstei ahead of us. 'Because we were frightened or confused?'
'That is an experiment we haven't wanted to make,'
Master Storr said. 'Presumably, you would eventually come out into one lost
valley or another.'
'But what of Morjin then? Aren't you afraid that he
will learn to control the tunnel's gelstei?'
'He might know nothing of it,' Master Storr said. 'He
is not omniscient, you know. Now. if you will please forbear and let Brother
Lorand learn the ways of these tunnels.'
None of us, I thought,, was pleased at the prospect of
Master Storr utilizing our circumstances to teach his young student, but that was the way of the
Brotherhood. In truth, however there was little danger of Brother Lorand guiding us
wrongly, for Master Storr
guided him, holding his concentration on the rustlike gelstei even as he encouraged Brother
Lorand with a ready smile or a
kind word. Our passage through the tunnel was much as before. We lined up in order behind Master
Storr; I took the lead of my companions,
followed by Atara, Liljana, Daj and Estrella, with Master Juwain and Maram riding closely
behind this irrepressibly joyful
girl. Kane, in the rear, kept a close watch on what Estrella watched, gazing into the flowing
hues of the gelstei on the walls
in hope that she might discover something of note. The horses, which we had blindfolded, clopped
along nervously as each of us fought
the spinning sensation in our heads and the sickness that crept into our bellies. Maram
moaned to see Master Storr waver
like a ghost and then reappear a moment later. It seemed that we walked a long time and an even
longer way over the road's cold
stones. But in the end, as Master Storr kept promising Maram, we drew closer and closer to the spot
of light at the tunnel's end.
We came out, as before, into a valley - but a very
different one than the Valley of the Sun. Below us, down steep and heavily
wooded slopes, ran a long, deep groove between two ridgelines of jagged
mountains. It was higher here, and colder, and crusts of snow whitened, the
rocks above the treeline. The blueness had fled from the sky, to be replaced by
a solid sheet of grayish-white clouds.
We stood by our horses on the rocky ground outside the
tunnel, trying to catch our breaths as we scanned this rugged terrain. Maram
leaned across his knees as if he might lose his breakfast. And then he pointed
down into the valley as he gasped out, 'But which way is that? I can't
see the damn sun! North, I would guess, but it seemed that we were walking
south, or perhaps east.'
Master Storr came up beside him and placed his old
hand on his-shoulder. And he said, 'It is north by west. The line of the valley
curves off due west, just around the base of that domed mountain. It will take
you down into Acadu.'
'Are you certain of that? What if we get lost?'
'Would it reassure you if I taught you a Way Rhyme to
guide you?'
'Ah, is that really necessary?'
'No, it. is not,' Master Storr said, smiling at him.
'From here, you can't help but walk straight into Acadu, but you'll have to
find your own way through the great forest, as your circumstances will determine.'
He embraced Maram then; and me and the others as well.
And he told us, 'You must undertake this quest with only one end in) mind. But
if you should come across any new gelstei on your journey, I would be
forever grateful if you would return them to our school for study. You seem to
have a knack for finding gelstei - let us hope that also holds for finding the
Maitreya.'
As Abrasax had, he enjoined us to walk in the light of
the One. Then he gathered in the reins of his horse, and with Brother Lorand, moved
back into the tunnel.
'Well,' Maram said to me as we looked off into this
new valley, 'shall we get this over with?'
I nodded at him, then turned to pull on Altaru's reins
and go down into the dark forests of Acadu.
Chapter 11 Back Table of Content Next
For the rest of the morning, we worked our way down into the valley. The going was rough. The road here, as ancient as any I had ever seen, had mostly disintegrated into a long, twisting slip of broken rock and dirt. Near the bottom of the valley, where a river rushed between steeply cut banks, the forest swallowed up the road altogether. We had to take care where we stepped, lest a rock hidden in the undergrowth or a root turn an ankle or hoof. We moved slowly, from need, guiding our horses over this bad ground. And yet a greater need drove us like a match flame slowly growing hotter inside us. We each knew that our quest had little chance of success in any case, and none at all if we wasted a week coddling ourselves - or perhaps a day or even an hour.
After a quick lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, washed down with a bubbly apple cider, it began to rain, and this added misery to the difficulty of our descent. As we came down near the river and the ground flattened out, Maram let out a grunt of thanks - and then he began cursing as the rain suddenly drove down harder in stinging sheets that made him, and all of us, squint and shiver as we hunched down into our cloaks.
'I'm tired and cold,' he complained late in the afternoon. 'And I'm getting hungry again, too. Why don't we break for the day, and see if we can roast up some of that lamb the Brothers packed for us before it rots?'
Kane, however,
insisted that we plod on another hour before making camp, and so we did. But by
the time we found a level spot above the river and began unpacking the horses,
Maram had grown quite surly with hunger - and fairly wroth when he discovered
that every twig, stick and log that he could find rummaging around in the woods was soaking wet. As the day darkened
into night he spent another hour fumbling with matches and strips of linen,
trying to get a fire going. He finally gave up. He sat on a large, wet rock feeling
as sorry for himself as he was ashamed at failing the rest of us. Then he took
out his firestone and held it between his hands as he might a dead child.
'Oh, my
poor, poor crystal!' he moaned. He nudged the pile of! wood beside him with his
foot. 'If that damn dragon hadn't ruined you, I'd turn this damn kindling into
char with a real fire.'
'It
might help,' Atara said, sitting down next to him, 'if you used paper for
tinder instead of linen.'
'Paper?
What paper?'
At
this, we all looked at Master Juwain, who said, 'Tear up one of my books? You
might as well tear off my skin and try to get a fire out of that. Only if we
were dying from cold would I consider it.'
'Ah,
well, it wouldn't matter anyway,' Maram said, kicking his woodpile again. 'The
problem is not with the tinder - these damn logs are soaked to the core, as am
I.'
We
brought out two large rain cloths, and propped them up with sticks. Then we all
sat around in a circle beneath them staring at the heap of sodden wood through
the dying light. Liljana had taken Daj under her cloak, and Atara likewise
sheltered Estrella. We listened to the rain patter against pungent-smelling
wool and break against the leaves of the trees towering above us.
Atara
oriented her soaked blindfold toward Maram's crystal, and she said, 'Do you
remember the prophecy concerning your fire-stone?'
'Do you
mean, that it will bring Morjin's doom?'
'Yes.
But I can't see how it ever will.'
'That's
because you've no faith that it will be made whole again. I know it
will,' Maram said. He sighed as he pointed his crystal northwest, toward
Argattha. 'And then I'll make a fire such as has never been seen on Ea,
I swear I will. Then I'll roast Morjin like a damn worm!'
'Ha!'
Kane said, coming over to clap him on the shoulder. 'You can't even roast a
little lamb for our dinner! Well, it will have to be cold cheese and battle
biscuits for us tonight, then.'
And so
it was. We sat in the driving rain eating these unappealing rations with
resignation. Our two cloths did not keep this slanting deluge from soaking us.
Maram complained for the hundredth time that we should lave brought tents with
us, and for the hundredth time Kane explained that tents were much too bulky
and heavy for our horses, which were already weighted down with our supplies.
In truth, they could not carry enough oats and food to take us even half the
way to Hesperu; this arithmetic reality of constant subtraction would compel
us to replenish our stores along the way and Kane bitterly resented this necessity.
'But
there's no help for it,' Maram said.
'No
help, you say? I say we could jettison certain stores to make room for more
food.'
Maram
cast Kane a suspicious look and said, 'I hope you don't mean the beer
and the brandy!'
Kane
turned up his wrists and let the rain gather in his cupped hands. 'It seems we
won't lack for drink, at least until we reach the desert.'
'Brandy,'
Maram said, 'is not just drink - it's medicine. And one that is badly
needed on such a night. We could all use a little of its fire.'
Master
Juwain, however, was not quite ready to concede this need. He said to Maram,
'Why don't you practice moving the kundalini fire up your spine, as Abrasax
taught you. That would warm you better.'
'Ah, a
woman would warm me better still,' he moaned. 'If only I had a good tent
against the rain, and my sleeping furs were dry, I'd crawl inside with her,
wrap my arms around her poor, cold, shivering body, and then, like flint and
steel, like a match held to a barrel of pitch, like a poker plunging into a bed
of coals, I'd -'
'Maram,'
I said to him, 'I thought you'd learned to redirect this fire of yours?'
'Well,
what if I have?' he said. 'I could redirect it, as you say, if I wanted
to - I'm sure I could. But why should I want to? It's too hard, too uncertain;
too ... unnatural, if you know what I mean. I'm a man who was born to live on
the earth, not the stars. And it's been too long since I held a woman in my
arms, much too long.'
And
with this lamentation, he tried to settle in to sleep for the night as best, he
could. And so did the rest of us. But it rained all that night, and we awoke to a dull gray light
fighting its way through the gray clouds above us and slatelike sheets of rain.
We fought against the ache of our cold, stiff limbs to get under way and
continue on down the valley. The squish of the horses' hooves against mud and
soaking bracken was nearly drowned out by the rushing of the river and the
unceasing rain.
By
mid-afternoon, however, this torrent had let up slightly. And then, as the
valley gave out into lower and flatter country, it dried up to a stiff drizzle.
So it was that we at last entered the great Acadian forest. This vast expanse
of woods stretched from Sakai in the northwest five hundred miles to the
borders of Uskadar and Karabuk in the southeast. We proposed to cross it, east
to west, along a route through its northern part less than two hundred miles
long. This would take us well to the north of Varkeva, Acadu's greatest and
only real city. And north, as well, we hoped, of that dark place of which
Abrasax had warned us. Master Juwain had brought with him a map of Acadu,
little good that it would do us. It showed Acadu's few main roads, but these we
could not take. Into the map's tough parchment was inked the position of the
few bridges across Acadu's rivers, but we would have to find fords or ferrymen
to help us along our way.
It did
not distress me to set out into this strange woods without any path to guide
us. Maram often envied my sense of direction, even as he called it uncanny,
even otherworldly. I had been born knowing in my blood east from west, north
from south, with all the certainty of a ship's pilot steering a course by the
stars. Even on such a dark, sunless day as this I had no trouble leading my
companions due-west.
The
openness of the woods here made my task all the simpler. We needed no road or
game track to wend our way beneath the great oaks and elms, for the ground of
the forest was remarkably free of shrubbery, deadwood or other entanglements.
Grass grew in many places, beneath the trees and in clearings where they had
been cut down. Antelope and sheep, in goodly-sized herds, grazed upon the
grass. Atara drew an arrow and pointed it toward one of these fat sheep, whose
spiral horns curling close to its head resembled a helmet. But then she lowered
her bow as she thought better of killing it.
'We
have uncooked lamb wrapped in store already,' she said, 'and who knows if we'll
be able to cook tonight - or tomorrow?'
At this
observation, not meant as a jibe, Maram's face pulled into an angry pout, but
he said nothing.
'At
least,' I said, 'it seems we won't lack for meat here. I've never seen a wood
so rich with game.'
And
that, as Master Juwain informed us, was not due to any natural bounty of Acadu
but rather the design of man. From one of the books in the Brothers' library,
he had learned that the Acadians, many of them, disdained the hard work of
farming such crops as potatoes or barley, and therefore farmed animals instead.
Each autumn, when the forest floor grew bone dry, they would set fires to burn
out the undergrowth. Grass grew in its place, and animals such as sheep and
antelope - and deer, wild cattle and even a few sagosk - grew fat and strong
upon the grass.
Indeed,
the whole of this great wood teemed with life. As we rode our horses beneath
miles of an emerald-green canopy, racoons and squirrels scurried out of our
way, and we saw foxes, wood voles and skunks, too. Many of the trees were like
old friends to me, and it gladdened my heart to see the oaks, birch and hickory
standing so straight and tall. Other kinds, holly and chestnut, were rarer in
the Morning Mountains and in other lands through which I had journeyed. And
there were trees that I had never laid eyes on before, two of which Master
Juwain identified as hornbeam and hackberry, with its bushy, drooping leaves
that looked something like a witch's broom, or so he said. Many bees buzzed in
fields of flowers: day's eyes, dandelions and sprays of white yarrow. There seemed
to be few mosquitoes about, however, or any of the other vermin that had so
tormented us in the Vardaloon. It was truly one of the loveliest forests I had
ever beheld.
And
yet, from the moment I set out to cross Acadu, I felt ill at ease. What little we
knew about this lost place, I thought, would be enough to disquiet anyone. It
seemed that many years ago, twenty-three 'kings' had held sway between the two
great, lower ranges of the White Mountains. Now Morjin claimed it. Not being
willing to commit any great force to subdue this wild country, the Red Dragon
instead had sent into its vast reaches corps of assassins and his Red Priests,
to murder, maim and persuade, to terrorize the scattered Acadians into
submitting to his will.
This
danger, however, was known and quantifiable, even if we presently had no news
as to our enemy's position or numbers. What vexed me more was the unknown: rumors
of strange beasts that could suck the life out of a man's limbs with a flash of
their eyes and even turn a man into stone. Had Morjin, I wondered, also sent
cadres of the terrible Grays into Acadu? Worst of all, I thought, was the dread
of the dark place called the Skadarak that Abrasax had warned of. Even the
glory of the orange hawkweed over which we trod and the burst of scarlet
feathers of a tanager flying across our path could not drive this foreboding
from me. I could almost smell its blackness, like a fetor tainting the perfume
of the periwinkles and other flowers around us. It seemed to whisper to me like an ill wind, to call to me
faintly and from far away.
As we
made camp at day's end, I sensed that none of my friends felt the pull of this
place - at least not yet. They set to work drawing water and building our
rudimentary fortifications out of wet logs with good cheer. This diminished
somewhat when Maram yet again failed to make a fire. But the rain finally
stopped, and the patch of blue that broke from the clouds just before dusk
promised better weather for travel the next morning, and we all hoped, drier wood.
For all
the next day, we journeyed as straight a course west as I could guide us. We
encountered no people - only some rabbits, deer and chittering birds - and that
was to our purpose. A few low hills rose up to block our way, and we had no
trouble skirting them. The sun, pouring down through the numerous breaks in the
trees, warmed us. It dried out the woods, as well. That night Maram finally
succeeded in striking up a fire: a good, hot, crackling one. But when Liljana
unpacked the leg of lamb to roast it she wrinkled up her face as she sniffed at
it and said, 'Whew - it's gone bad!'
Kane
came over to test it with his nose, and said, 'It's a little off, it's true.
But I've eaten worse. Why don't you roast it, anyway?'
'And
poison the children?' she asked him as she rested her arm across Estrella's
shoulder. 'Will you care for them if they fall ill?'
She
told him that he could roast the lamb if he wished, and ea1 it himself as well.
But as none of the rest of us was eager to put tooth or tongue to this tainted
flesh, Kane picked up the lamb's leg and flung it far out into the woods. He
said, 'I'll not feast in front of the rest of you. Let the foxes or racoons
have a good meal. They, at least, aren't particular.'
Liljana,
undeterred, set to preparing us what she called a good meal' anyway: fried eggs
and rashers of bacon, wheat cakes spread with apple butter and some freshly
picked newberries for desert. We went to bed warm that night and with full
bellies. Even the howling of wolves from somewhere deeper in the woods did not
disturb our sleep.
Just
after daybreak we set out again toward the west Atara, bow in hand, determined
to take one of the woods' wild sheep for our dinner, or perhaps a deer. But all
that morning, strangely, we saw no game larger than a skunk. The wind through
the trees reminded me of the faroff whispering that I had first sensed upon
entering Acadu. It carried as well a faint reck of rotting flesh. Altaru
smelled this stench before I did; the twitching of his great, black nostrils and
a nervous nicker from within his throat alerted me to it. We walked on two more
miles beneath the maple and hack-berry trees, and it grew stronger, nearly
choking us. And then, a hundred yards farther along, we came out into a grassy
clearing littered with the carcasses of sheep. They lay in twisted heaps. There
were thirty-three of them, as I quickly counted. All had been killed with black
arrows fired through their bloodstained white wool.
'Oh,
Lord!' Maram called out in a muffled voice. He held his scarf over his mouth
and nose. 'The poor little lambs! Who would slaughter so many and leave them
here to rot?'
It was
a question that almost needed no answer. The black arrows, as Kane quickly
determined, were Sakai-made and stamped with the mark of the Red Dragon.
'Hmmph,'
Atara said, walking around the edge of the massacred herd. 'Morjin's men must
have arrows in abundance, to waste so many leaving them this way.'
'It's
not waste at all,' I said, suddenly understanding the purpose behind this
dreadful deed. 'At least, not waste as Morjin's men would count it. Surely they
left the arrows as an advertisement.'
'A
warning, you mean,' Maram said. 'And it's all the warning I need to flee
this district.'
Kane,
sniffing at one of the sheep and testing the rigidity of its limbs, said to
him, 'These beasts are three days dead. Whoever did this is likely long gone.'
'So you
say,' Maram grumbled.
'What
is strange,' Master Juwain said, 'is that none of the scavengers have gone to
work here.'
No, no,
I thought. I reeled before the fire that sucked in through my nose and
burned through my blood. It is not strange at all.
Liljana,
as well as Kane, dared to uncover her face in order to take in the stench of
the rotting sheep. And she said, 'I think these arrows were poisoned with
kirax. It taints the flesh so that when it turns, it gives off an odor like
burning hair. If I can smell it, so can the badgers and bears.'
On the
lips of many of the sheep, I saw, black blood drew swarms of buzzing flies. I
guessed that the sheep had gnashed their jaws together in a maddened frenzy
that severed tongues and broke teeth, so great was the agony of the kirax.
'Lets
leave here,' I said, 'as quickly as we can.'
'Very
well,' Master Juwain said to me. 'But we'll have a difficult choice to make,
and soon. How far into Acadu do you think we've
come?'
'Forty
miles,' I said. 'Perhaps forty-five. If your map is right, we should find the
Tir River in another five miles or so.'
'And
how do you propose we cross it?'
'Come,'
I said to him. and to the others as I remounted my horse. 'Let's go on to this
river, and then well see about crossing it.'
As we
rode through a patch of oaks, the soft wind in our faces drove away the stench
of the murdered sheep. Despite Kane's assurances to Maram, Kane scanned the
woods about us with his sharp black eyes, looking for the sheep's killers, and
I did, too. After about four miles, the air grew more humid, and we heard the
rushing of water through the trees. We pushed through some dense undergrowth to
find the Tir River raging through the forest in full flood.
'Abrasax
said that the snows had been deep this past winter,' Master Juwain sighed out.
'We must be at the peak of the spring melt.'
I gazed
at this torrent of churning brown water, which sloshed and spilled over the
Tir's muddy banks. The river would sweep even the horses away if we tried
crossing here.
And so
we set out along the band of denser vegetation close to the river. Every
quarter mile or so, we would force our way back through the bracken and trees
to look for a place where we might ford the river. But the Tir, it seemed,
swelled swift and deep all along its course. And so instead we set our hopes on
finding a ferry.
At
last, after a few more miles, we came upon a clearing planted with new barley.
A farmhouse, built of stout logs, sat near the center of it. In the yard
outside the house, a few chickens squawked and pecked at pellets of grain. I
saw no barn to shelter cows or draft horses; the sty by the side of the house
was empty of pigs. I thought it strange to see no one about doing chores or
working in the fields on such a fine spring day.
'Perhaps
they've fled this district as I've proposed we do,' Maram grumbled. We stood by
our horses at the edge of the clearing, looking at the house. 'Perhaps we
should go inside and see if they've left behind any stores that we might ah,
appropriate.'
'Don't
you think,' Atara said to him coldly, 'that we might at least knock at the door
before plundering these poor people?'
It
seemed the wisest course. But then Kane cast his piercing gaze across the
clearing, and pointed at the house. He said to me, 'Do you see those crosses
cut into the walls and the door?'
I
strained my eyes to peer at these darkenings of the house's wood that looked
like black, painted crosses. I knew suddenly, however, that they must be arrow
ports. When I remarked upon this, Kane smiled grimly.
'So, it
would be wisest if only one of us knocks at the door,' he said. Then he
looked at Maram and smiled again.
And
Maram looked right back at him as if he had fallen mad. 'You can't think
I'm just going to walk up to that house under the aim of arrows, can you?'
'It was
your idea to enter it,' Kane reminded him.
'Ah,
well, perhaps we should ride on, then.'
'At
least,' Kane said to him, 'call out to whomever might be holing up inside the
house. Of all of us, you have the loudest voice, eh?'
And so
Maram cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed out a greeting that fairly
shook the trees above us. Through the silence that befell upon this blast of
Maram's breath, a woman's voice, shrill and faint behind the dark cross of one
of the arrow ports, called back to us: 'Go away! We don't talk to strangers here!'
'But
we're only poor pilgrims!' Maram shouted back to her. 'And we would only ask a
little of your hospitality!'
'Go
away!' this unseen woman shouted again. 'The Crucifiers have already taken
everything, and we've no hospitality to give!'
'But at
least tell us if we might find a ferry nearby to take us across the river!'
'Go
away! Go away! Would you kill me, too? Please, go away!'
The
anguish in the woman's voice told of great loss, perhaps of a husband killed
trying to protect this little homestead or a daughter carried off. I placed my
hand on Maram's shoulder and said to him, 'For mercy's sake, let's do as
she says and not torment her!'
Maram
nodded his head at this as a watery sadness crept into his eyes. I heard him
mutter, 'Oh, these poor people - too bad, too bad!'
We
turned to skirt the house and its fields, into the forest along the river. From
the darkness through the trees, crows cried out their raucous caws that seemed
a warning. Soon we came to another farm where a ragged man stood hoeing his
field; when he saw us approach, he dropped his hoe and ran inside his house.
He, too, shouted out that we should go away, and told us to return to whatever
land we called home. We came upon two more farms whose houses and fields had
been burnt to the ground, and then another where the bodies of a young girl and
boy lay on top of splinters by a woodpile. Their homespun tunics were
bloodstained and torn. An axe, encrusted with black blood, had been dropped on
top of a tree stump nearby. Their father, or so I guessed he was, remained
close to them: for planted into the loamy, black earth in front of the house
was a roughhewn cross onto which a man had been nailed. I thought this man had
been young, like myself, but it was hard to tell, as both the cross and the
body attached to it had been burnt to a black char. It was a hideous thing to
see, and I pulled Estrella closer to me to cover her face with my hand; I held
her slender body next to mine as shudders of sorrow tore through her and she
wept without restraint.
'Oh,
Lord!' Maram called out, nearly weeping, too. 'Oh, Lord, oh Lord!'
But
Daj, who couldn't have been more than eleven years old, stood dry-eyed staring
at this terrible sight as if he wanted to burn the memory of it into his brain.
Then
Liljana covered his face, too, for she would not suffer him to look upon such
sights: he who had already seen too many terrible things in Argattha. And she
said, 'I would like to know how many Red Priests Morjin has sent into this
accursed forest.'
'So,
not many,' Kane growled out. 'Surely the Crucifier could not afford to send
very many to subdue such an out-of-the-way land.'
'His
men might be few in numbers,' Master Juwain said, gesturing at the trees around
us, 'but they have no lack of wood with which to work their abominations. The
terror they've unleashed, I think, is something that takes no count of
numbers.'
I
nodded my head at this as I swallowed against the knot of pain choking up my
throat. I forced out, 'Let us bury them, then.'
Of all
my companions, only Kane thought to gainsay me. But then his eyes met mine as
he looked deep inside me. He finally said, 'All right, then, but let's be quick
about it.'
The
rich bottomland here was soft from the spring rains. We had no trouble digging
in it, though it took us longer than Kane would have liked to excavate three
rather deep graves. When we had laid the three murdered Acadians beneath three
neat mounds, I said a requiem for the dead, praying their souls up to the
stars. And then it was time to go.
But
Kane, standing guard with his bow in hand, motioned me closer to him. He
murmured, 'Look off past that elm to the south of the fields. There's a man
standing in the woods there who has been watching us.'
Through
the trees perhaps a hundred yards away, I saw the cloaked figure of a man. He
stood facing us and appeared to bear no weapon more fearsome than a staff;
neither did he move to arm himself or flee when it became obvious that we had
espied him.
'Surely
he can't mean us any harm,' Maram panted out as he hurried up with his bow.
'Else he would have attacked us while we were engaged digging the graves.'
The
mystery of this man's identity was soon to be solved, for he began walking
straight toward us. He seemed utterly unconcerned to stride right into the
bow-range of three strange archers. He pushed through the charred shoots of
barley, using a long, unstrung bow as a sort of staff. He was an old man, I
saw, with straggles of gray-white hair hanging down from his square, blocklike
head. His unkempt beard was colored likewise and spread out across a florid
face that looked as strong and weathered as a piece of granite. Though not
tall, he was thick in the arms and chest. His old eyes were grayish-green and
care-worn, like the homespun cloak that covered his sturdy body.
'Thank
the stars!' Maram said to me as the man approached us. 'His eyes are as human
as yours, and so he can't be one of the Grays!'
And
then the man stepped closer and held out his open hand to us as he called out
in a rough voice, 'My name is Tarmond. And whom do I have the pleasure of
making acquaintance?'
'My
name is Mirustral,' I said, giving him the Ardik form of my name, which meant
'Morning Star'. I nodded at Kane, and then told the man one of Kane's many
names, saying, 'And this is Rowan Madas.'
In
turn, I presented each of my other companions, telling Tarmond the names that
we had settled upon for our journey. This slight deception pained me, but there
was no help for it. We could not simply march right into the heart of the
Dragon Kingdoms giving out our true names to all whom we encountered.
'From what lands
do you hail?' Tarmond asked as he gazed «t Atara's long blonde hair. Then he
looked from Estrella to Maram, and then back at me as if trying to solve a
puzzle. 'Few strangers other than the Crucifiers journey through our forest
these days, and none in such a strange Company as yours.'
'And
yet you were willing to walk straight up to us "strangers"
under the aim of our arrows. Is that not a strange thing?'
Tarmond
looked Kane up and down as if he didn't like very much of what he saw.
And
then Tarmond thumped his hand across his chest and told him: 'I do not fear
your arrows. To a man such as I, whose sons the Red Priests have murdered,
whose daughters have been taken as concubines, an arrow through the heart would
be a blessing.'
So
great was the sorrow that poured out of him that I had to harden my own heart
against it lest I begin howling out in anguish.
'We
have heard,' I said to him, 'that the Red Dragon has sent priests into your
land.'
'They
are everywhere,' Tarmond told us. 'And yet they are nowhere, as well, for they
go about in secret or in disguise, and turn even good Acadians to their cause.
Some say the Red Dragon himself has given his priests cloaks that render them
invisible.'
And
with these words, he looked at the burnt cross rising up above us as if one of
these secret priests might be standing wraithlike beside it.
Liljana
stepped up to Tarmond and grasped his hand. She said, 'Do you not fear that one
of us might be a priest in disguise?'
A slow,
grim smile broke upon Tarmond's lips. 'The Red Priests do not bury those they
murder or crucify. And they do not weep for the dead.'
Here he
looked at Estrella and then at me.
'You might
be priests, or their acolytes,' he said, 'but that would be a deception
greater than any I have seen.'
'Then
you have not seen all of the Lord of Lies' deceptions,' Kane growled out as he
continued to eye Tarmond suspiciously.
A
shadow of doubt darkened Tarmond's face as he looked at Kane. 'You seem to know
more of the Crucifier than is good for a man.'
'So,
perhaps I do. As you say, his priests are everywhere, and they have no sympathy
for a company of pilgrims such as us.'
Tarmond
gazed at the scarred and nicked crossguard of Kane's sheathed sword. He said,
'Pilgrims, then, who are well-armed.'
Liljana,
who was better at dissembling than I was, said to Tarmond, 'I am of Tria, and
so is Master Javas. The boy and girl are my nephew and niece. Rowan and
Mirustral are knights who guard us, as is Basir. Mathena is one of the warrior
women of Thalu - you may have heard of them. We seek the Well of Restoration,
said to lie in the Red Desert. It is also said to bestow wisdom along with
healing.'
She
went on to tell of Master 'Javas' and his quest for knowledge, and of
Estrella's desire to be healed of her mutenes; Atara's blindness, of course,
was evident, though it obviously puzzled Tarmond that she should be able to
move about so freely and bear a bow aa if she could actually aim arrows at any
target. I thought that the story that we had concocted to explain our company
was a poor one. Although it contained elements of the truth - for surely the
Maitreya could gather a healing radiance within the well of the Lightstone - I
knew that people could always sense a lie.
'I've
never heard of this Well of Restoration,' Tarmond said. 'But if you're bound
for the Red Desert, then you've a long journey ahead of you, and a hard one.'
'It
would be less hard,' Liljana said to him, 'if we could find a way across the
river. Surely there must be a ferry nearby.'
'Indeed
there is,' Tarmond said, motioning with his thumb over his shoulder. 'Four
leagues back down the river. But the ferryman, Redmond, is friends with the
Crucifiers, and you can expect no confidentiality from him, if it's
confidentiality you seek.'
And
with that, his eyes fell upon the hilt of my sword. To cover its bright diamond
pommel and the seven diamonds set into its black jade, I had fashioned a crude
jacket of buckskin, as of a good leather grip.
'I do,
however,' Tarmond said to me, 'know a fisherman who used to run a ferry. He
might be willing to take you across the river. His name is Gorson, and he is of
my village.'
He told
us that his village lay only another league and a half farther on upriver. He
was returning home to it, he said, after a journey some twenty leagues to the
south.
'Come,'
he said to us, 'why don't we walk together and share a little bread, and
perhaps a few stories, too. It's been at least ten years since I've talked with
anyone from outside these woods -except, of course, the cursed Crucifiers, and
they lie.'
Kane,
as I would have guessed, was loath to join company with this unknown old man,
even for a walk of five miles. But if we were to gain the services of the
fisherman, Gorson, it seemed that we would need Tarmond to present us to him
and perhaps persuade him. And so Kane reluctantly nodded his head to me.
'All right,' I
said to Tarmond. 'We'll accompany you to your village. What is its name?'
'Gladwater,'
he told us. 'Named in happier times, when the Emerald King reigned in this part
of Acadu.'
We set
out away from the burnt-out farm and its stench of char and death. I was glad
indeed to enter a swath of elms and maples, whose three-lobed leaves fluttered
in the breeze. It was good to breathe in the scent of the day's eyes and
periwinkles and to listen to the chirping of the kingbirds. It was good, too,
to listen to Tarmond talk, in his rough old voice, for he was a man of passion
and wisdom, who had seen a great deal in his long life. The tale that he told
was an old and sad one, in a way the very story of Ea itself.
Long
ago, he said, in the time of the Forest Kings, there had been peace in Acadu.
Of course these kings had possessed less power than King Danashu of Anjo, even
less than any of his dukes or barons. It didn't matter. For in those years,
Uskudar, to the south, had been a divided realm and the Red Dragon still slept,
and Acadu had no other enemies. And above all else, Acadu had a single law, and
this was the Law of the One, for the Acadians were at once the freest and most
devout of peoples.
But at
last the Dragon awakened, and so did a mysterious darkness deep within the
heart of Acadu. The Forest Kings, attuned to the songs of angels of the woods,
no less the Law of the One, began to hear other voices. They quareled with each
other and called up armies to battle to the death. Then warlords overthrew the
kings, and tribal chieftains rebelled against the warlords; clan opposed clan,
until the only safety was to be found in one's family or village, and anarchy
spread. During the Dark Years, Tarmond told us, Acadian killed Acadian until a
land rich in people and goodness became poor.
And
then, under the guise of helping this torn realm, the Red Dragon began sending
missions to Acadu: mine masters to search for new veins of gold; moneylenders
to give out coin and restore a long-ruined trade; soldiers to protect whatever
village or demesne requested their aid. And he sent in as well the Red Priests,
to minister to the spirits of the miners, moneylenders and soldiers, and to any
Acadian who desired instruction in the Way of the Dragon.
'It was the
accursed Red Priests,' Tarmond told us as we walked through the woods, 'who
brought these evil times upon us. They promised that if we Acadians followed
the Way of the Dragon, we would gain riches, even immortality. But it is the
Law of the One that immortality is the province of the Elijin and Galadin.'
Here I
looked at Kane, but my silent friend only glared at me with his black, ancient
eyes.
'Some
there were,' Tarmond continued, 'who said that the word of the Priests was
abomination, and that they should be put to death. The Keepers of the Forest,
they called themselves: the greatest huntsmen of Acadu. They began hunting down
the priests as they would stags or boar. But the Priests are no easy prey.
Morjin sent in more soldiers to protect them, along with the moneylenders and
miners. And he sent the Shadow Men, who have neither eyes nor hearts. It's said
that they can freeze a man's blood with the whisper of their breath and suck
out his soul before they eat him alive.'
At the
mention of these demon-like men who could only be the dreaded Grays, Maram
shuddered and wiped the sweat from his neck. And he said to Tarmond, 'And did
no other Acadians join in this rebellion?'
Tarmond
smiled sadly and said, 'Many did - of course we did. We still do. But the
fiercer we fight, the more bestial the Crucifiers become and the more terrible
their deeds.'
'But is
there no one of royal lineage,' I asked, 'who might rally an army against your
invaders?'
Tarmond
shook his massive head. 'In Varkeva, Urwin the Lame calls himself Waldgrave but
he is under the spell of Arch Yatin, the reddest of the Red Priests, if you
know what I mean. Any leaders of true heart and stout bows, the Priests find
out and murder as they come forth.'
'But
how?' I persisted. 'The Priests are few and your people are many.'
'Not so
many as you might hope,' Tarmond said. He rubbed the deep creases cut into his
weather-beaten skin. 'And they are afraid. And not of just the Red
Priests, but of each other. You see, no Acadian can know who has joined the
Order of the Dragon, and who has not.'
With a
heavy sigh, as he drove the tip of his bow into the forest floor in rhythm with
his heavy steps., Tarmond told us of this secret society of men and women who
had given their allegiance to the Red Dragon. They were the deluded and the
depraved, Tarmond said, who believed the Red Dragon's lies. They participated
in the Priests' secret rites of sacrificing innocents and drinking their blood;
some aspired to be anointed as acolytes and even become Priests themselves. As
Tarmond spoke of the elevation of one Edric, a man of his district, to this
exalted if vile rank, I thought of Salmelu, my fellow Valari who had betrayed
his own people and nearly murdered me with an arrow tipped with kirax.
'It is
fear that undoes us,' Tarmond said. He suggested that we stop by a stream and
take a bit of lunch, and so we did. He shared with us a loaf of bread and a
mutton joint stowed in his pack; we cut wedges of cheese for him from a fresh
wheel sealed in red wax, and gave him handfuls of raspberries, too. 'A man's
own brother might be a spy for the Order of the Dragon; a woman might surrender
up her own daughter if pressed hard enough. Few there are who can face the Red
Priests' fire-irons or being mounted on a cross.'
I
chewed at the tough mutton as I regarded Tarmond's worn yew bow; although he
bore no sword, there was steel inside him. I said, 'And yet you fight the
Priests, don't you?'
'What
else is there to do?' he said, brushing crumbs from his beard. 'We fight, but
too late and too few. And we do not fight as one. I, myself, was chosen to
journey to Riversong, Greenwood and other villages, in order to speak in favor
of electing a true Waldgrave to raise an army. But these days, no one will
trust anyone from another village, and few enough from their own.'
He
stood up and shouldered on his pack again. 'We're good people, we Acadians,
with good hearts. But too afraid.'
After
that we began walking through the forest again. We passed by farms whose
occupants might have known Tarmond, but they called out no greeting to him.
With each rebuff or stare of shamed silence, with every suspicious look these
freeholders cast at us, I heard Tarmond mutter to himself: 'We're a good
people, we are -at heart, a good, strong people.'
Soon we
neared Gladwater, at the juncture of the Tir and a much smaller river that ran
into it. It was tiny village, as Tarmond described it, with a mill, a granary,
a dock for a handful of fishing boats, a couple of dozen houses and little
else. Its largest building was the longhouse, built of great oak logs, at the
edge of the woods. In good times, the villagers of Gladwater used it as a
meeting place where they might take ale and good company together; in bad
times, they might take shelter behind its thick timbers and throw open the
shutters of the longhouse's arrow ports.
'We're almost
there,' Tarmond said to us as we pushed through the rather thick bracken in
this pan of the forest. He pointed through what seemed an endless expanse of
trees ahead of us. 'Through these maples and over a rise, and we'll come upon
the longhouse. I'll stand you all to a glass of good ale, the children
excepted, of course.'
At this
offer, Maram's eyes gleamed, and a new strength seemed to course through
his legs. He breathed in deeply and said, 'We must be close - I can hear the
river.'
So
could I. Through the green wall of trees before us came the sound of rushing
water. I smelled the moistness in the air. And then the wind shifted and I
smelled something else, too, which pleased me less well: the reek of death.
Altaru let loose a terrible whinny, and I had to grip his reins to keep him
from rearing up and striking out with his hooves.
'Ho,
friend,' I said to him, stroking his neck. 'Quiet now, quiet.'
Tarmond,
I saw, had frozen like a piece of stone as he stared into the woods. And then
he said, 'I'm old and my senses have dulled, but there's a foulness in the
air.'
Upon
the wind came a high, faint keening, as of a child calling out to his mother. I
closed my eyes as waves of pain and fear broke inside my chest.
Tarmond
placed his hand on my shoulder and asked me, 'Would you climb to the top of
this hill with me?'
I
nodded my head. Then Kane and Atara came forward with bows in hand, and the
four of us hiked up the easy slope to the top of the rise. We stood behind the
trees looking down at the muddy brown Tir and the little village built on its
banks. It was much as Tarmond had described. But the smoldering ruins of two of
the houses sent up plumes of dark smoke, and carrion birds circled in the air
above.
The
great timbers of the longhouse were the cured trunks of trees, and its three
stone chimneys sent up curls of smoke. Men surrounded it. Although their round
shields showed a repeating motif of small, painted red dragons, these were
surely no Ikurian knights or Dragon Guard or any of Morjin's best soldiers.
Mercenaries, they must be, I thought. Their leader, was a stout man wearing
full armor, gripping a broadsword in his hand. A yellow surcoat, emblazoned
with a rather small dragon, draped from his shoulders to his knees.
'It is
Harwell the Burner!' Tarmond gasped out in a fierce whisper. 'From Silver
Glade, five leagues from here. He was one of the first of us to join the Order
of the Dragon. It is said that Arch Yatin himself knighted him in reward.'
Without another
word, Tarmond strung his bow, whipped an arrow from his quiver and fitted its
feathered shaft to his bowstring. He stared down at Harwell as he made ready to
draw his bow.
'Hold!'
I whispered to him. 'This is no way to protect your people!'
'What
other way is there?' he whispered back. 'Do you pilgrims intend to take
part in our fight?'
Kane's
dark eyes fairly shouted out a great 'no' as he stared at me. Then Daj came
running up from behind us, distracting our attention from the longhouse. His
slight form bounded over branches and fallen trees with all the grace of a
young buck. He gasped out, 'I want to see.'
He
knelt beside me in the bracken and looked down at the men besieging the
longhouse. Four of the soldiers stood guard by a wagon bearing black-coated
buckets and two barrels of what looked to be pitch. The other soldiers were
busy with axes and hammers, nailing wooden planks together. One of their
constructions was nearly finished: a sort of small wall of wood, three feet
wide and six feet high, with handles nailed into its back and struts
near its base to keep it from falling over.
'What
is it?' Daj whispered to me.
'It's a
mantelet,' I told him. I explained how a soldier might stand behind it and work
it closer to his objective, using it as a shield against arrows or other
missiles. 'It would seem that they intend to fire the house.'
Toward
this end, one of the archers suddenly ignited a cloth wrapped around the tip of
one of his arrows. He loosed it in a low, flaming arc that found its terminus
at the longhouse's roof. The arrow buried itself in the roof and continued to
bum. But the wooden shingles, moist from the recent rains, were not so easy to
set on fire.
From
one of the dark crosses cut into the house, an arrow hissed forth. It struck
into the bark of one of the trees that Harwell's archers stood behind.
'When
the mantelets are completed,' I said to Daj, 'the soldiers will go forward and
soak the house in pitch.'
And
then. I thought, the house's timbers would bum like match-sticks.
'Back!'
I whispered. 'Let us hold council.'
I laid
my hand on Tarmond's shoulder and urged him back down the hill a few dozen
yards. Liljana and Maram came up to join us. I quickly explained to them what
was about to befall on the other side of the hill.
'I don't like what
we saw of that house,' Kane growled out. His black eyes drilled into mine. 'And
I like what I see now even less.'
Just
then the breeze died to a whisper, and from below our hill the muffled wail of
a baby filled the air,
'We
can't just leave those people to the Crucifiers!' I said to Kane.
'People die!' Kane snarled. 'That's the way
of the world! There are only four of us. Five, if we count this old man.'
The
look on Tarmond's face told me that I could indeed count on him to fire his
arrows straight and true.
For the
hundredth time, I thought of King Mohan's words to me: that no one could see
the results of a deed and thereby judge its virtue. A deed, I thought, was
either right or wrong. I said to Kane, 'We might not live even to reach the Red
Desert. But we are alive now to help these people.'
'It's
not our fight!' Kane growled at me. 'Would you risk everything for the sake of
strangers?'
The
acridness of smoke recalled the ruins of my father's castle and all those who
had been butchered or burnt inside. I said to Kane, 'It is our fight! And
these villagers are our people - all people are!'
Kane
was not a man easily to accept defeat, but he stared at me for a few long
moments, then finally bowed his head,
I
looked at Maram then, and the fire in my heart leaped into his. He said, 'Ah, I
suppose that if I do flee, I'll be the only one?' He drew his sword in a
burst of bravura and ringing steel that I prayed no one would hear. His smile
warmed me like a draught of brandy.
Atara
had strung her bow and stood with an arrow in her hand. She said that she had
'seen' four archers on the far side of the longhouse, hiding in a grove of
trees.
I sent
Kane on a long flanking manuever: through the woods around the house and into
the grove of trees sheltering the archers that Atara had descried. Tarmond walked
beside me as Maram, Atara and I led our horses up to the top of the rise. I
stationed Tarmond behind a stout maple. Maram and I drew forth our longbows
and strung them. And then we waited.
A
coldness burned through my belly as if I had drunk a gallon of ice-water.
'My
hands are sweating!' Maram whispered to me. 'I'm no good at this!'
'You
took a third at the tournament,' I reminded him. 'You're one of the finest
archers in the Morning Mountains!'
'But we're not in
the Morning Mountains. And this is different - we're shooting at men. They
can shoot back!'
When
enough time had passed to allow Kane to reach the grove of trees on the far
side of the longhouse and deal with the four archers there as only Kane could,
at last I hissed, 'Ready! Targets!'
Atara could
work her recurved bow from a kneeling position, but Maram and I had to stand
along with Tarmond to draw arrows and sight upon our targets below. These were
four archers standing behind trees with their backs to us.
I
whispered, 'Draw!'
As one,
we held stiff our left arms as we drew the feathered shafts of our arrows to
our ears.
'Loose!'
The
crack of our four bowstrings seemed as loud as a thunderclap; our four arrows
shot out through the air. Tarmond's and Atara's struck dead true at the center
of two of the mercenary archers' backs. They cried out in their death agony. My
man, perhaps sensing my murderous intent, moved just as I loosed my arrow,
which drove through his armor oft center and perhaps pierced a lung. He, too,
cried out a hideous, bubbling scream. Maram's arrow missed altogether, thudding
into the trunk of a tree.
'Oh,
Lord!' he moaned to me. 'I told you! I told you!'
'Mount!'
I shouted at him as I dropped my bow.
The
screaming of the three stricken archers had alerted Harwell and his men. This
large 'knight,' whose gray hair flowed out from beneath a conical helm, turned
about and pointed at us as he cried out, 'We're under attack!'
Four of
his mercenaries immediately covered themselves with their shields but the men
working on the mantelets were slower to take up theirs. One of these Atara
killed with an arrow through the throat; Tarmond, at the same moment, loosed an
arrow that buried itself in the remaining archer's chest.
While
Tarmond continued firing arrows at them, Maram, Atara and I mounted our horses
and we charged down the gentle slope through the trees upon our enemy.
Harwell
had the presence of mind to form up his mercenaries in front of the wagon, so
that it might protect their backs and provide cover against arrows being loosed
from the longhouse behind it. They stood in a line of ten men, locking shields
as they faced us. As we pounded closer, I caught a whiff of terror tainting the
air. The mercanaries' eyes were wide with astonishment: they had no spears with
which to withstand a charge of mounted knights. They must have been utterly
mystified by Atara, with her white blindfold and her great Sarni bow, firing
off arrows as she bounded down the slope straight toward them.
'Aieeuuuu!'
A
terrible cry suddenly split the air; it was something like the roar of a
whirlwind and a tiger's scream. And then Kane, like a tiger, like a veritable
whirlwind of steel and death, burst from around the side of the wagon and fell
upon the mercenaries' rear. He chopped two of them apart with his sword almost
before they realized that they were under assault by this new and maddened
enemy. This proved too much for Harwell's remaining men. All at once they
broke, running off in different directions toward the woods.
This
made it all the easier to kill them. Atara fired an arrow at point black range
with such force that it pierced a mercenary's mouth and drove straight through
the back of his head. While Kane set to work with his sword and Maram ran down
another man, putting his lance through his back, I drove my lance at a great,
red-bearded mercenary. He was quick enough to get his shield up; my lance point
struck into the painted wood and then snapped as the mercenary threw down his
shield. I drew my sword then. The mercenary tried to meet my attack with his
sword, but like the rest of his companions, he was of little prowess and could
not stand against a real knight. I swung Alkaladur, and my shining sword
cleaved through his poor armor, and through flesh and bone. Then I killed two
other mercenaries nearby with a coldness like unto that of an executioner. I
hated this mechanical butchery almost even more than the maddened fury I bore
inside toward Morjin.
Soon
the battle was over. I turned to see Maram, leaning over the side of his horse,
pull his lance from the neck of the dead Harwell. Maram's face had fallen a
ghastly gray, but it seemed that he had taken no wound. Neither, I was
overjoyed to see, had Atara. She climbed down from her roan mare and began
retrieving arrows buried in the bodies of the three men she had killed.
'...
six, seven, eight,' I heard Kane muttering as he stood over a dead mercenary
counting the bodies of our enemies. 'Nine, ten, eleven - all here. Did you take
out your four archers?'
'Yes,'
I told him. 'And you?'
'Indeed - it was
as Atara said: there were four of them, spread out. Their attention was on the
house, and they didn't notice me coming out of the trees.'
He
patted the hilt of his dagger; I hated the smile that broke upon his savage
face.After that, Tarmond walked down the hill toward us as the doors of the
longhouse opened and the villagers of Gladwater began pouring out.
Chapter 12 Back Table of Content Next
Tarmond, I saw, clutched at his bloody shoulder, from which the broken shaft of an arrow protruded. He said to me, 'The fourth archer shot me just as I shot at him.'
His deeds, no less ours, were the wonder of the villagers, who gathered around us. There were twenty-five of them: mothers and grandmothers, children dressed in poor woolens and a few bent old men. For a while, we traded stories with them. The only man of fighting age was a broad-shouldered woodsman, who had a thick beard and shaggy dark hair. From between a gap in his reddened teeth, he spat a stream of an evil-looking liquid. He was dressed all in green. Tarmond presented him as Berkuar. As this rough, rude-looking man took in Tarmond's wound, he said to him, 'That was some fine arrow-work I saw today, old friend.'
He turned toward me and my companions and added, 'You used the sword and the lance well, I suppose; I am mostly unfamiliar with those weapons. We of the forest rely on these.'
So saying, he held up his longbow, and he touched the sheath of his long knife.
'The Crucifiers, too, bear swords,' he said, staring at me. He stepped forward and poked a dirt-stained finger into the opening of my cloak where my mail showed through. 'And armor, as well though nothing so fine as this steel. You say you are knights bound for the Red Desert?'
We told him the same story that we had prepared for
Tarmond, and he told us his. Berkuar, it turned out, was one of the Keepers of the Forest, or the Greens, as they were
called. He had come to Gladwater to test a young man named Taddeum for
recruitment into his society. But one of Taddeum's rivals, Grimshaw, had
betrayed them, calling Harwell and the mercenaries down upon Gladwater. In the battle that had ensued, Harwell's
mercenaries had slain nearly every fighting man in Gladwater - and many others - and threatened to burn down the
entire village as punishment for sheltering Berkuar. We had come along just in
time to witness the survivors' last stand inside the longhouse.
'It's a terrible choice we had,' a middling-old
woman named Rayna told us. 'Fire or the cross. Of course, sometimes the
Crucifiers put you on the wood and then set it on fire anyway. I was ready to
slit my daughter's and grandson's throats, and my own as well.'
Here she wrapped her arm around the shoulders of a
young woman giving suck to a newborn as she showed us the dagger strapped to
her belt.
And then she told us, 'We owe you our lives, and we
would make a feast for you, if we could. But there is no time. What happened
here will be reported, and then the Crucifiers will come here by the score -
perhaps even the Red Priest called Vogard or Arch Yatin himself. We have time
to bury our dead, perhaps, but then we'll all have to take to the forest.'
It pained me to think of these poor people hiding
among the trees, and living wild and hunted. But it seemed that there was no
help for it. Rayna, for one, however, had no pity for herself -only an immense
gratitude to be still alive. As she put it, she was an Acadian, one of a tough
and resourceful people who had thrived off the bounty of the forest for
thousands of years and who would survive for many thousands more.
One of those who hadn't survived, though, was
the riverman, Gorson. He had died, it seemed, defending his boats from the
Crucifiers. It turned out that the flatboat he used in secret to ferry his
countrymen across the Tir was unharmed. Tarmond told us that we should take it
as our reward, if we could manage to work it ourselves.
'I would come with you, if I could,' he told us. Then
he gripped his wounded arm. 'But an arrow-shot old man is no companion for a
band of pilgrims such as yourselves. And my place is with my people.'
As he spoke, Liljana and Master Juwain. with Estrella
and Daj came down the hill trailing their mounts and our packhorses. Master
Juwain was of a mind to help the five villagers wounded in the battle, and Tarmond
most especially. But these hard people of Gladwater preferred to tend to their
own,
'I could heal them quickly,' Master Juwain said to me
in a low voice as he took me aside. 'If
I could use my gelstei. If I can't, I suppose they'll have to draw
arrows and stitch themselves. I'm afraid they've had too much practice at this
for a long time.'
As we made ready to go down through the ravaged
village to the river, Tarmond spoke a few low words to Berkuar. Then he told
us, 'The woods beyond the Tir are thick, with only a few paths through them.
And thirty miles from here, you'll come to another river, the Iskand. Berkuar
is willing to show you the way through the woods and a ford across the Iskand.
if you're willing to let him.'
The rest of us were more than willing to accept this
woodsman as our guide, but Kane scowled at Berkuar, and took me by the arm as
he pulled me away from the others. And he snarled at me: 'Trust this dirty
stranger to lead us true? No, I say! What if Berkuar was in league with the
Crucifiers? These Acadians are quick to betray their own, eh? What if their
attack was staged solely to lure us to the rescue?'
I looked at Kane as if he might have been maddened by
bad drink. 'Does that seem likely, or even possible? That Berkuar tricked the
Crucifiers, as well as us? And why should Berkuar have thought that we would
help the villagers?'
I looked over at Berkuar, standing like a bear next to
Tarmond. He seemed almost as suspicious of us as Kane was of him.
'I don't know!' Kane snarled. 'So, he is willing to
guide us through Acadu. But guide us where, eh? Maybe into a trap, where
his confederates will capture us and torture out of us all that we know.'
I told him that if Berkuar was our enemy and had
wanted to trap us, he had only to lead Harwell and the mercenaries against us
in the wild land across the river. And then I clapped him on the shoulder and
added, 'You've grown too suspicious, my friend. I think you've let the evil of
these woods get to you.'
Then I walked back over to the others and said to
Berkuar, 'We've taken counsel and would be honored if you would guide us.'
I bowed to him, but he seemed to have no knowledge of
this gesture - or indeed, of manners of any sort. He spat again on the ground
and said, 'Let's be off then. There's no time to lose.'
We said goodbye to Tarmond and the other villagers,
then turned to follow Berkuar around the longhouse. We passed through the band
of trees, where four archers lay with their throats slit open like gaping red
mouths. The short walk through Gladwater's streets revealed other grisly
sights. The dead were everywhere, in front of neat, wooden houses and blocking
our way down the streets. We could not step carefully enough to avoid them. My
boots, I saw were soon stained a reddish-brown from tramping through the
bloodied mud.
We found Gorson's boats tied to a dock jutting out
into the river. The flatboat he had used for ferrying was a huge construction,
more like a raft with low rails than a true boat. It was hard getting the
horses aboard it, especially Altaru, for he had experience at being floated on
top of water, and he hated being so shipped. As I pulled him on board, he drove
his hoof into the boat's deck with such force that it seemed he might stave it
to splinters. But the boat was sturdy enough to bear up even in a raging river.
After we urged on the other horses and ourselves as well, we cast off and let
the current take us out into the Tir. Kane and I, with Maram and Berkuar,
pushed the boat cross-current with the aid of long poles that we stuck down
into the river. It seemed a clumsy means of navigation, but it sufficed to take
us across to the other bank.
As promised, the forest here was thicker than in the
part of Acadu that we had so far crossed. Few people, it seemed, lived nearby
to burn out the undergrowth, which grew in low walls of bracken, buttonbush and
other shrubs. It would have been difficult to force our way through such a
tangle. We were fortunate, I thought, to have a guide who led us onto a path
through the woods running almost due west.
We did not travel very far that day, for it was
growing late, and we were all weary. We set to making camp in a clearing where
there was a stream and good grass for the horses. Berkuar seemed amused at
Kane's insistence that we fortify our camp with the usual fence of deadwood and
logs. He did not say why. He was not a talkative man or a particularly friendly
one. But he joined in the work at day's end willingly enough, gathering wood
for our fire and then helping Liljana prepare our dinner. This was an enormous
ham that one of the villagers had given us. As Liljana turned it on a spit, fat
dripped down into the fire and popped and crackled. The sweet-salt smell of
roasting meat made my mouth water.
After dinner, when
Kane was apportioning hours for the night's watches, Berkuar brought out a bag
of reddish-brown nuts and offered one to Maram, who would stand the first
watch. When Maram asked what they were, Berkuar replied, 'We call them barbark
nuts. You hold them in your mouth, beneath the tongue, and they give you
wakefulness as well as strength.'
So saying, Berkuar loosed a stream of red spittle at
the fire where it caused the flames to smoke and writhe as it hissed away into
vapor.
Maram looked doubtfully at the hard, shiny nut in
Berkuar's dirt-stained hand. 'Does it, ah, gladden the spirit as well? Like
brandy?'
'It does - but without the stupor. And it makes a man
as strong in the loins as a bull.'
'Give me one, then!' Maram said, snatching the nut
from Berkuar's hand. He opened his mouth and made ready to pop it inside.
'Hold!' Master Juwain said. He sat across the fire
between Liljana and Estrella. 'Remember your vow!'
'My vow was to forsake brandy and beer.'
'In spirit, it was to forsake all intoxicants. And
what do we know about these barbark nuts, anyway? I've never heard of such
before.'
Berkuar's teeth shone red as he grimaced at Master
Juwain. Another man might have patiently described the classification of the
barbark nut with other botanicals, and its harvesting and preparation - or
explained that its use among the Acadians had a long and honored history. But
that was not Berkuar's way. He reached into his leather bag and cast a handful
of nuts down into the dirt. He said, 'Chew them or not, as you wish.'
Then he picked up a waterskin and stalked off down to
the stream.
'A strange man,' Master Juwain said, coming over to
examine the nuts. 'I hope this barbark, whatever it is, hasn't addled his
wits.'
At dawn, however, Berkuar greeted the morning with a
mighty stretch and clear blue eyes. He helped us break camp with a rude good
cheer. He moved with a sort of animal grace and power that reminded me of Kane.
He seemed to have little liking or care for Maram or me, or indeed, any other
human being. His passion, I sensed, was for flower and leaf, for the rabbits
that darted across our path and the deer browsing on bracken - and even the
squirrels scurrying along the branches above us. His wide nostrils quivered
in the breeze as if he were breathing in all the scents of the forest and much
else as well. He padded along almost soundlessly in his soft leather boots. He
was a quiet man, as far as conversation with others was concerned, but often
as noisy as a chittering bird. Indeed, he liked to talk to his winged friends,
as he called them, trilling out notes with his thick tongue or imitating their
calls. His whistles, as songlike as those of any songbird, were a marvel to
hear. While passing through some oaks, he let loose a succession of
shureet-shuroos indistinguishable from the voices of the scarlet tanagers that
sang back to him. I had a strange sense that he was communicating to them
secrets that neither I nor my companions were meant to hear.
While we were resting in another clearing later in the
morning, Maram tried to make conversation with him. He moved over to me and
rested his hand on my shoulder as he said to Berkuar, 'Mirustral, too, can talk
to animals. He's always had a way with them.'
This indeed piqued Berkuar's curiosity. He wiped his
greasy fingers in his beard, then pointed toward a robin that was standing
nearby on the forest floor. 'What does yon bird say to you, then?'
I let the morning breeze wash over me. I saw a
dragonfly near some goldthread and a fritillary fluttering all orange and
glorious in a patch of dandelions. From somewhere deeper in the trees, a bobcat
screeched out in anger. Once, I remembered, when I was a boy running free in
the forests of Mesh, I had loved the wild so much that it seemed I had a
covenant with these animals, indeed, with all life. Why, I had wondered, did it
seem that man was too often evil and nature good? Who could look out into the
woods on a perfect spring day and fail to be astonished at the beauty of the
world and the way that all things seemed to beat with one heart and share a
secret fire?
I finally I told Berkuar, 'The robin is hungry, as
robins always are. Especially in the spring. She is listening for a worm to
take back to her hatchlings.'
'Listening?' Berkuar said as we
watched the robin cocking her head, this way and that. 'But how could you know
that?'
'Mirustral knows things,' Maram said as he
squeezed my shoulder. 'And the animals know that he knows. It's the way that he
calls to them.'
I looked up at Maram and shook my head in warning. It
wouldn't do to tell Berkuar, or any other stranger, too much about my gift of
valarda.
Now Berkuar seemed suddenly very interested in me. He
pointed up past the crowns of the trees at the blue sky. There, a hawk soared
above us and called out its harsh, screaming kee yarr. And Berkuar said
to me, 'Let's
hear you call to that hawk, then. Not many can do well the cry of a
red-shouldered hawk.'
'Neither can I,'
I said.'I've never been able to mimic animals.'
'Then how is it that you can call to them?'
In answer, I stood and turned my face to the sky. I
looked up at the hawk even as he looked down at me. In the meeting of our eyes
was a shock of recognition, like the flash of a lightning bolt. It seemed as if
the hawk and I had known each other for a million years and would be as
brothers for a million more.
'Come!' I whispered in the silence of my heart.
'Ashvarii. come to me!'
It was said that if you called out an animal's true
name, he would do as you asked.
Again, the hawk gave voice to its screaming hunting
cry; I felt this sound deep within my own throat. Suddenly, without warning..
the hawk pulled back his wings and dived straight down toward me. I held my arm
straight out. At the last moment, it seemed, the hawk's wings beat the air in a
feathered fury as he settled down onto my forearm and wrapped his talons around
my cloak and the steel mail buried beneath it.
Daj and Estrella came running to witness this little
miracle, and Maram's eyes widened in surprise.
The hawk turned his bright black eye toward me.
Ashvarii, my grandfather used to call this kind of hawk. He was a beautiful
bird; true to his name, his feathers were rufous around the shoulder, and his
wings were barred black and white. Five thin white bands marked his black tail.
Nature had designed this sleek bird to hunt along the wind, flying as straight
and true as an arrow. He looked at me for a long moment, as if to ask me why I
remained so heavy and earthbound? Then he cried out again, and in a burst of
muscles and feathers, pushed off my arm into the air. He flew up and up, toward
the crowns of the trees.
'Strange,' Berkuar said, looking at me in a new light.
'Very strange.'
It occurred to me that I had not called animals in
this way for a long time. It gave me hope that the lies and killings of the
previous year hadn't completely sullied me. Would Ashvarii have come to me if I
were forever tainted with hate? How was it possible, I wondered, to hate at all
in sight of such a great being?
And then a shadow fell over my eyes as it came to me
that Morjin would hate this bird solely because it claimed a realm that could
not be his and flew so wild and free.
'Strange,' Berkuar murmured again. 'We of Acadu do not
summon these hunting birds as you have done, but it is said that in-other lands
they practice such arts. Is that your bird then, trained from a
hatchling?'
'I've never seen him before,' I told him. 'And that
bird belongs to no one and nothing except the sky.'
After that we resumed our journey to the west. We did
not come across the hawk again. But the woods were full of other birds:
warblers and ravens, sparrows, shrikes and starlings. We saw many four-legged
animals as well, and many of these were deer. What evening we feasted on a
young buck killed by Berkuar. He spent most of an hour washing its still form
in fresh water and chanting over its spirit before he would allow us to dress
and cook it. Maram, it seemed, had developed a liking for this strange man and
his ways. He was overeager to take the first watch; he even offered to stand
Master Juwain's and my watches, as well. The night passed peacefully, with Daj
and Estrella curled up in each other's arms between Atara and Liljana in front
of the fire. Toward midnight, the wakeful Berkuar called out to a great horned
owl somewhere in the woods. The owl's deep, hooing answer seemed as natural as
the wind, but it disturbed me even so.
Just before dawn, I came awake to the urgent press of
Kane's hand. He knelt over me, gripping his strung bow as waves of anger poured
out of him. When my eyes finally cleared, he bent his head low and whispered to
me, 'There are men, all around us, in the woods.'
As I roused myself up and grabbed for my sword, Kane
whipped about and drew an arrow. He fit it to his bowstring, which he pulled
back, aiming the arrow straight at Berkuar standing guard by the wooden fence
that protected our encampment. I quickly woke
the others, even Daj and Estrella. Atara and Maram armed themselves, too, then
joined Kane and me as we stood facing Berkuar.
'So, you've led us into a trap!' Kane snarled at him.
The day's first light barely sufficed to show the gray
trunks of trees all around us and the bracken low and grayish green along the
forest floor. The morning mist filled the silent woods. Between the trees, I
saw, through the swirls of mist stood men in a great circle around us. There
must have been more than thirty of them. They wore long, hooded cloaks and bore
bows and arrows, which they pulled back on almost invisible strings. They
seemed to be waiting for a signal or call.
'Kill me,' Berkuar said to Kane, 'and you'll die with
a dozen arrows in you - your friends, too!'
Maram, crouching low as if he hoped our flimsy
fortifications would be enough to shield him, cried out, 'Is it the Grays,
then? No, no - there are too many for a company of Grays, and the Stonefaces
bear knives, not bows, don't they?'
'We are the Greens,' Berkuar told him. Then he turned
to Kane. 'We are the Keepers of the Forest, and it is upon us to keep the enemy
out of Acadu. If you are one of them, then this is indeed a trap.'
'We've told you who we are!' Kane said as he tightened
the tension on his bow.
It was a rare man who could stare down Kane in all his
fury, but Berkuar seemed unconcerned with the prospect of his imminent death.
He said to Kane, 'You've told of a quest to find the Well of Restoration and
names that I do not believe are yours.'
'We killed your enemies!'
'You killed that traitor, Harwell, and his cursed
Crucifiers, and they were our enemies. But were they really yours, as
well? Or did you arrange the attack on Gladwater and sacrifice them to win my
confidence? The Kallimun have done more deceptive things, and worse, to try to
win their way into the trust of our society.'
The mist thinned to reveal the men surrounding us.
Kane finally blinked his eyes then. But he did not loose his arrow. I felt his
consternation, like an acid, at being confronted by a man even more suspicious
than he was.
'Val,' he whispered to me.
He nodded at me as if to confess that his own evil
mistrust had brought these men down on us. With his eyes, he sought my
forgiveness and looked to me to put things aright.
Then Berkuar let loose a whistle like that of a goldfinch.
Kane turned his attention back to him and to the Greens, about thirty of them,
who slowly began advancing upon us through the woods like a tightening noose.
'What is your name?' Berkuar asked me. 'The one you
were born with?'
I hesitated only a moment, then said, 'Valashu Elahad.
Of Mesh.'
Then I gave him the names of my companions and the
lands that had birthed them, as far as I knew. Estrella could not tell of her
origins, and as for Kane, no one knew what name his father and mother had
spoken on the hour of his birth - perhaps not even Kane himself.
'And what of this Well of Restoration then? Do you
really seek it?'
My breath rose and fell as I looked into Berkuar's
blue eyes, now gray in the early light. His breath, too, came quickly, like a
bird's, as he looked back at me. There dwelled within me, I knew, a great
power: that if I told the truth, utterly and completely, with all my heart, men
would believe me.
'We seek the Lightstone,' I said to him. 'Or rather,
the one who can wield it who is called the Maitreya.'
As quickly as I could, in a low voice that he strained
to hear, I told Mm of our struggles against Morjin and of our quest to faroff
Hesperu.
'What is he saying?' one of the Greens beyond our
encampment called out to us. This proved to be a big man named Gorman, who was
as thick and shaggy as a sagosk. 'Give the word and we'll fill him with
arrows!'
'Let us kill them all, anyway, and be done with it!'
another said. This man, almost as tall as I, was thin and angular like a piece
of overly whittled wood.
'Kill the summoner?' a third Green cried out. 'Didn't
you see how he called down the hawk? Would you have him call down a dragon upon
us?'
Berkuar ignored them and continued to regard me
strangely. At last he said to me quietly, 'That hawk's heart was as true as my
own, and I cannot think that such a bird would have given his trust to our
enemy. I believe you. And I believe your story, incredible as it is, though it
seems that I haven't heard the tenth part of it.'
So saying, he motioned for his fellow woodsmen to
lower their bows, then stepped straight toward me within reach of my sword. He
paid this terrible weapon no heed. Then he embraced me, clasping me to his
hard, hairy body with all the strength of a bear. His lips pulled back to show
his barbark-stained teeth. It was the first time I had seen him smile.
After that, I persuaded Kane to help me tear open our
wooden fence, and we invited the thirty Greens to share breakfast with us. Most
of these grim men remained wary of us, though they were inclined to accept my
friendship with the hawk as a powerful -and good - sign. Then Berkuar told them
of what had befallen in Gladwater and of our part in the battle at the
longhouse; they hadn't known of this for they ranged the wild lands west, of
the Tir. A few of them had wives and children in Gladwater, though, and were
overjoyed to learn from Berkuar that they still lived. They came up to me and
clasped my hand in thanks. They even thanked Kane for his savage knifework in
the grove behind the longhouse. They appreciated prowess with the knife almost
as much as with the bow and arrows.
And so on that misty morning we made together a small
feast. Fires were lit from the wood of our fortifications. Venison was roasted,
and stories were told. Berkuar respected the need to keep at least part of our
past and our present quest a secret. Who knew better than this embattled
Acadian how even the hardest of men might break and betray his friends if
nailed to a cross or threatened with seeing his children tortured?
Between bites of blackened deer meat Berkuar said,
'These are the worst of times, and strange, too. There are bad things in the
deep woods. I've heard stories of woodcutters whose minds the Crucificr has
seized and forced like puppets to his will so that they chop down friends and
family with their axes - and I believe them. There are the ones you call the
Grays. They freeze men's blood like winter does water, and steal children from
their beds. Something, in the woods to the far west, turns men to stone. And
then there is the Skadarak.'
I shivered to hear Berkuar say this word. Seeing this,
he went on.
'It is,' he said, 'a bad, bad place. There, the trees
grow black and twisted, and the animals devour their own young. Pass nearby it,
and it draws you without your knowing you are being drawn. Take the wrong path
through the forest, and it will capture you like a fly in a spider's web. And
then the Dark Thing will devour you.'
'But what it this "Dark Thing"?' Maram asked
him.
'It is the Skadarak,' Berkuar said simply, staring at
Maram. 'Haven't you listened to what I've said?'
He went on to explain that in the Skadarak, the forest
itself was like an living entity: ancient, powerful and malevolent.
'We've been advised,' I said to Berkuar, 'to avoid this
place.'
'And good advice that is. But if you're journeying
west to the Red Desert, it won't be so easy to avoid.'
'Why not? Do you not know where it lies? Can't we
bypass it?'
'I know where it lies,' Berkuar said. 'But how will
you bypass it? To the north of the Skadarak, in the hills, you'll find the
mineworks. There the Red Priests and the soldiers are as thick as flies on a
flayed ewe. To the south, for a hundred miles, are the Cold Marshes. And to the
south of that lie the lands around Varkeva, where the armies of Urwin
the Lame and cadres of Red Priests, the Grays, too, would likely discover you -
and likely blame you when the news of what happened at Gladwater gets out.'
I thought about this as I took a bite of deer meat,
which was charred black on the outside and bloody red inside, the way the
Greens liked to eat it. And I said, 'But you who wear the green must range your
land freely, if you're to fight your enemies as you do. How would you cross
Acadu then?'
Pittock, the tall, angular man I had noticed earlier,
answered for Berkuar, saying, 'If we were journeying west, we would cross the
mine lands where the hills are most broken, or pass south of the Cold Marshes.
But we do not journey as you do.'
'What do you mean?' Maram asked him.
'We can climb walls of bare rock where we have to.
We've no horses to whinny and snort, and leave tracks in the ground as deep as
a pond,' he explained. Then he looked pointedly at Maram. 'And we don't trample
the bracken as loudly as an ox - we go on foot, as silent as deer and nearly as
invisible as weryan.'
'Weryan?' Maram said. 'What is that - I've never heard
of such an animal?'
'That is because no one has ever seen one,' Pittock
said mysteriously - and maddeningly.
Berkuar was no help in telling anything more about
these 'invisible', and probably fantastical, beasts. But then, as his jaw set
and he seemed to come to a decision, I looked upon him as a guiding angel, for
he said, 'There is a way through the wild woods, north of the Cold
Marshes yet just south of the Skadarak. A narrow way. I know I can find a path
through it.'
'Are you sure?' Maram asked him. 'We were warned not
to go near that place, and this doesn't seem very much like avoiding it.'
Berkuar shrugged his shoulders then spat into the
fire. 'You have your choice then: the likelihood of keeping an arm's distance
from the Skadarak against the near certainty of being discovered by the Red
Priests.'
'Oh, excellent!' Maram said, looking up past the
branches of the trees toward the sky. 'Why am I always so fortunate as to be
given such wonderful choices?'
I tried not to laugh as I looked at Berkuar. 'If you
would guide us past the Skadarak, we would be fortunate indeed.'
'I will guide you past it,' Berkuar said, 'all the way
to the mountains where Acadu comes to an end.'
He smiled at me as we clasped hands to set the seal of
our new fellowship. Then he choose out Gorman, Pittock and a dark, hard-looking
man named Jastor to accompany us as well.
'But what of the rest of you?' Maram asked as his hand
swept out toward the thirty other Greens eating their breakfasts around the
other fires. 'Whatever dangers we'll find between here and the mountains would
be better met with thirty extras archers than with three.'
'Perhaps they would,' Berkuar said to him. 'But we've
dangers of our own to deal with. And vengeance to be meted.'
Here he looked at a lean, gray-haired man named Tarl,
whom I took to be one of the Greens' captains. A series of whistles, like that
of two singing larks, passed between them. Then Berkuar said, 'My men have the
survivors of Gladwater to look after. And the enemy to look for. The Red Priest
called Edric sent Harwell and the Crucifiers into the woods near Gladwater.
He'll be hunted down and killed like the snake he is.'
So, I thought, as I sipped from a mug of tea that
Liljana had brewed for us, one or more of the Greens would find Edric,
perhaps leading a company of Crucifiers through the woods against Riversong or
some other village along the Tir. They would surprise him through the trees and
kill him with arrows. And then Arch Yatin would send other Red Priests and
soldiers, in greater numbers, to crucify and slay in vengeance of their own,
and the cycle of death would grow only greater and would go on and on. Who was
I to stop it? I, who had brought so much death and destruction down upon my
countrymen and those whom I most loved? Truly, I hated war as I hated Morjin
himself, but there would be no end to it until the Shining One was found and
claimed mastery of the Lightstone. Toward this single purpose I must direct all
my will, for I could see no other hope.
And so I swallowed my bitter tea, and looked at Tarl
and the other Greens in silence. In an hour, after breakfast, they would
journey on east to seek their fate, while my friends and I, led by Berkuar and
his three fellow woodsmen, would try to force our way deeper into the darkest
of woods.
Chapter 13 Back Table of Content Next
We moved at a good speed through the woods all that day. A few miles farther on, we forded the Iskand, as Berkuar had promised, and came out into more open woods again. Many people lived in this part of Acadu, spread out between the Iskand and the great Ea River, and Berkuar and his men knew many of them. But they chose paths that led around and away from the villages and even the small farms breaking the forest. Although we might have replenished our supplies and so conserved them, Berkuar agreed with Kane that we should keep our presence in Acadu a secret, if that was any longer possible. In any case, he and his fellows mostly disdained the soft, farm foods that he might have requisitioned from his countrymen, choosing instead to depend on their bows to put meat on the table, so to speak. Freshly-killed deer, boar and wild sheep, nuts and fruit such as blackberries and apples - this was most of what the Greens liked to eat.
As Pittock told us proudly, the Greens' culinary preferences gave them great stamina and strength, like unto that of roving wolves. He and the others padded along besides our horses through bracken or over old leaves at a pace better managed by four legs than two. But Pittock's two legs, as Pittock told us, were as hard as wood and his breath was like the west wind itself. The Greens could walk thirty miles without stopping, at need, pause for a few bites of bloody venison, and then walk thirty more.
That afternoon, in a district full of cherry orchards
all snowy with white blossoms, we came to the Ea River. Berkuar knew of a
ferryman who took us across it. Maram, thankful at putting this great water
behind us, wanted to give the ferryman a gold piece for his efforts, but
Berkuar discouraged such largess. He pointed out that
the ferryman was likely already suspicious that we weren't really 'pilgrims' at
all, and it wouldn't do for him to think that we were rich as merchants, too.
After traversing some miles of farmland to
the west of the Ea, the farms thinned out as the forest gradually thickened.
Soon, the ground rose into a more hilly country, where the woods grew even
wilder. We chose a good spot to camp for the night beneath some mighty oaks and
by a stream that gurgled down from these low hills.
'The mines are not far from here,' Berkuar
told us as we unpacked the horses. He pointed into the wall of trees to the
west. 'Twenty miles yon way, the hills rise higher, and there the Crucifier's
men dig for gold. The line of hills runs thirty miles south, toward the Skadarak.'
'And what is the length and breadth of
that place?' Master Juwain asked him as he unfolded his map and smoothed out
the creases.
'No one knows with certainty,' Berkuar
said. 'But if we make a great roundabout along these hills, as we must if we're
to avoid the Crucifiers, for fifty miles, we'll come to the Cold Marshes. There
we'll turn west again along the lower edge of the Skadarak.'
Master Juwain then put to Berkuar the very
question that a very nervous Maram obviously trembled to ask: 'But if you don't
know the precise dimensions of the Skadarak, how do you know there is a way
past it, between the marshlands and it?'
'Because,' Berkuar said, 'my father once
ventured that way and lived to tell of it. Unless the Skadarak has grown these
past years, we'll find the same way that he did.'
'Unless it has grown!' Maram
cried out. 'Do you have reason to think it has? Oh, I don't like the prospect
of this at all, not even a dram's worth of spit!'
This proved to be a cue for Jastor and
Gorman to spit thin red streams at the ground, both at once, for they chewed
the barbark nut as did Berkuar and the merciless-looking Pittock. This gaunt
mam, whose cheeks were carved with scars, stared at Maram and said, 'Berkuar
has told us little more about you than that you are a knight of Mesh, which is
said to lie in the Morning Mountains, wherever that is. Do the knights of your
land then make such complaint when compelled to face dangers?'
'I was bom in Delu,' Maram told him. 'And,
yes, we Delians, being more reasonable, as well as more civilized, do make
complaint where complaint is called for. As it is when facing not just dangers,
but sheer madness.'
Maram took a sip of water from his cup and
swirled it about in his mouth as if he wished it were brandy. And then he
added, 'And as for dangers, you can't imagine. I, myself, have stood against
the siege of a great city and fought the Lord of Lies' Dragon Guard lance to
lance in a great battle. And crossed the earth's highest mountains and fought a
fire-breathing dragon and -'
I reached over and laid my hand on Maram's
knee to silence him. Berkuar, according to the Greens' way, had told his three
fellow woodsmen what they needed to know about us, and nothing more. He,
himself, knew very little. But later that night, with the moon brightening the
leaves of the trees above us, I joined him by the fortifications of our
encampment, and we spoke of many things. I told him what I knew about the
Maitreya. He, being a devout man in his crude, violent way, had memorized many
passages from the Saganom Elu, though he could not read. He surprised
me, reciting to me words that cut me to the heart:
About the Maitreya One thing is known:
That to himself
He
always is known
When the moment comes
To claim the Lightstone.
'If this is true, as it must be,'
he said to me, 'then since the Crucifier now keeps the Lightstone, the Maitreya
would likely not even know himself as he really is. So how will you, Valashu,
recognize him?'
And I told him, 'This is not written in
the Saganom Elu, but it is true nevertheless. The Maitreya is he who
will abide, at all times, under any circumstances, in the One. He will look
upon all with an equal eye. And in his heart, like fire, will blaze an
unshake-able courage.'
'Such valor,' Berkuar said, gripping the
leather wrappings of his bow. 'Such impossible grace. I believe it must be so.
But a million men live in Hesperu. You can't search out every one and look into
his eyes to find this fire.'
'No,' I said, 'we cannot.'
Then I told him of Kasandra's prophecy that Estrella would
show us the Maitreya.
'I see,' Berkuar said as he sucked on a
barbark nut. 'Now I understand why you've brought children with you.'
'It seemed the only way,' I said.
'The only way,' he murmured as his eyes
caught the gleam of the moonlight. 'Yes, I believe there is a way -
there must be This must be the time, then. The Shining One will come
forth! I never dreamed that I might live to see such a day!'
In all the miles of our journey from
Gladwater, I had not seen Berkuar so excited or happy, or indeed, known that he
was capable of such exaltation. I relieved him of his watch then. But he told
me that he wouldn't be able to sleep, and so we stood there by the log fence
for the next two hours, gazing out into the shimmering woods as we spoke of dreams
close to our hearts.
In the morning we set out with a soaring
of our spirits that seemed to rise up past the crowns of the trees and spread
out like a flock of swans beneath the deep blue sky. The day grew pleasantly
warm, and we were full of good food, and none of our enemies seemed too near.
But it is not the way of the world for
such contentment to last. Day passes into night; bellies grow empty; clouds
darken the sun. As we made our way along the line of hills, south and slightly
west, the soft spring wind shifted and began to blow from the north, and the
air fell steadily colder. Even so, we made good distance, journeying perhaps
thirty miles by the time we stopped to make camp that evening. The drizzle that
began sifting down from the gray sky at dusk, however, promised worse weather
later that night, and it was so. A cold rain began to fall from a nearly black
sky. It smothered our two little fires, and soaked our garments. Berkuar
suggested abandoning our encampment to take shelter beneath the thick foliage
of a basswood tree, and this we did. Kane didn't like giving up the protection
of our wooden fence, but he liked even less the prospect of the children
catching the cold of death.
For most of the night, Maram prayed aloud
for respite from this icy deluge. His invocations, like thunder, boomed out
above the great sound of water striking leaf, rock, log and our sodden wool
cloaks, and running in torrents over the earth. Our rain cloths provided us
little protection. I could do little more than wrap around my neck the white,
wool scarf that my grandmother had once knitted me. And wait. It seemed that I
had the very heavens to thank - or perhaps Maram - when the rain softened to a
drizzle again just before dawn. The sky, however, did not clear. It grew even
colder. After a miserable breakfast of old venison and cheese, we set out as
quickly as we could, fairly jogging beside our horses in order to generate a
little heat in our benumbed bodies. The wind died, and that was good, but with
this quietening came a stifling stillness, as if we were all being smothered by
a wet blanket held over our faces. Five miles of dripping woods we passed
through, and then ten more, and it seemed that we must be drawing nearer to the
Cold Marshes and the corridor of forest where we would turn west past the
Skadarak.
I sensed this place somewhere in the
forest beyond us. With every yard of slick ferns and dead branches clutching at
my legs, it seemed, with every furlong we passed deeper into these wild woods,
we drew closer to it. I felt it as a cooling of my blood, which seemed to grow
thicker and heavier, like honey in winter. I heard it as an unwanted whispering
in my mind: fell words of torment and despair, memories of nails and swords
driven through flesh, and dreams as dark as rotting corpses. It almost stole
away my breath. In the creeping dread that built inside me, I felt Morjin's
presence. I felt him close to me, as I always did now, but here in these dark,
damp woods, it seemed that the very foulness of his flesh tainted the air. When
we made camp that evening and Liljana expended great efforts to cook up a
succulent rabbit stew, I found that I couldn't eat a single bite. It was as if
a great fist were driving into the pit of my belly, pressing my innards against
my spine.
'You should eat something,' Liljana
said to me as I sat by the fire with Maram and Master Juwain. She stood over me
with a bowl of stew clutched between her hands. 'To keep up your strength.'
I was afraid that Liljana might continue
to harangue me; instead, she gave the bowl to Daj and came up behind me. Her
fingers, warm from the fire, pressed into various points on my neck, head and
face. In scarcely half an hour, she touched away enough of my sickness that I
could eat. I smiled at her in gratitude and surprise, for I hadn't known that
her hands held such magic. It saddened me that she could not smile back.
Later that night, however, as I lay near
Maram and Kane trying to sleep, the sickness crept back into me. I dreamed
dark, bloody dreams. The veil between earth and the otherworld of the dead
seemed to grow as thin and transparent as gossamer. I knew, in some ever-aware
corner of my mind, that the Skadarak had something to do with Morjin and the
Dark One whom he served. I tried to warn myself of this. There was a
danger I did not see, my heart whispered. I came awake trying to give voice to
this foreboding Without quite knowing what I was doing, I pulled open my sticky
eyes and called out, 'He is coming!'
My cries woke everyone. I sat up to see
Maram grabbing for his sword, even as Atara and Berkuar threw back their cloaks
and swept up their bows, along with Jastor and Pittock. Daj and Estrella rubbed
their eyes as they instinctively moved closer to Liljana's soft form.
Kane was already on his feet, moving at
speed the few yards toward our encampment's fortifications where Gorman stood
watch. Gorman's bow, fitted with an arrow, swept around in a great circle as he
scanned the woods all about us. 'What is it, Valashu?' he asked me. 'I... do
not know,' I told him.
I stood up even as I slid Alkaladur from
its sheath. The trees rose tall and straight in the quiet woods, and the
bracken lay like a heavy blanket covering the ground. It was too dark to see
very much. The moon's light could not easily pierce the covering of clouds and
leaves above us, though it did impart to the air a glimmer of gray. Nothing
made a sound or moved in the perimeter around us. And then, from behind an old
broken tree, jagged and standing as high as a man, something moved even as a
grating, old voice called out to us: 'I've been traveling a long way, and would
beg food and fire of you!'
'There!' Gorman suddenly pointed into the
woods. His fellow Greens came over to him and peered into the ghostly gray
trees near us. Kane did, too, but then quickly turned his gaze in other
directions, searching the surrounding woods - as did Berkuar. Both of these old
warriors, I thought, were wise to the ways of ambuscade.
'Just a little bread,' the voice called
out to us again. 'And a little meat, and salt to sweeten it, if you have it.'
I came over to Gorman and saw a man
limping closer to us. He leaned over his walking stick and moved slowly as if
in pain; his cowled robe made his face impossible to see.
'Stop!' Kane cried out to him. 'Stop and
show yourself!' The old man, if that he truly was, shuffled closer as if he
hadn't heard him.
'Stop! Pull back your cowl! We've arrows
aimed at you, and we'll loose them if you don't do as I say!'
Gorman, Jastor and Pittock pulled back the
strings of their long yew bows. Berkuar stood to their right, farther along our
fence, as he held out his bow and looked for assault from behind us. Atara, I
noticed to my disappointment, had put down her bow and had drawn her sword
instead.
'It's all dark;' she murmured.
The old man took another step toward us.
Maram asked, 'What if he's so old he can't
hear us?'
Even Kane, I thought, would hesitate to
cut down a deaf and weaponless old man.
From behind us, where Master Juwain waited
with Liljana and Estrella by one of the fires. Daj suddenly burst forward and
leaped upon the fence. He pushed up his head just high enough so that he could
look oat over it. Then he shouted. 'He's coming! The Dragon is coming!'
An old, sick heat burned through my blood
like a stroke of lightning. I felt inside flames flaring with the hues of
madder, puce and incarnadine. I looked out at the old man, digging his stick
into the black earth as he stepped even closer. And I cried out. 'It Is
Morjin!'
The Greens needed no more encouragement to
loose their arrows. Berkuar let fly his arrow, as well. At a distance of ten
yards, even in the near-dark, these renowned archers could not possibly miss.
But miss they did. Their arrows whined harmlessly past the old man and
skittered through the bushes deeper in the woods. They moved immediately to
draw new arrows from the quivers slung on their backs.
The old man, however, moved even more
quickly. In one blinding motion, he stood up like bent steel snapping straight,
pulled off his cloak, and flung it at Kane's face as he burst into a sprint
toward our fortifications. I had a moment to take to the flying golden hair and
fine, furious face of Morjin. He must be mad. I thought. He couldn't hope to
clear our wooden fence without being met by our swords. And if he was slow
getting over the top, he would be met by more arrows as well.
'Lord of lies!' Master Juwain suddenly
cried out from behind me. 'Lord of Illusions! Val, beware - the woodsmen do not
wear warders!'
His warning came a moment too late. Just
as .Morjin drew a sword and leaped at the fence, I heard Gorman cry out; 'Hai,
a dragon - a dragon is upon us!'
'A werewolf, too!' Pittock shouted. 'He
burns! The fire!'
Just as Morjin pulled himself to the top
of the fence. I moved to thrust my sword through his chest, Then an arrow sang
out and slammed into my back. I felt it drive my cloak and the mail beneath
into the muscle along my spine. It drove my breath away, as well. I gasped at
the pain of it, giving Morjin enough time to jump down upon me. Kane threw
himself forward to slay him, but another arrow sizzled through the night and
pierced his shoulder, causing him to drop his sword. He cried out like a
maddened tiger then, not so much in hurt, but in rage at losing the use of his
sword arm. It took him a moment to reach for his knife. And in that blink of an
eye, as the breath burned like fire in my lungs, Morjin struck out at me.
My eyes fixed on Morjin's sword: a slender
piece of steel stabbing like a snake for my throat. I did not see the rest of
our company, including the children, wrestle with the illusion-maddened
woodsmen and with Berkuar's help subdue them. I didn't see Atara standing
helplessly behind me with her sword dipping this way and that.
It was Maram who saved me. At the last
moment, he managed to bring his sword down upon Morjin's shoulder just as Kane
knocked into Morjin from the other side. Kane's good hand clamped on to the
hilt of Morjin's sword and ripped it from his grasp. Maram drove his huge body
against Morjin, bearing him down to the ground. Then Kane threw himself on top
of Morjin, too, as I lifted back my sword to drive it through Morjin's head.
'Kill him!' Kane cried out. His scream was
like that of an animal. 'Kill him, now - what are you waiting for?'
I fought to breathe against the knot of
flame choking my throat.
'Kill him!'
I aimed the point of my sword straight toward Morjin's forehead.
He waited, looking up at me with his fearful golden eyes. There was something
strange about them. The light of the nearby fire filled them with a ghastly
orange glow, but little radiance of their own seemed to illuminate them from
within. I smelled Morjin's fear of death, sickly and terrifying, but it had
little of the foul reek of the decaying flesh of the great Red Dragon whom I
had faced in Argattha. There was something strange about this Morjin, I
thought. He did not struggle beneath Maram's great weight, little good that it
would have done him with only one arm. The other I had cut off at the Battle of
the Asses' Ears. He should have thrashed like a furious snake and spat venomous
words at me; he should have beamed all his black, bottomless hate at me.
Instead, for a moment, in his soft, amber eyes, there was nothing except
confusion and pain.
'Rope!' I called out. I held back my
sword, looking down at Morjin as I waited. 'Berkuar, bring me a rope!'
'Val, what are you doing?' Maram puffed
out into the moist night air. 'Kill him, as Kane said!'
'No, I cannot!' I told him. 'This is not
Morjin!'
I stared down at this immortal man with
his glorious golden hair all dirtied and snarled in the clasp of Kane's savage
hand. Something about him called to me and suggested that he was even younger
than I.
'That is, it is Morjin - but
somehow it is not. I can't explain.'
Berkuar went over to the snorting,
stamping horses to fetch three ropes. Two of these he used to bind Pittock and
Gorman; there was no need to likewise secure Jastor, for he sat in the mud with
an arrow in his chest. It seemed that either Pittock or Gorman, firing arrows
in the wild panic of illusion, had killed him.
The third rope we used to bind Morjin - or
rather, the creature that we called by that name. Maram and Kane stood him up
and pressed his back to the wooden fence while Berkuar looped the rope around
his chest, belly and thighs, and fastened it to some sturdy logs behind him.
Maram's sword had cut through the mail covering Morjin's shoulder, which oozed
a dark, red blood. But Morjin seemed to pay this wound no notice. All of his
attention turned upon Berkuar.
'He wears no warder!' Master Juwain called
out again. 'Berkuar, do not believe what you see or heed what you hear!'
I gave Daj a thick, clublike piece of wood
and posted him to stand guard over Gorman and Pittock. Then Berkuar advanced
upon Morjin. He struck the edge of his bow across Morjin's face, bloodying his
mouth. He said, 'This fooled me with his first illusion, and so I
missed my mark. But I've a warder of my own: my father taught me meditations
against the evil eye.'
Some men, as I knew very well, were able
to defeat Morjin's illusions of their own will, without the aid of the gelstei
called warders.
Kane stood eye to eye with Morjin, looking at him
strangely: with loathing and dread but no hate. The arrow that one of the
Greens had loosed at Kane stuck out from his shoulder. My grim friend burned
with a fathomless will of his own: to command the veins in his torn shoulder to
stop bleeding even as his fury drove back the waves of pain that would have
vexed a lesser man. He stood straight as a young knight, paying no more
attention to the arrow than he would a bird perched there.
'I should draw that arrow,' Master Juwain
said to him. 'And you, Val, let's get your armor off and see how bad the wound
is.' I could feel the blood dripping down my back where the arrow had pushed
the links of my steel mail into my flesh, but neither the mail nor the arrow
had lodged there. And I could feel something else. I studied the way that Kane
studied Morjin. My sword flared white then, and I knew a thing.
'So,' Kane muttered, 'so.'
I said to him, 'You knew. At the battle,
when I cut off his arm, you knew who he was.'
'So - what if I did?'
'You knew what he is, didn't you?
Tell us, then.'
'What is there to tell, eh? This isn't
Morjin, as you've guessed. But it is Morjin, too - as you've also
guessed.'
'I don't understand,' I said, shaking my
head. 'How can he be both?'
'Because he is an abomination!' Kane
snarled out. 'The filthiest and most evil of abominations!'
He explained then how Morjin, with the aid
of a green gelstei, must have made this motherless creature from his own flesh
and brought him to a blighted manhood under the vile tutelage of his hand and
mind.
'He is a droghul!' Kane told us. 'Of all
the kinds of ghuls, the worst, for he has no mind of his own, and never had.'
'I didn't know such things were possible,'
Master Juwain said as he brought out his varistei and stared at it.
'So, to the Elijin, the Galadin, too, such
things are possible -though long ago forbidden.'
Kane scowled as he tried to flex the
fingers of his right arm that fairly dangled beneath his wounded shoulder. Then
he stepped forward and with his left hand grasped the droghul's hair, and
slammed his head back against the branches of the fence.
'Speak!' he snarled out. 'Do you deny who
you are?'
The droghul's face fell as still as a
piece of carved marble - and as beautiful. This, I thought, was no illusion
that the ancient, decaying Morjin wished men to see but rather the very grace
and glory of his youth that had enchanted all who looked upon him.
'I do not speak,' he said to Kane with
contempt in his eyes, 'when you command it.'
'We should not let him speak at all,' Master Juwain said.
'Of all his weapons, only his tongue is left to him, and it has cut down more
men than a thousand swords.'
Master Juwain, as always, spoke the truth.
But I knew that a part of him yearned even more than I did to Listen to
Morjin's golden voice: like a finely-tuned lyre that could let flow the
sweetest and most compelling of music, reaching deep inside all who heard it to
excite their fears, lusts, vanities and darkest of dreams.
'Is it true what Kane said of you?' I
asked the droghul.
'I do not speak when you command it
either,' he said. 'But since you ask with such earnestness, Valashu Elahad, I
will tell you, yes, it is much as Kalkin says it is, though he cannot
hope to understand.'
The droghul smiled at me, and for a
moment, I almost forgot who and what he was. I felt a great, churning emptiness
in his belly, and I asked him, 'Are you truly hungry, or was that just pan of
your ruse?'
'I'm always hungry,' the droghul said to
me.
'So what if he is?' Kane shouted. 'Let him
be hungry, then!'
'No,' I said. 'He should be watered and
fed.'
'But, Val, think of what this has
done to you! Let him suffer, I say!'
The loneliness that burned in the
droghul's eyes, as vast as the heavens on a clear night, told of a suffering
that I could just barely apprehend. I said to Kane, 'He will suffer the more if
he has strength to do so.'
It was a simple thing to say that our
captive should be fed, but none of us wished to put a cup to his lips or hold a
crust of bread to his mouth that he might gnaw on it. Kane continued scowling
at the droghul. Finally, Estrella picked up a waterskin and walked toward him.
But I took it from her and performed the repulsive task of tending to the
droghul myself.
Then I steeled myself to question this strange, dreadful being. I knew that it would be dangerous. And I knew that Morjin's creature would tell me things that I didn't want to hear.
Chapter 14 Back Table of Content Next
Atara, perhaps sensing my distress, came closer to the droghul and stood before him. It was she who asked of him one of the questions that vexed me. 'How did you find us?'
And this bound man who was almost Morjin said to her: 'How do you find anything at all now since I took your eyes?'
At this, Atara remained silent at she oriented her blindfolded face toward the droghul and clenched an arrow in her fist.
The droghul said to her, 'The world grows darker and darker, doesn't it?'
Then his gaze fell upon me, and through the veins of my neck a fire burned as my sword flared in my hand.
I said, 'He'll always find me now. It's the kirax, isn't it?'
He said with a smile, 'Our blood is one, and so how should I not find the beating of my own heart?'
'Our
blood is not one!' I shouted at him. 'My lineage is of noble kings, while you
call the Dark One himself your father!'
'I am your father,' the droghul said to me. 'As I've told you before, all that you are now is because of me.'
Despite the coolness of the night, my hand oozed a hot sweat that slicked the hilt of my sword. I could not bear the hatred in the droghul eyes, so like Morjin's - and so like my own.
'Your'e the Lord of Lies!' I said to him. 'You're the Crucifier!' 'I am your brother,' he told me. 'If I had two arms and I wasn't bound with rope, I would embrace you to me!'
The nearness of this droghul of Morjin sent the acids
of revulsion to eating at my belly. I aimed my sword at his throat. It would be
a simple thing to put an end to his lies, here and now. But Morjin, the
immortal and real Morjin who must at this moment dwell
three hundred miles away in the dark hole of Argattha, he would remain
untouched - or would he?
I commanded my arms to lower my sword; I drew in a
deep breath and said, 'I speak to you as if you are Morjin. But you are
a ghul, aren't you, a droghul? Morjin moves your mouth and puts words into it.
He moves your arms and hands. If that is so, is your hurt also his? When I cut
off your arm, did Morjin feel the pain of it himself?'
The droghul shuddered as I said this. For a moment his
eyes cleared, and a strange being stared back at me as through a great
emptiness. Then the amber of these golden orbs seemed to grow all fiery and red
as the droghul's face hardened with lines that I knew too well. His smile
became as Morjin's smile: bright, prideful, anguished and cruel.
'Does a puppeteer,' he said to me, 'feel pain when a
puppet's wooden arm is snapped off?'
'A better question might be,' Atara said from beside
me, 'if a man feels anything at all when he puts his thumbs into
another's eyes or pounds nails through her hands?'
'I do feel,' the droghul said. He looked Atara
and then back at me. 'Valashu knows how his agony has become my own.'
'You feed on it, don't you?' I said to him. 'The way
your priests drink their victims' blood?'
'Suffering makes us greater - I have spoken of this in
the letter that I wrote to you.'
'Then you must not mind,' I said to the Morjin who
dwelled so far away, 'any suffering that you have brought upon this flesh that
is yours.'
'It is you,' he said to me, 'who severed my arm
with that cursed sword of yours. But that begs the question: can a puppet truly
suffer?'
As he spoke, the muscles along his jaw tightened and
began to tremble. He ground his teeth together. The light of the fire showed a
terrible hate eating up his eyes. Then he shook his head, and his lips pulled
back in an anguished grimace. The being that then looked out at me might have
been the real Morjin or only his droghul - I could not tell.
'I do suffer,' he said to me again. 'All that
is flesh does. And I suffer most when he comes for me.'
'When who comes for you?' Master Juwain asked
him, stepping closer.
'When the Dragon
comes.'
'But are you not he, made from his own blood
and flesh? Did he not stamp his mind into yours and shape yours as his very
own?'
'I don't know,' he told Master Juwain. 'I have no
memory of what I was, before I was. And now. . .'
'Yes?' Master Juwain asked him.
'And now it is like this: the whole world is a
cavern cut out of black rock; there I dwell with the Dragon. In the instant that I do or say or think
anything that is against the Dragon's will he comes for me, with fire.
It is like being dipped into a vat of burning relb. If I displease the
Dragon a little, then there is only a little burning - let us say he takes only
my feet and leds. But if I defy him or try to, then he burns me down to the
bone untill nothing is left except darkness - and the Dragon. He always is,
do you understand? There is no escape. For in the end. I am the Dragon!'
There was a fire in his words as he said this; in his
terrible eyes blazed his will to devour Master Juwain, and all things.
'I should not have asked you,' Master Juwain said, looking
away from him. A sick look tormented his face as if someone had forced him to
eat ordure. 'We should not let him speak.'
'Master Juwain is right,' Kane said to me. 'Don't
listen to this thing - he's only trying to play upon your pity so that you don't
slay him, as you must.'
But I gave the droghul some more water. Then I asked
him, 'But when the Dragon sleeps, as sometimes he must, is your will your own?
Can you speak the truth of your heart?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'I can never be sure which
words are mine or which are his. I can't be sure when I am I, or I am he.' 'But
who are you, really?'
'Who is anybody?' he asked me. 'I am that I am.' His
face softened as he said this, and his eyes emptied of hate. They were like
deep golden waters that called to me. Tied to the fence in front me
stood a young man who seemed of an age with myself. There was an innocence
about him and an eagerness to live. I couldn't help feeling the joy of his
heart as it beat like a great, red drum with the very sound of life itself,
which was the same in all beings, whether lion or squirrel or man - or even the
droghul of a man.
What was a
man truly. I wondered? What was it to feel and breathe and be? If I
asked myself this question, if I looked past all the moments and memories of my
life for the true Valashu Elahad.
what would I find? Wasn't there always a deeper and
truer self looking back at me? And at the very center, like a perfect jewel
buried within the petals of a rose, was there not a brilliant light that
illuminated all that I ever thought or felt or did and was always aware of me?
A single light, the same light blazing forth in a butterfly or a bird or a man,
even a droghul, always watching, always knowing, shining like a star and . . .
'Valashu!' Master Juwain called to me as from a
thousand miles away. 'Do not look at him so!'
When I looked for this splendid light inside the
droghul, as the droghul himself must look, peeling back the petals of the rose,
I saw only the golden eyes of Morjin looking back at me.
'No!' I gasped out. 'No!'
I forced myself to turn my head; it seemed almost as
difficult as it must be to pull one's own hands off the nails of a cross. When
I looked back at the droghul, there were tears in his eyes. It made me want to
weep with the anguish of what Morjin had done to his own flesh.
'Your pity will yet undo you,' Kane growled out to me.
'But remember that this droghul led those filthy knights against us, and killed
too many of Bajorak's warriors. And somehow followed you across Acadu in order
to murder you.'
At that moment, the droghul's face seemed as tormented
as that of the true Morjin. I sensed that it must cost Morjin a great deal to
control the droghul from so far away - and even more to twist the Lightstone to
his own evil purpose.
'That is why you followed us, isn't it?' Kane
said to the droghul, stepping closer to him. 'Or did you have a deeper ruse?'
In answer, the droghul only stared at him.
'Damn you!' Kane shouted. 'You'll speak when I
command it, I swear you will!'
So saying, he began tearing deadwood out of the fence
near the droghul and piling it around the droghul's legs. Then he called out,
'So, do you really wish to know what it is like to burn? Do not think that
anything of you will remain. When you die, you die, and that will be the
end of things, eh?'
'Kane!' I said. 'Enough!'
I placed my hand
on his shoulder, a little too near the place where the arrow pierced him. He
winced at this, even as I winced, too. I looked at the droghul, at the dark
light of terror that ran through his eyes. I smelled the fear running out of
the pores in his skin.
'I will die,' the droghul said to me. 'Since I
sailed with you I will surely die.'
'That is upon me to decide,' I told him, wrapping my
hand more tightly around my sword.
'No, it is not. He gave me life, and he can
take it away.' The droghul closed his eyes for a moment as he drew in a long
and tortured breath. Then he looked at me and said, 'And he will take it. He
will command me to die so that you might know there is no hope.'
'There is always hope,' I said as I touched the scarf
that my grandmother had made for me.
'Not always,' the droghul said with a smile. 'Without
my leave, you'll never get past the Skadarak.'
I nodded at Berkuar and said, 'Our companion knows the
way.'
'He may know the way that once was, but the Skadarak
has grown.'
'We will find a way through it,' I said to the droghul
'and go on.'
'On to search for the Maitreya? Perhaps I should let
you pass.'
'You have great power over men,' I said to him. I
looked at my sword
doubtfully as it flared bright silver. 'Perhaps over the gelstei, too. But you've no power over the
earth itself.'
'Don't I?' The droghul stood up straighter against the
pull of the rope binding him. 'I am Lord of the Lightstone, am I not? And thus
Lord and Master of the earth.'
Again, I looked at my sword blazing so brilliantly.
And I said, 'No, not yet, you aren't.'
The droghul smiled without humor as he said, 'No, not
yet -it's true. But soon, and then utterly and forever.'
Kane, not wishing to hear such proud speech, made a
fist as if to strike the droghul. Again, I laid my hand on his shoulder.
'Until then,' the droghul said, 'I am master of
the gelstei, and that is why you'll never get past the Skadarak. He knows.'
The droghul aimed his eyes at Kane, who pulled away
from me and stared out over the fence toward the dark forest to the west. He
would not look at me.
'It is the Black Jade,' the droghul said. 'The great
black gelstei.' He went on to tell of the War of the Stone and of the glory of his
master, Angra Mainyu. He claimed that Angra Mainyu wanted only to vanquish
the Great Lie and bring about a new creation -and to take his rightful
place in it as the one called the Marudin. But the Galadin, he said,
grew envious of him. And so Kalkin had stolen the greatest of the black gelstei
to use against him: the very same stone that had defeated Angra Mainyu at the
Battle of Tharharra. And then the Galadin bound the brightest being in all
Eluru on the black wasteland of Damoom. With this crime, a doom was laid upon
the Black Jade: that it would betray Kaikin and bring Damoom's darkness down
upon Kane's soul and those of all who followed him.
'Kalkin tried to flee the vengeance of the Black
Jade,' the droghul told us. 'He brought the crystal here, to Acadu, in hope
that such a beautiful place might help him escape the crystal's pull. But he
might as well have tried to flee from his own damned eyes. The Black Jade only
darkened everything around it - even all of Ea, as we all have seen. In
despair, Kalkin cast the crystal away. Here, in Acadu, it has dwelled
for thousands of years. And so become the Skadarak.'
For a moment I thought that Kane had heard nothing of
what the droghul had said. He stood staring at the droghul with eyes as empty
as dry wells. Then he burst into a fury of motion, turning to stalk over to the
fire and grab up a flaming brand. He came back over to the droghul and cried
out, 'Speak one more lie, and you'll die in fire!'
'I will speak what I must speak,' the droghul said,
'whether you threaten me or not. But I speak the truth.'
'No, you lie!' Kane shouted. 'Others like you, at
Angra Mainyu's command, poisoned my wine with poppy. And then when I slept, the
Black Jade was stolen from me and brought here to aid him!'
Kane's face, like that of a snarling animal, was
terrible to look upon. I was afraid that it might be he who lied, while
the droghul told the truth.
And the droghul said to me: 'Even if you escape the
Skadarak now, in your persons, you won't escape it in your souls. Look on Kane!
Look on me and behold yourselves! Soon, very soon, the Dragon will use the Black
Jade to make anyone he wishes into a ghul.'
'Damn you!' Kane roared out. 'Damn you!'
He moved to thrust
the brand at the droghul, but I stepped between them and tore it from his hand.
For a moment it seemed that I looked upon a legendary beast. Kane, as ever,
shook with all the rage of a lion; his eyes flashed as fiercely as any eagle's
while his long white teeth seemed as powerful as those of a shark. And then my
eyes cleared, and I remembered who this dangerous friend of mine really was.
'Why trade words any longer with the Lord of Lies?' I
said to him. I breathed deeply the night's dark air, hoping it would clear my
mind of much of what I had seen and heard. 'Let us tear off a rag and bind his
droghul's mouth.'
'And what then, eh?' Kane said as he glared at me.
'Will you leave him tied up here for the bears to eat?'
We could not leave him as Kane had said. But neither,
I thought, could we drag this bound and hateful creature all across Ea, and we
certainly could not free him. That seemed to leave us only one choice.
I stood before the droghul and gripped my sword with
both hands. How many men, I wondered, had I slain? Although I had kept no count
of the numbers, the faces of each one burned inside me. One more, surely, would
poison my soul only a little more. And yet I had never put sword to a bound and
helpless man. I knew that Kane would be glad to execute the droghul in my
stead. Bui it seemed that the duty was upon me.
'Free me,' the droghul said to me. He cast a beautiful
smile at Atara. 'Lead me to the Maitreya, and your woman shall be restored.'
'You do not have that power,' I told him. 'I have the Lightstone,' he reminded
me. 'And so I have all the power in the world.'
'No,'
'Free me, and you shall be elevated to your rightful
place. For you, Valashu, there will be no death.'
For a moment, the hilt of my sword seemed to soften,
and then buckle as it came alive and writhed like the coils of a snake. I
nearly cast it from me. I said to the droghul 'You lie - as ever, you lie.'
'Is this a lie: that you know my heart as no
other man ever has? Even as I know yours?'
'No, no.'
The droghul with his soft, golden eyes looked at me in
all the terror of death - and something more. Something deep and beau-tiful
inside him called to me. It was a plea to be as brothers. And yet something
else, dark and vile, denied him this brotherhood and shouted down to me that he
would be satisfied only with my submission, flattery and adulation.
'How can I kill him?' I said to Kane - and to
myself.
'So, Val, so - give me your sword and I'll give you
his head!'
I hesitated. I remembered Kane once telling me how
Morjin had a sense of how he might have been noble and great, and still might
be.
I said to him: 'There is good in you - I can feel it!'
As I spoke these words, a darkness fell over his eyes.
His whole body jumped against his bonds and then shuddered. I had sense of hard
scales and burning relb and terrible, black claws seizing hold of his
heart. 'There is good in you!' I
insisted again.
'Is there?' he asked me. His voice had fallen hard as
ice.
My eyes locked onto his, and the whole world seemed to
disappear. 'Yes,' I said.
'Damn you, Elahad! Do not look at me that way!' he
snarled out. 'Always, you and your kind presume too much!'
'But it is the will of the One!' I told him.
'The One be damned!' he shouted at me. 'Do you want to
know about the One? Then I shall tell you.'
He drew in deep breath, and then let it out in a
torrent of words that was more like a fiery blast than true human speech: 'The
One calls all things into being, from worms to men to myself. We are given
freedom of will - those who do not surrender it to someone greater. But because
being itself, in this hell that is the world, is cruel and hard, some
few of us, the truly great ones, will ourselves to be even crueller and
harder. Some call this evil. Some men - and Master Juwain and his order are
among these - teach that the strong and the great do evil only out of
ignorance, in the mistaken belief that we are doing good. At the worst, they
say, our kind are cruel despite knowing what we do is evil, as if there
is no help for it. No one wants to know the truth: that the One made this to
happen when he made this hell for me to live in and gave me my perfect will to be
the Red Dragon. I do what I do because it is evil. I like it.'
He paused to let these words pierce me like so many
nails. His eyes were as hard as hammers; all the light seemed to have gone out
of them, leaving only black iron in its place.
He continued. 'I love it that men fear me as
the Crucifier, for I was born to this calling as others were to be sculptors or
minstrels. It is my art. I have written of this. About how the One, above all
else, wishes for me to create the greatest and most beautiful of all possible
things.'
He looked at me as he licked his dry lips. His throat,
I sensed, was parched. But his eyes no longer held any plea that I should give
him water, nor would I have obliged him by so much as spitting into his mouth,
even if he had begged me.
He smiled as he looked down at his remaining hand,
sticking out from beneath a turn of rope. He said to me, 'With these fingers I
have torn the liver from a young boy's belly and ate it as he screamed.'
I took a step back from him, shaking my head. Master
Juwain again called for the droghul to be gagged. Daj, I saw, standing over
Gorman and Pittock, had dropped his club and clasped his hands over his ears. I
sensed in Atara a gladness that she was blind and could not look upon the
droghul's face. Kane, however, stared at this dreadful being as if entranced.
Estrella simply looked at him. and listened. I could not bear for her to hear
another word. I raised back my sword. I noticed that all the light had gone out
of it.
'Yes, kill me,' the droghul said. 'Do you think he cares?
Do you think I do?'
Again, I hesitated. For a moment, I wasn't sure who
was speaking to me, the droghul or Morjin.
'What do my eyes tell you?' he asked me. 'Do they beg
for mercy? Damn you! You, who are damned as I am! What did the eyes of all
those you killed with that filthy sword say to you? Can you not hear their
voices? Listen!'
I stood holding Alkaladur back behind my head as I
looked into the droghul's hateful eyes. I felt, rather than saw, my sword's
silus-tria beginning to glow a hellish red.
'How many have I killed, Valashu?' he asked me.
'How many stars are there in the sky? And each one, as it must have been for
you, said this to me: "I die for you. I give you my life that yours
might burn brighter." This is my will. I tear a living heart from a
man's chest, and this feeds me. My hunger is vaster than all the oceans of the
world. I drink the blood of a woman's cut veins, and I do grow, vaster,
brighter and brighter - as bright as all the stars from Ea to Agathad. And the
whole of creation sings to see its purpose fulfilled.'
Now I could see the flames running along my sword. It
seemed that there was only one way to extinguish them.
And still the droghul spoke to me. The words poured
out of his mouth, clear and lovely in their tone, but they burned me like
poison: 'And some deaths, Valashu, feed us more than others, don't they? You
know of which deaths I speak. Your brothers -'
'Stop!' I cried
out. The diamonds set into the hilt of my sword cut into my clenched hands. 'Be
silent!'
'Your brothers died beyond my sight, it's true, but you
saw them at their end, didn't you? Your father, too. Your grandmother,
though, and your mother -'
'No!'
Kane, standing beside me, could bear the droghul's
talk no longer. Almost quicker than thought, he lunged forward and smashed his
fist into the droghul's mouth. This mighty blow would have felled an ox; it
stunned the droghul, but only for a moment. His eyes clouded as with concussion,
but soon cleared as they filled with desire to destroy Kane - and me. He spat
blood and teeth at my face. When he spoke again, his words were no longer so
beautifully formed.
'I must tell you, Valashu. I must. I've written
you that your mother never cried out for mercy, and that is true. But she
called for you.'
'No,' I murmured. The heat of my flaming sword burned
my hands, but I could not let go of ot. Neither could I move it forward,
not even an inch. 'No, no.'
'When I put the nails in,' the droghul said, 'her
thoughts were of you. Her last words, too. Shall I tell you?'
'No!'
'I shall,' he said. His eyes seemed redder than my
sword, and blood stained his lips. 'She lives in me, now, you know. She speaks,
always, as she spoke that day. She said -'
'No!'
'Valashu.'
I listened stunned as the timbre and rhythm of the
droghul's voice changed into a perfect mimicry of my mother's. If I closed my
eyes, it would have been as if my mother stood bound and tormented before me. I
hadn't known that Morjin, or his droghul, possessed this power.
'Valashu,' he said again in my mother's beautiful
voice. It held infinite love for me and all the pain in the world. 'Why did you
leave me to die?'
What is it to hate a man? It is grinding teeth and
burning skin and nails driven through the eyes. It is a tunnel of fire. Its
heart beats with a rage to inflict all your agony upon him, increased ten
thousandfold. And then to destroy him, utterly, expunging him from existence so
that nothing - no word nor gleam in his eye nor hair upon his head - remains.
'Morjin!' I
shouted out. My breath blasted out and seemed to shake the leaves of the trees
all about our encampment. 'I'll kill you - I swear I will!'
Inside my heart the valarda flamed red and terrible,
with a fury greater than even that of my sword. It came to me then that if I
struck out with it, Moijin might feel a mortal hurt even through his droghul.
'No. Val!' Atara suddenly shouted at me. 'Remember
your promise!'
I had promised myself that I would never again kill
with the valarda. Could I keep this unkeepable covenant? I would, I told
myself, I must - or die. But many times I had killed with my sword, as I must
kill many more. The droghul might truly have good in him, as all men did. But
he was evil, too. almost as twisted and evil as Morjin himself, and so he must
be destroyed. 'Valashu.'
With all the fury of all the sinews of my body, with
hate blackening my eyes, I swung Alkaladur down upon the droghul's head. The
speed of the blade slicing through the air caused the flames to flare up and
whisper with a burning wind. It sent out a sudden and bright light. I knew then
that I could not kill the droghul this way. At the last moment I checked the
blow, stopping the edge of my sword half an inch above his head. 'Damn you,
Elahad!' he roared out.
I pulled back my sword. I said, 'We'll take the
droghul with us through the Skadarak, to help us find the way.'
At this, the droghul's eyes filled with something black
and vile. It was all of Morjin's malevolence made as real and palpable as iron
smeared with dung.
'It was good to make your mother die,' he told me.
'But when I kill you, when I tear out your heart and eat it, I will sing
with joy!'
I could not bear
the fear fighting through the droghul's implacable face. Fear and hate, hate
and fear - it seemed the whole of the droghul's existence. And then a light
flared inside him and it seemed that there was something he hated even more
than me. He clenched the fingers of his single hand into a fist. He shook his
head back and forth, and twisted and pulled against the rope cutting into his
chest. Then his eyes, his glorious golden eyes, fell upon me. A clarity came
into them. It was as if he looked straight into my heart and smiled. For a
moment, as fleeting as a breath, I had a sense of an eagle beating his wings
against the wind and screaming out that he was free. 'Elahad!' The droghul's
mouth opened wide, showing his reddened teeth.
And then, as the hate came back into his eyes, as a
poison worse than kirax flooded through him, his jaws snapped shut with such
force that I felt his teeth bite off his tongue and break. His eyes rolled back
into his head, and a bloody froth bubbled from his lips. He screamed. I felt every
fiber along his neck and limbs twisting in agony. His whole body thrashed like
a speared fish; from some dark source, it gathered up a power so great that his
spasms shook the whole fence to which he was tied. He raged and lunged and
screamed; unbelievably, he pulled up a great wooden log half-rooted in the
ground and lunged at me as the fence fell apart. He spat blood into my eyes,
straining at the rope that still held him tied. He cried out with such a
terrible and keening pain that I thought my eardrums would break. And then he
died.
'Morjin,' I whispered. I hated the burn of water
filling up my eyes. 'Morjin.'
The droghul lay in the mud beneath my feet, twisted
and tangled up in the rope still attached to the log. I swung my sword and cut
the rope. Master Juwain came forward and held his hand to the droghul's throat
to make sure that he was really dead. But I knew that he was.
After that, Kane used an axe to cut the droghul into
pieces. He insisted that we bury each one in its own hole dug into the moist
forest floor. We buried Jastor as well. With the droghul destroyed, it seemed
safe to untie Pittock and Gorman.
But we would never really be safe. While Maram let
loose a cheer that we had slain yet another monster, Atara walked off by
herself a dozen yards into the woods. Dawn had come an hour since, and filled
the trees with a smothered gray light. She stood beneath an old oak with her
hand on her blindfold, shaking her head. I could almost feel the coldness that
fell upon her whenever she was gifted with a vision. And then her words
chilled me even more as she told us: 'This droghul was only the first. There
will be two more, each more terrible and more powerful, as Morjin gains power
over the Lightstone.'
That was all she said to us. That was all she would
say, no matter that Maram cajoled her and told her that it wasn't fair that
she should reveal only part of the future. But that was the way of things with
scryers, who had their own code and lived with mysteries that no one else could
understand.
'Well, I hope never to see a droghul again, despite
what you prophesy,' Maram said to Atara. He stared off into the woods to the
west. 'If we go that way, I think our passage will be bad enough.'
He looked to me then as if I might relent in our choice of routes through the Acadian forest. But I shook my head and dashed his hopes. Although the day was cool and gray and promised ill weather for travel I said to him that we must take no terror from what the droghul had told us, and go on undeterred into that dark swath of woods called the Skadarak.
Chapter 15 Back Table of Content Next
We did not, however, venture forth that morning or afternoon. The encounter with the droghul had exhausted all of us, and Kane and I had wounds that must be tended. Mine was the lesser of these. In the coolness of the damp morning, Liljana and Master Juwain helped me remove my armor and its leather underpadding. The force of the arrow that either Gorman or Pittock had fired at me had split the leather and the flesh along my spine as well. At least, as Master Juwain told me, the wound was not very deep. As I sat on a fallen log shivering at the mist that horripilated my naked skin, he cleaned it and rubbed in one of his foul-smelling ointments before sewing it shut. After that I could not sit up straight - much less move - without a sharp pain like that of a sword stabbing through my back.
As for Kane, Master Juwain was able to draw the arrow only with difficulty, for its barbed head caught up in his veins and tendons. Master Juwain determined that the arrow had torn the nerve chakra lying between the round of Kane's shoulder and his chest. Master Juwain's gray eyes clouded with concern, and he bit at his lip; he said that such a wound was much worse than it looked, for the fires of feeling would not be able to flow in and out of Kane's arm. Most men, suffering such an outrage to their flesh, would lose the use of their arm, which would wither and hang limp by their side.
'Perhaps,' Master Juwain said, taking out his green varistei, 'I should try to heal you with this. Although I must tell you that I am afraid to use it.'
'Ha, put your crystal away!'
Kane said to him. He looked down at his arm, resting in the sling that Master
Juwain had fashioned to support it. 'I've healed myself of worse wounds
than this.'
Gorman
and Pittoek came, forward to apologize for loosing arrows at us. It proved to
be Gorman's arrow that had pierced Kane, and Gorman said to hiin, 'Forgive me,
but I saw a dragon leap the fence and trample you to the ground, I
loosed the arrow to keep it from rending you with its claws, or so I
thought.'
He
pounded his fist against his head as if to punish himself for his eyes' betrayal. Pittock
likewise told of how he had seen a flaming werewolf grab hold of me.
As he put it, 'I'd heard that the
Crucifier was also called the Lord of Illusions but I never thought he had such power.'
With
the droghul dead, Master Juwain reiterated his opinion that Morjin was unlikely
to be able to inflict illusions upon either Pittock or Gorman - or any of the
rest of us. To be safe, though. Master Juwain gave Pittock his warder to
wear, as Atara gave hers to Gorman and Liljana draped her blood-red crystal
around Berkuar's neck. Master Juwain's mind was as strong as a diamond;
Liljana's was perhaps even stronger, and should be proof against any illusion
so long as she didn't open herself to danger by using her blue gelstei. As for
Atara, eyeless in eternity, Morjin had no power to make her see anything at
all, for she had no power in this herself.
We
spent the afternoon resting, drinking hot teas and later eating a thick venison
stew that Liljana prepared for us. I dreaded going forth, into the Skadarak
with Kane having the use of only one arm. What monsters, I wondered, would we
find to fight there, and how would we fight them with the mightiest of us
hardly able to wield his sword?
Other
questions vexed me as sorely. I kept thinking of what the droghul had said to
me. Finally, that night as we all sat close to the fire, we had a chance to
speak of this.
'You've
told that Angra Mainyu's people poisoned you with poppy and stole the Black
Jade,' I said to Kane. He sat to my right with his bad arm cradled in a sling.
'But why, then, was it brought to Ea?'
His
black eyes grew even blacker as he glared at me. He snarled out, 'So, do you
think I know everything?'
At
this, Master Juwain, ever a peacemaker, cleared his throat and began speaking
in the most reasonable of voices: 'In answer to this question, I believe that
we should consider the prophecy of
Midori Hastar: that Ea will give rise to the greatest and last Maitreya.
We all pray that this is so, even as the Baaloch and his kind must dread
it. It's likely, is it not, thai the Dark One sent the Black Jade here to help
defeat this Maitreya or prevent him from ever coming forth?'
'I
should think that it is likely,' Liljana said, for once agreeing with him. 'And
so it makes good sense that the Galadin must have then sent the Lightstone to
counteract the power of the Black Jade.'
Kane
only stared into the fire. Although he made no response to this hypothesis, his
silence seemed to confirm the spirit of what Master Juwain and Liljana had
said.
'What I
wonder at,' Maram called out into the cool evening air, 'is what the
droghul said about a doom laid upon the crystal. Was this only another lie? If
it wasn't, who laid such a doom, and how?'
Kane
waited a long few moments as he sat watching the crackling fire. Then he said,
'The droghul spoke truly in this, though he twisted the truth to make a lie.
The Daevas themselves laid the doom in their zeal to execute Angra Mainyu's
will. It was they who poisoned the crystal. The black gelstei contains
the great darkness itself, eh? So, it will drink in all that is dark from any
who try to wield it, and who is darker than the Daevas who follow Angra Mainyu
except the Dark One himself?'
Even
from three feet away, I could feel Kane's heart moving against his chest bones
like an animal trapped in a small, lightless room.
'But is
it possible,' Maram persisted, 'for Morjin to use the Black Jade as the droghul
has said? For him to make people into ghuls?'
Kane's
words, as he turned to Maram, were more chilling than the dank night air: 'So,
it is possible.'
He drew
in a deep breath, as did I, and Atara sitting on my other side. And then he
continued, now speaking in a more kindly tone: 'But first, he would have to
master the Lightstone.'
'Master
it or merely gain more power over it?' Maram asked. 'If Morjin could do to us
what he did to his droghul, through the Black Jade, then it should found
and destroyed.'
It took
a few moments for Maram to realize the implications of his words. Atara oriented
her face toward him, and said, 'Are you suggesting we search for it and destroy
it?'
'Am I
suggesting that?' Maram said as if speaking to himself. His audacity seemed to
astonish him. 'Well, we're close to it, aren't we?'
'That
we are,' Kane said holding out his good hand as if to feel the air. 'And if we
get too much closer, the Black Jade will destroy you.'
He went
to say that we couldn't just go strolling into the heart of the Skadarak and
pick up the Black Jade from the ground, then smash it with an axe into pieces.
'It was
brought here long ago,' he told us. 'It would be buried deep under
layers of earth.'
'Unless
perhaps it was left in some sort of cavern,' Maram said.
'That is one
cavern I wouldn't walk into, and neither would you.' Kane smiled at Maram, but
the coldness in his eyes only made Maram shudder. And Kane continued, 'No, I'm
certain that the earth has swallowed up the Black Jade. We would have to dig
for it.'
Berkuar
considered this as he chewed at one of his barbark nuts, then spat into the
fire. 'The Crucifier's men mine for gold not far from the Skadarak. What if
they've gone into it to mine for something else?'
'No,
they would not dare,' Kane said to him. 'And they would not succeed if they
did. Morjin would know this. So, it would be as if the Black Jade and the earth
have become as one.'
He told
us that the black gelstei had surely poisoned the very earth, even as the earth
fed the crystal with its own dark fires.
'If you
knew all this,' Master Juwain said to him, 'why did you wait until now to tell
of it?'
'Because
I didn't know,' Kane stared up at the trees beyond the remade fence
surrounding us. 'There are many dark places on Ea, eh? I haven't visited them
all, and until the droghul spoke of the Skadarak, I knew no more of it than
you.'
'But
from what we discussed with Master Storr in the library, you must have
suspected.'
'So -
so what if I did? I think you suspected it, too.'
Master
Juwain considered this as he rubbed at his bald head. Then he said to Kane, 'If
Morjin's men would not go after the Black Jade, then what about Morjin himself
- or one of his droghuls?'
'No, he
wouldn't dare, either,' Kane said. 'One must be careful in employing a dragon
as an ally, eh? So with the Black Jade. The Lightstone might give him a
measure of power over it, but not over the very earth of which it has become a
part - not yet. It would be the earth that would devour him.'
He sighed as he
looked at Master Juwain, and then added, 'But Angra Mainyu, if he were freed -
he would dare. So, and he would claim the Black Jade for himself.'
I took
a sip of tea and watched the fire's light playing in the black mirrors of
Kane's eyes; I said to him, 'The droghul spoke of a Great Lie and of Angra
Mainyu's struggle to become the Marudin. That word is strange to me - do you
know what he meant?'
'I do,'
Kane told us. His sigh was almost indistinguishable from a growl. 'I've spoken
of this before - part of it. Of how Asangal fell into evil out of his love for
the world and so became Angra Mainyu. So, and fell even more out of fear and
hate. He hated most of all his inevitable end in becoming one of the Ieldra,
and cursed the One who had made things so. He cursed creation itself. But death
is only part of life, eh? -just as suffering carves hollows in the soul to
leave room for joy. You said this once yourself. Angra Mainyu denied this. He
called this truth the Great Lie. He vowed to make anew the whole universe in a
new creation. He would, himself, although he was only of the Galadik
order and had no such power.'
Kane
paused to take a drink of his tea. Then his eyes fell upon me as he continued,
'But power he seeks as a bat does blood. All the power of the Ieldra, and more.
And he said the greatest part of the Great Lie was that the Galadin should die
in becoming the Ieldra. For he believed that there could be another order,
beyond that of the Galadin; he called this order the Marudin: they who would
not have to die into light, but who would touch all things in lighdt, even as
the rays of the sun fall upon the earth. One, and only one, was destined to
rule this order as the Marudin. And so rule creation itself.'
He
reached into his pocket and brought forth the oval-shaped baalstei that he
always kept close to him. 'I've said that the Black Jade is no greater, in size,
than this little trinket that I took from that damned Gray. You've seen the
seven gelstei that Abrasax and his brethren keep - they are no larger. But the
first of the great gelstei that crystallized out of the angel fire at the
beginning of time were immense beyond imagining. Immense in power, too. The
Ieldra used them to create Eluru. Somewhere, in the stars around Ninsun, the
first gelstei still dwell. So, Angra Mainyu would try to use the Black Jade to
wrest the power of these crystals from the Ieldra, even as he once tried during
the War of the Stone.'
Kane
sat staring at the little black gelstei resting in his palm. Estrella and Daj
edged up close to him, waiting to hear if he might say anything more. Maram
took a swallow of tea, while Berkuar spat yet again into the fire. I listened
as the wood there popped and hissed.
'Perhaps,' I said,
'we should find the Black Jade and destroy it.'
'No,
Val,' Kane murmured to me, 'that is not possible.'
I went
to bed that night telling myself that fighting through Morjin's forces to the
north or wading through the Cold Marshes to the south would be much riskier
than facing whatever darkness we might find in the Skadarak. But in truth, I
didn't really know. And a deeper truth whispered like fire in some far corner
of my mind: that I desired to look upon the darkest part of the world and know
that the light I held inside would be bright enough to guide me through it.
We set
out the next morning toward the west. Although it was late in Ashte, no hint of
summer's warmth worked its way into this southern wood. It grew even colder,
and the drizzle thickened into a sort of semptiternal gray cloud that enveloped
us like a wet blanket. I blinked my eyes against the moistness there, while
Maram licked beads of water from his mustache. We plodded along, yard by yard,
through the dripping bracken.
Berkuar
took the lead, with me close behind, followed by Atara, Master Juwain, Liljana
and the children. Maram accompanied Kane, who, despite his wound, insisted on
guarding our rear. Berkuar deployed Pittock and Gorman far out in the woods, to
our right and left, to cover our flanks. Gorman, on our left, was also to look
for sign of the Cold Marshes and give warning if we were about to wander into
boggy ground or even quicksands. I led Altaru, the better to keep pace with
Berkuar - and to feel solid ground beneath my boots. Then, too, the pain that
sliced through my back with every step was slightly less in walking than in
having to sit up straight in a jolting saddle.
According
to Berkuar's reckoning, we should reach the Cold Marshes after only ten or
fifteen more miles, and so it proved to be. We smelled this vast expanse of
stagnant water and rotting vegetation long before we saw it. Through the trees
wafted a stench that recalled the fetor of the Black Bog. The cloying air
seemed to make it worse. Particles of drizzle caught up the reek and deposited
it in our nostrils, in our hair and upon our garments. It made breathing itself
a nasty trial.
'Whew!'
Maiam said as he fanned his hand before his face. 'If it smells this bad here,
in the woods, I don't want to know what it would be like to cross these damned
Cold Marshes.'
Berkuar
called out to him: 'No one crosses the Cold Marshes. Now be quiet, lest you
call down a demon upon us!'
Berkuar
believed, as did his fellow Greens, that the souls of sorcerers and other evil
beings were doomed to linger in the cursed places of the world such as the Cold
Marshes. These demons could even take form as werewolves and other beasts that
might devour a man or suck out his blood.
'Demons!'
I heard Maram mutter from behind me. There came a slap of a hand against flesh.
'That's the fourth mosquito I've sent on in the last half mile, and I've hardly
seen one in all of Acadu. Ah, I'm getting a bad feeling about all this. Does no
one else remember the Vardaloon? The mosquitoes there were worse than
any demons.'
The
closer we drew to the pungent reek of the Marshes, the more numerous Maram's
least favorite insect grew. They did not descend upon us in clouds and choke
our nostrils, as in the Vardaloon, but it seemed that every bush we brushed
past disturbed dozens of the little black beasts. They winged through the air
as they found their way unerringly to us and settled soft as snowflakes on our
hands, brows and hair. Their whine was a torment in our ears.
'You
didn't warn us of this,' Maram grumbled to Berkuar as he slapped at his neck.
'Now I know why no one crosses the Marshes!'
Berkuar
only smiled at Maram, and then he spat into his hand. He rubbed this juice of
the barbark nut over his cheeks and forehead. This vile, red substance seemed
to drive away the mosquitoes.
A
sudden trill from our left alerted Berkuar that Gorman had found something. We
veered off toward Gorman, whose green cloak rendered him almost invisible
against the green leaves of a bearberry bush. We walked as quietly as we could
through the trees, here mostly oak and chestnut. As we drew nearer to Gorman,
we saw what he saw: that the forest seemed to give out a hundred yards ahead of
us. He led on past a gnarled, old oak until he stood upon some high ground,
beyond which the forest dissolved into a dense grayness. We joined him there.
Below us, in a great, ill-drained depression for miles to the south, stood a
great swamp. Drowned grasses and a few lonely trees poked above this still
water. A green slime floated upon it, and pockets of mist clung to it like
tattered garments on a leper.
'The
mosquitoes are bad here indeed,' Berkuar said to Maram. 'But that is not why no
one crosses the Gold Marshes.'
A man on stilts,
he said, would have trouble finding the bottom of this stinking mere, through
which swam lizard-like beasts that could bring down even our horses. And there
were quicksands, too.
'Even
the birds, I think, don't like to fly over it,' he told us. 'Our path lies
around it to the north, butSeaving as closely as we can.'
'Ah,
and cleaving close to these damn mosquitoes, too,' Maram said as he brushed at
his ear. 'They will be worse tonight. Can't we at least put a few miles between
us and this swamp?'
'A few
miles,' Berkuar told hin^'might take us into the Skadarak.'
'Well,
then, we're damned to the left and damned to the right,' Maram said. He slapped
a mosquito off his red nose. 'But better the demon we know, I suppose, than the
one we don't.'
For the
rest of the day we worked our way around the edge of the Cold Marshes. We could
not follow a straight course, for in places the high ground above the Marshes
was rocky and broken, and in other places swampy arms of water seemed to reach deep
into the forest, blocking our way and diverting us farther to the north. We all
grew irritable: from the constant whine and sting of the mosquitoes, from the
chafe of our soaked garments and from the smothering gray air. And there was
something else. At first no one articulated this, but I could feel something
calling to my companions from far away, even as I could feel it in myself. It
was like a voice murmuring intimations of great pleasure, and even more like a
sick urge to waste gold coins in a game of dice. In its intoxicating hold on
us, which worked its way into us like a perfume sweetening skin, was the
promise that all our suffering would soon end and our dreams be fulfilled.
Pittock,
as hard-looking and reticent as any man I had ever seen, was the first of us to
remark on this. When we broke for the day to make camp, he stared off through
the trees to the north and announced, 'We're close to it - I know we are: It's
as if there is an itch in my bones that I can't quite scratch. I would like to go
on that way, though I know that is madness. My uncle was lost to these woods,
and now I know why.'
Berkuar
stood near him, looking north, too. And he said, 'That thing of Morjin spoke
truly, in this at least. The Skadarak has grown.'
He went
on to say that on the morrow, we must try to hug the Cold Marshes even more
closely lest we wander into it.
Daj,
holding up a piece of firewood as he might a sword, thrust it out ahead of him
and asked, 'But how will we know if we've entered it?'
It was
simple question - the question of a child. And it was a good question, too, for
it held the very essence of our predicament.
That
night passed slowly, with no break in the great bank of clouds that pressed
down upon the earth. As Maram had warned, the mosquitoes came out in greater
numbers. So did the bats who ate them; they whumped through the air, as
dark-shaped as any demons. But they were not the kind of bats that drank blood
- at least not human blood. Pittock and Gorman, standing guard over us with
their bows at the ready, looked out into the dark air for any sign of werebats,
werewolves or even worse things.
As I
was trying to sleep, I overheard Gorman grumble to Pittock: 'That droghul
fooled you into thinking you saw a werewolf; just don't let your eyes fool you
into mistaking a deer for a dragon.'
'My
eyes?' Pittock said. 'There's nothing wrong with my eyes. It's your eyes
I worry about.'
'I have
the eyes of a hawk,' Gorman told him.
'Is
that why you killed Jastor?'
'You
blame me for that? It was your arrow that pierced him!'
'Was it my
arrow?' Pittock said. 'At the Battle of the Drowned Oaks, I gave you five
arrows to replace the ones you wasted. I know it must have been one of these
that killed Jastor.'
'You know
this, do you?'
'You've
always been a wild shot,' Pittock muttered.
'At
Oxfarm I put an arrow in the eye of one of the Crucifiers at fifty yards!'
'A
lucky shot. At the Battle of Sleeping Lake, you put an arrow into poor
Thorgard's belly.'
'How
can you speak of that?' Gorman half-shouted. 'Thorgard came out of the trees
before Berkuar's call, and it was deemed an accident of battle. No one else
holds me accountable for this!'
'Well,
Thorgard was my cousin, wasn't he?'
The two
men argued on in a like manner for a while, until Berkuar rose up to put an end
to their dispute. He sent them both off to their beds, standing watch in their
places. But Gorman chewed at one of his barbark nuts for most of the next hour
and muttered to himself, while Pittock lay awake by the fire staring into its
red flames.
We all,
I thought, slept poorly that night, even Estrella whose repose was usually as
easy and natural as a spring wind. More than once, I heard her whimpering as if
tormented by some dark dream from which she could not awaken. Even Liljana,
singing a soft lullaby as she lay next to her, could not soothe her. The cool,
gray morning brought no relief in the weather. We all moved stiffly, as if the
drizzle had worked its way into our bones. I could hardly sit to eat the goose
eggs and cakes that Liljana cooked for breakfast, so sharp was the pain
stabbing into my back. Although Master Juwain redressed my wound and pronounced
it free of infection, it seemed that hot acids were eating into my flesh. Kane,
as usual made no complaint of any hurt, but the look on his face was of a bear
disturbed from his den and ready to bite anyone who crossed his path.
We set
out. west, edging the stinking marshlands. Soon, however, we came upon a great
inlet of slimy water and had to circle north. Two or three miles farther on,
some rotten, limestone hills blocked our way back to the Marshes and forced us
to cut through the woods. It was there, in the oaks, elms and willows nearly a
hundred feet high, that a mist came upon us. It sifted through the dogwoods and
lesser vegetation, and enveloped us in a smothering grayness. In only moments,
it seemed, it thickened, and we could not see the tops of the trees; a short
while later we had difficulty making out the trees themselves.
'I
can't see our way!' Berkuar called out to me as he held up his hand. I walked
up close to him and his woodsmen, and everyone else drew up behind me. 'Perhaps
we should wait here until the mist clears.'
I
stamped my boot down into some wet old leaves. The ground about us was low and
boggy. I said to Berkuar, 'We might have to wait days - and this is no place to
make camp.'
Berkuar
shook his head. 'The mist is too thick; we'll wander apart.'
'We
won't wander,' I told him. 'If we must, we'll rope ourselves together as we did
in the Black Bog.'
'A good
plan,' Berkuar said, 'but I can't see ten feet in front of my nose, and so
we'll still wander.'
'No, we
won't,' I said pointing off ahead of us. 'West is that way.'
I was
as sure of this direction as I was of the difference between my right hand and
my left.
'I'm
sure west is that way,' Berkuar said. 'But will you be able to keep us
on course after another mile?'
'Val
will be able to,' Maram said, coming up to us. Then his faith in me
seemed to evaporate. 'Unless of course
he loses his sense of direction, as in the Black Bog.'
'If I
lose my way,' I said, 'I'll tell you and then we'll make camp on the spot. Now let's leave this
place.'
None of
us wished to spend another night as we had; we all told ourselves, I thought,
that another ten or twenty miles of hard walking should take us well past the
Skadarak.
'All
right,' Berkuar said, 'but let us then set course west and south, that we can
be sure to remain close to the Marshes.'
It took
us a while to rope the horses together. Then I pointed my nose southwest into
the mist and set out in the lead through the moist, still forest. Birds sang
out to us unseen. We came upon a channel of reeking water, and that reassured
us. After that I turned us almost due west. It was strange and unpleasant
moving nearly blind through the silent trees, but did not seem particularly
dangerous. The ground remained low and flat. The worst of things were the
mosquitoes and the occasional dead tree or sharp stump that were difficult to
perceive until we nearly tripped over them. But the forest floor grew clearer
and more open as we proceeded, and that reassured us even more, for Berkuar had
told us that the undergrowth should thin out along the western reaches of the
Cold Marshes. I felt my sense of direction sharp and strong inside me; it was
as if the iron in my blood pointed our way unerringly like a weather vane in
the wind. I had no doubt that soon we would put both the Marshes and the
Skadarak far behind us.
'This
isn't so bad, Daj,' I heard Maram call out. It seemed that he was trying to
reassure the boy - or himself. 'You should have been with us in the Black Bog.
Ah, perhaps you shouldn't. There, Val disappeared like a wraith, and I
thought I'd lost him forever. There, too, time ate up the moon - a whole month
of moons in a single night. There was a dragon, too, I think. Kane later told
us that for a few moments out of time we were walking on the Dark Worlds,
perhaps even Charoth. I have to believe him. That night was ten times
longer than this day, and I thought it would never end.'
'I wish
this mist would end,' I heard Daj say to him. 'It's nearly as dark in day here
as it was in the mines of the Dark City.'
'Do not
speak of that place,' Maram said to him as he slapped his neck. 'At
least there were no mosquitoes there. As for that, though, I haven't been
bedevilled by them nearly so badly this last hour, and so we must be drawing
near the end of these damn Marshes - mustn't we?'
Maram's
question alarmed Berkuar, who called for a halt. He stood beside me sniffing
the air. Then he said, 'I can't smell the Marshes.'
'Neither
can I,' Maram said. 'Hurray, hurray!'
Berkuar
looked at me through the mist and said, 'We can't have come that far. The
marshlands should still be to the south.'
'Perhaps
a shift in the wind has carried off the stench,' Master Juwain offered.
But
there was no wind - only the stillness of the silent wet woods. 'Are you sure
of our course?' Berkuar asked me. 'Perhaps we've veered to the north.'
'Does
one of your arrows veer,' I asked him, 'or does it fly straight?'
Gorman,
who had walked off a dozen yards to look for mosses growing on trees or other
sign of north, suddenly straightened up and called out to us, 'Look at this
sapling Oak, it is, and white oak at that. Its bark has gone black, and it's as
twisted as an old man!'
We
noticed then that something was wrong with the trees around us, for their
trunks, too, were blackened and twisted as with some disease.
'This
is a bad place,' Gorman said. 'Let us flee it as quickly as we can.'
'And
flee into a worse place?' Berkuar asked him. 'Let us remain here until the mist
clears so that we can see what is about us.'
He cast
no more aspersions on my leadership, but argued strongly for waiting, whatever
my sense of direction might say. We finally reached a compromise: if the mist
did not clear by noon or soon thereafter, we would push on to the west.
'But
how will we know when it's noon?' Daj asked, looking up into the blinding mist.
Although
my sense of direction, I thought, was nearly inviolate, my sense of time was
not. And so I said to Daj, 'We'll have to guess.'
And. so
we waited. Maram and Berkuar built up two little fires, around which we all
gathered to keep warm. An hour passed, and then another, and I was sure that
noon had passed as well. Daj was the first of us to notice a soft wind blowing
through the woods and thinning of the mist. Maram cried out that we were saved,
but his celebration proved to be premature, for as the wind sucked away the
mist and the air began to clear, we had a better view of the woods all around
us: in every direction, the trees grew all stunted and twisted, with blackened
bark and a brownish rust that blighted their leaves. Old oaks, which should
have been as tall and stately as kings, grew only twenty or thirty feet high.
Many were, as Gorman had said, bent like crippled old men. Few bushes
and no flowers grew out of the forest floor; I put my hand to this dark gray
ground, and it seemed too warm, as if the earth itself were burning up with
fever.
'The
accursed forest,' Berkuar said, looking at me. 'We've surely wandered into it.'
I said
nothing because I could no longer deny that I had led us into the one place
that Abrasax had warned us we must not go.
Chapter 16 Back Table of Content Next
For a while, as we waited near the fires and the mist grew thinner, Berkuar stared at me. Maram, I knew, did not like the accusation in his eyes because he came to my defense, saying, 'It's not Val's fault.'
'Did I say it was?' Berkuar asked him. 'The Skadarak might well have grown so that it would be impossible not to wander into it. All that matters now is how we will find our way out.'
This proud woodsman did not say what was obvious: that he had become lost in the mist, and could not tell north from south. Neither did his sharp eye for mosses and the like give hint of direction, for none such grew on these diseased trees.
Above us the clouds still gathered so thick and gray that no glow of white marked the position of the sun. Gorman told us that it was often this way in Acadu, in late Ashte, for weeks on end.
'That way is west,' I said, pointing straight ahead of us. I drew my sword, which glowed faintly when I pointed it toward my right. 'Do you see? Argattha should be to the north of us here, and Alkaladur confirms this.'
Once, my shining sword had led us to Argattha where the Lightstone resided.
'Let us go on,' I said.
'If you're wrong,' Pittock said, 'we could walk straight into the heart of the Skadarak.'
'Yes, that's true,' I told him. 'But so long as we walk straight, eventually we'll come out on the other side. Now let's be off.'
We smothered the
two fires with some stinking muck and resumed our hike toward what I was sure
was west. The walking was easy here, with no bracken or bushes to trip us up;
with the lifting of the mist, the drizzle dried up, too, and it grew cool rather than cold. The afternoon's journey might even have
been pleasant but for the horror of the blighted woods and our dread of what
had made it so. It was a dark wood, to be sure - darker even than the
Vardaloon. The trees about showed but little green. They grew black like burnt
firewood, and their worm-eaten leaves showed shades of brown and blood-red. But
the worst of it, I thought, came not from the omnipresent clouds blocking the
sun or the blackening of tree bark; rather, it felt like something from within
was stealing their life and dimming their essential light.
As it
was with the trees, so it was with us. We walked on into the woods, and we all
felt a gradual dampening and draining of our life fires. The earth itself
seemed to call us down into herself, and her voice was long, dreadful and deep.
By the end of the day, we had to struggle to keep our limbs moving. It was like
trying to fight our way out of a lake frozen with slush.
'I'm
cold,' Maram grumbled as we trudged along. 'I'm tired and I'm hungry, too. And
thirsty. Surely this is a night for a little brandy?'
'Remember
your vow,' I said to him. My voice, even to myself, sounded as raucous and
repetitive as a parrot's. 'The brandy is to be used only for medicine, and
there's nothing wrong with you.'
'Is
there not? My whole body feels like one big bruise.' He paused as his glazed
eyes took in the darkening woods around us. 'Ah, besides, it's not my body that
really needs medicine, but my soul.'
We found no clear
brook or stream upon whose banks to break our journey, and so we made camp that
night in the middle of the featureless forest. Maram was keen enough to build
up a great fire, but Kane had to drive him - and Gorman and Pittock - to gather
deadwood for our fortifications. In truth, there seemed no need. Mostly to
frighten Maram into activity, Kane spoke of maddened panthers or bears made
into ghuls, or even demons that might come for us in the night. But for all
that afternoon we had | seen not a single animal larger than a worm. We had
seen no sign of men, either, nor did we expect to, for who would be foolish
enough to enter such a doomed wood? Kane warned that after our encounter with
the droghul, Morjin might send a company of soldiers after us or even the
second droghul that Atara had told of. But as a despondent Maram pointed out in
a heavy voice, 'Why should he bother, when this damned dark place will do his
work for him?'
Master
Juwain led us in a light meditation, and that seemed to ward off the worst of
the gloom eating at us, at least for a while. I restated my belief that we
could simply walk out of this wood whenever we chose. Liljana's response to our
predicament was more practical: she willed herself to set to cooking us the
best meal she possibly could. We sat down late that night to roast venison and
cakes sweetened with some of the apple butter and jams that the Brothers had
given us. We had figs for dessert, and then Liljana brewed up some rare mugs of
coffee.
This
feast should have been enough stuff any man, but Maram ate as for three,
cramming food into his mouth with a gluttony that was excessive, even for him.
He had the grace, however, to compliment Liljana's cooking and the cunning to
extol her sacrifice in working hours late into the night for the sake of our
bellies and bodies, to say nothing of our spirits: 'Ah, bless you, Liljana,
bless you. No one else could have summoned up such delicious fare in such a
place, and no one else would even have tried. I'll go to bed a better man
tonight.'
His
words brightened Liljana's spirits more than could any of Master Juwain's
meditations. She even insisted on staying up late to clean the pots herself so
that we could get a good night's rest, and this was no little thing considering
that she had little water for the task. She went to work contentedly, almost
happily - that is, until she discovered that Maram had appropriated a jar of
strawberry jam and consumed all its contents himself. She found this cast-off
container in some leaves at Maram's place by the fire. As she held up the empty
jar and shook it at Maram, her mood instantly fell from good will toward all
men into a rare and shocking fury: 'How can you have gobbled all this down in
one meal yourself? Don't tell me there wasn't enough else to eat!'
Maram
stammered out, 'I... I, ah, I ate as I always eat! Do I need to ask your leave
to have a little jam?'
'You
ate all the jam - there is no more!'
'Ah, no
more strawberry, perhaps, but we've jars of blueberry and cherry, and
apple butter, too.'
'But
strawberry was Daj's favorite! You knew this, and you ate it all, even
so.'
'Well,
I'm sorry,' Maram said. 'Believe me, I can't tell you how sorry I am.'
'You're sorry you
got caught, that's all,' Liljana shrilled at him. 'You've no more care for Daj
than you do for me - else you would have saved at least a little jam.'
Daj,
awed by Liljana's rage, stood beside her and looked up at her as if she had
transformed into a she-wolf.
'You're
a hog,' she said to Maram. 'A great, fat hog of a man, and you've no care for
anyone or anything except what's in the trough in front of you!'
Such
words can put poison in the soul; in truth, they can poison the soul of the one
who utters them, as well. Liljana stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at
Maram as he glared back at her. Finally, he muttered something about having to
comb down the horses, and stalked off away from the fire.
I took
Liljana aside and pressed her hand into mine, trying to draw off some of her
fire. I said to her, 'You, of all of us, must keep us together, not drive us
apart.'
My
words seemed to calm her, but only slightly. She said to me, 'All that I said
to Maram was true!'
'Yes,
it was true,' I told her. 'But you must know that you shouldn't say it
precisely because it is true.'
'I do
know that,' she said, glancing down at the ground. Then she looked at me.
'Thank you for reminding me. The Materix before me - Anahita Kirriland - warned
me that I could be as murderous as Morjin if provoked, and I've always known
she was right. But that Maram provokes me so! Sometimes I think he hates me!'
'No,' I
said, smiling at her. 'He regards you as he would his own mother.'
'Do you
really think so? But sometimes he has so little respect.'
'Don't
you think he knows that? Don't you think he knows who he is and wishes to be
better, as we all do?'
Liljana's
face softened as I said this, and she might have smiled if Morjin hadn't stolen
from her this grace. She returned to the task of washing her pots with a
lifting of her spirits, if not exactly good cheer. And I went off to speak with
Maram.
I found
him thirty yards away from our camp, sitting in the dark on a log near a
blighted tree. At my approach, he gave a jerk and thrust his hand under his
cloak. He moaned out to me, 'Ah, Val, Val - that woman hates me!'
'Of
course she doesn't hate you,' I said, stepping closer. 'She's just not herself
- none of us are.'
'No, I
think she's too much herself, if you know what I mean. Oh, too bad, too
bad.'
Maram's
self-pity swept over me in waves that made me sick in the belly. As he opened
his mouth to bemoan his fate for the thousandth time, something else swept over
me as well: a blast of brandy-tainted breath.
My
sudden fury shocked me as I shouted to him: 'You've been drinking!'
'Ah,
well so what if I have!' he shouted back. 'Where's the bottle then?'
From
beneath his cloak, Maram withdrew a bottle of brandy unstoppered and half-full
judging from the sloshing sound of its contents. The sight of it further
inflamed my fury. I lashed out with my fist, knocking his forearm and
dislodging the bottle from his hand. It bounced off the log and fell to the
forest floor, where its dark brandy ran out onto the ground.
'What
have you done?' he cried out.
He
lunged for the bottle as if hoping to rescue at least a few drams of brandy.
But I caught hold of his arm and jerked him up short.
'What
have you done?' I yelled back at him. 'Your vow -'
'My vow
be damned!' he cried out. 'As we're all damned in this damnable woods!'
For a
moment, I wanted to slap the despair from his face. But then the outrage and
sense of betrayal that poured out of him stilled my hand. I made a fist again,
and bit my own knuckles. And I said to him, 'I. .. am sorry. Please forgive
me.'
Then it
was my turn to go marching off into the woods. As my boots squeezed the
moisture from mildewed old leaves, I tried breathing deeply, as Master Juwain
had taught me. I tried meditating upon the brilliance of the rising sun, as he
had also taught me in one of his light meditations. Nothing seemed to help. I
leaned against the trunk of a twisted tree, and I could not calm the beating of
my heart, which jumped in my chest like a hare fleeing a ravenous predator.
'Morjin,'
I whispered. 'Morjin.'
I knew
that somehow |e was attacking us, through the Black Jade. This cursed crystal
called to me through the blackened forest. The very earth beneath my boots
seemed to despise me, and promised soon to rot my flesh and bones.
How was
it possible, I wondered, that I had nearly struck my best friend? The dark
earth of the Skadarak called to the darkest part of me:
Valashu.
.
I had
impulses. All people do. I wanted to run in terror from the beast snapping its
jaws at the back of my neck, even as I wanted to pretend that Liljana was my
mother and fall weeping into her lap. Whenever I looked at Atara, my arms
trembled to crush her to me and kiss her beautiful lips, to carry her off and
fill her with the seed of our child. The wound in my back was an outrage that
demanded protest. All the wounds that I had taken since I was a child to my
body and my soul, gave voice to agony. The pain of the kirax burning up my
blood was a fire I could never escape. It made me want to scream at the immense
torment of life. My fingers ached to tear out Morjin's liver and cast it to the
dogs, as my tongue tingled to taste his blood. As the night deepened and I
stood alone in the lightless woods, I wanted to free all these impulses and a
hundred more as I might uncage rabid rats -even the darkest and deadliest
impulse of all.
Sometime
after midnight, I returned to our camp. Master Juwain sat by one of the fires
with his eyes fixed upon a page of the Saganom Elu. He seemed to be
reading the same lines over and over again. Atara was by herself near the other
fire seeking knowledge of another sort. When I sat down beside her, her whole
body gave a start, and her fingers fumbled to find my hands and face. 'What's
wrong?' I asked her. 'It's all dark, now,' she told me.
The
heart of this brave woman sent out pulses of fear. 'We'll find our way out of
here,' I promised. 'Tomorrow, we will.'
'It won't
matter if we do,' she said. 'It's all dark as if there will never be light
again. As if there never could be light again.'
I tried
to lift her fingers toward my lips but she pulled her hand away from me. The
coldness that flowed out of her would have frozen the very rays of the sun.
'Atara,' I whispered.
'No,
don't say anything,' she whispered back. 'Go to bed and gather some strength
for tomorrow. Let me be alone.'
As she
wished, I said goodnight to her, but I could not go to sleep. I left her
sitting silently by the fire, eyeless in eternity.
As I
paced about near the quiet forms of Daj and Estrella, I brooded over all the
ways that I might kill Morjin. Once, Atara had warned me that his death would
be my own. My fate seemed to be hurtling toward me like a great black stone
cast by a cata-pult. I could not step aside to save myself. It made me sweat
with a sick, black fear, but I almost didn't care.
Much
later my pacing carried me over to the western edge of our encampment where
Kane stood leaning out over the fence. He faced the black forest to the west.
Where Master Juwain had stared at the same verses in his book, Kane simply
stared - at nothing.
'Valashu,'
he finally said to me. His voice rolled like a deep and distant thunder. 'Why
are you here?'
'I keep
thinking of Morjin,' I confessed to him. So do I,' he told me. 'And of
Asangal.'
'Why do
you speak of the Dark One by that name?'
'I was
trying to remember what he was like before ... before.'
I
listened to the sound of a drunken Maram snoring by the fire, and I asked,
'What was he like, then?'
'I
think he was much like you,' He turned so that the flames of the fire licked at
the centers of his black eyes. 'He thought about death too much, too.'
He
stood staring at me as the world upon which we stood pulled us even deeper into
night. His dark gaze seemed to grab hold of me and pull me into a flight of
stairs that twisted down and down through a hole in the black earth, on and on,
and deeper and deeper, forever.
'Asangal
feared it,' he told me in a deep and almost dreamy voice. 'So, and fearing it,
he denied it.'
And in
denying it, as Kane said, Asangal had gone on to fight what he called the Great
Lie with every breath in his body. The results we could see and feel all around
us, in the poisoned earth of the Skadarak and in our souls.
'But
Valashu,' he said to me, 'a man, before he becomes one of the Elijin, must overcome
his fear of death - do you understand?'
The
Elijin, he went on to say, were destined to become Galadin, even as the Galadin
themselves were doomed to die into greater beings. Some, such as Ashtoreth and
Valoreth, found glory in this becoming. But for others this distant fate, if
feared, would fester and grow over the ages into a crushing torment.
'Do you
understand why?' Kane said to me.
I
thought I understood very well why. And so I spoke to him Morjin's words to me
- now my words to myself: 'Because who can bear the thought of being erased?
Who can bear the never-ness of night without end?'
'So,
who can bear that?' he snarled out. 'But that is not the worst of things
- no, neither the deepest dread nor the worst.'
'What
could be worse than that?'
In
answer, he bent down and scooped up a handful of moist earth. His hand
tightened around it and he said, 'As a man lives, on and on, he takes more and
more of the world into himself. If he
lives truly, he opens himself to great beauty, all the glories of the earth.
So, he creates these glories, eh? And in creating, as a father with a
child, he comes to love what he puts his hand to, more and more deeply. And so
he hates being sundered from it in death.'
I
thought of Atara's beautiful blue eyes and the children that Morjin had taken
from us when he had gouged them out. Worms of fire ate at my own eyes, and I
said, 'He killed her, a part of her, even as he killed my mother and
grandmother, forever. Damn him - and damn death then, too!'
Kane
shook his head at this as he took my hand and pressed a clod of earth into it.
'Morjin speaks thus, and so Angra Mainyu, but you must not.'
'How
should I speak, then?'
He
shook his head again and said to me, 'So, the One means death to be a gift, not
a curse. Why? Because in living forever, a man would want to behold all things,
taste all things, drink in the whole of the world and create his own. But man,
even though he be a Galadin, is only ever a finite being, eh? And so this lust
for the infinite would grow vaster and vaster in a sick heat and consume him in
a terrible flame. Then, despite his love for the world, that which was sweet
would become bitter; the new would too-quickly grow old; things of light would
fade in darkness, and the bright, green shoots of love turn into a twisted and
blackened hate. Then a man will say "no" to all of creation, and most
of all to himself.'
He
looked about our encampment at the reclining forms of our friends. In a low
voice, he told me, 'So, Val, so - there are a thousand ways to hate life, but
only one way to truly love it.'
And
with that, he clasped his hand around the clod of dirt cupped in mine, then
returned to his vigil, staring out at the dark and silent woods.
The
morning came only a few more hours after that, but it seemed to take forever
for the trees around us to brighten to a sort of blackish-gray. Maram groaned
upon being awakened, and complained of a terrible headache; we all moved as if
we had drunk wine poisoned with poppy. Setting out into the woods was a torment
of heavy limbs nearly drained of purpose, and spirits as confused as a flock of
birds at an eclipse of the sun. Here, I knew, the very earth was sick and had
gone mad. Soon it became clear that we were hopelessly lost. I drew my sword in
order to light our way, but its silustria gleamed only dully in whatever
direction I pointed it, and then faded with the miles so that it seemed it
would never gleam again. My sense of direction, strangely remained strong, and
I led us on and on, five miles across the poisoned earth and then two more. Due
west called to me through the sodden gray woods as clearly as a bell. Why, I
wondered, did it seem that we were only working our way deeper and deeper into
the Skadarak?
Because
here, a voice inside me whispered, your sense of
direction has been twisted.
For a
long while, I did not want to heed this deep voice. But then, around noon, with
Atara stumbling over tree roots and the children staring out at the stunted
oaks with dark, empty eyes, I called for a halt. While Pittock and Gorman went
off to look for sign of direction, I turned to Berkuar and said, 'This wood is
cursed. Here, north seems west, and west turns south and then east. And all
directions, it seems, lead ever and only one way.'
'Toward
the Black Jade,' he muttered.
'It is
calling me,' I told him.
'It's
calling all of us,' he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He moved his
jaw as if to spit, and then swallowed a gout of barbark juice instead.
Just
then a great, bellowing shout sounded from farther in the woods. I turned to
look past the blackened trunks of the trees at Pittock and Gorman. Gorman stood
backed up to an old elm; Pittock had thrust his long knife into his belly, and
stood there beside him, pushing and twisting the knife in deeper.
'Pittock!'
Berkuar cried out. 'Damn you, Pittock!'
He drew
his own knife and set out bounding through the woods straight toward them.
I
followed him a moment later, and so did Kane. But we could do nothing. Before
we could draw within ten yards, Pittock ripped his knife free from Gorman's
body and let him fall dying to the ground. He shook his bloody knife at the
forest and shouted out, 'He killed my cousin, so damn him, and his father and
mother -and damn the whole world for whelping them and all their line!'
And
with that he turned his long knife upon himself, thrusting it up beneath his
ribs into his heart. He died slumping down toward the ground, and leaving
bloody marks as he clawed at the bark of the elm tree.
'It was
their old quarrel,' Berkuar said, going forward to stand over his two men. He spoke these
words with an acceptance of the inevitability of murder, and I hated him for
that. 'Let's bury them then.'
Only
Estrella wept for these two ill-fated woodsmen or had the kindness to look for
flowers to put on their graves. In the blighted forest, she found none.
It took
all our will to get out shovels and dig two long holes and lay Gorman and
Pittock in the earth. There seemed no point to interring them this way. In
truth, there seemed no point to anything.
'We're
lost,' Atara said as she fumbled for the reins of her horse. She was the last
of us I would have expected to give voice to despair. 'I can't see our way out
of this.'
'That's
because there is no way out,' Maram muttered. He glowered at Master
Juwain and snarled, 'Tell me if you know of any Way Rhymes for this place!'
But
Master Juwain only shook his head at this and gripped the leather binding of
his useless book.
'It may
be,' I said, 'that the only way out is in.'
'No,
Val,' Kane said to me.
'If
it's the Black Jade that is truly calling us,' I said, 'then let us answer this
call. We'll find the dark crystal and destroy it.'
At this
Kane drew his sword and thrust it down into the ground. 'Can you destroy the
very earth to which it's welded?'
'It
might be that with the crystal destroyed, the earth here would have less power
over us.'
'Can't
you see,' Master Juwain said to me, 'that Morjin would want you to think like
this?'
'I can
see it well enough,' I said to him, hating the hauteur in my voice. 'We'll
destroy the crystal even so, and someday, Morjin himself.'
The
dark fire that filled my eyes then easily ignited the coals inside Kane. A
savage smile split his face as he gazed at me and said, 'So - perhaps this is
the only way.'
Estrella
stepped up to me and grasped my hand. I was sure that she wanted to tell me
that she would help me find the Black Jade. Then she shook her curly hair away
from her tear-filled eyes as she looked up at me with a terrible fear.
Daj,
speaking for her, came up to me and said, 'Do we have to go looking for
this crystal? Why can't there be another way?'
Master
Juwain rested his rough old hand on Daj's head and said to me, 'Abrasax told us
that we mustn't listen to the call of this crystal. You agreed to this, Val.'
'If I
did, then I was a fool,' I closed my eyes against the dark hateful drumbeat of
my heart. 'You see, I don't know how not to listen.'
I
opened my eyes to gaze at Master Juwain in silent accusation. 'Well, first and
last,' he told me, 'there are the Light Meditations.' 'Did they help Gorman or
Pittock?' I asked him. 'Have they helped you?'
The
sick look on Master Juwain's face told me that these meditations had availed
him little.
'The
truth is,' I told him, 'I must listen. How are we to destroy evil if we
don't understand it?'
If the
logic of my words failed to persuade Master Juwain, the force of my will bent
him to our new course. A gleam came into his gray eyes as he nodded his head to
me and told me, 'In truth, I don't know how not to listen either.'
And so
without a backward glance at the graves of Gorman and Pittock, we resumed our
journey. After another few miles, we paused in order to look through the
twisted trees that trapped us. Liljana passed around a waterskin. Master Juwain
walked off into the woods to look for a way out of them, or so he said.
Just as
it came my turn to drink, I noticed Liljana pat her tunic's pocket with a
sudden and rare panic, and then thrust her hand inside. And she cried out, 'My
gelstei! It's gone!'
'Are
you sure?' I called to her. I hurried over to her, and so did Kane and Maram.
'It is
gone!' she cried out again.
'Ah, it
must have fallen out,' Maram said to her. 'Perhaps while you were sleeping.'
She
pressed her lips together, then hissed at him, 'It did not fall out! I
would never let that happen. And so it must have been taken out.'
She
stared at him with a dark and deadly look.
Just
then Master Juwain came to Maram's defense, saying to Liljana, 'I'm afraid it did
fall out. I found it late last night while you were snoring.'
With
that, he took his hand from his pocket and held up Liljana's little blue figurine.
'But
why didn't you wake me then?' Liljana shouted at him. 'And why did you go the
whole day without telling me?'
She
came up close to him, and her hand darted out as quick as the head of a
striking snake. But Master Juwain proved quicker, for he snatched the crystal
away from her, out of her reach.
'Master
Juwain!'
Maram
and I both called out his name together. Then we hurried up to Liljana and
grabbed her arms to keep her from thrusting her fingers into Master Juwain's
throat or some other deadly vulnerable chakra.
'Give
it back to her!' I shouted at Master Juwain.
'But I
was only trying to keep it safe,' he huffed out. 'And to keep her safe.
In these woods, so dark, the temptation to use it must be very-'
'Give
it back to her!' I shouted again.
He
stared straight back at me as his fingers tightened around the crystal so hard
that his whole arm trembled. Then he seemed to will himself to extend his fist
and drop the figurine into Liljana's outstretched hand. She immediately thrust
it deep into her pocket as she glared at him.
'You,' she
said to him with an acid contempt, 'tried to use it, didn't you? To look inside
Morjin's mind?'
'His
mind,' he said as if intoning a magic word. His eyes glazed over as if dazzled
by a bright light. 'What do we really know of it? He was an Elijin, once, but
is he so different than mortal men in his mentations? Perhaps. Perhaps. I know
that his words strike us as evil, even mad, but there must be a logic beneath
it all. If we could discover the source of his onstreaming intelligence, which
I admit is great, then we might discover the whys and ways of the great Red
Dragon. The whys and ways of much more. The secrets he keeps! He has knowledge
unknown to men. Perhaps knowledge of the mystery of mind itself ... or at least
his own. What if one could dive down and find the currents that give rise to
it? I can almost see it! They would form up, each individual thought, like
waves upon the sea. At times, one must swell larger than another, and drown it
out, and then another and another - an infinitude of digressions, distractions
and side-thoughts, as with any other man. But always, the deeper logic,
revealed through analysis of perceptions, indications and manifestations,
these endless technics and deductions, you see. There must be a way to
peel back the waves to understand how they birth each other and impinge on
each other, even overwhelming and annihilating as they ever form and reform,
ever shaped by the source of all waves: the way that the very mind of the One
forms thoughts, and causes all things to burst into creation. Morjin must seek
this deepest of secrets, the final one, shining like a perfect jewel, which
lies beneath the endless layers and depths of watery waves, down and down and
-'
'Master
Juwain!' I cried out. I grasped hold of his arm, hard and shook him. Then his
madness for pure thought left him at
least for the moment and his eyes cleared. And I asked him, 'Did you use
Liljana's gelstei?'
He
shook his head, then admitted, 'Almost I did. If Liljana hadn't been so
suspicious of me -'
'Me, suspicious
of you!' Liljana cried out.
I
called out, 'This dispute must end here and now. Or else we'll all end up like
Gorman and Pittock.'
I
thought that Master Juwain wanted to argue with me, but then he bit his Up and
nodded his head. Liljana only scowled at him - and at me. Then she turned to
stomp off back toward the horses.
After
that, I led us deeper into the woods. No one spoke, and we walked on into a
terrible silence. The trees of the Skadarak began thinning out and grew ever
more stunted and blackened with the disease that blighted them. Some sort of
stinking, greenish-black fungus clung to the forest floor and fouled our boots.
We were hard put to encourage the horses to set their hooves down into it and
keep them moving forward. As for ourselves, it was a misery to keep going on
and on, but there seemed no help for it. For a deep voice, I sensed, sounded
inside all of us. It promised us endless fascinations and sweet drink to quell
the fire of existence; in truth, it promised us everything. It kept calling to
us in a dark and dreadful tone that none of us could resist.
How, I
wondered again, could I not listen? I tried putting my hand to my sword
and bringing to my mind all the light that was inside it. It was not enough. I
listened for the sound of Atara saying yes to a marriage troth and heard our
children playing happily in the yard of a little house by a stream, and that
was not enough either. I remembered promising my grandmother that I would not
let my burning for Morjin's death destroy me, and still the fell voice called
me on.
We came
to a place where the trees would not grow, nor would any other living thing.
The ground before us was bare and blackened, littered with many bones, mostly
human. I felt a strange, sick heat emanating as from the center of the earth.
Altaru
suddenly reared up and whinnied as he struck the air with his hooves. I stroked
his neck and murmured to him: 'Ho, friend, peace - it will be all right.'
I told
him that we were both strong enough to walk straight into this black hell and
walk out again. I could listen to the voice of the Skadarak, just a little, and
take from it the knowledge to undo it. It could have no power over me, for only
I, in the end, had power over myself.
'So,'
Kane said, staring out into this swath of death-scorched earth.
His
black eyes seemed perfectly to mirror the blackness before us. The rest of our
company looked at me then to see if I would lead us into it.
'It's
all right, Estrella,' I heard Daj whisper. He stood with her by their horses,
holding her hand as she blinked back the tears from her eyes.
I knew then
that if I took one more step and set foot into this wasteland, I would never
find my way out again. There are some holes so black and deep that there can be
no escape. It didn't matter. The Black Jade, I told myself, must be dug up and
destroyed. I turned my face toward the heart of the Skadarak.
No, a voice
whispered to me. No.
My eyes
lost themselves in a great, blackened bloom of hate. The kirax burned me; I
could feel Morjin trying to make me into a ghul. The One be damned, I thought,
for shaping my fate so. I knew that even if by some miracle I did escape
this place, it would leave its evil sear in my soul. I would have no more mercy
for anyone else than I did myself. I would put to the sword my enemies, even
though they begged quarter of me; I would torture captives with heated irons to
make them tell me their secrets; any and all who opposed me I would slay with
the bright fire of valarda.
And
then another, even darker thought came to me: I didn't care. Morjin had spoken
of three levels of evil, but I knew that there was a fourth: simply not caring
if one's actions were evil. I would do what I must do, what I wanted to do, and
the world be damned. There seemed no help for it. I steeled myself to take the
final and fateful step.
No.
I
looked at Berkuar, who seemed more than willing to follow me into this black
hell. But I could feel his raging resentment at me for leading him here; I knew
that he would be thinking that this was a trap and that I had betrayed him
after all. Treacherous people were always keen to suspect others of treachery.
And weren't the Greens veritable demons of treachery, as Gorman and Pittock had
proved? Truly, they were, and so very soon, at the first sign of Berkuar moving
against me, I would have to draw my sword and cut him down. Likewise I must
slay Kane, for I knew that he would be heeding the same dark call as I and
would be compelled to put his sword into me before I fell upon him. Maram I
must send on, here or perhaps in the desert, because someday his selfish ways
would get us all killed. Master Juwain was doomed to fall beneath my blade,
too, for I knew that very soon he would be tempted again to look into Morjin's
foul mind. And Atara. Wouldn't killing this poor, tormented woman be a mercy?
It would be the hardest thing I'd ever had to do - one quick stab through the
heart - but in a way, the kindest, too. What one must do out of love, I
thought, occurs beyond good or evil. I must kill Atara, as I would kill for her a thousand
times a thousand times - even as I would gladly die for her. And I would soon
die, by my own hand, for I was truly damned for even thinking of killing the
one I most loved. But before I took my sword to myself, I must stab and hack to
pieces all my enemies. They were everywhere. For war was everywhere and would
never end. My part in this eternal war would grow only deeper and more
murderous as my enemies became greater in power and numbers. And here, in the
heart of the Skadarak, dwelled my most terrible enemy of all. He must be slain.
All things born of this damned and twisted earth must be slain, and most of all
the treacherous earth itself. I had not made the world so. But I must take my
part in its unmaking, slashing out with my unquenchable sword through the flesh
of all who opposed me and the blackened skin of the earth itself, feeling the
heat of their blood flowing like red lava, killing all that lived in order to
fulfill my fate, killing and killing ...
Valashu.
The
whispering of my soul had fallen so faint and faroff that I could scarcely hear
it. The dark, fell voice of the Skadarak called to me in a thunder like that of
a fire mountain bursting in two. How, I wondered for the hundredth time, could
I not listen to it?
'Mother,'
I whispered. 'Ashtoreth.'
Did the
woman who had given me birth truly dwell with the Galadin beyond the stars?
Could she hear me call to her, or was she as deaf and doomed as I was?
'Mother,'
I whispered again. And then another name, that of an old friend, came almost
unbidden to my tongue: 'Ahura Alarama.'
With
this simple movement of my breath past my lips, Flick appeared. This being of
twinkling lights whirled before me, and his colors quickly brightened and
solidified into a form I loved very well. In a click of the fingers, Alphanderry
stood between me and the bone-strewn circle of black earth.
He
seemed every inch my companion of old: His curly black hair was tangled like a
mop, and flopped down over his soft brown eyes. His skin glowed with rich
browns and golds and the underlying tone of glorre. His voice, too, sounded out
all bright and full of his great gladness of life. He did not wait for the
stunned, soul-sickened Kane to bring forth his mandolet and accompany him. He
simply sang to us. He smiled, and his sensuous lips parted, and from deep
within his throat sounded a beautiful song. It rose, like the wind, and built
higher and higher, and ever more lovely like the very songs of the stars. In
its pure and golden notes was praise of all life - even of ourselves. We
listened until tears sprang into our eyes. And still Alphanderry kept singing,
like an ocean emptying itself, singing and singing. . .
'Valashu,'
I heard a voice whisper to me. It was the voice of my blood, the very sound and
soul of my throbbing heart. 'West is that way.'
I
turned to face to my left and slightly behind me. Beneath the shield of
Alphanderry's immortal song, my sense of direction lived again. Or rather, I
could feel it within me once more: bright, steady and warm, for some things can
never really die. I heard my fate, my true fate, calling me on. If we set forth
through the trees behind us, we could walk straight out of the Skadarak.
La
sarojin yil alla valhalla ....
As
Alphanderry continued to pour forth music into this desolation of blackened
trees and bone-cursed earth, I came to hear all of myself more deeply,
and I remembered who I really was.
'Atara,'
I called out to my blind, beloved companion who stood near me. I called the
names of all my friends beside me. 'We cannot go into that,' I said,
pointing into the heart of the wasteland. 'Let the Black Jade lie as it has.
There are some things beyond the power of any man.'
For a
moment, the whole world seemed to stop and hang poised on the point of a
sword's blade. Maram wiped the sweat from his brow, and Master Juwain rubbed at
the back of his head. Liljana closed her eyes as she fought a terrible battle
with herself. Kane stared into blackness. His whole body trembled as with a
tiger about to spring.
'Kane!'
I called to him as I laid hold of his arm. 'Kane!'
Then he
looked at me, and his eyes flashed with triumph. 'So,' he said to me. 'So.'
Liljana
murmured, 'There are some things beyond any woman.'
Master
Juwain said, 'You're right, Val. Why should we invite it to destroy us?'
He
moved over to Liljana and took her hand in his. 'I'm sorry that I borrowed your
gelstei. It will never happen again.'
'I'm
sorry that I yelled at you,' Liljana told him. And then, 'If I should die along
this journey, I want you to take my gelstei and keep it safe.'
They
bowed to each other and embraced each other. At this, Berkuar laughed out in
relief and spat happily upon the ground before us. Then Maram said to me, 'But
we're still lost, aren't we? How can we ever find our way out of here?'
'We are
not lost,' I told him. I drew Alkaladur and pointed my shining sword in the
direction my blood whispered to me: the direction of my fate. 'That way will
take us out of the Skadarak, and on to the desert and Hesperu.'
'Are
you sure?' Maram asked me.
I
closed my eyes a moment to listen to Alphanderry's strong, clear voice and the
even deeper one that sounded within me. Then I looked at Maram and told him,
'Yes, I'm sure.'
I
pulled gently on Altaru's reins and pointed my great, trusting horse toward the
west. We walked through the nearly-dead forest over blighted, blackened ground.
Alphanderry, like an angel, walked with us. And all the miles of the seemingly
endless Skadarak, he never ceased singing his beautiful, inextinguishable song.
Chapter
17 Back Table of Content Next
And so we moved away from that terrible place. We jour-neyed all that day and the nextt as well, into the west. Daj did not ask how we might determine when we had left the Skadarak, for we all knew that in a way, we never would. But
there came a time when trees grew tall and hearthy about us again, with bright green leaves that fluttered in a fresh, clean wind. The dreadful call of the Skadarak faded into a murmur and then seemed to die. Alphanderry left us then. Our shimmering friend simply vanished back into the nothingness that had birthed him. We were all sad to be left alone again, but we hoped that something of Alphanderry's song would continue to sound within us, as a charm against the darkness that had no end.
We mourned for Pittock and Gorman and felt keenly the loss of their bows, for despite their failings, they had been fine warriors. We did not speak of this. We did not speak of the worst of what had befallen us in the Skadarak, neither to each other nor even to ourselves; we were like murderers reentering the company of good men and ashamed of our deeds. When we came to a little stream, we spent some hours washing the stench of the dark woods from our clothing. We bathed in the cold water and scrubbed at our naked skin until it was raw. but it seemed that the evil that clung to us could not be washed away.
Only once did I give voice to the terrible doubt that now ate at my bones. We had crossed another stream and were setting our course when I took Kane aside and said to him, 'I'm tired, so damn tired. I haven't the heart for this any more.'
'What? What's this?'
'Perhaps you should lead us,' I told him.
His eyes flared
with anger and astonishment, 'I, lead us? Ha, I'm no leader! Men obey me - they do not follow. The duty
is upon you.'
'But I
nearly led us to our doom!' 'So? I've been near to doom a thousand times.
That's just the way of life, eh? In the end, you led us out of that cursed
wood, and that's all that matters.'
'Is it?
I am -' 'You're a star, Valashu. In the
end, a bright and beautiful star. You followed its light, and so did I. And so
now it's now, and now we're here in this beautiful place. A million miles might
lie ahead of us; I won't hear any talk of what lies behind, do you understand?'
He
squeezed my arm then, and I felt some of his inexhaustible strength flow into
me. I bowed my head to him, and he smiled at me.
But it
is one thing to agree to lead others and quite another to keep them moving
forward when their hearts as well have nearly given up all hope. After the
passage of the Skadarak, Atara fell into a silence so deep and cold it seemed
that she had almost lost the power of speech. Her second sight did not return
to her. I felt some deep part of her desperately looking for me to show her a
way out of her darkness.
As for
Maram, he tried to take solace in words. The next morning we set out into a
forest chittering with many birds, and he sang almost as brightly as they did.
But I sensed the falseness of bravado in his great, booming voice. I knew that
he was trying to rally himself for a battle with his old demons - either that
or trying to forget.
And so
I said to him, 'One day, when our grandchildren are happily married, we'll sit
with glasses of brandy in our hands and wonder that we once came so close to
despair.'
'Do you
really think so?' he asked me. 'But what if we fail?'
'We can't
fail, Maram - at least we can't fail each other. And that is why, in the
end, we'll win.'
He
smiled at this. 'Brave words, my friend, and thank you for them. But I don't know - I just don't know.'
We
continued our journey through the warm, open woods, and sometimes Maram's
singing swelled with true hope, and sometimes it didn't. This I had learned in
the Skadarak: our hearts were always free. Not even the Maitreya, I thought,
could save a man who didn't want to be saved.
.
For two
more days, we traveled into the west toward the mountains. Ashte had passed
Into Soldru, and so finally did the clouds above us pass on to the east. The
sky cleared, allowing the strong Soldru sun to rain down its blight rays
through the glowing, green leaves above us. Arum and marigolds showed their
colors in glades covered with grass. Through the occasional breaks in the
forest's canopy, we caught glimpses of a great wall of white peaks that grew
larger and larger.
At last
we came into a thinly-populated part of Acadu that Berkuar seemed to know quite
well. He guided us onto game paths and old, narrow roads. Here we might have
moved more quickly, but I called for an unhurried pace. We were alt worn from
our journey, and Daj and Estrella most of all. They were as tough and
uncomplaining as any children could be, but in the end they were still
children. We stopped more than once so that they might play by a stream or pick
apples from an orchard of one of the farmers who had made a homestead in these
lonely woods. One of these, a stout freeholder named Graybuck, invited us to a
feast of roasted ham, mashed potatoes and fresh greens picked from his fields.
He insisted on plying us with some of his homemade beer, even Maram, whose vows
he waved away.
'Beer
is the only fit drink for friends,' Graybuck told us, holding forth at table in
his long room with his wife and five children. He turned his heavy, red face
toward Maram. 'Surely you can put aside your vow this one time to make toast in
the company of friends?'
'Ah,
surely I can,' Maram told him. 'A vow is sacred, It's true, but what is more
sacred than friendship?'
I said
nothing as I watched Graybuck's eldest daughter, Roseen, fill Maram's mug with
a frothy brown beer. I bit my lip as I watched the way that Maram watched this
plump, young woman go about her business, as if he would rather have had her
for dessert in place of apple pie or other sweets.
'To the
Keepers of the Forest,' Graybuck said, holding up his mug and nodding at
Berkuar. 'May they the drive the Crucifiers from our woods.'
He went
on to tell of the depredations of Morjin's soldiers who had raided down from
the mine lands to the north. He praised us for having the courage and good
guidance to have passed by the Skadarak unharmed, and so avoided these men that
he hated.
'They've
feared your bows,' he said to Berkuar, 'and so few have dared to come into the
deep woods here, though I heard that last year they burnt Finlay's farm not
twenty miles from here and carried off his daughters. But if you're journeying
south, as you must, you'll find the forest full of soldiers. They've set
up a garrison at Nayland, between the Cold Marshes and the mountains.'
'But
what if we didn't go around the mountains,' I asked him, 'but across them?'
'Cross
the mountains?' Graybuck said to me. 'Not with horses and children. There are
no passes over them.'
Kane
sipped at his beer as he eyed Graybuck. Then he said, 'No passes at all?'
'Well,
there is a narrow gap about thirty miles from here, but it is cursed.'
'Cursed,
you say?' Maram called out. 'Cursed how?'
'It's
said that there is something there that turns men to stone.'
'Turns
men to stone!' Maram cried out. Then he belched and muttered. 'Oh, excellent,
excellent!'
'Surely,'
Master Juwain said to Graybuck, 'that cannot be true. Surely it is just a
legend.'
'I
don't know about that,' Graybuck said to him. 'I've heard people tell of kin
lost to this Stonemaker. They call it the Yaga.'
'The
Yaga,' Maram muttered again as he gazed into his empty mug.
'But
hasn't anyone,' Master Juwain asked, 'ever ventured into this gap to disprove
the legend?'
'Would
you venture into the Skadarak to disprove that it could capture a man as a
spider's web does a fly?'
Master
Juwain said nothing as he looked me and rubbed the back of his bald head.
'We
keep well away from that part of the mountains and the westernmost reaches of
the woods,' Graybuck told us. 'And you will too unless you want to stand like a
statue for the rest of your days. Now it's late, and I've an acre of weeds to
pull up tomorrow. And so I'll say goodnight.'
Later
that evening, after Maram returned from the barn and helping Roseen to milk the
cows, as he put it, we held council at the edge of Graybuck's apple orchard,
where we had made our encampment. All the way from the Brotherhood's school we
had argued as to our course toward Hesperu, and it had come time to make our
final decision.
'So,
nothing has changed,' Kane said to us, 'We've two routes to Hesperu: through
the Dragon lands or across the Red Desert.' 'Six hundred miles through
Sunguru the long way?' Master
Juwain
sighed out, shaking his head. 'It's bad enough that we have to venture into
Hesperu.'
We all
agreed to this. However fierce the heat of the Red Desert, it could not be so
dangerous as exposing ourselves at every village and town in the heavily
populated Sunguru along a course of six hundred miles.
'Then
if we're to go into the desert,' Kane said, 'we still have two choices: across
the mountains or around them.'
But to
go around them, as Graybuck had said, we might very well have to fight our way
past the garrison at Nayland. And worse, at the point of the Yorgos range of
the White Mountains, where they gave out upon the border between Uskudar and
Sunguru, we would find fortresses and yet more garrisons of the armies of both
King Orunjan and King Angand.
'But
couldn't we just slip around them?' Maram said. 'Better the danger that we do
know than this stonemaking Yaga that Graybuck told of.'
'But it
might turn out to be no danger at all,' Master Juwain said. His gray eyes
fairly glowed with curiosity. 'The Brotherhoods have investigated many other
reports of people being turned to stone, and they all proved false.'
'Ah, I
don't know, I don't know,' Maram muttered. 'Perhaps there's another pass that
Graybuck is unaware of.'
We all
looked at Berkuar as he rubbed at his heavily bearded jaw then spat into the
fire. He said, 'Graybuck is right: there are no passes through the mountains
other than the gap.'
Maram
gazed at Berkuar and asked, 'Are you sure?'
'As
sure as you are of your nose on your fat face.'
'Ah,'
Maram said, 'you know this country well, don't you? What is your belief about
this Stonemaker?'
'I've
never gone into the gap, so I can't say truly,' Berkuar told us. 'But my
grandfather once saw something at the mouth of the gap that might have been a
man of stone - he came within a quarter mile of it before he turned away.'
Master
Juwain offered his opinion that this was likely some natural rock configuration
or even a stone carving that the ancients had made. He restated his desire to
explore this mystery.
'I know
the way to the gap,' Berkuar told us. 'I'll take you there, if that is what you
decide.'
He
turned to look at me then, and so did Master Juwain and Maram. I drew my sword
and watched as the silustria glowed glorre when I pointed it toward the west. I
said, 'Surely Master
Juwain
is right that this Yaga is only a legend. But even if he's wrong, I'd rather
venture through the gap than fight our way south. I'm tired of killing.'
Atara
and Liljana agreed with this, and so did Kane, and even the children. Finally,
Maram bowed his head to the consensus of our company and groaned out, 'Well, we
survived the damn Stonefaces and so I suppose we can slip past this Stonemaker,
whatever it really is. But I have a bad feeling about this.'
In the
morning we said our farewells to Graybuck and his family and set out again
toward the mountains. For the first few miles we bushwacked through a wood
thick with buckthorn, sumac and many flowers. Then we came to a road that led
north and slightly west. For the rest of the day, as the ground rose before us,
we slowly rode up this deserted road through an archway of great elms, oaks and
sycamores. We passed an old woodcutter and a couple of hunters, but saw no sign
of the Dragon's men or any other people. We made camp that night on the bank of
a stream that cut the road. For dinner that night we ate part of a boar that
Berkuar had killed. Maram downed nearly an entire ham by himself. It was
astonishing how much my friend could eat when one of his hungers came upon him.
The
morning found us working our way up along the stream. The ground rose ever
higher and grew rockier, as well. The tall trees mostly blocked our view of the
mountains, but we could almost smell the snow and ice of these great peaks in
the cooling and freshening of the wind that blew down from them. At last we
came to a granite mantle of ground where only a few shrubs and a single black
locust grew out of the cracks in the rock. We stood beside the rushing stream
looking at the wall of mountains before us; they were so close it seemed that
we should be able to reach out and touch them.
'There's
the gap,' Berkuar said, pointing at a place where the mountains' contour seemed
broken in two. 'The stream leads up into it.'
'What's
its name, then?' Maram asked him.
'It has
none that I know,' Berkuar said.
'Then I
shall name it the Kul Kharand,' Maram said. 'Unless anyone objects?'
I
smiled at this because kharand was the ancient Ardik word meaning the
fulfillment of one's dreams. I loved Maram for fighting so hard to remain
hopeful.
It took
us two more hours to climb up to the Kul Kharand. We walked our horses along
the stony north bank of the stream. Then iron-shod hooves rang out against hard
granite. If anyone guarded this pass, I thought, they would hear us coming a
mile away.
At last
we came out into a great bowl of stone-strewn ground where the trees grew thin
and far between. Berkuar was the first of us to espy the statue set there,
sculpted with his arm lifted and his hand cupped back toward the gap as if
beckoning travellers toward it.
'That
must have been the man that your grandfather saw,' Maram said to Berkuar.
He did
not add what his rigid face said so plainly: that Berkuar's grandfather had
possessed the good sense to refuse the statue's invitation.
We
advanced toward the statue under the cover of Kane and Berkuar, who stalked up
the rocky slope gripping strung bows nocked with arrows. It was a statue in
smooth stone of a young man of medium height, rendered naked, with exquisitely
fine muscles carved about a slender frame. A smile almost as lovely as Alphanderry's
graced the features of the statue's face which was wonderfully expressive and
lifelike.
'Remarkable,'
Master Juwain said, examining the statue. He held out his hand toward it.
'Truly remarkable work.'
The
stone was unusual, as dark as obsidian and as smooth as marble, with strange
reddish striations running along its grain.
'Look,'
he said, 'not a chisel mark upon it!'
'Is
that supposed to encourage me?' Maram asked him.
'Only
the ancients could have made such a sculpture,' Master Juwain declared.
'I
don't know,' Berkuar said, spitting a gout of red barbark juice toward the base
of the statue. 'It could be possible.'
'Yes,
it could be,' Maram said. 'But there's another possibility, isn't
there?'
'Your
stonemaking Yaga?' Master Juwain asked him.
'Yes, my
Yaga, if you want to call it that. Do you remember Ymiru's purple gelstei?
What if this Yaga keeps a purple gelstei and uses it to turn men into stone?'
So
saying, he smacked his hand against the statue's face, and then immediately
cringed back from it as if fearing that it might come to life.
'I've
never heard of the purple gelstei,' Master Juwain said, 'being used this way.'
He
looked toward Kane, who said, 'So, I'm not sure that it could be used this way.'
He paused
to draw in a deep breath, and the look of relief on Maram's face instantly gave
way to dread as Kane added: 'But neither am I sure that it could not.'
'No one
seems sure of anything,' Maram muttered. 'Well, I am sure of one thing:
I should never have left Mesh. I should have married Behira, I know I should
have. Then I might have, ah, feasted on roasted boar and drunk the sweetest of
brandy in contentment to the end of my days, few though they might have been.
If ever I'm to return to my beloved's arms, I think we'd better find another
way through these mountains.'
Kane,
at last, had heard enough of Maram's worries and complaints. He pointed past
the statue into the gap and growled out, 'This is our way! You'll find
your beloved, whoever she is, wherever she is, through here!'
At
this, Atara stood by her horse orienting her face toward the gap. A coldness
seemed to strike into her heart and spread out into her limbs.
I
walked over and placed my hand on her cheek, gently turning her toward me. I
asked her, 'What do you see in this gap?'
And she
told me, 'I see nothing - nothing at all, now.'
'But
you're afraid to go into it?'
'I'm
afraid to go into it,' she admitted. 'But then I'm afraid to go into the south,
east or north, too. There is darkness in all directions.'
It was
a scryer's answer, a useless answer, and I ground my teeth in frustration. Then
I drew my sword. When I raised it past the statue toward the gap it glowed a
bright glorre.
'We'll
go on then,' I announced. I turned to Berkuar and said, 'You've guided this
far, at great cost, and we owe you great thanks. But the ground ahead of you
will be as unfamiliar to you as it will be to us. We should say farewell.'
'What?
And leave you to the Yaga?'
No
argument that I could fashion was enough to persuade Berkuar to part company
with us. He hadn't deserted us in the Skadarak, he said, and he certainly
wasn't about to turn tail now.
'If
you'll have me,' he said, 'I'll come with you at least as far as the desert.'
I
smiled as I clasped hands with him, and watched Kane and my friends do the
same. Then, with Berkuar walking to my right and Kane guarding our rear, I led
the way into the gap.
We
followed the stream up into the mountains. This sparkling water fell over
smooth stones on a winding course between the two great mounds of rock to
either side of us. The gap seemed about two miles at its widest, narrowing in
places to no more than half a mile. Trees grew sparsely here; a few of them
were silver maples, which I hadn't seen in this part of Acadu. The air was good
and clear, and full of the songs of warblers, swifts and other birds. In the
bushes along the stream, the honeysuckle hung heavy in bloom and sent out a
thick and pleasing sweetness. If ever a Stonemaker had dwelled here, I thought,
he had chosen a splendid place to do his work.
As we
made our way higher, we saw more of the mysterious statues. They seemed planted
at random in the ground along either side of the stream. Most were solitary
figures, standing by a tree or kneeling near the stream, but a tableau of four
of them, perched on a rocky prominence, were posed tightly together, back to
back as if guarding the four points of direction. Most had been carved into the
shapes of men: slender youths and bent old grandfathers leaning on stone staffs;
dignified graybeards and handsome gallants and thick-thewed brutes who had the
look of warriors. We saw sculptures of only three women, one of them cradling a
baby in her rigid arms. All the statues were naked. And all were made out the
same strange stone that we had seen in the first statue but failed to find
anywhere in the rock of the gap.
'Wondrous
work,' Master Juwain said again. 'Truly wondrous work.'
Truly,
it was. And yet, I thought that some of the statues were less wondrous than
others. That day and the next, the deeper that we pushed into the mountains,
the more the faces of the statues disturbed me. The expressions carved into
them were realistic, yes, but too realistic. A few showed smiles like
that of the statue at the mouth of the gap, but too many betrayed the rawest of
passions: astonishment rage, disgust, hatred or terror, as rendered in the
rictus of clamped jaws and eyes nearly popping from their heads. It was ugly
work I but not ugly as Master Juwain was ugly, with a sheer magnificence that
transcended into a paradoxical beauty. No, I thought, the ugliness of these statues
struck terror into the soul and made one feel sick to be alive.
Maram
obviously felt as I did, and worse, for he kept muttering to himself as he
walked along, muttering and belching and chewing at a barbark nut that he
rolled in his mouth. Finally, on the third day of our mountain passage, as we
followed another stream through the gap's western part, he seemed to have had
enough. He gazed at one of the statues, then spat out the nut and a stream of
red juice along with it. And he announced, 'I think the maker of these
sculptures was mad. And I'll fell mad, too, if I have I look at them Much
longer.'
To
soothe himself, he started humming a cheerful tune; when that failed to lift
his mood, he broke out into the new rounds of what had become his favorite
song:
Through
higher man burn mortal fears
Of
being bound in lower spheres;
In
flesh and blood and woman's breath
He
apprehends the seal of death.
And so
he dwells in castle's height
Where
all is purity and light,
But in
his dry, transcending zeal
Forgets
to live and dream and feel.
In
woman's cry of ecstasy
I find
my immortality;
With
every kiss, caress and thrust
I sing
eternal praise to lust
I am a
second chakra man;
I take
my pleasure while I can
From
maiden, matron, harridan,
I am a
second chakra man.
'Quiet,'
Kane finally barked out to him. 'Quiet now, I say! You sing loud enough to wake
the dead !'
'Well,
what if I do?' Maram snapped at him. 'Do you think it matters? Do you think
that if there's any Yaga skulking about, he hasn't heard us rattling up this
gorge long since?'
We
walked on a few more paces, and the horses' hooves struck out a great noise of
metal against bare stone. Kane's sharp eyes scrutinized every bush, tree and
rock about us. So it was with Master Juwain, Liljana and Berkuar. This great
hunter gripped his bow with a white-knuckled force. I held my drawn sword as I
cast about with my seventh sesense for sign of the stonemaker or any other
living thing. And Maram let loose a great gout of song yet again:
The
higher man seeks higher things . . .
As we
were rounding a bend in the stream, Maram espied a particularly striking
statue. He broke off singing to walk up to where it stood perched on a shelf of
rock. It was a sculpture of a woman, tall and large, with legs like tree
trunks, huge hindquarters and hips, and great, pendulous breasts. Its face was
hideous. The eyes were fierce, the pock-eaten nose twisted, the mouth cast into
a rage of passion. Long strings of stone hung down from the misshapen head. Its
maker had posed it with its stony arms held out as if to welcome a demonic
lover. 'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said, gazing at this sculpture.
Berkuar
came up near him gripping his bow, and he said, 'She's so ugly, she must have
turned herself to stone.'
'Ah, I
don't know,' Maram said. He stepped right up to the statue and laid his hand
upon its rounded belly. He slid it freely over the smooth stone. 'Look at these
hips! What magnificent thighs! Have you ever seen such breasts? If she were
real, can you imagine what mighty children she would bear a man?'
As Daj
and Estrella hung back from this terrifying thing, Liljana stared up at it and
said, 'Ages ago they made such sculptures of the Great Mother. Though I've
never seen one with a face so forbidding.'
'The
eyes are the worst of it,' Berkuar said with Shudder. 'Truly, they're cold
enough to turn a man to stone.'
'Ah, I
don't know,' Maram said again. 'There's something about her eyes. Cold, yes, I
suppose, but can't you see how they conceal a great fire? What kind of maker
could have sculpted such strange, deep eyes?'
His
brow suddenly furrowed with perplexity. He moved close up to the statue as he
peered into its eyes and breathed into its dreadful face.
'Strange,
very strange,' Maram muttered. Then he announced: 'It looks like there's a thin
layer of stone enamelled over some sort of gem, like amethyst, I don't know,
but if I can just chip it away with my knife then -'
As he
was reaching for the dagger on his belt, his voice suddenly choked off, and I
felt the breath freeze in my lungs. I felt my own eyes rigid as stone, for I
could not credit what they beheld: the statue's arms seemed to soften and
change color to a dusky gold as they came alive and tightened around Maram,
pushing him against its breasts. Maram stood gasping and struggling to move,
his arms pinioned helplessly against his sides. The statue - or whatever it
really was - seemed possessed of an insane strength. It lifted Maram off the
ground as easily as I might a child Its stonelike lips pulled back from
long white teeth and red gums in a terrible smile. Its eyes began to clear. The
enamel carapace dissolved into a brilliant violet that I finally understood to
be of pure gelstei.
'The
Stonemaker!' Berkuar shouted out. 'It is the Yaga!'
He
lifted up his bow and sighted his arrow on this demonic thing. Kane, standing
twenty yards farther back, called to him: 'Hold your arrow! You'll hit Maram!'
But
Berkuar ignored him. In a sudden snap of releasing tension, this great archer
loosed his arrow. It flew straight and struck the Stonemaker's neck. But the
point broke against the stony skin there, and the arrow glanced off, skittering
into rocks beyond.
'Back!'
I heard Atara cry out. 'Liljana, Master Juwain - help me get the children back
behind the trees!'
The
Stonemaker let loose a deep, belly-shaking laugh, almost dulcet and pleasing in
tone, but terrible in its promise of torment. She turned her violet eyes toward
Berkuar.
'Back!'
Kane called to me as he sprang away from it. 'Val - get yourself behind a
tree!'
I stood
frozen on a slab of naked rock gripping my sword in both hands. If the Stonemaker could move
as it did, I reasoned, then
her facade of stone must be thin enough that I could cut through it to the living flesh
beneath. But I was too far from Maram to strike at the thing that embraced him.
'Back,
I say! Back, Val!'
The
Stonemaker fixed her gaze upon Berkuar, who whipped another arrow from its
quiver. He never had time to nock it. The Stomemaker's eyes came alive with a
hideous, incandescent light. Berkuar's face lit up with a violet glow as he
froze motionless with his arrow trapped inside his hand. I watched in horror as
the flesh of his hand, face and neck turned to stone. Even the thick hair of
his face and head grew grayish black and hardened.
'Back,
Val, back!' the Stonemaker said to me a sweet, mocking voice. 'Go hide behind a
tree - if you have time!'
She
began to turn her ponderous head toward me.
I
believe I never moved so quickly in all my life as I did then. I fairly flew
across the rocks and took shelter behind a great oak tree. I stood with my side
pressed against hard bark. If the Yaga sought me out behind the curve of the
tree, I would stab her through the throat before I died.
'Ha, ha
- you're quick, little man, and you may have your little life, if that's want
you want,' she sang out. 'I've meat enough for ten years, and anyway, it's this
great dragon of a man I want.'
I heard
Maram grunt in terror. There came a sound as of stone-hard boots scraping
against rock. The Yaga seemed to be walking away from us. Then I heard her sing
out a song in mockery of Maram's beloved doggerel that she must have overheard:
Alone
I've dwelled nine hundred years
In
mountains, deserts, stinking meres,
Regaling
travelers where I can
While
waiting for my dragon man.
No
scholar, magus, king on high
If they
be cool or soft or dry;
My man
is molten earth's desire,
Whose
loins are full, whose blood is fire.
He
comes for me, most mighty snake,
A
mighty, raging thirst to slake,
Make
live inside my honeyed womb
The
Marudin's immortal bloom.
I am a
maid of angel's seed.
An
unfilled well of burning need;
My time
has come to mate and breed –
I am a
maid of angel's seed.
Her
voice died off into the soft wind, and so did Maram's cries; I stood stricken with
a terrible fear that my best friend would be finally and forever lost.
Chapter
18 Back Table of Content Next
When it seemed safe, we gathered near the form of the petrified Berkuar, nearly frozen ourselves with disbelief over what had just occurred.
'Well now we know,' Master Juwain said, running his hand across Berkuar's head, 'that it is possible to turn a man into stone.'
I turned my stare from Berkuar to Master Juwain. It was the only time in my life that I wanted to strike him.
'If it's possible to do this,' Liljana said, rapping her knuckles against Berkuar's hardened hand, 'is it possible to change him back? As the Yaga seemed to change herself back?'
None of us knew. But it was clear that if there was to be any help for Berkuar, we must somehow persuade the Yaga to do this work.
'In any case,' I said, coming to a decision, 'we cannot abandon Maram. Our only course is to go after him.'
I looked up through the gap at the sun where it descended like a knot of fire toward the west 'We have less than two hours of day left to us.'
'But what about the children?' Atara asked. 'Wouldn't it be better if I waited with them here? At least until you determine where that thing is taking Maram?'
I looked Daj and Estrella, who fairly clung to Atara's side. I did not want to remind Atara that she was in no state to protect them.
'All right,' I finally said. 'But let Master Juwain and Liljana remain here, too. Kane and I will move more quickly by ourselves.'
It was a hard decision, and
note of us were happy with it. But it seemed the wisest course for Kane and me
to track the Yaga to her lair, and then decide what must be done.
'I doubt if she'll return,' I said to Liljana. 'But if
she somehow flanks us and comes back here, you must try to use your gelstei
against her mind.'
Liljana nodded her head in assent of this dangerous
plan.
Then Kane and I, bow and sword in hand, set out at a
trot higher up into the gap. It was not difficult to track this monstrous
woman. She crushed down low-growing vegetation and left large, deep prints in
the ground between the trees where it wasn't so stony. In our race up along the
ground above the stream, we tried always to stay near one great tree or another
so that we might duck behind it at the first hint of a flash of violet, for we
could think of no other way of protecting ourselves against the Yaga's terrible
eyes.
About a mile from where we had left Berkuar standing
like the stone sculpture that he had become, the tracks veered off to the
right, higher up toward the northern wall of the gap. We followed them, snaking
around trees and climbing up old, scarred rocks past great boulders. We came
upon a shelf of ground cleared of trees. And there, in the middle of this
windswept patch of rock, stood a house like none I had ever seen. It was
rounded like a dome heaped up from the ground. Its curving walls and roof
seemed made of many thousands of white bones. An evil-looking substance, all
hard and red like petrified blood, cemented them in place. A chimney of bones
poked out from the roof, but from our vantage, I could see nothing in the walls
that looked like a window. The door - a great, rounded work of stone - looked
to be almost impossible to move. I felt waves of Maram's fear emanating outward
from the house even at a distance of fifty yards.
'So,' Kane said, 'even if we get up close to it, what
then? It looks like we'd need siege engines to break down those walls, eh?'
I nodded my head, grinding my teeth together. Then I
said, 'If we wait until dark, it might be too late.'
Neither of us knew what this monstrous woman wanted of
Maram. Her song suggested that she might have found in Maram a long-desired
mate, but this did not seem possible.
'What is she?' I whispered to Kane. 'I've never heard
talk or tale of her like.'
But Kane only stared at me in silence as he shook his
head.
An image of another monster flashed in my mind. 'Do
you remember Meliadus? This Yaga sang of being of angel's seed, and she has
something of the look of him, does she not? Do you think it's possible that
Morjin might have sired a daughter as well as a son?'
'It is possible,' Kane growled out. 'The Beast has
committed every abomination, every degradation of the human spirit.'
'You told us that the Marudin was to emerge from the
Galadin and go on to rule a new order of beings,' I said to Kane. 'But the Yaga
sang of the Marudin as if she intended to give him birth -with Maram the
father!'
I peered out again from behind the tree in order to
take a longerj look at the house. There came a scurry of movement from around
its side, and I noticed a large, gray rat darting out from a crack in the
rounded wall. The crack zigzagged vertically through the heap of bones; it
seemed that an earthquake might once have rent the house nearly in two.
'That might be our chance,' I said to Kane, tapping my
finger against his bow. 'Perhaps we can aim an arrow through it.'
'As Berkuar aimed an arrow at that beast?'
'If she's planning what I fear she's planning,' I
said, 'her skin must soften sometime. And even if it does not, she must sleep
sooner or later. There's a chance that I might be able to squeeze through the
crack and kill her before she can open her eyes.'
'You're as mad as she,' he said to me. 'Mad to think
you could force your way into her house without awakening her. So, you'll need
help.'
He took out his black gelstei and stood staring at it.
'I might be able to steal the fire of her eyes.'
Even here, hundreds of miles from Argattha, I could
feel Morjin's shadowy presence and sense him watching us as from the very eye
of black gelstei that Kane held in his hand. I said to him, 'It is too
dangerous!'
'So, that it is,' he growled out. 'And dangerous not
to try.'
I scanned the bone-littered ground around the house.
It would be madness, as we both knew, to expose ourselves in the light of day
to the Yaga's stare anywhere in this zone.
There seemed nothing to do now except to wait for the
fall of night. And so wait we did.
How was it possible that an hour spent wandering
through a glade with ones beloved on a spring afternoon could pass as quickly
as a heartbeat, while this hour - with the wind whooshing through the gap and
the light slowly bleeding away from the stones and trees around us - seemed to
go on tor an entire month? As I stood behind the tree wild Kane, wondering what
was occurring inside the house, I listened to my own breathing and I counted
the beats of my heart. It grew darker. From somewhere behind us, through the
trees came the harsh hooing of an owl. I looked up and watched the bright
constellations wheel into the sky.
'How long,' I said to Kane, 'must we wait?'
'So,' he said with a cruel smile, 'a bride and her
groom, on their wedding night, might not sleep until nearly dawn.'
'But we cannot know what she truly intends. What if
she has taken him for meat?'
'So,' Kane murmured. 'So.'
I looked down the blade of my darkened sword. I said,
'I will not wait, not another moment. Come, let's at least steal up close to
the house and see what we can see.'
Kane nodded his head at this. And so we came out from
behind our tree. Smoke poured out of the house's bone-made chimney in a plume
limned dark as a blacksnake against the still glowing western sky. A thin,
yellow light leaked from the crack in the wall. We began stalking across the
stony ground straight toward it.
Kane, from ages of discipline and need, moved with the
grace and quiet of a big cat. I pushed forward nearly as silently; my father
had taught me to hunt sharp-eared deer in the forests of Mesh, and his lessons
fill lived in my muscles and bones.
We came up closer to the house. The crack, I saw to my
dismay, was too small for me to force my way through it, even if I removed my
armor, clothing and several layers of skin. Even a skinny child would have a
hard time of such a passage.
'Oh, my - oh, my Lord!' I heard Maram groaning from
within the house. 'Oh, my, oh, oh, oh!'
We moved toward the sound of his heavy, pained voice,
which flowed like burning air from the crack. Over stones and hardened earth,
taking exquisite care, we drew up next to the house. I gripped my sword in one
hand while I rested the other against the bones of the house to steady myself.
Then I drew in a deep breath and pressed my eye to the crack.
'Oh!' Maram moaned out again. 'Oh, this is too much,
too, too much - oh, my Lord!'
Through the thick wall the house seemed all to be one
large, circular room, like the felt dwellings of the Sarni. On the far side, a
hearth of stones held a bed of glowing coals, and a great steel cauldron -
shiny and new-looking - hung bubbling over it. I had a clear line of
sight toward the stone door, barred with a great beam of what appeared to be
petrified wood. Two statues stood framing the doorway. Parts of them were
broken off: arms and a leg, and a missing head. The crack allowed only a
partial view of Maram, who lay on a large stone bed at the other half of the
house. He had been stripped naked. From his great shoulders and hairy chest had
been torn round, red wounds that oozed blood. Ropes, possibly made of twisted
hair, bound his arms back behind his head. I could not see his legs. Neither
could I see the Yaga. But I smelled her: a foul, thick stench of bloody breath
and sweating skin that might never have been washed. It poured from the crack
and sickened me.
'Oh - oh. Lord!' Maram moaned. 'This is the end -
surely the end!'
Kane's hand fell upon my shoulder. I stepped aside so
that he might have a look through the crack as well.
'Oh, oh, oh, oh!'
Then I heard the Yaga, from somewhere within the
house, call out to Maram, 'You're strong, my beautiful man. The strongest yet.
We'll see if you're the one, we'll surely see.'
Then she broke into song again, chanting out her love
poem to Maram:
Alone I've dwelled nine hundred years
In mountains, deserts, stinking meres,
Regaling travelers where I can
While waiting for my dragon man.
No scholar, magus, king on high
If they be cool or soft or dry;
My man is molten earth's desire-,
Whose loins are full, whose blood is fire.
He comes for me, most mighty snake,
A mighty, raging thirst to slake,
Make live inside my honeyed womb
The Marudin's immortal bloom.
I am a maid of
angel's seed,
An unfilled well
of burning need;
My time has come
to mate and breed –
I am a maid of
angel's seed.
And so my suitors stop on by,
Enchanted by my violet eye;
I turn to stone the small, effete:
Unworthy mates but good for meat.
To feed my fiery, fecund forge
I fill my red, rapacious gorge;
The blood of men, most potent wine,
Exalts new life and makes divine.
With love I seize and shred and skive,
Put lips to flesh, eat men alive,
Then suck sweet marrow from their bones
And roast on coals their empty stones.
I am a maid of angel's seed,
An unfilled well of burning need,
On life's red flame I fondly feed –
I am a maid of angel's seed.
Kane pulled back from the house and looked at me. In
the faint starlight, his face seemed grimmer than ever. He slashed the edge of
his hand across his throat. Then he pointed back towards the trees as if
telling me that we should make our escape before it was too late.
But it was already too late. The Yaga suddenly broke
off singing, and I heard her sniffing the air. And then she called out: 'Is
that you, little man? I know it is. You smell so sweet - almost as sweet
as my Maram.'
I heard a
shuffling of hard feet, and I quickly stepped to the side of the crack. The
stench of the Yaga grew stronger, and her voice louder and clearer as it poured
from the jagged crack: 'Don't be so shy, Valashu Elahad. Why don't you show
yourself so that I might look upon your sweet, sweet face?'
'So that you can turn me to stone?' I called out to
her. 'As you did my friend?'
'Ha, ha!' she laughed out. 'I've no desire to turn you
into stone, though I'll surely oblige you if you linger.'
'Val!' I heard Maram shout from inside the house.
'Val! Val!'
'Let Maram go!' I called out. 'And change my friend
back as he was!'
'I could change that hunter back, indeed,
indeed I could. But he would be good only for meat then, and you don't eat your
friends, do
you?'
'Val!' Maram cried out yet again. 'She's telling the
truth! She makes men into stone then brings them back here! When she unmakes
them, they are dead!'
'Sweet Maram,' I heard the Yaga murmur. 'I haven't
made you into stone yet, though you're harder than any man I've known,
the hardest yet. Now be quiet while I talk with Valashu, or I'll have to give
you another kiss.'
'Leave him alone!' I shouted. 'And how do you know my
name?'
'My father told me that you might pass this way.'
'Morjin? Is he truly your father then?'
'Indeed he is. It was he who named me Jezi, which
means the lovely one. And I am so very, very lovely, don't you think?' I said
nothing to this, then called back to her: 'If Morjin is your father, he would
not let you tell me to go away.'
'You're beginning to vex me, little man. Do you think
my father has power over Jezi Yaga?'
'If he is able to speak to you from afar, then surely
he has power.'
'Ha, ha - great power, it's true. But I no longer do
as he commands. We settled that long ago. When he couldn't bear the defiance in
my eyes, he tore them out with his own fingers. But then I bit off his thumb
and defied him all the more.'
The stench of Jezi Yaga's loathing drove into my belly
and made me want to vomit. I gasped out to her: 'Such hatred - for your own
father!'
'Ha, ha,' she laughed out again, 'my father commanded
that I should be his bride. But he was not my dragon man, no, no, he was
not, even though he calls himself the Great Red Dragon.'
'Abomination,' Kane muttered beside me. 'Every filthy
thing, every
degradation.'
'Is that you, Elijin?' Jezi called out. 'You speak
of abomination?' 'So, I do,' Kane said to her. 'Morjin used a varistei, did he
not, to bring you
forth?'
'The greenstone,' Jezi Yaga said. 'Ha, ha - he did use
it this way. And he
wanted to use it to breed a new race out of my sweet, sweet womb.'
'So, the Marudin.'
'The Marudin, the Marudin,' she sang out. 'The Great
One who will
defy even the Dark One. But my father is not to be his father. When I told him that, he took my
eyes and gave me these pretty purple stones in their place. He said that since
my heart was stone, I should turn to stone any man who tried to love me. My
skin can be hard as stone when I make it so, and therefore no one can kill me
with sword or arrow. But my heart is never stone - if it were, I would die. As
I nearly did die. He cursed me, my sweet father did, then cast me out.
And so it's been ever since. I've looked all across the world for my dragon
man. I've looked upon so many men these many, many years. One day, I shall find
him.'
A moan from Maram returned me from the horrible past
to the even more horrifying present. He called out, 'Leave me - leave me
alone!'
'Yes, Valashu,' the maddened being inside the house
said to me. 'Leave us alone. Go off to kill my father, and I will thank you for
it. But leave me alone so that I might test the strength of the snake.'
'We won't leave without Maram!' I shouted.
'Will you not?' she shouted back. 'You vex, little
man! You vex me.'
Her voice faded, and I heard her feet shuffling
against rough floor stones. And Maram cried out, 'No, please don't bite me
again -no!'
'You vex me!' Jezi Yaga called out. 'You vex me!'
Just then Maram let loose a terrible scream. It froze
me motionless, as if I were a piece of ice standing with my fist clenched
around my sword in the dark of the night. It took all my will to keep myself
from whipping about and looking through the crack into the house.
'Val!' Maram shouted to me. 'Go away, or she'll eat me
alive! Go, and save yourself!'
I could think of nothing else to do. It would be
folly, as both Kane and I knew, for Kane to try to put an arrow through the
crack. He brought his lips up close to my ear and whispered, 'Let's go back to
the others while we still can.'
And so we did. We retreated as we had come, past trees
and rocks, down the sloping ground toward the stream. When we drew near the
place where Jezi had turned Berkuar to stone, I called out into the darkness so
as not to give alarm: 'Atara! Master Juwain! Liljana! We return!'
It took our friends, drawn up with the horses near the
stream, only moments to determine that we did not return in triumph. I quickly
described Jezi Yaga's house and Maram's imprisonment. I gave an account of our
exchange with Jezi. When I finished, Atara cried out 'Oh, but this is terrible,
terrible! I should have seen it! And I should see a way out, now, but I can't!'
I stepped up beside her, and put my arm across her
shoulders I said to her, 'Don't give up hope just yet I have a plan.'
I bade Liljana, Master Juwain and the children to
gather around me. Then, to the sound of the stream pouring over dark rocks and
crickets chirping in the bushes, I told them what we must do.
'Daj,' I said, looking through the star-pierced
darkness at this brave boy. 'Will you come with me?'
Daj stood up straight as he nodded his head. He told
me, 'I'd do anything to help Maram.'
Kane drew out his black crystal and said, 'Perhaps I
should come with you, too.'
'No,' I said, 'it will be better for you to protect
the others, if you can. And to take them to Hesperu, if I do not return,'
After that we made ready the horses and prepared to
leave. I took off the gold medallion that I had worn since King Kiritan had
called the great Quest, and I draped it around Berkuar's neck. I said a quick
prayer for his spirit. Here he stood, dead upon the earth instead of in it and
here he might stand for a thousand more years.
While Kane set off with others further into the gap, I
led Daj back up the slope toward Jezi Yaga's house. We came up behind the same
oak tree that had given Kane and me shelter. Daj fairly clung to its bark as he
looked out from behind the tree. In the strong starlight the house gleamed like
the heap of bones that it was.
'You must wait here until she's gone,' I said to him,
'then squeeze through the crack and cut Maram free with your sword. Don't try
the door - you won't be able to move it, and the Yaga may look back and see
you.'
'Don't worry,' he whispered to me as he shuddered. 'I
don't want to wind up
like Berkuar.'
He paused, breathing deeply to quiet the pounding of
his heart, as Liljana had taught him. Then he said, 'I wonder if it hurts to be
turned into stone?'
'Don't think about that,' I said to him. 'Do you have
your sword?'
He smiled as he showed me the small sword that I had
given him.
'All right,' I said. 'After you're out, keep to the
high ground, and keep yourselves unseen. We'll meet you in the desert.'
I embraced him as I would any other warrior who was
dear to me. Then I walked out across the gleaming rocks and bones of the open
ground toward the house. I positioned myself halfway between the great door and
the few trees at my back. I cupped my hands around my mouth as I drew in a deep
breath. Then I shouted out: 'Jezi Yaga! Daughter of angels and mother of the
Marudin! Let Maram go! We have in our keeping a varistei that you may use to
help make your son! We will give it to you if you let Maram go!'
From the house came the sound of Maram moaning and
then the much louder voice of Jezi Yaga shouting through the walls: 'Do you
tell the truth, little man? Do you tell the truth?'
I stood on the hard ground listening for the sound of
the stone bar being thrown back from inside the door. I told myself that I would
exchange Master Juwain's green geistei for Maram. I would give up my sword
and all my possessions - even my life.
'I think you do tell the truth, sweet man,'
Jezi called out to me. Her piercing, musical voice rattled the very bones of
her house. 'My father told me that you hate to lie.'
'Let Maram go!' I shouted to her, 'and I shall let you
have the green varistei!'
'Do you take me for a fool, Valashu Elahad? I will never
let my dragon man go!'
'Then you will never have the geistei.'
'Will I not? Will I not?' At last I heard the harsh
grating sound of stone grinding against stone.
I dared not wait a moment longer. With one quick
glance toward Daj's oak tree, I turned and fled across the dark, uneven ground
into the shelter of the trees. Behind me I heard the great stone door of Jezi's
house grind open and then slam shut.
'Where are you, little man?' she called out to me.
She could not see me, but surely she could hear me, as
I could her. Her great weight of driving legs and hard feet rattled broken
rocks. It was perilous ground in the dark of night, for both of us. As I leapt
down the slope from rock to rock, past boulders and around trees, over guileys
and across rotting logs, I prayed that I wouldn't stumble and fall.
For a while I ran downhill and then up again over a
dark hump of ground. I listened for the noise of Jezi Yaga pounding after me.
My breath burst from my lungs, and the owls hooed in the trees, and beneath the
tempest of these sounds, I listened and ran and listened ever harder. I no
longer heard her. I had staked everything on my being able to outdistance her,
so I ran on and on, into the night. I thought of Daj, the rat-boy, as they had
called him in Argattha.
Sly as any rat, by now he would have cut Maram free
with his
sword. Maram, despite his wounds, would be strong
enough to
force open the great door, or so I prayed. I prayed
that he and Daj
would then make their escape along the high ground of
the gap,
out into the desert.
I smelled this vast expanse of burning sands and
wasted land long before I laid eyes upon it. The wind from the west blew warm
and hard through the gap, carrying the scent of desert plants into my nostrils
and I ran for many miles over cracked and broken ground toward it. The air grew
even drier. Few trees grew in the hard, stony soil that bruised my feet even
through my boots.
But I ran on even so. The arrow wound in my back
became a knot of burning pain. A worse fire tormented my blood. I could not
hear the footfalls of Jezi Yaga; it seemed that I had left her far behind. But
I knew she was still pursuing me, for I felt her presence as a dreadful
sensation like a sucking at my guts.
I sensed her drawing closer to me. How, I wondered,
could this be? I didn't know where her impossible speed came from. I couldn't
guess how she had remained alive all these years, or how she could see. I
waited to feel the skin along the back of my neck hardening into stone. Like
Daj, I couldn't keep myself from wondering how badly it would hurt.
And then I turned panting and driving hard around a
great mound of rock and almost ran straight into Kane and my other companions.
Kane stood behind his horse aiming an arrow in my direction; I saw through the
gloom that he had affixed his black gelstei to his forehead, as of a third eye.
'Quick . . . away from here!' I called. 'She
... must . . have . . guessed where . . And taken a shortcut.'
I caught my breath and added, 'Hurry - the sun will be
up soon!'
Already, in the east the sky through the gap behind us
glowed with red light that devoured the stars.
And so hurry we did. I had thought my friends would
already be beyond the pass, but Master Juwain explained that Atara had turned
her ankle on the rocky ground and so had been forced to ride. In the darkness,
they had not been able to move quickly.
For a mile we worked our way up a swell of fissured
rock. And then, at the top, we had our first view of the great Red Desert. The
wall of mountain to the north still blocked a line of sight in that direction,
but to the west and south, for as far as the eye could see, a seemingly endless
expanse of flat, scrub-covered ground opened out toward the horizon. Only a
last short slope, no more than a quarter mile in length, led down into it.
It vexed me that the ground of this slope was so stony
and broken that we still could not ride - at least no more quickly than Atara
rode. Jezi Yaga, I thought, might be quick over short distances but could never outpace a horse. I wondered
at the range of the purple gelstei that were her eyes. How far out in the
desert must we gallop, I thought, before we would be safe?
We were never to find this out. For just as we had descended
a short way down the slope, I heard a great pounding of footsteps and then a
jolly laughter from behind us. I whipped my head from left to right, wildly
looking about for any cover. A single boulder, not even large enough to shelter
Estrella, stood out from the ground.
'Valashu Elahad!' Jezi Yaga's rolling voice called
out. 'Sweet man! I'm coming! I'm coming!'
I moved quickly to help Atara down from her horse,
then positioned her behind this snorting beast. The rest of us likewise took
shelter behind our horses. Then we waited.
'Sweet man! Sweet man! Did you think you could escape
my lovely, lovely eyes?'
A moment later, Jezi Yaga appeared at the top of the
slope above us. She stood smiling with her hands planted on her huge, round
hips. Her great breasts hung nearly to her waist and shook as she let loose
great peals of laughter. She lifted back her blocky head in order to shake her
hair out of her glowing, violet eyes.
'Come out from behind your beasts, that I might see
you better!' she shouted to us. 'Must I turn them to stone, too? I've no liking
for horseflesh, for it's not as sweet as man.'
I crouched behind Altaru's great, trembling body, and
I stroked his neck and prayed that he could not understand Jezi Yaga's cruel
words. It would be a simple thing, I thought, for Jezi to charge down the slope
and find us out behind our horses once she had turned them to stone.
'Come out! Come out!' she called to us. 'Come out and
bring me the greenstone! I've no liking to have to chisel it from your hand!'
Master Juwain, I saw, slightly behind me, cringed in
back of his horse
as he made a fist around his varistei. He called out, 'Take my crystal then, but let us be!'
'I will take it! I will take it! But I will not
let you be!'
Just then the sun rose through the gap behind Jezi
Yaga enveloping her in a ball of red fire. It sent rays of light streaking
straight at us like arrows. I felt its heat on the mail of my legs, which the
legs of my horse could not quite cover.
Liljana, standing behind her horse near me, called
out, 'I must try!'
I looked over to see her bring her blue gelstei up to
the side of her head. A moment later, she flung the little figurine down upon
the ground as she cried out: 'He is still there!'
Kane, to my right, touched the smooth, black gelstei
glued to his forehead, and growled out, 'So, Valashu, if I fail, remember your
sword. Remember the valarda.'
Then he looked up the slope toward Jezi Yaga. He had
only a single moment to cry out: 'Damn him!' before his eyes closed and his
grip upon his horse's saddle broke. I felt the life drain from his limbs as of
water being-sucked into dry sand. Then he fell to the ground. Never had I seen
this great warrior lie so still.
Jezi Yaga turned her head toward him. Her eyes grew
brighter.
I closed my eyes as I looked for the killing sword of
valarda inside me. But whether because of my promise or because I didn't hate
Jezi as I did her father, I could not find it.
I looked down to see the skin along the back of Kane's
hand changing color and hardening. I hated it that I could think of nothing to
do.
Then there came a booming in the distance like thunder.
It took me a moment to realize that it was a voice, a great human voice full of
wrath. I could not make out what words echoed through the mouth of the gap, but
I knew with a great leaping of my heart that they belonged to Maram.
'My man!' Jezi cried out. 'My dragon man!'
The hardening of Kane's body suddenly ceased. I risked
looking over the top of my horse's saddle. A streak of brilliant red fire split
the air. The fire grew even more incandescent and merciless as it fell upon
Jezi Yaga's naked back. With my eyes, I followed the line of this flame from
the top of the slope. There, on a shelf of rock, stood Maram. The ruby light
that spilled forth from him dazzled my eyes so that I could not see clearly,
but I knew that he gnpped his hands around his firestone.
'My man! My man!' Jezi called out to him. Her words
came out more slowly now, for it seemed that she was having difficulty forming
them. 'My sweet, sweet dragon man!' She stood as still and steady as a
statue. She had turned her head halfway toward Maram. But it seemed that she
could move it no farther. The skin across her neck and back had hardened into a
carapace of stone. As the fire continued to fall upon her, the stone grew
thicker. I sensed that instinct had driven her to protect her body from the
fire.
'My man. My ... beautiful man.'
Those were her last words. The flames from Maram's
firestone burned straight into her, melting the stone that she made of her own
flesh. A thick, glowing lava ran down her back and sides, and dripped in bright
red splashes upon the ground. In order to assuage the anguish of Maram's
red-hot flame, or so I sensed, Jezi hardened layer upon layer of herself,
deeper and deeper, until even her muscles and bones began to petrify. At last,
the power of the purple gelstei worked its way into the deepest part of her
being. I felt the life leave her then, for as she had said, she must surely die
if ever her heart turned to stone.
After that, I came out from behind Altaru and called
up to Maram that Jezi Yaga was dead. He must have understood, for the fire
pouring out of his red gelstei suddenly ceased. I walked up the slope toward
the statue of Jezi Yaga as he walked down to us, with Daj close behind him. He
came closer, and I ground my teeth together to see what she had done to him. He
was entirely naked, even down to his bloody feet. Blood still oozed from the
bites that she had taken out of his chest from his shoulders and belly, his
hindquarters and legs, too, and nearly every other part of him.
'I knew you wouldn't abandon me,' he called out to me.
'You saved my life again, old friend.'
'Even as you saved mine,' I said, smiling at him as I
clasped his hand.
He gripped his other hand around his firestone. I saw
to my amazement that not a single crack marred its ruby interior.
'But how?' I said to him. 'How did this happen?'
While Estrella stood oyer Kane's still form, Master J
uwain and Liljana helped Atara walk up to us. Then Maram looked at his red
crystal and explained: 'I told Jezi that all my, ah, powers of love and life,
my very potency, were bound up in this. I persuaded her to make it whole it
again. And so with the touch of her eyes, she healed it.'
He reached out to touch Jezi's face, and he ran his
fingers across her cheeks. As when he had first seen her, a thin layer of stone
covered the purple jewels of her eyes.
'Amazing,' Master Juwain said, examining the
firestone. 'I didn't know the purple gelstei had such powers.'
'In anyone else's hands, so to speak,' Maram said, 'I
doubt if it does. Jezi, though, has had a thousand years to learn its secrets.'
Master Juwain considered this a moment, before his
attention turned to more immediate things. He examined Maram and said, 'But
what happened to your boots and clothes?'
'She burned them, too bad,' Maram told us. 'She said
that I would never have need of them again, since I was to remain inside her
house forever.'
He went on to tell of how Daj had forced his way
through the crack in Jezi's house, and like an angel of mercy, had freed him.
Daj stood basking in Maram's gratitude. It was nearly the proudest moment of
his life.
'But what about your armor?' I asked Maram.
'Gone,' he told me. 'Jezi softened the steel and
reformed it into a cauldron. She told me that she would put me in it, piece by
piece, if I failed her.'
I could think of nothing to say to this, or to the
torment that he had suffered. Then Liljana asked him, 'But if she wanted a
child from you, why take bites and weaken you?'
'I think she was testing me,' Maram muttered. 'Testing
my strength and the, ah, juiciness of my body, as she put it. My very blood.
Then, too, old ways die hard, and I don't think she could help herself.'
Liljana looked him up and down, and said, 'At least
she didn't bite off that unruly snake of yours.'
Maram's face flushed bright red beneath the rising sun
as he covered himself with his hand and groaned, 'Oh, my snake - my, poor,
poor, mighty snake!'
'That should be the least of your concerns,' Master
Juwain said to him. 'We've got to see to those wounds of yours. They are many,
and deep, and no animal's bite is as poisonous as a human being's.'
'All right,' Maram said, 'but first I want payment for
what this monster did to me. Daj, hand me my dagger!'
Daj, who bore Maram's sword and dagger, moved to
comply with his command. But then Atara, divining Maram's intentions, rested
her hand on Jezi Yaga's face and called out to him: 'No, let her keep her eyes
- please.'
Maram looked at me, and I nodded to him. Then he bowed
his head to Atara as he muttered, 'All right then, I won't chisel them out. But
it seems a pity to let a dead hunk of stone keep two of the great gelstei.'
After that, we walked down to the horses so that
Master Juwain could tend to Maram and the stricken Kane as well.
The sun rose higher above the gap, and its heat poured down upon us. I wondered
how it had been for Jezi Yaga, dying beneath the hellish heat of Maram's
firestone. I wondered if after all these years of doing monstrous deeds she
could still be considered human. She stood all huge and stony above us,
twisted about with a look of betrayal ad anguislh chiselled into her grotesque
face. I decided that oce, somewhere within her, there had lived a woman, and a
beautiful one at that. And so I said a prayer for her spirit. Then I turned my
eyes upon the great desert opening out to the west. Even at midmorning, the air
had grown sweltering, and soon my friends and I might well wish that we, too,
were made of stone.
Chapter 19 Back Table of Content Next
We bore Kane's heavy body down the long slope to more level ground, where we laid one of our sleeping furs on the rocky earth, and him on it. While Liljana and I set to erecting one of our rain cloths to shield out the fierce sun, Master Juwain mixed some bluish powder into a cup of water and then held up Kane's head and managed practically to pour it down his throat. It did not revive him, but it seemed that a little color returned to his ashen face. Then Master Juwain went to work on Maram. He cleaned Maram's wounds then daubed one of his pungent-smelling ointments into them. He bound them with clean bandages. After Maram donned his spare tunic, he lay down next to Kane, moaning and cursing because he could find no position in which one or more of his bitten parts did not press the hard ground beneath him.
'Oh, oh,' he murmured, rolling
from side to side. 'This is worse than the arrow wounds I took outside of
Khaisham - the worst yet. Please, Val, shoot an arrow through my heart and let
me die!' We held council then as we decided what to do. With Atara injured,
Maram missing pieces of skin and Kane lying as one dead, it seemed that we
should retreat back into the gap, where we might recuperate by the stream. But
we had no good way of carrying Kane, and as for Mam he was loath to set foot
again anywhere in that cursed valley that Jezi Yaga had terrorized for so long.
I think he feared that she might somehow return to life. It was Atara, though,
who persuaded us to go on, saying, 'Already we are well into Soldru, and the
desert will grow only hotter these next two months. We should cross it as soon
as we can, or go back into Acadu and wait for autumn. But my heart tells me
that it we do wait, we'll come into Hesperu too late.'
'If we actually reach Hesperu,' Master Juwain said.
'Which we won't if we have to cross the Crescent Mountains in winter.'
We agreed that if Kane survived and Maram could bear
to ride, we must go on.
'I'll have to bear it, though I don't know how
I will,' Maram moaned again, resting his hand on one of his fat hindquarters.
'I'm not going back into that valley of stone, and I'm certainly not going back
to Acadu. I haven't sacrificed so many precious pieces of myself to go back,
do you understand?'
I smiled to hear him speak such brave words, and I
prayed that his courage wouldn't fail him in the miles to come.
'All right,' I said, 'then we'll wait here until Kane
revives.'
Master Juwain, who had removed the black gelstei from
Kane's forehead, rested his hand on top of Kane's white hair and looked at him
with deep concern. 'I'm afraid I have no knowledge to help him.'
I came over to touch my fingers to Kane's fierce face.
Despite the heat of the day, his skin was cool. I said, 'He will recover
- I know he will. He cannot die.'
We all gathered in a circle around Kane, and we laid
our hands on top of his chest. Try as I might, I could not feel the beat of his
heart beneath my hand. It surprised me to see Liljana nearly in tears over the
reduction of this mighty warrior, for she had often had harsh words with him.
Estrella gazed at him with a fierce concentration. Whereas most people have
trouble holding an object within their consciousness for very long, Estrella
often took delight in dwelling with the flowers by a stream or in playing my
flute for hour after hour. And more, she seemed able to love those things so
completely that it was as if the object dissolved into her consciousness, and
her consciousness into it, and so became as one. So it was now. I felt her love
for Kane like a gentle flame within his heart. I felt Master Juwain's love as
well, and Atara's, and that of the rest of us, for that was my gift. It was
also my gift to strike deep into Kane's heart with the fire of my own.
Strangely, when I opened myself this way, I found Estrella smiling at me. It
almost seemed that she was waiting for me to pass this fire to her so that she
might concentrate it into an irresistible force that would warm every fiber of
Kane's being.
After a while, however, Maram could not hold the deep
silence that had fallen over us. He shifted positions yet again as he pulled
his bandaged hand away from Kane. Then he muttered, 'If Morjin could do this to
Kane, he could do it to the rest of us, or anyone, once he gains full control
of the Lightstone and the Black Jade. I think he'll be able to find us,
anywhere in the world.'
I looked about us, out into the desert with its baked,
red earth and sparse covering of tough-looking plants. I could see many
miles out into the barren land to the north, south and west. And so anyone
approaching from those directions could certainly see us beneath our white
shelter flapping in the wind. In our passage across the desert, I thought, we
would find neither shelter nor cover against the eyes of our enemies. I
wondered with dread if Morjin could somehow see us or sense our
whereabouts. 1=
'He knew we were caught in the Skadarak,' I
said to Maram and my other companions. 'And Jezi Yaga had been warned to look
for us.'
'Warned by the second droghul?' Master Juwain asked.
'Do you think he is close?'
We all looked at Atara then, but she said nothing as
she sat behind the silence of her blindfold.
Liljana, after gazing at the blue figurine that she
took out of her pocket, looked up at me and said, 'Every time we use our
gelstei he knows this. But can he really see us? You once said, Val,
that you thought he couldn't.'
'That was before he stole the Lightstone,' I told her.
'Now, I don't know.'
I did not give voice to what 1 most feared: that now
and forever more, Morjin would always be drawn to the kirax burning inside me
like a vampire bat to blood.
'How is it, I wonder,' Master Juwain said to Maram,
'that you were able to use your stone without Morjin seizing control of it?'
'Well, in truth, I think he tried,' Maram said. 'I certainly
felt him trying to wrest the firestone from my hand, as it were. It's
strange how things fall out, isn't it?'
'Strange - how so?' I asked him.
'Well he tried to pour so much power into it that it
would burst apart in my face. But this only gave it more fire.' Maram turned
over on his side to stare at his ruby crystal. 'It's been so long since I
wielded this, I don't know if I could have continued burning that monster
without his help.'
'Surely he fears your stone,' Master Juwain said to
him. 'Surely he remembers the doom that was laid upon it.'
Would Maram's red gelstei, I wondered, truly lead to
Morjin's undoing? I leaned over to run my finger along its smooth length as I
said to Maram, 'It's a miracle that the Yaga made this whole again, for I never
thought it could be healed, as you always hoped. It gives me hope that
somehow, in the end, we'll defeat Morjin.'
'Ah, then you've come to believe in the prophecy?'
Maram said, smiling at me.
'I believe in us,' I said, smiling back at him.
'And in you. If you hadn't come when you did. . .'
I said no more as I looked out from beneath our sun
cloth, up the slope where Jezi Yaga stood like a gargoyle guarding the mouth of
the gap.
'Ah, well, I did come, didn't I? As I always
will, if you need me. But let's not congratulate ourselves too soon. We still
have hundreds miles of desert before us, and without Kane, I don't see how we
can ever make it.'
Once, as Kane had told us, he had crossed the southern
part of the Red Desert, and so he knew of the wells and water holes that we
must find if we were to survive.
'Don't worry about Kane,' I told him, looking down at
Kane's still form. 'Does the sun rise in the morning? Does the forest fail to
turn green in the spring?'
There seemed little to do then except wait. We all sat
beneath our paltry covering, shifting about as the sun rose higher and the
shadow cast by the cloth shifted as well. By noon, it had grown very hot. We
sweated, and we drank from our waterskins to replenish ourselves. Flies came to
feed on our sweat and bite us. Our horses stood chewing up what forage they
could find. Out in the desert, lizards scrambled over sun-baked rocks. The
burning air sucked the moisture from my eyes.
We sweated and suffered through the afternoon. While
the others dozed, Estrella and I kept watch over Kane, who did not stir. I kept
a watch on the wavering desert, looking as always for sign of our enemies.
I think I had never looked forward so much to the
coming of the night. After endless hours, the sun melted like a gout of burning
red steel into the horizon in the west. The desert grew beautiful then. The
day's last light touched the mountains behind us with a starkness that unveiled
their deeper life. The air cleared, and the sky fell a deep and glowing blue.
After a while, the stars came out in their glittering millions. It grew so cool
that I drew on my cloak. Liljana, now awake and tending to Kane, covered him
with his cloak and helped Master Juwain pour some tea down his throat. He
slept, on and on, as the stars brightened and the hyenas gave voice to their
eerie cries far out in the desolate land around us. It was just before dawn,
with the rocks of the desert nearly as cold as ice, when Kane finally opened
his eyes. He looked at me through the light of the little fire that Maram had
made out of some dead yusage. He smiled as his hand found mine and squeezed my
fingers with a pitiful weakness. Then he murmured to me, 'So Val - so.'
Liljana set to making him some broth, which she
insisted that he must drink. But Kane would have none of it. 'Meat,' he
murmured again. 'I must have meat.'
In our stores, Liljana found a little ham, which was
going bad, and some dried venison, which had fared much better. But Kane would
have none of these either. He let his leonine head roll to the side so that he
could better look at me. And he said, 'Val -bring me fresh meat.'
Maram could aim an arrow straighter than I, most of
the time, but he could scarcely move to draw a bowstring and was in no shape to
hunt. And Atara, who might have been the finest archer in the world, was still
completely blind. And so when the sun came up, I took up my bow and walked out
into the desert. I gripped in my hand my brother Karshur's favorite hunting
arrow, the one he had given me when I had set out on the great Quest. Around my
neck hung my lucky bear claw, torn from the paw of the great beast that had
nearly killed Asaru - and myself. It brought me luck that morning, or so I thought.
Only three miles from our encampment I came upon a small herd of gazelles with
their long, spiral horns and swishing black tails. I put Karshur's arrow
through the heart of a young buck. I slung the dead animal across my shoulders
and bore him back to our camp. Liljana took charge of the butchering,
announcing that she would make a fine roast of its ribs. But Kane wouldn't wait
for this feast. He called out to Liljana, saying, 'Bring me my meat, just as it
is.'
I had watched lions eat raw meat before, but never
Kane. At first, as he nibbled at the gobbets that Liljana cut for him, he was
so weak that he could hardly chew. He seemed, however, to gain strength with
every bite. Soon, he was tearing into red flesh with his long, white teeth,
swallowing in huge gulps and calling for more meat. Sounds of deep delight
rumbled in his throat; blood smeared his hands and mouth. His black eyes began
filling with some of their oldfire. And still he worked at the gazelle's meat,
downing an entire leg and the liver and then calling for more.
I could scarcely believe that a man could eat so much,
but then reminded myself that Kane was scarcely a man. After he had filled his
belly, he lay back to digest this feast. Then he stirred a few hours later to
begin eating again. So it went through the course of that long, hot day. By the
afternoon, he was able to stand on the stony earth beneath a blazing, white-hot
sun; in the early evening, he began pacing about our encampment as he cast his
bright eyes toward the south, east, north and west. He drew his long sword and
began his nightly practice, stabbing straight out into the hearts of imagined
enemies, slashing and slicing the gleaming steel with a renewed ferocity that
tore apart the air. And still the deep, red fire of life blazed hotter and
brighter inside him. When full night fell upon the earth and the lions roared
out in the distance, Kane turned his savage face toward the wind and roared
back at them. He thrust the point of his sword straight up toward the stars,
and raised back his head in a long, triumphant howl to the heavens that it was
good to be alive.
After that, he rejoined us for some tea. As his hand
closed around his cup, his powerful body rippled with a restlessness that drove
him to pace about, circling the fire again and again as the earth does the sun.
'So,' he growled out, 'I must thank all of you for
tending to me. I can tell you little of what happened - the truth that can be
told is not the deepest truth, eh? And I had fallen so deep. So, the
Black Jade in the Skadarak nearly sucked out our souls. My black gelstei
nearly sucked out my life. Morjin made it so. It nearly turned me into
ice. He came for me then. He sucked out my blood, and when that wasn't enough,
the very liquids of my throat and eyes. There was a blackness - only a cold
blackness, and nothing more.'
He drew out his black gelstei and stared at it a
moment before shaking his head and putting it away again.
'How is it then,' Master Juwain asked him, 'that you
are still alive?'
'Ha! - the next time I use my stone, I might not be,
eh?' Kane's lips pulled back in a terrible smile. 'From what you've said, it
seems that Maram forced Morjin to turn his attention away from my little
bauble. Then too . . .'
His voice died into a deep rumble as he looked at me.
'Then, too,' he went on, 'there is always the fire, eh? The light. It is hard
to put it out. Especially with the lights of my friends shining through me
like seven suns.'
He turned his bright smile from me as he met eyes with
each of us. He looked at Estrella for a long time. And then he said, 'Enough of
that. We've other things to speak of. Liljana - how much food do we have left?
How much water?'
With much relief, we turned our talk from Morjin and
his dark ening of our gelstei to the more practical concerns of our quest. Our
plan to cross the desert posed considerable problems of logistics. Our horses
and remounts would be able to find only so much forage in such a sere land, and
if they were to bear us on their backs, the pack horses must bear on their backs
much grain to feed them. But they could not carry all the water that we. and
our mounts, would need to reach the streams and rivers of the Crescent
Mountains. Therefore everything depended upon us finding the water holes that
had quenched Kane's thirst so long ago.
'There should be a well fifty miles from here,' Kane
said, pointing out into the dark land to the west. 'We'll find a low line of
red hills, two miles in length, and the well just to the north of them.'
'But will we be able to draw water from it?' Master
Juwain asked.
'If it hasn't gone dry,' Kane said. 'And if its owners
allow it.'
Once, he said, the clans of the Taiji tribe had held
sway throughout the southeastern lands of the Red Desert. Kane had bought
water, and other necessities of life, from them. But all the Ravirii tribes
hated outsiders, even pilgrims, and sometimes refused to trade water for gold.
If times were hard and the hot winds of war maddened them, they would even put
wayfarers to the sword, taking their lives and their gold.
At the look of concern on Maram's face as he told us
this, Kane clapped him on the arm and said, 'Don't worry - the Ravirii are
great warriors, it's true, but therefore they respect nothing so much as even
greater warriors. And who are greater than the Valari, eh? If it comes to
swords, once they see our kalamas at work, they'll leave us well alone.'
Two hours before dawn, in the coolest part of the
night, we set out to the west. It soon became clear that Maram was to have a
horrible time of it, for he could hardly ride. Because it tormented him to sit
in his hard leather saddle, he took to standing in his horse's stirrups. But
the constant, rocking abrasion against his torn thighs proved almost as bad.
When he could bear the pain no longer, he dismounted and walked beside his
horse. Among the few parts of his body that Jezi Yaga hadn't bitten, as he told
us. were the soles of his feet.
After a while, the sun came up over the mountains in
the east and touched the desert with a golden-red glow. This wasteland, as I
saw, turned out to be full of life - but spread out sparsely across huge
distances. That morning I saw snakes slithering through the knife grass, and
horny toads, and sandrunners hopping along as they looked for insects to scoop
up in their yellow bills. Other birds winged through the air: rock sparrows and
gambels and hawks. We came across a lone, black-maned lion feeding on the
carcass of an antelope. Fifty yards away, a pack of hyenas waited for the lion
to finish his feast, as vultures circled high overhead.
As it grew hot, we all donned the hats that Liljana
had made for us: rather ridiculous-looking constructions that might have been
cowls hacked off of robes. They would help protect our heads and necks from the
ceaseless sun. I sweated streams of salt water beneath my hat, cloak and my
armor. Soon it became clear that I could not go on this way. I could cast aside
my cloak, but that would leave my armor exposed to the sun's fierce rays. The
rings of steel mail would quickly heat up like the metal of a skillet and roast
me inside. Kane had warned me that I would not be able to wear my armor across
the desert, but I had not wanted to believe him.
'You must divest yourself of it,' he told me, riding
up beside me. 'As I must, too.'
'Must I?' I said, touching my finger to my burning,
jangling mail. How many times, I wondered, in how many battles had it saved me
from being pierced by arrow, spear or sword? 'I'd feel naked without it. A
little farther - let's see if we can bear it.'
We rode on deeper into a burning plain dotted with
clumps of ursage and thornbush. The wavering air heated up even more. So did I
- so did we all. The horses sweated profusely; never had I seen so much water
pour from Altaru's sleek black hide. Flies descended on us in buzzing, black
clouds. Sweat now ran inside my armor in rivers; it seemed as if I were
swimming in a hot, salty bath. Sweat worked its way down my forehead and stung
my eyes. The others suffered as badly, or worse. I could almost feel the sweat
soaking through Maram's many bandages and working salt into the red rawness of
his wounds.
'Ah, oh!' I overheard him grumble to himself. 'Maram,
my old friend, you're supposed to marvel at the One and all the One's works,
but tell me truly: if you had made the world, would you have filled it
with such horrible heat and these bloody damn flies that take pieces out of a
man? No, no, it's too much, a child could see that - too, too damn much.'
When the sun grew too fierce, in the terrible heat of
the afternoon, we broke to take shelter beneath our sun cloths and rest. I
finally removed my armor and the sodden leather underpadding, and stowed this
heavy mass of accoutrements with one of the packhorses. I donned a long tunic
that coveted me from neck to ankle. I forced myself to go water the horses
before partaking of any of vital liquid myself. It was astonishing how much a
thirsty horse could drink. In nearly all our journeys, there had always been
some river or stream for our mounts to try to empty. Now, as we held leather
buckets to their frothy lips, they did empty them, with such alarming
rapidity that we had to pull the buckets away and ration them. We were only
slightly kinder to ourselves.
When Daj handed me one of our waterskins, I drank
enough to ease some of the parch of my throat, but not enough to really
replenish me. With every fiber in my body crying out for moisture, it seemed
that there wasn't enough water in all the world to fill me.
Kane, turning east to orient himself on the white
mountains of the Yorgos range, said to us, 'We've made good distance today, and
so we should reach the first well tomorrow. There we can drink as much as we'd
like.'
'If the well isn't dry,' Maram said, licking his
puffy, much-bitten lips. He kicked at a clump of brown ursage and said,
'Everything about this land is dry and growing drier by the mile.'
'Ha - you think this is bad?' Kane called out to him.
He stood squinting up at the sun as if challenging this bright white orb to
take the water from him. 'In the deep desert, there is no water. Nothing grows,
and so nothing lives. The winds drive the sand into mountains. The Tar Harath,
they call that place.'
He looked toward the northwest, and a strange burning
filled his
eyes.
'If there is no water there,' Maram asked him, 'then
how will we
cross it?'
'We won't,' Kane said, pointing almost due west. 'Our
course lies well to the south of the Tar Harath. There'll be water enough, if
we don't waste what we have and keep ourselves strong enough to reach it.'
Stregth, however, Maram now lacked, for Jezi Yaga had
bled much of it out of him. In the late afternoon, with the heat abating
slightly, he dozed if his saddle and several times nearly fell off. Dusk found
us still plodding along, for we had to take advantage of the first evening
hours to gain as many miles as we could, in the cool twilight Maram fought to
keep his eyes open and his_ hands fastened around the reins of his horse. At
last I took pity on him and gave him the bag of barbark nuts that I had
removed from the pocket of the cloak draped around Berkuar's petrified body. I
hated to see Ma ram put tongue to any intoxicant, but if the barbark
juice would help him to remain awake and ease his I pain, so much the
better.
We finally encamped on a little swell of ground
affording a fine view in all directions. Maram struck up a tittle fire, and Liljana
brought out her gleaming cookware, made of galte that the Ymanir had
forged for her out of the ores of the White Mountains. None of us had much
stomach for the hotcakes and roasted gazelle that she prepared for dinner. But
she, like Kane, insisted that we must keep up our strength. I tried to eat with
a grateful smile, but found myself longing for pears, plums and other
succulent foods instead.
Kane, having 'slept' more than long enough beneath the
evil enchantment of his black gelstei. flood watch through most of the night.
Maram thought it strange that we had seen no sign of
man since setting foot in the desert. But as Kane told him: 'I once wandered
here for forty days, and my only companions were the lizards and snakes.'
'Wandered?' Maram moaned. 'I don't like the sound of
that!'
'Don't worry,' Kane said. 'Our course is set and is nearly straight. Now get
yourself a little sleep, and heal those ugly wounds of yours.'
Our journey the next morning was much the same as that
of the previous day, save that it seemed even hotter. Maram sweated the scabs
off his wounds, and Master Juwain had to cast away his bloody bandages and make
new dressings. I grew very alarmed at the rapid and inexorable
disappearance of our water. As I calculated things, we would arrive at the
first well with our waterskins less than half full. If the well proved dry, our
situation would fall grim.
'If the well proves full,' Maram said to Kane,
'it's likely to be in use, isn't it? By the Taiji. as you call these people?
They'll see us coming from miles away. I only hope they greet us with alias
instead of arrows,'
Maram, I knew, felt even more vulnerable than I at
losing his armor.
Kane waved off his
concern, saying. 'The Ravirii tribes know nothing of arrow, as they haven't any
wood to make them. Their weapons are the lance and sword, And they don't wear
armor, either.'
His words encouraged Maram, a little, and for a while
it seemed he sat up straighter on his horse. When Kane finally descried the
hills that he had told of rising red along the horizon, Maram let his hand rest
upon the hilt of his sword. He licked his lips and swallowed against the dust,
then said, 'If there is water there, I'd fight a very dragon to claim
it.'
Late that afternoon we drew closer to the last, low
hump of a hill. I looked hard to make out anything that seemed like a well, but
the perpetual shimmer of the desert distances stymied me. The horses' hooves
kicked up a cloud of dust that billowed into the air like a great, waving
banner. We all waited for Taijii warriors to ride out to greet us - with either
salutations or swords.
But no one did. Maram, who could blow as fickle as the
wind, chose to take this as a bad sign, saying that surely this proved the well
must be dry. We rode closer to the place toward which Kane had pointed us. At
last I saw the well: a circular wall of stones built as if erupting from the very
ground. All around it was nothing except ursage and bitterbroom, spike grass
and thornbush and the red rocks of the desert.
I fought the urge to press my heels into Altaru's
sides and gallop straight up to the well. We continued our slow ride in good formation.
I saw signs of old encampments everywhere: the blackened rocks of firepits and
rubbish heaps full of bits of broken horn, charred wool and cracked,
sun-bleached bones. When we had drawn within a dozen yards of the well, I
noticed Altaru's nostrils quivering as if he had caught scent of water; he
nickered happily and dug his hoof into the earth. I knew then that the well was
full. Maram, though, couldn't quite believe our good fortune, and so I told him
to go see for himself.
He fairly flew off his horse and ran up to the well.
After bracing his hands on its rim, he stuck his head down into it and called
out a great, echoing shout of relief. Then he jumped back, grabbed up the
leather bucket attached to a long rope tied around the well, and heaved the
bucket down in. There came a muffled splash.
Maram cried out again. .
'Oh, joy!' he called out. 'Oh, mercy and sweet succor!
There is hope
for us yet!'
In the hours after that, we pulled up many bucketfuls
of sweet, cool water. We all drank to our deepest content. We let the horses
quench themselves, too. We washed the dust from our faces and sticky old sweat
from our bodies. All our waterskins we filled. Liljana was keen to set out her
pots so that she might wash our soiled and stinking clothing, but we finally
decided against this. It wouldn't do to waste the well's water, even if it did
seem inexhaustible.
We slept contentedly that night if not very long.
Again, we roused ourselves well before dawn and made our preparations for the
next leg of our journey. After leaving some coins by the well to pay for the
water that we had taken, we set out into the cool desert. The stars, twinkling
brightly, pointed out way. We all dreaded the rising of the sun. That day was
very much like the ones that had preceded it: dear, hot, dusty and dry. As
Maram had said, with every mile that we rode toward the west, the desert grew
even drier. Here the hardy grasses yielded to ursage and thornbush, and the
herds of antelope and gazelle vanished, to be replaced by a few scrawny
ostrakats and wild asses who ran away at our approach. The flies, however,
still filled the air in abundance. They buzzed most fiercely around Maram and
swarmed around his bandages, drawn by the smell of blood.
For two days we rode straight across the cracked red
earth toward the second well. We sucked down the water from our leather
containers, and the burning air sucked the water from us. I looked to the sky
for any sign of rain, but the immense blue dome above us showed only a few
wispy white clouds, drifting toward the north. Kane told us that in the Red
Desert, it never rained in the month of Soldru, nor in Marud or Soal.
We found the second well with mounds of sand blown
against its stone walls. As we all feared, it proved dry.
'It's been many years since I came this way,' Kane
said, 'so it shouldn't be a surprise that one of these wells has failed
us.'
'No,' Maram said, rubbing at one of his bloody
bandages, 'I'm not surprised either. Why should anyone be surprised by his
fate?'
'Take heart,' I said to him. 'The next well will be
full.'
'Full of sand, most likely,' Maram muttered. 'And what
then?'
'It won't be full of sand,' I said to him.
'Believing it will be will only make our journey harder and thirstier.'
Maram sighed as he wiped the sweat from his eyes and
stared out into the hot, ruddled plain to the west. He said to Kane, 'How far
then, to the next well?'
'Eighty miles,' Kane said, looking that way, too.
'Perhaps ninety.'
'Ninety miles!' Maram groaned. 'Will our water take us
that far?'
Liljana licked her
dusty lips and said, 'If were careful. And careful we'll be as long as I'm in
charge of the water.'
With a heaviness pulling at us, we resumed our
journey. We rode long into the night before we encamped by a great
outcrop-ping of stark, red rocks. Our dinner that night was meager- battle
bread and dried apples and a few handfuls of old nuts. Liljana told us that the
body requires much water to digest its food. The Ravirii it is said, eat nf
meat when they are unsure of their water, and when it falls very low, they do
not eat at all.
For the next three days, we pushed on into the deeps
of the desert. The Soldru sun grew ever brighter as tip angle of its searing
rays steepened toward the height of summer. The air grew hotter and even drier.
We did not make good distance, for the children had a hard time of things, and
Maram weakened by the mile. Master Juwain kept changing Maram's bandages, and
came to fear that he would soon run out of cloth to bind his wounds. He
confided to me that they were not healing as they should. Maram needed rest,
shelter and fresh food, all of which, in this terrible journey that seemed to go
on and on forever, were denied him.
'I'm concerned about Maram,' Master Juwain said to me
one night beneath a white, crescent moon. 'And not just about his wounds.'
'Don't worry, sir,' I told him. 'He's much tougher,
than even he knows. In the end, he'll come thrown.'
For part of those three days, we plodded across a
wide, gravel-covered pan. The stony ground bruised the horses' hooves and
jarred our spines. Nothing grew there, not even ursage or bitter-broom. We saw
only a few beetles scurrying along; even the lizards seemed to have fled this
terrible terrain. No sign of the Taijii or any other Ravirii tribe could we
find anywhere in the empty miles around us.
Late on the third day, one of our remounts and two of
our pack-horses collapsed and died. It seemed that we had made their burdens
too great while giving them too little water. We all feared that soon we would
share their fate.
And then on the fourth day out from the dry well, the
desert broke up into a series of long rocky ridges running north and south. It
was all torment and treachery to work our way over these fractured, knifelike
formations. At the top of one of them, late in the day, I caught wind of a
faint sensation that I dreaded almost more than any other. And as we crested
the next ridge, farther to the west, Kane came up to take me aside. He pointed
out into the wavering distances and told me that he thought he had described a
flash of a white cloak and the bound of a white horse. I sat up straight as I
held my hand to my forehead; if a rider was moving along the western horizon,
the dust and glare hid him from my sight.
'So, I think we are alone no longer,' Kane said to me.
'That might have been one of the Taiji.'
'Or someone else,' I said, pressing my fist into my
belly.
Kane turned his attention from the burning horizon to
me. He looked at me deeply and said, 'Morjin?'
'Or his droghul, at least.'
'Are you sure?'
I closed my eyes as I let the currents of hot air sift
over me. My blood seared my flesh like molten lead. Then I looked at Kane and
said, 'No, I'm not sure. Since the Skadarak, Morjin seems to be everywhere -
and inside me most of all.'
'In the desert,' Kane said, 'it's easy to mistake a
mirage for a mountain. Perhaps you're only suffering a mirage of the soul.'
'Perhaps,' I said to him.
'Well,' he told me, looking out into the west again,
'if it is the droghul, fate will find him soon enough. But let us keep
our swords ready tonight.'
Kane and I said nothing of our discovery to the
others, for we had no choice but to continue toward the next well. Our
water-skins were nearly empty. It didn't matter if the droghul - and all the
armies of the Red Dragon - stood between us and it.
We camped that evening within sight of a stark, lone
mountain rising up out of the lands to the south of us. I had little appetite
for the food that Liljana set before me; it hurt to swallow the water that she
rationed into my cup. A sickness began eating into my belly. Late in the night,
as I stood guard with Kane, looking out at the moonlit land to the west, I
opened myself to feel for the droghul's presence; the exercise of this strange
sense of mine was something like sniffing the air for the taint of rotting
flesh or listening for a hideous scream along the wind. All of a sudden, a wave
of agony swept over me. I cried out as I grabbed at myself below my heart and
fell writhing down upon the ground. The others woke then and gathered around
me. Liljana feared that I might have been stung by a scorpion or perhaps the
even more deadly black-ringed spider. Maram, though, took one look at my face
and said, 'Ah, surely this is some magic of Morjin's. Surely it is the working
of the Black Jade.'
It was Master Juwain who apprehended the real cause of
my torment - and my great peril. He moved quickly to draw my sword and place it
in my hands. He knelt by my side as he told me: 'Shield yourself, Val. Now,
before it is too late!'
I tried to grip the seven diamonds set into my sword's
hilt; the shimmer of my sword's silustria in the starlight seemed to envelop me
like a silvery armor. I fought to breath. With the valarda I had reached out
blindly, as of an open hand into a hornet's nest-now I withdrew this hand of my
soul and made it into a tight fist that I pressed over my heart.
'Val.' Atara knelt above me and pressed her cool lips
against my forehead, whispering my name.
Her deep regard for me, along with the radiance of my
sword, proved a magic of its own. After a few moments, I was able to open my
eyes and look at her. With Kane's and Maram's help, I sat up. 'Thank you, sir,'
I said to Master Juwain. Then, 'Thank you all. I... almost died.'
'Died?' Maram said to me. 'But you haven't slain
anyone, not for many miles! Died of what?'
'Died of death,' I said to him. I pointed out into the
desert. 'Somewhere, near here, there is so much death.'
That was all I was willing to say then. After that I
tried to sleep but could not. I failed even to meditate, as Master Juwain
prescribed for me. I dreamed terrible waking dreams. Two hours before dawn,
when it came time to rise and break camp, I could barely force myself to climb
on top of Altaru. With my friends on their horses behind me, I rode toward the
still-shadowed lands to the west as if moving into a black cloud.
Dawn brought a glowing beauty to the harsh, sculpted
terrain of the desert at odds with the ugliness that I knew lay ahead of us.
The sun rose higher and flared ever hotter and more terrible. As we approached
the third well, I nearly retched to espy a dark cloud hovering low. in the sky
a couple miles ahead of us. It was not a rain cloud. We drew closer, and the
cloud broke up into hundreds of vultures circling above an outcropping of red
rocks. Atara, I thought, was lucky that she could not see them.
Soon many tents came into view. Perhaps forty or fifty
people lay on the rocky ground between the tents and the single, central well.
They did not move. We shouted out to scare off a few hyenas who had already
gone to work on them, then rode up ever closer. I feared we would find slashed
throats and pierced bellies, but I could see no mark on any of the bodies, a
few of which were stripped naked. They were, I thought, a tough-looking people.
The men, though slight of stature, seemed hard as whipcord, with curly black
hair and beards, dark skins and chiselled features as stark as the desert rocks
around them. The folds and fissures of one old woman's face could only have
been burnt by a lifetime of wind and sun. I tried to look away from the rictus
of agony stamped into the countenances of a young boy and girl who lay near her.
Kane dismounted and found more of the dead inside the tents. By the time he had
gone about the encampment, making a count of them, I was ready to retch up the
little water that I had drunk an hour before - either that or to kill whoever
had killed these poor people.
'Sixty-four,' Kane said, walking up to where I sat
stunned on my horse. His eyes picked apart the jumble of rocks farther away
from the well. 'We might find more of them out there.'
So many dead, I thought, as I stared through the
burning air. I wondered what their names were. I wondered how it was possible
to slay so many innocents so wantonly just to strike vengeance into the enemy.
'Oh, Lord!' Maram said. 'Oh, my I too bad, too bad!'
The rest of us dismounted. Master Juwain examined a
young man whose body and limbs were covered in a dusty white robe. He said, 'He
is nearly twelve hours dead.'
'Dead of what then?' Maram asked him.
Maram, I saw from the dread that worked at his face,
knew well the answer to this question. So did we all.
'Poison,' Master Juwain said. 'I'm not sure which
one.'
Liljana joined him kneeling beside the man's body.
After shooing away the flies, she sniffed at his open mouth and ran her finger
over the whites of his eyes. She said to us; 'I believe it is zax. It is a slow
poison but a certain one.'
'Who did this?' Maram suddenly raged, kicking at the
ground. 'Who would poison all these people to get at us?'
It was a question that answered itself. It came time
to tell of the rider that Kane had seen the day before, and this I did. When I
had finished, Maram drew his sword.
'It is the droghul,' he said. 'It is surely the
second droghul.'
He offered his opinion that the droghul must have
ridden into the encampment last evening and either charmed these simple
desert-dwellers or enchanted them with one of his illusions. And then somehow
managed to pour his evil poison into the well.
Liljana confirmed that the well was indeed poisoned,
walking over to lean down into it and sniff its water far down in the dark
earth below. Atara stood looking at nothing; I wondered if she had seen this
terrible moment in one of her visions. Kane went about collecting waterskins,
from the tents and the many horses that stood about not knowing what to do. He
pried them from the very hands of the dead. All the skins were empty. It seemed
that the droghul must have poured their water into the sand.
'So,' he said, gripping his fists around one of the
skins. 'I'd hoped we'd find at least a few of them full of untainted water.'
Maram brought his sword up to his face and stared into
its mirror-like steel. I heard him murmur: 'Ah, you're thirsty, aren't you, my
friend? Very thirsty, and that's a very bad way to die, isn't it - the
very worst?'
I asked Liljana how long our remaining water might
last if we were very careful, and she slowly shook her head. Her voice
trembled and nearly cracked as she looked at the children and forced out:
'Another day, perhaps.'
'And the next well?' I asked Kane.
'So. So,' he said, gazing into the burning land to the
west. 'It is another seventy miles.'
'Seventy miles!' I wanted to cry out. We could not
make such a distance in a single day, not with our horses worn to the bone and
Maram nearly ready to drop from loss of blood. I could not let into my mind the
meaning of Kane's words; the horror of what had happened poisoned my soul and
nearly paralyzed me. Death was suddenly upon us. A short while before we had
been looking forward to drinking our fill of cool, sweet water, and now we
found ourselves sentenced to die. So it always was. Death always hovered behind
one's neck like a great, black vulture, watching for its chance and waiting.
I knew better than to entertain such thoughts, or even
to think them. Some of my despair overflowed into Maram, who said, 'That
droghul did his work well. Now it's time to do our work as well.'
He began to contemplate the point of his sword in a
way that struck
fear into my heart.
'No, Maram,' I
said, stepping over to grip my hand around his arm. 'We're in a bad way, it's
true, but we can't give up hope.'
'Hope?' he cried
out. 'What hope is left even to give up?'
I rubbed my eyes, which seemed as dry as my brain and
every other part of my body. I tried to think; it was like trying to see my way
out of a cloud of dust. I tried to think as Morjm would think. Finally, I drew
my sword and swept it in a circle toward the desert around us. 'The droghul has
journeyed on, and so he must have water. It may be that we can find his tracks
and ride after him.'
'To appropriate his water?' Maram said. 'Even if we
could overtake him, it wouldn't be enough.'
'It might be enough,' I said.
'If we did overtake him,' he said, 'he would
poison his water before letting us have it.'
'He would,' I agreed, 'if he hadn't already poured all
his poison into the well.'
'Then he would empty his water onto the sand. Do you
think Morjin would care if his damned droghul dies of thirst?'
I shook my head and told him, 'It may be that we could
take him before he does this.'
'Take him how?'
'Even a droghul,' I said, 'must rest sometime. We
might be able to take him while he sleeps.'
'Do you really think that's possible?'
'It might be possible,' I said. 'The droghul
must have been sent to meet us here. And so he might know of water that we do
not.'
'Do you think he would just tell you where this
water is, then?'
I looked over at Estrella, staring down at a
fly-covered boy about her age. Her dusty face, I saw, almost concealed the
anguish and suffering that she did not want me to see. I said to Maram, 'There
must be a way - there's always a way. We can't just lie down and die.'
'No - can we not?' Maram looked around the well at all
the bodies splayed there. He dropped his sword with a loud clang. With a great,
heavy sigh, he sat down on a long slab of sandstone, and then collapsed back against
it. 'Ah, my friend, this is surely the end, and since I'm in such fine company,
I think I will just lie here and die.'
I could find no words to rouse him. It would take a
horse, I thought, and a rope tied around his ankles to drag him from that spot.
Just as I was contemplating such desperate actions, I overheard Liljana
scolding Daj. It seemed that while the rest of us had concerned ourselves with
other matters, Daj had gone about the dead stripping them of jewelry, which he
had piled up on top of a sheepskin. Most of this was of gold, but a few silver
bracelets and rings, set with bright, blue stones that I hadn't seen before,
flashed in this mound of yellow.
'What are you
doing?' she shrilled at him. 'Are we thieves that we rob the dead?'
Daj finished pulling a necklace off an old woman, and
said to Liljana, 'But they won't need it where they're going! And we might need
it to buy water or food, in case our coins run out!'
Liljana's round face flushed a hot red. I saw that she
was ready to shame him for such an ignoble act, but I felt her check her
natural inclinations. As she looked at me knowingly, her eyes softened with
forgiveness. I could almost hear her thinking that Daj had learned to do almost
anything to survive in the black pits of Argattha, and he would apply those
lessons in the desert, and everywhere else we went. This little rat-boy would
be the last of us to give up and die.
Liljana bent down and kissed Daj's head. Then she
began to explain why we must not take the jewelry. At that moment, though, Kane
let out a great shout. He pointed to the mound of rocks to the south of us as
he cried out, 'Val! Maram! Arm yourselves! We are attacked!'
I looked toward the rocks expecting to see the droghul
- and perhaps a company of the Dragon Guard - charging at us. But two horseman
only came flying from around the edge of a great red standing stone. Both wore
long, dust-stained robes. The one in the lead howled out a curse or a
challenge, or perhaps both. His bearded face was as sharp as a flint and hard
with hate; he pointed his saber at Master Juwain. The man behind him, I saw,
could hardly be counted a man, for his smooth face showed a boy only a couple
years older than Daj. He, too, bore a saber, which he held back behind his head
as he whipped his horse straight toward Kane.
I was slow to move, not because of hunger or thirst or
weakness of limb, but only because I had seen enough of death for that day -
and for the rest of my life. I dreaded what now must befall. It seemed, though,
that I had no choice: when death came screaming out of the desert like a
whirlwind, who could think to stop it?
And so, with the sun beating down at me like a war hammer and the first horseman pounding closer, I went forward to do battle yet again.
Chapter 20 Back Table of Content Next
I waited on broken ground as my adversary pounded nearer. His face -
dark and fine-boned - contorted with wrath. He must have thought that he would
easily cut me down and make vultures' meat of me. But my father had drilled me,
and all my brothers, in standing with sword at ready to meet the charge of
armored knights. This man, though, was no Valari knight. His sword was shorter
than mine, and only thin cloth covered his limbs. He fairly oozed
overconfidence and a rage to kill. From the cast of his body and the angle of
his saber, I saw his error in strategy; I sensed how he anticipated that at the
last moment I would cringe in fear of being trampled, allowing him to slash his
sword into me. I knew that I could fend off this cut and strike a death blow of
my own. And then, as he whipped his horse forward and his dark, anguished eyes
met mine, I knew that I could not. 'Well-poisoner!' he screamed at me.
'Well-poisoner!' My father had also taught me a strategy, little used because
it was dangerous. I used it now. I stood fast, as if frozen with fear, as my
adversary's horse practically drove its hooves into me and snorted into my face.
At the last moment, rather than trying to avoid
the sword slash by pulling backward, and to my left, I leaped to my
right, past the front of the horse and toward its other side. As the sweating
beast pushed by me, I reached up with my hand to grasp my startled adversary's
arm, held almost straight out to counterbalance the sword gripped in his other
hand. I jerked on his arm, hard, and pulled
him flying off his horse. He hit the ground with a loud crunch that I
feared broke his back. He lay stunned, coughing blood and gasping for breath. I
stood with my boot stamped down on his sword
arm as I brought the point of Alkaladur within an inch of his throat. 'What are you waiting for?' he managed to cry out. His eyes
were dark pools of hate. 'Kill me! Better to die by the sword than by poison!'
I pressed down with my boot against his wrist until
his fingers relaxed their grip upon his saber. I looked down at him and said,
'We are not poisoners!'
But the man wasn't listening to me. He spat out a
mouthful of blood as he called out, 'Turi, my son! Kill the white-hair if you
can, or die on his blade! Don't let the poisoners capture you!'
Just then Maram finally came up to help me. The man I
had unhorsed tried to drive his neck up into my blade even as Maram kicked him
back to the ground and then fell on top of him, pinning him against the rocks.
I turned to see his son whip his horse toward Kane, standing thirty yards away.
It seemed that he had already made one pass at Kane and was about to make
another.
'Don't kill him!' I shouted at Kane.
I was nearly certain that he would kill him,
even if his opponent was only a boy, for I had never seen Kane suffer an enemy
a chance to wound him or cut him down. But Kane surprised me. This time, the
boy did not charge past him, but reined in his horse as he swept his sword at
Kane's head. With a ringing of steel, Kane easily parried this stroke, and then
another, and yet another. He stood in the hot sun fending off the boy's saber
with his sword as iF giving him a fencing lesson.
'Call off the boy!' I said to the man beneath Maram.
Struggle though he might, he could hardly move, for Maram must have outweighed
him by ten stone. 'Call him off before he gets hurt! We are not well-poisoners,
but we know the one who is!'
Seeing that our attackers were only two, the others
came over to help Maram and me. Atara stood holding Estrella's hand. My fallen
adversary looked at her and marveled: 'You bring the blind with you! And
children, too!'
His hate softened to suspicion and then puzzlement.
From beneath Maram, he gasped out, 'Who are you then, and who is the
well-poisoner?'
'We'll tell you. happily,' I said to him. 'But first
call off your son.'
Me turned his head to shout out: 'Turi, enough! But
keep ready to fight again!'
Turi, I thought, had already had more than enough
combat for one day. He seemed so tired that he could hardly raise his sword
against the tireless Kane.
I said to Maram, 'you're crushing this man - let him
up!'
I still worried that the fall had broken something
inside my adversary, but this tough desert man had little trouble sitting up.
He sucked at his bitten tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood before saying
to me: 'My name is Yago of the Soah clan of the Masud. My son is Turi. And who
are you?'
While Kane stood eyeing Turi, and Turi him, the rest
of my companions gathered around Yago. I presented myself as Mirustral and Kane
as a knight called Rowan, and everyone else according to the names that we had
chosen to use on our journey, I told Yago that we were pilgrims who sought the
Well of Restoration.
'Pilgrims, you say?' He looked at me as his black
eyebrows pulled together in doubt. He pointed his sharp chin toward the jewelry
that Daj had collected and said, 'Pilgrims pay gold to pass through our lands,
they do not collect it. In truth, they no longer pass this way at all.'
'We were afraid,' I said, looking at the bangles and
bracelets mounded on the sheepskin, 'that the hyenas would take your kinsmen
into the desert and their possessions with them. We collected their things that
such a treasure might not be lost.'
I told myself that this was true in spirit; at least I
hoped that Daj would want it to be true.
'Treasure it is,' Yago said, regarding the pile of
jewelry. 'Where did you think to take it?'
'Nowhere,' I said. 'We've burdens enough to bear, and
little water to keep us and our horses bearing them.'
Liljana showed him our waterskins, which were nearly
empty, and reiterated that we sought the Well of Restoration, not jewels and
gold.
Yago pulled at his beard as he regarded the bodies
around us. He said to me, 'Well-poisoners you cannot be, to leave yourselves so
little water. But if pilgrims you really are, you've found instead the Well of
Death.'
We told him a little of our journey then, and
he told me of his. It seemed that the lone mountain to the south of us was
sacred to the desert tribes, who called it Raman, the Pillar of the Sky. Yago
and his son had made a pilgrimage to it in order to seek visions.
'My son and I,' he told us, 'journeyed from the
hadrahs in the southeast to stand beneath the great mountain. And then we rode
on here to find the Ayo poisoned.'
He explained that the dead around us were of the Ayo
clan, whose people often camped at the well at the beginning of summer. Kane
nodded his head at this as he stared at the mountain to the south. 'You say
that you are of the Masud tribe? What happened to the Taiji, then, who once
claimed this well?'
Yago's eyes grew bright with astonishment. 'You know
of the Taiji? It has been long, past my grandfather's great-grandfather's time,
since they dwelled here. But the Taiji are no more.'
His face burned with pride as he continued: 'Long ago,
we of the Masud came up from the southern hadrahs, while the Zuri came out of
the pans to the west. Each tribe took half of the Taiji's lands, leaving the
Taiji with only sand to eat and air to drink.'
He spoke of the annihilation of the Taiji as one might
the slaughtering and division of a chicken. He spared little more sentiment
for the sheep baahing in the scrub outside the encampment, or indeed, for the
poisoned people of the Ayo clan whose bodies were rotting in the sun.
'The dead are dead,' he told us. He licked his dry
lips. 'Soon, we too will have only air to drink, and we will join them.'
'But you must know of other wells?' Maram said to him.
He wiped dusty beads of sweat from his face.
'Yes, I know,' Yago said calmly as he pointed across
the blazing sands to the west. 'The nearest well lies that way, seventy-five
miles. It belongs to the Zuri. Do you think to claim it from them?'
'We left gold coins at the first well that we came
to,' Maram said, pointing to the east. 'That is good,' Yago said. 'And the Zuri
will take your coins -your horses, weapons and clothing, too. They do not abide pilgrims.'
'But there must be other wells!' Maram said. 'You must
know where we can find
water!'
Yago smiled grimly at this and said, 'We'll find all
the water we wish in the Hadrahs of Heaven, when we rest with the dead.'
'But what about the hadrahs in the southeast that you
told of? Where there are trees and enough water to grow wheat and barley?'
'They are two hundred miles distant,' Yago said. 'This
time of year, there is no water along the way. We cannot return there.'
'But we can't just lie down and die!' Maram said.
I couldn't help smiling as Yago turned to look at his
saber, which Maram now gripped in his hands. Yago said to him, 'No, I won't die
here. If you'll give me back my sword, I'll ride after the well-poisoner and
kill him before the sun kills me.'
'But what about your son?' f said looking at Turi, who
still sat watching us from the back of his horse.
Yago shrugged his shoulders. 'The dead are the dead.
He'll ride with me. No Ravirii of any tribe can suffer a
well-poisoner to live.'
I looked at Maram and said, 'Give Yago his sword.'
Maram did as I asked, and Yago's fingers closed
gratefully around the hilt of his saber. I said to him: 'We'll ride with you,
too. It might be that we can persuade the Poisoner to tell us where there is
water.'
Yago's
fatalistic smile played upon his lips again. He pointed to the west and said,
'Nowhere, in all the Zuri's lands, will we be allowed to drink their water.
Toward dead south, if we rode that way, we would find the Vuai, who are worse
than the Zuri. And to the north lies the Tar Harath, where there is no
water.'
I turned to the east, scanning the broken country over
which we had ridden. I knew that we couldn't make the return journey to the
first well with the little water that remained to us, Then I looked to my left,
at the highlands some twenty miles to the northeast. These mountains were
stark and reddish-brown, showing no hint of snow or ice-cap. But mountains, as
I knew, often called down the rain of passing clouds. And so I said to Yago,
'What of that way?'
And Yago told me, 'I don't know - that is the country
of the Avari, and no one ever goes there. It is said that the Avari kill any
man of any tribe who trespasses, and drink his blood.'
'Then it seems,' I said to Yago, 'that we have no
choice but to pursue the Poisoner.'
'The dead are the dead,' he intoned, looking out into
the wasteland to the west.
'And the living are the living,' I said to him. 'And
as long as we're still alive, there is still hope.'
Yago shook his head as if marveling at the foolishness
of outlanders and pilgrims. Then we went to work, stripping the dead of their
jewelry, which Yago insisted we wrap in sheepskins and bury at the base of the
red standing stone. The poisoned Ayo we could not bury, for there were too many
of them and the ground was too hard to dig out graves.
'We'll leave them for the hyenas,' Yago said. 'Others
of the Ayo clan might find their bones.'
'And their jewelry?'
'They might find that, too. But if they fail, better
that the Zuri, if they
come here, don't find it.'
After that we had a hard labor of gathering up
boulders to heave down into the well and render it useless. Thus did we protect
any who would come here after us, even the Zuri. As Yago said, not even the
Zuri deserved to die by poison.
Just before leaving the well, Yago checked our horses'
loads and announced. 'They carry too many things.'
'Only the necessities,' Liljana told him.
'In the desert,' Yago said, 'pots and pans are not
needed. You might as well bring with you lumps of lead. You must leave them
here, or kill even more horses.'
I felt Liljana's keen disappointment at facing once
again the prospect of jettisoning her precious cookware. I said to Yago, 'In
the miles to come, we might have need of her pots. Is there no other way?'
'No, there is not.' Then he opened the pack where I
had stowed my armor, and he grasped the mail and shook it so that its links
rattled. 'All this metal! You and Rowan must leave your armor here, too.'
Kane scowled at this dictate, and I shook my head. I
said to Yago, 'In the country beyond the desert, we might have to fight
battles. We will need our armor.'
'If you bring it with you,' he told me, 'you might not
reach whatever country you hope to find. If you would survive in the desert,
you must follow the desert's ways.'
I considered this for a long few moments, and so did
Kane. Finally, we consented to Yago's harsh logic, and we left our armor with
most of Liljana's pots, buried behind some rocks. I thought it a miracle that
he allowed her to keep a single, small kettle, for boiling water for tea and
coffee.
In the heat of the afternoon, we set out after the
droghul. It seemed mad to let the sun simply roast all the juices out of us,
but we had already spent too much time by the well. The droghul, by now, would
be miles away. And every hour that we waited would only sweat more water out of
us.
Yago found the droghul's tracks outside the
encampment; I thought it a fine work of tracking to make out the faint hoof
marks in the hard, gritty ground. We followed them, riding as quickly as we
dared. Turi, after exchanging a few brusque words with Daj and Maram, kept his desert
pony close to his father. And his father kept close to me.
'Tell me,' he said as our horses worked against the
sun-baked turf,
'of the well-poisoner.'
And so I did. I began with an account of the Red
Dragon's recent conquests, news that had reached even the isolated tribes of
the Red Desert. I said that Morjin wished to bring down his iron fist upon all
lands, and toward that end had sent his Red Priests into every kingdom of Ea.
He had other agents, too. I tried to tell some-thing of the droghul, without
detailing the droghul's hellish gesta-tion or how Morjin moved his mind. I
settled on explaining that Morjin had chosen several men who looked like him to
send out and act in his stead. It was close enough to the truth.
Yago thought about this as he pulled at his beard. We
rode on in near-silence toward the west. The air grew brutally hot, and then
hotter. For the next few miles, the country flattened out a little, and the
hardpack gave way to scattered sweeps of sand. A few red rocks and clumps of hardy
ursage poked out of it. Lizards took shelter there from the blistering sun; so
did the flies. These buzzing black beasts must have caught Maram's bloody
scent, for they swarmed around him, and worked at his wounds where his bandages
had come loose. I could almost feel them biting their hard mouthparts into his
already-raw flesh. Maram's lips pulled back in torment, but he uttered no
complaint. It made me proud to see him riding on so bravely. Yago took note of
his determination, too.
'You pilgrims are tough,' he said to me as his eyes
found mine. 'Almost as tough as we Ravirii. I find it strange, though, that the
Red Dragon would set a poisoner upon a band of pilgrims.'
I tried to respond to his blazing curiosity as coolly
as I could. I told him that Master 'Javas' was of the Brotherhoods, whose
quarrel with Morjin was ancient. 'And Kane,' I told him, 'once took up the
sword against the Dragon, and so is hunted.'
'And you, Mirustral?' Yago said to me. He caught me
with a long, searching look.
'I have quarrel with the Dragon, too,' I told him. 'I
had hoped that we would find no evil of his in the desert. It's said that the
Ravirii will not abide him or his people.'
'Is that truly said?' Yago asked me. 'I had thought
that few even knew of the Ravirii.'
'Few do. But it's told that the Dragon fears to send
his armies into
the desert.'
Yago let loose a long, dry sigh. 'That may change. He
certainly does not fear sending his agents here, nor his bloody priests.'
At this news, Kane's ears pricked up, and he called
out from behind us: 'The Kallimun, here? Then the Red Priests dare to go about
openly?'
'They don't
dare to ride through the Masud's lands,' Yago said to him, turning in his
saddle. 'Rohaj, our chief, expelled the embassy sent to us and told them not to
return on pain of death. But it's said that there are priests among the Idi and
Sudi in the far north, and perhaps among the Yieshi, as well.'
He told us that the Yieshi tribe dwelled to the
northwest of the Zuri, between the Tar Harath and the Crescent Mountains.
'And the Zuri?' I asked him. 'The Vuai?'
'It's said that the priests have their stingers buried
deep into Tatuk, who is chief of the Zuri, and into Suhu and many of the Vuai,'
Yago turned back and stared at the barren country to the southwest, which the
Vuai claimed. 'The priests are like scorpions - in the desert, there are many
poisons, yes?'
For another mile or so we followed the droghul's
tracks, pressed so deeply into the sand that they seemed to point like wagon
ruts straight into the west. Then Yago nodded toward a dome-shaped mound of
sandstone to our left and announced, 'That is the Ar Nurum. It marks the end of
the Masud's country and the beginning of the Zuri's.'
'It would seem,' Master Juwain observed, 'that the
droghul has no fear of riding into it.'
'He would fear well enough,' Yago said, 'if Tatuk
learns of what he has done. Red Priests or no, I cannot believe that even the
Zuri would abide a well-poisoner.'
Upon these words, something inside me tightened. I
felt my heart beating hard, pushing heated blood up into my head; my ears
started ringing as with the sound of distant bells.
'Hold!' I called out raising up my hand. I brought
Altaru to a halt, and turned to see Atara and Iiljana and the rest of my
companions draw up their horses behind me. Yago sat on his smaller pony casting
me a puzzled look. And I said to him, and to everyone: 'We cannot go on.'
Yago looked at me as if to ascertain if the sun had
deranged my senses. 'But if we're to avenge the Ayo, we've no other choice than
to go after the Poisoner!'
'You'll have your chance for vengeance soon enough,' I
said to him. 'The droghul will come after us.'
I drew my sword and watched the play of sunlight on
its blade.
'But why, Mirustral?' Yago said to me. 'We have five
swords, and the droghul, as you call him, has only one.'
'No,' I told him, gazing into my sword's silustria.
'He will have all the swords of the Zuri, and those of the Red Priests, too.'
'No, they would never give him such aid. They would
not dare ride in force into the Masud's lands! Then Rohaj would call for war,
and the Zuri have lost the last three that we have fought.'
I tightened my fist around Alkaladur's hilt. I shook
my head and said to Yago: 'The droghul will tell Tatuk and the Zuri that we are
the well-poisoners. The Red Priests will encourage them to believe this. And
the droghul will lead the Zuri back along his track to trap us. In such
circumstances, would your chief still call for war?'
It was the law of the Ravirii, as Yago said, that a
man must punish a well-poisoner even if his vengeance carried him into the
lands of another tribe. And then Yago shouted: 'But it is the droghul who is
the poisoner, not you!'
'How will we prove this once the Zuri have put us to
the sword?'
'We Ravirii do not put well-poisoners to the sword,'
he said. 'But never mind that. How do you know what you have said is true?'
'I... know,' I said, touching my sword to the scar cut
into my forehead. 'It is what the droghul planned all along. I should have seen
it.'
Yago looked along the line of tracks leading toward
the falling sun. 'This droghul must be punished. Even if I die in punishing
him.'
'Is it the droghul's death you wish or your own?'
'The law is the law,' he told me.
I pointed into the open spaces to the west and said.
'The droghul will lead the Zuri upon us. If we're caught out there,
we'll have little hope of even getting close to the droghul.'
'But what other hope is there?'
I turned toward the northeast and pointed at the low
mountains shining in the sun. 'If we can reach those highlands, we'll find
better ground to stand against the Zuri. We'll be able to loose our arrows at
our enemies as from a castle's battlements.'
Yago had little knowledge of bows and arrows, and less
of castles, but he understood my strategy well enough. It didn't matter. As he
told me: 'That is the country of the Avari, and when they discover us, they'll
kill the Zuri and the droghul - and us.'
'Then you will have your vengeance after all,' I told
him. 'And as you say, the dead are the dead.'
For a few moments Yago continued gazing at the
mountains. Then he turned back to examine the droghul's tracks pointing into
the west. 'If you are wrong in your surmise, we'll lose all chance of
vengeance.'
'There is always a chance for vengeance,' I said,
looking at the edge of my sword. 'And even if we do lose this chance, we
might find water in the mountains, and so live to gain another.'
At this, Yago looked over at Turi, patting the neck of
his sweating horse. The boy's lips were dusty and cracked. Something cracked
inside Yago then. The law was the law, as he had said, but there was always a
higher law. For all his talk about vengeance and death, the living were still
the living, and Yago's heart beat quick and strong to keep his son among them.
'All right,' he finally told me. 'We'll go with you
into the mountains.'
I turned to take council with my friends; their eyes
all assented to the course I proposed. Without another word, I pointed Altaru
toward the northeast and urged him to a quick walk. We made our way along the
border between the Masud's lands and those of the Zuri. Our journey toward this
new direction immediately brought relief, for the sun now fell upon our backs.
The desert remained hot as a furnace, but at least the fiery orb above us no
longer burned out our eyes.
Two hours later, we drank the last of our water. We
spent the rest of the afternoon, it seemed, sweating all of it back out. I grew
thirsty, for it seemed that I hadn't had a long, deep drink of water since the
first well. I could feel the discomfort building inside Maram and the rest of
my companions, especially the children. And Yago's dry, hot eyes seemed to
assure me that as yet we knew nothing of real thirst.
In the last hour of the day, we came to a standing
stone that marked the place where the lands of the Zuri, Masud and Avari
touched upon each other. Yago and Turi were loath to go on another foot, for
they dreaded entering the mysterious Avari's country. Then Kane caught sight of
a dust plume in the west. This decided Yago; he smiled his doomful smile, and
pressed his horse forward. But he kept looking backward over his shoulder, as
did we all.
At first, with the great ball of fire of the setting
sun nearly blinding me, I had a hard time making out the dust plume. But with
each mile it grew larger. Our tired, parched horses could barely manage a brisk
walk. I thought that the Zuri's horses - for I was sure that the droghul had
led warriors of this tribe after us - must be well-watered. I tried to
calculate rates and distances, but there was no need, for we had no choice but
to continue on toward the mountains as quickly as we could.
These rocky prominences grew larger, too. Yago could
tell us little of them. They seemed to be a spur running south off the White
Mountains. Master Juwain pulled out one of his maps, but he could find nothing
marked there that helped us. In the day's last light, I saw that the peaks
ahead of us topped out much lower than any of the Yorgos range. Long canyons
cut them northeast to southwest, and steep ravines ran down the sides of huge,
triangular blades of rock into the canyons. Every square foot of these
highlands seemed as dry as a bleached bone.
As the ground broke up into a hilly country, Maram
took me aside and murmured to me, 'You care nothing for meting out vengeance
upon the droghul, do you? You hope to lose him in the mountains, don't you?'
'If we can, Maram,' I murmured back to him. 'If we
can.'
'If we do,' he said, licking his cracked lips,
'it will avail us nothing if we don't find water, and soon.'
He shooed away a few flies, thenn popped a barbark nut
in his mouth. Sucking on them, he had told me, kept his tongue from drying out.
I noticed that he had given up his habit of spitting upon the ground, electing
to swallow the vile red juice instead.
Yago rode up to us and asked us, 'What is it you are
discussing?'
'Ah. . . water,' Maram told him, gulping at the juice
in his mouth. 'We were talking about water. Neither of us can see any likely
places in those mountains to look for it.'
Yago stared at the mountains ahead of us. 'The Avari
will know of water, for we are deep in their country. But they would not tell
us of it.'
Maram lifted back his head to look up at the sky and
said. 'It must rain upon those damn mountains sometime. Look at those clouds!
Why do they drift to the north when the wind blows from the west?'
Yago studied the few, thin white clouds, moving north
as Maram had observed. And he told us, 'There must be winds higher in the sky
that blow them that way. But do not think that clouds will save you, thirsty
pilgrims. It never rains here in the summer.'
I listened to the clopping of the horses' hooves
against rocks. The flies were beginning to abate while the snakes and other
desert creatures emerged from their holes to greet the coming of night.
Everything seemed to stink of sweat and dust. With the dying of the sun,
twilight darkened the desert and its stark landforms. We continued on at a
slower pace, for the horses now had to take greater care where they placed
their hooves on the stony ground.
It grew mercifully cooler. The air, however, for the
first couple hours of night, remained warm enough to wring the sweat from us.
Our thirst grew worse. No longer could we perceive a dust plume against the
black, starry sky, but I sensed that the droghul and many others still pursued
us. The dark would slow them, Yago said, but they would keep after us unless we
could find mantles of bare, hard rock to ride across. And even then, when day
came, a good tracker might be able to make out a faint chip in the rock! while
the finest of Ravirii trackers might follow us even at night.
I kept my eyes fixed on the mountains. We finally came
within a mile of them, and turned almost due north as we rode paralleling the
ridgelines looking for a place of retreat. Any of the canyons, it seemed, might
do as well as any other. But we might come across a veritable castle cut out of
the stone above us, and still find ourselves doomed to die of thirst. And so I
let Altaru fall back to where Estrella rode next to Atara. And I said to this
tough, tired girl, 'If it comes to you that there might be water in any of
these canyons, follow your heart and seek it out. And we'll follow you.'
Estrella nodded her head at this, and weakly clasped
my hand. She tried to smile, but could not. For the thousandth time, I berated
myself for taking children with me on such a dreadful journey.
It was past midnight when we came upon the mouth of a
canyon little different from any of the others. But Estrella, after first
looking at me for approval, led us straight into it. We began climbing up a
wide notch between the masses of rock around us; I wondered if a river or
stream had once worked its way through here. After about two miles of plodding
over stony but mostly level ground, the canyon narrowed and dead-ended into a
great rise of mountain. Three ravines cut its slopes and gave out into the
canyon. Estrella drew up her horse before the centermost ravine. I could barely
make out her face in the thin light as she stared up into it. It would be hard
work to take our horses up this steep pitch in the dead of the night. Estrella
seemed uncertain as to what we should do. She dismounted and walked a few dozen
yards up into the ravine. She paused as if sniffing at the air. Then she walked
back to me and held out her hands helplessly. I understood that she could not
'say' that there was water somewhere up this ravine; but neither could she say
there was not.
'I doubt if there is water up there,' Yago said,
dismounting and walking up to us. 'I doubt if there is water anywhere in these
high lands.'
Everyone else dismounted then and came over to hold
council.
'Perhaps another canyon,' Maram said.
'We can't go seeking out one canyon after the next all
night,' Liljana said to us. 'We haven't the strength for that, or the water.'
Daj, standing next to Turi, started to say something
then, but all that came out of his throat was a tortured croak. He was so tired
he had to lean against Liljana to keep from falling over.
'We cannot go on like this,' Liljana said again. 'Let
us stop for a few hours and see if there is any water about.'
'If we stop, we stay,' Yago said. 'I think the Zuri
must be close.'
I thought this, too. I could almost feel the droghul's
hand upon my face and hear him whispering in my mind, promising me cool water
to drink if only I would lead him to the Maitreya.
Then Yago added, 'I think the Zuri will find this
canyon. And then we will have no way out.'
Rock surrounded us on three sides; we would find no
escape in any of those directions.
'I believe we should explore, as Liljana has said,'
Master Juwain told us. 'At least let us see if we can make our way up the
ravine and encamp up there, in those rocks.'
I peered up the ravine, where it gave out into a
large, rocky shelf. It seemed that we had at least found our castle to defend.
The dry wind out of the west seemed to suck the
thoughts from my mind so that I could not think clearly. And then Kane's voice,
cutting through the night like a bright sword, laid bare our choices: 'So, men
are only men, and we might defeat them no matter their numbers. But if we don't
find water, we'll die.'
After that, we made our way up the ravine. We moved
slowly, leading the horses along as best we could in the near-dark. More than
once, we had to help the horses find places to plant their hooves as we
practically pulled them up the slope. The ground rose steeply before us, and
several boulders blocked our way. This chute of rock, I thought, would turn
into a death trap for any of the Zuri who might try to storm their way up it
toward us. Equally, it would turn into our tomb if thirst forced us back down
it onto the Zuri's swords.
We finally came out upon the rock shelf, littered with
more boulders. Maram collapsed, sitting down with his back pressed to one of
these. Liljana looked for a level place to lay out our sleeping furs. Daj and
Turi, who seemed to be forging a silent friendship, began wandering about the
rocks on the slopes above the shelf in a desperate search for water. Estrella
stood staring at this barren and cracked mountain slope. Not even a thorn bush
or a sprig of bitterbroom grew here.
In the coolness of the deepest pan of night, we made
what we could of our 'camp'. Yago joined the children, searching for any scoop
in the rocks or hidden hole that might once have held a few ounces of water or
mud. Liljana squeezed a little slime out of the water skins; it moistened our
throats but was not enough to drink. After setting out the bows and arrows on
ground providing a clear line of sight down the ravine, Kane took off his cloak
and went hunting. He managed to throw this garment over a rock owl, which he
killed by snapping its neck. He used his knife to bleed it, filling up nearly two
cups with a thick, blackish blood. Only Daj and Turi could bring themselves to
drink this evil-looking liquid, and they each took a cup and drained it. Yago
looked on approv-ingly. Then Kane dug out the owl's eyes, which he and Yago ate
like grapes, sucking out the aqueous humors and then spitting out the hard
lenses.
After the children and Yago returned to their search
for water, Kane scowled at Maram and me - and the rest of us - and snarled out:
'So, you think you are thirsty, eh? Not thirsty enough, I say! Just wait until
the sun rises tomorrow. Then you'll pray for a little blood, if you can find
any, and you'll be grateful to lick the sweat from the horses' hides!'
He went over to grab up one of the bows and stand
watch in the starlight, staring down the ravine into the canyon below.
And Maram sighed out, 'Well, what about the brandy?
That's mostly water, isn't it?'
Master Juwain shook his head at this and said him,
'I've told you before: spirits only dry out the body, worse than sea water.
Please put this out of your mind.'
After another hour, when it grew bitterly cold, the
children gave up their search in order to take a little rest, lying down with
Maram, Master Juwain, Atara and Liljana. Yago continued prowling about the
rocks above us. I tried to sleep but kept waking up in want of water to ease
the burning in my throat. The stars shone down brightly through air that was
too clear.
Then, near dawn, I heard Kane call out from where he
stood watch above us: 'They come!'
I rose up stiffly from the rocky ground and climbed to
where he stood on a prominence looking down through the canyon to the open
desert in the west. Even two miles away we could see the light of what must be
torches, moving closer.
'So, so,' Kane said, stringing his longbow.
I tried to find some moisture in my mouth with which
to wet my tongue. I said, 'I'm afraid I'm too parched to fight another battle.'
'Battle?' he growled out. 'Well, it might come to that
yet. It all depends on whether our enemy has enough water to wait us out.'
When the torches began moving up through the mouth of
the canyon, I woke up the others. The children, with Liljana, renewed what
seemed a hopeless quest to find water. Maram and Yago joined Kane and me at the
edge of the rocky shelf. So, a moment later, did Master Juwain and Atara, who
used her unstrung bow to feel her way over the broken ground. She had hardly
spoken ten words for all the last day. Now she came up to me and whispered in
my ear. Her words burned with the rage of helplessness: 'I still can't see. I
should break my bow and cast away the pieces!'
'It will return,' I whispered back to her. 'It will
all return.'
She stood in the silence of the dark, shivering in the
cold and shaking her head. She said to me, 'Tell me what you see.'
And so I did. As the night drew to an end, a faint
light warmed the world. It slowly grew brighter. I tried to describe the way
the sun's first rays touched the desert with a golden-red glow. It was all
strangely beautiful, I said. This luminosity worked its way east until it
filled the canyon's mouth and set its stark rocks on fire. Now, I told her, our
enemy had no need of their torches. In the hard light of day, they tracked us
more surely and swiftly. A mass of horsemen, perhaps sixty strong, worked their
way up toward us. It seemed that they still hadn't seen us, half-hidden as we
were behind the boulders on the rocky shelf. But I could easily see them. Most
of the horsemen wore billowing white robes like unto Turi's and Yago's. Five of
them, though, showed the bright carmine of tunics or surcoats: the color of the
Red Priests. I could not guess what kind of garment covered the droghul of
Morjin.
'The Poisoner comes!' Yago said from next to me as he
pointed his saber down the ravine. 'Which one is he, Mirustral?'
'I can't quite tell,' I said to him. 'They are still
too far away.'
'Not for long,' Maram muttered. 'We might as well jump
up and announce ourselves so as to make things easier.'
He turned to stare at the slope of mountain looming
large and dark behind us. I turned, too, looking for Liljana and the children.
It seemed that Liljana must have pulled the children down into the cover of the
rocks higher up.
'The sun will be up soon,' Maram muttered. He put down
his bow and took out his red crystal instead. He looked down at the horsemen
moving slowly up the canyon. 'Well, let them come, then! They must be hungry
after riding all night - I'll give them fire to eat!'
'No,' Master Juwain said, coming over to rest his hand
on his arm. 'It's too dangerous.'
'The droghul comes,' I said to him. I blinked against
the sick heat of my blood burning into my eyes. 'He surely comes, and he'll
kill you with your own fire.'
'It might be our last chance,' Maram said as he pointed
his crystal down into the canyon.
'No,' I told him. 'He'll turn your fire and kill us
all.'
Yago turned to regard Maram, puzzled by the turn of
our talk. It seemed that he knew nothing of the gelstei. There was no time to
educate him, however, for just then a cry rang out through the canyon as one of
the white-robed men below us pointed straight up the ravine toward our
position.
'Maybe,' Maram said, 'I can at least burn that damn
droghul before he burns me.'
The enemy moved still closer, and now I caught a gleam
of yellow hair to match the yellow tunic of a man riding near the lead of the
horsemen. The fire that whispered in my mind told me that this must be yet
another incarnation of Morjin.
'So,' Kane's voice rumbled. 'So.'
'No fire,' I said to Maram. 'Not yet - let's see what
they'll do.'
When the horsemen came to the ravine, they stopped and
began dismounting. Some of them shouted up to us. I could not make out what
they were saying. Kane nocked an arrow, and drew it back to his ear. Then he
shook his head as he eased the tension on the bowstring. It was a long shot
down to the men below us, about a hundred yards. Atara might possibly be able
to pick off targets at such a distance, but Kane hated wasting arrows.
'You were right, Mirustal,' Yago said to me. 'This
Poisoner and the Red Priests have their stingers sunk very deep into the
Zuri. I didn't really think they would dare to cross the Avari's lands.'
A Zuri warrior, holding up a white banner of truce,
began making his way up the ravine. One of the priests walked to his left. So
narrow was this rocky chute that another man would have had difficulty fitting
in beside them.
They came within thirty yards, close enough that I
could see the priest's smooth, sunburnt face. He had red hair and blue eyes, like
the men of Surrapam. Kane pulled back on his bowstring again, sighting his
arrow upon him.
'No!' I called to him. 'They come under truce!'
'Truce?' Kane growled out. 'The bloody Red Priests
would break it as readily as they'd squash a bug. Let me at least kill one of
them and lighten our work.'
'No!' I said again. 'Let's hear what he has to say.'
'Lies, he'll say. How many must we listen to?'
The two men halted their climb twenty yards below us.
The Zuri warrior had the look of Yago's people, with his black beard and dark,
hard features. When 1 remarked that he looked much like the Masud I had seen at
the well, Yago took insult saying, 'Can you not see how his eyes are too close
together, like a snake's? Look at his narrow forehead! And the cut of his robes,
which are ...'
As Yago began describing the different cut and
stitching of the robes of the various tribes of the Ravirii, the much-fairer
Red Priest called up to us: 'Well-poisoners! My name is Maslan, and I speak on
behalf of Oalo, whom Tatuk has sent to bring you to justice! Lay down your
weapons and surrender, and you shall be spared the punishment decreed for
poisoners! Your children shall be taken into the Zuri tribe and well cared
for.'
'Never!' Yago shouted back at him. 'Give my son to you?
It is the yellow-hair you ride with who is the well-poisoner!'
Maslan turned to the warrior beside him as if to say:
'Do you see how they lie?'
Then he called up to us again: 'You are trapped here!
I think you have no water. We can wait here until you drop of thirst.'
'Then wait!' Kane shouted down to him. 'Or send up as
many as you please! We've arrows enough for you all!'
Maslan took from the Zuri warrior a waterskin, which
he held up to his lips. He swished some water around in his mouth, then spat it
out into the ravine. He called out: 'Any who surrender may have all the water
they wish. Any who do not are welcome to lick these rocks.'
That was all he said to us. He turned his back to us,
and led the Zuri warrior back down the ravine to the mass of our enemy gathered
in the canyon below.
'Val,' Maram said to me. 'Put your sword through my
throat! It will be better than dying of thirst or whatever torture the Red
Priests have planned for us.'
'Be quiet,' I said to him, trying to think. 'There
must be a way out.'
'What way?' Maram asked. 'To begin with, it might
rain.'
Maram looked up at the sky, at the single cloud
floating above the desert toward the north. He said, 'What other miracles do you
hope for?'
'Estrella might yet find water.'
'And I,' Maram said, 'might sprout wings like a bird
and simply fly out of here. But if I don't, and grow too weak and the worst
befalls, please promise me you won't let the Red Priests have me?'
'I won't let them touch you,' I told him. 'Now be
quiet. You waste water with every breath.'
There was nothing to do then but to wait. The Zuri and
the Red Priests below us dismounted and made camp at the bottom of the ravine.
I was sure that whoever Oalo might be, it was the droghul who really commanded
Zuri and the priests, and took charge of this siege. I felt his presence like a
burning quicksand sucking at my will to oppose him. I found myself wishing that
it had been he who had showed himself in the ravine to offer his vile terms.
Then Kane would have put an arrow through his heart, truce or no truce.
At last the sun rose over the rim of the mountains
behind us, and rained down its killing rays. The cold of night bled from the
air with startling quickness as it grew warmer and warmer. After a while the
sun heated up the rocks around us like a natural oven. We began to sweat. Soon,
I thought, we would all be ready to lick the rocks of the ravine, even as the
priest had said.
For a few hours, we waited for our miracle. And then
Kane, who had the eyes of an eagle if not the wings, caught sight of a dust
plume moving quickly across the desert toward the mouth of the canyon. Soon,
another mass of horsemen came into view. There must have been more than a
hundred and fifty of them. Upon seeing them pounding up through the canyon,
Maram gave up the last of his hope.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said. 'More Zuri!'
The arrival of these new warriors, however, did not
seem to be welcomed by the Zuri encamped below us. They sprang up from beneath
their flapping sun cloths and ran for their horses. I saw sixty sabers flashing
in the sunlight. But they were outnumbered more than two to one. The new
warriors thundered closer, drawing in more tightly as they rode up through the
funnel of the canyon. They came to a halt almost shoulder to shoulder in a long
line that completely blocked any exit into the desert. They waited on horseback
with their sabers pointing at the Zuri fifty yards away.
'Can you not see?' Yago said to Maram, pointing out details
in the garments of the newcomers, particularly the shawls drawn across their
faces. 'Those are the Avari.'
He spoke this name as one might that of a werewolf or
some other unnatural being.
'So,' Kane growled with a smile, 'now who is
trapped?'
As Maram stood with his strung how. peering down the
ravine into the canyon at these two groups of warriors, I felt him struggling
to take a little cheer in this unexpected turn of events. But then Yago dashed
his hopes, saying to Kane, 'Little good that it will do us. Likely the Avari
will kill the Zuri, and then turn on us.'
I watched as two Zuri warriors rode out toward the
Avari bearing a banner of truce. Two men in red robes rode with them, led by a
man wearing a bright yellow tunic. His hair, I saw, shone golden. Now, at this
distance, I could just barely make out the red dragon blazing from his tunic.
From the Avari line, four men with swaddled faces urged their horses forward
to meet them. They, too, bore a banner of truce. I wondered what lies Maslan and
the droghul would tell the Avari as they sat holding council beneath the
merciless sun.
I did not have to wait long to find out the answer to
this question. The tallest of the four Avari, who all seemed to sit much
higher on their horses than either the Zuri or the droghul, broke off council.
He began riding slowly in the direction of the Zuri's line, which parted before
him like a wave of water. He rode straight up into the ravine. Where the way
grew too steep, he dismounted and walked beside his great, gray horse, leading
it up toward the rocky shelf where Kane and Maram stood aiming arrows at him.
Yago waited there, too, with his saber drawn. He had never met an Avari
warrior, and was unsure how to greet him.
'May the sun warm your face,' Yago called out to him.
'May the rain fill your wells,, Avari.'
'May the rain fill your wells, Masud.' He spoke
with a strange accent, which changed the sounds of his words so that 'well'
came out as 'weal', and 'rain' was rendered as 'reen'. From the tone of his voice
and the deepness of his eyes, I guessed his age to be about thirty, 'From what
I've been told, one of your wells has been poisoned by the very
outlanders you ride with.'
The warrior climbed up and joined us on the rocky
shelf. He stood nearly as tall as I. Silver bracelets encrusted with blue
stones flashed from his wrists. Beneath his head covering his eyes shone bright
as black onyx. He regarded Kane and me in astonishment.
'I am Sunji,' he informed us. 'Son of Jovayl, who is
king of the Avari. My father sent me to discover who has invaded our realm, and
why.'
I longed to tell him that I, too, was a prince of a
realm far away. I wanted to give him my real name. But as I had relinquished
all claim to honors and rank to live the life of a wanderer, I did not. Instead
I told him much the same story that I had Yago. When I finished, Sunji stood
staring at me as he might a viper.
'The one you call a droghul,' he said to me,
pronouncing that name strangely, too, 'claims to be Morjin himself, king of the
realm called Sakai. He claims that you are the poisoners of the Masud's
well.'
'But why would we poison a well and so deny ourselves
water?' I said to him. 'And why would one of the Masud ride with those who had
poisoned his own people?'
'I do not know,' Sunji said to me. 'That is to be
determined.'
'Determined how?' Maram asked him.
Sunji looked at Maram, with his fly-blown sores, as
one might a leper. Then he said, 'There will be a trial. Either this Morjin or
Mirustral is lying. And so Mirustral will come with me now, that he might stand
face to face with Morjin.'
At the thought of this, my hand moved of its own to
grip the hilt of my sword. And Kane pointed down into the canyon as he growled
out to Sunji, 'I'll not let my friend go into that dragon's den alone!'
Sunji bowed his head to Kane. 'You may come as a
second, then. Rowan Madeus, if that is really your name. And the Masud.'
He looked at Yago, who assented to Sunji's demand. And
I said to Sunji, 'And what if we will not stand at trial?'
'Then you may stand here and let the sun determine
your fate!'
It seemed that we had no choice. Sunji waited
patiently while we made our preparations. Master Juwain came over to me and led
me in a meditation, the same one as he had before I fought my duel with
Salmelu. Atara, in silence, kissed me on the lips. As I moVed to gather up
Altaru's reins, Maram took me aside and said, 'I should come with you, too.'
'No, Maram,' I told him, looking down the ravine into
tne canyon. 'You must stay here and guard everyone, in case there is treachery.
With your bow, if you can, and with your firestone, if you cannot.'
His eyes blurred with tears, and he nodded at me. 'But
how will you stand against Morjin and all his lies?'
'I don't know,' I said. I clasped hands with him and
smiled. 'But there will be a way - there is always a way.'
Kane and Yago, leading their horses, came up behind
me. Then I pulled gently on Altaru's reins, and we followed Sunji down into the
ravine.
Chapter 21 Back Table of Content Next
We rode out onto the hardpack between the Avari and Zuri lines. The captain named Oalo waited there along with another Zuri warrior, still under the banner of truce. Next to them, on fine horses, sat Maslan and the droghul. In appearance, this double of Morjin seemed identical to the first droghul who had died so terribly in the forest of Acadu, except that he had two good arms and the sun had burned his fair face red. His hair shone all golden like the sun, as did his eyes. I could see nothing of his own will in these hideous orbs, and everything of Morjin. He radiated an overweening arrogance and the command of a king. The malevolence that poured out of him struck me like a hammer blow to the throat. I found myself bitterly wishing that I had not abandoned my steel mail. I wondered what armor I might find here against his sword, no less his inevitable lies and assault on my soul.
Three Avari warriors greeted Sunji, whom they treated as a prince. Although these three kept their faces covered, I could see from the webwork of creases around their black eyes that they were nearly old men. Sunji presented them as Laisar, Maidro and Avraym, and said that they were to be the judges of what was told here today.
With the fierce sun prompting all of us to speak concisely and quickly,
we submitted to trial all the while sitting on the backs of our horses. The
droghul and I gave our respective accounts of what had occurred at the Masud
well. We told of our journeys and our purposes, as much as we dared. The three
judges listened closely. The warriors in the two lines behind us tried to
listen, too. Twice, Oalo, an ugly, much-scarred man, interrupted in order to
clarify matters or make important points, speaking self-importantly in behalf of the Zuri's chief, Tatuk. Sunji silenced him both
times. He and he alone, as he told us, would conduct this trial.
After we had finished speaking, Sunji swept his saber
from Kane to me and called out, 'You claim to be landless knights guarding
pilgrims; the names you gave are Rowan Madeus and Mirustral. But King Morjin,
if such he really is, tells that your true names are Kane and Valaysu Elahad. Do
you claim that he has mistaken you for others?'
The three judges, I saw, leaned forward on their
horses, waiting for me to answer. Maslan, as with the four other Red Priests in
the Zuri line, regarded me as might a spider a fly trapped in a web. The droghul
simply stared at me with unrelenting hatred.
'No, he has not mistaken us for others,' I said to
Sunji. 'Those are our true names, though little else he has said about us or
himself is true.'
Now the eyes of Laisar, Avraym and Maidro, who sat on
their horses close to me, grew as stonelike as obsidian. I sensed doubt and
disdain hardening the hearts of the Avari warriors who watched me.
'Do you think to convince us of what you put forth as
true,' Sunji asked me, 'by readily admitting a lie?'
I gazed at the shawl wrapped around Sunji's face. I
said to him, 'You and those of your tribe keep yourselves well-covered against
the sun that would burn you. So it is with me and my companions. We have
chosen these names to wear just so this droghul and his kind wouldn't discover
us, as he has.'
It was a good answer, I thought, the best I could
give, but none of the Ravirii approved of it, especially not Yago, who clearly
didn't like it that I had kept secrets from him. He sat on his horse next to me
gazing at me in anger.
'I do not know yet what to believe,' Sunji said, now
pointing his saber at the droghul and then at me, 'but it is clear that the two
of you are mortal enemies. The king of a realm called Sakai, or his sorcerous
double, a droghul as you name him. And an outlawed prince of a faraway realm
called Mesh.'
'I am no outlaw,' I said, wiping the sweat from my
neck. 'I left my homeland of my own choice.'
'To seek this Well of Restoration that you have told
of?'
I commanded my
hand not to wipe at the sweat pouring from my face* It had come time to tell of
things that should be kept a secret. I said, 'In a way. We seek the one
who would use the Cup of Heaven to restore Ea. We call this one the Maitreya.'
As I told of the Lightstone, Sunji's eyes gleamed, and
a great excitement filled the three Avari judges and rippled through their
fellow warriors who sat watching us. Sunji allowed me to finish speaking and
then said to me, 'Is this another of your truths clothed in the dirty robes of
a lie? Do you ask us to believe that you would risk your lives journeying into
the desert in search of this Maitreya?'
From the Avari line, which had moved in closer to us,
a young man called out: 'What I cannot believe is his story of entering the
Stone City. Burning holes through rock with sorcerous fire, and slaying dragons
- dragons! And this man and a few companions slaying nearly a hundred men? He
told that a blind woman fired arrows into their hearts! He lies, surely, and
more, he must be mad to think that we should listen to such -'
'Be quiet, Daivayr!' Sunji suddenly barked out,
cutting him off. He turned back to me and said, 'My brother is impulsive, as it
is with the young. But he only voices questions we all have. You say that you
risked your lives seeking the Cup of Heaven in the great Quest, as you do now
in search of the one you call the Maitreya. Why?'
'Because it is the only hope for Ea - and for much
more.' As Sunji and the three judges listened to every word I spoke, and the
droghul's golden eyes never left mine, I tried to tell of my love for Ea's
forests and mountains, her oceans and grass-covered plains. And it would all be
burnt to ashes, I said, and washed in blood if Morjin and his Red Priests had
their way. 'I. .. would see an end to war. The Maitreya might bring this
abiding peace, if he can be found.'
'But how could you hope to find him,' Sunji asked me,
'if you do not even know his name or what tribe has given him birth?'
It was a good question, and I knew that my judges
would find my answer weak as I said: 'There is one among us who is
gifted in finding things.'
'Through the aid of sorceries?'
'We are not sorcerers!' I cried out.
Although the droghul's face remained implacable as he
regarded me, his whole being lit up as with a triumphant smile. Then he opened
his mouth to speak. His voice, ever golden and persuasive, swelled with a new
power. His words fell like irresistible weapons thatJaid people open and left
them utterly vulnerable to his command: 'This Elahad has impugned everything
about me, going so far as to deny who I am. I am King of Sakai! I have
risked much in coming into the desert, as I have. In the past, I have sent
priests to your people - the bravest and freest of Ea's peoples! - to help them
understand the nature of the menace that would undo us all. And to help them
unite against sorcerers such as the Elahad and his kind. My priests have not
always been well-received. I do not blame you Ravirii for this, as the world is
hard and our enemies are not always as they seem. But we are not your
enemies! I have come here, in my person, that you might hear the truth of
things from my own lips.'
The droghul, I knew, almost had a mind of his own,
although at the moment I could sense no particle or flame of his own self-ness.
So compelling was the smoothness of his voice - the perfection of pitch and
tone and utter certainty in itself - that he almost convinced me that he
was the real Morjin.
'Lord Morjin,' Maslan said hoarsely, coughing at the
dry air, 'is known in all lands as the most veracious of kings.'
No, I thought, the most voracious. If these
desert tribes let him, he would swallow them up one by one as he had the great
kingdoms that surrounded them. Little sense of this peril, however, seemed to
have made its mark on the Ravirii, at least not the Zuri gathered here. They
seemed to regard Maslan and the other Red Priests as keepers of a great and
mysterious power. They looked upon these five terrible men with something of
the same awe that my people held for the masters of the Brotherhood. Only Oalo,
I sensed, suspected how vile they really were. The tightness in his chest told
me that he lived in great fear of them, even as the priests themselves dreaded
the droghul and Morjin himself.
'I would enlist the aid of all the Ravirii
tribes,' the droghul said, looking from Oalo to Yago and then at Sunji. 'The
Lightstone has been taken back from the Elahad, who stole it and claimed it for
himself. Even now, he seeks other stones of power that he might cast his
ensorcellments over all peoples and all lands in hope of stealing back the
golden cup yet again.'
'He lies!' I said, shaking my fist at him. 'He accuses
me of his own evil dreams and deeds - even as he did the poisoning of the Masud
well!'
'I do not lie,' the droghul said. 'And I am no
poisoner.'
I tried to find the right words to gainsay this, but I
could not. So excruciating was the burning of my blood, from the kirax within
and the fiery sun pouring down on me, that I could hardly speak at all.
'The Cup of Heaven,' the droghul said, letting his
golden voice carry out to the lines of Zuri and Avari warriors pressing in even
closer, 'will remain safely in my hall in Argattha, where I invite any and all
to come drink of its light.'
'The urna has been found!' Avraym marveled as he gazed
at the droghul. Until now the judges of this trial had been as silent as stone.
'In my own lifetime, sought and found. All glory in
the One!' The droghul smiled at him, a
bright, open smile all full of the promise of happiness and otherwordly riches,
even love. And he said to Avraym and the other judges, and to all the Avari and
Zuri: 'When the time comes and victory is ours, I shall bring the Lightstone
into all lands. The Ravirii shall be its keepers, and here it will do its most
wondrous work. A golden light will poor itself out onto the desert's sands.
Trees will grow here again, soft grasses and flowers. Water will run in the dry
river beds, and lakes will shine in the sun. The desert will be green again.'
'As it was, it shall be again,' Avraym intoned.
'All glory in the One,' Laisar said.
The droghul, I thought, through his master in
Argattha, knew the Ravirii well, even as he knew all peoples. He gave them
precisely what they wished to hear.
'This Elahad,' he said, 'claimed the Lightstone for
himself. Even as he claimed to be the Maitreya.'
Sunji looked at me and asked. 'Is this true, Valashu
Elahad?'
'I... yes, there was a moment,' I stammered out. 'Only
a moment when I claimed this. But I was wrong.'
My admission did not make a good impression on those
judging me. The droghul smiled at me. I could feel him using the raw power of
Morjin's passions to pull at the heartstrings of everyone gathered here. He
touched their passions. He played on their vanities and fears, and
spoke to their deepest dreams. I vowed again that I would never use my gift
this way to violate people's souls and work such evil.
'From his own lips, he admits another lie!' the
droghul said. 'How many more must we hear before we judge him as what he is?'
How, I wondered, could I ever prevail here against
this double of Morjin? The droghul sat up straight on his horse, disdainful of
the sun and radiating all of Morjin's power and authority. Morjin was a king,
even if an evil and false one, and people heeded what he said.
'The Elahad has no more respect for you,' the
droghul said to the judges, 'than he does your laws. He and his fellow
conspirators invaded your lands solely to flee a richly deserved justice. With
his own hand, he poisoned the Masud well so that he could -'
'He lies!' I called out. 'Can't you hear how he lies?'
Sunji waved his sword at me. He Said, 'You must keep
your silence unless you have testimony to offer. Calling King Morjin a liar
does not constitute such, nor will it serve you.'
The droghul bowed his head to Sunji, and then smiled
at me. He drew in a breath of burning air hi order to further defame me. His
cleverness cut with all the precision of a surgeon's knife as he called out:
'When the Masud discovered the Elahad's true purpose, the Elahad poisoned their
well to keep them from turning against him. And what is his purpose? He seeks gelstei
and other stones of power. He found suchlike among the Masud, the very
skystones that are sacred to the Avari.'
At this, Sunji touched the blue stones set into the
silver of one of his bracelets. Avraym, I saw, wore a pendant fashioned of the
same substance, as did Maidro and Laisar. I recalled seeing such jewelry among
the gold bangles that Daj had gathered from the dead Masud.
Yago remembered this as well. He looked at me with
suspicion eating at his hard face.
'The Elahad,' the droghul went on, 'would use the
gelstei to take control of the Lightstone. Each of the conspirators has gained
these gelstei and mastery over them.'
How, I wondered, could people ever mistake a lie for
the truth? I knew from bitter experience that the truth always spoke with a
clear and perfect voice, but too often it spoke too softly. People did not hear
it, for they believed what they wanted to believe.
'Valashu Elahad - is this true?' Sunji asked me.
I turned to my right to see Kane's black eyes warning
me to silence. But with the judges and everyone else looking at me, I could not
keep silent. Neither could I lie.
'Yes,' I said, 'each of my companions and I keep one
of the gelstei.'
'Show us these stones, then.'
I saw that Kane
trembled to whip out his sword and cut off Sunji's head. Instead, he took out
his baalstei and showed it to him and the three judges. At the sight of this
black crystal Avraym kissed his own hand and pressed it over his heart. So did
Laisar and Maidro theirs. The droghul told that the black gelstei could be used
to suck out the very fires of a man's soul and Kane did not dispute this.
'So, it can be used this way,' Kane said,
making a fist around his stone. He stared at the droghul with such hate that
the droghul finally looked away. 'This thing of Morjin should know this,
for Morjin himself has used a much greater baalstei to try to suck at the soul
of the whole world and all her peoples.'
As he went on to tell of the Black Jade, the Avari
warriors up and down their line kissed their hands and clasped them to their
chests, as did the Zuri warriors in their line.
Then the droghul, for the first time seeming to
struggle against Morjin's iron-fisted control of him, pointed at Kane and said,
'He, too, is a liar, like the Elahad. Can no one here feel him attacking you
with this evil stone?'
With the sun sucking the life out of everyone gathered
in this sweltering canyon, and Morjin perhaps wielding the Black Jade from
afar, it was easy for Sunji and the judges to believe that Kane strove to lay
an evil enchantment upon them. And so Sunji called to Kane: 'Put away your
sorcerer's stone!'
Kane tucked away his gelstei, then said to Sunji, 'Ha
- you know nothing of what you speak! All the gelstei were made out of the
essence of the Lightstone itself. So, the baalstei were meant to control the
fires of the tuaoi stones, for good, not ill.'
'The firestones,' the droghul explained. 'Even as ww
speak, the fat leper on that hill makes ready to wreak burning sorceries upon
us.'
He pointed up the ravine where Maram, with Master
Juwain and Liljana, stood watching us.
'The Elahad himself,' the droghul said, 'bears a sword
wrought of the evilest of substances. He has used it to slay with all the
deadliness of a scorpion.'
Sunji aimed his saber at me, then commanded Laisar,
Avraym and Maidro to draw their sabers. He said to me, 'Let us see this
sorcerous sword!'
I drew out Alkaladur then. The Ravirii of all three
tribes gasped to behold its silvery brilliance. They drew back from it, too,
for even as I held it up to the sun, red flames ran up and down its length.
Only Kane, I thought, knew how badly I longed to stab its point into Morjin's
heart - even into the droghul. But killing this dreadful creature would not
kill Morjin. It would serve only to bring down the sabers of the Ravirii upon
me and my friends.
'Break it!' The droghul cried out. 'Take this evil thing
from the poisoner, and break it into pieces!'
'You take it!' I shouted back at him. I
pointed my sword at him, and watched in horror as it blazed with even hotter
flames. 'Let us cross swords, the two of us here and now, and let that be the
test of things!'
Sunji turned to nod at the Avari warriors backing him
up as if making sure they were ready to close in on me at a moment's notice.
Then he said to me, 'This is no trial by combat; put away your sword.'
The Sword of Light, Alkaladur was called, the Sword of
Truth. It caught me up in its fiery light Then I sheathed it and sat gasping at
the torrid air.
The sight of this burning blade seemed to stir
something within the droghul. His jaws clamped shut as if he struggled to bite
off the words forming in his throat. I sensed Morjin from afar, and too near,
driving a heated iron into the droghul's spine to make him speak. And when the
droghul finally did, he spoke too much - too much for me to bear: 'With that
cursed sword, the Elahad murdered his own father and brothers when they
discovered his sorceries and tried to drive him from Mesh!'
So bright did the sun blaze just then that I thought
it would burn out my eyes.
'Father-killer!' one of the Red Priests called out. A
Zuri warrior next to him repeated this accusation. And then, from both the Zuri
and Avari lines came more cries: 'Father-killer! Well-poisoner! Sorcerer!'
The three judges stared at me in a silence even more
terrible than these accusations.
He has won, I thought, looking
at the droghul for the hidden hand of Morjin. He will always win.
'Father-killer! Father-killer! Father-killer!'
I had told of things as accurately as I knew how, and
it seemed that I had only turned my judges against me. But had I really spoken truly?
Inside me whispered a deep and beautiful voice that had never failed me;
often, now, it called to me as loud and clear as a bell. I knew, though, that I
was afraid to make this voice my own and shout it out so that others might hear
it. I feared that they would mishear it or misuse it - or use it against
me. Even more, I feared wielding the truth as a sword that men could not
resist, annihilating their wills so that mine might prevail. That was Morjin's
way. As the golden eyes of the droghul fell upon me and I felt Morjin staring me
down from far away, I knew that he wished me to fear this and to live in dread
of my gift of valarda. In a hundred ways, perhaps even through the Black Jade,
he had attacked my will toward all that was good and true. And so I spoke with
what honesty I dared, but softly and weakly, in words that were often at least
partial lies.
'Father-killer!' the warriors around me called out.
'Sorcerer! Well-poisonerl'
'What else is there to say?' the droghul shouted. It
seemed that he had given up struggling against Morjin. 'These men and their
kind are well-poisoners! Give them to us that we might give them
justice!'
Morjin, I suddenly knew, wished to torture out of me
and my friends our knowledge of the Maitreya even more than he wished our
deaths. If the droghul and the Red Priests got their hands on us, I wondered
how they would be able to crucify us to a land without wood? Perhaps they would
settle on cutting apart Daj and Estrella piece by piece, knowing that I could
never bear this.
'Well-poisoners! Well-poisoners! Kill the
well-poisoners!'
What is truth? It is not merely faultlessness and
honesty, the uncovering of facts, but rather the urge toward these things, and
much more, the primeval drive to bring forth into the light of existence the
deepest designs of the real. It is as clear and perfect as starlight, and it
blazes with all the fierceness and power of the sun.
Well-poisoner! Sorcerer!
Father-killer! Father-killer! Father-killer!
In the black centers of the droghul's eyes, Morjin sat
on his Dragon Throne shouting these words at me. Then, at last, I drew in a
deep breath of fiery air and shouted back at him: 'My father died defending our
land from your armies! My brothers, too! My mother was nailed to wood by your
bloody priests! They put my grandmother next to her! You, with your own
fingers, tore out my beloved's eyes! I . . . could not stop this! I tried, with
all my might, but I could not!'
I drew my sword, and red flames swirled about its
shimmering silustria. With tears nearly blinding me, I told the assembled
warriors more, things that I did not want to tell anyone, not even myself. I
admitted that it was I who had led Atara and my other friends into Argattha,
and so shook my fist at the stars. Although I hadn't slain my family I had
brought about their deaths through hubris and hate. I loved the world, yes, and
wanted to bring an end to war, but even more I hated Morjin and wanted with
every breath to thrust my sword into his heart and make him die.
To the judges
staring at me with their black, blurred eyes, to Sunji and Yago and all the
warriors looking upon me in awe, even to the sky, I told of things simply as
they were. There was no
manipulation in this, no calculation to achieve a
certain end. I wanted only that my judges, and the whole world, should know.
Sorrow tore the truth from me. I held nothing back: all my anguish, guilt and
grief came pouring out of me. Al my love, and all my hate. The sun was a fierce
thing in the sky, burning with a white-hot light, but this was more terrible,
more beautiful more real.
When I could speak no more, Sunji sat on his
horse regarding me from beneath the shawl that covered most of his face. His
bright, black eyes shone with a deep lucidty. After glancing at the
droghul, he turned to the judges and told them, 'King Morjin is right - what
more is there to say?'
He drew in a deep breath of air as he called out to
everyone: 'The well-poisoner, and those who helped him, must be served
justice. Laisar, what do you say?'
Laisar's old eyes grew hard with judgment as he pointed
at the droghul and shouted, 'I say that this man, whether he is King Morjin or
his mind-slave, is the poisoner!'
'I say this, too!' Maidru called out.
'And I,' Avraym said.
'Let the poisoner be served!'
All at once, the Avari warriors up and down their line
began shouting out:. 'Well-poisoner! Well-poisoner! Kill the well-poisoner!'
But the Zuri warriors, trapped between the Avari and
the rocks where Maram and my other companions stood, kept their silence. It
is one thing to hear the truth, and another to act upon it.
All eyes now fell upon the droghul, who held up his
hand and cast his dreadful gaze to the right and left. He cried out: 'You must
listen to me! The Elahad lies! It is he, not I, who is the-'
'Sorcerer! Well-poisoner! Well-poisoner! Kill the
well-poisoner!'
Sunji, having heard from the judges, swept his sword
from the droghul to Oalo, and then out to the Zuri warriors as he pronounced
their doom: 'You have heeded too well the words of this sorcerer and poisoner,
and those of his priests. But we have all heard the power of these words - the
power of these lies. I cannot believe that you knew of the poisoner's deeds.
Therefore you shall be spared his punishment. Lay down your swords, and you
shall be free to go back to your home!'
'We won't lay down our swords!' Oalo shouted,
drawing his saber. Its polished steel flashed in the sun. 'We wont make it easy
for you to slaughter us here!'
'Truce-breaker!'
Avraym called out to him, 'Drop your sword now, or die along with the Poisoner
and his priests!'
'Throw down!' Laisar shouted at Oalo. He turned to the
Zuri warriors and told them, 'All of you - throw down your swords!'
The sixty Zuri warriors hesitated for a moment. They
looked from the droghul and Maslan at the center of the field to the four other
Red Priests waiting with them in their line. It seemed that they feared these
men more than they did Sunji and the Avari. And so they drew their swords and
pointed them at the Avari rather than throwing them down.
'Damn you!' the droghul cried out to Sunji as he drew his
sword. Torment ate at his eyes as he seemed for a moment to struggle
against his distant master. But then his face hardened once again as he
screamed out, 'Damn you, Avari! I'll poison your wells! I'll send armies
to crucify your women and children, and make you drink their blood!'
As he screamed out even more vile threats, Laisar,
Avraym and Maidro drew in closer to Sunji; with battle now imminent, ten Avari
warriors galloped out from the line to join Sunji and the judges. They
positioned themselves facing Oalo, Maslan and the droghul, forming a sort of
wall protecting Kane, Yago and me.
'This is no trial by combat!' Sunji called out again
to the Zuri. 'Throw down your swords!'
The droghul, however, pointed his sword straight at
me. Only his hatred of Morjin's control of him, I thought, had so far kept him
from trying to ride me down and hack me apart in full fury. But now he and
Morjin were as one.
'Damn you, Elahad! You killed my daughter!. My
only girl! I executed your family, and so destroyed your past, but you have
taken from me my hope for the future!'
'It was you who took this!' I called to him. 'You
killed Jezi when you touched her with your foul hands!'
'Damn you!' he screamed at me. 'This time you die!'
And then, even as the Red Priests goaded the Zuri warriors to attack the advancing Avari line, the droghul spurred his horse straight at me.
Chapter 22 Back Table of Content Next
Two of the ten Avari warriors that Sunji had called forward moved to stop him. But the droghul, with a thrust of his sword quicker than a striking snake, stabbed one of these warriors through the throat. His sword flashed out a moment later, cleaving the other warrior's skull. Then Sunji, the three judges and the other eight Avari closed in on him.
As the warriors of these two tribes came crashing together in a riot of gleaming sabers and darting horses, it seemed impossible that the Zuri could hold against the Avari. The Avari sat higher on larger horses, and their swords were longer, too. I had never seen warriors wield their swords with such prowess - no warriors except my own people, that is. In each of many individual duels, with saber clanging against saber, an Avari warrior slashed through his foe's defenses again and again. In truth, few of these duels remained individual, for the Avari were merciless and fell upon the outnumbered Zuri in twos and threes. Bright steel sliced through cotton garments, skin and bone. Men screamed in agony. The hardpacked earth of the desert ran red with blood.
I hoped to stay out of this battle, leaving matters to the Avari and Zuri. I sat on top of Altaru, holding back with Kane and Yago at my sides. I waited for Sunji to bring the droghul to justice: either slaying or capturing him. It should have been an easy thing for Sunji and the three judges, backed up by the eight Avari warriors, to cut him down. But two of the Red Priests and six Zuri warriors, with Oalo, rode forward to aid the frenzied, murderous droghul.
And then the
droghul seemed to summon up some secret torment from within himself as he cried
out in a voice ringing with a fell, new power: VALARIIII!
I felt a hundred
daggers, like ice, pierce every part of me and seize
hold of my limbs. So it was with Sunji and the Avari. Many of them lifted them
lifted their swords with a dreadful slowness-many more Simply froze altogether
in terror.
VALARIIII!
Now Avraym
dropped his saber and pressed his hands to his ears, even as Oalo plunged the
point of his saber into his back. Sunji could hardly lift his saber to defend
himself against the Red Priest attacking him. In the sea of screaming horses
and men all around me, it seemed that the Avari were losing their will to slay
the Zuri, while the Zuri warriors struck back at their executioners with a
renewed fury. I did not know why the Zuri seemed immune to the droghul's
terrible cry:
VALARIII!
All
across the burning canyon, Avari warriors began dropping their swords or
clinging to their horses. Now it was the Zuri who showed them no mercy. Their
sabers slashed out like lightning as the Avari's screams became one with the
droghul's.
'Damn
you, Elahad! Damn the Valariii!'
The
droghul cut down the last of the men drawn up in front of me. He ignored Kane,
off to my right, who desperately battled two Zuri warriors. The droghul spurred
his horse closer, then slashed his sword toward my face. I barely parried it,
and its shiny steel clanged against Alkaladur's silustria and struck out
flaming sparks. Again and again he tried to cleave me in two. My skin, with no
armor protecting it, fairly twitched with a deep, sick fear. I moved slowly, so
terribly slowly, as if trying to lift my sword through a raging stream of ice
water. I knew that the droghul would kill me, and soon.
And
then, from out of nowhere, it seemed, Yago came galloping forward in a whirl of
dusty white robes and flashing steel. With perfect coordination, he swerved his
horse and closed in just as the droghul raised back his sword to decapitate me.
Yago leaned forward in his saddle, and quick as the wind sliced his saber
through the droghul's throat. This vicious cut opened up the droghul's windpipe
and the great artery there. Blood spurted, and a red froth flowed from the
droghul's mouth. Although he could not speak to howl out his paralyzing cry,
his eyes remained full of hate. They fixed on my eyes like red-hot nails. They
told me that I had murdered him, Morjin's droghul, but that I could
never touch the one who moved the droghul's limbs and mind. One day, and soon,
Morjin would come to take a terrible vengeance. This the droghul promised me in
his last moment of life. Then Yago's saber flashed out again, and this time cut
clean through the droghul's neck and struck off his head.
After
that, the battle did not last very long. The Avari warriors regained their wits
and strength. Their terror at the droghul caused them to fall upon the
remaining Zuri with great wrath. They killed them cruelly, down to the last
man. Sunji himself put his saber through Oalo. Then he went about the field
making sure that all the Zuri were dead.
I sat
on top of Altaru, gasping for breath and staring down at the droghul's body.
The bodies of warriors, Zuri and Avari, lay everywhere, baking in the hot sun.
Already the flies had gone to work on their hideous, gaping wounds, and
vultures came from afar to circle in the air.
Kane nudged
his horse over to me. His black eyes flashed at me as if in joy that we had
survived another battle, in one way the worst yet. He asked Yago how it was
that the droghul's voice had left him untouched. Yago couldn't hear him. He
moved closer to Kane, and threw his hands up to the sides of his head. His
fingers dug free two sticky, red barbark nuts. It seemed that at the very
beginning of the battle, he had used them to stop up his ears.
'The
voice-of that thing,' he said, pointing down at what was left of the droghul,
'could have frozen the sun itself. By what sorcery can a man stop another
solely through his voice?'
I had
no answer for him, and neither did Kane. The mystery of how the Zuri warriors
had fought on beneath the droghul's piercing cry, however, was soon solved.
Sunji rode back over to us, and opened his hand to show us a yellowish-white,
greasy clot of matter.
'Beeswax,'
he said to us, 'taken from the Zuri's ears. They came prepared to murder us.'
He told
us that eighteen of his warriors had died in the battle, while another fifteen
bore serious wounds. All the Zuri were dead. But one of the Red Priests who
rode with them still lived.
'Come,
Valashu Elahad, you must bear witness to this,' he said to me. 'You, as well,
Kane. And you, Masud.'
We
picked our way across the battlefield until we came to a large rock. The
captured Red Priest had been bound with ropes and cast back against it. His
long, gaunt face, like a living skull, was horrible to look upon. His eyes
radiated both fear and hate. Three Avari warriors stood over him with their
sabers drawn. Laisar and Maidro stood there, too. Laisar held in his hand a
large, green bottle. He showed it to Yago and said, 'Poison - taken from the
priest's saddlebags. It is proved beyond any doubt: the Morjin thing and his
priests are all poisoners!'
And
Maidro added, nodding at Yago, 'Surely they would have poisoned our wells,
too.'
While
the Avari went about preparing their dead for burial and tending their wounded,
Master Juwain and Liljana came down from the rocky heights above - Maram and
Atara, too. When Yago asked after Turi, Liljana coldly informed him that
children had no place on a battlefield; Turi, she said, was safe in the company
of Daj and Estrella.
'But
the children need water,' she croaked out in a voice as dry as dust. 'We all
do.'
Some of
the Avari were surprised to learn that we had brought children with us, for
Sunji had not yet had time to inform them of this. One old warrior, as tall as
I, shook his head disapprovingly as he said, 'Children drink water even more
quickly than a hot wind.'
Liljana,
I thought, was ready to walk over and rip free the water-skin from the back of
the warrior's horse. Then she espied the captured priest, and her whole body
shuddered with revulsion. 'I know you - you were there that day in the
throne room! You put the irons in the fire, the ones they used to burn
Master Juwain! You were only a guard, then, filthy torturer!'
The
priest looked up at her and said, 'Lord Morjin rewards those who serve him.
Just as he does those who oppose him. I regret only that he didn't use the
pincers to tear out your filthy tongue and that I won't live to see how
he rewards you. But at least I had the pleasure of seeing him blind the
scryer.'
Although
Atara said nothing to this, I felt a cold rage building inside her. She stood
orienting her blindfold toward the sound of his voice.
'If I
had pincers, now,' he said, 'and my hands were free, I would gladly tear off
her -'
Kane,
stepping quickly over to him, delivered a vicious kick to his mouth, for a
moment silencing him. The priest sat there almost choking on blood and broken
teeth.
Sunji
moved over to Kane and grabbed his arm to keep him from further assaulting the
priest. He told him, 'This poisoner has helped kill my warriors, and his
punishment is for the Avari to mete out.'
'So, we have
grievances, too, as you have heard.' 'Would you kill him so easily then?'
'No,
not easily,' Kane said. 'We have grievances, yes, but even more we have
questions that must be answered.'
'You
may ask all the questions you wish,' Maidro said to him, 'after we have given
the poisoner to the sun.'
As
Maidro explained, the Ravirii tribes, even the Avari, punished well-poisoners
by staking them out naked beneath the blazing desert sun.
'It is
a terrible death,' Maidro said to Kane.
'Terrible,
yes,' Kane said. 'But the pain of it is spread out over too many hours. It
would be better if this priest were made to take his own medicine. Hot irons
would roast him just as well and loosen his tongue more readily!'
'Kane!'
I said to him, hating the dark lights that filled up his eyes. I felt this
darkness inside myself, and hated it even more.
'So,
Val - what would you have us do then? The priest might be able to tell us if
the droghul spoke of things. The droghul might have known what Morjin knows,
eh? It would be folly, I say, to lead the next droghul straight to the
Maitreya.'
'No,' I
said to him, remembering my vow, 'no more torture.'
'But
what if the third droghul,' he persisted, 'is waiting for us? What if this
priest knows where?'
'And
what if he doesn't? Would you have us do this evil thing to him only to achieve
no good end?'
Kane
stood staring at me, and gave no answer, which was answer enough. Then Master
Juwain came forward. He, whose ear opening had been seared by one of Morjin's
fire irons, said to Kane, 'If I can bear to see this man spared such torture,
so can you.'
Liljana,
whose mind Morjin had ravaged, reluctantly agreed with Master Juwain. Then
Atara, gathering in all her memories of that terrible day in Argattha, tapped
the end of her unstrung bow toward the priest and said, 'He is a torturer, and
so it is fitting that he be repaid in kind. He is a crucifier - being staked
out beneath the sun is like unto crucifixion, and only what he deserves.
Justice is hard. But how are we to restore the world as it should be without
justice?'
She
spoke legalistically, with steel in her tongue and a cold heart. She seemed as
opaque and impenetrable as a block of ice. At that moment, I felt that I could
never really know her.
'Justice
the poisoner shall have,' Sunji said to us. 'But we are in the desert now, and
the desert ways shall prevail. Maidro, what do you say to this?'
'I say stake the
poisoner to the sand!' Maidro called out.
'And you,
Laisar - what do you say?'
'Stake
him, and cut off his eyelids that he might meditate on the sun!'
The
Avari, I thought, might be different in some ways from the other Ravirii
tribes, but they were still a cruel, hard people.
I stood
over the bound Red Priest, who tried to show brave but quaked inside with a
terrible fear. If I let these people torture him, how would I be any different from
him? This question enraged me, for I felt myself caught in an inescapable
trap. I burned to put fire to the priest even more badly than did Kane; I
wanted to know what he knew. Even more, I wanted that he should suffer as
Master Juwain and Atara had suffered. I hated the One that had created a world
of such evil need and vengeance - almost as much as I feared what might befall
if we let the priest keep his silence.
'No,' I
said again, drawing my sword, 'no torture!'
The
three Avari warriors who guarded the priest angled their sabers toward me. I
wondered if 1 could cut down all of them before one of them managed to put his
sword into my armorless body.
'He is our
captive!' Sunji called to me. 'He and his kind have killed my warriors! And
foully killed the Masud at their well!'
I felt
him grieving for his dead tribesmen; I had overheard one of the Avari say that
he had lost a cousin and a nephew to the Zuri's swords. I gazed at Sunji, and
at Yago. And I said to them, 'You have lost kinsmen and friends to the Red
Dragon's poisoned claws, and the pain of such loss cannot be measured in
numbers. But I have lost much, too. Four thousand of my countrymen died upon
the Culhadosh Commons. All my brothers. Asaru, the greatest knight in our land,
took a lance through his chest so that I might live. I have promised to join
him in the stars rather than allow what he would have died a thousand times to
prevent.'
I stood
with my sword held back behind my head. Out of the side of my eye, I caught a
gleam of glorre blazing as brightly as the sun. I felt as wild as a thousand
suns. I was ready to stand against all the Avari warriors staring at me in awe,
and if need be, all the armies of the Red Dragon.
Sunji finally
could not bear looking at me. I knew that he did not want any more of his
warriors to die; curiously, I sensed that he likewise did not want them to kill
me. He turned to Yago and said, 'Masud - this stranger brings strange
sentiments into our land. But it was your tribesmen, too, that the poisoner
killed. And so I must ask you, too: what do you say?'
Shawls
still covered the heads of the Avari, so it was difficult to guess what they
looked like, but I thought it impossible that their faces could be any harder
than Yago's face, with its harsh planes, knife-blade of a nose and thin lips
set together like stone. I knew that he wanted to call for the Red Priest to
die in the most painful way possible. And yet he hesitated before speaking. He
looked at me. As I met his gaze, I couldn't help remembering how other Red
Priests had staked my mother and grandmother to wood. I could still feel the
agony of the nails burning through my own hands. I couldn't help wishing that
no one would ever have to die this way again. Yago looked at me for a long time
before he turned to answer Sunji's question.
'The
punishment for well-poisoning is everywhere known,' he said. 'And yet there is
another punishment, much older and less well-known. My great-grandfather told
me of this: that in the old days well-poisoners were made to drink their own
poison.'
'That
is not told among the Avari,' Sunji said. He looked at the green bottle that
Laisar still held, with great care, as he might a scorpion. Sunji continued,
'But it seems to me a just punishment. Fifteen of my warriors are wounded and
must be taken back to my father's hadrah to be cared for. I do not care to
linger here fighting off the vultures and hyenas until the poisoner manages to
die.'
He took
counsel with Laisar and Maidro, who agreed to Yago's proposition. Sunji bowed
his head to me. Then he ordered the priest's bonds untied, and gave him the
bottle of poison with his own hand. He stepped back quickly. Twenty Avari
warriors stood around aiming stones at the priest's head in case he should
attempt any treachery, such as throwing the poison at those who had condemned
him to death.
The
priest, however, was not that brave. Taking even the worst poison would be
better than being staked out in the sun. With a trembling hand, the priest
pulled open the bottle's cork stopper. He had to fight to bring the bottle up
to his lips. And then, as I watched in horror, he threw back his head and
drained the bottle in three huge gulps.
Compared
to the other deaths planned for him, this one was merciful. And yet no death, I
thought, was easy. Almost immediately, the priest's chest began working
violently as he struggled for breath and his lips turned blue. He screamed like
a dog crushed beneath a wagon's wheels. Tremors ripped through his whole body;
as I watched, these intensified into such terrible convulsions that I heard his
bones begin to snap. Blood ran from his nose; he coughed and vomited bright red
blood, and Sen stopped moving. He lay in the dirt whimpering in agony.
Before
anyone could stop me, I raised up my sword and rushed forward. I stabbed the
point of it into the back of the priest's neck killing him instantly. I would
never be sure whether I did this out of pity or hatred for a man who had helped
torture Master Juwain and Atara.
None of
the Avari objected to my hastening his end. The sight of the priest dying had
sickened them, as it had me.
'I
really must have some water,' Lilljana called out. She stood almost faint by
Atara's side, and it seemed the two women practically held each other up. 'I
must take water to the children, now.'
She
looked behind her at a warrior holding a waterskin. And the warrior barked at
her: 'Avari water is for the Avari!'
Liljana
dropped Atara's hand, and she began walking toward one of the riderless Zuri's
horses to appropriate the waterskin slung on its back. But another warrior
blocked her way, saying, 'The Zuri's water belongs to the Avari, too, as
payment for the lives they took.'
Liljana,
now furious, stalked straight up to Sunji and shouted, 'What is wrong with you?
We've been without water a whole day! The children are suffering the worst of
it! They'll die without water!'
Laisar,
the old judge of the Avari, looked at Sunji a moment before turning back to
Liljana. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'They will die anyway. That is the
law.'
'Law?
What law?' Maram bellowed out. Until now, the priest's terrible death had
driven him into silence. 'For mercy's sake, give us a little water!'
The
Avari warriors, seeing Maram's oozing sores, drew back from him as from a
leper. Then Sunji said to him, 'It is our way to kill those who enter our land
uninvited, and it is a mercy that we haven't put you to the sword, for you have
brought here only death.'
'Kill
me then!' Maram said, pulling open his tunic in order to expose his hairy,
much-bitten chest. 'Put your sword through my heart - will be more merciful
than making me die of thirst!'
At
first, Sunji said nothing as to Maram's histrionics. Then he sighed out: 'The
desert is hard, and so are our laws.'
Maram
made no reply to this as he stood gripping his red crystal in his hand.
'The
desert is hard,' Sunji repeated, 'and you are soft. You sweat more than a
horse. You wear garments that invite the sun to steal your water.'
'Then
let us have these robes of the Zuri,' Maram said. 'Give us water, and we'll
leave your lands as quickly as we can.'
'To go
where?' Sunji asked. 'If we gave you water, would you let the Masud guide you
back the way you came, out of the desert?'
'No,' I
said, hoping that I spoke for Maram. 'We must go on.'
'To
find this Maitreya that you told of?'
'Yes,
he,' I said. I stared toward the canyon's mouth, toward the west. 'He is out
there, somewhere.'
'Foolish
pilgrims,' Sunji said to me. 'I know nothing of this Maitreya, but much of the
desert. You cannot cross the Zuri's lands, not now that you have helped kill
the Zuri. Tatuk will be awaiting his warriors' return, and when he sees you
instead, he'll stake you to the sand to make you tell what has
happened here. The Red Priests, as you call them, have made a slave of Tatuk, I
think. I think the Priests have also poisoned the minds of the Vuai in the
south, and so you can't go that way either.'
'Then
there must be another way,' I said to him. 'Help us.'
Sunji
hesitated as he stared at me, but Laisar shook his head at this and said, 'All
other ways, you'll find only death. And so helping you would only be a waste of
water.'
'At
least,' I said, looking at Liljana 'let us take a little water to the children.
Whatever our foolishness, you shouldn't condemn them.'
But it
wasn't to be that we took water to the children. It was they who brought it to
us. As Sunji stood off a few paces conferring with Laisar and Maidro, I overheard
one of them murmur, '... no water. The dead are the dead.' Just then, Liljana
noticed Daj, Turi and Estrella hurrying down through the ravine toward us. She
opened her mouth to scold them for disobeying her and not remaining in the
rocks above. She closed her mouth a moment later. For she saw what we all saw:
the children each bore water-skins, wet on the outside and sloshingly full of
water.
The
Avari warriors stood watching in puzzlement as the children made their way
past the bodies of the dead straight toward us. The warriors' black, hard eyes
told of their suspicion that we had lied to them about our need for water. And
then Daj, in his high, piping boy's voice called out: 'Val! Liljana! Master
Juwain! Estrella found water!'
The
children came up to us, and the whole company of Avari warriors gathered
around. The children, having already drunk their fill, gave waterskins first to
Atara and Liljana, and then to Maram, Master Juwain, Kane and me. Turi seemed
proud to slap one of these wet leather bags into his father's hands. So
astonished were the Avari at this turn of events that none of them, not even
Laisar or Maidro, thought to object that we were still drinking their water.
]They
say she found water,' one of the Avari in the circle around us murmured. 'The
girl did, in the rocks above.'
'Impossible,'
another warrior said. 'There is no water in these hills.'
'There
is water in those skins - where did it come from then?'
After
we had all had a deep drink of water, we passed the water-skins to the thirsty
Avari so that they might drink, too. Then Sunji asked Estrella to show him
where she had found the water. She led us back up through the ravine. We passed
over the shelf of rocks where our horses stood and then scrambled up the rocky
slope behind it. With quick, lively gestures, Estrella pointed out a dark
opening in the side of the hill. Daj explained that in their search for water,
Estrella had found a crack in the rocks, which the children had excavated into
this hole.
'It's a
cave,' Daj said, pointing into the opening. 'It leads down to the water.'
The
opening was just barely large enough to let a single man squeeze through it.
Estrella led the way into the cave, and we followed. Maram declined this new
adventure. As he said, 'In Argattha I went deep into the bowels of the earth,
and never again.' Many of the Avari shared his sentiments, and waited outside
with him. So did Atara. Whatever wonders the cave held, she would not be able
to look upon them.
Estrella
led us down through a tube of rock that opened out and up the deeper in we
went. Master Juwain pointed out patches of goldish-red lichen growing on the
walls and ceiling, and marveled that they seemed to give off a soft, glowing
light. This radiance barely sufficed to illuminate the pendants of rock hanging
down from the ceiling and the pinnacles rising up from the floor. Master Juwain
identified the rock as limestone.
We felt
the presence of water before we saw or heard it, for as we descended the air
grew ever more humid. Estrella practically ran down and around a bend in the
rock, and then drew up short where the cave dead-ended in what seemed a pool of
water. But its rushing sound and the movement of the air above gave me to
perceive that it was really an underground stream. I knelt down by its edge,
and cupped my hands into it. I drank this water; it was cool and sweet just
like the water the children had brought to us.
'It is
a river of water!' Laisar cried out. 'All glory in the One!'
He
knelt down to drink of it, with Maidro and Sunji. Sunji had brought along a dry
waterskin, which he now filled. He stood up and looked at Estrella in awe.
'The
girl found water,' he said, 'and brought us to it.'
'Udra
Mazda,' Laisar intoned, gazing at Estrella. 'All glory in the One.'
'Udra
Mazda,' Maidro repeated, bowing to Estrella.
Sunji
explained that this strange name meant Water Bringer or Water Maker; among the
Avari, no one else was so revered, not even their king.
'You
have brought much death with you,' Sunji said to me. 'But also much life.'
He smiled
as he pointed down into the darkly gleaming river flowing past us. 'That is
life for a thousand Avari.'
In
order to drink, Sunji and his two judges had opened their shawls. I could now
see their faces, and I marveled at what I beheld: their long noses, broad brows
and the stark bones of their cheeks and chins seemed cut out of the same mold
as the faces of the Valari. Their eyes were as my eyes. The signs had been
there from the first, but I had been too thirsty and too full of dread of
battle to see them. Their names recalled those of my dead countrymen: Avram,
Laisu and Sunjay. And my brother, Mandru. Avari sounded nearly like Valari, and
I suddenly knew that we had come across one of the lost tribes of my people.
As I
stared at Sunji, he remarked upon this resemblance that he had noticed in Kane
and me from the first, saying, 'When I saw you, Valashu, I wondered if one of
my tribesmen might once have sired a child stolen away into another land. And
so with Kane. There is a mystery here that I would like to understand. It is
written that all men shall be as brothers. I would wish this of you and Kane.
And Master Juwain and the boy, too - even the fat one. The women shall be our
sisters. And the girl, Estrella, you call her, the Udra Mazda, For the time, at
least, you shall all be of the Avari. And then we shall help you cross the
desert.'
He did not confer
with Maidro or Laisar in this decision, for their bright, black eyes gleamed
with their consent. He dipped his hand into the river and used the water to
wash the dust from my forehead. Then he clasped his wet hand against mine.
'You
must tell me of your homeland,' he said to me. 'You must tell me of your people
that you call Valari.'
Then with a smile, gripping his newly-filled waterskin, he turned to walk up back through the cave and show his people the great treasure that Estrella had found.
Chapter 23 Back Table of Content Next
Later
that afternoon, with the day's heat finally escaping the earth's hold on it, we
said goodbye to Yago and Turi. They would set out for the Masud's country and
the hadrahs in the south where most of his tribe was encamped.
'I
must tell Rodaj of what has happened here,' he said to me as he readied his
horse for the journey. It turned out that he was one of the Masud chief's many
nephews, and he knew Rodaj well. 'He will want to know that the Red Priests
have poisoned the Zuri and Vuai - and I don't mean their wells.'
'Tell
him also,' I said to him, 'to keep watch over the gap in the mountains by which
we came into the desert. There you will find many stone statues. One day the
Red Dragon will send soldiers through it.'
'Thank
you, Valashu Elahad. for giving such consideration to the people of a tribe you
hardly know.'
'I
know you,' I told him.
'And
I know you. It has been a pleasure fighting by your side.'
We
clasped hands, and in his honest, brutal way, he added, 'I don't think you will
live to return from out of the desert, but if you do. I shall ask my uncle to
command that you'll be welcome in the Masud's lands.'
'Thank
you,' I said.
'Thank
you for helping me to avenge my tribesman. It was the best thing I have ever
done, cutting off that Morjin thing's head!'
With that he smiled grimly,
and mounted his horse. He wetched as Turi made his farewells to Daj and
Estrella. Then they turned to ride back down through the canyon and out into
the glowing red desert beyond. We lingered a little longer. With the crisis of pursuit
and battle behind us, Maram complained that his wounds hurt with
particular acuteness. His sores, he said, burned as if someone had rubbed salt
into them, and worse: 'Ah, it's as if something is eating into them - something
is moving there, I can feel it!'
Master Juwain ordered him to remove his tunic, and
this he did. He stood naked like a mountain of hairy white flesh. In the
strong, clear light of the sun, we immediately saw what ailed him: it seemed
that the flies had gotten to a dozen of his sores where his bandages had come
loose, laying eggs there. The eggs must have recently hatched, for now his
sores swarmed with little, squirming maggots.
'Oh, Lord!' Maram bellowed out, shaking his arms and
legs and hopping about madly as if to shake loose the maggots. 'Get them off
me!'
His shouts drew the attention of many Avari, who
gathered around. Master Juwain laid his hand on Maram's shoulder to calm him,
and said, 'We should let these creatures alone. They will eat the dead flesh
and clean your wounds.'
'I don't care!' Maram bellowed again. 'I won't live
like this! I can feel these worms eating me alive, and it's driving me mad!'
His frantic pleas finally persuaded Master Juwain to
debride his sores with a scalpel and tweezers. One of the Avari took pity on
Maram and produced a fresh bit of cloth that Master Juwain cut up into
bandages. It wasn't enough to bind all of Maram's sores, but it would keep the
flies out of the most serious of them.
'This is worse than the Vardaloon,' Maram said to me
as he shooed away a couple of buzzing flies. 'We always knew that accursed wood
would have an end, but it seems the desert goes on forever.'
Later that afternoon, when the Avari had finished
burying their dead, they filled all their waterskins from the river that
Estrella had discovered. They helped the wounded onto their horses and drew up
in a loose formation. My friends and I, now swathed in the robes of the fallen
Avari warriors, gathered near the front, for Sunji had invited us to ride with
him. We set out into the dusk, with the first stars appearing in the heavens
like countless glittering grains of sand.
It was Sunji's intention that we should journey to the
Avari's greatest hadrah, which lay a day's ride toward the mountains to the
north. There we would rest as long as we wished. There, too, Sunji would take
counsel with King Jovayl and the Avari elders as to our best course. 'My
father,' he said as we made our way over the darkening desert, 'will honor my
pledge to help you. Though when he discovers that the girl is an udra mazda, he
will not want to give her up to the desert.'
It was a mystery, he told me, whom the gift of finding
water would touch.
'Such a gift is very rare,' he said, 'for an udra
mazda is born only once every hundred years.'
He told me that he also wished to solve the mystery of
our seeming kinship. As he put it: 'My tribe dwells in the desert, and
so we are counted as being Ravirii. But we Avari are not like the peoples of
the other tribes. The minstrels tell we are not of the desert; they sing that
the Father of the Avari came here from the stars long, long ago.'
As the night deepened and the horses drove their
hooves against the rocky ground, Sunji's account of the Avari's origins
convinced me that they were indeed one the lost tribes of the Valari. Vast
reaches of time and isolation here in the desert, though, had done their work
upon the Avari's collective memory: the facts of history had degenerated into
legend, and legend had become myth. According to the story that Sunji told me,
the Father of the Avari had descended to earth riding upon the back of a fiery
mare named Ea. It had been told that here on this barren world, called the Ar
Ratham, or the Wrath of the One, the Father of the Avari would find the golden
cup that would restore the desert to life and keep it from spreading to devour
the whole of the world.
'After many years of searching over the dunes and
across the burning sands,' Sunji told me, 'the Father of the Avari did indeed
find the Kal Urna, which had been hidden in a cave. Upon drinking of its cool
waters, the burning veils of mirage were lifted from his eyes, and he saw the
world as it might be. He saw his mare, Ea, as she really was, and he gave her
to drink of the waters of the Kal Urna. At once, the fires consuming her were
put out, and Ea stood revealed as a beautiful woman. So happy was she to be
restored to herself that she wept whole rivers of tears. These fell upon the
desert's hadrahs, and there trees grew. But they were not enough to turn the
desert green; only the Kal Urna held so much water. The Father of the Avari and
Ea went forth to bring this sacred water everywhere. But then a man of one of
the Ravirii tribes in his cursed covetousness, cast his evil eyes upon the
golden cup. His name was Ar Yun, which means the Cursed One. Ar Yun stole the
golden cup from the Father of the Avari. It is said that a sandstorm sent by
the One ate the flesh off his bones, and the Kal Urna was lost.'
As we rode past dark clumps of ursage and bitterbroom
forcing their way up through the cracked earth, Maidro and Laisar pressed their
horses in close to hear this telling of the Avari's ancient story. Daj and
Estrella rode next to me, and they seemed eager to hear more. So did Kane. His
eyes, beneath the cowl wrapped around his face, gleamed in the starlight.
'After that,' Sunji went on, 'the Father of the Avari
took Ea as his wife, and she gave birth to our people. For generation after
generation, the Avari have gone into the desert to search for the Kal Urna. It
is said that one day, a great Udra Mazda born of the Avari will restore the
sands to new life.'
I caught Sunji gazing at Estrella as if in hope that
she might be this Udra Mazda. But he shook his head, for it was obvious that
whatever people Estrella claimed as her own, she had not been bojrn of the
Avari.
I said to Sunji, 'What was the name of the Father of
the Avari?'
'We call him Ar Raha, the Beloved of the One.'
I smiled and then told him of the history recorded by my
people: of how Elahad had brought the Lightstone to Ea, only to be murdered
by his brother, Aryu. Aryu, I said, had then stolen the golden cup and fled
with it into the west. Elahad's son, Arahad, had led a vain search for Aryu and
the Lightstone that had lasted a hundred years. When Arahad and his followers
failed to find it, their descendants at last settled in the Morning Mountains
under the leadership of Shavashar, Arahad's son and king of the Valari.
'It must be,' I told him, 'that your people were sons
and daughters of Arahad, too, who remained in the desert. And so the Avari and
the Valari are as one.'
From the back of his horse, Sunji regarded me as we
rode across
the starlit earth.
'Think of the names,' I told him. 'Ea. Ar Raha and
Arahad; Ar Yun and Aryu - these are nearly the same, are they not?'
Sunji admitted that they were, then added, 'And your
people's story is nearly the same as my people's. It is a pity, though, that
many parts of it have been misremembered and come down to you as only myths.'
I smiled again, and was glad for the shawl that hid my
face. I said to Sunji, 'Both our accounts, at least, tell that the Lightstone
will restore the world to new life.'
'I do not know, Valaysu,' he said to me. 'Can the
Lightstone really be the Kal Urna? I think perhaps this golden cup of yours is
only one of your gelstei made after the image of the Kal Urna.'
'That is because you have not held it in your hands
and beheld the stars shimmering inside it.'
'To see is to know,' he said to me as his eyes
gleamed. 'And I would like to know the truth about this Lightstone of yours and
the Maitreya. I will ponder what you have told me, and take counsel with my
father and the elders when we reach Hadr Halona.'
This was the name of the Avari's greatest hadrah.
After a long night's ride through rugged terrain that took us ever higher, with
the Avari warriors and the confiscated Zuri horses strung out in a long line
across the rocky desert, we came to this place of water just before dawn. The
Avari had made a home for thousands of their people in a five-mile wide break
between the mountains. The Hadr Halona proved to be more of a small city than
an encampment. Although many woolen tents had been pitched around springs and
the single lake, many houses had also been built of stone. As Sunji told me,
these had walls ten feet thick and cellars dug thirty feet deep, down into the
ground where it was always cool, even in the blazing heat of summer. But even
the tent-dwellers found life within the hadrah more pleasant than in the open
desert. It was higher here, and therefore cooler. The towering peaks above the
hadrah held snow for at least part of the year, and gave this water to the
Avari in Seams that filled the lake. But most blessed of all were the hadrah's many
trees: mostly the gnarled sakur trees that bloomed yearly with pretty pink
flowers and gave a succulent fruit called a kammat. According to Laisar, it was
a crime punishable by disembowelment to cut the sacred sakur trees for wood.
As we made our way down into the hadrah, sentinels
standing on rocky prominences blew horns to announce our arrival. A thousand
people, it seemed, roused themselves from their beds to come out and greet us.
They stood in robes outside of their tents and houses, and lined the dusty
lanes as we rode past. We created a great stir in the lives of the Avari, for
they rarely welcomed strangers into the hadrah. Then, too, the news of the
battle caused many to shout with excitement at the prospect of dividing up the
Zuri's horses, swords, clothing and other spoils - and it set off rounds of
wailing, too, in those who mourned sons, brothers or fathers killed in battle.
The house of Sunji's father, Jovayl, had been built
near the valley's small, single lake. Compared to the houses around it, it rose
up like a palace; but compared to the palaces of great kings that I had seen,
it was little more than a hut. Its walls were of sandstone, plastered with
dried mud and painted white. Slender sandstone pillars twelve feet high held up
the tiled roof and fronted the house's porch. There, in the dawn's red light.
Jovayl stood waiting to greet us. He was a tall man, like most of his people.
Here, in the hadrah, where he had no worry about losing the moisture of his
breath to the air, he wore no cowl to cover his face. The deep lines cut into
his dark, ivory skin suggested that he had seen more than sixty years. His
features were as aquiline as any eagle's, with a great, broken nose and black
eyes that darted about in quick assessment as we rode up. He seemed more
intelligent than cunning, and less cruel than hard. Sunji told me that the
Avari's king was a simple man and a great warrior who had killed sixty-three
men in battle.
He saw immediately that my companions and I were all
exhausted. He ordered that baths be prepared for us, and food. We were to rest
that day, he said, in his house's deepest rooms, set out with urns of cool
water, bowls of fruit, flowers and fresh linens. Then, in a harsh, old voice
like grinding stones, he told us, 'Tonight we will sit at feast and listen to
the story of the Poisoner with the Voice of Ice and the Udra Mazda.'
We had no trouble heeding his command. The hospitality
of King Jovayl's house afforded us the first real comfort we had known since
leaving the Brotherhood's school many miles and many days before. In a steamy
stone room in the back of King Jovayl's house, we washed the dust and grime
from our bodies; then outside on the porch we filled ourselves with good food.
We lay down to rest in dark, quiet rooms. When evening came, servants brought
us robes woven of virgin lamb's wool. They were King Jovayl's gift to us, and
we were to wear them to the feast.
This commenced at sunset, upstairs in the great room
of King Jovayl's house. We joined King Jovayl's wife, Adri, and Sunji and young
Daivayr in a sort of windowless hall hung with brightly-worked tapestries of
cotton, which proved to be the Avari's most precious cloth. Other guests
included Laisar and Maidro, and four other elders even more ancient. Three
well-seasoned men -captains like Sunji - arrived, too, and their names were
Arthayn, Noldayn and Ramji. We all sat on cushions arrayed in a great circle on
top of a white woolen carpet. A small table, carved out of stone, was set in
front of each of us. King Jovayl sat to the north, beneath a tapestry woven
with silver swans and stars. I nearly wept to see this beautiful thing
appearing as if by the magic of fate here in the middle of the desert.
We ate roasted lamb and kid, the fattest of King
Jovayl's flocks. The Avari grew wheat on irrigated land, and so we had bread as
well, stuffed with bits of garlic, onions and nuts, and hot from the ovens.
With reverence, King Jovayl passed around a bowl of salt to sprinkle on these
meats and breads. There were cheeses, too, and figs, oranges and the plump red
fruit called a kammat. The Avari did not drink blood, as their enemies told,
but they did celebrate with wine, and to Maram's delight, beer. His happiness
in discovering these beverages being passed around the circle, however, lasted
only as long as Master Juwain's murmured warning to him: 'Remember your vow!'
Maram sat next to me, and I heard him murmur back: 'In
the desert, I nearly died of thirst, and now I'm dying of a different thirst,
if you know what I mean. It would be rude of me to refuse King Jovayl's
gracious hospitality, would it not?'
With a great smile he eagerly held up his silver wine
cup.
But when Barsayr, a toothless old man, overheard this
conversation, he passed the word to King Jovayl that Maram's vow of abstinence
must be respected. And King Jovayl, sitting with his cup full and waiting to
make a toast, raised his cup to Maram and called out, 'It takes a brave man to
make and keep such a vow, and we all honor you. But you must toast with us, and
so you shall have the most honorable of all drinks.'
He then asked one of his daughters, Saira, to fill
Maram's cup with mare's milk. When this tall, pretty girl had carried out this
request, Maram took a long look at the warm, greasy white liquid in his cup and
muttered, 'Milk - it's barbaric to drink an animal's secretions. I might as
well be made to drink a horse's saliva or sweat!'
'You didn't object to drinking the Ymanir's kalvaas,'
I reminded him.
'That's because it was, ah, fermented. Besides, my
sensibilities have grown more refined.'
He smiled politely, though, when King Jovayl lifted up
his cup and spoke a requiem in remembrance of the Avari warriors who had fallen
in the Battle of the Dragon Rocks, as they named it. After that, other Avari
made other toasts: to King Jovayl's guests and to the nighttime sky, and most
especially, to the new water that Estrella had found and to Estrella herself.
'It is strange that an udra mazda should come to us
from beyond the desert,' King Jovayl said to us. He sat cross-legged on his
cushions as he looked at me. 'And strange, too, that you propose to take this
girl away from us so soon.'
During the feast, we had told the King as much as we
had Sunji and his warriors. For hours, our talk had centered around the news that
we brought and the seemingly miraculous things that we told to the Avari. Now
it had come time to decide if King Jovayl would help us.
'Valaysu,' he said to me, 'you have told that you seek
the one called the Maitreya in the lands across the desert, but you have not
said where.'
'Nor can I, sir,' I said. 'It may be that your people
will fight other battles with the Red Dragon's priests - if they are captured,
the Kallimun know tortures that would make a stone talk.'
King Jovayl frowned at this. 'When I was a young man,
these priests tried to establish an embassy here, but my father, Tavayr, had
the good sense to send them away. Now, from the Zuri and Vuai, we see what
happens when a tribe takes scorpions into its heart.'
He paused to look about, and continued, 'We see as
well the wisdom of our elders' elders in turning strangers away from the
Avari's country.'
I said nothing to this as I took a long drink of wine.
'Of course,' King Jovayl continued, looking from me to
Estrella, 'our laws were made to serve us, and not the reverse, and so
exceptions must be made. It is clear that in keeping strangers away we have
also denied ourselves news of great and evil things occurring beyond our
borders. I had not thought that any outsiders, not even the greatest of kings,
could ever send an army into the desert. Now I am not so sure.'
He nodded at Arthayn, a square-faced man with eyes as
cool as pools of water. A choker of bright skytones and silver encircled his
neck. Arthayn had just returned from the north, where King Jovayl had sent him
on a mission to avoid yet another war with the Sudi. Arthayn now gave a report
of his journey, telling us: 'I saw none of these Red Priests in the Sudi's
hadrah, but I heard talk that the new King of Yarkona wanted to send an embassy
of Kallimun to the Sudi. I didn't know what that word meant, then. The
Sudi believed that if they did not accept this embassy, King Ulanu would send
an army down through the Nashthalan into the desert. There was a time when
Yarkona was weak, but now it is strong.' At the look of loathing that fell over
Liljana's face at the mention of King Ulanu's name. King Jovayl turned to her
and said.'Do you know of this man?'
'We met him once,' liljana told him. 'On our
road to Argattha, I happened to hold out a sword just as Ulanu - he was only a
count then - happened to slice off his nose on the tip of it.'
Although Liljana could not smile, her wry words caused
nearly everyone else to smile. Then King Jovayl said to her, 'And you call
yourself a pilgrim?'
'Then we were truly pilgrims,' she said, 'In
quest of the Lightstone. Ulanu killed the best of us - the finest minstrel in
the world! - And then nailed him to a
cross of wood.'
'And what was this minstrel's name?'
'Alphanderry.'
For the thousandth time, I reflected on the miracle of
Flick somehow taking on Alphanderry's face and form. I looked about the room
for Flick's twinkling lights, but as always he winked in and out of existence
according to a will beyond mine.
'A minstrel,' King Jovayl intoned, 'is the beloved of
the One, for his heart sings with the words of the One.'
King Jovayl raised his cup in silent remembrance of
our dead companion. Then he said to me, 'I have taken the counsel of our elders.
We do not believe that this Lightstone that King Morjin claims can be the Kal
Urna. Nor can the Maitreya you seek be the great Udra Mazda - not unless as a
child he was once lost to the Avari and taken into the lands outside the
desert. And yet we do not have claim upon all wisdom. If we are wrong, the
Maitreya must be found and the Lightstone somehow must be taken back. And even
if we are right that the Lightstone is only one of these gelstei of yours, King
Morjin must be denied the use of it lest he send into the desert even worse
things than droghuls. These are strange times, in which strangers can bring an
udra mazda to us and new water be found. And so we have decided to help
you. But help you how?'
'Help us to cross the desert,' I said
simply.
'And how will you,
strangers from wet lands, do this impossible thing even with our help?' King
Jovayl sat on his cushions looking from Liljana to Maram to Daj.
'You cannot cross
it to the far north - the way is too long, and the Sudi would kill you
if thirst didn't first. Beyond the Sudi are the Idi, five hundred miles from
here as the eagle flies to the northwest. The southern way will take you
through the Zuri's or Vuai's country, where the Red 'Priests will surely be
waiting for you now.'
'Perhaps,' Maram said, 'we should then reconsider our
plans. Perhaps we should go back through the Masud's country, and then turn far
south, through Sunguru.'
'No,' Kane barked out. 'In Sunguru, we'll find
hundreds of the bloody Red Priests - and even more acolytes under their
command. As well, the armies of King Angand.'
I took a sip of wine, then said to King Jovayl. 'How would the Avari cross the desert then?'
'We wouldn't,' he told me. 'We don't.'
'But don't your minstrels sing that the Avari have
gone everywhere in the desert, searching for the Kal Urna?'
'That is true, in ages past, we have gone almost
everywhere.'
'Even, then, into the Tar Harath?'
At the mention of this immense hell at the
heart of the Red Desert, King Jovayl's face grew hard and full of dread. So did
the faces of every other Avail sitting down to dinner. King Jovayl said to me,
'I see the turn of your thoughts, Valaysu. But you cannot hope to cross the Tar
Harath. That would be madness. Nothing lives there, not even scorpions or
flies. There is no water - only rocks and sand, wind and sun. And then sun, and
more sun.' 'Then the Avari never go into the Tar Harath?' King Jovayl glanced
at Sunji before turning back to me. 'We go into it, for we are Avari and
the desert is ours.'
He told that men of his tribe often journeyed to the
Golden Highlands to mine skystone out the rocks there. The deep blue skystone,
as King Jovayl told us, was precious to the Avari, for it reminded them of the
great vault of the heavens from which the Father of the Valari and Ea had once
come. A few intrepid warriors had also ventured deeper into the Tar Harath in
search of the fabled salt beds of a dried-up lake. As the Avari tell their
children: 'Safe is life.' They usually do not say this of water, for that is
too obvious. But in the desert, the salt dissolved in the blood and in the
sweat pouring forth from the skin's pores was vital.
'In a thousand years, though, no Avari has ever found
these salt beds,' King Jovayl told us. 'Just as no one has ever found water.'
Old Sarald pulled at the folds of flesh beneath
his chin as he regarded King Jovayl with a bright, knowing look. King Jovayl
took note of this and said to me, 'The eldest of the Avari's judges reminds me
that I have not told all: it is said that there is water in the deep desert,
though no Avari knows where. You must have heard word of this water yourselves,
Valaysu.'
'No, we have not,'
I said to him. 'Why would you think that?'
'Why, because when Sunji first questioned you, you
admitted that you sought the Well of Restoration. That is the name of the water
said to lie within the Tar Harath.'
I stared at King Jovayl in amazement. The inspiration
for our story that we were pilgrims seeking the Well of Restoration had come
from Maram one night on the Wendrush while he was deep into his third horn of
beer. It seemed too incredible a coincidence that this name had just popped
into his head, as he had claimed. When I turned to him now and caught his eye
with a questioning look, he murmured to me: 'Ah, I must have been touched by
the spirit of the One. Do you see now the value of brandy and beer? Why
do you think they're called spirits?'
I tried not to smile at this as King Jovayl called out
to him from the front of the room: 'What are saying, Prince Maram? Speak louder
so that we all can hear you!'
'Ah, I was saying that you must be right. Wise
King, that it would be madness for us to seek this Well of Restoration that
even the hardiest of your warriors has not been able to find.'
Now I stared more intently at Maram, letting him feel
my great desire to journey on.
'Ah, and that is why,' Maram continued, 'we
must try to cross . the Tar Harath after all - we're all mad, as you must have
guessed, even to have come this far.'
Now I couldn't help smiling, nor could King Jovayl or
Sunji or even Old Sarald and many others sitting at their little tables. King
Jovayl nodded at Maram. 'It may be that only a madman could survive in the Tar
Harath. And yet there is a chance for others to survive, one chance only. It
may be that the udra mazda could lead you to this water.'
All eyes in the room now turned toward Estrella. This
slight girl, with her dark curls and dreamy eyes, sat between Atara and
Liljana, eating an orange. She seemed unused to people expecting such great and
even miraculous things of her. And yet I knew that she expected great things of
herself. What these might be, however, I thought that she could not say, not
even to herself.
She put down her orange rind, and looked at me. Her
eyes shone like dark, quiet pools. She seemed to have a rare sense of herself,
and something more. She nodded her head to me. She smiled, then turned to bow
to King Jovayl, too.
'It would be cruel to take this child, or any child,
into the Tar Harath,' King Jovayl said to us. 'And yet your way has been
nothing but cruel. That the udra mazda chooses this freely is a great thing. We
have drunk to her finding water; now let us drink to her finding such great
courage.'
He commanded that everyone's cup be refilled again.
Maram tried not to show his disgust at the prospect of have to swallow yet more
warm milk. Estrella and Daj both seemed delighted to see their cups filled with
wine - as far as I knew, their first taste of it.
'To Estrella!' King Jovayl said. 'May the One's light
always point her way toward water!'
We all drank deeply then - all of us except the
children, as Liljana permitted them a few sips of wine but no more. King Jovayl
then called for an end to the feast and commanded that we should go to take our
rest.
'Even with an udra mazda to guide you,' he said to me,
'a journey across the Tar Harath will be a desperate chance. I cannot supply
you with men, horses and water until I have conferred with the Elders more. So
go, rest - tonight and tomorrow. And then tomorrow night, I shall give you my
answer.'
My companions and I went down to our rooms then, but I
did not sleep very well because I shared a room with Maram, and he slept poorly.
Despite his exhaustion, he kept moaning as he tossed and turned in his bed,
struggling to find a position that did not put pressure on his sores. He
grumbled and cursed and finally fell into oblivion vowing that he would never
ogle another woman again.
But the next day, late in the morning, I found him
outside leaning back against an orange tree near one of the hadrah's springs.
He sat in the shade of this fragrant-smelling tree as he used a shard of a
broken pot to scratch at his sores. He watched the children at play: with
swords and dolls, and kicking a leather ball across the dusty square. He
watched the Avari women, too. They came and went to draw water from the spring.
They cast us looks of both curiosity and suspicion, and then hurried away.
'Ah, these Avari
woman are as comely as those of the Morning Mountains,' Maram said to me as he
fixed his gaze on a young matron bending over the walled-off spring. 'At least,
I think they are - who can really tell with those ugly robes and shawls
of theirs?'
'I thought that
women no longer interested you,' I said to him. 'Did I say that? No, no, my
friend, it is I who do not interest them. In truth, I think I repulse
them. And who can blame them? I think they would rather take a leper into their
arms.'
He scratched the edge of his potsherd across one of
his bandages. After sniffing at this stained white wrapping, his face fell
into a mask of disgust. He shooed away the buzzing flies then let loose a long,
deep sigh.
'Master
Juwain,' I said to him, 'worries because your wounds are not healing as they
should. He believes it would be best for you to rest here.'
'A year would not be too long,' he said. 'That is, if
I could just engage one of these women in a little, ah, conversation. And if
not for these damn flies.'
His hand beat the air in front of his face as he tried
to snatch up and crush one of the black flies bedeviling him. But he might as
well have tried to grasp the wind.
'Master Juwain,' I said to him, 'believes that it
might be best for you to remain here.'
'Remain here?' he said to me. 'And watch the rest of
you go on without me?'
I said nothing as I watched him scratch at his bitten
leg.
'Ah, do you think I haven't thought about it?' he said
to me. 'I don't suppose these Avari would deny me wine, though they'll keep
their women away from me as they would silk from a pig.'
He made a fist and punched out at a particularly
large, loud fly. Then he said, 'The truth is, though, no matter how drunk I
tried to remain, I couldn't get away from these damn bloody flies. Unless I go
with you into the Tar Ha rath, where there are no flies, if King Jovayl is
right. Then too. . .'
'Yes?'
'Then, too, I could never desert you,' He dropped his
potsherd and clapped me on the shoulder. 'Haven't I told you that a hundred
times?'
We traded smiles, then he said to me, 'In any case.
King Jovayl might decide not to help us. Then we'll have the merry little
choice between giving up our quest or going into the Tar Harath anyway where we'll
die.'
I knew that he hoped for a good reason to give up our
quest -and perhaps even longed for death to end his sufferings. But that
evening. King Jovayl, according to his promise sent us word of his decision.
Sunji found me outside King Jovayi's house as I sat on a large rock and gazed
out at the stars.
'You shall have my father's help in crossing the Tar
Harath,' he told me. 'I, myself, am to to lead three of our warriors and twenty
horses to carry water across the sands.'
'Thank you,' I told him. 'The Avari are generous. And
kind.'
'Sometimes we are. But some of the elders, I must tell
you, spoke against this journey. They do not believe this Maitreya you
hope to find really exists.'
'And you?'
'I have seen that Morjin thing you call a
droghul. If such crea-tures of dark exist, why not a being of great light?'
Why not indeed? I wondered as I watched the bright
stars.
'The elders,' he went on, 'believe that we Avari can
live here as we have almost forever, keeping strangers away. But my
father does not. and I do not. I believe that we will have to fight this new
enemy, or die. Or worse: watch the world die.'
I clasped hands with him then and smiled sadly. Sunji,
descended
from Elahad and Arahad, was of Valari blood, even as
I was. It seemed that it was the fate of our people ever to fight against
the evil that Morjin and Angra Mainyu had made - that is, when we weren't busy
fighting each other.
Sunji pointed at the dark line of hills against the
glowing sky to the west. He said to me, 'I went into the deep desert once, and
promised myself I never would again. But life is strange, is it not?'
Yes, life was strange
and precious, I told myself as I watched the play of lights that pointed the
way to the Tar Harath. We might yet come to death there, or anywhere, but for
the time being at least our quest to find the Maitreya would go on.
Chapter 24 Back Table of Content Next
For four days my companions and I rested at the Avari's hadrah. We ate good food and enjoyed good conversation, even as Maram bemoaned his wounds that wouldn't heal and beat away the biting black flies. King Jovayl sent out warriors and horses heavily laden with water into the west. The only well between the hadrah and the Tar Harath lay sixty miles toward the setting sun; no one knew whether or not at this time of year it would prove to be dry. As we learned when the warriors returned, the well was dry. And so the warriors had left a cache of water at the well. It wouldn't be enough to get us across the Tar Harath, but it would help us replenish the water that we brought with us. Hours before dawn on the twenty-third of Soldru, a day that promised to be as hot as any that summer, all who would be journeying into the Tar Harath gathered by the springs. We filled our waterskins and slung them on the backs of our horses. The pack-horses, of course, carried much more water than did our mounts and remounts - unless one considered that Altaru and Fire and our other old friends carried us, who were mostly water. I nearly wept when I learned of the Avari's plan for the horses, which was cruel: their packhorses would be given barely enough water to keep them alive. And then, if no additional water was found, as we and our mounts drank our precious water and lightened the packhorses' burdens waterskin by waterskin until nothing remained, the Avari would have to kill the now-useless horses to spare them from a worse death. As I had been told more than once: the ways of the desert were hard.
'If the
worst befalls,' Sunji said to me, 'we'll have to reserve our water for ourselves and let our mounts go without. Not that this will save us for
long, for if our mounts die, then we will die.'
In the quiet of the dark, with night's cold
practically freezing us, I placed my hands over Altaru's ears so that my great
stallion wouldn't have to hear such terrible words. I stroked his long neck and
whispered to him: 'Don't worry, old friend, I won't let you be thirsty. You
shall have water first before I drink, and if I must, I'll give you my own.'
He nickered in understanding, if not of my words, then
of the bond of brotherhood that had taken us from land to land and battle to
battle.
Sunji had chosen companions from his own tribe to go
with us: Arthayn and a younger man named Nuradayn, whose black eyes burned with
a desire to please his prince and do great things. Nuradayn seemed all whipcord
muscle and quick, almost violent motions that blew out of the center of him
like a whirlwind. I thought he might be impulsive or even wild, whereas I knew
that Sunji's third companion was the opposite. This was Maidro. It surprised me
that Sunji would choose an old man for such a difficult venture, but as Sunji
told me: 'He is as hard as a rock and wiser in the ways of the desert than any
man I know, even my father.'
When it came time for us to set out, King Jovayl rode
up to the springs with his queen, Adri, and their two other children, Daivayr
and Saira. They kept their farewell to Sunji brief. I overheard King Jovayl
say to Sunji: 'Help Valaysu and his people to cross the desert, but do not go
any farther than you must, and return as soon as you can. May the One always
lead you to water.'
We assembled in a formation with Sunji and Maidro in
the lead, followed by my companions and me, and then the packhorses, whom
Arthayn and Nuradayn watched over. We made our way out of the hadrah as we had
come, past the sentinels standing on high rocks. This time, in the deep of night
before dawn, they did not blow their horns. I couldn't help wondering if Sunji
and his warriors would ever return out of the Tar Harath to be heralded as the
brave men they truly were.
Sunji led us on a course that wound through a series
of low, rocky hills. In the near dark, we moved slowly lest one of the horses
bruise a hoof and draw up lame. If a horse grew too lame, we would have
kill it, and so come that much closer to killing our chances of success - as
well as ourselves.
Just before dawn Flick made one of his mysterious
appearances. Our four Avari companions marveled at his twinkling lights, and we
explained as much as we knew of this luminous being. Maidro took this as a good
omen, saying, 'Look - Valaysu brings the veil stars with him!'
An hour later the sun rose, and cast long shadows
ahead of us against the gritty, hardpacked earth. Here, in the country near the
hadrah, many things lived: ursage and bitterbroom, spike grass and soap grass,
all glazed with a sticky, whitish alkali. Ostrakats ran across the desert on
their two powerful legs chasing lizards and snakes, and even rabbits. We heard
the roar of the distant lions who sometimes chased them. Other birds - the
smaller sandrunners and rock sparrows - hunted beetles, grasshoppers and other
insects. I was curious to lay eyes upon a strange creature that supposedly
lived in these hills. Maidro called it a baboon, and said that the males
protected their harems and young from the hyenas by the mere display of their
hideous blue and red faces.
As we made our way west, the desert grew drier. The
ursage and rockgrass thinned out, leaving the horses little forage. Soon they
would have to subsist on the grain that the packhorses carried, along with the
water. It was not good for the horses to go without grass, but there was no
help for it. I prayed that in the Tar Harath, they wouldn't grow so hungry and
maddened by thirst that they tried to eat sand.
After only a few hours into this leg of our journey, I
noticed that Maram was having a very hard time of things. Every lurch and jolt
against his saddle tormented him; he bit his own lip against the pain of his
sores to keep from making complaint. Only the barbark nuts that he chewed, I
thought, and some fierce inner fire kept him going.
He did not want to arise from our midday break; I felt
him almost flogging himself to drive his great, afflicted body forward. That
night, with the wind driving fine particles of grit into our mouths and eyes,
he dismounted and collapsed down onto the warm ground. He ate the food that
Liljana prepared for him with little enthusiasm. I knew that he was close to
giving up hope.
Seeing this, I took Master Juwain aside and said to
him, 'Maram is failing.'
'I'm afraid he is,' Master Juwain said to me. 'I don't
know how to help him. All my ointments and medicines have availed not at all.'
'There is one medicine we might try.'
Master Juwain cast
me a knowing and censorious look, and said, 'Do you mean the brandy? It would
do nothing to heal him.'
'It wouldn't heal his body,' I admitted. 'But if we
can strengthen his spirit, it might help him bear the grievances to his body.'
Master Juwain thought about this and smiled sadly.
'Why else would brandy be called "spirits"?'
'Just so,' I said, smiling too.
'I don't know,' Master Juwain said. 'If Maram had
fallen into an icy river, and we had pulled him out and sat him by a fire,
well, yes - then a tot of brandy might warm him. But I'm afraid that here in
the desert it would serve only to parch him even more.'
'Only a tot, sir. And if that is too much, then just a
taste. It can't parch him any more than this damn, dry wind.'
Master Juwain finally agreed to my proposal. He
himself dug out one of the- brandy bottles and measured a few drams of it into
Maram's cup. When he approached Maram with it, Maram sat up and brightened like
a boy on his birthday. As his hand closed around the cup, he cried out to
Master Juwain, 'Oh, Lord! Oh, my Lord! Thank you, sir - may your breath be
blessed for taking pity upon a poor pilgrim!'
In a blink of an eye, Maram tossed down the brandy. It
instantly excited his thirst for more. When he understood that no more rations
would be forthcoming that night, he seemed crestfallen. But only for a moment
for it occurred to him that if Master Juwain had consented to giving him this
'medicine' once, he might again.
'Tomorrow night, then?' Maram said to Master Juwain.
'I can't promise you that,' Master Juwain told him. 'It will depend on the
need.'
'Oh, there'll be need enough,' Maram said,
picking up his potsherd to scratch at his sores. 'I can promise you that.'
'We'll see. After another day's journey and thirty or
forty miles of heat and dust, you might want only water to drink.'
But Maram appeared not to hear him. He gazed out into
the dark distances to the west and murmured to himself: 'Ah, forty miles, then
- forty miles equals one cup of brandy. Do you think I don't have the strength
to journey forty thousand miles?'
That evening the wind blew even harder and beat
against the walls of the three large tents that the Avari had brought with them
and quickly erected. Maidro didn't like this wind any more than he had the heat
of the day, for it stole too much moisture from us and made us even more
thirsty. Heat and wind, sweat and water, miles behind us and miles still to
come - these were the equations that concerned the Avari. Neither Maidro nor
Sunji, however, shared Kane's concern that we should stand watches in order to
protect our encampment -at least not at first. As Sunji told us: 'The Zuri will
not send more of their warriors into our land to be slaughtered so soon, and
for the time, we are at peace with the Sudi. We have no other enemies, and even
if we did, they would be unlikely to come across us here, so close to the Tar
Harath.'
Kane, standing near one of the tents to survey the
rocky terrain about us, squinted against the wind and said to Sunji: 'So, now
that you've slaughtered four of Morjin's priests along with the Zuri, you've
gained another enemy, and the worst one yet. Then, too, we've reason to suspect
that Morjin will unleash another of his cursed droghuls upon us.'
At this, he glanced at Atara, who stood over by the
horses brushing down her mare, Fire. I looked at her, too. According to her
scryer's way, she said nothing about the third droghul that she had foretold,
nor about any other vision. In truth, she had said nothing at all to me since
our disagreement over the fate of the captured priest. Her coldness toward me
cut as keenly as the chill of the desert night.
'Do you believe,' Sunji said to Kane, 'that this
droghul is close?'
Kane glanced at me, and I shook my head. And Kane said
to Sunji, 'We've no reason to think so. But then, we've no reason to think not.'
'Then perhaps you should remain awake to watch for
him,' Sunji said with a yawn. 'But I would advise you to rest - in the desert,
exhaustion can kill as surely as poison or swords.'
With that, he went inside his tent to take a few hours
of sleep along with his three tribesmen. Atara, Liljana and Estrella shared the
second tent, while I squeezed inside the third with Maram, Master Juwain and
Daj. Kane, as stubborn as a stone, stood outside looking out at the darkened
land around us and sniffing at the wind.
It blew incessantly all night, right through the
tents' tightly woven wool, covering us with a fine powder, I found myself
grateful for the shawl wrapped around my mouth and nose, though I hated feeling
smothered by this mask of warm, moist wool almost as much as 1 did its itch and
fusty stench. The Avari I thought, might have inured themselves to the desert
and all of its insults, but I never would.
We roused ourselves three hours before dawn. The four
Avari breakfasted on some bread, dried antelope and a handful of figs, and we
did the same. We fed the horses their rations of grain, then rode on into the
coldest part of the night.
It was strange, I thought, how we all welcomed the
rising of the sun almost as much as we dreaded it. The hellish sun could be
death but it was also life, even here in the desert. For a couple of hours, as
the hills gave out and we rode across a gravel plain, the sun fell upon our
dusty robes and warmed us. Then it grew too warm, and then hot. We
sweated even more than did the horses, whose dusty coats turned into masses of
muddy hair.
Later that morning we reached the last well before the
Tar Harath. The Avari, hundreds of years ago, had dug a hole down through the
bottom of an old lake-bed and built a stone wall around it. While Sunji and his
people pulled up the waterskins that Jovayl's warriors had dropped down into
the well, Maram sprawled out beneath our hastily erected sun cloth. He was so
tired that he could hardly move. Flies buzzed around him trying to get through
his stained robes to his raw, oozing wounds beneath. Master Juwain brought him
a cup a water, which he gulped down in two swallows. Then he looked up at
Master Juwain with the sorrowful eyes of a dog and begged for a bit of brandy.
'No - no more,' Master Juwain said. 'At least not
until day's end.'
'This is the end,' Maram moaned. 'I don't know
if I can get back on my horse.'
'You can,' I said to him. 'You must.'
'How many more miles, then, until we break for the day?
Fifteen? Twenty?'
'It doesn't matter,' I said, smiling down at him. 'It
doesn't matter if it's twenty thousand miles - we must keep on going.'
'Oh, Val, I don't know!' Maram said as he beat his
fist at the flies attacking his eyes. 'I don't know, I don't know!'
I walked off near the well to confer with Master
Juwain - and with Kane, Atara and Liljana. To Master Juwain, I said, 'It is too
much for him. Perhaps you should use your gelstei to try to heal him.'
Master Juwain
brought out his green stone, which gleamed like an emerald in the strong
sunlight. He said, 'No - we've agreed that it's too dangerous to use, now.'
'And dangerous if
you don't use it. Maram might die.'
Master Juwain rubbed the back of his head, now
swaddled in dusty white wool. He stared at his sparkling crystal and said, 'I'm
afraid that the Red Dragon can feel me contemplating using this, even
across deserts and mountains.'
'Perhaps he can,' I said as I drew my sword. I nodded
at Kane and then Liljana. 'Perhaps we can confuse him then. If Liljana were to
put her mind to her gelstei at the same moment that Kane used his, then -'
'Then they both might die even before Maram does.'
These ominous words came from Atara. She stood beneath
the blazing sun rolling her scryer's sphere between her hands. I bowed my head
because I knew that she was right. And she said to me, 'If any of us should try
to distract Morjin, it should be me.'
'No,' I told her, squinting against my sword's
brilliant silustria. 'It should be me. Of all of us, Morjin has yet to
find his way into my gelstei.'
'And that is precisely why your use of it won't
distract him.'
As Sunji and the other Avari warriors looked on and
Daj and Estrella watered the horses, I swung Alkaladur in a bright arc against
the sky. 'If I could make Morjin feel the true power that I have sensed within
this sword, then I might do more than distract him.'
'Yes, you might die,' Atara said to me coldly.
'And you?' I said to her, looking at her diamond-clear
crystal. 'Would not using your gelstei be just as dangerous?'
'No, I don't think so. Morjin might try to show me the
worst of torments, but what is that against what he has already taken from me?'
I remembered how Atara had once shared with me one of
her terrible visions, and I said, 'He might trap you inside a world from which
there would be no escape.'
Atara tapped her fingers against her blindfold. With
the shawl wrapped over her nose and mouth, the whole of her face was now lost
beneath coverings of cloth. 'The world is all darkness now, and what could be a
worse trap than that?'
'No,' I said, resting my hand on her arm. I can't let
you.'
She pulled away from me and gripped her sphere more
tightly as she told me, 'You can't stop me. And you mustn't.'
We all finally agreed that Master Juwain should try to
heal Maram, with Atara's help. When we put our proposal to him, he quickly
consented, for he did not want to live another day scratching at his sores, or
so he said. We helped him strip off his robes. I gritted my teeth against the
sight of the bites marking nearly every part of his body. Some had grown scabs
but many remained raw and open. Estrella and Daj came over and used cloths to
shoo away the flies that buzzed around these ugly wounds. Master Juwain knelt
next to Maram; he held his varistei over the cavities that Jezi Yaga had bitten
out of Maram's chest. Atara stood ready with her clear crystal cupped in her
hands. Sunji and the other Avari looked on in fascination and dread.
Master Juwain closed his eyes in meditation. Atara
stood as still as a pinnacle of rock. After a while. Master Juwain looked down
upon Maram with intense concentration. He gazed at his green gelstei, which he
rotated slightly as if feeling for currents of life inside Maram that only he
could perceive. We all remembered how the healing light from this crystal had
made whole the arrow wound in Atara's lung and saved her from death.
'Hurry!' Maram said to Master Juwain. Despite the
children's best efforts, the flies moved more quickly than their hands, and
several flies had already found their way to wounds along Maram's legs and were
busy sucking up the fluids that leaked out of him. 'Please, please - hurry!'
In a flash of light, soft green flames streaked out of
both ends of Master Juwain's crystal. They bent downward and joined together in
a glowing emerald ball. Then, like a fountain, this radiance fell down and
filled the whole of one of Maram's wounds. I could almost feel the cool,
healing light working its magic on Maram's tortured flesh.
'Oh, the pain!' Maram murmured out. 'The pain is going
away!'
I looked over at Atara, all wrapped up in cloth like a
mummy. She didn't move; it seemed that she didn't breathe.
'Good!' Maram murmured to Master Juwain. 'Ah, very
good!'
I held my breath as the edges of the wound, touched with
the fire's mysterious power, drew in and knitted together into a seamless
expanse of hairy skin. I couldn't help smiling in triumph at this miracle.
Master Juwain repositioned his crystal above the wound
torn out of the other half of Maram's chest. A fiery green light poured out of
it. Maram smiled as this light fell upon him and suffused his flesh; then,
without warning, his lips pulled back into a grimace. The light flared greener
and brighter, deeper and hotter. And then, quickly, even hotter. It grew so
hideous and hot that it seemed much more fire than light. Maram shouted to
Master Juwain, 'Stop! Take it away! You're burning me, damn it!'
But Master Juwain, it seemed, could not take the
crystal away. His fingers locked around it, and he stared down at Maram as a
hideous light filled his gray eyes. And still the terrible fire poured out of
his crystal and seared deeper into Maram's chest.
'Stop! Please! Stop, damn you! You're killing me!'
Maram, too, tried to move, but it seemed that some
terrible thing had a hold of his nerves and muscles so that he could not roll
out of the way. Kane and I dosed in on Master Juwain then. We each grabbed one
of his elbows and lifted him away from Maram. We carried him ten feet out into
the desert. This availed Maram not at all, however, for the fire still erupted
from the varistei and now snaked through the air in a streak of green to find
its way into Maram's wound.
'Stop! Stop! Stop!'
Almost without thinking, I held out my hand to try to
stop this strange fire that might soon kill Maram. It passed right
through my flesh without the slightest burn, leaving me entirely untouched. It
continued flaring and twisting through the air, and sizzling into Maram's
chest.
'Val, your sword!' Kane cried out to me.
I remembered that the silustria, along with its other
powers, could act as a shield against various energies: vital, mental or even
physical. I let go of Master Juwain and drew my sword again, I sliced it down
through the green fire, then held it still, letting the fire rain against it.
Like a mirror, its brilliant surface reflected the varistei's light back into
the varistei. Master Juwain's crystal grew quiescent then. It took only a
moment for the spell to be broken.
Master Juwain's eyes suddenly cleared, and he dropped
his crystal down into the dirt. He ran back over to Maram, knelt down and
rested his hand on Maram's chest. I expected to see the wound all black and
charred; instead, it gaped raw and red as freshly flayed meat. It seemed that
the evil fire had drilled deep into Maram's muscle, almost down to the bone.
Strangely, the terrible wound bled only a little.
'I'm sorry,' Master Juwain said, brushing back the
hair out of Maram's eyes. 'I'm sorry. Brother Maram!'
For a few moments, Maram could do nothing more than
grimace and groan. And then he clasped Master Juwain's hand and said, 'It's all
right - I forgive you. But please remember that I'm still Sar Maram.'
Master Juwain walked off to retrieve his crystal which
he dropped into his deepest pocket as if he never wanted to see it again. He
returned with a wad of cotton: he pressed it down into Maram's newly excavated
wound and wrapped a long strip of cotton around Maram's chest and back to hold
it in place. By way of explanation, he said to us, 'Never again. I nearly
killed Maram, and the Lord of Lies nearly made me into a ghul.'
I stood near Atara, who remained motionless. I help up
my sword toward the east as if to reflect back any illusions or evil visions
that might emanate from that direction. I had no sense that my efforts aided
Atara at all. But at last, the spell that had seized her, too, was broken.
Atara put away her scryer's crystal and called out,
'Is Maram all right?'
'Yes,' I told her, although this wasn't quite true. I
grasped her arm, and wished that I could look into her eyes. 'Are you all
right?'
She made no reply to this, directly. All she would say
was: 'The world ... is more than it seems. There are worse things than
anything I ever imagined.'
Sunji and Maidro stepped closer then. Maidro looked
from Master Juwain to Maram and said, 'If that wasn't sorcery, then I never
hope to see such.'
Master Juwain explained more about the making and
wielding of the gelstei crystals: what little had been passed down through the
ages. Then he said, 'What once was called art is now wrongly called sorcery.
Though if you wish to call the evil usage of these crystals sorcery, I
won't dispute you.'
Liljana came over with a cloth soaked in an infusion
made from kokun leaves, which was the only thing that eased the pain of Maram's
flesh, at least for a time. She washed his body and tended his wounds with a
gentleness that surprised me.
I expected that having suffered this new outrage that
had nearly killed him, Maram might call for us to return to the Avari's hadrah.
Instead he called for brandy.
'Ah, Master Juwain,' he said, tapping his hand lightly
over his chest, 'it was you who drilled this hole in me, and so it is upon you
to fill it in the only way that will truly help.'
So great was Master Juwain's guilt that he did not
gainsay Maram's request. None of us did. Master Juwain poured much more than a
few drams of brandy into Maram's cup, then watched as Maram drank it
slowly.
'Thank you, sir,' Maram said. He sat up and ran his
finger around the bowl of his cup, then licked it. 'You've made a new man of
me.'
He held out his
cup and gazed at the bottle of brandy that Master Juwain held in his gnarled
hand.
'No, no more,' Master Juwain told him. 'At least not
now. If you need a little at the end of the day, you shall have it.'
'Do you promise?'
'Yes, I suppose if I have to, I do promise.'
Maram's eyes gleamed, and a new strength flowed into
him. I watched with amazement as he suddenly stood up to begin dressing. Our
gelstei might hold undreamed-of powers I but so it seemed did a bottle of brandy.
We waited out the worst heat of the day there at the
well, trying to sleep inside our stifling tents. When the killing sun had
dropped much lower in the sky, we set out again to the west. We journeyed long
past dusk and deep into a new series of hills, whose sharp ridgelines
ran north and south. Maram counted out the miles like a miser adding coins to a
vault. But we all knew that at the day's end, like a spendthrift, he would
exchange them all in return for what had become his nightly libation.
Late that evening, we pitched our tent in a narrow
valley between two of these lines of hills. Master Juwain noted that many of
the stones in the valley seemed rounded, as of river stones. He worried that if
a storm came up, the walls of rock around us might funnel the rain into a
flashflood that could drown us.
'If it stormed, we would be swept away,' Maidro
said to him. 'And if we had wings, we could simply fly out of here; indeed, we
could fly clear across the desert.'
Arthayn and Nuradayn laughed at this as if they
thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Sunji looked up at the
glittering sky, unmarred by even a single cloud. And Maidro, taking pity on
Master Juwain, added, 'In Segadar and Yaradar it rains here, torrents and
rivers. But never in Soldru for as long as the Avari have lived in the desert.
So sleep in peace, Master Healer.'
That night, after Master Juwain had rewarded Maram as
promised, we all slept in relative peace, if not in comfort. The rocks
sticking out of the ground bruised us, even beneath our thick furs, and the air
fell almost icy cold. Maram stirred in his sleep and awakened more than once,
moaning at the new pain in his chest. In the hills around us, the hyenas let
loose their eerie cries.
Maram, when it came time to ride again, surprised me
by saddling his horse without grumbling. As he told me in the dark of the
morning before true morning: 'Forty miles we'll cover today, if it's a good
day, and the sooner they are behind us, the sooner I shall have my brandy.'
For a few hours, as we worked our way across the
highlands, we rode through near-darkness. Then the sun's first rays lit the
hills with a golden-red lire. The rocks about us seemed to glow. Sunji,
following an ancient route, led us up through a cleft between two hills as
stark and barren as the moon. They were, he said, the last of this high
country, and they marked the westernmost reaches of the Avari's realm.
'Now you will see,' he told me, turning on his horse
toward me, 'what few men have seen.'
We came out on top of the cleft to behold the vast
reaches of desert that opened out to the north, south and west. The wind, over
the ages, had swept up the sand into mountains. Some of it shone white as the
fine, shell-ground sand along a beach; some of it gleamed as red as the
sandstone pinnacles and castle-like formations that stood even higher than the
great dunes. In places, to the north, the sun fell upon swirls of red sand
embedded in white and caused the dunes to glow with a lovely pink hue unlike
anything I had ever seen. The sky framed this magnificent landscape with a blue
so rich and deep it seemed almost like water. It was all so impossibly
beautiful that I wanted |u» weep.
'The Tar Harath,', Sunji said to me. 'The womb of the
desert.' 'It is ... so lovely,' I said.
'It won't seem so in another three hours.' He pointed
his finger out at the endless sweeps of sand. 'Not once we're out on the Hell's
Anvil.'
'Ah, how far did you say it was across this?' Maram
asked. 'No one really knows,' Sunji told him. 'It would be far, even if we were
to ride as straight as an eagle flies. But if we must turn north or south in
search of water, then. . .'
He did not finish his sentence. And so Maram could not
calculate how many forty-mile segments he must complete in order to earn his
rations of brandy. In any case, as Maidro explained, we couldn't always count
on making forty miles in a day.
'There might be sandstorms that we'll have to wait
out,' he said. 'and that will eat up the hours - and eat the flesh off our
bones if we're impatient. There are quicksands, too, that we must avoid. The
sand itself will tire the horses' legs, ours too when we walk, and so the
journey will go more slowly.'
He said nothing about the sun, which made its way up
the great arc of the sky like a white-hot iron cinder. But Master Juwain had
already explained to us that in the desert the air held too little moisture to
shield against the sun. And here, in the deep desert, the air was so thin and
dry that the sun's fierce rays burned through it like starfire through the
great nothingness of space.
For a while, as we worked down into the Tar Harath,
the hills at our back blocked out the sun. But then we rode out onto the sand,
and the sun rose higher. It streaked down upon us like a rain of flaming
arrows. The sand threw it back into the air so that it seemed that we rode
through a wall of flame. The air here was indeed thin - but not so thin that we
couldn't feel it searing us through our coverings of wool. We rode past
mid-morning, and it grew even hotter. And still the sun rose higher and
brighter and hotter. It flared so hellishly hot that we stopped to pitch our
tents. Climbing inside them provided protection from the sun, but did nothing
to help us escape from the terrible heat.
'It is like breathing fire!' Maram gasped out a couple
of hours past noon. He lay sweating on top of his furs, unable to sleep. 'It is
like being cooked inside an oven!'
Master Juwain, Daj, Kane and I sprawled out on our
furs near him. My robes were a sodden mass of wool smothering me.
'I can't stop sweating,' Maram complained. 'It seems
I'm taking a bath with all my clothes on.'
'Do you see this?' Kane said, kneeling over him. He
ran his finger through the sweat pooling on Maram's forehead. 'This is all that
is keeping you from cooking. Your body is no different than other kinds of
meat. Heat it up enough and it will roast like lamb.'
I did not want to think that the Tar Harath could grow
so hot - or indeed, any hotter at all. But late in the afternoon, as we were
readying ourselves for the second half of the day's journey, Maidro stood in
his steaming woolen robe and shrugged his shoulders. 'This is still only
Soldru - wait until Marud when grows really hot.'
How does one measure heat? An iron thrust into a bed
of coals will glow red before white, but the searing agony of red-hot iron held
against the flesh is scarcely any less terrible, as Master Juwain could attest.
Some say that the dry heat of the desert is not so bad as the swelter of more
humid climes such as the jungles of Uskudar, but I say that these wayfarers
have never ventured into the Tar Harath. There is a heat on earth so hellishly
hot that it drives burning nails into the lungs even as it nearly poaches the
brain. Beyond this degree of anguish, it can grow no hotter, for if it did a
man would die.
That evening, on our ride into the coolness of the
descending dark, I knew that all of our thoughts were on death. Sunji and
Maidro fell into a deep silence, seeming to concentrate on finding the best
route across the soft, shifting sand. I felt within them a deep longing, as for
water, but I sensed that it was really a concentration on the need of life.
They knew better than any of us how easily the desert could snuff it out. Both
the children fought to master their suffering and fear, even as Master Juwain
struggled not to play through his overactive mind multifarious scenarios of
doom. It was Liljana's will, I thought, that if she could just manage to fill
our bodies with good food and our spirits with good cheer, then no doom could
touch us. Maram, of course, sought other means of dealing with the great,
inescapable darkness. As for Kane, with his fathomless black eyes and great
soul, it was his way to take death inside himself and laugh out to the stars
his defiance and glee.
I worried most about Atara, not just because I loved
her beyond all beauty and goodness, but because she revealed to me the least.
She sat on top of her red mare swaddled in her robes and blindfold as beneath
a tent of silence. Outside, the air still swirled up off the ground, dry and
warm, but inside this brave woman welled a terrible coldness.
We made camp that night with one of the desert's
sandstone castles at our back. Dunes had swept over part of this rock formation,
but great mounds of rock two hundred feet high stuck up out of the sand. After
our dinner of dried lamb and wheat cakes, Atara asked me to accompany her in a
short climb up to the rocks behind us. Arm in arm, with Atara pushing her bow
down into the sand with each step, we walked up along the crest of one of these
dunes. We came upon some flat rocks and sat down facing the desert to the west.
In the glittering black distances, Valura, the bright evening star, had almost
set.
'I must speak to you,' Atara said to me, 'before it is
too late.'
She had taken off her head covering so that only her
blindfold remained. I gazed at the gleam of starlight on her face as I took her
hand in mine. Her skin, like the rocks around us, was quickly losing its heat
to the night.
'I was wrong,' she said, 'after the battle in that
canyon. To call for the priest to be staked out to die in the sun - so
horribly, horribly wrong. I called it justice. It was only justice,
truly. But who of us desires that? Who would wish it upon herself?'
'Not I,' I said.
I thought of all the men I had slain -- and of their
widowed wives, vengeful brothers and children left with no one to protect or
provide for them. I thought of my brothers, and my father and mother,
and all my friends and countrymen who had died because I had told a single lie.
'It's kindness we need,' she said to me. 'And
forgiveness.'
'But you've done nothing for which you need to be
forgiven. Nothing more than anyone.'
'Haven't I? In the Skadarak -'
'Let's not speak of that place here,' I said to her.
'We've trials and torments enough ahead of us.'
'We do. You can't imagine .. .'
I looked at her and said, 'Tell me, then.'
'No, I'm sorry, I can't tell you. I can't even
tell myself.'
I felt a coldness pulsing through her wrist, and I
said, 'I've never seen you like this before.'
She fell quiet as she seemed to listen to the wind
rattling sand against the rocks around us. Then she said, 'I'm so afraid. So
horribly, horribly afraid.'
'You?'
She nodded her head. 'I think we will all die. And
worse, before we die.'
I gripped her hand too tightly. It was one thing when
Maram voiced such sentiments; it was another when Atara, greatest of scryers,
spoke of such doom.
'You won't tell anyone I said that, will you?
Especially not the children. I'm so afraid for the children.'
'As long as we're all right,' I reassured her, 'they
will be all right.'
This, I thought, was something that Liljana might say.
Too often, it seemed a little lie that I told myself.
'I'm so useless, now,' Atara said to me. 'I failed you
again in the battle with the droghul. His voice! The Voice of Ice, the Avari
call it. I should have fired an arrow through his throat!'
'It will all come back,' I said to her, squeezing her
hand. 'Your sight, and more - I know it will.'
She shook her head at this, and fell again into
silence. Her whole body seemed ready to shiver against the cold, driving wind.
'In the Skadarak,' she murmured, 'did you never think
of leaving me behind?'
'No - I could never leave you!'
I would die, I told myself, a thousand times to keep
her alive.
She sat shaking
her head. The coldness spread out from her center into her limbs and hands. Her
fingers pressed hard against mine as if feeling for something deep and
indestructible.
'I think you could have,' she said to me. 'No -
never!'
'I think that any of us could,' she said. 'There's
always a choice, isn't there? These terrible, terrible choices of life. We're
always so close to making the wrong choice. It's always there, the yes
and the no, and I can't get away from it. It's like trying to flee from Morjin:
the farther we go into the wilds of Ea, the more surely he finds us out and the
nearer he seems. But I must escape it, don't you see? I can't live with
the horror of it all.'
I listened to her breath push in and out of her chest.
I said, 'But you must live. You can't give up - I won't allow it.'
Her voice softened as she said, 'You won't? Then help
me, please.' 'How?'
She reached down to grab up a handful of sand. She sat
letting the grains run through her fingers onto the rocks below us. 'What
others feel inside them, you are able to feel, too. Sometimes, you can even
touch them with your fire, your dreams. Can you not, then, take their
nightmares away?'
I slowly shook my head. 'I'm not the Maitreya, Atara.
And I'm not sure that even he could do as you say.'
'Please,' she said, leaning against me. She let her
head rest against my shoulder. 'I'm so tired.'
She pressed her hand into mine, and I felt the cool,
grittiness of sand as well as the stirring of a deeper and warmer thing.
'I'm so tired,' she murmured, 'of being tired.'
Her head pressed me like a great weight. The smell of
her hair was musky and heavy.
'Take me away,' she said to me. 'Back to the Avail's
hadrah -or even back to Mesh. Somewhere safe.'
I felt my heart beating hard up through my throat as I
said, 'But nowhere in the world is safe for us now. We've spoken of this.
Eventually -'
'I don't care what happens ten years from now, or even
next month. I just want to be a safe for a single night. For an hour -why can't
it all just go away?'
Why, indeed, I wondered as I sat listening to Atara's
heavy breathing and looking out at the stars?
'Val, Val,' she said to me.
I was no scryer, but even so a vision came-to me: of
Atara and I going back to the Avari's hadrah to live in peace. We would wed,
despite Atara's misgivings, and bear a child whom she could never behold. We
might be happy, for a time, but sorrows would inevitably come for us. Atara
would grow to hate rearing our son in blindness, and hate me for calling him
into life. And most of all, she would hate life itself, especially when Morjin
finally found us and our world became a nightmare.
Her fingers pulled at mine with a quiet, desperate
urgency. I couldn't move; it seemed that I could hardly breathe. Only our thin
coverings of skin kept the fire of my blood from burning into her, and hers
into me.
'No,' I whispered.
It was as if I had slapped her face. The coldness
suddenly flooded back into her, and she sat up straight.
'No,' she repeated, 'we always have a choice, don't
we? You're so damn noble, you always choose what you do, even though someday,
it will kill you.'
'Atara, I -'
'It will kill all of us, I'm afraid. It might. And
I have to accept that, don't I? Because that's the beautiful, beautiful thing
about you, that those of us who love you can't help choosing as we do,
too.'
For a while, she sat there quietly weeping into the
wind, and she would not let me touch her. I had a strange sense that she was
almost glad that her eyes had been put out so that I couldn't see the pain and
horror in them. Then she regathered her composure; in a clear, calm voice, she
said to me, 'Tell me what you see then, in the deep desert to the west, where
we must go.'
I described the sweeps of sand and rock in the dark
distances before us. Then I stared out at the infinite black bowl of the sky
and said, 'There are stars - so many stars. Never, not even on top of Mount
Telshar, have I seen them so brilliant.'
Valura, I told her, gleamed like a bright diamond just
at the edge of the horizon, while Icesse and Hyanne and the stars of the Mother
hung higher in the sky. Although she could not see my finger, I pointed out
Ahanu, the Eye of the Bull, and Helaku and Shinkun and a dozen other stars.
Solaru and Aras, I said, shone more splendidly than any others; they were like
blazing signposts lighting our way.
'And there,' I
said as I moved my hand in an arc across the heavens, 'are the Seven Sisters.
And beyond, the Golden Band, filling the blackness with glorre. I can almost
see it. Sometimes, I do. It shimmers. It is strange, the way its light touches
that of the stars and makes them seem even brighter. Now I know the real reason
that the Avari go into the Tar Harath.'
I fell quiet as I looked into the black, brilliant
deeps for Shavashar and Elianora, Ayasha and Yarashan and Asaru, and the other
stars that called to me with the voices of my dead family. I called back to
them, whispering their names: 'Karshur, Mandru, Ravar, Jonathay. . .'
My voice shook with longing. I heard it and hated it.
I said to Atara: 'In all the sky, there isn't a single cloud. It's all so
perfectly clear - clearer even than your crystal.'
'Is it? Tell me what you see in the sky, then.'
"Triumph. A great light unveiled. At the end of
it all, the whole earth singing of what we have done. I see the one whom we
seek. I see you, looking at me the way you once did. You will see
again - I know you will.'
She laughed at this, not in joy, but only in sadness.
Then she said softly, 'I think you lie. But I love you for trying to make me believe
it.'
She kissed my hand, and stood up to walk back to our line of tents. I had to help her work her way down through the darkness, lest she stumble upon the rocks. Although she said nothing of the future, I knew that before we won any great triumph, if ever we did, we would suffer through many sweltering days of terror and pain.
Chapter 25 Back Table of Content Next
Our sleep that night was as deep and cool as the air that fell down from the sky. We took comfort in the softness of the sand beneath our furs and the floors of our tents. Even Maram found ways to position his great body that did not unduly distress him. When it came time to journey again, his big voice boomed out into the darkness: 'There are five good things about this part of the desert. First, the sand makes a good bed. Second, there are no flies. And third, my nightly drink.'
'And the fourth and fifth good things?' I asked him.
If I expected him to extol the splendors of the heavens or the terrible beauty of the desert, then I would have been disappointed, for he said, 'The fourth and fifth good things are the same as the third.'
I smiled into the dark, glad that Maram had found at least a little good in this forsaken land. But he also suffered other things that were not good, as did we all. That day, as we pushed farther into the Tar Harath, it grew even hotter. The blazing sun reflected off the sand nearly burned out our eyes. Breathing itself became a torment, and we all coughed at the dust that the wind blew at our faces. This dust worked its way into the fibers of our clothing and the cracks in our skin. Movement, hour after hour sitting on horseback or walking through the sand, chafed our dirty, sweaty skin. Soon, as Master Juwain feared, the dust might work at us so that we all had sores in our flesh like Maram's.
So it went for the
next four days. Our bodies grew thinner, for none of us wanted to eat very much
in the unrelenting heat, not even at night when we fell exhausted into our
beds. We sweated and drank from our waterskins, and drank and sweated some more
We wished for a good bath and clean clothing almost as much as oranges and kammats and other succulent fruits. We watched
our water disappear, cup by cup and skin by skin. Once, after a lone afternoon
spent nearly dying on top of the burning sand, Maidro caught Maram washing the
dust from his face and upbraided him.
'We've
no water to spare for such extravagances,' he said to Maram in a raspy,
dust-choked voice. 'Every drop of water you waste brings us all an inch closer
to death.'
Maram
bowed his head in shame, and he apologized for his thoughtlessness. But an hour
later, I heard him mutter to himself: 'Every mile we cover brings me that much
closer to my brandy. But what then, my friend? How many cups do you have left
before our water runs out and brandy is all you have to drink? You can't
bear the thirst, can you? No, no, you can't, and so I think that drowning
yourself in brandy would be a better way to die.'
We made
our way across the sun-seared Tar Harath mile by mile - but we did not cover as
many miles each day as we hoped. The sand burned the horses' hooves and slowed
them, as Maidro had said. We lost most of a day in circling around a miles-wide
basin that Maidro feared contained quicksands. Maram objected to this detour,
saying, 'This sand looks the same as any other - how do you know it's
quicksand?'
And
Maidro, who did not like to explain himself, told Maram, 'If you don't trust
me, there is only one way to find out.'
He
pointed his wrinkled old finger out toward the basin's sandy center. So
despondent was Maram that he seemed to consider walking right out into it.
And
then I heard him mutter: 'Ah, if there is no Maram, there is no purpose
to the brandy that we've made our poor horses carry. And what will befall then?
The brandy will be poured out into the sand. It would be a crime to
waste it.'
He
turned to Maidro and said more graciously, 'I'm sure you're right about the
quicksand. Thank you for saving my miserable life.'
Just
before dawn the next day, Arthayn killed the first of the packhorses by slicing
his saber through its throat. The other horses had eaten all the grain that
this unfortunate horse carried and had drunk its water, as well. For two days,
the useless horse had plodded along relieved of its burden, but also denied
food and drink. In truth, Arthayn should have killed the thirst-maddened beast
the day before, but the Avari - and all of us - kept hoping that we might find
water.
We
never ceased scanning the rocks and sand and blue horizon for sign of this
marvelous substance. We looked to Estrella in hope that she might lead us
toward another hidden cave or perhaps some ancient, forgotten well. But she seemed to have
no more sense
of where we might find water than anyone else. Often she would gaze up at the sky with
longing at the few small clouds,
which here drifted toward the northwest.
'One
cloud,' Maidro said, 'holds more water than a well. But the clouds go where they will, not
where we wish. And they never shed their rain in the Tar Harath, not even, I
think, at the command of an urda mazda.'
Later
that day, at Maidro's command, Nuradayn killed the second packhorse. Maidro
stood watching this slaughter and speaking with Sunji. Sunji then gathered
everyone around him and announced, 'Our water has grown too little, and so we
must forbear meat until new water is found.'
Here he
looked at Estrella in utter confidence that she would somehow work another
miracle. But Nuradayn, a young man given to wild surges of mood, looked out
across the sun-baked dunes with doubt eating at his dark eyes.
The
next morning, we came upon a single sandstone pinnacle so smooth and
symmetrical that it might have been carved by the hand of man a million years
ago. Here Estrella stopped her horse and looked up at the sky to watch a few
puffy clouds drift past. Then she looked at me and pointed in the direction
that the clouds were moving, toward the north.
'Estrella,'
I said to Sunji and Maidro, 'wants us to turn that way.'
Estrella
nodded her head at this and smiled. Arthayn nudged his horse forward and
squinted at the brilliance of the unbroken sweep of dunes.
He
said, 'There cannot be water there.'
Maidro's
eyes filled with doubt, too, but he said, 'The girl is an udra mazda. She found
water at the Dragon Rocks, in hills that were known to be dry.'
We held coundl then, and decided to turn toward
the north, as Estrella had indicated. Maram, I thought, echoed all of our sentiments
when he muttered: 'One direction in this damn desert seems as good as another.
As they say, when you're going through Hell, keep on going.'
And so
we set our course to the north, and slightly west. We journeyed for two more
days without seeing any sign of water. During the day we relied on the sun and
my sense of direction to hold a straight line across the sand; at night we
navigated by the stars. With every mile farther into the heart of the Tar
Harath, it seemed to grow only hotter and drier. The air in our faces burned us
like the blast from a furnace. Our skin cracked, and the salt in our sweat
worked its way into these raw wounds; it seared us as if we were being stabbed
with fire-irons. Our noses grew so parched that they bled at the slightest
touch. Things were simple in the deep desert, I thought, reduced to the most
basic elements: sun and sky, sand and suffering.
Maram,
upon grinding his teeth at the torture of his abrasive saddle, said to me,
'Don't you think it's strange that I, who have sought pleasures few men could
bear, have instead found so much pain?'
I
smiled beneath the cowl smothering me. I asked him, 'Do you still have the
stone?'
Maram
produced a roundish river stone with a hole burned through its middle. In the
Vardaloon, he had used his gelstei to make this hole as a distraction against
the mosquitoes. It was supposed to remind him that even the worst torments
could be endured and would come to an end.
'I do
have the stone,' Maram said to me. 'I only wish I were made of such substance -
this damn sun is burning a hole in me.' Later that day the third of our
packhorses died, not from the slash of a sword, but from heatstroke: it simply
collapsed onto the sand and coughed out its last breath from its frothy mouth.
Nuradayn blamed himself for not dispatching it sooner, but as he put it: 'Each
time we cut down one of the horses, it's like cutting off our own limbs.'
Travelling
as we did by early morning and early night, we lost count of the days: one
evening in our tent, Master Juwain sat rubbing his bald head as he told us that
he thought it was the fourth of Marud. We lost track of distances, too. We
measured our progress not by the mile, but by the hoof and the foot: it took
all our strength to keep the horses moving forward, step by step, and when they
grew too tired, we had to force ourselves to walk up one dune and down the
next. Finally we reached a place where neither days nor miles nor even suffering
mattered. In the middle of an expanse of sand nearly as featureless as a sheet
of parchment, Maidro suddenly called for a halt. He called for a council, too.
'If we
turn back now,' he said to us when we had all gathered around him, 'I believe
that we might be able to return to the Hadr Halona.'
'No!' I
cried out to him. I looked all around us at the blazing sand. Other than some
dunes in the distance and a few low rocks sucking out of the ground, there was
nothing to see. 'If we turn back now, we'll lose!'
'If we
don't turn back and we don't find water,' Sunji said to me, 'we'll lose, too:
our lives.'
'We'll
find water,' I said. 'I know we will.'
I
looked at Estrella, and so did the rest of us. This slender girl, sitting on
top of her spent horse, looked up at the pretty clouds in the sky.
'She
follows the clouds,' Sunji said, 'as she has for days. It will not avail us,
but who can blame her?'
Estrella,
he said, having been acclaimed as an udra mazda, must feel too keenly the
desire to satisfy our expectations.
'But
surely she must be stymied, as we are,' Sunji said. 'Surely she leads us on in
false hope.'
Nuradayn,
whose doubt had turned into despair, sucked in air through the bloody shawl
wrapped over his nose and said, 'It may have been false for us to have
named the girl an udra mazda. What if she found that cave by chance?'
For a
while, beneath the day's dying sun, the four Avari debated the signs by which
an udra mazda might be recognized. Maidro held that only the grace of the One
could lead such a young girl to water, and that chance could have played no
part in this miracle. Estrella, he told Nuradayn, was surely who they believed
her to be. But then he added, 'Even an udra mazda, however, cannot find water
where there is no water.'
We all
gazed out at the burning sands where Estrella wanted us to go; almost none of
us wanted to go there. The desert itself seemed to drive us back with a
hellishly hot wind that seared our eyes. Nuradayn told of a sick heat that fell
upon his brain whenever he contemplated taking another step along our course;
he said that it must be the will of the One that we would surely die if we went
on. We all, I thought, felt something like that. Even Kane regarded the barren
terrain before us with a dread that was as powerful and deep as it was strange.
'It is
a terrible chance you're asking us to take,' Sunji said to me.
I drew
my sword and watched as the sun touched' it with an impossible brightness. I
shielded my eyes against its shimmering glorre, and I told him, 'We're well
beyond chance now, as you have said. I believe our fate lies out there.'
I looked at
Estrella and bowed my head to her. Either one had faith in people, or one did
not.
'Fate,'
Sunji said, looking out to the northwest. 'Fate,' Maidro repealed, shaking his
head.
I saw
in his old eyes what he saw: all of us lying dead on the sand without
even the ants or the vultures to relieve us of our rotting flesh.
He
gazed at Estrella, and then at me. I opened my heart to him then, I found
within myself a fierce, fiery will to keep on going. For a moment, it burnt
away my fear, and Maidro's as well.
'If we turned back now,' he said, 'we might still reach
the Hadr Halona. But then, we might not.'
'One place,' Sunji said to him, 'is
as good to die as another.' Arthayn agreed with them, and so,
reluctantly, did Ruradayn. I sat there beneath the merciless sun marveling at
the courage of these warriors who did not have to make this journey nor fight
this battle,
'One
thing we must do, however,' Maidro said, 'if we are to go on.'
He told
us that we must lighten the horses' burdens, and this meant jettisoning
everything not vital to our survival. He was a harder man and more exacting
than even Yago. And so we cast away many things that were dear to us. Liljana
nearly wept at having to abandon the last of her galte cookware, as did Master
Juwain when he removed his steel instruments and medicines from his polished
wooden box and left the box to be buried by the sifting sands. Only with great
difficulty could I bring myself to part with the chess set that Jonathay had
given me at the outset of our first quest - and with Mandru's sharpening stone and
Yarashan's copy of the Valkariad. Maram made a great show of surrendering up
the heavy wool sweater that Behira had knitted for him. But this sacrifice
proved insufficient to satisfy the implacable Maidro. When Maidro discovered
that one of our horses carried seven bottles of brandy, he insisted that they,
too, be left to the sand.
'But
that is our whole reserve!' Maram cried out. 'It is madness to give up good
medicine!'
'It is
madness to make the horses carry it another mile!' Maidro snapped at him. 'Madness
to bring it along in the first place, when this horse could have carried extra
waterskins!"
They
argued then, with a vehemence and heat like unto that of the desert all around
us. For a moment, I thought Maram was ready to strike Maidro. But in the end,
all of Maram's bluster could not prevail against this tough, old warrior.
Maidro had his way, and we all watched as Nuradayn dropped the brandy
bottles onto the sand.
'Damn
you!' Maram shouted at Maidro. 'You'll kill me yet!'
He sat
down near the bottles, and would not be moved. He shouted out to Sunji, 'You're
right, Avari: One place is as good as another to die!'
Again,
I worried that we would have to tie ropes around Maram and drag him across the
desert. And then Master Juwain came over, and bent down to whisper in Maram's
ear.
'Ah,
all right - all right, then!' Maram pulled himself proudly back up. He stood
glaring at Maidro. 'Let it not be said that Sar Maram Marshayk of the Five
Horns abandoned his friends!'
As we
made ready to resume our journey, I took Master Juwain aside and asked him,
'What did you say to him? Did you remind him how much we love him and couldn't
go on without him?'
'No,'
Master Juwain said with a smile. 'I reminded him that I'm still the keeper of
the last bottle of brandy, and that he had better get back on his horse if he
wants his ration tonight.'
We did
not ride much farther that day. Just past dusk, we came upon some low rocks,
and Maidro insisted that we should make camp in their lee. He did not say why.
Apparently, his argument with Maram had driven him into a disagreeable silence.
We were
all grateful for a chance to take a little extra sleep. Even Kane lay down
inside the tent with us. I was not sure if he ever allowed himself to slip down
into unconsciousness, but it seemed that he dwelt for hours in a realm of deep
meditation and dreams.
Just
after midnight, with a cold wind blowing against our tent, I felt his hand on
my shoulder shaking me awake. I called out into the darkness: 'What is it?'
'Maram,'
Kane said to me, 'has not returned.'
I
rolled over to pat the empty sleeping fur where Maram should have been. I said
to Kane, 'Return? Where did he go?'
'He
said that he couldn't sleep. He said that he was going outside to look at the
stars.'
Now I
sat bolt upright; Maram, I thought, would no more give up his rest to look at
the stars than he would to take a walk on the moon.
'How
long ago, then?' I asked Kane.
'I'm
not sure. An hour - maybe two.'
I
grabbed for my sword, then worked my way out of our tent. Kane followed me. The
brilliant starlight and half moon illumined our encampment and the desert
beyond. The Avari's tent and that of the women stood black and square in a line
with ours, behind a rock formation twenty feet high. The horses stood there,
too, as if frozen in the eerie stillness with which horses sleep. Maram's
horse, I saw, remained with the others. I circled around the mound of rock,
hoping to find Maram sitting on top of it or on one of its steps. I looked out
into the desert, hoping to see his great shape looming above the starlit sands.
'Maram!'
I whispered to the wind whipping out of the northwest. I turned to look off to
the south and east, then shouted out, 'Maram! Maaa-ram! Where are you?'
My
cries awakened everyone, who came out of their tents rubbing their eyes. I told
them what had happened. It was Maidro, with his sharp old eyes, who discovered
an additional set of tracks paralleling a mass of hoofprints pressed down into
the sand in a long, churned-up groove leading from the direction by which we
had come here, from the south. The tracks, Maidro told us, were surely Maram's,
for they were deep and pointed back along our route.
'He has
given up!' Nuradayn said, without thinking. 'But why didn't he take his horse?'
Nuradyan
counted our waterskins, and determined that Maram had taken none of these
either.
'He has
not given up,' I said to him, and everyone else. 'And he did not take his horse
because he wished to steal out of here unheard.'
'But
why?' Nuradayn asked.
I
looked at Master Juwain, who looked back at me through the weak light. I said,
'Because he knew we would stop him from going back for the brandy.'
I moved
to go saddle my horse, and Maram's, but then Maidro stopped me, laying his
leathery old hand on my arm. 'No, Valaysu, do not go, not now. I fear that soon
there will be a storm.'
I
looked up at the glittering sky. Except for some clouds drifting toward the
northwest, and strangely, up from the southwest, the sky was perfectly clear.
'Do you
mean a sandstorm?' I said to him.
'I have
seen signs of it all day,' he told me. 'It is why I wanted to make camp early,
behind these rocks.'
'Then
all the more reason that I must ride after Maram, before the storm comes.'
Maidro
looked past the mound of rocks toward the northwest. The wind from the darkened
desert in that direction blew stronger and stronger even as we spoke.
'I
think you do not have time,' Maidro told me. 'I think it will storm before
another quarter of an hour has passed.'
'Then I
must ride quickly,' I said.
Maidro's
fingers closed around my arm like iron manacles. 'The storm will sweep away
Maram's tracks. You will not find him. And then you both will die.'
'I must
go after him!' I said, breaking away from his grip.
I
turned again to saddle Altaru, but then Sunji, Arthayn and Nuradayn hurried up
to me and grabbed my arms and waist. I surged against them, nearly pulling them
up off the sand. But they were strong men, and they held me fast. And then Kane
came up, too, and wrapped his mighty arm around my chest. He squeezed me
tightly against him as his savage voice murmured in my ear: 'At least wait a
few more minutes, as Maidro has said. If he is wrong about the storm, then
ride, if you will. The delay will give Maram only that much longer to enjoy his
drink. But if Maidro is right, then there is nothing you can do. So, Val, it is
only fate!'
I did
not want to listen to him. I twisted and stamped about, trying to shake Kane
and the Avari off as a stag might hounds. None of my friends came to my aid.
Master Juwain appreciated the terrible logic of Maidro's and Kane's argument,
and so apparently did Liljana. They stood with the children watching the Avari
restrain me. Atara, I sensed, no more wanted me to go galloping off into a
sandstorm than she would want to see me plunge into a pool of lava. She waited
in the starlight with her beautiful face all hard and cold.
And
then there was no starlight - at least not in the northwest. There, the black
glittering sky fell utterly black as if a shadow had devoured the stars. The
shadow grew, obscuring even more of the sky, even as the wind built into a
gale. It drove bits of sand against our garments and unprotected faces; it was
like being burned by hundreds of heated iron cinders. In a moment, it seemed,
the air about us turned into a gritty, blinding cloud.
'Inside
the tents!' Maidro called out. 'Take the waterskins, and keep your shayals
moistened!'
Shayal,
I remembered as I coughed at the dust, was the Avari's word for shawl. I
retreated back inside our tent as Maidro had commanded. So did everyone else.
While Kane fastened the tent's opening, I poured water over my shawl and
wrapped it around my face. I heard Master Juwain and Daj doing likewise.
I could not see them, for our unlit tent had now fallen pitch black.
There
was nothing to do then but wait. And wait we did inside our coverings of
sheep and goat wool as the storm raged with the force of a whirlwind. Sand
whipped in continuous streams against our tent; it was like a roaring thunder
that would not cease. We prayed that the stakes holding down our tent would not
pull out nor its fabric rip. We heard the horses whinnying in distress, as from
far away, but we could do nothing for them. They would smother or not according
to the protection that the rocks provided them and their animal wisdom and will
to live. We, ourselves, breathed in and out through our moistened shawls,
coughing at nearly every breath. We kept our eyes closed lest the dust swirling
inside the tent abrade them. In any case, there was nothing to see.
I tried
not to think of Maram, trapped out on the wasteland in this terrible, blinding
storm. I hoped that he, at least, had found the brandy before the dust
swallowed him up. I missed his great presence beside me. It tormented me to lie
there in utter darkness, counting the beats of my heart, minute after minute,
hour after hour. I waited for the storm to abate, as did everyone else, but it
seemed only to grow fiercer and stronger.
We
waited all that night into the next day. The air inside the tent lightened
slightly into a sort of dusty gloom. And then it grew black again as another
night descended upon us and the wind continued to blow. It did not let up until
early in the morning of the following day when it ceased abruptly - and
strangely.
I came
out of our tent to behold a landscape covered with sand, as it always was. In
places - in front of our shield of rocks and out beyond - the wind had driven
the sand into gleaming, new dunes. Otherwise, the desert looked the same as it
always did. The sun blazed low over the eastern horizon, scattering bright
light into a perfectly blue sky.
My
first concern was for Altaru, and the rest of the horses. Miraculously, they
had all survived the storm, though their hooves were buried in a powder-like
sand and they were very thirsty. Nurdayn and Arthayn came out to begin watering
them, and Sunji and Maidro walked up to me.
'Valaysu,'
Maidro said to me, 'I do not think that Maram could have survived the storm.
Two nights and a day, out on the sand.'
I stood
staring off at the shimmering emptiness to the south, where we had abandoned
the brandy.
'The horses
survived,' I said to him simply.
'Yes,
here behind these rocks. But out there, the wind -'
'Wind
can't defeat Maram,' I half-shouted at him. 'Nor can sand nor heat - nor even
dragon fire. Only Maram can defeat Maram.'
As I
moved to saddle my horse, Maidro said, 'Even before the storm, our position was
perilous. And now -'
'Now my
best friend is lost out there .. . somewhere! The storm obliterated our tracks,
so he may not be able to find his way back here. He'll be waiting for me.'
'But
how will you find him?'
'I
don't know,' I told him. 'But I would have more hope if you would help me!'
Maidro
looked at Sunji and Arthayn, who said, 'It is a waste of time, and therefore a
waste of water. And therefore foolish beyond folly.'
I stood
staring at him in the glare of the rising sun. Finally, he said to Maidro: 'I
do not think anything will deter Valaysu. Therefore, we might as well help him,
as he has asked.'
We
spent ail that day searching the desert for Maram. On our tired, parched
horses, we rode south, east, west and north, scan-ning the dunes for any sign
of Maram or his body. It was madness, as Maidro said, to go forth beneath the
naked, noonday sun, but so we did. All of us nearly dropped from heatstroke. By
the time that dusk approached, we had to return to our encampment to keep from
falling off our horses.
'Two
days now, alone and without water,' Maidro said to me over dinner that night.
'That is the limit of how long a man can live.'
'Four
horns of Sarni beer is the limit of how much a man can drink,' I said to him.
'And yet Maram drank five horns and called for more.'
'It is
not the same thing,' he told me.
'No, it
is not, but I can't give up looking for Maram - not yet.'
That
night, for a few hours, we rode out into the desert to search for Maram again.
The starlight pouring down upon the pale sands showed not the slightest
footprint that might have been made by him. We shouted out his name, but he did
not answer us. The next morning, we resumed our quest, until the sun in the
afternoon fell down upon us with a fire that we could not bear. When we quit
for the day and met up back at our tents, I was forced to concede that the sun could
defeat Maram - as it could anyone.
'Surely he is
dead,' Maidro said to me. 'As we will be, too, if we do not leave this place
and find water.'
I
watched Estrella nibbling on a dried fig; Daj sat next to her moistening a
battle biscuit with a little water so that he could chew it. In a voice as dry
as the wind, I said. 'Surely Maram is dead -reason tells me this. Yet my heart
tells me otherwise. If he died, I would know.'
I
wondered if this were really true. Then Liljana, haggard and nearly dead of
exhaustion herself, said to me: 'You always seem to know when Morjin or one of
his kind is hunting you. Wouldn't you
likewise know if Maram were still alive and seeking his way back here?'
'He
is,' I said, trying to convince myself. 'He must be.'
I
looked at Atara, who sat on a rock trying to get a comb through her dirty,
matted hair. I said, 'I cannot give up hope yet, but neither can I ask everyone
to remain here with me. If we don't find Maram soon, then it will be time to go
on.'
At
this, Sunji shot me a penetrating look and said, 'But what do you mean by
"soon"?'
'Soon,'
I said, echoing words that my father had once spoken, 'means soon. Now, why
don't we rest before we go out looking for Maram again?'
Our
search that night proved to be in vain. The moonlit dunes showed no footprint
that Maram might have made nor any other sign of life. I returned to our tents
with the others, and collapsed onto my furs. I could not sleep. I listened for
the plaint of Maram calling to me; I did not hear him. I felt inside myself for
the beating of his heart, however faint, but all that I could feel was the
hard, painful hammering of my own. Then I called to him, in my mind, and from
some deeper place inside me where a voice as real as the wind always whispered
- and sometimes cracked out like a thunderbolt. This terrible sound seemed to
tear through my heart and touch even the sands of the earth beneath me.
I was
awakened just after first light when Nuradayn shouted out a warning. I came out
of my tent, sword in hand, to see him watering the horses and pointing out into
the desert. Everyone else left the tents, too, and joined us, looking east
toward the rising sun.
The
glare of this fiery orb nearly blinded us, so at first it was hard to make out
the object of Nuradayn's excitement. But then I held my hand over my forehead
and squinted, and this is what I saw: a creature more hideous than Jezi Yaga or
Meliadus staggering toward us on two, bird-thin legs. The whole of his body
seemed desiccated and shrunken, like a fruit left to bake in the sun. His ribs
stood out like the frame of a wrecked ship; his belly had fallen in so that it
practically clung to his spine. He was entirely naked, and his skin from head
to foot had the look of sun-blackened leather. His lips seemed to have been
peeled back from his teeth and gums, giving him the appearance of a flayed animal.
Although many old wounds were eaten into his arms, chest, thighs and other
parts of his body, none of them bled or oozed the slightest moisture. His eyes
seemed as dry as bone, and fairly clicked about and rolled inside his skull as
if he had no control over them. They appeared to see nothing - but to have seen
much more than eyes should ever suffer or see.
'Is it
a man?' Daj cried out, pointing at him.
'No,' I
said, 'it is Maram.'
I took
note of the long, ruby firestone tucked beneath Maram's armpit. His hands, I
saw, looked to have been burned even worse than the rest of him so that they
could not grasp this heavy crystal. Brushed forward then, and so did everyone
else. Maram fell into our arms. We carried him back to our tent; this proved no
great feat as he must have weighed scarcely half what he had before the sun had
stolen much of his water.
'Three
and a half days!' Nuradayn marveled as he stood before our tent, looking
inside. 'Who has ever heard of such a miracle?'
'All
glory in the One,' Maidro said, staring at Maram. 'He should be dead.'
Sunji,
looking on gravely, too, did not say what we were all thinking: that Maram was
dead, and needed only a little more time before his heart stopped beating
and his eyes closed forever.
'Vargh!'
Maram said as I knelt beside him. 'Vargh!'
It took
me a moment before I realized that he was trying to say my name.
Master
Juwain and Liljana tried to get him to drink some water, but his tongue and
throat were so parched that he could not swallow. And so Liljana moistened her
fingers and touched them to his lips and tongue, which looked like a piece of
blackened meat. She poured water directly over his body in the hope that his
skin might absorb a little of it. Upon witnessing this waste, the four Avail
who stood outside our tent shook their heads in silence.
'Vargh!'
Maram said again. 'Sokki.'
Sokki, I
thought, must mean, sorry.
These
words came out like the croaking of a frog. His mouth and throat were too dry
for him to speak intelligibly, but as Master Juwain and Liljana worked on him,
he let loose a long series of grunts, barks, hisses and moans that I tried to
make sense of. I slowly pieced together what had happened, and shook my head in
wonder at his story:
Maram
had indeed gone after the brandy, but had never reached this trove. When the
storm had fallen upon him, in the blinding sand, he couldn't follow our old
tracks and so had drifted off his course. After an hour or so of believing that
he might stumble upon the brandy, he instead came upon a low rock. This saved
him. He took shelter behind the rock, where he could catch his breath and wait
out the storm, much as we had, too. Since he had brought no water with him,
however, he grew very thirsty. By the time the storm ended, he could think of
nothing except water. He knew that he should try to find his way back to our
encampment, but the desert seemed featureless, an endless expanse of sun-baked
sand, and he did not know which way he should strike out. He tried to gauge
direction by the sun; he walked north, hoping that he hadn't wandered too far.
He saw no landmark that looked like the rocks near our tents. He walked on and
on beneath the killing sun until it grew so hot that he had to stop. Then, like
a desert rat, he dug down into the sand and buried himself to wait out the
worst of the heat. Thus he did not see us searching for him, nor hear us
calling to him.
When he
emerged from his hole, thirst had maddened him. Now, all that he desired to
drink was brandy. He wandered, in hope of finding the seven bottles that
Nuradayn had dropped into the sand. The unceasing sun deranged both his wits
and his senses. The wool of his robe and shawl tormented his wounds and seemed
as heavy as a covering of burning iron, and so he cast them off. He continued
wandering, certain that he would find an entire lake filled with brandy. Once -
in a moment of terrible lucidity - he realized that we would be searching for
him. And so he had tried to unleash the fire from his crystal in order to
signal us. He could not control the powerful red gelstei, however, and had
succeeded only in burning his hands.
After
that, only his craving for brandy had kept him from dropping down into the
sand and dying. He fancied that the earth itself would tell him where to search
for it. Sometime during the previous night, in the darkness before dawn, he had
heard me calling to him and telling him that I had found the brandy. If only he
could make his way back to me, he could have all the brandy that he could
drink.
'Vraddi!,' he
croaked out as he lay inside the tent. 'Vraddi!'
I knew
that he was calling for brandy, and I implored Master Juwain to wet his mouth
with a little brandy from the last remaining bottle. Master Juwain did as I
asked. The few drops that he poured down Maram's throat were all that Maram
could drink.
'We
cannot remain here any longer,' Sunji said to me from outside the tent. 'I know
that your friend is dying, but -'
'There
is still hope,' I said to him. I came out of the tent to stand beside him. 'You
are right, though, that we cannot remain. If Estrella can find water, perhaps
another cave where it is moist and cool, then Maram might yet live.'
The
dark look in Sunji's eyes told me that he no longer had much hope of Estrella
finding water and none at all that it would help Maram if she did.
After
that we fashioned a litter from the tent and its poles, and placed Maram upon
it. We covered him against the rising sun. A little more work sufficed to
secure the litter to one of the pack-horses, who would drag it atilt across the
sand.
Then we
set out again toward the northwest. We were all so tired that we had to fight
to keep from falling off our horses. Maidro announced that we had so little
water left, we must forbear eating altogether. None of us, I thought, except
perhaps Kane, had any appetite left. I couldn't think of food; in truth, I
could hardly think of water. As we made our way miles farther into the glaring
sands of the Tar Harath, all my attention concentrated on Maram. Bound to his
litter and wrapped up like a mummy that remained somehow alive, he moved up one
dune and down the next; from time to time, he would call out to us a single
word: 'Vraddi!'
And
then there came a time when he called out no more. Master Juwain dismounted and
determined that Maram had fallen into the deep sleep that sometimes precedes
the even deeper sleep of death.
'Even
if Estrella can find water,' Sunji said to me as we crested one of the endless
dunes, 'I don't think it will help Maram now.'
'I
don't think the udra mazda will find water,' Maidro said. He sat on his
wasted horse staring out at the sun-seared distances. 'It is growing only
hotter, and the glare more hellish by the mile.'
Estrella,
almost as weak as a newborn, found the strength to urge her horse onward,
across the blazing sands. I followed her; I tried to follow my dimly-remembered
sense that there was a union of opposites: good and evil; brightness and dark;
moisture and drought.
Then we
came up on top of another dune, and my urge to turn back from the fiery
wasteland before us burned me like the kirax in my blood. I felt this urge to
retreat flaring inside my compan- ions and the four Avari, as well. I was so
tired, fevered and thirsty that I could barely see. It seemed that We were
riding on and on into a wavering emptiness. The air was sick with flat; it
seemed to bend the hellish light and distort it in strange ways. Mirages
swirled in the distance and then vanished into nothingness.
Something
powerful seized hold of me, as of a great hand
wrapped around my spine. I knew that I had experienced this strange
sensation before, but I could not quite remember where. And then Estrella
pointed into the heart of the terrible brilliance ahead of us. In the
shimmering light there, I thought could make out flashes of green that looked
like trees.
'The
sun has addled your wits,' Sunji said to me when I mentioned this. He squinted
into the dazzling distances and shook his head. 'It is the madness that
precedes sunstroke. We should pitch our tents and take shelter before it grows
even hotter.'
I gazed
down at Maram, bound to his litter, and I said, 'No, we must go on.'
It was
Master Juwain who noticed the clouds above us: all puffy and white, and
drifting in from the east, west and south toward a point just beyond the
impossibly bright horizon.
'Strange,'
Master Juwain murmured. 'How very strange!'
Liljana,
who sat next to him on top of her exhausted horse, seemed to read his thoughts,
and she said, 'Can it be that one of the Vilds lies here?'
At the
look of puzzlement in Sunji's and Maidro's eyes, she told of the magic woods
called Vilds that could be found at certain secret places in the world.
'You
are all mad!' Sunji cried out. 'There cannot be such a hadrah at the heart of
the Tar Harath!'
But
then we forced ourselves to ride on another mile and crested yet another line
of dunes. The air grew moist, as of a breeze off the sea. The shimmer out on
the blinding sands suddenly fell from quicksilver to a bright and beautiful
green.
'So,'
Kane said. 'So.'
Now the
veils of mirage finally parted to reveal an astonishing sight: great trees
pushed their green crowns high above the desert's sands. And above this
unbroken canopy hung thick layers of clouds rising up even higher into the sky.
From the streaks of gray slanting downward toward the trees, it seemed that it
must be raining.
'It cannot be,'
Maidro murmured. 'It cannot be!'
He, and
all of us, stared in wonder at the miles-wide forest in the middle of nowhere.
His gaze fell upon Estrella, and he said, 'Bless the udra mazda!'
Sunji,
Arthayn and Nuradayn all bowed their heads to Estrella, and so did I. Then
Maidro nodded at me and added, 'Bless the Elahad, too. Without him, how would
we have found the will to go on?'
The Avari seemed
enraptured, even terrified, for although a few spindly trees grew in their
hadrahs, they had never imagined anything like these lush, magnificent woods.
Estrella smiled at them as if to say that the impossible was not only possible,
but inevitable. Then she urged her horse forward, down toward the cool, abiding
greenness of the Vild.
Chapter 26 Back Table of Content Next
We rode straight from the desert into the shelter of
giant trees rising
almost two hundred feet above the forest floor. The air grew instantly cooler,
and although the light dimmed, everything seemed strangely more clear. We all
breathed more easily; the parched linings of our mouths and throats fairly
drank in the moisture from the breeze wafting through the great oaks and
maples. The sweet scent of flowers - anemone, tril-lium, honeysuckle and many
others - nearly intoxicated us. Birds sang from all around us; I noticed
Sunji's eyes grow wide with astonishment at the blue jays, yellow-breasted
warblers and scarlet tangagers whose like he had never seen before, or even
imagined. The four Avari, I thought, rode as if in a dream. Their terror at the
mighty trees gradually bled away, to be replaced by awe and wonder.
'All glory in the One!' Maidro repeated like a mantra.
'And I have never seen such glory!'
'Out on the sand, I think we must have died,' Nuradayn
said. 'And here, we've been reborn on earth a million years hence, after the
desert has been restored.'
'Either that,' Arthayn said, 'or we all still remain
out in the desert, hallucinating our final vision before death.'
Maidro shook his head at this as he unwrapped the
shawl from his face. He breathed in deeply and said, 'No, this is real. In all
my life, I have never felt anything as real, except perhaps the light of
the stars. Behold those flowers, the white ones with the nine points! It's as
if they hold starlight itself. Everything here - the grasses, the leaves, the
bark on the trees - it all shines as from a light within!'
I smiled because I had rarely heard the taciturn Avari
wax so poetic, or indeed speak so many words in one breath. Then Sunji, too,
uncovered his face and smiled as he said simply: 'If this is death, give me
more of it. I have never felt so alive.'
We dismounted and walked beside our horses over the
soft, green grass. The power of the earth here was as palpable as the beating
of my heart. Its fires did not burn, but seemed to stream into me like an
elixir through my legs, mouth, eyes and the very pores of my skin. A new
strength, vast and deep, touched my blood. I noticed Daj and Estrella stepping
with a happier gait, while Liljana and Master Juwain got the best of their
exhaustion and managed to drive the pains from their old bones. Atara, tapping
her unstrung bow ahead of her to feel her way through the woods, trembled with
a new hope. Even Kane seemed more alive here, if that were possible. He shook
out the dust from his white hair and wiped the sweat from his savage eyes - and
for a moment he stood revealed as an angel of bright and indestructible
purpose.
It was Maram, however, who gave me the greatest joy. I
nearly wept to see him open his eyes and croak out: 'Vraddi! Vraddi!'
I could not tell if he realized that we had once again
entered one of Ea's magic woods. It didn't seem to matter. He was still alive,
and even the bluebirds on the branches of the trees seemed to sing of this
miracle.
After about a mile or so we came to a place where many
crystals, like flowers in a garden, sprang up from the grass: rubies,
amethyst, tourmaline and even diamonds. Master Juwain knelt down to examine a
particularly lovely green crystal, and determined that it was an emerald. Then
he turned to another nearby which looked just like it and added, 'And this is a
varistei.'
Maidro shook his head in disbelief at this new wonder.
I knew it must seem impossible to him that precious gems, much less magical
gelstei, could simply grow out of the ground.
'But how can you tell it is a varistei?' I
asked Master Juwain.
In answer, he drew out his green crystal - the one
that had so nearly killed Maram.
'I can feel the life of this gelstei,' he said,
holding his crystal down toward the rock garden, 'seeking out the life of that
gelstei.'
Liljana, too, brought forth her crystal, and held the
little whale figurine up to the side of her head. She told us, 'I can't
hear Morjin breathing his filthy lies in my ears. I don't think he has power
over our gelstei here.'
Her words prompted Atara to cup her scryer's sphere in
her hand. She stood holding it in front of her blindfold. Then she announced,
'He can't see us here! It's as if a dark eave has hidden us from him!'
She put away her kristei, and tucked her bow into the
holster strapped to her horse. Then she walked straight over to where a
starflower grew beneath a huge, old elm tree. She bent down to touch her finger
precisely upon one of the filamentous stamens flowing out from the center of
the starflower's white petals. She gathered up a bit of pollen on her fingertip
and fairly ran back over to me, crying out, 'Oh, Val - you were right! I can see
again!'
Her laughter filled the forest with a music sweeter
than even the trilling of the birds.
'I am still afraid to try to heal Maram again,' Master
Juwain said, gripping his gelstei in his hand. 'It may be that the Lord of
Dragon Fire has only turned his sight away from us for a time.'
He said that it might be enough for us to find a pool
or pond, and cover Maram's outraged skin with mud. Then, if we could use the
brandy to moisten his mouth and throat enough for him to drink, we might slowly
bring him back to life.
'That is good, good!' a high, piping voice called out
to us as if from nowhere. I fairly jumped back five feet as a small, nut-brown
man stepped out from behind an old oak tree. He wore a skirt of some silk-like
fiber, and nothing else. It seemed that he had been eavesdropping on us. 'But
it would be better, better for Anneli to tend to him.'
He presented himself as Kalevi, and said that he had
been sent to take us to a place of healing deeper in the woods. There gathered
many of his people, whom he called the Loikalii. He spoke with a strange accent
so thick and lilting that I could barely make sense of his words. He gave us to
understand that the Loikalii had been anticipating our arrival for many days.
'Those who come out of the desert,' he told us, 'are
always burnt like unwatered plants, and always need healing.'
'Then have others come here before us?' Master Juwain
asked him.
'Other giants, do you mean?' Kalevi said, looking up
at Master Juwain, who was not a large man. 'No, no - they do not
come. Never, never. But sometimes, we Loikalii go out into the desert. And sometimes,
we even return. Now, come, yourselves, before it is too late for that one.'
So saying, he pointed at Maram, who lay on his litter
savoring the dram of brandy that Liljana had slowly dripped into his mouth.
There was nothing to do then except to follow Kalevi
through the forest The four Avari all seemed amazed that our story of little
people and giant trees had proved true. We walked in a line strung out beneath
the leafy boughs above us. By the time we had gone another mile, the trees
seemed to grow even higher. More flowers adorned the grass, and the lights of
the Timpum appeared and twinkled brighter and brighter. These strange beings,
with their swirls of ruby radiance, silver and many other colors, were everywhere.
Sprays of gleaming amethyst filled the buttercups and tulips; splendid
teardrops, like sapphire necklaces glittering in the sun, encircled the trunk
of a maple sapling and a much larger birch. Some of the Timpum were as tiny as
particles of diamond dust, while others encompassed whole trees like a raiment
woven of pure light. No two of the Timpum seemed exactly the same, any more
than the face of one man exactly resembled that of another, even though they be
twin brothers. All of the Timpum, however, blazed with a deep and beautiful
life. They spun and danced all around us, in all their fiery millions, in sheer
delight.
Master Juwain, never one to offer up simple
explanations where an arcane verse would serve as well, looked from the
mystified Sunji to Maidro and then at Nuradayn as he recited an old, old rhyme
that my companions and had heard more than once:
There is a place 'tween earth and time.
In some forsaken desert clime
Of woods and brooks and vernal glades,
Whose healing magic never fades.
An island in a sandy sea,
Abode of secret greenery
Where giant trees and emeralds grow,
Where leaves and grass and flowers glow.
And there no bitter bloom of spite
To blight the
forest's living light,
No sword, no spear, no axe, no knife
To tear the sweetest sprigs of life.
The deeper life
for which we yearn,
Immortal flame
that doesn't burn,
The sacred sparks,
ablaze, unseen –
The children of
the Galadin.
Beneath the trees they gloze and gleam,
And whirl and play and dance and dream
Of wider woods beyond the sea
Where they shall dwell eternally.
'I have changed a few of the words,' Master Juwain
told Maidro and Sunji, 'to suit the circumstances of this Vild. As for
the Timpum, they are all around you, though you cannot see them. But they are
of the same substance, I believe, as Flick.'
At this, Flick suddenly flared into sight. The Avari
gazed at him once more in wonder. So did Kalevi - but for different reasons. He
cried out, 'One of the Bright Ones walks with you! How is it that you can see
him?'
I told him of how Master Juwain, Maram, Atara and I
had found one of the Lokilani's Vilds in faroff Alonia and had eaten the sacred
timana, which had gifted us with vision of the Timpum.
'Good, good!' Kalevi said. Then he swept his hand
toward Sunji and the other Avari and added, 'But these men did not eat the
timana, yes? And they behold the Bright One, even so. Why? Why? It must be
because he is so bright - the brightest I have ever seen!'
As he spoke, the bits of light making up Flick's form
blazed like tiny suns. Glorre radiated out from his center and filled the
woods.
'This color!' Kalevi cried out. 'We have seen it
before, but never here - never, never! The Loikalii must look upon this one!
Come, come!'
He urged us onward, beneath the giant trees. With
every furlong that we walked deeper into the woods, they seemed to grow even
higher. We came upon the first astors, much smaller, but more beautiful than
even the white birches, for their leaves shone golden and their bark gleamed
with the soft shimmer of silver. Some bore clusters of timanas: small, round,
golden fruits, sweet to the tongue and even sweeter to the spirit. Their flesh
could open doors to another world, but could also kill.
At last we entered a glade ringed with silver maples
and filled with lovely astor trees. The Loikalii had all gathered there - all
who lived in this Vild, or so Kalevi said. Three hundred men, women and
children dressed much as Kalevi spread out in a great circle to welcome us. In
our entrance to the Alonian Vild, their kinsmen had aimed arrows at us;
these people, instead, held out to us their small, brown hands cupping gourds
filled with water. 'We have been waiting for you,' a regal-looking woman called
out to us. She stood in front of the ring of her people. She seemed of an age
with Liljana, with graying hair and wrinkles creasing her wise face, but her
eyes were as green and as full of life as spring leaves. She- presented herself
as Maira, and told us: 'Our water is yours.'
These words made a good impression on the Avari, who
bowed their heads to honor Maira and her people. The Loikalii closed in upon us
then, and we spent some time accepting the gourds from them and drinking water
as sweet and cool as the sap running through
a tree. Then Maira presented to us a beautiful young woman named Anneli, who
was taller than most of the other Loikalii. Her hair flowed in black waves over
her shoulders and back, and she wore a great green stone around her neck. I
sensed that this crystal must be a varistei; so did Master Juwain. When Maira
announced that Anneli was a great healer, Master Juwain inclined his head
toward her in respect.
'Anneli,' Maira said to us, pointing at Maram, 'will
take the burnt one inside her house to be made whole again - if it is not too
late.'
'Vraddi,' Maram croaked out from his litter as he
looked up at Maira. Then his gaze fell upon the lovely Anneli, and his voice
grow louder: 'Vraddi!'
Anneli misunderstood what Maram was asking for. She
came over to him and held out her slender hand to keep back one of the Loikalii
women trying to get Maram to drink from her gourd. Then Anneli tenderly brushed
back the filthy hair plastered to Maram's forehead. In a voice like a song, she
piped out: 'This flower needs much water, but too much too soon will drown
him.'
Maira nodded her head at Anneli, and then looked at my
companions and me. She told us, 'Houses have been made ready for the rest of
you. You must sleep now, and eat and drink, and then sleep some more. And then
we will speak: of the Burning Lands and the Bright One you call Flick - and of
the Dark One we call Asangal and others name as Ang Ar Mai Nyu. And of his disciple,
the Morajin. Until then - and after, after! - the Forest shall be your home.'
While the Loikalii men and women melted off into the
woods to gather nuts and fruits, which was most of their work, Kalevi escorted
us to a little lake, where we stripped ourselves naked and used fragrant leaves
to wash the grime from our bodies. He gave us garments - tunics woven of silk -
to wear. Then he led us a short distance to our 'houses'. These proved to be
nothing more, and nothing less, than the hollowed-out trunks of huge
living trees called olindas. As Kalevi
told us, his people had little need of shelter, for the Forest never grew very
hot or very cold. Even when it rained, the canopies of the oaks and other great
trees protected them. A few of the Loikalii therefore lived their entire lives
outside of their houses, but most of them liked to sleep inside the wooden
walls of the olinda tree.
'The trees give us their strength,' Kalevi said to us
as he stopped near one of the towering oilndas. 'As they will to you.'
A sort of doorway almost wide enough to ride a horse
through opened through the trunk of one of the olindas, which must have been a
hundred feet around. Its dark interior seemed to have been scooped out, though
Kalevi gave me to understand that these trees grew this way mostly of their own
accord, with very little help from the Loikalii.
'We do not shape these trees,' he told us, 'but
deeper in the wood, you might see the bonsails, which are almost as beautiful
as the astors. Now, come, come! - rest, as Maira has said!'
He left us to make ourselves comfortable inside our
three houses. After seeing to the horses, the Avari went inside a great olinda.
Atara, Liljana and Estrella shared the shelter of a second tree, while Kane,
Daj, Master Juwain and I set up inside the third. There was little work for us
to do. We had no need even to roll out our dusty, stinking sleeping furs, for
the interior of the olinda had been lined with a thick carpet of leaves, and
mats of woven silk laid out on top of them. Someone had stocked our new home
with gourds of water and others full of fresh fruits and nuts. We had to share
our simple living quarters with the spiders and insects who also dwelled there,
but we were all so tired that we didn't mind this web-spinning and buzzing
company.
And so we all lay down to take our rest - all
of us except Master Juwain. He bore a heavy burden of guilt at having so nearly
killed Maram with his crystal, and he would not suffer Anneli to try to heal
Maram alone with her varistei. Anneli, a woman of generous heart, gladly
invited Master Juwain into her house. While we slept, the two of them spent
many long hours tending to Maram.
For the next three days we did little more than eat,
sleep and walk through the Loikajii's woods. Liljana could not even manage to
wash our sweat-stained clothing, for the Loikalii insisted on soaking our
woolens in water full of the same leaves with which we had washed ourselves.
They brought us water to drink and a never-ending supply of delicious things to
eat. After they over came their fear of our horses, they even took on the task
of watering them with their own hands.
We saw Master Juwain only twice during this time, and
Maram not at all. One evening, Daj stole close to Anneli's house, but was not
allowed inside. He later told us of flashes of emerald lighting up the tree's
interior, and of Maram calling out softly for water. On the fourth day after
our entrance into the Vildi Anneli and Master Juwain emerged to tell us that
Maram would be all right. On the fifth day, Maram himself walked out of
Anneli's house under the power of his own two legs. He was nearly naked; like
the Loikalii, he wore only a narrow band of a skirt that barely covered his
loins. His flesh, no less his eyes, gleamed. I could hardly believe the wonders
that Anneli and Master Juwain had worked upon him.
He stood boldly without shame so that we could regard
him. Although he was much thinner than when we had set out from Mesh, he was
still Maram: thick of bone and thew, and radiating a raw, rude vitality. All
the sores were gone from his flesh - all save one. Neither Anneli nor Master
Juwain had been able to heal the terrible burn that Master Juwain's gelstei had
seared into his chest. A large leaf covered this wound. But the rest of Maram's
skin, even his hands, had taken on their usual ruddy color and showed little of
the more angry red of a sunscalding or other burn.
Maram gazed at Anneli as if utterly enchanted by this
lovely woman who had healed him. His desires had obviously moved on from brandy
to more fiery things.
Maira ordered a feast to celebrate Maram's recovery
and to honor us. That evening, we gathered beneath the astor trees, whose
leaves gave off a soft, golden light. The whole tribe of Loikalii sat themselves
down around many large mats placed throughout the grove. As at our other feasts
in the other Vilds, these mats would serve as tables on which the Loikalii set
bowls full of their simple yet sustaining food.
'In many ways,' Master Juwain remarked as we and the
Avari joined Maira, Anneli, Kalevi and several other Loikalii around a
particularly large mat, 'these people are quite similar to their kinsmen. But
in other ways. . .'
His voice trailed off as Maira shot him a sharp,
penetrating look. She seemed much more knowledgeable about us, and the world
outside, than the other Lokilani whom we had met. Although she exuded
congeniality and sweetness, I sensed that she could also be as forceful and
determined as any of Ea's queens. When we had finished filling ourselves with
nutbread and honey and other delicious things, she passed me a gourd full of elderberry
wine with a graceful motion of her hand and the most radiant of smiles. She
would not abide Master Juwain's protestations that Maram should be denied
strong drink; she passed Maram wine too: more than one gourd's worth, and then
more than three. She seemed not to mind the way that Maram gazed at Anneli,
though a couple of the other Loikalii present could not countenance his obvious
infatuation. She smiled at him in amusement and then directed our conversation
toward matters that we had put off discussing for five days.
'Tell us, Val'Alahad,' she said to me, 'of yourselves
and your journey.'
And so I did. While the Loikalii at our table and the
others nearby turned toward me, I told of our quest, as much as I thought wise.
The hours flowed into evening, and evening turned toward night. The radiance of
the astor leaves lit the grove, and it fell cool. No mosquitoes, however, came
out to Be the Loikalii's nearly naked bodies. It seemed that they allowed into
their woods only those living things that pleased them. Other things, however,
darker things, they could not keep out.
'We have seen the Morajin,' she told us. 'The
Earthkiller, our cousins call him. The Burning One that you call the Red
Dragon: he burns, inside, as if his blood is on fire. It is worse than the
scorching of the sun, for that can destroy only flesh. But the Morajin's soul!
It is all black and twisted, like a worm dropped onto hot coals. We have seen
this! He would kill all that displeases him, even the best of himself. He sends
his armies throughout all lands, killing and killing until the earth cannot
bear it. Soon, soon, we fear, all of the earth's trees will be cut down and her
soil burnt barren. It will be as it is in the Burning Lands outside of the
Forest.'
She seemed to blame the desolation of the desert on
Morjin, and on his master, whom she called Ang Ar Mai Nyu. How she knew of
either of them - or of anything outside of her woods -was not clear. I could
not imagine any of her delicate, gentle people crossing the desert to lands so
faraway and forbidding as Sakai in the heart of the White Mountains.
Her words
disturbed all of us, and Master Juwain especially. He rubbed at his smooth
scalp as he looked at Maira and said, 'Surely the desert has causes other than
the hand of the Red Dragon. Why, the Crescent Mountains, to the west, which
block the moisture from the ocean. The pattern of the winds, which blow -'
'The winds blow enough moisture our way,' Maira said,
cutting him off. She smiled at him nicely, but I could tell that she had little
patience for his perpetual questioning and turning things over and over in his
mind. 'Grass could grow where now there is only the sand. And more moisture
could be summoned - enough to make the Forest grow across the whole of the
Burning Lands.'
Here she glanced to her right at an old woman named
Oni. Oni had white hair and withered breasts, but her eyes still held much
life. She cupped between her hands a small, bluish bowl that looked something
like frozen water. I wondered immediately if it were made of some kind of
gelstei that I had never seen before.
'If you can truly summon the clouds,' Master Juwain
said, addressing both Maira and Oni, 'as it seems you can, then why hasn't the
desert been made green again?'
'The Loikalii,' Maira said to us, 'long, long ago were
sent to this place to re-enchant the earth. A great evil occurred here, long
past long ago. It opened up the earth to the deep fires, the black fires which
scorched the soil, out and out across the Burning Lands.'
Master Juwain nodded his head in deep contemplation; I
could almost hear him wondering what kind of evil event or sorcery could have
channelled the telluric currents so as to create a wasteland hundreds of miles
wide.
'But you have succeeded here,' he said, looking
at the astor trees above us. 'I have never known a more enchanting place.'
'We have not succeeded here,' Maira said. 'We
have sent our people out on the sands to plant seeds so that the Forest might
widen. All have failed. Even in this place, if we did not fight to make the
Forest grow, the trees would wither and die and be lost into the sand.'
She went on to tell of an ancient dark thing, perhaps
a crystal, buried beneath the soil somewhere on earth. She said that it had the
power to draw life from the earth and allow its inner fires to burn unchecked
and wreak destruction upon all things. Kane scowled at this, and his eyes found
mine; it was obvious that Maira must be speaking of the Black Jade. I recounted
then of our crossing of the Skadarak and what we knew of this powerful gelstei.
'The Black Jade,' Maira said as she looked from Oni to
Anneli and then back at me. 'You have named it well. We have felt how the
Morajin seeks his way deeper and deeper into its heart. We know that Ang Ar Mai
Nyu aids him. Why, why, we have asked ourselves? Soon, we fear, the Morajin
will loose the earth's fires and burn open the very sky. Then the evil that
created the Burning Lands will blight the stars. Their earths - so many, many!
- will be burnt too. The Forest that covers them will die. It will be as you
said it was at the heart of the Skadarak: everything blackened and covered with
bones. And then it will be as it is here, beyond our trees: nothing but burning
sands, Everywhere and forever.' I gazed
at her in wonder of how her dread of the future so nearly matched my own. Then
she took a sip of her wine and shook her head furiously. 'But we must not let
this be! If the Morajin gains power, utterly, over the Black
Jade, he will invade the Forest. First with his eyes and with dark dreams. And
soon after, with steel and fire.'
Here she glanced at the hilt of Kane's sword and shook
her head in loathing. A similar look on Oni's face told me that, in some ways
at least, the Loikalii did not welcome our presence in their woods.
I took a sip of wine, too, and then said to Maira,
'You know a great deal about matters of which we have learned only with difficulty.
And that few others even suspect. How, then? Are there scryers among you?'
Maira looked quickly at Oni, who spoke in a cranky,
quavering voice saying, 'Do you see, Maira? I told you they would want to
know.'
Oni's angry, relentless stare seemed to disconcert
Maira, who glanced at Atara and said, 'No, none of us can see the future, not
as you can. But sometimes, we can see things far, far away.'
'How, then?' I asked again.
Now Oni stared at me as she shook her head. She said
to Maira, 'No, no - they mustn't see!'
Her hands gripped her crystal bowl, and I suddenly
knew that it had been Oni who had sent the sandstorm that had so nearly killed
us. There was something wild about this old woman, I thought like the wind. I
sensed that she acted by the force of her own will and no one else's, not even
Maira's.
'I believe that they must see,' Maira said to
her. 'How else are they to find the Shining One they seek? And how else to keep
the Morajin from using the gelstei they call the Lightstone?'
'No,' Oni said, as stubborn as a stone. 'The giants
are clumsy and stupid, and bring an evil of their own into the Forest.'
She stared at the hilt of my sword; after a while, she
raised up her angry old eyes and stared at me.
'They are not stupid,'
Maira said to her. 'And whose heart is wholly pure?'
'No, no - they must not see!'
'I have seen this,' Maira said to her. 'And
you have, too; that the time is coming when either the Forest will grow across
the Burning Lands, or the Burning Lands will devour the Forest - and soon,
soon. Which will it be?'
While the evening deepened, they argued back and forth,
but no word or reason from Maira could prevail against Oni's obduracy. And
then there occurred a miracle beyond reason or resistance: Flick fell out of
the night like a comet. He hovered in the air radiating an intense glorre. This
light seemed to draw many other Timpum from out of the trees around us. It
touched them so that they glowed with glorre, too. Then these thousands of
splendid beings passed the fire back to Flick so that he blazed ever brighter.
Back and forth it passed, many, many times. Flick feeding the Timpum and they
feeding him until the whole host of little lights shimmered with great
brilliance.
'Do you see?' Kalevi cried out, pointing at Flick.
'The angel fire - I did not imagine it! The giants call it glorre!'
'Glorre! Glorre! Glorre!' the many Loikalii at their
tables chanted.
'It is a sign!' Kalevi cried out again, turning to
Oni. 'You must take them to the Water!'
'Take them! Take them! Take them!' his tribesmates
chanted.
I drew my sword and held it up toward Flick. Its
mirrored surface seemed perfectly to reflect his fiery form. Whether it picked
up the glorre pouring out of him or shone from within with this singular color
was hard to tell.
'All right,' Oni said at last as she gazed at my
sword. I saw for the first time how lovely her eyes really were. The ice inside
her seemed utterly to have melted. 'In the morning, I will take them to the
Water. But now, we should eat the flesh of the angels - and dance and sing!'
She smiled, and years fell away from her. Then bowls
full of golden, ripe timanas were brought forth so that we might eat the sacred
fruit and deepen our visions of the Timpum, and all living things. Daj and
Estrella, to their disappointment, were not allowed to touch the timanas, for
the Loikalii counted them as children even though they stood as high as many of
the Loikalii women and men. Sunji, Maidro, Arthayn and Nuradayn, however, each
picked up a fat, gleaming timana. Maira warned them that the very taste of it sometimes
killed. Sunji, speaking for all the Avari, said that they would risk it. As he
put it: 'We have borne heat, wind, sand and sun to come this far. It is said
that if a man dies in the desert seeking visions, he doesn't really die when he
dies. And so we will gladly eat these fruits that you have given us.'
And so he did, along with the other Avari. That night,
none of them died, nor did anyone else in the grove partaking in this part of
the feast. The Avari finally beheld what we had looked upon for several days
but could never take for granted: the millions of Timpum in their glory,
gleaming as brightly as the stars and whirling ecstatically in and out of the
astor trees. Old Maidro, upon standing up to dance with us and the hundreds of
Loikalii forming up into circles, laughed like a young man and called out: 'I'm
still alive, but I'm finally ready to die!'
Later that night, after it came time for rest, we
returned to our olinda trees. Maram, though, did not come with us. He claimed
that Anneli had yet to heal him wholly, and so he would sleep inside her house
so that she might bestow upon him her gifts.
Just before going off with her, he took me aside and
draped his arm across my shoulders. His breath, heavy with the vapors of
elderberry wine, blasted into my face as he said, 'Ah, Val, there is healing
and then there is healing, do you understand? Maidro might be ready to
die, but I'm not. No, no - it's time I truly lived again.'
And with that,
this irrepressible man who had come so close to breathing his last breath,
walked off into the woods happily singing his favorite song.
Chapter
27 Back Table of Content Next
In the morning, we all gathered in the grove, where Maira and Oni met us - along with all the other Loikalii. They thought nothing, it seemed, of giving up their work in favor of witnessing whatever event was about to occur. Oni led us through the trees in a winding way that followed no path. In the strong light raining down through the emerald leaves, the Timpum seemed to shine even more brightly than they had the previous night. So did the flowers and the birds and every other living thing in these mysterious woods.
At last we came into a clearing. A pool of water, fifty feet wide, gleamed in its center. The Loikalii sat around it on low banks of grass. Oni stood beside the pool's rippling waters with Maira and me - and with Kane. Although no one had invited him in so close, no one seemed to find the courage to warn him away. The Loikalii allowed no large predators into their woods, but Kane was like a tiger, pacing back and forth with a barely contained fire tormenting his great body as his fathomless eyes fixed on the pool.
Oni cupped her pale blue bowl in her hands, and shut her eyes. Almost immediately, the breeze died. A stillness fell upon the air over the pool. The only sounds were the songs of the birds deeper in the trees and Kane's restless footfalls.
'Be quiet!' Oni finally hissed at Kane. She opened her eyes and glared at him. 'Or else leave this place!'
Kane stared right back at her with a fiery gaze that might have wilted a tree. But he finally did as she had commanded, freezing into motionlessness like a great cat ready to spring. His bright, black eyes took in the glimmer of the pool.
As my heart drummed
inside me, the waters of the pool grew stiller and clearer. I noticed that it
sat within a bed of crystal that might have been
diamond. No fly pad nor lake skimmer nor even a twig or a speck of dust floated
upon this water. It came to me that I had never seen water so pure and
deep.
'The
waters of all worlds flow into each other,' Oni's voice intoned - a million
miles away, it seemed. 'The waters of all things are one; in the end, there is
only one Water.'
Now the
pool's waters stilled with an utter clarity. In its depths - it was like
looking through air - I beheld mountains and water-falls and a great,
shimmering city. Crystalline towers half a mile high stood on rocky prominences
above a broad valley. It must have been autumn there, for the valley's contours
showed the yellows of aspens and maples' blazing reds - as well groves of astor
trees whose golden foliage blanketed the earth. Throughout the valley and above
it, upon rocky hills, stood many graceful buildings and houses agleam with the
colors of living stone: azure and cinnabar, magenta, saffron and aquamarine. I
knew that all these-structures had been built by the hand of man, but so perfect
were they in design and in harmony with the landforms of the valley that it
seemed here art and nature were as one. I couldn't help recalling the wondrous
city that Ymanir had built high in the White Mountains: Alundil, the City of
the Stars.
The
valley's beauty called to something ancient within me. Without quite knowing
what I was doing, I reached out my hand toward it. This simple motion unsettled
my balance. Even as Kane's hand struck out to try to catch me, I found myself
teetering at the edge of the pool, and then stumbling forward. I hit the water
with a great splash. Its coldness stabbed into me like a thousand icy needles.
The weight of my sword, strapped to my back, helped to pull me under, down and
down into a deepening gloom for what seemed forever. I pulled hard with my
hands against cold currents and kicked my feet. I swam up and up toward the
light streaming through the water. Finally, with a gasp of air I broke
from the surface of the pool into a burst of brilliant sunshine. I shook back my
wet hair. I blinked my eyes because I could not believe what they beheld. Kane
and Oni and everyone else who had gathered by the pool - the Loikalii, the
Avari, too - were gone. The city that I had descried within the pool now spread
out all around me, amethyst towers rising up from the mountainsides to my right
and left. Upon the pool's grassy banks stood tall men and women with jet black
hair and eyes as bright and black as my deepest dreams.
One of
them, a man wearing a blue tunic trimmed in gold and a fillet of silver binding
back his long hair, held out his hand to me and pulled me dripping and
shivering from the pool. A woman - I had never seen a queen so striking, not
even my mother -covered me with a long, thick robe of new lamb's wool. A man who
might have been her brother stood smiling at me in welcome; the diamonds
encrusting his tunic shone more brilliantly than a knight's armor. All these
people, I thought, were like unto the Valari of my home, only more beautiful
and even nobler in aspect. It come to me then that they were Valari,
the true and ancient Valari, for I knew somehow that I had stepped out upon
another world and looked upon twelve of the Star People.
'Tallina
ira vos,' the queenlike woman said to me. 'Lila satna garad.'
She
spoke more words to me, and so did the others. As with veils pulled back to
reveal a familiar fact:, their meaning became clearer and clearer. I realized
that they were speaking in a language similar to ancient Ardik, which is to the
language of the angels as the common tongue is to Ardik.
They
gave me their names: Asha, Eva, Varjan, Jessur, Eldru and Shivaj. And Kavalad,
Aja, Saya, Jerusha, Varda and Ramadar. They gave me to understand that they had
come here to greet me; that seemed almost impossible, but I sensed that they
were not lying. Something about the structure of their language made it unnatural
to utter anything false or guileful. In the clear consonants and liquid vowels
that poured from their beautiful lips, no less the light sparking in their
eyes, I sensed only a strong intent toward goodness and truth. They each
embodied these qualities, along with a nobility that I had seen in my father
and mother, but few others. They were men and women, I thought, as I had always
imagined men and women to be.
So
awestruck was I that I could hardly speak. But I finally remembered my manners,
and bowed my head to Ramadar, the man who had pulled me from the pool. I found
my voice and stammered out: 'Satnamon Valashu - Valashu Elahad.'
'Valashu,'
he repeated, bowing to me. Then he pointed up at the deep blue sky,
where a blue sun shone with a dazzling light. 'Val al'Ashu ni al'Elahad -
vos art arda valas.'
My
heart beat like a soaring swan within me as the meaning of what Ramadar had
said became clear and confirmed what I knew to be true: 'Star-of-the-Morning of
the line of Elahad you have journeyed deep into the stars.'
Only
the dead, I thought, made such journeys. For several hours, I struggled to
speak to them in their beautiful language. The sun dried my tunic then began to
drop toward the blazing hills in the west. There, the light off the houses ran
through a riot of shifting colors: violet and carnelian; ocher, turquoise and
red. A few of the Star People - Eva, Saya and Jessur - walked off to their
houses and returned with delicious foods, whose like I had never seen nor
tasted. It grew darker, and the stars came out, and then I knew that I
had left Ea, for the constellations here were all strange and lit up the sky
with a brilliance beyond that of any sky I had ever beheld, even the Infinite
black and silver dome above the tar Harath,
As the
Star People's words became ever clearer to me, so did mine to them. I gained a
clearer understanding of their purpose and how they had come to be waiting here
to greet me. They had their scryers, too, it seemed. One of them had foretold
my journey, and had warned that once I beheld the beauty of their city, Iveram,
I would never want to leave. This was so. In gazing out at the mountains and
waterfalls above the city's twinkling lights, it seemed that I had finally come
home.
'You,
Valashu, are welcome to remain with us,' Ramadar said to me. Although his long,
grave face and bold eyes reminded me of my father, it seemed that he bore no
higher rank than any other of his eleven companions. 'But we have been sent
here to persuade you that you must go back.'
Was I
not dead, then, after all? But go back to what, I thought? To a woman whom I
could never marry? To friends whom I led on and on in a quest likely to find
only their deaths? To a doomed world?
Although
I had spoken around these doubts for many hours with Ramadar and the other Star
People, I had not made them explici. It didn't matter. They sensed the volcano
of fury and anguish that fumed inside me. They, too, perhaps in greater measure
than I, bore the gift of valarda.
'Our
lives present us with many choices,' Ramadar told me. 'But in the end, only one
path will have been walked. We believe that yours lies back, toward the world
you call Ea.'
'Perhaps
it does,' I said. I turned to looked at Asha, and then at Eva, whose long black
hair showed strands of silver and whose eyes shone with kindness and concern
for me. 'Why don't you then come with me? All of you - and any of you who live here?'
I went
on to say that many thousands of men and women willing to make this journey
couid surely be found in Iveram and other cities of their world, which they
named as Givene. Under a brilliant banner emblazoned with Givene's most
brilliant stars, we could assemble a great host of warriors who would throw
down Morjin and bring peace to Ea.
'No, Valashu, that we may not do,' Eva said to
me. Her voice fell over me as cool and gentle as the wind blowing off the mountains.
'You know that we may not go to Ea, and you know why.'
'Because
you are too pure to go down into Hell?'
Although
I had eaten here the sweetest of fruits, there remained in my mouth a terrible
bitterness.
'No,
that we are not,' she said with a sad smile. 'Neither are the Elijin nor the
Galadin. And it is because we are not that we may not go to Ea.'
Shivaj,
a man with quick, hot eyes and a proud cast of chin, was more brusque than Eva.
He said simply, 'The Galadin forbid it.'
'But
what if this forbiddance were lifted?' I said.
'Long
ago the forbiddance was lifted,' Shivaj said in a voice like a hammered gong,
'and a great Elijin became the Red Dragon. And Kalkin became the one you call
Kane.'
'But
one last time,' I said. 'One last battle - Morjin could not stand against a
million Valari of Givene armed with spears and swords!'
'You do
not know that,' Eva said to me. 'Not even our scryers can foresee what Morjin
might do, armed with the Lightstone and the wrath of the Dark One filling his
heart.'
'But we
could win!' I cried out.
'Yes,
we could win,' Ramadar said to me. His black eyes and noble bearing fell upon
me with a heavy weight. 'The Valari could stand triumphant on Ea's soil beneath
a star-silvered banner, holding high the Cup of Heaven that we had claimed. As
we did once before. We remember too well how Elahad's brother fell mad and slew
Elahad over the Lightstone. How Valari slew Valari in a bloodbath that has
grown only deeper and redder with the passing of the ages. How will it end? Not
with more Valari going to Ea. You are Valashu ni al'Elahad, the last and
only heir of the Elahad. The stain of his murder lies upon all the Valari, on
Ea and elsewhere, but it is upon you to put things right and end what
was begun on Ea so long ago.'
He
added that I was also Valashu ni al'Adar, the last of the great Adar's
descendents and therefore the rightful guardian of the Lightstone. My task, he
said, was to reclaim the Cup of Heaven for the Maitreya. I stared hard into
Ramadar's bright eyes and asked, 'While and your people remain safe here on Givene
and watch events unfold through the waters of your pool? Are you afraid to
fight, then?'
He
pointed at my sword and said, 'There are different ways of fighting. The one
who sits on the Dragon throne might be brought down by the edge of your
sword, but the Dark One will never be. That will require i different kind of
sword, finer than silustria, as pure in essence as light. It is upon us,
and even more the Elijin and Galadin, to help forge it.'
I
remembered lines of a verse graven in my heart;
Valarda,
like molten steel like tears,
like
waves of singing light.
Which
angel fire has set its seal
And
breath of angels polished bright.
'The
true Alkaladur,' I said bitterly. 'This truly impossible thing.'
At this
Eva smiled at me and said. 'The Valari were meant to be warriors of the spirit.
In the end, Valashu, you were, too.'
I said
nothing as I looked into the impossibly deep pools of Eva's eves,
'The
War of the Stone,' she said, 'goes on across the stars as it has for a million
years. We fight it as we must, for it must be won, and the Valkariad
must come. If not in our time, then in our children's, or our children's
children.'
'All
right,' I finally said, 'fight as you must, then. But must all your
people, in all their millions, fight your way? Can you not spare a few
thousands to come to Ea and fight our way?'
'No,'
she said sadly, 'the Galadin forbid it.'
'Then
damn the Galadin!' I snarled out. The rage in my voice stunned me; it seemed to
shock Eva and Ramadar and the others standing about the dark pool. 'If they
won't help, then damn them!'
'Valashu
- you know not what you say!'
Eva and
Varjan - Asha and Shivaj, too - stared at me in horror. And I stared right back
at them as I called out, 'I may not know what I say. But how is it that you know
what the Galadin say?'
'From
time to time,' Eva told me, 'one of the mighty Elijin walks our world and
brings us their words.'
'Then
you bow to their will?'
'Even as a warrior
of your world does to his king,' Ramadar told me. 'And even as the Galadin
themselves follow the light of the Ieldra, and the Ieidra work the will of the
One.'
I shook
my head at this even as my hand closed hard and hurtful around the hilt of my
sword.
'If you
doubt, then look!' Eva said to me as she pointed at the pool. 'Look - and listen!'
For a
while, in the quiet of the cool night, as Eva and the others moved in closer
around me, I gazed into the pool. It had fallen so dark that only the faintest
shimmer of starlight played upon its black waters. Then a radiance began
welling up from deep inside it. Words, perfectly pitched like ringing bells,
poured forth in a beautiful song. They reminded me of the immortal words thaj
Alphanderry had sung out in the pass of the Kul Moroth: La valaha eshama
halla, lais arda alhalla raj erathe...' As in the moments before
Alphanderry had died, the words blended so harmoniously into the music and the
music into the words that it seemed they were one.
I
sensed that those around me understood more of this song than I did. I watched
as the pool grew brighter and ever clearer. Just below its perfectly still
surface I caught sight of another body of water, much larger: a silver lake,
very lovely, and beside it on a hilly bank grew a great and glorious astor
tree. Framing it, in the distance, were two white-capped mountains. This could
only be Irdrasil, the world-tree of legend and dreams, and the mountains Vayu
and Telshar - the ageless and true Telshar, after which the sacred peak rising
above my father's castle had been named. Just as I had beheld Givene through
the waters of the pool in one of Ea's Vilds, I knew that now I looked upon the
Galadin's world of Agathad.
'Ashtoreth,'
I said, murmuring out the name of one of the greatest of the Galadin.
'Valoreth.'
It was
hard to tell, but in the music sounding from deep inside the pool I thought I
heard the breath and heartbeat of my own name.
'The
blessed tree!' Eva whispered from beside me.
The
whole world shimmered with the numinous color of Irdrasil's perfect leaves. In
the shadings and tones pulsing out of the great tree, I sensed unfathomed
layers of the angels' language and deeper unities: the melodies of all music
and all the words ever spoken. The Galadin, I thought, must understand this,
just as they surely understood the language of light that fell upon Agathad.
Thus did the Ieldra speak to them and bring them the word of the One.
Lais arda alhalla
raja Valashu ni al'Elahad ni al'Adar...
I
thought it a miracle that I, too, should grasp this eternal language. Who was I
to speak to the Ieldra or to stand before their fiery tree as they spoke
to me? It came to me that I understood only the tiniest part of what these
luminous beings had to tell me, and yet that part contained its entirety and
essence; that I must vanquish my fear of death, both in dealing it out to
others and in dying myself. And I must return to Ea to fulfill nay fate.
'No!' I
cried out from within the deep, dark pools of my heart. I wondered if the
Ieldra - or the Galadin - could understand the fleshes of fire lighting up my
eyes. 'What can you really know of Ea? To feel your flesh burning up or
to scream as a length of steel is driven through your insides? You do
not die nailed to crosses! You do not even die!'
I
expected no answer to the fury that raged through me. And then, through the Star
People's pool I watched with awe as the glorre of the great astor tree faraway
blazed with a terrible and beautiful light.
Valashu
Elahad.
In the
end, I knew, we each opened ourselves to this light, or not.
Valashu.
Or
perhaps this eternal light opened itself to us and drew us within. For a moment
that seemed to last forever, I stood in a place that could not be: the pristine
fields of Culhadosh Commons on another world across the universe. Its green
acres were undefined by the terror of Morjin's armies. None of the slain lay
in bloody heaps upon the grass, not my father nor my brothers. In truth, it
seemed that those closest to me hadn't died at all, for out of the stream of
sunlight spilling down upon the pasture coalesced the faces and forms of Karshur,
Mandru, Jonathay, Ravar and Yarashan. My brother, Asaru, dressed in a suit of
brilliant diamonds, stood with my father at the center of the field. So did my
mother and my grandmother, whom I called Nona.
No
wounds marred their flesh as they smiled at me, warm smiles that filled the
whole of my being. My father told me that I must return to Mesh to become king,
while my mother, in the soft light of her eyes, conveyed to me the simplest of
truths: that men and women could die but love never could. The force pouring
from her heart into mine made me weep. I did not want to leave her. Tney spoke
to me for a long time; there was a sense in which I was speaking with myself.
But my father reminded me that I was still of the living, and could not remain
with the dead. He promised me, however, that he would never leave my side. He
told me, too, that help would be sent to me. Then he smiled one last time, and
dissolved back into light, along with my mother, grandmother and brothers.
I found
myself still standing by the edge of the pool on Givene with the Star People.
They asked me what I had experienced, and I told them. Then I said, 'I do not
know if I saw things outside and beyond myself, or was only dreaming.'
Eva
nodded her head at this, and told me mysteriously, 'Sometimes, there is no
difference.'
I
noticed that the sun had risen over the mountains in the east and its light
painted the houses and towers in the hills around us a softly blazing blue. It
came to me that my friends on Ea might have given me up as dead.
And
when I stared back into the pool, I no longer saw Vayu and Telshar and the
great astor tree of Agathad, but only the smaller pool in the Loikalii's Vild
into which I had fallen. Oni and Kane stood above it looking down into its
black waters with wonder and dread; so did Maram and my other companions, and
all the Loikalii.
'You
must go back,' Ramadar said to me. He told me of the understanding that he had
gleaned from his own gazing at Irdrasil: 'Help will be sent with you.'
I
nodded my head as he clasped my hand; Eva embraced me, and so did the others.
Then Ramadar pressed into my hand a perfectly-cut diamond the size of a walnut.
He told me. 'This was taken from the crown that Adar once wore. Elahad should
have brought the crown with him to Ea, but he would not wear it until Ea was
made one with the worlds of the stars and the great Maitreya came forth. The
crown has been lost, but we have kept this last stone all these ages. Take it
back with you that you might remember what you have seen and who you really
are.'
I
gripped my hand around the huge diamond. I bowed my head to Ramadar. Then, with
a final look at the waterfalls spilling down toward the shimmering city around
me, I dived back into the pool
The
moment I broke from its cold waters, Kane's hand snapped out and locked onto
mine. With a single heave that nearly dislocated my shoulder, he pulled me up
onto the pool's banks. Water fell off my sodden hair and clothing onto the
grass. Master Juwain and Maram hurried over to me, and so did Liljana, Atara,
Daj and Estrella. Even Flick spun in a whirl of sparks as if astonished at my
reappearance. Maira and Anneli and the Loikalii gathered in as close as they
could. The great trees of the vild towered high above us.
'Val!'
Maram shouted at me. He squeezed the back of my neck as if to reassure himself
that I had really returned to him. 'We thought you were gone - sucked down into
the bowels of the earth!'
I saw
that Maram's loin covering was soaking wet, as was Kane's tunic. It seemed they
had dived into the pool after me.
Master
Juwain stepped forward to look into my eyes. 'You should not be conscious - not
even alive! You were under for too long!'
'For
most of a day,' I said, shaking the water from my hair.
'Not that
long,' Master Juwain said. 'But ten minutes is long enough to kill - I
suppose that we should be glad that the lack of air has served only to confuse
you.'
I told
him, 'But, sir, I am not confused. I stood on the banks of
another pool on another world and watched the sun set and then rise again.'
He and
all the others listened intently as I described what had happened to me since I
fell into the pool. Finally, Oni fixed me with one of her withering gazes and
said, 'The Water only gives visions of places faraway. It must be that one of
these visions captured you and convinced you that it was real.'
I shook
my head at this, wondering if it could be true, then I felt in my hand the
great diamond that I still held. Sunlight reflected off its many facets in a
brilliance of colors. This convinced almost everyone of the veracity of my
story, but Oni only squinted her old eyes and said, 'Perhaps such diamonds grow
at the bottom of the Water.'
As she
pointed at the pool and stared into it, its waters grew ever calmer and
clearer. After a while, they stilled so that its surface fell as smooth as
glass. In the silver of this liquid mirror, I caught flashes of great purple
towers gleaming beneath a blue sun, and a great golden-leaved tree whose light
never failed, not even in the darkest of nights. And then a brilliant light
filled the pool, dissolving all that I beheld into a blaze of glorre. Without
warning, it poured forth in a stream of fire that shot up and fell upon Flick.
A song like the ringing of perfectly tuned crystals poured forth, too, and the
music and the fire were as one. Everyone stood back as Flick's whirling lights
flared brighter and brighter. I watched awestruck as this radiance gathered
itself into the form of Alphanderry. He was like unto the strange being that
had appeared before us several times on our journeys, and yet different, too.
Although I knew well enough that our old friend had died in the Kul Moroth, the
man who stood suddenly shaped and whole before us seemed almost alive.
'Val!'
he cried out to me. He turned his head toward my other companions and smiled.
'Maram, Liljana, Master Juwain . . Kane.'
Kane
stared at this instantiation of Alphanderry with both sadness and joy filling
up his eyes. He cried out: 'My little friend!' But he made no move to embrace
him.
Daj,
however, suffered from no such restraint. He stepped up to Alphanderry as if
intending to touch his arm. His hand passed right through him - not, however,
as before, as through a beam of light, but more like a hand dipped into water.
It left ripples and a wake in whatever shimmering substance Alphanderry was
made of.
Alphanderry
smiled at Daj, and at Estrella who stood next to him. He looked at her deeply
and for a long time. Then his gaze fell upon Atara and the blindfold binding
her face, and he said, 'It is good to see you again after all this time, though
it pains me that you cannot see me. What happened to you, Atara?'
'You do
not know?'
He
shook his head. 'I almost know. The memory is there, somewhere, but I
cannot find it.'
For a
while we stood there recounting the many events that had occurred after
Alphanderry's death in the Kul Moroth: our entrance into Khaisham and the great
library; our journey across the White Mountains and the battle inside Argattha
in which we had claimed the Lightstone. Although Atara would not speak of her
blinding, Alphanderry must have guessed that she had left her eyes behind in
Morjin's throne room. When our story moved on to the tragedy of Morjin invading
Mesh and stealing back the Lightstone, and all that had happened since,
Alphanderry rubbed at his curly black hair and told us: 'It is as if I was there,
somehow, at the heart of all these things you say have happened.'
'But
you were there!' I said to him.
'As the
one you call Flick?'
At
this, he held out his hand as if beckoning one of the nearby Timpum floating
above a patch of lilies. The Timpum - it was all blue and golden like a ball of
light - drifted over and settled in the center of Alphanderry's palm. I watched
amazed as Alphanderry's hand broke apart into a shimmer of silver and crimson
and then reassembled itself a moment later. And Alphanderry told me, 'I am not
Flick. And yet, I am not other than Flick, too. It is hard to
explain.'
Explanations,
I thought, had never been Alphanderry's gift. He was a poet and a minstrel. His
triangular face was full of all the wild ness and spontaneity that we had all
loved, and with wit and imag-ination, too. His wide, sensual lips pulled up in
a dazzling smile that lit up his whole face and caused the deep creases around
his eyes to flare out like the rays of the sun. His innate playfulness caught
others up like fire. He had always been a dreamy man, living in some intensely
beautiful inner world that he delighted in sharing with others. His large brown
eyes told of his longing for places even more splendid than Givene or Agathad.
And yet something new warmed his soul - or perhaps it was only a change in
direction of his oldest and deepest impulse, as natural as breathing out once
one has fully breathed in. As he gazed at the Timpum shining in his hand - and
then at Estrella and the lilies around the pool and the astor trees and the
rocks and grasses in the Loikalii's woods - I sensed within him an overwhelming
desire to sing not just of the wonder of the world, but to sing to the
world, to fill the flowers with music and make everything come alive in a way
it never had before.
He
seemed as puzzled at his own existence as I was. I looked to Oni and Maira to
see if they might offer some understanding of this miracle, but they and the
other Loikalii had never witnessed one
of the Timpum transformed this way. Oni stood watching Alphanderry with worship
lighting up her old face. Even Kane seemed mystified, for I heard him mutter,
'My little, dear little friend - how, how?'
Oni now
had little left to show us in her magic pool, and there was little that we
still wished to see. She suggested returning to the astor grove in order to
make another feast in honor of Alphanderry's return to us. No one objected. I
kept waiting for Alphanderry to vanish back into a whirl of lights, but he
remained as solid and real as he could be. With Daj and Estrella close by him
and many of the Loikalii children gathering in close, he walked through the woods
singing a sweet, silly song that delighted them.
That evening, though, when the Loikalii spread out their fruits and nuts and delicious forest foods on their leaf-woven mats, Alphanderry sang other songs. With Kane playing the mandolet that Alphanderry still could not quite grasp, Alphanderry gave voice to a melody so lovely and compelling that all of us joined him, though we did not know what the words we intoned meant. I marveled that many of the Timpum came shimmering and streaking from out of the woods to add their strange chiming sounds to the chorus. Even the great trees above us sang, in silence, as the stars far beyond the world sang out with light.
Chapter 28 Back Table of Content Next
We remained in the Loikaiii's woods for two more days. I kept waiting for Alphanderry to fade back into the lesser splendor of Flick, but he seemed to grow only more and more real. Although he ate no food nor drank any drop of water, he walked through the woods like any other man, and he laughed and joked with us as we gathered stores for the remaining part of our journey.
We could not put this off any longer. We all dreaded leaving the shelter of the lovely trees to go out into the blazing hell of the Tar Harath. Maram especially moved with a sloth and sullenness hard to bear, cursing under his breath as he helped fill up the waterskins from one of the Loikaiii's pools. He cast numerous, longing looks at Anneli, who seemed loath to leave his side. His resentment weighed heavily upon me, as did the need to say farewell to Sunji and the Avari. There was no help for this. When we had stowed the last waterskin and bag of fresh cherries on the packhorses, in the coolness of a mid-Marud morning with the birds singing all around us, we held council with Sunji and his fellow warriors beneath an old, spreading astor tree.
'Your father,' I said to Sunji, 'enjoined you to help us cross the desert, but to go only as far as you must. You have come that far, perhaps even farther. Now you must return to tell King Jovayl of the great thing that you have done.'
While Maidro, Nurathayn and Arthayn regarded me with questioning looks, Sunji said, 'But you still have the rest of the Tar Harath to cross! And beyond that, the lands of the Yieshil'
And Maidro added, 'Who will
warn you of sandstorms? Who will keep you from drowning in quicksands? Who will
help you find water?'
This
last question needed no answer, for everyone's gaze fell upon Estrella, who sat
near Alphanderry's brilliant form playing some sort of game with him in the
graceful movements of their fingers and hands. And I said to the Avari: 'We
would never have reached this place without your help. But once we leave here,
we journey to the mountains in the west, and beyond. If you were to go with us
as far as the mountains, and then try to return by yourselves to your hadrah
across the whole breadth of the Tar Harath, then you must take water again
here, or die. Without Estrella to lead you, you would be unlikely to find these
woods. This is too great a risk, and I cannot ask you to bear it.'
Sunji
and his fellow warriors were brave men, but they were practical, too, as were
all the peoples of the Red Desert. They saw the logic of what I said. Nuradyan,
however, upon watching Estrella and Alphanderry with wonder, said, 'But we
could go with you to the end of your quest!'
This,
though, Sunji was unwilling to do. He said to Nuradayn, and to all of us: 'My
father's wishes must be obeyed, and we must return home as soon as we can. In
autumn, 'I think, there will be war with the Zuri. Valaysu is right, I think,
that the Dragon will not leave the killing of his Red Priests unavenged.
Valaysu has his battles, and we have ours.'
He
stood up to embrace me then, and it surprised me to see tears flowing freely
from his eyes.
'All
right,' Maidro said, embracing me, too, 'then we must say farewell, and I will
wish you well: May the One always lead you to water.'
Just
then Oni surprised us by marching into the grove at the head of a contingent of
the Loikalii, including Maira, Kalevi and three elders. Oni walked straight up
to Estrella, and held out to her the blue, crystal bowl that was so clear to
her. And she told her: 'Take this, that the One might always lead water to you.'
Estrella's
hands closed around the little bowl, and she looked up at Oni with deep
gratitude. Then Oni bent to kiss the top of her curly head. Since Estrella
remained as mute as the trees around us, I spoke for her, saying to Oni, 'You
have given us a great gift, perhaps even the gift of life itself. But how will
you summon the rain without your gelstei?'
At
this, Oni cast me one of her mysterious looks and said, 'Don't worry, giant
man, we have our ways.'
Liljana,
who was more practical than I, studied the gleaming blue bowl that Estrella
held and said, 'But how will she know how to use it?'
Her
question really needed no answer, for we had all found our way into our gelstei
largely unaided. I thought Oni's response interesting, however, for she looked
at the radiance streaming down through the golden astor leaves and said, 'How
do the trees know how to use the light of the sun?'
When it
came time to saddle the horses and leave the woods, another surprise awaited
me, but this one was heartbreaking. Maram, holding Anneli's hand, strolled into
the assembly place near our olinda trees and announced that he would not be
coming with us.
'I'm
sorry, Val, but I've come too far already, and it is too much - too, too much.'
We stood
near the stamping horses. My heart beat with a sick thudding in my chest as I
stared at Maram in disbelief. I could find no words to say.
'I'm
sorry, my friends,' he said to all of us, 'but I just can't go on.'
He
wiped at the corner of his eye, and would not look at me. It came to me that
this was just another of his vastations, when doubt and fear worked at his
insides and made jelly of his muscles and bones and his will to move himself in
the right direction. As always, I believed, a brilliant fire would soon burn
away his deepest affliction and leave a noble being standing straight and
unvan-quishable. As always, I had only to light the torch.
'Maram,'
I said, stepping up close to him to grasp his shoulder.
'No, no
- do not look at me that way!'
How
could I not look at this vain, vexatious yet great man whom I loved as much as
I did anyone?
'Please,
Val - this is too hard!'
As I
searched for the right thing to say to him, Kane barked out at him: 'Watch that
your courage doesn't fail you now!'
Atara stepped
up to him and said, 'The worst of our journey is behind us.'
Liljana
came over to touch her hand to his cheek. 'We know how you've suffered - who
knows better than your friends? But it's almost over. I have to believe that.'
'No,
no, it will never be over,' Maram said. 'I do not think you will ever find the
Maitreya.'
He
stood squeezing Anneli's hand and still would not look me.
'We
need you, Maram,' I said at last. Estrella came over and pulled gently at his
hand to indicate her intense desire that he should change his mind and journey
on with ill Alphanderry told him of the great wonders of the world that he
might experience if only he found the will to ride a few hundred more miles.
Kane turned to me with a helpless look softening his savage face.
'Maram,'
I said, again touching his shoulder.
He
still ignored me, turning to unwrap his old traveling cloak from around his
firestone. He lifted up this great, ruby crystal and said, 'I never really
believed that this would be made whole again. I never believed that I would be
made whole again. Can I hold love's bright flame? For a day or a year? That's
all that really matters. In the end, it all comes down to love.'
His
gaze fell in adoration upon Anneli for a moment and then finally met mine. All
of his anguish came flooding into me. All of his dreams and desires filled me
with a pain that I could not bear. I blinked my eyes against the burning there,
and said to him, 'All right, Maram, stay if you must, and peace be with you.'
If I
searched inside myself for the truth of things, hadn't I always known it would
come to this?
'Don't
look at me like that!' Maram called out to me again.
I could
no longer bear for him to suffer, not another arrow wound to his flesh or a
sunburn or a day of fruitless fighting an enemy that could not be defeated. I
could not bear that his great heart should remain empty of that for which he
most yearned. I said to him, 'Stay - take Anneli for your bride. Have children.
Be happy, my friend.'
I
looked at him as he looked at me, and I could not hold inside the bright, warm
thing that made my heart hurt.
'Damn
you, Val!' he said to me. 'You're cruel! You make it easy for me - and so make
it hard. So damn, damn hard!'
We
embraced each other then, and wept like boys. Then it came time to saddle the
horses for rest of our journey. Maram watched me fasten the straps beneath
Altaru's great body, and he said to me, 'Ah, surely I was wrong in what I said
about the Maitreya. You will find him! And on your return, you'll pass
back through these woods again - I know you will!'
He
forced himself to smile, huge and deep, but I could tell that be did not
believe what he had said. I, however had to act as if I believed it. And
so with great gratitude we said farewell to the people of the forest. We mounted
our horses and rode through the silent trees. When we came out upon the sands
of the Tar Harath, a blast of terrible heat instantly burned the moisture from
my eyes. There came another parting, as Sunji and the Avari turned south and
east while we forced ourselves to point our mounts toward the great dunes
gleaming in the west. Soon, the Avari were lost to our sight among the sweeps
and swells of this vast country. Then the Loikalii's Vild vanished into the
glare of the deepening distances. Never, not even after my family's death, had
I felt so alone.
Over
the next few days of our journey, my friends said little to me, for I could not
bear the sound of their voices. Our lives settled into a harsh routine: strike
our goat-hair tents hours before dawn and ride into the growing heat of the
morning. When the air became a blazing furnace searing our eyes and sucking our
bodies' moisture clean out of the fibers of the robes that the Avari had given
us, we pitched our tents again and lay sweating and suffering until it came
time to set out into the cooling air of the late afternoon. We plodded on
across the evening's starlit sands; when exhaustion finally weakened us and the
icy cold of deep night drove through our garments like knives, we crawled
inside our tents yet again to take a few hours of sleep.
I led
us on a straight course southwest toward the Crescent Mountains. No lesser
mountains or rocky hills rose up out of the desert to impede us or to cause us
to make a detour. The heat of the Tar Harath, after the cool greenery of the
Loikalii's woods, seemed even more hellish than the baking misery that had so
nearly killed us in the desert's easternmost reaches.
There
seemed no end to it. Although I knew from the maps that we would eventually
reach the great Crescent Mountains, and the Tar Harath give out many miles
before that, my ears, eyes and heart told me differently. There was only desert
in all directions, day after day. The wind blew particles of stinging sand
across a sun-seared emptiness that seemed to go on forever. I turned often
toward the direction that I imagined the Vild to lie, hoping that Maram might
have changed his mind and that I might see him riding after us. I felt him
close to me, his great heart booming out his remorse at deserting me and his
desire to reunite in our quest But I searched the wavering sand behind us in
vain.
We all,
I thought, grieved Ma ram's absence; it was as if there was a hole in the earth
where a great mountain had stood. One night, over dinner, Liljana admitted that
she missed Ma ram's grumbling and drinking almost as much as she did his bawdy
songs and unchainable zest for life. She had little appetite for the last of
the cherries and other fresh fruit that we had taken from the Loikalii's woods.
I had none. I sat staring at my untouched food; I sipped the few drams of
brandy that 1 poured into my cup in remembrance of happier times. If we had lost one companion, however, we had
gained another - almost - in Alphanderry. His presence did not fade with our
passing from the Vild, nor did he often dissolve back into his old radiance as
Flick. He 'rode' along with us on top of one of the packhorses, if that was the
right word to describe the actions of a being who possessed neither solidity
nor weight. I wondered if he could simply soar through the air like a brilliant
bird or streak onward like the rays of the sun. it seemed, though, that such
means of movement were impossible for him when he remained in his human form.
As we neared the end of the Tar Harath, or so we hoped, Alphanderry rode or
walked, even as we did.
He did
not, however, eat or drink or sleep or sweat. If he suffered along with us, it
was not from the world's hardships, at least not in their physical aspects, I
sensed that he anguished over our anguish, as any good friend would. He, too, I
thought, missed Maram. From his own memory of Maram and our descriptions of
Maram's valor at the Siege of Khaisham and many times since, he composed lines
that he called 'An Ode To A Five-Horned Man'. His voice, cool and flowing,
refreshed us even more than water, and the song reminded us that Maram remained
close to us, at least in spirit.
On the
fourth night since our leaving the Loikalii's forest, we gathered around a
single candle that Liljana had lit. Kane sat plucking the mandolet's strings
while Alphanderry sang of the time when Maram had mistaken a bear licking honey
from his face for one of his lovers. When Alphanderry had finished and the wind
came whooshing out of the west, we spoke yet again of the mystery of
Alphanderry's existence. Daj wondered how it was possible for this almost-real
being woven of light to possess Alphanderry's very real memories.
It was
Liljana who tried to answer him. In the words that poured out of her, I heard
her fervor for the wisdom and teachings of her ancient order: 'All men and
women die, for they are born from the world and must return to it. But the
world itself never dies -not unless one such as Angra Mainyu comes with fire to
destroy it. We are all of this immortal world. Not just in the
water of our blood or in the minerals of our bones, but in our thoughts, our
passions and our dreams. And in our memories. My Sisters of old believed that
all we ever experience, the world experiences, too. As we remember, so does the
world remember. Should it not be, then, that as the world remembers, we remember?
Ea is Alphanderry's mother, and it must be that She, herself, whispers these
memories in his mind. It must be that she has the power to remake him in
greater glory, even as She once gave him birth.'
Master
Juwain twirling his cursed varistei between his fingers, said, 'I believe that
Liljana is right. In spirit, she is right. But I think there is much more to
this matter than she has told. Alphanderry is of this world, as is water or
light or the crystal of the gelstei, whose deepest structure we may never
understand. But surely he is something more, too. Something from beyond the
world. It is said that once the Galadin walked upon Ea, and left some part of
their shining substance behind in the Lokalani's Vilds
- what else can the Timpum really be? Unless
the Timpum are even more than this: some part or impulse of the Ieldra
themselves. My Brotherhood teaches that the Ieldra dwell ft the bright, black
emptiness of Ninsun, at the center of all things. Everything dwells
there: all time, all space, all matter, all memory. The universe itself, not
just the world, remembers all that is and has ever occurred, down to the
tumbling points on the tiniest grain of sand driven by a whirlwind. The Akashic
Memory, my order has named this record. Over the ages, a few masters of my
Brotherhood have been able to call upon a wisdom and memories far beyond
themselves. It must be these memories, some special part, that Alphanderry
calls upon to make his verses. It must be from these memories that the Shining
Ones somehow make him.'
Alphanderry,
sitting across from me, listened respectfully to what Master Juwain said,
though without particular concentration. He seemed not to care how he
came to be, only that he somehow existed again. He took delight in this.
His smile nearly lit up the night. He turned toward Daj and Estrella, who had
not known him of old, and said, 'Master Juwain is wise in the ways of philosophy,
and many other things, and we have much to learn from him. But creation might
not be as much of a mystery as he makes it. Even the creation of a man. Daj,
will you help me with this? Estrella?'
As
Estrella looked at Alphanderry in puzzlement, Daj asked him, 'What do you mean,
sir?'
'Please,'
Alphanderry said to him, 'save the "sir" for masters of the
Brotherhood and other illummaries. I'm just a maker of songs - and
of men, as you will see and aid in the making. Now, this man who doesn't quite
yet exist but somehow always exists whom we'll call into being - what is
the first thing that we should know about him?'
Daj's
eyes brightened at being drawn into this diversion, and he said, 'I don't know
- his name?'
'Yes,
good, good - his name. Well, what is it?'
'But
how should I know?'
'Think,
then!'
As Daj
closed his eyes as if running through a list of names of all the people he had
ever known, Alphanderry reached out to tap him on his head. But since Daj could
not feel the substance of his hand, Alphanderry called out to him instead: 'Do
not think with this! Not in this matter. Think with that.'
So
saying, he laid his shimering hand over Daj's heart and smiled at him. And he
added, 'Come on, quickly now, the name is there, and you know it!'
And Daj
blurted out: 'Might it be Aldarian?'
'Good -
a good name, noble and strong. A little dull, perhaps. Is our man dull?'
'No,
just the opposite. He is clever and cunning.'
'Then
we don't have his true name yet, do we?'
A fire
flared deep within Daj, and he called out with more certainty: 'His name is
Eleikar!'
'Hoy!
Eleikar - so it is. Well, what does our Eleikar desire more than anything
else?'
And Daj
told him: 'Vengeance! Eleikar's father was a great knight. A wicked king
coveted his mother for a for a concubine, and when he could not have her, he
killed Eleikar's father and took his mother anyway. To save her honor,
Eleikar's mother poisoned herself.'
'And
what became of Eleikar?'
'He
fled with his brothers and sisters into the wilderness. The king's men hunted
them down like pigs, sticking them with spears. They killed everyone except
Eleikar.'
'And
how did Eleikar survive?'
'By
playing dead - even when the king's men stuck his face and legs for sport. The wolves of the
forest rescued him. They licked
his wounds and brought him fresh meat to eat. He lived with them, in a cave, until he grew into a
man.'
'Hoy,'
Alphanderry said, nodding sadly, 'then Eleikar must have many scars.'
'Many,'
Daj said. He tapped his cheekbone and added, 'He bears one here, shaped like a
crescent moon. He bears his father's scimitar, of the same shape, pis only
desire is to get close enough to the king to im.it.'
Alphanderry
nodded his head again and asked, 'Is this his only desire?'
As Daj
fell into a puzzled silence, Alphanderry turned to Estrella and put the same
question to her. She could not, of course, give voice to her answer. But her
quicksilver eyes flowed with all her deep passion for life, and her fingers
danced in that secret language of play and dreams that only Daj seemed to
understand.
At the
frown that knitted Daj's eyebrows together, Alphanderry said to him: 'Well? Is
vengeance all that he desires?'
Daj
scowled at Estrella and said, 'No, there is something else. It seems that
Eleikar has fallen in love with the wicked king's daughter.'
For
another couple of hours, as the night deepened and the air fell bitterly cold,
Alphanderry continued this game of quizzing the children and summoning out of
near-nothingness a wild, star-crossed man named Eleikar. As their story built
in elaboration and complexity, so did Eleikar gain his essential
characteristics: bright, burning, sorrowful, adoring, doomed. He was a man who
howled his wrath at the moon, and whispered to his beloved all of his
overflowing joy of life. I winced to hear Daj declaim that Eleikar was
immortal, not because Eleikar could not be slain, but because he would love as
no man ever had before, and minstrels for many ages would sing of him. I
marveled at how Eleikar came alive out of a few words spoken by a whip-scarred
boy and the gestures of a mute slave girl, and seemed more real than many men I
had known.
It was
a strange magic that Alphanderry wove, and while Kane smiled strangely at
Alphanderry's unusual exercise, neither Master Juwain nor Liljana quite
approved of it. Minstrels, to their way of thinking, sang of love or the beauty
of the sea, or recounted the feats of ancient heroes who had really lived.
Liljana scolded Alphanderry for trying to usurp the prerogatives of the Ieldra
or even the One, saying to him: 'Your Eleikar moves according to your whims and
designs, but it is not so with real men. With women, shaped after the
image of Ea herself. We are all imbued with free will. Isn't this is the
essence of what it means to be alive?'
We all
carried this question off to bed; I thought of little else over the hot, dusty
miles of our journey the next day. Alphanderry's very existence seemed a window
into the great mystery of life and death. I came to see him not as a challenger
of the power of the Ieldra but as their fulfillment and gift. He, merely in
being, was a promise that our lives were not lived in vain.
Nothing
is lost, I thought as I gazed at Alphanderry sitting happily on
top of his swaying packhorse. The world must remember.
I
recalled the faces and voices of my family whom I had left behind in a place
impossibly far away. A great hope came to me then. Truly, we each blazed with
the bright flame of free will, and if we worked this will truly, then we might
suffer or die but we would never fall to evil and be enslaved. And so we would
somehow live, in honor and beauty, throughout eternity.
Nothing
is lost for the whole universe remembers.
With
this thought, however, as with ravening lions chasing a gazelle, came a
terrible fear. I recalled what Kane had once told me: that two paths only wound
their way into the mists of the future. Either men would become as angels, and
the brightest of the Galadin would advance to the order of the Ieldra in a
Great Progression known as the Valkariad, or Angra Mainyu and his kind would be
freed from Damoom, and a darkness without end would befall the stars. But the
Ieldra would not abide such total and final evil, and so they would destroy the
stars and the whole universe of Eluru that contained them. Nothing of the
universe would be left, and so nothing would remain to remember anything.
All
will be lost. It is not enough to choose freely and fight nobly. We must win.
Triumph,
however, seemed impossible without Maram at my side. As I gazed into the
blood-red dunes where the sun died into the west, it took all my will to keep
riding on as if any real hope still remained.
That
evening, as Liljana rationed out our water and Master Juwain morosely read from
the Saganom Elu, I knew that I could not let them drown in the darkness
of despair, much less the children. They needed to believe in a story where
things came out right. So did I. Someday, perhaps, the minstrels would sing of
my companions and me, and I would have them tell that we fought like the heroes
of old to vanquish our enemies, down to our last breaths.
And so
I stood before the glowing candle, and I added my voice to the game that
Alphanderry had begun, saying to Daj and Estrella: 'Eleikar must have his
revenge upon the king, and he must love the princess, too, as the sun does the
earth, for that is his fate. So it seems
that it is his fate to live and die tragically. But perhaps there is more to
Eleikar than we see.'
'What,
then?' Daj asked me.
'That
remains unknown. Perhaps it can't be known, by us. But Eleikar, if he is
truly to come alive, might see what we cannot.'
'But
what could that be?'
'A way
out of his dilemma.'
'But
what if there is no way out?'
'There
is always a way,' I told him. 'A king once said this to me: "How is it
possible that the impossible is not only possible but inevitable?"'
As the
candle flicked and glozed, Daj pondered this, then said, 'I can't see the
answer to that riddle, either. Perhaps I will by the time we reach
Hesperu - if we ever do.' 'We will, Daj.'
'Without
Maram?'
'Yes,
if we have to, without Maram.'
'Then
you really believe that there is a chance we might find the Maitreya before
Morjin does?'
As I
gazed up at the millions of lights above us, more splendid at the center of the
Tar Harath than any place else on earth, something blazed inside me, and I
said, 'We will find the Maitreya. And on our journey back to the
Brotherhood School, we'll return to the Loikalii's woods. We'll sit with Maram
again and eat raspberries- together. We'll bring him a bottle of the finest Hesperuk
brandy and make a toast to love - I swear we will!'
All of
my friends looked up at me and smiled - everyone except Atara, who could not
look at anything, and Liljana, who could not smile. But Atara's hand found mine
and squeezed me tightly as she said, 'Val - I can see the Yieshi well!
We will reach it! And beyond the desert, the mountains leading to
Hesperu!'
Although
Liljana's face remained as. stern as stone, her eyes warmed even so. 'We still
have a long way to go before we find this brandy you speak of, much less the
Maitreya. Now, why don't we get some sleep, while we can?'
The
next day, our journey proved no less arduous than any other but we bore the
pain of it in better spirits. Not until the day following did we finally came
out of the Tar Harath into the western reaches of the Red Desert.
We
celebrated surviving the worst hell on earth by drinking the last of our water
and gazing out optimistically into the country that opened before us. Here the
dunes gave way to the harder
sands
of a pain nearly as flat as one of the skillets that Liljana had been forced to
abandon. Here the air was cooler, slightly. Ursage and spiny sage grew in
ragged clumps, and a few strands of rock-grass forced their way out of cracks
in the ground. I watched a scorpion dragging a dead lizard through this grass,
while farther to the west, in the air, a hawk soared over the desert. The sun
remained a white-hot iron searing our eyes, but in its fierce light I found not
the foreburn of death but rather the brightness of hope.
'How
far is it,' I asked Atara, riding over to her, 'to the Yieshi well?'
'I'm
not sure,' she told me from beneath the sweat-stained shawl that covered her
face. 'I cannot see distances with my sight as you can with your eyes.
But perhaps twenty miles.'
From
here, I guessed that it couldn't be more than a hundred and twenty miles to the
mountains and the streams that we presumed we would find there. But without any
water at all, it might as well have been a hundred and twenty thousand miles.
By late
morning, my mouth and throat had grown so dry, I could speak only in croaks,
like a toad. By midafternoon, with the sweat soaking my robes, I could think of
nothing but water. I was ready to try to chew the juices out of the bitter soap
grass or even to bite open my horse's neck to drink down a little blood. The
burning thirst of my friends made mine a hundred times worse.
Then,
near the day's end, we crested a swell of ground and found ourselves looking
down into a depression that might have been made by the drying-up of a lake.
Two black tents poked up against the brown, sun-baked earth. At the center of
the depression stood the circular wall of rocks: the Yieshi's well. A half
dozen of the Yieshi stood there, too, or so we presumed the dun-robed figures
near the well to be.
At the
sight of us, just after Alphanderry had vanished into nothingness, one of them
drew a saber that flashed in the late afternoon light. We rode closer, and I
saw that he was about ten years older than I, with a face as sharp as obsidian
and a scowl showing rows of white teeth. A young woman called to a boy tending
some nearby goats, and then gathered two other children behind the meager
protection of the well. An older woman with skin like dark, wrinkled leather
hurried over to the well too. I guessed that she must be the man's mother.
We rode
even closer, and the eyes of all the Yieshi grew wide with astonishment. The
man shouted out to us: 'Who are you? From where do you come?'
Ten
yards from the well, we all climbed down off our horses. I moistened my lips
with some of the sweat pouring from Altaru's neck, and I croaked out to him: 'I
am Mirustral, and we are pilgrims seeking the Well of Restoration. And we have
come from the east, across the Tar Harath.'
As I
pointed behind us at the glowing duneland, the man's astonishment turned to
disbelief. He shouted at me: 'No one crosses the Tar Harath! You are a liar -
either that or the sun has made you mad!'
'The
sun has made me thirsty,' I said to him. 'And my friends, too. Have you any
water to spare?'
The man
looked at the old woman standing behind the well, and then looked back at me.
He shook his sword at me and said, 'For madmen we have none, for that would be
a waste. And for liars, we have only steel!'
Kane,
perhaps even thirstier than I (and perhaps a little mad), whipped free his long
kalama and advanced on the man. He growled out, 'So, we have steel for you,
too! Let's see whose is quicker and sharper!'
'Kane!'
I called out. I moved to grab him, but he was too quick for me. And so I
shouted, with greater force: 'Kane! Let us give them gold for their water,not
steel!'
Although
the old woman's face brightened at this, it seemed that Kane hadn' heard me. He
might have succeeded in quickly cutting down this bellicose man if Estrella
hadn't sprinted forward, throwing her arms around Kane's waist and looking up
with her dark, warm eyes as if pleading with Kane to put away his sword.
Kane
came to a halt and rested his hand on top of Estrella's head. He glared at the
man with black eyes full of fire.
Now
Liljana came forward and walked past the' swords of both Kane and the startled
Yieshi man, straight up to the well. She held out a gold coin to the old woman
and said, 'We are neither mad nor liars - nor are we thieves. Why don't we sit
together and tell our stories? At least let our children have a little water,
if you've none for us.'
As
quick as an ostrakat pecking up a lizard, the old woman's hand darted out and
snatched up the coin. Then her face softened, and she said to the younger
woman: 'Let them have water, Rani.'
The
younger woman heaved a leather skin into the well. It made no splash but only
sent up a sound like that of wet clothes beaten against a rock. Moments later
Rani drew up a bucketful of muddy water that seemed more mud than water.
'You
shall all of you drink, not just your children,' the old woman said to me. 'But
we've no water to spare for your horses.'
After
that Kane and the Yieshi man sheathed their swords. His name proved to be
Manoj, and he presented to us his mother, Zarita, his wife and their children:
Tareesh, Lia and Yiera. While Rani went to work filtering the well water
through a filthy cloth, we sat on goatskins to tell our stories, even as
Liljana had suggested.
It took
some time to get Manoj to speak, but when he finally did, he was cordial
enough, if not friendly. He eyed Kane suspiciously as he told us that he had
quarrelled with the cousins of his clan, who had gone on to the wells in the
north to wait out the heat of the summer. Manoj, though, had chosen to remain
alone with the rest of his family at this well, where they eked out a living
from a few goats and sheep, and a little dirty water.
When
Rani had finished her work, she hefted up a waterskin and went around filling
our cups, I didn't mind the earthy, slightly brackish taste of the water. In
truth, I had to restrain myself from gulping down the precious liquid like a
dog lest I spill a single drop on the dry ground.
'Very
well Mirustral,' Manoj said to me when I had drunk my fill, 'Now tell me how it
is possible for pilgrims to cross the Tar Harath.'
In the
last heat of the day, I told him about the much greater heat of the deep desert
and how the four Avari warriors had helped us survive it. Although I could not
give away the secret of the Vild I admitted that we had found water in a place
where none believed water to be.
'I've
heard it said that there is water hidden by the dunes,' Manoj told us, 'but I
never believed it. If this girl led you to it, then she is a treasure greater
than gold.'
He
nodded his head at Estrella, who sat cupping Oni's blue bowl between her hands.
Ever since we had left the Loikalii's woods, she had tried to unleash the
gelstei's power.
'Perhaps,'
Manoj said, 'she will lead you to water in the miles between here and the
mountains.'
'Is
there no other well in all that distance?'
Manoj
shook his head. 'There is a well but it is dry, stone dry, as it will
remain until Ashavar, when the rains come.'
I
looked off into the west, at the dusty, dry folds of ground where bits of
thombush and spike grass grew, I said, 'We cannot go on to look for more
water without water now, for our horses.'
I
turned to watch Altaru sweating in the sun. It pained me that I had broken my
promise to him by drinking before he did, but there was no help for it. I could
not give him, or any of the horses, water that the Yieshi denied us.
Manoj
regarded him, too, and then looked at Atara's roan mare, Fire. He said, 'Those
are fine horses, the best I have seen, even if too thin. We might find
water for them, but we haven't enough for your other horses - we've barely
enough to get us through the summer.'
This, I
thought, looking at Manoj's skinny goats grazing about, must be true. If his
well ran dry, he and his family would perish. We could not buy or play upon his
sympathies to yield up what he could not give us. But neither could we water
Altaru and Fire and simply let our other horses die. 'I'm sorry, Mirustral,' Manoj told me.
As it
became clear that we remained in a desperate plight, Estrella squeezed her blue
crystal with a surprising fierceness. Something inside her seemed suddenly to
click, like an iron key fitting into a lock. She rose up and looked about her.
She began walking, out into the desert where she came upon a low, flat rock
near a thorn-bush. There she stood, facing west and holding up her blue bowl to
the sky.
'Father,
what is she doing?'
This
question came from Lia, a girl about Estrella's age.
It was
Daj who answered Lia, saying: 'She is summoning rain.'
Manoj
and his family must have thought Daj mad after all, and Estrella more so, for
she stood gazing in the direction of the setting sun and did not move. Almost
immediately, however, the wind began blowing out of the west. It built quickly
and unrelentingly to nearly the force of a gale, and drove sand in a stinging
brown blanket across the Yiehsi's encampment.
I
shielded my eyes and watched awed as the first dark clouds appeared on the
horizon; the wind drove them straight toward us at an astonishing speed. The
air fell colder and moister, and ran with electric currents. Whips of lightning
cracked down from the clouds, splitting the ground with flashes of brilliant
white-orange fire. Then the sky above us grew nearly as black as night. Manoj's
children fled into the comfort of their mother's and grandmother's robes, but
they could give them no protection from this wild storm.
A great
thunderbolt shook the earth beneath us, and a strange burning smell charged the
air.
And
then the clouds opened, unleashing rain in sheets and streams. It rained so
hard that we could scarcely breathe. Our robes quickly soaked through as if
plunged into a lake. We cringed and shivered against the icy torrents raging
down from above us.
Then
Kane let loose a great laugh that tore from his lungs like a thunder of his
own. He stood and stripped off his useless clothing, standing naked beneath the
black sky. He raised back his head as he opened his mouth and let the rain pour
down his throat. He I raised his hands straight up as if summoning the heaven's
lightning himself. To Manoj, he must have seemed as mad as the world about us.
But Kane was the first of us to seize the moment, grabbing up waterskins from
the terrified horses and opening them to the deluge. It alarmed me how quickly
the skins swelled with water.
The
ground beneath us, too, began overflowing like a suddenly rising lake. If this
storm had caught us in a ravine, raging rivers of water would surely have
drowned us; as it was, I feared that this ancient basin might prove a deathtrap
if it rained much longer, for there was no drainage here and the sky seemed to
hold entire oceans of water. I shouted at Estrella to put down her bowl; she
did not hear me. She remained standing against the storm's ferocity with her
eyes closed and her arms frozen out, holding up the blue bowl. The rain had now
filled it many times over, and water poured from it as from an infinite source.
I ran over to her then. I eased the bowl out of her cold fingers, and tried to
cover her with my robe. She finally opened her eyes. Her smile drove through
the storm like the sun.
Soon
after that, it stopped raining. The clouds broke apart, blew away and vanished
into the blueness of the twilight sky. The desert about the well had been
changed into a wetlands of pools, puddles and water holes drilled down into
acres of mud. Rani, with bucket in hand, discovered that the well was full -
fuller than it had ever been before, even in the months of winter.
'Rain
in Marud!' she marveled, looking about the well. 'You are not pilgrims, but
sorcerers!'
Then
she gazed at Estrella in awe. 'No, I should call you instead a water witch as
lived in the ancient ages - a worker of miracles!'
That
night, in honor of miracles, Manoj slaughtered his fattest goat and roasted it
beneath the light of the moon. The fire, made from moist, woody thornbush dried
our garments even as the
greasy
smoke worked its way into our skin and hair. We ate succulent meat and goat
cheese. Manoj fed Estrella choice tidbits from his own hand and wanted to know
how she had called up the storm. So did Master Juwain.
Bui
their words only amused Estrella. She suddenly hooked together her thumbs,
shiny with goat grease, and moved her fingers up and down around them as of the
flapping of wings. Her face came alive with a succession of delightful
expressions, and she made other signs, with her fingers and hands. Daj
interpreted this mysterious language as best he could, telling Master Juwain;
'It is like this, sir: everything touches upon everything else. And so even the
tiniest act can ripple out into the world with great effects. The beating of a
butterfly's wings can cause a whirlwind a thousand miles away. I think Estrella
has found a way to be that butterfly.'
Manoj
considered this as he called for Rani to pour some fermented goat's milk for us
to drink. He looked at Estrella and said, 'Well, then, little butterfly - where
will you fly to next?'
I
sensed that he wished to follow us on our quest, to see what other miracles
Estrella might bring forth. For his sake, and ours, I told him only that we
sought a wondrous source of healing deep in the mountains.
'In
Sandar?' he asked us.
Sandar,
I thought, letting that name's sounds play out inside me. Could he mean Senta?
For nearly a thousand miles we had debated our route into Hesperu. Once we had
decided on crossing the Red Desert and the Crescent Mountains, it seemed wisest
to go down into the north of Hesperu through Senta in the mountains' southern
part. A good road, we knew, led from Senta through that difficult terrain. But
how we were to negotiate the even more difficult terrain between the edge of
the desert and Senta had remained a mystery.
'You must
be bound for Sandar,' Manoj said to us. 'Like the pilgrims of old.'
Senta,
of course, had drawn pilgrims from across Ea for ages: all from roads leading
from Surrapam, Sunguru or Hesperu itself. We knew of no ancient route from the
Yieshi's lands to this fabled city.
Master
Juwain regarded Manoj with his clear, old eyes as he rubbed the back of his
head and asked. 'And how did the ancient pilgrims find their way to Sandar?'
'From
the Dead City.'
The
puzzled look that Master .Juwain traded with Kane caused Manoj to add: 'It was
once called Souzam. It is said that there is a road leading out of there to the
west - at least there was once. No Yieshi would ever go into the mountains to
find out if this is true.'
Further
questioning prompted Manoj to tell Master Juwain that the Dead City, or Souzam,
lay only a hundred miles from his well at the foot of the Crescent Mountains.
'But if
you are considering journeying that way,' Manoj told us, 'do not. Do not go
into the mountains at all, I beg you.'
'Why not?' I asked him.
'Because
the mountains arc cursed,' he told me. 'The Dead People dwell there.'
Fate,
it seemed, after slinging fire and arrows at us for too long, had at last
opened a door to better fortune. The gleam in Master Juwain's and Kane's eyes,
no less my own, told me that we would indeed journey at least as far as the
Dead City to see what we might see.
We
stayed up late that night, for the ground was too wet for easy sleeping. Manoj
had many old tales that he wished to share with us - and many that he wished to
hear. After his third cup of fermented milk, we finally got him to tell us
exactly how we might find the Dead City. Just before dawn, we arose to say
goodbye to him and his family. And he told us: 'I would ride with you, as far
as the mountains, to see that you are safe. But I must remain here to make sure
that my wife and children are safe. The Zuri have raided into our lands, and
although I do not think they would come this far in Marud, it is said that
sorcerers have poisoned the mind of Tatuk and now direct his decisions. I would
make war upon the Zuri before they grow too bold, but my cousins have disputed
the need.'
As I
stood by Altaru, who was happy at having drunk gallons of fresh water, I
clapped Manoj on the arm and told him: 'Remain here then, and keep your family
safe. And keep your sword sharp, Yieshi.'
We rode
off into the desert to the west. Estrella's rain had made the desiccated rock
grass and bitterbroom magically green. Brilliant pink flowers bloomed from the
thornbush. The sandrunners, rabbits, lizards and other desert creatures all
seemed restored to new life.
All
that day and the next we travelled toward the mountains, following the
landmarks that Manoj had described to us. We found the second Yieshi well, too.
It was not dry but full. We drank from it and topped up our waterskins, and
continued on our way. The mountains came into view and built before us, ever
higher, ever clearer, shadowed in purple and capped in white. On our third day
out from Manoj's well, we came upon Souzam, which he had called the Dead City.
It seemed nothing more than a few acres of ancient stone buildings and
mud-brick houses half-buried in sand. Most of the streets were broken, and the stones
of a great aqueduct's arch had long since cracked and fallen apart. It seemed
that no one had lived here for ten thousand years. A quick search turned up
some hyenas making a den in one of the buildings, but we came across no other
inhabitants.
We found
the road that Manoj had told of easily enough, although it, too, was nearly
buried in sand and its paving stones cracked in a thousand places. We followed
it out of the city, up into the bone dry foothills. It wound up through a
canyon. On its rugged slopes grew thornbush and other plants that we had seen
for too many miles. From the rounded stones strung out in a snaking curve along
the bottom of the canyon, we saw that once a stream or river had flowed here.
As we
worked our way higher, the sands of the stream bed darkened with moistness.
The tough desert vegetation gave way to juniper, cottonwoods and the first pine
trees. Master Juwain remarked upon the extremes of the Crescent Mountains: in
the range's western slopes, running from Surrapam down into Hesperu, the
mountains caught the wet winds of the oceans and wrung out the rain. And there
grew the lushest, greenest forests in the world. Its eastern slopes, as we now
saw, were nearly as dry as the desert beyond. But they became moister and
cooler with every mile higher that we climbed into the mountains.
We
camped that night in sight of a great, white-capped peak. We ate some goat
cheese and drank our water in good confidence that we would soon find more.
That morning, a few miles higher, the stream bed filled with mud; a few miles
higher still, a trickle of water flowed down to the desert that it would never
quite reach. By midafternoon the trickle had become a good-sized stream. And
then, almost without warning, we came up around the curve of a mountain into a
beautiful valley full of aspen trees, wildflowers, miles of thick green grass
and herds of antelope that grazed upon it - into heaven.
Chapter 29 Back Table of Content Next
Maram would have enjoyed our feast that night, made from a roasted antelope that I had killed with a quick arrow. Most of all, he would have delighted in the honey that Kane took from a beehive in a fallen tree.
None of us, not even Kane, knew anything about the mountainous terrain ahead of us. Surely, we all thought, we would find cities or at least villages in such a rich land.
Liljana, still chafing at having to abandon her beloved cook-ware, announced, 'Perhaps we will find a village and a smith who might- sell us a few pots?'
'And find as well Kallimun spies?' Kane growled at her. 'We're too close to Hesperu now, and it won't do to expose ourselves for no good need. It will be chance enough to pass through Senta, but I see no other way.' He walked over to the low fence of brush and logs that we had built up encircling our fire. It was the first fortified camp we had made since the mountains beyond Acadu. 'Manoj called this the land of the Dead People. Let's not join them,'
The next morning, as we wound our way southwest, we saw no sign of the
road's makers nor indeed of anyone. The valley, and others through the
mountains that lay beyond it, proved densely inhabited but not by man. Elk and
wild horses kept company with the antelope, as did badgers, bears, boars,
rabbits and other furry creatures we saw
chewing the browse from bushes or darting through the trees of the
mountains' forests. Flowers grew everywhere,
but especially brightened the acres of thick grass in the valleys' lower
reaches. We moved slowly, pausing often to let our horses fatten on this grass.
The land seemed as wild as any we had ever crossed. And
then the next day the road led straight into a small town, dead and deserted
like Souzam. Ten miles farther up the road we came to a city thrice Souzam's
size, though it was hard to tell for here field and forest overgrew what must
have once been wooden houses and lanes passing between them, just as the desert
had swallowed parts of Souzam. Death indeed haunted this place. I found myself
wishing for the familiar sound of Maram's voice, moaning out his dread of
ghosts. Here, among the ruins of ancient temples and what looked to be a large
palace. Maram himself seemed almost a ghost and I could not shake the sense
that he rode at my side or just behind us.
'What happened,' I called out into the cool air,
giving voice to a sentiment that Maram would have shared, 'to the poor people
of this city? And of Souzam - all those who once dwelled in these mountains?'
I looked to Kane for an answer, but he sat on top of
his horse using his strong, white teeth to tweezer out a bee's stinger still
embedded in his skin. He shrugged his shoulders. And Master Juwain said, 'It
might have been the Great Death. In 1047 of the Age of the Dragon, the plague
spread out of Argattha into all lands, in some places killing nine people out
of ten. It might be that there were lands where all died - or at least,
no one remained to make accounts.'
He wanted to search through the ruins for a library
but Kane gainsaid such a quest, growling out, '1047 - has it really been almost
two thousand years since Morjin bred that filthy plague? So, any books here
that told of it would long since have rotted apart.'
He went on to curse Morjin for using a green gelstei
to create the hideous, hemorrhagic disease meant to afflict the blood of all
the Valari - and the Valari only.
'So, he failed - the green gelstei are hard to
use, eh?' he said looking at Master Juwain. 'The Lord of Pestilence killed more
of his own people than he did Valari.'
He didn't add what we all feared: that with the
Lightstone in his grasp, he would be soon breed even worse plagues than the
Great Death.
After
that, we continued our journey up the road. This band of bricks and stones
wound still higher and gradually turned past snowy peaks toward the south. Our
dread of the Great Death, if not ghosts, impelled us to hurry from this rich
country but over the next days we continued moving slowly, pausing often to let
the horses graze upon all the grass they wished to eat. In truth, we all still
suffered from the ravages of the desert. We needed time to heal. And our
suspicion that a droghul awaited us farther up the road checked our enthusiasm
for swift travel. We hunted and filled our bellies with meat even as Liljana
found wild potatoes growing along our way, and much fruit: raspberries and
blackberries, cherries, peaches and plums. We made feast of all these foods,
and of the trout and rockfish that we pulled out of moun- tain streams. Kane
called this land a hunter's paradise, and that it was. Liljana simply called it
paradise. Rain fell upon us in perfect intervals and amounts, and so it was
with the sunshine. It seemed strange that after fighting so hard for so long,
against both man and nature, we should find a place where the world welcomed us
and fed both our bodies and souls.
Daj and
Estrella especially seemed to thrive here. Their small frames filled out, and
their faces lost the haggard, haunted look that hundreds of miles of desert
travel - to say nothing of the Skadarak - had worn into them. The sharp edge of
guilt I felt at taking them on this quest dulled, slightly. It made me happy to
see them happy, taking all the sustenance and sleep they needed, and more,
playing games once again. They made fast friends with Alphanderry. His
materializations and vanishings remained a mystery. The children, though,
accepted the presence of this strange being in a way that we, his old friends,
could not. They sat often with Alphanderry, continuing their elaboration of
Eleikar's story and bringing this figmental character more and more to life.
One night, with the fire crackling and the owls hooing deep in the forest, I
heard Alphanderry say to Daj: 'Hoy, our Eleikar is still in an
impossible fix, loving the wicked king's daughter, all the while knowing he
must kill the king, whom the princess still loves, wickedness or no. Eleikar's
dilemma reminds me of a riddle I once heard: "How do you capture a
beautiful bird without killing its spirit?"'
Daj
considered this a moment, and then turned to Estrella, who suddenly smiled and
looked up at the sparkling heavens. And Daj blurted out: 'By becoming the sky!'
'Hoy,
good, good - indeed, by becoming the sky!' Alphanderry said to Daj. 'What is
it, then, that Eleikar must become to keep his head on his shoulders and keep
the princess from hating him?'
Neither
Daj nor Estrella, however, had an answer for him, and neither did I. I watched
Alphanderry's face sparkling even in the thick of night as he said, 'We might
think that we need to solve Eleikar's conundrum for him. But give it time, and he
will solve it, himself - you'll see!'
We
slept well that night, and journeyed on the next day, and the following days,
in high spirits. The peaks of the Crescent Mountains cut the sky above us like
rows of ice-sharp white teeth. In places, along rivers where the road held
good, we clopped along over ancient stones. In other places thick forests
obliterated the road, and there we had to pick our way more carefully, sometimes
guessing from the lay of the land where we might find the road again. In ten
days of such travel, we put many miles behind us. It couldn't be many more, I
thought, until we came upon the tiny kingdom of Senta, and the much greater
realm of Hesperu beyond that. I sensed with a rising heat of my blood that our
story - at least our quest to find the Maitreya or not - was quickly
coming to an end.
On the
fourth of Soal, late in the afternoon, we came to a place where a wall of
mountains blocked our way. We had lost the thread of the road a good five miles
back and could not tell if a pass might cut this escarpment to our left, up and
around the rocky slopes of a pyramid mountain, or to our right, to the west,
through a dense forest of oak. cedar and silver fir.
'Here
we have need of one of your Way Rhymes,' I said to Master Juwain. 'Or failing
that, a guess.'
Master
Juwain peered at the stark terrain ahead of us and said, 'Left, I think. I can
almost see where a road once wound up around that mountain.'
So, I
thought, shielding my eyes against the glare of the mountains' snowy slopes,
could I.
Kane
swept his hand at the escarpment and said, 'Senta lies within a great bowl.
These might be the mountains forming the bowl's northern part - their backside.
I have a memory of that peak, I think, though I beheld it long ago and from a
different vantage. If it is that mountain, then I would say our way lies to the
left.'
'Then
let us make camp here for the night,' I said, 'and in the morning we'll see if
you are right.'
'If I am
right,' Kane said, 'if the way is not blocked, we'll reach Senta tomorrow.
So, we must decide if we will go into the caverns.'
All my
life I had heard of the Singing Caves of Senta, and for much of that time I had
wondered if they could possibly be real.
'If we are to put
ourselves forward as pilgrims,' Master Juwain said, 'as it seems we must, then
the Sentans would think it strange if we didn't go into the caverns.'
His
gray eyes gleamed with the light off the glacier high above us. I knew that he wasn't about to cross half
the earth only to surrender up the chance to behold one of Ea's greatest
wonders. 'I would like to hear the caverns' songs,' Liljana said.
'I
would, too,' Atara added. 'There might be a chance that one of the
voices in the caverns will tell of the Maitreya.'
'Ha -
do you think you'll understand anything?' Kane asked. 'There are thousands of
voices, millions, and if you go into the caverns, you'll hear gobbledygook. You
will see - it will drive you mad.'
I
thought about this for a moment, then looked at Kane. 'Mad, as it was for us
with the Skadarak?'
Kane's
eyes darkened and he said softly, 'No, not like that. The voices all do speak
truly, I think. But in the presence of the truth, people are like stones in
water. They can sit there forever, thirsting, and remain as dry as chalk.'
I
glanced at Estrella, then clapped him on the arm and said, 'Let us hope that
some people are rather like sponges. Let us go into the caverns and hope for
the best.'
Kane
slowly nodded his head at this, and my smile made him smile. 'All right,
Valashu. But I tell you that you will hear things in those damn caverns that
will be harder you to hear.'
I
thought about this for half the night, and all the next morning as we set out
again and worked our way up to the left, over the humps and folds of the
pyramid mountain. Its eastern slopes, at this great height, with the air
cool and thin, were covered mostly with silver fir and little undergrowth, and
so we had little difficulty passing through the open spaces between the tall
trees. Our luck held good, for we espied the white ridgeline of a low pass
ahead of us and encountered no very steep grades or rockfalls to block our way.
And then we came upon the road again. Here it was nothing more than a rubble of
old, shattered stones, but it held true for a few more miles, taking us up
almost all the way to the lip of the pass. We breathed hard at the cutting air,
hurrying up this last leg of the ascent to see if Kane was right. Then we stood
on a snowy shelf of ground as we looked down into a bowl of land twelve miles
wide that was the ancient and entire kingdom of Senta.
The
city of Senta stood near the bowl's midpoint. From this distance I could make
out the cuts of the winding streets and the larger buildings, some of them
domed and gleaming with veneers of gold. Kane pointed out King Yulmar's palace,
on the wooded heights to the west of the city. More gold flashed from the
towers and domes there, and I caught a brilliant sparkle, as of encrusted
diamonds. Senta, which had extracted tolls and bribes from pilgrims for
thousands of years, was famous for its wealth. According to Kane, it enjoyed a
natural bounty, as well. Through the forest rising between the king's palace
and the sheltering wall of mountains ran deer, foxes and boar, and other game
that the king and Senta's nobles hunted. To the north of the city, and sweeping
in a wide swath around it to the east and south, the Sentans cultivated some
of the richest-looking farmland I had ever seen. The greenness of these acres
colored the entire kingdom. And it was all crowned by huge, sharp, white peaks
in a vast and gleaming circle, and higher still, by the brilliant blue sky.
Kane
pointed past the city perhaps a mile to the south where a rocky prominence rose
up, too large to be called a hill and yet not quite high enough to challenge
the mountains that framed it.
'There
are the Singing Caves,' Kane said. 'They go down through the side of that
rock.'
We
could see the road to it as a narrow streak of bluish-gray against the
greenness of fields. Three other roads led into (or out of) Senta: to the west,
the road to Surrapam, which cut through a high pass before curving back north
on its winding way through the Crescent Mountains. To our left, built on a line
toward the southeast, ran the Sunguru road. And nearly straight ahead, passing
around the rocky prominence and then into the city, gleamed the ancient road that
we would take into Hesperu.
No
road, unfortunately, led from the pass upon which we stood down into the city.
We had a hard time picking our way slowly down through the rattling scree, and
were grateful to enter the line of trees where the grade eased and the ground
smoothed out. Soon we came out of the forest into a wheatfield, to the surprise
of the farmer at work there: a stout, red-haired man with pale blue eyes who
directed us toward the city. We planned to stay at one of the inns built on the
hill at the very foot of the Singing Caves. Though it would no doubt be costly,
Kane insisted we should remain close to the Hesperu Road and the pass to the
south out of Senta in case we encountered troubles and needed to make a hasty escape.
Soon we
found ourselves riding through the streets of Senta's northern district, past
shops and steeply gabled houses that were like those of my home. They were
built flush with one another of good granite that might have endured here for
thousands of years. We found the Hesperu Road near the center of the city,
where, in a great square, intersected the Sunguru Road coming in from the east.
Along the storefronts, we saw many more people plying their trades and going
about their business - though not nearly as many, we were given to understand,
as in years past. Most of them, I thought, were Sentans. Red hair and blue eyes
predominated among them, and I wondered if some wandering tribe from Surrapam
had made its way south through the mountains to settle this kingdom during the
Age of the Mother long, long ago. Some showed darker, almost mahogany-colored
skins and black rings of hair, and these I took to be Hesperuks, in origin if
not allegiance to King Arsu. Some were a blending of kinds and colors, and it
amazed me to come across a young man as brown as coffee, with sparking green
eyes and a curly red mane falling to his shoulders. The few pilgrims we saw
seemed to be Hesperuk or Sung, with their almond eyes and straight black hair.
But I bowed my head to a band of Galdans, to three blond Thalunes and to a lone
Saryak warrior from Uskudar, whose face seemed carved of jet and who stood as
high as the ceilings of most houses. In such company, my friends and I did not
attract undue attention.
As we
moved into Senta's southern districts, closer to the caverns, we came upon inns
and the shops of craftsmen who had long serviced pilgrims: armorers, barbers,
seamstresses, saddlers, cobblers and wheelwrights - and many others. We stopped
at a tinker's so that Liljana could finally buy her pots and pans, and we
visited a miller and a butcher in order lay in stores. It was from the
butcher, all sweaty and bloody from cutting up a lamb, that we heard news out
of Hesperu and other lands.
'They
say there was a rising in Surrapam,' he told us as he weighed out some slabs of
salt pork. 'And a new rebellion in Hesperu, in the Haraland - that lies in
Hesperu's north, brave pilgrims, just over the mountains. You didn't come here
by way of Hesperu, did you? Few now do. Anyway, it's said that King Arsu has
marched north with his army out of Khevaju to put down the rebellion. There are
those who fear that he will march right into Senta, but he can't even hold onto
his conquests and keep his evil empire together. And if he did try to
force his way through the Khal Arrak, we would stop him in the narrows of the
pass.'
To
emphasize his point - and his own bravery - he picked up a bloody cleaver and
waved it about. And he added, 'Senta will never fall; you can take that as
a prophecy - and take it back to your homelands, wherever they are.'
Others,
however, were not so confident of Senta's ability to withstand King Arsu, and
his master, the Red Dragon. After we had finished with the butcher, we came
across an old, blind woman begging alms beneath the eves of the adjacent
fletcher's shop. She had the straight hair and wheat-colored skin of the Sung,
and her eyes might once have been like large almonds before being gouged out.
Atara took pity on her, and pressed a gold coin into the woman's trembling
hand. And the woman, whose name was Zhenna, murmured to her: 'Bless you, my
lady. But you should be careful with whom you speak. Alfar, the butcher, is a
good man, but he talks too freely. The Red Dragon's ears are very keen, if you
understand me, and they are everywhere.'
'If we
were to take your advice,' Liljana said, stepping up close to her, 'we should
not speak to you. How is it that you are willing to speak to us?'
'Because
I like your smell,' Zhenna said, turning from Atara to smile towards Daj and
Estrella. She reached out and fumbled to grasp Liljana's hand. 'And because I,
too, was once a pilgrim like you.'
She
told us that years ago, when King Angand had come to Sunguru's throne and had
made the first moves toward an alliance with Morjin, she had been the wife of
the Duke of Nazca. The Duke, in secret, had rallied nobles to oppose the
alliance - and, if need be, to oppose King Angand himself. But sometimes there
are secrets within secrets. By ill fate, one of the nobles had proved to be of
the Order of the Dragon and had betrayed the Duke to King Angand and the
Kallimun priests who sat at his court. As an example. King Angand had ordered
the Duke crucified and had Zhenna cruelly blinded. She had then fled Sunguru,
making the pilgrimage to Senta, and had remained here ever since.
'I've
lived off the kindness of the Sentans and strangers such as yourselves,' she
told us. 'But everyone looks to the south now, and they hoard their coins. Who
has the strength to resist King Arsu? Once, Senta made alliance with Sunguru
and Surrapam to keep the Hesperuks at bay, but I'm afraid that time is past.'
'I
should think that even King Yulmar's few warriors,' I said to her, 'could wreak
harm on King Arsu's army, if they tried to force the pass.'
'Alfar,
too,' she said to me, 'speaks always of the Hesperuk army. But why should King
Arsu waste his soldiers in an invasion when those who look to the Red Dragon
will do his work for him? It's said that Galda fell from within, and so, I
fear, it will be here.'
'Why
don't you leave here, then?' I asked her.
'Where
would I go?' Zhenna said to me. 'At least here, for ten days at the New Year,
King Yulmar opens the caverns to such as I. The songs! Not even the larks make
such music! As you will hear - you will hear!'
Atara
gave her another coin and said to her, 'We should go on. Perhaps it would be
best if you weren't seen talking with us.'
Zhenna
straightened her shoulders and held her head up high. She said, 'What more can
they take from me? I've only one wish, and that is to go into the caverns one
more time. Somewhere, in the lower caverns, I think, where the opals grow, they
sing of a land without tyrants, without evil or war. A land that the Red Dragon
cannot touch.'
I shook
my head against the throbbing there, and told her: 'I think there is no place
on earth like that.'
'No,
young man,' she said, grasping my hand, 'there must be. Someday I will
go there. It will be my last pilgrimage.'
She
smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I thought to take her with us and pay her
admittance to the caverns, but she said that King Yulmar's stewards, who
guarded them, would not allow that. She shooed me toward my horse, and said,
'Go, and listen well, brave knight. The land that I told of - it is called
Ansunna.'
Past a
district where the air reeked of tannin, roasting meats and perfume wafting from the open windows
of the brothels, we came
out into farmland, and smelled instead freshly turned earth and the dung used to fertilize the
fields. It did not take us very
long to wind our way up the wooded hill at the base of Mount Miru, as the Sentans called the
huge rock that contained the caverns.
Two inns stood upon the top of the hill: The Inn of the Caves and the larger, rambling Inn of the
Clouds, painted white. Kane
liked the size and look of this inn, and so we rented rooms there. We gave our horses into the
keeping of the stableboys. The
innkeeper insisted that we should have a hot bath and a change of clothes before going into the
caverns. And so it was late in the afternoon when we walked along a flagstoned path at
the top of the
hill with the shadowed, granite face of Mount Miru above us. We were the last pilgrims that day
to seek admittance at the entrance
to the caverns, a house-sized scoop in the rock of the face of Mount Miru. The Sentans called it
the First Cavern, but it did not
seem natural: most of its surface gleamed with an obsidian-like glaze. I
wondered if men had once melted out in this hollow from solid rock with, the
aid of a firestone.
At a
long, gilded table set on a carpet in the recesses of the cavern sat a lean,
dark-haired man decked out in gilded armor. Two other men similarly dressed but
with spears in their hands and short swords on their ruby-studded belts stood
leaning against It. These I took to be stewards of the Caves. As we drew up in
front of the table, the seated man said, 'My name is Sylar, good pilgrims, and I am Lord of the Caves. We ask
only three things of you: a small donation to help pay for the upkeep of the
Caves and that you take from them all the wonder that you are about to
see and hear.'
I studied Sylar's sharp eyes and nose, and the
tiny round scars pocking his dark, sallow skin. Long ringlets of black hair,
scented with sandalwood oil, hung down over the plate armor encasing his chest.
He had a kindly, helpful manner about him, but his smile, somewhat forced,
hinted at deep resentments and suspicions.
'And
what is the third thing?' I asked him.
He
directed my attention to a rock the size of a wagon rising up from the cavern's
floor behind us. I saw that this rock, too, did not seem a natural part of the
mountain, for it was of basalt, as black as night and all greasy looking. A
face, hideous as a demon's, had been carved into the rock's smooth surface. Two
blue stones resembling lapis had been set below the demon's bulging brows as
eyes. The demon's mouth turned up in a tormented smile, and a large black hole
at its center opened like a throat drilled deep into the rock.
'The
third thing we ask,' Sylar said to us, 'is that you not take any stone
or crystal from the caverns. There is a demon of desire inside all of us. but
if you give in to its lusts, you will not gain new treasure but only lose that
which is even more precious.'
He
explained that each pilgrim, upon exiting the cavern, would be required to put
his hand inside the demon's mouth. He would then be asked if he had removed
anything from the caverns. If the pilgrim told the truth, all would be well. If
the pilgrim lied however, he would forfeit his hand. It seemed that the ancients
had connected a mechanism to the demon's eyes, which were truth stones. Upon
being activated, the mechanism would bring down a massive, razor-sharp blade
upon the wrist of any palterer or prevaricator.
'But
that is horrible!' Atara cried out. 'To lose a hand so! How long has it been,
then, since a pilgrim perjured himself?'
'Never
in my lifetime,' Sylar told her. He seemed almost disappointed that he had
never had the opportunity to see the demon do its work. 'But two hundred years
ago, it is said that a prince of Karabuk boasted that no gelstei could look
through his mind into his heart. What is left of his hand adorns that wall.'
He
pointed toward the back of the hollow where two more stewards stood guarding
iron doors that led into the caverns. On the wail to the left and right of the
doors, seemingly cemented into the rock, gleamed the yellow-white bones of many
human hands. Kane, I thought, should have warned us against such a bizarre and
gruesome display, but he had retreated inside one of his depth less silences.
The
'Lord of the Caves' turned to look at me in a way that I did not like. And I
told him, 'We are no thieves.'
'No, of
course not - anyone could see that.' Sylar's dark, inquisitive eyes studied my
face, and then fell upon my sword, strapped to my back. I had wrapped a strip
of plain leather around its hilt to conceal the diamond pommel and the seven
diamonds set into the black jade. 'You are no doubt a hired sword engaged to
protect these good pilgrims, and perhaps even a pilgrim yourself?'
The
scorn in his voice made my ears burn, and I wanted to shout out that I was no
mercenary but a knight and a prince of Mesh. Instead, I kept my silence.
'A
hired sword ... from where?' he asked me. 'You have the look of the Valari, I
think. A couple of Valari visited the caverns not two years ago, during the
great Quest. I think they said they were Waashians.'
'I call
no land my home,' I told him.
'I
see.' Then Sylar's eyes turned to Atara's unstrung bow, which she tapped
against the ground, seeming to feel her way. I was glad that Liljana had sewn
the three arrows that Atara had brought with her within the lining of her
cloak.
'A
woman, bearing a bow without arrows,' Sylar said, 'and a blind one at that. I
am not sure if I've ever seen a stranger sight.'
'I was
a warrior before being blinded in battle,' Atara told him. 'My bow is sacred to
me, and makes a good enough staff.'
'A
warrior woman,' Sylar mused. 'I think I have heard of such, in Thalu - you must
be Thalune, then? Well, many of the blind come here hoping to ease their
suffering. It's said that the blind gain keener hearing to make up for what was
lost. If that is true, then very soon, when you hear the songs of the angels,
you will not regret your misfortune.'
He went
on to explain to us that the deepest caverns held the most beautiful songs as
well as the loveliest crystals, adding, 'Now, it is the way of things here for
honored pilgrims such as yourselves to show their devotion, as the sun does
its gold. The more gold, the greater the honor, do you understand? And the
deeper the devotion, the deeper the songs that the good pilgrim will hear.' .
Kane growled out, 'Are you telling us that the lower caverns are open only to
those who'll pay to see them?'
The
look in Kane's black eyes just then alarmed the two guards leaning against the
table, for they stood up straight and ground the iron-shod butts of their
spears against the cavern's rocky floor. And Sylar, in a voice as smooth as
silk, said, 'No, good pilgrim - of course not! That would go against the King's
decree. All the caverns are open to all who come here. But so many come, and so
many wish to linger in the lower caverns that unfortunately we must limit the
time of their visits. Of course, we like to reserve the greatest spans of time
for those who are most deeply devoted.'
Liljana,
who could haggle the scales off a dragon, bowed her head to him and asked, 'And
how much devotion do you think a pilgrim should show in order to spend as long
inside the caverns as she pleases?' So
sweetly and yet compellingly did her voice sound out that Sylar forget the
first rule of negotiating, and he was the first to name a price, saying,
'Surely six ounces would not be too much.'
'All
right - six silver ounces,' Liljana said, reaching for the coins bulging out
her purse.
'No,
madam - six gold ounces,' Sylar smiled at her and added, 'Alonian
archers would be good - that is one currency, at least, that hasn't been
debased. You are Alonian, aren't you? A poor knight's widow, I heard you
say, though I think you have the look of a queen.'
His
smile, as fluid as heated oil, produced no like response in her. Her gaze fixed
on him as she said. 'Three gold archers seems to me a very great devotion.'
Sylar's
smile widened as he snapped at her offer and said, 'Very well, then - three
archers for each of the seven of you. Twenty-one altogether.'
'Three
archers apiece!' Liljana cried out. 'Why didn't you say so from the first?
We're only poor pilgrims - and even poorer for having come so far.'
'Two
archers apiece, then. Let it not be said that Sylar of the Caves takes
advantage of blind women and grandmothers.'
Liljana
appeared to consider this. She gathered Estrella and Daj close to her, then
asked, 'Have you children. Lord Steward? You wouldn't wish to impoverish ours, would
you?'
And so
the haggling continued untill the end Sylar raised his hands in a gesture of
helplessness and agreed to accept five gold ounces, total, for our admission to
the caverns: one for each adult, and none at all for the children. I watched
Liljana count the coins out of her purse. They were full-weight, Alonian
ounces, with the face of the deceased King Kiritan stamped into one side and
the image of an archer drawing a longbow on the other.
'Very
well, grandmother,' Sylar said to Liljana after he had put away
the coins. He glared at her as if he had lost the ability to smile then waved
us toward the opened iron doors.
'You
played him like a hooked fish,' I whispered to her as I walked beside her.
I heard
my words less as a compliment than an accusation. Not often did Liljana allow
anyone to see the skills in manipulating men that had made her Materix of the
Maitriche Telu.
'The
signs were written on his face for anyone to read,' she whispered back to me.
'Still, that is one fish who is more slippery than I would like. Let us not be
any longer about our business than we must.'
I
nodded my head, and looked over at the blue-eyed demon behind us. Then I turned
to lead the way into the Singing Caves.
Chapter 30 Back Table of Content Next
The first thing I noted upon entering the next cavern was not sound but light. A soft, variously-hued radiance seemed to pour forth from the curving cavern walls and ceilings from no single source. A closer inspection revealed that the crystals studding the cavern's smooth rock each glowed from within. There were millions of them. Some were nearly as tiny as grains of sand; the largest were the size of Master Juwain's varistei, which nearly fit into his opened palm. They glittered through the whole of the cavern in a rainbow of colors: carmine; orange; citron; emerald; azure; indigo and violet. Most of the crystals were clear, like precious jewels, though many swirled with piebald or iridescent patterns, more like opals or pearls. Among these. Master Juwain identified many music marbles, touch stones and thought stones, all of the same family of gelstei. He guessed that the other crystals in this chamber were of some sort of related gelstei, but he did not really know.
The cavern had been shaped like a bubble of blown glass, only pinched-in and elongated as it opened down into the earth. We made our way slowly toward its center. This required us to move down steps that had been cut into the floor of the cavern long ago, a rather difficult feat since the cavern's splendor drew the eye not downward but out and up. A few crystals did sprout up from the floor like glowing mushrooms, but we guessed that most there had long since been broken off or chiseled out to make room for the pathways and open spaces upon which pilgrims might stand. There was nothing to do here, I thought, but to stand and stare in awe - and to listen.
As Kane had promised, thousands, perhaps millions, of voices filled the
air. Not all of them, or even most of them, sang. I heard wails and laments,
chants, thanksgivings, cries of joy and invoca-tions. The bray of an old
warrior telling of his victories vied with the shrillness of a bereft woman wondering
why plague and war had taken the lives of her nine children. At first this
cacophony nearly drowned me like an ocean's wave slamming my body underwater
against hard sand. The raw emotion in the multitude of voices, all speaking
with passion and truth, nearly crushed the blood from my chest. I threw my
hands over my ears to block out [this immense Sound. It helped only a little,
for I could feel my flesh and my very hand bones vibrating in harmony with the
voices filling up the cavern, and pushing the sound only deeper into me. I saw
Master Juwain put his finger to one of the wall's vibrating crystals, which he
had named as a touch stone. I remembered that the lovely, variegated touch
stones recorded and played people's sentiments, instead of music, for others to
feel.
'This is madness!' I cried out, looking at
Kane. 'I cannot even hear myself think!'
Kane's jaws ground together as he glared back at me
and slowly nodded his head.
'How do you bear it?' I asked him. My words seemed lost into the great
noise about us. My other companions,
however, did not seem as troubled by it as I was. Master Juwain told me that he could make
out a voice reciting in ancient
Ardik the long lost epic of Azariel - as well as another speaking in Marouan of the forging
of the first of the blue gelstei.
He did not pause to await my response, for two streams of sound sufficed to fill him to
overflowing. I marveled that he seemed able to concentrate his awareness on only two,
to the exclusion of the many
others. So it seemed with Daj, who would not tell of what sounds enchanted him. He only
stared at a cluster of aquamarine
crystals as if soaring through a dream. Liljana asked if I could hear the voice of Seki the First telling
of the building of the Temple of
Life in the Age of the Mother. And of a boy asking after his missing father and a young woman singing of
her love for a man named Seasar
- and a dozen other threads of utterances that she somehow sorted out within herself and wove
into a pattern making sense to her.
Atara likewise shared this gift, and so, perhaps did Estrella. This slender girl seemed to open
herself to the thousands of voices echoing through the cavern as if she somehow could
hold each of
them inside her.
'If I remember aright,' Kane shouted at me, 'it gets
better in the lower
caverns. So, let's get on with things, then.'
He turned to walk down the steps where they cut
through a particularly steep stretch of the cavern's floor. I followed him
gladly, and so, less gladly, did the others. The deepest part of the cavern
narrowed into a tube, as of a corridor connecting two parts of a castle. Here,
no crystals arose from the smooth rock encasing us, and the voices died almost
to a murmur. I breathed out a sigh of relief. I felt myself building stony
walls inside my heart against the surge of sound and people's passions that
would surely assault me upon our entrance to the next cavern.
The third cavern proved much smaller than the second:
barely the size of a serving woman's chambers, with great, inward bulges in its
crystal-lined walls that made it feel even smaller. The seven of us crowded in
together only with difficulty, and we did not long remain. I noted, though,
that the crystals in this cavern grew larger, some reaching nearly a foot in
length. Strangely, the voices grew fewer in number and less strident, though
perhaps I was learning to block out the sounds and words that most vexed me.
In the fourth cavern, deeper still, pink and silvery
crystals grew out of the walls and floor like swords. The path through them cut
steep and narrow, and we had to move with care lest we impale ourselves on
their glittering points. Atara took my hand, and asked me if I could make out
the voice of a minstrel singing in Old High Lorranda the Gest of Nodin and
Yurieth. I could not. I wondered that we each seemed to apprehend different
voices. I had a strange sense that the crystals here possessed desires of their
own. Somehow the crystals, I thought, as of a gosharp's strings resonating with
each other, attuned themselves to something deep and individual inside each of
us and directed the sounds that pleased them into our ears and hearts.
Daj hadn't yet learned Lorranda, which Maram had
called the language of love. He lifted his face toward the ceiling, hung with
long, amethyst-like pendants and pulsing golden crystals. And in his high,
piping boy's voice, he called out: 'I have a song for you! It's called the Gest
of Eleikar and Ayeshtan, Princess of Khalind. It tells of how Eleikar slew
the wicked King Ivar and gained Khalind's throne.'
Upon the sound of his bold words, Alphanderry appeared
out of the cavern's close air. He stood in the radiance pouring down from the
thousands of gelstei gleaming upon the cavern's ceiling and walls. He smiled at
Daj, and said, 'Hoy, the song - let's hear the song!' Master Juwain, however,
was not so pleased by Daj's enthusiasm, nor did he appear eager to listen to
the story that Daj, Estrella and Alphanderry had nearly finished making. He
turned his lumpy face toward the boy, and chastened him, saying, 'Your story
still incomplete.'
Daj shrugged his shoulders as he cocked his ear toward
a particularly large ruby crystal pointing down from the ceiling thirty feet
above our heads. He said, 'Other stories are incomplete, too. Other songs are.
The story of the whole world ... has yet to be finished.'
'There is a time for singing, and a time for
listening.'
'But I just want to sing of Eleikar, and listen to
these stones sing back! Maybe the next people passing through will hear it and
know how to complete the story if we don't - and if Eleikar himself doesn't, or
even dies before he has the chance.'
'Dajarian,' Master Juwain said to him, 'Eleikar cannot
really die.' 'That's just it, sir - we can't let him die.'
'He cannot die because he is not real.'
'He's real to me, sir.'
Master Juwain sighed as he rubbed the back of his
shiny head and regarded Daj. Not two years ago, when we had rescued Daj from
the Dragon's clutches, the horrors of Argattha had killed something precious
and innocent in him, and he had been more callous of countenance and soul than
a battle-hardened warrior. Now, the boy lived within him again, and a world of
beauty and hope, and it gladdened my heart to see that.
'It is said,' Master Juwain explained to him, 'that
only words spoken truly and with deep conviction can be recorded here.'
'I will speak the truth,' Daj assured him.
'But your story is an invention.'
'But what of Nodin and Yurieth, then?'
'Well, they are real. It is almost certain that
they lived in the vanished kingdom of Osh, during the Age of Swords.'
'But Eleikar and Ayeshtan live inside me! A story
doesn't have to be really real to be true.'
Master Juwain sighed as he rested his gnarled hand on
a small purple crystal sprouting out of a rocky rise in the floor. It would have
been an easy thing, I saw, for him to snap it off and put it in his pocket.
'All right,' he said to Daj. 'Speak as you will, and
let us hear if these stones speak back.'
Daj stood up straight, and without hesitation, in a
voice as steady and full of fire as the desert sun, recited the first verses
into which he and Alphanderry, with Estrella's assent, had rendered their
story:
In Khalind, once upon a time,
A boy's revenge, upon a crime...
We all stood listening as Daj sang out his story.
After he had completed the first three stanzas, he fell into a silence. He
stared at the lacy, white crystals adorning the wall before him. He waited lor
them to begin sparkling like diamonds.
An echo, reflected back from a mountain's rock,
reaches the ear faster than any bird can fly. We waited for a good ten count,
and then thrice that long, and the only voices that any of us heard belonged to
departed wanderers, minstrels, merchants and queens, but not to boys barely ten
years old. And then, with a suddenness that froze the breath in my throat, the
space about us fell dead quiet. The cavern itself seemed to be listening. And
then Daj's words, in Daj's earnest voice, fell out of the air like perfectly
formed jewels:
In Khalind, once upon a time,
A boy's revenge, upon a crime
So dark the demons shriek and sing
The torment of a wicked king ...
When the song stones had finished speaking back Daj's
verses. Master Juwain rested his hand on top of Daj's tousled hair and smiled
at him. 'Well, lad, I must admit that I was wrong. Very wrong. There is truth,
and then there is truth.'
'I told you,' Daj said, beaming at him.
'And then there is that which we came here to find,'
Master Juwain said. He looked from Daj to Liljana, and then at Atara and me.
'Well-made verses, whether old or new, are always a delight to hear. But has
anyone heard tell of the Shining One?'
We all had. Over the centuries, many had come into the
caverns to sing of Ea's Maitreyas. Most of their songs were ancient and told of
miracles of healing: In the third cavern, I had listened intently as a nameless
woman gave praise to Godavanni the Glorious, relating how he had laid his hands
upon her son's withered leg and made it whole again. A master of the
Brotherhood -a man who called himself Navarran - told of his reverence for
Alesar Tal's powers of soul and uplifting others' spirits. He had wondered if
Alesar might be the Maitreya foretold for the end of the Age of the Mother,
but. he had never determined this, for Alesar had never caught sight of the lost
Lightstone and had died in obscurity, just another healer who lived out his
life in one of the Brotherhood's schools. Liljana, as she informed us, had
heard a song praising a Maitreya known simply as the Erikur. As the Maitreyas
born near the endings of the known ages were accounted for, Liljana concluded
that the Erikur had worked his wonders during one of the Lost Ages, after Aryu
had slain Elahad and men and women lived nearly wild in lands whose names were
lost to time.
And then there was Issayu. Born in the year 2261 of
the Age of the Swords on the island of Maroua, he had grown into manhood
talking to the dolphins and healing the blind. Of him it was sung that 'his
hands were like the ocean's waters and his eyes like the sun'. Thaddariam, the
Grandmaster of the Brotherhood, upon testing Issayu, had proclaimed him as the
Shining One. Many looked to Issayu to end the terror of that age and bring a
time of peace and healing. But after Morjin had conquered the Elyssu in 2284,
he had captured and seduced Issayu, promising to bestow upon him the Lightstone
and the gift of immortality. Of course Morjin had never actually allowed Issayu
to hold the Cup of Heaven in his hands. The Lord of Lies had slowly perverted
Issayu by requiring him to do darker and darker deeds in hope someday of
becoming a great Wielder of Light. In the end, when Issayu had discovered how
Morjin had twisted his heart and poisoned his soul, he had despaired and had
killed himself by throwing himself out of a tower upon the rocks overlooking
the sea.
All these accounts, and there were thousands of them,
were ancient. But others seemed less old. Many people had come into the caverns
to sing of their hope for the coming Maitreya, the Cosmic Maitreya - the
last of the Shining Ones who would bring an end to the dark ages of Ea and
herald in the Age of Light. Their many prayers and chants were variations of
these words:
Hail Maitreya, Lord of Light,
Open up our deepest sight.
Shine like sun, forever bright.
Bring an end to darkest night.
At least fifty voices were new, for they told of King
Kiritan's calling of the great Quest and how the Lightstone had been found.
Soon, it was sung, the Cup of Heaven would find its way into the hands of the
Maitreya. Indeed, this great-souled being might already have come forth: in the
person of a blacksmith's son in Alonia or a fisherman on one of the Islands off
Thalu or a Galdan healer - or even in the unlikely form of a prince of Mesh
named Valashu Elahad. As I stood beneath purple and white crystals vibrating
like a mandolet's wrings, I tried to take in the dozens of hints as to where
the Maitreya might have been born and who he might be. So, I thought did Master
Juwain and Liljana and my other friends. We listened most intently for accounts
of healings and other miracles out of the lands in the north of Hesperu.
'Let us go deeper,' Kane finally said as he
looked toward the passage to the next cavern. 'Let us hope that as the songs
grow deeper, we will hear what we came to hear.'
We followed his lead. The fifth cavern twisted off
sharply to the right, and down, many more feet into the earth. Virescent crystals
the length of spears stuck up from the floor and hung down from the ceiling
above our heads. A few of these flowed from the celling to the floor
like delicate, translucent pillars. As I made my way through this narrow
chamber, I seemed able to pick out single songs and concentrate my awareness
upon them. In the sixth cavern, full of pendants, plumes and other lovely rock
formations glistering with the fire of opals, individual verses and words
became ever clearer even as the thousands of distracting voices faded to a
murmur. It seemed that I had the power to let live within myself only those
songs that touched me most deeply.
'I wonder,' Alphanderry said, 'if this is where
Venkatil heard the voice telling him to seek for the Lightstone in the Tower of
the Sun. I wonder if he also knew where the Maitreya might have been born.'
At last we came into the seventh cavern, nearly as
round and vast as King Kiritan's hall in faraway Tria. The air fell quiet as
over a field just before a battle. A hundred feet above our heads, amethyst,
turquoise and rose crystals hung silent and still. Great pinnacles, jacketed in
some pearly white substance, pointed up from the floor. They caught the
glittering greens, reds and blues pouring off the cavern's curving walls; they
caught the light of our eyes and seemed to drink in our breath and the sound
our beating hearts,
'Why can't I hear anything here?' Daj whispered
to Master Juwain.
Master Juwain, however, stood staring up at the
brilliant dome above us and rubbing at his jaw in deep concentration, and so
it was Alphanderry who answered Daj's question.
'What do you want to hear?' he asked Daj. 'This
is the seventh cavern, and it's said that here a man may apprehend anything he
wishes, as long he truly wishes it.'
'I don't know what I want to hear,' Daj told him. He
watched, as did I as Alphanderry's form glittered with scarlet
and silver lights. 'Something about the Maitreya?'
'You don't sound very certain.'
'Well that's what I should want to hear,
shouldn't I?'
'Only you know that,' Alphanderry told him. His
luminous eyes seemed to look right through Daj's hard-set face. 'Is there
someone you'd rather hear about?'
Daj stared off at ohe of the opalescent pillars
connecting the floor to the domed ceiling high above us, and he nodded his
head.
'Who, then?'
And Daj whispered, 'My mother.'
Alphanderry thought about this and told him, 'Then you
must listen deeply, and you will hear of her.'
'But how is that possible? No one who knew her . .
.could have come here to sing of her.'
'No, Daj, many have come: minstrels from across Ea for
thou-sands of years. This chamber is known as the Minstrels' Cavern. Here they
have sung of everything that can be sung.'
'But my mother -'
'She still lives, in the songs the minstrels have sung
of their mothers. Listen, and you will hear.'
As Daj fell silent, casting his eyes down upon the
marbled stones about us, Alphanderry turned to Liljana and asked, 'What song
would most brighten your spirits?'
Without hesitation Liljana told him, 'A song of the
Mother.'
Alphanderry slowly nodded his head, then looked at
Master Juwain.
'What do you wish to hear?'
And Master Juwain told him, That which cannot be
heard.'
'And you, Kane?' Alphanderry asked, peering over at
our grim-faced friend.
But Kane stared at him in silence, answering him only
in the fury of his blazing eyes.
'Atara?' Alphanderry asked, looking away from him.
Atara smiled as she said, 'Why, a love song, of course.' Alphanderry paused
regard Estrella, who gazed right back at him with a soft radiance lighting up
her face. I thought she might be happy listening to, any song, or to all
of them. And then Alphanderry turned toward me.
'Val - what do you most want to hear?'
What did I wish to hear, I wondered? The
location and identity of the Maitreya? The secret of life and death? Words
assuring me that Daj and Estrella would somehow grow up in safety and that
Atara would have all the love that she could bear? Or did I wish even more to
learn of a cure for the poison burning up my soul?
I drew in a deep breath of the cavern's cool air, and
I said, 'I want to hear how Morjin might be defeated.'
At this, Kane smiled savagely, baring his glittering
white teeth. Atara's hand reached out to grip mine. Liljana and my other
companions looked at me quietly. Finally, Alphanderry said to me, 'I do not
know what minstrel would have sung of that, but why don't we all listen, even
so?'
And so we did. We found a clear place on the cavern's
floor near its center, and positioned ourselves facing whatever part of the
cavern called to us. And then we waited.
At first, there was nothing to hear - nothing more
than the susurrus of our breaths and a faint drumming that sounded almost like
the Heartbeat of the earth. I set my hand upon the leather wrapped around the
hilt of my sword; I could smell the sweat and oils worked into it, as I could
the moistness of stone. There was a strange taste to the air. Across the cavern
from me, where its walls gleamed with silver swirls, the light pouring out of
the crystals grew suddenly stronger. The crystals themselves rang out like
chimes, and voices fell out all around us.
As before, there were many of them. But here, in the
seventh cavern deep in the earth, they did not resound as a multitudinous
noise or even as chords, but rather progressed like the notes of a melody, one
by one. I listened as the rich baritone of one minstrel gave way to the booming
bass of another, only to be followed by an even deeper voice trolling out in
verse or song, and then yet another. Many of the minstrels had not put their
names to their compositions or the ancient ballads and epics they recited;
others had: Agasha, Mingan, Kamilah, Hauk Eskii Mahamanu and Azureus. In the
Minstrels' Cavern, I thought names mattered less than the virtue of the voices
that spoke them. I sensed that minstrels from across Ea had come to this place,
century after century, age after age, to vie with one another in singing the
most beautiful song. No gold medallion would be given to the winner of this
age-old competition, for it remained ongoing, and living minstrels might always
hope to outsing even the greatest of the ancients. It was enough, I thought,
that their words would live on long after they themselves had died, perhaps to
the very ending of the world.
For an hour, it seemed, I stood nearly as still as one
of the cavern's stone pillars, listening. I thought it would be impossible ever
to single out any one minstrel's song as being the most beautiful or true.
Some of their voices trilled out high and sweet, like the piping of birds, and
soared up to the sky; other voices rang out low and long like gongs or bells
that resonated with something deep inside my heart. Once or twice the minstrels
attained to the truly angelic, and in the rhymes they intoned and the rhythms
of their strange words, I caught hint of the grace of the language of the
Galadin.
It was the singing of one of these ancient minstrels
that most drew me. I couldn't help listening, for his voice was clear and
strong, and rang out with the brightness of struck silver: In his
heart-piercing song, I heard much that seemed lovely, but even more that was
plaintive and pained. The immense suffering of this nameless minstrel made my
throat hurt. His words cut open my soul, and burned with a terrible beauty that
drove deep into me and filled my blood with fire.
At first, I took little sense from these blazing
words, for the minstrel sang them in ancient Ardik, a language that I never
translated easily. But the more he chanted out his verses, the more I could
apprehend. I found myself drawing my sword nearly a foot out of its sheath.
Alkaladur's shimmering silver gelstei seemed to resonate with something in the
minstrel's music, and within the minstrel himself. A strange thing happened
then: the meaning of the minstrel's words suddenly became utterly clear to me,
as though light shone through a diamond. And the mystery of the minstrel's
identity stood revealed.
His name was Morjin. But he was not the Morjin that I
had battled in Argattha and had hated ever since, nor did his voice sound the
same as that of the man who had taken on the mantle of the Red Dragon. No, I
thought, this was a different Morjin, a younger Morjin not yet completely
corrupted by the evils he had wrought upon the world. His voice was sweeter,
gentler and less sure of itself. It reverberated with a different pitch and
tone. In its plangent insistence on trying to uncover the truth, I heard almost
as much-love as I did hate.
This Morjin of old had a story to tell, and he
had come here to tell it. He had come to open his heart, and perhaps something
more, too. In the most exquisitely sad music that I had ever heard, these words
of an immortal who had once belonged to the Elijik order sounded out deep
inside the earth:
Let none hear my voice except my brothers in spirit,
for only they will understand: I have slain a man. I, of those who are not
permitted to slay, have done this thing which cannot be undone. In the dark of
the moon, on a black night in winter with the wolves howling in the hills, I
bade a man to look out the window upon the stars, and I put a knife into his
back, into his heart - how else to slay this man who was
more than a man? To slay? Why do I bite my tongue to keep from saying the true
word for what I have done? And that is murder. Let me shout that, here, in the
hollow of the earth to these pretty stents, as I soon must shout it to
the stars: That is murder! And I am therefore a murderer - at
last.
Iojin. You were my brother, in spirit, and my brother
in a great quest. You always knew my heart. How could I hide from you that
which had begun to live inside me, with a ferocity like unto starfire feeding
upon an infinite scarce? I burned, and so you burned, in touching my heart. You
knew what golden source of light blazed in all my thoughts so that I could not
sleep. You knew that I must someday try to claim IT - I
think you knew this before I knew it myself. I burned, and so you
burned, with compassion for me. I wept to know that you did not hate me for
this dragon fire that consumed me, but only loved me. But you feared me, too,
even as I feared myself.
How could you, Iojin of the Waters, not have wanted to
go to the others in fear of me, in fear for me, and in fear for what we had
come here to do? In fear for the world? Did you count this as betrayal? No, I
do not think you would have, for you loved me as a brother, and would never
have suffered anyone or anything to have grieved me. And yet, Garain, I think,
would have betrayed me to the Bright Ones who sent us here. And Kalkin even
worse: you, so gentle of heart, could never look into his heart, as fiery as a
star, as black as death. He, the mighty Kalkin, might have murdered me. He
would have -I feel this in my heart. When I claimed IT,
he proved his baseness by murdering men, lesser men, before I slew him and cast
his body into the sea.
Upon these words, I couldn't help looking over at
Kane, who stood grinding his jaws together as he wept silently, perhaps to
the sound of some song that I could not hear. And then Morjin's beautiful
voice captured me again:
And so, by evil fate, I had to murder my brother. When
I stabbed you, you screamed and screamed - I didn't know
it would hurt so badly or take you so long to die. I watched the light go out
of your eyes. Your beautiful eyes, like bright pools, beloved by all, and not
just me. But the last light was for me. I set it still, like the setting of the
moon, and cannot forget. Just as I cannot forget the burn of blood that stained
my hands, for it was so warm and bright. I cannot wash it away, nor do I wish
to. For your blood became my blood, my very life. It fed me, and feeds me
still. Out of your death, the Dragon was born, and that is a very great thing.
If your eyes could look into mine now, would I see
forgiveness there? Would you understand? I think you would. You, who loved me
and would have died for me, and did die, without my asking you. You always wanted
me to shine like the Bright Ones themselves; now I do. But I think I would see
tears in your eyes, too. You would weep for yourself as I weep. You would weep
for me, your friend, your brother, who screamed himself at the agony of the
knife and died even as you died.
I think always of both these men: their beauty, their
goodness, their grace. Their... innocence. I cannot bear that they
should be cast into a black pit, never again to smell the honeysuckle in high
summer or to gaze upon the brilliance of the winter stars. Never again to sing.
I cannot bear that the One made the world so. Now that I am who I am, I will
not bear it. I will breathe all my fire into this hateful creation, and out of
its immolation, as the silver swan is reborn out of the ashes of its death
pyre, I will make things anew.
This, though it will be no consolation to you now, I
promise: that I will use the stone of light to bring only good things into the
world - as good and beautiful as you. I will bring peace to Ea. And peace to the
stars and every part of Eluru. When my work is done, I will turn all my
thoughts and memories upon you. All my will. For nine score days and nights, I
have asked myself if I have done the right thing. I have kept the knife always
close to me. How shall I use it? Only you can tell me. And so I have come here
to sing, that you might live again. If my heart is true, there will be an
opening. I will enter into a cavern, not icy and dark, but gleaming with great
crystals and full of tight And I will sing. If my words are perfect, if the
music is as beautifully made as were you, I will breathe my breath into you.
And you will live again. I will clasp your hand in mine: I will touch my hand
to your wound and make it whole. I will look once more into your eyes, full of
wonder, full of forgiveness, full of light. And I will live again, too, and all
will be well.
Music poured forth from Morjin's throat then, and its
lovely notes seemed to rise and seek form in the music of the Galadin. I heard
in Morjin's voice a terrible striving for pure tones and all that was beautiful
and good. But something deep in the sounding of his soul hissed with
self-deception and untruth. I grit my teeth against the poisonous lie built
into the very heart of his song.
A faint sound from somewhere in the caverns above us
caused me to break my concentration oft this eulogy - or perhaps it was a
prayer. I stood breathing hard against the sharp pain stabbing through my
chest. I turned my head, and Morjin's anguished words died to a whisper. Kane
still stood beside me, weeping freely now, as did Daj and Estrella behind him.
Master Juwain stared up at the cavern's crystalline ceiling as if listening to
some impossibly brilliant song. Atara leaned back against the opalescent pillar
to my right. The smile that broke upon her face warmed my heart; I sensed that
one of the immortal minstrels had given her a love song as beautiful as her
dreams. Liljana, however, seemed also to have been startled out of her rapture.
She cocked her ear toward the opening to the sixth cavern above us, and said to
me, 'Did you hear anything?'
Her voice broke the spell woven by the minstrels'
songs. Kane, through blurry eyes, peered at the stairs leading up to the sixth
cavern, and his hand fell upon the hilt of his sword.
The sound of boots slapping against stone now clearly
echoed out into our cavern. As we waited, this noise grew louder. Then, from
out of the corridor at the top of the stairs, one of the Stewards of the Caves
appeared. He grunted as he made his way down the stairs, followed by another
guard, as dark and thin as he was fair and fat. Between grunts and the banging
of his spear butt against the stone steps, he called out to us, 'Good pilgrims!
Good pilgrims!'
When they had come closer, winding their way between
the sharp crystals projecting up from the floor, an annoyed Liljana called back
to him, 'You disturb us, good steward! Did we not agree that we were to be left
here, alone, for as long as we wished?'
'But Madam Maida!' he said, fairly shouting out the
name Liljana had given the stewards, 'that is just why we have come: we have
been left alone. I fear treachery!'
The steward, whose name was Babul, came panting up to
us. He stood next to the second steward, Pirro, and explained what had
happened:
'After you went into the caverns,' he said, 'Lord
Sylar posted Pirro and me by the doors while he held conference with Tarran,
Elkar and Hakun. I tried to hear what he said to them, but I couldn't. I didn't
like the sound of his voice. I never liked him -King Yulmar made him
Lord of the Caves only because he married the King's niece. There was always
something wrong about him. He spoke of the Red Dragon too often, if you
know what I mean. He never trusted me, either, nor Pirro here. I didn't want to
do as he bade us, but he is my lord, and I had no choice.'
Liljana quietly listened to his story, inviting him to
say more in the openness of her manner. But Kane finally lost patience, and
grabbed hold of Babul's arm: 'So - out with, man: what did Lord Sylar bid you
to do?'
Babul swallowed, and I saw the apple of his throat
pushing up and down beneath the folds of fat there. He could not look at Kane
as he said, 'After the sun had set and it was dark, Lord Sylar sent Taran
riding off - where, I don't know. He came up to me and Pirro, and told us that
you were a band of thieves - as clever as rats, he said. He had sworn an oath,
he said, to protect the caverns' treasures, and wasn't about to let you defile
them. He sent Pirro and me to find you. We were to tell you that Lord Sylar had
discovered one of Madam Maida's coins to be counterfeit: of gold-plated lead.
You were to pay us another, or to leave the caverns for good. We were to escort
you back to the first cavern, and there you would be arrested. Lord Sylar had
Elkar and Harun make ready the chains.'
'So,' Kane growled, squeezing Babul's arm more
tightly. 'You were to capture us with this ploy of Sylar! So much for speaking
the truth!'
'He told us you were thieves!' Babul
said, his face reddening.
'What could we do?'
'What did you do, then? What happened, that you
decided to betray
your lord to us?'
Babul looked over at Pirro, who seemed to be trying to
restrain his
hand from grasping the hilt of his sword. And Babul told Kane: 'As soon as we had gone a dozen
yards into the second cavern, Lord
Sylar had Elkar and Harun close the doors behind us. He locked us in! I heard them laughing
outside. I don't know why they
imprisoned us, along with you.'
'No, you don't know,' Kane muttered as his
knuckles grew white against
Babuls arm. 'But you suspect, don't you? You said there was something wrong about this
Sylar, eh?'
Babul nodded his head. He licked at his lips and told
us, 'This is a
bad time in Senta - a bad time everywhere, I think. It's said that the Dragon's
Red Priests have many friends in Sent a, secret friends they call themselves. Spies,
I call them. Traitors and snakes. It's said that they are everywhere. I am
afraid that Lord Sylar is one of these.'
Kane suddenly released Babul, who stood rubbing his
arm. Kane looked straight at Liljana, who returned his stare. I could see the
question in Kane's eyes: was Babul's story to be believed or was it only a ploy
within a ploy?
Liljana nodded almost imperceptibly to signal her
belief that Babul was telling the truth. And then Kane snarled out, 'Back,
then! Back up to the doors!'
Without waiting a moment longer, he bounded like a
great cat for the stairs leading up to the sixth cavern. The rest of us
followed him. Master Juwain could not move as quickly, and he managed to cut his
leg on one of the crystals lining our path. Babul, practically dragging his
spear behind him, fell far back as he puffed and panted for air. Although he
was as fat as Maram, he seemed to possess none of Maram's stamina and strength.
I held back near him, and Pirro, to make sure they didn't decide to put their
spears into our backs.
But it seemed that they intended no treachery toward
us. It seemed as well that we must hurry to escape from the caverns, or be
trapped here to await whatever priest or assassin Sylar might have summoned.
Chapter 31 Back Table of Content Next
We raced up and back through the caverns, one by one. When we came into the second cavern, I saw that we had been shut in by the massive iron doors. Kane waited for us in front of them; his eyes picked apart the doors' joints and the surrounding rock as if looking for any weakness. With his sword in hand, he suddenly leaped toward the doors, slamming his shoulder against the crack where they came together. There came a great bang and a groaning of iron, and I was afraid that Kane had broken his bones. But his savage effort failed to budge the doors even an inch.
'Damn them!' Kane muttered. He slapped his open hand against hard iron with such force that bits of rust flew out into the air. 'Damn them!'
Muffled voices sounded from
beyond the door, and I sensed that Sylar and the two other stewards stood guard
there. Without warning, Kane grabbed Babul's spear and used the iron
shod butt to hammer at the doors as he cried out, 'Open up! Open, I say!'
From the first cavern past the doors came the sound of laughter.
'Sylar - open the damn doors!'
The laughter grew louder, and I could plainly hear Sylar's voice as he called out to us: 'Soon enough we'll open the doors, cursed pilgrims. But you'll not be happy when we do.'
Liljana came up to the door and shouted out: 'We've more gold - diamonds, too! Open the door, and we'll give you all you wish!'
'Can you give me what I really wish? No, not with gold, or even diamonds.'
There resounded a smug
laughter that made me want to tear off Sylar's head. Then he added, 'In the
end, you will give me what I wish, though. And I'll have your treasure out
of you, too.'
It came
to me in a flash that what he wished was to be made a Red Priest of the
Kallimun. These hated executors of Morjin recruited from devoted members of the
Order of the Dragon, to which Sylar and the other stewards must belong. Thus had
Morjin's priests suborned even princes. I remembered the red dragon tattooed on
Salmelu Aradar's forehead, to the shame of Ishka and all the Valari kingdoms.
Kane
must have shared my thinking, for he raised back his head and howled out:
'Trapped! Cursed acolytes with their cursed secret marks! Damn them!'
He
motioned for Alphanderry to come closer to him, and asked him, 'Is there
anything you can do?'
A
glimmer of light played beneath Alphanderry's skin as his hand felt along the
crack between the door. Then Alphanderry looked off at Kane, and shook his
head. Whatever wondrous substance he was made of, it could not pass through
solid iron.
We
moved off deeper into the cavern, and we held council as we decided what to do.
Kane believed that Sylar must have sent the steward Tarran for reinforcements;
clearly Sylar was waiting for them before opening the doors.
'There
must be a way out,' I murmured. 'There is always a way.'
It
seemed that an answer must be whispering in my mind, but the roar of voices
deafened me so that I could not hear it.
'I
should have seen it,' Kane growled to me, staring at the doors. It was
his way of apologizing. 'To be captured so - so damn easily, after
following our star so long and so far.'
But
even as he uttered the word 'star'. Master Juwain's eyes lit up, and he thumped
the side of his head with his hand. Then he called out:
‘The
road toward heavens' starry crown Goes ever up but always down.’
At this,
Liljana's face soured, and she said to him. 'This is no time for one of your
Way Rhymes.'
'It is precisely
the time,' Master Juwain told her, 'since things have grown dark and we
desperately need a way out of here, I should have seen it! I should have,
from the first.'
'Seen
what, sir?' I asked him.
He
pointed back toward the corridor leading into the next cavern. He said, 'If we
would see the stars again, we must go down. Down to the seventh cavern.'
'But
there is no way out of it except up to the sixth cavern.'
'Are
you sure?'
I
shrugged my shoulders. 'Not even with the songs of the angels could we sing our
way through solid rock.'
'No,
perhaps not. But we might find a way out of it into the succeeding cavern
-- the true seventh cavern.'
I
looked at him in confusion, and so did Liljana and everyone else. And Master
Juwain nodded his head toward the iron doors and explained: 'That hollow
outside was clearly made by a fire-stone long ago; I don't count
it as a true cavern. Therefore, this chamber where we stand is the true first
cavern, and the Minstrels' Cavern is only the sixth.'
My
confusion only deepened as I stared at him. The cavern's crystals cast a
rainbow radiance upon his shining head.
Kane
scowled at him and said, 'So - so what? Then there are only six of what you
call true caverns here.'
'No,
there are seven caverns to the Singing Caves of Senta - this is known.
Therefore there must be an opening out of the Minstrels' Cavern into an even
deeper one.'
'What
makes you so sure of that, eh?'
'Because
there are seven musical notes, and seven colors to the spectrum - seven chakras
along the spine, as well. And many, many other sevens. It is the Law of the
Seven, and I feel certain that it applies here.'
While Kane
stood considering this, Babul looked at Master Juwain and said, 'But Master
Javas, I have been a steward here for fifteen years, and my father and
grandfather served here before me. No one has ever heard any mention of a
secret cavern.'
'And
that,' Pirro added in a high, whiny voice, 'is because there is no
secret cavern.'
'And
even if there was,' Babul said, 'how would that help us? We would only be
trapped that much deeper in the earth.'
'No, we
might escape,' Master Juwain said. 'Sometimes underground rivers flow through
caves. And there might be cracks off the seventh cavern, corridors leading out
of it and up into the mountain - or even out its back side. Who knows? This
mountain might even be riddled with tunnels as is Skartaru.'
At the
mention of the Black Mountain beneath which the city of Argattha was buried,
and where Morjin dwelled, I made a fist around the hilt of my sword. Then I
heard Morjin's voice singing from deep in the earth, and I told Master Juwain
and the rest of my friends what I had learned of Morjin in the seventh - or
sixth - cavern.
'I
believe that he was seeking something there,' I said. 'Something beyond
listening to the minstrels and leaving his song. It might have been a
secret cavern.'
Atara
turned toward the dark opening leading down into the mountain. A slight shaking
of her head gave me to understand that if any secret, seventh cavern was hidden
beyond the sixth, she had seen no vision of it. But then she said, 'Why don't
we go back, even so? Can anyone think of a better plan?'
Again,
I led the way into the earth. We strung out in a line, like ants, with my
friends behind me and the two stewards directly in front of Kane, who took the
rear. When we came out into the Minstrels' Cavern, Kane posted himself at the
top of the stairs to warn us in case Sylar and his men came for us. The rest of
us spread out to examine the cavern's walls. A secret door to a secret cavern,
as Master Juwain reasoned, would certainly be outlined by cracks in the walls'
gleaming crystals. But there were thousands of cracks, many of which cleaved
along the crystals' bases in clean planes. And some of these cracks, I thought,
would be invisible to the eye, rather like the seam in a broken crust of bread
after the two halves had been fitted back together.
When we
were ready to abandon our search as a long and probably hopeless work, I
noticed Estrella standing motionless before a particularly lovely part of the
cavern. Her eyes caught the colors of the crystals there, and I could not tell
whether their radiance came from without or within.
'Estrella?'
I said, moving over to her. 'What do you see?'
I
traced my finger along the edges and facets of azure crystals. I could find no
cracks that might have been the outline of a doorway. 'Estrella?' I said again.
This
bright-eyed girl remained frozen, gazing at the crystalline wall. I remembered
that the Avarii had called her an udra mazda, who had found water in a
nearly waterless desert. And more, Master Juwain had identified her as a seard,
who could make her heart one with hidden things.
'Estrella
- do you think there is a door here? How can there be?'
Daj
came over to me and touched me on the arm. He said, 'Don't you remember the
door to the secret passage off Lord Morjin's chambers?'
In
fact, at that very moment, I was thinking of exactly that door in the black
depths of Argattha. And of how a password spoken in ancient Ardik had opened it.
Master
Juwain examined the wall in from of Estrella, and said, 'I don't think
there is a door here. And if there is, how would we ever discover the
word that might open it?'
I drew
my sword and pointed it toward the wall. The two stewards gasped to see
its silustria flare with a soft light. Something bright flared within me, too.
From bits and pieces out of ray memory - the poignancy of Morjin's words, the
yearning of his song and the beauty of other songs that I had heart in darker
places - a sparkling pattern took shape. And I said to Master Juwain.
'Perhaps not a word, then, but a language. Perhaps we can sing our way
through solid rock.'
I
turned to Alphanderry and said, 'Do you remember the Kul Moroth?'
Alphanderry
nodded his head. 'Yes, I remember.'
'The
way you sang there, and other times since - can you sing that way now?'
'I can
try,' he said. He looked across the cavern at Kane standing at the top of the
stairs. 'It might help if I had accompaniment.'
Kane
nodded his assent and came down to us. He unslung the mandolet that he had
brought with him into the caverns. After quickly tuning it, he looked at
Alphanderry and said, 'So.'
And so
as Kane began plucking the mandolet's strings, Alphanderry sang. He directed
his strong, clear voice at the wall before him. His words, pouring forth in
ever more perfect form, with exquisite grace, seemed to melt into a music so beautiful
that 1 found myself weeping and laughing, all at once. And all at once, the
crystals on the wall seemed to lose their solidity and run with a sparkle and
fluidness like unto water. With great care, I pushed the point of my sword
toward these crystals. The silustria sliced deep into them; the substance of
the crystals seemed to flow around my sword like an azure waterfall, and yet
strangely did not move or lose its shape. And still Kane played, and still
Alphanderry sang, aad my heart surged with great joy to hear once more the
language of the Galadin. Of all the minstrels who had ever given their voices
to this cavern, I thought that none could compare with Alphanderry. I watched
as the jewel-like crystals began changing once again. Their liquidity gave way
to an even less solid substance, more like air, and then finally shimmered
before me like a curtain of light.
Alphanderry
stopped singing, and gazed in wonder at what his music had accomplished. As I
pulled back my sword, now gleaming like a mirror. Master Juwain stared at the
cavern's wall. A great oval, like a door, stood limned against that part of the
wall that remained hard crystal. I could not see through it to determine if
another cavern lay beyond. It was like trying to look through the sky's
brilliant blueness to apprehend the stars.
Master
Juwain brought forth a copper coin and tossed it at the wall. It passed
straight through the light-wrought crystals and disappeared. I heard the
tinkling of metal as it seemed that the coin struck rock on the other side.
'The
Law of the Seven, indeed,' I said, smiling at Master Juwain.
Pirro,
trembling with his hand held palm outward as if to ward away a blow, shook his
thin head at the wall and cried out, 'Sorcery! You are not thieves, but
sorcerers!'
Babul,
however, seemed made of more courageous stuff. He gazed at the seeming doorway
into the crystalline wall and said, 'If they are sorcerers, then let us give
thanks for their magic. Could there really be a seventh cavern through
there?'
'Who
would want to walk through that,' Pirro said, pointing at the
frozen cascades of light, 'to find out?'
My
companions and I, of course, would. When Pirro saw this, he declared that he
would not follow us, not even for a cartful of diamonds.
'Then
go back,' Kane growled at him, pointing up the steps to the higher caverns. 'At
least stand guard, and give warning if Sylar comes.'
Without
waiting for Pirro's assent, Kane turned toward me. 'Val?'
'I will
go first,' I told him.
'But
what if the opening closes behind you, and we cannot reopen it?'
'I'll
have to take that chance.'
'No -
let this Babul take it! He was ready enough to trick us into Sylar's chains.
Let him redeem himself by doing us this service.'
As
Babul stared straight ahead at the wall, his red face blanched. Kane seemed
ready to propel his large form through the even larger opening. And I said to
Kane, 'No, it is upon me.'
And
then without another word, I turned and stepped through the curtain of light
into the seventh cavern. I wanted to cry out to my friends that this passage
had been no more difficult than walking through the doorway of my father's
library in the Elahad castle. I could not, however, speak. For the chamber that
opened before me was no mere cavern, but seemed almost another world. It was
spherical in shape, and vast, as if the entire inside of the mountain had been
hollowed out. The crystals here rose out the floor, wall or ceiling as long and
thick as the trunks of trees. They pointed: inward, toward the chamber's
center, and most showed six facets, like the sides of a honeycomb's cell. The
crystals gleamed with bright blues and scintillating reds - and with flaming
oranges, yellows and the other hues of the spectrum.
'Oh, my
Lord!' I whispered, wishing that Maram had come this far. 'Oh, my Lord!'
From
somewhere behind me, I heard Kane shout out: 'Val, do you hear me? Are you all
right?'
And I
called back to him: 'Yes ... I am. Truly I am.'
'Should
we come, then?'
'Yes,
come - come now!'
A
moment later Kane passed through the light curtain, followed by Liljana, Atara,
Estrella, Daj and Master Juwain. Then Babul dared to enter this seventh cavern
as well. He joined us and stood staring out into the cavern's center, which
wavered in the distance as of an infinity depth.
'Ten of
King Yulmar's palaces,' Babul exclaimed, 'would fit into this space! Twenty or
thirty - I do not know!'
We
stood together on a shelf of plain rock jutting out from the cavern's wall
perhaps halfway up the sphere's circumference. A long, wide stairway carved
into the rock led down the cavern's curving slope below us to a larger
clearing, circular in shape, at the very bottom of the cavern. There seemed
nothing else to do but to walk down to it.
'You,'
Kane said to Babul, 'are a Steward of Caves, eh? Guardians, you call
yourselves. So, you will stay here and guard this doorway. If Pirro calls out a
warning to you or if the door begins to close, you will call out a warning to
us, do you understand?'
Few men
were willing to argue with Kane. As Babul nodded his head and his chin
disappeared into his neck, I turned to go down the stairs. My friends walked
behind me. Our way led between the great crystals, like a straight path through
a forest. I saw almost immediately that we would not find an exit from this
cavern as Master Juwain had wished. The substance of the walls and floor out of
which the crystals grew gleamed like black glass, without the slightest flaw or
crack that we could detect. The perfection of this chamber, in substance and
shape, both awed and mystified me.
At last
we worked down the curve of the cavern to the bare circle at its bottom. I
could see Babul perched on the rocky shelf to our right, high above us.
Crystals, like great, ruby obelisks, rose up around us out of what seemed to be
pure obsidian. High above I us, straight across the cavern, other crystals hung
suspended over our heads like impossibly huge swords.
'Oh, my
Lord!' I whispered again. I thought that Maram would perhaps not like standing
here after all.
'What is
this place?' Daj said, looking up at Master Juwain. 'Can these crystals
really be gelstei?'
'Can they
be?' Master Juwain said. He stepped over to one of the great crystals and laid
his hand upon it. 'Can they truly be?'
'Men,'
Liljana said, running her hand along the face of a ruby monolith, 'could not
have made such things.'
'Men,
no - perhaps not the Ardun. But might have the angels?'
Liljana
stared off in wonder as she shook her head.
'But if
not the Galadin,' Master Juwain said, 'then who? All the gelstei of which we
have record were forged by the hand of man.'
'But
what of the gelstei that grew out of the earth in the vilds?'
Master
Juwain thought about this and said, 'If not forged, then cultivated. The Lokilani
tend their crystals as fanners do their crops.'
'But it
is the earth that grows the crystals.'
'What
are you thinking?'
Liljana
swept her hand out at the rainbow of colors pouring out of the huge crystals.
'I feel certain that the Mother gave birth to this place. Perhaps man and the
earth created it together.'
'How,
then?'
'You
always concern yourself with the how of things. But what I wonder is why?'
All
this time Kane had remained silent. But then he raised up his eyes and spoke in
a sad, deep voice that rang out as if from another land far away.
'I have
a memory,' he told us. 'A memory of a memory. I think I heard of such a place
long, long ago. It was called Ansunna.'
He
looked at me, and then at Liljana. His black eyes seemed to grow ever brighter
and clearer as he stood there remembering. 'These caverns are a creation
of the living earth and the Galadin of old. The Bright Ones once walked the
earth, eh? In the Elder Ages, I think they came here and planted in the ground
the seeds of the gelstei - the great gelstei that grew into these great
crystals.'
Here he
smacked his hand against one of the ruby pillars so hard that it seemed the
whole earth shook. And Master Juwain said to him, 'But you cannot mean the great
gelstei!'
I
thought of the seven clear crystals, colored red through violet that Abrasax
and the masters of the Brotherhood kept safe about their persons high in the
White Mountains. They called them the Seven Openers, and although small in
size, Abrasax had believed them to be made of the same substance as the great
gelstei used in the creation of the universe.
'I mean
just that,' Kane said to Master Juwain. He turned to Liljana, and his voice
softened as he said, 'So, this is the why of things, eh? The great
gelstei, in their highest purpose, are to be used in creation.'
Master
Juwain stepped over to the crystal rising up near Kane. 'You can't mean that
these are the great gelstei used in Eluru's creation!'
'No,
surely not,' Kane told him. 'The gelstei of which you speak are surely almost
infinitely vaster - as far beyond these little rocks as the Ieldra are the
Galadin.'
Master
Juwain gazed up as if looking for the point of the great crystal a hundred feet
above us. 'Then what are these gelstei for?'
Kane
began pacing around the circle, casting quick glances to his right or left
across the cavern, at Babul standing far away on his rocky shelf and the
dangling green and yellow crystals of the cavern's ceiling. I could scarcely
bear the flood of feelings pouring out of him: curiosity, remorse, anticipation,
sorrow and all his wild joy of life.
'So,'
he finally said, 'a day must come when the Galadin will become Ieldra and use
the gelstei to sing into creation a new universe. I believe that Ashtoreth and
Valoreth - even Asangal and many other Galadin - once came here to sing.'
He went
on say that just as boys practiced with wooden swords before becoming warriors
who wielded razor-sharp steel, so the Galadin must prepare themselves for the
great task that lay ahead of them.
'But of
what did they sing, then?' Daj asked Kane.
'Who
knows?' Kane told him. 'But this was said about the place called
Ansunna: that it held a great magic. Whatever one spoke truly, with the voice
of the soul, would be made real.'
'That
would be magic, indeed,' Master Juwain said, 'for wishes to come true.'
'I
didn't say wishes,' Kane snapped at him. 'We wish that our
desires be fulfilled, and we desire that which most pleases or benefits us.
But the soul has other desires, eh? And its deepest desire is always in accord
with that of the One. What does the One will? Discover that within
yourself and speak it truly, without wish or regard for yourself, and it will
be.'
Master
Juwain rubbed his gleaming head as he thought about this. And then Atara said,
'But only, it would seem for the Galadin for who of us can ever hope to sing as
they sing?'
Kane
gazed at Alphanderry a moment before saying, 'Who, indeed?'
Estrella,
who could not sing or even speak, caught Kane's attention with a flutter of
her fingers and a smile. Their eyes met, and something seemed to snap inside
him like an overstretched bowstring. He said, 'There is singing, and there is singing.
The Ieldra do not have voices as men do, and yet from them pours forth the
music of creation.'
In the
Loikalii's vild, I had stood staring at the great astor tree, Irdrasil, as a
glorre-infused radiance poured out of it. I could almost hear the Ieldra
whispering to me still; I knew that the deepest voice of all spoke not in
impossible-to-learn tones but in the language of light.
'This, too,
I believe, was said,' Kane told us. His fathomless eyes drank in the cavern's
colors. 'That one should not speak of abstractions such as peace, compassion
or love. That which is, always is, eh? It partakes of the eternal realm.
But that which would be, in creation, comes forth within this realm.
Like the world itself, it must be a physical thing.'
A
question seemed to divide him, like a chasm through solid rock. It divided me,
as well. How, I wondered, could I distinguish what I wanted from the
will of the One? Did I long for Atara to see with new eyes for her sake or my
own? And what of my hope that someday I would hear sweet song pouring from
Estrella's throat, no less my darker desire to plunge my sword through Morjin's
heart? A hundred wants and needs formed up inside me with an almost palpable
presence. I tried to listen for the whispering of my soul and to sing out with
all my heart my deepest desire. But I felt lost inside this vast cavern, like a
sleeper within a dream. There came a moment when I wished for nothing more than
to stand outside beneath the stars again, to feel the wind on my face and for
Maram to press a cup of brandy into my hand as his great voice boomed out that
it was good to be alive.
As we
all stood there in the womb of the earth, staring off in silence, the great
gelstei crystals came alive with a deep light. It passed from one crystal to the next, red
to yellow, violet to blue, so that
each crystal seemed to partake of the radiance of all the thousands of others. The splendor
they cast out into the cavern colored
the very air so that it shimmered a brilliant glorre.
And
yet, I thought, the crystals shone less brilliantly than they should have. A
too-familiar dread crept up my bones into my spine. My sword smoldered with
hidden flames, as did my heart, and I felt Morjin's presence here. Surely he
knew of this place, even if he had never found the purity of voice to sing his
way into it. But now, I sensed, from a thousand miles away he used the power of
the Lightstone to sing a different and darker kind of song. The Galadin once
might have spoken their desires to these beautiful crystals, as did we; the Red
Dragon would speak his demands. And the great gelstei spoke back. When I
emptied myself of all wishes and listened hard enough, I heard the saddest song
of all. For here the earth herself sang: long, lovely, low and deep. She sang
of the Black Jade buried within her flesh like a poisoned arrowhead; she told
of Morjin delving down through the rock beneath Skartaru and doing terrible
things. She lamented her own darkening, and sang of her dread of the day when
Morjin would free the Dark One and the earth would finally sicken and die.
It came
to me that we would never find our way out of the Singing Caves if we stood
frozen listening to such tormented songs. I wondered how we would find our way
at all. And then I heard another song, or rather a voice, that dashed our hopes
of escape. For Babul, high on his slab of rock above us, suddenly called out to
us: 'Mirustral! Rowan! Pirro has given the warning! He heard shouts beyond the
doors, and says that Sylar comes for us! What shall we do?'
What
indeed, I wondered, as I looked at Kane?
And
then a moment later, Babul shouted out again: 'The doorway! It is closing!'
We all
turned to face the gleaming azure crystals on the curving wall above us. Master
Juwain said, 'If we let ourselves be closed in, we'll be safe from Sylar and
his men.'
And
Kane snarled at him, 'You mean, entombed!'
'No -
when Sylar finds us vanished, he'll attribute it to sorcery. We can reopen the
door another time, and make our escape.'
'So you
say. But what if Sylar does not attribute our vanishing to sorcery? What
if that damn Pirro betrays us, and Sylar sets miners to chiselling away here
and discovers this cavern?'
He did
not have to add that if Sylar really belonged to the Order of the Dragon, then
Morjin would be told of anything he discovered.
'Good
pilgrims!' Babul cried out, 'the doorway!'
'So,
I'd rather die trying to fight our way out,' Kane said.
'So would
I,' I told him. Then I turned toward the stairs. 'Hurry, then, before we are
trapped in here.'
We ran
up the stairs to the shimmering doorway. The opening appeared to be gelling
into something more solid. I urged everyone through and then jumped after them
through the wall into the sixth or Minstrels' Cavern; it was like passing
through freezing water.
'The
doors!' Pirro's voice rang out from above us. He stood at the mouth of the
fifth cavern shouting down to us. 'They're going to open the doors!'
I led
the way running toward him. I had to pace myself up the stairs, and all the way
back up through the other sloping chambers, lest the climb burn up my limbs
and wind me. Then I came into the first cavern. There, in that hollow of
gleaming crystals, I stood gasping for air. My friends joined me, one by one.
At the front of the cavern, the iron doors remained shut, and I could hear no
sound from beyond them.
'What
shall we do?' Babul said again, whispering to me. 'We are few, and they will
surely be many.'
Just
then something banged the door outside, and there came the jangle of what
sounded like keys.
'Form
up!' I whispered, stepping closer to the door.
Kane,
sword in hand, stood by my right side, while to my left, Babul and Pirro
pressed close to each other and pointed their spears at the doors. Liljana,
Master Juwain, Estrella and Daj gathered behind us. Liljana had drawn the long
knife that she wore concealed beneath her robes, while Daj gripped his short
sword. Farther to my right and behind me, Atara had stationed herself at an
angle to the door. She had cut free from her cloak the three arrows sewn into
it, and had nocked one of them to the string of her bow. She pulled back the
arrow to her ear, somehow aiming its steel point in the direction of the crack
between the doors. I wondered how long she could hold her great bow at full
draw.
The
sound of a key grating inside the iron lock of the doors sent a thrill of fear
shooting through me. And Pirro whispered out into the dank, close air: 'I could
not tell how many they are.'
I heard
Kane whisper back to him, 'We'll kill them all few or many. We must, be
prepared for anything.'
But I
was not, despite Kane's fierce words, prepared for what awaited us on the other
side of the doors. Finally, with much creaking, these great slabs of iron began
to swing open. Torchlight spilled into the cavern, and limned against its red
glow stood a single man. I blinked my eyes in wonder. I could not believe what
I saw, although I was overjoyed at the sight that greeted me.
'My
Lord!' a familiar voice called out to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'
It was
Maram.
Chapter 32 Back Table of Content Next
We hurried out into the scoop of rock called the first cavern. The bodies of Elkar and Harun lay sprawled near the table where Sylar had collected our gold. Elkar's slashed throat oozed blood, while Harun fairly floated in a dark pool building out from a terrible wound in his chest. Just in front of the demon rock slumped another form: Sylar's, I guessed from the gilded armor. His body had been decapitated. Although I looked about the bloodstained cavern floor, I could not see his head.
'But how did you come to be here?' I asked Maram. We stood over Sylar's corpse gazing at each other in amazement. I noted the blood dripping off Maram's drawn sword. 'What happened?'
'Ah, Val!' Maram said as he embraced me with his free arm, 'I happened along just in time, I think, else you would have been dead, or worse.'
He explained that after arriving at the Inn of the Clouds in the dead of night, he had asked after us and learned that we had not returned from the Singing Caves. Thinking to surprise us, he had hurried after us, up the flagstone path leading from the inn beneath the face of Mount Miru. As he had approached the caverns' entrance, however, a cruel laughter had given him warning. And so, like a bear sniffing out a new lair, he had stalked up to the caverns in near silence.
'As I drew closer,' he told us, 'I hid behind that rock.'
He pointed at a large boulder ten yards away just outside the cavern.
Then he pointed at the bodies of Elkar, Harun and Sylar.
'I heard them
boasting that they had locked you inside the caverns,'
he went on. He pointed his sword toward Sylar's headless torso. 'That
one was their captain, wasn't he? He said that they
would be given a great reward for capturing you. I gathered that he had sent
another of these guards for reinforcements.'
Kane
sprang up to Maram and grasped his arm. 'Did you hear Sylar say where he sent
him?'
Maram
nodded. 'To Hesperu, to return this very night with one of the Red Priests and
a cadre of Crucifiers . . .'
'Did
Sylar,' Kane asked Maram with a tightening of his fist, 'say the name of the Red
Priest?'
Maram
pried Kane's fingers from his arm and took a step back. He looked down at
Sylar's remains beneath the demon's stony, grinning face. 'I waited for
him to say it. Or for one of his men. But all they seemed to want to talk about
was Mouth of Truth, as. they called it. Sylar lamented that they couldn't test
it on you. I couldn't listen to that, do you understand? I couldn't wait
forever, and so I did what I did.'
And
what Maram had done, as Maram now told us, was to charge from out behind his
rock with his sword in his hand. Before the hapless guards realized that a
fierce warrior was upon them, he had slashed open the astonished Elkar's throat
with a lightning cut of his sword and then thrust its point through Harun's
armor at the shoulder joint, deep into Harun's chest. He had then turned upon
Sylar.
'For him,'
Maram said, nudging Sylar's body with his boot, 'I didn't have to use my
sword.'
'Then
what happened to him?' Daj asked.
'I
grabbed him,' Maram said, 'before he could draw his sword. He fought
like a fish, but I, ah, subdued him. I asked him the name of the Red Priest,
but he wouldn't tell me. And so I hammer-locked him, and pushed his head inside
this.'
Maram
slapped his hand against the smooth rock carved with the demon's face. I noticed
the fresh blood staining the lips of of the Mouth of Truth.
'You
put Lord Sylar inside of Old Ugly?' Babul called out.
'Just
his head and neck,' Maram replied. 'I told him that I'd let him go free if he
gave me the Red Priest's name and told me where Tarran was bound; if he didn't,
I told him I'd break his filthy neck. I did almost have to break it,
too. Finally, though, Sylar gave me a name: Ra Jaumal. I knew he was lying the
moment he spoke it.'
According
to Maram, as soon as Sylar had spoken the name of Ra Jaumal, the demon's eyes
had flared bright blue and from within the rock had come the sound of whirring
gears and metal whooshing through the air. Maram never laid eyes on the falling
blade that had severed Sylar's head. But he had felt the impact of steel
against flesh and bone through Sylar's shocked body.
'Lord
Sylar,' Babul said, staring down at the bloody stone, 'always wanted to test
Old Ugly. But I don't think he really believed it would do its work.'
'So,'
Kane said, gazing at the reddened Mouth of Truth.
He drew
forth a round, reddish rock called a bloodstone, and moved over to Elkar's
body. He held the little gelstei over Elkar's forehead; a crimson light pouring
out of the bloodstone illumined the secret mark of the Red Dragon tattooed
there. It remained a burning crimson in Elkar's flesh even after Kane closed
his fist around his bloodstone.
'I
should have used this on him and that damn Sylar before we went into the
caverns,' Kane sighed as he rose up again. 'But it's hard to expose our enemies
without exposing us.'
He
turned to Maram and asked, 'Do you think Sylar knew who we are?'
Maram
shook his head. 'No, I got no sense of that. He spoke only of having been
alerted to look for a band of pilgrims such as us. I believe that it was his
own idea to lock you inside and send for the Red Priest. He seemed proud of his
initiative.'
'It may
be,' Liljana said, stepping closer, 'that the Lord of Lies deduced that we
would come to Senta. And warned whoever Sylar reported to that he should watch
for us.'
'Whoever
that is,' Kane said, 'will be warned soon enough if we're not quick. And every
other Red Priest in Senta and down into Hesperu.'
I
noticed Babul and Pirro standing in a little too closely and fairly hanging on
Kane's every word. I didn't like it that he spoke so freely in front of them.
'But
who are you, then,' Babul asked me, 'that the Lord of Lies would hunt
you?'
I felt
a darkness building inside Kane, who said, 'Go ahead and tell them. They might
as well know before they join the others.'
And
with that, he drew his sword and turned toward Babul.
'No!' I
cried out. I took a step closer to Kane. 'No ... Rowan!'
Babul
tried to use his spear to defend himself and perhaps thrust its long, gleaming
point into Kane before Kane could kill him. But Kane knocked away Babul's spear
as easily as he might have parried the thrust of a child. I grabbed onto Kane's
arm then before his wrath drove him to do something that he didn't really wish
to do. I pulled him back, out the range of Babul's and Pirro's spears.
'No!' I
said to him again.
He
whirled to face me, and his eyes burned into mine. 'They know too much!
We can't just leave them behind us!'
'Perhaps
they do.' I told him. 'But we can't just slay innocent men!'
'Innocent,'
Kane spat out, glancing at the badly frightened Babul. 'Who is truly innocent?'
'We
cannot slay them!' I shouted.
'Would
you have us risk everything to preserve the lives of these?'
In
answer, I tightened my grip around his arm. Behind me and to my right, I saw
Estrella step in front of Babul as she fearlessly looked up at Kane.
'So,'
Kane said as he gazed at her. I watched as the life in his eyes died into a
smoldering rage. He seemed to command his arm to sheathe his sword, and I let
go of him so that he could.
'Good
pilgrim,' Babul said to Kane as he wiped the sweat from his neck. 'I will guard
your secrets as I do the caverns themselves, with my life!'
'Ha -
that you will!' Kane snarled at him.
He took
a step closer to Babul even as Babul took a step back. Then Kane sprang forward
past Estrella, brushing aside Babul's spear with a savage motion. He opened his
fist to let the bloodstone's light shine on Babul's forehead. But the
gelstei's radiance failed to bring forth any secret tattoo. A similar test of
Pirro proved him also to be free of the Dragon's mark.
'All
right, then, we shall give you our trust,' Kane told them. 'Do not betray it.
You know that the Red Dragon hunts us; you do not want me to hunt you.
I must leave now, but I will return.
If I
learn you've spoken of us or what lies beyond what you call the seventh cavern,
then I shall slay you - you and your families: your wives, your fathers,
sisters and children!'
It was
a terrible thing for him to say, and the force of his breath breaking from his
lips made both Babul and Pirro quail. Then Kane turned toward the flagstone
path gleaming gray-white in the glister of the torches. He caught my eye, and
said. 'If I ride fast enough, I may be able to overtake Sylar's messenger
before he reaches the Red Priest he's been sent to.'
'Alone?' I said to him.
'Yes -
I'll do this work better alone.'
But how will we find you, then?'
'Follow
me tonight, as soon as you can,' he told me. 'Ride quickly, but don't ruin the
horses. And tomorrow, I'll find you.'
So
saying, he sprang forward and began running down the path back toward the Inn
of the Clouds. He vanished like a great cat into the dark folds of night.
Babul
as if all his strength had bled away, staggered over to the chair behind the
table and slumped down into it. He gazed at Sylar's headless body as he used a
scarf to mop the sweat from his forehead. He said to me, 'The King will have to
be informed of what occurred here. If we're to guard your secrets, what story
shall we give him?'
'What
sort of man is King Yulmar?' I asked him.
'A man
of honor, it's said. And a courageous one. When the Red Priests sent assassins
to kill Prince Paomar, the King came out of his chambers where he was safely
guarded to fight the assassins sword to sword. He took a wound to his arm
before the assassins were killed. He has no cause to love the Red Priests or
their master, if that is what you were wondering.'
I
nodded my head as I told Babul: 'Then give your king the truth. Tell him that
Sylar had joined the Order of the Dragon -Elkar, Harun and Tarran, too. Tell
him that they locked you inside the caverns, along with the Red Dragon's
enemies. Do not give him our names or say where we are bound. And do not tell
him of the true seventh cavern.'
I could
see from the flickers of light in Babul's and Pirro's eyes that this last would
be a hard secret to keep and take with them to their graves, Pirro, I thought,
would have a harder time keeping any secrets at all, for he looked at me and
said, 'But what if the King demands that we tell him all that we know?'
'Then
tell him that you've vowed to protect our identities, if he is a man of honor,
he'll respect that.'
'But
we've vowed nothing,' Pirro said.
'Then
do so now,' I told him.
Pirro
looked over at Babul and nodded his head at him. And Babul said to me, 'All
right, then, we do.'
But
this, I thought, was not quite good enough, for I sensed gnawing doubt in both
Babul and Pirro. I told them, 'Do not vow to do that which you cannot do. You
must be certain of your selves, and before we leave, we must be certain of
you.'
'But we've given you our vows - what more do you
want?'
In
answer, I looked over at the demon rock and said, 'Give your vows to it.'
Babul's
face blanched as he stared at the demon's mouth, but he slowly nodded his head.
He stood up and walked over to where Sylar lay beneath it. Again, he used his
crumpled scarf to mop his forehead. He swallowed, hard, and cleared his throat.
I felt him fighting to find within himself all his will to be brave and true.
Finally, he pushed his hand inside the demon's mouth and declared: 'I vow to
keep your secrets, as you have asked.'
Babul
closed his eyes and waited, as did we. When the demon failed to take his hand,
he quickly removed it and stood staring at his open palm and five fingers in
wonder. It was as if he were seeing himself for the first time and beholding
long-desired possibilities.
Pirro
likewise endured this trial that I urged upon him; afterwards, strangely, he
seemed not to hate me but only to be glad to have found new resolve and a
courage to match Babul's. He said to me, 'Senta will never fall, at least not
from within as Galda did. If you pass back this way and I am still a guard
here, you will be welcome. Perhaps next time, I'll even dare to go into the
cavern that I will not speak of and does not really exist.'
He
smiled as he bowed his head to me, and I bowed back. Then Babul assured me that
he and Pirro would wait a few more hours before making their report in order to
give us time to ride away from here. I felt certain that they would do as they
promised.
We said
farewell, and turned to make our way back down the path. When we reached the
Inn of the Clouds, we had no need to awaken the innkeeper, for Kane already
had. As the innkeeper told us, Kane had galloped off into the night less than
half an hour before.
'It's
unheard of,' the small, pot-bellied man told us, 'for our guests to flee like
thieves in the night before they've even slept in their beds. I hope your
accommodations didn't disappoint you?'
I assured him that his inn was the most splendid we
had ever seen, but said that urgent business called us elsewhere. According to
Kane's instructions, the innkeeper had our horses saddled and ready outside the
white colonnades fronting the portico of this rather grandiose inn. Without
further explanation, we mounted and trotted off down the road. In the light of
the stars, we followed this well-paved track that led down from Mount Miru and
wound around its rocky mass to the east, where it joined the road to Hesperu.
It was
now well past midnight, and no other travelers ventured forth, neither
southward towards Hesperu nor from it. We clopped along over smooth,
star-washed stones. Fields ft rippling wheat opened out on either side of us.
The crickets there chirped with a million tiny voices. As we passed by
farmhouses standing alone beneath the black and silver sky, dogs barked out
their warnings into the night.
When I
was sure that no one had followed us, I called for a halt and turned toward
Maram. I said to him, 'Well?'
'Well, what?'
he called back.
Master
Juwain, Atara and everyone else reined in their horses around us in the center
of the deserted road. And I said to Maram: 'How did you find us? And why did
you leave the Vild? And what did you -'
'Ah,
Val, Val!' he said, holding up his hand and smiling. 'I'll tell you everything,
though there's really very little to tell. I left the Vild because I could not
remain. You see, I knew you would need me.'
The story he now related was indeed neither long nor
complicated. It seemed that two days after the rest of us had ridden out of
the Vild into the desert, a great disquiet had come over Maram. He realized
that even though he cherished Anneli and loved the quiet peace of the Vild,
other things remained even dearer to him. And so upon steeling himself for a
long and solitary journey, he had said goodbye to the weeping Anneli and the
other Loikalii, and went out into the desert. He found the Tar Harath to be
just as hot and hellish as he had remembered. He followed our tracks west and
then came upon the well of Manoj and his family. Manoj, when he learned that
Maram was our companion, was only too happy to give him stores and water from
his well, still full from the storm that Estrella had summoned. He told him,
too, of the Dead City and the road leading up into the mountains. Maram had
followed this road, even as we had, up through the lovely green valleys of the
Crescent Mountains. He had searched out our old camps, one by one. He travelled
as quickly as he could, trying to eat up our lead, for an unusual urgency drove
him on. At last, he had found his way into Senta. Since Kane had spoken of the
Inn of the Clouds, Maram had first looked for us there. 'It was strange,' he
told me. 'There I was in the Loikalii's wood one fine morning eating cherries
with Anneli, and I heard you calling to me. And on the road, all those days, I
felt you wishing that I hadn't stayed behind. You did wish this, didn't
you? You did call me?'
'Yes,
Maram, I did,' I told him. But I didn't quite know how to explain that I had
wished this most intently and called out the loudest scarcely an hour
before is the cavern called Ansunna, where one's dreams and deepest desires
might be made real.
Master
Juwain, I noticed, was looking at me with great curiosity, as was Liljana. Then
Maram insisted that we climb down off our horses, and so we did. He brought out
two cups and the very last of his brandy. Alter filling them, he gave one into
my hand and raised up the other. Starlight illumined the wide smile breaking
upon his face, and the wind whipped at his hair. Then he clinked cups
with me, and drank down his brandy, as did I. He embraced me as
he thumped my back and cried out, 'Val, Val - It's good to see you again! It's
good to be alive!'
Was it
possible, I wondered? Could it be that what I had wished for most fervently in
the seventh cavern had somehow come to pass?
When I
remarked upon the mystery of how Maram could have acted upon my wish many days
before I even wished it. Atara turned toward me and said, 'Time is
strange. In the eternal realm, that of the One, there is no time. But even in this
realm, all things of the world take their being from the One, and there are
moments when past, future and present are as one. If I can cast my second sight
into time that is yet to be, why shouldn't you be able to sing your wishes into
the past?'
Why
not, indeed? I wondered as I watched Maram licking drops of brandy from
his moustache.
Our
talk of wishes and singing impelled a recounting of what we had found inside
the Singing Caves. I almost couldn't bear to tell Maram of the marvels he had
missed. He was a man who loved music and beauty almost as much as he did women
and wine. If he had stood in the great cavern of the Galadin by my side and had
sung out with his great heart, I wondered what he would have wished for?
'Ah,
but it's too bad I didn't hear all those songs,' he said to us. 'Maybe
we should consider going back, then. We still have some hours before daybreak.
Wasn't the whole idea of passing through Senta to gain some sort of idea as to
where we might find the Maitreya?'
I was about to tell him that we had heard thousands of
mentions of the Maitreya, all to no avail, when Daj straightened up on top of
his horse, and called out in his high voice, 'But we do know! At least, we know
where we might look for him.'
We
turned to stare at Daj. I said to him, 'What do you know? And why didn't
you tell us before?'
'I'm
sorry,' he said to me, 'but I heard someone singing of this in the Minstrels'
Cavern just as we were passing back through it. I thought that there would soon
be a battle, and when there wasn't, when the doors opened and we found everyone
dead and Kane hurried off, and then we did, too - well, there hasn't been time
to tell you.'
'We've
time now,' I said, looking up at the stars.
And Daj
told us, 'It was a woman's voice - I never heard her name. She came to Senta to
sing praises of a man, a healer who had saved her daughter. Some incurable
disease it was, and the daughter was wasting away. Just a year ago! She never
spoke the healer's name, either. But she said that he had brought a bright
light back into her life, and she called this man her "Shining One".'
'Oh,
excellent!' Maram said. 'A nameless women praising a nameless man for a miracle
that occurred we know not where.'
'But we
do know where!' Daj said to Maram. 'The woman said that her husband had
crossed the whole north of Hesperu to bring her daughter to this healer. In a
place called Jhamrul.'
Daj,
though he had been born in Hesperu's Haraland, could not tell me if Jhamrul
might be a district, city or village, nor did he have any idea where we might
find this place. Master Juwain got out his maps then, but the light of the
stars proved too little to read by. But Master Juwain had an excellent memory,
and he could not recall any marking on his maps of that name.
'We'll
have to ask after this Jhamrul, then,' he said. 'When we reach Hesperu, surely
someone will have heard of it.'
According
to his maps and what he had learned through making inquiries, it was nine miles
from the Singing Caves to Hesperu's frontier, and then another nine miles down
from the mountains into the populated parts of the Haraland. Without wasting
any more words, we resumed our journey. We all hoped, I thought, that we were
nearing its culmination, if not its end.
Only
one road led from Senta into Hesperu. We followed it through the rocky bowl in
which this tiny kingdom was sited to the southern wall of sheltering mountains.
Weariness worked deep into me so that I felt every jolt of my horse down into
my bones. It was even worse for the others, and I feared that we were all too
tired to ride through the night. We could not, however, remain within the reach
of King Yulmar should Babul and Pirro break their vows and King Yulmar prove to
be neither as honorable nor courageous as they had promised. And so we drove
ourselves and our horses over the rocky, rising ground with as much speed as we
could summon.
Soon we
worked our way up to a high pass between rows of ice-capped peaks gleaming in
the starlight to either side of us. The air fell cooler and shimmered with the
brilliance of the stars. Which one, I wondered, might point our way to the
Maitreya? Was he sleeping somewhere down in the land beyond the mountains? Or
did he stand awake on some hilltop or in a window gazing up at the same bright
stellar vista as did I?
Time is
strange, Atara had said to me. That night, on our push into Hesperu, the hours
seemed to draw out almost endlessly long as if the world itself hung perfectly
balanced in black space and could never move. And yet taken as a whole, the
night fairly flew by, and I could no more hold onto the fleeting moments than I
could a streaking arrow. I felt myself rushing toward my fate. Whatever star
called me onward pulled with a force I could not resist and filled my
blood with an unquenchable fire.
At last
we found ourselves braving the narrows of the pass called the Khal Arrak. Here,
in a cut through the earth scarcely a quarter mile wide, walls of rock rose up to
our left and right. Long ago Senta and Hesperu had agreed that this place
should mark the frontier between their two kingdoms. I thought it curious that
neither had built any sort of fortress here to guard their, side of the pass.
But then I had grown to manhood in Mesh, where twenty-two kel keeps guarded the
passes into Ishka, Waas and the plains of the Wendrush where the warriors of
the Urtuk and Mansurii tribes cast hateful and envious eyes upon my homeland.
Enemies surrounded Mesh on all sides, but for thousands of years Senta and
Hesperu had dwelt with each other in peace. Although King Arsu might have
thrown in with the Red Dragon and made noises of war that disturbed the
Sentans, it seemed that both he and King Yulmar wanted to believe the fiction that
Senta had nothing to fear from Hesperu, or the reverse. Or perhaps it was a
point of pride. In either case, it worked to our advantage that no soldiers
stopped us to question us and make sure that we weren't revolutionists sent to
subvert King Arsu's realm.
'It's
too quiet,' Maram said to me in a low voice as we moved along the narrow road.
The sharp tattoo of our horses' hooves striking stone edhoed off the rocky
walls around us. 'I can hear my belly grumbling - I missed dinner, you know.
Ah, I can hear myself grumbling, and I should tell you I'm sick of it.
And sick of forsaken places like this. Have you noticed that the nastiest of
surprises have Invariably awaited us in mountain passes?'
I
thought of the stormy pass high in the White Mountains where Ymiru and
the 'Frost Giants' had sprung up our of banks of snow and had nearly clubbed us
to death with their fearsome borkors. I remembered, too, the great while ghul
of a bear sent by Morjin to slay us beneath the slopes of Mount Korukel, and of
course the first droghul who had come upon us in the cleft of ground between
the Asses Ears. And later, Jezi Yaga. Most of all, I couldn't shake loose from
my mind the images of Atara nearly dying from a dreadful arrow wound in the Kul
Moroth. where Morjin's soldiers under Count Ulanu had in fact sent
Alphanderry on to death.
'It
will be all right,' I murmured to Maram, The wind whooshing through the Khal
Arrak carried scents of wildflowers and wet rock, 'Nothing will happen to us
here.'
I was
filled with great hope. The glimmer off the glaciers above us cast a faint
light upon Maram's face. It was a magnificent thing that he had done,
journeying across hundreds of miles of Ea's wilds by himself.
'Maram,
have I thanked you for saving my life . ., again?'
'Ah, I did
save you, didn't I? There was no way out of those damn caverns, was there?'
'I
can't think that we escaped them,' I said, looking at the rocks pressing in
upon us, 'only to be trapped here. Surely our fate lies farther on.'
'Surely
it does,' he said. 'But how far on? A mile? Two? If Kane fails to stop
that rider, we'll likely meet a Red Priest and a cadre of Crucifiers coming our
way.'
'Kane
won't fail,' I told him. 'And if he does, once we're out of this gorge, we'll
hide far from the road.'
For
another mile, however, I listened to every hoofbeat and breath as we wound our
way through the pass's narrows. Then, in terrain that must have been claimed by
Hesperu, the narrows gave out into a gap several miles wide. A razor-backed
ridge marbled with snow rose up to our left while humps of broken ground
gleamed in the starlight to our right. I espied many large boulders, behind
which we might hide at need. Bui the earth remained quiet, and so we followed
the road as it twisted sharply right and left on its descent into Hesperu.
Dawn's
light revealed that we were passing through a valley full of trees lower down
and ragged snowfields higher along steel-gray slopes. To the sides of the road,
the slanting fields glowed orange with the lichens growing on rocks, and showed
the greens, purples and whites of mosses, sky pilots and saxifrage. With every
mile that we rode further into this new realm, we lost elevation and the snow
quickly gave way to swaths of emerald forest. The valley broke up into a hilly
country that opened out to the east, west and south. Behind us, limned against
a blue sky, the white peaks of the Crescent Mountains guarded the tiny kingdom
of Senta. And then the road led us into a thick forest of dogwoods and oak, and
the sky vanished from sight.
Two
hours later, as we were rounding a bend in the road, I stopped suddenly and
drew my sword. My eyes fixed on a large oak, covered with moss and hung with
vines. And then a familiar voice called out to us, 'It's good I'm no Red Priest
with a gang of Crucifiers at my call, for I heard you coming a half mile away.'
And Kane stepped from behind the tree's cover.
He gave
no welcoming smile as he began pacing toward us with a heavy step. Over his
back he slung his heavy leather saddle.
'Where
is your horse?' I asked him, looking for the Hell Witch.
'Dead,'
he sighed out. 'I had to ride her into the ground trying to catch up with that
damned traitor.'
'And
did you?'
We all
waited for the answer to this question.
'Yes,'
he finally said. Although speech seemed to distress him, he added, 'We needn't
worry about the Kallimun being warned of us, at least not here and not yet.
Now, why don't we take a little breakfast? There's a stream down the road not
far from here.'
When we
came to the stream, we moved off into the woods, and Liljana cooked us a
breakfast of ham, fried eggs and toasted wheat bread. I had never seen Kane eat
with so little appetite. He sat on a downed tree poking at a piece of ham with
his dagger, and then staring at the blade's shiny steel. Even the news that we
hoped to find the Maitreya in a place called Jhamrul failed to enliven him.
After
that we took a few hours of rest while Kane stood guard over us. Before I
drifted off, I saw Kane staring at his hand as if he had to will himself to
keep his eyes open. But I sensed a terrible and ancient torment that ate at his
heart and kept him from joining us in sleep.
When it
came lime to set out, Kane threw his saddle on top of one of the remounts. If
riding this big gelding in place of the Hell Witch vexed Kane, he gave no sign
of it. In truth, he did not speak at all, and he hardly moved his dark eyes,
not even to scan the woods for enemies.
Later
that day, we came down into a flatter country of low, wooded hills and rolling
farmland. The air grew sweltering, and seemed to soak the earth like boiling
water. We all sweated beneath our thin robes, and swatted at the tiny gnats
that came to bite us. The road led us over streams on rotting wooden bridges,
and then over a much larger stone construction joining the muddy banks of one
of the Haraland's numerous rivers. Not far from it we encountered a woodcutter
who had bound some faggots of oak across the back of his dog, a giant mastiff.
The flesh of the dog's hindquarters had been ripped open: it looked as if the
woodcutter had whipped him. 1 wanted to give this cruel-looking man a wide
berth, but Master Juwain insisted that we should ask him for directions.
'Jhamrul?'
the man said to us, scratching at his greasy beard. 'I never heard of it. Why
would pilgrims such as yourselves want to go there?'
'We
seek the Weil of Restoration,' Master Juwain told him, 'said to lie near
there.'
'The
Well of Restoration? I never heard of that, either. And I don't want to.'
The
gaze of his bleary eyes took in Daj and Estrella sitting on their horses and
finally came to rest on Kane. Something tightened inside the woodcutter then,
and he gripped his axe and said, 'You pilgrims should keep to this road, and
not go wandering about where you don't belong. Now, let me be on my way - I've
work to
do.'
A farmer
whom we came across an hour later proved no friend-lier and no more helpful.
And so we continued down the road, asking after Jhamrul, although I dreaded
what we might find around the next bend or awaiting us in the Haraland's towns.
I hated nearly everything about this country: the steamy, stifling air
overlaying field and forest, its sullen people, and even its strange flowers,
all waxy with bizarre colors and exuding a sickening, too-sweet fragrance. The
very smell of the Haraland tormented me, for it was of sweat and dung running
off sun-baked fields into muddy rivers - and of blood, fear, decay and death.
I had
thought Kane Inured to such things - indeed, to anything and everything that
might distress a man. But I sensed a great pain gnawing at his insides like a
rabid rat. Thai night we made camp in a wood by a wheatfield, and alter dinner
I stood with him at the edge of the trees looking out at the stalks of wheat
glimmering in the starlight. And I said to him, 'I've never seen you like
this.'
He
stood like a statue frozen by Jezi Yaga. Finally, a little light came into his
face, and he said, 'How much of me have you really seen, eh?'
'Was it
Tarran, then? What happened with him?'
'So,
death happened, as it does to us all,' he growled. 'And before the end, just as
I put my knife into him, despair. I saw it in his eyes, Valashu. I smelled it
fouling his soul. This black, black, cursed thing.'
I
rested my hand on his shoulder and said, 'But you did what you had to do. How
many times have you killed at need?'
'So,
how many times, eh?' He stared out into the wavering silver and black
wheat. 'I tell you, if every blade of grass here were a man, then I've mowed
down a thousand fields, ten thousand. And all unripened, don't you see?'
I
thought I did see, and I rested my other hand on the hilt of the sword
that Kane himself had forged so long ago. And I said to him, 'It must all come
to an end - the killing must.'
'Yes,
it must. And soon, Valashu, soon.'
The
black centers of his black eyes seemed to drink up what little light the stars
cast down to earth here. And he said, 'The one we seek is close - I know he is.
He is waiting for us. We must find him. I must. Morjin slaughtered
Godavanni in front of my eyes, but this time, if I must, I'll send all his
armies to hell to keep the Maitreya safe.'
I gazed
south and west at the other farms and woods stretching out to the horizon. 'The
man told of in Jhamrul might or might not be the one we seek. It might be
harder than we hope to find him.'
'Hard,
yes - but we will find him.'
Behind
us, Estrella sat around the fire with our other friends drinking tea. I
inclined my head toward her, and asked Kane, 'Do you believe that she will show
us the Shining One?'
'I do.
And in the end, the Shining One will show himself. Do you remember the three
signs by which the Maitreya will be known?'
I
nodded my head. 'In his looking upon all with an equal eye, and his unshakeable
courage at all times. And in his steady abidance in the One.'
'So. So
it must be. The Maitreya dwells, always, in the realm of the One.'
I said
to Kane, 'I know what you say must be true, but I don't really understand it.
In Tria, I was told that the Maitreya was of this realm. He is always
one of the Ardun, born of the earth.'
Kane
smiled at this and said, 'That ghost told you this, eh? The Urudjin whom the
Galadin sent to deliver that verse. Do you remember it? Can you recite it for
me, now?'
I
nodded my head again. Then I drew in a deep breath and called out:
The
Ardun, born of earth, delight
In
flowers, butterflies, bright
New
snow beneath the bluest sky,
All things of earth that live and die.
Valari
sail beyond the sky
Where
heaven's splendors terrify;
In
ancient longing to unite,
They
seek a deeper, deathless light.
The
angels, too, with searing sight
Behold
the blazing, starry height;
Reborn
from fire, in flame they fly
Like
silver swans: to live, they die.
The
Shining Ones who live and die
Between
the whirling earth and sky
Make
still the sun, all things ignite –
And
earth and heaven reunite.
The
Fearless Ones find day in night
And in
themselves the deathless light,
In
flower, bird and butterfly,
In
love: thus dying, do not die.
They
see all things with equal eye:
The
stones and stars, the earth and sky,
The
Galadin, blazing bright,
The
Elijin, Valari knight
They bring to them the deathless light.
Their fearlessness and sacred sight;
To slay the doubts that terrify:
Their gift to them to gladly die.
And so
on wings the angels fly,
Valari
sail beyond the sky,
But
they are never Lords of Light,
And not
for them the Stone of Light.
'So,'
Kane said, his eyes agleam, 'the Maitreya dwells, always, in this world,
as well. Ultimately, as Abrasax told us, the realm of the One and the realm of
the earth are not two.'
I
thought about this for a while, then said, 'But I still don't understand why
the Maitreya is never a Valari or even one of the higher orders, but always
born of the Ardun.'
'Do you
remember what I told you in the Skadarak, that the Galadin must overcome their
fear of death?'
I
nodded my head as I listened to the crickets chirping fast and loud in the
fields. Behind us, I heard Atara laughing at some lewd joke that Maram had
made. Liljana busied herself roasting up some honey-lemon tarts for our
dessert, and their pungent fragrance wafted out into the air. For a single
moment, the whole world seemed infinitely sweet.
'So,'
Kane said, 'this overcoming is hard. The path toward becoming an Elijin
and Galadin is itself almost impossibly hard and long beyond measure. For
everyone, that is, except the Shining One.'
'But
the Maitreyas are never of the Galadin!' I said.
'No,
they are not. But they could be, eh? That is the beauty of Shining Ones,
their sweet, sweet, terrible beauty. A long lifetime it takes for a man to
advance to the Elijin, and sometimes ages for an Elijin to progress to the
Galidik order. But for the Shining Ones, this becoming could occur in the flash
of a moment.'
An old
verse came unbidden into my mind:
And
down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark. The dying of the light, The
neverness of night.
I told
these words to Kane, then said, 'The Maitreya chooses death, then. Death over
infinitely long life.'
'No -
he chooses one path over the other. He chooses infinite life.'
'But he
dies!'
'No, he
lives, truly lives, such as few ever do. Every moment in this realm,
everything he touches: a rock, a tree, a child's face, blazing with the light
of the One.'
'But he
still must die. Why, then?'
Kane
looked off into the star-silvered fields around us, and his face fell sad and
strange with an ancient yearning. And he said to me, 'It is his gift to us. The
Maitreya lives with a wild joy of life; he dies with equal delight. "To
gladly die", Valashu. It is this gladness that pours out through
the Maitreya and the Lightstone in his hands, long before his end actually comes.
It has great power. It fills the world, and all worlds, and joins the earth to
the heavens. Of men it makes angels. It... heals.'
I could
feel his heart beating quick and strong deep inside him with a rhythm that
matched my own. And then he said to me, 'In such gladness, how can fear ever
dwell?'
'His
gift,' I whispered, looking up at the stars.
'And
that is why,' Kane said, 'the Maitreya is always chosen of the Ardun. The
higher orders have already set out on the path toward immortality. For the
Elijin, theirs is not to die until their ending as Galadin in a new creation -
not unless they are done in by accident or treachery first. As for the Valari,
who have beheld the beauty of Star-Home, with their eyes or in their dreams -
they have already taken one step through the doorway of everlasting life into
another world. Is it not so with you?'
'Yes,
it is so,' I said to him. 'I have stood with the true Valari, in a place where
life was honored instead of death.'
'So -
so have I, long ago.' Kane's jaws closed with a snap like that of a wolf, then
ground together as the muscles beneath his cheeks popped out. Then he said,
'But the Maitreya's whole purpose in being is to show that there is no true
death.'
'"To
live, I die," I said, quoting from one of my father's favourite passages
of the Saganom Elu. 'The faith of the Valari.'
Kane
smiled at this as he looked at me. 'This, too, is said: "They who die
before they die - they do not die when they die."'
'I wish
that I could believe that,' I said, swallowing against the hot acids burning
the back of my throat.
'So, beliefs
are useless,' Kane snarled at me. 'You must know it - or know
it not.'
'I know
this realm,' I said, looking out at the wheatfields of the Haraland.
Somewhere down the road or across wide rivers, I knew that we would come upon
other traitors or enemies such as Tarran. We would see soldiers hacked to
pieces and grandmothers torn and bloodied, and men nailed to crosses of wood.
'If this is truly the same as the realm of the One, then why grieve death or
the
need to
kill?'
Kane's
jaws clenched, and so did his fists. His eyes seemed to grow darker, like two
black holes drilled into his savage face. For a moment, I thought he wanted to
draw his sword and run me through with cold steel. And then something within
him softened, and he said to me, 'That is Morjin's mistake - and Asangal's. I
did not say that the two realms are identical, only not two. All that is, here
on earth, the flowers and the butterflies, no less Morjin himself, are precious.
Life is, Valashu - so infinitely precious. But so many live almost wholly
within this realm. They do not see the other realm. They do not know.
Thus they do not really live. When they die, they truly die and lose
everything. And when such as I, and you, send them on before their time, before
they ever open their eyes, we cut them off. . . from everything. And that's the
hell of it. The bloody, bloody hell of this cursed world we've made for
ourselves.'
He drew
in a long breath as he looked at me. Then he said, 'And that is why we must
find the Maitreya. Keeping Morjin from using the Lightstone is one thing. But
it is another to keep the world from losing its soul.'
Without another word, he whirled about and left me there at the edge of the wheatfield. Would we ever find the Maitreya, I wondered? Tomorrow we would continue our journey into this stifling realm of our enemies that I had hated nearly upon first sight. Somewhere on the road ahead of us, I sensed, we would find torment, blood and death, for that was the world. But the world must be more than that, too, or so I told myself. And with that small comfort, I turned back toward our campfire to listen to Alphanderry sing and to eat some of the honey tarts that Liljana had made for us.
Chapter 33 Back Table of Content Next
In the morning we continued down the road, the Senta Road as the Hesperuks called it, and according to the Sentans. the Iskull Road, for it led almost straight south through the whole length of Hesperu, paralleling the Rhul River and passing through the great city of Khevaju on its way to Iskull, where the Rhul emptied into the Southern Ocean. The country flattened out even more, with the low hills shrinking down into a steaming green plain. The first good-sized town we came to was named Nubur, and there we asked after Jhamrul. No one seemed to have heard of it. In the town square, built around a widened portion of the Senta Road, we went from shop to shop querying blacksmiths, barbers and the like, and attracting too much attention. A wheelwright wondered a little too loudly why pilgrims would seek a place called Jhamrul instead of Iskull, where pilgrims for ages had embarked from or landed in Hesperu. Finally, to a cooper named Goro, we admitted that we sought a place called the Well of Restoration.
'The Well of Restoration, you say!' Goro barked out as he eyed us. We had dismounted, and stood outside his shop near the huge barrel that signified his trade. 'Tell me about this Well of Restoration!'
Goro was a big man, with a big voice that carried out into the square,
where many Hesperuks went about their business or took a little rest beneath
one of the spreading almond trees. In shape, with his huge chest and deep
belly, he resembled one of the barrels that he made out of wooden staves and
hoops of iron. His black curly hair had been trimmed close to his roundish
head, as had his beard. His dark eyes seemed a little too small for his face,
which had fallen suddenly suspicious. I explained
that we were returning from Senta, where we had learned of a fount of healing
that might make Atara whole.
'Too many have been blinded these days,' Goro said as
he looked at Atara. For a moment, I felt a tenderness trying to fight its way
up from inside him. But then his heart hardened, and so did his face as he
said. 'But then, many have made errors and suffered their correction.'
'I don't know what you mean by error,' Atara said, 'or
its correction. I was blinded in battle, where an evil man took my eyes.'
'That, in itself, is an error,' Goro told her. He
looked from me to Master Juwain, and then at Liljana and the children. 'Not to
know error is counted by some as an Error Major, and if the igno-rance is
willful or defiant, even as an Error Mortal. You should have been told this
when you got off your ship in Iskull.'
'We did not come to Senta by way of Iskull,' Liljana
told him, 'and so we are new to Hesperu.'
Our encounter had attracted the interest of a
bookseller, who had come out of the adjacent shop. He was a small, neat man
wearing an impeccably clean tunic of white cotton trimmed at the cuffs and hem
with blue silk. His black ringlets of hair gleamed with a fragrant-smelling
oil, and he wore gold rings around four of his ten fingers. He presented
himself as Vasul, and he said to Goro: 'What is this talk about Errors Major
and Errors Mortal?'
A dozen yards out in the square, whose shiny
cobblestones seemed to have been scrubbed of the stain of horse dung and swept
clean of the tiniest particle of dirt, a few of the other townsfolk passing
along had turned their curious faces toward us. I decided that this would be an
excellent time to make our farewell and be on our way.
But just as I took a step toward my horse, Goro called
out to me: "Just a moment, pilgrim! We were discussing errors, and
yours at that.'
In looking at the stubbornness of censure that befell
Goro's face, I had a keen sense that things would go worse for us if we fled
instead of remaining. And so I, and my friends, waited to hear what Goro would
say.
'Let us,' Goro told, 'read the relevant passages in
the Black Book. Will you oblige me, pilgrim?'
He stared straight at me, and it took me some moments
before I realized that he was referring to that compendium of evil and lies
called the Darakul Elu. Morjin had written it himself in mockery of the Saganom
Elu. Most editions of it were bound in leather dyed a dark black, hence its
more common name.
'We are traveling light,' I told him, 'and it seemed
wise not to burden ourselves with books.'
I glanced at Master Juwain; this was one time where
his copy of the Saganom Elu was nowhere to be seen, and I silently gave
thanks for that.
'A burden!' Goro cried out. He turned to
Vasul and said, 'Do you see? They willfully keep themselves in ignorance. Is
that not an Error Mortal?'
'It might be,' Vasul said, 'if they were of Hesperu.
But other lands have other ways.'
His words, however, which were meant to placate Goro,
seemed only to anger him. Goro's dark face grew darker as he barked out: 'My
son, Ugo, was killed last year, in Surrapam, fighting the errants so that our
priests might bring the Way of the Dragon to the north. His blood washes clean
the ground where he lies. After the campaign is finished, all the errants there
who haven't been crucified will turn to the Way. And so it will be, soon, in
all lands. And so these pilgrims would do well to learn our ways, since
their journey has afforded them so great a chance.'
Now a man whose clay-stained hands proclaimed him as a
potter stepped closer, and so did a middling old woman and a much younger one
with a baby girl in her arms: a mother, daughter, and granddaughter, or so I
guessed. I wanted badly to jump on Altaru's back and gallop out of this trap of
a town, but it was too late for that.
'All families,' Goro instructed me, 'must keep at
least one copy of the Black Book. If you are pilgrims bound by blood or oaths,
you count as a family.'
'Then we should treat them as a family,' Vasul said to
him. 'Where is our kindness to these strangers? Where is our hospitality?'
'The best kindness we could offer them is to correct
their errors.'
'Then let us help them,' Vasul said to Goro. 'Wait
here with them, won't you?'
With that, he disappeared into his shop, and then came
out a few moments later bearing a large, thick book. Gold leaf had been worked
into the edges of its pages; a large dragon - of a red so dark it gleamed
almost black - had been embossed upon the book's leather cover. More leaf, I
saw, had been used to render the dragon's eyes a brilliant gold.
'One of my scribes,' Vasul said to us, 'finished
lettering this only last week. As you can see, it is beautifully illuminated.'
He opened the book to show us golden characters
through which sunlight streamed as through glowing windows. He came to a page
worked with the brilliant figure of the angel, Asangal, giving the Lightstone
into Morjin's outstretched hands. Another page depicted the crucifixion of
Kalkamesh. The scene's vividness nearly made me weep: a great being nailed to
stone on the side of a black mountain, as above him a dragon beat the air with
his leathery wings and used his talons to tear out Kalkamesh's liver.
'Here,' Vasul said to me, coming to a page near the
middle of the book. 'This passage is from the Healings, under Miracles.
Read it to us, won't you?'
He gave the book to me, and tapped a gold-ringed
finger against the top of the page. The finely-wrought letters inked into the
paper burned my eyes like fire. I could not bring myself to give voice to the
words; it was like holding in my mouth pure poison.
'Read!' Goro told me. 'It's nearly noon, and I've a
barrel to finish.'
More people had now gathered around. I began mumbling
out the words of the passage.
'Louder!' Goro barked out. 'I can't hear you!
I drew in a deep breath, and with greater force, if
not enthusiasm, I recited:
" ' If a man should lose limb or eye, let him not
despair or drink the potions of conjurors or witches. Let him turn the eye of
his soul toward the One's light and he who brings it to earth, for the only
true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya."'
I finished reading, and Goro suddenly shouted at me:
'The only true restoration is in the hands of the Maitreya! Remember this,
pilgrim! This Well of Restoration you seek is a figment. And your desire to
seek it must be corrected.'
I told Goro that I would surely remember the passage.
But this wasn't good enough for him.
'Read it again!' he commanded me.
'What?' I said.
'Read it again, nine times more, and louder.' He
turned to look at Master Juwain. 'And the rest of you shall recite it, ten
times each!'
'By what authority,' I asked him, 'do you demand this
of us?'
By now, Goro had so swollen up with righteous anger
and pride that it seemed his head might burst. And so it was Vasul who answered
for him, saying. 'It is upon everyone to correct the errors of each other, and
especially their own. That is the Way of the Dragon.'
Vasul, and others crowding in close, waited to see
what I would do. But Goro lost patience, and called out: 'Read the passage!'
And so I did. Nine more times I read out loud these
duplicitous words of Morjin. I gave the book to Master Juwain, and he
reluc-tantly recited to Goro and Vasul, and to the crowd, as well. So did
Maram, Liljana and Daj; so, in a quavering voice that nearly broke my heart,
did Atara. When she failed to pass the book to Estrella, Goro berated her.
'All of you shall recite the verse,'
Goro commanded.
If Atara had still possessed eyes, she would have
fired off arrows of hate with them. She snapped at Goro: 'But the girl is
mute!'
At the sharpness of her voice, Goro's fingers clenched
as if he longed to correct her contempt with his fist. But then he asked Atara,
'Can she see still read?'
'No, she never learned the art.'
'Can she still hear?'
Atara looked at Estrella and nodded her head.
'Good,' Goro said. 'Then she will have heard the
passage enough that she might recite it within her heart. Ten times.'
He turned his gaze on Estrella, who stood there on
smooth cobblestones staring back at him. In the silence that fell over the
square, everyone waited as they watched Estrella. She remained almost
motionless as the leaves of the nearby almond trees fluttered in the breeze.
Whether or not she recited Morjin's words within herself, not even the wind
could know.
Finally, Goro grabbed up the book and extended it
toward Kane. 'Read!' he told him.
Kane did not move. His eyes looked past the big black
book and fixed on Goro's eyes. I thought he might be ready to tear them out of
his head.
'Read, now, pilgrim! We haven't got all day!'
I felt Kane's fingers burning to grip the hilt of his
sword. I knew that he could whip it out of its sheath and strike off Goro's
head before Goro had time to change the expression of his belligerent face.
At last, with a furious motion, Kane took hold of the
book. By bad chance, it seemed,
it fell open to the illumination of Kalkamesh's crucifixion. Kane
stared for a long few moments at the dragon's bloody talon ripping open
Kalkamesh's side. I knew he trembled to cut off Goro's life years before its
time, and Vasul's life, too - and the lives of a nearby baker and barber and
all the other townspeople gathering in the square. The fire In Kane eyes told
me that he had returned to his savage self, and I hated myself for liking him
better that way. 'So,' Kane growled. 'So.'
His blunt fingers fairly tore through the book's
pages. When he came to the passage that we had all read, he snarled out:
'"If a man should lose limb or eye, let him not
despair or drink the potions of conjurors or witches. Let him turn the eye of
his soul toward the One's light and he who brings it to earth, for the only
true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya."'
'There!' he shouted at Goro.
'Good!' Goro said to him. He shot Kane a dark smile.
'Now complete the passage for us.'
'What!'
'The passage is incomplete. You'll find the words that
should come next, if you search in your heart for them.'
If Kane searched in his heart just then, I thought, he
would find a ravening beast that would tear both Goro and himself apart.
'I don't know what you're talking about!' Kane said.
'Then I shall help you.' Goro seemed very satisfied
with himself as he smiled and drew in a breath of air. Then he recited the selfsame
passage, ending with:
'"For the only true restoration lies in the hands
of the Maitreya ... and his name is Morjin!"'
'But that is not written!' Kane said, smacking his
knuckles into the book.
Vasul pulled at his rings of oiled hair, and said to
him, 'It is written, surely. The Darakul Elu is a living text,
dwelling within the heart of the One, and therefore within the hearts of men.
It always grows, even as a child grows to a man and then to an angel. And
surely, Lord Morjin is the Shining One.'
A gray-haired woman standing in close called out in an
awed voice, 'The heralds came with the news just last month, on the thirteenth
of Marud: Lord Morjin has claimed the Lightstone and has been revealed as the
Maitreya. And so his dominion is not just all of Ea, but over men's minds and
hearts, as well.' And over our destinies!' another woman shouted. '"He
is the coming of the sun after night," someone else quoted. "He
is the bringer of the new age."'
'He is coming, himself!' the potter called out.
'It is said that Lord Morjin will soon visit Hesperu, and honor King Arsu for
his conquest of Surrapam. He brings blessings for all those who have battled
the errants.'
This news, if news it really was, caused many crowding
the square to let out a great cheer of anticipation. But not everyone seemed to
shout with equal enthusiasm. I felt sure that the cobbler standing behind the
potter loudly praised Morjin only so that he could be heard praising
Morjin. So it was with the woman holding the baby, and the barber, and others.
A few failed to join the chorus altogether. One of these, a large man bearing
an iron-shod staff, rubbed at the scar of a dragon that had been branded into
his cheek. As it had been in Sakai, too many of the people here bore signs of
torture: brandings, amputations, tongue clippings and eyes put out. I prayed
that none of these mutilations were the correctives for Errors Minor.
Goro still waited for Kane to recite the passage - and
the noxious amendment that he had added to it. I thought that Kane would rather
die than say these words, but he surprised me, spitting them out nine more
times to Goro's and Vasul's satisfaction. Then he turned to climb on top of his
horse.
'Where are you going, pilgrim?' Goro said to him.
'We're not finished here.'
'No? Are we not?'
Kane's hand crept closer to his sword's hilt. I felt
sure that he was about to commit an Error Mortal.
'What would you have of us?' I asked Goro as I grabbed
Kane's arm.
'It's not what I would have,' Goro said. He
looked at Vasul. 'I believe their errors call for, at the very least, a payment
to the Dragon.'
'I agree,' Vasul said, smiling at me. 'I should think
a dragongild of at least twenty ounces. Gold ounces, of course.'
'Twenty gold pieces!' Maram cried out. 'That is
robbery!'
'No,' Vasul told him, 'it is only correction. As it is
said in the Black Book, gold washes clean the stain of error.'
Various mumblings and protests from the crowd gave me
to understand that this was also said of pain and blood.
'How can our gold filling your pockets,'
Maram asked him, 'wash anything clean?'
Where his question angered Goro, it seemed only to
wound Vasul. He held out his hands as if to ask why fate had driven him to deal
with unreasoning errants. Then he explained. 'The book I have given you would
sell for five gold ounces itself, and is in any case priceless. The dragongild
that we ask of you will be given to the Kallimun school up on Crow's Hill, that
the children of Nubur shall be educated to avoid errors in all their forms. In
the end, all belongs to the Dragon, anyway.'
'So,' Kane said to Vasul, 'since you ask this
dragongild of us, we are free not to pay it, eh?'
Goro stood eyeing Kane as if wondering if he had the
strength to crush the breath out of him. But it was one thing, I thought, to
heft barrels all day and another to grapple with Kane.
'You're free to commit any errors you wish,' Goro snapped
at him. 'We've only suggested these correctives to help you. If you disagree
with our assessments, we can always go up to the Kallimun castle. It's said
that Ra Parvu is the one of the wisest of the Red Priests. He is far more
skilled than we in distinguishing Errors Minor from Errors Major.'
Out in the crowd to my left, I took note of a
pot-bellied man I recognized as a carpenter. I overheard him proudly telling
someone that he had kept the Red Priests well supplied with crosses as
correctives to Errors Mortal.
Liljana stepped up closer to Goro and told him, 'We
don't have twenty gold pieces. We're only poor pilgrims trying make our
way to Iskull.'
'Iskull?' Goro said. 'But you told that you were
trying to find a Well of Restoration.'
'We,' Liljana said, looking from Kane to me, 'have
realized that it cannot exist, after all. And we thank you for helping us see
our error.'
Goro's beady eyes bored into Liljana to determine if
she was mocking him. Although Liljana no longer possessed the means to smile at
him in reassurance, her kindly, round face filled with sincerity and a great
calm. She seemed genuinely grateful to Goro and Vasul. All her skills as
the Materix of the Maitriche Telu, I thought, went into this persuasion. I
marveled at how the pitch of her voice seemed perfectly calibrated to pump up
Goro's vanity even while soothing his belligerence and urge toward cruelty. I
sensed that she waited for me; to help things along. I needed only to smile at
him and bow my head in acquiescence, and most of all, to nudge his heart with
the slightest touch of the valarda. But I could not. And so, for a moment, our
fate hung in the balance.
'If you determine that we should give all our
money to the Dragon,' Liijana said to Goro, 'then we won't be able to make the
journey to Iskull. And so we won't be able to greet Lord Morjin as he comes up
the Senta Road, as we would like to do. And so what chance would we have of
seeing sight restored to our poor companion?'
At this, Liljana gazed at Atara. Her words pleased the
crowd and softened the hearts of both Vasul and Goro. In the end, Liljana was
able to bargain down our 'dragongild' to ten gold pieces: a true miracle,
considering that we were in no position to bargain.
'Ten gold ounces, then,' Goro finally said to Liljana.
'Alonian archers, is that right?'
Although Goro and Vasul might not like strangers
bringing dangerous sentiments into their realm, they had no objection to good
Alonian gold. As we would learn, the Hesperuk currency had been debased to near
worthlessness to pay for the Surrapam war.
'Good!' Goro called out as Liljana counted the coins
into his hand. 'Then I would like to wish you well on your pilgrimage. May the
mercy of the Dragon be upon you!'
Vasul and others in the crowd repeated this blessing,
then bade us farewell. As quickly as we could without appearing overhasty, we
mounted our horses and made our way out of the square. We said nothing as we
rode through Nubur's streets to the edge of the town. Even through the
wheatfields and farmland stretching on for five miles to the south, we kept our
mouths shut and our eyes upon the road. The iron shoes nailed to our horses'
hooves beat against worn stone, again and again. Then, at last, as we entered a
forest full of cluttering blue and yellow birds, Maram sighed out: 'That was
close.'
'The mercy of the Dragon, indeed!' Kane snarled as he
looked at Atara riding on in silence. He turned in his saddle to gaze back
toward Nubur. 'I'd like to steal back there tonight and rouse those two thieves
from their beds with a little of my mercy. How many other travelers do
you think they've squeezed gold from with their little game, eh?'
'Their little game might have gotten us killed,' Maram
said, 'but for Liljana's cleverness. And deceit.'
Maram's words both pleased and wounded Liljana. She
looked at him and huffed out, 'I said nothing to that greedy cooper that wasn't
true.'
'Ah, is that true? Would you really like to
greet Morjin upon this road?'
The harsh lines that seamed Liljana's face hinted at
how badly she would like to greet Morjin: with the full fury of her mind
pouring itself out through the lens of her blue gelstei. Even as Atara would
like to greet him with arrows and I would like to give him the blessings of my
sword.
'One thing seems clear,' Liljana said. 'We can't go
about this land telling everyone we're seeking the Well of Restoration. That
surely is an error.'
'I'm afraid that we can't tell everyone, either, that
we're seeking the Red Dragon,' Master Juwain said. 'I would not want the
Kallimun to hear that we eight pilgrims were asking after him.'
'Perhaps,' Maram said, scratching his beard, 'it's too
dangerous for us to pose as pilgrims at all. I think we need a new guise.'
'What, then?'
As we clopped along down the road into a wall of
moist, hot air, Maram looked up at a lark perched on the branch of a teak tree
and singing out its sweet song. And Maram smiled as he said, 'I have an idea.'
Later that day we came to a town called Sumru, where
we spent the night camping out in the surrounding woods. Before dawn, with the
air still nearly black and whining with mosquitoes, we roused ourselves and
turned west onto a narrow load leading out of Sumru through the forest. The
great teak trees and thick undergrowth, we hoped, would hide us from the eyes
of our enemies, if any had been sent to spy upon us. After a few hours of swift
riding, we came into a more populous region, and turned northwest onto a muddy
little road that took us into a town named Ramlan. There, with the last of our
money, we went about the various shops making purchases: bright bolts of cloth
and colored swatches of leather; herbs and paper and ink; paints of various
colors, and brushes, large and small; a great cart that it would take two
horses to pull, and a load of planks of cured wood to fill it. And other
things. Kane went to a swordsmith and ordered knives made according to precise
specifications. From one of Ramlan's blacksmiths, Hartu the Hammer, as he was
called, he also ordered chains and a cask of nails. We had to wait all the rest
of that day and half the next for Hartu to pound out the nails from long strips
of glowing red iron. Which he had finished this hot, sweaty work, he gave the
cask to Kane, and tried to dispel his uneasiness toward him, and us, by saying,
'I haven't made so many nails since Lord Mansarian came through here five years
ago to punish the errants up toward Yor. You haven't said what you want all
this iron for; I should think the nails are too small for putting anyone up on
wood, even children - ha, ha!'
I didn't like his nervous laughter, or the way he
looked at Daj and Estrella. I didn't like the way the people of Ramlan looked
at us, as if wondering why pilgrims had left the Senta Road to go
wandering about the countryside. I was glad to help hitch two of pur packhorses
to the cart, and then lead the way out of Ramlan even deeper into the Haraland.
We spent the rest of the day working along muddy farm roads,
turning left or right, north or south, so as to confound any who might witness
our passage and want to report us. Toward dusk we entered a large wood and
found what seemed an old track leading into the heart of the trees. It seemed
perfect for our needs. While Kane guarded our rear, I rode on ahead to look for
footprints or other sign of habitation, but it seemed that no one had used this
track for a long time. We finally came into a clearing. The heap of stones at
its center looked to be a cottage that had fallen in upon itself ages ago. Kane
wanted to set to work immediately, but we had to use the last light of day to
make our camp.
In the morning, though, Kane rose at dawn, and began
banging nails into the wooden planks with a great noise that awoke everyone. I
helped him build a sort of small chalet onto the bed of the cart, and so did
Daj and Maram. While we sweated in the humid morning air, Liljana took out
scissors, needle and thread to shape and sew the bolts of cloth together. Atara
helped her. This surprised me, for I had not known she possessed such skills.
As she put it, 'I was once a princess, and my father expected me to
learn the womanly arts - so that I could marry well and provide him with
grandchildren.'
Estrella, however, had little talent for sewing, and
so she played the flute for us to provide music while we worked. Alphanderry
came forth and accompanied her, singing out a rather bawdy ballad whose rhythms
seemed timed to reinforce the hammering of Kane's nails. Later that day, when
it came time to paint the little traveling house that our cart had become,
Estrella picked up a small brush while Alphanderry continued entertaining us.
As it happened, she had a rare gift for using brightly colored paints to render
birds and flowers and the like, though she could not tell us where she had come
by it. Alphanderry, of course, could grasp no brush in his hand, nor anything
else. But day by day, he seemed to appear ever more substantial, as if he was
somehow growing used to the world again. He called out ideas for figures to
Estrella, and to Kane and Maram, who also helped with the painting. I took
great delight in the delight with which Estrella brought to life a golden astor
tree and a rising sun and a dark blue panel full of stars. I had to stop her,
though, from depicting a great silver swan. When she discovered that her
enthusiasm had carried her away into an error that might have betrayed us, she
wasted no time in self-recrimination, but only used her brush to quickly transform
the swan into a winged horse. It joined other animal figures, some fantastical
and some not: diving dolphins and a chimera; an eagle in flight and a
two-headed serpent and a great blue bear. Liljana suggested we paint a dragon
against one of the red panels, but it was thought that the Hesperuks
might take offence at a golden or green one. None of us could bear to see a red
dragon defiling our wildly and beautifully decorated house, though Kane wryly
remarked that it would do no harm to paint a red one against red. That way, we
could always tell the curious that the great Red Dragon always dwelled within
our house, unseen, as it did within the hearts of men.
It took us four days to complete our preparations. When
we were ready to set out again, I stood staring at the cart and admiring the
fine detail with which Estrella had embellished a mandolet, a tarot card and
the figure of a costumed man juggling seven brightly colored balls. I smiled to
see how closely this man resembled Kane. The likeness became even more striking
when Liljana brought forth one of the costumes that she had been sewing and
bade Kane to put it on. This, with much grumbling and cursing, he did. She then
gave him seven leather balls which she had filled with dried rice and stitched
shut. Their colors ranged from blood red to a brilliant violet, as of a
rainbow.
As we all stood around watching, Kane tossed the balls
into the air, one after the other, and with lightning-quick motions of his hands,
kept them streaming in an arc that seemed a rainbow of its own. I knew then
that Maram's idea might possibly work: Kane would certainly be our juggler.
(And, at need, our strongman, magician and mandolet player.) Atara, who brought
forth a clear, gleaming sphere that we had purchased from a glassblower in
Ramlan, would tell people's fortunes. Master Juwain would act as a reader of
horoscopes and tarot cards, while Liijana would pose as a potionist and Daj as
her assistant. I began practicing on a long flute also acquired in Ramlan,
intending to accompany Estrella, who held dear the flute that I had given her
more than a year ago in Ishka. We both would provide music for Alphanderry, our
minstrel. As Estrella also evinced great expressiveness with her eyes, hands
and move- ments, she might also act as a mime. And Maram, of course, would be
our fool.
'We needn't actually perform,' he told us after
Liljana had helped him try on his silly clown's costume. 'In fact, I'm sure it
will go better for us if we don't. But at least we should be able to move about
freely - doesn't everyone welcome a traveling troupe?'
Such troupes of players, of course, had journeyed from
land to land for thousands of years. They called no kingdom their own, and no
kingdom made claim on their loyalties and rarely dared even to tax them.
'These Hesperuks are a grim people,' Maram said, 'but
at least they haven't yet outlawed entertainment.'
Daj, however, having been born in the Haraland, took
objection to this, saying, 'My people are not grim. In my father's
house, there was always wine and song. No one was afraid to laugh. My father,
once when I was very young, took us to see one of the troupes that came up from
the south. There was a tightrope walker and a man who ate fire. I can't
remember their names.'
Maram reached up to jingle one of the bells hanging
down from his yellow and blue cap. He said, 'Well, I hope people will forget our
names as readily. But we mustn't, and so let's go over them one more
time.'
Mirustral I was to be no longer, and certainly not
Valashu Elahad. Maram now nodded at me and addressed me as Arajun, and Atara as
Kalinda. Liljana had chosen the new name of Mother Magda, while Master Juwain
was to go by Tedorik and Daj as Jaiyu. Kane had transformed into Taras, and
Estrella into Mira. Alphanderry would sing under the name of Thierraval. And
Maram had become Garath the Fool.
We left the woods as we had come, and turned onto one
of the Haraland's back roads. Although we journeyed toward no particular
destination, we felt the need to complete our quest with all possible speed.
Our pace, however, limited by the speed of the heavy cart, proved slow. Its
huge, iron-shod wheels left long grooves in the soft roads and from time to
time became stuck in mud. Finally, I decided to hitch Altaru to the cart. He
hated this new, grinding work, and looked at me as if I had betrayed him. But
he was as strong as any draft horse, and had something of a draft horse's look.
And this, I thought, might work to our advantage in case anyone questioned us
too closely.
For the next five days, we wandered from town to town
asking people if they had ever heard of a place called Jhamrul. No one had. We
listened for talk of healers and unusual healings, too. We worked our way into
the heart of the Haraland, east and south. As we drew closer to the Iona River,
which flowed down from the mountains into the great Ayo, the land grew almost
perfectly flat. The Haralanders here cultivated little wheat, but much millet,
maize, beans and a sickly-sweet orange root called a yam. The various towns and
villages - Urun, Skah, Malku and Nirrun -smelled of cinnamon and chocolate,
which the Haralanders ground up with other spices and made into a sort of sauce
for chicken, lamb and pork and strange meats such as squaj and kresh, taken
from the giant lizards that infested Hesperu's watercourses. At first we
encountered no troubles more vexatious than roads flooded from torrential rains
and repeated requests that we encamp and give a show. And then, five miles
outside of Nirrun, we ran straight into a company of soldiers coming up the
road from the south.
There were fourteen of them, accoutred in heavy,
fish-scale armor and riding worn horses. Their captain, a long-faced man named
Riquis, waited impatiently while we maneuvered the cart onto a beanfield off
the side of the road. The ground was mushy from the recent rains, and instantly
mired the cart's great wheels. The soldiers, of course, might have ridden
around us with greater ease, but that was not the way of things in Hesperu.
Riquis' sergeant, a stout man with a thick, black
beard that spilled down over the collar of his armor, watched us with a growing
interest. His covetous eyes fastened like fishhooks on Altaru and Fire. He said
to Riquis: 'My lord I look at those horses! I've never seen finer ones!'
They are fine indeed,' Riquis said as his calculating
gaze fell upon
Altaru. 'How does a band of players come by such horses?'
I stood in the mud by Altaru with my hand stroking his
neck. To Riquis, I said,
'A gift, my lord, from a lord of a land far away.'
I did not tell him that the lord was named Duke
Gorador of Daksh.
'He must have liked your performance marvelously well
to have given you such a gift,' Riquis said to me.
I tried not to look Riquis eye to eye as I said,
'We're but poor players who do as we can.'
Riquis nodded his head at what he took to be modesty.
Then his sergeant said to him, 'Why don't we see how well they can do?
It's been half a year since I saw a show.'
'I would like that,' Riquis said. 'Unfortunately,
though, we haven't the time.'
Although he did not reveal his business, I gathered
that his company had been summoned to Avrian, some forty miles to the north on
the Iona River. As we had been told in Senta, King Asru had laid siege to
Avrian for two bitter months before he had finally taken the city.
It's said they've crucified a thousand men,' Riquis
told us. 'King Angand has arrived from Sunguru, and has joined King Arsu to
witness Avrian's destruction. If you truly wish for an appreciative audience,
then you should perform for the King. He is a lover of all arts and
entertainments, or so it's said.'
'Perhaps one day,' I told him, 'we'll be so
fortunate.'
The sergeant returned to the matter that had
originally caught his attention. He said, 'If we don't have time for a show,
then let's requisition these horses and be done with it, my lord.'
My hand froze fast against Altaru's warm, sweating
neck. I calculated the distance, in inches, to the wagon where I had hidden my
sword. I calculated the thickness of the soldiers' armor and the length of
their spears, as well, and the slight art they seemed to have with such
weaponry. I thought that Kane, Maram and I might possibly kill most of them
before the survivors lost heart and fled.
'Lord Riquis,' I said to this grim captain, 'this
horse was a gift, and so it would be bad manners if we ourselves were to give
him away.'
'This horse,' Master Juwain said, nodding at Altaru,
'is our strongest. We would be hard put to find another to draw so heavy a
cart.'
'And where, diviner,' Riquis asked, 'were you given
this beast?'
Master Juwain, who hated lying even more than I did,
said, 'The horse comes from Anjo.'
'And where is that?'
'It lies in the Morning Mountains.'
'And where is that?'
'Far away, northeast, past the White Mountains and
across the plains of the Wendrush.'
'Oh,' Riquis spat out, 'the Dark Lands. Where, it's
said, dwell the Valari.'
This word seemed to hang in the air like a ringing
bell. I wrapped my fingers around Altaru's mane as I tried not to look at
Riquis.
'Have you performed for the Valari, then?' Riquis
asked. 'Horse or no, you are well away from those demons.'
Then he quoted a passage from the- Black Book.
'"All who follow the Way of the Dragon, and
follow it truly, are of the Light and shall walk the path of the angels. All
who do not are of the Dark, and shall be destroyed."'
Liljana, who
had a mind as sharp as Godhran steel and could use it to rip apart others'
arguments, said to Riquis: 'But surely, the Way of the Dragon is open to
everyone, even the Valari.'
'Surely it is,' Riquis said. 'But the Valari, long
ago, at the beginning of time, turned away from the Light. Willfully. They
poisoned their spirits, and so became demons.'
'Not all of them seemed so evil when we passed through
their realm.'
'But is it not so with the cleverest of demons? That
which is foul often appears as fair, and the darkest of the Dark as Light.'
Liljana threw her arm around Daj, who stood by her
side. And she said, 'But what child is born in darkness? And is it not upon all
of us to bring to the errants the -'
'Do not weep for the demonspawn,' Riquis told her. 'In
darkness they are born, and to darkness they shall return. It is
coming, Mother - the Great Crusade is coming. The Kariad, when whole
forests shall be felled in order to make crosses for the Valari people. Soon,
King Arsu will lead our armies into the Dark Lands, into Eanna and the far
north. Any day now, it's said, the King will march with King Angand back down
to Khevaju, and then we shall need all the good men and good horses to bear
them that we can find.'
This news gave us good reason to reconsider our
course, for we had been drifting closer and closer to the Iona River, which it
now seemed we must avoid at any cost.
Riquis drew in a great gulp of the muggy air, and
stared at Liljana. And then he surprised me, saying, 'But we also need fine
players to keep our soldiers' spirits bright. And so keep your horses. Mother.
Perhaps one day you'll return to the Dark Lands to perform for our company when
we have raised high the standard of the Dragon over the Valari's graves.'
As Maram had said, doesn't everyone welcome a
traveling troupe?
Liljana thanked Riquis for his mercy, and presented
him and his sergeant with a love potion, which might help them open their
hearts and hold their spears up high when they reached Avrian, or so she told
them. Riquis and his soldiers rode off quickly after that. And so did we. We
turned east and south through the steaming countryside, away from Avrian and
the road that King Arsu's army would soon march down along the Iona river. In
villages and small farms, we continued inquiring after Jhamrul. As we thought
it might arouse too much suspicion to ask directly if anyone knew of any
miracles of healing, we spoke of our desire to see Atara made whole again, in
hope that somebody might volunteer information that would help us. But when we
broached this matter, more than one Haralander stared at us in cold silence.
And one woman, a silver-haired grandmother, admitted that she knew of a fine
healer up near Sagarun. a young man who had been taken by the Kallimun and
never seen again. Even this man, however, she told us, had never been known to
heal the blind.
With every day and hour that we remained within this
hateful realm, it seemed less and less likely that we would ever come across
Jhamrul, and more and more likely that we would be found out, taken and
tortured. Torture seemed the fate of everyone who dwelt here, for the Way of
the Dragon not only made cruel use of people's bodies and possessions, but
twisted their spirits and scared them
with fire.
As we drove our
painted cart down muddy roads and through poor towns whose houses were built of
dried mud and straw, we saw men and women wearing placards that proclaimed
their errors. We learned to 'read' the various symbols branded into their
cheeks or foreheads: a star usually signified minor defiance of some lord or
master whereas an eye within a triangle told of the errant's hubris, in
aspiring to a station for which he had no claim. Theft, of course, was usually
punished by amputation, though minor pilferings or greed might call for nothing
more than the searing of a grasping hand into one's flesh. And so with other
symbols for other crimes.
I might have thought that the Haralanders would try to
cover these mutilations in shame. But so disfigured were they in their souls
that many bore their scars openly and even blatantly: in the village of Dakai,
I saw a streetsweeper going about naked but for a loincloth, and proudly
displaying a star, triangle, bell, hand, circle, butterfly and other signs
branded all across his shiny brown torso, arms and legs. It was as if he used
these scars to cry out to everyone: 'Do you see how much I've suffered to try
to walk the Way of the Dragon? Do you see how much I've sacrificed in pain that
others might learn from my errors?' It astonished me to learn that errants,
when facing a branding, were expected to perform this atrocity upon themselves,
and that many actually did. It seemed they were burning into their very nerve
fibers the imperative that they existed only to execute the will of the Red
Dragon.
We had tramped through the Haraland many days,
however, before we came across the first crucifixion. In the town square of
Yosun, a slender man had been put up on wood for all to see. I was driving the
cart that day, and stopped it on hardpacked earth stained with blood. I climbed
down and joined the crowd gathered around the cross. Four soldiers covered in
iron scales and bearing spears would not let any of the townsfolk too near the
crucified man. I saw that great iron spikes split his hands and feet, and his
trembling legs seemed no longer able to push against the footpiece to which he
was nailed. He gasped for breath. Two days in the hot Haraland sun had nearly
blackened his naked body. His dark eyes stared out as at nothing, and I knew he
was close to death.
Although it was hard to tell because desiccation and
anguish had contorted his face, I thought he was of an age with me. To a woman
standing near me, I asked, 'What was his error?'
'He killed his brother,' she told me.
'Killed his brother!' I cried out. I could think of
few worse crimes.
But there was more to the story than that. From a
wheelwright who had known the young man, whose name was Tristan, I learned that
Tristan's brother, Alok, had flown into a rage and had struck the local Red
Priest. It seemed that the priest, Ra Sadun, upon learning of the defiant ways
of a third brother only six years old, had come to take the boy from Tristan's
and Alok's house to be raised in the Kallimun school. As the Kallimun say,
'Give us the child, and we shall give you the man.'
But Alok had not wanted to give away his youngest
brother. Perhaps
he feared that the Red Priests would castrate him, as they often did with boys so that they
might more beautifully sing the
praises of Angra Mainyu and Morjin. Perhaps he dreaded even darker things. Clearly, though, he
had not believed Ra Sadun's assertion
that the abduction of his youngest brother was a mercy, the only way to save the boy. And so he
had hammered his fist into Ra
Sadun's nose, drawing blood. After Ra Sadun had gone away to summon the soldiers, jgristan took
up a carving knife and killed
Alok. The dishonor that Alok had brought upon their family, Tristan claimed, was too great for
him to bear. Alok's blood, he told
everyone, would wash it clean. But many of the townfolk of Yosun believed that Tristan had
stabbed Alok to save him from the terrible punishment of crucifixion. Ra
Sadun must have believed this, too, for he had ordered the soldiers to seize
Tristan and crucify him in his brother's place.
'The Dragon is not to be cheated,' the wheelwright
told me. He was an old whitebeard whose hands seemed as hard as the wooden
spokes he worked. He waved one of them at Tristan, fastened to the cross above
the square. 'If you ask me, though, Tristan did kill Alok out of honor.
He loved his brother, yes, but I say he loved his family's honor even more. And
who could suffer anyone to live who had struck a priest?'
Slayings of honor, of course, had a long tradition in
the Haraland. Nobles fought duels over real or imagined insults; men murdered
the prurient for staring too boldly at their wives; brothers put to death their
own sisters for adultery and other lasdviousness that mocked marriage and
brought shame upon their families.
The wheelwright gazed up at the dying man with a
whitish rheum rilling his eyes. He said to me, 'There was a time when the Red
Priests would have praised Tristan for what he did. Now they put him on a
cross.'
The whole spirit of the Way of the Dragon, as I
understood it, was that people were supposed to divine Morjin's will, make it
their own and carry it out in their hearts and deeds. But this will could prove
difficult to perceive, for it always changed.
'I think it's Arch Uttam,' the wheelwright said to me.
This was not the first time I had heard the name of Hesperu's High Priest.
'They say the Kallimun will no longer tolerate honor killings of any sort. All
right, I say, all honor to Lord Morjin, and who is anyone to assert his own
honor against what's best for the realm? But sometimes it's hard to know what's
best. I don't understand why the priests don't make things more clear. I don't
understand why King Arsu doesn't make them make things more clear. It's
enough to drive a man mad. I'm not complaining, of course, but I just wish I
could get through one day without worrying I've made some error I didn't even
know was an error. I suppose Arch Uttam just wants to bring order to the
Haraland, as does everyone. They say Lord Morjin will visit here soon, and so
it won't do for him to have to see men going around murdering their own
brothers.'
It astonished me that the wheelwright bore no mark of
brandings anywhere that I could see, for it seemed that the looseness of his
lips would long since have tripped him up into making an Error Major. I took
advantage of his loquaciousness to ask if he had ever heard of a place called
Jhamrul; he hadn't. When I brought up the matter of miraculous healings, as
slyly as I could, he seemed to remember that he was talking to a strange player
in a public square at a crucifixion, and not holding forth over a mug of beer
in his home. And so he gave me a response that I had grown well-tired of: 'They
say the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya. Of course, I
don't know if even Lord Morjin could restore poor Tristan now.'
In truth, no one or nothing could, for Tristan's head
suddenly dropped down upon his chest as his strength gave out and he died. I
felt it, like a hole opening inside myself through which an icy black wind
blew. A terrible thought came to me then: what if we had come here too late and
Tristan had been the one whom we sought? But how could that be, I wondered?
Tristan was a murderer of men, even as I was myself.
After that they cut down the body for burial, and we
prepared to leave. But the wheelwright, who knew Tristan's mother, implored me
to give a show so that we might cheer the poor woman. I did not think that
anything in the world could help her just then, for she bent over weeping
uncontrollably as she wrapped Tristan's body in a white linen. She reminded me
of my own mother, not in appearance, for she was short and stout, but in the
depth of love that poured out of her.
In the end, I agreed to the wheelwright's request,
although I doubted if any of the townsfolk would want to see a show that day.
But the people of Yosun surprised me. Later that afternoon, after the burial,
my friends and I donned our costumes and set up in the town square. More people
packed into it than had been present at the crucifixion. It was as if they
desired any song, story or spectacle that might drive the sight of Tristan from
their minds. Tristan's mother, whose name was Uja, stood closest to the circle
that we had marked off with a painted rope. It seemed almost profane to perform
on ground still stained with Tristan's blood.
But perform we did. Kane brought out his colored
balls, and hurled them high into the air. When he had finished juggling, he
took off his shirt and stood half naked before the crowd. So perfect was he in
the proportions of his limbs and body that it wasn't readily obvious what a
large man he really was. But now he displayed his great strength for all to
behold. He brought out an iron chain, and invited the wheelwright and several
other men from the audience to test it and wrap it around his mighty chest,
locking it tightly. Then, with a huge and quick inbreath of air, his chest
swelled out like a bellows, snapping the chain with a sharp crack of iron, to
the delight of the crowd.
After that Maram came out and clowned around,
pretending to try to break this selfsame chain with heavings of his
belly. Failing this feat he gave up in order to ogle Yosun's most beautiful
women. When Yosun's fathers and brothers grew uneasy with his attentions,
Maram seemed to remember his restraint, and used the chain as A reminder,
wrapping it around his loins. A moment later, however, he fell back into lust,
and thrust out his hips toward the crowd as he stepped forward with a leer
lighting up his face, only to be jerked up short by his pulling on the chain. I
thought his' act too lewd for the severe Haralanders, and I feared that one of
the men might draw a sword and decapitate him, or worse. But again the
townsfolk surprised me. They laughed heartily at Maram's antics. There was
something curious, I thought, in the way that a fool could play to the heart of
people's foibles and fears, and get away with things that no one else could.
Toward the end of our show, Estrella and I took up our
flutes and Kane his mandolet, even as liljana opened the painted door of our
cart for Alphanderry to make a mysterious appearance. Maram announced that
Thierraval was too shy to mingle with the crowd, but had consented to sing for
everyone. The single song that Alphanderry gave to the people was sorrowful and
yet full of brilliant hope, and made many of the men, women and children weep.
After Alphanderry had finished and gone back inside the cart - and Atara began
telling fortunes while Liljana sold potions - Tristan's mother came forward to
thank us. She tried to give us a few coins for our efforts, but I told her that
she should save them to buy candles to bum for her sons. Others, however,
dropped into Maram's fool's cap many copper coins and even a few pieces of
silver. They wished us well on our journey, and asked when we might return.
When Maram hefted the jingling silver in his cap, he
looked at me and said, 'Well, we failed at being princes, but it seems we might
have a future as players.'
In the days following that, after we had left Yosun
miles behind us, we gave other performances in other towns. Liljana insisted
that we needed the money to replenish our dwindling stores, if not our purse
that we had emptied of gold in Nubur and Ramlan. But we had even deeper
desires. We played, I thought, to encourage the nearly-enslaved Haralanders,
and more, to inspirit ourselves. It was as if we needed to know there remained
one small part of the world that we could still command and make beautiful. The
cross holding up Tristan was only the first of many that we passed by. We never
became inured to their sight. The cruel wasting of so many lives cut at something
sacred inside all of us, but seemed to wound Estrella the most deeply. Although
she had borne the torments of the Red Desert, and much else, without
complairaflH thought she might not be able to go on much longer. And then one
day, on a rainy forest road outside of Lachun, we came upon a solitary cross.
The very small body it bore was that of a child. We could not tell its sex, for
the sun had baked its bloated flesh black, and the crows had long since gone to
work on it, pecking the corpse nearly to the bone. We could find no one about
to tell us what this child's error could possibly have been. After we had cut
down the remains and buried them, Estrella stood weeping over the grave in her
strange, silent way that was so much worse than another person's sobbing.
Crucifixion, the Hesperuks say, is a mercy, for it gives the crucified nearly
infinite time to go down into the soul and correct one's errors. It might truly
have been a mercy, I thought, if Estrella had died at so young an age in
Argattha so as to spare her the anguish that now tore through her like a
torturer's skive opening up her insides. I felt her fighting this terrible pain
with all her will and every breath; and more, she seemed to beat back in fury
the black, bitter thing that had been working at her heart since our passage of
the Skadarak. I wept with her because it seemed that in the end, evil must
always win.
The following morning, however, the rain stopped and
rays of brilliant sunshine drove down through the spaces between the clouds.
Estrella insisted on leading us west, toward the Iona River. Whether the
previous day's suffering had opened up some secret part of her or whether she
merely followed h||mstinct, she could not tell us. But she led us straight to a
town full of swordmakers and armorers. It was from a blacksmith there, in a
seemingly chance conversation, that we learned of a village not very far away
whose name was Jhamrul.
Chapter 34 Back Table of Content Next
The place that we had been seeking for so many days lay fifty miles to the northwest, across the Iona River - and somewhere below the mountains, to the east of Ghurlan but west of the Rhul River. Although this fit Master Matai's prediction, Maram objected to our new course, saying, 'But what if we find nothing there? We can't just go tramping from town to town forever on the basis of some horoscope that might, or might not be, the Maitreya's! Every time I see a carpenter sawing out a beam of wood, I wonder if he's making it just for me.'
He complained further that first we would have to cross the Iona and the road that King Arsu and his army were coming down.
'That's true,' I told him. 'And so the sooner we set out, the better our chance of avoiding them.'
We turned our cart onto a dirt track leading to the city of Assul. There, if the blacksmith was right, we would find a road running east to west, over the Black Bridge spanning the Iona and then on to Ghurlan. Jhamrul lay just to the north of this road, in the hills some forty miles before Ghurlan - or so we hoped.
We all, I thought, chafed at the slowness of our pace, set by our cart's
grinding wheels. We considered unhitching Altaru from the cart for a wild dash
to Jhamrul, and then out of Hesperu altogether, but this seemed too great a
risk. And so we worked our way to Assul, a neat, quiet, little city. The road
that the blacksmith had told of proved to be a ribbon of broken paving stones
and patches of mud. My father never would have tolerated such dilapidation of
a major road, but then he had never imagined that rebellion might tear his
kingdom apart. As we moved across the rich bottomland closer to the Iona River,
we encountered gangs of corvee laborers hard at work repairing the road. They
swung their picks and lifted their shovels with a
rare enthusiasm, as if taking great pride that they had been chosen to restore
King Arsu's realm to greatness. One of these gangs struggled mightily, with
ropes and teams of snorting mules, to erect a giant marble carving of Morjin
off to the side of the road. I heard someone say that this statue would stand
for ten thousand years; I prayed that it would sink into the soft, black loam
as into quicksand, and vanish overnight into the bowels of the earth.
Other laborers, however, did not seem so happy. Close
to the river, the Haralanders cultivated cotton and rice, and we passed swarms
of men stripped nearly naked as sweat poured off their bodies and they bent
down in the bog-like fields hoeing and pulling up weeds. Many were slaves, and
quite a few of these had been brought down from Surrapam, branded and bound in
chains. The hot Hesperu sun burnt their fair skins raw and bloody. More than a
lew serfs worked spreading dung in these fields, too. Their masters seemed to
whip them as ferociously as they did their slaves.
It seemed to me that nearly everyone in Hesperu, from
the lowliest gong farmer to the King, was a slave of some sort, for they all
made obeisance to Morjin - and to each other. In Ramlan, I had heard a saying:
'Every man has a master.' It seemed a perfect expression of the degradation of
people all through the Dragon Kingdoms. In this land of crosses and carvings of
monsters, everyone in principle was bound to someone else. And now, according
to King Arsu's edicts, many of them had to bow to a new class of masters. The
Haralanders called them 'New Lords', and these were mostly common men such as
the bookseller and cooper in Nubur who had enriched themselves on the
dragongild, and with the Kallimun's blessing, purchased their titles from the
King. It was one of these New Lords, a Lord Rodas, who stopped us on the
rundown Ghurlan road just as we were about to cross the Black Bridge over the
turbid waters of the Iona River.
Lord Rodas was a small, thin-faced man whose scraggly
beard did not make up for his lack of chin. He wore silk pantaloons and a blue
silk doublet embroidered with gold. The six hirelings accompanying him were
richly attired in a purple and yellow livery, and they bore lances and swords
but no armor. They waited on horseback as Lord Rodas positioned his gray
gelding in the middle of the road, blocking our cart.
'Greetings, my good players,' he said to us.
As he informed us in a voice as smooth as safflower
oil, all traveling troupes in the Haraland between the Iona River and the Rhul
had come under his command.
'And it is my command,' he informed us, 'that you are not
to cross this bridge until you've paid me a levy of forty silver ounces.'
I glanced at Kane, on top of the packhorse we had
converted to a mount. His eyes were pools of fire. I did not think that either
Lord Rodas or his six hirelings had any idea how close they were to death.
Despite Lord Rodas' weak appearance, he had a great
strength of stubbornness, and Liljana was able to bargain him down only a
little, to a squeeze of thirty silver pieces - the last of our money.
'I can only think,' he told us, 'that it will go
harder for you in the west. There, Lord Olum has taken charge of all troupes.
You'll only have to pay him another levy, and a stiffer one at that. Well, be
on your way then, before I change my mind - the mercy of the Dragon be with
you!'
He moved his horse aside and rudely waved us by. As we
rolled past him, I overheard him complaining to one of his hirelings about this
Lord Olum; it seemed that Lord Rodas and his men planned to intercept King Arsu
and his army when they came down the Iona road so as to denounce Lord Olum for
making the grave error of holding back the levies that he collected, and thus
cheating the King.
On the other side of the river, on the road that led
down from Avrian through Orun, we saw no sign of the King's vanguard, and we
gave thanks for that. Neither Lord Olum nor anyone claiming to act in his stead
stopped us to demand money, and we were grateful for that as well. Quickly, we
made our way through rice bogs and cotton patches, which soon gave way to
fields of millet and maize. The weather held clear, and we made a good distance
that day, despite the potholes in the crumbling road.
For two days after that, we followed this road west
toward Ghurlan. It climbed gradually up into a country of low hills covered
with ginseng, chicory and poppies - and groves of almond trees and pecans. The
air grew less close and humid, and slightly | cooler. About thirty-five miles
from the Iona, a farmer pointed us toward a dirt road cutting off north through
these hills. He told us that if we drove our cart up the road for another five
miles past Hagberry Hill, we would come to Jhamrul. His directions proved true,
and we found the long-sought village nestled in a wooded notch.
There was little to it: some forty houses and other
buildings surrounded by almond and pecan groves, and fields of red wheat
growing on the hills' terraces. It seemed impossible that we could simply go
down into this pretty place and ask after the Maitreya, but this is what we
did. Or rather, we made our way into the village square, where we asked the
blacksmith if Jhamrul had any healers who might be able to help us. The
blacksmith directed us to the house of Jhamrul's only healer - indeed, the only
healer for miles about, for apparently the nearby villages of Sojun, Eslu and
Nur also sent their sick and injured to this renowned man. His name was Mangus,
but it seemed that the village folk referred to him more reverentially as the
Master.
We found his house to the north of the village on the
side of a hill; it was built of good, gray granite instead of the mud bricks
more common in Hesperuk constructions. As we rolled up the lane fronting the
house, we saw an old woman, a slave, working in the herb garden to its side. On
the other side, fig trees grew, while behind it, a dark-haired man stood in a
pasture tending some goats. The house itself was a good size, with sweeping,
red-tiled roofs covering its four sections. The front doors - wide enough to
drive our cart through £ stood open to reveal a courtyard with roses growing on
white trellises and a mossy fountain at its center. Another old woman waited by
these doors to greet us. She, however, could not be mistaken for a slave, for
she wore a fine silk robe embroidered with flowers and a necklace of opals and
black onyx. She gave her name as Zhor, and she told us that she was Mangus's
wife.
I glanced at Master Juwain as I tried to hide my
chagrin; unless Mangus had married forty years beyond his age, he could not be
the one we sought. If Master Matai's astrological calculations proved true, the
Maitreya would have been bom, as I was, on the ninth of Triolet in the year 279m
and would therefore be only twenty-two years old.
Zhor invited us inside the atrium while a servant went
to summon Mangus. With her own hand, she picked up a large urn and poured us
glasses of lemon squash, sweetened with mint and honey. As we waited by the
burbling water of the fountain, I noted a pedestal holding up a marble bust of
Morjin. Its eyes stared upward; following their blind gaze I saw above the arch
of the doorway behind us, almost too high to read, a gold-trimmed scroll
listing in an elegant, red-inked script the steps that one must take to walk
the Way of the Dragon:
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING
RIGHT THOUGHT RIGHT
SPEECH RIGHT DEED
RIGHT REVERANCE
RIGHT SUBMISSION
As 1 was brooding over ail the ways that Morjin had
perverted what should have been noble virtues, in his Darakul Elu - and
in pain and blood - the 'Master' came into the atrium. He glided toward us as
if buoyed within an air of great dignity. His white hair hung in
perfectly oiled curls about his shoulders. He wore a tunic of red silk and red
pantaloons, and a longer outer robe of white cotton that draped down to his
silver slippers. I noticed a few, faint pinkish stains that it seemed his
servants had been unable to wash out of it. His cleanly shaved, stern face,
which shone with kindness and concern, reminded me of my grandfather's. As
well, I liked his eyes, which shone with kindness and concern. But his eyes
held the same cloud of suspicion that I had seen too often since we had come
into Hesperu.
We made our presentations, and told him of our concern
for Atara's blindness and the wound on Maram's chest that would not be healed;
we paid him what little silver we had gained in a performance on the road. Then
he led Atara, Maram and me into a small room off the atrium. White tiles
covered this chamber's floor and walls, and it smelled of mint and old herbs,
as well as blood. Old blood stains, I saw, marred the grain of the wooden chair
at the center of the room, as well as a table near one of the walls. Mangus invited
Atara to sit down in the chair, while Maram pulled off his tunic and stretched
out on the table.
When Mangus unwrapped the bandage from around Atara's
face, I felt my heart beating more quickly to the rhythm of Mangus's pounding
pulse. My throat burned as Mangus drew in a deep breath of air. For a moment, a
surging hope built inside me. I wondered if Master Matai might have been wrong,
and the one we sought was really an old man after all.
But Mangus only stared sadly at Atara and said to her.
'I'm sorry, Kalinda, but I cannot help you. I know of no one who can. Except,
of course, the Maitreya. I have heard that Lord Morjin might be coming to
Hesperu. Perhaps you should seek him out. If he were to lay his hands upon your
face, to touch his fingers beneath your brows, then -'
'Thank you,' Atara said to Mangus as her whole body
stiffened. The coldness that came into her nearly froze the blood in my heart.
'I had hoped that you might be able to heal me, but I thank you for your
suggestion. If it is my fate, I shall certainly seek out the Red Dragon.'
Mangus sighed at Atara's obvious distress, and bowed
his head to her. Then he sighed again before stepping over to Maram. It did not
take him long to get Maram's bandage off and unpack the layers of cotton stuffed
down into the single remaining wound in Maram's chest. Although he kept his
face hard and expressionless, I felt his churning disgust at the sight of this
raw, oozing opening that Jezi Yaga had torn into Maram. The bloody, stinking
bandages he cast into a bronze basin. He rested his old hand on the other half
of Maram's thickly-haired chest, and asked him, 'You say your horse bit you
here nearly three months ago? Have you tried setting maggots to the wound?'
Maram's eyes rolled upward. He said, 'On the road some
miles back we met, ah, a healer who advised me that maggots would clean the
wound. The damn worms burned me sorely, but didn't help.'
Mangus smiled at Maram, then told him, 'Once, a
soldier was brought to me - Sefu was his name. He had carried an arrowpoint in
his lung for nearly three years. It was said that sixty-seven pots of
pus had been drained from him. Although I was unable to draw the arrowpoint, I
made a plaster for the wound. After a month, it began to close, and after two
more, it healed successfully, though Sefu complained that he could still feel
the arrow's steel when he breathed too deeply.'
At that point, I slipped these words out: 'We had
heard that you cured a girl of an incurable wasting disease.'
Something moved inside of Mangus as if he had
swallowed a live worm. His sad smile, I thought, hid a great deal. He gazed out
the window at the pasture; he seemed deep in contemplation. Then he walked over
to the open window, cupped his hands around his mouth and cried out, 'Bemossed!
I have need of you!'
He turned back toward us. He glanced at Maram and
said, 'I must be alone with Garath now.'
A few moments later, as Atara and I were making our
way toward the door, a young man rushed into the room. The looseness of his
rough wool tunic did little to conceal his slender, sun-browned limbs and what
appeared to be whip scars seaming the flesh of his upper back around his neck.
He was tall for a Hesperuk, and comely, with rather soft features and a
gentle-looking face. A black cross had been tattooed into his forehead above
the space between, his eyes. His eyes. I noticed, were of a deep umber
color and as large and luminous as any eyes I had ever seen.
'Bemossed,' Mangus commanded his slave. He pointed at
the foul bandages in the basin. 'Dispose of these. Then go out to the pasture
and kill me a goat, that we might make sacrifice.'
Bemossed bowed to Mangus, and picked up the basin. He
exited the chamber without a glance at anyone. We left Maram to Mangus's
dubious ministrations, then followed Bemossed into the atrium, where we waited
as he left the house by way of the rear door. A short while later, the scream
of a goat broke the atrium's peace. Not even the tinkling fountain could drown
out this terrible sound.
Mangus's wife poured us more of our lemony
refreshment, but I could not bring myself to drink it. She told us that she had
other duties to attend to, and excused herself, leaving us to ourselves. I
waited, staring at the bust of Morjin as I wondered why Mangus had needed to be
alone with Maram. Soon Bemossed returned, bearing a large bronze urn. Its
contents sloshed against its sides as he moved through the atrium, and I
smelled fresh blood. Then he went into his master's healing chamber, and shut
the door behind him.
The tang of the lemons wafting into the air nearly
sickened me. I looked over the rim of my glass at Liljana and Master Juwain,
who were staring at Estrella. She sat on a stone bench near the fountain gazing
with great intensity at the chamber's closed door. Her dark, liquid eyes
rippled with little lights like quicksilver. Then her face came alive with a
burning radiance as if a bolt of lightning had split the air above her. She
jumped up from her bench. She looked at Daj as her fingers began fluttering as
quickly as a hummingbird's wings. She looked at me. She fairly danced over to
me, and took hold of my hand, gently pulling at me. Again, she stared at the
closed door to the chamber into which Bemossed had disappeared. I almost
couldn't bear the bright bursts of blood I felt pulsing out of her racing
heart. I couldn't bear the brightness of her eyes, for in these twin pools of
delight, I saw all her wonder and burning hope for the slave called Bemossed.
'He?' I said to Estrella. 'This one
- are you sure?'
Estrella smiled, all warm and brilliant like the sun,
and she quickly nodded her head. A dying scryer had once told me that she would
show me the Maitreya; now that the moment had finally come, I almost couldn't
believe it.
'So,' Kane said coming over to lay his hand on
Estrella's head.
'So.' Master Juwain muttered something about wanting
to know the
day and hour of Bemossed's birth, while
Atara stood icily still
within a strange silence. Daj said. But he looks just Hke everyone
else! What should we do now?'
His question, I thought was very much to the
point. There seemed nothing to do but wait, and so wait we did, I listened to
the water splashing in the fountain drop by drop, and felt Estrella's hand gripping
mine excitedly as a new life coursed through her veins. Kane's unfathomable
eyes fixed on the door. If a dragon had burst into the atrium just then, Kane
would have tried to fight it back with his bare hands. And yet I felt a deep
doubt eating at him, too.
At last the door opened, and Mangus came out, followed
by Maram and Bemossed. My eyes quickly took in Bemossed's curly black hair and
neatly trimmed beard. He bore the same bronze basin, now full of more wads of
stained cotton and blood. His motions were light and quick, yet sure, and he
hastened out of the atrium as he had before. I wanted to stop and question him,
but there seemed no way to do this gracefully.
Mangus cast no more light on the mystery of this man.
All he said to us was: 'Garath's plaster will need to be changed tomorrow. And
on the day following. After that, you may be on your way, wherever you are
bound.'
He bowed to us, and then showed us to the front door.
We left his house as we had come, driving the cart down the lane that led back
to the village. When we had gone half a mile, I stopped the cart by a pasture
full of sheep and looked at Maram. He sat on his horse, with his hand lightly
pressed to his chest.
'Tell me what happened to you!' I said to him.
'Tell you?' he said. His gaze fell upon
Estrella, who sat with me on the seat of the cart. 'Tell me! You
all look as if you ate morning glory seeds and stared too long at the sun.'
I explained to him that our quest might very well have
come to an end. And then he recounted what had happened in the closed chamber
with Mangus and Bemossed: 'I couldn't see very much because Mangus
covered my face with a cloth: it was of silk, thick and yellow and emblazoned
with a Red Dragon. And fairly soaked in some perfume. Strange, I thought, very
strange. But Mangus told me that I should meditate beneath the Dragon's
protection.. Meditate! He told me that he must wash my wound with medicines.
The cloth, he said, would protect me from their stench. It helped, I suppose,
but only a little. I don't know what that damned quack packed the
poultice with. But I smelled spirits and peppermint oil, and sandalwood, too, I
think. And something really foul. And - I'm loathe to believe this, Val
- that stinking goat's blood.'
Maram pushed his hand down beneath the collar of his
tunic as if intending to rip off the bandages bound to his chest. But Master
Juwain nudged his horse up close to Maram and said, 'No, leave it be. Let us
wait a few days to see if the poultice actually helps. Perhaps Mangus is not as
much of a quack as you fear.'
'But what would he want with an animal's blood?'
I turned to open the cart's front door, behind my
seat. After looking about at the nearby houses and pasture to see if anyone
might be watching us, I pulled out my scabbarded sword. I drew Alkaladur, then
pointed it back up the hill toward Mangus's house. The blade flared a soft
glorre.
'The blood was used to purify,' I said with a sudden
sureness. 'To purify me?' Maram said,
shuddering.
'No,' I told him. 'Don't you remember Argattha? I
heard one of the priests there speak of sacrificing virgins ... for their
blood. Blood washes clean, as the Kallimun says, yes? But I don't suppose
Mangus finds virgins so easy to come by, and so he has to slay innocent goats
instead.'
Maram's hand worked beneath his tunic as the light of
understanding filled his eyes. 'That slave, then? The one Estrella believes to
be the -'
'He is the Maitreya,' I said softly. 'He must
be.'
'But, Val, the mark - the black cross! How could fate
be so cruel as to make the Maitreya a damned Hajarim?' I smiled grimly as I
sheathed my sword. The Hajarim of Hesperu and the other Dragon Kingdoms, I
thought, were truly damned, for no other orders of humanity - not even
murderers or slaves taken in war - were treated so vilely. Most people loathed
them as they did blowflies. Hajarim were born of Hajarim, and so it had been
for ages, far back into the mists of time. No one knew their origins. But too
many agreed that the Hajarim must perform the lowliest and most hated of tasks:
gong farming and cleaning stables and streets; slaughtering animals, butchering
their meat and tanning their hides. The Hajarim handled the dead. Not all the
Hajarim were slaves, and not all slaves were Hajarim, particularly in Hesperu,
with so many ships packed with men arriving from Surrapam. Slave or free,
however, whatever 'free' still meant, the Hajarim were forbidden even to brush
against the garments of others or let their exhalations fall too near their
faces. Above all, they must never touch their hands to another's person.
'That slave did touch me,' Maram said. 'At
least, I think he did. Someone laid a hand upon my wound I it didn't feel like
an old man's hand.'
His great body shuddered, and he turned to look back
up at Mangus's house.
'You, too, then?' I asked him. 'Everyone here hates
the Hajarim.'
Maram's face soured as he said, 'It doesn't bother me
that! Bemossed is Hajarim. But that he washed his hands in blood before laying
them upon me - that vexes me sorely.'
'But how else to clean,' Atara asked him, 'the
uncleanable?'
I thought of the black cross that blighted Bemossed's
forehead; all Hajarim babies were marked thus at birth, an ineradicable sign of
their error in even being born.
'I don't think we should concern ourselves with the
rites of these Hesperuks,' Master Juwain said. 'No blood, a goat's or a
virgin's, is going to do very much toward healing Maram's wound. But the
Maitreya might. Let us see if we can find out more about this Bemossed.'
Toward this end, we returned to the village and set up
in the square for a show. We waited some hours for the word of our performance
to spread to the outlying farms, and even to the nearby village of Nur. At
dusk, with many curious people packing the square, we donned our costumes as we
had a dozen times before. Kane broke his chain, and Alphanderry sang. Atara
told several young women that they would find love and happiness. And Maram
made the women, men and children laugh. Afterwards, a fletcher and a barber
vied for the dubious honor of sharing conversation and spirits with Garath the
Fool. Maram matched these men in a drinkfest, one cup of brandy following
another until tongues loosened and words began to flow. But Maram, being Maram,
kept his wits about him while the two men spoke much more freely than they
should have. It was nearly midnight when Maram staggered back to where we had
made camp in a fallow wheatfield at the edge of the village. Despite the late
hour we gathered around a little fire to sip some tea and compare stories.
'Ah, perhaps Bemossed is the one we've been seeking,'
Maram said to us. He belched up a burble of brandy. 'The very, very one.'
From what Maram had learned from his inebriated new
"friends, and Atara during her fortune telling - and the rest of us in
various conversations with seamstresses, cobblers and the like - we pieced
together a little about Bemossed: He had been born in the north near Avrian and
separated from his parents at an early age. After being sold and resold
numerous times, he had finally run away from a cruel master, a leather-seller
named Chadu. But Chadu had recaptured him, and despite custom, had whipped
him, nearly stripping the meat from his bones. Alter that Bemossed would not do
any work for Chadu, refusing even to lift a broom to sweep the floors of Chadus
house. Chadu threatened to strangle him, but Bemossed told him that he would
not carry out any more of Chadu's commands. And so in disgust, Chadu had
journeyed to Jhamrul, where he had heard that a healer had need of a Hajarim to
dispose of bandages, amputated limbs and perform other filthy tasks. And so,
seven years previously, Mangus had bought Bemossed and put him to work.
'I heard,' Atara said, 'that a great lord brought his
dying daughter here. That the girl was coughing out her lungs with consumption.
I don't think Mangus could have cured that with his medicines. Perhaps Bemossed
-'
'The barber also told me of that lord and his child,'
Maram said, interrupting her. 'Apparently, the lord wouldn't leave her alone with
an old man and a Hajarim. So he must have seen Bemossed laying his hands
upon her. But no one speaks of it openly.'
Bemossed's talent for healing, it seemed, was a secret
that was no real secret.
'But they do speak of it,' Maram said. 'They
call Mangus "The Master", but they know the truth. And it
can't be long, I think, before others outside the village will know, too. The
barber told me that only a few months ago, the Kallimun sent a man down from
Kharun to question Mangus. I'm sure that damn priest went away with his purse
full of gold - they say that no one is more faithful in paying the weregild
than Mangus.'
I laid my hand on Maram's shoulder. I can only hope
that the villagers will come to speak of how Mangus healed Garath the Fool. 'Is
your wound any better?'
'All of my wounds, inside and out, are
better when I've had a little drink,' Maram said, rubbing his chest. 'Who needs
the Maitreya when you have brandy, eh? But no, it's not really better -
not as when Master Juwain healed Atara with his crystal.'
Master Juwain sat holding his mug of tea in both
hands; he had long since put away his emerald varistei - I hoped not forever.
'I can only pray your wound will heal now, too,'
Master Juwain said to Maram. 'But if it doesn't, that is no proof that Bemossed
is not the Maitreya. As we say: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence,'"
I thought about all that had befallen since I had
mistakenly claimed to be who I could never be. Then I said, 'Proof that
he is not the Maitreya might be neither pleasant nor easy to come by.'
'I'm more interested in proof that he is the
Maitreya,' Master Juwain said. 'Or at least good evidence.'
At this, I looked at Estrella, and so did Kane and
Maram. She sat gazing at the fire as if she hadn't heard a word we had spoken.
Her face fairly gleamed with a deep and splendid light.
'What better evidence than that?' I asked
Master Juwain.
'Perhaps no better evidence,' Master Juwain
admitted as he looked at her. 'But I should like some objective evidence.'
I nodded my head at this. Once, I had been wrong in
this matter, and must never be again.
'If only,' Master Juwain said, 'we could discover
exactly where Bemossed was born, and when.'
I thought about this too, and then I said, 'I doubt if
any of the villagers can tell us that. But Bemossed himself might know. Why
don't I try to talk to him tomorrow?'
'Ah, and what then?' Maram asked. 'Suppose that he
confirms Master Matai's calculations, down to the minute of his birth? What shall
we do then?'
I gazed at the orange flames of the fire, and I said,
'Everyone wants to join a traveling troupe, yes? Why don't we invite Bemossed
to run off with us?'
We went to bed after that, but I couldn't sleep. I kept going over in my mind all that I wanted to ask Bemossed, and more, all that my heart most deeply desired from him. Could he truly be the one we sought, I wondered? For more than a year, I had schemed and fought to reach this place, but never with a very good idea of what might happen next. My last thought before trying to meditate was that we had met the Maitreya - perhaps -and now we must keep him. from the Kallimun and Morjin.
Chapter 35 Back Table of Content Next
In the morning, I took up my
flute and went for a hike in the hills above the village. As I had hoped, I
found Bemossed tending his goats in the meadow not very far from Mangus's
house. He sat on a large rock, and appeared to be watching the sun pouring off
the petals of some pink and white wildflowers -I did not know their names. The
grass here grew a lighter green than that of Mesh, and seemed strange to me,
too, as did Bemossed himself. When I drew within a few yards of him, he leaped
up from his rock and turned toward me. He called out, 'Master Musician! I did
not hear you approaching me.'
I sat down on the grass
across from the rock, and invited him to sit back down, too. I smiled and said,
'Why don't you call me Arajun?'
'All right - Master Arajun,
then. Where is Garath? Is it time to change his dressing?'
I looked down the hill toward
the field where we had stopped our cart. I said, 'He'll be along in a while. I
wanted to take a walk before the sun grew too high.'
Bemossed nodded his head at
this. He pointed at my flute and said, 'To walk and play to the birds? I heard
you last night in the square, playing to the people.'
'You did? I didn't see you
there.'
'I stood near the almond
trees.'
'So far away? But you
couldn't have heard very much.'
'I couldn't come any closer.'
He shrugged his shoulders and said simply, 'I am Hajarim.'
I sat looking at his finely-made head, his deep eyes
and long eyelashes. His hands, long and expressive, moved while he spoke as if
to music. In manner, he seemed thoughtful and polite. I felt that he
had a keen sense of himself that he tried to keep hidden from others. But a
certain grace and natural nobility shone out from within him, even so. Except
for the black cross tattooed into his skin, it would have been impossible to
guess at his lowly birth. 'My companions and I,' I told .him, 'have journeyed
to many kingdoms. In other places, there are no Hajarim, nor slaves either.'
'No
Hajarim?' he said, touching the mark on his forehead. 'No slaves? But what
lands are these?'
'The
Free Kingdoms, in the north.'
'Do you
mean, the Dark Lands? It is said that men mate with animals there, and eat
their own dead.'
'Do you
believe that?'
Bemossed
hesitated as he dared a deep look at me. I felt within him a bright, burning
awareness and an incredibly strong will toward the truth. But other things
dwelled there, too, and he quickly broke off the meeting of our eyes. And he
stammered out, 'It. . . is said.'
He
gazed at the dozen goats spread out below us tearing up the grass. I could
sense him choosing his words with great care, in Hesperu, speaking bluntly
could earn a visit from the Crucifiers and a tearing out of the tongue with hot
pincers so that one would never speak the wrong words again.
'It is
a lovely day,' he finally said. He looked farther up the pasture at a grove of
cherry trees where a pair of bluebirds sat on a branch singing. 'It will rain
this afternoon, though, I think.'
'Bemossed,'
I murmured into the soft breeze.
This
young man who seemed of an age with me forced himself to look at me again, and
this time he held the gaze. His eyes shone warm and sweet, and seemed
inextinguishable. Something incredibly bright there burned into me like lightning.
I felt him trying to turn away from this thing, but one might as well try to
keep the earth from turning and stop the rising of the sun. I had a strange
sense that he knew exactly what I was about, and wanted to trust me, as I did
him.
'Yes,
Master Musician?' he said to me.
I held
my flute up to the sun's onstreaming rays. I said, 'I can play a few melodies,
but I'm hardly a master.'
'All
free men are masters to such as I.'
'I'm hardly free,' I told him. The memory of my
family's slaughter, I knew, bound me in a dark prison as surely as any chain.
'Who is free any more? It is said that a Lord Olum is now master of all
traveling troupes, and others as well.'
Bemossed
looked at a hawk soaring high on the wind above us. He said, 'The birds are
free. People's hearts are free.'
This, I
thought, was a dangerous half-quote from the Darakul Elu: there, it was
written that people's hearts were free when they beat in time to the heart of
the Red Dragon.
'A man
should always follow his own heart,' I said to him.
'I
heard you following yours last night. In your music. The way you played. I
heard such a longing for freedom,'
Bemossed
dared a great deal in what he said to me and the way that he said it. He didn't
appear to mind. There was steel inside him, and more, something as brilliant
and adamantine as diamond. It was as if he had long since willed himself to act
with little concern for what might befall himself. His courage shone out like
that of my brothers.
'You
must know what it is like to long for freedom,' I told him. 'They say you ran
away from your master when you were younger.'
'Chedu,'
he said, rubbing at the scars on the back of his neck. A darkness fell over his
face like a dust-cloud covering the sun, 'He made me do ... evil things.'
'But
you do not complain that he did evil things to you?'
He
shrugged his shoulders again. His gaze took in the white flowers nearby,
Mangus's house and the village below us, and the hills and sky beyond that.
Something inside him flowed all golden like melting honey. Life, I thought, had
treated him cruelly, and yet he seemed to have great affection for every part
of the world that he beheld or contemplated - almost every part.
'Chedu,'
he said again, 'wanted me to flay a piglet alive. So that he could sell a
living skin to rejuvenate the flesh of a great lord, he told me. But I knew he
really wanted to grieve me by making me torture a helpless animal, and so I
couldn't. After that, I kept thinking about flaying Chedu. So I ran
away.'
'And
when he recaptured you, it's said, you refused to obey him.'
'I
would rather have died.'
'And so
he whipped you - nearly to death?'
Bemossed
smiled sadly as he said, 'With a Dragon's Scourge. Have you seen one at work?
The Crucifiers tie bits of steel to thongs, and call them the Dragon's
Teeth. Chedu wanted to use it to strip the skin off me.'
'What
stopped him, then?'
The Crucifiers did. A priest, Ra Amru, came along in
time to save me.' Now Bemossed's smile grew bright with irony. 'You see, he
reminded Chedu that I was Hajarim.'
The blood
of the Hajarim, I remembered, was thought to be so unclean that even the
priests of the Kallimun were forbidden to spill it. And so Hajarim were usually
burnt, or racked in correction for their errors, or if condemned to death,
strangled. The black cross signified that, like animals, the Hajarim weren't
even worthy of being crucified. I said to Bemossed, 'You had other masters
before Chedu, yes?' He nodded his head. 'Chedu was the worst of them, but not
the
first.'
'And
who would that be?'
'Lord
Kullian. My father served him, and I was born on his estate.'
The
story that Bemossed now told me made me grit my teeth against all the madness
and hurts of the world. It seemed that for the first years of his childhood,
Bemossed had lived quietly with both his father and mother, in the expectation
that he would learn his father's trade of butchering. But then, in one of the
wars of the north, Lord Kullian had joined a rebellion against the young King
Arsu. King Arsu's soldiers finally came to kill Lord Kullian and confiscate his
lands. Bemossed's father died trying to protect Lord Kullian. and Bemossed's
mother suffered a broken mouth trying to protect Bemossed. The blood from this
wound had defiled the cut fist of one of the soldiers, and his captain
immediately ordered Bemossed's mother to be buried alive. Bemossed himself they
made to help dig the grave. After that, he was sold as a gong farmer cleaning
out the latrines of local notables. And then resold to a succession of masters,
ending with Chedu and Mangus.
I did
not know what to say upon hearing of these terrible things. And so I forced
out, 'That is war.'
Bemossed
shrugged his shoulders. 'Others have suffered much worse than I.'
I
thought of King Arsu's present campaign, and the thousand men he had mounted on
crosses. I looked at Bemossed. 'You say you were born near Avrian?'
'I think
so. I think I was three or four when they killed my parents.'
'And
how old are you now?'
'Twenty-two,
I think. Perhaps twenty-three.'
'You
don't know? Didn't anyone ever tell you the date of your birth?'
'No -
why should they have?'
The sun
falling on his face seemed to bring out much of his essence, and I saw him as
many things at once: sad, compassionate, strong, innocent and wise. I thought
he lived too close to the dark, turbid currents of the unknown self that flowed
inside of everyone. And yet I felt a wild joy of life surging there, too. And
so I said to him, 'Most people celebrate the day they were born.'
'Most
free people, perhaps,'
I
watched as he rose up off his rock and went over to scratch beneath the jaw of
one of the goats. I could not imagine him ever using a sharp knife to slit this
gentle animal's throat, and I said to him, 'Do you ever think about being
free?'
He
looked up at the hawk still circling on the morning's rising wind, I felt him
building inside himself a wall of stone to keen his storming passions within -
even as I tried to keep those of others without. Then he said a strange thing:
'Does a bird think of flying beyond the sky?'
I
caught his gaze and said, 'You hate your service with Mangus don't you?'
'But
why would you think that?'
'Because
I know about hate,' I told him.
A
gentleness came into him as he looked at me. 'I think you do. Master Arajun.
And I think you speak about things that it is best not to speak about.'
'Then
let us not speak but act,' I said to him. 'Tomorrow, after Mangus changes
Garath's dressing, we shall leave Jhamrul. We have need of a healer - why don't
you come with us?' His eyes grew
restless and bright. He called out softly, 'A healer, you say? But I am
Hajarim!'
'Truly,
you are. But you must know what the people of your village say about you.' 'They do not understand.'
'With
some power you were born with,' I said to him, 'with some virtue that runs like
fire along your blood, you lay your hands on others, and they are healed.'
He
lifted his hand away from the goat's throat and looked at it. 'You ... do not
understand. I can do nothing to heal anyone. I'm only a slave.'
I
wanted to tell him that he might heal the whole world, But old doubts tore into me, and
terrible memories, too, and because I wasn't wholly open with him, he couldn't quite bring
himself to trust
me.
'Bemossed,'
I said again, rising up off the grass. Then I crossed over to him and took hold of his
hand. At the touching of my palm to his, he gasped, in astonishment. His eyes
went wide with horror, exaltation, delight and dread. I stared at him deeply as
he did me; it was like staring at the sun. 'You . . do not know what you do,'
he told me. He seemed to be searching for something in me as his hand gripped
mine.
I felt
in him a vast, cold loneliness and a wild hope, too 'What do you do?'
There
was a moment. Something inside him seemed to pull me into a place of
deep brilliance. I felt time slowing down as the whole world suddenly stopped.
The trilled-out notes of the blue-birds hung like drops of silver in the air.
The birds themselves brightened with an impossible blue, as if their leathers
flamed with a lovely fire that didn't burn. Along the hills, the grasses and
flowers shimmered green and pink and white. Everything - the meadow and the
goats grazing upon it, the sun above and the earth beneath my feet and
Bemossed's hand within mine - seemed to be made of a single substance that kept
pouring itself out in a blaze of light. In this splendid land we dwelled nearly
forever. But then some fearful thing buried in Bemossed's heart, or perhaps
within mine, darkened the meadow and drove us back into the world. I saw that
the goats were just goats, the grass was only grass, and the sky shone no bluer
than it ever did. And Bemossed was only a man, even as I was.
He
looked at our clasped hands, and I thought that in his whole life since his
parents' deaths, no one had ever willingly touched him. He said to me. 'What do
you want?'
'You
don't have to remain a slave,' I told him. 'Come away with us, and we'll leave Hesperu.'
'To go
to the Dark Lands?'
'The
only darkness in any land,' I said, 'is what men have brought into it.'
'And
what have you brought into the world ... Arajun?' I knew that I could lie to
him, in my words, but not in the light oi my eyes. His hold on my hand suddenly
tightened. I had spent too many hours of my life gripping a sword, and so I was
stronger than he in my sinews and bones. But his will beat at mine with all the
fire of the desert sun. I could keep no secret from him. He must have sensed
the hatred poisoning me, and more, that I was a slayer of men, for he let go of
my hand as he might a heated iron. I stood staring at him in shame. The day
before he had washed in the gore of a goat, and yet it was I who had blood upon
my hands.
'Come
with us,' I said again. 'My friends all agree that you would be a welcome
addition to our troupe.'
I felt
him wanting to leap toward this offer as a starving wolf toward meat. But
something stopped him up short.
'No,'
he said, 'I would only be caught, and this time I would be strangled.'
I did
not, at that moment, sense in him any fear of death. But something else grieved
him terribly, some dark thing that I could, not see.
'You won't
be caught,' I told him. 'We'll protect you.'
'But
how can anyone protect me?'
'We
won't let anyone take you.'
He
looked down the hill at where the bright colors of our cart blazed in the
distance. 'You have weapons hidden away, don't you? You, and the
strongman, Taras?'
I
remained silent as I gazed into the luminous centers of his eyes.
'You
would kill, wouldn't you? Kill to keep your freedom?'
I said
nothing to this accusation, and so said everything.
He
looked at me with a terrible longing, as if that which he had sought his entire
life lay just beyond his grasp. His voice grew sad almost beyond bearing as he
told me, 'I'm sorry, but I can't go with you.'
'But
don't you want to be free!' I cried out to him.
His
eyes pulled away from mine, and seemed to drink in the cherries all red and
ripe along the branches of the tree. The sky opened out into an infinite
blueness beyond it. I felt him return to that shining place that was his secret
home. This time, however, he could not take me with him.
'I am
free right now,' he finally said to me. He looked back at me, and the burning
in his eyes brought tears into mine. 'All men are free. They just don't know
it.'
After
that, he asked me to play a song on my flute, and this I did. There seemed
nothing more to say. When I finished, I bade him farewell and walked back
through the meadow's swishing grasses to the field where our cart stood. My
friends immediately gathered around me.
'Well,
what did you find out?' Maram asked me.
'Not as
much as we hoped,' I admitted. I turned to Master Juwain and recounted much of
what Bemossed had told me. Then I said, 'It could be nearly impossible to trace
back Bemossed's owners to anyone who might have known about his birth. Probably
anyone who did know was killed or sold off at the pillaging of Lord
Kullian's estate.'
'But we
can't he certain of that,' Master Juwain said to me.
'No, we
can't. But we can't either go up around Avrian asking where Lord Kullian's old
estate might lie and if anyone thereabouts remembers a slave boy named
Bemossed.'
Master
Juwain rubbed at this bald head, gleaming in the morning sunlight. His
disappointment seemed as thick as the porridge that Liljana had prepared for
breakfast.
'I'm
sorry, sir,' I said to him. 'But likely we will never know the day of
Bemossed's birth.'
'But
Master Matai's horoscope -'
'Has
led us this far,' I said. 'And we should be glad for that. For I'm nearly
certain that Bemossed is the Maitreya.'
Kane
held a jangling chain in his hands as he inspected its black iron for weak
links. Then his black eyes fixed on me, and he said, 'But what of the signs,
then, eh? Do you think you are able to tell? Does this goatherd look upon all
with an equal eye?'
I
thought of Chedu who had nearly skinned Bemossed alive, and I said, 'Nearly
all.'
'Is his
courage unshakeable?'
'He has
little fear of death, I think.'
'But
does he abide steadily in the One?'
I drew
in a long breath as I looked up the green hills above us. I said, 'He could abide
there - I'm certain he could.'
At
this. Master Juwain's lips tightened as if he had sucked on a sour cherry. 'But
did he give any other sign, in his words or manner, that he might be the
Maitreya?'
I
smiled sadly as I said, 'He wouldn't even admit to being a healer.'
Master
Juwain sighed at this and said, 'I was afraid it might be thus. Do you remember
the verse, Val?'
I
nodded my head, then recited lines from an ancient vesrse that had once
perplexed me and led me to make the greatest error of my life:
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.
'As it
was thought with you,' Master Juwain said to me, 'Bemossed is young, and it may
be that his time has not yet come to awaken. And so he may not know that he is
the Maitreya. Unfortunately, we don't either.'
I
stepped over the cart and drew forth my sword. When I pointed it up the hill
toward Bemossed and his goats, its fiery light still ran with glorre. And I
said to Master Juwain, 'But we do know . . . that he might be the
Maitreya.'
'So
might others be. Others with whom we could confirm their hour of birth. Perhaps
we should still search for them.'
'Perhaps
we should,' I said, 'but we must take Bemossed with us.'
'But
how, Val?' Maram asked me. He jingled the bells of his fool's cap that he was
playing with. 'You said yourself he refused to run off with us. We can't just
throw a cloak over his head and abduct him, can we?'
'No, we
can't,' I said. I looked at Estrella, whose deep, liquid eyes seemed to tell me
that we were all being fools. 'But we might buy him.'
This
suggestion seemed to shock Maram - and everyone else -as much as it did me. And
Maram called out, 'What? What are you saying?'
'If the
priests have been asking after him,' I said, 'he is in great danger here. It
would be for the best.'
'But
doesn't he hate emptying bloody basins for that damn Mangus?'
'He does hate his servitude, yes,' I
said. 'But I think there is something he loves greater than his hate.'
'Ah, I
don't understand. Do you mean, then, that we should buy him as our slave?'
'Only
until we've left Hesperu. Only until he comes to trust us. Then we shall tell
him all, and free him.'
It
seemed a dark and desperate deed, but then we had reached the end of our quest to
find ourselves in a dark and desperate place. None of us could think of a
better plan. And so Liljana finally said, 'All right then, but please let me
handle the negotiations.'
Later
that morning we returned to Mangus's house, and Maram disappeared into Mangus's
healing chamber to have his dressing changed. After Mangus had finished, he
left Bemossed to clean up while he met with Kane, Liljana, Maram and me in the
atrium. It was there, with flowers perfuming the air and water bubbling from
the fountain, that Liljana proposed buying Bemossed.
'We're
only poor players,' she told Mangus, 'but we could give you one of our horses
for him.'
As she
spoke, the sounds of Bemossed tidying up beyond the open door to the healing
chamber suddenly quieted. And Mangus said, 'But what would I want with a horse?
And why would you want to buy a Hajarim?'
He knew
well enough the answer to his question. As Liljana started to say something
about all the dirty tasks involved with a traveling troupe's constantly making
and breaking camp, Mangus held up his hand to interrupt her.
'Mother
Magda,' he intoned as his face fell stern, 'I know there is talk about Bemossed
in the village. But it is only idle talk. The villagers are only simple folk,
and know nothing of the art of healing.'
'Are
you saying that Bemossed is of no help to you?'
Mangus
ran a finger along one of his coils of white hair. He pulled at the cuff of his
tunic. I sensed his great interest in dealing with Liljana. But it must have
occurred to him that if he insisted that Bemossed was of little value, he could
ask only a small price for him.
'Bemossed,'
he said, 'is a great help to me. No one has ever kept our house so clean
My wife and I are very fond of him.'
'But is
he of no help in healing?'
Mangus
looked at Maram and Kane, and then back at Liljana. 'I did not say that. He
helps in ways that you wouldn't understand.'
'Is he
a healer, then?'
'Bemossed?'
Liljana
sidled over to Maram and grasped his arm. She said, 'Garath felt sure that
Bemossed laid his hand upon him. The people of the village have told of such
laying on of hands as well.'
Mangus
now ran his finger along the collar of his crimson tunic as if the
atrium had suddenly grown too hot. He said, 'You should know that this is an
unusual situation and that we have the sanction of the Kallimun. Before my
slave touches anyone, he is purified.'
'Then
he is a healer?'
'No,
certainly not. He does help me, but only as a bandage draws out pus.'
'You
were right,' Liljana said, 'I don't understand.'
Mangus
drew himself up straight and with all his dignity told her, 'Festering sores
such as Garath's are caused by demons attacking the body. Bemossed is one of
the few born able to draw out these demons.'
'Into
his own body?' Liljana asked.
Just
then Bemossed came out of the chamber bearing a soiled basin. He did not look
at me as he crossed the atrium then exited by way of the back door.
'He is Hajarim,'
Mangus said, as if that explained everything. 'And so you must understand, as
these demon-drawers are quite rare, that my slave is very precious to me.'
Indeed,
he was. Although Liljana stood there haggling with Mangus for most of the next
hour, she was able to whittle down the unbelievable price that Mangus asked for
Bemossed only to a slightly less staggering sum:
Forty
ounces, of gold!
I cried
out this number in the silence of my mind. Who had so much money? I thought
that selling Bemossed might very well put an end to Mangus's life as a healer -
which might be exactly what he wanted. Perhaps he intended to retire to a small
estate by the sea or to flee Hesperu altogether.
Forty
ounces of gold!
Liljana
finally threw up her hands in disgust. She looked at me as apologizing for
failing to move Mangus.
Then I
reached into my pocket and drew forth a little bit of metal and stone that was
more than precious to me. It was the ring of a Valari lord: heavy silver set
with four large, brilliant diamonds. On the field of the Raaswash, in sight of
the opposing armies of Ishka and Mesh, my father had put it on my finger to
honor me for completing the quest to find the Lightstone. Since his death,
however, I had not dared to wear it.
'This,'
I said, showing Mangus the ring, 'is surely worth forty gold pieces.'
His
eyes narrowed as he examined it. 'Even if the stones are real, what would I do
with a diamond ring?'
Because
my throat hurt and I could not speak just then, it was Liljana who answered for
me: 'You could sell it, if you wished.'
'You can
sell it if you wish,' he told her. 'I haven't the time, but in Kharun, which is
only thirty miles up the road, there are jewelers and gem sellers. Why don't
you return here when you have the sum that we've agreed upon?'
Although
he smiled at us in a kindly way, his face returned to its usual stern lines,
and he indicated that he would argue with us no further. We had no choice then
but to return to our camp, and this we did.
'Forty
ounces of gold!' I shouted as I stood by the fire that Daj tended. I held the
ring in the flat of my hand as I stared at it. 'How can I trade this for gold?
Am I a diamond seller?'
Diamond
sellers were destitute warriors or knights who sold their rings against the law
of all the Valari kingdoms, and so brought upon themselves and their families
everlasting shame. The worst of thieves were those who waylaid traveling
knights for the treasure that they wore or despoiled fallen warriors of their
glittering armor, and these were counted as diamond sellers, too.
Kane
came over to me and snatched the ring from my hand. His eyes flared with
impatience but with compassion, too. He said to me. 'If you can't sell it, then
I shall, eh? All right?'
I could
not look at him as I nodded my head.
Atara,
who sat by the fire as she repaired one of her arrows, said. 'The ring of a
Valari lord might be recognized as such even in this land. I would hate for one
of the jewelers here to give us away.'
'So,'
Kane said, making a fist around the ring. 'Then I'll chisel the damn diamonds
out of it.'
True to
his word, he went off to break my ring apart. I could not bear the sound of his
hammer beating against iron, and iron cutting open silver. After Kane had
finished this evil work, he came over and said, 'Will you ride with me to
Khaurn?'
'No,' I
told him, 'you go with Liljana. It will be better if I remain here.'
I
watched as Kane and Liljana saddled their horses. It seemed utterly mad to me
that they were setting out with the diamonds of my ring to get gold to buy a
slave.
They
rode away after that. And so, at the edge of the peaceful village of Jhamrul,
in a fallow field where voles burrowed and larks sang, we waited all that day and
most of the next for them to return. We all gave thanks when we saw their
horses cantering back up the lane. With the afternoon sun dropping toward the
hills in the west, they dismounted and Liljana showed me a leather purse full
of forty jangling gold coins.
'I've
never haggled so hard,' she told me, 'I wanted sixty pieces, but with the sack
of Avrian, diamonds are flooding the markets just now. I was lucky to get
forty.'
'All
right,' I said, 'then let us go back to Mangus and hope that he hasn't changed
his mind.'
'If he
has,' Kane growled out, gripping a knife beneath his cloak, 'we'll change it
back for him.'
Mangus,
however, proved true to his word. After we met once again in his atrium and
gave him the gold, he counted out the coins, then said, 'I can't tell you how
hard it is for me to sell my slave. But it is for the best.'
I
thought that he might be speaking truly. I sensed in him a surprising fondness
for Bemossed, and more, his fear for him, as if he dreaded that the Red Priests
might return and take Bemossed away to a much worse fate than he would find
with us.
He
called Bemossed to him then. Bemossed came into the atrium bearing a tied-up
cloth that contained his few possessions: a spare tunic, an owl's feather, an
old tooth and the like - or so Mangus told us. Mangus prepared a paper
attesting to Bemossed's sale. He invited his wife and the other slaves of his
household to bid farewell to him. They all seemed sad to see him go, though I
noted that none of them clasped his hand or embraced him.
'Perhaps
your wanderings will bring you back here someday,' Mangus said to Bemossed.
'But wherever you go, may the grace of the Dragon go with you.'
As we
made our way to the front door, the cold, dead eyes chiselled into the bust of
Morjin seemed to watch our every movement. Bemossed walked like a condemned
man, with his gaze cast down upon the ground. So it was that we made the
Maitreya our slave.
Chapter 36 Back Table of Content Next
It was too late in the day to
break camp and resume our travel, and so we returned to our cart and settled in
to enjoying the delicious dinner that Liljana prepared. She cooked us ham and
maize-bread, green beans in butter and cucumbers sliced up in sour cream and
mint. For dessert we had a rice pudding sweet-ened with honey, cloves and
cinnamon. She determined to welcome Bemossed into our company with foods that
might nourish his body, and a camaraderie of like souls. She amazed him by
giving a piece of bread directly into his hand. He looked upon her, I sensed,
as the mother whom he could hardly remember. It must have been hard for him to
reconcile his obvious warm feelings toward her - and toward Maram, Atara,
Estrella and Daj -with his bitterness at me for buying him and bearing him away
against his will.
That evening, I borrowed
Master Juwain's gelding and gave Bemossed his first riding lesson. As soon as
we could, we would set out to recross the north of Hesperu, abandoning the cart
when we reached the mountains. Bemossed would need to learn his way with
horses. This, I saw, might prove no easy task. Although he had no trouble
gentling the gelding with long strokes of his hand, he nearly refused to mount
the beast. As he put it 'How is it that men think that they can make slaves of
a noble creature and compel him to bear a great weight upon his back?'
These were the greatest
number of words that he had spoken to me since the morning in the meadow. After
I compelled him to place his feet in the horse's stirrups, he spoke to me only
a little and only at need, responding to my questions or commands with quick,
quiet utterances. He never failed to be polite. A score of years as a slave had
taught him the ways of respect, and it seemed to me that he used this
acquiescent manner not so much to placate me as to pierce me with a spear of
guilt over what I had done to him. That he already knew me so well chagrined
me, even as it made me believe that he truly was the one whom we had sought for
so long.
He did not, however, carry
this revenge to my companions. Neither did he befriend them, at least not at
first. In the morning, when we drove our cart out of Jhamrul back toward the
Ghurlan Road, he sat beside Estrella on the seat with me in near silence. He
seemed to listen to the thump of the horses' hooves and the grinding of the
cart's wheels - and to Maram's booming voice as he held forth with Master
Juwain and the others, riding ahead of us. Once, Liljana dropped back to ask
Bemossed the name of some strange vegetables growing in a field off to the side
of the road, and he chatted with her pleasantly enough. And, later that afternoon,
Maram got him to laugh with a recitation of 'A Second Chakra Man'. Bemossed
seemed to bear a great fondness for Maram, and asked him more than once if his
wound might be getting better. I felt him, though, restraining his deeper
affections, for Maram and the rest of us, as a man might clamp down his hand
upon a cut vein. Beginning with his parents, I thought, he had lost too much in
his life to want to risk losing more.
We made a good few miles that
day beneath a clear, hot sky, covering nearly half the distance back toward
Orun. Our plan was to recross the Iona River, and then to lose ourselves on
forest roads and country lanes, cutting the Senta Road well to the north of
Nubur, where we could hardly explain to Goro and Vasul how we had suspiciously
transformed ourselves from pilgrims into a troupe of players. We said nothing
of this plan to Bemossed. Given time, I was sure that we could win him to our
purpose. But for now, as Liljana advised, he must get used to us, and we to
him.
If he remained a mystery to
us, then he must have found many things about us to be more than strange. He
surely wondered why Kane insisted on surrounding our camp with a fence of old
logs and brush, and more, that he remained awake all night, prowling about like
a great cat listening to every sound in the woods around us. Master Juwain, in
various conversations, betrayed his great erudition about a great number of
things, including the healing arts. I could almost hear Bemossed asking himself
how a reader of tarot cards and horoscopes had come by such knowledge. I think
he puzzled as well over the obvious fact that Daj had been born of Hesperu.
When Maram brought up the matter of the Avrian crucifixions, Daj turned toward
the north and said, 'They always promised that if there was another rebellion,
they would nail everyone up on crosses instead of selling them as slaves.'
Atara, I sensed, seemed a
marvel to him - and possibly much more. After dinner that evening she asked him
for help in changing her blindfold. He brought a pot of warm water to her, and
cloth for bathing as well. In the light of an almost full moon, he watched as
she sat on an old log and washed her face. The hideousness of her scarred eye
hollows did not repel him; rather it aroused in him a blazing compassion. He
could scarcely control the quavering of his voice as he said to her: 'Is it
true that in being blinded you gained the second sight?'
'I gained something,' she
said to him. 'At times, my sight is clearer, now.'
'But what do you see? I heard
you telling fortunes in the square. You promised the widow, Luyu, that she
would find happiness and love.'
'I said that she could find
these things. There is always a way. Always a path.'
'Truly? And can you see this
path when you look at someone?'
'Sometimes.'
'As you can see other paths,
through meadows or woods? I've never heard of a blind woman who can see
everything.'
'Not everything, Bemossed. I
can't see you.'
This, I thought, should have
given me great hope, for Atara had told us that the Maitreya always remained
veiled in shadow to her, and so she could not describe the lineaments of his
face. 'Here,' she said to him, 'come closer.'
She bade him to kneel down on
the ground in front of the log, and he reluctantly did as she asked. Then she
reached out toward him, fumbling through naked air until she found his face.
She traced her fingers across his forehead and along the line of his curly
black hair. She pressed lightly upon his dosed eyelids, then touched his fine
nose and flaring cheekbones. She let her palm rest upon his bearded jaw. She
smiled, then told him, 'I think you must be as beautiful as Luyu said you
were.'
Atara's words seemed to stun
him. He gazed at her for a long moment before calling out softly, 'She said
that. . . about a slave?'
'She has eyes,' Atara said
sadly. 'She is a woman, and a widow at that.'
'Yes, but she should not even
have been looking at a Hajarim.'
Atara smiled again and said,
'If I still had eyes, what would I see when I looked at you? Not a Hajarim.
There are no such ones in our company.'
And with that she found his
hand and took hold of it. She brought it up to her face. He needed only the
slightest encouragement to touch the golden hair of her eyebrows and then let
his fingertips come to rest in the empty spaces beneath. She sat I on her log
while he knelt before her, face to face, for what seemed almost forever. I
heard their breaths rise and fall in perfect rhythm with each other. Then a
deep desire that she usually kept hidden poured out of her like a stream of
glowing white iron. I could not tell if it was longing or lust or love - or
perhaps all three. I did not know if Bemossed could feel her burning passion
for life as I did, like a white-hot sword thrust through my belly. He was like
a man discovering a new land of beauty and wonder. He kept touching his
fingertips to her eye hollows, oblivious of time, oblivious of me. I doubted
if he purposed to inflame my jealousy; I doubted as well that he would have
acted otherwise solely because it distressed me.
In truth, I sensed much in
his encounter with Atara that distressed him. His fingers and hands began
trembling, and he seemed barely able to contain his own blazing passions. If
the sun shone all day and all night, I thought, it would incinerate everything
that it touched. I felt him again clamping down on the desire that surged
through him, this time closing off his heart. After resting his hand upon her
cheek, he finally broke off touching her altogether. He wrapped a new blindfold
for her, and tied it around her head. Then he went off to help Estrella comb
the mud out of the horses' coats.
Later that night, before bed,
I stood with Atara in the moonlight. As it had been for most of the miles
since the Skadarak, she still seemed totally blind. I said to her, 'Maram's
wound is no better - do you feel anything, where Bemossed touched you?'
She rested her fingers on her
blindfold and laughed out, 'I think you feel something that you needn't. You've
no cause for worry on this account.'
'I'm not worried,' I told
her.
She reached out to grasp my
hand as when I had first met her and we sat together beneath the stars. She
said to me, 'Bemossed would be an easy man to love, I think, but never as I do
you. He is like the brother I never had.'
She kissed me on the lips,
lightly, and then went off to sleep inside the cart with Liljana and Estrella.
I lay down by the fire, staring up for hours at the silver moon and the bright
arrays of stars. A single question burned through my mind deep into my soul:
Why did it seem to be Bemossed's fate to heal in love and light, while mine
drove me on to strike my sword into others and slay?
In the morning we set out
again to the east. The road led slightly downhill toward the low country around
the Iona River. As I drove the cart, Bemossed sat on the seat opposite me, with
Estrella in between. For hours, he said nothing. He tried not to look at Atara,
riding along on her roan mare ahead of us, or at me. He stared out at the
fields of cotton and the rice bogs, and the occasional stretches of forest,
and I wondered if his service to various masters had ever taken him through
this steamy country. I fell him brooding over matters that he would not speak
of. I sensed in him an anguish of the soul which, strangely, he seemed to
cherish and hold onto, as he did other dark moods and sensations. I thought he
was too much at home inside himself with all the colon of his feelings: the
blue of his awe and sorrow for the world; the violet of his unfulfilled desire;
the red of his great anger toward me.
For most of his life, I thought,
he had necessarily looked to himself alone for any succor or understanding. But
with his touching of Atara, some deep drive to trust others seemed to open
inside him. As the miles passed behind us that long, hot day, I sensed him
finding a deep accord with Estrella, and she with him. He spoke to her of
little things, which she smiled at or commented upon with a flutter of her
fingers or an arching of her eyebrows. And she seemed to speak to him. And not
just to him but of him: her lovely, open face shone as brightly as any mirror,
reflecting the glories of his soul that she found within him. Without being
conscious of this talent, I thought, she showed me Bemossed's kindness, his
compassion, generosity, fire and an otherworldly grace.
But there were darker things,
too: stubbornness, jealousy, and an excruciating sensitivity to other people
and to the world. He carried deep in his eyes intimations of despair and doom.
I sensed that he felt flawed in a fundamental way. Then, too, I think he feared
the long, dark night of the spirit when he found himself cast out into the
deadness of the world and could not find his way back to his secret land. It
came to me, as I saw him touching his fingers to Estrella's throat and his eyes
grew bright and fey, that he sought this abidance through healing. And at least
a part of this primeval urge to make things whole he directed at me. This
amazed me: that despite his ire, despite his dread of my wrath and my fury for
vengeance upon my enemies, he still wished to restore me to my best self and to
bring out in me only the good, the beautiful and the true.
We made camp that night in a
clearing in a wood to the south of the road not five miles from Orun. While
Liljana and Estrella began preparing dinner, Kane galloped off to scout ahead
and ensure that we might make the river crossing without running into King
Arsu's army marching down the road from Avrian. He returned two hours later to
a bowl of stew that Liljana had kept warm for him. Between bites of steaming
okra, maize and beef, he told us, 'The army hasn't passed yet, but it's
expected any day. We'll do well to be up early tomorrow and cross over the
Black Bridge as soon as they open it for taking tolls.'
I might have hoped that Kane
would join us in retiring early, taking a little rest, if not sleep. Instead,
he set up on the side of the cart a painted wooden target. He took out the
seven knives that he had ordered from the smith in Ramlan. They were each long
and tapered to a fine point, perfectly balanced and razor-sharp. He stood on
bracken-covered ground oblivious of the mosquitoes that came out and whined
through the semi-darkness; he hurled his knives spinning through the air,
trying to fit as many as he could into the small, white circle at the center of
the target. The small moon above the trees cast but little light for him to
make out the target's rings. How he worked such magic remained to me a mystery.
Warriors of Mesh cast lances at targets, and used knives to cut meat or other
men, but we rarely learned this art that Kane now displayed with such great
determination and virtuosity.
Later, Liljana brewed up some
tea for us, and for Kane, some thick Khevaju coffee which Bemossed brought to
him steaming in his cup. Everyone except Kane retired soon after that. He took
long slow sips of his dark drink in between his target practice. I tried to
fall asleep to the thunk, thunk, thunk of steel driving into wood. In watching
Kane all ashimmer in the moonlight, in looking over at Bemossed stretched out
in a troubled stillness by the fire, I brooded over the mystery of men. Would
the brilliance of our spirits someday lift us up toward the stars? Or would our
inborn flaws drive deep through our hearts, dividing us against ourselves and
letting in the darkness?
It was in that strange time
between darkness and day that I awoke to a sense that something was wrong.
Mosquitoes whined about me without pity; frogs croaked from some water deeper
in the woods. A faint light suffused the trees and undergrowth, while the fire
had burnt out completely. I sat up to take stock of Master Juwain, Maram and
Daj sleeping near me. Over by the fence surrounding our encampment,
unbelievably, Kane seemed to be sleeping, too. But Bemossed was nowhere to be seen.
My first thought upon noting
this shamed me: that he and Atara had stolen off into the woods together. My
second thought frightened me, for I feared that Bemossed had run away. As
quickly as I could, I stepped over to Kane and bent down to shake him awake.
This proved harder than I would have supposed. When Kane finally opened his
eyes in a burst of consciousness, though, he whipped himself into motion,
sliding out a dagger and nearly disembowelling me before I moved aside and
shouted at him: 'Kane! It is only me - Valashu!' 'Val!' he shouted back. 'Val -
what happened?' Our cries aroused our companions. Maram and Master Juwain came
over to us in a hurry; a few moments later, the door to the cart opened, and
Atara came out with her unstrung bow in her hand. She joined us by the fence,
and so did Estrella and Liljana, Kane rubbed at his eyes and said, 'I don't
know what happened.' When I told of how I had found him, Maram upbraided Kane,
saying, 'You fell asleep, that's what happened. You, the invincible Kane, the
ever-watchful the ever-waking: you finally closed your damn eyes like any other
human being and -'
'So,' Kane growled out. He
sliced his dagger in the air inches from Ma ram's throat as if to silence him.
'I never just fall asleep.'
Liljana noticed Kane's cup
dropped down onto the forest floor near the fence. A residue of coffee stained
its insides. She picked up the cup and sniffed at it. Then she said to Kane, 'I
remember Bemossed bringing you your coffee. He must have slipped a soporific
into it.'
'One of your sleeping
potions, then? You should be more careful Liljana.'
'You should be careful,' she
told him. 'Of what you say. I've kept my medicines safe enough, and so has
Master Juwain.'
She went on to say that she
detected a faint, bittersweet odor of some botanical emanating from the cup,
but it was neither that of mandrake or poppy or anything else familiar to her.
'But many plants here in Hesperu are strange to me. It seems likely that
Bemossed must have stolen a soporific from Mangus before we left Jhamrul.'
'So,' Kane said, hurling the
cup down to the ground, 'I should have smelled it, too.'
And I, I thought, should have
turned my mind toward suspecting that Bemossed might be planning an escape, for
I had surely known it in my heart. And then Atara reminded both me and Kane: 'This
is no time for recriminations. Bemossed is gone - what shall we do?'
'I'll go after him,' Kane
said simply, moving toward the cart to gather up some things. 'He can't have
gotten very far.'
'I'll go, too,' I told him.
'And I,' Maram said.
'No,' Kane commanded him. 'It
won't do for all of us to go running across the countryside getting lost. Stay
here and guard the others. I'll hunt this rabbit best alone.'
After he had packed his
horse's saddlebags with food, water and other necessities, he led the beast
toward some broken undergrowth beyond our camp. He found Bemossed's track
easily enough. It led off toward the south, through the woods.
A few moments later, he
disappeared into the wall of green and left us there wondering what to do. Liljana
immediately impressed Daj and Estrella into helping her prepare breakfast.
Eating good food together, I thought, was her answer to a great many problems.
We waited there in the
clearing through the long hours of the morning as the sun drove the dew from
the grasses and other vegetation, and heated up the air. I listened to the
birds chirping and some chittering squirrels fighting in the branches high overhead.
After a while, I took out my flute and played a few songs. I watched as Liljana
sewed up a rip in Maram's fool's costume and Master Juwain read from the
Saganom Elu. Daj showed Estrella a game that he had invented with Master
Juwain's tarot cards. The day wore on.
By late afternoon, I grew
concerned. It seemed that Kane's 'rabbit' had gotten much farther than Kane had
supposed - either that or Kane had run into some sort of trouble. When evening
darkened the trees and the mosquitoes came out in blood-sucking clouds, I could
not bring myself to eat very much. I stood at Kane's post by the heap of logs
peering through the nearly blackened woods. I listened for the sound of Kane's
horse swishing through the undergrowth; I watched the stars whirl slowly about
the sky, and I waited.
I slept only a little that
night, when Maram relieved me for a few hours. The new day found me back at my
vigil. Because of my tiredness, I was slow to act when I heard at least four
horses clopping along the road hidden by the swath of trees. I commanded Maram
and Daj to gather up Altaru and Fire, and our other mounts, and lead them off
into the forest. This they did. And just in time, for a few moments later, six
soldiers wearing a yellow livery marked with many small red dragons burst into
the clearing. They bore lances, sheathed swords and small, bossed shields. It
seemed that they had espied our cart's tracks in the soft earth leading off the
road and had followed them here.
'Have you any chickens, pigs
or goats?' their grizzled sergeant called out to us.
They were, as we discovered,
a foraging party sent into the countryside to find food for King Arsu's army,
which had finally marched and was nearing Orun. One of the soldiers rode over
to our three packhorses and sized them up with a practiced eye. He offered his
opinion that they could be put to work in the army's baggage train - or at
least slaughtered and cut up for food. It horrified me to learn that these
soldiers of King Arsu ate horse meat. I prayed that Maram and Daj would keep
Altaru from whinnying out a challenge from wherever they had hidden him in the
woods. And our other horses, too. And then the sergeant took pity on us, saying
to his man: 'How are these players to pull their cart without horses?' He
dismounted and walked about our encampment. He went over to the cart, where
Kane's target hung. He noted the seven knives stuck into it. He pulled one of
them free, then backed off a dozen paces. As he squinted, he flung the knife at
the target. It struck the painted wood butt end first, and sprang back into the
air with clang of steel before striking the ground.
'Knives,' he laughed out,
shaking his head. Then he rested his hand on the stacked brush near our wagon
and said, 'You don't need such protections any more - haven't you heard? The
errants have all been crucified and won't be waylaying travelers any more.'
He seemed quite proud of his
accomplishments up in Avrian, and so did his men. Without asking our leave, he
opened up the can's back door to look within. I wanted badly to push him aside
and take out my sword, which I had hidden beneath some bolts off cloth. The
captain and his men wore only the thinnest of scale armor beneath their livery.
I thought that I might be able to cut all of them apart as one of their
butchers might section a requisitioned horse. But Liljana was cleverer than I
and possessed of greater restraint. She found a ham, and presented it to the
sergeant, saying, 'I'm sure everyone is thanking you for making the land safe.
We would ask you to breakfast but we must soon be on our way. But please
consider that we have taken meat together.'
The sergeant smiled at this,
and so did his men. I was sure that they would devour the ham before they had
gone five more miles. Then, at need, they could tell their quartermaster
truthfully that they had been our guests instead of confiscators of supplies
they did not share.
We all breathed easier to see
the soldiers ride off as they had come. When I thought it safe, I called for
Maram and Daj to bring the horses back into the clearing. I explained what had
happened, then said, 'It seems that the army will encamp in Orun tonight, and
so it's not safe for us to go on.'
'It's clearly not safe for us
to remain here, either,' Maram said. He sighed, then added, 'And I was hoping
to have that ham for dinner.'
We all had greater concerns
than missing victuals. We worried that Bemossed or Kane might have encountered
other soldiers fanning out along the river. Perhaps Bemossed lay dead or dying
in some stinking rice bog with a spear wound though his belly; perhaps Kane had
been cut off from returning or had been captured.
The passing hours heaped
worry upon worry like a growing stack of lead weights upon our chests. When
evening came and still Kane remained absent, the long night wreaked upon us an
excrutiating dread that slowly tightened like the turning of a torturer's screw
around our skulls. None of us slept very well. We awoke at dawn to whining
mosquitoes, aching heads and a wall of mist that clung to the greenery of the
woods. I knew that we could not bear to remain another day in this place,
waiting and doing nothing.
In silence, I brought forth
Alkaladur to begin my morning sword practice. The rising sun warmed the woods
only a little, and did not burn off the mist. And then, after a couple hours, I
heard the noise of a horse clopping along the road. The noise came closer as
the horse obviously turned into the woods straight toward us. A few moments
later, Kane's horse broke from the mist, and I saw Kane sitting grimly upon his
back. A rope tied to the horse's saddle trailed behind a few yards and pulled
upon the bound body of Bemossed. I had to blink my eyes, to make sure it really
was Bemossed, staggering along behind Kane and half-hidden in the mist. Mud
caked his curly hair and covered his face, arms and his tunic. His bare legs
seemed to have been cut by thorns, and streaks of blood had washed away some of
the mud staining them. He bled from his chest, as well. There, the irons that
Kane had locked around his arms and back had abraded his tunic and opened up
his flesh. I ground my teeth in horror at this sight; I had sent Kane after the
Maitreya - or at least a great, free spirit - and he had brought him back to us
in chains.
I rushed forward and swung my
sword at the rope, parting it like air. I placed my hand upon Bemossed's back,
but he -shook me oft insisting upon walking into our encampment of his own
power, I shouted at Kane: 'Unlock him! You had no need to put chains upon
him!'
'No need!' Kane growled at
me. He came inside our brush work fortifications and dismounted. He sat
Bemossed down upon a log. He gripped the chain pinioning Bemossed's arms
against his chest, and he shook Bemossed and snapped at me, 'So, what do you
know of need? This rabbit ran faster and farther than I could have guessed. And
when I finally caught him, he fought me like a trapped rat. There was no other
way to bring him back, and so I'm not sorry for that.'
'Well, he is back,' I said,
'so unlock him.'
'No - he'll just try to run
away again.'
'Unlock him, Kane!'
Kane shoved his savage face
closer to mine and glared at me. But then I glared at him, and flung all his
fury back at him, and something more. Finally, he looked away from me and
muttered, 'Unlock him yourself, if you want.'
He brought forth a key and
slapped it into my hand. Then he stalked off toward the fire as he called out,
'Maram! Where's that damn brandy you've been hiding away?'
After I had taken the chains
off Bemossed, Liljana came forward with some tea for him to drink. But he
refused to take it. All he seemed able to say was: 'Leave me alone.'
'But you have to drink
something,' Liljana said. 'And eat some breakfast, too. And we have to get you
cleaned up! Daj, go fetch some water from the stream and put it to boil so that
-' 'Leave me alone!' Bemossed shouted at her. The force of will that poured out
of him stunned me. I stood gripping the bloody chains that I had taken off him.
Atara, waiting nearby, turned her blindfolded face toward him with a look of
great concern. Master Juwain paused in making ready the needle and thread and
other gleaming instruments he might need to tend to Bemossed's wounds. Estrella
knelt down on the muddy ground by Bemossed's feet. It amazed me that he allowed
her to take hold of his hand.
'I'm sorry it came to this,'
I said to him. 'Sorry, too, that we had to take you with us. But Taras is right
- it couldn't be helped.'
Bemossed stared at me then.
The hurt in his soft brown eyes wounded me deeper than any accusation could
have.
'It is for the best,' I told
him. 'I know you don't understand.'
'You,' he finally said to me,
'don't understand. You speak to me of freedom - and then you make me your
slave! You can put me in chains or cut out my tongue or crucify me, but you are
more of a slave than I!'
His words shocked me, but I
knew exactly what he meant. So, I thought, did Atara and Maram, and everyone
else. I said to him, 'We didn't mean to keep you a slave. As to our eyes,
truly, you are not. We hoped you would come to trust us and then -'
'You think what you did makes
me trust you?'
He looked at me with such a
deep searching of his soul that I could not bear it. Something broke inside me
then. I turned toward Kane and rattled the chains in the air. I called out,
'No, not this way - this cannot be the way!'
Kane said nothing as he
stared at me through the fire's hot flames.
I flung the chains to the
ground. I turned back to Bemossed and told him, 'All right - you are free,
then!'
He smiled sadly at this as he
rubbed his wounded chest. 'Free of the irons, and I suppose I should thank you
for that. But still free to go only where you make me to go.'
'No, you misunderstand me,' I
told him. 'You are free. We will make out a deed of manumission.'
His eyes locked onto mine.
'Truly?'
'Truly,' I told him.
I held out my hand for him to
grasp, but before he could act, Kane stalked over from the fire and knocked his
forearm against mine. He growled at me, 'What are you doing?'
'As I said,' glancing at
Bemossed, 'I'm giving him his freedom.'
'No, you can't.'
'You're right, I can't,' I said.
'I can't give him what he already possesses. Men are born free, and free they
remain.'
'Do you think so?'
'We don't make slaves of men,
Kane!'
Kane bent down to pick up the
chains on the ground, and now he shook them at me. 'We do what we have to do, eh?
There was no other choice.'
'No, this is wrong,' I said,
striking my fist into the chains. 'There must be another way.'
'Just letting him go, then?'
Kane hurled the chains spinning toward the cart, which they struck with a
jangle of iron links and dented wood. 'I won't let him go - go off to be
captured or killed by the bloody Red Priests! Do you know how far I've come to
find him?'
The dark flame burning up his
eyes told of a journey across the stars and across the ages. I did not know how
I could put it out. 'The Beast murdered Godavanni!' he shouted in anguish. 'He
caused Issayu to jump from a tower onto the rocks of the sea! I won't let him
take this one! I won't lose him, do you understand?' So saying, he whipped free
his sword from its sheath and faced me. I clenched my fingers around the black
jade of my sword's hilt. The line between anguish and madness, I knew, was
thinner than Alkaladur's flaming edge.
At the same moment that his
hand darted out to grasp hold of my sword arm, my hand locked onto his. We
stood there in the quiet woods in the misty morning, pulling at each other and
testing each other's strength.
'Kane!' Liljana shouted. 'You
let go of him - let go right now!'
But Kane, I thought, as his
black eyes burned into mine, would never let go if that meant freeing my arm so
that I might strike out at him.
'Val! You let go, too!'
'No!' I shouted.
'Val, please,' Master Juwain
said to me. 'Let go so we can make sense of this!'
If I let go, I knew that Kane
might strike his sword into me.
'Val!' Atara called out. 'Let
him go!'
Just then Estrella darted
forward, and ducked beneath Kane's and my locked arms. She squeezed her slender
body between us as she pushed one hand against Kane's chest and the other
against mine. There came a moment when the fire filling up Kane's eyes cooled,
slightly. I let go of my sword, and heard it strike the earth. Then I let go of
Kane's arm and told him, 'Kill me, if you must, but you will let Bemossed go
free!'
As Liljana stepped forward to
pull Estrella away from us, I waited to see what Kane would do. He stood
staring at me in wonder, and my heart raced In great surging pulses. His eyes
grew hot and wild - but no wilder, I thought, than my own. His breath steamed
from his lips with a bitterness that I could almost taste. He hated, I knew,
but his wrath slowly boiled away beneath the blaze of an even greater thing.
'So, Val,' he said to me. He
sheathed his sword and then bent to pick up mine. He pressed it into my hand.
'Valashu Elahad. I will let Bemossed go, will I? Ha - I suppose I will! But
what then? Are we to let one man go free, only to watch the whole of Ea become
enslaved?'
Bemossed, I thought, had
heard a great deal that we had not intended for him to hear, at least not yet.
He had seen the flaming of my sword's silustria. If he told of this to anyone,
the Red Priests would surely find out and try to hunt us down. It didn't
matter. If he went off on his own, it would be the end of everything anyway.
And so, after taking a long,
deep breath, I began to explain who we really were and why we had come to
Hesperu. I could not give a full accounting of our journeys and trials, for
there was too much to tell. But I gave him our names and the lands of our
births; I said that Master Matai, of the Brotherhoods, had pointed us toward
the Haraland of Hesperu in our quest for the Maitreya.
'Thank you ... Valashu,'
Bemossed said to me at last. He gazed at me for at least a full minute. 'Thank
you for trusting me. But there is still much that makes me confused.'
He picked off a little of the
mud encrusting his arm and shot me a troubled look. And I said to him, 'Speak,
then. We haven't much time.'
He nodded his head, then
forced out: 'You say that this Master Matai and the oracle at Senta led you to
me. But I know nothing of the Maitreya.'
His face, at that moment, was
open and full of puzzlement, I sensed no guile in him. I remembered lines of
the verse that Master Juwain had told to me:
The Shining One
In innocence sleeps. .
'You know yourself,' I said
to him. 'You know what is within you.'
'But how can that lead you to
the Maitreya?'
I exchanged a quick look with
Master Juwain. Although it seemed impossible, Bemossed obviously had no idea of
why we had sought him out.
Master Juwain said to him,
'I'm afraid you don't understand. You are the Maitreya. At least we have good
reason to believe you might be.'
Bemossed stared at Master
Juwain and me as if we had eaten poisoned mushrooms and fallen completely mad.
'I ?' he called out at last.
'You think I am the Maitreya? The great Shining One? Do you know nothing?'
'We know what we have heard,'
I said, thinking of the golden songs that rang throughout Senta's caverns. 'We
know what has been prophesied, and what we have seen.'
'What have you seen, then?
What have you heard? Have your wanderings kept you ignorant of all that has
happened? Haven't you heard that Lord Morjin has been proclaimed as the
Maitreya?'
It took me a moment before
the tightening of my throat allowed my fury to pour out of me: 'Morjin? That
cursed Crucifier? You think Morjin is the Maitreya?'
Bemossed looked at my sword,
which I still clutched in my hand. He gasped in dread as blue flames erupted
from the silus-tria and writhed in swirls all along its length. I quickly slid
the blade back into its scabbard, which extinguished this little bit of
hellfire.
'You hate him, don't you?' he
said to me.
The only answer that I could
summon then was a single word: 'Yes.'
'Many do,' he said. 'But it
is his priests who are evil, not he.'
I drew in a breath of moist
air and said, 'Do you really think so?'
He looked down at his dirty,
scratched hands, then gazed off into the misty forest. 'I know almost nothing
of the Dark Lands, but too much of my land. I was born into great injustice,
and things have grown only worse. The Kallimun priests, with King Arsu's
consent, torture Hesperu. They torture the whole world. They have made of
everything a foul disease. All in Lord Morjin's name - but against his will.'
I looked at Master Juwain,
who could hear nothing in his ruined ear because of Morjin's will. I looked at
Liljana, who could not smile. Then I looked at Bemossed and asked him, 'Why do
you think the Red Priests act without Morjin's consent?'
He shrugged his shoulders and
told us, 'The Master - Mangus - always said that men cannot bear perfection,
and so out of envy will do their best to sully and destroy it.'
At this, Kane growled out,
'But Mangus seemed on good enough terms with the Kallimun. He spoke well of the
damn Red Priests!'
'So it is everywhere now,'
Bemossed sighed out. 'So it must be. In the village square or within the
hearing of others, one must say one thing. But in one's house among family, and
in the privacy of the heart, one says another.'
'But what do you say?' I
asked him. 'Do you believe that Morjin is perfect?'
'If he is the Maitreya, he
must be,' he said simply. 'I have read and reread the Darakul Elu. Everything
in Lord Morjin's words speaks of his desire for perfection.'
I ground my teeth at this and
said, 'Desire or not, why should you think that he has succeeded and he isn't
the poisoned well that his priests draw all their evil from?'
'Because in the Black Book,'
he told me, 'especially in its heart, in the Songs of Light, I have felt such
love. And because .. .'
His voice died off into the
little sounds of the woods. And I said to him, 'Yes?'
He waved his hand at an oak
tree at the edge of the clearing, then reached down to touch a broken fern that
we had trampled under. And he said, 'Because the world cannot be a cruel jest.
The One created it as a gift to us and not a torment. Soon Lord Morjin will
rule over all lands, even the Dark ones. If he was evil, then evil would
prevail, not just in enslavements or crucifixions of the unfortunate, but with
everyone - and everywhere, forever. The One could never allow this to be.'
Master Juwain, who had more
liking for philosophical arguments than I did, said to Bemossed: 'If the One
could never permit this, and the Red Dragon is but the One's eyes and hands,
then how can the Dragon permit his priests to do what they do, in his name?'
'Because,' he said simply,
'Lord Morjin's priests have defiled his good name and all that he is. But he is
the Maitreya. And so when he comes into his power, he will come into Hesperu,
and into all lands. He will purge the evil from his priesthood, and restore the
world.'
I could not bear any longer
to hear such things. And so I stared at Bemossed and said, 'It was Morjin who
crucified my mother.'
'No, that cannot be. One of
his priests, perhaps, acting upon his own -'
'Bemossed!' I shouted. I
motioned for Daj to lead Atara over to us. I lay my hand upon her face and
said, 'Look at her! Morjin did this to her!'
'No, no,' he murmured as he
gazed at her. 'No, no.'
I grabbed onto his hand and
pulled him so that he looked back at me. I said, 'He is the Red Dragon, the
Lord of Lies. He is the Great Beast. It was Morjin, with his own hands, who
took her eyes!'
I told him of how we had gone
into Argattha to gain the Lightstone, and of how Morjin had tortured Master
Juwain, Ymiru and Atara. I knew that he heard the truth of what I said. His
fingers grasped at mine as his whole body began to tremble and he wept without
restraint.
Then he asked Atara, 'Is it
as Valashu has said?'
'It is worse,' she told him.
'I'm sorry,' he said to her.
He took hold of her with his free hand. 'The Dragon took your eyes, and yet it
is I who have been blind.'
'You've nothing to be sorry
about,' she told him.
'I don't know - perhaps I
shouldn't have run away.'
He stood up to face her, and
he lay his hands over her temples, where the white bandage pressed her golden
hair. He looked at her with great gentleness, even as something hard and
hurtful knotted up inside him.
And she said to him, 'We had
hoped. . .'
He took his hands away from
her and shook his head sadly. 'I cannot be the one you hope me to be.'
'But we had heard that you
healed a great lord's daughter. When she was near to death. You laid your hands
upon her and -'
'No, you don't understand,'
he said. 'I can heal no one. It is not as you must think.'
'How is it, then?'
Bemossed held his hand up to
the sun's rays burning down through the thinning mist. He said, 'A spectacle's
lens gathers light and strengthens it, but in itself illuminates nothing. I am
such a lens, and nothing more. There are times ... when everything is utterly
clear. Then there is Ughtij§ there is always tight, but sometimes it shines so
brilliantly. Within it is everything. The design for all things, in their
wholeness, in their being, in their joy. This light is such a joy. It is that
which touches those I lay my hands upon, not I. But when I am utterly clear, I
touch upon it, for a moment. It is like touching the One itself. It is like . .
the whole world is beautiful and can never be full of ugliness or hurt again.
Then, and only then, I am perfect. Then it all passes through me, like
lightning, and sometimes people are healed. They call this a miracle.'
He fell silent, and we gazed
at him in utter silence. At last Master Juwain said to him, 'So it would be
with the Maitreya.'
'But so it is with many
people,' Bemossed said.
'No, not many - your gift is
quite rare.'
'Surely it is not. Surely
many others can do as I do. They just don't speak of it.'
He went on to say that once
he had lived in the south, near Khevaju, and had known of three young healers
who had disappeared into the Kallimun fortress there.
'Everyone is afraid to appear
as different, and who can blame
them?'
'In the Free Kingdoms,'
Master Juwain said, 'people have no such fear, and yet I know of no one able to
heal as you do.'
Bemossed smiled sadly at this
and said, 'If they do not fear the Kallimun, then they fear themselves. That
which they will not touch. Surely, no man or woman exists who cannot be open to
what shines from the One?'
'If that is true,' Master
Juwain said, 'then what is the Maitreya?'
Bemossed shrugged his
shoulders and said, 'He is not the lens, but the light.'
The two of them contended in
a like manner for a while. I joined in this argument, and so did Maram and
Liljana. We could not quite convince Bemossed that he might be the Maitreya; we
could not quite convince ourselves. But there still seemed no better course
than to take him away from Hesperu. And so I finally said to him, 'You now know
what we feared to tell you, and with good reason. What will you do? Will come
with us?'
Bemossed picked another scab
of mud off his skin, and then looked off into the forest. He said, 'This is my
land. As cruel as it is, as cruel as it has been to me, it is still my home.'
'Then come back to it,' I
said. 'In strength, after we've stopped Morjin. You can do nothing for your
people, now.'
'I don't know,' he said.
'There was Taimu, the miller's son, whose leg was shattered almost beyond
repair. There was Ysanna, who was only a breath away from dying.'
'In the lands we must pass
through,' I told him, 'you will find no lack of people who are ailing or close
to death.'
'I don't know,' he said, looking
up at the sky.
Master Juwain gripped a pair
of tweezers in his hand, and said to him, 'Whatever you are, whatever your gift
might be, I believe that the Grandmaster of my order might be able to help
bring it forth in all its glory. With the aid of the gelstei we call the seven
openers. Then you might be able to claim control of the Lightstone, even across
a thousand miles. Think what a lens that would be!'
I felt Bemossed's heart
quicken, and his eyes brightened. But he shook his head as if he couldn't
believe what Master Juwain had said might be possible.
'I don't know,' he said
again. 'I just don't know.'
He stared at the mad colors
of the cart as he seemed to listen to the weet-trit-weet of a swallow singing
from the branch of a nearby tree. Then he looked at me and asked, 'Why have you
kept the minstrel hidden all these days?'
I started to give the usual
excuse about Thierraval's shyness and retiring ways, but Bemossed's hurt look
reminded me that I must try to be truthful with him in all things.
And so I said, 'The
minstrel's real name is Alphanderry. And he is not as other men.'
'What is wrong with him?'
Bemossed asked.
'Nothing is wrong,' I told
him. I sensed in him a strange dread burning through his belly. So I asked him,
'What is wrong with you?'
'Only that I feared you had
done something to the minstrel. As I supposed you wished to do to me.'
'What do you mean?'
He shrugged his shoulders and
smiled at me. 'Because you are from the Dark Lands, as I thought of them, I
supposed you wanted to use me in some evil rite. It is said that demons there
castrate men against their will and make of them women for their pleasure, and
do even worse things.'
I stared at him in disbelief.
'I have been marked,' he
said, touching the black cross tattooed into his forehead. 'In any case, people
have always singled me out. I see the way they look at me. I know there is
something about me they can't bear. And so who better to choose for a strange
rite?'
I wanted to laugh at this
almost as much as I wanted to weep. Instead, I asked Maram to open the door to
the cart. Then I called for Alphanderry to come out and make Bemossed's
acquaintance.
From twenty yards away,
seemingly attired in rich velvets and wool, Alphanderry appeared much as any
other man. But as he came closer, the colors of his skin and curly hair seemed
to grow ever more vivid and almost too real. When he closed the distance and
stood next to the log upon which Bemossed sat, he fairly glowed. His large eyes
filled with light - and so did his lips, cheeks and forehead.
'Bemossed,' he said, bowing,
'it is my pleasure.'
Bemossed stared at him in
wonder. He said to him, 'They call me the Maitreya, but it is you who shines!'
Alphanderry laughed at this
in a rich musk that poured from his throat. He seemed to look deep into
Bemossed's being as if layers of flesh were as nothing to him.
'Who are you?' Bemossed asked
him.
'Hoy - who are you? The
Maitreya, they say. Well, we can only hope.'
It came time to tell of the
Timpum, those strange, luminous beings that shimmered through all of Ea's
vilds. Were they really the children of the Galadin or seeds of light that the
Galadin had bestowed upon the earth? And could these seeds somehow blossom into
a human being whose substance seemed pure radiance? We didn't know. All that we
could explain to Bemossed was that Flick had somehow become very much like our
old friend, Alphanderry.
'What are you?' Bemossed
asked him.
Alphanderry's warm, wide
smile invited friendship, even intimacy. Bemossed gathered up his courage and
reached out to take hold of Alphanderry. With his delight of touching of hand
to hand, he was like a child with a new game. But it was still impossible to
apprehend Alphanderry in this way. Bemossed's hand passed right through him as
if he had thrust it into a pool of glimmering water.
He almost fell off his log
then. And he said to Alphanderry, 'If you are made of light, you must be the
Maitreya-'
'The Maitreya?' Alphanderry
said. 'Hoy - I am a minstrel.'
'But -'
'You are made of light, too.
Everything is. I heard you tell Valashu this.'
'But -'
'I am not here to argue,'
Alphanderry said, 'but to sing. What shall I sing of?'
He didn't wait for an answer,
but only smiled as he intoned:
The Shining One
In innocence sleeps.
Inside his heart Angel
fire sleeps,
And when he wakes
The firre leaps.
About the Maitreya
One thing is known:
That to himself
He always is known
When the moment comes
To claim the Lightstone.
Alphanderry stopped singing
and looked at Bemossed. And he asked him, 'What will it take, I wonder, to wake
you up?'
And with that, he vanished
into nothingness.
An astonished Bemossed stood
up, looked around and asked, 'Where did he go?'
'I don't know,' I told him.
I stared at the cross shining
from his forehead, and I couldn't help remembering my mother's arms stretched
out and her hands nailed to a piece of wood.
Where does the light go, I wondered, when the light goes out?
Bemossed stared back at me,
at the lightning bolt scar cut into my forehead, and the deeper wound cut into
my eyes. I never told him, with words, how desperately I needed him by my side
in the final battles that soon must be fought. He knew it even so. A lovely light
came into his eyes as he smiled me. I felt my heart quicken and my breath
whispering like a cool wind even as the old pain in my chest died away.
'Valashu,' he said, holding
out his hand to me. 'I have decided: I will come with you as far as the Brotherhood's
school, and perhaps farther.'
We clasped hands then and
stood there smiling at each other. In him I sensed much of Karshur's strength,
Yarashan's verve and Asaru's grace and goodness. He was like the brother I no
longer had.
'And I,' I told him, 'will go
with you, even to the end of all things.'
After that he clasped hands
with each of the others as we welcomed him into our company. It grieved me only
a little to see him embrace Atara and kiss her lips. Then Kane shocked him,
coming up to crush Bemossed's slender body to him and kissing him. And he
growled out, 'When you ran, I fell mad like a rabid dog. Will you forgive me?'
'Will you forgive me for
biting you?'
They laughed together then,
Bemossed's gentle tones as warm as a summer rain and Kane's voice breaking from
him like thunder. It was a happy moment, full of soaring spirits and hope.
It took most of the next two
hours for Liljana to help clean up Bemossed and Master Juwain finally to tend
his wounds. After we had broken camp and everything was packed away, I hitched
Altaru to the cart and patted his neck as I told him, 'All right old friend.
Let's see if we can find our way back home.'
But this, it seemed, was not
to be. Just as we were setting out, I heard an unwelcome noise through the trees,
and quickly drawing closer. From the direction of the road came the beat of
horses' hooves against stone. Then soldiers burst into the clearing again, and
this time there were many more of them.
Chapter 37 Back Table of Content Next
At the head of these armed men rode Lord Rodas, who was now in command of this district's magicians, alchemists, dancers, augurers and courtesans - and traveling troupes such as ours. It seemed that he had grown in power in the days since he had extorted silver from us on our crossing of the Black Bridge. Upon seeing this scrawny New Lord in his silks and gold embroidery, I gathered that he had been successful in a scheme to slander Lord Olum and see him ruined. He made his way toward our cart as if he had been elevated to lordship over all the Haralanders, and not just a few ragged outcasts. His six hirelings in their hideous purple and yellow livery accompanied him as before, but so did twenty of King Arsu's men-at-arms. They wore weapon-scarred bronze armor and bore shields and lances that looked well-used. It seemed that Lord Rodas had begged King Arsu to detach this company in his charge in order to 'escort' us to the army's encampment just outside of Orun.
Lord Rodas's gaze swept from the cart to Bemossed, now wearing a fresh tunic that hid most of his scrapes and cuts. Lord Rodas said to me: 'I see you've acquired this man since our last meeting. You must be doing well, though with the price of slaves falling so low, I suppose even poor players such as yourselves can afford one, if only a Hajarim.'
He brought out a purse full of jangling coins and bounced them in his hand.
'The King has asked to see you, and has given me coin in pledge of your performance,' he told us.
'We are honored that
King Arsu requests this,' I said, feeling the sweat running down my sides, 'but
our way lies opposite from Orun.'
'It is
not the King's request,' Lord Rodas told me, 'but his command. And
mine. As it is also my command that your way not take you out of the Haraland.
Now, come! The King is returning to his encampment, and we must prepare for his
arrival.'
I eyed
the twenty soldiers sitting on top of their horses. Unless we were willing to
fight them all and managed to kill them to the last man, we had no choice but
to go with Lord Rodas into the very last place in Hesperu that we wished to go.
I
nodded at Kane then, and he nodded back his affirmation that a battle at this
time would be too great a chance.
And so,
with ten of the soldiers riding behind us, and ten more with Lord Rodas and his
hirelings out in front, we made our way onto the Ghurlan Road. A stiff wind
rose up to blow away the mist from the walls of trees lining our way.
The birds nesting there chirped and sang in the peace of the late morning.
Bemossed sat with me on the seat of the cart, and appeared to be listening to
them - or perhaps to the drumbeat of his heart. The grinding of the cart's
wheels turning over worn stone reminded me that time itself was grinding on and
on, and pulling us inexorably toward our fate.
By the
time we passed through the rice bogs and finally reached Orun, the sun burned
up the blue sky like a gout of Galda fire flung up by a catapult. We turned
south onto the great road running along the Iona River. King Arsu's army had
encamped in some pasturage off to the right of the road a couple miles outside
of the city. Their hundreds of tents spread out in neat arrays like a little
city of its own across fields of grass, all churned-up and muddy from the tramp
of many horses' hooves and the boots of thousands of men.
Upon
seeing this, Maram nudged his horse up close to me and muttered, 'Into the
belly of the beast, once again - oh, too bad, too bad!'
'It
will be all right,' I told him. 'We've only to perform as we have a dozen times
already. And then we'll find a way to go on.'
'Do you
think so? I'm afraid that this will be our last performance.'
'One
way or the other,' I said, smiling, 'the last.'
'Don't
jest, please. I can't believe that we were stupid enough to pose as players.'
'But it
was your idea.'
'I
know, I know,' he muttered. 'My stupid, stupid idea.'
Lord
Rodas led us down through the lanes formed by the many rows of tents. Outside
them stood King Arsu's soldiers, cleaning their armor or sharpening their
spears 1 or roasting meats over little fires, playing dice, or swatting at
flies and grumbling, as soldiers do. They cast us curious looks as we passed
by, I gazed back at them with an even greater curiosity, which I tried to
conceal. My eyes drank in the length of their spears and the size of their
shields: rounds of thinnish-looking wood that I did not think would hold up
very well beneath the cut and sweep of steel kalamas. I looked for the weak
places in their fish-scaled armor; I watched a few companies of these
battle-worn Hesperuks at drill, standing too close to each other as they locked
shields in a dense block of men many ranks deep bristling with iron spear
points. It seemed that it would be hard to attack such an armored block -almost
as hard as it would be for them to maneuver. I noted, however, that all of King
Arsu's men seemed to move to a fierce and relentless discipline.
At last
we came to the camp's center: a great square formed by the soldiers' tents with
the pavilions of King Angand and Arch Uttam standing on either side of King
Arsu's pavilion, to the south. Smaller tents of prominent commanders were arrayed
nearby. Many banners flapped in the strong wind. A pole flying a bright yellow
one emblazoned with a great red dragon had been planted in the earth just
outside of King Arsu's pavilion: a vast, billowing monstrosity of purple silk
sewn with gold. King Angand's pavilion was of sky blue, as was the field of the
banner displaying his emblem: a white heart with wings. Of all the Dragon
kings, only King Angand had kept his family's ancient arms, because only he had
possessed the foresight to make alliance with Morjin freely, instead of being
forced to swear fealty to him.
Across
the square from King Arsu's pavilion, vendors from Orun had arrived to set up
carts, stalls and small tents of their own. Most of these were food sellers,
offering fresh fruits, tarts and various roasted meats. The Harlanders were
fond of a strong-tasting riverfish called the katouj. It seemed we couldn't go
ten yards without passing some old woman frying up this foul-smelling fish in
pan of sizzling oil. The Haralanders ate it piping hot, on slices of salted
bread slathered with a hot greenish sauce that looked like toad slime. It
occurred to me that a people who could consume such fare could endure almost
anything.
As we
moved through the square, I counted scarcely two hundred of Orun's citizens
standing about eating with the soldiers. If this had been anywhere in Mesh - or
in Ishka, Taron or Kaash - the whole city would have famed out to greet the
realm's warriors.
But
most of the soldiers that King Arsu had summoned for the assault upon Avrian
were levies from the south. These darker, shorter men looked upon the
Haralanders with contempt even as the Haralanders did them, though of course in
secret. The few Haraland contingents of this army, as I soon learned,
were those who had proved themselves again and again in fanatical devotion to
their king.
The
arrogance of all the soldiers hung in the air like a charge before a
thunderstorm. They bullied their way to the front of the food queues or charged
about on their horses so that people had to leap out of their way to keep from
being trampled. I thought that King Arsu had been wise to recruit mostly
Haraland men for the army that had invaded Surrapam five hundred miles to the
north - what better way of removing the most resentful and bellicose of his
subjects without having to nail them to crosses?
Lord
Rodas led us to a place reserved for us in the center of the line of carts.
Here gathered the performers summoned to show their skills to King Arsu and
King Angand. Lord Rodas commanded us to await the arrival of the King, who was
off at the local Kallimun school to consecrate a great new statue of Morjin.
The captain of the twenty soldiers in Lord Rodas's charge informed him that his
men had completed their escort and had better things to do than to watch over a
troupe of ragged players. Without waiting for Lord Rodas's consent, they rode
off toward their tents, leaving Lord Rodas and his hirelings as our guards.
Lord
Rodas, with a false largesse, bought us all servings of katouj, which we forced
down with false smiles of gratitude. Although it seemed that many people in the
encampment had turned their gazes upon us, common sense told me that we
attracted no more attention than we should have expected as heralded players.
Even so, Maram fell so nervous that he could hardly eat - for him, a rare
affliction. He stood next to me, fairly gagging on the green katouj as he
grumbled, 'Why is everyone watching us?'
He
caught Daj staring at a mounted knight across the square, and murmured to him,
'What's the matter with you? Keep your eyes down!'
But it seemed that
Daj could not help staring at this knight for a surge of hatred washed through
him, and he stood trembling like a cat waiting to fight. I came over to him and
wrapped my arm around him as I whispered, 'What is the matter?'
And he
whispered back, 'That man killed my father and my brothers. He sold my mother
and sisters into slavery. And me.'
I bowed
my head at this. His suffering, I realized, burned no less terribly than did my
own.
The
knight whom he had been regarding, I sensed, took too great an interest in us.
On top of a snow-white stallion, he rode slowly along the rows of soldiers
kneeling down in front of the tents as they awaited their king. He seemed to be
searching the ranks for any sign of disorder, or indeed of displeasure, in any
of these men who had been honored to attend the day's celebrations. He gripped
in his fist a long lance, with which he pointed here or there, as if to chasten
individual soldiers to hide the boredom in their eyes or sit up straighter. His
bronze fish scales had been polished to a blinding sheen, as had his helm,
crested with green peacock feathers. His golden surcoat showed a half-sized red
dragon that proclaimed him as a lord of some importance. He wore a blood-red
cape. Many of the townsfolk from Orun could not bear his gaze and turned away
from him. He guided his horse over to the foodsellers' stalls, casting men and
women dark looks as if he suspected them of disloyalty to the King or even of
being assassins. And all the while, with dartings of his dark eyes, he kept
glancing at Daj and me and the others of our company - and particularly at
Bemossed.
At last
he worked his way over to us. Lord Rodas, who had dismounted, saluted this man
and called out, 'Lord Mansarian -this is the troupe I told you about! Here we
have Kalinda, the fortune teller, and Mother Magda and Garath the Fool.'
Lord
Rodas presented each of us in turn, and Lord Mansarian stared at each of us, in
turn. He seemed tall, for a Hesperuk, and thick in his limbs and body. His face
was like a hammer, all blunt and scarred, and his eyes drove into each of us
like nails. As his gaze fell upon me, I thought that I had never seen a
harder-looking man, not even in Argattha.
'Arajun,'
he said, staring down at me. His voice came out all hoarse and raspy, like a
wheeze of ill wind. The scars seaming his heavily bearded throat suggested that
he had been badly wounded there. 'Arajun, the flute player - is that right?'
'He
pipes like a bird,' said Lord Rodas, who had never heard me play. I saw that
Lord Rodas had begun to sweat, whether from the hot katouj sauce or the sun or
his fear, it was hard to say.
'And you, Jaiyu,'
Lord Mansarian said to Daj. 'You are of the Haraland, are you not?'
Daj
nodded his head as he kept his gaze on Lord Mansarian's boots.
'Where
in the Haraland, then?'
'Ghurlan,'
Daj said, naming the one large city in the north that had never rebelled
against King Arsu. It pained him not at all, I sensed, to tell this lie.
'And
how did you come to be with this troupe?'
'My
mother died in childbirth,' he lied again. 'When my father passed on, too,
Teodorik and Mother Magda adopted me into their troupe and took me into other
lands.'
Lord
Mansarian nodded his head at this as he stared at Master Juwain and Liljana. I
gave thanks that he appeared not to recognize Daj, who had been very young
when Lord Mansarian's men had enslaved him.
Then
Lord Rodas gathered up his courage and pointed at Liljana as he told Lord
Mansarian, 'Are you still looking for healers? As you can see, there are none
with this troupe, and certainly no young ones - just an old potionist.'
I felt
Liljana restraining her ire at being called old. I felt, too, Lord Mansarian
fighting very hard not to look at Bemossed, even as Bemossed struggled to keep
his eyes cast down upon the ground.
Lord
Mansarian sat on his horse above us, and I sensed within him a great turmoil of
anguish and hate. He seemed to keep locked inside his heart some fearful thing
that he did not want anyone to see. The tension between him and Bemossed grew
tighter and tighter, like that of a great weight pulling on a grappling hook
buried in his chest. At last his eyes stabbed into Bemossed, and he stared at
him. Then he pointed his lance at him and called out, 'Lord Rodas! The King
will arrive soon, and it would be best if he did not have to look upon this
Hajarim. Keep him out of sight!'
'Yes,
my Lord!' Lord Rodas called back, bowing so deep that he practically scraped
the ground. It seemed he had forgotten that he, himself, had been made a lord.
Without
another word. Lord Mansarian looked away from Bemossed, reined his horse around
and continued his patrol.
'A
great man,' Lord Rodas called out a little too loudly. 'And a great Haralander,
too.'
'What
is his rank?' I asked Lord Rodas. 'He must be a great lord.'
'Stupid flutist -
can you be so ignorant?' he barked at me. He was one of those cowards
whose fear too easily transformed into ill-use of those whom he considered
beneath him. 'Lord Mansarian commands the Crimson Companies!'
He went
on to tell something of Lord Mansarian's fearful pan Some years before, it
seemed, when King Arsu had sworn fealty to Morjin, Lord Mansarian had taken up
arms against the King in protest, along with other Haralanders. He had fought
with great cunning and savagery, killing many. At last, however, the Red
Priests had found a way to his heart, and they persuaded him to turn traitor to
the rebellion - and to pledge his undying loyalty to King Arsu. King Arsu had
then tested him, in many ways and in many places. Lord Mansarian always proved
himself, and more, like many converts to a new cause, strove to serve his king
with zealousness. He requested permission to form a force of other Haraland
nobles and knights who opposed the rebellion.
These
two hundred men - they were called the Crimson Companies, after the red capes
they wore - soon wreaked a bloody terror upon their kith and kin. They hunted
down rebels through every part of the Haraland. When they drove the last of
them behind Avrian's walls, King Arsu had then led the main body of his
southern army in siege against the city. After it finally fell, he gave the
surviving errants to Lord Mansarian and the Crimson Companies for justice. It
was Lord. Mansarian who had suggested and taken charge of crucifying them all
along the Avrian Road.
'The
Red Capes did their work well,' Lord Rodas told us, 'as you will see if I
decide that your troupe should try its fortunes up around Avrian. The errants'
corpses are to be left on their crosses until they rot and the vultures pick
clean their bones.'
I
turned to watch Lord Mansarian riding along the lines of kneeling soldiers as
he stabbed his lance at them. There was a coldness about him, as if the evil
of his dreadful deeds had turned him to stone.
Lord
Rodas went on, 'It is said that now the King will have him hunt down those who
have taken false oaths of loyalty - as well as counterfeiters, enchanters,
false healers, and the like.'
At the
mention of the word 'healer', I tried not to look at Bemossed, standing next to
me. Lord Rodas turned away, saying, 'See that your Hajarim removes himself from
sight, as Lord Mansarian commanded!'
Lord
Rodas scowled and strutted off, leaving us under the supervision of his
hirelings.
I walked with
Bemossed over to the cart. In a low voice, I said to him, 'This Lord Mansarian
recognized you?'
'Yes,' he said.
'And you
recognized him.'
'Yes,'
he said again, nodding his head. 'The lord who brought his daughter to the
Master to be healed - it was Lord Mansarian.'
And
with that, he went inside the cart and shut the door. Could it be, I wondered,
that the pitiless Lord Mansarian might be protecting Bemossed out of gratitude
for curing his child? Or was he only waiting to betray both Bemossed and our
company to the King at a key moment for his own gain? I watched Lord Mansarian
all stiff and stonelike on his great horse, but he did not look back at us.
My
other friends came over to me, and we all stood in front of the cart looking at
each other. Maram bit at his moustache and then said, 'Ah, I need good quaff of
brandy.'
'Well?'
I said, looking at him. 'Are you waiting for me to try to stop you?'
'I wish
that was my only obstacle. Haven't you heard? King Arsu has banned all spirits
from his encampment. It's said that soon he'll ban them throughout his realm.'
I
thought that Maram might try to steal off and drink in secret. But it seemed
that he had other plans.
'Ah,
Mother Magda,' he said to Liljana. 'O great keeper of our company's coins, I
don't suppose you have a few silver pieces to spare?'
Liljana
shot him a quizzical look and asked, 'What for?'
'I
thought I would make the acquaintance of the ladies in that tent.'
He
smiled as he pointed at the nearby tent of some courtesans.
Liljana
stared at him with such scorn that any other man would have reddened with
shame.
But
Maram, being Maram, only threw up his hands and said, 'Well, I had to try,
didn't I? As I think I shall try my charm, since I haven't anything better. It
has sufficed before.'
He took
a step toward the courtesans' tent, and I held out my arm to stop him. I said,
'Don't you remember what happened with Jezi Yaga?'
'Do I remember?
I do, I do, my friend, and it is precisely that memory that moves me. I've
learned too well, ah, just how fragile I really am. And so, since I've likely
only a few hours left on earth, I don't want to spend all of them waiting for
this king to arrive while I stare at his ugly soldiers.'
He
broke away from me and strode off toward the tent. One of Lord Rodas's
hirelings moved to intercept him. But when he discovered that Maram did not
intend to flee, he let him go. The young tough in his ill-fitting livery might
have no sympathy for love of freedom, but he certainly understood well enough
raw lust.
A short
while later there came a commotion from the western part of the encampment, and
someone cried out, 'The King! The King is coming!'
I
looked towards the lines of soldiers in front of the tents there. The lines
were broken, I saw, for no one stood or knelt to block the very wide center
lane leading into the square. Down this lane rode a company of fifty of King
Arsu's knights in burnished bronze armor, bearing blue plumes upon their helms
and blue capes upon their shoulders. Their shields and surcoats showed
quarter-sized red dragons. Then came the smaller escort of King Angand, whose
knights bore their own individual arms: black boar's heads, golden eagles, red
lions rampant, and the like. Their armor, being partly of steel plate, shone
brilliantly. King Angand rode at their center. Although he seemed a smallish
man, his renown was vast; in all the realms of the south, no other king had
done such great deeds in war or possessed so fine an army. His strange emblem -
the white, winged heart - gleamed from the banner that one of his knights bore
and from the silken surcoat covering his own chest. His great ease with his mount
hinted at a lifetime of long, hard marches and battle.
The
same could not be said of King Arsu. To begin with, he rode no horse. Indeed,
he did not ride at all, if that meant guiding the beast that bore him. Rather,
he sat within a sort of canopied and gilded fort perched on the back of an
elephant. Until that moment, I had wondered if the drawings that I had seen in
books might be pure figments. But this huge beast was as real as the earth that
shook beneath its treelike, driving legs. Its swaying nose, seven feet long,
hung down from a fearsome face festooned with two great curving tusks that
could have impaled a man and left him hanging high in the air. It was said that
the Hesperuks captured elephants in the wild, in the south, and then armored
them and trained them for battle. If true, then I hoped never to meet such a
raging mountain of flesh at work. Strangely, its handler - a small man sitting
on the elephant's neck in front of the King - controlled it with the well-timed
tappings of a little stick.
King
Arsu seemed himself an elephantine man. As the elephant stepped and swayed, the
layers of fat beneath King Arsu's bronze armor seemed to flow and swell out one
portion or another, and spill out over the neck in a cascade of fleshy chins.
Despite the armor, I could see that he was no fighting king. So huge were his
arms and labored his motions that he would have difficulty wielding a sword or
drawing a bow. No spatter of blood, I thought, had ever marked the bright
yellow surcoat that ballooned over him. This silken fabric, of course, showed
the three-quarter sized red dragon that Morjin made all his subject kings to
bear. Perhaps wisely, though, Morjin had left King Arsu the one glorious trapping
of the Hesperuk monarchs: a great, flowing cloak sewn with ten thousand parrot
feathers, in brilliant colors of red, yellow, green and blue. King Arsu's
golden crown - set with three great emeralds - seemed almost dull in
comparison to this fantastic garment. The two kings and their guard entered the
square and made their way toward King Arsu's pavilion, where a raised dais,
covered in a silken canopy, had been built. Five heavy chairs had been set out
upon it. I wondered that his army should burden itself hauling the supplies
needed to construct such a box, but it seemed that King Arsu's soldiers never
traveled without a good supply of wood. King Arsu came down from his kneeling
elephant, and with a great groaning effort, managed to climb the few steps
leading up to the box. He wheezed as he stood behind the long table at its
front. Then he settled his great bulk down into the centermost and largest of
the chairs: an ornate work of teak and gold encrusted with gems. A short, dark
woman perhaps thirty, years old came out of the pavilion behind the dais and sat
down on the chair to his left. Her name, I learned, was Lida: the King's cousin
and consort, who went everywhere that King Arsu went, even to war. An old man
wearing the red robe of a priest of the Kallimun claimed the chair to King
Arsu's right. I overheard someone call him Arch Uttam: the highest of all
Hesperuk's priests and the most terrible. His flesh seemed to cling like a
tight glove to his skull. King Angand sat next to him, at one end of the dais,
while Lord Mansarian came up and took the chair beside Lida at the other end.
A silence now fell
over the square. King Arsu gazed dismissively at the bowls of apples and the
pitchers of lemon squash and various nectars set out on the table. Then a slave
hurried up to bring him a goblet full of mother's milk sweetened with honey,
his preferred drink. He sipped from it, and then looked out to address the
hundreds of people assembled there. His voice seemed incongruent with his
massive form, for it came out of his throat all high and squeaky, like that of
a mouse: 'Soldiers of Hesperu! Citizens of Orun! We are met today to celebrate
our victory - as well as Lady Lida's birthday, only two days hence!'
He
turned toward Lida, and the two small, piglike eyes embedded in his fleshy face
seemed to warm happily. Then he looked back out over the square and announced:
'We are told that we shall have entertainments! Dancers and singers - and the
finest traveling troupe in all the north! So sit and enjoy yourselves! The
most valorous of soldiers that a king was ever honored to lead have more than
earned this day's revelries!'
His
words, I thought, fairly shrieked with bravado and insin-cerity. And yet his
many soldiers looked upon him with a real reverence lighting up their faces.
Their king had once again led them to victory. He had bestowed upon them
honors, loot and captured women. More than this, however, he had given them
great purpose. From the sheer heat of enthusiasm that passed from soldier to
soldier like a flame, I knew that they believed utterly in the crusade on which
King Arsu led them. Surely, in the war that must soon come, they would die
fighting with great fervor for King Arsu - and for their King of Kings whom
they called Morjin.
'Has
everyone eaten?' King Arsu called out. 'Good! Good! Then Arch Uttam will lead
us in a recitation, and then our sport will begin!' As Arch Uttam stood up from
his chair, so did everyone else assembled around the muddy grass - even King
Arsu. A dozen Red Priests dressed in flowing scarlet robes now entered the
square and positioned themselves among the soldiers at intervals of forty
paces. They looked toward Arch Uttam to begin reciting from the Darakul Elu.
This he did, without having even to open the black book that he clutched in
his veiny, cadaverous hands. In a grinding, unpleasant voice he intoned a long
passage that he had committed to memory, as he had many others of this dreadful
book:
'Warriors
who carry within their hearts the ineffable flame of the One, who bear inside
their souls the seeds of angels - go forth to victory against those who have
turned away from the Light! Face death with courage, and you
yourselves will never truly die! Master your fear! Make sacrifice
of your blood that others may know greater life! Be strong and take
dominion over the weak. . .'
Arch
Uttam spoke on and on in a like way for what seemed forever. I noticed that
many of the soldiers in their ranks raised up their eyes toward him as they
moved their lips in echo of the words that he recited.
At
last, he finished. Then he beckoned toward two of his priests standing off in
front of Arch Uttam's pavilion. They held between them a young woman perhaps of
an age with Atara. She wore a tunic of lamb's wool as white as snow. They had
to help her walk out into the square in front of the box, for her glazed eyes
suggested that they had given her some sort of potion that robbed her of her
will. Her head kept nodding forward toward her chest. Arch Uttam came down from
the dais then. A third priest stepped forward to give him a bowl fashioned from
a human skull while a fourth priest handed him a knife.
'No,' I
whispered, 'it cannot be!'
It
nearly killed me that I could not move or cry out in protest, but only stand
there raging silently. I wanted to gouge out my own eyes. Then one of the
priests clamped his fist in the woman's hair, and pulled back her head,
exposing her throat. With a quick, practiced motion. Arch Uttam sliced his
knife across it, even as he positioned the bowl to catch the blood that pumped
out of her. It did not take very long for the woman to die. More priests
appeared holding up a bier trimmed in satin and gold. They laid her gently upon
it. Arch Uttam stood above her, raising high the blood-filled bowl for all to
see.
'A
virgin with all her life to live,' he called out, 'has freely given her life so
that we might be stronger! An innocent girl who in her sacrifice has become the
greatest of warriors! We bear her body away to lie in glory. But she will live
on, forever, in us! This is the Way of the Dragon!'
So
saying, he put the bowl of bone to his lips. I watched in horror as he took a
few sips of living blood, his preferred drink. Then he passed the bowl
to the priest nearest him, who likewise drank from it, and so it went with
other priests until the bowl had been emptied.
I did
not want to believe what I had seen. I bowed my head in shame. Atara stood next
to me stricken as well Estrella buried her face in Iiljana's side as she began
weeping without restraint. Kane stared out into the square as his hand
convulsed in a death grip and he muttered, 'So, damn them forever - so, so.'
All the
soldiers and townsfolk of Orun bowed their heads as well, not in shame but to
honor this young woman, whose name was Yismi. I overheard an old woman say that
Yismi's betrothed, Olas, had been killed in the siege of Avrian, and that she
would now find happiness in joining him in death.
After
that, Arch Uttam returned to the dais and sat back down. So did everyone else.
And then King Arsu signalled for the entertainments to begin. From out of
nowhere, it seemed. Lord Rodas hurried up to us. He seemed to have taken no
more notice of Yismi's sacrifice than he would a chicken slaughtered for
supper. I contemplated setting my hands around his neck and breaking it.
Instead I looked down at the ground as he called out, 'Where is that fool who
calls himself Garath? Well, we still have time. You are to go last, after the
pairs from Avrian, but you should be ready all the same.'
We
retired one by one to our cart, where we donned our costumes in Bemossed's
silent company. Then we stood together outside and watched as forty youths from
the nearby Kallimun school paraded out into the square. They wore golden tunics
gathered in with bright red sashes. After forming up facing the King on the
very spot where Yismi had been put to the knife, the priest leading them
motioned with his hand for them to bow to King Arsu. Then the priest cast them
a stern look and motioned for them to begin singing.
They
sang like angels. Their voices rang out high and sweet I too sweet and too high
for youths who were almost men. I had never heard quite such a lovely pitch and
tone pouring from male throats before. But then, in the Morning Mountains, no
one would ever think to geld a boy like a horse just to preserve the beauty of
his voice. It shocked me to learn that many of these youths had not only
submitted to their castration without complaint but had actually volunteered to
be mutilated, 'offering up their manhood to the Dragon,' as they put it.
The
father of one of these youths stood nearby beaming proudly, even as my father
once had when I had competed with the sword at tournaments. I overheard him say
to his wife: 'Who would ever have dreamed that our Dyrian would sing for the
King?'
And
another man a few paces away exclaimed, 'What a day this is! What great days
are to come!'
I
sensed in them the same passion that stirred many of those throughout King
Arsu's realm: a great dream for the future, in the coming Kariad and the march
into the Age of Light. But with their longing for a better world came a great
fear as well, for they dreaded being left behind in the glorious crusade
that Morjin led. And so they were willing to sacrifice the most precious of
things to see this dream made real: not only their freedom and their children's
wholeness, but their very lives.
The
youths sang five songs, and it seemed that they strove for a purity of voice
like that of the Galadin. Then they cleared the square for dancers wearing
bright green silks and little cymbals on their fingers. I watched them gyrate,
leap and jangle in front of King Arsu's box for a while. They were quite
skilled in the maracheel and other traditional dances of Hesperu. After
they had finished and knelt gasping for breath, King Arsu cast out gold coins
to them with his own hand. Then they ran off happily, clanging their little
cymbals and whooping with joy.
It came
time for the pairs from Avrian to entertain the King. But before his soldiers
could bring them out, a lathered horse bearing a blue-caped rider galloped down
the center lane into the square. He drew up in front of the King's box. He
dismounted and bowed to King Arsu, who beckoned him forward, up upon the dais.
I watched as this messenger, or so he seemed, bent low and cupped his hands
around King Arsu's ear. King Arsu nodded his head and smiled. Then the
messenger hurried off the dais. He gathered up his horse's reins and
disappeared into the throng of soldiers standing about guarding King Arsu.
King
Arsu held up his hand as he cried out in his whipsaw of a voice: 'We have had
great tidings! King Orunjan has journeyed from Uskudar at our invitation, and
is even now journeying up from Khevaju. A master priest sent by Lord Morjin
rides with him: the renowned Haar Igasho. We are to meet soon, in a conclave of
kings such as has not been held for an entire age!'
This
news caused the hundreds of soldiers and townsfolk gathered around the square
to let out a great cheer. It caused me to want to retrieve my sword and
cut down every Kallimun priest that I could before falling upon Arch Uttam. If
Haar Igasho had gained renown, it was only through betraying our own people and
bringing shame upon all the Valari. I wanted to slay him for the atrocities
visited upon Mesh almost as badly as I burned to cut down Morjin. Prince
Salmelu of Ishka: this was who Igasho had once been, before resentment and
poisoned pride led him to try to put an arrow in my back. Ra Igasho he had been
called at our last meeting, after he had been made a full priest of the
Kallimun. And now it seemed that Morjin had elevated him once more in reward
for helping to crucify my grandmother and mother. I could only wonder why
Morjin had sent Haar Igasho into Hesperu. It must be, I thought, that
Morjin wished to warn the priests of King Arsu's realm to look for us in case
we journeyed this way. And to aid them in identifying us and hunting us down.
I
traded a quick, dark look with Kane and then Liljana. Our circumstances,
already perilous, had suddenly grown deadly.
I tried
to think of how we might possibly slip away from under Lord Rodas's watchful
eyes and steal out of the encampment No means of escape suggested themselves to
me. It seemed that we must somehow get through the day and hope that we could
ride fast and far before Haar Igasho met up with King Arsu and Arch Uttam.
The next 'entertainment' made it difficult to
get through half an hour. Lord Mansarian's men, in their blood-red capes,
brought out the first of the pairs from Avrian: two naked men, among the last
of the captive errants. Lord Mansarian had kept these defeated rebels alive in
order to inspire the Haralanders along the road down to Gethun and Khevaju.
Lord Mansarian's soldiers gave each of them a razor-sharp short sword, then
quickly backed away. These
two men, once brothers in arms, were to fight
each other to the death. If they refused this final degradation, or turned upon
the soldiers guarding them, their children held hostage would be crucified.
I
forced myself to look out into the square, for I wished to gauge the Hesperuks'
skill with weapons. The combat was bloody and quick; in only a few moments, the
taller of the two men lay fallen on the muddy grass, disembowelled and nearly
decapitated. The soldiers drawn up in their ranks cheered with gusto as they
had for the young singers. I hated them for that. I thought that I would never
understand human beings. Perhaps we would do better simply to free Angra Mainyu
from Damoom, and then to perish down to the last man, woman and child in a
holocaust of flame. Three more pairs of men Lord Mansarian's soldiers brought
out to fight for the pleasure of the King, pair by pair, until four men
survived the first round of this deadly competition. Then they paired off these
men together, and made them slay each other in another vicious round, until
only two remained. These two - now bloodied and barely able to stand up - faced
each other in the final combat. A rumor going around the square had it that
they were best of friends, but I had no way of confirming that. If friends they
truly were, then they fought with a rare passion to rend and slay. Lord
Mansarian had promised the sole survivor his freedom. At last, only one of them
stood, looking down over the body of his opponent. He cast his sword upon the
bloody grass. He bowed his head. Then Lord Mansarian's soldiers closed in upon
him to grab his arms and take him away to be crucified. He would find his
freedom from his errors in excruciating agony over several days, as so many had
before him.
Now
Lord Rodas paced back and forth with a nervousness eating at him. Just as he
was readying himself to charge into the courtesans' tent and call out once
more for Garath the Fool, Maram marched out of it. He came straight over to us.
His face, I saw; had fallen a sickly white as if he had met up with a ghost.
'What's wrong?' I whispered to him.
'Ah,
nothing,' he whispered back. He looked over at Lord Rodas, who fairly clung to
him like a tick. 'Nothing I can tell you now.' 'Was it the girl?' I said,
remembering what Arch Uttam had done to Yismi.
'Ah ...
what girl?'
I stared
at him as I shook my head. I did not know whether to rage or give thanks that
Maram's pursuits had spared him witnessing Yismi's murder.
'What's
that?' Lord Rodas snapped at us as he rushed over. His angry eyes took in the
traveling tunic that Maram wore. 'Fool of a fool! I told you to be ready - and
now we'll have to keep the King waiting.'
'Be at
ease!' Maram snapped back at him. 'Or you'll give yourself apoplexy. No one is
going to keep anyone waiting!'
So
saying, he cast me a troubled look and hurried to go inside the cart. We moved
it out into the center of the square then, facing it toward King Arsu's box.
Kane, barechested and wearing his billowing silk pants, hung his painted target
from its side. By the time he had made ready his chains, the cart's door flew
open and Maram burst out into the square.
Then it was our turn to perform for the King.
Chapter 38 Back Table of Content Next
How Maram had donned his costume and painted his face so quickly, I didn't know. He immediately managed to trip over Kane's chain and nearly landed face first in a mound of horse droppings. It was farce at its crudest, yet it made everyone laugh. After the horror of the sword fights, I thought, no less Yismi's butchery, the people in the square needed whatever relief they could find.
Maram himself took no pleasure in his performance. Some great fear burned through his bouncing belly, and he could not tell me what it was. It did not keep him, however, from shimmying about in mockery of the maracheel dancers, and making everyone laugh all the more.
Although we had improvised our way across the Haraland, we had always set the rhythm and routines of our show ourselves. It was not to be that way this day. Without warning, as Estrella joined Maram in a silly pantomime, a seemingly jovial King Arsu held up his hand and called out to them: 'Enough! Enough for now, good Garath! Let us see what else your troupe has prepared for us.'
He turned toward his left, where the Lady Lida sat pretending amusement at Maram's and Estrella's antics. Her dark, sharp face, I thought, hid her true sentiments as if covered with a veil. It disturbed me that she kept stealing quick glances at Liljana, who waited by the side of the cart with the rest of us.
'My Lady,' King Arsu said to Lida, 'since it is your birthday, what would you most like of this troupe?'
Lida didn't hesitate to answer
him. She spoke in a sweet and perfectly controlled voice as she told him, 'My
lord, I would like a love potion, that my ardor for my king always inflames me
as it does now, even when I am ugly and old.'
Her
words pleased King Arsu greatly, and I felt a flush of pride wash through him.
It seemed that he could not get enough flattery, just as he had a nearly
bottomless thirst for sugared drinks.
'Dear
one,' he said to her, 'you will never be less than beau-tiful, and as for
growing old, is it not written that those of impassioned blood will enjoy the
eternal youth of the angels?'
His
quote from the Darkakul Elu elicited a quick nod of Arch Uttam's
skull-like head. He gazed at King Arsu as if noting down his every word. His
umber eyes, though smoldering with a cruel intelligence, seemed utterly dead.
'My
Lord,' Arch Uttam said to King Arsu, correcting him, 'it is written that they
will enjoy the everlasting youth of the angels.'
King
Arsu waved his hand at this as he might bat away a fly, Even so, I felt a
flicker of fear burn through him. Then he told Lida, 'You shall certainly have
your potion.'
He
called out his command to Liljana then. She went inside the cart, and then
hurried back out holding a blue-glassed vial full of a dark liquid. She stepped
forward toward the dais, where one of the King's men moved to take it from her.
But Lida stayed him, and came down from the dais to take the potion from
Liljana herself. I watched as she turned her face to whisper something in
Liljana's ear, and Liljana likewise spoke back to her.
As Lida
returned to her place, Liljana walked back to us. I wondered what she had said
to her, for she fairly beamed with new hope.
And
then King Arsu pointed at Atara and said, 'Kalinda, Teller of Fortunes - come
forward and let us hear of our fate!'
He
smiled if expecting the usual promises of love, children and a happy future.
Atara did not disappoint him. With Daj leading her forward by one hand, she
clutched in her other the glass sphere that we had bought in Ramlan. Despite
her blindfold, she appeared to gaze into it deeply. Then she lifted up her face
toward King Arsu's box.
'My
Lord!' she called out. 'I see for you the fulfillment of your greatest desire.
You will gain that which you have sought all your life.'
King
Arsu smiled hugely to hear this. It was, however, scryer talk, and therefore
likely double-edged in its meaning. King Arsu seemed not to realize this.
Likely he had never encountered a true scyrer before, as all the women of that
order had long since been purged from his realm.
'The
fulfillment of our greatest desire.' King Arsu repeated. 'That is well. But we
have many desires. It would be hard to tell which one is the greatest.'
His
answer caused Arch Uttam to look at him with scorn. And then King Arsu hastened
to call down to Atara: 'Tell us then of victory! Tell us of our army, which
will soon march forth on the great crusade!'
King
Arsu looked out at his hundreds of soldiers assembled in the square.
Atara
fell silent. I felt my heart quicken its painful beats as something stabbed
into me. Then Atara drew in a deep breath and called out:
'I see
an ocean of grass, covered with armies of men. I cannot count the number of
spears gleaming in the sun. The shields of the army of Sunguru shine like
thousands of mirrors; the men of Uskudar stand there, too, like ebony pillars.
Your army King Arsu, gathers at their center. And you, on top of an elephant
draped in armor, at the center of it. Your enemies stand before you. It will be
said ever after that they had no hope of prevailing against such an invincible
force. And then fate will find you, and everyone assembled there that day. It
will be the greatest battle fought in all the ages of Ea. And you will gain the
greatest victory of your life.'
She
stopped speaking and stood there facing King Arsu. A terrible strangeness
shivered up my spine like the chill of the winter wind. I feared with all my
soul that Atara had told King Arsu the truth.
King
Arsu turned directly toward Atara. At last, he put down his goblet of honeyed
milk and clapped his puffy hands together. He called out, 'That, Fortune
Teller, was a great one indeed. And it deserves a great reward.'
And
with that, he reached into his purse and cast a handful of gold coins at her.
Daj retrieved them from the grass. After Atara had bowed to the King, Daj took
her by the hand once again and
led her back to our cart.
Next to
Arch Uttam, King Angand sat quietly gazing out at Atara. Although a stew of
strong sentiments bubbled inside him, his brown face remained stonelike. His
dark, almond eyes gleamed with cunning, but betrayed none of his thoughts. I
had never known a man harder to read. Did he pay any mind at all to Atara's
prophecy? And what had he made of the messenger's news, that King Orunjan, his
old enemy, would soon meet up with King Arsu and himself in conclave? Did he
dwell at all upon the great irony that Morjin had put an end to the incessant
wars of the south by leading the Dragon Kingdoms straight toward a final war
that would consume all of Ea?
He
finally broke his silence, turning to King Arsu to say: 'It would seem that our
fates are linked together But that is the future. Why don't we return to the
present and witness the skills of the strongman?'
I
sensed that he hated almost everything about his enforced rapprochement with
King Arsu and the bloodthirsty Arch Uttam, and wished to remove himself from
their presence as soon as he could.
King
Arsu nodded at this, and called out to Kane: 'Taras - is that your name? Why
don't you show us what you can do?'
What
Kane could do, I thought, as his eyes deepened into black pools, would be to
grab up his sword and charge King Arsu's box, cutting down any guard who stood
in the way. And then to cut short the reigns of Morjin's two greatest kings and
one of his most valued priests before other guards came to kill him.
Instead,
he gathered up his chains and positioned himself in front of King Arsu's box.
Then Arch Uttam wagged his bony finger at him as he addressed King Arsu: 'I'm
sure this man is as strung as everyone says. I'm sure we would all like to see
him break his chains, but is this wise? It might give the slaves bad ideas.'
Something
ugly in his voice grated as if the whole world irritated him. I watched as he
forced a thin smile upon his face. I thought for a moment that he might be
joking, although he did not seem capable of any sort of levity.
King
Arsu took him seriously enough. He sipped some of his sweetened milk as he
seemed to consider what Arch Uttam had seemed to offer as a suggestion. Then he
said to Kane. 'You are a juggler as well, aren't you? Well, then, juggle for
us, good Taras.'
He
waved his hand at him as if that settled the matter. Then Daj brought out a
little basket filled with Kane's seven colored balls. For a while Kane
entertained King Arsu and the other luminaries in the box - and the soldiers
and townspeople, too - with the blur of his hands and a stream of
leather-covered spheres. He sent them high up into the air on a rainbow arc,
and then whirled about in a full circle, catching them with perfect timing and
passing them even lower and faster as the balls flowed in an unbroken streak of
crimson and orange, indigo and violet. I thought it likely that no one present
in the square had ever seen such juggling.
At
last, though, everyone grew tired of this amusement, as people do. And so Kane
put his balls away, and went about performing feats of prestidigitation. I had
never come across anyone so skilled at this sleight of hand. He dared to ask
Lady Lida for a gold coin, and then made it vanish into thin air. After showing
Lady Lida his naked palm, he made a fist and blew on it. When he opened his
hand again, two gold coins gleamed there.
'Marvelous!'
Lady Lida said, clapping her hands together.
'Marvelous?'
Arch Uttam said. He tried to make himself smile again. 'Let us hope it is not sorcerous.'
I never
learned how Kane worked this magic, and he never told me. Although I found some
measure of wonder in it, as did Lady Lida and King Arsu, it seemed only to bore
Arch Uttam. He stared at Kane with his soulless eyes as he steepled his thin
fingers beneath his chin; something about Kane seemed to vex him. It was the
King's prerogative to command entertainments, but that didn't stop Arch Uttam
from rudely speaking out.
'I'm
sure we have all had enough of this man's tricks,' he said. He turned to look
down his thin nose at Kane. 'We have heard, player, that your skill with knives
is something to be seen.'
Kane
could not keep his old hate from burning through him. He growled out, 'Even as
was yours, priest.'
Arch
Uttam sat staring at Kane as if he could not believe what he had just heard.
Finally, he barked at Kane: 'What was that?'
Kane
smiled his savage smile, showing his long white teeth. And then, to Maram's
horror, and mine, he said, 'Today, I only cast my knives at a wooden target.
But you put yours through that girl's throat with a precision we all must
wonder at. She couldn't have suffered much, eh? Who else has such skill but a
high priest of the Kallimun?'
Kane
managed to say this without obvious sarcasm but only the greatest seeming
sincerity. Even so, he walked a knife blade's edge between condemnation of Arch
Uttam and compliment. A fool such as Maram might be able to get away with such
wordplay, but Kane was Kane. Arch Uttam stared at him again, and his eyes
finally came alive with hate.
'You
revere Lord Morjin's priests, do you?' he said to Kane.
'Even
as I do Morjin himself,' Kane said. 'What would the world be without him and
the truest of his servants?'
With
many eyes now gazing upon Arch Uttam in witness of this singular interchange,
it seemed that he had no choice but to interpret Kane's words as praise. But I
felt the poison in his voice as he snapped at Kane: 'The world will be a
paradise when we all doserve him truly. As you may serve him now by
showing us what is possible through years of discipline and great
concentration.'
Kane
bowed his head at this. Then he beckoned toward Estrella, standing with the
rest of us by the cart. She walked toward him bearing a velvet-covered tray on
which sat seven gleaming knives. It was her job to hold the tray up to Kane as
he plucked up the knives one by one and hurled them at the target. And again,
to retrieve the knives and stand many paces farther back as Kane repeated a
remarkable feat: planting six of the knives in a perfect hexagram around the
edge of the innermost circle while the seventh knife transfixed its center.
Arch
Uttam stared at the target, and for the moment seemed disinclined to speak.
King
Angand, however, clapped his hands and said to Kane, 'If you could learn such
skill with the sword, we would be glad to have you ride with our army.'
'And
ours,' King Arsu said. 'There are always errants to deal with.'
'Yes,'
Arch Uttam said to Kane. He smiled at him. 'Then you could put steel
through flesh instead of wood.'
I
prayed that Kane would let Arch Uttam have the final word in this deadly duel
forming up between them. For at least ten of my heart's beats, Kane did not say
anything, and he did not move.
And
then he growled out to him, 'I'm just a simple player, eh? Throwing knives is
one thing; facing swords in the heat of battle is another. As you have said.
Arch Uttam, I can only hope to master my fear. And someday, by the One's grace,
to witness the defeat of those who have turned away from the Light.'
He
bowed then, not so much to Arch Uttam or King Arsu, but to the sun burning like
a circle of white-hot steel above their silk-covered box. Without another word,
he turned about and walked back toward the cart.
'What
is wrong with you?' I whispered to him as he moved up close to me.
'So,
Morjin is wrong,' he muttered. He cast a quick, killing look at Arch Uttam.
'It's wrong that the Beast himself isn't here instead of his lackey. Then I'd
put a knife into each of his damn eyes!'
We
hoped to end our performance with Alphanderry singing a few songs. King Arsu
agreed with this plan, and waved his hand at the cart's door as if commanding
it to open. When Estrella walked over and turned the handle to let out the
mysterious minstrel known as Thierravai, everyone around the square fell
silent. They watched as Alphanderry positioned himself in front of King Arsu's
box - but not too near it. Then Kane took up his mandolet and Estrella
and I our flutes, and we all gathered together to play for the King.
Three
songs we gave to King Arsu and his companions, and to the many soldiers looking
on and listening in wonder. For we made, I thought, a wondrous music - or
rather Alphanderry did. While Kane and I, with Estrella, summoned out of our
instruments ancient melodies, Alphanderry sang out with the much finer instrument
of his voice. No words poured forth from his golden throat, not even those of the
Galadin. The perfect tones that his lips shaped and shaded had something of the
form of words, and something of their meaning, too, but seemed to go far beyond
them and touch upon that deep, resounding place in which words had their
source. It was a true magic that he worked that day. His songs pierced the
hearts of all who listened. Each person in the square, I thought, heard in them
what he most wished to hear: yearning for love or exaltation of war; chants
pealing out like bells and hymns to life and lamentations of the dead. Even as
I breathed into my flute and played to accompany Alphanderry's marvelous
singing, I couldn't help thinking of the astonished look in Yismi's eyes as
Arch Uttam had sliced his knife across her throat. So it was, I sensed, with
many of those who listened to Alphanderry. Something in his brilliant voice
seemed rip through the thin veil that separated life from death, and the earth
from the starry heavens. By the time he finished the last of his songs, many
people were weeping and many more stared at him as, if they could not believe
what they had just heard.
In the
vast silence that came over the square, as King Arsu and King Angand stared at
Alphanderry stunned and unable to speak, Alphanderry bowed his head to them and
quickly returned to the cart, Estrella walked over with him to shut the door.
Then she came back over to where Kane and I stood in front of King Arsu's box,
and we made our bow together.
At
last, King Axsu returned to himself. He smiled at us even as a thunder of
applause rang out from around the square. He reached for his purse with its
golden coins. But then Arch Uttam stopped him, laying his bony hand on King
Arsu's arm. He raised his other hand to silence the soldiers who were shouting,
clapping and calling for Thierraval to come back out of the cart to sing for
them again. Now the air fell so deathly still that I could hear the flies
buzzing around the foodsellers' stalls. Arch Uttam's scabrous eyes looked from
Kane to Estrella to me, then settled upon the cart. He looked at King Arsu. And
then, in a bone-chilling voice, he called out: 'There is error here.'
Hundreds
of people seemed horrified to hear this. Hundreds of pairs of eyes now turned
their heat upon us. I sensed Kane readying himself to respond to Arch Uttam's
dreaded accusation. I shook my head slightly to warn him to say nothing.
And
then I called up to the box: 'What error, Arch Uttam?' The High Priest of the
Kallimun of Hesperu stared down at me. His knife-like eyes fairly cut open the
scar marking my forehead. Something about me, too, seemed to vex him. 'Do you really not know,
flute-player?' he asked me. 'We have only played the ancient songs,' I said to
him. 'But do you not know that many of them have been proscribed?' He waited
like a spider watching for a butterfly to become ensnared in its web. As it
happened, I did not know this, but I did not want to betray my naivety.
And so I said to him, 'We are only players who have traveled far and performed
mostly in small villages. It might be that we haven't learned of everything
that has been proscribed.' 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating
it,' he said to me. 'Indeed it is not,' I said, sweating beneath the sun as
much his hateful gaze. 'And that is why we have striven to play only the
classics that would be acceptable. But since we don't have your keen
discernment as to which songs fall into error, perhaps we have chosen
unwisely.'
My
words did not mollify him. He only stared at me and said, 'Then it is upon me
to enlighten you. Which songs would you choose, if King Arsu should command you
to play for us again?'
It now
seemed that there could be no escaping Arch Uttam's web. I glanced over by the
cart, where Maram shook his head as if he had given up the last of his hope.
And I
said to him, 'The Song of the Sun is full of beautiful music.'
And
Arch Uttam snapped his head at this as he told me: 'That which is beauty
becomes ugliness when it lapses into error. And so the Song of the Sun has
been proscribed.'
'But
what about the Gest of Nodin and Yurieth? That is a simple love song.'
'It may
be simple,' Arch Uttam said. 'But it has also been proscribed.'
I did not need to
ask him about my favorite verse, the Song of Kalkamesh and Telemesh, which
told of the crusade to liberate the Lightstone after Morjin had first stolen it
late in the Age of Swords.
As we
would soon learn, that epic was first on the proscribed list. And so I asked
Arch Uttam, 'Has the Lay of the Lightstone also been proscribed?'
'Proscribed?
No. But one may sing it only with changes made to the old verses that reflect
the Lightstone's true history. And Lord Morjin's place in that history.'
Changes,
I thought. Lies, and more lies.
I said
to Arch Uttam, 'And the Lord of Light?'
'It is
the same with that work, especially so.'
I gave
up trying to find any traditional song, epic or poem that Arch Uttam would
approve. I glanced quickly at Daj and said, 'What, then, of the Gest of
Eleikar and Ayeshtan?'
Arch
Uttam frowned at this. He obviously hated that I had named a work with which he
was unfamiliar. I sensed, too, that without words to provoke his scorn and
cognizance, he had failed to identify the melodies of Alphanderry's three
songs.
'I'm
sure that I have never heard of that work,' he said. 'And sure that I don't
wish to.'
'But is
it on the proscribed list?'
'All works,'
he told me, 'that have not been approved have been proscribed. That is the new
edict. You should know that.'
It
nearly killed me to bow my head to him and say politely, 'Then in the future we
will make sure that all the words to our songs are approved. If we are in
doubt, we will play only pure music for its own sake.'
This
failed to mollify him as well. His frown deepened as he stared at me and
announced, 'Nothing must ever be done for its own sake. Not a walk in
the sunshine or the smelling of a flower's fragrance. Especially the
making of music. It arouses too many passions. And all passion, as it is
written, must be directed toward one purpose, and one purpose only. It
disappoints me that you seem not to know this. It is a grave error.'
I left
a lust for violence stir inside Lord Mansarian and many of the soldiers
standing about. When Arch Uttam spoke of a grave error, they could expect to
see blood.
I
prepared to run over to the cart and retrieve my sword so that I could make a
last fight of things. I would not stand to be scourged and have the meat
shredded from my bones - to say nothing of being crucified. Nor would I abide
watching Estrella and Kane being tortured likewise, if Arch Uttam should
include them in the correction of the error of playing a few lovely songs.
I do
not know how things would have gone for us if Lady Lida hadn't caught King
Arsu's ear and said, 'Who of us hasn't made errors from time to time? Who of us
hasn't lapsed into enjoying a beautiful sunset just because it is beautiful?
These players tried to give us a fine music, and in their ignorance chose their
songs foolishly. I am no priest, of course, but are these players' errors
really so very bad?'
Arch
Uttam stared at her as if he wished to nail her to a cross, and only
awaited the chance.
Just
before Arch Uttam responded to this, Lida resumed speaking to King Arsu. The
King held up his hand to silence Arch Uttam. He seemed utterly taken with Lida;
she communicated things to him with a few murmured words, a pressure of her
hand against his wrist and the imploring look in her eyes.
Then
King Arsu turned to Arch Uttam, and for the first time that day, took on
something of the aspect of a true king: 'We must take into account that these
players are practically strangers in our land, and should be treated with the
hospitality for which Hesperu is famed. Is it generous to construe their errors
according to the strictest possible interpretation of what we know of error?
Must we fear the goodness of our hearts and the forgiveness that Lord Morjin
has taught us? We know well that we can be stern, at need - who has not lost a
beloved companion in this last war? Who has not exulted in the sight of the
Avrians crucified for their defiance? But this is a day of celebration: of our
victory and our cousin's birthday, and therefore of life. Can we not celebrate
the gift of our lives in realizing that all who live are subject to error?
Surely these players have made errors, but surely they are no worse than Errors
Minor.'
King
Arsu, I thought, having completed a successful campaign, was in a great good
humor. He practically willed Arch Uttam to bow before his magnanimity.
But a
High Priest of the Kallimun will bow before no one - except the Red Dragon
himself. And so, in an icy voice. Arch Uttam said to King Arsu: 'You are a
great king who has led Hesperu to victory in great battles. And we can all give
thanks that you have devoted yourself to the study of war and the ordering of
Hesperu's empire, won in the Red Dragon's name. But there other battles that
must be fought, and it is your very great devotion to final victory that has
necessarily kept you from studying the deeper ways of error. It is to free you
to fulfill your purpose that the Red Dragon, in his compassion, has sent his
priests to aid you. And that is all that I would ask of you today, that you let
them, for that is my purpose.'
King
Arsu's high spirits seemed to plummet. He could not gainsay Arch Uttam without
defying Morjin himself. And so he told Arch Uttam: 'It is upon you, of course,
to decide the nature of these players' error. But let us say that they have
made only an Error Minor. Shouldn't it be enough that they correct it by
forfeiting their prize to the Kallimun school here? And that they be commanded
to memorize the list of permitted works and the changes that have been made to
them?'
Now it
was Arch Uttam's turn to seethe with ire. Almost everyone listening to their
debate, I thought, found King Arsu's judgment to be reasonable. Arch Uttam
could not gainsay King Arsu without undermining his authority and thus ruining
his effectiveness in leading Morjin's armies to triumph. And so it seemed that
he had no choice except to be merciful toward us.
He
gazed down from the box at Kane, Estrella and me. And he told us, 'As King Arsu
has suggested, let it be. Are you willing to forfeit your prize?'
Over by
the foodsellers' stalls. Lord Rodas stood with his six toughs waiting to hear
how I would reply. His indignation bubbled out into the air like boiling oil.
'Yes,'
I said, answering for all of us.
'And
are you willing to memorize the changes in the songs that you may sing?'
'Yes,'
I said, looking down at the grass.
'Very
well,' he snapped out. 'Then your errors will be corrected.'
I felt
the muscles along my throat begin to relax, as of the tension slowly easing on
a piece of bent steel. And then Arch Uttam pointed at the cart and said, 'Let
us make sure the minstrel understands this, too. Bring him to me.'
Kane
flashed me a quick, dangerous look. Then he shook his head and said to Arch
Uttam, 'Thierraval always keeps to himself after a performance. It is his way.'
'Excluding
oneself from others is also an error,' Arch Uttam said. "Therefore your
minstrel will have a different way today. Go fetch him.'
But
Kane only glared at Arch Uttam, and did not move.
Arch
Uttam finally looked away from him. He turned his anger on Estrella, the
smallest and youngest of our company. He pointed at the cart and commanded her:
'Go open that door, right now girl! Or do you wish to stand in defiance of one
of Lord Morjin's priests, which is defiance of Lord Morjin himself?'
Estrella
had no choice but to carry out Arch Uttam's command. She ran over to the cart
and opened its door. After looking inside, she turned toward Arch Uttam and
shook her head. With quick motions of her hands and a look of puzzlement on her
open, expressive face, she made it clear to Arch Uttam. and everyone else, that
Thierraval was not inside the cart.
'What?'
Arch Uttam cried out. He glared at Estrella. 'What are you saying, mime? Speak
in words!'
'She
cannot speak.' Kane growled out 'She is mute.'
'Mute,
you say?'
'As
silent as the sky. But her meaning is plain enough: You won't find Thierraval
inside the cart. As I told you, he always vanishes after a performance.' 'What
trick is this, Juggler?' 'No trick at all, priest. You might say it is part of
our act.'
Arch
Uttam drew himself up stiffly and sneered at Kane as if he refused to handy
words with a lowly player. He whipped about, turning to face Lord Mansarian. He
pointed at the cart as he called
out, 'Go bring me that minstrel!'
Lord
Mansarian bowed his head to him. He threw back his red cape, drew his sword and
came down from the box. After hurrying across the square, he brushed Estrella
aside. He practically leaped up into the cart. I heard him banging about inside
as if striking his sword's pommel against the cart's floor and walls. I could
only guess at Lord Mansarian's reaction in coming face to face with Bemossed
hiding there, and Bemossed's response to this search. I commanded my arms and
legs not to move; if I could have stilled my racing heart, I would have.
And
then Lord Mansarian stepped out of the cart and dosed the door. He called up to
Arch Uttam: 'The minstrel is not inside.'
I could
not keep my breath from bursting out in a rush of relief.
And
then Arch Uttam called down to Lord Mansarian: 'What? Are you sure he is
not hiding there? It must be a trick: a false bottom to their wagon. A false
wall.' 'No. I tested for that. The
minstrel must be elsewhere.'
Arch
Uttam stared at our cart as if he might order it chopped to splinters with
axes. Then he stared at Lord Mansarian. When this grim-faced Crucifier, famed
for ferreting out errants from hiding places in their houses, declared that no
minstrel hid inside it, even a high priest of the Kallimun had to accept
this.
At
last, Arch Uttam said, 'The minstrel must have slipped away somehow when we
were discussing these players' errors. It would seem that they are adept at
sleight of word as well as prestidigitation.'
He
looked past the food-sellers' stalk and the courtesans' pavilion at the many
rows of tents of the army's encampment. He cast his gaze down upon Estrella and
said. 'Tell me where he went! You must know.'
But
Estrella only held out her hands as her eyes grew wide with mystification and
she shook her head.
'Speak!'
he commanded her. 'Do not mock me any more!' Kane's voice rolled out
like a dark thunder as he called up to Arch Uttam: 'She cannot speak any
more than you can fly!'
Arch
Uttam seemed ready to order Kane put to death on the spot. He snapped out, You
mock me. too. You say the girl cannot speak. We shall see. Lord Mansarian!'
He
commanded this butcher to take hold of Estrella, and bring her forward.
Although Lord Mansarian may have stood in debt to Bemossed, he did not
extend his gratitude to Estrella. I watched helplessly as he did Arch Uttam's
bidding. He escorted Estrella up the steps of the box and over to Arch Uttam so
that they stood between the priest and King Arsu. Lord Mansarian damped his
bronze-shod arm across Estrella's trembling body so that she could not flee.
Her dark, wild eyes found out mine as if pleading with me not to let anyone
harm her.
'Don't
be afraid,' Arch Uttam said to her as he rose up from his chair. 'For the true
of heart there is nothing ever to fear.'
King
Arsu's guards did not like anyone outside his entourage to approach very close
to him, not even a weaponless young girl. King Arsu seemed not to like this
course of events either. He said to Arch Uttam: 'Can we not get on with the
celebrations?'
'We
must always celebrate truth.' Arch Uttam said in a deadly calm voice. He placed
his fingertips on Estrella's jaw to tilt her face up toward him. 'I think this
girl has something of the look of the Sung. And the look of defiance.'
Next to
Arch Uttam, still sitting at the edge of the box. King Angand looked on with
interest. He seemed to question whether Estrella ought really have had her
origins in the people of Sunguru. And then Lady Lida touched King Arsu's arm
and said, 'If the girl really cant speak, then she can't be held accountable
for defiance.'
Before
King Arsu could say anything. Arch Uttam barked out, 'Lord Mansarian!Iif
this girl has dared to play us all false, do you think that you could
make her speak?'
'Yes,
Arch Uttam,' he said as his arm tightened across Estrella's slender chest. His
scarred face seemed as empty of life as a steel mask. 'Thumbscrews would loosen
her tongue, if it was stuck. A little fire applied in the right places would
make her sing.'
I
traded a quick look with Kane. I could see his black eyes, like mine, looking
for a way out of the violence moving toward us like a fog of blood.
Arch
Uttam smiled at Lord Mansarian. He seemed to be testing him; I sensed that this
had become a ritual with them: the High Priest of Hesperu trying to make sure
of the devotion of a once-noble man who had gone from being a rebel to
Hesperu's greatest murderer.
'I
might prefer a flaying,' Arch Uttam told Lord Mansarian. 'But even you, I
think, might have difficulty peeling the skin off a girl'
If Arch
Uttam was trying to frighten Estrella into speaking, then he failed. Or perhaps
he was still trying to find some act or abomination so utterly cruel that Lord
Mansarian would refuse to carry it out.
'I
could take the skin off her hand,' Lord Mansarian said, 'like a glove.'
I
noticed Lida's fingers moving against King Arsu's wrist, and King Arsu suddenly
called out: 'This is no day for torturing children!'
Arch
Uttam only smiled at this. He said to Lord Mansarian, 'You yourself once
resisted the truth, did you not?'
'Even
as I resisted Lord Morjin,' Lord Mansarian said.
'And
you did this of your own will, did you not?'
'Freely,
I did.'
'And so
who was to blame for the torments you suffered?'
'Only
myself,' Lord Mansarian said. He let his eyes look down upon Estrella. 'But
there can be no resisting the Red Dragon's power. It is perfect - and
glorious.'
I
sensed the sincerity in his voice, as well a deep loathing of himself. Clearly
he blamed himself, and not Morjin, for whatever evil had befallen him.
'Perfect
and glorious!' Arch Uttam called out as he caressed Estrella's face. 'That, Lord
Mansarian, is a perfect characterization of Lord Morjin and all that he puts
his hand to.'
His
bony fingers now touched beneath Estrella's jaw and felt down along her
delicate throat. He used them to force apart her jaws. He positioned her so
that the sun streaming through the box's silk covering illumined her open
mouth. He grabbed up a cloth and used it to take hold of her tongue. Then he
pulled it out as he rudely stuck his fingers
down her throat until she coughed and gagged.
As it
happened, he had once been a healer of some reputation. And this former healer
who now hunted down healers in the Red Dragon's name, loudly announced: 'There
is nothing wrong with this girl, in her body, that keeps her from speaking. And
so there must be something wrong in her mind: some error of thought.'
He let
go of her, even as Lord Mansarian maintained his hold. He wiped his fingers
with the cloth. Then he continued: 'All errors of thought can be corrected with
right thoughts. And no thought can be more perfect than that of Lord Morjin
himself.'
Arch
Uttam bent down and brought his horrible face up close to Estrella's. I could
almost smell his foul, bloody breath as he said to her with a false kindness:
'Do not be afraid, girl. Close your eyes. Hold the image of Lord Morjin inside
you. Concentrate on it! Let it blaze like the sun! The Red Dragon will burn
away your muteness more surely than Lord Mansarian's fire.'
Arch
Uttam then pressed his palm against Estrella's forehead as if to sear this
image into her.
I stood
there with Kane on the grass of the square looking up at the box at Arch Uttam,
Lord Mansarian and Estrella. I felt my hand aching to grasp the hilt of
my sword. I felt my heart aching as well. At last, Estrella opened her eyes and
stared at Arch Uttam. She could not hide her contempt for him, or her fear.
'Well,
girl?' Arch Uttam asked. 'Does Lord Morjin live inside you?'
Estrella
slowly nodded her head. She could not tell him that Morjin, who had taken her
speech in the first place, would always dwell inside her like a snake wrapping
its coils around her throat.
'Speak,
then!' Arch Uttam commanded her. 'Speak now!'
But
Estrella only shook her head and held out her hands helplessly.
'Speak,
damn you, brat!'
Tears
welled up in her eyes.
And
then Kane shouted up to the box: 'If the girl is ever healed, it will only be
through the Maitreya!'
'She is
as whole as you or I!' Arch Uttam shouted back at him.
'No -
she is mute and has been so for years!'
'You,'
Arch Uttam said, pointing down at Kane, 'lie.'
Arch
Uttam made a fist as if to control the trembling of his fingers. And then he
added, 'And therefore you are guilty of sedition as well.'
Around
the square, many people looked upon this scene intently but did not say
anything. I saw Lida gripping King Arsu's hand in silence.
King
Arsu said, 'Before crucifying them, we would like to know the truth of things.'
'Indeed,'
Arch Uttam said. 'The juggler and the girl must be put to the test.'
Lida's
hand tightened around King Arsu's hand, and the King told Arch Uttam, 'It is
too fine a day for more torture.'
Arch
Uttam considered this. 'If not torture, then a trial - a trial of arms.'
Kane's
black eyes gleamed at this. So did mine. I imagined King Arsu sending out Lord
Mansarian or some champion to fight Kane sword to sword.
But
Arch Uttam, it seemed, imagined other things. He plucked an apple from the bowl
of fruit on the long table in front of him. Without warning, he hurled it
straight at Kane's face. Kane snatched it out of the air and stood looking at
Arch Uttam with loathing.
Then Arch
Uttam explained the nature of the trial that he had in mind: Estrella was to go
down to the cart and stand before the target with the apple balanced on top of
her head. Kane must then throw the knife at the apple.
'If the
juggler misses,' Arch Uttam announced, 'it is only because his bad conscience
spoils his aim, and we shall know that he is lying. Likewise if he strikes the
girl.'
What
must it be like, I wondered, to feel so superior to others that one could
torment, maim or kill them at will?
I hoped
that Lida might somehow persuade King Arsu to put a stop to this barbaric
trial. But the King seemed to take a great interest in Arch Uttam's proposal,
as he did in all cruel and bizarre things. I watched him pull his hand away
from Lida.
'And if
he strikes the apple?' King Arsu asked Arch Uttam.
With
reluctance, Arch Uttam forced out, 'Then we shall know that he is telling the
truth.'
'Let be
so,' King Arsu said. 'If the juggler strikes the apple, there is no error, and
they will be free to go.'
He
pointed down at the cart. 'Put the girl in her place.'
Lord
Mansarian now escorted Estrella back down to the cart. He stood her up with her
back to the target, facing Kane, and then backed away. Kane stalked forward,
squeezing the apple in his hand. He touched her cheek, kissed her brow. Then he
set the apple gently on top of Estrella's head. After grabbing up two throwing
knives, one in either hand, he returned to his place in front of the target.
I
overheard one of the soldiers say, 'Why two knives? Doesn't he know that
Arch Uttam will never give him a second chance?'
A
second soldier next to him shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Maybe the other
knife balances him.'
This
was true. Kane would strive for every advantage in this evil trial that Arch
Uttam had forced upon him. But I knew that Kane had a deeper reason: if he
missed, the second knife would be for Arch Uttam.
I now
walked over to the foodsellers' stalls with my friends, so that we would not
distract Kane by standing too near the can. I wondered if Bemosscd knew what
was about to happen as he dwelled in the darkness inside it.
Out in
the square, Kane looked at nothing except the apple perched on top of
Estrella's head. She stood almost perfectly still, fixing her gaze upon him. I
sensed no fear in her - at least no fear of Kane. Although her face remained
quiet and serious, she seemed to be smiling at him from some place deep inside
herself.
I knew
that Kane could split the apple. He would not let his love for Estrella ruin
his aim.
And
then, before he could raise back his arm, Arch Uttam cried out: 'We have all
seen this man's skill; at this distance, casting the knife will be no trial.
Therefore, let the distance be doubled.'
King
Arsu, with Lida puiling on his elbow, looked at him as if he thought this last
condition was cruelly unfair. Lord Mansarian looked at Arch Uttam this way, too
- and so did half a hundred nobles and soldiers. But Arch Uttam would not be
defeated a second time that day.
'This is
written,' he called out. "We must always double and redouble our
efforts to prove ourselves worthy of the journey toward the One." Let
the Juggler prove himself to us. Lord Mansarian!'
He
issued a command to Lord Mansarian, who borrowed a spear from one of his
red-caped soldiers. He then walked over to where Earella stood in front of the
cart. With hardly a glance at her, he began counting out paces as he stepped
out toward Kane and then continued counting until he reached a place on the
grass twice Kane's distance from the target. There he stuck the spear into the
grass, down into the loamy earth. Kane was to stand behind the spear, facing
Estrella.
After
Kane had taken his place at this new mark. Lord Mansarian once more retreated
nearer to King Arsu's box. Again, Kane fixed the whole of his awareness on the
apple gleaming a bright crimson on top of Estrella's head. Arch Uttam had set
for him an impossible distance, better suited to archery than the casting of a
foot-long knife. Maram stood on one side of me muttering, 'Ah, too bad, too
bad!' while Daj waited on the other side almost weeping. Even Atara seemed
terrified by the future now about to fall upon us in a whirring of steel. I
felt my heart pounding wildly. I did not think that even Kane could make such a
throw.
Neither,
it seemed, did anyone else. From his chair up in the box. King Angand said to
Arch Uttam, 'It is too far and too windy. This is no true trial of arms. No man
who ever lived could make such a throw.'
But
Arch Uttam only scoffed at this. 'They're magicians, aren't they? They made the
minstrel disappear - maybe they can make the wind stop, too.'
While
Estrella waited for Kane to make ready, she closed her eyes as if she could not
bear to look at him. I felt her enter into an immense, inner stillness. All at
once, the splendidly colored banners flapping above the pavilions of King Arsu
and King Angand drooped down and the wind suddenly died. Kane's eyes blazed
brightly. And then, with a suddenness that astonished everyone, his arm drew back
and whipped forward with a blinding speed. The knife flashed through the air in
a whirl of bright steel almost impossible to see. Its point drove straight
through the apple's center, pinning the apple to the target. Then, and only
then, Estrella opened her eyes and smiled at Kane.
'He did
it!' Maram cried out, clapping me on the shoulder. 'Oh, my lord - he really did
it!'
Kane's
great feat caused hundreds of soldiers to draw their swords and strike their
pommels against their shields in a tumult of acclaim. Even Lord Mansarian bowed
his head to Kane. But Arch Uttam only cast him a hateful look. He stood by his
chair up in the box waiting for the thunder of celebration to die down.
"The
juggler got lucky,' he finally called out with a sickening peevishness. 'And
luck is no part of a true trial.'
'A
trial is a trial,' King Angand said.
'This trial,'
Arch Uttam said, 'is not over. Let the distance be doubled again!'
So
saying, he grabbed up a second apple from the bowl. Again-he hurled it out
toward Kane. But almost before the apple left his hand, Kant cast his second
knife, left-handed, straight at the apple. The knife struck it in midair, and
the greater weight of its steel carried the apple back toward Arch Uttam so that
the knife buried itself quivering in the table with the apple transfixed upon
its blade.
'Was
that luck, too, priest?' Kane called to him. He grinned like a wolf, showing
his long, white teeth.
Arch
Uttam stared at the knife planted in the table as if he couldn't believe what
he had just seen. I, myself, had always thought that striking a moving target
in the air was impossible.
With a
great sigh and groan. King Arsu heaved himself up from his chair. He looked
straight at Arch Uttam and said, 'The trial is over. The juggler and the mime
are deemed to have told the truth and shall be free to perform where they will,
even as we have said.'
At
this, Estrella ran forward toward Kane and leaped into his arms. She wept and
laughed silently, all at once. And then the wind began blowing fiercely again.
'Sire!'
a voice called out. This came from Lord Rodas, who began advancing across the
square toward King Arsu's box. It seemed that we might not be so very free,
after all. 'Sire, my players have forfeited their prize in payment of their
error, but what about my portion of it?'
Now
Lady Lida stood up, too, and whispered something in King Arsu's ear. And King
Arsu pointed at Lord Rodas as he called down to Lord Mansarian: 'There is
something vexing about this New Lord and his insistence on gaining gold. Take
him to be questioned, and his men, too.'
Lord
Mansarian hurried forward to carry out this command. He grabbed the outraged
Lord Rodas's arm, while other knights of his red-caped company closed in upon
Lord Rodas's six hirelings and escorted them from the square. It seemed that we
really were free.
Then
Arch Uttam cast us one final, poisonous look that promised death, and stalked
off toward his pavilion. We hurried over to the cart, which we began making
ready for the next leg of our journey, out of Hesperu and into the vast,
forested miles of the mountains that lay beyond.
Chapter 39 Back Table of Content Next
We left the army's encampment as quickly as we could without giving the impression that we were fleeing from it. When we reached the Avrian Road, we turned north toward Orun, only two miles away. We soon stopped at the edge of a cotton field. I opened the cart's door so that Bemossed could finally come out of his prison and join us in the sunlight. He embraced Estrella and ran his hand through her curly hair as he told her, 'I knew that Kane would not cut off a single lock.'
He embraced Kane, too, and stood there as if wondering what we would do next.
Although I wanted to unhitch Altaru and gallop back through Orun and across the Black Bridge to escape the men who had almost murdered us, I felt the need for council even more. And so I called for everyone to gather close by the cart.
'Liljana,' I said, looking at this stout woman who had kept her calm through the whole of our ordeal. 'You seemed almost familiar with Lady Lida, and she saved us, more than once. Why?'
Liljana nodded her head into the gusting wind. And she said simply, 'Lida is Maitriche Telu.'
This news surprised all of us, especially Master Juwain. He said to Liljana, 'I had thought that King Arsu's grandfather. King Taitu, had destroyed the Hesperuk Maitriche Telu.'
'I had thought this, too,' Liljana said. 'But it seems that at least one sanctuary must have remained undiscovered.'
'And in all those years, they have sent you no communication?'
'They wouldn't know how, or whom to send word to. You see, even within the Maitriche Telu, we have our secrets - and so we survive.'
For the course of
two long quests across Ea, Liljana had told us very
little of the ancient Sisterhood that she led. And now, she would explain only
that the Maitriche Telu was composed of secret sanctuaries in all lands. The
sisters of individual sanctuaries knew each other and the identity of their
mistresses only, and the mistresses each reported to a single matriarch in
charge of several sanctuaries, and so on. This gave great protection in case
any sanctuary was discovered and its sisters tortured, for they could betray
only the next highest sister in the net that connected them to the great
sanctuary in Tria and the Materix herself. But if enough knots in this net were
destroyed, it could also leave them isolated and ignorant of the workings of
their own order.
'But
then how did you recognize Lida?' Master Juwain asked.
'There
are signs we use,' Liljana said. 'Secret signs that others see as normal
expressions and gestures. It is its own language.'
I bowed
my head to this woman whom I had come to respect more than almost any other. I
asked her, 'Can Lida help us, then? It will go badly for us if Arch Uttam sends
assassins after us or if King Arsu changes his mind.'
Liljana
shook her head at this. 'Lida has only so much influence over King Arsu. As
for Arch Uttam, she lives in mortal peril of him.'
'We are
ourselves in mortal peril,' Maram said. He looked about the field as if Arch
Uttam's spies might be hiding among the white, wind-whipped bolls of cotton.
'We must go on as quickly as we can. That traitor Salmelu, who now calls
himself Mar Igasho, is riding toward King Arsu's encampment.'
'We
know,' I said to him. 'While you were in the courtesans' tent, King Arsu
announced that King Orunjan was coming to a conclave along with a master
priest.'
'He
did?' Maram said. 'But did he also tell that Morjin rode with them?'
'What?'
I said, looking down the road toward the south. 'Morjin? Here, in Hesperu? How
do you know?'
'Ah, I
don't really know,' Maram admitted. 'But while I was with the
courtesans. King Arsu's messenger came into the tent for a little comfort after
his hard ride, or so he said. He liked to talk, that man did. He said that
Morjin rode with King Orunjun in secret. Well, very soon, I think, it will be a
secret that is no secret that Morjin has come to Hesperu - to meet with the
other kings to plan the conquest of Eanna, if not the whole damn world.'
Now I
stared hard at the road's gray paving stones as if they might tell me if my
enemy was pounding down them toward us. I said to Maram: 'Surely it can't be
Morjin, himself. Surely it must be the third droghul that Atara told of.'
At
this, Atara turned her blindfolded face toward me and said, 'I assumed he was a
droghul, but I can't see that, Val. The one who comes - it could be
Morjin.'
I
waited while a farmer plodded along with a wagon full of manure, and I let him
pass by. Then I drew forth my sword and pointed it down the road. Its silvery
blade seemed to burn with a blue fire but gave little light. If Morjin himself
had come from Argattha, he would surely bear the Lightstone with him, wouldn't
he? And so wouldn't my sword flare in resonance with the golden cup as it once
had?
Master
Juwain saw the thrust of my reasoning, which hadn't changed since the first
droghul had pursued us across the plains of the Wendrush. He said to me, 'I'm
afraid you can't use your sword as a test this way any more, Val.'
I
watched as the flames running along Alkaladur's length grew hotter. I said to
Atara, 'If we knew it was really Morjin, I could wait for him and put an end to
things, here and now. And the rest of you could take Bemossed to safety.'
I
looked at Kane as if to ask if he would give up everything for this final
vengeance; his eyes burned with a dark fire of their own, and I saw that he
dwelled with death.
'But we
don't even know if Bemossed is the Maitreya!' Maram said. 'And without
you and Kane with us, we'll never live to reach home!'
Master
Juwain nodded his head at this and said, 'There are other considerations as
well. If you kill Morjin and fail to reclaim the Lightstone, it will pass to
Arch Uttam or King Arsu. Or to another high priest if Morjin has left it in
Argattha. In the end, one of these would become a new Red Dragon. And complete
Morjin's conquest in his name.'
'Not if
Bemossed could keep him from using the Lightstone,' I said.
'But
could he? Would he?' Master Juwain said to me. 'Maram is right: if you throw
your life away this way, Bemossed might not live to contest anyone for the
Lightstone.'
'That
is a chance we'll have to take!'
'Indeed?
But on whose behalf must we take it? Yours? The dead who are buried on the
Culhadosh Commons? Or the living, in all lands?'
'No one
can see all ends,' I said. 'We have such a rare chance!'
At this
Atara came over to me and grasped my hand. In a clear voice, she told me, 'If
you and Kane go after the one who pursues us, I see your deaths.'
Atara's
face turned toward me as she tried to fight back her fear, and I saw our
deaths, too. And I said, 'I don't care!'
'No,
Val,' she said to me as her hand tightened around mine. 'You must care.
And you must live.'
Master
Juwain nodded his head at this. 'There is a great deal at stake here, beyond
our lives or even the life of Ea.'
At that
moment, Alphanderry stepped out of the shimmering air and said to me, 'I would
rather sing while you play the flute than wail at your funeral.'
Bemossed,
I saw, stood near the cart taking in every word of our debate. His large,
luminous eyes held much doubt, and he seemed at once both restless and calm,
innocent and wise.
'I have
seen too much death, Valashu,' he said to me. 'Is there no other way?'
I
squeezed the black jade of my sword's hilt so hard that my hand hurt. I said,
'Not so long as Morjin lives.'
'Is
there no way, even for him, other than murder and war?' I shook my head at
this. 'You're a dreamer, Bemossed.' 'You have called me the Maitreya as well,'
he said. 'Should I not then dwell in dreams?'
He
brushed back the curls from his gentle face, which came alive with a deep light
that seared into me. Then he looked from me to Kane. Something inside my fierce
friend seemed to soften. And Kane said to me, 'There is a time for fighting and
a time for fleeing. Even if we could come within striking distance of
Morjin without him smelling us out, which we couldn't, what do you suppose
would happen then, eh? King Arsu would send Lord Mansarian and his damn Red
Capes after our companions, and they'd hunt them down.'
'Likely
they will hunt us down anyway as soon King Orunjan meets up with King Arsu,' I
said. 'If anyone should tell of us, Morjin will come after us with the whole of
King Arsu's army.'
That is
a good argument for going quickly, as Maram has said. We will have a lead -
let's keep it and lose ourselves in the mountains.'
Estrella
gazed at me with a look of utter simplicity and a question in her eyes that
cut into me like the keenest steel: Why kill at all unless killing was
inescapably thrust upon me? She had a way, I thought, of showing me my soul.
'All right,' I finally said. I sheathed Alkaladur, and put it back inside the
cart. 'Let us then flee, as fast as we can.'
But
with our heavy cart and our horses yoked to it, we could not set anything like
a rapid pace. We needed to find a wood where we could abandon the cart, and
with it our disguise as players, but it would be folly to do this too close to
King Arsu's army.
And so
we continued our journey back up the road. The wind blew steadily out of the
north, cooling the sweltering valley of the Iona River. We turned east at Orun,
which stank of rotting wood and oily fish, and we crossed over the Black Bridge
into the rich bottom land on the east side of the river. A few miles farther
on, we left the road to strike out along back lanes more or less straight for
the Khal Arrak pass through the mountains. It would be more difficult to ride
cross-country through field and forest, but easier to throw off anyone who
might pursue us.
Amid
rice bogs and swarms of mosquitoes, we soon came upon a village of a few dozen
mud huts called Tajul. We had no intention of stopping in this ugly place, but
the sight of our cart, painted with such eye-popping colors, drew the curiosity
of the few villagers not at work in the surrounding fields.
One of
these, a thick-bodied man with a shock of curly hair and a grizzled beard,
called out to us: 'Good players! Have you any medicines? My son is sick, and
could use something for his pain.'
Though
he might once have been tall, he stood all hunched over as if crippled with
some disease; all his movements seemed to torment him. He wore a tunic of good
silk, belted with a piece of thick leather chafed in a way that suggested it
might once have borne a sword. He gave his name as Falco and said his son had
been kicked in the belly by a mule.
Master Juwain
asked him, 'Is there no healer hereabouts who can help him?'
Falco
shook his head at this. 'We had a good one, Jahal, but he left our village last
year.'
He spat
into the street, and I suddenly knew that Jahal had not left the village of his
own will, but had been taken away.
At the
grave look that fell over Falco's face. Master Juwain said to him: 'I have had
some practice tending our troupe's wounds. May I look in upon him?'
Though
we all wanted urgently to go on, Falco said that he would be honored to offer
us refreshment, and Master Juwain climbed down from his horse - and it seemed
that there was no help for breaking our flight in this poor village. Falco
invited all of us to come inside his house - all of us except Bemossed, who
stayed with the cart. Falco opened the door to his house, and we entered its
large, single room. I immediately noted the scabbarded sword mounted above the
polished teak mantle. There, bending in front of the fireplace, his eldest
daughter hurried to get some water boiling for coffee.
Across
the room, his son lay in bed, and his wife sat in a chair by his side, holding
his hand. Falco presented her as Nela, and then smiled at his son as he said,
'And this is Taitu, named for the old king.'
Taitu,
I saw, could not have been more than fifteen years old. I thought him a
handsome lad, though it was hard to tell for his smooth face was all contorted
in pain. He lay flat out on his back, and wore a pair of silken trousers but no
shirt. A livid bruise marked the brown skin near his navel, and his belly
bulged out almost like that of a pregnant girl.
Master
Juwain went over to him, and sat on the edge of the bed. He gently touched his
hand to Taitu's belly, which caused Taitu to gasp in agony. Master Juwain then
pushed against Taitu's skin, and Taitu's head snapped back as he let loose a
terrible scream.
'Stop
it!' Nela cried out, holding on to Taitu's spasming hand. 'Let him be!'
Master
Juwain took his hand away and looked at Falco. And Falco said, 'He's dying,
isn't he? I've told him he must prepare for death.'
I could
almost feel Master Juwain's hand burning to take out his varistei and hold it
to Taitu's belly. I felt the ache in his throat as his voice grew clear and
deep, but held no hope: 'I'm afraid the blow fractured your son's spleen.
Perhaps other organs, too. He is bleeding, inside. If there are any potions to
stop it, I am unfamiliar with them.'
'But do
you at least have a balm?' Nela asked us, mopping the sweat from Taitu's
forehead. 'Something strong - I don't want him to suffer.'
Without
a word, Liljana moved to go back outside and prepare for Taitu a tincture of
poppy. But then the door suddenly opened, and Bemossed stood limned in the
light pouring in from the street.
Falco
stared at the black cross tattooed into Bemossed's forehead, and he called
out, 'What is the Hajarim doing here?'
At
first, Bemossed made no response to this, in words. He stood quietly looking
down upon Taitu. I marveled at the change that had come over him. His face
shone like the summer sky after the wind has blown heavy clouds away.
And
then, without doubt or hesitation, he said to Falco, 'I can help your boy.'
I
sensed that Falco trembled to call him a liar and order him from his house.
Instead, he stared at Bemossed as if dazzled by the sun.
'Let
him help,' Nela said to Falco. She gazed at Bemossed as a desperate hope
bloomed inside her. 'Let him try.'
'All
right,' Falco finally said. He crossed the room and shut the door behind
Bemossed. He looked at his daughter, and then at his wife. 'But let no one tell
that we allowed a Hajarim into our house.'
Bemossed
went over the side of the bed opposite Master Juwain. He smiled down upon Taitu
as if to reassure the boy that every-thing would be all right. Then, as gently
as a butterfly settling down upon a flower, he laid his hand on Taitu's belly.
Taitu gave no cry of alarm, nor did he writhe in anguish at Bemossed's touch.
He only gazed into Bemossed's eyes, even as Bemossed gazed at him. There came a
flash, as of lightning out of a perfectly blue sky. It hung in the air above
the bed in a blaze of glorre. Bemossed's hand seemed to channel this splendid
fire deep into Taitu's belly. I felt a hot, surging new life stream through
Taitu's insides. It seemed incredibly sweet and bright; I sensed it seeking out
ruptured blood vessels and filling them up, making that which was broken beyond
repair perfectly whole.
After a
while, Bemossed took his hand away from Taitu and smiled at him again. We all
watched in amazement as the boy's swollen belly began to shrink, like a
waterskin being emptied. As the same time, he began sweating profusely; it
seemed that the volume of blood filling his belly was being passed out of his
skin as water.
'Mother,'
Taitu said, looking up at Nela. 'It doesn't hurt any more!'
Nela
tried to force out a 'thank you,' but she could barely speak against the sweet
anguish choking up her throat.
'He
will get better, now,' Bemossed said to her, 'Keep him in bed for the next day,
and give him no food but much drink.'
Falco
could not restrain the tears filling his eyes. He could not keep himself from
grasping Bemossed's hand and calling out, 'You saved him! It is a miracle!'
Bemossed
began to protest that all life was a miracle, and that this was only another of
its workings. But Falco cut him off, saying, 'When I rode with Lord Mansarian,
I heard a rumor that a Hajarim had healed his child, but I never really
believed it until today.' Falco crossed the room to the mantel and picked up
the bottle of brandy that sat there. He said, 'We will drink to miracles - and
my boy's life. Daughter! Fetch glasses, that we might celebrate!'
As his
daughter hurried to carry out his command, I wanted to make our excuses and
leave the village as quickly as we could. But something in Falco's manner
stayed me. I said to him, 'You rode with the Red Capes?'
'I
did,' he said. He seemed not to care whom he admitted this to. 'For two
years, until we trapped a band of errants near Sagara. They deserved death for
assassinating Haar Dyamian, and who was I to speak against it? But Ra Zahur,
the priest who rode with our companies, demanded that we also crucify fifty men
and women from Sagara, in retaliation. I knew the Sagarans - knew that
they'd had nothing to do with the errants who murdered Haar Dyamian. And so I
had to speak out.'
Falco's
daughter gave out small glasses, and he filled them with banned brandy. 'To
life!' he called out. He nodded at Bemossed. 'To those who bring life instead
of taking it!' Then he tossed back the
brandy in one quick swallow, and refilled his glass. He waited for us to drink,
too, before continuing his story.
'I've
always spoken too freely, or so my Nela tells me.' He raised up his glass
toward his wife. 'And so Ra Zahur recommended to Lord Mansarian that I be
whipped and discharged for being too lenient with the enemy. The enemy! These
were blacksmiths and potters in Sagara who were no more assassins than is my
own son. They were Hesperuks, and Haralanders at that - our own countrymen, or
so I said. But it didn't matter: Ra Zahur said that I should be whipped, and so
I was.'
Falco
downed two more glasses of brandy, and said, 'The dragon teeth tore the meat
out of me, and made of me a cripple. I was lucky that Lord Mansarian took pity
on me, and gave me a little gold so that I could buy some land and make a
living for my family.'
Maram,
who had matched Falco drink for drink, said, 'I hadn't heard that Lord
Mansarian spared anyone pity.'
'Lord
Mansarian to a hard man, it's true,' Falco said. 'But then, he's had a hard
time of things, and few harder.'
'How
so?' Maram asked, taking the bottle from Falco and refilling Falco's glass.
'You
haven't heard? I thought everyone knew the story by now.'
With an
obvious pride and longing, he recalled the days when Lord Mansarian had been
the greatest warrior in the north to take up arms against the King. But
finally, the King's men had hunted him down, at the estate of Lord Weru above
Avrian, where Lord Mansarian had hidden his children. On the day the soldiers
and priests came for him, the mother was away, seeking a healer to cure their
daughter, who had the consumption. Falco gave the girl's name as Ysanna. The
whole family had been thrown into a dungeon - the mother and Ysanna, too, when
they returned. Then Arch Uttam came up from Gethun and ordered the children
crucified before Lord Mansarian's eyes - all except Ysanna. Arch Uttam said
that he had no liking to put a sick girl to death. So he gave Lord Mansarian a
choice: Lord Mansarian's remaining daughter would be spared, her mother, too,
if Lord Mansarian admitted the error of his ways. He had only to take the Red
Dragon into his heart.
Falco
seemed close to tears as he told us, 'Some say that Lord Mansarian was reborn
that day. I say that he died, the best part of him. And if the
crucifixion of his children drove the nails through his heart, what he did
then turned him to stone. For freely, it's said, with his own hand, he
crucified Lord Weru and his family -even the children. Then, with Arch Uttam
and the other priests attesting the oath, he swore loyalty to King Arsu. Since
then, there is no one who has slain more errants in the King's name.'
With
that, he turned his head to spit into the fire.
I
clapped him on the arm and said to him, 'Perhaps it's good that you no longer
ride with the Red Capes.'
'Perhaps,'
he muttered. 'But some of my old companions were good men, once. I know that
many of them feel as I do, even if they say nothing.'
'Why do
they still ride with Lord Mansarian, then?'
'What
choice do they have? To desert and be hunted down? To see their children
crucified? Then, too -'
'Yes?'
I said, squeezing his arm.
'It
takes more than courage to rebel. They must have at least a little hope. If a
leader arose such as Lord Mansarian once was, or if Lord Mansarian, himself. .
.'
His
voice died off as he looked into the fire. And then he muttered, 'But, no -
after what happened at Avrian, that's impossible now.'
The
anguish in his voice caused Bemossed to leave Taitu's side and approach Falco.
A deep understanding shone from Bemossed's face, and he looked at Falco as if
he wanted to help him, too. Seeing this, Falco held up his hand and said, 'Go
away, healer! I don't deserve your miracles. If you only knew what I have
done. The truth is, whipping wasn't punishment enough for my real crimes.'
He took
out of his pocket a single gold coin and pressed it into Bemossed's hand. Then
he shuffled across the room to open the door.
'You'd
better go now,' he said. He looked over at Taitu, who had now managed to sit up
against the headboard of the bed. 'Thank you for saving my son's life.'
When he
opened the door, however, there came a flurry of feet against muddy earth and I
heard a boy's voice call out: 'The Hajarim healed Taitu! The Hajarim healed
Taitu!'
I
traded a quick, cutting look with Kane. Short of running after this
eavesdropper and putting him to the sword - and perhaps everyone in the village
- there was no way to keep the secret of what Bemossed had done.
We said
farewell and hurried out to the cart. As my friends mounted their horses and
Bemossed joined me on the cart's seat, a dozen villagers came out of their huts
and in from the fields to watch us pass by. No one tried to stop us or even
speak to us. They only stared at Bemossed, some in wonder, but some in loathing,
too.
I
feared for Falco, but even more for Bemossed, and us, that the Red Priests
would inevitably learn of what had happened here. And so as quickly as we
could, we left the clump of mud huts far behind us.
The
cart's wheels ground and squeaked along the potholed road. Late in the
afternoon, the farmland gave out into a rougher terrain of scrubland dotted
with pools of stagnant water and bramble patches. I saw no good place to
abandon the cart that would keep it hidden, and so Maram suggested that we
simply burn it. But the smoke, I thought, might attract attention rather than
repelling it. And so we journeyed on, into the early hours of the evening.
And
then, perhaps ten or twelve miles from the village, just as it was growing
dark, we came into a stretch of forest. Kane found an old path leading off the
road through the trees. The horses struggled to pull the cart down this narrow,
rocky strip, and it was an even harder work to get the cart off the path and
cover it with a tangle of undergrowth. If anyone pursued us, the cart's tracks
would certainly give it away. But at least it wouldn't stand by itself in some field like a colorful beacon
announcing what we had done and where we had gone.
We took
from the cart only those supplies that we would need for a long, hard ride.
Liljana regretted leaving behind a large, cast iron oven that she had acquired
along the way, and Maram told her that she had become spoiled. In our search
across Hesperu, I thought, we all had, for we had never gone without food or
suffered through a rainy night without a roof to protect us. After we had put
aside our Hesperuk garb and donned tunics, trousers and traveling cloaks - and
gathered up our weapons - it came time to consider one of the most daunting
problems that faced us.
'Bemossed,'
Kane said, pointing at the man we had bought as a slave, 'can't ride.'
Bemossed
stood stroking the neck of Little foot, the gentlest of our horses. If he took
any insult from Kane's words, he did not show it.
'He can
ride,' I said. 'I've taught him.'
'So,
one lesson only. He might be able to sit on that gelding without falling off,
but he can't really ride.'
'He'll have
to,' I said. 'We'll help him - there's no other choice.'
I
looked at Bemossed and smiled, even though I felt heavy doubt pulling at me. I
regretted that he had to take his second lesson at night, in the middle of a
mosquito-infested wood, but there was no help for it.
'At
least we'll have a bit of moon to light our way,' I said as I gazed up through
the trees at the glowing sky.
'Perhaps
it would be better,' Master Juwain said, 'if we rested and continued on at
dawn.'
I shook
my head at this. 'When Morjin learns that we entertained King Arsu, he won't
rest. And neither will Lord Mansarian and the Red Capes.'
We
mounted our horses then, but we did not ride very quickly, for it was dark in
the forest and Bemossed had a hard time of things. I had to show him again how
to set his feet in the stirrups and hold the reins. His unease communicated to
Littlefoot, who nickered nervously and seemed ready to buck Bemossed off his
back. It pained me, and all of us, that walking seemed the only pace that
Bemossed could safely get out of Littlefoot that night. I told myself, though,
that Bemossed was learning quickly and that tomorrow would be a better day. I
told myself, too, that any pace at all was a good one if took us away from our
enemies.
I
intended to ride without much rest straight for the Khal Arrak pass, perhaps
sixty miles away. After a while, however I saw that the terrain between here
and there was too rough, and would ruin the horses. Worse, Bemossed had no legs
for riding, a couple of hours before dawn, when his muscles began cramping
along his thighs, I looked for a good place to stop. We came to a stream
cutting the road and flooding it; no one, it seemed, had ever bothered to build
a bridge here. We moved off into the woods and made camp near the stream's
banks. Mercifully, few mosquitoes came out to bite us, not even at daybreak,
when I moved over to where Bemossed slept on a pile of leaves and shook him awake.
'Is it
time already?' he asked me, yawning. 'It seems that I just closed my eyes.'
He
stood with difficulty, and limped like an old man over to Liljana, who handed
him a cup of hot coffee. She had arisen an hour before, taking scarcely any
rest, just so that she could make him a hot meal of egg pie and maize bread.
We ate
quickly as the sun filled the forest with a warm, green-tinged light. The
leaves of the oaks and dogwoods about us began to glow, and many birds chirped
out their songs. It did not take us long to break camp, for we had not made
much of one in the first place. It was a bright day promising much sunshine,
and I dared to hope that we might reach the mountains safely by the end of it
Just as
we readied to mount, though, Maram let out a cry and jumped away from his
horse. He grabbed at his leg and shouted, 'It burns! It burns!'
I
feared that he, too, had taken a cramp - or even that a poisonous snake had
crawled into his trousers and had bitten him. He continued shouting and jumping
about as if he had been dropped down onto a bed of coals, even as he pulled
frantically at his trousers. Finally, he managed to undo them and pull them off
over his boots. He cast them away from him. He stood there half naked, and I
saw that the skin along the outside of his leg had been burned as if
seared by the sun.
'What
happened?' I cried, rushing over to him. Everyone else made a circle around us.
'It is
my firestone!' he said.
Maram
usually carried his red gelstei secreted in a long pocket sewn into the leg of
his trousers. Now we all watched as this cast-off garment began to smoke and
smolder. A few moments later, it burst into flames. It didn't take long for the
fire to consume the wool. In the center of the ashes, glowing brightly, the
hot, crimson crystal burned against the ground.
'What
did you do?' I asked him.
'Nothing!'
he said. 'I haven't even thought of using it for a thousand miles.'
'Then
what made it come alive?'
My
question almost needed no answer. Even so, Master Juwain pointed at the
seething firestone and said, 'It is Morjin.'
It
seemed that Morjin's power over the Lightstone - and therefore over our
gelstei - had grown. It seemed that we no longer needed to wield our sacred
crystals in order for him to take control over them.
Daj
went to fetch a spare pair of trousers from Maram's saddlebags, and Maram
dressed himself again. He stood looking down at the red gelstei, which still
poured forth a ferocious heat.
'Oh, my
poor flesh!' Maram said, rubbing his leg. He bent to hold his hand above the
radiating firestone. 'My poor, poor crystal - how am I to hold it?'
He
might as well, I thought, have tried to grasp a heated iron. 'I'm afraid you
might have to abandon it,' Master Juwain said.
'Abandon
my gelstei? No, no - I can't do that.'
'You
can't carry it with you, either.'
Maram
stared at the burning stone. 'It will cool - you'll see. It must.'
We
waited a few minutes, but the firestone lost none of its torridness. Neither,
it seemed, did it grow any hotter. 'We must ride,' I said to Maram. 'Ride now.'
'No, I
can't leave it behind. What if some boy wandering through these woods found it?
What if Morjin did?'
This
objection persuaded all us that we could not simply leave his gelstei burning
on the ground here. As we had been told, it might be the last remaining
firestone on Ea.
'We
won't leave it,' Kane called out. He went over to one of the packhorses and
lifted off a waterskin. And emptying its contents on the ground, he went over
to the stream, where he bent down to scoop into the skin handfuls of sandy mud.
He laid the waterskin on the ground next to the firestone, and he used a rock
from the stream to push the firestone point-first down into the opened neck of
the mud-filled skin. We waited a while longer, and although the leather skin
grew warm, it seemed that the firestone was not hot enough to burn through
sand and consume its container. Kane stowed it back on the horse, and he said
to Maram: 'If it gets any worse, it will burn the beast and not you.'
His assurance,
however, did not console Maram, or any of the rest of us. Maram said, 'I always
hoped that if I faced Morjin again, I might burn him with my stone's fire. But
now I'm afraid he's coming to burn me.'
I was
afraid of this, too. I began to sweat as a familiar and dreaded sensation
stabbed through my spine into my belly. It was like being devoured inside by a
ravenous snake.
Maram
looked straight at me then, and so did Kane and Master Juwain. Bemossed did,
too. His soft eyes filled with a grave knowing as he said to me, 'This poison
that Morjin put in your blood burns you and bonds you to him, doesn't it,
Valashu?'
'Yes,'
I said, 'it does.'
Bemossed
stepped up close to me; he set his hand upon the scar on my forehead as if to
cool the fever that always tormented me. 'He is drawing nearer, now, isn't he?'
I
nodded my head as everyone looked at me. I felt Morjin's desire to destroy me
driving through my navel, even as the point of Maram's firestone had pierced
Kane's waterskin. A terrible pressure inside me bruised my organs and built
hotter and hotter.
'He has
found me,' I said. 'Either he or his droghul.'
'Then
let us ride,' Kane said, 'and see if we can reach the mountains before him.'
There
was nothing to do then but mount our horses and try to outdistance the enemy I
felt pursuing us. Whether this might be a single droghul hunting by himself or
Morjin riding with Lord Mansarian and two hundred Red Capes, I could not say.
Neither could I tell how far behind us they might be.
'All
right,' I said to Kane, 'let us ride.'
And so we set out up the road leading north, toward the great, snowcapped peaks of the Crescent Mountains that shone in the distance many miles away.
Chapter 40 Back Table of Content Next
The horses' hooves beat a thudding tattoo against the earth as the trees along the narrow road flew by. I soon saw, however, that Bemossed could not hold this pace. Twice his foot popped out of his stirrup, which confused and angered his usually gentle horse. As we were bounding down a rough, turning stretch of road, he lost the reins altogether and in desperation threw his arms around Littlefoot's neck to hold on for his life. I called for a halt then. I waited while Bemossed collected his senses and his breath. I rode over to help him reposition himself and take up the reins again. Then I set forth at a slower pace.
I heard Maram mutter to Atara, 'Ah, but it's going to be a long day.'
For two hours we rode through the forest, until it gave out onto an expanse of farmland. The road turned toward the northwest; as the Khal Arrak lay to the northeast, we had to ride off the road to find little lanes between the fields and sometimes cut straight across them. More than one farmer shook his hoe at us and shouted curses at us for trampling his cabbages. I worried that we attracted too much attention. I felt our enemy drawing ever closer - even as the pressure inside me built ever more painful, and hotter and hotter.
'We must ride faster,' I turned to tell Bemossed. 'You must try.'
He nodded his head at this and said, 'It still seems wrong to burden this beast this way, but I will try.'
'Your horse is named Littlefoot,' I told him. 'And he is no beast but a great being who is proud to bear you. If you do your part, he will do his.'
He grasped his reins and patted Littlefoot's neck with a new resolve.
And for the next hour of the day, beneath the hot noon sun,
he managed to hold a canter without once losing his stirrups or reins.
And then we came into a torn, treeless country of poor
soil that looked to have been overfarmed. Hesperus sometimes torrential rains
had eroded the slopes of the hills rising up toward the mountains. We had to
cross many gullies and slips of silt and stones. This demanded skillful
horsemanship, but as we were riding over a particularly broken patch of ground,
Bemossed clenched his reins too tightly and caused Littlefoot to whinny and
rear up. He lost his balance then and flew off onto the ground. Although he
took no injury from this fall, he barely managed to roll out of the way in a
frantic effort to keep Uttlefoot's driving hooves from crushing him. After
that, he did not want to ride anymore. I felt him, however, steeling himself to
climb back into his saddle and master this difficult art.
Master Juwain, I saw, was having a hard time of
things, too. The work of getting across the gullies caused him to gasp, as if
drawing in breath was a strain. This surprised and worried me. He had always
seemed to me as tough as tree bark. Even in the heights of the Nagarshath range
of the White Mountains, where the air is the thinnest on earth, he had climbed
up through a terrible terrain as if he possessed the lungs of a much younger
man.
When we stopped by a stream to refill our waterskins,
I saw him take out his green gelstei and stare at it. Then I finally understood.
1 said to him, 'It is Morjin, isn't it?'
He nodded his head, then gasped out, 'He has .. .
found his way ... again... into this crystal.'
Maram came up and looked at it. 'I never felt a fire
so terrible as that which came out of your stone when you tried to heal me.
Morjin is burning you with it, isn't he?'
'No... it isn't like ... that,' Master Juwain said
again. He waited to catch his breath. 'The varistei, I think ... is making my
blood sick. Making it so that it can't... hold the air I breathe in.'
Liljana stepped over to look at the beautiful emerald
crystal in his hand. She said, 'Then you must get rid of it.'
'I will,' Master Juwain said, closing his hand around
his crystal. 'If things get worse, I will bury it.'
I did not want to pause any longer to hold an
argument. None of us, I knew, would readily abandon his gelstei. I told myself
that
if we could flee far enough from Morjin, he would lose
whatever power he might be gaining over the stones.
'Let us ride,' I said. I looked at the mountains, now
standing out sharply in stark gray and white lines perhaps only twenty-five
miles away. 'Let us leave this dreadful country behind us.'
We set out again, and the terrain became even worse:
rockier along the steeply cut slopes of the hills, and filled with dense vegetation
in their troughs. Much grass grew here, and we saw a few herders grazing their
sheep and goats upon it. But a tough, rubbery plant called hape also sprouted
from the poor soil, in large patches through which the horses had a hard time
driving their hooves. Littlefoot stumbled twice here, and I didn't know how
Bemossed was able to keep from being thrown. Even Fire, the most surefooted of
our horses, nearly broke her leg in a tangle of hape that concealed a rocky
hole.
As the sun crossed the sky's zenith and began falling
toward the west in a gout of yellow fire, the air grew stiller and hotter. We
sweated and prayed for any hint of wind. I wondered if Estrella might be able
to summon up a breeze. But this strong, sweet girl worked hard just to keep her
horse moving forward. I listened as Master Juwain gasped and wheezed, and our
horses snorted out froth into the blazing afternoon. My eyes burned as if
someone had pushed me face-first into an oven. My heart burned, too, and my
blood which pulsed through my aching veins. And with every mile we put behind
us, I felt the hateful thing that pursued us drawing closer.
At the crest of one hape-covered rise, I called for a
halt. I scanned the country behind us. A haze of heat and moisture steamed off
the broken hills. I could not detect anyone riding over this ground; the only
things that moved were a few dozen sheep a mile away. Kane, who had dismounted,
lifted up his ear from a rock on the ground, and he shook his head. He
murmured, 'Nothing - not yet.'
'Atara?' I said, looking over to where she stood leaning
against her horse. 'Can you see anything?'
The sickness that
burned through her belly struck deep into my own. I felt smothered in a thick
blackness, as if a great hand had pushed me down into a mass of stinking black
mud. I saw Atara grasping at the pommel of her saddle with one hand, even as
she clutched something close to her body with her other. And then she turned to
show me her diamond-clear gelstei. She told me, 'I can see almost nothing - not
the land which we ride over, or the hours of the rest of this day. There is
only Morjin. He is here, inside this crystal. And he is here, in these
hills, somewhere. He comes, Val - how quickly he comes!'
Bemossed moved over to help her mount her horse. I
thought it strange that even totally
blind, she could ride much more fluidly than he, as if she had become a living
part of her fierce, beautiful mare.
We began moving
again, north and east toward the break in the mountains called the Khal Arrak. Whenever
we came up over a swell of ground, I looked for this pass in the folds and
fissures of rock to the north. I could not quite make it out. Even so, I felt
certain that we rode more or less straight toward it: my sense of
dead-reckoning told me this was so. I tried to assure Maram that we were going
the right way, and he made a joke of this, saying, 'I hope you're right,
because if you don't reckon correctly, we're all dead.'
A short distance farther on the ground got better,
with fewer rocks and hape plants, and more grass for grazing. There should have
been many sheep in the hills hereabout, and shepherds, too. For three miles we
saw none of these; however, we did come across half a dozen houses, crumbling
and obviously abandoned. I wondered why everyone had left them.
Bemossed, exhausted, fairly teetered on top of his
horse and said, 'I heard there was war in this district, and plague, too.'
'Oh, excellent!' Maram grumbled. 'A cursed land - and
we have to ride straight through it. Is there no other way?'
I looked out at the hot green hills around us. Perhaps
ten miles farther on, a band of darker green forest covered the rising ground
leading up to the mountains.
'Hmmph, you'll be all right,' Atara said to Maram,
joking with him.
'Just don't drink the water here, and try not to breathe the air.'
Liljana, upon hearing this, did not smile. She sat on
top of her horse
next to Daj as she combed her fingers through his thick hair, checking to see if he might have picked up any ticks or
other vermin on our
ride. Then she broke off her inspection and said,
'I wish that I did not have to breathe the same air as
Morjin, anywhere
on earth. He makes everything so foul.'
The unusual shrillness of her voice alarmed me,
and I nudged Altaru over to her. We traded knowing looks, and I asked her. 'Has Morjin found his way into your
gelstei, too?'
She nodded her head as she brought out her blue whale
figurine. She looked at it hatefully.
'He slides himself into my mind, like a tapeworm! He is filth! He is an
abomination who never should have
been born! I can't tell you what he is saying to me - I can hardly tell myself.'
Her words alarmed not just me, but everyone. Kane rode
over to her, and cast his eyes upon the blue gelstei. He shouted, 'Then it must
be destroyed!'
'No, not yet,' Liljana murmured, closing her fingers
around her crystal. 'I can still bear it.'
'Can you bear giving us away? If Morjin can see what
you see, hear what you hear, then -'
'But he can't!'
'How do you know?'
'I just do. He wants only to madden me. He speaks and
speaks to me, but he doesn't really know if I can hear him.'
'But how do we know that, eh?'
'How can you ask that? After all we've suffered
together? Don't you know me?'
'But what if you're wrong, eh?'
Liljana thrust her hand inside her cloak as she glared
at Kane. And she snapped at him, 'You'll just have to trust me!'
'So,' he growled as he glared back at her. 'So.'
Liljana usually spoke with care, so as not to upset
the children with things that they didn't need to know. But now she cried out:
'It doesn't matter anyway! Morjin is tracking us, and not by my thoughts. He
will run us down, and soon!'
'Did he tell you that?' I asked her.
'Yes!'
I looked up at the mountains, which seemed so close,
and yet still too far away. I said to Liljana, 'Then he told you lies - we will
escape him, again.'
'You tell yourself lies. We are riding so slowly.'
'Be quiet, woman!' Kane thundered at her. 'You worry
more than Maram! And that's just what Morjin wants, eh? It's your damn gelstei!
You should throw it away before I do!'
His large hands, it seemed, fairly trembled to rip
open the folds of her cloak and seize her gelstei. And so I shouted at him:
'Kane! Morjin wants even more that we should start tearing at each other's
throats!'
As I said this, the deep lines cut into his savage
face smoothed out, and his eyes cooled, slightly. He turned away from Liljana.
Then he brought out his black gelstei and sat on his horse staring at it.
'Damn Morjin!' he muttered. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his
blood!'
He made a fist around his dark stone, and lifted his
hand back behind his head as if making ready to hurl it from him. And then his
whole body seemed to lose its strength. His arm fell to his side as he slumped
in his saddle. He put his gelstei away. He turned to me to snarl out, 'Let's
ride, damn it, while we still can!'
And so ride we did, trying to keep our hope fixed on
the great rocky wall of mountains growing larger and larger in front of
us. We pounded around and over grassy hills. Flies came out to bite us. Our
sweat, like fire, burned in the little wounds the flies tore in our flesh.
And then we crested a good-sized hill, and the dark
blanket of forest we sought for shade from the fierce sun and cover from our
pursuers' eyes seemed almost close enough to touch. I thought that we might
possibly reach it and vanish into its trees. Then I turned to scan the rolling
ground behind us and a flash of white and red brightened the top of one of the
hills. I squinted against the sun, and I could just make out a white horse
bearing a bronze-armored warrior and his flowing red cape. Lord Mansarian. I
remembered, rode a snow-white stallion. I knew this was he. His men galloped
right behind him. There must have been at least two hundred knights of these
Crimson Companies, pouring down the hillside like a stream of bronze and red.
Somewhere in this frightful mass, I thought, rode priests of the Kallimun. I
knew that their master rode with them as well - either he or the droghul of
Morjin.
Seeing this, Maram sighed out, 'Ah, too many, too
close - too bad.'
'No!' I said to him. 'We can escape them yet! Let's
ride!'
I urged Altaru to a gallop; it gladdened my heart to
see Bemossed push his gelding to match this pace. He and Littlefoot both seemed
near to collapse, but they managed to negotiate the easy slope down the
backside of the hill. Another and larger hill rose up before us. 1 led the way
around it, through a broad, grassy trough, and I dared to hope that the sight
of our enemy would inspire us to a speed great enough to leave them
behind.
But it was not to be. Just as I rounded the hill, I
came upon a stream cutting through a gully. Altaru jumped across it almost
without breaking stride. Just as I turned in my saddle to warn Bemossed of this
unexpected obstacle, though, he seized hold of Littlefoots reins in confusion.
Littlefoot planted his hooves in the grass, stopping up short of the stream.
Bemossed, completely unprepared for his horse's sudden balk, went flying
headfirst from his saddle through the air. His momentum carried him clear
across the stream, where he struck the ground with a sickening impact. He threw
up his hands to protect his head, and I heard bones break. It was something of
a miracle that Atara's horse and those of the children, following close behind
him, managed to jump the stream without trampling him.
We all gathered around Bemossed near the edge of the
gully and dismounted. Bemossed stood up bravely, holding his drooping arm in
his hand. He winced in pain as Master Juwain quickly examined it, but did not
utter even a murmur of complaint
'Both bones in your forearm are broken,' Master Juwain
announced. 'Not badly, I think, but they must be set. and your arm
wrapped.'
'Not here!' Kane growled out. 'There is no time!'
'He can't ride like this,' Master Juwain said.
'He can hardly ride as it is,' Kane snapped. 'But ride
he must.'
'All right,' I said. 'Then he'll ride with me.'
I mounted Altaru, and then helped Maram and Kane as
they fairly flung Bemossed up onto Altaru's back behind me. I told Bemossed to
wrap his good arm around my waist and to hold on tightly. Then I whispered to
my great, black stallion, 'All right, old friend, you must run quickly now -
quicker than you ever have before!'
Altaru, however, although the strongest of horses and
a fury of speed over short distances, had never had the wind for long races.
With Bemossed's weight added to mine, Altaru sprang forward with a great surge
of determination that could not last very long. We galloped for a while over
the lumpy, grassy ground. The breath snorted from his huge nostrils, and I felt
an agony of fire building within the great, bunching muscles of his flanks and
legs. I feared that he would run so hard that his heart might burst. I wanted
to weep at the valor of this great-spirited being.
I heard the horses of my companions pounding after us
and Bemossed's tormented breath exploding in my ear. I felt his arm tight
around my belly, but trembling with the effort to keep holding on. I knew his
strength was failing, as was Altaru's. After a couple of miles, my horse's pace
slowed to barely a gallop. His whole body seemed to knot and quiver with a
burning agony. I did not know how he kept on running.
We came out into a bowl of thick grass surrounded by
hills, to its center stood an old cottage, or rather, its ruins. It had no roof
and only three good walls: the fourth wall, facing us, had crumbled in places,
and its doorway lacked a door. I pointed Altaru straight toward this hole in
the wall's mortared stone. And Maram cried out in protest to me: 'What are you
doing? The pass lies that way!' He pointed off past the right of the
house. 'We won't make it - not this way!' I called back to him. 'We must make a
stand, here.'
He didn't argue with me, nor did anyone else. I drew
up in front of the cottage and waited as my friends joined me and dismounted.
Kane and Maram helped Bemossed down from Altaru's back; then I rode him through
the doorway into the cottage. Kane took charge of getting the other horses and
everyone inside. I dismounted, too, and began walking around the cottage's
single room. Piles of old leaves and bits of stone littered its packed-earth
floor. Three of its walls, as I had thought, seemed to be in good enough
repair. They stood a good seven feet high. The southern wall, however, had
crumbled down to a height of four feet along much of its length. It was no
castle that I had chosen for us to defend, but the best protection we could
hope to find.
While Master Juwain and Liljana worked to set
Bemossed's arm and wrap it, Kane unholstered his bow and began sticking arrows
down into the dirt floor. So did I, and so did Maram. He moved with speed but
without conviction or hope. I heard him mutter to himself, 'Ah, Maram, my old
friend, this is madness - this is surely the end.'
'How many times have you said that?' I asked him,
pushing an arrow down into the rain-softened earth.
'I don't know,' he grumbled. 'But sooner or later,
I'll be right.'
I looked out over the crumbled section of wall for the
approach of our enemy. I said, 'We survived the siege of Khaisham, didn't we?'
'By a miracle, we did. But here we have no escape
tunnel.' 'Then we'll have to find a different way to escape.' Behind us, near
the cottage's north wall, Estrella tried to quiet the horses. She and Daj had
tethered them to an old beam that lay on the floor there; other than it and
some splinters from an old window frame, the cottage seemed to have been
stripped of wood and all its furnishings.
'This is not so bad a place,' I told Maram. 'Not
nearly so bad as Argattha, where we fought off a hundred men.'
'But there we had Ymiru with us, and we wore armor,
too. And Atara had her other sight.'
He turned toward Atara, who was busy stringing her
great horn bow. She kept her arrows in the quiver slung on her back. I felt her
waiting desperately for her second sight to return.
'We will win,' I told Maram.
'Against two hundred knights?'
'Yes,' I said.
'How, Val?'
I looked out over the low section of the wall toward
the gap in the hills to the south. And I told him, 'I don't know, but we will
win.'
My words did not convince him. I wasn't sure that I
could even convince myself. I saw Kane's jaws working with all the tension of a
steel trap, and I sensed that even my grim-faced friend had rarely found himself
in such a desperate situation.
There came a grinding snap as Master Juwain set the
bones of Bemossed's arm. Bemossed gave a gasp, and his face contorted with
pain. He said nothing. I saw little hope in his eyes, and I wondered if he
regretted coming away with us. I felt a tightness in his throat; a sense of
doom seemed to grip him in an ironclad fist. I couldn't help thinking of what
Master Matai had said about the Maitreya: that his star would burn brightly but
not long.
A few moments later, Lord Mansarian rode his white
stallion through the gap in the hills to the south. The green peacock feathers
of his shiny bronze helm fluttered in the breeze. Four or five of his companies
of Red Capes thundered behind him. Lord Mansarian led them to a point in the
grassy bowl about four hundred yards away: just outside the range of our
arrows. He drew up his men in long lines facing the cottage. I caught a flash
of a white-haired man wearing a red robe, and I knew that this must be one of
the Red Priests. Another priest - Salmelu, I guessed - sat on his horse next to
a man covered from head to knee with a gray traveling cloak. I could not see if
he wore armor beneath it. I could not see his face, but the acid burning my
throat told me that this must be Morjin.
'Damn him!' Kane muttered. He stood next to me behind
the crumbled section of wall. 'Damn his blood!'
Daj came up to us, and craned his head over the wall
to look upon our enemy. He gripped his little sword in his hand, and he said,
'Why do they wait there? Why don't they surround the house?'
'Because,' I told him, 'it is easier to ride down
fleeing rats than to face them cornered with no place to run.'
He immediately understood and said, 'They want us
to flee. Well, this rat will kill at least one of them as they come over
the walls.'
So saying, he pointed his sword at the Red Capes. I
remembered how in Argattha he had used a spear to dispatch several of Morjin's
wounded soldiers.
Lord Mansarian posted two men on the gentle slopes
above the western and eastern sides of the cottage - no doubt to give warning
in case we should flee.
Seeing this, Maram said, 'Why don't they just storm us
and be done? What are they waiting for?'
They are waiting for our nerve to break, I
thought. But I said nothing.
Maram twanged the string of his bow, and said, 'How
many do you
think that we can hit before they reach the house? Five? Ten?'
'Ten? Hmmph,' Atara said. 'You won't be able to shoot
with any accuracy
until they come within a hundred yards. And then you'll only have seconds to get off your rounds.'
'And that is my point. Even if by some miracle, we
each get five of
them, or even ten, that's only thirty men, which will leave -'
'Be quiet!' Kane snapped at him. 'This is no time for
arithmetic.'
'Is it not?' Maram turned to look at Master Juwain
wrapping Bemossed's
arm in the corner as Liljana paid out a length of linen from a large roll.
'Nine of us minus nine leaves zero, which is all that will remain of the great
Lightstone Traveling Troupe as soon as the damn Red Capes find their courage and charge
us.'
He threw down his bow in disgust and moved over to the
horses. It did not take him long to find his brandy bottle and to begin
drinking straight from its glassy mouth.
'What are you doing?' Kane shouted at him. 'Get back
to your post!'
'Give me a moment, damn you! I just want one more
taste of brandy before I die.'
Kane stepped toward him as if intending to seize him
by the neck and drag him back to the wall. But I stayed him, and said, 'Let him
be.'
'But he'll drink himself senseless!'
'No, he won't,' I said. I didn't add: Who could
blame him if he did?
I gazed out across the field at the two hundred Red
Capes sitting on
their mounts and pointing their spears at us. At the center of their front line, Lord Mansarian
seemed to be consulting with the
two priests and the gray-cloaked man I took as Morjin.
'Maram is right,' Kane said to me. 'We won't kill very
many before they reach this wall.'
'Maybe we'll kill enough to drive them off,' I said.
'No - we won't. They'll come over the wall, and
through the doorway,' Kane said grimly.
I gripped the hilt of my sword and said, 'I will kill
anyone that tries to come through it.'
'So, you will - but it still won't be enough. Maram
and I can't hold this wall by ourselves.'
'But what about me?' Daj said, pointing his sword
toward our enemy. 'I can fight!'
I looked down upon this valiant young warrior, and at
Atara, who stood next to him gripping her bow. How wrong it was, I thought,
that Lord Mansarian and his war-hardened men should have driven to battle a
blind woman and a beardless boy.
'There is a way,' I said to Kane. 'There must be a
way.'
But I no longer believed this. I looked over at
Bemossed, grimacing as Master Juwain fashioned a sling for his arm, and I
silently raged that we had found this bright, gentle man only to have to lose
him soon to our enemy's spears.
'There is a way!' Kane said to me. His hand
shot out to lock upon my forearm, even as his eyes took hold of mine. I saw the
old hate flare up inside him, even as he saw it seething in me. 'You know the
way!'
'No,' I murmured. 'No.'
'Yes, this is the time - there isn't much time!'
'No, I can't.'
Kane let go of my arm to stab his fngers out toward
our enemy. 'You have a sword inside you - use it!'
'I have sworn not to!'
'Use the valarda, damn it! This one time! Strike the
Beast! Kill his droghul! Do it, Val!'
I looked out at the lines of mounted men in their
gleaming, fish-scaled armor. I stared at the merciless Lord Mansarian and the
man in gray who might be Morjin. It was Morjin, I remembered, who had nailed my
mother and grandmother to planks of wood. And now he waited to murder my
friends, who were the only family I had left.
Hate, the dark, destroying passion, fairly emanated
from Lord Mansarian's men likes waves of heat. I felt it working at Lord
Mansarian and burning up the man who must be Morjin. It howled like an enraged
animal inside of Kane, and most of all, in myself. I could not escape it any
more than I could the hot, humid air that hurt my lungs and stung my eyes.
'Valashu,' Bemossed said to me.
He came over and stood with me by the wall. He looked
at me with his wise, brilliant eyes. Although I had said almost nothing to him
of the valarda and the way that this terrible force of the soul could kill, he
seemed to understand even so.
I set down my bow, and took out my sword. I no longer
cared that its sacred silustria burned
with fire.
There came a movement from the lines of Red Capes, and
three knights rode forward to join Lord Mansarian. I guessed that they were
captains receiving orders to make ready to charge us. Seeing this, Liljana
stepped up to the wall and so did Master Juwain.
'Val,' Liljana said. The essential kindness of her
soft, round face melted away before something fearful and furious inside her.
'If ever there was a time to use the valarda as Kane has said, this must be
it.'
I stared at this woman who was like a mother to me,
but I said nothing.
'Think of all those who have sacrificed so much for
you to have come this far,' she said to me. 'Can't you sacrifice your vain
attachment to a principle?'
'The only principle that realty matters,' Maram
bellowed out to me from across the room, 'is life. But you don't care about
that, do you?'
Master Juwain, I thought, wanted to advise me as well.
But he stood quietly, and his gray eyes flickered back and forth as.if he was
reading a book. He seemed to be searching for .words or the right verse that
would reveal the absolute truth in order to guide me - searching and searching.
I felt his mind spinning like a steel discus hurled out into space.
'What will be?' Atara said to me. She had put down her
bow to re-tie her blindfold so that it wouldn't come loose in battle. Her voice
grew as cold as a mountaintop as she said to me, 'What will be left of the
world if you don't do what you were born to do?'
Her hatred of Morjin, like ice, seemed to touch even
Estrella. She walked over to Atara, and pressed Atara's hand to her face. I
felt this lovely girl's dread of what soon must come, and even more, her
loathing of the darkness from which none of us seemed able to escape.
'You should wait with the horses,' I said to her,
pointing across the room. 'You should try to keep them calm.'
She closed her eyes as if looking inside herself for a
place of calm that
spears and swords could not touch.
'Valashu,' Bemossed said to me again. He held
his hand out toward Alkaladur's angry red flame. 'This cannot be the way.'
I saw in my sword's fire my dead father and my
brothers and the thousands of warriors who had fallen upon the Culhadosh
Commons. And I shouted, 'It is the way of the world! What does it matter if I
slay with a sword forged out of gelstei or the hate in my heart?'
I stared at my sword, and I could not move. I felt its
point piercing my hands and my feet - and every other part of me -crucifying me
to something worse than death.
And Bemossed told me, 'No good can come of this.'
'Good comes,' I called out, looking across the field,
'when warriors kill those who need killing.'
Bemossed blinked as if he could not hold the moisture
filling up his eyes. He said to me, 'Even yourself, Valashu?'
'Can you stop it?' I said to him. 'What is a
Maitreya good for?'
Why, I wondered, had fate chosen Bemossed as the
Shining One, and not me? The answer burned along the blade that stabbed through
the center of my being: because I was damned. Because I was who I was.
There came a shout from across the field, and I looked
out to see a third red-robed priest leading a packhorse up between the ranks of
knights toward Lord Mansarian. Something seemed to be slung over the horse's
back; I hoped it was not a packet of arrows and a bow. It nearly maddened me to
have to wait here to see how Lord Mansarian would attack us - and to know what
I would do. I felt this uncertainty torturing not just myself, but my friends
as well. The battle had not yet begun, but the battle raged as it always
had inside each of us.
I felt this most excruciatingly in Estrella. She
seemed lost in a dark cavern of pain that had no bottom or end. Her heart beat
quickly and agonizingly, as if she were fleeing from a bloodthirsty beast. And
then everything inside her grew utterly still as if she had plunged deep into
cool waters. An image came into my mind: that of a brilliant silver lake. She
opened her eyes then and looked at me. She looked at Bemossed. Her whole being
gleamed like a perfect mirror. Bemossed gazed at her in wonder. He stared and
stared, deep into the eyes of this glorious girl, but even more at the great
shining wonder of himself.
'Look, they move!' Maram cried out. He came hurrying
over to the wall to grab up his bow. 'They're coming!'
I turned to see one of Lord Mansarian's warriors ride
forward bearing a white banner of truce. Then came Lord Mansarian and a line of
six knights. Morjin and the three priests rode behind the knights, using them
as a shield in case we should fail to honor the truce and begin shooting arrows
at them.
'Why should they even want to parlay?' Kane
snarled out. He lifted up his bow. 'So, we'll speak to them with arrows through
their throats!'
'Are we trucebreakers, now?' I shouted at him.
'Must we commit every abomination?'
'The only abomination is in letting Morjin and his
creatures live!'
Our enemy rode a dozen yards closer. Kane nocked an
arrow to his bowstring,
and so did Maram. Just then Alphanderry appeared and stood with us behind the wall.
'Look!' Daj cried out. 'Look at Bemossed!'
As Bemossed stared at Estrella, his face shone in the
onstreaming rays of the sun. Everything about him shone: his eyes, his lips,
his great, throbbing heart. He stood in a shimmer of glorre. I could hardly
believe what I saw. Bemossed took his arm out of his sling and cast down this
bit of cloth. He smiled. His eyes grew as bril-liant as the stars. He seemed to
behold himself as he had always longed to be.
'Hoy!' Alphanderry sang out. 'La neshama halla!'
Bemossed looked out at our enemy, and I felt in him no
fear. He looked at the sky and the earth; he looked at me. He seemed utterly
without doubt. A bright, shining hope lit his smile, and more, the sureness of
triumph. I knew then that Ea had not just a dark and false king of kings, but a
new Lord of Light.
'La neshama halla jai Maitreya!'
In the air in front of him, a plain golden cup
appeared. It seemed at once to be as hard as diamond and without true
substance, like light. Bemossed reached out with his bandaged arm to grasp this
cup. The moment that his fingers closed around it, my sword blazed a bright
glorre. Then a dazzling radiance filled up every corner of the cottage, and
swelled outward and upward to illuminate the green hills around us and the deep
blue of the sky. Strangely, our enemy, riding ever closer, seemed unable to
perceive this splendid light.
'The gelstei!' Maram shouted. He seemed stunned as by
a hammer blow to his head. He ran over to the horses, and removed his firestone
from the waterskin encasing it. He held it up for us all to see. 'My gelstei
- look, it cools!'
Liljana and Master Juwain took out their gelstei
then,too.
'I won't break the truce,' Maram sighed out, tucking
the fire-stone down into the pocket of his trousers. He came back over to me.
'I think you Valari are right, after all. All that really matters is
honor - to honor the glory of life. And so if I must die, I must die, too bad.'
Liljana pointed at the gray-cloaked man who rode with
the three priests behind Lord Mansarian. 'I doubt if that is really Morjin. He
wouldn't trust us to keep the truce. I was wrong, Val. Don't waste the best
of yourself on him.'
'I agree,' Master Juwain told me. He seemed able to
breathe more easily. 'It is likely some sort of trap.'
Atara moved up next to me, and she reached out blindly
to lay her hand on my chest. And she said, 'Do what you were born to do, but
not this murder.'
Our enemy came even closer, within the long range of
our arrows, and now even Kane put down his bow. He turned to gaze at Bemossed
with great dread, and yet with an intense longing, too. I knew that he wanted
to weep and laugh and roar out all his wild joy of life, all at once. Finally
he said to me, 'Do not use the valarda to slay. Remember the two wolves, Val.
Remember who you really are.'
At this, Bemossed smiled. He held out his hand to me.
'Valashu Elahad!' someone called out from far away.
The voice sounded raspy, like that of Lord Mansarian. 'Liljana Ashvaran! Maram
Marshayk! Atara Ars Narmada! We know that these are your real names!'
And then a deeper, richer voice reverberated across
the field. It was bright like silver and as cruel as steel. It rang with a will
toward torment and vengeance, and left no doubt who in the body of men riding
toward us held command. Too often, in my dreams and in my waking hours, I had
trembled with loathing as I listened to the fell, deceptive, deadly voice of
Morjin.
'Valashu Elahad!' the man in the gray cloak cried out
to me. 'It has been too long - too long since I said farewell to your mother,
and to Mesh!'
I turned away from Bemossed then. I could not take his
outstretched hand. I noticed Daj staring at my fiery sword.
At a distance of two hundred yards. Lord Mansarian
called for a halt and sent the knight bearing the white banner cantering toward
us. He rode straight up to the cottage. He drew up in front of our wall, and
said to us, 'You are offered a truce, that Lord Mansarian might discuss with
you the terms of your surrender.'
'Terms!' I shouted. 'We all know the terms here: our
deaths, or yours!'
The knight looked at Bemossed standing next to me. He
said, 'Lord Mansarian
has asked me to assure you that he will do all he can to spare the life of the Hajarim.
Will you speak with him?'
Kane, standing on my other side, snarled in my ear:
'It's a trap!
Don't let that Morjin thing come any closer!'
I fought to quiet the wild pounding of my heart. I
remembered how Lord Mansarian had protected Bemossed at our performance for
King Arsu - likely at great risk to himself. I said to Kane, 'He might spare
him.'
'He won't, damn it! Don't let them close, I
say!'
'No,' I whispered. 'I want them all as near as
they can be.' I nodded at the knight. 'All right - tell Lord Mansarian
that he can approach us, and we will honor the truce.'
But the knight shook his head at this. He sat holding
up the white banner, and he said, 'First, put down your bows and come out from
behind that wall. My lord will not meet beneath the threat of your arrows.'
'All right,' I said again. 'We will come out - twenty
yards only.' I nodded to Kane and Maram, and we began walking toward the door.
And the knight pointed at Atara, and said, 'The princess, too.'
'But she is blind!' I said.
'So are bats blind,' the knight said, 'and yet somehow
they fly through the air straight as arrows. My orders are clear on this: the
princess must put down her bow.'
Atara smiled coldly, and she laid her bow on top of
the wall. She, too, moved over toward the door. So did Bemossed. He said to me,
'Let me come with you.'
I looked for the golden cup in his hand, but I could
no longer see it. The radiance pouring out of him seemed lost to the hellish
glare of the sun. I told him, 'No, you must stay here. It will be all right.'
I told the knight that we would meet with his master,
and he turned to gallop back to Lord Mansarian.
I drew in a long, deep breath of burning air. I clamped
my fingers around the hilt of my sword, and I tried not to look at Bemossed.
Then, with Maram, Kane and Atara close behind me, I stepped through the doorway
out into the brilliant sunlight.
Chapter
41 Back Table of Content Next
My friends followed me out across the grass to a distance of twenty yards. There we waited.
Lord Mansarian and his knights, with Morjin and the priests behind them, came within a hundred yards of us, and then fifty. If they should break into a charge, or at any time draw their swords, we could beat a quick retreat back into the cottage.
At twenty yards, I called out, 'That is far enough! Come down from your horses!'
'What!' Lord Mansarian wheezed out. 'Who are you to issue commands here?'
'We are not mounted,' I told him, 'and we will not hold parlay with you speaking down to us.'
Lord Mansarian looked behind him at the man in the gray cloak. This mud-spattered traveler threw back his hood to reveal a shock of golden blond hair and a beautiful face that I knew too well. His golden eyes burned into mine. In the manner of the Grays, he had affixed to his forehead a flat, dark stone: a black gelstei. It seemed to suck at my will to resist him. He, himself, seemed to swell with an enormous will to crush anyone who stood against him. I felt a weakness run through my legs as if my body were being drained of blood.
'Lord Morjin?' Lord Mansarian said to this man.
'We will dismount,' he said. His beautiful voice pounded through the air like a great hammer. 'Let the Elahad have his way.'
His motions as he
came down from his horse were sure and swift. He seemed as full of life as a
young lion. I felt sure that Morjin had lost the power of illusion over me, and
so he could not disguise the hideousness of his true appearance as a rotting
old man - if indeed he still appeared so. I doubted this. Looking at him, I suddenly doubted all that I knew to be true. I
wondered, again, if he had used the Lightstone to remake himself as he had been
in his body long ago. As for his soul, I thought, nothing could ever expunge
its foul, terrible stench. I could not tell if he was really Morjin. Indeed, in
this hateful creature who stood glaring at me, it seemed that Morjin and his
droghul might have become
as one.
'We
demand your surrender!' he called out to me. 'Throw down all your weapons, your
gesltei, too, and your lives will be spared!'
I let
my hand rest on the hilt of my sword. I wondered if I could whip free my blade
and charge him, and cut him down before the six dismounted knights standing
near Lord Mansarian stopped me. If 1 cut his cloak and tunic to bloody shreds,
I wondered, would I find the Ltghtstone secreted there?
'How
long will you let us live then?' I asked him. 'Long enough for your priests to
nail us to crosses?'
It
shouldn't have surprised me that Arch Uttam, at Morjin's right, had found the
hardiness to ride with the Red Capes in our pursuit, so great was the malice
that he held for us. On the other side of Morjin stood my old enemy, Salmelu.
Although he called himself Haar Igasho now, and he wore a red robe instead of
armor and the emblem of a prince of Ishka, his ugliness of face and spirit were
the same. He smiled at me as if my plight gave him great satisfaction.
'If you
don't surrender, Eiahad,' Salmelu told me, 'you will be crucified!'
Arch
Uttam turned to cast him a venomous look. I sensed his jealousy that Salmelu
had the privilege of accompanying their master.
'That
is for Lord Morjin to decide,' he reminded Saimelu. 'Lord Morjin, the Merciful
and Compassionate!'
He
gazed at Morjin as if he did not suspect that this creature might be only a
soulless droghul. I wondered, however, if he truly believed that Morjin could
be the Maitreya.
'Surrender,
Valashu Eiahad.' Morjin called to me, 'and you have my promise that you won't
be crucified. You will live as long as you can.'
The
command in his voice stunned me. I thought it an abom-nation that he too,
possessed the gift of vaiarda. He poured all of his power into willing me to submit to
him.
'You
lie,' I said. I stood there sweating and fighting for breath. 'And so we will surrender only
when we are dead.'
'Is it
death you want so badly? Would you bring it upon your friends and everyone you
encounter?' He drew in a deep breath, and then roared out: 'Ra Zahur!'
The
third priest, a man as squat and hairy as an ape, struggled with the tarp that
he had taken down from the packhorse. He moved with a great strength, as if he
spent the hours of the day lifting stones. At last, when he had the bundle
standing upright, he used a knife to slash the rope binding it. He pulled down
the tarp to reveal the face and body of a boy about fourteen years old.
'Taitu!'
Bemossed cried out from behind the cottage's wall.
'Why?
Why.'
He came
running, and although I yelled for him to go back inside, he paid me no heed.
It was all I could do to catch him and hold him fast before he closed the
distance toward Morjin and his filthy priests.
I
stared out at Lord Mansarian, hating him as well as Morjin. Taitu, I saw, had
been stripped naked, and he could not stand of his own. I thought it a miracle
that the hard ride slung over the back of a bounding horse hadn't killed him
outright. I sensed, though, that he didn't have long to live: the horse's
backbone had crushed Taitu's organs as surely as had the mule's kick, swelling
out his belly again with blood. His soft eyes had grown glassy, and he seemed
to cry out silently for Bemossed to help him.
'It is
said,' Arch Uttam called out, 'that the Hajarim healed this boy with a laying
on of his hands. That power is the Maitreya's only, and so all who have
conspired in this lie have committed an Error Mortal. The boy's father and
sister have already paid the price, and even now hang on crosses in their
village.'
'No!'
Bemossed cried out. 'It is you who lie!'
'Be
quiet, Hajarim!' Arch Uttam spat out. He moved over and drove his fist into
Taitu's belly. He waited a long time for Taitu to finish screaming. Then he
said, 'As you can see, the boy is not healed. But we are merciful, as
always. Ra Zahur! Help him!'
While I
held Bemossed fast with my arm, Ra Zahur plunged his knife into Taitu's belly,
and ripped him open. A great gout of blood poured out of him, along with his
ruptured organs. From the cottage behind us, I heard Liljana cry out in grief.
Kane cast Morjin a look that seemed blacker than any gelstei, and wondered if
he had hidden in his pocket one of his throwing knives. Nearly two hundred
yards across the field, Lord Mansarian's red-caped soldiers in their quiet,
mounted lines gazed upon this horror. Surely they had seen worse crimes. As for
Morjin, he watched Taitu die with all the compassion he might have held for a
worm. I sensed that he cared nothing for Taitu, but took great pleasure in
Bemossed's
pain.
'Once,'
Bemossed said to Morjin, 'I thought you were the
Maitreya.
But now I see what you are.'
Bemossed
stood staring at Morjin, and a terrible sadness welled up out of him. I
marveled that he seemed able to suffer great anguish and sorrow and yet remain
open to the deep light that filled his eyes. I could not. I felt only acid
burning a hole through my heart. Bemossed seemed to sense this, and he turned
his attention toward me. I thought that he feared nothing, for himself. But
for me, everything. I knew that he did not want to lose me to the dark,
twisting thing ripping me open. 'No,'
he murmured to me. 'Not this way.'
I
gripped the hilt of my sword. I sensed Alkaladur burning in its scabbard, where
I had sheathed it. If it grew as hot as a fire-stone, I wondered, would it melt
straight through the scabbard's thin metal?
Morjin
kicked his boot into Taitu's fallen body. He smiled at me. He nodded at
Bemossed and asked me, 'Well, Elahad? Will you surrender and spare your friends
such agony?'
I knew
then that he wanted Bemossed to live: so that he could torture out of
him the secret of how the Lightstone might be used to its fullest power. He
wanted, too, for me to draw my sword.
'We
will never surrender to you!' I called out. 'I told you this in Argattha!'
Morjin
- or his droghul - smiled at Atara, who stood next to Kane. He told her simply,
'Surrender, and I will restore what I took from you.'
But she
shook her blindfolded head, and said softly, 'Liar.'
I felt
a pressure filling up my belly and pressing at my brain behind my eyes. Water,
I thought, builds within a cloud until the thunder sounds and the lightning
flashes to let it out. I suddenly knew that I must strike out with the valarda.
Morjin - Lord Mansarian and the priests, too - stood close enough that they
would feel its full force.
'Surrender,'
Morjin demanded of me again, pointing toward the cottage at Estrella, 'or I
will do to the girl what I let Haar Igasho and my soldiers do to your mother.'
I found
myself floating in empty space as if I had been abandoned on the only world
left in the universe. For a moment, everything grew cold and dark, I felt only
a single thing: the terrible.
fire of
life that tormented me. I knew then that I loved slaying in righteousness
evil men such as Morjin. I would slay him, I vowed. I would thrust the
bitter sword of my malice straight through him. He would die, like a worm
caught in a holocaust of flame. And then there would be light again, and an
infinitude of stars - and I would find peace at last.
'Morjin!'
I cried out, 'you will never harm any of my friends again!'
His
smile grew wider and brighter, and I knew that he would try to turn my hate
against me. He would try to seize my will and make me into a ghul. I didn't
care. I wanted to howl out all the rage inside me that I could not hold. I
would then live as a maddened beast or a monster, but at least Morjin would be
dead.
'Look
at him!' I heard Arch Uttam say to Ra Zahur as he pointed at me. 'The only heir
of King Shamesh, and he can't even decide what to do.'
'It was
like that in Mesh,' Salmelu said. 'But you'll see, in the end he'll betray his
friends as he did his own father and mother.'
Salmelu's
face soured in contempt for me, and I knew that I would kill him, too, as I
should have in the red circle of honor in King Hadaru's hall. I would kill all
the creatures of Morjn, in their red robes and their shining armor, in all
their hundreds and their thousands, in every land of the world. All those who
stood against me in mockery and evil deeds, as Salmelu did, I would destroy.
No.
Molten
silustria, I thought, must burn far hotter than even white-hot steel. With it,
my silver sword had been forged. And with some substance infinitely hotter than
this, I had been forged, the silver of my soul - and it flowed with a
hellish fury in the center of my heart.
No,
Valashu - you were born for more than murder and hate.
When I
listened hard enough, and deeply enough, I could hear rny mother whispering to
me, for she, too, dwelled within me. She did not call for vengeance. She cried
out to me only that I should live, in pride and joy, as the son whom she loved.
'Valashu,'
Bemossed said to me. And once again, he held out his hand to me.
I
stared at his slender palm for what seemed forever. Then finally, I took hold
of it. The moment that my calloused hand touched his softer fingers, my fury to
destroy brightened into a rage to live. Something dark and ugly inside me
burned away in a fiery light. I felt instantly lighter, as if a great weight
had been lifted from my chest. The air I breathed seemed sweet. I took a great
gulp of it, and howled out, not in hate but in utter freedom: 'Morjin! I won't
betray them! Not my friends! Not my father and mother, or my brothers!'
The
blood cleared from my eyes, and I saw many things. I knew that if I struck
Morjin dead, Lord Mansarian and the priests, too, I would only incite Lord
Mansarian's men to a killing frenzy of revenge, for that was the way of the
world. But there were other ways, as well. And Morjin, I suddenly sensed, could
be defeated.
'I
won't betray you!' I shouted at him. Kane stared at me in
disbelief, for these were the strangest words that I had ever spoken.
'"All men shall be as brothers" - so it is written in the Darakul
Elu.'
Morjin
glared at me in confusion. I did not recall ever seeing him so unsure of
himself. 'What do you know about that, Elahad?'
'I know
about Iojin.'
'You
... what?'
'I know
you stabbed him in the back with your own knife. And I know you loved him.'
The
cloaked man standing less than twenty yards from me seemed unable to speak, and
I wondered after all if he might be Morjin's droghul. He glared at me with a
bottomless hate. Then he shouted, 'Be silent! You know not what you say!'
His
face flushed bright red from the blood burning through him, and I suddenly knew
that he had long ago poisoned himself with the kirax, to remind himself
of what Iojin had suffered and to atone for this terrible crime.
I said
to him, 'You have never gone a single day, have you, without wishing that he
could live again?'
'Be
silent! Damn you, Elahad!'
I
remembered Kane, high on top of a mountain, telling me that there were no evil
men, only evil deeds. And I said to Morjin, 'No one is damned. There is a way
out.'
Now
Morjin turned his terrible golden eyes and all his spite upon Bemossed.
'Let us
go free,' Bemossed said to him. 'And let yourself go free.'
'Don't
speak to me that way!'
Bemossed
only smiled at him, in defiance, but in deep understanding, too. He fairly
blazed with a deep desire that the world, and all that lived within it, should
be made whole again.
'Don't
look at me that way, Hajarim!'
I let
go of Bemossed's hand, and grasped my sword's hilt again. And I told Morjin,
'It can all end, right here and now.'
Hot
acids seemed to burn Morjin's throat, choking him, and he pointed at me as he
called out to Lord Mansarian, 'Kill him! Kill the Elahad!'
Two of
the knights standing near Morjin looked to Lord Mansarian in consternation. I
took them as captains of the Red Capes, and I had overhead their names as
Roarian and Atuan. The tall, muscular one, Atuan, nodded at Lord Mansarian.
Then Lord Mansarian turned to Morjin and said, 'But, my lord, we are met here in truce!'
'How
can there be truce with such as this?' Morjin said, hissing at me. 'Kill
him, I say!'
He
cannot bear it, I thought. That which he most desires, he cannot abide.
I saw
that Morjin could withstand very well my killing fury but not my compassion.
And what, after all, was true compassion, this valarda that connected
men soul to soul? Only suffering with. Suffering each other's joys, or
suffering agonies, but always being joined as one in the great experience of
life. As with love, it was a force and not a feeling.
'Morjin!'
I called out.
My eyes
met his, and a shock of love ran through me. Not love for him: only a
Maitreya, I thought, could possess the grace to love such a loathsome being. My
love for my family, however, blazed within me like starfire. I could not
contain it. I could not keep to myself the anguish of wanting to talk to them
again, to cross swords with my brother, Asaru, in a friendly practice duel, and
to feel my grandmother's soft, wrinkled hand on mine as we walked together
through the halls of my father's castle. I wanted to smell my mother's hair
again and the spice of peppermint and honey as she made for me hot tea.
'Morjin!'
I cried. 'You kill too easily! Know, then, what it was like for me when you
killed my family!'
I drew
my sword and pointed it at him. Its silver blade flared with a brilliant flame.
If the valarda was the gift of empathy, I thought, then Alkaladur was the
weapon of compassion. Not this length of silustria, sharper than any
razor, whose diamond-bright polish drove the sunlight into Morjin's eyes. But
the true Alkaladur, wrought of a purer substance, as radiant as the
stars. The Sword of Light shone within me, as yet only half-forged. All that I
had suffered had gone into its making. All that my friends had suffered with
me infused its essence as well. Even now, as Liljana, Master Juwain and the
children looked on from behind the wall of the cottage, and Kane, Maram and
Atara stood by my side, I felt all their courage, kindness and great will
toward life. They seemed to pass these fundamental forces to me through their
eyes and in their throbbing hearts, in flames of red, orange and yellow, green
and blue, indigo and violet. The whole world seemed to pass its fire to me.
Somehow, Bemossed seemed to weave it all together into a pure, white blaze that
streaked through my sword and me straight up into the sky. Hotter and brighter,
it built, until it flared a brilliant glorre. Then this perfect color gave way
to a single, clear, indestructible light. And so at the last, Bemossed's love
for me, no less Morjin's hate, had put into my hand the greatest weapon in the
universe.
'Damn
you, Elahad!'
All the
fire and force of my soul I poured into this sword. Alkaladur blazed like the
sun. Across the distance between us, it struck into Morjin's heart. He gasped
and grabbed his chest; he raged and cursed and wept. He stared at me with his
golden eyes, now wild and maddened with anguish. I almost couldn't bear it. He
had told me once that the only way I would ever free myself from suffering
would be to inflict even greater suffering upon another. It was not so. As I
drove the Sword of Light deeper and deeper into Morjin, my agony burned through
me, and all of Morjin's incredible pain, too. I thought that it might kill me.
It killed something in Morjin. I felt him longing desperately for some
impossible thing: perhaps that he and the world could somehow be different. I
felt him longing for something even more. He looked at me strangely. He cringed
away from me as a black, bottomless terror took hold of him. I knew then that
there was one thing that he feared above all else.
'Elahad!'
he screamed out to me.
He
continued screaming until his voice grew hoarse. He ranted and bit his tongue,
and spat out a bloody froth. He sweated; from nearly twenty yards away, I could
smell his foulness and fear. He told of how he would torture me in a dozen
hideous ways. The debasement of this powerful man to a snarling, suffering,
craven beast stunned all of us looking on.
And
then Morjin returned to himself - or perhaps he found sustenance and strength
in the being of his droghul. He drew in a deep breath, and stood up straight.
He wiped the blood from his mouth. He turned to Lord Mansarian, and said, 'The
truce is over. You have heard the Elahad say that they will not surrender.
Therefore you will attack, and kill them all.'
'All
except the Hajarim,' Lord Mansarian said, looking at Bemossed.
Morjin
looked at him, too. But Bemossed's bright face seemed only to drive him to a
new- fury. 'Especially the Hajarim! You are to kill him outright, or
deliver him, bound in chains, to me!'
'That
was not what you promised!' Lord Mansarian rasped out.
Arch
Uttam turned toward this grim, red-caped man in astonishment. So did Atuan and
Roarian, and Lord Mansarian's other captains. It seemed that they had never
dared to think that any soldier of Hesperu would openly contradict the great
Red Dragon.
'You
must have misunderstood me,' Morjin said to Lord Mansarian. His silver voice
trembled with dismissal and undertones of threat, too.
'I
misunderstood nothing,' Lord Mansarian said. 'The Hajarim was to be given to
me, for whatever corrective that I might contrive.'
'He
will be crucified!' Morjin snarled out. 'Alive or dead.'
'But
Hajarim are never crucified!' Lord Mansarian reminded him.
'This one,'
Morjin said, pointing at Bemossed, 'will be crucified. You have my
promise.'
Lord
Mansarian looked at me, and I sensed that some part of my suffering over my
family's death called him to remember the slaughter of his own. He met eyes
with Bemossed, and I felt his intense gratitude for what this man had done. And
something more. As Bemossed smiled at him. Lord Mansarian's dark, doomed soul
began to sparkle with hope once again.
'No,'
Lord Mansarian told Morjin.
'No?
You say this to me?'
Morjin's
ferocious will beat down upon Lord Mansarian like a battle axe. Lord Mansarian
stood there sweating. But he finally found the courage to say, 'The Hajarim
saved my daughter's life. And so I owe him his life.'
'You
owe him nothing! You owe me everything!'
Lord
Mansarian let out a long sigh, and then traded looks with Atuan. Remorse gnawed
at his eyes. He seemed suddenly unable to bear Morjin's lies and spite. Then he
said to him, 'All that I have done in King Arsu's service is wrong. I will not
dishonor myself, ever again.'
'You are
wrong!' Morjin shouted at him. 'All honor is to be found in loyalty: to your
king, and to his king!'
As the
tone of command reverberating through Morjin's voice grew almost too great to
resist. Lord Mansarian hesitated. And Arch Uttam warned him, 'Be careful of
what you say, warrior. You speak errors. Major and Mortal.'
'I
speak the truth,' Lord Mansarian said. 'And I have no king.'
At
this, Morjin spat on the grass in front of Lord Mansarian and told him, 'You,
and all of the Crimson Companies who are gathered upon this ground today, are
under King Arsu's command! And therefore mine!'
'Are
they?' Lord Mansarian said, nodding at Roarian. 'Let us see about that.'
He
turned and hurried over to his horse. He quickly mounted, as did Roarian and
Atuan. They pointed their horses facing away from the cottage.
Now
Morjin's whole body trembled as his jaws clamped together with great enough
force to break his teeth. He spat again, in a spray of blood, straight at me.
His face contorted with rage as he screamed, 'Damn you, Elahad!'
Then he
and his priests, with the four other captains and the banner-bearer, climbed
onto their mounts. They all whipped their horses to a gallop, and began a wild
race with Lord Mansarian back toward the lines of Lord Mansararian's red-caped
knights.
'Ah, I
suppose the truce is over,' Maram said as he looked from Kane to me.
'What do we do now?'
'Go
back,' I said. 'Let us go back inside the house.'
I
placed my hand on Bemossed's shoulder to urge him to haste. But he stood facing
our enemies across the field as if he would not be moved.
'You
have already worked one miracle today,' I said to him. 'I know what you want,
and I want it, too. But as long as Morjin lives, he'll drive men to war.'
'You do
not know that, Valashu. If I held the Lightstone -'
'So,'
Kane growled out to him, 'you'll hold the Lightstone only if you live.
Which you won't if you stand here dreaming impossible dreams, eh?'
He
turned back toward the cottage. So did Maram, who took Atara's hand. Then
Bemossed looked down upon Taitu's body and called out, 'Wait! Let us not leave
the boy here like this to be trampled by horses.'
I
nodded my head, and we quickly wrapped up Taitu again in the tarp - now his
shroud. We bore him back into the cottage. Kane immediately grabbed up his bow
and nocked an arrow to its string.
'They
are within range,' he said as he looked out over the crumbled cottage
wall.
I
looked, too. Those who had come to us under the banner of truce had reached
Lord Mansarian's companies. The neat lines of knights on their horses had
collapsed into a chaos of men and mounts swarming around Lord Mansarian and
Morjin. Angry shouts rang out across the field.
'Two
hundred yards?' Atara said to Kane. 'That is too long a range. You can't be
sure of hitting Morjin at that distance.'
'I'll
hit someone,' Kane growled. 'And that will be one less to fight corning
over these walls.'
'Why
fight at all?' Maram said. He nodded at Estrella, who stood by the horses. 'Why
don't we flee, while they argue?'
'No,' I
said, shaking my head. 'If we do that, we might end their argument for them and
force them to make common cause again. And we would expose our backs to them.'
'What
shall we do then?'
And I
told him, 'Wait.'
While
the pasture rang out with shouts that grew louder and more numerous, Master
Juwain examined Taitu's body to make sure that he really was dead. Estrella
stood by my horse, feeding him some grain. Liljana, not knowing what else to do,
went around with a waterskin so that we all might quench our thirst. Daj drank
thankfully, then gripped his sword as he stood next to Maram behind the wall.
Then
one of Red Capes near Morjin drew his sword and plunged it through the throat
of a knight shouting at him. As if a trumpet had sounded, all the knights
gathered around Morjin drew swords or brought their spears to bear. Dozens of
them paired off, and began hacking or stabbing at each other. They fought
fiercely as their enmity for each other drove them to a maddened melee.
'They'll
kill each other for us!' Maram said.
He put
his hand on Kane's bow as if to restrain him from loosing an arrow. But Kane
had already come to the same conclusion, and he muttered, 'So they might.'
We all
watched then as Lord Mansarian ripped free the crimson cape from his shoulders
and cast it to the ground. He cried out: 'Captain Atuan! Captain Roarian! All
my companions who would follow me! Let us be free!'
Perhaps
eighty of the two hundred knights also cast off their capes. The green grass
soon gleamed with a carpet of red. Those knights loyal to Lord Mansarian
gathered near him, if they could. I clenched my fist to see Lord Mansarian's
companions so badly outnumbered.
'Estrella!'
I called out. 'Bring Altaru to the door!'
'Yes,'
Maram said. 'Now we can flee.'
'No, we
can't,' I told him. I nodded at Bemossed, and said, 'Our new friend might be
the Maitreya, but he still can't ride well enough to escape from
Morjin.'
'Then
what shall we do?' Maram asked. And I told him, 'We'll fight. Kane and I will.'
'But
why?'
I
pointed across the grass, where hopes trampled red capes with their hooves and
men clashed sword to sword, trying to murder] each other. The melee had now
grown into a battle. I said simply, 'If Lord Mansarian can prevail, then we
will live.'
'But
what about us?' Maram said, looking at Liljana and Estrella. 'You can't
just leave us undefended!'
'We
won't leave you,' I told him, clapping him on the shoulder. 'Kane and I will
fight better mounted. And you will guard the wall.'
I told
him to fire off an arrow at any of Morjin's knights who came within thirty
yards of it. After we got the horses out of the doorway, I watched as Daj
helped Atara into position facing this rectangular opening. She stood with an
arrow nocked to her bow's string, waiting. If anyone should try to force the
doorway, Daj would direct her to loose an arrow blindly at zero range.
Then
Kane and I mounted our horses. Just before we rode forward, however, I turned
toward the wall in hesitation. Bemossed stood there looking at me. He told me,
'Go and do what you must, Valashu. You are a warrior. And as you have said, war
is still the way of this world.'
Altaru,
smelling blood and battle, drove his hoof into the earth as he let loose a
great whinny. I drew my bright sword. I said to Kane, sitting on top of his big
brown horse beside me, 'We've no armor, and so you will have to watch my back.'
'Ha -
and you mine!'
We
hardly had to touch our horses to urge them into a gallop toward the mass of
men before us. Many had already fallen, and their bodies lay sprawled upon the
grass, along with many bright red capes. Knights, whether fighting for Morjin
or defending Lord Mansarian, called out challenges and curses to each other as
they hacked and stabbed and screamed and died. In seconds we drew within a
hundred yards, and then fifty, and now I too smelled blood spraying out into
the air. The wind whipped at my face, and carried to me other hateful scents. I
could hardly bear these men's rage to kill each other. And then Kane and I
charged straight into the heart of the madness.
A
red-caped soldier spurred his horse toward me as he tried to intercept me with
a spear thrust through my chest. I parried the spear with my forearm, then cut
right through the bronze armor covering his belly. He cried out in agony, even
as one of his companions tried to impale me, too. Him I cleaved from shoulder
to side. A nearby soldier, seeing this, called out, 'The musician has a sword!
Such a sword!'
Many of
the men riding about now looked upon Alkaladur in astonishment and terror. My
sword's silustria shone with a dazzling white light. They shrank back from it,
and from me. Morjin, twenty yards away, surrounded by a wall of horses and
knights fighting ferociously to protect him, looked toward me as he cried out,
'It is the Elahad! Kill him - kill him now!'
A dozen
knights charged forward to carry out this command. And Lord Mansarian, off
toward my left, shouted to his men: 'Spare the musician, the juggler,
too! Protect them, if you can!'
If any
of the knights who had remained loyal to Morjin still thought of Kane as just a
juggler and knife-thrower, he now gave them cause to change their minds. With
three blindingly quick strokes of his sword, he cut down three knights that had
come too close to us, and then whirled about in his saddle to cleave the arm
off a fourth knight trying to spear me through my back. His black eyes flashed
with a wild joy, and for a moment met mine. Then he struck out again and again,
even as my sword sliced through fish-scaled bronze as if it was leather.
'The
errants are demons!' an enemy knight cried out. 'Demons from the Dark Lands!'
'They
are from Hell!' another knight shouted. 'The musician's sword blazes like the
sun!'
Demons
Kane and I might be, I thought. But we were also something more. We had fought
together in terrible battles, side by side and sword synchronizing with sword.
And now, together, striking with steel and silustria in perfect rhythm, slaying
in a fury of lightning cuts and thrusts, we fought as true angels of death.
Our enemies gave way before us. Although they had been trained to war, they
were not Valari. A few wielded their weapons with skill, but their heavy armor
weighed them down and slowed their motions. It seemed they had spent too many
campaigns hunting down poorly armed errants instead of sharpening their virtues
against true knights. Kane and I charged at them with a practiced passion to
slay, and so they fell before us and died.
Lord
Mansarian used the terror that we created to deploy his knights around the mass
of men protecting Morjin. They fought fiercely, pressing Morjin's men closer
together. This offset their superior numbers, for soon Morjin's knights bunched
together so closely that those nearest Morjin at their center could hardly
wield their spears. It was possible, I saw, that through this strategem Lord
Mansarian's men might actually prevail.
And
then Morjin cried out to his knights, 'Move aside! I need no protection! Move,
I say!'
As he
had commanded, his men tried to make room for him, whipping or spurring their
horses out of his way. He pushed his mount through the gaps between the horses
around him, straight toward me. Then Lord Mansarian's knights tried to close in
on him. He killed two of them with two quick cuts of his sword; another he
stabbed through the throat. He fought with a fearful skill nearly equal to that
of Kane.
'Damn
him!' Kane shouted from next to me. He shook his sword at Morjin, and drops of
blood went spinning through the air. 'Let's finally kill this beast!'
We
urged our horses toward Morjin, even as five of his knights pressed toward us
to cover his flank. Morjin turned to stare across the field at Kane and me. The
black stone stuck to his forehead began glowing with a dark light. A vast,
black chasm seemed to open in the ground before me. I felt it pulling at me,
down through the layers of earth into death.
'Elahad!'
Morjin screamed at me. 'Valari!'
And
then, without warning, he unleashed a new weapon, dreadful and terrible. From
deep inside his throat he let loose a sound like nothing I had ever heard. In
its ear-shattering tones was something of an eagle's scream and the hyena's
hideous call - and the shrieks of millions of men and women dying in torment.
This cry pierced straight to the heart and turned hot blood to ice. I grasped
my chest, and clung to my saddle. And all the while, Morjin cried out in a
voice of death:
'Aiyiiyariii!'
Two of
Lord Mansarian's knights spurred their horses toward Morjin; He whipped about
in his saddle, and directed his voice toward the first of these, who froze in
terror as he gasped for breath. Then he fell from his horse, dead. Morjin now
screamed at the second knight, who clutched at his throat as he choked and
died, too.
'Aiyiiyariii!'
Morjin
now screamed out his death voice at me. 1 had a sense that he could strike out
this way only at one person at a time. I sensed, too, that this weapon was new
to him, awkward and untested. Perhaps what I had done to him earlier had broken
open his being in such a way that all his evil and hate could now be carried
through the air in a hideous sound, it fell upon me like a blast of dragon
fire, and nearly killed me.
'Father!'
I gasped. 'Mother!'
Sweat
ran from every pore on my body, and I fought back the urge to vomit up blood.
My heart beat with such a hard and violent pain that I thought it would burst.
I wanted to drop my sword and clasp my hands over my ears. But it was my sword,
I believe, that saved me. As often when I was near to death, I drew strength
from it. I felt Alkaladur's bright silustria feeding into me the very life of
the sun and the earth. I raised it up just in time to block a sword from
slicing off the top of my head. Then Kane came forward to kill the knight who
had so nearly killed me. He, too, I sensed, fought a desperate battle against
Morjin's death voice, which now fell upon him.
'Val!'
Kane shouted at me. 'Keep hold of your sword!'
Perhaps
Alkaladur gave me the will to resist Morjin's voice; or perhaps years of
battling him had inured me to the worst of its power. Whatever the cause of the
new strength pouring through me, I found myself able to keep to my saddle and
fight off the men who suddenly assaulted me. Seeing this, Morjin came forward
to attack me with a more mundane and substantial weapon. In a fury of motion he
drove his horse against mine and thrust his sword at my chest. It would have
killed me if Altaru hadn't reared back, striking air with his iron-shod hooves.
Morjin worked his horse around to my side and slashed at me, again and again. I
didn't know how I parried his ferocious strokes. Any one of them, without the
protection of my armor, might have cut me to the death. Kane moved in from the
other side to help me, but Morjin - or his droghul - nearly chopped the edge of
his sword through Kane's neck. I had never seen Kane lift his sword so
slowly, so desperately, as if he were fighiing his way through an icy, raging
sea.
Atara
had warned us that each of the droghuls we faced would be more terrible than
the last, but nothing had prepared me for the power of this dreadful being. Was
he truly a droghul, I wondered? All of Morjin's ferocity and malice poured
out him in his furious sword and murderous voice. It seemed impossible that he
might kill either Kane or me, or both of us, but I knew that in another few
moments he would.
'Damn
you, Elahad! Damn the Valariii - Aiyiiyariii!'
Just
then Roarian and Atuan came forward with three other knights, and pressed an
attack against Morjin. Two of these Morjin killed with his fell voice, but the
others seemed able to bear it. They joined Kane and me in trying to cut down
Morjin. This caused Morjin suddenly to alter his strategy. He shouted out:
'Haar Igasho! Ra Zahur! To me! To me! Kill the Valari for me!'
The
red-robed Salmelu, who called himself by the foul name of Igasho, now rode up
to us with Ra Zahur and a half dozen knights. They began slashing at us with
their swords. Three of them surrounded me, and I began fighting a furious
battle for my life.
'Do you
see the sword I bear, Elahad?' Salmelu shouted at me. It is no kalama, but I
will put it through you, even so!'
I
shouted out, too, in a terrible frustration because I could not quickly get
away from the men surrounding me. I had only a moment to see Morjin turn his
horse and gather up a dozen enemy knights to act as his cover. Then they
charged en masse straight toward the cottage.
A sword
whirled toward my throat, and I parried it. Kane came up beside me, and killed
the enemy knight nearest to me. Then he turned to cross swords with the blocky
and bestial Ra Zahur.
'I will
have my revenge!' Salmelu screamed at me. He feinted with his sword toward
my face, then tried to disembowel me. 'I will have it now!'
Aiyiiyaiiii!
Morjin's
death voice rang out from across the field. I stole a quick glance to my left,
and saw one of Lord Mansarian's knights grasp hold of his head and plummet from
his horse's back. Lord Mansarian, charging upon Morjin even as Morjin continued
galloping toward the cottage, lowered his spear and aimed it at Morjin's chest.
'Valariii!'
Salmelu's
horse and mine drove their hooves against the slick, reddened grass, fighting
for purchase and advantaged they whinnied and snorted and pushed at each other.
For a while we
exchanged
blows, each of us fighting desperately to find an opening. Salmelu seemed sure
of himself - sure that his defeat in our duel two years before had been just
bad luck. I knew it was not. I knew, too, that I had slain many men in the time
since then sword to sword, and that I could slay Salmelu now.
We
clashed swords, once, twice, thrice; we feinted and thrust, parried and
slashed. Desperation ate at Salmelu's inky eyes. Then, finally, he stabbed his
sword at my throat in a lightning thrust. I moved my head aside just in time to
keep from being torn open, then thrust my sword at his shoulder. The
point of it drove in just deep enough to split the muscle and score the bone,
which caused Salmelu to cry out and drop his sword. I might have finished him
then if Lord Mansarian hadn't screamed out in a terrible agony. I turned to see
Morjin jerk his bloody sword free from Lord Mansarian's belly. This gave
Salmelu time to whip his mount about, and go galloping from the field.
'Val!'
Kane shouted to me. He parried a vicious blow that Ra Zahur dealt him, then
chopped his sword through Ra Zahur's neck, cutting off his head. 'We must get
to the house!'
But we
had no time left. Even as I drove Altaru forward and cut down the last enemy
knight attacking me, Morjin resumed his charge toward the cottage. Six of his
knights still covered his front. A bowstring cracked, and an arrow whined out
and buried itself in one of these knight's chests - and now only five men rode
with Morjin. Maram fired off another arrow with a similar result, and then
there were only four. And then, before Maram could nock another arrow and aim
it, the four knights and Morjin thundered right up to the cottage.
Aiyiiyariii!
'Bemossedl'
I cried.
I felt
Morjin's hate shriek out toward this gentle man who must be the Maitreya. I
knew that he would soon kill him, either with his voice of death or with his
sword. I could do nothing to stop it. I galloped back toward the cottage with
Kane covering my side, and the wind burned my face. I could not believe that we
had come this far only to lose Bemossed to the ravening beast who flung himself
at the cottage's wall even as he continued howling out his hate.
'Val -
help me!' Maram cried.
But I
could not help him. I could only watch in horror as Morjin leaped off his horse
and onto the top of the wall in one incredibly graceful motion. He struck down
at Maram, and Maram fell, back behind the wall. Then Morjin leaped into the
cottage, and the wall obscured the sight of him falling upon Bemossed and my
other friends. A terrible scream split the air.
A few
seconds later, Kane and I reached the cottage. We came down from our horses and
ran toward the doorway. I pushed through it first, stepping over the bodies of
two knights there whom Atara had killed with arrows. She stood holding her bow,
with a third arrow pulled back toward her ear. I shouted at her, 'Atara,
it is
me!'
She
immediately lowered her bow. I turned to see Maram rising up off the body of
the knight who had gone over the wall before Morjin had. Maram bled from a gash
on his forehead. Morjin -impossibly - lay near the knight dead.
'What!'
I cried out. I looked at Bemossed gathered with Master Juwain and Estrella over
by the horses. 'What happened?'
Liljana,
who stood over Morjin's body holding a sword, quickly explained things: It
seemed that Maram had clashed swords with the first of the knights to assault
the wall and had killed him as he tried to scale it. The second knight he had
also destroyed. Morjin, though, jumping down into the cottage, had smashed the
pommel of his sword into Maram's forehead, stunning him and causing him to
fall. Morjin had then tried to cut down Liljana to get to Bemossed. But Daj,
squatting down behind the shelter of the wall, had thrust his sword
through Morjin's belly, straight up through Morjin's insides into his heart. It
was nearly impossible to kill one of the great Elijin with a single blow, but
it seemed that Daj had accomplished this great feat.
'I
hid,' Daj told me. He proudly held up his bloody sword. 'As Lord Morjin forced
me to do in Argattha, I hid, and then I killed him. He is dead, isn't
he?'
I knew
that he was dead, and so did everyone else. To make sure of this, however, Kane
came forward and slashed down with his sword to cut off Morjin's head. He cut
off the black gelstei fixed to it. He gave this stone to me. Then he clamped
his fingers in Morjin's golden hair, and held up his head high above the
cottage's walls for all to see.
'Death!'
he roared out. 'Death to the Beast and all who follow him!'
I stood
with Kane behind the wall. I looked out across the bloody, corpse-strewn field.
The sight of what Kane showed everyone caused the remaining knights to cease
their combats and stare at him in horror. 'It is Lord Morjin!' one of the
red-caped knights cried out. 'Lord Morjin is dead!'
'Lord
Morjin!' a second and a third knight cried. 'Lord Morjin!'
I took
a quick count, and determined that Lord Mansarian's knights had indeed
prevailed against those remaining loyal to Morjin, for only twenty-three of
these red-caped knights still kept to the field on top of their horses, while
some forty men now looked to Captain Atuan to command them. It seemed that
Morjin's knights had no one to lead them.
'The
Maitreya is dead! The Maitreya is dead!' - this call passed from one defeated
knight to another.
Then
Arch Uttam rode forward from as out of nowhere. He tried to rally the knights,
calling out, 'Vengeance! Kill the errants, and avenge Lord Morjin!'
The red-caped
knights, however, paid him no heed. Two of them turned to ride away from the
cottage, and then three more. Then the rest suddenly broke, making their way
across the grass toward the hills in all directions. Seeing that his cause had
grown hopeless. Arch Uttam called out a curse to us, and then galloped off
after them.
Captain
Atuan, who had indeed now taken command, rode slowly about the field with
Captain Roarian and other knights looking for survivors. He showed the
vanquished mercy, for only an hour earlier, they had been his companions. Those
of the wounded who wore a red cape and could still ride were put on horses, and
then driven from the field; those who could not ride and would die anyway were
put to the sword. Captain Atuan's own wounded he treated the same way. This
proved a great problem, however, as one of these turned out to be Lord
Mansarian.
'He is
dying,' Atuan called out to me as he rode up to the cottage. 'He calls to the
Hajarim to ease his pain before he goes on.'
Bemossed,
showing no fear of Atuan's remaining knights, who had terrorized the north of
Hesperu for so long, walked out of the cottage. So did we all We crossed the
field, and came to the place where Lord Mansarian lay dying on the grass.
Someone had taken off his armor and cut back his underpadding. It shocked Atuan
and Roarian and the other former Red Capes to see Bemossed set his hands around
the terrible wound splitting open Lord Mansarian's belly. Lord Mansarian shook
his head at Bemossed as if to tell him that healing him would be hopeless.
'Let me
be,' his heavy voice rasped out. 'Let me thank you for saving Ysanna's life. I
never thanked you, did I, Hajarim?'
In
answer, Bemossed only smiled and looked down at him.
'I
never learned your name, either. What is it?'
'I am
called Bemossed.'
'Bemossed,'
Lord Mansarian said, smiling back at him. 'It is a good name.'
And
then, before Bemossed could work his magic upon him, he closed his eyes and died.
'It was
his time,' Bemossed said, taking his hands away from Lord Mansarian. His face
shone with a strange light. He seemed not at all dismayed that he had lost the
chance to heal him. 'Let us bury him.'
After
that, in the remaining hours of the day and late into the evening, we worked
with Captain Atuan and his men digging graves for Lord Mansarian and all those
who had died there. We buried poor Taitu and the vile Ra Zahur - and even the
remains of the being who had called himself Morjin.
When
the moon rose over the earth and cast its silver light upon the many mounds we
had made upon the field. Captain Atuan bade us farewell. He stood over the
grave of Lord Mansarian, and he said to us, 'We have lingered here longer than
we should have, but we must go.'
I
looked through the wan light at the forty battle-weary knights standing near
their horses. I said to Atuan, 'But where will you go?'
'To our
homes,' Atuan said. 'To gather up our families and flee into the forests. We
will be hunted now.'
'So
will we be hunted,' Maram said. 'Perhaps you should ride with us as far
as the mountains.'
Atuan
shook his head at this. 'I do not think that any of our former companions will
come after you. They will surely ride back to King Arsu's encampment and make a
report of what has happened here. You have time.'
He then
told us of a secret pass through the mountains into Senta that lay closer than
the Khal Arrak.
'Go
back to your homes,' he told us, 'or wherever you will. But go
carefully, I think there will be rebellion throughout the length and breadth of
Ea, now that Lord Morjin is dead.'
And
with that, he mounted his horse, and so did the knights who had remained loyal
to Lord Mansarian. They rode off into the night, and disappeared around the
curve of the hill to the south.
My friends and I stood in the moonlit graveyard in silence for a few
more moments. And then Daj said to me, 'Is Lord Morjin really dead?'
I
opened my hand to stare at the piece of black jade that Kane had cut from our
enemy's. forehead. It seemed to pulse with a malevolence and murmur with a
soft, fell voice that cursed me even as it called to me.
'No, he
is not dead,' I told Daj. 'Morjin would never have risked his life coming to
Hesperu, much less pursuing Bemossed and storming the house. It was a droghul
you killed.'
'He
whispered a strange thing to me just before he died,' Daj informed me. 'He
said: "Tell Valashu I am free."'
I
closed my fist around the black jade, with its sharp facets. I walked back
toward the cottage, where I found two good-sized stones. I set the black jade
on the flatter of these. Then I used the other stone as a hammer to smash the
fragile gelstei into pieces.
'What
shall we do now?' Daj asked, coming over to me.
I
looked at Bemossed holding Estrella's hand in the strong light raining down
from the heavens, and I smiled at Daj. I told him, 'Now we will go home.'
I
turned to mount Altaru and begin the long journey back toward the lands from
which we had come.
Chapter 42 Back Table of Content Next
We rode only a couple of hours after that, for we were all exhausted and the ground soon grew even hillier and more rocky. We wanted, though, to place a good few miles between us and the cottage in case any of the Red Capes did return. We finally made camp in a cluster of rocks above a stream flowing down from the mountains. Although the ground was almost too hard for sleeping, sleep we all did - all of us except Kane. He stood guard over us with his bow strung, watching the moonlit swells of ground below us. But nobody pursued us that night, not even in our dreams.
When morning came, the sun rose in the east, all golden and glorious. So, it seemed, with Bemossed. He moved with a new purpose, and he smiled more, as if all that he looked upon pleased him. His eyes shone with a new light. In the coming days, I looked for it to fade, but it did not.
Just before we set out for the secret pass, as Master Juwain was changing the dressing of the wound in Maram's chest that had never healed, Bemossed came over to Maram. He set his hand directly upon the raw, red wound, and Maram cried out as the salts of Bemossed's skin burned him. Bemossed left his hand there even so, for a long time. And when he took it away, Maram's flesh had been made whole again.
'Oh - oh, my Lord!' Maram shouted, pushing out his chest to the sky. 'I am healed!'
He hugged Bemossed to him
in a crushing embrace, and then began dancing about the rocks half-naked. He whooped
for joy, and then said to Bemossed, 'You are
the Maitreya, truly you are, and
nothing is impossible now!'
This,
however, proved not to be so. Bemossed proceeded to lay his
hands over Atara's face and then Estrella's throat. But even after an hour of
great effort, Estrella still could not find words to speak, and Atara's eye
hollows remained empty.
'I'm
sorry,' Bemossed said to Atara. He bowed his head to Estrella. 'I've failed
you.'
Despite
Atara's disappointment, she clasped his hand and told him, 'You could never
fail me. There must be many things beyond the power even of a Maitreya.'
She
smiled at him, sadly and wistfully, and yet with great gladness, too. She
seemed happier than she had been in a long time.
'What
could be beyond the power of the Shining One?' Maram exulted as he thumped his
chest and gazed at Bemossed. 'The perfect power of a perfect, perfect man!'
Bemossed
blinked his dark eyes as his lips tightened with anger. He said to Maram,
'Whatever power passes through me might be perfect, but I certainly am not.'
Maram,
though, only waved his hand at the sunlit rocks and the green grass all about
us, and said, 'Today, everything is perfect!'
Bemossed
rolled his eyes in exasperation, and couldn't help smiling at him. Then turned
to me and said, 'You understand, don't you?'
I gazed
at him, and his face gleamed with all his kindness, goodness and his bright,
soaring spirit. But the deep light that filled him now also illumined his
restlessness, obstinacy and his anguish of life - and all his other flaws. And
the more brilliantly it shone, the clearer and sharper these flaws seemed to
be.
'Give
it time,' I said to him, clapping him on his shoulder. I looked from Atara to
Estrella. 'My brother, Asaru, was the finest knight Mesh has ever seen, but
even he didn't learn to wield a sword all in one day.'
Bemossed
considered this. It was strange, I thought, that even in the depths of a dark,
brooding silence, something inside him seemed to sing with light.
'Val is
right,' Master Juwain said, coming up to Bemossed. 'All that I have read about
the Maitreya leads me to believe that his gift must be trained like that of any
other man.'
Bemossed
nodded his head as his face brightened once again. 'All right, then let us
leave this land and go where I might find such training.'
After
that, we saddled our horses and rode until we entered the band of forest beyond
the pasture country. We saw no sign of Red Capes hunting us, or indeed, of
anyone. Birds sang out from the trees in abundance, and deer browsed on the
bushes, but if any people had ever dwelt here, they had many years since fled
for other places. We made our way through the rugged, rising hills toward the
pass that Atuan had told of. We found it only with difficulty: a sharp and
treacherous break in the mountains that was more of a crack splitting naked
rock than a true pass. We had to work our way through it walking our horses in
single file. It snaked north and east, and it took all our care to negotiate it
without any of our horses - or us - stumbling and breaking a leg. Finally,
though, after a long, hard work, we came out into the great bowl of lowland
where we once again looked upon the city of Senta. Great, jagged peaks rose up
in a ring of white for miles around us.
Maram
gazed out at the wheatfields to the south of Senta's houses and buildings, at
the rocky prominence called Mount Miru. There, the opening of the Singing Caves
led down into the earth. He told me, 'I would look upon this marvel. I would
hear the angels sing.'
But
this, too, was not to be. We held council, and we decided that going into the
caverns once again might prove too dangerous.
'So,'
Kane said, 'King Yulmar might not welcome us, since we left a slaughter on the
caverns' doorstep the last time we came this way.'
Liljana
nodded her head and added, 'We must do all that we can to slip past Senta
without alerting the Kallimun's priests or their spies.'
'But we
defeated the Kallimun - again!' Maram said. 'And killed the greatest monster
that Morjin ever sent after us! We vanquished the Tar Harath, to say nothing of
Jezi Yaga or the Skadarak. And we found the Lord of Light! We should go into
the caverns to sing of our deeds!'
'Didn't
you tell me,' I said to him, 'that you never wanted to go down into the earth
again?'
'Ah,
well, I suppose I did,' he said. He looked at Bemossed. 'But that was then.'
In the
end, however, Maram saw the reason of our arguments, and he grudgingly accepted
the need for prudence. It was, as he said, the greatest disappointments of his
life. It consoled him somewhat that he had Alphanderry the greatest minstrel
of the age, to sing for him in the caverns' stead.
'I'll come back,' he promised
himself, looking up at Mount Miru.
'Someday,
Morjin will be finally and utterly defeated and I'll come back and make a true
pilgrimage here.'
We
spent most of that day crossing the tiny kingdom of Senta, or rather,
skirting it, for we rode in a great circle around Senta's farmland and forests,
keeping close to the mountains. We encoun-tered only a woodcutter and a few
farmers, who gave us leave to cross their fields. At the end of the day, we
made camp m a wood northeast of the city, just below the pyramid
mountain that had pointed our way toward Senta. We spent the next morning
working our way up through the pass around this icy peak, and so we left the
civilized realms of Ea's far west behind us.
We came
down into the thick forest of that wild upland where no people lived. For the
rest of that day and part of the next, we picked our way with great care ever
downward, searching through the trees and huge rocks for the road by which we
had approached Senta. Kane had an excellent memory for terrain, and so did I.
and so we had no trouble finding this road, in its broken segments, or the long
valley through which it led. The Valley of Death, Maram called it, for it
disquieted him to wonder what had happened to the people who had once lived
here. But as before, on our journey toward Hesperu, this broad, green swath
through the earth proved to be just the opposite, for we took from it ripe apples
and wild, golden wheat, as well as antelopes and boar and other game that
sustained our lives.
It was
here, during the warm, sunny days of early Ioj, that Bemossed finally learned
to ride. Here, too, he began putting to the test whether we had truly dealt
Morjin a significant defeat. Day after day. as we rode down the grass-filled
valley, he would gaze out at the rocks and the golden-leaved aspen trees as if
looking for the Lightstone's radiance in all things. Twice, as during the
battle with Morjins droghul. I saw the Lightstone appear and Bemossed reach out
to grasp it. He seemed still to lack the power to make it his own and wield it
as he had been born to do. We all however, felt a change in our gelstei:
Maram's firestone cooled to the temperature of warm bread while Atara found her
kristei to be suddenly lighter and almost free of taint - and so with our other
crystals. We all dared to hope that Morjin might be losing his power over them.
After twelve days of easy travel
the valley grew drier as we approached the canyon that gave out onto the Red
Desert. None of us wanted to recross this wasteland. Maram, especially, sought
for arguments to put oft this passage or avoid it altogether.
'But
Bemossed is making such excellent progress here!' Maram said to
us. 'If we go into the desert, he'll have to light the dreadful heat, and so he
won't have the wherewithal to fight Morjin.'
'But we
can't just remain in this valley forever,' Liljana told him.
'Why
not? There is enough game to feed us forever - and wild wheat that could be
brewed into a good beer.'
Liljana,
I thought, almost smiled at this. Then she said to him. 'But I haven't seen any
grapes from which we could make wine, and so brandy. And courtesans there are
none.'
Maram
considered this. 'But we could at least wait until Ashvar, couldn't we? Or even
Valte, when the desert grows a little cooler?'
'The
desert must be cooler now than it was in Marud,' I told him. 'We must
cross it as soon as we can, and you know why.'
At
this, Maram raised up his hands in surrender, and said, 'All right, my friend,
but if I die of heatstroke in the Tar Harath, you'll never forgive yourself.'
The
next afternoon, we came down into the Dead City, half buried in the desert's
swirling, reddish sands. Hundreds of miles of emptiness opened before us, to
the north and east. Here grew a little ursage, rock grass and other tough
plants. It was said to rain here in Segadar and the other months of winter, but
we would be unlikely to see any moisture fall from the sky unless Estrella worked
her magic again.
For
three days, we rode east, taking water from the Yieshi wells that we came to.
We saw no men or women of this tribe, not even at the easternmost well where
Manoj and his family had dwelt with their little black tents and stinking goats.
We speculated that he might have gone off to make war with the Zuri, but we
didn't really know. We filled our waterskins almost to bursting from his well,
still nearly full from the storm that Estrella had summoned. We left no coins
to pay for it. As Atara reminded us, we had given the Yieshi a great deal of
water, which in the desert was a hundred times more valuable than gold.
After
that, we went into the Tar Harath. This immense country of sun-scorched rocks
and blazing dunes proved to be not so hellishly hot as Maram had feared -
which is to say that the torrid air did not quite sear our lungs or steam the
flesh from our bones. But the days waxed more than hot enough to make us sweat
and swear and suffer. Somehow, we bore it. Maram, who had ventured this journey
in the opposite direction alone, found the grace to remark that our
companionship made the miles and the days pass more easily. Then, too, as he
put it with his wounds healed, he had only to endure a more or less human
measure of pain.
This
grew greater and greater the deeper that we pushed into the Tar Harath.
Miracles we had found in abundance all along our way, but we had no magic to
keep the sun from sucking the moisture from our bodies and emptying our
waterskins a little more with every passing mile. Finally, our water ran out
altogether. Then Estrella took out the blue bowl that Oni had given her, and
she tried to call the clouds to her from out of nowhere. She failed. We were
never able to determine exactly why. Some things, it seemed, especially the
ways of the wind and the human heart, would always remain a mystery.
We
might have despaired then, but we did not. I reminded Maram, and myself, that
on our outward passage Estrella had led us to the Vild, and she would again. So
it proved to be. Our course across the drifting desert sands had held straight
and true, and less than a day later we came upon the giant oak trees and
olindas that grew by the greatest of magics in the middle of a wasteland. And
so we entered the Loikalii's wood, parched and dust-worn but still gloriously
alive.
When
Maira, with Anneli and others of her small people, came to greet us, she called
out in delight: 'The seekers return! With the bright one they sought! We must
make a feast!'
It took
two days of eating and drinking for us to consume all the succulent fruits,
nuts, wines and other things that the Loikalii brought to us from their fecund
woods. We rested as much as we wished, and then arose to eat, drink and sing
some more. I unpacked a bottle of old brandy, bought in Hesperu, that I had
been saving for many miles. As I had promised Maram, I filled our cups with
this marvelous liquid, and made a toast to love. Toward the end of bringing
more love into the world, Maram renewed his acquaintance with Anneli, who
wanted again and again to hear the story of how Bemossed had healed his
unhealable wound. At last, on the third day of our sojourn, we all gathered
around Oni's magic pool that she called the Water. Bemossed had a hard time
believing that I had fallen into it, only to emerge onto the banks of another
much like it on another world. As we stood over it looking down into its still,
silvery waters, I said to him, 'Why don't we put it to the test? Why don't you
dive in and see what you can see?'
Just
then the amethyst towers and golden buildings of the city called Iveram
appeared from out of the pool's shimmering water. Bemossed gasped at the wonder
of it, and he said, 'No, thank you - I am a man of this world.'
He
planted his feet on the bank of the pool and grabbed hold of my arm to steady
himself, and he stared in amazement as the faces and forms of the Star People
came into view. I recognized the noble Ramadar, Eva, Varjan and others of the
true Valari whom I had met on their world of Givene. No words did they speak,
nor could any common language pass through the water that connected our two
worlds, or so I thought. I knew, however, that the Star People recognized
Bemossed for who he was. Their black, brilliant eyes blazed with great
rejoicing.
And
then the pool shimmered like silustria, and the Star People disappeared from
our sight. Through the clear water other things took shape: the great, golden
astor tree, Irdrasil, and the two perfect white mountains, Telshar and Vayu
that framed it in the distance. Although the Galadin of Agathad did not make
themselves visible to us, I had a sense that Ashtoreth and Valoreth - and
others of their order - were aware of much that occurred on Ea, and elsewhere.
If they had faces like other men and women, they surely smiled to behold
Bemossed and know that all of Eluru had a new Lord of light.
After a
while, the pool's radiance dimmed and its surface quieted to a sheeny silver,
like that of any other still water. The Loikalii, in awe of what they had seen,
turned toward Bemossed and began clapping their hands as they chanted: 'A song!
A song - give us a song!'
At
this, Bemossed seemed genuinely embarrassed. He said, 'I never learned many,
and none worthy of such a wonder.'
Then
Alphanderry came forth out of nothingness, and walked up to him. He smiled at
him and said, 'Hoy, I have songs! Thousands upon thousands! If you'll give me a
few notes, I shall give one to you.'
As
Estrella and I took out our flutes and Kane his mandolet -and the Loikalii
sucked on ripe apples or plums to prepare their throats for a songfest -
Alphanderry stood by the pool looking at Bemossed strangely. And then he began
singing out old verses beloved of Master Juwain and the rest of us:
When
earth alights the Golden Band,
The
darkest age will pass away:
When
angel fire illumes the land,
The stars will
show the brightest day.
The
deathless day, the Age of Light;
Ieldra's
blaze befalls the earth;
The end
of war, the end of night
Awaits the last Maitreya 's birth.
The Cup
of Heaven in his hands,
The
One's clear light in heart and eye,
He
brings the healing of the land,
And
opens colors in the sky.
And
there, the stars, the ageless lights
For
which we ache and dream and burn,
Upon
the deep and dazzling heights -
Our
ancient home we shall return.
The
Loikalii learned most of these words, the music too, with a single recitation,
for such was their gift. They insisted on singing the verses again - and again
- thrice more, until they had them perfect. Then Maira arose from the grass and
said to Alphanderry, 'You bring words that echo our dreams.'
'How
not?' Alphanderry said. 'I am of the Forest, am I not?' Maira smiled at this
and turned to Bemossed. 'And you - we hope, we hope! - will bring the fire that
heals.'
For a
moment, Bemossed's eyes grew troubled as if he stared down into a dark place.
Then this mood melted away before the blaze of his design. Although I sensed in
him little vanity or arrogance, he also had little patience for pretended
humility. Now that he knew with a surety who and what he was, he seemed to
accept this with all the naturalness of a flower opening its petals to the sky.
'What I
bring already is,' he said to Maira. 'The fire you speak of is spread upon the
earth, but people do not see it.' 'Then you will help them to see,' Maira told
him. At this, Bemossed smiled sadly as he looked at Atara. 'You will, you will,'
Maira said. 'And when everyone sees the world as it really is, the world
will never be the same.'
Later
that morning we said goodbye to Maira and the Loikalii. Oni promised to send
cooling winds from out of the northwest, and so it proved to be. After we had
left the woods to make our way across the drifts of red-tinged sand, we
followed this steady wind, or rather it followed us. Although the days never
grew really cool, as with a bright Valte afternoon in the mountains of Mesh, we
found ourselves able to travel straight through from dawn to dusk. Even the
heat of high noon seemed sweetly hot, as if the sun's rays penetrated our
garments and flesh to fill our bodies with an ease of being and a love of
light.
The
sheer brilliance of the deep desert dazzled all of us. During the long hours of
the days, the sand scattered the sunlight up into a perfectly blue sky. And at
night, the stars came out in all their shimmering millions. Bemossed seemed
almost wholly ignorant of astrology, and so I pointed out to him constellations
such as the Swan and the Great Bear and others that my grandfather had once
taught me. One evening, after dinner, as we sat together on the crest of a
great dune, Bemossed reached up toward an array of lights named the Angels'
Tears, and he said, 'I don't think those stars shine down upon Hesperu.'
'Of course
they do,' I told him. 'We haven't come so far to the north that they wouldn't.
It is just that these stars are faint, and the air in your land contains too
much moisture, and so blocks their radiance.'
He
nodded his head at this, then told me, 'It is strange: water is life, and here
there is so little of it. And yet everything here is so alive.'
I said
nothing as I gazed off at Solaru, Icesse and bright Arras, and other lights
that were as old friends to me. And Bemossed continued: 'The sky here is so
black - and yet the stars are so bright.'
I said
nothing to this either as I found the splendid pair of lights that I had named
Shavashar and Elianora.
'I
don't think he can see us here,' Bemossed said to me. 'Morjin can't - and that
is strange because the air in this emptiness is clearer and the light is more
brilliant than I had ever imagined.'
I drew
my sword and watched the starlight play upon its silvery surface. I said,
'Once, I was sure that Morjin would find his way to claim this for himself.
Now, I think, it is almost free of his foulness. The others say that of their
gelstei, too.'
Bemossed
smiled at this. 'And you think that is because of me.'
'I know
it is. With every passing mile, you seem ever clearer. Ever brighter,
too.'
His
heavy eyebrows pulled together as he said, 'But we still have so many miles to
go.'
'Do you
doubt that we can defeat Morjin now?'
He
thought about this as the wind whipped wisps of dark sand across the gleaming
dunes, and blew steadily out of the northwest, almost as from another world.
The words he spoke then would remain with me for many many miles, and all the
rest of my life: 'But that is just it, Valashu. I do not wish to defeat Morjin
as you do.'
During the
days that followed, as we held a straight and steady course across the Tar
Harath, I tried better to understand this wise, gentle and yet powerful man who
had been born a slave. He seemed always willing to be open with me, even as I
sensed that he always kept the worst of his sufferings and his deepest dreams
to himself. Something in his essential being seemed flow like quick-silver,
difficult to look upon for all its shifting brilliance, and impos-sible to
grasp. In the end, I thought, he would remain to me a more profound mystery
than life and death.
In the
coming days we journeyed on past the ides of Vane into the later part of that
month. As we drew farther and farther from the Loikalii's wood, the north wind
gradually weakened and then died altogether. It didn't matter, for finally the
desert began to cool of its own. Our long ride across it became almost
pleasant.
And
then we came out of the Tar Harath into the country of the Avari. On the 24th
of Valte we found that break in the mountains sheltering the Hadr Halona. As
we rode past the many tents and houses of this place of water, the Avari came
out into the streets to greet us. Warriors drew their curving swords and
saluted us, and they shouted out their surprise that we had returned from out
of the Tar Harath. Many of them, I saw to my dismay, seemed to have been
recently wounded, as evidenced by arms hanging in slings or bandaged faces. I
knew without being told that the Avari had finally been driven to war, even as
Sunji had feared.
We met
with him later that day in his father's house by the lake when King Jovayl
invited guests for a great victory feast. Some of these were elders of the
tribe with whom we had sat before: Laisar, Jaidray, Barsayr and old Sarald.
Maidro arrived wearing a white bandage wrapped around his head, and we cried
out in gladness to greet our former companion. Arthayn accompanied him, but we
waited in vain for Nuradayn to appear. And then Sunji informed us that the
impulsive Nuradayn had fallen in battle.
'He
survived the Tar Harath.' Sunji told us. 'only to die leading a charge against
the Zuri's swords.'
'He was
a brave man. and we honor him,' King Jovayl announced as he bade us sit
down to the many platters of food laid out on his great white carpet, 'When he
went into the Tar Harath, he was still much of a youth, and too reckless, its
we all knew. But when he came out, he was a man, bold and yet balanced, and
worthy of all our respect. And so we gave him a command.'
He went
on to say that the deep desert was like a forge, either shaping and tempering
the steel inside a man or destroying it.
'The
Tar Harath has changed you, Valaysu,' he said, staring at me. 'There is
something about you now, something. It is as rare as skystone, and ten times
more striking. It cannot be denied.'
He
nodded at Liljana, Daj, Master Juwain and paused for a long time as he looked
at Maram. 'All of you. You have done a great thing, and this greatness shines
for all to see.'
He
lifted up a bottle of wine, and he filled each of our glasses with his own
hand. Then he bowed his head toward Bemossed.
'It
seems that you have found the one you sought,' he told us. 'Well, we shall
see.'
Bemossed
returned his bow, and said, 'What do you mean, lord?'
'My
warriors have returned with me from the battle,' King Jovayl told him, 'and too
many of them bear wounds beyond all help. If you are the Maitreya that Valaysu
sought, you will heal them.'
He went
on to recount what had happened in the desert while we made quest in faraway
Hesperu. Sunji had thought that there might be war with the Zuri in the autumn,
but King Jovayl had surprised him, and everyone else in the tribe, by moving
against the Zuri in the heat of Soal. And more, he had surprised the Zuri. It
had been the Masud's wells that Morjin's droghul had poisoned, (with the
compliance of the Zuri), but it was King Jovayl who led the crusade of
vengeance. He had not only made allies of the Masud and their fierce chief,
Rohaj, but of the Yieshi as well. Their three armies, like the points of
stabbing spears, he had coordinated in a vicious attack upon the Zuri, from
out the west, the north and east. They worked a great slaughter upon the Zuri
warriors, and they put to the sword their chief, Tatuk, and all the Red
Priests, who had corrupted him. Some of the Zuri women they took as wives,
while others they slew - along with many children, too, for even boys ten years
old tried to defend their families with lances and swords. King Jovayl had
finally managed to put an end to this massacre. Then the Avari warriors, along
with the Masud and the Yieshi, had driven the survivors from their homes, and
they divided the Zuri's lands among the three tribes.
'The
Zuri are no more,' King Jovayl announced proudly. 'We have heard that a few of
their clans have begged mercy from the Vuai, but they must be few, and they
will never take back what we have claimed.'
I
traded looks with Maram, who took a huge gulp of wine. It was a terrible thing
that the Avari had done, but that was the way of things with the tribes of the
Red Desert. With a single brilliant and ruthless campaign. King Jovayl had put
an end to Morjin's hopes of conquering this vast country, at least for a time,
and I should have been glad for that.
Bemossed,
however, took no joy in King Jovayl's news - nor, in truth, in King Jovayl. All
during the least, he picked at his food and kept a silence. Later that night,
as we took a walk by the lake, he said to me, 'Did you see the way that King
Jovayl and the elders looked at me? As if I existed only to prove their
prophecies and justify their crusades. Is that why I am?'
I gazed
at the starlight reflected off the lake's black, mirrored surface. I said,
'King Jovayl has only asked for your help in healing his people, and there is
nothing wrong with that.'
'Does
he care about them?' he said.
'Of
course he does - they are his warriors.'
'His
warriors,' he repeated. 'Who have murdered in the name of the good.'
I let
my hand fall upon my sword's hilt and said, 'So have I, Bemossed.'
'I know
- I have seen you. But you did not slay women and children.'
'Is it
so much better to slay a man?' I asked him. 'Slaughter is slaughter. That is
war, and why I hate it. And why it must end.'
I
turned to look at him through the pale light pouring down from the sky, and I
told him, 'And that is why you are.'
The
next morning, however, when King Jovayl called the wounded to his house from
the dwellings across the Hadr Halona and the pastures farther out in the
desert, Bemossed was loath to go among them. He remained within his room, and
people said that he was not the Maitreya after all - either that, or his power
had failed him. And so Master Juwain went out to tend to the stricken warriors
in his place. Master Juwain had a great gift of his own for healing, and he
managed to draw a lance point buried deep in the back of one of the warriors
and to reset the bones of another whose arm had been badly broken. But he could
do nothing for a third warrior sweating and gasping at the pain of a leg
crushed when a horse had fallen upon it - nothing without his gelstei, that is.
In desperation, not wanting to have to cut off the man's leg, Master Juwain
finally took out his gelstei. He held it over the shattered leg. But as before
with Maram, a hot green fire poured out of the crystal instead of a healing
light, and struck into the man a pure agony. Seeing this, Bemmsed's
heart broke open. He hurried out of King Jovayl's house, and set his hand upon
the man's leg, and he made it whole. Likewise, he restored a warrior named
Irgayn with an infected sword wound in his belly, and young Dalvayr who had
suffered a dizzying blow to the back of his head, and others. At the end of the
day, when this great work of healing was finished, I took him aside and said to
him, 'You were kind to men you call murderers.'
Then he looked at me with a deep light running tn his eyes like water,
and he told me, 'Until war is ended upon this world we are all murderers.'
We
stayed one more night in King Jovayl's house, and set out at dawn to continue
our desert crossing. King Jovayl commanded Sunji Maidro, Arthayn and six other
warriors to escort us to the edge of the Avari's country, and this they did.
For a day we rode south along the little range of mountains, and then we turned
east and travelled a good few miles farther until we came to lands claimed by
the Masud. There, by a great red rock as flat at the top as a sheet of paper,
we said farewell to Sunji - I hoped not forever.
'We
have no plans to return this way.' I told him, 'but the wind blows where it
will blow.'
'Not
always,' he said, removing his cowl to smile at Estrella. We had stopped not
far from that place in the barren mountains where she had found a new source of
water. 'But I hope one day it blows as together again.'
'I know it
will,' I told him. 'Until then, go in the light of the One.'
'That will be
easier now,' he said, bowing his head to Bemossed. He told him, 'I never
thanked you, did I, for healing Daivayr? He is my brother.'
After that we journeyed east through the sere,
sun-baked land by which we had first entered the desert. We drank water from
the Masud's wells, and we did not fear that they would take this as thievery.
After the battle in the canyon, when Yago had cut off the second droghul's
head, he had promised us that if we ever ventured into the Masud's realm again,
we would be welcome.
So it
proved to be. On our fourth day out from the Hadr Halona, a band of Masud
warriors returnmg from the destruction of the Zuri espied u. At first threy
seemed eager tor another battle, for they charged upon us in cloud of dust. But
when we called out our names and that we were friends of Yago and under the
protection of Rohaj, they called back that they would extend us all their
hospitality. True to their word, they shared with us some dried goat meat, figs
and fermented milk. Then, over the next few days, they rode with us all the way
to that place where the desert ended against the great wall of the White
Mountains.
We said
farewell to these warriors, too, and I wondered if we really would see any of
the Red Desert's fierce peoples again. It surprised me that I had come to love
the desert - its brilliance and stark beauty - as much as I dreaded going up
into the mountains.
Part of
my disquiet, I knew, came from my memories of the monster that had so nearly
killed us on our first crossing of these heights. As we worked up toward the
gap where Jezi Yaga had once lived and turned wayfarers into stone, we finally
caught sight of the place where she had perished. High on a shelf of rock overlooking
the desert, she still stood: a great, hideous stone statue with violet eyes.
Maram, with some trepidation, insisted on going up to her and laying his hands
upon her face. Perhaps he wanted to reassure himself that she really was dead.
He wept then, and he could not tell us why.
We all
moved forward past this lonely sentinel, and we began working our way through
the gap's rugged terrain. That night it grew quite cold. Master Juwain
calculated that we had journeyed into Ashvar, the month of the falling leaves,
which in the mountains could turn almost as frigid as winter. No snow,
however, fell upon us during our passage of the gap. We rode up and up past
red-leaved trees through air that steamed our breath. When we came to that
place by the gap's central stream where Jezi had turned Berkuar to stone, we
paused to pray for him. He stood like an immortal, still wearing the gold
medallion that I had placed around his neck.
'Perhaps
you should take that back,' Liljana said to me, pointing at the medallion. 'If
anyone chances this way, he will likely claim it.'
'No, let
it remain,' I said. 'Berkuar is entitled to keep it.' 'Then perhaps we should
bury him, and let it lie with him.' I considered this as I watched Bemossed
step up to Berkuar and
touch
his hand to Berkuar's stony fingers. I found myself gazing
at
Bemossed a little too intently.
And he
said to me, 'I cannot bring back the dead, Valashu.' 'I know that,' I told him.
I rapped my knuckles against the trunk of a maple as I added, 'And I know it
would be best to leave Berkuar just as he is, looking upon these beautiful
trees. It is a kind of life, isn't it?'
After
that we journeyed on into the more heavily wooded eastern reaches of the gap,
and I thought more and more about life - and thus about death. Although we
hadn't yet drawn very close to that dark, diseased part of the Acadian forest
called the Skadarak, I knew that we could not avoid it. Our reasons for setting
a course close to it remained as before. It was reason that told me we could
survive it, as we had once, and yet as I contemplated going anywhere near the
Skadarak's blackened and twisted trees, my disquiet built into a howling,
belly-shaking dread.
So it
was with my friends. In our descent of the mountains down into Acadu's cold,
gray woods, Daj fell as quiet as Estrella, while Atara, Liljana and Master
Juwain rode along lost in a terrible silence. And then, with our horses' hooves
crunching over dead leaves, Maram finally looked at Master Juwain and said, 'At
the Avari's hadrah, when you tried to use your crystal, you only proved that
Morjin still has a hold on it. It must be, then, that he still has a hold on
the Black Jade, and so on us.'
Master
Juwain could usually summon a well-thought response to almost any statement.
This time, however, he only looked at Maram as he shrugged his shoulders, then
drew the hood of his cloak over his bald head.
And so
I told Maram, 'He has no hold over us - at least, not our hearts.'
'But
what of our gelstei?' He drew out his firestone and stared at it. 'I'm afraid
of what I feel building inside this. I am, Val.'
'It
will be all right,' I told him.
'It
will not be all right, just because you say so.' He turned in his saddle
to look back at Bemossed, riding next to the children. 'He was supposed
to take control of the Lightstone from Morjin.'
'Give
it time,' I told him.
'Time,'
he muttered. 'In another day, I think, we'll come to the Skadarak. Who knows,
we might have entered it already.'
His
deepest fears, however, and my own, proved groundless. After some more miles
of. riding through gray-barked trees shedding their leaves, we came to that
strip of forest bordering the marshland to the south and the Skadarak to the
north. I led the way straight into it. We rode on and on into a smothering
still-ness, and soon the sky grew thick with black clouds, and we all heard the
call of a voice we dreaded above all others. But then Bemossed nudged his horse
up close beside me. He smiled at ml and the sun rose in that dark, dark place.
Alphanderry came out of nowhere to sing us a bright, immortal song. And
although the terrible voice continued murmuring its maddening tones, as it
always would, we did not listen. And so we completed our passage of the
Skadarak once again.
The
workings of fate are strange. We had traveled all the way from Hesperu nearly a
thousand miles across some of Ea's harshest and deadliest country without
incident, almost as if we had gone on a holiday. Now, with only one last
stretch of forest to negotiate before reaching our journey's end, Maram
rejoiced that our luck had held good. But he rejoiced too soon.
The
woods of Acadu, as we discovered, proved to be infested with even more
Crucifiers than before, for Morjin had sent a battalion of soldiers down from
Sakai to quell the unrest and exterminate the forces opposing him. We did what
we could to avoid them. The trees, however, more and more barren with every
mile that we pressed eastward toward winter, provided us little cover. We had
trouble crossing Acadu's rivers: the great Ea and the Tir. We hoped to fall in
with the Greens and gain a little protection for at least a part of our
passage, but we learned that these Keepers of the Forest had concentrated their
forces for a great battle up north of the minelands, where Acadu bordered
Sakai. I set a course almost due east, over wet leaves and between trees that
seemed as dead and gray as ghosts. Thus we made our way through the rainy and
dark days of late Ashvar by ourselves.
We came
close to the Nagarshath range of the White Mountains safely. And then, within a
span of fifty miles, we fought two battles. In the first of these, a squadron
of soldiers came upon us at the edge of a farmer's field, and they demanded
that we surrender up Atara and Estrella to 'cook and provide comfort for them,'
as they put it. We killed these ten Crucifiers quickly, down to the last man.
Two days later, with the jagged, white-capped peaks of the mountains gleaming
through the leafless trees, a band of Acadians who had gone over to Morjin
tried to relieve us of our possessions -as well as our lives. We fought an
arrow duel with them: Kane put a feathered shaft through their leader's eye,
while Maram killed two men with arrows buried exactly in the centers of their
chests. Seeing this, their companions lost heart and melted away into the
forest. We all made ready to rejoice then, but we discovered that Daj had taken
an arrow straight through his thigh. Remarkably, he bore this nasty wound
without crying out or making any sound. He kept his silence, too, as Master
Juwain drew the arrow with great difficulty, for its barbs had caught up in
Daj's tendons Bemossed managed to heal his torn and bleeding leg with little
difficulty, and within an hour, Daj could walk with little pain. I, however,
suffered a stab of guilt that would not go away, for this was the first time in
our travels that one of the children had been seriously wounded.
At last
we came to the place where the forest's trees rose up the steep slopes of the
mountains. We found the ravine by which we had come down into Acadu months
before, and now we made our way up into it. The ascent was hard, for Ashvar's
rains had fallen here as snow, which grew deeper and deeper the higher we
climbed. It grew much colder, too. I kept watching the sky for sign that the
clouds might thicken up and loose upon us a major storm. 'If it does snow
too much or too long,' Maram said, giving voice to my thoughts, 'we could be
trapped here all winter. How much food do we have left? Ten days' worth?
Twenty, if we stretch it?' 'Be quiet!'
Kane told him, looking about the trees of the snow-covered ravine. 'If we have
to, we can always kill a few deer.'
'If any
remain this high up,' Maram said, shivering. He watched his horse's breath
steaming out of its nostrils.
'So, if
we really have to,' Kane told Maram with a wicked light in his eyes, 'we
could always kill you. I'd bet that you'd keep us in meat longer than
three fat bucks, eh?'
To
emphasize his point, he moved over and poked his finger into Maram's belly,
still quite rotund, though considerably diminished due to the hardships of our
journey. And Maram said to him, 'That is not funny! You shouldn't joke
about such things!'
Something
in Kane's voice, however, caused Maram to look at him to make sure he really was
joking. With Kane, one never quite knew.
'I'm
afraid that snow or no snow," Master Juwain said, 'we must go on. Tomorrow
is the twenty-eighth of Ashvar.'
'Are
you sure we're not late?' Maram asked as he pulled his cloak tighter around his
throat and stamped his boots in the snow. 'It feels more like Segadar - and
late Segadar at that.'
'I've
kept a count of the days,' Master Juwain reassured him. 'But are you certain
about the twenty-eighth? I haven't had a clear sight of the stars for half a
month.'
'I am not the greatest
astrologer, it's true,' Master Juwain admitted. 'But if my calculations are
correct, then tomorrow the moon will conjunct the Seven Sisters.'
Again,
I gazed skyward at the overlying sheet of gray above us. Who could tell where
the moon would cross that night? Who could even see the sun, much less the
stars?
We
continued climbing up into the mountains, all the rest of that day and most of
the next. One of the pack horses stumbled in the deep snow, and broke its neck
on some rocks. It died before Bemossed could even attempt to help it. Later,
the foot of Daj's wounded leg began to freeze, and we had to stop more than
once to thaw his toes. Finally, though, we came up to a wall of rock where one
of the tunnels through these mountains opened like a yawning, black mouth. With
great satisfaction, Master Juwain announced that we still had hours to
spare.
'The
conjunction should occur late tonight,' he informed us, 'just two hours before
dawn.'
'Ah, it
should occur,' Maram agreed, 'but what if it doesn't? I wish Master
Storr had given us one his gelstei so that we could unlock this damn tunnel any
time we pleased.'
But
Master Storr, I thought, for all his hope that our quest would end
successfully, had not been willing to entrust the key to the Brotherhood's
secret school to wayfarers who might be captured and might surrender up his
precious gelstei to Morjin.
'If
you're wrong about the date,' Maram said to Master Juwain, 'when is the next
nearest motion of the stars that will open this?' 'Not until the second of
Triolet. I don't think you would want to wait that long.'
'I
don't want to wait another hour, much less twelve,' Maram said. 'But I suppose
there's no help for it?'
If
Bemossed had doubted that the pool in the Loikalii's vild might provide a
passage to the stars, he could not deny the magic of the tunnel. Two hours
before dawn, with the sky beginning to clear, we entered this dark tube of
rock. It came alive in pulses of iridescent light. As before, its workings made
us sick in our stomachs and disoriented us; and as before, our focused will
took us through it, out into that beautiful, sunny valley that sheltered the
Brotherhood's greatest school.
This
time, no trick of Master Virang or our own blindness kept the sight of it from
us. We rejoiced at the cluster of gleaming stone buildings by the valley's
frozen river. It took us until mid-morning to ride down through the drifts of
snow and reach this haven. Abrasax and the six other masters, with all two
hundred of the men who lived and studied here, came out of their dwellings and
gathered in front of the great hall to greet us. When Bemossed fairly dropped
off his horse, stiff and nearly frozen, Abrasax gazed at him for a long time. I
sensed that he was seeing in him colors other than those of the outer world;
the green of the fir trees; the sweeps of white snow; the blue sky's brilliant
golden sun.
'Valashu
Elahad,' Master Storr said, standing next to Abrasax, 'brings another stranger
into our valley.'
Estrella
came up to Bemossed, and took his hand. She waved her other hand about in the
frigid air as if she desperately desired the gift of being able to talk to us
again. But as Abrasax had said months before, her words held less power than
did her eyes or her heart. She looked at Bemossed in adoration, with a perfect
brilliance felt by all who stood gazing upon them. For a long moment, it was
Estrella who seemed to speak, in sparkling streams and shimmering oceans deeper
than any words, while Master Storr stood there struck dumb like a mute - and so
it was with the other Masters of the Seven, and all the Brothers, as well as my
friends and even myself.
'He is
no stranger,' Abrasax said as he bowed his head to Bemossed. Then held up his
long, wrinkled hand, and shouted out: 'It is he whom we've known from all our
books and dreams! The quest has been completed! Valashu Elahad and his companions
have found the Shining One!'
Then he
cast aside all decorum and restraint, and he rushed forward to embrace
Bemossed, as he did with each of us in our turn. His old face warmed with the
brightest of smiles.
Even
the dour old Master Storr couldn't help smiling along with him, and he called
out, 'Then they have brought us the greatest, gift in the world - and just in
time for your birthday, Grandfather!'
All the rest of the Seven and the two hundred Brothers standing about in the snow let out a great cheer. Abrasax's attention finally turned from the miracle of Bemossed's existence to the sorry state of our clothing, mounts and our care-worn flesh. Then he commanded us to repair to the guest houses and recover from our great journey.
Chapter 43 Back Table of Content Next
The next few days were a time of rest and restoration. We took up residence in the two guest houses by the river, and we spent whole hours bathing our worn bodies in the great cedarwood tubs that the Brothers kept full of steaming hot water. We sat with the Brothers in the great hall to take our meals: simple, sustaining foods such as beef and barley soup, lamb stews, and hot bread drenched with sweet butter. We slept as much as we liked, in good beds, swaddled in crisp cotton sheets and thick quilts stuffed with goose down. At night, it grew bitterly cold in those high mountains, and it seemed impossible that we had ever suffered through the Red Desert's inexorable heat. As well, we had a hard time imagining that there were places and things in the world that were not bright and clean and good.
Abrasax's one hundred and forty-seventh birthday arrived on the third of Segadar, and the Brothers and my companions all gathered for a great feast to celebrate it. All that day Liljana had
labored in the kitchens baking chocolate and raspberry cakes, which were Abrasax's favorite. When it came time to eat them, he praised her artistry and declared that in all his long life, at this school and others, he had never tasted a confection so fine as the one Liljana baked for him. He commanded that the Brothers break out their reserve of rare teas to accompany the cakes; all present stirred into their cups an orange blossom honey from Galda that was rarer still. Its sweetness, Abrasax said, would always remind him of this evening with Iiljana and the rest of our company - and, of course, with Bemossed. We
might have luxuriated thusly all winter, and fallen into indulgence or even
sloth. But when Master Okuth deemed us sufficiently strong, Abrasax appointed
each of us tasks: Master Juwain was to record a
complete account of our journey, paying particular attention to what we had
discovered in the Vild and in Senta's Singing Caves, Abrasax asked Liljana to
begin imparting to the Brothers her great knowledge of herbs and poisons, as
well as her many recipes for delicious foods that were unknown to them. He
commanded that Daj and Estrella should receive instruction in ancient Ardik and
other languages, as well as mathematics, music and the arts. When Daj
complained that he would rather spend his time completing the Gest of
Eleikar and Ayeshtan, Abrasax arranged with Master Nolashar for Daj to
work this composition into his music
lessons. Atara he set to caring tor the horses, sheep, cows and pigs that the
Brothers kept in their stables. It was hard, often dirty work, unfit for a
princess, much less a great warrior of the Manslayer Society, but Atara
surprised us all by looking after these animals with a love that she often
found difficult to tender to human beings. Strangely, Abrasax insisted that
Kane and I should spend at least three hours each day practicing with swords.
And stranger still, he asked Maram to sit at a desk composing a whole new set
of verses for 'A Second Chakra Man'.
Bemossed did not escape the Grandmaster's demands.
Indeed, he had the hardest work of all of us, for he had to face the most
terrible of enemies in a relentless combat. Each morning just after dawn,
Abrasax would go into the little stone conservatory to sit with Bemossed and
Master Virang, who led Bemossed in endless hours of meditation. Their labor, as
I understood it, was to clear each of Bemossed's chakras so that the deep light
that lived within him might rise and blaze forth, unclouded by the dark moods
and sense of doom that too often grieved him. And each afternoon, in the short
sharp brightness of the winter days. Bemossed met with Master Storr to attune
himself to the Cup of Ashurun. Whenever Bemossed dared to lay his hands upon
it, this great work of silver gelstei glowed with a strong golden radiance and
resonated with the Lightstone hundreds of miles away in Argattha. Master Storr
soon determined that Bemossed could touch upon the True Gelstei from
afar and reach with his luminous being deep into its heart. Someday, he might
even master it this way, though Master Storr thought the danger to Bemossed
would be very great.
Bemossed did not like to talk about this, nor would he
say very much about his endless struggles with Morjin. One night, however,
after a particularly brutal session of delving the Lightstone's mysteries, he
took me aside and confided to me, 'Morjin will die before ever giving up the
Cup of Heaven again. And he will slay. He hates ... so hatefully, Valashu. Far
more than you do. And it is so foul - fouler than a corpse rotting
slowly in a slaughterhouse for a thousand years. You think that you have known
darkness in the Skadarak, but what lies within Morjin is blacker than any Black
Jade.'
He told me then that he did not know how he could bear
it.
But bear it he did, and more, he gained a great
victory over Morjin. There came a day in Yaradar, just past the darkest time of
the year, when we all felt our gelstei free of Morjin's taint, as of wounds drained
of poison. Master Juwain ventured to use his varistei to germinate and grow
some barbark seeds that he had brought out of Acadu, while Liljana pressed her
blue figurine to her head and managed to speak mind to mind with one of her
sisters in faroff Alonia, or so she said. Maram broke off his versifying to go
out into the Valley of the Sun with his red crystal and unleash bolts of fiery
lightning, just for the sheer joy of it. Then Kane took out his gelstei to
demonstrate how the black jade had been designed to be used. It frustrated
Maram for Kane to steal his fire, so to speak, but more than once, Kane kept
Maram from killing himself in a great blast of rock and heat, or at least badly
burning his hands. As for Atara, she did not regain her second sight. Even so,
she spent what seemed entire days gazing eyeless into her clear scryer's
sphere. As she told me, she did not look for things faraway in space or time,
but rather concentrated all her will upon imagining them to be.
Master Storr finally deemed it safe to begin exploring
the properties of Estrella's blue bowl, which Estrella gladly lent to him. He
thanked her for bearing it all across Ea, and told all of us: 'You do have
a talent for discovering gelstei. It is a pity, though, that you could not also
bring me the lilastei that you say the Yaga used to turn men to stone.'
In early Triolet, with the snows falling heavy and
deep, we broke our usual rhythms and routines to receive a rare winter visitor
to the valley. A Brother Vipul, at great risk, had forced his way through the
mountains on snow shoes to bring Abrasax important news. After Abrasax had
allowed Master Juwain to use his green crystal to heal Vipul's frozen feet and
had sat drinking hot cider with Vipul for most of an afternoon, Abrasax called
the Brotherhood's masters into a conclave to speak with my friends and me.
We met in the conservatory that evening. Bemossed
entered the room looking tired and troubled, and yet strangely happier than he
had ever been. In truth, his whole being seemed to glow. We all took our places
around the three low tea tables. One of the brothers came in to fill our cups
with steaming tea and serve us hot lemon cakes. The many candles set ablaze in
their stands cast their warm radiance on the twelve pillars holding up the
domed roof. Snow plastered over the round windows to the north and west, but
the southern windows let in the light of the stars.
After asking each of us to tell of the progress in the
tasks appointed to us, Abrasax moved on to his purpose in calling us together.
He sat straight and stern on his colorful cushion, his curly hair and beard
framing his striking face in a wreath of white. Then he said to us, 'Brother
Vipul has been ordered to bed, and so we will discuss his tidings in his
absence. It is time, in any case, that we discussed certain things.'
With what seemed infinite patience, he bit off a piece
of his cake and chewed it thoroughly before taking a long sip of tea. He looked
from Estrella to Bemossed. Then he looked at the table in front of me, where I
had laid the diamond that Ramadar had given me by the pool on Givene: the great
gem that had once been set into my ancestor, Adar's, crown. Abrasax had asked
me to show it to the Brotherhood's masters as a proof of miracles.
'I have said many times,' he told me, and the rest of
my friends, 'that each of our acts, as with a stone dropped into a pool,
ripples outward forever. Together on this last quest of yours, you have cast
entire mountains into the waters of this world. We all worried that the risk
would be too great and the goal almost impossible to achieve. And yet you
forced Morjin to take great risks of his own. He spent much time and will
working his three droghuls from afar. And to what end? The tribes of the Red
Desert now ally themselves against him. In Hesperu, brave spirits have made
rebellion again. It is said that King Arsu has recalled part of his army from
Surrapam to smash it, and so we do not need to fear the conquest of Eanna and
the northwest, at least not yet. Something else is said, not just in Hesperu,
but in Sunguru, Uskudar and all lands: that Morjin is dead. The rumor has
spread like a wildfire. The Red Dragon will now have to spend even more will to
quell it. Perhaps he will even be forced out of Argattha to show himself, in
Sunguru, I think, and in Karabuk. Already, in Galda, it is too late.'
He ate another bit of cake and drank some more tea. I
sensed that like a minstrel working up to the end of a great epic, he revelled
in making us wait for his good news.
'In Galda,' he finally told us, 'there has been
another revolt, greater than the last. The Red Priests and anyone connected to
the Kallimun have been killed or driven out. A common knight named Gallagerry
has claimed lordship of the land.'
He looked at me and added, 'I am told that the revolt
was led by common captains of the army that you and yours so terribly defeated
at the Culhadosh Commons. You count that battle as the worst moment of your
life, and rightly so, but what you did there, Valashu, now engulfs the world
with the force of a tidal wave, does it not?'
I noticed Bemossed smiling at me, and I remembered
that false humility would not serve me. But neither would pride. 'On the day
you speak of,' I reminded Abrasax, 'what I did caused the Lightstone to be lost.'
'Lost, yes, but not forsaken.' Abrasax looked across
the table at Bemossed, and bowed his head to him, as did Master Storr, Master
Matai and the other masters of the Brotherhood. 'Bemossed now keeps Morjin from
wielding it.'
'But Bemossed cannot wield it himself.'
'No, he cannot, and that bright eventuality must
likely await the day when he sets his hands upon it.'
Across the room, the Cup of Ashurun gleamed upon its
stand. I found myself wishing that this work of silver gelstei was the real
Lightstone. I found myself wanting to promise Bemossed that the day would
surely come when he would lay his hands upon the true Cup of Heaven.
'We have had reports out of Argattha,' Abrasax told
me. 'Morjin has broken off the excavations there. He cannot, we believe, free
the Dark One without full command of the Lightstone. And so, as of this day,
he turns his attention to more pressing matters.'
'I have had reports of that,' Liljana
announced. 'I am told that Morjin has prepared the Kallimun to make ready
assassinations all across Alonia. My sisters believe that Morjin has gained a
hold over Baron Maruth of the Aquantir. They fear that he will ally himself
with the Marituk tribe and let the Sarni cross the Long Wall. Such a force
could conquer Iviunn and Tarlan, and then all of Alonia could be lost.'
'So it could,' Kane added. 'As for Galda, do you think
that Morjin will let the revolt prevail? Ha! - he will surely send an army from
Karabuk to destroy this Gallagerry and restore the Kallimun.'
'And let us not
forget that the Dragon has a new weapon,' Master Juwain said. 'If he himself,
as his droghuls did, commands a voice of death, then woe to anyone who tries to
stand before him.'
'Not anyone,' Master Okuth said. His gray hair
gleamed on his round, heavy head likellron. 'All of you did stand before
him. I should think that this death voice has something to do with Morjin's
fifth chakra - and your ability, all of you, to withstand it must come from the
soundness of each of your chakras. As Grandfather has said, your auras have
been strengthened, like an armor woven of light. We should not be surprised at
this: each of you, except Bemossed, once held the Lightstone. And Bemossed is
Bemossed.'
'What you say might be true,' Master Juwain told him.
'But I still would not want to face the real Red Dragon, in the flesh.'
Abrasax allowed us, as well as Master Yasul and Master
Matai, to speak on in a like way for some time. Then he finally held up his
hand and told us: 'We cannot delude ourselves that Morjin has been defeated, or
that what you did along the way to Hesperu will bring his certain defeat. But
neither should we deny that we have gained a great victory.'
Now he looked at us across the table, and bowed his
head.
'You, all of you,' he said, 'have done
this great thing. And the marvel of it is that you did it without paying back
evil for evil.'
I felt a burning inside my chest, and I said, 'Almost,
we did such terrible things. Too many times, it was so close.'
'And in that,' Abrasax said, 'you gained the greatest
victory of all.'
'Perhaps,' I told him.
'You vanquished your murderous hate of Morjin. And
more, transmuted it, like an alchemist, into a thing of the truest gold. I know
of no greater feat.'
I felt my mouth pulling into a grim smile. I looked at
Bemossed; Estrella sat next to him, and she seemed like a great, shining mirror
perfectly reflecting the brightness of his being. This last journey, I thought,
had transformed all of us.
Then I said to Abrasax, 'With the help of my friends,
I did - for a moment only. A man such as Morjin might be killed, once and
forever, but not my hate for him. That is one battle that must be fought again
and again.'
'And now you will fight it successfully,' Abrasax told
me. 'You will use your gift to bring a great light into the world. Just as, in
the end, I believe that the good will triumph over all that is dark and wrong.'
I found myself tracing my finger over the diamonds set
into the black jade of the hilt of my sword, which I had laid at my side by the
table. And I said, 'What you call the good must triumph. But it is no
simple matter. The valarda, I know, must never be used to slay. It is a
beautiful thing, like life itself. It connects heart to living heart, as light
passes from star to star. It is pure light, in a way, and so love, for
it brings into creation all that is bright and good. And yet, and yet. . .'
I paused to take a sip of tea, and I looked at
Abrasax. Then I said, 'Morjin crucified my mother and grandmother, and that was
the most evil thing that I have ever suffered. And yet it led to the beginning
of my understanding of him, which is a good thing, yes? This burning sense of
the soul that sometimes I love, and sometimes I hate above all else. With it,
I saw how I might strike a kind of light into Morjin. He could not bear it, for
he sees in the compassionate and the beautiful all that is weak. And so it
drove him to make a mortal error. I did. You could say that I used a
good thing to kill the droghul, which is an evil act in itself. And yet only
through this evil and the slaughter of many men were we able to make our escape
from Hesperu and bring Bemossed here - which you count as the greatest of
good.'
Abrasax considered this as he ran his finger around the
rim of his tea cup. Then he stood, and walked over to the conservatory's
western wall. Into its smooth stone had been carved a yanyin: a simple circle,
bisected by a sigmoid line, like the curve of a snake. Its right side was set
with quartz, as white as snow. A piece of black obsidians made up the other
half. I couldn't help noticing how the black part of this ancient symbol
swelled like a wave into the white as if to push against it, as the white did
into the black.
Abrasax touched his hand to it, and said, 'This
reminds us that light and dark are inextricably interwoven in the creation of
the world. So it is with good and evil.'
'Yet you speak of good's inevitable triumph,' I told
him. 'As do I.'
'As you say, it is no simple matter. I believe that
life will always entail suffering, even after this age is ended and the Age of
Light begins. But the suffering that man makes out of pride, ignorance and
hate, which we call evil, that must surely end.'
He looked across the room as if to ask Bemossed to
help explicate the deepest mysteries of life. Bemossed could not help laughing
at the Grandmaster's obvious expectation. After bowing his head to Master
Virang and Master Matai, he looked at Abrasax and said, 'You are the scholars
and philosophers, men of well-chosen and beautiful words. Who am I? A Hajarim
whose only gift is to keep burning like a torch so that you don't forget to
light a fire of your
own.'
He smiled at me, then shrugged his shoulders as to
cast off a great weight pressing upon him. Then he said, 'All right, I will
try.'
He took a sip of tea, and his eyes grew sad and
bright.
'I learned in the desert that water is the source and
substance of all life,' he told us. 'As the One is the source of all things. It
flows through us and all around us, like a river leading down to the ocean. And
that bright infinite sea is what we all long for most deeply, isn't it? We have
only to plunge into the river and let it take us there. But what man or woman
has the courage to do that? It seems simpler, in our thirst for water, to wade
out and try to empty the river bucket by bucket. But our thirst is infinite, is
it not? Who has not known merchants who have amassed gold a thousand times in
excess of their needs while their slaves starve to death, or kings who slaughter
tens of thousands as they press on ever to conquer new lands? Or even
once-great Elijin lords such as Morjin who seek unbounded power to fill the
emptiness inside them? The ways of bringing hideous wrongs into this world are
themselves nearly infinite. And so the ages go on, as the river goes on, and we
continue to try to stand against it or to direct its currents for our own need.
Why should we be surprised when it pulls us down into the mud and muck, and
drowns us? Why can't we be content to discover how the river will flow?
If we could do that we wouldn't have to speak of good and evil.'
In the quiet of the conservatory, we all looked at
Bemossed. The candles' light brought the soft features of his face aglow. At
times he seemed a plain and simple man, and at other times, something much
more.
Abrasax, still standing by the symbol-carved wall,
said to him, 'Why not, indeed? Might I ask, then, where this great river will
carry the Maitreya?'
'That is no easier for me to determine than for anyone
else,' Bemossed said. 'But for now, I will remain here, Grandfather.'
'And you, Valashu Elahad? Will you and your companions
stay with us, too?'
I took hold of my sword, and stood up to work off some
of the restlessness building inside me. I paced around the room, looking at the
various glyphs and the crystals set into the walls. I came to where Abrasax
stood by the yanyin, with its gleaming curves of black and white. I drew my
sword, and for a long few moments I watched the silver blade flare with a deep
glorre. Then I thrust it straight into the heart of the yanyin. Its point,
almost infinitely sharp, came to a rest in the fine crack between the yanyin's
white quartz and black obsidian without chipping off the slightest sliver of
stone or marring the yanyin in any way.
And I said to Abrasax, and to the other masters still
sitting at the table, 'No, I will return to Mesh.'
'To Mesh?' Abrasax said. 'But your own warriors turned
away from you and cast you out.'
'I cast myself out. But now the river that Bemossed has
spoken of is carrying me back home.'
'Are you sure?'
I looked at my bright sword, and nodded my head. 'As
sure as I am of anything.'
'But to what end?'
'To the end ... of ending Morjin's terror,' I told
him. 'There are those of my people who would still follow me.'
'To war, then?'
I drew in a long breath, and I remembered the lessons
that my father had once taught me. I said, 'I must strike now, while Morjin is
compromised, where he is the weakest.'
'To strike with that sword?'
I lifted up Alkaladur, and pointed it toward the
starlight streaming in through one of the windows. 'This sword he fears like
death. But there is another sword that is not so easy to see. He fears that one
even more. It remains half-forged, and I still do not know how to wield it.'
Abrasax sighed and regarded me with his deep,
perceptive eyes. 'It is a dangerous path that you've chosen.'
'Have I chosen it, Grandfather?'
He looked at the thing of silustria and light that I
held in my hand, and he said, 'When you first came here. Master Storr accused
you of being of the sword. That is still true, isn't it?'
'Yes,' I told him. 'I bear two swords now, and I will
use either one, or both, against Morjin.'
'Will you not content yourself to see if Bemossed can
prevail against him?'
I bowed my head to my new friend. 'Bemossed will do
what he can do, and I will do what I must.'
'What is it then that you hope to accomplish?'
I looked at Estrella sitting beside Daj as she calmly
ate a piece of lemon cake; I looked at Maram steeling himself for yet another
journey, and at Atara abiding with a deep and lightless silence. Then I looked
at Kane. I smiled and said, 'Nothing less than Morjin's utter defeat. I believe
in a victory so final and complete that even the stones buried miles down in
the muck of the earth will sing with joy and light.'
'Ha!' Kane suddenly shouted. His deep voice set the
walls of the conservatory to ringing. 'Ha! - the stars will dance and the earth
itself will sing!'
He sprang to his feet and crossed the room almost in
one blinding motion. He knelt before me as he laid his calloused hand on the
flat of my sword's blade.
'So - I've waited too long to hear you say that,' he
told me. 'To Mesh we'll go, and then if we must, to the gates of heaven or
hell!'
Abrasax sighed at this. Then he, too, dared to touch
my sword. He called out into the room, 'The river might flow to the sea, but it
seems that it takes many turnings to reach it.'
He asked Kane and me to go back to the tables and sit
back down. Then he stepped over to the door. He opened it to ask something of
a Brother Hannold who waited outside. After taking his place again next to
Master Storr, he folded his hands beneath his chin as he patiently waited.
After some time. Brother Hannold entered the room
bearing a dark, dust-stained bottle- Another Brother followed after him
carrying a tray of tinkling glasses. Brother Hannold set one of these
deep-bodied glasses in front of each of us, even as he gripped the bottle in
his other hand. I guessed that it must contain one of those sweet-bitter
infusions of herbs that the Brothers favored in place of more convivial drink.
Then Brother Hannold uncorked the bottle.
'Ah, brandy!' Maram said as pushed out his fat nose to
sniff across the table. 'Excellent! Excellent!'
'Brandy!' Master Storr cried out. 'It cannot be!'
His liver-spotted face grew red with outrage, and
Masters Matai, Okuth and Yasul also seemed disturbed by this turn of events,
while Master Virang rubbed his chin in confusion.
'Brandy it is, truly,' Abrasax said. He motioned for
Brother Hannold to pour a bit of this dark, fiery liquid in our glasses. 'We
will drink to the success of our guests' last journey, and their future ones,
as well.'
'But, Grandfather,' Master Storr said, 'we do not
drink to such things! It is not our way!'
'I believe that a
new age is coming, and so there will be new ways. And so tonight, just this one
time, we will drink.'
'Even the children?'
Abrasax smiled at Daj and Estrella, and said, 'Yes,
even the children.'
Daj's eyes gleamed as Brother Hannold poured a little
brandy into his glass. It was only a fourth the amount that Maram convinced
Brother Hannold to pour for him, but Daj didn't seem to mind. After Abrasax had
raised his glass and proposed the toast, bidding us to follow the sacred rivers
that ran through each of our hearts, Daj downed his brandy in two great gulps.
Miraculously, he did not cough or choke on it, but only sat triumphantly as if
he had done a great thing.
And then he called out: 'I have an ending for my
story. Does anyone want to hear it?'
At that moment Alphanderry appeared in a swirl of
sparkling lights, and stood over the table.
'Of course we want to hear it,' Master Storr said. He
drained his glass, and then held out for Brother Hannold to refill it. 'We
might as well have a songfest to go along with our drink, since we're breaking
the peace of this chamber, to say nothing of our school.'
'Ha - peace be damned!' Kane said, smiling at Daj.
'Tell us how your story ends!'
Daj smiled back at him, and said, 'Well, for a long
time, I didn't think it could have an ending. At least not a happy one,
Eleikar must kill the wicked king to gain his vengeance and keep his
honor. And he must not do anything that would wound Ayeshtan's heart, so
how can he even think of killing her father?'
To the little sounds of brandy being sipped and
glasses tinkling, we all
sat contemplating this conundrum. None of us, not even Bemossed could find an answer for Daj.
'So - tell us, then,' Kane finally said to him.
'Well,' Daj said, smiling back at him, 'it is Eleikar,
after all, who finds
his way out of his dilemma. It seems that he goes off on a quest of his own. He returns to
Khalind with a kind of black gelstei, more powerful even than the Black Jade. He uses it to
kill the wicked
king and then take him down into the land of death. There, the king meets Eleikar's family -
and all the people he has murdered.
They all tell him what it was like to be stolen from life. And the king understands because
now he has been stolen from life. By Eleikar. But Eleikar uses the gelstei to
bring the wicked king
back to Khalind. Only he is not wicked anymore because all he can think about is how good it
is to be reborn and live again. And so he becomes a good king, and gives Ayeshtan
to Eleikar in marriage, and everyone lives happily ever after.'
Daj finished speaking and looked at Kane proudly. He
seemed utterly swept away by the words that he had spoken to us.
Then, in a kindly way, Master Storr said to him, 'You
do know, lad, that the black gelstei has no power to do such things. Not even
the Lightstone can be used to bring the dead back to life.'
'This is my story,' Daj said, staring across
the table at him. 'And in Khalind, people can live again.'
Abrasax met eyes with me for a moment, then turned to
Daj to say, 'Perhaps they can indeed. Well, I for one would like to hear the
whole of this gest. Will you sing it for us?'
Daj nodded his head proudly and said, 'If Master
Nolashar will accompany me.'
Master Nolashar smiled at this, and brought out his
flute. He played a haunting melody, while Daj stood up and sang out verse after
verse of the Gest of Eleikar and Ayeshtan. When he had finished, we all
clapped our hands, even Alphanderry, who did so without making the slightest sound.
Then he said to Daj, 'Hoy, a minstrel you are! Why don't you and I sing
together - Master Nolashar, too? There are so many songs!'
Abrasax called for a little more brandy, but Maram -
along with Master Storr - drank much more than a little. Master Storr finally
got up from his cushion and wobbled over to Liljana. He kissed the back of her
head and told her, 'I'm sorry I ever called you a witch.' Then he wobbled back
to his cushion.
After that, we sat for a long time in that beautiful
place, in the best of company. As the evening deepened into night. Master
Nolashar played his flute, while Daj and Alphanderry stood together in the
starlight, and seemed to sing the whole universe into creation. It was one of
those rare times when I sensed that all things might be possible, even the
impossibilities of Daj's story.
Bright days followed that night, and grew longer and
longer as winter passed into spring. In Gliss, the month of the new leaves, the
snow began melting from most of the lower reaches of the Valley of the Sun. My
friends and I would still have to wait until Ashte before daring the passes of
the eastern Nagarshath, and so we had little to do except to study and prepare
ourselves for another journey - and to wait and hope.
Late one morning, on a perfectly clear day, I met with
Atara, and we walked together along the path by the river just below the
school's ash grove. The trees showed a greenish fuzz of new leaves. while the
first dandelions and fairies' eyes pushed up through the grass in sprays of yellow
and white. We found a beautiful place, I and laid down two blankets on the
sloping ground that looked out over the partially frozen river. Water rushed in
a gleaming black torrent down the channel cut through the river's ice. The
petals of the flowers all around us caught the sun's brilliant light and
reflected it up into the bluest of skies.
It was warm enough that we sat comfortably with only
our tunics and cloaks to cover us. After a while the sun reached its zenith,
and it grew warmer still, and we cast off the gray, woolen coverings that had
seen so many miles. Atara smelled like her mare, Fire, for she had spent part
of the morning trimming her hooves and combing her down. We picnicked on some
cheese and bread, and apple cider that the Brothers had made last fall. For a
while we spoke of little things such as the fine spring weather and the health
of the horses. And then we moved on to other matters.
'Will you not consider remaining here with the
Brothers?' I asked her.
'No, I don't think so,' she said. 'I've promised Fire
a ride across the Wendrush again. But I promise you that I won't slow us
down.'
I looked at the clean cloth that she had wrapped
around her face. I said, 'I know you won't. But has there been nothing at all?
Even a hint of your second sight returning?'
'No, nothing,' she murmured, shaking her head.
'Perhaps if you remained here all summer, and sat in
the conservatory with Bemossed, he might -'
'I would rather ride beneath the open sky with you.'
'But he is doing such great things,' I told her. 'One
day .. .'
I let my voice fade off into the soft roar of the
river. I had nearly spoken of that which Atara did not wish me to speak of.
She grasped my hand in her warm fingers and said,
'It's all right - all right for you to wish that he might restore me.'
'But do you never think of this now, yourself?'
'Of course I do. But of course I mustn't. What will be
will be. What is, now, is just as it should be. In so many ways, even
after this last terrible, terrible journey, I have been restored already.'
I smiled at this, and said, 'I remember that you once
told me how suffering carves hollows in the soul - only to leave room for it to
hold more joy.'
She pressed her palm to her blindfold, which covered
hollows as deep as the caverns beneath Argattha. And she said, 'These past
days, with the children safe and Bemossed so happy in becoming this shining
light for everyone. I have been so happy, too.'
My smile deepened as I squeezed her hand in mine. I
gazed at her face, wishing with a hot pain in my eyes that she could gaze back
at me.
'Bemossed makes people happy,' I said.
'The Maitreya, we call him, the Lord of Light,' she
said to me. 'But what does that mean? What light can any man summon to
bring help for this terrible world? This above all, I think: that everything
that is, is so beautiful. It all shines, here and now.'
I looked out across the river at the acres of star
lilies and white fairies' eyes gleaming in the strong sunlight. In the sky, an
eagle soared, a little streak of gold against icy mountains and bright blue
rock. The whole valley, with its brilliant green fields and forests powdered
with snow, seemed on fire.
'What you say is true,' I told her. 'And yet,
somewhere in the world, right now, a bird of prey is tearing out the insides of
a vole or a hare. And somewhere, a man or a woman is dying upon a cross.'
'That, too, is true,' she said, and her voice grew
thick with sadness. 'But even dying, they look out upon the same sky and the
same earth that we do.'
I pressed her hand to my face, and I said softly, 'But
you do not see at all now, not even with your second sight.'
'Don't pity me,' she said, pulling her hand away from
me. The old coldness seemed to fall over her face like a cloud covering the
sun.
'I don't pity you. But I will not believe there is no
hope.'
She smiled coldly, even as her sadness deepened. Her
fingers reached into the spray of blond hairs falling over her shoulders. She
managed to pluck one of them out, and she held up this gleaming, golden
filament for me to see. 'One chance only, Val. One slender, slender chance
exists, finer even than this, of what you hope will be. And for all our
gladness at finding Bemossed and what he has accomplished, it is exactly the
same chance we have of defeating Morjin, in the end.'
'I know that,' I told her. 'But even if there is only
one chance in ten thousand, I will think of how we might bring his defeat, and
nothing else.'
I reached out and prised the hair from her fingers. I
coiled it around one of mine, then folded it into a handkerchief, which I put
in my tunic's pocket. And I said, 'Almost nothing else. If there is only
one chance in all the universe of you being made whole and marrying me, I will
make it be.'
She sat next to me, with the sun beating down upon
her, and the essence of horse and her musky skin steamed off her garments. I
listened to her deep, quick breaths. Then she said, 'You sound so sure of
yourself. The tone in your words - I have never heard you speak this way.'
I felt my own breath building in my throat like a
storm. I no longer doubted that I could give voice to what whispered in my
heart.
'My grandfather,' I told her, 'believed that a man can
make his own fate. What can a man and a woman together make? Everything,
Atara.'
She stood up and stepped carefully down to the river's
bank, where she scooped up a handful of old snow. After shaping it into a ball,
she returned to the blanket. She sat holding it before her face as if it might
reveal the shape of the future. At last she said, 'King Jovayl was right about
you. This journey has changed you.'
I felt a bright, warm thing filling up my blood with
an unbearable heat. I no longer feared letting it loose into Atara like lightning.
'Tell me that you believe in the future,' I said to
her.
She squeezed her snowy ball and replied, 'Of course I
do.'
I took the snow from her and cast it into the river,
where the dark, churning water swept it away. I took her cold, wet hands in
mine. I held them, tightly, until they warmed, and then grew hot.
'Say that you will be my wife.'
'You want my promise?'
'No - I want you say that it must be. That no other
future can be.'
She sat breathing quickly, and she said, 'I almost believe
that.'
I stared at the blindfold binding her face. My eyes
felt like fire-stones, and I wanted to burn it away.
'Don't look at me like that!' she told me.
'How do you know how I look at you? You are blind.'
'I have never been that blind. I can feel you
looking and looking .. and loving, the way that you do, with all the fire of
your sweet, sweet heart, which I want to -'
I kissed her then. I felt something inside her melt,
utterly, and flow like a sweet liquor, and so I cupped my hand around the back
of her neck to pull us together. Her lips crushed against mine as she threw her
arms around my back and pulled on me, fiercely, as if she wanted to take every
part of me inside her. From within her throat, and mine, came a deep murmur
almost like a growl, and we must have sounded like animals. But we were angels,
too, for we kept passing the bright, warm thing to each other in our lips and
our breath and our pounding blood, back and forth, until the fire grew so
brilliant and hot that we could not bear it.
At last, she pushed away from me, and sat sweating and
gasping. Her breath steamed out into the cool air as she told me, 'What I won't
make with you is a child, not here and now - not with men still dying on
crosses, as you say.'
'No - that would not be right,' I agreed. 'But someday,
you will bear me a child. The most beautiful, beautiful child.'
She smiled, then laughed as she took hold of my hand
and squeezed it. She said, 'Oh, Val, I do believe you - what else can I
do?'
I kissed her again, and for a longer time. Then I told
her, 'When the baby comes, you will look upon him with new eyes, I promise
you.'
'But what if we have a girl?'
'Then you will look upon her even more gladly, as will
I - especially if she is as beautiful as you.'
She sat quietly for a moment as she oriented her face
toward me. Then she asked, 'Do you still think I'm beautiful?'
'More beautiful than any woman I've ever seen,' I told
her. 'Even Asha and Varda, all the Star People, would envy you.'
She tapped her fingers to her blindfold and said,
'They would not envy me this, I think.'
I reached out to untie her blindfold and pull it away
from her. I traced my fingers beneath her brows and across the bridge of her
nose, even as my eyes grew warmer and I couldn't help looking and looking.
Finally I said, 'A day will come when you will take this off for good. You will
see again, Atara.'
She grasped my hand, and pressed it over the front of
her face. She said, 'But I see so much now. I see you.'
I listened as the eagle above us let loose its harsh,
haunting cry. I said, 'Tell me what you see, then.'
'I see a man,' she said, 'who had lost everything in
the world, only to gain the whole world, and more. You are larger now, somehow,
inside. Like that impossible stallion you ride. Like the sun. I don't know how
your skin can contain you. You are wilder - so willful and wild. And even
angrier than before, and you hate Morjin no less. But it is a different force
now. It does not rule you. You rule, now. The man I have wanted to be
with every hour and with every breath since I first laid eyes upon him: he, who
almost died. I see that one, who somehow found a moment of compassion
for the vilest of beasts, even though that beast had slaughtered all that he
loved.'
'Not all,' I said, squeezing her hand.
'But your mother and grandmother, your beautiful
brothers, they -'
'They are here,' I said, pressing her hand to my
chest. 'For so long, I kept thinking of them as murdered, dead. But truly, they
live.'
I knew she wanted to weep, but at that moment I felt
nothing except joy, and so I held her close to me. For a while, she did weep,
but soon her soft sobbing gave way to a deeper heaving of her belly as she
began laughing with a gladness for life that she could not contain. Finally,
she sat back away from me and said, 'There is such a light in you - this
beautiful, beautiful light! Kane says it is like a sword; I mould say like the
sweetest fire. I've never known anyone to love like you, to live like you, not
even Bemossed. The passion. It is what you were born for. Sometimes, I
know, I am all ice inside, but when you touch me the way you do, I'm all
water.'
She paused to draw in a deep breath, then added, 'And.
that is why I love you. And why I will marry you.'
She kissed me, and then laughed for a long time, a
delightful sound, like the ringing of the river. Then I could not contain myself.
I leaped up, and pulled her up to her feet. I wanted to throw off my tunic
and let the wind cool my burning skin. I wanted to fly like flame over the
mountains. Why didn't their snow, I wondered, melt when I looked at it? Why
didn't Atara gasp out at the fire in my hands when I took hold of her sides? I
lifted her off the blanket then. She was a tall woman, large-boned with lithe
muscles like a great, tawny cat, and yet I lifted her as if she were a child,
and then whirled her through the air as I began dancing about.
After I had set her down, she turned toward me and
said, 'I see a bird, Val. Bigger than that eagle that called to us. Bigger even
than a dragon. He is a great swan, as silvery as that sword of yours, and he
flies toward the stars. Once there, he becomes a star: so big, so
bright. And that is my star, whose light I cannot live without.'
For a while, we stood together on the cool grass, arm
in arm. We faced the mountains to the east, over which the sun had risen only a
few hours before. Beyond the Nagarshath range stretched the bright, emerald
grasses of the Wendrush and the beautiful mountains of my home. And beyond
that, the sea. All of Ea, it seemed, lay before us. It would have been easy to
think that the whole world was ours, existing only for our pleasure, as Morjin
thought of things. And the world was ours - but only to love as we loved
each other and to protect with our last breath. I did not need to speak of this
to Atara. If our marriage was to mean anything at all, it could only be that we
must live for something much greater than ourselves.
I reached down to pick the first flower that I could
find, and I pressed into her hand.
'Here,' I told her, 'take this as my troth.'
'A dandelion, Val? It is the most common of
flowers.'
'Today, no flower in the world is common to me. But
what would you have me give you?'
'Only this,' she said, squeezing her hand around the
flower. 'You're right - it is perfect.'
'But what would you give to me?'
She sniffed the air and said, 'A star lily, I think.
Their fragrance is so sweet.'
I looked about the meadow at the many flowers, and I
finally espied one of these lilies, with its long, slender white petals and
bright yellow center like a bit of starfire. It grew among some buttercups and
fairies' eyes twenty yards away. I moved to step over to it, but Atara laid her
hand on my shoulder.
'No,' she told me. 'I must give it to you.'
And with that, she fairly danced across the meadow.
Without the slightest hesitation or fumbling, she reached straight down to pick
this one, bright flower. She came back over to me, and wrapped my fingers
around it.
'This is my troth to you,' she told me.
Then she reached out with a perfect accuracy to wipe
the tears running down my face.
'We have so little time,' she said to me. 'It is so
peaceful here. Let's He together while we can. I want to feel your heart
beating next to mine.'
We returned to our blankets, and threw our cloaks over
our thinly clad bodies to cover us. As I held her close to me, I felt her breath
upon my face. I knew that she was willing to give herself to me, utterly, as I
was with her. But i knew, as well, that this glorious union must wait. I felt
no bitterness in this, only an immense anticipation. She pulled me into the
warmth of her breasts and her belly, and I could not tell that we were two
separate beings, for our hearts beat as one.
Thus we lay for hours on that bright, perfect
afternoon, and the whole world seemed to stand perfectly still. At last,
however, the earth carried us into the future, as it always did. It grew cold
and dark, and the stars came out like millions of tiny white flowers. For a
long time, we soared among them. I listened for the voices of those who dwelled
there. I did not know if the dead would ever speak to me again. The living,
though, and the infinitude of beings waiting to be born, sang out only the most
brilliant of songs. Atara and I sang with them, and so did our son, and our
voices, like the exultations of angels, filled the night with a fiery and
inextinguishable joy.
APPENDICES Back Table of Content Next
Heraldry:
Gelstei:
THE NINE KINGDOMS Back Appendices
Next
The
shield and surcoat arms of the warriors of the Nine Kingdoms differ from those
of the other lands in two respects. First they tend to be simpler, with a
single, bold charge emblazoned on a field of a single color. Second, every
fighting man, from the simple warrior up through the ranks of knight, master
and lord to the king himself, is entitled to bear the arms of his line.
There
is no mark or insignia of service to any lord save the king. Loyalty to one's
ruling king is displayed on shield borders as a field matching the color of the
king's field, and a repeating motif of the king's charge. Thus, for instance,
every fighting man of Ishka, from warrior to lord, will display a red shield
border with white bears surrounding whatever arms have been passed down to him.
With the exception of the lords of Anjo, only the kings and the royal families
of the Nine Kingdoms bear unbordered shields and surcoats.
In
Anjo, although a king in name still rules in Jathay, the lords of the other
regions have broken away from his rule to assert their own sovereignty. Thus,
for instance, Baron Yashur of Vishal bears a shield of simple green emblazoned
with a white crescent moon without bordure as if were already a king or
aspiring to be one.
Once
there was a time when all Valari kings bore the seven stars of the Swan
Contellation on their shields as a reminder of the Elijin and Galadin to whom
they owed allegiance. But by the time of the Second Lightstone Quest, only the
House of Elahad has as part of its emblem the seven silver stars.
In the heraldry of the Nine Kingdoms, white and silver
are used interchangeably as are silver and gold. Marks of cadence - those
smaller charges that distinguish individual members of a line, house or family
- are usually placed at the point of the shield.
Mesh
House
of Elahad - a black field; a silver-white swan with spread wings gazes upon the seven silver-white
stars of the Swan constellation
Lord
Harsha - a blue field; gold lion rampant filling nearly all
of it
Lord
Tomavar - white field; black tower
Lord
Tanu - white field; black, double-headed eagle
Lord
Raasharu - gold field; blue rose
Lord
Navaru - blue field; gold sunburst
Lord
Juluval - gold field; three red roses
Lord
Durrivar - red field; white bull
Lord
Arshan - white field; three blue stars
Ishka
King
Hadaru Aradar - red field; great white bear
Lord
Mestivan - gold field; black dragon
Lord
Nadhru - green field; three white swords, points touching
upwards
Lord
Solhtar - red field; gold sunburst
Athar
King
Mohan - gold field; blue horse
Lagash
King
Kurshan - blue field; white Tree of Life
Waas
King
Sandarkan - black field; two crossed silver swords
Taron
King
Waray - red field; white winged horse
Kaash
King
Talanu Solaru - blue field; white snow tiger
Anjo
King Danashu - blue field; gold
dragon
Duke Gorador Shurvar of Daksh - white
field; red heart
Duke Rezu of Rajah - white field; green
falcon
Duke Barwan of Adar - blue field; white
candle
Baron Yashur of Vishal - green field; white
crescent moon
Count Rodru Narvu of Yarvanu - white
field; two green lions ram pant
Count Atanu Tuval of Onkar - white
field; red maple leaf
Baron Yuval of Natesh - black field;
golden flute
FREE KINGDOMS Back Appendices
Next
As in
the Nine Kingdoms, the bordure pattern is that of the field and charge of the
ruling king. But in the Free Kingdoms, only nobles and knights are permitted to
display arms on their shields and surcoats. Common soldiers wear two badges:
the first, usually on their right arm, displaying the emblems of their kings,
and the second, worn on their left arm, displaying those of whatever baron,
duke or knight to whom they have sworn allegiance.
In the
houses of Free Kingdoms, excepting the ancient Five Families of Tria from whom
Alonia has drawn most of her kings, the heraldry tends toward more complicated
and geometric patterns than in the Nine Kingdoms.
Alonia
House
of Narmada - blue field; gold caduceus
House
of Eriades - Field divided per bend; blue upper, white lower; white
star on
blue, blue star on white House of Kirriland - White field; black raven
House
of Hastar - Black field; two gold lions rampant
House
of Marshan - white field; red star inside black circle
Baron
Narcavage of Arngin - white field; red bend; black oak lower;
black eagle upper
Baron
Maruth of Aquantir - green field; gold cross; two gold arrows
on each quadrant
Duke
Ashvar of Raanan - gold field; repeating pattern of black
swords
Baron
Monteer of Iviendenhall - white and black checkered shield
Count
Muar of lviunn - black field; white cross of Ashtoreth
Duke
Malatam of Tarlan - white field; black saltire; repeating red
roses on white quadrants
Eanna
King
Hanniban Dujar - gold field; red cross; blue lions rampant
on each gold quadrant
Surrapam
King Kaiman - red field; white
saltire; blue star at center
Thalu
King
Aryaman - Black and white gyronny; white swords on four black
sectors
Delu
King
Santoval Marshayk - green field; two gold lions rampant facing
each other
The Elyssu
King
Theodor Jardan - blue field; repeating breaching silver dolphins
Nedu
King Tal - blue field; gold
cross; gold eagle volant on each blue quadrant
THE DRAGON KINGDOMS Back Appendices
Next
With
one exception, in these lands, only Morjin himself bears his own arms: a great,
red dragon on a gold field. Kings who have sworn fealty to him ~ King Orunjan,
King Arsu - have been forced to surrender their ancient arms and display a
somewhat smaller red dragon on their shields and surcoats. Kallimun priests who
have been appointed to kingship or who have conquered realms in Morjin's name -
King Mansul, King Yarkul, Count Ulanu - also display this emblem but are proud
to do so.
Nobles
serving these kings bear slightly smaller dragons, and the knights serving them
bear yet smaller ones. Common soldiers wear a yellow livery displaying a
repeating pattern of very small red dragons.
King
Angand of Sunguru, as an ally of Morjin, bears his family's arms as does any
free king.
The
kings of Hesperu and Uskudar have been allowed to retain their family crests as
a mark of their kingship, though they have surrendered their arms.
Sunguru
King
Angand - blue field; white heart with wings
Uskudar
King Orunjan - gold field; 3/4
red dragon
Karabuk
King
Mansul - gold field; 3/4 red dragon
Hesperu
King
Arsu - gold field; 3/4 red dragon
Galda
King
Yarkul - gold field; 3/4 red dragon
Yarkona
Count Ulanu - gold field; 1/2
red dragon
THE GELSTEI Back Appendices
Next
The
history of the gold gelstei, called the Lightstone, is shrouded in mystery.
Most people believe the legend of Elahad: that this Valari king of the Star
People made the Lightstone and brought it to earth. Some of the Brotherhoods,
however, teach that the Elijin or the Galadin made the Lightstone. Some teach
that the mythical Ieldra, who are like gods, made the Lightstone millions of
years earlier. A few hold that the Lightstone may be a transcendental, increate
object from before the beginning of time, and as such, much as the One or the
universe itself, has always existed and always will. Also, there are people who
believe that this golden cup, the greatest of the gelstei, was made in Ea
during the great Age of Law.
The
Lightstone is the image of solar light, the sun, and hence of divine
intelligence. It is made into the shape of a plain golden cup because 'it holds
the whole universe inside'. Upon being activated by a powerful enough being,
the gold begins to turn clear like a crystal and to radiate light like the sun.
As it connects with the infinite power of the universe, the One, it radiates
light like that of ten thousand suns. Ultimately, its light is pure, clear and
infinite - the light of pure consciousness. The light inside light, the light
inside all things that is all things. The Lightstone quickens
consciousness in itself, the power of consciousness to enfold itself and form
up as matter and thus evolve into infinite possibilities. It enables certain
human beings to channel and magnify this power. Its power is infinitely
greater than that of the red gelstei, the firestones. Indeed, the Lightstone
gives power over the other gelstei, the greea purple, blue and white, the black
and perhaps the silver - and potentially over all matter, energy, space and
time. The final secret of the Lightstone is that, as the very consciousness and
substance of the universe itself, it is found within each human being,
interwoven and interfused with
each separate soul. To quote from the Saganom Elu, it is 'the
perfect jewel within the lotus found inside the human heart'.
The
Lightstone has many specific powers, and each person finds in it a reflection
of himself. Those seeking healing are healed. In some, it recalls their true
nature and origins as Star People; others, in their lust for immortality, find
only the hell of endless life. Some - such as Morjin or Angra Mainyu - it
blinds with its terrible and beautiful light. Its potential to be misused by
such maddened beings is vast: ultimately it has the power to blow up the sun
and destroy the stars, perhaps the whole universe itself.
Used
properly, the Lightstone can quicken the evolution of all beings. In its light,
Star People may transcend to their higher angelic natures while angels evolve
into archangels. And the Galadin themselves, in the act of creation only, may
use the Lightstone to create whole new universes.
The
Lightstone is activated at once by individual consciousness, the collective
unconscious and the energies of the stars. It also becomes somewhat active at
certain key times, such as when the Seven Sisters are rising in the sky. Its
most transcendental powers manifest when it is in the presence of an
enlightened being and/or when the earth enters the Golden Band.
It is
not known if there are many Lightstones throughout the universe, or only one
that somehow appears at the same time in different places. One of the greatest
mysteries of the Lightstone is that on Ea, only a human man, woman or child can
use it for its best and highest purpose: to bring the sacred light to others
and awaken each being to his angelic nature. Neither the Elijin nor the
Galadin, the archangels, possess this special resonance. And only a very few of
the Star People do.
These rare beings are the Maitreyas who come forth
every few millen nia or so to share their enlightenment with the world. They
have cast off all illusion and apprehend the One in all things and all things
as manifestations of the One. Thus they are the deadly enemies of Morjin and
the Dark Angel, and other Lords of the Lie.
THE GREATER GELSTEI Back Appendices
Next
THE
SILVER
The
silver gelstei is made of a marvelous substance called silustria. The crystal
resembles pure silver, but is brighter, reflecting even more light. Depending
on how forged, the silver gelstei can be much harder than
diamond.
The
silver gelstei is the stone of reflection, and thus of the soul, for the soul
is that part of man that reflects the light of the universe. The silver
reflects and magnifies the powers of the soul, including, in its lower
emanations, those of mind: logic, deduction, calculation, awareness, ordinary
memory, judgment and insight. It can confer upon those who wield it holistic
vision: the ability to see whole patterns and reach astonishing conclusions
from only a few details or clues. Its higher emanations allow one to see how
the individual soul must align itself with the universal soul to achieve the
unfolding of fate.
In its
reflective qualities, the silver gelstei may be used as a shield against
various energies: vital, mental, or physical. In other ages, it has been shaped
into arms and armor, such as swords, mail shirts and actual shields. Although
not giving power over another, in body or in mind, the silver can be us
too quicken the working of another's mind, and is thus a great pedagogical tool
leading to knowledge and laying bare truth. A sword made of silver gelstei can
cut through all things physical as the
mind cuts through ignorance and darkness.
In its fundamental composition, the silver is very
much like the gold gelstei, and is one of the two noble stones.
THE
WHITE
These
stones are called the white, but in appearance are usually clear like diamonds.
During the Age of Law, many of
them were cast into the form of crystal balls to be used by scryers, and are
thus often called 'scryers' spheres'.
These
are the stones of far-seeing: of perceiving events distant in either space or
time. They are sometimes used by remembrancers to uncover the secrets of the
past. The kristei as they are called have helped the master healers of the
Brotherhoods read the auras of the sick that they might be brought back to
strength and health.
THE
BLUE
The
blue gelstei, or blestei, have been fabricated on Ea at least as far back as
the Age of the Mother. These crystals range in color from a deep cobalt to a
bright lapis blue. They have been cast into many forms: amulets, cups,
figurines, rings and others.
The
blue gelstei quicken and deepen all kinds of knowing and communication. They
are an aid to mindspeakers and truthsayers, and confer a greater sensitivity to
music, poetry, painting, languages and dreams.
THE
GREEN
Other
than the Lightstone itself, these are the oldest of the gelstei. Many books of
the Soganom Elu tell of how the Star People brought twelve of the green
stones with them to Ea. The varistei look like beautiful emeralds; they are usually
cast - or grown - in the shape of baguettes or astragals, and range in size
from that of a pin or bead to great jewels nearly a foot in length. The green gelstei resonate with the
vital fires of plants and animate, and of the earth. They are the stones of
healing and can be used to quicken and strengthen life and lengthen its
span. As the purple gelstei can be used to mold crystals and other inanimate
substances into new shapes, the green gelstei haw powers over the forms of
living things. In the Lost Ages, it was said that masters of the varistei used
them to create new races of man (and sometimes monsters) lbut this art is
thought to be long
since lost. These crystals confer great vitality on those who use them harmony
with nature; they can open the body's chakras and awaken the kundalini fire so
the whole body and soul vibrate at a higher level of being.
THE RED
The red
gelstei - also called tuaoi stones or firestones - are blood-red crystals like
rubies in appearance and color. They are often cast into baguettes at least a
foot in length, though during the Age of Law much larger ones were made. The
greatest ever fabricated was the hundred-foot Eluli's Spire, mounted on top of
the Tower of the Sun. It was said to cast its fiery light up into the heavens
as a beacon calling out to the Star People to return to earth. The firestones quicken, channel and
control the physical energies. They draw upon the sun's rays, as well as the
earth's magnetic and telluric currents, to generate beams of light, lightning,
heat or fire. They are thought to be the most dangerous of the gelstei; it is
said that a great pyramid of red gelstei unleashed a terrible lightning that
split asunder the world of Iviunn and destroyed its star.
THE
BLACK
The
black gelstei, or baalstei, are black crystals like obsidian.. Many are cast
into the shape of eyes, either flattened or rounded like large marbles. They
devour light and are the stones of negation. Many believe them to be evil stones, but
they were created for a great good purpose: to control the awesome lightning of
the firestones. Theirs is the power to damp the fires of material things, both
living and living crystals such as the gelstei. Used properly, they can negate
the working of all the other kinds of gelstei except the silver and the gold,
over which they have no power.
Their power over living things is most often put to evil purpose.
The Kallimun priests and other servants of Morjin such as the Grays have
wielded them as weapons to attack people physically, mentally and spiritually,
literally sucking away their vital energies and will. Thus the black stones can
be used to cause disease, degeneration and death.
It is
believed that that baalstei might be potentially more dangerous than even the
firestones. For in the Beginnings is told of an utterly black place that
is at once the negation of all things and paradoxically also their source. Out
of this place may come the fire and light of the universe itself. It is said
that the Baaloch, Angra Mainyu, before he was imprisoned on the world of
Damoom, used a great black gelstei to destroy whole suns in his war of
rebellion against the Galadin and the rule of the Ieldra.
THE
PURPLE
The
lilastei are the stones of shaping and making. They are a bright violet in hue,
and are cast into crystals of a great variety of shapes and sizes. Their power
is unlocking the light locked up in matter so that matter might be changed,
molded and transformed. Thus the lilastei are sometimes called the alchemists'
stones, according to the alchemists' age-old dream of transmuting baser matter
into true gold, and casting true gold into a new Lightstone. The purple gelstei's greatest
effects are on crystals of all sorts: but mostly those in metal and rocks. It
can unlock the crystals in these substances so that they might be more easily
worked. Or they can be used to grow crystals of great size and beauty; they are
the stone shapers and stone growers spoken of in legend. It is said that
Kalkamesh used a lilastei in forging the silustria of the Bright Sword,
Alkaladur. Some
believe the potential power of the purple gelstei to be very great and perhaps
very perilous. Lilastei have been known to 'freeze' water into an alternate
crystal called shatar, which is clear and as hard as quartz. Some fear that these
gelstei might be used thus to crystallize the water in the sea and so destroy
all life on earth. The stone masters of old, who probed the mysteries of the
lilastei too deeply, are said to have accidentally turned themselves into stone,
but most believe this to be only a cautionary tale out of legend.
THE SEVEN OPENERS Back Appendices
Next
If
man's purpose is seen as in progressing to the orders of the Star People,
Elijin and Galadin, then the seven stones known as the openers might fairly be
called greater gelstei. Indeed, there are those of the Great White Brotherhood
and the Green Brotherhood who revered them in this way. For, with much study
and work, the openers each activate one of the body's chakras: the energy
centers known as wheels of light. As the chakras are opened, from the base of
the spine to the crown of the head, so is opened a pathway for the fires of
life to reconnect to the heavens in a great burst of lightning called the
angel's fire. Only then can a man or a woman undertake the advanced work
necessary for advancement to the! higher orders.
The
openers are each small, clear stones the color of their respective chakras.
They are easily mistaken for gemstones.
THE
FIRST (also called bloodstones)
These
are a clear, deep red in color, like rubies. The first stones open the chakra
of the physical body and activate the vital energies.
THE
SECOND (also called passion stones or old gold)
These
gelstei are gold-orange in color and are sometimes mistaken for amber. The
second stones open the chakra of the emotional body and activate the currents
of sensation and feeling.
THE
THIRD (also called sun stones)
The
third stones are clear and bright yellow, like citrine; they open the third
chakra of the mental body and activate the mind.
THE
FOURTH (also called dream stones or heart stones)
These
beautiful stones - clear and pure green in color like emeralds -open the heart
chakra. Thus they open one's second feeling, a truer and deeper sense than the
emotions of the second chakra. The fourth stones work upon the astral body and
activate the dreamer.
THE
FIFTH (also called soul stones)
Bright
blue in color like sapphires, the fifth stones open the chakra of the etheric
body and activate the intuitive knower, or the soul.
THE
SIXTH (also called angel eyes)
The
sixth stones are bright purple like amethyst They open the chakra of the
celestial body located just above and between the eyes. Thus their more common
name: theirs is the power of activating ones second sight. Indeed, these
gelstei activate the seer in the realm of light, and open one to the powers of
scrying, visualization and deep insight.
THE
SEVENTH (also called clear crowns or true diamonds)
One of
the rarest of the gelstei, the seventh stones are clear and bright as diamonds.
Indeed, some say they are nothing more than perfect diamonds, without flaw or
taint of color. These stones open the chakra of the ketheric body and free the
spirit for reunion with the One.
THE LESSER GELSTEI Back Appendices
Next
During
the Age of Law, hundreds of kinds of gelstei were made for pur poses ranging
from the commonplace to the sublime. Few of these have survived the passage of
the centuries. Some of those that have are:
GLOWSTONES
Also
called glowglobes, these stones are cast into solid, round shapes resembling
opals of various sizes - some quite huge. They give a soft and beautiful light.
Those of lesser quality must be frequently refired beneath the sun, while those
of the highest quality drink in even the faintest candlelight, hold it and
give back in a steady illumination.
SLEEP STONES
A
gelstei of many shifting and swirling colors, the sleep stones have a calming
effect on the human nervous system. They look something like agates.
WARDERS
Usually
blood-red in color and opaque, like carnelians, these stones deflect or
'ward-off psychic energies directed at a person. This includes thoughts,
emotions, curses - and even the debilitating energy drain of the black gelstei.
One who wears a warder can be rendered invisible to scryers and opaque to
mindspeakers.
LOVE STONES
Often
called true amber and sometimes mistaken for the second stones of the openers,
these gelstei partake of some of their properties. They are specific to
arousing feelings of infatuation and love; sometimes love stones are ground
into a powder and made into potions to achieve the same end. They are soft
stones and look much like amber.
WISH STONES
These
little stones - they look something like white pearls - help the wearer
remember his dreams and visions of the future; they activate the will to
manifest these visualizations.
DRAGON BONES
Of a
translucent, old ivory in color, the dragon bones strengthen the life fires and quicken one's
courage - and all too often one's wrath.
HOT SLATE
A dark,
gray, opaque stone of considerable size - hot slate is usually cast into
yard-long bricks - this gelstei is related in powers and purpose, if not form,
to the glowstones. It absorbs heat directly from the air and radiates it back
over a period of hours or days.
MUSIC MARBLES
Often
called song stones, these gelstei of variegated, swirling hues record and play
music, both of the human voice and all instruments. They are very rare.
TOUCHSTONES
These
are related to the song stones and have a similar appearance. However, they
record and play emotions and tactile sensations instead of music. A man or a
woman, upon touching one of these gelstei, will leave a trace of emotions that
a sensitive can read from contact with the stone.
THOUGHT STONES
This is
the third stone in this family and is almost indistinguishable from the others.
It absorbs and holds one's thoughts as a cotton garment might retain the smell
of perfume or sweat. The ability to read back these thoughts from touching this
gelstei is not nearly so rare as that of mindspeaking itself.
BOOKS OF THE SAGANOM ELU Back Appendices Next
|
Beginnings |
Mendelin |
|
Sources |
Ananke |
|
Chronicles |
Commentaries |
|
Journeys |
Book of Stars |
|
Book of Stones |
Book of Ages |
|
Book of Water |
Peoples |
|
Book of Wind |
Healings |
|
Book of Fire |
Laws |
|
Tragedies |
Battles |
|
Book of
Remembrance |
Progressions |
|
Sarojin |
Book of Dreams |
|
Baladin |
Idylls |
|
Averin |
Visions |
|
Souls |
Valkariad |
|
Songs |
Trian prophecies |
|
Meditations |
The Eschaton |
THE AGES OF EA Back Appendices
Next
The
Lost Ages (18,000 - 12,000 years ago)
The Age
of the Mother (12,000 - 9,000 years ago)
The Age
of the Sword (9,000 - 6000 years ago)
The Age
of Law (6,000 - 3,000 years ago)
The Age
of the Dragon (3,000 years ago to the present)
THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR Back Appendices
Next
Yaradar Marud
Viradar Soal
Triolet Ioj
Gliss Valte
Ashte Ashvar
Soldru Segadar