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Black Jade
Book Three of the Ea Cycle
DAVID ZINDELL
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely fictional.
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2005
Copyright © David Zindell 2005
David Zindell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006486220
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2016 ISBN 9780007387717
Version: 2016-09-01
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Keep Reading
Appendices
Heraldry
The Gelstei
The Greater Gelstei
The Lesser Gelstei
Books of the Saganom Elu
The Ages of Ea
The Months of the Year
About the Author
By David Zindell
About the Publisher
Map
1
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 men, 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 snow-capped 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 threatened 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 me. ‘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 likeness 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 campfires. 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 known 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 or 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 if I am? Haven’t you seen a bear eat when winter is coming?’
‘But it’s Ashte – in 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 sacrifices.’
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 firestick 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, clapped 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 thought, 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.
2
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 grass, he 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 Estrella, 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, whose 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 I 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 us?’
‘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 chieftain! 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. Garthax quarreled with Artukan over the question of whether 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 face 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 Sarni 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 it 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. And 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 across the 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 his 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 upon 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 essences – 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?
3
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 while, 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 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 mountains, 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 kindness. 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 at 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 there 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.
‘Friends,’ 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 of 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 horseflesh. 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 gain 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 boulders 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 to 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 battle 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 a 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 hard work over rocks and up shrub-covered slopes, but necessity 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 Liljanja 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 gelstei, 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 of 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.
4
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 me 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 their 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 were 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 moment that 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 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 quivered 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 that 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 around 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.
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