Black Jade

Chapter 11

For the rest of the morning, we worked our way down into the valley. The going was rough. The road here, as ancient as any I had ever seen, had mostly disintegrated into a long, twisting slip of broken rock and dirt. Near the bottom of the valley, where a river rushed between steeply cut banks, the forest swallowed up the road altogether. We had to take care where we stepped, lest a rock hidden in the undergrowth or a root turn an ankle or hoof. We moved slowly, from need, guiding our horses over this bad ground. And yet a greater need drove us like a match flame slowly growing hotter inside us. We each knew that our quest had little chance of success in any case, and none at all if we wasted a week coddling ourselves — or perhaps a day or even an hour.

After a quick lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, washed down with a bubbly apple cider, it began to rain, and this added misery to the difficulty of our descent. As we came down near the river and the ground flattened out, Maram let out a grunt of thanks — and then he began cursing as the rain suddenly drove down harder in stinging sheets that made him, and all of us, squint and shiver as we hunched down into our cloaks.

'I'm tired and cold,' he complained late in the afternoon. 'And I'm getting hungry again, too. Why don't we break for the day, and see if we can roast up some of that lamb the Brothers packed for us before it rots?'

Kane, however, insisted that we plod on another hour before making camp, and so we did. But by the time we found a level spot above the river and began unpacking the horses, Maram had grown quite surly with hunger — and fairly wroth when he discovered that every twig, stick and log that he could find rummaging around in the woods was soaking wet. As the day darkened into night he spent another hour fumbling with matches and strips of linen, trying to get a fire going. He finally gave up. He sat on a large, wet rock feeling as sorry for himself as he was ashamed at failing the rest of us. Then he took out his firestone and held it between his hands as he might a dead child.

'Oh, my poor, poor crystal!' he moaned. He nudged the pile of! wood beside him with his foot. 'If that damn dragon hadn't ruined you, I'd turn this damn kindling into char with a real fire.'

'It might help,' Atara said, sitting down next to him, 'if you used paper for tinder instead of linen.'

'Paper? What paper?'

At this, we all looked at Master Juwain, who said, 'Tear up one of my books? You might as well tear off my skin and try to get a fire out of that. Only if we were dying from cold would I consider it.'

'Ah, well, it wouldn't matter anyway,' Maram said, kicking his woodpile again. 'The problem is not with the tinder — these damn logs are soaked to the core, as am I.'

We brought out two large rain cloths, and propped them up with sticks. Then we all sat around in a circle beneath them staring at the heap of sodden wood through the dying light. Liljana had taken Daj under her cloak, and Atara likewise sheltered Estrella. We listened to the rain patter against pungent-smelling wool and break against the leaves of the trees towering above us.

Atara oriented her soaked blindfold toward Maram's crystal, and she said, 'Do you remember the prophecy concerning your fire-stone?'

'Do you mean, that it will bring Morjin's doom?'

'Yes. But I can't see how it ever will.'

'That's because you've no faith that it will be made whole again. I know it will,' Maram said. He sighed as he pointed his crystal northwest, toward Argattha. 'And then I'll make a fire such as has never been seen on Ea, I swear I will. Then I'll roast Morjin like a damn worm!'

'Ha!' Kane said, coming over to clap him on the shoulder. 'You can't even roast a little lamb for our dinner! Well, it will have to be cold cheese and battle biscuits for us tonight, then.'

And so it was. We sat in the driving rain eating these unappealing rations with resignation. Our two cloths did not keep this slanting deluge from soaking us. Maram complained for the hundredth time that we should lave brought tents with us, and for the hundredth time Kane explained that tents were much too bulky and heavy for our horses, which were already weighted down with our supplies. In truth, they could not carry enough oats and food to take us even half the way to Hesperu; this arithmetic reality of constant subtraction would compel us to replenish our stores along the way and Kane bitterly resented this necessity.

'But there's no help for it,' Maram said.

'No help, you say? I say we could jettison certain stores to make room for more food.'

Maram cast Kane a suspicious look and said, 'I hope you don't mean the beer and the brandy!'

Kane turned up his wrists and let the rain gather in his cupped hands. 'It seems we won't lack for drink, at least until we reach the desert.'

'Brandy,' Maram said, 'is not just drink — it's medicine. And one that is badly needed on such a night. We could all use a little of its fire.'

Master Juwain, however, was not quite ready to concede this need. He said to Maram, 'Why don't you practice moving the kundalini fire up your spine, as Abrasax taught you. That would warm you better.'

'Ah, a woman would warm me better still,' he moaned. 'If only I had a good tent against the rain, and my sleeping furs were dry, I'd crawl inside with her, wrap my arms around her poor, cold, shivering body, and then, like flint and steel, like a match held to a barrel of pitch, like a poker plunging into a bed of coals, I'd — '

'Maram,' I said to him, 'I thought you'd learned to redirect this fire of yours?'

'Well, what if I have?' he said. 'I could redirect it, as you say, if I wanted to — I'm sure I could. But why should I want to? It's too hard, too uncertain; too … unnatural, if you know what I mean. I'm a man who was born to live on the earth, not the stars. And it's been too long since I held a woman in my arms, much too long.'

And with this lamentation, he tried to settle in to sleep for the night as best, he could. And so did the rest of us. But it rained all that night, and we awoke to a dull gray light fighting its way through the gray clouds above us and slatelike sheets of rain. We fought against the ache of our cold, stiff limbs to get under way and continue on down the valley. The squish of the horses' hooves against mud and soaking bracken was nearly drowned out by the rushing of the river and the unceasing rain.

By mid-afternoon, however, this torrent had let up slightly. And then, as the valley gave out into lower and flatter country, it dried up to a stiff drizzle. So it was that we at last entered the great Acadian forest. This vast expanse of woods stretched from Sakai in the northwest five hundred miles to the borders of Uskadar and Karabuk in the southeast. We proposed to cross it, east to west, along a route through its northern part less than two hundred miles long. This would take us well to the north of Varkeva, Acadu's greatest and only real city. And north, as well, we hoped, of that dark place of which Abrasax had warned us. Master Juwain had brought with him a map of Acadu, little good that it would do us. It showed Acadu's few main roads, but these we could not take. Into the map's tough parchment was inked the position of the few bridges across Acadu's rivers, but we would have to find fords or ferrymen to help us along our way.

It did not distress me to set out into this strange woods without any path to guide us. Maram often envied my sense of direction, even as he called it uncanny, even otherworldly. I had been born knowing in my blood east from west, north from south, with all the certainty of a ship's pilot steering a course by the stars. Even on such a dark, sunless day as this I had no trouble leading my companions due-west.

The openness of the woods here made my task all the simpler. We needed no road or game track to wend our way beneath the great oaks and elms, for the ground of the forest was remarkably free of shrubbery, deadwood or other entanglements. Grass grew in many places, beneath the trees and in clearings where they had been cut down. Antelope and sheep, in goodly-sized herds, grazed upon the grass. Atara drew an arrow and pointed it toward one of these fat sheep, whose spiral horns curling close to its head resembled a helmet. But then she lowered her bow as she thought better of killing it.

'We have uncooked lamb wrapped in store already,' she said, 'and who knows if we'll be able to cook tonight — or tomorrow?'

At this observation, not meant as a jibe, Maram's face pulled into an angry pout, but he said nothing.

'At least,' I said, 'it seems we won't lack for meat here. I've never seen a wood so rich with game.'

And that, as Master Juwain informed us, was not due to any natural bounty of Acadu but rather the design of man. From one of the books in the Brothers' library, he had learned that the Acadians, many of them, disdained the hard work of farming such crops as potatoes or barley, and therefore farmed animals instead. Each autumn, when the forest floor grew bone dry, they would set fires to burn out the undergrowth. Grass grew in its place, and animals such as sheep and antelope — and deer, wild cattle and even a few sagosk — grew fat and strong upon the grass.

Indeed, the whole of this great wood teemed with life. As we rode our horses beneath miles of an emerald-green canopy, racoons and squirrels scurried out of our way, and we saw foxes, wood voles and skunks, too. Many of the trees were like old friends to me, and it gladdened my heart to see the oaks, birch and hickory standing so straight and tall. Other kinds, holly and chestnut, were rarer in the Morning Mountains and in other lands through which I had journeyed. And there were trees that I had never laid eyes on before, two of which Master Juwain identified as hornbeam and hackberry, with its bushy, drooping leaves that looked something like a witch's broom, or so he said. Many bees buzzed in fields of flowers: day's eyes, dandelions and sprays of white yarrow. There seemed to be few mosquitoes about, however, or any of the other vermin that had so tormented us in the Vardaloon. It was truly one of the loveliest forests I had ever beheld.

And yet, from the moment I set out to cross Acadu, I felt ill at ease. What little we knew about this lost place, I thought, would be enough to disquiet anyone. It seemed that many years ago, twenty-three 'kings' had held sway between the two great, lower ranges of the White Mountains. Now Morjin claimed it. Not being willing to commit any great force to subdue this wild country, the Red Dragon instead had sent into its vast reaches corps of assassins and his Red Priests, to murder, maim and persuade, to terrorize the scattered Acadians into submitting to his will.

This danger, however, was known and quantifiable, even if we presently had no news as to our enemy's position or numbers. What vexed me more was the unknown: rumors of strange beasts that could suck the life out of a man's limbs with a flash of their eyes and even turn a man into stone. Had Morjin, I wondered, also sent cadres of the terrible Grays into Acadu? Worst of all, I thought, was the dread of the dark place called the Skadarak that Abrasax had warned of. Even the glory of the orange hawkweed over which we trod and the burst of scarlet feathers of a tanager flying across our path could not drive this foreboding from me. I could almost smell its blackness, like a fetor tainting the perfume of the periwinkles and other flowers around us. It seemed to whisper to me like an ill wind, to call to me faintly and from far away.

As we made camp at day's end, I sensed that none of my friends felt the pull of this place — at least not yet. They set to work drawing water and building our rudimentary fortifications out of wet logs with good cheer. This diminished somewhat when Maram yet again failed to make a fire. But the rain finally stopped, and the patch of blue that broke from the clouds just before dusk promised better weather for travel the next morning, and we all hoped, drier wood.

For all the next day, we journeyed as straight a course west as I could guide us. We encountered no people — only some rabbits, deer and chittering birds — and that was to our purpose. A few low hills rose up to block our way, and we had no trouble skirting them. The sun, pouring down through the numerous breaks in the trees, warmed us. It dried out the woods, as well. That night Maram finally succeeded in striking up a fire: a good, hot, crackling one. But when Liljana unpacked the leg of lamb to roast it she wrinkled up her face as she sniffed at it and said, 'Whew — it's gone bad!'

Kane came over to test it with his nose, and said, 'It's a little off, it's true. But I've eaten worse. Why don't you roast it, anyway?'

'And poison the children?' she asked him as she rested her arm across Estrella's shoulder. 'Will you care for them if they fall ill?'

She told him that he could roast the lamb if he wished, and eat it himself as well. But as none of the rest of us was eager to put tooth or tongue to this tainted flesh, Kane picked up the lamb's leg and flung it far out into the woods. He said, 'I'll not feast in front of the rest of you. Let the foxes or racoons have a good meal. They, at least, aren't particular.'

Liljana, undeterred, set to preparing us what she called a good meal' anyway: fried eggs and rashers of bacon, wheat cakes spread with apple butter and some freshly picked newberries for desert. We went to bed warm that night and with full bellies. Even the howling of wolves from somewhere deeper in the woods did not disturb our sleep.

Just after daybreak we set out again toward the west Atara, bow in hand, determined to take one of the woods' wild sheep for our dinner, or perhaps a deer. But all that morning, strangely, we saw no game larger than a skunk. The wind through the trees reminded me of the faroff whispering that I had first sensed upon entering Acadu. It carried as well a faint reck of rotting flesh. Altaru smelled this stench before I did; the twitching of his great, black nostrils and a nervous nicker from within his throat alerted me to it. We walked on two more miles beneath the maple and hack-berry trees, and it grew stronger, nearly choking us. And then, a hundred yards farther along, we came out into a grassy clearing littered with the carcasses of sheep. They lay in twisted heaps. There were thirty-three of them, as I quickly counted. All had been killed with black arrows fired through their bloodstained white wool.

'Oh, Lord!' Maram called out in a muffled voice. He held his scarf over his mouth and nose. 'The poor little lambs! Who would slaughter so many and leave them here to rot?'

It was a question that almost needed no answer. The black arrows, as Kane quickly determined, were Sakai-made and stamped with the mark of the Red Dragon.

'Hmmph,' Atara said, walking around the edge of the massacred herd. 'Morjin's men must have arrows in abundance, to waste so many leaving them this way.'

'It's not waste at all,' I said, suddenly understanding the purpose behind this dreadful deed. 'At least, not waste as Morjin's men would count it. Surely they left the arrows as an advertisement.'

'A warning, you mean,' Maram said. 'And it's all the warning I need to flee this district.'

Kane, sniffing at one of the sheep and testing the rigidity of its limbs, said to him, 'These beasts are three days dead. Whoever did this is likely long gone.'

'So you say,' Maram grumbled.

'What is strange,' Master Juwain said, 'is that none of the scavengers have gone to work here.'

No, no, I thought. I reeled before the fire that sucked in through my nose and burned through my blood. It is not strange at all.

Liljana, as well as Kane, dared to uncover her face in order to take in the stench of the rotting sheep. And she said, 'I think these arrows were poisoned with kirax. It taints the flesh so that when it turns, it gives off an odor like burning hair. If I can smell it, so can the badgers and bears.'

On the lips of many of the sheep, I saw, black blood drew swarms of buzzing flies. I guessed that the sheep had gnashed their jaws together in a maddened frenzy that severed tongues and broke teeth, so great was the agony of the kirax.

'Lets leave here,' I said, 'as quickly as we can.'

'Very well,' Master Juwain said to me. 'But we'll have a difficult choice to make, and soon. How far into Acadu do you think we've

come?'

'Forty miles,' I said. 'Perhaps forty-five. If your map is right, we should find the Tir River in another five miles or so.'

'And how do you propose we cross it?'

'Come,' I said to him. and to the others as I remounted my horse. 'Let's go on to this river, and then well see about crossing it.'

As we rode through a patch of oaks, the soft wind in our faces drove away the stench of the murdered sheep. Despite Kane's assurances to Maram, Kane scanned the woods about us with his sharp black eyes, looking for the sheep's killers, and I did, too. After about four miles, the air grew more humid, and we heard the rushing of water through the trees. We pushed through some dense undergrowth to find the Tir River raging through the forest in full flood.

'Abrasax said that the snows had been deep this past winter,' Master Juwain sighed out. 'We must be at the peak of the spring melt.'

I gazed at this torrent of churning brown water, which sloshed and spilled over the Tir's muddy banks. The river would sweep even the horses away if we tried crossing here.

And so we set out along the band of denser vegetation close to the river. Every quarter mile or so, we would force our way back through the bracken and trees to look for a place where we might ford the river. But the Tir, it seemed, swelled swift and deep all along its course. And so instead we set our hopes on finding a ferry.

At last, after a few more miles, we came upon a clearing planted with new barley. A farmhouse, built of stout logs, sat near the center of it. In the yard outside the house, a few chickens squawked and pecked at pellets of grain. I saw no barn to shelter cows or draft horses; the sty by the side of the house was empty of pigs. I thought it strange to see no one about doing chores or working in the fields on such a fine spring day.

'Perhaps they've fled this district as I've proposed we do,' Maram grumbled. We stood by our horses at the edge of the clearing, looking at the house. 'Perhaps we should go inside and see if they've left behind any stores that we might ah, appropriate.'

'Don't you think,' Atara said to him coldly, 'that we might at least knock at the door before plundering these poor people?'

It seemed the wisest course. But then Kane cast his piercing gaze across the clearing, and pointed at the house. He said to me, 'Do you see those crosses cut into the walls and the door?'

I strained my eyes to peer at these darkenings of the house's wood that looked like black, painted crosses. I knew suddenly, however, that they must be arrow ports. When I remarked upon this, Kane smiled grimly.

'So, it would be wisest if only one of us knocks at the door,' he said. Then he looked at Maram and smiled again.

And Maram looked right back at him as if he had fallen mad. 'You can't think I'm just going to walk up to that house under the aim of arrows, can you?'

'It was your idea to enter it,' Kane reminded him.

'Ah, well, perhaps we should ride on, then.'

'At least,' Kane said to him, 'call out to whomever might be holing up inside the house. Of all of us, you have the loudest voice, eh?'

And so Maram cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed out a greeting that fairly shook the trees above us. Through the silence that befell upon this blast of Maram's breath, a woman's voice, shrill and faint behind the dark cross of one of the arrow ports, called back to us: 'Go away! We don't talk to strangers here!'

'But we're only poor pilgrims!' Maram shouted back to her. 'And we would only ask a little of your hospitality!'

'Go away!' this unseen woman shouted again. 'The Crucifiers have already taken everything, and we've no hospitality to give!'

'But at least tell us if we might find a ferry nearby to take us across the river!'

'Go away! Go away! Would you kill me, too? Please, go away!'

The anguish in the woman's voice told of great loss, perhaps of a husband killed trying to protect this little homestead or a daughter carried off. I placed my hand on Maram's shoulder and said to him, 'For mercy's sake, let's do as she says and not torment her!'

Maram nodded his head at this as a watery sadness crept into his eyes. I heard him mutter, 'Oh, these poor people — too bad, too bad!'

We turned to skirt the house and its fields, into the forest along the river. From the darkness through the trees, crows cried out their raucous caws that seemed a warning. Soon we came to another farm where a ragged man stood hoeing his field; when he saw us approach, he dropped his hoe and ran inside his house. He, too, shouted out that we should go away, and told us to return to whatever land we called home. We came upon two more farms whose houses and fields had been burnt to the ground, and then another where the bodies of a young girl and boy lay on top of splinters by a woodpile. Their homespun tunics were bloodstained and torn. An axe, encrusted with black blood, had been dropped on top of a tree stump nearby. Their father, or so I guessed he was, remained close to them: for planted into the loamy, black earth in front of the house was a roughhewn cross onto which a man had been nailed. I thought this man had been young, like myself, but it was hard to tell, as both the cross and the body attached to it had been burnt to a black char. It was a hideous thing to see, and I pulled Estrella closer to me to cover her face with my hand; I held her slender body next to mine as shudders of sorrow tore through her and she wept without restraint.

'Oh, Lord!' Maram called out, nearly weeping, too. 'Oh, Lord, oh Lord!'

But Daj, who couldn't have been more than eleven years old, stood dry-eyed staring at this terrible sight as if he wanted to burn the memory of it into his brain.

Then Liljana covered his face, too, for she would not suffer him to look upon such sights: he who had already seen too many terrible things in Argattha. And she said, 'I would like to know how many Red Priests Morjin has sent into this accursed forest.'

'So, not many,' Kane growled out. 'Surely the Crucifier could not afford to send very many to subdue such an out-of-the-way land.'

'His men might be few in numbers,' Master Juwain said, gesturing at the trees around us, 'but they have no lack of wood with which to work their abominations. The terror they've unleashed, I think, is something that takes no count of numbers.'

I nodded my head at this as I swallowed against the knot of pain choking up my throat. I forced out, 'Let us bury them, then.'

Of all my companions, only Kane thought to gainsay me. But then his eyes met mine as he looked deep inside me. He finally said, 'All right, then, but let's be quick about it.'

The rich bottomland here was soft from the spring rains. We had no trouble digging in it, though it took us longer than Kane would have liked to excavate three rather deep graves. When we had laid the three murdered Acadians beneath three neat mounds, I said a requiem for the dead, praying their souls up to the stars. And then it was time to go.

But Kane, standing guard with his bow in hand, motioned me closer to him. He murmured, 'Look off past that elm to the south of the fields. There's a man standing in the woods there who has been watching us.'

Through the trees perhaps a hundred yards away, I saw the cloaked figure of a man. He stood facing us and appeared to bear no weapon more fearsome than a staff; neither did he move to arm himself or flee when it became obvious that we had espied him.

'Surely he can't mean us any harm,' Maram panted out as he hurried up with his bow. 'Else he would have attacked us while we were engaged digging the graves.'

The mystery of this man's identity was soon to be solved, for he began walking straight toward us. He seemed utterly unconcerned to stride right into the bow-range of three strange archers. He pushed through the charred shoots of barley, using a long, unstrung bow as a sort of staff. He was an old man, I saw, with straggles of gray-white hair hanging down from his square, blocklike head. His unkempt beard was colored likewise and spread out across a florid face that looked as strong and weathered as a piece of granite. Though not tall, he was thick in the arms and chest. His old eyes were grayish-green and care-worn, like the homespun cloak that covered his sturdy body.

'Thank the stars!' Maram said to me as the man approached us. 'His eyes are as human as yours, and so he can't be one of the Grays!'

And then the man stepped closer and held out his open hand to us as he called out in a rough voice, 'My name is Tarmond. And whom do I have the pleasure of making acquaintance?'

'My name is Mirustral,' I said, giving him the Ardik form of my name, which meant 'Morning Star'. I nodded at Kane, and then told the man one of Kane's many names, saying, 'And this is Rowan Madas.'

In turn, I presented each of my other companions, telling Tarmond the names that we had settled upon for our journey. This slight deception pained me, but there was no help for it. We could not simply march right into the heart of the Dragon Kingdoms giving out our true names to all whom we encountered.

'From what lands do you hail?' Tarmond asked as he gazed «t Atara's long blonde hair. Then he looked from Estrella to Maram, and then back at me as if trying to solve a puzzle. 'Few strangers other than the Crucifiers journey through our forest these days, and none in such a strange Company as yours.'

'And yet you were willing to walk straight up to us "strangers" under the aim of our arrows. Is that not a strange thing?'

Tarmond looked Kane up and down as if he didn't like very much of what he saw.

And then Tarmond thumped his hand across his chest and told him: 'I do not fear your arrows. To a man such as I, whose sons the Red Priests have murdered, whose daughters have been taken as concubines, an arrow through the heart would be a blessing.'

So great was the sorrow that poured out of him that I had to harden my own heart against it lest I begin howling out in anguish.

'We have heard,' I said to him, 'that the Red Dragon has sent priests into your land.'

'They are everywhere,' Tarmond told us. 'And yet they are nowhere, as well, for they go about in secret or in disguise, and turn even good Acadians to their cause. Some say the Red Dragon himself has given his priests cloaks that render them invisible.'

And with these words, he looked at the burnt cross rising up above us as if one of these secret priests might be standing wraithlike beside it.

Liljana stepped up to Tarmond and grasped his hand. She said, 'Do you not fear that one of us might be a priest in disguise?'

A slow, grim smile broke upon Tarmond's lips. 'The Red Priests do not bury those they murder or crucify. And they do not weep for the dead.'

Here he looked at Estrella and then at me.

'You might be priests, or their acolytes,' he said, 'but that would be a deception greater than any I have seen.'

'Then you have not seen all of the Lord of Lies' deceptions,' Kane growled out as he continued to eye Tarmond suspiciously.

A shadow of doubt darkened Tarmond's face as he looked at Kane. 'You seem to know more of the Crucifier than is good for a man.'

'So, perhaps I do. As you say, his priests are everywhere, and they have no sympathy for a company of pilgrims such as us.'

Tarmond gazed at the scarred and nicked crossguard of Kane's sheathed sword. He said, 'Pilgrims, then, who are well-armed.'

Liljana, who was better at dissembling than I was, said to Tarmond, 'I am of Tria, and so is Master Javas. The boy and girl are my nephew and niece. Rowan and Mirustral are knights who guard us, as is Basir. Mathena is one of the warrior women of Thalu — you may have heard of them. We seek the Well of Restoration, said to lie in the Red Desert. It is also said to bestow wisdom along with healing.'

She went on to tell of Master 'Javas' and his quest for knowledge, and of Estrella's desire to be healed of her mutenes; Atara's blindness, of course, was evident, though it obviously puzzled Tarmond that she should be able to move about so freely and bear a bow aa if she could actually aim arrows at any target. I thought that the story that we had concocted to explain our company was a poor one. Although it contained elements of the truth — for surely the Maitreya could gather a healing radiance within the well of the Lightstone — I knew that people could always sense a lie.

'I've never heard of this Well of Restoration,' Tarmond said. 'But if you're bound for the Red Desert, then you've a long journey ahead of you, and a hard one.'

'It would be less hard,' Liljana said to him, 'if we could find a way across the river. Surely there must be a ferry nearby.'

'Indeed there is,' Tarmond said, motioning with his thumb over his shoulder. 'Four leagues back down the river. But the ferryman, Redmond, is friends with the Crucifiers, and you can expect no confidentiality from him, if it's confidentiality you seek.'

And with that, his eyes fell upon the hilt of my sword. To cover its bright diamond pommel and the seven diamonds set into its black jade, I had fashioned a crude jacket of buckskin, as of a good leather grip.

'I do, however,' Tarmond said to me, 'know a fisherman who used to run a ferry. He might be willing to take you across the river. His name is Gorson, and he is of my village.'

He told us that his village lay only another league and a half farther on upriver. He was returning home to it, he said, after a journey some twenty leagues to the south.

'Come,' he said to us, 'why don't we walk together and share a little bread, and perhaps a few stories, too. It's been at least ten years since I've talked with anyone from outside these woods — except, of course, the cursed Crucifiers, and they lie.'

Kane, as I would have guessed, was loath to join company with this unknown old man, even for a walk of five miles. But if we were to gain the services of the fisherman, Gorson, it seemed that we would need Tarmond to present us to him and perhaps persuade him. And so Kane reluctantly nodded his head to me.

'All right,' I said to Tarmond. 'We'll accompany you to your village. What is its name?'

'Gladwater,' he told us. 'Named in happier times, when the Emerald King reigned in this part of Acadu.'

We set out away from the burnt-out farm and its stench of char and death. I was glad indeed to enter a swath of elms and maples, whose three-lobed leaves fluttered in the breeze. It was good to breathe in the scent of the day's eyes and periwinkles and to listen to the chirping of the kingbirds. It was good, too, to listen to Tarmond talk, in his rough old voice, for he was a man of passion and wisdom, who had seen a great deal in his long life. The tale that he told was an old and sad one, in a way the very story of Ea itself.

Long ago, he said, in the time of the Forest Kings, there had been peace in Acadu. Of course these kings had possessed less power than King Danashu of Anjo, even less than any of his dukes or barons. It didn't matter. For in those years, Uskudar, to the south, had been a divided realm and the Red Dragon still slept, and Acadu had no other enemies. And above all else, Acadu had a single law, and this was the Law of the One, for the Acadians were at once the freest and most devout of peoples.

But at last the Dragon awakened, and so did a mysterious darkness deep within the heart of Acadu. The Forest Kings, attuned to the songs of angels of the woods, no less the Law of the One, began to hear other voices. They quareled with each other and called up armies to battle to the death. Then warlords overthrew the kings, and tribal chieftains rebelled against the warlords; clan opposed clan, until the only safety was to be found in one's family or village, and anarchy spread. During the Dark Years, Tarmond told us, Acadian killed Acadian until a land rich in people and goodness became poor.

And then, under the guise of helping this torn realm, the Red Dragon began sending missions to Acadu: mine masters to search for new veins of gold; moneylenders to give out coin and restore a long-ruined trade; soldiers to protect whatever village or demesne requested their aid. And he sent in as well the Red Priests, to minister to the spirits of the miners, moneylenders and soldiers, and to any Acadian who desired instruction in the Way of the Dragon.

'It was the accursed Red Priests,' Tarmond told us as we walked through the woods, 'who brought these evil times upon us. They promised that if we Acadians followed the Way of the Dragon, we would gain riches, even immortality. But it is the Law of the One that immortality is the province of the Elijin and Galadin.'

Here I looked at Kane, but my silent friend only glared at me with his black, ancient eyes.

'Some there were,' Tarmond continued, 'who said that the word of the Priests was abomination, and that they should be put to death. The Keepers of the Forest, they called themselves: the greatest huntsmen of Acadu. They began hunting down the priests as they would stags or boar. But the Priests are no easy prey. Morjin sent in more soldiers to protect them, along with the moneylenders and miners. And he sent the Shadow Men, who have neither eyes nor hearts. It's said that they can freeze a man's blood with the whisper of their breath and suck out his soul before they eat him alive.'

At the mention of these demon-like men who could only be the dreaded Grays, Maram shuddered and wiped the sweat from his neck. And he said to Tarmond, 'And did no other Acadians join in this rebellion?'

Tarmond smiled sadly and said, 'Many did — of course we did. We still do. But the fiercer we fight, the more bestial the Crucifiers become and the more terrible their deeds.'

'But is there no one of royal lineage,' I asked, 'who might rally an army against your invaders?'

Tarmond shook his massive head. 'In Varkeva, Urwin the Lame calls himself Waldgrave but he is under the spell of Arch Yatin, the reddest of the Red Priests, if you know what I mean. Any leaders of true heart and stout bows, the Priests find out and murder as they come forth.'

'But how?' I persisted. 'The Priests are few and your people are many.'

'Not so many as you might hope,' Tarmond said. He rubbed the deep creases cut into his weather-beaten skin. 'And they are afraid. And not of just the Red Priests, but of each other. You see, no Acadian can know who has joined the Order of the Dragon, and who has not.'

With a heavy sigh, as he drove the tip of his bow into the forest floor in rhythm with his heavy steps., Tarmond told us of this secret society of men and women who had given their allegiance to the Red Dragon. They were the deluded and the depraved, Tarmond said, who believed the Red Dragon's lies. They participated in the Priests' secret rites of sacrificing innocents and drinking their blood; some aspired to be anointed as acolytes and even become Priests themselves. As Tarmond spoke of the elevation of one Edric, a man of his district, to this exalted if vile rank, I thought of Salmelu, my fellow Valari who had betrayed his own people and nearly murdered me with an arrow tipped with kirax.

'It is fear that undoes us,' Tarmond said. He suggested that we stop by a stream and take a bit of lunch, and so we did. He shared with us a loaf of bread and a mutton joint stowed in his pack; we cut wedges of cheese for him from a fresh wheel sealed in red wax, and gave him handfuls of raspberries, too. 'A man's own brother might be a spy for the Order of the Dragon; a woman might surrender up her own daughter if pressed hard enough. Few there are who can face the Red Priests' fire-irons or being mounted on a cross.'

I chewed at the tough mutton as I regarded Tarmond's worn yew bow; although he bore no sword, there was steel inside him. I said, 'And yet you fight the Priests, don't you?'

'What else is there to do?' he said, brushing crumbs from his beard. 'We fight, but too late and too few. And we do not fight as one. I, myself, was chosen to journey to Riversong, Greenwood and other villages, in order to speak in favor of electing a true Waldgrave to raise an army. But these days, no one will trust anyone from another village, and few enough from their own.'

He stood up and shouldered on his pack again. 'We're good people, we Acadians, with good hearts. But too afraid.'

After that we began walking through the forest again. We passed by farms whose occupants might have known Tarmond, but they called out no greeting to him. With each rebuff or stare of shamed silence, with every suspicious look these freeholders cast at us, I heard Tarmond mutter to himself: 'We're a good people, we are — at heart, a good, strong people.'

Soon we neared Gladwater, at the juncture of the Tir and a much smaller river that ran into it. It was tiny village, as Tarmond described it, with a mill, a granary, a dock for a handful of fishing boats, a couple of dozen houses and little else. Its largest building was the longhouse, built of great oak logs, at the edge of the woods. In good times, the villagers of Gladwater used it as a meeting place where they might take ale and good company together; in bad times, they might take shelter behind its thick timbers and throw open the shutters of the longhouse's arrow ports.

'We're almost there,' Tarmond said to us as we pushed through the rather thick bracken in this pan of the forest. He pointed through what seemed an endless expanse of trees ahead of us. 'Through these maples and over a rise, and we'll come upon the longhouse. I'll stand you all to a glass of good ale, the children excepted, of course.'

At this offer, Maram's eyes gleamed, and a new strength seemed to course through his legs. He breathed in deeply and said, 'We must be close — I can hear the river.'

So could I. Through the green wall of trees before us came the sound of rushing water. I smelled the moistness in the air. And then the wind shifted and I smelled something else, too, which pleased me less well: the reek of death. Altaru let loose a terrible whinny, and I had to grip his reins to keep him from rearing up and striking out with his hooves.

'Ho, friend,' I said to him, stroking his neck. 'Quiet now, quiet.'

Tarmond, I saw, had frozen like a piece of stone as he stared into the woods. And then he said, 'I'm old and my senses have dulled, but there's a foulness in the air.'

Upon the wind came a high, faint keening, as of a child calling out to his mother. I closed my eyes as waves of pain and fear broke inside my chest.

Tarmond placed his hand on my shoulder and asked me, 'Would you climb to the top of this hill with me?'

I nodded my head. Then Kane and Atara came forward with bows in hand, and the four of us hiked up the easy slope to the top of the rise. We stood behind the trees looking down at the muddy brown Tir and the little village built on its banks. It was much as Tarmond had described. But the smoldering ruins of two of the houses sent up plumes of dark smoke, and carrion birds circled in the air above.

The great timbers of the longhouse were the cured trunks of trees, and its three stone chimneys sent up curls of smoke. Men surrounded it. Although their round shields showed a repeating motif of small, painted red dragons, these were surely no Ikurian knights or Dragon Guard or any of Morjin's best soldiers. Mercenaries, they must be, I thought. Their leader, was a stout man wearing full armor, gripping a broadsword in his hand. A yellow surcoat, emblazoned with a rather small dragon, draped from his shoulders to his knees.

'It is Harwell the Burner!' Tarmond gasped out in a fierce whisper. 'From Silver Glade, five leagues from here. He was one of the first of us to join the Order of the Dragon. It is said that Arch Yatin himself knighted him in reward.'

Without another word, Tarmond strung his bow, whipped an arrow from his quiver and fitted its feathered shaft to his bowstring. He stared down at Harwell as he made ready to draw his bow.

'Hold!' I whispered to him. 'This is no way to protect your people!'

'What other way is there?' he whispered back. 'Do you pilgrims intend to take part in our fight?'

Kane's dark eyes fairly shouted out a great 'no' as he stared at me. Then Daj came running up from behind us, distracting our attention from the longhouse. His slight form bounded over branches and fallen trees with all the grace of a young buck. He gasped out, 'I want to see.'

He knelt beside me in the bracken and looked down at the men besieging the longhouse. Four of the soldiers stood guard by a wagon bearing black-coated buckets and two barrels of what looked to be pitch. The other soldiers were busy with axes and hammers, nailing wooden planks together. One of their constructions was nearly finished: a sort of small wall of wood, three feet wide and six feet high, with handles nailed into its back and struts near its base to keep it from falling over.

'What is it?' Daj whispered to me.

'It's a mantelet,' I told him. I explained how a soldier might stand behind it and work it closer to his objective, using it as a shield against arrows or other missiles. 'It would seem that they intend to fire the house.'

Toward this end, one of the archers suddenly ignited a cloth wrapped around the tip of one of his arrows. He loosed it in a low, flaming arc that found its terminus at the longhouse's roof. The arrow buried itself in the roof and continued to bum. But the wooden shingles, moist from the recent rains, were not so easy to set on fire.

From one of the dark crosses cut into the house, an arrow hissed forth. It struck into the bark of one of the trees that Harwell's archers stood behind.

'When the mantelets are completed,' I said to Daj, 'the soldiers will go forward and soak the house in pitch.'

And then. I thought, the house's timbers would bum like match-sticks.

'Back!' I whispered. 'Let us hold council.'

I laid my hand on Tarmond's shoulder and urged him back down the hill a few dozen yards. Liljana and Maram came up to join us. I quickly explained to them what was about to befall on the other side of the hill.

'I don't like what we saw of that house,' Kane growled out. His black eyes drilled into mine. 'And I like what I see now even less.'

Just then the breeze died to a whisper, and from below our hill the muffled wail of a baby filled the air,

'We can't just leave those people to the Crucifiers!' I said to Kane.

'People die!' Kane snarled. 'That's the way of the world! There are only four of us. Five, if we count this old man.'

The look on Tarmond's face told me that I could indeed count on him to fire his arrows straight and true.

For the hundredth time, I thought of King Mohan's words to me: that no one could see the results of a deed and thereby judge its virtue. A deed, I thought, was either right or wrong. I said to Kane, 'We might not live even to reach the Red Desert. But we are alive now to help these people.'

'It's not our fight!' Kane growled at me. 'Would you risk everything for the sake of strangers?'

The acridness of smoke recalled the ruins of my father's castle and all those who had been butchered or burnt inside. I said to Kane, 'It is our fight! And these villagers are our people — all people are!'

Kane was not a man easily to accept defeat, but he stared at me for a few long moments, then finally bowed his head,

I looked at Maram then, and the fire in my heart leaped into his. He said, 'Ah, I suppose that if I do flee, I'll be the only one?' He drew his sword in a burst of bravura and ringing steel that I prayed no one would hear. His smile warmed me like a draught of brandy.

Atara had strung her bow and stood with an arrow in her hand. She said that she had 'seen' four archers on the far side of the longhouse, hiding in a grove of trees.

I sent Kane on a long flanking manuever: through the woods around the house and into the grove of trees sheltering the archers that Atara had descried. Tarmond walked beside me as Maram, Atara and I led our horses up to the top of the rise. I stationed Tarmond behind a stout maple. Maram and I drew forth our longbows and strung them. And then we waited.

A coldness burned through my belly as if I had drunk a gallon of ice-water.

'My hands are sweating!' Maram whispered to me. 'I'm no good at this!'

'You took a third at the tournament,' I reminded him. 'You're one of the finest archers in the Morning Mountains!'

'But we're not in the Morning Mountains. And this is different — we're shooting at men. They can shoot back!'

When enough time had passed to allow Kane to reach the grove of trees on the far side of the longhouse and deal with the four archers there as only Kane could, at last I hissed, 'Ready! Targets!'

Atara could work her recurved bow from a kneeling position, but Maram and I had to stand along with Tarmond to draw arrows and sight upon our targets below. These were four archers standing behind trees with their backs to us.

I whispered, 'Draw!'

As one, we held stiff our left arms as we drew the feathered shafts of our arrows to our ears.

'Loose!'

The crack of our four bowstrings seemed as loud as a thunderclap; our four arrows shot out through the air. Tarmond's and Atara's struck dead true at the center of two of the mercenary archers' backs. They cried out in their death agony. My man, perhaps sensing my murderous intent, moved just as I loosed my arrow, which drove through his armor oft center and perhaps pierced a lung. He, too, cried out a hideous, bubbling scream. Maram's arrow missed altogether, thudding into the trunk of a tree.

'Oh, Lord!' he moaned to me. 'I told you! I told you!'

'Mount!' I shouted at him as I dropped my bow.

The screaming of the three stricken archers had alerted Harwell and his men. This large 'knight,' whose gray hair flowed out from beneath a conical helm, turned about and pointed at us as he cried out, 'We're under attack!'

Four of his mercenaries immediately covered themselves with their shields but the men working on the mantelets were slower to take up theirs. One of these Atara killed with an arrow through the throat; Tarmond, at the same moment, loosed an arrow that buried itself in the remaining archer's chest.

While Tarmond continued firing arrows at them, Maram, Atara and I mounted our horses and we charged down the gentle slope through the trees upon our enemy.

Harwell had the presence of mind to form up his mercenaries in front of the wagon, so that it might protect their backs and provide cover against arrows being loosed from the longhouse behind it. They stood in a line of ten men, locking shields as they faced us. As we pounded closer, I caught a whiff of terror tainting the air. The mercanaries' eyes were wide with astonishment: they had no spears with which to withstand a charge of mounted knights. They must have been utterly mystified by Atara, with her white blindfold and her great Sarni bow, firing off arrows as she bounded down the slope straight toward them.

'Aieeuuuu!'

A terrible cry suddenly split the air; it was something like the roar of a whirlwind and a tiger's scream. And then Kane, like a tiger, like a veritable whirlwind of steel and death, burst from around the side of the wagon and fell upon the mercenaries' rear. He chopped two of them apart with his sword almost before they realized that they were under assault by this new and maddened enemy. This proved too much for Harwell's remaining men. All at once they broke, running off in different directions toward the woods.

This made it all the easier to kill them. Atara fired an arrow at point black range with such force that it pierced a mercenary's mouth and drove straight through the back of his head. While Kane set to work with his sword and Maram ran down another man, putting his lance through his back, I drove my lance at a great, red-bearded mercenary. He was quick enough to get his shield up; my lance point struck into the painted wood and then snapped as the mercenary threw down his shield. I drew my sword then. The mercenary tried to meet my attack with his sword, but like the rest of his companions, he was of little prowess and could not stand against a real knight. I swung Alkaladur, and my shining sword cleaved through his poor armor, and through flesh and bone. Then I killed two other mercenaries nearby with a coldness like unto that of an executioner. I hated this mechanical butchery almost even more than the maddened fury I bore inside toward Morjin.

Soon the battle was over. I turned to see Maram, leaning over the side of his horse, pull his lance from the neck of the dead Harwell. Maram's face had fallen a ghastly gray, but it seemed that he had taken no wound. Neither, I was overjoyed to see, had Atara. She climbed down from her roan mare and began retrieving arrows buried in the bodies of the three men she had killed.

'… six, seven, eight,' I heard Kane muttering as he stood over a dead mercenary counting the bodies of our enemies. 'Nine, ten, eleven — all here. Did you take out your four archers?'

'Yes,' I told him. 'And you?'

'Indeed — it was as Atara said: there were four of them, spread out. Their attention was on the house, and they didn't notice me coming out of the trees.'

He patted the hilt of his dagger; I hated the smile that broke upon his savage face.After that, Tarmond walked down the hill toward us as the doors of the longhouse opened and the villagers of Gladwater began pouring out.