Black Jade

Chapter 20

I waited on broken ground as my adversary pounded nearer. His face — dark and fine-boned — contorted with wrath. He must have thought that he would easily cut me down and make vultures' meat of me. But my father had drilled me, and all my brothers, in standing with sword at ready to meet the charge of armored knights. This man, though, was no Valari knight. His sword was shorter than mine, and only thin cloth covered his limbs. He fairly oozed overconfidence and a rage to kill. From the cast of his body and the angle of his saber, I saw his error in strategy; I sensed how he anticipated that at the last moment I would cringe in fear of being trampled, allowing him to slash his sword into me. I knew that I could fend off this cut and strike a death blow of my own. And then, as he whipped his horse forward and his dark, anguished eyes met mine, I knew that I could not. 'Well-poisoner!' he screamed at me. 'Well-poisoner!' My father had also taught me a strategy, little used because it was dangerous. I used it now. I stood fast, as if frozen with fear, as my adversary's horse practically drove its hooves into me and snorted into my face. At the last moment, rather than trying to avoid the sword slash by pulling backward, and to my left, I leaped to my right, past the front of the horse and toward its other side. As the sweating beast pushed by me, I reached up with my hand to grasp my startled adversary's arm, held almost straight out to counterbalance the sword gripped in his other hand. I jerked on his arm, hard, and pulled him flying off his horse. He hit the ground with a loud crunch that I feared broke his back. He lay stunned, coughing blood and gasping for breath. I stood with my boot stamped down on his sword arm as I brought the point of Alkaladur within an inch of his throat. 'What are you waiting for?' he managed to cry out. His eyes were dark pools of hate. 'Kill me! Better to die by the sword than by poison!'

I pressed down with my boot against his wrist until his fingers relaxed their grip upon his saber. I looked down at him and said, 'We are not poisoners!'

But the man wasn't listening to me. He spat out a mouthful of blood as he called out, 'Turi, my son! Kill the white-hair if you can, or die on his blade! Don't let the poisoners capture you!'

Just then Maram finally came up to help me. The man I had unhorsed tried to drive his neck up into my blade even as Maram kicked him back to the ground and then fell on top of him, pinning him against the rocks. I turned to see his son whip his horse toward Kane, standing thirty yards away. It seemed that he had already made one pass at Kane and was about to make another.

'Don't kill him!' I shouted at Kane.

I was nearly certain that he would kill him, even if his opponent was only a boy, for I had never seen Kane suffer an enemy a chance to wound him or cut him down. But Kane surprised me. This time, the boy did not charge past him, but reined in his horse as he swept his sword at Kane's head. With a ringing of steel, Kane easily parried this stroke, and then another, and yet another. He stood in the hot sun fending off the boy's saber with his sword as iF giving him a fencing lesson.

'Call off the boy!' I said to the man beneath Maram. Struggle though he might, he could hardly move, for Maram must have outweighed him by ten stone. 'Call him off before he gets hurt! We are not well-poisoners, but we know the one who is!'

Seeing that our attackers were only two, the others came over to help Maram and me. Atara stood holding Estrella's hand. My fallen adversary looked at her and marveled: 'You bring the blind with you! And children, too!'

His hate softened to suspicion and then puzzlement. From beneath Maram, he gasped out, 'Who are you then, and who is the well-poisoner?'

'We'll tell you. happily,' I said to him. 'But first call off your son.'

Me turned his head to shout out: 'Turi, enough! But keep ready to fight again!'

Turi, I thought, had already had more than enough combat for one day. He seemed so tired that he could hardly raise his sword against the tireless Kane.

I said to Maram, 'you're crushing this man — let him up!'

I still worried that the fall had broken something inside my adversary, but this tough desert man had little trouble sitting up. He sucked at his bitten tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood before saying to me: 'My name is Yago of the Soah clan of the Masud. My son is Turi. And who are you?'

While Kane stood eyeing Turi, and Turi him, the rest of my companions gathered around Yago. I presented myself as Mirustral and Kane as a knight called Rowan, and everyone else according to the names that we had chosen to use on our journey, I told Yago that we were pilgrims who sought the Well of Restoration.

'Pilgrims, you say?' He looked at me as his black eyebrows pulled together in doubt. He pointed his sharp chin toward the jewelry that Daj had collected and said, 'Pilgrims pay gold to pass through our lands, they do not collect it. In truth, they no longer pass this way at all.'

'We were afraid,' I said, looking at the bangles and bracelets mounded on the sheepskin, 'that the hyenas would take your kinsmen into the desert and their possessions with them. We collected their things that such a treasure might not be lost.'

I told myself that this was true in spirit; at least I hoped that Daj would want it to be true.

'Treasure it is,' Yago said, regarding the pile of jewelry. 'Where did you think to take it?'

'Nowhere,' I said. 'We've burdens enough to bear, and little water to keep us and our horses bearing them.'

Liljana showed him our waterskins, which were nearly empty, and reiterated that we sought the Well of Restoration, not jewels and gold.

Yago pulled at his beard as he regarded the bodies around us. He said to me, 'Well-poisoners you cannot be, to leave yourselves so little water. But if pilgrims you really are, you've found instead the Well of Death.'

We told him a little of our journey then, and he told me of his. It seemed that the lone mountain to the south of us was sacred to the desert tribes, who called it Raman, the Pillar of the Sky. Yago and his son had made a pilgrimage to it in order to seek visions.

'My son and I,' he told us, 'journeyed from the hadrahs in the southeast to stand beneath the great mountain. And then we rode on here to find the Ayo poisoned.'

He explained that the dead around us were of the Ayo clan, whose people often camped at the well at the beginning of summer. Kane nodded his head at this as he stared at the mountain to the south. 'You say that you are of the Masud tribe? What happened to the Taiji, then, who once claimed this well?'

Yago's eyes grew bright with astonishment. 'You know of the Taiji? It has been long, past my grandfather's great-grandfather's time, since they dwelled here. But the Taiji are no more.'

His face burned with pride as he continued: 'Long ago, we of the Masud came up from the southern hadrahs, while the Zuri came out of the pans to the west. Each tribe took half of the Taiji's lands, leaving the Taiji with only sand to eat and air to drink.'

He spoke of the annihilation of the Taiji as one might the slaughtering and division of a chicken. He spared little more sentiment for the sheep baahing in the scrub outside the encampment, or indeed, for the poisoned people of the Ayo clan whose bodies were rotting in the sun.

'The dead are dead,' he told us. He licked his dry lips. 'Soon, we too will have only air to drink, and we will join them.'

'But you must know of other wells?' Maram said to him. He wiped dusty beads of sweat from his face.

'Yes, I know,' Yago said calmly as he pointed across the blazing sands to the west. 'The nearest well lies that way, seventy-five miles. It belongs to the Zuri. Do you think to claim it from them?'

'We left gold coins at the first well that we came to,' Maram said, pointing to the east. 'That is good,' Yago said. 'And the Zuri will take your coins — your horses, weapons and clothing, too. They do not abide pilgrims.'

'But there must be other wells!' Maram said. 'You must know where we can find water!'

Yago smiled grimly at this and said, 'We'll find all the water we wish in the Hadrahs of Heaven, when we rest with the dead.'

'But what about the hadrahs in the southeast that you told of? Where there are trees and enough water to grow wheat and barley?'

'They are two hundred miles distant,' Yago said. 'This time of year, there is no water along the way. We cannot return there.'

'But we can't just lie down and die!' Maram said.

I couldn't help smiling as Yago turned to look at his saber, which Maram now gripped in his hands. Yago said to him, 'No, I won't die here. If you'll give me back my sword, I'll ride after the well-poisoner and kill him before the sun kills me.'

'But what about your son?' f said looking at Turi, who still sat watching us from the back of his horse.

Yago shrugged his shoulders. 'The dead are the dead. He'll ride with me. No Ravirii of any tribe can suffer a well-poisoner to live.'

I looked at Maram and said, 'Give Yago his sword.'

Maram did as I asked, and Yago's fingers closed gratefully around the hilt of his saber. I said to him: 'We'll ride with you, too. It might be that we can persuade the Poisoner to tell us where there is water.'

Yago's fatalistic smile played upon his lips again. He pointed to the west and said, 'Nowhere, in all the Zuri's lands, will we be allowed to drink their water. Toward dead south, if we rode that way, we would find the Vuai, who are worse than the Zuri. And to the north lies the Tar Harath, where there is no water.'

I turned to the east, scanning the broken country over which we had ridden. I knew that we couldn't make the return journey to the first well with the little water that remained to us, Then I looked to my left, at the highlands some twenty miles to the northeast. These mountains were stark and reddish-brown, showing no hint of snow or ice-cap. But mountains, as I knew, often called down the rain of passing clouds. And so I said to Yago, 'What of that way?'

And Yago told me, 'I don't know — that is the country of the Avari, and no one ever goes there. It is said that the Avari kill any man of any tribe who trespasses, and drink his blood.'

'Then it seems,' I said to Yago, 'that we have no choice but to pursue the Poisoner.'

'The dead are the dead,' he intoned, looking out into the wasteland to the west.

'And the living are the living,' I said to him. 'And as long as we're still alive, there is still hope.'

Yago shook his head as if marveling at the foolishness of outlanders and pilgrims. Then we went to work, stripping the dead of their jewelry, which Yago insisted we wrap in sheepskins and bury at the base of the red standing stone. The poisoned Ayo we could not bury, for there were too many of them and the ground was too hard to dig out graves.

'We'll leave them for the hyenas,' Yago said. 'Others of the Ayo clan might find their bones.'

'And their jewelry?'

'They might find that, too. But if they fail, better that the Zuri, if they come here, don't find it.'

After that we had a hard labor of gathering up boulders to heave down into the well and render it useless. Thus did we protect any who would come here after us, even the Zuri. As Yago said, not even the Zuri deserved to die by poison.

Just before leaving the well, Yago checked our horses' loads and announced. 'They carry too many things.'

'Only the necessities,' Liljana told him.

'In the desert,' Yago said, 'pots and pans are not needed. You might as well bring with you lumps of lead. You must leave them here, or kill even more horses.'

I felt Liljana's keen disappointment at facing once again the prospect of jettisoning her precious cookware. I said to Yago, 'In the miles to come, we might have need of her pots. Is there no other way?'

'No, there is not.' Then he opened the pack where I had stowed my armor, and he grasped the mail and shook it so that its links rattled. 'All this metal! You and Rowan must leave your armor here, too.'

Kane scowled at this dictate, and I shook my head. I said to Yago, 'In the country beyond the desert, we might have to fight battles. We will need our armor.'

'If you bring it with you,' he told me, 'you might not reach whatever country you hope to find. If you would survive in the desert, you must follow the desert's ways.'

I considered this for a long few moments, and so did Kane. Finally, we consented to Yago's harsh logic, and we left our armor with most of Liljana's pots, buried behind some rocks. I thought it a miracle that he allowed her to keep a single, small kettle, for boiling water for tea and coffee.

In the heat of the afternoon, we set out after the droghul. It seemed mad to let the sun simply roast all the juices out of us, but we had already spent too much time by the well. The droghul, by now, would be miles away. And every hour that we waited would only sweat more water out of us.

Yago found the droghul's tracks outside the encampment; I thought it a fine work of tracking to make out the faint hoof marks in the hard, gritty ground. We followed them, riding as quickly as we dared. Turi, after exchanging a few brusque words with Daj and Maram, kept his desert pony close to his father. And his father kept close to me.

'Tell me,' he said as our horses worked against the sun-baked turf, 'of the well-poisoner.'

And so I did. I began with an account of the Red Dragon's recent conquests, news that had reached even the isolated tribes of the Red Desert. I said that Morjin wished to bring down his iron fist upon all lands, and toward that end had sent his Red Priests into every kingdom of Ea. He had other agents, too. I tried to tell some-thing of the droghul, without detailing the droghul's hellish gesta-tion or how Morjin moved his mind. I settled on explaining that Morjin had chosen several men who looked like him to send out and act in his stead. It was close enough to the truth.

Yago thought about this as he pulled at his beard. We rode on in near-silence toward the west. The air grew brutally hot, and then hotter. For the next few miles, the country flattened out a little, and the hardpack gave way to scattered sweeps of sand. A few red rocks and clumps of hardy ursage poked out of it. Lizards took shelter there from the blistering sun; so did the flies. These buzzing black beasts must have caught Maram's bloody scent, for they swarmed around him, and worked at his wounds where his bandages had come loose. I could almost feel them biting their hard mouthparts into his already-raw flesh. Maram's lips pulled back in torment, but he uttered no complaint. It made me proud to see him riding on so bravely. Yago took note of his determination, too.

'You pilgrims are tough,' he said to me as his eyes found mine. 'Almost as tough as we Ravirii. I find it strange, though, that the Red Dragon would set a poisoner upon a band of pilgrims.'

I tried to respond to his blazing curiosity as coolly as I could. I told him that Master 'Javas' was of the Brotherhoods, whose quarrel with Morjin was ancient. 'And Kane,' I told him, 'once took up the sword against the Dragon, and so is hunted.'

'And you, Mirustral?' Yago said to me. He caught me with a long, searching look.

'I have quarrel with the Dragon, too,' I told him. 'I had hoped that we would find no evil of his in the desert. It's said that the Ravirii will not abide him or his people.'

'Is that truly said?' Yago asked me. 'I had thought that few even knew of the Ravirii.'

'Few do. But it's told that the Dragon fears to send his armies into the desert.'

Yago let loose a long, dry sigh. 'That may change. He certainly does not fear sending his agents here, nor his bloody priests.'

At this news, Kane's ears pricked up, and he called out from behind us: 'The Kallimun, here? Then the Red Priests dare to go about openly?'

'They don't dare to ride through the Masud's lands,' Yago said to him, turning in his saddle. 'Rohaj, our chief, expelled the embassy sent to us and told them not to return on pain of death. But it's said that there are priests among the Idi and Sudi in the far north, and perhaps among the Yieshi, as well.'

He told us that the Yieshi tribe dwelled to the northwest of the Zuri, between the Tar Harath and the Crescent Mountains.

'And the Zuri?' I asked him. 'The Vuai?'

'It's said that the priests have their stingers buried deep into Tatuk, who is chief of the Zuri, and into Suhu and many of the Vuai,' Yago turned back and stared at the barren country to the southwest, which the Vuai claimed. 'The priests are like scorpions — in the desert, there are many poisons, yes?'

For another mile or so we followed the droghul's tracks, pressed so deeply into the sand that they seemed to point like wagon ruts straight into the west. Then Yago nodded toward a dome-shaped mound of sandstone to our left and announced, 'That is the Ar Nurum. It marks the end of the Masud's country and the beginning of the Zuri's.'

'It would seem,' Master Juwain observed, 'that the droghul has no fear of riding into it.'

'He would fear well enough,' Yago said, 'if Tatuk learns of what he has done. Red Priests or no, I cannot believe that even the Zuri would abide a well-poisoner.'

Upon these words, something inside me tightened. I felt my heart beating hard, pushing heated blood up into my head; my ears started ringing as with the sound of distant bells.

'Hold!' I called out raising up my hand. I brought Altaru to a halt, and turned to see Atara and Iiljana and the rest of my companions draw up their horses behind me. Yago sat on his smaller pony casting me a puzzled look. And I said to him, and to everyone: 'We cannot go on.'

Yago looked at me as if to ascertain if the sun had deranged my senses. 'But if we're to avenge the Ayo, we've no other choice than to go after the Poisoner!'

'You'll have your chance for vengeance soon enough,' I said to him. 'The droghul will come after us.'

I drew my sword and watched the play of sunlight on its blade.

'But why, Mirustral?' Yago said to me. 'We have five swords, and the droghul, as you call him, has only one.'

'No,' I told him, gazing into my sword's silustria. 'He will have all the swords of the Zuri, and those of the Red Priests, too.'

'No, they would never give him such aid. They would not dare ride in force into the Masud's lands! Then Rohaj would call for war, and the Zuri have lost the last three that we have fought.'

I tightened my fist around Alkaladur's hilt. I shook my head and said to Yago: 'The droghul will tell Tatuk and the Zuri that we are the well-poisoners. The Red Priests will encourage them to believe this. And the droghul will lead the Zuri back along his track to trap us. In such circumstances, would your chief still call for war?'

It was the law of the Ravirii, as Yago said, that a man must punish a well-poisoner even if his vengeance carried him into the lands of another tribe. And then Yago shouted: 'But it is the droghul who is the poisoner, not you!'

'How will we prove this once the Zuri have put us to the sword?'

'We Ravirii do not put well-poisoners to the sword,' he said. 'But never mind that. How do you know what you have said is true?'

'I… know,' I said, touching my sword to the scar cut into my forehead. 'It is what the droghul planned all along. I should have seen it.'

Yago looked along the line of tracks leading toward the falling sun. 'This droghul must be punished. Even if I die in punishing him.'

'Is it the droghul's death you wish or your own?'

'The law is the law,' he told me.

I pointed into the open spaces to the west and said. 'The droghul will lead the Zuri upon us. If we're caught out there, we'll have little hope of even getting close to the droghul.'

'But what other hope is there?'

I turned toward the northeast and pointed at the low mountains shining in the sun. 'If we can reach those highlands, we'll find better ground to stand against the Zuri. We'll be able to loose our arrows at our enemies as from a castle's battlements.'

Yago had little knowledge of bows and arrows, and less of castles, but he understood my strategy well enough. It didn't matter. As he told me: 'That is the country of the Avari, and when they discover us, they'll kill the Zuri and the droghul — and us.'

'Then you will have your vengeance after all,' I told him. 'And as you say, the dead are the dead.'

For a few moments Yago continued gazing at the mountains. Then he turned back to examine the droghul's tracks pointing into the west. 'If you are wrong in your surmise, we'll lose all chance of vengeance.'

'There is always a chance for vengeance,' I said, looking at the edge of my sword. 'And even if we do lose this chance, we might find water in the mountains, and so live to gain another.'

At this, Yago looked over at Turi, patting the neck of his sweating horse. The boy's lips were dusty and cracked. Something cracked inside Yago then. The law was the law, as he had said, but there was always a higher law. For all his talk about vengeance and death, the living were still the living, and Yago's heart beat quick and strong to keep his son among them.

'All right,' he finally told me. 'We'll go with you into the mountains.'

I turned to take council with my friends; their eyes all assented to the course I proposed. Without another word, I pointed Altaru toward the northeast and urged him to a quick walk. We made our way along the border between the Masud's lands and those of the Zuri. Our journey toward this new direction immediately brought relief, for the sun now fell upon our backs. The desert remained hot as a furnace, but at least the fiery orb above us no longer burned out our eyes.

Two hours later, we drank the last of our water. We spent the rest of the afternoon, it seemed, sweating all of it back out. I grew thirsty, for it seemed that I hadn't had a long, deep drink of water since the first well. I could feel the discomfort building inside Maram and the rest of my companions, especially the children. And Yago's dry, hot eyes seemed to assure me that as yet we knew nothing of real thirst.

In the last hour of the day, we came to a standing stone that marked the place where the lands of the Zuri, Masud and Avari touched upon each other. Yago and Turi were loath to go on another foot, for they dreaded entering the mysterious Avari's country. Then Kane caught sight of a dust plume in the west. This decided Yago; he smiled his doomful smile, and pressed his horse forward. But he kept looking backward over his shoulder, as did we all.

At first, with the great ball of fire of the setting sun nearly blinding me, I had a hard time making out the dust plume. But with each mile it grew larger. Our tired, parched horses could barely manage a brisk walk. I thought that the Zuri's horses — for I was sure that the droghul had led warriors of this tribe after us — must be well-watered. I tried to calculate rates and distances, but there was no need, for we had no choice but to continue on toward the mountains as quickly as we could.

These rocky prominences grew larger, too. Yago could tell us little of them. They seemed to be a spur running south off the White Mountains. Master Juwain pulled out one of his maps, but he could find nothing marked there that helped us. In the day's last light, I saw that the peaks ahead of us topped out much lower than any of the Yorgos range. Long canyons cut them northeast to southwest, and steep ravines ran down the sides of huge, triangular blades of rock into the canyons. Every square foot of these highlands seemed as dry as a bleached bone.

As the ground broke up into a hilly country, Maram took me aside and murmured to me, 'You care nothing for meting out vengeance upon the droghul, do you? You hope to lose him in the mountains, don't you?'

'If we can, Maram,' I murmured back to him. 'If we can.'

'If we do,' he said, licking his cracked lips, 'it will avail us nothing if we don't find water, and soon.'

He shooed away a few flies, thenn popped a barbark nut in his mouth. Sucking on them, he had told me, kept his tongue from drying out. I noticed that he had given up his habit of spitting upon the ground, electing to swallow the vile red juice instead.

Yago rode up to us and asked us, 'What is it you are discussing?'

'Ah. . water,' Maram told him, gulping at the juice in his mouth. 'We were talking about water. Neither of us can see any likely places in those mountains to look for it.'

Yago stared at the mountains ahead of us. 'The Avari will know of water, for we are deep in their country. But they would not tell us of it.'

Maram lifted back his head to look up at the sky and said. 'It must rain upon those damn mountains sometime. Look at those clouds! Why do they drift to the north when the wind blows from the west?'

Yago studied the few, thin white clouds, moving north as Maram had observed. And he told us, 'There must be winds higher in the sky that blow them that way. But do not think that clouds will save you, thirsty pilgrims. It never rains here in the summer.'

I listened to the clopping of the horses' hooves against rocks. The flies were beginning to abate while the snakes and other desert creatures emerged from their holes to greet the coming of night. Everything seemed to stink of sweat and dust. With the dying of the sun, twilight darkened the desert and its stark landforms. We continued on at a slower pace, for the horses now had to take greater care where they placed their hooves on the stony ground.

It grew mercifully cooler. The air, however, for the first couple hours of night, remained warm enough to wring the sweat from us. Our thirst grew worse. No longer could we perceive a dust plume against the black, starry sky, but I sensed that the droghul and many others still pursued us. The dark would slow them, Yago said, but they would keep after us unless we could find mantles of bare, hard rock to ride across. And even then, when day came, a good tracker might be able to make out a faint chip in the rock! while the finest of Ravirii trackers might follow us even at night.

I kept my eyes fixed on the mountains. We finally came within a mile of them, and turned almost due north as we rode paralleling the ridgelines looking for a place of retreat. Any of the canyons, it seemed, might do as well as any other. But we might come across a veritable castle cut out of the stone above us, and still find ourselves doomed to die of thirst. And so I let Altaru fall back to where Estrella rode next to Atara. And I said to this tough, tired girl, 'If it comes to you that there might be water in any of these canyons, follow your heart and seek it out. And we'll follow you.'

Estrella nodded her head at this, and weakly clasped my hand. She tried to smile, but could not. For the thousandth time, I berated myself for taking children with me on such a dreadful journey.

It was past midnight when we came upon the mouth of a canyon little different from any of the others. But Estrella, after first looking at me for approval, led us straight into it. We began climbing up a wide notch between the masses of rock around us; I wondered if a river or stream had once worked its way through here. After about two miles of plodding over stony but mostly level ground, the canyon narrowed and dead-ended into a great rise of mountain. Three ravines cut its slopes and gave out into the canyon. Estrella drew up her horse before the centermost ravine. I could barely make out her face in the thin light as she stared up into it. It would be hard work to take our horses up this steep pitch in the dead of the night. Estrella seemed uncertain as to what we should do. She dismounted and walked a few dozen yards up into the ravine. She paused as if sniffing at the air. Then she walked back to me and held out her hands helplessly. I understood that she could not 'say' that there was water somewhere up this ravine; but neither could she say there was not.

'I doubt if there is water up there,' Yago said, dismounting and walking up to us. 'I doubt if there is water anywhere in these high lands.'

Everyone else dismounted then and came over to hold council.

'Perhaps another canyon,' Maram said.

'We can't go seeking out one canyon after the next all night,' Liljana said to us. 'We haven't the strength for that, or the water.'

Daj, standing next to Turi, started to say something then, but all that came out of his throat was a tortured croak. He was so tired he had to lean against Liljana to keep from falling over.

'We cannot go on like this,' Liljana said again. 'Let us stop for a few hours and see if there is any water about.'

'If we stop, we stay,' Yago said. 'I think the Zuri must be close.'

I thought this, too. I could almost feel the droghul's hand upon my face and hear him whispering in my mind, promising me cool water to drink if only I would lead him to the Maitreya.

Then Yago added, 'I think the Zuri will find this canyon. And then we will have no way out.'

Rock surrounded us on three sides; we would find no escape in any of those directions.

'I believe we should explore, as Liljana has said,' Master Juwain told us. 'At least let us see if we can make our way up the ravine and encamp up there, in those rocks.'

I peered up the ravine, where it gave out into a large, rocky shelf. It seemed that we had at least found our castle to defend.

The dry wind out of the west seemed to suck the thoughts from my mind so that I could not think clearly. And then Kane's voice, cutting through the night like a bright sword, laid bare our choices: 'So, men are only men, and we might defeat them no matter their numbers. But if we don't find water, we'll die.'

After that, we made our way up the ravine. We moved slowly, leading the horses along as best we could in the near-dark. More than once, we had to help the horses find places to plant their hooves as we practically pulled them up the slope. The ground rose steeply before us, and several boulders blocked our way. This chute of rock, I thought, would turn into a death trap for any of the Zuri who might try to storm their way up it toward us. Equally, it would turn into our tomb if thirst forced us back down it onto the Zuri's swords.

We finally came out upon the rock shelf, littered with more boulders. Maram collapsed, sitting down with his back pressed to one of these. Liljana looked for a level place to lay out our sleeping furs. Daj and Turi, who seemed to be forging a silent friendship, began wandering about the rocks on the slopes above the shelf in a desperate search for water. Estrella stood staring at this barren and cracked mountain slope. Not even a thorn bush or a sprig of bitterbroom grew here.

In the coolness of the deepest pan of night, we made what we could of our 'camp'. Yago joined the children, searching for any scoop in the rocks or hidden hole that might once have held a few ounces of water or mud. Liljana squeezed a little slime out of the water skins; it moistened our throats but was not enough to drink. After setting out the bows and arrows on ground providing a clear line of sight down the ravine, Kane took off his cloak and went hunting. He managed to throw this garment over a rock owl, which he killed by snapping its neck. He used his knife to bleed it, filling up nearly two cups with a thick, blackish blood. Only Daj and Turi could bring themselves to drink this evil-looking liquid, and they each took a cup and drained it. Yago looked on approv-ingly. Then Kane dug out the owl's eyes, which he and Yago ate like grapes, sucking out the aqueous humors and then spitting out the hard lenses.

After the children and Yago returned to their search for water, Kane scowled at Maram and me — and the rest of us — and snarled out: 'So, you think you are thirsty, eh? Not thirsty enough, I say! Just wait until the sun rises tomorrow. Then you'll pray for a little blood, if you can find any, and you'll be grateful to lick the sweat from the horses' hides!'

He went over to grab up one of the bows and stand watch in the starlight, staring down the ravine into the canyon below.

And Maram sighed out, 'Well, what about the brandy? That's mostly water, isn't it?'

Master Juwain shook his head at this and said him, 'I've told you before: spirits only dry out the body, worse than sea water. Please put this out of your mind.'

After another hour, when it grew bitterly cold, the children gave up their search in order to take a little rest, lying down with Maram, Master Juwain, Atara and Liljana. Yago continued prowling about the rocks above us. I tried to sleep but kept waking up in want of water to ease the burning in my throat. The stars shone down brightly through air that was too clear.

Then, near dawn, I heard Kane call out from where he stood watch above us: 'They come!'

I rose up stiffly from the rocky ground and climbed to where he stood on a prominence looking down through the canyon to the open desert in the west. Even two miles away we could see the light of what must be torches, moving closer.

'So, so,' Kane said, stringing his longbow.

I tried to find some moisture in my mouth with which to wet my tongue. I said, 'I'm afraid I'm too parched to fight another battle.'

'Battle?' he growled out. 'Well, it might come to that yet. It all depends on whether our enemy has enough water to wait us out.'

When the torches began moving up through the mouth of the canyon, I woke up the others. The children, with Liljana, renewed what seemed a hopeless quest to find water. Maram and Yago joined Kane and me at the edge of the rocky shelf. So, a moment later, did Master Juwain and Atara, who used her unstrung bow to feel her way over the broken ground. She had hardly spoken ten words for all the last day. Now she came up to me and whispered in my ear. Her words burned with the rage of helplessness: 'I still can't see. I should break my bow and cast away the pieces!'

'It will return,' I whispered back to her. 'It will all return.'

She stood in the silence of the dark, shivering in the cold and shaking her head. She said to me, 'Tell me what you see.'

And so I did. As the night drew to an end, a faint light warmed the world. It slowly grew brighter. I tried to describe the way the sun's first rays touched the desert with a golden-red glow. It was all strangely beautiful, I said. This luminosity worked its way east until it filled the canyon's mouth and set its stark rocks on fire. Now, I told her, our enemy had no need of their torches. In the hard light of day, they tracked us more surely and swiftly. A mass of horsemen, perhaps sixty strong, worked their way up toward us. It seemed that they still hadn't seen us, half-hidden as we were behind the boulders on the rocky shelf. But I could easily see them. Most of the horsemen wore billowing white robes like unto Turi's and Yago's. Five of them, though, showed the bright carmine of tunics or surcoats: the color of the Red Priests. I could not guess what kind of garment covered the droghul of Morjin.

'The Poisoner comes!' Yago said from next to me as he pointed his saber down the ravine. 'Which one is he, Mirustral?'

'I can't quite tell,' I said to him. 'They are still too far away.'

'Not for long,' Maram muttered. 'We might as well jump up and announce ourselves so as to make things easier.'

He turned to stare at the slope of mountain looming large and dark behind us. I turned, too, looking for Liljana and the children. It seemed that Liljana must have pulled the children down into the cover of the rocks higher up.

'The sun will be up soon,' Maram muttered. He put down his bow and took out his red crystal instead. He looked down at the horsemen moving slowly up the canyon. 'Well, let them come, then! They must be hungry after riding all night — I'll give them fire to eat!'

'No,' Master Juwain said, coming over to rest his hand on his arm. 'It's too dangerous.'

'The droghul comes,' I said to him. I blinked against the sick heat of my blood burning into my eyes. 'He surely comes, and he'll kill you with your own fire.'

'It might be our last chance,' Maram said as he pointed his crystal down into the canyon.

'No,' I told him. 'He'll turn your fire and kill us all.'

Yago turned to regard Maram, puzzled by the turn of our talk. It seemed that he knew nothing of the gelstei. There was no time to educate him, however, for just then a cry rang out through the canyon as one of the white-robed men below us pointed straight up the ravine toward our position.

'Maybe,' Maram said, 'I can at least burn that damn droghul before he burns me.'

The enemy moved still closer, and now I caught a gleam of yellow hair to match the yellow tunic of a man riding near the lead of the horsemen. The fire that whispered in my mind told me that this must be yet another incarnation of Morjin.

'So,' Kane's voice rumbled. 'So.'

'No fire,' I said to Maram. 'Not yet — let's see what they'll do.'

When the horsemen came to the ravine, they stopped and began dismounting. Some of them shouted up to us. I could not make out what they were saying. Kane nocked an arrow, and drew it back to his ear. Then he shook his head as he eased the tension on the bowstring. It was a long shot down to the men below us, about a hundred yards. Atara might possibly be able to pick off targets at such a distance, but Kane hated wasting arrows.

'You were right, Mirustal,' Yago said to me. 'This Poisoner and the Red Priests have their stingers sunk very deep into the Zuri. I didn't really think they would dare to cross the Avari's lands.'

A Zuri warrior, holding up a white banner of truce, began making his way up the ravine. One of the priests walked to his left. So narrow was this rocky chute that another man would have had difficulty fitting in beside them.

They came within thirty yards, close enough that I could see the priest's smooth, sunburnt face. He had red hair and blue eyes, like the men of Surrapam. Kane pulled back on his bowstring again, sighting his arrow upon him.

'No!' I called to him. 'They come under truce!'

'Truce?' Kane growled out. 'The bloody Red Priests would break it as readily as they'd squash a bug. Let me at least kill one of them and lighten our work.'

'No!' I said again. 'Let's hear what he has to say.'

'Lies, he'll say. How many must we listen to?'

The two men halted their climb twenty yards below us. The Zuri warrior had the look of Yago's people, with his black beard and dark, hard features. When I remarked that he looked much like the Masud I had seen at the well, Yago took insult saying, 'Can you not see how his eyes are too close together, like a snake's? Look at his narrow forehead! And the cut of his robes, which are …'

As Yago began describing the different cut and stitching of the robes of the various tribes of the Ravirii, the much-fairer Red Priest called up to us: 'Well-poisoners! My name is Maslan, and I speak on behalf of Oalo, whom Tatuk has sent to bring you to justice! Lay down your weapons and surrender, and you shall be spared the punishment decreed for poisoners! Your children shall be taken into the Zuri tribe and well cared for.'

'Never!' Yago shouted back at him. 'Give my son to you? It is the yellow-hair you ride with who is the well-poisoner!'

Maslan turned to the warrior beside him as if to say: 'Do you see how they lie?'

Then he called up to us again: 'You are trapped here! I think you have no water. We can wait here until you drop of thirst.'

'Then wait!' Kane shouted down to him. 'Or send up as many as you please! We've arrows enough for you all!'

Maslan took from the Zuri warrior a waterskin, which he held up to his lips. He swished some water around in his mouth, then spat it out into the ravine. He called out: 'Any who surrender may have all the water they wish. Any who do not are welcome to lick these rocks.'

That was all he said to us. He turned his back to us, and led the Zuri warrior back down the ravine to the mass of our enemy gathered in the canyon below.

'Val,' Maram said to me. 'Put your sword through my throat! It will be better than dying of thirst or whatever torture the Red Priests have planned for us.'

'Be quiet,' I said to him, trying to think. 'There must be a way out.'

'What way?' Maram asked. 'To begin with, it might rain.'

Maram looked up at the sky, at the single cloud floating above the desert toward the north. He said, 'What other miracles do you hope for?'

'Estrella might yet find water.'

'And I,' Maram said, 'might sprout wings like a bird and simply fly out of here. But if I don't, and grow too weak and the worst befalls, please promise me you won't let the Red Priests have me?'

'I won't let them touch you,' I told him. 'Now be quiet. You waste water with every breath.'

There was nothing to do then but to wait. The Zuri and the Red Priests below us dismounted and made camp at the bottom of the ravine. I was sure that whoever Oalo might be, it was the droghul who really commanded Zuri and the priests, and took charge of this siege. I felt his presence like a burning quicksand sucking at my will to oppose him. I found myself wishing that it had been he who had showed himself in the ravine to offer his vile terms. Then Kane would have put an arrow through his heart, truce or no truce.

At last the sun rose over the rim of the mountains behind us, and rained down its killing rays. The cold of night bled from the air with startling quickness as it grew warmer and warmer. After a while the sun heated up the rocks around us like a natural oven. We began to sweat. Soon, I thought, we would all be ready to lick the rocks of the ravine, even as the priest had said.

For a few hours, we waited for our miracle. And then Kane, who had the eyes of an eagle if not the wings, caught sight of a dust plume moving quickly across the desert toward the mouth of the canyon. Soon, another mass of horsemen came into view. There must have been more than a hundred and fifty of them. Upon seeing them pounding up through the canyon, Maram gave up the last of his hope.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said. 'More Zuri!'

The arrival of these new warriors, however, did not seem to be welcomed by the Zuri encamped below us. They sprang up from beneath their flapping sun cloths and ran for their horses. I saw sixty sabers flashing in the sunlight. But they were outnumbered more than two to one. The new warriors thundered closer, drawing in more tightly as they rode up through the funnel of the canyon. They came to a halt almost shoulder to shoulder in a long line that completely blocked any exit into the desert. They waited on horseback with their sabers pointing at the Zuri fifty yards away.

'Can you not see?' Yago said to Maram, pointing out details in the garments of the newcomers, particularly the shawls drawn across their faces. 'Those are the Avari.'

He spoke this name as one might that of a werewolf or some other unnatural being.

'So,' Kane growled with a smile, 'now who is trapped?'

As Maram stood with his strung how. peering down the ravine into the canyon at these two groups of warriors, I felt him struggling to take a little cheer in this unexpected turn of events. But then Yago dashed his hopes, saying to Kane, 'Little good that it will do us. Likely the Avari will kill the Zuri, and then turn on us.'

I watched as two Zuri warriors rode out toward the Avari bearing a banner of truce. Two men in red robes rode with them, led by a man wearing a bright yellow tunic. His hair, I saw, shone golden. Now, at this distance, I could just barely make out the red dragon blazing from his tunic. From the Avari line, four men with swaddled faces urged their horses forward to meet them. They, too, bore a banner of truce. I wondered what lies Maslan and the droghul would tell the Avari as they sat holding council beneath the merciless sun.

I did not have to wait long to find out the answer to this question. The tallest of the four Avari, who all seemed to sit much higher on their horses than either the Zuri or the droghul, broke off council. He began riding slowly in the direction of the Zuri's line, which parted before him like a wave of water. He rode straight up into the ravine. Where the way grew too steep, he dismounted and walked beside his great, gray horse, leading it up toward the rocky shelf where Kane and Maram stood aiming arrows at him. Yago waited there, too, with his saber drawn. He had never met an Avari warrior, and was unsure how to greet him.

'May the sun warm your face,' Yago called out to him. 'May the rain fill your wells, Avari.'

'May the rain fill your wells, Masud.' He spoke with a strange accent, which changed the sounds of his words so that 'well' came out as 'weal', and 'rain' was rendered as 'reen'. From the tone of his voice and the deepness of his eyes, I guessed his age to be about thirty, 'From what I've been told, one of your wells has been poisoned by the very outlanders you ride with.'

The warrior climbed up and joined us on the rocky shelf. He stood nearly as tall as I. Silver bracelets encrusted with blue stones flashed from his wrists. Beneath his head covering his eyes shone bright as black onyx. He regarded Kane and me in astonishment.

'I am Sunji,' he informed us. 'Son of Jovayl, who is king of the Avari. My father sent me to discover who has invaded our realm, and why.'

I longed to tell him that I, too, was a prince of a realm far away. I wanted to give him my real name. But as I had relinquished all claim to honors and rank to live the life of a wanderer, I did not. Instead I told him much the same story that I had Yago. When I finished, Sunji stood staring at me as he might a viper.

'The one you call a droghul,' he said to me, pronouncing that name strangely, too, 'claims to be Morjin himself, king of the realm called Sakai. He claims that you are the poisoners of the Masud's well.'

'But why would we poison a well and so deny ourselves water?' I said to him. 'And why would one of the Masud ride with those who had poisoned his own people?'

'I do not know,' Sunji said to me. 'That is to be determined.'

'Determined how?' Maram asked him.

Sunji looked at Maram, with his fly-blown sores, as one might a leper. Then he said, 'There will be a trial. Either this Morjin or Mirustral is lying. And so Mirustral will come with me now, that he might stand face to face with Morjin.'

At the thought of this, my hand moved of its own to grip the hilt of my sword. And Kane pointed down into the canyon as he growled out to Sunji, 'I'll not let my friend go into that dragon's den alone!'

Sunji bowed his head to Kane. 'You may come as a second, then. Rowan Madeus, if that is really your name. And the Masud.'

He looked at Yago, who assented to Sunji's demand. And I said to Sunji, 'And what if we will not stand at trial?'

'Then you may stand here and let the sun determine your fate!'

It seemed that we had no choice. Sunji waited patiently while we made our preparations. Master Juwain came over to me and led me in a meditation, the same one as he had before I fought my duel with Salmelu. Atara, in silence, kissed me on the lips. As I moVed to gather up Altaru's reins, Maram took me aside and said, 'I should come with you, too.'

'No, Maram,' I told him, looking down the ravine into tne canyon. 'You must stay here and guard everyone, in case there is treachery. With your bow, if you can, and with your firestone, if you cannot.'

His eyes blurred with tears, and he nodded at me. 'But how will you stand against Morjin and all his lies?'

'I don't know,' I said. I clasped hands with him and smiled. 'But there will be a way — there is always a way.'

Kane and Yago, leading their horses, came up behind me. Then I pulled gently on Altaru's reins, and we followed Sunji down into the ravine.