Black Jade

Chapter 23

Later that afternoon, with the day's heat finally escaping the earth's hold on it, we said goodbye to Yago and Turi. They would set out for the Masud's country and the hadrahs in the south where most of his tribe was encamped.

'I must tell Rodaj of what has happened here,' he said to me as he readied his horse for the journey. It turned out that he was one of the Masud chief's many nephews, and he knew Rodaj well. 'He will want to know that the Red Priests have poisoned the Zuri and Vuai — and I don't mean their wells.'

'Tell him also,' I said to him, 'to keep watch over the gap in the mountains by which we came into the desert. There you will find many stone statues. One day the Red Dragon will send soldiers through it.'

'Thank you, Valashu Elahad. for giving such consideration to the people of a tribe you hardly know.'

'I know you,' I told him.

'And I know you. It has been a pleasure fighting by your side.'

We clasped hands, and in his honest, brutal way, he added, 'I don't think you will live to return from out of the desert, but if you do. I shall ask my uncle to command that you'll be welcome in the Masud's lands.'

'Thank you,' I said.

'Thank you for helping me to avenge my tribesman. It was the best thing I have ever done, cutting off that Morjin thing's head!'

With that he smiled grimly, and mounted his horse. He wetched as Turi made his farewells to Daj and Estrella. Then they turned to ride back down through the canyon and out into the glowing red desert beyond. We lingered a little longer. With the crisis of pursuit and battle behind us, Maram complained that his wounds hurt with particular acuteness. His sores, he said, burned as if someone had rubbed salt into them, and worse: 'Ah, it's as if something is eating into them — something is moving there, I can feel it!'

Master Juwain ordered him to remove his tunic, and this he did. He stood naked like a mountain of hairy white flesh. In the strong, clear light of the sun, we immediately saw what ailed him: it seemed that the flies had gotten to a dozen of his sores where his bandages had come loose, laying eggs there. The eggs must have recently hatched, for now his sores swarmed with little, squirming maggots.

'Oh, Lord!' Maram bellowed out, shaking his arms and legs and hopping about madly as if to shake loose the maggots. 'Get them off me!'

His shouts drew the attention of many Avari, who gathered around. Master Juwain laid his hand on Maram's shoulder to calm him, and said, 'We should let these creatures alone. They will eat the dead flesh and clean your wounds.'

'I don't care!' Maram bellowed again. 'I won't live like this! I can feel these worms eating me alive, and it's driving me mad!'

His frantic pleas finally persuaded Master Juwain to debride his sores with a scalpel and tweezers. One of the Avari took pity on Maram and produced a fresh bit of cloth that Master Juwain cut up into bandages. It wasn't enough to bind all of Maram's sores, but it would keep the flies out of the most serious of them.

'This is worse than the Vardaloon,' Maram said to me as he shooed away a couple of buzzing flies. 'We always knew that accursed wood would have an end, but it seems the desert goes on forever.'

Later that afternoon, when the Avari had finished burying their dead, they filled all their waterskins from the river that Estrella had discovered. They helped the wounded onto their horses and drew up in a loose formation. My friends and I, now swathed in the robes of the fallen Avari warriors, gathered near the front, for Sunji had invited us to ride with him. We set out into the dusk, with the first stars appearing in the heavens like countless glittering grains of sand.

It was Sunji's intention that we should journey to the Avari's greatest hadrah, which lay a day's ride toward the mountains to the north. There we would rest as long as we wished. There, too, Sunji would take counsel with King Jovayl and the Avari elders as to our best course. 'My father,' he said as we made our way over the darkening desert, 'will honor my pledge to help you. Though when he discovers that the girl is an udra mazda, he will not want to give her up to the desert.'

It was a mystery, he told me, whom the gift of finding water would touch.

'Such a gift is very rare,' he said, 'for an udra mazda is born only once every hundred years.'

He told me that he also wished to solve the mystery of our seeming kinship. As he put it: 'My tribe dwells in the desert, and so we are counted as being Ravirii. But we Avari are not like the peoples of the other tribes. The minstrels tell we are not of the desert; they sing that the Father of the Avari came here from the stars long, long ago.'

As the night deepened and the horses drove their hooves against the rocky ground, Sunji's account of the Avari's origins convinced me that they were indeed one the lost tribes of the Valari. Vast reaches of time and isolation here in the desert, though, had done their work upon the Avari's collective memory: the facts of history had degenerated into legend, and legend had become myth. According to the story that Sunji told me, the Father of the Avari had descended to earth riding upon the back of a fiery mare named Ea. It had been told that here on this barren world, called the Ar Ratham, or the Wrath of the One, the Father of the Avari would find the golden cup that would restore the desert to life and keep it from spreading to devour the whole of the world.

'After many years of searching over the dunes and across the burning sands,' Sunji told me, 'the Father of the Avari did indeed find the Kal Urna, which had been hidden in a cave. Upon drinking of its cool waters, the burning veils of mirage were lifted from his eyes, and he saw the world as it might be. He saw his mare, Ea, as she really was, and he gave her to drink of the waters of the Kal Urna. At once, the fires consuming her were put out, and Ea stood revealed as a beautiful woman. So happy was she to be restored to herself that she wept whole rivers of tears. These fell upon the desert's hadrahs, and there trees grew. But they were not enough to turn the desert green; only the Kal Urna held so much water. The Father of the Avari and Ea went forth to bring this sacred water everywhere. But then a man of one of the Ravirii tribes in his cursed covetousness, cast his evil eyes upon the golden cup. His name was Ar Yun, which means the Cursed One. Ar Yun stole the golden cup from the Father of the Avari. It is said that a sandstorm sent by the One ate the flesh off his bones, and the Kal Urna was lost.'

As we rode past dark clumps of ursage and bitterbroom forcing their way up through the cracked earth, Maidro and Laisar pressed their horses in close to hear this telling of the Avari's ancient story. Daj and Estrella rode next to me, and they seemed eager to hear more. So did Kane. His eyes, beneath the cowl wrapped around his face, gleamed in the starlight.

'After that,' Sunji went on, 'the Father of the Avari took Ea as his wife, and she gave birth to our people. For generation after generation, the Avari have gone into the desert to search for the Kal Urna. It is said that one day, a great Udra Mazda born of the Avari will restore the sands to new life.'

I caught Sunji gazing at Estrella as if in hope that she might be this Udra Mazda. But he shook his head, for it was obvious that whatever people Estrella claimed as her own, she had not been bojrn of the Avari.

I said to Sunji, 'What was the name of the Father of the Avari?'

'We call him Ar Raha, the Beloved of the One.'

I smiled and then told him of the history recorded by my people: of how Elahad had brought the Lightstone to Ea, only to be murdered by his brother, Aryu. Aryu, I said, had then stolen the golden cup and fled with it into the west. Elahad's son, Arahad, had led a vain search for Aryu and the Lightstone that had lasted a hundred years. When Arahad and his followers failed to find it, their descendants at last settled in the Morning Mountains under the leadership of Shavashar, Arahad's son and king of the Valari.

'It must be,' I told him, 'that your people were sons and daughters of Arahad, too, who remained in the desert. And so the Avari and the Valari are as one.'

From the back of his horse, Sunji regarded me as we rode across

the starlit earth.

'Think of the names,' I told him. 'Ea. Ar Raha and Arahad; Ar Yun and Aryu — these are nearly the same, are they not?'

Sunji admitted that they were, then added, 'And your people's story is nearly the same as my people's. It is a pity, though, that many parts of it have been misremembered and come down to you as only myths.'

I smiled again, and was glad for the shawl that hid my face. I said to Sunji, 'Both our accounts, at least, tell that the Lightstone will restore the world to new life.'

'I do not know, Valaysu,' he said to me. 'Can the Lightstone really be the Kal Urna? I think perhaps this golden cup of yours is only one of your gelstei made after the image of the Kal Urna.'

'That is because you have not held it in your hands and beheld the stars shimmering inside it.'

'To see is to know,' he said to me as his eyes gleamed. 'And I would like to know the truth about this Lightstone of yours and the Maitreya. I will ponder what you have told me, and take counsel with my father and the elders when we reach Hadr Halona.'

This was the name of the Avari's greatest hadrah. After a long night's ride through rugged terrain that took us ever higher, with the Avari warriors and the confiscated Zuri horses strung out in a long line across the rocky desert, we came to this place of water just before dawn. The Avari had made a home for thousands of their people in a five-mile wide break between the mountains. The Hadr Halona proved to be more of a small city than an encampment. Although many woolen tents had been pitched around springs and the single lake, many houses had also been built of stone. As Sunji told me, these had walls ten feet thick and cellars dug thirty feet deep, down into the ground where it was always cool, even in the blazing heat of summer. But even the tent-dwellers found life within the hadrah more pleasant than in the open desert. It was higher here, and therefore cooler. The towering peaks above the hadrah held snow for at least part of the year, and gave this water to the Avari in Seams that filled the lake. But most blessed of all were the hadrah's many trees: mostly the gnarled sakur trees that bloomed yearly with pretty pink flowers and gave a succulent fruit called a kammat. According to Laisar, it was a crime punishable by disembowelment to cut the sacred sakur trees for wood.

As we made our way down into the hadrah, sentinels standing on rocky prominences blew horns to announce our arrival. A thousand people, it seemed, roused themselves from their beds to come out and greet us. They stood in robes outside of their tents and houses, and lined the dusty lanes as we rode past. We created a great stir in the lives of the Avari, for they rarely welcomed strangers into the hadrah. Then, too, the news of the battle caused many to shout with excitement at the prospect of dividing up the Zuri's horses, swords, clothing and other spoils — and it set off rounds of wailing, too, in those who mourned sons, brothers or fathers killed in battle.

The house of Sunji's father, Jovayl, had been built near the valley's small, single lake. Compared to the houses around it, it rose up like a palace; but compared to the palaces of great kings that I had seen, it was little more than a hut. Its walls were of sandstone, plastered with dried mud and painted white. Slender sandstone pillars twelve feet high held up the tiled roof and fronted the house's porch. There, in the dawn's red light. Jovayl stood waiting to greet us. He was a tall man, like most of his people. Here, in the hadrah, where he had no worry about losing the moisture of his breath to the air, he wore no cowl to cover his face. The deep lines cut into his dark, ivory skin suggested that he had seen more than sixty years. His features were as aquiline as any eagle's, with a great, broken nose and black eyes that darted about in quick assessment as we rode up. He seemed more intelligent than cunning, and less cruel than hard. Sunji told me that the Avari's king was a simple man and a great warrior who had killed sixty-three men in battle.

He saw immediately that my companions and I were all exhausted. He ordered that baths be prepared for us, and food. We were to rest that day, he said, in his house's deepest rooms, set out with urns of cool water, bowls of fruit, flowers and fresh linens. Then, in a harsh, old voice like grinding stones, he told us, 'Tonight we will sit at feast and listen to the story of the Poisoner with the Voice of Ice and the Udra Mazda.'

We had no trouble heeding his command. The hospitality of King Jovayl's house afforded us the first real comfort we had known since leaving the Brotherhood's school many miles and many days before. In a steamy stone room in the back of King Jovayl's house, we washed the dust and grime from our bodies; then outside on the porch we filled ourselves with good food. We lay down to rest in dark, quiet rooms. When evening came, servants brought us robes woven of virgin lamb's wool. They were King Jovayl's gift to us, and we were to wear them to the feast.

This commenced at sunset, upstairs in the great room of King Jovayl's house. We joined King Jovayl's wife, Adri, and Sunji and young Daivayr in a sort of windowless hall hung with brightly-worked tapestries of cotton, which proved to be the Avari's most precious cloth. Other guests included Laisar and Maidro, and four other elders even more ancient. Three well-seasoned men — captains like Sunji — arrived, too, and their names were Arthayn, Noldayn and Ramji. We all sat on cushions arrayed in a great circle on top of a white woolen carpet. A small table, carved out of stone, was set in front of each of us. King Jovayl sat to the north, beneath a tapestry woven with silver swans and stars. I nearly wept to see this beautiful thing appearing as if by the magic of fate here in the middle of the desert.

We ate roasted lamb and kid, the fattest of King Jovayl's flocks. The Avari grew wheat on irrigated land, and so we had bread as well, stuffed with bits of garlic, onions and nuts, and hot from the ovens. With reverence, King Jovayl passed around a bowl of salt to sprinkle on these meats and breads. There were cheeses, too, and figs, oranges and the plump red fruit called a kammat. The Avari did not drink blood, as their enemies told, but they did celebrate with wine, and to Maram's delight, beer. His happiness in discovering these beverages being passed around the circle, however, lasted only as long as Master Juwain's murmured warning to him: 'Remember your vow!'

Maram sat next to me, and I heard him murmur back: 'In the desert, I nearly died of thirst, and now I'm dying of a different thirst, if you know what I mean. It would be rude of me to refuse King Jovayl's gracious hospitality, would it not?'

With a great smile he eagerly held up his silver wine cup.

But when Barsayr, a toothless old man, overheard this conversation, he passed the word to King Jovayl that Maram's vow of abstinence must be respected. And King Jovayl, sitting with his cup full and waiting to make a toast, raised his cup to Maram and called out, 'It takes a brave man to make and keep such a vow, and we all honor you. But you must toast with us, and so you shall have the most honorable of all drinks.'

He then asked one of his daughters, Saira, to fill Maram's cup with mare's milk. When this tall, pretty girl had carried out this request, Maram took a long look at the warm, greasy white liquid in his cup and muttered, 'Milk — it's barbaric to drink an animal's secretions. I might as well be made to drink a horse's saliva or sweat!'

'You didn't object to drinking the Ymanir's kalvaas,' I reminded him.

'That's because it was, ah, fermented. Besides, my sensibilities have grown more refined.'

He smiled politely, though, when King Jovayl lifted up his cup and spoke a requiem in remembrance of the Avari warriors who had fallen in the Battle of the Dragon Rocks, as they named it. After that, other Avari made other toasts: to King Jovayl's guests and to the nighttime sky, and most especially, to the new water that Estrella had found and to Estrella herself.

'It is strange that an udra mazda should come to us from beyond the desert,' King Jovayl said to us. He sat cross-legged on his cushions as he looked at me. 'And strange, too, that you propose to take this girl away from us so soon.'

During the feast, we had told the King as much as we had Sunji and his warriors. For hours, our talk had centered around the news that we brought and the seemingly miraculous things that we told to the Avari. Now it had come time to decide if King Jovayl would help us.

'Valaysu,' he said to me, 'you have told that you seek the one called the Maitreya in the lands across the desert, but you have not said where.'

'Nor can I, sir,' I said. 'It may be that your people will fight other battles with the Red Dragon's priests — if they are captured, the Kallimun know tortures that would make a stone talk.'

King Jovayl frowned at this. 'When I was a young man, these priests tried to establish an embassy here, but my father, Tavayr, had the good sense to send them away. Now, from the Zuri and Vuai, we see what happens when a tribe takes scorpions into its heart.'

He paused to look about, and continued, 'We see as well the wisdom of our elders' elders in turning strangers away from the Avari's country.'

I said nothing to this as I took a long drink of wine.

'Of course,' King Jovayl continued, looking from me to Estrella, 'our laws were made to serve us, and not the reverse, and so exceptions must be made. It is clear that in keeping strangers away we have also denied ourselves news of great and evil things occurring beyond our borders. I had not thought that any outsiders, not even the greatest of kings, could ever send an army into the desert. Now I am not so sure.'

He nodded at Arthayn, a square-faced man with eyes as cool as pools of water. A choker of bright skytones and silver encircled his neck. Arthayn had just returned from the north, where King Jovayl had sent him on a mission to avoid yet another war with the Sudi. Arthayn now gave a report of his journey, telling us: 'I saw none of these Red Priests in the Sudi's hadrah, but I heard talk that the new King of Yarkona wanted to send an embassy of Kallimun to the Sudi. I didn't know what that word meant, then. The Sudi believed that if they did not accept this embassy, King Ulanu would send an army down through the Nashthalan into the desert. There was a time when Yarkona was weak, but now it is strong.' At the look of loathing that fell over Liljana's face at the mention of King Ulanu's name. King Jovayl turned to her and said.'Do you know of this man?'

'We met him once,' liljana told him. 'On our road to Argattha, I happened to hold out a sword just as Ulanu — he was only a count then — happened to slice off his nose on the tip of it.'

Although Liljana could not smile, her wry words caused nearly everyone else to smile. Then King Jovayl said to her, 'And you call yourself a pilgrim?'

'Then we were truly pilgrims,' she said, 'In quest of the Lightstone. Ulanu killed the best of us — the finest minstrel in the world! — And then nailed him to a cross of wood.'

'And what was this minstrel's name?'

'Alphanderry.'

For the thousandth time, I reflected on the miracle of Flick somehow taking on Alphanderry's face and form. I looked about the room for Flick's twinkling lights, but as always he winked in and out of existence according to a will beyond mine.

'A minstrel,' King Jovayl intoned, 'is the beloved of the One, for his heart sings with the words of the One.'

King Jovayl raised his cup in silent remembrance of our dead companion. Then he said to me, 'I have taken the counsel of our elders. We do not believe that this Lightstone that King Morjin claims can be the Kal Urna. Nor can the Maitreya you seek be the great Udra Mazda — not unless as a child he was once lost to the Avari and taken into the lands outside the desert. And yet we do not have claim upon all wisdom. If we are wrong, the Maitreya must be found and the Lightstone somehow must be taken back. And even if we are right that the Lightstone is only one of these gelstei of yours, King Morjin must be denied the use of it lest he send into the desert even worse things than droghuls. These are strange times, in which strangers can bring an udra mazda to us and new water be found. And so we have decided to help you. But help you how?'

'Help us to cross the desert,' I said simply.

'And how will you, strangers from wet lands, do this impossible thing even with our help?' King Jovayl sat on his cushions looking from Liljana to Maram to Daj.

'You cannot cross it to the far north — the way is too long, and the Sudi would kill you if thirst didn't first. Beyond the Sudi are the Idi, five hundred miles from here as the eagle flies to the northwest. The southern way will take you through the Zuri's or Vuai's country, where the Red 'Priests will surely be waiting for you now.'

'Perhaps,' Maram said, 'we should then reconsider our plans. Perhaps we should go back through the Masud's country, and then turn far south, through Sunguru.'

'No,' Kane barked out. 'In Sunguru, we'll find hundreds of the bloody Red Priests — and even more acolytes under their command. As well, the armies of King Angand.'

I took a sip of wine, then said to King Jovayl. 'How would the Avari cross the desert then?'

'We wouldn't,' he told me. 'We don't.'

'But don't your minstrels sing that the Avari have gone everywhere in the desert, searching for the Kal Urna?'

'That is true, in ages past, we have gone almost everywhere.'

'Even, then, into the Tar Harath?'

At the mention of this immense hell at the heart of the Red Desert, King Jovayl's face grew hard and full of dread. So did the faces of every other Avail sitting down to dinner. King Jovayl said to me, 'I see the turn of your thoughts, Valaysu. But you cannot hope to cross the Tar Harath. That would be madness. Nothing lives there, not even scorpions or flies. There is no water — only rocks and sand, wind and sun. And then sun, and more sun.' 'Then the Avari never go into the Tar Harath?' King Jovayl glanced at Sunji before turning back to me. 'We go into it, for we are Avari and the desert is ours.'

He told that men of his tribe often journeyed to the Golden Highlands to mine skystone out the rocks there. The deep blue skystone, as King Jovayl told us, was precious to the Avari, for it reminded them of the great vault of the heavens from which the Father of the Valari and Ea had once come. A few intrepid warriors had also ventured deeper into the Tar Harath in search of the fabled salt beds of a dried-up lake. As the Avari tell their children: 'Safe is life.' They usually do not say this of water, for that is too obvious. But in the desert, the salt dissolved in the blood and in the sweat pouring forth from the skin's pores was vital.

'In a thousand years, though, no Avari has ever found these salt beds,' King Jovayl told us. 'Just as no one has ever found water.'

Old Sarald pulled at the folds of flesh beneath his chin as he regarded King Jovayl with a bright, knowing look. King Jovayl took note of this and said to me, 'The eldest of the Avari's judges reminds me that I have not told all: it is said that there is water in the deep desert, though no Avari knows where. You must have heard word of this water yourselves, Valaysu.'

'No, we have not,' I said to him. 'Why would you think that?'

'Why, because when Sunji first questioned you, you admitted that you sought the Well of Restoration. That is the name of the water said to lie within the Tar Harath.'

I stared at King Jovayl in amazement. The inspiration for our story that we were pilgrims seeking the Well of Restoration had come from Maram one night on the Wendrush while he was deep into his third horn of beer. It seemed too incredible a coincidence that this name had just popped into his head, as he had claimed. When I turned to him now and caught his eye with a questioning look, he murmured to me: 'Ah, I must have been touched by the spirit of the One. Do you see now the value of brandy and beer? Why do you think they're called spirits?'

I tried not to smile at this as King Jovayl called out to him from the front of the room: 'What are saying, Prince Maram? Speak louder so that we all can hear you!'

'Ah, I was saying that you must be right. Wise King, that it would be madness for us to seek this Well of Restoration that even the hardiest of your warriors has not been able to find.'

Now I stared more intently at Maram, letting him feel my great desire to journey on.

'Ah, and that is why,' Maram continued, 'we must try to cross. the Tar Harath after all — we're all mad, as you must have guessed, even to have come this far.'

Now I couldn't help smiling, nor could King Jovayl or Sunji or even Old Sarald and many others sitting at their little tables. King Jovayl nodded at Maram. 'It may be that only a madman could survive in the Tar Harath. And yet there is a chance for others to survive, one chance only. It may be that the udra mazda could lead you to this water.'

All eyes in the room now turned toward Estrella. This slight girl, with her dark curls and dreamy eyes, sat between Atara and Liljana, eating an orange. She seemed unused to people expecting such great and even miraculous things of her. And yet I knew that she expected great things of herself. What these might be, however, I thought that she could not say, not even to herself.

She put down her orange rind, and looked at me. Her eyes shone like dark, quiet pools. She seemed to have a rare sense of herself, and something more. She nodded her head to me. She smiled, then turned to bow to King Jovayl, too.

'It would be cruel to take this child, or any child, into the Tar Harath,' King Jovayl said to us. 'And yet your way has been nothing but cruel. That the udra mazda chooses this freely is a great thing. We have drunk to her finding water; now let us drink to her finding such great courage.'

He commanded that everyone's cup be refilled again. Maram tried not to show his disgust at the prospect of have to swallow yet more warm milk. Estrella and Daj both seemed delighted to see their cups filled with wine — as far as I knew, their first taste of it.

'To Estrella!' King Jovayl said. 'May the One's light always point her way toward water!'

We all drank deeply then — all of us except the children, as Liljana permitted them a few sips of wine but no more. King Jovayl then called for an end to the feast and commanded that we should go to take our rest.

'Even with an udra mazda to guide you,' he said to me, 'a journey across the Tar Harath will be a desperate chance. I cannot supply you with men, horses and water until I have conferred with the Elders more. So go, rest — tonight and tomorrow. And then tomorrow night, I shall give you my answer.'

My companions and I went down to our rooms then, but I did not sleep very well because I shared a room with Maram, and he slept poorly. Despite his exhaustion, he kept moaning as he tossed and turned in his bed, struggling to find a position that did not put pressure on his sores. He grumbled and cursed and finally fell into oblivion vowing that he would never ogle another woman again.

But the next day, late in the morning, I found him outside leaning back against an orange tree near one of the hadrah's springs. He sat in the shade of this fragrant-smelling tree as he used a shard of a broken pot to scratch at his sores. He watched the children at play: with swords and dolls, and kicking a leather ball across the dusty square. He watched the Avari women, too. They came and went to draw water from the spring. They cast us looks of both curiosity and suspicion, and then hurried away.

'Ah, these Avari woman are as comely as those of the Morning Mountains,' Maram said to me as he fixed his gaze on a young matron bending over the walled-off spring. 'At least, I think they are — who can really tell with those ugly robes and shawls of theirs?'

'I thought that women no longer interested you,' I said to him. 'Did I say that? No, no, my friend, it is I who do not interest them. In truth, I think I repulse them. And who can blame them? I think they would rather take a leper into their arms.'

He scratched the edge of his potsherd across one of his bandages. After sniffing at this stained white wrapping, his face fell into a mask of disgust. He shooed away the buzzing flies then let loose a long, deep sigh.

'Master Juwain,' I said to him, 'worries because your wounds are not healing as they should. He believes it would be best for you to rest here.'

'A year would not be too long,' he said. 'That is, if I could just engage one of these women in a little, ah, conversation. And if not for these damn flies.'

His hand beat the air in front of his face as he tried to snatch up and crush one of the black flies bedeviling him. But he might as well have tried to grasp the wind.

'Master Juwain,' I said to him, 'believes that it might be best for you to remain here.'

'Remain here?' he said to me. 'And watch the rest of you go on without me?'

I said nothing as I watched him scratch at his bitten leg.

'Ah, do you think I haven't thought about it?' he said to me. 'I don't suppose these Avari would deny me wine, though they'll keep their women away from me as they would silk from a pig.'

He made a fist and punched out at a particularly large, loud fly. Then he said, 'The truth is, though, no matter how drunk I tried to remain, I couldn't get away from these damn bloody flies. Unless I go with you into the Tar Ha rath, where there are no flies, if King Jovayl is right. Then too. .'

'Yes?'

'Then, too, I could never desert you,' He dropped his potsherd and clapped me on the shoulder. 'Haven't I told you that a hundred times?'

We traded smiles, then he said to me, 'In any case. King Jovayl might decide not to help us. Then we'll have the merry little choice between giving up our quest or going into the Tar Harath anyway where we'll die.'

I knew that he hoped for a good reason to give up our quest — and perhaps even longed for death to end his sufferings. But that evening. King Jovayl, according to his promise sent us word of his decision. Sunji found me outside King Jovayi's house as I sat on a large rock and gazed out at the stars.

'You shall have my father's help in crossing the Tar Harath,' he told me. 'I, myself, am to to lead three of our warriors and twenty horses to carry water across the sands.'

'Thank you,' I told him. 'The Avari are generous. And kind.'

'Sometimes we are. But some of the elders, I must tell you, spoke against this journey. They do not believe this Maitreya you hope to find really exists.'

'And you?'

'I have seen that Morjin thing you call a droghul. If such crea-tures of dark exist, why not a being of great light?'

Why not indeed? I wondered as I watched the bright stars.

'The elders,' he went on, 'believe that we Avari can live here as we have almost forever, keeping strangers away. But my father does not. and I do not. I believe that we will have to fight this new enemy, or die. Or worse: watch the world die.'

I clasped hands with him then and smiled sadly. Sunji, descended

from Elahad and Arahad, was of Valari blood, even as I was. It seemed that it was the fate of our people ever to fight against the evil that Morjin and Angra Mainyu had made — that is, when we weren't busy fighting each other.

Sunji pointed at the dark line of hills against the glowing sky to the west. He said to me, 'I went into the deep desert once, and promised myself I never would again. But life is strange, is it not?'

Yes, life was strange and precious, I told myself as I watched the play of lights that pointed the way to the Tar Harath. We might yet come to death there, or anywhere, but for the time being at least our quest to find the Maitreya would go on.