Black Jade

Chapter 24

For four days my companions and I rested at the Avari's hadrah. We ate good food and enjoyed good conversation, even as Maram bemoaned his wounds that wouldn't heal and beat away the biting black flies. King Jovayl sent out warriors and horses heavily laden with water into the west. The only well between the hadrah and the Tar Harath lay sixty miles toward the setting sun; no one knew whether or not at this time of year it would prove to be dry. As we learned when the warriors returned, the well was dry. And so the warriors had left a cache of water at the well. It wouldn't be enough to get us across the Tar Harath, but it would help us replenish the water that we brought with us. Hours before dawn on the twenty-third of Soldru, a day that promised to be as hot as any that summer, all who would be journeying into the Tar Harath gathered by the springs. We filled our waterskins and slung them on the backs of our horses. The pack-horses, of course, carried much more water than did our mounts and remounts — unless one considered that Altaru and Fire and our other old friends carried us, who were mostly water. I nearly wept when I learned of the Avari's plan for the horses, which was cruel: their packhorses would be given barely enough water to keep them alive. And then, if no additional water was found, as we and our mounts drank our precious water and lightened the packhorses' burdens waterskin by waterskin until nothing remained, the Avari would have to kill the now-useless horses to spare them from a worse death. As I had been told more than once: the ways of the desert were hard.

'If the worst befalls,' Sunji said to me, 'we'll have to reserve our water for ourselves and let our mounts go without. Not that this will save us for long, for if our mounts die, then we will die.'

In the quiet of the dark, with night's cold practically freezing us, I placed my hands over Altaru's ears so that my great stallion wouldn't have to hear such terrible words. I stroked his long neck and whispered to him: 'Don't worry, old friend, I won't let you be thirsty. You shall have water first before I drink, and if I must, I'll give you my own.'

He nickered in understanding, if not of my words, then of the bond of brotherhood that had taken us from land to land and battle to battle.

Sunji had chosen companions from his own tribe to go with us: Arthayn and a younger man named Nuradayn, whose black eyes burned with a desire to please his prince and do great things. Nuradayn seemed all whipcord muscle and quick, almost violent motions that blew out of the center of him like a whirlwind. I thought he might be impulsive or even wild, whereas I knew that Sunji's third companion was the opposite. This was Maidro. It surprised me that Sunji would choose an old man for such a difficult venture, but as Sunji told me: 'He is as hard as a rock and wiser in the ways of the desert than any man I know, even my father.'

When it came time for us to set out, King Jovayl rode up to the springs with his queen, Adri, and their two other children, Daivayr and Saira. They kept their farewell to Sunji brief. I overheard King Jovayl say to Sunji: 'Help Valaysu and his people to cross the desert, but do not go any farther than you must, and return as soon as you can. May the One always lead you to water.'

We assembled in a formation with Sunji and Maidro in the lead, followed by my companions and me, and then the packhorses, whom Arthayn and Nuradayn watched over. We made our way out of the hadrah as we had come, past the sentinels standing on high rocks. This time, in the deep of night before dawn, they did not blow their horns. I couldn't help wondering if Sunji and his warriors would ever return out of the Tar Harath to be heralded as the brave men they truly were.

Sunji led us on a course that wound through a series of low, rocky hills. In the near dark, we moved slowly lest one of the horses bruise a hoof and draw up lame. If a horse grew too lame, we would have kill it, and so come that much closer to killing our chances of success — as well as ourselves.

Just before dawn Flick made one of his mysterious appearances. Our four Avari companions marveled at his twinkling lights, and we explained as much as we knew of this luminous being. Maidro took this as a good omen, saying, 'Look — Valaysu brings the veil stars with him!'

An hour later the sun rose, and cast long shadows ahead of us against the gritty, hardpacked earth. Here, in the country near the hadrah, many things lived: ursage and bitterbroom, spike grass and soap grass, all glazed with a sticky, whitish alkali. Ostrakats ran across the desert on their two powerful legs chasing lizards and snakes, and even rabbits. We heard the roar of the distant lions who sometimes chased them. Other birds — the smaller sandrunners and rock sparrows — hunted beetles, grasshoppers and other insects. I was curious to lay eyes upon a strange creature that supposedly lived in these hills. Maidro called it a baboon, and said that the males protected their harems and young from the hyenas by the mere display of their hideous blue and red faces.

As we made our way west, the desert grew drier. The ursage and rockgrass thinned out, leaving the horses little forage. Soon they would have to subsist on the grain that the packhorses carried, along with the water. It was not good for the horses to go without grass, but there was no help for it. I prayed that in the Tar Harath, they wouldn't grow so hungry and maddened by thirst that they tried to eat sand.

After only a few hours into this leg of our journey, I noticed that Maram was having a very hard time of things. Every lurch and jolt against his saddle tormented him; he bit his own lip against the pain of his sores to keep from making complaint. Only the barbark nuts that he chewed, I thought, and some fierce inner fire kept him going.

He did not want to arise from our midday break; I felt him almost flogging himself to drive his great, afflicted body forward. That night, with the wind driving fine particles of grit into our mouths and eyes, he dismounted and collapsed down onto the warm ground. He ate the food that Liljana prepared for him with little enthusiasm. I knew that he was close to giving up hope.

Seeing this, I took Master Juwain aside and said to him, 'Maram is failing.'

'I'm afraid he is,' Master Juwain said to me. 'I don't know how to help him. All my ointments and medicines have availed not at all.'

'There is one medicine we might try.'

Master Juwain cast me a knowing and censorious look, and said, 'Do you mean the brandy? It would do nothing to heal him.'

'It wouldn't heal his body,' I admitted. 'But if we can strengthen his spirit, it might help him bear the grievances to his body.'

Master Juwain thought about this and smiled sadly. 'Why else would brandy be called "spirits"?'

'Just so,' I said, smiling too.

'I don't know,' Master Juwain said. 'If Maram had fallen into an icy river, and we had pulled him out and sat him by a fire, well, yes — then a tot of brandy might warm him. But I'm afraid that here in the desert it would serve only to parch him even more.'

'Only a tot, sir. And if that is too much, then just a taste. It can't parch him any more than this damn, dry wind.'

Master Juwain finally agreed to my proposal. He himself dug out one of the- brandy bottles and measured a few drams of it into Maram's cup. When he approached Maram with it, Maram sat up and brightened like a boy on his birthday. As his hand closed around the cup, he cried out to Master Juwain, 'Oh, Lord! Oh, my Lord! Thank you, sir — may your breath be blessed for taking pity upon a poor pilgrim!'

In a blink of an eye, Maram tossed down the brandy. It instantly excited his thirst for more. When he understood that no more rations would be forthcoming that night, he seemed crestfallen. But only for a moment for it occurred to him that if Master Juwain had consented to giving him this 'medicine' once, he might again.

'Tomorrow night, then?' Maram said to Master Juwain. 'I can't promise you that,' Master Juwain told him. 'It will depend on the need.'

'Oh, there'll be need enough,' Maram said, picking up his potsherd to scratch at his sores. 'I can promise you that.'

'We'll see. After another day's journey and thirty or forty miles of heat and dust, you might want only water to drink.'

But Maram appeared not to hear him. He gazed out into the dark distances to the west and murmured to himself: 'Ah, forty miles, then — forty miles equals one cup of brandy. Do you think I don't have the strength to journey forty thousand miles?'

That evening the wind blew even harder and beat against the walls of the three large tents that the Avari had brought with them and quickly erected. Maidro didn't like this wind any more than he had the heat of the day, for it stole too much moisture from us and made us even more thirsty. Heat and wind, sweat and water, miles behind us and miles still to come — these were the equations that concerned the Avari. Neither Maidro nor Sunji, however, shared Kane's concern that we should stand watches in order to protect our encampment — at least not at first. As Sunji told us: 'The Zuri will not send more of their warriors into our land to be slaughtered so soon, and for the time, we are at peace with the Sudi. We have no other enemies, and even if we did, they would be unlikely to come across us here, so close to the Tar Harath.'

Kane, standing near one of the tents to survey the rocky terrain about us, squinted against the wind and said to Sunji: 'So, now that you've slaughtered four of Morjin's priests along with the Zuri, you've gained another enemy, and the worst one yet. Then, too, we've reason to suspect that Morjin will unleash another of his cursed droghuls upon us.'

At this, he glanced at Atara, who stood over by the horses brushing down her mare, Fire. I looked at her, too. According to her scryer's way, she said nothing about the third droghul that she had foretold, nor about any other vision. In truth, she had said nothing at all to me since our disagreement over the fate of the captured priest. Her coldness toward me cut as keenly as the chill of the desert night.

'Do you believe,' Sunji said to Kane, 'that this droghul is close?'

Kane glanced at me, and I shook my head. And Kane said to Sunji, 'We've no reason to think so. But then, we've no reason to think not.'

'Then perhaps you should remain awake to watch for him,' Sunji said with a yawn. 'But I would advise you to rest — in the desert, exhaustion can kill as surely as poison or swords.'

With that, he went inside his tent to take a few hours of sleep along with his three tribesmen. Atara, Liljana and Estrella shared the second tent, while I squeezed inside the third with Maram, Master Juwain and Daj. Kane, as stubborn as a stone, stood outside looking out at the darkened land around us and sniffing at the wind.

It blew incessantly all night, right through the tents' tightly woven wool, covering us with a fine powder, I found myself grateful for the shawl wrapped around my mouth and nose, though I hated feeling smothered by this mask of warm, moist wool almost as much as I did its itch and fusty stench. The Avari I thought, might have inured themselves to the desert and all of its insults, but I never would.

We roused ourselves three hours before dawn. The four Avari breakfasted on some bread, dried antelope and a handful of figs, and we did the same. We fed the horses their rations of grain, then rode on into the coldest part of the night.

It was strange, I thought, how we all welcomed the rising of the sun almost as much as we dreaded it. The hellish sun could be death but it was also life, even here in the desert. For a couple of hours, as the hills gave out and we rode across a gravel plain, the sun fell upon our dusty robes and warmed us. Then it grew too warm, and then hot. We sweated even more than did the horses, whose dusty coats turned into masses of muddy hair.

Later that morning we reached the last well before the Tar Harath. The Avari, hundreds of years ago, had dug a hole down through the bottom of an old lake-bed and built a stone wall around it. While Sunji and his people pulled up the waterskins that Jovayl's warriors had dropped down into the well, Maram sprawled out beneath our hastily erected sun cloth. He was so tired that he could hardly move. Flies buzzed around him trying to get through his stained robes to his raw, oozing wounds beneath. Master Juwain brought him a cup a water, which he gulped down in two swallows. Then he looked up at Master Juwain with the sorrowful eyes of a dog and begged for a bit of brandy.

'No — no more,' Master Juwain said. 'At least not until day's end.'

'This is the end,' Maram moaned. 'I don't know if I can get back on my horse.'

'You can,' I said to him. 'You must.'

'How many more miles, then, until we break for the day? Fifteen? Twenty?'

'It doesn't matter,' I said, smiling down at him. 'It doesn't matter if it's twenty thousand miles — we must keep on going.'

'Oh, Val, I don't know!' Maram said as he beat his fist at the flies attacking his eyes. 'I don't know, I don't know!'

I walked off near the well to confer with Master Juwain — and with Kane, Atara and Liljana. To Master Juwain, I said, 'It is too much for him. Perhaps you should use your gelstei to try to heal him.'

Master Juwain brought out his green stone, which gleamed like an emerald in the strong sunlight. He said, 'No — we've agreed that it's too dangerous to use, now.'

'And dangerous if you don't use it. Maram might die.'

Master Juwain rubbed the back of his head, now swaddled in dusty white wool. He stared at his sparkling crystal and said, 'I'm afraid that the Red Dragon can feel me contemplating using this, even across deserts and mountains.'

'Perhaps he can,' I said as I drew my sword. I nodded at Kane and then Liljana. 'Perhaps we can confuse him then. If Liljana were to put her mind to her gelstei at the same moment that Kane used his, then — '

'Then they both might die even before Maram does.'

These ominous words came from Atara. She stood beneath the blazing sun rolling her scryer's sphere between her hands. I bowed my head because I knew that she was right. And she said to me, 'If any of us should try to distract Morjin, it should be me.'

'No,' I told her, squinting against my sword's brilliant silustria. 'It should be me. Of all of us, Morjin has yet to find his way into my gelstei.'

'And that is precisely why your use of it won't distract him.'

As Sunji and the other Avari warriors looked on and Daj and Estrella watered the horses, I swung Alkaladur in a bright arc against the sky. 'If I could make Morjin feel the true power that I have sensed within this sword, then I might do more than distract him.'

'Yes, you might die,' Atara said to me coldly.

'And you?' I said to her, looking at her diamond-clear crystal. 'Would not using your gelstei be just as dangerous?'

'No, I don't think so. Morjin might try to show me the worst of torments, but what is that against what he has already taken from me?'

I remembered how Atara had once shared with me one of her terrible visions, and I said, 'He might trap you inside a world from which there would be no escape.'

Atara tapped her fingers against her blindfold. With the shawl wrapped over her nose and mouth, the whole of her face was now lost beneath coverings of cloth. 'The world is all darkness now, and what could be a worse trap than that?'

'No,' I said, resting my hand on her arm. I can't let you.'

She pulled away from me and gripped her sphere more tightly as she told me, 'You can't stop me. And you mustn't.'

We all finally agreed that Master Juwain should try to heal Maram, with Atara's help. When we put our proposal to him, he quickly consented, for he did not want to live another day scratching at his sores, or so he said. We helped him strip off his robes. I gritted my teeth against the sight of the bites marking nearly every part of his body. Some had grown scabs but many remained raw and open. Estrella and Daj came over and used cloths to shoo away the flies that buzzed around these ugly wounds. Master Juwain knelt next to Maram; he held his varistei over the cavities that Jezi Yaga had bitten out of Maram's chest. Atara stood ready with her clear crystal cupped in her hands. Sunji and the other Avari looked on in fascination and dread.

Master Juwain closed his eyes in meditation. Atara stood as still as a pinnacle of rock. After a while. Master Juwain looked down upon Maram with intense concentration. He gazed at his green gelstei, which he rotated slightly as if feeling for currents of life inside Maram that only he could perceive. We all remembered how the healing light from this crystal had made whole the arrow wound in Atara's lung and saved her from death.

'Hurry!' Maram said to Master Juwain. Despite the children's best efforts, the flies moved more quickly than their hands, and several flies had already found their way to wounds along Maram's legs and were busy sucking up the fluids that leaked out of him. 'Please, please — hurry!'

In a flash of light, soft green flames streaked out of both ends of Master Juwain's crystal. They bent downward and joined together in a glowing emerald ball. Then, like a fountain, this radiance fell down and filled the whole of one of Maram's wounds. I could almost feel the cool, healing light working its magic on Maram's tortured flesh.

'Oh, the pain!' Maram murmured out. 'The pain is going away!'

I looked over at Atara, all wrapped up in cloth like a mummy. She didn't move; it seemed that she didn't breathe.

'Good!' Maram murmured to Master Juwain. 'Ah, very good!'

I held my breath as the edges of the wound, touched with the fire's mysterious power, drew in and knitted together into a seamless expanse of hairy skin. I couldn't help smiling in triumph at this miracle.

Master Juwain repositioned his crystal above the wound torn out of the other half of Maram's chest. A fiery green light poured out of it. Maram smiled as this light fell upon him and suffused his flesh; then, without warning, his lips pulled back into a grimace. The light flared greener and brighter, deeper and hotter. And then, quickly, even hotter. It grew so hideous and hot that it seemed much more fire than light. Maram shouted to Master Juwain, 'Stop! Take it away! You're burning me, damn it!'

But Master Juwain, it seemed, could not take the crystal away. His fingers locked around it, and he stared down at Maram as a hideous light filled his gray eyes. And still the terrible fire poured out of his crystal and seared deeper into Maram's chest.

'Stop! Please! Stop, damn you! You're killing me!'

Maram, too, tried to move, but it seemed that some terrible thing had a hold of his nerves and muscles so that he could not roll out of the way. Kane and I dosed in on Master Juwain then. We each grabbed one of his elbows and lifted him away from Maram. We carried him ten feet out into the desert. This availed Maram not at all, however, for the fire still erupted from the varistei and now snaked through the air in a streak of green to find its way into Maram's wound.

'Stop! Stop! Stop!'

Almost without thinking, I held out my hand to try to stop this strange fire that might soon kill Maram. It passed right through my flesh without the slightest burn, leaving me entirely untouched. It continued flaring and twisting through the air, and sizzling into Maram's chest.

'Val, your sword!' Kane cried out to me.

I remembered that the silustria, along with its other powers, could act as a shield against various energies: vital, mental or even physical. I let go of Master Juwain and drew my sword again, I sliced it down through the green fire, then held it still, letting the fire rain against it. Like a mirror, its brilliant surface reflected the varistei's light back into the varistei. Master Juwain's crystal grew quiescent then. It took only a moment for the spell to be broken.

Master Juwain's eyes suddenly cleared, and he dropped his crystal down into the dirt. He ran back over to Maram, knelt down and rested his hand on Maram's chest. I expected to see the wound all black and charred; instead, it gaped raw and red as freshly flayed meat. It seemed that the evil fire had drilled deep into Maram's muscle, almost down to the bone. Strangely, the terrible wound bled only a little.

'I'm sorry,' Master Juwain said, brushing back the hair out of Maram's eyes. 'I'm sorry. Brother Maram!'

For a few moments, Maram could do nothing more than grimace and groan. And then he clasped Master Juwain's hand and said, 'It's all right — I forgive you. But please remember that I'm still Sar Maram.'

Master Juwain walked off to retrieve his crystal which he dropped into his deepest pocket as if he never wanted to see it again. He returned with a wad of cotton: he pressed it down into Maram's newly excavated wound and wrapped a long strip of cotton around Maram's chest and back to hold it in place. By way of explanation, he said to us, 'Never again. I nearly killed Maram, and the Lord of Lies nearly made me into a ghul.'

I stood near Atara, who remained motionless. I help up my sword toward the east as if to reflect back any illusions or evil visions that might emanate from that direction. I had no sense that my efforts aided Atara at all. But at last, the spell that had seized her, too, was broken.

Atara put away her scryer's crystal and called out, 'Is Maram all right?'

'Yes,' I told her, although this wasn't quite true. I grasped her arm, and wished that I could look into her eyes. 'Are you all right?'

She made no reply to this, directly. All she would say was: 'The world … is more than it seems. There are worse things than anything I ever imagined.'

Sunji and Maidro stepped closer then. Maidro looked from Master Juwain to Maram and said, 'If that wasn't sorcery, then I never hope to see such.'

Master Juwain explained more about the making and wielding of the gelstei crystals: what little had been passed down through the ages. Then he said, 'What once was called art is now wrongly called sorcery. Though if you wish to call the evil usage of these crystals sorcery, I won't dispute you.'

Liljana came over with a cloth soaked in an infusion made from kokun leaves, which was the only thing that eased the pain of Maram's flesh, at least for a time. She washed his body and tended his wounds with a gentleness that surprised me.

I expected that having suffered this new outrage that had nearly killed him, Maram might call for us to return to the Avari's hadrah. Instead he called for brandy.

'Ah, Master Juwain,' he said, tapping his hand lightly over his chest, 'it was you who drilled this hole in me, and so it is upon you to fill it in the only way that will truly help.'

So great was Master Juwain's guilt that he did not gainsay Maram's request. None of us did. Master Juwain poured much more than a few drams of brandy into Maram's cup, then watched as Maram drank it slowly.

'Thank you, sir,' Maram said. He sat up and ran his finger around the bowl of his cup, then licked it. 'You've made a new man of me.'

He held out his cup and gazed at the bottle of brandy that Master Juwain held in his gnarled hand.

'No, no more,' Master Juwain told him. 'At least not now. If you need a little at the end of the day, you shall have it.'

'Do you promise?'

'Yes, I suppose if I have to, I do promise.'

Maram's eyes gleamed, and a new strength flowed into him. I watched with amazement as he suddenly stood up to begin dressing. Our gelstei might hold undreamed-of powers I but so it seemed did a bottle of brandy.

We waited out the worst heat of the day there at the well, trying to sleep inside our stifling tents. When the killing sun had dropped much lower in the sky, we set out again to the west. We journeyed long past dusk and deep into a new series of hills, whose sharp ridgelines ran north and south. Maram counted out the miles like a miser adding coins to a vault. But we all knew that at the day's end, like a spendthrift, he would exchange them all in return for what had become his nightly libation.

Late that evening, we pitched our tent in a narrow valley between two of these lines of hills. Master Juwain noted that many of the stones in the valley seemed rounded, as of river stones. He worried that if a storm came up, the walls of rock around us might funnel the rain into a flashflood that could drown us.

'If it stormed, we would be swept away,' Maidro said to him. 'And if we had wings, we could simply fly out of here; indeed, we could fly clear across the desert.'

Arthayn and Nuradayn laughed at this as if they thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Sunji looked up at the glittering sky, unmarred by even a single cloud. And Maidro, taking pity on Master Juwain, added, 'In Segadar and Yaradar it rains here, torrents and rivers. But never in Soldru for as long as the Avari have lived in the desert. So sleep in peace, Master Healer.'

That night, after Master Juwain had rewarded Maram as promised, we all slept in relative peace, if not in comfort. The rocks sticking out of the ground bruised us, even beneath our thick furs, and the air fell almost icy cold. Maram stirred in his sleep and awakened more than once, moaning at the new pain in his chest. In the hills around us, the hyenas let loose their eerie cries.

Maram, when it came time to ride again, surprised me by saddling his horse without grumbling. As he told me in the dark of the morning before true morning: 'Forty miles we'll cover today, if it's a good day, and the sooner they are behind us, the sooner I shall have my brandy.'

For a few hours, as we worked our way across the highlands, we rode through near-darkness. Then the sun's first rays lit the hills with a golden-red lire. The rocks about us seemed to glow. Sunji, following an ancient route, led us up through a cleft between two hills as stark and barren as the moon. They were, he said, the last of this high country, and they marked the westernmost reaches of the Avari's realm.

'Now you will see,' he told me, turning on his horse toward me, 'what few men have seen.'

We came out on top of the cleft to behold the vast reaches of desert that opened out to the north, south and west. The wind, over the ages, had swept up the sand into mountains. Some of it shone white as the fine, shell-ground sand along a beach; some of it gleamed as red as the sandstone pinnacles and castle-like formations that stood even higher than the great dunes. In places, to the north, the sun fell upon swirls of red sand embedded in white and caused the dunes to glow with a lovely pink hue unlike anything I had ever seen. The sky framed this magnificent landscape with a blue so rich and deep it seemed almost like water. It was all so impossibly beautiful that I wanted |u» weep.

'The Tar Harath,', Sunji said to me. 'The womb of the desert.' 'It is … so lovely,' I said.

'It won't seem so in another three hours.' He pointed his finger out at the endless sweeps of sand. 'Not once we're out on the Hell's Anvil.'

'Ah, how far did you say it was across this?' Maram asked. 'No one really knows,' Sunji told him. 'It would be far, even if we were to ride as straight as an eagle flies. But if we must turn north or south in search of water, then. .'

He did not finish his sentence. And so Maram could not calculate how many forty-mile segments he must complete in order to earn his rations of brandy. In any case, as Maidro explained, we couldn't always count on making forty miles in a day.

'There might be sandstorms that we'll have to wait out,' he said. 'and that will eat up the hours — and eat the flesh off our bones if we're impatient. There are quicksands, too, that we must avoid. The sand itself will tire the horses' legs, ours too when we walk, and so the journey will go more slowly.'

He said nothing about the sun, which made its way up the great arc of the sky like a white-hot iron cinder. But Master Juwain had already explained to us that in the desert the air held too little moisture to shield against the sun. And here, in the deep desert, the air was so thin and dry that the sun's fierce rays burned through it like starfire through the great nothingness of space.

For a while, as we worked down into the Tar Harath, the hills at our back blocked out the sun. But then we rode out onto the sand, and the sun rose higher. It streaked down upon us like a rain of flaming arrows. The sand threw it back into the air so that it seemed that we rode through a wall of flame. The air here was indeed thin — but not so thin that we couldn't feel it searing us through our coverings of wool. We rode past mid-morning, and it grew even hotter. And still the sun rose higher and brighter and hotter. It flared so hellishly hot that we stopped to pitch our tents. Climbing inside them provided protection from the sun, but did nothing to help us escape from the terrible heat.

'It is like breathing fire!' Maram gasped out a couple of hours past noon. He lay sweating on top of his furs, unable to sleep. 'It is like being cooked inside an oven!'

Master Juwain, Daj, Kane and I sprawled out on our furs near him. My robes were a sodden mass of wool smothering me.

'I can't stop sweating,' Maram complained. 'It seems I'm taking a bath with all my clothes on.'

'Do you see this?' Kane said, kneeling over him. He ran his finger through the sweat pooling on Maram's forehead. 'This is all that is keeping you from cooking. Your body is no different than other kinds of meat. Heat it up enough and it will roast like lamb.'

I did not want to think that the Tar Harath could grow so hot — or indeed, any hotter at all. But late in the afternoon, as we were readying ourselves for the second half of the day's journey, Maidro stood in his steaming woolen robe and shrugged his shoulders. 'This is still only Soldru — wait until Marud when grows really hot.'

How does one measure heat? An iron thrust into a bed of coals will glow red before white, but the searing agony of red-hot iron held against the flesh is scarcely any less terrible, as Master Juwain could attest. Some say that the dry heat of the desert is not so bad as the swelter of more humid climes such as the jungles of Uskudar, but I say that these wayfarers have never ventured into the Tar Harath. There is a heat on earth so hellishly hot that it drives burning nails into the lungs even as it nearly poaches the brain. Beyond this degree of anguish, it can grow no hotter, for if it did a man would die.

That evening, on our ride into the coolness of the descending dark, I knew that all of our thoughts were on death. Sunji and Maidro fell into a deep silence, seeming to concentrate on finding the best route across the soft, shifting sand. I felt within them a deep longing, as for water, but I sensed that it was really a concentration on the need of life. They knew better than any of us how easily the desert could snuff it out. Both the children fought to master their suffering and fear, even as Master Juwain struggled not to play through his overactive mind multifarious scenarios of doom. It was Liljana's will, I thought, that if she could just manage to fill our bodies with good food and our spirits with good cheer, then no doom could touch us. Maram, of course, sought other means of dealing with the great, inescapable darkness. As for Kane, with his fathomless black eyes and great soul, it was his way to take death inside himself and laugh out to the stars his defiance and glee.

I worried most about Atara, not just because I loved her beyond all beauty and goodness, but because she revealed to me the least. She sat on top of her red mare swaddled in her robes and blindfold as beneath a tent of silence. Outside, the air still swirled up off the ground, dry and warm, but inside this brave woman welled a terrible coldness.

We made camp that night with one of the desert's sandstone castles at our back. Dunes had swept over part of this rock formation, but great mounds of rock two hundred feet high stuck up out of the sand. After our dinner of dried lamb and wheat cakes, Atara asked me to accompany her in a short climb up to the rocks behind us. Arm in arm, with Atara pushing her bow down into the sand with each step, we walked up along the crest of one of these dunes. We came upon some flat rocks and sat down facing the desert to the west. In the glittering black distances, Valura, the bright evening star, had almost set.

'I must speak to you,' Atara said to me, 'before it is too late.'

She had taken off her head covering so that only her blindfold remained. I gazed at the gleam of starlight on her face as I took her hand in mine. Her skin, like the rocks around us, was quickly losing its heat to the night.

'I was wrong,' she said, 'after the battle in that canyon. To call for the priest to be staked out to die in the sun — so horribly, horribly wrong. I called it justice. It was only justice, truly. But who of us desires that? Who would wish it upon herself?'

'Not I,' I said.

I thought of all the men I had slain — and of their widowed wives, vengeful brothers and children left with no one to protect or provide for them. I thought of my brothers, and my father and mother, and all my friends and countrymen who had died because I had told a single lie.

'It's kindness we need,' she said to me. 'And forgiveness.'

'But you've done nothing for which you need to be forgiven. Nothing more than anyone.'

'Haven't I? In the Skadarak — '

'Let's not speak of that place here,' I said to her. 'We've trials and torments enough ahead of us.'

'We do. You can't imagine.. '

I looked at her and said, 'Tell me, then.'

'No, I'm sorry, I can't tell you. I can't even tell myself.'

I felt a coldness pulsing through her wrist, and I said, 'I've never seen you like this before.'

She fell quiet as she seemed to listen to the wind rattling sand against the rocks around us. Then she said, 'I'm so afraid. So horribly, horribly afraid.'

'You?'

She nodded her head. 'I think we will all die. And worse, before we die.'

I gripped her hand too tightly. It was one thing when Maram voiced such sentiments; it was another when Atara, greatest of scryers, spoke of such doom.

'You won't tell anyone I said that, will you? Especially not the children. I'm so afraid for the children.'

'As long as we're all right,' I reassured her, 'they will be all right.'

This, I thought, was something that Liljana might say. Too often, it seemed a little lie that I told myself.

'I'm so useless, now,' Atara said to me. 'I failed you again in the battle with the droghul. His voice! The Voice of Ice, the Avari call it. I should have fired an arrow through his throat!'

'It will all come back,' I said to her, squeezing her hand. 'Your sight, and more — I know it will.'

She shook her head at this, and fell again into silence. Her whole body seemed ready to shiver against the cold, driving wind.

'In the Skadarak,' she murmured, 'did you never think of leaving me behind?'

'No — I could never leave you!'

I would die, I told myself, a thousand times to keep her alive.

She sat shaking her head. The coldness spread out from her center into her limbs and hands. Her fingers pressed hard against mine as if feeling for something deep and indestructible.

'I think you could have,' she said to me. 'No — never!'

'I think that any of us could,' she said. 'There's always a choice, isn't there? These terrible, terrible choices of life. We're always so close to making the wrong choice. It's always there, the yes and the no, and I can't get away from it. It's like trying to flee from Morjin: the farther we go into the wilds of Ea, the more surely he finds us out and the nearer he seems. But I must escape it, don't you see? I can't live with the horror of it all.'

I listened to her breath push in and out of her chest. I said, 'But you must live. You can't give up — I won't allow it.'

Her voice softened as she said, 'You won't? Then help me, please.' 'How?'

She reached down to grab up a handful of sand. She sat letting the grains run through her fingers onto the rocks below us. 'What others feel inside them, you are able to feel, too. Sometimes, you can even touch them with your fire, your dreams. Can you not, then, take their nightmares away?'

I slowly shook my head. 'I'm not the Maitreya, Atara. And I'm not sure that even he could do as you say.'

'Please,' she said, leaning against me. She let her head rest against my shoulder. 'I'm so tired.'

She pressed her hand into mine, and I felt the cool, grittiness of sand as well as the stirring of a deeper and warmer thing.

'I'm so tired,' she murmured, 'of being tired.'

Her head pressed me like a great weight. The smell of her hair was musky and heavy.

'Take me away,' she said to me. 'Back to the Avail's hadrah — or even back to Mesh. Somewhere safe.'

I felt my heart beating hard up through my throat as I said, 'But nowhere in the world is safe for us now. We've spoken of this. Eventually — '

'I don't care what happens ten years from now, or even next month. I just want to be a safe for a single night. For an hour — why can't it all just go away?'

Why, indeed, I wondered as I sat listening to Atara's heavy breathing and looking out at the stars?

'Val, Val,' she said to me.

I was no scryer, but even so a vision came-to me: of Atara and I going back to the Avari's hadrah to live in peace. We would wed, despite Atara's misgivings, and bear a child whom she could never behold. We might be happy, for a time, but sorrows would inevitably come for us. Atara would grow to hate rearing our son in blindness, and hate me for calling him into life. And most of all, she would hate life itself, especially when Morjin finally found us and our world became a nightmare.

Her fingers pulled at mine with a quiet, desperate urgency. I couldn't move; it seemed that I could hardly breathe. Only our thin coverings of skin kept the fire of my blood from burning into her, and hers into me.

'No,' I whispered.

It was as if I had slapped her face. The coldness suddenly flooded back into her, and she sat up straight.

'No,' she repeated, 'we always have a choice, don't we? You're so damn noble, you always choose what you do, even though someday, it will kill you.'

'Atara, I — '

'It will kill all of us, I'm afraid. It might. And I have to accept that, don't I? Because that's the beautiful, beautiful thing about you, that those of us who love you can't help choosing as we do, too.'

For a while, she sat there quietly weeping into the wind, and she would not let me touch her. I had a strange sense that she was almost glad that her eyes had been put out so that I couldn't see the pain and horror in them. Then she regathered her composure; in a clear, calm voice, she said to me, 'Tell me what you see then, in the deep desert to the west, where we must go.'

I described the sweeps of sand and rock in the dark distances before us. Then I stared out at the infinite black bowl of the sky and said, 'There are stars — so many stars. Never, not even on top of Mount Telshar, have I seen them so brilliant.'

Valura, I told her, gleamed like a bright diamond just at the edge of the horizon, while Icesse and Hyanne and the stars of the Mother hung higher in the sky. Although she could not see my finger, I pointed out Ahanu, the Eye of the Bull, and Helaku and Shinkun and a dozen other stars. Solaru and Aras, I said, shone more splendidly than any others; they were like blazing signposts lighting our way.

'And there,' I said as I moved my hand in an arc across the heavens, 'are the Seven Sisters. And beyond, the Golden Band, filling the blackness with glorre. I can almost see it. Sometimes, I do. It shimmers. It is strange, the way its light touches that of the stars and makes them seem even brighter. Now I know the real reason that the Avari go into the Tar Harath.'

I fell quiet as I looked into the black, brilliant deeps for Shavashar and Elianora, Ayasha and Yarashan and Asaru, and the other stars that called to me with the voices of my dead family. I called back to them, whispering their names: 'Karshur, Mandru, Ravar, Jonathay. .'

My voice shook with longing. I heard it and hated it. I said to Atara: 'In all the sky, there isn't a single cloud. It's all so perfectly clear — clearer even than your crystal.'

'Is it? Tell me what you see in the sky, then.'

"Triumph. A great light unveiled. At the end of it all, the whole earth singing of what we have done. I see the one whom we seek. I see you, looking at me the way you once did. You will see again — I know you will.'

She laughed at this, not in joy, but only in sadness. Then she said softly, 'I think you lie. But I love you for trying to make me believe it.'

She kissed my hand, and stood up to walk back to our line of tents. I had to help her work her way down through the darkness, lest she stumble upon the rocks. Although she said nothing of the future, I knew that before we won any great triumph, if ever we did, we would suffer through many sweltering days of terror and pain.