Black Jade

Chapter 32

We hurried out into the scoop of rock called the first cavern. The bodies of Elkar and Harun lay sprawled near the table where Sylar had collected our gold. Elkar's slashed throat oozed blood, while Harun fairly floated in a dark pool building out from a terrible wound in his chest. Just in front of the demon rock slumped another form: Sylar's, I guessed from the gilded armor. His body had been decapitated. Although I looked about the bloodstained cavern floor, I could not see his head.

'But how did you come to be here?' I asked Maram. We stood over Sylar's corpse gazing at each other in amazement. I noted the blood dripping off Maram's drawn sword. 'What happened?'

'Ah, Val!' Maram said as he embraced me with his free arm, 'I happened along just in time, I think, else you would have been dead, or worse.'

He explained that after arriving at the Inn of the Clouds in the dead of night, he had asked after us and learned that we had not returned from the Singing Caves. Thinking to surprise us, he had hurried after us, up the flagstone path leading from the inn beneath the face of Mount Miru. As he had approached the caverns' entrance, however, a cruel laughter had given him warning. And so, like a bear sniffing out a new lair, he had stalked up to the caverns in near silence.

'As I drew closer,' he told us, 'I hid behind that rock.'

He pointed at a large boulder ten yards away just outside the cavern.

Then he pointed at the bodies of Elkar, Harun and Sylar.

'I heard them boasting that they had locked you inside the caverns,' he went on. He pointed his sword toward Sylar's headless torso. 'That one was their captain, wasn't he? He said that they would be given a great reward for capturing you. I gathered that he had sent another of these guards for reinforcements.'

Kane sprang up to Maram and grasped his arm. 'Did you hear Sylar say where he sent him?'

Maram nodded. 'To Hesperu, to return this very night with one of the Red Priests and a cadre of Crucifiers. .'

'Did Sylar,' Kane asked Maram with a tightening of his fist, 'say the name of the Red Priest?'

Maram pried Kane's fingers from his arm and took a step back. He looked down at Sylar's remains beneath the demon's stony, grinning face. 'I waited for him to say it. Or for one of his men. But all they seemed to want to talk about was Mouth of Truth, as. they called it. Sylar lamented that they couldn't test it on you. I couldn't listen to that, do you understand? I couldn't wait forever, and so I did what I did.'

And what Maram had done, as Maram now told us, was to charge from out behind his rock with his sword in his hand. Before the hapless guards realized that a fierce warrior was upon them, he had slashed open the astonished Elkar's throat with a lightning cut of his sword and then thrust its point through Harun's armor at the shoulder joint, deep into Harun's chest. He had then turned upon Sylar.

'For him,' Maram said, nudging Sylar's body with his boot, 'I didn't have to use my sword.'

'Then what happened to him?' Daj asked.

'I grabbed him,' Maram said, 'before he could draw his sword. He fought like a fish, but I, ah, subdued him. I asked him the name of the Red Priest, but he wouldn't tell me. And so I hammer-locked him, and pushed his head inside this.'

Maram slapped his hand against the smooth rock carved with the demon's face. I noticed the fresh blood staining the lips of of the Mouth of Truth.

'You put Lord Sylar inside of Old Ugly?' Babul called out.

'Just his head and neck,' Maram replied. 'I told him that I'd let him go free if he gave me the Red Priest's name and told me where Tarran was bound; if he didn't, I told him I'd break his filthy neck. I did almost have to break it, too. Finally, though, Sylar gave me a name: Ra Jaumal. I knew he was lying the moment he spoke it.'

According to Maram, as soon as Sylar had spoken the name of Ra Jaumal, the demon's eyes had flared bright blue and from within the rock had come the sound of whirring gears and metal whooshing through the air. Maram never laid eyes on the falling blade that had severed Sylar's head. But he had felt the impact of steel against flesh and bone through Sylar's shocked body.

'Lord Sylar,' Babul said, staring down at the bloody stone, 'always wanted to test Old Ugly. But I don't think he really believed it would do its work.'

'So,' Kane said, gazing at the reddened Mouth of Truth.

He drew forth a round, reddish rock called a bloodstone, and moved over to Elkar's body. He held the little gelstei over Elkar's forehead; a crimson light pouring out of the bloodstone illumined the secret mark of the Red Dragon tattooed there. It remained a burning crimson in Elkar's flesh even after Kane closed his fist around his bloodstone.

'I should have used this on him and that damn Sylar before we went into the caverns,' Kane sighed as he rose up again. 'But it's hard to expose our enemies without exposing us.'

He turned to Maram and asked, 'Do you think Sylar knew who we are?'

Maram shook his head. 'No, I got no sense of that. He spoke only of having been alerted to look for a band of pilgrims such as us. I believe that it was his own idea to lock you inside and send for the Red Priest. He seemed proud of his initiative.'

'It may be,' Liljana said, stepping closer, 'that the Lord of Lies deduced that we would come to Senta. And warned whoever Sylar reported to that he should watch for us.'

'Whoever that is,' Kane said, 'will be warned soon enough if we're not quick. And every other Red Priest in Senta and down into Hesperu.'

I noticed Babul and Pirro standing in a little too closely and fairly hanging on Kane's every word. I didn't like it that he spoke so freely in front of them.

'But who are you, then,' Babul asked me, 'that the Lord of Lies would hunt you?'

I felt a darkness building inside Kane, who said, 'Go ahead and tell them. They might as well know before they join the others.'

And with that, he drew his sword and turned toward Babul.

'No!' I cried out. I took a step closer to Kane. 'No … Rowan!'

Babul tried to use his spear to defend himself and perhaps thrust its long, gleaming point into Kane before Kane could kill him. But Kane knocked away Babul's spear as easily as he might have parried the thrust of a child. I grabbed onto Kane's arm then before his wrath drove him to do something that he didn't really wish to do. I pulled him back, out the range of Babul's and Pirro's spears.

'No!' I said to him again.

He whirled to face me, and his eyes burned into mine. 'They know too much! We can't just leave them behind us!'

'Perhaps they do.' I told him. 'But we can't just slay innocent men!'

'Innocent,' Kane spat out, glancing at the badly frightened Babul. 'Who is truly innocent?'

'We cannot slay them!' I shouted.

'Would you have us risk everything to preserve the lives of these?'

In answer, I tightened my grip around his arm. Behind me and to my right, I saw Estrella step in front of Babul as she fearlessly looked up at Kane.

'So,' Kane said as he gazed at her. I watched as the life in his eyes died into a smoldering rage. He seemed to command his arm to sheathe his sword, and I let go of him so that he could.

'Good pilgrim,' Babul said to Kane as he wiped the sweat from his neck. 'I will guard your secrets as I do the caverns themselves, with my life!'

'Ha — that you will!' Kane snarled at him.

He took a step closer to Babul even as Babul took a step back. Then Kane sprang forward past Estrella, brushing aside Babul's spear with a savage motion. He opened his fist to let the bloodstone's light shine on Babul's forehead. But the gelstei's radiance failed to bring forth any secret tattoo. A similar test of Pirro proved him also to be free of the Dragon's mark.

'All right, then, we shall give you our trust,' Kane told them. 'Do not betray it. You know that the Red Dragon hunts us; you do not want me to hunt you. I must leave now, but I will return.

If I learn you've spoken of us or what lies beyond what you call the seventh cavern, then I shall slay you — you and your families: your wives, your fathers, sisters and children!'

It was a terrible thing for him to say, and the force of his breath breaking from his lips made both Babul and Pirro quail. Then Kane turned toward the flagstone path gleaming gray-white in the glister of the torches. He caught my eye, and said. 'If I ride fast enough, I may be able to overtake Sylar's messenger before he reaches the Red Priest he's been sent to.'

'Alone?' I said to him.

'Yes — I'll do this work better alone.'

But how will we find you, then?'

'Follow me tonight, as soon as you can,' he told me. 'Ride quickly, but don't ruin the horses. And tomorrow, I'll find you.'

So saying, he sprang forward and began running down the path back toward the Inn of the Clouds. He vanished like a great cat into the dark folds of night.

Babul as if all his strength had bled away, staggered over to the chair behind the table and slumped down into it. He gazed at Sylar's headless body as he used a scarf to mop the sweat from his forehead. He said to me, 'The King will have to be informed of what occurred here. If we're to guard your secrets, what story shall we give him?'

'What sort of man is King Yulmar?' I asked him.

'A man of honor, it's said. And a courageous one. When the Red Priests sent assassins to kill Prince Paomar, the King came out of his chambers where he was safely guarded to fight the assassins sword to sword. He took a wound to his arm before the assassins were killed. He has no cause to love the Red Priests or their master, if that is what you were wondering.'

I nodded my head as I told Babul: 'Then give your king the truth. Tell him that Sylar had joined the Order of the Dragon — Elkar, Harun and Tarran, too. Tell him that they locked you inside the caverns, along with the Red Dragon's enemies. Do not give him our names or say where we are bound. And do not tell him of the true seventh cavern.'

I could see from the flickers of light in Babul's and Pirro's eyes that this last would be a hard secret to keep and take with them to their graves, Pirro, I thought, would have a harder time keeping any secrets at all, for he looked at me and said, 'But what if the King demands that we tell him all that we know?'

'Then tell him that you've vowed to protect our identities, if he is a man of honor, he'll respect that.'

'But we've vowed nothing,' Pirro said.

'Then do so now,' I told him.

Pirro looked over at Babul and nodded his head at him. And Babul said to me, 'All right, then, we do.'

But this, I thought, was not quite good enough, for I sensed gnawing doubt in both Babul and Pirro. I told them, 'Do not vow to do that which you cannot do. You must be certain of your selves, and before we leave, we must be certain of you.'

'But we've given you our vows — what more do you want?'

In answer, I looked over at the demon rock and said, 'Give your vows to it.'

Babul's face blanched as he stared at the demon's mouth, but he slowly nodded his head. He stood up and walked over to where Sylar lay beneath it. Again, he used his crumpled scarf to mop his forehead. He swallowed, hard, and cleared his throat. I felt him fighting to find within himself all his will to be brave and true. Finally, he pushed his hand inside the demon's mouth and declared: 'I vow to keep your secrets, as you have asked.'

Babul closed his eyes and waited, as did we. When the demon failed to take his hand, he quickly removed it and stood staring at his open palm and five fingers in wonder. It was as if he were seeing himself for the first time and beholding long-desired possibilities.

Pirro likewise endured this trial that I urged upon him; afterwards, strangely, he seemed not to hate me but only to be glad to have found new resolve and a courage to match Babul's. He said to me, 'Senta will never fall, at least not from within as Galda did. If you pass back this way and I am still a guard here, you will be welcome. Perhaps next time, I'll even dare to go into the cavern that I will not speak of and does not really exist.'

He smiled as he bowed his head to me, and I bowed back. Then Babul assured me that he and Pirro would wait a few more hours before making their report in order to give us time to ride away from here. I felt certain that they would do as they promised.

We said farewell, and turned to make our way back down the path. When we reached the Inn of the Clouds, we had no need to awaken the innkeeper, for Kane already had. As the innkeeper told us, Kane had galloped off into the night less than half an hour before.

'It's unheard of,' the small, pot-bellied man told us, 'for our guests to flee like thieves in the night before they've even slept in their beds. I hope your accommodations didn't disappoint you?'

I assured him that his inn was the most splendid we had ever seen, but said that urgent business called us elsewhere. According to Kane's instructions, the innkeeper had our horses saddled and ready outside the white colonnades fronting the portico of this rather grandiose inn. Without further explanation, we mounted and trotted off down the road. In the light of the stars, we followed this well-paved track that led down from Mount Miru and wound around its rocky mass to the east, where it joined the road to Hesperu.

It was now well past midnight, and no other travelers ventured forth, neither southward towards Hesperu nor from it. We clopped along over smooth, star-washed stones. Fields ft rippling wheat opened out on either side of us. The crickets there chirped with a million tiny voices. As we passed by farmhouses standing alone beneath the black and silver sky, dogs barked out their warnings into the night.

When I was sure that no one had followed us, I called for a halt and turned toward Maram. I said to him, 'Well?'

'Well, what?' he called back.

Master Juwain, Atara and everyone else reined in their horses around us in the center of the deserted road. And I said to Maram: 'How did you find us? And why did you leave the Vild? And what did you — '

'Ah, Val, Val!' he said, holding up his hand and smiling. 'I'll tell you everything, though there's really very little to tell. I left the Vild because I could not remain. You see, I knew you would need me.'

The story he now related was indeed neither long nor complicated. It seemed that two days after the rest of us had ridden out of the Vild into the desert, a great disquiet had come over Maram. He realized that even though he cherished Anneli and loved the quiet peace of the Vild, other things remained even dearer to him. And so upon steeling himself for a long and solitary journey, he had said goodbye to the weeping Anneli and the other Loikalii, and went out into the desert. He found the Tar Harath to be just as hot and hellish as he had remembered. He followed our tracks west and then came upon the well of Manoj and his family. Manoj, when he learned that Maram was our companion, was only too happy to give him stores and water from his well, still full from the storm that Estrella had summoned. He told him, too, of the Dead City and the road leading up into the mountains. Maram had followed this road, even as we had, up through the lovely green valleys of the Crescent Mountains. He had searched out our old camps, one by one. He travelled as quickly as he could, trying to eat up our lead, for an unusual urgency drove him on. At last, he had found his way into Senta. Since Kane had spoken of the Inn of the Clouds, Maram had first looked for us there. 'It was strange,' he told me. 'There I was in the Loikalii's wood one fine morning eating cherries with Anneli, and I heard you calling to me. And on the road, all those days, I felt you wishing that I hadn't stayed behind. You did wish this, didn't you? You did call me?'

'Yes, Maram, I did,' I told him. But I didn't quite know how to explain that I had wished this most intently and called out the loudest scarcely an hour before is the cavern called Ansunna, where one's dreams and deepest desires might be made real.

Master Juwain, I noticed, was looking at me with great curiosity, as was Liljana. Then Maram insisted that we climb down off our horses, and so we did. He brought out two cups and the very last of his brandy. Alter filling them, he gave one into my hand and raised up the other. Starlight illumined the wide smile breaking upon his face, and the wind whipped at his hair. Then he clinked cups with me, and drank down his brandy, as did I. He embraced me as he thumped my back and cried out, 'Val, Val — It's good to see you again! It's good to be alive!'

Was it possible, I wondered? Could it be that what I had wished for most fervently in the seventh cavern had somehow come to pass?

When I remarked upon the mystery of how Maram could have acted upon my wish many days before I even wished it. Atara turned toward me and said, 'Time is strange. In the eternal realm, that of the One, there is no time. But even in this realm, all things of the world take their being from the One, and there are moments when past, future and present are as one. If I can cast my second sight into time that is yet to be, why shouldn't you be able to sing your wishes into the past?'

Why not, indeed? I wondered as I watched Maram licking drops of brandy from his moustache.

Our talk of wishes and singing impelled a recounting of what we had found inside the Singing Caves. I almost couldn't bear to tell Maram of the marvels he had missed. He was a man who loved music and beauty almost as much as he did women and wine. If he had stood in the great cavern of the Galadin by my side and had sung out with his great heart, I wondered what he would have wished for?

'Ah, but it's too bad I didn't hear all those songs,' he said to us. 'Maybe we should consider going back, then. We still have some hours before daybreak. Wasn't the whole idea of passing through Senta to gain some sort of idea as to where we might find the Maitreya?'

I was about to tell him that we had heard thousands of mentions of the Maitreya, all to no avail, when Daj straightened up on top of his horse, and called out in his high voice, 'But we do know! At least, we know where we might look for him.'

We turned to stare at Daj. I said to him, 'What do you know? And why didn't you tell us before?'

'I'm sorry,' he said to me, 'but I heard someone singing of this in the Minstrels' Cavern just as we were passing back through it. I thought that there would soon be a battle, and when there wasn't, when the doors opened and we found everyone dead and Kane hurried off, and then we did, too — well, there hasn't been time to tell you.'

'We've time now,' I said, looking up at the stars.

And Daj told us, 'It was a woman's voice — I never heard her name. She came to Senta to sing praises of a man, a healer who had saved her daughter. Some incurable disease it was, and the daughter was wasting away. Just a year ago! She never spoke the healer's name, either. But she said that he had brought a bright light back into her life, and she called this man her "Shining One".'

'Oh, excellent!' Maram said. 'A nameless women praising a nameless man for a miracle that occurred we know not where.'

'But we do know where!' Daj said to Maram. 'The woman said that her husband had crossed the whole north of Hesperu to bring her daughter to this healer. In a place called Jhamrul.'

Daj, though he had been born in Hesperu's Haraland, could not tell me if Jhamrul might be a district, city or village, nor did he have any idea where we might find this place. Master Juwain got out his maps then, but the light of the stars proved too little to read by. But Master Juwain had an excellent memory, and he could not recall any marking on his maps of that name.

'We'll have to ask after this Jhamrul, then,' he said. 'When we reach Hesperu, surely someone will have heard of it.'

According to his maps and what he had learned through making inquiries, it was nine miles from the Singing Caves to Hesperu's frontier, and then another nine miles down from the mountains into the populated parts of the Haraland. Without wasting any more words, we resumed our journey. We all hoped, I thought, that we were nearing its culmination, if not its end.

Only one road led from Senta into Hesperu. We followed it through the rocky bowl in which this tiny kingdom was sited to the southern wall of sheltering mountains. Weariness worked deep into me so that I felt every jolt of my horse down into my bones. It was even worse for the others, and I feared that we were all too tired to ride through the night. We could not, however, remain within the reach of King Yulmar should Babul and Pirro break their vows and King Yulmar prove to be neither as honorable nor courageous as they had promised. And so we drove ourselves and our horses over the rocky, rising ground with as much speed as we could summon.

Soon we worked our way up to a high pass between rows of ice-capped peaks gleaming in the starlight to either side of us. The air fell cooler and shimmered with the brilliance of the stars. Which one, I wondered, might point our way to the Maitreya? Was he sleeping somewhere down in the land beyond the mountains? Or did he stand awake on some hilltop or in a window gazing up at the same bright stellar vista as did I?

Time is strange, Atara had said to me. That night, on our push into Hesperu, the hours seemed to draw out almost endlessly long as if the world itself hung perfectly balanced in black space and could never move. And yet taken as a whole, the night fairly flew by, and I could no more hold onto the fleeting moments than I could a streaking arrow. I felt myself rushing toward my fate. Whatever star called me onward pulled with a force I could not resist and filled my blood with an unquenchable fire.

At last we found ourselves braving the narrows of the pass called the Khal Arrak. Here, in a cut through the earth scarcely a quarter mile wide, walls of rock rose up to our left and right. Long ago Senta and Hesperu had agreed that this place should mark the frontier between their two kingdoms. I thought it curious that neither had built any sort of fortress here to guard their, side of the pass. But then I had grown to manhood in Mesh, where twenty-two kel keeps guarded the passes into Ishka, Waas and the plains of the Wendrush where the warriors of the Urtuk and Mansurii tribes cast hateful and envious eyes upon my homeland. Enemies surrounded Mesh on all sides, but for thousands of years Senta and Hesperu had dwelt with each other in peace. Although King Arsu might have thrown in with the Red Dragon and made noises of war that disturbed the Sentans, it seemed that both he and King Yulmar wanted to believe the fiction that Senta had nothing to fear from Hesperu, or the reverse. Or perhaps it was a point of pride. In either case, it worked to our advantage that no soldiers stopped us to question us and make sure that we weren't revolutionists sent to subvert King Arsu's realm.

'It's too quiet,' Maram said to me in a low voice as we moved along the narrow road. The sharp tattoo of our horses' hooves striking stone edhoed off the rocky walls around us. 'I can hear my belly grumbling — I missed dinner, you know. Ah, I can hear myself grumbling, and I should tell you I'm sick of it. And sick of forsaken places like this. Have you noticed that the nastiest of surprises have Invariably awaited us in mountain passes?'

I thought of the stormy pass high in the White Mountains where Ymiru and the 'Frost Giants' had sprung up our of banks of snow and had nearly clubbed us to death with their fearsome borkors. I remembered, too, the great while ghul of a bear sent by Morjin to slay us beneath the slopes of Mount Korukel, and of course the first droghul who had come upon us in the cleft of ground between the Asses Ears. And later, Jezi Yaga. Most of all, I couldn't shake loose from my mind the images of Atara nearly dying from a dreadful arrow wound in the Kul Moroth. where Morjin's soldiers under Count Ulanu had in fact sent Alphanderry on to death.

'It will be all right,' I murmured to Maram, The wind whooshing through the Khal Arrak carried scents of wildflowers and wet rock, 'Nothing will happen to us here.'

I was filled with great hope. The glimmer off the glaciers above us cast a faint light upon Maram's face. It was a magnificent thing that he had done, journeying across hundreds of miles of Ea's wilds by himself.

'Maram, have I thanked you for saving my life., again?'

'Ah, I did save you, didn't I? There was no way out of those damn caverns, was there?'

'I can't think that we escaped them,' I said, looking at the rocks pressing in upon us, 'only to be trapped here. Surely our fate lies farther on.'

'Surely it does,' he said. 'But how far on? A mile? Two? If Kane fails to stop that rider, we'll likely meet a Red Priest and a cadre of Crucifiers coming our way.'

'Kane won't fail,' I told him. 'And if he does, once we're out of this gorge, we'll hide far from the road.'

For another mile, however, I listened to every hoofbeat and breath as we wound our way through the pass's narrows. Then, in terrain that must have been claimed by Hesperu, the narrows gave out into a gap several miles wide. A razor-backed ridge marbled with snow rose up to our left while humps of broken ground gleamed in the starlight to our right. I espied many large boulders, behind which we might hide at need. Bui the earth remained quiet, and so we followed the road as it twisted sharply right and left on its descent into Hesperu.

Dawn's light revealed that we were passing through a valley full of trees lower down and ragged snowfields higher along steel-gray slopes. To the sides of the road, the slanting fields glowed orange with the lichens growing on rocks, and showed the greens, purples and whites of mosses, sky pilots and saxifrage. With every mile that we rode further into this new realm, we lost elevation and the snow quickly gave way to swaths of emerald forest. The valley broke up into a hilly country that opened out to the east, west and south. Behind us, limned against a blue sky, the white peaks of the Crescent Mountains guarded the tiny kingdom of Senta. And then the road led us into a thick forest of dogwoods and oak, and the sky vanished from sight.

Two hours later, as we were rounding a bend in the road, I stopped suddenly and drew my sword. My eyes fixed on a large oak, covered with moss and hung with vines. And then a familiar voice called out to us, 'It's good I'm no Red Priest with a gang of Crucifiers at my call, for I heard you coming a half mile away.' And Kane stepped from behind the tree's cover.

He gave no welcoming smile as he began pacing toward us with a heavy step. Over his back he slung his heavy leather saddle.

'Where is your horse?' I asked him, looking for the Hell Witch.

'Dead,' he sighed out. 'I had to ride her into the ground trying to catch up with that damned traitor.'

'And did you?'

We all waited for the answer to this question.

'Yes,' he finally said. Although speech seemed to distress him, he added, 'We needn't worry about the Kallimun being warned of us, at least not here and not yet. Now, why don't we take a little breakfast? There's a stream down the road not far from here.'

When we came to the stream, we moved off into the woods, and Liljana cooked us a breakfast of ham, fried eggs and toasted wheat bread. I had never seen Kane eat with so little appetite. He sat on a downed tree poking at a piece of ham with his dagger, and then staring at the blade's shiny steel. Even the news that we hoped to find the Maitreya in a place called Jhamrul failed to enliven him.

After that we took a few hours of rest while Kane stood guard over us. Before I drifted off, I saw Kane staring at his hand as if he had to will himself to keep his eyes open. But I sensed a terrible and ancient torment that ate at his heart and kept him from joining us in sleep.

When it came lime to set out, Kane threw his saddle on top of one of the remounts. If riding this big gelding in place of the Hell Witch vexed Kane, he gave no sign of it. In truth, he did not speak at all, and he hardly moved his dark eyes, not even to scan the woods for enemies.

Later that day, we came down into a flatter country of low, wooded hills and rolling farmland. The air grew sweltering, and seemed to soak the earth like boiling water. We all sweated beneath our thin robes, and swatted at the tiny gnats that came to bite us. The road led us over streams on rotting wooden bridges, and then over a much larger stone construction joining the muddy banks of one of the Haraland's numerous rivers. Not far from it we encountered a woodcutter who had bound some faggots of oak across the back of his dog, a giant mastiff. The flesh of the dog's hindquarters had been ripped open: it looked as if the woodcutter had whipped him. I wanted to give this cruel-looking man a wide berth, but Master Juwain insisted that we should ask him for directions.

'Jhamrul?' the man said to us, scratching at his greasy beard. 'I never heard of it. Why would pilgrims such as yourselves want to go there?'

'We seek the Weil of Restoration,' Master Juwain told him, 'said to lie near there.'

'The Well of Restoration? I never heard of that, either. And I don't want to.'

The gaze of his bleary eyes took in Daj and Estrella sitting on their horses and finally came to rest on Kane. Something tightened inside the woodcutter then, and he gripped his axe and said, 'You pilgrims should keep to this road, and not go wandering about where you don't belong. Now, let me be on my way — I've work to do.'

A farmer whom we came across an hour later proved no friend-lier and no more helpful. And so we continued down the road, asking after Jhamrul, although I dreaded what we might find around the next bend or awaiting us in the Haraland's towns. I hated nearly everything about this country: the steamy, stifling air overlaying field and forest, its sullen people, and even its strange flowers, all waxy with bizarre colors and exuding a sickening, too-sweet fragrance. The very smell of the Haraland tormented me, for it was of sweat and dung running off sun-baked fields into muddy rivers — and of blood, fear, decay and death.

I had thought Kane Inured to such things — indeed, to anything and everything that might distress a man. But I sensed a great pain gnawing at his insides like a rabid rat. Thai night we made camp in a wood by a wheatfield, and alter dinner I stood with him at the edge of the trees looking out at the stalks of wheat glimmering in the starlight. And I said to him, 'I've never seen you like this.'

He stood like a statue frozen by Jezi Yaga. Finally, a little light came into his face, and he said, 'How much of me have you really seen, eh?'

'Was it Tarran, then? What happened with him?'

'So, death happened, as it does to us all,' he growled. 'And before the end, just as I put my knife into him, despair. I saw it in his eyes, Valashu. I smelled it fouling his soul. This black, black, cursed thing.'

I rested my hand on his shoulder and said, 'But you did what you had to do. How many times have you killed at need?'

'So, how many times, eh?' He stared out into the wavering silver and black wheat. 'I tell you, if every blade of grass here were a man, then I've mowed down a thousand fields, ten thousand. And all unripened, don't you see?'

I thought I did see, and I rested my other hand on the hilt of the sword that Kane himself had forged so long ago. And I said to him, 'It must all come to an end — the killing must.'

'Yes, it must. And soon, Valashu, soon.'

The black centers of his black eyes seemed to drink up what little light the stars cast down to earth here. And he said, 'The one we seek is close — I know he is. He is waiting for us. We must find him. I must. Morjin slaughtered Godavanni in front of my eyes, but this time, if I must, I'll send all his armies to hell to keep the Maitreya safe.'

I gazed south and west at the other farms and woods stretching out to the horizon. 'The man told of in Jhamrul might or might not be the one we seek. It might be harder than we hope to find him.'

'Hard, yes — but we will find him.'

Behind us, Estrella sat around the fire with our other friends drinking tea. I inclined my head toward her, and asked Kane, 'Do you believe that she will show us the Shining One?'

'I do. And in the end, the Shining One will show himself. Do you remember the three signs by which the Maitreya will be known?'

I nodded my head. 'In his looking upon all with an equal eye, and his unshakeable courage at all times. And in his steady abidance in the One.'

'So. So it must be. The Maitreya dwells, always, in the realm of the One.'

I said to Kane, 'I know what you say must be true, but I don't really understand it. In Tria, I was told that the Maitreya was of this realm. He is always one of the Ardun, born of the earth.'

Kane smiled at this and said, 'That ghost told you this, eh? The Urudjin whom the Galadin sent to deliver that verse. Do you remember it? Can you recite it for me, now?'

I nodded my head again. Then I drew in a deep breath and called out:

The Ardun, born of earth, delight

In flowers, butterflies, bright

New snow beneath the bluest sky,

All things of earth that live and die.

Valari sail beyond the sky

Where heaven's splendors terrify;

In ancient longing to unite,

They seek a deeper, deathless light.

The angels, too, with searing sight

Behold the blazing, starry height;

Reborn from fire, in flame they fly

Like silver swans: to live, they die.

The Shining Ones who live and die

Between the whirling earth and sky

Make still the sun, all things ignite -

And earth and heaven reunite.

The Fearless Ones find day in night

And in themselves the deathless light,

In flower, bird and butterfly,

In love: thus dying, do not die.

They see all things with equal eye:

The stones and stars, the earth and sky,

The Galadin, blazing bright,

The Elijin, Valari knight

They bring to them the deathless light.

Their fearlessness and sacred sight;

To slay the doubts that terrify:

Their gift to them to gladly die.

And so on wings the angels fly,

Valari sail beyond the sky,

But they are never Lords of Light,

And not for them the Stone of Light.

'So,' Kane said, his eyes agleam, 'the Maitreya dwells, always, in this world, as well. Ultimately, as Abrasax told us, the realm of the One and the realm of the earth are not two.'

I thought about this for a while, then said, 'But I still don't understand why the Maitreya is never a Valari or even one of the higher orders, but always born of the Ardun.'

'Do you remember what I told you in the Skadarak, that the Galadin must overcome their fear of death?'

I nodded my head as I listened to the crickets chirping fast and loud in the fields. Behind us, I heard Atara laughing at some lewd joke that Maram had made. Liljana busied herself roasting up some honey-lemon tarts for our dessert, and their pungent fragrance wafted out into the air. For a single moment, the whole world seemed infinitely sweet.

'So,' Kane said, 'this overcoming is hard. The path toward becoming an Elijin and Galadin is itself almost impossibly hard and long beyond measure. For everyone, that is, except the Shining One.'

'But the Maitreyas are never of the Galadin!' I said.

'No, they are not. But they could be, eh? That is the beauty of Shining Ones, their sweet, sweet, terrible beauty. A long lifetime it takes for a man to advance to the Elijin, and sometimes ages for an Elijin to progress to the Galidik order. But for the Shining Ones, this becoming could occur in the flash of a moment.'

An old verse came unbidden into my mind:

And down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark. The dying of the light, The neverness of night.

I told these words to Kane, then said, 'The Maitreya chooses death, then. Death over infinitely long life.'

'No — he chooses one path over the other. He chooses infinite life.'

'But he dies!'

'No, he lives, truly lives, such as few ever do. Every moment in this realm, everything he touches: a rock, a tree, a child's face, blazing with the light of the One.'

'But he still must die. Why, then?'

Kane looked off into the star-silvered fields around us, and his face fell sad and strange with an ancient yearning. And he said to me, 'It is his gift to us. The Maitreya lives with a wild joy of life; he dies with equal delight. "To gladly die", Valashu. It is this gladness that pours out through the Maitreya and the Lightstone in his hands, long before his end actually comes. It has great power. It fills the world, and all worlds, and joins the earth to the heavens. Of men it makes angels. It… heals.'

I could feel his heart beating quick and strong deep inside him with a rhythm that matched my own. And then he said to me, 'In such gladness, how can fear ever dwell?'

'His gift,' I whispered, looking up at the stars.

'And that is why,' Kane said, 'the Maitreya is always chosen of the Ardun. The higher orders have already set out on the path toward immortality. For the Elijin, theirs is not to die until their ending as Galadin in a new creation — not unless they are done in by accident or treachery first. As for the Valari, who have beheld the beauty of Star-Home, with their eyes or in their dreams — they have already taken one step through the doorway of everlasting life into another world. Is it not so with you?'

'Yes, it is so,' I said to him. 'I have stood with the true Valari, in a place where life was honored instead of death.'

'So — so have I, long ago.' Kane's jaws closed with a snap like that of a wolf, then ground together as the muscles beneath his cheeks popped out. Then he said, 'But the Maitreya's whole purpose in being is to show that there is no true death.'

'"To live, I die," I said, quoting from one of my father's favourite passages of the Saganom Elu. 'The faith of the Valari.'

Kane smiled at this as he looked at me. 'This, too, is said: "They who die before they die — they do not die when they die."'

'I wish that I could believe that,' I said, swallowing against the hot acids burning the back of my throat.

'So, beliefs are useless,' Kane snarled at me. 'You must know it — or know it not.'

'I know this realm,' I said, looking out at the wheatfields of the Haraland. Somewhere down the road or across wide rivers, I knew that we would come upon other traitors or enemies such as Tarran. We would see soldiers hacked to pieces and grandmothers torn and bloodied, and men nailed to crosses of wood. 'If this is truly the same as the realm of the One, then why grieve death or the

need to kill?'

Kane's jaws clenched, and so did his fists. His eyes seemed to grow darker, like two black holes drilled into his savage face. For a moment, I thought he wanted to draw his sword and run me through with cold steel. And then something within him softened, and he said to me, 'That is Morjin's mistake — and Asangal's. I did not say that the two realms are identical, only not two. All that is, here on earth, the flowers and the butterflies, no less Morjin himself, are precious. Life is, Valashu — so infinitely precious. But so many live almost wholly within this realm. They do not see the other realm. They do not know. Thus they do not really live. When they die, they truly die and lose everything. And when such as I, and you, send them on before their time, before they ever open their eyes, we cut them off. . from everything. And that's the hell of it. The bloody, bloody hell of this cursed world we've made for ourselves.'

He drew in a long breath as he looked at me. Then he said, 'And that is why we must find the Maitreya. Keeping Morjin from using the Lightstone is one thing. But it is another to keep the world from losing its soul.'

Without another word, he whirled about and left me there at the edge of the wheatfield. Would we ever find the Maitreya, I wondered? Tomorrow we would continue our journey into this stifling realm of our enemies that I had hated nearly upon first sight. Somewhere on the road ahead of us, I sensed, we would find torment, blood and death, for that was the world. But the world must be more than that, too, or so I told myself. And with that small comfort, I turned back toward our campfire to listen to Alphanderry sing and to eat some of the honey tarts that Liljana had made for us.