Black Jade

Chapter 33

In the morning we continued down the road, the Senta Road as the Hesperuks called it, and according to the Sentans. the Iskull Road, for it led almost straight south through the whole length of Hesperu, paralleling the Rhul River and passing through the great city of Khevaju on its way to Iskull, where the Rhul emptied into the Southern Ocean. The country flattened out even more, with the low hills shrinking down into a steaming green plain. The first good-sized town we came to was named Nubur, and there we asked after Jhamrul. No one seemed to have heard of it. In the town square, built around a widened portion of the Senta Road, we went from shop to shop querying blacksmiths, barbers and the like, and attracting too much attention. A wheelwright wondered a little too loudly why pilgrims would seek a place called Jhamrul instead of Iskull, where pilgrims for ages had embarked from or landed in Hesperu. Finally, to a cooper named Goro, we admitted that we sought a place called the Well of Restoration.

'The Well of Restoration, you say!' Goro barked out as he eyed us. We had dismounted, and stood outside his shop near the huge barrel that signified his trade. 'Tell me about this Well of Restoration!'

Goro was a big man, with a big voice that carried out into the square, where many Hesperuks went about their business or took a little rest beneath one of the spreading almond trees. In shape, with his huge chest and deep belly, he resembled one of the barrels that he made out of wooden staves and hoops of iron. His black curly hair had been trimmed close to his roundish head, as had his beard. His dark eyes seemed a little too small for his face, which had fallen suddenly suspicious. I explained that we were returning from Senta, where we had learned of a fount of healing that might make Atara whole.

'Too many have been blinded these days,' Goro said as he looked at Atara. For a moment, I felt a tenderness trying to fight its way up from inside him. But then his heart hardened, and so did his face as he said. 'But then, many have made errors and suffered their correction.'

'I don't know what you mean by error,' Atara said, 'or its correction. I was blinded in battle, where an evil man took my eyes.'

'That, in itself, is an error,' Goro told her. He looked from me to Master Juwain, and then at Liljana and the children. 'Not to know error is counted by some as an Error Major, and if the igno-rance is willful or defiant, even as an Error Mortal. You should have been told this when you got off your ship in Iskull.'

'We did not come to Senta by way of Iskull,' Liljana told him, 'and so we are new to Hesperu.'

Our encounter had attracted the interest of a bookseller, who had come out of the adjacent shop. He was a small, neat man wearing an impeccably clean tunic of white cotton trimmed at the cuffs and hem with blue silk. His black ringlets of hair gleamed with a fragrant-smelling oil, and he wore gold rings around four of his ten fingers. He presented himself as Vasul, and he said to Goro: 'What is this talk about Errors Major and Errors Mortal?'

A dozen yards out in the square, whose shiny cobblestones seemed to have been scrubbed of the stain of horse dung and swept clean of the tiniest particle of dirt, a few of the other townsfolk passing along had turned their curious faces toward us. I decided that this would be an excellent time to make our farewell and be on our way.

But just as I took a step toward my horse, Goro called out to me: "Just a moment, pilgrim! We were discussing errors, and yours at that.'

In looking at the stubbornness of censure that befell Goro's face, I had a keen sense that things would go worse for us if we fled instead of remaining. And so I, and my friends, waited to hear what Goro would say.

'Let us,' Goro told, 'read the relevant passages in the Black Book. Will you oblige me, pilgrim?'

He stared straight at me, and it took me some moments before I realized that he was referring to that compendium of evil and lies called the Darakul Elu. Morjin had written it himself in mockery of the Saganom Elu. Most editions of it were bound in leather dyed a dark black, hence its more common name.

'We are traveling light,' I told him, 'and it seemed wise not to burden ourselves with books.'

I glanced at Master Juwain; this was one time where his copy of the Saganom Elu was nowhere to be seen, and I silently gave thanks for that.

'A burden!' Goro cried out. He turned to Vasul and said, 'Do you see? They willfully keep themselves in ignorance. Is that not an Error Mortal?'

'It might be,' Vasul said, 'if they were of Hesperu. But other lands have other ways.'

His words, however, which were meant to placate Goro, seemed only to anger him. Goro's dark face grew darker as he barked out: 'My son, Ugo, was killed last year, in Surrapam, fighting the errants so that our priests might bring the Way of the Dragon to the north. His blood washes clean the ground where he lies. After the campaign is finished, all the errants there who haven't been crucified will turn to the Way. And so it will be, soon, in all lands. And so these pilgrims would do well to learn our ways, since their journey has afforded them so great a chance.'

Now a man whose clay-stained hands proclaimed him as a potter stepped closer, and so did a middling old woman and a much younger one with a baby girl in her arms: a mother, daughter, and granddaughter, or so I guessed. I wanted badly to jump on Altaru's back and gallop out of this trap of a town, but it was too late for that.

'All families,' Goro instructed me, 'must keep at least one copy of the Black Book. If you are pilgrims bound by blood or oaths, you count as a family.'

'Then we should treat them as a family,' Vasul said to him. 'Where is our kindness to these strangers? Where is our hospitality?'

'The best kindness we could offer them is to correct their errors.'

'Then let us help them,' Vasul said to Goro. 'Wait here with them, won't you?'

With that, he disappeared into his shop, and then came out a few moments later bearing a large, thick book. Gold leaf had been worked into the edges of its pages; a large dragon — of a red so dark it gleamed almost black — had been embossed upon the book's leather cover. More leaf, I saw, had been used to render the dragon's eyes a brilliant gold.

'One of my scribes,' Vasul said to us, 'finished lettering this only last week. As you can see, it is beautifully illuminated.'

He opened the book to show us golden characters through which sunlight streamed as through glowing windows. He came to a page worked with the brilliant figure of the angel, Asangal, giving the Lightstone into Morjin's outstretched hands. Another page depicted the crucifixion of Kalkamesh. The scene's vividness nearly made me weep: a great being nailed to stone on the side of a black mountain, as above him a dragon beat the air with his leathery wings and used his talons to tear out Kalkamesh's liver.

'Here,' Vasul said to me, coming to a page near the middle of the book. 'This passage is from the Healings, under Miracles. Read it to us, won't you?'

He gave the book to me, and tapped a gold-ringed finger against the top of the page. The finely-wrought letters inked into the paper burned my eyes like fire. I could not bring myself to give voice to the words; it was like holding in my mouth pure poison.

'Read!' Goro told me. 'It's nearly noon, and I've a barrel to finish.'

More people had now gathered around. I began mumbling out the words of the passage.

'Louder!' Goro barked out. 'I can't hear you!

I drew in a deep breath, and with greater force, if not enthusiasm, I recited:

" ' If a man should lose limb or eye, let him not despair or drink the potions of conjurors or witches. Let him turn the eye of his soul toward the One's light and he who brings it to earth, for the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya."'

I finished reading, and Goro suddenly shouted at me: 'The only true restoration is in the hands of the Maitreya! Remember this, pilgrim! This Well of Restoration you seek is a figment. And your desire to seek it must be corrected.'

I told Goro that I would surely remember the passage. But this wasn't good enough for him.

'Read it again!' he commanded me.

'What?' I said.

'Read it again, nine times more, and louder.' He turned to look at Master Juwain. 'And the rest of you shall recite it, ten times each!'

'By what authority,' I asked him, 'do you demand this of us?'

By now, Goro had so swollen up with righteous anger and pride that it seemed his head might burst. And so it was Vasul who answered for him, saying. 'It is upon everyone to correct the errors of each other, and especially their own. That is the Way of the Dragon.'

Vasul, and others crowding in close, waited to see what I would do. But Goro lost patience, and called out: 'Read the passage!'

And so I did. Nine more times I read out loud these duplicitous words of Morjin. I gave the book to Master Juwain, and he reluc-tantly recited to Goro and Vasul, and to the crowd, as well. So did Maram, Liljana and Daj; so, in a quavering voice that nearly broke my heart, did Atara. When she failed to pass the book to Estrella, Goro berated her.

'All of you shall recite the verse,' Goro commanded.

If Atara had still possessed eyes, she would have fired off arrows of hate with them. She snapped at Goro: 'But the girl is mute!'

At the sharpness of her voice, Goro's fingers clenched as if he longed to correct her contempt with his fist. But then he asked Atara, 'Can she see still read?'

'No, she never learned the art.'

'Can she still hear?'

Atara looked at Estrella and nodded her head.

'Good,' Goro said. 'Then she will have heard the passage enough that she might recite it within her heart. Ten times.'

He turned his gaze on Estrella, who stood there on smooth cobblestones staring back at him. In the silence that fell over the square, everyone waited as they watched Estrella. She remained almost motionless as the leaves of the nearby almond trees fluttered in the breeze. Whether or not she recited Morjin's words within herself, not even the wind could know.

Finally, Goro grabbed up the book and extended it toward Kane. 'Read!' he told him.

Kane did not move. His eyes looked past the big black book and fixed on Goro's eyes. I thought he might be ready to tear them out of his head.

'Read, now, pilgrim! We haven't got all day!'

I felt Kane's fingers burning to grip the hilt of his sword. I knew that he could whip it out of its sheath and strike off Goro's head before Goro had time to change the expression of his belligerent face.

At last, with a furious motion, Kane took hold of the book. By bad chance, it seemed, it fell open to the illumination of Kalkamesh's crucifixion. Kane stared for a long few moments at the dragon's bloody talon ripping open Kalkamesh's side. I knew he trembled to cut off Goro's life years before its time, and Vasul's life, too — and the lives of a nearby baker and barber and all the other townspeople gathering in the square. The fire In Kane eyes told me that he had returned to his savage self, and I hated myself for liking him better that way. 'So,' Kane growled. 'So.'

His blunt fingers fairly tore through the book's pages. When he came to the passage that we had all read, he snarled out:

'"If a man should lose limb or eye, let him not despair or drink the potions of conjurors or witches. Let him turn the eye of his soul toward the One's light and he who brings it to earth, for the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya."'

'There!' he shouted at Goro.

'Good!' Goro said to him. He shot Kane a dark smile. 'Now complete the passage for us.'

'What!'

'The passage is incomplete. You'll find the words that should come next, if you search in your heart for them.'

If Kane searched in his heart just then, I thought, he would find a ravening beast that would tear both Goro and himself apart.

'I don't know what you're talking about!' Kane said.

'Then I shall help you.' Goro seemed very satisfied with himself as he smiled and drew in a breath of air. Then he recited the selfsame passage, ending with:

'"For the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya … and his name is Morjin!"'

'But that is not written!' Kane said, smacking his knuckles into the book.

Vasul pulled at his rings of oiled hair, and said to him, 'It is written, surely. The Darakul Elu is a living text, dwelling within the heart of the One, and therefore within the hearts of men. It always grows, even as a child grows to a man and then to an angel. And surely, Lord Morjin is the Shining One.'

A gray-haired woman standing in close called out in an awed voice, 'The heralds came with the news just last month, on the thirteenth of Marud: Lord Morjin has claimed the Lightstone and has been revealed as the Maitreya. And so his dominion is not just all of Ea, but over men's minds and hearts, as well.' And over our destinies!' another woman shouted. '"He is the coming of the sun after night," someone else quoted. "He is the bringer of the new age."'

'He is coming, himself!' the potter called out. 'It is said that Lord Morjin will soon visit Hesperu, and honor King Arsu for his conquest of Surrapam. He brings blessings for all those who have battled the errants.'

This news, if news it really was, caused many crowding the square to let out a great cheer of anticipation. But not everyone seemed to shout with equal enthusiasm. I felt sure that the cobbler standing behind the potter loudly praised Morjin only so that he could be heard praising Morjin. So it was with the woman holding the baby, and the barber, and others. A few failed to join the chorus altogether. One of these, a large man bearing an iron-shod staff, rubbed at the scar of a dragon that had been branded into his cheek. As it had been in Sakai, too many of the people here bore signs of torture: brandings, amputations, tongue clippings and eyes put out. I prayed that none of these mutilations were the correctives for Errors Minor.

Goro still waited for Kane to recite the passage — and the noxious amendment that he had added to it. I thought that Kane would rather die than say these words, but he surprised me, spitting them out nine more times to Goro's and Vasul's satisfaction. Then he turned to climb on top of his horse.

'Where are you going, pilgrim?' Goro said to him. 'We're not finished here.'

'No? Are we not?'

Kane's hand crept closer to his sword's hilt. I felt sure that he was about to commit an Error Mortal.

'What would you have of us?' I asked Goro as I grabbed Kane's arm.

'It's not what I would have,' Goro said. He looked at Vasul. 'I believe their errors call for, at the very least, a payment to the Dragon.'

'I agree,' Vasul said, smiling at me. 'I should think a dragongild of at least twenty ounces. Gold ounces, of course.'

'Twenty gold pieces!' Maram cried out. 'That is robbery!'

'No,' Vasul told him, 'it is only correction. As it is said in the Black Book, gold washes clean the stain of error.'

Various mumblings and protests from the crowd gave me to understand that this was also said of pain and blood.

'How can our gold filling your pockets,' Maram asked him, 'wash anything clean?'

Where his question angered Goro, it seemed only to wound Vasul. He held out his hands as if to ask why fate had driven him to deal with unreasoning errants. Then he explained. 'The book I have given you would sell for five gold ounces itself, and is in any case priceless. The dragongild that we ask of you will be given to the Kallimun school up on Crow's Hill, that the children of Nubur shall be educated to avoid errors in all their forms. In the end, all belongs to the Dragon, anyway.'

'So,' Kane said to Vasul, 'since you ask this dragongild of us, we are free not to pay it, eh?'

Goro stood eyeing Kane as if wondering if he had the strength to crush the breath out of him. But it was one thing, I thought, to heft barrels all day and another to grapple with Kane.

'You're free to commit any errors you wish,' Goro snapped at him. 'We've only suggested these correctives to help you. If you disagree with our assessments, we can always go up to the Kallimun castle. It's said that Ra Parvu is the one of the wisest of the Red Priests. He is far more skilled than we in distinguishing Errors Minor from Errors Major.'

Out in the crowd to my left, I took note of a pot-bellied man I recognized as a carpenter. I overheard him proudly telling someone that he had kept the Red Priests well supplied with crosses as correctives to Errors Mortal.

Liljana stepped up closer to Goro and told him, 'We don't have twenty gold pieces. We're only poor pilgrims trying make our way to Iskull.'

'Iskull?' Goro said. 'But you told that you were trying to find a Well of Restoration.'

'We,' Liljana said, looking from Kane to me, 'have realized that it cannot exist, after all. And we thank you for helping us see our error.'

Goro's beady eyes bored into Liljana to determine if she was mocking him. Although Liljana no longer possessed the means to smile at him in reassurance, her kindly, round face filled with sincerity and a great calm. She seemed genuinely grateful to Goro and Vasul. All her skills as the Materix of the Maitriche Telu, I thought, went into this persuasion. I marveled at how the pitch of her voice seemed perfectly calibrated to pump up Goro's vanity even while soothing his belligerence and urge toward cruelty. I sensed that she waited for me; to help things along. I needed only to smile at him and bow my head in acquiescence, and most of all, to nudge his heart with the slightest touch of the valarda. But I could not. And so, for a moment, our fate hung in the balance.

'If you determine that we should give all our money to the Dragon,' Liijana said to Goro, 'then we won't be able to make the journey to Iskull. And so we won't be able to greet Lord Morjin as he comes up the Senta Road, as we would like to do. And so what chance would we have of seeing sight restored to our poor companion?'

At this, Liljana gazed at Atara. Her words pleased the crowd and softened the hearts of both Vasul and Goro. In the end, Liljana was able to bargain down our 'dragongild' to ten gold pieces: a true miracle, considering that we were in no position to bargain.

'Ten gold ounces, then,' Goro finally said to Liljana. 'Alonian archers, is that right?'

Although Goro and Vasul might not like strangers bringing dangerous sentiments into their realm, they had no objection to good Alonian gold. As we would learn, the Hesperuk currency had been debased to near worthlessness to pay for the Surrapam war.

'Good!' Goro called out as Liljana counted the coins into his hand. 'Then I would like to wish you well on your pilgrimage. May the mercy of the Dragon be upon you!'

Vasul and others in the crowd repeated this blessing, then bade us farewell. As quickly as we could without appearing overhasty, we mounted our horses and made our way out of the square. We said nothing as we rode through Nubur's streets to the edge of the town. Even through the wheatfields and farmland stretching on for five miles to the south, we kept our mouths shut and our eyes upon the road. The iron shoes nailed to our horses' hooves beat against worn stone, again and again. Then, at last, as we entered a forest full of cluttering blue and yellow birds, Maram sighed out: 'That was close.'

'The mercy of the Dragon, indeed!' Kane snarled as he looked at Atara riding on in silence. He turned in his saddle to gaze back toward Nubur. 'I'd like to steal back there tonight and rouse those two thieves from their beds with a little of my mercy. How many other travelers do you think they've squeezed gold from with their little game, eh?'

'Their little game might have gotten us killed,' Maram said, 'but for Liljana's cleverness. And deceit.'

Maram's words both pleased and wounded Liljana. She looked at him and huffed out, 'I said nothing to that greedy cooper that wasn't true.'

'Ah, is that true? Would you really like to greet Morjin upon this road?'

The harsh lines that seamed Liljana's face hinted at how badly she would like to greet Morjin: with the full fury of her mind pouring itself out through the lens of her blue gelstei. Even as Atara would like to greet him with arrows and I would like to give him the blessings of my sword.

'One thing seems clear,' Liljana said. 'We can't go about this land telling everyone we're seeking the Well of Restoration. That surely is an error.'

'I'm afraid that we can't tell everyone, either, that we're seeking the Red Dragon,' Master Juwain said. 'I would not want the Kallimun to hear that we eight pilgrims were asking after him.'

'Perhaps,' Maram said, scratching his beard, 'it's too dangerous for us to pose as pilgrims at all. I think we need a new guise.' 'What, then?'

As we clopped along down the road into a wall of moist, hot air, Maram looked up at a lark perched on the branch of a teak tree and singing out its sweet song. And Maram smiled as he said, 'I have an idea.'

Later that day we came to a town called Sumru, where we spent the night camping out in the surrounding woods. Before dawn, with the air still nearly black and whining with mosquitoes, we roused ourselves and turned west onto a narrow load leading out of Sumru through the forest. The great teak trees and thick undergrowth, we hoped, would hide us from the eyes of our enemies, if any had been sent to spy upon us. After a few hours of swift riding, we came into a more populous region, and turned northwest onto a muddy little road that took us into a town named Ramlan. There, with the last of our money, we went about the various shops making purchases: bright bolts of cloth and colored swatches of leather; herbs and paper and ink; paints of various colors, and brushes, large and small; a great cart that it would take two horses to pull, and a load of planks of cured wood to fill it. And other things. Kane went to a swordsmith and ordered knives made according to precise specifications. From one of Ramlan's blacksmiths, Hartu the Hammer, as he was called, he also ordered chains and a cask of nails. We had to wait all the rest of that day and half the next for Hartu to pound out the nails from long strips of glowing red iron. Which he had finished this hot, sweaty work, he gave the cask to Kane, and tried to dispel his uneasiness toward him, and us, by saying, 'I haven't made so many nails since Lord Mansarian came through here five years ago to punish the errants up toward Yor. You haven't said what you want all this iron for; I should think the nails are too small for putting anyone up on wood, even children — ha, ha!'

I didn't like his nervous laughter, or the way he looked at Daj and Estrella. I didn't like the way the people of Ramlan looked at us, as if wondering why pilgrims had left the Senta Road to go wandering about the countryside. I was glad to help hitch two of pur packhorses to the cart, and then lead the way out of Ramlan even deeper into the Haraland.

We spent the rest of the day working along muddy farm roads, turning left or right, north or south, so as to confound any who might witness our passage and want to report us. Toward dusk we entered a large wood and found what seemed an old track leading into the heart of the trees. It seemed perfect for our needs. While Kane guarded our rear, I rode on ahead to look for footprints or other sign of habitation, but it seemed that no one had used this track for a long time. We finally came into a clearing. The heap of stones at its center looked to be a cottage that had fallen in upon itself ages ago. Kane wanted to set to work immediately, but we had to use the last light of day to make our camp.

In the morning, though, Kane rose at dawn, and began banging nails into the wooden planks with a great noise that awoke everyone. I helped him build a sort of small chalet onto the bed of the cart, and so did Daj and Maram. While we sweated in the humid morning air, Liljana took out scissors, needle and thread to shape and sew the bolts of cloth together. Atara helped her. This surprised me, for I had not known she possessed such skills. As she put it, 'I was once a princess, and my father expected me to learn the womanly arts — so that I could marry well and provide him with grandchildren.'

Estrella, however, had little talent for sewing, and so she played the flute for us to provide music while we worked. Alphanderry came forth and accompanied her, singing out a rather bawdy ballad whose rhythms seemed timed to reinforce the hammering of Kane's nails. Later that day, when it came time to paint the little traveling house that our cart had become, Estrella picked up a small brush while Alphanderry continued entertaining us. As it happened, she had a rare gift for using brightly colored paints to render birds and flowers and the like, though she could not tell us where she had come by it. Alphanderry, of course, could grasp no brush in his hand, nor anything else. But day by day, he seemed to appear ever more substantial, as if he was somehow growing used to the world again. He called out ideas for figures to Estrella, and to Kane and Maram, who also helped with the painting. I took great delight in the delight with which Estrella brought to life a golden astor tree and a rising sun and a dark blue panel full of stars. I had to stop her, though, from depicting a great silver swan. When she discovered that her enthusiasm had carried her away into an error that might have betrayed us, she wasted no time in self-recrimination, but only used her brush to quickly transform the swan into a winged horse. It joined other animal figures, some fantastical and some not: diving dolphins and a chimera; an eagle in flight and a two-headed serpent and a great blue bear. Liljana suggested we paint a dragon against one of the red panels, but it was thought that the Hesperuks might take offence at a golden or green one. None of us could bear to see a red dragon defiling our wildly and beautifully decorated house, though Kane wryly remarked that it would do no harm to paint a red one against red. That way, we could always tell the curious that the great Red Dragon always dwelled within our house, unseen, as it did within the hearts of men.

It took us four days to complete our preparations. When we were ready to set out again, I stood staring at the cart and admiring the fine detail with which Estrella had embellished a mandolet, a tarot card and the figure of a costumed man juggling seven brightly colored balls. I smiled to see how closely this man resembled Kane. The likeness became even more striking when Liljana brought forth one of the costumes that she had been sewing and bade Kane to put it on. This, with much grumbling and cursing, he did. She then gave him seven leather balls which she had filled with dried rice and stitched shut. Their colors ranged from blood red to a brilliant violet, as of a rainbow.

As we all stood around watching, Kane tossed the balls into the air, one after the other, and with lightning-quick motions of his hands, kept them streaming in an arc that seemed a rainbow of its own. I knew then that Maram's idea might possibly work: Kane would certainly be our juggler. (And, at need, our strongman, magician and mandolet player.) Atara, who brought forth a clear, gleaming sphere that we had purchased from a glassblower in Ramlan, would tell people's fortunes. Master Juwain would act as a reader of horoscopes and tarot cards, while Liijana would pose as a potionist and Daj as her assistant. I began practicing on a long flute also acquired in Ramlan, intending to accompany Estrella, who held dear the flute that I had given her more than a year ago in Ishka. We both would provide music for Alphanderry, our minstrel. As Estrella also evinced great expressiveness with her eyes, hands and move- ments, she might also act as a mime. And Maram, of course, would be our fool.

'We needn't actually perform,' he told us after Liljana had helped him try on his silly clown's costume. 'In fact, I'm sure it will go better for us if we don't. But at least we should be able to move about freely — doesn't everyone welcome a traveling troupe?'

Such troupes of players, of course, had journeyed from land to land for thousands of years. They called no kingdom their own, and no kingdom made claim on their loyalties and rarely dared even to tax them.

'These Hesperuks are a grim people,' Maram said, 'but at least they haven't yet outlawed entertainment.'

Daj, however, having been born in the Haraland, took objection to this, saying, 'My people are not grim. In my father's house, there was always wine and song. No one was afraid to laugh. My father, once when I was very young, took us to see one of the troupes that came up from the south. There was a tightrope walker and a man who ate fire. I can't remember their names.'

Maram reached up to jingle one of the bells hanging down from his yellow and blue cap. He said, 'Well, I hope people will forget our names as readily. But we mustn't, and so let's go over them one more time.'

Mirustral I was to be no longer, and certainly not Valashu Elahad. Maram now nodded at me and addressed me as Arajun, and Atara as Kalinda. Liljana had chosen the new name of Mother Magda, while Master Juwain was to go by Tedorik and Daj as Jaiyu. Kane had transformed into Taras, and Estrella into Mira. Alphanderry would sing under the name of Thierraval. And Maram had become Garath the Fool.

We left the woods as we had come, and turned onto one of the Haraland's back roads. Although we journeyed toward no particular destination, we felt the need to complete our quest with all possible speed. Our pace, however, limited by the speed of the heavy cart, proved slow. Its huge, iron-shod wheels left long grooves in the soft roads and from time to time became stuck in mud. Finally, I decided to hitch Altaru to the cart. He hated this new, grinding work, and looked at me as if I had betrayed him. But he was as strong as any draft horse, and had something of a draft horse's look. And this, I thought, might work to our advantage in case anyone questioned us too closely.

For the next five days, we wandered from town to town asking people if they had ever heard of a place called Jhamrul. No one had. We listened for talk of healers and unusual healings, too. We worked our way into the heart of the Haraland, east and south. As we drew closer to the Iona River, which flowed down from the mountains into the great Ayo, the land grew almost perfectly flat. The Haralanders here cultivated little wheat, but much millet, maize, beans and a sickly-sweet orange root called a yam. The various towns and villages — Urun, Skah, Malku and Nirrun — smelled of cinnamon and chocolate, which the Haralanders ground up with other spices and made into a sort of sauce for chicken, lamb and pork and strange meats such as squaj and kresh, taken from the giant lizards that infested Hesperu's watercourses. At first we encountered no troubles more vexatious than roads flooded from torrential rains and repeated requests that we encamp and give a show. And then, five miles outside of Nirrun, we ran straight into a company of soldiers coming up the road from the south.

There were fourteen of them, accoutred in heavy, fish-scale armor and riding worn horses. Their captain, a long-faced man named Riquis, waited impatiently while we maneuvered the cart onto a beanfield off the side of the road. The ground was mushy from the recent rains, and instantly mired the cart's great wheels. The soldiers, of course, might have ridden around us with greater ease, but that was not the way of things in Hesperu.

Riquis' sergeant, a stout man with a thick, black beard that spilled down over the collar of his armor, watched us with a growing interest. His covetous eyes fastened like fishhooks on Altaru and Fire. He said to Riquis: 'My lord I look at those horses! I've never seen finer ones!'

They are fine indeed,' Riquis said as his calculating gaze fell upon Altaru. 'How does a band of players come by such horses?'

I stood in the mud by Altaru with my hand stroking his neck. To Riquis, I said, 'A gift, my lord, from a lord of a land far away.'

I did not tell him that the lord was named Duke Gorador of Daksh.

'He must have liked your performance marvelously well to have given you such a gift,' Riquis said to me.

I tried not to look Riquis eye to eye as I said, 'We're but poor players who do as we can.'

Riquis nodded his head at what he took to be modesty. Then his sergeant said to him, 'Why don't we see how well they can do? It's been half a year since I saw a show.'

'I would like that,' Riquis said. 'Unfortunately, though, we haven't the time.'

Although he did not reveal his business, I gathered that his company had been summoned to Avrian, some forty miles to the north on the Iona River. As we had been told in Senta, King Asru had laid siege to Avrian for two bitter months before he had finally taken the city.

It's said they've crucified a thousand men,' Riquis told us. 'King Angand has arrived from Sunguru, and has joined King Arsu to witness Avrian's destruction. If you truly wish for an appreciative audience, then you should perform for the King. He is a lover of all arts and entertainments, or so it's said.'

'Perhaps one day,' I told him, 'we'll be so fortunate.'

The sergeant returned to the matter that had originally caught his attention. He said, 'If we don't have time for a show, then let's requisition these horses and be done with it, my lord.'

My hand froze fast against Altaru's warm, sweating neck. I calculated the distance, in inches, to the wagon where I had hidden my sword. I calculated the thickness of the soldiers' armor and the length of their spears, as well, and the slight art they seemed to have with such weaponry. I thought that Kane, Maram and I might possibly kill most of them before the survivors lost heart and fled.

'Lord Riquis,' I said to this grim captain, 'this horse was a gift, and so it would be bad manners if we ourselves were to give him away.'

'This horse,' Master Juwain said, nodding at Altaru, 'is our strongest. We would be hard put to find another to draw so heavy a cart.'

'And where, diviner,' Riquis asked, 'were you given this beast?'

Master Juwain, who hated lying even more than I did, said, 'The horse comes from Anjo.'

'And where is that?'

'It lies in the Morning Mountains.'

'And where is that?'

'Far away, northeast, past the White Mountains and across the plains of the Wendrush.'

'Oh,' Riquis spat out, 'the Dark Lands. Where, it's said, dwell the Valari.'

This word seemed to hang in the air like a ringing bell. I wrapped my fingers around Altaru's mane as I tried not to look at Riquis.

'Have you performed for the Valari, then?' Riquis asked. 'Horse or no, you are well away from those demons.'

Then he quoted a passage from the- Black Book.

'"All who follow the Way of the Dragon, and follow it truly, are of the Light and shall walk the path of the angels. All who do not are of the Dark, and shall be destroyed."'

Liljana, who had a mind as sharp as Godhran steel and could use it to rip apart others' arguments, said to Riquis: 'But surely, the Way of the Dragon is open to everyone, even the Valari.'

'Surely it is,' Riquis said. 'But the Valari, long ago, at the beginning of time, turned away from the Light. Willfully. They poisoned their spirits, and so became demons.'

'Not all of them seemed so evil when we passed through their realm.'

'But is it not so with the cleverest of demons? That which is foul often appears as fair, and the darkest of the Dark as Light.'

Liljana threw her arm around Daj, who stood by her side. And she said, 'But what child is born in darkness? And is it not upon all of us to bring to the errants the — '

'Do not weep for the demonspawn,' Riquis told her. 'In darkness they are born, and to darkness they shall return. It is coming, Mother — the Great Crusade is coming. The Kariad, when whole forests shall be felled in order to make crosses for the Valari people. Soon, King Arsu will lead our armies into the Dark Lands, into Eanna and the far north. Any day now, it's said, the King will march with King Angand back down to Khevaju, and then we shall need all the good men and good horses to bear them that we can find.'

This news gave us good reason to reconsider our course, for we had been drifting closer and closer to the Iona River, which it now seemed we must avoid at any cost.

Riquis drew in a great gulp of the muggy air, and stared at Liljana. And then he surprised me, saying, 'But we also need fine players to keep our soldiers' spirits bright. And so keep your horses. Mother. Perhaps one day you'll return to the Dark Lands to perform for our company when we have raised high the standard of the Dragon over the Valari's graves.'

As Maram had said, doesn't everyone welcome a traveling troupe?

Liljana thanked Riquis for his mercy, and presented him and his sergeant with a love potion, which might help them open their hearts and hold their spears up high when they reached Avrian, or so she told them. Riquis and his soldiers rode off quickly after that. And so did we. We turned east and south through the steaming countryside, away from Avrian and the road that King Arsu's army would soon march down along the Iona river. In villages and small farms, we continued inquiring after Jhamrul. As we thought it might arouse too much suspicion to ask directly if anyone knew of any miracles of healing, we spoke of our desire to see Atara made whole again, in hope that somebody might volunteer information that would help us. But when we broached this matter, more than one Haralander stared at us in cold silence. And one woman, a silver-haired grandmother, admitted that she knew of a fine healer up near Sagarun. a young man who had been taken by the Kallimun and never seen again. Even this man, however, she told us, had never been known to heal the blind.

With every day and hour that we remained within this hateful realm, it seemed less and less likely that we would ever come across Jhamrul, and more and more likely that we would be found out, taken and tortured. Torture seemed the fate of everyone who dwelt here, for the Way of the Dragon not only made cruel use of people's bodies and possessions, but twisted their spirits and scared them with fire.

As we drove our painted cart down muddy roads and through poor towns whose houses were built of dried mud and straw, we saw men and women wearing placards that proclaimed their errors. We learned to 'read' the various symbols branded into their cheeks or foreheads: a star usually signified minor defiance of some lord or master whereas an eye within a triangle told of the errant's hubris, in aspiring to a station for which he had no claim. Theft, of course, was usually punished by amputation, though minor pilferings or greed might call for nothing more than the searing of a grasping hand into one's flesh. And so with other symbols for other crimes.

I might have thought that the Haralanders would try to cover these mutilations in shame. But so disfigured were they in their souls that many bore their scars openly and even blatantly: in the village of Dakai, I saw a streetsweeper going about naked but for a loincloth, and proudly displaying a star, triangle, bell, hand, circle, butterfly and other signs branded all across his shiny brown torso, arms and legs. It was as if he used these scars to cry out to everyone: 'Do you see how much I've suffered to try to walk the Way of the Dragon? Do you see how much I've sacrificed in pain that others might learn from my errors?' It astonished me to learn that errants, when facing a branding, were expected to perform this atrocity upon themselves, and that many actually did. It seemed they were burning into their very nerve fibers the imperative that they existed only to execute the will of the Red Dragon.

We had tramped through the Haraland many days, however, before we came across the first crucifixion. In the town square of Yosun, a slender man had been put up on wood for all to see. I was driving the cart that day, and stopped it on hardpacked earth stained with blood. I climbed down and joined the crowd gathered around the cross. Four soldiers covered in iron scales and bearing spears would not let any of the townsfolk too near the crucified man. I saw that great iron spikes split his hands and feet, and his trembling legs seemed no longer able to push against the footpiece to which he was nailed. He gasped for breath. Two days in the hot Haraland sun had nearly blackened his naked body. His dark eyes stared out as at nothing, and I knew he was close to death.

Although it was hard to tell because desiccation and anguish had contorted his face, I thought he was of an age with me. To a woman standing near me, I asked, 'What was his error?'

'He killed his brother,' she told me.

'Killed his brother!' I cried out. I could think of few worse crimes.

But there was more to the story than that. From a wheelwright who had known the young man, whose name was Tristan, I learned that Tristan's brother, Alok, had flown into a rage and had struck the local Red Priest. It seemed that the priest, Ra Sadun, upon learning of the defiant ways of a third brother only six years old, had come to take the boy from Tristan's and Alok's house to be raised in the Kallimun school. As the Kallimun say, 'Give us the child, and we shall give you the man.'

But Alok had not wanted to give away his youngest brother. Perhaps he feared that the Red Priests would castrate him, as they often did with boys so that they might more beautifully sing the praises of Angra Mainyu and Morjin. Perhaps he dreaded even darker things. Clearly, though, he had not believed Ra Sadun's assertion that the abduction of his youngest brother was a mercy, the only way to save the boy. And so he had hammered his fist into Ra Sadun's nose, drawing blood. After Ra Sadun had gone away to summon the soldiers, jgristan took up a carving knife and killed Alok. The dishonor that Alok had brought upon their family, Tristan claimed, was too great for him to bear. Alok's blood, he told everyone, would wash it clean. But many of the townfolk of Yosun believed that Tristan had stabbed Alok to save him from the terrible punishment of crucifixion. Ra Sadun must have believed this, too, for he had ordered the soldiers to seize Tristan and crucify him in his brother's place.

'The Dragon is not to be cheated,' the wheelwright told me. He was an old whitebeard whose hands seemed as hard as the wooden spokes he worked. He waved one of them at Tristan, fastened to the cross above the square. 'If you ask me, though, Tristan did kill Alok out of honor. He loved his brother, yes, but I say he loved his family's honor even more. And who could suffer anyone to live who had struck a priest?'

Slayings of honor, of course, had a long tradition in the Haraland. Nobles fought duels over real or imagined insults; men murdered the prurient for staring too boldly at their wives; brothers put to death their own sisters for adultery and other lasdviousness that mocked marriage and brought shame upon their families.

The wheelwright gazed up at the dying man with a whitish rheum rilling his eyes. He said to me, 'There was a time when the Red Priests would have praised Tristan for what he did. Now they put him on a cross.'

The whole spirit of the Way of the Dragon, as I understood it, was that people were supposed to divine Morjin's will, make it their own and carry it out in their hearts and deeds. But this will could prove difficult to perceive, for it always changed.

'I think it's Arch Uttam,' the wheelwright said to me. This was not the first time I had heard the name of Hesperu's High Priest. 'They say the Kallimun will no longer tolerate honor killings of any sort. All right, I say, all honor to Lord Morjin, and who is anyone to assert his own honor against what's best for the realm? But sometimes it's hard to know what's best. I don't understand why the priests don't make things more clear. I don't understand why King Arsu doesn't make them make things more clear. It's enough to drive a man mad. I'm not complaining, of course, but I just wish I could get through one day without worrying I've made some error I didn't even know was an error. I suppose Arch Uttam just wants to bring order to the Haraland, as does everyone. They say Lord Morjin will visit here soon, and so it won't do for him to have to see men going around murdering their own brothers.'

It astonished me that the wheelwright bore no mark of brandings anywhere that I could see, for it seemed that the looseness of his lips would long since have tripped him up into making an Error Major. I took advantage of his loquaciousness to ask if he had ever heard of a place called Jhamrul; he hadn't. When I brought up the matter of miraculous healings, as slyly as I could, he seemed to remember that he was talking to a strange player in a public square at a crucifixion, and not holding forth over a mug of beer in his home. And so he gave me a response that I had grown well-tired of: 'They say the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya. Of course, I don't know if even Lord Morjin could restore poor Tristan now.'

In truth, no one or nothing could, for Tristan's head suddenly dropped down upon his chest as his strength gave out and he died. I felt it, like a hole opening inside myself through which an icy black wind blew. A terrible thought came to me then: what if we had come here too late and Tristan had been the one whom we sought? But how could that be, I wondered? Tristan was a murderer of men, even as I was myself.

After that they cut down the body for burial, and we prepared to leave. But the wheelwright, who knew Tristan's mother, implored me to give a show so that we might cheer the poor woman. I did not think that anything in the world could help her just then, for she bent over weeping uncontrollably as she wrapped Tristan's body in a white linen. She reminded me of my own mother, not in appearance, for she was short and stout, but in the depth of love that poured out of her.

In the end, I agreed to the wheelwright's request, although I doubted if any of the townsfolk would want to see a show that day. But the people of Yosun surprised me. Later that afternoon, after the burial, my friends and I donned our costumes and set up in the town square. More people packed into it than had been present at the crucifixion. It was as if they desired any song, story or spectacle that might drive the sight of Tristan from their minds. Tristan's mother, whose name was Uja, stood closest to the circle that we had marked off with a painted rope. It seemed almost profane to perform on ground still stained with Tristan's blood.

But perform we did. Kane brought out his colored balls, and hurled them high into the air. When he had finished juggling, he took off his shirt and stood half naked before the crowd. So perfect was he in the proportions of his limbs and body that it wasn't readily obvious what a large man he really was. But now he displayed his great strength for all to behold. He brought out an iron chain, and invited the wheelwright and several other men from the audience to test it and wrap it around his mighty chest, locking it tightly. Then, with a huge and quick inbreath of air, his chest swelled out like a bellows, snapping the chain with a sharp crack of iron, to the delight of the crowd.

After that Maram came out and clowned around, pretending to try to break this selfsame chain with heavings of his belly. Failing this feat he gave up in order to ogle Yosun's most beautiful women. When Yosun's fathers and brothers grew uneasy with his attentions, Maram seemed to remember his restraint, and used the chain as A reminder, wrapping it around his loins. A moment later, however, he fell back into lust, and thrust out his hips toward the crowd as he stepped forward with a leer lighting up his face, only to be jerked up short by his pulling on the chain. I thought his' act too lewd for the severe Haralanders, and I feared that one of the men might draw a sword and decapitate him, or worse. But again the townsfolk surprised me. They laughed heartily at Maram's antics. There was something curious, I thought, in the way that a fool could play to the heart of people's foibles and fears, and get away with things that no one else could.

Toward the end of our show, Estrella and I took up our flutes and Kane his mandolet, even as liljana opened the painted door of our cart for Alphanderry to make a mysterious appearance. Maram announced that Thierraval was too shy to mingle with the crowd, but had consented to sing for everyone. The single song that Alphanderry gave to the people was sorrowful and yet full of brilliant hope, and made many of the men, women and children weep. After Alphanderry had finished and gone back inside the cart — and Atara began telling fortunes while Liljana sold potions — Tristan's mother came forward to thank us. She tried to give us a few coins for our efforts, but I told her that she should save them to buy candles to bum for her sons. Others, however, dropped into Maram's fool's cap many copper coins and even a few pieces of silver. They wished us well on our journey, and asked when we might return.

When Maram hefted the jingling silver in his cap, he looked at me and said, 'Well, we failed at being princes, but it seems we might have a future as players.'

In the days following that, after we had left Yosun miles behind us, we gave other performances in other towns. Liljana insisted that we needed the money to replenish our dwindling stores, if not our purse that we had emptied of gold in Nubur and Ramlan. But we had even deeper desires. We played, I thought, to encourage the nearly-enslaved Haralanders, and more, to inspirit ourselves. It was as if we needed to know there remained one small part of the world that we could still command and make beautiful. The cross holding up Tristan was only the first of many that we passed by. We never became inured to their sight. The cruel wasting of so many lives cut at something sacred inside all of us, but seemed to wound Estrella the most deeply. Although she had borne the torments of the Red Desert, and much else, without complaining thought she might not be able to go on much longer. And then one day, on a rainy forest road outside of Lachun, we came upon a solitary cross. The very small body it bore was that of a child. We could not tell its sex, for the sun had baked its bloated flesh black, and the crows had long since gone to work on it, pecking the corpse nearly to the bone. We could find no one about to tell us what this child's error could possibly have been. After we had cut down the remains and buried them, Estrella stood weeping over the grave in her strange, silent way that was so much worse than another person's sobbing. Crucifixion, the Hesperuks say, is a mercy, for it gives the crucified nearly infinite time to go down into the soul and correct one's errors. It might truly have been a mercy, I thought, if Estrella had died at so young an age in Argattha so as to spare her the anguish that now tore through her like a torturer's skive opening up her insides. I felt her fighting this terrible pain with all her will and every breath; and more, she seemed to beat back in fury the black, bitter thing that had been working at her heart since our passage of the Skadarak. I wept with her because it seemed that in the end, evil must always win.

The following morning, however, the rain stopped and rays of brilliant sunshine drove down through the spaces between the clouds. Estrella insisted on leading us west, toward the Iona River. Whether the previous day's suffering had opened up some secret part of her or whether she merely followed on instinct, she could not tell us. But she led us straight to a town full of swordmakers and armorers. It was from a blacksmith there, in a seemingly chance conversation, that we learned of a village not very far away whose name was Jhamrul.