Black Jade

Chapter 36

It was too late in the day to break camp and resume our travel, and so we returned to our cart and settled in to enjoying the delicious dinner that Liljana prepared. She cooked us ham and maize-bread, green beans in butter and cucumbers sliced up in sour cream and mint. For dessert we had a rice pudding sweetened with honey, cloves and cinnamon. She determined to welcome Bemossed into our company with foods that might nourish his body, and a camaraderie of like souls. She amazed him by giving a piece of bread directly into his hand. He looked upon her, I sensed, as the mother whom he could hardly remember. It must have been hard for him to reconcile his obvious warm feelings toward her — and toward Maram, Atara, Estrella and Daj — with his bitterness at me for buying him and bearing him away against his will.

That evening, I borrowed Master Juwain's gelding and gave Bemossed his first riding lesson. As soon as we could, we would set out to recross the north of Hesperu, abandoning the cart when we reached the mountains. Bemossed would need to learn his way with horses. This, I saw, might prove no easy task. Although he had no trouble gentling the gelding with long strokes of his hand, he nearly refused to mount the beast. As he put it 'How is it that men think that they can make slaves of a noble creature and compel him to bear a great weight upon his back?'

These were the greatest number of words that he had spoken to me since the morning in the meadow. After I compelled him to place his feet in the horse's stirrups, he spoke to me only a little and only at need, responding to my questions or commands with quick, quiet utterances. He never failed to be polite. A score of years as a slave had taught him the ways of respect, and it seemed to me that he used this acquiescent manner not so much to placate me as to pierce me with a spear of guilt over what I had done to him. That he already knew me so well chagrined me, even as it made me believe that he truly was the one whom we had sought for so long.

He did not, however, carry this revenge to my companions. Neither did he befriend them, at least not at first. In the morning, when we drove our cart out of Jhamrul back toward the Ghurlan Road, he sat beside Estrella on the seat with me in near silence. He seemed to listen to the thump of the horses' hooves and the grinding of the cart's wheels — and to Maram's booming voice as he held forth with Master Juwain and the others, riding ahead of us. Once, Liljana dropped back to ask Bemossed the name of some strange vegetables growing in a field off to the side of the road, and he chatted with her pleasantly enough. And, later that afternoon, Maram got him to laugh with a recitation of 'A Second Chakra Man'. Bemossed seemed to bear a great fondness for Maram, and asked him more than once if his wound might be getting better. I felt him, though, restraining his deeper affections, for Maram and the rest of us, as a man might clamp down his hand upon a cut vein. Beginning with his parents, I thought, he had lost too much in his life to want to risk losing more.

We made a good few miles that day beneath a clear, hot sky, covering nearly half the distance back toward Orun. Our plan was to recross the Iona River, and then to lose ourselves on forest roads and country lanes, cutting the Senta Road well to the north of Nubur, where we could hardly explain to Goro and Vasul how we had suspiciously transformed ourselves from pilgrims into a troupe of players. We said nothing of this plan to Bemossed. Given time, I was sure that we could win him to our purpose. But for now, as Liljana advised, he must get used to us, and we to him.

If he remained a mystery to us, then he must have found many things about us to be more than strange. He surely wondered why Kane insisted on surrounding our camp with a fence of old logs and brush, and more, that he remained awake all night, prowling about like a great cat listening to every sound in the woods around us. Master Juwain, in various conversations, betrayed his great erudition about a great number of things, including the healing arts. I could almost hear Bemossed asking himself how a reader of tarot cards and horoscopes had come by such knowledge. I think he puzzled as well over the obvious fact that Daj had been born of Hesperu. When Maram brought up the matter of the Avrian crucifixions, Daj turned toward the north and said, 'They always promised that if there was another rebellion, they would nail everyone up on crosses instead of selling them as slaves.'

Atara, I sensed, seemed a marvel to him — and possibly much more. After dinner that evening she asked him for help in changing her blindfold. He brought a pot of warm water to her, and cloth for bathing as well. In the light of an almost full moon, he watched as she sat on an old log and washed her face. The hideousness of her scarred eye hollows did not repel him; rather it aroused in him a blazing compassion. He could scarcely control the quavering of his voice as he said to her: 'Is it true that in being blinded you gained the second sight?'

'I gained something,' she said to him. 'At times, my sight is clearer, now.'

'But what do you see? I heard you telling fortunes in the square. You promised the widow, Luyu, that she would find happiness and love.'

'I said that she could find these things. There is always a way. Always a path.'

'Truly? And can you see this path when you look at someone?'

'Sometimes.'

'As you can see other paths, through meadows or woods? I've never heard of a blind woman who can see everything.'

'Not everything, Bemossed. I can't see you.'

This, I thought, should have given me great hope, for Atara had told us that the Maitreya always remained veiled in shadow to her, and so she could not describe the lineaments of his face. 'Here,' she said to him, 'come closer.'

She bade him to kneel down on the ground in front of the log, and he reluctantly did as she asked. Then she reached out toward him, fumbling through naked air until she found his face. She traced her fingers across his forehead and along the line of his curly black hair. She pressed lightly upon his dosed eyelids, then touched his fine nose and flaring cheekbones. She let her palm rest upon his bearded jaw. She smiled, then told him, 'I think you must be as beautiful as Luyu said you were.'

Atara's words seemed to stun him. He gazed at her for a long moment before calling out softly, 'She said that. . about a slave?'

'She has eyes,' Atara said sadly. 'She is a woman, and a widow at that.'

'Yes, but she should not even have been looking at a Hajarim.'

Atara smiled again and said, 'If I still had eyes, what would I see when I looked at you? Not a Hajarim. There are no such ones in our company.'

And with that she found his hand and took hold of it. She brought it up to her face. He needed only the slightest encouragement to touch the golden hair of her eyebrows and then let his fingertips come to rest in the empty spaces beneath. She sat I on her log while he knelt before her, face to face, for what seemed almost forever. I heard their breaths rise and fall in perfect rhythm with each other. Then a deep desire that she usually kept hidden poured out of her like a stream of glowing white iron. I could not tell if it was longing or lust or love — or perhaps all three. I did not know if Bemossed could feel her burning passion for life as I did, like a white-hot sword thrust through my belly. He was like a man discovering a new land of beauty and wonder. He kept touching his fingertips to her eye hollows, oblivious of time, oblivious of me. I doubted if he purposed to inflame my jealousy; I doubted as well that he would have acted otherwise solely because it distressed me.

In truth, I sensed much in his encounter with Atara that distressed him. His fingers and hands began trembling, and he seemed barely able to contain his own blazing passions. If the sun shone all day and all night, I thought, it would incinerate everything that it touched. I felt him again clamping down on the desire that surged through him, this time closing off his heart. After resting his hand upon her cheek, he finally broke off touching her altogether. He wrapped a new blindfold for her, and tied it around her head. Then he went off to help Estrella comb the mud out of the horses' coats.

Later that night, before bed, I stood with Atara in the moonlight. As it had been for most of the miles since the Skadarak, she still seemed totally blind. I said to her, 'Maram's wound is no better — do you feel anything, where Bemossed touched you?'

She rested her fingers on her blindfold and laughed out, 'I think you feel something that you needn't. You've no cause for worry on this account.'

'I'm not worried,' I told her.

She reached out to grasp my hand as when I had first met her and we sat together beneath the stars. She said to me, 'Bemossed would be an easy man to love, I think, but never as I do you. He is like the brother I never had.'

She kissed me on the lips, lightly, and then went off to sleep inside the cart with Liljana and Estrella. I lay down by the fire, staring up for hours at the silver moon and the bright arrays of stars. A single question burned through my mind deep into my soul: Why did it seem to be Bemossed's fate to heal in love and light, while mine drove me on to strike my sword into others and slay?

In the morning we set out again to the east. The road led slightly downhill toward the low country around the Iona River. As I drove the cart, Bemossed sat on the seat opposite me, with Estrella in between. For hours, he said nothing. He tried not to look at Atara, riding along on her roan mare ahead of us, or at me. He stared out at the fields of cotton and the rice bogs, and the occasional stretches of forest, and I wondered if his service to various masters had ever taken him through this steamy country. I fell him brooding over matters that he would not speak of. I sensed in him an anguish of the soul which, strangely, he seemed to cherish and hold onto, as he did other dark moods and sensations. I thought he was too much at home inside himself with all the colon of his feelings: the blue of his awe and sorrow for the world; the violet of his unfulfilled desire; the red of his great anger toward me.

For most of his life, I thought, he had necessarily looked to himself alone for any succor or understanding. But with his touching of Atara, some deep drive to trust others seemed to open inside him. As the miles passed behind us that long, hot day, I sensed him finding a deep accord with Estrella, and she with him. He spoke to her of little things, which she smiled at or commented upon with a flutter of her fingers or an arching of her eyebrows. And she seemed to speak to him. And not just to him but of him: her lovely, open face shone as brightly as any mirror, reflecting the glories of his soul that she found within him. Without being conscious of this talent, I thought, she showed me Bemossed's kindness, his compassion, generosity, fire and an otherworldly grace.

But there were darker things, too: stubbornness, jealousy, and an excruciating sensitivity to other people and to the world. He carried deep in his eyes intimations of despair and doom. I sensed that he felt flawed in a fundamental way. Then, too, I think he feared the long, dark night of the spirit when he found himself cast out into the deadness of the world and could not find his way back to his secret land. It came to me, as I saw him touching his fingers to Estrella's throat and his eyes grew bright and fey, that he sought this abidance through healing. And at least a part of this primeval urge to make things whole he directed at me. This amazed me: that despite his ire, despite his dread of my wrath and my fury for vengeance upon my enemies, he still wished to restore me to my best self and to bring out in me only the good, the beautiful and the true.

We made camp that night in a clearing in a wood to the south of the road not five miles from Orun. While Liljana and Estrella began preparing dinner, Kane galloped off to scout ahead and ensure that we might make the river crossing without running into King Arsu's army marching down the road from Avrian. He returned two hours later to a bowl of stew that Liljana had kept warm for him. Between bites of steaming okra, maize and beef, he told us, 'The army hasn't passed yet, but it's expected any day. We'll do well to be up early tomorrow and cross over the Black Bridge as soon as they open it for taking tolls.'

I might have hoped that Kane would join us in retiring early, taking a little rest, if not sleep. Instead, he set up on the side of the cart a painted wooden target. He took out the seven knives that he had ordered from the smith in Ramlan. They were each long and tapered to a fine point, perfectly balanced and razor-sharp. He stood on bracken-covered ground oblivious of the mosquitoes that came out and whined through the semi-darkness; he hurled his knives spinning through the air, trying to fit as many as he could into the small, white circle at the center of the target. The small moon above the trees cast but little light for him to make out the target's rings. How he worked such magic remained to me a mystery. Warriors of Mesh cast lances at targets, and used knives to cut meat or other men, but we rarely learned this art that Kane now displayed with such great determination and virtuosity.

Later, Liljana brewed up some tea for us, and for Kane, some thick Khevaju coffee which Bemossed brought to him steaming in his cup. Everyone except Kane retired soon after that. He took long slow sips of his dark drink in between his target practice. I tried to fall asleep to the thunk, thunk, thunk of steel driving into wood. In watching Kane all ashimmer in the moonlight, in looking over at Bemossed stretched out in a troubled stillness by the fire, I brooded over the mystery of men. Would the brilliance of our spirits someday lift us up toward the stars? Or would our inborn flaws drive deep through our hearts, dividing us against ourselves and letting in the darkness?

It was in that strange time between darkness and day that I awoke to a sense that something was wrong. Mosquitoes whined about me without pity; frogs croaked from some water deeper in the woods. A faint light suffused the trees and undergrowth, while the fire had burnt out completely. I sat up to take stock of Master Juwain, Maram and Daj sleeping near me. Over by the fence surrounding our encampment, unbelievably, Kane seemed to be sleeping, too. But Bemossed was nowhere to be seen.

My first thought upon noting this shamed me: that he and Atara had stolen off into the woods together. My second thought frightened me, for I feared that Bemossed had run away. As quickly as I could, I stepped over to Kane and bent down to shake him awake. This proved harder than I would have supposed. When Kane finally opened his eyes in a burst of consciousness, though, he whipped himself into motion, sliding out a dagger and nearly disembowelling me before I moved aside and shouted at him: 'Kane! It is only me — Valashu!' 'Val!' he shouted back. 'Val — what happened?' Our cries aroused our companions. Maram and Master Juwain came over to us in a hurry; a few moments later, the door to the cart opened, and Atara came out with her unstrung bow in her hand. She joined us by the fence, and so did Estrella and Liljana, Kane rubbed at his eyes and said, 'I don't know what happened.' When I told of how I had found him, Maram upbraided Kane, saying, 'You fell asleep, that's what happened. You, the invincible Kane, the ever-watchful the ever-waking: you finally closed your damn eyes like any other human being and — '

'So,' Kane growled out. He sliced his dagger in the air inches from Ma ram's throat as if to silence him. 'I never just fall asleep.'

Liljana noticed Kane's cup dropped down onto the forest floor near the fence. A residue of coffee stained its insides. She picked up the cup and sniffed at it. Then she said to Kane, 'I remember Bemossed bringing you your coffee. He must have slipped a soporific into it.'

'One of your sleeping potions, then? You should be more careful Liljana.'

'You should be careful,' she told him. 'Of what you say. I've kept my medicines safe enough, and so has Master Juwain.'

She went on to say that she detected a faint, bittersweet odor of some botanical emanating from the cup, but it was neither that of mandrake or poppy or anything else familiar to her. 'But many plants here in Hesperu are strange to me. It seems likely that Bemossed must have stolen a soporific from Mangus before we left Jhamrul.'

'So,' Kane said, hurling the cup down to the ground, 'I should have smelled it, too.'

And I, I thought, should have turned my mind toward suspecting that Bemossed might be planning an escape, for I had surely known it in my heart. And then Atara reminded both me and Kane: 'This is no time for recriminations. Bemossed is gone — what shall we do?'

'I'll go after him,' Kane said simply, moving toward the cart to gather up some things. 'He can't have gotten very far.'

'I'll go, too,' I told him. 'And I,' Maram said.

'No,' Kane commanded him. 'It won't do for all of us to go running across the countryside getting lost. Stay here and guard the others. I'll hunt this rabbit best alone.'

After he had packed his horse's saddlebags with food, water and other necessities, he led the beast toward some broken undergrowth beyond our camp. He found Bemossed's track easily enough. It led off toward the south, through the woods.

A few moments later, he disappeared into the wall of green and left us there wondering what to do. Liljana immediately impressed Daj and Estrella into helping her prepare breakfast. Eating good food together, I thought, was her answer to a great many problems.

We waited there in the clearing through the long hours of the morning as the sun drove the dew from the grasses and other vegetation, and heated up the air. I listened to the birds chirping and some chittering squirrels fighting in the branches high overhead. After a while, I took out my flute and played a few songs. I watched as Liljana sewed up a rip in Maram's fool's costume and Master Juwain read from the Saganom Elu. Daj showed Estrella a game that he had invented with Master Juwain's tarot cards. The day wore on.

By late afternoon, I grew concerned. It seemed that Kane's 'rabbit' had gotten much farther than Kane had supposed — either that or Kane had run into some sort of trouble. When evening darkened the trees and the mosquitoes came out in blood-sucking clouds, I could not bring myself to eat very much. I stood at Kane's post by the heap of logs peering through the nearly blackened woods. I listened for the sound of Kane's horse swishing through the undergrowth; I watched the stars whirl slowly about the sky, and I waited.

I slept only a little that night, when Maram relieved me for a few hours. The new day found me back at my vigil. Because of my tiredness, I was slow to act when I heard at least four horses clopping along the road hidden by the swath of trees. I commanded Maram and Daj to gather up Altaru and Fire, and our other mounts, and lead them off into the forest. This they did. And just in time, for a few moments later, six soldiers wearing a yellow livery marked with many small red dragons burst into the clearing. They bore lances, sheathed swords and small, bossed shields. It seemed that they had espied our cart's tracks in the soft earth leading off the road and had followed them here.

'Have you any chickens, pigs or goats?' their grizzled sergeant called out to us.

They were, as we discovered, a foraging party sent into the countryside to find food for King Arsu's army, which had finally marched and was nearing Orun. One of the soldiers rode over to our three packhorses and sized them up with a practiced eye. He offered his opinion that they could be put to work in the army's baggage train — or at least slaughtered and cut up for food. It horrified me to learn that these soldiers of King Arsu ate horse meat. I prayed that Maram and Daj would keep Altaru from whinnying out a challenge from wherever they had hidden him in the woods. And our other horses, too. And then the sergeant took pity on us, saying to his man: 'How are these players to pull their cart without horses?' He dismounted and walked about our encampment. He went over to the cart, where Kane's target hung. He noted the seven knives stuck into it. He pulled one of them free, then backed off a dozen paces. As he squinted, he flung the knife at the target. It struck the painted wood butt end first, and sprang back into the air with clang of steel before striking the ground.

'Knives,' he laughed out, shaking his head. Then he rested his hand on the stacked brush near our wagon and said, 'You don't need such protections any more — haven't you heard? The errants have all been crucified and won't be waylaying travelers any more.'

He seemed quite proud of his accomplishments up in Avrian, and so did his men. Without asking our leave, he opened up the can's back door to look within. I wanted badly to push him aside and take out my sword, which I had hidden beneath some bolts off cloth. The captain and his men wore only the thinnest of scale armor beneath their livery. I thought that I might be able to cut all of them apart as one of their butchers might section a requisitioned horse. But Liljana was cleverer than I and possessed of greater restraint. She found a ham, and presented it to the sergeant, saying, 'I'm sure everyone is thanking you for making the land safe. We would ask you to breakfast but we must soon be on our way. But please consider that we have taken meat together.'

The sergeant smiled at this, and so did his men. I was sure that they would devour the ham before they had gone five more miles. Then, at need, they could tell their quartermaster truthfully that they had been our guests instead of confiscators of supplies they did not share.

We all breathed easier to see the soldiers ride off as they had come. When I thought it safe, I called for Maram and Daj to bring the horses back into the clearing. I explained what had happened, then said, 'It seems that the army will encamp in Orun tonight, and so it's not safe for us to go on.'

'It's clearly not safe for us to remain here, either,' Maram said. He sighed, then added, 'And I was hoping to have that ham for dinner.'

We all had greater concerns than missing victuals. We worried that Bemossed or Kane might have encountered other soldiers fanning out along the river. Perhaps Bemossed lay dead or dying in some stinking rice bog with a spear wound though his belly; perhaps Kane had been cut off from returning or had been captured.

The passing hours heaped worry upon worry like a growing stack of lead weights upon our chests. When evening came and still Kane remained absent, the long night wreaked upon us an excrutiating dread that slowly tightened like the turning of a torturer's screw around our skulls. None of us slept very well. We awoke at dawn to whining mosquitoes, aching heads and a wall of mist that clung to the greenery of the woods. I knew that we could not bear to remain another day in this place, waiting and doing nothing.

In silence, I brought forth Alkaladur to begin my morning sword practice. The rising sun warmed the woods only a little, and did not burn off the mist. And then, after a couple hours, I heard the noise of a horse clopping along the road. The noise came closer as the horse obviously turned into the woods straight toward us. A few moments later, Kane's horse broke from the mist, and I saw Kane sitting grimly upon his back. A rope tied to the horse's saddle trailed behind a few yards and pulled upon the bound body of Bemossed. I had to blink my eyes, to make sure it really was Bemossed, staggering along behind Kane and half-hidden in the mist. Mud caked his curly hair and covered his face, arms and his tunic. His bare legs seemed to have been cut by thorns, and streaks of blood had washed away some of the mud staining them. He bled from his chest, as well. There, the irons that Kane had locked around his arms and back had abraded his tunic and opened up his flesh. I ground my teeth in horror at this sight; I had sent Kane after the Maitreya — or at least a great, free spirit — and he had brought him back to us in chains.

I rushed forward and swung my sword at the rope, parting it like air. I placed my hand upon Bemossed's back, but he — shook me oft insisting upon walking into our encampment of his own power, I shouted at Kane: 'Unlock him! You had no need to put chains upon him!'

'No need!' Kane growled at me. He came inside our brush work fortifications and dismounted. He sat Bemossed down upon a log. He gripped the chain pinioning Bemossed's arms against his chest, and he shook Bemossed and snapped at me, 'So, what do you know of need? This rabbit ran faster and farther than I could have guessed. And when I finally caught him, he fought me like a trapped rat. There was no other way to bring him back, and so I'm not sorry for that.'

'Well, he is back,' I said, 'so unlock him.'

'No — he'll just try to run away again.'

'Unlock him, Kane!'

Kane shoved his savage face closer to mine and glared at me. But then I glared at him, and flung all his fury back at him, and something more. Finally, he looked away from me and muttered, 'Unlock him yourself, if you want.'

He brought forth a key and slapped it into my hand. Then he stalked off toward the fire as he called out, 'Maram! Where's that damn brandy you've been hiding away?'

After I had taken the chains off Bemossed, Liljana came forward with some tea for him to drink. But he refused to take it. All he seemed able to say was: 'Leave me alone.'

'But you have to drink something,' Liljana said. 'And eat some breakfast, too. And we have to get you cleaned up! Daj, go fetch some water from the stream and put it to boil so that — ' 'Leave me alone!' Bemossed shouted at her. The force of will that poured out of him stunned me. I stood gripping the bloody chains that I had taken off him. Atara, waiting nearby, turned her blindfolded face toward him with a look of great concern. Master Juwain paused in making ready the needle and thread and other gleaming instruments he might need to tend to Bemossed's wounds. Estrella knelt down on the muddy ground by Bemossed's feet. It amazed me that he allowed her to take hold of his hand.

'I'm sorry it came to this,' I said to him. 'Sorry, too, that we had to take you with us. But Taras is right — it couldn't be helped.'

Bemossed stared at me then. The hurt in his soft brown eyes wounded me deeper than any accusation could have.

'It is for the best,' I told him. 'I know you don't understand.'

'You,' he finally said to me, 'don't understand. You speak to me of freedom — and then you make me your slave! You can put me in chains or cut out my tongue or crucify me, but you are more of a slave than I!'

His words shocked me, but I knew exactly what he meant. So, I thought, did Atara and Maram, and everyone else. I said to him, 'We didn't mean to keep you a slave. As to our eyes, truly, you are not. We hoped you would come to trust us and then — '

'You think what you did makes me trust you?'

He looked at me with such a deep searching of his soul that I could not bear it. Something broke inside me then. I turned toward Kane and rattled the chains in the air. I called out, 'No, not this way — this cannot be the way!'

Kane said nothing as he stared at me through the fire's hot flames.

I flung the chains to the ground. I turned back to Bemossed and told him, 'All right — you are free, then!'

He smiled sadly at this as he rubbed his wounded chest. 'Free of the irons, and I suppose I should thank you for that. But still free to go only where you make me to go.'

'No, you misunderstand me,' I told him. 'You are free. We will make out a deed of manumission.'

His eyes locked onto mine. 'Truly?'

'Truly,' I told him.

I held out my hand for him to grasp, but before he could act, Kane stalked over from the fire and knocked his forearm against mine. He growled at me, 'What are you doing?'

'As I said,' glancing at Bemossed, 'I'm giving him his freedom.'

'No, you can't.'

'You're right, I can't,' I said. 'I can't give him what he already possesses. Men are born free, and free they remain.'

'Do you think so?'

'We don't make slaves of men, Kane!'

Kane bent down to pick up the chains on the ground, and now he shook them at me. 'We do what we have to do, eh? There was no other choice.'

'No, this is wrong,' I said, striking my fist into the chains. 'There must be another way.'

'Just letting him go, then?' Kane hurled the chains spinning toward the cart, which they struck with a jangle of iron links and dented wood. 'I won't let him go — go off to be captured or killed by the bloody Red Priests! Do you know how far I've come to find him?'

The dark flame burning up his eyes told of a journey across the stars and across the ages. I did not know how I could put it out. 'The Beast murdered Godavanni!' he shouted in anguish. 'He caused Issayu to jump from a tower onto the rocks of the sea! I won't let him take this one! I won't lose him, do you understand?' So saying, he whipped free his sword from its sheath and faced me. I clenched my fingers around the black jade of my sword's hilt. The line between anguish and madness, I knew, was thinner than Alkaladur's flaming edge.

At the same moment that his hand darted out to grasp hold of my sword arm, my hand locked onto his. We stood there in the quiet woods in the misty morning, pulling at each other and testing each other's strength.

'Kane!' Liljana shouted. 'You let go of him — let go right now!'

But Kane, I thought, as his black eyes burned into mine, would never let go if that meant freeing my arm so that I might strike out at him.

'Val! You let go, too!'

'No!' I shouted.

'Val, please,' Master Juwain said to me. 'Let go so we can make sense of this!'

If I let go, I knew that Kane might strike his sword into me.

'Val!' Atara called out. 'Let him go!'

Just then Estrella darted forward, and ducked beneath Kane's and my locked arms. She squeezed her slender body between us as she pushed one hand against Kane's chest and the other against mine. There came a moment when the fire filling up Kane's eyes cooled, slightly. I let go of my sword, and heard it strike the earth. Then I let go of Kane's arm and told him, 'Kill me, if you must, but you will let Bemossed go free!'

As Liljana stepped forward to pull Estrella away from us, I waited to see what Kane would do. He stood staring at me in wonder, and my heart raced In great surging pulses. His eyes grew hot and wild — but no wilder, I thought, than my own. His breath steamed from his lips with a bitterness that I could almost taste. He hated, I knew, but his wrath slowly boiled away beneath the blaze of an even greater thing.

'So, Val,' he said to me. He sheathed his sword and then bent to pick up mine. He pressed it into my hand. 'Valashu Elahad. I will let Bemossed go, will I? Ha — I suppose I will! But what then? Are we to let one man go free, only to watch the whole of Ea become enslaved?'

Bemossed, I thought, had heard a great deal that we had not intended for him to hear, at least not yet. He had seen the flaming of my sword's silustria. If he told of this to anyone, the Red Priests would surely find out and try to hunt us down. It didn't matter. If he went off on his own, it would be the end of everything anyway.

And so, after taking a long, deep breath, I began to explain who we really were and why we had come to Hesperu. I could not give a full accounting of our journeys and trials, for there was too much to tell. But I gave him our names and the lands of our births; I said that Master Matai, of the Brotherhoods, had pointed us toward the Haraland of Hesperu in our quest for the Maitreya.

'Thank you … Valashu,' Bemossed said to me at last. He gazed at me for at least a full minute. 'Thank you for trusting me. But there is still much that makes me confused.'

He picked off a little of the mud encrusting his arm and shot me a troubled look. And I said to him, 'Speak, then. We haven't much time.'

He nodded his head, then forced out: 'You say that this Master Matai and the oracle at Senta led you to me. But I know nothing of the Maitreya.'

His face, at that moment, was open and full of puzzlement, I sensed no guile in him. I remembered lines of the verse that Master Juwain had told to me:

The Shining One

In innocence sleeps…

'You know yourself,' I said to him. 'You know what is within you.'

'But how can that lead you to the Maitreya?'

I exchanged a quick look with Master Juwain. Although it seemed impossible, Bemossed obviously had no idea of why we had sought him out.

Master Juwain said to him, 'I'm afraid you don't understand. You are the Maitreya. At least we have good reason to believe you might be.'

Bemossed stared at Master Juwain and me as if we had eaten poisoned mushrooms and fallen completely mad.

'I?' he called out at last. 'You think I am the Maitreya? The great Shining One? Do you know nothing?'

'We know what we have heard,' I said, thinking of the golden songs that rang throughout Senta's caverns. 'We know what has been prophesied, and what we have seen.'

'What have you seen, then? What have you heard? Have your wanderings kept you ignorant of all that has happened? Haven't you heard that Lord Morjin has been proclaimed as the Maitreya?'

It took me a moment before the tightening of my throat allowed my fury to pour out of me: 'Morjin? That cursed Crucifier? You think Morjin is the Maitreya?'

Bemossed looked at my sword, which I still clutched in my hand. He gasped in dread as blue flames erupted from the silus-tria and writhed in swirls all along its length. I quickly slid the blade back into its scabbard, which extinguished this little bit of hellfire.

'You hate him, don't you?' he said to me.

The only answer that I could summon then was a single word: 'Yes.'

'Many do,' he said. 'But it is his priests who are evil, not he.'

I drew in a breath of moist air and said, 'Do you really think so?'

He looked down at his dirty, scratched hands, then gazed off into the misty forest. 'I know almost nothing of the Dark Lands, but too much of my land. I was born into great injustice, and things have grown only worse. The Kallimun priests, with King Arsu's consent, torture Hesperu. They torture the whole world. They have made of everything a foul disease. All in Lord Morjin's name — but against his will.'

I looked at Master Juwain, who could hear nothing in his ruined ear because of Morjin's will. I looked at Liljana, who could not smile. Then I looked at Bemossed and asked him, 'Why do you think the Red Priests act without Morjin's consent?'

He shrugged his shoulders and told us, 'The Master — Mangus — always said that men cannot bear perfection, and so out of envy will do their best to sully and destroy it.'

At this, Kane growled out, 'But Mangus seemed on good enough terms with the Kallimun. He spoke well of the damn Red Priests!'

'So it is everywhere now,' Bemossed sighed out. 'So it must be. In the village square or within the hearing of others, one must say one thing. But in one's house among family, and in the privacy of the heart, one says another.'

'But what do you say?' I asked him. 'Do you believe that Morjin is perfect?'

'If he is the Maitreya, he must be,' he said simply. 'I have read and reread the Darakul Elu. Everything in Lord Morjin's words speaks of his desire for perfection.'

I ground my teeth at this and said, 'Desire or not, why should you think that he has succeeded and he isn't the poisoned well that his priests draw all their evil from?'

'Because in the Black Book,' he told me, 'especially in its heart, in the Songs of Light, I have felt such love. And because.. '

His voice died off into the little sounds of the woods. And I said to him, 'Yes?'

He waved his hand at an oak tree at the edge of the clearing, then reached down to touch a broken fern that we had trampled under. And he said, 'Because the world cannot be a cruel jest. The One created it as a gift to us and not a torment. Soon Lord Morjin will rule over all lands, even the Dark ones. If he was evil, then evil would prevail, not just in enslavements or crucifixions of the unfortunate, but with everyone — and everywhere, forever. The One could never allow this to be.'

Master Juwain, who had more liking for philosophical arguments than I did, said to Bemossed: 'If the One could never permit this, and the Red Dragon is but the One's eyes and hands, then how can the Dragon permit his priests to do what they do, in his name?'

'Because,' he said simply, 'Lord Morjin's priests have defiled his good name and all that he is. But he is the Maitreya. And so when he comes into his power, he will come into Hesperu, and into all lands. He will purge the evil from his priesthood, and restore the world.'

I could not bear any longer to hear such things. And so I stared at Bemossed and said, 'It was Morjin who crucified my mother.'

'No, that cannot be. One of his priests, perhaps, acting upon his own — '

'Bemossed!' I shouted. I motioned for Daj to lead Atara over to us. I lay my hand upon her face and said, 'Look at her! Morjin did this to her!'

'No, no,' he murmured as he gazed at her. 'No, no.'

I grabbed onto his hand and pulled him so that he looked back at me. I said, 'He is the Red Dragon, the Lord of Lies. He is the Great Beast. It was Morjin, with his own hands, who took her eyes!'

I told him of how we had gone into Argattha to gain the Lightstone, and of how Morjin had tortured Master Juwain, Ymiru and Atara. I knew that he heard the truth of what I said. His fingers grasped at mine as his whole body began to tremble and he wept without restraint.

Then he asked Atara, 'Is it as Valashu has said?'

'It is worse,' she told him.

'I'm sorry,' he said to her. He took hold of her with his free hand. 'The Dragon took your eyes, and yet it is I who have been blind.'

'You've nothing to be sorry about,' she told him.

'I don't know — perhaps I shouldn't have run away.'

He stood up to face her, and he lay his hands over her temples, where the white bandage pressed her golden hair. He looked at her with great gentleness, even as something hard and hurtful knotted up inside him.

And she said to him, 'We had hoped. .'

He took his hands away from her and shook his head sadly. 'I cannot be the one you hope me to be.'

'But we had heard that you healed a great lord's daughter. When she was near to death. You laid your hands upon her and — '

'No, you don't understand,' he said. 'I can heal no one. It is not as you must think.'

'How is it, then?'

Bemossed held his hand up to the sun's rays burning down through the thinning mist. He said, 'A spectacle's lens gathers light and strengthens it, but in itself illuminates nothing. I am such a lens, and nothing more. There are times … when everything is utterly clear. Then there is Ughtij§ there is always tight, but sometimes it shines so brilliantly. Within it is everything. The design for all things, in their wholeness, in their being, in their joy. This light is such a joy. It is that which touches those I lay my hands upon, not I. But when I am utterly clear, I touch upon it, for a moment. It is like touching the One itself. It is like. the whole world is beautiful and can never be full of ugliness or hurt again. Then, and only then, I am perfect. Then it all passes through me, like lightning, and sometimes people are healed. They call this a miracle.'

He fell silent, and we gazed at him in utter silence. At last Master Juwain said to him, 'So it would be with the Maitreya.'

'But so it is with many people,' Bemossed said.

'No, not many — your gift is quite rare.'

'Surely it is not. Surely many others can do as I do. They just don't speak of it.'

He went on to say that once he had lived in the south, near Khevaju, and had known of three young healers who had disappeared into the Kallimun fortress there.

'Everyone is afraid to appear as different, and who can blame

them?'

'In the Free Kingdoms,' Master Juwain said, 'people have no such fear, and yet I know of no one able to heal as you do.'

Bemossed smiled sadly at this and said, 'If they do not fear the Kallimun, then they fear themselves. That which they will not touch. Surely, no man or woman exists who cannot be open to what shines from the One?'

'If that is true,' Master Juwain said, 'then what is the Maitreya?'

Bemossed shrugged his shoulders and said, 'He is not the lens, but the light.'

The two of them contended in a like manner for a while. I joined in this argument, and so did Maram and Liljana. We could not quite convince Bemossed that he might be the Maitreya; we could not quite convince ourselves. But there still seemed no better course than to take him away from Hesperu. And so I finally said to him, 'You now know what we feared to tell you, and with good reason. What will you do? Will come with us?'

Bemossed picked another scab of mud off his skin, and then looked off into the forest. He said, 'This is my land. As cruel as it is, as cruel as it has been to me, it is still my home.'

'Then come back to it,' I said. 'In strength, after we've stopped Morjin. You can do nothing for your people, now.'

'I don't know,' he said. 'There was Taimu, the miller's son, whose leg was shattered almost beyond repair. There was Ysanna, who was only a breath away from dying.'

'In the lands we must pass through,' I told him, 'you will find no lack of people who are ailing or close to death.'

'I don't know,' he said, looking up at the sky.

Master Juwain gripped a pair of tweezers in his hand, and said to him, 'Whatever you are, whatever your gift might be, I believe that the Grandmaster of my order might be able to help bring it forth in all its glory. With the aid of the gelstei we call the seven openers. Then you might be able to claim control of the Lightstone, even across a thousand miles. Think what a lens that would be!'

I felt Bemossed's heart quicken, and his eyes brightened. But he shook his head as if he couldn't believe what Master Juwain had said might be possible.

'I don't know,' he said again. 'I just don't know.'

He stared at the mad colors of the cart as he seemed to listen to the weet-trit-weet of a swallow singing from the branch of a nearby tree. Then he looked at me and asked, 'Why have you kept the minstrel hidden all these days?'

I started to give the usual excuse about Thierraval's shyness and retiring ways, but Bemossed's hurt look reminded me that I must try to be truthful with him in all things.

And so I said, 'The minstrel's real name is Alphanderry. And he is not as other men.'

'What is wrong with him?' Bemossed asked.

'Nothing is wrong,' I told him. I sensed in him a strange dread burning through his belly. So I asked him, 'What is wrong with you?'

'Only that I feared you had done something to the minstrel. As I supposed you wished to do to me.'

'What do you mean?'

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at me. 'Because you are from the Dark Lands, as I thought of them, I supposed you wanted to use me in some evil rite. It is said that demons there castrate men against their will and make of them women for their pleasure, and do even worse things.'

I stared at him in disbelief.

'I have been marked,' he said, touching the black cross tattooed into his forehead. 'In any case, people have always singled me out. I see the way they look at me. I know there is something about me they can't bear. And so who better to choose for a strange rite?'

I wanted to laugh at this almost as much as I wanted to weep. Instead, I asked Maram to open the door to the cart. Then I called for Alphanderry to come out and make Bemossed's acquaintance.

From twenty yards away, seemingly attired in rich velvets and wool, Alphanderry appeared much as any other man. But as he came closer, the colors of his skin and curly hair seemed to grow ever more vivid and almost too real. When he closed the distance and stood next to the log upon which Bemossed sat, he fairly glowed. His large eyes filled with light — and so did his lips, cheeks and forehead.

'Bemossed,' he said, bowing, 'it is my pleasure.'

Bemossed stared at him in wonder. He said to him, 'They call me the Maitreya, but it is you who shines!'

Alphanderry laughed at this in a rich musk that poured from his throat. He seemed to look deep into Bemossed's being as if layers of flesh were as nothing to him.

'Who are you?' Bemossed asked him.

'Hoy — who are you? The Maitreya, they say. Well, we can only hope.'

It came time to tell of the Timpum, those strange, luminous beings that shimmered through all of Ea's vilds. Were they really the children of the Galadin or seeds of light that the Galadin had bestowed upon the earth? And could these seeds somehow blossom into a human being whose substance seemed pure radiance? We didn't know. All that we could explain to Bemossed was that Flick had somehow become very much like our old friend, Alphanderry.

'What are you?' Bemossed asked him.

Alphanderry's warm, wide smile invited friendship, even intimacy. Bemossed gathered up his courage and reached out to take hold of Alphanderry. With his delight of touching of hand to hand, he was like a child with a new game. But it was still impossible to apprehend Alphanderry in this way. Bemossed's hand passed right through him as if he had thrust it into a pool of glimmering water.

He almost fell off his log then. And he said to Alphanderry, 'If you are made of light, you must be the Maitreya-'

'The Maitreya?' Alphanderry said. 'Hoy — I am a minstrel.'

'But — '

'You are made of light, too. Everything is. I heard you tell Valashu this.'

'But — '

'I am not here to argue,' Alphanderry said, 'but to sing. What shall I sing of?'

He didn't wait for an answer, but only smiled as he intoned:

The Shining One

In innocence sleeps.

Inside his heart Angel fire sleeps,

And when he wakes

The firre leaps.

About the Maitreya

One thing is known:

That to himself

He always is known

When the moment comes

To claim the Lightstone.

Alphanderry stopped singing and looked at Bemossed. And he asked him, 'What will it take, I wonder, to wake you up?'

And with that, he vanished into nothingness.

An astonished Bemossed stood up, looked around and asked, 'Where did he go?'

'I don't know,' I told him.

I stared at the cross shining from his forehead, and I couldn't help remembering my mother's arms stretched out and her hands nailed to a piece of wood.

Where does the light go, I wondered, when the light goes out?

Bemossed stared back at me, at the lightning bolt scar cut into my forehead, and the deeper wound cut into my eyes. I never told him, with words, how desperately I needed him by my side in the final battles that soon must be fought. He knew it even so. A lovely light came into his eyes as he smiled me. I felt my heart quicken and my breath whispering like a cool wind even as the old pain in my chest died away.

'Valashu,' he said, holding out his hand to me. 'I have decided: I will come with you as far as the Brotherhood's school, and perhaps farther.'

We clasped hands then and stood there smiling at each other. In him I sensed much of Karshur's strength, Yarashan's verve and Asaru's grace and goodness. He was like the brother I no longer had.

'And I,' I told him, 'will go with you, even to the end of all things.'

After that he clasped hands with each of the others as we welcomed him into our company. It grieved me only a little to see him embrace Atara and kiss her lips. Then Kane shocked him, coming up to crush Bemossed's slender body to him and kissing him. And he growled out, 'When you ran, I fell mad like a rabid dog. Will you forgive me?'

'Will you forgive me for biting you?'

They laughed together then, Bemossed's gentle tones as warm as a summer rain and Kane's voice breaking from him like thunder. It was a happy moment, full of soaring spirits and hope.

It took most of the next two hours for Liljana to help clean up Bemossed and Master Juwain finally to tend his wounds. After we had broken camp and everything was packed away, I hitched Altaru to the cart and patted his neck as I told him, 'All right old friend. Let's see if we can find our way back home.'

But this, it seemed, was not to be. Just as we were setting out, I heard an unwelcome noise through the trees, and quickly drawing closer. From the direction of the road came the beat of horses' hooves against stone. Then soldiers burst into the clearing again, and this time there were many more of them.