The Lightstone

Chapter 11

For what seemed forever, Atara held this magical connection of our eyes. Then, with what seemed a great effort of will, she looked away and smiled in embarrassment as if she had seen too much of me -or I of her. She said, 'Please excuse me, there's work to be done.' She walked back and forth across the hill, scanning the tree line for sign that the hill-men might attack again. She looked upon Maram and Master Juwain with scant curiosity, then quickly went about the blood-stained slope cutting her arrows out of the bodies of the fallen men. She used her saber with all the precision of Master Juwain probing a wound with a scalpel.

And as she went from man to man, she counted out loud, beginning with the number five. At first, I thought her accounting had something to do with the number of arrows she had fired or recovered. But when she reached the body of the hill-men's leader, whom no arrow had struck, she quietly said, 'Fourteen.' And the headless body of the man she had beheaded was fifteen, whatever that might mean.

And then, as Maram and Master Juwain drew closer, I reflected upon Atara's strange second name: Manslayer. I remembered Ravar once telling of a| group of women warriors of the Sarni called the Manslayer Society. It was said that a few rare women from each tribe practiced at arms and gave up marriage in order to join the fearsome Manslayers. Membership in their Society was almost always for life, for the only way that a Manslayer could be released from her vows was to slay a hundred of her enemies. Atara, in having slain four before she reached this dreadful hill, had already accounted for more men than many Valari knights. And in sending on twelve more, with arrow and sword, she had acomplished a great if terrible feat.

I stood watching her in awe as she cleaned the blood from her arrows and dropped them down into the quiver slung over her back. I thought that she couldn't be much older than I. She was a tall woman and big-boned, like most of her people. And she had their barbaric look. Her leather armor – all black and hardened and studded with steel -covered only her torso. A smoother and more supple pair of leather trousers provided protection for her legs. Her long, lithe arms were naked and burnt brown by the sun. Golden armlets encircled the upper parts of them. A golden torque, inlaid with lapis, encircled her neck. Her hair was like beaten gold, and the ends of it were wrapped with strings of tiny lapis beads. But it was her eyes that kept capturing my gaze; I had never hoped to see eyes like hers in all the world. Like sapphires her eyes were, like blue diamonds or the brightest of lapis.

They sparkled with a rare spirit, and I thought they were more precious than any gem.

Just then, Maram and Master Juwain rode up to us, and Maram said, 'Oh, my Lord – it really is a woman!'

'A woman, yes,' I said to him. I was instantly jealous of the intense interest he showed in her. 'May I present Atara Manslayer of the Kurmak tribe? And this is Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu.'

I presented Master Juwain as well, and Atara greeted them politely before returning to the bloody work of retrieving her arrows. Both Master Juwain and Maram, as did I, wanted to know how a lone woman had come to be trapped on this hill. But Atara cut short their questions with an imperious shake of her head. She pointed to the top of the hill where her horse lay moaning, and she said, 'Excuse me, but I have one more thing to attend to.'

We followed her up the hill, but when we saw what she intended, we stood off a few yards to give her a bit of privacy. She walked straight up to her horse, a young steppe pony whose belly had been cut open. Much of his insides had spilled out of him and lay steaming on the grass. She sat down on the grass beside him; gently, she lifted his head onto her lap. She began stroking the side of it as she sang out a sad little song and looked into his large dark eye. She stroked his long neck, and then – even as I turned Altaru facing downhill – she drew the edge of her saber across his throat, almost more quickly than I could believe.

For a while Atara sat there on the reddening grass and stared up at the sky. Her struggle between pride of decorum and her grief touched me keenly. And then, at last, she buried her face in her horse's fur and began weeping softly. I blinked as I fought to keep from weeping as well.

After a while, she stood up and came over to us. Her hands and trousers were as bloody as a butcher's but she paid them no heed. She pointed at the bodies of the hill-men and said, 'They accosted me in the woods as I was climbing the hill. They demanded that I pay a toll for crossing their country. Their country, hmmph. I told them all this land belonged to King Kiritan, not them.'

'What else could you do?' Maram asked understandably. 'Who has gold for tolls?'

Here Atara moved back to her horse, where she freed a purse from his saddlebag.

As she weighed it in her hand, it jangled with coins, and she said, 'It's not gold I lack only a willingness to enrich robbers.' 'But they might have killed you!' Maram said.

'Better death than the dishonor of doing business with such men.' Maram stared at her as if this principle were utterly alien to him. 'When the hill-men saw that I wouldn't pay them,' Atara continued, 'they became angry and raised weapons to me.

They told me that they would take from me much more than a toll. ONe of them cut my pony with an axe to keep me from riding away. My pony! On the Wendrush, anyone who intentionally wounds a warrior's pony in battle is staked-out in the grass for the wolves.'

At this, Maram shook his head sadly and muttered, 'Well, better the wolves than the bears.'

It was a measure of Atara's wit – and grace – that she could laugh at this grim humor that she couldn't be expected to appreciate. But laugh she did, showing her straight white teeth as her face widened with a grim smile.

'But why were you even in the hill-men's country?' I asked her. I thought it more than strange that we should meet in the middle of this wilderness. 'And why were you climbing this hill?'

Atara pointed to the hill's ragged, rocky crest above us and said, 'I thought I might be able to see the Nar Road from here.'

We looked at each other in immediate understanding. I admitted that I needed to be in Tria on the seventh day of Soldru to answer King Kiritan's call to find the Lightstone. As did Atara. She told us of her journey then. She said that when word of the great quest had reached the Kurmak tribe, she had bade her people farewell and had ridden north along the western side of the Shoshan Mountains. Only by keeping close to these great peaks had she been able to bypass the Long Wall which ran for four hundred miles across the prairies from the Shoshan to the Blue Mountains. Thus had Alonia protected its rich lands from the Sarni hordes for three long ages. But the Wall couldn't keep out one lone warrior determined to find a way around it. On Citadel Mountain, where the stones of the Wall flowed almost seamlessly into the blue granite of the Shoshan, Atara had discovered a track leading around it through the woods. Her nimble steppe pony had found footing on this rocky track where a larger horse such as Altaru would have broken his legs. And so Alonia, as in times past, had been invaded by the Sarni – if only a single warrior of the Manslayer Society.

'But the Sarni aren't at war with Alonia, are they?' I asked her. 'Why didn't you just pass the Wall through one of its gates?'

Atara looked at rne strangely, and I felt her temper begin to rise. And then she said,

'No, there's no war, not yet. Other warriors, all men, have taken the more direct route along the Poru toward Tria. But the Alonians won't allow one such as I to pass through their gates.'

And so, she said, she had ridden north from the Wall into the hills west of the gap in the Shoshan Mountains. Even as we had ridden onto them, from a different direction.

'I had hoped to cut the road by now,' she said. 'It can't be far.' 'You didn't see it from the top of the hill?' Maram asked worriedly. 'No, I didn't have time to look. But why don't we look now?' Together, we walked the twenty yards to the hill's very top.

As I had thought, the ground dropped off suddenly in a cliff as if a giant axe had chopped off the entire north part of the hill. From the exposed rocks along the line of this fault, we stood to look out. Forty or fifty miles away, the northern spur of the Shoshan Mountains was buried in the clouds. A cottony mist lay over the hill country leading up to them. We couldn't see much more of it than humps of green sticking out above the silvery swirls. But just below us, in a little valley, a blue-gray band of rock cut through the trees. It was wider than any road I had ever seen, and I knew that it must be the ancient Nar Road, which had been built from Tria to Nar before even the Age of Swords.

The question now arose as to what we should do. Maram, of course, favored the familiarity of good paving stones beneath his feet while I might have preferred to keep to the woods. I felt safer beneath the crowns of the great oaks than in proceeding along the line of an open road. But Master Juwain observed that if the hill-men were. bent upon revenge, they could fall upon us anywhere in these hills that they chose. Therefore, he said, we might as well make our way down to the road. Atara agreed with him. And then she added that the hill-men were unlikely to attack us after losing so many men -especially since the arms of a Valari knight had now been added to the power of her great bow.

'But what about my bow?' Maram protested. He held up my hunting bow as if it belonged to him. 'It was my arrow, was it not, that finally frightened the men away?'

Atara looked down the hill to where Maram's arrow still stuck out of the grass. She said, 'Oh, you're right – what a magnificent shot! You probably managed to kill a mole or at least a few earthworms.'

I tried not to smile as Maram's face flushed beet red. And it was good that I didn't, for Atara had her doubts about me as well,

'I've heard that the Valari are great warriors,' she told me.

Yes, I thought, Telemesh and my grandfather were. My father is.

Atara pointed down at the body of the man I had spared. 'It must be hard to be a great warrior who is afraid to kill his enemies.'

Her eyes, which were as beautiful as diamonds, could be as cold and hard as these stones, too. They cut right through me and seemed to strip me naked.

'Yes,' I told her, 'It is hard.'

'Why did you ride to help me then?'

My gift which sometimes let me see others' motivations so easily, often left me quite blind to my own. What could I say to her? That I had felt compassion for her plight?

That even now I was afraid I might feel something more? Better then to say nothing, and so I stared off at the mist swirling over the hills.

'Well, you did help me, after all,' Atara finally said. 'You saved my life. And for that, I owe you a debt of blood.'

'No,' I said, looking at her, 'you owe me nothing.'

'Yes, I do. And I should ride with you until this debt is repaid.'

I blinked my eyes at the strangeness of this suggestion. A Sarni warrior ride with a Valari knight? Did wolves run with lions? How many times over the ages had the Sarni invaded the Morning Mountains – always to be beaten back? How many Valari had the Sarni sent on, and the Sarni slain of the Valari? Not even a warrior of the Manslayer Society, I thought, could count such numbers.

'No,' I said again, 'there is no debt.'

'Yes, of course there is. And I must repay it. Do you think I'd ride with you otherwise?'

Upon looking at the way she impatiently moved her hands as if to sweep away my obduracy, I sensed that she wouldn't No, I thought, she would be much more likely to make her own way out of this wilderness – or even to fight me for the sheer joy of fighting.

'If the hill-men return,' she said, 'you'll need my bow and arrows.'

I touched my hand to my kalama and said, 'We Valari have always done well enough with our swords – even against the Sarni.'

Atara, who still held her saber in her long hands, glanced down at its curved blade and said, 'Yes, you've always had the superior weaponry.'

'You have your bows,' I said, pointing at hers, which she had left by her horse.

'We do,' she admitted. 'But the mountains have always proved bad ground for employing them to the best advantage. We've always had bad luck, as well.'

'That's true,' I said. 'At the Battle of the Song River, Elemesh's good generalship was your misfortune.' We might have stood there arguing all day if Master Juwain hadn't observed that the sun wouldn't stop to listen and neither would the earth stand still to see who had prevailed. We should move on, and soon. Then he pointed out that Atara had no horse, and asked me if I truly intended to leave her alone in the woods.

'Are you sure you want to ride with us?' I asked her. Then I told her about Kane and the unknown men whom we suspected of hunting us since Anjo, and who might be hunting us still. If I had thought to discourage her, however, I was disappointed. In answer to my question, she just stood there cleaning the blood from her sword and smiling as if I had proposed a game of chess on which she might gladly bet not only her bag of gold but her very life.

How, I wondered, could I ever trust such a woman? I looked at the bodies of the hill men she had slain. Truly, she was the enemy of my enemies, but her people were also the enemy of mine. Was my enemy, then, so easily to become my friend?

'I pledge my life to the protection of yours,' she said simply. 'But I can't keep the hill-men away – or anyone else – if I don't ride with you.'

How could I not trust this courageous woman? I could almost feel her will to keep her word. I saw in her eyes a bright light and a basic goodness that touched me to the core. Even as I feared the fire building in my own eyes: if I let it, it might burn through me and consume me utterly. But if I ran away from this ineffable flame as I always had, then how would I be able protect her should evil men come for her again? 'Please,' I said, 'ride with us. 'We'll be glad of your company.' I clasped hands with her then, and I felt the blood on her palm warm and wet against my own.

We spent most of the next hour readying ourselves for our journey. While Master Juwain redressed my wound, Maram shared out some of my hunting arrows with Atara. With her pony dead, we had to convert one of the pack horses to a mount.

Atara reluctantly suggested riding my pack horse, Tanar. Although the big, bay gelding was quite strong, it had been a long time since he had borne a human being on his back. He was happy enough when I removed the bags of food and gear from him, but he shook his head and stamped his hoof when Atara buckled her saddle around him. Atara, however, had a gift for gentling horses. And for taking command of them. After convincing Tanar to accept the hard, iron bit in his mouth, she rode him about the hill for a while and announced that he would have to do until she could buy a better horse in Suma or Tria.

With one less horse available for carrying our supplies, I considered jettisoning the little casks of brandy and beer that Tanar had borne all the way from Silvassu. But this prospect horrified Maram. He protested that if necessary, he would dismount and carry the casks on his own back as far as Tria – or until he had managed to drain every dram from them if that came first. Atara chided him, and all of us, for traveling so heavily burdened. A Sarni warrior, she said, could cross five hundred miles of the Wendrush with little more than a leather cloak and a bag full of dried antelope meat.

But we were not Sarni. In the end, we redistributed our supplies as best we could over the backs and sides of our six horses.

We rode down from the hill then. After pausing by a stream so that Atara could clean herself, we found our way around the side of the hill into the valley we had seen from its top. A short distance through the trees brought us to a sudden break into bright sunlight where the Nar Road cut across the land. I marveled at the road's width; it was like a river of stone flowing through the forest. Grass grew in the many small cracks in it, and here and there, a tree grew out of larger breaks in its surface.

But it was quite serviceable. Whole armies, I thought, could pass down this road.

Whole armies had.

We traveled northeast along it for the rest of the day. We rode four abreast with the two remaining pack horses trailing behind us. If the hill-men were watching us from behind the walls of trees along the sides of the road, they didn't dare to show themselves. I thought that Atara was right, that they'd had enough of battle for one day. Even so, Atara and Maram kept their bows strung and dose at hand as we all listened for breaking twigs or rustling leaves.

Master Juwain told us what he knew of the hill-men: he said they were descendants of a Kallimun army that had invaded Alonia early in the Age of the Dragon. The army's captain had been none other than Sartan Odinan, the very same Kallimun priest who had betrayed Morjin and then led Kalkamesh into Argattha to reclaim the Lightstone. After the rape and burning of Suma, Sartan's heart had softened and he had abandoned his bloodthirsty men. Morjin had then recalled the leaderless army to Sakai just as the conquest of Alonia seemed certain. But many of Sartan's men had remained to ravage the countryside. When King Maimun's soldiers began to hunt them down, they took refuge in the hills all about us which their descendants had infested ever since.

'Sartan Odinan used a firestone to break the Long Wall,' Master Juwain said. 'Thus did his army force it, way into Alonia. Even as the Sarni did in the Age of Swords.'

'No, the Sarni did not use a firestone to breach the Wall,' Atara said, the Sarni knew nothing of firestones then.'

As our horses dopped down the road and the slanting sun broke upon the canopies of the trees, Atara recounted the fines of Tulumar Elek, who had united the Sarni tribes in the year 2,054 of the Age of Swords. According to Atara, Tulumar had been determined to conquer Alonia, then and still the greatest of Ea's kingdoms. And so Tulumar's armies had besieged the immense fortifications of the Long Wall for a year, without result. And then one day a mysterious man named Kadar the Wise had arrived in Tulumar's camp bearing casks of a red substance called relb. As Atara explained, relb was only a forerunner of the red gelstei, a first essay into the art of making these powerful stones. But it had power enough of its own: it concentrated the rays of the sun and set even stone on fire. Thus it was called the Stoneburner.

Kadar the Wise persuaded Tulumar's Sarni warriors to spread the relb at night over a section of the Long Wall, and this they did, with great sacrifice. It looked much like paint or fresh blood, and the Alonians thought that the Sarni had gone mad.

But the next day, as the sun's rays at noon poured down upon the Long Wall, the relb burst into flame, melting stone to lava and killing thousands of the Wall's defenders. This great event had become known as the Breaking of the Long Wall. In the coming years, Tulumar would go on to conquer all of Alonia and Delu.

'Tulumar was a great warrior,' Atara said. 'One of the greatest of the Sarni. But Kadar the Wise tricked him.'

Master Juwain, rubbing his bald head as he rode along, looked at her in surprise, 'if your story is true – and I should say it's nowhere mentioned in the Saganom Elu or any of the histories of the Elekar dynasty – then it would seem that Tulumar owed much of his success to this Kadar the Wise.'

'No, Kadar tricked Tulumar,' Atara said again. 'For Kadar was really Morjin in disguise.'

'What!' Master Juwain called out He rubbed his gnarly hands together as if in anticipation of a feast. I had never seen him so excited. 'The Red Dragon began his rise more than two hundred years after that!'

'No it was Morjin,' Atara said. 'This is known. The stories have been told for two ages. Morjin tried to use Tulumar to conquer all of Ea. He tried to make a ghul of him, and in the end this killed him.'

'The Saganom Elu tells that Tulumar died of a fever after preparing an invasion of the Nine Kingdoms.'

'If he did, it was a fever born of poison and Morjin's lies.'

I thought about the poison burning in my own veins and what it might eventually do to me. To distract myself from these dark thoughts, I said, 'Tulumar's son was Sagumar, I believe.'

'Yes,' Atara said. 'Morjin tried to enslave him, too.'

'And this was the same Sagumar, wasn't it, whom King Elemesh defeated at the Song River? If what you say is true, then King Elemesh defeated Morjin as well.'

'For a time,' Atara said bitterly, nodding her head. 'Morjin has always posed as the Sarni's greatest friend, but he is our greatest enemy. Even now, he is trying to win the tribes with promises of diamonds and gold. This is the key for him. If he wins the Sarni, he wins all of Ea.'

Although the sun was a bright yellow disk in the west, the world suddenly seemed cast into darkness. I asked Atara, 'Are the tribes listening to the Red Dragon then?'

'Some of them are. The Danladi and Marituk have practically pledged their swords to him. And half the clans of the Urtuk, it is said, favor an alliance with Sakai.'

At this news, I ground my teeth together. For the Urtuk commanded the steppe just to the west of the mountains of Mesh. 'And what about the Kurmak?' I asked her.

'Will your people ride with the Red Dragon?'

'Never!' Atara said. 'Sajagax himself would slay any warrior of the clans who even suggested following Morjin.'

She went on to tell us that this fierce, old chief of the Kurmak was her grandfather, and that he favored finding the Lightstone as a way of defeating Morjin. As did Atara.

As we made our way through the lovely afternoon, I thought about all that Atara had said. I thought about her as well. I liked her forceful and sportive temperament, and I liked her passion for justice even more. She had a wisdom I had never seen in a woman her age. And this was not simply a discerning knowledge of things unknown even to Master Juwain, but a keen sense for the ways of the world. Her eyes seemed to miss no detail of the forest we passed through, and her feel for terrain was even better than mine: more than once she was able to guess what streams we might find or how the road might turn beyond the wall of the hills before us. And that evening, as we halted by one of these streams, I discovered just how deep her understanding of animals ran. She told me that since I was wounded, I should rest and allow her to do much of the work of making camp. She insisted on unsaddling Altaru and brushEg him down. WhenJ insisted that my unruly horse might kill her if she drew too close to him, she simply walked up to his side and told him that they must be friends. Something in the dulcet tones of her votes must have worked a magic on Altaru, for he nickered softly and allowed her to breathe into his great nostrils. She stroked his neck for a long time then, and I could feel the beginning of love stirring in his great chest.

I was forced to admit that it was good that Atara had joined us; she was good company, and we all appreciated her enthusiasm and easy laughter. But she managed to vex us as well. Over the days of our journey, Master Juwain, Maram and I had grown used to each other and had established a certain rhythm in making camp.

Atara changed all that. She was as meticulous in performing chores as she was precise in shooting her arrows. Water must be taken from a stream at its exact center so as to avoid collecting any unwanted sediment; the stones for the fire had to be set around the pit in a exact circle and the firewood neatly trimmed so as to fit the pit perfectly. She seemed tireless in making these devotions. For Atara, I thought, there was a right way and a wrong way of doing everything, and she attended each little action as if the fate of the world hung in the balance.

It must have been hard for her to demand so much of herself. I sensed in her a relentless war between what she wanted to do and what she knew she must do. At those rare moments when she relaxed and let down her guard, her wild joy of life came bubbling up out her like a fountain. She liked to laugh at even the most ridiculous of Maram's stories, and when she did, the peals rang out of her without restraint. That night, over a warm fire and a nip of brandy, she laughed and sang while I played my flute. I thought it was the finest music I had ever heard, and wished that we might have the chance again to make more.

The next day dawned bright and clear with the music of a million birds filling the forest. We traveled down the road through some of the most beautiful country I had ever seen. The hills were on fire with a deep and pure green, and glowed like huge emeralds; the sun was a golden crown melting over them. Wildflowers grew everywhere along the side of the road. With spring renewing the land, every tree was in leaf, and every leaf seemed to reflect the light of every other so that the whole forest shimmered with a perfect radiance.

Everything about the world that day touched me with astonishment at its perfection.

It pleased me to see the squirrels scurrying after new shoots, and the sweetness of the buttercups and daisies filled my lungs with every breath. But I took my greatest joy from Atara for she seemed the greatest of the world's creations. As we passed down the road toward Tria, I found myself looking at her whenever I could. At times she rode ahead of me with Maram, and I listened to them talking spiritedly. When Atara laughed at one of Maram's rude jokes, my ears couldn't seem to get enough of the sound. My eyes drank in the sight of her long, browned arms and her flowing yellow hair, and were unquenchably thirsty for more. I marveled at even her hands for they were graceful and finely made, with long, tapering fingers – not at all the hands of a warrior The image of her whole being seemed to burn itself into me: straight proud, laughing, wise and allied with all the forces of life, a woman as a woman was born to be.

On the next day of our journey, we left the hills behind us, and the forest grew flatter.

With nothing but wild land empty of human beings before us, we all began to relax a little. Around mid-morning, I found myself riding beside Maram while Atara and Master luwain went on ahead us some thirty yards. Atara was telling Master Juwain of the Sarni's greatest stories and feats, which he was furiously scribbling down in his journal as he rode. I couldn't keep myself from admiring Atara's poise in the saddle, the way that the play of her hip and leg muscles seemed to guide Tanar effortlessly along. And Maram couldn't keep himself from noticing my absorption – and commenting upon it.

'You're in love, my friend,' he quietly said to me. 'At last, in love.'

His words caught me completely by surprise. The truth often does. It is astonishing how we can deny such things even when it is in our eyes and hearts. 'You think I'm in love?' I said stupidly. 'With Atara?'

'No, with your pack horse, whom you've been watching all morning.' He shook his head at my doltishness.

'But I thought it was you who loved her.'

'But what made you think that?'

'Well, she's a woman, isn't she?'

'Ah, a woman she is. And I'm a man. So what? A stallion smells a mare in heat, and it's inevitable that the inevitable will happen. But love, Val?'

'Well, she's a beautiful woman.'

'Beautiful, yes. So is a star. Can you touch one? Can you wrap your arms around such a cold fire and clasp it to your heart?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'If you can't why should you think I cant?'

'Because you're different from me,' he said simply. 'You were born to worship such impossible lights.'

He went on to say that the very feature I loved most about Atara unnerved him completely. 'The truth is, my friend, I can't bear looking at her damn eyes. Too blue, too bright – a woman's eyes should flow into mine like coffee, not dazzle me like diamonds.'

I looked down at the two diamonds of my knight's ring but couldn't find anything to say.

She loves you, you know,' he suddenly told me.

'Did she say that?'

'Ah, no, not exactly. In fact, she denied it. But that's like denying the sun.'

'You see,' I said. 'She couldn't possibly love me. No one could love another so soon.'

'You think not? When you were born, did you need more than a moment to love the world?'

'That's different,' i said.

'No, my friend, it's not. Love is. Sometimes I think it's the only thing in the world that really is. And when a man and a woman meet, either they open themselves to this heavenly fire, or they do not.'

Again I looked at the stones of my ring shining in the bright morning light like two stars.

'Aren't you aware of the way Atara listens to you when you speak of even little things?' Maram asked. 'When you walk into a clearing, don't you see the way her eyes light up as if you were the sun?' 'No, no,' I murmured, 'it's not possible.'

'It is possible, damn it! She told me she was drawn to your kindness and that wild thing in your heart you always try to hide. She was really just saying that she loved you.' 'No, it's not possible,' I said again.

'Listen, my friend, and listen well!' Here Maram grasped my arm as if his fingers might convince me of what his words could not. 'You should tell her that you love her. Then ask her to marry you, before it's too late.'

'You say that?' I couldn't believe what I had heard. 'How many women have you asked to marry you, then?'

'Listen,' he said again. 'I may spend the rest of my life looking for the woman who was meant for me. But you, by rare good chance and the grace of the One – you've found the woman who was meant for you.' We made camp that night off the side of the road in a little clearing where a great oak had fallen. A stream ran through the forest only fifty yards from our site; it was a place of good air and the clean scents of ferns and mosses. Maram and Master Juwain drifted off to sleep early while I insisted on staying awake to make the night's first watch, la truth, with all that Maram had said to me, I could hardly sleep. I was sitting on a flat rock by the fire and looking out at the stars when Atara came over and sat beside me. 'You should sleep, too,' I told her. 'The nights are growing shorter.' Atara smiled as she shook her head at me. In her hands she held a couple of stones and a length of wood, which she intended to- shape into a new arrow, 'I promised myself I'd finish this,' she said. We spoke for a while of the Sarni's deadly war arrows which could pierce armor and their great bows made of layers of horn and sinew laminated to a wooden frame.

Atara talked of life on the Wendrush and its harsh, unforgiving ways. She told me about the harsh, unforgiving Sajagax, the great war chief of the Kurmak. But of her father, she said little. I gathered only that he disapproved of her decision to enter the Mansiayer Society.

'For a man to see his daughter take up arms,' I said, 'must come as a great shock.'

'Hmmph,' she said. 'A warrior who has seen many die in battle shouldn't complain about such shocks.'

'Are you speaking of me or your father?'

'I'm speaking of men,' she said. 'They claim they are brave and then almost faint at the sight of a woman with a bow in bet hands or bleeding a little blood.'

'That's true,' I said, smiling. 'For me to see my mother or grandmother wounded would be almost unbearable.'

Atara's tone softened as she looked at me and said, 'You love them very much, don't you?'

'Yes, very much.'

'Then you must be glad,' she said, 'that you Valari forbid women to become warriors.'

'No, you don't understand,' I told her. 'We don't forbid women this. It's just the opposite: all our women are warriors.'

I went on to say that the first Valari were meant to be warriors of the spirit only. But in an imperfect world, we Valari men had had to learn the arts of war in order to preserve our purity of purpose, which we saw as being realized in women. It was only the Valari women, I said, who had the freedom to embody our highest aspirations. Where men were caught up with the mechanisms of death, the women might further the glories of life. It was upon women to approach all the things of life

– growing food, healing, birthing, raising children – with a warrior's passion and devotion to flowingness, flawlessness and fearlessness.

'Women,' I said, 'are the source of life are they not? And thus it is taught that they are a perfect manifestation of the One'

And thus, I said, among the Valari, it was also taught that women might more easily find serenity and joy in the One. Women were seen It more easily mastering the meditative arts, and were very often the instructors of men. Of the three things a Valari warrior is taught – to tell the truth; to wield a sword; to abide in the One – his mother was responsible for the first and the last.

I stopped talking then, and listened to the stream flowing through the forest and the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. Atara was quiet for a few moments while she regarded me in the fire's light. And then she told me, 'I've never known a man like you.'

I watched as she drew the length of wood between the two grooved pieces of sandstone that she held in her hand, smoothing and straightening the new arrow.

Then I said, 'Who has ever seen a women like you? In the Morning Mountains, the women shoot different kinds of arrows into men's hearts.'

She laughed at this in her spirited way, and then told me that healing, birthing, and raising children were indeed important and women were very good at them. But some women were also good at war, and this was a time when much killing needed to be done.

'A time comes to cut wheat and harvest it,' she said. 'Now it's time for the more bloody harvest of cutting men.'

She went on to say that for three long ages, men had ravaged the world, and now it was time for them to reap what they had sowed.

'No, there must be another way,' I told her. I drew my sword and watched the play of starlight on its long blade. 'This isn't the way the world was meant to be.'

'Perhaps not,' she said, staring at this length of steel. 'But it's the way the world will be until we make it differently.'

'And how will we do that?' I wondered.

She fell quiet for a long time as she sat looking at me. And then she said,

'Sometimes, late at night or when I look into the waters of a still pool, I can see it.

Almost see it. There is a woman there. She has incredible courage but incredible grace, too. There hasn't been a true woman on Ea since the Age of the Mother.

Maybe not even then. But this woman of the waters and wind – she has a terrible beauty like that of Ashtoreth herself. This is the beauty that the world was meant to bring into life. This is the beauty that every woman was born for. But that woman I will never be until men become what they were meant to be. And nothing will ever change men's hearts except the Lightstone itself.'

'Nothing?' I asked, dropping my eyes toward her arrow.

Here she laughed nicely for a moment and then admitted, 'I said; before that I sought the Lightstone to unite all the Sarni. And that's true. And yet, I would like to see all men united. All men and all women.'

'That's a lovely thought,' I told her. 'And you're a lovely woman.' 'Please don't say that.'

'Why not?'

'Please don't say that the way that you say that.'

'My apologies,' I said, looking down as she slid the arrow between her sanding stones.

Then she put down both her arrow and her stones and waved her hands at the darkened trees all about us. 'It's strange,' she said, 'here we are in the middle of a wood that has almost no end, far from either the Wendrush or any city. And yet, whenever I come near you I feel like I'm returning home.'

'It's that way for me, too,' I said.

'But it shouldn't be. It mustn't be. This isn't the time for anyone to be making homes together. Or anything else.'

'Such as children?'

'Children, yes.'

'Then you've no wish ever to be a mother?'

'Of course I have,' she said. 'Sometimes I think there's nothing I want more.' She looked straight at me and continued, 'But there are always choices, aren't there? And I was given the choice between making babies or killing my enemies.'

'So,' I said, 'if you kill enough bad men, the world will be a better place for babies?'

'Yes,' she said. 'That's why I joined the Society and made my vow.'

'Would you never consider breaking it then?'

'As Maram breaks his?'

'A hundred men,' I said, staring off at the shadows between the trees. Not even Asaru or Karshur, I thought, had slain so many. No Valari warrior I knew had.

'A vow is a vow,' she said sadly. 'I'm sorry, Val.'

I was sorry, too. I put away my sword then and took out my flute. The world about me was more peaceful than it had been since Mesh. The trees swayed gentiy beneath the starry sky while the wind blew cool and dean. On the other side of the fire, Maram snored happily and Master luwain moved his lips in his sleep as if memorizing the lines from a book. And yet beneath this contentment was a sadness that seemed to touch all things, the ferns and the flowers no less than Atara and me.

It was in recognition of the bittersweet taste of life that I began to play a song that my grandmother had taught me. The words formed up inside me like dried fruits stuck in my throat Wishes are wishing you would wish them. What wish, I wondered, was waiting for me to give it life? Only that Atara and I might someday stand face to face, as man and woman, without the thunder of the war drums sounding in the distance.

And so I played, and each note was a step taking the music higher; my breath was the wind carrying this wish up into the sky. After a while, played other songs even as Atara put away her arrow and looked at me. | her eyes danced the dark lights of the fire and much else. I couldn t help thinking of the words that Maram had called out some days before. Her eyes are windows to the stars. He had forgotten the lines of his new poem even more quickly than he had Duke Gorador's wife. But I hadn't Neither had I forgotten the verse that he had recited the night of the feast in my father's hall:

Star of my soul, how you shimmer

Beyond the deep blue sky

Whirling and whirling – you and I whisperlessly Spinning sparks of joy into the night.

Even as the crackling fire sent its own sparks spinning into the darkness, I was overwhelmed with a strange sense that Atara and I had once come from this nameless star. In truth, whenever she looked at me it seemed that we returned there.

As we did now. For an age, it seemed, we sat there on our rock beneath the ancient constellations as the world turned and the stars whirled. Almost forever, I looked into her eyes. What was there? Only light. How, I wondered, even if she should miraculously fulfill her vow, could 1 ever hold it? Could I drink in the sea and all the oceans of stars?

Wordlessly, she reached out her hand and grasped mine. Her touch was like lightning splitting me open. All of her incredible sadness came flooding into me; but all of her wild joy of life came, too. In the warmth of her fingers against mine there was no assurance of passion or marriage, but only a promise that we would always be kind to each other and that we wouldn't fail each other. And that we would always remind each other where we had come from and who we were meant to be. It was the most sacred vow I had ever made, and I knew that both Atara and I would keep it.

It was good to be certain of at least one thing in a world where men tried to twist truth into lies. In the quiet of the night we lost ourselves in each other's eyes and breathed as one.

And so for a few hours, I was happier than I had ever been. But when a door to a closed room is finally opened, not only does light stream in, that which was confined in the darkness is free to leap howling out. In my soaring hope, in my great gladness of Atara's company, I didn't dare see that my heart was wide open to the greatest of terrors.