The Lightstone

Chapter 23

For a long time I sat beneath the trees wondering what else the Red Dragon might have made. I said nothing of my speculations to my companions. They teetered on the brink of despair, and any news of yet another bloodthirsty creature pursuing us might push them over. To distract them from their torments – and me from mine – I called on Alphanderry to sing us a song.

'And what shall I play for you?' he said as we all sat between the five smoky fires that Maram had made.

'Something uplifting,' I said. 'Something that will take us far from here.'

He brought out his mandolet and tuned it with his puffy, bitten fingers. And then he began singing of the Cup of Heaven, of how the Galadin had forged it around a distant star long before it had come to Ea. At first, his words were Ardik, which we all knew fairly well. But soon he lapsed in that strange tongue that none of us understood. Its flowing vowels poured out of him like a sweet spring from the earth; its consonants filled the night like the ringing of silver bells. It seemed impossible to grasp with the mind alone, for it changed from moment to moment like the rushing of a moonlit river. It was musical in its very essence, as if it could never be spoken but only sung.

'That was lovely,' Atara said when he had finished.

We all agreed that it was – all of us except Kane, who sat staring at the fire as if he longed for its flames to burn him away.

'But what does it mean?' Maram asked. He watched as Flick did incandescent turns just above Alphanderry's head. 'Where did you learn this language?'

'But I'm still learning it, don't you see?'

'No, I don't,' Maram said, slapping at a mosquito.

Again, Alphanderry smiled, and he said, 'As I sing, if my heart is open, my tongue finds its way around new sounds. And I know the true ones by their taste. Because there is really only one sound and one taste. The more I sing, the sweeter the sounds and the closer I come to. And that is why I seek the Lightstone.'

He went on to say that he believed the golden cup would help him recreate the original language and music of the angels, both Elijin and Galadin. Then would be revealed the true song of the universe and the secret of singing the stars and all of creation into light.

'Someday,' he said, 'I will find it, and then I will make real music.'

The music he made that night, I thought, was very fine as it was, for it poured from him like an elixir that gave both hope and strength. For a while, I paid no mind to the tightening of my belly that told me that something was coming for me through the forest. Instead, I looked off into the dark spaces between the trees. And there, sitting on top of a gnarly root or simply set down into the earth, I saw the Lightstone. It gleamed in many places even more brightly than it had in the Tur-Solonu. It gave me to remember why I had set out on the quest and why, at all costs, it must be found.

Moments of faith, when they fire the soul, seem as if they will last forever. And yet they do not. The morning brought a moist heat along with the mosquitoes, and we set out through the sweltering woods with a heaviness of limb and soul. Even the Vardaloon's many flowers – the snakeroot and ironweed, the baneberry and wild ginger – brought us no cheer. It was hard to stay wrapped in our rough wool cloaks; soon, I thought, we would have to choose between the leeches or heat stroke. I kept smelling the stifling air and looking for any sign that we might be drawing near the ocean. But I knew that we hadn't come as far as I had hoped. The Bay of Whales might still be two days away – or more. And two days, through these leech-infested woods that went on and on mile after mile, might as well be forever.

It was the seeming endlessness of the Vardaloon that oppressed me almost more than anything else. The whole world had become a vast tangle of trees, steaming bracken and bushes that tore at us and sheltered bloodsucking things. Although my mind knew very well that we must eventually come out upon the sea, the itch of my much-stung skin and the sweat burning along my leech bites told me otherwise. And even if we did survive this slow draining of our blood and somehow reached the Sea People, I couldn't guess how they might be able to help us, for they hadn't been known to speak to men and women for thousands of years. We might very well find the Bay of Whales a dead end from which we would have no retreat – unless we wanted to go back through the Vardaloon.

Around mid-afternoon, as the ground rose and the elms and maples began to give way before many more oaks, chestnuts and poplars, my sense of something hunting me rose as well. I knew that the dark thing that Mithuna had spoken of was coming closer. I tried to guess what it might be. Another bear that Morjin had made a ghul?

A pack of maddened wolves trained to the taste of human blood? Or had Morjin somehow found us in this wild land and set another company of Grays upon us? I shuddered to think I might feel the helplessness of frozen limbs yet again as when I stood beneath the Grays' long knives and soulless eyes.

I nearly lost hope then. The sight of my companions slumped on their horses dispirited me even more. Maram's sullenness had deepened to an anger at the world – and me – for bringing him to such a dreadful place. Atara was haunted by what she saw in her scryer's sphere – and sickened by what awaited us in the trees. Her usually bright eyes seemed glazed with the certainty of our doom. Master Juwain couldn't find the strength even to open his book, while Alphanderry had lapsed into an unnerving silence. Liljana, stubborn and tough as she was, appeared determined to go on toward her inevitable death. I thought that she pitied herself and regretted even more that none of us would live to appreciate her sacrifice. Only Kane seemed untouched by this desolation – but, then, sometimes he hardly seemed human anyway. Hate was his shield against the evils of the Vardaloon, and he surrounded himself with it so that none of us dared even to look at him.

My friends' despair touched me deeply, and I wanted to make it go away. But first I had to make my own go away. No noble gesture would do.

'These damn trees,' Maram grumbled as he rode near me, 'there's no end to them!

Well never find our way out of here!'

I stared off into the gloom of the forest as I remembered that a light beyond light always shone within each of us to show the way. And so I said, 'Yes, we will.'

'No,' he said, 'it's impossible we'll ever come out of these woods.'

I felt this light now gathering in my eyes with all the inevitability of the rising sun. I had only to open myself to it, and it might touch Maram and remind him of his own.

And so I said, 'It's impossible that we won't'

For a moment, he sat very still in his saddle as he looked at me.

'Do you still have the stone?' I asked him.

He nodded his head as he reached into the pocket of his robe and removed the stone. His efforts with his gelstei had succeeded in burning a hole clean through it.

'Look through it, then,' I said, 'and tell me what you see.'

With a puzzled expression, he held the stone to his eye and said, 'Ah, I see trees and yet more trees. And leeches, and mosquitoes and other loathsome things.'

I held out my hand as I said, 'Give me the stone.'

He placed it in my hand, and then 1 looked through it at him and said, 'I see a glorious thing. I see a man in the likeness of the angels who burns so brightly even stone melts before him. Don't tell me that such a man can't find his way out of the woods.'

I smiled at him, and he at me, and suddenly his anger went away.

An hour later, as we rode higher into the hills, a new scourge descended upon us.

Little black birds with red markings on their throats flew at us in angry flocks out of the trees. They drove their black beaks into the wounds on the horses' bodies to lap up their blood; they beat their wings and shrieked about our heads as they tried to get at the mosquito bites and leech cuts on our faces. Although they made no attack against any unmarked flesh, we bore enough wounds there that we were afraid they might pluck out our eyes. There seemed to be thousands of these bloodbirds, and they filled the air like a black cloud.

'Hoy, this is too much!' Alphanderry called out. He waved his hand in front of him as he tried to bury his head in his cloak. 'This is the end!'

The horses were all whinnying and stomping beneath the attacking birds. I managed to steady Altaru and urge him closer to Alphanderry and his bloody white horse. I waved my hand about violently, to no more effect than brushing frantic feathers. I looked at Maram, beginning to slip into despair again. I looked at Atara with her haunted eyes, and Liljana flinching beneath the birds' beaks. Their suffering made my eyes burn. And then I suddenly remembered that an infinite fire pooled always ready to fill my heart. It blazed there now, so hot and bright and full that it hurt, and I realized that it was nothing other than love. A wild and terrible love, perhaps, but love nonetheless. I whipped out my sword then, and a half-dozen birds fell in pieces to the ground. To Maram, I called out, 'Use your gelstei!'

The thousands of birds chittered and screamed as they darted and wheeled and kept diving at the horses and us. It was like being in the middle of a cloud of whirling feathers and stabbing beaks.

Maram gripped his red crystal in his hand as he called back to me, 'But Mithuna said that I shouldn't use it unless it was necessary!'

'It's necessary!' I said.

Maram struggled to position the gelstei so that it filled with light. Then something wild leaped inside him, and an orange flame shot from his stone and wrapped itself around twenty or thirty of the birds. They fell from the air like shrieking torches. I waited for another blast from the firestone to incinerate yet more of these pitiless creatures, but Maram shook his head as he shouted. 'That's all I can do for now!'

Kane, Atara and I were now laying about fiercely with our swords. But the birds had become wary of the flashing steel and mostly managed to avoid them. And then an inspiration came to me. I shielded my eyes as I called to Alphanderry, 'You found words to make the angels sing, now find those to drive away these demon birds!'

Alphanderry nodded his head as if he understood. Then he opened his mouth, and out of him poured the most bittersweet song i had ever heard. The notes of the music shifted and rose as he played with the harmonies; soon the sound of it grew so eerie and high-pitched that it hurt my ears. It seemed to unnerve the birds as well.

As the sting built louder and louder and filled all the forest with its terrible tones, the birds suddenly took wing as if moved by one mind, and vanished into the trees.

Alphanderry pressed his horse nearer to me, and his lips pulled back in a smile. 'I had never thought to do something like that,' he said.

Now the others gathered around us, and they were smiling, too.

'Do you think it will work against the mosquitoes?' Maram asked. 'And the leeches?'

'I don't know,' Alphanderry said.

I sat on Altaru wiping my sword as I looked about the woods. The oaks and poplars here were very tall, and there were fewer leeches among the vegetation than in other parts of the Vardaloon. The mosquitoes seemed less numerous as well. But whatever had been hunting us was now much closer. I felt its hunger like a gigantic leech wrapped around my spine

'There is more here to worry about than vermin,' I said. Then I took a deep breath and told them of what I had sensed.

'But this is terrible!' Maram said. 'This is the worst news yet!'

We held council then and decided to go no farther that day. And so we gathered wood for the night's fires; we cut brush to fortify our camp. When we had finished it was growing late, with perhaps only an hour left until dark.

'What is it Val?' Maram asked me. We all stood together near the rude fence we had made. 'Is it the Grays?'

I slowly shook my head as I looked for any movement about us. Next to me, Kane stared at the woods with hate-filled eyes. And then suddenly he walked over toward his horse and slid his bow out of its sling.

'What are you doing?' I asked him.

His jaws clamped together as he strung his bow and then slung on his quiver of arrows.

'Where are you going?' I asked.

He finally looked at me as his eyes took on the gleam of the black stone he held in his hand. And he growled out, 'I'm going hunting.'

He began moving toward the edge of the camp, and I rested my hand against his arm. I said, 'One alone in the woods will have no friends to stand with him.'

'That's true,' he said, looking at Atara as she, too, strung her bow. 'But one alone may go where others cannot.'

'Yes,' I said, 'all the way to the otherworld.'

'Ha – I'm setting out on no such journey!' he said. 'As with the Grays, I'll hunt whatever is hunting you.'

'Do you know what it is, then?'

'No – I only suspect.'

'You should have told me,' I said, staring at the shadows between the trees.

'And you should have told me,' he said, catching me up in the dark light of his eyes.

'You should have told me if it was this close.'

And with that, he carefully parted the brush surrounding our camp and stole off into the woods.

And so we waited. While Atara stood ready with an arrow nocked in her bowstring, Maram put aside his flrestone in favor of his more reliable sword. Alphanderry and Liljana drew their cutlasses, and I my kalama, and we joined Master Juwain in gazing out through the curtains of green all around us.

'Surely it won't come for us here,' Maram said. 'Surely it will wait until tomorrow when we're lost in the forest. And then pick us off one by one.'

Maram, I knew, was exhausted – as we all were. In such ground, fear most easily takes seed.

'We survived the Grays,' I told him. 'We can survive this, too.'

And then I thought, no, not survive. But to thrive, yes, always and only to live with the wildness that makes eagles soar and wolves to sing. I clapped Maram on the shoulder then and traded smiles with him, and after that he spoke no more words of defeat.

Liljana, after doubtfully running her thumb across the edge of her sword, came over to inspect mine. She touched my kalama without my leave, and then she touched my arm as if testing its strength. She said, 'Listen, my dear, if there's to be a battle, shouldn't you eat something first? Perhaps I could make a little -'

'Liljana,' I said, 'your devotion is even more sustaining than your meals.'

I touched her face, which broke into a wide smile, and her fear of dying unheralded seemed to melt away.

Next to me, Master Juwain looked down at the varistei he held in his hand. His mind, I thought, like a sharpening wheel spin-ning out sparks, was turniing around the same thoughts over and over. 'What is troubling you sir?' I asked him.

He held up his green crystal and said, 'This is a stone of healing, as we've all seen.

And yet I'm afraid it has no power over death.'

'No,' I said, 'its power is only in life.'

I smiled as I gripped his wiry forearm, and I felt his veins pressing against mine. His mind seemed to find a moment of peace even as his heart beat with a great surge of life.

Alphanderry, too, came closer as he stared out into the darkening woods. He said,

'A scryer once told me that I wouldn't die without finding the words to my song. Yet today, they seem as far away as the stars.'

'And what does that tell you?' I asked him.

'That scryers are usually wrong.'

This made Atara smile wryly, and I said to Alphanderry, 'Do you know what it tells me?'

'What, Val?'

'That this is not your day to die.'

Our eyes found each other then, and the light that came into his was almost as bright as the fire pouring out of Flick.

Atara stood staring out into the woods as if the whole world were a scryer's sphere.

I stepped up to her and said, 'You've seen something, haven't you?'

'Yes,' she said, 'so many people here. In the forest, where the oaks grow along a stream. They were slaughtered. They are being slaughtered, or will be – oh, Val, I don't know, I don't know!'

I cupped my hand around her shoulder as she rubbed her bloodshot eyes. Death clung to her like a thousand leeches; it was written across her face like the letters of Master Juwain's book.

'I don't know what to do,' she said, 'because nothing can be done. It can't be, don't you see?'

I squeezed her shoulder and said to her, 'What is it the scryers always say? That in the end, we choose our futures, yes?'

I touched my forehead against hers and felt the lightning scar there pressing against her third eye. I felt her breath against my face and mine falling against hers like fire.

When we pulled away from each other, her eyes were sparkling as if she had come alive again.

After that, we all stood watching the woods in silence. I was only dimly aware of the mosquitoes whining about and biting me; birds chirped and chittered from far off, but I was listening for other sounds. I gazed past the hanging leeches and the insect-eaten leaves, looking for something that was looking for me.

And then, out of the darkening woods, a terrible scream shook the trees. We all started at the anguish of it. I gripped my sword with sweating hands, as Maram, Liljana and Alphanderry theirs, while Atara drew her bow and sighted her arrow in the direction from which it had come. A second scream ripped through the air, followed by another, and then came the sound of something large crashing through the bracken around our camp.

'What is it?' Maram whispered to me.'Can you see -'

'Shhh!' I whispered back. 'Get ready!'

At that moment, a young woman broke from the cover of the trees running as fast as she could. Her long brown hair seemed torn, as was the homespun dress that barely covered her torn and bleeding body. She ran in a panic, now casting a quick look over her shoulder, now turning her head this way and that as if seeking an escape route through the woods. She stumbled past us barely fifty yards from our camp.

But so great was her terror to flee whatever was pursuing her that she seemed not to see us. 'What shall we do?' Maram whispered to me.

'Wait,' I said, feeling my fingers curl around the hilt of my kalama. Next to me, Atara aimed her arrow at the trees behind the woman. 'Wait a few moments more.'

But Maram, who was now trembling with anger, had suffered through too many days of waiting. He suddenly waved his sword above his head and shouted, 'Over here!

We're over here!'

At the sound of his huge voice, the woman stopped and turned toward us. The look of relief on her pretty face was that of a lost child who has found her mother. She ran straight for our camp, and we pulled aside the brush fence to let her in.

'Thank you,' she gasped from her bloody lips as we gathered around her. 'It… killed the others. It almost killed me.'

'What did?' I asked her.

But she was too spent and frightened to say much more. She stood near Maram trembling and weeping and gasping for air.

'Whatever it is,' Atara said, 'it likely won't show it face now.'

'No,' Alphanderry said, 'not until it grows dark.'

Maram, who was swelling with pity, opened his cloak to gather in the woman next to him. He wrapped it around her and asked, 'What is your name?' 'Melia,' the woman sobbed out. 'I'm Melia.'

Liljana sniffed at this bruised and beautiful woman as if jealous of Maram's gentleness toward her. And gentle. Maram was, but I could also feel his desire rising like hot sap in a tree. It surprised me to feel as well a fierce desire for him burning through Melia's bleeding body.

'They're all dead,' Melia said, pointing out into the woods. 'All dead.'

I turned to peer through the trees. Behind me I heard Maram making strangled sounds as if his desire for Melia had caught in his throat. 'Ah,' he groaned, 'ah, ah, ahhh!'

I turned back to see Melia's face pressed into the curve of Maram's neck. Her hand was clutching there, too, as she pulled closer to him. It took me a moment to credit what my eyes knew to be true. Maram's eyes, I saw, were almost popping from his head as he struggled to scream. And all the while, Melia squeezed harder and harder as she fastened her teeth into him and bit open his neck. 'Ah,' Maram gasped through a burble of blood, 'ah, ah, ahhh!'

'Hold, there!' I shouted. 'What are you doing?' I moved over to pull her away from the stricken Maram, but she raised an arm and knocked me to the ground with a shocking strength. As I was rising back up – and Liijana and Alphanderry moved toward them – Maram's cloak fell open to reveal Melia's changing shape. Now I couldn't credit what my eyes reported to me, for in only a moment Melia had transformed into a large, black, growling bear.

'Val,' Maram gasped as he struggled helplessly, 'ah, Val, Val!' The bear – or whatever Melia really was – pushed its snout against Maram as it growled and bit and lapped his blood. Its black claws dug into his back, pulling him deep into this killing embrace. I swung my sword at it then. I expected to feel the kalama's razor edge bite through fur and flesh. Instead, it fell against the bear's hunched back as if striking stone. With a scream of tortured steel, it broke into two pieces. So broke the noble blade that my father had given me. I stared down at its jagged hilt-shard as if it were I who had been broken.

'Val, help us!' Liijana called to me, I looked up to see her and Alphanderry ruin their blades against the bear as well. Atara shot an arrow point blank at the bear's back but somehow, it glanced off its furry hide. Master Juwain finally found his heart and beat at the bear's head with his leather-bound book; but he might as well have beaten at a mountain. Suddenly the bear swiped out with one of its paws and knocked Master Juwain off his feet. Then, still gripping Maram with one arm, it struck out at Alphanderry and Liljana with the other, bloodying and stunning them. It didn't take long for it to rip apart the fence surrounding our camp. Now licking the blood that smeared its mouth, it carried Maram off into the woods.

'Val, they're getting away!' Atara shouted at me. She fired off another arrow, to no effect.

For only a moment, I hesitated. Then, gripping my broken sword, I sprang after them. I ran crashing and screaming like a wild man through the thick bracken. My feet pounded against the green-shrouded earth as my eyes fixed on the black, shaggy thing pulling Maram through the bushes with an unbelievable strength. It seemed impossible that I could hurt this unnatural creature in any way. Yet I suddenly knew with an utter certainty that I couldn't fail, that a light beyond light would show me where my sword must strike. And so as I closed with them and the bear-thing raised its paw to brain me, I ducked beneath it and stabbed out with all my strength. The splintered steel drove deep into the bear's armpit. It howled in a sudden rage as blood spurted and I wrenched my sword free. Then the bear's paw swiped out again, striking the side of my head and knocking me nearly senseless.

‘Val!' Atara screamed from behind me. 'Oh, my lord, Val!'

I rose to one knee, breathing hard as I blinked and looked out upon an amazing sight. For the beast was shifting shapes and changing yet again – this time into what I took to be its true form. It had two arms and two legs, even as I did, and two hands, each ending in five thick fingers. It was entirely naked and hairless and covered with a thick, black carapace more like the burnt iron of a meteor than skin. It couldn't have moved at all except for the joints in this stone-hard armor. Into one of these, I saw, between its mighty arm and blocky body, I had chanced to drive my sword.

Although blood flowed from it freely, it seemed that it was not a fatal wound. It now dropped Maram onto the ground as it turned to regard me. It was a man, I thought, surely it must be a man. But only its eyes – large and lonely and full of malice – seemed human.

'Val!' Atara shouted. 'Get out of the way!'

This hideous man suddenly moved forward, growling and cursing at me. I saw from the blazing intelligence of his eyes that this time he didn't intend to present his more vulnerable parts to what was left of my sword. He would kill me, I knew, crushing me beneath his body as easily as he might a rabbit. I might have turned from him and fled back toward our camp. But then he would have had his way with Maram. And so instead, sensing the unbearable tension in Atara behind me, I suddenly dropped to the ground. I heard her bowstring twang as an arrow shrieked through the air above my head. It drove straight into the beast-man's eye. This stopped him dead In his tracks, though strangely he did not fall And then another arrow, fired off with the blinding speed of which only Sarni warriors are capable, took him in his other eye.

'Father!' he cried out in a terrible voice that seemed to shake all the world. In this one sound were many deep emotions: astonishment, longing, relief and bitter hate. For only a moment, it seemed that a howl of grief answered him from far away. And then he died. He toppled backward to the ground like a tree and lay still among the ferns and flowers.

I was very weak, as if it had been my blood that he had drunk. Yet I managed to get up and go over to Maram. Atara and the others joined me there, too. Master Juwain found that the wounds to Maram's neck were not as grave as we had feared. It seemed that the beast-man had only pierced the vein there to take his meal. Maram, he said, had most likely fainted from the loss of blood.

'I hope that is the worst of it,' he said, looking through the woods at the body of the beast-man. 'Human bites are more poisonous than a snake's.'

He brought out his gelstei then and reached deep to find its healing fire. After a while, Maram opened his eyes, and we helped him sit up.

'Ah, Atara, you killed him!' Maram said as he looked into the woods. 'Good! Good!

I guess that puts your count at twenty-two.'

The beast-man's last word troubled us, for he was so fell and hideous that we did not wish to see his father. And so when we heard something else crashing through the trees behind us, we jumped to our feet as we took up our weapons with trembling hands.

But it was only Kane. He came running at us through the bushes gripping his bow and arrows. He stopped before the body of the creature Atara had killed and stared down at it for a long moment. And then he growled out, 'I came upon his spoor a couple of miles from here. So, I was too late.'

Enough strength had returned to me that I was able to walk up to him and touch his shoulder. I asked, 'Do you know who this is?'

Kane slowly nodded his head. 'His name is Meliadus. He's Morjin's son.'

At this news, Atara shuddered, and so did I. Atara's gaze turned inward as if she were seeing some private vision that terrified her.

Master Juwain stepped up to Kane and cleared his throat 'A son, you say? The Red Dragon had a son? But no one has ever told of that!'

'I myself thought it only a rumor until today,' Kane said, pointing at Meliadus. 'He's an abomination. You can't begin to understand how great an abomination.'

He went on to tell us what was whispered about Morjin: that long ago, at the beginning of the Age of the Dragon, he had gone into the Vardaloon to breed a race of invincible warriors from his own flesh. Meliadus had been the first of this race – and the last. For Meliadus, upon growing to manhood and beholding the hideousness of his form, had conceived a terrible hate for his creator and had risen up against him. According to Kane, he had nearly killed Morjin, who had fled the Vardaloon and had left the vast forest to the vengeance of his mighty son.

'Once,' Kane said, waving his hand at the dark trees around us, 'the Vardaloon was a paradise. It's said that many people lived here. Meliadus must have been jealous of them. He must have hunted them down, man by man, tribe by tribe.'

Maram, sitting back against Liljana and Alphanderry, managed to cough out, 'But how is that possible? He can't have lived all that time!'

Master Juwain rubbed his bald head thoughtfully and told him, 'There's only one explanation: Morjin must have bestowed upon him his own immortality.'

'Immortality – ha!' Kane said. He moved over to Meliadus, and with the help of his knife, pried apart the fingers of his left hand. There he found a stone, which he brought over for us to see.

'What is it?' Maram asked.

The stone was a crystal, like in shape to Master Juwain's green gelstei. But its color was brown, and it was riven with many cracks so that it looked more like a withered leaf.

'It's a varistei,' Kane said. 'Possibly the same one that Morjin used to make his mosquitoes and leeches – and Meliadus.'

We all stared at this ugly crystal. And then Maram said, 'But that can't be a gelstei!'

'Can it not?' Kane said to him. 'You think the gelstei are immortal, but only the Lightstone truly is. The varistei especially are living crystals. And they can die, even as you see.'

'But what killed it?' Maram asked.

'He did,' Kane said, pointing again at Meliadus. 'He took the blood of men and women for hundreds of years, and that sustained him, in part. But he also took the life of this crystal.'

Master Juwain held out his hand to examine the brown crystal. Kane gave it to him, and Master Juwain asked, 'If this had no life left to give, what would Meliadus have done?'

'So, he would have continued sucking the blood out of deer and suchlike – and anyone who chanced to enter the Vardaloon,' Kane said. 'Then someday, and soon, he would have come out of it and crossed into other lands looking for another varistei.' The thought of Meliadus ravaging the wilds of Alonia and finding the Forest of the Lokilani made my belly clutch up with dread. Unless the Lokilani were as keen shots as Atara, Meliadus might have slaughtered every last one of them.

I looked at Kane and asked, 'You said the Lord of lies was Meliadus' father. But who was his mother, then?'

'That is not told,' Kane said. 'Likely Morjin got his son out of one of the tribeswomen who used to live here.'

The memory of the bleeding young woman whom Maram had taken beneath his cloak still burned in my mind. As did the growling bear. I told Kane about this, and we all looked at him as he said, 'Morjin must have bestowed upon Meliadus one thing at least. And that is his power of illusion. Or some small part of it, anyway. It would seem that Meliadus was able to shape only the image of how he appeared to you.'

Maram blushed in embarrassment at the way Meliadus had fooled him. But he was glad to be alive, and he said, 'Ah, I don't understand why Meliadus didn't just kill all of us once we had taken him inside our camp.'

'That should be obvious,' Kane snapped at him. 'Meliadus needed the blood of the living to go on living himself. After he had finished with you, he would have come back for the rest us one by one.'

I stood there breathing in the smell of blood that stained Maram's clothes and the dead leaves of the forest floor. I listened to the chirping of some birds, and wondered if they were the same ones that had tried to dip their beaks into us.

'If not for Atara's marksmanship,' Kane said, staring at the arrows that stuck out of Meiiadus' eyes, 'he would have made meals of us all – all the way to the Bay of Whales.'

His words reminded us that we still had a journey to make and a quest to fulfill. The question now arose as to what we should do with Meliadus. Maram favored leaving him for the wolves. But as Master Juwain observed, they would only break their teeth against Meliadus' iron-hard hide.

'Why don't we bury him?' I said. 'Whatever else he was, he was a man first, and should be buried.'

We all agreed that it would be best to put him into earth and so at least return him to his mother. Liljana went to get the shovels then, and we dug at the tough, root-laced ground of the forest until we had a hole big enough to lay him in. We all stood for a moment looking at the feathered shafts embedded in what seemed the only human part of him. Arrows were dear to Atara, but these she did not retrieve. Then we covered him with dirt so that no one would ever have to see what a monster Morjin had made from a man.

Much later, as we gathered between the fires breathing in smoke, I sat holding the hilt-shard of what had once been my sword. It almost seemed that the ruin of this magnificent weapon had been too great a price to pay for my life. For a moment I felt as if it hadn't been a piece of steel that had broken against Meliadus but my very soul. And then I looked off into the woods towards his grave. There I saw the Lightstone shining out of the darkness and reminding me that the deepest fire that burned inside everyone was as inextinguishable as the light of the stars.