The Lightstone

Chapter 29

With a strong wind blowing at our backs, it took us only a day and a night of fast sailing to cross the Dragon Channel to Surrapam. There, the following morning, at Artram, the last of Surrapam's free ports and therefore crowded with ships coming and going through its bustling harbor, we said goodbye to Captain Kharald and the Snowy Owl. After the horses had been led onto the dock, he stood by us telling of the news that had just been brought to him.

'King Kaiman,' he said to us, 'is making a stand near Azam only forty miles from here. Its seems our wheat is needed very badly.'

I watched the lean, hungry-looking Surrapam dockmen unloading the bags of wheat from the Snowy Owl's holds. From nearby smithies down Artram's busy streets came the sounds of hammered steel and the clamor of preparations for war.

'Your swords are needed badly, too,' he said to us. 'Would you be willing to raise them against the enemy that you say you oppose?'

I remembered Thaman's request to the Valari in Duke Rezu's castle; in the months since then, I thought, it had gone very badly for his people.

'Oppose the Hesperuk armies with this,' I asked him, showing him the wooden sword I had carved.

'Some,' he said grimly, looking around at the desperate Surrapamers, 'would fight him with their nails and teeth. But I think you have a better weapon than that piece of wood.'

The day before, when we had first returned to the ship, a chance gust of wind had whipped back my cloak, and Captain Kharald's quick eyes had fallen on Alkaladur's jeweled hilt. Since then, I had taken pains to keep it covered.

'You haven't told me what occurred on the island, and that's your business,' he said to me. 'But it's my business to help save the kingdom, if I can.'

Captain Kharald's new conscience had changed the direction of his efforts but not their vigor: I thought he would pursue his new business with all the cunning and force that he had applied toward making money.

'We failed to gain the Lightstone,' I said to him as Kane prowled about the horses, checking their loads. The others stood near me awaiting their turns to say goodbye as well. 'What more is there to tell?'

'Only you know that, Sar Valashu.'

Because I hoped it might give him courage, I finally confided in him the story of my receiving the Bright Sword. He looked at me with wonder lighting up his hard, blue eyes. 'Such a sword and a Valari knight to wield it would be worth a company of men. And with Kane and your friends behind you, a whole regiment.'

I smiled at this flattery, then told him, 'Even a hundred regiments arrayed against the Red Dragon wouldn't be enough to bring him down. But the finding of the Lightstone might be.'

'Then you intend to continue your quest?'

'Yes, we must.'

'But where will you go? It won't be long before the Hesperuk warships close the Channel.'

Kane, stroking the neck of Alphanderry's white Tervolan, shot me a warning look.

Although our journey lay to the east, we hadn't yet decided its course.

'We'll go wherever we must,' I said to Captain Kharald.

'Well, go in the One's light then,' he told me. 'I wish you well, Valashu Elahad.'

I wished him well, too, and so did the others. And then, after clasping Captain Kharald's rough hand, we mounted our horses and rode north through Artram's narrow streets.

The choice of this direction was Kane's. Ever alert for enemies and Kallimun spies, he spared no effort in trying to throw potential pursuers off our scent. Artram was a rather small city of stout wooden houses and the inevitable shops of sailmakers, ropemakers and sawyers working up great spars to be used in fitting out the many ships docked in her port. There were many salteries, too, preserving the cargoes of cod and char that the fishing boats brought in from the sea. Most of these shops, however, were now empty, their stores having been requisitioned by King Kaiman's quartermasters. In truth, there seemed little food left in the city, and little hope for defeating Hesperu's ravaging armies, either.

Everywhere we went, we saw marks of woe upon the Surrapamers' gaunt faces. It pained me to see their children eyeing our well-fed horses and full saddlebags. Like Thaman and Captain Kharald thev were mostly red of hair, fair of skin and thick of body – or would have been in better times. Though nearly beaten, they carried themselves bravely and well. I resolved that if I ever returned to Mesh, I would speak out strongly for helping them, if only by taking the field against the Red Dragon.

Maram surprised us all by stopping to pull off his rings one by one and giving them to various beggars who crossed our path. After slipping his third ring into the hand of a one-legged old warrior, Kane chided him for such conspicuous largesse. And Maram chided him, saying, 'I can always get more rings, but he'll never get another leg. I regret that I have only ten fingers, with ten rings to give.'

The afternoon found us a few miles outside of the city, in a region of rich black earth and once-prosperous farms. But the King's quarter-masters had come here, too.

Smokehouses that should have been stuffed with hanging hams were empty; barns that should have been full of dried barley and corn held only straw. Most of the grown men having been called to war, or already laid low by it, the fields of ripening wheat were tended by women, children and old men. They paused in their labor to watch us pass, obviously wondering that an armed company should ride unchallenged through their land. But there were few knights or men-at-arms left to stop and question us – or to offer us hospitality. I thought that the widows and worried wives who nodded to us would have been willing to share all they had, even if it was only a thin gruel. The Surrapamers were as generous of heart even as they were sometimes greedy, like Captain Kharald. But that day, we didn't put it to the test: we rode along in silence, exchanging nothing more than a few kind looks with those who watched us.

When we were sure that no one had followed us out of Artram, we turned east toward the mountains. Although the great Crescent Mountains were said to be very tall, we could not see even the tallest of their peaks, evem though they lay only sixty miles away. Surrapam, it seemed, was a land of clouds and mists that obscured the sky – and sometimes even the tops of the trees pushing up into it. Master Juwain told us that here the sun shone only rarely. The Surrapamers' pale, pink skin drank up what little light there was; their thick bodies protected them from the sempiternal coolness clinging like moistened silk to its lush fields. But we were not so fortunate.

That day, a thin drizzle sifted slowly down through the air. Although it was full summer, and the height of Marud at that, its chill made me draw my cloak tightly around me.

And yet, despite the gloom, it was a rich, beautiful land of evergreen forests and emerald fields glowing softly beneath the sky's gentle light. I could iee why tine Hesperuks might wish to conquer it. The farther we rode across its verdant folds, the more it seemed that we went journeying in the wrong direction. But three times that day I drew Alkaladur, and each time its faint radiance pointed us east. And east we must continue, I thought, even though great battles and the call to arms lay behind us.

We camped that night in a stand of spruce trees beside a swift-running stream in waters were dear and sweet, and full of trout, nine of which Alphanderry and Kane managed to catch for our dinner. Maram summoned forth a fire from some moist sticks, white Liljana set to with her pots and pans. It was the first time the had cooked a full meal for us since before Varkall.

We ate our fried fish and cornbread in the silence of those soft woods. We had cheese and blackberries for dessert for these shiny little fruits grew abundantly in thickets along the roads we had ridden. Bv the time Matter Juwain had brewed up a pot of Sunguran tea purchased in one of Artram's shops, we were ready to discuss the jourrney that still lay before us.

"Well, I had hoped the Lightstone might have come to Artram,' Maram said as he patted his well-filled belly, 'Though why I should have expected to find the Cup of Heaven in that sad little city not even the leldra know.'

I sat by the fire with my new sword unsheathed. Just to be sure that we had traveled in the right direction, I held it pointing toward Artram to the west. But the only light in its gleaming length came from the fire's flickering orange flames.

'No, I'm afraid it still lies east of us,' Master luwain said. 'And I think it's more than a coincidence that Khaisham lies directly along the line which Val's sword has shown us.'

It was not the first time he had said this. Ever since the Island of the Swans, when it became clear that our journey might take us as far as Khaisham and the great library there, he had continually gazed off in its direction with a new excitement in his usually calm, gray eyes.

'I still don't see how the Lightstone could be there,' Maram said. 'The library has been searched a hundred times, hasn't it?'

'Yes, it has,' Master Juwain told him. 'But it's said to be vast perhaps too vast ever to be searched fully. The number of books it holds is said to be thousands and thousands.'

Kane, sitting by Alphanderry who was tuning his mandolet, smiled gleefully and said,

'So I've been to the library once, many years ago. The number of its hooks is thousands of thousands. Many of them have never even been read.'

A few idea had suddenly come to Master Juwain, who sat rubbing his hands together as if in anticipation of a feast. 'Then perhaps on of them holds the Lightstone.'

'You mean, holds knowledge about it, don't you, sir?' Maram asked.

'No, I mean the Cup of Heaven itself. Perhaps one of the books has had its pages hollowed out to fit a small golden cup. And so escaped being discovered in any search.'

'Now there's a thought,' Maram said.

'It's as I've always told you,' Master Juwain said to him, 'When you open a hook, you never know what you'll find there.'

We talked for quite a while about the library and the great treasures it guarded: not just the books, of course, but the numerous paintings, sculptures, works of jewelry, glittering masks studded with unknown gelstei and other artifacts, many of which dated from the Age of Law – and whose purpose neither the Librarians nor any one else had been able to fathom. For Master Juwain, a journey to the library was an opportunity of a lifetime. And the rest of us were eager to view this wonder, too.

Even Atara, who had little patience for books, seemed excited at the prospect of beholding so many of them.

'I think there's no other choice then,' she said. 'We should go to this library, and see what we see.'

I looked at her as if to ask if she had seen us successfully completing our quest there, but she slowly shook her head.

'There's no other choice,' Master Juwain said. 'At least none better that I can think of.'

And so, despite Maram's objections that Khaisham lay five hundred miles away across unknown lands, we decided to journey there unless my sword pointed us elsewhere or we found the Lightstone first.

To firm up our resolve, we broke out the brandy and sat sipping it by the fire. This distillation of grapes ripened in the sun far away warmed us deep inside. Alphanderry began playing, and much to everyone's surprise, Kane joined him in song. His singing voice, which I had never heard, was much like the brandy itself: rich, dark, fiery and aged to a bittersweet perfection – and quite beautiful in its own way. He sang to the stars far above us which we could not see; he sang to the earth that gave us form and life and would someday take it away. When he had finished I sat staring at my. word as if 1 might find my reflection there.

'What do you see, Val?' Master Juwain asked.

'That's hard to say,' I told him. 'It's all so strange. Here we are drinking this fine brandy – and it's as if the vintner who made it left the taste of his soul in it. In the air, there's the sound of battle even though it's a quiet night. And the earth upon which we sit: can you feel her heart beating up through the ground? And not just her heart, but everyone's and everything's: the nightingale's and the wood vole's, and even that of the Lord Librarian in Khaisham half a world away. It beats and beats, and there's a song there – the same strange song that the stars sing. And truly, it's a cloudy night, but the stars are always there, in their spirals and sprays of light, like sea foam, like diamonds, like dreams in the mind of a child. And they never cease forming up and delighting: it's like Flick whirling in the Lokilani's wood. And it's all part of one pattern. And we could see the whole of it from any part if only we opened our eyes, if only we knew how to look. Strange, strange.'

Maram staggered over to me, and touched my head to see if I had a fever. He had never heard me speak like this before; neither had I.

'Ah, my friend, you're drunk,' he said, looking down at Alkaladur. 'Drunk on brandy or drunk on the fire of this sword – it's all the same.'

Master Juwain looked back and forth between the sword and me. 'No, I don't think he's quite drunk yet. I think he's just beginning to see.'

He went on to tell us that everyone had three eyes: the eye of the senses; the eye of reason; and the eye of the soul. This third eye did not develop so easily or naturally as the others. Meditation helped open it, and so did the attunement of certain gelstei.

'All the greater gelstei quicken the other sight,' he said, 'but the silver is especially the stone of the soul.'

The silustria, he said, had its most obvious effects on that part of the soul we called the mind. Like a highly polished lens, the silver crystal could reflect and magnify its powers: logic, deduction, calculation, awareness, insight and ordinary memory. In its reflective qualities, the silver gelstei might also be used as a shield against energies: vital, physical and particularly mental. Although not giving power over other minds, it could be used to quicken the working of another's mind, and was thus a great tool for teaching. A sword made of silustria, he thought, could cut through all things material as the mind cuts through ignorance and darkness, for it was far harder than diamond. In fact, in its fundamental composition, the silver was very much like the gold gelstei, and was one of the two noble stones.

'But its most sublime power is said to be this seeing of the soul that Val has told of.

The way that all things are interconnected.'

Alphanderry, who seemed to have a song ready for any topic or occasion, sang an old one about the making of the heavens and earth. Its words, written down by some ancient minstrel long ago, told of how all of creation was woven of a single tapestry of superluminal jewels, the light of each jewel reflected I every other. Although only the One could ever perceive each of the tapestry's shimmering emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, a man, through the power of the silver gelstei, might apprehend its unfolding pattern in all its unimaginable magnificence.

' "For we are the eyes through which the One beholds itself and knows itself divine,"

' Alphanderry quoted.

And by 'we', he explained, he meant not only the men and women of Ea, but the Star People, the Elijin, and the great Galadin such as Arwe and Ashtoreth, whose eyes were said to be of purest silustria in place of flesh.

'What wonders would we behold,' he asked us, 'if only we had the eyes to see them?'

'Ah, well,' Maram said as he yawned and drank the last of his brandy, 'I'm afraid my eyes have seen enough of day for one day, if you know what I mean. While I don't expect anyone's sympathy, I must tell you that Lailaiu didn't allow me much sleep.

But I'm off to bed to replenish my store of it. And to behold her in my dreams.'

He stood up, yawned again, rubbed his eyes and then patted Alphanderry's head.

'And that, my friend, is the only part of this wonderful tapestry of yours I care to see tonight.'

Because we were all quite as tired as he, we lay back against our furs and wrapped ourselves with our cloaks against the chill drizzle -everyone except Kane who had the first watch. I fell asleep to the sight of Flick fluttering about the fire like a blazing butterfly, even as I rested my hand on the hilt of my sword, which I kept at my side.

Although I dreaded the dreams the Lord of Lies might send me, I slept well. That night, in my dreams, when I was trapped in a cave as black as death itself, I drew forth Alkaladur. The sword's fierce white light fell upon the dragon waiting in the darkness there, with its huge, folded wings and iron-black scales. Its radiance allowed me to see the dragon's only vulnerability: the knotted, red heart which throbbed like a bloody sun. And in seeing my seeing of his weakness, the dragon turned his great, golden eyes away from me in fear. And then, in a thunder of wings and great claws striking sparks against stone, he vanished down a tunnel leading into the bowels of the earth.

The next morning, after a breakfast of porridge and blackberries fortified with some walnuts that Liljana had held in reserve, we set out in good spirits. We rode across fallow fields and little dirt roads, neither seeking out the occasional farmhouses we came across or trying to avoid them. This part of Surrapam, it seemed, was not the most populated. Broad swaths of forest separated the much narrower strips of cultivated land and settlements from each other. Although the roads through the giant moss-hung trees were good enough, if a little damp, I wondered what it would be like when we reached the mountains, where we might find no roads at all.

Maram, too, brooded about this. As we paused to make a mid-morning meal out of the clumps of blackberries growing along the roadside, he pointed ahead of us and said, 'How are we to take the horses across the mountains if there are no roads for them? The Crescent Mountains, Val?'

'Don't worry,' I told him, 'we'll find a way.'

Kane, whose face was so covered with berry juice that he looked as if he had torn apart a deer with his large teeth, grinned at him and said, 'If we find the mountains impassable, we can always go around them.'

He pointed out that this great mountain chain, which ran in a broad crescent from the southern reaches of the Red Desert up Ea's west coast through Hesperu and Surrapam, thinned and gave out altogether a hundred and fifty miles to the north of us in Eanna. We could always journey in that direction, he said, before rounding the farthermost point of the mountains and turning back south and east for Khaisham.

'But that would add another three hundred miles to our journey!' Maram groaned.

'Let's at least try crossing the mountains first.'

At this, Atara laughed and said, 'Your laziness is giving you courage.'

'It would give me more if you could see a road through the mountains. Can you?'

But in answer, Atara popped a fat blackberry into her mouth and slowly shook her head.

As we set out again, I wondered at the capriciousness of each of our gifts and the various gelstei that quickened them. Among us, we now had six; only Alphanderry lacked a stone, and so great were our hopes after my gaining Alkaladur that we were sure he would find a purple gelstei somewhere between Surrapam and Khaisham.

Although Master Juwain brought forth his varistei with greater and greater frequency, he admitted that drawing upon its deepest healing properties might be the work of a lifetime. Kane, of course, kept his black stone mostly hidden and his doubts about using it secret as well. Liljana's blue figurine might indeed aid her in mindspeaking, but there were no dolphins or whaks to be found in Ea's interior, and none among us with her talent. As she had promised to look away from the running streams of each of our thoughts unless invited to dip into them, she had little opportunity to gain any son of mastery of her stone. As for Atara, she gazed into her scryer's sphere as often as I searched the sky for the sun. What she saw I there, however, remained a mystery. I gathered that her visions were as uncertain as blizzards in spring, and blew through her with sometimes blinding fury.

Maram's talent proved to be the most fickle of any of ours – and the most neglected.

Where he should have been growing more adept in using his firestone, he seemed almost to have forgotten that he possessed it. As he had said, his dreams were now of Lailaiu; at any one time, I thought, he was able to pour his passions into one vessel only. At the end of the day, after we had covered a good twenty-five miles through a gradually deepening drizzle, he tried to make a fire for us with his gelstei.

But the red crystal brightened not even a little and remained dead in his hands.

'The wood is too wet,' he said as he knelt over a pile of it that he had made. 'There's too little light coming through these damn clouds.'

'Hmmph, you've gotten a fire out of your crystal before with as little light,' Atara chided him. 'I should think the test of it is at times such as these rather than in waiting for perfect conditions.'

'I didn't know I was being tested,' Maram fired back.

'Our whole journey is a test for- all of us,' Atara told him. 'And all our lives may someday depend on your firestone.'

Her words cut deep into me and remained in my mind as I fell asleep that night. For I had a sword that I must learn to wield – and not by crossing blades with Kane every night during our fencing practice. Although Alkaladur might indeed be hard enough to slice through the hardest steel, it had more vital powers that I was only beginning to sense. It would take all my will, I thought, all my awareness and concentration of my lifefire to find myself in the silvery substance of the sword and it in me.

Morning brought with it a little sun, which lasted scarcely long enough for us to saddle the horses and break camp. It began to rain again, but much of its sting was taken away by the needles of the towering trees above us. Here were hemlocks and spruce two hundred feet high, and great King Firs perhaps even higher. They formed a vast shield of green protecting against wind and water, and sheltering the many squirrels, foxes and birds that lived here. I might have been content to ride through this lovely forest another month, for its smells of mosses and wildflowers pleased me greatly. Soon, however, the trees gave way to more farmland, cut with numerous streams running down from the mountains. In this more open country, the rain found us easy targets, and pelted us with icy drops that streaked down through the sky like silver arrows. It soaked our garments, making a misery of what should have been an easy ride. By late afternoon, with the ground rising steeply towards the mountains' foothills, we were all of us considering knocking on the door of some stout farmhouse and asking refuge for the night.

'But if we do that,' I said to my friends as we stopped to water the horses by a stream, 'these poor people will have to feed us, and they've nothing to spare.'

'Perhaps we could feed them,' Atara suggested. "We've plenty to spare.'

Liljana cast her a troubled look and said, 'If travelers came through the Wendrush offering food to their hosts, what would they think?'

'Ha,' Kane said, 'if travelers came through the Wendrush offering food to the Kurmak, they'd likely be put to the sword for the insult of it.'

Although Atara didn't respond to this remark about her people, her grim face suggested it might be true.

'I have an idea,' Maram said. 'It's time we began inquiring if anyone hereabouts knows of a road through the mountains. If anyone happens also to offer us shelter and also has enough food, we'll accept. Otherwise we'll ride on.'

It was a good plan, I thought, and the others agreed. We spent the next few hours riding from farmhouse to farmhouse, even as the rain grew stronger. But none of the Surrapamers knew of the road we sought. Most of them did offer us lodgings for the night, even though their sunken faces and bony bodies told us that this was an act of pride and politesse they could ill afford. It amazed me that they were willing to succor us at all, for we were strangers from distant lands of which few had heard; we were girt for war and riding across their fields at a time when many of their kinsmen had been taken by war – and many more might soon be. I thanked our stars that all their knights and warriors had ridden off, and so left these brave people little more than goodwill, and faith in our goodwill, with which to face us.

But as the day faded toward a gray, rainy evening, it seemed that I had given my thanks too soon. Just after we had knocked on the door of yet another farmhouse, a company of armed men came thundering down the road from the east and turned onto the farm's muddy lane. There were twenty of them, and they all wore rusted mail with no surcoat to cover it or identify their domains or houses. Shabby knights they seemed, and yet their lances appeared sharp enough and their swords ready at hand. Although they were quite as gaunt as the rest of their countrymen, they sat straight in their saddles and rode with good discipline.

'Who are you?' their leader called out to us as his large war horse kicked up dots of mud and came to a halt ten yards from us. He himself was a large man, with a thick gray beard and braided gray plaits hanging down from beneath his open-faced, helmet. 'What are you doing in our land?'

The door of the house having been shut behind us. I stood bv Altaru as he stomped about and eyed this man's horse ferociously. My companions had already mounted their horses; Atara was fingering her strung bow while Kane cast his black eyes on the men before us.

I gave the knight our names, and asked him his. He presented himself as Toman of Eastdale; he said that he and his men had been riding off to join King Kaiman at Azam.

'We'd heard there were strange knights about,' Toman said, studying my surcoat and other accouterments. 'We were afraid you might be Hesperuk spies.'

'Do we look like spies?' I said to him.

'No, you don't,' he admitted graciously. 'But not everyone is who they seem. The Hesperuks haven't won half our kingdom through force of arms alone.'

I pulled myself on top of Altaru and patted his neck to steady him. To Toman, I said, 'We're not Kallimun priests, if that's what you're thinking.'

'Perhaps not,' he said, 'but that is for the King to decide. I'm afraid you'll have to lay down your arms and come with us.'

At a nod from him, four of his knights rode up by his side with their lances held ready. Toman looked from Atara to Maram and then back at me, 'Please give me your sword, Sar Valashu.'

'I'll give you mine,' Kane growled as his eyes flashed and his hand moved quick as a snake's to draw his sword.

'Kane!' I said. With almost miraculous control, Kane caught himself in mid-motion and stared at me. 'Kane, don't draw on him!'

But all of Toman's knights had now drawn their swords. Unlike their armor, they showed no spot of rust.

'You must understand,' Toman said to me, 'that we can't allow you to go armed about our land -not with the Hesperuks knocking on our doors, too.'

'Very well,' I said, 'but we've no desire to go riding about Surrapam at all – only to find a way to leave it.'

I explained that we were journeying to the library at Khaisham; I told him that we had made vows to seek the Lightstone along with a thousand others in King Kiritan's hall in Tria.

'We've heard of this quest,' he said, pulling at his beard. 'But how do we know that you have truly set out upon it?'

I nudged Altaru forward, then drew forth the medallion that King Kiritan had given me. At the sight of this circle of gold, Toman's eyes held wonder but no greed.

Then, at my bidding, my companions approached to show their medallions as well.

Toman's knights, gathering around us suddenly put away their swords at his bidding.

'We must honor the impulse behind this quest, even if we do not believe in it,'

Toman said. 'If you truly oppose the Crucifier, you'd do better to come to battle with us.'

'That appears to be the thought of most of your countrymen,' I said. Then I told him of meeting Thaman at Duke Rezu's castle in Anjo, and his plea to the Valari.

'You know Thaman of Bear Lake?' one of Toman's men asked in surprise. He was scarcely eighteen years old, and proved to be Toman's grandson.

'It seems you do,' I said to him.

'He's my betrothed's cousin,' the man said, 'and a great warrior.'

Our acquaintance with Thaman finally decided Toman. He smiled grimly at us and said, 'Very well, you're free to go, then. But please leave our land before you frighten anyone else.'

'We'd leave it faster if we knew of a road through the mountains.'

Toman pointed off through the rain and dense greenery surrounding the farm and said, 'There is a road – it's about ten miles southeast of here. I would show it to you, but we've another hour before it's dark and must ride on. But my other grandson, Jaetan, will take you to it if you tell him of our meeting and my wishes.'

He proceeded to give us directions to his estate. Then he said, 'Well, we're off to the assembly at Iram. Are you sure you won't join us?'

'Thank you, no – we have our road, and it leads east.'

'Then farewell, Sar Valashu. Perhaps we'll meet in better times.'

And with that, he and his men turned their horses and rode off down the road to the west.

Toman's 'estate', when we found it an hour later, proved to be nothing more than a rather large, fortified house overlooking a barn and fields surrounded by a high fence of sharpened wooden poles. As he had promised, his family provided us shelter for the night. Toman's daughter and two grandsons were all that was left to him, his son having died in the battle of the Maron and two granddaughters taken by fever last winter. Toman's second grandson, Jaetan, was a freckle-faced redhead about thirteen years old – too young to ride off with his brother to war. And yet, I thought, I had gone to war at that age. It gladdened my heart, even as I filled with not a little pride, that even in the hour of their greatest need, the Surrapamers were not so war-loving as we Valari.

After we had laid our sleeping furs on the dry straw in the barn, Jaetan's mother, Kandra, insisted on calling us into the house for a meal, even as we had feared. But as they had nothing more than a few eggs, some blackberry jam and flour to be baked into bread our dinner was a long time in coming. Kane solved the problem of our eating up Toman's family's reserves in the most spectacular manner as he had with Meliadus, he grabbed up his bow and stole off into the darkening woods. A half hour later, he returned with a young buck slung across his broad shoulders. It was a great feat of hunting, Kandra exclaimed, especially so considering that the forest hereabouts had been nearly emptied of deer.

And so we had a feast that night and everyone was happy. Kandra kept the remains of the deer, which more than made up for the bread that she baked us. In the morning, we set out well fed, with Jaetan leading the way on a bony-looking old nag that was a little too big for him.

After a couple of hours of riding up a gradually ascending dirt road, we came to a notch between two hills where the road seemed to disappear into a great, green wall of vegetation. Jaetan pointed into it and told us, 'This is the old East Road. It's said to lead into Eanna. But no one really knows because no one goes that way any more.'

'Except us,' Maram muttered nervously.

Jaetan looked at him and told him, 'The road is good enough, I think. But you should be careful of the bears, Master Maram. It's said that there are still many bears in the mountains.'

'Oh, excellent,' Maram said, staring into the woods. 'Bears, is it now?'

We thanked Jaetan for his hospitality, and then he turned to Kane and asked, 'If you ever come back this way, will you teach me to hunt, sir?'

'That I will,' Kane promised as he reached out to rumple the boy's hair. That I will.'

With a few backward glances, Jaetan then rode back toward his grandfather's house and the warmth of the hearth that awaited him.

'Well,' Maram said, 'if the old maps are right, we've sixty miles of mountains to cross before we reach Eanna. I suppose we'd better start out before the bears catch our scent.'

But we saw no sign of bears all that day, nor the next nor even the one following that. The woods about us, though, were thick enough to have hidden a hundred of them. As the hills to either side of us rose and swelled into mountains, the giant trees of western Surrapam gave way to many more silver firs and nobles. These graceful evergreens, while not so tall as their lowland cousins, grew more densely. If not for the road, we would have been hard pressed to fight our way through them. This narrow muddy track had been cut along a snakelike course. And it turned like a snake, now curving south, now north, but always making its way roughly east as it gradually gained elevation. And with every thousand feet higher upon the green, humped earth on which we stood, it seemed that the rain poured down harder and the air fell colder.

Making camp in these misty mountains was very much a misery. The needles of the conifers, the bushes, the mosses and ferns about our soaked sleeping furs – everything the eye and hand fell upon was dripping wet. That Maram failed yet again with his fire dispirited us even more. When the day's first light fought its way through the almost solid grayness lying over the drenched earth each morning, we were glad to get moving again, if only because our exertions warmed our stiff bodies.

Three times the road failed us, vanishing into a mass of vegetation that seemed to swallow it completely. And three times Maram com-plained that we were lost and would never see the sun again, let alone Khaisham.

But each time, with an unerring sense, Atara struck off into the forest, leading us through the trees for a half mile or more until we found the road again. It was as if she could see much of the path that lay before us. It made me wonder if her powers of scrying were much greater than she let on.

On the fourth day of our mountain crossing, we had a stroke of luck. The rain stopped, the sky cleared, and the bright sun shone down upon us and warmed the world. The needles of the trees and the bushes' leaves, still wet with rain, shimmered as if covered with millions of drops of melting diamonds. Two thousand feet above us, the trees were frosted with snow. For the first time, we had a good view of the great peaks around us. Snow and ice covered these spurs of rock, which pushed up into the blue sky to the north and south of us. Our little road led between them; the ground that we still had to cross, as we could see, was not really a gap in the mountains, but only a stretch where they rose less high. Although we had covered a good thirty miles, as the raven flies, we still had heights to climb and as many more miles before us.

We broke then for our midday meal in a sparkling glade by a little lake. Maram, who still had his talent with flint and steel, struck up a fire, which Liljana used to roast a rock goat that Atara had managed to shoot. After some days of cold cheese and batde biscuits, we were all looking forward to this feast. While the meat was cooking, Maram discovered a downed tree-trunk, hollowed and swarming with bees.

'Ah, honeycomb,' he said to me as he pointed at the trunk and licked his lips. 'I can smell the honey in that hive.'

I watched from a safe distance as he built up another fire from wet twigs to smoke the bees out of their home. It took quite some time, and many Mows of the axe, but he finally pulled out a huge, sticky mass of waxen comb dripping with golden honey.

That he suffered only a dozen stings from his robbery amazed me.

'You're brave enough when you want to be,' I said to him as he handed me a piece of comb. I licked a little honey from it. It was incredibly good, tasting of thousands of sun-drenched blossoms.

'Ah, I'd take a thousand stings for honey,' he said before cramming into his mouth af huge chunk of comb. 'In all the world, there's nothing sweeter except a woman.'

He rubbed some honey over the stings along his hands and face, and then we returned to the others to share this treasure.

We all gorged on the succulent goat meat and honey, Maram most of all. After he had finished stuffing his belly, he fell asleep on top of the dewed bracken near some thick bushes that Kane called pink spira. The rays of sun playing over his honey-smeared face showed a happy man.

We let him finish his nap while we broke our makeshift camp. After our waterbags had all been filled and the horses packed, we made ready to mount them and ride back to the road. And then, just as Liljana pointed out that it wouldn't do to leave Maram sleeping, we heard him murmuring behind us as if dreaming: 'Ah, Lailaiu, so soft, so sweet.'

I turned to go fetch him, but immediately stopped dead in my tracks. For what my eyes beheld then, my mind wouldn't quite believe: There, across the glade, in a break in the bushes above Maram and bending over him, crouched a large, black she-bear.

She had her long, shiny snout pressed down into Maram's face as she licked his'lips and beard with her long, pink tongue. She seemed rather content lapping up the smears of honey that the careless Maram had left clinging there. And all the while, Maram murmured in his half-sleep, 'Lailaiu, ah, Lailaiu.'

I might have fallen down laughing at my friend's very mistaken bliss. But bears, after all, were bears. I couldn't imagine how this one had stolen out of the bushes upon Maram without either Kane or the horses taking notice. As it was mid-summer, I feared that she had young cubs nearby.

Slowly and quietly, I reached out to tap on the elbow of Kane, who had his back to the bear as he tightened the cinch of his horse. When he turned to see what I was looking at, his black eyes lit up with many emotions at once: concern, hilarity, contempt, outrage and blood-lust. Quick as a wink, he drew forth his bow, strung it and fit an arrow to its string. This movement alerted the others as to Maram's peril – and the horses, too. Altaru, facing the wind, finally turned to see the bear; he suddenly reared up as he let loose a tremendous whinny. Liljana's gelding and Master Juwain's sorrel, Iolo and Fire – all the horses added their voices to the great chorus of challenge and panic splitting the air We had all we could do to keep hold of their reins and prevent them from running off. With Kane's bay stamping about and threatening to split his skull with a flying hoof, he couldn't get off a shot. And it was good that he didn't. For just as Mararn finally awakened and looked up with wide eyes into the hairy face of his new lover, the bear started at the sudden noise and peered across the glade as if seeing us for the first time. She seemed more astonished than we were. It took her only a moment to gather her legs beneath her and bound off into the bushes.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram called out upon realizing what had happened. He sprang up and raced to the lake's edge, where he knelt to wash his face. Then he said, 'Oh, my Lord – I was nearly eaten!'

Atara, keeping an eye out for the bear's return, walked up to him and poked a finger into his big belly. 'Hmmph, you're half a bear yourself. I've never seen anyone eat honey the way that you do. But the next time, perhaps you should be more careful how you eat it.'

That day we climbed to the greatest heights of our mountain crossing. This was a broad saddle between two great peaks, where lush meadows alternated with spire-like conifers. Thousands of wildflowers in colors from blazing pink to indigo brightened the sides of the road. Marmots and pikas grazed there, and looked at us as if they had never seen our kind before. But as they fed upon the grasses and seeds they found among the flowers, they kept a close watch for the eagles and ravens who hunted them. We watched them, too. Maram wondered if the Great Beast could seize the souls of these circling birds and turn them into ghuls as he had the bear at the beginning of our journey.

'Do you think he's watching us, Val?' Maram asked me. 'Do you think he can see us?'

I stopped to draw my sword and watch it glow along the line to the east. Its fire was of a faint white. In the journey from Swan Island, I had noticed that other things beside the Lightstone caused it to shine. In the glint of the stars, it radiance was more silver, while the stillness of my soul seemed to produce a dearer and brighter light.

'It's strange,' I said, 'but ever since Lady Nimaiu gave me this blade, the Lord of Lies seems unable to see me, even in my dreams.'

I looked up at a great, golden eagle gliding along the mountain wind, and I said,

'There's no evil in these creatures, Maram. If they're watching, it's only because they're afraid of us.'

My words seemed to reassure him, and we began our descent through the eastern half of the Crescent Range with good courage. For another three days, beneath the strong mountain sun, we rode on without incident. The road held true,- taking us down the folded slopes and around the curve of lesser peaks. At we lost elevation and made our way east the land grew drier, the forest more open. We crossed broad bands of white oak and ponderous pine interspersed with balmroot lived phlox and other smaller plants. Many of the birds and animals who lived here were strange to me. There was a chipmunk with yellow stripes and a bluejay who ate acorns. We saw four more bears, smaller and of a grayish hue to their fur that lent them great dignity. They must have wondered why we hurried through their domain, when the glories of the earth in midsummer ripened all around us.

And then, on the first day of Soal with most of the great Crescent Range at our backs, we came out of a cleft in the foothills to see a vast plain opening to the east.

It was like a sea of grass, yellow-green, and colored with deeper green lines where trees grew along the winding watercourses. Another hour's journey down some slopes of ponderous pine and rocky ridges would take us down into it.

'Eanna,' Kane said, pointing down into this lovely land. 'At least this was once part of the ancient kingdom. But we're far from Imatru, and I doubt if King Hanniban holds any sway here.'

What peoples or lords we might find in the realm below ut, he didn't know. But he admonished us to be wary, for out on the plain we would have no cover, either from men or the wolves and lions who hunted the antelope there.

'Wolves!' Maram exclaimed. 'Lions! – I think I'd rather keep company with the bears.'

But all that first day of our journey across Eanna, neither his fears nor Kane's took form to bring us harm. We left the road only a couple of miles from the mountains.

It turned south, whether toward some lost city in this pretty country or toward nowhere, none of us could say. The Red Desert, Kane told us, lay not so very far in thai direction, and its drifting vermilion sands and dunes had swallowed up more than one city over the millennia. We were lucky, he said, that Alkaladur seemed to point us along a path above this endless wasteland, for other than the fierce tribes of the Ravirii no one could survive the desert's murderous sun for very long.

As it was, we felt a whiff of its heat even hundreds of miles north of the heart of it.

But after the freezing rains of the mountains, we welcomed this sudden warming of the air, for it was dry like the breath of the stars and clean and did not smother us. It did not last long, either, giving way soon after noon to gentle breezes that swept through the swaying grasses and touched our faces with the scents of strange new plants and flowers.

And at night, beneath the constellations that hung in the heavens like a brilliant, blazing tapestry, it fell quite cool – not so much that it chilled our bones, but rather that bracing crispness that sharpens all the senses and invites the marvel of the infinite.

We all slept quite well through that first dark out on the steppe -except during those hours when we were standing watch or simply gazing up at the stars from our beds on top of the long grass. The moon rose over the world like a gleaming half-shield; beneath it, from far out across the luminous earth, wolves howled and lions roared. I dreamed of these animals that night, and of eagles and falcons, and great silver swans that flew so high they caught the fire of the stars. When I awoke in the morning to a sky so blue that it seemed to go on forever, I felt this fire in me, warming my heart and calling me to Journey forth toward the completion of our quest.

We rode hard all that day and the next, and the two following that. Although I worried we might press the horses too strenuously, they took great strength from the grass all around us, both in its sweet smell and in the bellyfuls they bit off and ate at midday and night. After many days of picking their way up and down steep mountain tracks studded with sharp rocks, they seemed glad for the feel of soft earth beneath their hooves. It was their pleasure to keep moving across the windy steppe, at a fast walk and sometimes at a canter or even a gallop. I felt my excitement flowing into Altaru and firing up his great heart, and his delight in running unbound across the wild and open steppe passing back into me. Sometimes he raced Iolo or Fire just for the sheer singing joy of it. And at such moments, I realized that our souls were free, and each of us knew this in the surging of our blood and our breaths upon the wind – and in the promises we made to ourselves.

It was hard for me, used to the more circumscribed horizons of mountainous or wooded country, to see just how far we traveled each day. But Atara had a better eye for distances here. She put the tally at a good fifty miles. So it was that we crossed almost the whole length of southern Eanna in very little time. And in all that wide land, dotted with cottonwood trees whose silver-green leaves were nearly as beautiful as astors', we saw almost no people.

'I should think someone would live here,' Liljana said on the fifth morning of our journey across the steppe. 'This is a fair land – it can't be the wolves that have scared them away. Nor even the lions.'

Later that day, toward noon, we came across some nomads who solved the mystery of Eanna's emptiness for us. The head of the thirty members of this band, who lived in tents woven from the hair of the shaggy cattle they tended, boldly presented himself as Jacarun the Elder.

He was a whitebeard whose bushy brows overhung his suspicious old eyes. But when he saw that we meant no harm and wanted only to cross his country, he was free with the milk and cheeses that his people got from their cattle – and with advice as well.

'We are the Telamun,' he explained to us as we broke from our journey to take a meal with his family. 'And once we were a great people'

He told us that only a few generations before, the Telamun in their two great tribes had ruled this land. So great was their prowess at arms that the Kings in Imatru had feared to send their armies here. But then, after a blood-feud brought about by a careless insult, murder and an escalating sequence of revenge killings, the two tribes had gone to war against each other rather than with their common enemies. In the space of only twenty years, they had nearly wiped each other out.

'A few dozen families like ours, we're all that's left,' Jacarun said as he held up his drover's staff and swept it out across the plain. 'Now we've given up war – unless you count beating off wolves with sticks as war.'

He went on to say that their days as a free people were almost over, for others were now eyeing his family's ancient lands and even moving into them.

'King Hanniban has been having trouble with his barons, it's said, so hasn't yet been able to muster the few companies that it would take to conquer us,' he told us. 'But some of the Ravirii have come up from the Red Desert – they butchered a family not fifty miles from here. And the Yarkonans, well, in the long run, they're the real threat, of course. Count Ulanu of Aigul – they call him Ulanu the Handsome – has it in mind to conquer all of Yarkona in the Red Dragon's name and set himself up as King. If he ever does, he'll turn his gaze west and send his crucifiers here.'

He called for one of his daughters to bring us some roasted beef. And then, after fixing his weary old eyes on Kane and my other friends, he looked at me and asked,

'And where are you bound, Sar Valashu?'

'To Yarkona,' I said.

'Aha, I thought so! To the Library at Khaisham, yes?'

'How did you know?'

'Well, you're not the first pilgrims to cross our lands on their way to the Library, though you may be the last.' He sighed as he lifted his staff toward the sky. There was a time, and not so long ago, when many pilgrims came this way. We always charged them tribute for their safe passage, not much, only a little silver and sometimes a few grains of gold. But those days are past; soon it is we who will have to pay tribute for living here. In any case, no one goes to Yarkona anymore – it's accursed land.'

He advised us that, if we insisted on completing our journey, we should avoid Aigul and Count Ulanu's demesne at all costs.

We ate our roasted beef then, and washed it down with some fermented milk that Jacarun called laas. After visiting with his family and admiring the fatness of their cattle – and restraining Maram from doing likewise with their women – we thanked Jacarun for his hospitality and set out again.

Soon the steppe, which had gradually been drying out as we drew further away from the Crescent Mountains, grew quite sere. The greens of its grasses gave way to yellow and umber and more somber tones. Many new shrubs found root here in the rockier soil: mostly bitterbroom and yusage, as Kane named these tough-looking plants. They gave shelter to lizards, thrashers, rock sparrows and other animals that f had never seen before. As the sun fell down the long arc of the sky behind us in its journey into night it grew slightly warmer instead of cooler. We put quite a few miles behind us, though not so many as on die four preceding afternoons. The horses, perhaps sensing that they would find less water and food to the east, began moving more slowly as if to conserve their strength. And as we approached the land that Jacarun had warned us against, we turned our gazes inward to look for strength of our own.

And then, just before dusk, with the sun casting its longest rays over a glowing, reddened land, we came to a little trickle of water that Kane called the Parth. From its sandy banks, we looked out on the distant rocky outcroppings of Yarkona. There, I prayed, we would at last find the end of our journey and our hearts' deepest desire.