The Lightstone

Chapter 38

It took us four days to set out from Alundil. Much of this was spent in gathering supplies for our journey: rations such as cheeses and dried fruit, pine nuts and potatoes and the Ymanir version of the inevitable battle biscuits. To Maram's delight, Ymiru laid in a few small casks of a fermented goat's milk called kalvaas. I thought it a foul, rancid-smelling brew, but Maram announced that drinking it gave him visions of the angels or beautiful women – to him, it seemed, the same thing.

'Now take these Ymanir women,' he said to me one night after we had worked very hard to reshoe the horses. 'Now it's true, they are, ah, rather large. But they have a certain comeliness of form and face, don't you think? And, oh my Lord, they would keep a man warm at night.'

As it happened, the Ymanir women were working very hard to keep us all warm on our journey. It took Hrothmar's daughters – along with Audhumla, Yvanu, Ulla and others – most of four days to make for us long coats that covered us from head to ankle. They were wonderfully soft and thick, woven from the long fur that the Ymanir women had sheared from their own bodies. Their whiteness, like that of snow, would help hide us against the frozen slopes of the mountains to the east.

The Ymanir men were equally clever at the making of things. They filled Atara's empty quivers with arrows, a few of which were tipped with diamond points for piercing the hardest plate armor. One of their smiths presented Liljana with a new set of cookware, forged from a very light but very strong goldish metal that he called galte. Burn himself, on this last night of our stay in Alundil, brought Ymiru a map that one of their ancestors had fashioned some generations before. He kept this gift wrapped in brown paper and string, and admonished Ymiru not to reveal its secrets to us until we were well away from the city.

'For the time, this be for your eyes only,' he said to Ymiru. 'And for your hands only

– only the fathers and sons of our line have ever touched this.'

The mystery that he made of the map aroused our curiosity. There was much, as well that we wished to know about Ymiru and his family. After Burn had gone, we asked Ymiru why he hadn't told us outright that he was his father. And Ymiru, staring at the paper-covered package in his hands, fell into a deep, brooding silence.

And then he said, 'I thought I did.

In truth, he had told us only that he had lost his children to the Red Dragon, and Burri his grandchildren – and this was his way of making known to us certain truths that tormented him. Clever he might be in shaping things with his huge hands, but he was not very good at bringing forth memories and sadnesses from the gloom inside him.

We did learn, however, one of the reasons that the Urdahir had chosen him to show us the way toward Argattha: when he was younger, it seemed, he had led raids into Sakai in a fierce effort to beat back the encroachments of the Red Dragon's armies.

Although he and the other Ymanir had killed many with their borkors, in the end they were too few, and much of the East Reach had been lost.

'The Dragon grows ever stronger while we weaken,' he told us. 'Burri and Hrothmar, all of the Urdahir, know that we can hrold Elivagar for another generation, perhaps two – but not forever. And so they were willing to take the dreadful chance of sending' me with you to Argattha.'

Evil omens, he said, were everywhere: in the stars, in the fall of Yarkona, in the rumor of a fire-breathing dragon that Morjin held ready to unleash upon those who opposed them. Even the new color of Alumit, he admitted, was not wholly a good thing, for in the wisdom that the Elders gleaned from the Star People there was not only hope but the murmurings of doom.

'Elivagar might be the last place on Ea to fall,' he said to us. 'But fall it finally will.

And so the Star People will never come.'

'No, don't speak so,' I told him. 'There's always hope.'

'Hrope,' he said bitterly. 'I have had none since the Beast took my children from me.

And now -'

I gripped his massive forearm, wondering if he could feel the incred ible strength there that I did.

'And now, tomorrow,' he said, 'the seven of us will leave for Argattha. Be there really any hrope in this quest? I suppose we must at least act as if there be.'

Ymiru's sudden melancholy, which fell upon him like an ice-fog, seemed to evaporate the following morning when the Elders and many of the Ymanir again gathered in the great square to wish us farewell. He had girded himself for our journey, strapping onto his back a huge pack and taking into his hand the great borkor that had felled many of his enemies. As well, he had taken on the task of leading the thirty Ymanir guards who would escort us from Alundil; now he was all business and bluff good cheer, checking the guards' loads, calling out commands in his thundering voice. He moved about with an almost frenetic activity, with the air of a captain who is certain of victory. His new mood, that sunny morning, was that of his people. They swarmed around us, cheering and calling out encouragements.

When it came time for us to set out, they formed up on either side of us like living mountains of fur. Down one of Alundil's broad avenues, as through a valley, we passed between them as they cast sprigs of laurel at us and sang out their prayers.

We left Alundil by way of a great road leading through the valley to the south of the city. Here, along the banks of the blue Ostrand, were many fields planted with barley, rye, potatoes and other hardy crops. 1 rode on top of Altaru, leading the line of my friends on their mounts. And the Ymanir led us. With Ymiru at their head, our guard marched along with huge strides, matching the pace of our horses. For a moment, I wished that these thirty giants might accompany us all the way to Argattha where they might simply batter down its gates with their huge clubs.

Some miles outside of the city, where the farms gave way to forests and wilder country, we turned onto a side road leading east toward what seemed a break in the mountains. As Altaru carried me forward, I searched the undulations of the sharp white peaks very carefully, measuring angles and distances with my eye, trying to see with my mind's eye how the terrain into which we were journeying would unfold.

And then it came time for me to look no more. Ymiru halted our company and asked us to dismount. He brought out the same blindfolds that had covered our eyes on our passage into Alundil. Now we must wear them again, so that if by ill fete we were captured, we might tell of Alundil's existence but not the way into it.

Thus we walked blind as bats for the rest of the day. As on our approach to Alundil we each had one of the Ymanir to guide us. I had worried that the presence and the smoky smell of so many men who stood almost as high as great white bears might spook the horses. But men are men, not beasts, and the horses knew this well enough. They accepted the Ymanir as they might any people. But the Ymanir did not easily accept them. They were unused to horses, and the idea of riding an animal disturbed them deeply. As Ymiru put it, ‘The hrorse was made with four legs to flee from lions and wolves, not to bear a man's weight when his two legs have grown too tired.' It was, I thought, a strange and compassionate way to look at the world.

I worried that the horses would have a hard time crossing the mountains ahead of us.

There might be places there, on steep slopes of scree or sheer rock, where two legs

– and two hands – would be much better than four. But if Ymiru shared my concern, he showed no sign of it. Neither did he discuss the route that he intended to take out of Elivagar and into Sakai. I wondered if he might be reluctant to tell of this in front his countrymen, who didn't really need to know it. I wondered, too, if he simply wished to spare us the imagining of its terrors.

It was disquieting and uncomfortable walking along with a piece of cloth wrapped around my eyes. It would be terrible, I thought, to be truly blind. And yet, with the negation of this most vital of the senses, I became more aware of my others. The road led up a winding way through a forest into the mountains. I felt this steep gradient through the angle of my feet as I felt the air growing colder and colder with every yard higher we climbed. The wind on my face carried scents of spruce, feather fir and new- flowers that I had never smelled before. I listened to the sweet cheer-lee churr of what sounded like a bluebird and to the bellows and whistles of the elk from deeper in the woods. And then my senses drove deeper, and I dwelled on the pull of Ymiru's hand against mine and the rushing of the breath from his lips. My heart told me that he was hiding something in his great, booming heart, keeping from us some dark secret that he didn't want us to know.

We made camp that night by a little river, where it pooled just beneath a waterfall. It seemed a lovely place, with the smell of spray off the rocks and some nearby yarrow perfuming the air. All of us, I knew, longed to take off our blindfolds and look upon it. But this Ymiru would not permit. Neither would he let us gather wood for a fire or cook our meal. He assigned his countrymen these chores and others. He left only the care of the horses to us. Even a blind man, I thoughts as I patted Altaru's neck, could comb down a horse or hold a bag of oats to his eager lips.

The next day we set out early and spent most of the morn-ing climbing over a snow-steeped pass. There were turnings and twistings to our route – and risings and fallings, too. But mostly risings: we climbed beneath a bright sun into cold air that grew thinner and thinner as the mountain beneath us thrust itself up into the sky. We plowed through snowdrifts up to our thighs; in places, we slipped upon ice-glazed rocks. But Ymiru's guidance, and that of the Ymanir who had my other companions' hands, proved steady and true. That night we found shelter in yet another of the stone huts that the Ymanir had built through the high country of their land On our third day out from Alundil, we wound our way down into a; deep valley before climbing I fagged ridgeline that led to yet another pass. We crested this cleft between two mountains late in the afternoon. After making our way down through the snow past a field of scree. Ymiru found a shelf on the mountain's east slope where he called for a halt and a rest. He also called for our blindfolds to be removed.

As on our approach to Alundil, the sudden touch of the sun dazzled our eyes. It was quite a few moments before our sight returned to us. When I again managed to make out the world's forms, I saw that that a high valley lay below us. All around us were the sculpted white peaks of mountains as far as the eye could see.

We said goodbye to our escort, there on that cold mountain. Maram. who had come to appreciate the comfort of these thirty giants, did not want to see them leave. Two of them especially, Lodur and a young man named Asklin, he had befriended on our journey through Elivagar. After clasping hands with them and watching them march off with the others, he sighed and said, 'I don't understand why they can't accompany us to Argattha. They would be a great strength.'

Ymiru stood with his furry feet splayed out upon the snow. He nodded at the line of his retreating countrymen and said, 'Their numbers might prove a weakness rather than a strength. Above all else, on our way through Sakai, we must avoid being detected. If we are, it won't matter if we are thirty times thirty.'

'Besides,' Atara reminded him, 'the prophecy spoke of the seven brothers and sisters of the earth – not their thirty brothers as well.'

With the hour fallen so late, we hastened our descent down the mountain. Even so, we were forced to make camp fairly high up, barely within the shelter of the trees that blanketed the mountain's lower slopes. But at least there was no snow beneath the swaying spruces, and we found some level ground where we laid out our sleeping furs. When the wind rose later that night and it grew cold, we had a good crackling fire to warm us – as well as the thick coats that Hrothmar's daughters had made for us.

'Ah. this isn't so bad,' Maram whispered to me, drawing his white coat around himself. He fingered its collar and added, 'It's as though the best part of the world is keeping me warm. Such softness – I wonder if the Ymanir women are so soft. Now that is something I would like to live to discover.'

He must have thought that Ymiru, lying on the bare ground between Kane and Liljana with only his own fur to cover him. was asleep. But it seemed that he was only deep in thought. And hearing, as Maram discovered to his embarrassment, was very keen.

He turned about, facing the fire – and Maram. And then he laughed and said, 'And just what would you do with one of our women, little man?'

'Little?' Maram said. 'Ah, I confess that there aren't any yet who have found me so.'

'No? Are you considering the size of your mouth? Or perhaps you speak of your head, which seems swollen with unattainable dreams?'

'Ah, well, my head,' Maram muttered. He shot me a quick, knowing look as if giving thanks that Lord Harsha hadn't cut it off. 'Let's just say I'm speaking of the size of my, ah, soul.'

'Your soul is it?' Ymiru said.'Now that be a great and glorious thing, I'm sure. Even a little man can have a great soul.'

'Just so, just so.'

'It must be your plan, then, to find a willing woman and fill her with this magnificent, questing soul of yours?'

'Ah, you do understand.'

'I do indeed,' Ymiru said, letting loose a laugh that shook the side of the mountain.

'Now that would be something I would like to live to see.'

We all laughed with Ymiru and Maram, and felt the better for it. Since Alphanderry's death, we'd had little enough opportunity for laughter and even less inclination. In truth, making jokes again around a campfire made us miss his mirthful ways terribly and seemed almost to mock his memory. But it would have been worse, I thought, if we had kept to our mournful mood forever. Alphanderry, of all people, would not have wanted it so. He would have wished upon us music and song, dancing and friendship and laughter. I knew that the only way we could ever really honor his death was to live our lives more deeply and take his spirit into us.

The coming of Ymiru into our company made this easier in some ways and more difficult in others. He had a wit to match Alphanderry's and a song in his heart – but the melodies that sounded there were less often light and sweet than complex, dark and deep. His quiet glooms and occasional enthusiasms reminded us that he could never simply replace Alphanderry as the seventh of our company. He was his own person, as brooding and mysterious as Alphanderry was cheerful and open.

Although we already appreciated his thoughtfulness and courage, no less his steadiness and strength, he would have to find his way toward us, and we toward him.

At least, I thought, we would have many miles in our coming together toward out common cause. From Alundil to Argattha, Burri had told us, was a distance of a good two hundred and fifty miles. Perhaps thirty of these me had already covered..

How long would the remaining miles take us to cross? A month? Already, it was near the end of Soal, and loj was nearly upon us. If Valte, with its snows, found us still in the mountains. it might be very bad for us indeed.

After breakfast the following morning we crossed a high valley peopled with only a few dozen Ymanir families. One of these served us a big lunch of vegetable and barley soup, cream cheese sandwiches and applesauce. They shared a little kalvaas with us too, before wishing us well on our journey.

That afternoon we crossed over a rather low ridgelinc into a wild country broken with many tors. We snaked our way around these rocky prominences, working our way through mostly barren furrows toward the east. The air grew cold as we gradually gained elevation. The horses, driving their newly shod hooves against the icy rocks and patches of snow, moved steadily forward, bearing the six of us on their backs as Ymiru walked a few paces ahead of them. Of all of horses, I thought, only Altaru knew how much I worried over the finding of grass for them in the even more forbidding land into which we were headed.

We made camp well before sunset by a stream that flowed out from between two good-sized hills. The faces of these rocky heaps were jacketed with slabs of sandstone, growing out of the earth at a sleep angle like huge flatirons. After the work of gathering water, making a fire and preparing dinner had been done – and after we had eaten the thick cheese and potato soup that liljana made – Ymiru sat by the fire playing with some chips of sandstone that he had found. Then, from a pouch on the great black belt that he wore, he took out the gelstei Hrothmar had given him.

He held the flat purple crystal over the sandstone chips in various positions, turning it this way and that. His ice-blue eyes were afire with the intensity of his concentration.

'Ah, may I ask what you're doing?' Maram said as he held a mug of kalvaas in his hand and sat nearby looking on.

When Ymiru didn't answer him, Atara came close and said, 'That should be obvious.'

'Well, it's not obvious to me.' now Liljana moved closer, and so did Kane. And Atara said, 'You might say he's trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.' Ymirus faint, curving smile suggested that he had heard Atara's words as from far away.

' Trying?' Maram said. 'But he's a Frost Giant! Don't they all know how to use these stones?'

He then began a long speech – made much longer by the quantity of kalavas that he drank – about the wonders of Alundil. After he were on and on extolling the great crystalline sculptures of the Garden of the Gods, which could only have been formed through the power of the purple gelstei, Ymiru had finally had enough. He held up his great hand for silence. Then he said to Maram, 'The Garden of the Gods was made long ago, with knowledge that has been lost to us. And with much greater galastei than this one.'

As he looked at the gleaming stone in his hand, Master Juwain came over and said,

'It's told that the purple crystals sing with the deeper vibrations of the earth. And thus, in many ways, they are the hardest to use.'

'And who tells this?' Ymiru asked him.

'My Brotherhood's alchemists.'

'Have they worked with many of the lilastei, then?'

Master Juwain shook his head. 'Not for three thousand years. The purple stones have been lost to us, too. The alchemists' knowledge comes from books.'

'So does mine,' Ymiru said, fingering his crystal. 'And from the teachings of the elders. Many of my people are instructed in the ways of the lilastei should the Ymanir ever find the secret of making more of them.'

And with that, he bent over to direct his attention to the task at hand, trying to unlock the secrets of his violet-colored crystal.

After a while, Liljana and Atara went to work on cleaning the pots and dishes while Ma ram slipped off into a drunken doze. I stood up to cover the horses with the white blankets that the Ymanir women had woven for them, Kane stood because he hated sitting; he walked about the perimeter of our camp, staring off into the darkness to look for enemies that he was unlikely to find within the safety of the Ymanir's land.

And then, just as I was feeding Altaru a chunk of carrot that I had saved from my soup, I heard Master Juwain cry out with delight: 'Do you see? He's done it after all!

Val, Kane, Liljana – come here and look!'

As Mararn awoke with a loud, breaking snore, we all gathered around Ymiru. I looked down at the ground beneath his purple gelstei. Where only a few moments before a pile of sandstone chips had been, now three long, dear, quartz crystals grew out of a fused mass of stone.

'What is it?' Maram asked. He struggled to sit up as he peered at Ymiru's work through his bleary eyes. 'What is this – sleight of hand?'

He looked at Ymiru suspiciously, as he might a street magician who has been given a bauble to play with. I did not think that he would ever be willing to lend Ymiru a gold coin for fear that Ymiru would return to him only a lump of lead.

'There's your silk purse,' Atara said, pointed at the newly-formed quartz crystals.

'It's good work – they're lovely, Ymiru.'

'So small,' he said, holding the crystals up to the light of the fire. 'And stived with flaws. But it be a beginning.'

Master Juwain had his own crystal in his hand as he looked at Ymiru approvingly.

He couldn't have helped noticing, I thought, that just as Ymiru's knowledge and will had brought out the power of the purple stone, the stone had also brought out his power and exalted him.

'It is a beginning,' Master Juwain said, to Ymiru and to all of us. 'Or, I should say, a completion. Now, for perhaps the first time since the Age of Law, seven of the greater gelstei have been brought together.'

He explained that the seven greater gelstei were each emanations of the gold gelstei and held something of its virtue. Used together, they were much more powerful than all of the stones used separately. They were like the fingers of a hand gripping the cup of fate that is also called the Lightstone.

'And as with the gelstei, so with us,' he said, looking at Ymiru. 'For we are only emanations of the One. Each of us – all have some seeds of the great gifts. It's the gelstei's purpose to quicken these gifts.'

Maram let loose a loud belch and said, 'You seem happy, sir.'

'I am happy, Brother Maram. Do you see? It's as I've always said -there is only one pattern to everything, a single tapestry. And we are its threads.'

Maram, still trying to wake up, rubbed his eyes and said, 'Ah, I don't quite understand.'

'One pattern,' Master Juwain said to him again. 'And the Lightstone holds the secret of its making. Its making. And I've sought just the opposite. All my life, looking for the knowledge to cut through and understand, the way to unravel the tapestry – all my life. And now, when perhaps there is not much left of it, I see that I was mis guided.'

He turned to look at Liljana and Atara, and then at Kane and me. He said, 'We've been seeking to quicken our gifts and use the gelstei in order to find the Lightstone.

But perhaps we should seek the Lightstone in order quicken our gifts.'

He went on to tell us that our work with the gelstei had great merit, as did our lives, even if we failed in our quest.

'Alphanderry said it best,' he reminded us. 'Do you remember his words?'

We are the songs that sing the world into life, I thought. And then I said them aloud for all to hear.

I sat staring up at the stars, wondering if Alphanderry's music had ever found its way toward these eternal lights. And then Kane's gruff voice brought me back to earth.

'Our lives are our lives, and we shouldn't give them up too easily,' he said to Master Juwain. 'So, I'll sing better when we hold the Lightstone in our hands.'

I fell off to sleep that night holding the hilt of Alkaladur in my hand. I prayed for the thousandth time that I might never again use this sword to take others' lives in defense of mine, but only to find my way through to the Lightstone.

The next day we had our first sight of Sakai. After a breakfast of fried eggs and toasted rye bread, we set out and soon pushed our way between the two hills where we had encamped. A line of low mountains lay ahead of us. We found a pass cutting through this chain, and worked our way over it. And when we crossed over to the other side, we found that we had come to the end of the Yrnanir's country.

By chance, it seemed, Ymiru had led us to the exact spot on earth that we had first sought. For here was the great hinge in the White Mountains. To our right, toward the south, the line of mountains that we had just crossed quickly gained elevation as they built toward a wall of white peaks running off into the distance. These were the mountains of the Yorgos Range, and most of Elivagar was spread across their ridges and valleys. To our left, toward the south and east, rose the rocky masses of the Nagarshath. It chilled me merely to look up the unbroken chain of these vast upthrustings of the earth, with their jagged, white, ice-frozen crests. There was no way, I thought, that either man or beast could survive in such great heights. Surely our only hope, as we had discussed, was to pass through Sakai by way of the broad plateau opening out between the two mountain ranges straight ahead of us.

'So that is Sakai,' Maram said as we stood by the horses on the side of the mountain. The wind was out of the west, at our backs, and threatened to push us down its slopes. 'Well, I don't like the look of it.'

Neither did I. The land below was windswept and sere, its brown grasses and patches of bare earth already showing occasional shags of snow. It went on and on toward the gray haze of the horizon. I thought I could make out, off in the distance, outcroppings of dark rock marking the face of this forbidding plateau. It did not seem a place where people would live. And yet I knew that when we went down into it, we would likely find nomads herding their flocks – or the Red Dragon's cavalry riding the borders of his dread-ful realm.

'So.' Kane said as the wind whipped up his snowy hair. 'So.'

Atara stood near me, staring down into Sakai as if she had seen it before in her crystal sphere.

Maram looked at Ymiru doubtfully. 'You said that you've led raids down into that?'

'No, not here,' Ymiru said. 'Our battles with the Beast's armies were almost a hundred miles to the south.'

'But you still propose to lead us across it?'

'No,' Ymiru said, 'I don't.'

We all looked at him in surprise, even as did Maram, who said, 'But you were to lead us through Sakai. Has seeing it changed your mind?'

'I will lead you through Sakai,' Ymiru said. His hard blue eyes looked to the left as he pointed at the mountains of the Nagarshath. 'That, too, be Sakai.'

Although the wind was burning Maram's face bright red, for a moment the color drained from his cheeks. 'But there's no way through those mountains!'

'No, there be a way,' Ymiru said. The coldness of his eyes made me want to shiver.

'An ancient way – we call it the Wailing Way.'

He told us that long ago his ancestors had built a system of roads, tunnels and bridges through the Nagarshath in order to help them fight their wars against Morjin.

There, along the icy peaks of these high mountains, the wind wailed almost continually. And there, too, the mothers of the Ymanir had wailed for many hundreds of years to see so many of their sons and daughters slain.

'It took the Beast a long, long time to drive us from the Nagarshath,' Ymiru told us.

'But the mountains were too vast, and we were too few to defend them. So in the end we had to retreat to Elivagar.'

'But surely, then,' Maram said, 'the Red Dragon's men now guard this Wailing Way of yours.'

'No, they would have no reason to – none of my people has been that way for a thousand years.'

'You haven't either?'

'No, I haven't.'

'Then how do you know it still exists?'

'It must still exist,' Ymiru said. 'You've seen how my people build things.'

'But what if the Red Dragon has destroyed it?'

'It is my hrope that he has not,' Ymiru said. 'You see, it was a secret way, and it may be that his men never found it.'

We all stood wondering if Ymiru could find his way through these terrible mountains and so lead us to Argattha through Sakai's back door. In answer, he took off his pack and removed the paper-wrapped package that Burri had given him. It took him only a moment to open it and take out his fathers map.

'What is that?' Maram said crowding close to look at it.

Ymiru held in his hands what seemed a pair of lacquered boards, square in shape and inlaid with various dark woods. With great care Ymiru suddenly pulled away the top board, which was set neatly against the bottom board's rune-carved frame so as to protect its interior surface. This was a smaller square within a square, wrought of a reddish-brown substance that looked much like clay. Indeed Ymiru called it living clay, and said that his great-grandfather had crafted it nearly ninety years before.

'This be one thing my people haven't lost,' Ymiru said. 'Almost every Ymanir family has such a map.'

Maram suddenly reached out his finger to run it over the clay's smooth, unbroken surface. And then Ymiru's great voice suddenly bellowed out and froze him motionless: 'Don't touch that! The living clay must never be touched, or else you'll ruin the map!'

Maram jerked back his hand as if from a heated iron. He said, 'I don't understand how you can call this a map.'

'Watch, little man,' Ymiru said to him. 'If I be steady of hand and clear of mind, you'll see something you've never seen.'

As Ymiru oriented his father's map toward the mountains of the Nagarshath, we all gathered in as close as we could. We watched at Ymiru closed his eyes and slowly shifted the position of his furry feet about the bare ground. He seemed to draw strength from it and something else. Almost as slowly as the turning of the earth, he rotated the clay-laden board, apparently seeking to position it along lines that only he could apprehend.

And then without warning, the map's living day began moving about as if being molded by invisible hands. In places, fissures and furrows marked its rippling surface even as bits of day formed themselves into ridges and crests, and thrust upward in long, jagged lines that looked like miniature mountain ranges. It took very little time for this transformation to occur. But when it was completed, as I saw to my amazement, Ymiru held in his hands an exact replica of the mountains that lay before us.

'This be a map of the nearer mountains of the Nagarshath,' Ymiru said, opening his eyes. He pointed down with his chin. 'Do you see the valley behind the front range?'

Of course, we all could make out the deep groove in the clay behind the map's front mountain. s But when I looked out at the world, through the cold- air that hung heavy beneath the blue sky, all I could see was a vast, white wall of rocky peaks edging Sakai's umber plateau. If a valley lay beyond these very real mountains, the map could see it but I couldn't.

'If the map is true,' Master Juwain said, pointing his finger at the gleaming clay, 'then it seems the valley runs for many miles.'

'The map be true,' Ymiru said, looking down at it proudly. 'And the valley be nearly eighty miles long. It will take us a third of the way to Argattha.'

'But what is the magic of this map?' Maram asked him. 'I've never heard of such magic.'

Ymiru's eyes warmed as he looked out upon Sakai. And then to Maram, he said,

'The world be a great and glorious place. And through it, along its valleys and rivers and within its hills, pulses the currents of the earth – much as your blood pulses through your big nose and follows its contours. The living clay resonates with these currents. And so it hrolds within its form the forms of the earth.'

Master Juwain s clear gray eyes fixed on the map. And then he said, 'But not all the earth, it seems.'

'No, there be a limit to what the map can model,' Ymiru said. 'If it be oriented with the greatest skill, it will show the terrain ahead to a distance of a hundred miles but no more.'

Then,' I said, pointing at the edge of the map, 'there is no way for us to know what lies beyond this valley.'

'No, not until we've covered some further distance,' Ymiru said. 'But it be my hrope that we'll find other valleys paralleling this one. The line of Nagarshath runs toward Argattha, and so must its valleys.'

'And this Wailing Way of yours?' Kane asked him. 'Does it follow the Nagarshath's valleys, too?'

'It be said that it does.'

'Do you think you can find it?'

Ymiru looked down at the map as he nodded his head. 'That be my hrope.'

With his marvelous map revealing a possible way through the moun-tains, it seemed that we might not have to brave Sakai's plateau after all. But I was reluctant to commit to this new course. At least on the plateau below us, there would be abundant grass for the horses.

'There be grass in the mountains' valleys, I think,' Ymiru said. 'At least the lower valleys.'

As he pointed out, the horses' packs were still full of the oats that we had gathered for our journey. 'And if the worst befalls and the horses starve, you can always eat them and continue the journey afoot.'

Just then Altaru nickered nervously, and I looked at Ymiru as if he had suggested eating my own brother. Ymiru, who had watched in horror as we savored the taste of our salted pork, could not quite understand the different kind of love that we held for our horses.

'Come, Val,' Kane said to me. 'There are risks in whatever path we take.'

After a quick council it was decided that the greater risk was in riding straight across Sakai's plateau with barely a rock for cover. And so, as Ymiru turned his attention away from his map and its surface molded itself back into a flat sheet of clay, we steeled ourselves to cross over the Nagarshath's great mountains and approach Argattha along the Wailing Way.