The Seeker

Prologue

The twin moons of Athas flooded the desert with a ghostly light as the dark sun sank on the horizon. The temperature dropped quickly while Ryana sat warming herself by the campfire, relieved at having left the city.

Tyr held nothing for her but bad memories. As a young girl growing up in a villichi convent, she had dreamt of visiting the city at the foot of the Ringing Mountains. Tyr had seemed like an exotic and exciting place then, when she could only imagine its teeming marketplaces and its tantalizing nightlife. She had heard stories of the city from the older priestesses, those who had been on pilgrimages, and she had longed for the day when she could take her own pilgrimage and leave the convent to see the outside world. Now she had seen it, and it was a far cry from the dreams of her youth.

When in her girlish dreams she had imagined the crowded streets and glamorous marketplaces of Tyr, she had pictured them without the pathetic, scrofulous beggars that crouched in the dust and whined plaintively for coppers, holding out their filthy hands in supplication to every passerby. The colorful images of her imagination had not held the stench of urine and manure from all the beasts penned up in the market square, or the human waste produced by the city’s residents, who simply threw their refuse out the windows into the streets and alleys. She had imagined a city of grand, imposing buildings, as if all of Tyr were as impressive as the Golden Tower or Kalak’s ziggurat. Instead she found mostly aging, blocky, uniformly earth-toned structures of crudely mortared brick covered with cracked and flaking plaster, such as the ramshackle hovels in the warrens. There the poor people of Tyr lived in squalid and pitiful conditions, crowded together like beasts crammed into stinking holding pens.

She had not imagined the vermin and the filth, or the flies and the miasma of decay as garbage rotted in the streets, or the pickpockets and the cutthroats and the vulgar, painted prostitutes, or the rioting mobs of desperate people caught up in the painful transition of a city laboring to shift from a sorcerer-king’s tyranny to a more open and democratic form of government. She had not imagined that she would come to Tyr not as a priestess on a pilgrimage, but as a young woman who had broken her sacred vows and fled the convent in the night, in pursuit of the only male she had ever known and loved. Nor had she imagined that before she left the city, she would learn what it meant to kill.

She turned away from the shadowy city in the distance, feeling no regret at leaving it, and gazed across the desert spreading out below. She and Sorak had made camp on the crest of a ridge overlooking the Tyr Valley, just east of the city. Beyond the city, to the west, the foothills rose to meet the Ringing Mountains. To the east, they gradually fell away, almost completely encircling the valley, save for the pass directly to the south, along which the trade route ran from Tyr out across the tablelands. The caravans always took the pass, then headed southeast to Altaruk, or else turned to the northeast toward Silver Spring, before heading north to Urik, or north-east to Raam and Draj. To the east of the oasis known as Silver Spring, there was nothing but rocky, inhospitable desert, a trackless waste known as the Stony Barrens that stretched out for miles before it ended at the Barrier Mountains, beyond which lay the cities of Gulg and Nibenay.

The caravans all have their routes mapped out, Ryana thought, while ours has not yet been determined. She sat alone, huddled in her cloak, her long, silvery white hair blowing gently in the breeze, and wondered when Sorak would return.

Or, perhaps more properly, she thought, the Ranger. Shortly before he had left the campsite, Sorak had fallen asleep, and the Ranger had come out to take control of his body. She did not really know the Ranger very well, though she had met him many times before. The Ranger was not much for words. He was a hunter and a tracker, an entity wise in the lore of the mountain forests and desert tablelands.

The Ranger ate flesh, as did the other entities who made up Sorak’s inner tribe. Sorak, like the villichi among whom he was raised, was vegetarian. It was one of the many anomalies of his multiplicity. Though, unlike her, Sorak had not been born villichi, he had been raised in the villichi convent and had adopted many of their ways. And, like all villichi, he had sworn to follow the Way of the Druid and the Path of the Preserver.

Ryana recalled the day when Sorak had been brought to the convent by the pyreen elder, who had found him half dead in the desert. He had been cast out of his tribe and left to die because he had been born a half-breed. Though the human and demihuman races of Athas frequently mixed, and half-breeds such as half-dwarves, half-giants, and half-elves were not uncommon, Sorak was an elfling—perhaps the only one of his kind.

Elves and halflings were mortal enemies, and usually killed one another on sight. Yet, somehow, an elf and a halfling had mated to produce Sorak, giving him the characteristics of both races. Halflings were small, though powerfully built, while elves were extremely tall, lean and long-limbed. Sorak’s proportions, a mixture of the two, were similar to those of humans. In fact, at first glance, he looked completely human.

The differences were slight, though significant. His long black hair was thick and luxuriant, like a halfling’s mane. His eyes were deeply set and dark, with an unsettling, penetrating gaze, and like both elves and halflings, he could see in the dark. His eyes had the same, catlike lambency that halfling eyes had in the darkness. His facial features had an elvish cast, sharply pronounced, with high, prominent cheekbones; a sharp nose; a narrow, almost pointed chin; a wide, sensual mouth; arched eyebrows; and pointed ears. And, like elves, he could grow no facial hair.

But as unique as his physical appearance was, his mental makeup was even more unusual. Sorak was a ‘tribe of one.’ The condition was exceedingly rare, and so far as Ryana knew, only the villichi truly understood it. She knew of least two cases that had occurred among villichi, though neither during her lifetime. Both priestesses who had been so afflicted had kept extensive journals, and as a girl, Ryana had studied them in the temple library, the better to understand her friend.

She had been only six years old when Sorak had been brought to the villichi convent, and he had been approximately the same age. He had no memory of his past, the time before he was cast out into the desert, so he himself did not know how old he was. The trauma of his experience had not only wiped out his memories, it had divided his mind in such a way that he now possessed at least a dozen different personalities, each with its own unique attributes, not the least of which were powerful psionic powers.

Before Sorak came, there had never been a male in residence at the villichi convent. The villichi were a female sect, not only by choice, but by accident of birth, as well. Villichi, too, were rare, though not as uncommon as tribes of one.

Only human females were born villichi, though no one knew why. They were a mutation, marked by such physical characteristics as their unusual height and slenderness, their fairness, and their elongated necks and limbs. In terms of their physical proportions, they had more in common with elves than humans, though elves were taller still. But what truly made them different was that they were born with fully developed psionic abilities. Whereas most humans and many demihumans had a latent potential for at least one psionic power, it usually took many years of training under a psionicist, a master of the Way, to bring it out. Villichi children were born with it in full flower.

Ryana was short for a villichi, though at almost six feet, she was still tall for a human female, and her proportions were closer to the human norm. The only thing that marked her as different was her silvery white hair, like that of an albino.

Her eyes were a striking, bright emerald green, and her skin was so fair as to be almost translucent. Like all villichi, she burned easily in the hot Athasian sun if she was not careful.

Her parents were poor and already had four other children when she was born. Things had been hard enough for them without an infant who tossed household objects around with the power of her mind whenever she was feeling hungry or cranky. When a villichi priestess on pilgrimage had come to their small village, they had been relieved to surrender the custody of their troublesome psionic child to an order devoted to the proper care, nurturing, and training of others like her.

Sorak’s situation had been different. Not only was he a male, which was bad enough, he was not even human. His arrival at the convent had stirred up a great deal of heated controversy. Varanna, the high mistress of the order, had accepted him because he was both a tribe of one and gifted with incredible psionic powers, the strongest she had ever encountered. The other priestesses, however, had initially resented the presence of a male in their midst, and an elfling male at that.

Even though he was just a child, they had protested. Males sought only to dominate women, they had argued, and elves were notoriously duplicitous. As for halflings, not only were they feral flesh-eaters, they often ate human flesh as well. Even if Sorak did not manifest any of those loathsome traits, the young villichi felt that the mere presence of a male in the convent would be disruptive. Varanna had stood firm, however, insisting that though Sorak had not been born villichi, he was nevertheless gifted with unusual psionic talent, as were they all. He was also a tribe of one, which meant that without villichi training to adapt him to his rare condition, he would have been doomed to a life of suffering and, ultimately, insanity.

On the day Sorak was first brought to Ryana’s residence hall, the other young priestesses had all protested vehemently. Ryana, alone, stood up for him. Looking back on it now, she was not sure she could remember why.

Perhaps it was because they were roughly the same age, and Ryana had no one else her age to be friends with at the convent. Perhaps it was her own natural willfulness and rebelliousness that had caused her to diverge from the others and stand up for the young elfling, or perhaps it was because she had always felt alone and saw that he was alone, too. Perhaps, even then, she had known somehow, on some deeply intuitive, subconscious level, that the two of them were fated to be together.

He had seemed hurt, lost and alone, and her heart went out to him. He had no memory. He did not even know his own name. The high mistress had named him Sorak, an elvish word used to describe a nomad who always walked alone.

Even then, Ryana had joined herself to him, and they had grown up as brother and sister. Ryana had always thought she understood him better than anybody else. However, there were limits to her own understanding, as she had discovered on the day, not very long ago, when she had announced her love to Sorak—and been rebuffed, because several of Sorak’s personalities were female, and could not love another woman.

She had first felt shock, and then humiliation, then anger at his never having told her, and then pain ... for him and for his loneliness, for the unique and harsh realities of his existence. She had retired to the meditation chamber in the tower of the temple to sort things out in her own mind, and when she came out again, it was only to learn that he had left the convent.

She had blamed herself at first, thinking she had driven him away. But the high mistress had explained that, if anything, she had only been the catalyst for a decision Sorak had been struggling to make for quite some time.

“I have always known that he would leave us one day,” Mistress Varanna had said. “Nothing could have held him, not even you, Ryana. Elves and halflings are wanderers. It is in their blood. And Sorak has other forces driving him, as well. There are questions he hungers to have answered, and he cannot find those answers here.”

“But I cannot believe that he would simply leave without even saying good-bye,” Ryana had said.

Mistress Varanna had smiled. “He is an elfling. His emotions are not the same as ours. You, of all people, ought to know that by now. You cannot expect him to act human.”

“I know, but ... It’s just that ... I had always thought...”

“I understand,” the high mistress had said in a sympathetic tone. “I have known how you felt about Sorak for quite some time now. I could see it in your eyes. But the sort of partnership you hoped for was never meant to be, Ryana. Sorak is an elfling and a tribe of one. You are villichi, and the villichi do not take mates.”

“But there is nothing in our vows that prohibits it,” Ryana had protested.

“Strictly speaking, no, there is not,” the high mistress had agreed. “I will grant you that the interpretation of the vows we take could certainly be argued on that point. But practically speaking, it would be folly. We cannot bear children. Our psionic abilities and our training, to say nothing of our physical makeup, would threaten most males. It is not for nothing that most of the priestesses choose celibacy.”

“But Sorak is different,” Ryana had protested, and the high mistress held up her hand to forestall any further comment.

“I know what you are going to say,” she said, “and I will not disagree. His psionic powers are the strongest I have yet encountered. Not even I can penetrate his formidable defenses. And since he is a half-breed, he may also be unable to sire offspring. However, Sorak has certain unique problems that he may never be able to overcome. At best, he will only find a way to live with them. His path in life is a solitary one, Ryana. I know that it is hard for you to hear these things right now, and harder still to understand them, but you are young yet, and your best and most productive years are still ahead of you.

“Soon,” she had continued, “you will be taking over Sister Tamura’s training sessions, and you will discover that there is a great measure of satisfaction to be found in molding the minds and bodies of the younger sisters. In time, you will be departing on your first pilgrimage to seek out others like ourselves and bring them into the fold, and to gather information about the state of things in the outside world. When you return, it will help us in our quest to find a way of reversing all the damage that our world has suffered at the hands of the defilers. Our task here is a holy and a noble one, and its rewards can be ever so much greater than the ephemeral pleasures of love.

“I know these things are hard to hear when one is young,” Varanna had said with an indulgent smile. “I was young myself once, so I know, but time brings clarity, Ryana. Time and patience. You gave Sorak what he needed most, your friendship and your understanding. More than anyone else, you helped him gain the strength that he required to go out and find his own way in the world. The time has come for him to do that, and you must respect his choice. You must let him go.”

Ryana had tried to tell herself that the high mistress was right, that the best thing she could do for Sorak was to let him go, but she could not make herself believe it. They had known each other for ten years, since they were both small children, and she had never felt as close to any of her villichi sisters as she had to Sorak. Perhaps she had nurtured unreasonable expectations as to the sort of relationship they could have, but while it was now clear to her that they never could be lovers, she still knew that Sorak loved her as much as he could ever love anyone. For her part, she had never wanted anyone else. She had never even known another male.

The priestesses had frequently discussed the different ways in which physical desire could be sublimated. On occasion, a priestess on a pilgrimage might indulge in the pleasures of the flesh, for it was not expressly forbidden by their vows, but even those who had done so had eventually chosen celibacy. Males, they said, left much to be desired when it came to such things as companionship, mutual respect, and spiritual bonding. Ryana was still a virgin, so she had no personal experience from which to judge, but the obvious implication seemed to be that the physical side of love was not all that important. What was important was the bond that she had shared with Sorak from childhood.

With his departure, she had felt a void within her that nothing else could fill.

That night, after everyone had gone to sleep, she had quickly packed her rucksack with her few possessions, then stole into the armory where the sisters kept all the weapons used in their training. The villichi had always followed a philosophy that held the development of the body to be as important as the training of the mind. From the time they first came to the convent, the sisters were all trained in the use of the sword, the staff, the dagger, and the crossbow, in addition to such weapons as the cahulaks, the mace and flail, the spear, the sickle, and the widow’s knife. A one villichi priestess on a pilgrimage was not as vulnerable as she appeared.

Ryana had buckled on an iron broadsword and tucked two daggers into the top of each of her high moccasins. She also took a staff and slung a crossbow across her back, along with a quiver of bolts. Perhaps the weapons were not hers to take, but she had put in her share of time in the workshop of the armory, fashioning bows and arrows and working at the forge, making iron swords and daggers, so in a sense, she felt she had earned a right to them. She did not think Sister Tamura would begrudge her. If anyone would understand, Tamura would.

Ryana then had climbed over the wall so as not to alert the old gatekeeper. Sister Dyona might not have prevented her from leaving, but Ryana was sure she would have tried to talk her out of it and insisted that she first discuss it with Mistress Varanna. Ryana was in no mood to argue or try to justify her actions. She had made her decision. Now she was living with the consequences of that decision, and those consequences were that she had absolutely no idea what lay ahead of her.

All she knew was that they had to find a wizard known only as the Sage, something that was a lot easier said than done. Most people believed the Sage was nothing but a myth, a legend for the common people to keep hope alive, hope that one day the power of the defilers would be broken, the last of the dragons would be slain, and the greening of Athas would begin.

According to the story, the Sage was a hermit wizard, a preserver who had embarked upon the arduous path of metamorphosis into an avangion. Ryana had no idea what exactly an avangion was. There had never been an avangion on Athas, but the ancient books of magic spoke of it. Of all the spells of metamorphosis, the avangion transformation was the most difficult, the most demanding, and the most dangerous. Aside from dangers inherent in the metamorphosis itself, there were dangers posed by defilers, especially the sorcerer-kings, to whom the avangion would be the greatest threat.

Magic had a cost, and that cost was most dramatically visible in the reduction of Athas to a dying, desert planet. The templars and their sorcerer-kings claimed that it was not their magic that had defiled the landscape of Athas. They insisted the destruction of the ecosystem began thousands of years earlier with those who had tried to control nature, and that it was aided by changes in the sun, which no one could control. There may have been some truth to that, but few people believed these claims, for there was nothing that argued against them quite so persuasively as the devastation brought about by the practice of defiler magic.

Preservers did not destroy the land the way defilers did, but most people did not bother to differentiate between defiler and preserver magic. Magic of any form was universally despised for being the agency of the planet’s ruin. Everyone had heard the legends, and there was no shortage of bards who repeated them. “The Ballad of a Dying Land,” “The Dirge of the Dark Sun,” “The Druid’s Lament,” and many others were songs that told the story of how the world had been despoiled.

There had been a time when Athas was green, and the winds blowing across its verdant, flowering plains had carried the song of birds. Once, its dense forests had been rich with game, and the seasons came and went, bringing blankets of virgin snow during the winter and rebirth with every spring. Now, there were only two seasons, as the people said, “summer and the other one.”

During most of the year, the Athasian desert was burning hot during the day and freezing cold at night, but for two to three months during the Athasian summer, the nights were warm enough to sleep outside without a blanket and the days brought temperatures like the inside of an oven. Where once the plains were green and fertile, now they were barren, desert tablelands covered merely with brown desert grasses, scrubby ironwood and pagafa trees, a few drought resistant bushes, and a wide variety of spiny cacti and succulents, many of them deadly. The forests had, for the most part, given way to stony hills, where the winds wailed through the rocky crags, making a sound like some giant beast howling in despair. Only in isolated spots, such as the Forest Ridge of the Ringing Mountains, was there any evidence of the world the way it once had been, but with every passing year, the forests died back a little more.

And what did not die was destroyed by the defilers.

Magic required energy, and the source of that energy could be the life-force of the spellcaster or that of other living things such as plants. The magic practiced by defilers and preservers was essentially the same, but preservers had a respect for life, and cast their spells conservatively so that any energy borrowed from plant life was taken in such a way as to allow a full recovery.

Preservers did not kill with their magic.

Defilers, on the other hand, practiced the sorcery of death. When a defiler cast a spell, he sought only to absorb as much energy as he could, the better to increase his power and the potency of his spell. When a defiler drew energy from a plant, it withered and died, and the soil where it grew was left completely barren.

The great lure of defiler magic was that it was incredibly addictive. It allowed the sorcerer to increase his power far more quickly than those who followed the Path of the Preserver, which mandated reverence for life. But as with any addictive drug, the defiler’s boundless lust for power necessitated ever greater doses. In his relentless quest for power, the defiler eventually reached the limit of what he could absorb and contain, beyond which the power would consume him....

Only the sorcerer-kings could withstand the flood of complete defiling power, and they did so by changing. They transformed themselves through painful, time-consuming rituals and gradual stages of development into creatures whose voracious appetites and capacities for power made them the most dangerous life-forms on the planet . . . Dragons.

Dragons were hideous perversions, thought Ryana, sorcerous mutations that posed a threat to all life on the planet. Everywhere a dragon passed, it laid waste to the entire countryside and took a fearful toll in the human and demihuman lives that it demanded as a tribute.

Once a sorcerer-king embarked upon the magical path of metamorphosis that would transform him into a dragon, there was no return. Merely to begin the process was to pass beyond redemption. With each successive stage of the transformation, the sorcerer changed physically, gradually losing all human appearance and taking on the aspect of a dragon. By then, the defiler would have ceased to care about its own humanity, or lack of it. The metamorphosis brought with it immortality and a capacity for power beyond anything the defiler had ever experienced before. It would make no difference to a dragon that its very existence threatened all life on the planet; its insatiable appetite could reduce the world to a barren, dried out rock incapable of supporting any life at all. Dragons did not care about such things. Dragons were insane.

There was only one creature capable of standing up to the power of a dragon, and that was an avangion. Or at least, so the legends said. An avangion was the antithesis of a dragon, a metamorphosis achieved through following the Path of the Preserver. The ancient books of magic spoke of it, but there had never been an avangion on Athas, perhaps because the process took far longer than did the dragon metamorphosis. According to the legend, the process of avangion transformation was not powered by absorbed life-force, and so the avangion was stronger than its defiler enemies. While the dragon was the enemy of life, the avangion was the champion of life, and possessed a powerful affinity for every living thing. The avangion could counteract the power of a dragon and defeat it, and help bring about the greening of the world.

According to the legend, one man, a preserver—a hermit wizard known only as the Sage—had embarked upon the arduous and lonely path of metamorphosis that would transform him into an avangion. Because the long, painful, and extremely demanding transformation would take many years, the Sage had gone into seclusion in some secret hiding place, where he could concentrate upon the complicated spells of metamorphosis and keep safe from the defilers who would seek to stop him at all costs. Even his true name was unknown, so that no defiler could ever use it to gain power over him or deduce the location of his hiding place.

The story had many different variations, depending on which bard sang the song, but it had been around for years, and no avangion had been forthcoming. No one had ever seen the Sage or spoken to him or knew anything about him. Ryana, like most people, had always believed the story was nothing but a myth ... until now.

Sorak had embarked upon a quest to find the Sage, to both discover the truth about his own past and find a purpose for his future. He had first sought out Lyra Al’Kali, the pyreen elder who had found him in the desert and brought him to the convent.

The pyreens, known also as the peace-bringers, were shapechangers and powerful masters of the Way, devoted to the Way of the Druid and the Path of the Preserver. They were the oldest race on Athas, and though their lives spanned centuries, they were dying out. No one knew how many of them were left. It was believed that only a very small number remained. The pyreens were wanderers, mystics who traveled the world and sought to counteract the corrupting influence of the defilers—but they usually kept to themselves and avoided contact with humans and demihumans alike. When the Elder Al’Kali had brought Sorak to the convent, it had been both the first and last time Ryana had ever laid eyes on a pyreen.

Once each year, Elder Al’Kali made a pilgrimage to the summit of the Dragon’s Tooth to reaffirm her vows. Sorak had found her there, and she had told him that the leaders of the Veiled Alliance—an underground network of preservers who fought against the sorcerer-kings—maintained some sort of contact with the Sage. Sorak had gone to Tyr to seek them out. In trying to make contact with the Veiled Alliance, he had inadvertently become involved in political intrigue aimed at toppling the government of Tyr, exposing the members of the Veiled Alliance, and restoring the templars to power under a defiler regime. Sorak had helped to foil the plot and, in return, the leaders of the Veiled Alliance had given him a scroll which, they said, contained all they knew about the Sage.

“But why write it down upon a scroll?” Sorak wondered aloud after they had left. “Why not simply tell me?”

“Perhaps because it was too complicated,” Ryana had suggested, “and they thought you might forget if it were not written down.”

“But they said that I must burn this after I had read it,” Sorak said, shaking his head. “If they were so concerned that this information not fall into the wrong hands, why bother to write it down at all? Why take the risk?”

“It does seem puzzling,” she had agreed.

He had broken the seal on the scroll and unrolled it.

“What does it say?” Ryana asked, anxiously.

“Very little,” Sorak had replied. “It says, ‘Climb to the crest of the ridge west of the city. Wait until dawn. At sunrise, cast the scroll into a fire. May the Wanderer guide you on your quest.’ And that is all.” He shook his head. “It makes no sense.”

“Perhaps it does,” Ryana had said. “Remember that the members of the Veiled Alliance are sorcerers.”

“You mean the scroll itself is magic?” Sorak said. Then he nodded. “Yes, that could be. Or else I have been duped and played for a fool.”

“Either way, we shall know at dawn tomorrow,” said Ryana.

By nightfall, they had reached the crest of the ridge and made camp. She had slept for a while, then woke to take the watch so that Sorak could sleep. No sooner had he closed his eyes than the Ranger came out and took control. He got up quietly and stalked off into the darkness without a word, his eyes glowing like a cat’s. Sorak, she knew, was fast asleep, ducked under, as he called it. When he awoke, he would have no memory of the Ranger going out to hunt.

Ryana had grown accustomed to this unusual behavior back when they were still children at the convent. Sorak, out of respect for the villichi who had raised him, would not eat meat. However, his vegetarian diet went against his elf and halfling natures, and his other personalities did not share his desire to follow the villichi ways. To avoid conflict, his inner tribe had found us unique method of compromise. While Sorak slept, the Ranger would hunt, and the rest of the tribe could enjoy the warm blood of a fresh kill without Sorak’s having to participate. He would awaken with a full belly, but no memory of how it got that way. He would know, of course, but since he would not have been the one to make the kill and eat the flesh, his conscience would be clear.

It was, Ryana thought, a curious form of logic, but it apparently satisfied Sorak. For her part, she did not really care if he ate flesh or not. He was an elfling, and it was natural for him to do so. For that matter, she thought, one could argue that it was natural for humans to eat flesh, as well. Since she had broken her vows by leaving the convent, perhaps there was nothing left to lose by eating meat, but she had never done so. Just the thought was repellent to her. It was just as well that Sorak’s inner tribe went off to make their kill and consume it away from the camp. She grimaced as she pictured Sorak tearing into a hunk of raw, still warm and bloody meat. She decided that she would remain a vegetarian.

It was almost dawn when the Ranger returned. He moved so quietly that even with her trained villichi senses, Ryana didn’t hear him until he stepped into the firelight and settled down on the ground beside her, sitting cross-legged. He shut his eyes and lowered his head upon his chest . . . and a moment later, Sorak awoke and looked up at her.

“Did you rest well?” she asked, in a faintly mocking tone.

He merely grunted. He looked up at the sky. “It is almost dawn.” He reached into his cloak and pulled out the rolled up scroll. He unrolled it and looked at if once again. “ ‘At sunrise, cast the scroll into a fire- May the Wanderer guide you on your quest,’ ” he read.

“It seems simple enough,” she said. “We have climbed the ridge and made a fire. In a short while, we shall know the rest... whatever there may be to know.”

“I have been thinking about that last part,” Sorak said. “ ‘May the Wanderer guide you on your quest.’ It is a common sentiment often expressed to wish one well upon a journey, but the word ‘quest’ is used instead of ‘journey’ in this case.”

“Well, they knew your journey was a quest,” Ryana said with a shrug.

“True,” said Sorak, “but otherwise, the words written on the scroll are simple and direct, devoid of any sentiment or salutation.”

“You mean you think that something else is meant?”

“Perhaps,” said Sorak. “It would seem to be a reference to The Wanderer’s journal. Sister Dyona gave me her own copy the day I left the convent.”

He opened his pack, rummaged in it for a moment, and then pulled out a small, plain, leather-bound book, stitched together with animal gut. It was not something that would have been produced by the villichi, who wrote their knowledge down on scrolls. “You see how she inscribed it?

“A small gift to help guide you on your journey. A more subtle weapon than your sword, but no less powerful, in its own way. Use it wisely.

“A subtle weapon,” he repeated, “to be used wisely. And now the scroll from the Veiled Alliance seems to refer to it again.”

“It is known that the Veiled Alliance makes copies of the journal and distributes them,” Ryana said thoughtfully. “The book is banned because it speaks truthfully of the defilers, but you think there may be something more to it than that?”

“I wonder,” Sorak said. “I have been reading through it, but perhaps it merits a more careful study. It is possible that it may contain some sort of hidden meaning.” He looked up at the sky again. It was getting light. “The sun will rise in another moment.” He rolled the scroll up once again and held it out over the fire, gazing at it thoughtfully. “What do you think will happen when we burn it?”

She shook her head. “I do not know.”

“And if we do not?”

“We already know what it contains,” she said. “It would seem that there is nothing to be served by holding on to it.”

“Sunrise,” he said again. “It is most specific about that. And on this ridge. On the crest, it says.”

“We have done all else that was required. Why do you hesitate?”

“Because I hold magic in my hand,” he said. “I feel certain of it now. What I am not certain of is what spell we may be loosing when we burn it.”

“The members of the Veiled Alliance are preservers,” she reminded him. “It would not be a defiler spell. That would go against everything that they believe.”

He nodded. “I suppose so. But I have an apprehension when it comes to magic. I do not trust it.”

“Then trust your instincts,” said Ryana. “I will support you in whatever you choose to do.”

He looked up at her and smiled. “I am truly sorry that you broke your vows for me,” he said, “but I am also very glad you came.”

“Sunrise,” she said, as the dark sun peeked over the horizon.

“Well.. .” he said, then dropped the scroll into the fire.

It rapidly turned brown, then burst into flame, but it was a flame that burned blue, then green, then blue again. Sparks shot from the scroll as it was consumed, sparks that danced over the fire and flew higher and higher, swirling in the rising, blue-green smoke, going around faster and faster, forming a funnel like an undulating dust devil that hung over the campfire and grew, elongating as it whirled around with ever increasing speed. It sucked the flames from the fire, drawing them up into its vortex, which sparked and crackled with magical energy, raising a wind that plucked at their hair and cloaks and blinded them with dust and ash.

It rose high above the now-extinguished fire, making a rushing, whistling noise over which a voice suddenly seemed to speak, a deep and sonorous voice that came out of the blue-green funnel cloud to speak only one word.

“Nibenaaaay...”

Then the glowing funnel cloud rose up and skimmed across the ridge, picking up speed as it swept down toward the desert floor. It whirled off rapidly across the tablelands, heading due east, toward Silver Spring and the desert flats beyond it. They watched it recede into the distance, moving with such amazing speed that it left a trail of blue-green light behind it, as if marking out the way. Then it was gone, and all was quiet once again.

They both stood, gazing after it, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Sorak broke the silence. “Did you hear it?” he asked.

Ryana nodded. “The voice said, ‘Nibenay.’ Do you think it was the Sage who spoke?”

“I do not know,” Sorak replied. “But it went due east. Not southeast, where the trade route runs to Altaruk and from there to Gulg and then to Nibenay, but directly east, toward Silver Spring and then beyond.”

“Then that would seem to be the route that we must take,” Ryana said.

“Yes,” said Sorak, nodding, “but according to The Wanderer’s Journal, that way leads across the Stony Barrens. No trails, no villages or settlements, and worst of all, no water. Nothing but a rocky waste until we reach the Barrier Mountains, which we must cross if we are to reach Nibenay by that route. The journey will be harsh ... and very dangerous.”

“Then the sooner we begin it, the sooner it will end,” Ryana said, picking up her rucksack, her crossbow, and her staff.

“But what are we to do when we reach Nibenay?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Sorak, “but if we try to cross the Stony Barrens, we may never even reach the Barrier Mountains.”

“The desert tried to claim you once before, and it failed,” said Ryana. “What makes you think that now it will succeed?”

Sorak smiled. “Well, perhaps it won’t, but it is not wise to tempt fate. In any case, there is no need for both of us to make so hazardous a journey. You could return to Tyr and join a caravan bound for Nibenay along the trade route by way of Altaruk and Gulg. I could simply meet you there and—”

“No, we go together,” said Ryana, in a tone that brooked no argument. She slung her crossbow across her back and slipped her arms through the straps of the rucksack. Holding her staff in her right hand, she started off down the western slope. She walked a few paces, then paused, looking back over her shoulder. “Coming?” Sorak grinned. “Lead on, little sister.”