In truth, it was more than strange; I couldn’t remember hearing of any Valari ever making friends with a Sarni warrior. As the sun rose over the meadow where Atara and I had stood against our enemies together, I couldn’t help wondering if the Age of the Dragon – and war itself – was finally coming to an end.
‘Ah, this is all very interesting,’ Maram said to Kane. ‘But what does this have to do with the Lokii?’
‘Just this,’ Kane said. ‘After Aryu stole the Lightstone and the Valari were broken into their two kindred, the remaining tribes scattered to every land of Ea. Each tribe carried its own varistei; they used the stones to adapt their forms to the various climes of Ea. The Lokii, being lovers of trees, disappeared into the Great Northern Forest. Over the ages, they came to look even as you’ve seen them.’
‘Have you seen them, then?’ Maram asked.
Kane ignored this question, regarding Maram as he might a fly that had a loud buzz but no bite. Then he told us more about the Lokii.
‘Of all the tribes,’ he said, ‘they were the only one to fully understand the power of the green gelstei.’
The Lokii, he explained, became masters of growing great trees and things out of the earth, and of awakening the living earth fires called the telluric currents. After thousands of years, they learned how to grow more of the green gelstei crystals from the earth. They used these magic stones, as they thought of them, to deepen the power of their wood. So changed and concentrated did these telluric currents become that their wood separated from Ea in some strange way and became invisible to the rest of it. The Lokii called these pockets of deepened life fires ‘vilds,’ for they believed that there the earth was connected to the wild fires of the stars. Since the Lokii could not return to the stars, they hoped to awaken the earth itself so that all of Ea became as alive and magical as the other worlds that circled other suns.
‘So, the vilds are invisible to almost all people except the Lokii,’ Kane said. ‘Even they have trouble finding their vild once they have left it. Which is why they never go far from their trees.’
‘You say “vilds,”’ Maram said. ‘Are there more than one?’
Kane nodded his head and told us, ‘During the Lost Ages, the Lokii tribe split into at least ten septs and bore varistei to other parts of Ea. There, they created vilds of their own. At least five of them remain.’
‘Remain where?’
‘Somewhere,’ Kane said. ‘They are somewhere.’
As he took another drink of brandy, Flick soared over to him and began spinning in front of his bright eyes. I could almost see the sparks passing back and forth between them. It was the longest I had ever seen Flick remain in one place.
‘How is it,’ Maram wondered, ‘that Flick can live outside the vild?’
‘That I would like to know, too,’ Kane said.
‘There can only be one answer,’ Master Juwain said. ‘If it’s truly the telluric currents of the vilds that feed the Timpum, then here Flick must take his life from something else. And that can only be the Golden Band. Twenty years it’s been since the earth entered its radiance. It must be the light of the Ieldra themselves that sustains him.’
‘Perhaps,’ Kane said. ‘Perhaps we’re coming into the time when the Galadin will walk the earth again.’
He knelt next to me by the tree, studying the scar on my forehead. Then he told me, ‘This is why the Lokii spared your life. The mark of the lightning bolt – the Lokii believe that it’s sacred to the archangel they call the Ellama. But others know this being as Valoreth. It’s strange that you should bear his mark, eh?’
Maram, apparently not liking the look on Kane’s face just then, turned to him and said, ‘What’s strange is that you should know so much that no one else knows.’
‘It’s a strange world,’ Kane growled out.
‘How did you know that the Red Dragon had sent assassins to kill Val?’ Maram asked. ‘And how did you learn to fight as you do? Are you of the Black Brotherhood?’
As Maram tapped his empty cup against a stone, we all looked at Kane, who said, ‘If I were of the Black Brotherhood, whatever you think that is, do you suppose I’d be permitted to tell you?’
Maram pointed at Flick, who now hovered over some flowers like a cloud of flashing butterflies. He said, ‘If you can see the Timpum – ah, the Timpimpiri, as you called them – then you must have spent time in one of the vilds.’
‘Must I have?’
Master Juwain sat holding his book and said, ‘We of the Brotherhood spend our lives in search of knowledge. But even our Grandmaster would have much to learn from you.’
Kane smiled at this but said nothing.
‘But how,’ I asked him, ‘did you find the vild and enter it?’
‘Much the same as you did.’
He told us that he had spent much of his life crossing and recrossing Ea in search of knowledge – and something else.
‘So, I seek the Lightstone,’ he told us. ‘Even as you do.’
‘Toward what end?’ I asked him.
‘Toward the end of bringing about the end,’ he growled out again. ‘The end of Morjin and all his works.’
I remembered touching upon his bottomless hatred for Morjin at our first meeting in Duke Rezu’s castle; I remembered the anguish in his eyes, and I shuddered.
‘But what grievance do you have against him?’ I asked.
‘Does a man need a grievance against the Crucifier to oppose him?’
‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘But to hate him as you do, yes.’
Then let’s just say he took from me that which was dearer than life itself
I remembered wondering if the Red Dragon had murdered his family, and I bowed my head in silence. Then I looked up and said, ‘Tour accent is strange – what is your homeland?’
‘I have no home,’ Kane said. ‘No homeland that Morjin hasn’t despoiled.’
‘Who are your people, then?’
‘I have no people whom Morjin hasn’t killed or enslaved.’
‘You almost look Valari.’
‘I almost am. As with your people, I’m Morjin’s enemy.’
As I sat staring into his dark, wild eyes, I couldn’t help remembering the story of the Hundred Year March. After Aryu had killed Elahad and fled into the Northern Sea, Elahad’s son, Arahad, had assembled a fleet of ten ships and set sail with the remaining Valari in pursuit. For ten years, they searched in vain from island to island and place to place. They faced many storms and adventures. Finally, having circumnavigated the whole of Ea, they had returned to Tria with only five remaining ships.
Arahad then decided – wrongly–that Aryu and the renegade Valari must have come to land and established themselves somewhere in the interior of the continent. And so again, Arahad and his followers set out in pursuit, this time on foot. Thus began the Hundred Year March. Arahad’s Valari wandered almost every land of Ea looking for Aryu’s descendants and the Lightstone. Finally, after Arahad’s death, his son, Shavashar, led the remnants of the Valari tribe into the Morning Mountains, where they gave up their quest and remained. But it was said that some of the Valari lost heart long before this, and broke off from the rest of the tribe before they reached the Morning Mountains. In what land these lost Valari might have established themselves, not even the legends told. But I wondered if Kane might have been one of their descendants.
‘You make a mystery of yourself,’ I said to him.
‘No more than the One has made a mystery of life,’ he told me. ‘So, it’s not important who I am – only what I do.’
I turned toward the sunlit meadow to look upon the work that Kane had done. I still couldn’t quite believe that he had killed the six Grays at close quarters without taking a scratch. I pointed at their bodies and said, ‘Is this what you do, then?’
‘As I told you at the Duke’s castle, I oppose Morjin in any way I can.’
‘Yes, by slaughtering his servants. How is it that you found them here? Were you followin
g them – or us?’
Kane hesitated while he drew in a breath and looked at me deeply. Then he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you, Valashu Elahad, for a year. When I heard that Morjin’s assassins had found you first, I set out for Mesh as soon as I could.’
‘But why should you have been looking for me at all? And how did you hear about the assassins?’
‘My people in Mesh sent me the news by carrier pigeon,’ he said.
‘Your people?’ I asked, now quite alarmed.
‘So, there are brave men and women in every land who have joined to fight the Crucifier.’
‘Are they of the Black Brotherhood, then?’
As he had with Maram, he ignored this question. And then he went on to say, ‘When I heard that you had fought a duel with Prince Salmelu and were being pursued by the Ishkans along the North Road, I hurried through Anjo to Duke Rezu’s castle to intercept you.’
‘But how could you know that we’d come there? We certainly didn’t know this until we escaped from the Black Bog.’
Now Kane’s eyes began glowing as of coals heated in a furnace. He smiled savagely at me and said, ‘So, I guessed. Duke Barwan eats from the Ishkans’ hands like a dog, and so how much sense would it have made for you to cross the Aru-Adar Bridge into his domain? But where else could you cross into Anjo? Where could you hope to lose the Ishkans if not in the Bog? It was a good guess, eh?’
I nodded my head as Maram and Master Juwain looked at me in silent remembrance of the terrors of this nighttime passage. And then Kane continued, ‘I knew that if you were who I thought you to be, you’d find your way out of the Bog – even as you found your way into the Lokii’s vild.’
‘But what is the Black Bog?’ Maram asked, shuddering. ‘It’s like no place on earth I ever wanted to see.’
That it’s not,’ Kane said. ‘So, the Bog isn’t wholly of the earth.’
He went on to tell us that there were certain power places in the earth – usually in the mountains – where the telluric currents gathered like great knots of fire. If they were disturbed, as the ancient Ishkans had done in leveling a whole mountain with firestones to create the Bog, then strange things could happen.
‘Other worlds around other suns stream with their own telluric currents,’ Kane said. The currents everywhere in the universe are interconnected. And so are the lands of the various worlds: in places such as the Bog, it’s possible to pass from one world to another.’
‘Do you mean to say that we were walking on other worlds like earth?’ Maram asked.
‘No, not like the earth, I hope,’ Kane said. ‘The Bog is known to connect Ea only with the Dark Worlds.’
I looked up at the sun pouring its light on the green leaves and the many-colored flowers of our woods; I didn’t want to imagine what a Dark World might be. And neither, it seemed, did Maram or Atara. They looked utterly mystified by what Kane had said. But Master Juwain slowly nodded his head as he squeezed his black book in his little hands.
‘The Dark Worlds are told of in the Tragedies,’ he explained. ‘They are worlds that have turned away from the Law of the One. “There the sun doesn’t shine nor do men smile or birds sing.” Shaitar was one such world. Damoom is another. Angra Mainyu is imprisoned there.’
Of course, even I had heard of Angra Mainyu, the Baaloch, the Dark Angel – the Lord of Darkness, himself. It was said that he had been the greatest of the Galadin before falling and making war against the One. But Valoreth and Ashtoreth, along with a great angelic host, had finally defeated him and bound him to the world of Damoom. That this world had somehow been darkened by his presence, however, I hadn’t known.
‘You should read the Saganom Elu more closely,’ Master Juwain chided Maram and me. ‘Then you might learn the true nature of darkness.’
I fought back a shudder as I smiled grimly; I didn’t need a book to help me recall the hopelessness I had felt in the Black Bog.
To Kane, I said, ‘If we passed from Ea to other worlds through the Bog, is it then possible for other peoples to pass from them to earth?’
‘Not in any way that anyone could use,’ Kane said, following my thoughts. ‘There are no maps from the Bog to other such places. Openings to other worlds appear by chance and then vanish without warning like smoke. Anyone caught there quickly becomes maddened, exhausted, lost. The mind can’t see its way out and wanders within itself even as you wandered with your bodies. But sometimes things escape from one world and find their way to another. Like the Grays: it’s possible they originally came from one of the Dark Worlds. Perhaps even Damoom itself.’
My breakfast having put new strength in my limbs, I suddenly found myself standing up and stretching beneath the tree. It was good to feel the earth beneath my feet; it was good to be alive on a world such as Ea where the sun rose every day and the birds sang their sweet songs.
‘The Grays,’ I said to Kane, ‘picked up our scent before we’d left Anjo.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Kane said. ‘When Morjin’s assassins failed to kill you, he must have decided to send his most powerful retainers against you.’
‘You followed us from the Duke’s castle, didn’t you? Did you find the Grays following us, too?’
Kane slowly nodded his head, then stood up beside me. ‘You were in great danger, though you couldn’t have known the source. But I knew. So, I knew that they’d open you with their minds and then with their knives if I didn’t follow them and kill them first.’
‘If you truly wanted to help us,’ I said, looking out into the meadow, ‘you waited a long time.’
‘That I did. There was no other way. It’s impossible to steal upon the Grays and attack them unless their minds are completely occupied in immobilizing their victims.’
‘So you used us as bait to spring your trap.’
‘Would it have been better if I had walked into their trap and died with you?’
I nodded my head because what he had said made sense. Then I told him, ‘We should thank you for taking such great risks to save our lives.’
‘It’s not your thanks I want,’ he told me.
‘What is it you want, then? You said you’ve spent a year looking for me – why?’
Now Master Juwain, Maram and Atara rose up and stood beside me facing Kane. We all waited to hear what he would say.
As the sun rose higher and the woods grew even warmer, Kane began pacing back and forth beneath the oak tree. His grim, bold face was set into a scowl; the large tendons along his neck popped out beneath his sun-burnt skin as his jaw muscles worked and he clamped his teeth together. Kane, I thought, was a man who fought terrible battles – the worst ones with himself. I felt in him a great doubt, and even more, a seething anger at himself for doubting at all. Finally, he turned toward me, and his eyes were pools of fire catching me up in their dark flames.
‘So, I’ll tell you of the prophecy of Ayondela Kirriland,’ he said. The sounds issuing from his throat just then were more like an animal’s growls than a human voice. ‘Listen, listen well: “The seven brothers and sisters of the earth with the seven stones will set forth into the darkness. The Lightstone will be found, the Maitreya will come forth–”’
‘“And a new age will begin,”’ Maram said, interrupting him. ‘Ah, we already know the words to the prophecy. King Kiritan’s messenger delivered it in Mesh before we set out.’
‘Did he?’ Kane said, fixing his blazing eyes on Maram.
‘Yes, we already know that the seven stones must be –’
‘Be quiet!’ Kane suddenly commanded him. ‘Be quiet, now – you know nothing!’
Maram’s mouth snapped shut like a turtle’s. He looked at Kane in surprise, and not a little fear, as well.
‘There’s more to the prophecy than you’ll have heard,’ he told us. He turned to stare at me. ‘These are the last lines of it: “A seventh son with the mark of Valoreth will slay the dragon. The old world will be destroyed and a new world created.”’
As his voice d
ied into the deepness of the woods, I stood there rubbing the scar on my forehead. I thought of Asaru, Karshur, Yarashan, Jonathay, Ravar and Mandru – my six brothers who were the sons of Shavashar Elahad. Then Maram turned toward me as if seeing me for the first time, and so did Atara and Master Juwain.
‘If this is truly the whole prophecy,’ I said to Kane, ‘then why didn’t King Kiritan’s messenger deliver it?’
‘Because he almost certainly didn’t know it.’
He stared at my face as he told us of the tragedy of Ayondela Kirriland. It was well known, he said, that Ayondela was struck down by an assassin’s knife just as she recited the first two lines of the prophecy. But what was not known was that the great oracle in Tria had been infiltrated by Morjin’s priests who helped murder Ayondela. Just before she died, she whispered the second two lines of the prophecy to two of these Kallimun priests – Tulann Hastar and Seshu Jonku – who kept them secret from King Kiritan and almost everyone else.
‘If the lines were kept secret, then how did you learn of them?’ I asked.
‘Tulann and Seshu informed Morjin, of course,’ Kane said. His dark eyes gleamed with hate. ‘And before Tulann died, he whispered the whole of the prophecy to me.’
I looked at the knife that Kane wore sheathed at his side; I didn’t want to know how Kane had persuaded Tulann to reveal such secrets.
‘Tulann was an assassin,’ Kane said to me. ‘And I’m an assassin of assassins. Some day I may kill the Great Beast himself – unless you do first.’
The scar above my eye was now burning as if a bolt of lightning had put its fire into me. I squeezed the hilt of my sword, hardly able to look at Kane.
‘You bear the mark of Valorem that Ayondela told of,’ he said to me. ‘And unless I’ve forgotten how to count, you’re Shavashar Elahad’s seventh son. That’s why Morjin sent his assassins to kill you.’
Atara came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I felt within her a terrible excitement and her great fear for me as well. Master Juwain smiled happily as if he had just found a piece to a puzzle that he had thought lost. Maram bowed his head to me as a swell of pride flushed his face.
The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom Page 37