Still as even Sajagax admitted, the true test of things would come only when our two armies faced each other in full strength on the field. We could not stop the Red Dragon's men from drawing nearer and setting up their tents in a vast encampment opposite ours four miles to the north of the river. In back of our enemy's line of campfires, the stark rocks of the Detheshaloon loomed like a vast, cracked skull. A much smaller prominence rose up two miles to the south of it and nearer to our encampment. Sajagax's warriors called this mound of earth the Owl's Hill, for one night they had heard a great horned owl hooing from its heights. When battle finally came, I thought, Morjin's armies would advance upon the river and form lines just beneath this little hill. Perhaps Morjin would ride up its gentle, grassy slopes and survey the field from its rounded top. If my warriors prevailed in driving back our enemy, they would have to attack uphill, at least on this one small sector of the field. I accepted this slight hindrance. For we held a much greater advantage in being able to draw up our lines with the river to our backs. In the heat of the day, with the sun beating down upon us like a fire iron, my men would have access to fresh water while Morjin's men would not.
At dusk on the seventh of Valte, with the Dragon army's camp-fires filling the northern horizon with a hellish orange glow, I took a moment to stand outside my tent with Altaru so that I might comb down my huge horse. Joshu Kadar and a few of my Guardians waited in front of one of our campfires nearby - but not too close. They knew that even a king sometimes needed a space of privacy.
'Old friend,' I said to my mount as I drew the brush across his shiny black coat, 'have you had enough grass to eat? Enough oats? Tomorrow will be a hard day.'
I continued working the brush along his flank, speaking to him in low tones. He nickered softly, and I felt the great muscles along his back and hindquarters fairly surging with life as if in anticipation of a great work soon to come.
'A hard day,' I said again. 'Our enemy has no honor, and they will try to pierce you with lances and swords.'
He turned his head to regard me with his great, dark eye as if to tell me that he would never let me down.
'And there will be elephants - they will try to knock you to earth and trample you. The Sunguruns have fifty of them and the Hesperuks at least two hundred more.'
I went on to inform him that we would unlikely to encounter any of the Hesperuk elephants, as we would take our post at the head of the Meshian, Waashian, Kaashari and Atharian cavalry on our right wing, with Sajagax leading half his Sarni farther to the right to protect our flank.
'I am sure,' I said, 'that Morjin will place the Hesperu army at his center to break our center. Other than the Dragon Guard, they are his best men. And so shall place the Alonians and Eannans opposite them, for they are my weakest warriors. The Hesperuks will break though, I think, or at least push the Alonians back. And then, when half of Morjin's army has poured into a space too small, I will send in our reserve and command the Valari to close in from the sides to slaughter them.'
I felt my heart beating in time to Altaru's. I sighed because I had employed a similar stratagem to defeat our enemy at the Culhadosh Commons, and I thought it unlikely to work again. 'Morjin,' I told him, shaking ray head, 'did not take the field at the Commons, but he will have studied deeply on what happened there. And at the Sarburn. Tomorrow, I think, he will make no major mistakes, it will not be a day for brilliance in battle - only
bravery, or not.'
Again, Altaru nickered, and I smelled the thick, fermy scent emanating from him. I stroked the long, muscular column of his neck.
'Are you brave enough for one last battle, my friend?' I asked him. 'Just one more time of the steel screaming madness, I promise you, and then we can rest.'
As the afternoon's last light bled from the sky. I kept working the brush over this great animal. I assured him that there must be a way to victory - but only if each man and horse in our lines fought with a heart of fire. I lamented, for the thousandth time, the smallness of my own heart, which I had too often had to keep closed lest the sufferings of others crush me under. What would it be like, I wondered, not only to give my blood to Altaru and my other friends, but the deepest blaze within me?
I might have stood there ail night whispering my doubts to the world, but just then Atara rode her lithe red mare down the main lane leading up to my tent. Her white blindfold flashed in the deepening gloom. She sat straight and grave beneath her great lion-skin cloak, lined with satin and trimmed with black fur. But I could feel the great effort that it cost her to hold this proud posture, for her side ached with a fierce, throbbing pain from a saber cut taken in battle with the Marituk.
'Val,' she said as she drew up close, 'Liljana will serve dinner in an hour - and after that you will have much to do. Can we not go somewhere where we can talk?'
In truth, with all the councils over the past days, I had not had a moment alone with her. 'Where, then?' I asked her.
She pointed south, past the river. 'Out there., on the grass.' I nodded my head at this. I did not think my Guardians would like me to ride alone out onto the barren steppe where Morjin might have sent outriders to circle around and spy out our encampment, especially since I wore my tunic only and no armor. But some risks had to he taken.
And so, I nodded my head to Atara, and quickly saddled my horse. Then we turned to ride pass the rows of tents; we splashed across the river; which at this time of year wound its way across the grasslands as a brown trickle scarcely deeper than a man's knee. It did not take us long to gallop a couple of miles out onto the open steppe, where we found a gentle rise of ground and took shelter in its lee. We dismounted, then Atara removed her cloak and spread it out over the rustling grass. We sat upon it, looking out at the darkening world.
For a while we spoke of the starry sky and the soughing west wind, which promised hot, clear weather the following day. Then our talk turned toward the battle: 'You take a chance,' she said to me, 'in engaging Morjin with the river at your back.'
I shrugged my shoulders at this. 'We have discussed this in council. The river is shallow enough that we can retreat across it in good order, if we must. But if we must retreat, then the battle will in any case be lost - and then it won't matter.'
Atara, sitting next to me with her knee pressing against mine, slowly nodded her head. Her blindfold gleamed in the starlight.
'Have your kings and captains decided what to do about the elephants then? I'm sorry I missed the council earlier, but I wanted to verify that the Hesperuks really have two hundred and twenty of them.'
'Kane,' I said to her, 'faced war elephants long ago. He has told the warriors what they must do to fight against them.'
She smiled grimly at this. 'I am glad that I will lead the Manslayers against men only tomorrow, and not elephants.'
She took out her scryer's sphere, and sat rolling it between her long, lithe hands. I felt in her a quaking fear as if she had seen in her crystal some great and dreadful beast.
'You didn't invite me here,' I said to her, 'to talk about elephants.'
'No,' she said squeezing her crystal. 'Tomorrow, Morjin will unleash something upon us - some terrible, terrible thing.'
'What, then? Is it a firestone or a new kind of gelstei?'
'I don't know,' she said, lifting up her glimmering sphere. 'He keeps it from me. I look and look, in here, but all is dark.'
'Well, whatever it is, we'll destroy it! As we will the Red Dragon.'
The wrath she heard in my voice must have alarmed her, for she removed her right hand from her crystal and laid it on top of mine. 'You will seek him out on the field, won't you?'
I shook my head at this. 'Only if fate puts him in my path. It will be enough if we can drive off the Ikurian Horse, and circle around the Dragon's army from the right.'
On our right I would charge with the Guardians and the best of our knights against the Ikurians. On the left, I told myself, King Hadaru would have a very hard task leading the combined I
shkan, Anjori, Taron and Lagashun cavalry against Morjin's heavy horse if they were to break through and complete the double encirclement that I envisioned.
'You seem sure,' she told me, 'that Morjin will set his Ikurians against our right.'
'As sure as I am that tomorrow will not be a day for my vengeance alone.'
'Truly?' she said. Her lips pulled up into a cold smile. 'lie to me, if you will, Val, but not yourself.'
'What would you have me do?' I asked her. With one hand, I squeezed her fingers, while I rested my other hand on top of the hilt of my sword, which I had set down in the grass beside me. 'I cannot turn away from him.'
'No, you cannot. But Kane will keep by your side, through all the Ikurians' lances and swords - even through fire. Can you not let him slay Morjin?'
I turned to look toward the north, where the rising ground behind us blocked most of the glare of the Dragon Army's encampment. And I said, 'You are brave to talk of us slaying anyone with our enemy outnumbering us more than four to one.'
'What should I talk of then? What I have seen in my kristei? It is no different, here and now, than it was in Argattha.'
I lived again, in a blaze of memory, the anguish in the words that Atara had cried out to me in Morjin's throne room soon after he had taken out her eyes: If you kill him, you kill yourself.
'Didn't you once tell me,' I said to her, 'that no scryer can see all things?'
I remembered, as well, the ancient prophecy that 'The death of Morjin would be the death of Ea.'
'No scryer can see everything,' Atara said to me. Then her hand suddenly tightened around mine. 'But all scryers see something they know will be - unless something else is done to make it not be. But it never is, Val, never, never. Because men like you believe that whatever is, is, and always must be - and so go rushing madly toward their fate.'
I let her soft, grave voice play over again and again inside me. Then I said to her, 'My fate is my fate. So many will die tomorrow. It can't matter if I am one of them.'
'Can't matter?' she cried out. 'It matters to those who follow you, as it does to all Ea. And to me - it matters, so terribly, terribly.'
I remembered another thing that she had said to me in Argattha: If you kill yourself, you kill me.
She began shaking then, deep tremors that rose up from her belly and ripped through the whole of her body. Her hand suddenly opened to seize hold of mine, and she dropped her sphere, which rolled a few feet across the grass. Upon realizing how careless she had been with this priceless gelstei, she turned her head right and left, as if trying to orient herself toward it. But I sensed that her second sight had left her, at least for the moment, and so she sat utterly blind.
She reached out to pat the grass around her. I placed my hand on her arm to stay her, then bent to retrieve her crystal. In the instant that my fingers closed around the cold white gelstei, I cried out in agony because it was as if I had grasped hold of a lightning bolt. A fierce white flash tore through me, and I beheld the same fearful thing that had terrified Atara: the great Tree of Life that grew out toward the future in all its infinite branchings. And each branch, I saw, every one of the tiniest shoots and sprigs, had been charred, as if by dragon fire. The whole of the tree stood utterly blackened beneath the dying light of the stars.
I gave this accursed crystal back to Atara. The touch of it seemed to reawaken her sight, as horrible and unwanted as it might be.
'Morjin!' I cried out. 'He will win tomorrow, won't he?'
'Val, I-'
'You always spoke as if we had a chance! But we never really did, did we?'
'Please don't be angry with me,' she told me as her hand tightened around mine. 'But I had to act as if there really is hope, don't you see?'
'Why, then?'
'Because hope is our duty. It is the deepest courage - truly, truly. And then, of course, you, with your beautiful, beautiful eyes and all your dreams. . .'
Her voice softened to a whisper, then failed altogether. It took her a few moments to gather in her breath again and say to me, 'I couldn't bear to see you lose hope, Val. Should I let the sun lose its light?'
I sat listening to the crickets chirping nearby and the roaring of a lion farther out on the grass. And I rapped my diamond ring against her crystal and said, 'But you can't keep this future from happening, can you?'
'Can't I? Don't we, in the end, choose our futures?'
'I always thought we could. But if every path leads only to destruction and doom, what is there to choose?'
'But I can't see everything! There must a chance -at least one! beautiful beautiful chance.'
'There must be,' I said, feeling the quick pulsing of the vein along her wrist. 'But what if there isn't?'
'If there isn't, if the tree is truly withered beyond hope, then the One must be able to breathe life back into it. Somehow, this impossible grace - it must be possible. I have to believe that. And so must you.'
I touched my sword's scabbard, which covered the inscription etched into the silustria. I asked her, 'Have you seen all of what is written here?'
'No, I haven't,' she told me, shaking her head. 'But I have seen you seeing it. There will come a moment - I know there will.'
'And then?'
'And then I don't know!'
She began shaking again as if from cold, although the evening continued warm. The wind, moving slowly across the earth, carried the distant booming of our enemy's war drums. I lifted up Atara's hand to press my lips to her skin, and I could almost hear the deeper drumming of her heart.
'Tomorrow,' she told me, 'when I lead the Manslayers against the Marituk, our arrows will sweep them from the field - I know they will. But we will have to ride far afield, so very, very far. I can't see how our paths will cross during the battle, Val.'
'No - neither can I,' I said, kissing her fingers.
'And after the battle, it will be. . . after.'
I suddenly could not bear the sight of her crystal sphere, nor the visions that she saw within it. And so I took it from her and buried it beneath the edge of her cloak.
'And now,' she murmured, 'it is now. For you and me, this is the only moment that ever is, don't you see?'
And with that, she kissed my hand, then pulled my arm around her to draw me closer. She kissed my mouth, my nose, my eyes, then returned to pressing her lips against mine with a fierce desire. She pulled at me with her hands and the force of her quick, hot inhalations as if she wanted to breathe my very soul into her.
'I want your child, Val,' she murmured. 'At least, its beginning inside me.'
'A child you will never live to see?'
'I don't know that,' she said. And then, 'Do you really love me?'
I felt her hands all warm and urgent against mine.
'Atara,' I finally said to her, sitting back to gasp for air, 'we only ever have this moment - that is true. But if we win tomorrow, we will have millions of moments - all the nights of our lives - for love.'
'Are you asking me, then, to keep inside what I can't bear to keep inside ... as a faith in victory?'
'Faith, yes,' I said to her. 'We've come so far on almost nothing else. And we will need all our faith tomorrow.'
'I know you are right: we must at least act as if we can win,' she told me. I felt the chill of duty and acceptance begin to take hold of her. 'What could love possibly matter at a time like
this?'
She folded her hands across her lap, and held her head utterly still. I listened to her deep breathing, even as I knew she listened to me. I sensed the hurt of her side where she had been wounded and adeeper pain within her chest. Her dreadful vision, I thought, had hollowed out her heart, nearly emptying her of hope. I felt this in my heart as a coldness and a darkness that sent terror shooting through me. I wanted to grasp hold of her then and never let go; I wanted to fill up this black nothing with all the fire and light I could find.
Without either of us speaking a word, at the same moment, our hands reached out t
oward each other. They met in the space between us, and our fingers twined and then suddenly locked together in the shock of knowing what we must do. I pulled at her, fiercely, even as she pulled at me; the force of our tensed limbs and bodies drew us together with a greater shock of lips bruising against lips in a kiss so savage with years of longing that it seemed that we were trying to devour each other. I smelled myrrh and musk in her hair, and tasted blood on her tongue. Her hand tightened around mine with such a terrible need that I thought our fingers might break.
Then we let go of each other, she to lift off my tunic and I to tear away the leather armor encasing her belly and breasts. When we had made ourselves naked, we fell at each other again in a fever to press skin against skin as if our desire could sear our flesh together as one. She lay back against her furry cloak and opened herself to me: her arms, her legs and that bright, beautiful thing deep inside her that had pierced my heart the moment I had first set eyes upon her. I knew I had to be careful lest I aggrieve the raw, red wound still seaming her side. But she didn't want me to take care, and she had none for herself. And so we pulled at each other like ravenous beasts, sweating and moaning and breathing in each other's breaths as if we could never get enough of each other. But we were like angels, too, for in our blaze of passion, we called each other higher and higher, where the deepest radiance pours as from an inexhaustible source.
For a moment, we returned to our star. It pulled us straight into its fiery heart, burning away time and the grasses of the steppe all around us, annihilating whole armies and the very world itself. And then we both screamed together as one: I because I could not bear the ecstasy passing back and forth between us like a lightning bolt, and she to feel me filling her up with love and light and burning raindrops of life.
Afterward, we lay holding each other. The soft beauty of her body, no less the sweetness of her soul, held me as within a dream that I had never quite dared to dream. It came to me that I had been a fool: wasting my blood and breath fighting a war to end war and living for a higher purpose. What could be more exalted, I asked myself, than the wild joy that Atara and I had made together? Was this not the will of the One and a song to all of creation? Was it not the One's deepest desire to pour itself out through us in a brilliant blaze of divine love?
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