At first, with the great ball of fire of the setting sun nearly blinding me, I had a hard time making out the dust plume. But with each mile it grew larger. Our tired, parched horses could barely manage a brisk walk. I thought that the Zuri's horses - for I was sure that the droghul had led warriors of this tribe after us - must be well-watered. I tried to calculate rates and distances, but there was no need, for we had no choice but to continue on toward the mountains as quickly as we could.
These rocky prominences grew larger, too. Yago could tell us little of them. They seemed to be a spur running south off the White Mountains. Master Juwain pulled out one of his maps, but he could find nothing marked there that helped us. In the day's last light, I saw that the peaks ahead of us topped out much lower than any of the Yorgos range. Long canyons cut them northeast to southwest, and steep ravines ran down the sides of huge, triangular blades of rock into the canyons. Every square foot of these highlands seemed as dry as a bleached bone.
As the ground broke up into a hilly country, Maram took me aside and murmured to me, 'You care nothing for meting out vengeance upon the droghul, do you? You hope to lose him in the mountains, don't you?'
'If we can, Maram,' I murmured back to him. 'If we can.'
'If we do,' he said, licking his cracked lips, 'it will avail us nothing if we don't find water, and soon.'
He shooed away a few flies, thenn popped a barbark nut in his mouth. Sucking on them, he had told me, kept his tongue from drying out. I noticed that he had given up his habit of spitting upon the ground, electing to swallow the vile red juice instead.
Yago rode up to us and asked us, 'What is it you are discussing?'
'Ah. . . water,' Maram told him, gulping at the juice in his mouth. 'We were talking about water. Neither of us can see any likely places in those mountains to look for it.'
Yago stared at the mountains ahead of us. 'The Avari will know of water, for we are deep in their country. But they would not tell us of it.'
Maram lifted back his head to look up at the sky and said. 'It must rain upon those damn mountains sometime. Look at those clouds! Why do they drift to the north when the wind blows from the west?'
Yago studied the few, thin white clouds, moving north as Maram had observed. And he told us, 'There must be winds higher in the sky that blow them that way. But do not think that clouds will save you, thirsty pilgrims. It never rains here in the summer.'
I listened to the clopping of the horses' hooves against rocks. The flies were beginning to abate while the snakes and other desert creatures emerged from their holes to greet the coming of night. Everything seemed to stink of sweat and dust. With the dying of the sun, twilight darkened the desert and its stark landforms. We continued on at a slower pace, for the horses now had to take greater care where they placed their hooves on the stony ground.
It grew mercifully cooler. The air, however, for the first couple hours of night, remained warm enough to wring the sweat from us. Our thirst grew worse. No longer could we perceive a dust plume against the black, starry sky, but I sensed that the droghul and many others still pursued us. The dark would slow them, Yago said, but they would keep after us unless we could find mantles of bare, hard rock to ride across. And even then, when day came, a good tracker might be able to make out a faint chip in the rock! while the finest of Ravirii trackers might follow us even at night.
I kept my eyes fixed on the mountains. We finally came within a mile of them, and turned almost due north as we rode paralleling the ridgelines looking for a place of retreat. Any of the canyons, it seemed, might do as well as any other. But we might come across a veritable castle cut out of the stone above us, and still find ourselves doomed to die of thirst. And so I let Altaru fall back to where Estrella rode next to Atara. And I said to this tough, tired girl, 'If it comes to you that there might be water in any of these canyons, follow your heart and seek it out. And we'll follow you.'
Estrella nodded her head at this, and weakly clasped my hand. She tried to smile, but could not. For the thousandth time, I berated myself for taking children with me on such a dreadful journey.
It was past midnight when we came upon the mouth of a canyon little different from any of the others. But Estrella, after first looking at me for approval, led us straight into it. We began climbing up a wide notch between the masses of rock around us; I wondered if a river or stream had once worked its way through here. After about two miles of plodding over stony but mostly level ground, the canyon narrowed and dead-ended into a great rise of mountain. Three ravines cut its slopes and gave out into the canyon. Estrella drew up her horse before the centermost ravine. I could barely make out her face in the thin light as she stared up into it. It would be hard work to take our horses up this steep pitch in the dead of the night. Estrella seemed uncertain as to what we should do. She dismounted and walked a few dozen yards up into the ravine. She paused as if sniffing at the air. Then she walked back to me and held out her hands helplessly. I understood that she could not 'say' that there was water somewhere up this ravine; but neither could she say there was not.
'I doubt if there is water up there,' Yago said, dismounting and walking up to us. 'I doubt if there is water anywhere in these high lands.'
Everyone else dismounted then and came over to hold council.
'Perhaps another canyon,' Maram said.
'We can't go seeking out one canyon after the next all night,' Liljana said to us. 'We haven't the strength for that, or the water.'
Daj, standing next to Turi, started to say something then, but all that came out of his throat was a tortured croak. He was so tired he had to lean against Liljana to keep from falling over.
'We cannot go on like this,' Liljana said again. 'Let us stop for a few hours and see if there is any water about.'
'If we stop, we stay,' Yago said. 'I think the Zuri must be close.'
I thought this, too. I could almost feel the droghul's hand upon my face and hear him whispering in my mind, promising me cool water to drink if only I would lead him to the Maitreya.
Then Yago added, 'I think the Zuri will find this canyon. And then we will have no way out.'
Rock surrounded us on three sides; we would find no escape in any of those directions.
'I believe we should explore, as Liljana has said,' Master Juwain told us. 'At least let us see if we can make our way up the ravine and encamp up there, in those rocks.'
I peered up the ravine, where it gave out into a large, rocky shelf. It seemed that we had at least found our castle to defend.
The dry wind out of the west seemed to suck the thoughts from my mind so that I could not think clearly. And then Kane's voice, cutting through the night like a bright sword, laid bare our choices: 'So, men are only men, and we might defeat them no matter their numbers. But if we don't find water, we'll die.'
After that, we made our way up the ravine. We moved slowly, leading the horses along as best we could in the near-dark. More than once, we had to help the horses find places to plant their hooves as we practically pulled them up the slope. The ground rose steeply before us, and several boulders blocked our way. This chute of rock, I thought, would turn into a death trap for any of the Zuri who might try to storm their way up it toward us. Equally, it would turn into our tomb if thirst forced us back down it onto the Zuri's swords.
We finally came out upon the rock shelf, littered with more boulders. Maram collapsed, sitting down with his back pressed to one of these. Liljana looked for a level place to lay out our sleeping furs. Daj and Turi, who seemed to be forging a silent friendship, began wandering about the rocks on the slopes above the shelf in a desperate search for water. Estrella stood staring at this barren and cracked mountain slope. Not even a thorn bush or a sprig of bitterbroom grew here.
In the coolness of the deepest pan of night, we made what we could of our 'camp'. Yago joined the children, searching for any scoop in the rocks or hidden hole that might once have held a few ounces of water or mud. Liljana squ
eezed a little slime out of the water skins; it moistened our throats but was not enough to drink. After setting out the bows and arrows on ground providing a clear line of sight down the ravine, Kane took off his cloak and went hunting. He managed to throw this garment over a rock owl, which he killed by snapping its neck. He used his knife to bleed it, filling up nearly two cups with a thick, blackish blood. Only Daj and Turi could bring themselves to drink this evil-looking liquid, and they each took a cup and drained it. Yago looked on approv-ingly. Then Kane dug out the owl's eyes, which he and Yago ate like grapes, sucking out the aqueous humors and then spitting out the hard lenses.
After the children and Yago returned to their search for water, Kane scowled at Maram and me - and the rest of us - and snarled out: 'So, you think you are thirsty, eh? Not thirsty enough, I say! Just wait until the sun rises tomorrow. Then you'll pray for a little blood, if you can find any, and you'll be grateful to lick the sweat from the horses' hides!'
He went over to grab up one of the bows and stand watch in the starlight, staring down the ravine into the canyon below.
And Maram sighed out, 'Well, what about the brandy? That's mostly water, isn't it?'
Master Juwain shook his head at this and said him, 'I've told you before: spirits only dry out the body, worse than sea water. Please put this out of your mind.'
After another hour, when it grew bitterly cold, the children gave up their search in order to take a little rest, lying down with Maram, Master Juwain, Atara and Liljana. Yago continued prowling about the rocks above us. I tried to sleep but kept waking up in want of water to ease the burning in my throat. The stars shone down brightly through air that was too clear.
Then, near dawn, I heard Kane call out from where he stood watch above us: 'They come!'
I rose up stiffly from the rocky ground and climbed to where he stood on a prominence looking down through the canyon to the open desert in the west. Even two miles away we could see the light of what must be torches, moving closer.
'So, so,' Kane said, stringing his longbow.
I tried to find some moisture in my mouth with which to wet my tongue. I said, 'I'm afraid I'm too parched to fight another battle.'
'Battle?' he growled out. 'Well, it might come to that yet. It all depends on whether our enemy has enough water to wait us out.'
When the torches began moving up through the mouth of the canyon, I woke up the others. The children, with Liljana, renewed what seemed a hopeless quest to find water. Maram and Yago joined Kane and me at the edge of the rocky shelf. So, a moment later, did Master Juwain and Atara, who used her unstrung bow to feel her way over the broken ground. She had hardly spoken ten words for all the last day. Now she came up to me and whispered in my ear. Her words burned with the rage of helplessness: 'I still can't see. I should break my bow and cast away the pieces!'
'It will return,' I whispered back to her. 'It will all return.'
She stood in the silence of the dark, shivering in the cold and shaking her head. She said to me, 'Tell me what you see.'
And so I did. As the night drew to an end, a faint light warmed the world. It slowly grew brighter. I tried to describe the way the sun's first rays touched the desert with a golden-red glow. It was all strangely beautiful, I said. This luminosity worked its way east until it filled the canyon's mouth and set its stark rocks on fire. Now, I told her, our enemy had no need of their torches. In the hard light of day, they tracked us more surely and swiftly. A mass of horsemen, perhaps sixty strong, worked their way up toward us. It seemed that they still hadn't seen us, half-hidden as we were behind the boulders on the rocky shelf. But I could easily see them. Most of the horsemen wore billowing white robes like unto Turi's and Yago's. Five of them, though, showed the bright carmine of tunics or surcoats: the color of the Red Priests. I could not guess what kind of garment covered the droghul of Morjin.
'The Poisoner comes!' Yago said from next to me as he pointed his saber down the ravine. 'Which one is he, Mirustral?'
'I can't quite tell,' I said to him. 'They are still too far away.'
'Not for long,' Maram muttered. 'We might as well jump up and announce ourselves so as to make things easier.'
He turned to stare at the slope of mountain looming large and dark behind us. I turned, too, looking for Liljana and the children. It seemed that Liljana must have pulled the children down into the cover of the rocks higher up.
'The sun will be up soon,' Maram muttered. He put down his bow and took out his red crystal instead. He looked down at the horsemen moving slowly up the canyon. 'Well, let them come, then! They must be hungry after riding all night - I'll give them fire to eat!'
'No,' Master Juwain said, coming over to rest his hand on his arm. 'It's too dangerous.'
'The droghul comes,' I said to him. I blinked against the sick heat of my blood burning into my eyes. 'He surely comes, and he'll kill you with your own fire.'
'It might be our last chance,' Maram said as he pointed his crystal down into the canyon.
'No,' I told him. 'He'll turn your fire and kill us all.'
Yago turned to regard Maram, puzzled by the turn of our talk. It seemed that he knew nothing of the gelstei. There was no time to educate him, however, for just then a cry rang out through the canyon as one of the white-robed men below us pointed straight up the ravine toward our position.
'Maybe,' Maram said, 'I can at least burn that damn droghul before he burns me.'
The enemy moved still closer, and now I caught a gleam of yellow hair to match the yellow tunic of a man riding near the lead of the horsemen. The fire that whispered in my mind told me that this must be yet another incarnation of Morjin.
'So,' Kane's voice rumbled. 'So.'
'No fire,' I said to Maram. 'Not yet - let's see what they'll do.'
When the horsemen came to the ravine, they stopped and began dismounting. Some of them shouted up to us. I could not make out what they were saying. Kane nocked an arrow, and drew it back to his ear. Then he shook his head as he eased the tension on the bowstring. It was a long shot down to the men below us, about a hundred yards. Atara might possibly be able to pick off targets at such a distance, but Kane hated wasting arrows.
'You were right, Mirustal,' Yago said to me. 'This Poisoner and the Red Priests have their stingers sunk very deep into the Zuri. I didn't really think they would dare to cross the Avari's lands.'
A Zuri warrior, holding up a white banner of truce, began making his way up the ravine. One of the priests walked to his left. So narrow was this rocky chute that another man would have had difficulty fitting in beside them.
They came within thirty yards, close enough that I could see the priest's smooth, sunburnt face. He had red hair and blue eyes, like the men of Surrapam. Kane pulled back on his bowstring again, sighting his arrow upon him.
'No!' I called to him. 'They come under truce!'
'Truce?' Kane growled out. 'The bloody Red Priests would break it as readily as they'd squash a bug. Let me at least kill one of them and lighten our work.'
'No!' I said again. 'Let's hear what he has to say.'
'Lies, he'll say. How many must we listen to?'
The two men halted their climb twenty yards below us. The Zuri warrior had the look of Yago's people, with his black beard and dark, hard features. When I remarked that he looked much like the Masud I had seen at the well, Yago took insult saying, 'Can you not see how his eyes are too close together, like a snake's? Look at his narrow forehead! And the cut of his robes, which are ...'
As Yago began describing the different cut and stitching of the robes of the various tribes of the Ravirii, the much-fairer Red Priest called up to us: 'Well-poisoners! My name is Maslan, and I speak on behalf of Oalo, whom Tatuk has sent to bring you to justice! Lay down your weapons and surrender, and you shall be spared the punishment decreed for poisoners! Your children shall be taken into the Zuri tribe and well cared for.'
'Never!' Yago shouted back at him. 'Give my son to you? It is t
he yellow-hair you ride with who is the well-poisoner!'
Maslan turned to the warrior beside him as if to say: 'Do you see how they lie?'
Then he called up to us again: 'You are trapped here! I think you have no water. We can wait here until you drop of thirst.'
'Then wait!' Kane shouted down to him. 'Or send up as many as you please! We've arrows enough for you all!'
Maslan took from the Zuri warrior a waterskin, which he held up to his lips. He swished some water around in his mouth, then spat it out into the ravine. He called out: 'Any who surrender may have all the water they wish. Any who do not are welcome to lick these rocks.'
That was all he said to us. He turned his back to us, and led the Zuri warrior back down the ravine to the mass of our enemy gathered in the canyon below.
'Val,' Maram said to me. 'Put your sword through my throat! It will be better than dying of thirst or whatever torture the Red Priests have planned for us.'
'Be quiet,' I said to him, trying to think. 'There must be a way out.'
'What way?' Maram asked. 'To begin with, it might rain.'
Maram looked up at the sky, at the single cloud floating above the desert toward the north. He said, 'What other miracles do you hope for?'
'Estrella might yet find water.'
'And I,' Maram said, 'might sprout wings like a bird and simply fly out of here. But if I don't, and grow too weak and the worst befalls, please promise me you won't let the Red Priests have me?'
'I won't let them touch you,' I told him. 'Now be quiet. You waste water with every breath.'
There was nothing to do then but to wait. The Zuri and the Red Priests below us dismounted and made camp at the bottom of the ravine. I was sure that whoever Oalo might be, it was the droghul who really commanded Zuri and the priests, and took charge of this siege. I felt his presence like a burning quicksand sucking at my will to oppose him. I found myself wishing that it had been he who had showed himself in the ravine to offer his vile terms. Then Kane would have put an arrow through his heart, truce or no truce.
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