'I think you do not have time,' Maidro told me. 'I think it will storm before another quarter of an hour has passed.'
'Then I must ride quickly,' I said.
Maidro's fingers closed around my arm like iron manacles. 'The storm will sweep away Maram's tracks. You will not find him. And then you both will die.'
'I must go after him!' I said, breaking away from his grip.
I turned again to saddle Altaru, but then Sunji, Arthayn and Nuradayn hurried up to me and grabbed my arms and waist. I surged against them, nearly pulling them up off the sand. But they were strong men, and they held me fast. And then Kane came up, too, and wrapped his mighty arm around my chest. He squeezed me tightly against him as his savage voice murmured in my ear: 'At least wait a few more minutes, as Maidro has said. If he is wrong about the storm, then ride, if you will. The delay will give Maram only that much longer to enjoy his drink. But if Maidro is right, then there is nothing you can do. So, Val, it is only fate!'
I did not want to listen to him. I twisted and stamped about, trying to shake Kane and the Avari off as a stag might hounds. None of my friends came to my aid. Master Juwain appreciated the terrible logic of Maidro's and Kane's argument, and so apparently did Liljana. They stood with the children watching the Avari restrain me. Atara, I sensed, no more wanted me to go galloping off into a sandstorm than she would want to see me plunge into a pool of lava. She waited in the starlight with her beautiful face all hard and cold.
And then there was no starlight — at least not in the northwest. There, the black glittering sky fell utterly black as if a shadow had devoured the stars. The shadow grew, obscuring even more of the sky, even as the wind built into a gale. It drove bits of sand against our garments and unprotected faces; it was like being burned by hundreds of heated iron cinders. In a moment, it seemed, the air about us turned into a gritty, blinding cloud.
'Inside the tents!' Maidro called out. 'Take the waterskins, and keep your shayals moistened!'
Shayal, I remembered as I coughed at the dust, was the Avari's word for shawl. I retreated back inside our tent as Maidro had commanded. So did everyone else. While Kane fastened the tent's opening, I poured water over my shawl and wrapped it around my face. I heard Master Juwain and Daj doing likewise. I could not see them, for our unlit tent had now fallen pitch black.
There was nothing to do then but wait. And wait we did inside our coverings of sheep and goat wool as the storm raged with the force of a whirlwind. Sand whipped in continuous streams against our tent; it was like a roaring thunder that would not cease. We prayed that the stakes holding down our tent would not pull out nor its fabric rip. We heard the horses whinnying in distress, as from far away, but we could do nothing for them. They would smother or not according to the protection that the rocks provided them and their animal wisdom and will to live. We, ourselves, breathed in and out through our moistened shawls, coughing at nearly every breath. We kept our eyes closed lest the dust swirling inside the tent abrade them. In any case, there was nothing to see.
I tried not to think of Maram, trapped out on the wasteland in this terrible, blinding storm. I hoped that he, at least, had found the brandy before the dust swallowed him up. I missed his great presence beside me. It tormented me to lie there in utter darkness, counting the beats of my heart, minute after minute, hour after hour. I waited for the storm to abate, as did everyone else, but it seemed only to grow fiercer and stronger.
We waited all that night into the next day. The air inside the tent lightened slightly into a sort of dusty gloom. And then it grew black again as another night descended upon us and the wind continued to blow. It did not let up until early in the morning of the following day when it ceased abruptly — and strangely.
I came out of our tent to behold a landscape covered with sand, as it always was. In places — in front of our shield of rocks and out beyond — the wind had driven the sand into gleaming, new dunes. Otherwise, the desert looked the same as it always did. The sun blazed low over the eastern horizon, scattering bright light into a perfectly blue sky.
My first concern was for Altaru, and the rest of the horses. Miraculously, they had all survived the storm, though their hooves were buried in a powder-like sand and they were very thirsty. Nurdayn and Arthayn came out to begin watering them, and Sunji and Maidro walked up to me.
'Valaysu,' Maidro said to me, 'I do not think that Maram could have survived the storm. Two nights and a day, out on the sand.'
I stood staring off at the shimmering emptiness to the south, where we had abandoned the brandy.
'The horses survived,' I said to him simply.
'Yes, here behind these rocks. But out there, the wind — '
'Wind can't defeat Maram,' I half-shouted at him. 'Nor can sand nor heat — nor even dragon fire. Only Maram can defeat Maram.'
As I moved to saddle my horse, Maidro said, 'Even before the storm, our position was perilous. And now — '
'Now my best friend is lost out there.. somewhere! The storm obliterated our tracks, so he may not be able to find his way back here. He'll be waiting for me.'
'But how will you find him?'
'I don't know,' I told him. 'But I would have more hope if you would help me!'
Maidro looked at Sunji and Arthayn, who said, 'It is a waste of time, and therefore a waste of water. And therefore foolish beyond folly.'
I stood staring at him in the glare of the rising sun. Finally, he said to Maidro: 'I do not think anything will deter Valaysu. Therefore, we might as well help him, as he has asked.'
We spent ail that day searching the desert for Maram. On our tired, parched horses, we rode south, east, west and north, scan-ning the dunes for any sign of Maram or his body. It was madness, as Maidro said, to go forth beneath the naked, noonday sun, but so we did. All of us nearly dropped from heatstroke. By the time that dusk approached, we had to return to our encampment to keep from falling off our horses.
'Two days now, alone and without water,' Maidro said to me over dinner that night. 'That is the limit of how long a man can live.'
'Four horns of Sarni beer is the limit of how much a man can drink,' I said to him. 'And yet Maram drank five horns and called for more.'
'It is not the same thing,' he told me.
'No, it is not, but I can't give up looking for Maram — not yet.'
That night, for a few hours, we rode out into the desert to search for Maram again. The starlight pouring down upon the pale sands showed not the slightest footprint that might have been made by him. We shouted out his name, but he did not answer us. The next morning, we resumed our quest, until the sun in the afternoon fell down upon us with a fire that we could not bear. When we quit for the day and met up back at our tents, I was forced to concede that the sun could defeat Maram — as it could anyone.
'Surely he is dead,' Maidro said to me. 'As we will be, too, if we do not leave this place and find water.'
I watched Estrella nibbling on a dried fig; Daj sat next to her moistening a battle biscuit with a little water so that he could chew it. In a voice as dry as the wind, I said. 'Surely Maram is dead — reason tells me this. Yet my heart tells me otherwise. If he died, I would know.'
I wondered if this were really true. Then Liljana, haggard and nearly dead of exhaustion herself, said to me: 'You always seem to know when Morjin or one of his kind is hunting you. Wouldn't you likewise know if Maram were still alive and seeking his way back here?'
'He is,' I said, trying to convince myself. 'He must be.'
I looked at Atara, who sat on a rock trying to get a comb through her dirty, matted hair. I said, 'I cannot give up hope yet, but neither can I ask everyone to remain here with me. If we don't find Maram soon, then it will be time to go on.'
At this, Sunji shot me a penetrating look and said, 'But what do you mean by "soon"?'
'Soon,' I said, echoing words that my father had once spoken, 'means soon. Now, why don't we rest before we go out looking for Maram again?'
I was awakened just after first light when Nuradayn shouted out a warning. I came out of my tent, sword in hand, to see him watering the horses and pointing out into the desert. Everyone else left the tents, too, and joined us, looking east toward the rising sun.
The glare of this fiery orb nearly blinded us, so at first it was hard to make out the object of Nuradayn's excitement. But then I held my hand over my forehead and squinted, and this is what I saw: a creature more hideous than Jezi Yaga or Meliadus staggering toward us on two, bird-thin legs. The whole of his body seemed desiccated and shrunken, like a fruit left to bake in the sun. His ribs stood out like the frame of a wrecked ship; his belly had fallen in so that it practically clung to his spine. He was entirely naked, and his skin from head to foot had the look of sun-blackened leather. His lips seemed to have been peeled back from his teeth and gums, giving him the appearance of a flayed animal. Although many old wounds were eaten into his arms, chest, thighs and other parts of his body, none of them bled or oozed the slightest moisture. His eyes seemed as dry as bone, and fairly clicked about and rolled inside his skull as if he had no control over them. They appeared to see nothing — but to have seen much more than eyes should ever suffer or see.
'Is it a man?' Daj cried out, pointing at him.
'No,' I said, 'it is Maram.'
I took note of the long, ruby firestone tucked beneath Maram's armpit. His hands, I saw, looked to have been burned even worse than the rest of him so that they could not grasp this heavy crystal. Brushed forward then, and so did everyone else. Maram fell into our arms. We carried him back to our tent; this proved no great feat as he must have weighed scarcely half what he had before the sun had stolen much of his water.
'Three and a half days!' Nuradayn marveled as he stood before our tent, looking inside. 'Who has ever heard of such a miracle?'
'All glory in the One,' Maidro said, staring at Maram. 'He should be dead.'
Sunji, looking on gravely, too, did not say what we were all thinking: that Maram was dead, and needed only a little more time before his heart stopped beating and his eyes closed forever.
'Vargh!' Maram said as I knelt beside him. 'Vargh!'
It took me a moment before I realized that he was trying to say my name.
Master Juwain and Liljana tried to get him to drink some water, but his tongue and throat were so parched that he could not swallow. And so Liljana moistened her fingers and touched them to his lips and tongue, which looked like a piece of blackened meat. She poured water directly over his body in the hope that his skin might absorb a little of it. Upon witnessing this waste, the four Avail who stood outside our tent shook their heads in silence.
'Vargh!' Maram said again. 'Sokki.'
Sokki, I thought, must mean, sorry.
These words came out like the croaking of a frog. His mouth and throat were too dry for him to speak intelligibly, but as Master Juwain and Liljana worked on him, he let loose a long series of grunts, barks, hisses and moans that I tried to make sense of. I slowly pieced together what had happened, and shook my head in wonder at his story:
Maram had indeed gone after the brandy, but had never reached this trove. When the storm had fallen upon him, in the blinding sand, he couldn't follow our old tracks and so had drifted off his course. After an hour or so of believing that he might stumble upon the brandy, he instead came upon a low rock. This saved him. He took shelter behind the rock, where he could catch his breath and wait out the storm, much as we had, too. Since he had brought no water with him, however, he grew very thirsty. By the time the storm ended, he could think of nothing except water. He knew that he should try to find his way back to our encampment, but the desert seemed featureless, an endless expanse of sun-baked sand, and he did not know which way he should strike out. He tried to gauge direction by the sun; he walked north, hoping that he hadn't wandered too far. He saw no landmark that looked like the rocks near our tents. He walked on and on beneath the killing sun until it grew so hot that he had to stop. Then, like a desert rat, he dug down into the sand and buried himself to wait out the worst of the heat. Thus he did not see us searching for him, nor hear us calling to him.
When he emerged from his hole, thirst had maddened him. Now, all that he desired to drink was brandy. He wandered, in hope of finding the seven bottles that Nuradayn had dropped into the sand. The unceasing sun deranged both his wits and his senses. The wool of his robe and shawl tormented his wounds and seemed as heavy as a covering of burning iron, and so he cast them off. He continued wandering, certain that he would find an entire lake filled with brandy. Once — in a moment of terrible lucidity — he realized that we would be searching for him. And so he had tried to unleash the fire from his crystal in order to signal us. He could not control the powerful red gelstei, however, and had succeeded only in burning his hands.
After that, only his craving for brandy had kept him from dropping down into the sand and dying. He fancied that the earth itself would tell him where to search for it. Sometime during the previous night, in the darkness before dawn, he had heard me calling to him and telling him that I had found the brandy. If only he could make his way back to me, he could have all the brandy that he could drink.
'Vraddi!' he croaked out as he lay inside the tent. 'Vraddi!'
I knew that he was calling for brandy, and I implored Master Juwain to wet his mouth with a little brandy from the last remaining bottle. Master Juwain did as I asked. The few drops that he poured down Maram's throat were all that Maram could drink.
'We cannot remain here any longer,' Sunji said to me from outside the tent. 'I know that your friend is dying, but — '
'There is still hope,' I said to him. I came out of the tent to stand beside him. 'You are right, though, that we cannot remain. If Estrella can find water, perhaps another cave where it is moist and cool, then Maram might yet live.'
The dark look in Sunji's eyes told me that he no longer had much hope of Estrella finding water and none at all that it would help Maram if she did.
After that we fashioned a litter from the tent and its poles, and placed Maram upon it. We covered him against the rising sun. A little more work sufficed to secure the litter to one of the pack-horses, who would drag it atilt across the sand.
Then we set out again toward the northwest. We were all so tired that we had to fight to keep from falling off our horses. Maidro announced that we had so little water left, we must forbear eating altogether. None of us, I thought, except perhaps Kane, had any appetite left. I couldn't think of food; in truth, I could hardly think of water. As we made our way miles farther into the glaring sands of the Tar Harath, all my attention concentrated on Maram. Bound to his litter and wrapped up like a mummy that remained somehow alive, he moved up one dune and down the next; from time to time, he would call out to us a single word: 'Vraddi!'
And then there came a time when he called out no more. Master Juwain dismounted and determined that Maram had fallen into the deep sleep that sometimes precedes the even deeper sleep of death.
'Even if Estrella can find water,' Sunji said to me as we crested one of the endless dunes, 'I don't think it will help Maram now.'
'I don't think the udra mazda will find water,' Maidro said. He sat on his wasted horse staring out at the sun-seared distances. 'It is growing only hotter, and the glare more hellish by the mile.'
Estrella, almost as weak as a newborn, found the strength to urge her horse onward, across the blazing sands. I followed her; I tried to follow my dimly-remembered sense that there was a union of opposites: good and evil; brightness and dark; moisture and drought.
Then we came up on top of another dune, and my urge to turn back from the fiery wasteland before us burned me like the kirax in my blood. I felt this urge to retreat flaring inside my compan- ions and the four Avari, as well. I was so tired, fevered and thirsty that I could barely see. It seemed that We were riding on and on into a wavering emptiness. The air was sick with flat; it seemed to bend the hellish light and distort it in strange ways. Mirages swirled in the distance and then vanished into nothingness.
Something powerful seized hold of me, as of a great hand wrapped around my spine. I knew that I had experienced this strange sensation before, but I could not quite remember where. And then Estrella pointed into the heart of the terrible brilliance ahead of us. In the shimmering light there, I thought could make out flashes of green that looked like trees.
'The sun has addled your wits,' Sunji said to me when I mentioned this. He squinted into the dazzling distances and shook his head. 'It is the madness that precedes sunstroke. We should pitch our tents and take shelter before it grows even hotter.'
I gazed down at Maram, bound to his litter, and I said, 'No, we must go on.'
It was Master Juwain who noticed the clouds above us: all puffy and white, and drifting in from the east, west and south toward a point just beyond the impossibly bright horizon.
'Strange,' Master Juwain murmured. 'How very strange!'
Liljana, who sat next to him on top of her exhausted horse, seemed to read his thoughts, and she said, 'Can it be that one of the Vilds lies here?'
At the look of puzzlement in Sunji's and Maidro's eyes, she told of the magic woods called Vilds that could be found at certain secret places in the world.
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