'Who are you?' he called out in a rough but steady voice. 'From where have you come?'
'My name,' 1 said hoarsely, 'is Valashu Elahad.' Then I turned to present Master Juwain and Maram. 'We've come from Mesh.'
The knight presented himself as named Sar Naviru. Then he looked at me more closely and said, 'From Mesh, indeed - that I can see. But how did you come from there to here?' I pointed at the bog behind us and said, 'We came through Ishka' 'Through the bog? No, that's not possible - no one has ever come
out of the Black Bog.'
Now his fist tightened around his sword, and he looked at us as if we had better give him a true accounting of our journeys.
'Nevertheless, we did,' I told him. 'We crossed it last night and -'
A sudden shiver of pain tore through my side, and I had to hold on to Maram for a moment to keep from falling. I stood there gasping for air. Then Master Juwain came over to me and held his hand against my burning forehead. He looked at Naviru and said, 'My friend has been wounded. Is there any way you can help us?'
Naviru pointed at me and said, 'If you are truly of Mesh and not demons, as has been said, you will be helped.'
Master Juwain pressed his hand to my side and then held it up for everyone to see.
My bandage must have soaked through because his palm and fingers were covered with my blood.
'Does a demon,' Master Juwain asked, 'bleed?'
'I don't know,' Naviru said with a half-smile. 'I've never seen one. Now please come with us'
It took most of Maram's considerable strength to boost me up onto Altaru's back and all of mine to keep me there during our short ride up to the castle. Master Juwain wanted to send Naviru's men for a litter, but I didn't want to greet Duke Rezu lying down. We rode across a long, open slope blazing a deep green with new spring grass. It looked like good country for grazing: off in the distance towards the bluish mountains to the east, a flock of sheep covered the side of a hill. Sar Naviru informed us that these low mountains to our right were those of the Aakash Range.
On the other side of them, he said, was the duchy of Adar, from where we were fortunate not to have come.
The Rezu clan had built the Duke's castle against the backdrop of the much greater mountains of the Shoshan Range to the west. It was a small castle with only four towers and a single keep that also held the Duke's living quarters and hall. The walls, though not particularly high, were of a blue granite, and seemed in good repair. We rode into ther castle across a moat on which floated many ducks and geese. I noted that the great chains that worked the drawbridge were free of rust and freshly greased. In the single courtyard, where some sheep milled about baahing nervously, three more knights wearing the green falcons of the Rezu clan stood waiting to greet us. The shortest of them - he was a sharp - faced man with sharp, quick eyes that reminded me of Sar Naviru's - wore a fresh black tunic and a kalama whose sheath was scarred with gouges. He greeted us warily and then presented himself as Duke Rezu of Rajak.
After Naviru had presented us and related our story, or as much as we had told him, the Duke looked straight at me for an uncomfortably long time. Then he said, 'Sar Valashu Elahad - I met your father at the tournament in Nar. You have his eyes, you know. And I hope you have his honesty as well: I can't believe that the son of Shavashar Elahad would tell my son anything other than the truth. Even so, it's hard to believe that you crossed the bog. It seems that you have stories for us. However, we won't ask you to tell them just now. You are wounded and need rest. That you shall have. And fire, salt and bread as well.'
And with that, he bowed to me, and took my hand in his to offer his hospitality. He summoned a groom to water, feed and comb down our horses. Then he instructed Naviru, who proved to be his third and youngest son, to take us to the guest quarters in the rooms above the great hall. This Naviru did without complaint. He seemed used to following his father's commands, and I sensed that they had fought in more than one battle together.
Naviru led us into the keep through an arched entrance surmounted with two carved falcons. Heavy wooden doors closed behind us, cutting off the sounds of the courtyard. The Duke's castle was like all castles: dark, dreary and cold. I shuddered at the prospect of being locked away in one again; I shuddered, too, because my entire body felt weak and cold. I was glad to lean against Maram's considerable bulk for support, but not glad at all to discover that the quarters to which we had been assigned lay on the keep's topmost floor. There were endless stairs to climb; with Maram's help, I somehow made my way up them. The far-off smell of baking bread encouraged me. And our rooms, when Naviru opened the door to them; gave me hope that the world was yet a fine place to live: along the west wall facing the Shoshan were many long windows letting in the late sunshine. There were two fireplaces lit with blazing logs, and our beds were stuffed with fresh straw and built off the floor on freshly waxed wooden platforms. Most wondrous of all was the large wooden tub in the bathing room that might be filled with hot water whenever we wanted a bath.
I spent all that night and most of the next three days in my very comfortable bed.
Maram helped me wash away the muck of the bog, and Master Juwain fashioned a fresh dressing for my wound. He also made me a strong, bitter tea that tasted of turpentine and mold; he said it would fight my fever. After eating a little of the bread and chicken soup that Duke Rezu sent up for dinner, I slept long into the next morning. I awoke to find that my fever had broken, and I ate a much larger meal of bacon, fried eggs and porridge. And so it went for the next two days, the rhythm of my .ife settling in to successive rounds of eating and sleeping.
On the evening of the third day, Naviru returned to inquire if we would like join the Duke for dinner. He told us that the castle had guests whom the Duke wished us to meet. Although I wasn't particularly eager for company, I saw that Maram and Master Juwain had been confined much too long nursing me back to health. And so I quickly agreed to the Duke's summons. I put on my tunic, which Maram had sown and washed while I had been sleeping. And then we all went down to take our meal together.
The Duke's hall was not nearly so large as my father's. With its low, smoke-stained beams and a wooden floor lined with woven carpets, it seemed a rather cozy room for feasting. In it were crammed six smallish tables for Duke Rezu's warriors and knights, and a longer one that served his family and guests. That evening, only this longer table, made of planks of rough-cut hickory, was set with dishes.
The Duke stood waiting for us by his chair at the head of the table, while his wife took her place at the opposite end. Along the north side of the table gathered various members of the Rezu clan: Naviru and a nephew named Arashar; Chaitra, the Duke's recendy widowed (and beautiful) niece, and his mother, Helenya, a small, dour woman whose eyes were as sharp as flints. Next to her stood an old minstrel named Yashku. Master Juwain, Maram and I took our places at the table's south side - I was glad that my sense of direction had returned to me - along with the Duke's two other guests. The first of these he presented as Thaman of Surrapam. I tried not to stare at this barbaric man with his mottled, pinkish skin and icy blue eyes. But how could I help looking at him again and again, especially at the bright red hair and beard that seemed to surround his head like a wreath of flames? Who had ever seen such hair on a human being? Well of course I could help myself - hadn't my father taught me restraint? So instead of offending Thaman with the insolence of my gaze, I turned to regard the Dukes other guest instead.
This was a man with the strange and singular name of Kane. He wore loose, gray-green woolens without insignia or emblem that almost concealed the suit of mail beneath. I wondered from what land he had come. Although not as tall as most Valari, he had the brilliant black eyes and bold face bones of my people. But his accent sounded strange, as if he had been born in some kingdom far from the Morning Mountains, and he wore his snowy white hair cropped close to his head.
I couldn't tell how old he was: the hair suggested an age of sixty while his sun-beaten f
eatures were those of a forty-year-old man. He moved, however, like a much younger warrior. In the highlands of Kaash, I had once seen one of the few snow tigers left in the world; Kane reminded me of that great beast in the power and grace of his muscular body, and most of all, in the fire I sensed blazing inside him. His dark eyes were hot, angry, wild and pained as if he were used to looking upon death and I immediately mistrusted him.
'So, Valashu Elahad,' he said, drawing out the syllables of my name after the Duke had introduced us and we had all sat down. I felt his eyes cutting into the scar on my forehead. 'Of the Meshian Elahads -now there's a name that even I have heard.'
'Heard ... where?' I asked, trying to ferret out his homeland.
But he only stared at me with his fathomless eyes as he scowled and the muscles above his tense jaws stood out like blocks of wood.
'So, you've journeyed from Mesh,' he continued. 'The Duke tells me you came through the bog.'
'Yes, we did,' I said, looking at Master Juwain and Maram.
Here the Duke's wife - a harsh-looking woman named Durva -fingered her graying hair and said, 'We've always counted on the bog being impassable. It's bad enough having to guard our border with Adar, to say nothing of the Kurmak raids. But if we have to worry about the Ishkans coming at us from the south, then we might as well just go into the bog ourselves and let the demons devour us.'
I shook my head as I smiled at her. Then I said, ' There aren't any demons in the bog.'
'No?' she asked. 'What is there in the bog?'
'Something worse,' I said.
While the Duke called for our goblets to be filled so that we could begin our rounds of toasting, I told of our passage through the bog. I had to explain, of course, why we had chosen to flee into it, and that led to an account of my duel with Salmelu and my reasons for leaving home. When I had finished my story, everyone sat looking at me quietly.
'Remarkable,' Duke Rezu said, staring at me down the ridge of his sharp nose. 'A sun that never rises, and a moon that vanishes like smoke! If I didn't have to worry about Duke Barwan, I'd be tempted to ride into the bog myself to witness these wonders.'
'Wonders?' Durva said. 'If those are wonders, then the Kurmak are angels sent to deliver us from our other enemies.'
The Duke took a sip of beer and then nodded at me. 'Perhaps your fever gave you visions of things that weren't there.'
'Master Juwain and Maram,' I said, 'didn't suffer from fevers, and they saw what I saw, too.'
At this, Maram took much more than a sip of beer, and nodded his head to affirm what I had said.
'Sleeplessness can cause one to view time strangely,' Duke Reza said He looked at his mother and smiled. 'Isn't .that true?'
'It certainly is,' Helenya said crabbily. 'I haven't slept since Duke Barwan made an alliance with the Ishkans. I can tell you that a single night can well seem like a month.'
The Duke went around the table then, polling both family and guests as to what they thought of my story. Naviru, Chaitra and Arashar were inclined to believe me, while his mother and wife were more skeptical. Yashku, the old minstrel, however, seemed to doubt nothing of what I had said, even as Thaman shook his head and impatiently drummed his fingers against the table. As for Kane, his response surprised me. He took a long pull of his beer; then to Thaman, and the rest of us, he said. 'A man who has never seen a boat won't want to believe that mariners, could cross the sea in one.
So, there are many bad places in the world. And there are many things in Ea left from the War of Stones that we don't understand. This Black Bog is only one of them, eh?'
Duke Rezu agreed that this must be so, then complimented me on finding my way out of the bog. I took a sip of beer from my goblet as I shook my head. I admitted that it had been Altaru, and not I, who had led us to dry ground.
Kane's black eyes seemed to drink in my every word, and he said, 'The powers of animals run very deep. Few people anymore understand just how deep.'
It was a strange thing for him to say, and for a moment no one seemed to know how to respond. Naviru spoke of the nobility of his own horse, and Helenya told of a beloved dog that had once saved her from a robber's knife. Then Duke Rezu finally called for our meal to begin. His grooms brought out of the kitchen many platters of food: fried trout and rabbit stew, goose pie and nut bread and a big salad of spring greens. There were mashed potatoes, too, and three roasted legs of lamb. I found myself very hungry. I piled planks of trout and heaps of potatoes on my plate, and I watched as Maram, too, began to eat with a good appetite. After some moments of clanking dishes and beer being sloshed into our quickly emptied goblets, Maram nudged his elbow into my side. He nodded toward Kane, then whispered, 'I thought that you were the only one who could eat more than I.'
Not wanting to be too obvious, I glanced down the line of the table to see Kane working at his meal with a startling intensity. At the Duke's encouragement, he had taken a whole leg of lamb for himself. Using a dagger that he shook out of the sleeve of his tunic, he sliced off long strips of the rare meat with the skill of a butcher. His motions were so graceful and efficient that his hands and jaws - his whole body -
seemed to flow almost languidly. He ate quite neatly, almost fastidiously. But as I watched his long white teeth tear into the meat, I realized that he was devouring it with great speed. And with great relish, too: there was blood on his lips and fire in his eyes. In the time it took me to finish my first fillet of fish, he downed many gobbets of meat, all the while giving sound to murmurs of contentment from deep in his throat
Duke Rezu seemed glad to provide Kane such toothsome joys, and he urged upon him other dishes and poured his beer with his own hand. From comments that he made and the silent trust of their eyes, I understood that Kane had done services for him in the past - what kinds of services I almost didn't want to know. As I watched Kane working with his dagger, I suspected that he could cut human flesh as easily as a lamb's.
'So, you wounded Lord Salmelu and left him alive,' he said to me as he looked up from his plate. He swallowed a huge hunk of lamb, almost without chewing then smiled at me without humor. 'You should never leave enemies behind you, eh?'
I smiled, too, with no humor, and said, 'The world is full of enemies - we can't kill them all.'
At this, the bloodthirsty Durva shook her head and said, 'I wish you had killed Salmelu. And I wish your countrymen would kill the Ishkans, as many as possible.
That would keep them from looking north, wouldn't it?'
'Perhaps,' I said. 'But there must be better ways to discourage the wandering of their eyes.'
Duke Rezu sighed at this and then pointed at the hall's empty tables. 'Even as we take this meal behind the safety of these walls, my eldest son, Ramashar, and my knights are riding the border of Adar. And we can only hope that the Kurmak clans won't mount an invasion this summer. Sad to say, we have enemies all around us.
And so long as we do, the Ishkans will never be discouraged.'
'Enemies we have no lack of,' Durva agreed. Then she looked at her husband in silent accusation. 'And yet you chose this time to let our son go off on a hopeless quest.'
Duke Rezu took a gulp of beer as he regarded his outspoken wife. And then, to me and his other guests, he explained, 'Count Dario and the Alonians passed through Anjo before coming to Mesh. Ianar, my secondborn, has answered the call to the quest even as Sar Valashu and his friends have. He left for Tria ten days ago.'
This news encouraged me, and I felt a warmth inside as if I had drunk a glass of brandy. At least I thought, I wouldn't be the only Vaiari knight inTria.
The Duke looked at Thaman, who had hardly spoken ten words all night. Then he asked, 'And how is it in Surrapam? Have King Kiritan's emissaries reached your land, too?'
Thaman, dressed in stained woolens that had seen better days, used a napkin to wipe his hands. Then he ran his fingers through his thick red beard and said, 'Yes, they have. A ship arrived in Taylan late in Viradar. But few of my people have s
et out for Tria. This is not the time for us to be making such quests.'
'How so?' Duke Rezu asked him.
Thaman lifted back his head and drained the beer from his goblet. He grimaced as if he found the taste of the thick, black brew very bitter. Then he said, 'On the eighth of Viradar, at the Red Dragon's bidding, the armies of Hesperu marched against us.
They've conquered our entire kingdom up to the line of the Maron River.'
At these words, everyone at the table grew still and looked at Thaman. These were the worst tidings to come to the Morning Mountains since the story of Galda's fall.
'So you see,' Thaman continued, 'we can spare few warriors to go off looking for golden cups that no longer exist.'
The Duke nodded his head and asked him, 'How is it then that your king can spare you?'
Thaman's small eyes blinked as if stung by particles of blowing snow. Then he drew his sword and laid it on the table alongside one of the half-eaten roasts. Its blade was shorter and thicker than that of a kalarna, and notched in several places. He said,
'With this I've sent five Hesperuk warriors back to their ancestors. Do you question my courage?'
Thaman's sudden unsheathing of his sword caused Naviru and Arashar to grip the hilts of theirs. But Duke Rezu stayed their hands with a single look. He smiled coldly at Thaman and said, 'In the Morning Mountains, as Sar Valashu has found, we must be careful of unsheathing our swords. But you are new to our land, and must be forgiven for not knowing our ways. As for your courage, no, I do not question it - it is rather the opposite. You've made a journey across most of Ea that few would be willing or able to make. My only question is why your king would allow a brave man to make such a journey at a time when your sword
must be badly needed.'
'It is needed,' Thaman admitted. 'I don't know how long we'll be able to hold. The Hesperuks fight like demons - it's believed that the Red Dragon's priests who lead their army have stolen their souls. They have done things I cannot speak of. My wife, my children ...'
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