'Excellent,' Kane said, licking his lips. 'Now I'll tell you what I know of the Lokii.'
'You mean, the Lokilani, don't you?' Maram said.
'No ~ that's not their true name,' Kane said. 'You see, the Lokii were one of the original tribes of Star People sent to Ea with the Lightstone ages ago.'
He went on to explain that there had been twelve of these tribes: the Danya, Weryin, Nisu, Kesari, Asadu, Ajani, Tuwari, Talasi, Sakuru, Helkiin and Lokii. And, of course, the Valari, headed by Elahad and entrusted with guarding the Lightstone.
Each of the tribes had brought with them a single varistei meant to bring the new world to flower. For the green crystals had power over all living things and the fires of life itself. The Gaiadin and Elijin who had sent the twelve tribes to Ea had intended for them to create a paradise. But instead, Aryu of the Valari had risen up in envy to slay his brother, Elahad. He had stolen the Lightstone and broken the peace and hope of Ea. .
'This much is known everywhere, if not always believed,' Kane said. 'But what is not known is that Aryu also stole the varistei from Elahad.'
He told us that Aryu, and many of the Valari who followed him, had set sail from Tria on three ships, fleeing into the Northern Sea. Near the Island of Nedu, a storm had driven two of the ships onto rocks, killing everyone aboard them save Aryu. But Aryu had been mortally wounded; at last, realizing his folly, he crawled ashore on a small island and hid the Lightstone in a cave. The Valari on the remaining ship, under his son, Jolonu, found Aryu's body but not the Lightstone. Jolonu then took the varistei from Aryu's dead hand and set sail for the most distant land he could find.
And so the renegade Valari came at last to the Island of Thalu in the uttermost west.
There they used the green gelstei to slowly change their form to adapt to the cold mists of that harsh and rugged land. The followers of Aryu, or the Aryans, as they came to be called, became a tall, big-boned people, fair of face, with flaxen hair and blue eyes as bright as the sea.
Here Kane paused in his story to look at Atara. She sat on old leaves beneath the oak tree, and her bright, blue eyes were fixed on Kane's face. 'Have you never wondered at the origins of your people?' he asked her.
'No more than I have the origins of the antelope or the grass,' Atara told him. 'But it's said that the Sarni are the descendants of Sarngin Marshan.'
Prince Sarngin, she said, had fought with his brothers, Vashrad and Nawar, over the throne of Alonia late in the Age of the Mother. Vashrad had finally prevailed, killing Nawar. But he had spared Sarngin, whom he had loved. He had banished him and many of his followers, forbidding them ever to return to the lands of Alonia. And so Sarngin had come to the prairies of the Wendrush, where he and his followers had prospered and multiplied to become the ferocious Sarni. 'Sarngin and Vashrad were sons of Bohimir, eh?' Kane said. 'Yes,' Atara said. 'Bohimir the Great. He was Alonia's first king.'
'Ha, a king!' Kane said to her. 'He was an adventurer and a warlord. In three hundred ships, he sailed from Thalu with the Aryan sea rovers - descendants all of them of Aryu and Jolonu. That was in the year 2,177 of the Age of the Mother. The Dark Year, as it's now called. The Aryans entered the Dolphin Channel and sacked Tria.
Bohimir crowned himself king. And that is the origin of your people.'
Kane paused to drink yet another cup of brandy. The potent liquor seemed to have little effect on him. While bees buzzed in the blossoms of a nearby dogwood and the day grew warmer, he sat looking back and forth between Atara and me. 'It's strange,'
he muttered. Very, very strange.' 'What is?' I asked him.
He pointed at my hair and then held his hand toward my face as his black eyes burned into mine. 'It's said that all the Star People who came to Ea looked like you.
Like the Valari. The Valari who settled the Morning Mountains were the only people to have had their varistei stolen. And so they were the only people of Ea to remain true to the Star People's original form.'
I looked down at the black hair spilling over my chest and at the ivory tones of my hands. I rubbed my long, hawk's nose and the prominent bones of my cheeks. Then I looked at Atara, whose coloring and cast of face couldn't have been more different.
'The Valari and the Aryans,' Kane said, 'were once of one tribe. Thus they're the closest of all peoples - and yet, ever since Aryu killed Elahad, they've always been the bitterest of enemies. The Sarni are ultimately the descendants of Aryu himself, and who has warred with the Valari more?'
Only the Valari, I thought, biting back a bitter smile. 'It's strange,' Kane said, bowing his head first at Atara and then at me, 'that you two should have made a peace between yourselves at a time when it's foretold the Lightstone will be found.'
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 tellluric 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 Ban. 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 Valorem. 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 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, 'Your 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 following 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 assassin had found you first, I set out for Mesh as soon at I could.'
'But why should you have been looking for me at at al?l 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 everv 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 yon.'
'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 inter-connected. 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 Mairryu 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 h
ad 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,'
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