After a couple of hours of riding up a gradually ascending dirt road, we came to a notch between two hills where the road seemed to disappear into a great, green wall of vegetation. Jaetan pointed into it and told us, 'This is the old East Road. It's said to lead into Eanna. But no one really knows because no one goes that way any more.'
'Except us,' Maram muttered nervously.
Jaetan looked at him and told him, 'The road is good enough, I think. But you should be careful of the bears, Master Maram. It's said that there are still many bears in the mountains.'
'Oh, excellent,' Maram said, staring into the woods. 'Bears, is it now?'
We thanked Jaetan for his hospitality, and then he turned to Kane and asked, 'If you ever come back this way, will you teach me to hunt, sir?'
'That I will,' Kane promised as he reached out to rumple the boy's hair. That I will.'
With a few backward glances, Jaetan then rode back toward his grandfather's house and the warmth of the hearth that awaited him.
'Well,' Maram said, 'if the old maps are right, we've sixty miles of mountains to cross before we reach Eanna. I suppose we'd better start out before the bears catch our scent.'
But we saw no sign of bears all that day, nor the next nor even the one following that. The woods about us, though, were thick enough to have hidden a hundred of them. As the hills to either side of us rose and swelled into mountains, the giant trees of western Surrapam gave way to many more silver firs and nobles. These graceful evergreens, while not so tall as their lowland cousins, grew more densely. If not for the road, we would have been hard pressed to fight our way through them. This narrow muddy track had been cut along a snakelike course. And it turned like a snake, now curving south, now north, but always making its way roughly east as it gradually gained elevation. And with every thousand feet higher upon the green, humped earth on which we stood, it seemed that the rain poured down harder and the air fell colder.
Making camp in these misty mountains was very much a misery. The needles of the conifers, the bushes, the mosses and ferns about our soaked sleeping furs -
everything the eye and hand fell upon was dripping wet. That Maram failed yet again with his fire dispirited us even more. When the day's first light fought its way through the almost solid grayness lying over the drenched earth each morning, we were glad to get moving again, if only because our exertions warmed our stiff bodies.
Three times the road failed us, vanishing into a mass of vegetation that seemed to swallow it completely. And three times Maram com-plained that we were lost and would never see the sun again, let alone Khaisham.
But each time, with an unerring sense, Atara struck off into the forest, leading us through the trees for a half mile or more until we found the road again. It was as if she could see much of the path that lay before us. It made me wonder if her powers of scrying were much greater than she let on.
On the fourth day of our mountain crossing, we had a stroke of luck. The rain stopped, the sky cleared, and the bright sun shone down upon us and warmed the world. The needles of the trees and the bushes' leaves, still wet with rain, shimmered as if covered with millions of drops of melting diamonds. Two thousand feet above us, the trees were frosted with snow. For the first time, we had a good view of the great peaks around us. Snow and ice covered these spurs of rock, which pushed up into the blue sky to the north and south of us. Our little road led between them; the ground that we still had to cross, as we could see, was not really a gap in the mountains, but only a stretch where they rose less high. Although we had covered a good thirty miles, as the raven flies, we still had heights to climb and as many more miles before us.
We broke then for our midday meal in a sparkling glade by a little lake. Maram, who still had his talent with flint and steel, struck up a fire, which Liljana used to roast a rock goat that Atara had managed to shoot. After some days of cold cheese and batde biscuits, we were all looking forward to this feast. While the meat was cooking, Maram discovered a downed tree-trunk, hollowed and swarming with bees.
'Ah, honeycomb,' he said to me as he pointed at the trunk and licked his lips. 'I can smell the honey in that hive.'
I watched from a safe distance as he built up another fire from wet twigs to smoke the bees out of their home. It took quite some time, and many Mows of the axe, but he finally pulled out a huge, sticky mass of waxen comb dripping with golden honey.
That he suffered only a dozen stings from his robbery amazed me.
'You're brave enough when you want to be,' I said to him as he handed me a piece of comb. I licked a little honey from it. It was incredibly good, tasting of thousands of sun-drenched blossoms.
'Ah, I'd take a thousand stings for honey,' he said before cramming into his mouth af huge chunk of comb. 'In all the world, there's nothing sweeter except a woman.'
He rubbed some honey over the stings along his hands and face, and then we returned to the others to share this treasure.
We all gorged on the succulent goat meat and honey, Maram most of all. After he had finished stuffing his belly, he fell asleep on top of the dewed bracken near some thick bushes that Kane called pink spira. The rays of sun playing over his honey-smeared face showed a happy man.
We let him finish his nap while we broke our makeshift camp. After our waterbags had all been filled and the horses packed, we made ready to mount them and ride back to the road. And then, just as Liljana pointed out that it wouldn't do to leave Maram sleeping, we heard him murmuring behind us as if dreaming: 'Ah, Lailaiu, so soft, so sweet.'
I turned to go fetch him, but immediately stopped dead in my tracks. For what my eyes beheld then, my mind wouldn't quite believe: There, across the glade, in a break in the bushes above Maram and bending over him, crouched a large, black she-bear.
She had her long, shiny snout pressed down into Maram's face as she licked his'lips and beard with her long, pink tongue. She seemed rather content lapping up the smears of honey that the careless Maram had left clinging there. And all the while, Maram murmured in his half-sleep, 'Lailaiu, ah, Lailaiu.'
I might have fallen down laughing at my friend's very mistaken bliss. But bears, after all, were bears. I couldn't imagine how this one had stolen out of the bushes upon Maram without either Kane or the horses taking notice. As it was mid-summer, I feared that she had young cubs nearby.
Slowly and quietly, I reached out to tap on the elbow of Kane, who had his back to the bear as he tightened the cinch of his horse. When he turned to see what I was looking at, his black eyes lit up with many emotions at once: concern, hilarity, contempt, outrage and blood-lust. Quick as a wink, he drew forth his bow, strung it and fit an arrow to its string. This movement alerted the others as to Maram's peril -
and the horses, too. Altaru, facing the wind, finally turned to see the bear; he suddenly reared up as he let loose a tremendous whinny. Liljana's gelding and Master Juwain's sorrel, Iolo and Fire - all the horses added their voices to the great chorus of challenge and panic splitting the air We had all we could do to keep hold of their reins and prevent them from running off. With Kane's bay stamping about and threatening to split his skull with a flying hoof, he couldn't get off a shot. And it was good that he didn't. For just as Mararn finally awakened and looked up with wide eyes into the hairy face of his new lover, the bear started at the sudden noise and peered across the glade as if seeing us for the first time. She seemed more astonished than we were. It took her only a moment to gather her legs beneath her and bound off into the bushes.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram called out upon realizing what had happened. He sprang up and raced to the lake's edge, where he knelt to wash his face. Then he said, 'Oh, my Lord - I was nearly eaten!'
Atara, keeping an eye out for the bear's return, walked up to him and poked a finger into his big belly. 'Hmmph, you're half a bear yourself. I've never seen anyone eat honey the way that you do. But the next time, perhaps you should be more careful how you eat it.'
That day we climbed to the gr
eatest heights of our mountain crossing. This was a broad saddle between two great peaks, where lush meadows alternated with spire-like conifers. Thousands of wildflowers in colors from blazing pink to indigo brightened the sides of the road. Marmots and pikas grazed there, and looked at us as if they had never seen our kind before. But as they fed upon the grasses and seeds they found among the flowers, they kept a close watch for the eagles and ravens who hunted them. We watched them, too. Maram wondered if the Great Beast could seize the souls of these circling birds and turn them into ghuls as he had the bear at the beginning of our journey.
'Do you think he's watching us, Val?' Maram asked me. 'Do you think he can see us?'
I stopped to draw my sword and watch it glow along the line to the east. Its fire was of a faint white. In the journey from Swan Island, I had noticed that other things beside the Lightstone caused it to shine. In the glint of the stars, it radiance was more silver, while the stillness of my soul seemed to produce a dearer and brighter light.
'It's strange,' I said, 'but ever since Lady Nimaiu gave me this blade, the Lord of Lies seems unable to see me, even in my dreams.'
I looked up at a great, golden eagle gliding along the mountain wind, and I said,
'There's no evil in these creatures, Maram. If they're watching, it's only because they're afraid of us.'
My words seemed to reassure him, and we began our descent through the eastern half of the Crescent Range with good courage. For another three days, beneath the strong mountain sun, we rode on without incident. The road held true,- taking us down the folded slopes and around the curve of lesser peaks. At we lost elevation and made our way east the land grew drier, the forest more open. We crossed broad bands of white oak and ponderous pine interspersed with balmroot lived phlox and other smaller plants. Many of the birds and animals who lived here were strange to me. There was a chipmunk with yellow stripes and a bluejay who ate acorns. We saw four more bears, smaller and of a grayish hue to their fur that lent them great dignity. They must have wondered why we hurried through their domain, when the glories of the earth in midsummer ripened all around us.
And then, on the first day of Soal with most of the great Crescent Range at our backs, we came out of a cleft in the foothills to see a vast plain opening to the east.
It was like a sea of grass, yellow-green, and colored with deeper green lines where trees grew along the winding watercourses. Another hour's journey down some slopes of ponderous pine and rocky ridges would take us down into it.
'Eanna,' Kane said, pointing down into this lovely land. 'At least this was once part of the ancient kingdom. But we're far from Imatru, and I doubt if King Hanniban holds any sway here.'
What peoples or lords we might find in the realm below ut, he didn't know. But he admonished us to be wary, for out on the plain we would have no cover, either from men or the wolves and lions who hunted the antelope there.
'Wolves!' Maram exclaimed. 'Lions! - I think I'd rather keep company with the bears.'
But all that first day of our journey across Eanna, neither his fears nor Kane's took form to bring us harm. We left the road only a couple of miles from the mountains.
It turned south, whether toward some lost city in this pretty country or toward nowhere, none of us could say. The Red Desert, Kane told us, lay not so very far in thai direction, and its drifting vermilion sands and dunes had swallowed up more than one city over the millennia. We were lucky, he said, that Alkaladur seemed to point us along a path above this endless wasteland, for other than the fierce tribes of the Ravirii no one could survive the desert's murderous sun for very long.
As it was, we felt a whiff of its heat even hundreds of miles north of the heart of it.
But after the freezing rains of the mountains, we welcomed this sudden warming of the air, for it was dry like the breath of the stars and clean and did not smother us. It did not last long, either, giving way soon after noon to gentle breezes that swept through the swaying grasses and touched our faces with the scents of strange new plants and flowers.
And at night, beneath the constellations that hung in the heavens like a brilliant, blazing tapestry, it fell quite cool - not so much that it chilled our bones, but rather that bracing crispness that sharpens all the senses and invites the marvel of the infinite.
We all slept quite well through that first dark out on the steppe -except during those hours when we were standing watch or simply gazing up at the stars from our beds on top of the long grass. The moon rose over the world like a gleaming half-shield; beneath it, from far out across the luminous earth, wolves howled and lions roared. I dreamed of these animals that night, and of eagles and falcons, and great silver swans that flew so high they caught the fire of the stars. When I awoke in the morning to a sky so blue that it seemed to go on forever, I felt this fire in me, warming my heart and calling me to Journey forth toward the completion of our quest.
We rode hard all that day and the next, and the two following that. Although I worried we might press the horses too strenuously, they took great strength from the grass all around us, both in its sweet smell and in the bellyfuls they bit off and ate at midday and night. After many days of picking their way up and down steep mountain tracks studded with sharp rocks, they seemed glad for the feel of soft earth beneath their hooves. It was their pleasure to keep moving across the windy steppe, at a fast walk and sometimes at a canter or even a gallop. I felt my excitement flowing into Altaru and firing up his great heart, and his delight in running unbound across the wild and open steppe passing back into me. Sometimes he raced Iolo or Fire just for the sheer singing joy of it. And at such moments, I realized that our souls were free, and each of us knew this in the surging of our blood and our breaths upon the wind - and in the promises we made to ourselves.
It was hard for me, used to the more circumscribed horizons of mountainous or wooded country, to see just how far we traveled each day. But Atara had a better eye for distances here. She put the tally at a good fifty miles. So it was that we crossed almost the whole length of southern Eanna in very little time. And in all that wide land, dotted with cottonwood trees whose silver-green leaves were nearly as beautiful as astors', we saw almost no people.
'I should think someone would live here,' Liljana said on the fifth morning of our journey across the steppe. 'This is a fair land - it can't be the wolves that have scared them away. Nor even the lions.'
Later that day, toward noon, we came across some nomads who solved the mystery of Eanna's emptiness for us. The head of the thirty members of this band, who lived in tents woven from the hair of the shaggy cattle they tended, boldly presented himself as Jacarun the Elder.
He was a whitebeard whose bushy brows overhung his suspicious old eyes. But when he saw that we meant no harm and wanted only to cross his country, he was free with the milk and cheeses that his people got from their cattle - and with advice as well.
'We are the Telamun,' he explained to us as we broke from our journey to take a meal with his family. 'And once we were a great people'
He told us that only a few generations before, the Telamun in their two great tribes had ruled this land. So great was their prowess at arms that the Kings in Imatru had feared to send their armies here. But then, after a blood-feud brought about by a careless insult, murder and an escalating sequence of revenge killings, the two tribes had gone to war against each other rather than with their common enemies. In the space of only twenty years, they had nearly wiped each other out.
'A few dozen families like ours, we're all that's left,' Jacarun said as he held up his drover's staff and swept it out across the plain. 'Now we've given up war - unless you count beating off wolves with sticks as war.'
He went on to say that their days as a free people were almost over, for others were now eyeing his family's ancient lands and even moving into them.
'King Hanniban has been having trouble with his barons, it's said, so hasn't yet been able to muster the few companies that it would ta
ke to conquer us,' he told us. 'But some of the Ravirii have come up from the Red Desert - they butchered a family not fifty miles from here. And the Yarkonans, well, in the long run, they're the real threat, of course. Count Ulanu of Aigul - they call him Ulanu the Handsome - has it in mind to conquer all of Yarkona in the Red Dragon's name and set himself up as King. If he ever does, he'll turn his gaze west and send his crucifiers here.'
He called for one of his daughters to bring us some roasted beef. And then, after fixing his weary old eyes on Kane and my other friends, he looked at me and asked,
'And where are you bound, Sar Valashu?'
'To Yarkona,' I said.
'Aha, I thought so! To the Library at Khaisham, yes?'
'How did you know?'
'Well, you're not the first pilgrims to cross our lands on their way to the Library, though you may be the last.' He sighed as he lifted his staff toward the sky. There was a time, and not so long ago, when many pilgrims came this way. We always charged them tribute for their safe passage, not much, only a little silver and sometimes a few grains of gold. But those days are past; soon it is we who will have to pay tribute for living here. In any case, no one goes to Yarkona anymore - it's accursed land.'
He advised us that, if we insisted on completing our journey, we should avoid Aigul and Count Ulanu's demesne at all costs.
We ate our roasted beef then, and washed it down with some fermented milk that Jacarun called laas. After visiting with his family and admiring the fatness of their cattle - and restraining Maram from doing likewise with their women - we thanked Jacarun for his hospitality and set out again.
Soon the steppe, which had gradually been drying out as we drew further away from the Crescent Mountains, grew quite sere. The greens of its grasses gave way to yellow and umber and more somber tones. Many new shrubs found root here in the rockier soil: mostly bitterbroom and yusage, as Kane named these tough-looking plants. They gave shelter to lizards, thrashers, rock sparrows and other animals that f had never seen before. As the sun fell down the long arc of the sky behind us in its journey into night it grew slightly warmer instead of cooler. We put quite a few miles behind us, though not so many as on die four preceding afternoons. The horses, perhaps sensing that they would find less water and food to the east, began moving more slowly as if to conserve their strength. And as we approached the land that Jacarun had warned us against, we turned our gazes inward to look for strength of our own.
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