We looked at each other in puzzlement and wonder; the world was full of mysteries.
'Ah, I'm tired,' Maram yawned. 'Too tired to think about such things now. I think I'd better lie down before I fall down.'
We were all exhausted. We were at the end of our second sleepless night; none of us, except perhaps Kane, could pass another day without at least a few hours of rest. As for myself, my body hurt from a dozen bruises gained in battle. My shoulder, into which the Blue had swung his axe, was the worst of these torments.
With the coolness of the night and the muscles' inevitable stiffening, it ached so badly that Master Juwain had to rig a sling to take up the weight of my arm. And yet it was nothing against the aching I felt in my heart whenever I thought of Alphanderry hanging from his cross and all the Librarians who had died before my eyes. From such ghastly visions, I and all my friends longed for surcease.
And so we found a level place in a hollow between two ridges and set out our sleeping furs for a quick nap. Kane insisted on remaining awake to keep watch over us, and none of us argued with him. I fell off into a sleep troubled with images of fire and terrible screams. And it wasn't Morjin who sent these dreams to me, only the demons of war that had fought their way deep into my mind.
We awoke beneath a bright sun to vistas of icy mountains rising up before us. While Liljana went to work on our breakfast we held a quick council and decided that we had eluded whatever pursuit that Count Ulanu had sent after us - if indeed he had sent anyone at all. Kane thought it possible that the Library had been fired before our escape route through the crypt had been discovered, and Atara agreed. Perhaps, she said, the Library had collapsed into a smoking ruin, forever sealing off access to the escape tunnel and the steel door that guarded it.
'Likely Count Ulanu thinks we're dead,' Atara told us. 'Likely he'll spend many days searching through the ruins for our bodies - and for our gelstei.'
'Well this is a stroke of luck, then!' Maram said. 'Perhaps luck is turning our way.'
Atara said nothing as she stared out at the great mountains before us. We all knew that we would need much more than luck to cross them.
The smell of bubbling porridge wafted into the air. Liljana stood by her little cauldron stirring the oats with a long wooden spoon. Her face told me that she was still unhappy at having had to jettison her cookware on our flight across Yarkona.
She was unhappy, too, that there hadn't been time to gather the necessary supplies for our journey.
'We've enough food for most of a month, if we stretch it,' she told us as we gathered around the little fire to eat. 'How far is it to Argattha?'
'If the old maps are right, two hundred and fifty miles, as the raven flies,' Master Juwain said. Then his face furrowed as he rubbed his bald head. No one knew very much about Sakai, not even the mapmakers.
'Well, then,' Maram said, 'we need make only eight or nine miles per day,'
'So,' Kane said, 'we won't be traveling as the raven flies. And in the mountains, we'll be lucky to make even that.'
While Liljana brewed up the last of our coffee and its sweet, thick aroma steamed out into the air, we sat discussing our route into Sakai. It was unnerving to know so little about the land that we proposed to cross. According to Master Juwain, Sakai was a vast, high plateau entirely ringed by mountains. The White Mountains, he said, rose up like an immense wall from the lake country of Eanna in the northwest and ran for a thousand miles toward the southeast to make up Ea's spine. Somewhere to the east of us, it divided into two great ranges: The Yorgos in the south, and in the north, the Nagarshath, where it was said were the highest mountains on earth. The realm of Sakai lay betwee them. Master Juwain thought that various spurs of these ranges ran north and south across the plateau, but he wasn't sure.
'At least we know that Skartaru lies along the very northern edge of the Nagarshath,'
he said. 'It's known that the Black Mountain looks out over the Wendrush.'
'Then we should follow the line of the Nagarshath until we come to it,' I said, glooked at my sword, whose radiance was almost lost in the greater blaze of the sun.
It pointed us east and slightly south - straight along the course I imagined the Nagarshath to run.
'We should follow it,' Kane agreed, 'but follow how? We can't make our way through the range itself. Its mountains are said to be impassable. That leaves a journey across the plateau, keeping the mountains to our left. But there, we'll certainly find Morjin's people - or be found by them.'
'But what other choice do we have?' Liljana asked.
'None that I can see,' Kane said.
We all looked at Atara, who shook her head and told us,'None that I can see, either.'
We were silent as we scannld the mountains about us. Maram stared off behind us, still looking for pursuit, while I gazed ahead at the great, white peaks rising up like impossibly high merlons directly ahead of us.
'How far is it,' I asked Master Juwain, 'until we come to where the two ranges part and the plateau begins?'
'I'm not really sure,' he said. 'Sixty miles. Perhaps seventy.'
I felt my belly tighten. Seventy miles of such mountains as these seemed like seventy thousand. Trying to show a courage that I didn't feel, I pointed my sword east into their heart. Then I said, 'We'll just have to cut straight across them.'
'Ha, straight is it?' Kane laughed out, clapping me on my good shoulder. 'So you say
- and you a man of the mountains.'
I laughed with him. Then Maram pointed out that the only thing] straight about the journey ahead of us was that we were going straight into hell.
That day we had some of the hardest work of our journey. Without any map or track to follow, we had to make our way across the rocky ridiges with little more than intuition to guide us. Twice, my sighting of a possible pass through the rising ground before us proved a dead-end, and we had to turn back to find another route. It was exhausting to lead the horses, up toward the snowline along a slope strewn with boulders and scree; it was even more dispiriting to retreat down these same uncertain steps to seek out another path. Although there was beauty all about us in the gleam of the great mountains and in the sky pilots and other wildflowers that brightened their sides, by the time we made camp that evening, we were all too tired to appreciate it. The thin air cut our throats, and Master Juwain complained of the same dull headache I felt building at the back of my neck. It grew quite cold - and this faint frost of the falling night was only a promise of the ice and bitterness that still lay before us.
Thus for three days we fought our way east. Mostly, the weather held fair, with the air so thin and dry that it seemed it could never hold the slightest particle of moisture. But then, late on the third afternoon, dark clouds appeared as if from nowhere, and we had a few fierce hours of freezing rain. It cut our eyes with lancets of sleet and stung our lips; it coated the rocks with a glaze of ice, making the footing for both man and beast treacherous. As we could find no shelter from this torment, we sat huddled beneath our cloaks waiting for it to end. And end it did as the clouds finally opened to reveal the frigidity of night. As we could neither retreat nor go forward with any degree of safety, we were forced to spend the night high up on the saddle between two great mountains. There Maram knelt with his flint and steel, trying to get a fire out of the wood that the horses had toted up into this barrenness.
'I'm cold; I'm wet; I'm tired,' Maram complained as he struck off another round of sparks into his tinder. His hands shook as he shivered and said, 'Ah, no, the truth is, I'm very cold.'
While Atara and Kane gathered snow to melt and Liljana waited to cook our dinner, I walked over to Maram and placed my hand on the back of his neck to rub the knotted muscles there. Some of the fire that kept me going must have passed into him, for he sighed and said, 'Ah, that's good, that's very good - thank you, Val.'
A tiny flame leaped up from the tinder and spread to the little twigs that Maram had gathered around it. He watched it grow u
ntil he had quite a good blaze going.
'Ah,' he said, relaxing beneath the sudden heat, 'you took more blows in the battle than I. And so it is I who should rub your neck.'
The pain at the back of my neck felt as if a mace had broken through the bones there to open up my brain. But I said, 'You took two arrows saving us, Maram. It was a great thing that you did.'
'It was, wasn't it?' he said. He gingerly touched his hindquarters where the arrows had pierced him. 'Still, fair is fair, and I owe you a massage, all right?'
'All right,' I said, smiling at him. He smiled as well proud to have freely taken on such a little debt.
An hour later we gathered around the fire and ate some boiled salt pork and battle biscuits. Master Juwain made us tea and poured it into our mugs, which we rolled between our hands to ddraw in its warmth. It was a time for song, but none of us felt like singing. And so I drew forth my flute and played a melody that my mother had taught me. It was nothing like the music that Alphanderry had made for us, but there was love and hope to it even so.
'Ah, that's very very good,' Maram said as he held his cloak before the fire to dry it.
'Look, Flick is dancing to your song!'
Limned against the starry eastern sky. Flick was spinning about in long, glittering spirals. His fiery pirouettes did seem something like dancing. We all took courage from his presence. Master Juwain pointed at him and said, 'I'm beginning to think that he might be the seventh told of in Ayondela's prophecy.'
It was a strange thought with which to lie against the cold ground and fall off to sleep that night it made me recall with great clar-ity Alphanderry's death and the despair that had gripped my heart afterwards. And through this dark doorway, Morjin came for me. In my dreams, he sent a werewolf who looked like Alphanderry sniffing through the shadows for the scent of my blood. This demon howled in a rage to show me yet another of my deaths, then it sang sweetly that I should join him in the land from which there is no return. It tried to kill me with the terror of what awaited me. Butt that night, I had allies. watching over me and guarding my soul.
Flick, I somehow knew, spun above my sleeping form like a swirl of stars warding off evil. My mother's love, fell in the deep currents of the earth beneath me, enveloped me like a warm and impenetrable cloak. Inside me shone the sword of valor that my father had given me, and outside on the ground with my hand resting on the hilt, was the sword called Alkaladur. It quickened the fires of my being so that I was able to strike out and drive the demon away, it cut through the black smoke of the nightmare realm into the clear air through which shone the worlds bright stars.
And so I was able to awaken beneath the mountains, covered to sweat and shaking but otherwise unharmed.
I opened my eyes to see Atara sitting by my tide and holding my hand. It was just past midnight and her turn to take the watch. On the other side of the fire, with their furs spread on top of the snow, Maram, Liljana and Master Juwain were sleeping.
Kane who lay breathing lightly with his eyes closed was probably sleeping too, but with him it was harder to tell. 'Your dreams are growing darker, aren't they?' Atara said softly.
'Not. . . darker,' I said struggling for breath I sat up facing her and looked for her eyes through the thickness of the night. 'But they're worse - the Lord of Lies tries to twist the love of a friend into hate.'
She squeezed my hand in hers, while she held her scryer's sphere in her other. I gathered that she had been gazing into this clear crystal when I had cried out in my sleep. 'He sees you, doesn't he?' she asked.
'In a way,' I said. 'But it is more as if he can smell the taint of the kirax in me.
Whatever Count Ulanu has communicated to him as to our deaths, he knows that I'm still alive.'
'He is still seeking you, then?'
'Yes, seeking - but not quite finding. Not as he would like.'
'He mustn't find you,' she said with a quiet urgency in her voice.
'Time is on his side,' I told her. 'It is said that the Lord of lies never sleeps.'
'Do not speak so. You mustn't say such things.'
Of course, she was right. To anticipate one's own defeat is to bring it about with utter certainty.
There was a new fear in her voice when she spoke of Morjin and a new tenderness in her fingers as she stroked my hand. I pointed at the sphere of gelstei she clutched against her breast, and I asked, 'Have you seen him then? In your crystal?'
'I've seen many things,' she said evasively.
I waited for her to say more but she fell into a deep silence.
'Tell me, Atara,' I whispered.
She shook her head and whispered back, 'You're not like Master Juwain. You don't need to know everything about everything.'
'No, not everything,' I agreed.
Maram, snoring loudly on the other side of the fire, rolled over in his sleep as Liljana shifted about against the cold and pulled her cloak more tightly about her neck. I sensed that Atara was afraid of waking them. So it didn't surprise me when she stood up, took my hand and walked with me a few dozen yards across the snowy ground into the darkness surrounding our camp.
'It's so hard for me to tell you, don't you see?' she said softly.
'Is it that bad then? Is it any worse than what I've seen?'
I told her about the thousands of deaths I had died in my dreams. This touched something raw inside her. I felt her seize up as if I had stuck my finger into an open wound.
'What is it?' I asked her.
Her whole body shook as if suddenly stricken with the night's deep cold.
'Please tell me,' I said, holding her against me. 'No, I can't, I shouldn't - I shouldn't have to,' she whispered.
And then she was kissing my hands and eyes, touching the scar on my forehead, kissing that, holding me tightly - and then she collapsed to her knees as she threw her arms around my legs and buried her face against my thighs as she sobbed.
I called to her as I stroked her hair, 'Atara, Atara,'
A little later, with the night's wind cooling her grief, she managed to stand again and look at me. And she told me, 'Almost every time I see Morjin, I see you. I see your death.'
The wind off the icy peaks around us suddenly chilled me to the bone. I smiled grimly at her and asked, 'You said almost every time?'
'Almost, yes,' she said. 'There are other branchings, you see, so few other branchings of your life.'
'Please tell me, then.'
She took a deep breath and said, 'I've seen you kneeling to Morjin -and living.'
'That will never be.'
'I've seen you turning away from Argattha, too. And going far away from him. With me, Val. Hiding.'
'That can't ever be,' I said softly.
'I know,' she whispered through her tears. 'But I want it to be.'
I held her tightly as her heart beat against mine. I whispered in her ear, 'There must be a way. I have to believe that there's always a way.'
'But what if there isn't?'
The star's light reflected from the snow was just, enough for me to behold the terror in her eyes. And I said, 'If you've seen my death in Argattha, you should tell me. So that I might fight against it and make my own fate.'
'You don't understand,' she said, shaking her head.
She went on to tell me something of her gift with which she had been touched. She tried to describe how a scryer's vision was like ascending the branches of an infinite tree. Each moment of time, she said, was like a magical seed quivering with possibilities. Just as a woman lay waiting to blossom inside a child, the whole tree of life was inside the seed. Every leaf, twig or flower that could ever be was there A scryer opened it with her warmth and will with her passion for truth and her tears. To move from the present to the future, as a scryer does, was to find an eternal golden stem breaking out of the seed and dividing into two or ten branches, and each one of these dividing again and again, ten into ten thousand, ten thousand into trillions upon trillions of branches shimmering always just bey
ond her reach. The tree grew ever higher toward the sun, branching out into infinite possibilities. And the higher the scryer climbed, the brighter became this sun until it grew impossibly bright, as if all the light in the universe were pulling her toward a single, golden moment at the end of time that could never quite be.
'It sounds glorious,' I said to her.
'You still don't understand,' she said sadly. 'Morjin, and his lord, Angra Mainyu -
they are poisoning this tree. Darkening even the sun' The higher I climb, the more withered branches and dead leaves.'
The wind in my face seemed to carry the stench of the burning Library in its sharp gusts. For the thousandth time I wondered how many people had died in this terrible conflagration.
'But there must be a branch that is whole,' I said to her. 'Leaves that even he cannot touch.'
'There might be,' she agreed. 'I wish I had the courage to look.'
'What do you mean?'
She put her crystal in her pocket and grasped my hands. She said, 'I'm afraid, Val.'
'You, afraid?'
She nodded her head. The starlight seemed to catch in her hair. Then she told me that the tree of life grew out of a strange, dark land inside her.
'There be dragons there,' she said, looking at me sharply.
My heart ached with a sudden, fierce desire to slay this particular dragon.
'A scryer,' she said, 'a true scryer must never turn back from ascending the tree. But the heights bring her too close to the sun. To the light. After a while, it burns and blinds - blinds her to the things of the world. Her world grows ever brighter. And so she lives more for her visions than for other people. And living thus, she dies a little and grows ugly in her soul. Old, ugly, shriveled. And that is why people grow to hate her.'
I pressed her hand against my wrist so that she could feel the beating of my heart there. I said, 'Do you think I could ever hate you?'
'I'd want to die if you did,' she said.
In the dark I found her eyes as I took a deep breath. I said, 'There must be a way.'
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