'Hmmph,' Atara said to Maram, 'has coming so close to Argattha made you forget the prophecy?'
'I know, I know,' he said, 'the seven of us must go forth ... to where we must go.
But what will happen to the horses? And what will happen to us should our quest prove a success and we return to find the horses gone?'
He suggested that we should perhaps hobble the horses or even picket them so that they remained in the valley.
'No, there are wolves and lions about,' I said, looking down into the plain. 'If we tie the horses, they'd be unable to run or defend themselves. And if we don't return ...'
Maram watched my face for sign of despair, and then asked, 'But what are we to do?'
I moved quickly to ungird Altaru's saddle and remove his harness. When he was free of these encumbrances and naked as an animal should be, I faced him stroking his neck and looking into his eyes. In these large, brown orbs was something deep and ancient that brought a mist to mine. I stood there breathing my love for him into his nostrils while he gave voice to the covenant of friendship that had always been between us.
'Stay with the other horses,' I told him as he nickered softly. 'Don't let them leave this valley - do you understand?'
He nickered again, this time louder, and I was seized with a strange, soaring sense that somehow he did understand
It took Atara and the others only a few moments to loose their horses, too. We hid the saddles and tack in some bushes beneath the nearby trees. After taking up our weapons and some supplies, we turned to leave the horses grazing on the canyon's brown grass.
We might have done well to wait for night and approach Skartaru under the cover of darkness. But we needed to find the Ogre and the cave leading into Argattha, and for this we needed light And so in the day's last hours, we crossed the ridge to the south and then made our way across the narrow canyon cutting beneath the mountain's north face. We found what cover we could among the trees and stony outcroppings there. Now Skartaru loomed so high and huge above us that it blocked the sun and most of the sky. Its black rock seemed the whole of the world; looking at this stark and terrible face, I could almost feel Kalkamesh's blood running down its jags and cracks, even as the cries of those still trapped inside the underground city sounded from inside it.
We walked almost straight up a rocky slope toward the base of the Diamond. We expected to be caught at any moment But except for a few birds and deer keeping a watch for lions, the valley seemed empty of anyone except us.
'Look!' Ymiru said in a low voice that broke into the quiet air like thunder. He pointed at a great hump of rock five hundred feet high swelling out the Diamond's dark wall. 'Does that look like an Ogre to anyone?'
'Almost,' Liljana said. 'But it's hard to tell from this angle.'
We changed the course of our hike slightly toward the west. After a couple of hundred yards, we came to the very bottom of the Diamond's lower point in a hollow pressed between the north face's two immense buttresses. And there, jutting out of this dread face, the hump of rock did indeed look like an ogre kneeling down on one knee.
We rushed up to this knob-like prominence, looking for the cave told of in Ymiru's verse. But no cave, to either side of it could we find. The black rock of the Diamond was scarred with many cracks, but otherwise unmarked. Even though we spread out along the wall searching more carefully, we found no sign of any cave.
'But it must be here!' Ymiru said, pounding the cold rock with his great fist.
Maram, breathing deeply against the day's exertions, leaned back against what must have been the Ogre's knee and sighed, 'Well, who's ready to try one of Argattha's gates?'
Liljana fixed her eyes upon the mountain's rock; suddenly she spoke to both of them, saying, 'Don't you give up so soon. Don't you remember the verse's last two lines?'
Even as she said this, Atara, standing back from the wall, descried a vein of red running through the black rock. Now we all stood back as she pointed at it. It was surely iron ore, I thought, and it ran in jagged bands that pointed like an arrow straight toward the base of the wall just to the right of the Ogre's knee.
'But there be no cave there!' Ymiru said, 'There be nothing but rock.'
'Only rock,' Kane muttered. Then he stepped back toward the wall and began moving his hands over it. 'And smooth rock at that, eh? Ymiru, come here and look at this! Tell me if you've ever seen a mountain's rock so smooth.'
Ymiru joined him there, as did the rest of us. And then Ymiru said, 'It looks like the rock that the ancients cut through the passes of the Wailing Way.'
'So, cut with firestones,' Kane said. 'Melted out of the mountains -as this mountain has been melted down over the cave.'
He told us them that Morjin, perhaps after making other escape tunnels from Argattha, must have sealed off this one.
'But why?' Maram asked. 'Just to confound us, no doubt.'
'Who knows why?' Kane said, rapping his knuckles against the wall. 'Maybe too many knew about this. But I'd wager our lives we'll find the cave behind this rock.'
We all looked at each other in the grim certainty that we were wagering our lives here. And then Ymiru, after first casting quick glances up and down the valley, began tapping his borkor at various points along the wall. When he reached the place beneath the bands of iron ore, the reverberations from the rock sounded slightly hollow.
'There be something behind here,' he said.
Now he raised his iron-shod club straight back and struck the wall a tremendous blow. The rock rang as if hammered by a god. Chips of black basalt sprayed out into the air. But if Ymiru had hoped to break through to the hidden cave, he failed.
Thrice more he wielded his club, before turning to Kane and saying, 'The rock be too thick. And I haven't the right tools to mine into it.'
'Ha you don't,' Kane said. Then he looked at Maram. 'But he does'
Maram drew forth his firestone and stood looking up at the sky. He said, 'There's not much light here, and I've never burned rock like this, but...'
He pointed his red crystal at the wall and told us, 'Stand back now!'
We did as he bade us. A moment later, a thin tendril of flame flickered out from his crystal and licked the wall. But it scarcely heated up the rock there.
'It's too dark here,' Maram muttered. 'There's too little light.'
'So,' Kane told him, 'I think it's not only light that fires your stone.'
Maram nodded his head and closed his eyes as he searched inside himself. And then, as his gelstei began glowing bright red, he looked straight at the wall, concentrating on the exact spot that he wished to open. At that moment, a great bolt of lightning shot from his crystal and burned into the rock, which vaporized in a tremendous blast. Fire flew back into Maram's face, scorching it lobster-red and singing his beard and eyebrows. Lava ran down from the wall in thick, glowing streams. Maram had to be careful that it didn't engulf his feet and melt away his flesh into a hellishly hot soup.
'Be careful with that stone or you'll kill us all!' Kane shouted at him. He looked at the shallow hole that Maram had melted in the rock. 'Here, I'd better help you.'
He took out his black gelstei and held it facing Maram's firestone. Then he nodded at him and said, 'All right.'
For the next half hour, he and Maram worked together to open the way into the mountain. At times, when the red crystal flared too brightly and great sheets of flame fell out against the rock, Kane used his black gelstei to damp the fury of the firestone. At other times he had to desist altogether, for all Maram's efforts sufficed only in coaxing from his stone a dull red glow. Little by little, however, Maram melted away layers of rock and cut deeper into the face of Skartaru.
All this time, Atara and I had been keeping watch. Now she nudged me gently and pointed down the valley out toward the plain. 'Val, look!' she said.
I squinted and strained my eyes to see some twenty men on horses riding straight toward the canyon.
'Do you think they saw us?'Wana asked Ata
ra, looking toward the riders, too.
'They saw something,' Atara said. 'Probably the flashes of the firestone.'
Ymiru approached the hole that Maram had made in the wall, and rammed his club against the still-glowing rock there. But he failed break through. He said, 'It still be too thick.'
'Get down!' I said to him, waving my hand toward the ground. The men were approaching the mouth of the canyon. 'Get down, Ymiru -they mustn't see you!'
I pointed at a nearby rock formation to our left and told him to hide behind it. Then I nodded at some trees to our right and told Liljana, Master Juwain and Atara to wait there.
'So, Val,' Kane said looking down the canyon. 'So.'
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said, hurrying down from the scorched wall over to where I stood. 'Val - shouldn't we flee?'
'No, they might already have seen us,' I said. 'They would catch us wherever we ran.
Or give the alarm.'
'But what are we to do, then?'
I smiled at him and said, 'Bluff it out.'
And so, there beneath Skartaru's dark face, with the Ogre's grim, black eyes staring down at us, we waited as the twenty riders drew closer. Maram, who was clever enough at need, busied himself gathering wood as if for a fire. Kane sat back against a rock and began whittling a long pole with his knife. And I gathered some round stones and set them in a circle as for a firepit.
Soon we saw that the riders were wearing the livery of Morjin: their surcoats showed blazing red dragons against a bright yellow field. They had sabers girded at their sides and bore long lances pointing at us. At a very quick pace, they urged their snorting mounts up the rocky slope straight toward the place where we sat.
'Who are you?' their leader called out to us. He was a thickset man with long yellow hair that spilled out from beneath his iron helm. His drooping mustaches couldn't hide the scars cut into his long, truculent face. 'Stand up and identify yourselves!'
After grabbing up a stone in either hand, I did as he bade us, and so did Maram and Kane. We gave the scowling captain names and stories that we had made up on the spot. He glowered at us as if he didn't like our look and said, 'Three more vagabonds come to sell their swords to the highest bidder. Well, you've come to the right place - show us your passes!'
'Passes?' Maram asked him.
'Of course - you're in Sakai now. How did you come this far without being given a pass?'
Now he gripped his lance more tightly as he looked at us suspiciously. He told us that no one was permitted to move about Sakai without the proper scroll signed by an officer of the border guard - or without one of the seals of the kingdom which the Red Priests bestowed upon the especially privileged.
So saying, he touched the heavy gold disk that hung on a chain from his neck. It was hard to tell across a distance of twenty feet, but it seemed embossed with a coiled, fire-breathing dragon.
'Oh, that,' Maram said with a nonchalance that I knew he didn't feel. 'We didn't know you called them passes.'
And with that he opened his cloak to show the captain the gift that King Kiritan had given him. I did the same, and so did Kane.
Our medallions, cast with the Cup of Heaven at their centers, gleamed in day's last light. For a moment, I thought that this mistrustful captain might let us go. And then, as he spurred his horse forward, he called out, 'Let me see those!'
We waited for him and three of his men to come closer, and then Kane growled out,
'I'll let you see this! '
And with that, he cast the pole that he had been whittling straight through the captain's eye, killing him instantly. I hurled the two stones in my hands at two of the knights bearing down on us, and managed to strike one of them full in his face, knocking him off his horse. And then, at the call of one of the captain's lieutenants, the remaining knights whipped up their horses and thundered down upon us, and the battle began.
The knights clearly intended to make quick work of us. And so they might have if their lieutenant, a young man with a dark, vulpine look that reminded me of Count Ulanu, hadn't pointed his sword at us and said, 'Take them alive! Lord Morjin will want to question them!'
But it was not so easy for anyone to take Kane this way - or to kill him. With a lightning-quick motion he reached back the hand holding his knife and whipped it forward. The knife spun through space, and its sharp point tore straight into the lieutenant's mouth, which he hadn't had time to close. At the same moment, from the right, an arrow hissed out from behind a tree as Atara found her mark and killed another of Morjin's men. Three more arrows followed in a quick, sizzling succession before the knights even realized that a hidden archer was firing upon them. They had counted on their greater numbers and the great advantage in height that their charging horses gave them to strike terror into us.
And then, from the left, with a great, thundering war-cry that shook even me to my bones, Ymiru arose from behind his rock. His face contorted with a ferocious look as he raised his huge club above his head.
'The Yamanish!' one of the knights cried. 'The Yamanish are upon us!'
Ymiru stood as high as the knights upon their horses; with four quick, savage blows, he knocked four of them off them. None got up.
And then the remaining nine knights, who had given up all thought of maiming and capturing us, fell upon Kane, Maram and me. They tried to kill us with their lances, swords and maces. And we tried to kill them. Kane drew his sword; I drew Alkaladur and cut one of the knights off his mount. Ymiru swung his club against the side of a knight's neck, and struck his head clean off. Blood sprayed the air as more arrows hissed out. Horses flailed their hooves against the earth, reared and screamed. I heard Maram call out the name of his father as he met a flashing saber with his sword and then managed a clean thrust through the belly of one of the knights - just in time to keep him from skewering me with his lance. And Kane, as always, fought like an angel of death in the thickest part of the battle, growling as horses knocked against him, grabbing their bits and tearing them from their mouths, parrying the blows of the knights, cutting and thrusting and snarling out his hate.
And then, miraculously, it was over. The agony of the men I had killed came flooding into me as I stared at the bodies of the nine teen dead knights and fought to keep myself from falling down and I joining them.
'Look!' Ymiru called out. 'One of them is getting away!'
Indeed, one of the knights, in the heat of the battle, had turned his horse around and was now galloping straight toward the mouth of the canyon.
Atara came out from behind her tree then to get a better angle upon him. She pulled back the string of her great bow, sighting one of her diamond-tipped arrows on the red dragon of the surcoat covering the knight's back. It was a long shot that she trembled to make - made even longer with every second that she hesitated loosing her arrow.
'Shoot, damn it!' Kane shouted. 'Shoot now, I say, or all is lost!'
Atara finally let fly the arrow. It split the air in an invisible whining and drove straight through the knight's surcoat and armor, burying itself in his back. He remained in his saddle for only a few strides of his bounding horse before plunging off to crash against the rocky ground.
During the next few minutes, Kane went about the mountain's slope with his sword making sure that none of Morjin's men remained alive. And then Master Juwain noticed that some of the blood dripping from his white hair was not the enemy's but his own. It seemed that one of the knights had sliced off his ear.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said.
None of us had ever seen Kane wounded. But as always, he made no complaint not even when Maram set a brand afire and Master Juwain used it to cauterize the bloody hole at the side of his head.
'So, that was close,' he said as Master Juwain fixed a bandage over what remained of his ear. 'The closest yet, eh?'
All the rest of us were untouched. But I was still shaking from the deaths I had meted out and Maram stood staring at his bloody sword not quite daring to believe that he had
used it to kill two armored knights.
'You did well, Maram,' Kane said to him. 'Very well. Now let's get back to work before anyone else comes, eh?'
Maram cleaned his sword and sheathed it. He took out his red crystal. But he was not quite ready to use it. He walked off a way, up a slight rise, and stood staring down at the carnage that we had made.
After a while, after the shooting pains were gone from my chest and I could breathe again, I went over to him and said, 'You did do well, you know. You saved my life.'
'I did, didn't I?' he said as he smiled brightly. And then the horror returned to his face as his eyes fell upon the bodies of the slain. 'Kane was right, I think. That was the closest yet.'
He turned to look at the dark hole that he had burned in Skartaru's dark north face.
Then he said, 'And yet I think that perhaps worse awaits us inside there.'
'Perhaps,' I said.
'Perhaps it's the end of the road, for all of us.'
'Don't worry,' I said to him, grasping his hand. 'I won't let you die.'
'Ah, death,' he said, smiling sadly. 'I must die someday. It seems strange, but I know it's true.'
I squeezed his hand harder, trying not to think of the lines of the poem that had haunted me ever since I had killed Raldu in the forest beneath my father's castle.
'And when I do die, Val,' he said, 'if I could choose, I'd rather have it come fighting beside you.'
'Maram, listen to me, you mustn't speak -'
'No, I must speak of this, now, because I might not have another chance,' he told me. Then he looked straight into my eyes. 'Ever since we set out from Mesh, you've shown me a realm I never dreamed. I. . . I was born the prince of a great kingdom.
But it's you who have made me noble.'
He clasped me to him then and hugged me as hard as he could. And then, as he dried his eyes and I did mine, he took a step back and said, 'Now let's finish this nasty business and get out of here, if we can.'
There was a man whom Maram wished to be. This man now gathered up all of his bravura and stood up straight and tall. Then he gripped his red crystal and marched up to Skartaru's darkening face without hesitation.
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