I looked back toward the fire where Kane stood like a lonely sentinel surveying the steppe in all directions. Despite our nearness to Mesh, he hadn't ceased his eternal watch for enemies.
'Sometimes now,' she said to me, 'Kane walks with the One. But too often, he still walks with himself. He hasn't the power to make me see. In Argattha, for a moment, he helped me find my way back to the One. But I... can't always remain there. And so then I'm utterly blind.'
'I don't care,' I told her.
'But I do care,' she said to me. 'Someday, if I bear your son, as I have wished a thousand times and will, if only I could, my son. . .when I hold him to me and give him my milk, when I look down at him, if I can't see him, if I can't see him seeing me, then it would break my heart.'
I stood beneath the blazing stars that she could not perceive. In their brilliance, the patterns of life and death were stitched by the silver needle of fate. And fate, I thought, was forged in our hearts, whether with the fire of hate or love, it was our will to decide.
'I understand,' I told her. How could I love this woman if I didn't guard her heart as I would my own heart, as I would the Lightstone itself?
'I know it's vain of me,' she said, 'I know it's selfish, but I -'
'I understand,' I said again.
I moved to stroke her hair, gleaming like silver-gold in the starlight But she shook her head and pulled back from me. And she murmured, 'No, no - I'm imakla now, haven't you heard? I'm imakla, and may not be touched.'
'I don't care, Atara.'
I knew that she couldn't bear for me to touch her - and even more, that she couldn't bear not being touched. And so one last time, I kissed her. My lips burned with a pain worse than when the dragon had seared me with her fire.
After that, I sat with her on the cold grass holding hands as we waited for the sun to brighten the sky over the mountains to the east. When it came time to say goodbye, she squeezed my hand and said, 'I wish you well, Valashu Elahad.'
For a moment, my eyes burned and blurred, and I was almost as blind as she. Then I told her, 'May you always walk in the light of the One.' She got up to saddle her horse with the others while I sat staring at the last of the night's stars. After a while Maram came over to me. He some how knew what had occurred between us, and I loved him for that.
'Take courage, old friend, there may yet be hope,' he told me. 'If you've taught me anything, it's that.'
I slipped the Lightstone out from beneath my armor and held it before me. Its hollows suddenly filled with the first rays of the sun rising over Tarkel's slopes, and I knew what he said was true.
'Thank you, Maram,' I said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. I pointed east at Tarkel. 'Now why don't we go get some of that beer I've promised you for at least the last thousand miles?'
The smile brightening his face reminded me that no matter how fiercely I might miss Atara and the rest of our company, others whom I loved were waiting for me beneath the shining mountains of my home.
Chapter 47
About a mile from our camp, Atara found a ford over the Diamond River and led Liljana, Daj and Kane across it. Thus they entered the lands of the Adiri tribe, who were presently allied with the Kurmak. As she rode north on her red horse draped in her black-maned lion's skin, I had no fear for her - only a great doubt if I would ever see her again.
In the quiet of the morning, I rode with Maram and Master Juwain east along the river. There were no boundary stones to mark the exact place where Altaru first set his hoof upon Meshian soil. But when the steppe gave way to the low foothills fronting the Shoshan Range of the Morning Mountains, I knew that we would find no Sarni farming the rocky ground or tending flocks of sheep on the pastures, but only Valari waniors who followed the standard of King Shamesh.
A fortress, built beneath Tarkel's lower slopes, stood looking down upon the Diamond River and the valley through which it cut. It was a great square construction, with thick granite walls - one of the twenty-two kel keeps that ringed my father s kingdom. Politeness demanded that we make our way up to it and pay our respects to its commander. And the knights and warriors who manned its walls would have demanded this too if we had tried to ride past it. In truth, there was no way that three unknown men could simply ride out of the Wendrush into Mesh along the river without being seen and stopped.
And so we were met at the north gate by fifty warriors in mail and the keep's commander, a long-faced, jowly man whose long hair had gone almost completely gray. He presented himself as Lord Manthanu of Pushku. He had summoned forth the entire garrison to witness the strange sight of three men, who obviously were not Sarni, coming unscathed out of the Sarni's lands.
'And who,' Lord Mantham called out as we stopped just inside the gate, 'are you?'
His men were lined up on either side of the road leading from the gate, their hands gripping their kalamas should they need to draw them. I did not recognize any of them. It seemed that the keep was garrisoned with warriors from the lands along the Sawash River, a part of Mesh I had visited only once ten years before.
'My name,' I said, throwing back my cloak to reveal the swan and stars of my much-worn surcoat, 'is Valashu Elahad.'
Like a lightning flash, Lord Manthanu whipped out his kalama and pointed it at me.
And nearly as quickly, his fifty warriors drew their swords, too.
'Impossible!' Lord Manthanu called out. 'Sar Valashu was killed last spring in Ishka, in the Black Bog. We had reports of it.'
' That is news to me,' I said with a smile. 'It would seem that the Ishkans reported wrongly. My name is as I've said. And my friends are Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu and Master Juwain of the Brotherhood.'
After much discussion we convinced them of who we really were. It turned out that one of the keep's stonemasons making repairs to its battlements had once done work for the Brothers at their sanctuary near Silvassu. Upon being summoned, he greeted Master Juwain warmly, for Master Juwain had once healed him of a catarrh of the eyes that had nearly blinded him.
'Sar Valashu, my apologies,' Lord Manthanu said. He sheathed his sword and clasped my hand. 'But the Ishkans did send word that you had perished in the Bog.
How did you escape it?'
Maram took this opportunity to say, 'That might be a story best told over a glass of beer.' 'It might,' Lord Manthanu admitted, 'but this is no time for drinkfests.' 'How so?' Maram asked.
'Haven't you heard? But of course not - you've been off on that foolish quest. Did you ever make it as far as Tria?'
'Yes,' I said, smiling again, 'we did. But please tell us these tidings that have all your men drawing swords on their countrymen.'
Lord Manthanu paused only a moment before saying, 'We received word only yesterday that the Ishkans are marching on Mesh. We're to meet in battle on the fields between the Upper Raaswash and the Lower.'
So, I thought, it had finally come to this. Autumn having reached its fullness, and the year's barley safely grown and harvested, the Ishkans had succeeded in calling out the battle that they had long sought 'Has a date been appointed?' I asked.
'Yes, the sixteenth.'
'And today is the twelfth, is that right?'
Lord Manthanu's eyes widened as he asked, 'Where have you been that you are in doubt of the date?'
'We have been,' I told him, 'in a dark place, the darkest of places.' It seemed that while all the Sarni tribes from Galda to the Long Wall knew of our adventure in Argattha, word of this had not yet penetrated beyond the wall of the Morning Mountains. I decided that this was no time to tell of our journey - and certainly not to show the golden cup that we had brought out of the bowels of Skartaru.
I bowed my head then and said, 'Lord Manthanu, as you can see, we haven't much time. Will you supply us with food and drink that we might ride on as soon as possible?'
Maram was now quite alarmed by what he heard in my voice. He looked at me and said, 'But Val, you can't be thinking of riding to this battle?'
I was
thinking exactly that, and he knew it. I told him, 'The King has called all free knights and warriors to the Raaswash. And the King himself gave me this ring.'
I made a fist to show Maram my knight's ring with its two sparkling diamonds. The fifty warriors lined up by the gate looked on approvingly. And so did Lord Manthanu.
'It's our duty to remain here and miss the greatest battle in years, and more's the pity,' he said. 'But, Sar Valashu, it seems that fortune has favored you. You've arrived home just in time seek honor and show brave.'
So I had, I thought. But I feared that fate had brought me back to Mesh so that I must witness the death or wounding of my brothers beneath the Ishkans' swords.
Maram, who hadn't yet reconciled himself to another battle, looked at me and said,
'It's a good hundred miles from here to the Raaswash - and mountain miles at that.
How can we hope to cover this distance in only four days?'
'By riding fast,' I told him. 'Very fast.'
'Oh, oh,' he said, rubbing his hindquarters. Despite Master Juwain's ministrations, he still complained of hurts taken from the two arrows shot into him in the battle for Khaisham. 'My poor body!'
While five of Lord Manthanu's men went to take charge of filling our saddlebags with oats, salt pork and other supplies, I turned to Maram and said, 'This isn't your battle. No one will think worse of you if you remain here and rest or go straight on to the Brotherhood's sanctuary with Master Juwain.'
'No, I suppose they wouldn't,' he said. 'But I would think worse of myself. Do you think I've ridden by your side across half of Ea to leave you to the Ishkans at the last moment?'
We clasped hands then, and he gripped mine so hard that his fingers squeezed like a vise against my knight's ring.
'I'm afraid I won't be leaving either,' Master Juwain said. He rubbed the back of his bald head and sighed. 'If a battle must be fought, if it really is, then there will be much healing to be done.'
After Lord Manthanu had seen to our provisioning, we thanked him and bade him farewell. Then we rode forth out of the gate and found our way to the Kel Road leading along the border of Ishka. As always, my father's men had kept it in good repair. We urged the horses to a greater effort and so cantered at a fast pace toward the northeast corner of my father's kingdom.
All that day the weather held fair, and we made good time. It was one of the most beautiful seasons of the year with the foliage of the trees just past the most brilliant colors. The maples lining the road waved their bright red leaves in the sun while on the higher slopes, the yellows of the aspens were a yellow blaze against the deep blue sky. We passed by pastures whitened with flocks of sheep and by fields golden with the chaff of freshly cut barley. That night we took shelter in the house of a woman named Fayora. She fed us mutton and black barley bread, and asked us to look for her husband, Sar Laisu, if we should see him on the field of the Raaswash.
The next day - the thirteenth of Valte - found us struggling across and around some of the Shoshan's highest peaks. We pounded across a bridge spanning one of the tributaries of the Diamond, then came to two more kel keeps before crossing over this icy blue river's headwaters where they wound down from the south toward Ishka. We had hoped to make it as far as Mount Raaskel by evening; but for the horses sake, to say nothing of Maram's poor hindquarters, we felt compelled to spend the night at the kel keep only a few miles from the bridge.
'You'll have some hard travel tomorrow,' Master Tadru the keep's commander, told us. 'From here to the North Road, the way is very steep.'
And so it was. In the hard frost of the next morning, before the sun had risen, the horses' breath steamed out into the air as they drove forward up the Kel Road. Here, its ice-slicked stones turned away from Mount Raaskel, rising up like a white horn to the north of us. The road led south for a few miles, before turning back north and east again. We passed up a hot meal offered us at the keep where the Kel Road intersected the North Road On our journey into Ishka, we had stopped here to greet the keep's commander, Lord Avijan. But the keep's new commander, Master Sivar, informed us that we would be hard-pressed to join Lord Avijan in-time for the meeting with the Ishkans two days hence.
'The battle is to begin in the morning,' he admonished us, 'and it won't wait upon one late knight, even if he is King Shamesh's son.'
We paused at the keep only long enough to give the horses oats and water - and to gaze up the North Road where it led through the Telemesh Gate into Ishka. There, on the snowfield between Raaskel and Korukel, with its twin peaks and ogre-like humps, the white bear sent by Morjin had attacked us and nearly put an end to our quest at its very beginning. It gave us grim satisfaction to know that the Lord of Illusions would not he making ghuls of animals or men for quite some time to come.
That afternoon we passed through Ki; as on our journey into Ishka, we found that we didn't have time for a hot bath at one of its inns, nor for the beer that 1 had promised Maram. We left its little chalets and shops quickly behind us. Only one kel keep graced the long stretch of road between Ki and the Raaswash, and I wanted to reach it before nightfall.
We found this cold, spare fortress to be nearly emptied of supplies, which had been sent off in wagons toward the battlefield to the east. Our rest there that night was brief and troubled. For the first time since Argattha, I had bad dreams, none of which had been sent by Morjin. 1 was only too happy to arise in the darkness before dawn and saddle Altaru for another long day's ride.
It was a good thirty miles from the keep to the Lower Raaswash, and then perhaps another seven to the appointed battlefield. I didn't know how we would be able to cover this distance in a single day. It was a cold morning with wisps of clouds high in the sky and a shifting of the wind that presaged a storm. Although the forest beyond the keep's battlements smelled sweetly of woodsmoke and dry leaves, there hung in the crisp autumn air a certain bitterness: both our remembrance of what we had lost on our long journey and a presentiment of what the following day's battle might still take from us.
I didn't need spurs or the silver-handled quirt that the Niuriu's chieftain, Vishakan, had given me to hurry Altaru onward. As always, he sensed my urgency to cover ground quickly, and he led the other horses in moving down the road with all the speed their driving hooves could purchase against the worn paving stones. My fierce warhorse smelled battle ahead of us - and not a battle where he must hide behind walls while the Blues and other warriors came howling over battlements, but a great gathering of warriors in long, shining lines and companies of cavalry thundering over grass toward each other. He was a fearless animal, I thought and I envied him his trust that the future would somehow take care of itself and come ouf? all right.
It grew colder all that day as we rode along; by early afternoon, the sky was growing heavy with clouds. The first snowflakes of the season's first snow began falling a few hours later. Maram, pulling his cloak around himself, offered his opinion that the hand of fate had fallen against us and now we had no hope of reaching the battlefield by the morrow. 'Perhaps they'll call the battle off,' he said as our horses clopped along the road. 'It's no fun fighting through snow.'
I looked at him past the fluffy white crystals sifting slowly down from the sky. I said to him, 'They won't call off the battle, Maram. And so we must ride, even faster, if we can.'
'Ride through the snow, then?'
'Yes,' I said. 'And we'll ride through the night, if we have to.' Although we had suffered much worse cold in the Nagarshath, we had been hoping by this day for the warmth of our home fires and our journey's end. If the storm had proved a heavy one, it might have gone badly for us. As it was, however, it snowed for only a couple of hours. And a couple of hours after that the clouds began breaking up. By dusk, with the air growing dark and icy, the sky was beginning to fill with stars. 'It seems,' I said to Maram, 'that fate may yet offer us a chance.'
'Yes, to throw ourselves onto the Ishkan's spears,' he muttered. He wiped the frost from his mustache, then said t
o me, 'Do you remember that day in Lord Harsha's fields? He said that the next time the Ishkans and Meshians lined up for battle, you'd be there at the front of your army.'
Master Juwain, making a rare joke, looked at Maram from on top of his tired horse and said, 'I didn't know Mesh produced such scryers. 'Perhaps we should have taken him with us on our journey as well.'
This suggestion produced nothing but groans from Maram. He turned toward me and said, 'Lord Harsha is too old to go off to war, isn't he? Now there's a man I don't want to meet decked out for battle.'
'We're likely to meet only the dead on the battlefield,' I said to him, 'if we don't hurry.'
That evening we ate our supper in our saddles: a cold meal of cheese, dried cherries and battle biscuits that nearly broke our teeth. We rode far into the cold night. The many stars and the bright half-moon opened up the black sky and gave enough light so that we could follow the whitened road as it wound like a strand of shimmering silver along the mountains toward the east. It would have been safest for us to cleave to the Kel Road and take it all the way to the keep by the gorge of the lower Raaswash.
There the road from Mir, by which my father's army had marched, came up from the south and followed the river for seven miles as it flowed northeast toward the Upper Raaswash. But for us, coming from the west, this was not the quickest way toward the battlefield. I knew of another road that led straight from the Kel Road down to the Upper Raaswash. 'Are you asking us to cut through the mountains on a snowy night?' Maram asked incredulously when I told him of my plan. 'Have you lost your wits?'
'Is this wise?' Master Juwain asked as we stopped the horses for a quick rest. 'Your shortcut will save only a few miles.'
I looked up at the stars where the Swan constellation was practically flying across the sky. I said, 'It may save an hour of our journey - and the difference between life and death.'
'Very well,' he said, steeling himself for the last leg of a hard ride. 'Ah, I think I've lost my wits,' Maram said, 'following you this far.'
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