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I looked back and forth between Maram and Kane as they glared at each other. I did not think that either of them was quite telling the truth. I rested my hand on Maram’s shoulder as I caught Kane’s gaze. And I said, ‘No one is going to be left behind. And we will fulfill this quest, as we did the first.’
Just then Master Juwain, sitting with our other friends by the fire, finished writing something in one of his journals and came over to us. He was as small as Maram was large and as ugly as Kane was well-made. His head somewhat resembled a walnut, and a misshapen one at that: all lumpy and bald with a knurled nose and ears that stuck out too far. But I had never known a man whose eyes were so intelligent and clear. Like the rest of us, he wore a gray traveling cloak, though he refused to bind his limbs in steel rings or carry any weapon more deadly than the little knife he used to sharpen his quills.
‘Come,’ he said as he grasped Maram’s wrist. ‘If we’re to hold council, let us all sit together. Liljana is nearly finished making dinner.’
I looked over toward the fire where a plump, matronly woman bent over a pot of bubbling stew. A girl about ten years old sat next to her making cakes on a griddle while a boy slightly older poked the fire with a long, charred stick.
‘Excellent,’ Maram agreed, ‘we’ll eat and then we’ll talk.’
‘You would talk more cogently,’ Master Juwain told him, ‘if you would take your drink after you eat. Or forbear it altogether.’
With fierce determination, Master Juwain suddenly clamped his knotted fingers around Maram’s mug. His small hands were surprisingly strong, from a lifetime of disciplines and hard work, and he managed to pry free the mug from Maram’s thick palm.
Maram eyed the mug as might a child a candy that has been taken from him. He said, ‘I have forborne my brandy these last three days, waiting for the Red Knights to attack us, too bad. As for talk, cogent as it is clever, please don’t forget that I’m now called Five-Horned Maram.’
Once, a lifetime ago it seemed, Maram had been an adept of the Great White Brotherhood under the tutelage of Master Juwain, and everyone had called him ‘Brother Maram.’ But he had long since abjured his vows to forsake wine, women and war. Now he wore steel armor beneath his cloak and bore a sword that was nearly as long and keen as my own. Less than a year before, in the tent of Sajagax, the Sarni’s mightiest chieftain, he had become the only man in memory to down five great horns of the Sarni’s potent beer – and to remain standing to tell everyone of his great feat.
Kane continued glaring at Maram, and again he poked his steely finger into his belly. He said, ‘You’d do well to forbear brandy and bread, at least for a while. Are you trying to kill yourself, as well as your horse?’
In truth, ever since the Battle of Culhadosh Commons and the sack of my father’s castle, Maram had been eating enough for two men and drinking more than enough for five.
‘Forbear, you say?’ he muttered to Kane. ‘I might as well forbear life itself.’
‘But you’re growing as fat as a bear.’
Maram patted his belly and smiled. ‘Well, what if I am? Haven’t you seen a bear eat when winter is coming?’
‘But it’s Ashte – in another month, summer will be upon us!’
‘No, my friend, there you’re wrong,’ Maram told him, with a shake of his head and another belch. ‘Wherever we journey, it will be winter – and deep winter at that, for we’ll be deep into this damn new quest. Do you remember the last time we went tramping all across Ea? I nearly starved to death. And so is it not the soul of prudence that I should fortify myself against the deprivations that are sure to come?’
Kane had no answer against this logic. And so he snapped at Maram: ‘Fortify yourself then, if you will. But at least forbear your brandy until there’s a better time and place to drink it.’
So saying, he took the mug from Master Juwain and moved to empty its contents onto the grass.
‘Hold!’ Maram cried out. ‘It would be a crime to waste such good brandy!’
‘So,’ Kane said, eyeing the dark liquor inside the mug. ‘So.’
He smiled his savage smile, as if the great mystery of life’s unfairness pleased him almost as much as it pained him. Then, with a single, quick motion, he put the mug to his lips and threw down the brandy in three huge gulps.
‘Forbear yourself, damn you!’ Maram called out to him.
‘Damn me? You should thank me, eh?’
‘Thank you why? For saving me from drunkenness?’
‘No – for taking a little pleasure from this fine brandy of yours.’
Kane handed the mug back to Maram, who stood looking into its hollows.
‘Ah, well, I suppose one of us should have savored it,’ he said to Kane. ‘It pleases me that it pleased you so deeply, my friend. Perhaps someday I can return the favor – and save you from becoming a drunk.’
Kane smiled at this as Maram began laughing at the little joke he had made, and so did Master Juwain and I. One mug of brandy had as much effect on the quenchless Kane as a like amount of water would on all the sea of grasses of the Wendrush.
I looked at Kane as I tapped my finger against Maram’s cup. I said, ‘Perhaps we should all forbear brandy for a while.’
‘Ha!’ Kane said. ‘There’s no need that I should.’
‘The need is to encourage Maram to remain sober,’ I said. I couldn’t help smiling as I added, ‘Besides, we all must make sacrifices.’
Kane looked at Maram for an uncomfortably long moment, and then announced, ‘All right then, if Maram will vow to forbear, so shall I.’
‘And so shall I,’ I said.
Maram blinked at the new moisture in his eyes; I couldn’t quite tell if our little sacrifice had moved him or if the prospect of giving up his beloved brandy made him weep. And then he clapped me on the arm as he nodded at Kane and said, ‘You would do that for me?’
‘We would,’ Kane and I said with one breath.
‘Ah, well, that pleases me more than I could ever tell you, even if I had a whole barrel full of brandy to loosen my tongue.’ Maram paused to dip his fat finger down into the mug, moistening it with the last few drops of brandy that clung to its insides. Then he licked his finger and smiled. ‘But I must say that I would wish no such deprivation upon my friends. Just because I suffer doesn’t mean that the rest of the world must, too.’
I glanced at the campfires of our enemies, then I turned back to look at Maram. ‘In these circumstances, we’ll gladly suffer with you.’
‘Very well,’ Maram said. Then he nodded at Master Juwain. ‘Sir, will you be a witness to our vows?’
‘Even as I was once before,’ Master Juwain said dryly.
‘Excellent,’ Maram said. ‘Then unless it be needed for, ah, medicinal purposes, I vow to forbear brandy until we find the one we seek.’
‘Ha!’ Kane cried out. ‘Rather let us say that unless Master Juwain prescribes brandy for medicinal purposes, we shall all forbear it.’
‘Excellent, excellent,’ Maram agreed, nodding his head. He held up his mug and smiled. ‘Then why don’t we all return to the fire and drink one last toast to our resolve?’
‘Maram!’ I half-shouted at him.
‘All right, all right!’ he called back. The breath huffed out of him, and for a moment he seemed like a bellows emptied of air. ‘I was just, ah, testing your resolve, my friend. Now, why don’t we all go have a taste of Liljana’s fine stew. That, at least, is still permitted, isn’t it?’
We all walked back to the fire and sat down on our sleeping furs set out around it. I smiled at Daj, the dark-souled little boy that we had rescued out of Argattha along with the Lightstone. He smiled back, and I noticed that he was not quite so desperate inside nor small outside as when we had found him a starving slave in Morjin’s hellhole of a city. It was a good thing, smiling, I thought. It lifted up the spirit and gave courage to others. I silently thanked Maram for making me laugh, and I resolved to sustain my gladness of life as long as I could. This was the vow I had made, high on a sacred mountain above the castle where my mother and grandmother had been crucified.
Daj, sitting next to me, jabbed the glowing end of his firestick toward me and called out, ‘At ready! Let’s practice swords until it’s time to eat!’
He moved to put down his stick and draw the small sword I had given him when we had set out on our new quest. His enthusiasm for this weapon both impressed and saddened me. I would rather have seen him playing chess or the flute, or even playing at swords with other boys his age. But this savage boy, I reminded myself, had never really been a boy. I remembered how in Argattha he had fought a dragon by my side and had stuck a spear into the bodies of our wounded enemies.
‘It is nearly time to eat,’ Liljana called out to us. Her heavy breasts moved against her thick, strong body as she stirred the succulent-smelling stew. ‘Why don’t you practice after dinner?’
Although her words came out of her firm mouth as a question, sweetly posed, there was no question that we must put off our swordwork until later. Beneath her bound, iron-gray hair, her pleasant face betrayed an iron will. She liked to bring the cheer and good order of a home into our encampments by directing cooking, eating and cleaning, even talking, and many other details of our lives. I might be the leader of our company on our quest across Ea’s burning steppes and icy mountains, but she sought by her nature to try to lead me from within. Through countless kindnesses and her relentless devotion, she had dug up the secrets of my soul. It seemed that there was no sacrifice that she wouldn’t make for me – even as she never tired, in her words and deeds, of letting me know how much she loved me. At her best, however, she called me to my best, as warrior, dreamer and man. Now that the insides of my father’s castle had been burnt to ashes, she was the only mother I still had.
‘There will be no swordwork tonight,’ I said, to Liljana and Daj, ‘unless the Red Knights attack us. We need to hold council.’
‘Very well, then, but I hope you’re not still considering attacking them.’ Liljana looked through the steam wafting up from the stew, straight at Kane. She shook her head, then called out, ‘Estrella, are those cakes ready yet?’
Estrella, a dark, slender girl of quicksilver expressions and bright smiles, clapped her hands to indicate that the yellow rushk cakes – piled high on a grass mat by her griddle – were indeed ready to eat. She could not speak, for she, too, had been Morjin’s slave, and he had used his black arts to steal the words from her tongue. But she had the hearing of a cat; in truth, there was something feline about her, in her wild, triangular face and in the way she moved, instinctually and gracefully, as if all the features of the world must be sensed and savored. With her black curls gathered about her neck, her lustrous skin and especially her large, luminous eyes, she possessed a primeval beauty. I had never known anyone, not even Kane, who seemed so alive.
Almost without thought, she plucked one of the freshest cakes from the top of the piles and placed it in my hand. It was still quite hot, though not enough to burn me. As I took a bite out of it, her smile was like the rising sun.
‘Estrella, you shouldn’t serve until we’re all seated,’ Liljana instructed her.
Estrella smiled at Liljana, too, though she did not move to do as she was told. Instead, seeing that I had finished my cake, she gave me another one. She delighted in bringing me such little joys as the eating of a hot, nutty rushk cake. It had always been that way between us, ever since I had found her clinging to a cold, castle wall and saved her from falling to her death. And countless times since that dark night, in her lovely eyes and her deep covenant with life, she had kept me from falling into much worse.
‘The girl never minds me,’ Liljana complained. ‘She always does just as she pleases.’
I smiled because what she said was true. I watched as Estrella tried to urge one of the cakes into Liljana’s hand. She seemed not to resent Liljana’s stern looks or scolding; indeed, Liljana’s oppressive care for her and her desire to teach her good manners obviously pleased her, as did almost everything about the people she loved. Her will to be happy, I thought, was even greater than Liljana’s urge to remake the world as the paradise it had been in the Age of the Mother. It must have vexed Liljana that our quest depended utterly upon this wild, magical child.
‘She was a slave of the Red Priests,’ Kane said to Liljana. ‘So who can blame her for not wanting to be your slave, too?’
As Liljana paused in stirring the stew to glare at Kane, more wounded by his cruel words than angry, Master Juwain cleared his throat and said, ‘The closer we’ve come to Argattha, it seems, the more she has relished her freedom.’
We were, I thought, much too close to Morjin’s dark city, carved out of the dark heart of the black mountain called Skartaru. Our course across the Wendrush had inevitably brought us this way. And it seemed that it had inevitably brought the knights of Morjin’s Dragon Guard upon our heels.
As Estrella began passing out rushk cakes to everyone, Liljana called for Atara to sit down, and she began ladling the stew into wooden bowls. From out of the darkness at the edge of our encampment where our horses were hobbled, a tall woman appeared and walked straight toward us. And that, I thought, was a miracle, because a white cloth encircled her head, covering the hollows which had once held the loveliest and most sparkling pair of sapphire-blue eyes. Atara Ars Narmada, daughter of the murdered King Kiritan and Sajagax’s beloved granddaughter, moved with all the prowess of the princess and the warrior-woman that she was. In consideration of our quest, she had cast off the lionskin cloak that she usually wore in favor of plain gray woolens. Gone were the golden hoops that had once encircled her lithe arms and the lapis beads bound to her long, golden hair. Few, outside of the Wendrush, would recognize her as one of the Sarni. But in her hand she gripped the great, double-curved bow of the Sarni archers, and the Sarni knew her as the great imakla warrior of the Manslayer Society. I knew her as a scryer who had great powers of sight, in space and time, and most of all, as the only woman I could ever love.
‘Vanora, Suri and Mata,’ she told me, naming three of her sisters of the Manslayers, ‘will take watches tonight, so we won’t have to worry about the Zayak trying to steal the horses.’
For the thousandth time that day, I looked back in the direction where our enemy gathered. As Atara knew very well, I worried about much more than this.
She sat down between Liljana and Master Juwain, and picked up a bowl of stew. Before permitting herself to taste any of it, she continued her report: ‘Karimah has set patrols, so there won’t be any surprises. Bajorak has, too.’
In the deepening night, the steppe’s grasses swayed and glowed beneath the stars. There, crickets chirped and snakes slithered, hunting rabbits or voles or other prey. There, forty yards to our left, Bajorak and some thirty Danladi warriors sat around their fires roasting sagosk joints over long spits. And forty yards to our right, Karimah and her twelve Manslayers – women drawn from half a dozen of the Sarni tribes – prepared their own dinner. It was our greatest strategic weakness, I thought, that the Manslayers disdained camaraderie with the Danladi men. And that both contingents of our Sarni escort neither really liked nor trusted us.
‘I would sleep better tonight,’ Maram told her, ‘if the enemy weren’t so close.’
‘Hmmph, you sleep better than any man I’ve ever known, enemy or no enemy,’ Atara said to him. ‘But fear not, we Sarni rarely fight night battles. There won’t be any attack tonight.’
‘Are you speaking as a Sarni warrior or a scryer?’
In answer, Atara only smiled at him, and then returned to her dinner.
‘Ah, well,’ Maram continued, ‘I should tell you that it’s not the Zayak who really concern me, at least not until daybreak – and then I shall fear their arrows, too bad. No, it’s those damn Red Knights. What if they charge straight into our encampment while we’re sleeping?’
‘They won’t do that,’ Atara reassured him.
‘But what if they do?’
‘They won’t.’ Atara looked up at the bright moon. ‘They fear arrows as much as you do. And there’s enough light that they would still make good targets, at least at short range.’
I touched the hilt of my sword, sheathed beside me, and I said, ‘We can’t count on this.’
‘In three days,’ Atara said, ‘they’ve kept their distance. They haven’t the numbers to prevail.’
‘And that is precisely the point,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they are waiting for reinforcements.’
‘So, just so,’ Kane said as he squeezed his bowl of stew between his calloused hands. ‘And so, if there must be battle, we should take it to them before it’s too late.’
For three days and nights, I thought, my friends and I had been arguing the same argument. But now the mountains were drawing nearer, and a decision must be made.
‘We may not have the numbers to prevail, either,’ Atara said. She positioned her head facing Estrella and Daj, who sat across the fire from her. ‘And what of the children?’
The children, of course, were at risk no matter what course we chose: attacking our enemy would only expose them to recapture or death all the sooner. It was that way with all children everywhere, even in lands far away and still free. With Morjin in control of the Lightstone, uncontested, it would only be a matter of time before everyone on Ea was either put on crosses or enslaved.
‘I can fight!’ Daj suddenly announced, drawing out his small blade.
We all knew that he could. We all knew, too, that Estrella had a heart of pure fire. Her great promise, however, was not in fighting the enemy with swords but with a finer and deeper weapon. As her dark, almond eyes fixed on me, I felt in her an unshakeable courage – and her unshakeable confidence in me to lead us the right way.
‘We must either fight or flee,’ I said. ‘But if we do flee, flee where?’
‘We could still go into the mountains,’ Maram said. ‘But farther south of the Kul Kavaakurk. And then we could turn north toward the Brotherhood school. We’ll lose our enemy in the mountains.’
‘We’ll lose ourselves,’ Master Juwain put in. ‘Try to remember, Brother Maram, that –’
‘Sar Maram,’ Maram said, correcting him. He held up his hand to show the double-diamond ring that proclaimed him a Valari knight.
‘Sar Maram, then,’ Master Juwain said with a sigh. ‘But try to remember that this school has remained a secret from the Lord of Lies only because our Grandmaster has permitted knowledge of it to very few. No map shows its location. I may be able to find it – but only from the gorge called the Kul Kavaakurk.’
For the thousandth time, I scanned the ghostly, white wall of mountains to the west of us. Could we find this secret school of the Great White Brotherhood? And if by some miracle we did reach this place of power deep within the maze of mountains of the lower Nagarshath, would we find the Grandmaster still alive? And more importantly, would he – or any of the Brotherhood’s masters – be able to tell us in which land the Maitreya had been born? For it was said that this great Shining One might be able to wrest the Lightstone from Morjin, if not in the substance of the golden bowl, then at least in the wielding of it.
‘There must be such a gorge,’ I told Master Juwain. ‘We will certainly find it, if not tomorrow, then the next day.’
‘We would find it the easier,’ Atara said, ‘if we took Bajorak into our confidence. Surely he would know what gorges or passes give out onto the Danladi’s country.’
‘He might know,’ Master Juwain agreed. ‘But he might not know it by that name. And if we can help it, he must not know that name.’
He went on to say that Bajorak, under torture or the seduction of gold, might betray the name to Morjin. And that might key ancient knowledge of clues as to the school’s whereabouts.
‘If the Red Dragon discovered our greatest school so close to Argattha,’ he told us, ‘that would be a greater disaster than I can tell.’
The fire, burning logs of cottonwood that we had found by a stream, crackled and hissed. I stared into the writhing flames as I marvelled at the near-impossibility of this new quest. There were too many contingencies that must fall in our favor if we were to succeed. Would Estrella, I wondered, when the time came, really be able to show us the Maitreya, as had been prophesied? And if she did, was it not the slenderest of hopes that we would be able to spirit him to safety before Morjin succeeded in murdering him?
‘All right,’ I said, ‘we cannot go south, as Maram has suggested. Our choices, then, are either to turn and attack or to lead the way into this Kul Kavaakurk and hope that we can lose our enemy before we betray the way to the school.’
Master Juwain’s lips tightened in dismay because either alternative was repugnant to him.
‘Or,’ Maram put in, ‘we could still try to outride the Red Knights. If you’re concerned about me lagging and can’t bear to see me make a stand against them, I could always turn off in another direction and try to meet up with you later.’
I leaned over to grasp his arm, and I said, ‘No, you’d only make yourself easy prey, and I couldn’t bear that. Whatever we do, we’ll all stay together.’
‘Then perhaps we should make our way to Delu and stay there until next year.’
He went on to say that his father, King Santoval Marshayk, would provide us shelter – and perhaps even a ship and crew to sail the lands of Ea in search of the Maitreya.
