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Lord Tanu glanced behind me at Master Juwain, Atara and Liljana, and seemed to be looking for Kane, as well. And he said, ‘You keep strange company. You have a strange way about you, and nothing is stranger than the story people tell about you merely looking at the Alonian lord in Tria and somehow causing him to die.’
I gazed at the many knights gathered behind Lord Tanu. ‘I have not returned to Mesh to cause anyone to die – except Morjin and those who follow him. Release your warriors from their pledges to you that they might decide whether or not to follow me against the Red Dragon!’
Lord Tanu slowly shook his head at this like a bull preparing to charge. Then he called out to me: ‘Remove yourself from this road, and leave Mesh.’
I glanced down at the road’s paving stones, and I said, ‘My ancestors built this road, and my father saw to its maintenance. He would have wanted me to inspect it, when the time came. And he would not want me to ride off just because Lord Vishathar Tanu commanded it.’
Now Lord Tanu stared at me, in anger and dread. He pointed along the strip of land behind me, and barked out, ‘Our army marches through this pass!’
‘And here I stand!’
So saying, I dismounted, then gave my horse to the care of Sar Kanshar. I took a few steps toward Lord Tanu, out onto the bare road away from Sar Vikan and Joshu Kadar and the other knights accompanying me. They looked at me as if I had fallen mad, but I felt a great hope surging in them as well.
‘We will march,’ Lord Tanu said to me, ‘whether you stand or fall!’
I feared that I would fall, and soon. If Lord Tanu pressed his knights to move forward, jammed together in the narrow pass, one or more of their horses would inevitably knock me over, and then other horses would trample me to death.
‘If we cannot ride past you,’ Lord Tanu shouted, ‘we shall ride over you! I am not bluffing!’
‘Neither am I!’ I called back to him.
My reason told me that only I could be king of Mesh and find the way to defeat Morjin. But my heart cried out that if I died, I still might pass on the sacred sword of my dreams to others who would carry on the fight. Somehow, in the end, they would prevail. They must prevail, though it seemed impossible. Just as it seemed impossible that Lord Tanu would really command his knights to ride over me. Lord Tanu, though, did not make threats wantonly; I knew that he would let his knights’ horses drive me down to the road’s hard stones.
‘One last time, Lord Elahad, I’ll tell you to get off this road!’
I felt him steeling himself to press his knees against his horse and urge the great beast forward. Just then, from behind me, I heard the slap of boots against stone, as of someone running hard. I turned to see Estrella darting and weaving among the knights gathered behind me as she practically sprinted toward me. Daj followed close at her heels. I was never to learn how these two children found their way out of the castle; it seemed that once they had escaped, however, they had run the whole distance down to the pass. Estrella rushed up to my side, and threw her arms around me as she stood against me gasping for breath. Daj found his way to my other side, and his chest worked so hard to draw in air that it seemed his lungs might tear open. They looked up at Lord Tanu in defiance – and in fear, too.
‘What is this?’ Lord Tanu cried out to me. ‘Some trick of yours?’
In answer, I could only shake my head at him.
‘It is said,’ Lord Tanu cried out, ‘that these children accompanied you on your quest.’
In the way he gazed at Estrella, and then Daj, I wondered if he felt more keenly the loss of his two grandchildren, slaughtered when Morjin’s Red Knights had ravaged my father’s castle.
‘Well, this is no place for children,’ he continued. ‘Get them off the road!’
I moved to take hold of them, for I would not see either of them trampled to death, even for the sake of my dream. But then Daj took hold of my leg even as Estrella tightened her grip around my waist. Then, with a great and heavy sigh, Maram dismounted, too, and came forward to stand by me. So did Liljana, Master Juwain and Atara. At their show of courage, the knights behind me could do no less, and so Lord Avijan took his place on the road, along with Lord Harsha, Joshu Kadar, and everyone else.
‘I will remain with the Elahad!’ Joshu Kadar shouted, staring at Lord Tanu. He had no liking for this old man who had taken his young lady love away from him. ‘You won’t drive us away!’
‘I will remain, too!’ Sar Shivalad called out.
Estrella, locked on to me, gazed at Lord Tanu with no less defiance.
‘What is this?’ Lord Tanu cried out. ‘Must we ride over all of you?’
In the warmth of Estrella’s face pressed against my chest I felt her will to stand and die wherever I stood. So it was with my other companions and the knights who followed me, even Maram, who pressed up behind me and clasped his hand around my arm. Their hearts seemed to beat in unison like a single, great drum. In the immense silence that sounded out along the road above the lake, I gazed at Lord Tanu. And my heart filled with a wild and anguished love of life.
‘Ride, if you must,’ I said to him.
For a long time, he sat on top of his great warhorse staring down at me. He appeared at once sad, fearful and weighed down with a bittersweet longing. My companions drew in closer to me. I felt their élan passing into me and gathering in my eyes with a painful brightness. Lord Tanu stared and stared at me, and at last, a door inside him opened. Then his eyes grew all moist and glassy, like the waters of the lake.
‘I might have been wrong about you,’ he forced out in a harsh, thick voice. ‘I had thought you were vainglorious, like Lord Tomavar.’
He looked from Maram to Atara, and then at Lord Harsha, Lord Avijan and Joshu Kadar, still holding up my banner with the swan and stars. Then he said to me, ‘Too many adventurers are careless of their own lives, and those of others. But it might be that you are more like your father and grandfather. They would gladly have given their lives for the men who followed them – and did.’
I bowed my head at this, then so did Lord Tanu and everyone else. After a few moments, Lord Tanu turned to Lord Eldru and said, ‘Let us not ride any farther up this road today.’
He nodded at Lord Ramjay and Sar Shagarth, who nodded back at him. Then Lord Tanu said to Lord Avijan, standing a few paces from me: ‘We will take your word that your castle is well defended. But you should prepare your warriors to march forth from it within the week.’
‘And why is that?’ Lord Avijan asked him.
‘Because,’ Lord Tanu said, looking at me, ‘we shall call for a gathering of all the warriors in Mesh – even Lord Tomavar’s. Let it be as Valashu Elahad has said: all who have made pledges should be released from them. Let the warriors decide who shall be king!’
At this, Sar Vikan let loose a great cheer, which Jessu the Lion-Heart and Sar Shivalad and the other knights near me picked up and amplified, calling out: ‘Let the warriors decide!’
The knights who had pressed up close behind Lord Tanu must have sympathized with this sentiment, for they too repeated this cry. And then, like a command passed across a battlefield, the warriors drawn up in columns along the road shouted out that they should be allowed to stand for a new king. Their thousands of voices boomed out across the lake like a stroke of thunder.
‘Very well, then,’ Lord Tanu said, bowing his head to me. ‘Until the gathering, Lord Elahad.’
‘Until then, Lord Tanu,’ I said, bowing back to him.
It was no great work for Lord Tanu to call for his captains to turn his army about and begin marching back down the road, with the vanguard following those who marched on foot. We watched them go as they had come, a great mass of men and horses pounding at the road’s stone. When they had disappeared from our sight around the curve of the mountain, I looked down at Estrella, still clinging to me, and I said to her, ‘It was you who led the way out of the castle, wasn’t it?’
At this, she happily nodded her head as if she thought her action should have pleased me. Then Daj spoke for her, saying, ‘We couldn’t let you face Lord Tanu alone. He might have killed you!’
I tried to smile at him as I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Then Maram gazed down into the pass and muttered to me, ‘Do you see how it goes, then? We survive another urgent situation, only to be to be forced into yet another. A gathering of the warriors, indeed! Three armies will be at this gathering – and Lord Tomavar, I think, will be quicker to have his warriors draw swords than to release them from their pledges.’
At this, Sar Vikan stepped up to Maram, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘If that is the way of things, then I shall have the pleasure of fighting by your side again. Which of Lord Tomavar’s knights can stand against Sar Maram Marshayk?’
As Maram rolled his eyes at this and let out a soft groan, Lord Avijan came over to me. ‘Which of Mesh’s knights will fail to stand for Valashu Elahad as king?’
For a while we remained there above the deep, blue lake feeling very glad for our lives – and not a little amazed that our small force had been able to turn back Lord Tanu’s army without a single sword flying from its scabbard. I thought about Lord Avijan’s words to me. Of all the questions in my life, at that moment, it was the one I most wanted to be answered.
6 (#ulink_5c0a2f0e-666c-5918-94ce-ad99f758a6a9)
It took more than a week for Lord Tanu’s emissaries to ride across Mesh and arrange with Lord Tomavar a time and place for the gathering of the warriors: On the 21st of Soldru we were to converge on a great open meadow to the west of Hardu along the Arashar River. This field, where the Lake Country gave way to the Gorgeland at the very heart of the realm, was almost exactly equidistant from Mount Eluru, Godhra and Lord Tomavar’s stronghold in Pushku. Other claimants to the throne – Lord Ramanu, Lord Bahram and Lord Kharashan – would have to make longer journeys. As they had no hope of becoming king, however, few worried that they might take insult in not being given equal consideration. It had proved hard enough to persuade Lord Tomavar to attend the gathering. In the end, however, his innate character drove him straight toward this historic confrontation. Perhaps he suspected that Lord Tanu and I would join forces against him, and he wanted to forestall such a combination. More likely he simply assumed that he could go among Mesh’s warriors and win them to his banner with his bravura, a few quick smiles and a great show of strength.
As the spring deepened toward summer, warriors who had pledged to Lord Avijan continued riding up to his castle. By the ides of Soldru, almost all of these had arrived. Of course, there would always be a few who would miss the call to gather. As had happened with Sar Jonavar a year before, they might be away on hunting trips or meditation retreats deep in the mountains. These two or three dozen men, though, would not significantly diminish our forces, which Lord Avijan counted at more than twenty-three hundred. In combination with Lord Tanu’s army, I thought, we would slightly outnumber the six thousand warriors said to be pledged to Lord Tomavar.
At dawn on the 18th we finally marched out of the castle and down to the pass. I led forth with Joshu Kadar flying my banner beside me. A hundred and fifty knights on horses came next, followed by more than two thousand warriors stepping along at a good pace. At the rising of the sun, their full diamond armor glittered with a fiery brilliance. My companions had leave to ride where they would, and most of them remained within the vanguard near me, though from time to time, Atara would drop back behind the marching columns to check on the wagons of the baggage train and to look for enemies in that direction. Or perhaps, I thought, she just wanted to gain a few moments of solitude riding behind the whole of our army. Although we had no reason to fear attack, a lifetime of discipline drove me to keep everyone moving in good order. My army, almost ten times the size of the greatest force that I had ever led, needed no extraordinary urging to negotiate the excellent roads leading down to Hardu. My father had always said that half the skill of commanding an army was just to keep men moving from one point to another and then seeing them lined up in good array for battle – but only half, and much the lesser half at that.
Our first day’s march took us down the North Road a good part of the way to Hardu. On the second day we passed through this little city of waterwheels, mills and breweries, and we crossed over the Victory Bridge spanning the fast-flowing Arashar River. There we turned onto a smaller road paralleling it. It led north and west, behind the tree-covered slopes of Mount Vayu, and through some rolling green pastures toward the Gorgeland farther to the north. In the trough between two low hills, we came across acres of grass ablaze with blue and red starflowers. I knew of no other place on earth where these glorious things grew. A few miles farther on, however, where the road led away from the river, the flowers gave way to fields of long-bladed sweetgrass and the many sheep and cattle that grazed upon it.
At the end of the day, in a stretch of country where the hills flattened out a bit, we came upon the place of the gathering. This was a broad meadow perhaps a mile across. Acres of tents dotted the grass. Its center, though, had been kept clear, with many banners of truce flapping in the wind almost like great swans’ wings. According to our agreement with Lord Tanu’s emissaries, everyone was to encamp around a central square. Already Lord Tomavar’s army, marching from Lashku in the west, had settled in to the west of the square, while Lord Tanu’s four thousand men made camp to the south. Fanning out above the square’s northern perimeter I made out the standards of Lord Ramanu, Lord Bahram and Lord Kharashan. They commanded four hundred, two hundred and a hundred and fifty men respectively. Other warriors and knights – those who had not given their pledges to any lord – set up there as well. Most of them had arrived without tents of their own, and so I had a hard time counting their numbers. If Lord Avijan was right, though, more than two thousand of these free warriors, as they called themselves, would assert their right to stand or not for any lord wishing to be king.
We made our way down to the expanse of meadow east of the square, scarcely four hundred yards from the roaring Arashar River. There we set up our camp, with neat lanes at regular intervals running down the lines of our tents. I had inherited my father’s campaign pavilion: a great, billowing expanse of black silk embroidered with the silver swan and stars of our ancestors. My companions would sleep within tents next to mine, as would Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and my other counselors. I did not like being so close to the river. Although we would not have to haul water so far as Lord Tanu’s or Lord Tomavar’s men, everything I knew about strategy warned me against taking a position with a river or lake at my back. If the worst befell and a battle did break out, we would have little room to maneuver against what might prove a much greater force.
‘But I will not let it come to that,’ I promised Maram that evening as we gathered around one of our campfires to eat some roasted lamb. ‘And neither Lord Tanu or Lord Tomavar will break the truce.’
‘No, of course they won’t,’ Maram said between bites of bloody meat. ‘If it becomes obvious that the warriors want you as king, Lord Tomavar will march off beyond the bounds of the truce – and then turn and attack you farther down the river.’
For a while, after dinner, I stood at the edge of our encampment staring out across the square. Lord Tomavar stood with his knights in his encampment, staring back at me. Although the distance was too great to make out the features of his face with any clarity, I could see the black tower of the Tomavars emblazoned on his white surcoat. I sensed his black eyes seeking out my own and warning me not to oppose him.
As we had also agreed, we spent the night in our own encampment, with the warriors ordered to remain near their campfires, and so it was with Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu and their men. Although most of us had friends or kin in the other encampments, we had foes, too, and it wouldn’t do to let a little casual mingling lead to arguments that might very well end in swords drawn and warriors lying dead in pools of blood.
Despite Maram’s gloom, which he assuaged with cups of both beer and brandy, the night passed peacefully, and the next day dawned with clear blue skies and abundant sunshine. Lord Tomavar sent his emissaries across the square to the various encampments to call for an immediate conclave. But Lord Tanu would not be moved from his original plan: tomorrow would be the 21st of Soldru, and we must allow time for the last of the free warriors to arrive. The conclave, he said, must not begin before then.
Already, though, as Liljana pointed out, a sort of informal conclave had gotten underway. The news of the gathering had gone out to every corner of Mesh, and beyond. According to a long tradition, women and boys from Hardu arrived bearing food and drink for the warriors of our armies, and blacksmiths came up from Godhra to shoe horses and repair weapons or armor. Others, from Mir or the Diamond River clear across the realm, merely wished to be present at the choosing of a new king. They joined the throngs who set up little tents or made cookfires on the outskirts, around the warriors’ encampments. By late morning, it seemed a city of Meshians had sprung up overnight from the pasture’s thick grass.
A handful of outlanders also attended the gathering. On a trip down to the river, I saw five merchants from Delu and a dozen evacuees, from Galda and faraway Surrapam, who sought refuge in our land. From the Elyssu came a herbalist searching for rare botanicals, and this adventurous man inevitably found his way to consult with Master Juwain. A traveling troupe from Alonia, Nedu and points farther west decided to seek its fortune in entertaining the waiting warriors. They misjudged, however, the mood prevailing among those who had journeyed to this place: tense, wary and deadly serious. Few, it seemed, wanted to watch a juggler toss colored balls into the air or an acrobat walk across a tightrope – at least not yet.
Late in the afternoon, five warriors of the Manslayer Society arrived asking for the great imakla granddaughter of Sajagax. They rode their steppe ponies from Lord Tanu’s encampment down the rows of tents into ours. Their leader, a stout, ebullient woman named Karimah, I knew from two campaigns across the Wendrush. She could be quick with a drawn knife or a bow and arrow – and even quicker to smile and bandy words, with friend or foe. When Atara came forth to greet them, Karimah laughed out with great gladness and urged her horse forward so that she could kiss Atara’s hands and face. She leaned her head down close to Atara’s and spoke words that I could not hear. Then Atara went to saddle Fire. After leading this beautiful mare up to where I stood with Karimah and the others, she told me, ‘We must hold a conclave of our own. We shall try to be back by dinner.’ Without any further explanation, she rode off with her sister Manslayers. A burning disquiet worked at my throat as I watched them make their way through the many people ringing our encampment. Then they crested the hill to the north above the river, and disappeared.
And so Atara did not witness the miraculous event that stirred warriors in every encampment to break off their sword practice and rush to the edges of the square. From out of the south, along the crowded central lane running through Lord Tanu’s array of tents, a single rider appeared and made his way into the square. His close-cropped white hair gleamed in the sun almost as brightly as a steel helm. The lines of his sun-browned face – at once savage and beautiful and burning with a strange grace – had been set like cracks running through stone. His large, powerful body flowed with the movements of his nearly spent horse. He wore no armor, but only trousers and a torn, tainted shirt. A red arrow stuck out of his back. Whether this color came from the dyes that the Red Knights use to stain their arrows or from the man’s own blood was hard to tell. He seemed to give this deadly shaft of wood no thought, however, but only rode on toward our encampment with a rare ease and unquenchable will. His contempt for pain and what could only be a mortal wound amazed the tough Meshian warriors who looked upon him. Sar Vikan, straining to see at the edge of the square, suddenly cried out, ‘Look! It is Kane! Sar Kane has returned!’
‘Sar Kane!’ someone else shouted. And then half a hundred voices picked up the cry: ‘Sar Kane has returned! Bring a litter for Sar Kane!’
But my old friend would not be carried so long as he had the strength to command his own motions. And strength he still possessed, in an overflowing abundance that stunned those who watched him ride up to me. He sat tall and straight in his saddle, as if some vastly greater hand had sculpted him from a burning rock. Dressed in rags, dirty, bleeding, the air hissing out of the hole torn into his lung, Kane managed to look more regal than either Lord Tanu or Lord Tomavar – or, I imagined, myself.
‘So, Valashu,’ Kane said as he stopped his horse before me. ‘I did not come back too late.’
He dismounted, and I rushed forward to embrace him as best I could without disturbing the broken arrow embedded in him. His large, hard hands, however, thumped against my back without restraint. At last he stood away from me. His bright, black eyes drank in the delight in my eyes. And with a savage smile, he growled out, ‘Ha – but it is good to be back! Let us go somewhere we can talk.’
Just then Master Juwain, followed by Liljana, Maram, Estrella and Daj, pushed through the throngs of knights surrounding us. Master Juwain hurried up to Kane and looked at him gravely. ‘First, I should draw that arrow.’
‘No – the arrow remains where it has been for four hundred miles, and will still be there when you need to go to work on me. But right now, I’ve tidings that must be told.’
I led the way toward my pavilion then, and Sar Vikan, Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and others cleared a path forus. Although Kane walked with all the smooth power of a tiger, I could almost feel the agony of the arrow grinding against his ribs and searing his lungs. My companions and I went inside my huge tent, where Alphanderry joined us in a splash of glittering lights. Daj pulled the flaps closed behind us. We sat on one of the carpets there, in a circle, as if gathering around a fire on one of our campaigns. From one of the braziers heaped with hot coals, Master Juwain removed an iron pot full of hot water and prepared Kane a cup of tea that would help keep the blood inside Kane, or so he said.
‘I’ve bad tidings from Galda,’ Kane told us without further ado. ‘The revolt has failed. Gallagerry the Defiant defies no one anymore: the Dragon Guard captured him, and the Red Priests crucified him. His followers are being hunted down. And Morjin …’
Here he paused to take a sip of tea as he grimaced in pain. Then he continued, ‘I was not able to determine if it was Morjin who led the Dragon Guard and the Karabukers into Galda, or only one of his droghuls. I think it was he. All of Galda reeks with his stench. The Galdans are gathering their armies again – exactly why, no one would say. But everywhere I heard soldiers speak of marching forth on a great crusade.’
He took another sip of tea, and stared into the dark liquid of his cup. And he muttered, ‘So, my crusade failed, eh? Everyone except myself captured or killed.’
‘Everyone?’ Maram said, looking at him. ‘Do you mean your knights of the Black Brotherhood?’
In answer, Kane just stared at him in a dark, dreadful silence – and that was answer enough.
‘Then you had to flee,’ Maram prompted him, ‘so that you could tell us this news?’
Kane shook his fearsome head. ‘With my men held captive and Morjin still on the loose, I would not have fled. But there is something that I learned that overruled these considerations.’
Here he looked straight at me, and added, ‘There is something that has been sent to destroy you, Valashu. A dark thing, so damned dark – you cannot know.’
At this, I stared into the corner of the tent, where I could feel an emptiness pulling at me. Then Alphanderry, sitting across from Kane, recounted our battle with the Ahrim in the woods near Lord Harsha’s farm and our speculations as to its nature. He said, ‘It followed us all the way from the Skadarak, and so we thought it must be some part of the Skadarak.’
‘No,’ Kane said, ‘the Ahrimana is something worse – much worse.’
He moved to take another sip of tea, then looked up at the tent’s roof as if his eyes could pierce the black silk to gaze at the heavens.
‘So, it came through the Skadarak,’ he told us. ‘From far, far away it came. The Dark One, Angra Mainyu, sent it from Damoom. It is all his malice and spite, the very shadow of his soul. In a way, his herald.’
‘His herald!’ Maram cried out. ‘But it was so powerful! It nearly killed Val!’
At this, Kane looked at me as he shook his head. ‘This you must know about the Ahrimana: it has no power, of its own. But the power you give it, which it seeks out as a leech does blood, that power can burn you like hellfire and utterly destroy you.’
Upon speaking these words, Kane’s immense strength finally seemed to fail him. Air bubbled out of his back in a sprinkling of bright red blood as if he could no longer will his veins to keep his life’s essence within him. His eyes closed, for a moment, and he seemed ready to topple over.
‘That is enough for today’ Master Juwain said, going over to Kane. He positioned his small body against Kane’s side to prop him up. ‘I don’t know how you learned of what you have told us, or how you could ride four hundred miles with an arrow in your lung. But I’ve got to draw it, now, or even you might be destroyed.’
Kane slowly nodded his head at this. Then I called for a litter, and Kane had to consent to being carried from my pavilion into Master Juwain’s smaller and starkly furnished tent. There, with Liljana’s help and that of two other healers, Master Juwain went to work with his gleaming steel instruments to draw the barbed arrow from deep within Kane’s flesh. This difficult surgery nearly killed the unkillable Kane. Finally, though, with a great spray of blood, Master Juwain pulled free the arrow. He used his green gelstei to stop the ferocious hemorrhaging and heal the terrible wound torn into Kane. Finally, he helped Kane drink a tea that would make him sleep.
‘I shall stay with him the rest of today and tonight,’ Master Juwain told me. He looked over toward his own bed, where Kane rested with his eyes closed. ‘Liljana will stay, too. But there is no need for you to remain here – you must have many things to do.’
I did indeed have matters to attend to, though none so important as seeing Kane restored to himself. I waited by his side all the rest of the afternoon, through dinner and late into the evening. And then as the night deepened and the stars came out, Atara finally returned with news of her own. She stepped into Master Juwain’s tent, and came over to kiss Kane’s forehead. She smiled sadly as if she had looked upon his still form a thousand times. Then she said to me, ‘May I speak with you alone?’
I nodded my head at this. We went outside and walked along the rows of campfires, where warriors gathered drinking beer and telling of deeds at the Culhadosh Commons, and other battles. Joshu Kadar and a few knights kept a vigil outside my pavilion. No one seemed bothered that I should hold council inside alone with Atara. I closed the flaps behind us, and went around this large space lighting the many candles in their stands. They cast little, flickering lights on the long council table and the tent’s walls and ceiling. Atara and I sat facing each other on a red carpet at the center of the tent.
‘We are as alone as we can be,’ I said, gazing at the blindfold that bound her face. ‘What is troubling you?’
Atara cocked her head as if listening for eavesdroppers along the walls. ‘It might be better if we took a walk in the hills.’
I laughed softly at this, and told her, ‘Joshu Kadar and Shivalad, to say nothing of Lord Avijan, would never allow that. Now that the gathering has begun, they look for assassins everywhere. They don’t even like me to walk around our own encampment alone.’
Atara smiled grimly at this, then her deep, dulcet voice grew even lower. ‘It is beginning, Val. At last, this terrible, terrible future that I have seen for too long is upon us.’
I moved even closer to her, and covered her hot, long hand with mine. Outside the tent came the sound of crickets chirping and men chanting out the ancient epics. Inside, it was nearly so quiet that I could hear the drumbeat of Atara’s heart – and my own.
‘Kane,’ I whispered to her, ‘said that in Galda, people spoke of a great crusade. I didn’t think Morjin could be ready to order forth his armies so soon.’
She drew out her scryer’s crystal, and she pressed this sphere of white gelstei against her forehead. ‘I don’t know that he is. But he makes ready something. Out on the Wendrush. Karimah told me that the Zayak have crossed the Blood River, the Janjii, too. It can only be that they have gone to join with the Marituk. From the south, there have come reports that the Tukulak are making common cause with the Danyak and Usark.’
‘Kane always said,’ I murmured, squeezing her hand, ‘that Morjin would try to unite the Sarni before falling against the Nine Kingdoms.’
Atara smiled sadly as she cupped her clear crystal in her free hand. ‘He will never unite all the Sarni – not so long as my grandfather can pull a bow. Sajagax has called for the tribes to join with the Kurmak in alliance against Morjin.’
‘Is this the news that Karimah brought you?’
‘Yes, in part.’
‘Sajagax,’ I said, remembering, ‘is a great man. But most of the tribes favor Morjin, do they not?’
‘Yes, most,’ she told me, nodding her head. ‘But not the Niuriu, nor the central Urtuk. Nor the Adirii, most of the clans, and probably not the Danladi. And then there are the Manslayers.’
At the mention of these most willful of warriors, drawn from every Sarni tribe, I gazed at Atara and waited for her to say more.
