Читать книгу The Lightstone: The Silver Sword: Part Two - David Zindell, David Zindell - Страница 9

The Count himself led the charge up the hill. He was daring enough to show brave, but cunning enough to know that his knights wouldn’t let him ride right onto our swords unprotected and alone. As their horses wheezed and sweated and pounded up the steep slope, two of his knights spurred their mounts slightly ahead of him to act as living shields. And it was well for him that they did. For just then, behind me, a bowstring twanged and an arrow buried itself in the lead knight’s chest. I heard Atara call out, ‘Twenty-three!’ A few moments later, another arrow sizzled through the roiling air, only to glance off the Count’s shield. And then he and his men were upon us.

The first knight to crest the hill – a big, burly man with fear-maddened eyes – drove his horse straight toward me. But due to his uphill charge, he had little momentum and less balance in his saddle; with Altaru’s hooves planted squarely in the earth, the point of my lance took him in the throat and drove clean through him. The force of his fall ripped the lance from my grasp. I heard him screaming, but then realized that he was going to his death in near silence, a wheeze of bloody breath escaping from his ruined throat and nothing more. The scream was all inside me. It built louder and louder until it seemed that the earth itself was shrieking in agony as it split asunder beneath me and pulled me down toward a black and bottomless chasm.

‘Val!’ Kane called out from somewhere nearby. ‘Draw your sword!’

I heard his sword slice the air and cleave through the gorget surrounding a knight’s neck. I was vaguely aware of Maram fumbling with his red crystal and trying to catch a few rays of sun with which to burn the advancing knights. Master Juwain, to my astonishment, scooped up the shield of the man I had unhorsed; he held it protecting Liljana from another knight’s sword as she tried to urge her horse toward Count Ulanu. Behind me, to the right and left, Atara and Alphanderry worked furiously with their swords to beat back the attack of yet more knights who were trying to flank us along the rear of the hill and take us from behind.

With a trembling hand, I drew forth Alkaladur. The long blade gleamed in the light of the sun. The sight of the silver gelstei shining so brilliantly dismayed Count Ulanu and his men, even as it drove back the darkness engulfing me. My mind suddenly cleared and a fierce strength flowed up my hand into my arm, a strength that felt as bottomless as the sea. It was as if I were drawing Altaru’s surging blood into me, and more, the very fires of the earth itself.

The Bright Sword flared white then, so brilliant and dazzling that the nearest knights cried out and threw their arms over their eyes. But other knights and the three Blues pressed toward me. Kane was near me, too, cutting and killing and cursing. Horses collided with each other, snorted and screamed. Altaru, steadying me and freely lending me his great strength, turned his wrath on any who tried to harm me. An unhorsed knight tried to hammer my back with his mace; Altaru kicked out, catching him in the chest and knocking him over. And then, even as Urturuk, the Blue with the missing ear, came for me with his huge axe, Altaru backed up to trample the fallen knight with his sharp hooves. He struck down with tremendous force, again and again until the knight’s head was little more than white bones and broken brains beneath his crumpled helm.

‘Val – on your right!’

I narrowly pulled back from Urturuk’s ferocious axe blow that would have chopped through Altaru’s neck. Altaru, now sensing the enemy’s strategy of trying to kill him to get at me, furiously bit out at Urturuk, taking a good chunk of flesh from his shoulder. Urturuk seemed not to notice this ugly wound. He drove straight toward Altaru again, his mouth fairly frothing with wrath, this time trying to split open his skull.

At last I swung Alkaladur. It arced downward in a silvery flash, cutting through the axe’s iron-hard haft and into Urturuk’s bare chest, cleaving him nearly in two. The spray of blood from his opened chest nearly blinded me. I almost didn’t see one of the Count’s knights coming at me from the other side. But a sudden whinny and tensing of Altaru’s body told me of his attack. I whirled about, swinging Alkaladur again. Its terrible, star-tempered edge cut through both shield and the mailed forearm behind it, and then bit into the steel rings covering the knight’s belly. He cried out to see his arm fall away like a pruned tree limb, and plunged to the ground screaming out his death agony.

‘Take him!’ Count Ulanu screamed to his knights scarcely a dozen yards from me. ‘Can’t you take one damned Valari!’

Perhaps his men could have taken us but for Kane’s fury and the suddenly unleashed terror of my sword. Then, too, they were disadvantaged by trying to cripple and capture us rather than kill. With knights now pressing us on all sides, I urged Altaru toward Count Ulanu. But Liljana, with Master Juwain still holding out the shield to protect her right side while Kane bulled his way forward on her left, had already reached him. She struck her sword straight out toward his sneering face. The point of it managed to slice off the tip of his nose even as one of his knights’ horses knocked into hers. Blood streamed from this rather minor gash. But it was enough to unnerve Count Ulanu – and his men.

‘The Count is wounded!’ one of his captains cried out. ‘Retreat! Protect the Count! Take him to safety!’

Although it hadn’t been Count Ulanu who ordered this ignoble retreat, he made no move to gainsay his knight’s command. He himself led the flight back down the hill. Two of his knights guarded his back as he turned his horse’s tail to us – and paid with their lives. Kane’s sword took one of them clean through the forehead while I pushed the point of mine straight through the other’s armor into his heart. And suddenly the battle was over.

‘Do we pursue?’ Maram called out, reining in his horse at the top of the hill. He was either battle-drunk, I thought, or mad. ‘I’ll give them a taste of fire, I will!’

So saying, he drew out his gelstei and tried to loose a bolt of flame upon Count Ulanu and his retreating knights. But although the crystal warmed to a bright scarlet, it never came fully alive.

‘Hold!’ I called out. ‘Hold now!’

Atara, who had her bow raised, fired off an arrow which split the mail of one of the retreating knights. He galloped away from us with a feathered shaft sticking out of his shoulder.

‘Hold, please!’

With the three men I had killed lying rent and bleeding on the grass, I could barely keep from falling, too. Kane had dispatched two knights and the other two Blues. Atara had added two more men to her tally, while Maram, Alphanderry, Liljana and Master Juwain had done extraordinarily well in beating off the assault of armored knights without taking any wounds themselves. But now the agony of the slain took hold of my heart. A doorway showing only blackness opened to my left. The nothingness there beckoned me deeper toward death than I had ever been. To keep from being pulled inside, I held onto Alkaladur as tightly as I could. Its numinous fire opened another door through which streamed the light of the sun and stars. It warmed my icy limbs and brought me back to life.

‘Val, are you wounded?’ Master Juwain asked as he came up to me. Then he turned to take stock of the corpse-strewn hummock and called out to the rest of our company, ‘Is anyone wounded?’

None of us were. I sat on top of the trembling Altaru, gaining strength each moment as I watched the last of Count Ulanu’s men disappear over the same ridge from which they had come.

‘What now, Val?’ Liljana said to me as she wiped the Count’s blood from the tip of her sword. ‘Do we pursue?’

‘No, we’ve had enough of battle for one day,’ I said. ‘And we don’t know how close the rest of the Count’s army is.’

I looked up at the blazing sun and then out across Yarkona’s rocky hills, calculating time and distances. To Liljana, to my other battle-sickened friends, I said, ‘Now we flee.’

They needed no further encouragement to put this hill of carnage behind us. We eased the horses down its slopes into the grassy trough through which we had been riding when the Count had surprised us. And then, wishing to cover ground quickly, we urged them to a fast canter toward the east. The pass into Khaisham called the Kul Joram, I guessed, lay a good twenty-five or thirty miles ahead of us. And beyond that, we would still need to ride another twenty miles to reach the Librarians’ city.

We kept up a good pace for most of five miles, but then one of the pack horses threw a shoe, and we had to go more slowly as the sun-scorched turf gave way to ground planted with many more rocks. Here, too, there was a little ring-grass and sage pushing through the dirt, which the horses’ hooves powdered and kicked up into the air. It was dry and hot, and the glazy blue sky held not the faintest breath of wind. The horses sweated even more profusely than did we. They kept driving onward through the murderous heat, snorting at the dust, making choking sounds in their throats and gasping until their nostrils and lips were white with froth. When we came across a little stream running down from the mountains, we had to stop to water them lest our dash across the burning plain kill them.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered to Altaru as he bent his shiny black neck down to the stream. ‘Only a few more miles, old friend, only a few more.’

Alphanderry, gazing back in the direction from which we had come, spoke to all of us, saying, ‘I’m sorry, but this is all my fault. If I hadn’t opened my mouth to sing, we’d never have been discovered.’

I walked up to him and laid my hand on the damp, dark curls of his head. I told him, ‘They might have found us in any case. And without your songs, we’d never have had the courage to come this far.’

‘How far have we come?’ Master Juwain said, looking eastward. ‘How far to this Kul Joram?’

Liljana brushed back the hair sticking to her face as she caught my eye. ‘There’s something I must tell you, something else I saw in the Count’s filthy mind. After Tarmanam, he sent a force to the Kul Joram to hold it for his army’s advance into Khaisham.’

Maram, bending low by the stream to examine the hooves of his tiring sorrel, suddenly straightened up and said, ‘Oh, no – this is terrible news! How are we to cross into Khaisham, then?’

‘Don’t you give up hope so easily,’ Liljana chided him. ‘There is another pass.’

‘The Kul Moroth,’ Kane spat out as he gazed into the wavering distances. ‘It lies twenty miles north of the Kul Joram. It’s an evil place, and much narrower, but it will have to do.’

Maram pulled at his beard as he fixed Liljana with a suspicious look. ‘I thought you promised that you’d never look into another’s mind without his permission? This was a sacred principle, you said.’

‘Do you think I’d have let that treacherous Count nail you to a cross because of a principle?’ Liljana said. ‘Besides, I promised you, not him.’

Master Juwain came up to look into my eyes and said, ‘It seems that you’re growing ever more able to put up shields against others’ agonies.’

‘No, it’s just the opposite,’ I said, thinking of the three men I had slain. ‘Each time a man goes over now, it carries me deeper into the death realm. But the valarda, even as it opens me to this void, also opens me to the world. To all its pain, yes, but to its life as well. The sword that Lady Nimaiu gave me only aids in this opening. When I wield it truly, it’s as if the soul of the world pours into me.’

So saying, I drew Alkaladur and held it gleaming faintly toward the east.

‘Then the sword lends you a certain protection against the vulnerabilities of your gift.’

‘No, it is not so, sir. Someday when I kill, the death realm will grab hold of me so tightly that I’ll never return.’

Because there was nothing for him to say to this, he stood looking at me quietly even as the others fell silent, too.

Then Atara, scanning the horizon behind us, drew in a quick breath as she pointed toward the west. ‘They’re coming,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see?’

At first none of us did. But as we stared at the far-off hills until our eyes burned, we finally saw a plume of dust rising into the sky.

‘How many are there?’ Maram asked Atara.

‘That’s hard to say,’ she told him.

But even as we stood there beneath the quick beatings of our hearts, the dust plume grew bigger.

‘Too many, I think,’ Kane said. ‘Let’s ride now. We’ll have to leave the pack horses behind. They’re practically lame and slowing us down.’

This imperious announcement sparked fierce protest from Maram and Liljana. Maram couldn’t abide the thought of separating ourselves from most of our food and drink, while Liljana bitterly regretted having to forsake her beloved pots and pans.

‘You have your shield,’ she said to Kane, ‘so why shouldn’t I be allowed at least one pot for cooking a hot meal when we might most need one?’

‘And what about the brandy?’ Maram put in. ‘There’s little enough left, but we’ll need it for our return from Khaisham.’

‘Return?’ Kane growled. ‘We won’t even reach Khaisham if we don’t ride now. Now fetch your pot and your brandy, and let’s be off.’

We made a quick redistribution of those vital stores that the pack horses carried, filling our mounts’ saddlebags as full as we dared. Then we said goodbye to these faithful beasts that had carried our belongings so far. I prayed that they would wander over Yarkona’s mounded plains until some kind farmer found them and put them to work.

With pursuit now certain, though still far away, we set out for the Kul Moroth. We rode hard, pressing the horses to a full gallop until it became clear that they couldn’t hold such a pace. Altaru and Iolo were strong enough, and Fire, too, but Kane’s big bay and Liljana’s gelding had little wind left for such heroics. Master Juwain’s sorrel seemed to have aged greatly since setting out from Mesh, while Maram’s poor horse was in the worst shape of any of our mounts. His sore hoof, now bruised by hot stones, was getting worse with every furlong we covered. I worried that soon he would pull up ruined and lame. And Maram worried about this as well.

‘Ah, perhaps you should just leave me behind,’ he gasped as he urged his limping sorrel to keep up with us. For a moment, we slowed to a trot. ‘I’ll ride off in a different direction. Perhaps the Count’s men will follow me, instead of you.’

It was a courageous offer, if a little insincere. I thought that he might hope that our pursuers would follow us instead of him.

‘On the Wendrush,’ Atara said from atop her great roan mare, ‘that is how it must be. Where speed is life, a war party is only as fast as its slowest horse.’

Her words greatly alarmed Maram, who had no real intention of simply riding away from us. She saw his disquiet and said, ‘But this is not the Wendrush and we are no war party.’

‘Just so,’ I said. ‘Our company will reach Khaisham together or not at all. We have a lead; now let’s keep it.’

But this proved impossible to do. As the ground grew even drier and rougher, Maram’s sorrel slowed his pace even more. And the plume of dust behind us grew closer and thickened into a cloud.

‘What are we to do?’ Maram muttered. ‘What are we to do?’

And Kane, bringing up the rear, answered him with one word, ‘Ride.’

And ride we did. The rhythm of our horses’ hooves beat against the ground like the pounding of a drum. It grew very hot. I squinted against the sun pouring down upon the rocks to the east of us. Its rays, I thought, were like fiery nails fixing us to the earth. Dust stung my eyes and found its way into my mouth. Here the soil tasted of salt and men’s tears, if not those of the angels. Here, in this burning waste, it would be easy for horse and man to perish, sweated dry of all their water.

After some miles, my thoughts turned away from the men behind us and toward visions of water. I remembered the deep blue stillness of Lake Waskaw and the rivers of Mesh; I thought of the soft white clouds over Mount Vayu and its glittering snowfields melting into rills and brooks. I began to pray for rain.

But the sky remained clear, a hot and hellish blue-white that glared like fired iron. It consoled me not at all that Count Ulanu and his men must suffer this dreadful heat even as we did. I took courage, however, from the thought that if we endured it more bravely, we still might outdistance them.

But it was they who closed the distance between us. The cloud of dust following us grew ever larger and nearer.

‘The Count,’ Kane observed bitterly, looking back, ‘can afford to leave his laggards behind.’

As the hours passed, we entered terrain in which a series of low ridges ran from north to south like dull knife-blades pushing up the earth. They roughly paralleled the much greater mountain spur still ahead of us where, if Kane’s memory proved true, we would find the Kul Moroth. In most places, we had no choice but to ride up and over these sun-baked folds. This hot, heaving work tortured the horses. From the top of one of them, where we paused to rest our faithful and sweating friends, we had a better view of the men pursuing us.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram groaned. ‘There are so many!’

For now, beneath the roiling column of dust drawing closer to the west, we saw perhaps five hundred men on horses following the dragon standard. I thought I caught a glimpse of another red dragon set against a yellow surcoat: surely that of Count Ulanu leading the pursuit. There were many knights behind him, both heavy cavalry and light, and even a few horse archers accoutered much as Atara. A whole company of Blues on their swift, nimble ponies galloped after us as well. It seemed that Count Ulanu had summoned the entire vanguard of his army to help him wreak his vengeance upon us.

During the next hour of our flight, clouds began moving in from the north and darkening the sky. They built to great heights with amazing quickness. Their black, billowing shapes blocked out much of the sun. It grew much cooler, a gift from the heavens for which we were all grateful.

Count Ulanu’s men, though, drew as much relief from the approaching storm as did we. He sent some of his horse archers galloping forward in a wild dash finally to close with us. They fired off a few rounds of arrows, which fell to earth out of range.

‘Hmmph, archers shouldn’t waste arrows so,’ Atara said. ‘If they come any closer, I’ll spare them a few of mine.’

They did come closer. As we began ascending yet another ridge, a feathered shaft struck the earth only a dozen yards behind Kane’s heaving bay. Atara’s great, recurved bow was strung and ready; I thought that she would wait until gaining the crest of the ridge before turning to shoot back at them.

The rapidly cooling air about us seemed charged with anticipation and death. The sky rumbled with great rolling waves of thunder. I felt an itch at the back of my neck as if something were pulling at my hair. And then a bolt of lightning flashed down from the clouds and burned the air. It struck the ridge above us, and sent a blue fire running along the rocks. Balls of hail fell down, too, pelting us and pinging off my helmet. Master Juwain and the others made a sort of canopy of their cloaks, holding them up to protect their heads. And still the lightning streaked down and set the very earth to humming.

It seemed pure folly to climb toward the ridgeline where the lightning was the fiercest. But behind us rode six archers firing off certain death from their bows. These steel-tipped bolts struck even closer than did the lightning. One of them glanced off my helmet like a piece of hail – only from a different direction and with much greater force. The sound of it dinging against the steel caused Atara to turn in her saddle and finally fire off a shot of her own. The arrow sank into the belly of the lead archer, who fell off his horse onto the hail-shrouded earth. But the others only charged after us with renewed determination.

I was the first to the ridge, followed in quick succession by Alphanderry, Liljana, Master Juwain, Maram and Kane. Atara rode more slowly, the better to make her shots and fight her arrow duel. Another two found their marks, and she called out, ‘Twenty-seven, twenty-eight!’ Just as she reached the ridge-top, however, with the sky’s bright fire sizzling the very rocks, the hail began to fall much harder. It streaked down from the sky at a slant like millions of silver bolts. Her arrows crashed into these hurtling balls of ice with sharp clacking sounds, sometimes shattering them into a spray of frozen chips and snow. The hail deflected the advancing archers’ arrows, too. They fired off many rounds to no effect. But one of their arrows ripped through Atara’s billowing cloak just before two more of hers raised her count to thirty. Then the remaining archer, sighting his last arrow with great care despite the rain and hail, fired off a desperate shot. Lightning flashed and thunder rent the sky, and somewhere beneath these terrifying events came the even more terrible twang of his bowstring. And then I gasped to see a couple feet of wood and feathers sticking out of Atara’s chest.

‘Ride!’ she choked out as she kicked her horse forward. ‘Keep riding!’

It wasn’t fear that drove her on through the pain of such a grievous wound nor even will but regard for us and what must happen if her strength failed. I felt this in the way that she waved on Master Juwain every time he turned his worried gaze toward her; it was obvious in her brave smiles toward Kane and especially in the bittersweet protectiveness that filled her eyes whenever she looked at me. Of all the courageous acts I had witnessed on fields of battle, I thought that her jolting ride across the final miles of Virad was the most valorous.

Liljana, galloping by her side, suggested that we must stop to offer her a little water. But Atara waved her on, too, gasping out, ‘Ride, ride now – they’re too close.’ There was blood on her lips as she said this.

Soon the thunder and rain stopped, and the dark clouds boiled above us as if threatening to break apart. The mountainous spur marking Khaisham’s border came into view. It was a barren escarpment of reddish rock perhaps a thousand feet high. It stood like a wall before us. In many places along its length, it was cut with fissures starkly defining great rock forms that looked like pyramids and towers. From the miles of plain that still lay between us and it, it was hard to make out much detail. But I prayed that one of these dark openings into the upfolded earth would prove to be the pass named the Kul Moroth.

So began our wild dash toward whatever safety the domain of Khaisham might afford us. Count Ulanu and his men were close now, and thundering closer with each passing minute. We rode as fast as we could considering the lameness of Maram’s horse and Atara’s injury. I felt the jolts of pain that shot through her body with every strike of her horse’s hooves; I felt her quickly weakening in her grip upon the reins as her vitality drained out of her. She was coughing up blood, I saw, not much but enough.

Kane pointed out a rent in the rocks ahead of us a little larger than the others. We rode straight toward it over the stony ground. Now, from behind us along the wind, came the high-pitched howling of the Blues; it chilled us more cruelly than had any rain or hail. It seemed to promise us a death beneath steel-bladed axes or even the gnashing teeth of enemies mad for revenge.

Death was everywhere about us. We felt it immediately as we found the opening to the Kul Moroth. As Kane had warned us, it seemed an evil place. Others, I knew, had died here in desperate battles before us. I could almost hear their cries of anguish echoing off the walls of rock rising up on either side of us. The pass was dark in its depths, and the sunlight had to fight its way down to its hard, scarred floor. And it was narrow indeed; ten horses would have had trouble riding through it side by side. We had trouble ourselves, for the ground was uneven and strewn with many rocks and boulders. Other boulders, and even greater sandstone pinnacles, seemed perched precariously along the pass’s walls and top as if ready to roll down upon us at the slightest jolt. Long ago, perhaps, some great cataclysm had cracked open this rent in the earth; I prayed that it wouldn’t close in upon us before we were free of it.

And that, it seemed as we drove the horses forward, we might never be. For just as we made a turning through this dark corridor and caught a glimpse of Khaisham’s rough terrain a half mile ahead of us through the pass, Atara let loose a gasp of pain and slumped forward, throwing her arms around Fire’s neck. She could go no farther. My first thought was that we would have to lash her to her horse if we were to ride the rest of the distance to the Librarians’ city.

But this was not to be. I dismounted quickly, and Master Juwain and Liljana did, too. We reached Atara’s side just as she slipped off her saddle and fell into our arms. We found a place where the fallen boulders provided some slight protection again Count Ulanu’s advancing army, and there we laid her down, against the cold stone.

‘There’s no time for this!’ Kane growled out as he gazed back through the pass. ‘No time, I say!’

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram said, coming down from his horse and looking at Atara. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

Now Alphanderry dismounted, too, and so did Kane. His dark eyes flashed toward Atara as he said, ‘We’ve got to put her back on her horse.’

Master Juwain, after examining Atara for a moment, looked up at Kane and said, ‘I’m afraid the arrow pierced her lights. I think it’s cut an artery, too. We can’t just lash her to her horse.’

‘So, what can we do?’

‘I’ve got to draw the arrow and staunch the bleeding somehow. If I don’t, she’ll die.’

‘So, if you do she’ll die anyway, I think.’

There was no time to argue. Atara was coughing up more blood now, and her face was very pale. Liljana used a clean white cloth to wipe the bright scarlet from her mouth.

‘Val,’ she whispered to me as the slightness of her breath moved over her blue lips. ‘Leave me here and save yourself.’

‘No,’ I told her.

‘Leave me – it’s the Sarni way.’

‘It’s not my way,’ I told her. ‘It’s not the way of the Valari.’

From the opening of the pass came the sound of many iron-shod hooves striking against stone and a terrible howling growing louder with each passing moment.

‘Go now, damn you!’

‘No, I won’t leave you,’ I told her.

I drew Alkaladur, then. The sight of its shimmering length cut straight through to my heart. I would kill a hundred of Count Ulanu’s men, I vowed, before I let anyone come close to her. I knew I could.

OWRRULLL!

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram said, taking out his red crystal. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

As Master Juwain brought forth his wooden chest and opened it to search inside among the clacking steel instruments of its lower drawer, Alphanderry laid his hand upon Atara’s head. He told her, ‘I’m sorry, but this is my fault. My singing –’

‘Your singing is all I wish to hear now,’ Atara said, forcing a smile. ‘Sing for me, now, will you? Please?’

Master Juwain found the two instruments that he was looking for: a razor-sharp knife and a long, spoonlike curve of steel with a little hole in the bowl near its end. Just then Alphanderry sang out:

Be ye songs of glory,Be ye songs of glory,That the light of the OneWill shine upon the world.

Maram, with tears in his eyes, stood above Atara as he tried to position his gelstei so that it caught what little light filtered down to the floor of the pass. He called out, to the rocks and the clouded sky above us, ‘I’ll burn them if they come close! Oh, my Lord, I will!’

The wild look in his eyes alarmed Kane. He drew out his black gelstei and stood looking between it and Maram’s stone.

‘Hold her!’ Master Juwain said to me sharply as he looked down at Atara.

I put aside my sword, sat and pulled Atara onto my lap. My hands found their way between her arms and sides as I hung on to her tightly. Liljana bent to help hold her, too.

Master Juwain cut open her leather armor and the softer shirt beneath. He grasped the arrow and tugged on it, gently. Atara gasped in agony, but the arrow didn’t move. Then Master Juwain nodded at me as if admonishing me not to let go of her. Sighing sadly, he used the knife to probe the opening that the arrow had made between her ribs and enlarge it, slightly. Now it took both Liljana and me to hold Atara still. Her body writhed with what little strength she had left. And still Master Juwain wasn’t done tormenting her. He took out his spoon and fit its tip to the red hole in Atara’s creamy white skin. Then he pushed his elongated spoon down along the arrow, slowly, feeling his way, deep into her. He twirled it about while Atara’s eyes leapt toward mine; from deep in her throat came a succession of strangled cries. At last Master Juwain smiled with relief. I understood that the hole at the spoon’s tip had snagged the tip of the arrow point; its curved flanges would now be wrapped around the point’s barbs, thus shielding Atara’s flesh from them so that they wouldn’t catch as Master Juwain drew the arrow. This he now did. It came out with surprising smoothness and ease.

And so did a great deal of blood. It truth, it ran out of her like a bright red stream, flowing across her chest and wetting my hands with its warmth.

And all the while, Alphanderry knelt by her and sang:

Be ye songs of glory,Be ye songs of glory,That the light of the OneWill shine upon the world.

‘Maram!’ I heard Kane call out behind me. ‘Watch what you’re doing with that crystal!’

The quick clopping of many horses’ hooves against stone came closer, as did the hideous howling, which filled the pass with an almost deafening sound: OWRRULLL!

Kane glanced down at Atara, who was fighting to breathe, much air now wheezing out of her chest along with a frothy red spray.

‘So,’ he said. ‘So.’

Master Juwain touched her chest just above the place where the archer’s arrow had ripped open her lungs. Everyone knew that such sucking wounds were mortal.

‘She’s bleeding to death!’ I said to Master Juwain. ‘We have to staunch it!’

He stared at her, almost frozen in his thoughts. He said, ‘The wound is too grievous, too deep. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid there’s no way.’

‘Yes, there is,’ I said. I reached my bloody hand into his pocket where he kept his green crystal. I took it out and gave it to him. ‘Use this, please.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know how.’

‘Please, sir,’ I said again to him. ‘Use the gelstei.’

He sighed as he gripped his healing stone. He held it above Atara’s wound. He closed his eyes as if looking inside himself for the spark with which to ignite it.

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing,’ he said.

Maram, breaking off his fumblings with his crystal, said, ‘Ah, perhaps you should read from your book. Or perhaps a period of meditation would –’

‘There is no time,’ Master Juwain said with uncharacteristic vehemence. ‘Never enough time.’

OWRULLLLLLL!

Through my hand, I felt Atara’s pulse weakening. I felt her life ready to blow out like a candle flame in an ice-cold wind. I didn’t care then if Count Ulanu’s men fell upon us and captured us. I wanted only for Atara to live another day, another minute, another moment. Where there was life, I thought, there was always hope and the possibility of escape.

‘Please, sir,’ I said to Master Juwain, ‘keep trying.’

Again, Master Juwain closed his eyes even as his hard little hand closed tightly around the gelstei. But soon he opened them and shook his head.

‘One more time,’ I said to him. ‘Please.’

‘But there is no rhyme or reason to using this stone!’ he said bitterly.

‘No reason of the mind,’ I said to him.

Atara began moving her lips as if she wanted to tell me something. But no words came out of them, only the faintest of whispers. The touch of her breath against my ear was so cold it burned like fire.

‘What is it, Atara?’ In her eyes was a look of faraway places and last things. I pressed my lips to her ear and whispered, ‘What do you see?’

And she told me, ‘I see you, Val, everywhere.’

In her clear blue eyes staring up at me, I saw my grandfather’s eyes and the dying face of my mother’s grandmother. I saw our children, Atara’s and mine, who were worse than dead because we had never breathed our life into them.

A door to a deep, dark dungeon opened beneath Atara then. I was not the only one to look upon it. Atara, who could always see so much, and sometimes everything, turned and whispered, ‘Alphanderry.’

Alphanderry stood up and smoothed the wrinkles out of his tunic, stained with sweat, rain and blood. He smiled as Atara said, ‘Alphanderry, sing, it’s time.’

Just as Count Ulanu and the knights of his hard-riding guard showed themselves down the pass’s dark turnings, Alphanderry began walking toward them. I didn’t know what he was doing.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram said above me. ‘Here they come!’

OWRRULLLL! sang the voices of the Blues riding behind Count Ulanu as they clanked their axes together.

And Alphanderry, with a much different voice, sang out, ‘La valaha eshama halla, lais arda alhalla …’

His music had a new quality to it, both sadder and sweeter than anything I had ever heard before. I knew that he was close to finding the words that he had so long sought and opening the heavens with their sound.

‘Valashu Elahad!’ Count Ulanu called out as he rode with his captains and crucifiers inexorably toward us. ‘Lay down your weapons and you will be spared!’

And then, as the Count reined in his horse and stopped dead in his tracks, Alphanderry began singing more strongly. The Count looked at him as if he were mad. So did his captains and the knights and Blues behind him. But then Alphanderry’s song built ever larger and deeper, and began soaring outward like a flock of swans beating their wings up toward the sky. So wondrous was the music that poured out of him that it seemed the Count and his men couldn’t move.

Something in it touched Master Juwain, too, as I could tell from the faraway look that haunted his eyes. He was staring into the past, I thought, and looking for an answer to Atara’s approaching death in the fleeting images of memory or in the verses of the Saganom Elu. But he would never find it there.

‘Look at her,’ I said to Master Juwain. I took his free hand and brought it over Atara’s and mine so that it covered both of them. ‘Please look, sir.’

There was nothing more I could say to him, no more urgings or pleadings. I no longer felt resentment that he had failed to heal Atara, only an overwhelming gratitude that he had tried. And for Atara, I felt everything there was to feel. Her weakening pulse beneath my fingers touched mine with a deeper beating, vaster and infinitely finer. The sweet hurt of it reminded me how great and good it was to be alive. There seemed no end to it; it swelled my heart like the sun, breaking me open. And as I looked at Master Juwain eye to eye and heart to heart, he found himself in this luminous thing.

‘I never knew, Val,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, I see, I see.’

And then Master Juwain, who turned back to Atara, did look and seemed suddenly to see her. He found the reason of his heart as his eyes grew moist with tears. He found his greatness, too. Then he smiled as if finally understanding something. He touched the wound in her chest. Then he held the varistei over it, the long axis of the stone exactly perpendicular to the opening that the arrow had made. He took a deep breath and then let it out to the sound of Atara’s own anguished gasp.

I was waiting to see the gelstei glow with its soft, healing light. Even Kane, despite his despair, was looking at the stone as if hoping it would begin shining like a magical emerald. What happened next, I thought, amazed us all. A rare fire suddenly leaped in Master Juwain’s eyes. And then viridian flames almost too bright to behold shot from both ends of the gelstei; they circled to meet each other beneath it before shooting like a stream of fire straight into Atara’s wound. She cried out as if struck again with a burning arrow. But the green fire kept filling up the hole in her chest, and soon her eyes warmed with the intense life of it. A few moments later, the last of the fire swirled about the opening of the wound as if stitching it shut with its numinous light. As it crackled and then faded along her pale skin, we blinked our eyes, not daring to believe what we saw. For Atara was now breathing easily, and her flesh had been made whole.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram sighed out from above us. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

It seemed that neither Count Ulanu nor his men witnessed this miracle, for Liljana’s and Master Juwain’s backs blocked their view of it. And before them unfolded a miracle of another sort. For now, at last, as Alphanderry stood in all his glory facing down the vanguard of an entire army, his tongue found the turnings of the language that he had sought all his life. Its sounds flowed out of him like golden drops of light. And words and music became as one, for now Alphanderry was singing the Song of the One. In its eternal harmonies and pure tones, it was impossible to lie, impossible to see the world other than as it was because every word was a thought’s or a thing’s true name.

And truth, I knew as I held Atara’s hand and listened to Alphanderry sing, was really just beauty – a terrible beauty almost impossible to bear. Nothing like it had been heard on Ea since the Star People first came to earth ages ago. With every passing moment, Alphanderry’s words became clearer, sweeter, brighter. They dissolved time as the sea does salt, and hatred, pride and bitterness. They called us to remember all that we had lost and might yet be regained; they reminded us who we really were. Tears filled my eyes, and I looked up astonished to see Kane weeping, too. The stony Blues had belted their axes for a moment so that they might cover their faces. Even Count Ulanu had fallen away from his disdain. His misting eyes gave sign that he was recalling his own original grace. It seemed that he might have a change of heart and renounce the Kallimun and Morjin, then and there with all the world witnessing his remaking.

In the magic of that moment in the Kul Moroth, all things seemed possible. Flick, near Alphanderry, was spinning wildly, beautifully, exultantly. The walls of stone around us echoed Alphanderry’s words and seemed to sing them themselves. High above the world, the clouds parted and a shaft of light drove down through the pass to touch Alphanderry’s head. I thought I saw a golden bowl floating above him and pouring out its radiance over him as from an infinite source.

And so Alphanderry sang with the angels. But he was, after all, only a man. One single line of the Galadin’s song was all that he could call forth in its true form. After a while, his voice began to falter and fail him. He nearly wept at losing the ancient, heavenly connection. And then the spell was broken.

Count Ulanu, still sitting on his war horse in his battle armor, shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had heard. It infuriated him to see what a dreadful sculpture he had made of himself from the sacred clay with which the One had provided him. His wrath now fell upon Alphanderry for showing him this. And for standing between him and the rest of us. A snarl of outrage returned to his face; he drew his sword as his knights pointed their lances at Alphanderry. The Blues, with unfeeling fingers, gripped their axes and readied themselves to advance upon him.

OWRRULLL! OWRRULLLLL!

At last, with the howls of the Blues drowning out the final echoes of Alphanderry’s music, I grabbed up my sword and leaped to my feet. Kane gripped his gelstei as his wild black eyes fell upon Maram’s red crystal.

‘I’ll burn them!’ Maram called out. ‘I will, I will!’

The clouds above the pass broke apart even more, and rays of light streamed down and touched Maram’s firestone. It began glowing bright crimson.

Alphanderry, who had marched many yards down the pass away from us, turned and looked up toward his right. Something seemed to catch his eye. For a moment, he recaptured his joy and something of the Star People’s lost language as he cried out: ‘Ahura Alarama!’

‘What?’ I shouted, gathering my strength to run to his side.

‘I see him!’

‘See who?’

‘The one you call Flick.’ He smiled like a child. ‘Oh, Val … the colors!’

Just then, even as Count Ulanu spurred his horse forward, Maram’s gelstei flared and burned his hands. He screamed, jerking the blazing crystal upwards. A great stream of fire poured out of it and blasted the boulders along the pass’s walls. Kane was now working urgently with his black crystal to damp the fury of the firestone. But it drew its power from the very sun and fed the fires of the earth. The ground around us began shaking violently; I went down to one knee to keep from falling altogether. Stones rained down like hail, and one of them pinged off my helmet. Then came a deafening roar of great boulders bounding down the pass’s walls. In only a few moments, the rockslide filled the defile to a height of twenty feet. A great mound stood between Alphanderry and the rest of the company, cutting off his escape. And keeping us from coming to his aid. We couldn’t even see him.

But we could still hear him. As the dust choked us and settled slowly down, from beyond the heaped-up rubble I heard him singing what I knew would be his death song. For I knew that Count Ulanu, who spared no mercy for himself, would find none for him.

My hand gripped the hilt of my sword so fiercely that my fingers hurt; my arm hurt even as I felt Count Ulanu’s arm pull back and his sword thrust downward. Alphanderry’s terrible cry easily pierced the rocks between us. It pierced the whole world; it pierced my heart. My sword fell from my hand, even as I clasped my chest and fell myself. A door opened before me, and I followed Alphanderry through it.

I walked with him through the dark, vacant spaces up toward the stars.