Maram gazed at Anneli as if utterly enchanted by this lovely woman who had healed him. His desires had obviously moved on from brandy to more fiery things.
Maira ordered a feast to celebrate Maram's recovery and to honor us. That evening, we gathered beneath the astor trees, whose leaves gave off a soft, golden light. The whole tribe of Loikalii sat themselves down around many large mats placed throughout the grove. As at our other feasts in the other Vilds, these mats would serve as tables on which the Loikalii set bowls full of their simple yet sustaining food.
'In many ways,' Master Juwain remarked as we and the Avari joined Maira, Anneli, Kalevi and several other Loikalii around a particularly large mat, 'these people are quite similar to their kinsmen. But in other ways. . .'
His voice trailed off as Maira shot him a sharp, penetrating look. She seemed much more knowledgeable about us, and the world outside, than the other Lokilani whom we had met. Although she exuded congeniality and sweetness, I sensed that she could also be as forceful and determined as any of Ea's queens. When we had finished filling ourselves with nutbread and honey and other delicious things, she passed me a gourd full of elderberry wine with a graceful motion of her hand and the most radiant of smiles. She would not abide Master Juwain's protestations that Maram should be denied strong drink; she passed Maram wine too: more than one gourd's worth, and then more than three. She seemed not to mind the way that Maram gazed at Anneli, though a couple of the other Loikalii present could not countenance his obvious infatuation. She smiled at him in amusement and then directed our conversation toward matters that we had put off discussing for five days.
'Tell us, Val'Alahad,' she said to me, 'of yourselves and your journey.'
And so I did. While the Loikalii at our table and the others nearby turned toward me, I told of our quest, as much as I thought wise. The hours flowed into evening, and evening turned toward night. The radiance of the astor leaves lit the grove, and it fell cool. No mosquitoes, however, came out to Be the Loikalii's nearly naked bodies. It seemed that they allowed into their woods only those living things that pleased them. Other things, however, darker things, they could not keep out.
'We have seen the Morajin,' she told us. 'The Earthkiller, our cousins call him. The Burning One that you call the Red Dragon: he burns, inside, as if his blood is on fire. It is worse than the scorching of the sun, for that can destroy only flesh. But the Morajin's soul! It is all black and twisted, like a worm dropped onto hot coals. We have seen this! He would kill all that displeases him, even the best of himself. He sends his armies throughout all lands, killing and killing until the earth cannot bear it. Soon, soon, we fear, all of the earth's trees will be cut down and her soil burnt barren. It will be as it is in the Burning Lands outside of the Forest.'
She seemed to blame the desolation of the desert on Morjin, and on his master, whom she called Ang Ar Mai Nyu. How she knew of either of them - or of anything outside of her woods -was not clear. I could not imagine any of her delicate, gentle people crossing the desert to lands so faraway and forbidding as Sakai in the heart of the White Mountains.
Her words disturbed all of us, and Master Juwain especially. He rubbed at his smooth scalp as he looked at Maira and said, 'Surely the desert has causes other than the hand of the Red Dragon. Why, the Crescent Mountains, to the west, which block the moisture from the ocean. The pattern of the winds, which blow -'
'The winds blow enough moisture our way,' Maira said, cutting him off. She smiled at him nicely, but I could tell that she had little patience for his perpetual questioning and turning things over and over in his mind. 'Grass could grow where now there is only the sand. And more moisture could be summoned - enough to make the Forest grow across the whole of the Burning Lands.'
Here she glanced to her right at an old woman named Oni. Oni had white hair and withered breasts, but her eyes still held much life. She cupped between her hands a small, bluish bowl that looked something like frozen water. I wondered immediately if it were made of some kind of gelstei that I had never seen before.
'If you can truly summon the clouds,' Master Juwain said, addressing both Maira and Oni, 'as it seems you can, then why hasn't the desert been made green again?'
'The Loikalii,' Maira said to us, 'long, long ago were sent to this place to re-enchant the earth. A great evil occurred here, long past long ago. It opened up the earth to the deep fires, the black fires which scorched the soil, out and out across the Burning Lands.'
Master Juwain nodded his head in deep contemplation; I could almost hear him wondering what kind of evil event or sorcery could have channelled the telluric currents so as to create a wasteland hundreds of miles wide.
'But you have succeeded here,' he said, looking at the astor trees above us. 'I have never known a more enchanting place.'
'We have not succeeded here,' Maira said. 'We have sent our people out on the sands to plant seeds so that the Forest might widen. All have failed. Even in this place, if we did not fight to make the Forest grow, the trees would wither and die and be lost into the sand.'
She went on to tell of an ancient dark thing, perhaps a crystal, buried beneath the soil somewhere on earth. She said that it had the power to draw life from the earth and allow its inner fires to burn unchecked and wreak destruction upon all things. Kane scowled at this, and his eyes found mine; it was obvious that Maira must be speaking of the Black Jade. I recounted then of our crossing of the Skadarak and what we knew of this powerful gelstei.
'The Black Jade,' Maira said as she looked from Oni to Anneli and then back at me. 'You have named it well. We have felt how the Morajin seeks his way deeper and deeper into its heart. We know that Ang Ar Mai Nyu aids him. Why, why, we have asked ourselves? Soon, we fear, the Morajin will loose the earth's fires and burn open the very sky. Then the evil that created the Burning Lands will blight the stars. Their earths - so many, many! - will be burnt too. The Forest that covers them will die. It will be as you said it was at the heart of the Skadarak: everything blackened and covered with bones. And then it will be as it is here, beyond our trees: nothing but burning sands, Everywhere and forever.' I gazed at her in wonder of how her dread of the future so nearly matched my own. Then she took a sip of her wine and shook her head furiously. 'But we must not let this be! If the Morajin gains power, utterly, over the Black Jade, he will invade the Forest. First with his eyes and with dark dreams. And soon after, with steel and fire.'
Here she glanced at the hilt of Kane's sword and shook her head in loathing. A similar look on Oni's face told me that, in some ways at least, the Loikalii did not welcome our presence in their woods.
I took a sip of wine, too, and then said to Maira, 'You know a great deal about matters of which we have learned only with difficulty. And that few others even suspect. How, then? Are there scryers among you?'
Maira looked quickly at Oni, who spoke in a cranky, quavering voice saying, 'Do you see, Maira? I told you they would want to know.'
Oni's angry, relentless stare seemed to disconcert Maira, who glanced at Atara and said, 'No, none of us can see the future, not as you can. But sometimes, we can see things far, far away.'
'How, then?' I asked again.
Now Oni stared at me as she shook her head. She said to Maira, 'No, no - they mustn't see!'
Her hands gripped her crystal bowl, and I suddenly knew that it had been Oni who had sent the sandstorm that had so nearly killed us. There was something wild about this old woman, I thought like the wind. I sensed that she acted by the force of her own will and no one else's, not even Maira's.
'I believe that they must see,' Maira said to her. 'How else are they to find the Shining One they seek? And how else to keep the Morajin from using the gelstei they call the Lightstone?'
'No,' Oni said, as stubborn as a stone. 'The giants are clumsy and stupid, and bring an evil of their own into the Forest.'
She stared at the hilt of my sword; after a while, she raised up her angry old eyes and stared at me.
'They are not stupid,' Maira said to her. 'And whose heart is wholly pure?'
'No, no - they must not see!'
'I have seen this,' Maira said to her. 'And you have, too; that the time is coming when either the Forest will grow across the Burning Lands, or the Burning Lands will devour the Forest - and soon, soon. Which will it be?'
While the evening deepened, they argued back and forth, but no word or reason from Maira could prevail against Oni's obduracy. And then there occurred a miracle beyond reason or resistance: Flick fell out of the night like a comet. He hovered in the air radiating an intense glorre. This light seemed to draw many other Timpum from out of the trees around us. It touched them so that they glowed with glorre, too. Then these thousands of splendid beings passed the fire back to Flick so that he blazed ever brighter. Back and forth it passed, many, many times. Flick feeding the Timpum and they feeding him until the whole host of little lights shimmered with great brilliance.
'Do you see?' Kalevi cried out, pointing at Flick. 'The angel fire - I did not imagine it! The giants call it glorre!'
'Glorre! Glorre! Glorre!' the many Loikalii at their tables chanted.
'It is a sign!' Kalevi cried out again, turning to Oni. 'You must take them to the Water!'
'Take them! Take them! Take them!' his tribesmates chanted.
I drew my sword and held it up toward Flick. Its mirrored surface seemed perfectly to reflect his fiery form. Whether it picked up the glorre pouring out of him or shone from within with this singular color was hard to tell.
'All right,' Oni said at last as she gazed at my sword. I saw for the first time how lovely her eyes really were. The ice inside her seemed utterly to have melted. 'In the morning, I will take them to the Water. But now, we should eat the flesh of the angels - and dance and sing!'
She smiled, and years fell away from her. Then bowls full of golden, ripe timanas were brought forth so that we might eat the sacred fruit and deepen our visions of the Timpum, and all living things. Daj and Estrella, to their disappointment, were not allowed to touch the timanas, for the Loikalii counted them as children even though they stood as high as many of the Loikalii women and men. Sunji, Maidro, Arthayn and Nuradayn, however, each picked up a fat, gleaming timana. Maira warned them that the very taste of it sometimes killed. Sunji, speaking for all the Avari, said that they would risk it. As he put it: 'We have borne heat, wind, sand and sun to come this far. It is said that if a man dies in the desert seeking visions, he doesn't really die when he dies. And so we will gladly eat these fruits that you have given us.'
And so he did, along with the other Avari. That night, none of them died, nor did anyone else in the grove partaking in this part of the feast. The Avari finally beheld what we had looked upon for several days but could never take for granted: the millions of Timpum in their glory, gleaming as brightly as the stars and whirling ecstatically in and out of the astor trees. Old Maidro, upon standing up to dance with us and the hundreds of Loikalii forming up into circles, laughed like a young man and called out: 'I'm still alive, but I'm finally ready to die!'
Later that night, after it came time for rest, we returned to our olinda trees. Maram, though, did not come with us. He claimed that Anneli had yet to heal him wholly, and so he would sleep inside her house so that she might bestow upon him her gifts.
Just before going off with her, he took me aside and draped his arm across my shoulders. His breath, heavy with the vapors of elderberry wine, blasted into my face as he said, 'Ah, Val, there is healing and then there is healing, do you understand? Maidro might be ready to die, but I'm not. No, no - it's time I truly lived again.'
And with that, this irrepressible man who had come so close to breathing his last breath, walked off into the woods happily singing his favorite song.
Chapter 27
In the morning, we all gathered in the grove, where Maira and Oni met us - along with all the other Loikalii. They thought nothing, it seemed, of giving up their work in favor of witnessing whatever event was about to occur. Oni led us through the trees in a winding way that followed no path. In the strong light raining down through the emerald leaves, the Timpum seemed to shine even more brightly than they had the previous night. So did the flowers and the birds and every other living thing in these mysterious woods.
At last we came into a clearing. A pool of water, fifty feet wide, gleamed in its center. The Loikalii sat around it on low banks of grass. Oni stood beside the pool's rippling waters with Maira and me - and with Kane. Although no one had invited him in so close, no one seemed to find the courage to warn him away. The Loikalii allowed no large predators into their woods, but Kane was like a tiger, pacing back and forth with a barely contained fire tormenting his great body as his fathomless eyes fixed on the pool.
Oni cupped her pale blue bowl in her hands, and shut her eyes. Almost immediately, the breeze died. A stillness fell upon the air over the pool. The only sounds were the songs of the birds deeper in the trees and Kane's restless footfalls.
'Be quiet!' Oni finally hissed at Kane. She opened her eyes and glared at him. 'Or else leave this place!'
Kane stared right back at her with a fiery gaze that might have wilted a tree. But he finally did as she had commanded, freezing into motionlessness like a great cat ready to spring. His bright, black eyes took in the glimmer of the pool.
As my heart drummed inside me, the waters of the pool grew stiller and clearer. I noticed that it sat within a bed of crystal that might have been diamond. No fly pad nor lake skimmer nor even a twig or a speck of dust floated upon this water. It came to me that I had never seen water so pure and deep.
'The waters of all worlds flow into each other,' Oni's voice intoned - a million miles away, it seemed. 'The waters of all things are one; in the end, there is only one Water.'
Now the pool's waters stilled with an utter clarity. In its depths - it was like looking through air - I beheld mountains and water-falls and a great, shimmering city. Crystalline towers half a mile high stood on rocky prominences above a broad valley. It must have been autumn there, for the valley's contours showed the yellows of aspens and maples' blazing reds - as well groves of astor trees whose golden foliage blanketed the earth. Throughout the valley and above it, upon rocky hills, stood many graceful buildings and houses agleam with the colors of living stone: azure and cinnabar, magenta, saffron and aquamarine. I knew that all these-structures had been built by the hand of man, but so perfect were they in design and in harmony with the landforms of the valley that it seemed here art and nature were as one. I couldn't help recalling the wondrous city that Ymanir had built high in the White Mountains: Alundil, the City of the Stars.
The valley's beauty called to something ancient within me. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I reached out my hand toward it. This simple motion unsettled my balance. Even as Kane's hand struck out to try to catch me, I found myself teetering at the edge of the pool, and then stumbling forward. I hit the water with a great splash. Its coldness stabbed into me like a thousand icy needles. The weight of my sword, strapped to my back, helped to pull me under, down and down into a deepening gloom for what seemed forever. I pulled hard with my hands against cold currents and kicked my feet. I swam up and up toward the light streaming through the water. Finally, with a gasp of air I broke from the surface of the pool into a burst of brilliant sunshine. I shook back my wet hair. I blinked my eyes because I could not believe what they beheld. Kane and Oni and everyone else who had gathered by the pool - the Loikalii, the Avari, too - were gone. The city that I had descried within the pool now spread out all around me, amethyst towers rising up from the mountainsides to my right and left. Upon the pool's grassy banks stood tall men and women with jet black hair and eyes as bright and black as my deepest dreams.
One of them, a man wearing a blue tunic trimmed in gold and a fillet of silver binding back his long hair, held out his hand to me and pulled me dripping and shivering from the pool. A woman - I had never seen a quee
n so striking, not even my mother -covered me with a long, thick robe of new lamb's wool. A man who might have been her brother stood smiling at me in welcome; the diamonds encrusting his tunic shone more brilliantly than a knight's armor. All these people, I thought, were like unto the Valari of my home, only more beautiful and even nobler in aspect. It come to me then that they were Valari, the true and ancient Valari, for I knew somehow that I had stepped out upon another world and looked upon twelve of the Star People.
'Tallina ira vos,' the queenlike woman said to me. 'Lila satna garad.'
She spoke more words to me, and so did the others. As with veils pulled back to reveal a familiar fact:, their meaning became clearer and clearer. I realized that they were speaking in a language similar to ancient Ardik, which is to the language of the angels as the common tongue is to Ardik.
They gave me their names: Asha, Eva, Varjan, Jessur, Eldru and Shivaj. And Kavalad, Aja, Saya, Jerusha, Varda and Ramadar. They gave me to understand that they had come here to greet me; that seemed almost impossible, but I sensed that they were not lying. Something about the structure of their language made it unnatural to utter anything false or guileful. In the clear consonants and liquid vowels that poured from their beautiful lips, no less the light sparking in their eyes, I sensed only a strong intent toward goodness and truth. They each embodied these qualities, along with a nobility that I had seen in my father and mother, but few others. They were men and women, I thought, as I had always imagined men and women to be.
So awestruck was I that I could hardly speak. But I finally remembered my manners, and bowed my head to Ramadar, the man who had pulled me from the pool. I found my voice and stammered out: 'Satnamon Valashu - Valashu Elahad.'
'Valashu,' he repeated, bowing to me. Then he pointed up at the deep blue sky, where a blue sun shone with a dazzling light. 'Val al'Ashu ni al'Elahad - vos art arda valas.'
My heart beat like a soaring swan within me as the meaning of what Ramadar had said became clear and confirmed what I knew to be true: 'Star-of-the-Morning of the line of Elahad you have journeyed deep into the stars.'
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