'Oh — oh. Lord!' Maram moaned. 'This is the end — surely the end!'
Kane's hand fell upon my shoulder. I stepped aside so that he might have a look through the crack as well.
'Oh, oh, oh, oh!'
Then I heard the Yaga, from somewhere within the house, call out to Maram, 'You're strong, my beautiful man. The strongest yet. We'll see if you're the one, we'll surely see.'
Then she broke into song again, chanting out her love poem to Maram:
Alone I've dwelled nine hundred years
In mountains, deserts, stinking meres,
Regaling travelers where I can
While waiting for my dragon man.
No scholar, magus, king on high
If they be cool or soft or dry;
My man is molten earth's desire-,
Whose loins are full, whose blood is fire.
He comes for me, most mighty snake,
A mighty, raging thirst to slake,
Make live inside my honeyed womb
The Marudin's immortal bloom.
I am a maid of angel's seed,
An unfilled well of burning need;
My time has come to mate and breed -
I am a maid of angel's seed.
And so my suitors stop on by,
Enchanted by my violet eye;
I turn to stone the small, effete:
Unworthy mates but good for meat.
To feed my fiery, fecund forge
I fill my red, rapacious gorge;
The blood of men, most potent wine,
Exalts new life and makes divine.
With love I seize and shred and skive,
Put lips to flesh, eat men alive,
Then suck sweet marrow from their bones
And roast on coals their empty stones.
I am a maid of angel's seed,
An unfilled well of burning need,
On life's red flame I fondly feed -
I am a maid of angel's seed.
Kane pulled back from the house and looked at me. In the faint starlight, his face seemed grimmer than ever. He slashed the edge of his hand across his throat. Then he pointed back towards the trees as if telling me that we should make our escape before it was too late.
But it was already too late. The Yaga suddenly broke off singing, and I heard her sniffing the air. And then she called out: 'Is that you, little man? I know it is. You smell so sweet — almost as sweet as my Maram.'
I heard a shuffling of hard feet, and I quickly stepped to the side of the crack. The stench of the Yaga grew stronger, and her voice louder and clearer as it poured from the jagged crack: 'Don't be so shy, Valashu Elahad. Why don't you show yourself so that I might look upon your sweet, sweet face?'
'So that you can turn me to stone?' I called out to her. 'As you did my friend?'
'Ha, ha!' she laughed out. 'I've no desire to turn you into stone, though I'll surely oblige you if you linger.'
'Val!' I heard Maram shout from inside the house. 'Val! Val!'
'Let Maram go!' I called out. 'And change my friend back as he was!'
'I could change that hunter back, indeed, indeed I could. But he would be good only for meat then, and you don't eat your friends, do you?'
'Val!' Maram cried out yet again. 'She's telling the truth! She makes men into stone then brings them back here! When she unmakes them, they are dead!'
'Sweet Maram,' I heard the Yaga murmur. 'I haven't made you into stone yet, though you're harder than any man I've known, the hardest yet. Now be quiet while I talk with Valashu, or I'll have to give you another kiss.'
'Leave him alone!' I shouted. 'And how do you know my name?'
'My father told me that you might pass this way.'
'Morjin? Is he truly your father then?'
'Indeed he is. It was he who named me Jezi, which means the lovely one. And I am so very, very lovely, don't you think?' I said nothing to this, then called back to her: 'If Morjin is your father, he would not let you tell me to go away.'
'You're beginning to vex me, little man. Do you think my father has power over Jezi Yaga?'
'If he is able to speak to you from afar, then surely he has power.'
'Ha, ha — great power, it's true. But I no longer do as he commands. We settled that long ago. When he couldn't bear the defiance in my eyes, he tore them out with his own fingers. But then I bit off his thumb and defied him all the more.'
The stench of Jezi Yaga's loathing drove into my belly and made me want to vomit. I gasped out to her: 'Such hatred — for your own father!'
'Ha, ha,' she laughed out again, 'my father commanded that I should be his bride. But he was not my dragon man, no, no, he was not, even though he calls himself the Great Red Dragon.'
'Abomination,' Kane muttered beside me. 'Every filthy thing, every degradation.'
'Is that you, Elijin?' Jezi called out. 'You speak of abomination?' 'So, I do,' Kane said to her. 'Morjin used a varistei, did he not, to bring you forth?'
'The greenstone,' Jezi Yaga said. 'Ha, ha — he did use it this way. And he wanted to use it to breed a new race out of my sweet, sweet womb.'
'So, the Marudin.'
'The Marudin, the Marudin,' she sang out. 'The Great One who will defy even the Dark One. But my father is not to be his father. When I told him that, he took my eyes and gave me these pretty purple stones in their place. He said that since my heart was stone, I should turn to stone any man who tried to love me. My skin can be hard as stone when I make it so, and therefore no one can kill me with sword or arrow. But my heart is never stone — if it were, I would die. As I nearly did die. He cursed me, my sweet father did, then cast me out. And so it's been ever since. I've looked all across the world for my dragon man. I've looked upon so many men these many, many years. One day, I shall find him.'
A moan from Maram returned me from the horrible past to the even more horrifying present. He called out, 'Leave me — leave me alone!'
'Yes, Valashu,' the maddened being inside the house said to me. 'Leave us alone. Go off to kill my father, and I will thank you for it. But leave me alone so that I might test the strength of the snake.'
'We won't leave without Maram!' I shouted.
'Will you not?' she shouted back. 'You vex, little man! You vex me.'
Her voice faded, and I heard her feet shuffling against rough floor stones. And Maram cried out, 'No, please don't bite me again — no!'
'You vex me!' Jezi Yaga called out. 'You vex me!'
Just then Maram let loose a terrible scream. It froze me motionless, as if I were a piece of ice standing with my fist clenched around my sword in the dark of the night. It took all my will to keep myself from whipping about and looking through the crack into the house.
'Val!' Maram shouted to me. 'Go away, or she'll eat me alive! Go, and save yourself!'
I could think of nothing else to do. It would be folly, as both Kane and I knew, for Kane to try to put an arrow through the crack. He brought his lips up close to my ear and whispered, 'Let's go back to the others while we still can.'
And so we did. We retreated as we had come, past trees and rocks, down the sloping ground toward the stream. When we drew near the place where Jezi had turned Berkuar to stone, I called out into the darkness so as not to give alarm: 'Atara! Master Juwain! Liljana! We return!'
It took our friends, drawn up with the horses near the stream, only moments to determine that we did not return in triumph. I quickly described Jezi Yaga's house and Maram's imprisonment. I gave an account of our exchange with Jezi. When I finished, Atara cried out 'Oh, but this is terrible, terrible! I should have seen it! And I should see a way out, now, but I can't!'
I stepped up beside her, and put my arm across her shoulders I said to her, 'Don't give up hope just yet I have a plan.'
I bade Liljana, Master Juwain and the children to gather around me. Then, to the sound of the stream pouring over dark rocks and crickets chirping in the bushes, I told them what we must do.
'Daj,' I said, looking through the star-pierced darkness at this brave boy. 'Will you come with me?'
Daj stood up straight as he nodded his head. He told me, 'I'd do anything to help Maram.'
Kane drew out his black crystal and said, 'Perhaps I should come with you, too.'
'No,' I said, 'it will be better for you to protect the others, if you can. And to take them to Hesperu, if I do not return,'
After that we made ready the horses and prepared to leave. I took off the gold medallion that I had worn since King Kiritan had called the great Quest, and I draped it around Berkuar's neck. I said a quick prayer for his spirit. Here he stood, dead upon the earth instead of in it and here he might stand for a thousand more years.
While Kane set off with others further into the gap, I led Daj back up the slope toward Jezi Yaga's house. We came up behind the same oak tree that had given Kane and me shelter. Daj fairly clung to its bark as he looked out from behind the tree. In the strong starlight the house gleamed like the heap of bones that it was.
'You must wait here until she's gone,' I said to him, 'then squeeze through the crack and cut Maram free with your sword. Don't try the door — you won't be able to move it, and the Yaga may look back and see you.'
'Don't worry,' he whispered to me as he shuddered. 'I don't want to wind up like Berkuar.'
He paused, breathing deeply to quiet the pounding of his heart, as Liljana had taught him. Then he said, 'I wonder if it hurts to be turned into stone?'
'Don't think about that,' I said to him. 'Do you have your sword?'
He smiled as he showed me the small sword that I had given him.
'All right,' I said. 'After you're out, keep to the high ground, and keep yourselves unseen. We'll meet you in the desert.'
I embraced him as I would any other warrior who was dear to me. Then I walked out across the gleaming rocks and bones of the open ground toward the house. I positioned myself halfway between the great door and the few trees at my back. I cupped my hands around my mouth as I drew in a deep breath. Then I shouted out: 'Jezi Yaga! Daughter of angels and mother of the Marudin! Let Maram go! We have in our keeping a varistei that you may use to help make your son! We will give it to you if you let Maram go!'
From the house came the sound of Maram moaning and then the much louder voice of Jezi Yaga shouting through the walls: 'Do you tell the truth, little man? Do you tell the truth?'
I stood on the hard ground listening for the sound of the stone bar being thrown back from inside the door. I told myself that I would exchange Master Juwain's green geistei for Maram. I would give up my sword and all my possessions — even my life.
'I think you do tell the truth, sweet man,' Jezi called out to me. Her piercing, musical voice rattled the very bones of her house. 'My father told me that you hate to lie.'
'Let Maram go!' I shouted to her, 'and I shall let you have the green varistei!'
'Do you take me for a fool, Valashu Elahad? I will never let my dragon man go!'
'Then you will never have the geistei.'
'Will I not? Will I not?' At last I heard the harsh grating sound of stone grinding against stone.
I dared not wait a moment longer. With one quick glance toward Daj's oak tree, I turned and fled across the dark, uneven ground into the shelter of the trees. Behind me I heard the great stone door of Jezi's house grind open and then slam shut.
'Where are you, little man?' she called out to me.
She could not see me, but surely she could hear me, as I could her. Her great weight of driving legs and hard feet rattled broken rocks. It was perilous ground in the dark of night, for both of us. As I leapt down the slope from rock to rock, past boulders and around trees, over guileys and across rotting logs, I prayed that I wouldn't stumble and fall.
For a while I ran downhill and then up again over a dark hump of ground. I listened for the noise of Jezi Yaga pounding after me. My breath burst from my lungs, and the owls hooed in the trees, and beneath the tempest of these sounds, I listened and ran and listened ever harder. I no longer heard her. I had staked everything on my being able to outdistance her, so I ran on and on, into the night. I thought of Daj, the rat-boy, as they had called him in Argattha.
Sly as any rat, by now he would have cut Maram free with his
sword. Maram, despite his wounds, would be strong enough to
force open the great door, or so I prayed. I prayed that he and Daj
would then make their escape along the high ground of the gap,
out into the desert.
I smelled this vast expanse of burning sands and wasted land long before I laid eyes upon it. The wind from the west blew warm and hard through the gap, carrying the scent of desert plants into my nostrils and I ran for many miles over cracked and broken ground toward it. The air grew even drier. Few trees grew in the hard, stony soil that bruised my feet even through my boots.
But I ran on even so. The arrow wound in my back became a knot of burning pain. A worse fire tormented my blood. I could not hear the footfalls of Jezi Yaga; it seemed that I had left her far behind. But I knew she was still pursuing me, for I felt her presence as a dreadful sensation like a sucking at my guts.
I sensed her drawing closer to me. How, I wondered, could this be? I didn't know where her impossible speed came from. I couldn't guess how she had remained alive all these years, or how she could see. I waited to feel the skin along the back of my neck hardening into stone. Like Daj, I couldn't keep myself from wondering how badly it would hurt.
And then I turned panting and driving hard around a great mound of rock and almost ran straight into Kane and my other companions. Kane stood behind his horse aiming an arrow in my direction; I saw through the gloom that he had affixed his black gelstei to his forehead, as of a third eye.
'Quick. . away from here!' I called. 'She … must. have. guessed where. . And taken a shortcut.'
I caught my breath and added, 'Hurry — the sun will be up soon!'
Already, in the east the sky through the gap behind us glowed with red light that devoured the stars.
And so hurry we did. I had thought my friends would already be beyond the pass, but Master Juwain explained that Atara had turned her ankle on the rocky ground and so had been forced to ride. In the darkness, they had not been able to move quickly.
For a mile we worked our way up a swell of fissured rock. And then, at the top, we had our first view of the great Red Desert. The wall of mountain to the north still blocked a line of sight in that direction, but to the west and south, for as far as the eye could see, a seemingly endless expanse of flat, scrub-covered ground opened out toward the horizon. Only a last short slope, no more than a quarter mile in length, led down into it.
It vexed me that the ground of this slope was so stony and broken that we still could not ride — at least no more quickly than Atara rode. Jezi Yaga, I thought, might be quick over short distances but could never outpace a horse. I wondered at the range of the purple gelstei that were her eyes. How far out in the desert must we gallop, I thought, before we would be safe?
We were never to find this out. For just as we had descended a short way down the slope, I heard a great pounding of footsteps and then a jolly laughter from behind us. I whipped my head from left to right, wildly looking about for any cover. A single boulder, not even large enough to shelter Estrella, stood out from the ground.
'Valashu Elahad!' Jezi Yaga's rolling voice called out. 'Sweet man! I'm coming! I'm coming!'
I moved quickly to help Atara down from her horse, then positioned her behind this snorting beast. The rest of us likewise took shelter behind our horses. Then we waited.
'Sweet man! Sweet man! Did you think you could escape my lovely, lovely eyes?'
A moment later, Jezi Yaga appeared at the top of the slope above us. She stood smiling with her hands planted on her huge, round hips. Her great breasts hung nearly to her waist and shook as she let loose great peals of laughter. She lifted back her blocky head in ord
er to shake her hair out of her glowing, violet eyes.
'Come out from behind your beasts, that I might see you better!' she shouted to us. 'Must I turn them to stone, too? I've no liking for horseflesh, for it's not as sweet as man.'
I crouched behind Altaru's great, trembling body, and I stroked his neck and prayed that he could not understand Jezi Yaga's cruel words. It would be a simple thing, I thought, for Jezi to charge down the slope and find us out behind our horses once she had turned them to stone.
'Come out! Come out!' she called to us. 'Come out and bring me the greenstone! I've no liking to have to chisel it from your hand!'
Master Juwain, I saw, slightly behind me, cringed in back of his horse as he made a fist around his varistei. He called out, 'Take my crystal then, but let us be!'
'I will take it! I will take it! But I will not let you be!'
Just then the sun rose through the gap behind Jezi Yaga enveloping her in a ball of red fire. It sent rays of light streaking straight at us like arrows. I felt its heat on the mail of my legs, which the legs of my horse could not quite cover.
Liljana, standing behind her horse near me, called out, 'I must try!'
I looked over to see her bring her blue gelstei up to the side of her head. A moment later, she flung the little figurine down upon the ground as she cried out: 'He is still there!'
Kane, to my right, touched the smooth, black gelstei glued to his forehead, and growled out, 'So, Valashu, if I fail, remember your sword. Remember the valarda.'
Then he looked up the slope toward Jezi Yaga. He had only a single moment to cry out: 'Damn him!' before his eyes closed and his grip upon his horse's saddle broke. I felt the life drain from his limbs as of water being-sucked into dry sand. Then he fell to the ground. Never had I seen this great warrior lie so still.
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