I had no answer for him, and neither did Kane. The mystery of how the Zuri warriors had fought on beneath the droghul's piercing cry, however, was soon solved. Sunji rode back over to us, and opened his hand to show us a yellowish-white, greasy clot of matter.
'Beeswax,' he said to us, 'taken from the Zuri's ears. They came prepared to murder us.'
He told us that eighteen of his warriors had died in the battle, while another fifteen bore serious wounds. All the Zuri were dead. But one of the Red Priests who rode with them still lived.
'Come, Valashu Elahad, you must bear witness to this,' he said to me. 'You, as well, Kane. And you, Masud.'
We picked our way across the battlefield until we came to a large rock. The captured Red Priest had been bound with ropes and cast back against it. His long, gaunt face, like a living skull, was horrible to look upon. His eyes radiated both fear and hate. Three Avari warriors stood over him with their sabers drawn. Laisar and Maidro stood there, too. Laisar held in his hand a large, green bottle. He showed it to Yago and said, 'Poison — taken from the priest's saddlebags. It is proved beyond any doubt: the Morjin thing and his priests are all poisoners!'
And Maidro added, nodding at Yago, 'Surely they would have poisoned our wells, too.'
While the Avari went about preparing their dead for burial and tending their wounded, Master Juwain and Liljana came down from the rocky heights above — Maram and Atara, too. When Yago asked after Turi, Liljana coldly informed him that children had no place on a battlefield; Turi, she said, was safe in the company of Daj and Estrella.
'But the children need water,' she croaked out in a voice as dry as dust. 'We all do.'
Some of the Avari were surprised to learn that we had brought children with us, for Sunji had not yet had time to inform them of this. One old warrior, as tall as I, shook his head disapprovingly as he said, 'Children drink water even more quickly than a hot wind.'
Liljana, I thought, was ready to walk over and rip free the water-skin from the back of the warrior's horse. Then she espied the captured priest, and her whole body shuddered with revulsion. 'I know you — you were there that day in the throne room! You put the irons in the fire, the ones they used to burn Master Juwain! You were only a guard, then, filthy torturer!'
The priest looked up at her and said, 'Lord Morjin rewards those who serve him. Just as he does those who oppose him. I regret only that he didn't use the pincers to tear out your filthy tongue and that I won't live to see how he rewards you. But at least I had the pleasure of seeing him blind the scryer.'
Although Atara said nothing to this, I felt a cold rage building inside her. She stood orienting her blindfold toward the sound of his voice.
'If I had pincers, now,' he said, 'and my hands were free, I would gladly tear off her — '
Kane, stepping quickly over to him, delivered a vicious kick to his mouth, for a moment silencing him. The priest sat there almost choking on blood and broken teeth.
Sunji moved over to Kane and grabbed his arm to keep him from further assaulting the priest. He told him, 'This poisoner has helped kill my warriors, and his punishment is for the Avari to mete out.'
'So, we have grievances, too, as you have heard.' 'Would you kill him so easily then?'
'No, not easily,' Kane said. 'We have grievances, yes, but even more we have questions that must be answered.'
'You may ask all the questions you wish,' Maidro said to him, 'after we have given the poisoner to the sun.'
As Maidro explained, the Ravirii tribes, even the Avari, punished well-poisoners by staking them out naked beneath the blazing desert sun.
'It is a terrible death,' Maidro said to Kane.
'Terrible, yes,' Kane said. 'But the pain of it is spread out over too many hours. It would be better if this priest were made to take his own medicine. Hot irons would roast him just as well and loosen his tongue more readily!'
'Kane!' I said to him, hating the dark lights that filled up his eyes. I felt this darkness inside myself, and hated it even more.
'So, Val — what would you have us do then? The priest might be able to tell us if the droghul spoke of things. The droghul might have known what Morjin knows, eh? It would be folly, I say, to lead the next droghul straight to the Maitreya.'
'No,' I said to him, remembering my vow, 'no more torture.'
'But what if the third droghul,' he persisted, 'is waiting for us? What if this priest knows where?'
'And what if he doesn't? Would you have us do this evil thing to him only to achieve no good end?'
Kane stood staring at me, and gave no answer, which was answer enough. Then Master Juwain came forward. He, whose ear opening had been seared by one of Morjin's fire irons, said to Kane, 'If I can bear to see this man spared such torture, so can you.'
Liljana, whose mind Morjin had ravaged, reluctantly agreed with Master Juwain. Then Atara, gathering in all her memories of that terrible day in Argattha, tapped the end of her unstrung bow toward the priest and said, 'He is a torturer, and so it is fitting that he be repaid in kind. He is a crucifier — being staked out beneath the sun is like unto crucifixion, and only what he deserves. Justice is hard. But how are we to restore the world as it should be without justice?'
She spoke legalistically, with steel in her tongue and a cold heart. She seemed as opaque and impenetrable as a block of ice. At that moment, I felt that I could never really know her.
'Justice the poisoner shall have,' Sunji said to us. 'But we are in the desert now, and the desert ways shall prevail. Maidro, what do you say to this?'
'I say stake the poisoner to the sand!' Maidro called out.
'And you, Laisar — what do you say?'
'Stake him, and cut off his eyelids that he might meditate on the sun!'
The Avari, I thought, might be different in some ways from the other Ravirii tribes, but they were still a cruel, hard people.
I stood over the bound Red Priest, who tried to show brave but quaked inside with a terrible fear. If I let these people torture him, how would I be any different from him? This question enraged me, for I felt myself caught in an inescapable trap. I burned to put fire to the priest even more badly than did Kane; I wanted to know what he knew. Even more, I wanted that he should suffer as Master Juwain and Atara had suffered. I hated the One that had created a world of such evil need and vengeance — almost as much as I feared what might befall if we let the priest keep his silence.
'No,' I said again, drawing my sword, 'no torture!'
The three Avari warriors who guarded the priest angled their sabers toward me. I wondered if I could cut down all of them before one of them managed to put his sword into my armorless body.
'He is our captive!' Sunji called to me. 'He and his kind have killed my warriors! And foully killed the Masud at their well!'
I felt him grieving for his dead tribesmen; I had overheard one of the Avari say that he had lost a cousin and a nephew to the Zuri's swords. I gazed at Sunji, and at Yago. And I said to them, 'You have lost kinsmen and friends to the Red Dragon's poisoned claws, and the pain of such loss cannot be measured in numbers. But I have lost much, too. Four thousand of my countrymen died upon the Culhadosh Commons. All my brothers. Asaru, the greatest knight in our land, took a lance through his chest so that I might live. I have promised to join him in the stars rather than allow what he would have died a thousand times to prevent.'
I stood with my sword held back behind my head. Out of the side of my eye, I caught a gleam of glorre blazing as brightly as the sun. I felt as wild as a thousand suns. I was ready to stand against all the Avari warriors staring at me in awe, and if need be, all the armies of the Red Dragon.
Sunji finally could not bear looking at me. I knew that he did not want any more of his warriors to die; curiously, I sensed that he likewise did not want them to kill me. He turned to Yago and said, 'Masud — this stranger brings strange sentiments into our land. But it was your tribesmen, too, that the poisoner killed. And so I must ask
you, too: what do you say?'
Shawls still covered the heads of the Avari, so it was difficult to guess what they looked like, but I thought it impossible that their faces could be any harder than Yago's face, with its harsh planes, knife-blade of a nose and thin lips set together like stone. I knew that he wanted to call for the Red Priest to die in the most painful way possible. And yet he hesitated before speaking. He looked at me. As I met his gaze, I couldn't help remembering how other Red Priests had staked my mother and grandmother to wood. I could still feel the agony of the nails burning through my own hands. I couldn't help wishing that no one would ever have to die this way again. Yago looked at me for a long time before he turned to answer Sunji's question.
'The punishment for well-poisoning is everywhere known,' he said. 'And yet there is another punishment, much older and less well-known. My great-grandfather told me of this: that in the old days well-poisoners were made to drink their own poison.'
'That is not told among the Avari,' Sunji said. He looked at the green bottle that Laisar still held, with great care, as he might a scorpion. Sunji continued, 'But it seems to me a just punishment. Fifteen of my warriors are wounded and must be taken back to my father's hadrah to be cared for. I do not care to linger here fighting off the vultures and hyenas until the poisoner manages to die.'
He took counsel with Laisar and Maidro, who agreed to Yago's proposition. Sunji bowed his head to me. Then he ordered the priest's bonds untied, and gave him the bottle of poison with his own hand. He stepped back quickly. Twenty Avari warriors stood around aiming stones at the priest's head in case he should attempt any treachery, such as throwing the poison at those who had condemned him to death.
The priest, however, was not that brave. Taking even the worst poison would be better than being staked out in the sun. With a trembling hand, the priest pulled open the bottle's cork stopper. He had to fight to bring the bottle up to his lips. And then, as I watched in horror, he threw back his head and drained the bottle in three huge gulps.
Compared to the other deaths planned for him, this one was merciful. And yet no death, I thought, was easy. Almost immediately, the priest's chest began working violently as he struggled for breath and his lips turned blue. He screamed like a dog crushed beneath a wagon's wheels. Tremors ripped through his whole body; as I watched, these intensified into such terrible convulsions that I heard his bones begin to snap. Blood ran from his nose; he coughed and vomited bright red blood, and Sen stopped moving. He lay in the dirt whimpering in agony.
Before anyone could stop me, I raised up my sword and rushed forward. I stabbed the point of it into the back of the priest's neck killing him instantly. I would never be sure whether I did this out of pity or hatred for a man who had helped torture Master Juwain and Atara.
None of the Avari objected to my hastening his end. The sight of the priest dying had sickened them, as it had me.
'I really must have some water,' Lilljana called out. She stood almost faint by Atara's side, and it seemed the two women practically held each other up. 'I must take water to the children, now.'
She looked behind her at a warrior holding a waterskin. And the warrior barked at her: 'Avari water is for the Avari!'
Liljana dropped Atara's hand, and she began walking toward one of the riderless Zuri's horses to appropriate the waterskin slung on its back. But another warrior blocked her way, saying, 'The Zuri's water belongs to the Avari, too, as payment for the lives they took.'
Liljana, now furious, stalked straight up to Sunji and shouted, 'What is wrong with you? We've been without water a whole day! The children are suffering the worst of it! They'll die without water!'
Laisar, the old judge of the Avari, looked at Sunji a moment before turning back to Liljana. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'They will die anyway. That is the law.'
'Law? What law?' Maram bellowed out. Until now, the priest's terrible death had driven him into silence. 'For mercy's sake, give us a little water!'
The Avari warriors, seeing Maram's oozing sores, drew back from him as from a leper. Then Sunji said to him, 'It is our way to kill those who enter our land uninvited, and it is a mercy that we haven't put you to the sword, for you have brought here only death.'
'Kill me then!' Maram said, pulling open his tunic in order to expose his hairy, much-bitten chest. 'Put your sword through my heart — will be more merciful than making me die of thirst!'
At first, Sunji said nothing as to Maram's histrionics. Then he sighed out: 'The desert is hard, and so are our laws.'
Maram made no reply to this as he stood gripping his red crystal in his hand.
'The desert is hard,' Sunji repeated, 'and you are soft. You sweat more than a horse. You wear garments that invite the sun to steal your water.'
'Then let us have these robes of the Zuri,' Maram said. 'Give us water, and we'll leave your lands as quickly as we can.'
'To go where?' Sunji asked. 'If we gave you water, would you let the Masud guide you back the way you came, out of the desert?'
'No,' I said, hoping that I spoke for Maram. 'We must go on.'
'To find this Maitreya that you told of?'
'Yes, he,' I said. I stared toward the canyon's mouth, toward the west. 'He is out there, somewhere.'
'Foolish pilgrims,' Sunji said to me. 'I know nothing of this Maitreya, but much of the desert. You cannot cross the Zuri's lands, not now that you have helped kill the Zuri. Tatuk will be awaiting his warriors' return, and when he sees you instead, he'll stake you to the sand to make you tell what has happened here. The Red Priests, as you call them, have made a slave of Tatuk, I think. I think the Priests have also poisoned the minds of the Vuai in the south, and so you can't go that way either.'
'Then there must be another way,' I said to him. 'Help us.'
Sunji hesitated as he stared at me, but Laisar shook his head at this and said, 'All other ways, you'll find only death. And so helping you would only be a waste of water.'
'At least,' I said, looking at Liljana 'let us take a little water to the children. Whatever our foolishness, you shouldn't condemn them.'
But it wasn't to be that we took water to the children. It was they who brought it to us. As Sunji stood off a few paces conferring with Laisar and Maidro, I overheard one of them murmur, '… no water. The dead are the dead.' Just then, Liljana noticed Daj, Turi and Estrella hurrying down through the ravine toward us. She opened her mouth to scold them for disobeying her and not remaining in the rocks above. She closed her mouth a moment later. For she saw what we all saw: the children each bore water-skins, wet on the outside and sloshingly full of water.
The Avari warriors stood watching in puzzlement as the children made their way past the bodies of the dead straight toward us. The warriors' black, hard eyes told of their suspicion that we had lied to them about our need for water. And then Daj, in his high, piping boy's voice called out: 'Val! Liljana! Master Juwain! Estrella found water!'
The children came up to us, and the whole company of Avari warriors gathered around. The children, having already drunk their fill, gave waterskins first to Atara and Liljana, and then to Maram, Master Juwain, Kane and me. Turi seemed proud to slap one of these wet leather bags into his father's hands. So astonished were the Avari at this turn of events that none of them, not even Laisar or Maidro, thought to object that we were still drinking their water.
]They say she found water,' one of the Avari in the circle around us murmured. 'The girl did, in the rocks above.'
'Impossible,' another warrior said. 'There is no water in these hills.'
'There is water in those skins — where did it come from then?'
After we had all had a deep drink of water, we passed the water-skins to the thirsty Avari so that they might drink, too. Then Sunji asked Estrella to show him where she had found the water. She led us back up through the ravine. We passed over the shelf of rocks where our horses stood and then scrambled up the rocky slope behind it. With quick, lively gestures, Estre
lla pointed out a dark opening in the side of the hill. Daj explained that in their search for water, Estrella had found a crack in the rocks, which the children had excavated into this hole.
'It's a cave,' Daj said, pointing into the opening. 'It leads down to the water.'
The opening was just barely large enough to let a single man squeeze through it. Estrella led the way into the cave, and we followed. Maram declined this new adventure. As he said, 'In Argattha I went deep into the bowels of the earth, and never again.' Many of the Avari shared his sentiments, and waited outside with him. So did Atara. Whatever wonders the cave held, she would not be able to look upon them.
Estrella led us down through a tube of rock that opened out and up the deeper in we went. Master Juwain pointed out patches of goldish-red lichen growing on the walls and ceiling, and marveled that they seemed to give off a soft, glowing light. This radiance barely sufficed to illuminate the pendants of rock hanging down from the ceiling and the pinnacles rising up from the floor. Master Juwain identified the rock as limestone.
We felt the presence of water before we saw or heard it, for as we descended the air grew ever more humid. Estrella practically ran down and around a bend in the rock, and then drew up short where the cave dead-ended in what seemed a pool of water. But its rushing sound and the movement of the air above gave me to perceive that it was really an underground stream. I knelt down by its edge, and cupped my hands into it. I drank this water; it was cool and sweet just like the water the children had brought to us.
'It is a river of water!' Laisar cried out. 'All glory in the One!'
He knelt down to drink of it, with Maidro and Sunji. Sunji had brought along a dry waterskin, which he now filled. He stood up and looked at Estrella in awe.
'The girl found water,' he said, 'and brought us to it.'
'Udra Mazda,' Laisar intoned, gazing at Estrella. 'All glory in the One.'
'Udra Mazda,' Maidro repeated, bowing to Estrella.
Sunji explained that this strange name meant Water Bringer or Water Maker; among the Avari, no one else was so revered, not even their king.
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