'Just letting him go, then?' Kane hurled the chains spinning toward the cart, which they struck with a jangle of iron links and dented wood. 'I won't let him go — go off to be captured or killed by the bloody Red Priests! Do you know how far I've come to find him?'
The dark flame burning up his eyes told of a journey across the stars and across the ages. I did not know how I could put it out. 'The Beast murdered Godavanni!' he shouted in anguish. 'He caused Issayu to jump from a tower onto the rocks of the sea! I won't let him take this one! I won't lose him, do you understand?' So saying, he whipped free his sword from its sheath and faced me. I clenched my fingers around the black jade of my sword's hilt. The line between anguish and madness, I knew, was thinner than Alkaladur's flaming edge.
At the same moment that his hand darted out to grasp hold of my sword arm, my hand locked onto his. We stood there in the quiet woods in the misty morning, pulling at each other and testing each other's strength.
'Kane!' Liljana shouted. 'You let go of him — let go right now!'
But Kane, I thought, as his black eyes burned into mine, would never let go if that meant freeing my arm so that I might strike out at him.
'Val! You let go, too!'
'No!' I shouted.
'Val, please,' Master Juwain said to me. 'Let go so we can make sense of this!'
If I let go, I knew that Kane might strike his sword into me.
'Val!' Atara called out. 'Let him go!'
Just then Estrella darted forward, and ducked beneath Kane's and my locked arms. She squeezed her slender body between us as she pushed one hand against Kane's chest and the other against mine. There came a moment when the fire filling up Kane's eyes cooled, slightly. I let go of my sword, and heard it strike the earth. Then I let go of Kane's arm and told him, 'Kill me, if you must, but you will let Bemossed go free!'
As Liljana stepped forward to pull Estrella away from us, I waited to see what Kane would do. He stood staring at me in wonder, and my heart raced In great surging pulses. His eyes grew hot and wild — but no wilder, I thought, than my own. His breath steamed from his lips with a bitterness that I could almost taste. He hated, I knew, but his wrath slowly boiled away beneath the blaze of an even greater thing.
'So, Val,' he said to me. He sheathed his sword and then bent to pick up mine. He pressed it into my hand. 'Valashu Elahad. I will let Bemossed go, will I? Ha — I suppose I will! But what then? Are we to let one man go free, only to watch the whole of Ea become enslaved?'
Bemossed, I thought, had heard a great deal that we had not intended for him to hear, at least not yet. He had seen the flaming of my sword's silustria. If he told of this to anyone, the Red Priests would surely find out and try to hunt us down. It didn't matter. If he went off on his own, it would be the end of everything anyway.
And so, after taking a long, deep breath, I began to explain who we really were and why we had come to Hesperu. I could not give a full accounting of our journeys and trials, for there was too much to tell. But I gave him our names and the lands of our births; I said that Master Matai, of the Brotherhoods, had pointed us toward the Haraland of Hesperu in our quest for the Maitreya.
'Thank you … Valashu,' Bemossed said to me at last. He gazed at me for at least a full minute. 'Thank you for trusting me. But there is still much that makes me confused.'
He picked off a little of the mud encrusting his arm and shot me a troubled look. And I said to him, 'Speak, then. We haven't much time.'
He nodded his head, then forced out: 'You say that this Master Matai and the oracle at Senta led you to me. But I know nothing of the Maitreya.'
His face, at that moment, was open and full of puzzlement, I sensed no guile in him. I remembered lines of the verse that Master Juwain had told to me:
The Shining One
In innocence sleeps…
'You know yourself,' I said to him. 'You know what is within you.'
'But how can that lead you to the Maitreya?'
I exchanged a quick look with Master Juwain. Although it seemed impossible, Bemossed obviously had no idea of why we had sought him out.
Master Juwain said to him, 'I'm afraid you don't understand. You are the Maitreya. At least we have good reason to believe you might be.'
Bemossed stared at Master Juwain and me as if we had eaten poisoned mushrooms and fallen completely mad.
'I?' he called out at last. 'You think I am the Maitreya? The great Shining One? Do you know nothing?'
'We know what we have heard,' I said, thinking of the golden songs that rang throughout Senta's caverns. 'We know what has been prophesied, and what we have seen.'
'What have you seen, then? What have you heard? Have your wanderings kept you ignorant of all that has happened? Haven't you heard that Lord Morjin has been proclaimed as the Maitreya?'
It took me a moment before the tightening of my throat allowed my fury to pour out of me: 'Morjin? That cursed Crucifier? You think Morjin is the Maitreya?'
Bemossed looked at my sword, which I still clutched in my hand. He gasped in dread as blue flames erupted from the silus-tria and writhed in swirls all along its length. I quickly slid the blade back into its scabbard, which extinguished this little bit of hellfire.
'You hate him, don't you?' he said to me.
The only answer that I could summon then was a single word: 'Yes.'
'Many do,' he said. 'But it is his priests who are evil, not he.'
I drew in a breath of moist air and said, 'Do you really think so?'
He looked down at his dirty, scratched hands, then gazed off into the misty forest. 'I know almost nothing of the Dark Lands, but too much of my land. I was born into great injustice, and things have grown only worse. The Kallimun priests, with King Arsu's consent, torture Hesperu. They torture the whole world. They have made of everything a foul disease. All in Lord Morjin's name — but against his will.'
I looked at Master Juwain, who could hear nothing in his ruined ear because of Morjin's will. I looked at Liljana, who could not smile. Then I looked at Bemossed and asked him, 'Why do you think the Red Priests act without Morjin's consent?'
He shrugged his shoulders and told us, 'The Master — Mangus — always said that men cannot bear perfection, and so out of envy will do their best to sully and destroy it.'
At this, Kane growled out, 'But Mangus seemed on good enough terms with the Kallimun. He spoke well of the damn Red Priests!'
'So it is everywhere now,' Bemossed sighed out. 'So it must be. In the village square or within the hearing of others, one must say one thing. But in one's house among family, and in the privacy of the heart, one says another.'
'But what do you say?' I asked him. 'Do you believe that Morjin is perfect?'
'If he is the Maitreya, he must be,' he said simply. 'I have read and reread the Darakul Elu. Everything in Lord Morjin's words speaks of his desire for perfection.'
I ground my teeth at this and said, 'Desire or not, why should you think that he has succeeded and he isn't the poisoned well that his priests draw all their evil from?'
'Because in the Black Book,' he told me, 'especially in its heart, in the Songs of Light, I have felt such love. And because.. '
His voice died off into the little sounds of the woods. And I said to him, 'Yes?'
He waved his hand at an oak tree at the edge of the clearing, then reached down to touch a broken fern that we had trampled under. And he said, 'Because the world cannot be a cruel jest. The One created it as a gift to us and not a torment. Soon Lord Morjin will rule over all lands, even the Dark ones. If he was evil, then evil would prevail, not just in enslavements or crucifixions of the unfortunate, but with everyone — and everywhere, forever. The One could never allow this to be.'
Master Juwain, who had more liking for philosophical arguments than I did, said to Bemossed: 'If the One could never permit this, and the Red Dragon is but the One's eyes and hands, then how can the Dragon permit his priests to do what they do, in his name?'
I could not bear any longer to hear such things. And so I stared at Bemossed and said, 'It was Morjin who crucified my mother.'
'No, that cannot be. One of his priests, perhaps, acting upon his own — '
'Bemossed!' I shouted. I motioned for Daj to lead Atara over to us. I lay my hand upon her face and said, 'Look at her! Morjin did this to her!'
'No, no,' he murmured as he gazed at her. 'No, no.'
I grabbed onto his hand and pulled him so that he looked back at me. I said, 'He is the Red Dragon, the Lord of Lies. He is the Great Beast. It was Morjin, with his own hands, who took her eyes!'
I told him of how we had gone into Argattha to gain the Lightstone, and of how Morjin had tortured Master Juwain, Ymiru and Atara. I knew that he heard the truth of what I said. His fingers grasped at mine as his whole body began to tremble and he wept without restraint.
Then he asked Atara, 'Is it as Valashu has said?'
'It is worse,' she told him.
'I'm sorry,' he said to her. He took hold of her with his free hand. 'The Dragon took your eyes, and yet it is I who have been blind.'
'You've nothing to be sorry about,' she told him.
'I don't know — perhaps I shouldn't have run away.'
He stood up to face her, and he lay his hands over her temples, where the white bandage pressed her golden hair. He looked at her with great gentleness, even as something hard and hurtful knotted up inside him.
And she said to him, 'We had hoped. .'
He took his hands away from her and shook his head sadly. 'I cannot be the one you hope me to be.'
'But we had heard that you healed a great lord's daughter. When she was near to death. You laid your hands upon her and — '
'No, you don't understand,' he said. 'I can heal no one. It is not as you must think.'
'How is it, then?'
Bemossed held his hand up to the sun's rays burning down through the thinning mist. He said, 'A spectacle's lens gathers light and strengthens it, but in itself illuminates nothing. I am such a lens, and nothing more. There are times … when everything is utterly clear. Then there is Ughtij§ there is always tight, but sometimes it shines so brilliantly. Within it is everything. The design for all things, in their wholeness, in their being, in their joy. This light is such a joy. It is that which touches those I lay my hands upon, not I. But when I am utterly clear, I touch upon it, for a moment. It is like touching the One itself. It is like. the whole world is beautiful and can never be full of ugliness or hurt again. Then, and only then, I am perfect. Then it all passes through me, like lightning, and sometimes people are healed. They call this a miracle.'
He fell silent, and we gazed at him in utter silence. At last Master Juwain said to him, 'So it would be with the Maitreya.'
'But so it is with many people,' Bemossed said.
'No, not many — your gift is quite rare.'
'Surely it is not. Surely many others can do as I do. They just don't speak of it.'
He went on to say that once he had lived in the south, near Khevaju, and had known of three young healers who had disappeared into the Kallimun fortress there.
'Everyone is afraid to appear as different, and who can blame
them?'
'In the Free Kingdoms,' Master Juwain said, 'people have no such fear, and yet I know of no one able to heal as you do.'
Bemossed smiled sadly at this and said, 'If they do not fear the Kallimun, then they fear themselves. That which they will not touch. Surely, no man or woman exists who cannot be open to what shines from the One?'
'If that is true,' Master Juwain said, 'then what is the Maitreya?'
Bemossed shrugged his shoulders and said, 'He is not the lens, but the light.'
The two of them contended in a like manner for a while. I joined in this argument, and so did Maram and Liljana. We could not quite convince Bemossed that he might be the Maitreya; we could not quite convince ourselves. But there still seemed no better course than to take him away from Hesperu. And so I finally said to him, 'You now know what we feared to tell you, and with good reason. What will you do? Will come with us?'
Bemossed picked another scab of mud off his skin, and then looked off into the forest. He said, 'This is my land. As cruel as it is, as cruel as it has been to me, it is still my home.'
'Then come back to it,' I said. 'In strength, after we've stopped Morjin. You can do nothing for your people, now.'
'I don't know,' he said. 'There was Taimu, the miller's son, whose leg was shattered almost beyond repair. There was Ysanna, who was only a breath away from dying.'
'In the lands we must pass through,' I told him, 'you will find no lack of people who are ailing or close to death.'
'I don't know,' he said, looking up at the sky.
Master Juwain gripped a pair of tweezers in his hand, and said to him, 'Whatever you are, whatever your gift might be, I believe that the Grandmaster of my order might be able to help bring it forth in all its glory. With the aid of the gelstei we call the seven openers. Then you might be able to claim control of the Lightstone, even across a thousand miles. Think what a lens that would be!'
I felt Bemossed's heart quicken, and his eyes brightened. But he shook his head as if he couldn't believe what Master Juwain had said might be possible.
'I don't know,' he said again. 'I just don't know.'
He stared at the mad colors of the cart as he seemed to listen to the weet-trit-weet of a swallow singing from the branch of a nearby tree. Then he looked at me and asked, 'Why have you kept the minstrel hidden all these days?'
I started to give the usual excuse about Thierraval's shyness and retiring ways, but Bemossed's hurt look reminded me that I must try to be truthful with him in all things.
And so I said, 'The minstrel's real name is Alphanderry. And he is not as other men.'
'What is wrong with him?' Bemossed asked.
'Nothing is wrong,' I told him. I sensed in him a strange dread burning through his belly. So I asked him, 'What is wrong with you?'
'Only that I feared you had done something to the minstrel. As I supposed you wished to do to me.'
'What do you mean?'
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at me. 'Because you are from the Dark Lands, as I thought of them, I supposed you wanted to use me in some evil rite. It is said that demons there castrate men against their will and make of them women for their pleasure, and do even worse things.'
I stared at him in disbelief.
'I have been marked,' he said, touching the black cross tattooed into his forehead. 'In any case, people have always singled me out. I see the way they look at me. I know there is something about me they can't bear. And so who better to choose for a strange rite?'
I wanted to laugh at this almost as much as I wanted to weep. Instead, I asked Maram to open the door to the cart. Then I called for Alphanderry to come out and make Bemossed's acquaintance.
From twenty yards away, seemingly attired in rich velvets and wool, Alphanderry appeared much as any other man. But as he came closer, the colors of his skin and curly hair seemed to grow ever more vivid and almost too real. When he closed the distance and stood next to the log upon which Bemossed sat, he fairly glowed. His large eyes filled with light — and so did his lips, cheeks and forehead.
'Bemossed,' he said, bowing, 'it is my pleasure.'
Bemossed stared at him in wonder. He said to him, 'They call me the Maitreya, but it is you who shines!'
Alphanderry laughed at this in a rich musk that poured from his throat. He seemed to look deep into Bemossed's being as if layers of flesh were as nothing to him.
'Who are you?' Bemossed asked him.
'Hoy — who are you? The Maitreya, they say. Well,
we can only hope.'
It came time to tell of the Timpum, those strange, luminous beings that shimmered through all of Ea's vilds. Were they really the children of the Galadin or seeds of light that the Galadin had bestowed upon the earth? And could these seeds somehow blossom into a human being whose substance seemed pure radiance? We didn't know. All that we could explain to Bemossed was that Flick had somehow become very much like our old friend, Alphanderry.
'What are you?' Bemossed asked him.
Alphanderry's warm, wide smile invited friendship, even intimacy. Bemossed gathered up his courage and reached out to take hold of Alphanderry. With his delight of touching of hand to hand, he was like a child with a new game. But it was still impossible to apprehend Alphanderry in this way. Bemossed's hand passed right through him as if he had thrust it into a pool of glimmering water.
He almost fell off his log then. And he said to Alphanderry, 'If you are made of light, you must be the Maitreya-'
'The Maitreya?' Alphanderry said. 'Hoy — I am a minstrel.'
'But — '
'You are made of light, too. Everything is. I heard you tell Valashu this.'
'But — '
'I am not here to argue,' Alphanderry said, 'but to sing. What shall I sing of?'
He didn't wait for an answer, but only smiled as he intoned:
The Shining One
In innocence sleeps.
Inside his heart Angel fire sleeps,
And when he wakes
The firre leaps.
About the Maitreya
One thing is known:
That to himself
He always is known
When the moment comes
To claim the Lightstone.
Alphanderry stopped singing and looked at Bemossed. And he asked him, 'What will it take, I wonder, to wake you up?'
And with that, he vanished into nothingness.
An astonished Bemossed stood up, looked around and asked, 'Where did he go?'
'I don't know,' I told him.
I stared at the cross shining from his forehead, and I couldn't help remembering my mother's arms stretched out and her hands nailed to a piece of wood.
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