“We will be together again,” I said, trying to speak gently, for it was not Tassida’s wont to humble herself as she was doing, pleading with me. “You will find your way back to me again, as you have always done before.”
Her dark brows drew together. “In Mahela’s hell!” she snapped, and she turned and strode angrily away. I set off at speed on my journey, not looking back at her.
Chapter Eleven
Through what was left of the day I traveled in utmost haste, at trot and brief walk and trot again, and on past dusk into nightfall, through the smother of smoke that blotted out the stars and moon that might have guided me through the night, and only for that reason, because I could not see to travel, did I stop to eat, and after I had eaten I could not rest; but stood up and paced and circled where I was. Sometime past halfnight a sharp, cold wind came up and blew the smoke away, and then I could see, though not to run for fear of laming myself against a stone, and I walked on again.
Kor.… Tass.… But Tass was in no danger except the world’s danger, which was on all of us. With an effort of will I pushed the thought of her aside. Even the brief moment of thinking of her—behind me—and Kor—ahead—had made me feel as if I were being torn asunder.
At first light I began to run, and I ran on through the blazing day with only brief pauses to walk or drink, and still I had not drawn abreast of Catalin Du! By Mahela’s stinking bowels, but it was a vast, doomed world to one afoot and in haste. Even had I been mounted, it was all too vast, the distance all too far that I had come from my bond brother.
That night, when full dark came, I had to rest or I would have fallen. But with first light I was up again and stumbling onward like a crazed thing, like a lemming, toward the sea. A murky sunrise the color of old blood lay over the immense eastward plain. Smoke had spread that way, lying over the world like a blanket over a corpse, making even sunlight seem dim, leaving a wincing smell and a bitter taste in the air.
Before me, the treeless roughlands of the Steppes. Behind me, small with distance but yet there, no matter how I strove to leave him behind, Methven, red tattered cape turning to dull black on his shoulders. Beside me, seeming never to change shape or move, Catalin Du, his red cloak darkening in like wise. Overhead, a vast sky that could give me no joy. I, very small, running raggedly beneath it.
I began to dream of Kor that day, seeing his face instead of what was before me, or I could not have gone on. Kor, tending the murderous madman in the prison pit. Showing me the ways of mercy. Kor, dying in torment for my sake—I blinked, shaking my head, to drive that memory away, seeing instead his sunrise smile after my tears or some uncanny power had brought him back to life. Kor, my bond brother, questing to Mahela’s undersea realm with me. And the beaten despair in both of us as we had crawled naked back onto the shore.…
Vision shifted. As plainly as if it stood before me, I was seeing something new and unknown to me.
A sandy shoreline. Endless sky, endless water, ocean surf seething at my feet. And flying landward, low over the waves, two great ernes—I gasped in glad surprise, for I had never seen such eagles before except in the realm of the dead. A white-tailed sea eagle and one of pure white, its wings flashing bright as swords against a storm-dark sky. And the white eagle flew wearily, heavily, heaving at some burden that dangled from its hooked beak. The other flew close to its side, slowing its wingbeats to match its comrade’s laboring speed.
They swooped down, or nearly fell down, and with a thump they both landed in the sand, just out of reach of the waves. The dangling burden was a round, bright fruit still on the stem, a fruit as blue as highmountain sky. It had rolled into the sand, and tiny grains of sand clung to its glistening rind. But I was not looking at the fruit, for the eagles at the touch of the land’s edge had turned to two goodly men, and I was gazing on them in happiness and longing, for I knew them. They were Chal and Vallart.
He who had been the white-tailed erne was Vallart, and he was sitting up, then staggering to his feet. But Chal, who had been the burdened eagle of entire white—Chal was lying still, with lidded eyes, and the strange fruit had rolled away from him to nestle in the sand by his side. Then I saw how horribly he had been hurt. It was no mere tale, that he had been put to torment in Mahela’s realm.
Vallart went to him, sat in the sand by his head, and softly gathered him up, head and shoulders, into his lap and arms. Then with a tremulous effort Chal opened his eyes.
“We’ve done it,” he murmured, looking up into his comrade’s face. “We’ve bested her.”
Vallart nodded, swallowing, seeming scarcely able to speak. “Hush,” he said finally. “Rest. You must grow strong again. I must go find you food, some covering—”
“No. Stay with me. Please.…” Chal’s voice dwindled away into a gasping breath. His eyes closed again.
“Chal.” Vallart shook him slightly, but Chal did not stir. “Chal! My lord, my comrade, you must live!” Vallart’s voice broke on the words, and he held his friend and king hard, close, fiercely, as if holding him could keep him. But Chal lay still. I saw his face grow smooth as pain left him. He had ceased to breathe.
For a moment Vallart did not move. He sat as rigid as a mountain, still clutching at Chal, his body nearly as hard as mountain stone. Stunned with sorrow, I thought, not yet knowing the passions clashing inside him, the sense of duty, the anger and rebellious hope.… His head snapped up. Then with a yell of despair or defiance, a heart-torn roar that seemed to echo through generations of mortal dying to reach me, he turned and snatched up the sky-blue fruit in his hand.
He held it over Chal’s wounded and unmoving chest. His fingers ripped into the bright rind, tore the fruit wide open, flung it asunder. Inside, blazing white, it was all light, so shining I could scarcely see—stones, dropping out of it, one of sun yellow, one as red as Chal’s blood. And naked in Vallart’s hand glowed another stone, or jewel, of such a vivid, perfect hue, nameless as the nameless god, never seen but in the flower that had perished with Sakeema’s passing, the amaranth. Jewel of an impossible color made all of sunset light, dazzling me with its brightness so that I could scarcely look at it—Vallart laid it on Chal’s chest, pressing it into place with the warmth of his hand, and I saw that he was shaking.
The stone flared so that its light blazed, amaranthine, even through Vallart’s hand, and he cried out but did not move. Then came a gentler glow—
And Chal stirred and started softly to breathe, and I saw his wounds closing even as I looked. I had seen such a healing once before. And Vallart was weeping, his shoulders shaking, his chest heaving, weeping as I had wept, that time I had held Korridun’s body in my arms, first dead, then living and healed.… Vallart’s tears were falling on his comrade’s face, and when Chal opened his eyes in bewilderment, Vallart gathered him up and embraced him.
“What.…” Chal struggled to sit up, his own tears filling his eyes. “My god, Vallart, I was dead and now I am alive. What price have you paid? What have you sacrificed?”
The jewel of amaranthine hue had fallen to the sand with the other two, the one sun yellow, the one red as blood. Shakily Vallart lifted it—his palm bore a raw, red wound. The stone blazed darkly in his burned hand, and Chal stared.
“No,” he breathed.
“I had to.” Vallart could scarcely speak for weeping.
“No! Better you had let me die than sunder it.”
“I could not let you die.”
“You would rather let the world go down to death?” Chal sounded not so much wrathful as utterly dismayed. “All our striving has come to naught. All goodliness of creation will come to naught.”
“Chal, do not reproach me, please!” Vallart covered his face with his hands—the fingers still glistened, moist from ripping the rind of the fruit, dewed as if with its tears. Then he let drop his hands and faced Chal starkly, heedless of his own weeping. “My lord and king, my friend, my comrade, even though the world should die I yet had to be with you.”
&n
bsp; In the vision, it suddenly seemed to me that Chal’s face was Kor’s calm, kingly face, and that Vallart’s impassioned face was mine. Even though the world should die, I yet had to heed my heart.
And Chal, or Kor, reached out to embrace his comrade, saying, “All will yet be well, somehow. What seems so right to you must yet somehow be well.” But the words faltered, and the beloved face was bleak.
Kor’s face, bleak and grim.…
Why was I stupidly standing in a desert on the wrong side of a black cinder cone? Why was I not with him? What had seemed right to me had been wrong, wrong, wrong, or what now seemed right would be wrong, I did not know which, I knew only that I must be with him, and I felt a doom riding on my shoulders along with my heavy bags of provision, the burden I bore to stay alive. I began to run again, strengthened by desperation, the sun blazing down, my sword slapping at my leg.
Run and walk again, walk and trot, walk and trot, through the day.… Mind hazy with weariness and longing, I thought of my strange vision in a drifting way, without much comprehension. Only when I saw the sunset spreading in the western sky did one shard of understanding come to me, came like the point of a knife, for I had not much wanted to think of Tassida.
The amaranthine stone that had healed Chal now glowed in the pommel of her sword. I had seen the fierce blaze of that jewel, and I felt certain of it.
Tass.… She was like the sword, an edge that cut and a touch that healed. The thought slowed my steps to a faltering walk, as if something tugged me to turn and stagger back to her. Instead, I stumbled to my knees, then thudded to the hard, rocky ground, and I lay there until the nighttime chill roused me with my own shivering. Then I groaned and got up and went on.
At dawn I saw that Catalin Du was beginning to fall behind me at last.
Hasten, hasten.… My sense of urgency had not abated. My feet, rubbed raw and bleeding from the borrowed, ill-fitting boots, moved as fast as I could drag them. I leaned forward so that I reeled along, half falling with every frantic step. It was the only way I could go on except for crawling. And I believe I crawled sometimes, also. I do not remember clearly. The three or four days after I passed Catalin Du and turned westward are a blur. I knew only that I had to go to Kor, and that if no mount were waiting for me along the Traders’ Trail I would fail him.
No mount awaited me.
No living creature met my sight across the flat Steppes in any direction when I reached the place where the bleached bones of my former enemies lay. Perhaps the mares had run back to their herdmates, to the westward hosting. More likely they had gone feral and were feeding on asps in some of the dry, steep-sided streambeds that gouged the high plain. Hidden from my sight in such a scar, they might be not even very far away, but I was exhausted, in no condition to track them or wander the Steppes in search of them. I had come the distance from the Herder village in less than a tenday, as fast as a horse and rider would have done it at middling speed, and to no avail.
I lay down, or fell down, on the hard ground by the skeletal bodies and went to sleep. Or swooned.
Perhaps a day passed, for it was daylight again when I awoke. Perhaps not. I was in no fit fettle to reckon. I sat up and drank water. One goatskin of water was left to me, and one bag of dried berries, cheese and grasshopper bread. My burden of food and water had lightened all the way to the place where I sat, or perhaps I might not have been able to make it so far. But even so lightly laden, even had I left the things and walked away without them, I could not go on. I was emptied, like the flattened water-skins I had hurled aside. I was spent.
Numbly I sat staring westward, not even hoping any longer for a horse, not hoping for anything, not even that someone might come this way and find me. No one would be stirring on this trade trail in these ominous end-time days full of the rumor of war. I sat and stared, not knowing what it was that I looked for. It might have been the better part of a day I sat that way, and in time, as seemed to happen to me more easily with every passing day, my awareness faded into vision, as if I had been fasting and keeping a vigil.
I saw sky first, and wind blowing the high clouds into long strands and wisps like horsehair, like the scant tail of a fanged mare. Then I saw two men fronting the wind, their hair blown back from their foreheads, their eyes narrowed and the bones keen in their faces, so that they made me think of eagles. Indeed they had been eagles, at least once, for I knew them. They were Chal and Vallart, the rich and heavy cloaks of kings whipping about their shoulders. Older, yet I would not have known it except that whiteness lay like frost on their hair. And they were splendid, they in their broidered robes, the sunstuff glinting at their necks and chests and sleeves. Chal wore a circlet of sunstuff on his head—a crown. So that was a crown such as kings had worn in those long-gone times. I had only heard of crowns from Tassida—I had never before seen one. Chal had the look of a king followers would die for, glorious, but Vallart stood no less glorious.
“The cycle speeds downward toward doom,” Chal said softly, staring off into the distance somewhere.
Silence. I could see the wild sky and snowpeaks behind the two of them, and a low wall of stone that seemed to encircle them. Somewhere there was a low rumbling sound.
“Feel the earth quiver, even here,” said Chal, and then I began to understand, for I stood with them, and I could see the thunder cones in the far distance, eastward, all seven of them flinging blood-red flame and black rock skyward. And I knew the place where I stood, it was the tower on the mountainside above the—the—I could not think of the deep tarn’s name except to call it a strange name, Sableenaleb, “dark eye of earth.” And with a shock I realized that I was seeing through Vallart’s eyes and mind, that I knew the things he knew and felt the things he felt, that somewhere on the far plains to the eastward kingdoms were warring in a fateful war, and kings, friends and sons of old friends, were dying in anguish by the lance and sword—
Frightened, I wrenched myself away, but not before I had felt the stone platform shake under his feet.
“We had better go down,” Chal said.
They descended the narrow stone steps in a numb silence, and I went with them, or my spirit did, hanging back so as not to come too close again. Very much at one with them, I felt, too much at one with them—but that was an old, useless fear, the terror of being lost and drowned. I ignored it.
No folk were about in the great hall. Perhaps they had all fled somewhere. Tremors were causing the hangings to swing—long, beautifully wrought hangings in some rich cloth, they showed Chal and Vallart sailing away in a high-headed ship, and Chal confronting Mahela and being imprisoned, and Vallart coming after him to rescue him. Then they showed the rescue of the mystic fruit, and the flight, and the sundering of the fruit into its three colors. The banners hung three on each side of the throne—a modest throne, as I knew from having seen Mahela’s—and the panel of sunstuff, which I had seen before, hung on the stone wall above and behind it. I stared, for now I knew the bird thieving the fruit from the tree. It was a cormorant. It was Mahela. She must have thieved the tree itself, in some distant time past, for I had seen it in its pot by her throne.
Head bowed, Vallart settled himself on the step at the foot of the throne, and Chal sat beside him.
“I must return to the Mountains of Doom,” Vallart said to his hands. “In time, there will be another pomegranate of our god on the tree. I must bring it hither. Round, perfect and whole.”
Chal was gazing at him quizzically, and Vallart must have felt the look, for he raised his eyes. But they were narrowed in pain.
“I am old and due to die soon in any event,” he said to Chal. “I cannot expect to go there and live another time, I know that. And it is not dying that troubles me. It is the thought of leaving you.”
“No need,” said Chal quietly. “I will go with you.”
“No! I must go alone.”
“I seem to recall,” said Chal with a sort of tender amusement, “that I once thought I would go alone.”
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“Chal, do not dispute with me! Old friend.…” Vallart’s hand came up to meet Chal’s hand, and his voice faltered. “Myself I can sacrifice. But if you were wounded … the same thing would happen all over again.”
“Nor could I bear it if you were hurt.” Chal’s grip tightened on his comrade’s hand, but his voice was steady. “Therefore it follows, Vallart, that we must both be dead to start with.”
Vallart’s eyes widened, met his king’s. Gazing levelly at each other, the two of them came to some wordless agreement. Then the stone walls around them shook again, the hangings swung wildly, the wooden door splintered and the arch of the doorway cracked. With a crash the trefoil stone at its peak fell down to the floor below.
“Let us go,” said Chal, getting up as if it were no more than to walk a small distance to a neighboring lodge. “Ai, my poor old bones, they ache with the damp.”
“The swords,” Vallart blurted, far less calmly. “What are we to do with the swords?”
“Leave them for the three who may yet come.”
Marantha, Tassida’s sword, hung on the wall behind the throne, the gem in her pommel blazing. Vallart went to her in haste and made as if to grasp her by the hilt, but with a swift, fierce movement she cut at his hand. He jumped back, swearing.
“Bitch!”
“It is of no use to speak to her in that way,” said Chal mildly. “Address her courteously.”
“You get her, then.”
“We both forged her. We must both go to her.”
And they did so, standing before her like humble petitioners, each with a hand outstretched, coaxing her by name, “Marantha.” And the sword came softly down off the wall and nestled in their hands.
Then Chal and Vallart made their way out under the ruined archway and down the rumbling mountainside to the pool they called Sableenaleb.
They presented Marantha gently to the dark water. She left their hands of her own will, slipped into the tarn as if into a sheath, point and blade, then vanished. Chal wore Zaneb at his waist, and Vallart wore Alar, each weapon housed in a scabbard of bronze—Vallart’s mind had joined with mine again, or I would not have remembered the strange words Tassida had once told me. No matter. I withdrew a little and watched as they unbuckled their swords. The stones, red and yellow, were blazing. For a moment the heroes stood holding the weapons in silent farewell, and then Zaneb and Alar sprang from their scabbards and followed Marantha. Without a ripple the pool of vision closed over the three of them.
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