except water. He knew that he should try to find his way back to our encampment, but the desert seemed featureless, an endless expanse of sun-baked sand, and he did not know which way he should strike out. He tried to gauge direction by the sun; he walked north, hoping that he hadn't wandered too far. He saw no landmark that looked like the rocks near our tents. He walked on and on beneath the killing sun until it grew so hot that he had to stop. Then, like a desert rat, he dug down into the sand and buried himself to wait out the worst of the heat. Thus he did not see us searching for him, nor hear us calling to him.
When he emerged from his hole, thirst had maddened him. Now, all that he desired to drink was brandy. He wandered, in hope of finding the seven bottles that Nuradayn had dropped into the sand. The unceasing sun deranged both his wits and his senses. The wool of his robe and shawl tormented his wounds and seemed as heavy as a covering of burning iron, and so he cast them off. He continued wandering, certain that he would find an entire lake filled with brandy. Once — in a moment of terrible lucidity — he realized that we would be searching for him. And so he had tried to unleash the fire from his crystal in order to signal us. He could not control the powerful red gelstei, however, and had succeeded only in burning his hands.
After that, only his craving for brandy had kept him from dropping down into the sand and dying. He fancied that the earth itself would tell him where to search for it. Sometime during the previous night, in the darkness before dawn, he had heard me calling to him and telling him that I had found the brandy. If only he could make his way back to me, he could have all the brandy that he could drink.
'Vraddi!' he croaked out as he lay inside the tent. 'Vraddi!'
I knew that he was calling for brandy, and I implored Master Juwain to wet his mouth with a little brandy from the last remaining bottle. Master Juwain did as I asked. The few drops that he poured down Maram's throat were all that Maram could drink.
'We cannot remain here any longer,' Sunji said to me from outside the tent. 'I know that your friend is dying, but — '
'There is still hope,' I said to him. I came out of the tent to stand beside him. 'You are right, though, that we cannot remain. If Estrella can find water, perhaps another cave where it is moist and cool, then Maram might yet live.'
The dark look in Sunji's eyes told me that he no longer had much hope of Estrella finding water and none at all that it would help Maram if she did.
After that we fashioned a litter from the tent and its poles, and placed Maram upon it. We covered him against the rising sun. A little more work sufficed to secure the litter to one of the pack-horses, who would drag it atilt across the sand.
Then we set out again toward the northwest. We were all so tired that we had to fight to keep from falling off our horses. Maidro announced that we had so little water left, we must forbear eating altogether. None of us, I thought, except perhaps Kane, had any appetite left. I couldn't think of food; in truth, I could hardly think of water. As we made our way miles farther into the glaring sands of the Tar Harath, all my attention concentrated on Maram. Bound to his litter and wrapped up like a mummy that remained somehow alive, he moved up one dune and down the next; from time to time, he would call out to us a single word: 'Vraddi!'
And then there came a time when he called out no more. Master Juwain dismounted and determined that Maram had fallen into the deep sleep that sometimes precedes the even deeper sleep of death.
'Even if Estrella can find water,' Sunji said to me as we crested one of the endless dunes, 'I don't think it will help Maram now.'
'I don't think the udra mazda
Estrella, almost as weak as a newborn, found the strength to urge her horse onward, across the blazing sands. I followed her; I tried to follow my dimly-remembered sense that there was a union of opposites: good and evil; brightness and dark; moisture and drought.
Then we came up on top of another dune, and my urge to turn back from the fiery wasteland before us burned me like the kirax in my blood. I felt this urge to retreat flaring inside my compan- ions and the four Avari, as well. I was so tired, fevered and thirsty that I could barely see. It seemed that We were riding on and on into a wavering emptiness. The air was sick with flat; it seemed to bend the hellish light and distort it in strange ways. Mirages swirled in the distance and then vanished into nothingness.
Something powerful seized hold of me, as of a great hand wrapped around my spine. I knew that I had experienced this strange sensation before, but I could not quite remember where. And then Estrella pointed into the heart of the terrible brilliance ahead of us. In the shimmering light there, I thought could make out flashes of green that looked like trees.
'The sun has addled your wits,' Sunji said to me when I mentioned this. He squinted into the dazzling distances and shook his head. 'It is the madness that precedes sunstroke. We should pitch our tents and take shelter before it grows even hotter.'
I gazed down at Maram, bound to his litter, and I said, 'No, we must go on.'
It was Master Juwain who noticed the clouds above us: all puffy and white, and drifting in from the east, west and south toward a point just beyond the impossibly bright horizon.
'Strange,' Master Juwain murmured. 'How very strange!'
Liljana, who sat next to him on top of her exhausted horse, seemed to read his thoughts, and she said, 'Can it be that one of the Vilds lies here?'
At the look of puzzlement in Sunji's and Maidro's eyes, she told of the magic woods called Vilds that could be found at certain secret places in the world.
'You are all mad!' Sunji cried out. 'There cannot be such a hadrah at the heart of the Tar Harath!'
But then we forced ourselves to ride on another mile and crested yet another line of dunes. The air grew moist, as of a breeze off the sea. The shimmer out on the blinding sands suddenly fell from quicksilver to a bright and beautiful green.
'So,' Kane said. 'So.'
Now the veils of mirage finally parted to reveal an astonishing sight: great trees pushed their green crowns high above the desert's sands. And above this unbroken canopy hung thick layers of clouds rising up even higher into the sky. From the streaks of gray slanting downward toward the trees, it seemed that it must be raining.
'It cannot be,' Maidro murmured. 'It cannot be!'
He, and all of us, stared in wonder at the miles-wide forest in the middle of nowhere. His gaze fell upon Estrella, and he said, 'Bless the udra mazda!'
Sunji, Arthayn and Nuradayn all bowed their heads to Estrella, and so did I. Then Maidro nodded at me and added, 'Bless the Elahad, too. Without him, how would we have found the will to go on?'
The Avari seemed enraptured, even terrified, for although a few spindly trees grew in their hadrahs, they had never imagined anything like these lush, magnificent woods. Estrella smiled at them as if to say that the impossible was not only possible, but inevitable. Then she urged her horse forward, down toward the cool, abiding greenness of the Vild.
Chapter 26
We rode straight from the desert into the shelter of giant trees rising almost two hundred feet above the forest floor. The air grew instantly cooler, and although the light dimmed, everything seemed strangely more clear. We all breathed more easily; the parched linings of our mouths and throats fairly drank in the moisture from the breeze wafting through the great oaks and maples. The sweet scent of flowers — anemone, tril-lium, honeysuckle and many others — nearly intoxicated us. Birds sang from all around us; I noticed Sunji's eyes grow wide with astonishment at the blue jays, yellow-breasted warblers and scarlet tangagers whose like he had never seen before, or even imagined. The four Avari, I thought, rode as if in a dream. Their terror at the mighty trees gradually bled away, to be replaced by awe and wonder.
'All glory in the One!' Maidro repeated like a mantra. 'And I have never seen such glory!'
'Out on the sand, I think we must have died,' Nuradayn said. 'And here, we've been reborn on earth a million
