We left the woods as we had come, and turned onto one of the Haraland's back roads. Although we journeyed toward no particular destination, we felt the need to complete our quest with all possible speed. Our pace, however, limited by the speed of the heavy cart, proved slow. Its huge, iron-shod wheels left long grooves in the soft roads and from time to time became stuck in mud. Finally, I decided to hitch Altaru to the cart. He hated this new, grinding work, and looked at me as if I had betrayed him. But he was as strong as any draft horse, and had something of a draft horse's look. And this, I thought, might work to our advantage in case anyone questioned us too closely.
For the next five days, we wandered from town to town asking people if they had ever heard of a place called Jhamrul. No one had. We listened for talk of healers and unusual healings, too. We worked our way into the heart of the Haraland, east and south. As we drew closer to the Iona River, which flowed down from the mountains into the great Ayo, the land grew almost perfectly flat. The Haralanders here cultivated little wheat, but much millet, maize, beans and a sickly-sweet orange root called a yam. The various towns and villages — Urun, Skah, Malku and Nirrun — smelled of cinnamon and chocolate, which the Haralanders ground up with other spices and made into a sort of sauce for chicken, lamb and pork and strange meats such as squaj and kresh, taken from the giant lizards that infested Hesperu's watercourses. At first we encountered no troubles more vexatious than roads flooded from torrential rains and repeated requests that we encamp and give a show. And then, five miles outside of Nirrun, we ran straight into a company of soldiers coming up the road from the south.
There were fourteen of them, accoutred in heavy, fish-scale armor and riding worn horses. Their captain, a long-faced man named Riquis, waited impatiently while we maneuvered the cart onto a beanfield off the side of the road. The ground was mushy from the recent rains, and instantly mired the cart's great wheels. The soldiers, of course, might have ridden around us with greater ease, but that was not the way of things in Hesperu.
Riquis' sergeant, a stout man with a thick, black beard that spilled down over the collar of his armor, watched us with a growing interest. His covetous eyes fastened like fishhooks on Altaru and Fire. He said to Riquis: 'My lord I look at those horses! I've never seen finer ones!'
They are fine indeed,' Riquis said as his calculating gaze fell upon Altaru. 'How does a band of players come by such horses?'
I stood in the mud by Altaru with my hand stroking his neck. To Riquis, I said, 'A gift, my lord, from a lord of a land far away.'
I did not tell him that the lord was named Duke Gorador of Daksh.
'He must have liked your performance marvelously well to have given you such a gift,' Riquis said to me.
I tried not to look Riquis eye to eye as I said, 'We're but poor players who do as we can.'
Riquis nodded his head at what he took to be modesty. Then his sergeant said to him, 'Why don't we see how well they
'I would like that,' Riquis said. 'Unfortunately, though, we haven't the time.'
Although he did not reveal his business, I gathered that his company had been summoned to Avrian, some forty miles to the north on the Iona River. As we had been told in Senta, King Asru had laid siege to Avrian for two bitter months before he had finally taken the city.
It's said they've crucified a thousand men,' Riquis told us. 'King Angand has arrived from Sunguru, and has joined King Arsu to witness Avrian's destruction. If you truly wish for an appreciative audience, then you should perform for the King. He is a lover of all arts and entertainments, or so it's said.'
'Perhaps one day,' I told him, 'we'll be so fortunate.'
The sergeant returned to the matter that had originally caught his attention. He said, 'If we don't have time for a show, then let's requisition these horses and be done with it, my lord.'
My hand froze fast against Altaru's warm, sweating neck. I calculated the distance, in inches, to the wagon where I had hidden my sword. I calculated the thickness of the soldiers' armor and the length of their spears, as well, and the slight art they seemed to have with such weaponry. I thought that Kane, Maram and I might possibly kill most of them before the survivors lost heart and fled.
'Lord Riquis,' I said to this grim captain, 'this horse was a gift, and so it would be bad manners if we ourselves were to give him away.'
'This horse,' Master Juwain said, nodding at Altaru, 'is our strongest. We would be hard put to find another to draw so heavy a cart.'
'And where, diviner,' Riquis asked, 'were you given this beast?'
Master Juwain, who hated lying even more than I did, said, 'The horse comes from Anjo.'
'And where is that?'
'It lies in the Morning Mountains.'
'And where is
'Far away, northeast, past the White Mountains and across the plains of the Wendrush.'
'Oh,' Riquis spat out, 'the Dark Lands. Where, it's said, dwell the Valari.'
This word seemed to hang in the air like a ringing bell. I wrapped my fingers around Altaru's mane as I tried not to look at Riquis.
'Have you performed for the Valari, then?' Riquis asked. 'Horse or no, you are well away from those demons.'
Then he quoted a passage from the- Black Book.
Liljana, who had a mind as sharp as Godhran steel and could use it to rip apart others' arguments, said to Riquis: 'But surely, the Way of the Dragon is open to everyone, even the Valari.'
'Surely it is,' Riquis said. 'But the Valari, long ago, at the beginning of time, turned away from the Light. Willfully. They poisoned their spirits, and so became demons.'
'Not all of them seemed so evil when we passed through their realm.'
'But is it not so with the cleverest of demons? That which is foul often appears as fair, and the darkest of the Dark as Light.'
Liljana threw her arm around Daj, who stood by her side. And she said, 'But what child is born in darkness? And is it not upon all of us to bring to the errants the — '
'Do not weep for the demonspawn,' Riquis told her. 'In darkness they
This news gave us good reason to reconsider our course, for we had been drifting closer and closer to the Iona River, which it now seemed we must avoid at any cost.
Riquis drew in a great gulp of the muggy air, and stared at Liljana. And then he surprised me, saying, 'But we also need fine players to keep our soldiers' spirits bright. And so keep your horses. Mother. Perhaps one day you'll return to the Dark Lands to perform for our company when we have raised high the standard of the Dragon over the Valari's graves.'
As Maram had said, doesn't everyone welcome a traveling troupe?
Liljana thanked Riquis for his mercy, and presented him and his sergeant with a love potion, which might help them open their hearts and hold their spears up high when they reached Avrian, or so she told them. Riquis and his soldiers rode off quickly after that. And so did we. We turned east and south through the steaming countryside, away from Avrian and the road that King Arsu's army would soon march down along the Iona river. In villages and small farms, we continued inquiring after Jhamrul. As we thought it might arouse too much suspicion to ask directly if anyone knew of any miracles of healing, we spoke of our desire to see Atara made whole again, in hope that somebody might volunteer information that would help us. But when we broached this matter, more than one Haralander stared at us in cold silence. And one woman, a silver-haired grandmother, admitted that she knew of a fine healer up near Sagarun. a young man who had been taken by the Kallimun and never seen again. Even this man, however, she told us, had never been known to heal the blind.
With every day and hour that we remained within this hateful realm, it seemed less and less likely that we would ever come across Jhamrul, and more and more likely that we would be found out, taken and tortured. Torture seemed the fate of everyone who dwelt here, for the Way of the Dragon not only made cruel use of people's bodies
