making ready the needle and thread and other gleaming instruments he might need to tend to Bemossed's wounds. Estrella knelt down on the muddy ground by Bemossed's feet. It amazed me that he allowed her to take hold of his hand.
'I'm sorry it came to this,' I said to him. 'Sorry, too, that we had to take you with us. But Taras is right — it couldn't be helped.'
Bemossed stared at me then. The hurt in his soft brown eyes wounded me deeper than any accusation could have.
'It is for the best,' I told him. 'I know you don't understand.'
'You,' he finally said to me, 'don't understand. You speak to me of freedom — and then you make me your slave! You can put me in chains or cut out my tongue or crucify me, but you are more of a slave than I!'
His words shocked me, but I knew exactly what he meant. So, I thought, did Atara and Maram, and everyone else. I said to him, 'We didn't mean to keep you a slave. As to our eyes, truly, you are not. We hoped you would come to trust us and then — '
'You think what you did makes me trust you?'
He looked at me with such a deep searching of his soul that I could not bear it. Something broke inside me then. I turned toward Kane and rattled the chains in the air. I called out, 'No, not this way — this cannot be the way!'
Kane said nothing as he stared at me through the fire's hot flames.
I flung the chains to the ground. I turned back to Bemossed and told him, 'All right — you are free, then!'
He smiled sadly at this as he rubbed his wounded chest. 'Free of the irons, and I suppose I should thank you for that. But still free to go only where you make me to go.'
'No, you misunderstand me,' I told him. 'You are free. We will make out a deed of manumission.'
His eyes locked onto mine. 'Truly?'
'Truly,' I told him.
I held out my hand for him to grasp, but before he could act, Kane stalked over from the fire and knocked his forearm against mine. He growled at me, 'What are you doing?'
'As I said,' glancing at Bemossed, 'I'm giving him his freedom.'
'No, you can't.'
'You're right, I can't,' I said. 'I can't give him what he already possesses. Men are born free, and free they remain.'
'Do you think so?'
'We don't make slaves of men, Kane!'
Kane bent down to pick up the chains on the ground, and now he shook them at me. 'We do what we have to do, eh? There was no other choice.'
'No, this is wrong,' I said, striking my fist into the chains. 'There must be another way.'
'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:
'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?'
