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?'
'Because,' he said simply, 'Lord Morjin's priests have defiled his good name and all that he is. But he is the Maitreya. And so when he comes into his power, he will come into Hesperu, and into all lands. He will purge the evil from his priesthood, and restore the world.'
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
