Tarmond gazed at the scarred and nicked crossguard of Kane's sheathed sword. He said, 'Pilgrims, then, who are well-armed.'
Liljana, who was better at dissembling than I was, said to Tarmond, 'I am of Tria, and so is Master Javas. The boy and girl are my nephew and niece. Rowan and Mirustral are knights who guard us, as is Basir. Mathena is one of the warrior women of Thalu — you may have heard of them. We seek the Well of Restoration, said to lie in the Red Desert. It is also said to bestow wisdom along with healing.'
She went on to tell of Master 'Javas' and his quest for knowledge, and of Estrella's desire to be healed of her mutenes; Atara's blindness, of course, was evident, though it obviously puzzled Tarmond that she should be able to move about so freely and bear a bow aa if she could actually aim arrows at any target. I thought that the story that we had concocted to explain our company was a poor one. Although it contained elements of the truth — for surely the Maitreya could gather a healing radiance within the well of the Lightstone — I knew that people could always sense a lie.
'I've never heard of this Well of Restoration,' Tarmond said. 'But if you're bound for the Red Desert, then you've a long journey ahead of you, and a hard one.'
'It would be less hard,' Liljana said to him, 'if we could find a way across the river. Surely there must be a ferry nearby.'
'Indeed there is,' Tarmond said, motioning with his thumb over his shoulder. 'Four leagues back down the river. But the ferryman, Redmond, is friends with the Crucifiers, and you can expect no confidentiality from him, if it's confidentiality you seek.'
And with that, his eyes fell upon the hilt of my sword. To cover its bright diamond pommel and the seven diamonds set into its black jade, I had fashioned a crude jacket of buckskin, as of a good leather grip.
'I do, however,' Tarmond said to me, 'know a fisherman who used to run a ferry. He might be willing to take you across the river. His name is Gorson, and he is of my village.'
He told us that his village lay only another league and a half farther on upriver. He was returning home to it, he said, after a journey some twenty leagues to the south.
'Come,' he said to us, 'why don't we walk together and share a little bread, and perhaps a few stories, too. It's been at least ten years since I've talked with anyone from outside these woods — except, of course, the cursed Crucifiers, and they lie.'
Kane, as I would have guessed, was loath to join company with this unknown old man, even for a walk of five miles. But if we were to gain the services of the fisherman, Gorson, it seemed that we would need Tarmond to present us to him and perhaps persuade him. And so Kane reluctantly nodded his head to me.
'All right,' I said to Tarmond. 'We'll accompany you to your village. What is its name?'
'Gladwater,' he told us. 'Named in happier times, when the Emerald King reigned in this part of Acadu.'
We set out away from the burnt-out farm and its stench of char and death. I was glad indeed to enter a swath of elms and maples, whose three-lobed leaves fluttered in the breeze. It was good to breathe in the scent of the day's eyes and periwinkles and to listen to the chirping of the kingbirds. It was good, too, to listen to Tarmond talk, in his rough old voice, for he was a man of passion and wisdom, who had seen a great deal in his long life. The tale that he told was an old and sad one, in a way the very story of Ea itself.
Long ago, he said, in the time of the Forest Kings, there had been peace in Acadu. Of course these kings had possessed less power than King Danashu of Anjo, even less than any of his dukes or barons. It didn't matter. For in those years, Uskudar, to the south, had been a divided realm and the Red Dragon still slept, and Acadu had no other enemies. And above all else, Acadu had a single law, and this was the Law of the One, for the Acadians were at once the freest and most devout of peoples.
But at last the Dragon awakened, and so did a mysterious darkness deep within the heart of Acadu. The Forest Kings, attuned to the songs of angels of the woods, no less the Law of the One, began to hear other voices. They quareled with each other and called up armies to battle to the death. Then warlords overthrew the kings, and tribal chieftains rebelled against the warlords; clan opposed clan, until the only safety was to be found in one's family or village, and anarchy spread. During the Dark Years, Tarmond told us, Acadian killed Acadian until a land rich in people and goodness became poor.
And then, under the guise of helping this torn realm, the Red Dragon began sending missions to Acadu: mine masters to search for new veins of gold; moneylenders to give out coin and restore a long-ruined trade; soldiers to protect whatever village or demesne requested their aid. And he sent in as well the Red Priests, to minister to the spirits of the miners, moneylenders and soldiers, and to any Acadian who desired instruction in the Way of the Dragon.
'It was the accursed Red Priests,' Tarmond told us as we walked through the woods, 'who brought these evil times upon us. They promised that if we Acadians followed the Way of the Dragon, we would gain riches, even immortality. But it is the Law of the One that immortality is the province of the Elijin and Galadin.'
Here I looked at Kane, but my silent friend only glared at me with his black, ancient eyes.
'Some there were,' Tarmond continued, 'who said that the word of the Priests was abomination, and that they should be put to death. The Keepers of the Forest, they called themselves: the greatest huntsmen of Acadu. They began hunting down the priests as they would stags or boar. But the Priests are no easy prey. Morjin sent in more soldiers to protect them, along with the moneylenders and miners. And he sent the Shadow Men, who have neither eyes nor hearts. It's said that they can freeze a man's blood with the whisper of their breath and suck out his soul before they eat him alive.'
At the mention of these demon-like men who could only be the dreaded Grays, Maram shuddered and wiped the sweat from his neck. And he said to Tarmond, 'And did no other Acadians join in this rebellion?'
Tarmond smiled sadly and said, 'Many did — of course we did. We still do. But the fiercer we fight, the more bestial the Crucifiers become and the more terrible their deeds.'
'But is there no one of royal lineage,' I asked, 'who might rally an army against your invaders?'
Tarmond shook his massive head. 'In Varkeva, Urwin the Lame calls himself Waldgrave but he is under the spell of Arch Yatin, the reddest of the Red Priests, if you know what I mean. Any leaders of true heart and stout bows, the Priests find out and murder as they come forth.'
'But how?' I persisted. 'The Priests are few and your people are many.'
'Not so many as you might hope,' Tarmond said. He rubbed the deep creases cut into his weather-beaten skin. 'And they are afraid. And
With a heavy sigh, as he drove the tip of his bow into the forest floor in rhythm with his heavy steps., Tarmond told us of this secret society of men and women who had given their allegiance to the Red Dragon. They were the deluded and the depraved, Tarmond said, who believed the Red Dragon's lies. They participated in the Priests' secret rites of sacrificing innocents and drinking their blood; some aspired to be anointed as acolytes and even become Priests themselves. As Tarmond spoke of the elevation of one Edric, a man of his district, to this exalted if vile rank, I thought of Salmelu, my fellow Valari who had betrayed his own people and nearly murdered me with an arrow tipped with kirax.
'It is fear that undoes us,' Tarmond said. He suggested that we stop by a stream and take a bit of lunch, and so we did. He shared with us a loaf of bread and a mutton joint stowed in his pack; we cut wedges of cheese for him from a fresh wheel sealed in red wax, and gave him handfuls of raspberries, too. 'A man's own brother might be a spy for the Order of the Dragon; a woman might surrender up her own daughter if pressed hard enough. Few there are who can face the Red Priests' fire-irons or being mounted on a cross.'
I chewed at the tough mutton as I regarded Tarmond's worn yew bow; although he bore no sword, there was steel inside him. I said, 'And yet you fight the Priests, don't you?'
'What else is there to do?' he said, brushing crumbs from his beard. 'We fight, but too late and too few. And we do not fight as one. I, myself, was chosen to journey to Riversong, Greenwood and other villages, in order to speak in favor of electing a true Waldgrave to raise an army. But these days, no one will trust anyone from another village, and few enough from their own.'
He stood up and shouldered on his pack again. 'We're good people, we Acadians, with good hearts. But too afraid.'
After that we began walking through the forest again. We passed by farms whose occupants might have known Tarmond, but they called out no greeting to him. With each rebuff or stare of shamed silence, with every suspicious look these freeholders cast at us, I heard Tarmond mutter to himself: 'We're a good people, we are — at
