Liljana nodded her head in assent of this dangerous plan.
Then Kane and I, bow and sword in hand, set out at a trot higher up into the gap. It was not difficult to track this monstrous woman. She crushed down low-growing vegetation and left large, deep prints in the ground between the trees where it wasn't so stony. In our race up along the ground above the stream, we tried always to stay near one great tree or another so that we might duck behind it at the first hint of a flash of violet, for we could think of no other way of protecting ourselves against the Yaga's terrible eyes.
About a mile from where we had left Berkuar standing like the stone sculpture that he had become, the tracks veered off to the right, higher up toward the northern wall of the gap. We followed them, snaking around trees and climbing up old, scarred rocks past great boulders. We came upon a shelf of ground cleared of trees. And there, in the middle of this windswept patch of rock, stood a house like none I had ever seen. It was rounded like a dome heaped up from the ground. Its curving walls and roof seemed made of many thousands of white bones. An evil-looking substance, all hard and red like petrified blood, cemented them in place. A chimney of bones poked out from the roof, but from our vantage, I could see nothing in the walls that looked like a window. The door — a great, rounded work of stone — looked to be almost impossible to move. I felt waves of Maram's fear emanating outward from the house even at a distance of fifty yards.
'So,' Kane said, 'even if we get up close to it, what then? It looks like we'd need siege engines to break down those walls, eh?'
I nodded my head, grinding my teeth together. Then I said, 'If we wait until dark, it might be too late.'
Neither of us knew what this monstrous woman wanted of Maram. Her song suggested that she might have found in Maram a long-desired mate, but this did not seem possible.
'What is she?' I whispered to Kane. 'I've never heard talk or tale of her like.'
But Kane only stared at me in silence as he shook his head.
An image of another monster flashed in my mind. 'Do you remember Meliadus? This Yaga sang of being of angel's seed, and she has something of the look of him, does she not? Do you think it's possible that Morjin might have sired a daughter as well as a son?'
'It is possible,' Kane growled out. 'The Beast has committed every abomination, every degradation of the human spirit.'
'You told us that the Marudin was to emerge from the Galadin and go on to rule a new order of beings,' I said to Kane. 'But the Yaga sang of the Marudin as if she intended to give him birth — with Maram the father!'
I peered out again from behind the tree in order to take a longerj look at the house. There came a scurry of movement from around its side, and I noticed a large, gray rat darting out from a crack in the rounded wall. The crack zigzagged vertically through the heap of bones; it seemed that an earthquake might once have rent the house nearly in two.
'That might be our chance,' I said to Kane, tapping my finger against his bow. 'Perhaps we can aim an arrow through it.'
'As Berkuar aimed an arrow at that beast?'
'If she's planning what I fear she's planning,' I said, 'her skin must soften sometime. And even if it does not, she must sleep sooner or later. There's a chance that I might be able to squeeze through the crack and kill her before she can open her eyes.'
'You're as mad as she,' he said to me. 'Mad to think you could force your way into her house without awakening her. So, you'll need help.'
He took out his black gelstei and stood staring at it. 'I might be able to steal the fire of her eyes.'
Even here, hundreds of miles from Argattha, I could feel Morjin's shadowy presence and sense him watching us as from the very eye of black gelstei that Kane held in his hand. I said to him, 'It is too dangerous!'
'So, that it is,' he growled out. 'And dangerous
I scanned the bone-littered ground around the house. It would be madness, as we both knew, to expose ourselves in the light of day to the Yaga's stare anywhere in this zone.
There seemed nothing to do now except to wait for the fall of night. And so wait we did.
How was it possible that an hour spent wandering through a glade with ones beloved on a spring afternoon could pass as quickly as a heartbeat, while this hour — with the wind whooshing through the gap and the light slowly bleeding away from the stones and trees around us — seemed to go on tor an entire month? As I stood behind the tree wild Kane, wondering what was occurring inside the house, I listened to my own breathing and I counted the beats of my heart. It grew darker. From somewhere behind us, through the trees came the harsh hooing of an owl. I looked up and watched the bright constellations wheel into the sky. 'How long,' I said to Kane, 'must we wait?'
'So,' he said with a cruel smile, 'a bride and her groom, on their wedding night, might not sleep until nearly dawn.'
'But we cannot know what she truly intends. What if she
'So,' Kane murmured. 'So.'
I looked down the blade of my darkened sword. I said, 'I will not wait, not another moment. Come, let's at least steal up close to the house and see what we can see.'
Kane nodded his head at this. And so we came out from behind our tree. Smoke poured out of the house's bone-made chimney in a plume limned dark as a blacksnake against the still glowing western sky. A thin, yellow light leaked from the crack in the wall. We began stalking across the stony ground straight toward it.
Kane, from ages of discipline and need, moved with the grace and quiet of a big cat. I pushed forward nearly as silently; my father had taught me to hunt sharp-eared deer in the forests of Mesh, and his lessons fill lived in my muscles and bones.
We came up closer to the house. The crack, I saw to my dismay, was too small for me to force my way through it, even if I removed my armor, clothing and several layers of skin. Even a skinny child would have a hard time of such a passage.
'Oh, my — oh, my Lord!' I heard Maram groaning from within the house. 'Oh, my, oh, oh, oh!'
We moved toward the sound of his heavy, pained voice, which flowed like burning air from the crack. Over stones and hardened earth, taking exquisite care, we drew up next to the house. I gripped my sword in one hand while I rested the other against the bones of the house to steady myself. Then I drew in a deep breath and pressed my eye to the crack.
'Oh!' Maram moaned out again. 'Oh, this is too much, too, too much — oh, my Lord!'
Through the thick wall the house seemed all to be one large, circular room, like the felt dwellings of the Sarni. On the far side, a hearth of stones held a bed of glowing coals, and a great steel cauldron — shiny and new-looking — hung bubbling over it. I had a clear line of sight toward the stone door, barred with a great beam of what appeared to be petrified wood. Two statues stood framing the doorway. Parts of them were broken off: arms and a leg, and a missing head. The crack allowed only a partial view of Maram, who lay on a large stone bed at the other half of the house. He had been stripped naked. From his great shoulders and hairy chest had been torn round, red wounds that oozed blood. Ropes, possibly made of twisted hair, bound his arms back behind his head. I could not see his legs. Neither could I see the Yaga. But I smelled her: a foul, thick stench of bloody breath and sweating skin that might never have been washed. It poured from the crack and sickened me.
'Oh — oh. Lord!' Maram moaned. 'This is the end — surely the end!'
Kane's hand fell upon my shoulder. I stepped aside so that he might have a look through the crack as well.
'Oh, oh, oh, oh!'
Then I heard the Yaga, from somewhere within the house, call out to Maram, 'You're strong, my beautiful man. The strongest yet. We'll see if you're the one, we'll surely see.'
Then she broke into song again, chanting out her love poem to Maram:
