I could think of nothing else to do. It would be folly, as both Kane and I knew, for Kane to try to put an arrow through the crack. He brought his lips up close to my ear and whispered, 'Let's go back to the others while we still can.'
And so we did. We retreated as we had come, past trees and rocks, down the sloping ground toward the stream. When we drew near the place where Jezi had turned Berkuar to stone, I called out into the darkness so as not to give alarm: 'Atara! Master Juwain! Liljana! We return!'
It took our friends, drawn up with the horses near the stream, only moments to determine that we did not return in triumph. I quickly described Jezi Yaga's house and Maram's imprisonment. I gave an account of our exchange with Jezi. When I finished, Atara cried out 'Oh, but this is terrible, terrible! I should have seen it! And I should see a way out, now, but I can't!'
I stepped up beside her, and put my arm across her shoulders I said to her, 'Don't give up hope just yet I have a plan.'
I bade Liljana, Master Juwain and the children to gather around me. Then, to the sound of the stream pouring over dark rocks and crickets chirping in the bushes, I told them what we must do.
'Daj,' I said, looking through the star-pierced darkness at this brave boy. 'Will you come with me?'
Daj stood up straight as he nodded his head. He told me, 'I'd do anything to help Maram.'
Kane drew out his black crystal and said, 'Perhaps I should come with you, too.'
'No,' I said, 'it will be better for you to protect the others, if you can. And to take them to Hesperu, if I do not return,'
After that we made ready the horses and prepared to leave. I took off the gold medallion that I had worn since King Kiritan had called the great Quest, and I draped it around Berkuar's neck. I said a quick prayer for his spirit. Here he stood, dead upon the earth instead of in it and here he might stand for a thousand more years.
While Kane set off with others further into the gap, I led Daj back up the slope toward Jezi Yaga's house. We came up behind the same oak tree that had given Kane and me shelter. Daj fairly clung to its bark as he looked out from behind the tree. In the strong starlight the house gleamed like the heap of bones that it was.
'You must wait here until she's gone,' I said to him, 'then squeeze through the crack and cut Maram free with your sword. Don't try the door — you won't be able to move it, and the Yaga may look back and see you.'
'Don't worry,' he whispered to me as he shuddered. 'I don't want to wind up like Berkuar.'
He paused, breathing deeply to quiet the pounding of his heart, as Liljana had taught him. Then he said, 'I wonder if it hurts to be turned into stone?'
'Don't think about that,' I said to him. 'Do you have your sword?'
He smiled as he showed me the small sword that I had given him.
'All right,' I said. 'After you're out, keep to the high ground, and keep yourselves unseen. We'll meet you in the desert.'
I embraced him as I would any other warrior who was dear to me. Then I walked out across the gleaming rocks and bones of the open ground toward the house. I positioned myself halfway between the great door and the few trees at my back. I cupped my hands around my mouth as I drew in a deep breath. Then I shouted out: 'Jezi Yaga! Daughter of angels and mother of the Marudin! Let Maram go! We have in our keeping a varistei that you may use to help make your son! We will give it to you if you let Maram go!'
From the house came the sound of Maram moaning and then the much louder voice of Jezi Yaga shouting through the walls: 'Do you tell the truth, little man? Do you tell the truth?'
I stood on the hard ground listening for the sound of the stone bar being thrown back from inside the door. I told myself that I
'I think you
'Let Maram go!' I shouted to her, 'and I shall let you have the green varistei!'
'Do you take me for a fool, Valashu Elahad? I will never let my dragon man go!'
'Then you will never have the geistei.'
'Will I not? Will I not?' At last I heard the harsh grating sound of stone grinding against stone.
I dared not wait a moment longer. With one quick glance toward Daj's oak tree, I turned and fled across the dark, uneven ground into the shelter of the trees. Behind me I heard the great stone door of Jezi's house grind open and then slam shut.
'Where are you, little man?' she called out to me.
She could not see me, but surely she could hear me, as I could her. Her great weight of driving legs and hard feet rattled broken rocks. It was perilous ground in the dark of night, for both of us. As I leapt down the slope from rock to rock, past boulders and around trees, over guileys and across rotting logs, I prayed that I wouldn't stumble and fall.
For a while I ran downhill and then up again over a dark hump of ground. I listened for the noise of Jezi Yaga pounding after me. My breath burst from my lungs, and the owls hooed in the trees, and beneath the tempest of these sounds, I listened and ran and listened ever harder. I no longer heard her. I had staked everything on my being able to outdistance her, so I ran on and on, into the night. I thought of Daj, the rat-boy, as they had called him in Argattha.
Sly as any rat, by now he would have cut Maram free with his
sword. Maram, despite his wounds, would be strong enough to
force open the great door, or so I prayed. I prayed that he and Daj
would then make their escape along the high ground of the gap,
out into the desert.
I smelled this vast expanse of burning sands and wasted land long before I laid eyes upon it. The wind from the west blew warm and hard through the gap, carrying the scent of desert plants into my nostrils and I ran for many miles over cracked and broken ground toward it. The air grew even drier. Few trees grew in the hard, stony soil that bruised my feet even through my boots.
But I ran on even so. The arrow wound in my back became a knot of burning pain. A worse fire tormented my blood. I could not hear the footfalls of Jezi Yaga; it seemed that I had left her far behind. But I knew she was still pursuing me, for I felt her presence as a dreadful sensation like a sucking at my guts.
I sensed her drawing closer to me. How, I wondered, could this be? I didn't know where her impossible speed came from. I couldn't guess how she had remained alive all these years, or how she could see. I waited to feel the skin along the back of my neck hardening into stone. Like Daj, I couldn't keep myself from wondering how badly it would hurt.
And then I turned panting and driving hard around a great mound of rock and almost ran straight into Kane and my other companions. Kane stood behind his horse aiming an arrow in my direction; I saw through the gloom that he had affixed his black gelstei to his forehead, as of a third eye.
'Quick. . away from here!' I called. 'She … must. have. guessed where. . And taken a shortcut.'
I caught my breath and added, 'Hurry — the sun will be up soon!'
Already, in the east the sky through the gap behind us glowed with red light that devoured the stars.
And so hurry we did. I had thought my friends would already be beyond the pass, but Master Juwain explained that Atara had turned her ankle on the rocky ground and so had been forced to ride. In the darkness, they had not been able to move quickly.
For a mile we worked our way up a swell of fissured rock. And then, at the top, we had our first view of the great Red Desert. The wall of mountain to the north still blocked a line of sight in that direction, but to the west and south, for as far as the eye could see, a seemingly endless expanse of flat, scrub-covered ground opened out toward the horizon. Only a last short slope, no more than a quarter mile in length, led down into it.
It vexed me that the ground of this slope was so stony and broken that we still could not ride — at least no more quickly than Atara rode. Jezi Yaga, I thought, might be quick over short distances but could never outpace a horse. I wondered at the range of the purple gelstei that were her eyes. How far out in the desert must we gallop, I thought, before we would be safe?
We were never to find this out. For just as we had descended a short way down the slope, I heard a great pounding of footsteps and then a jolly laughter from behind us. I whipped my head from left to right, wildly looking about for any cover. A single boulder, not even large enough to shelter Estrella, stood out from the ground.
