'Yes,' I said, 'it is. But don't you think it has a beautiful shape?'
'Ah, I suppose so.'
'It lacks only one thing, though.'
'And what is that?'
'A hole.'
'A… hole?' He looked at me as if my head were full of holes.
'Yes, a hole,' I told him. 'Someday, when we return to Mesh with the Lightstone and tell the story of our journey, we'll show this as well. And everyone will marvel at the rocks of the Vardaloon that have holes in them.'
Maram's eyes shone with a sudden understanding as he hefted the rock in his hand and tapped it with his firestone.
'Make me a hole,' I said, smiling at him.
'All right,' he said, smiling back. 'For you, my friend, I'll make the most beautiful hole you've ever seen.'
And with that, he bent over it and went to work. There was just enough light left in the woods to bring his gelstei alive and summon forth a thin stream of flame. It melted out a little bit of rock before the light failed altogether, and with it the firestone. But Maram had the beginnings of a hole to show for his efforts, and this pleased him greatly. And it distracted him, for the moment, from the murderous mosquitoes.
When it grew dark, Kane and I further entertained him with another round of swordplay. Then it came time for sleep, which none of us managed very well. The merciless whining in our ears, I thought, was the song of the Vardaloon, and it kept us turning and slapping at the air far into the night.
We arose the next morning in very low spirits. All of our hands and faces were puffy from mosquito bites – all of us except Kane. He gazed out at the forest from behind his tough, unmarked face and explained, 'These little beasts drink blood for breakfast. Well, some blood is too bad even for them, eh?'
After we had saddled the horses, we held council and decided it was time we left the path. It was taking us ever farther into the Vardaloon toward the west, whereas we needed to cut off northwest to reach the Bay of Whales.
'The going will be rougher,' I said, looking off at the wall of green in that direction.
'But there may be higher ground that way, and so fewer mosquitoes.'
'Then let's go,' Maram called out as he waved his hand about his head. 'Nothing could be worse than these accursed mosquitoes.'
In our three days of travel from the Tur-Solonu, we must have come some fifty miles. That meant we had another fifty miles ahead of us before the Vardaloon gave out on the open country said to surround the Bay of Whales. If we found no swamps or large rivers to cross and rode hard, we might reach it in only two more days.
We rode as hard as we could. But the horses, drained of blood, moved off slowly, and we couldn't bring ourselves to drive them faster. As I had hoped, the ground rose away from the path, and it seemed that the swarms of mosquitoes grew thinner.
The undergrowth, however, did not. We forced our way through some hobblebush and thickets of a dense shrub with pointed leaves. These scratched the horses' flanks and pulled at our legs. In a few places, we had to hack our way through with swords to keep the branches out of our faces.
Thus we endured the long morning. It was dark beneath the smothering cover of the trees – darker than in any woods I had ever been. The shroud of green above us almost completely blocked out the sun. In truth, we couldn't tell if the sun shone at all that day or whether clouds lay over the world, for the leaves were so thick we could see nothing of the sky.
'It's too damn dark here,' Maram said as we paused to take our lunch in a relatively clear space beneath an old oak tree. 'Not as dark as the Black Bog, but dark enough.'
He looked down at the red crystal he held in his much-bitten hand as if wondering how he might ever find enough light to fill it. Then he said, 'At least the mosquitoes aren't so bad here. I think the worst is…'
His voice suddenly died off as a look of horror came over his swollen face. His hand darted toward his other wrist, where his fingers closed like pincers, and he plucked something off him and cast it quickly to the ground. Then he jumped to his feet as he shuddered and began brushing wildly at his trousers and feeling with his panicked hands through his thick brown beard and hair.
'Ticks!' he cried out. 'I'm covered with ticks!'
We all were. The undergrowth here, it seemed, was infested with these loathsome insects. They were rather large ticks, flat and hard with tiny black heads. They clung to our garments and worked their way through their openings to find flesh to attach themselves. They crawled along our scalps beneath our hair.
We all jumped up then, and beat at our clothes to drive the ticks off us. Then we paired off to search through each other's hair. Atara carefully ran her fingers through my hair. She found at least seven ticks, which she pulled off me and threw back into the bushes. Then I parted her soft blond hair lock by lock and returned the favor.
Master Juwain tended Liljana (for once I was envious of his bald head), while Alphanderry and Maram groomed each other like monkeys. Only Kane, the odd man out, seemed unconcerned with what might be hiding on his body. But he had great care for the horses. He went among them, laying his rough hands on their jumping hides, and combing through their hair as he began pulling off ticks by the tens and twenties.
'Let's ride,' he said when we had flashed, 'Let's get out of here.'
I led the way through the woods, trying to keep a more or less slight line toward the northwest. But this way led through yet more undergrowth. We all looked down at the leaves of the bushes, hoping to espy any ticks there and pull our legs out of the way before they could cling to us. It was thus that our attention was turned in that direction. And so we did not see what hung from the branches above us until it was too late.
'What was that?' Maram shouted. He dapped his hand to his neck and sat bolt upright in his saddle. 'Val, did you throw something at me?'
'No,' I said, 'it must be -
'I can feel it,' Maram said, now pulling frantically at the collar of his shirt. 'Oh, my Lord, no, no – it can't be!'
But it was. Just then, as Maram looked up into the trees to see what had fallen on him, a dozen leeches dropped down upon his face and neck. They were black, wormy things at least four inches long – segmented, with bloated bodies thick in the middle but tapering off toward their sucking parts at either end. They fell upon the rest of us as well. They hung lengthwise from the branches above us in the hundreds and thousands like so many swaying seedpods. And as we passed beneath them they rained down upon us in streams of hungry, writhing flesh.
'I've got to get this off!' Maram shouted as he pulled at his shirt. 'I've got to get them off me!'
'No, not here!' I called back. Even as I felt something smooth and warm moving down my neck beneath my mail, I pulled my cloak around my head to cover myself from the leeches. 'Ride, Maram! Everyone ride until we're out of this!'
We pressed our horses then, but the undergrowth caught at their legs and kept them from moving very fast. They were weak, too, from being eaten by mosquitoes, as were we. We rode as hard as we could for a long while, perhaps an hour, and in all that time the leeches in the trees never stopped falling on us and trying to find their way inside our clothes. They drummed against my cloak and bounced off Altaru's sides – those that didn't fasten to his sweating black hide. After a while, I forgot to check the bushes for ticks. And I almost didn't notice the mosquitoes that still danced around my face.
'This is unbearable!' Maram called out from beside me. We had long since broken order, and now we rode as we could, strung out in a ragged line beneath the trees.
'I've got to get my clothes off! I can feel these bloodsuckers attached to me!'
We all could. I could feel the shuddering skin of my companions as my own. This was my gift and my glory – now my hell. Their horror of the leeches and their other sufferings only multiplied mine. Maram, especially, was fighting back panic, and everyone except Kane was near to despair.
'Atara,' I said as we stopped to catch our breaths, 'can you see our way out of this?'
She sat on her big roan mare, looking down into the crystal sphere that she held in her hands. For all of our journey from the mountains, she had struggled with her newly found skills of scrying. More than once, I thought she had gazed with terror upon futures that she did not wish to see. But away from the time-annihilating fires of the
