might as well be forever.
It was the seeming endlessness of the Vardaloon that oppressed me almost more than anything else. The whole world had become a vast tangle of trees, steaming bracken and bushes that tore at us and sheltered bloodsucking things. Although my mind knew very well that we must eventually come out upon the sea, the itch of my much-stung skin and the sweat burning along my leech bites told me otherwise. And even if we did survive this slow draining of our blood and somehow reached the Sea People, I couldn't guess how they might be able to help us, for they hadn't been known to speak to men and women for thousands of years. We might very well find the Bay of Whales a dead end from which we would have no retreat – unless we wanted to go back through the Vardaloon.
Around mid-afternoon, as the ground rose and the elms and maples began to give way before many more oaks, chestnuts and poplars, my sense of something hunting me rose as well. I knew that the dark thing that Mithuna had spoken of was coming closer. I tried to guess what it might be. Another bear that Morjin had made a ghul?
A pack of maddened wolves trained to the taste of human blood? Or had Morjin somehow found us in this wild land and set another company of Grays upon us? I shuddered to think I might feel the helplessness of frozen limbs yet again as when I stood beneath the Grays' long knives and soulless eyes.
I nearly lost hope then. The sight of my companions slumped on their horses dispirited me even more. Maram's sullenness had deepened to an anger at the world – and me – for bringing him to such a dreadful place. Atara was haunted by what she saw in her scryer's sphere – and sickened by what awaited us in the trees. Her usually bright eyes seemed glazed with the certainty of our doom. Master Juwain couldn't find the strength even to open his book, while Alphanderry had lapsed into an unnerving silence. Liljana, stubborn and tough as she was, appeared determined to go on toward her inevitable death. I thought that she pitied herself and regretted even more that none of us would live to appreciate her sacrifice. Only Kane seemed untouched by this desolation – but, then, sometimes he hardly seemed human anyway. Hate was his shield against the evils of the Vardaloon, and he surrounded himself with it so that none of us dared even to look at him.
My friends' despair touched me deeply, and I wanted to make it go away. But first I had to make my own go away. No noble gesture would do.
'These damn trees,' Maram grumbled as he rode near me, 'there's no end to them!
Well never find our way out of here!'
I stared off into the gloom of the forest as I remembered that a light beyond light always shone within each of us to show the way. And so I said, 'Yes, we will.'
'No,' he said, 'it's impossible we'll ever come out of these woods.'
I felt this light now gathering in my eyes with all the inevitability of the rising sun. I had only to open myself to it, and it might touch Maram and remind him of his own.
And so I said, 'It's impossible that we won't'
For a moment, he sat very still in his saddle as he looked at me.
'Do you still have the stone?' I asked him.
He nodded his head as he reached into the pocket of his robe and removed the stone. His efforts with his gelstei had succeeded in burning a hole clean through it.
'Look through it, then,' I said, 'and tell me what you see.'
With a puzzled expression, he held the stone to his eye and said, 'Ah, I see trees and yet more trees. And leeches, and mosquitoes and other loathsome things.'
I held out my hand as I said, 'Give me the stone.'
He placed it in my hand, and then 1 looked through it at him and said, 'I see a glorious thing. I see a man in the likeness of the angels who burns so brightly even stone melts before him. Don't tell me that such a man can't find his way out of the woods.'
I smiled at him, and he at me, and suddenly his anger went away.
An hour later, as we rode higher into the hills, a new scourge descended upon us.
Little black birds with red markings on their throats flew at us in angry flocks out of the trees. They drove their black beaks into the wounds on the horses' bodies to lap up their blood; they beat their wings and shrieked about our heads as they tried to get at the mosquito bites and leech cuts on our faces. Although they made no attack against any unmarked flesh, we bore enough wounds there that we were afraid they might pluck out our eyes. There seemed to be thousands of these bloodbirds, and they filled the air like a black cloud.
'Hoy, this is too much!' Alphanderry called out. He waved his hand in front of him as he tried to bury his head in his cloak. 'This is the end!'
The horses were all whinnying and stomping beneath the attacking birds. I managed to steady Altaru and urge him closer to Alphanderry and his bloody white horse. I waved my hand about violently, to no more effect than brushing frantic feathers. I looked at Maram, beginning to slip into despair again. I looked at Atara with her haunted eyes, and Liljana flinching beneath the birds' beaks. Their suffering made my eyes burn. And then I suddenly remembered that an infinite fire pooled always ready to fill my heart. It blazed there now, so hot and bright and full that it hurt, and I realized that it was nothing other than love. A wild and terrible love, perhaps, but love nonetheless. I whipped out my sword then, and a half-dozen birds fell in pieces to the ground. To Maram, I called out, 'Use your gelstei!'
The thousands of birds chittered and screamed as they darted and wheeled and kept diving at the horses and us. It was like being in the middle of a cloud of whirling feathers and stabbing beaks.
Maram gripped his red crystal in his hand as he called back to me, 'But Mithuna said that I shouldn't use it unless it was necessary!'
'It's necessary!' I said.
Maram struggled to position the gelstei so that it filled with light. Then something wild leaped inside him, and an orange flame shot from his stone and wrapped itself around twenty or thirty of the birds. They fell from the air like shrieking torches. I waited for another blast from the firestone to incinerate yet more of these pitiless creatures, but Maram shook his head as he shouted. 'That's all I can do for now!'
Kane, Atara and I were now laying about fiercely with our swords. But the birds had become wary of the flashing steel and mostly managed to avoid them. And then an inspiration came to me. I shielded my eyes as I called to Alphanderry, 'You found words to make the angels sing, now find those to drive away these demon birds!'
Alphanderry nodded his head as if he understood. Then he opened his mouth, and out of him poured the most bittersweet song i had ever heard. The notes of the music shifted and rose as he played with the harmonies; soon the sound of it grew so eerie and high-pitched that it hurt my ears. It seemed to unnerve the birds as well.
As the sting built louder and louder and filled all the forest with its terrible tones, the birds suddenly took wing as if moved by one mind, and vanished into the trees.
Alphanderry pressed his horse nearer to me, and his lips pulled back in a smile. 'I had never thought to do something like that,' he said.
Now the others gathered around us, and they were smiling, too.
'Do you think it will work against the mosquitoes?' Maram asked. 'And the leeches?'
'I don't know,' Alphanderry said.
I sat on Altaru wiping my sword as I looked about the woods. The oaks and poplars here were very tall, and there were fewer leeches among the vegetation than in other parts of the Vardaloon. The mosquitoes seemed less numerous as well. But whatever had been hunting us was now much closer. I felt its hunger like a gigantic leech wrapped around my spine
'There is more here to worry about than vermin,' I said. Then I took a deep breath and told them of what I had sensed.
'But this is terrible!' Maram said. 'This is the worst news yet!'
We held council then and decided to go no farther that day. And so we gathered wood for the night's fires; we cut brush to fortify our camp. When we had finished it was growing late, with perhaps only an hour left until dark.
'What is it Val?' Maram asked me. We all stood together near the rude fence we had made. 'Is it the Grays?'
I slowly shook my head as I looked for any movement about us. Next to me, Kane stared at the woods with
