The stone was a crystal, like in shape to Master Juwain's green gelstei. But its color was brown, and it was riven with many cracks so that it looked more like a withered leaf.
'It's a varistei,' Kane said. 'Possibly the same one that Morjin used to make his mosquitoes and leeches – and Meliadus.'
We all stared at this ugly crystal. And then Maram said, 'But that can't be a gelstei!'
'Can it not?' Kane said to him. 'You think the gelstei are immortal, but only the Lightstone truly is. The varistei especially are living crystals. And they can die, even as you see.'
'But what killed it?' Maram asked.
'He did,' Kane said, pointing again at Meliadus. 'He took the blood of men and women for hundreds of years, and that sustained him, in part. But he also took the life of this crystal.'
Master Juwain held out his hand to examine the brown crystal. Kane gave it to him, and Master Juwain asked, 'If this had no life left to give, what would Meliadus have done?'
'So, he would have continued sucking the blood out of deer and suchlike – and anyone who chanced to enter the Vardaloon,' Kane said. 'Then someday, and soon, he would have come out of it and crossed into other lands looking for another varistei.' The thought of Meliadus ravaging the wilds of Alonia and finding the Forest of the Lokilani made my belly clutch up with dread. Unless the Lokilani were as keen shots as Atara, Meliadus might have slaughtered every last one of them.
I looked at Kane and asked, 'You said the Lord of lies was Meliadus' father. But who was his mother, then?'
'That is not told,' Kane said. 'Likely Morjin got his son out of one of the tribeswomen who used to live here.'
The memory of the bleeding young woman whom Maram had taken beneath his cloak still burned in my mind. As did the growling bear. I told Kane about this, and we all looked at him as he said, 'Morjin must have bestowed upon Meliadus one thing at least. And that is his power of illusion. Or some small part of it, anyway. It would seem that Meliadus was able to shape only the image of how he appeared to you.'
Maram blushed in embarrassment at the way Meliadus had fooled him. But he was glad to be alive, and he said, 'Ah, I don't understand why Meliadus didn't just kill all of us once we had taken him inside our camp.'
'That should be obvious,' Kane snapped at him. 'Meliadus needed the blood of the living to go on living himself. After he had finished with you, he would have come back for the rest us one by one.'
I stood there breathing in the smell of blood that stained Maram's clothes and the dead leaves of the forest floor. I listened to the chirping of some birds, and wondered if they were the same ones that had tried to dip their beaks into us.
'If not for Atara's marksmanship,' Kane said, staring at the arrows that stuck out of Meiiadus' eyes, 'he would have made meals of us all – all the way to the Bay of Whales.'
His words reminded us that we still had a journey to make and a quest to fulfill. The question now arose as to what we should do with Meliadus. Maram favored leaving him for the wolves. But as Master Juwain observed, they would only break their teeth against Meliadus' iron-hard hide.
'Why don't we bury him?' I said. 'Whatever else he was, he was a man first, and should be buried.'
We all agreed that it would be best to put him into earth and so at least return him to his mother. Liljana went to get the shovels then, and we dug at the tough, root-laced ground of the forest until we had a hole big enough to lay him in. We all stood for a moment looking at the feathered shafts embedded in what seemed the only human part of him. Arrows were dear to Atara, but these she did not retrieve. Then we covered him with dirt so that no one would ever have to see what a monster Morjin had made from a man.
Much later, as we gathered between the fires breathing in smoke, I sat holding the hilt-shard of what had once been my sword. It almost seemed that the ruin of this magnificent weapon had been too great a price to pay for my life. For a moment I felt as if it hadn't been a piece of steel that had broken against Meliadus but my very soul. And then I looked off into the woods towards his grave. There I saw the Lightstone shining out of the darkness and reminding me that the deepest fire that burned inside everyone was as inextinguishable as the light of the stars.
Chapter 24
That night I had my first dream of Morjin in nearly a month. He appeared to me with his unearthly beauty and golden, dragon's eyes; he told me that he had found me again and would never leave my side. A price, he said, must be paid for the slaying of his son. He would send other fell beings to hunt us down, and if they failed to take, us, he would come for us himself.
I awoke drenched in sweat and beleaguered by a cloud of mosquitoes. Leeches still hung swaying from the surrounding trees. With Meliadus' death, the worst of the Vardaloon had perished, but we still remained in the thick of that horrible wood. And so, in the quiet of the cool, damp morning, we saddled our horses and determined to ride out of it as fast as we could.
We traveled ail that day north and west toward the unseen ocean. We kept hoping to catch a glint of water through the wall of green before us. But the hills rose and fell like steps leading nowhere, and the forest covering them allowed only a rare few glimpses of the sky. Dusk found us fighting through some clumps of winged blackthorn and stands of yellow poplar. And so we were forced to spend yet another night in the company of our bloodsucking friends. That there seemed fewer of them in this part of the woods, I almost didn't notice. I lay awake most of the night, listening for worse things than mosquitoes.
In truth, I mourned the loss of my sword. Without it I felt naked and alone. How was I to defend my friends if a real bear should attack us or some servant of Morjin's surprise us in a fury of pounding hooves and well-tempered steel? My kalama was irreplaceable, I knew, for only the smiths of faraway Godhra made such wondrous swords. And even if I were willing to slide a lesser blade into my sheath, where would I find even a broadsword or longsword in the wild lands so many miles from any kingdom or civilized place?
'I'll give you my sword, if you wish,' Kane said to me the next morning as were preparing for yet another day of our journey. 'It's a kalama, too.'
'Thank you, but no,' I said to him. His concern astonished me. 'Your sword is your soul, and you can't just give it to anyone.'
'But you're not anyone, eh?'
I climbed on top of Altaru and touched the upraised lance holstered at his side. 'A knight has other weapons, yes?'
'Perhaps,' he said.
I looked down at the long blade buckled to his waist and said, 'Besides, we'll all ride more easily knowing that Ea's greatest swordsman still has his.'
Eight miles of hard travel that morning brought us to the crest of a line of hills. And there the Vardaloon suddenly ended. We felt this mostly as a cooling of the earth and a change in the air, for there were still many trees about us. But these were mostly white oak, magnolia and sycamore, and no leeches infested them. Neither did the wind stir with mosquitoes. Liljana, who had the keenest nose of us all, said that she could smell the faint, far-off scent of the sea. This good news caused us to make our way forward with renewed spirit. We were so excited that we didn't stop for lunch, and ate a cold meal of cheese and battle biscuits in our saddles.
Soon the hills began to grow smaller, and we came to a more open country. The woods were broken with fields and flats of hawthorn, elderleaf and highbush blueberry. And then, after another six or seven miles, we topped the last of the hills.
And there, below us, windswept dunes were piled up east and west as far as the eye could see. Beyond them shone the blue waters of the Great Northern Ocean.
'Oh, my Lord – we did it!' Maram said as we rode down to the dunes. When we reached these castle-like mounds of sand, he practically fell from his horse and kissed the ground. 'We're saved!'
After whooping like a wild dog and throwing up handtuls of sand, he remounted, and we rode across the dunes toward the sea. Although we were all eager to stand before this great water, we had to make our way carefully along the dunes' shirting slopes. Master Juwain, who had been raised on the islands of the Elyssu, pointed
