enabled them to march into battle in a frenzy of unfeeling wrath toward their foes. The berries also stained their skin a pale shade of blue; most of their men accentuated this color by rubbing berry juice across their skin so that the whole of their bodies were blemished a deep blue the color of a bruise. Most of them, as well displayed many scabs, open cuts and running sores across their arms and legs, for in their nearly nerveless immunity to pain, they were wont to wound themselves and take no notice of the injury. But others couldn't help noticing them: they went into battle naked wielding huge, terrible, steel axes. They howled like maddened wolves.
They killed without pity or feeling as if their souls had died. Because of this, they were called the Soulless Ones of the Half-Dead.
'But if the Beast created these warriors during the Age of Swords for battle,' Master luwain asked, thumping his book, 'why isn't more told of their feats in here?'
'There are other books,' Kane said, scanning the gleaming terrain about us. 'If we ever reach the Library, maybe you'll read them.'
As if realizing that he had spoken too harshly to a man he had come to respect, he softened his voice and said, 'As for their feats, they were almost too terrible to record. Great axes they wielded, remember, and they had even less care for others' flesh than they did their own.'
He went on to say that Morjin had employed the Blues in his initial conquest of Alonia. They had left almost no one alive to tell of their terror. They had also proved almost impossible to control. And so after one particularly vicious battle, Morjin – the Lord of lies, the Treacherous One – had invited the entire host of Blues to a victory celebration. There, with his own hand, he had poured into their cups a poisoned wine.
'It's said that all the Blues perished in a single night,' Kane told us, looking toward the mountains to the north. 'But I think that some must have escaped to take refuge here. I've long heard it rumored that there was some terror hidden in the White Mountains – other than the Frost Giants, of course.'
In silence, we all looked at the great, snow-capped peaks glistering in the moonlight.
And then Maram said, 'But we're still a good forty miles from the mountains. If it is the Blues we heard, what are they doing in the hills of Yarkona?'
'That I would like to know,' Kane told him. Then he clapped him on the arm and smiled his savage smile. 'But not too badly. And not tonight. Now why don't we at least try to sleep? Alphanderry and I will take the first watch. If the Blues come back to sing for us, we'll be sure to wake you.'
But the Half-Dead, if such they really were, did not return that night. Even so, none of us got much sleep. By the time morning came, we were all red-eyed and crabby, almost too tired to pull ourselves on top of our footsore horses. We prayed for a few clouds to soften the sun. Each hour, however, it waxed hotter and hotter so that it threatened to set all the sky on fire.
We rode through a land devoid of people. After we turned southeast at the bend in the river, we sought out the few scattered huts along the rock-humped plain to gather knowledge of the country through which we passed. But the huts were all empty, deserted it seemed in great haste. Perhaps, I thought, the cries of the Soulless Ones had driven their owners away. Perhaps they had fled for protection to a nearby castle of some local lord.
Late that morning, we saw some vultures circling in the sky ahead of us. As we rode closer, the air thickened with a terrible smell. Maram wanted to turn aside from whatever lay in that direction, but Kane was eager as always to see what must be seen. And so we pressed on until we crested a low rise. And there before us, growing out of the sage and grass like trees, were three wooden crosses from which hung the blackened bodies of three naked men. Vultures, perched on the arms of the crosses, bent their beaks downward, working at them. When Kane saw these death birds, his face darkened and his heart filled with wrath. He charged forward, waving his sword and growling like a wolf himself. At first, the vultures managed to ignore him. But such was his fury that when his sword leapt out to impale one of the vultures in the chest, the others sprang into the air and began circling warily about, waiting for the maddened Kane to leave them to their feast.
'How I hate these damn birds!' Kane raged as he dismounted to wipe his sword on the grass. 'They make a mockery of the One's noblest creation.'
We rode up to him, holding our cloaks over our noses against the awful smell. I forced myself to look up at these husks of once-proud men, which iron nails and the iron-hard beaks of the vultures had reduced so pitifully. To Kane, I said, 'You didn't tell us that the Blues learned the defilements of the Crucifier.'
'I never heard that they did,' he said, looking at the crosses. 'This may be the work of some lord who has gone over to the Kallimun.'
'What lord?' Liljana asked, nudging her horse closer to Kane. 'Rinald said that the lords of Virad looked to Khaisham for leadership.'
'So, it seems that some of them may look to Aigul.'
I dismounted Altaru and walked over to the center cross. I reached out and touched the foot of the man who had been nailed to it. His flesh was soft swollen and hot – as hot as the burning air itself.
'We should bury these men,' I said.
Kane stuck his sword down into the rock-hard earth. 'We should bury them, Val.
But it would take us a day of digging, eh? Whoever put them here may come back and find us.'
Maram, whose hand was trembling as he held his cloak tightly covering his face, said, 'Come, please, let's go before it's too late!'
And then Kane, always a man of oppositions, snarled out, 'He's right, we should go.
Let's leave these birds their meal. Even vultures must eat.'
And so, after a saying a prayer for the three men who had ended their lives in this desolate place, we mounted our horses and resumed our journey. But as we rode over the hot, tormented earth, Alphanderry wet his throat with a little blood from his cracked lips and gave us a song to hearten us. He made a hauntingly beautiful music in remembrance of the dead men, singing their souls up to the stars behind the deep blue sky. Despite the terrible thing we had just seen, his words were in praise of life: Sing ye songs of glory, Sing ye songs of glory, That the light of the One Will shine upon the world.
'Too loud,' Kane muttered as he scanned the low hills about us.
But Alphanderry, perhaps concentrating on an image of the Lightstone that lay somewhere before us, raised up his voice even louder. He sang strongly and bravely, with a reckless abandon, and his voice filled the countryside. Even the grasses, I thought, sere and stunted here, would want to weep at the sound of it.
'Too damn loud, I say!' Kane barked out, flashing an angry look at Alphanderry. 'Do you want to announce us to the whole world?'
Alphanderry, however, seemed drunk on the beauty of his own sing-ing. He ignored Kane. After a while, strange and wonderful words began pouring from his lips in a torrent that seemed impossible to stop.
'Damn you, Alphanderry, come to your senses, will you?'
As Kane glowered at Alphanderry, he finally fell quiet. The look on his face was that of a scolded puppy. To Kane, he said, 'I'm sorry, but I was so dose. So very close to finding the words of the angels.'
'If the crucifiers come upon us here,' Kane said, 'not even the angels will be able to help us.'
Even as he said this, Atara pointed at a far-off hill. I looked there and thought I saw a hazy figure vanish behind it.
'What is it?' Kane asked, squinting.
Atara, who had the best eyes of any of us, said, 'It was a man – he seemed dressed in blue.'
At this news, Maram sat swallowing against the fear in his throat as if he could so easily make it go away.
'I'm sorry,' Alphanderry said again. 'But maybe the blue man didn't see us.'
'Foolish minstrel,' Kane said softly. 'Let's ride now, and hope he didn't.'
And so we set out again, riding as swiftly as we dared for half an hour. And with each mile we covered, the air grew hotter so that it fairly roiled, and the stench of death stayed with us. We entered a country of; rolling swells of earth like the waves of the sea; some were a hundred feet high and broken with rocky outcroppings. We kept a reasonably straight course, winding our way down their troughs. After a while, I felt a sick sensation along the back of my neck as if the vultures were watching me.
I stopped and turned toward the left; I looked toward the top of the rise even as Atara did, too.
'What is it?' Maram said, reining up behind us. 'What do you see?'
We had been told to avoid Aigul, and so we had. But Aigul hadn't avoided us. Just as Maram swallowed another mouthful of air and belched in disquiet, a company of cavalry broke over the rise and thundered down the
