furrowed as he rubbed his bald head. No one knew very much about Sakai, not even the mapmakers.
'Well, then,' Maram said, 'we need make only eight or nine miles per day,'
'So,' Kane said, 'we won't be traveling as the raven flies. And in the mountains, we'll be lucky to make even that.'
While Liljana brewed up the last of our coffee and its sweet, thick aroma steamed out into the air, we sat discussing our route into Sakai. It was unnerving to know so little about the land that we proposed to cross. According to Master Juwain, Sakai was a vast, high plateau entirely ringed by mountains. The White Mountains, he said, rose up like an immense wall from the lake country of Eanna in the northwest and ran for a thousand miles toward the southeast to make up Ea's spine. Somewhere to the east of us, it divided into two great ranges: The Yorgos in the south, and in the north, the Nagarshath, where it was said were the highest mountains on earth. The realm of Sakai lay betwee them. Master Juwain thought that various spurs of these ranges ran north and south across the plateau, but he wasn't sure.
'At least we know that Skartaru lies along the very northern edge of the Nagarshath,' he said. 'It's known that the Black Mountain looks out over the Wendrush.'
'Then we should follow the line of the Nagarshath until we come to it,' I said, glooked at my sword, whose radiance was almost lost in the greater blaze of the sun.
It pointed us east and slightly south – straight along the course I imagined the Nagarshath to run.
'We should follow it,' Kane agreed, 'but follow how? We can't make our way through the range itself. Its mountains are said to be impassable. That leaves a journey across the plateau, keeping the mountains to our left. But there, we'll certainly find Morjin's people – or be found by them.'
'But what other choice do we have?' Liljana asked.
'None that I can see,' Kane said.
We all looked at Atara, who shook her head and told us,'None that I can see, either.'
We were silent as we scannld the mountains about us. Maram stared off behind us, still looking for pursuit, while I gazed ahead at the great, white peaks rising up like impossibly high merlons directly ahead of us.
'How far is it,' I asked Master Juwain, 'until we come to where the two ranges part and the plateau begins?'
'I'm not really sure,' he said. 'Sixty miles. Perhaps seventy.'
I felt my belly tighten. Seventy miles of such mountains as these seemed like seventy thousand. Trying to show a courage that I didn't feel, I pointed my sword east into their heart. Then I said, 'We'll just have to cut straight across them.'
'Ha, straight is it?' Kane laughed out, clapping me on my good shoulder. 'So you say
– and you a man of the mountains.'
I laughed with him. Then Maram pointed out that the only thing] straight about the journey ahead of us was that we were going straight into hell.
That day we had some of the hardest work of our journey. Without any map or track to follow, we had to make our way across the rocky ridiges with little more than intuition to guide us. Twice, my sighting of a possible pass through the rising ground before us proved a dead-end, and we had to turn back to find another route. It was exhausting to lead the horses, up toward the snowline along a slope strewn with boulders and scree; it was even more dispiriting to retreat down these same uncertain steps to seek out another path. Although there was beauty all about us in the gleam of the great mountains and in the sky pilots and other wildflowers that brightened their sides, by the time we made camp that evening, we were all too tired to appreciate it. The thin air cut our throats, and Master Juwain complained of the same dull headache I felt building at the back of my neck. It grew quite cold – and this faint frost of the falling night was only a promise of the ice and bitterness that still lay before us.
Thus for three days we fought our way east. Mostly, the weather held fair, with the air so thin and dry that it seemed it could never hold the slightest particle of moisture. But then, late on the third afternoon, dark clouds appeared as if from nowhere, and we had a few fierce hours of freezing rain. It cut our eyes with lancets of sleet and stung our lips; it coated the rocks with a glaze of ice, making the footing for both man and beast treacherous. As we could find no shelter from this torment, we sat huddled beneath our cloaks waiting for it to end. And end it did as the clouds finally opened to reveal the frigidity of night. As we could neither retreat nor go forward with any degree of safety, we were forced to spend the night high up on the saddle between two great mountains. There Maram knelt with his flint and steel, trying to get a fire out of the wood that the horses had toted up into this barrenness.
'I'm cold; I'm wet; I'm tired,' Maram complained as he struck off another round of sparks into his tinder. His hands shook as he shivered and said, 'Ah, no, the truth is, I'm very cold.'
While Atara and Kane gathered snow to melt and Liljana waited to cook our dinner, I walked over to Maram and placed my hand on the back of his neck to rub the knotted muscles there. Some of the fire that kept me going must have passed into him, for he sighed and said, 'Ah, that's good, that's very good – thank you, Val.'
A tiny flame leaped up from the tinder and spread to the little twigs that Maram had gathered around it. He watched it grow until he had quite a good blaze going.
'Ah,' he said, relaxing beneath the sudden heat, 'you took more blows in the battle than I. And so it is I who should rub your neck.'
The pain at the back of my neck felt as if a mace had broken through the bones there to open up my brain. But I said, 'You took two arrows saving us, Maram. It was a great thing that you did.'
'It was, wasn't it?' he said. He gingerly touched his hindquarters where the arrows had pierced him. 'Still, fair is fair, and I owe you a massage, all right?'
'All right,' I said, smiling at him. He smiled as well proud to have freely taken on such a little debt.
An hour later we gathered around the fire and ate some boiled salt pork and battle biscuits. Master Juwain made us tea and poured it into our mugs, which we rolled between our hands to ddraw in its warmth. It was a time for song, but none of us felt like singing. And so I drew forth my flute and played a melody that my mother had taught me. It was nothing like the music that Alphanderry had made for us, but there was love and hope to it even so.
'Ah, that's very very good,' Maram said as he held his cloak before the fire to dry it.
'Look, Flick is dancing to your song!'
Limned against the starry eastern sky. Flick was spinning about in long, glittering spirals. His fiery pirouettes did seem something like dancing. We all took courage from his presence. Master Juwain pointed at him and said, 'I'm beginning to think that he might be the seventh told of in Ayondela's prophecy.'
It was a strange thought with which to lie against the cold ground and fall off to sleep that night it made me recall with great clar-ity Alphanderry's death and the despair that had gripped my heart afterwards. And through this dark doorway, Morjin came for me. In my dreams, he sent a werewolf who looked like Alphanderry sniffing through the shadows for the scent of my blood. This demon howled in a rage to show me yet another of my deaths, then it sang sweetly that I should join him in the land from which there is no return. It tried to kill me with the terror of what awaited me. Butt that night, I had allies. watching over me and guarding my soul.
Flick, I somehow knew, spun above my sleeping form like a swirl of stars warding off evil. My mother's love, fell in the deep currents of the earth beneath me, enveloped me like a warm and impenetrable cloak. Inside me shone the sword of valor that my father had given me, and outside on the ground with my hand resting on the hilt, was the sword called Alkaladur. It quickened the fires of my being so that I was able to strike out and drive the demon away, it cut through the black smoke of the nightmare realm into the clear air through which shone the worlds bright stars.
And so I was able to awaken beneath the mountains, covered to sweat and shaking but otherwise unharmed.
I opened my eyes to see Atara sitting by my tide and holding my hand. It was just past midnight and her turn to take the watch. On the other side of the fire, with their furs spread on top of the snow, Maram, Liljana and Master Juwain were sleeping.
Kane who lay breathing lightly with his eyes closed was probably sleeping too, but with him it was harder to tell. 'Your dreams are growing darker, aren't they?' Atara said softly.
'Not… darker,' I said struggling for breath I sat up facing her and looked for her eyes through the thickness of the night. 'But they're worse – the Lord of Lies tries to twist the love of a friend into hate.'
She squeezed my hand in hers, while she held her scryer's sphere in her other. I gathered that she had been
