'Hrold!' Ymiru cried out yet again. He looked at me and asked, 'How can you think to walk armed into our land?'
'How can you think to blind us?' I countered.
For a long ten beats of my heart, Ymiru stared at me as we took each other's measure. I didn't have to tell him that at least a few of his people would die if they tried to kill us. And he didn't have to tell me that these deaths, ours included, would serve only our common enemy.
'Very well,' he said to me at last. 'You may keep your weapons. But while in Elivagar, you must keep your bows unstrung and your swords sheathed. Do you agree to this?'
'Yes,' I said, looking at my friends, 'we do.'
'But, Ymiru!' Askir suddenly shouted, 'what if they -'
'Sar Valashu,' Ymiru said, cutting him off, 'if you break your word, which I have accepted in good faith, the Elders will put me to death. And then you and your companions.'
There was a keenness to this huge man's gaze that cut right to my heart. Somehow, without being told, he knew that the possibility of my causing his death in this manner would bind my hands more surely that the tightest cords.
'But about the blindfolding,' he continued, 'there can be no argument. No one except the Ymanir can see the way toward the place we are taking you.'
In the end, we agreed on this compromise. It. was strange and disturbing to watch as they found a roll of red cloth in the pack that Havru bore and cut it up to fashion six blindfolds. Despite the hugeness of their hands, they worked quickly in the cold with an amazing dexterity. Ymiru appointed Havru to tie the blindfolds over our eyes, and this he did. He moved from Kane to Atara and Liljana, and then tied broad, red strips around Master Juwain's and Maram's heads and finally mine. As this great, furry being towered over me, I had to stand fast and steady Altaru, or else my ferocious horse would have kicked out in terror and wrath. I held my breath as the blindfold's soft fabric pulled tight over my eyes. With the world plunged into darkness, I suddenly noticed Havru's smell, which was of woodsmoke and wool and cold wind off a frozen lake.
Wise Ymiru also appointed Havru and four others to be our guides. He himself took my hand in his and began leading me up toward the pass. There was a comforting warmth and great strength in the press of his flesh against mine. I heard Maram sigh out behind me, and I could almost feel his fingers thawing in Havru's encompassing grip. Although none of us liked walking blind through the snow, the Ymanir had a friendship with this bitter substance that communicated to us through the sure, gentle pulling of hand against hand. It was remarkable, I thought, that we were led over ice and rocks, and none of us stumbled or tripped. In this way, from guide to guided, a seemingly unbreakable trust was born.
As Maram had feared, the rise toward which we climbed proved not to be the end of the pass. Ymiru, walking in front of me and leading me upward, was loath to say much about the mountains here. But he did tell us that our path would take us over a still higher rise, before descending into the difficult terrain beyond. From what he said, it was clear that we would have to spend the night at a very high elevation. But we would not have to spend it in the open. For the Ymanir, he told us, had built a hut that they used for sleeping less than a mile from where we stood.
In truth, this 'hut' turned out to be more like a fortress, as we found when we reached it a little later. Although Ymiru bade us keep our blindfolds on, the moment that we walked through the doorway of this unseen structure, I had a sense of a cold, vast, open space where the echoes of our snow-encrusted boots fell off of thick walls of stone. We were all shivering by the time the Ymanir closed the doors behind us and led us to what I took to be a sleeping area where thick wool mats were laid out in front a fire. As someone heaved on a few fresh logs, flames leaped out at us to thaw our frozen bodies. We were very glad for the heat, and gladder still for the bowls of steaming soup that our hosts ladled out into huge bowls and pressed into our hands. Their hospitality, I thought, was flawless. They gave their beds up to us, and took our boots away to be dried in front of the fire. They even served us a mulled cider that had almost as much flavor and punch as the finest Meshian beer.
'Ah, this isn't so bad,' Maram said, sipping his cider on the bed next to mine. 'In fact, it's really quite good.'
It was strange not being able to see the food that we ate or the drink that passed our lips. But soon it came time for lying back in our beds, and the darkness of our blindfolds gave way to that of sleep. We rested well that night. In the morning, the Ymanir served us porridge mixed with goat's milk, dried berries and nuts before we set out again.
As I could tell from the warmth of the sun on my face, we had a clear day for traveling. Half the Ymanir remained near their hut to guard the pass. One man Ymiru sent on ahead to alert the Elders of our coming. And then he and the remaining Ymanir led us even higher into the mountains.
We walked rather slowly for a couple of hours up a steep slope. And then, at the crest of the pass, where the wind blew so fiercely that it nearly ripped the blindfolds from our faces, we began a long descent through what seemed a chute of rock. We walked for a couple more hours, breaking only for a quick lunch. We offered the Ymanir some of the salted pork that we had tucked away in the horses' packs, but this food horrified them. Havru called us Eaters of Beasts; the loathing in his voice suggested that we might as well have been cannibals. Askir explained that although the Ymanir might borrow milk and wool from their goats, they would never think to take their meat. Their gentleness toward animals was only the first of the surprises that awaited us that day.
Our afternoon's journey took us down below the snowline, where Ymiru led us onto what felt like a broad dirt track. Here there were many more rocks to negotiate, which made the going much more difficult. The track turned sharply north and climbed steeply before veering eastward and downward again. I was as sure of these directions as I was of the beating of my heart. I didn't need the thin heat of the falling sun to tell me which way we walked. But I failed to mention this to Ymiru. He seemed content to lead me by the hand, whistling a sad song as he walked on a couple of paces ahead of me.
By early afternoon, the track turned yet again, this time toward the south. It rose in a series of snakelike switchbacks up what seemed to be the slopes of a good-sized mountain. Soon the smells of spruce and dirt gave way to ice as we again crossed onto a snowfield. Frozen crusts crunched beneath our feet. With my left hand in Ymiru's and my right hand pulling on Altaru's halter, I led my horse through some rather thick drifts of snow. We climbed ever higher. Maram, walking to the rear of me, puffed and wheezed in the thin, bitter air. I felt his fear that we would climb too high and fall to cold or sudden stroke of breathlessness. The burning in my lungs told me that I had never been so high in the mountains in all my life; my nearly frozen cheeks and the pulsing of my eyes against the blindfold told me that Maram's fears might soon become my own.
And then, without warning, we crested yet another pass. The wind shifted and blew strange scents against my face. I heard one of the Ymanir sigh out with anticipation as if he would soon be rejoined with his wife and family. Something very deep stirred in Ymiru, too. He led us down through the snow for perhaps a quarter of a mile to a more level ground where the wind didn't cut so keenly. And there, with the crest of the pass at our backs, he finally let go of my hand.
'Sar Valashu,' he said to me, 'we have come to the place that I have told of. None except the Ymanir have ever looked upon it And none ever must. And so I ask you, whatever fate befalls you, that you keep this sight to yourself. Do you agree to this?'
With the blindfold still tight around my eyes, I didn't know what I was agreeing to.
But 1 was eager to have it removed, so I said, 'Yes, we are agreed.'
Ymiru's voice carried out behind me as he called out, 'Prince Maram Marshayk, do you agree to this?'
And so it went, one by one, Ymiru formally calling each of us to pledge his silence, and each of us giving what he had asked. Then I felt his fingers at the back of my head working against the blindfold's knot. In a few moments, he had it off. The sun, even at this late hour, pierced my eyelids with such a dazzling white light that I could not open them. I stood toward the south with my hand to my forehead, trying to block out some of its intense radiance.
And then, as my eyes slowly adjusted to this new level of illumination, I fought them open, blinking against the stab of the tears there, blinking and blinking at the blinding haze of indistinct forms that was all I could perceive at first. And then my vision suddenly cleared. The features of the world came into sharp focus. And I, along with Atara, Maram and my other friends, drew in a sudden gasp of air almost with one breath. For there, spread out beneath the blue dome of the sky, was the most astonishing sight I had ever beheld.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram murmured quietly from behind me.
