second coming to Argattha, we discovered that the Lord of Light, as he called himself, was really the Lord of Lies. He had taken back the Lightstone then, but he kept us digging beneath Skartaru all the same. He used it to try to bend us to his will and tried to make us slaves. But no one will rule the Ymanir – not even other Ymanir. And so began our war with the Beast that has lasted until this day.'
After he had finished speaking, Atara sat listening to the wind as she stared into her white crystal. Master Juwain gripped his old book and looked at Liljana, who had taken out her blue whale. Kane, crouching near Ymiru like a tiger ready to spring, growled, 'Damn his golden eyes.'
Maram was nearly drunk, but he had a clear enough wit to appreciate that as far as we were concerned, Ymiru's story might not be wholly tragic. 'If your people made Argattha,' he said, 'did they keep any maps of its streets?'
'No,' Ymiru said, 'all such perished in the wars.'
'Ah, too bad, too bad,' Maram said. 'I had hoped, for a moment, that there might be a way into the city other than through one of its gates.'
For a hundred miles, at least, we had discussed the problem of entering Argattha and finding our way to Morjin's throne room. I had thought that our knowledge of the city was scarcely more than anyone's: that Argattha had been built up through the black mountain on seven levels, with Morjin's palace and throne room at the highest.
And that five gates, named in mockery of Tria's, opened upon its streets. Each gate, it was said, was guarded by ferocious dogs and a company of Morjin's men. And perhaps, as Kane suggested, by the mind-reading Grays as well.
'There be another way into Argattha,' Ymiru said. 'A dark way, an ancient way.'
We all looked at him, waiting for him to say more.
'When Morjin came to Argattha with the Lightstone,' he explained, 'he feared that his enemies would assault the mountain and trap him inside. And so my people built escape tunnels for him. Secret tunnels, and the knowledge of all of them has been lost to us – except one.'
'Do you know where this tunnel is?' Maram asked.
'Ho, I don't know,' Ymiru said, to Maram's bitter disappointment. 'But I know where it might be found.'
Maram's face immediately brightened again as Ymiru brought out his map arid oriented it toward the east. For quite a few days now, we had used it to set our course on the greatest of the mountains to show through the clay along the map's eastern edge. This was Skartaru, whose shape was famous across Ea: as seen from the east, from across the Wendrush, its twin peaks thrust like the points of pyramids high into the sky. And now, as Ymiru told us of a secret way into this dread mountain, we studied the model of it in the map that he held in his huge, furry hands.
'I can't see anything here,' Maram said, peering at the living clay in the fire's flickering light.
'No, the scale be much too small,' Ymiru said. 'The map shows only the mountain's greater features.'
'Then how do you hope to find this tunnel of yours?'
'Because there be a verse,' Ymiru said. 'Words that have survived where paper or clay have not.'
'What is it, then?'
Ymiru cleared his throat, and then recited for us six ancient lines: Beneath the Diamond's icy walls,
Where brightest sunlight never falls;
Beside the Ogre's knobby knee:
The cave that leads to liberty.
The rock there marked with iron ore
Which points the way to Morjin's door.
We sat there listening to the wind shriek across the high mountains around us. It seemed to carry the whisperings of the frozen rocks and echoes ten thousand years old.
'So,' Kane said, pointing his finger at Ymiru's map, 'this Diamond that the verse tells of must be Skartaru's north face.'
The black mountain's north face, I saw, was indeed shaped like a standing diamond three miles high, with great buttresses to either side seeming to hold it up.
'That is confirmed by the verse's next line,' Master Juwain said.
'But what about the Ogre?' Liljana asked, looking at the map's dark clay. 'I don't see any such formations beneath the north face.'
'No, the scale be too small,' Ymiru said. 'And so we can deduce that this Ogre rock formation will be rather small, in relation to the rest of the mountain. We won't be able to find the cave until we actually stand beneath it.'
'We won't find anything,' Kane said, 'if the verse doesn't tell true.'
'I believe that it be true,' Ymiru said.
Maram took another swig of his kalvaas, then asked him, 'This matter of the verse, ah, your people making escape tunnels, making Argattha itself – why didn't you tell us all this before now?'
'I didn't want to arouse false hrope.'
I sat beneath the stars of the bright Owl constellation, which I could see reflected in the silver of my sword. Then I looked up and said, 'Isn't there another reason, Ymiru?'
Ymiru looked straight at me then, but seemed not to see me. His great heart was booming like a drum.
The ancient Ymanir,' I said to him, 'sought the true gold beneath Skartaru, but they also sought something else, didn't they?'
'Yes,' he finally said, as everyone stared at him. 'You see, beneath the White Mountains, the earth currents are very strong – the strongest on all of Ea. And they touch the currents of other worlds.'
Kane's black eyes seemed to flare up in the firelight and fall upon Ymiru like hot coals. I remembered him telling us how the telluric currents of all worlds were interconnected.
'My ancestors believed,' Ymiru said, 'that if they could open the currents beneath Skartaru, they might open doors to other worlds. The worlds of the Galadin. They built Argattha to welcome them to Ea.'
'And who,' I asked Ymiru, 'suggested to the ancient Ymanir that such doors might be opened?'
'Morjin did.'
If my sword had shattered into a. thousand pieces just then, I would have been able to see the whole of it from a single glittering shard. I found Ymiru's eyes in the dark and said to himy 'Seeking the true gold was never Morjin's real purpose either, was it?'
'No,' Ymiru whispered. As the wind cut at us with icy knives, we waited for him to say more. Then he looked down at his map and told us, 'Morjin wanted to open a door to the Dark World where the Baaloch, Angra Mainyu, is imprisoned. And he came dose, we believe, so very close.'
I could hardly bear Kane's presence just then, so deep and dark was the well of hate that opened inside him.
He knows, I thought. Somehow, he knows.
'And what do you believe,' Kane growled at Ymiru, 'kept Morjin from opening this door?'
'Kalkamesh did,' Ymiru said. 'And Sartan Odinan. When they took the Lightstone out of the dungeon where it was kept, they took away Morjin's greatest chance of freeing the Baaloch.' 'How so?' Master luwain asked.
'Because the Lightstone,' Ymiru said, 'is attuned to the galastei and all things of power, but especially to the telluric currents. With it, Morjin almost certainly would have been able to see exactly where In the earth beneath Skartaru he must send his slaves to dig.'
All this time, even as Atara stared silently into her crystal, Liljana had been nearly as quiet. But now she fingered her blue gelstei and turned to Ymiru, saying, 'When I stood beneath Alumit and its colors changed, I thought I heard the voices of the Galadin. Speaking to me, speaking to everyone. There was a warning about Angra Mainyu, I think. A warning told of in a great prophecy.'
Now Atara finally looked up from her gleaming sphere at Ymiru as she waited for him to speak.
'Yes, there be a great, great prophecy,' Ymiru said. 'An old proph ecy – ages old.
The Elders know of this. They have heard the Galadin speak of it.'
He went on to tell us what the grandfathers and grandmothers of the Urdahir had gleaned from the otherworldly voices that poured out of Alumit's singular color. He said that ages ago, when the Star People discovered Ea, their greatest scryer, Midori Hastar, had prophesied two paths for this sparkling new world: either it
