the greatest stroke of fortune of all our journey. For there in the center of the bowl, his black coat burning in the light of the rising sun, Altaru stood sniffing the air as for enemies. Atara's roan mare. Fire, was feeding on the lush grass nearby him, while twelve other horses – all of them mares as well -took their breakfast with her. I was sure that these were the mounts of the knights in the cave.
Altaru had obviously gathered a harem about him. But he seemed to have driven off the magnificent Iolo, for what stallion will endure another sniffing about his new brides? When Maram discovered this, he wanted to weep bitter tears that he would have to find another horse to carry him homeward. Kane, Liljana and Master Juwain had better luck their geldings stood off about a quarter mile from the herd as if awaiting our return. We walked down into the bowl, where I whistled for Altaru. His ears pricked up, and he let loose a great whinny in return; it was like the music of the earth carried along with the day's first wind. I waited to see if he would come to me.
It seemed a shame to take him from his newly-found freedom, to say nothing of his harem. But he and I had a covenant between us. So long as we had breath in our lungs and blood in our veins, we were fated to face, and fight, our enemies together.
At last he came trotting over to greet me. He nuzzled my face; I breathed into his nostrils and told him that a dragon had been killed – although the Great Red Dragon remained alive. We still had very far to ride together, I said, if he was willing to bear my weight. In answer, he nickered softly and licked my ear. His great heart beat like a war drum. He pawed the ground impatiently as I brought forth the saddle that I had hidden with the others and put it on his back.
The others saddled their horses, too. Maram chose out of the herd a big mare to ride; the smallest we gave to Daj, who had surprised us all by declaring that he could ride. 'My father,' he told us, 'was a knight.'
'In what land, lad?' Kane asked him.
Finally Daj consented to naming his homeland. He looked at Kane in the deepest of trust and said, 'Hesperu. My father, all the knights of the north – there was a rebellion, you see. But we were defeated. Killed and enslaved.'
'Hesperu is very far away,' Kane told him. 'I'm afraid there's no way we can take you home.'
'I know,' he said. And then a moment later, he admitted, 'I have no home.'
He said no more as he buckled around his horse the small saddle that we had taken from Morjin's men. It was still too big for him. But he rode well enough, I thought, patting his mare on the neck and being gentle with her flanks, which were scarred from the spurs of its previous owner.
Most of the day, however, we spent in walking, rather than riding, along the foothills of the White Mountains. The sun was high in the sky by the time we reached the canyon by which we had come down out of the Nagarshath. There we said goodbye to Ymiru. He would be traveling west, while we must journey east.
'But it's too dangerous for you to cross the mountains alone!' Maram said to him. He looked at the remains of his arm and shook his head. 'And surely you're still too weak from what the dragon did to you.'
Ymiru bowed his huge head to Master Juwain, and then said, 'I've had the help of Ea's greatest healer – I feel as strong as a bear.' At the mention of Maram's least favorite animal, he cast his eyes about the tree-shrouded hills to look for one of the great, white bears that were said to haunt the Nagarshath. Then he studied Ymiru.
Master Juwain had healed his pierced side, and his green gelstei seemed to have restored him to his great vitality.
'Still,' Maram said, 'those mountains, two hundred and fifty miles of them, and you alone. And with winter coming on, it's a journey that-'
'Only I can make,' Ymiru said, dapping him on the arm. 'Don't worry, little man, I shall be all right. But I must go hrome.'
He went on to say that he must tell his people the great news that the Lightstone had been found. Such a miracle, he said, surely heralded the return of the Star People, and so Alundil must be prepared for this great event.
'And the Ymanir must prepare for war,' he said. 'The Great Beast told me that my people would be the next to feel his wrath.'
Liljana came forward and laid her hand on his white fur. 'I saw this in his mind. His hatred of your land, and the desire to destroy it.'
'He has the strength, I think,' Ymiru admitted. His sad smile made me recall the hosts of men and the preparations for war that we had seen in Argattha. 'But we can still fight a while longer.'
'You won't fight alone,' I promised him.
Ymiru's face brightened as he asked me, 'Will the Valari take up the sword against him, then?'
'We'll have to,' I assured him. 'With what we've seen on this journey, what other choice will we have?'
He smiled again as he put down his club; then we clasped hands like brothers.
'I shall miss you, Valashu Elahad,' he said to me.
'And I, you,' I told him.
Liljana brought up one of the mares, which she and Master Juwain had heaped with most of the saddlebags of food. Ymiru would need every last biscuit of it on his long journey.
'Farewell,' she told him. 'May you walk in the light of the One.'
The others, too, said their goodbyes. And then, one last time, I took out the Lightstone and placed it in Ymiru's hand. Its radiance spilled over him like the gold of the sun.
'Someday,' he told me, 'I'll have to journey to Mesh to learn this cup's secrets.'
'You'll always be welcome,' I said to him.
'Or perhaps someday,' he said, handing the Lightstone back to me, 'you'll bring this to Alundil.'
'Perhaps I will,' I said.
Gone from his fearsome face was any hint of gloom; I saw there instead only bright, shining hope. He bowed his head to me, and then turned to tie the mare's reins around his mutilated arm. And he called out, 'A hrorse! Who would ever have thought that a Ymanir would make company of a hrorse!'
And then, leading his horse with one hand, his great war club in the other, he turned to the west and began his long, lonely walk up into the great white mountains of the Nagarshath.
After he had disappeared around the curve of the canyon, we made our final preparations for our journey. Since we had sixteen horses among the seven of us, we had remounts to tie behind us. And Master Juwain had a bandage to tie around Atara. Because she could not bear us to endure the sight of her missing eyes, she begged Master Juwain to cover them. In his wooden chest, he found a bolt of clean white cloth, which he pulled over her eye hollows and temples. I thought it looked less like a bandage than a blindfold.
At last we were ready to leave Sakai. And so we mounted our horses and turned them toward the east. Just below the foothills, the golden plains of the Wendrush gleamed in the sunlight as far as the eye could see. We rode straight down into them; there was nothing else to do. Now, as we found ourselves in the middle of a sea of grass or crested a rise, we would be visible from miles away: clear targets for Morjin's cavalry or any of the Sarni who might decide to divest us of our horses, our lives or more precious treasure.
In truth, on all of Ea there is no other place more perilous to travelers than the Wendrush. Here, between the Morning Mountains and the White, prides of lions hunted antelope and the great, shaggy sagosk; sometimes a darkness fell upon their fierce, red hearts, and then they hunted men. Of all the Sarni tribes, in their plundering for sport or gold, perhaps only the Kurmak or Niuriu tempered their ferocity with mercy – and even they had no love of strangers. The worst of the tribes, it was said, was the Zayak, whose country we now had to cross. Somehow, Morjin had made allies of them – if it was possible to enlist the aid of warriors so proudly independent that they were said to demand tribute even of Morjin's men should they wish to ride across their lands.
For all that first day of our flight from Argattha, we saw no sign of Sarni or of pursuit from Sakai. We rode as fast as we dared, over the swaying grasses of the soft, black earth. The sky was an immense blue dome resting upon the fundament of the far-off horizon; all about us was grass made golden by autumn's last heat. When night came, still we didn't pause in our rush across the plains. With the rising of the wind, we rode long past the twilight hour into the falling darkness.
The stars came out like a million candles lighting the black ocean of the heavens.
They called us ever onward; their splendor lifted up our spirits and reminded us how good it was to be free.
The next day, however, as we looked back toward the Black Mountain still looming over the plain, we found ourselves pursued by riders. They crested a knoll behind us; there were twenty of them, bearing neither the shining
