'I still have my vow,' she reminded me.
I stopped to look off across the steppe, west, toward Argattha. I asked her, 'How many men have you slain,, then? Sixty? Seventy?'
'Would you have me slay more?'
I listened to the beating of my heart, then said, 'Your vow isn't what keeps you from wanting to make vows with me.'
'No,' she said softly, touching the cloth around her face. 'I can't marry you like this.'
'But your sight will return,' I said, speaking of her powers of scrying, which seemed to be growing ever stronger. 'In Argattha, when Kane touched -'
'Kane will go his way, and I will go mine,' she told me. 'And Kane is still Kane, don't you see?'
I looked back toward the fire where Kane stood like a lonely sentinel surveying the steppe in all directions. Despite our nearness to Mesh, he hadn't ceased his eternal watch for enemies.
'Sometimes now,' she said to me, 'Kane walks with the One. But too often, he still walks with himself. He hasn't the power to make me see. In Argattha, for a moment, he helped me find my way back to the One. But I… can't always remain there. And so then I'm utterly blind.'
'I don't care,' I told her.
'But I do care,' she said to me. 'Someday, if I bear your son, as I have wished a thousand times and will, if only I could, my son… when I hold him to me and give him my milk, when I look down at him, if I can't see him, if I can't see him seeing me, then it would break my heart.'
I stood beneath the blazing stars that she could not perceive. In their brilliance, the patterns of life and death were stitched by the silver needle of fate. And fate, I thought, was forged in our hearts, whether with the fire of hate or love, it was our will to decide.
'I understand,' I told her. How could I love this woman if I didn't guard her heart as I would my own heart, as I would the Lightstone itself?
'I know it's vain of me,' she said, 'I know it's selfish, but I -'
'I understand,' I said again.
I moved to stroke her hair, gleaming like silver-gold in the starlight But she shook her head and pulled back from me. And she murmured, 'No, no – I'm imakla now, haven't you heard? I'm imakla, and may not be touched.'
'I don't care, Atara.'
I knew that she couldn't bear for me to touch her – and even more, that she couldn't bear not being touched. And so one last time, I kissed her. My lips burned with a pain worse than when the dragon had seared me with her fire.
After that, I sat with her on the cold grass holding hands as we waited for the sun to brighten the sky over the mountains to the east. When it came time to say goodbye, she squeezed my hand and said, 'I wish you well, Valashu Elahad.'
For a moment, my eyes burned and blurred, and I was almost as blind as she. Then I told her, 'May you always walk in the light of the One.' She got up to saddle her horse with the others while I sat staring at the last of the night's stars. After a while Maram came over to me. He some how knew what had occurred between us, and I loved him for that.
'Take courage, old friend, there may yet be hope,' he told me. 'If you've taught me anything, it's that.'
I slipped the Lightstone out from beneath my armor and held it before me. Its hollows suddenly filled with the first rays of the sun rising over Tarkel's slopes, and I knew what he said was true.
'Thank you, Maram,' I said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. I pointed east at Tarkel. 'Now why don't we go get some of that beer I've promised you for at least the last thousand miles?'
The smile brightening his face reminded me that no matter how fiercely I might miss Atara and the rest of our company, others whom I loved were waiting for me beneath the shining mountains of my home.
Chapter 47
About a mile from our camp, Atara found a ford over the Diamond River and led Liljana, Daj and Kane across it. Thus they entered the lands of the Adiri tribe, who were presently allied with the Kurmak. As she rode north on her red horse draped in her black-maned lion's skin, I had no fear for her – only a great doubt if I would ever see her again.
In the quiet of the morning, I rode with Maram and Master Juwain east along the river. There were no boundary stones to mark the exact place where Altaru first set his hoof upon Meshian soil. But when the steppe gave way to the low foothills fronting the Shoshan Range of the Morning Mountains, I knew that we would find no Sarni farming the rocky ground or tending flocks of sheep on the pastures, but only Valari waniors who followed the standard of King Shamesh.
A fortress, built beneath Tarkel's lower slopes, stood looking down upon the Diamond River and the valley through which it cut. It was a great square construction, with thick granite walls – one of the twenty-two kel keeps that ringed my father s kingdom. Politeness demanded that we make our way up to it and pay our respects to its commander. And the knights and warriors who manned its walls would have demanded this too if we had tried to ride past it. In truth, there was no way that three unknown men could simply ride out of the Wendrush into Mesh along the river without being seen and stopped.
And so we were met at the north gate by fifty warriors in mail and the keep's commander, a long-faced, jowly man whose long hair had gone almost completely gray. He presented himself as Lord Manthanu of Pushku. He had summoned forth the entire garrison to witness the strange sight of three men, who obviously were not Sarni, coming unscathed out of the Sarni's lands.
'And who,' Lord Mantham called out as we stopped just inside the gate, 'are you?'
His men were lined up on either side of the road leading from the gate, their hands gripping their kalamas should they need to draw them. I did not recognize any of them. It seemed that the keep was garrisoned with warriors from the lands along the Sawash River, a part of Mesh I had visited only once ten years before.
'My name,' I said, throwing back my cloak to reveal the swan and stars of my much-worn surcoat, 'is Valashu Elahad.'
Like a lightning flash, Lord Manthanu whipped out his kalama and pointed it at me.
And nearly as quickly, his fifty warriors drew their swords, too.
'Impossible!' Lord Manthanu called out. 'Sar Valashu was killed last spring in Ishka, in the Black Bog. We had reports of it.'
' That is news to me,' I said with a smile. 'It would seem that the Ishkans reported wrongly. My name is as I've said. And my friends are Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu and Master Juwain of the Brotherhood.'
After much discussion we convinced them of who we really were. It turned out that one of the keep's stonemasons making repairs to its battlements had once done work for the Brothers at their sanctuary near Silvassu. Upon being summoned, he greeted Master Juwain warmly, for Master Juwain had once healed him of a catarrh of the eyes that had nearly blinded him.
'Sar Valashu, my apologies,' Lord Manthanu said. He sheathed his sword and clasped my hand. 'But the Ishkans did send word that you had perished in the Bog.
How did you escape it?'
Maram took this opportunity to say, 'That might be a story best told over a glass of beer.' 'It might,' Lord Manthanu admitted, 'but this is no time for drinkfests.' 'How so?' Maram asked.
'Haven't you heard? But of course not – you've been off on that foolish quest. Did you ever make it as far as Tria?'
'Yes,' I said, smiling again, 'we did. But please tell us these tidings that have all your men drawing swords on their countrymen.'
Lord Manthanu paused only a moment before saying, 'We received word only yesterday that the Ishkans are marching on Mesh. We're to meet in battle on the fields between the Upper Raaswash and the Lower.'
So, I thought, it had finally come to this. Autumn having reached its fullness, and the year's barley safely
