ages. He could work on his poem as we journeyed north, and if he so desired, he could read it to the nobles and princes in Tria.
We said goodbye to the Duke near the gate where we had met him. Then we rode into the soft, swelling hills around his castle. The sky was as blue as cobalt glass; the soft wind smelled of dandelions and other wildflowers that grew on the grassy slopes, in the east, the sun burned with a golden fire.
It was a fine day for traveling, I thought, perhaps our finest yet. I determined that we should leave Daksh far behind us and cross well into Jathay before evening came.
Perhaps some thirty miles of rolling country lay before us. We began our journey through it to the sound of Maram bellowing out the verses of his new poem. It was a measure of the safety that Duke Gorador provided his domain that we could ride without fear of Maram's noise provoking any enemy to attack us.
As the noon hour approached, the mountains to our east grew lower and lower like great granite steps leading down into the plains of Anjo. Their forested slopes gradually gave way to grassier terrain. At the border between Daksh and Jathay, they stopped altogether. Here, where one of the feeder streams of the Havosh led northeast toward Yarvanu and Vishal, we paused to eat a meal of lamb sandwiches and take our bearings.
'Ah, Val, listen to this,' Maram said between bites of his sandwich. Which line do you think is better? 'Her eyes are pools of sacred fire?' Or, 'Her eyes are fire feeding fire'?'
We sat on top of a hill above the west bank of the Havosh River. The day was still clear, and we could see many miles in any direction. To the east, just across the sparkling trickle of the river, the plains of Jathay glistened like a sea of green. Only some fifteen miles from us lay the city of Sauvo and the court intrigues that Duke Rezu had spoken of. To the northeast, along the line of the Havosh, were the fields of Vishal and Yarvanu, and some miles beyond their domains, the distant blue haze of the Alonian Sea. The Shoshan Range still rose like a vast wall of rock and ice to the west, but I knew that their jagged peaks gave way to a great gap some seventy-five miles to the northwest. Forty miles due north of our hill, the raging Santosh River flowed down from these mountains into the Alonian Sea. It formed the border between Alonia and Anjo's wild lands that both Duke Rezu and Duke Gorador had warned us against. From our vantage above them, they didn't seem so wild. Long stretches of swaying grass and shrubs were cut by stands of trees in an irregular patchwork of vegetation. The ground undulated with soft swells of earth, as of the contours of a snake, but nowhere did it appear hilly or difficult to cross.
'Perhaps you don't like either line,' Maram said as I suddenly stood to gaze down at the thin, blue ribbon of the Havosh. 'How about, 'Her eyes are windows to the stars'? Val, are you listening to me? What's wrong?'
I was barely listening to him. A sudden coldness struck into me as of something serpentine wrapping itself around my spine. It seemed to contract rhythmically, grinding my back-bones together even as it ate its way into my skull. Despite the dreadful chill I felt spreading through my limbs, I began to sweat. My belly tightened with a sickness that made me want to surrender up my lunch.
Now Master Juwain stood up, too, and laid his hand on my shoulder. He touched my head to see if my fever had returned. And then he asked, 'Are you ill, Val?'
'No,' 1 told him. 'It's not that'
'What is it then?'
I saw great concern on both my friends' faces. And I was concerned not to alarm either of them, especially Maram. But they had to know, so as gently as I could, 1 told them, 'Someone is following me.'
At this news, Maram leaped to his feet and began scanning the world in every direction. And so, more slowly, did Master Juwain. But the only moving things they detected were a few hawks in the sky and a rabbit startled out of the grass by Maram's darting back and forth across the top of the hill.
'We can't see anything,' Master Juwain said. 'Are you sure we're being followed?'
'Yes,' I said. 'At least someone or something is seeking me and knows where I am.
It's like they can scent out my blood.'
'Do you think it's Kane?' Maram asked. He turned south to peer more closely through the valley leading back to Duke Rezu's castle.
'It could be Kane,' I said. 'Or it could be someone waiting for us to ride into a trap.'
'Waiting where?' Maram asked. 'And who is it who's after you? The Ishkans? No, no
– they wouldn't dare ride this far into Anjo. Would they? Do you think it's your assassin who has tracked you down?'
But I had no answers for him, nor for myself. All I could do was to smile bravely so that the flames of Maram's disquiet didn't spread into a raging panic.
Master Juwain, who had an intimation of my gift nodded his head as if he trusted what I had told him. He asked, 'What should we do, Val?'
'We could try to set a trap of our own,' I said, touching the hilt of my sword.
'No, there's been enough of that already,' Master Juwain said. 'Besides, we have no idea how many might be pursuing us, do we?'
Maram nodded his head at the good sense of this, and said, 'Please, Val, let's leave this land as soon as we can,'
'All right,' I said. I pointed down at the Havosh River where it formed the border of Jathay and led toward Yarvanu and Vishal. 'If it is Kane who is after us, then he knows that Duke Rezu advised us to go in this direction. If it's someone else, then likely they'll be waiting for us along the Nar Road where it crosses through Yarvanu.'
'Of course they would,' Maram muttered. 'That's the only way over the Santosh into Alonia.'
'Perhaps not the only way,' I said.
'What do you mean?' Maram asked in alarm.
I pointed down into the wild lands that began at the base of our hill. I said, 'We could journey north, straight for the Santosh. And then into Alonia. If we keep northwest toward the Shoshan Range and then strike out north again, we should intercept the Nar Road in the Gap far from any of our pursuers.'
Maram looked at me as if I had suggested crossing the Alonian Sea on a log. Then he called out, 'But what of the wild lands we were warned against? The robbers and outlaws? Ah, perhaps the bears, too? And how will we cross the Santosh if there's no bridge? And if by some miracle we do cross it without drowning, how will we find our way through Alonia? I've heard there's nothing there but trackless forest.'
Some men are born to fear the familiar dangers that they see before their eyes; some take their greatest terror in the unknown. Maram was cursed with a sensibility that found threat everywhere in the world, from a boulder poised on the side of a hill to roll down upon him to his most wild imaginings. I knew that nothing I could say would assuage the dread rising like a flood inside him. Dangers lay before us in every direction. All we could do was to choose one way or another to go.
Even so, I grasped his hand in mine to reassure him. It was one of the times in my life that I wished my gift worked in reverse, so that some of my great hope for the future might pass into him. I fancied that some of it did.
We held council on top of that barren hill. All of us agreed that when facing an opponent, it was best to do the unexpected. And so in the end we decided on the course that I had suggested.
After packing up our food, we rode down into the wild lands with a new haste communicating into our horses. We moved at a bone-jolting trot over fields overgrown with shrubs and weeds; but upon entering the various woods that lay upon our line of travel, we had to pick our way more slowly. The country through which we rode had once been rich farmland, some of the richest in the Morning Mountains..But now all that remained of civilization were the ruins of low stone walls or an occasional house, rotting or fallen in upon itself. We saw no other sign of human beings all that long afternoon. When evening came, we made camp in a copse of stout oaks. We risked no fire that night. We ate a cold meal of cheese and bread, and then agreed to take our sleep in turns so that one of us might always remain awake to listen for our pursuers. I took the first watch, followed by Maram. When it came time for me to rest, 1 fell asleep to the sound of wolves howling far out on the plain before us.
I was awakened just before dawn by a dreadful sensation that one of these wolves was licking my throat. I sprang up from the dark, damp earth with my sword in my hand; I believe I lunged at the gray shapes of these beasts lurking in the shadows of the trees. And then, as I came truly awake and my eyes cleared, I saw nothing more threatening than a few rotting logs among the towering oaks. 'Are you all right?'
Master Juwain whispered. 'Was it a dream?' 'Yes, a dream,' I told him. 'But perhaps it's time we were off.' We roused Maram then and quickly broke camp. Upon emerging from the woods, we rode straight toward the north star over a dark and silent land. But soon the sun reddened the sky in the east and drove away the darkness. With
