my own.
'It may be,' I told him, 'that in fighting for the lightstone, we'd be fighting for our people. For all people. We would be, Asaru,'
'Perhaps.' he said, looking at me again.
Someday, I thought, he would be king and therefore the loneliest of men. And so he needed one other man whom he could trust absolutely.
'At least' I said, 'please consider that our grandfather might not have been a fool. All right?'
He slowly nodded his head and grasped my shoulder, 'All right'
'Good,' I said, smiling at him. I picked up my bow and nodded toward the woods.
'Then why don't we go get your deer?'
After that we helped Lord Marsha put away the remains of our lunch. We slipped on our quivers full of hunting arrows. I said goodbye to Altaru, my fierce, black stallion, who reluctantly allowed Joshu Kadar to tend him in my absence. I thanked Lord Harsha for his hospitality, then turned and led the way into the woods.
Chapter 2
As soon as we entered this stand of ancient trees, it grew cooler and darker. The forest that rilled the Valley of Swans was mostly of elm, maple and oak with a scattering of the occasional alder or birch. Their great canopies opened out a hundred feet above the forest floor, nearly blocking out the rays of the cloud-shrouded sun. The light was softened by the millions of fluttering leaves, and deepened to a primeval green. I could almost smell this marvelous color as I could the ferns and flowers, the animal droppings and the loamy earth. Through the still air came the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker and the buzzing of bees; I heard a pair of bluebirds calling to each other and the whispering of my own breath.
We walked deeper into the woods across the valley almost due east toward the unseen Mount Eluru. I was as sure of this direction as I was of the beating of my heart. Once a sea captain from the Elyssu, on a visit to our castie, had shown me a little piece of iron called a lodestone that pointed always toward the north. In my wandering of Mesh's forests and mountains, I had always found my way as if I had millions of tiny lodestones in my blood pointing always toward home. And now I moved steadily through the great trees toward something vast and deep that called to me from the forest farther within. What was calling me, however, I didn't quite know.
I felt something else there that seemed as out of place as a snow tiger in a jungle or the setting of the sun in the east. The air, dark and heavy, almost screamed with a sense of wrongness that chilled me to the bone. I felt eyes watching me: those of the squirrels and the cawing crows and perhaps others as well. For some reason, I suddenly thought of the lines from The Death of Elahad – Elahad the Great, my distant ancestor, the fabled first king of the Valari who had brought the Lightstone to Ea long, long ago. I shuddered as I thought of how Elahad's brother, Aryu,-had killed Elahad in the dark wood very like this one, and then, ages before Morjin had ever conceived of such a crime, claimed the Lightstone for his own: The stealing of the gold,
The evil knife, the cold -
The cold that freezes breath,
The nothingness of death.
My breath steamed out into the coolness of the silent trees as I caught a faint, distant scent that disturbed me. The sense of wrongness pervading the woods grew stronger. Perhaps, I thought, I was only dwelling on the wrongness of Elahad's murder. I couldn't help it. Wasn't all killing of men by men wrong, I asked myself?
And what of killing, itself? Men hunted animals, and that was the way the world was.
I thought of this as the scar above my eye began to tingle with a burning coldness. I remembered that once, not far from here, I had tried to kill a bear; I remembered that sometimes bears went wrong in their hearts and hunted men just for the sport of it.
I gripped my bow tightly as I listened for a bear or other large animal crashing through the bushes and bracken all about us. I listened to Maram stepping close behind me and to Asaru following him. Maram, curiously, despite his size, could move quietly when he wanted to. And he could shoot straight enough, as the Delian royalty are taught. We Valari, of course, are taught three fundamental things: to wield a sword, to tell the truth, and to abide in the One. But we are also taught to shoot our long yew bows with deadly accuracy, and some of us, as my grandfather had taught me, to move across even broken terrain almost silently. I believe that if we had chanced upon a bear feasting upon wild newberries or honey, we might have stepped up close to him unheard and touched him before being discovered.
That is, we might have done this if not for Maram's continual comments and complaints. Once, when I had bent low to examine the round, brown pellets left behind by a deer, he leaned up against a tree and grumbled, 'How much farther do we have to go? Are you sure we're not tost? Are you sure there are any deer in these wretched woods?'
Asaru's voice hissed out in a whisper, 'Shhh – if there are any deer about, you'll scare them away.'
'All right,' Maram muttered as we moved off again. He belched, and a bloom of beer vapor obliterated the perfume of the wildflowers. 'But don't go so fast. And watch out for snakes. Any poison ivy.'
I smiled as I tugged gently on the sleeve of his red tunic to get him going again. But I didn't watch for snakes, for the only deadly ones were the water dragons which hunted mostly along the streams. And the only poison ivy that was to be found in Mesh grew in the mountains beyond the Lower Raaswash near Ishka.
We walked for most of an hour while the clouds built into great black thunderheads high in the sky and seemed to press down through the trees with an almost palpable pressure. Still I felt something calling me, and I moved still deeper into the woods. I saw an old elm shagged with moss, a dear sign that we were approaching a place I remembered very well. And then, as Maram drew in a quick breath, I turned to see him pointing at the exposed, gnarly root of a great oak tree.
'Look,’ he murmured. 'What's wrong with that squirrel?'
A squirrel, I saw, was lying flat on the root with its arms and legs splayed out. Its dark eye stared out at us but appeared not to see us. Its sides shook with quick, shallow breathing.
I closed my eyes for a moment and I could feel the pain where something sharp had punctured the squirrel beneath the fur of its hind leg. It was the sharp, hot pain of infection, which burned up the leg and consumed the squirrel with its fire.
'Val?'
Something dark and vast had its claws sunk into the squirrel's fluttering heart and I could feel this terrible pulling just as surely as I could Maram's fear of death. This was my gift; this was my glory; this was my curse. What others feel, I feel as well.
All my life I had suffered from this unwanted empathy. And I had told only one other person about its terrors and joys.
Asaru moved closer to Maram and pointed at the squirrel as he whispered, 'Val has always been able to talk to animals.'
It was not Asaru. Although he certainly knew of my love of animals and sometimes looked at me fearfully when I opened my heart to him, he sensed only that I was strange in ways that he could never quite understand. But my grandfather had known, for he had shared my gift; indeed, it was he who gave it to me. I thought that like the color of my eyes, it must have been passed along in my family's blood – but skipping generations and touching brother and sister capriciously. I thought as well that my grandfather regarded it as truly a gift and not an affliction. But he had died before he could teach me how to bear it.
For a few moments I stared at the squirrel, touching eyes. I sud-denly remembered other lines from The Death of Elahad; I remembered that Master Juwain, at the Brotherhood's school had never approved of this ancient song, because, as he said, it was full of dread and despair.
And down into the dark,
No eyes, no lips, no spark.
The dying of the light,
The neverness of night.
Maram asked softly, 'Should we finish him?'
