every dram from them if that came first. Atara chided him, and all of us, for traveling so heavily burdened. A Sarni warrior, she said, could cross five hundred miles of the Wendrush with little more than a leather cloak and a bag full of dried antelope meat.
But we were not Sarni. In the end, we redistributed our supplies as best we could over the backs and sides of our six horses.
We rode down from the hill then. After pausing by a stream so that Atara could clean herself, we found our way around the side of the hill into the valley we had seen from its top. A short distance through the trees brought us to a sudden break into bright sunlight where the Nar Road cut across the land. I marveled at the road's width; it was like a river of stone flowing through the forest. Grass grew in the many small cracks in it, and here and there, a tree grew out of larger breaks in its surface.
But it was quite serviceable. Whole armies, I thought, could pass down this road.
Whole armies had.
We traveled northeast along it for the rest of the day. We rode four abreast with the two remaining pack horses trailing behind us. If the hill-men were watching us from behind the walls of trees along the sides of the road, they didn't dare to show themselves. I thought that Atara was right, that they'd had enough of battle for one day. Even so, Atara and Maram kept their bows strung and dose at hand as we all listened for breaking twigs or rustling leaves.
Master Juwain told us what he knew of the hill-men: he said they were descendants of a Kallimun army that had invaded Alonia early in the Age of the Dragon. The army's captain had been none other than Sartan Odinan, the very same Kallimun priest who had betrayed Morjin and then led Kalkamesh into Argattha to reclaim the Lightstone. After the rape and burning of Suma, Sartan's heart had softened and he had abandoned his bloodthirsty men. Morjin had then recalled the leaderless army to Sakai just as the conquest of Alonia seemed certain. But many of Sartan's men had remained to ravage the countryside. When King Maimun's soldiers began to hunt them down, they took refuge in the hills all about us which their descendants had infested ever since.
'Sartan Odinan used a firestone to break the Long Wall,' Master Juwain said. 'Thus did his army force it, way into Alonia. Even as the Sarni did in the Age of Swords.'
'No, the Sarni did not use a firestone to breach the Wall,' Atara said, the Sarni knew nothing of firestones then.'
As our horses dopped down the road and the slanting sun broke upon the canopies of the trees, Atara recounted the fines of Tulumar Elek, who had united the Sarni tribes in the year 2,054 of the Age of Swords. According to Atara, Tulumar had been determined to conquer Alonia, then and still the greatest of Ea's kingdoms. And so Tulumar's armies had besieged the immense fortifications of the Long Wall for a year, without result. And then one day a mysterious man named Kadar the Wise had arrived in Tulumar's camp bearing casks of a red substance called relb. As Atara explained, relb was only a forerunner of the red gelstei, a first essay into the art of making these powerful stones. But it had power enough of its own: it concentrated the rays of the sun and set even stone on fire. Thus it was called the Stoneburner.
Kadar the Wise persuaded Tulumar's Sarni warriors to spread the relb at night over a section of the Long Wall, and this they did, with great sacrifice. It looked much like paint or fresh blood, and the Alonians thought that the Sarni had gone mad.
But the next day, as the sun's rays at noon poured down upon the Long Wall, the relb burst into flame, melting stone to lava and killing thousands of the Wall's defenders. This great event had become known as the Breaking of the Long Wall. In the coming years, Tulumar would go on to conquer all of Alonia and Delu.
'Tulumar was a great warrior,' Atara said. 'One of the greatest of the Sarni. But Kadar the Wise tricked him.'
Master Juwain, rubbing his bald head as he rode along, looked at her in surprise, 'if your story is true – and I should say it's nowhere mentioned in the Saganom Elu or any of the histories of the Elekar dynasty – then it would seem that Tulumar owed much of his success to this Kadar the Wise.'
'No, Kadar tricked Tulumar,' Atara said again. 'For Kadar was really Morjin in disguise.'
'What!' Master Juwain called out He rubbed his gnarly hands together as if in anticipation of a feast. I had never seen him so excited. 'The Red Dragon began his rise more than two hundred years after that!'
'No it was Morjin,' Atara said. 'This is known. The stories have been told for two ages. Morjin tried to use Tulumar to conquer all of Ea. He tried to make a ghul of him, and in the end this killed him.'
'The Saganom Elu tells that Tulumar died of a fever after preparing an invasion of the Nine Kingdoms.'
'If he did, it was a fever born of poison and Morjin's lies.'
I thought about the poison burning in my own veins and what it might eventually do to me. To distract myself from these dark thoughts, I said, 'Tulumar's son was Sagumar, I believe.'
'Yes,' Atara said. 'Morjin tried to enslave him, too.'
'And this was the same Sagumar, wasn't it, whom King Elemesh defeated at the Song River? If what you say is true, then King Elemesh defeated Morjin as well.'
'For a time,' Atara said bitterly, nodding her head. 'Morjin has always posed as the Sarni's greatest friend, but he is our greatest enemy. Even now, he is trying to win the tribes with promises of diamonds and gold. This is the key for him. If he wins the Sarni, he wins all of Ea.'
Although the sun was a bright yellow disk in the west, the world suddenly seemed cast into darkness. I asked Atara, 'Are the tribes listening to the Red Dragon then?'
'Some of them are. The Danladi and Marituk have practically pledged their swords to him. And half the clans of the Urtuk, it is said, favor an alliance with Sakai.'
At this news, I ground my teeth together. For the Urtuk commanded the steppe just to the west of the mountains of Mesh. 'And what about the Kurmak?' I asked her.
'Will your people ride with the Red Dragon?'
'Never!' Atara said. 'Sajagax himself would slay any warrior of the clans who even suggested following Morjin.'
She went on to tell us that this fierce, old chief of the Kurmak was her grandfather, and that he favored finding the Lightstone as a way of defeating Morjin. As did Atara.
As we made our way through the lovely afternoon, I thought about all that Atara had said. I thought about her as well. I liked her forceful and sportive temperament, and I liked her passion for justice even more. She had a wisdom I had never seen in a woman her age. And this was not simply a discerning knowledge of things unknown even to Master Juwain, but a keen sense for the ways of the world. Her eyes seemed to miss no detail of the forest we passed through, and her feel for terrain was even better than mine: more than once she was able to guess what streams we might find or how the road might turn beyond the wall of the hills before us. And that evening, as we halted by one of these streams, I discovered just how deep her understanding of animals ran. She told me that since I was wounded, I should rest and allow her to do much of the work of making camp. She insisted on unsaddling Altaru and brushEg him down. WhenJ insisted that my unruly horse might kill her if she drew too close to him, she simply walked up to his side and told him that they must be friends. Something in the dulcet tones of her votes must have worked a magic on Altaru, for he nickered softly and allowed her to breathe into his great nostrils. She stroked his neck for a long time then, and I could feel the beginning of love stirring in his great chest.
I was forced to admit that it was good that Atara had joined us; she was good company, and we all appreciated her enthusiasm and easy laughter. But she managed to vex us as well. Over the days of our journey, Master Juwain, Maram and I had grown used to each other and had established a certain rhythm in making camp.
Atara changed all that. She was as meticulous in performing chores as she was precise in shooting her arrows. Water must be taken from a stream at its exact center so as to avoid collecting any unwanted sediment; the stones for the fire had to be set around the pit in a exact circle and the firewood neatly trimmed so as to fit the pit perfectly. She seemed tireless in making these devotions. For Atara, I thought, there was a right way and a wrong way of doing everything, and she attended each little action as if the fate of the world hung in the balance.
It must have been hard for her to demand so much of herself. I sensed in her a relentless war between what she wanted to do and what she knew she must do. At those rare moments when she relaxed and let down her guard, her wild joy of life came bubbling up out her like a fountain. She liked to laugh at even the most ridiculous of Maram's stories, and when she did, the peals rang out of her without restraint. That night, over a warm fire and a
