the trees suddenly gave out onto a broad band of stone. The road, as I could see, ran very straight here east and west through the flat fewest. From the emptiness of this country, I guessed that Suma must lie to our east which meant that we had bypassed this great city by quite a few miles. After some miles more – perhaps as few as eighty – we would find Tria down the road to the west.
'We're saved, then!' Maram cried out. He climbed down from his horse, and collapsed to his knees as he kissed the road's stones in relief. 'Shall we ride on until we find a village or town?' I dismounted Altaru and stood beside him along the curb of the road. The day was dying quickly, and for the first night in many nights, we had a clear view of the sky. Already Valura, the evening star, shone in the blue-black dome to the west. In the east, the moon was rising: a full moon, as we could all see from its almost perfect circle of silver. The last time 1 had stood beneath a moon so bright had been in the Black Bog. I couldn't look upon it now without recalling that time of terror when 1 had feared that I was losing my mind.
Even as I now feared that men were attacking my mind. With the coming of night, the pain in all our heads grew suddenly worse. It seemed that the Stonefaces, whatever they were, took their greatest strength and boldness from the dark.
'If we ride,' I said, 'It would be very bad if the Stonefaces were waiting on the road to ambush us.'
I looked at Master Juwain slumped on his horse and at Atara forcing a smile to her worn-out face. We were all exhausted, I thought, and growing weaker by the hour. I doubted whether we could ride half the night to the next village.
'Wouldn't it be worse if they ambushed us here?' Maram asked. 'No,' I said, pointing behind us. 'We passed a meadow less than half a mile back. We could make camp there and fortify it against attack.' 'All right,' Maram said wearily. 'I'm too tired to argue.' We mounted our horses again, and made our way back to the meadow. It was a broad, grassy expanse perhaps a hundred yards in diameter. Copses of mulberry and oak surrounded it. We hauled some deadfall from these woods to the center of the meadow where we built up around our camp a sort of circular fence. It took many trips back and forth to gather enough wood to construct such rudimentary fortifications. But when we were finished, we felt very glad to go inside it and lay out our bearskins.
It was full night by the time we finished our dinner. The moon had climbed above the meadow and silvered it with its cold light. Long, grayish grasses swayed in the gentle wind blowing in from the east. In the eerie sheen of the earth, the many rocks about us seemed as big as boulders. We had a clear line of sight fifty yards in any direction toward the rim of dark trees that surrounded us. Unless it grew very cloudy, no one could steal upon us unseen. And if anyone attacked us openly, we would kill them with arrows. Toward this end, Maram unpacked my arrows and bow and kept them close at hand. We checked our swords as well. Atara stood up against the breastwork of the fence as she practiced drawing her great, horn bow and aiming arrows over the top of it. She seemed satisfied that we had done all we could. After bidding us goodnight, she slipped down to the ground to sleep holding her bow as child might a blanket.
I took the first watch while the others slept fitfully. I knew they must be having evil dreams: Maram sweated and rolled about, while Master Juwain's small body twitched and started whenever he let out a low moan. Several times Atara murmured,
'No, no, no,' before falling into the ragged rhythms of her breathing.
When it came my turn to sleep, I couldn't bear the thought of closing my eyes. It was selfish of me, but I couldn't bring myself to wake up Master Juwain, either. And so I walked in a slow circle behind the fence looking out across the meadow. The horses, tethered outside the fence, were silently sleeping. So still did they stand that they looked like statues. As did the trees of the surrounding woods. In their dark shadows, I could see nothing. I listened for any telltale that men might be coming to attack us, but the only sounds were the crickets in the meadow and the distant howling of some wolves. Wherever these great, gray beasts stood, I thought, they must be looking upon the same moon as did I. I watched this pale disk climb the starry heavens inch by inch. I might have measured out the moments of its rise and fall by the painful beating of my heart., but the night seemed to deepen into a timelessness that had no end.
I let Maram sleep as well in place of standing his watch. And Atara, too. Despite the pain in my head, which drove through my eyes like nails, I was wide awake. The night was very warm, and I sweated beneath my armor. My legs shook with the effort of remaining standing. Even so, for many hours, I stared out across the meadow, listening and waiting I walked around and around our camp trying to catch the sense of whoever might be hunting us.
Near dawn, without warning, Atara started out of her sleep and rose to stand by my side. When she saw the angle of the moon, she chided me for staying awake nearly all night. Then she sniffed the wind as might a tawny lioness and said, 'They're close, aren't they?' 'Yes,' I said, 'they are.'
'Then you should gotten some sleep to face them.'
'Sleep,' I said, shaking my head.
For a while we spoke of little things such as the direction of the wind and the grimness of the gray face of the moon. And then I looked at her and asked, 'Are you afraid to die?'
She thought about this for a long moment before saying, 'Death is like going to sleep. Should I be afraid of sleeping, then?'
I looked at Master Juwain as he lay against the ground moaning softly. I almost told Atara that death is cold, death is dark, death is an evil dream full of empty black nothing. But I kept myself from voicing such despair.
Even so, she seemed to sense my doubts. She smiled at me bravely and said, 'We take our being from the One. How can the One ever stop being? How can we?'
Because I had no answer for her, I looked up at the black spaces between the stars.
I felt her hand touch my face, and I turned to look at her as she asked me, 'Are you afraid?'
'Yes,' I told her. 'But most afraid for you.'
She smiled at me in the silent understanding that had flowed between us almost from our first moment together. Then her face fell serious as she said a strange thing: 'I can see them, you know.' 'See who, Atara?'
'The men,' she said. 'The gray men.'
'You mean, you saw them in your dreams?'
'Yes, that of course. But I can see them here, now.'
I looked at the gray trees standing in a circle all about us with their leafy arms raised toward the sky, but I saw no men standing with them.
Then Atara pointed out across the moonlit meadow and said, 'I can see them walking toward us with their knives.'
If the Stonefaces came to attack us, I thought, then surely they would stand behind the trees shooting arrows at us or charge us on horses with their swords drawn.
'Once, when I was a child,' she said, 'I saw a spider weaving a web in a corner of my father's house a month before she actually did. I can see the gray men the same way.'
I continued looking out around the meadow; other than the wind-rippled grasses, nothing moved. The moon seemed like a silver nail pinning still the sky. In between the soughs of Atara's breaths, I could almost feel each beat of her heart as it hung in the air like a boom of a great red drum.
And then Altaru came violently awake and let out a tremendous whinny, and I saw them, too. They suddenly appeared next to the trees as if the dark shadows had given them birth. Tall men they were, with hooded, grayish cloaks covering them from head to knee. As Atara had said, there were at least nine of them. Although we couldn't see their faces, they stood around the circle of trees watching us and waiting for something.
I quickly drew my sword.
Again, Altaru whinnied and stomped the earth as he pulled and rattled the fence. His noise shook Master Juwain and Maram awake.
'What is it?' Maram grumbled as he struggled to his feet rubbing his eyes. Then he looked across the meadow and cried out, 'Oh, no! Oh, my Lord – it's them!'
When pressed, Maram could move very quickly, big belly or no. It took only a moment for him to grab up his bow and join Atara and me by the fence.
'Don't shoot them!' Master Juwain pleaded as he stepped forward, too. By now, both Maram and Atara had arrows nocked to their bowstring as they began to pull and sight on the gray men. 'We should try to talk to them first.'
Yes, we should, I thought. And so I called out, 'Who are you? What do you want of us?'
