land he could find.
And so the renegade Valari came at last to the Island of Thalu in the uttermost west.
There they used the green gelstei to slowly change their form to adapt to the cold mists of that harsh and rugged land. The followers of Aryu, or the Aryans, as they came to be called, became a tall, big-boned people, fair of face, with flaxen hair and blue eyes as bright as the sea.
Here Kane paused in his story to look at Atara. She sat on old leaves beneath the oak tree, and her bright, blue eyes were fixed on Kane's face. 'Have you never wondered at the origins of your people?' he asked her.
'No more than I have the origins of the antelope or the grass,' Atara told him. 'But it's said that the Sarni are the descendants of Sarngin Marshan.'
Prince Sarngin, she said, had fought with his brothers, Vashrad and Nawar, over the throne of Alonia late in the Age of the Mother. Vashrad had finally prevailed, killing Nawar. But he had spared Sarngin, whom he had loved. He had banished him and many of his followers, forbidding them ever to return to the lands of Alonia. And so Sarngin had come to the prairies of the Wendrush, where he and his followers had prospered and multiplied to become the ferocious Sarni. 'Sarngin and Vashrad were sons of Bohimir, eh?' Kane said. 'Yes,' Atara said. 'Bohimir the Great. He was Alonia's first king.'
'Ha, a king!' Kane said to her. 'He was an adventurer and a warlord. In three hundred ships, he sailed from Thalu with the Aryan sea rovers – descendants all of them of Aryu and Jolonu. That was in the year 2,177 of the Age of the Mother. The Dark Year, as it's now called. The Aryans entered the Dolphin Channel and sacked Tria.
Bohimir crowned himself king. And that is the origin of your people.'
Kane paused to drink yet another cup of brandy. The potent liquor seemed to have little effect on him. While bees buzzed in the blossoms of a nearby dogwood and the day grew warmer, he sat looking back and forth between Atara and me. 'It's strange,' he muttered. Very, very strange.' 'What is?' I asked him.
He pointed at my hair and then held his hand toward my face as his black eyes burned into mine. 'It's said that all the Star People who came to Ea looked like you.
Like the Valari. The Valari who settled the Morning Mountains were the only people to have had their varistei stolen. And so they were the only people of Ea to remain true to the Star People's original form.'
I looked down at the black hair spilling over my chest and at the ivory tones of my hands. I rubbed my long, hawk's nose and the prominent bones of my cheeks. Then I looked at Atara, whose coloring and cast of face couldn't have been more different.
'The Valari and the Aryans,' Kane said, 'were once of one tribe. Thus they're the closest of all peoples – and yet, ever since Aryu killed Elahad, they've always been the bitterest of enemies. The Sarni are ultimately the descendants of Aryu himself, and who has warred with the Valari more?'
Only the Valari, I thought, biting back a bitter smile. 'It's strange,' Kane said, bowing his head first at Atara and then at me, 'that you two should have made a peace between yourselves at a time when it's foretold the Lightstone will be found.'
In truth, it was more than strange; I couldn't remember hearing of any Valari ever making friends with a Sarni warrior. As the sun rose over the meadow where Atara and I had stood against our enemies together, I couldn't help wondering if the Age of the Dragon – and war itself – was finally coming to an end.
'Ah, this is all very interesting,' Maram said to Kane. 'But what does this have to do with the Lokii?'
'Just this,' Kane said. 'After Aryu stole the Lightstone and the Valari were broken into their two kindred, the remaining tribes scattered to every land of Ea. Each tribe carried its own varistei; they used the stones to adapt their forms to the various climes of Ea. The Lokii, being lovers of trees, disappeared into the Great Northern Forest. Over the ages, they came to look even as you've seen them.'
'Have you seen them, then?' Maram asked.
Kane ignored this question, regarding Maram as he might a fly that had a loud buzz but no bite. Then he told us more about the Lokii.
'Of all the tribes,' he said, 'they were the only one to fully understand the power of the green gelstei.'
The Lokii, he explained, became masters of growing great trees and things out of the earth, and of awakening the living earth fires called the telluric currents. After thousands of years, they learned how to grow more of the green gelstei crystals from the earth. They used these magic stones, as they thought of them, to deepen the power of their wood. So changed and concentrated did these telluric currents become that their wood separated from Ea in some strange way and became invisible to the rest of it. The Lokii called these pockets of deepened life fires 'vilds,' for they believed that there the earth was connected to the wild fires of the stars.
Since the Lokii could not return to the stars, they hoped to awaken the earth itself so that all of Ea became as alive and magical as the other worlds that circled other suns.
'So, the vilds are invisible to almost all people except the Lokii,' Kane said. 'Even they have trouble finding their vild once they have left it. Which is why they never go far from their trees.'
'You say 'vilds,' Maram said. 'Are there more than one?'
Kane nodded his head and told us, 'During the Lost Ages, the Lokii tribe split into at least ten septs and bore varistei to other parts of Ea. There, they created vilds of their own. At least five of them remain.'
'Remain where?'
'Somewhere,' Kane said. 'They are somewhere.'
As he took another drink of brandy, Flick soared over to him and began spinning in front of his bright eyes. I could almost see the sparks passing back and forth between them. It was the longest I had ever seen Flick remain in one place.
'How is it,' Maram wondered, 'that Flick can live outside the vild?'
'That I would like to know, too,' Kane said.
'There can only be one answer,' Master Juwain said. 'If it's truly the tellluric currents of the vilds that feed the Timpum, then here Flick must take his life from something else. And that can only be the Golden Ban. Twenty years it's been since the earth entered its radiance. It must be the light of the Ieldra themselves that sustains him.'
'Perhaps,' Kane said. 'Perhaps we're coming into the time when the Galadin will walk the earth again.'
He knelt next to me by the tree, studying the scar on my forehead. Then he told me,
'This is why the Lokii spared your life. The mark of the lightning bolt – the Lokii believe that it's sacred to the archangel they call the Ellama. But others know this being as Valorem. It's strange that you should bear his mark, eh?'
Maram, apparently not liking the look on Kane's face just then, turned to him and said, 'What's strange is that you should know so much that no one else knows.'
'It's a strange world,' Kane growled out.
'How did you know that the Red Dragon had sent assassins to kill Val?' Maram asked. 'And how did learn to fight as you do? Are you of the Black Brotherhood?'
As Maram tapped his empty cup against a stone, we all looked at Kane, who said, 'If I were of the Black Brotherhood, whatever you think that is, do you suppose I'd be permitted to tell you?'
Maram pointed at Flick, who now hovered over some flowers like a cloud of flashing butterflies. He said, 'If you can see the Timpum – ah, the Timpimpiri, as you called them – then you must have spent time in one of the vilds.'
'Must I have?'
Master Juwain sat holding his book and said, 'We of the Brotherhood spend our lives in search of knowledge. But even our Grandmaster would have much to learn from you.'
Kane smiled at this but said nothing.
'But how,' I asked him, 'did you find the vild and enter it?'
'Much the same as you did.'
He told us that he had spent much of his life crossing and recrossing Ea in search of knowledge – and something else.
'So, I seek the Lightstone,' he told us. 'Even as you do.'
'Toward what end?' I asked him.
'Toward the end of bringing about the end,' he growled out again. 'The end of Morjin and all his works.'
I remembered touching upon his bottomless hatred for Morjin at our first meeting in Duke Rezu's castle; I remembered the anguish in his eyes, and I shuddered.
