'But what grievance do you have against him?' I asked.
'Does a man need a grievance against the Crucifier to oppose him?'
'Perhaps not,' I said. 'But to hate him as you do, yes.'
'Then let's just say he took from me that which was dearer than life itself.' I remembered wondering if the Red Dragon had murdered his family, and I bowed my head in silence. Then I looked up and said, 'Your accent is strange – what is your homeland?'
'I have no home,' Kane said. 'No homeland that Morjin hasn't despoiled.'
'who are your people, then?'
'I have no people whom Morjin hasn't killed or enslaved.'
'You almost look Valari.'
'I almost am. As with your people, I'm Morjin's enemy.'
As I sat staring into his dark, wild eyes, I couldn't help remembering the story of the Hundred Year March. After Aryu had killed Elahad and fled into the Northern Sea, Elahad's son, Arahad, had assembled a fleet of ten ships and set sail with the remaining Valari in pursuit. For ten years, they searched in vain from island to island and place to place. They faced many storms and adventures. Finally, having circumnavigated the whole of Ea, they had returned to Tria with only five remaining ships.
Arahad then decided – wrongly – that Aryu and the renegade Valari must have come to land and established themselves somewhere in the interior of the continent. And so again, Arahad and his followers set out in pursuit, this time on foot. Thus began the Hundred Year March. Arahad's Valari wandered almost every land of Ea looking for Aryu's descendants and the Lightstone. Finally, after Arahad's death, his son, Shavashar, led the remnants of the Valari tribe into the Morning Mountains, where they gave up their quest and remained. But it was said that some of the Valari lost heart long before this, and broke off from the rest of the tribe before they reached the Morning Mountains. In what land these lost Valari might have established themselves, not even the legends told. But I wondered if Kane might have been one of their descendants.
'You make a mystery of yourself,' I said to him.
'No more than the One has made a mystery of life,' he told me. 'So, it's not important who I am – only what I do.'
I turned toward the sunlit meadow to look upon the work that Kane had done. I still couldn't quite believe that he had killed the six Grays at close quarters without taking a scratch. I pointed at their bodies and said, 'Is this what you do, then?'
'As I told you at the Duke's castle, I oppose Morjin in any way I can.'
'Yes, by slaughtering his servants. How is it that you found them here? Were you following them – or us?'
Kane hesitated while he drew in a breath and looked at me deeply. Then he said, 'I've been looking for you- Valashu Elahad, for a year. When I heard that Morjin's assassin had found you first, I set out for Mesh as soon at I could.'
'But why should you have been looking for me at at al? l And how did you hear about the assassins?'
'My people in Mesh sent me the news by carrier pigeon,' he said.
'Your people? I asked, now quite alarmed.
'So, there are brave men and women in everv land who have joined to fight the Crucifier.'
'Are they of the Black Brotherhood, then.'
As he had with Maram, he ignored this question. And then he went on to say, 'When I heard that you had fought a duel with Prince Salmelu and were being pursued by the Ishkans along the North Road. I hurried through Anjo to Duke Rezu's castle to intercept yon.'
'But how could you know that we'd come there? We certainly didn't know this until we escaped from the Black Bog.'
Now Kane's eyes began glowing as of coals heated in a furnace, He smiled savagely at me and said, 'So, I guessed. Duke Barwan eats from the Ishkans' hands like a dog and so how much sense would it have made for you to cross the Aru-Adar Bridge into his domain? But where else could you cross into Anjo? Where could you hope to lose the Ishkans if not in the Bog? It was a good guess, eh?'
I nodded my head as Maram and Master Juwain looked at me in silent remembrance of the terrors of this nighttime passage. And then Kane continued, 'I knew that if you were who I thought you to be, you'd find your way out of the Bog – even as you found your way into the Lokii's vild.'
'But what is the Black Bog?' Maram asked, shuddering. 'It's like no place on earth I ever wanted to see.'
'That it's not,' Kane said. 'So, the Bog isn't wholly of the earth.'
He went on to tell us that there were certain power places in the earth – usually in the mountains – where the telluric currents gathered like great knots of fire. If they were disturbed, as the ancient Ishkans had done in leveling a whole mountain with firestones to create the Bog, then strange things could happen.
'Other worlds around other suns stream with their own telluric currents,' Kane said.
'The currents everywhere in the universe are inter-connected. And so are the lands of the various worlds; in places such as the Bog, it's possible to pass from one world to another.'
'Do you mean to say that we were walking on other worlds like earth?' Maram asked.
'No, not like the earth, I hope,' Kane said. 'The Bog is known to connect Ea only with the Dark Worlds.'
I looked up at the sun pouring its light on the green leaves and the many-colored flowers of our woods; I didn't want to imagine what a Dark World might be. And neither, it seemed, did Maram or Atara. They looked utterly mystified by what Kane had said. But Master Juwain slowly nodded his head as he squeezed his black book in his little hands.
'The Dark Worlds are told of in the Tragedies,' he explained. 'They are worlds that have turned away from the Law of the One. ''There the sun doesn't shine nor do men smile or birds sing.' Shaitar was one such world. Damoom is another. Angra Mairryu is imprisoned there.'
Of course, even I had heard of Angra Mainyu, the Baaloch, the Dark Angel – the Lord of Darkness, himself. It was said that he had been the greatest of the Galadin before falling and making war against the One. But Valoreth and Ashtoreth, along with a great angelic host, had finally defeated him and bound him to the world of Damoom. That this world had somehow been darkened by his presence, however, I hadn't known.
'You should read the Saganom Elu more closely,' Master Juwain chided Maram and me. 'Then you might learn the true nature of darkness.'
I fought back a shudder as I smiled grimly; I didn't need a book to help me recall the hopelessness I had felt in the Black Bog.
To Kane, I said, 'If we passed from Ea to other worlds through the Bog, is it then possible for other peoples to pass from them to earth?'
'Not in any way that anyone could use,' Kane said, following my thoughts. 'There are no maps from the Bog to other such places. Openings to other worlds appear by chance and then vanish without warning like smoke. Anyone caught there quickly becomes maddened, exhausted, lost. The mind can't see its way out and wanders within itself even as you wandered with your bodies. But sometimes things escape from one world and find their way to another. Like the Grays: it's possible they originally came from one of the Dark Worlds. Perhaps even Damoom itself.'
My breakfast having put new strength in my limbs, I suddenly found myself standing up and stretching beneath the tree. It was good to feel the earth beneath my feet; it was good to be alive on a world such as Ea where the sun rose every day and the birds sang their sweet songs.
'The Grays,' I said to Kane, 'picked up our scent before we'd left Anjo.'
'Yes, I know,' Kane said. 'When Morjin's assassins failed to kill you, he must have decided to send his most powerful retainers against you.'
'You followed us from the Duke's castle, didn't you? Did you find the Grays following us, too?'
Kane slowly nodded his head, then stood up beside me, 'You were in great danger, though you couldn't have known the source. But I knew. So, I knew that they'd open you with their minds and then with their knives if I didn't follow them and kill them first.'
'If you truly wanted to help us,' I said, looking out into the meadow, 'you waited a long time.'
'That I did. There was no other way. It's impossible to steal upon the Grays and attack them unless their minds are completely occupied in immobilizing their victims,'
