Can you wait until then?'
'Oh, if I really must,' she said.
I looked up at the sun and said, 'If we're to be at the gathering at all, we'd better saddle the horses and ride on. We've only two full days until King Kiritan calls the quest.'
And with that, we smiled at each other and turned to break camp.
Chapter 17
A little later, when we were ready to set out, Kane sat atop his big brown horse and told us, 'We still must be careful. One of the Grays escaped us, and he may have gone to find reinforcements.'
This news dismayed all of us, Maram especially. 'Escaped?' he said to Kane. 'Are you sure?'
Kane nodded his head as he looked into the meadow. 'The Grays always hunt in companies of thirteen. I counted only twelve bodies. One of them must have run off into the woods in the heat of the battle.'
'Ah, this is very bad,' Maram said.
'No, it's not that bad,' Kane told him. 'The Gray won't be able to find any more of his kind – and almost certainly, no assassins of the Kallimun, either. At least not between here and Tria. But for the next few days, we should still keep our eyes open.'
And so we did. We quickly found our way through the woods back to the great road. I took the lead, keeping open much more than my eyes as I felt through the forested countryside for anyone who might be lying in wait for us. Atara, her bow at the ready, rode beside me, followed by Maram and Master Juwain. Kane insisted on taking the rear post. He was wise to the ways of ambuscade, he said, and he wouldn't let anyone steal upon us and attack us from behind.
After an hour of easy travel along the straight road, the forest gave out onto broad swaths of farmland, and we all relaxed a little. The ground here was flat, allowing a view across the fields for miles in any direction. It was a rich land of oats, barley and wheat – and cattle fattening in fallow fields next to little, wooden houses. I was surprised to find that we had fought our battle with the Grays so close to such intensely cultivated land. Later, when we had stopped for lunch and f remarked that I had never seen so many people packed so closely together outside of a city, Kane just laughed at me. He told me that the domains along the Nar Road were barren compared to the true centers of Alonian civilization, which lay along the Istas and Poru rivers.
'And as for true cities, you've never seen one,' he said. 'No one has until he's seen Tria.'
Since he had seen so much of the world and seemed to know so much about it, I asked him if he had learned the identity of the assassin who had shot at me that day in the woods outside my father's castle.
'No – it might've been anyone,' he told us. 'But most likely, a Kallimun priest or someone serving them. Master Juwain is right that they're the only ones to use the kirax.'
At the mention of this poison that would always drag its clawed fingers along my veins, I shuddered. 'It's strange, but it seemed that the Grays could smell the kirax in my blood. It seemed that the Red Dragon could – and still can.'
'So,' Kane said, 'the kirax is also known as the Great Opener – it opens one to death.
But those it doesn't kill, it opens to worse things.'
I remembered my dream of Morjin, and ground my teeth together. I said, 'Could it be that the Red Dragon used it to torment me? To try to make me into a ghul?'
Kane favored me with one of his savage smiles. 'The kirax is designed to kill, quickly and horribly. The amount needed is tiny, eh? The amount you took inside is tinier still – it would be impossible to use it this way to make men into ghuls.'
I smiled in relief, which lasted no more than a moment as Kane told me, 'However, for you, who bears the gift of the valarda, it would seem that the kirax is especially dangerous. If Morjin tries to make a ghul of you, you'll have to fight very hard to stop him.'
'It's not easy to understand,' I said, 'why he doesn't just make ghuls of everyone and be done with it.'
'Ha!' Kane laughed out harshly. 'It's hard enough for him to make a ghul of anyone.
And harder still to control him. It requires almost all his will, all his concentration.
And that, we can thank the One, is why ghuls are very rare.'
As we resumed our journey, I tried not to think about Morjin or terrible poisons that might turn men into ghuls. It was a beautiful day of blue skies and sunshine, and it seemed almost a crime to dwell on dark things. As Master Juwain had warned me, the surest way to bring about that which we fear is to live in terror of it. And so I tried to open myself to other things: to the robins singing out their songs, cheery-up, cheery-me; to the farmers working hard in their fields; to the light that I poured down from the sky and touched the whole earth with its golden radiance.
That night, in a town called Manarind, we found lodging at an inn, where we had a hot bath, a good meal and a sound sleep. We awoke the next morning feeling greatly refreshed and ready to push on toward Tria. The innkeeper, who looked something like a shorter Maram, patted his round belly and said to us, 'Learing already, then?
Well, I shouldn't he surprised -it's good fifty miles to the city. You'll have to press hard to teach it by tomorrow.'
He went on to say that other companies of knights had stopped at his inn, but not for many days.
'You're the last,' he told us. 'I'm afraid you'll find all the respectable inns in Tria already full. No one wants to miss the King's celebration or the calling of the quest, I'd go myself, if I didn't have other duties.'
In the clear light of the morning, he looked at us more closely as he stroked his curly heard.
'Now where did you say you were from?' he asked us. He looked especially long at Atara. 'Two Valari knights and their friends. Well, for my friends, I can recommend an inn on the River Road not far from the Star Bridge. My brother-in-law owns it – he always keeps a room open for those I send on to him. For a small consideration, for my friends, of course, I could -'
'No, thank you,' Kane growled out. His eyes flashed, and for a moment, I thought he was ready to send this fat innkeeper on.. 'We won't be staying in the city.'
This was news to all of us. Kane's insistence on secrecy disturbed me. It seemed that, at need, he could slide from truth into falsehood as easily as a fish changing currents in a stream.
'Well, then,' the innkeeper said, presenting Kane with the bill for our stay. 'I'll hope to see you on your return journey.'
Kane studied the bill for a moment as his face pulled into a scowl. Then he fixed his fierce eyes on the innkeeper and said, 'The oats you gave our horses we'll pay for, though not at the rate that you'd charge for serving men porridge. But the water they drank we won't pay for at-all. This isn't the Red Desert – it rains every third day here, eh? Now fetch our horses, if you please.'
The innkeeper appeared inclined to argue with Kane. He started to say something about the great labor involved in drawing water from his well and hauling it to his stables. But the look on Kane's face silenced him, and he went off to do as Kane had told him.
The innkeeper's cupidity was my first experience of the Alonians' hunger for money but far from the last. (1 didn't count the hill-men who had tried to rob Atara as Alonians.) As we rode out from the inn that morning, we passed the estates of great knights. In the fields surrounding their palatial houses, ragged-looking men and women worked with hoes beneath the hot sun. Kane called them peasants. They slept in hovels away from their masters' houses; Kane said that the knights permitted them to till their fields and let them keep a portion of the crops they cultivated. Such injustice infuriated me. Even the poorest Valari, I thought, lived on his own land in a stout, if small, stone house – and possessed as well a sword, suit of armor and the right to fight for his king when called to war.
'It's this way almost everywhere,' Kane told us. 'Ha, the lands ruled by Morjin are much worse. There he makes his people into slaves.'
'On the Wendrush,' Atara said, 'there are neither peasants nor slaves. Everyone is truly free.'
'That may be. Still, it's said that the Alonians are better off than most peoples and that Kiritan Narmada is a better king.'
