seemed a selfish and even ignoble thing. In truth, I questioned the very wish itself, for I was beginning to see that my gift might help my friends even as it tormented me.
Hadn't I, after Atara had eaten the timana and lay stricken in the Lokilani's wood, somehow called her back from death? And hadn't I called to King Kiritan's compassion and softened his heart toward her? What other possibilities might be lost if the valarda were simply expunged from me like a raging fever that gives visions of the angels along with convulsions?
Surely the Cup of Heaven held secrets unknown to any man. And surety the unbidden empathy that connected me to others held for me mysteries I might never understand.
For many years, I had thought of my gift as a door that might be opened or closed according to my will. Some terrible things, such as my killing Raldu in the woods, paralyzed my will and left me open to the greatest of pain. But only three nights before, I had slain Baron Narcavage's men and suffered something less than the icy touch of their deaths. Was I somehow learning to keep closed the door to my heart even as I struck cold steel into others'? Or was I only hardening, as tender; flesh grows layers of callus to bear up beneath the world's outrages and thorns?
I didn't know. But my dream led me to hope that someday, in some mysterious way, the valarda might help me withstand the most violent of passions and emotional storms. I did know that whatever the cost, I must somehow keep myself open to my companions, for I had something vital to give them.
And I couldn't not give. They were as my brothers and sisters, and each of them was close to my heart in a different way. Each had weaknesses and even greater strengths that I was beginning to see ever more clearly. This was my gift, to see in others what they couldn't see in themselves. And in Kane and Atara, no less Maram and Master Juwain, was buried a finer steel than they ever knew.
Maram, my fat friend, lived in fear of the world and all that might come growling out of its dark shadows to harm him. But he also lived, passionately and with great joy, as few men dared to do, and I believed that someday his love of life would overcome his fright. Master Juwain might dwell too much in his books and his brain, but I knew that someday, and soon, he would find the door to his own heart and emerge from it as a healer without equal. Atara might be overzealous in striving to make the world and everything around her perfect. But in her, more than anyone I knew, blazed a deep love that was already perfect in itself and needed no refinement to touch others with its beauty. As for Kane, his hate pooled black and bitter as bile.
But his rage at life was all the more terrible for concealing something sweet and warm and splendid as a golden apple shining in the sunlight. I prayed that someday he would remember himself and behold the noble being he was born to be.
Liljana and Alphanderry were harder for me to read, for I had known them only a few days. Already, however, on this very morning, Liljana's caring for others was obvious in the way she surprised us with a breakfast of bacon, eggs and some delicious crescent bread that she managed to coax out of a stone oven that she had painstakingly built while we had slept. She insisted on keeping our plates full while she waited to eat – and took nothing but joy at seeing our bodies and souls thus nourished. And Alphanderry, when we had finished our meal, picked up his mandolet and sang us a song with all his heart. He was incapable, I thought, of singing any other way. His music made our spirits soar and our feet eager to set out on the road before us.
I believed in my friends as I did the earth and the trees, the wind, the sky, the very sun. In their presence I felt more fully human, more alive. Often it seemed that I longed for their company as I did food and drink Their smiles and kind words sustained me; the beating of their hearts reminded me of the power and purpose of my own. I loved the sound of Maram's deep voice the smell of Atara's thick hair, even the wild gleam bound up in the darkness of Kanes black eyes. Their gift to me was greater than anything I could ever give to them, for it fed the fire of my valarda; it made me want to touch all things no matter the passion or pain, to burn away and be reborn like a great silver swan from the flames. In them I heard the whisper of my deepest self no less the calling of the stars.
We resumed our journey that morning with great good cheer. We rode without time pressing at us – and neither were we harried by wounds or men pursuing us with swords or knives. I was almost certain of this. The country through which we passed, with its little farms and fishing villages, was as peaceful as any I had ever seen. There was no smell of danger in the air, only the scent of the sea that blew over us in soft breezes and cooled the sun-drenched land.
We stopped to take our midday meal in a village called Railan. From a stand near the boats by the beach, we bought some fried fish and little slices of potatoes all crisp and golden and redolent with strangely spiced oils, I stood a long time staring out at the shining ocean and marveling at its size. And then Kane growled out that it was growing late and we should be on our way.
We left the coast road at Railan, from where it continued along the headland to the ancient town of Ondrar, built at the point of a peninsula sticking out into the ocean.
Ondrar was famed for its museum housing many artifacts from the Age of Law; in setting out on the road toward this town, which lay northwest of Tria, we had hoped that anyone following us would suppose we would begin our quest there. But Kane was expert at maneuver and believed in always misdirecting the enemy. The Tur- Solonu, to the southwest, remained our objective. So, as we had decided the previous night we turned toward it on a little dirt road leading out of Railan. It was scarred with potholes and wagon tracks, but so long as the weather held good, it would suit our purpose well.
'We're free,' Maram said to me that evening as we made camp on a farmer's field by a stream. 'Finally free. I'm sure no followed us from Tria. Ah, no one is following us, are they, Val?'
'No, they're not,' I said to reassure him. I looked at the farmland spread across the green hills around us and the occasional stands of trees along the streams. Then I smiled and said, 'It's likely that there aren't even any bears.'
The following morning we continued on into the fine spring sunshine. Away from the coast the air grew warmer, but never so hot that we suffered, not even Kane and I in our steel armor. All that day and the next our horses walked down the dry road. Fifty miles, at least, we covered with our steady plodding, and every mile was full of birds singing or bees buzzing in the flowers in the woods by the road. Along our way, the farms grew ever smaller and were separated by ever greater stands of trees.
Some time on the fourth day of our journey, we passed from Old Alonia into the barony of Iviunn. A woodcutter that we met along the road told us that we had crossed into Baron Muar's domains. He also told us that we would find few farms or towns thereabout. We had entered a forest he said, that so far as he knew went on to the west for a good seventy miles.
'So,' Kane told us later, 'the forest goes on a hundred and seventy miles, all the way to the Tur-Solonu – and beyond, across the mountains into the Vardaloon. That's the greatest forest in all of Ea.'
The thought of such an unbroken expanse of trees awed me almost as much as had the sight of the ocean. I looked about us at the verdant swath of oaks and elms crowding the road – now reduced to a dirt track – and I said, 'So few people here.'
'Yes – that's what we wanted, isn't it?'
A long time ago, he said, this part of Alonia from Iviunn up into the domains of Narain and Jerolin, had been full of people. But the War of the Stones had laid waste the countryside, and the forest had reclaimed land once its own. There were still many people in Iviunn, but fifty miles to the south, along the Istas River.
'Ah, perhaps we should have traveled that way,' Maram said as he stared off into the darkening woods. 'There is a road that goes from Tria to Durgin, isn't there? A good road, it's said.'
'You're thinking of your bears again, aren't you?' Kane asked him.
'Well, what if I am?'
'So,' Kane said to him, 'you've seen bears and you've seen Morjin's men: Kallimun priests as well as the Grays. Which do you prefer?'
'Neither,' Maram said, shuddering. 'But we don't know that we'd find the Kallimun along the Durgin Road, do we?'
'We won't find them here,' Kane snapped at him. Then, as if remem-bering that Maram was now his sworn companion, his voice softened and he said, 'At least it's much less likely.' We made camp under the cover of the trees that night In this thick forest among the oaks and elms, there were many that I had seen only rarely: black ash and locust magnolia and holly. We laid out ow sleeping furs near some thickets full of baneberry, with their tiny white flowers that looked like clumps of snow. The coming into our company of Kane, Alphanderry and Liljana had
