Finally, the Istarian vanished entirely. At one moment he was the wraith, the shadow, and then … he was nothing, not even sand. The desolate, scrubby landscape stretched into darkness all around the pursuing elf. Stormlight found himself
in an unknown, bleak terrain, where forked black tree trunks sprouted starkly out of the crusty earth.
'I have followed him too far,' he told himself, wrestling with a rising alarm. 'I can see the foothills to the north, the mouth of the Central Pass. We're out on the plains somewhere, too close to Istar and its armies …'
Then the horse brushed by one of the dark trees, which crumbled into powder, streaking the animal's flank with a long, black stain.
Not trees. Crystals.
A light wind chimed through the glittering forest.
'The salt flats,' Stormlight whispered. 'The Tears of Mishakal.'
At once he turned his horse about, intent on riding out of the perilous region, out to the safety of the desert, out to the plains. Even the prospect of Istar-ian armies no longer daunted him, faced as he was with night and magic and the dangerous illusions of this crystalline maze.
Slowly the horse weaved between the crystals, and Stormlight scanned the opaque horizon for signs of torchlight, of campfires, of a moon or a for shy;tunate star. He refused to think on the old legends of his people, on how the salt flats would open to swal shy;low the traveler, how they drew you toward their heart and toward your destruction by the serenade of the wind over the crystals-a cruel, cold wind that tumbled suddenly into song and language, against which, the legends said, the listener was powerless.
Amid the mist and the high chiming, amid the shifting dark shapes and the crunch of his horse's hooves through the crusted layers of sand and salt, Stormlight rode in widening circles, looking for light, for clear ground. He breathed a string of memorized prayers-to Shinare and to his patron Branchala, to Gilean the Book for knowledge, and of course to Mishakal herself, the goddess of heal shy;ing whose tears, it was said, had created these flats.
All of his efforts-both strategy and prayer- seemed for naught. As the night wore on, Stormlight found himself moving into a deeper and deeper darkness. Now, though the stars and planets scat shy;tered the flats with a mysterious half-light, the elf could see no more than ten feet ahead of his horse. The pocked and hoof-churned ground told him he had passed this way before.
Instead of widening circles, his path had spiraled inward, turning toward the center of the salt flats, where the darkness was most dense, the country most confusing.
'Stop,' he whispered, and reined in the horse. With a rising sense of unease, he scanned the maze around him for some clue, some glimmering-some definable light to guide him anywhere.
In seven hundred years of roaming the desert, it was as close as he had ever come to being lost.
When he reached what appeared to be the center of the salt flats he dismounted slowly, testing the ground beneath his feet and carefully leading his horse toward the centermost crystals.
It would be a long time-four, maybe five hours- until dawn. If the Tears of Mishakal were the leg shy;endary death trap, why, he was already dead. And yet, if they were only confusing and impassable ter shy;rain …
If nothing else, the sunrise would show him reli shy;able east. Stormlight sat at the foot of the crystal, leaning back against the dark surface, which crumbled slightly against his weight. He sat, and waited, and watched for light.
After a while-Stormlight was unsure whether it was an hour, three hours, five hours-the darkness began to lift, and the wind chiming through the crystals calmed in the anticipation of approaching dawn. Now he could make out his face reflected on the facets of crystal.
It was distorted. In the nearest crystal, one eye was magnified, outsized, while in another not three feet away, his face was grotesquely narrowed, as though he had passed through a crack in a wall.
Yet another facet showed him as squat, shorter than he ever remembered. Always sensitive about his height, Stormlight turned quickly away.
And saw yet another, and another, each one bending, twisting, or otherwise translating his form into something bizarre and grotesque, some even reflecting those other reflections in an infinity of confusion.
Like the visions and prophecies that milled through the rebel camp, he thought. Each was a way of looking at the world, of holding the light so that it reflected the beholder as much as what he beheld.
'It is all too confusing,' Stormlight murmured.
He closed his eyes and prayed again to Mishakal, for insight and healing wisdom. After all, this land was named for her, and hers as well was the power of healing, to restore the fractured and distorted body to its natural health.
No voice of the goddess did he hear, whistling through the crystal fields with revelation. And yet-
The solution came to him softly and slowly-it was so simple that his laughter rang through the Tears in recognition.
He would need eyes, of course, to guide him out of the salt flats. And his own eyes were subject to the mirror maze of the crystals, the distraction and dis shy;tortion and misdirection.
Still chuckling to himself, Stormlight mounted and, leaning back in the saddle, laid the reins gently over the animal's withers. He closed his eyes, brought down the lucerna, and surrendered to the horse. The animal serenely wandered through the crystals, bent toward the edge of the salt flats, toward open country, and toward his breakfast.
Stormlight let himself be carried homeward, his thoughts on cool water-if water indeed had been found-and the morning's quith-pa and bread. A sudden lurch from the horse snapped him back to alertness. Instantly wary, Stormlight opened his eyes and sat upright.
Dark shapes lay ahead of him, gray lines and imprints on the surface of the black salt. Stormlight took up the reins and guided the horse toward them.
One of the crystals-once a very large one, he guessed-lay in powder and rubble, a forlorn heap in the middle of a wasteland. Half out of idleness, half out of curiosity, Stormlight dismounted to examine it more closely.
The facets of the crystals caught the first pink light, and for a moment they shone softly, warmly, like freshly mined gems. Was it this that had prompted his people to go underground years ago? Had they mistaken something like this black glim shy;mering for the stone more rare, for the glain opals their priests and Namers had told them lay deep beneath the Khalkist and Vingaard Mountains?
It was a story older than his own memories-how, adopted, he had come to reside with the Que-Nara.
Stormlight had little recollection of his people. He recalled a face half-revealed by firelight, the smell of buckskin and pine, the touch of a soft hand …
Memories from childhood, or from a hundred years of wandering. He could not distinguish which.
But he remembered well the ambush at the desert's edge. The red armor and white banners of Istar, the knives of the slavers and the white-hot pain in his side.
He shrugged, pushing away the memory. Alone then, he was even more alone now in the Tears of Mishakal. That was the past, and to dwell on it was foolish, especially here in the deceptive salt flats, where a despairing thought could be your last.
Idly, the elf shifted his foot through the odd rubble.
Then the new light shone on a track-a single deep footprint in the black salt.
Stormlight crouched in the rubble, peering more closely.
A woman's print. Two days old, maybe three. Narrow and graceful, and incredibly deep.
As though she had sunk to her knees in the packed sand.
Yet the print was strangely delicate. The soft whorls of the heel marked the fine-grained, com shy;pressed salt, and the foot was clearly defined and free of callus and scar.
She did not walk much. At least not barefoot. Even a child among trackers would know that.
With a rough, leathery finger, Stormlight traced the graceful instep of the print.
He should know something more. The footprint taunted him with a mystery, with a secret in its spi shy;rals and simple, deep lines …
Lines. Like the foot of an infant.
Stormlight rested on his heels. Slowly, with a judi shy;cious sweep of his hand, he blew the drifted black salt from another print, and another. Then risingto his feet, he mounted the horse and followed the trail of the woman out of the Tears-a trail that seemed to rise out of nothingness, out of the blank center of the flats.
