And so I rode on and on, watching the glints of gold about Bajorak ahead of me and turning to gaze at the red smear of Morjin’s knights and the Zayak warriors on their ponies pounding after us across the sunlit plain. We did not escape them all that long day. We were only three miles from the mountains when at last we stopped to make camp by a stream that flowed down from these heights. And, as with the night before, our enemy set up their tents only a mile away.
We were all tired and sore from the cruel day’s work, and so none of us had much enthusiasm for tending the horses, gathering wood and water, making the fire, and other such things. As usual when the sun went down, Liljana took charge. She insisted on preparing us a hot meal, and it was good to sit down with our bowls of bloody sagosk meat, whose juices we mopped up with fresh rushk cakes. These Liljana made herself, for she had excused both Daj and Estrella from their chores. The children were so weary and worn that they could hardly hold their bowls to eat their dinners. The sun had burnt their faces, and dust dirtied their hair. Although Daj would not allow himself to whine as other children did, much less to weep, I knew that the hard riding had chafed him, nearly flaying the flesh from his legs. Estrella was in even worse condition. She sat very still, fighting to keep her eyes open. Even the slightest motion caused her to wince in pain.
‘Ah, that was a day!’ Maram sighed out as he worked at a piece of hastily roasted meat. ‘The hardest ride we’ve had since Count Ulanu chased us to Khaisham.’
I remembered that day too well. It had ended with an arrow shot through Atara’s lung and the death of our friend, Alphanderry. I suddenly could not bear the iron tang of my meat, and I put down my knife and bowl.
‘Ah, oh – oh, my poor, poor aching body!’ Maram groaned. He moved stiffly to bring out his brandy bottle, and he caught Master Juwain’s eye. ‘Surely, sir, this is a night for prescribing a little restorative drink?’
‘Surely it is not,’ Master Juwain told him, taking the bottle and putting it away. ‘At least, not that kind of drink. I shall make us all a tea that will soothe rather than numb us.’
So saying, he found some herbs in his medicine chest and brewed up a pot of tea. The hot drink, sweetened with honey, stole some of the hurt from our limbs. Upon sipping it, Daj and Estrella almost immediately lay down upon their furs. Liljana sat between them, stroking their hair and singing them to sleep. After a while her dulcet voice murmured out above the crackle of the fire as she said to me: ‘We cannot travel tomorrow as we did today. They’re children, Val.’
Because her words disturbed me, I stood up to walk by the stream. I paused beneath a huge old cottonwood tree as I looked out at our enemy’s campfires. Across the stream Karimah had posted sentinels who would sit on their horses all night guarding us from attack. Kane found me there, staring at their dark, ghostly forms as I listened to the water gurgling over rounded rocks.
‘You shouldn’t be alone here,’ he told me as he stood with his hand on the hilt of his sword. His eyes searched the grass for stalking lions, no less Zayak warriors.
‘I shouldn’t have brought Daj and Estrella with us,’ I told him. ‘All on such a narrow chance.’
‘You know the need,’ he growled out. ‘You did the right thing.’
‘Did I? Or have I only stolen from them the few days of peace they might have had before … before there is no peace, for anyone?’
‘You take too much upon yourself.’
‘No, too little,’ I said. ‘Daj is as tough as a diamond, but Estrella suffers. Inside, even more than out. I … cannot tell you. She sees too deeply inside of things. There are places she’s terrified to go. And it’s as if I am taking her into the worst of these places, back into a black tunnel that has no end.’
‘Is it her suffering that grieves you or your own?’
‘But there is no difference!’ I said. ‘Especially with her, it is one.’
‘She is a radiant child,’ he told me. ‘I have seen many moments when her joy, too, became your own.’
‘Even then,’ I said, listening to the stream, ‘it is like drinking too much wine too quickly.’
Kane stared up at the stars, and his voice grew strange and deep as he told me, ‘The valarda is the gift of the One. You have yet to learn how to use it.’
‘It is a curse!’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It is an affliction, like a pox upon the skin, like a rupture of the heart.’
At this, he grabbed my arm and shook me as a lion might a lamb. And he growled out, ‘You might as well complain that life is a curse. And that light is an affliction because it carries into your eyes all the ugliness and evil of the world!’
‘Yes,’ I said, feeling the fire inside me. ‘It must have been like that for Artukan when the kirax made him gouge out his own eyes.’
Now Kane squeezed my arm so hard I thought my bones might break. ‘Tell that to Atara, why don’t you? Let her hear you damn your eyes, and hers, and see what she will say!’
I pulled away from him, and looked past the cottonwood’s dark, fluttering leaves at the sky. I found the Seven Sisters and the Dragon and other twinkling constellations. The stars there were so bright, so beautiful. Which ones, I wondered, burned with the light of my father and my mother and all the rest of my slaughtered family?
‘You saw!’ I said to Kane. ‘In Tria, you stood and saw with your own eyes as I struck down Ravik with my “gift”!’
‘So – so I did. The valarda is a double-edged sword, eh?’
It was bad enough that others’ dreads and exaltations should flood into me. But why, I wondered, should my passions strike into them when I lost my head – especially my killing passions?
‘I murdered a man!’ I shouted at him.
‘No, you killed a Kallimun priest who would have killed Atara.’
‘You don’t understand!’
‘Don’t I? So, I’ve seen you kill rabbits and rock goats for food, and how many of our enemy have you sent on with that sword you wear? Killing is only killing, eh? It doesn’t matter how we kill, only who.’
The stream purled in darkness, and the wind rustled the steppe’s grasses, and the whispering inside me told me that Kane was wrong.
‘It must matter,’ I said. ‘Just as everything we do matters.’
‘These are hard times, Val. So, we must do hard things.’
‘Hard things, yes.’
‘Would it be so hard for you to tell Bajorak that we seek a great treasure in the mountains beyond the Oro River? And that in finding it, we would fight Morjin’s gold with our own? Is that not close to the truth?’
I smiled at this as I listened to my heart drumming inside me. I said, ‘I have learned … that the smallest of lies can grow, like a rat’s bite beginning a plague of death.’
‘We need Bajorak on our side, you know.’
‘I will not lie to him.’
‘But you cannot tell him the truth about our purpose! What if he is captured, eh? What if he sells our secrets for gold?’
‘I trust him no more than you do.’
‘Do you trust him to fight, if it comes to that? So, it would not take much, at need, for you to push him into battle.’
I ground my teeth at the fury I felt for Morjin seething inside me. How hard would it be to touch Bajorak – or anyone – with a little of this flame?
‘No, I will not,’ I said to Kane.
‘No?