His words stunned Maram more than they soothed him. But for the moment, at least, they drove back the demons that impelled him to find solace in his brandy bottle. He stood proud and tall staring at Kane, transformed from a drunkard into a Valari knight. And he said, ‘Do you really think we can win?’
‘So, we must win – and so we will.’
Kane, I thought, understood the nature of evil better than any man. But it was the nature of evil, the truly horrible thing about it, that understanding alone would not keep evil from devouring a man alive.
‘We will win,’ Master Juwain affirmed, looking at Maram, ‘so long as we do not let down our guard. Have you been practicing the Light Meditations?’
‘Ah, perhaps not as often as I should,’ Maram said.
‘Well, what about the Way Rhymes, then? Memorizing them would be a better balm than brandy.’
‘Ah, I’m too tired, and it’s too late. My brain aches almost as much as my poor body.’
‘Then I’ll prepare you a tisane that will wake you up.’
‘Ah, what if I don’t want to wake up?’
Master Juwain rubbed the back of his shiny head as he regarded Maram. He seemed at a loss for words.
It was Liljana who came to his rescue. She waggled her finger at Maram, then poked it below his ribs as she said, ‘How many nights have I stayed up cooking and cleaning so that you might go to bed with a full belly? Master Juwain has asked you to memorize his verses, and so you should, for our sakes, if not your own.’
Everyone looked at Maram then, and he held up his hands in defeat – or in victory, depending on one’s point of view.
‘All right, all right,’ he said, ‘I’ll learn these silly rhymes, if that’s what you all want. It will be easier than everyone nagging me all the time.’
Master Juwain’s smile lasted only as long as it took Maram to add, ‘I’ll begin tomorrow, then.’
Kane suddenly took a step closer to him and stood staring at him like a great cat tensing to spring. I knew that he was only testing Maram, and would never lay hands upon him. Maram, however, was not so sure of this.
‘All right, all right,’ he said again with a heavy sigh. He turned to Master Juwain. ‘What verses for tonight, then?’
At Master Juwain’s prompting, I heard Maram recite:
At gorge’s end, a wooded vale …
And so it went as we returned to our places around the fire and drank the spicy teas that Master Juwain made for us. It was much to his purpose that we should learn the Way Rhymes, too, and so we took turns intoning the verses and correcting each other when we made mistakes. We did not continue our practice quite as long as Master Juwain might have wished, for we all were quite tired. But when it came time to retire for the night, we took the words into sleep, and perhaps into our dreams. And that was a good thing, I thought, for the essence of the Way Rhymes was the promise that if a man took one step after another, in the right direction, he would always reach his journey’s end.
The next day dawned clear, as we could tell from the band of blue that slowly brightened above us. We continued our long walk through the gorge, over loose stone and through stands of cottonwood trees that gradually showed a sprinkling of elms and oaks the deeper we penetrated into the White Mountains. Twenty miles, at least, we had travelled since our battle with Morjin and his Red Knights. None of us knew the length of the Kul Kavaakurk, for Master Juwain’s rhymes did not tell of that. But here, deep in this cleft in the earth, where the wind whooshed as through a bellows’ funnel and tore at our hair and garments, the gorge seemed to go on and on forever.
And then, abruptly, as we rounded yet another bend in the stream, the gorge opened out into a broad valley. A forest covered its slopes, gentle and undulating to the north but still quite steep to the south of the river. For the first time in two days, we had all the sun we could hope for; its warm rays poured down upon rock, earth and leaf, and filled all the great bowl before us. Smaller mountains, cloaked in oak and birch with aspens and hemlock higher up, edged the rim of this bowl; beyond rose the great white peaks of the Nagarshath. The valley continued along the line of the gorge, toward the west, and it seemed that our course should be to follow the river straight through it. But there were other exits from the valley that we might choose: clefts and saddles between the slopes around us, through which smaller streams flowed down into the river. Any one of these, I thought, might lead us up toward the Brotherhood’s school, though the way would obviously be difficult and dangerous.
‘Well,’ Master Juwain said to Maram as we walked out into the valley, ‘what is our way?’
And Maram recited:
At gorge’s end, a wooded vale;
Its southern slopes show shell-strewn shale.
Toward setting sun the vale divides;
To left or right the seeker strides.
Recall the tale or go astray:
King Koru-Ki set sail this way.
Maram stood next to his horse licking his lips as he glanced to the left. He said, ‘Ah, who devised these rhymes, anyway? “Its southern slopes sow hell-strewn shale.” Now there’s a tongue-twister for you! I can hardly say it!’
‘But it’s not so hard!’ Daj said, laughing at him. Then quick as a twittering bird, he piped out perfectly:
Its southern slopes show shell-strewn shale.
Master Juwain beamed a smile at him and patted his head. And then he said to Maram, ‘The Rhymes aren’t supposed to be easy to say but to memorize – hence the rhythm and rhyme. The alliteration, too.’
‘Well, at least I did memorize it,’ Maram said. ‘Little good that it would do me if you weren’t here to interpret for us.’
The Way Rhymes, of course, might be meant to be easy to memorize, but they were designed so that only the Brotherhood’s adepts and masters might resolve them correctly. Thus did the Brotherhood guard its secrets.
‘Come, come,’ Master Juwain said to him. ‘These lines are as transparent as the air in front of your nose.’
Maram pointed at the turbulent water rushing past us and muttered, ‘You mean, as clear as river mud.’
‘What don’t you understand? Clearly, we’ve passed the Ass’s Ears and the Kul Kavaakurk, and have come out into this valley, as the verse tells. Look over there, at the rock! Surely that is shale, is it not?’
We all looked where he pointed, across the river at the nearly vertical slopes to the south of us. The rock there was dark, striated and crumbly, and certainly appeared to be shale.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Maram said to him. ‘You know your stones. But does it bear shells? Who would want to cross the river to find out?’
Kane coughed out a deep curse then, and mounted his horse. He drove the big bay out into the river, which looked to be swift enough to sweep a man away but not so huge a beast. In a few mighty surges, his horse crossed to the other bank and soaked the stone there with water running off his flanks. Kane then rode up through the trees