The Lightstone: The Ninth Kingdom Page 17

  We left King Hadaru’s palace as we had entered it. Outside, at the bottom of the stairs beneath the front door, we found the grooms waiting for us with our horses. Lord Nadhru and Lord Issur – and an entire squadron of Ishkan knights mounted on their stamping horses – were waiting for us there, too.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram called out when he saw them. ‘It seems we have an escort.’

  Master Juwain smiled grimly as he looked from the knights to me. Then he asked, ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. With a sharp gasp, I used my good arm to pull myself onto Altaru’s back. The great beast’s glossy coat was like black jade in the moonlight; he angrily shook his head at the Ishkan knights and their horses. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  We made our way slowly down the tree-lined road leading away from King Hadaru’s palace. The sound of the horses’ iron-shod hooves striking the paving stones seemed very loud against the stillness of the quiet grounds. It was now full night and falling cold. In the sky there were many stars. They rained their silver light upon the tinkling fountains and the rows of flowers that perfumed the air. Even though I vowed not to do so, I turned in my saddle to see this bright starlight glinting off the points of the Ishkans’ lances and armor. Like me, they wore steel mail and not their diamond battle armor. They followed us at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards; as we turned onto the road leading to the bridge that crossed the Tushur, I was afraid that they intended to follow us all the way to Anjo.

  ‘Shouldn’t we return to Mesh?’ Maram asked as he rode his tired sorrel beside me. ‘If we go on to Anjo, the Ishkans will kill us as soon as we cross the border.’

  ‘If we return to Mesh,’ I told him, ‘they’ll likely attack us as soon as we enter the Telemesh Gate.’

  I went on to say that my death there, on Meshian soil, at the hands of the Ishkans, would make war between our two kingdoms almost certain.

  ‘Perhaps you should return to Mesh,’ I said to Maram. I looked at Master Juwain riding his sorrel to my right. ‘And you, too, sir. It’s not you that the Ishkans want.’

  ‘No, it is not,’ Master Juwain agreed. ‘But if you journey without us, who will tend you if you fall to fever? And we can’t just leave you alone to the Ishkans’ lances, can we, Brother Maram?’

  Maram, casting a glance back at Lord Nadhru and the other knights, let out a little moan of distress and said, ‘Ah, no, I suppose we can’t. But if we can’t go back to Mesh, what are we to do?’

  That, it seemed, was the question of the moment. Four points there are to the world, and one of these we could not follow. And as for the other three, each had its perils. To the west rose a wall of almost impassable mountains; beyond it were the warriors of the fierce Adirii tribe of the Sarni who patrolled the vast gray plains of the Wendrush. To the east, just beyond the Tushur, we would meet the King’s Road which might take us into the kingdom of Taron. We could follow this road to Nar, where we would intersect the ancient Nar Road leading all the way to Tria. But the Taroners, while no friends of Ishka, were neither friendly with Mesh. In our war with Waas, Taron had sent knights to aid their ancient ally, and many of these my brothers had killed. Then too, the road to Nar led east, while if we were to make our quest, we must eventually turn around and journey northwest, toward Tria.

  ‘It’s only sixty miles to Anjo,’ I said, looking across the dark landscape toward the bright north star. ‘In that direction lies our best hope.’

  ‘How so?’ Master Juwain asked me. ‘Brother Maram is right. With the Duke of Adar under King Hadaru’s fist, the Ishkans will feel free to attack us as soon as we cross the Aru-Adar Bridge.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But there are other dukedoms in Anjo where the Ishkans might fear to ride. And other ways to cross into them.’

  Without explaining too much, I told them that it was my intention to cross the border into Anjo much to the west of the bridge, where the waters of the Aru River did not flow so fiercely. Under the cover of night, we would simply ride into the mountains and lose the Ishkans somewhere in the thick, sloping forests.

  ‘And that is your plan?’ Maram said to me.

  ‘Can you think of a better one?’

  Maram waved his hand toward the lights of Loviisa glowing at the foot of the hill beneath us. ‘King Hadaru’s knights won’t touch us so long as we remain in Ishka. Why not find an inn for the night and hope that morning will find his heart has softened?’

  ‘His heart won’t soften that soon,’ I said. ‘And besides, have you forgotten that he’s denied us fire, bread and salt? So long as we remain in Ishka, we’ll have only our supplies to eat, and after they’re gone, we’ll starve.’

  Since Maram liked little in the world more than his evening meal, he rubbed his empty belly and agreed that we should leave Ishka as soon as possible. Neither he nor Master Juwain could think of a better course than the one I had suggested. And so we rode on into the night.

  Loviisa, although not a large city, was spread out on both sides of the Tushur. We quickly found our way through its streets back to the North Road and the bridge that spanned the river. This great archway, with its stone pylons sunk down into the river’s gurgling, black waters, was lit by torches along its rails. Lord Issur and his knights followed us across it. They kept a good hundred yards to our rear: not so close that they would have to suffer our presence, but not so far that we might lose them in the maze of streets winding through the northern half of the city.

  Soon the buildings thinned out and gave way to the rolling farmland surrounding Loviisa. The moon shone upon fields of barley and wheat, whose new leaves glistened in the soft light. More than once, Maram cast a longing glance toward one of the little houses in the fields off the side of the road. We all listened to the lowing of cows and smelled the maddening aroma of roasting meat that wafted on the wind. We were very hungry, but all we had to eat was a few wheels of cheese and some battle biscuits pulled from the pack horses’ bags. Maram complained that the iron-hard biscuits hurt his teeth; he bemoaned my duel with Salmelu, and then chided me, saying, ‘Why couldn’t you at least wait until after the feast before drawing on him?’

  Eating the biscuits hurt my teeth, too. Everything about that nighttime flight from Ishka hurt. As always, Altaru sensed my condition and moved so as to ease the discomfiture of my wound. Even so, I could feel my outraged body throbbing with every beat of my heart. Around midnight, some clouds came up, and it rained. It grew suddenly colder. Maram pulled his cloak tightly around himself and then shook his fist at the sky as he growled out, ‘I’m cold; I’m tired; I’m wet – and I’m still hungry. The merciless Ishkans can’t expect us to ride all night, can they?’

  It seemed they could. Soon after that, Master Juwain insisted that we stop to make camp for the night. But even as we were tethering our horses to the fence edging a farmer’s fields, Lord Nadhru came thundering up the road on a huge war horse. I could barely make out his sharp features through the spattering of the rain. But his quick eyes found me easily enough. He stared straight at me and said, ‘You’ve been denied any hospitality while in Ishka. Mount your horses, and don’t try to stop again.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Maram snapped at him. ‘We’ve ridden since dawn, and our horses are exhausted, we are too, and –’

  ‘Mount your horses,’ Lord Nadhru commanded again, ‘or we’ll bind you with ropes and drag you from Ishka!’

  Just then Lord Issur came riding up. He sat high on his horse while he regarded us through the rain. He was a spirited, graceful man, perhaps even kind in his own way, and I thought I might have liked him if we had met under different circumstances.

  ‘Please mount your horses,’ he told us. ‘We’ve no liking to do as Lord Nadhru has said.’

  Master Juwain stepped forward and looked up at these two towering knights on their horses. Although he was a small man, it seemed that he might be able to keep them at bay by the power of his voice alone.

  ‘My friend is badly wounded and need
s rest,’ he said. ‘If you have any compassion, you’ll let us be.’

  ‘Compassion?’ Lord Issur cried out. ‘We should all strive for such a noble estate, but does Sar Valashu? If he had any compassion at all, he would have slain my brother rather than condemning him to live in shame.’

  ‘At least your brother is still alive,’ Master Juwain said. ‘And so long as he continues to draw breath, there’s always hope that he’ll find a way to undo his shame, is there not?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lord Issur said.

  Master Juwain pointed at me and said, ‘This journey might kill Valashu. His best hope lies in finding rest as soon as possible.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Lord Issur said, shaking his head sadly. ‘For him, there is no hope. He made his choice, and he must live by it – and die by it. Now please mount your horses, or I’ll have to let Lord Nadhru fetch his ropes.’

  There was no arguing with him. Kind he might be, deep in his heart, but there was steel in him, too, and he seemed determined to execute King Hadaru’s wishes no matter how bravely Master Juwain stood before him.

  After he and Lord Nadhru had ridden back to the other knights, we prepared to set out again. Then Maram suddenly drew his sword and shook it at the dark road in their direction.

  ‘How they speak to you!’ he called out to me. ‘Didn’t they see what you did to Salmelu? I’ve never seen such sword work in my life! Tie us with ropes, they say! Why, if they even lay a hand on you, I’ll –’

  ‘Maram, please,’ I broke in. ‘Save your fight for our passage into Anjo. Now let’s ride while we still can.’

  The Sarni warriors, it is said, eat and sleep in the saddle, and let a little blood from a vein in their horses’ necks for drink. Riding hard, they can cover a hundred miles in a day. We rode hard ourselves that night, although we did not cover nearly so many as a hundred miles. But we did well enough. As the rain pelted my cloak and the farmland gave way to rougher country, I struggled to remain awake. The pain in my side helped me. As for Maram, more than once he nodded off with a loud snoring, only to be jolted rudely awake when he felt himself slipping off his horse. Master Juwain, however, seemed to need little sleep. He admitted that his daily meditations had nearly overcome his need for such sweet oblivion. Beneath his vow of nonviolence and his kindly ways, he was a very tough man, as many of the Brothers are.

  Sometime before morning, the rain stopped and the clouds pulled back from the night’s last stars. Daybreak found us in a broad, green valley more than half the way to Anjo. To the east, a low range of mountains cut the golden-red disk of the rising sun. Its streaming rays fell upon us, not so warmly that it dried our garments, but not so weakly that we didn’t all feel a little cheered. To the west, framed by the great snow-capped peaks of the Shoshan Range, the sunlight glinted off an expanse of blue water. I guessed that this must be Lake Osh, which was the largest and only real lake in Ishka. From the northern shore of its gleaming waters to the Ishkan border, if I remembered correctly, was a distance of only fifteen miles.

  ‘Will I insult you,’ Maram asked as he rode by my side, ‘if I observe that this is a beautiful country? Almost as beautiful as Mesh.’

  ‘Beauty can never be an insult,’ I told him. I looked at him and tried to smile. ‘Does it distress you that you might have remained to appreciate it if you hadn’t ogled King Hadaru’s wife?’

  ‘Ogle, you say?’ Maram’s face flushed beet-red with resentment. ‘But I wasn’t ogling her!’

  ‘What were you doing, then?’

  ‘Ah, I was only appreciating her. You have to be grateful to a world that could bring such beauty into life.’

  I smiled again and said, ‘You sound as if you’re in love with her.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘But you only just met her – you weren’t even properly presented. How could you love her?’

  ‘Does a fish need an introduction to love the water? Does a flower need more than a moment to love the sun?’

  ‘But Irisha,’ I said, ‘is a woman.’

  ‘Ah, yes, a woman indeed – just so. When you touch a woman’s eyes with your own, you touch her soul. And then you know.’

  ‘Do you think it’s always so simple, then?’

  ‘Of course it is – what could be simpler than love?’

  What, indeed? Because I had no answer for him, I just rubbed my tired eyes and smiled.

  Then Maram continued, ‘How old do you think Irisha is – eighteen? Nineteen? King Hadaru has set himself to planting very old seed in some very fertile earth. I predict that nothing will grow from it. He won’t live forever, either. And then someday I’ll return for her.’

  ‘But what about Behira?’ I asked him. ‘I thought you loved her.’

  ‘Ah, sweet Behira. Well, I do love her – I think. But I’m sure I love Irisha even more.’

  I wondered if Maram would ever return for either of these women – or even return at all. Even as the sparrows chirped in the fields around us and the sun began its climb into the sky, King Hadaru was still very much alive in his palace, and his knights were still pursuing us. A couple of hundred yards behind us, their brightly colored surcoats flapped in the early wind as they urged their horses forward.

  We rode, too, as hard and steadily as we dared. More than once we stopped to feed and water the horses. The Ishkans made no complaint against these brief breaks. They might press us until we dropped from exhaustion, but being knights, they would have no wish to kill our horses. The morning deepened around us as the sun grew ever brighter. It heated up my armor, and I was grateful for the surcoat that covered most of its searing, steel rings. The warmth of the day made me drowsy, and I scarcely noticed the rocky slabs of the mountains to the east or the higher peaks that lay ahead of us. By noon, we had passed well beyond Yarwan, a pretty little town that reminded me of Lashku in Mesh. I guessed that the border to Anjo – and the Aru-Adar Bridge – lay only ten or twelve miles farther up the road. And so I eased Altaru to a halt, and turned to talk with Maram and Master Juwain.

  ‘It would be best,’ I told them, ‘if you go on from here without me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Maram asked.

  I pointed up the road, which led north like a ribbon of gleaming stone.

  The Ishkans won’t follow you across the bridge.’

  ‘But where are you going?’

  Now I pointed west to the hilly country that lay between Lake Osh and the mountains to the north.

  ‘If what my father’s minstrel once told me is true,’ I said, ‘there’s a way through the mountains farther to the west. We’ll part company for a few days and meet in Sauvo.’

  In Sauvo, I explained, King Danashu would give us shelter, and there the Ishkans would not go.

  Now Master Juwain nudged his horse over to me and touched his cool hand to my forehead. ‘You’re very hot, Val – you have a fever, and that might kill you before the Ishkans do. You need rest, and soon.’

  ‘That might be,’ I said. I closed my eyes for a moment as I tried to remember why I had set out on this endless journey. The world needs peace, too, but must go on all the same.’

  ‘We won’t leave you alone,’ Master Juwain said.

  ‘No, we won’t,’ Maram told me. Then, as he realized what he had committed himself to, doubt began to eat at his face, and he summoned up the bravado to bluster his way through it. ‘We’ll follow even through the gates of hell, my friend.’

  ‘How did you know,’ I said with a smile, ‘where we were going?’

  And with that, I turned Altaru toward the west and left the road. We began riding easily through the soft, green hills. The Ishkans, obviously alarmed at our new tack, tightened their ranks and followed us more closely. The soil beneath our horses’ trampling hooves was too poor for crops, and so there were few farms about. Few trees grew, either, having been cut long ago for firewood or the Ishkans’ wasteful building projects. I had hoped for more cover than this from Lord Issur’s and Lord Nadhru’s unr
elenting vigilance. In truth, I had hoped for a thick forest into which we might dash wildly trying to make our escape.

  There were forests in this part of Ishka, but only on the steep slopes of the mountains rising up to the north. I considered riding straight into them, but thought the better of it. I doubted if I or the horses, even Altaru, had any strength left for negotiating such rocky terrain. And even if we evaded Lord Issur and his knights, we would still have to make our way through one of the three passes along this part of the border. I was afraid that any of the garrisons guarding them might hold us up until Lord Issur tracked us down. The only unguarded pass – if it could be called that – still lay some miles ahead across these bare, undulating foothills. It took all my will to keep Altaru moving toward it, but I could think of nothing else to do.

  And so I followed the sun, and Maram and Master Juwain followed me. It was the longest day of my life. My side felt as if Salmelu’s sword was still stuck there, and every bone in my body, particularly those of my trembling legs, hurt. After some hours, the country around us seemed to dissolve into a sea of blazing green. I dozed in my saddle and I dreamed feverish dreams. More than once, I almost toppled off Altaru’s back; but each time he moved with a knowing grace to check my fall. I marveled at the trust he had in me, leading him on toward a destination that none of us had ever seen. My trust in him – his surefootedness and his plain good sense – grew with every mile we put behind us; it seemed even more solid than the earth over which we rode.

  Nightfall made our journey no easier. Indeed, if not for the full moon that rose over the hills about us, we wouldn’t have been able to journey at all. I tried to set my gaze on a great, white-capped peak that swelled against the black sky straight ahead; there the lesser mountains to the north met the Shoshan Range like a great hinge of rock. But my eyes were dry as stones, and I could hardly keep them open. I was so tired that I couldn’t even eat the pieces of bread that Master Juwain kept trying to urge into my mouth like a mother bird. It was all I could do to gulp down a few swallows of water. Soon, I knew, I would slip from Altaru’s back no matter the great horse’s agility and love for me. I would find oblivion in the sweet heather that blanketed the hills. And then Lord Nadhru would have to come for me with his ropes.