The Lightstone Page 24

  And as she went from man to man, she counted out loud, beginning with the number five. At first, I thought her accounting had something to do with the number of arrows she had fired or recovered. But when she reached the body of the hill-men's leader, whom no arrow had struck, she quietly said, 'Fourteen.' And the headless body of the man she had beheaded was fifteen, whatever that might mean.

  And then, as Maram and Master Juwain drew closer, I reflected upon Atara's strange second name: Manslayer. I remembered Ravar once telling of a| group of women warriors of the Sarni called the Manslayer Society. It was said that a few rare women from each tribe practiced at arms and gave up marriage in order to join the fearsome Manslayers. Membership in their Society was almost always for life, for the only way that a Manslayer could be released from her vows was to slay a hundred of her enemies. Atara, in having slain four before she reached this dreadful hill, had already accounted for more men than many Valari knights. And in sending on twelve more, with arrow and sword, she had acomplished a great if terrible feat.

  I stood watching her in awe as she cleaned the blood from her arrows and dropped them down into the quiver slung over her back. I thought that she couldn't be much older than I. She was a tall woman and big-boned, like most of her people. And she had their barbaric look. Her leather armor - all black and hardened and studded with steel -covered only her torso. A smoother and more supple pair of leather trousers provided protection for her legs. Her long, lithe arms were naked and burnt brown by the sun. Golden armlets encircled the upper parts of them. A golden torque, inlaid with lapis, encircled her neck. Her hair was like beaten gold, and the ends of it were wrapped with strings of tiny lapis beads. But it was her eyes that kept capturing my gaze; I had never hoped to see eyes like hers in all the world. Like sapphires her eyes were, like blue diamonds or the brightest of lapis.

  They sparkled with a rare spirit, and I thought they were more precious than any gem.

  Just then, Maram and Master Juwain rode up to us, and Maram said, 'Oh, my Lord -

  it really is a woman!'

  'A woman, yes,' I said to him. I was instantly jealous of the intense interest he showed in her. 'May I present Atara Manslayer of the Kurmak tribe? And this is Prince Maram Marshayk of Delu.'

  I presented Master Juwain as well, and Atara greeted them politely before returning to the bloody work of retrieving her arrows. Both Master Juwain and Maram, as did I, wanted to know how a lone woman had come to be trapped on this hill. But Atara cut short their questions with an imperious shake of her head. She pointed to the top of the hill where her horse lay moaning, and she said, 'Excuse me, but I have one more thing to attend to.'

  We followed her up the hill, but when we saw what she intended, we stood off a few yards to give her a bit of privacy. She walked straight up to her horse, a young steppe pony whose belly had been cut open. Much of his insides had spilled out of him and lay steaming on the grass. She sat down on the grass beside him; gently, she lifted his head onto her lap. She began stroking the side of it as she sang out a sad little song and looked into his large dark eye. She stroked his long neck, and then -

  even as I turned Altaru facing downhill - she drew the edge of her saber across his throat, almost more quickly than I could believe.

  For a while Atara sat there on the reddening grass and stared up at the sky. Her struggle between pride of decorum and her grief touched me keenly. And then, at last, she buried her face in her horse's fur and began weeping softly. I blinked as I fought to keep from weeping

  as well.

  After a while, she stood up and came over to us. Her hands and trousers were as bloody as a butcher's but she paid them no heed. She pointed at the bodies of the hill-men and said, 'They accosted me in the woods as I was climbing the hill. They demanded that I pay a toll for crossing their country. Their country, hmmph. I told them all this land belonged to King Kiritan, not them.'

  'What else could you do?' Maram asked understandably. 'Who has gold for tolls?'

  Here Atara moved back to her horse, where she freed a purse from his saddlebag.

  As she weighed it in her hand, it jangled with coins, and she said, 'It's not gold I lack only a willingness to enrich robbers.' 'But they might have killed you!' Maram said.

  'Better death than the dishonor of doing business with such men.' Maram stared at her as if this principle were utterly alien to him. 'When the hill-men saw that I wouldn't pay them,' Atara continued, 'they became angry and raised weapons to me.

  They told me that they would take from me much more than a toll. ONe of them cut my pony with an axe to keep me from riding away. My pony! On the Wendrush, anyone who intentionally wounds a warrior's pony in battle is staked-out in the grass for the wolves.'

  At this, Maram shook his head sadly and muttered, 'Well, better the wolves than the bears.'

  It was a measure of Atara's wit - and grace - that she could laugh at this grim humor that she couldn't be expected to appreciate. But laugh she did, showing her straight white teeth as her face widened with a grim smile.

  'But why were you even in the hill-men's country?' I asked her. I thought it more than strange that we should meet in the middle of this wilderness. 'And why were you climbing this hill?'

  Atara pointed to the hill's ragged, rocky crest above us and said, 'I thought I might be able to see the Nar Road from here.'

  We looked at each other in immediate understanding. I admitted that I needed to be in Tria on the seventh day of Soldru to answer King Kiritan's call to find the Lightstone. As did Atara. She told us of her journey then. She said that when word of the great quest had reached the Kurmak tribe, she had bade her people farewell and had ridden north along the western side of the Shoshan Mountains. Only by keeping close to these great peaks had she been able to bypass the Long Wall which ran for four hundred miles across the prairies from the Shoshan to the Blue Mountains. Thus had Alonia protected its rich lands from the Sarni hordes for three long ages. But the Wall couldn't keep out one lone warrior determined to find a way around it. On Citadel Mountain, where the stones of the Wall flowed almost seamlessly into the blue granite of the Shoshan, Atara had discovered a track leading around it through the woods. Her nimble steppe pony had found footing on this rocky track where a larger horse such as Altaru would have broken his legs. And so Alonia, as in times past, had been invaded by the Sarni - if only a single warrior of the Manslayer Society.

  'But the Sarni aren't at war with Alonia, are they?' I asked her. 'Why didn't you just pass the Wall through one of its gates?'

  Atara looked at rne strangely, and I felt her temper begin to rise. And then she said,

  'No, there's no war, not yet. Other warriors, all men, have taken the more direct route along the Poru toward Tria. But the Alonians won't allow one such as I to pass through their gates.'

  And so, she said, she had ridden north from the Wall into the hills west of the gap in the Shoshan Mountains. Even as we had ridden onto them, from a different direction.

  'I had hoped to cut the road by now,' she said. 'It can't be far.' 'You didn't see it from the top of the hill?' Maram asked worriedly. 'No, I didn't have time to look. But why don't we look now?' Together, we walked the twenty yards to the hill's very top.

  As I had thought, the ground dropped off suddenly in a cliff as if a giant axe had chopped off the entire north part of the hill. From the exposed rocks along the line of this fault, we stood to look out. Forty or fifty miles away, the northern spur of the Shoshan Mountains was buried in the clouds. A cottony mist lay over the hill country leading up to them. We couldn't see much more of it than humps of green sticking out above the silvery swirls. But just below us, in a little valley, a blue-gray band of rock cut through the trees. It was wider than any road I had ever seen, and I knew that it must be the ancient Nar Road, which had been built from Tria to Nar before even the Age of Swords.

  The question now arose as to what we should do. Maram, of course, favored the familiarity of good paving stone
s beneath his feet while I might have preferred to keep to the woods. I felt safer beneath the crowns of the great oaks than in proceeding along the line of an open road. But Master Juwain observed that if the hill-men were . bent upon revenge, they could fall upon us anywhere in these hills that they chose. Therefore, he said, we might as well make our way down to the road. Atara agreed with him. And then she added that the hill-men were unlikely to attack us after losing so many men -especially since the arms of a Valari knight had now been added to the power of her great bow.

  'But what about my bow?' Maram protested. He held up my hunting bow as if it belonged to him. 'It was my arrow, was it not, that finally frightened the men away?'

  Atara looked down the hill to where Maram's arrow still stuck out of the grass. She said, 'Oh, you're right - what a magnificent shot! You probably managed to kill a mole or at least a few earthworms.'

  I tried not to smile as Maram's face flushed beet red. And it was good that I didn't, for Atara had her doubts about me as well,

  'I've heard that the Valari are great warriors,' she told me.

  Yes, I thought, Telemesh and my grandfather were. My father is.

  Atara pointed down at the body of the man I had spared. 'It must be hard to be a great warrior who is afraid to kill his enemies.'

  Her eyes, which were as beautiful as diamonds, could be as cold and hard as these stones, too. They cut right through me and seemed to strip me naked.

  'Yes,' I told her, 'It is hard.'

  'Why did you ride to help me then?'

  My gift which sometimes let me see others' motivations so easily, often left me quite blind to my own. What could I say to her? That I had felt compassion for her plight?

  That even now I was afraid I might feel something more? Better then to say nothing, and so I stared off at the mist swirling over the hills.

  'Well, you did help me, after all,' Atara finally said. 'You saved my life. And for that, I owe you a debt of blood.'

  'No,' I said, looking at her, 'you owe me nothing.'

  'Yes, I do. And I should ride with you until this debt is repaid.'

  I blinked my eyes at the strangeness of this suggestion. A Sarni warrior ride with a Valari knight? Did wolves run with lions? How many times over the ages had the Sarni invaded the Morning Mountains - always to be beaten back? How many Valari had the Sarni sent on, and the Sarni slain of the Valari? Not even a warrior of the Manslayer Society, I thought, could count such numbers.

  'No,' I said again, 'there is no debt.'

  'Yes, of course there is. And I must repay it. Do you think I'd ride with you otherwise?'

  Upon looking at the way she impatiently moved her hands as if to sweep away my obduracy, I sensed that she wouldn't No, I thought, she would be much more likely to make her own way out of this wilderness - or even to fight me for the sheer joy of fighting.

  'If the hill-men return,' she said, 'you'll need my bow and arrows.'

  I touched my hand to my kalama and said, 'We Valari have always done well enough with our swords - even against the Sarni.'

  Atara, who still held her saber in her long hands, glanced down at its curved blade and said, 'Yes, you've always had the superior weaponry.'

  'You have your bows,' I said, pointing at hers, which she had left by her horse.

  'We do,' she admitted. 'But the mountains have always proved bad ground for employing them to the best advantage. We've always had bad luck, as well.'

  'That's true,' I said. 'At the Battle of the Song River, Elemesh's good generalship was your misfortune.' We might have stood there arguing all day if Master Juwain hadn't observed that the sun wouldn't stop to listen and neither would the earth stand still to see who had prevailed. We should move on, and soon. Then he pointed out that Atara had no horse, and asked me if I truly intended to leave her alone in the woods.

  'Are you sure you want to ride with us?' I asked her. Then I told her about Kane and the unknown men whom we suspected of hunting us since Anjo, and who might be hunting us still. If I had thought to discourage her, however, I was disappointed. In answer to my question, she just stood there cleaning the blood from her sword and smiling as if I had proposed a game of chess on which she might gladly bet not only her bag of gold but her very life.

  How, I wondered, could I ever trust such a woman? I looked at the bodies of the hill men she had slain. Truly, she was the enemy of my enemies, but her people were also the enemy of mine. Was my enemy, then, so easily to become my friend?

  'I pledge my life to the protection of yours,' she said simply. 'But I can't keep the hill-men away - or anyone else - if I don't ride with you.'

  How could I not trust this courageous woman? I could almost feel her will to keep her word. I saw in her eyes a bright light and a basic goodness that touched me to the core. Even as I feared the fire building in my own eyes: if I let it, it might burn through me and consume me utterly. But if I ran away from this ineffable flame as I always had, then how would I be able protect her should evil men come for her again? 'Please,' I said, 'ride with us. 'We'll be glad of your company.' I clasped hands with her then, and I felt the blood on her palm warm and wet against my own.

  We spent most of the next hour readying ourselves for our journey. While Master Juwain redressed my wound, Maram shared out some of my hunting arrows with Atara. With her pony dead, we had to convert one of the pack horses to a mount.

  Atara reluctantly suggested riding my pack horse, Tanar. Although the big, bay gelding was quite strong, it had been a long time since he had borne a human being on his back. He was happy enough when I removed the bags of food and gear from him, but he shook his head and stamped his hoof when Atara buckled her saddle around him. Atara, however, had a gift for gentling horses. And for taking command of them. After convincing Tanar to accept the hard, iron bit in his mouth, she rode him about the hill for a while and announced that he would have to do until she could buy a better horse in Suma or Tria.

  With one less horse available for carrying our supplies, I considered jettisoning the little casks of brandy and beer that Tanar had borne all the way from Silvassu. But this prospect horrified Maram. He protested that if necessary, he would dismount and carry the casks on his own back as far as Tria - or until he had managed to drain every dram from them if that came first. Atara chided him, and all of us, for traveling so heavily burdened. A Sarni warrior, she said, could cross five hundred miles of the Wendrush with little more than a leather cloak and a bag full of dried antelope meat.

  But we were not Sarni. In the end, we redistributed our supplies as best we could over the backs and sides of our six horses.

  We rode down from the hill then. After pausing by a stream so that Atara could clean herself, we found our way around the side of the hill into the valley we had seen from its top. A short distance through the trees brought us to a sudden break into bright sunlight where the Nar Road cut across the land. I marveled at the road's width; it was like a river of stone flowing through the forest. Grass grew in the many small cracks in it, and here and there, a tree grew out of larger breaks in its surface.

  But it was quite serviceable. Whole armies, I thought, could pass down this road.

  Whole armies had.

  We traveled northeast along it for the rest of the day. We rode four abreast with the two remaining pack horses trailing behind us. If the hill-men were watching us from behind the walls of trees along the sides of the road, they didn't dare to show themselves. I thought that Atara was right, that they'd had enough of battle for one day. Even so, Atara and Maram kept their bows strung and dose at hand as we all listened for breaking twigs or rustling leaves.

  Master Juwain told us what he knew of the hill-men: he said they were descendants of a Kallimun army that had invaded Alonia early in the Age of the Dragon. The army's captain had been none other than Sartan Odinan, the very same Kallimun priest who had betrayed Morjin and then led Kalkamesh into Argattha to reclaim the Lightstone. After the rape and burning of Suma, Sartan's
heart had softened and he had abandoned his bloodthirsty men. Morjin had then recalled the leaderless army to Sakai just as the conquest of Alonia seemed certain. But many of Sartan's men had remained to ravage the countryside. When King Maimun's soldiers began to hunt them down, they took refuge in

  the hills all about us which their descendants had infested ever since.

  'Sartan Odinan used a firestone to break the Long Wall,' Master Juwain said. 'Thus did his army force it, way into Alonia. Even as the Sarni did in the Age of Swords.'

  'No, the Sarni did not use a firestone to breach the Wall,' Atara said, the Sarni knew nothing of firestones then.'

  As our horses dopped down the road and the slanting sun broke upon the canopies of the trees, Atara recounted the fines of Tulumar Elek, who had united the Sarni tribes in the year 2,054 of the Age of Swords. According to Atara, Tulumar had been determined to conquer Alonia, then and still the greatest of Ea's kingdoms. And so Tulumar's armies had besieged the immense fortifications of the Long Wall for a year, without result. And then one day a mysterious man named Kadar the Wise had arrived in Tulumar's camp bearing casks of a red substance called relb. As Atara explained, relb was only a forerunner of the red gelstei, a first essay into the art of making these powerful stones. But it had power enough of its own: it concentrated the rays of the sun and set even stone on fire. Thus it was called the Stoneburner.

  Kadar the Wise persuaded Tulumar's Sarni warriors to spread the relb at night over a section of the Long Wall, and this they did, with great sacrifice. It looked much like paint or fresh blood, and the Alonians thought that the Sarni had gone mad.

  But the next day, as the sun's rays at noon poured down upon the Long Wall, the relb burst into flame, melting stone to lava and killing thousands of the Wall's defenders. This great event had become known as the Breaking of the Long Wall. In the coming years, Tulumar would go on to conquer all of Alonia and Delu.