Simon Hawke - The Seeker

“We are, perhaps, the first to cross the barrens since the Wanderer did it,” Sorak said. “Or perhaps, I should say the Sage.”

“No, the Wanderer,” Ryana said. “He had not yet become the Sage.”

“I wonder how long ago it was?” Korahna mused aloud.

Ryana shook her head. “No one knows. No one can even remember when The Wanderer’s Journal first appeared.”

“There was a copy of it in the templar library at the palace,” said Korahna. “I must have read it at least a dozen times. It seemed to me, back then, that the Wanderer must have led a wonderful life. Free to roam wherever he chose, to sleep under the stars, to see the entire world, while I was cloistered in the palace, unable even to venture beyond the walls of the compound until I began to sneak out at night in secret. How I longed for the sort of adventures he must have had!”

“Well, you have had your first,” said Sorak. “How does it feel?”

Korahna did not reply at once. When she finally spoke, it was in a soft, contemplative tone. “It was, of course, nothing like what I had dreamt of when I was younger. I had dreamt of adventure without the harsh realities. I had imagined traveling across the desert, but I had not added the sweltering heat to my imaginings, nor the horrible feeling of thirst, nor the aching muscles from hours upon hours of unaccustomed riding. I had no way of knowing what it would be like to fear being attacked by predators . .. either animal or human. And I could never have imagined that I could be treated as Torian had treated me.”

Neither Sorak nor Ryana spoke, waiting for her to continue.

“He had reduced me to something less than human,” she said after a moment. “I was merely a means to an end, a thing for him to possess and use to accomplish his aims. And when he called me his property ... I think that it was only then that I realized just what I was to him, and all my outrage came bursting forth.” She looked at Ryana. “I was such a fool. I do not know what came over me.”

Ryana nodded. “Sometimes it happens that way, when a person is pushed far enough.”

Korahna looked away, out over the barrens once again. “When he plunged his sword into himself... I actually enjoyed it. It felt good. It made me feel so vindicated, so alive. . . .” Her voice trailed off. She took a deep breath and expelled it heavily and shook her head. “What sort of person that does that make me?”

“A normal person,” Sorak said, but Ryana realized it wasn’t Sorak. The voice still sounded the same, but she knew him well enough to recognize the Guardian in the subtle changes only she could notice. And then, suddenly, she realized that Korahna would notice them as well because of their shared commonality of experience induced by Kether.

“Guardian?” Korahna said, proving what Ryana had suspected.

“Yes.”

“We have never met, have we?”

“I have known you, through Sorak,” said the Guardian. “But you have not known me.”

“Why, wise Guardian?” Korahna asked. “Why? How can it be normal to feel such passion for someone’s death?”

“Because to a normal person, killing is an act of passion,” the Guardian replied. “Either that, or an act of desperation, of self-defense. Torian had denied you that which you, like all people, hold most dear and central to the very essence of your being—your own identity. Your needs and your desires. He denied you your free will. And you also knew that he would have killed us, if he could.”

“But he could not,” Korahna said. “When he realized that, he knew he could not win.”

“He made his choice,” the Guardian replied. “He could take a life, even his own, and not feel anything. And that is why you, Korahna, are a normal person and Torian was not. What you are feeling now, these are all things a normal person feels. If you did not feel any of these things, then you would be right to be concerned about what sort of person you had become. Except that, if you were such a person, such thoughts would not occur to you, for you would no longer have a conscience.”

Korahna looked down at the ground. When she Joked back up, there were tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Guardian,” she said, softly. “Thank you for helping me understand.”

That night, they made camp in the mountains and It a fire and slept. As Ryana felt weariness overcome her, she saw Sorak duck under and the Ranger came to the fore. He stood and walked off into the darkness without a word, moving as silently as a mountain cat. With a sigh of resignation, Ryana sat up and took her sword, holding it across her lap while she waited for the Ranger to complete his hunt and return. She gazed at Korahna as she slept, quietly and soundly.

“Rest well, sister,” she murmured, under her breath. “Rest well. The healing has begun.”

The Barrier Mountains were a crescent-shaped range, bowed out to the northwest, with the tips of the crescent pointing east and south. At the southernmost end of the mountain range, near the lower tip of the crescent, stood the city of Gulg. At the opposite end of the crescent, separated from Gulg by the wide and verdant valley sheltered between the opposite ends of the range, was the city of Nibenay. From where Sorak stood, on the crest near the upper end of the range, he could see the city down below. The city of Gulg was barely visible in the distance, shrouded in the early morning mist at the far end of the valley.

The two cities were located in one of the few areas of Athas that were still green. The region was sustained by runoff from the mountains and by underground springs that bubbled to the surface, most located near Nibenay. According to The Wanderer’s Journal, which Sorak had studied while they camped in the mountains, Gulg was not so much a city as a large settlement of hunter-gatherers who depended on the forests of the barrier Mountains for their sustenance.

The ruler. or oba, of Gulg was the sorcerer-queen, Lalali-Puy, whose name meant “forest goddess” in the language of her people. She enjoyed the full support of her rather primitive subjects, who worshipped her as if she were a deity.

The oba resided in what was perhaps the most unusual palace on Athas, one that was constructed high up in the limbs of an ancient and gigantic agafari tree. Her templars lived in huts constructed in the lower limbs of that same tree.

The palace, wrote the Wanderer, was small, but magnificent—simple, and yet beautiful, reflecting the strong bond the residents of Gulg felt with the trees of the forest. Though she was a defiler, the oba was the closest of all Athasian rulers to the life path of a druid. However, it was a path she had perverted through her pursuit of power in the defiler arts.

Most of the residents of Gulg lived in small, circular thatched huts around the gigantic agafari tree where their queen made her home. Their simple dwellings were protected by a defensive “wall” that was, in reality, a huge hedge of thorny trees planted so close together that not even a halfling could squeeze through without being cut to ribbons.

For the most part, the people of Gulg were savage, tribal peasants who hunted in the forests of the mountains and turned over all their game to the oba, who then distributed the food to her simple people through her templars.

The traders of the merchant guilds had to deal with the templars rather than directly with the people, and for this reason: Torian’s father, one of the queen’s templars, had forged a powerful alliance with the House of Ankhor. He had also raised a son in the warrior tradition of the judaga, the warrior headhunters of Gulg, fierce fighters and deadly archers whose poisoned darts could kill by the slightest scratch. Small wonder, Sorak thought, that Torian had felt so little compassion or regard for human life.