Alan Foster - Krull

Ynyr's eyes locked with Colwyn's. "There is much I should have told you, many things you deserve to know that I saw fit to withhold from you. Now you must learn them for yourself. The time of teaching is past."

Frustration filled Colwyn's face. "I don't understand."

"You will. You must. Your marriage…" He drew in a wheezing breath. "Your marriage to Lyssa was necessary;"

"Of course it was. The alliance between Eirig and Turold—"

Ynyr was shaking his head. "No, no! Truly you do not understand, for which you cannot be blamed. So much was kept from you. It was necessary that you mature and reach decisions uncontaminated by too much knowledge. The marriage… you must rescue Lyssa!"

"I know. Just rest now."

"No," Ynyr said violently, "you don't knowl You don't know that… that…" He hesitated, staring through Colwyn for a moment. Then his gaze dropped from Colwyn's face to his own right hand. There was a look of surprise on his face. He opened his fingers. When he spoke again, it was in the voice of a young man: "The sand is gone."

Colwyn looked. The night wind scattered the few remaining grains from the old man's palm. When he looked again into Ynyr's face, the wizened old eyes had closed for the last time.

He rose. There was no anger in him and less sorrow than he'd expected. Ynyr had chosen this moment, as surely as Colwyn had determined to marry Lyssa. He desperately wanted to know what the old man had been so frantic to impart before his passing. Now it seemed he would never know, unless…

"You must learn them for yourself," Ynyr had said.

Torquil put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I understood very little of what he said, and I knew him not overlong, but for a wise man he seemed like a decent chap."

"He was the wisest of the wise," Colwyn muttered. "I wish he had not chosen this course. I will miss him."

"If you believe in his wisdom, then you won't stand here regretting its loss. You'll make use of it, as he instructed you to." He glanced back toward the camp. "I wish he'd been wise enough to tell us how we're supposed to get from here to the Iron Desert in a day and night."

"We'll get there." Colwyn's assurance was so palpable that Torquil elected not to argue the point further.

Instead he turned and started downhill. "Then we'd better wake the others and get started. I haven't made a long run in a year. I don't know how many of the' others are in shape for such an attempt."

"First we bury him." Colwyn nodded toward the now peaceful form.

"We waste time, Colwyn."

"No time spent on Ynyr the Wise is wasted."

"Colwyn," Torquil said evenly, "Ynyr the Wise is dead."

"His spirit will travel with us. I want that spirit laid to rest in comfort. First we bury him."

Torquil sighed. "As you command."

Rell turned away from the sight. There was much he'd hoped to ask of the wise man. Now he would be denied that opportunity. That had always been his people's curse; failing to ask the right questions in time. Now there was only one opportunity left to him, and he had no intention of wasting it.

The cairn they raised above the grave was simple and devoid of decoration, as Ynyr would have wanted it. The old man had a horror of waste when he was alive.

Ergo spoke the words and for a change lived up to his sobriquet, the Magnificent. When he'd finished and the last rock had been piled in place, Colwyn turned his attention to Torquil.

"I did not mean to appear obstinate in this matter. Your concern is justified, of course. Has he died in vain? The Iron Desert is a thousand leagues away."

Torquil was certainly no optimist by nature, but neither was he the kind of man to quietly accept defeat. "We'd better get started. Perhaps we can somehow reach the place."

"No man can cover that distance in a night and a day," said Kegan. "Not the greatest runner on all Krull could do it, and I am not he."

"Nor am I," added Colwyn, "but we are bound to try. Perhaps we can find additional horses along the way."

"Not even a horse could make such a journey,"

Rell stepped out of the brush, spoke quietly: "No normal horse." All eyes turned to him. "But the fire-mares might do it. They do not run in the manner of normal steeds."

"No, and they don't behave like normal steeds either," Torquil snapped. "No man has ever saddled a fire-mare."

"Someone must always be first. I have saddled and ridden them. It can be done, though not for much more than a day. Longer than that and you lose the strength to hold on."

"We would all have to have mounts," Torquil continued to argue. "What you suggest is impossible."

"An impossible task confronts us; Rell proposes an impossible solution. I see no conflict there." Colwyn turned to the cyclops. "I have heard stories that speak of such a herd living to the south of here, near the place where the great plain meets the foothills."

Rell nodded. "Your storytellers speak truth. There is time, if we move quickly and prepare."

"Enough debate, then. Titch and Ergo will remain here with Merith."

Ergo stepped forward. "They most certainly will not, I have traveled a long way with you, Colwyn of Eirig, or Turold, or wherever you choose. Perhaps I haven't always lived up to the claims I've made for myself, and I am no seer when it comes to practicing the arcane arts, but I know a few things. That makes me valuable to a party of thickheads like this one." For once no one took him to task.

"You once said that I had courage. It hasn't deserted me." He looked around with an amazed expression on his homely face. "Am I really saying all this? By Krull, the man offers a chance to back out with honor and I'm actually arguing to go with him!" Laughter burst from the assembled thieves.

But when Ergo turned to face Colwyn again, his tone had grown serious. "It is not your decision to make, Colwyn. I've earned the right to go on with you to the end."

"The end may be death."

Ergo shrugged. "So be it. I've lived a short life but a full one." He grinned. "I have experienced the lord of all gooseberry trifles, have consumed the supreme dish. I claim the right to go from dessert to desert."

Colwyn nodded his approval. "How can I resist in the face of such brilliant oratory? I concede."

A small voice sounded from behind Ergo, and Colwyn could see the boy peeping out at him. "I want to come, too."

"No, Titch," Colwyn told him. "You're too young. Ergo may have lived a short life, but you've lived none at all. It would be wrong to throw away what you don't have."

"I haven't been in the way. If the seer was still alive," he hesitated, fighting back tears, "he'd say that I should go so that I could learn. Besides, Ergo told me that you were my family now." He looked around at them. "All of you."

"It's true that the boy has nowhere else to go," Ergo pointed out.

Colwyn considered, reluctantly gave in. "You're right again. All right, Titch, you can come, but stay clear of trouble and mind what you're told."

"I will, sir," the boy said solemnly.

They hurried to break camp. Merith moved to embrace Kegan.

"I know that I can't make you come back to me only," she murmured, "but if you survive, I ask you to consider it. I'd make you as happy as any one woman could."

"Be damned if I don't think you're right about that," he admitted. "No promises, but I'll think on it."

She smiled and kissed him. "That's all I ask."

The journey was not long and the canyon itself a rainbow of breathtaking shapes and colors, but there was no time for sight-seeing.

Colwyn crawled to the edge of the cliff, stopping only when he could see clearly over the edge. They had no time to waste and there must be no mistakes. Everything had to work perfectly on the first attempt, Rell warned him, or they would have to think of another way to cover the distance between the plains and the Iron Desert. The herd would not give them a second chance.