David Zindell - The Lightstone

'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.