“What will you do now?” Luana asked me.
Though the morning was bright, and the sky over the mountain shone in sapphire blue, a dark cloud had passed over me. I had done what I had intended upon traveling to the island; I had gazed into the Dreaming Eye, and through the help of its creator goddess I had caught the briefest glimpse of my beloved. True to the word of the first hero, the god of Phyreios, Khalim was unharmed, but he no longer remained in the place in the realm of the dead where I thought I would one day find him. He had set off, alone, across a strange, unknown country.
How foolish I was, to think that he would simply stay and await rescue. My Khalim was many things, but patient was not one of them. He must have hated that pale, dead city. It had nothing that he loved in its meager confines; no living beings, no open sky, no growing things. Once, he had told me that he had never been alone. Torr’s realm must have been terrifying in its stark loneliness.
“My quest remains the same,” I said. “All that has changed is that I now know I will not find him in the kingdom of the god Torr. I still intend to find him.”
Luana nodded, her face somber. “We can offer you no more help to that end. We have not the means to allow you to cross over before the time of your death. I am sorry.”
“I understand,” I said. “I will be forever grateful for the help you have given me.”
“You are welcome to return any time,” Luana said with a smile.
I thanked her with a deep bow, as I had been instructed at the temple of the dragon. That dragon had sent me here, but no farther. Surely, I thought, there were other sages who might have the knowledge I sought; perhaps I would visit each of them, traveling across the entire world, and with the totality of their knowledge I would find my way across the barrier between this world and the next.
“There is one more thing I might ask of you,” I said. “Khalim wanders the world beyond, and it might be some time before I am able to find him. How will I know where he has gone?”
Luana reached out and placed her small, weathered hand upon mine. “Only he could tell you that,” she said. “It is not like this world, where islands are rooted in place and the wind and the sea obey the sun and moon. You saw some of it, while you were within the Dreaming Eye. The world beyond changes according to the will of the gods and of the mortal souls that dwell within it, and so the road your beloved will take will change even as he walks it.”
“There must be a way I can follow him.”
“That may be,” Luana said. “You said he was free of his prison, and so he wanders of his own will. Do you know where that will would carry him?”
I did not. I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no answer for her. Khalim had told me where he had come from, but now that he was separated from me and from everything he had loved, I could not say what he would choose to do next.
Our acquaintance had been so brief. I had spent many times longer in pursuit of my quest than I had spent in his company. Despair passed over me like a wave, followed by a second wave of anger, like a rising tide. The gods permitted the Seven Ascended to oppress the people of Phyreios for generations, and men like Governor Niran to extract from the villagers in Maagay all that they needed to feed their children, but they did not allow me to love Khalim for more than the cycle of a moon.
Had he heard me, while I was in the vision? I had thought that he had turned to me when I called out to him, but I began to doubt the strength of my memory. If only I had been able to speak to him, to tell him that I had not forgotten him, and I would come for him soon. If only I could have asked him what he meant to do.
“I don’t know,” I confessed at last, and I sank down onto the dry sand beside the cooking fire. My body was heavy, as though it had endured many tasks while my mind had left it to enter the Dreaming Eye. A hollow feeling, like a sinkhole spreading beneath my skin, pressed out from within my chest.
“Think on it,” Luana said. “You are welcome to stay a while longer.”
But not forever, I understood, though she did not say it aloud. As beautiful as this place was, I would not be content to remain here—and though the priestesses welcomed me and the help I could provide, I could not impose on their hospitality much longer. There would be other pilgrims before long, other strong, young warriors with appetites to match, and their resources would stretch thin. A second look into the Dreaming Eye would not be permitted to me.
I had to move on. The warnings Luana had given me before my vision, of duplicitous spirits and wicked gods, rang in my ears. If only Khalim had possessed the good sense to stay where he would be safe. Now he wandered, unprotected, across a shifting, perilous landscape.
But when had he ever done as he was told?
My anger lasted only the span of a heartbeat before it turned again to pain. If given the chance, I would follow him, and speak not a word against him. I could not fault him for rejecting the gifts of the god who had stolen him from me. And after seeing the prison-paradise Torr had offered with my own eyes, I could blame him even less. I swore I would never confine him as Torr had done.
Khalim had, I remembered, once followed Torr’s command, traveling on foot from his home in the south and across the iron-rich desert to Phyreios. I had seen red sand in the Dreaming Eye, and a river, and green fields like the ones he had described stretching out across his homeland.
I picked myself up and went to Bran’s saddlebags. The horse himself had wandered down to the beach, where he chased Kala in the glittering morning surf under the watchful eye of the priestess Malea.
Among the few possessions I had carried with me from Phyreios to the Dragon Temple, and from the Dragon Temple to this island, was the small canvas tent that Khalim and I had shared on the mountainside. On the inside of its rough walls was a record of our travels, mine across the frozen North and his across the flatlands, culminating in the city beneath the Iron Mountain. He could read and write no better than I, but his hands were steadier and the pictures he drew—of fields and forests and the creatures that walked among them—were finer than mine.
With utmost care, I unrolled the canvas onto a stretch of gray sand, and my heart sank to behold what had become of the last object that remained to preserve his memory. Weeks in the rain and damp had turned the charcoal figures to translucent ghosts, their lines blurred and their shapes softened. Still, I could trace Khalim’s road from a thatch-roofed house, across a rice field presided over by humpbacked cattle, to a wide, muddy river, and finally past the wind-etched rocks of the red desert. At the top of the tent, where the canvas creased, stood Phyreios, with the mountain standing vigilant over its spires.
Within the dream-logic of the world beyond, Khalim was recreating his trek to Phyreios, this time with no god to compel him and no others to aid him, and I had no idea what he might find at the end of his journey.
For my part, I was no closer to him than I had been upon my arrival on the island, though I now knew not to look for him in the white city. But for the time being, I decided I would begin where Khalim’s journey began, in the village he called home. There, I would find others who had known him longer than I had, and I might gain some insight as to his current destination.
To travel so far, I would need a ship.
I bade a sad farewell to the grandmothers and Kala, and in a borrowed canoe I took Bran to the next island. He tossed his head and stared with wide eyes at the water as I paddled us across the narrow strait and between sandbars too high for a larger ship to pass, but he planted his feet against the sides of the boat and weathered the voyage as he would have done an earthquake. He was truly a rare horse, and Aysulu had blessed me more than she would ever know when she gave him to me.
If I could not trust the gods, then I would put my faith in Bran’s steadfastness, Aysulu’s generosity, Khalim’s stubbornness, and the ever-present need of a large ship for another rower.
I found the pirate and his crew on a sun-drenched beach, passing bottles of liquor among themselves and crafting fans of palm leaves. I could just make out the mast of the ship, concealed in a cove behind a low hill. On the other side of the island, fishers in broad hats with intricate tattoos on their arms pulled up nets heavy with fish into their canoes.
The captain got up from his place beneath a shady tree and greeted me with a broad wave and a winsome smile. He beckoned me closer.
I beached the boat and, with a few soft words, persuaded Bran to follow me up the shore. Once dry land lay beneath his hooves, his ears relaxed and he looked ahead instead of all around for danger. He nosed at my clothing and that of the sailors, searching for fruit.
“I need to sail west,” I told the captain, gesturing toward the declining afternoon sun, “to the green country south of the desert. I can row, or do anything else you ask. And I want to learn your language.”
He looked up at me with a frown. Our languages were distant cousins, not brothers, and I feared he hadn’t understood a word.
At last, he said, “West, then!” and a number of other things I could only guess at, but he spread his arms wide and the sailors cheered.
A tall man with a sun-darkened face and a scar across one high cheekbone handed me a glass vessel of sweet brown liquor. Once I had swallowed half of it and the island swam pleasantly around me, a pair of sailors with hair like soft black clouds led me to a table where others participated in a contest of arm wrestling.
The sailors pushed me into one wobbly chair, set into the sand at a precarious angle. Opposite me sat an elderly man, his face like worn leather and his arms like the knotted branches of an oak. What teeth he had remaining were capped in gold and silver. He set his elbow on the table and held up his hand.
I glanced up at the surrounding sailors. This man was strong, but I was a third his age and a warrior born. The nearest sailor, a redheaded fellow as broad as I, gave me an encouraging smile.
I placed my hand in the old man’s and began to push against him.
Pain shot through my leg. I cried out, and my grip faltered. The old man slammed my hand into the table, and he jumped up and laughed in delight.
He had kicked me, his bony foot connecting with my shin. I did not need to understand his triumphant boast to fathom what had occurred. I laughed as well, as did the other sailors, and I knew that I had become one of them.
We would leave the following morning, chasing the far western horizon and fleeing the Imperial craft that still searched these waters for the pirate’s ship. I had not the words to tell my newfound friends of my quest. It was with a heavy heart that I took my last look at the priestesses’ island and the temple of the Dreaming Eye, which had given me one precious glance of Khalim before he was lost to me once more.
Forward to Chapter XII: The Lady of Osona
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