“I think we figured that much out,” Travis said dryly.
Vani turned her gold eyes toward Farr. “I believe it is time we heard your tale, Seeker.”
“Seeker,” he said with a husky laugh. “I haven’t been called that in a long time.”
He fell silent, and Travis began to think that was all Farr was going to tell them. At last he spoke in a low voice.
“It began with the man in black.”
Travis shivered despite the stifling air.
“I found him in Istanbul,” Farr said. “Or rather, he found me, for I doubt I would have come upon him had he not wished it. He wore the black robe of an imam, and his skin was dark rather than pale, but all the same I knew at once who he was. I had read your descriptions of him many times over, Travis.”
“Brother Cy.”
“Yes.”
Travis should have known that was how Farr had gotten to Eldh. But why had the Old God–who seemed to favor the garb of a holy man no matter what land he was in–transported Farr here?
“I wasn’t even certain why I had gone to Istanbul,” Farr went on. “I had investigated rumors of an otherworldly portal there once. I had never found any evidence of a door, but I always felt there were a few leads that I had not followed as fully as I might have, so I took the Orient Express from Paris. However, I never had the chance to perform any research, for he found me almost the moment I stepped off the train.
“He told me to meet him the following evening beneath the dome of the Hagia Sophia, then vanished. I went to my hotel, phoned Deirdre and left her a message, spent a sleepless night, then went to the museum to meet him, hardly expecting him to be there. Only he was, along with the other two–the girl and the blind woman. I knew it was them, though they were robed and veiled.”
“Samanda and Mirrim,” Grace murmured. “What happened then?”
The dervish shook his head. “The imam–Brother Cy–said he could show me the way to what I searched for. I said I didn’t know what that was, but the girl said that was a lie. And she was right, because I hadgone to Istanbul looking for something. I was looking for a door to Eldh. I wanted to stop searching for those who had traveled to other worlds and instead go there myself.
“The blind woman whispered something in my ear, something that made no sense to me, then suddenly they were gone. I thought that was it, that nothing else was going to happen. In despair, I left the Hagia Sophia. Only when I stepped out of the door, I found myself not on a street in Istanbul, but rather standing among ruined stone columns in the middle of a desert. The sun was blazing, and I had no water. There was no sign of a doorway behind me. Vultures circled above, and I laughed bitterly, because I had finally gotten what I wanted–I had traveled to another world. And I was going to die there.” Farr sighed. “Only then . . .”
“Then what?” Travis said, fascinated, even envious. He remembered what it was like to first come to Eldh.
“Then I was found,” Farr said.
For the next hour, they listened as Farr told them what had befallen him during his last three years on Eldh–although Travis was certain the former Seeker was not telling them everything. In the ruins he was found by a dervish, much as Travis had been found by Falken in the Winter Wood the first time he journeyed to Eldh. In both cases, Brother Cy had chosen their destinations with care.
The ruins where the dervish discovered him turned out to be all that was left of Usyr, once the greatest city of ancient Amъn, and now little more than a few heaps of stone that jutted out of the desert like the bones of giants. The old dervish had come to Usyr to find secrets of sorcery. Instead he had found death. While opening a box of scrolls, he had sprung an ancient trap, releasing a cloud of poisonous dust, and even as he stumbled upon Farr he was dying.
You must take them,the dervish had said, giving the scrolls to Farr. All my life I have searched for them. I have sacrificed everything to seek them out: my home, my people, my blood.
The scrolls had been filled with writing Farr could not understand. What are they?
They are a story, the dervish said. The story of the birthing of all the worlds. Those that are, and those that are not.
All night Farr huddled in the ruins with the dervish, listening to the old man speak. He told Farr everything that had happened to him in his years as a dervish, everything he had forsaken and everything he had learned. Then, as the horizon turned from gray to white, the old man fell silent; he was dead.
As the sun rose, Farr took the dervish’s bag of food, his waterskins, and the scrolls, then donned the old man’s black serafi. He set out on foot, in the direction from which the dervish said he had come.
For three days Farr walked through the desert, beneath the blazing sun, avoiding scorpions, vipers, and sandstorms, until his water was gone. Another day he walked, but still there was no sign of a village. The vultures began to circle again; death drew near. At last Farr fell to his knees, ready to die. Only then he remembered there was one other thing he had taken from the dervish: his knife.
Farr cut his arm, let his blood spill upon the sand, and called the morndarito him, just as the dervish had described.
“I didn’t really think they would come,” Farr said, the words quiet. “Even after all that had happened, after all I had seen, I don’t think I truly believed in magic. Only then they did come, just as the old man had said.” His eyes went distant, and he touched his left arm. “At first I was nearly intoxicated, and they drank deeply of my blood, drawing it from me with terrible force. Then fear sharpened my mind, and I commanded the spirits to lead me to water. To my amazement, they did.
“They carved a line in the sand, and I stumbled along it before the winds could blow it away. It turned out I was very close to a village. It was just on the other side of a ridge. However, if I had kept on in the direction I had been walking, I would have passed it and never known. I managed to stumble into the village, and I fell down next to the oasis and drank as the spirits buzzed away.”
Vani studied Farr with a look of grudging respect. “Only one in a hundred has any talent for sorcery. And only one in a thousand might call the morndariand command them successfully on the first try. It is fate you came here, for you were born to this. And yet . . .” A knife appeared in her hands.
“Are you going to kill me?” Farr said. He made no attempt to move away from her.
The T’golran a finger along the edge of the knife. “To be a dervish is anathema. The working of blood sorcery is forbidden by my people.”
“I am not one of the Mournish.”
Vani sheathed the knife. Only then did Travis realize he had been holding his breath. He glanced at Grace; her eyes were locked on Farr. Larad watched with cool interest.
“You are right about one thing,” Farr said, sitting down at the table again. “To be a dervish is to be an outcast. I learned that at the village I first came to. The people came for me, throwing stones at me, driving me from the village. Luckily, I had had time to refill my waterskins, and this time there was a road to follow, leading to a larger city. Once there, I made sure to hide my black serafiand dress in the garb of common folk.”
“You’re not hiding your robe now,” Travis said.
“One can only hide what one truly is for so long. I believe you understand that well, Travis Wilder.”