Paulo took a bite and chewed for a moment, watching the long-limbed man draw circles in the dirt with his toe. “Everybody ought to have a name. In this land we got names even if we’re nobodies.”
“If I could have a name, I think it would be Zanore,” said the runner, cocking his head thoughtfully. “I feel that name. But it has not been granted to me. Perhaps someday, if I live well.”
“Nobody has to grant you a name here. If you want to be called it, then just say so.” Paulo passed me the food bag. “Don’t you think he should be called Zanore if he wants?”
I chose two biscuits and shrugged. “I’ll call you Zanore. Whatever you like.”
The black runner seemed to grow two hands taller right there in front of us. He bowed first to me and then to Paulo, scraping the dusty road with his spiky silver hair. “I am honored beyond tellings by your naming, great Master. And I thank you for your goodwill, Horseman Mighty.”
Paulo turned pure scarlet. “My name is Paulo. Does Zanore mean something special, or is it like mine… just a name?”
“Oh, sir, Zanore is not ‘just a name.’ No name is ‘just a name.’ Names are realness. Hereness. Names are bounded.” He grinned hugely, as if he had explained everything.
Once I had swallowed the last crumbs of biscuit and drunk a bit of the tepid, murky stream water from my waterskin, my disposition was much improved. I offered the waterskin to the leathery man. He was so much wider than his bony horse, he looked like an owl astride a twig as he sat gaping cheerfully at his two friends. “I suppose you have a name you’re interested in, too.”
I would have sworn the red tufts of hair on his brown head wriggled in delight. “Ob.”
“Well then… Ob… I thank you for your help. Have a drink if you want.”
“Honor.” Though he spoke only one word at a time, his words seemed to have a great deal more bulk than other people’s. He declined the water, but he bellowed a laugh and tipped sideways, making the deepest bow he could manage without toppling from his horse.
The three begged us to say what else we might need that they could acquire for us. I didn’t want to be greedy, for I had a feeling that their “acquirings” would be at the expense of some terrified villagers. The two horses they rode, though not exceptional, were surely being missed by someone.
“Nothing just now,” I said. “Unless you could transport us farther away as you did before. I want to go to the dream place, the place you’ve shown me with the black-and-purple sky.”
The three gave a huge, satisfied sigh.
“Ah, not so far can we carry you,” said Vroon, grinning so widely it crinkled the skin over his missing eye.
“You will find your own way there… if you are the one. If not, you will fail.”
“If I’m the one what?”
“The One Who Makes Us Bounded. Who gives us names. His coming is awaited most eagerly.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve seen you three in my dreams - you know that?”
They looked at each other with unreadable expressions. “We came searching for the dreamer. For such a long time we have searched, listening for tales of kings and rulers. Following. Hoping to recognize the dreamer. We felt urgently to come to the fallen fastness, and there we find you! You were not fearful, and so we believe you are the one we have been waiting for. You have… ”
“… wholeness,” said Ob. His broad brow wrinkled into deep furrows, as if his thoughts were as ponderous as his body.
Silly. I pulled my cloak around me and nudged Jasyr to get moving.
The day grew warmer. We continued northward. I tried a few more questions, but our companions held their tongues and shook their heads. They just weren’t going to tell me what I wanted. Part of their game must be making me guess.
“So how far can you take us?” I said as the road narrowed and curved into the shadowed ravine between two brown hillsides.
Vroon thought for a moment. “Next topland, anywards. Or mighty treeland sunwards traveling. Or stonewalled fastness coldwards.”
I puzzled at the odd descriptions as we rode in and out of the patchy shadows and sunlight of the rolling hill country. Topland anywards… Hilltops? In any direction? Mighty treeland… A forest, most likely… a big one. Sunwards traveling. East? No, west, following the sun. The forest of Tennebar lay west of us. And there were a number of stone-walled fastnesses hereabouts - fortresses and castles built to control the approaches to Montevial. And coldwards would be north. Comigor was perhaps five leagues north…
Of course! Vroon must have picked up the destinations directly from me, not reading my thoughts exactly, because I’d not voiced them even to myself. But he had offered hilltops because I was worried about pursuit, and we couldn’t see more than a half a league in any direction from where we were. He considered Tennebar because that was the route to the Vallorean highlands where the shepherd’s son had disappeared. And Comigor, because I could not ride these hills without thinking of the castle where’d I’d grown up always afraid, and where I’d first met my mother without either of us knowing it.
The choice was easy. “The mighty treeland,” I said. “Sunwards traveling.” The time wasn’t yet right for going back to Comigor. But a fast journey to Tennebar would give us a terrific head start on any pursuers, putting us two days closer to Valleor and the shepherd’s lay.
“As you say.” And with no more fuss than if they were preparing supper, Zanore jogged up between Jasyr and Molly and grabbed my right arm and Paulo’s left, while Vroon and Ob rode to the outside, taking my left arm and Paulo’s right. Then we fell off the edge of the world again. The last thing I saw was Paulo’s puzzled stare at Vroon and me. And the last question on my lips was answered before I could blurt it out. The horses could indeed come with us, for after some indefinable, unsettling instant. I sat on a nervous Jasyr under the green shadowed eaves of Tennebar.
“Bloody hell!” Paulo and Molly were backing in nervous circles, and Paulo had to use all his particular skills to quiet his big-hearted mare. Truthfully, I think Paulo was more disconcerted than Molly.
“Can you take us across this treeland?” I said. “ ‘Sunwards traveling’ yet again?”
“No more,” said Vroon, grinning. “Your own way must you make. Ob, Zanore, and I will beside you watch, for acquirings you need or guardings. But the way must be your own.” He bobbed his brown beard. “We believe you are the one we hope for.”
“So what do you make of them?” said Paulo, after the three winked out again, leaving us to ride alone through the forest in the bright noonday. “They’re not from Avonar, are they? I didn’t see nobody like them there.”
“No. And they’re not from Zhev’Na, either.” Paulo’s face didn’t change when I said that, but he fixed his eyes on me as if he might see something different if he looked long enough. I watched the road. “No one in Zhev’Na had any deformities. Think of the Zhid warriors, still Dar’Nethi in form, but all very much alike, even the women. Perfect variations of the same mold. Similar in stature and strength. No weaknesses. They never transformed Duke into Zhid. The Zhid considered them too short, too small.” I hated thinking about Zhev’Na, much less talking about it.
“Then are these three from yet another world?”
“I don’t know… though I’m beginning to have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Not yet. You’re hard enough to convince of things I’m sure of. Let’s get closer and see.”
“Closer to where?”
“The place where the shepherd’s son disappeared. I think it’s a portal to the world I see in my dreams.”
At sunset, we stopped somewhere in the middle of the forest and made camp - if rolling off a saddle into last year’s leaves and Paulo telling the horses not to go away could be called making camp. It had been two days without sleep for both of us, and little enough for me before that. On that night in Tennebar, we slept from sunset to sunrise, and only at the end of the long night did I fall once again into dreaming. But the dream was as strange as everything else…