From the first they met with misfortune. One was murdered, and three were seized on false claims of debt and sold into slavery. The rest were cheated and robbed. Moreover, they heard not one word of Asarta, for all their asking. There seemed to be neither tale nor memory of her.
When they had lost almost all that they had brought, four decided to give up and go home, but one man and one woman said that they would continue the search, penniless and hopeless though they were. Their names were Reyel Ortahlson and Dirna Urlasdaughter. These two journeyed on, choosing their roads at random, until they came to a city on the very edge of the immense desert that marked the eastern boundary of the Empire.
It was here one morning, sitting in the shadow of a gateway, they saw two women walking out of the desert. As they passed under the arch, one said to the other, “So that is the end of Asarta. I never thought I should live to see her go. It will be a strange world without her.”
The two from the Valley jumped up and caught the women by their cloaks and said, “Asarta? You have news of Asarta? We have journeyed from the furthest north to find her.”
The women shook their heads and said, kindly enough, “You come too late. She is gone into the desert to undo her days. An hour after moonrise she will be no more.”
“There is still time to find her,” said the two from the Valley. “Which way did she go?”
“She went east,” said the women. “But you will not find her, not unless she chooses to be found.”
Reyel and Dirna filled their flasks from a reeking tank by the gate and set out east across the burning sands. There was no path and no shade. The water was too foul to drink, so they wetted themselves with it and trudged on. A time came when they knew in their hearts that if they did not turn back they would die in the desert, but they plodded on east, and as the sun went down and their shadows stretched far in front of them they came to a rocky hollow with a carved stone slab at its center. Sitting by the slab with her head bowed was an old woman in a gray cloak.
The two went quietly down and stood a few paces to one side, afraid to speak, knowing the place was holy. But the woman looked up and said in a mild voice, “You come on an errand. You have something to ask. Tell me your trouble.”
They told her, and she nodded, and said, “You have brought me a fee?”
“We have nothing,” they said. “We started our journey with friends and money and jewels, but we were cheated and robbed all the way, and now we have only the clothes we wear.”
“Nothing?” said Asarta. “You are asking a great work to be done for nothing?”
“I have half of a stale barley loaf I begged in the city,” said Dirna.
“There is a little water left in my flask,” said Reyel.
“Give them to me,” said Asarta.
They did so, and she moistened her lips from the flask and broke a corner from the loaf and ate it, and then handed them back.
“Very well,” she said. “I cannot in any case do what you ask. I have put all that aside. But I can tell you what you must do. First, you must wait here and watch what happens until I am gone, and then you must journey to the city of Talak and find a man called Faheel and ask him to help you. He will demand a fee and you will give him this ring. Keep it safe, and do not attempt to wear it. I trust you with it, because you have shown that you have the will to carry a task through.”
She took a gold ring from her finger and put it on the slab beside her. With a twist of her hand she broke off a corner of rock and blew on it and it became fine sand. This she rubbed out between her thumb and forefinger, spinning it into a braided cord which she threaded through the ring, rubbing the ends together so that they joined without a knot. She gave it to Dirna, who slid the cord over her head and tucked the ring down inside her blouse. The cord assumed the color of her skin, so that you would not have known it was there.
Asarta nodded to show that she had finished and sat as they had first seen her. The two climbed to the lip of the hollow and settled to watch. While they waited they ate some of the loaf and drank from the flask, and found that the bread was soft and fresh, and smelled as if it had just now come from the oven, while the water was as sweet and clean and cool as a snowmelt stream in the Valley.
The sky darkened and the stars came out. The moon rose, shining bright across the desert, but the hollow by which they sat was still in dense shade, from which now they heard the whisper of Asarta’s voice, old and thin, like dead leaves trapped in a wind eddy. As the moon climbed and began to shine into the hollow the voice became stronger, harsher, like a queen’s commanding her armies, or the chant of a priestess with the knife raised for the sacrifice. By the time it shone full down into the bowl there was a tall woman standing beside the carved slab, wearing the same gray robe that Asarta had worn, but with long dark hair flowing around it, so that it could hardly be seen. Her voice was a ringing chant that made the boulder on which they sat tingle and quiver, while flecks of light like crumbled star-stuff darted to and fro across the bowl. Then the stance eased and the voice softened and the chant became a song, while the flecks of light whirled closer around the young woman who stood by the slab so that she was lit by their light as well as by the moon’s. The song ended, and she stood in silence, waiting.
Time also waited. The two from the Valley had watched, not understanding what they saw. But they remembered what the women by the gateway had said, and guessed that if they took any step down into the hollow they would be trapped in the backward eddy of the years, sucked into the vortex where Asarta sang. Now that the song was over the eddy stilled.
Asarta threw back her cloak and with her bare arms made a slow ritual gesture, as if offering an invisible vessel to the starlit sky. The shimmering flecks that had whirled around her gathered between her palms, making a shape like the drop that is left at the center of a ribbed leaf after a shower, lit with its own light, paler and brighter than the moon’s.
She gazed at it for a while, unblinking. Then, continuing the interrupted movement of her arms, she raised it above her head and it floated away, widening and widening until it seemed to disperse itself into moonlight. Reyel and Dirna watched it disappear. When they looked down into the hollow Asarta was also gone.
The two from the Valley trudged back to the city and asked directions to Talak. It was a long and dangerous journey, but they made it without trouble apart from the ordinary weariness of endless walking. The barley loaf and the flask of water sustained them, not merely staying fresh but renewing themselves, so there seemed always as much of them left when they next needed them as there had been the time before. When armed bandits raided a resting place for travelers and stripped all who were there naked so that they could better search them, they seemed not to notice the two from the Valley where they sat quietly under the wall.
And again, when they came to Talak itself they found lines of travelers at the gateways, where guards questioned and searched each one, demanding monstrous fees before they let them pass. But when the two reached the front of their line the guard was interrupted with the news that his wife had just borne him a son, and in his delight he just waved the pair through.
But once inside the city their troubles began. Talak is very ancient, with the Emperor’s palace at its heart, and broad streets leading to it from the twelve great gates. Between these open ways it is all twisting lanes and alleys. People who have lived in Talak all their lives can lose themselves in a strange quarter and take a day or more to find their way home. Furthermore the people of Talak are a suspicious, scurrying lot, and when the two from the Valley asked where they could find Faheel they were met with blank faces or shrugs or, sometimes, a quick, sharp stare, as if the question were dangerous, or mad.