Black Jade Read online

  Then one of the Red Knights below us raised up his arm, and another horn rang out its bone-chilling blare. The forty Zayak on their horses began their charge toward Bajorak and his warriors. And the Red Knights - bearing drawn maces or swords - began moving at the double-pace up between the two ridges.

  'They come!' Kashak whispered to me.

  I remained frozen to the ground, gripping a rock with one hand and my sword in the other. The entire world narrowed until I could see neither mountain nor sky nor rocks running along the edge of the gray-green grasslands. I had eyes for only one man: he who led the Red Knights up along the stream cutting between the two ridges. His yellow surcoat blazed with a great red dragon. I felt the fury of the sun heating up my sword and a wild fire inside me, and I knew that this man was Morjin.

  'Lord Valashu, they come!' Kashak whispered more urgently.

  He pulled at my cloak, and I nodded my head. We scuttled crablike down the slope a dozen yards before rising to a crouch and then running back down to join our companions.

  There were too few trees here to provide cover for all the Sarni. Kashak's warriors grumbled at being ordered to hide behind them, while Karimah's Manslayers almost rebelled at being asked to lie down behind some raspberry bushes. I stood with Kane, Maram and Atara behind a rock the size of a wagon. We waited for our enemy to appear in the notch down and around the curve of the stream.

  'Oh, Lord, my Lord!' Maram sighed out to me. He fingered the edge of his drawn sword: a Valari kalama like the one that Kane held to his lips as he whispered fell words and then kissed its brilliant steel. 'That Kashak was right, wasn't he? It seems always to come to this.'

  I looked up to my left past the stream, at the ridge where Bajorak waited with his warriors. The curve of the ground obscured the sight of most of his small force, but I knew they were ready because I could see three of the Danladi nearest us. They pulled back their bowstrings as they sighted their arrows on the Zayak who would be riding uphill against them.

  'Why, Val why?' Maram murmured to me. 'I should be sitting by a stream in the Morning Mountains, preparing to eat a picnic lunch that my beloved has made for me. Look at this lovely day! Ah, why, why, why did I ever consent to leave Mesh?'

  'Shhh!' Kane whispered fiercely to him. 'You'll give us away!'

  I smiled sadly, for Maram was right about one thing: it was a beautiful day. In the hills behind us, birds Here singing. The sun rained down a bright light upon the reddish rocks and the silvery green leaves of the cottonwood trees. Below us, along either bank of the stream and up the rocky slopes, millions of small white flowers grew. Atara called them Maiden's Breath. A soft breeze rippled their delicate petals, which shimmered in the sunlight. It occurred to me that I should be picking a bouquet for Atara, rather than gripping a long sword in which gathered reddish-orange flowers of flame.

  We heard our enemy before we saw them, for as they advanced up the stream, they made a great noise: of boots kicking at rocks; of grunts and hard breath puffing out into the warm air; of interlocking rings of mail jangling and grinding against the sheets of steel plate that covered their shoulders, forearms and chests. And of twanging bowstrings, as well, as Bajorak's warriors upon the ridge rained down arrows upon them. Steel points broke against steel armor and shields with a clanging terrible to hear. A few of these must have broken through to the flesh beneath for the air below the towering Ass's Ears rang with the even more terrible screams of men struck down or dying. I wondered if Bajorak's men were concentrating on the Red Knights or the more vulnerable Zayak warriors in their flimsy leather armor. And then our enemy rounded the curve of the stream and charged up the flower-covered slopes straight toward us.

  They did not see us until it was too late. I waited until they came close enough to smell their acrid sweat, and then I shouted out: 'Attack!'

  Kashak's men stepped out from behind the trees at the same momenlthat Karimah's Manslayers lifted their bows over the tops of the raspberry bushes. With Atara, these archers were twenty in number, and they loosed their arrows almost as one. The first volley, fired at such short range, killed a dozen of the Red Knights and the Zayak. A few arrows glanced off red armor, but many found their marks through the Zayaks' throats or chests, or straight through the Red Knights' vulnerable faces. I shouted at Kashak's men to keep to the cover of the trees, but in this one matter they I did not heed me. They were Sarni warriors, used to battle on the open steppe, and they thought it shameful to hide behind trees. The second volley found our enemy better prepared; the knights covered their faces with their shields, while the Zayak warriors loosed arrows of their own at us. I grunted in pain as a long, feathered shaft slammed into my shoulder but failed to penetrate my tough Godhran armor. There was no third volley. With our two small forces so close to each other, our enemy's leader shouted out for his men to close the distance and charge into us where the fighting would be hand to hand.

  With a chill that shot down my spine, I recognized this voice as belonging to Morjin. It was a strong voice, almost musical in its tone, and it vibrated with sureness and command. And with malevolence, vanity and a hunger for cruelty that made my belly twist with hot acids and pain. His face was Morjin's, too: not, however, the aged, haunted countenance with the blood-red eyes and grayish, decaying flesh that I knew to be his true face, but rather that of his youth. He was fine and fair to look upon. His eyes were all clear and golden, and sparkled like freshly minted coins. His thick hair, the color of Atara's, spilled out from beneath his carmine helm. Although not quite a large man, he moved with a power that I felt pulsing out across three dozen yards of ground. In truth, he fairly quavered with all the fell vitality of a dragon.

  Was it possible, I wondered, that he had somehow regained the power to deceive me with the same illusions that he cast over other men? Or had he found in the Lightstone a way to renew himself? There was something strange about him, in the way he moved and scanned the flower-covered slopes before him. He seemed to apprehend the rocks and trees and the men standing beside them both from close-up and from far away, like an ever-watchful angel of death. His gaze found mine and seared me with his hate. The flames of his being writhed in flares of madder, puce and incarnadine - and with other colors that I could not quite behold. The burning sickness inside me told me that this must be Morjin.

  Without warning, Atara loosed an arrow at him. But he moved his head at the same moment that her bowstring cracked, and the arrow whined harmlessly past him. He pointed his finger at her then. Atara gave a gasp, and slumped back against our rock. I could feel her second sight leave her. She shook her bow at Morjin in her helplessness and rage at being made once more truly blind.

  'Kill the witch!' he shouted to his men. Now he pointed at me.

  'Kill the Valari!!'

  'Morjin!' I shouted back at him. 'Damn you Morjin!'

  I rushed at him then even as he charged at me. But his Red Knights close by, those still standing, would not let him take straight-on the fury of my sword. A few of them crowded ahead of him as a vanguard. I cut down the foremost with a slash through his neck. Blood sprayed my face, and I cried out in the agony of the man I had killed. I was only dimly aware of other combats raging aroud me as Kashak's warriors and the Manslayers ran down the slopes with flashing sabers to meet the advance of the Red Knights and the Zayak. Some part of me saw steel biting into flesh and bright red showers raining down upon the snowy white blossoms at our feet. I heard arrows whining out upon the ridge above us, and curses and screams, and I knew that Bajorak's men were fighting a fierce battle with the mounted Zayak. But I had eyes only for Morjin. I fought my way closer to him, shivering the shield of a knight with a savage thrust. I felt Maram on my left and Kane on my right, stabbing their swords into the Red Knights who swarmed forward to protect their lord. The world dissolved into a glowing red haze. And then I killed another of his vanguard, and Morjin suddenly stood unprotected in front of me.

  'Mother!' I cried out. 'Father! Asaru!'

 
; I raised high my bright silver blade, dripping with blood. And then one of Kashak's warriors - or perhaps it was a Manslayer -nearly robbed me of my vengeance. A bow cracked, and an arrow streaked forth. But as before with Atara, Morjin moved out of the way at the instant the bolt was loosed at him. He must, I knew, possess some sort of uncanny sense of when others were intending to deal him a death blow. As I did, too. We were brothers in our blood, I thought, bound to each other in the quick burn of the kirax poison no less than in our souls' bitter hate.

  'Morjin!'

  'Elahad!'

  I swung my sword at him. He parried it with a shocking strength. Steel rang against silustria, and I felt a terrible power run down my blade into my arms and chest, and nearly shiver my bones. Once, twice, thrice we clashed, pushed against each other and then sprang apart. Maram knocked against my left side as he grunted and gasped and tried to kill the knight in front of him. on my right, Kane's sword struck out with a rare passion to rend and destroy. He wanted as badly as I to kill Morjin. But fate was fate and it was I who rushed in to slay the dragon.

  MORJINNN!

  I stabbed Alkaladur's brilliant point at his neck, but he parried that thrust as well and then nearly cut off my head. He sliced his sword at me, again and again, with a prowess I had encountered in no other man except Kane. The flashing of our blades nearly blinded me; the ringing of steel rattled my skull. This was not the same Morjin that I had fought in Argattha. In his cuts and savage thrusts there was a recklessness, as if he willed himself to lay me open but had little care for his own flesh. This made him vastly more formidable. Twice he missed running me through by an inch. As his sword burned past my head yet again, his contempt blazed out at me. There was something strange, I sensed, in his hate. It was not immediate, like the blast of an open furnace, like mine for him, but rather like the sun's flares as viewed through a dark glass. It had enough fire, though, to kill me if I let it.

  'Look at the Valari!' I heard someone shout above the tumult of the battle. 'His sword. It burns!'

  Blue and red flames ran along my shining blade and blazed only brighter and hotter as I whipped it through the air. The fiery brilliance of my sword dazzled Morjin. Fear ran like molten steel in his eyes, and I knew that I had it within me to slay him. And he knew it, too. With a boldness born of desperation, he gripped his sword with one hand and suddenly thrust at me: quick, low and deep. I moved aside, slightly, and felt his sword scrape past the armor that covered my belly. And then, like a lightning flash, I brought Alkaladur down against his elbow. The silustria fairly burned through steel, muscle and bone, and struck off his arm. The hellish heat seared his flesh; I heard blood sizzling and smelled his cauterized veins. He screamed at me then as he reached for his dagger with the only arm that remained to him.

  'Lord Morjin is wounded!' someone called out. 'To him! To him! Kill the Valari!'

  I raised back my sword to send Morjin into the heart of some distant star, where he would burn forever. But just then one of the Zayak loosed an arrow at me. I pulled back my head at the very moment that it would have driven through my face - right into the path of another arrow aimed by another Zayak. This arrow struck the mail over my temple at the wrong angle to penetrate but with enough force to stun me. A bright white light burst through my eyes, and the world about me blurred. I felt Kane to my right and Maram beside me working furiously with their swords to protect me from the maces and swords of the nearby Red Knights. When my vision finally cleared, I saw other knights closing around Morjin as they bound his arm with twists of rawhide to keep him from bleeding to death and bore him back down the stream, away from the battle.

  'Morjin!' I cried out. 'Damn you - you won't escape'!' With my friends, I hacked and stabbed at the wall of knights in front of us. On either side of the stream, arrows sizzled out and sabers flashed as the Manslayers and Danladi threw themselves at the Red Knights and the Zayak. As promised, Kashak fought like a pride of lions. In this close combat against the Red Knights, his thinner sword and lighter armor proved a disadvantage, as with the other Sarni. But Kashak made up for this with a rare fierceness and strength. He towered over the Red knights, calling out curses as his saber slashed through wrists or throats with a savagery that shocked our enemy. He closed with one of them, and he used his great fist like a battering ram, driving it into the man's face with a sickening crunch that I heard above the din of the battle. I heard Kane, as well, growling and cursing to my right even as a howl of rage built inside me. I cried out to Morjin, in a hot, red, silent wrath, my vow that he would never get away.

  And as his paladins bore him down the rocky banks of the stream, away from the high ground in front of the Ass's Ears, he screamed back at me: 'You won't escape me, Elahad! All you Valari! He is nearly free! The Baaloch is! And when he walks the earth again, we shall crucify all your kind, down to the last woman and child!'

  Deep within my memory burned the image of my mother and grandmother, nailed to wood. I suddenly killed one of the Red Knights in front of me with a quick thrust of my sword, and then another. My friends threw themselves at these champions of Morjin, and so did the Manslayers and Kashak's Danladi. We had cut down more than a score of them, and their bleeding bodies crushed the white flowers about the stream and reddened its waters. Even so they still outnumbered us, for they had killed too many of us as well. And yet it was we who pushed them back, with beating sabers and long swords, ever backward down the stream and over broken ground out from the saddle between the two ridges. Through the shifting gaps in the mass of men before me, I watched as four of the Red Knights bore Morjin toward a bend in the stream where our enemy had left their horses. To our left, the Zayak who had ridden against Bajorak along the ridge were in full retreat, galloping back down toward the steppe, it would be only a matter of moments, I saw, before Morjin mounted his horse and joined them.

  'Morjin!' I cried out, yet again. 'Morjin!'

  I could not get at him. Swords flashed in front of me like a steel fence. I howled out my rage at being thwarted. Atara, wandering the battlefield blindly as she felt her way over rocks or dead bodies with the tip of her useless bow, moved closer to me, perhaps drawn by the sound of my voice. She held her unused saber in her hand, and I knew that she would fight to her death to try to protect me. Two of the Red Knights, like jackals, moved in on her to take advantage of her sightlessness. But I moved even more quickly. I cleaved the first of these knights through the helm, and the second I split open with a thrust through his chest. He died burning with a lust to lay his hands about Atara's throat and drag this helpless woman down into darkness with him.

  I fell mad then. I threw myself at the Red Knights and the Zayak warriors, who were slowly retreating over the swells of ground that flowed down to the grasslands of the Wendrush. I cursed and gnashed my teeth and howled like a wolf; I struck out with my fearsome sword, again and again, at arms, bellies, throats, and faces. Steel shrieked and terrible cries split the air. Hacked and headless men dropped before me. The living, in ones and twos, began to break and run. One of the knights threw down his sword and begged for quarter. In my killing frenzy, however, I could not hear his words or perceive the surrender in his eyes. I sent him on without pity, and then another and yet another. And then, suddenly, no more of the enemy remained standing near me -only Kashak, Maram and Kane, who were gasping for breath and spattered with blood. Kashak's warriors, the few who hadn't fallen, gathered behind us, with the remaining Manslayers and Atara.

  'They're getting away!' Kane shouted at me. He pointed his bloody sword out toward the open steppe. 'He is getting away. . . again!'

  Morjin's four paladins, I saw, were grouped around their lord and their horses galloped over the swaying grasses, away from the mountains. They were already far out on the Wendrush, to the east The Red Knights and the few Zayak who had survived the slaughter had mounted their horses and hurried after them, soon to be joined by the Zayak who had ridden against Bajorak.

  'He won't get away!' I shouted. '
Let us ride after him!'

  Our horses, however, were nowhere near at hand. Bajorak ran down from the ridge then and came np to us. He said, 'Six of my men have fallen and four of Kashak's. And six of the Manslayers. We are only thirty, now.'

  He went on to tell that we had slain some thirty of the Red Knights and all but two of the Zayak who had followed Morjin up the stream. With the Zayak that Bajorak's men had felled with arrows, we had accounted for more than fifty of our enemy.

  'But they still outnumber us,' Bajorak told me. 'And if we pursue them, there will be no surprise.'

  'I don't care!'

  'Morjin has the distance now!'

  'Growing greater by the moment, as we stand here!'

  'There may be other companies, other Red Knights and Zayak,' Bajorak told me. 'We have a victory. Morjin might not survive the wound you dealt him. You're free to complete your quest.'

  'I don't care!' I shouted again. I pointed my flaming sword toward the east. 'There is our enemy!'

  Bajorak slowly shook his head. 'I will not pursue him. And neither will my warriors.'

  'It is Morjin!' I shouted in rage. 'And so he will survive, to kill and crucify again!'

  So hot did the fire swirling about my sword grow that Bajorak stepped away from me, and so did Kashak. But Kane, with a terrible wildness in his eyes, pointed toward Morjin racing away from us and shouted, 'He won't survive, damn him! Kill him, Val! You know the way!'

  As I met eyes with Kane, we walked together through a land burning up in flames. And yet, despite the fire and the terrible heat, it was a dark land, as black and hideous as charred flesh.

  'Kill him!' Kane called out as he pointed at Morjin. 'He is weak, now! This is your chance!'