Black Jade Page 9

  In my hands I held a sword that flared hotter and hotter as I stared out at Morjin's shrinking form. Fire burned my face and built to a raging inferno inside me. I held there another sword, finer and yet even more terrible. It was pure lightning, all the fury and incandescence of the stars. With it I had slain Ravik Kirriland. I knew that I had only to strike out with this sword of fire and light to slay Morjin now.

  'So - kill him! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!'

  Father! I cried out silently. Mother! Nona! Asaru!

  'No, Val!' Atara called out to me, stumbling across the uneven ground. She found her way to my side and laid her hand on my shoulder. 'Not this way!' 'Do it!' Kane howled at me.

  Could I slay Morjin with the valarda, of my own will? Could I tell a thunderbolt where to strike?

  'He is getting away, damn it! You are letting him get away!'

  No, a voice inside me whispered. No, no, no.

  'Kill him, now!'

  'No, I won't!' I howled back at Kane. 'He crucified your own mother!'

  MORJINNN!

  I cried out this name with all the agony of my breath, like a blast of fire. My hate for Morjin swelled to the point where I could not control it, where I did not want to control it. Could I stop a whirlwind from blowing? No, I could not, and so finally the lightning tore me open. I felt all my evil rage flash straight out toward the tiny, retreating figure of Morjin as he galloped across the open grasslands. But it was too late. The sword of wrath, I sensed, struck him and stunned him, but did not kill. I watched helplessly as he made his escape toward the curving edge of the world. 'It is too far!' Kane shouted at me. 'You waited too long!' I bowed my head in shame that I had failed to kill Morjin - and in even greater shame that, in the perversion of my sacred gift, I almost had.

  'Damn him!' Kane shouted.

  I lowered my sword and watched as its flames slowly quiesced. With a ringing of silustria against steel, I slid it back into its sheath. And then I turned to Kane and said, 'If I can help it, I won't use the valarda to slay.'

  He stared at me for a moment that seemed to last longer than the turning of the earth into night. His eyes were like hell to look upon. And he shouted at me; 'You won't? Then it is you who are damned!' He watched as Morjin's red form vanished into the shimmering nothingness of the horizon. Then he threw his hands up to the sky, and stalked off up the stream where the dead lay like a carpet leading to a realm that none would wish to walk.

  Neither Bajorak nor Kashak, nor even Karimah, understood what had transpired between us, for they knew little of the nature of my gift. But they realized that they had witnessed here something extraordinary. Kashak stared at Alkaladur's hilt, with its black jade grip and diamond pommel, and he said to me, 'Your sword - it burned! But didn't burn! How is that possible?'

  He made a warding sign with his finger as Bajorak stared at me too. And Bajorak said to me, 'Your face. Valari! It is burnt!'

  I held my hand to my forehead; it was painful and hot as if a fever consumed me. Karimah told me that my face was as red as a cherry, as if I had been staked out all day in the fierce summer sun. She produced a leather bag containing an ointment that the fair-skinned Sarni apply as proof against sunburns. Atara took it from her, and dipped her fingers into it. Her touch was cool and gentle against my outraged flesh as she worked the pungent-smelling ointment into my cheek.

  'Come,' I said pulling away from her. 'Others have real wounds that need tending.'

  So it was with any battle. Bajorak's men had taken arrows through faces, legs or other pans of the body, and Kashak's warriors and the Manslayers had sword cuts to deal with. But these tough Sarni warriors were already busy binding up their wounds. In truth, there was little for me and my friends to do here except stare at the bodies of the dead.

  I pointed at the hacked men lying on top of the pretty white flowers called Maiden's Breath, and I said, 'They must be buried.'

  'Yes, ours will be,' Bajorak said to me. 'The Manslayers and our warriors, even the Zayak, we shall take out onto the steppe and bury in our way. As for Morjin's men, I care not if they rot here in their armor.'

  'Then we,' I said, looking at Maram, 'will dig graves for them here.'

  Maram, exhausted and bloody from the battle, looked at me as if I had truly fallen mad.

  And Bajorak said to me, 'No, the ground here is too rocky for digging. And there is no time. You must hurry after your friends.'

  He pointed up the stream where it disappeared between the two towering Ass's Ears. 'Go now, while you can - ten of my warriors have died that you might go where you must. Honor what they gave here, lord.'

  'And you?'

  Bajorak nodded at Kashak, and then at his warriors still guarding the ridge above with bows and arrows. And he said, 'We shall remain here in case Morjin returns. But I do not think that he will return.'

  I looked up the stream at the many Red Knights that we had killed. They would remain here unburied to rot in the sun. So, then, I thought, that was war. I closed my eyes as I bowed down my head.

  'Go,' Bajorak said to me again, pressing his hand against my chest.

  'All right,' I said, looking at him. 'Perhaps we'll meet again in a better time and a better place.'

  'I doubt it not,' he said to me. He clasped my hand in his. 'Farewell, then, Valari.'

  'Farewell, Sarni,' I told him.

  Then I put my arm across Atara's shoulders and turned toward the mountains. Somewhere, in the heap of rocks to the west, Master Juwain and Liljana would waiting with the children for us. And Kane, I prayed, would be, too.

  Chapter 5

  We collected our horses and then made our way up the stream into the gap between the Ass's Ears. We caught up to my grim-faced friend about half a mile into the mountains. He said nothing to me. Neither did he look at me. He rejoined our company with no further complaint, taking his usual post behind us to guard our rear. Kane, I thought, might bear a cold anger at me like a sword stuck through his innards, but he would never desert me.

  The way up the stream was rocky and broken, and so we walked our horses and remounts behind us. We had no need to track our friends, for the slopes of the foothills here were so steep and heavily wooded that a deer would have had trouble crossing them, and so there was only one direction Master Juwain and the others could have traveled: along the stream, farther into the mountains. These prominences rose higher and higher before us. Although not as immense as the peaks of the upper Nagarshath to the north, they were great enough to chill the air with a cutting wind that blew down from their snow-covered crests. It was said that men no longer lived in this part of the White Mountains - if indeed they ever had. It was also said that no man knew the way through them. This, I prayed, could not be true, for if Master Juwain could not lead us through the Kul Kavaakurk Gorge and beyond, we would be lost in a vast, frozen wilderness.

  For about a mile, as the stream wound ever upward, we saw no sign of this gorge. But then the slopes to either side of us grew deeper and steeper until another mile on they rose up like walls around us. Higher and higher they built, to the right and left, until soon it was clear that we had entered a great gorge. Looking to the west, where this deep deli through the earth cut its way like a twisting snake, we could see no end of it. Surely, I thought we must soon overtake our friends, for there could be no way out of this stone-walled deathtrap except at either end.

  'Ah, I don't like this place,' Maram grumbled as he kicked his way along the stone-strewn bank of the stream. He puffed for air as he gazed at the layers of rock on the great walls rising up around us. 'Can you imagine how it would go for us if we were caught here?'

  'We won't be caught here,' I told him. 'Bajorak will protect the way into the gorge.'

  'Yes, he'll protect that way,' Maram said, pointing behind us. Then he whipped his arm about and pointed ahead. 'But what lies this way?'

  'Surely our friends do,' I told him. 'Now let's hurry after them.'

  But we could not hurry as I would ha
ve liked, not with the ground so rotten - and not with Atara still blind and stumbling over boulders that nearly broke her knees. Even with Maram adding her horses to the string he led along and with me taking her by the hand, it was still a treacherous work to fight our way through the gorge. And a slow one. With the day beginning to wane and no sign of our friends, it seemed that they might be travelling quickly enough to outdistance us.

  And then, as we came out of a particularly narrow and deep part of the gorge, we turned into a place where the stream's banks suddenly widened and were covered with trees. And there, behind two great cottonwoods, with a clear line of sight straight toward us, Surya and the other Manslayer stood pointing their drawn arrows at our faces. Their horses, and those of our friends, were tethered nearby.

  Then Surya, a high-strung and wiry woman, gave a shout, saying, 'It's all right - it's only Lord Valashu and our Lady!'

  Surya eased the tension on her bow and stepped out from behind the tree, and so did the other Manslayer, whose name proved to be Zoreh. And then from behind trees farther up the gorge, Master Juwain, Liljana, Daj and Estrella appeared, and called out to us in relief and gladness.

  'The battle has been won!' I called back to them as they hurried along the stream toward us. 'The Red Knights will not pursue us here!'

  Daj let loose a whoop of delight as he came running down the stream, dodging or jumping over stones with the agility of a rock goat. A few moments later, Estrella threw her arms around me, and pressed her face against my chest. Liljana came up more slowly She took in the blood on our armor and garments. She gazed at my face and said, 'You are burnt, as from fire.'

  Her gaze lowered to fix upon my sheathed sword, and she slowly shook her head.

  Because Surya and Zoreh were staring at me, too, I gave them a quick account of the battle. I said nothing, however, of my sword's burning or my failure to kill Morjin.

  'We must go, then,' Surya told us. 'Six of our sisters are dead, and we must go.'

  She turned to Atara and gazed at her blindfolded face as if trying to understand a puzzle. Then she embraced her, kissing her lips. 'Farewell, my imakla one. We shall all sing to the owls, that your other sight returns soon. But if it does not, who will care for you? Must you go off with these kradaks?'

  'Yes, I must,' Atara told her, squeezing my hand in hers.

  'Then we shall sing to the wind, as well, that fate,will blow you back to us.'

  And with that, she and Zoreh gathered up their horses and turned to begin the walk back down the gorge. We watched them disappear around the rocks of one of its turnigs.

  We decided to go no farther that day. We were all too tired, from battle and from too many miles of hard traveling. Surya had found a place that we could defend as well as any. Four archers, I thought, firing arrows quickly at the bend where the gorge narrowed behind us, could hold off an entire company of Red Knights. We had here good, clear water, even if it was little more than a trickle. Above the stream, the ground between the trees was flat enough to lay out our sleeping furs in comfort. There was grass for the horses, too, and plenty of deadwood for a fire.

  Despite our exhaustion, we fortified our camp with stones and a breastwork of logs. 'Liljana brought out her pots to cook us a hot meal, while Atara and Estrella took charge of washing the blood from pur garments in the stream and mending them in the places where an arrow or a sword had ripped through them. We gathered around the fire to eat our stew and rushk cakes in the last hour of the day. But here, at the bottom of the gorge where the stream spilled over rocks, it was already nearly dark. The sunlight had a hard time fighting its way down to us, and the walls of the gorge had fallen gray with shadow.

  Although we had much to discuss and I desired Kane's counsel, this ancient warrior stood alone behind the breastwork gazing down the stream in the direction from which our enemies would come at us, if they came at all. His strung bow and quiver full of arrows were close at hand as he ate his stew in silence.

  'Ah, what I would most like to know,' Maram said as he licked at his lips, 'is what will become of Morjin?'

  He sat with the rest of us around the fire. From time to time, he poked a long stick into its blazing logs.

  'Unless he bled to death, which seems unlikely,' Master Juwain said, 'he will recover from his wound. A better question might be: what has become of him? If Val is right that it really was Morjin.'

  'It must have been Morjin,' I said. 'Changed, somehow, yes. He is something more ... and something less. There was something strange about him. But I know it was he.'

  'Unless he has an evil twin, it was he,' Maram agreed.

  'But how do we really know that?' Master Juwain asked. 'He is the Lord of Illusions, isn't he? Perhaps he has regained the power to put into our eyes the same images with which he fools other people.'

  Liljana shook her head at this. 'No, what we faced earlier was no illusion. Morjin's mind is powerful - so horribly powerful, as none know better than I. But he cannot, from hundreds of miles away in Argattha, cast illusions that fool so many through the course of an entire battle. And he cannot have fooled me.'

  'No,' I said, fingering my cloak, spread out on a rock near the fire to dry. I had felt the blood from Morjin's severed arm soak into it, and the red smear of it still stained the collar. 'No, he has a great strength now. I felt this in his arms, when we were locked together sword to sword.'

  'Could this not, then, have been the old Morjin drawing strength from the Lightstone?' Master Juwain asked. 'And drawing from it as well the means to deceive you about his form?'

  'No,' I said, touching the hilt of my sword, 'I know that he has lost the power of illusion over me. And the Lightstone is all beauty and truth. There is nothing within it that could help engender illusions and lies.'

  For the span of a year, after my friends and I had rescued the Lightstone out of Argattha, the golden bowl had been like a sun showering its radiance upon us. I missed the soft sheen of it keenly, nearly as much as I did my murdered family. Since the day that Morjin had stolen it back, I had known no true days, only an endless succession of moments darkened as when the moon eclipses the sun. 'Then,' Master Juwain sighed out, 'we have dispensed with several hypotheses. And so we must consider that Morjin has indeed found a way to rejuvenate himself.'

  'I didn't think the Lightstone had that power,' Maram said.

  'Neither did I,' Master Juwain admitted.

  'But what of the akashic crystal?' Atara asked. 'Was there no record within it of such things?'

  Master Juwain sighed again as his face knotted up in regret. With the breaking in Tria of the great akashic crystal, repository of much of the Elijin's lore concerning the Lightstone, Master Juwain's hope of gaining this great knowledge had broken as well.

  'There might have been such a record within it,' Master Juwain said. 'If only I'd had more time to look for it.'

  'Then you don't really know,' Atara said, pressing him.

  Master Juwain squeezed the wooden bowl of stew between his hands as if his fingers ached for the touch of a smoother and finer substance. 'No, I suppose I don't. But I spent many days searching through the akashic stone, following many streams of knowledge. One gets a sense of the terrain this way, so to speak. And everything I've ever learned about the Lightstone gives me to understand that it cannot be used to make one's body and being young again. In truth, it is quite the opposite.'

  'What do you mean, sir?' I asked him.

  'Consider what we do know about the Lightstone,' he said, looking at me and the others. 'Above all, that it is to be used by the Maitreya, and by him only. But used how? Of this, we still have barely a glimmer. "In the Shining One's hands, the true gold; in the Cup of Heaven, men and women shall drink in the light of the One." Indeed, indeed -but what does this really mean? We know that the Maitreya is thus to help man walk the path of the Elijin and Galadin, and so on to the Ieldra themselves, ever and always toward the One. And in so doing, the Maitreya will be exalted beyond any man: in gra
ce, in vitality, in the splendor of his soul. But now let us consider what befalls when the Lightstone is claimed by one who is not the Maitreya. Let us consider Morjin. Clearly, he has used the Lightstone to try to gain mastery over all the other gelstei - even as he has tried to enslave men's souls and make himself master of the world. He searches for the darkest of knowledge! And so he holds in his hands not the true gold but something rather like a lead stone that pulls him ever and always down into a lightless chasm. And so he has utterly debased himself: in his body, in his mind, in his soul. He is immortal, yes, and so he cannot die as other men do. But we have all seen his scabrous flesh, the deadness of his eyes, the rot that slowly blackens his insides. All his lusting for the Lightstone and struggle to master it has only withered him. And so how can he use this cup to make himself young again?'

  I considered long and deeply what Master Juwain had said as I looked through the fire's writhing flames and gazed at the darkening walls of the chasm called the Kul Kavaakurk. How close had I been to claiming the Lightstone for myself? As close as the curve of my fingers or the whispering of my breath - as close as the beating of my heart.

  Maram cast a glance at the silent, motionless Kane standing like a stone carving above us, and he said, 'Didn't our grim friend tell us in Argattha that the Lightstone had no power to make one young again?'

  I touched the hilt of my sword, and I recalled exactly what Kane had told us in Morjin's throne room when he stood revealed as one of the Elijin: that the Lightstone did not possess the power to bestow immortality. I told this to Maram, and to the others, who sat around the fire quietly eating their dinner.

  Then Maram nodded at Master Juwain and said, 'Then it might be possible that Morjin has rejuvenated himself.'

  'It is possible,' Master Juwain allowed. 'No man knows very much about the Lightstone.'

  He looked up at Kane, and so did everyone else. But still Kane said nothing.

  'We know,' Liljana said, 'that Morjin can draw a kind of strength from the Lightstone, as he does in feeding off others' fear or adulation I or even in drinking their blood. And so I suppose we must assume he has found a way to renew himself, if only for a time.'