Black Jade (11 page)

'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!'

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.