Black Jade (38 page)

The droghul smiled at me, and for a moment, I almost forgot who and what he was. I felt a great, churning emptiness in his belly, and I asked him, 'Are you truly hungry, or was that just pan of your ruse?'

'I'm always hungry,' the droghul said to me.

'So what if he is?' Kane shouted. 'Let him be hungry, then!'

'No,' I said. 'He should be watered and fed.'

'But, Val, think of what
this
has done to you! Let him suffer, I say!'

The loneliness that burned in the droghul's eyes, as vast as the heavens on a clear night, told of a suffering that I could just barely apprehend. I said to Kane, 'He will suffer the more if he has strength to do so.'

It was a simple thing to say that our captive should be fed, but none of us wished to put a cup to his lips or hold a crust of bread to his mouth that he might gnaw on it. Kane continued scowling at the droghul. Finally, Estrella picked up a waterskin and walked toward him. But I took it from her and performed the repulsive task of tending to the droghul myself.

Then I steeled myself to question this strange, dreadful being. I knew that it would be dangerous. And I knew that Morjin's creature would tell me things that I didn't want to hear.

Atara, perhaps sensing my distress, came closer to the droghul and stood before him. It was she who asked of him one of the questions that vexed me. 'How did you find us?'

And this bound man who was almost Morjin said to her: 'How do
you
find anything at all now since I took your eyes?'

At this, Atara remained silent at she oriented her blindfolded face toward the droghul and clenched an arrow in her fist.

The droghul said to her, 'The world grows darker and darker, doesn't it?'

Then his gaze fell upon me, and through the veins of my neck a fire burned as my sword flared in my hand.

I said, 'He'll always find me now. It's the kirax, isn't it?'

He said with a smile, 'Our blood is one, and so how should I not find the beating of my own heart?'

'Our blood is
not
one!' I shouted at him. 'My lineage is of noble kings, while you call the Dark One himself your father!'

'I am
your
father,' the droghul said to me. 'As I've told you before, all that you are now is because of me.'

Despite the coolness of the night, my hand oozed a hot sweat that slicked the hilt of my sword. I could not bear the hatred in the droghul eyes, so like Morjin's - and so like my own.

'Your'e the Lord of Lies!' I said to him. 'You're the Crucifier!' 'I am your brother,' he told me. 'If I had two arms and I wasn't bound with rope, I would embrace you to me!'

The nearness of this droghul of Morjin sent the acids of revulsion to eating at my belly. I aimed my sword at his throat. It would be a simple thing to put an end to his lies, here and now. But Morjin, the immortal and real Morjin who must at this moment dwell three hundred miles away in the dark hole of Argattha, he would remain untouched - or would he?

I commanded my arms to lower my sword; I drew in a deep breath and said, 'I speak to you as if you
are
Morjin. But you are a ghul, aren't you, a droghul? Morjin moves your mouth and puts words into it. He moves your arms and hands. If that is so, is your hurt also his? When I cut off your arm, did Morjin feel the pain of it himself?'

The droghul shuddered as I said this. For a moment his eyes cleared, and a strange being stared back at me as through a great emptiness. Then the amber of these golden orbs seemed to grow all fiery and red as the droghul's face hardened with lines that I knew too well. His smile became as Morjin's smile: bright, prideful, anguished and cruel.

'Does a puppeteer,' he said to me, 'feel pain when a puppet's wooden arm is snapped off?'

'A better question might be,' Atara said from beside me, 'if a
man
feels anything at all when he puts his thumbs into another's eyes or pounds nails through her hands?'

'I
do
feel,' the droghul said. He looked Atara and then back at me. 'Valashu
knows
how his agony has become my own.'

'You feed on it, don't you?' I said to him. 'The way your priests drink their victims' blood?'

'Suffering makes us greater - I have spoken of this in the letter that I wrote to you.'

'Then you must not mind,' I said to the Morjin who dwelled so far away, 'any suffering that you have brought upon this flesh that is yours.'

'It is
you,'
he said to me, 'who severed my arm with that cursed sword of yours. But that begs the question: can a puppet truly suffer?'

As he spoke, the muscles along his jaw tightened and began to tremble. He ground his teeth together. The light of the fire showed a terrible hate eating up his eyes. Then he shook his head, and his lips pulled back in an anguished grimace. The being that then looked out at me might have been the real Morjin or only his droghul - I could not tell.

'I
do
suffer,' he said to me again. 'All that is flesh does. And I suffer most when
he
comes for me.'

'When
who
comes for you?' Master Juwain asked him, stepping closer.

'When the Dragon comes.'

'But are you
not
he, made from his own blood and flesh? Did he not stamp his mind into yours and shape yours as his very own?'

'I don't know,' he told Master Juwain. 'I have no memory of what I was, before I
was.
And now. . .'

'Yes?' Master Juwain asked him.

'And now it is like this: the whole world is a cavern cut out of black rock; there I dwell with the Dragon. In the instant that I do or say or think anything that is against the Dragon's will he comes for me, with fire. It is like being dipped into a vat of burning
relb
. If I displease the Dragon a little, then there is only a little burning - let us say he takes only my feet and leds. But if I defy him or try to, then he burns me down to the bone untill nothing is left except darkness - and the Dragon. He always
is
, do you understand? There is no escape. For in the end. I am the Dragon!'

There was a fire in his words as he said this; in his terrible eyes blazed his will to devour Master Juwain, and all things.

'I should not have asked you,' Master Juwain said, looking away from him. A sick look tormented his face as if someone had forced him to eat ordure. 'We should not let him speak.'

'Master Juwain is right,' Kane said to me. 'Don't listen to this thing - he's only trying to play upon your pity so that you don't slay him, as you must.'

But I gave the droghul some more water. Then I asked him, 'But when the Dragon sleeps, as sometimes he must, is your will your own? Can you speak the truth of your heart?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'I can never be sure which words are mine or which are his. I can't be sure when I am I, or I am he.' 'But who
are
you, really?'

'Who is anybody?' he asked me. 'I am that I am.' His face softened as he said this, and his eyes emptied of hate. They were like deep golden waters that called to me. Tied to the fence in front me stood a young man who seemed of an age with myself. There was an innocence about him and an eagerness to live. I couldn't help feeling the joy of his heart as it beat like a great, red drum with the very sound of life itself, which was the same in all beings, whether lion or squirrel or man - or even the droghul of a man.

What
was
a man truly. I wondered? What was it to feel and breathe and be? If I asked myself this question, if I looked past all the moments and memories of my life for the true Valashu Elahad.

what would I find? Wasn't there always a deeper and truer self looking back at me? And at the very center, like a perfect jewel buried within the petals of a rose, was there not a brilliant light that illuminated all that I ever thought or felt or did and was always aware of me? A single light, the same light blazing forth in a butterfly or a bird or a man, even a droghul, always watching, always knowing, shining like a star and . . .

'Valashu!' Master Juwain called to me as from a thousand miles away. 'Do not look at him so!'

When I looked for this splendid light inside the droghul, as the droghul himself must look, peeling back the petals of the rose, I saw only the golden eyes of Morjin looking back at me.

'No!' I gasped out. 'No!'

I forced myself to turn my head; it seemed almost as difficult as it must be to pull one's own hands off the nails of a cross. When I looked back at the droghul, there were tears in his eyes. It made me want to weep with the anguish of what Morjin had done to his own flesh.

'Your pity will yet undo you,' Kane growled out to me. 'But remember that this droghul led those filthy knights against us, and killed too many of Bajorak's warriors. And somehow followed you across Acadu in order to murder you.'

At that moment, the droghul's face seemed as tormented as that of the true Morjin. I sensed that it must cost Morjin a great deal to control the droghul from so far away - and even more to twist the Lightstone to his own evil purpose.

'That
is
why you followed us, isn't it?' Kane said to the droghul, stepping closer to him. 'Or did you have a deeper ruse?'

In answer, the droghul only stared at him.

'Damn you!' Kane shouted. 'You'll speak when
I
command it, I swear you will!'

So saying, he began tearing deadwood out of the fence near the droghul and piling it around the droghul's legs. Then he called out, 'So, do you really wish to know what it is like to burn? Do not think that anything of you will remain. When you die,
you
die, and that will be the end of things, eh?'

'Kane!' I said. 'Enough!'

I placed my hand on his shoulder, a little too near the place where the arrow pierced him. He winced at this, even as I winced, too. I looked at the droghul, at the dark light of terror that ran through his eyes. I smelled the fear running out of the pores in his skin.

'I
will
die,' the droghul said to me. 'Since I sailed with you I will surely die.'

'That is upon me to decide,' I told him, wrapping my hand more tightly around my sword.

'No, it is not.
He
gave me life, and he can take it away.' The droghul closed his eyes for a moment as he drew in a long and tortured breath. Then he looked at me and said, 'And he will take it. He will command me to die so that you might know there is no hope.'

'There is always hope,' I said as I touched the scarf that my grandmother had made for me.

'Not always,' the droghul said with a smile. 'Without my leave, you'll never get past the Skadarak.'

I nodded at Berkuar and said, 'Our companion knows the way.'

'He may know the way that once was, but the Skadarak has grown.'

'We will find a way through it,' I said to the droghul 'and go on.'

'On to search for the Maitreya? Perhaps I
should
let you pass.'

'You have great power over men,' I said to him. I looked at my sword doubtfully as it flared bright silver. 'Perhaps over the gelstei, too. But you've no power over the earth itself.'

'Don't I?' The droghul stood up straighter against the pull of the rope binding him. 'I am Lord of the Lightstone, am I not? And thus Lord and Master of the earth.'

Again, I looked at my sword blazing so brilliantly. And I said, 'No, not yet, you aren't.'

The droghul smiled without humor as he said, 'No, not yet -it's true. But soon, and then utterly and forever.'

Kane, not wishing to hear such proud speech, made a fist as if to strike the droghul. Again, I laid my hand on his shoulder.

'Until then,' the droghul said, 'I
am
master of the gelstei, and that is why you'll never get past the Skadarak.
He
knows.'

The droghul aimed his eyes at Kane, who pulled away from me and stared out over the fence toward the dark forest to the west. He would not look at me.

'It is the Black Jade,' the droghul said. 'The great black gelstei.' He went on to tell of the War of the Stone and of the glory of
his
master, Angra Mainyu. He claimed that Angra Mainyu wanted only to vanquish the Great Lie and bring about a new creation -and to take his rightful place in it as the one called the Marudin. But the Galadin, he said, grew envious of him. And so Kalkin had stolen the greatest of the black gelstei to use against him: the very same stone that had defeated Angra Mainyu at the Battle of Tharharra. And then the Galadin bound the brightest being in all Eluru on the black wasteland of Damoom. With this crime, a doom was laid upon the Black Jade: that it would betray Kaikin and bring Damoom's darkness down upon Kane's soul and those of all who followed him.

'Kalkin tried to flee the vengeance of the Black Jade,' the droghul told us. 'He brought the crystal here, to Acadu, in hope that such a beautiful place might help him escape the crystal's pull. But he might as well have tried to flee from his own damned eyes. The Black Jade only darkened everything around it - even all of Ea, as we all have seen. In despair, Kalkin cast the crystal away. Here, in Acadu, it has dwelled for thousands of years. And so become the Skadarak.'

For a moment I thought that Kane had heard nothing of what the droghul had said. He stood staring at the droghul with eyes as empty as dry wells. Then he burst into a fury of motion, turning to stalk over to the fire and grab up a flaming brand. He came back over to the droghul and cried out, 'Speak one more lie, and you'll die in fire!'

'I will speak what I must speak,' the droghul said, 'whether you threaten me or not. But I speak the truth.'

'No, you lie!' Kane shouted. 'Others like you, at Angra Mainyu's command, poisoned my wine with poppy. And then when I slept, the Black Jade was stolen from me and brought here to aid him!'

Kane's face, like that of a snarling animal, was terrible to look upon. I was afraid that it might be
he
who lied, while the droghul told the truth.