Black Jade (43 page)

'I was trying to remember what he was like before ... before.'

I listened to the sound of a drunken Maram snoring by the fire, and I asked, 'What was he like, then?'

'I think he was much like you,' He turned so that the flames of the fire licked at the centers of his black eyes. 'He thought about death too much, too.'

He stood staring at me as the world upon which we stood pulled us even deeper into night. His dark gaze seemed to grab hold of me and pull me into a flight of stairs that twisted down and down through a hole in the black earth, on and on, and deeper and deeper, forever.

'Asangal feared it,' he told me in a deep and almost dreamy voice. 'So, and fearing it, he denied it.'

And in denying it, as Kane said, Asangal had gone on to fight what he called the Great Lie with every breath in his body. The results we could see and feel all around us, in the poisoned earth of the Skadarak and in our souls.

'But Valashu,' he said to me, 'a man, before he becomes one of the Elijin,
must
overcome his fear of death - do you understand?'

The Elijin, he went on to say, were destined to become Galadin, even as the Galadin themselves were doomed to die into greater beings. Some, such as Ashtoreth and Valoreth, found glory in this becoming. But for others this distant fate, if feared, would fester and grow over the ages into a crushing torment.

'Do you understand why?' Kane said to me.

I thought I understood very well why. And so I spoke to him Morjin's words to me - now my words to myself: 'Because who can bear the thought of being erased? Who can bear the never-ness of night without end?'

'So, who
can
bear that?' he snarled out. 'But that is not the worst of things - no, neither the deepest dread nor the worst.'

'What could be worse than that?'

In answer, he bent down and scooped up a handful of moist earth. His hand tightened around it and he said, 'As a man lives, on and on, he takes more and more of the world into himself. If he lives truly, he opens himself to great beauty, all the glories of the earth. So, he
creates
these glories, eh? And in creating, as a father with a child, he comes to love what he puts his hand to, more and more deeply. And so he hates being sundered from it in death.'

I thought of Atara's beautiful blue eyes and the children that Morjin had taken from us when he had gouged them out. Worms of fire ate at my own eyes, and I said, 'He killed her, a part of her, even as he killed my mother and grandmother, forever. Damn him - and damn death then, too!'

Kane shook his head at this as he took my hand and pressed a clod of earth into it. 'Morjin speaks thus, and so Angra Mainyu, but you must not.'

'How should I speak, then?'

He shook his head again and said to me, 'So, the One means death to be a gift, not a curse. Why? Because in living forever, a man would want to behold all things, taste all things, drink in the whole of the world and create his own. But man, even though he be a Galadin, is only ever a finite being, eh? And so this lust for the infinite would grow vaster and vaster in a sick heat and consume him in a terrible flame. Then, despite his love for the world, that which was sweet would become bitter; the new would too-quickly grow old; things of light would fade in darkness, and the bright, green shoots of love turn into a twisted and blackened hate. Then a man will say "no" to all of creation, and most of all to himself.'

He looked about our encampment at the reclining forms of our friends. In a low voice, he told me, 'So, Val, so - there are a thousand ways to hate life, but only one way to truly love it.'

And with that, he clasped his hand around the clod of dirt cupped in mine, then returned to his vigil, staring out at the dark and silent woods.

The morning came only a few more hours after that, but it seemed to take forever for the trees around us to brighten to a sort of blackish-gray. Maram groaned upon being awakened, and complained of a terrible headache; we all moved as if we had drunk wine poisoned with poppy. Setting out into the woods was a torment of heavy limbs nearly drained of purpose, and spirits as confused as a flock of birds at an eclipse of the sun. Here, I knew, the very earth was sick and had gone mad. Soon it became clear that we were hopelessly lost. I drew my sword in order to light our way, but its silustria gleamed only dully in whatever direction I pointed it, and then faded with the miles so that it seemed it would never gleam again. My sense of direction, strangely remained strong, and I led us on and on, five miles across the poisoned earth and then two more. Due west called to me through the sodden gray woods as clearly as a bell. Why, I wondered, did it seem that we were only working our way deeper and deeper into the Skadarak?

Because here,
a voice inside me whispered,
your sense of direction has been twisted.

For a long while, I did not want to heed this deep voice. But then, around noon, with Atara stumbling over tree roots and the children staring out at the stunted oaks with dark, empty eyes, I called for a halt. While Pittock and Gorman went off to look for sign of direction, I turned to Berkuar and said, 'This wood
is
cursed. Here, north seems west, and west turns south and then east. And all directions, it seems, lead ever and only one way.'

'Toward the Black Jade,' he muttered.

'It is calling me,' I told him.

'It's calling all of us,' he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He moved his jaw as if to spit, and then swallowed a gout of barbark juice instead.

Just then a great, bellowing shout sounded from farther in the woods. I turned to look past the blackened trunks of the trees at Pittock and Gorman. Gorman stood backed up to an old elm; Pittock had thrust his long knife into his belly, and stood there beside him, pushing and twisting the knife in deeper.

'Pittock!' Berkuar cried out. 'Damn you, Pittock!'

He drew his own knife and set out bounding through the woods straight toward them.

I followed him a moment later, and so did Kane. But we could do nothing. Before we could draw within ten yards, Pittock ripped his knife free from Gorman's body and let him fall dying to the ground. He shook his bloody knife at the forest and shouted out, 'He killed my cousin, so damn him, and his father and mother -and damn the whole world for whelping them and all their line!'

And with that he turned his long knife upon himself, thrusting it up beneath his ribs into his heart. He died slumping down toward the ground, and leaving bloody marks as he clawed at the bark of the elm tree.

'It was their old quarrel,' Berkuar said, going forward to stand over his two men. He spoke these words with an acceptance of the inevitability of murder, and I hated him for that. 'Let's bury them then.'

Only Estrella wept for these two ill-fated woodsmen or had the kindness to look for flowers to put on their graves. In the blighted forest, she found none.

It took all our will to get out shovels and dig two long holes and lay Gorman and Pittock in the earth. There seemed no point to interring them this way. In truth, there seemed no point to anything.

'We're lost,' Atara said as she fumbled for the reins of her horse. She was the last of us I would have expected to give voice to despair. 'I can't see our way out of this.'

'That's because there
is
no way out,' Maram muttered. He glowered at Master Juwain and snarled, 'Tell me if you know of any Way Rhymes for
this
place!'

But Master Juwain only shook his head at this and gripped the leather binding of his useless book.

'It may be,' I said, 'that the only way out is in.'

'No, Val,' Kane said to me.

'If it's the Black Jade that is truly calling us,' I said, 'then let us answer this call. We'll find the dark crystal and destroy it.'

At this Kane drew his sword and thrust it down into the ground. 'Can you destroy the very earth to which it's welded?'

'It might be that with the crystal destroyed, the earth here would have less power over us.'

'Can't you see,' Master Juwain said to me, 'that Morjin would want you to think like this?'

'I can see it well enough,' I said to him, hating the hauteur in my voice. 'We'll destroy the crystal even so, and someday, Morjin himself.'

The dark fire that filled my eyes then easily ignited the coals inside Kane. A savage smile split his face as he gazed at me and said, 'So - perhaps this
is
the only way.'

Estrella stepped up to me and grasped my hand. I was sure that she wanted to tell me that she would help me find the Black Jade. Then she shook her curly hair away from her tear-filled eyes as she looked up at me with a terrible fear.

Daj, speaking for her, came up to me and said, 'Do we
have
to go looking for this crystal?
Why
can't there be another way?'

Master Juwain rested his rough old hand on Daj's head and said to me, 'Abrasax told us that we mustn't listen to the call of this crystal. You agreed to this, Val.'

'If I did, then I was a fool,' I closed my eyes against the dark hateful drumbeat of my heart. 'You see, I don't know how
not
to listen.'

I opened my eyes to gaze at Master Juwain in silent accusation. 'Well, first and last,' he told me, 'there are the Light Meditations.' 'Did they help Gorman or Pittock?' I asked him. 'Have they helped you?'

The sick look on Master Juwain's face told me that these meditations had availed him little.

'The truth is,' I told him, 'I
must
listen. How are we to destroy evil if we don't understand it?'

If the logic of my words failed to persuade Master Juwain, the force of my will bent him to our new course. A gleam came into his gray eyes as he nodded his head to me and told me, 'In truth, I don't know how not to listen either.'

And so without a backward glance at the graves of Gorman and Pittock, we resumed our journey. After another few miles, we paused in order to look through the twisted trees that trapped us. Liljana passed around a waterskin. Master Juwain walked off into the woods to look for a way out of them, or so he said.

Just as it came my turn to drink, I noticed Liljana pat her tunic's pocket with a sudden and rare panic, and then thrust her hand inside. And she cried out, 'My gelstei! It's gone!'

'Are you sure?' I called to her. I hurried over to her, and so did Kane and Maram.

'It
is
gone!' she cried out again.

'Ah, it must have fallen out,' Maram said to her. 'Perhaps while you were sleeping.'

She pressed her lips together, then hissed at him, 'It did
not
fall out! I would never let that happen. And so it must have been taken out.'

She stared at him with a dark and deadly look.

Just then Master Juwain came to Maram's defense, saying to Liljana, 'I'm afraid it
did
fall out. I found it late last night while you were snoring.'

With that, he took his hand from his pocket and held up Liljana's little blue figurine.

'But why didn't you wake me then?' Liljana shouted at him. 'And why did you go the whole day without telling me?'

She came up close to him, and her hand darted out as quick as the head of a striking snake. But Master Juwain proved quicker, for he snatched the crystal away from her, out of her reach.

'Master Juwain!'

Maram and I both called out his name together. Then we hurried up to Liljana and grabbed her arms to keep her from thrusting her fingers into Master Juwain's throat or some other deadly vulnerable chakra.

'Give it back to her!' I shouted at Master Juwain.

'But I was only trying to keep it safe,' he huffed out. 'And to keep
her
safe. In these woods, so dark, the temptation to use it must be very-'

'Give it back to her!' I shouted again.

He stared straight back at me as his fingers tightened around the crystal so hard that his whole arm trembled. Then he seemed to will himself to extend his fist and drop the figurine into Liljana's outstretched hand. She immediately thrust it deep into her pocket as she glared at him.

'You,'
she said to him with an acid contempt, 'tried to use it, didn't you? To look inside Morjin's mind?'

'His mind,' he said as if intoning a magic word. His eyes glazed over as if dazzled by a bright light. 'What do we really know of it? He was an Elijin, once, but is he so different than mortal men in his mentations? Perhaps. Perhaps. I know that his words strike us as evil, even mad, but there must be a logic beneath it all. If we could discover the source of his onstreaming intelligence, which I admit is great, then we might discover the whys and ways of the great Red Dragon. The whys and ways of much more. The secrets he keeps! He has knowledge unknown to men. Perhaps knowledge of the mystery of mind itself ... or at least his own. What if one could dive down and find the currents that give rise to it? I can almost see it! They would form up, each individual thought, like waves upon the sea. At times, one must swell larger than another, and drown it out, and then another and another - an infinitude of digressions, distractions and side-thoughts, as with any other man. But always, the deeper logic, revealed through analysis of perceptions, indications and manifestations, these endless technics and deductions, you see. There
must
be a way to peel back the waves to understand how they birth each other and impinge on each other, even overwhelming and annihilating as they ever form and reform, ever shaped by the source of all waves: the way that the very mind of the One forms thoughts, and causes all things to burst into creation. Morjin
must
seek this deepest of secrets, the final one, shining like a perfect jewel, which lies beneath the endless layers and depths of watery waves, down and down and -'

'Master Juwain!' I cried out. I grasped hold of his arm, hard and shook him. Then his madness for pure thought left him at least for the moment and his eyes cleared. And I asked him, 'Did you use Liljana's gelstei?'

He shook his head, then admitted, 'Almost I did. If Liljana hadn't been so suspicious of me -'