Black Jade (46 page)

'If you'll have me,' he said, 'I'll come with you at least as far as the desert.'

I smiled as I clasped hands with him, and watched Kane and my friends do the same. Then, with Berkuar walking to my right and Kane guarding our rear, I led the way into the gap.

We followed the stream up into the mountains. This sparkling water fell over smooth stones on a winding course between the two great mounds of rock to either side of us. The gap seemed about two miles at its widest, narrowing in places to no more than half a mile. Trees grew sparsely here; a few of them were silver maples, which I hadn't seen in this part of Acadu. The air was good and clear, and full of the songs of warblers, swifts and other birds. In the bushes along the stream, the honeysuckle hung heavy in bloom and sent out a thick and pleasing sweetness. If ever a Stonemaker had dwelled here, I thought, he had chosen a splendid place to do his work.

As we made our way higher, we saw more of the mysterious statues. They seemed planted at random in the ground along either side of the stream. Most were solitary figures, standing by a tree or kneeling near the stream, but a tableau of four of them, perched on a rocky prominence, were posed tightly together, back to back as if guarding the four points of direction. Most had been carved into the shapes of men: slender youths and bent old grandfathers leaning on stone staffs; dignified graybeards and handsome gallants and thick-thewed brutes who had the look of warriors. We saw sculptures of only three women, one of them cradling a baby in her rigid arms. All the statues were naked. And all were made out the same strange stone that we had seen in the first statue but failed to find anywhere in the rock of the gap.

'Wondrous work,' Master Juwain said again. 'Truly wondrous work.'

Truly, it was. And yet, I thought that some of the statues were less wondrous than others. That day and the next, the deeper that we pushed into the mountains, the more the faces of the statues disturbed me. The expressions carved into them were realistic, yes, but
too
realistic. A few showed smiles like that of the statue at the mouth of the gap, but too many betrayed the rawest of passions: astonishment rage, disgust, hatred or terror, as rendered in the rictus of clamped jaws and eyes nearly popping from their heads. It was ugly work I but not ugly as Master Juwain was ugly, with a sheer magnificence that transcended into a paradoxical beauty. No, I thought, the ugliness of
these
statues struck terror into the soul and made one feel sick to be alive.

Maram obviously felt as I did, and worse, for he kept muttering to himself as he walked along, muttering and belching and chewing at a barbark nut that he rolled in his mouth. Finally, on the third day of our mountain passage, as we followed another stream through the gap's western part, he seemed to have had enough. He gazed at one of the statues, then spat out the nut and a stream of red juice along with it. And he announced, 'I think the maker of these sculptures was mad. And I'll fell mad, too, if I have I look at them Much longer.'

To soothe himself, he started humming a cheerful tune; when that failed to lift his mood, he broke out into the new rounds of what had become his favorite song:

Through higher man burn mortal fears

Of being bound in lower spheres;

In flesh and blood and woman's breath

He apprehends the seal of death.

And so he dwells in castle's height

Where all is purity and light,

But in his dry, transcending zeal

Forgets to live and dream and feel.

In woman's cry of ecstasy

I find my immortality;

With every kiss, caress and thrust

I sing eternal praise to lust

I am a second chakra man;

I take my pleasure while I can

From maiden, matron, harridan,

I am a second chakra man.

'Quiet,' Kane finally barked out to him. 'Quiet now, I say! You sing loud enough to wake the dead !'

'Well, what if I do?' Maram snapped at him. 'Do you think it matters? Do you think that if there's any Yaga skulking about, he hasn't heard us rattling up this gorge long since?'

We walked on a few more paces, and the horses' hooves struck out a great noise of metal against bare stone. Kane's sharp eyes scrutinized every bush, tree and rock about us. So it was with Master Juwain, Liljana and Berkuar. This great hunter gripped his bow with a white-knuckled force. I held my drawn sword as I cast about with my seventh sesense for sign of the stonemaker or any other living thing. And Maram let loose a great gout of song yet again:

The higher man seeks higher things . . .

As we were rounding a bend in the stream, Maram espied a particularly striking statue. He broke off singing to walk up to where it stood perched on a shelf of rock. It was a sculpture of a woman, tall and large, with legs like tree trunks, huge hindquarters and hips, and great, pendulous breasts. Its face was hideous. The eyes were fierce, the pock-eaten nose twisted, the mouth cast into a rage of passion. Long strings of stone hung down from the misshapen head. Its maker had posed it with its stony arms held out as if to welcome a demonic lover. 'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said, gazing at this sculpture.

Berkuar came up near him gripping his bow, and he said, 'She's so ugly, she must have turned
herself to
stone.'

'Ah, I don't know,' Maram said. He stepped right up to the statue and laid his hand upon its rounded belly. He slid it freely over the smooth stone. 'Look at these hips! What magnificent thighs! Have you ever seen such breasts? If she were real, can you imagine what mighty children she would bear a man?'

As Daj and Estrella hung back from this terrifying thing, Liljana stared up at it and said, 'Ages ago they made such sculptures of the Great Mother. Though I've never seen one with a face so forbidding.'

'The eyes are the worst of it,' Berkuar said with Shudder. 'Truly, they're cold enough to turn a man to stone.'

'Ah, I don't know,' Maram said again. 'There's something about her eyes. Cold, yes, I suppose, but can't you see how they conceal a great fire? What kind of maker could have sculpted such strange, deep eyes?'

His brow suddenly furrowed with perplexity. He moved close up to the statue as he peered into its eyes and breathed into its dreadful face.

'Strange, very strange,' Maram muttered. Then he announced: 'It looks like there's a thin layer of stone enamelled over some sort of gem, like amethyst, I don't know, but if I can just chip it away with my knife then -'

As he was reaching for the dagger on his belt, his voice suddenly choked off, and I felt the breath freeze in my lungs. I felt my own eyes rigid as stone, for I could not credit what they beheld: the statue's arms seemed to soften and change color to a dusky gold as they came alive and tightened around Maram, pushing him against its breasts. Maram stood gasping and struggling to move, his arms pinioned helplessly against his sides. The statue - or whatever it really was - seemed possessed of an insane strength. It lifted Maram off the ground as easily as I might a child Its stonelike lips pulled back from long white teeth and red gums in a terrible smile. Its eyes began to clear. The enamel carapace dissolved into a brilliant violet that I finally understood to be of pure gelstei.

'The Stonemaker!' Berkuar shouted out. 'It is the Yaga!'

He lifted up his bow and sighted his arrow on this demonic thing. Kane, standing twenty yards farther back, called to him: 'Hold your arrow! You'll hit Maram!'

But Berkuar ignored him. In a sudden snap of releasing tension, this great archer loosed his arrow. It flew straight and struck the Stonemaker's neck. But the point broke against the stony skin there, and the arrow glanced off, skittering into rocks beyond.

'Back!' I heard Atara cry out. 'Liljana, Master Juwain - help me get the children back behind the trees!'

The Stonemaker let loose a deep, belly-shaking laugh, almost dulcet and pleasing in tone, but terrible in its promise of torment. She turned her violet eyes toward Berkuar.

'Back!' Kane called to me as he sprang away from it. 'Val - get yourself behind a tree!'

I stood frozen on a slab of naked rock gripping my sword in both hands. If the Stonemaker could move as it did, I reasoned, then her facade of stone must be thin enough that I could cut through it to the living flesh beneath. But I was too far from Maram to strike at the thing that embraced him.

'Back, I say! Back, Val!'

The Stonemaker fixed her gaze upon Berkuar, who whipped another arrow from its quiver. He never had time to nock it. The Stomemaker's eyes came alive with a hideous, incandescent light. Berkuar's face lit up with a violet glow as he froze motionless with his arrow trapped inside his hand. I watched in horror as the flesh of his hand, face and neck turned to stone. Even the thick hair of his face and head grew grayish black and hardened.

'Back, Val, back!' the Stonemaker said to me a sweet, mocking voice. 'Go hide behind a tree - if you have time!'

She began to turn her ponderous head toward me.

I believe I never moved so quickly in all my life as I did then. I fairly flew across the rocks and took shelter behind a great oak tree. I stood with my side pressed against hard bark. If the Yaga sought me out behind the curve of the tree, I would stab her through the throat before I died.

'Ha, ha - you're quick, little man, and you may have your little life, if that's want you want,' she sang out. 'I've meat enough for ten years, and anyway, it's this great dragon of a man I want.'

I heard Maram grunt in terror. There came a sound as of stone-hard boots scraping against rock. The Yaga seemed to be walking away from us. Then I heard her sing out a song in mockery of Maram's beloved doggerel that she must have overheard:

Alone I've dwelled nine hundred years

In mountains, deserts, stinking meres,

Regaling travelers where I can

While waiting for my dragon man.

No scholar, magus, king on high

If they be cool or soft or dry;

My man is molten earth's desire,

Whose loins are full, whose blood is fire.

He comes for me, most mighty snake,

A mighty, raging thirst to slake,

Make live inside my honeyed womb

The Marudin's immortal bloom.

I am a maid of angel's seed.

An unfilled well of burning need;

My time has come to mate and breed
–

I am a maid of angel's seed.

Her voice died off into the soft wind, and so did Maram's cries; I stood stricken with a terrible fear that my best friend would be finally and forever lost.

When it seemed safe, we gathered near the form of the petrified Berkuar, nearly frozen ourselves with disbelief over what had just occurred.

'Well now we know,' Master Juwain said, running his hand across Berkuar's head, 'that it is possible to turn a man into stone.'

I turned my stare from Berkuar to Master Juwain. It was the only time in my life that I wanted to strike him.

'If it's possible to do this,' Liljana said, rapping her knuckles against Berkuar's hardened hand, 'is it possible to change him back? As the Yaga seemed to change herself back?'

None of us knew. But it was clear that if there was to be any help for Berkuar, we must somehow persuade the Yaga to do this work.

'In any case,' I said, coming to a decision, 'we cannot abandon Maram. Our only course is to go after him.'

I looked up through the gap at the sun where it descended like a knot of fire toward the west 'We have less than two hours of day left to us.'

'But what about the children?' Atara asked. 'Wouldn't it be better if I waited with them here? At least until you determine where that thing is taking Maram?'

I looked Daj and Estrella, who fairly clung to Atara's side. I did not want to remind Atara that she was in no state to protect them.

'All right,' I finally said. 'But let Master Juwain and Liljana remain here, too. Kane and I will move more quickly by ourselves.'

It was a hard decision, and note of us were happy with it. But it seemed the wisest course for Kane and me to track the Yaga to her lair, and then decide what must be done.

'I doubt if she'll return,' I said to Liljana. 'But if she somehow flanks us and comes back here, you must try to use your gelstei against her mind.'

Liljana nodded her head in assent of this dangerous plan.

Then Kane and I, bow and sword in hand, set out at a trot higher up into the gap. It was not difficult to track this monstrous woman. She crushed down low-growing vegetation and left large, deep prints in the ground between the trees where it wasn't so stony. In our race up along the ground above the stream, we tried always to stay near one great tree or another so that we might duck behind it at the first hint of a flash of violet, for we could think of no other way of protecting ourselves against the Yaga's terrible eyes.

About a mile from where we had left Berkuar standing like the stone sculpture that he had become, the tracks veered off to the right, higher up toward the northern wall of the gap. We followed them, snaking around trees and climbing up old, scarred rocks past great boulders. We came upon a shelf of ground cleared of trees. And there, in the middle of this windswept patch of rock, stood a house like none I had ever seen. It was rounded like a dome heaped up from the ground. Its curving walls and roof seemed made of many thousands of white bones. An evil-looking substance, all hard and red like petrified blood, cemented them in place. A chimney of bones poked out from the roof, but from our vantage, I could see nothing in the walls that looked like a window. The door - a great, rounded work of stone - looked to be almost impossible to move. I felt waves of Maram's fear emanating outward from the house even at a distance of fifty yards.