Black Jade (49 page)

'Amazing,' Master Juwain said, examining the firestone. 'I didn't know the purple gelstei had such powers.'

'In anyone else's hands, so to speak,' Maram said, 'I doubt if it does. Jezi, though, has had a thousand years to learn its secrets.'

Master Juwain considered this a moment, before his attention turned to more immediate things. He examined Maram and said, 'But what happened to your boots and clothes?'

'She burned them, too bad,' Maram told us. 'She said that I would never have need of them again, since I was to remain inside her house forever.'

He went on to tell of how Daj had forced his way through the crack in Jezi's house, and like an angel of mercy, had freed him. Daj stood basking in Maram's gratitude. It was nearly the proudest moment of his life.

'But what about your armor?' I asked Maram.

'Gone,' he told me. 'Jezi softened the steel and reformed it into a cauldron. She told me that she would put me in it, piece by piece, if I failed her.'

I could think of nothing to say to this, or to the torment that he had suffered. Then Liljana asked him, 'But if she wanted a child from you, why take bites and weaken you?'

'I think she was testing me,' Maram muttered. 'Testing my strength and the, ah, juiciness of my body, as she put it. My very blood. Then, too, old ways die hard, and I don't think she could help herself.'

Liljana looked him up and down, and said, 'At least she didn't bite off that unruly snake of yours.'

Maram's face flushed bright red beneath the rising sun as he covered himself with his hand and groaned, 'Oh, my snake - my, poor, poor, mighty snake!'

'That should be the least of your concerns,' Master Juwain said to him. 'We've got to see to those wounds of yours. They are many, and deep, and no animal's bite is as poisonous as a human being's.'

'All right,' Maram said, 'but first I want payment for what this monster did to me. Daj, hand me my dagger!'

Daj, who bore Maram's sword and dagger, moved to comply with his command. But then Atara, divining Maram's intentions, rested her hand on Jezi Yaga's face and called out to him: 'No, let her keep her eyes - please.'

Maram looked at me, and I nodded to him. Then he bowed his head to Atara as he muttered, 'All right then, I won't chisel them out. But it seems a pity to let a dead hunk of stone keep two of the great gelstei.'

After that, we walked down to the horses so that Master Juwain could tend to Maram and the stricken Kane as well. The sun rose higher above the gap, and its heat poured down upon us. I wondered how it had been for Jezi Yaga, dying beneath the hellish heat of Maram's firestone. I wondered if after all these years of doing monstrous deeds she could still be considered human. She stood all huge and stony above us, twisted about with a look of betrayal ad anguislh chiselled into her grotesque face. I decided that once, somewhere within her, there had lived a woman, and a beautiful one at that. And so I said a prayer for her spirit. Then I turned my eyes upon the great desert opening out to the west. Even at midmorning, the air had grown sweltering, and soon my friends and I might well wish that we, too, were made of stone.

We bore Kane's heavy body down the long slope to more level ground, where we laid one of our sleeping furs on the rocky earth, and him on it. While Liljana and I set to erecting one of our rain cloths to shield out the fierce sun, Master Juwain mixed some bluish powder into a cup of water and then held up Kane's head and managed practically to pour it down his throat. It did not revive him, but it seemed that a little color returned to his ashen face. Then Master Juwain went to work on Maram. He cleaned Maram's wounds then daubed one of his pungent-smelling ointments into them. He bound them with clean bandages. After Maram donned his spare tunic, he lay down next to Kane, moaning and cursing because he could find no position in which one or more of his bitten parts did not press the hard ground beneath him.

'Oh, oh,' he murmured, rolling from side to side. 'This is worse than the arrow wounds I took outside of Khaisham - the worst yet. Please, Val, shoot an arrow through my heart and let me die!' We held council then as we decided what to do. With Atara injured, Maram missing pieces of skin and Kane lying as one dead, it seemed that we should retreat back into the gap, where we might recuperate by the stream. But we had no good way of carrying Kane, and as for Mam he was loath to set foot again anywhere in that cursed valley that Jezi Yaga had terrorized for so long. I think he feared that she might somehow return to life. It was Atara, though, who persuaded us to go on, saying, 'Already we are well into Soldru, and the desert will grow only hotter these next two months. We should cross it as soon as we can, or go back into Acadu and wait for autumn. But my heart tells me that it we
do
wait, we'll come into Hesperu too late.'

'If we actually reach Hesperu,' Master Juwain said. 'Which we won't if we have to cross the Crescent Mountains in winter.'

We agreed that if Kane survived and Maram could bear to ride, we must go on.

'I'll
have
to bear it, though I don't know how I will,' Maram moaned again, resting his hand on one of his fat hindquarters. 'I'm not going back into that valley of stone, and I'm certainly not going back to Acadu. I haven't sacrificed so many precious pieces of myself to go
back,
do you understand?'

I smiled to hear him speak such brave words, and I prayed that his courage wouldn't fail him in the miles to come.

'All right,' I said, 'then we'll wait here until Kane revives.'

Master Juwain, who had removed the black gelstei from Kane's forehead, rested his hand on top of Kane's white hair and looked at him with deep concern. 'I'm afraid I have no knowledge to help him.'

I came over to touch my fingers to Kane's fierce face. Despite the heat of the day, his skin was cool. I said, 'He
will
recover - I know he will. He cannot die.'

We all gathered in a circle around Kane, and we laid our hands on top of his chest. Try as I might, I could not feel the beat of his heart beneath my hand. It surprised me to see Liljana nearly in tears over the reduction of this mighty warrior, for she had often had harsh words with him. Estrella gazed at him with a fierce concentration. Whereas most people have trouble holding an object within their consciousness for very long, Estrella often took delight in dwelling with the flowers by a stream or in playing my flute for hour after hour. And more, she seemed able to love those things so completely that it was as if the object dissolved into her consciousness, and her consciousness into it, and so became as one. So it was now. I felt her love for Kane like a gentle flame within his heart. I felt Master Juwain's love as well, and Atara's, and that of the rest of us, for that was my gift. It was also my gift to strike deep into Kane's heart with the fire of my own. Strangely, when I opened myself this way, I found Estrella smiling at me. It almost seemed that she was waiting for me to pass this fire to her so that she might concentrate it into an irresistible force that would warm every fiber of Kane's being.

After a while, however, Maram could not hold the deep silence that had fallen over us. He shifted positions yet again as he pulled his bandaged hand away from Kane. Then he muttered, 'If Morjin could do this to Kane, he could do it to the rest of us, or anyone, once he gains full control of the Lightstone and the Black Jade. I think he'll be able to find us, anywhere in the world.'

I looked about us, out into the desert with its baked, red earth and sparse covering of tough-looking plants. I could see many miles out into the barren land to the north, south and west. And so anyone approaching from those directions could certainly see us beneath our white shelter flapping in the wind. In our passage across the desert, I thought, we would find neither shelter nor cover against the eyes of our enemies. I wondered with dread if Morjin could somehow see us or sense our whereabouts.

'He
knew
we were caught in the Skadarak,' I said to Maram and my other companions. 'And Jezi Yaga had been warned to look for us.'

'Warned by the second droghul?' Master Juwain asked. 'Do you think he is close?'

We all looked at Atara then, but she said nothing as she sat behind the silence of her blindfold.

Liljana, after gazing at the blue figurine that she took out of her pocket, looked up at me and said, 'Every time we use our gelstei
he
knows this. But can he really see us? You once said, Val, that you thought he couldn't.'

'That was before he stole the Lightstone,' I told her. 'Now, I don't know.'

I did not give voice to what I most feared: that now and forever more, Morjin would always be drawn to the kirax burning inside me like a vampire bat to blood.

'How is it, I wonder,' Master Juwain said to Maram, 'that you were able to use your stone without Morjin seizing control of it?'

'Well, in truth, I think he tried,' Maram said. 'I certainly
felt
him trying to wrest the firestone from my hand, as it were. It's strange how things fall out, isn't it?'

'Strange - how so?' I asked him.

'Well he tried to pour so much power into it that it would burst apart in my face. But this only gave it more fire.' Maram turned over on his side to stare at his ruby crystal. 'It's been so long since I wielded this, I don't know if I could have continued burning that monster without his help.'

'Surely he fears your stone,' Master Juwain said to him. 'Surely he remembers the doom that was laid upon it.'

Would Maram's red gelstei, I wondered, truly lead to Morjin's undoing? I leaned over to run my finger along its smooth length as I said to Maram, 'It's a miracle that the Yaga made this whole again, for I never thought it could be healed, as you always hoped. It gives
me
hope that somehow, in the end, we'll defeat Morjin.'

'Ah, then you've come to believe in the prophecy?' Maram said, smiling at me.

'I believe in
us,'
I said, smiling back at him. 'And in you. If you hadn't come when you did. . .'

I said no more as I looked out from beneath our sun cloth, up the slope where Jezi Yaga stood like a gargoyle guarding the mouth of the gap.

'Ah, well, I
did
come, didn't I? As I always will, if you need me. But let's not congratulate ourselves too soon. We still have hundreds miles of desert before us, and without Kane, I don't see how we can ever make it.'

Once, as Kane had told us, he had crossed the southern part of the Red Desert, and so he knew of the wells and water holes that we must find if we were to survive.

'Don't worry about Kane,' I told him, looking down at Kane's still form. 'Does the sun rise in the morning? Does the forest fail to turn green in the spring?'

There seemed little to do then except wait. We all sat beneath our paltry covering, shifting about as the sun rose higher and the shadow cast by the cloth shifted as well. By noon, it had grown very hot. We sweated, and we drank from our waterskins to replenish ourselves. Flies came to feed on our sweat and bite us. Our horses stood chewing up what forage they could find. Out in the desert, lizards scrambled over sun-baked rocks. The burning air sucked the moisture from my eyes.

We sweated and suffered through the afternoon. While the others dozed, Estrella and I kept watch over Kane, who did not stir. I kept a watch on the wavering desert, looking as always for sign of our enemies.

I think I had never looked forward so much to the coming of the night. After endless hours, the sun melted like a gout of burning red steel into the horizon in the west. The desert grew beautiful then. The day's last light touched the mountains behind us with a starkness that unveiled their deeper life. The air cleared, and the sky fell a deep and glowing blue. After a while, the stars came out in their glittering millions. It grew so cool that I drew on my cloak. Liljana, now awake and tending to Kane, covered him with his cloak and helped Master Juwain pour some tea down his throat. He slept, on and on, as the stars brightened and the hyenas gave voice to their eerie cries far out in the desolate land around us. It was just before dawn, with the rocks of the desert nearly as cold as ice, when Kane finally opened his eyes. He looked at me through the light of the little fire that Maram had made out of some dead yusage. He smiled as his hand found mine and squeezed my fingers with a pitiful weakness. Then he murmured to me, 'So Val - so.'

Liljana set to making him some broth, which she insisted that he must drink. But Kane would have none of it. 'Meat,' he murmured again. 'I must have meat.'

In our stores, Liljana found a little ham, which was going bad, and some dried venison, which had fared much better. But Kane would have none of these either. He let his leonine head roll to the side so that he could better look at me. And he said, 'Val -bring me fresh meat.'

Maram could aim an arrow straighter than I, most of the time, but he could scarcely move to draw a bowstring and was in no shape to hunt. And Atara, who might have been the finest archer in the world, was still completely blind. And so when the sun came up, I took up my bow and walked out into the desert. I gripped in my hand my brother Karshur's favorite hunting arrow, the one he had given me when I had set out on the great Quest. Around my neck hung my lucky bear claw, torn from the paw of the great beast that had nearly killed Asaru - and myself. It brought me luck that morning, or so I thought. Only three miles from our encampment I came upon a small herd of gazelles with their long, spiral horns and swishing black tails. I put Karshur's arrow through the heart of a young buck. I slung the dead animal across my shoulders and bore him back to our camp. Liljana took charge of the butchering, announcing that she would make a fine roast of its ribs. But Kane wouldn't wait for this feast. He called out to Liljana, saying, 'Bring me my meat, just as it is.'

I had watched lions eat raw meat before, but never Kane. At first, as he nibbled at the gobbets that Liljana cut for him, he was so weak that he could hardly chew. He seemed, however, to gain strength with every bite. Soon, he was tearing into red flesh with his long, white teeth, swallowing in huge gulps and calling for more meat. Sounds of deep delight rumbled in his throat; blood smeared his hands and mouth. His black eyes began filling with some of their oldfire. And still he worked at the gazelle's meat, downing an entire leg and the liver and then calling for more.