Black Jade (72 page)

He did not, however, eat or drink or sleep or sweat. If he suffered along with us, it was not from the world's hardships, at least not in their physical aspects, I sensed that he anguished over our anguish, as any good friend would. He, too, I thought, missed Maram. From his own memory of Maram and our descriptions of Maram's valor at the Siege of Khaisham and many times since, he composed lines that he called 'An Ode To A Five-Horned Man'. His voice, cool and flowing, refreshed us even more than water, and the song reminded us that Maram remained close to us, at least in spirit.

On the fourth night since our leaving the Loikalii's forest, we gathered around a single candle that Liljana had lit. Kane sat plucking the mandolet's strings while Alphanderry sang of the time when Maram had mistaken a bear licking honey from his face for one of his lovers. When Alphanderry had finished and the wind came whooshing out of the west, we spoke yet again of the mystery of Alphanderry's existence. Daj wondered how it was possible for this almost-real being woven of light to possess Alphanderry's very real memories.

It was Liljana who tried to answer him. In the words that poured out of her, I heard her fervor for the wisdom and teachings of her ancient order: 'All men and women die, for they are born from the world and must return to it. But the world itself never dies -not unless one such as Angra Mainyu comes with fire to destroy it. We are all
of
this immortal world.
Not
just in the water of our blood or in the minerals of our bones, but in our thoughts, our passions and our dreams. And in our memories. My Sisters of old believed that all we ever experience, the world experiences, too. As we remember, so does the world remember. Should it not be, then, that as the world remembers,
we
remember? Ea is Alphanderry's mother, and it must be that She, herself, whispers these memories in his mind. It must be that she has the power to remake him in greater glory, even as She once gave him birth.'

Master Juwain twirling his cursed varistei between his fingers, said, 'I believe that Liljana is right. In spirit, she is right. But I think there is much more to this matter than she has told. Alphanderry is of this world, as is water or light or the crystal of the gelstei, whose deepest structure we may never understand. But surely he is something more, too. Something from
beyond
the world. It is said that once the Galadin walked upon Ea, and left some part of their shining substance behind in the Lokalani's Vilds - what else can the Timpum really be? Unless the Timpum are even
more
than this: some part or impulse of the Ieldra themselves. My Brotherhood teaches that the Ieldra dwell ft the bright, black emptiness of Ninsun, at the center of all things.
Everything
dwells there: all time, all space, all matter, all memory. The universe itself, not just the world, remembers all that is and has ever occurred, down to the tumbling points on the tiniest grain of sand driven by a whirlwind. The Akashic Memory, my order has named this record. Over the ages, a few masters of my Brotherhood have been able to call upon a wisdom and memories far beyond themselves. It must be these memories, some special part, that Alphanderry calls upon to make his verses. It must be from these memories that the Shining Ones somehow make
him.'

Alphanderry, sitting across from me, listened respectfully to what Master Juwain said, though without particular concentration. He seemed not to care
how
he came to be, only
that
he somehow existed again. He took delight in this. His smile nearly lit up the night. He turned toward Daj and Estrella, who had not known him of old, and said, 'Master Juwain is wise in the ways of philosophy, and many other things, and we have much to learn from him. But creation might not be as much of a mystery as he makes it. Even the creation of a man. Daj, will you help me with this? Estrella?'

As Estrella looked at Alphanderry in puzzlement, Daj asked him, 'What do you mean, sir?'

'Please,' Alphanderry said to him, 'save the "sir" for masters of the Brotherhood and other illummaries. I'm just a maker of songs - and of men, as you will see and aid in the making. Now, this man who doesn't quite yet exist but somehow always exists whom
we'll
call into being - what is the first thing that we should know about him?'

Daj's eyes brightened at being drawn into this diversion, and he said, 'I don't know - his name?'

'Yes, good, good - his name. Well, what is it?'

'But how should I know?'

'Think, then!'

As Daj closed his eyes as if running through a list of names of all the people he had ever known, Alphanderry reached out to tap him on his head. But since Daj could not feel the substance of his hand, Alphanderry called out to him instead: 'Do not think with
this
! Not in this matter. Think with
that
.'

So saying, he laid his shimering hand over Daj's heart and smiled at him. And he added, 'Come on, quickly now, the name is there, and you know it!'

And Daj blurted out: 'Might it be Aldarian?'

'Good - a good name, noble and strong. A little dull, perhaps. Is our man dull?'

'No, just the opposite. He is clever and cunning.'

'Then we don't have his true name yet, do we?'

A fire flared deep within Daj, and he called out with more certainty: 'His name is Eleikar!'

'Hoy! Eleikar - so it is. Well, what does our Eleikar desire more than anything else?'

And Daj told him: 'Vengeance! Eleikar's father was a great knight. A wicked king coveted his mother for a for a concubine, and when he could not have her, he killed Eleikar's father and took his mother anyway. To save her honor, Eleikar's mother poisoned herself.'

'And what became of Eleikar?'

'He fled with his brothers and sisters into the wilderness. The king's men hunted them down like pigs, sticking them with spears. They killed everyone except Eleikar.'

'And how did Eleikar survive?'

'By playing dead - even when the king's men stuck his face and legs for sport. The wolves of the forest rescued him. They licked his wounds and brought him fresh meat to eat. He lived with them, in a cave, until he grew into a man.'

'Hoy,' Alphanderry said, nodding sadly, 'then Eleikar must have many scars.'

'Many,' Daj said. He tapped his cheekbone and added, 'He bears one here, shaped like a crescent moon. He bears his father's scimitar, of the same shape, pis only desire is to get close enough to the king to
im.it.'

Alphanderry nodded his head again and asked, 'Is this his
only
desire?'

As Daj fell into a puzzled silence, Alphanderry turned to Estrella and put the same question to her. She could not, of course, give voice to her answer. But her quicksilver eyes flowed with all her deep passion for life, and her fingers danced in that secret language of play and dreams that only Daj seemed to understand.

At the frown that knitted Daj's eyebrows together, Alphanderry said to him: 'Well?
Is
vengeance all that he desires?'

Daj scowled at Estrella and said, 'No, there is something else. It seems that Eleikar has fallen in love with the wicked king's daughter.'

For another couple of hours, as the night deepened and the air fell bitterly cold, Alphanderry continued this game of quizzing the children and summoning out of near-nothingness a wild, star-crossed man named Eleikar. As their story built in elaboration and complexity, so did Eleikar gain his essential characteristics: bright, burning, sorrowful, adoring, doomed. He was a man who howled his wrath at the moon, and whispered to his beloved all of his overflowing joy of life. I winced to hear Daj declaim that Eleikar was immortal, not because Eleikar could not be slain, but because he would love as no man ever had before, and minstrels for many ages would sing of him. I marveled at how Eleikar came alive out of a few words spoken by a whip-scarred boy and the gestures of a mute slave girl, and seemed more real than many men I had known.

It was a strange magic that Alphanderry wove, and while Kane smiled strangely at Alphanderry's unusual exercise, neither Master Juwain nor Liljana quite approved of it. Minstrels, to their way of thinking, sang of love or the beauty of the sea, or recounted the feats of ancient heroes who had really lived. Liljana scolded Alphanderry for trying to usurp the prerogatives of the Ieldra or even the One, saying to him: 'Your Eleikar moves according to your whims and designs, but it is not so with real men. With
women,
shaped after the image of Ea herself.
We
are all imbued with free will. Isn't this is the essence of what it means to be alive?'

We all carried this question off to bed; I thought of little else over the hot, dusty miles of our journey the next day. Alphanderry's very existence seemed a window into the great mystery of life and death. I came to see him not as a challenger of the power of the Ieldra but as their fulfillment and gift. He, merely in being, was a promise that our lives were not lived in vain.

Nothing is lost,
I thought as I gazed at Alphanderry sitting happily on top of his swaying packhorse.
The world must remember.

I recalled the faces and voices of my family whom I had left behind in a place impossibly far away. A great hope came to me then. Truly, we each blazed with the bright flame of free will, and if we worked this will truly, then we might suffer or die but we would never fall to evil and be enslaved. And so we would somehow live, in honor and beauty, throughout eternity.

Nothing is lost for the whole universe remembers.

With this thought, however, as with ravening lions chasing a gazelle, came a terrible fear. I recalled what Kane had once told me: that two paths only wound their way into the mists of the future. Either men would become as angels, and the brightest of the Galadin would advance to the order of the Ieldra in a Great Progression known as the Valkariad, or Angra Mainyu and his kind would be freed from Damoom, and a darkness without end would befall the stars. But the Ieldra would not abide such total and final evil, and so they would destroy the stars and the whole universe of Eluru that contained them. Nothing of the universe would be left, and so nothing would remain to remember anything.

All will be lost. It is not enough to choose freely and fight nobly. We must win.

Triumph, however, seemed impossible without Maram at my side. As I gazed into the blood-red dunes where the sun died into the west, it took all my will to keep riding on as if any real hope still remained.

That evening, as Liljana rationed out our water and Master Juwain morosely read from the
Saganom Elu,
I knew that I could not let them drown in the darkness of despair, much less the children. They needed to believe in a story where things came out right. So did I. Someday, perhaps, the minstrels would sing of my companions and me, and I would have them tell that we fought like the heroes of old to vanquish our enemies, down to our last breaths.

And so I stood before the glowing candle, and I added my voice to the game that Alphanderry had begun, saying to Daj and Estrella: 'Eleikar must have his revenge upon the king, and he must love the princess, too, as the sun does the earth, for that is his fate. So it seems that it is his fate to live and die tragically. But perhaps there is more to Eleikar than we see.'

'What, then?' Daj asked me.

'That remains unknown. Perhaps it can't
be
known, by us. But Eleikar, if he is truly to come alive, might see what we cannot.'

'But what could that be?'

'A way out of his dilemma.'

'But what if there
is
no way out?'

'There is always a way,' I told him. 'A king once said this to me: "How is it possible that the impossible is not only possible but inevitable?"'

As the candle flicked and glozed, Daj pondered this, then said, 'I can't see the answer to
that
riddle, either. Perhaps I will by the time we reach Hesperu - if we ever do.' 'We will, Daj.'

'Without Maram?'

'Yes, if we have to, without Maram.'

'Then you really believe that there is a chance we might find the Maitreya before Morjin does?'

As I gazed up at the millions of lights above us, more splendid at the center of the Tar Harath than any place else on earth, something blazed inside me, and I said, 'We
will
find the Maitreya. And on our journey back to the Brotherhood School, we'll return to the Loikalii's woods. We'll sit with Maram again and eat raspberries- together. We'll bring him a bottle of the finest Hesperuk brandy and make a toast to love - I swear we will!'

All of my friends looked up at me and smiled - everyone except Atara, who could not look at anything, and Liljana, who could not smile. But Atara's hand found mine and squeezed me tightly as she said, 'Val - I can
see
the Yieshi well! We
will
reach it! And beyond the desert, the mountains leading to Hesperu!'

Although Liljana's face remained as. stern as stone, her eyes warmed even so. 'We still have a long way to go before we find this brandy you speak of, much less the Maitreya. Now, why don't we get some sleep, while we can?'

The next day, our journey proved no less arduous than any other but we bore the pain of it in better spirits. Not until the day following did we finally came out of the Tar Harath into the western reaches of the Red Desert.

We celebrated surviving the worst hell on earth by drinking the last of our water and gazing out optimistically into the country that opened before us. Here the dunes gave way to the harder

sands of a pain nearly as flat as one of the skillets that Liljana had been forced to abandon. Here the air was cooler, slightly. Ursage and spiny sage grew in ragged clumps, and a few strands of rock-grass forced their way out of cracks in the ground. I watched a scorpion dragging a dead lizard through this grass, while farther to the west, in the air, a hawk soared over the desert. The sun remained a white-hot iron searing our eyes, but in its fierce light I found not the foreburn of death but rather the brightness of hope.