Black Jade (74 page)

'But if you are considering journeying that way,' Manoj told us, 'do not. Do not go into the mountains at all, I beg you.' 'Why not?' I asked him.

'Because the mountains arc cursed,' he told me. 'The Dead People dwell there.'

Fate, it seemed, after slinging fire and arrows at us for too long, had at last opened a door to better fortune. The gleam in Master Juwain's and Kane's eyes, no less my own, told me that we would indeed journey at least as far as the Dead City to see what we might see.

We stayed up late that night, for the ground was too wet for easy sleeping. Manoj had many old tales that he wished to share with us - and many that he wished to hear. After his third cup of fermented milk, we finally got him to tell us exactly how we might find the Dead City. Just before dawn, we arose to say goodbye to him and his family. And he told us: 'I would ride with you, as far as the mountains, to see that you are safe. But I must remain here to make sure that my wife and children are safe. The Zuri have raided into our lands, and although I do not think they would come this far in Marud, it is said that sorcerers have poisoned the mind of Tatuk and now direct his decisions. I would make war upon the Zuri before they grow too bold, but my cousins have disputed the need.'

As I stood by Altaru, who was happy at having drunk gallons of fresh water, I clapped Manoj on the arm and told him: 'Remain here then, and keep your family safe. And keep your sword sharp, Yieshi.'

We rode off into the desert to the west. Estrella's rain had made the desiccated rock grass and bitterbroom magically green. Brilliant pink flowers bloomed from the thornbush. The sandrunners, rabbits, lizards and other desert creatures all seemed restored to new life.

All that day and the next we travelled toward the mountains, following the landmarks that Manoj had described to us. We found the second Yieshi well, too. It was not dry but full. We drank from it and topped up our waterskins, and continued on our way. The mountains came into view and built before us, ever higher, ever clearer, shadowed in purple and capped in white. On our third day out from Manoj's well, we came upon Souzam, which he had called the Dead City. It seemed nothing more than a few acres of ancient stone buildings and mud-brick houses half-buried in sand. Most of the streets were broken, and the stones of a great aqueduct's arch had long since cracked and fallen apart. It seemed that no one had lived here for ten thousand years. A quick search turned up some hyenas making a den in one of the buildings, but we came across no other inhabitants.

We found the road that Manoj had told of easily enough, although it, too, was nearly buried in sand and its paving stones cracked in a thousand places. We followed it out of the city, up into the bone dry foothills. It wound up through a canyon. On its rugged slopes grew thornbush and other plants that we had seen for too many miles. From the rounded stones strung out in a snaking curve along the bottom of the canyon, we saw that once a stream or river had flowed here.

As we worked our way higher, the sands of the stream bed darkened with moistness. The tough desert vegetation gave way to juniper, cottonwoods and the first pine trees. Master Juwain remarked upon the extremes of the Crescent Mountains: in the range's western slopes, running from Surrapam down into Hesperu, the mountains caught the wet winds of the oceans and wrung out the rain. And there grew the lushest, greenest forests in the world. Its eastern slopes, as we now saw, were nearly as dry as the desert beyond. But they became moister and cooler with every mile higher that we climbed into the mountains.

We camped that night in sight of a great, white-capped peak. We ate some goat cheese and drank our water in good confidence that we would soon find more. That morning, a few miles higher, the stream bed filled with mud; a few miles higher still, a trickle of water flowed down to the desert that it would never quite reach. By midafternoon the trickle had become a good-sized stream. And then, almost without warning, we came up around the curve of a mountain into a beautiful valley full of aspen trees, wildflowers, miles of thick green grass and herds of antelope that grazed upon it - into heaven.

Maram would have enjoyed our feast that night, made from a roasted antelope that I had killed with a quick arrow. Most of all, he would have delighted in the honey that Kane took from a beehive in a fallen tree.

None of us, not even Kane, knew anything about the mountainous terrain ahead of us. Surely, we all thought, we would find cities or at least villages in such a rich land.

Liljana, still chafing at having to abandon her beloved cook-ware, announced, 'Perhaps we will find a village and a smith who might- sell us a few pots?'

'And find as well Kallimun spies?' Kane growled at her. 'We're too close to Hesperu now, and it won't do to expose ourselves for no good need. It will be chance enough to pass through Senta, but I see no other way.' He walked over to the low fence of brush and logs that we had built up encircling our fire. It was the first fortified camp we had made since the mountains beyond Acadu. 'Manoj called this the land of the Dead People. Let's not join them,'

The next morning, as we wound our way southwest, we saw no sign of the road's makers nor indeed of anyone. The valley, and others through the mountains that lay beyond it, proved densely inhabited but not by man. Elk and wild horses kept company with the antelope, as did badgers, bears, boars, rabbits and other furry creatures we saw chewing the browse from bushes or darting through the trees of the mountains' forests. Flowers grew everywhere, but especially brightened the acres of thick grass in the valleys' lower reaches. We moved slowly, pausing often to let our horses fatten on this grass. The land seemed as wild as any we had ever crossed. And then the next day the road led straight into a small town, dead and deserted like Souzam. Ten miles farther up the road we came to a city thrice Souzam's size, though it was hard to tell for here field and forest overgrew what must have once been wooden houses and lanes passing between them, just as the desert had swallowed parts of Souzam. Death indeed haunted this place. I found myself wishing for the familiar sound of Maram's voice, moaning out his dread of ghosts. Here, among the ruins of ancient temples and what looked to be a large palace. Maram himself seemed almost a ghost and I could not shake the sense that he rode at my side or just behind us.

'What happened,' I called out into the cool air, giving voice to a sentiment that Maram would have shared, 'to the poor people of this city? And of Souzam - all those who once dwelled in these mountains?'

I looked to Kane for an answer, but he sat on top of his horse using his strong, white teeth to tweezer out a bee's stinger still embedded in his skin. He shrugged his shoulders. And Master Juwain said, 'It might have been the Great Death. In 1047 of the Age of the Dragon, the plague spread out of Argattha into all lands, in some places killing nine people out of ten. It might be that there were lands where
all
died - or at least, no one remained to make accounts.'

He wanted to search through the ruins for a library but Kane gainsaid such a quest, growling out, '1047 - has it really been almost two thousand years since Morjin bred that filthy plague? So, any books here that told of it would long since have rotted apart.'

He went on to curse Morjin for using a green gelstei to create the hideous, hemorrhagic disease meant to afflict the blood of all the Valari - and the Valari only.

'So, he failed - the green gelstei are
hard
to use, eh?' he said looking at Master Juwain. 'The Lord of Pestilence killed more of his own people than he did Valari.'

He didn't add what we all feared: that with the Lightstone in his grasp, he would be soon breed even worse plagues than the Great Death.

After that, we continued our journey up the road. This band of bricks and stones wound still higher and gradually turned past snowy peaks toward the south. Our dread of the Great Death, if not ghosts, impelled us to hurry from this rich country but over the next days we continued moving slowly, pausing often to let the horses graze upon all the grass they wished to eat. In truth, we all still suffered from the ravages of the desert. We needed time to heal. And our suspicion that a droghul awaited us farther up the road checked our enthusiasm for swift travel. We hunted and filled our bellies with meat even as Liljana found wild potatoes growing along our way, and much fruit: raspberries and blackberries, cherries, peaches and plums. We made feast of all these foods, and of the trout and rockfish that we pulled out of moun- tain streams. Kane called this land a hunter's paradise, and that it was. Liljana simply called it paradise. Rain fell upon us in perfect intervals and amounts, and so it was with the sunshine. It seemed strange that after fighting so hard for so long, against both man and nature, we should find a place where the world welcomed us and fed both our bodies and souls.

Daj and Estrella especially seemed to thrive here. Their small frames filled out, and their faces lost the haggard, haunted look that hundreds of miles of desert travel - to say nothing of the Skadarak - had worn into them. The sharp edge of guilt I felt at taking them on this quest dulled, slightly. It made me happy to see them happy, taking all the sustenance and sleep they needed, and more, playing games once again. They made fast friends with Alphanderry. His materializations and vanishings remained a mystery. The children, though, accepted the presence of this strange being in a way that we, his old friends, could not. They sat often with Alphanderry, continuing their elaboration of Eleikar's story and bringing this figmental character more and more to life. One night, with the fire crackling and the owls hooing deep in the forest, I heard Alphanderry say to Daj: 'Hoy, our Eleikar is
still
in an impossible fix, loving the wicked king's daughter, all the while knowing he must kill the king, whom the princess still loves, wickedness or no. Eleikar's dilemma reminds me of a riddle I once heard: "How do you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit?"'

Daj considered this a moment, and then turned to Estrella, who suddenly smiled and looked up at the sparkling heavens. And Daj blurted out: 'By becoming the sky!'

'Hoy, good, good - indeed, by becoming the sky!' Alphanderry said to Daj. 'What is it, then, that Eleikar must become to keep his head on his shoulders and keep the princess from hating him?'

Neither Daj nor Estrella, however, had an answer for him, and neither did I. I watched Alphanderry's face sparkling even in the thick of night as he said, 'We might think that we need to solve Eleikar's conundrum for him. But give it time, and
he
will solve it, himself - you'll see!'

We slept well that night, and journeyed on the next day, and the following days, in high spirits. The peaks of the Crescent Mountains cut the sky above us like rows of ice-sharp white teeth. In places, along rivers where the road held good, we clopped along over ancient stones. In other places thick forests obliterated the road, and there we had to pick our way more carefully, sometimes guessing from the lay of the land where we might find the road again. In ten days of such travel, we put many miles behind us. It couldn't be many more, I thought, until we came upon the tiny kingdom of Senta, and the much greater realm of Hesperu beyond that. I sensed with a rising heat of my blood that
our
story - at least our quest to find the Maitreya or not - was quickly coming to an end.

On the fourth of Soal, late in the afternoon, we came to a place where a wall of mountains blocked our way. We had lost the thread of the road a good five miles back and could not tell if a pass might cut this escarpment to our left, up and around the rocky slopes of a pyramid mountain, or to our right, to the west, through a dense forest of oak. cedar and silver fir.

'Here we have need of one of your Way Rhymes,' I said to Master Juwain. 'Or failing that, a guess.'

Master Juwain peered at the stark terrain ahead of us and said, 'Left, I think. I can almost see where a road once wound up around that mountain.'

So, I thought, shielding my eyes against the glare of the mountains' snowy slopes, could I.

Kane swept his hand at the escarpment and said, 'Senta lies within a great bowl. These might be the mountains forming the bowl's northern part - their backside. I have a memory of that peak, I think, though I beheld it long ago and from a different vantage. If it is that mountain, then I would say our way lies to the left.'

'Then let us make camp here for the night,' I said, 'and in the morning we'll see if you are right.'

'If I
am
right,' Kane said, 'if the way is not blocked, we'll reach Senta tomorrow. So, we must decide if we will go into the caverns.'

All my life I had heard of the Singing Caves of Senta, and for much of that time I had wondered if they could possibly be real.

'If we are to put ourselves forward as pilgrims,' Master Juwain said, 'as it seems we must, then the Sentans would think it strange if we
didn't
go into the caverns.'

His gray eyes gleamed with the light off the glacier high above us. I knew that he wasn't about to cross half the earth only to surrender up the chance to behold one of Ea's greatest wonders. 'I would like to hear the caverns' songs,' Liljana said.

'I would, too,' Atara added. 'There might be a
chance
that one of the voices in the caverns will tell of the Maitreya.'

'Ha - do you think you'll understand anything?' Kane asked. 'There are thousands of voices, millions, and if you go into the caverns, you'll hear gobbledygook. You will see - it will drive you mad.'

I thought about this for a moment, then looked at Kane. 'Mad, as it was for us with the Skadarak?'

Kane's eyes darkened and he said softly, 'No, not like that. The voices all
do
speak truly, I think. But in the presence of the truth, people are like stones in water. They can sit there forever, thirsting, and remain as dry as chalk.'

I glanced at Estrella, then clapped him on the arm and said, 'Let us hope that some people are rather like sponges. Let us go into the caverns and hope for the best.'