Black Jade

I slept only a little that night, and Master Juwain and Kane did not sleep at all. At times, in low voices, they discussed the meaning of the Way Rhymes; at other times they sat in silence as they looked up at the stars. I kept watch on these bright points of light as best I could. But I must have dozed, for I awakened in the deep of night to the weight of Kane’s hand gently shaking my shoulder. He stood above me uncloaked, and he pointed up at the constellations spread across the heavens.

‘Look, Val,’ he murmured. ‘The Ram is about to set.’

In the biting cold, we roused the others and broke camp. This required little more work than heaping a few handfuls of snow upon the fire’s coals and tying our rolled-up sleeping furs to the backs of the horses. We breakfasted on some battle biscuits and a little cold water to wash them down. And then we waited.

As the last stars of the Ram set behind the western horizon, a faint light suffused the world and touched the mountains around us with an eerie sheen. At a nod from Master Juwain, we lit the torches that we had readied for this moment. And then without wasting another breath, we set out up the road and into the tunnel.

None of us knew what we would find there. The tunnel’s starkness and long straight lines were almost a disappointment. The road through it seemed good and solid, and the horses’ hooves clopping against the paving stones sent echoes reverberating up and down around us. The light cast by our oily torches showed a tube seemingly melted through the mountain’s rock. The curving walls and ceiling above us gleamed all glassy and black, like sheets of obsidian more than fused granite. Maram guessed that the Ymanir must have once burned this tunnel with great firestones, for those shaggy giants had once ranged through most of the White Mountains and had built through them underground cities, invisible bridges and other marvels. Surely, I thought, this tunnel must be one of them. As we made our way down its gentle slope, I could see no end to it. Who but the Ymanir, I wondered, could carve a miles-long tunnel out of solid rock?

‘How I do miss Ymiru,’ Maram called out into the cold, still air. ‘He was a broody man, it’s true, but the only one I’ve ever known bigger and stronger than I. A great companion, he was, too. If he were here, I’m sure he could explain the mystery of this damn tunnel and what we’ll find when we come out on the other side.’

‘But we have the Rhyme for that,’ Master Juwain said to him. ‘Why don’t you recite it?’

‘Ah, you recite it,’ Maram said to him. ‘My head has never worked right at this accursed hour.’

‘All right,’ Master Juwain told him. And then he intoned:

And through the long dark into dawn,

The road goes down, yet up: go on!

‘Shhh, quiet now!’ Kane called out to us in a low voice. ‘We know nothing about this place or what might dwell here.’

His words sobered us, and we moved on more quickly, and more quietly, too. It was freezing cold in this long tube through the earth, though mercifully there was no wind. After a few hundred yards or so we came upon yellowish bones strewn across the tunnel’s floor and heaped into mounds. At the sight of them, Maram began shaking. The bones did not, however, look to be human; I whispered to Maram and the others that a snow tiger must have holed up here, dragging inside and devouring his kills. This did little to mollify Maram. As he walked his horse next to mine, he muttered, ‘Snow tigers, is it? Oh, Lord, they’re even worse than bears!’

The smell of the bones was old and musty, and I did not sense here the presence of snow tigers or any other beings besides ourselves. And yet something about this tunnel seemed strange, almost as if the melted rock that lined it sensed our presence and was in some way alive. As we moved farther into it, I felt a pounding from down deep, as of drums – but even more like the beating of a heart. I wondered, as did Master Juwain, if the tunnel’s obsidian coating might really be some sort of unknown gelstei. All the gelstei resonated with each other in some way, however faint, and a disturbing sensation tingled through the hilt of my sword. It traveled up my arm and into my body, collecting in the pit of my belly where it burned. It impelled me to lead on through the smothering darkness even more quickly.

‘Val,’ Maram whispered to me through the cold air, ‘I feel sick – like I did in the Black Bog.’

‘It’s all right,’ I whispered back. ‘We’re nearly through.’

‘Are you sure? How can you be sure?’

We journeyed on for quite a way, how far or how long I couldn’t quite tell. Our torches burnt down and began flickering out, one by one. We had brought no oil with which to renew them. And then, at last, with the horses’ iron-shod hooves striking out a great noise against cold stone, we sighted a little patch of light ahead of us. We fairly ran straight toward it. Our breath burst from our lungs, and the patch grew bigger and bigger. And then we came out of the tunnel into blessed fresh air.

We gathered on a little shelf of rock on the side of the mountain. A cold wind whipped at our faces. Spread out before us, to the north and east, was some of the most forbidding country I had ever seen. Far out to the horizon gleamed nothing but great jagged peaks covered with snow and white rivers of ice that cut between them. No part of this terrible terrain seemed flat or showed a spray of green.

‘This can’t be the Valley of the Sun!’ Maram cried out. ‘No one could live here!’

In truth, even a snow tiger or a marmot would have had a difficult time surviving in this ice-locked land. Snowdrifts covered the road before us; this little span of stone seemed to dip down along the spine of a rocky ridge before rising again and disappearing into the rock and snow of another mountain.

‘We must have made a mistake,’ Maram said. ‘Either that or the Rhymes misled us.’

‘No, we made no mistake,’ Master Juwain huffed out into the biting wind. ‘And the Rhymes always tell true.’

And Maram said:

And through the long dark into dawn

The road goes down, yet up: go on!

‘Well,’ he continued, ‘we went through that damn tunnel, and if we go on any farther, we’ll freeze to death. There’s nothing left of this road, and I wouldn’t follow it if there were. And there are no more Rhymes!’

But there were. As Kane again warned Maram to silence, Master Juwain said, ‘Yes, be quiet now – we have little time.’

And then he recited:

Through mountains’ notch, a golden ray:

The rising sun will point the way.

Before this orb unveils full face

Go on into a higher place.

‘Into that?’ Maram cried out, pointing at the icy wasteland before us. ‘I won’t. We can’t. And why should we hurry to our doom, anyway?’

‘Shhh, quiet now,’ Kane said to him. ‘Quiet.’

He watched as Master Juwain lifted his finger toward two great peaks to the east of us. The notch between them glowed red with the radiance of the sun about to rise.

‘This is why we were to come here near Ashte’s ides,’ Master Juwain said. ‘You see, on this date, the declination of the sun, the precise angle of its rays as it rises …’

His voice died into the howling wind as the first arrows of sunlight broke from the notch and streaked straight toward us. So dazzling was this incandescence that we had to shield our eyes and look away lest we be struck blind.

‘And so,’ Master Juwain went on, ‘the sun’s rays should illuminate exactly that part of this land leading on to our destination. Let us look for it before it is too late.’

‘I can’t look for anything at all,’ Maram said, squinting and blinking against the sun’s fulgor. ‘I can’t see anything – it’s too damn bright!’

‘Hurry!’ Liljana said to Master Juwain. She stood by her horse gripping its reins. ‘If these Rhymes of yours have any worth, we must hurry. What did you say are the next verses? The last ones?’

And Master Juwain told her:

If stayed by puzzlement or pride

Let Kundalini be your guide;

But hasten forth or count the cost:

Who long delays is longer lost.

‘The Kundala always rises,’ Master Juwain said. ‘Rises straight to its goal. But I can see no way to go up here, unless it is over the top of that mountain.’

Still shielding his eyes, he pointed straight ahead of us. And Liljana asked him, ‘Are you sure you’ve remembered the verses correctly?’

‘Are you sure your name is Liljana Ashvaran?’

I had rarely heard such peevishness in his voice – or pride. And then, as the sun pushed a little higher above the mountain’s notch and flared even brighter, a sick look befell Master Juwain’s face. I saw it drain the color from his skin, and so did Liljana.

‘Well?’ she said to him. ‘What is it?’

And Master Juwain, who honored truth above almost all else, said, ‘There is a small chance I may have rendered the lines inexactly. But it doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, doesn’t it? Why not, then?’

‘The lines may have been:

If stayed by puzzlement or pride

Let sacred serpent be your guide.

He cleared his throat as he looked at Liljana, and said, ‘To my order, of course, the sacred serpent and the Kundala are one and the same.’

‘But what if the verses’ maker knew the deeper way of things?’ Liljana asked him. ‘What if his sacred serpent was instead Ouroboros?’

‘Impossible!’ Master Juwain called out.

Now the sun had risen like a red knot of fire almost entirely above the notch. We could not look upon its blazing brilliance.

‘Impossible!’ Master Juwain said again.

He turned around toward the mountain behind us. Although the dawn was lightening it seemed to me to be growing only darker, for our hope of finding our way was quickly evaporating before the fury of the sun.

And then I heard Master Juwain whisper the words that Alphanderry had sung to us on a magical night:

The dazzling heights light deep desire;

Within the heart, a deeper fire.

The road toward heavens’ starry crown

Goes ever up but always down.

‘Back!’ Master Juwain suddenly cried out. He pointed at the mouth of the tunnel and the snow of the mountain around it. The sun’s fiery rays had set the whole of it to glowing. ‘Back, now, before it’s too late!’

He turned his horse to lead him into the tunnel. And Maram shouted, ‘Are you mad? It’s black as night in there! I’m not going back inside unless we find a way to relight the torches!’

I reached out and snatched the reins of his horse from his hand, and followed after Master Juwain. Atara grabbed Maram’s empty hand to pull him after us. Then, quickly, came Liljana, Estrella and Daj. Kane, as usual, guarded our rear.

And so we went back into the tunnel. The moment we set foot within, it came alive. The glassy walls glowed, changed color to a translucent white and then poured forth a milky light. It was more than enough with which to see. There were few features, however, to catch the eye. The tunnel’s floor seemed the same cut-stone road that we had trod before. The air was cold, and lay heavy about us as we pushed on through this long scoop through the earth.

‘Val, I feel sick!’ Maram said to me. ‘My head is spinning, as if I’d drunk too much wine.’

I felt as he did, and so did the others, although they did not complain of it. But there seemed nothing to do except to follow Master Juwain deeper into the cold air of this mysterious tunnel.

And then the air around us was suddenly no longer cold. The walls and ceiling seemed to pulse unnervingly, even if the light they shed was steady and clean. I looked back behind me to reassure Maram that everything would be all right. But even as I opened my mouth to speak to him, his form wavered and dissolved into a spray of tiny lights before coalescing and solidifying again.

‘Oh, Lord!’ Maram called out as he stared at me in amazement. ‘Oh, Lord – let us leave this place as quickly as we can before we all evanesce and there’s nothing left of us forever!’

Just then Altaru let loose a long, bone-chilling whinny. He shook his great head, struck stone with his hoof hard enough to send up sparks and then reared up and beat the air with his hooves. He nearly brained Master Juwain, and it was all I could do to hold onto his reins.

‘Lo, friend!’ I called to him as I stroked his neck. ‘Lo, now!’

The other horses, too, began either to whinny or nicker in disquiet. And Kane called to me: ‘Let’s tie blindfolds around them as we did when we crossed the Ymanir’s bridge over the gorge!’

And as he said, it was done. With our dread working at us like a hot acid, it did not take us long to cut some strips from a bolt of cloth and bind them over the horses’ eyes.

After that, we moved on even more quickly. I tried not to look at Master Juwain’s flickering form, nor that of Maram or the pulsing, hollowed-out walls of the tunnel. I pulled at Altaru’s reins and concentrated on the rhythm of his hooves beating against stone. I tried to ignore those moments when this rhythm broke and my horse’s great hooves seemed to beat against nothing more than air. I did not want to listen to Maram’s complaint that he could find no sign of the bones that littered the tunnel near its entrance. For I had eyes, now, only for its exit. As this circle of light grew larger and brighter, we all broke into a run. Master Juwain was the first of us to breach the tunnel’s mouth and step outside. I followed after him a moment later. And I cried out in awe and delight. The serpent, it seemed, had indeed swallowed its own tail. For spread out below us was not the rugged terrain and long road by which we had originally entered the tunnel but a beautiful green valley. And somewhere, perhaps near its center along the blue river below us, there must stand a collection of old stone buildings that would be the Brotherhood’s ancient school.

8

For a long while, however, we stood on a mantle of ground near the tunnel’s mouth looking in vain for this fabled school. Kane set out along the heights to our left to see what he could see, while Master Juwain picked his way along the rocks to our right. They returned to report that they could descry no sign of the school, or indeed, of any human habitation.

‘Perhaps,’ Master Juwain said, pointing at the folded, forested terrain below us, ‘the school is hidden. The lay of the land might conceal it.’

‘Then let us find a better vantage to look for it,’ Kane said.

‘As long as that vantage lies lower and not higher,’ Maram said. ‘It’s damn cold on these heights.’

We began making our way down the rugged slope into the valley. We found a line of clear patches through the trees that might or might not have been part of an ancient path. After an hour, we came out around the curve of a great swell of ground, and we gathered on a long, clear ridge that afforded an excellent view of almost the entire valley. All we could see were trees and empty meadows and the river’s bright blue gleam.

‘Perhaps your Rhymes misled us after all,’ Maram complained to Master Juwain.

Master Juwain’s jaws tightened as he readied a response to Maram’s incessant faithlessness. And then, from below us, through the trees, there came the faint sound of someone singing. I could make out a pleasant melody but none of the words. Although it seemed unlikely that an enemy would cheerfully alert us, Kane and I drew our swords even so.

A few moments later, a small, old man worked his way up the path into view. He wore plain, undyed woolens and leaned upon a shepherd’s crook as if it were a walking staff. I saw that he had the wheat-colored skin and almond eyes of the Sung. Long, thick white hair framed his wrinkled face. Despite his obvious age, he moved with the liveliness of a much younger man.

‘Greetings, strangers!’ he called to us in a rich, melodious voice. ‘You look as if you’ve come a long way.’

His words caused Master Juwain to rub the back of his head as he scrutinized this old man. He said to him, ‘A stranger’s way is always long.’

‘Unless, of course,’ the old man said, smiling, ‘he is no stranger to the Way.’

Now Master Juwain smiled, too, and he bowed to the old man. Having completed the ancient formula by which those of the Brotherhood recognize and greet others of their order in chance encounters in out of the way places, the two of them strode forward to embrace each other. Master Juwain gave his name and those of the rest of us. And the old man presented himself as Master Virang.

‘You did well,’ he told Master Juwain, bowing back to him, ‘to find your way here. My brethren will be eager to learn why you have brought outsiders to our valley.’

He cast a deep, penetrating look at Kane and me, as we faced him with our swords still drawn. I had a sense that he could peel back the layers of my being and nearly read my mind. And Maram said to him, ‘Then this is the Valley of the Sun? We weren’t sure, for we saw nothing that looked like a school. You don’t dwell underground, do you?’

He shuddered as he said this. Since the Ymanir, who might have carved the mysterious tunnel above us, had also built the underground city of Argattha in these same mountains, it seemed a likely surmise.

His question, though, made Master Virang smile. ‘No, we are men, not moles, and so we dwell as most men do.’

‘Dwell where, then?’ Maram asked. ‘I could swear that there isn’t a hut or even an outhouse in all this valley.’

‘Could you?’

Master Virang kept one of his hands inside his pocket as he looked at Maram strangely. Then he looked at me. The space behind my eyes tingled in a way that seemed both pleasant and disturbing. I found myself, of a sudden, able to make out the trees in the distance with a greater clarity. It was as if I had emerged from a pool of blurry water into cold, crisp air.

‘Ah, I could swear it,’ Maram muttered. ‘We’ve looked everywhere.’

‘Indeed?’ Master Virang asked. ‘But did you look down there?’

So saying, he pointed the tip of his staff straight down the slope below us toward the most open part of the valley, where the river ran through its heart. The air overlaying this green, sunny land began to shimmer. And then I gripped my sword in astonishment, for out of the wavering brilliance a few miles away, along the banks of the river, many white, stone buildings appeared. So distinctly did they stand out that it seemed impossible we had failed to perceive them.

‘Sorcery!’ Maram cried out, even more astonished than I. He shook his head at Master Virang, and took a step back from him. ‘You hide your school beneath the veil of illusion!’

Liljana, too, seemed disquieted by the sudden sight of the school – and even more so by Master Virang. In her most acid of voices, she said to him, ‘We had not heard that the masters of the Great White Brotherhood had learned the arts of the Lord of Illusions.’

But Master Virang only matched her scowl with a smile. He said to her, ‘To compel others to see what is not is indeed illusion, and that is forbidden to us, as it is to all men. But to help them apprehend what is – this is true vision and the grace of the One.’

He bowed his head to Liljana and added, ‘Our school is real enough, after all. You are tired and travel-worn – will you accept our hospitality?’

Although he posed this invitation as a question, politely and formally, there could be no doubting what our answer would be. All of us, I thought, bore misgivings as to how the Brotherhood’s school had been hidden from us. Even more, though, we were curious to learn its secrets and ways.

And so Master Virang twirled his staff in his hand as he led us back along the path. He fairly jumped from rock to rock like a mountain goat. The rest of us, trailing our horses, moved more slowly. It took us most of the rest of the morning to hike down into the valley and to come out of the forest onto the school’s grounds, laid out above the river. We walked through apple orchards, ash groves and rose gardens, and fields of rye, oats and barley. The Valley of the Sun was as warm and bright as its name promised, especially near the ides of Ashte with the full bloom of spring greening the land. A ring of great, white mountains entirely surrounded it and guarded it from the worst winds and snow.

This refuge deep within the Nagarshath range was nothing so splendid and magnificent as the Ymanir’s crystal city, Alundil, beneath the Mountain of the Morning Star. But it shone with a quiet beauty and was pervaded by a deep peace. It seemed to exist out of time and to take no part in the ways and wars of the world. We all sensed that it concealed ancient secrets. The two hundred or so Brothers who dwelled here worked hard but happily in getting their sustenance from the land. We passed these simple men dressed in simple woolen tunics, laying to in the fields with hoes or dipping candles or working hot iron in the blacksmith’s shop. Others tended sheep in pastures on the hillsides or attended to the dozen other occupations necessary for the thriving of what amounted to a small town. But the Brothers’ main occupations, as we would learn, remained the ancient disciplines, or callings, of the Great White Brotherhood. And each of these seven callings was exemplified by a revered master, and indeed, by the Grandmaster of the Brotherhood himself.

Master Virang, who proved to be the Meditation Master, helped us to settle into two of the school’s guest houses just above the river. Liljana, Atara and Estrella took up residence in the smaller of them, while the rest of us set up in the other. There, in these steeply-roofed stone hostels that reminded me of the chalets of my home, we spent hours soaking our cold, bruised bodies in hot water and washing away the grime of our journey. It was good to put on fresh tunics, and even better to sit down to a hot meal. Master Virang saw to it that we were served chicken soup and fresh bread for lunch, and cheese and berries, too. He left us alone to eat these heartening foods, but then returned an hour later to spirit away Master Juwain to a private meeting with the Grandmaster.

What they discussed all during that long afternoon we could only wonder. Master Juwain rejoined us only at the end of the day, when we gathered with the entire community of Brothers for a feast in the Great Hall. We were so busy, however, exchanging pleasantries with the curious Brothers that Master Juwain could not find a moment to confer with the rest of us. His face seemed tight and troubled, and I wondered if the Grandmaster had given him ill tidings or perhaps had chastened him for leading our company here.

I did not have to wait long to find out the answers to these questions – and to others that vexed me even more sorely. After the feast, we were summoned to take tea with The Seven, as the Brotherhood’s masters were called. On a clear, lovely night we adjourned to one of the nearby buildings. Here, from time to time, in a little stone conservatory, the Grandmaster came to dwell in solitude or sit with the Music or Meditation Masters, or others with whom he wished to speak. Indeed, the circular space where we met with them had much the air of a meditation chamber. White wool carpets and many cushions covered the floor across its length and breadth. Vases of fresh flowers had been set into recesses built into the walls. These curves of white granite were carved with various symbols: pentagram, gammadion and caduceus; sun and eagle, swan and star. In various places, some ancient artisan had chiselled the Great Serpent in the form of a lightning bolt – and of a dragon swallowing its tail. The twelve pillars supporting the dome above us also showed cut glyphs. The light from the room’s many candles illumined the shapes of the Archer, Ram, Dolphin, and nine other signs of the zodiac. The dome itself was smooth and featureless save for twelve round windows letting in the light of the stars.