Black Jade

The room fell quiet as he and the others of the Seven sat regarding me. And then Master Okuth said, ‘If the Maitreya is slain or falls into Morjin’s hands, then we see no hope of Angra Mainyu ever being healed. And so no hope for Ea and all the other worlds of Eluru.’

‘The risk is great beyond measure,’ Master Virang said to me. ‘And not just to the world, but to yourself. If you fall into Morjin’s hands, or fall as his master did, then –’

‘But we have to take the chance!’ I cried out. ‘Or else we might as well be dead already!’

For a while everyone sat quite still. The smell of various teas steeping in hot water filled the air. Then Abrasax looked at me with unnerving percipience, and said, ‘Your manner, Valashu, the fire of your eyes, all you have dared and done – this bespeaks the attainment of the highest Valari ideal. And yet I think you find your valor in being drawn to that which you most dread.’

I said nothing as I tried to return his relentless gaze.

‘You would wish,’ he continued, ‘for others to see you as fearless, as you would like to see yourself. But you fear this neverness that Prince Maram has told of so terribly, don’t you?’

I could hardly look at him as I nodded my head and said, ‘Yes.’

‘And you fear, too,’ Abrasax said as the others of the Seven bent closer to me, ‘that Morjin will be the one to damn you to exile in this lightless land?’

Yes, yes, yes! And as I feared, so I hated; and as I hated, my heart ached with a black, bitter wrath that poisoned my blood and darkened everything I held inside as beautiful and good. How I longed to take a sword to this dreadful disease that consumed me! But I could not, as I might rid myself of a rotting limb, simply cut it out.

‘And most of all,’ Abrasax said, looking at me deeply, ‘you fear your hatred of Morjin.’

‘It is killing me!’ I called out.

The fury that poured out of me beat against Liljana, Master Juwain and the others sitting close to me with the force of a raging river. It caught up the seven Masters, as well. Their faces fell ashen and sick, and Master Storr gripped the edge of his table as if to keep himself from being swept away. And then Master Juwain placed his hand on the center of my back, and I drew in three long, deep breaths.

‘You see,’ Abrasax said to me, ‘your hate is a terrible thing, and we fear it, too.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I finally gasped out. ‘I would have done better to have been born a lamb or made a gelding!’

Abrasax’s smile was like a cold bucket of water splashed in my face. And he said, ‘Do not mistake lack of passion for virtue. We must celebrate all the passions, as we do life itself.’

‘Even hate?’

‘Yes, even that. The virtuous man is not one who doesn’t hate, but he who is in full control of it, as he is all his passions, directing it toward a good end – and by good means.’

I traded dark looks with Kane then, for Abrasax had pierced to the heart of the conundrum that tormented me. Then I looked back at the Grandmaster and said, ‘Too often it seems that if I don’t give back Morjin evil for evil, he’ll win. And if I do fight this way, evil will still win.’

‘It is difficult, I know,’ he told me. ‘But you must find the way to make use of these blazing passions of yours, even the ugly and evil inside yourself, toward a higher end – even as the One does in creating the world. Pour fire the wrong way against a lump of coal and it will burn up and crumble into ashes. Wield fire as the earth does, however, as the sun and stars do, and you will make a diamond. This self-creation is the path of the angels; it is their fundamental duty and test.’

He came over to my table to pour some tea into my cup, and his steady gaze seemed to remind me that I held the keys to two opposing kingdoms inside my heart: either the wild joy of life or the rage for death.

Master Storr, who had recovered from my carelessness, pointed his finger at me and said, ‘We’ve all felt this passion of Prince Valashu tonight. With it, in Tria, he slew a man. How long before he slays again?’

‘Never!’ I cried out inside the cold castle of my mind. And then, to Master Storr and the others, I said, ‘I have vowed never again to use the valarda this way. And Morjin lives because of this!’

It might have been more accurate to say that Morjin had survived our last battle because of my hesitation – or because I could no more control my gift than I could a thunderstorm.

‘It is strange that Morjin left Argattha at this time,’ Abrasax said to me. ‘Indeed, there is something very strange about your encounter with him. I must believe that it is for the best that you did not slay Morjin with this secret sword of yours. All my understanding of the Law of the One is that the valarda is to be used only for the highest of purposes.’

Yes, I thought, it should be. To sense in others their deepest desires, to dream their dreams, to share with them my own – how I had longed for this! Yet too often the valarda had been a curse. I felt my heart pressing up against my throat as I said, ‘All my life, I have suffered others’ passions. And now, it seems, I have learned to inflict mine upon them – even to slay.’

Abrasax regarded me a moment before saying, ‘Surely you must suspect that your sentiments and passions, as powerful as they are, are not sufficient to kill another person?’

I looked at him in alarm and waited for him to say more.

‘Haven’t you ever wondered,’ he asked me, ‘at the true nature of the valarda?’

‘Only as long as I could think and feel!’ I told him.

‘Then haven’t you ever sensed that your openness to others is only the beginning of openness to much more? Indeed, I believe it leads to the identity with others, ultimately with the entire world. As with the Maitreya.’

‘But I am not the Maitreya!’

‘No, you are not,’ he told me. ‘But already you have wielded some of the power that must be his. Through him would flow the great soul force, the deepest fires of the world. Such a force, Valashu, can be used either for great evil or great good.’

He went on to say that, ultimately, this angel fire could be used to destroy whole universes, as the Ieldra were sometimes forced to do, or to create new ones.

He finished speaking and poured himself yet another cup of tea. And I said, ‘If what you’ve told us is true, then the Maitreya would possess the valarda in much greater measure than I.’

‘Perhaps. But I should say rather than possessing the valarda, the Maitreya, in his essence, is valarda, for he would be as a window letting in the light of all things.’

Above us, the twelve round windows filled with the faint sheen of the stars. The dome above us seemed to catch the exhalations of the Seven as they looked at me.

‘The Maitreya,’ I said to Abrasax, and to everyone, ‘must be able to draw forth the light from the Cup of Heaven. And we must find him before Morjin does.’

Master Virang’s discipline was meditation, not mind-reading, but I sensed that he exactly echoed Abrasax’s thoughts as he asked me, ‘Do you seek the Shining One to keep Morjin from using the Lightstone or for more personal reasons?’

‘Both,’ I told him truthfully.

Two flames, I thought, burned inside my heart. The first was reddish-black, and would destroy me if I let it. The other flame was as blue as the sky and connected me to all the lights of the heavens.

‘If we are to help you, we must be sure of you,’ Master Storr told me again. ‘Sure, at least, that you can use the valarda for good, and not ill. Will you allow us to test this?’

I nodded my head as I looked at him. ‘If you must.’

‘Good,’ Master Storr said. ‘Then please stand up.’

I did as he asked, and moved off to the side of the tables beneath the chamber’s dome. The Seven gathered around me. Each of them held one of the Great Gelstei out toward my chest.

‘Ah, just don’t make him disappear,’ Maram called out from his cushion below me.

Abrasax smiled at this as his open hand showed a little colored sphere. So it was with Master Yasul, Master Matai and the others of the Seven. Each of them, especially Master Storr, gazed at me intently. I felt their eyes pierce me like hot needles at many places through my body. Their hands, now glowing with the radiance of their crystals, seemed to reach inside me and open me to the whirls of light up and down my spine.

‘It burns, does it not?’ Abrasax said to me. His eyes filled with concern for me even as his crystal flared with a white luster. ‘Your belly is where you feel it, isn’t it? All your hatred of the Red Dragon?’

Deep within my belly, down behind my navel, the red flame raged hot as molten stone. For a moment, I perceived it as Abrasax did: as red as burning blood and shot with streaks of orange darkening to black, like smoke. I sensed that it would soon kill me, if I let it.

‘There is a saying,’ Abrasax told me. ‘Words as old as the stars: “If you would be freed from burning, you must become fire.”’

With that, the crystals of the Seven glistened in a rainbow brilliance. Wheels of fiery light whirled along my spine in colors to match the hues pouring from their crystals. The red flame in my deepest part built hotter and hotter. It might, I knew, burn up the whole world with my hellish hate if I let it. It consumed me, now, almost, being drawn up into my chest with every beat of my heart. But there, too, gathered the other flame, pure and blue, like Arras and Solaru and the brightest of the stars.

If you would be freed from burning, you must become fire.

I closed my eyes then, and I felt the hot flickers of the red flame feed the blazing of the blue. I willed this to be. It grew brighter and brighter. I did. My whole being, out from my center into my arms and legs, feet and hands, fairly shimmered and sang with a surging new life. And then, in a rush of joy, a fountain of violet flame seemed to shoot up through my belly, heart and throat, flaring to pure white as it filled the bright, black spaces behind my eyes. For an endless moment I did disappear, into a fire so brilliant that it touched the whole world with an infinite light.

At last, I returned to myself. I sensed a quickness of breath and rushing blood inside Abrasax, and I opened my eyes to see as he did. And I gasped in astonishment. For the auras of the Seven and Atara and Kane, and all those in the room, impinged on each other, and flowed, swirled and shimmered in a cloud of light. This living radiance seemed to be drawn to me as water to an opening in the earth and to change hues as it brightened into a numinous and dazzling glorre. I drew my sword then, and held it pointing up toward the apex of the dome. Alkaladur, too, blazed with this perfect color.

‘Fire, indeed,’ Abrasax said.

Then he put away his gelstei, and so did Master Storr and the others, and the auras of everyone gathered there vanished from my sight. But my sword’s silustria continued burning with an ineffable flame.

‘Do you see?’ Abrasax said, to Master Virang and Master Storr. ‘Do you see? It is as Master Juwain told about Prince Valashu.’

Everyone watched as the glorre illuminating my sword slowly faded to a silvery sheen. I sheathed Alkaladur as I looked at Abrasax.

‘That is enough of testing for one night,’ he said, smiling at me.

Master Storr looked down at Maram swigging his tea and said, ‘But what of the others?’

‘Valashu is their leader,’ Abrasax told him. ‘As he goes, so go they. If he can overcome the worst of himself as he has here tonight, then I believe that they will, too.’

‘You speak of him,’ Master Storr said, eyeing me, ‘almost as if he is the Maitreya!’

‘No, Valashu is not the Shining One,’ he said. ‘But I believe their fates are interwoven, as threads in a tapestry. Surely it is upon the Prince of Elahad to lead the way to him. Do you agree, Master Matai?’

The Master Diviner, standing across from me, smiled at Abrasax. And then, in turn, as Abrasax queried the other masters, each of them gave his assent. Even Master Storr reluctantly nodded his head.

‘I suppose we must trust Valashu and his friends,’ he affirmed.

In the end, I thought, either one has faith in another or not.

‘Yes, we must trust them with all our power to trust,’ Abrasax said. ‘And give them all our help. All the signs point one way.’

‘Ah, but which way?’ Maram asked as he fingered his beard. ‘That is the question of the moment, is it not?’

Abrasax smiled at this, then called out, ‘Master Matai – will you show us the parchment?’

The Seven moved back over to the empty table, and my friends and I gathered around them. Master Matai produced a large, yellowed parchment, which he unrolled and laid upon the table for all of us to examine. On its glossy surface were inscribed a great circle and various symbols marking the position of the planets and stars at the hour of my birth. It was, I saw, a copy of my horoscope, which Master Sebastian of the school in Mesh had prepared scarcely a year before.

Master Matai ran his finger over a hornlike glyph representing the sign of the Ram, and he said, ‘As Master Sebastian and Master Juwain elucidated in Mesh, Valashu’s horoscope is nearly identical with that of Godavanni. Valashu’s stars, as they determined, are those of a Maitreya.’

‘Then you should not blame him,’ Maram half-shouted, ‘for having believed that he might be the Maitreya!’

Master Matai shot him a sharp look and shook his head to silence him. And then he went on: ‘As we say, the stars impel; they do not compel. There are always other signs. And there are other stars.’

‘I’m afraid I still don’t understand,’ Master Juwain said, resting his elbows on the table to examine the horoscope, ‘where Master Sebastian went wrong.’

‘That is because he didn’t,’ Master Matai said. ‘On all of Ea, there is hardly a better diviner, especially when it comes to astrology. No, Master Sebastian made no error, at least of commission. But it must be said that an omission has been made, and a critical one at that.’

So saying, he brought forth a second parchment and unrolled it on top of mine.

‘Always, at the end of ages, the Maitreyas are born,’ he told us. ‘And at the end of this age, the last age that will give birth to the Age of Light, or so we hope, the stars are so strong. I have studied this for years, and for years I believed the Maitreya’s star would rise over the Morning Mountains. But I have found a brighter one that rose in another land. Twenty-two years ago, now, at the same time that the Golden Band flared as it never had before and has done only once since.’

I glanced at the date that Master Matai had inked onto the parchment: the ninth of Triolet in the year 2792 – the same day as my birth.

Master Juwain studied the symbols inscribed in the great circle, and he asked, ‘And for which land has this horoscope been prepared?’

‘Hesperu. In the Haraland, in the north, somewhere below the mountains, to the east of Ghurlan but west of the Rhul River.’

‘Hesperu!’ I wanted to cry out. I could think of few lands of Ea so far away, and none so difficult to reach.

‘But we can’t journey there!’ Maram bellowed. ‘It’s impossible!’

‘So, it would be difficult, not impossible,’ Kane said, his eyes gleaming.

He went on to tell us that we could complete our transit of the White Mountains and cross the vast forest of Acadu. And then choose between two routes: the southern one through the Dragon Kingdoms, or the northern route across the Red Desert.

‘Oh, excellent!’ Maram said. ‘Then we’ll have our choice between being put up on crosses or dying of thirst in the desert.’

I turned to look at Maram. I didn’t want him to frighten the children – and himself.

‘But think, Val!’ he said to me. ‘Even if the Maitreya was born in Hesperu, he might long since have gone elsewhere. Or been taken as a slave or even killed. It’s madness, I say, to set out to the end of the earth solely according to another astrological reckoning.’

I waited for the blood to leave his flushed face, and then I asked him, ‘But what else can we do?’

‘Ah, I don’t really know,’ he muttered. ‘Why must we do anything? And if we do do something, wouldn’t it be enough to work in concert with the Brotherhood? Surely the Grandmaster has alerted the schools in Hesperu to look for the Maitreya. Let them find him, I say.’

Master Juwain looked over his shoulder at Maram and asked him, ‘Have you forgotten Kasandra’s prophecy?’

‘You mean, that Val would find the Maitreya in the darkest of places?’

Hesperu, I thought, under the terror of King Arsu and the Kallimun, no less Morjin, seemed just about the darkest place on Ea.

‘There is more that you should know,’ Master Matai said as he pressed his finger against one of the symbols inked onto the parchment. ‘The Maitreya’s star, I believe, will burn brightly but not long.’

I looked at Maram as he looked at me. Sometimes decisions are made not in the affirmation of one’s lips but in the silence of the eyes.

‘But we’ll die reaching Hesperu!’ he moaned. ‘Oh, too bad, too bad!’

And with that he hammered his fist on the table behind him hard enough to rattle the teacups and to shake from them a few dark, amber drops. ‘Why can’t I have at least one glass of brandy before I’m reduced to worm’s meat? Are there no spirits in this accursed place?’

‘There are those that you carry inside your hearts,’ Abrasax told him with a smile.

Maram waved his thick hand at Abrasax’s attempt to encourage him, and he turned toward me. ‘Can’t you see it, Val? It’s madness, this new quest of ours, damnable and utter madness!’

‘Then you must be mad, too,’ I told him, ‘to be coming with us.’

‘Am I coming with you? Am I?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Ah, of course I am, damn it! And that’s the hell of it, isn’t it? How could I ever desert you?’

We returned to our original tables then. Abrasax began a long account of how one of the ancient Maitreyas, on another world during the age-old War of the Stone, had sung to a star called Ayasha to keep it from dying in a blaze of light. We drank many cups of tea. Finally, it grew late. Through one of the windows, I saw the stars of the Dragon descending toward the west. And yet Kane still sat spellbound as he listened to Abrasax’s flowing voice, and so did Daj and Estrella. But whereas Kane could remain awake for nights on end, and perhaps longer, the children began yawning with their need for sleep.

‘I think that is enough for one night,’ Abrasax said. He closed the crystal-paged book from which he had been reading. I sheathed my sword, and my companions hid away their gelstei. ‘Tomorrow you must begin preparing for a long journey, and we must help you.’

He turned to look at Atara, Daj and Estrella, and all the rest of us, one by one. At last he rested his gaze on me. ‘I believe with all my heart that you will find the Maitreya, as has been prophesied. And I also believe that what will befall then will be ruled by your heart. Remember, Valashu, creation is everything. It is what we were born for.’

He stood up slowly, and stepped over to the pedestal holding up the cup of silver gelstei. After lifting it with great care, he brought it back to our table and set it down. And then he enjoined us: ‘Escort the Shining One back to us, here, and we shall help him, too. We shall place this in his hands, if not the true gold. And then we shall see who is truly master of the Lightstone.’

After that we went back to our hostels to rest. For hours I lay awake with my hand on the hilt of Alkaladur, by the side of my bed. A bright flame still blazed inside me. I wanted to pass it on like a strengthening elixir to Atara, sleeping in the little house next to mine, and to Estrella, Liljana, and everyone. I couldn’t help hoping that we might bring something beautiful into creation, even though I knew that before us lay an endless road of blood, destruction and death.

10

We spent the next days resting and preparing for what Maram kept calling our ‘mad quest’. In the warmth of the brightening spring, we feasted on good, solid food to build up our bodies against the trials that would soon come. We tried to strengthen our minds and spirits as well. Master Juwain passed many hours in the school’s library studying maps and reading accounts of the lands that we must cross. Liljana held counsel with Abrasax in an unprecedented effort to combine the resources of the Sisterhood and Brotherhood. Master Nolashar taught Estrella and me secret songs to play on our flutes and drive evil humors away. We all sat in the stone conservatory with Master Virang, who guided us through meditations so as to enliven our auras. This unseen radiance, like an armor woven of light, might protect us against the malice and lies of the Red Dragon – against even cold and hunger and the depredations of our own despair.

After nearly a week of this practice, the other masters joined us in these meditations, and the Grandmaster, too. The Seven brought forth their crystals and used them to quicken our chakras’ fires. As Abrasax told us, this would help open us to the angel fire and greater life.

‘That is the power and purpose of the Great Gelstei,’ he told us one fine morning with the larks singing in the nearby cherry orchard. ‘At least, the purpose of these small stones that we are privileged to keep. We use them with you as we believe the Star People do: in the creation of angels.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Maram said as he patted his overstuffed belly and let loose a rude belch, ‘I am rather like an angel, aren’t I? Five-Horned Maram will become Maram of the Golden Wings. Soon, soon, I know, lesser men will have to bow to me and address me as “Lord Elijin”.’

Abrasax shook his head in reproach for his sarcasm, and told him, ‘You need not worry about taking on that burden just now. The Way is very long – long even for the Star People, and we have rediscovered only part of it.’

He looked at Kane as if in hope that he might say more about this ancient path that human beings walked toward the heavens. But Kane just stared at the conservatory’s stone walls in silence.

‘I must say,’ Maram grumbled out, as he pressed his hand against his belly, solar plexus, heart and throat, ‘that I feel little different than I did before we began this work.’

‘That is because,’ Master Storr chided him, ‘your fires are blocked and trapped within your second chakra.’

At this, Maram shot Master Storr a belligerent look, and wantonly waggled his hips. Master Storr stared back at him in disdain.

Abrasax, however, was kinder. He smiled at Maram and said, ‘Give it time.’

‘Ah, time,’ Maram muttered. ‘How much of it do I have left before the candle burns out?’

He sighed as he stood up and gazed out the conservatory’s window at the setting sun. Then he turned to Abrasax and said, ‘You seem to have had all the time in the world, Grandfather, and yet that hasn’t kept old age from snowing white hair on you, if you’ll forgive me for speaking so bluntly.’

Abrasax smiled at this. ‘I will forgive you, Sar Maram, but things are not always as they seem. Just how old do you think I am?’

Maram gazed at Abrasax, and I could almost hear him mentally subtracting ten years from his assessment in an effort to repay Abrasax’s kindness: ‘Ah, seventy, I should guess.’

Abrasax’s smile widened. He said, ‘I was born in the year that the Red Dragon destroyed the Golden Brotherhood and captured the False Gelstei. That was –’

‘2647!’ Maram cried out. ‘But that is impossible! That would make you a hundred and forty-seven years old!’

‘Please, Sar Maram – a hundred and forty-six,’ Abrasax said with a grin. ‘I won’t have my next birthday until Segadar.’

‘But that is impossible!’ Maram said again. He looked from Abrasax to Kane. ‘Only the Elijin are immortal and –’