Black Jade

Liljana patted his head at his perceptiveness, then looked at me as she said, ‘In the end, of course, it might be the same question.’

‘Whatever the answer,’ Master Juwain said to me, ‘it is certain that the Lord of Lies is learning the Lightstone’s secrets. Your hate will not deter him. Put your sword away.’

I leaned forward to wrap my fingers around Alkaladur’s hilt. The black jade was as cool as grass. But the blade’s silustria still emanated a faint heat, like a paving stone after a long summer day.

‘Surely this is damned,’ I said as I lifted up my sword. ‘As I am damned.’

Liljana slapped her hand into her palm, then shook her head violently as she waggled her finger at me. ‘Don’t you ever say that!’

She edged past Daj and Estrella and knelt before me, and she laid her hand on top of mine. Her voice grew soft and gentle as she told me, ‘You are not damned! You, of all people. And you, of all people, must never think that of yourself.’

I smiled at her kindness, but she did not smile back. I let go of Alkaladur for a moment to squeeze her hand. And then I grasped yet again the sword that would carve my fate.

‘Morjin is poisoning the gelstei,’ I said. ‘Or trying to.’

Once, I remembered, in a wood near my home, Morjin’s priest named Igasho had shot at me an arrow tipped with kirax. The poison had found its way into my blood, where it would always work its dark enchantment. I wondered if this evil substance that connected me to Morjin was slowly killing me after all. As I fiercely gripped my sword, I felt the kirax burning my stomach, liver and lungs with every breath, and stabbing like red-hot needles through my eyes and brain.

‘Damn him!’ I said again, shaking my sword at the heavens.

In the west, clouds were moving in, blocking out the stars. Lightning rent the sky there, and thunder shook the earth. Far out on the steppe, wolves howled their strange and mournful cries. There, too, our enemy’s campfires burned on and on through the night.

‘And damn them, too!’ I said, stabbing my sword at the Red Knights who followed us.

I watched with dread as my silver sword again burst into flame. And then something dark and dreadful as a dragon burned through my hand, arm and chest, straight into my heart.

‘He is here!’ I cried out as I sprang up to my feet.

‘Who is here?’ Master Juwain asked me. Now he stood up, too, and came over to me, and so did the others.

‘Morjin is – he rides with the Red Knights!’ I said.

‘Morjin, here?’ Kane shouted. His eyes flared like fire-arrows out toward the steppe. ‘Impossible!’

Atara stood by my side, but well away from my burning blade. She put her hand on my shoulder to gentle me, and she said, ‘Your sword shone much as it ever did when you pointed it toward Argattha, and so the Lightstone must still be there. And so, as you have said yourself, must Morjin.’

‘No, he is here, a mile away across the grass!’

‘Atara is right,’ Master Juwain said to me. He rested his hand on my other shoulder. ‘Think, Val: the Dragon would never leave the Lightstone out of his clutches, even for moment, not even to ride after you.’

‘And if he did hunt you,’ Atara added, ‘he would have come out of Argattha at the head of his whole army, and not leading a couple of dozen knights.’

As lightning lit the mountains and fire sheathed my sword, my friends tried to reason with me. I could hardly listen. For I felt Morjn’s presence too near me. The flames of his being writhed and twisted as they ever did, in shoots of madder, puce and incarnadine, and other colors that recalled his tormented soul.

‘I know it is he!’ I said, to Atara and my other friends.

Then Liljana moved closer and told me, ‘Your gift betrays you. As mine betrayed me.’

All my life, it seemed, I had felt others’ passions, hurts and joys as my own. Kane called this gift the valarda: two hearts beating as one and lit from within as with the fire of a star. He had also said it was impossible that Morjin should be here, in our enemy’s encampment scarcely two thousand yards away. But it seemed impossible that the malice, decay and spite I felt emanating from that direction could have its source in any man except Morjin.

‘Do you remember Argattha?’ I said to Liljana. ‘There Morjin soaked his skin with the essence of roses to cover the smell of his rotting flesh. But he could not cover the stench of his soul. I … smell it here.’

Liljana pointed at my sword, at the flames that still swirled up and down its length. And she said to me, ‘Is that really what you smell?’

I noticed that Flick, spinning like a top in the air beyond my reach, seemed to be keeping his distance from me.

Liljana brushed past Master Juwain, and laid her hand over the steel rings that encased my chest. And she said, ‘I think you hate Morjin so much that you always sense him close now. Here, in your own heart.’

I held my breath against the pain that her words caused me. My sword dipped lower, and its flames began to recede.

‘There is a great danger for you here, Val,’ Master Juwain said to me. ‘Do you remember the prophecy?: “If a man comes forth in falseness as the Shining One concealing darkness in his heart, if he claims the Lightstone for his own, then he shall become a new Red Dragon, only mightier and more terrible.”’

‘But that’s just it, sir!’ I said to him. ‘I have proved that I am not the Maitreya!’

‘Yes, you have. But have you proved that you could not become like unto the Red Dragon?’

I watched the flames working at my sword, and I could not breathe.

‘Do you not remember your dream?’ Master Juwain asked me.

I slowly nodded my head. Once, in the innocence of my youth, I had vowed to bring an end to war.

‘But there’s no help for it!’ I gasped out. ‘The more I have sought not to kill, the more I have killed. And the more war I have brought upon us!’

Master Juwain squeezed my shoulder, and then pointed out toward the Red Knights’ campfires. And he told me, ‘Killing, even at need, is an evil of itself. But killing when there may be no need is much worse. And killing as you feel compelled to kill, in vengeance and hate … that is everything you’ve been fighting against.’

‘But there’s no help for that either!’ I said. I blinked my eyes against my sword’s searing flames. ‘Ten thousand men Morjin crucified in Galda! He is poisoning the world!’

I went on to say that Morjin would use the Lightstone to master men: their lusts, fears and dreams, even as he was trying with our gelstei. And then soon, perhaps in another year, perhaps less, all of Ea would be lost – and much more.

‘You know,’ I said to Master Juwain. ‘You know what will happen, in the end.’

‘I do not know about ends,’ Master Juwain said. ‘I only know that it is as it ever was: if you use evil to fight evil, then you will become evil.’

‘Yes,’ I said, gripping my sword, ‘and if I do not, the whole world will fall to evil and be destroyed.’

It grew quiet in our encampment after that. The fire made little crackling sounds, and from out on the grasslands an owl hooed faintly, but none of us spoke. I stood staring at my burning sword. It was strange how the blue and red flames licked at the bright silustria but did not seem to really touch it.

Then Liljana said to me, ‘Morjin has long tried to make a ghul of you. It may be that, through your sword, he could seize your will.’

‘No, I won’t let him,’ I said. Then I smiled grimly. ‘But if he does, then Kane will have to kill me – if he can.’

‘Ah, Val, Val!’ Maram said to me as sweat beaded on his fat cheeks. He cast his eyes upon Kane. ‘Don’t make jokes, not at a time like this!’

No one, I thought, not even Liljana, could read the look on Kane’s face just then. He stood as still as death, gazing at my sword as his hand rested on the hilt of his own. Like coals, his black, blazing eyes seemed to burn open the night.

And then this strange man said a strange thing: ‘Hate is just the left hand of love, eh? And so with evil and good. So – Val hates Morjin, even as Morjin hates him. Don’t be so sure what will come of it.’

I pointed Alkaladur toward the Red Knights a mile away. I said, ‘There Morjin watches us and waits. Let us end things now, if we can.’

Kane followed my gaze, and I felt his insides churning with an unusual disquiet. ‘Don’t be so sure he is there. The Lord of Lies has laid traps for us before, eh? Let us ride tomorrow, for the mountains, as fast as we can.’

Master Juwain nodded his head at this and said, ‘Yes, surely he has conjured up confusions, somehow. Let us ride, as Kane has said.’

Maram, naturally, agreed with this course of action, and so did Liljana, Atara and even Daj. It was not Estrella’s way to pit her will against mine or even to make a vote by pointing towards or away from the Red Knights. But she knew with a quiet certainty that she had a part to play in our decision. She came up close to me, heedless of my burning sword. Against the curve of the dark world, with her fine features and wisps of black hair, she seemed small and slight. She stood gazing at me, her lovely eyes looking for something bright and beautiful in my own. She was a seard, I remembered, gifted with finding things and the secrets inside them; a dying scryer had once promised me that she would show me the Maitreya. Since the night I had met her, it been both a grace and a torment that she had also shown me myself.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ I said to her. I stabbed my sword out toward the steppe. ‘If Morjin is there, he won’t expect us to attack. When we do, you and Daj will ride with Liljana and Master Juwain toward the mountains. You’ll be safe there. After we’ve won, we’ll meet up with you. And then it will all be over … everything. We’ll regain the Lightstone, and much else besides.’

Evil, I know, speaks in the most seductive of voices. It plays to our lusts, fears, delusions and hates. There is always a part of us that wants to heed this voice. But there is always a deeper voice, too, which we might take to heart if only we would listen. As Estrella looked at me with so much trust, I heard it whispering, like the songs of the stars: that war could be ended; that I could grip my sword with hate’s right hand; that darkness could always be defeated by shining a bright enough light.

‘Estrella,’ I whispered, ‘Estrella.’

I would give anything, I thought, that she should grow into womanhood without the blight of murder and war.

Then she called back to me in her silent way, with a smile and a flash of her eyes. She placed one hand over my heart and the other upon my hand that held my sword. I watched as its fires dimmed and died.

‘All right, we won’t attack – not tonight, not like this,’ I said. I slid my sword back into its sheath. ‘But if Morjin is out there, it will come to battle, in the end.’

After that, I sat back down with my friends to finish our dessert of fresh berries. Maram brought out his brandy bottle; I heard him muttering to himself, commanding himself not to uncork it. He licked his lips as he held himself proud and straight. In the west, lightning continued to torment the sky, but the threatened storm never came. As I watched our enemy’s campfires burning with a hazy orange glow, far into the night, the wolves on the dark grass about us howled to the stars.

2

The sun, at the breaking of the morning, reddened the green grasslands in the east like a great blister of flame. We rose at first light and ate a quick, cold breakfast of dried sagosk and battle biscuits. I pulled myself on top of my great, black warhorse, Altaru, as my friends did their mounts. The twelve Manslayers formed up behind us to cover our rear. Their captain was Karimah, a fat, jolly woman who was almost as quick with her knife as she was with her arrows, which she could fire with a deadly accuracy while turning in her saddle. Bajorak and his thirty warriors took their places on their lithe steppe ponies ahead of us, as a vanguard. If we were attacked from the rear, he and his men could quickly drop back to support Karimah and the Manslayers. But as he had told me the day before: ‘The danger in that direction is known, and I scorn the Zayak, even more the Crucifier’s knights. But who knows what lies ahead?’

As we pushed our horses to a quick trot and then a canter, I watched this young headman of the Tarun clan. Although he was not tall, as the Sarni headmen and chieftains usually are, he had an air of fierceness that might easily intimidate a larger man. His handsome face was thrice-scarred: an arrow wound and two saber cuts along his cheeks had the effect of pulling his lips into a sort of permanent scowl. Like his warriors, he wore much gold: around his thick, sunburned arms and wrists and encircling his neck. Unlike the men he led, however, the leather armor encasing his barrel chest was studded with gold instead of steel. A golden fillet, woven with bright blue lapis beads, held back his long, blond hair and shone from his forehead. His senses were as keen as a lion’s, and as we pounded across the grass, he turned to regard me with his bright blue eyes. I liked his eyes: they sparkled with intelligence and spirit. They seemed to say to me: ‘All right, Valashu Elahad, we’ll test these enemy knights – and you and yours, as well.’

For most of an hour, as the sun rose higher into a cobalt sky, we raced across the steppe. Bajorak and his warriors fanned out in a great V before us, like a flock of geese, while the Manslayers kept close behind us. Our horses’ hooves – and those of our remounts and our packhorses – drummed against the green grass and the pockets of bitterbrush. Meadowlarks added their songs to the noise of the world: the chittering of grasshoppers and snorting horses and lions roaring in the deeper grass. I felt beneath me my stallion’s great surging muscles and his great heart. He would run to his death, if I asked him to. Atara, to my right, easily guided her roan mare, Fire. It was one of those times when she could ‘see’ the hummocks and other features of the rolling ground before us. Then came Daj and Estrella, who were light burdens for their ponies. What they lacked in stamina, they made up for in determination and skill. Master Juwain and Liljana followed close behind, and Maram struggled along after them. His mounds of fat rippled and shook beneath his mail as he puffed and sweated and urged his huge gelding forward. Kane, on top of a bad-tempered mare named the Hell Witch, kept pace at the end of our short column. He seemed to be readying himself to stick the point of his sword into either Maram’s or his horse’s fat rump if they should lose courage and lag behind. But we all rode well and quickly – though not quite quickly enough to outdistance our enemy.

As we galloped along, I turned often to study these two dozen Red Knights, flanked by as many of the Zayak warriors. At times, a hummock blocked my line of sight, and they were lost to me, and I hoped that we might truly outride them. And then they would crest some swell of earth, and the sun would glint off their carmine-colored armor, giving the lie to my hope. They seemed always to keep about a mile’s span between us; I could not tell if they held this close pursuit easily or were hard put to keep up. Fear and hate, I sensed, drove them onward. I felt Morjin’s ire whipping at them, even as I imagined I heard the crack of their silver-tipped quirts bloodying their horse’s sides.

‘Damn him!’ I whispered to myself. ‘Damn him!’

After a while we slowed our pace, and so did our pursuers. Then we stopped by a winding stream to water our panting horses, and change them over with our remounts. Bajorak rode up to me, and so did Karimah and Atara. Bajorak nodded at Maram, and said, ‘You kradaks ride well, even the fat one, I’ll give you that.’

Maram’s face, red and sweaty from his exertions, now flushed with pride.

Then Bajorak turned to look farther down the stream where the Red Knights had also paused to change horses. ‘Well indeed, but not well enough, I think. The Crucifier’s men will not break chase. Their horses are as good as yours, and they have more remounts.’

It was Bajorak’s way, I thought, to speak the truth as plainly as he knew how.

‘We still might outrun them,’ I said.

‘No, you won’t. You’ll only ruin your horses.’

Bajorak dismounted and came over to lay his hand on Altaru’s sweating side. It amazed me that my ferocious stallion allowed him this bold touch. But then it is said that the Sarni warriors love horses more than they do women, and Altaru must have sensed this about him.

‘If all you kradaks had horses like him,’ Bajorak said, stroking Altaru, ‘it might be a different matter. I’ve never seen his like. You still haven’t told me where you found him.’

‘This isn’t the time for tales,’ I said. I shielded my eyes from the sun’s glare as I took in the red glint of our enemy’s armor a mile away.

Bajorak spat on the ground and said, ‘The cursed Red Knights won’t move unless we do. Why, I wonder, why?’

I said nothing as I continued studying the twenty-five knights and the Zayak warriors who stood by the stream to the east of us.

‘You haven’t told me, either,’ he went on, ‘why you wish to cross our lands and what you seek in the mountains?’

At this, Kane stepped up and growled at him: ‘Such knowledge would only burden you. We’ve paid you good gold that we might ride in silence, and that’s burden enough, eh?’

Bajorak’s blue eyes flashed, and so did the fillet of gold binding his hair and his heavy golden armlets. And he said, ‘The gold you gave us is only a weregild to pay for my men’s lives should there be battle between us and Morjin’s men – or anyone else. But it is not why we agreed to ride with you.’

I knew this, and so did Kane. I grasped his steely arm to restrain him. And Bajorak, whose blood was up, went on to state openly what had so far remained unspoken: ‘I owe a debt to the Manslayers, and debts must be repaid.’

He nodded at Karimah, and this stout, matronly woman gripped her bow as she nodded back.

‘When Karimah came to me,’ he said, looking at me, ‘and asked that we should escort your company across our lands, I thought she had fallen mad. Kradaks should be killed out of hand – or at least relieved of the burdens of their horses, weapons and goods. Hai, but these kradaks were different, she said. One of them was Valashu Elahad, who had ridden with Sajagax to the great conclave in Tria and would have made alliance against the Crucifier. The Elahad, who had taken the Lightstone out of Argattha and whom everyone was saying might be the Maitreya.’

As he had spoken, two of his captains had come over, bearing their strung bows. One of them, Pirraj, was about Bajorak’s height, but the other, whose name was Kashak, was a giant of a man and one of the largest Sarni warriors I had ever seen.

‘And with the Elahad,’ Bajorak went on, ‘rode Atara Manslayer, Sajagax’s own granddaughter, the great imakla warrior. She, the blind one, who has slain seventy-nine men! And so might become the only woman of her Society in living memory to gain her freedom.’

Here Bajorak’s sensual lips pulled back to reveal his straight white teeth. It was a smile meant to be charming, but due to the thick scars on his cheeks, seemed more of a leer. All the women of the Manslayers, when they entered their Society, took vows to slay a hundred of their enemy before they would be free to marry. Few, of course, ever did. But those who fulfilled this terrible vow had almost free choice of husbands among the Sarni men, who would be certain to sire out of them only the strongest and fiercest of sons. As Bajorak’s desire pulled at his blood, my own passion surged inside me: hot, angry, wild and pained. I glared at him as I gripped the hilt of my sword. Then it was Kane’s turn to wrap his hand around my arm and restrain me.

‘And so,’ Bajorak said, looking at Pirraj and Kashak, ‘my warriors and I agreed to Karimah’s strange request. We were curious. We wanted to see if all kradaks are like them.’

He pointed to the Red Knights down the stream. Then his clear blue eyes cut into me, testing me.

And I said, testing him, ‘Do you think we’re alike? The Red Knights are our enemies, as they are yours. What is strange is that you allow them to ride freely across your lands – the Zayak, too.’

‘You say,’ he muttered. He shot me a keen, knowing look. ‘I think you want us to attack them, yes?’

‘I have not said that, have I?’

‘You say it with your eyes,’ he told me.

I continued scanning the glints of red armor along the river, looking for a standard that might prove the presence of Morjin.

‘If we attacked them,’ I asked Bajorak, ‘would you join us?’

‘Nothing would please me more,’ he said, causing my hope to rise. And then my sudden elation plummeted like a bird shot with an arrow as he continued, ‘But we may not attack them.’

‘May not? They are crucifiers! They are Zayak, from across Jade River!’

‘They are,’ he said, turning to spit in their direction, ‘and Morjin has paid for their safe passage of our lands.’

This was news to us. We crowded closer to hear what Bajorak might say.

‘In the darkness of the last moon,’ he told us, ‘the Red Knights came to Garthax with gold. He is greedy, our new chieftain is. Greedy and afraid of Morjin. And so Garthax allowed the Crucifier’s knights to range freely across our country, from the Jade River to the Oro, from the Astu to the mountains in the west. They are not to be attacked, curse them! And curse Morjin for defiling the Danladi’s country!’

His warriors, savage-seeming men, with faces painted blue, braided blond hair and moustaches hanging down beneath their chins, nodded their heads in agreement with Bajorak’s sentiments.

‘Was it Morjin, himself, then,’ I asked Bajorak, ‘who paid this gold to Garthax? Does he lead the Red Knights?’

‘I have not heard that,’ he told me. ‘Were it so, we would attack them no matter if Morjin had paid Garthax a mountain of gold.’

‘It will come to that, in the end!’ Kashak barked out. Blue crosses gleamed on his sunburned cheeks to match the smoldering hue of his eyes. ‘Let us ride against them now, with these kradaks!’

‘And break our chieftain’s covenant?’

‘A chieftain who makes covenant with the Crucifier is no chieftain! Let us do as we please.’

Bajorak, too, shared Kashak’s zeal for battle. But he had a cool head as well as a fiery heart, and so to Kashak and his other men he called out: ‘Would you commit the Tarun clan to going against our chieftain? If we break the covenant, it will mean war with Garthax.’

‘War, yes, with him,’ Pirrax said, shaking his bow. ‘We’re warriors, aren’t we?’

Now Atara stepped forward, and her white blindfold gleamed in the strong sunlight. Her face was cold and stern as she addressed these fierce men of the Tarun clan: ‘It’s wrong for warriors to make war against their chieftain. Can not Garthax be persuaded to return this gold?’

Bajorak shook his head. ‘You do not know him.’

‘I know what my grandfather, Sajagax, said of Garthax’s father: that Artukan was a great chieftain who would never scrape before Morjin. Does a lion sire a snake?’

‘Garthax,’ Bajorak said, ‘is not his father’s son.’

‘Have you tried helping him to be?’

It was one of Atara’s graces, I thought, that she tried ever to remake men’s natures for the good.

‘Help him?’ Bajorak said. ‘You do not understand. Garthax quarreled with Artukan over the question of whether we should treat with Morjin. And two days later Artukan died while drinking his beer … of poison!’

‘Poison!’ Atara cried out. ‘That cannot be!’

‘No, no one wanted to believe it – certainly not I,’ Bajorak told her. ‘But it is said that upon taking the first sip of his beer, Artukan cried out that his throat was on fire. One of his wives offered him water, but Artukan said that this burned his lips. Everything … burned him. No one could touch him. It is said that he put out his own eyes so that he would not have to bear the torment of light. His skin turned blue and then black, like dried meat. He screamed, like a kradak burnt at the stake. It took him a whole day to die.’