Black Jade

‘Then you don’t really know,’ Atara said, pressing him.

Master Juwain squeezed the wooden bowl of stew between his hands as if his fingers ached for the touch of a smoother and finer substance. ‘No, I suppose I don’t. But I spent many days searching through the akashic stone, following many streams of knowledge. One gets a sense of the terrain this way, so to speak. And everything I’ve ever learned about the Lightstone gives me to understand that it cannot be used to make one’s body and being young again. In truth, it is quite the opposite.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’ I asked him.

‘Consider what we do know about the Lightstone,’ he said, looking at me and the others. ‘Above all, that it is to be used by the Maitreya, and by him only. But used how? Of this, we still have barely a glimmer. “In the Shining One’s hands, the true gold; in the Cup of Heaven, men and women shall drink in the light of the One.” Indeed, indeed – but what does this really mean? We know that the Maitreya is thus to help man walk the path of the Elijin and Galadin, and so on to the Ieldra themselves, ever and always toward the One. And in so doing, the Maitreya will be exalted beyond any man: in grace, in vitality, in the splendor of his soul. But now let us consider what befalls when the Lightstone is claimed by one who is not the Maitreya. Let us consider Morjin. Clearly, he has used the Lightstone to try to gain mastery over all the other gelstei – even as he has tried to enslave men’s souls and make himself master of the world. He searches for the darkest of knowledge! And so he holds in his hands not the true gold but something rather like a lead stone that pulls him ever and always down into a lightless chasm. And so he has utterly debased himself: in his body, in his mind, in his soul. He is immortal, yes, and so he cannot die as other men do. But we have all seen his scabrous flesh, the deadness of his eyes, the rot that slowly blackens his insides. All his lusting for the Lightstone and struggle to master it has only withered him. And so how can he use this cup to make himself young again?’

I considered long and deeply what Master Juwain had said as I looked through the fire’s writhing flames and gazed at the darkening walls of the chasm called the Kul Kavaakurk. How close had I been to claiming the Lightstone for myself? As close as the curve of my fingers or the whispering of my breath – as close as the beating of my heart.

Maram cast a glance at the silent, motionless Kane standing like a stone carving above us, and he said, ‘Didn’t our grim friend tell us in Argattha that the Lightstone had no power to make one young again?’

I touched the hilt of my sword, and I recalled exactly what Kane had told us in Morjin’s throne room when he stood revealed as one of the Elijin: that the Lightstone did not possess the power to bestow immortality. I told this to Maram, and to the others, who sat around the fire quietly eating their dinner.

Then Maram nodded at Master Juwain and said, ‘Then it might be possible that Morjin has rejuvenated himself.’

‘It is possible,’ Master Juwain allowed. ‘No man knows very much about the Lightstone.’

He looked up at Kane, and so did everyone else. But still Kane said nothing.

‘We know,’ Liljana said, ‘that Morjin can draw a kind of strength from the Lightstone, as he does in feeding off others’ fear or adulation – or even in drinking their blood. And so I suppose we must assume he has found a way to renew himself, if only for a time.’

‘I suppose we must,’ Master Juwain said with another sigh. ‘Unless we can find another explanation.’

The fading sunlight barely sufficed to illuminate Kane’s fathomless black eyes. He seemed, in silence, to explain to us a great deal: above all that the distance between the Elijin and mortal men was as vast as the black spaces between the stars. As always, I sensed that he knew much more than he was willing to reveal, about the world and about himself – even to himself.

‘Ah, well,’ Maram said, looking up at Kane, ‘Morjin fought like a much younger man, didn’t he? In truth, like no man I have ever seen except Val – or Kane. He has a power now that he didn’t have in Argattha. Perhaps many powers. He pointed at Atara, and struck her blind!’

Atara paused in eating her stew to hold up her spoon in front of the white cloth covering her face. She said, ‘But I am already blind.’

‘You know what I mean.’

She brought out her scryer’s sphere and sat rolling it between her long, lithe fingers. ‘Morjin has power over my gelstei now, nothing more.’

‘But your second sight –’

‘My second sight comes and goes, like the wind, as it always has. Surely it was just evil chance, what happened on the battlefield.’

‘Evil, indeed,’ Maram said, looking at her. ‘But what if it was more than chance?’

Atara shook her head violently. Then she clapped her hands over her blindfold and said, ‘Morjin took my eyes and with them my first sight. Isn’t that enough?’

Because there was nothing to say to this, we sat around the fire eating our stew. The knock and scrape of our spoons against our wooden bowls seemed as loud as thunder.

And then I took her hand and said to her, ‘Please promise me that if the next battle comes upon us with the wind blowing the wrong way, you’ll find a safe place and remain there.’

‘I should have, I know,’ she said to me, pressing her hand into mine. ‘But I was sure that my sight would return, at any moment, so sure. Then, too, they were so many and we so few. I heard you calling out, to me it seemed. I thought you needed my sword.’

‘I need much more than your sword,’ I told her.

In the clasp of her fingers around mine was all the promise that I could ever hope for.

Maram, sitting nearby, cast us a wistful look as if he might be thinking of his betrothed, Behira. And he said, ‘It vexes me what Morjin said about the Baaloch. Can it be true that he is so close to freeing Angra Mainyu?’

‘He would lie,’ I said, ‘just to vex me. And to strike terror into you, and everyone else.’

‘He would,’ Master Juwain agreed. ‘But as we have seen before, he has no need of lies when the truth will serve him better.’

‘But how can we know the truth about this?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you once teach me that Morjin possessed the Lightstone for thirty years at the end of the Age of Swords? And then for nearly ten times as long when the Age of Law fell to the Age of the Dragon? If he didn’t free Angra Mainyu then why should we fear that he will now?’

‘Because,’ Master Juwain told me, ‘that was then, and this is now. The first time he claimed the Lightstone, he used it in desperate battle to conquer Alonia. And the second time, to overthrow the order of the Age of Law, which everyone had thought eternal. Now that he has nearly conquered all of Ea, he will surely use it to bring his master here from Damoom.’

‘If he can, he will,’ I said, still not wanting to believe the worst. ‘But why should we think that he can?’

Atara’s hand suddenly tightened around mine as she said, ‘But, Val, I have seen this, and have spoken of it before!’

What Atara had ‘seen’ we all knew to be true: that beneath the buried city of Argattha, far beneath the mountain, Morjin had driven his slaves to digging tunnels deep into the earth. And there, through solid rock, as with the lightning-like pulses that coursed along a man’s nerves and through the chakras along his spine, ran the fires of the earth. Master Juwain called them the telluric currents. Their power was very great: if Master Juwain was right, the Lightstone could be used to direct them, as with the flames of a blacksmith’s furnace, to touch upon the currents of the world of Damoom. And then the door behind which Angra Mainyu was bound, like an iron gate, might be burnt open. And then Angra Mainyu, the Dark One, would be set free from his prison and loosed upon Ea.

‘Morjin is close,’ Atara told me, ‘so very close to cutting open the right tunnel. The wrong tunnel. Now that he has the Lightstone, it will be months, not years, before he sees clear where to dig.’

Daj, who had been a slave in the mines below Argattha’s first level, nodded his head at this. ‘It might be even sooner. I once heard Lord Morjin tell one of his priests that the Baaloch would be freed within a year. And that was before he took back the Lightstone.’

‘Well, then, Morjin either was wrong or he lied,’ Maram said to Daj. ‘It’s been more than a year since we freed you from Argattha.’

‘Morjin didn’t lie,’ Liljana said, ‘when I touched minds with him. He couldn’t lie, then. He believes that he will free Angra Mainyu, and soon.’

Master Juwain rubbed at the back of his bald head as he told us: ‘It has been a year and a half since we took the Lightstone out of Argattha. And in that time, Morjin must have lain long abed recovering from the first wound that Val dealt him. And then, many months planning and leading the invasion of Mesh. And now –’

‘And now,’ Maram said hopefully, ‘we’ve tempted him out of Argattha, along with the Lightstone no doubt, and so we’ve delayed the worst of what he can do yet again.’

‘Perhaps,’ Master Juwain said. ‘But now that Val has wounded him again, he’ll return to Argattha and to his greatest chance.’

‘And that,’ I said, looking up through the gorge at the mountains beyond, ‘is why we must find the Maitreya, and soon.’

I felt my heart beating hard against my ribs. Would even the Maitreya, I wondered, be able to keep Morjin from using the Lightstone?

‘Ah, well, even if we fail,’ Maram said, ‘must we give up all hope? If what we learned outside of Tria is true, then once before Angra Mainyu walked other worlds freely, and yet in the end was defeated. He is only one man, isn’t he, even if he is one of the Galadin.’

At this, Maram looked hopefully toward Kane, for it had been Kane, long ago and on another world, who had immobilized Angra Mainyu so that the Lightstone might be wrested from him.

A light flashed in Kane’s eyes as from far away. His gaze fell upon Maram. In a voice as harsh as breaking steel, he laughed out: ‘Ha – only a man, you say! Only one of the Galadin, eh? Fool! What would you do if this man faced you upon the battlefield or came at you in a dark glade? Die, you would – of fright. And you would be fortunate to be dead. You have seen the Grays! They are terrible, aren’t they? They nearly sucked out your soul, didn’t they? And yet they are as children happily playing games in a flowered field compared to the one you speak of.’

‘I wish I hadn’t,’ Maram said, pulling at the mail that covered his throat. ‘Must we really speak of this?’

‘So, we must speak of it,’ Kane growled out. His face had fallen fierce, like that of a tiger, and yet there was much in its harsh lines that was sad, noble and exalted. ‘This one time we shall, and never again. I have heard and seen today too much uncertainty. And too much pity, for ourselves. Master Juwain has told of the fires of the earth, these telluric currents that our enemy seeks to wield. Val dreads the flames of his sword. Fire and flame – ha! I shall tell you of fire! There is that in each of us that must utterly burn away. Liljana’s pride at besting Morjin: at least this one time. Maram’s self-indulgence, Atara’s desire to be made whole again, and Val’s rage for vengeance. So, and my own. The grief we all suffer from the poisoning of our gelstei. It is nothing. We are nothing. In the face of what comes, none of our lives matters. Except that we all do matter, utterly, and so long as we live and draw breath, everything that we do – every word, thought and act – must be keener and strike truer than even Val’s sword. For if we fail, Morjin will use the Lightstone as we all fear and open the way to Damoom.’

As Kane spoke, he paced back and forth behind the log breastwork gripping his strung bow. His fierce eyes danced about, now flicking toward the bend in the stream, now falling upon us. From time to time, he scowled as he looked up at the darkening sky.

‘And then,’ he told us, ‘he will come, with fire. Who of us will be able to bear even the sight of him? For his eyes are like molten stone, his flesh is red as heated iron, his hair is a wreath of flames. His mouth opens like a pit of burning pitch that devours all things. Angra Mainyu, men call him now. He is the Baaloch, the Black Dragon – but stronger than any thousand dragons. Do you hate, Valashu? It is as a match flame compared to the roaring furnace inside Morjin – and that is nothing against the hell that torments Angra Mainyu, like unto the fire of the stars. For he has been denied the stars. Ages and ages, the Galadin have bound him in darkness on Damoom, he who was once the greatest of the Galadin, and the most fair. So. So. He will burn to take his vengeance upon Ashtoreth and Valoreth and all their kind. Ha, all our kind as well.

‘Where will we be when Morjin delivers the cup into his hands? Wherever we are, even on the most distant isle across the seas, we will feel the earth shake and see clouds of smoke darken the air as the fire mountains burst forth. When Angra Mainyu lays grip upon Ea’s telluric currents, he will not care if the very earth is riven in two. First he will free the others bound with him on his dark world: Gashur, Yurlungurr, Yama, Zun. A host of Galadin, and Elijin, too – those who still survive. They will follow in Angra Mainyu’s train. He will take his first vengeance upon Ea and her peoples: we who have denied him the Lightstone for so long. In every land wooden crosses will sprout up like mushrooms. The Baaloch will breathe upon those to which Valari are nailed, and they will burst into flame. He will feast upon flesh, not as a lion upon lambs – not only – but as a master wears the sinews of his slaves down to the bone. All men will be his ghuls, ready to twitch or sing or mouth his thoughts, at his whim. When he has finished subduing Ea, not even a blade of grass will dare poke itself above the ground unless he wills it.

‘And then he will turn his blazing eyes upon the heavens. They who follow him will lend him all their strength. Time nearly beyond reckoning they have had to prepare for such a day. Stars, beyond counting, they will claim. Then the Baaloch will seize the stellar currents, bound inside pure starfire. Ten thousand men, it’s said, Morjin nailed to crosses in Galda. Ten thousand worlds will burn up in flame when Angra Mainyu makes war again upon Ashtoreth and Valoreth and the other Amshahs who still dwell across the stars on Agathad. But the Galadin are the inextinguishable ones, eh? Diamond will not pierce them, no fire can scorch them, nor age steal the beauty of their form. And so, as in ages past, ages of ages, Angra Mainyu will try to use the Lightstone to wrest the great fire, the angel fire, from the Ieldra themselves.’

Now Kane stood facing me, and he paused to draw in a deep breath. His eyes burned into mine as he said, ‘But it is the Ieldra, not the Galadin – not even Angra Mainyu – who are given the power of creation. And so no Galadin has the power to uncreate any other. Angra Mainyu, though, will never believe this, just as he will not accept that any power might be beyond his grasp, not even the very splendor of the One. So. So. The Ieldra, at last, at the end of all things when time has run out and there is no more hope, will be forced to make war upon Angra Mainyu, lest the evil that he has unleashed upon Eluru spill over into other universes: those millions that exist beyond ours and those countless ones that are yet to be. But Angra Mainyu was the first of the Galadin, and the greatest, and so as long as the stars shed their light upon creation, he, too, cannot be harmed. Knowing this, the Ieldra will be forced to put an end to their creation. In fire the universe came to be, and in fire the universe and all within will be destroyed. And so Eluru, and all its worlds and beautiful stars, will be no more.’

Kane finished speaking and stood still again. For a moment, I could not move, nor could our other friends. Daj and Estrella, in their short years, had seen and heard many terrible things, but Kane’s warning as to the horrible end of the War of the Stone seemed to strike terror into them. They sat next to each other, holding hands and staring at the stream. Above this pale water, Flick appeared, and the lights within his luminosity pulsed as in alarm. Above him, the forbidding walls of the Kul Kavaakurk grew ever darker. Their exposed rock ran along the gorge, east and west, in layers. How long, I wondered, had it taken for the stream to cut down through the skin of the earth? Each layer, it seemed, was as a million years, and as the stream had cut deeper and deeper, the War had gone on, layer upon layer. And not just the War of the Stone, but the war of all life against life, to triumph and dominate, to be and to become greater. And not just on Ea or Eluru but in all universes in all times, without end. Were all peoples everywhere, I wondered, afflicted with war? Was it possible that all worlds and universes, as seemed the fate of ours, might be doomed?

It was Maram, the most fearful of us and consequently the most hopeful, who could not bear to think of such an end. He loved the pleasures of life too much to imagine it ever ceasing – even for others. And so he looked at Kane and said, ‘But Angra Mainyu was defeated once, and so might be again. And it was you who defeated him!’

‘No, it was not I,’ Kane said as a strange light filled his eyes. ‘And I’ve told you before, he was not defeated. From Damoom, he still works his evil on all of Eluru.’

‘But he was bound there,’ Maram persisted. ‘And so might be again.’

‘No, he will not be,’ Kane told us. ‘Once, on Erathe, on the plain of Tharharra long ago, there was a battle – the greatest of all battles. A host of the Amshahs pursued Angra Mainyu and his Daevas there. Ashtoreth and Valoreth forbade this violence, but Marsul and others of the Galadin would not heed them. And neither would Kalkin.’

Kane, who had once borne this noble name, stood up tall and straight as the light of the night’s first stars rained down upon him.

‘A hundred thousand Valari died that day,’ Kane said to us. ‘And as many of the Elijin. So, Elijin slaying Valari and other Elijin, against the Law of the One, and Galadin such as Marsul and Varkoth slaying all – this was the evil of that day. A victory Maram calls it! Ha! Many of the Amshahs fell mad after that. Darudin threw himself on his sword in remorse, and so with Odin and Sulujin and many others. But it is not so easy for the living to expunge the stain of such an atrocity, eh? Many there were who bore the shadow of Tharharra on their souls.’

Kane paused in his account of this ancient history before known history. He began pacing about like a tiger again in front of the fire, and his hand clenched and unclenched like a beating heart.

‘And so,’ he said, ‘once a time the Amshahs came to Erathe; they will not come to Ea, especially if the Baaloch and his Daevas are loosed upon it. The danger is too great. Ea is a Dark World, now – almost a Dark World. Here, Morjin turned from the fairest of men into the most foul. Here, even the brightest of the Amshahs might come under Angra Mainyu’s spell, and how could the stars above us abide even one more fallen Galadin? And then, too, there is the Black Jade.’

Almost without thought, my hand fell upon my sword. Seven diamonds, like stars, were set into its hilt, carved out of true black jade, which might be dug up from the earth like any other stone. But the jade of which Kane spoke was the black gelstei, rarest of the rare, wrought in furnaces long ago from unknown substances and with an art long since lost. And not just any black gelstei.

Kane paused in his pacing to set his bow on top of the logs of the breastwork. Then he brought forth a flat, black stone, shiny as obsidian, and held it gleaming dully in the palm of his hand. And he said to us, ‘This baalstei is small, eh? And yet the one that Kalkin used upon Angra Mainyu was no larger – in size. But it had great power, like unto the dark of the moon, for in it was bound all the blackness of space and the great emptiness that lies inside all things.’

He stood still for a moment as he stared up at the sky. Then he continued: ‘You can’t imagine its power, for in a way, the Black Jade is the Lightstone’s shadow. I spoke of how the Ieldra might be forced to unmake the universe, but I say the Black Jade is the greater dread. For even men, such as Morjin, might use it to steal the very light from this world: all that is bright and good.’

Maram thought about this as he gazed at Kane. Then he asked him, ‘But why didn’t you tell us that the black gelstei you used on Angra Mainyu had power beyond any others?’

‘Because,’ Kane said, ‘I didn’t want to frighten you. So, I didn’t want to frighten myself. To wield it was to touch upon a cold so terrible and vast that it froze one’s soul in ice as hard as diamond. To wield it too long was to be lost in a lightless void from which there could be no escape. Angra Mainyu himself, early in the War of the Stone, forged this cursed stone we call the Black Jade. There will never be another like it. Long ago, it was lost. And so once the Baaloch is freed, no one will ever bind him again.’

Maram stood up from the fire to get a better look at the black crystal seemingly welded to Kane’s hand. And he asked: ‘If Angra Mainyu made the great baalstei, how did Kalkin come by it?’

‘So, how did Kalkin come by it, eh?’ Kane said. He spoke his ancient name as if intoning a requiem for a long lost friend. ‘That is a story that I won’t tell here, unless you’d like to remain in this cursed gorge for a month, and then half a year after. Let’s just say that the Lightstone wasn’t the only gelstei that the Amshahs and the Daevas fought over.’

‘But how was it lost, then?’

Kane clamped his jaws together with such force that I heard the grinding of his teeth. Then he said, ‘That story is even longer. I can tell you only that Angra Mainyu’s creatures regained it. Some say that it was brought to Ea, to await his coming.’

Again, I stared at the chasm’s layers of rock, now nearly black with the fall of night. It seemed that in ages without end, on uncountable worlds, anything might happen – and almost everything had. It seemed as well that the folds of the earth might conceal many dark things, even one as dark and terrible as the ancient black gelstei.

Kane suddenly made a fist, and the small crystal seemed to vanish. When he opened his hand again, there was nothing inside it except air.

And I asked him, ‘Do you believe the baalstei was brought to Ea?’

‘Where else would it have been brought if not here?’

My mysterious friend, I thought, possessed all the evasive arts of a magician. Somewhere on his person, no doubt, he had secreted the black gelstei. Just as somewhere in his soul he kept hidden even more powerful things.

‘You told us once,’ I said to him, ‘that the Galadin sent Kalkin to Ea. Along with Morjin, and ten others of the Elijin?’

Kane’s eyes grew brighter and more pained as he said, ‘Yes – Sarojin and Baladin, and the others. I have told you their names.’

‘Yes, you have. But you haven’t told us why you were sent here? Why, if Ea was so perilous for your kind?’

‘It was a chance,’ he said, looking up at the night’s first stars. ‘A last, desperate chance. The Lightstone had been sent here long before, and that was chance enough.’

And this supreme gamble on the part of Ashtoreth and the other Galadin on Agathad had nearly succeeded: Kalkin, in the great First Quest, had led the others of his order to recover the lost Lightstone. But then Morjin had fallen mad; he had murdered Garain and Averin to claim the Lightstone for himself. And Kalkin, in violation of the Law of the One, had killed five of Morjin’s henchmen, and in a way, slain himself as well. Now only Kane remained.