Black Jade

‘So, you see how it went for the Elijin who came to Ea,’ Kane said. ‘How much worse would it be for any Galadin to come to this cursed place?’

At this, Liljana’s kind face tightened in anger. She patted the ground beneath her, and snapped at Kane: ‘Such things you say! I won’t listen to such slander! The earth is our mother, the mother of us all – even you!’

As Kane regarded Liljana, I felt a strange, cold longing ripple through him.

‘Liljana is right,’ Master Juwain said. ‘You can’t blame Ea for corrupting Morjin. Neither can you blame the black gelstei.’

And Kane said, ‘The greatest of scryers foretold that Ea would give rise to a dark angel who would free the Baaloch.’

‘Either that,’ Master Juwain reminded him, ‘or give birth to the last and greatest Maitreya, who will lead all Eluru into the Age of Light.’

For a moment, Kane stared down at his clenched fists. Then he looked at Master Juwain and said, ‘I know you are right. It is not soil or even black gelstei that poisons men, but their hearts. What lies within.’

He reached down to scoop up a handful of dirt. He said to us, ‘And that is the hell of it, eh? What being, born of earth, does not suffer? Grow old and die?’

‘The Galadin do not,’ I said to him.

‘You think not, eh? So, the Bright Ones grow old in their souls. And in the end, it is their fate, too, to die.’

The brilliance of his eyes recalled the most beautiful, yet terrible, part of the Law of the One: that each of the Galadin, at the moment of a Great Progression, in the creation of a new universe, was destined to die into light – and thus be reborn as one of the numinous Ieldra.

‘And as for suffering, Valashu,’ he said to me, ‘despite what you have suffered, you cannot know. How many times have you swatted a mosquito?’

For a moment, his question puzzled me. My skin fairly twitched as I recalled the clouds of mosquitoes that had drained my blood in the Vardaloon. And I said, ‘Hundreds. Thousands.’

‘Could you have killed them so readily if they had been human beings? Do you think they suffered as men do?’

I, who had already killed many tens of men with my bright sword, said, ‘I know they did not.’

‘Just so,’ Kane said to me. ‘The pain that men, women and children know, compared to that of the Galadin, is minuscule. And yet it is no small thing, eh? And that in the end, is what poisoned Angra Mainyu’s sweet, sweet, beautiful heart.’

Kane’s words were like a bucket of cold water emptied upon me. I sat by the fire, blinking my eyes as a chill shot down my spine. I said to him, ‘I never thought to hear you speak such words of the Dark One.’

And he told me: ‘Angra Mainyu was not always Angra Mainyu, nor was he always evil. So, he was born Asangal, the most beautiful of men, and when still a man, it is said that he loved all life so dearly that he would not swat mosquitoes. And more, that once he saw a dog in excruciating pain from an open wound being eaten with worms. Asangal resolved to remove the worms, but could not bear for them to die. And so he licked out the worms with his own tongue so as not to crush them, and he let them eat his own flesh.’

At this, Daj’s face screwed up in disgust, and Maram shook his head. And Kane went on:

‘Asangal so loved the world that he thought he could take in all its pain. But after he became an Elijin lord and then was elevated as the first of the Galadin, the pain became an agony that he could not escape. In truth, like a robe of fire, it drove him mad. He began to question the One’s design in calling forth life only to suffer so terribly; as the ages passed into ages, it seemed to him particularly cruel that all beings should be made to bear such torment, only, at the end of it all, to die. Love thwarted turns to hate, eh?, for one of the Galadin no less than a man, and so it was with him. So, he began to hate the One. And in hating, he began to feel himself as other from the One and the Ieldra’s creation, and so he damned the One and creation itself.

‘And then, for the first time, a terrible fear seized hold of him. It gnawed at him, worse than worms of fire, for he knew that he had only damned himself. He could not bear to believe that he must someday die, as the Galadin do, in becoming greater. As the evil that he made inside his own heart worked at him, he could not bear to believe that any being, not the greatest of the Ieldra, not even the One, was greater than himself. For how could they be if they suffered to exist a universe as flawed and hurtful as ours? And so he resolved to gather all power to himself to remake the universe: in all goodness, truth and beauty, without suffering, without war, and most of all, without death. Toward this magnificent end, out of his magnificent love for all beings, or so he told himself, he would storm heaven and make war against the Ieldra, against all peoples and all worlds opposing him. So, even against the One.’

Kane stood closer to me now, looking down at me, and his face flashed with reddish lights from the fire’s writhing flames.

‘Do you see?’ he said to me. ‘It is possible to be too good, eh?’

‘Perhaps,’ I told him. I smiled, but there was no sweetness in it, only the taste of blood. ‘But I’m in no danger of that, am I?’

‘Damn it, Val, you might have killed Morjin!’

I stood up to face him and said, ‘Yes, I might have. And what then? Would one of his priests have used the Lightstone to free Angra Mainyu anyway? Or might I have regained it – only to become as Morjin? And then, in the end, been made to free Angra Mainyu myself?’

‘You ask too many questions,’ he growled. He pointed at my sheathed sword. ‘When you held the answer in your hand!’

My fingers closed around Alkaladur’s hilt, and I said, ‘Truly, I held something there.’

‘Damn you, Val!’ he shouted at me. ‘Damn you! Would you loose the Baaloch upon us!’

I looked down to see Daj set his jaw against the trembling that tore through his slight body. Master Juwain’s face had gone grave, and his eyes had lost their sparkle, and so it was with Maram and Liljana. It came to me then that our hope for fulfilling our quest hung like the weight of the whole world upon a strand as slender as one of Atara’s blond hairs. In truth, it seemed that there was no real hope at all. And if that were so, why not just ask Master Juwain to prepare a potion for all of us that we might die, here and now, in peace? Was death so terrible as I had feared? Was it really a black neverness, freezing cold, like ice? Was it a fire that burned the flesh forever? Or was it rather like a beautiful song and the brightest of lights that carried one upward toward the stars?

No, I heard myself whisper. No.

I glanced at Estrella, who looked up at me in dread. And yet, miraculously, with so much trust. Her quick, lovely eyes seemed to grab hold of mine even more fiercely than Kane grasped my arm. So much hope burned inside her! So much life spilled out to fill up her radiant face! Who was I to resign myself and consign her to its ending? No, I thought, that would be ignoble, cowardly, wrong. For her sake, no less my own, I would at least act as if there somehow might be hope.

I said to Kane, ‘Not even the greatest of scryers can see all ends.’

‘So, I think you can see your own end. And long for it too much, eh?’

I shook my head at this, and told him, ‘Last year, at the Tournament when Asaru lay abed with a wounded shoulder, King Mohan spoke these words to me: “A man can never be sure that his acts will lead to the desired result; he can only be sure of the acts, themselves. Therefore each act must be good and true, of its own.”’

‘A warrior’s code, eh? Act nobly, always with honor, and smile at death, if that is the result. The code of the Valari.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘better death than life lived as Morjin lives, or as one of his slaves.’

Kane regarded Daj and Estrella a moment before turning back to me. He said, ‘But we’re not speaking of the death of a lone warrior, or even an entire army, but that of the whole world and all that is!’

‘I … know.’

‘Do you really? What, then, is good? Where will you find truth? Do you know that, as well?’

‘I know it as well as I can. Is it not written in the Law of the One?’

‘So, so,’ he murmured, glaring at me.

‘Is it not written that a man may slay another man only in defense of life? And is it not also written that the Elijin may not slay at all?’

‘So, so.’

‘And yet you slay so gladly. As you would have had me slay Morjin!’

At this he gripped the hilt of his sword and smiled, showing his long white teeth. But there was no mirth on his savage face.

‘You are one of the Elijin!’ I said to him.

‘No, Kalkin was of the Elijin,’ he told me. ‘I am Kane.’

I held out my hand to him and said, ‘If I gave you this sword that is inside me, would you slay with it? What law for the valarda, then?’

‘I … don’t remember.’

His eyes smoldered with a dark fire almost too hot to bear. I felt his heart beating in great, angry surges inside him. It came to me then that there were those who could not abide their smallness, and they feared mightily obliteration in death. But those, like Kane, who turned away from their greatness dreaded even more the glory of life. How long had this ancient warrior stood alone in shadows and dark chasms, away from all others, even from himself? Was it not a terrible thing for a man to forget who he really was?

‘I know,’ I said to him, ‘that the valarda was not meant for slaying.’

‘So – you know this, do you?’

‘Somewhere,’ I said, ‘it must be written in the Law of the One.’

Kane stared at me as through a wall of flame. His jaws clenched, and the muscles of his windburnt cheeks popped out like knots of wood. It seemed that the veins of his neck and face could not contain the bursts of blood coursing through him.

Then he whipped his sword from its sheath and shouted at me, ‘Then damn the One!’

His words seemed to horrify him, as they did the rest of us. Daj sat looking at him in awed silence. Even Estrella seemed to wilt beneath his fearsome countenance.

Then Kane murmured, ‘What I meant to say was that Asangal damned the One. Angra Mainyu did – do you understand?’

I looked down at my open hand. A bloody spike pierced the palm through the bones. The agony of this iron nail still tore through me, as did that of the other nails driven through my mother’s hands and feet. And I said to Kane, ‘Yes – I do understand.’

I felt the hard hurt of his sword pressing into his own hand. He did not want to look at me, but he could not help it. His eyes said what his lips would not: I am damned. And so are you.

‘No, no,’ I told him. I took a step closer and covered his hand with mine. ‘Peace, friend.’

As gently as I could, I peeled back his fingers from his sword’s hilt, then took it away from him. He stood like a stunned lamb as he watched me slide it back into its sheath.

‘Valashu,’ he whispered to me.

I clasped hands with him then, and stood looking at him eye to eye. His blood burned against my palm with every beat of his great, beautiful heart. Such a wild joy of life surged inside him! Such a brilliance brightened his being, like unto the splendor of the stars! What was the truth of the valarda, I wondered? Only this: that it was a sword of light, truly, but something much more. It passed from man to man, brother to brother, as the very stars poured out to each other their fiery radiance, onstreaming, shining upon all things and calling to that deeper light within that was their source.

‘Kalkin,’ I said to him, whispering his name. For a moment, as through veil rent with a lightning flash, I looked upon a being of rare power and grace. But only for a moment.

‘No, no,’ he murmured. ‘You promised.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said.

‘No, it is I who am sorry. What do I really know of the valarda, eh? Perhaps you were right to try to keep that sword within its sheath.’

His gaze, it seemed, tore open my heart. I said to him, ‘If Angra Mainu is defeated, I do not believe that it will be by my hand, or yours, or even that of Ashtoreth and Valoreth.’

‘Perhaps you are right. Perhaps.’

‘And so with Morjin.’

‘So, so.’

‘Only the Maitreya,’ I said, ‘can keep him from using the Lightstone. And I do not believe I will ever be allowed to lay eyes upon this Shining One if I use the valarda to slay.’

Then he smiled at me, a true smile, all warm and sweet like honey melting in the sun. ‘So, there will be no slaying tonight, let us hope. Peace, friend.’

He stepped back over to the breastwork and picked up his bow again. His smile grew only wider as his eyes filled with amusement, irony and a mystery that I would never quite be able to apprehend.

After that it grew dark, and then nearly as black as a moonless eve, for here at the bottom of the gorge, there was very little light. Its towering walls reduced the heavens to a strip of stars running east and west above us. But one of these stars, I saw, was bright Aras. After all the work of washing the dishes and settling into our camp was completed, with Atara singing Estrella to sleep and Kane standing watch over us, I lay back against my mother earth to keep a vigil upon this sparkling light. It blazed throughout the night like a great beacon, and I wondered how this star of beauty and bright shining hope could ever be put out.

6

Idid not welcome my awakening the next morning. My battle wounds – mostly bruises from edged weapons or maces that had failed to penetrate my mail – hurt. The cold wind funneling down the gorge set my stiff body to shivering, and that hurt even more. No ray of sun warmed the gorge directly for the first few hours of the day, as we ate our breakfast and broke camp with a slowness and heaviness of motion. All of us, except Kane, perhaps, were exhausted. It would have been good to remain there all day before a crackling fire, eating and resting, but we needed to gain as much distance as we could from the gorge’s entrance at the gateway to the Wendrush. And so we loaded our horses and drank one of Master Juwain’s teas to drive the weariness from our bodies. Then we set forth into the gorge, winding our way around walls of naked rock deeper into the Kul Kavaakurk’s shadows.

As we kicked our way over the rattling stones along the riverbank, I looked back behind us often and listened for any sign of pursuit. I sniffed at the cool air and reached out with a deeper sense, as well. I heard water rushing along its course and smelled spring leaves fluttering in the wind, but the only eyes upon us were those of the squirrels or the birds singing in the branches of the gorge’s many trees. No one, it seemed, followed us. Nothing sought to harm us. The only enemy we faced that morning, I thought, dwelled within. The horror of what lay behind us in the previous day’s butchery haunted all of us, even those who had not actually witnessed the battle. We feared what lay ahead in the vast unmapped reaches of the lower Nagarshath. Fear, in truth, was the worst of all our inner demons, for who among us did not gaze up at the sky and wonder if the Dark One could devour the very sun?

It was after dinner that evening when Maram finally let fear take hold of him. He rose up from the campfire to tend his horse’s bruised hoof, or so he said. But I followed him and found him in the stand of trees where the horses were tethered, rummaging through the saddlebags of Master Juwain’s remount. Quick as a weasel stealing eggs, he prized out a bottle of brandy and uncorked it. I ran over to him and slapped my hand upon his wrist with such force that I nearly knocked the bottle from his hand. And I shouted at him, ‘What of your vow?’

And he shouted back at me, ‘What of your vow, then?’

I clamped my fingers harder around his massive wrist as he struggled to bring the mouth of the bottle up to his fat lips. And I asked him, ‘What vow?’

‘Ah, what you said when we first met, that ours would be a lifelong friendship. What kind of friend keeps his friend from drinking away his pain?’

‘The kind who would keep him from a greater pain.’

‘You speak as if we have endless moments left to us.’

‘Our whole lives, Maram.’

‘Yes, our whole lives, as long as they will be. But how long will they be? Didn’t you hear anything of what was said last night? Months we have, until Morjin frees Angra Mainyu, perhaps only days. And so why not allow me what little joy I can find in this forsaken place?’

I let go his arm and stood facing him. ‘Drink then, if that is what you must do!’

‘I shall! I shall! Only, do not look at me like that!’

I continued staring through the twilight into his large, brown eyes.

‘Ah, damn you, Val!’ he said more softly. ‘I’ll do what I want, do you understand? What I choose. And what I choose now is not to drink after all. You’ve ruined the moment, too bad.’

So saying, he put the cork back in the bottle and sealed it with an angry slap of his hand. He tucked it back into Master Juwain’s saddlebag. Then he stood beneath the gorge’s towering wall staring at me.

Our shouts drew the others. They stood around us in a half-circle as Maram said, by way of explanation, ‘All that talk last night of Angra Mainyu and worlds ending in fire – it was too much!’

Kane eyed the poorly tied strings of the saddlebag but did not comment upon them. Then he said, ‘Perhaps it was.’

There was a kindness in his voice that I had heard only rarely. His black eyes held Maram in the light of compassion, and that was rarer still.

‘There are only six of us against Morjin and all his armies!’ Maram cried out. ‘Eight, if we count the children! How can we possibly keep the Dragon at bay while we find the Maitreya?’

‘We were one fewer,’ Kane said, ‘when we found our way into Argattha.’

‘But Morjin is stronger now, isn’t he? I saw this. So damn strong. And there is Angra Mainyu, too.’

Kane regarded him as a deep light played in his eyes. And then he snarled out, ‘Strong, you say? Ha, they are weak!’

His words astonished us. I stared at him as I shook my head. He was a man, I thought, who could hold within fierce contradictions, like two tigers in rut locked inside the same small cage.

‘So, weak they are,’ he growled out again. ‘Who are the strong, then, the truly powerful? They who follow the Law of the One, even though their faithfulness leads to their death. They who bring the design of the One into its fullest flowering, for in creation lies true life. But Morjin and his master create nothing. They fear everything, and their own feebleness most of all. So, fearing, thus they hate, and in hating chain themselves to all that is hateful and foul. Daj escaped from Argattha, Estrella, too, but how can the two Dragons ever break free from the hellhole that they have made for themselves with every nail they have pounded into flesh and every eye they have gouged out? From the very chains that they have forged to make themselves slaves? So. So. Knowing this, they would cloak their slave souls in royal robes and seek to conquer others, as proof of their power over life – and death. But the truly free can never be conquered, eh? At least not conquered in their souls. The stars can all die, their radiance, too, but not the light of the One. It is this that terrifies Angra Mainyu, and Morjin, too. And that is why, in the end, we’ll win.’

His words stunned Maram more than they soothed him. But for the moment, at least, they drove back the demons that impelled him to find solace in his brandy bottle. He stood proud and tall staring at Kane, transformed from a drunkard into a Valari knight. And he said, ‘Do you really think we can win?’

‘So, we must win – and so we will.’

Kane, I thought, understood the nature of evil better than any man. But it was the nature of evil, the truly horrible thing about it, that understanding alone would not keep evil from devouring a man alive.

‘We will win,’ Master Juwain affirmed, looking at Maram, ‘so long as we do not let down our guard. Have you been practicing the Light Meditations?’

‘Ah, perhaps not as often as I should,’ Maram said.

‘Well, what about the Way Rhymes, then? Memorizing them would be a better balm than brandy.’

‘Ah, I’m too tired, and it’s too late. My brain aches almost as much as my poor body.’

‘Then I’ll prepare you a tisane that will wake you up.’

‘Ah, what if I don’t want to wake up?’

Master Juwain rubbed the back of his shiny head as he regarded Maram. He seemed at a loss for words.

It was Liljana who came to his rescue. She waggled her finger at Maram, then poked it below his ribs as she said, ‘How many nights have I stayed up cooking and cleaning so that you might go to bed with a full belly? Master Juwain has asked you to memorize his verses, and so you should, for our sakes, if not your own.’

Everyone looked at Maram then, and he held up his hands in defeat – or in victory, depending on one’s point of view.

‘All right, all right,’ he said, ‘I’ll learn these silly rhymes, if that’s what you all want. It will be easier than everyone nagging me all the time.’

Master Juwain’s smile lasted only as long as it took Maram to add, ‘I’ll begin tomorrow, then.’

Kane suddenly took a step closer to him and stood staring at him like a great cat tensing to spring. I knew that he was only testing Maram, and would never lay hands upon him. Maram, however, was not so sure of this.

‘All right, all right,’ he said again with a heavy sigh. He turned to Master Juwain. ‘What verses for tonight, then?’

At Master Juwain’s prompting, I heard Maram recite:

At gorge’s end, a wooded vale …

And so it went as we returned to our places around the fire and drank the spicy teas that Master Juwain made for us. It was much to his purpose that we should learn the Way Rhymes, too, and so we took turns intoning the verses and correcting each other when we made mistakes. We did not continue our practice quite as long as Master Juwain might have wished, for we all were quite tired. But when it came time to retire for the night, we took the words into sleep, and perhaps into our dreams. And that was a good thing, I thought, for the essence of the Way Rhymes was the promise that if a man took one step after another, in the right direction, he would always reach his journey’s end.

The next day dawned clear, as we could tell from the band of blue that slowly brightened above us. We continued our long walk through the gorge, over loose stone and through stands of cottonwood trees that gradually showed a sprinkling of elms and oaks the deeper we penetrated into the White Mountains. Twenty miles, at least, we had travelled since our battle with Morjin and his Red Knights. None of us knew the length of the Kul Kavaakurk, for Master Juwain’s rhymes did not tell of that. But here, deep in this cleft in the earth, where the wind whooshed as through a bellows’ funnel and tore at our hair and garments, the gorge seemed to go on and on forever.

And then, abruptly, as we rounded yet another bend in the stream, the gorge opened out into a broad valley. A forest covered its slopes, gentle and undulating to the north but still quite steep to the south of the river. For the first time in two days, we had all the sun we could hope for; its warm rays poured down upon rock, earth and leaf, and filled all the great bowl before us. Smaller mountains, cloaked in oak and birch with aspens and hemlock higher up, edged the rim of this bowl; beyond rose the great white peaks of the Nagarshath. The valley continued along the line of the gorge, toward the west, and it seemed that our course should be to follow the river straight through it. But there were other exits from the valley that we might choose: clefts and saddles between the slopes around us, through which smaller streams flowed down into the river. Any one of these, I thought, might lead us up toward the Brotherhood’s school, though the way would obviously be difficult and dangerous.