Black Jade (103 page)

When we stopped by a stream to refill our waterskins, I saw him take out his green gelstei and stare at it. Then I finally understood. I said to him, 'It is Morjin, isn't it?'

He nodded his head, then gasped out, 'He has .. . found his way ... again... into this crystal.'

Maram came up and looked at it. 'I never felt a fire so terrible as that which came out of your stone when you tried to heal me. Morjin is burning
you
with it, isn't he?'

'No... it isn't like ... that,' Master Juwain said again. He waited to catch his breath. 'The varistei, I think ... is making my blood sick. Making it so that it can't... hold the air I breathe in.'

Liljana stepped over to look at the beautiful emerald crystal in his hand. She said, 'Then you must get rid of it.'

'I will,' Master Juwain said, closing his hand around his crystal. 'If things get worse, I will bury it.'

I did not want to pause any longer to hold an argument. None of us, I knew, would readily abandon his gelstei. I told myself that

if we could flee far enough from Morjin, he would lose whatever power he might be gaining over the stones.

'Let us ride,' I said. I looked at the mountains, now standing out sharply in stark gray and white lines perhaps only twenty-five miles away. 'Let us leave this dreadful country behind us.'

We set out again, and the terrain became even worse: rockier along the steeply cut slopes of the hills, and filled with dense vegetation in their troughs. Much grass grew here, and we saw a few herders grazing their sheep and goats upon it. But a tough, rubbery plant called hape also sprouted from the poor soil, in large patches through which the horses had a hard time driving their hooves. Littlefoot stumbled twice here, and I didn't know how Bemossed was able to keep from being thrown. Even Fire, the most surefooted of our horses, nearly broke her leg in a tangle of hape that concealed a rocky hole.

As the sun crossed the sky's zenith and began falling toward the west in a gout of yellow fire, the air grew stiller and hotter. We sweated and prayed for any hint of wind. I wondered if Estrella might be able to summon up a breeze. But this strong, sweet girl worked hard just to keep her horse moving forward. I listened as Master Juwain gasped and wheezed, and our horses snorted out froth into the blazing afternoon. My eyes burned as if someone had pushed me face-first into an oven. My heart burned, too, and my blood which pulsed through my aching veins. And with every mile we put behind us, I felt the hateful thing that pursued us drawing closer.

At the crest of one hape-covered rise, I called for a halt. I scanned the country behind us. A haze of heat and moisture steamed off the broken hills. I could not detect anyone riding over this ground; the only things that moved were a few dozen sheep a mile away. Kane, who had dismounted, lifted up his ear from a rock on the ground, and he shook his head. He murmured, 'Nothing - not yet.'

'Atara?' I said, looking over to where she stood leaning against her horse. 'Can you see anything?'

The sickness that burned through her belly struck deep into my own. I felt smothered in a thick blackness, as if a great hand had pushed me down into a mass of stinking black mud. I saw Atara grasping at the pommel of her saddle with one hand, even as she clutched something close to her body with her other. And then she turned to show me her diamond-clear gelstei. She told me, 'I can see almost nothing - not the land which we ride over, or the hours of the rest of this day. There is only Morjin. He is here, inside this crystal. And he is
here,
in these hills, somewhere. He comes, Val - how quickly he comes!'

Bemossed moved over to help her mount her horse. I thought it strange that even totally blind, she could ride much more fluidly than he, as if she had become a living part of her fierce, beautiful mare.

We began moving again, north and east toward the break in the mountains called the Khal Arrak. Whenever we came up over a swell of ground, I looked for this pass in the folds and fissures of rock to the north. I could not quite make it out. Even so, I felt certain that we rode more or less straight toward it: my sense of dead-reckoning told me this was so. I tried to assure Maram that we were going the right way, and he made a joke of this, saying, 'I hope you're right, because if you
don't
reckon correctly, we're all dead.'

A short distance farther on the ground got better, with fewer rocks and hape plants, and more grass for grazing. There should have been many sheep in the hills hereabout, and shepherds, too. For three miles we saw none of these; however, we did come across half a dozen houses, crumbling and obviously abandoned. I wondered why everyone had left them.

Bemossed, exhausted, fairly teetered on top of his horse and said, 'I heard there was war in this district, and plague, too.'

'Oh, excellent!' Maram grumbled. 'A cursed land - and we have to ride straight through it. Is there no other way?'

I looked out at the hot green hills around us. Perhaps ten miles farther on, a band of darker green forest covered the rising ground leading up to the mountains.

'Hmmph, you'll be all right,' Atara said to Maram, joking with him. 'Just don't drink the water here, and try not to breathe the air.'

Liljana, upon hearing this, did not smile. She sat on top of her horse next to Daj as she combed her fingers through his thick hair, checking to see if he might have picked up any ticks or other vermin on our ride. Then she broke off her inspection and said,

'I wish that I did not have to breathe the same air as Morjin, anywhere on earth. He makes everything so
foul.'

The unusual shrillness of her voice alarmed me, and I nudged Altaru over to her. We traded knowing looks, and I asked her. 'Has Morjin found his way into your gelstei, too?'

She nodded her head as she brought out her blue whale figurine. She looked at it hatefully. 'He slides himself into my mind, like a tapeworm! He is filth! He is an abomination who never should have been born! I can't tell you what he is saying to me - I can hardly tell myself.'

Her words alarmed not just me, but everyone. Kane rode over to her, and cast his eyes upon the blue gelstei. He shouted, 'Then it must be destroyed!'

'No, not yet,' Liljana murmured, closing her fingers around her crystal. 'I can still bear it.'

'Can you bear giving us away? If Morjin can see what you see, hear what you hear, then -'

'But he can't!'

'How do you know?'

'I just do. He wants only to madden me. He speaks and speaks to me, but he doesn't really know if I can hear him.'

'But how do
we
know that, eh?'

'How can you ask that? After all we've suffered together? Don't you know
me?'

'But what if you're wrong, eh?'

Liljana thrust her hand inside her cloak as she glared at Kane. And she snapped at him, 'You'll just have to trust me!'

'So,' he growled as he glared back at her. 'So.'

Liljana usually spoke with care, so as not to upset the children with things that they didn't need to know. But now she cried out: 'It doesn't matter anyway! Morjin is tracking us, and not by my thoughts. He will run us down, and soon!'

'Did he tell you that?' I asked her.

'Yes!'

I looked up at the mountains, which seemed so close, and yet still too far away. I said to Liljana, 'Then he told you lies - we will escape him, again.'

'You tell yourself lies. We are riding so
slowly.'

'Be quiet, woman!' Kane thundered at her. 'You worry more than Maram! And that's just what Morjin wants, eh? It's your damn gelstei! You should throw it away before I do!'

His large hands, it seemed, fairly trembled to rip open the folds of her cloak and seize her gelstei. And so I shouted at him: 'Kane! Morjin wants even more that we should start tearing at each other's throats!'

As I said this, the deep lines cut into his savage face smoothed out, and his eyes cooled, slightly. He turned away from Liljana. Then he brought out his black gelstei and sat on his horse staring at it.

'Damn Morjin!' he muttered. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his blood!'

He made a fist around his dark stone, and lifted his hand back behind his head as if making ready to hurl it from him. And then his whole body seemed to lose its strength. His arm fell to his side as he slumped in his saddle. He put his gelstei away. He turned to me to snarl out, 'Let's ride, damn it, while we still can!'

And so ride we did, trying to keep our hope fixed on the great rocky wall of mountains growing larger and larger in front of us. We pounded around and over grassy hills. Flies came out to bite us. Our sweat, like fire, burned in the little wounds the flies tore in our flesh.

And then we crested a good-sized hill, and the dark blanket of forest we sought for shade from the fierce sun and cover from our pursuers' eyes seemed almost close enough to touch. I thought that we might possibly reach it and vanish into its trees. Then I turned to scan the rolling ground behind us and a flash of white and red brightened the top of one of the hills. I squinted against the sun, and I could just make out a white horse bearing a bronze-armored warrior and his flowing red cape. Lord Mansarian. I remembered, rode a snow-white stallion. I knew this was he. His men galloped right behind him. There must have been at least two hundred knights of these Crimson Companies, pouring down the hillside like a stream of bronze and red. Somewhere in this frightful mass, I thought, rode priests of the Kallimun. I knew that their master rode with them as well - either he or the droghul of Morjin.

Seeing this, Maram sighed out, 'Ah, too many, too close - too bad.'

'No!' I said to him. 'We can escape them yet! Let's ride!'

I urged Altaru to a gallop; it gladdened my heart to see Bemossed push his gelding to match this pace. He and Littlefoot both seemed near to collapse, but they managed to negotiate the easy slope down the backside of the hill. Another and larger hill rose up before us. I led the way around it, through a broad, grassy trough, and I dared to hope that the sight of our enemy would inspire us to a speed great enough to leave them behind.

But it was not to be. Just as I rounded the hill, I came upon a stream cutting through a gully. Altaru jumped across it almost without breaking stride. Just as I turned in my saddle to warn Bemossed of this unexpected obstacle, though, he seized hold of Littlefoots reins in confusion. Littlefoot planted his hooves in the grass, stopping up short of the stream. Bemossed, completely unprepared for his horse's sudden balk, went flying headfirst from his saddle through the air. His momentum carried him clear across the stream, where he struck the ground with a sickening impact. He threw up his hands to protect his head, and I heard bones break. It was something of a miracle that Atara's horse and those of the children, following close behind him, managed to jump the stream without trampling him.

We all gathered around Bemossed near the edge of the gully and dismounted. Bemossed stood up bravely, holding his drooping arm in his hand. He winced in pain as Master Juwain quickly examined it, but did not utter even a murmur of complaint

'Both bones in your forearm are broken,' Master Juwain announced. 'Not badly,
I
think, but they must be set. and your arm wrapped.'

'Not here!' Kane growled out. 'There is no time!'

'He can't ride like this,' Master Juwain said.

'He can hardly ride as it is,' Kane snapped. 'But ride he must.'

'All right,' I said. 'Then he'll ride with me.'

I mounted Altaru, and then helped Maram and Kane as they fairly flung Bemossed up onto Altaru's back behind me. I told Bemossed to wrap his good arm around my waist and to hold on tightly. Then I whispered to my great, black stallion, 'All right, old friend, you must run quickly now - quicker than you ever have before!'

Altaru, however, although the strongest of horses and a fury of speed over short distances, had never had the wind for long races. With Bemossed's weight added to mine, Altaru sprang forward with a great surge of determination that could not last very long. We galloped for a while over the lumpy, grassy ground. The breath snorted from his huge nostrils, and I felt an agony of fire building within the great, bunching muscles of his flanks and legs. I feared that he would run so hard that his heart might burst. I wanted to weep at the valor of this great-spirited being.

I heard the horses of my companions pounding after us and Bemossed's tormented breath exploding in my ear. I felt his arm tight around my belly, but trembling with the effort to keep holding on. I knew his strength was failing, as was Altaru's. After a couple of miles, my horse's pace slowed to barely a gallop. His whole body seemed to knot and quiver with a burning agony. I did not know how he kept on running.

We came out into a bowl of thick grass surrounded by hills, to its center stood an old cottage, or rather, its ruins. It had no roof and only three good walls: the fourth wall, facing us, had crumbled in places, and its doorway lacked a door. I pointed Altaru straight toward this hole in the wall's mortared stone. And Maram cried out in protest to me: 'What are you doing? The pass lies
that
way!' He pointed off past the right of the house. 'We won't make it - not this way!' I called back to him. 'We must make a stand, here.'

He didn't argue with me, nor did anyone else. I drew up in front of the cottage and waited as my friends joined me and dismounted. Kane and Maram helped Bemossed down from Altaru's back; then I rode him through the doorway into the cottage. Kane took charge of getting the other horses and everyone inside. I dismounted, too, and began walking around the cottage's single room. Piles of old leaves and bits of stone littered its packed-earth floor. Three of its walls, as I had thought, seemed to be in good enough repair. They stood a good seven feet high. The southern wall, however, had crumbled down to a height of four feet along much of its length. It was no castle that I had chosen for us to defend, but the best protection we could hope to find.

While Master Juwain and Liljana worked to set Bemossed's arm and wrap it, Kane unholstered his bow and began sticking arrows down into the dirt floor. So did I, and so did Maram. He moved with speed but without conviction or hope. I heard him mutter to himself, 'Ah, Maram, my old friend, this is madness - this is surely the end.'