Black Jade (40 page)

That was all she said to us. That was all she
would
say, no matter that Maram cajoled her and told her that it wasn't fair that she should reveal only part of the future. But that was the way of things with scryers, who had their own code and lived with mysteries that no one else could understand.

'Well, I hope never to see a droghul again, despite what you prophesy,' Maram said to Atara. He stared off into the woods to the west. 'If we go that way, I think our passage will be bad enough.'

He looked to me then as if I might relent in our choice of routes through the Acadian forest. But I shook my head and dashed his hopes. Although the day was cool and gray and promised ill weather for travel I said to him that we must take no terror from what the droghul had told us, and go on undeterred into that dark swath of woods called the Skadarak.

We did not, however, venture forth that morning or afternoon. The encounter with the droghul had exhausted all of us, and Kane and I had wounds that must be tended. Mine was the lesser of these. In the coolness of the damp morning, Liljana and Master Juwain helped me remove my armor and its leather underpadding. The force of the arrow that either Gorman or Pittock had fired at me had split the leather and the flesh along my spine as well. At least, as Master Juwain told me, the wound was not very deep. As I sat on a fallen log shivering at the mist that horripilated my naked skin, he cleaned it and rubbed in one of his foul-smelling ointments before sewing it shut. After that I could not sit up straight - much less move - without a sharp pain like that of a sword stabbing through my back.

As for Kane, Master Juwain was able to draw the arrow only with difficulty, for its barbed head caught up in his veins and tendons. Master Juwain determined that the arrow had torn the nerve chakra lying between the round of Kane's shoulder and his chest. Master Juwain's gray eyes clouded with concern, and he bit at his lip; he said that such a wound was much worse than it looked, for the fires of feeling would not be able to flow in and out of Kane's arm. Most men, suffering such an outrage to their flesh, would lose the use of their arm, which would wither and hang limp by their side.

'Perhaps,' Master Juwain said, taking out his green varistei, 'I should try to heal you with
this.
Although I must tell you that I am afraid to use it.'

'Ha, put your crystal away!' Kane said to him. He looked down at his arm, resting in the sling that Master Juwain had fashioned to support it. 'I've healed
myself
of worse wounds than this.'

Gorman and Pittoek came, forward to apologize for loosing arrows at us. It proved to be Gorman's arrow that had pierced Kane, and Gorman said to hiin, 'Forgive me, but I
saw
a dragon leap the fence and trample you to the ground, I loosed the arrow to keep it from rending you with its claws, or so I thought.'

He pounded his fist against his head as if to punish himself for his eyes' betrayal. Pittock likewise told of how he had seen a flaming werewolf grab hold of me. As he put it, 'I'd heard that the Crucifier was also called the Lord of Illusions but I never thought he had such power.'

With the droghul dead, Master Juwain reiterated his opinion that Morjin was unlikely to be able to inflict illusions upon either Pittock or Gorman - or any of the rest of us. To
be
safe, though. Master Juwain gave Pittock his warder to wear, as Atara gave hers to Gorman and Liljana draped her blood-red crystal around Berkuar's neck. Master Juwain's mind was as strong as a diamond; Liljana's was perhaps even stronger, and should be proof against any illusion so long as she didn't open herself to danger by using her blue gelstei. As for Atara, eyeless in eternity, Morjin had no power to make her see anything at all, for she had no power in this herself.

We spent the afternoon resting, drinking hot teas and later eating a thick venison stew that Liljana prepared for us. I dreaded going forth, into the Skadarak with Kane having the use of only one arm. What monsters, I wondered, would we find to fight there, and how would we fight them with the mightiest of us hardly able to wield his sword?

Other questions vexed me as sorely. I kept thinking of what the droghul had said to me. Finally, that night as we all sat close to the fire, we had a chance to speak of this.

'You've told that Angra Mainyu's people poisoned you with poppy and stole the Black Jade,' I said to Kane. He sat to my right with his bad arm cradled in a sling. 'But why, then, was it brought to Ea?'

His black eyes grew even blacker as he glared at me. He snarled out, 'So, do you think I know
everything?'

At this, Master Juwain, ever a peacemaker, cleared his throat and began speaking in the most reasonable of voices: 'In answer to this question, I believe that we should consider the prophecy of Midori Hastar: that Ea will give rise to the greatest and last Maitreya. We all pray that this is so, even as the Baaloch and his kind must dread it. It's likely, is it not, thai the Dark One sent the Black Jade here to help defeat this Maitreya or prevent him from ever coming forth?'

'I should think that it is likely,' Liljana said, for once agreeing with him. 'And so it makes good sense that the Galadin must have then sent the Lightstone to counteract the power of the Black Jade.'

Kane only stared into the fire. Although he made no response to this hypothesis, his silence seemed to confirm the spirit of what Master Juwain and Liljana had said.

'What
I
wonder at,' Maram called out into the cool evening air, 'is what the droghul said about a doom laid upon the crystal. Was this only another lie? If it wasn't, who laid such a doom, and how?'

Kane waited a long few moments as he sat watching the crackling fire. Then he said, 'The droghul spoke truly in this, though he twisted the truth to make a lie. The Daevas themselves laid the doom in their zeal to execute Angra Mainyu's will. It was
they
who poisoned the crystal. The black gelstei contains the great darkness itself, eh? So, it will drink in all that is dark from any who try to wield it, and who is darker than the Daevas who follow Angra Mainyu except the Dark One himself?'

Even from three feet away, I could feel Kane's heart moving against his chest bones like an animal trapped in a small, lightless room.

'But is it possible,' Maram persisted, 'for Morjin to use the Black Jade as the droghul has said? For him to make people into ghuls?'

Kane's words, as he turned to Maram, were more chilling than the dank night air: 'So, it is possible.'

He drew in a deep breath, as did I, and Atara sitting on my other side. And then he continued, now speaking in a more kindly tone: 'But first, he would have to master the Lightstone.'

'Master it or merely gain more power over it?' Maram asked. 'If Morjin could do to
us
what he did to his droghul, through the Black Jade, then it should found and destroyed.'

It took a few moments for Maram to realize the implications of his words. Atara oriented her face toward him, and said, 'Are you suggesting we search for it and destroy it?'

'Am
I suggesting that?' Maram said as if speaking to himself. His audacity seemed to astonish him. 'Well, we're close to it, aren't we?'

'That we are,' Kane said holding out his good hand as if to feel the air. 'And if we get too much closer, the Black Jade will destroy
you.'

He went to say that we couldn't just go strolling into the heart of the Skadarak and pick up the Black Jade from the ground, then smash it with an axe into pieces.

'It was brought here
long
ago,' he told us. 'It would be buried deep under layers of earth.'

'Unless perhaps it was left in some sort of cavern,' Maram said.

'That
is one cavern I wouldn't walk into, and neither would you.' Kane smiled at Maram, but the coldness in his eyes only made Maram shudder. And Kane continued, 'No, I'm certain that the earth has swallowed up the Black Jade. We would have to dig for it.'

Berkuar considered this as he chewed at one of his barbark nuts, then spat into the fire. 'The Crucifier's men mine for gold not far from the Skadarak. What if they've gone into it to mine for something else?'

'No, they would not dare,' Kane said to him. 'And they would not succeed if they did. Morjin would know this. So, it would be as if the Black Jade and the earth have become as one.'

He told us that the black gelstei had surely poisoned the very earth, even as the earth fed the crystal with its own dark fires.

'If you knew all this,' Master Juwain said to him, 'why did you wait until now to tell of it?'

'Because I didn't
know,'
Kane stared up at the trees beyond the remade fence surrounding us. 'There are many dark places on Ea, eh? I haven't visited them all, and until the droghul spoke of the Skadarak, I knew no more of it than you.'

'But from what we discussed with Master Storr in the library, you must have suspected.'

'So - so what if I did? I think you suspected it, too.'

Master Juwain considered this as he rubbed at his bald head. Then he said to Kane, 'If Morjin's men would not go after the Black Jade, then what about Morjin himself - or one of his droghuls?'

'No, he wouldn't dare, either,' Kane said. 'One must be careful in employing a dragon as an ally, eh? So with the Black Jade. The Lightstone
might
give him a measure of power over it, but not over the very earth of which it has become a part - not yet. It would be the earth that would devour him.'

He sighed as he looked at Master Juwain, and then added, 'But Angra Mainyu, if he were freed - he
would
dare. So, and he would claim the Black Jade for himself.'

I took a sip of tea and watched the fire's light playing in the black mirrors of Kane's eyes; I said to him, 'The droghul spoke of a Great Lie and of Angra Mainyu's struggle to become the Marudin. That word is strange to me - do you know what he meant?'

'I do,' Kane told us. His sigh was almost indistinguishable from a growl. 'I've spoken of this before - part of it. Of how Asangal fell into evil out of his love for the world and so became Angra Mainyu. So, and fell even more out of fear and hate. He hated most of all his inevitable end in becoming one of the Ieldra, and cursed the One who had made things so. He cursed creation itself. But death is only part of life, eh? -just as suffering carves hollows in the soul to leave room for joy. You said this once yourself. Angra Mainyu denied this. He called this truth the Great Lie. He vowed to make anew the whole universe in a new creation.
He
would, himself, although he was only of the Galadik order and had no such power.'

Kane paused to take a drink of his tea. Then his eyes fell upon me as he continued, 'But power he seeks as a bat does blood. All the power of the Ieldra, and more. And he said the greatest part of the Great Lie was that the Galadin should die in becoming the Ieldra. For he believed that there could be
another
order, beyond that of the Galadin; he called this order the Marudin: they who would not have to die into light, but who would touch all things in lighdt, even as the rays of the sun fall upon the earth. One, and only one, was destined to rule this order as
the
Marudin. And so rule creation itself.'

He reached into his pocket and brought forth the oval-shaped baalstei that he always kept close to him. 'I've said that the Black Jade is no greater, in size, than this little trinket that I took from that damned Gray. You've seen the seven gelstei that Abrasax and his brethren keep - they are no larger. But the first of the great gelstei that crystallized out of the angel fire at the beginning of time were immense beyond imagining. Immense in power, too. The Ieldra used them to create Eluru. Somewhere, in the stars around Ninsun, the first gelstei still dwell. So, Angra Mainyu would try to use the Black Jade to wrest the power of these crystals from the Ieldra, even as he once tried during the War of the Stone.'

Kane sat staring at the little black gelstei resting in his palm. Estrella and Daj edged up close to him, waiting to hear if he might say anything more. Maram took a swallow of tea, while Berkuar spat yet again into the fire. I listened as the wood there popped and hissed.

'Perhaps,' I said, 'we
should
find the Black Jade and destroy it.'

'No, Val,' Kane murmured to me, 'that is not possible.'

I went to bed that night telling myself that fighting through Morjin's forces to the north or wading through the Cold Marshes to the south would be much riskier than facing whatever darkness we might find in the Skadarak. But in truth, I didn't really know. And a deeper truth whispered like fire in some far corner of my mind: that I desired to look upon the darkest part of the world and know that the light I held inside would be bright enough to guide me through it.

We set out the next morning toward the west. Although it was late in Ashte, no hint of summer's warmth worked its way into this southern wood. It grew even colder, and the drizzle thickened into a sort of semptiternal gray cloud that enveloped us like a wet blanket. I blinked my eyes against the moistness there, while Maram licked beads of water from his mustache. We plodded along, yard by yard, through the dripping bracken.

Berkuar took the lead, with me close behind, followed by Atara, Master Juwain, Liljana and the children. Maram accompanied Kane, who, despite his wound, insisted on guarding our rear. Berkuar deployed Pittock and Gorman far out in the woods, to our right and left, to cover our flanks. Gorman, on our left, was also to look for sign of the Cold Marshes and give warning if we were about to wander into boggy ground or even quicksands. I led Altaru, the better to keep pace with Berkuar - and to feel solid ground beneath my boots. Then, too, the pain that sliced through my back with every step was slightly less in walking than in having to sit up straight in a jolting saddle.

According to Berkuar's reckoning, we should reach the Cold Marshes after only ten or fifteen more miles, and so it proved to be. We smelled this vast expanse of stagnant water and rotting vegetation long before we saw it. Through the trees wafted a stench that recalled the fetor of the Black Bog. The cloying air seemed to make it worse. Particles of drizzle caught up the reek and deposited it in our nostrils, in our hair and upon our garments. It made breathing itself a nasty trial.