Black Jade (80 page)

'Can
they be?' Master Juwain said. He stepped over to one of the great crystals and laid his hand upon it. 'Can they truly be?'

'Men,' Liljana said, running her hand along the face of a ruby monolith, 'could not have made such things.'

'Men, no - perhaps not the Ardun. But might have the angels?'

Liljana stared off in wonder as she shook her head.

'But if not the Galadin,' Master Juwain said, 'then who? All the gelstei of which we have record were forged by the hand of man.'

'But what of the gelstei that grew out of the earth in the vilds?'

Master Juwain thought about this and said, 'If not forged, then cultivated. The Lokilani tend their crystals as fanners do their crops.'

'But it is the earth that
grows
the crystals.'

'What are you thinking?'

Liljana swept her hand out at the rainbow of colors pouring out of the huge crystals. 'I feel certain that the Mother gave birth to this place. Perhaps man and the earth created it together.'

'How, then?'

'You always concern yourself with the
how
of things. But what I wonder is
why?'

All this time Kane had remained silent. But then he raised up his eyes and spoke in a sad, deep voice that rang out as if from another land far away.

'I have a memory,' he told us. 'A memory of a memory. I think I heard of such a place long, long ago. It was called Ansunna.'

He looked at me, and then at Liljana. His black eyes seemed to grow ever brighter and clearer as he stood there remembering. 'These caverns
are
a creation of the living earth and the Galadin of old. The Bright Ones once walked the earth, eh? In the Elder Ages, I think they came here and planted in the ground the seeds of the gelstei - the great gelstei that grew into these great crystals.'

Here he smacked his hand against one of the ruby pillars so hard that it seemed the whole earth shook. And Master Juwain said to him, 'But you cannot mean the
great
gelstei!'

I thought of the seven clear crystals, colored red through violet that Abrasax and the masters of the Brotherhood kept safe about their persons high in the White Mountains. They called them the Seven Openers, and although small in size, Abrasax had believed them to be made of the same substance as the great gelstei used in the creation of the universe.

'I mean just that,' Kane said to Master Juwain. He turned to Liljana, and his voice softened as he said, 'So, this is the
why
of things, eh? The great gelstei, in their highest purpose, are to be used in creation.'

Master Juwain stepped over to the crystal rising up near Kane. 'You can't mean that these are the great gelstei used in Eluru's creation!'

'No, surely not,' Kane told him. 'The gelstei of which you speak are surely almost infinitely vaster - as far beyond these little rocks as the Ieldra are the Galadin.'

Master Juwain gazed up as if looking for the point of the great crystal a hundred feet above us. 'Then what are these gelstei
for
?'

Kane began pacing around the circle, casting quick glances to his right or left across the cavern, at Babul standing far away on his rocky shelf and the dangling green and yellow crystals of the cavern's ceiling. I could scarcely bear the flood of feelings pouring out of him: curiosity, remorse, anticipation, sorrow and all his wild joy of life.

'So,' he finally said, 'a day must come when the Galadin will become Ieldra and use the gelstei to sing into creation a new universe. I believe that Ashtoreth and Valoreth - even Asangal and many other Galadin - once came here to sing.'

He went on say that just as boys practiced with wooden swords before becoming warriors who wielded razor-sharp steel, so the Galadin must prepare themselves for the great task that lay ahead of them.

'But of what did they sing, then?' Daj asked Kane.

'Who knows?' Kane told him. 'But
this
was said about the place called Ansunna: that it held a great magic. Whatever one spoke truly, with the voice of the soul, would be made real.'

'That would be magic, indeed,' Master Juwain said, 'for wishes to come true.'

'I didn't say
wishes
,' Kane snapped at him. 'We
wish
that our desires be fulfilled, and we desire that which most pleases or benefits us. But the soul has other desires, eh? And its deepest desire is always in accord with that of the One. What does the One
will?
Discover
that
within yourself and speak it truly, without wish or regard for yourself, and it will be.'

Master Juwain rubbed his gleaming head as he thought about this. And then Atara said, 'But only, it would seem for the Galadin for who of us can ever hope to sing as they sing?'

Kane gazed at Alphanderry a moment before saying, 'Who, indeed?'

Estrella, who could not sing or even speak, caught Kane's attention with a flutter of her fingers and a smile. Their eyes met, and something seemed to snap inside him like an overstretched bowstring. He said, 'There is singing, and there is
singing.
The Ieldra do not have voices as men do, and yet from them pours forth the music of creation.'

In the Loikalii's vild, I had stood staring at the great astor tree, Irdrasil, as a glorre-infused radiance poured out of it. I could almost hear the Ieldra whispering to me still; I knew that the deepest voice of all spoke not in impossible-to-learn tones but in the language of light.

'This, too, I believe, was said,' Kane told us. His fathomless eyes drank in the cavern's colors. 'That one should not speak of abstractions such as peace, compassion or love. That which
is,
always is, eh? It partakes of the eternal realm. But that which would be, in creation, comes forth within
this
realm. Like the world itself, it must be a physical thing.'

A question seemed to divide him, like a chasm through solid rock. It divided me, as well. How, I wondered, could I distinguish what
I
wanted from the will of the One? Did I long for Atara to see with new eyes for her sake or my own? And what of my hope that someday I would hear sweet song pouring from Estrella's throat, no less my darker desire to plunge my sword through Morjin's heart? A hundred wants and needs formed up inside me with an almost palpable presence. I tried to listen for the whispering of my soul and to sing out with all my heart my deepest desire. But I felt lost inside this vast cavern, like a sleeper within a dream. There came a moment when I wished for nothing more than to stand outside beneath the stars again, to feel the wind on my face and for Maram to press a cup of brandy into my hand as his great voice boomed out that it was good to be alive.

As we all stood there in the womb of the earth, staring off in silence, the great gelstei crystals came alive with a deep light. It passed from one crystal to the next, red to yellow, violet to blue, so that each crystal seemed to partake of the radiance of all the thousands of others. The splendor they cast out into the cavern colored the very air so that it shimmered a brilliant glorre.

And yet, I thought, the crystals shone less brilliantly than they should have. A too-familiar dread crept up my bones into my spine. My sword smoldered with hidden flames, as did my heart, and I felt Morjin's presence here. Surely he knew of this place, even if he had never found the purity of voice to sing his way into it. But now, I sensed, from a thousand miles away he used the power of the Lightstone to sing a different and darker kind of song. The Galadin once might have spoken their desires to these beautiful crystals, as did we; the Red Dragon would speak his demands. And the great gelstei spoke back. When I emptied myself of all wishes and listened hard enough, I heard the saddest song of all. For here the earth herself sang: long, lovely, low and deep. She sang of the Black Jade buried within her flesh like a poisoned arrowhead; she told of Morjin delving down through the rock beneath Skartaru and doing terrible things. She lamented her own darkening, and sang of her dread of the day when Morjin would free the Dark One and the earth would finally sicken and die.

It came to me that we would never find our way out of the Singing Caves if we stood frozen listening to such tormented songs. I wondered how we would find our way at all. And then I heard another song, or rather a voice, that dashed our hopes of escape. For Babul, high on his slab of rock above us, suddenly called out to us: 'Mirustral! Rowan! Pirro has given the warning! He heard shouts beyond the doors, and says that Sylar comes for us! What shall we do?'

What indeed, I wondered, as I looked at Kane?

And then a moment later, Babul shouted out again: 'The doorway! It is closing!'

We all turned to face the gleaming azure crystals on the curving wall above us. Master Juwain said, 'If we let ourselves be closed in, we'll be safe from Sylar and his men.'

And Kane snarled at him, 'You mean, entombed!'

'No - when Sylar finds us vanished, he'll attribute it to sorcery. We can reopen the door another time, and make our escape.'

'So you say. But what if Sylar does
not
attribute our vanishing to sorcery? What if that damn Pirro betrays us, and Sylar sets miners to chiselling away here and discovers this cavern?'

He did not have to add that if Sylar really belonged to the Order of the Dragon, then Morjin would be told of anything he discovered.

'Good pilgrims!' Babul cried out, 'the doorway!'

'So, I'd rather die trying to fight our way out,' Kane said.

'So would I,' I told him. Then I turned toward the stairs. 'Hurry, then, before we
are
trapped in here.'

We ran up the stairs to the shimmering doorway. The opening appeared to be gelling into something more solid. I urged everyone through and then jumped after them through the wall into the sixth or Minstrels' Cavern; it was like passing through freezing water.

'The doors!' Pirro's voice rang out from above us. He stood at the mouth of the fifth cavern shouting down to us. 'They're going to open the doors!'

I led the way running toward him. I had to pace myself up the stairs, and all the way back up through the other sloping chambers, lest the climb burn up my limbs and wind me. Then I came into the first cavern. There, in that hollow of gleaming crystals, I stood gasping for air. My friends joined me, one by one. At the front of the cavern, the iron doors remained shut, and I could hear no sound from beyond them.

'What shall we do?' Babul said again, whispering to me. 'We are few, and they will surely be many.'

Just then something banged the door outside, and there came the jangle of what sounded like keys.

'Form up!' I whispered, stepping closer to the door.

Kane, sword in hand, stood by my right side, while to my left, Babul and Pirro pressed close to each other and pointed their spears at the doors. Liljana, Master Juwain, Estrella and Daj gathered behind us. Liljana had drawn the long knife that she wore concealed beneath her robes, while Daj gripped his short sword. Farther to my right and behind me, Atara had stationed herself at an angle to the door. She had cut free from her cloak the three arrows sewn into it, and had nocked one of them to the string of her bow. She pulled back the arrow to her ear, somehow aiming its steel point in the direction of the crack between the doors. I wondered how long she could hold her great bow at full draw.

The sound of a key grating inside the iron lock of the doors sent a thrill of fear shooting through me. And Pirro whispered out into the dank, close air: 'I could not tell how many they are.'

I heard Kane whisper back to him, 'We'll kill them all few or many. We must, be prepared for anything.'

But I was not, despite Kane's fierce words, prepared for what awaited us on the other side of the doors. Finally, with much creaking, these great slabs of iron began to swing open. Torchlight spilled into the cavern, and limned against its red glow stood a single man. I blinked my eyes in wonder. I could not believe what I saw, although I was overjoyed at the sight that greeted me.

'My Lord!' a familiar voice called out to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'

It was Maram.

We hurried out into the scoop of rock called the first cavern. The bodies of Elkar and Harun lay sprawled near the table where Sylar had collected our gold. Elkar's slashed throat oozed blood, while Harun fairly floated in a dark pool building out from a terrible wound in his chest. Just in front of the demon rock slumped another form: Sylar's, I guessed from the gilded armor. His body had been decapitated. Although I looked about the bloodstained cavern floor, I could not see his head.

'But how did you come to be here?' I asked Maram. We stood over Sylar's corpse gazing at each other in amazement. I noted the blood dripping off Maram's drawn sword. 'What happened?'

'Ah, Val!' Maram said as he embraced me with his free arm,
'I
happened along just in time, I think, else you would have been dead, or worse.'

He explained that after arriving at the Inn of the Clouds in the dead of night, he had asked after us and learned that we had not returned from the Singing Caves. Thinking to surprise us, he had hurried after us, up the flagstone path leading from the inn beneath the face of Mount Miru. As he had approached the caverns' entrance, however, a cruel laughter had given him warning. And so, like a bear sniffing out a new lair, he had stalked up to the caverns in near silence.

'As I drew closer,' he told us, 'I hid behind that rock.'

He pointed at a large boulder ten yards away just outside the cavern.

Then he pointed at the bodies of Elkar, Harun and Sylar.

'I heard them boasting that they had locked you inside the caverns,' he went on. He pointed his sword toward Sylar's headless torso. 'That one was their captain, wasn't he? He said that they would be given a great reward for capturing you. I gathered that he had sent another of these guards for reinforcements.'

Kane sprang up to Maram and grasped his arm. 'Did you hear Sylar say where he sent him?'