Читать книгу Black Jade - David Zindell, David Zindell - Страница 10

We collected our horses and then made our way up the stream into the gap between the Ass’s Ears. We caught up to my grim-faced friend about half a mile into the mountains. He said nothing to me. Neither did he look at me. He rejoined our company with no further complaint, taking his usual post behind us to guard our rear. Kane, I thought, might bear a cold anger at me like a sword stuck through his innards, but he would never desert me.

The way up the stream was rocky and broken, and so we walked our horses and remounts behind us. We had no need to track our friends, for the slopes of the foothills here were so steep and heavily wooded that a deer would have had trouble crossing them, and so there was only one direction Master Juwain and the others could have traveled: along the stream, farther into the mountains. These prominences rose higher and higher before us. Although not as immense as the peaks of the upper Nagarshath to the north, they were great enough to chill the air with a cutting wind that blew down from their snow-covered crests. It was said that men no longer lived in this part of the White Mountains – if indeed they ever had. It was also said that no man knew the way through them. This, I prayed, could not be true, for if Master Juwain could not lead us through the Kul Kavaakurk Gorge and beyond, we would be lost in a vast, frozen wilderness.

For about a mile, as the stream wound ever upward, we saw no sign of this gorge. But then the slopes to either side of us grew steeper and steeper until another mile on they rose up like walls around us. Higher and higher they built, to the right and left, until soon it was clear that we had entered a great gorge. Looking to the west, where this deep cleft through the earth cut its way like a twisting snake, we could see no end of it. Surely, I thought, we must soon overtake our friends, for there could be no way out of this stone-walled deathtrap except at either end.

‘Ah, I don’t like this place,’ Maram grumbled as he kicked his way along the stone-strewn bank of the stream. He puffed for air as he gazed at the layers of rock on the great walls rising up around us. ‘Can you imagine how it would go for us if we were caught here?’

‘We won’t be caught here,’ I told him. ‘Bajorak will protect the way into the gorge.’

‘Yes, he’ll protect that way,’ Maram said, pointing behind us. Then he whipped his arm about and pointed ahead. ‘But what lies this way?’

‘Surely our friends do,’ I told him. ‘Now let’s hurry after them.’

But we could not hurry as I would have liked, not with the ground so rotten – and not with Atara still blind and stumbling over boulders that nearly broke her knees. Even with Maram adding her horses to the string he led along and with me taking her by the hand, it was still treacherous work to fight our way through the gorge. And a slow one. With the day beginning to wane and no sign of our friends, it seemed that they might be traveling quickly enough to outdistance us.

And then, as we came out of a particularly narrow and deep part of the gorge, we turned into a place where the stream’s banks suddenly widened and were covered with trees. And there, behind two great cottonwoods, with a clear line of sight straight toward us, Surya and the other Manslayer stood pointing their drawn arrows at our faces. Their horses, and those of our friends, were tethered nearby.

Then Surya, a high-strung and wiry woman, gave a shout, saying, ‘It’s all right – it’s only Lord Valashu and our Lady!’

Surya eased the tension on her bow and stepped out from behind the tree, and so did the other Manslayer, whose name proved to be Zoreh. And then from behind trees farther up the gorge, Master Juwain, Liljana, Daj and Estrella appeared, and called out to us in relief and gladness.

‘The battle has been won!’ I called back to them as they hurried along the stream toward us. ‘The Red Knights will not pursue us here!’

Daj let loose a whoop of delight as he came running down the stream, dodging or jumping over stones with the agility of a rock goat. A few moments later, Estrella threw her arms around me, and pressed her face against my chest. Liljana came up more slowly. She took in the blood on our armor and garments. She gazed at my face and said, ‘You are burnt, as from fire.’

Her gaze lowered to fix upon my sheathed sword, and she slowly shook her head.

Because Surya and Zoreh were staring at me, too, I gave them a quick account of the battle. I said nothing, however, of my sword’s burning or my failure to kill Morjin.

‘We must go, then,’ Surya told us. ‘Six of our sisters are dead, and we must go.’

She turned to Atara and gazed at her blindfolded face as if trying to understand a puzzle. Then she embraced her, kissing her lips. ‘Farewell, my imakla one. We shall all sing to the owls, that your other sight returns soon. But if it does not, who will care for you? Must you go off with these kradaks?’

‘Yes, I must,’ Atara told her, squeezing my hand in hers.

‘Then we shall sing to the wind, as well, that fate will blow you back to us.’

And with that, she and Zoreh gathered up their horses and turned to begin the walk back down the gorge. We watched them disappear around the rocks of one of its turnings.

We decided to go no farther that day. We were all too tired, from battle and from too many miles of hard traveling. Surya had found a place that we could defend as well as any. Four archers, I thought, firing arrows quickly at the bend where the gorge narrowed behind us, could hold off an entire company of Red Knights. We had here good, clear water, even if it was little more than a trickle. Above the stream, the ground between the trees was flat enough to lay out our sleeping furs in comfort. There was grass for the horses, too, and plenty of deadwood for a fire.

Despite our exhaustion, we fortified our camp with stones and a breastwork of logs. Liljana brought out her pots to cook us a hot meal, while Atara and Estrella took charge of washing the blood from our garments in the stream and mending them in the places where an arrow or a sword had ripped through them. We gathered around the fire to eat our stew and rushk cakes in the last hour of the day. But here, at the bottom of the gorge where the stream spilled over rocks, it was already nearly dark. The sunlight had a hard time fighting its way down to us, and the walls of the gorge had fallen gray with shadow.

Although we had much to discuss and I desired Kane’s counsel, this ancient warrior stood alone behind the breastwork gazing down the stream in the direction from which our enemies would come at us, if they came at all. His strung bow and quiver full of arrows were close at hand as he ate his stew in silence.

‘Ah, what I would most like to know,’ Maram said as he licked at his lips, ‘is what will become of Morjin?’

He sat with the rest of us around the fire. From time to time, he poked a long stick into its blazing logs.

‘Unless he bled to death, which seems unlikely,’ Master Juwain said, ‘he will recover from his wound. A better question might be: what has become of him? If Val is right that it really was Morjin.’

‘It must have been Morjin,’ I said. ‘Changed, somehow, yes. He is something more … and something less. There was something strange about him. But I know it was he.’

‘Unless he has an evil twin, it was he,’ Maram agreed.

‘But how do we really know that?’ Master Juwain asked. ‘He is the Lord of Illusions, isn’t he? Perhaps he has regained the power to put into our eyes the same images with which he fools other people.’

Liljana shook her head at this. ‘No, what we faced earlier was no illusion. Morjin’s mind is powerful – so horribly powerful, as none know better than I. But he cannot, from hundreds of miles away in Argattha, cast illusions that fool so many through the course of an entire battle. And he cannot have fooled me.’

‘No,’ I said, fingering my cloak, spread out on a rock near the fire to dry. I had felt the blood from Morjin’s severed arm soak into it, and the red smear of it still stained the collar. ‘No, he has a great strength now. I felt this in his arms, when we were locked together sword to sword.’

‘Could this not, then, have been the old Morjin drawing strength from the Lightstone?’ Master Juwain asked. ‘And drawing from it as well the means to deceive you about his form?’

‘No,’ I said, touching the hilt of my sword, ‘I know that he has lost the power of illusion over me. And the Lightstone is all beauty and truth. There is nothing within it that could help engender illusions and lies.’

For the span of a year, after my friends and I had rescued the Lightstone out of Argattha, the golden bowl had been like a sun showering its radiance upon us. I missed the soft sheen of it keenly, nearly as much as I did my murdered family. Since the day that Morjin had stolen it back, I had known no true days, only an endless succession of moments darkened as when the moon eclipses the sun.

‘Then,’ Master Juwain sighed out, ‘we have dispensed with several hypotheses. And so we must consider that Morjin has indeed found a way to rejuvenate himself.’

‘I didn’t think the Lightstone had that power,’ Maram said.

‘Neither did I,’ Master Juwain admitted.

‘But what of the akashic crystal?’ Atara asked. ‘Was there no record within it of such things?’

Master Juwain sighed again as his face knotted up in regret. With the breaking in Tria of the great akashic crystal, repository of much of the Elijin’s lore concerning the Lightstone, Master Juwain’s hope of gaining this great knowledge had broken as well.

‘There might have been such a record within it,’ Master Juwain said. ‘If only I’d had more time to look for it.’

‘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.

‘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.