Black Jade

Chapter 17

And so we moved away from that terrible place. We jour-neyed all that day and the nextt as well, into the west. Daj did not ask how we might determine when we had left the Skadarak, for we all knew that in a way, we never would. But

there came a time when trees grew tall and hearthy about us again, with bright green leaves that fluttered in a fresh, clean wind. The dreadful call of the Skadarak faded into a murmur and then seemed to die. Alphanderry left us then. Our shimmering friend simply vanished back into the nothingness that had birthed him. We were all sad to be left alone again, but we hoped that something of Alphanderry's song would continue to sound within us, as a charm against the darkness that had no end.

We mourned for Pittock and Gorman and felt keenly the loss of their bows, for despite their failings, they had been fine warriors. We did not speak of this. We did not speak of the worst of what had befallen us in the Skadarak, neither to each other nor even to ourselves; we were like murderers reentering the company of good men and ashamed of our deeds. When we came to a little stream, we spent some hours washing the stench of the dark woods from our clothing. We bathed in the cold water and scrubbed at our naked skin until it was raw. but it seemed that the evil that clung to us could not be washed away.

Only once did I give voice to the terrible doubt that now ate at my bones. We had crossed another stream and were setting our course when I took Kane aside and said to him, 'I'm tired, so damn tired. I haven't the heart for this any more.'

'What? What's this?'

'Perhaps you should lead us,' I told him.

His eyes flared with anger and astonishment, 'I, lead us? Ha, I'm no leader! Men obey me — they do not follow. The duty is upon you.'

'But I nearly led us to our doom!' 'So? I've been near to doom a thousand times. That's just the way of life, eh? In the end, you led us out of that cursed wood, and that's all that matters.'

'Is it? I am — ' 'You're a star, Valashu. In the end, a bright and beautiful star. You followed its light, and so did I. And so now it's now, and now we're here in this beautiful place. A million miles might lie ahead of us; I won't hear any talk of what lies behind, do you understand?'

He squeezed my arm then, and I felt some of his inexhaustible strength flow into me. I bowed my head to him, and he smiled at me.

But it is one thing to agree to lead others and quite another to keep them moving forward when their hearts as well have nearly given up all hope. After the passage of the Skadarak, Atara fell into a silence so deep and cold it seemed that she had almost lost the power of speech. Her second sight did not return to her. I felt some deep part of her desperately looking for me to show her a way out of her darkness.

As for Maram, he tried to take solace in words. The next morning we set out into a forest chittering with many birds, and he sang almost as brightly as they did. But I sensed the falseness of bravado in his great, booming voice. I knew that he was trying to rally himself for a battle with his old demons — either that or trying to forget.

And so I said to him, 'One day, when our grandchildren are happily married, we'll sit with glasses of brandy in our hands and wonder that we once came so close to despair.'

'Do you really think so?' he asked me. 'But what if we fail?'

'We can't fail, Maram — at least we can't fail each other. And that is why, in the end, we'll win.'

He smiled at this. 'Brave words, my friend, and thank you for them. But I don't know — I just don't know.'

We continued our journey through the warm, open woods, and sometimes Maram's singing swelled with true hope, and sometimes it didn't. This I had learned in the Skadarak: our hearts were always free. Not even the Maitreya, I thought, could save a man who didn't want to be saved.

For two more days, we traveled into the west toward the mountains. Ashte had passed Into Soldru, and so finally did the clouds above us pass on to the east. The sky cleared, allowing the strong Soldru sun to rain down its blight rays through the glowing, green leaves above us. Arum and marigolds showed their colors in glades covered with grass. Through the occasional breaks in the forest's canopy, we caught glimpses of a great wall of white peaks that grew larger and larger.

At last we came into a thinly-populated part of Acadu that Berkuar seemed to know quite well. He guided us onto game paths and old, narrow roads. Here we might have moved more quickly, but I called for an unhurried pace. We were alt worn from our journey, and Daj and Estrella most of all. They were as tough and uncomplaining as any children could be, but in the end they were still children. We stopped more than once so that they might play by a stream or pick apples from an orchard of one of the farmers who had made a homestead in these lonely woods. One of these, a stout freeholder named Graybuck, invited us to a feast of roasted ham, mashed potatoes and fresh greens picked from his fields. He insisted on plying us with some of his homemade beer, even Maram, whose vows he waved away.

'Beer is the only fit drink for friends,' Graybuck told us, holding forth at table in his long room with his wife and five children. He turned his heavy, red face toward Maram. 'Surely you can put aside your vow this one time to make toast in the company of friends?'

'Ah, surely I can,' Maram told him. 'A vow is sacred, It's true, but what is more sacred than friendship?'

I said nothing as I watched Graybuck's eldest daughter, Roseen, fill Maram's mug with a frothy brown beer. I bit my lip as I watched the way that Maram watched this plump, young woman go about her business, as if he would rather have had her for dessert in place of apple pie or other sweets.

'To the Keepers of the Forest,' Graybuck said, holding up his mug and nodding at Berkuar. 'May they the drive the Crucifiers from our woods.'

He went on to tell of the depredations of Morjin's soldiers who had raided down from the mine lands to the north. He praised us for having the courage and good guidance to have passed by the Skadarak unharmed, and so avoided these men that he hated.

'They've feared your bows,' he said to Berkuar, 'and so few have dared to come into the deep woods here, though I heard that last year they burnt Finlay's farm not twenty miles from here and carried off his daughters. But if you're journeying south, as you must, you'll find the forest full of soldiers. They've set up a garrison at Nayland, between the Cold Marshes and the mountains.'

'But what if we didn't go around the mountains,' I asked him, 'but across them?'

'Cross the mountains?' Graybuck said to me. 'Not with horses and children. There are no passes over them.'

Kane sipped at his beer as he eyed Graybuck. Then he said, 'No passes at all?'

'Well, there is a narrow gap about thirty miles from here, but it is cursed.'

'Cursed, you say?' Maram called out. 'Cursed how?'

'It's said that there is something there that turns men to stone.'

'Turns men to stone!' Maram cried out. Then he belched and muttered. 'Oh, excellent, excellent!'

'Surely,' Master Juwain said to Graybuck, 'that cannot be true. Surely it is just a legend.'

'I don't know about that,' Graybuck said to him. 'I've heard people tell of kin lost to this Stonemaker. They call it the Yaga.'

'The Yaga,' Maram muttered again as he gazed into his empty mug.

'But hasn't anyone,' Master Juwain asked, 'ever ventured into this gap to disprove the legend?'

'Would you venture into the Skadarak to disprove that it could capture a man as a spider's web does a fly?'

Master Juwain said nothing as he looked me and rubbed the back of his bald head.

'We keep well away from that part of the mountains and the westernmost reaches of the woods,' Graybuck told us. 'And you will too unless you want to stand like a statue for the rest of your days. Now it's late, and I've an acre of weeds to pull up tomorrow. And so I'll say goodnight.'

Later that evening, after Maram returned from the barn and helping Roseen to milk the cows, as he put it, we held council at the edge of Graybuck's apple orchard, where we had made our encampment. All the way from the Brotherhood's school we had argued as to our course toward Hesperu, and it had come time to make our final decision.

'So, nothing has changed,' Kane said to us, 'We've two routes to Hesperu: through the Dragon lands or across the Red Desert.' 'Six hundred miles through Sunguru the long way?' Master

Juwain sighed out, shaking his head. 'It's bad enough that we have to venture into Hesperu.'

We all agreed to this. However fierce the heat of the Red Desert, it could not be so dangerous as exposing ourselves at every village and town in the heavily populated Sunguru along a course of six hundred miles.

'Then if we're to go into the desert,' Kane said, 'we still have two choices: across the mountains or around them.'

But to go around them, as Graybuck had said, we might very well have to fight our way past the garrison at Nayland. And worse, at the point of the Yorgos range of the White Mountains, where they gave out upon the border between Uskudar and Sunguru, we would find fortresses and yet more garrisons of the armies of both King Orunjan and King Angand.

'But couldn't we just slip around them?' Maram said. 'Better the danger that we do know than this stonemaking Yaga that Graybuck told of.'

'But it might turn out to be no danger at all,' Master Juwain said. His gray eyes fairly glowed with curiosity. 'The Brotherhoods have investigated many other reports of people being turned to stone, and they all proved false.'

'Ah, I don't know, I don't know,' Maram muttered. 'Perhaps there's another pass that Graybuck is unaware of.'

We all looked at Berkuar as he rubbed at his heavily bearded jaw then spat into the fire. He said, 'Graybuck is right: there are no passes through the mountains other than the gap.'

Maram gazed at Berkuar and asked, 'Are you sure?'

'As sure as you are of your nose on your fat face.'

'Ah,' Maram said, 'you know this country well, don't you? What is your belief about this Stonemaker?'

'I've never gone into the gap, so I can't say truly,' Berkuar told us. 'But my grandfather once saw something at the mouth of the gap that might have been a man of stone — he came within a quarter mile of it before he turned away.'

Master Juwain offered his opinion that this was likely some natural rock configuration or even a stone carving that the ancients had made. He restated his desire to explore this mystery.

'I know the way to the gap,' Berkuar told us. 'I'll take you there, if that is what you decide.'

He turned to look at me then, and so did Master Juwain and Maram. I drew my sword and watched as the silustria glowed glorre when I pointed it toward the west. I said, 'Surely Master

Juwain is right that this Yaga is only a legend. But even if he's wrong, I'd rather venture through the gap than fight our way south. I'm tired of killing.'

Atara and Liljana agreed with this, and so did Kane, and even the children. Finally, Maram bowed his head to the consensus of our company and groaned out, 'Well, we survived the damn Stonefaces and so I suppose we can slip past this Stonemaker, whatever it really is. But I have a bad feeling about this.'

In the morning we said our farewells to Graybuck and his family and set out again toward the mountains. For the first few miles we bushwacked through a wood thick with buckthorn, sumac and many flowers. Then we came to a road that led north and slightly west. For the rest of the day, as the ground rose before us, we slowly rode up this deserted road through an archway of great elms, oaks and sycamores. We passed an old woodcutter and a couple of hunters, but saw no sign of the Dragon's men or any other people. We made camp that night on the bank of a stream that cut the road. For dinner that night we ate part of a boar that Berkuar had killed. Maram downed nearly an entire ham by himself. It was astonishing how much my friend could eat when one of his hungers came upon him.

The morning found us working our way up along the stream. The ground rose ever higher and grew rockier, as well. The tall trees mostly blocked our view of the mountains, but we could almost smell the snow and ice of these great peaks in the cooling and freshening of the wind that blew down from them. At last we came to a granite mantle of ground where only a few shrubs and a single black locust grew out of the cracks in the rock. We stood beside the rushing stream looking at the wall of mountains before us; they were so close it seemed that we should be able to reach out and touch them.

'There's the gap,' Berkuar said, pointing at a place where the mountains' contour seemed broken in two. 'The stream leads up into it.'

'What's its name, then?' Maram asked him.

'It has none that I know,' Berkuar said.

'Then I shall name it the Kul Kharand,' Maram said. 'Unless anyone objects?'

I smiled at this because kharand was the ancient Ardik word meaning the fulfillment of one's dreams. I loved Maram for fighting so hard to remain hopeful.

It took us two more hours to climb up to the Kul Kharand. We walked our horses along the stony north bank of the stream. Then iron-shod hooves rang out against hard granite. If anyone guarded this pass, I thought, they would hear us coming a mile away.

At last we came out into a great bowl of stone-strewn ground where the trees grew thin and far between. Berkuar was the first of us to espy the statue set there, sculpted with his arm lifted and his hand cupped back toward the gap as if beckoning travellers toward it.

'That must have been the man that your grandfather saw,' Maram said to Berkuar.

He did not add what his rigid face said so plainly: that Berkuar's grandfather had possessed the good sense to refuse the statue's invitation.

We advanced toward the statue under the cover of Kane and Berkuar, who stalked up the rocky slope gripping strung bows nocked with arrows. It was a statue in smooth stone of a young man of medium height, rendered naked, with exquisitely fine muscles carved about a slender frame. A smile almost as lovely as Alphanderry's graced the features of the statue's face which was wonderfully expressive and lifelike.

'Remarkable,' Master Juwain said, examining the statue. He held out his hand toward it. 'Truly remarkable work.'

The stone was unusual, as dark as obsidian and as smooth as marble, with strange reddish striations running along its grain.

'Look,' he said, 'not a chisel mark upon it!'

'Is that supposed to encourage me?' Maram asked him.

'Only the ancients could have made such a sculpture,' Master Juwain declared.

'I don't know,' Berkuar said, spitting a gout of red barbark juice toward the base of the statue. 'It could be possible.'

'Yes, it could be,' Maram said. 'But there's another possibility, isn't there?'

'Your stonemaking Yaga?' Master Juwain asked him.

'Yes, my Yaga, if you want to call it that. Do you remember Ymiru's purple gelstei? What if this Yaga keeps a purple gelstei and uses it to turn men into stone?'

So saying, he smacked his hand against the statue's face, and then immediately cringed back from it as if fearing that it might come to life.

'I've never heard of the purple gelstei,' Master Juwain said, 'being used this way.'

He looked toward Kane, who said, 'So, I'm not sure that it could be used this way.'

He paused to draw in a deep breath, and the look of relief on Maram's face instantly gave way to dread as Kane added: 'But neither am I sure that it could not.'

'No one seems sure of anything,' Maram muttered. 'Well, I am sure of one thing: I should never have left Mesh. I should have married Behira, I know I should have. Then I might have, ah, feasted on roasted boar and drunk the sweetest of brandy in contentment to the end of my days, few though they might have been. If ever I'm to return to my beloved's arms, I think we'd better find another way through these mountains.'

Kane, at last, had heard enough of Maram's worries and complaints. He pointed past the statue into the gap and growled out, 'This is our way! You'll find your beloved, whoever she is, wherever she is, through here!'

At this, Atara stood by her horse orienting her face toward the gap. A coldness seemed to strike into her heart and spread out into her limbs.

I walked over and placed my hand on her cheek, gently turning her toward me. I asked her, 'What do you see in this gap?'

And she told me, 'I see nothing — nothing at all, now.'

'But you're afraid to go into it?'

'I'm afraid to go into it,' she admitted. 'But then I'm afraid to go into the south, east or north, too. There is darkness in all directions.'

It was a scryer's answer, a useless answer, and I ground my teeth in frustration. Then I drew my sword. When I raised it past the statue toward the gap it glowed a bright glorre.

'We'll go on then,' I announced. I turned to Berkuar and said, 'You've guided this far, at great cost, and we owe you great thanks. But the ground ahead of you will be as unfamiliar to you as it will be to us. We should say farewell.'

'What? And leave you to the Yaga?'

No argument that I could fashion was enough to persuade Berkuar to part company with us. He hadn't deserted us in the Skadarak, he said, and he certainly wasn't about to turn tail now.

'If you'll have me,' he said, 'I'll come with you at least as far as the desert.'

I smiled as I clasped hands with him, and watched Kane and my friends do the same. Then, with Berkuar walking to my right and Kane guarding our rear, I led the way into the gap.

We followed the stream up into the mountains. This sparkling water fell over smooth stones on a winding course between the two great mounds of rock to either side of us. The gap seemed about two miles at its widest, narrowing in places to no more than half a mile. Trees grew sparsely here; a few of them were silver maples, which I hadn't seen in this part of Acadu. The air was good and clear, and full of the songs of warblers, swifts and other birds. In the bushes along the stream, the honeysuckle hung heavy in bloom and sent out a thick and pleasing sweetness. If ever a Stonemaker had dwelled here, I thought, he had chosen a splendid place to do his work.

As we made our way higher, we saw more of the mysterious statues. They seemed planted at random in the ground along either side of the stream. Most were solitary figures, standing by a tree or kneeling near the stream, but a tableau of four of them, perched on a rocky prominence, were posed tightly together, back to back as if guarding the four points of direction. Most had been carved into the shapes of men: slender youths and bent old grandfathers leaning on stone staffs; dignified graybeards and handsome gallants and thick-thewed brutes who had the look of warriors. We saw sculptures of only three women, one of them cradling a baby in her rigid arms. All the statues were naked. And all were made out the same strange stone that we had seen in the first statue but failed to find anywhere in the rock of the gap.

'Wondrous work,' Master Juwain said again. 'Truly wondrous work.'

Truly, it was. And yet, I thought that some of the statues were less wondrous than others. That day and the next, the deeper that we pushed into the mountains, the more the faces of the statues disturbed me. The expressions carved into them were realistic, yes, but too realistic. A few showed smiles like that of the statue at the mouth of the gap, but too many betrayed the rawest of passions: astonishment rage, disgust, hatred or terror, as rendered in the rictus of clamped jaws and eyes nearly popping from their heads. It was ugly work I but not ugly as Master Juwain was ugly, with a sheer magnificence that transcended into a paradoxical beauty. No, I thought, the ugliness of these statues struck terror into the soul and made one feel sick to be alive.

Maram obviously felt as I did, and worse, for he kept muttering to himself as he walked along, muttering and belching and chewing at a barbark nut that he rolled in his mouth. Finally, on the third day of our mountain passage, as we followed another stream through the gap's western part, he seemed to have had enough. He gazed at one of the statues, then spat out the nut and a stream of red juice along with it. And he announced, 'I think the maker of these sculptures was mad. And I'll fell mad, too, if I have I look at them Much longer.'

To soothe himself, he started humming a cheerful tune; when that failed to lift his mood, he broke out into the new rounds of what had become his favorite song:

Through higher man burn mortal fears

Of being bound in lower spheres;

In flesh and blood and woman's breath

He apprehends the seal of death.

And so he dwells in castle's height

Where all is purity and light,

But in his dry, transcending zeal

Forgets to live and dream and feel.

In woman's cry of ecstasy

I find my immortality;

With every kiss, caress and thrust

I sing eternal praise to lust

I am a second chakra man;

I take my pleasure while I can

From maiden, matron, harridan,

I am a second chakra man.

'Quiet,' Kane finally barked out to him. 'Quiet now, I say! You sing loud enough to wake the dead!'

'Well, what if I do?' Maram snapped at him. 'Do you think it matters? Do you think that if there's any Yaga skulking about, he hasn't heard us rattling up this gorge long since?'

We walked on a few more paces, and the horses' hooves struck out a great noise of metal against bare stone. Kane's sharp eyes scrutinized every bush, tree and rock about us. So it was with Master Juwain, Liljana and Berkuar. This great hunter gripped his bow with a white-knuckled force. I held my drawn sword as I cast about with my seventh sesense for sign of the stonemaker or any other living thing. And Maram let loose a great gout of song yet again:

The higher man seeks higher things. .

As we were rounding a bend in the stream, Maram espied a particularly striking statue. He broke off singing to walk up to where it stood perched on a shelf of rock. It was a sculpture of a woman, tall and large, with legs like tree trunks, huge hindquarters and hips, and great, pendulous breasts. Its face was hideous. The eyes were fierce, the pock-eaten nose twisted, the mouth cast into a rage of passion. Long strings of stone hung down from the misshapen head. Its maker had posed it with its stony arms held out as if to welcome a demonic lover. 'Oh, my Lord!' Maram said, gazing at this sculpture.

Berkuar came up near him gripping his bow, and he said, 'She's so ugly, she must have turned herself to stone.'

'Ah, I don't know,' Maram said. He stepped right up to the statue and laid his hand upon its rounded belly. He slid it freely over the smooth stone. 'Look at these hips! What magnificent thighs! Have you ever seen such breasts? If she were real, can you imagine what mighty children she would bear a man?'

As Daj and Estrella hung back from this terrifying thing, Liljana stared up at it and said, 'Ages ago they made such sculptures of the Great Mother. Though I've never seen one with a face so forbidding.'

'The eyes are the worst of it,' Berkuar said with Shudder. 'Truly, they're cold enough to turn a man to stone.'

'Ah, I don't know,' Maram said again. 'There's something about her eyes. Cold, yes, I suppose, but can't you see how they conceal a great fire? What kind of maker could have sculpted such strange, deep eyes?'

His brow suddenly furrowed with perplexity. He moved close up to the statue as he peered into its eyes and breathed into its dreadful face.

'Strange, very strange,' Maram muttered. Then he announced: 'It looks like there's a thin layer of stone enamelled over some sort of gem, like amethyst, I don't know, but if I can just chip it away with my knife then — '

As he was reaching for the dagger on his belt, his voice suddenly choked off, and I felt the breath freeze in my lungs. I felt my own eyes rigid as stone, for I could not credit what they beheld: the statue's arms seemed to soften and change color to a dusky gold as they came alive and tightened around Maram, pushing him against its breasts. Maram stood gasping and struggling to move, his arms pinioned helplessly against his sides. The statue — or whatever it really was — seemed possessed of an insane strength. It lifted Maram off the ground as easily as I might a child Its stonelike lips pulled back from long white teeth and red gums in a terrible smile. Its eyes began to clear. The enamel carapace dissolved into a brilliant violet that I finally understood to be of pure gelstei.

'The Stonemaker!' Berkuar shouted out. 'It is the Yaga!'

He lifted up his bow and sighted his arrow on this demonic thing. Kane, standing twenty yards farther back, called to him: 'Hold your arrow! You'll hit Maram!'

But Berkuar ignored him. In a sudden snap of releasing tension, this great archer loosed his arrow. It flew straight and struck the Stonemaker's neck. But the point broke against the stony skin there, and the arrow glanced off, skittering into rocks beyond.

'Back!' I heard Atara cry out. 'Liljana, Master Juwain — help me get the children back behind the trees!'

The Stonemaker let loose a deep, belly-shaking laugh, almost dulcet and pleasing in tone, but terrible in its promise of torment. She turned her violet eyes toward Berkuar.

'Back!' Kane called to me as he sprang away from it. 'Val — get yourself behind a tree!'

I stood frozen on a slab of naked rock gripping my sword in both hands. If the Stonemaker could move as it did, I reasoned, then her facade of stone must be thin enough that I could cut through it to the living flesh beneath. But I was too far from Maram to strike at the thing that embraced him.

'Back, I say! Back, Val!'

The Stonemaker fixed her gaze upon Berkuar, who whipped another arrow from its quiver. He never had time to nock it. The Stomemaker's eyes came alive with a hideous, incandescent light. Berkuar's face lit up with a violet glow as he froze motionless with his arrow trapped inside his hand. I watched in horror as the flesh of his hand, face and neck turned to stone. Even the thick hair of his face and head grew grayish black and hardened.

'Back, Val, back!' the Stonemaker said to me a sweet, mocking voice. 'Go hide behind a tree — if you have time!'

She began to turn her ponderous head toward me.

I believe I never moved so quickly in all my life as I did then. I fairly flew across the rocks and took shelter behind a great oak tree. I stood with my side pressed against hard bark. If the Yaga sought me out behind the curve of the tree, I would stab her through the throat before I died.

'Ha, ha — you're quick, little man, and you may have your little life, if that's want you want,' she sang out. 'I've meat enough for ten years, and anyway, it's this great dragon of a man I want.'

I heard Maram grunt in terror. There came a sound as of stone-hard boots scraping against rock. The Yaga seemed to be walking away from us. Then I heard her sing out a song in mockery of Maram's beloved doggerel that she must have overheard:

Alone I've dwelled nine hundred years

In mountains, deserts, stinking meres,

Regaling travelers where I can

While waiting for my dragon man.

No scholar, magus, king on high

If they be cool or soft or dry;

My man is molten earth's desire,

Whose loins are full, whose blood is fire.

He comes for me, most mighty snake,

A mighty, raging thirst to slake,

Make live inside my honeyed womb

The Marudin's immortal bloom.

I am a maid of angel's seed.

An unfilled well of burning need;

My time has come to mate and breed -

I am a maid of angel's seed.

Her voice died off into the soft wind, and so did Maram's cries; I stood stricken with a terrible fear that my best friend would be finally and forever lost.

Chapter 18

When it seemed safe, we gathered near the form of the petrified Berkuar, nearly frozen ourselves with disbelief over what had just occurred.

'Well now we know,' Master Juwain said, running his hand across Berkuar's head, 'that it is possible to turn a man into stone.'

I turned my stare from Berkuar to Master Juwain. It was the only time in my life that I wanted to strike him.

'If it's possible to do this,' Liljana said, rapping her knuckles against Berkuar's hardened hand, 'is it possible to change him back? As the Yaga seemed to change herself back?'

None of us knew. But it was clear that if there was to be any help for Berkuar, we must somehow persuade the Yaga to do this work.

'In any case,' I said, coming to a decision, 'we cannot abandon Maram. Our only course is to go after him.'

I looked up through the gap at the sun where it descended like a knot of fire toward the west 'We have less than two hours of day left to us.'

'But what about the children?' Atara asked. 'Wouldn't it be better if I waited with them here? At least until you determine where that thing is taking Maram?'

I looked Daj and Estrella, who fairly clung to Atara's side. I did not want to remind Atara that she was in no state to protect them.

'All right,' I finally said. 'But let Master Juwain and Liljana remain here, too. Kane and I will move more quickly by ourselves.'

It was a hard decision, and note of us were happy with it. But it seemed the wisest course for Kane and me to track the Yaga to her lair, and then decide what must be done.

'I doubt if she'll return,' I said to Liljana. 'But if she somehow flanks us and comes back here, you must try to use your gelstei against her mind.'

Liljana nodded her head in assent of this dangerous plan.

Then Kane and I, bow and sword in hand, set out at a trot higher up into the gap. It was not difficult to track this monstrous woman. She crushed down low-growing vegetation and left large, deep prints in the ground between the trees where it wasn't so stony. In our race up along the ground above the stream, we tried always to stay near one great tree or another so that we might duck behind it at the first hint of a flash of violet, for we could think of no other way of protecting ourselves against the Yaga's terrible eyes.

About a mile from where we had left Berkuar standing like the stone sculpture that he had become, the tracks veered off to the right, higher up toward the northern wall of the gap. We followed them, snaking around trees and climbing up old, scarred rocks past great boulders. We came upon a shelf of ground cleared of trees. And there, in the middle of this windswept patch of rock, stood a house like none I had ever seen. It was rounded like a dome heaped up from the ground. Its curving walls and roof seemed made of many thousands of white bones. An evil-looking substance, all hard and red like petrified blood, cemented them in place. A chimney of bones poked out from the roof, but from our vantage, I could see nothing in the walls that looked like a window. The door — a great, rounded work of stone — looked to be almost impossible to move. I felt waves of Maram's fear emanating outward from the house even at a distance of fifty yards.

'So,' Kane said, 'even if we get up close to it, what then? It looks like we'd need siege engines to break down those walls, eh?'

I nodded my head, grinding my teeth together. Then I said, 'If we wait until dark, it might be too late.'

Neither of us knew what this monstrous woman wanted of Maram. Her song suggested that she might have found in Maram a long-desired mate, but this did not seem possible.

'What is she?' I whispered to Kane. 'I've never heard talk or tale of her like.'

But Kane only stared at me in silence as he shook his head.

An image of another monster flashed in my mind. 'Do you remember Meliadus? This Yaga sang of being of angel's seed, and she has something of the look of him, does she not? Do you think it's possible that Morjin might have sired a daughter as well as a son?'

'It is possible,' Kane growled out. 'The Beast has committed every abomination, every degradation of the human spirit.'

'You told us that the Marudin was to emerge from the Galadin and go on to rule a new order of beings,' I said to Kane. 'But the Yaga sang of the Marudin as if she intended to give him birth — with Maram the father!'

I peered out again from behind the tree in order to take a longerj look at the house. There came a scurry of movement from around its side, and I noticed a large, gray rat darting out from a crack in the rounded wall. The crack zigzagged vertically through the heap of bones; it seemed that an earthquake might once have rent the house nearly in two.

'That might be our chance,' I said to Kane, tapping my finger against his bow. 'Perhaps we can aim an arrow through it.'

'As Berkuar aimed an arrow at that beast?'

'If she's planning what I fear she's planning,' I said, 'her skin must soften sometime. And even if it does not, she must sleep sooner or later. There's a chance that I might be able to squeeze through the crack and kill her before she can open her eyes.'

'You're as mad as she,' he said to me. 'Mad to think you could force your way into her house without awakening her. So, you'll need help.'

He took out his black gelstei and stood staring at it. 'I might be able to steal the fire of her eyes.'

Even here, hundreds of miles from Argattha, I could feel Morjin's shadowy presence and sense him watching us as from the very eye of black gelstei that Kane held in his hand. I said to him, 'It is too dangerous!'

'So, that it is,' he growled out. 'And dangerous not to try.'

I scanned the bone-littered ground around the house. It would be madness, as we both knew, to expose ourselves in the light of day to the Yaga's stare anywhere in this zone.

There seemed nothing to do now except to wait for the fall of night. And so wait we did.

How was it possible that an hour spent wandering through a glade with ones beloved on a spring afternoon could pass as quickly as a heartbeat, while this hour — with the wind whooshing through the gap and the light slowly bleeding away from the stones and trees around us — seemed to go on tor an entire month? As I stood behind the tree wild Kane, wondering what was occurring inside the house, I listened to my own breathing and I counted the beats of my heart. It grew darker. From somewhere behind us, through the trees came the harsh hooing of an owl. I looked up and watched the bright constellations wheel into the sky. 'How long,' I said to Kane, 'must we wait?'

'So,' he said with a cruel smile, 'a bride and her groom, on their wedding night, might not sleep until nearly dawn.'

'But we cannot know what she truly intends. What if she has taken him for meat?'

'So,' Kane murmured. 'So.'

I looked down the blade of my darkened sword. I said, 'I will not wait, not another moment. Come, let's at least steal up close to the house and see what we can see.'

Kane nodded his head at this. And so we came out from behind our tree. Smoke poured out of the house's bone-made chimney in a plume limned dark as a blacksnake against the still glowing western sky. A thin, yellow light leaked from the crack in the wall. We began stalking across the stony ground straight toward it.

Kane, from ages of discipline and need, moved with the grace and quiet of a big cat. I pushed forward nearly as silently; my father had taught me to hunt sharp-eared deer in the forests of Mesh, and his lessons fill lived in my muscles and bones.

We came up closer to the house. The crack, I saw to my dismay, was too small for me to force my way through it, even if I removed my armor, clothing and several layers of skin. Even a skinny child would have a hard time of such a passage.

'Oh, my — oh, my Lord!' I heard Maram groaning from within the house. 'Oh, my, oh, oh, oh!'

We moved toward the sound of his heavy, pained voice, which flowed like burning air from the crack. Over stones and hardened earth, taking exquisite care, we drew up next to the house. I gripped my sword in one hand while I rested the other against the bones of the house to steady myself. Then I drew in a deep breath and pressed my eye to the crack.

'Oh!' Maram moaned out again. 'Oh, this is too much, too, too much — oh, my Lord!'

Through the thick wall the house seemed all to be one large, circular room, like the felt dwellings of the Sarni. On the far side, a hearth of stones held a bed of glowing coals, and a great steel cauldron — shiny and new-looking — hung bubbling over it. I had a clear line of sight toward the stone door, barred with a great beam of what appeared to be petrified wood. Two statues stood framing the doorway. Parts of them were broken off: arms and a leg, and a missing head. The crack allowed only a partial view of Maram, who lay on a large stone bed at the other half of the house. He had been stripped naked. From his great shoulders and hairy chest had been torn round, red wounds that oozed blood. Ropes, possibly made of twisted hair, bound his arms back behind his head. I could not see his legs. Neither could I see the Yaga. But I smelled her: a foul, thick stench of bloody breath and sweating skin that might never have been washed. It poured from the crack and sickened me.

'Oh — oh. Lord!' Maram moaned. 'This is the end — surely the end!'

Kane's hand fell upon my shoulder. I stepped aside so that he might have a look through the crack as well.

'Oh, oh, oh, oh!'

Then I heard the Yaga, from somewhere within the house, call out to Maram, 'You're strong, my beautiful man. The strongest yet. We'll see if you're the one, we'll surely see.'

Then she broke into song again, chanting out her love poem to Maram:

Alone I've dwelled nine hundred years

In mountains, deserts, stinking meres,

Regaling travelers where I can

While waiting for my dragon man.

No scholar, magus, king on high

If they be cool or soft or dry;

My man is molten earth's desire-,

Whose loins are full, whose blood is fire.

He comes for me, most mighty snake,

A mighty, raging thirst to slake,

Make live inside my honeyed womb

The Marudin's immortal bloom.

I am a maid of angel's seed,

An unfilled well of burning need;

My time has come to mate and breed -

I am a maid of angel's seed.

And so my suitors stop on by,

Enchanted by my violet eye;

I turn to stone the small, effete:

Unworthy mates but good for meat.

To feed my fiery, fecund forge

I fill my red, rapacious gorge;

The blood of men, most potent wine,

Exalts new life and makes divine.

With love I seize and shred and skive,

Put lips to flesh, eat men alive,

Then suck sweet marrow from their bones

And roast on coals their empty stones.

I am a maid of angel's seed,

An unfilled well of burning need,

On life's red flame I fondly feed -

I am a maid of angel's seed.

Kane pulled back from the house and looked at me. In the faint starlight, his face seemed grimmer than ever. He slashed the edge of his hand across his throat. Then he pointed back towards the trees as if telling me that we should make our escape before it was too late.

But it was already too late. The Yaga suddenly broke off singing, and I heard her sniffing the air. And then she called out: 'Is that you, little man? I know it is. You smell so sweet — almost as sweet as my Maram.'

I heard a shuffling of hard feet, and I quickly stepped to the side of the crack. The stench of the Yaga grew stronger, and her voice louder and clearer as it poured from the jagged crack: 'Don't be so shy, Valashu Elahad. Why don't you show yourself so that I might look upon your sweet, sweet face?'

'So that you can turn me to stone?' I called out to her. 'As you did my friend?'

'Ha, ha!' she laughed out. 'I've no desire to turn you into stone, though I'll surely oblige you if you linger.'

'Val!' I heard Maram shout from inside the house. 'Val! Val!'

'Let Maram go!' I called out. 'And change my friend back as he was!'

'I could change that hunter back, indeed, indeed I could. But he would be good only for meat then, and you don't eat your friends, do you?'

'Val!' Maram cried out yet again. 'She's telling the truth! She makes men into stone then brings them back here! When she unmakes them, they are dead!'

'Sweet Maram,' I heard the Yaga murmur. 'I haven't made you into stone yet, though you're harder than any man I've known, the hardest yet. Now be quiet while I talk with Valashu, or I'll have to give you another kiss.'

'Leave him alone!' I shouted. 'And how do you know my name?'

'My father told me that you might pass this way.'

'Morjin? Is he truly your father then?'

'Indeed he is. It was he who named me Jezi, which means the lovely one. And I am so very, very lovely, don't you think?' I said nothing to this, then called back to her: 'If Morjin is your father, he would not let you tell me to go away.'

'You're beginning to vex me, little man. Do you think my father has power over Jezi Yaga?'

'If he is able to speak to you from afar, then surely he has power.'

'Ha, ha — great power, it's true. But I no longer do as he commands. We settled that long ago. When he couldn't bear the defiance in my eyes, he tore them out with his own fingers. But then I bit off his thumb and defied him all the more.'

The stench of Jezi Yaga's loathing drove into my belly and made me want to vomit. I gasped out to her: 'Such hatred — for your own father!'

'Ha, ha,' she laughed out again, 'my father commanded that I should be his bride. But he was not my dragon man, no, no, he was not, even though he calls himself the Great Red Dragon.'

'Abomination,' Kane muttered beside me. 'Every filthy thing, every degradation.'

'Is that you, Elijin?' Jezi called out. 'You speak of abomination?' 'So, I do,' Kane said to her. 'Morjin used a varistei, did he not, to bring you forth?'

'The greenstone,' Jezi Yaga said. 'Ha, ha — he did use it this way. And he wanted to use it to breed a new race out of my sweet, sweet womb.'

'So, the Marudin.'

'The Marudin, the Marudin,' she sang out. 'The Great One who will defy even the Dark One. But my father is not to be his father. When I told him that, he took my eyes and gave me these pretty purple stones in their place. He said that since my heart was stone, I should turn to stone any man who tried to love me. My skin can be hard as stone when I make it so, and therefore no one can kill me with sword or arrow. But my heart is never stone — if it were, I would die. As I nearly did die. He cursed me, my sweet father did, then cast me out. And so it's been ever since. I've looked all across the world for my dragon man. I've looked upon so many men these many, many years. One day, I shall find him.'

A moan from Maram returned me from the horrible past to the even more horrifying present. He called out, 'Leave me — leave me alone!'

'Yes, Valashu,' the maddened being inside the house said to me. 'Leave us alone. Go off to kill my father, and I will thank you for it. But leave me alone so that I might test the strength of the snake.'

'We won't leave without Maram!' I shouted.

'Will you not?' she shouted back. 'You vex, little man! You vex me.'

Her voice faded, and I heard her feet shuffling against rough floor stones. And Maram cried out, 'No, please don't bite me again — no!'

'You vex me!' Jezi Yaga called out. 'You vex me!'

Just then Maram let loose a terrible scream. It froze me motionless, as if I were a piece of ice standing with my fist clenched around my sword in the dark of the night. It took all my will to keep myself from whipping about and looking through the crack into the house.

'Val!' Maram shouted to me. 'Go away, or she'll eat me alive! Go, and save yourself!'

I could think of nothing else to do. It would be folly, as both Kane and I knew, for Kane to try to put an arrow through the crack. He brought his lips up close to my ear and whispered, 'Let's go back to the others while we still can.'

And so we did. We retreated as we had come, past trees and rocks, down the sloping ground toward the stream. When we drew near the place where Jezi had turned Berkuar to stone, I called out into the darkness so as not to give alarm: 'Atara! Master Juwain! Liljana! We return!'

It took our friends, drawn up with the horses near the stream, only moments to determine that we did not return in triumph. I quickly described Jezi Yaga's house and Maram's imprisonment. I gave an account of our exchange with Jezi. When I finished, Atara cried out 'Oh, but this is terrible, terrible! I should have seen it! And I should see a way out, now, but I can't!'

I stepped up beside her, and put my arm across her shoulders I said to her, 'Don't give up hope just yet I have a plan.'

I bade Liljana, Master Juwain and the children to gather around me. Then, to the sound of the stream pouring over dark rocks and crickets chirping in the bushes, I told them what we must do.

'Daj,' I said, looking through the star-pierced darkness at this brave boy. 'Will you come with me?'

Daj stood up straight as he nodded his head. He told me, 'I'd do anything to help Maram.'

Kane drew out his black crystal and said, 'Perhaps I should come with you, too.'

'No,' I said, 'it will be better for you to protect the others, if you can. And to take them to Hesperu, if I do not return,'

After that we made ready the horses and prepared to leave. I took off the gold medallion that I had worn since King Kiritan had called the great Quest, and I draped it around Berkuar's neck. I said a quick prayer for his spirit. Here he stood, dead upon the earth instead of in it and here he might stand for a thousand more years.

While Kane set off with others further into the gap, I led Daj back up the slope toward Jezi Yaga's house. We came up behind the same oak tree that had given Kane and me shelter. Daj fairly clung to its bark as he looked out from behind the tree. In the strong starlight the house gleamed like the heap of bones that it was.

'You must wait here until she's gone,' I said to him, 'then squeeze through the crack and cut Maram free with your sword. Don't try the door — you won't be able to move it, and the Yaga may look back and see you.'

'Don't worry,' he whispered to me as he shuddered. 'I don't want to wind up like Berkuar.'

He paused, breathing deeply to quiet the pounding of his heart, as Liljana had taught him. Then he said, 'I wonder if it hurts to be turned into stone?'

'Don't think about that,' I said to him. 'Do you have your sword?'

He smiled as he showed me the small sword that I had given him.

'All right,' I said. 'After you're out, keep to the high ground, and keep yourselves unseen. We'll meet you in the desert.'

I embraced him as I would any other warrior who was dear to me. Then I walked out across the gleaming rocks and bones of the open ground toward the house. I positioned myself halfway between the great door and the few trees at my back. I cupped my hands around my mouth as I drew in a deep breath. Then I shouted out: 'Jezi Yaga! Daughter of angels and mother of the Marudin! Let Maram go! We have in our keeping a varistei that you may use to help make your son! We will give it to you if you let Maram go!'

From the house came the sound of Maram moaning and then the much louder voice of Jezi Yaga shouting through the walls: 'Do you tell the truth, little man? Do you tell the truth?'

I stood on the hard ground listening for the sound of the stone bar being thrown back from inside the door. I told myself that I would exchange Master Juwain's green geistei for Maram. I would give up my sword and all my possessions — even my life.

'I think you do tell the truth, sweet man,' Jezi called out to me. Her piercing, musical voice rattled the very bones of her house. 'My father told me that you hate to lie.'

'Let Maram go!' I shouted to her, 'and I shall let you have the green varistei!'

'Do you take me for a fool, Valashu Elahad? I will never let my dragon man go!'

'Then you will never have the geistei.'

'Will I not? Will I not?' At last I heard the harsh grating sound of stone grinding against stone.

I dared not wait a moment longer. With one quick glance toward Daj's oak tree, I turned and fled across the dark, uneven ground into the shelter of the trees. Behind me I heard the great stone door of Jezi's house grind open and then slam shut.

'Where are you, little man?' she called out to me.

She could not see me, but surely she could hear me, as I could her. Her great weight of driving legs and hard feet rattled broken rocks. It was perilous ground in the dark of night, for both of us. As I leapt down the slope from rock to rock, past boulders and around trees, over guileys and across rotting logs, I prayed that I wouldn't stumble and fall.

For a while I ran downhill and then up again over a dark hump of ground. I listened for the noise of Jezi Yaga pounding after me. My breath burst from my lungs, and the owls hooed in the trees, and beneath the tempest of these sounds, I listened and ran and listened ever harder. I no longer heard her. I had staked everything on my being able to outdistance her, so I ran on and on, into the night. I thought of Daj, the rat-boy, as they had called him in Argattha.

Sly as any rat, by now he would have cut Maram free with his

sword. Maram, despite his wounds, would be strong enough to

force open the great door, or so I prayed. I prayed that he and Daj

would then make their escape along the high ground of the gap,

out into the desert.

I smelled this vast expanse of burning sands and wasted land long before I laid eyes upon it. The wind from the west blew warm and hard through the gap, carrying the scent of desert plants into my nostrils and I ran for many miles over cracked and broken ground toward it. The air grew even drier. Few trees grew in the hard, stony soil that bruised my feet even through my boots.

But I ran on even so. The arrow wound in my back became a knot of burning pain. A worse fire tormented my blood. I could not hear the footfalls of Jezi Yaga; it seemed that I had left her far behind. But I knew she was still pursuing me, for I felt her presence as a dreadful sensation like a sucking at my guts.

I sensed her drawing closer to me. How, I wondered, could this be? I didn't know where her impossible speed came from. I couldn't guess how she had remained alive all these years, or how she could see. I waited to feel the skin along the back of my neck hardening into stone. Like Daj, I couldn't keep myself from wondering how badly it would hurt.

And then I turned panting and driving hard around a great mound of rock and almost ran straight into Kane and my other companions. Kane stood behind his horse aiming an arrow in my direction; I saw through the gloom that he had affixed his black gelstei to his forehead, as of a third eye.

'Quick. . away from here!' I called. 'She … must. have. guessed where. . And taken a shortcut.'

I caught my breath and added, 'Hurry — the sun will be up soon!'

Already, in the east the sky through the gap behind us glowed with red light that devoured the stars.

And so hurry we did. I had thought my friends would already be beyond the pass, but Master Juwain explained that Atara had turned her ankle on the rocky ground and so had been forced to ride. In the darkness, they had not been able to move quickly.

For a mile we worked our way up a swell of fissured rock. And then, at the top, we had our first view of the great Red Desert. The wall of mountain to the north still blocked a line of sight in that direction, but to the west and south, for as far as the eye could see, a seemingly endless expanse of flat, scrub-covered ground opened out toward the horizon. Only a last short slope, no more than a quarter mile in length, led down into it.

It vexed me that the ground of this slope was so stony and broken that we still could not ride — at least no more quickly than Atara rode. Jezi Yaga, I thought, might be quick over short distances but could never outpace a horse. I wondered at the range of the purple gelstei that were her eyes. How far out in the desert must we gallop, I thought, before we would be safe?

We were never to find this out. For just as we had descended a short way down the slope, I heard a great pounding of footsteps and then a jolly laughter from behind us. I whipped my head from left to right, wildly looking about for any cover. A single boulder, not even large enough to shelter Estrella, stood out from the ground.

'Valashu Elahad!' Jezi Yaga's rolling voice called out. 'Sweet man! I'm coming! I'm coming!'

I moved quickly to help Atara down from her horse, then positioned her behind this snorting beast. The rest of us likewise took shelter behind our horses. Then we waited.

'Sweet man! Sweet man! Did you think you could escape my lovely, lovely eyes?'

A moment later, Jezi Yaga appeared at the top of the slope above us. She stood smiling with her hands planted on her huge, round hips. Her great breasts hung nearly to her waist and shook as she let loose great peals of laughter. She lifted back her blocky head in order to shake her hair out of her glowing, violet eyes.

'Come out from behind your beasts, that I might see you better!' she shouted to us. 'Must I turn them to stone, too? I've no liking for horseflesh, for it's not as sweet as man.'

I crouched behind Altaru's great, trembling body, and I stroked his neck and prayed that he could not understand Jezi Yaga's cruel words. It would be a simple thing, I thought, for Jezi to charge down the slope and find us out behind our horses once she had turned them to stone.

'Come out! Come out!' she called to us. 'Come out and bring me the greenstone! I've no liking to have to chisel it from your hand!'

Master Juwain, I saw, slightly behind me, cringed in back of his horse as he made a fist around his varistei. He called out, 'Take my crystal then, but let us be!'

'I will take it! I will take it! But I will not let you be!'

Just then the sun rose through the gap behind Jezi Yaga enveloping her in a ball of red fire. It sent rays of light streaking straight at us like arrows. I felt its heat on the mail of my legs, which the legs of my horse could not quite cover.

Liljana, standing behind her horse near me, called out, 'I must try!'

I looked over to see her bring her blue gelstei up to the side of her head. A moment later, she flung the little figurine down upon the ground as she cried out: 'He is still there!'

Kane, to my right, touched the smooth, black gelstei glued to his forehead, and growled out, 'So, Valashu, if I fail, remember your sword. Remember the valarda.'

Then he looked up the slope toward Jezi Yaga. He had only a single moment to cry out: 'Damn him!' before his eyes closed and his grip upon his horse's saddle broke. I felt the life drain from his limbs as of water being-sucked into dry sand. Then he fell to the ground. Never had I seen this great warrior lie so still.

Jezi Yaga turned her head toward him. Her eyes grew brighter.

I closed my eyes as I looked for the killing sword of valarda inside me. But whether because of my promise or because I didn't hate Jezi as I did her father, I could not find it.

I looked down to see the skin along the back of Kane's hand changing color and hardening. I hated it that I could think of nothing to do.

Then there came a booming in the distance like thunder. It took me a moment to realize that it was a voice, a great human voice full of wrath. I could not make out what words echoed through the mouth of the gap, but I knew with a great leaping of my heart that they belonged to Maram.

'My man!' Jezi cried out. 'My dragon man!'

The hardening of Kane's body suddenly ceased. I risked looking over the top of my horse's saddle. A streak of brilliant red fire split the air. The fire grew even more incandescent and merciless as it fell upon Jezi Yaga's naked back. With my eyes, I followed the line of this flame from the top of the slope. There, on a shelf of rock, stood Maram. The ruby light that spilled forth from him dazzled my eyes so that I could not see clearly, but I knew that he gnpped his hands around his firestone.

'My man! My man!' Jezi called out to him. Her words came out more slowly now, for it seemed that she was having difficulty forming them. 'My sweet, sweet dragon man!' She stood as still and steady as a statue. She had turned her head halfway toward Maram. But it seemed that she could move it no farther. The skin across her neck and back had hardened into a carapace of stone. As the fire continued to fall upon her, the stone grew thicker. I sensed that instinct had driven her to protect her body from the fire.

'My man. My … beautiful man.'

Those were her last words. The flames from Maram's firestone burned straight into her, melting the stone that she made of her own flesh. A thick, glowing lava ran down her back and sides, and dripped in bright red splashes upon the ground. In order to assuage the anguish of Maram's red-hot flame, or so I sensed, Jezi hardened layer upon layer of herself, deeper and deeper, until even her muscles and bones began to petrify. At last, the power of the purple gelstei worked its way into the deepest part of her being. I felt the life leave her then, for as she had said, she must surely die if ever her heart turned to stone.

After that, I came out from behind Altaru and called up to Maram that Jezi Yaga was dead. He must have understood, for the fire pouring out of his red gelstei suddenly ceased. I walked up the slope toward the statue of Jezi Yaga as he walked down to us, with Daj close behind him. He came closer, and I ground my teeth together to see what she had done to him. He was entirely naked, even down to his bloody feet. Blood still oozed from the bites that she had taken out of his chest from his shoulders and belly, his hindquarters and legs, too, and nearly every other part of him.

'I knew you wouldn't abandon me,' he called out to me. 'You saved my life again, old friend.'

'Even as you saved mine,' I said, smiling at him as I clasped his hand.

He gripped his other hand around his firestone. I saw to my amazement that not a single crack marred its ruby interior.

'But how?' I said to him. 'How did this happen?'

While Estrella stood oyer Kane's still form, Master J uwain and Liljana helped Atara walk up to us. Then Maram looked at his red crystal and explained: 'I told Jezi that all my, ah, powers of love and life, my very potency, were bound up in this. I persuaded her to make it whole it again. And so with the touch of her eyes, she healed it.'

He reached out to touch Jezi's face, and he ran his fingers across her cheeks. As when he had first seen her, a thin layer of stone covered the purple jewels of her eyes.

'Amazing,' Master Juwain said, examining the firestone. 'I didn't know the purple gelstei had such powers.'

'In anyone else's hands, so to speak,' Maram said, 'I doubt if it does. Jezi, though, has had a thousand years to learn its secrets.'

Master Juwain considered this a moment, before his attention turned to more immediate things. He examined Maram and said, 'But what happened to your boots and clothes?'

'She burned them, too bad,' Maram told us. 'She said that I would never have need of them again, since I was to remain inside her house forever.'

He went on to tell of how Daj had forced his way through the crack in Jezi's house, and like an angel of mercy, had freed him. Daj stood basking in Maram's gratitude. It was nearly the proudest moment of his life.

'But what about your armor?' I asked Maram.

'Gone,' he told me. 'Jezi softened the steel and reformed it into a cauldron. She told me that she would put me in it, piece by piece, if I failed her.'

I could think of nothing to say to this, or to the torment that he had suffered. Then Liljana asked him, 'But if she wanted a child from you, why take bites and weaken you?'

'I think she was testing me,' Maram muttered. 'Testing my strength and the, ah, juiciness of my body, as she put it. My very blood. Then, too, old ways die hard, and I don't think she could help herself.'

Liljana looked him up and down, and said, 'At least she didn't bite off that unruly snake of yours.'

Maram's face flushed bright red beneath the rising sun as he covered himself with his hand and groaned, 'Oh, my snake — my, poor, poor, mighty snake!'

'That should be the least of your concerns,' Master Juwain said to him. 'We've got to see to those wounds of yours. They are many, and deep, and no animal's bite is as poisonous as a human being's.'

'All right,' Maram said, 'but first I want payment for what this monster did to me. Daj, hand me my dagger!'

Daj, who bore Maram's sword and dagger, moved to comply with his command. But then Atara, divining Maram's intentions, rested her hand on Jezi Yaga's face and called out to him: 'No, let her keep her eyes — please.'

Maram looked at me, and I nodded to him. Then he bowed his head to Atara as he muttered, 'All right then, I won't chisel them out. But it seems a pity to let a dead hunk of stone keep two of the great gelstei.'

After that, we walked down to the horses so that Master Juwain could tend to Maram and the stricken Kane as well. The sun rose higher above the gap, and its heat poured down upon us. I wondered how it had been for Jezi Yaga, dying beneath the hellish heat of Maram's firestone. I wondered if after all these years of doing monstrous deeds she could still be considered human. She stood all huge and stony above us, twisted about with a look of betrayal ad anguislh chiselled into her grotesque face. I decided that once, somewhere within her, there had lived a woman, and a beautiful one at that. And so I said a prayer for her spirit. Then I turned my eyes upon the great desert opening out to the west. Even at midmorning, the air had grown sweltering, and soon my friends and I might well wish that we, too, were made of stone.