Black Jade

Chapter 1

Each man and woman is a star. As long as we are alive, my grandfather used to say, we must endure burning if we are to give light. As for the dead, only the dead know if their eternal flame is a glory or an anguish. In the heavens they shine through the dark nights of the ages in uncountable numbers. There, since I was a child, my grandfather has dwelled with Aras and Solaru and the other brightest lights. There, my mother and father, my grandmother and brothers, have joined him, sent on by the deadly lies and misdeeds of one they loved. Some day, it is said, a man will come forth and impel the stars to end their vast silence, and then these splendid orbs will sing their long, deep, fiery songs to those who listen. Will this Shining One, with the Lightstone in his hands, cool the tormented hearts of mien, the living and the dead? I must believe that he will. For it is also said that the Lightstone gathers all things to itself. Within its luminous center dwells the earth and men and women and all the stars — and the blackness between them that allows them to be seen.

The Lightstone, however, was as far from this Shining One's grasp as the sun was from mine. With the Red Dragon's ravaging of my father's castle to steal the golden cup, men and women in every land were looking toward the Dragon's stronghold of Argattha with fevered and fearful eyes. In Surrapam, the victorious armies of King Arsu stood ready to conquer Eanna and the other Free Kingdoms of the far west, and crucify their peoples in the Dragon's name. In Alonia, mightiest of realms, quarrelsome dukes and lords slew each other to gain King Kiritan's vacant throne. Across the Morning Mountains of my home, the Valari kings fought as always for ancient grudge and glory. A great rebellion in Galda had ended with ten thousand men being mounted on crosses of wood. The Wendrush was a sea of grass running red with the blood of the Sarni tribes. Too many of these fierce warriors had surrendered their independence to declare for the Red Dragon, whose name was Morjin. As scryers had foreseen in terrible visions, it seemed that the whole world was about to burn up in a holocaust that would blacken the very stars.

And yet, as the scryers had also told somewhere on Ea lived the Shining One: the last Maitreya who might bring a light so pure and sweet that it would put out this all-consuming fire. I sought this great-souled being. My friends — heroes, all of the Quest to find the Lightstone — sought him. too. Our new quest, by day and by night, took us ever farther from the green valleys and snowcapped mountains of my homeland. To the west we journeyed, following the fiery arc of Aras and Varshara and the other bright stars of the ancient constellations where they disappeared beyond the dark edge of the heavens. And others followed us. Early in Ashte in the year 2814 of the Age of the Dragon, a squadron of Morjin's famed Dragon Guard and their Sarni allies pursued us across the Wendrush's rolling steppe. Our enemies seemed not to care that we were under the escort of forty-four Sarni warriors of the Danladi tribe; for three days, as we approached the great, icy, stone wall of the White Mountains, they had ridden after us like shadows through the Danladi's country — always keeping at a distance that neither threat-

ened nor invited attack. And for three nights, they had built their campfires and cooked their dinners scarcely a mile from the sites that we chose to lay our sleeping furs. When the third night fell upon the world and the wind shifted and blew at us from the north, we could smell the smoky char of roasting meat and other more disturbing scents.

On a swell of dark grass at the edge of our camp, I stood with my friend Kane gazing out to the northwest at the orange glow of our enemy's campfires. Kane's cropped, white hair was a silvery sheen beneath a round, silver moon. He stared off into the starlit distances, and his lips pulled back from his white teeth in a fearsome grimace. His large, savage body trembled with a barely-contained fury. I could almost hear him howling out his hate, like a great, white wolf of the steppe lusting to rend and slay.

'So. Val, so,' he said to rne. 'We must decide what we are to do about these crucifiers, and soon.'

He turned his gaze upon me then. As always, I saw too much of myself in this vengeful man, and of him in me. His bright, black eyes were like a mirror of my own. He was nearly as tall as I; his nose was that of a great eagle, and beneath his weathered ivory skin, the bones of his face stood out boldly. Between us was a like-ness that others had remarked: of form, certainly, for he looked as much a Valari warrior as had my father and brothers. But our deeper kinship, I thought, was not of the blood but the spirit. Now that my family had all been slaughtered, I sometimes found the best part of them living on in his aspect: strange, wild, beautiful and free.

I smiled at him and then turned back toward our enemy's camp-fires. One of our Sarni escort, after earlier riding close enough to take an arrow through the arm, had put their numbers at fifty: twenty-five Zayak warriors under some unknown chief or headman and as many of the Red Knights, with their dragon blazons and their iron armor, tinctured red as with blood.

'We might yet outride them,' I said to Kane. 'Perhaps tomorrow, we should put it to the test.'

We could not, of course, so easily escape the Zayak warriors, for none but a Sarni could outride a Sarni. The Red Knights, however, encased in heavy armor and mounted on heavy horses, moved more slowly. Of our company, only Kane and I, with our friend, Maram, wore any kind of real armor: supple mail forged of Godhran steel that was lighter and stronger than anything Morjin's blacksmiths could hammer together. Our horses, I thought, were better, too: Fire, Patience and Hell Witch, and especially my great, black warhorse, Altaru, who stood off a hundred paces with our other mounts taking his fill of the steppe's new, sweet grass.

'Well then,' Kane said to me, 'we must test it before we reach the mountains.'

He pointed off toward the great, snow-capped peaks that glinted beneath the western stars. As he held out his thick finger, his mail likewise glinted from beneath his gray, wool traveling cloak, similar in cut and weave to my own.

'So, then — fight or flee,' he growled out. 'And I hate to flee.' As we pondered our course, mostly in silence, a great bear of a man stood up from the nearby campfire and ambled over to hear what we were discussing. He tried to skirt the inevitable piles of horse or sagosk dung, and other imagined dangers of the dark grass, all the while sipping from a mug of sloshing brandy. I drank in the form of my best friend, Maram Marshayk. Once a prince of Delu and an honorary Valari knight of great renown, fate had reduced him to accompanying me into Ea's wild lands

as outcasts.

'Ah, I heard Kane say something about fleeing,' he said to us. A belch rumbled up from his great belly, and he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 'My father used to say that whoever runs away lives to fight again another day.'

His soft eyes found mine through the thin light as his thick, sensuous lips broke into a smile. Upon taking in the whole of his form — the dense, curly beard which covered his heavy face, no less his massive chest, arms and legs — I decided that it would be a bad idea to try to outride the Red Knights. No weight of their armor, be it made of steel plate, could match the mass of muscle and fat that padded the frame of Maram Marshayk.

'If we flee,' Kane said to him, poking his finger into Maram's belly, 'are you willing to be left behind when your horse dies of exhaustion?'

It was too dark to see Maram's florid face blanch, but I felt the blood drain from it, even so. He looked out toward our enemy's campfires, and said, 'Would you really leave me behind?'

'So, I would,' Kane growled out. His dark eyes drilled into Maram. 'At need, I'd sacrifice any and all of us to fulfill this quest.'

Maram took a long pull of brandy as he turned to regard Kane. 'Ah, a sacrifice is it, then? Well, I won't have that on your conscience. If a sacrifice truly needs to be made, I'll turn to cross lances with the Red Knights by myself.'

I looked back and forth between Maram and Kane as they glared at each other. I did not think that either of them was quite telling the truth. I rested my hand on Maram's shoulder as I caught Kane's gaze. And I said, 'No one is going to be left behind. And we will fulfill this quest, as we did the first.'

Just then Master Juwain, sitting with our other friends by the fire, finished writing something in one of his journals and came over to us. He was as small as Maram was large and as ugly as Kane was well-made. His head somewhat resembled a walnut, and a misshapen one at that: all lumpy and bald with a knurled nose and ears that stuck out too far. But I had never know a man whose eyes were so intelligent and clear. Like the rest of us, he wore a gray traveling cloak, though he refused to bind his limbs in steel rings of carry any weapon more deadly than the little knife he used to sharpen his quills.

'Come,' he said as he grasped Maram's wrist. 'If we're to hold council, let us all sit together. Liljana is nearly finished making dinner.'

I looked over toward the fire where a plump, matronly woman bent over a pot of bubbling stew. A girl about ten years old sat next to her making cakes on a griddle while a boy slightly older poked the fire with a long, charred stick.

'Excellent,' Maram agreed, 'we'll eat and then we'll talk.'

'You would talk more cogently,' Master Juwain told him, 'if you would take your drink after you eat. Or forbear it altogether.'

With fierce determination, Master Juwain suddenly clamped his knotted fingers around Maram's mug. His small hands were surprisingly strong, from a lifetime of disciplines and hard work, and he managed to pry free the mug from Maram's thick palm.

Maram eyed the mug as might a child a candy that has been taken from him. He said, 'I have forborne my brandy these last three days, waiting for the Red Knights to attack us, too bad. As for talk, cogent as it is clever, please don't forget that I'm now called Five-Horned Maram.'

Once, a lifetime ago it seemed, Maram had been an adept of the Great White Brotherhood under the tutelage of Master Juwain, and everyone had called him 'Brother Maram.' But he had long since abjured his vows to forsake wine, women and war. Now he wore steel armor beneath his cloak and bore a sword that was nearly as long and keen as my own. Less than a year before, in the tent of Sajagax, the Sarni's mightiest chieftain, he had become the only man in memory to down five great horns of the Sarni's potent beer — and to remain standing to tell everyone of his great feat.

Kane continued glaring at Maram, and again he poked his steely finger into his belly. He said, 'You'd do well to forbear brandy and bread, at least for a while. Are you trying to kill yourself, as well as your horse?'

In truth, ever since the Battle of Culhadosh Commons and the sack of my father's castle, Maram had been eating enough for two men and drinking more than enough for five.

'Forbear, you say?' he muttered to Kane. 'I might as well forbear life itself.'

'But you're growing as fat as a bear.'

Maram patted his belly and smiled. 'Well, what I am? Haven't you seen a bear eat when winter is coming?'

'But it's Ashte — another month, summer will be upon us!'

'No, my friend, there you're wrong,' Maram told him, with a shake of his head and another belch. 'Wherever we journey it will be winter — and deep winter at that, for we'll be deep into this damn new quest. Do you remember the last time we went tramping all across Ea? I nearly starved to death. And so is it not the soul of prudence that I should fortify myself against the deprivations that are sure to come?'

Kane had no answer against this logic. And so he snapped at Maram: 'Fortify yourself then, if you will. But at least forbear your brandy until there's a better time and place to drink it.'

So saying, he took the mug from Master Juwain and moved to empty its contents onto the grass.

'Hold!' Maram cried out. 'It would be a crime to waste such good brandy!'

'So,' Kane said, eyeing the dark liquor inside the mug. 'So.'

He smiled his savage smile, as if the great mystery of life's unfairness pleased him almost as much as it pained him. Then, with a single, quick motion, he put the mug to his lips and threw down the brandy in three huge gulps.

'Forbear yourself, damn you!' Maram called out to him.

'Damn me? You should thank me, eh?'

'Thank you why? For saving me from drunkenness?'

'No — for taking a little pleasure from this fine brandy of yours.'

Kane handed the mug back to Maram, who stood looking into its hollows.

'Ah, well, I suppose one of us should have savored it,' he said to Kane. 'It pleases me that it pleased you so deeply, my friend. Perhaps someday I can return the favor — and save you from becoming a drunk.'

Kane smiled at this as Maram began laughing at the little joke he had made, and so did Master Juwain and I. One mug of brandy had as much effect on the quenchless Kane as a like amount of water would on all the sea of grasses of the Wendrush.

I looked at Kane as I tapped my finger against Maram's cup. I said, 'Perhaps we should all forbear brandy for a while.'

'Ha!' Kane said. 'There's no need that I should.'

'The need is to encourage Maram to remain sober,' I said. I couldn't help smiling as I added, 'Besides, we all must make sacri-fices.'

Kane looked at Maram for an uncomfortably long moment, and then announced, 'All right then, if Maram will vow to forbear, so shall I.'

'And so shall I,' I said.

Maram blinked at the new moisture in his eyes; I couldn't quite tell if our little sacrifice had moved him or if the prospect of giving up his beloved brandy made him weep. And then he clapped me on the arm as he nodded at Kane and said, 'You would do that for me?'

'We would,' Kane and I said with one breath.

'Ah, well that pleases me more than I could ever tell you, even if I had a whole barrel full of brandy to loosen my tongue/ Maram paused to dip his fat finger down into the mug, moistening it with the last few drops of brandy that clung to its insides. Then he licked his finger and smiled. 'But I must say that I would wish no such deprivation upon my friends. Just because I suffer doesn't mean that the rest of the world must, too.'

I glanced at the campfires of our enemies, then I turned back to look at Maram. 'In these circumstances, we'll gladly suffer with you.'

'Very well,' Maram said. Then he nodded at Master Juwain. 'Sir, will you be a witness to our vows?'

'Even as I was once before,' Master Juwain said dryly.

'Excellent,' Maram said. 'Then unless it be needed for, ah, medicinal purposes, I vow to forbear brandy until we find the one we seek.'

'Ha!' Kane cried out. 'Rather let us say that unless Master Juwain prescribes brandy for medicinal purposes, we shall all forbear it.'

'Excellent excellent,' Maram agreed, nodding his head. He held up his mug and smiled. 'Then why don't we all return to the fire and drink one last toast to our resolve?'

'Maram!' I half-shouted at him.

'All right, all right!' he called back. The breath huffed out of him, and for a moment he seemed like a bellows emptied of air. 'I was just, ah, testing your resolve, my friend. Now, why don't we all go have a taste of Liljana's fine stew. That, at least, is still permitted, isn't it?'

We all walked back to the fire and sat down on our sleeping furs set out around it. I smiled at Daj, the dark-souled little boy that we had rescued out of Argattha along with the Lightstone. He smiled back, and I noticed that he was not quite so desperate inside nor small outside as when we had found him a starving slave in Morjin's hellhole of a city. It was a good thing, smiling, I thought. It lifted up the spirit and gave courage to others. I silently thanked Maram for making me laugh, and I resolved to sustain my gladness of life as long as I could. This was the vow I had made, high on a sacred mountain above the castle where my mother and grandmother had been crucified. Daj, sitting next to me, jabbed the glowing end of his fire-stick toward me and called out, 'At ready! Let's practice swords until it's time to eat!'

He moved to put down his stick and draw the small sword I had given him when we had set out on our new quest. His enthusiasm for this weapon both impressed and saddened me. I would rather have seen him playing chess or the flute, or even playing at swords with other boys his age. But this savage boy. I reminded myself, had never really been a boy. I remembered how in Argattha he had fought a dragon by my side and had stuck a spear into the bodies of our wounded enemies.

'It is nearly time to eat,' Liljana called out to us- Her heavy breasts moved against her thick, strong body as she stirred the succulent-smelling stew. 'Why don't you practice after dinner?'

Although her words came out of her firm mouth as a question, sweetly posed, there was no question that we must put off our swordwork until later. Beneath her bound, iron-gray hair, her pleasant face betrayed an iron will. She liked to bring the cheer and good order of a home into our encampments by directing cooking, eating and cleaning, even talking, and many other details of our lives. I might be the leader of our company on our quest across Ea's burning steppes and icy mountains, but she sought by her nature to try to lead me from within. Through countless kindnesses and her relentless devotion, she had dug up the secrets of my soul. It seemed that there was no sacrifice that she wouldn't make for me — even as she never tired, in her words and deeds, of letting me know how much she loved me. At her best, however, she called me to my best, as warrior, dreamer and man. Now that the insides of my father's castle had been burnt to ashes, she was the only mother I still had.

'There will be no swordwork tonight,' I said, to Liljana and Daj, 'unless the Red Knights attack us. We need to hold council.'

'Very well then, but I hope you're not still considering attacking them.' Liljana looked through the steam wafting up from the stew, straight at Kane. She shook her head, then called out, 'Estrella, are those cakes ready yet?'

Estrella, a dark, slender girl of quicksilver expressions and bright smiles, dapped her hands to indicate that the yellow rushk cakes — piled high on a grass mat by her griddle — were indeed ready to eat. She could not speak, for she, too, had been Morjin's slave, and he had used his black arts to steal the words from her tongue. But she had the hearing of a cat; in truth, there was something feline about her, in her wild, triangular face and in the way she moved, instinctually and gracefully, as if all the features of the world must be sensed and savored. With her black curls gathered about her neck, her lustrous skin and especially her large, luminous eyes, she possessed a primeval beauty. I had never known anyone, not even Kane, who seemed so alive.

Almost without thought, she plucked one of the freshest cakes from the top of the piles and placed it in my hand. It was still quite hot, though not enough to burn me. As I took a bite out of it, her smile was like the rising sun.

'Estrella, you shouldn't serve until we're all seated,' Liljana instructed her.

Estrella smiled at Liljana, too, though she did not move to do as she was told. Instead, seeing that I had finished my cake, she gave me another one. She delighted in bringing me such little joys as the eating of a hot, nutty rushk cake. It had always been that way between us, ever since I had found her clinging to a cold, castle wall and saved her from falling to her death. And countless times since that dark night, in her lovely eyes and her deep covenant with life, she had kept me from falling into much worse.

'The girl never minds me,' Liljana complained. 'She always does just as she pleases.'

I smiled because what she said was true. I watched as Estrella tried to urge one of the cakes into Liljana's hand. She seemed not to resent Liljana's stern looks or scolding; indeed, Liljana's oppressive care for her and her desire to teach her good manners obviously pleased her, as did almost everything about the people she loved. Her will to be happy, I thought, was even greater than Liljana's urge to remake the world as the paradise it had been in the Age of the Mother. It must have vexed Liljana that our quest depended utterly upon this wild, magical child.

'She was a slave of the Red Priests,' Kane said to Liljana. 'So who can blame her for not wanting to be your slave, too?'

As Liljana paused in stirring the stew to glare at Kane, more wounded by his cruel words than angry. Master Juwain cleared his throat and said, 'The closer we've come to Argattha, it seems, the more she has relished her freedom.'

We were, I tought, much too close to Morjin's dark city, carved out of the dark heart of the black mountain called Skartaru. Our course across the Wendrush had inevitably brought us this way. And it seemed that it had inevitably brought the knights of Morjin's Dragon Guard upon our heels. As Estrella began passing out rushk cakes to everyone, Liljana called for Atara to sit down, and she began ladling the stew into wooden bowls. From out of the darkness at the edge of our encampment where our horses were hobbled, a tall woman appeared and walked straight toward us. And that, I thought, was a miracle, because a white cloth encircled her head, covering the hollows which had once held the loveliest and most sparkling pair of sapphire-blue eyes. Atara Ars Narmada, daughter of the murdered King Kiritan and Sajagax's beloved granddaughter, moved with all the prowess of the princess and the warrior-woman that she was. In consideration of our quest, she had cast off the lionskin cloak that she usually wore in favor of plain gray woolens. Gone were the golden hoops that had once encircled her lithe arms and the lapis beads bound to her long, golden hair. Few, outside of the Wendrush, would recognize her as one of the Sarni. But in her hand she gripped the great, double-curved bow of the Sarni archers, and the Sarni knew her as the great imakla warrior of the Manslayer Society. I knew her as a scryer who had great powers of sight, in space and time, and most of all, as the only woman I could ever love.

'Vanora, Suri and Mata,' she told me, naming three of her sisters of the Manslayers, 'will take watches tonight, so we won't have to worry about the Zayak trying to steal the horses.'

For the thousandth time that day, I looked back in the direction where our enemy gathered. As Atara knew very well, I worried about much more than this.

She sat down between Liljana and Master Juwain, and picked up a bowl of stew. Before permitting herself to taste any of it, she continued her report: 'Karimah has set patrols, so there won't be any surprises. Bajorak has, too.'

In the deepening night, the steppe's grasses swayed and glowed beneath the stars. There, crickets chirped and snakes slithered, hunting rabbits or voles or other prey. There, forty yards to our left, Bajorak and some thirty Danladi warriors sat around their fires roasting sagosk joints over long spits. And forty yards to our right, Karimah and her twelve Manslayers — women drawn from half a dozen of the Sarni tribes — prepared their own dinner. It was our greatest strategic weakness, I thought, that the Manslayers disdained camaraderie with the Danladi men. And that both contingents of our Sarni escort neither really liked nor trusted us.

'I would sleep better tonight,' Maram told her, 'if the enemy weren't so close.'

'Hmmph, you sleep better than any man I've ever known, enemy or no enemy,' Atara said to him. 'But fear not, we Sarni rarely fight night battles. There won't be any attack tonight.'

'Are you speaking as a Sarni warrior or a scryer?'

In answer, Atara only smiled at him, and then returned to her dinner.

'Ah, well,' Maram continued, 'I should tell you that it's not the Zayak who really concern me, at least not until daybreak — and then I shall fear their arrows, too bad. No, it's those damn Red Knights. What if they charge straight into our encampment while we're sleeping?'

'They won't do that,' Atara reassured him.

'But what if they do?'

'They won't.' Atara looked up at the bright moon. 'They fear arrows as much as you do. And there's enough light that they would still make good targets, at least at short range.'

I touched the hilt of my sword, sheathed beside me, and I said, 'We can't count on this.'

'In three days,' Atara said, 'they've kept their distance. They haven't the numbers to prevail.'

'And that is precisely the point,' I said. 'Perhaps they are waiting for reinforcements.'

'So, just so,' Kane said as he squeezed his bowl of stew between his calloused hands. 'And so, if there must be battle, we should take it to them before it's too late.'

For three days and nights, I thought, my friends and I had been arguing the same argument. But now the mountains were drawing nearer, and a decision must be made,

'We may not have the numbers to prevail, either,' Atara said. She positioned her head facing Estrella and Daj, who sat across the fire from her. 'And what of the children?'

The children, of course, were at risk no matter what course we chose: attacking our enemy would only expose them to recapture or death all the sooner. It was that way with all children everywhere, even in lands far away and still free. With Morjin in control of the Lightstone, uncontested, it would only be a matter of time before everyone on Ea was either put on crosses or enslaved.

'I can fight!' Daj suddenly announced, drawing out his small blade.

We all knew that he could. We all knew, too, that Estrella had a heart of pure fire. Her great promise, however, was not in fighting the enemy with swords but with a finer and deeper weapon. As her dark, almond eyes fixed on me, I felt in her an unshakeable courage — and her unshakeable confidence in me to lead us the right way.

'We must either fight or flee,' I said. 'But if we do flee, flee where?'

'We could still go into the mountains,' Maram said. 'But farther south of the Kul Kavaakurk. And then we could turn north toward the Brotherhood school. We'll lose our enemy in the mountains.'

'We'll lose ourselves,' Master Juwain put in. 'Try to remember, Brother Maram, that — '

'Sar Maram,' Maram said, correcting him. He held up his hand to show the double-diamond ring that proclaimed him a Valari knight.

'Sar Maram, then,' Master Juwain said with a sigh. 'But try to remember that this school has remained a secret from the Lord of Lies only because our Grandmaster has permitted knowledge of it to very few. No map shows its location. I may be able to find it — but only from the gorge called the Kul Kavaakurk.'

For the thousandth time, I scanned the ghostly, white wall of mountains to the west of us. Could we find this secret school of the Great White Brotherhood? And if by some miracle we did reach this place of power deep within the maze of mountains of the lower Nagarshath, would we find the Grandmaster still alive? And more importantly, would he — or any of the Brotherhood's masters — be able to tell us in which land the Maitreya had been born? For it was said that this great Shining One might be able to wrest the Lightstone from Morjin, if not in the substance of the golden bowl, then at least in the wielding of it.

'There must be such a gorge,' I told Master Juwain. 'We will certainly find it, if not tomorrow, then the next day.'

'We would find it the easier,' Atara said, 'if we took Bajorak into our confidence. Surely he would know what gorges or passes give out onto the Danladi's country.'

'He might know,' Master Juwain agreed. 'But he might not know it by that name. And if we can help it, he must not know that name.'

He went on to say that Bajorak, under torture or the seduction of gold, might betray the name to Morjin. And that might key ancient knowledge of clues as to the school's whereabouts.

'If the Red Dragon discovered our greatest school so close to Argattha,' he told us, 'that would be a greater disaster than I can tell.'

The fire, burning logs of cottonwood that we had found by a stream, crackled and hissed. I stared into the writhing flames as I marvelled at the near-impossibility of pis new quest. There were too many contingencies that must fall in our favor if we were to succeed. Would Estrella, I wondered, when the time came, really be able to show us the Maitreya, a had been prophesied? And if she did. was it not the slenderest of hopes that we would be able to spirit him to safety before Morjin succeeded in murdering him?

'All right,' I said, 'we cannot go south, as Maram has suggested. Our choices, then, are either to turn and attack or to lead the way into this Kul Kavaakurk and hope that we can lose our enemy before we betray the way to the school.'

Master Juwain's lips tightened in dismay because either alternative was repugnant to him.

'Or,' Maram put in, 'we could still try to outride the Red Knights. If you're concerned about me lagging and can't bear to see me make a stand against them, I could always turn off in another direction and try to meet up with you later.'

I leaned over to grasp his arm, and I said, 'No, you'd only make yourself easy prey, and I couldn't bear that. Whatever we do, we'll all stay together.'

'Then perhaps we should make our way to Delu and stay there until next year.'

He went on to say that his father, King Santoval Marshayk, would provide us shelter — and perhaps even a ship and crew to sail the lands of Ea in search of the Maitreya.

I stared at the sky in the west over the mountains leading to Skartaru, and in my mind's eye, I saw a great hourglass full of sparkling sands like unto stars. And with every breath that I drew and every word wasted in speculation — with every minute, hour and day that passed — the sands fell and crashed and darkened like burnt-out cinders as Morjin gained mastery of the-Lightstone.

'We cannot wait until next year,' I said. 'And we are agreed that our bell hope of finding the Maitreya lies in reaching the Brotherhood school.'

'In that case,' Maram said, 'our dilemma remains: do we flee or fight?'

Atara had now finished her stew, and she sat quietly between Liljana and Master Juwain as the fire's orange light danced across her blindfolded face. Sometimes, I knew, she could 'see' the grasses and grasshoppers and other features of the world about her, and other times she was truly blind. Just as sometimes she could see the future — or at least its possibilities.

'Atara,' I asked her, 'what do you think we should do?' 'Flee,' she said. 'Let's see how well these Red Knights can ride.'

She waited as my heart drummed five times, then turned toward me as she declared, 'You would rather see how well they can fight.'

I said nothing as I gripped the hilt of my sword.

'I must tell you, Val,' she said to me, 'that it is not certain that the warriors who ride with us will fight just because you ask them to.'

I pointed out across the steppe and said, 'Fifty men, Red Knights and Zayak, pursue us. And your warriors are Manslayers, are they not?'

'Indeed they are,' she said. Now it was her turn to grip the great unstrung bow that she had set by her side. 'And indeed they will fight — if I ask them. But Bajorak and his warriors are another matter.'

'He agreed to escort us to the mountains.'

'Yes, and so he will certainly fight if we are attacked. So far, though, we are only followed.'

'In this country,' I said, 'with this enemy, it is the same thing.'

Liljana made a show of collecting our empty bowls and serving us some succulent bearberries for dessert. During dinner she had not said very much. But now, as she often did, she cut me to the quick with only a few words: 'I think you love to hate this enemy too much,' she told me.

For a moment I looked down at my sword's hilt, at the diamond pommel and the smaller diamonds set into the black jade. Then I met eyes with Liljana and said, 'How should I not hate them? They might be the very same knights who put nails through my mother's hands and feet!'

'They might be,' she admitted. 'But would you then throw yourself upon their lances and put nails through my heart?'

Because I could not bear to look at Liljana just then, I returned to my vigil, staring out across the steppe at our enemy's fires. I muttered, 'How did they find us and who leads them? What do they intend?'

Kane scowled at this and spat out, 'What does Morjin ever intend?'

'I must know,' I said. I looked around the circle at my friends. 'We must know, if we are to reach a decision.'

'Some things,' Master Juwain said, 'are unknowable.'

I turned to Liljana and asked, 'What of your crystal?' 'And other things,' Master Juwain continued, looking from me to Liljana, 'are better left unknown.'

Liljana reached into her tunic's inner pocket and brought out a small figurine cast into the form of a whale. It had the luster of lapis and the hint of the ocean's deep currents. Long ago, in another age, it had been forged of blue gelstei.

'Are you asking,' she said to me, 'that I should look into the minds of these Red Knights?'

Just then, out of the blackness beyond the fire. Flick appeared like a tiny, whirling array of stars. His colors of crimson, silver and blue, throwing out sparks, also pulsed in patterns that I took to be a warning. What was this strange being who had followed me across the length of Ea, I wondered? Was he truly a messenger of the Galadin, a little bit of starlight and angel fire? Or did he possess a will all his own, and therefore his own life and his own fate?

Master Juwain, upon glancing at Flick, turned to Liljana and commanded her, 'No, do not use your gelstei!'

Then he brought out his own gelstei: the emerald healing crystal that he had gained on our first quest. He held it up to the fire, letting the flickering light pour through its green-tinged translucency. Although it was hard to tell in the deep of night, a darkness seemed to have fallen over the crystal, as if it were steeped in shadow.

'It's too dangerous!' he said to Liljana. 'Now that the Dragon has regained the Lightstone, too damned dangerous! Especially for you.'

Maram regarded Master Juwain in shock, and so did I, for we had never heard him curse before. Liljana sat looking at her gelstei, cupped in her hands. As if she were holding a newborn, she swayed rhythmically back and forth.

'I won't believe that Morjin can use the Lightstone to taint this crystal,' she said. 'How can that which is most fair abide anything

fouler.

'Surely the foulness,' I said, 'arises from Morjin himself and our weakness in resisting him. He desecrates everything he touches.'

I turned to look at the white cloth binding Atara's face. I couldn't help remembering how Morjin, with his own fingers, had torn out her eyes.

'So, every abomination, every degradation of the spirit,' Kane said, gazing at Liljana's blue stone. 'But things aren't as simple as you think, eh? Don't be so sure you understand Morjin — or the Lightstone!'

'I understand that we must fight him — and not with swords,' Iiljana said.

She was a wise woman, but a willful one, too. And so she clasped her figurine between her fingers and brought it up to the side of her head.

'No,' Master Juwain called out again, 'do not!'

Once, in the depths of Argattha where the very rocks stank of rotting blood and terror, Liljana had touched minds with Morjin. And now, even as Estrella could not speak, Liljana would never smile again.

The moment that the gelstei touched her temple, she cried out in betrayal and pain. The crystal seemed to burn her like a heated iron, and she dropped it onto the grass. Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing the whites. 'Liljana!' I cried out. 'Liljana!'

It took me a moment to realize that not only I had called to her, but Maram, Master Juwain and Atara — even Daj and Kane. And then Atara sidled closer to Liljana and wrapped her arm around her back as she cradled Liljana's drooping head against her breasts. Estrella took Liljana's hand between hers and squeezed it tightly. Their little comforts must have worked a quick magic on Liljana, for soon her eyes regained their focus, and she gathered herself together and forced herself to sit up straight again. She drew in ten deeps breaths, and let each of them out, slowly. She wiped the sweat from her sodden hair. Finally she retrieved her blue gelstei. In her open hand it glinted, and she sat staring at it. Then she cried out: 'He is there!' 'Morjin!' I called back to her. 'Damn him! Damn him!' Daj rose up to one knee and leaned over to get a better look at Liljana's crystal. He asked, 'How, then? Where, then Where?' 'He is everywhere!' Liljana gasped. 'Watching, always watching.' She closed her fist around her stone and put it back in her pocket. Atara still embraced her, and now they both swayed together back and forth, back and forth.

Although I hated the need of it, I put to Liljana the question that must be asked: 'Were you able to open the minds of the Red Knights?'

'No!' she snapped at me. And then, more gently, 'He was waiting for me, Morjin was. Waiting to open up my mind. To twist his soul and his sick sentiments into me. Like snakes they are, cold, and full of venom. I. cannot say. You cannot know.'

I could know, I thought. I did know. When I closed my eyes, the bodies of my mother and grandmother, nailed to wood, writhed inside me. Only, they were not cold, but warm — always too warm as they cried out in their eternal anguish, burning, burning, burning….

I'm sorry,' Liljana said to Master Juwain, 'but you were right.'

Master Juwain sighed as he knotted his small, hard fingers together. 'I'm afraid it's too dangerous for any of us to use our gelstei, now.'

'And dangerous not to,' I said. 'Atara can still see, sometimes, with her gift, but without my eyes, I would be blind.'

And with that, I drew my sword from its sheath. Even in the thick of the night, the long blade gleamed faintly. The silustria from which it was wrought, like living silver, caught the stars' light and gave it back manyfold. It was harder than diamond and double-edged and sharp enough to cut steel. Alkaladur, men called it, the Sword of Sight that could cut through the soul's dark confusions to release the secret light within. The immortal Kalkin had forged it at the end of the Age of Swords, and it had once defeated Morjin. The silver gelstei was said to be one of the two noble stones; it was also said that the gold gelstei that formed the Lightstone had resonance with the silver but no power over it.

'Put it away!' Master Juwain said to me as he pushed out his palm. 'Use it in battle with the enemy, if you must, but until then, put it back in its sheath.'

I held my beautiful sword straight up, pointing toward the stars. A lovely, silver light spilled down the blade and enveloped my arm; it built around me like a luminous sea and flowed out to

bathe the grasses and the cottonwood trees and the other things of the world.

'Valashu!' Master Juwain said to me.

And I said to him, 'Liljana is right: the enemy is here, and everywhere. And the battle never ends.'

I turned to look north and west, toward Skartaru where Morjin dwelled. Although I could not see the Black Mountain among the lesser white peaks leading up to it, I felt it pulling at my mind and memory, and darkening my soul. Then suddenly my sword darkened, too. I held before me a length of gelstei no brighter than ordinary burnished steel.

'Damn him!' I whispered. 'Damn him!'

Now I pointed my sword toward Skartaru, and the blade began to glow and then flare in resonance with the faroff Lightstone — but not as brightly as it once had.

'He is there,' I murmured. 'There he sits on his filthy throne with the Lightstone in his filthy hand, watching and waiting.'

How could the world abide such a being as Morjin and all his deeds? How could the mountains, the wind, the stars? The same bright orbs poured down their radiance on Skartaru as they did the Wendrush and the mountains of my home. Why? And why shine at all? My eyes hurt from staring so hard as I brooded over the conundrum of a star: if it let fire consume itself, it would burn out into blackness. So it was with me. Soon enough I would be dead. A Sarni arrow would find my throat or I would freeze to death crossing the mountains. Or, more likely, one of Morjin's armies would trap me in some land near or faraway, and then I would be taken and crucified. I would descend to that dark, cold realm where I had sent so many, and that was only justice. But it seemed wrong to me, terribly and dreadfully wrong, that with my death, the bright memory of my mother, father and brothers that lived inside me would perish, too. And so those I loved most would truly die, and Morjin would have twice murdered my family and stolen them from the world.

'Valashu!' Master Juwain called to me again.

Where, I wondered, did the light of a candle's flame go when the wind blew it out? Could it be that the land of the dead was not fell but rather as cool and quiet as a long, peaceful sleep? Why should Morjin keep me in this world of iron nails, crosses and fire even one more day?

'Valashu — your sword!'

I squeezed my sword's hilt of black jade, carved with swans and set with seven diamonds. Once, I had sliced the sharp blade through Morjin's neck, but by the evil miracle of his kind, he had lived. My aim, the next time, must be true. I would plunge the star-tempered point straight through his heart. Atara had once prophesied that if I killed Morjin, I would kill myself. So, just so, as Kane would say.

'Damn him!' I whispered as I pointed my sword toward Argattha. 'Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!'

I would cut off Morjin's head and mount it on a pike for all to behold. I would hack his body into pieces and pour pitch upon them and set them on fire. I would feel the heat of the flames upon my face, burning, burning, burning. . 'Valashu!' Master Juwain, Liljana and Atara cried out as one.

When my vision suddenly cleared, I gasped to see that my silver sword seemed to have caught fire. Blue flames clung to the silustria along its whole length like a hellish garment, while longer orange and red ones twisted and leaped and blazed with a searing heat. So violent was this fire that I dropped my sword upon the ground. The grass there was too green to easily ignite, but Liljana and Daj hastened to douse it with water even so. We all watched with amazement as the flames raced up and down my sword's blade, cooled, faded and then finally died.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram called out. 'Oh, my Lord!'

'I didn't know your sword could burn like that!' Daj said to me.

'Neither did I,' Master Juwain told me.

And neither did I. Even Kane, who had once been Kalkin, the great Elijin lord who had forged this sword with his own two hands and all the art of the angels, stared at it mysteriously. His black eyes seemed as cold as the space between the stars. He held himself utterly still.

'Like hell, that was,' he finally said. He turned to stare at me.

'Like hate, it was,' Master Juwain said to me. Again he pushed his palm toward my cast-down sword. 'Surely its fire came out of that which consumes you.'

Daj, who was bright beyond his years, studied my sword and asked, 'Did it? Or did it burn because Lord Morjin is gaining control of the Lightstone?'

Liljana patted his head at his perceptiveness, then looked at me as she said, In the end, of course, it might be the same question.'

'Whatever the answer,' Master Juwain said to me, 'it is certain that the Lord of Lies is learning the Lightstone's secrets. Your hate will not deter him. Put your sword away.'

I leaned forward to wrap my fingers around Alkaladur's hilt. The black jade was as cool as grass. But the blade's silustria still emanated a faint heat, like a paving stone after a long summer day.

'Surely this is damned,' I said as I lifted up my sword. 'As I am damned.'

Liljana slapped her hand into her palm, then shook her head violently as she waggled her finger at me. 'Don't you ever say that!'

She edged past Daj and Estrella and knelt before me, and she laid her hand on top of mine. Her voice grew soft and gentle as she told me, 'You are not damned! You, of all people. And you, of all people, must never think that of yourself.'

I smiled at her kindness, but she did not smile back. I let go of Alkaladur for a moment to squeeze her hand. And then I grasped yet again the sword that would carve my fate.

'Morjin is poisoning the gelstei,' I said. 'Or trying to.'

Once, I remembered, in a wood near my home, Morjin's priest named Igasho had shot at me an arrow tipped with kirax. The poison had found its way into my blood, where it would always work its dark enchantment. I wondered if this evil substance that connected me to Morjin was slowly killing me after all. As I fiercely gripped my sword, I felt the kirax burning my stomach, liver and lungs with every breath, and stabbing like red-hot needles through my eyes and brain.

'Damn him!' I said again, shaking my sword at the heavens.

In the west, clouds were moving in, blocking out the stars. Lightning rent the sky there, and thunder shook the earth. Far out on the steppe, wolves howled their strange and mournful cries. There, too, our enemy's campfires burned on and on through the night.

'And damn them, too!' I said, stabbing my sword at the Red Knights who followed us.

I watched with dread as my silver sword again burst into flame. And then something dark and dreadful as a dragon burned through my hand, arm and chest, straight into my heart.

'He is here!' I cried out as I sprang up to my feet.

'Who is here?' Master Juwain asked me. Now he stood up, too, and came over to me, and so did the others.

'Morjin is — he rides with the Red Knights!' I said.

'Morjin, here?' Kane shouted. His eyes flared like fire-arrows out toward the steppe. 'Impossible!'

Atara stood by my side, but well away from my burning blade. She put her hand on my shoulder to gentle me, and she said, 'Your sword shone much as it ever did when you pointed it toward Argattha, and so the Lightstone must still be there. And so, as you have said yourself, must Morjin.'

'No, he is here, a mile away across the grass!'

'Atara is right,' Master Juwain said to me. He rested his hand on my other shoulder. 'Think, Val: the Dragon would never leave the Lightstone out of his clutches, even for moment, not even to ride after you.'

'And if he did hunt you,' Atara added, 'he would have come out of Argattha at the head of his whole army, and not leading a couple of dozen knights.'

As Lightning lit the mountains and fire sheathed my sword, my friends tried to reason with me. I could hardly listen. For I felt Morjin's presence too near me. The flames of his being writhed and twisted as they ever did, in shoots of madder, puce and incarnadine, and other colors that recalled his tormented soul.

'I know it is he!' I said, to Atara and my other friends.

Then Liljana moved closer and told me, 'Your gift betrays you. As mine betrayed me.'

All my life, It seemed, I had felt others' passions, hurts and joys as my own. Kane called this gift the valarda: two hearts beating as one and lit from within as with the fire of a star. He had also said it was impossible that Morjin should be here, in our enemy's encampment scarcely two thousand yards away. But it seemed impossible that the malice, decay and spite I felt emanating from that direction could have its source in any man except Morjin.

'Do you remember Argattha?' I said to Liljana. 'There Morjin soaked his skin with the essence of roses to cover the smell of his rotting flesh. But he could not cover the stench of his soul. I. . smell it here.'

Liljana pointed at my sword, at the flames that still swirled up and down its length. And she said to me, 'Is that really what you smell?'

I noticed that Flick, spinning like a top in the air beyond my reach, seemed to be keeping his distance from me.

Liljana brushed past Master Juwain, and laid her hand over the steel rings that encased my chest. And she said, 'I think you hate Morjin so much that you always sense him close now. Here, in your own heart.'

I held my breath against the pain that her words caused me. My sword dipped lower, and its flames began to recede.

'There is a great danger for you here, Val,' Master Juwain said to me. 'Do you remember the prophecy?: "If a man comes forth in falseness as the Shining One concealing darkness in his heart, if he claims the Lightstone for his own, then he shall become a new Red Dragon, only mightier and more terrible.""

'But that's just it, sir!' I said to him. 'I have proved that I am not the Maitreya!'

'Yes, you have. But have you proved that you could not become like unto the Red Dragon?'

I watched the flames working at my sword, and I could not breathe.

'Do you not remember your dream?' Master Juwain asked me.

I slowly nodded my head. Once, in the innocence of my youth, I had vowed to bring an end to war.

'But there's no help for it!' I gasped out. 'The more I have sought not to kill, the more I have killed. And the more war I have brought upon us!'

Master Juwain squeezed my shoulder, and then pointed out toward the Red Knights' campfires. And he told me, 'Killing, even at need, is an evil of itself. But killing when there may be no need is much worse. And killing as you feel compelled to kill, in vengeance and hate … that is everything you've been fighting against.'

'But there's no help for that either!' I said. I blinked my eyes against my sword's searing flames. 'Ten thousand men Morjin crucified in Galda! He is poisoning the world!'

I went on to say that Morjin would use the Lightstone to master men: their lusts, fears and dreams, even as he was trying with our gelstei. And then soon, perhaps in another year, perhaps less, all of Ea would be lost — and much more.

'You know,' I said to Master Juwain. 'You know what will happen, in the end.'

'I do not know about ends,' Master Juwain said. 'I only know that it is as it ever was: if you use evil to fight evil, then you will become evil.'

'Yes,' I said, gripping my sword, 'and if I do not, the whole world will fall to evil and be destroyed.'

It grew quiet in our encampment after that. The fire made little crackling sounds, and from out on the grasslands an owl hooed faintly, but none of us spoke. I stood staring at my burning sword. It was strange how the blue and red flames licked at the bright silustria but did not seem to really touch it.

Then Liljana said to me, 'Morjin has long tried to make a ghul of you. It may be that, through your sword, he could seize your will.'

'No, I won't let him,' I said. Then I smiled grimly. 'But if he does, then Kane will have to kill me — if he can.'

'Ah, Val, Val!' Maram said to me as sweat beaded on his fat cheeks. He cast his eyes upon Kane. 'Don't make jokes, not at a time like this!'

No one, I thought, not even Liljana, could read the look on Kane's face just then. He stood as still as death, gazing at my sword as his hand rested on the hilt of his own. Like coals, his black, blazing eyes seemed to burn open the night.

And then this strange man said a strange thing: 'Hate is just the left hand of love, eh? And so with evil and good. So — Val hates Morjin, even as Morjin hates him. Don't be so sure what will come of it.'

I pointed Alkaladur toward the Red Knights a mile away I said, 'There Morjin watches us and waits. Let us end things now if we can.'

Kane followed my gaze, and I felt his insides churning with an unusual disquiet. 'Don't be so sure he is there. The Lord of Lies has laid traps for us before, eh? Let us ride tomorrow, for the mountains, as fast as we can.'

Master Juwain nodded his head at this and said, 'Yes, surely he has conjured up confusions, somehow. Let us ride, as Kane has said.'

Maram, naturally, agreed with this course of action, and so did Liljana, Atara and even Daj. It was not Estreila's way to pit her will against mine or even to make a vote by painting towards or away from the Red Knights. But she knew with a quiet certainty that she had a part to play in our decision. She came up dose to me, heedless of my burning sword. Against the curve of the dark world, with her fine features and wisps of black hair, she seemed small and slight. She stood gazing at me, her lovely eyes looking for something bright and beautiful in my own. She was a seard, I remembered, gifted with finding things and the secrets inside them; a dying scryer had once promised me that she would show me the Maitreya. Since the night I had met her, it been both a grace and a torment that she had also shown me myself.

'Don't look at me like that!' I said to her. I stabbed my sword out toward the steppe. 'If Morjin is there, he won't expect us to attack. When we do, you and Daj will ride with Liljana and Master Juwain toward the mountains. You'll be safe there. After we've won, we'll meet up with you. And then it will all be over… everything. We'll regain the Lightstone, and much else besides.'

Evil, I know, speaks in the most seductive of voices. It plays to our lusts, fears, delusions and hates. There is always a part of us that wants to heed this voice. But there is always a deeper voice, too, which we might take to heart if only we would listen. As Estrella looked at me with so much trust, I heard it whispering, like the songs of the stars: that war could be ended; that I could grip my sword with hate's right hand; that darkness could always be defeated by shining a bright enough light. 'Estrella,' I whispered, 'Estrella.'

I would give anything, I thought that she should grow into womanhood without the blight of murder and war.

Then she called back to me in her silent way, with a smile and a flash of her eyes. She placed one hand over ay heart and the other upon my hand that held my sword. I watched as its fires

dimmed and died.

'All right, we won't attack — not tonight, not like this,' I said. I slid my sword back into its sheath. 'But if Morjin is out there, it will come to battle, in the end.'

After that, I sat back down with my friends to finish our dessert of fresh berries. Maram brought out his brandy bottle; I heard him muttering to himself, commanding himself not to uncork it. He licked his lips as he held himself proud and straight. In the west, lightning continued to torment the sky, but the threatened storm never came. As I watched our enemy's campfires burning with a hazy orange glow, far into the night, the wolves on the dark grass about us howled to the stars.