Black Jade

Chapter 27

In the morning, we all gathered in the grove, where Maira and Oni met us — along with all the other Loikalii. They thought nothing, it seemed, of giving up their work in favor of witnessing whatever event was about to occur. Oni led us through the trees in a winding way that followed no path. In the strong light raining down through the emerald leaves, the Timpum seemed to shine even more brightly than they had the previous night. So did the flowers and the birds and every other living thing in these mysterious woods.

At last we came into a clearing. A pool of water, fifty feet wide, gleamed in its center. The Loikalii sat around it on low banks of grass. Oni stood beside the pool's rippling waters with Maira and me — and with Kane. Although no one had invited him in so close, no one seemed to find the courage to warn him away. The Loikalii allowed no large predators into their woods, but Kane was like a tiger, pacing back and forth with a barely contained fire tormenting his great body as his fathomless eyes fixed on the pool.

Oni cupped her pale blue bowl in her hands, and shut her eyes. Almost immediately, the breeze died. A stillness fell upon the air over the pool. The only sounds were the songs of the birds deeper in the trees and Kane's restless footfalls.

'Be quiet!' Oni finally hissed at Kane. She opened her eyes and glared at him. 'Or else leave this place!'

Kane stared right back at her with a fiery gaze that might have wilted a tree. But he finally did as she had commanded, freezing into motionlessness like a great cat ready to spring. His bright, black eyes took in the glimmer of the pool.

As my heart drummed inside me, the waters of the pool grew stiller and clearer. I noticed that it sat within a bed of crystal that might have been diamond. No fly pad nor lake skimmer nor even a twig or a speck of dust floated upon this water. It came to me that I had never seen water so pure and deep.

'The waters of all worlds flow into each other,' Oni's voice intoned — a million miles away, it seemed. 'The waters of all things are one; in the end, there is only one Water.'

Now the pool's waters stilled with an utter clarity. In its depths — it was like looking through air — I beheld mountains and water-falls and a great, shimmering city. Crystalline towers half a mile high stood on rocky prominences above a broad valley. It must have been autumn there, for the valley's contours showed the yellows of aspens and maples' blazing reds — as well groves of astor trees whose golden foliage blanketed the earth. Throughout the valley and above it, upon rocky hills, stood many graceful buildings and houses agleam with the colors of living stone: azure and cinnabar, magenta, saffron and aquamarine. I knew that all these-structures had been built by the hand of man, but so perfect were they in design and in harmony with the landforms of the valley that it seemed here art and nature were as one. I couldn't help recalling the wondrous city that Ymanir had built high in the White Mountains: Alundil, the City of the Stars.

The valley's beauty called to something ancient within me. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I reached out my hand toward it. This simple motion unsettled my balance. Even as Kane's hand struck out to try to catch me, I found myself teetering at the edge of the pool, and then stumbling forward. I hit the water with a great splash. Its coldness stabbed into me like a thousand icy needles. The weight of my sword, strapped to my back, helped to pull me under, down and down into a deepening gloom for what seemed forever. I pulled hard with my hands against cold currents and kicked my feet. I swam up and up toward the light streaming through the water. Finally, with a gasp of air I broke from the surface of the pool into a burst of brilliant sunshine. I shook back my wet hair. I blinked my eyes because I could not believe what they beheld. Kane and Oni and everyone else who had gathered by the pool — the Loikalii, the Avari, too — were gone. The city that I had descried within the pool now spread out all around me, amethyst towers rising up from the mountainsides to my right and left. Upon the pool's grassy banks stood tall men and women with jet black hair and eyes as bright and black as my deepest dreams.

One of them, a man wearing a blue tunic trimmed in gold and a fillet of silver binding back his long hair, held out his hand to me and pulled me dripping and shivering from the pool. A woman — I had never seen a queen so striking, not even my mother — covered me with a long, thick robe of new lamb's wool. A man who might have been her brother stood smiling at me in welcome; the diamonds encrusting his tunic shone more brilliantly than a knight's armor. All these people, I thought, were like unto the Valari of my home, only more beautiful and even nobler in aspect. It come to me then that they were Valari, the true and ancient Valari, for I knew somehow that I had stepped out upon another world and looked upon twelve of the Star People.

'Tallina ira vos,' the queenlike woman said to me. 'Lila satna garad.'

She spoke more words to me, and so did the others. As with veils pulled back to reveal a familiar fact:, their meaning became clearer and clearer. I realized that they were speaking in a language similar to ancient Ardik, which is to the language of the angels as the common tongue is to Ardik.

They gave me their names: Asha, Eva, Varjan, Jessur, Eldru and Shivaj. And Kavalad, Aja, Saya, Jerusha, Varda and Ramadar. They gave me to understand that they had come here to greet me; that seemed almost impossible, but I sensed that they were not lying. Something about the structure of their language made it unnatural to utter anything false or guileful. In the clear consonants and liquid vowels that poured from their beautiful lips, no less the light sparking in their eyes, I sensed only a strong intent toward goodness and truth. They each embodied these qualities, along with a nobility that I had seen in my father and mother, but few others. They were men and women, I thought, as I had always imagined men and women to be.

So awestruck was I that I could hardly speak. But I finally remembered my manners, and bowed my head to Ramadar, the man who had pulled me from the pool. I found my voice and stammered out: 'Satnamon Valashu — Valashu Elahad.'

'Valashu,' he repeated, bowing to me. Then he pointed up at the deep blue sky, where a blue sun shone with a dazzling light. 'Val al'Ashu ni al'Elahad — vos art arda valas.'

My heart beat like a soaring swan within me as the meaning of what Ramadar had said became clear and confirmed what I knew to be true: 'Star-of-the-Morning of the line of Elahad you have journeyed deep into the stars.'

Only the dead, I thought, made such journeys. For several hours, I struggled to speak to them in their beautiful language. The sun dried my tunic then began to drop toward the blazing hills in the west. There, the light off the houses ran through a riot of shifting colors: violet and carnelian; ocher, turquoise and red. A few of the Star People — Eva, Saya and Jessur — walked off to their houses and returned with delicious foods, whose like I had never seen nor tasted. It grew darker, and the stars came out, and then I knew that I had left Ea, for the constellations here were all strange and lit up the sky with a brilliance beyond that of any sky I had ever beheld, even the Infinite black and silver dome above the tar Harath,

As the Star People's words became ever clearer to me, so did mine to them. I gained a clearer understanding of their purpose and how they had come to be waiting here to greet me. They had their scryers, too, it seemed. One of them had foretold my journey, and had warned that once I beheld the beauty of their city, Iveram, I would never want to leave. This was so. In gazing out at the mountains and waterfalls above the city's twinkling lights, it seemed that I had finally come home.

'You, Valashu, are welcome to remain with us,' Ramadar said to me. Although his long, grave face and bold eyes reminded me of my father, it seemed that he bore no higher rank than any other of his eleven companions. 'But we have been sent here to persuade you that you must go back.'

Was I not dead, then, after all? But go back to what, I thought? To a woman whom I could never marry? To friends whom I led on and on in a quest likely to find only their deaths? To a doomed world?

Although I had spoken around these doubts for many hours with Ramadar and the other Star People, I had not made them explici. It didn't matter. They sensed the volcano of fury and anguish that fumed inside me. They, too, perhaps in greater measure than I, bore the gift of valarda.

'Our lives present us with many choices,' Ramadar told me. 'But in the end, only one path will have been walked. We believe that yours lies back, toward the world you call Ea.'

'Perhaps it does,' I said. I turned to looked at Asha, and then at Eva, whose long black hair showed strands of silver and whose eyes shone with kindness and concern for me. 'Why don't you then come with me? All of you — and any of you who live here?'

I went on to say that many thousands of men and women willing to make this journey couid surely be found in Iveram and other cities of their world, which they named as Givene. Under a brilliant banner emblazoned with Givene's most brilliant stars, we could assemble a great host of warriors who would throw down Morjin and bring peace to Ea.

'No, Valashu, that we may not do,' Eva said to me. Her voice fell over me as cool and gentle as the wind blowing off the mountains. 'You know that we may not go to Ea, and you know why.'

'Because you are too pure to go down into Hell?'

Although I had eaten here the sweetest of fruits, there remained in my mouth a terrible bitterness.

'No, that we are not,' she said with a sad smile. 'Neither are the Elijin nor the Galadin. And it is because we are not that we may not go to Ea.'

Shivaj, a man with quick, hot eyes and a proud cast of chin, was more brusque than Eva. He said simply, 'The Galadin forbid it.'

'But what if this forbiddance were lifted?' I said.

'Long ago the forbiddance was lifted,' Shivaj said in a voice like a hammered gong, 'and a great Elijin became the Red Dragon. And Kalkin became the one you call Kane.'

'But one last time,' I said. 'One last battle — Morjin could not stand against a million Valari of Givene armed with spears and swords!'

'You do not know that,' Eva said to me. 'Not even our scryers can foresee what Morjin might do, armed with the Lightstone and the wrath of the Dark One filling his heart.'

'But we could win!' I cried out.

'Yes, we could win,' Ramadar said to me. His black eyes and noble bearing fell upon me with a heavy weight. 'The Valari could stand triumphant on Ea's soil beneath a star-silvered banner, holding high the Cup of Heaven that we had claimed. As we did once before. We remember too well how Elahad's brother fell mad and slew Elahad over the Lightstone. How Valari slew Valari in a bloodbath that has grown only deeper and redder with the passing of the ages. How will it end? Not with more Valari going to Ea. You are Valashu ni al'Elahad, the last and only heir of the Elahad. The stain of his murder lies upon all the Valari, on Ea and elsewhere, but it is upon you to put things right and end what was begun on Ea so long ago.'

He added that I was also Valashu ni al'Adar, the last of the great Adar's descendents and therefore the rightful guardian of the Lightstone. My task, he said, was to reclaim the Cup of Heaven for the Maitreya. I stared hard into Ramadar's bright eyes and asked, 'While and your people remain safe here on Givene and watch events unfold through the waters of your pool? Are you afraid to fight, then?'

He pointed at my sword and said, 'There are different ways of fighting. The one who sits on the Dragon throne might be brought down by the edge of your sword, but the Dark One will never be. That will require i different kind of sword, finer than silustria, as pure in essence as light. It is upon us, and even more the Elijin and Galadin, to help forge it.'

I remembered lines of a verse graven in my heart;

Valarda, like molten steel like tears,

like waves of singing light.

Which angel fire has set its seal

And breath of angels polished bright.

'The true Alkaladur,' I said bitterly. 'This truly impossible thing.'

At this Eva smiled at me and said. 'The Valari were meant to be warriors of the spirit. In the end, Valashu, you were, too.'

I said nothing as I looked into the impossibly deep pools of Eva's eves,

'The War of the Stone,' she said, 'goes on across the stars as it has for a million years. We fight it as we must, for it must be won, and the Valkariad must come. If not in our time, then in our children's, or our children's children.'

'All right,' I finally said, 'fight as you must, then. But must all your people, in all their millions, fight your way? Can you not spare a few thousands to come to Ea and fight our way?'

'No,' she said sadly, 'the Galadin forbid it.'

'Then damn the Galadin!' I snarled out. The rage in my voice stunned me; it seemed to shock Eva and Ramadar and the others standing about the dark pool. 'If they won't help, then damn them!'

'Valashu — you know not what you say!'

Eva and Varjan — Asha and Shivaj, too — stared at me in horror. And I stared right back at them as I called out, 'I may not know what I say. But how is it that you know what the Galadin say?'

'From time to time,' Eva told me, 'one of the mighty Elijin walks our world and brings us their words.'

'Then you bow to their will?'

'Even as a warrior of your world does to his king,' Ramadar told me. 'And even as the Galadin themselves follow the light of the Ieldra, and the Ieidra work the will of the One.'

I shook my head at this even as my hand closed hard and hurtful around the hilt of my sword.

'If you doubt, then look!' Eva said to me as she pointed at the pool. 'Look — and listen!'

For a while, in the quiet of the cool night, as Eva and the others moved in closer around me, I gazed into the pool. It had fallen so dark that only the faintest shimmer of starlight played upon its black waters. Then a radiance began welling up from deep inside it. Words, perfectly pitched like ringing bells, poured forth in a beautiful song. They reminded me of the immortal words thaj Alphanderry had sung out in the pass of the Kul Moroth: La valaha eshama halla, lais arda alhalla raj erathe…' As in the moments before Alphanderry had died, the words blended so harmoniously into the music and the music into the words that it seemed they were one.

I sensed that those around me understood more of this song than I did. I watched as the pool grew brighter and ever clearer. Just below its perfectly still surface I caught sight of another body of water, much larger: a silver lake, very lovely, and beside it on a hilly bank grew a great and glorious astor tree. Framing it, in the distance, were two white-capped mountains. This could only be Irdrasil, the world-tree of legend and dreams, and the mountains Vayu and Telshar — the ageless and true Telshar, after which the sacred peak rising above my father's castle had been named. Just as I had beheld Givene through the waters of the pool in one of Ea's Vilds, I knew that now I looked upon the Galadin's world of Agathad.

'Ashtoreth,' I said, murmuring out the name of one of the greatest of the Galadin. 'Valoreth.'

It was hard to tell, but in the music sounding from deep inside the pool I thought I heard the breath and heartbeat of my own name.

'The blessed tree!' Eva whispered from beside me.

The whole world shimmered with the numinous color of Irdrasil's perfect leaves. In the shadings and tones pulsing out of the great tree, I sensed unfathomed layers of the angels' language and deeper unities: the melodies of all music and all the words ever spoken. The Galadin, I thought, must understand this, just as they surely understood the language of light that fell upon Agathad. Thus did the Ieldra speak to them and bring them the word of the One.

Lais arda alhalla raja Valashu ni al'Elahad ni al'Adar…

I thought it a miracle that I, too, should grasp this eternal language. Who was I to speak to the Ieldra or to stand before their fiery tree as they spoke to me? It came to me that I understood only the tiniest part of what these luminous beings had to tell me, and yet that part contained its entirety and essence; that I must vanquish my fear of death, both in dealing it out to others and in dying myself. And I must return to Ea to fulfill nay fate.

'No!' I cried out from within the deep, dark pools of my heart. I wondered if the Ieldra — or the Galadin — could understand the fleshes of fire lighting up my eyes. 'What can you really know of Ea? To feel your flesh burning up or to scream as a length of steel is driven through your insides? You do not die nailed to crosses! You do not even die!'

I expected no answer to the fury that raged through me. And then, through the Star People's pool I watched with awe as the glorre of the great astor tree faraway blazed with a terrible and beautiful light.

Valashu Elahad.

In the end, I knew, we each opened ourselves to this light, or not.

Valashu.

Or perhaps this eternal light opened itself to us and drew us within. For a moment that seemed to last forever, I stood in a place that could not be: the pristine fields of Culhadosh Commons on another world across the universe. Its green acres were undefined by the terror of Morjin's armies. None of the slain lay in bloody heaps upon the grass, not my father nor my brothers. In truth, it seemed that those closest to me hadn't died at all, for out of the stream of sunlight spilling down upon the pasture coalesced the faces and forms of Karshur, Mandru, Jonathay, Ravar and Yarashan. My brother, Asaru, dressed in a suit of brilliant diamonds, stood with my father at the center of the field. So did my mother and my grandmother, whom I called Nona.

No wounds marred their flesh as they smiled at me, warm smiles that filled the whole of my being. My father told me that I must return to Mesh to become king, while my mother, in the soft light of her eyes, conveyed to me the simplest of truths: that men and women could die but love never could. The force pouring from her heart into mine made me weep. I did not want to leave her. Tney spoke to me for a long time; there was a sense in which I was speaking with myself. But my father reminded me that I was still of the living, and could not remain with the dead. He promised me, however, that he would never leave my side. He told me, too, that help would be sent to me. Then he smiled one last time, and dissolved back into light, along with my mother, grandmother and brothers.

I found myself still standing by the edge of the pool on Givene with the Star People. They asked me what I had experienced, and I told them. Then I said, 'I do not know if I saw things outside and beyond myself, or was only dreaming.'

Eva nodded her head at this, and told me mysteriously, 'Sometimes, there is no difference.'

I noticed that the sun had risen over the mountains in the east and its light painted the houses and towers in the hills around us a softly blazing blue. It came to me that my friends on Ea might have given me up as dead.

And when I stared back into the pool, I no longer saw Vayu and Telshar and the great astor tree of Agathad, but only the smaller pool in the Loikalii's Vild into which I had fallen. Oni and Kane stood above it looking down into its black waters with wonder and dread; so did Maram and my other companions, and all the Loikalii.

'You must go back,' Ramadar said to me. He told me of the understanding that he had gleaned from his own gazing at Irdrasil: 'Help will be sent with you.'

I nodded my head as he clasped my hand; Eva embraced me, and so did the others. Then Ramadar pressed into my hand a perfectly-cut diamond the size of a walnut. He told me. 'This was taken from the crown that Adar once wore. Elahad should have brought the crown with him to Ea, but he would not wear it until Ea was made one with the worlds of the stars and the great Maitreya came forth. The crown has been lost, but we have kept this last stone all these ages. Take it back with you that you might remember what you have seen and who you really are.'

I gripped my hand around the huge diamond. I bowed my head to Ramadar. Then, with a final look at the waterfalls spilling down toward the shimmering city around me, I dived back into the pool

The moment I broke from its cold waters, Kane's hand snapped out and locked onto mine. With a single heave that nearly dislocated my shoulder, he pulled me up onto the pool's banks. Water fell off my sodden hair and clothing onto the grass. Master Juwain and Maram hurried over to me, and so did Liljana, Atara, Daj and Estrella. Even Flick spun in a whirl of sparks as if astonished at my reappearance. Maira and Anneli and the Loikalii gathered in as close as they could. The great trees of the vild towered high above us.

'Val!' Maram shouted at me. He squeezed the back of my neck as if to reassure himself that I had really returned to him. 'We thought you were gone — sucked down into the bowels of the earth!'

I saw that Maram's loin covering was soaking wet, as was Kane's tunic. It seemed they had dived into the pool after me.

Master Juwain stepped forward to look into my eyes. 'You should not be conscious — not even alive! You were under for too long!'

'For most of a day,' I said, shaking the water from my hair.

'Not that long,' Master Juwain said. 'But ten minutes is long enough to kill — I suppose that we should be glad that the lack of air has served only to confuse you.'

I told him, 'But, sir, I am not confused. I stood on the banks of another pool on another world and watched the sun set and then rise again.'

He and all the others listened intently as I described what had happened to me since I fell into the pool. Finally, Oni fixed me with one of her withering gazes and said, 'The Water only gives visions of places faraway. It must be that one of these visions captured you and convinced you that it was real.'

I shook my head at this, wondering if it could be true, then I felt in my hand the great diamond that I still held. Sunlight reflected off its many facets in a brilliance of colors. This convinced almost everyone of the veracity of my story, but Oni only squinted her old eyes and said, 'Perhaps such diamonds grow at the bottom of the Water.'

As she pointed at the pool and stared into it, its waters grew ever calmer and clearer. After a while, they stilled so that its surface fell as smooth as glass. In the silver of this liquid mirror, I caught flashes of great purple towers gleaming beneath a blue sun, and a great golden-leaved tree whose light never failed, not even in the darkest of nights. And then a brilliant light filled the pool, dissolving all that I beheld into a blaze of glorre. Without warning, it poured forth in a stream of fire that shot up and fell upon Flick. A song like the ringing of perfectly tuned crystals poured forth, too, and the music and the fire were as one. Everyone stood back as Flick's whirling lights flared brighter and brighter. I watched awestruck as this radiance gathered itself into the form of Alphanderry. He was like unto the strange being that had appeared before us several times on our journeys, and yet different, too. Although I knew well enough that our old friend had died in the Kul Moroth, the man who stood suddenly shaped and whole before us seemed almost alive.

'Val!' he cried out to me. He turned his head toward my other companions and smiled. 'Maram, Liljana, Master Juwain. Kane.'

Kane stared at this instantiation of Alphanderry with both sadness and joy filling up his eyes. He cried out: 'My little friend!' But he made no move to embrace him.

Daj, however, suffered from no such restraint. He stepped up to Alphanderry as if intending to touch his arm. His hand passed right through him — not, however, as before, as through a beam of light, but more like a hand dipped into water. It left ripples and a wake in whatever shimmering substance Alphanderry was made of.

Alphanderry smiled at Daj, and at Estrella who stood next to him. He looked at her deeply and for a long time. Then his gaze fell upon Atara and the blindfold binding her face, and he said, 'It is good to see you again after all this time, though it pains me that you cannot see me. What happened to you, Atara?'

'You do not know?'

He shook his head. 'I almost know. The memory is there, somewhere, but I cannot find it.'

For a while we stood there recounting the many events that had occurred after Alphanderry's death in the Kul Moroth: our entrance into Khaisham and the great library; our journey across the White Mountains and the battle inside Argattha in which we had claimed the Lightstone. Although Atara would not speak of her blinding, Alphanderry must have guessed that she had left her eyes behind in Morjin's throne room. When our story moved on to the tragedy of Morjin invading Mesh and stealing back the Lightstone, and all that had happened since, Alphanderry rubbed at his curly black hair and told us: 'It is as if I was there, somehow, at the heart of all these things you say have happened.'

'But you were there!' I said to him.

'As the one you call Flick?'

At this, he held out his hand as if beckoning one of the nearby Timpum floating above a patch of lilies. The Timpum — it was all blue and golden like a ball of light — drifted over and settled in the center of Alphanderry's palm. I watched amazed as Alphanderry's hand broke apart into a shimmer of silver and crimson and then reassembled itself a moment later. And Alphanderry told me, 'I am not Flick. And yet, I am not other than Flick, too. It is hard to explain.'

Explanations, I thought, had never been Alphanderry's gift. He was a poet and a minstrel. His triangular face was full of all the wild ness and spontaneity that we had all loved, and with wit and imag-ination, too. His wide, sensual lips pulled up in a dazzling smile that lit up his whole face and caused the deep creases around his eyes to flare out like the rays of the sun. His innate playfulness caught others up like fire. He had always been a dreamy man, living in some intensely beautiful inner world that he delighted in sharing with others. His large brown eyes told of his longing for places even more splendid than Givene or Agathad. And yet something new warmed his soul — or perhaps it was only a change in direction of his oldest and deepest impulse, as natural as breathing out once one has fully breathed in. As he gazed at the Timpum shining in his hand — and then at Estrella and the lilies around the pool and the astor trees and the rocks and grasses in the Loikalii's woods — I sensed within him an overwhelming desire to sing not just of the wonder of the world, but to sing to the world, to fill the flowers with music and make everything come alive in a way it never had before.

He seemed as puzzled at his own existence as I was. I looked to Oni and Maira to see if they might offer some understanding of this miracle, but they and the other Loikalii had never witnessed one of the Timpum transformed this way. Oni stood watching Alphanderry with worship lighting up her old face. Even Kane seemed mystified, for I heard him mutter, 'My little, dear little friend — how, how?'

Oni now had little left to show us in her magic pool, and there was little that we still wished to see. She suggested returning to the astor grove in order to make another feast in honor of Alphanderry's return to us. No one objected. I kept waiting for Alphanderry to vanish back into a whirl of lights, but he remained as solid and real as he could be. With Daj and Estrella close by him and many of the Loikalii children gathering in close, he walked through the woods singing a sweet, silly song that delighted them.

That evening, though, when the Loikalii spread out their fruits and nuts and delicious forest foods on their leaf-woven mats, Alphanderry sang other songs. With Kane playing the mandolet that Alphanderry still could not quite grasp, Alphanderry gave voice to a melody so lovely and compelling that all of us joined him, though we did not know what the words we intoned meant. I marveled that many of the Timpum came shimmering and streaking from out of the woods to add their strange chiming sounds to the chorus. Even the great trees above us sang, in silence, as the stars far beyond the world sang out with light.