On account of the Jade, they could not master this war.
And yet, what is the power of a Talisman in the face of evil and cunning?
On the Fifth day, when the Witch’s victory was nearly secure, three of the Eldest’s best warriors gained good luck and struck at her until they broke her shield. She fled into her palace, running through the halls, through the plain rooms, through the meager gardens, until she reached the Chamber that was the safe-keeping of the Jade.
And here she saw the Eldest Brother waiting for her with the Dwarf and one tall, thin, sad-eyed Priest.
“I understand that you have been left a Widow, and so now are the proper owner of the Jade,” the Eldest said. “If you are good enough to let me keep this Trifle, I will let you keep your life.”
“No enemy can Destroy me while I own that precious Thing,” the Witch said. “It is mine alone.”
The Eldest laughed.
“It has come to my understanding,” he said, “that if we two Marry, you could not name me as your Enemy, and what should be yours would be mine.”
“But I do not like to take you as a husband,” the Witch screamed.
“Yet you must,” the Dwarf said. “There is one cleverness of the world that you have forgotten: Women are below men, and so do not have the power to refuse an offer to wed.”
Guided by this bit of wisdom, the Eldest now ordered the Priest to perform the Rites. So this man of the Gods draped the trembling Witch with flowers, and chanted prayers above her head, and caused her to take the hand of the Eldest.
“You are now his Bride,” he said, as he was about to anoint the Witch with oil.
But then one thing happened that was not foreseen by either Dwarf or King.
As the thin, solemn, and—it should be said—lonely Priest bent over the Witch to touch her face with the Holy oil, he peered into her dark eyes and fell in love.
Of course, his companions noticed nothing of this as they rejoiced over their dominion of the Jade, and listened with delight to the sounds of the Coast warriors dying under the thrusts of the gold spears.
The Eldest stood victorious on the bloody mount of his brother’s land. By his side quailed the Witch, his new wife. The Stone, magnificent, beaming its blue light, had become his own. It would protect him.
It would protect him from all save himself.
Years passed.
In Due course, the Eldest King proved much like his brother, for the charms of the Jade made him, too, grow mad.
Ensconced in his Castle on the top of the lofty blue Mounts, he looked upon the Queen of All Jades and turned into an idiot from his greed.
Soon, he could bear to look upon nothing but Jade, and ordered his architects to build him a great City made of the glowing Blue boulders in the Jungle, within the shade of the blessed Dragon Tree. And then he ordered them another plan as well:
“Hide this City within a Winding Jade Maze, made of curves and circles, which we will know as the Labyrinth of Deceit,” he said. “For I possess such a Treasure that it may only attract Foreign Thieves and Murderers. You must do this, and keep me safe.”
So the Mad Blue City was built in the shadow cast by the great Tree that bleeds ruby sap. And it was hidden within that colossus of a Labyrinth formed of diabolical jade passages and maelific stanzes and Confusion out of which there would be no Express.
The Eldest King brought his Stone and his people to the city within the Maze. He brought his Bride too, but blindfolded, so that she could not find her way out.
When the mask fell from her eyes and she gazed at her cage, the Witch saw she could never read all the labyrinth’s dangers and escape.
The moon waxed, shining down upon a city where dark plans hatched. The moon waned, and the black shadows of the eve concealed subtle minds.
The calendar turned again.
There were whispers. Some said there were shadows on the walls of the Maze, wherein lay the corpses of royal enemies, and where rebels practiced treasonous arts. Gossip held that a secret and mutinous force had been raised against which the royal arms would fall. Others agreed among themselves that the Eldest Brother had entered an early Dotage, as he could think of nothing but his Stone.
The wise wizard Dwarf, much older now, realized that a cross-eyed Ass could have given the Eldest Brother better counsel than he. Yet he still tended what remained of the kingdom and pursued all rumors of sedition. Thus, when he heard of the larks in the Maze, he left the Palace one dark night and traveled toward the Labyrinth’s riddling routes.
In the shadows, the Dwarf leapt easy and soft through that Labyrinth, as he knew each curve and folly of its Design. Past its dead-falls he slipped with little dread, though there were perils that faced him toward the North Star, toward the Sea, toward the Sun, and toward the Heat of the South: sucking marshes, and red-eyed jaguars, and roaring rivers. Past all this he ran, and he ducked, too, the rocks and mire thrown by the shrieking gobelyns that lived in its dizzy heights. He pushed; he pressed. He cast out his eye and his keen ear until he saw shadows of twisting limbs on the Walls of the maze. He heard the moaning breaths and the obscene, murmured oaths. Peering deeper into the Puzzle, he roamed its circles. He reached a moon-flooded spot and observed there the Witch and the Priest married in an embrace, with wet lips and gleaming teeth, moving and biting like serpents.
“We have had no trouble breeding rebels in the forest,” he heard the Witch cry, at the same time she dispatched her warm deed. “The Eldest Brother proves too feeble to remain King.”
“He has turned many against him,” said the Priest.
“He loves what he cannot own,” she said. “And we will raise our Army against Him and crush this city into blue dust.”
“We will,”the Priest wept.
And as he peered through the night’s gloom the Dwarf saw this man looked sallow and dazed.
“When the sun rises twice more, we will bring our Force to lay siege upon his Castle, and leave no enemy of mine alive.”
“Yes”
In the shadows of the Labyrinth, the Dwarf trembled.
Back to the Palace he flew, under the moon that would grow thinner and lighter until it vanished like smoke under the Sun. The Dwarf entered the blue castle and pushed through the doors and past the jade-breasted guards. He discovered the Eldest Brother hunched on his shining throne, his indigo crown tilted on his head, and his purple sword within its scabbard. His eyes were glazed and gawping blind at his Court of Knights, who kneeled before him and waited their orders.
“King,” the Dwarf said, “it is time for you to rise from your throne and throw off this Pallor.”
The Eldest Brother said nothing, but only blenched and stared.
“There is Treason afoot. There is a plot for your Death.”
The King seemed still to have a child’s mind, though he did frown at this.
“There is a plan for your Murder, at the Order of the Witch, who even now puddles your Bed by her sweat mixt with the Priest’s.”
“I know it,” came at last the answer, but the King remained soft-brained and mild.
So the Dwarf mused upon this trouble for one more hour. And in the red dawn, he knew it was himself who must call the order. Striding into the Court once more, he said, “There are traitors in our midst, and so we are to arms!”
The Knights happily agreed. Gathering the King to his feet, the Army stood, roaring as it once had down at the poor country of the Coast. Then these horrible men marched upon the Witch and her Lover.
In the King’s own blue bed, wrapped in cambric windings and with their lips red and sore from kissing, the two betrayers were discovered. And when the Eldest Brother looked upon his wife in such disgrace, he cast off his Dotage at once, and drew his sword, and slashed it down.
But he only slew the Priest, as the Witch proved too fast.
Down the halls she flew, shouting for her rebels until her mutinous friends emerged from the corners and shaded nooks of the castle, and from the de
ep black folds of the forest itself.
A second battle commenced, though from the first the rebels buckled beneath the royal force. Jade blades slashed through the air, dripping, plunging, and terrible to see. Women and men, still clutching their weapons, fell to the ground and watered it with their blood. Halberdiers stood above the begging forms of the insurgents, shouting out the King’s name. The Witch, leading this war, was one of the few untouched by the soldiers’ wrath. She raced to the vanguard until she reached the Eldest Brother and raised her sword against him.
But he proved the more apt killer.
He drew his knife and murdered her with one swift stroke.
As the Witch felt her life escape, she turned her beautiful face to her husband. Remembering once more the dark eyes and slow soft hands of the Younger Brother, she wept.
“I curse you,” she said. “I call upon the great powers that have shaped all that is fell, and all that is fine, to cast the King into ruin, and all that he divined. None of your kin shall be safe from my spell, for the angels shall burn your blue city with fire, drown it with water, and commit you to hell. And any man who seeks anew to claim the Jade shall suffer that same fate. Each soul tempted by the Stone’s beauty shall smother in flood, and be eaten by storm, until he wakes within Hades’ gates.”
She took one more breath.
“But you shall suffer worst of all, my husband, my devil, the master of my bed. For I destroy you and all you love. You are dead. You are dead. We are dead.”
And then she was silent forever.
The King went cold with fear.
“The Jade!” he screamed, rushing about the palace to find any sanctuary where he might retain his Gem. But there was no such safe place there.
Commanding his slaves to collect the Queen of all Jades, he fled his Mad city. He passed the Dragon Tree, which poured a river of blood into the earth, as he continued to run far, toward the East. Here, he hid within a second Maze of his own making. He called this the Labyrinth of Virtue.
And of what was this crazed Puzzle composed?
Of nothing more than a riddle:
The Roughest Path to Take
The Harshest Road to Tread
Is the one We must Make
Tho’ our Hearts fill with Dread
The Hardest Pass to Walk
In these Days foul and Fast
When crooked sin us Mocks
Is ours to Brave and Last
He who steers due from Hell For he who bears the Waves
The Jade waits in her Dell
And the Good Man is Repaid
In this secret lair, the Eldest Brother hid with his Stone. For days, he gazed upon its blue splendor, and stroked its glittering form with his shaking hands. He whispered to the Talisman as if it were alive and thought himself the most happy man.
Yet this King was deceived in his Faith.
The Gods had heard the prayer of the Witch, and it alone was in their power to confound the Protection of the Jewel.
So in that high place that exists beyond the world, past the doorway of the Smoking Mirror, the Deities cast their eyes on the Kingdom and the Covert of the Eldest Brother and wished it gone.
Down came the wind like a great Hand, and it smothered the City and its people and its Ruler and the Jade with its wild fingers. In that crushing force, the temples became dust, and soldiers, who stabbed at the enemy air with their knives, were sucked into the heavens as if swallowed by God’s throat. Blood filled the gardens, and bones cluttered the courts, and the lashings of this Weather wiped away the Vanity of Men.
And the King, with his Jade, was made also to vanish by the howling Tempest. He clutched onto his Fortune with his dying hands, until the strength of the wind ripped them away.
The kingdom of the Eldest and the Youngest and their father disappeared. And how quiet were the forests and the mountains after these days! In this time, no bird, no dragon, no gobelyn, disturbed the cracked blue palace with their furtive work.
More years passed.
But as the earth is built to be the home of Man, in its kindness it grew green things over the remnants of the blue city, the old bones and the blood, and began to feed new life again.
Villages were built. Children were born. Grandfathers took the Tale of the King and his Deceit to their graves. Danger, too, breeds. From progress Stupidity has risen anew, and the Gods, in their Wisdom, look down upon us and wait.
Sons and Daughters, we must not forget our failings. We must not forget that beneath all this pretty world lie still the bones of your ancestors, who died so hard on account of that Temptation.
Remember always that under the skin of your City rests still that one parlous Gem that seduced men to their Deaths.
Your life has been built on the Tomb of the Powerful Jade.
Take care to learn from this Tale, then.
Hark this:
Do not seek the Stone, or Disturb it Again.
“Erik,” I said. I was bending over the pages of the tale which I’d spread out on the coffee table, underlining a particular paragraph with a pen. “Look at these lines.”
“Hmmmmm.” He stretched out on the sofa, folded his hands over his chest, and peeped at me from half-shut eyes while I read aloud from the Legende.
The Eldest King brought his Stone and his people to the city within the Maze. He brought his Bride too, but blindfolded, so that she could not find her way out.
When the mask fell from her eyes and she gazed at her cage, the Witch saw she could never read all the labyrinth’s dangers and escape.
A few days before, I had noticed that quirk in de la Cueva’s writing style, when I’d examined her letters to her sister, Agata. There, she described to her sister Agata how the Maze of Deceit was a “difficult bugger to scan,” and I’d wondered how exactly one should translate that phrase. In these lines from the Legende, I had just come across a similar sort of question.
“It’s the word read,” I explained. “It’s a strange usage. The word has a complicated etymological history. The Spanish verb leer, ‘to read,’ is a derivative of the early Latin legere. That means to ‘gather’ and ‘collect,’ and also to ‘speak’ and ‘tell.’ “
“Very, very, very interesting,” Erik mumbled.
“It’s a mother word to the later Middle English legende, or legend— the tale—and the old French legion, which means ‘the gathering of men.’ I think that de la Cueva’s playing on the word, here. The witch is plotting to gather her rebel army, while she’s being led into the labyrinth. So de la Cueva is probably trying to convey the idea that she can’t marshal her forces. Or she might mean that the witch can’t read the labyrinth, as in ‘reading the situation.’ I’m thinking about translating this text into English—but it’s difficult because of her linguistic games. What I’m wondering is whether ‘read’ should be translated literally.”
His lips began to flutter halfway through my speech.
“Erik. Erik.”
“Yes, yes. I’m just concentrating.”
He concentrated while I scribbled down notes, and I’d filled up three pieces of paper before the coffee wore off and I felt my eyelids dropping, too. I leaned over onto what I thought was a pillow, listened to the sounds of the city traffic outside, and tried to puzzle out my questions about the tale. I wondered if my mother had also found the writing strange when she’d studied the legend. I wished I could ask her.
After a while, I heard the tumble of papers as they fell to the floor. I turned over and arranged my elbows in a jutting position so that I might get a bit more room on the sofa. I was going to go to bed in just one minute.
I could swear I felt Erik’s hand stroke my hair right before I fell asleep.
CHAPTER 17
Six A.M. The xeroxed pages of Beatriz de la Cueva’s Legende and Letters spread out on the dark hotel carpet in white scattered drifts, where they caught the sunlight misting into the windows. The light also wafted onto other jumbled remnants from the previous nig
ht: empty wineglasses and plates of disintegrated cake, and the sock that had slipped off Erik’s behemoth foot.
I leaned up on an elbow and looked at him. I brought my face closer up to his, curiously inspecting, not quite sure what I was doing. His face looked slightly mashed and creased, and his surprisingly long lashes fluttered against the cheek stained with the purple bruise. His cheek flickered when I nudged him. And then nudged him again.
He opened an eye, like a large overfed lion snoozing in a zoo.
“You dropped off,” I said. “You didn’t go to your room.”
“This is my room.”
“Oh. Well, never mind that. You’d better get up. We’re going to Antigua this morning.”
“Coffee,”he said.
“You get it.” I leaned down and touched the sore spot on my leg.
“You crushed me to pieces on this thing all night.”
“What?”
“You had your head in my lap.”
He sat up with his dented-looking hair waving around. “Oh. Sorry.”
“So you get the coffee.”
“All right.”
He heaved off and padded toward the phone, so that within twenty minutes we were both sipping from a Turkish-thick brew and nibbling on fried bread glittering with sugar.
We packed our books, pens, my etymological notes. But we didn’t feel human until we had showered and dressed—me in Wranglers and a sweater with a big pointed collar and red sneakers, Erik in his jeans and the large T-shirt with the decal of the Flores Stelae. The T-shirt was slightly too tight, and the icons on it stretched out across his chest. We walked out through the gilt-and-velvet trappings of the Westin’s foyer, sidestepping the other, posher guests. Then we went out to a nearby Budget office and rented ourselves a small blue Jeep.
Erik launched us forward, speeding, braking, chatting about the risotto of the previous night, and steering in his customary one-finger fashion down the highway. I looked out the window at the city and the encroaching grasslands, toward the hillsides flashing past, and the chicken buses with their rainbow stripes hurtling through the splashing high water. I rolled my window down to feel the wet breeze on my cheek and my arm. A dark arrow of birds marked the sky above us, and I watched them until they were out of sight.
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