Black Jade

by David Zindell

  Alter nearly a week of this practice, the other masters joined us in these meditations, and the Grandmaster, too. The Seven brought forth their crystals and used them to quicken our chakras' fires. As Abrasax told us. this would help open us to the angel fire and greater life.

  'That is the power and purpose of the Great Gelstei,' he told us one fine morning with the larks singing in the nearby cherry orchard. 'At least, the purpose of these small stones that we are Privileged to keep. We use them with you as we believe the Star People do: in the creation of angels.'

  'Ah. yes,' Maram said as he patted his overstuffed belly and let loose a rude belch, 'I am rather like an angel aren't I? Five-Horned Maram will become Maram of the Golden Wings. Soon, soon, I know, lesser men will have to bow to me and address me as "Lord Elijin".'

  Abrasax shook his head in reproach for his sarcasm, and told him, 'You need not worry about taking on that burden just now. The Way is very long - long even for the Star People, and we have rediscovered only part of it.'

  He looked at Kane as if in hope that he might say more about this ancient path that human beings walked toward the heavens. But Kane just stared at the conservatory's stone walls in silence.

  'I must say,' Maram grumbled out, as he pressed his hand against his belly, solar plexus, heart and throat, 'that I feel little different than I did before we began this work.'

  'That is because,' Master Storr chided him, 'your fires are blocked and trapped within your second chakra.'

  At this, Maram shot Master Storr a belligerent look, and wantonly waggled his hips. Master Storr stared back at him in disdain.

  Abrasax, however, was kinder. He smiled at Maram and said, 'Give it time.'

  'Ah, time,' Maram muttered. 'How much of it do I have left before the candle burns out?'

  He sighed as he stood up and gazed out the conservatory's window at the setting sun. Then he turned to Abrasax and said, 'You seem to have had all the time in the world. Grandfather, and yet that hasn't kept old age from snowing white hair on you, if you'll forgive me for speaking so bluntly.'

  Abrasax smiled at this. 'I will forgive you, Sar Maram, but things are not always as they seem. Just how old do you think I am?'

  Maram gazed at Abrasax, and I could almost hear him mentally subtracting ten years from his assessment in an effort to repay Abrasax's kindness: 'Ah, seventy, I should guess/

  Abrasax's smile widened. He said, 'I was born in the year that the Red Dragon destroyed the Golden Brotherhood and captured the False Gelstei. That was -'

  '2647!' Maram cried out. 'But that is impossible! That would make you a hundred and forty-seven years old!'

  'Please, Sar Maram - a hundred and forty-six. Abrasax said with a grin. 'I won't have my next birthday until Segadar.'

  'But that is impossible!' Maram said again. He looked from Abrasax to Kane. 'Only the Elijin are immortal and -'

  'We of the Seven,' Abrasax said, interrupting him, 'have not gained immortality - only longevity. And other things.'

  'Ah, what things?' Maram asked with great interest.

  In answer, Abrasax stepped over to him, and he laid his long, wrinkled hands on Maram's sides along his chest And then he lifted him as he might a child, straight up into the air. Maram although obviously no angel, did for a moment appear to be flying. He whooped as he beat his arms like wings. I blinked my eyes in disbelief, for with all the eating he had been doing during the past week, he must have weighed twenty stone.

  Abrasax set him down, and Maram stared at him as if he too couldn't believe what had just happened. He said to him, 'You look like an old bird, but you're as strong as a bear!'

  'Thank you, I think,' Abrasax told him.

  Maram clasped Abrasax's hand as if to test its strength. Abrasax squeezed back, and Maram winced and coughed out, 'Did I say a bear? A bull, you are, a veritable old bull. And all this from the work you do with your little crystals? What other, ah, powers have you gained?'

  Abrasax smiled at this and said, 'What powers would you most like to gain?'

  'Do you need to ask? A bull has only two horns, but I have five! A veritable dragon, I am, and oh how I burn! And so I would strengthen those fires that burn the most pleasurably.'

  'There is more to life, Sar Maram, than pleasure. And there is more to pleasure than this little tickle in the loins that you pursue so ardently.'

  'Yes, there is beer and brandy,' Maram said. 'And that which bestirs me down there is no little thing - it is more like dragon fire!'

  Abrasax said nothing to this as he studied Maram with his keen eyes.

  'Pure dragon fire, I tell you! And I can direct it as I will, no matter what Master Storr says about me being blocked!'

  'Can you? Then perhaps you wouldn't mind if we put it to the test?'

  'What kind of test?'

  'One that should prove more enjoyable than one of your drinking duels.'

  'Truly? Truly?' Maram smiled as he considered this. 'Then when do we begin?'

  Abrasax stepped over to Master Okuth to murmur something in his ear. Master Okuth bowed, excused himself, and left the room. We waited with the other Masters around the tea tables for him to go about his business, whatever it was. Half an hour later, he returned. He produced a small vial containing some dark, reddish substance, which he poured into Maram's cup of tea and stirred with a little silver spoon. Then he gave the cup to Maram to drink.

  'Ah, I must say,' Maram called out, sniffing his tea, 'that this potion of yours seems suspiciously like blood.'

  'It is a tincture made from the pineal gland of the adil serpent,' Master Okuth told him. 'It will help dissolve your blockage so that the kundala can rise within you.'

  Maram sniffed it again. 'Are you sure it won't poison me? Ah, like a snake's venom, paralyzing me?'

  'It will only paralyze your resistance.'

  I gazed at Maram, waiting for him to drink, or not - as did Kane, Master Juwain and Liljana. The Masters of the Brotherhood studied him as well. And then Maram, challenged once again to drink as part of a trial, shrugged his shoulders and downed the red-tinged tea.

  'Aach!' he cried out, coughing. 'Ohhh - oh, my Lord, that was vile!'

  He looked to Master Okuth for sympathy for his sufferings. But Master Okuth just looked at him sternly as he brought out his small, green heart stone. The other Masters held out their gelstei as well, and they beckoned for Maram to stand up and gathered around him.

  Then Abrasax instructed Maram: 'You must try visualizing that which you most love. Hold this image inside yourself, and let it call to you.'

  'Ah, you mean visualize her whom I love. Make her call to me.'

  'No, Sar Maram,' Abrasax said. 'I do not mean that. We have other potions and other exercises designed for the realization of fancies and dreams. You have told us that you are a man of this world. There is something in this world - something that you've held in hand and heart - that you love above all else. Hold it in your heart now. And in your mind. Let it call to your life's deepest fire and draw it upward, even as the kundalini strikes upward, toward the heavens.'

  Maram smiled at me then, and I understood that he took great satisfaction in keeping secret whatever it was that he found most to love. Was it Behira, I wondered? The Galdan brandy that Vishakan, chief of the Niuriu, had once poured for him? The smell of the earth on the most perfect day of his life? I thought that I would never know.

  Then Maram closed his eyes, and the Great Gelstei of the Seven began to sing to Maram in a rainbow of fire. The Masters worked their magic upon Maram for most of an hour. Finally, there came a moment when I felt something inside of Maram break open I sensed a great gout of flame moving up from his first and second chakras into his third, fourth and higher ones, as with companions passing from hand to hand a bright torch. Hotter and hotter it grew, like the sun in Soldru. At last Maram opened his eyes, and looked straight at me in triumph. He let out a shout of delight that shook the stones of the dome above us. His face seemed to light up as with firewor
ks as he cried out, 'It's as if the ecstasy of my loins is burning throughout my whole body and brain! You were right, Grandfather: this is more enjoyable than beer, or even brandy!'

  'Even more enjoyable,' Atara prodded him, 'than women?'

  'Ah, perhaps, perhaps.' Maram breathed deeply and raggedly as he held his hand over his heart. Then his eyes glazed with doubt. 'But it's almost too pleasurable, if you know what I mean.'

  Liljana, whose Maitriche Telu possessed other means of igniting the body's fires, said to him, 'And now you know why my sisters are dreaded.'

  'Dreaded or desired?'

  Liljana pointed her finger at him as she shook her head. 'It's good that we've taken shelter here rather than at one of our sanctuaries. If you weren't careful, my sisters would kill you with just such pleasure.'

  'Truly? Well, I must die sometime, I suppose, and I can think of no better way.'

  Whatever fate awaited us on our quest, however, during our final days at the Brotherhood's school, we had only thought and feeling for more life. As the spring quickened and the warm sun poured down its light into the valley - and the Seven continued pouring their gelstei's radiance into us - we gained strength like the new shoots of the cherry trees fairly singing with sap. My companions and I all felt more vital. We found ourselves needing less sleep, and during our waking hours we seemed more awake Although we did not gain the miraculous regenerative powers of Kane, whose flesh I had once seen regrow a severed ear. Abrasax told us that we might bear up beneath insults and wounds would kill lesser beings.

  'But it is your spirits, I believe, that will suffer the greatest trials,' he told us one fine morning. It was to be our last day in the valley of the Sun, and we had gathered with the Masters in the cherry orchard beneath a tree covered in snowy blossoms. 'The Lord of Lies will attack them, and more, try to drink your very souls. We must speak of this now. If your path is to take you through Acadu, there is one danger that you must avoid above all others.'

  Maram's face blanched while Master Juwain sat on the white-petaled grass with his hands folded like a closed book. And Master Juwain said, 'And what is that. Grandfather?'

  Abrasax looked at Master Juwain for a long moment as his lips pressed together. Then he said, 'I would like to give you a full account of this. Would you be willing to come with me into the library?'

  'Of course,' Master Juwain told him.

  'Estrella,' Abrasax said, turning toward the girl, 'there is a book that I believe will tell more than I can about this danger. It is, in a way, lost in the library's stacks. Would you help me locate it?'

  Estrella smiled as she nodded her head.

  The rest of us, curious as to how this new mystery might unfold, stood up and followed Abrasax as he led us toward the library. This building rose up near the center of the Brotherhood's grounds, and was made of the same white stone as every other building in the valley. Tall pillars fronted it. Its rear wall fairly pushed into the side of a hill. Although larger even than the great hall, it wasn't nearly so grand as the library of King Kiritan's palace - to say nothing of the vast, burnt-out Library of Kaisham.

  We followed Abrasax and the other masters up the seven stairs leading to the doorway and into the library's single room. There, sitting at long wooden tables, a dozen Brothers bent over reading old tomes; a dozen more worked hard to preserve the knowledge of the oldest and most fragile of them, transcribing words onto new paper with ink-blackened quills. This scratching sound filled the quiet room. The many dusty, crumbling books stacked on the shelves along the four walls seemed to await renewal at the Brothers' hands. I counted some seven thousand of them. As we learned, every one of them had been indexed and accounted for. I did not understand how one of them could have been lost.

  I looked in vain for the marvelous, crystal-paged books like the one from which Abrasax had read that night in the conservatory. I wondered if the Brothers might keep them locked away somewhere in a cabinet, but Abrasax did not say anything about this. He led us straight across the room to the far wall. Between two of the great shelves rising six feet above our heads, there hung a tapestry depicting one the greatest events of Eaean history: King Julamesh giving the Lightstone into the hands of Godavanni the Glorious. With great care, Abrasax moved aside this tapestry to reveal a small door set into the wall's stone. Without a word of explanation, he opened the door, which swung inward on creaking hinges to the passage beyond.

  'Ah, secret doors and dark passages,' Maram said with a nervous cough. 'This reminds me too much of Argattha. Where are you taking us, Grandfather?'

  Abrasax paused to turn and smile at us. 'Why, into the library.'

  'What do you mean?' Maram said, waving his hand at one of the ink-stained Brothers hard at work on a book. 'What do you call this place?'

  'It is only the reading room,' Abrasax told him. He turned to step through the doorway into the passage beyond. 'This is the library.'

  We followed him down an unlit stone corridor. A soft radiance suffused the opening twenty yards ahead of us. The Masters passed through this opening, out into the chamber beyond, and then so did I. I shook my head in disbelief. My belly fairly fluttered up into my throat as if I had jumped off a cliff into a pool, for I found myself gazing out into a vast, open space so deep that I did not want to look down for its bottom. I gathered with my friends and the Masters in a sort of loggia affording a view of this immense cavern. It was good that stone railings had been built at the edge of the loggia; otherwise it would have been easy for anyone, sick with the heights, to step off the edge and plunge downward-

  'Oh, Lord!' Maram said as he looked out over the railing. 'Oh, Lord!'

  The loggia proved to be part of the uppermost tier carved into the rock of this cylindrical pit and running around its circumference. It seemed half a mile, as a bird might fly, straight across to the tier's other side. There were many, many tiers: two hundred eighty-four, as Abrasax told us. Bands of rock separated each tier, and glowed with a pearly substance that could only be some sort of gelstei. It provided a soft, white light that illumined the entire library and its many books.

  There must have been millions of them. Each tier, twelve feet high, contained ten shelves which had been carved as even deeper recesses into the cavern's solid rock. As with any library, books packed each shelf. Abrasax led us out of the loggia into the first tier, and I ran my hand across the bindings of the old books. All were of leather and paper, and seemed no different from any of the other books that I had read. And they were all, in this section of this tier, as I could see from their titles, copies of various versions of the Saganom Elu or commentaries upon it. I had never dreamed that so much could have been written about this Book of Books, neatly arrayed on smooth, granite shelves curving off nearly to infinity.

  'I can see,' Master Juwain said to Abrasax, 'how a book might become lost here. If all the levels contain as many volumes as this one, there must be more than thirty million books!'

  'There are forty million, ten thousand and forty-three,' Abrasax informed us with a smile. 'To be precise.'

  'But that is more than the Great Library held!'

  'It is. But we Brothers have had longer to collect our books than did Khaisham's Librarians.'

  'But how did you acquire so many, Grandfather? And where are the crystal books that you call the vedastei? And who built your library, and how was it made?'

  Master Juwain had other questions for Abrasax, which Abrasax tried to answer as he led us back into the loggia, and then down a flight of stone stairs connecting to a loggia on the second tier.

  'None of us,' Abrasax said, nodding at Master Storr and Master Yasul, 'has been able to determine who built this library. When our order established itself here in the Age of Law, Grandmaster Teodorik discovered the library much as you see it today. It is possible that the Aymaniri - they call themselves the Ymanir now - melted out this cavern with firestones even before they built Agarttha. Or it might be older still: much, much older. Some of us believe it mig
ht be a wonder from the Elder Ages.'

  'But the books,' Master Juwain said, 'cannot date from the Elder Ages!'

  We had passed down to the eighth tier, and Master Juwain's hand swept out as he pointed outside the loggia at ancient tomes recording the Epic of Kalkamesh, the Gest ofNodin and Yurieth and other famous narratives, which were very much part of Eaean history.

  'No, you are correct,' Abrasax said to Master Juwain. 'These books we have gathered from across the world like any others. But it may be that the vedastei are not of this world.'

  He led us down ten more tiers, and the sound of our boots slapping against stone steps vanished into the immense open space of the library. I could almost hear Maram formulatmg his complaints as to the inevitable climb back up the many stairways. He must have wondered, as did I, if the library's makers had indeed been angels who could simply fly from tier to tier. It would have required hours, I thought, to retrieve a book from the lowest tiers and make the arduous climb back up into the reading room. As I watched Master Yasul and Master Virang follow Abrasax effortlessly down the stairways, it came to me that Brothers had endless hours and years to go about their work - and nearly bottomless stamina.

  We made our way down to the twentieth and then the twenty-fifth tier. Here the books of leather and paper gave way to those made from crystal. Abrasax told us that most of the books on these levels, as far as the Brothers had been able to determine, were of poetry and songs. At last we came out into a loggia on the thirty-third tier. Abrasax led the way out Onto this narrow curve of stone. We walked in near-silence past shelves of the marvelous vedastei. I could not guess at their subjects, for I could not read the script engraved into their colored and lacquered covers.