Black Jade

by David Zindell

  Later that day, we came down into a flatter country of low, wooded hills and rolling farmland. The air grew sweltering, and seemed to soak the earth like boiling water. We all sweated beneath our thin robes, and swatted at the tiny gnats that came to bite us. The road led us over streams on rotting wooden bridges, and then over a much larger stone construction joining the muddy banks of one of the Haraland's numerous rivers. Not far from it we encountered a woodcutter who had bound some faggots of oak across the back of his dog, a giant mastiff. The flesh of the dog's hindquarters had been ripped open: it looked as if the woodcutter had whipped him. I wanted to give this cruel-looking man a wide berth, but Master Juwain insisted that we should ask him for directions.

  'Jhamrul?' the man said to us, scratching at his greasy beard. 'I never heard of it. Why would pilgrims such as yourselves want to go there?'

  'We seek the Weil of Restoration,' Master Juwain told him, 'said to lie near there.'

  'The Well of Restoration? I never heard of that, either. And I don't want to.'

  The gaze of his bleary eyes took in Daj and Estrella sitting on their horses and finally came to rest on Kane. Something tightened inside the woodcutter then, and he gripped his axe and said, 'You pilgrims should keep to this road, and not go wandering about where you don't belong. Now, let me be on my way - I've work to do.'

  A farmer whom we came across an hour later proved no friend-lier and no more helpful. And so we continued down the road, asking after Jhamrul, although I dreaded what we might find around the next bend or awaiting us in the Haraland's towns. I hated nearly everything about this country: the steamy, stifling air overlaying field and forest, its sullen people, and even its strange flowers, all waxy with bizarre colors and exuding a sickening, too-sweet fragrance. The very smell of the Haraland tormented me, for it was of sweat and dung running off sun-baked fields into muddy rivers - and of blood, fear, decay and death.

  I had thought Kane Inured to such things - indeed, to anything and everything that might distress a man. But I sensed a great pain gnawing at his insides like a rabid rat. Thai night we made camp in a wood by a wheatfield, and alter dinner I stood with him at the edge of the trees looking out at the stalks of wheat glimmering in the starlight. And I said to him, 'I've never seen you like this.'

  He stood like a statue frozen by Jezi Yaga. Finally, a little light came into his face, and he said, 'How much of me have you really seen, eh?'

  'Was it Tarran, then? What happened with him?'

  'So, death happened, as it does to us all,' he growled. 'And before the end, just as I put my knife into him, despair. I saw it in his eyes, Valashu. I smelled it fouling his soul. This black, black, cursed thing.'

  I rested my hand on his shoulder and said, 'But you did what you had to do. How many times have you killed at need?'

  'So, how many times, eh?' He stared out into the wavering silver and black wheat. 'I tell you, if every blade of grass here were a man, then I've mowed down a thousand fields, ten thousand. And all unripened, don't you see?'

  I thought I did see, and I rested my other hand on the hilt of the sword that Kane himself had forged so long ago. And I said to him, 'It must all come to an end - the killing must.'

  'Yes, it must. And soon, Valashu, soon.'

  The black centers of his black eyes seemed to drink up what little light the stars cast down to earth here. And he said, 'The one we seek is close - I know he is. He is waiting for us. We must find him. I must. Morjin slaughtered Godavanni in front of my eyes, but this time, if I must, I'll send all his armies to hell to keep the Maitreya safe.'

  I gazed south and west at the other farms and woods stretching out to the horizon. 'The man told of in Jhamrul might or might not be the one we seek. It might be harder than we hope to find him.'

  'Hard, yes - but we will find him.'

  Behind us, Estrella sat around the fire with our other friends drinking tea. I inclined my head toward her, and asked Kane, 'Do you believe that she will show us the Shining One?'

  'I do. And in the end, the Shining One will show himself. Do you remember the three signs by which the Maitreya will be known?'

  I nodded my head. 'In his looking upon all with an equal eye, and his unshakeable courage at all times. And in his steady abidance in the One.'

  'So. So it must be. The Maitreya dwells, always, in the realm of the One.'

  I said to Kane, 'I know what you say must be true, but I don't really understand it. In Tria, I was told that the Maitreya was of this realm. He is always one of the Ardun, born of the earth.'

  Kane smiled at this and said, 'That ghost told you this, eh? The Urudjin whom the Galadin sent to deliver that verse. Do you remember it? Can you recite it for me, now?'

  I nodded my head again. Then I drew in a deep breath and called out:

  The Ardun, born of earth, delight

  In flowers, butterflies, bright

  New snow beneath the bluest sky,

  All things of earth that live and die.

  Valari sail beyond the sky

  Where heaven's splendors terrify;

  In ancient longing to unite,

  They seek a deeper, deathless light.

  The angels, too, with searing sight

  Behold the blazing, starry height;

  Reborn from fire, in flame they fly

  Like silver swans: to live, they die.

  The Shining Ones who live and die

  Between the whirling earth and sky

  Make still the sun, all things ignite –

  And earth and heaven reunite.

  The Fearless Ones find day in night

  And in themselves the deathless light,

  In flower, bird and butterfly,

  In love: thus dying, do not die.

  They see all things with equal eye:

  The stones and stars, the earth and sky,

  The Galadin, blazing bright,

  The Elijin, Valari knight

  They bring to them the deathless light.

  Their fearlessness and sacred sight;

  To slay the doubts that terrify:

  Their gift to them to gladly die.

  And so on wings the angels fly,

  Valari sail beyond the sky,

  But they are never Lords of Light,

  And not for them the Stone of Light.

  'So,' Kane said, his eyes agleam, 'the Maitreya dwells, always, in this world, as well. Ultimately, as Abrasax told us, the realm of the One and the realm of the earth are not two.'

  I thought about this for a while, then said, 'But I still don't understand why the Maitreya is never a Valari or even one of the higher orders, but always born of the Ardun.'

  'Do you remember what I told you in the Skadarak, that the Galadin must overcome their fear of death?'

  I nodded my head as I listened to the crickets chirping fast and loud in the fields. Behind us, I heard Atara laughing at some lewd joke that Maram had made. Liljana busied herself roasting up some honey-lemon tarts for our dessert, and their pungent fragrance wafted out into the air. For a single moment, the whole world seemed infinitely sweet.

  'So,' Kane said, 'this overcoming is hard. The path toward becoming an Elijin and Galadin is itself almost impossibly hard and long beyond measure. For everyone, that is, except the Shining One.'

  'But the Maitreyas are never of the Galadin!' I said.

  'No, they are not. But they could be, eh? That is the beauty of Shining Ones, their sweet, sweet, terrible beauty. A long lifetime it takes for a man to advance to the Elijin, and sometimes ages for an Elijin to progress to the Galidik order. But for the Shining Ones, this becoming could occur in the flash of a moment.'

  An old verse came unbidden into my mind:

  And down into the dark, No eyes, no lips, no spark. The dying of the light, The neverness of night.

  I told these words to Kane, then said, 'The Maitreya chooses death, then. Death over infinitely long life.'

  'No - he chooses one path over the other. He chooses
infinite life.'

  'But he dies!'

  'No, he lives, truly lives, such as few ever do. Every moment in this realm, everything he touches: a rock, a tree, a child's face, blazing with the light of the One.'

  'But he still must die. Why, then?'

  Kane looked off into the star-silvered fields around us, and his face fell sad and strange with an ancient yearning. And he said to me, 'It is his gift to us. The Maitreya lives with a wild joy of life; he dies with equal delight. "To gladly die", Valashu. It is this gladness that pours out through the Maitreya and the Lightstone in his hands, long before his end actually comes. It has great power. It fills the world, and all worlds, and joins the earth to the heavens. Of men it makes angels. It... heals.'

  I could feel his heart beating quick and strong deep inside him with a rhythm that matched my own. And then he said to me, 'In such gladness, how can fear ever dwell?'

  'His gift,' I whispered, looking up at the stars.

  'And that is why,' Kane said, 'the Maitreya is always chosen of the Ardun. The higher orders have already set out on the path toward immortality. For the Elijin, theirs is not to die until their ending as Galadin in a new creation - not unless they are done in by accident or treachery first. As for the Valari, who have beheld the beauty of Star-Home, with their eyes or in their dreams - they have already taken one step through the doorway of everlasting life into another world. Is it not so with you?'

  'Yes, it is so,' I said to him. 'I have stood with the true Valari, in a place where life was honored instead of death.'

  'So - so have I, long ago.' Kane's jaws closed with a snap like that of a wolf, then ground together as the muscles beneath his cheeks popped out. Then he said, 'But the Maitreya's whole purpose in being is to show that there is no true death.'

  '"To live, I die," I said, quoting from one of my father's favourite passages of the Saganom Elu. 'The faith of the Valari.'

  Kane smiled at this as he looked at me. 'This, too, is said: "They who die before they die - they do not die when they die."'

  'I wish that I could believe that,' I said, swallowing against the hot acids burning the back of my throat.

  'So, beliefs are useless,' Kane snarled at me. 'You must know it - or know it not.'

  'I know this realm,' I said, looking out at the wheatfields of the Haraland. Somewhere down the road or across wide rivers, I knew that we would come upon other traitors or enemies such as Tarran. We would see soldiers hacked to pieces and grandmothers torn and bloodied, and men nailed to crosses of wood. 'If this is truly the same as the realm of the One, then why grieve death or the

  need to kill?'

  Kane's jaws clenched, and so did his fists. His eyes seemed to grow darker, like two black holes drilled into his savage face. For a moment, I thought he wanted to draw his sword and run me through with cold steel. And then something within him softened, and he said to me, 'That is Morjin's mistake - and Asangal's. I did not say that the two realms are identical, only not two. All that is, here on earth, the flowers and the butterflies, no less Morjin himself, are precious. Life is, Valashu - so infinitely precious. But so many live almost wholly within this realm. They do not see the other realm. They do not know. Thus they do not really live. When they die, they truly die and lose everything. And when such as I, and you, send them on before their time, before they ever open their eyes, we cut them off. . . from everything. And that's the hell of it. The bloody, bloody hell of this cursed world we've made for ourselves.'

  He drew in a long breath as he looked at me. Then he said, 'And that is why we must find the Maitreya. Keeping Morjin from using the Lightstone is one thing. But it is another to keep the world from losing its soul.'

  Without another word, he whirled about and left me there at the edge of the wheatfield. Would we ever find the Maitreya, I wondered? Tomorrow we would continue our journey into this stifling realm of our enemies that I had hated nearly upon first sight. Somewhere on the road ahead of us, I sensed, we would find torment, blood and death, for that was the world. But the world must be more than that, too, or so I told myself. And with that small comfort, I turned back toward our campfire to listen to Alphanderry sing and to eat some of the honey tarts that Liljana had made for us.

  Chapter 33

  In the morning we continued down the road, the Senta Road as the Hesperuks called it, and according to the Sentans. the Iskull Road, for it led almost straight south through the whole length of Hesperu, paralleling the Rhul River and passing through the great city of Khevaju on its way to Iskull, where the Rhul emptied into the Southern Ocean. The country flattened out even more, with the low hills shrinking down into a steaming green plain. The first good-sized town we came to was named Nubur, and there we asked after Jhamrul. No one seemed to have heard of it. In the town square, built around a widened portion of the Senta Road, we went from shop to shop querying blacksmiths, barbers and the like, and attracting too much attention. A wheelwright wondered a little too loudly why pilgrims would seek a place called Jhamrul instead of Iskull, where pilgrims for ages had embarked from or landed in Hesperu. Finally, to a cooper named Goro, we admitted that we sought a place called the Well of Restoration.

  'The Well of Restoration, you say!' Goro barked out as he eyed us. We had dismounted, and stood outside his shop near the huge barrel that signified his trade. 'Tell me about this Well of Restoration!'

  Goro was a big man, with a big voice that carried out into the square, where many Hesperuks went about their business or took a little rest beneath one of the spreading almond trees. In shape, with his huge chest and deep belly, he resembled one of the barrels that he made out of wooden staves and hoops of iron. His black curly hair had been trimmed close to his roundish head, as had his beard. His dark eyes seemed a little too small for his face, which had fallen suddenly suspicious. I explained that we were returning from Senta, where we had learned of a fount of healing that might make Atara whole.

  'Too many have been blinded these days,' Goro said as he looked at Atara. For a moment, I felt a tenderness trying to fight its way up from inside him. But then his heart hardened, and so did his face as he said. 'But then, many have made errors and suffered their correction.'

  'I don't know what you mean by error,' Atara said, 'or its correction. I was blinded in battle, where an evil man took my eyes.'

  'That, in itself, is an error,' Goro told her. He looked from me to Master Juwain, and then at Liljana and the children. 'Not to know error is counted by some as an Error Major, and if the igno-rance is willful or defiant, even as an Error Mortal. You should have been told this when you got off your ship in Iskull.'

  'We did not come to Senta by way of Iskull,' Liljana told him, 'and so we are new to Hesperu.'

  Our encounter had attracted the interest of a bookseller, who had come out of the adjacent shop. He was a small, neat man wearing an impeccably clean tunic of white cotton trimmed at the cuffs and hem with blue silk. His black ringlets of hair gleamed with a fragrant-smelling oil, and he wore gold rings around four of his ten fingers. He presented himself as Vasul, and he said to Goro: 'What is this talk about Errors Major and Errors Mortal?'

  A dozen yards out in the square, whose shiny cobblestones seemed to have been scrubbed of the stain of horse dung and swept clean of the tiniest particle of dirt, a few of the other townsfolk passing along had turned their curious faces toward us. I decided that this would be an excellent time to make our farewell and be on our way.

  But just as I took a step toward my horse, Goro called out to me: "Just a moment, pilgrim! We were discussing errors, and yours at that.'

  In looking at the stubbornness of censure that befell Goro's face, I had a keen sense that things would go worse for us if we fled instead of remaining. And so I, and my friends, waited to hear what Goro would say.

  'Let us,' Goro told, 'read the relevant passages in the Black Book. Will you oblige me, pilgrim?'

  He stared straight at me, and it took me some moments before I realized that
he was referring to that compendium of evil and lies called the Darakul Elu. Morjin had written it himself in mockery of the Saganom Elu. Most editions of it were bound in leather dyed a dark black, hence its more common name.

  'We are traveling light,' I told him, 'and it seemed wise not to burden ourselves with books.'

  I glanced at Master Juwain; this was one time where his copy of the Saganom Elu was nowhere to be seen, and I silently gave thanks for that.

  'A burden!' Goro cried out. He turned to Vasul and said, 'Do you see? They willfully keep themselves in ignorance. Is that not an Error Mortal?'

  'It might be,' Vasul said, 'if they were of Hesperu. But other lands have other ways.'

  His words, however, which were meant to placate Goro, seemed only to anger him. Goro's dark face grew darker as he barked out: 'My son, Ugo, was killed last year, in Surrapam, fighting the errants so that our priests might bring the Way of the Dragon to the north. His blood washes clean the ground where he lies. After the campaign is finished, all the errants there who haven't been crucified will turn to the Way. And so it will be, soon, in all lands. And so these pilgrims would do well to learn our ways, since their journey has afforded them so great a chance.'

  Now a man whose clay-stained hands proclaimed him as a potter stepped closer, and so did a middling old woman and a much younger one with a baby girl in her arms: a mother, daughter, and granddaughter, or so I guessed. I wanted badly to jump on Altaru's back and gallop out of this trap of a town, but it was too late for that.

  'All families,' Goro instructed me, 'must keep at least one copy of the Black Book. If you are pilgrims bound by blood or oaths, you count as a family.'

  'Then we should treat them as a family,' Vasul said to him. 'Where is our kindness to these strangers? Where is our hospitality?'

  'The best kindness we could offer them is to correct their errors.'

  'Then let us help them,' Vasul said to Goro. 'Wait here with them, won't you?'