Black Jade

by David Zindell

With that, he disappeared into his shop, and then came out a few moments later bearing a large, thick book. Gold leaf had been worked into the edges of its pages; a large dragon - of a red so dark it gleamed almost black - had been embossed upon the book's leather cover. More leaf, I saw, had been used to render the dragon's eyes a brilliant gold.

  'One of my scribes,' Vasul said to us, 'finished lettering this only last week. As you can see, it is beautifully illuminated.'

  He opened the book to show us golden characters through which sunlight streamed as through glowing windows. He came to a page worked with the brilliant figure of the angel, Asangal, giving the Lightstone into Morjin's outstretched hands. Another page depicted the crucifixion of Kalkamesh. The scene's vividness nearly made me weep: a great being nailed to stone on the side of a black mountain, as above him a dragon beat the air with his leathery wings and used his talons to tear out Kalkamesh's liver.

  'Here,' Vasul said to me, coming to a page near the middle of the book. 'This passage is from the Healings, under Miracles. Read it to us, won't you?'

  He gave the book to me, and tapped a gold-ringed finger against the top of the page. The finely-wrought letters inked into the paper burned my eyes like fire. I could not bring myself to give voice to the words; it was like holding in my mouth pure poison.

  'Read!' Goro told me. 'It's nearly noon, and I've a barrel to finish.'

  More people had now gathered around. I began mumbling out the words of the passage.

  'Louder!' Goro barked out. 'I can't hear you!

  I drew in a deep breath, and with greater force, if not enthusiasm, I recited:

  " ' If a man should lose limb or eye, let him not despair or drink the potions of conjurors or witches. Let him turn the eye of his soul toward the One's light and he who brings it to earth, for the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya."'

  I finished reading, and Goro suddenly shouted at me: 'The only true restoration is in the hands of the Maitreya! Remember this, pilgrim! This Well of Restoration you seek is a figment. And your desire to seek it must be corrected.'

  I told Goro that I would surely remember the passage. But this wasn't good enough for him.

  'Read it again!' he commanded me.

  'What?' I said.

  'Read it again, nine times more, and louder.' He turned to look at Master Juwain. 'And the rest of you shall recite it, ten times each!'

  'By what authority,' I asked him, 'do you demand this of us?'

  By now, Goro had so swollen up with righteous anger and pride that it seemed his head might burst. And so it was Vasul who answered for him, saying. 'It is upon everyone to correct the errors of each other, and especially their own. That is the Way of the Dragon.'

  Vasul, and others crowding in close, waited to see what I would do. But Goro lost patience, and called out: 'Read the passage!'

  And so I did. Nine more times I read out loud these duplicitous words of Morjin. I gave the book to Master Juwain, and he reluc-tantly recited to Goro and Vasul, and to the crowd, as well. So did Maram, Liljana and Daj; so, in a quavering voice that nearly broke my heart, did Atara. When she failed to pass the book to Estrella, Goro berated her.

  'All of you shall recite the verse,' Goro commanded.

  If Atara had still possessed eyes, she would have fired off arrows of hate with them. She snapped at Goro: 'But the girl is mute!'

  At the sharpness of her voice, Goro's fingers clenched as if he longed to correct her contempt with his fist. But then he asked Atara, 'Can she see still read?'

  'No, she never learned the art.'

  'Can she still hear?'

  Atara looked at Estrella and nodded her head.

  'Good,' Goro said. 'Then she will have heard the passage enough that she might recite it within her heart. Ten times.'

  He turned his gaze on Estrella, who stood there on smooth cobblestones staring back at him. In the silence that fell over the square, everyone waited as they watched Estrella. She remained almost motionless as the leaves of the nearby almond trees fluttered in the breeze. Whether or not she recited Morjin's words within herself, not even the wind could know.

  Finally, Goro grabbed up the book and extended it toward Kane. 'Read!' he told him.

  Kane did not move. His eyes looked past the big black book and fixed on Goro's eyes. I thought he might be ready to tear them out of his head.

  'Read, now, pilgrim! We haven't got all day!'

  I felt Kane's fingers burning to grip the hilt of his sword. I knew that he could whip it out of its sheath and strike off Goro's head before Goro had time to change the expression of his belligerent face.

  At last, with a furious motion, Kane took hold of the book. By bad chance, it seemed, it fell open to the illumination of Kalkamesh's crucifixion. Kane stared for a long few moments at the dragon's bloody talon ripping open Kalkamesh's side. I knew he trembled to cut off Goro's life years before its time, and Vasul's life, too - and the lives of a nearby baker and barber and all the other townspeople gathering in the square. The fire In Kane eyes told me that he had returned to his savage self, and I hated myself for liking him better that way. 'So,' Kane growled. 'So.'

  His blunt fingers fairly tore through the book's pages. When he came to the passage that we had all read, he snarled out:

  '"If a man should lose limb or eye, let him not despair or drink the potions of conjurors or witches. Let him turn the eye of his soul toward the One's light and he who brings it to earth, for the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya."'

  'There!' he shouted at Goro.

  'Good!' Goro said to him. He shot Kane a dark smile. 'Now complete the passage for us.'

  'What!'

  'The passage is incomplete. You'll find the words that should come next, if you search in your heart for them.'

  If Kane searched in his heart just then, I thought, he would find a ravening beast that would tear both Goro and himself apart.

  'I don't know what you're talking about!' Kane said.

  'Then I shall help you.' Goro seemed very satisfied with himself as he smiled and drew in a breath of air. Then he recited the selfsame passage, ending with:

  '"For the only true restoration lies in the hands of the Maitreya ... and his name is Morjin!"'

  'But that is not written!' Kane said, smacking his knuckles into the book.

  Vasul pulled at his rings of oiled hair, and said to him, 'It is written, surely. The Darakul Elu is a living text, dwelling within the heart of the One, and therefore within the hearts of men. It always grows, even as a child grows to a man and then to an angel. And surely, Lord Morjin is the Shining One.'

  A gray-haired woman standing in close called out in an awed voice, 'The heralds came with the news just last month, on the thirteenth of Marud: Lord Morjin has claimed the Lightstone and has been revealed as the Maitreya. And so his dominion is not just all of Ea, but over men's minds and hearts, as well.' And over our destinies!' another woman shouted. '"He is the coming of the sun after night," someone else quoted. "He is the bringer of the new age."'

  'He is coming, himself!' the potter called out. 'It is said that Lord Morjin will soon visit Hesperu, and honor King Arsu for his conquest of Surrapam. He brings blessings for all those who have battled the errants.'

  This news, if news it really was, caused many crowding the square to let out a great cheer of anticipation. But not everyone seemed to shout with equal enthusiasm. I felt sure that the cobbler standing behind the potter loudly praised Morjin only so that he could be heard praising Morjin. So it was with the woman holding the baby, and the barber, and others. A few failed to join the chorus altogether. One of these, a large man bearing an iron-shod staff, rubbed at the scar of a dragon that had been branded into his cheek. As it had been in Sakai, too many of the people here bore signs of torture: brandings, amputations, tongue clippings and eyes put out. I prayed that none of these mutilations were the correctives for Errors Minor.

  Goro still waited for Kane to r
ecite the passage - and the noxious amendment that he had added to it. I thought that Kane would rather die than say these words, but he surprised me, spitting them out nine more times to Goro's and Vasul's satisfaction. Then he turned to climb on top of his horse.

  'Where are you going, pilgrim?' Goro said to him. 'We're not finished here.'

  'No? Are we not?'

  Kane's hand crept closer to his sword's hilt. I felt sure that he was about to commit an Error Mortal.

  'What would you have of us?' I asked Goro as I grabbed Kane's arm.

  'It's not what I would have,' Goro said. He looked at Vasul. 'I believe their errors call for, at the very least, a payment to the Dragon.'

  'I agree,' Vasul said, smiling at me. 'I should think a dragongild of at least twenty ounces. Gold ounces, of course.'

  'Twenty gold pieces!' Maram cried out. 'That is robbery!'

  'No,' Vasul told him, 'it is only correction. As it is said in the Black Book, gold washes clean the stain of error.'

  Various mumblings and protests from the crowd gave me to understand that this was also said of pain and blood.

  'How can our gold filling your pockets,' Maram asked him, 'wash anything clean?'

  Where his question angered Goro, it seemed only to wound Vasul. He held out his hands as if to ask why fate had driven him to deal with unreasoning errants. Then he explained. 'The book I have given you would sell for five gold ounces itself, and is in any case priceless. The dragongild that we ask of you will be given to the Kallimun school up on Crow's Hill, that the children of Nubur shall be educated to avoid errors in all their forms. In the end, all belongs to the Dragon, anyway.'

  'So,' Kane said to Vasul, 'since you ask this dragongild of us, we are free not to pay it, eh?'

  Goro stood eyeing Kane as if wondering if he had the strength to crush the breath out of him. But it was one thing, I thought, to heft barrels all day and another to grapple with Kane.

  'You're free to commit any errors you wish,' Goro snapped at him. 'We've only suggested these correctives to help you. If you disagree with our assessments, we can always go up to the Kallimun castle. It's said that Ra Parvu is the one of the wisest of the Red Priests. He is far more skilled than we in distinguishing Errors Minor from Errors Major.'

  Out in the crowd to my left, I took note of a pot-bellied man I recognized as a carpenter. I overheard him proudly telling someone that he had kept the Red Priests well supplied with crosses as correctives to Errors Mortal.

  Liljana stepped up closer to Goro and told him, 'We don't have twenty gold pieces. We're only poor pilgrims trying make our way to Iskull.'

  'Iskull?' Goro said. 'But you told that you were trying to find a Well of Restoration.'

  'We,' Liljana said, looking from Kane to me, 'have realized that it cannot exist, after all. And we thank you for helping us see our error.'

  Goro's beady eyes bored into Liljana to determine if she was mocking him. Although Liljana no longer possessed the means to smile at him in reassurance, her kindly, round face filled with sincerity and a great calm. She seemed genuinely grateful to Goro and Vasul. All her skills as the Materix of the Maitriche Telu, I thought, went into this persuasion. I marveled at how the pitch of her voice seemed perfectly calibrated to pump up Goro's vanity even while soothing his belligerence and urge toward cruelty. I sensed that she waited for me; to help things along. I needed only to smile at him and bow my head in acquiescence, and most of all, to nudge his heart with the slightest touch of the valarda. But I could not. And so, for a moment, our fate hung in the balance.

  'If you determine that we should give all our money to the Dragon,' Liijana said to Goro, 'then we won't be able to make the journey to Iskull. And so we won't be able to greet Lord Morjin as he comes up the Senta Road, as we would like to do. And so what chance would we have of seeing sight restored to our poor companion?'

  At this, Liljana gazed at Atara. Her words pleased the crowd and softened the hearts of both Vasul and Goro. In the end, Liljana was able to bargain down our 'dragongild' to ten gold pieces: a true miracle, considering that we were in no position to bargain.

  'Ten gold ounces, then,' Goro finally said to Liljana. 'Alonian archers, is that right?'

  Although Goro and Vasul might not like strangers bringing dangerous sentiments into their realm, they had no objection to good Alonian gold. As we would learn, the Hesperuk currency had been debased to near worthlessness to pay for the Surrapam war.

  'Good!' Goro called out as Liljana counted the coins into his hand. 'Then I would like to wish you well on your pilgrimage. May the mercy of the Dragon be upon you!'

  Vasul and others in the crowd repeated this blessing, then bade us farewell. As quickly as we could without appearing overhasty, we mounted our horses and made our way out of the square. We said nothing as we rode through Nubur's streets to the edge of the town. Even through the wheatfields and farmland stretching on for five miles to the south, we kept our mouths shut and our eyes upon the road. The iron shoes nailed to our horses' hooves beat against worn stone, again and again. Then, at last, as we entered a forest full of cluttering blue and yellow birds, Maram sighed out: 'That was close.'

  'The mercy of the Dragon, indeed!' Kane snarled as he looked at Atara riding on in silence. He turned in his saddle to gaze back toward Nubur. 'I'd like to steal back there tonight and rouse those two thieves from their beds with a little of my mercy. How many other travelers do you think they've squeezed gold from with their little game, eh?'

  'Their little game might have gotten us killed,' Maram said, 'but for Liljana's cleverness. And deceit.'

  Maram's words both pleased and wounded Liljana. She looked at him and huffed out, 'I said nothing to that greedy cooper that wasn't true.'

  'Ah, is that true? Would you really like to greet Morjin upon this road?'

  The harsh lines that seamed Liljana's face hinted at how badly she would like to greet Morjin: with the full fury of her mind pouring itself out through the lens of her blue gelstei. Even as Atara would like to greet him with arrows and I would like to give him the blessings of my sword.

  'One thing seems clear,' Liljana said. 'We can't go about this land telling everyone we're seeking the Well of Restoration. That surely is an error.'

  'I'm afraid that we can't tell everyone, either, that we're seeking the Red Dragon,' Master Juwain said. 'I would not want the Kallimun to hear that we eight pilgrims were asking after him.'

  'Perhaps,' Maram said, scratching his beard, 'it's too dangerous for us to pose as pilgrims at all. I think we need a new guise.' 'What, then?'

  As we clopped along down the road into a wall of moist, hot air, Maram looked up at a lark perched on the branch of a teak tree and singing out its sweet song. And Maram smiled as he said, 'I have an idea.'

  Later that day we came to a town called Sumru, where we spent the night camping out in the surrounding woods. Before dawn, with the air still nearly black and whining with mosquitoes, we roused ourselves and turned west onto a narrow load leading out of Sumru through the forest. The great teak trees and thick undergrowth, we hoped, would hide us from the eyes of our enemies, if any had been sent to spy upon us. After a few hours of swift riding, we came into a more populous region, and turned northwest onto a muddy little road that took us into a town named Ramlan. There, with the last of our money, we went about the various shops making purchases: bright bolts of cloth and colored swatches of leather; herbs and paper and ink; paints of various colors, and brushes, large and small; a great cart that it would take two horses to pull, and a load of planks of cured wood to fill it. And other things. Kane went to a swordsmith and ordered knives made according to precise specifications. From one of Ramlan's blacksmiths, Hartu the Hammer, as he was called, he also ordered chains and a cask of nails. We had to wait all the rest of that day and half the next for Hartu to pound out the nails from long strips of glowing red iron. Which he had finished this hot, sweaty work, he gave the cask to Kane, and tried to dispel his uneasiness
toward him, and us, by saying, 'I haven't made so many nails since Lord Mansarian came through here five years ago to punish the errants up toward Yor. You haven't said what you want all this iron for; I should think the nails are too small for putting anyone up on wood, even children - ha, ha!'

  I didn't like his nervous laughter, or the way he looked at Daj and Estrella. I didn't like the way the people of Ramlan looked at us, as if wondering why pilgrims had left the Senta Road to go wandering about the countryside. I was glad to help hitch two of pur packhorses to the cart, and then lead the way out of Ramlan even deeper into the Haraland.

  We spent the rest of the day working along muddy farm roads, turning left or right, north or south, so as to confound any who might witness our passage and want to report us. Toward dusk we entered a large wood and found what seemed an old track leading into the heart of the trees. It seemed perfect for our needs. While Kane guarded our rear, I rode on ahead to look for footprints or other sign of habitation, but it seemed that no one had used this track for a long time. We finally came into a clearing. The heap of stones at its center looked to be a cottage that had fallen in upon itself ages ago. Kane wanted to set to work immediately, but we had to use the last light of day to make our camp.

  In the morning, though, Kane rose at dawn, and began banging nails into the wooden planks with a great noise that awoke everyone. I helped him build a sort of small chalet onto the bed of the cart, and so did Daj and Maram. While we sweated in the humid morning air, Liljana took out scissors, needle and thread to shape and sew the bolts of cloth together. Atara helped her. This surprised me, for I had not known she possessed such skills. As she put it, 'I was once a princess, and my father expected me to learn the womanly arts - so that I could marry well and provide him with grandchildren.'

  Estrella, however, had little talent for sewing, and so she played the flute for us to provide music while we worked. Alphanderry came forth and accompanied her, singing out a rather bawdy ballad whose rhythms seemed timed to reinforce the hammering of Kane's nails. Later that day, when it came time to paint the little traveling house that our cart had become, Estrella picked up a small brush while Alphanderry continued entertaining us. As it happened, she had a rare gift for using brightly colored paints to render birds and flowers and the like, though she could not tell us where she had come by it. Alphanderry, of course, could grasp no brush in his hand, nor anything else. But day by day, he seemed to appear ever more substantial, as if he was somehow growing used to the world again. He called out ideas for figures to Estrella, and to Kane and Maram, who also helped with the painting. I took great delight in the delight with which Estrella brought to life a golden astor tree and a rising sun and a dark blue panel full of stars. I had to stop her, though, from depicting a great silver swan. When she discovered that her enthusiasm had carried her away into an error that might have betrayed us, she wasted no time in self-recrimination, but only used her brush to quickly transform the swan into a winged horse. It joined other animal figures, some fantastical and some not: diving dolphins and a chimera; an eagle in flight and a two-headed serpent and a great blue bear. Liljana suggested we paint a dragon against one of the red panels, but it was thought that the Hesperuks might take offence at a golden or green one. None of us could bear to see a red dragon defiling our wildly and beautifully decorated house, though Kane wryly remarked that it would do no harm to paint a red one against red. That way, we could always tell the curious that the great Red Dragon always dwelled within our house, unseen, as it did within the hearts of men.