Jezi Yaga turned her head toward him. Her eyes grew brighter.
I closed my eyes as I looked for the killing sword of valarda inside me. But whether because of my promise or because I didn't hate Jezi as I did her father, I could not find it.
I looked down to see the skin along the back of Kane's hand changing color and hardening. I hated it that I could think of nothing to do.
Then there came a booming in the distance like thunder. It took me a moment to realize that it was a voice, a great human voice full of wrath. I could not make out what words echoed through the mouth of the gap, but I knew with a great leaping of my heart that they belonged to Maram.
'My man!' Jezi cried out. 'My dragon man!'
The hardening of Kane's body suddenly ceased. I risked looking over the top of my horse's saddle. A streak of brilliant red fire split the air. The fire grew even more incandescent and merciless as it fell upon Jezi Yaga's naked back. With my eyes, I followed the line of this flame from the top of the slope. There, on a shelf of rock, stood Maram. The ruby light that spilled forth from him dazzled my eyes so that I could not see clearly, but I knew that he gnpped his hands around his firestone.
'My man! My man!' Jezi called out to him. Her words came out more slowly now, for it seemed that she was having difficulty forming them. 'My sweet, sweet dragon man!' She stood as still and steady as a statue. She had turned her head halfway toward Maram. But it seemed that she could move it no farther. The skin across her neck and back had hardened into a carapace of stone. As the fire continued to fall upon her, the stone grew thicker. I sensed that instinct had driven her to protect her body from the fire.
'My man. My … beautiful man.'
Those were her last words. The flames from Maram's firestone burned straight into her, melting the stone that she made of her own flesh. A thick, glowing lava ran down her back and sides, and dripped in bright red splashes upon the ground. In order to assuage the anguish of Maram's red-hot flame, or so I sensed, Jezi hardened layer upon layer of herself, deeper and deeper, until even her muscles and bones began to petrify. At last, the power of the purple gelstei worked its way into the deepest part of her being. I felt the life leave her then, for as she had said, she must surely die if ever her heart turned to stone.
After that, I came out from behind Altaru and called up to Maram that Jezi Yaga was dead. He must have understood, for the fire pouring out of his red gelstei suddenly ceased. I walked up the slope toward the statue of Jezi Yaga as he walked down to us, with Daj close behind him. He came closer, and I ground my teeth together to see what she had done to him. He was entirely naked, even down to his bloody feet. Blood still oozed from the bites that she had taken out of his chest from his shoulders and belly, his hindquarters and legs, too, and nearly every other part of him.
'I knew you wouldn't abandon me,' he called out to me. 'You saved my life again, old friend.'
'Even as you saved mine,' I said, smiling at him as I clasped his hand.
He gripped his other hand around his firestone. I saw to my amazement that not a single crack marred its ruby interior.
'But how?' I said to him. 'How did this happen?'
While Estrella stood oyer Kane's still form, Master J uwain and Liljana helped Atara walk up to us. Then Maram looked at his red crystal and explained: 'I told Jezi that all my, ah, powers of love and life, my very potency, were bound up in this. I persuaded her to make it whole it again. And so with the touch of her eyes, she healed it.'
He reached out to touch Jezi's face, and he ran his fingers across her cheeks. As when he had first seen her, a thin layer of stone covered the purple jewels of her eyes.
'Amazing,' Master Juwain said, examining the firestone. 'I didn't know the purple gelstei had such powers.'
'In anyone else's hands, so to speak,' Maram said, 'I doubt if it does. Jezi, though, has had a thousand years to learn its secrets.'
Master Juwain considered this a moment, before his attention turned to more immediate things. He examined Maram and said, 'But what happened to your boots and clothes?'
'She burned them, too bad,' Maram told us. 'She said that I would never have need of them again, since I was to remain inside her house forever.'
He went on to tell of how Daj had forced his way through the crack in Jezi's house, and like an angel of mercy, had freed him. Daj stood basking in Maram's gratitude. It was nearly the proudest moment of his life.
'But what about your armor?' I asked Maram.
'Gone,' he told me. 'Jezi softened the steel and reformed it into a cauldron. She told me that she would put me in it, piece by piece, if I failed her.'
I could think of nothing to say to this, or to the torment that he had suffered. Then Liljana asked him, 'But if she wanted a child from you, why take bites and weaken you?'
'I think she was testing me,' Maram muttered. 'Testing my strength and the, ah, juiciness of my body, as she put it. My very blood. Then, too, old ways die hard, and I don't think she could help herself.'
Liljana looked him up and down, and said, 'At least she didn't bite off that unruly snake of yours.'
Maram's face flushed bright red beneath the rising sun as he covered himself with his hand and groaned, 'Oh, my snake — my, poor, poor, mighty snake!'
'That should be the least of your concerns,' Master Juwain said to him. 'We've got to see to those wounds of yours. They are many, and deep, and no animal's bite is as poisonous as a human being's.'
'All right,' Maram said, 'but first I want payment for what this monster did to me. Daj, hand me my dagger!'
Daj, who bore Maram's sword and dagger, moved to comply with his command. But then Atara, divining Maram's intentions, rested her hand on Jezi Yaga's face and called out to him: 'No, let her keep her eyes — please.'
Maram looked at me, and I nodded to him. Then he bowed his head to Atara as he muttered, 'All right then, I won't chisel them out. But it seems a pity to let a dead hunk of stone keep two of the great gelstei.'
After that, we walked down to the horses so that Master Juwain could tend to Maram and the stricken Kane as well. The sun rose higher above the gap, and its heat poured down upon us. I wondered how it had been for Jezi Yaga, dying beneath the hellish heat of Maram's firestone. I wondered if after all these years of doing monstrous deeds she could still be considered human. She stood all huge and stony above us, twisted about with a look of betrayal ad anguislh chiselled into her grotesque face. I decided that once, somewhere within her, there had lived a woman, and a beautiful one at that. And so I said a prayer for her spirit. Then I turned my eyes upon the great desert opening out to the west. Even at midmorning, the air had grown sweltering, and soon my friends and I might well wish that we, too, were made of stone.
Chapter 19
We bore Kane's heavy body down the long slope to more level ground, where we laid one of our sleeping furs on the rocky earth, and him on it. While Liljana and I set to erecting one of our rain cloths to shield out the fierce sun, Master Juwain mixed some bluish powder into a cup of water and then held up Kane's head and managed practically to pour it down his throat. It did not revive him, but it seemed that a little color returned to his ashen face. Then Master Juwain went to work on Maram. He cleaned Maram's wounds then daubed one of his pungent-smelling ointments into them. He bound them with clean bandages. After Maram donned his spare tunic, he lay down next to Kane, moaning and cursing because he could find no position in which one or more of his bitten parts did not press the hard ground beneath him.
'Oh, oh,' he murmured, rolling from side to side. 'This is worse than the arrow wounds I took outside of Khaisham — the worst yet. Please, Val, shoot an arrow through my heart and let me die!' We held council then as we decided what to do. With Atara injured, Maram missing pieces of skin and Kane lying as one dead, it seemed that we should retreat back into the gap, where we might recuperate by the stream. But we had no good way of carrying Kane, and as for Mam he was loath to set foot again anywhere in that cursed va
lley that Jezi Yaga had terrorized for so long. I think he feared that she might somehow return to life. It was Atara, though, who persuaded us to go on, saying, 'Already we are well into Soldru, and the desert will grow only hotter these next two months. We should cross it as soon as we can, or go back into Acadu and wait for autumn. But my heart tells me that it we do wait, we'll come into Hesperu too late.'
'If we actually reach Hesperu,' Master Juwain said. 'Which we won't if we have to cross the Crescent Mountains in winter.'
We agreed that if Kane survived and Maram could bear to ride, we must go on.
'I'll have to bear it, though I don't know how I will,' Maram moaned again, resting his hand on one of his fat hindquarters. 'I'm not going back into that valley of stone, and I'm certainly not going back to Acadu. I haven't sacrificed so many precious pieces of myself to go back, do you understand?'
I smiled to hear him speak such brave words, and I prayed that his courage wouldn't fail him in the miles to come.
'All right,' I said, 'then we'll wait here until Kane revives.'
Master Juwain, who had removed the black gelstei from Kane's forehead, rested his hand on top of Kane's white hair and looked at him with deep concern. 'I'm afraid I have no knowledge to help him.'
I came over to touch my fingers to Kane's fierce face. Despite the heat of the day, his skin was cool. I said, 'He will recover — I know he will. He cannot die.'
We all gathered in a circle around Kane, and we laid our hands on top of his chest. Try as I might, I could not feel the beat of his heart beneath my hand. It surprised me to see Liljana nearly in tears over the reduction of this mighty warrior, for she had often had harsh words with him. Estrella gazed at him with a fierce concentration. Whereas most people have trouble holding an object within their consciousness for very long, Estrella often took delight in dwelling with the flowers by a stream or in playing my flute for hour after hour. And more, she seemed able to love those things so completely that it was as if the object dissolved into her consciousness, and her consciousness into it, and so became as one. So it was now. I felt her love for Kane like a gentle flame within his heart. I felt Master Juwain's love as well, and Atara's, and that of the rest of us, for that was my gift. It was also my gift to strike deep into Kane's heart with the fire of my own. Strangely, when I opened myself this way, I found Estrella smiling at me. It almost seemed that she was waiting for me to pass this fire to her so that she might concentrate it into an irresistible force that would warm every fiber of Kane's being.
After a while, however, Maram could not hold the deep silence that had fallen over us. He shifted positions yet again as he pulled his bandaged hand away from Kane. Then he muttered, 'If Morjin could do this to Kane, he could do it to the rest of us, or anyone, once he gains full control of the Lightstone and the Black Jade. I think he'll be able to find us, anywhere in the world.'
I looked about us, out into the desert with its baked, red earth and sparse covering of tough-looking plants. I could see many miles out into the barren land to the north, south and west. And so anyone approaching from those directions could certainly see us beneath our white shelter flapping in the wind. In our passage across the desert, I thought, we would find neither shelter nor cover against the eyes of our enemies. I wondered with dread if Morjin could somehow see us or sense our whereabouts.
'He knew we were caught in the Skadarak,' I said to Maram and my other companions. 'And Jezi Yaga had been warned to look for us.'
'Warned by the second droghul?' Master Juwain asked. 'Do you think he is close?'
We all looked at Atara then, but she said nothing as she sat behind the silence of her blindfold.
Liljana, after gazing at the blue figurine that she took out of her pocket, looked up at me and said, 'Every time we use our gelstei he knows this. But can he really see us? You once said, Val, that you thought he couldn't.'
'That was before he stole the Lightstone,' I told her. 'Now, I don't know.'
I did not give voice to what I most feared: that now and forever more, Morjin would always be drawn to the kirax burning inside me like a vampire bat to blood.
'How is it, I wonder,' Master Juwain said to Maram, 'that you were able to use your stone without Morjin seizing control of it?'
'Well, in truth, I think he tried,' Maram said. 'I certainly felt him trying to wrest the firestone from my hand, as it were. It's strange how things fall out, isn't it?'
'Strange — how so?' I asked him.
'Well he tried to pour so much power into it that it would burst apart in my face. But this only gave it more fire.' Maram turned over on his side to stare at his ruby crystal. 'It's been so long since I wielded this, I don't know if I could have continued burning that monster without his help.'
'Surely he fears your stone,' Master Juwain said to him. 'Surely he remembers the doom that was laid upon it.'
Would Maram's red gelstei, I wondered, truly lead to Morjin's undoing? I leaned over to run my finger along its smooth length as I said to Maram, 'It's a miracle that the Yaga made this whole again, for I never thought it could be healed, as you always hoped. It gives me hope that somehow, in the end, we'll defeat Morjin.'
'Ah, then you've come to believe in the prophecy?' Maram said, smiling at me.
'I believe in us,' I said, smiling back at him. 'And in you. If you hadn't come when you did. .'
I said no more as I looked out from beneath our sun cloth, up the slope where Jezi Yaga stood like a gargoyle guarding the mouth of the gap.
'Ah, well, I did come, didn't I? As I always will, if you need me. But let's not congratulate ourselves too soon. We still have hundreds miles of desert before us, and without Kane, I don't see how we can ever make it.'
Once, as Kane had told us, he had crossed the southern part of the Red Desert, and so he knew of the wells and water holes that we must find if we were to survive.
'Don't worry about Kane,' I told him, looking down at Kane's still form. 'Does the sun rise in the morning? Does the forest fail to turn green in the spring?'
There seemed little to do then except wait. We all sat beneath our paltry covering, shifting about as the sun rose higher and the shadow cast by the cloth shifted as well. By noon, it had grown very hot. We sweated, and we drank from our waterskins to replenish ourselves. Flies came to feed on our sweat and bite us. Our horses stood chewing up what forage they could find. Out in the desert, lizards scrambled over sun-baked rocks. The burning air sucked the moisture from my eyes.
We sweated and suffered through the afternoon. While the others dozed, Estrella and I kept watch over Kane, who did not stir. I kept a watch on the wavering desert, looking as always for sign of our enemies.
I think I had never looked forward so much to the coming of the night. After endless hours, the sun melted like a gout of burning red steel into the horizon in the west. The desert grew beautiful then. The day's last light touched the mountains behind us with a starkness that unveiled their deeper life. The air cleared, and the sky fell a deep and glowing blue. After a while, the stars came out in their glittering millions. It grew so cool that I drew on my cloak. Liljana, now awake and tending to Kane, covered him with his cloak and helped Master Juwain pour some tea down his throat. He slept, on and on, as the stars brightened and the hyenas gave voice to their eerie cries far out in the desolate land around us. It was just before dawn, with the rocks of the desert nearly as cold as ice, when Kane finally opened his eyes. He looked at me through the light of the little fire that Maram had made out of some dead yusage. He smiled as his hand found mine and squeezed my fingers with a pitiful weakness. Then he murmured to me, 'So Val — so.'
Liljana set to making him some broth, which she insisted that he must drink. But Kane would have none of it. 'Meat,' he murmured again. 'I must have meat.'
In our stores, Liljana found a little ham, which was going bad, and some dried venison, which had fared much better. But Kane would have none of these either. He let his leonine head roll to the
side so that he could better look at me. And he said, 'Val — bring me fresh meat.'
Maram could aim an arrow straighter than I, most of the time, but he could scarcely move to draw a bowstring and was in no shape to hunt. And Atara, who might have been the finest archer in the world, was still completely blind. And so when the sun came up, I took up my bow and walked out into the desert. I gripped in my hand my brother Karshur's favorite hunting arrow, the one he had given me when I had set out on the great Quest. Around my neck hung my lucky bear claw, torn from the paw of the great beast that had nearly killed Asaru — and myself. It brought me luck that morning, or so I thought. Only three miles from our encampment I came upon a small herd of gazelles with their long, spiral horns and swishing black tails. I put Karshur's arrow through the heart of a young buck. I slung the dead animal across my shoulders and bore him back to our camp. Liljana took charge of the butchering, announcing that she would make a fine roast of its ribs. But Kane wouldn't wait for this feast. He called out to Liljana, saying, 'Bring me my meat, just as it is.'
I had watched lions eat raw meat before, but never Kane. At first, as he nibbled at the gobbets that Liljana cut for him, he was so weak that he could hardly chew. He seemed, however, to gain strength with every bite. Soon, he was tearing into red flesh with his long, white teeth, swallowing in huge gulps and calling for more meat. Sounds of deep delight rumbled in his throat; blood smeared his hands and mouth. His black eyes began filling with some of their oldfire. And still he worked at the gazelle's meat, downing an entire leg and the liver and then calling for more.
I could scarcely believe that a man could eat so much, but then reminded myself that Kane was scarcely a man. After he had filled his belly, he lay back to digest this feast. Then he stirred a few hours later to begin eating again. So it went through the course of that long, hot day. By the afternoon, he was able to stand on the stony earth beneath a blazing, white-hot sun; in the early evening, he began pacing about our encampment as he cast his bright eyes toward the south, east, north and west. He drew his long sword and began his nightly practice, stabbing straight out into the hearts of imagined enemies, slashing and slicing the gleaming steel with a renewed ferocity that tore apart the air. And still the deep, red fire of life blazed hotter and brighter inside him. When full night fell upon the earth and the lions roared out in the distance, Kane turned his savage face toward the wind and roared back at them. He thrust the point of his sword straight up toward the stars, and raised back his head in a long, triumphant howl to the heavens that it was good to be alive.
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