Black Jade ec-3

by David Zindell

  I said to Maram, 'you're crushing this man — let him up!'

  I still worried that the fall had broken something inside my adversary, but this tough desert man had little trouble sitting up. He sucked at his bitten tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood before saying to me: 'My name is Yago of the Soah clan of the Masud. My son is Turi. And who are you?'

  While Kane stood eyeing Turi, and Turi him, the rest of my companions gathered around Yago. I presented myself as Mirustral and Kane as a knight called Rowan, and everyone else according to the names that we had chosen to use on our journey, I told Yago that we were pilgrims who sought the Well of Restoration.

  'Pilgrims, you say?' He looked at me as his black eyebrows pulled together in doubt. He pointed his sharp chin toward the jewelry that Daj had collected and said, 'Pilgrims pay gold to pass through our lands, they do not collect it. In truth, they no longer pass this way at all.'

  'We were afraid,' I said, looking at the bangles and bracelets mounded on the sheepskin, 'that the hyenas would take your kinsmen into the desert and their possessions with them. We collected their things that such a treasure might not be lost.'

  I told myself that this was true in spirit; at least I hoped that Daj would want it to be true.

  'Treasure it is,' Yago said, regarding the pile of jewelry. 'Where did you think to take it?'

  'Nowhere,' I said. 'We've burdens enough to bear, and little water to keep us and our horses bearing them.'

  Liljana showed him our waterskins, which were nearly empty, and reiterated that we sought the Well of Restoration, not jewels and gold.

  Yago pulled at his beard as he regarded the bodies around us. He said to me, 'Well-poisoners you cannot be, to leave yourselves so little water. But if pilgrims you really are, you've found instead the Well of Death.'

  We told him a little of our journey then, and he told me of his. It seemed that the lone mountain to the south of us was sacred to the desert tribes, who called it Raman, the Pillar of the Sky. Yago and his son had made a pilgrimage to it in order to seek visions.

  'My son and I,' he told us, 'journeyed from the hadrahs in the southeast to stand beneath the great mountain. And then we rode on here to find the Ayo poisoned.'

  He explained that the dead around us were of the Ayo clan, whose people often camped at the well at the beginning of summer. Kane nodded his head at this as he stared at the mountain to the south. 'You say that you are of the Masud tribe? What happened to the Taiji, then, who once claimed this well?'

  Yago's eyes grew bright with astonishment. 'You know of the Taiji? It has been long, past my grandfather's great-grandfather's time, since they dwelled here. But the Taiji are no more.'

  His face burned with pride as he continued: 'Long ago, we of the Masud came up from the southern hadrahs, while the Zuri came out of the pans to the west. Each tribe took half of the Taiji's lands, leaving the Taiji with only sand to eat and air to drink.'

  He spoke of the annihilation of the Taiji as one might the slaughtering and division of a chicken. He spared little more sentiment for the sheep baahing in the scrub outside the encampment, or indeed, for the poisoned people of the Ayo clan whose bodies were rotting in the sun.

  'The dead are dead,' he told us. He licked his dry lips. 'Soon, we too will have only air to drink, and we will join them.'

  'But you must know of other wells?' Maram said to him. He wiped dusty beads of sweat from his face.

  'Yes, I know,' Yago said calmly as he pointed across the blazing sands to the west. 'The nearest well lies that way, seventy-five miles. It belongs to the Zuri. Do you think to claim it from them?'

  'We left gold coins at the first well that we came to,' Maram said, pointing to the east. 'That is good,' Yago said. 'And the Zuri will take your coins — your horses, weapons and clothing, too. They do not abide pilgrims.'

  'But there must be other wells!' Maram said. 'You must know where we can find water!'

  Yago smiled grimly at this and said, 'We'll find all the water we wish in the Hadrahs of Heaven, when we rest with the dead.'

  'But what about the hadrahs in the southeast that you told of? Where there are trees and enough water to grow wheat and barley?'

  'They are two hundred miles distant,' Yago said. 'This time of year, there is no water along the way. We cannot return there.'

  'But we can't just lie down and die!' Maram said.

  I couldn't help smiling as Yago turned to look at his saber, which Maram now gripped in his hands. Yago said to him, 'No, I won't die here. If you'll give me back my sword, I'll ride after the well-poisoner and kill him before the sun kills me.'

  'But what about your son?' f said looking at Turi, who still sat watching us from the back of his horse.

  Yago shrugged his shoulders. 'The dead are the dead. He'll ride with me. No Ravirii of any tribe can suffer a well-poisoner to live.'

  I looked at Maram and said, 'Give Yago his sword.'

  Maram did as I asked, and Yago's fingers closed gratefully around the hilt of his saber. I said to him: 'We'll ride with you, too. It might be that we can persuade the Poisoner to tell us where there is water.'

  Yago's fatalistic smile played upon his lips again. He pointed to the west and said, 'Nowhere, in all the Zuri's lands, will we be allowed to drink their water. Toward dead south, if we rode that way, we would find the Vuai, who are worse than the Zuri. And to the north lies the Tar Harath, where there is no water.'

  I turned to the east, scanning the broken country over which we had ridden. I knew that we couldn't make the return journey to the first well with the little water that remained to us, Then I looked to my left, at the highlands some twenty miles to the northeast. These mountains were stark and reddish-brown, showing no hint of snow or ice-cap. But mountains, as I knew, often called down the rain of passing clouds. And so I said to Yago, 'What of that way?'

  And Yago told me, 'I don't know — that is the country of the Avari, and no one ever goes there. It is said that the Avari kill any man of any tribe who trespasses, and drink his blood.'

  'Then it seems,' I said to Yago, 'that we have no choice but to pursue the Poisoner.'

  'The dead are the dead,' he intoned, looking out into the wasteland to the west.

  'And the living are the living,' I said to him. 'And as long as we're still alive, there is still hope.'

  Yago shook his head as if marveling at the foolishness of outlanders and pilgrims. Then we went to work, stripping the dead of their jewelry, which Yago insisted we wrap in sheepskins and bury at the base of the red standing stone. The poisoned Ayo we could not bury, for there were too many of them and the ground was too hard to dig out graves.

  'We'll leave them for the hyenas,' Yago said. 'Others of the Ayo clan might find their bones.'

  'And their jewelry?'

  'They might find that, too. But if they fail, better that the Zuri, if they come here, don't find it.'

  After that we had a hard labor of gathering up boulders to heave down into the well and render it useless. Thus did we protect any who would come here after us, even the Zuri. As Yago said, not even the Zuri deserved to die by poison.

  Just before leaving the well, Yago checked our horses' loads and announced. 'They carry too many things.'

  'Only the necessities,' Liljana told him.

  'In the desert,' Yago said, 'pots and pans are not needed. You might as well bring with you lumps of lead. You must leave them here, or kill even more horses.'

  I felt Liljana's keen disappointment at facing once again the prospect of jettisoning her precious cookware. I said to Yago, 'In the miles to come, we might have need of her pots. Is there no other way?'

  'No, there is not.' Then he opened the pack where I had stowed my armor, and he grasped the mail and shook it so that its links rattled. 'All this metal! You and Rowan must leave your armor here, too.'

  Kane scowled at this dictate, and I shook my head. I said to Yago, 'In the country beyond the desert, we might have to fight battles. We will
need our armor.'

  'If you bring it with you,' he told me, 'you might not reach whatever country you hope to find. If you would survive in the desert, you must follow the desert's ways.'

  I considered this for a long few moments, and so did Kane. Finally, we consented to Yago's harsh logic, and we left our armor with most of Liljana's pots, buried behind some rocks. I thought it a miracle that he allowed her to keep a single, small kettle, for boiling water for tea and coffee.

  In the heat of the afternoon, we set out after the droghul. It seemed mad to let the sun simply roast all the juices out of us, but we had already spent too much time by the well. The droghul, by now, would be miles away. And every hour that we waited would only sweat more water out of us.

  Yago found the droghul's tracks outside the encampment; I thought it a fine work of tracking to make out the faint hoof marks in the hard, gritty ground. We followed them, riding as quickly as we dared. Turi, after exchanging a few brusque words with Daj and Maram, kept his desert pony close to his father. And his father kept close to me.

  'Tell me,' he said as our horses worked against the sun-baked turf, 'of the well-poisoner.'

  And so I did. I began with an account of the Red Dragon's recent conquests, news that had reached even the isolated tribes of the Red Desert. I said that Morjin wished to bring down his iron fist upon all lands, and toward that end had sent his Red Priests into every kingdom of Ea. He had other agents, too. I tried to tell some-thing of the droghul, without detailing the droghul's hellish gesta-tion or how Morjin moved his mind. I settled on explaining that Morjin had chosen several men who looked like him to send out and act in his stead. It was close enough to the truth.

  Yago thought about this as he pulled at his beard. We rode on in near-silence toward the west. The air grew brutally hot, and then hotter. For the next few miles, the country flattened out a little, and the hardpack gave way to scattered sweeps of sand. A few red rocks and clumps of hardy ursage poked out of it. Lizards took shelter there from the blistering sun; so did the flies. These buzzing black beasts must have caught Maram's bloody scent, for they swarmed around him, and worked at his wounds where his bandages had come loose. I could almost feel them biting their hard mouthparts into his already-raw flesh. Maram's lips pulled back in torment, but he uttered no complaint. It made me proud to see him riding on so bravely. Yago took note of his determination, too.

  'You pilgrims are tough,' he said to me as his eyes found mine. 'Almost as tough as we Ravirii. I find it strange, though, that the Red Dragon would set a poisoner upon a band of pilgrims.'

  I tried to respond to his blazing curiosity as coolly as I could. I told him that Master 'Javas' was of the Brotherhoods, whose quarrel with Morjin was ancient. 'And Kane,' I told him, 'once took up the sword against the Dragon, and so is hunted.'

  'And you, Mirustral?' Yago said to me. He caught me with a long, searching look.

  'I have quarrel with the Dragon, too,' I told him. 'I had hoped that we would find no evil of his in the desert. It's said that the Ravirii will not abide him or his people.'

  'Is that truly said?' Yago asked me. 'I had thought that few even knew of the Ravirii.'

  'Few do. But it's told that the Dragon fears to send his armies into the desert.'

  Yago let loose a long, dry sigh. 'That may change. He certainly does not fear sending his agents here, nor his bloody priests.'

  At this news, Kane's ears pricked up, and he called out from behind us: 'The Kallimun, here? Then the Red Priests dare to go about openly?'

  'They don't dare to ride through the Masud's lands,' Yago said to him, turning in his saddle. 'Rohaj, our chief, expelled the embassy sent to us and told them not to return on pain of death. But it's said that there are priests among the Idi and Sudi in the far north, and perhaps among the Yieshi, as well.'

  He told us that the Yieshi tribe dwelled to the northwest of the Zuri, between the Tar Harath and the Crescent Mountains.

  'And the Zuri?' I asked him. 'The Vuai?'

  'It's said that the priests have their stingers buried deep into Tatuk, who is chief of the Zuri, and into Suhu and many of the Vuai,' Yago turned back and stared at the barren country to the southwest, which the Vuai claimed. 'The priests are like scorpions — in the desert, there are many poisons, yes?'

  For another mile or so we followed the droghul's tracks, pressed so deeply into the sand that they seemed to point like wagon ruts straight into the west. Then Yago nodded toward a dome-shaped mound of sandstone to our left and announced, 'That is the Ar Nurum. It marks the end of the Masud's country and the beginning of the Zuri's.'

  'It would seem,' Master Juwain observed, 'that the droghul has no fear of riding into it.'

  'He would fear well enough,' Yago said, 'if Tatuk learns of what he has done. Red Priests or no, I cannot believe that even the Zuri would abide a well-poisoner.'

  Upon these words, something inside me tightened. I felt my heart beating hard, pushing heated blood up into my head; my ears started ringing as with the sound of distant bells.

  'Hold!' I called out raising up my hand. I brought Altaru to a halt, and turned to see Atara and Iiljana and the rest of my companions draw up their horses behind me. Yago sat on his smaller pony casting me a puzzled look. And I said to him, and to everyone: 'We cannot go on.'

  Yago looked at me as if to ascertain if the sun had deranged my senses. 'But if we're to avenge the Ayo, we've no other choice than to go after the Poisoner!'

  'You'll have your chance for vengeance soon enough,' I said to him. 'The droghul will come after us.'

  I drew my sword and watched the play of sunlight on its blade.

  'But why, Mirustral?' Yago said to me. 'We have five swords, and the droghul, as you call him, has only one.'

  'No,' I told him, gazing into my sword's silustria. 'He will have all the swords of the Zuri, and those of the Red Priests, too.'

  'No, they would never give him such aid. They would not dare ride in force into the Masud's lands! Then Rohaj would call for war, and the Zuri have lost the last three that we have fought.'

  I tightened my fist around Alkaladur's hilt. I shook my head and said to Yago: 'The droghul will tell Tatuk and the Zuri that we are the well-poisoners. The Red Priests will encourage them to believe this. And the droghul will lead the Zuri back along his track to trap us. In such circumstances, would your chief still call for war?'

  It was the law of the Ravirii, as Yago said, that a man must punish a well-poisoner even if his vengeance carried him into the lands of another tribe. And then Yago shouted: 'But it is the droghul who is the poisoner, not you!'

  'How will we prove this once the Zuri have put us to the sword?'

  'We Ravirii do not put well-poisoners to the sword,' he said. 'But never mind that. How do you know what you have said is true?'

  'I… know,' I said, touching my sword to the scar cut into my forehead. 'It is what the droghul planned all along. I should have seen it.'

  Yago looked along the line of tracks leading toward the falling sun. 'This droghul must be punished. Even if I die in punishing him.'

  'Is it the droghul's death you wish or your own?'

  'The law is the law,' he told me.

  I pointed into the open spaces to the west and said. 'The droghul will lead the Zuri upon us. If we're caught out there, we'll have little hope of even getting close to the droghul.'

  'But what other hope is there?'

  I turned toward the northeast and pointed at the low mountains shining in the sun. 'If we can reach those highlands, we'll find better ground to stand against the Zuri. We'll be able to loose our arrows at our enemies as from a castle's battlements.'

  Yago had little knowledge of bows and arrows, and less of castles, but he understood my strategy well enough. It didn't matter. As he told me: 'That is the country of the Avari, and when they discover us, they'll kill the Zuri and the droghul — and us.'

  'Then you will have your vengeance after all,' I told him. 'And as you sa
y, the dead are the dead.'

  For a few moments Yago continued gazing at the mountains. Then he turned back to examine the droghul's tracks pointing into the west. 'If you are wrong in your surmise, we'll lose all chance of vengeance.'

  'There is always a chance for vengeance,' I said, looking at the edge of my sword. 'And even if we do lose this chance, we might find water in the mountains, and so live to gain another.'

  At this, Yago looked over at Turi, patting the neck of his sweating horse. The boy's lips were dusty and cracked. Something cracked inside Yago then. The law was the law, as he had said, but there was always a higher law. For all his talk about vengeance and death, the living were still the living, and Yago's heart beat quick and strong to keep his son among them.

  'All right,' he finally told me. 'We'll go with you into the mountains.'

  I turned to take council with my friends; their eyes all assented to the course I proposed. Without another word, I pointed Altaru toward the northeast and urged him to a quick walk. We made our way along the border between the Masud's lands and those of the Zuri. Our journey toward this new direction immediately brought relief, for the sun now fell upon our backs. The desert remained hot as a furnace, but at least the fiery orb above us no longer burned out our eyes.

  Two hours later, we drank the last of our water. We spent the rest of the afternoon, it seemed, sweating all of it back out. I grew thirsty, for it seemed that I hadn't had a long, deep drink of water since the first well. I could feel the discomfort building inside Maram and the rest of my companions, especially the children. And Yago's dry, hot eyes seemed to assure me that as yet we knew nothing of real thirst.

  In the last hour of the day, we came to a standing stone that marked the place where the lands of the Zuri, Masud and Avari touched upon each other. Yago and Turi were loath to go on another foot, for they dreaded entering the mysterious Avari's country. Then Kane caught sight of a dust plume in the west. This decided Yago; he smiled his doomful smile, and pressed his horse forward. But he kept looking backward over his shoulder, as did we all.

  At first, with the great ball of fire of the setting sun nearly blinding me, I had a hard time making out the dust plume. But with each mile it grew larger. Our tired, parched horses could barely manage a brisk walk. I thought that the Zuri's horses — for I was sure that the droghul had led warriors of this tribe after us — must be well-watered. I tried to calculate rates and distances, but there was no need, for we had no choice but to continue on toward the mountains as quickly as we could.