Black Jade ec-3

by David Zindell

  I heard the horses of my companions pounding after us and Bemossed's tormented breath exploding in my ear. I felt his arm tight around my belly, but trembling with the effort to keep holding on. I knew his strength was failing, as was Altaru's. After a couple of miles, my horse's pace slowed to barely a gallop. His whole body seemed to knot and quiver with a burning agony. I did not know how he kept on running.

  We came out into a bowl of thick grass surrounded by hills, to its center stood an old cottage, or rather, its ruins. It had no roof and only three good walls: the fourth wall, facing us, had crumbled in places, and its doorway lacked a door. I pointed Altaru straight toward this hole in the wall's mortared stone. And Maram cried out in protest to me: 'What are you doing? The pass lies that way!' He pointed off past the right of the house. 'We won't make it — not this way!' I called back to him. 'We must make a stand, here.'

  He didn't argue with me, nor did anyone else. I drew up in front of the cottage and waited as my friends joined me and dismounted. Kane and Maram helped Bemossed down from Altaru's back; then I rode him through the doorway into the cottage. Kane took charge of getting the other horses and everyone inside. I dismounted, too, and began walking around the cottage's single room. Piles of old leaves and bits of stone littered its packed-earth floor. Three of its walls, as I had thought, seemed to be in good enough repair. They stood a good seven feet high. The southern wall, however, had crumbled down to a height of four feet along much of its length. It was no castle that I had chosen for us to defend, but the best protection we could hope to find.

  While Master Juwain and Liljana worked to set Bemossed's arm and wrap it, Kane unholstered his bow and began sticking arrows down into the dirt floor. So did I, and so did Maram. He moved with speed but without conviction or hope. I heard him mutter to himself, 'Ah, Maram, my old friend, this is madness — this is surely the end.'

  'How many times have you said that?' I asked him, pushing an arrow down into the rain-softened earth.

  'I don't know,' he grumbled. 'But sooner or later, I'll be right.'

  I looked out over the crumbled section of wall for the approach of our enemy. I said, 'We survived the siege of Khaisham, didn't we?'

  'By a miracle, we did. But here we have no escape tunnel.' 'Then we'll have to find a different way to escape.' Behind us, near the cottage's north wall, Estrella tried to quiet the horses. She and Daj had tethered them to an old beam that lay on the floor there; other than it and some splinters from an old window frame, the cottage seemed to have been stripped of wood and all its furnishings.

  'This is not so bad a place,' I told Maram. 'Not nearly so bad as Argattha, where we fought off a hundred men.'

  'But there we had Ymiru with us, and we wore armor, too. And Atara had her other sight.'

  He turned toward Atara, who was busy stringing her great horn bow. She kept her arrows in the quiver slung on her back. I felt her waiting desperately for her second sight to return.

  'We will win,' I told Maram.

  'Against two hundred knights?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'How, Val?'

  I looked out over the low section of the wall toward the gap in the hills to the south. And I told him, 'I don't know, but we will win.'

  My words did not convince him. I wasn't sure that I could even convince myself. I saw Kane's jaws working with all the tension of a steel trap, and I sensed that even my grim-faced friend had rarely found himself in such a desperate situation.

  There came a grinding snap as Master Juwain set the bones of Bemossed's arm. Bemossed gave a gasp, and his face contorted with pain. He said nothing. I saw little hope in his eyes, and I wondered if he regretted coming away with us. I felt a tightness in his throat; a sense of doom seemed to grip him in an ironclad fist. I couldn't help thinking of what Master Matai had said about the Maitreya: that his star would burn brightly but not long.

  A few moments later, Lord Mansarian rode his white stallion through the gap in the hills to the south. The green peacock feathers of his shiny bronze helm fluttered in the breeze. Four or five of his companies of Red Capes thundered behind him. Lord Mansarian led them to a point in the grassy bowl about four hundred yards away: just outside the range of our arrows. He drew up his men in long lines facing the cottage. I caught a flash of a white-haired man wearing a red robe, and I knew that this must be one of the Red Priests. Another priest — Salmelu, I guessed — sat on his horse next to a man covered from head to knee with a gray traveling cloak. I could not see if he wore armor beneath it. I could not see his face, but the acid burning my throat told me that this must be Morjin.

  'Damn him!' Kane muttered. He stood next to me behind the crumbled section of wall. 'Damn his blood!'

  Daj came up to us, and craned his head over the wall to look upon our enemy. He gripped his little sword in his hand, and he said, 'Why do they wait there? Why don't they surround the house?'

  'Because,' I told him, 'it is easier to ride down fleeing rats than to face them cornered with no place to run.'

  He immediately understood and said, 'They want us to flee. Well, this rat will kill at least one of them as they come over the walls.'

  So saying, he pointed his sword at the Red Capes. I remembered how in Argattha he had used a spear to dispatch several of Morjin's wounded soldiers.

  Lord Mansarian posted two men on the gentle slopes above the western and eastern sides of the cottage — no doubt to give warning in case we should flee.

  Seeing this, Maram said, 'Why don't they just storm us and be done? What are they waiting for?'

  They are waiting for our nerve to break, I thought. But I said nothing.

  Maram twanged the string of his bow, and said, 'How many do you think that we can hit before they reach the house? Five? Ten?'

  'Ten? Hmmph,' Atara said. 'You won't be able to shoot with any accuracy until they come within a hundred yards. And then you'll only have seconds to get off your rounds.'

  'And that is my point. Even if by some miracle, we each get five of them, or even ten, that's only thirty men, which will leave — '

  'Be quiet!' Kane snapped at him. 'This is no time for arithmetic.'

  'Is it not?' Maram turned to look at Master Juwain wrapping Bemossed's arm in the corner as Liljana paid out a length of linen from a large roll.

  'Nine of us minus nine leaves zero, which is all that will remain of the great Lightstone Traveling Troupe as soon as the damn Red Capes find their courage and charge us.'

  He threw down his bow in disgust and moved over to the horses. It did not take him long to find his brandy bottle and to begin drinking straight from its glassy mouth.

  'What are you doing?' Kane shouted at him. 'Get back to your post!'

  'Give me a moment, damn you! I just want one more taste of brandy before I die.'

  Kane stepped toward him as if intending to seize him by the neck and drag him back to the wall. But I stayed him, and said, 'Let him be.'

  'But he'll drink himself senseless!'

  'No, he won't,' I said. I didn't add: Who could blame him if he did?

  I gazed out across the field at the two hundred Red Capes sitting on their mounts and pointing their spears at us. At the center of their front line, Lord Mansarian seemed to be consulting with the two priests and the gray-cloaked man I took as Morjin.

  'Maram is right,' Kane said to me. 'We won't kill very many before they reach this wall.'

  'Maybe we'll kill enough to drive them off,' I said.

  'No — we won't. They'll come over the wall, and through the doorway,' Kane said grimly.

  I gripped the hilt of my sword and said, 'I will kill anyone that tries to come through it.'

  'So, you will — but it still won't be enough. Maram and I can't hold this wall by ourselves.'

  'But what about me?' Daj said, pointing his sword toward our enemy. 'I can fight!'

  I looked down upon this valiant young warrior, and at Atara, who stood next to him gripping her bow. How wrong it was, I tho
ught, that Lord Mansarian and his war-hardened men should have driven to battle a blind woman and a beardless boy.

  'There is a way,' I said to Kane. 'There must be a way.'

  But I no longer believed this. I looked over at Bemossed, grimacing as Master Juwain fashioned a sling for his arm, and I silently raged that we had found this bright, gentle man only to have to lose him soon to our enemy's spears.

  'There is a way!' Kane said to me. His hand shot out to lock upon my forearm, even as his eyes took hold of mine. I saw the old hate flare up inside him, even as he saw it seething in me. 'You know the way!'

  'No,' I murmured. 'No.'

  'Yes, this is the time — there isn't much time!'

  'No, I can't.'

  Kane let go of my arm to stab his fngers out toward our enemy. 'You have a sword inside you — use it!'

  'I have sworn not to!'

  'Use the valarda, damn it! This one time! Strike the Beast! Kill his droghul! Do it, Val!'

  I looked out at the lines of mounted men in their gleaming, fish-scaled armor. I stared at the merciless Lord Mansarian and the man in gray who might be Morjin. It was Morjin, I remembered, who had nailed my mother and grandmother to planks of wood. And now he waited to murder my friends, who were the only family I had left.

  Hate, the dark, destroying passion, fairly emanated from Lord Mansarian's men likes waves of heat. I felt it working at Lord Mansarian and burning up the man who must be Morjin. It howled like an enraged animal inside of Kane, and most of all, in myself. I could not escape it any more than I could the hot, humid air that hurt my lungs and stung my eyes.

  'Valashu,' Bemossed said to me.

  He came over and stood with me by the wall. He looked at me with his wise, brilliant eyes. Although I had said almost nothing to him of the valarda and the way that this terrible force of the soul could kill, he seemed to understand even so.

  I set down my bow, and took out my sword. I no longer cared that its sacred silustria burned with fire.

  There came a movement from the lines of Red Capes, and three knights rode forward to join Lord Mansarian. I guessed that they were captains receiving orders to make ready to charge us. Seeing this, Liljana stepped up to the wall and so did Master Juwain.

  'Val,' Liljana said. The essential kindness of her soft, round face melted away before something fearful and furious inside her. 'If ever there was a time to use the valarda as Kane has said, this must be it.'

  I stared at this woman who was like a mother to me, but I said nothing.

  'Think of all those who have sacrificed so much for you to have come this far,' she said to me. 'Can't you sacrifice your vain attachment to a principle?'

  'The only principle that realty matters,' Maram bellowed out to me from across the room, 'is life. But you don't care about that, do you?'

  Master Juwain, I thought, wanted to advise me as well. But he stood quietly, and his gray eyes flickered back and forth as.if he was reading a book. He seemed to be searching for.words or the right verse that would reveal the absolute truth in order to guide me — searching and searching. I felt his mind spinning like a steel discus hurled out into space.

  'What will be?' Atara said to me. She had put down her bow to re-tie her blindfold so that it wouldn't come loose in battle. Her voice grew as cold as a mountaintop as she said to me, 'What will be left of the world if you don't do what you were born to do?'

  Her hatred of Morjin, like ice, seemed to touch even Estrella. She walked over to Atara, and pressed Atara's hand to her face. I felt this lovely girl's dread of what soon must come, and even more, her loathing of the darkness from which none of us seemed able to escape.

  'You should wait with the horses,' I said to her, pointing across the room. 'You should try to keep them calm.'

  She closed her eyes as if looking inside herself for a place of calm that spears and swords could not touch.

  'Valashu,' Bemossed said to me again. He held his hand out toward Alkaladur's angry red flame. 'This cannot be the way.'

  I saw in my sword's fire my dead father and my brothers and the thousands of warriors who had fallen upon the Culhadosh Commons. And I shouted, 'It is the way of the world! What does it matter if I slay with a sword forged out of gelstei or the hate in my heart?'

  I stared at my sword, and I could not move. I felt its point piercing my hands and my feet — and every other part of me — crucifying me to something worse than death.

  And Bemossed told me, 'No good can come of this.'

  'Good comes,' I called out, looking across the field, 'when warriors kill those who need killing.'

  Bemossed blinked as if he could not hold the moisture filling up his eyes. He said to me, 'Even yourself, Valashu?'

  'Can you stop it?' I said to him. 'What is a Maitreya good for?'

  Why, I wondered, had fate chosen Bemossed as the Shining One, and not me? The answer burned along the blade that stabbed through the center of my being: because I was damned. Because I was who I was.

  There came a shout from across the field, and I looked out to see a third red-robed priest leading a packhorse up between the ranks of knights toward Lord Mansarian. Something seemed to be slung over the horse's back; I hoped it was not a packet of arrows and a bow. It nearly maddened me to have to wait here to see how Lord Mansarian would attack us — and to know what I would do. I felt this uncertainty torturing not just myself, but my friends as well. The battle had not yet begun, but the battle raged as it always had inside each of us.

  I felt this most excruciatingly in Estrella. She seemed lost in a dark cavern of pain that had no bottom or end. Her heart beat quickly and agonizingly, as if she were fleeing from a bloodthirsty beast. And then everything inside her grew utterly still as if she had plunged deep into cool waters. An image came into my mind: that of a brilliant silver lake. She opened her eyes then and looked at me. She looked at Bemossed. Her whole being gleamed like a perfect mirror. Bemossed gazed at her in wonder. He stared and stared, deep into the eyes of this glorious girl, but even more at the great shining wonder of himself.

  'Look, they move!' Maram cried out. He came hurrying over to the wall to grab up his bow. 'They're coming!'

  I turned to see one of Lord Mansarian's warriors ride forward bearing a white banner of truce. Then came Lord Mansarian and a line of six knights. Morjin and the three priests rode behind the knights, using them as a shield in case we should fail to honor the truce and begin shooting arrows at them.

  'Why should they even want to parlay?' Kane snarled out. He lifted up his bow. 'So, we'll speak to them with arrows through

  their throats!'

  'Are we trucebreakers, now?' I shouted at him. 'Must we commit every abomination?'

  'The only abomination is in letting Morjin and his creatures live!'

  Our enemy rode a dozen yards closer. Kane nocked an arrow to his bowstring, and so did Maram. Just then Alphanderry appeared and stood with us behind the wall.

  'Look!' Daj cried out. 'Look at Bemossed!'

  As Bemossed stared at Estrella, his face shone in the onstreaming rays of the sun. Everything about him shone: his eyes, his lips, his great, throbbing heart. He stood in a shimmer of glorre. I could hardly believe what I saw. Bemossed took his arm out of his sling and cast down this bit of cloth. He smiled. His eyes grew as bril-liant as the stars. He seemed to behold himself as he had always longed to be.

  'Hoy!' Alphanderry sang out. 'La neshama halla!'

  Bemossed looked out at our enemy, and I felt in him no fear. He looked at the sky and the earth; he looked at me. He seemed utterly without doubt. A bright, shining hope lit his smile, and more, the sureness of triumph. I knew then that Ea had not just a dark and false king of kings, but a new Lord of Light.

  'La neshama halla jai Maitreya!'

  In the air in front of him, a plain golden cup appeared. It seemed at once to be as hard as diamond and without true substance, like light. Bemossed reached out with his bandaged arm to grasp this cup. The moment that hi
s fingers closed around it, my sword blazed a bright glorre. Then a dazzling radiance filled up every corner of the cottage, and swelled outward and upward to illuminate the green hills around us and the deep blue of the sky. Strangely, our enemy, riding ever closer, seemed unable to perceive this splendid light.

  'The gelstei!' Maram shouted. He seemed stunned as by a hammer blow to his head. He ran over to the horses, and removed his firestone from the waterskin encasing it. He held it up for us all to see. 'My gelstei — look, it cools!'

  Liljana and Master Juwain took out their gelstei then,too.

  'I won't break the truce,' Maram sighed out, tucking the fire-stone down into the pocket of his trousers. He came back over to me. 'I think you Valari are right, after all. All that really matters is honor — to honor the glory of life. And so if I must die, I must die, too bad.'

  Liljana pointed at the gray-cloaked man who rode with the three priests behind Lord Mansarian. 'I doubt if that is really Morjin. He wouldn't trust us to keep the truce. I was wrong, Val. Don't waste the best of yourself on him.'

  'I agree,' Master Juwain told me. He seemed able to breathe more easily. 'It is likely some sort of trap.'

  Atara moved up next to me, and she reached out blindly to lay her hand on my chest. And she said, 'Do what you were born to do, but not this murder.'

  Our enemy came even closer, within the long range of our arrows, and now even Kane put down his bow. He turned to gaze at Bemossed with great dread, and yet with an intense longing, too. I knew that he wanted to weep and laugh and roar out all his wild joy of life, all at once. Finally he said to me, 'Do not use the valarda to slay. Remember the two wolves, Val. Remember who you really are.'

  At this, Bemossed smiled. He held out his hand to me.

  'Valashu Elahad!' someone called out from far away. The voice sounded raspy, like that of Lord Mansarian. 'Liljana Ashvaran! Maram Marshayk! Atara Ars Narmada! We know that these are your real names!'