Black Jade

Chapter 13

We moved at a good speed through the woods all that day. A few miles farther on, we forded the Iskand, as Berkuar had promised, and came out into more open woods again. Many people lived in this part of Acadu, spread out between the Iskand and the great Ea River, and Berkuar and his men knew many of them. But they chose paths that led around and away from the villages and even the small farms breaking the forest. Although we might have replenished our supplies and so conserved them, Berkuar agreed with Kane that we should keep our presence in Acadu a secret, if that was any longer possible. In any case, he and his fellows mostly disdained the soft, farm foods that he might have requisitioned from his countrymen, choosing instead to depend on their bows to put meat on the table, so to speak. Freshly-killed deer, boar and wild sheep, nuts and fruit such as blackberries and apples — this was most of what the Greens liked to eat.

As Pittock told us proudly, the Greens' culinary preferences gave them great stamina and strength, like unto that of roving wolves. He and the others padded along besides our horses through bracken or over old leaves at a pace better managed by four legs than two. But Pittock's two legs, as Pittock told us, were as hard as wood and his breath was like the west wind itself. The Greens could walk thirty miles without stopping, at need, pause for a few bites of bloody venison, and then walk thirty more.

That afternoon, in a district full of cherry orchards all snowy with white blossoms, we came to the Ea River. Berkuar knew of a ferryman who took us across it. Maram, thankful at putting this great water behind us, wanted to give the ferryman a gold piece for his efforts, but Berkuar discouraged such largess. He pointed out that the ferryman was likely already suspicious that we weren't really 'pilgrims' at all, and it wouldn't do for him to think that we were rich as merchants, too.

After traversing some miles of farmland to the west of the Ea, the farms thinned out as the forest gradually thickened. Soon, the ground rose into a more hilly country, where the woods grew even wilder. We chose a good spot to camp for the night beneath some mighty oaks and by a stream that gurgled down from these low hills.

'The mines are not far from here,' Berkuar told us as we unpacked the horses. He pointed into the wall of trees to the west. 'Twenty miles yon way, the hills rise higher, and there the Crucifier's men dig for gold. The line of hills runs thirty miles south, toward the Skadarak.'

'And what is the length and breadth of that place?' Master Juwain asked him as he unfolded his map and smoothed out the creases.

'No one knows with certainty,' Berkuar said. 'But if we make a great roundabout along these hills, as we must if we're to avoid the Crucifiers, for fifty miles, we'll come to the Cold Marshes. There we'll turn west again along the lower edge of the Skadarak.'

Master Juwain then put to Berkuar the very question that a very nervous Maram obviously trembled to ask: 'But if you don't know the precise dimensions of the Skadarak, how do you know there is a way past it, between the marshlands and it?'

'Because,' Berkuar said, 'my father once ventured that way and lived to tell of it. Unless the Skadarak has grown these past years, we'll find the same way that he did.'

'Unless it has grown!' Maram cried out. 'Do you have reason to think it has? Oh, I don't like the prospect of this at all, not even a dram's worth of spit!'

This proved to be a cue for Jastor and Gorman to spit thin red streams at the ground, both at once, for they chewed the barbark nut as did Berkuar and the merciless-looking Pittock. This gaunt mam, whose cheeks were carved with scars, stared at Maram and said, 'Berkuar has told us little more about you than that you are a knight of Mesh, which is said to lie in the Morning Mountains, wherever that is. Do the knights of your land then make such complaint when compelled to face dangers?'

'I was bom in Delu,' Maram told him. 'And, yes, we Delians, being more reasonable, as well as more civilized, do make complaint where complaint is called for. As it is when facing not just dangers, but sheer madness.'

Maram took a sip of water from his cup and swirled it about in his mouth as if he wished it were brandy. And then he added, 'And as for dangers, you can't imagine. I, myself, have stood against the siege of a great city and fought the Lord of Lies' Dragon Guard lance to lance in a great battle. And crossed the earth's highest mountains and fought a fire-breathing dragon and — '

I reached over and laid my hand on Maram's knee to silence him. Berkuar, according to the Greens' way, had told his three fellow woodsmen what they needed to know about us, and nothing more. He, himself, knew very little. But later that night, with the moon brightening the leaves of the trees above us, I joined him by the fortifications of our encampment, and we spoke of many things. I told him what I knew about the Maitreya. He, being a devout man in his crude, violent way, had memorized many passages from the Saganom Elu, though he could not read. He surprised me, reciting to me words that cut me to the heart:

About the Maitreya One thing is known:

That to himself

He always is known

When the moment comes

To claim the Lightstone.

'If this is true, as it must be,' he said to me, 'then since the Crucifier now keeps the Lightstone, the Maitreya would likely not even know himself as he really is. So how will you, Valashu, recognize him?'

And I told him, 'This is not written in the Saganom Elu, but it is true nevertheless. The Maitreya is he who will abide, at all times, under any circumstances, in the One. He will look upon all with an equal eye. And in his heart, like fire, will blaze an unshake-able courage.'

'Such valor,' Berkuar said, gripping the leather wrappings of his bow. 'Such impossible grace. I believe it must be so. But a million men live in Hesperu. You can't search out every one and look into his eyes to find this fire.'

'No,' I said, 'we cannot.'

Then I told him of Kasandra's prophecy that Estrella would show us the Maitreya.

'I see,' Berkuar said as he sucked on a barbark nut. 'Now I understand why you've brought children with you.' 'It seemed the only way,' I said.

'The only way,' he murmured as his eyes caught the gleam of the moonlight. 'Yes, I believe there is a way — there must be This must be the time, then. The Shining One will come forth! I never dreamed that I might live to see such a day!'

In all the miles of our journey from Gladwater, I had not seen Berkuar so excited or happy, or indeed, known that he was capable of such exaltation. I relieved him of his watch then. But he told me that he wouldn't be able to sleep, and so we stood there by the log fence for the next two hours, gazing out into the shimmering woods as we spoke of dreams close to our hearts.

In the morning we set out with a soaring of our spirits that seemed to rise up past the crowns of the trees and spread out like a flock of swans beneath the deep blue sky. The day grew pleasantly warm, and we were full of good food, and none of our enemies seemed too near.

But it is not the way of the world for such contentment to last. Day passes into night; bellies grow empty; clouds darken the sun. As we made our way along the line of hills, south and slightly west, the soft spring wind shifted and began to blow from the north, and the air fell steadily colder. Even so, we made good distance, journeying perhaps thirty miles by the time we stopped to make camp that evening. The drizzle that began sifting down from the gray sky at dusk, however, promised worse weather later that night, and it was so. A cold rain began to fall from a nearly black sky. It smothered our two little fires, and soaked our garments. Berkuar suggested abandoning our encampment to take shelter beneath the thick foliage of a basswood tree, and this we did. Kane didn't like giving up the protection of our wooden fence, but he liked even less the prospect of the children catching the cold of death.

For most of the night, Maram prayed aloud for respite from this icy deluge. His invocations, like thunder, boomed out above the great sound of water striking leaf, rock, log and our sodden wool cloaks, and running in torrents over the earth. Our rain cloths provided us little protection. I could do little more than wrap around my neck the white, wool scarf that my grandmother had once knitted me. And wait. It seemed that I had the very heavens to thank — or perhaps Maram — when the rain softened to a drizzle again just before dawn. The sky, however, did not clear. It grew even colder. After a miserable breakfast of old venison and cheese, we set out as quickly as we could, fairly jogging beside our horses in order to generate a little heat in our benumbed bodies. The wind died, and that was good, but with this quietening came a stifling stillness, as if we were all being smothered by a wet blanket held over our faces. Five miles of dripping woods we passed through, and then ten more, and it seemed that we must be drawing nearer to the Cold Marshes and the corridor of forest where we would turn west past the Skadarak.

I sensed this place somewhere in the forest beyond us. With every yard of slick ferns and dead branches clutching at my legs, it seemed, with every furlong we passed deeper into these wild woods, we drew closer to it. I felt it as a cooling of my blood, which seemed to grow thicker and heavier, like honey in winter. I heard it as an unwanted whispering in my mind: fell words of torment and despair, memories of nails and swords driven through flesh, and dreams as dark as rotting corpses. It almost stole away my breath. In the creeping dread that built inside me, I felt Morjin's presence. I felt him close to me, as I always did now, but here in these dark, damp woods, it seemed that the very foulness of his flesh tainted the air. When we made camp that evening and Liljana expended great efforts to cook up a succulent rabbit stew, I found that I couldn't eat a single bite. It was as if a great fist were driving into the pit of my belly, pressing my innards against my spine.

'You should eat something,' Liljana said to me as I sat by the fire with Maram and Master Juwain. She stood over me with a bowl of stew clutched between her hands. 'To keep up your strength.'

I was afraid that Liljana might continue to harangue me; instead, she gave the bowl to Daj and came up behind me. Her fingers, warm from the fire, pressed into various points on my neck, head and face. In scarcely half an hour, she touched away enough of my sickness that I could eat. I smiled at her in gratitude and surprise, for I hadn't known that her hands held such magic. It saddened me that she could not smile back.

Later that night, however, as I lay near Maram and Kane trying to sleep, the sickness crept back into me. I dreamed dark, bloody dreams. The veil between earth and the otherworld of the dead seemed to grow as thin and transparent as gossamer. I knew, in some ever-aware corner of my mind, that the Skadarak had something to do with Morjin and the Dark One whom he served. I tried to warn myself of this. There was a danger I did not see, my heart whispered. I came awake trying to give voice to this foreboding Without quite knowing what I was doing, I pulled open my sticky eyes and called out, 'He is coming!'

My cries woke everyone. I sat up to see Maram grabbing for his sword, even as Atara and Berkuar threw back their cloaks and swept up their bows, along with Jastor and Pittock. Daj and Estrella rubbed their eyes as they instinctively moved closer to Liljana's soft form.

Kane was already on his feet, moving at speed the few yards toward our encampment's fortifications where Gorman stood watch. Gorman's bow, fitted with an arrow, swept around in a great circle as he scanned the woods all about us. 'What is it, Valashu?' he asked me. 'I… do not know,' I told him.

I stood up even as I slid Alkaladur from its sheath. The trees rose tall and straight in the quiet woods, and the bracken lay like a heavy blanket covering the ground. It was too dark to see very much. The moon's light could not easily pierce the covering of clouds and leaves above us, though it did impart to the air a glimmer of gray. Nothing made a sound or moved in the perimeter around us. And then, from behind an old broken tree, jagged and standing as high as a man, something moved even as a grating, old voice called out to us: 'I've been traveling a long way, and would beg food and fire of you!'

'There!' Gorman suddenly pointed into the woods. His fellow Greens came over to him and peered into the ghostly gray trees near us. Kane did, too, but then quickly turned his gaze in other directions, searching the surrounding woods — as did Berkuar. Both of these old warriors, I thought, were wise to the ways of ambuscade.

'Just a little bread,' the voice called out to us again. 'And a little meat, and salt to sweeten it, if you have it.'

I came over to Gorman and saw a man limping closer to us. He leaned over his walking stick and moved slowly as if in pain; his cowled robe made his face impossible to see.

'Stop!' Kane cried out to him. 'Stop and show yourself!' The old man, if that he truly was, shuffled closer as if he hadn't heard him.

'Stop! Pull back your cowl! We've arrows aimed at you, and we'll loose them if you don't do as I say!'

Gorman, Jastor and Pittock pulled back the strings of their long yew bows. Berkuar stood to their right, farther along our fence, as he held out his bow and looked for assault from behind us. Atara, I noticed to my disappointment, had put down her bow and had drawn her sword instead.

'It's all dark;' she murmured.

The old man took another step toward us.

Maram asked, 'What if he's so old he can't hear us?'

Even Kane, I thought, would hesitate to cut down a deaf and weaponless old man.

From behind us, where Master Juwain waited with Liljana and Estrella by one of the fires. Daj suddenly burst forward and leaped upon the fence. He pushed up his head just high enough so that he could look oat over it. Then he shouted. 'He's coming! The Dragon is coming!'

An old, sick heat burned through my blood like a stroke of lightning. I felt inside flames flaring with the hues of madder, puce and incarnadine. I looked out at the old man, digging his stick into the black earth as he stepped even closer. And I cried out. 'It Is Morjin!'

The Greens needed no more encouragement to loose their arrows. Berkuar let fly his arrow, as well. At a distance of ten yards, even in the near-dark, these renowned archers could not possibly miss. But miss they did. Their arrows whined harmlessly past the old man and skittered through the bushes deeper in the woods. They moved immediately to draw new arrows from the quivers slung on their backs.

The old man, however, moved even more quickly. In one blinding motion, he stood up like bent steel snapping straight, pulled off his cloak, and flung it at Kane's face as he burst into a sprint toward our fortifications. I had a moment to take to the flying golden hair and fine, furious face of Morjin. He must be mad. I thought. He couldn't hope to clear our wooden fence without being met by our swords. And if he was slow getting over the top, he would be met by more arrows as well.

'Lord of lies!' Master Juwain suddenly cried out from behind me. 'Lord of Illusions! Val, beware — the woodsmen do not wear warders!'

His warning came a moment too late. Just as.Morjin drew a sword and leaped at the fence, I heard Gorman cry out; 'Hai, a dragon — a dragon is upon us!'

'A werewolf, too!' Pittock shouted. 'He burns! The fire!'

Just as Morjin pulled himself to the top of the fence. I moved to thrust my sword through his chest, Then an arrow sang out and slammed into my back. I felt it drive my cloak and the mail beneath into the muscle along my spine. It drove my breath away, as well. I gasped at the pain of it, giving Morjin enough time to jump down upon me. Kane threw himself forward to slay him, but another arrow sizzled through the night and pierced his shoulder, causing him to drop his sword. He cried out like a maddened tiger then, not so much in hurt, but in rage at losing the use of his sword arm. It took him a moment to reach for his knife. And in that blink of an eye, as the breath burned like fire in my lungs, Morjin struck out at me.

My eyes fixed on Morjin's sword: a slender piece of steel stabbing like a snake for my throat. I did not see the rest of our company, including the children, wrestle with the illusion-maddened woodsmen and with Berkuar's help subdue them. I didn't see Atara standing helplessly behind me with her sword dipping this way and that.

It was Maram who saved me. At the last moment, he managed to bring his sword down upon Morjin's shoulder just as Kane knocked into Morjin from the other side. Kane's good hand clamped on to the hilt of Morjin's sword and ripped it from his grasp. Maram drove his huge body against Morjin, bearing him down to the ground. Then Kane threw himself on top of Morjin, too, as I lifted back my sword to drive it through Morjin's head.

'Kill him!' Kane cried out. His scream was like that of an animal. 'Kill him, now — what are you waiting for?'

I fought to breathe against the knot of flame choking my throat.

'Kill him!'

I aimed the point of my sword straight toward Morjin's forehead. He waited, looking up at me with his fearful golden eyes. There was something strange about them. The light of the nearby fire filled them with a ghastly orange glow, but little radiance of their own seemed to illuminate them from within. I smelled Morjin's fear of death, sickly and terrifying, but it had little of the foul reek of the decaying flesh of the great Red Dragon whom I had faced in Argattha. There was something strange about this Morjin, I thought. He did not struggle beneath Maram's great weight, little good that it would have done him with only one arm. The other I had cut off at the Battle of the Asses' Ears. He should have thrashed like a furious snake and spat venomous words at me; he should have beamed all his black, bottomless hate at me. Instead, for a moment, in his soft, amber eyes, there was nothing except confusion and pain.

'Rope!' I called out. I held back my sword, looking down at Morjin as I waited. 'Berkuar, bring me a rope!'

'Val, what are you doing?' Maram puffed out into the moist night air. 'Kill him, as Kane said!'

'No, I cannot!' I told him. 'This is not Morjin!'

I stared down at this immortal man with his glorious golden hair all dirtied and snarled in the clasp of Kane's savage hand. Something about him called to me and suggested that he was even younger than I.

'That is, it is Morjin — but somehow it is not. I can't explain.'

Berkuar went over to the snorting, stamping horses to fetch three ropes. Two of these he used to bind Pittock and Gorman; there was no need to likewise secure Jastor, for he sat in the mud with an arrow in his chest. It seemed that either Pittock or Gorman, firing arrows in the wild panic of illusion, had killed him.

The third rope we used to bind Morjin — or rather, the creature that we called by that name. Maram and Kane stood him up and pressed his back to the wooden fence while Berkuar looped the rope around his chest, belly and thighs, and fastened it to some sturdy logs behind him. Maram's sword had cut through the mail covering Morjin's shoulder, which oozed a dark, red blood. But Morjin seemed to pay this wound no notice. All of his attention turned upon Berkuar.

'He wears no warder!' Master Juwain called out again. 'Berkuar, do not believe what you see or heed what you hear!'

I gave Daj a thick, clublike piece of wood and posted him to stand guard over Gorman and Pittock. Then Berkuar advanced upon Morjin. He struck the edge of his bow across Morjin's face, bloodying his mouth. He said, 'This fooled me with his first illusion, and so I missed my mark. But I've a warder of my own: my father taught me meditations against the evil eye.'

Some men, as I knew very well, were able to defeat Morjin's illusions of their own will, without the aid of the gelstei called warders.

Kane stood eye to eye with Morjin, looking at him strangely: with loathing and dread but no hate. The arrow that one of the Greens had loosed at Kane stuck out from his shoulder. My grim friend burned with a fathomless will of his own: to command the veins in his torn shoulder to stop bleeding even as his fury drove back the waves of pain that would have vexed a lesser man. He stood straight as a young knight, paying no more attention to the arrow than he would a bird perched there.

'I should draw that arrow,' Master Juwain said to him. 'And you, Val, let's get your armor off and see how bad the wound is.' I could feel the blood dripping down my back where the arrow had pushed the links of my steel mail into my flesh, but neither the mail nor the arrow had lodged there. And I could feel something else. I studied the way that Kane studied Morjin. My sword flared white then, and I knew a thing.

'So,' Kane muttered, 'so.'

I said to him, 'You knew. At the battle, when I cut off his arm, you knew who he was.'

'So — what if I did?'

'You knew what he is, didn't you? Tell us, then.'

'What is there to tell, eh? This isn't Morjin, as you've guessed. But it is Morjin, too — as you've also guessed.'

'I don't understand,' I said, shaking my head. 'How can he be both?'

'Because he is an abomination!' Kane snarled out. 'The filthiest and most evil of abominations!'

He explained then how Morjin, with the aid of a green gelstei, must have made this motherless creature from his own flesh and brought him to a blighted manhood under the vile tutelage of his hand and mind.

'He is a droghul!' Kane told us. 'Of all the kinds of ghuls, the worst, for he has no mind of his own, and never had.'

'I didn't know such things were possible,' Master Juwain said as he brought out his varistei and stared at it.

'So, to the Elijin, the Galadin, too, such things are possible — though long ago forbidden.'

Kane scowled as he tried to flex the fingers of his right arm that fairly dangled beneath his wounded shoulder. Then he stepped forward and with his left hand grasped the droghul's hair, and slammed his head back against the branches of the fence.

'Speak!' he snarled out. 'Do you deny who you are?'

The droghul's face fell as still as a piece of carved marble — and as beautiful. This, I thought, was no illusion that the ancient, decaying Morjin wished men to see but rather the very grace and glory of his youth that had enchanted all who looked upon him.

'I do not speak,' he said to Kane with contempt in his eyes, 'when you command it.'

'We should not let him speak at all,' Master Juwain said. 'Of all his weapons, only his tongue is left to him, and it has cut down more men than a thousand swords.'

Master Juwain, as always, spoke the truth. But I knew that a part of him yearned even more than I did to Listen to Morjin's golden voice: like a finely-tuned lyre that could let flow the sweetest and most compelling of music, reaching deep inside all who heard it to excite their fears, lusts, vanities and darkest of dreams.

'Is it true what Kane said of you?' I asked the droghul.

'I do not speak when you command it either,' he said. 'But since you ask with such earnestness, Valashu Elahad, I will tell you, yes, it is much as Kalkin says it is, though he cannot hope to understand.'

The droghul smiled at me, and for a moment, I almost forgot who and what he was. I felt a great, churning emptiness in his belly, and I asked him, 'Are you truly hungry, or was that just pan of your ruse?'

'I'm always hungry,' the droghul said to me.

'So what if he is?' Kane shouted. 'Let him be hungry, then!'

'No,' I said. 'He should be watered and fed.'

'But, Val, think of what this has done to you! Let him suffer, I say!'

The loneliness that burned in the droghul's eyes, as vast as the heavens on a clear night, told of a suffering that I could just barely apprehend. I said to Kane, 'He will suffer the more if he has strength to do so.'

It was a simple thing to say that our captive should be fed, but none of us wished to put a cup to his lips or hold a crust of bread to his mouth that he might gnaw on it. Kane continued scowling at the droghul. Finally, Estrella picked up a waterskin and walked toward him. But I took it from her and performed the repulsive task of tending to the droghul myself.

Then I steeled myself to question this strange, dreadful being. I knew that it would be dangerous. And I knew that Morjin's creature would tell me things that I didn't want to hear.