Black Jade

Chapter 31

We raced up and back through the caverns, one by one. When we came into the second cavern, I saw that we had been shut in by the massive iron doors. Kane waited for us in front of them; his eyes picked apart the doors' joints and the surrounding rock as if looking for any weakness. With his sword in hand, he suddenly leaped toward the doors, slamming his shoulder against the crack where they came together. There came a great bang and a groaning of iron, and I was afraid that Kane had broken his bones. But his savage effort failed to budge the doors even an inch.

'Damn them!' Kane muttered. He slapped his open hand against hard iron with such force that bits of rust flew out into the air. 'Damn them!'

Muffled voices sounded from beyond the door, and I sensed that Sylar and the two other stewards stood guard there. Without warning, Kane grabbed Babul's spear and used the ironshod butt to hammer at the doors as he cried out, 'Open up! Open, I say!'

From the first cavern past the doors came the sound of laughter.

'Sylar — open the damn doors!'

The laughter grew louder, and I could plainly hear Sylar's voice as he called out to us: 'Soon enough we'll open the doors, cursed pilgrims. But you'll not be happy when we do.'

Liljana came up to the door and shouted out: 'We've more gold — diamonds, too! Open the door, and we'll give you all you wish!'

'Can you give me what I really wish? No, not with gold, or even diamonds.'

There resounded a smug laughter that made me want to tear off Sylar's head. Then he added, 'In the end, you will give me what I wish, though. And I'll have your treasure out of you, too.'

It came to me in a flash that what he wished was to be made a Red Priest of the Kallimun. These hated executors of Morjin recruited from devoted members of the Order of the Dragon, to which Sylar and the other stewards must belong. Thus had Morjin's priests suborned even princes. I remembered the red dragon tattooed on Salmelu Aradar's forehead, to the shame of Ishka and all the Valari kingdoms.

Kane must have shared my thinking, for he raised back his head and howled out: 'Trapped! Cursed acolytes with their cursed secret marks! Damn them!'

He motioned for Alphanderry to come closer to him, and asked him, 'Is there anything you can do?'

A glimmer of light played beneath Alphanderry's skin as his hand felt along the crack between the door. Then Alphanderry looked off at Kane, and shook his head. Whatever wondrous substance he was made of, it could not pass through solid iron.

We moved off deeper into the cavern, and we held council as we decided what to do. Kane believed that Sylar must have sent the steward Tarran for reinforcements; clearly Sylar was waiting for them before opening the doors.

'There must be a way out,' I murmured. 'There is always a way.'

It seemed that an answer must be whispering in my mind, but the roar of voices deafened me so that I could not hear it.

'I should have seen it,' Kane growled to me, staring at the doors. It was his way of apologizing. 'To be captured so — so damn easily, after following our star so long and so far.'

But even as he uttered the word 'star'. Master Juwain's eyes lit up, and he thumped the side of his head with his hand. Then he called out:

‘The road toward heavens' starry crown Goes ever up but always down.’

At this, Liljana's face soured, and she said to him. 'This is no time for one of your Way Rhymes.'

'It is precisely the time,' Master Juwain told her, 'since things have grown dark and we desperately need a way out of here, I should have seen it! I should have, from the first.'

'Seen what, sir?' I asked him.

He pointed back toward the corridor leading into the next cavern. He said, 'If we would see the stars again, we must go down. Down to the seventh cavern.'

'But there is no way out of it except up to the sixth cavern.'

'Are you sure?'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'Not even with the songs of the angels could we sing our way through solid rock.'

'No, perhaps not. But we might find a way out of it into the succeeding cavern — the true seventh cavern.'

I looked at him in confusion, and so did Liljana and everyone else. And Master Juwain nodded his head toward the iron doors and explained: 'That hollow outside was clearly made by a fire-stone long ago; I don't count it as a true cavern. Therefore, this chamber where we stand is the true first cavern, and the Minstrels' Cavern is only the sixth.'

My confusion only deepened as I stared at him. The cavern's crystals cast a rainbow radiance upon his shining head.

Kane scowled at him and said, 'So — so what? Then there are only six of what you call true caverns here.'

'No, there are seven caverns to the Singing Caves of Senta — this is known. Therefore there must be an opening out of the Minstrels' Cavern into an even deeper one.'

'What makes you so sure of that, eh?'

'Because there are seven musical notes, and seven colors to the spectrum — seven chakras along the spine, as well. And many, many other sevens. It is the Law of the Seven, and I feel certain that it applies here.'

While Kane stood considering this, Babul looked at Master Juwain and said, 'But Master Javas, I have been a steward here for fifteen years, and my father and grandfather served here before me. No one has ever heard any mention of a secret cavern.'

'And that,' Pirro added in a high, whiny voice, 'is because there is no secret cavern.'

'And even if there was,' Babul said, 'how would that help us? We would only be trapped that much deeper in the earth.'

'No, we might escape,' Master Juwain said. 'Sometimes underground rivers flow through caves. And there might be cracks off the seventh cavern, corridors leading out of it and up into the mountain — or even out its back side. Who knows? This mountain might even be riddled with tunnels as is Skartaru.'

At the mention of the Black Mountain beneath which the city of Argattha was buried, and where Morjin dwelled, I made a fist around the hilt of my sword. Then I heard Morjin's voice singing from deep in the earth, and I told Master Juwain and the rest of my friends what I had learned of Morjin in the seventh — or sixth — cavern.

'I believe that he was seeking something there,' I said. 'Something beyond listening to the minstrels and leaving his song. It might have been a secret cavern.'

Atara turned toward the dark opening leading down into the mountain. A slight shaking of her head gave me to understand that if any secret, seventh cavern was hidden beyond the sixth, she had seen no vision of it. But then she said, 'Why don't we go back, even so? Can anyone think of a better plan?'

Again, I led the way into the earth. We strung out in a line, like ants, with my friends behind me and the two stewards directly in front of Kane, who took the rear. When we came out into the Minstrels' Cavern, Kane posted himself at the top of the stairs to warn us in case Sylar and his men came for us. The rest of us spread out to examine the cavern's walls. A secret door to a secret cavern, as Master Juwain reasoned, would certainly be outlined by cracks in the walls' gleaming crystals. But there were thousands of cracks, many of which cleaved along the crystals' bases in clean planes. And some of these cracks, I thought, would be invisible to the eye, rather like the seam in a broken crust of bread after the two halves had been fitted back together.

When we were ready to abandon our search as a long and probably hopeless work, I noticed Estrella standing motionless before a particularly lovely part of the cavern. Her eyes caught the colors of the crystals there, and I could not tell whether their radiance came from without or within.

'Estrella?' I said, moving over to her. 'What do you see?'

I traced my finger along the edges and facets of azure crystals. I could find no cracks that might have been the outline of a doorway. 'Estrella?' I said again.

This bright-eyed girl remained frozen, gazing at the crystalline wall. I remembered that the Avarii had called her an udra mazda, who had found water in a nearly waterless desert. And more, Master Juwain had identified her as a seard, who could make her heart one with hidden things.

'Estrella — do you think there is a door here? How can there be?'

Daj came over to me and touched me on the arm. He said, 'Don't you remember the door to the secret passage off Lord Morjin's chambers?'

In fact, at that very moment, I was thinking of exactly that door in the black depths of Argattha. And of how a password spoken in ancient Ardik had opened it.

Master Juwain examined the wall in from of Estrella, and said, 'I don't think there is a door here. And if there is, how would we ever discover the word that might open it?'

I drew my sword and pointed it toward the wall. The two stewards gasped to see its silustria flare with a soft light. Something bright flared within me, too. From bits and pieces out of ray memory — the poignancy of Morjin's words, the yearning of his song and the beauty of other songs that I had heart in darker places — a sparkling pattern took shape. And I said to Master Juwain. 'Perhaps not a word, then, but a language. Perhaps we can sing our way through solid rock.'

I turned to Alphanderry and said, 'Do you remember the Kul Moroth?'

Alphanderry nodded his head. 'Yes, I remember.'

'The way you sang there, and other times since — can you sing that way now?'

'I can try,' he said. He looked across the cavern at Kane standing at the top of the stairs. 'It might help if I had accompaniment.'

Kane nodded his assent and came down to us. He unslung the mandolet that he had brought with him into the caverns. After quickly tuning it, he looked at Alphanderry and said, 'So.'

And so as Kane began plucking the mandolet's strings, Alphanderry sang. He directed his strong, clear voice at the wall before him. His words, pouring forth in ever more perfect form, with exquisite grace, seemed to melt into a music so beautiful that I found myself weeping and laughing, all at once. And all at once, the crystals on the wall seemed to lose their solidity and run with a sparkle and fluidness like unto water. With great care, I pushed the point of my sword toward these crystals. The silustria sliced deep into them; the substance of the crystals seemed to flow around my sword like an azure waterfall, and yet strangely did not move or lose its shape. And still Kane played, and still Alphanderry sang, aad my heart surged with great joy to hear once more the language of the Galadin. Of all the minstrels who had ever given their voices to this cavern, I thought that none could compare with Alphanderry. I watched as the jewel-like crystals began changing once again. Their liquidity gave way to an even less solid substance, more like air, and then finally shimmered before me like a curtain of light.

Alphanderry stopped singing, and gazed in wonder at what his music had accomplished. As I pulled back my sword, now gleaming like a mirror. Master Juwain stared at the cavern's wall. A great oval, like a door, stood limned against that part of the wall that remained hard crystal. I could not see through it to determine if another cavern lay beyond. It was like trying to look through the sky's brilliant blueness to apprehend the stars.

Master Juwain brought forth a copper coin and tossed it at the wall. It passed straight through the light-wrought crystals and disappeared. I heard the tinkling of metal as it seemed that the coin struck rock on the other side.

'The Law of the Seven, indeed,' I said, smiling at Master Juwain.

Pirro, trembling with his hand held palm outward as if to ward away a blow, shook his thin head at the wall and cried out, 'Sorcery! You are not thieves, but sorcerers!'

Babul, however, seemed made of more courageous stuff. He gazed at the seeming doorway into the crystalline wall and said, 'If they are sorcerers, then let us give thanks for their magic. Could there really be a seventh cavern through there?'

'Who would want to walk through that,' Pirro said, pointing at the frozen cascades of light, 'to find out?'

My companions and I, of course, would. When Pirro saw this, he declared that he would not follow us, not even for a cartful of diamonds.

'Then go back,' Kane growled at him, pointing up the steps to the higher caverns. 'At least stand guard, and give warning if Sylar comes.'

Without waiting for Pirro's assent, Kane turned toward me. 'Val?'

'I will go first,' I told him.

'But what if the opening closes behind you, and we cannot reopen it?'

'I'll have to take that chance.'

'No — let this Babul take it! He was ready enough to trick us into Sylar's chains. Let him redeem himself by doing us this service.'

As Babul stared straight ahead at the wall, his red face blanched. Kane seemed ready to propel his large form through the even larger opening. And I said to Kane, 'No, it is upon me.'

And then without another word, I turned and stepped through the curtain of light into the seventh cavern. I wanted to cry out to my friends that this passage had been no more difficult than walking through the doorway of my father's library in the Elahad castle. I could not, however, speak. For the chamber that opened before me was no mere cavern, but seemed almost another world. It was spherical in shape, and vast, as if the entire inside of the mountain had been hollowed out. The crystals here rose out the floor, wall or ceiling as long and thick as the trunks of trees. They pointed: inward, toward the chamber's center, and most showed six facets, like the sides of a honeycomb's cell. The crystals gleamed with bright blues and scintillating reds — and with flaming oranges, yellows and the other hues of the spectrum.

'Oh, my Lord!' I whispered, wishing that Maram had come this far. 'Oh, my Lord!'

From somewhere behind me, I heard Kane shout out: 'Val, do you hear me? Are you all right?'

And I called back to him: 'Yes … I am. Truly I am.'

'Should we come, then?'

'Yes, come — come now!'

A moment later Kane passed through the light curtain, followed by Liljana, Atara, Estrella, Daj and Master Juwain. Then Babul dared to enter this seventh cavern as well. He joined us and stood staring out into the cavern's center, which wavered in the distance as of an infinity depth.

'Ten of King Yulmar's palaces,' Babul exclaimed, 'would fit into this space! Twenty or thirty — I do not know!'

We stood together on a shelf of plain rock jutting out from the cavern's wall perhaps halfway up the sphere's circumference. A long, wide stairway carved into the rock led down the cavern's curving slope below us to a larger clearing, circular in shape, at the very bottom of the cavern. There seemed nothing else to do but to walk down to it.

'You,' Kane said to Babul, 'are a Steward of Caves, eh? Guardians, you call yourselves. So, you will stay here and guard this doorway. If Pirro calls out a warning to you or if the door begins to close, you will call out a warning to us, do you understand?'

Few men were willing to argue with Kane. As Babul nodded his head and his chin disappeared into his neck, I turned to go down the stairs. My friends walked behind me. Our way led between the great crystals, like a straight path through a forest. I saw almost immediately that we would not find an exit from this cavern as Master Juwain had wished. The substance of the walls and floor out of which the crystals grew gleamed like black glass, without the slightest flaw or crack that we could detect. The perfection of this chamber, in substance and shape, both awed and mystified me.

At last we worked down the curve of the cavern to the bare circle at its bottom. I could see Babul perched on the rocky shelf to our right, high above us. Crystals, like great, ruby obelisks, rose up around us out of what seemed to be pure obsidian. High above I us, straight across the cavern, other crystals hung suspended over our heads like impossibly huge swords.

'Oh, my Lord!' I whispered again. I thought that Maram would perhaps not like standing here after all.

'What is this place?' Daj said, looking up at Master Juwain. 'Can these crystals really be gelstei?'

'Can they be?' Master Juwain said. He stepped over to one of the great crystals and laid his hand upon it. 'Can they truly be?'

'Men,' Liljana said, running her hand along the face of a ruby monolith, 'could not have made such things.'

'Men, no — perhaps not the Ardun. But might have the angels?'

Liljana stared off in wonder as she shook her head.

'But if not the Galadin,' Master Juwain said, 'then who? All the gelstei of which we have record were forged by the hand of man.'

'But what of the gelstei that grew out of the earth in the vilds?'

Master Juwain thought about this and said, 'If not forged, then cultivated. The Lokilani tend their crystals as fanners do their crops.'

'But it is the earth that grows the crystals.'

'What are you thinking?'

Liljana swept her hand out at the rainbow of colors pouring out of the huge crystals. 'I feel certain that the Mother gave birth to this place. Perhaps man and the earth created it together.'

'How, then?'

'You always concern yourself with the how of things. But what I wonder is why?'

All this time Kane had remained silent. But then he raised up his eyes and spoke in a sad, deep voice that rang out as if from another land far away.

'I have a memory,' he told us. 'A memory of a memory. I think I heard of such a place long, long ago. It was called Ansunna.'

He looked at me, and then at Liljana. His black eyes seemed to grow ever brighter and clearer as he stood there remembering. 'These caverns are a creation of the living earth and the Galadin of old. The Bright Ones once walked the earth, eh? In the Elder Ages, I think they came here and planted in the ground the seeds of the gelstei — the great gelstei that grew into these great crystals.'

Here he smacked his hand against one of the ruby pillars so hard that it seemed the whole earth shook. And Master Juwain said to him, 'But you cannot mean the great gelstei!'

I thought of the seven clear crystals, colored red through violet that Abrasax and the masters of the Brotherhood kept safe about their persons high in the White Mountains. They called them the Seven Openers, and although small in size, Abrasax had believed them to be made of the same substance as the great gelstei used in the creation of the universe.

'I mean just that,' Kane said to Master Juwain. He turned to Liljana, and his voice softened as he said, 'So, this is the why of things, eh? The great gelstei, in their highest purpose, are to be used in creation.'

Master Juwain stepped over to the crystal rising up near Kane. 'You can't mean that these are the great gelstei used in Eluru's creation!'

'No, surely not,' Kane told him. 'The gelstei of which you speak are surely almost infinitely vaster — as far beyond these little rocks as the Ieldra are the Galadin.'

Master Juwain gazed up as if looking for the point of the great crystal a hundred feet above us. 'Then what are these gelstei for?'

Kane began pacing around the circle, casting quick glances to his right or left across the cavern, at Babul standing far away on his rocky shelf and the dangling green and yellow crystals of the cavern's ceiling. I could scarcely bear the flood of feelings pouring out of him: curiosity, remorse, anticipation, sorrow and all his wild joy of life.

'So,' he finally said, 'a day must come when the Galadin will become Ieldra and use the gelstei to sing into creation a new universe. I believe that Ashtoreth and Valoreth — even Asangal and many other Galadin — once came here to sing.'

He went on say that just as boys practiced with wooden swords before becoming warriors who wielded razor-sharp steel, so the Galadin must prepare themselves for the great task that lay ahead of them.

'But of what did they sing, then?' Daj asked Kane.

'Who knows?' Kane told him. 'But this was said about the place called Ansunna: that it held a great magic. Whatever one spoke truly, with the voice of the soul, would be made real.'

'That would be magic, indeed,' Master Juwain said, 'for wishes to come true.'

'I didn't say wishes,' Kane snapped at him. 'We wish that our desires be fulfilled, and we desire that which most pleases or benefits us. But the soul has other desires, eh? And its deepest desire is always in accord with that of the One. What does the One will? Discover that within yourself and speak it truly, without wish or regard for yourself, and it will be.'

Master Juwain rubbed his gleaming head as he thought about this. And then Atara said, 'But only, it would seem for the Galadin for who of us can ever hope to sing as they sing?'

Kane gazed at Alphanderry a moment before saying, 'Who, indeed?'

Estrella, who could not sing or even speak, caught Kane's attention with a flutter of her fingers and a smile. Their eyes met, and something seemed to snap inside him like an overstretched bowstring. He said, 'There is singing, and there is singing. The Ieldra do not have voices as men do, and yet from them pours forth the music of creation.'

In the Loikalii's vild, I had stood staring at the great astor tree, Irdrasil, as a glorre-infused radiance poured out of it. I could almost hear the Ieldra whispering to me still; I knew that the deepest voice of all spoke not in impossible-to-learn tones but in the language of light.

'This, too, I believe, was said,' Kane told us. His fathomless eyes drank in the cavern's colors. 'That one should not speak of abstractions such as peace, compassion or love. That which is, always is, eh? It partakes of the eternal realm. But that which would be, in creation, comes forth within this realm. Like the world itself, it must be a physical thing.'

A question seemed to divide him, like a chasm through solid rock. It divided me, as well. How, I wondered, could I distinguish what I wanted from the will of the One? Did I long for Atara to see with new eyes for her sake or my own? And what of my hope that someday I would hear sweet song pouring from Estrella's throat, no less my darker desire to plunge my sword through Morjin's heart? A hundred wants and needs formed up inside me with an almost palpable presence. I tried to listen for the whispering of my soul and to sing out with all my heart my deepest desire. But I felt lost inside this vast cavern, like a sleeper within a dream. There came a moment when I wished for nothing more than to stand outside beneath the stars again, to feel the wind on my face and for Maram to press a cup of brandy into my hand as his great voice boomed out that it was good to be alive.

As we all stood there in the womb of the earth, staring off in silence, the great gelstei crystals came alive with a deep light. It passed from one crystal to the next, red to yellow, violet to blue, so that each crystal seemed to partake of the radiance of all the thousands of others. The splendor they cast out into the cavern colored the very air so that it shimmered a brilliant glorre.

And yet, I thought, the crystals shone less brilliantly than they should have. A too-familiar dread crept up my bones into my spine. My sword smoldered with hidden flames, as did my heart, and I felt Morjin's presence here. Surely he knew of this place, even if he had never found the purity of voice to sing his way into it. But now, I sensed, from a thousand miles away he used the power of the Lightstone to sing a different and darker kind of song. The Galadin once might have spoken their desires to these beautiful crystals, as did we; the Red Dragon would speak his demands. And the great gelstei spoke back. When I emptied myself of all wishes and listened hard enough, I heard the saddest song of all. For here the earth herself sang: long, lovely, low and deep. She sang of the Black Jade buried within her flesh like a poisoned arrowhead; she told of Morjin delving down through the rock beneath Skartaru and doing terrible things. She lamented her own darkening, and sang of her dread of the day when Morjin would free the Dark One and the earth would finally sicken and die.

It came to me that we would never find our way out of the Singing Caves if we stood frozen listening to such tormented songs. I wondered how we would find our way at all. And then I heard another song, or rather a voice, that dashed our hopes of escape. For Babul, high on his slab of rock above us, suddenly called out to us: 'Mirustral! Rowan! Pirro has given the warning! He heard shouts beyond the doors, and says that Sylar comes for us! What shall we do?'

What indeed, I wondered, as I looked at Kane?

And then a moment later, Babul shouted out again: 'The doorway! It is closing!'

We all turned to face the gleaming azure crystals on the curving wall above us. Master Juwain said, 'If we let ourselves be closed in, we'll be safe from Sylar and his men.'

And Kane snarled at him, 'You mean, entombed!'

'No — when Sylar finds us vanished, he'll attribute it to sorcery. We can reopen the door another time, and make our escape.'

'So you say. But what if Sylar does not attribute our vanishing to sorcery? What if that damn Pirro betrays us, and Sylar sets miners to chiselling away here and discovers this cavern?'

He did not have to add that if Sylar really belonged to the Order of the Dragon, then Morjin would be told of anything he discovered.

'Good pilgrims!' Babul cried out, 'the doorway!'

'So, I'd rather die trying to fight our way out,' Kane said.

'So would I,' I told him. Then I turned toward the stairs. 'Hurry, then, before we are trapped in here.'

We ran up the stairs to the shimmering doorway. The opening appeared to be gelling into something more solid. I urged everyone through and then jumped after them through the wall into the sixth or Minstrels' Cavern; it was like passing through freezing water.

'The doors!' Pirro's voice rang out from above us. He stood at the mouth of the fifth cavern shouting down to us. 'They're going to open the doors!'

I led the way running toward him. I had to pace myself up the stairs, and all the way back up through the other sloping chambers, lest the climb burn up my limbs and wind me. Then I came into the first cavern. There, in that hollow of gleaming crystals, I stood gasping for air. My friends joined me, one by one. At the front of the cavern, the iron doors remained shut, and I could hear no sound from beyond them.

'What shall we do?' Babul said again, whispering to me. 'We are few, and they will surely be many.'

Just then something banged the door outside, and there came the jangle of what sounded like keys.

'Form up!' I whispered, stepping closer to the door.

Kane, sword in hand, stood by my right side, while to my left, Babul and Pirro pressed close to each other and pointed their spears at the doors. Liljana, Master Juwain, Estrella and Daj gathered behind us. Liljana had drawn the long knife that she wore concealed beneath her robes, while Daj gripped his short sword. Farther to my right and behind me, Atara had stationed herself at an angle to the door. She had cut free from her cloak the three arrows sewn into it, and had nocked one of them to the string of her bow. She pulled back the arrow to her ear, somehow aiming its steel point in the direction of the crack between the doors. I wondered how long she could hold her great bow at full draw.

The sound of a key grating inside the iron lock of the doors sent a thrill of fear shooting through me. And Pirro whispered out into the dank, close air: 'I could not tell how many they are.'

I heard Kane whisper back to him, 'We'll kill them all few or many. We must, be prepared for anything.'

But I was not, despite Kane's fierce words, prepared for what awaited us on the other side of the doors. Finally, with much creaking, these great slabs of iron began to swing open. Torchlight spilled into the cavern, and limned against its red glow stood a single man. I blinked my eyes in wonder. I could not believe what I saw, although I was overjoyed at the sight that greeted me.

'My Lord!' a familiar voice called out to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'

It was Maram.