Black Jade. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ smiled at this as I listened to my heart drumming inside me. I said, ‘I have learned … that the smallest of lies can grow, like a rat’s bite beginning a plague of death.’

      ‘We need Bajorak on our side, you know.’

      ‘I will not lie to him.’

      ‘But you cannot tell him the truth about our purpose! What if he is captured, eh? What if he sells our secrets for gold?’

      ‘I trust him no more than you do.’

      ‘Do you trust him to fight, if it comes to that? So, it would not take much, at need, for you to push him into battle.’

      I ground my teeth at the fury I felt for Morjin seething inside me. How hard would it be to touch Bajorak – or anyone – with a little of this flame?

      ‘No, I will not,’ I said to Kane.

      ‘No? No matter what befalls? No matter which of your friends is threatened? What else won’t you do, then?’

      I drew in a deep breath and held it until my lungs burned. And then I said, ‘I will not torture. I will not sacrifice innocents, not to save you or me, or even the children. I will not use the valarda … as I would my sword, to strike terror or maim. And never again to kill.’

      As Kane glared at me through the near-darkness, I drew Alkaladur and watched the play of starlight along its length.

      ‘So,’ he said, gazing at it, ‘in such goodness, in such purity of truth, you think to fight Morjin and all his evil deeds?’

      I smiled sadly as I shook my head. ‘I am neither good, nor pure, nor am I renowned as an exemplar of the truth. Who, then, am I to fight evil?’

      ‘Ha – is that not itself an evil question?’

      I said to him, ‘I don’t understand you! Once, on top of a mountain, you told me that I could not fight Morjin your way without losing my soul!’

      ‘So – perhaps I lied.’

      ‘No, you did not!’

      His voice softened then as he told me, ‘Listen to me, my young friend: we do what we have to do, eh? Just don’t be so sure it’s always easy to know what is evil and what is not.’

      And with that, he stalked off back toward our encampment.

      I waited with my drawn sword, watching the world turn into darkness.

      I breathed in the smells of grass and woodfire and the fresh blood of a lion’s kill wafting on the wind. I sensed many things. The horses standing in their small herd nearby were all exhausted and would have a hard time when morning came. I quivered with the fear of the field mice as they looked for the owls who hunted them, and my heart leaped with the gladness of the wolves as they followed the scent of their prey. And in all this immense anguish and zest, I thought, in all this incessant struggle and striving there was no evil but only the terrible beauty of life. It was too much for me to take in, too much for any man. And yet I must, for the stars, too, had a kind of life: deeper and wilder and infinite in duration. How, I wondered, would I ever feel my mother’s breath upon my face or hear Asaru laughing again if I could not open myself to this eternal flame?

      Just then Atara appeared out of the glare of our campfire and walked closer to me. Then she called out: ‘Val, your face – your sword!’

      To be open to love, I knew, is to be vulnerable to hate.

      ‘Morjin is out there,’ I said to her. My sword glowed red like an ember as I pointed it toward our enemy. ‘Can you “see” him?’

      Atara drew out her scryer’s crystal and stood rolling it between her hands. She said, ‘Everywhere I look now, Morjin is there. It is why I am loath to look.’

      ‘Your gift,’ I told her, ‘is a curse. As is mine.’

      I went on to relate my conversation with Kane. She came up close to me and grasped my hand. ‘No, it is just the opposite. Kane was right: you have yet to learn how to use the valarda.’

      I wrenched free my hand and said, ‘If I could, I would cut it out of me, the way I’ve cut off others’ hands and carved out their hearts.’

      ‘No – please don’t say that!’

      ‘Such terrible things I have done! And what is yet to come?’

      I stared at the Red Knights’ campfires, then Atara touched my cheek to turn my face toward her. And she said to me, ‘I don’t know what is to come, strange though you might think it. But I know what has been. And I know where I have been, with my gift.’

      She held up her gelstei: a little white sphere gleaming beneath the white circle of the moon. ‘I’ve tried to tell you what it is like to see as I have seen. To live. Such glory! So much light! Truly, there are infinite possibilities, the dreams of the stars waiting to be made real. I’ve seen them all, inside this crystal. And here, for too long, I have dwelled. It is splendid, beyond the beating of a butterfly’s wings or the sun rising over the sea. But it is cold. It is like being frozen in ice at the top of a mountain as high as the stars. And all the time, I am so utterly, utterly alone.’

      ‘A curse,’ I said softly as I covered her crystal with my hand.

      ‘No! You don’t see! The price of such beauty has been such terrible isolation – almost too terrible to bear. But I have borne it, even gloried in it, because of you. Your gift. You are such a gift, Valashu. You have a heart of fire, and it is so brilliantly, brilliantly beautiful! Is there any ice it could not melt? No, I know – only you. You bring me back into the world, where everything is warm and sweet. I don’t want to know what it would be like to live without you. You are the one being with whom I do not feel alone.’

      Her hand was warm against mine. Because she had no eyes, she could not weep. And so I wept for her instead.

      ‘Kane has suggested,’ I finally told her, ‘that I should use the valarda to manipulate Bajorak. Like a puppeteer pulling on strings.’

      She smiled sadly and shook her head. ‘Kane is so knowing. But sometimes, so willfully blind.’

      ‘How should I use the valarda, then?’

      ‘You know,’ she said to me. Her voice was as cool and gentle as the wind. ‘You’ve always known, and you always will know, when the time comes.’

      I looked out at the millions of stars shimmering through the night. The black sky could hold their splendor, but how could any man?

      ‘And now,’ she said to me, ‘you should get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day, and a bad one, I think. Come to bed, Val.’

      She pulled at my hand to lead me back to our camp. But I let go of her to grip my sword, and I told her, ‘In a moment.’

      I watched her walk back to the fire as she had come, and I marvelled yet again that she could find her way without the use of her eyes. I wondered then how I would ever find my own way to whatever end awaited me. I gazed at Alkaladur, whose silustria glistered with dark reds and violets. The Sword СКАЧАТЬ