Black Jade. David Zindell

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      ‘You are one of the Elijin!’ I said to him.

      ‘No, Kalkin was of the Elijin,’ he told me. ‘I am Kane.’

      I held out my hand to him and said, ‘If I gave you this sword that is inside me, would you slay with it? What law for the valarda, then?’

      ‘I … don’t remember.’

      His eyes smoldered with a dark fire almost too hot to bear. I felt his heart beating in great, angry surges inside him. It came to me then that there were those who could not abide their smallness, and they feared mightily obliteration in death. But those, like Kane, who turned away from their greatness dreaded even more the glory of life. How long had this ancient warrior stood alone in shadows and dark chasms, away from all others, even from himself? Was it not a terrible thing for a man to forget who he really was?

      ‘I know,’ I said to him, ‘that the valarda was not meant for slaying.’

      ‘So – you know this, do you?’

      ‘Somewhere,’ I said, ‘it must be written in the Law of the One.’

      Kane stared at me as through a wall of flame. His jaws clenched, and the muscles of his windburnt cheeks popped out like knots of wood. It seemed that the veins of his neck and face could not contain the bursts of blood coursing through him.

      Then he whipped his sword from its sheath and shouted at me, ‘Then damn the One!’

      His words seemed to horrify him, as they did the rest of us. Daj sat looking at him in awed silence. Even Estrella seemed to wilt beneath his fearsome countenance.

      Then Kane murmured, ‘What I meant to say was that Asangal damned the One. Angra Mainyu did – do you understand?’

      I looked down at my open hand. A bloody spike pierced the palm through the bones. The agony of this iron nail still tore through me, as did that of the other nails driven through my mother’s hands and feet. And I said to Kane, ‘Yes – I do understand.’

      I felt the hard hurt of his sword pressing into his own hand. He did not want to look at me, but he could not help it. His eyes said what his lips would not: I am damned. And so are you.

      ‘No, no,’ I told him. I took a step closer and covered his hand with mine. ‘Peace, friend.’

      As gently as I could, I peeled back his fingers from his sword’s hilt, then took it away from him. He stood like a stunned lamb as he watched me slide it back into its sheath.

      ‘Valashu,’ he whispered to me.

      I clasped hands with him then, and stood looking at him eye to eye. His blood burned against my palm with every beat of his great, beautiful heart. Such a wild joy of life surged inside him! Such a brilliance brightened his being, like unto the splendor of the stars! What was the truth of the valarda, I wondered? Only this: that it was a sword of light, truly, but something much more. It passed from man to man, brother to brother, as the very stars poured out to each other their fiery radiance, onstreaming, shining upon all things and calling to that deeper light within that was their source.

      ‘Kalkin,’ I said to him, whispering his name. For a moment, as through veil rent with a lightning flash, I looked upon a being of rare power and grace. But only for a moment.

      ‘No, no,’ he murmured. ‘You promised.’

      ‘I am sorry,’ I said.

      ‘No, it is I who am sorry. What do I really know of the valarda, eh? Perhaps you were right to try to keep that sword within its sheath.’

      His gaze, it seemed, tore open my heart. I said to him, ‘If Angra Mainu is defeated, I do not believe that it will be by my hand, or yours, or even that of Ashtoreth and Valoreth.’

      ‘Perhaps you are right. Perhaps.’

      ‘And so with Morjin.’

      ‘So, so.’

      ‘Only the Maitreya,’ I said, ‘can keep him from using the Lightstone. And I do not believe I will ever be allowed to lay eyes upon this Shining One if I use the valarda to slay.’

      Then he smiled at me, a true smile, all warm and sweet like honey melting in the sun. ‘So, there will be no slaying tonight, let us hope. Peace, friend.’

      He stepped back over to the breastwork and picked up his bow again. His smile grew only wider as his eyes filled with amusement, irony and a mystery that I would never quite be able to apprehend.

      After that it grew dark, and then nearly as black as a moonless eve, for here at the bottom of the gorge, there was very little light. Its towering walls reduced the heavens to a strip of stars running east and west above us. But one of these stars, I saw, was bright Aras. After all the work of washing the dishes and settling into our camp was completed, with Atara singing Estrella to sleep and Kane standing watch over us, I lay back against my mother earth to keep a vigil upon this sparkling light. It blazed throughout the night like a great beacon, and I wondered how this star of beauty and bright shining hope could ever be put out.

       6

      Idid not welcome my awakening the next morning. My battle wounds – mostly bruises from edged weapons or maces that had failed to penetrate my mail – hurt. The cold wind funneling down the gorge set my stiff body to shivering, and that hurt even more. No ray of sun warmed the gorge directly for the first few hours of the day, as we ate our breakfast and broke camp with a slowness and heaviness of motion. All of us, except Kane, perhaps, were exhausted. It would have been good to remain there all day before a crackling fire, eating and resting, but we needed to gain as much distance as we could from the gorge’s entrance at the gateway to the Wendrush. And so we loaded our horses and drank one of Master Juwain’s teas to drive the weariness from our bodies. Then we set forth into the gorge, winding our way around walls of naked rock deeper into the Kul Kavaakurk’s shadows.

      As we kicked our way over the rattling stones along the riverbank, I looked back behind us often and listened for any sign of pursuit. I sniffed at the cool air and reached out with a deeper sense, as well. I heard water rushing along its course and smelled spring leaves fluttering in the wind, but the only eyes upon us were those of the squirrels or the birds singing in the branches of the gorge’s many trees. No one, it seemed, followed us. Nothing sought to harm us. The only enemy we faced that morning, I thought, dwelled within. The horror of what lay behind us in the previous day’s butchery haunted all of us, even those who had not actually witnessed the battle. We feared what lay ahead in the vast unmapped reaches of the lower Nagarshath. Fear, in truth, was the worst of all our inner demons, for who among us did not gaze up at the sky and wonder if the Dark One could devour the very sun?

      It was after dinner that evening when Maram finally let fear take hold of him. He rose up from the campfire to tend his horse’s bruised hoof, or so he said. But I followed him and found him in the stand of trees where the horses were tethered, rummaging through the saddlebags of Master Juwain’s remount. Quick as a weasel stealing eggs, he prized out a bottle of brandy and uncorked it. I ran over to him and slapped my hand upon his wrist with such force that I nearly knocked the bottle from his hand. And I shouted at him, ‘What of your vow?’

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