Black Jade

breathe. Only our thin coverings of skin kept the fire of my blood from burning into her, and hers into me.

'No,' I whispered.

It was as if I had slapped her face. The coldness suddenly flooded back into her, and she sat up straight.

'No,' she repeated, 'we always have a choice, don't we? You're so damn noble, you always choose what you do, even though someday, it will kill you.'

'Atara, I — '

'It will kill all of us, I'm afraid. It might. And I have to accept that, don't I? Because that's the beautiful, beautiful thing about you, that those of us who love you can't help choosing as we do, too.'

For a while, she sat there quietly weeping into the wind, and she would not let me touch her. I had a strange sense that she was almost glad that her eyes had been put out so that I couldn't see the pain and horror in them. Then she regathered her composure; in a clear, calm voice, she said to me, 'Tell me what you see then, in the deep desert to the west, where we must go.'

I described the sweeps of sand and rock in the dark distances before us. Then I stared out at the infinite black bowl of the sky and said, 'There are stars — so many stars. Never, not even on top of Mount Telshar, have I seen them so brilliant.'

Valura, I told her, gleamed like a bright diamond just at the edge of the horizon, while Icesse and Hyanne and the stars of the Mother hung higher in the sky. Although she could not see my finger, I pointed out Ahanu, the Eye of the Bull, and Helaku and Shinkun and a dozen other stars. Solaru and Aras, I said, shone more splendidly than any others; they were like blazing signposts lighting our way.

'And there,' I said as I moved my hand in an arc across the heavens, 'are the Seven Sisters. And beyond, the Golden Band, filling the blackness with glorre. I can almost see it. Sometimes, I do. It shimmers. It is strange, the way its light touches that of the stars and makes them seem even brighter. Now I know the real reason that the Avari go into the Tar Harath.'

I fell quiet as I looked into the black, brilliant deeps for Shavashar and Elianora, Ayasha and Yarashan and Asaru, and the other stars that called to me with the voices of my dead family. I called back to them, whispering their names: 'Karshur, Mandru, Ravar, Jonathay. .'

My voice shook with longing. I heard it and hated it. I said to Atara: 'In all the sky, there isn't a single cloud. It's all so perfectly clear — clearer even than your crystal.'

'Is it? Tell me what you see in the sky, then.'

'Triumph. A great light unveiled. At the end of it all, the whole earth singing of what we have done. I see the one whom we seek. I see you, looking at me the way you once did. You will see again — I know you will.'

She laughed at this, not in joy, but only in sadness. Then she said softly, 'I think you lie. But I love you for trying to make me believe it.'

She kissed my hand, and stood up to walk back to our line of tents. I had to help her work her way down through the darkness, lest she stumble upon the rocks. Although she said nothing of the future, I knew that before we won any great triumph, if ever we did, we would suffer through many sweltering days of terror and pain.

Chapter 25

Our sleep that night was as deep and cool as the air that fell down from the sky. We took comfort in the softness of the sand beneath our furs and the floors of our tents. Even Maram found ways to position his great body that did not unduly distress him. When it came time to journey again, his big voice boomed out into the darkness: 'There are five good things about this part of the desert. First, the sand makes a good bed. Second, there are no flies. And third, my nightly drink.'

'And the fourth and fifth good things?' I asked him.

If I expected him to extol the splendors of the heavens or the terrible beauty of the desert, then I would have been disappointed, for he said, 'The fourth and fifth good things are the same as the third.'

I smiled into the dark, glad that Maram had found at least a little good in this forsaken land. But he also suffered other things that were not good, as did we all. That day, as we pushed farther into the Tar Harath, it grew even hotter. The blazing sun reflected off the sand nearly burned out our eyes. Breathing itself became a torment, and we all coughed at the dust that the wind blew at our faces. This dust worked its way into the fibers of our clothing and the cracks in our skin. Movement, hour after hour sitting on horseback or walking through the sand, chafed our dirty, sweaty skin. Soon, as Master Juwain feared, the dust might work at us so that we all had sores in our flesh like Maram's.

So it went for the next four days. Our bodies grew thinner, for none of us wanted to eat very much in the unrelenting heat, not even at night when we fell exhausted into our beds. We sweated and drank from our waterskins, and drank and sweated some more We wished for a good bath and clean clothing almost as much as oranges and kammats and other succulent fruits. We watched our water disappear, cup by cup and skin by skin. Once, after a lone afternoon spent nearly dying on top of the burning sand, Maidro caught Maram washing the dust from his face and upbraided him.

'We've no water to spare for such extravagances,' he said to Maram in a raspy, dust-choked voice. 'Every drop of water you waste brings us all an inch closer to death.'

Maram bowed his head in shame, and he apologized for his thoughtlessness. But an hour later, I heard him mutter to himself: 'Every mile we cover brings me that much closer to my brandy. But what then, my friend? How many cups do you have left before our water runs out and brandy is all you have to drink? You can't bear the thirst, can you? No, no, you can't, and so I think that drowning yourself in brandy would be a better way to die.'

We made our way across the sun-seared Tar Harath mile by mile — but we did not cover as many miles each day as we hoped. The sand burned the horses' hooves and slowed them, as Maidro had said. We lost most of a day in circling around a miles-wide basin that Maidro feared contained quicksands. Maram objected to this detour, saying, 'This sand looks the same as any other — how do you know it's quicksand?'

And Maidro, who did not like to explain himself, told Maram, 'If you don't trust me, there is only one way to find out.'

He pointed his wrinkled old finger out toward the basin's sandy center. So despondent was Maram that he seemed to consider walking right out into it.

And then I heard him mutter: 'Ah, if there is no Maram, there is no purpose to the brandy that we've made our poor horses carry. And what will befall then? The brandy will be poured out into the sand. It would be a crime to waste it.'

He turned to Maidro and said more graciously, 'I'm sure you're right about the quicksand. Thank you for saving my miserable life.'

Just before dawn the next day, Arthayn killed the first of the packhorses by slicing his saber through its throat. The other horses had eaten all the grain that this unfortunate horse carried and had drunk its water, as well. For two days, the useless horse had plodded along relieved of its burden, but also denied food and drink. In truth, Arthayn should have killed the thirst-maddened beast the day before, but the Avari — and all of us — kept hoping that we might find water.

We never ceased scanning the rocks and sand and blue horizon for sign of this marvelous substance. We looked to Estrella in hope that she might lead us toward another hidden cave or perhaps some ancient, forgotten well. But she seemed to have no more sense of where we might find water than anyone else. Often she would gaze up at the sky with longing at the few small clouds, which here drifted toward the northwest.

'One cloud,' Maidro said, 'holds more water than a well. But the clouds go where they will, not where we wish. And they never shed their rain in the Tar Harath, not even, I think, at the command of an urda mazda.'

Later that day, at Maidro's command, Nuradayn killed the second packhorse. Maidro stood watching this slaughter and speaking with Sunji. Sunji then gathered everyone around him and announced, 'Our water has grown