Black Jade

My first concern was for Altaru, and the rest of the horses. Miraculously, they had all survived the storm, though their hooves were buried in a powder-like sand and they were very thirsty. Nurdayn and Arthayn came out to begin watering them, and Sunji and Maidro walked up to me.

'Valaysu,' Maidro said to me, 'I do not think that Maram could have survived the storm. Two nights and a day, out on the sand.'

I stood staring off at the shimmering emptiness to the south, where we had abandoned the brandy.

'The horses survived,' I said to him simply.

'Yes, here behind these rocks. But out there, the wind — '

'Wind can't defeat Maram,' I half-shouted at him. 'Nor can sand nor heat — nor even dragon fire. Only Maram can defeat Maram.'

As I moved to saddle my horse, Maidro said, 'Even before the storm, our position was perilous. And now — '

'Now my best friend is lost out there.. somewhere! The storm obliterated our tracks, so he may not be able to find his way back here. He'll be waiting for me.'

'But how will you find him?'

'I don't know,' I told him. 'But I would have more hope if you would help me!'

Maidro looked at Sunji and Arthayn, who said, 'It is a waste of time, and therefore a waste of water. And therefore foolish beyond folly.'

I stood staring at him in the glare of the rising sun. Finally, he said to Maidro: 'I do not think anything will deter Valaysu. Therefore, we might as well help him, as he has asked.'

We spent ail that day searching the desert for Maram. On our tired, parched horses, we rode south, east, west and north, scan-ning the dunes for any sign of Maram or his body. It was madness, as Maidro said, to go forth beneath the naked, noonday sun, but so we did. All of us nearly dropped from heatstroke. By the time that dusk approached, we had to return to our encampment to keep from falling off our horses.

'Two days now, alone and without water,' Maidro said to me over dinner that night. 'That is the limit of how long a man can live.'

'Four horns of Sarni beer is the limit of how much a man can drink,' I said to him. 'And yet Maram drank five horns and called for more.'

'It is not the same thing,' he told me.

'No, it is not, but I can't give up looking for Maram — not yet.'

That night, for a few hours, we rode out into the desert to search for Maram again. The starlight pouring down upon the pale sands showed not the slightest footprint that might have been made by him. We shouted out his name, but he did not answer us. The next morning, we resumed our quest, until the sun in the afternoon fell down upon us with a fire that we could not bear. When we quit for the day and met up back at our tents, I was forced to concede that the sun could defeat Maram — as it could anyone.

'Surely he is dead,' Maidro said to me. 'As we will be, too, if we do not leave this place and find water.'

I watched Estrella nibbling on a dried fig; Daj sat next to her moistening a battle biscuit with a little water so that he could chew it. In a voice as dry as the wind, I said. 'Surely Maram is dead — reason tells me this. Yet my heart tells me otherwise. If he died, I would know.'

I wondered if this were really true. Then Liljana, haggard and nearly dead of exhaustion herself, said to me: 'You always seem to know when Morjin or one of his kind is hunting you. Wouldn't you likewise know if Maram were still alive and seeking his way back here?'

'He is,' I said, trying to convince myself. 'He must be.'

I looked at Atara, who sat on a rock trying to get a comb through her dirty, matted hair. I said, 'I cannot give up hope yet, but neither can I ask everyone to remain here with me. If we don't find Maram soon, then it will be time to go on.'

At this, Sunji shot me a penetrating look and said, 'But what do you mean by 'soon'?'

'Soon,' I said, echoing words that my father had once spoken, 'means soon. Now, why don't we rest before we go out looking for Maram again?'

Our search that night proved to be in vain. The moonlit dunes showed no footprint that Maram might have made nor any other sign of life. I returned to our tents with the others, and collapsed onto my furs. I could not sleep. I listened for the plaint of Maram calling to me; I did not hear him. I felt inside myself for the beating of his heart, however faint, but all that I could feel was the hard, painful hammering of my own. Then I called to him, in my mind, and from some deeper place inside me where a voice as real as the wind always whispered — and sometimes cracked out like a thunderbolt. This terrible sound seemed to tear through my heart and touch even the sands of the earth beneath me.

I was awakened just after first light when Nuradayn shouted out a warning. I came out of my tent, sword in hand, to see him watering the horses and pointing out into the desert. Everyone else left the tents, too, and joined us, looking east toward the rising sun.

The glare of this fiery orb nearly blinded us, so at first it was hard to make out the object of Nuradayn's excitement. But then I held my hand over my forehead and squinted, and this is what I saw: a creature more hideous than Jezi Yaga or Meliadus staggering toward us on two, bird-thin legs. The whole of his body seemed desiccated and shrunken, like a fruit left to bake in the sun. His ribs stood out like the frame of a wrecked ship; his belly had fallen in so that it practically clung to his spine. He was entirely naked, and his skin from head to foot had the look of sun-blackened leather. His lips seemed to have been peeled back from his teeth and gums, giving him the appearance of a flayed animal. Although many old wounds were eaten into his arms, chest, thighs and other parts of his body, none of them bled or oozed the slightest moisture. His eyes seemed as dry as bone, and fairly clicked about and rolled inside his skull as if he had no control over them. They appeared to see nothing — but to have seen much more than eyes should ever suffer or see.

'Is it a man?' Daj cried out, pointing at him.

'No,' I said, 'it is Maram.'

I took note of the long, ruby firestone tucked beneath Maram's armpit. His hands, I saw, looked to have been burned even worse than the rest of him so that they could not grasp this heavy crystal. Brushed forward then, and so did everyone else. Maram fell into our arms. We carried him back to our tent; this proved no great feat as he must have weighed scarcely half what he had before the sun had stolen much of his water.

'Three and a half days!' Nuradayn marveled as he stood before our tent, looking inside. 'Who has ever heard of such a miracle?'

'All glory in the One,' Maidro said, staring at Maram. 'He should be dead.'

Sunji, looking on gravely, too, did not say what we were all thinking: that Maram was dead, and needed only a little more time before his heart stopped beating and his eyes closed forever.

'Vargh!' Maram said as I knelt beside him. 'Vargh!'

It took me a moment before I realized that he was trying to say my name.

Master Juwain and Liljana tried to get him to drink some water, but his tongue and throat were so parched that he could not swallow. And so Liljana moistened her fingers and touched them to his lips and tongue, which looked like a piece of blackened meat. She poured water directly over his body in the hope that his skin might absorb a little of it. Upon witnessing this waste, the four Avail who stood outside our tent shook their heads in silence.

'Vargh!' Maram said again. 'Sokki.'

Sokki, I thought, must mean, sorry.

These words came out like the croaking of a frog. His mouth and throat were too dry for him to speak intelligibly, but as Master Juwain and Liljana worked on him, he let loose a long series of grunts, barks, hisses and moans that I tried to make sense of. I slowly pieced together what had happened, and shook my head in wonder at his story:

Maram had indeed gone after the brandy, but had never reached this trove. When the storm had fallen upon him, in the blinding sand, he couldn't follow our old tracks and so had drifted off his course. After an hour or so of believing that he might stumble upon the brandy, he instead came upon a low rock. This saved him. He took shelter behind the rock, where he could catch his breath and wait out the storm, much as we had, too. Since he had brought no water with him, however, he grew very thirsty. By the time the storm ended, he could think of nothing