Black Jade

Maira ordered a feast to celebrate Maram's recovery and to honor us. That evening, we gathered beneath the astor trees, whose leaves gave off a soft, golden light. The whole tribe of Loikalii sat themselves down around many large mats placed throughout the grove. As at our other feasts in the other Vilds, these mats would serve as tables on which the Loikalii set bowls full of their simple yet sustaining food.

'In many ways,' Master Juwain remarked as we and the Avari joined Maira, Anneli, Kalevi and several other Loikalii around a particularly large mat, 'these people are quite similar to their kinsmen. But in other ways. .'

His voice trailed off as Maira shot him a sharp, penetrating look. She seemed much more knowledgeable about us, and the world outside, than the other Lokilani whom we had met. Although she exuded congeniality and sweetness, I sensed that she could also be as forceful and determined as any of Ea's queens. When we had finished filling ourselves with nutbread and honey and other delicious things, she passed me a gourd full of elderberry wine with a graceful motion of her hand and the most radiant of smiles. She would not abide Master Juwain's protestations that Maram should be denied strong drink; she passed Maram wine too: more than one gourd's worth, and then more than three. She seemed not to mind the way that Maram gazed at Anneli, though a couple of the other Loikalii present could not countenance his obvious infatuation. She smiled at him in amusement and then directed our conversation toward matters that we had put off discussing for five days.

'Tell us, Val'Alahad,' she said to me, 'of yourselves and your journey.'

And so I did. While the Loikalii at our table and the others nearby turned toward me, I told of our quest, as much as I thought wise. The hours flowed into evening, and evening turned toward night. The radiance of the astor leaves lit the grove, and it fell cool. No mosquitoes, however, came out to Be the Loikalii's nearly naked bodies. It seemed that they allowed into their woods only those living things that pleased them. Other things, however, darker things, they could not keep out.

'We have seen the Morajin,' she told us. 'The Earthkiller, our cousins call him. The Burning One that you call the Red Dragon: he burns, inside, as if his blood is on fire. It is worse than the scorching of the sun, for that can destroy only flesh. But the Morajin's soul! It is all black and twisted, like a worm dropped onto hot coals. We have seen this! He would kill all that displeases him, even the best of himself. He sends his armies throughout all lands, killing and killing until the earth cannot bear it. Soon, soon, we fear, all of the earth's trees will be cut down and her soil burnt barren. It will be as it is in the Burning Lands outside of the Forest.'

She seemed to blame the desolation of the desert on Morjin, and on his master, whom she called Ang Ar Mai Nyu. How she knew of either of them — or of anything outside of her woods — was not clear. I could not imagine any of her delicate, gentle people crossing the desert to lands so faraway and forbidding as Sakai in the heart of the White Mountains.

Her words disturbed all of us, and Master Juwain especially. He rubbed at his smooth scalp as he looked at Maira and said, 'Surely the desert has causes other than the hand of the Red Dragon. Why, the Crescent Mountains, to the west, which block the moisture from the ocean. The pattern of the winds, which blow — '

'The winds blow enough moisture our way,' Maira said, cutting him off. She smiled at him nicely, but I could tell that she had little patience for his perpetual questioning and turning things over and over in his mind. 'Grass could grow where now there is only the sand. And more moisture could be summoned — enough to make the Forest grow across the whole of the Burning Lands.'

Here she glanced to her right at an old woman named Oni. Oni had white hair and withered breasts, but her eyes still held much life. She cupped between her hands a small, bluish bowl that looked something like frozen water. I wondered immediately if it were made of some kind of gelstei that I had never seen before.

'If you can truly summon the clouds,' Master Juwain said, addressing both Maira and Oni, 'as it seems you can, then why hasn't the desert been made green again?'

'The Loikalii,' Maira said to us, 'long, long ago were sent to this place to re-enchant the earth. A great evil occurred here, long past long ago. It opened up the earth to the deep fires, the black fires which scorched the soil, out and out across the Burning Lands.'

Master Juwain nodded his head in deep contemplation; I could almost hear him wondering what kind of evil event or sorcery could have channelled the telluric currents so as to create a wasteland hundreds of miles wide.

'But you have succeeded here,' he said, looking at the astor trees above us. 'I have never known a more enchanting place.'

'We have not succeeded here,' Maira said. 'We have sent our people out on the sands to plant seeds so that the Forest might widen. All have failed. Even in this place, if we did not fight to make the Forest grow, the trees would wither and die and be lost into the sand.'

She went on to tell of an ancient dark thing, perhaps a crystal, buried beneath the soil somewhere on earth. She said that it had the power to draw life from the earth and allow its inner fires to burn unchecked and wreak destruction upon all things. Kane scowled at this, and his eyes found mine; it was obvious that Maira must be speaking of the Black Jade. I recounted then of our crossing of the Skadarak and what we knew of this powerful gelstei.

'The Black Jade,' Maira said as she looked from Oni to Anneli and then back at me. 'You have named it well. We have felt how the Morajin seeks his way deeper and deeper into its heart. We know that Ang Ar Mai Nyu aids him. Why, why, we have asked ourselves? Soon, we fear, the Morajin will loose the earth's fires and burn open the very sky. Then the evil that created the Burning Lands will blight the stars. Their earths — so many, many! — will be burnt too. The Forest that covers them will die. It will be as you said it was at the heart of the Skadarak: everything blackened and covered with bones. And then it will be as it is here, beyond our trees: nothing but burning sands, Everywhere and forever.' I gazed at her in wonder of how her dread of the future so nearly matched my own. Then she took a sip of her wine and shook her head furiously. 'But we must not let this be! If the Morajin gains power, utterly, over the Black Jade, he will invade the Forest. First with his eyes and with dark dreams. And soon after, with steel and fire.'

Here she glanced at the hilt of Kane's sword and shook her head in loathing. A similar look on Oni's face told me that, in some ways at least, the Loikalii did not welcome our presence in their woods.

I took a sip of wine, too, and then said to Maira, 'You know a great deal about matters of which we have learned only with difficulty. And that few others even suspect. How, then? Are there scryers among you?'

Maira looked quickly at Oni, who spoke in a cranky, quavering voice saying, 'Do you see, Maira? I told you they would want to know.'

Oni's angry, relentless stare seemed to disconcert Maira, who glanced at Atara and said, 'No, none of us can see the future, not as you can. But sometimes, we can see things far, far away.'

'How, then?' I asked again.

Now Oni stared at me as she shook her head. She said to Maira, 'No, no — they mustn't see!'

Her hands gripped her crystal bowl, and I suddenly knew that it had been Oni who had sent the sandstorm that had so nearly killed us. There was something wild about this old woman, I thought like the wind. I sensed that she acted by the force of her own will and no one else's, not even Maira's.

'I believe that they must see,' Maira said to her. 'How else are they to find the Shining One they seek? And how else to keep the Morajin from using the gelstei they call the Lightstone?'

'No,' Oni said, as stubborn as a stone. 'The giants are clumsy and stupid, and bring an evil of their own into the Forest.'

She stared at the hilt of my sword; after a while, she raised up her angry old eyes and stared at me.

'They are not stupid,' Maira said to her. 'And whose heart is wholly pure?'

'No, no — they must not see!'

'I have seen this,' Maira said to her. 'And you have, too; that the time is coming when either the Forest will grow across the Burning Lands, or the Burning Lands will devour the Forest — and soon, soon. Which will it be?'

While the evening deepened, they argued back and forth, but no word or reason from Maira could prevail against Oni's obduracy. And then there occurred a miracle beyond reason or resistance: Flick fell out of the night like a comet. He hovered in the air radiating an intense glorre. This light seemed to draw many other Timpum from out of the trees around us. It touched them so that they glowed with glorre, too. Then these thousands of splendid beings passed the fire back to Flick so that he blazed ever brighter. Back and forth it passed, many, many times. Flick feeding the Timpum and they feeding him until the whole host of little lights shimmered with great