Black Jade

unnatural to utter anything false or guileful. In the clear consonants and liquid vowels that poured from their beautiful lips, no less the light sparking in their eyes, I sensed only a strong intent toward goodness and truth. They each embodied these qualities, along with a nobility that I had seen in my father and mother, but few others. They were men and women, I thought, as I had always imagined men and women to be.

So awestruck was I that I could hardly speak. But I finally remembered my manners, and bowed my head to Ramadar, the man who had pulled me from the pool. I found my voice and stammered out: 'Satnamon Valashu — Valashu Elahad.'

'Valashu,' he repeated, bowing to me. Then he pointed up at the deep blue sky, where a blue sun shone with a dazzling light. 'Val al'Ashu ni al'Elahad — vos art arda valas.'

My heart beat like a soaring swan within me as the meaning of what Ramadar had said became clear and confirmed what I knew to be true: 'Star-of-the-Morning of the line of Elahad you have journeyed deep into the stars.'

Only the dead, I thought, made such journeys. For several hours, I struggled to speak to them in their beautiful language. The sun dried my tunic then began to drop toward the blazing hills in the west. There, the light off the houses ran through a riot of shifting colors: violet and carnelian; ocher, turquoise and red. A few of the Star People — Eva, Saya and Jessur — walked off to their houses and returned with delicious foods, whose like I had never seen nor tasted. It grew darker, and the stars came out, and then I knew that I had left Ea, for the constellations here were all strange and lit up the sky with a brilliance beyond that of any sky I had ever beheld, even the Infinite black and silver dome above the tar Harath,

As the Star People's words became ever clearer to me, so did mine to them. I gained a clearer understanding of their purpose and how they had come to be waiting here to greet me. They had their scryers, too, it seemed. One of them had foretold my journey, and had warned that once I beheld the beauty of their city, Iveram, I would never want to leave. This was so. In gazing out at the mountains and waterfalls above the city's twinkling lights, it seemed that I had finally come home.

'You, Valashu, are welcome to remain with us,' Ramadar said to me. Although his long, grave face and bold eyes reminded me of my father, it seemed that he bore no higher rank than any other of his eleven companions. 'But we have been sent here to persuade you that you must go back.'

Was I not dead, then, after all? But go back to what, I thought? To a woman whom I could never marry? To friends whom I led on and on in a quest likely to find only their deaths? To a doomed world?

Although I had spoken around these doubts for many hours with Ramadar and the other Star People, I had not made them explici. It didn't matter. They sensed the volcano of fury and anguish that fumed inside me. They, too, perhaps in greater measure than I, bore the gift of valarda.

'Our lives present us with many choices,' Ramadar told me. 'But in the end, only one path will have been walked. We believe that yours lies back, toward the world you call Ea.'

'Perhaps it does,' I said. I turned to looked at Asha, and then at Eva, whose long black hair showed strands of silver and whose eyes shone with kindness and concern for me. 'Why don't you then come with me? All of you — and any of you who live here?'

I went on to say that many thousands of men and women willing to make this journey couid surely be found in Iveram and other cities of their world, which they named as Givene. Under a brilliant banner emblazoned with Givene's most brilliant stars, we could assemble a great host of warriors who would throw down Morjin and bring peace to Ea.

'No, Valashu, that we may not do,' Eva said to me. Her voice fell over me as cool and gentle as the wind blowing off the mountains. 'You know that we may not go to Ea, and you know why.'

'Because you are too pure to go down into Hell?'

Although I had eaten here the sweetest of fruits, there remained in my mouth a terrible bitterness.

'No, that we are not,' she said with a sad smile. 'Neither are the Elijin nor the Galadin. And it is because we are not that we may not go to Ea.'

Shivaj, a man with quick, hot eyes and a proud cast of chin, was more brusque than Eva. He said simply, 'The Galadin forbid it.'

'But what if this forbiddance were lifted?' I said.

'Long ago the forbiddance was lifted,' Shivaj said in a voice like a hammered gong, 'and a great Elijin became the Red Dragon. And Kalkin became the one you call Kane.'

'But one last time,' I said. 'One last battle — Morjin could not stand against a million Valari of Givene armed with spears and swords!'

'You do not know that,' Eva said to me. 'Not even our scryers can foresee what Morjin might do, armed with the Lightstone and the wrath of the Dark One filling his heart.'

'But we could win!' I cried out.

'Yes, we could win,' Ramadar said to me. His black eyes and noble bearing fell upon me with a heavy weight. 'The Valari could stand triumphant on Ea's soil beneath a star-silvered banner, holding high the Cup of Heaven that we had claimed. As we did once before. We remember too well how Elahad's brother fell mad and slew Elahad over the Lightstone. How Valari slew Valari in a bloodbath that has grown only deeper and redder with the passing of the ages. How will it end? Not with more Valari going to Ea. You are Valashu ni al'Elahad, the last and only heir of the Elahad. The stain of his murder lies upon all the Valari, on Ea and elsewhere, but it is upon you to put things right and end what was begun on Ea so long ago.'

He added that I was also Valashu ni al'Adar, the last of the great Adar's descendents and therefore the rightful guardian of the Lightstone. My task, he said, was to reclaim the Cup of Heaven for the Maitreya. I stared hard into Ramadar's bright eyes and asked, 'While and your people remain safe here on Givene and watch events unfold through the waters of your pool? Are you afraid to fight, then?'

He pointed at my sword and said, 'There are different ways of fighting. The one who sits on the Dragon throne might be brought down by the edge of your sword, but the Dark One will never be. That will require i different kind of sword, finer than silustria, as pure in essence as light. It is upon us, and even more the Elijin and Galadin, to help forge it.'

I remembered lines of a verse graven in my heart;

Valarda, like molten steel like tears,

like waves of singing light.

Which angel fire has set its seal

And breath of angels polished bright.

'The true Alkaladur,' I said bitterly. 'This truly impossible thing.'

At this Eva smiled at me and said. 'The Valari were meant to be warriors of the spirit. In the end, Valashu, you were, too.'

I said nothing as I looked into the impossibly deep pools of Eva's eves,

'The War of the Stone,' she said, 'goes on across the stars as it has for a million years. We fight it as we must, for it must be won, and the Valkariad must come. If not in our time, then in our children's, or our children's children.'

'All right,' I finally said, 'fight as you must, then. But must all your people, in all their millions, fight your way? Can you not spare a few thousands to come to Ea and fight our way?'

'No,' she said sadly, 'the Galadin forbid it.'

'Then damn the Galadin!' I snarled out. The rage in my voice stunned me; it seemed to shock Eva and Ramadar and the others standing about the dark pool. 'If they won't help, then damn them!'

'Valashu — you know not what you say!'

Eva and Varjan — Asha and Shivaj, too — stared at me in horror. And I stared right back at them as I called out, 'I may not know what I say. But how is it that you know what the Galadin say?'

'From time to time,' Eva told me, 'one of the mighty Elijin walks our world and brings us their words.'

'Then you bow to their will?'

'Even as a warrior of your world does to his king,' Ramadar told me. 'And even as the Galadin themselves