Black Jade

towers gleaming beneath a blue sun, and a great golden-leaved tree whose light never failed, not even in the darkest of nights. And then a brilliant light filled the pool, dissolving all that I beheld into a blaze of glorre. Without warning, it poured forth in a stream of fire that shot up and fell upon Flick. A song like the ringing of perfectly tuned crystals poured forth, too, and the music and the fire were as one. Everyone stood back as Flick's whirling lights flared brighter and brighter. I watched awestruck as this radiance gathered itself into the form of Alphanderry. He was like unto the strange being that had appeared before us several times on our journeys, and yet different, too. Although I knew well enough that our old friend had died in the Kul Moroth, the man who stood suddenly shaped and whole before us seemed almost alive.

'Val!' he cried out to me. He turned his head toward my other companions and smiled. 'Maram, Liljana, Master Juwain. Kane.'

Kane stared at this instantiation of Alphanderry with both sadness and joy filling up his eyes. He cried out: 'My little friend!' But he made no move to embrace him.

Daj, however, suffered from no such restraint. He stepped up to Alphanderry as if intending to touch his arm. His hand passed right through him — not, however, as before, as through a beam of light, but more like a hand dipped into water. It left ripples and a wake in whatever shimmering substance Alphanderry was made of.

Alphanderry smiled at Daj, and at Estrella who stood next to him. He looked at her deeply and for a long time. Then his gaze fell upon Atara and the blindfold binding her face, and he said, 'It is good to see you again after all this time, though it pains me that you cannot see me. What happened to you, Atara?'

'You do not know?'

He shook his head. 'I almost know. The memory is there, somewhere, but I cannot find it.'

For a while we stood there recounting the many events that had occurred after Alphanderry's death in the Kul Moroth: our entrance into Khaisham and the great library; our journey across the White Mountains and the battle inside Argattha in which we had claimed the Lightstone. Although Atara would not speak of her blinding, Alphanderry must have guessed that she had left her eyes behind in Morjin's throne room. When our story moved on to the tragedy of Morjin invading Mesh and stealing back the Lightstone, and all that had happened since, Alphanderry rubbed at his curly black hair and told us: 'It is as if I was there, somehow, at the heart of all these things you say have happened.'

'But you were there!' I said to him.

'As the one you call Flick?'

At this, he held out his hand as if beckoning one of the nearby Timpum floating above a patch of lilies. The Timpum — it was all blue and golden like a ball of light — drifted over and settled in the center of Alphanderry's palm. I watched amazed as Alphanderry's hand broke apart into a shimmer of silver and crimson and then reassembled itself a moment later. And Alphanderry told me, 'I am not Flick. And yet, I am not other than Flick, too. It is hard to explain.'

Explanations, I thought, had never been Alphanderry's gift. He was a poet and a minstrel. His triangular face was full of all the wild ness and spontaneity that we had all loved, and with wit and imag-ination, too. His wide, sensual lips pulled up in a dazzling smile that lit up his whole face and caused the deep creases around his eyes to flare out like the rays of the sun. His innate playfulness caught others up like fire. He had always been a dreamy man, living in some intensely beautiful inner world that he delighted in sharing with others. His large brown eyes told of his longing for places even more splendid than Givene or Agathad. And yet something new warmed his soul — or perhaps it was only a change in direction of his oldest and deepest impulse, as natural as breathing out once one has fully breathed in. As he gazed at the Timpum shining in his hand — and then at Estrella and the lilies around the pool and the astor trees and the rocks and grasses in the Loikalii's woods — I sensed within him an overwhelming desire to sing not just of the wonder of the world, but to sing to the world, to fill the flowers with music and make everything come alive in a way it never had before.

He seemed as puzzled at his own existence as I was. I looked to Oni and Maira to see if they might offer some understanding of this miracle, but they and the other Loikalii had never witnessed one of the Timpum transformed this way. Oni stood watching Alphanderry with worship lighting up her old face. Even Kane seemed mystified, for I heard him mutter, 'My little, dear little friend — how, how?'

Oni now had little left to show us in her magic pool, and there was little that we still wished to see. She suggested returning to the astor grove in order to make another feast in honor of Alphanderry's return to us. No one objected. I kept waiting for Alphanderry to vanish back into a whirl of lights, but he remained as solid and real as he could be. With Daj and Estrella close by him and many of the Loikalii children gathering in close, he walked through the woods singing a sweet, silly song that delighted them.

That evening, though, when the Loikalii spread out their fruits and nuts and delicious forest foods on their leaf-woven mats, Alphanderry sang other songs. With Kane playing the mandolet that Alphanderry still could not quite grasp, Alphanderry gave voice to a melody so lovely and compelling that all of us joined him, though we did not know what the words we intoned meant. I marveled that many of the Timpum came shimmering and streaking from out of the woods to add their strange chiming sounds to the chorus. Even the great trees above us sang, in silence, as the stars far beyond the world sang out with light.

Chapter 28

We remained in the Loikaiii's woods for two more days. I kept waiting for Alphanderry to fade back into the lesser splendor of Flick, but he seemed to grow only more and more real. Although he ate no food nor drank any drop of water, he walked through the woods like any other man, and he laughed and joked with us as we gathered stores for the remaining part of our journey.

We could not put this off any longer. We all dreaded leaving the shelter of the lovely trees to go out into the blazing hell of the Tar Harath. Maram especially moved with a sloth and sullenness hard to bear, cursing under his breath as he helped fill up the waterskins from one of the Loikaiii's pools. He cast numerous, longing looks at Anneli, who seemed loath to leave his side. His resentment weighed heavily upon me, as did the need to say farewell to Sunji and the Avari. There was no help for this. When we had stowed the last waterskin and bag of fresh cherries on the packhorses, in the coolness of a mid-Marud morning with the birds singing all around us, we held council with Sunji and his fellow warriors beneath an old, spreading astor tree.

'Your father,' I said to Sunji, 'enjoined you to help us cross the desert, but to go only as far as you must. You have come that far, perhaps even farther. Now you must return to tell King Jovayl of the great thing that you have done.'

While Maidro, Nurathayn and Arthayn regarded me with questioning looks, Sunji said, 'But you still have the rest of the Tar Harath to cross! And beyond that, the lands of the Yieshil'

And Maidro added, 'Who will warn you of sandstorms? Who will keep you from drowning in quicksands? Who will help you find water?'

This last question needed no answer, for everyone's gaze fell upon Estrella, who sat near Alphanderry's brilliant form playing some sort of game with him in the graceful movements of their fingers and hands. And I said to the Avari: 'We would never have reached this place without your help. But once we leave here, we journey to the mountains in the west, and beyond. If you were to go with us as far as the mountains, and then try to return by yourselves to your hadrah across the whole breadth of the Tar Harath, then you must take water again here, or die. Without Estrella to lead you, you would be unlikely to find these woods. This is too great a risk, and I cannot ask you to bear it.'

Sunji and his fellow warriors were brave men, but they were practical, too, as were all the peoples of the Red Desert. They saw the logic of what I said. Nuradyan, however, upon watching Estrella and Alphanderry with wonder, said, 'But we could go with you to the end of your quest!'

This, though, Sunji was unwilling to do. He said to Nuradayn, and to all of us: 'My father's wishes must be obeyed, and we must return home as soon as we can. In autumn, 'I think, there will be war with the Zuri. Valaysu is right, I think, that the Dragon will not leave the killing of his Red Priests unavenged. Valaysu has his battles, and we have ours.'