Black Jade

He stood up to embrace me then, and it surprised me to see tears flowing freely from his eyes.

'All right,' Maidro said, embracing me, too, 'then we must say farewell, and I will wish you well: May the One always lead you to water.'

Just then Oni surprised us by marching into the grove at the head of a contingent of the Loikalii, including Maira, Kalevi and three elders. Oni walked straight up to Estrella, and held out to her the blue, crystal bowl that was so clear to her. And she told her: 'Take this, that the One might always lead water to you.'

Estrella's hands closed around the little bowl, and she looked up at Oni with deep gratitude. Then Oni bent to kiss the top of her curly head. Since Estrella remained as mute as the trees around us, I spoke for her, saying to Oni, 'You have given us a great gift, perhaps even the gift of life itself. But how will you summon the rain without your gelstei?'

At this, Oni cast me one of her mysterious looks and said, 'Don't worry, giant man, we have our ways.'

Liljana, who was more practical than I, studied the gleaming blue bowl that Estrella held and said, 'But how will she know how to use it?'

Her question really needed no answer, for we had all found our way into our gelstei largely unaided. I thought Oni's response interesting, however, for she looked at the radiance streaming down through the golden astor leaves and said, 'How do the trees know how to use the light of the sun?'

When it came time to saddle the horses and leave the woods, another surprise awaited me, but this one was heartbreaking. Maram, holding Anneli's hand, strolled into the assembly place near our olinda trees and announced that he would not be coming with us.

'I'm sorry, Val, but I've come too far already, and it is too much — too, too much.'

We stood near the stamping horses. My heart beat with a sick thudding in my chest as I stared at Maram in disbelief. I could find no words to say.

'I'm sorry, my friends,' he said to all of us, 'but I just can't go on.'

He wiped at the corner of his eye, and would not look at me. It came to me that this was just another of his vastations, when doubt and fear worked at his insides and made jelly of his muscles and bones and his will to move himself in the right direction. As always, I believed, a brilliant fire would soon burn away his deepest affliction and leave a noble being standing straight and unvan-quishable. As always, I had only to light the torch.

'Maram,' I said, stepping up close to him to grasp his shoulder.

'No, no — do not look at me that way!'

How could I not look at this vain, vexatious yet great man whom I loved as much as I did anyone?

'Please, Val — this is too hard!'

As I searched for the right thing to say to him, Kane barked out at him: 'Watch that your courage doesn't fail you now!'

Atara stepped up to him and said, 'The worst of our journey is behind us.'

Liljana came over to touch her hand to his cheek. 'We know how you've suffered — who knows better than your friends? But it's almost over. I have to believe that.'

'No, no, it will never be over,' Maram said. 'I do not think you will ever find the Maitreya.'

He stood squeezing Anneli's hand and still would not look me.

'We need you, Maram,' I said at last. Estrella came over and pulled gently at his hand to indicate her intense desire that he should change his mind and journey on with ill Alphanderry told him of the great wonders of the world that he might experience if only he found the will to ride a few hundred more miles. Kane turned to me with a helpless look softening his savage face.

'Maram,' I said, again touching his shoulder.

He still ignored me, turning to unwrap his old traveling cloak from around his firestone. He lifted up this great, ruby crystal and said, 'I never really believed that this would be made whole again. I never believed that I would be made whole again. Can I hold love's bright flame? For a day or a year? That's all that really matters. In the end, it all comes down to love.'

His gaze fell in adoration upon Anneli for a moment and then finally met mine. All of his anguish came flooding into me. All of his dreams and desires filled me with a pain that I could not bear. I blinked my eyes against the burning there, and said to him, 'All right, Maram, stay if you must, and peace be with you.'

If I searched inside myself for the truth of things, hadn't I always known it would come to this?

'Don't look at me like that!' Maram called out to me again.

I could no longer bear for him to suffer, not another arrow wound to his flesh or a sunburn or a day of fruitless fighting an enemy that could not be defeated. I could not bear that his great heart should remain empty of that for which he most yearned. I said to him, 'Stay — take Anneli for your bride. Have children. Be happy, my friend.'

I looked at him as he looked at me, and I could not hold inside the bright, warm thing that made my heart hurt.

'Damn you, Val!' he said to me. 'You're cruel! You make it easy for me — and so make it hard. So damn, damn hard!'

We embraced each other then, and wept like boys. Then it came time to saddle the horses for rest of our journey. Maram watched me fasten the straps beneath Altaru's great body, and he said to me, 'Ah, surely I was wrong in what I said about the Maitreya. You will find him! And on your return, you'll pass back through these woods again — I know you will!'

He forced himself to smile, huge and deep, but I could tell that be did not believe what he had said. I, however had to act as if I believed it. And so with great gratitude we said farewell to the people of the forest. We mounted our horses and rode through the silent trees. When we came out upon the sands of the Tar Harath, a blast of terrible heat instantly burned the moisture from my eyes. There came another parting, as Sunji and the Avari turned south and east while we forced ourselves to point our mounts toward the great dunes gleaming in the west. Soon, the Avari were lost to our sight among the sweeps and swells of this vast country. Then the Loikalii's Vild vanished into the glare of the deepening distances. Never, not even after my family's death, had I felt so alone.

Over the next few days of our journey, my friends said little to me, for I could not bear the sound of their voices. Our lives settled into a harsh routine: strike our goat-hair tents hours before dawn and ride into the growing heat of the morning. When the air became a blazing furnace searing our eyes and sucking our bodies' moisture clean out of the fibers of the robes that the Avari had given us, we pitched our tents again and lay sweating and suffering until it came time to set out into the cooling air of the late afternoon. We plodded on across the evening's starlit sands; when exhaustion finally weakened us and the icy cold of deep night drove through our garments like knives, we crawled inside our tents yet again to take a few hours of sleep.

I led us on a straight course southwest toward the Crescent Mountains. No lesser mountains or rocky hills rose up out of the desert to impede us or to cause us to make a detour. The heat of the Tar Harath, after the cool greenery of the Loikalii's woods, seemed even more hellish than the baking misery that had so nearly killed us in the desert's easternmost reaches.

There seemed no end to it. Although I knew from the maps that we would eventually reach the great Crescent Mountains, and the Tar Harath give out many miles before that, my ears, eyes and heart told me differently. There was only desert in all directions, day after day. The wind blew particles of stinging sand across a sun-seared emptiness that seemed to go on forever. I turned often toward the direction that I imagined the Vild to lie, hoping that Maram might have changed his mind and that I might see him riding after us. I felt him close to me, his great heart booming out his remorse at deserting me and his desire to reunite in our quest But I searched the wavering sand behind us in vain.

We all, I thought, grieved Ma ram's absence; it was as if there was a hole in the earth where a great mountain had stood. One night, over dinner, Liljana admitted that she missed Ma ram's grumbling and drinking almost as much as she did his bawdy songs and unchainable zest for life. She had little appetite for the last of the cherries and other fresh fruit that we had taken from the Loikalii's woods. I had none. I sat staring at my untouched food; I sipped the few drams of brandy that I poured into my cup in remembrance of happier times. If we had lost one companion, however, we had gained another — almost — in Alphanderry. His presence did not fade with our passing from the Vild, nor did he often dissolve back into his old radiance as Flick. He 'rode' along with us on top of one of the packhorses, if that was the right word to describe the actions of a being who possessed neither solidity