Black Jade

bee's stinger still embedded in his skin. He shrugged his shoulders. And Master Juwain said, 'It might have been the Great Death. In 1047 of the Age of the Dragon, the plague spread out of Argattha into all lands, in some places killing nine people out of ten. It might be that there were lands where all died — or at least, no one remained to make accounts.'

He wanted to search through the ruins for a library but Kane gainsaid such a quest, growling out, '1047 — has it really been almost two thousand years since Morjin bred that filthy plague? So, any books here that told of it would long since have rotted apart.'

He went on to curse Morjin for using a green gelstei to create the hideous, hemorrhagic disease meant to afflict the blood of all the Valari — and the Valari only.

'So, he failed — the green gelstei are hard to use, eh?' he said looking at Master Juwain. 'The Lord of Pestilence killed more of his own people than he did Valari.'

He didn't add what we all feared: that with the Lightstone in his grasp, he would be soon breed even worse plagues than the Great Death.

After that, we continued our journey up the road. This band of bricks and stones wound still higher and gradually turned past snowy peaks toward the south. Our dread of the Great Death, if not ghosts, impelled us to hurry from this rich country but over the next days we continued moving slowly, pausing often to let the horses graze upon all the grass they wished to eat. In truth, we all still suffered from the ravages of the desert. We needed time to heal. And our suspicion that a droghul awaited us farther up the road checked our enthusiasm for swift travel. We hunted and filled our bellies with meat even as Liljana found wild potatoes growing along our way, and much fruit: raspberries and blackberries, cherries, peaches and plums. We made feast of all these foods, and of the trout and rockfish that we pulled out of moun- tain streams. Kane called this land a hunter's paradise, and that it was. Liljana simply called it paradise. Rain fell upon us in perfect intervals and amounts, and so it was with the sunshine. It seemed strange that after fighting so hard for so long, against both man and nature, we should find a place where the world welcomed us and fed both our bodies and souls.

Daj and Estrella especially seemed to thrive here. Their small frames filled out, and their faces lost the haggard, haunted look that hundreds of miles of desert travel — to say nothing of the Skadarak — had worn into them. The sharp edge of guilt I felt at taking them on this quest dulled, slightly. It made me happy to see them happy, taking all the sustenance and sleep they needed, and more, playing games once again. They made fast friends with Alphanderry. His materializations and vanishings remained a mystery. The children, though, accepted the presence of this strange being in a way that we, his old friends, could not. They sat often with Alphanderry, continuing their elaboration of Eleikar's story and bringing this figmental character more and more to life. One night, with the fire crackling and the owls hooing deep in the forest, I heard Alphanderry say to Daj: 'Hoy, our Eleikar is still in an impossible fix, loving the wicked king's daughter, all the while knowing he must kill the king, whom the princess still loves, wickedness or no. Eleikar's dilemma reminds me of a riddle I once heard: 'How do you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit?''

Daj considered this a moment, and then turned to Estrella, who suddenly smiled and looked up at the sparkling heavens. And Daj blurted out: 'By becoming the sky!'

'Hoy, good, good — indeed, by becoming the sky!' Alphanderry said to Daj. 'What is it, then, that Eleikar must become to keep his head on his shoulders and keep the princess from hating him?'

Neither Daj nor Estrella, however, had an answer for him, and neither did I. I watched Alphanderry's face sparkling even in the thick of night as he said, 'We might think that we need to solve Eleikar's conundrum for him. But give it time, and he will solve it, himself — you'll see!'

We slept well that night, and journeyed on the next day, and the following days, in high spirits. The peaks of the Crescent Mountains cut the sky above us like rows of ice-sharp white teeth. In places, along rivers where the road held good, we clopped along over ancient stones. In other places thick forests obliterated the road, and there we had to pick our way more carefully, sometimes guessing from the lay of the land where we might find the road again. In ten days of such travel, we put many miles behind us. It couldn't be many more, I thought, until we came upon the tiny kingdom of Senta, and the much greater realm of Hesperu beyond that. I sensed with a rising heat of my blood that our story — at least our quest to find the Maitreya or not — was quickly coming to an end.

On the fourth of Soal, late in the afternoon, we came to a place where a wall of mountains blocked our way. We had lost the thread of the road a good five miles back and could not tell if a pass might cut this escarpment to our left, up and around the rocky slopes of a pyramid mountain, or to our right, to the west, through a dense forest of oak. cedar and silver fir.

'Here we have need of one of your Way Rhymes,' I said to Master Juwain. 'Or failing that, a guess.'

Master Juwain peered at the stark terrain ahead of us and said, 'Left, I think. I can almost see where a road once wound up around that mountain.'

So, I thought, shielding my eyes against the glare of the mountains' snowy slopes, could I.

Kane swept his hand at the escarpment and said, 'Senta lies within a great bowl. These might be the mountains forming the bowl's northern part — their backside. I have a memory of that peak, I think, though I beheld it long ago and from a different vantage. If it is that mountain, then I would say our way lies to the left.'

'Then let us make camp here for the night,' I said, 'and in the morning we'll see if you are right.'

'If I am right,' Kane said, 'if the way is not blocked, we'll reach Senta tomorrow. So, we must decide if we will go into the caverns.'

All my life I had heard of the Singing Caves of Senta, and for much of that time I had wondered if they could possibly be real.

'If we are to put ourselves forward as pilgrims,' Master Juwain said, 'as it seems we must, then the Sentans would think it strange if we didn't go into the caverns.'

His gray eyes gleamed with the light off the glacier high above us. I knew that he wasn't about to cross half the earth only to surrender up the chance to behold one of Ea's greatest wonders. 'I would like to hear the caverns' songs,' Liljana said.

'I would, too,' Atara added. 'There might be a chance that one of the voices in the caverns will tell of the Maitreya.'

'Ha — do you think you'll understand anything?' Kane asked. 'There are thousands of voices, millions, and if you go into the caverns, you'll hear gobbledygook. You will see — it will drive you mad.'

I thought about this for a moment, then looked at Kane. 'Mad, as it was for us with the Skadarak?'

Kane's eyes darkened and he said softly, 'No, not like that. The voices all do speak truly, I think. But in the presence of the truth, people are like stones in water. They can sit there forever, thirsting, and remain as dry as chalk.'

I glanced at Estrella, then clapped him on the arm and said, 'Let us hope that some people are rather like sponges. Let us go into the caverns and hope for the best.'

Kane slowly nodded his head at this, and my smile made him smile. 'All right, Valashu. But I tell you that you will hear things in those damn caverns that will be harder you to hear.'

I thought about this for half the night, and all the next morning as we set out again and worked our way up to the left, over the humps and folds of the pyramid mountain. Its eastern slopes, at this great height, with the air cool and thin, were covered mostly with silver fir and little undergrowth, and so we had little difficulty passing through the open spaces between the tall trees. Our luck held good, for we espied the white ridgeline of a low pass ahead of us and encountered no very steep grades or rockfalls to block our way. And then we came upon the road again. Here it was nothing more than a rubble of old, shattered stones, but it held true for a few more miles, taking us up almost all the way to the lip of the pass. We breathed hard at the cutting air, hurrying up this last leg of the ascent to see if Kane was right. Then we stood on a snowy shelf of ground as we looked down into a bowl of land twelve miles wide that was the ancient and entire kingdom of Senta.

The city of Senta stood near the bowl's midpoint. From this distance I could make out the cuts of the winding streets and the larger buildings, some of them domed and gleaming with veneers of gold. Kane pointed out King Yulmar's palace, on the wooded heights to the west of the city. More gold flashed from the towers and domes there, and I caught a brilliant sparkle, as of encrusted diamonds. Senta, which had extracted tolls and bribes from pilgrims for thousands of years, was famous for its wealth. According to Kane, it enjoyed a natural bounty, as well. Through the forest rising between the king's palace and the sheltering wall of mountains ran deer, foxes and boar, and other game that the king and Senta's nobles hunted. To the north of the city, and sweeping in a wide swath