Black Jade

'It is not a question of honor,' Master Juwain told him. 'If I fall before we reach the school, at least one of us must know the verse. Now listen well and try to remember this:

Between the Oro and the Jade

Where sun at edge of grass is laid.

Between the rocks like ass's ears

The Kul Kavaakurk gorge appears.

Maram nodded his head as his fat lips moved silently. Then he looked at Master Juwain and said, 'Well, the first two lines are clear enough, but what about the third? What about these 'ass's' ears?'

'Why, that is certainly clear as well, isn't it? Somewhere, at the edge of the steppe, we will find two rocks shaped like an ass's ears framing the way toward the Kul Kavaakurk.'

'Why two rocks, then?' Master Juwain cast Maram a strained look as if he were being as dull and difficult as an ass.

He said, 'How many ears does an ass have?'

'No more than two, I hope, or I would not want to see such a beast. But what if the line you told me was instead:

Between the rocks like asses' ears

That could mean two asses or three, and so there could be four rocks or six — or even more.'

As Master Juwain pulled at his ruined ear, the one into which Morjin's priest had stuck a red-hot iron, he gazed at the mountains to the west. And he said, 'I'm afraid I hadn't thought of that.'

'And that is the problem with these Way Rhymes of yours. Since none of them are written down, how are we to make such distinctions?'

Master Juwain fell quiet as we trotted along. Then he thumped his book yet again and said to Maram, 'The words in here are meant to be clear for any man to read. But the words in the Way Rhymes are only for the masters of the Brotherhood. And any master would know, as you should know, to apply Jaskar the Wise's Scales to any conundrum.'

'Scales?' Maram said. 'Are we now speaking of fish?'

'Now you are being an ass!' Master Juwain snapped out.

'Ah, well, I must confess,' Maram said, 'that I do not remember anything about this Jaskar the Wise or his scales.'

'Jaskar the Wise,' Master Juwain reminded him, 'was the Master Diviner and then Grandmaster of the Blue Brotherhood in the Age of Law. But never mind for right now who he was. We are concerned with the principle that he elucidated: that when faced with two or more equally logical alternatives, the simplest should be given the greatest weight.'

'And so we are to look for an ass's ears, and so two rocks and not four, is that right?'

'I believe that is right.'

Maram covered his heavy brows with his hand as he scanned the great wall of the Nagarshath along our way. And he said, 'I haven't seen anything that looks like ears, those of an ass or any other beast, and we've come at least a hundred and forty miles from the Jade.'

'And we've still another forty until we reach the Oro. And so we can deduce that we'll come across this landmark between here and there.'

Maram looked behind at our pursuers and said, 'Closer to to here would be better than closer to there. I'm getting a bad feeling about all this. I hope we find these damn donkey's ears, and soon.'

After that we rode even faster through the swishing grasses along the mountains, and so did the men who followed us. I, too, had a bad feeling about them, and it grew only hotter and more galling as the sun rose higher above us. I turned often to make sure that Karimah and her Manslayers covered our rear, just as I watched Bajorak and his Danladi warriors fanned out ahead of us. After brooding upon Master Juwain's and Maram's little argument and all that my friends had said to me the night before, I finally pushed Altaru forward at a gallop so that I might hold counsel with this strong-willed headman of the Tarun clan.

After pounding across the stone-strewn turf and accidentally trampling the nest of a meadowlark, I came up to Bajorak. He held up his hand and called for a halt then. When he saw the look in my eyes, he led me away from Pirraj and the huge Kashak and his other warriors. He reined in his horse near a large boulder about fifty yards from his men. And he said to me, 'What is it, Valashu Elahad?'

For a moment I studied this great Sarni warrior, with his limbs, neck and head encircled in gold and his face painted with blue stripes like some sort of strange tiger. Most of all I looked deeply into his dazzling blue eyes. And then I asked him: 'Do you know of two rocks, along the mountains, shaped like an ass's ears? There would be a span between them — and possibly a stream or a river.'

His eyes grew brighter and even harder, like blue diamonds, as he stared at me. And he answered my question with a question: 'Is that where we are to escort you then?'

'Perhaps,' I told him.

His fine face pulled into a scowl, and he snapped his braided, black quirt against his hand. 'I know not of any ass's ears, and I care not.'

I couldn't keep down my disappointment, and he must have felt this for his eyes softened as he said, 'But there are two great rocks like unto those you describe, about ten miles south of here. We call them the Red Shields. If that is your destination, however, you would have had a hard time finding it.'

'Why so?'

'Because the Shields face east, and we approach them from the northwest. From our vantage, we will see only their edges — and the rocks and trees on the slopes behind them.'

I continued gazing at him, and I finally asked, 'Do these shields, then, guard a gorge cutting through the mountains?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'I know not. No Sarni would ever journey into the mountains to find out.'

He turned to snap his quirt toward the mountain and asked me, 'What is the name of this gorge?'

Our eyes locked together, and something inside him seemed to

push at me, as I pushed at him. I said, 'If you've no care for gorges, you would have even less for its name.' Now he whipped the quirt against his hand so hard that it instantly raised up a red welt — but no redder and hotter than his anger at me. He seemed to bite back words that he might regret speaking. He turned away from my gaze to look at the mountains and then behind us at the Red Knights, who had also paused to take a rest. Then his eyes moved toward my friends, grouped together in front of the Manslayers; I knew with a painful leap of my blood that he was watching Atara.

'What have I done,' he asked, 'to make you scorn me so?'

And I blurted out: 'I do not scorn you, only the way that you look at one… whom you should not look at at all.'

Astonishment poured out of him like the sweat that shone from his brow and beaded up on his golden fillet. And he said to me, 'Atara is a great warrior, and more, imakla! And even more, a beautiful woman. How should a man look at such a woman, then.'

Notin lust, I thought, fighting at the knot of pain rising up in my throat. Not in such terrible desire.

He turned back to me, and his astonishment only deepened. And he half-shouted 'You are Valari, and she is Sarni — half-Sarni! And she is your companion in arms who has yet to fulfill her vow! You cannot be betrothed to her!'

'No, we are not betrothed,' I forced out. 'But we are promised to each other.'

'Promised how, then?'

I watched Atara giving Estrella a drink from her water horn, and I said, 'Promised with our hearts.'

I did not really expect this savage Danladi warrior to understand such deep and tender sentiments, for the Sarni beat their women when they displease them and rarely show them kind-ness. And so he astonished me once more when he said. 'I am sorry, Valashu, I will not look at her again. But I too, know what it is to love this