Black Jade

Minstrels' Cavern. Here they have sung of everything that can be sung.'

'But my mother — '

'She still lives, in the songs the minstrels have sung of their mothers. Listen, and you will hear.'

As Daj fell silent, casting his eyes down upon the marbled stones about us, Alphanderry turned to Liljana and asked, 'What song would most brighten your spirits?'

Without hesitation Liljana told him, 'A song of the Mother.'

Alphanderry slowly nodded his head, then looked at Master Juwain.

'What do you wish to hear?'

And Master Juwain told him, That which cannot be heard.'

'And you, Kane?' Alphanderry asked, peering over at our grim-faced friend.

But Kane stared at him in silence, answering him only in the fury of his blazing eyes.

'Atara?' Alphanderry asked, looking away from him. Atara smiled as she said, 'Why, a love song, of course.' Alphanderry paused regard Estrella, who gazed right back at him with a soft radiance lighting up her face. I thought she might be happy listening to, any song, or to all of them. And then Alphanderry turned toward me.

'Val — what do you most want to hear?'

What did I wish to hear, I wondered? The location and identity of the Maitreya? The secret of life and death? Words assuring me that Daj and Estrella would somehow grow up in safety and that Atara would have all the love that she could bear? Or did I wish even more to learn of a cure for the poison burning up my soul?

I drew in a deep breath of the cavern's cool air, and I said, 'I want to hear how Morjin might be defeated.'

At this, Kane smiled savagely, baring his glittering white teeth. Atara's hand reached out to grip mine. Liljana and my other companions looked at me quietly. Finally, Alphanderry said to me, 'I do not know what minstrel would have sung of that, but why don't we all listen, even so?'

And so we did. We found a clear place on the cavern's floor near its center, and positioned ourselves facing whatever part of the cavern called to us. And then we waited.

At first, there was nothing to hear — nothing more than the susurrus of our breaths and a faint drumming that sounded almost like the Heartbeat of the earth. I set my hand upon the leather wrapped around the hilt of my sword; I could smell the sweat and oils worked into it, as I could the moistness of stone. There was a strange taste to the air. Across the cavern from me, where its walls gleamed with silver swirls, the light pouring out of the crystals grew suddenly stronger. The crystals themselves rang out like chimes, and voices fell out all around us.

As before, there were many of them. But here, in the seventh cavern deep in the earth, they did not resound as a multitudinous noise or even as chords, but rather progressed like the notes of a melody, one by one. I listened as the rich baritone of one minstrel gave way to the booming bass of another, only to be followed by an even deeper voice trolling out in verse or song, and then yet another. Many of the minstrels had not put their names to their compositions or the ancient ballads and epics they recited; others had: Agasha, Mingan, Kamilah, Hauk Eskii Mahamanu and Azureus. In the Minstrels' Cavern, I thought names mattered less than the virtue of the voices that spoke them. I sensed that minstrels from across Ea had come to this place, century after century, age after age, to vie with one another in singing the most beautiful song. No gold medallion would be given to the winner of this age-old competition, for it remained ongoing, and living minstrels might always hope to outsing even the greatest of the ancients. It was enough, I thought, that their words would live on long after they themselves had died, perhaps to the very ending of the world.

For an hour, it seemed, I stood nearly as still as one of the cavern's stone pillars, listening. I thought it would be impossible ever to single out any one minstrel's song as being the most beautiful or true. Some of their voices trilled out high and sweet, like the piping of birds, and soared up to the sky; other voices rang out low and long like gongs or bells that resonated with something deep inside my heart. Once or twice the minstrels attained to the truly angelic, and in the rhymes they intoned and the rhythms of their strange words, I caught hint of the grace of the language of the Galadin.

It was the singing of one of these ancient minstrels that most drew me. I couldn't help listening, for his voice was clear and strong, and rang out with the brightness of struck silver: In his heart-piercing song, I heard much that seemed lovely, but even more that was plaintive and pained. The immense suffering of this nameless minstrel made my throat hurt. His words cut open my soul, and burned with a terrible beauty that drove deep into me and filled my blood with fire.

At first, I took little sense from these blazing words, for the minstrel sang them in ancient Ardik, a language that I never translated easily. But the more he chanted out his verses, the more I could apprehend. I found myself drawing my sword nearly a foot out of its sheath. Alkaladur's shimmering silver gelstei seemed to resonate with something in the minstrel's music, and within the minstrel himself. A strange thing happened then: the meaning of the minstrel's words suddenly became utterly clear to me, as though light shone through a diamond. And the mystery of the minstrel's identity stood revealed.

His name was Morjin. But he was not the Morjin that I had battled in Argattha and had hated ever since, nor did his voice sound the same as that of the man who had taken on the mantle of the Red Dragon. No, I thought, this was a different Morjin, a younger Morjin not yet completely corrupted by the evils he had wrought upon the world. His voice was sweeter, gentler and less sure of itself. It reverberated with a different pitch and tone. In its plangent insistence on trying to uncover the truth, I heard almost as much-love as I did hate.

This Morjin of old had a story to tell, and he had come here to tell it. He had come to open his heart, and perhaps something more, too. In the most exquisitely sad music that I had ever heard, these words of an immortal who had once belonged to the Elijik order sounded out deep inside the earth:

Let none hear my voice except my brothers in spirit, for only they will understand: I have slain a man. I, of those who are not permitted to slay, have done this thing which cannot be undone. In the dark of the moon, on a black night in winter with the wolves howling in the hills, I bade a man to look out the window upon the stars, and I put a knife into his back, into his heart — how else to slay this man who was more than a man? To slay? Why do I bite my tongue to keep from saying the true word for what I have done? And that is murder. Let me shout that, here, in the hollow of the earth to these pretty stents, as I soon must shout it to the stars: That is murder! And I am therefore a murderer — at last.

Iojin. You were my brother, in spirit, and my brother in a great quest. You always knew my heart. How could I hide from you that which had begun to live inside me, with a ferocity like unto starfire feeding upon an infinite scarce? I burned, and so you burned, in touching my heart. You knew what golden source of light blazed in all my thoughts so that I could not sleep. You knew that I must someday try to claim IT — I think you knew this before I knew it myself. I burned, and so you burned, with compassion for me. I wept to know that you did not hate me for this dragon fire that consumed me, but only loved me. But you feared me, too, even as I feared myself.

How could you, Iojin of the Waters, not have wanted to go to the others in fear of me, in fear for me, and in fear for what we had come here to do? In fear for the world? Did you count this as betrayal? No, I do not think you would have, for you loved me as a brother, and would never have suffered anyone or anything to have grieved me. And yet, Garain, I think, would have betrayed me to the Bright Ones who sent us here. And Kalkin even worse: you, so gentle of heart, could never look into his heart, as fiery as a star, as black as death. He, the mighty Kalkin, might have murdered me. He would have — I feel this in my heart. When I claimed IT, he proved his baseness by murdering men, lesser men, before I slew him and cast his body into the sea.

Upon these words, I couldn't help looking over at Kane, who stood grinding his jaws together as he wept silently, perhaps to the sound of some song that I could not hear. And then Morjin's beautiful voice captured me again:

And so, by evil fate, I had to murder my brother. When I stabbed you, you screamed and screamed — I didn't know it would hurt so badly or take you so long to die. I watched the light go out of your eyes.