Black Jade

Chapter 31

We raced up and back through the caverns, one by one. When we came into the second cavern, I saw that we had been shut in by the massive iron doors. Kane waited for us in front of them; his eyes picked apart the doors' joints and the surrounding rock as if looking for any weakness. With his sword in hand, he suddenly leaped toward the doors, slamming his shoulder against the crack where they came together. There came a great bang and a groaning of iron, and I was afraid that Kane had broken his bones. But his savage effort failed to budge the doors even an inch.

'Damn them!' Kane muttered. He slapped his open hand against hard iron with such force that bits of rust flew out into the air. 'Damn them!'

Muffled voices sounded from beyond the door, and I sensed that Sylar and the two other stewards stood guard there. Without warning, Kane grabbed Babul's spear and used the ironshod butt to hammer at the doors as he cried out, 'Open up! Open, I say!'

From the first cavern past the doors came the sound of laughter.

'Sylar — open the damn doors!'

The laughter grew louder, and I could plainly hear Sylar's voice as he called out to us: 'Soon enough we'll open the doors, cursed pilgrims. But you'll not be happy when we do.'

Liljana came up to the door and shouted out: 'We've more gold — diamonds, too! Open the door, and we'll give you all you wish!'

'Can you give me what I really wish? No, not with gold, or even diamonds.'

There resounded a smug laughter that made me want to tear off Sylar's head. Then he added, 'In the end, you will give me what I wish, though. And I'll have your treasure out of you, too.'

It came to me in a flash that what he wished was to be made a Red Priest of the Kallimun. These hated executors of Morjin recruited from devoted members of the Order of the Dragon, to which Sylar and the other stewards must belong. Thus had Morjin's priests suborned even princes. I remembered the red dragon tattooed on Salmelu Aradar's forehead, to the shame of Ishka and all the Valari kingdoms.

Kane must have shared my thinking, for he raised back his head and howled out: 'Trapped! Cursed acolytes with their cursed secret marks! Damn them!'

He motioned for Alphanderry to come closer to him, and asked him, 'Is there anything you can do?'

A glimmer of light played beneath Alphanderry's skin as his hand felt along the crack between the door. Then Alphanderry looked off at Kane, and shook his head. Whatever wondrous substance he was made of, it could not pass through solid iron.

We moved off deeper into the cavern, and we held council as we decided what to do. Kane believed that Sylar must have sent the steward Tarran for reinforcements; clearly Sylar was waiting for them before opening the doors.

'There must be a way out,' I murmured. 'There is always a way.'

It seemed that an answer must be whispering in my mind, but the roar of voices deafened me so that I could not hear it.

'I should have seen it,' Kane growled to me, staring at the doors. It was his way of apologizing. 'To be captured so — so damn easily, after following our star so long and so far.'

But even as he uttered the word 'star'. Master Juwain's eyes lit up, and he thumped the side of his head with his hand. Then he called out:

‘The road toward heavens' starry crown Goes ever up but always down.’

At this, Liljana's face soured, and she said to him. 'This is no time for one of your Way Rhymes.'

'It is precisely the time,' Master Juwain told her, 'since things have grown dark and we desperately need a way out of here, I should have seen it! I should have, from the first.'

'Seen what, sir?' I asked him.

He pointed back toward the corridor leading into the next cavern. He said, 'If we would see the stars again, we must go down. Down to the seventh cavern.'

'But there is no way out of it except up to the sixth cavern.'

'Are you sure?'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'Not even with the songs of the angels could we sing our way through solid rock.'

'No, perhaps not. But we might find a way out of it into the succeeding cavern — the true seventh cavern.'

I looked at him in confusion, and so did Liljana and everyone else. And Master Juwain nodded his head toward the iron doors and explained: 'That hollow outside was clearly made by a fire-stone long ago; I don't count it as a true cavern. Therefore, this chamber where we stand is the true first cavern, and the Minstrels' Cavern is only the sixth.'

My confusion only deepened as I stared at him. The cavern's crystals cast a rainbow radiance upon his shining head.

Kane scowled at him and said, 'So — so what? Then there are only six of what you call true caverns here.'

'No, there are seven caverns to the Singing Caves of Senta — this is known. Therefore there must be an opening out of the Minstrels' Cavern into an even deeper one.'

'What makes you so sure of that, eh?'

'Because there are seven musical notes, and seven colors to the spectrum — seven chakras along the spine, as well. And many, many other sevens. It is the Law of the Seven, and I feel certain that it applies here.'

While Kane stood considering this, Babul looked at Master Juwain and said, 'But Master Javas, I have been a steward here for fifteen years, and my father and grandfather served here before me. No one has ever heard any mention of a secret cavern.'

'And that,' Pirro added in a high, whiny voice, 'is because there is no secret cavern.'

'And even if there was,' Babul said, 'how would that help us? We would only be trapped that much deeper in the earth.'

'No, we might escape,' Master Juwain said. 'Sometimes underground rivers flow through caves. And there might be cracks off the seventh cavern, corridors leading out of it and up into the mountain — or even out its back side. Who knows? This mountain might even be riddled with tunnels as is Skartaru.'

At the mention of the Black Mountain beneath which the city of Argattha was buried, and where Morjin dwelled, I made a fist around the hilt of my sword. Then I heard Morjin's voice singing from deep in the earth, and I told Master Juwain and the rest of my friends what I had learned of Morjin in the seventh — or sixth — cavern.

'I believe that he was seeking something there,' I said. 'Something beyond listening to the minstrels and leaving his song. It might have been a secret cavern.'

Atara turned toward the dark opening leading down into the mountain. A slight shaking of her head gave me to understand that if any secret, seventh cavern was hidden beyond the sixth, she had seen no vision of it. But then she said, 'Why don't we go back, even so? Can anyone think of a better plan?'

Again, I led the way into the earth. We strung out in a line, like ants, with my friends behind me and the two stewards directly in front of Kane, who took the rear. When we came out into the Minstrels' Cavern, Kane posted himself at the top of the stairs to warn us in case Sylar and his men came for us. The rest of us spread out to examine the cavern's walls. A secret door to a secret cavern, as Master Juwain reasoned, would certainly be outlined by cracks in the walls' gleaming crystals. But there were thousands of cracks, many of which cleaved along the crystals' bases in clean planes. And some of these cracks, I thought, would be invisible to the eye, rather like the seam in a broken crust of bread after the two halves had been fitted back together.

When we were ready to abandon our search as a long and probably hopeless work, I noticed Estrella standing motionless before a particularly lovely part of the cavern. Her eyes caught the colors of the crystals there,