Black Jade

and I could not tell whether their radiance came from without or within.

'Estrella?' I said, moving over to her. 'What do you see?'

I traced my finger along the edges and facets of azure crystals. I could find no cracks that might have been the outline of a doorway. 'Estrella?' I said again.

This bright-eyed girl remained frozen, gazing at the crystalline wall. I remembered that the Avarii had called her an udra mazda, who had found water in a nearly waterless desert. And more, Master Juwain had identified her as a seard, who could make her heart one with hidden things.

'Estrella — do you think there is a door here? How can there be?'

Daj came over to me and touched me on the arm. He said, 'Don't you remember the door to the secret passage off Lord Morjin's chambers?'

In fact, at that very moment, I was thinking of exactly that door in the black depths of Argattha. And of how a password spoken in ancient Ardik had opened it.

Master Juwain examined the wall in from of Estrella, and said, 'I don't think there is a door here. And if there is, how would we ever discover the word that might open it?'

I drew my sword and pointed it toward the wall. The two stewards gasped to see its silustria flare with a soft light. Something bright flared within me, too. From bits and pieces out of ray memory — the poignancy of Morjin's words, the yearning of his song and the beauty of other songs that I had heart in darker places — a sparkling pattern took shape. And I said to Master Juwain. 'Perhaps not a word, then, but a language. Perhaps we can sing our way through solid rock.'

I turned to Alphanderry and said, 'Do you remember the Kul Moroth?'

Alphanderry nodded his head. 'Yes, I remember.'

'The way you sang there, and other times since — can you sing that way now?'

'I can try,' he said. He looked across the cavern at Kane standing at the top of the stairs. 'It might help if I had accompaniment.'

Kane nodded his assent and came down to us. He unslung the mandolet that he had brought with him into the caverns. After quickly tuning it, he looked at Alphanderry and said, 'So.'

And so as Kane began plucking the mandolet's strings, Alphanderry sang. He directed his strong, clear voice at the wall before him. His words, pouring forth in ever more perfect form, with exquisite grace, seemed to melt into a music so beautiful that I found myself weeping and laughing, all at once. And all at once, the crystals on the wall seemed to lose their solidity and run with a sparkle and fluidness like unto water. With great care, I pushed the point of my sword toward these crystals. The silustria sliced deep into them; the substance of the crystals seemed to flow around my sword like an azure waterfall, and yet strangely did not move or lose its shape. And still Kane played, and still Alphanderry sang, aad my heart surged with great joy to hear once more the language of the Galadin. Of all the minstrels who had ever given their voices to this cavern, I thought that none could compare with Alphanderry. I watched as the jewel-like crystals began changing once again. Their liquidity gave way to an even less solid substance, more like air, and then finally shimmered before me like a curtain of light.

Alphanderry stopped singing, and gazed in wonder at what his music had accomplished. As I pulled back my sword, now gleaming like a mirror. Master Juwain stared at the cavern's wall. A great oval, like a door, stood limned against that part of the wall that remained hard crystal. I could not see through it to determine if another cavern lay beyond. It was like trying to look through the sky's brilliant blueness to apprehend the stars.

Master Juwain brought forth a copper coin and tossed it at the wall. It passed straight through the light- wrought crystals and disappeared. I heard the tinkling of metal as it seemed that the coin struck rock on the other side.

'The Law of the Seven, indeed,' I said, smiling at Master Juwain.

Pirro, trembling with his hand held palm outward as if to ward away a blow, shook his thin head at the wall and cried out, 'Sorcery! You are not thieves, but sorcerers!'

Babul, however, seemed made of more courageous stuff. He gazed at the seeming doorway into the crystalline wall and said, 'If they are sorcerers, then let us give thanks for their magic. Could there really be a seventh cavern through there?'

'Who would want to walk through that,' Pirro said, pointing at the frozen cascades of light, 'to find out?'

My companions and I, of course, would. When Pirro saw this, he declared that he would not follow us, not even for a cartful of diamonds.

'Then go back,' Kane growled at him, pointing up the steps to the higher caverns. 'At least stand guard, and give warning if Sylar comes.'

Without waiting for Pirro's assent, Kane turned toward me. 'Val?'

'I will go first,' I told him.

'But what if the opening closes behind you, and we cannot reopen it?'

'I'll have to take that chance.'

'No — let this Babul take it! He was ready enough to trick us into Sylar's chains. Let him redeem himself by doing us this service.'

As Babul stared straight ahead at the wall, his red face blanched. Kane seemed ready to propel his large form through the even larger opening. And I said to Kane, 'No, it is upon me.'

And then without another word, I turned and stepped through the curtain of light into the seventh cavern. I wanted to cry out to my friends that this passage had been no more difficult than walking through the doorway of my father's library in the Elahad castle. I could not, however, speak. For the chamber that opened before me was no mere cavern, but seemed almost another world. It was spherical in shape, and vast, as if the entire inside of the mountain had been hollowed out. The crystals here rose out the floor, wall or ceiling as long and thick as the trunks of trees. They pointed: inward, toward the chamber's center, and most showed six facets, like the sides of a honeycomb's cell. The crystals gleamed with bright blues and scintillating reds — and with flaming oranges, yellows and the other hues of the spectrum.

'Oh, my Lord!' I whispered, wishing that Maram had come this far. 'Oh, my Lord!'

From somewhere behind me, I heard Kane shout out: 'Val, do you hear me? Are you all right?'

And I called back to him: 'Yes … I am. Truly I am.'

'Should we come, then?'

'Yes, come — come now!'

A moment later Kane passed through the light curtain, followed by Liljana, Atara, Estrella, Daj and Master Juwain. Then Babul dared to enter this seventh cavern as well. He joined us and stood staring out into the cavern's center, which wavered in the distance as of an infinity depth.

'Ten of King Yulmar's palaces,' Babul exclaimed, 'would fit into this space! Twenty or thirty — I do not know!'

We stood together on a shelf of plain rock jutting out from the cavern's wall perhaps halfway up the sphere's circumference. A long, wide stairway carved into the rock led down the cavern's curving slope below us to a larger clearing, circular in shape, at the very bottom of the cavern. There seemed nothing else to do but to walk down to it.

'You,' Kane said to Babul, 'are a Steward of Caves, eh? Guardians, you call yourselves. So, you will stay here and guard this doorway. If Pirro calls out a warning to you or if the door begins to close, you will call out a warning to us, do you understand?'

Few men were willing to argue with Kane. As Babul nodded his head and his chin disappeared into his neck, I turned to go down the stairs. My friends walked behind me. Our way led between the great crystals, like a straight path through a forest. I saw almost immediately that we would not find an exit from this cavern as Master Juwain had wished. The substance of the walls and floor out of which the crystals grew gleamed like black glass, without the slightest flaw or crack that we could detect. The perfection of this chamber, in substance and shape, both awed and mystified me.

At last we worked down the curve of the cavern to the bare circle at its bottom. I could see Babul perched on the rocky shelf to our right, high above us. Crystals, like great, ruby obelisks, rose up around us out of what seemed to be pure obsidian. High above I us, straight across the cavern, other crystals hung suspended over our heads like impossibly huge swords.