Black Jade

the levies that he collected, and thus cheating the King.

On the other side of the river, on the road that led down from Avrian through Orun, we saw no sign of the King's vanguard, and we gave thanks for that. Neither Lord Olum nor anyone claiming to act in his stead stopped us to demand money, and we were grateful for that as well. Quickly, we made our way through rice bogs and cotton patches, which soon gave way to fields of millet and maize. The weather held clear, and we made a good distance that day, despite the potholes in the crumbling road.

For two days after that, we followed this road west toward Ghurlan. It climbed gradually up into a country of low hills covered with ginseng, chicory and poppies — and groves of almond trees and pecans. The air grew less close and humid, and slightly | cooler. About thirty-five miles from the Iona, a farmer pointed us toward a dirt road cutting off north through these hills. He told us that if we drove our cart up the road for another five miles past Hagberry Hill, we would come to Jhamrul. His directions proved true, and we found the long-sought village nestled in a wooded notch.

There was little to it: some forty houses and other buildings surrounded by almond and pecan groves, and fields of red wheat growing on the hills' terraces. It seemed impossible that we could simply go down into this pretty place and ask after the Maitreya, but this is what we did. Or rather, we made our way into the village square, where we asked the blacksmith if Jhamrul had any healers who might be able to help us. The blacksmith directed us to the house of Jhamrul's only healer — indeed, the only healer for miles about, for apparently the nearby villages of Sojun, Eslu and Nur also sent their sick and injured to this renowned man. His name was Mangus, but it seemed that the village folk referred to him more reverentially as the Master.

We found his house to the north of the village on the side of a hill; it was built of good, gray granite instead of the mud bricks more common in Hesperuk constructions. As we rolled up the lane fronting the house, we saw an old woman, a slave, working in the herb garden to its side. On the other side, fig trees grew, while behind it, a dark-haired man stood in a pasture tending some goats. The house itself was a good size, with sweeping, red-tiled roofs covering its four sections. The front doors — wide enough to drive our cart through? stood open to reveal a courtyard with roses growing on white trellises and a mossy fountain at its center. Another old woman waited by these doors to greet us. She, however, could not be mistaken for a slave, for she wore a fine silk robe embroidered with flowers and a necklace of opals and black onyx. She gave her name as Zhor, and she told us that she was Mangus's wife.

I glanced at Master Juwain as I tried to hide my chagrin; unless Mangus had married forty years beyond his age, he could not be the one we sought. If Master Matai's astrological calculations proved true, the Maitreya would have been bom, as I was, on the ninth of Triolet in the year 279m and would therefore be only twenty-two years old.

Zhor invited us inside the atrium while a servant went to summon Mangus. With her own hand, she picked up a large urn and poured us glasses of lemon squash, sweetened with mint and honey. As we waited by the burbling water of the fountain, I noted a pedestal holding up a marble bust of Morjin. Its eyes stared upward; following their blind gaze I saw above the arch of the doorway behind us, almost too high to read, a gold-trimmed scroll listing in an elegant, red-inked script the steps that one must take to walk the Way of the Dragon:

RIGHT UNDERSTANDING

RIGHT THOUGHT

RIGHT SPEECH

RIGHT DEED

RIGHT REVERANCE

RIGHT SUBMISSION

As I was brooding over ail the ways that Morjin had perverted what should have been noble virtues, in his Darakul Elu — and in pain and blood — the 'Master' came into the atrium. He glided toward us as if buoyed within an air of great dignity. His white hair hung in perfectly oiled curls about his shoulders. He wore a tunic of red silk and red pantaloons, and a longer outer robe of white cotton that draped down to his silver slippers. I noticed a few, faint pinkish stains that it seemed his servants had been unable to wash out of it. His cleanly shaved, stern face, which shone with kindness and concern, reminded me of my grandfather's. As well, I liked his eyes, which shone with kindness and concern. But his eyes held the same cloud of suspicion that I had seen too often since we had come into Hesperu.

We made our presentations, and told him of our concern for Atara's blindness and the wound on Maram's chest that would not be healed; we paid him what little silver we had gained in a performance on the road. Then he led Atara, Maram and me into a small room off the atrium. White tiles covered this chamber's floor and walls, and it smelled of mint and old herbs, as well as blood. Old blood stains, I saw, marred the grain of the wooden chair at the center of the room, as well as a table near one of the walls. Mangus invited Atara to sit down in the chair, while Maram pulled off his tunic and stretched out on the table.

When Mangus unwrapped the bandage from around Atara's face, I felt my heart beating more quickly to the rhythm of Mangus's pounding pulse. My throat burned as Mangus drew in a deep breath of air. For a moment, a surging hope built inside me. I wondered if Master Matai might have been wrong, and the one we sought was really an old man after all.

But Mangus only stared sadly at Atara and said to her. 'I'm sorry, Kalinda, but I cannot help you. I know of no one who can. Except, of course, the Maitreya. I have heard that Lord Morjin might be coming to Hesperu. Perhaps you should seek him out. If he were to lay his hands upon your face, to touch his fingers beneath your brows, then — '

'Thank you,' Atara said to Mangus as her whole body stiffened. The coldness that came into her nearly froze the blood in my heart. 'I had hoped that you might be able to heal me, but I thank you for your suggestion. If it is my fate, I shall certainly seek out the Red Dragon.'

Mangus sighed at Atara's obvious distress, and bowed his head to her. Then he sighed again before stepping over to Maram. It did not take him long to get Maram's bandage off and unpack the layers of cotton stuffed down into the single remaining wound in Maram's chest. Although he kept his face hard and expressionless, I felt his churning disgust at the sight of this raw, oozing opening that Jezi Yaga had torn into Maram. The bloody, stinking bandages he cast into a bronze basin. He rested his old hand on the other half of Maram's thickly-haired chest, and asked him, 'You say your horse bit you here nearly three months ago? Have you tried setting maggots to the wound?'

Maram's eyes rolled upward. He said, 'On the road some miles back we met, ah, a healer who advised me that maggots would clean the wound. The damn worms burned me sorely, but didn't help.'

Mangus smiled at Maram, then told him, 'Once, a soldier was brought to me — Sefu was his name. He had carried an arrowpoint in his lung for nearly three years. It was said that sixty-seven pots of pus had been drained from him. Although I was unable to draw the arrowpoint, I made a plaster for the wound. After a month, it began to close, and after two more, it healed successfully, though Sefu complained that he could still feel the arrow's steel when he breathed too deeply.'

At that point, I slipped these words out: 'We had heard that you cured a girl of an incurable wasting disease.'

Something moved inside of Mangus as if he had swallowed a live worm. His sad smile, I thought, hid a great deal. He gazed out the window at the pasture; he seemed deep in contemplation. Then he walked over to the open window, cupped his hands around his mouth and cried out, 'Bemossed! I have need of you!'

He turned back toward us. He glanced at Maram and said, 'I must be alone with Garath now.'

A few moments later, as Atara and I were making our way toward the door, a young man rushed into the room. The looseness of his rough wool tunic did little to conceal his slender, sun-browned limbs and what appeared to be whip scars seaming the flesh of his upper back around his neck. He was tall for a Hesperuk, and comely, with rather soft features and a gentle-looking face. A black cross had been tattooed into his forehead above the space between, his eyes. His eyes. I noticed, were of a deep umber color and as large and luminous as any eyes I had ever seen.

'Bemossed,' Mangus commanded his slave. He pointed at the foul bandages in the basin. 'Dispose of these. Then go out to the pasture and kill me a goat, that we might make sacrifice.'