Black Jade

'There is a way!' Kane said to me. His hand shot out to lock upon my forearm, even as his eyes took hold of mine. I saw the old hate flare up inside him, even as he saw it seething in me. 'You know the way!'

'No,' I murmured. 'No.'

'Yes, this is the time — there isn't much time!'

'No, I can't.'

Kane let go of my arm to stab his fngers out toward our enemy. 'You have a sword inside you — use it!'

'I have sworn not to!'

'Use the valarda, damn it! This one time! Strike the Beast! Kill his droghul! Do it, Val!'

I looked out at the lines of mounted men in their gleaming, fish-scaled armor. I stared at the merciless Lord Mansarian and the man in gray who might be Morjin. It was Morjin, I remembered, who had nailed my mother and grandmother to planks of wood. And now he waited to murder my friends, who were the only family I had left.

Hate, the dark, destroying passion, fairly emanated from Lord Mansarian's men likes waves of heat. I felt it working at Lord Mansarian and burning up the man who must be Morjin. It howled like an enraged animal inside of Kane, and most of all, in myself. I could not escape it any more than I could the hot, humid air that hurt my lungs and stung my eyes.

'Valashu,' Bemossed said to me.

He came over and stood with me by the wall. He looked at me with his wise, brilliant eyes. Although I had said almost nothing to him of the valarda and the way that this terrible force of the soul could kill, he seemed to understand even so.

I set down my bow, and took out my sword. I no longer cared that its sacred silustria burned with fire.

There came a movement from the lines of Red Capes, and three knights rode forward to join Lord Mansarian. I guessed that they were captains receiving orders to make ready to charge us. Seeing this, Liljana stepped up to the wall and so did Master Juwain.

'Val,' Liljana said. The essential kindness of her soft, round face melted away before something fearful and furious inside her. 'If ever there was a time to use the valarda as Kane has said, this must be it.'

I stared at this woman who was like a mother to me, but I said nothing.

'Think of all those who have sacrificed so much for you to have come this far,' she said to me. 'Can't you sacrifice your vain attachment to a principle?'

'The only principle that realty matters,' Maram bellowed out to me from across the room, 'is life. But you don't care about that, do you?'

Master Juwain, I thought, wanted to advise me as well. But he stood quietly, and his gray eyes flickered back and forth as.if he was reading a book. He seemed to be searching for.words or the right verse that would reveal the absolute truth in order to guide me — searching and searching. I felt his mind spinning like a steel discus hurled out into space.

'What will be?' Atara said to me. She had put down her bow to re-tie her blindfold so that it wouldn't come loose in battle. Her voice grew as cold as a mountaintop as she said to me, 'What will be left of the world if you don't do what you were born to do?'

Her hatred of Morjin, like ice, seemed to touch even Estrella. She walked over to Atara, and pressed Atara's hand to her face. I felt this lovely girl's dread of what soon must come, and even more, her loathing of the darkness from which none of us seemed able to escape.

'You should wait with the horses,' I said to her, pointing across the room. 'You should try to keep them calm.'

She closed her eyes as if looking inside herself for a place of calm that spears and swords could not touch.

'Valashu,' Bemossed said to me again. He held his hand out toward Alkaladur's angry red flame. 'This cannot be the way.'

I saw in my sword's fire my dead father and my brothers and the thousands of warriors who had fallen upon the Culhadosh Commons. And I shouted, 'It is the way of the world! What does it matter if I slay with a sword forged out of gelstei or the hate in my heart?'

I stared at my sword, and I could not move. I felt its point piercing my hands and my feet — and every other part of me — crucifying me to something worse than death.

And Bemossed told me, 'No good can come of this.'

'Good comes,' I called out, looking across the field, 'when warriors kill those who need killing.'

Bemossed blinked as if he could not hold the moisture filling up his eyes. He said to me, 'Even yourself, Valashu?'

'Can you stop it?' I said to him. 'What is a Maitreya good for?'

Why, I wondered, had fate chosen Bemossed as the Shining One, and not me? The answer burned along the blade that stabbed through the center of my being: because I was damned. Because I was who I was.

There came a shout from across the field, and I looked out to see a third red-robed priest leading a packhorse up between the ranks of knights toward Lord Mansarian. Something seemed to be slung over the horse's back; I hoped it was not a packet of arrows and a bow. It nearly maddened me to have to wait here to see how Lord Mansarian would attack us — and to know what I would do. I felt this uncertainty torturing not just myself, but my friends as well. The battle had not yet begun, but the battle raged as it always had inside each of us.

I felt this most excruciatingly in Estrella. She seemed lost in a dark cavern of pain that had no bottom or end. Her heart beat quickly and agonizingly, as if she were fleeing from a bloodthirsty beast. And then everything inside her grew utterly still as if she had plunged deep into cool waters. An image came into my mind: that of a brilliant silver lake. She opened her eyes then and looked at me. She looked at Bemossed. Her whole being gleamed like a perfect mirror. Bemossed gazed at her in wonder. He stared and stared, deep into the eyes of this glorious girl, but even more at the great shining wonder of himself.

'Look, they move!' Maram cried out. He came hurrying over to the wall to grab up his bow. 'They're coming!'

I turned to see one of Lord Mansarian's warriors ride forward bearing a white banner of truce. Then came Lord Mansarian and a line of six knights. Morjin and the three priests rode behind the knights, using them as a shield in case we should fail to honor the truce and begin shooting arrows at them.

'Why should they even want to parlay?' Kane snarled out. He lifted up his bow. 'So, we'll speak to them with arrows through

their throats!'

'Are we trucebreakers, now?' I shouted at him. 'Must we commit every abomination?'

'The only abomination is in letting Morjin and his creatures live!'

Our enemy rode a dozen yards closer. Kane nocked an arrow to his bowstring, and so did Maram. Just then Alphanderry appeared and stood with us behind the wall.

'Look!' Daj cried out. 'Look at Bemossed!'

As Bemossed stared at Estrella, his face shone in the onstreaming rays of the sun. Everything about him shone: his eyes, his lips, his great, throbbing heart. He stood in a shimmer of glorre. I could hardly believe what I saw. Bemossed took his arm out of his sling and cast down this bit of cloth. He smiled. His eyes grew as bril-liant as the stars. He seemed to behold himself as he had always longed to be.

'Hoy!' Alphanderry sang out. 'La neshama halla!'

Bemossed looked out at our enemy, and I felt in him no fear. He looked at the sky and the earth; he looked at me. He seemed utterly without doubt. A bright, shining hope lit his smile, and more, the sureness of triumph. I knew then that Ea had not just a dark and false king of kings, but a new Lord of Light.

'La neshama halla jai Maitreya!'

In the air in front of him, a plain golden cup appeared. It seemed at once to be as hard as diamond and without true substance, like light. Bemossed reached out with his bandaged arm to grasp this cup. The moment that his fingers closed around it, my sword blazed a bright glorre. Then a dazzling radiance filled up every corner of the cottage, and swelled outward and upward to illuminate the green hills around us and the deep blue of the sky.