Black Jade

After a while, the pool's radiance dimmed and its surface quieted to a sheeny silver, like that of any other still water. The Loikalii, in awe of what they had seen, turned toward Bemossed and began clapping their hands as they chanted: 'A song! A song — give us a song!'

At this, Bemossed seemed genuinely embarrassed. He said, 'I never learned many, and none worthy of such a wonder.'

Then Alphanderry came forth out of nothingness, and walked up to him. He smiled at him and said, 'Hoy, I have songs! Thousands upon thousands! If you'll give me a few notes, I shall give one to you.'

As Estrella and I took out our flutes and Kane his mandolet — and the Loikalii sucked on ripe apples or plums to prepare their throats for a songfest — Alphanderry stood by the pool looking at Bemossed strangely. And then he began singing out old verses beloved of Master Juwain and the rest of us:

When earth alights the Golden Band,

The darkest age will pass away:

When angel fire illumes the land,

The stars will show the brightest day.

The deathless day, the Age of Light;

Ieldra's blaze befalls the earth;

The end of war, the end of night

Awaits the last Maitreya 's birth.

The Cup of Heaven in his hands,

The One's clear light in heart and eye,

He brings the healing of the land,

And opens colors in the sky.

And there, the stars, the ageless lights

For which we ache and dream and burn,

Upon the deep and dazzling heights -

Our ancient home we shall return.

The Loikalii learned most of these words, the music too, with a single recitation, for such was their gift. They insisted on singing the verses again — and again — thrice more, until they had them perfect. Then Maira arose from the grass and said to Alphanderry, 'You bring words that echo our dreams.'

'How not?' Alphanderry said. 'I am of the Forest, am I not?' Maira smiled at this and turned to Bemossed. 'And you — we hope, we hope! — will bring the fire that heals.'

For a moment, Bemossed's eyes grew troubled as if he stared down into a dark place. Then this mood melted away before the blaze of his design. Although I sensed in him little vanity or arrogance, he also had little patience for pretended humility. Now that he knew with a surety who and what he was, he seemed to accept this with all the naturalness of a flower opening its petals to the sky.

'What I bring already is,' he said to Maira. 'The fire you speak of is spread upon the earth, but people do not see it.' 'Then you will help them to see,' Maira told him. At this, Bemossed smiled sadly as he looked at Atara. 'You will, you will,' Maira said. 'And when everyone sees the world as it really is, the world will never be the same.'

Later that morning we said goodbye to Maira and the Loikalii. Oni promised to send cooling winds from out of the northwest, and so it proved to be. After we had left the woods to make our way across the drifts of red-tinged sand, we followed this steady wind, or rather it followed us. Although the days never grew really cool, as with a bright Valte afternoon in the mountains of Mesh, we found ourselves able to travel straight through from dawn to dusk. Even the heat of high noon seemed sweetly hot, as if the sun's rays penetrated our garments and flesh to fill our bodies with an ease of being and a love of light.

The sheer brilliance of the deep desert dazzled all of us. During the long hours of the days, the sand scattered the sunlight up into a perfectly blue sky. And at night, the stars came out in all their shimmering millions. Bemossed seemed almost wholly ignorant of astrology, and so I pointed out to him constellations such as the Swan and the Great Bear and others that my grandfather had once taught me. One evening, after dinner, as we sat together on the crest of a great dune, Bemossed reached up toward an array of lights named the Angels' Tears, and he said, 'I don't think those stars shine down upon Hesperu.'

'Of course they do,' I told him. 'We haven't come so far to the north that they wouldn't. It is just that these stars are faint, and the air in your land contains too much moisture, and so blocks their radiance.'

He nodded his head at this, then told me, 'It is strange: water is life, and here there is so little of it. And yet everything here is so alive.'

I said nothing as I gazed off at Solaru, Icesse and bright Arras, and other lights that were as old friends to me. And Bemossed continued: 'The sky here is so black — and yet the stars are so bright.'

I said nothing to this either as I found the splendid pair of lights that I had named Shavashar and Elianora.

'I don't think he can see us here,' Bemossed said to me. 'Morjin can't — and that is strange because the air in this emptiness is clearer and the light is more brilliant than I had ever imagined.'

I drew my sword and watched the starlight play upon its silvery surface. I said, 'Once, I was sure that Morjin would find his way to claim this for himself. Now, I think, it is almost free of his foulness. The others say that of their gelstei, too.'

Bemossed smiled at this. 'And you think that is because of me.'

'I know it is. With every passing mile, you seem ever clearer. Ever brighter, too.'

His heavy eyebrows pulled together as he said, 'But we still have so many miles to go.'

'Do you doubt that we can defeat Morjin now?'

He thought about this as the wind whipped wisps of dark sand across the gleaming dunes, and blew steadily out of the northwest, almost as from another world. The words he spoke then would remain with me for many many miles, and all the rest of my life: 'But that is just it, Valashu. I do not wish to defeat Morjin as you do.'

During the days that followed, as we held a straight and steady course across the Tar Harath, I tried better to understand this wise, gentle and yet powerful man who had been born a slave. He seemed always willing to be open with me, even as I sensed that he always kept the worst of his sufferings and his deepest dreams to himself. Something in his essential being seemed flow like quick-silver, difficult to look upon for all its shifting brilliance, and impos-sible to grasp. In the end, I thought, he would remain to me a more profound mystery than life and death.

In the coming days we journeyed on past the ides of Vane into the later part of that month. As we drew farther and farther from the Loikalii's wood, the north wind gradually weakened and then died altogether. It didn't matter, for finally the desert began to cool of its own. Our long ride across it became almost pleasant.

And then we came out of the Tar Harath into the country of the Avari. On the 24th of Valte we found that break in the mountains sheltering the Hadr Halona. As we rode past the many tents and houses of this place of water, the Avari came out into the streets to greet us. Warriors drew their curving swords and saluted us, and they shouted out their surprise that we had returned from out of the Tar Harath. Many of them, I saw to my dismay, seemed to have been recently wounded, as evidenced by arms hanging in slings or bandaged faces. I knew without being told that the Avari had finally been driven to war, even as Sunji had feared.

We met with him later that day in his father's house by the lake when King Jovayl invited guests for a great victory feast. Some of these were elders of the tribe with whom we had sat before: Laisar, Jaidray, Barsayr and old Sarald. Maidro arrived wearing a white bandage wrapped around his head, and we cried out in gladness to greet our former companion. Arthayn accompanied him, but we waited in vain for Nuradayn to appear. And then Sunji informed us that the impulsive Nuradayn had fallen in battle.

'He survived the Tar Harath.' Sunji told us. 'only to die leading a charge against the Zuri's swords.'

'He was a brave man. and we honor him,' King Jovayl announced as he bade us sit down to the many platters