Black Jade

of food laid out on his great white carpet, 'When he went into the Tar Harath, he was still much of a youth, and too reckless, its we all knew. But when he came out, he was a man, bold and yet balanced, and worthy of all our respect. And so we gave him a command.'

He went on to say that the deep desert was like a forge, either shaping and tempering the steel inside a man or destroying it.

'The Tar Harath has changed you, Valaysu,' he said, staring at me. 'There is something about you now, something. It is as rare as skystone, and ten times more striking. It cannot be denied.'

He nodded at Liljana, Daj, Master Juwain and paused for a long time as he looked at Maram. 'All of you. You have done a great thing, and this greatness shines for all to see.'

He lifted up a bottle of wine, and he filled each of our glasses with his own hand. Then he bowed his head toward Bemossed.

'It seems that you have found the one you sought,' he told us. 'Well, we shall see.'

Bemossed returned his bow, and said, 'What do you mean, lord?'

'My warriors have returned with me from the battle,' King Jovayl told him, 'and too many of them bear wounds beyond all help. If you are the Maitreya that Valaysu sought, you will heal them.'

He went on to recount what had happened in the desert while we made quest in faraway Hesperu. Sunji had thought that there might be war with the Zuri in the autumn, but King Jovayl had surprised him, and everyone else in the tribe, by moving against the Zuri in the heat of Soal. And more, he had surprised the Zuri. It had been the Masud's wells that Morjin's droghul had poisoned, (with the compliance of the Zuri), but it was King Jovayl who led the crusade of vengeance. He had not only made allies of the Masud and their fierce chief, Rohaj, but of the Yieshi as well. Their three armies, like the points of stabbing spears, he had coordinated in a vicious attack upon the Zuri, from out the west, the north and east. They worked a great slaughter upon the Zuri warriors, and they put to the sword their chief, Tatuk, and all the Red Priests, who had corrupted him. Some of the Zuri women they took as wives, while others they slew — along with many children, too, for even boys ten years old tried to defend their families with lances and swords. King Jovayl had finally managed to put an end to this massacre. Then the Avari warriors, along with the Masud and the Yieshi, had driven the survivors from their homes, and they divided the Zuri's lands among the three tribes.

'The Zuri are no more,' King Jovayl announced proudly. 'We have heard that a few of their clans have begged mercy from the Vuai, but they must be few, and they will never take back what we have claimed.'

I traded looks with Maram, who took a huge gulp of wine. It was a terrible thing that the Avari had done, but that was the way of things with the tribes of the Red Desert. With a single brilliant and ruthless campaign. King Jovayl had put an end to Morjin's hopes of conquering this vast country, at least for a time, and I should have been glad for that.

Bemossed, however, took no joy in King Jovayl's news — nor, in truth, in King Jovayl. All during the least, he picked at his food and kept a silence. Later that night, as we took a walk by the lake, he said to me, 'Did you see the way that King Jovayl and the elders looked at me? As if I existed only to prove their prophecies and justify their crusades. Is that why I am?'

I gazed at the starlight reflected off the lake's black, mirrored surface. I said, 'King Jovayl has only asked for your help in healing his people, and there is nothing wrong with that.'

'Does he care about them?' he said.

'Of course he does — they are his warriors.'

'His warriors,' he repeated. 'Who have murdered in the name of the good.'

I let my hand fall upon my sword's hilt and said, 'So have I, Bemossed.'

'I know — I have seen you. But you did not slay women and children.'

'Is it so much better to slay a man?' I asked him. 'Slaughter is slaughter. That is war, and why I hate it. And why it must end.'

I turned to look at him through the pale light pouring down from the sky, and I told him, 'And that is why you are.'

The next morning, however, when King Jovayl called the wounded to his house from the dwellings across the Hadr Halona and the pastures farther out in the desert, Bemossed was loath to go among them. He remained within his room, and people said that he was not the Maitreya after all — either that, or his power had failed him. And so Master Juwain went out to tend to the stricken warriors in his place. Master Juwain had a great gift of his own for healing, and he managed to draw a lance point buried deep in the back of one of the warriors and to reset the bones of another whose arm had been badly broken. But he could do nothing for a third warrior sweating and gasping at the pain of a leg crushed when a horse had fallen upon it — nothing without his gelstei, that is. In desperation, not wanting to have to cut off the man's leg, Master Juwain finally took out his gelstei. He held it over the shattered leg. But as before with Maram, a hot green fire poured out of the crystal instead of a healing light, and struck into the man a pure agony. Seeing this, Bemmsed's heart broke open. He hurried out of King Jovayl's house, and set his hand upon the man's leg, and he made it whole. Likewise, he restored a warrior named Irgayn with an infected sword wound in his belly, and young Dalvayr who had suffered a dizzying blow to the back of his head, and others. At the end of the day, when this great work of healing was finished, I took him aside and said to him, 'You were kind to men you call murderers.' Then he looked at me with a deep light running tn his eyes like water, and he told me, 'Until war is ended upon this world we are all murderers.'

We stayed one more night in King Jovayl's house, and set out at dawn to continue our desert crossing. King Jovayl commanded Sunji Maidro, Arthayn and six other warriors to escort us to the edge of the Avari's country, and this they did. For a day we rode south along the little range of mountains, and then we turned east and travelled a good few miles farther until we came to lands claimed by the Masud. There, by a great red rock as flat at the top as a sheet of paper, we said farewell to Sunji — I hoped not forever.

'We have no plans to return this way.' I told him, 'but the wind blows where it will blow.'

'Not always,' he said, removing his cowl to smile at Estrella. We had stopped not far from that place in the barren mountains where she had found a new source of water. 'But I hope one day it blows as together again.'

'I know it will,' I told him. 'Until then, go in the light of the One.'

'That will be easier now,' he said, bowing his head to Bemossed. He told him, 'I never thanked you, did I, for healing Daivayr? He is my brother.'

After that we journeyed east through the sere, sun-baked land by which we had first entered the desert. We drank water from the Masud's wells, and we did not fear that they would take this as thievery. After the battle in the canyon, when Yago had cut off the second droghul's head, he had promised us that if we ever ventured into the Masud's realm again, we would be welcome.

So it proved to be. On our fourth day out from the Hadr Halona, a band of Masud warriors returnmg from the destruction of the Zuri espied u. At first threy seemed eager tor another battle, for they charged upon us in cloud of dust. But when we called out our names and that we were friends of Yago and under the protection of Rohaj, they called back that they would extend us all their hospitality. True to their word, they shared with us some dried goat meat, figs and fermented milk. Then, over the next few days, they rode with us all the way to that place where the desert ended against the great wall of the White Mountains.

We said farewell to these warriors, too, and I wondered if we really would see any of the Red Desert's fierce peoples again. It surprised me that I had come to love the desert — its brilliance and stark beauty — as much as I dreaded going up into the mountains.

Part of my disquiet, I knew, came from my memories of the monster that had so nearly killed us on our first crossing of these heights. As we worked up toward the gap where Jezi Yaga had once lived and turned wayfarers into stone, we finally caught sight of the place where she had perished. High on a shelf of rock overlooking the desert, she still stood: a great, hideous stone statue with violet eyes. Maram, with some trepidation, insisted on going up to her and laying his hands upon her face. Perhaps he wanted to reassure himself that she really was dead. He wept then, and he could not tell us why.

We all moved forward past this lonely sentinel, and we began working our way through the gap's rugged terrain. That night it grew quite cold. Master Juwain calculated that we had journeyed into Ashvar, the month of the falling leaves, which in the mountains could turn almost as frigid as winter. No snow, however, fell upon us during our passage of the gap. We rode up and up past red-leaved trees through air that steamed our breath. When we came to that place by the gap's central stream where Jezi had turned Berkuar to stone, we paused to pray for him. He stood like an immortal, still wearing the gold medallion that I had placed around his neck.