Black Jade

continued our long walk through the gorge, over loose stone and through stands of cottonwood trees that gradually showed a sprinkling of elms and oaks the deeper we penetrated into the White Mountains. Twenty miles, at least, we had travelled since our battle with Morjin and his Red Knights. None of us knew the length of the Kul Kavaakurk, for Master Juwain's rhymes did not tell of that. But here, deep in this cleft in the earth, where the wind whooshed as through a bellows' funnel and tore at our hair and garments, the gorge seemed to go on and on forever.

And then, abruptly, as we rounded yet another bend in the stream, the gorge opened out into a broad valley. A forest covered its slopes, gentle and undulating to the north but still quite steep to the south of the river. For the first time in two days, we had all the sun we could hope for; its warm rays poured down upon rock, earth and leaf, and filled all the great bowl before us. Smaller mountains, cloaked in oak and birch with aspens and hemlock higher up, edged the rim of this bowl; beyond rose the great white peaks of the Nagarshath. The valley continued along the line of the gorge, toward the west, and it seemed that our course should be to follow the river straight through it. But there were other exits from the valley that we might choose: clefts and saddles between the slopes around us, through which smaller streams flowed down into the river. Any one of these, I thought, might lead us up toward the Brotherhood's school, though the way would obviously be difficult and dangerous.

'Well,' Master Juwain said to Maram as we walked out into the valley, 'what is our way?'

And Maram recited:

At gorge's end, a wooded vale;

Its southern slopes show shell-strewn shale.

Toward setting sun the vale divides;

To left or right the seeker strides.

Recall the tale or go astray:

King Koru-Ki set sail this way.

Maram stood next to his horse licking his lips as he glanced to the left. He said, 'Ah, who devised these rhymes, anyway? 'Its southern slopes sow hell-strewn shale.' Now there's a tongue-twister for you! I can hardly say it!'

'But it's not so hard!' Daj said, laughing at him. Then quick as a twittering bird, he piped out perfectly:

Its southern slopes skew shell-strewn shale.

Master Juwain beamed a smile at him and patted his head. And then he said to Maram, 'The Rhymes aren't supposed to be easy to say but to memorize — hence the rhythm and rhyme. The alliteration, too.'

'Well, at least I did memorize it,' Maram said. 'Little good that it would do me if you weren't here to interpret for us.'

The Way Rhymes, of course, might be meant to be easy to memorize, but they were designed so that only the Brotherhood's adepts and masters might resolve them correctly. Thus did the Brotherhood guard its secrets.

'Come, come,' Master Juwain said to him. 'These lines are as transparent as the air in front of your nose.'

Maram pointed at the turbulent water rushing past us and muttered, 'You mean, as clear as river mud.'

'What don't you understand? Clearly, we've passed the Ass's Ears and the Kul Kavaakurk, and have come out into this valley, as the verse tells. Look over there, at the rock! Surely that is shale, is it not?'

We all looked where he pointed, across the river at the nearly vertical slopes to the south of us. The rock there was dark, striated and crumbly, and certainly appeared to be shale.

'I'm sure you're right,' Maram said to him. 'You know your stones. But does it bear shells? Who would want to cross the river to find out?'

Kane coughed out a deep curse then, and mounted his horse. He drove the big bay out into the river, which looked to be swift enough to sweep a man away but not so huge a beast. In a few mighty surges, his horse crossed to the other bank and soaked the stone there with water running off his flanks. Kane then rode up through the trees a hundred yards before dismounting and making his way up the steep slope on foot. We saw him disappear behind a great oak as he approached a slab of shale.

'He's as mad as Koru-Ki himself,' Maram said, watching for him. 'He'd cross an ocean just to see what was on the other side.'

A few moments later, Kane returned as he had gone, bearing a huge smile on his face.

'Well?' Maram said. 'Did you see any of these shells-in-shale?' 'Many,' Kane told him as his smile grew wider.

'I don't believe you — you're lying!'

'Go see for yourself,' Kane said, pointing across the river

'Do you think I won't?' Maram eyed the swift water that cut through the valley and shook his head. 'Ah, perhaps I won't, after all. It's enough that one of us risked his life proving out those silly lines. You did see shells, didn't you? She sells? I mean, sea shells?'

'I've told you that I did. What more do you want of me?'

'Well, it wouldn't have hurt to bring back one of these shelled rocks, would it?'

Kane laughed at this and produced a flat, thick piece of slate as long as his hand. He gave it to Maram. All of us gathered around as Maram stared at the grayish slate and fingered the little, stonelike shells embedded within it.

'Impossible!' Maram said. 'I saw shells like these on the shore of the Great Northern Sea!'

'But then how did they get into this rock?' Daj asked him.

Kane stood silently staring at the rock as the rest of us examined it more closely. Not even Master Juwain had an answer for him.

'Perhaps,' Atara said, 'there really was once a great flood that drowned the whole world, as the legends tell.'

Kane's black eyes bored into the rock, and he seemed lost in endless layers of time. He finally said to us, 'So, the earth is stranger than we know. Stranger than we can know. Who will ever plumb all her mysteries?'

'Well,' Maram said, hefting the rock and then tucking it into his saddlebag, 'this is one mystery I'll keep for myself, if you don't mind. If I ever return home, I can show this as proof that I found sea shells at the top of a mountain!'

I smiled at this because it was not Maram who had found the rock, nor had it quite been taken from a mountain's top. It cheered me to know, however, that he still contemplated a homecoming. And so he held inside at least some hope.

'Your way homeward,' Master Juwain said to him, 'lies through this valley. Are we agreed that we must traverse it?'

'Toward the setting sun,' Maram said, pointing to the west. 'But I can't see if the valley truly divides there.'

I stood with my hand shielding my eyes as I peered up the valley. It seemed to come to an end upon a great wedge of a mountain rising up to the west. But it was a good thirty miles distant, and the folds and fissures of the mountains along the valley's rim blocked a clear line of sight.

'Then let us go on,' Atara said, 'and we shall see what we shall see.'

A faint smile played upon her lips, and it gladdened my heart to know that she could joke about her blindness. Then she mounted her horse and said, 'Come, Fire!' She guided her mare along the strip of grass that paralleled the river, and it gladdened me even more to see that her second sight had mysteriously returned to her.

And so we followed the river into the west. It was a day of sunshine and warm spring breezes. Wildflowers in sprays of purple and white blanketed the earth around us where the trees gave way to acres of grass. It seemed that we were all alone here In this quiet, beautiful place. Our spirits rose along with the terrain, not so high,