Black Jade

streaks of viridian and crimson.'

As Abrasax's hand continued pressing against Maram, I could almost see this fiery orb that he spoke of.

'There is nothing wrong with your heart,' Abrasax told Maram.

'And you do have time for love — all the time in the world. But what I it that you love, above all else?'

Maram glanced at me nervously and then turned back to Abrasax as he said, 'There is a woman. Somewhere in the world, a woman who can take in my heart and, ah, all of me. The one whose hips and breasts swell like the mountains and seas, like the very curves of the earth: she, whose desire is as boundless as my own. Some men seek the most beautiful of women, others the kindest or the most pure. But I dream of the most passionate.' At this Abrasax cleared his throat and said to him, 'You must be careful what you wish for. Careful even of what you whisper inside your mind. The earth listens. There are powers there that no one fully understands. Her fires feed ours, and what we create inside ourselves, we can bring into being.'

He pressed his hand against Maram's chest, then walked around the tables again to return to his cushions. He sat gazing at Maram, who wrapped his huge hand around his red crystal and lowered his eyes to study the fine cracks marring it.

'All of them,' Master Storr said, looking from Maram to Liljana, 'must be careful with their gelstei. Each time they use the sacred crystals, Morjin will use the Lightstone to find his way farther into them and twist their power toward his will.'

I gazed into the silustria of my sword, and so did my friends study their gelstei.

'Indeed,' Master Storr continued, eyeing our crystals, too, 'I counsel that they surrender their gelstei to us for safekeeping.'

At this, Maram's hand closed around the cut planes of his fire-stone while I gripped the hilt of my sword more tightly.

'Surrender this to you?' Maram said, holding his long, red crystal pointing at Master Storr. 'You might as well ask me to cut off, ah, more personal parts of myself so that they don't lead me into troubles.'

'I know,' Atara said, turning her sphere between her hands, 'that this came to me for a purpose.'

Kane's response was the simplest and most direct of all of us. He held up his black stone for all to see and then closed his fist

around it as he called out, 'Ha!'

Abrasax sighed as he looked at Master Storr and said, 'I told you this would be the way of things, as you of all of us should understand.'

Master Storr bowed his head, but said nothing as he turned his attention back to the gleam of our crystals. And Abrasax said to us, 'So it goes. Everywhere on Ea, Morjin finds his way into men's minds, and so gains control of their arms, voices and eyes. And no one is willing to give them up either just to thwart him. But I counsel you: if you use your gelstei, Morjin will slowly seize control of them.'

'Even my sword?' I said, holding up its blade so as to catch the room's candlelight.

'The silver gelstei,' Master Storr said to me, 'would be last of your crystals to be perverted, if indeed it truly can be perverted. It is possible that only the Maitreya, having gained full mastery of the Lightstone, could touch upon the silustria of your sword — and then only for the highest of purposes. But I don't really know. Therefore I, too, counsel not using it.'

Kane smiled at this as he gripped his large hands together and said, 'And have you followed your own counsel, then?'

'What do you mean?' Master Storr said.

Kane pointed toward the waist of Master Storr, and then at Master Okuth and Abrasax. 'What is it you keep inside your pockets?'

At this, Abrasax smiled at Master Storr in a knowing way, and then looked at Kane. 'You have keen perceptions — from where do they come? What is that you keep inside yourself?'

Abrasax's smile deepened as he studied Kane. I knew that my mysterious friend hated being singled out for scrutiny in this way. His glare fell hot with a barely-contained fury. And then he stood up to face the Grandmaster of the Brotherhood. It took a brave man to hold Kane's gaze, as Abrasax did. I didn't need to be a reader to see the fire that seemed to leap straight out

of Kane's black eyes. As the candles flickered in their stands and the other Masters drew in deep breaths or held them inside, Abrasax continued staring at Kane. The Grandmaster's eyes grew brighter, like moonlit oceans, and I fancied that I saw this radiance touch his hair and beard and spill down over his tunic in flows of scarlet, orange and other colors. And yet it was nothing against the splendor that enveloped Kane. He stood as beneath a rainbow. Its hues clung to his body like a robe of fire and slowly deepened and brightened into a shimmering brilliance. White light crowned his savage head, and so did flashes of glorre. I stared at him, awestruck. I couldn't believe what my eyes or some other sensing organ told me must be true. It lasted only a moment, this piercing vision into the heart of Kane's being. And then I blinked my eyes, and it was gone. I saw my old friend standing before me as he usually did: fiercely, willfully, joyfully — with challenge toward Abrasax or anything in the world that might try to thwart or even contain him.

The others of the Seven, with my companions, sat gazing at Kane in wonderment. Master Storr shook his head as he called out, 'No, it cannot be! Not this rogue knight!'

Then Abrasax bowed to Kane and said, 'I never thought to live so long that my path would cross yours, Lord Elijin.'

Again, Master Storr said, 'It cannot be!'

Abrasax drew in a deep breath. He looked from Master Storr to Master Matai, and then at Kane. 'It surely is. This man is no rogue knight. It is, as the Master Diviner and I have deduced, now beyond argument that one of the Old Ones of the Elijik Order journeyed with this company into Argattha. And has found the way into our valley. His name, of old, was — '

'I am,' Kane growled out, interrupting him, 'not the one you speak of. Once I was, perhaps, but now I am Kane.'

'Kane, then,' Abrasax said to him. 'But you were, were you not, sent to Ea along with eleven others of your order to find and safeguard the Lightstone for the Maitreya?'

'So,' Kane said, glaring at him.

'And of those eleven, only one other survives — Morjin.'

'So,' Kane said again.

Abrasax and the others of the Seven sat staring up at Kane. I noticed Master Storr's hard blue eyes drilling into him as he regarded him with dread. He called out, 'If this is that one, then he has fallen nearly as far as the Red Dragon. How can we be sure that if we help him to find the Maitreya, he won't fall even farther?'

Kane, not deigning to respond to the Master Galastei's terrible doubt, stood as still as a granite carving.

'How can we be sure what any man or woman will do, in the end?' Abrasax asked, looking at his fellows. 'Master Juwain tells that in Argattha, Kane gave back the Lightstone to Valashu when he might have kept it for himself. Can all of us say that we would have surrendered it so faithfully? Surely Kane has passed the most vital test.'

His reasoning seemed to persuade even Master Storr, who inclined his head toward Kane. And Kane growled out to Abrasax, 'And what of the Brotherhood's Masters, then? You speak of keeping no secrets, and yet you keep some very powerful baubles hidden inside your pockets, eh?'

Abrasax smiled at Master Storr. 'Did I not tell you that we could not conceal things from one of the Elijin?'

And with that he nodded at Master Matai, who reached into his pocket and brought out a small crystal sphere that shone like a ruby. The First, he named it. Master Virang likewise showed us a stone, which he called the Second, which gleamed golden-orange in hue. And so with Master Nolashar and his bright yellow sun stone and Master Okuth's green heart stone, and then Master Yasul's and Master Storr's crystals — colored blue and purple — whose names were the Fifth and the Sixth. And then, finally, Abrasax drew forth a marble-like sphere as clear and brilliant as a diamond. It was, he told us, the Seventh; the last and highest of the crystals called the Great