Black Jade

'You read it how?' Maram called out. 'The pages have no letters!'

'Do they not?' Abrasax asked him with a smile. 'Perhaps you are just not looking at them right.'

And with that, he opened the book to a page he had marked, and he held his hand over it. Then Maram gave a little gasp of astonishment, and so did I, for the clear crystal of the page suddenly took on an albescent tone as of the white of an egg being fried. Hundreds of glyphs, like little black worms, popped into view and crowded the page in many columns.

'Sorcery!' Maram called out to Abrasax. He thumped his hand down upon our table near the book, 'I would accuse you of sorcery, as I did Master Virang, but I suppose that you'll just tell me, ah, that you're only helping me to see what was already there to see?'

Abrasax exchanged smiles with Master Virang, then turned his attention back to Maram and the book. 'No, this time the explanation is simpler, for the writing was not there to see. Only one who possesses the key to the book can unlock it and bring the script into sight.'

'But you made no move to unlock it, unless waving your hand like a conjuror constitutes such. Where is the key?'

Abrasax pointed his finger at his forehead and told Maram, 'Inside here. Each book is keyed to open to a phrase, which must be memorized and held inside the mind or sometimes spoken.'

'Like one of the Way Rhymes?'

Abrasax nodded his head at this. 'The Brotherhood must protect its secrets. And its treasures.'

'But I never heard that the Brotherhood kept such treasures!' Maram said as he regarded the book in wonder.

'Neither,' Master Juwain said, studying it as well, 'did I.'

'But what is its secret?' Maram asked. 'Obviously, the pages are made of some sort of gelstei — what sort, and how do you make it?'

'It is called the vedastei,' Abrasax informed him as he ran his finger down the page's glyphs. 'And I did not say that we made this — only that we protect it. And cherish it for what it contains. It is that knowledge, of the Maitreya, that concerns us now.'

He cleared his throat and pressed his finger at the writing near the middle of the page as he read to us: ''He is the Shining One who dwells in two worlds; he is the light inside darkness, and the life that knows no death.' '

Against one of the windows above us, I saw Flick spinning about in a whirl of silver lights. I remembered how, in Tria, the Galadin had sent this luminous being to bring me word of the Maitreya in verses that I now recited to Abrasax:

The Shining Ones who live and die

Between the whirling earth and sky

Make still the sun, all things ignite -

And earth and heaven reunite.

The Fearless Ones find day in night

And in themselves the deathless light,

In flower, bird and butterfly,

In love: thus dying, do not die.

I finished speaking and nodded at Abrasax. He tapped his book as he said to me, 'Do not these words concord with your verses and what Estrella has told us tonight?'

Without warning, Maram thumped his hand upon the table, rattling our cups. He looked at Abrasax and grumbled out, 'Estrella said nothing of two worlds. I, for one, know this world, and that should be enough, shouldn't it? And yet you of the Brotherhood are never satisfied unless you can speak of another.'

Abrasax's response to this was to flip through the pages of the book. He must have found the passage that he was seeking, for he suddenly nodded his head. He said to Maram, 'These words were written by Master Li of the Avasian Brotherhood.'

'The Avasian Brotherhood? Ah, I've never heard of such.'

'That is because,' Abrasax said, without further explanation, 'it existed on another world, that of Varene, many ages ago. Now listen, for this bears most pertinently on the matter of the Maitreya.'

His eyes gleamed as he pulled at his fluffy white beard. Then he read to us:

' 'Two realms there are: the One and the manifold. The first is causeless, inextinguishable, infinite — and some say as blissful as the sun's light on a perfect spring day. The second realm is created, and all things that dwell there suffer, age and die. It is all nails and fire, beauty that fades, a few moments of sweetness and noble dreams. Some call this the world, and others hell. It is man's path to strive ever upward, toward the heavens, toward the sun. But to go beyond the world toward the One, we must go beyond ouselves. It is almost like dying, is it not? A newborn ceases to exist in becoming a child, as a child does in becoming a man. And as all men must do if they are to walk the path of angels. And then, the greatest death of all when the Galadin perish in their bodies and die into light in the creation of a new universe. Who has utter faith in the goodness of such a sacrifice? Who would not fear that such a path might lead to the utter obliteration of one's being?' '

Abrasax finished reading and looked at me. 'And yet we must not fear. Overcoming fear is the cardinal task of any warrior, be he of the sword or the spirit. Many fail. Even the angels.'

He paused to take a drink of tea and moisten his throat. Then he said to me, 'In Tria, you learned the truth of Angra Mainyu, didn't you?'

I shrugged my shoulders at this. I glanced at Kane. 'Can any man know very much about the Galadin?'

'We know this, I think,' Abrasax said. 'Angra Mainyu, and too many of his kind, came to dread the Galadin's fate. And so he clung to his form as a leech does to living flesh. And so rather than becoming infinitely greater in giving himself to the universe, he tries to suck the blood from all things and take the universe into himself — and so becomes infinitely less.'

I considered this for a moment, then asked him, 'And the Maitreya?'

'The Maitreya is sent to heal those such as the Dark One and to keep others from falling as he has.'

I remembered the blood rushing from my father's lips as he died, and all the thousands of men lying still upon the reddened grass of the Culhadosh Commons. I felt Morjin's baleful eyes nailing me to a fiery cross, and all the while my heart drummed with a dreadful sickness inside my chest. And I said to Abrasax, 'Is that possible?'

'It must be possible.' He glanced over at Estrella sitting happily at her table. 'The Maitreya, in great gladness of life, is sent to show all beings the shining depths of themselves that can never die. And that, ultimately, the two realms are one and the same.'

Maram seemed not to like what he was hearing, for he knocked the bottom of his tea cup against the tiled table as if to announce his annoyance. He caught Abrasax's attention and asked him, 'Are you saying that when we when pass into this infinite realm of yours, that some part of us keeps on shining? And that therefore, there is no true death?'

'That,' Abrasax told him, 'is my belief.'

Maram gazed into his empty teacup as he muttered, 'And therefore, I suppose, there is nothing to fear.'

'You understand, then,' Abrasax said, smiling at him.

'I understand that there is nothing to fear, and that is precisely what I do fear: the great, black void at the end of life that swallows us all. You say this neverness is full of light. The Shining Ones, if we're to believe you, say this in their gladness. Ah, all your books say it, too. But who, I ask you, has ever returned from the land of the dead to tell of it?'

Abrasax seemed to have no answer to this; for a moment he turned his attention to sipping his tea. Then his eyes grew hard and bright, and he called out: 'Master Virang! Master Matai! Master Storr!'

He issued instructions for a repositioning of the tables and of everyone in the room. Atara, Estrella and Daj moved over to join the rest of our company at our two tables, while the Seven took their places with Masters Yasul and Nolashar at theirs. The artifacts still resting there were put back into the treasured ebony box — all except the