Black Jade

called the Skadarak that Abrasax had warned of. Even the glory of the orange hawkweed over which we trod and the burst of scarlet feathers of a tanager flying across our path could not drive this foreboding from me. I could almost smell its blackness, like a fetor tainting the perfume of the periwinkles and other flowers around us. It seemed to whisper to me like an ill wind, to call to me faintly and from far away.

As we made camp at day's end, I sensed that none of my friends felt the pull of this place — at least not yet. They set to work drawing water and building our rudimentary fortifications out of wet logs with good cheer. This diminished somewhat when Maram yet again failed to make a fire. But the rain finally stopped, and the patch of blue that broke from the clouds just before dusk promised better weather for travel the next morning, and we all hoped, drier wood.

For all the next day, we journeyed as straight a course west as I could guide us. We encountered no people — only some rabbits, deer and chittering birds — and that was to our purpose. A few low hills rose up to block our way, and we had no trouble skirting them. The sun, pouring down through the numerous breaks in the trees, warmed us. It dried out the woods, as well. That night Maram finally succeeded in striking up a fire: a good, hot, crackling one. But when Liljana unpacked the leg of lamb to roast it she wrinkled up her face as she sniffed at it and said, 'Whew — it's gone bad!'

Kane came over to test it with his nose, and said, 'It's a little off, it's true. But I've eaten worse. Why don't you roast it, anyway?'

'And poison the children?' she asked him as she rested her arm across Estrella's shoulder. 'Will you care for them if they fall ill?'

She told him that he could roast the lamb if he wished, and eat it himself as well. But as none of the rest of us was eager to put tooth or tongue to this tainted flesh, Kane picked up the lamb's leg and flung it far out into the woods. He said, 'I'll not feast in front of the rest of you. Let the foxes or racoons have a good meal. They, at least, aren't particular.'

Liljana, undeterred, set to preparing us what she called a good meal' anyway: fried eggs and rashers of bacon, wheat cakes spread with apple butter and some freshly picked newberries for desert. We went to bed warm that night and with full bellies. Even the howling of wolves from somewhere deeper in the woods did not disturb our sleep.

Just after daybreak we set out again toward the west Atara, bow in hand, determined to take one of the woods' wild sheep for our dinner, or perhaps a deer. But all that morning, strangely, we saw no game larger than a skunk. The wind through the trees reminded me of the faroff whispering that I had first sensed upon entering Acadu. It carried as well a faint reck of rotting flesh. Altaru smelled this stench before I did; the twitching of his great, black nostrils and a nervous nicker from within his throat alerted me to it. We walked on two more miles beneath the maple and hack-berry trees, and it grew stronger, nearly choking us. And then, a hundred yards farther along, we came out into a grassy clearing littered with the carcasses of sheep. They lay in twisted heaps. There were thirty-three of them, as I quickly counted. All had been killed with black arrows fired through their bloodstained white wool.

'Oh, Lord!' Maram called out in a muffled voice. He held his scarf over his mouth and nose. 'The poor little lambs! Who would slaughter so many and leave them here to rot?'

It was a question that almost needed no answer. The black arrows, as Kane quickly determined, were Sakai-made and stamped with the mark of the Red Dragon.

'Hmmph,' Atara said, walking around the edge of the massacred herd. 'Morjin's men must have arrows in abundance, to waste so many leaving them this way.'

'It's not waste at all,' I said, suddenly understanding the purpose behind this dreadful deed. 'At least, not waste as Morjin's men would count it. Surely they left the arrows as an advertisement.'

'A warning, you mean,' Maram said. 'And it's all the warning I need to flee this district.'

Kane, sniffing at one of the sheep and testing the rigidity of its limbs, said to him, 'These beasts are three days dead. Whoever did this is likely long gone.'

'So you say,' Maram grumbled.

'What is strange,' Master Juwain said, 'is that none of the scavengers have gone to work here.'

No, no, I thought. I reeled before the fire that sucked in through my nose and burned through my blood. It is not strange at all.

Liljana, as well as Kane, dared to uncover her face in order to take in the stench of the rotting sheep. And she said, 'I think these arrows were poisoned with kirax. It taints the flesh so that when it turns, it gives off an odor like burning hair. If I can smell it, so can the badgers and bears.'

On the lips of many of the sheep, I saw, black blood drew swarms of buzzing flies. I guessed that the sheep had gnashed their jaws together in a maddened frenzy that severed tongues and broke teeth, so great was the agony of the kirax.

'Lets leave here,' I said, 'as quickly as we can.'

'Very well,' Master Juwain said to me. 'But we'll have a difficult choice to make, and soon. How far into Acadu do you think we've

come?'

'Forty miles,' I said. 'Perhaps forty-five. If your map is right, we should find the Tir River in another five miles or so.'

'And how do you propose we cross it?'

'Come,' I said to him. and to the others as I remounted my horse. 'Let's go on to this river, and then well see about crossing it.'

As we rode through a patch of oaks, the soft wind in our faces drove away the stench of the murdered sheep. Despite Kane's assurances to Maram, Kane scanned the woods about us with his sharp black eyes, looking for the sheep's killers, and I did, too. After about four miles, the air grew more humid, and we heard the rushing of water through the trees. We pushed through some dense undergrowth to find the Tir River raging through the forest in full flood.

'Abrasax said that the snows had been deep this past winter,' Master Juwain sighed out. 'We must be at the peak of the spring melt.'

I gazed at this torrent of churning brown water, which sloshed and spilled over the Tir's muddy banks. The river would sweep even the horses away if we tried crossing here.

And so we set out along the band of denser vegetation close to the river. Every quarter mile or so, we would force our way back through the bracken and trees to look for a place where we might ford the river. But the Tir, it seemed, swelled swift and deep all along its course. And so instead we set our hopes on finding a ferry.

At last, after a few more miles, we came upon a clearing planted with new barley. A farmhouse, built of stout logs, sat near the center of it. In the yard outside the house, a few chickens squawked and pecked at pellets of grain. I saw no barn to shelter cows or draft horses; the sty by the side of the house was empty of pigs. I thought it strange to see no one about doing chores or working in the fields on such a fine spring day.

'Perhaps they've fled this district as I've proposed we do,' Maram grumbled. We stood by our horses at the edge of the clearing, looking at the house. 'Perhaps we should go inside and see if they've left behind any stores that we might ah, appropriate.'

'Don't you think,' Atara said to him coldly, 'that we might at least knock at the door before plundering these poor people?'

It seemed the wisest course. But then Kane cast his piercing gaze across the clearing, and pointed at the house. He said to me, 'Do you see those crosses cut into the walls and the door?'

I strained my eyes to peer at these darkenings of the house's wood that looked like black, painted crosses. I knew suddenly, however, that they must be arrow ports. When I remarked upon this, Kane smiled grimly.

'So, it would be wisest if only one of us knocks at the door,' he said. Then he looked at Maram and smiled again.

And Maram looked right back at him as if he had fallen mad. 'You can't think I'm just going to walk up to that house under the aim of arrows, can you?'

'It was your idea to enter it,' Kane reminded him.

'Ah, well, perhaps we should ride on, then.'

'At least,' Kane said to him, 'call out to whomever might be holing up inside the house. Of all of us, you have