Black Jade

there was nothing except confusion and pain.

'Rope!' I called out. I held back my sword, looking down at Morjin as I waited. 'Berkuar, bring me a rope!'

'Val, what are you doing?' Maram puffed out into the moist night air. 'Kill him, as Kane said!'

'No, I cannot!' I told him. 'This is not Morjin!'

I stared down at this immortal man with his glorious golden hair all dirtied and snarled in the clasp of Kane's savage hand. Something about him called to me and suggested that he was even younger than I.

'That is, it is Morjin — but somehow it is not. I can't explain.'

Berkuar went over to the snorting, stamping horses to fetch three ropes. Two of these he used to bind Pittock and Gorman; there was no need to likewise secure Jastor, for he sat in the mud with an arrow in his chest. It seemed that either Pittock or Gorman, firing arrows in the wild panic of illusion, had killed him.

The third rope we used to bind Morjin — or rather, the creature that we called by that name. Maram and Kane stood him up and pressed his back to the wooden fence while Berkuar looped the rope around his chest, belly and thighs, and fastened it to some sturdy logs behind him. Maram's sword had cut through the mail covering Morjin's shoulder, which oozed a dark, red blood. But Morjin seemed to pay this wound no notice. All of his attention turned upon Berkuar.

'He wears no warder!' Master Juwain called out again. 'Berkuar, do not believe what you see or heed what you hear!'

I gave Daj a thick, clublike piece of wood and posted him to stand guard over Gorman and Pittock. Then Berkuar advanced upon Morjin. He struck the edge of his bow across Morjin's face, bloodying his mouth. He said, 'This fooled me with his first illusion, and so I missed my mark. But I've a warder of my own: my father taught me meditations against the evil eye.'

Some men, as I knew very well, were able to defeat Morjin's illusions of their own will, without the aid of the gelstei called warders.

Kane stood eye to eye with Morjin, looking at him strangely: with loathing and dread but no hate. The arrow that one of the Greens had loosed at Kane stuck out from his shoulder. My grim friend burned with a fathomless will of his own: to command the veins in his torn shoulder to stop bleeding even as his fury drove back the waves of pain that would have vexed a lesser man. He stood straight as a young knight, paying no more attention to the arrow than he would a bird perched there.

'I should draw that arrow,' Master Juwain said to him. 'And you, Val, let's get your armor off and see how bad the wound is.' I could feel the blood dripping down my back where the arrow had pushed the links of my steel mail into my flesh, but neither the mail nor the arrow had lodged there. And I could feel something else. I studied the way that Kane studied Morjin. My sword flared white then, and I knew a thing.

'So,' Kane muttered, 'so.'

I said to him, 'You knew. At the battle, when I cut off his arm, you knew who he was.'

'So — what if I did?'

'You knew what he is, didn't you? Tell us, then.'

'What is there to tell, eh? This isn't Morjin, as you've guessed. But it is Morjin, too — as you've also guessed.'

'I don't understand,' I said, shaking my head. 'How can he be both?'

'Because he is an abomination!' Kane snarled out. 'The filthiest and most evil of abominations!'

He explained then how Morjin, with the aid of a green gelstei, must have made this motherless creature from his own flesh and brought him to a blighted manhood under the vile tutelage of his hand and mind.

'He is a droghul!' Kane told us. 'Of all the kinds of ghuls, the worst, for he has no mind of his own, and never had.'

'I didn't know such things were possible,' Master Juwain said as he brought out his varistei and stared at it.

'So, to the Elijin, the Galadin, too, such things are possible — though long ago forbidden.'

Kane scowled as he tried to flex the fingers of his right arm that fairly dangled beneath his wounded shoulder. Then he stepped forward and with his left hand grasped the droghul's hair, and slammed his head back against the branches of the fence.

'Speak!' he snarled out. 'Do you deny who you are?'

The droghul's face fell as still as a piece of carved marble — and as beautiful. This, I thought, was no illusion that the ancient, decaying Morjin wished men to see but rather the very grace and glory of his youth that had enchanted all who looked upon him.

'I do not speak,' he said to Kane with contempt in his eyes, 'when you command it.'

'We should not let him speak at all,' Master Juwain said. 'Of all his weapons, only his tongue is left to him, and it has cut down more men than a thousand swords.'

Master Juwain, as always, spoke the truth. But I knew that a part of him yearned even more than I did to Listen to Morjin's golden voice: like a finely-tuned lyre that could let flow the sweetest and most compelling of music, reaching deep inside all who heard it to excite their fears, lusts, vanities and darkest of dreams.

'Is it true what Kane said of you?' I asked the droghul.

'I do not speak when you command it either,' he said. 'But since you ask with such earnestness, Valashu Elahad, I will tell you, yes, it is much as Kalkin says it is, though he cannot hope to understand.'

The droghul smiled at me, and for a moment, I almost forgot who and what he was. I felt a great, churning emptiness in his belly, and I asked him, 'Are you truly hungry, or was that just pan of your ruse?'

'I'm always hungry,' the droghul said to me.

'So what if he is?' Kane shouted. 'Let him be hungry, then!'

'No,' I said. 'He should be watered and fed.'

'But, Val, think of what this has done to you! Let him suffer, I say!'

The loneliness that burned in the droghul's eyes, as vast as the heavens on a clear night, told of a suffering that I could just barely apprehend. I said to Kane, 'He will suffer the more if he has strength to do so.'

It was a simple thing to say that our captive should be fed, but none of us wished to put a cup to his lips or hold a crust of bread to his mouth that he might gnaw on it. Kane continued scowling at the droghul. Finally, Estrella picked up a waterskin and walked toward him. But I took it from her and performed the repulsive task of tending to the droghul myself.

Then I steeled myself to question this strange, dreadful being. I knew that it would be dangerous. And I knew that Morjin's creature would tell me things that I didn't want to hear.

Chapter 14

Atara, perhaps sensing my distress, came closer to the droghul and stood before him. It was she who asked of him one of the questions that vexed me. 'How did you find us?'

And this bound man who was almost Morjin said to her: 'How do you find anything at all now since I took your eyes?'

At this, Atara remained silent at she oriented her blindfolded face toward the droghul and clenched an arrow in her fist.

The droghul said to her, 'The world grows darker and darker, doesn't it?'

Then his gaze fell upon me, and through the veins of my neck a fire burned as my sword flared in my hand.

I said, 'He'll always find me now. It's the kirax, isn't it?'

He said with a smile, 'Our blood is one, and so how should I not find the beating of my own heart?'

'Our blood is not one!' I shouted at him. 'My lineage is of noble kings, while you call the Dark One himself your father!'

'I am your father,' the droghul said to me. 'As I've told you before, all that you are