Black Jade

seemed to have gone out of them, leaving only black iron in its place.

He continued. 'I love it that men fear me as the Crucifier, for I was born to this calling as others were to be sculptors or minstrels. It is my art. I have written of this. About how the One, above all else, wishes for me to create the greatest and most beautiful of all possible things.'

He looked at me as he licked his dry lips. His throat, I sensed, was parched. But his eyes no longer held any plea that I should give him water, nor would I have obliged him by so much as spitting into his mouth, even if he had begged me.

He smiled as he looked down at his remaining hand, sticking out from beneath a turn of rope. He said to me, 'With these fingers I have torn the liver from a young boy's belly and ate it as he screamed.'

I took a step back from him, shaking my head. Master Juwain again called for the droghul to be gagged. Daj, I saw, standing over Gorman and Pittock, had dropped his club and clasped his hands over his ears. I sensed in Atara a gladness that she was blind and could not look upon the droghul's face. Kane, however, stared at this dreadful being as if entranced. Estrella simply looked at him. and listened. I could not bear for her to hear another word. I raised back my sword. I noticed that all the light had gone out of it.

'Yes, kill me,' the droghul said. 'Do you think he cares? Do you think I do?'

Again, I hesitated. For a moment, I wasn't sure who was speaking to me, the droghul or Morjin.

'What do my eyes tell you?' he asked me. 'Do they beg for mercy? Damn you! You, who are damned as I am! What did the eyes of all those you killed with that filthy sword say to you? Can you not hear their voices? Listen!'

I stood holding Alkaladur back behind my head as I looked into the droghul's hateful eyes. I felt, rather than saw, my sword's silus-tria beginning to glow a hellish red.

'How many have I killed, Valashu?' he asked me. 'How many stars are there in the sky? And each one, as it must have been for you, said this to me: 'I die for you. I give you my life that yours might burn brighter.' This is my will. I tear a living heart from a man's chest, and this feeds me. My hunger is vaster than all the oceans of the world. I drink the blood of a woman's cut veins, and I do grow, vaster, brighter and brighter — as bright as all the stars from Ea to Agathad. And the whole of creation sings to see its purpose fulfilled.'

Now I could see the flames running along my sword. It seemed that there was only one way to extinguish them.

And still the droghul spoke to me. The words poured out of his mouth, clear and lovely in their tone, but they burned me like poison: 'And some deaths, Valashu, feed us more than others, don't they? You know of which deaths I speak. Your brothers — '

'Stop!' I cried out. The diamonds set into the hilt of my sword cut into my clenched hands. 'Be silent!'

'Your brothers died beyond my sight, it's true, but you saw them at their end, didn't you? Your father, too. Your grandmother, though, and your mother — '

'No!'

Kane, standing beside me, could bear the droghul's talk no longer. Almost quicker than thought, he lunged forward and smashed his fist into the droghul's mouth. This mighty blow would have felled an ox; it stunned the droghul, but only for a moment. His eyes clouded as with concussion, but soon cleared as they filled with desire to destroy Kane — and me. He spat blood and teeth at my face. When he spoke again, his words were no longer so beautifully formed.

'I must tell you, Valashu. I must. I've written you that your mother never cried out for mercy, and that is true. But she called for you.'

'No,' I murmured. The heat of my flaming sword burned my hands, but I could not let go of ot. Neither could I move it forward, not even an inch. 'No, no.'

'When I put the nails in,' the droghul said, 'her thoughts were of you. Her last words, too. Shall I tell you?'

'No!'

'I shall,' he said. His eyes seemed redder than my sword, and blood stained his lips. 'She lives in me, now, you know. She speaks, always, as she spoke that day. She said — '

'No!'

'Valashu.'

I listened stunned as the timbre and rhythm of the droghul's voice changed into a perfect mimicry of my mother's. If I closed my eyes, it would have been as if my mother stood bound and tormented before me. I hadn't known that Morjin, or his droghul, possessed this power.

'Valashu,' he said again in my mother's beautiful voice. It held infinite love for me and all the pain in the world. 'Why did you leave me to die?'

What is it to hate a man? It is grinding teeth and burning skin and nails driven through the eyes. It is a tunnel of fire. Its heart beats with a rage to inflict all your agony upon him, increased ten thousandfold. And then to destroy him, utterly, expunging him from existence so that nothing — no word nor gleam in his eye nor hair upon his head — remains.

'Morjin!' I shouted out. My breath blasted out and seemed to shake the leaves of the trees all about our encampment. 'I'll kill you — I swear I will!'

Inside my heart the valarda flamed red and terrible, with a fury greater than even that of my sword. It came to me then that if I struck out with it, Moijin might feel a mortal hurt even through his droghul.

'No. Val!' Atara suddenly shouted at me. 'Remember your promise!'

I had promised myself that I would never again kill with the valarda. Could I keep this unkeepable covenant? I would, I told myself, I must — or die. But many times I had killed with my sword, as I must kill many more. The droghul might truly have good in him, as all men did. But he was evil, too. almost as twisted and evil as Morjin himself, and so he must be destroyed. 'Valashu.'

With all the fury of all the sinews of my body, with hate blackening my eyes, I swung Alkaladur down upon the droghul's head. The speed of the blade slicing through the air caused the flames to flare up and whisper with a burning wind. It sent out a sudden and bright light. I knew then that I could not kill the droghul this way. At the last moment I checked the blow, stopping the edge of my sword half an inch above his head. 'Damn you, Elahad!' he roared out.

I pulled back my sword. I said, 'We'll take the droghul with us through the Skadarak, to help us find the way.'

At this, the droghul's eyes filled with something black and vile. It was all of Morjin's malevolence made as real and palpable as iron smeared with dung.

'It was good to make your mother die,' he told me. 'But when I kill you, when I tear out your heart and eat it, I will sing with joy!'

I could not bear the fear fighting through the droghul's implacable face. Fear and hate, hate and fear — it seemed the whole of the droghul's existence. And then a light flared inside him and it seemed that there was something he hated even more than me. He clenched the fingers of his single hand into a fist. He shook his head back and forth, and twisted and pulled against the rope cutting into his chest. Then his eyes, his glorious golden eyes, fell upon me. A clarity came into them. It was as if he looked straight into my heart and smiled. For a moment, as fleeting as a breath, I had a sense of an eagle beating his wings against the wind and screaming out that he was free. 'Elahad!' The droghul's mouth opened wide, showing his reddened teeth.

And then, as the hate came back into his eyes, as a poison worse than kirax flooded through him, his jaws snapped shut with such force that I felt his teeth bite off his tongue and break. His eyes rolled back into his head, and a bloody froth bubbled from his lips. He screamed. I felt every fiber along his neck and limbs twisting in agony. His whole body thrashed like a speared fish; from some dark source, it gathered up a power so great that his spasms shook the whole fence to which he was tied. He raged and lunged and screamed; unbelievably, he pulled up a great wooden log half-rooted in the ground and lunged at me as the fence fell apart. He spat blood into my eyes, straining at the rope that still held him tied. He cried out with such a terrible and keening pain that I thought my eardrums would break. And then he died.

'Morjin,' I whispered. I hated the burn of water filling up my eyes. 'Morjin.'

The droghul lay in the mud beneath my feet, twisted and tangled up in the rope still attached to the log. I