Black Jade

seemed no point to interring them this way. In truth, there seemed no point to anything.

'We're lost,' Atara said as she fumbled for the reins of her horse. She was the last of us I would have expected to give voice to despair. 'I can't see our way out of this.'

'That's because there is no way out,' Maram muttered. He glowered at Master Juwain and snarled, 'Tell me if you know of any Way Rhymes for this place!'

But Master Juwain only shook his head at this and gripped the leather binding of his useless book.

'It may be,' I said, 'that the only way out is in.'

'No, Val,' Kane said to me.

'If it's the Black Jade that is truly calling us,' I said, 'then let us answer this call. We'll find the dark crystal and destroy it.'

At this Kane drew his sword and thrust it down into the ground. 'Can you destroy the very earth to which it's welded?'

'It might be that with the crystal destroyed, the earth here would have less power over us.'

'Can't you see,' Master Juwain said to me, 'that Morjin would want you to think like this?'

'I can see it well enough,' I said to him, hating the hauteur in my voice. 'We'll destroy the crystal even so, and someday, Morjin himself.'

The dark fire that filled my eyes then easily ignited the coals inside Kane. A savage smile split his face as he gazed at me and said, 'So — perhaps this is the only way.'

Estrella stepped up to me and grasped my hand. I was sure that she wanted to tell me that she would help me find the Black Jade. Then she shook her curly hair away from her tear-filled eyes as she looked up at me with a terrible fear.

Daj, speaking for her, came up to me and said, 'Do we have to go looking for this crystal? Why can't there be another way?'

Master Juwain rested his rough old hand on Daj's head and said to me, 'Abrasax told us that we mustn't listen to the call of this crystal. You agreed to this, Val.'

'If I did, then I was a fool,' I closed my eyes against the dark hateful drumbeat of my heart. 'You see, I don't know how not to listen.'

I opened my eyes to gaze at Master Juwain in silent accusation. 'Well, first and last,' he told me, 'there are the Light Meditations.' 'Did they help Gorman or Pittock?' I asked him. 'Have they helped you?'

The sick look on Master Juwain's face told me that these meditations had availed him little.

'The truth is,' I told him, 'I must listen. How are we to destroy evil if we don't understand it?'

If the logic of my words failed to persuade Master Juwain, the force of my will bent him to our new course. A gleam came into his gray eyes as he nodded his head to me and told me, 'In truth, I don't know how not to listen either.'

And so without a backward glance at the graves of Gorman and Pittock, we resumed our journey. After another few miles, we paused in order to look through the twisted trees that trapped us. Liljana passed around a waterskin. Master Juwain walked off into the woods to look for a way out of them, or so he said.

Just as it came my turn to drink, I noticed Liljana pat her tunic's pocket with a sudden and rare panic, and then thrust her hand inside. And she cried out, 'My gelstei! It's gone!'

'Are you sure?' I called to her. I hurried over to her, and so did Kane and Maram.

'It is gone!' she cried out again.

'Ah, it must have fallen out,' Maram said to her. 'Perhaps while you were sleeping.'

She pressed her lips together, then hissed at him, 'It did not fall out! I would never let that happen. And so it must have been taken out.'

She stared at him with a dark and deadly look.

Just then Master Juwain came to Maram's defense, saying to Liljana, 'I'm afraid it did fall out. I found it late last night while you were snoring.'

With that, he took his hand from his pocket and held up Liljana's little blue figurine.

'But why didn't you wake me then?' Liljana shouted at him. 'And why did you go the whole day without telling me?'

She came up close to him, and her hand darted out as quick as the head of a striking snake. But Master Juwain proved quicker, for he snatched the crystal away from her, out of her reach.

'Master Juwain!'

Maram and I both called out his name together. Then we hurried up to Liljana and grabbed her arms to keep her from thrusting her fingers into Master Juwain's throat or some other deadly vulnerable chakra.

'Give it back to her!' I shouted at Master Juwain.

'But I was only trying to keep it safe,' he huffed out. 'And to keep her safe. In these woods, so dark, the temptation to use it must be very-'

'Give it back to her!' I shouted again.

He stared straight back at me as his fingers tightened around the crystal so hard that his whole arm trembled. Then he seemed to will himself to extend his fist and drop the figurine into Liljana's outstretched hand. She immediately thrust it deep into her pocket as she glared at him.

'You,' she said to him with an acid contempt, 'tried to use it, didn't you? To look inside Morjin's mind?'

'His mind,' he said as if intoning a magic word. His eyes glazed over as if dazzled by a bright light. 'What do we really know of it? He was an Elijin, once, but is he so different than mortal men in his mentations? Perhaps. Perhaps. I know that his words strike us as evil, even mad, but there must be a logic beneath it all. If we could discover the source of his onstreaming intelligence, which I admit is great, then we might discover the whys and ways of the great Red Dragon. The whys and ways of much more. The secrets he keeps! He has knowledge unknown to men. Perhaps knowledge of the mystery of mind itself … or at least his own. What if one could dive down and find the currents that give rise to it? I can almost see it! They would form up, each individual thought, like waves upon the sea. At times, one must swell larger than another, and drown it out, and then another and another — an infinitude of digressions, distractions and side-thoughts, as with any other man. But always, the deeper logic, revealed through analysis of perceptions, indications and manifestations, these endless technics and deductions, you see. There must be a way to peel back the waves to understand how they birth each other and impinge on each other, even overwhelming and annihilating as they ever form and reform, ever shaped by the source of all waves: the way that the very mind of the One forms thoughts, and causes all things to burst into creation. Morjin must seek this deepest of secrets, the final one, shining like a perfect jewel, which lies beneath the endless layers and depths of watery waves, down and down and — '

'Master Juwain!' I cried out. I grasped hold of his arm, hard and shook him. Then his madness for pure thought left him at least for the moment and his eyes cleared. And I asked him, 'Did you use Liljana's gelstei?'

He shook his head, then admitted, 'Almost I did. If Liljana hadn't been so suspicious of me — '

'Me, suspicious of you!' Liljana cried out.

I called out, 'This dispute must end here and now. Or else we'll all end up like Gorman and Pittock.'

I thought that Master Juwain wanted to argue with me, but then he bit his Up and nodded his head. Liljana only scowled at him — and at me. Then she turned to stomp off back toward the horses.

After that, I led us deeper into the woods. No one spoke, and we walked on into a terrible silence. The trees of the Skadarak began thinning out and grew ever more stunted and blackened with the disease that blighted them. Some sort of stinking, greenish-black fungus clung to the forest floor and fouled our boots. We were hard put to encourage the horses to set their hooves down into it and keep them moving forward. As for ourselves, it was a misery to keep going on and on, but there seemed no help for it. For a deep voice, I sensed, sounded inside all of us. It promised us endless fascinations and sweet drink to quell the fire of existence; in truth, it promised us everything. It kept calling to us in a dark and dreadful tone that none of us could resist.

How, I wondered again, could I not listen? I tried putting my hand to my sword and bringing to my mind all the light that was inside it. It was not enough. I listened for the sound of Atara saying yes to a marriage troth and heard our children playing happily in the yard of a little house by a stream, and that was not enough either. I remembered promising my grandmother that I would not let my burning for Morjin's death destroy me, and still the fell voice called me on.