Black Jade

'Are you sure?' Maram asked me.

I closed my eyes a moment to listen to Alphanderry's strong, clear voice and the even deeper one that sounded within me. Then I looked at Maram and told him, 'Yes, I'm sure.'

I pulled gently on Altaru's reins and pointed my great, trusting horse toward the west. We walked through the nearly-dead forest over blighted, blackened ground. Alphanderry, like an angel, walked with us. And all the miles of the seemingly endless Skadarak, he never ceased singing his beautiful, inextinguishable song.

Chapter 17

And so we moved away from that terrible place. We jour-neyed all that day and the nextt as well, into the west. Daj did not ask how we might determine when we had left the Skadarak, for we all knew that in a way, we never would. But

there came a time when trees grew tall and hearthy about us again, with bright green leaves that fluttered in a fresh, clean wind. The dreadful call of the Skadarak faded into a murmur and then seemed to die. Alphanderry left us then. Our shimmering friend simply vanished back into the nothingness that had birthed him. We were all sad to be left alone again, but we hoped that something of Alphanderry's song would continue to sound within us, as a charm against the darkness that had no end.

We mourned for Pittock and Gorman and felt keenly the loss of their bows, for despite their failings, they had been fine warriors. We did not speak of this. We did not speak of the worst of what had befallen us in the Skadarak, neither to each other nor even to ourselves; we were like murderers reentering the company of good men and ashamed of our deeds. When we came to a little stream, we spent some hours washing the stench of the dark woods from our clothing. We bathed in the cold water and scrubbed at our naked skin until it was raw. but it seemed that the evil that clung to us could not be washed away.

Only once did I give voice to the terrible doubt that now ate at my bones. We had crossed another stream and were setting our course when I took Kane aside and said to him, 'I'm tired, so damn tired. I haven't the heart for this any more.'

'What? What's this?'

'Perhaps you should lead us,' I told him.

His eyes flared with anger and astonishment, 'I, lead us? Ha, I'm no leader! Men obey me — they do not follow. The duty is upon you.'

'But I nearly led us to our doom!' 'So? I've been near to doom a thousand times. That's just the way of life, eh? In the end, you led us out of that cursed wood, and that's all that matters.'

'Is it? I am — ' 'You're a star, Valashu. In the end, a bright and beautiful star. You followed its light, and so did I. And so now it's now, and now we're here in this beautiful place. A million miles might lie ahead of us; I won't hear any talk of what lies behind, do you understand?'

He squeezed my arm then, and I felt some of his inexhaustible strength flow into me. I bowed my head to him, and he smiled at me.

But it is one thing to agree to lead others and quite another to keep them moving forward when their hearts as well have nearly given up all hope. After the passage of the Skadarak, Atara fell into a silence so deep and cold it seemed that she had almost lost the power of speech. Her second sight did not return to her. I felt some deep part of her desperately looking for me to show her a way out of her darkness.

As for Maram, he tried to take solace in words. The next morning we set out into a forest chittering with many birds, and he sang almost as brightly as they did. But I sensed the falseness of bravado in his great, booming voice. I knew that he was trying to rally himself for a battle with his old demons — either that or trying to forget.

And so I said to him, 'One day, when our grandchildren are happily married, we'll sit with glasses of brandy in our hands and wonder that we once came so close to despair.'

'Do you really think so?' he asked me. 'But what if we fail?'

'We can't fail, Maram — at least we can't fail each other. And that is why, in the end, we'll win.'

He smiled at this. 'Brave words, my friend, and thank you for them. But I don't know — I just don't know.'

We continued our journey through the warm, open woods, and sometimes Maram's singing swelled with true hope, and sometimes it didn't. This I had learned in the Skadarak: our hearts were always free. Not even the Maitreya, I thought, could save a man who didn't want to be saved.

For two more days, we traveled into the west toward the mountains. Ashte had passed Into Soldru, and so finally did the clouds above us pass on to the east. The sky cleared, allowing the strong Soldru sun to rain down its blight rays through the glowing, green leaves above us. Arum and marigolds showed their colors in glades covered with grass. Through the occasional breaks in the forest's canopy, we caught glimpses of a great wall of white peaks that grew larger and larger.

At last we came into a thinly-populated part of Acadu that Berkuar seemed to know quite well. He guided us onto game paths and old, narrow roads. Here we might have moved more quickly, but I called for an unhurried pace. We were alt worn from our journey, and Daj and Estrella most of all. They were as tough and uncomplaining as any children could be, but in the end they were still children. We stopped more than once so that they might play by a stream or pick apples from an orchard of one of the farmers who had made a homestead in these lonely woods. One of these, a stout freeholder named Graybuck, invited us to a feast of roasted ham, mashed potatoes and fresh greens picked from his fields. He insisted on plying us with some of his homemade beer, even Maram, whose vows he waved away.

'Beer is the only fit drink for friends,' Graybuck told us, holding forth at table in his long room with his wife and five children. He turned his heavy, red face toward Maram. 'Surely you can put aside your vow this one time to make toast in the company of friends?'

'Ah, surely I can,' Maram told him. 'A vow is sacred, It's true, but what is more sacred than friendship?'

I said nothing as I watched Graybuck's eldest daughter, Roseen, fill Maram's mug with a frothy brown beer. I bit my lip as I watched the way that Maram watched this plump, young woman go about her business, as if he would rather have had her for dessert in place of apple pie or other sweets.

'To the Keepers of the Forest,' Graybuck said, holding up his mug and nodding at Berkuar. 'May they the drive the Crucifiers from our woods.'

He went on to tell of the depredations of Morjin's soldiers who had raided down from the mine lands to the north. He praised us for having the courage and good guidance to have passed by the Skadarak unharmed, and so avoided these men that he hated.

'They've feared your bows,' he said to Berkuar, 'and so few have dared to come into the deep woods here, though I heard that last year they burnt Finlay's farm not twenty miles from here and carried off his daughters. But if you're journeying south, as you must, you'll find the forest full of soldiers. They've set up a garrison at Nayland, between the Cold Marshes and the mountains.'

'But what if we didn't go around the mountains,' I asked him, 'but across them?'

'Cross the mountains?' Graybuck said to me. 'Not with horses and children. There are no passes over them.'

Kane sipped at his beer as he eyed Graybuck. Then he said, 'No passes at all?'

'Well, there is a narrow gap about thirty miles from here, but it is cursed.'

'Cursed, you say?' Maram called out. 'Cursed how?'

'It's said that there is something there that turns men to stone.'

'Turns men to stone!' Maram cried out. Then he belched and muttered. 'Oh, excellent, excellent!'

'Surely,' Master Juwain said to Graybuck, 'that cannot be true. Surely it is just a legend.'

'I don't know about that,' Graybuck said to him. 'I've heard people tell of kin lost to this Stonemaker. They call it the Yaga.'

'The Yaga,' Maram muttered again as he gazed into his empty mug.

'But hasn't anyone,' Master Juwain asked, 'ever ventured into this gap to disprove the legend?'