Black Jade

No scholar, magus, king on high

If they be cool or soft or dry;

My man is molten earth's desire-,

Whose loins are full, whose blood is fire.

He comes for me, most mighty snake,

A mighty, raging thirst to slake,

Make live inside my honeyed womb

The Marudin's immortal bloom.

I am a maid of angel's seed,

An unfilled well of burning need;

My time has come to mate and breed -

I am a maid of angel's seed.

And so my suitors stop on by,

Enchanted by my violet eye;

I turn to stone the small, effete:

Unworthy mates but good for meat.

To feed my fiery, fecund forge

I fill my red, rapacious gorge;

The blood of men, most potent wine,

Exalts new life and makes divine.

With love I seize and shred and skive,

Put lips to flesh, eat men alive,

Then suck sweet marrow from their bones

And roast on coals their empty stones.

I am a maid of angel's seed,

An unfilled well of burning need,

On life's red flame I fondly feed -

I am a maid of angel's seed.

Kane pulled back from the house and looked at me. In the faint starlight, his face seemed grimmer than ever. He slashed the edge of his hand across his throat. Then he pointed back towards the trees as if telling me that we should make our escape before it was too late.

But it was already too late. The Yaga suddenly broke off singing, and I heard her sniffing the air. And then she called out: 'Is that you, little man? I know it is. You smell so sweet — almost as sweet as my Maram.'

I heard a shuffling of hard feet, and I quickly stepped to the side of the crack. The stench of the Yaga grew stronger, and her voice louder and clearer as it poured from the jagged crack: 'Don't be so shy, Valashu Elahad. Why don't you show yourself so that I might look upon your sweet, sweet face?'

'So that you can turn me to stone?' I called out to her. 'As you did my friend?'

'Ha, ha!' she laughed out. 'I've no desire to turn you into stone, though I'll surely oblige you if you linger.'

'Val!' I heard Maram shout from inside the house. 'Val! Val!'

'Let Maram go!' I called out. 'And change my friend back as he was!'

'I could change that hunter back, indeed, indeed I could. But he would be good only for meat then, and you don't eat your friends, do you?'

'Val!' Maram cried out yet again. 'She's telling the truth! She makes men into stone then brings them back here! When she unmakes them, they are dead!'

'Sweet Maram,' I heard the Yaga murmur. 'I haven't made you into stone yet, though you're harder than any man I've known, the hardest yet. Now be quiet while I talk with Valashu, or I'll have to give you another kiss.'

'Leave him alone!' I shouted. 'And how do you know my name?'

'My father told me that you might pass this way.'

'Morjin? Is he truly your father then?'

'Indeed he is. It was he who named me Jezi, which means the lovely one. And I am so very, very lovely, don't you think?' I said nothing to this, then called back to her: 'If Morjin is your father, he would not let you tell me to go away.'

'You're beginning to vex me, little man. Do you think my father has power over Jezi Yaga?'

'If he is able to speak to you from afar, then surely he has power.'

'Ha, ha — great power, it's true. But I no longer do as he commands. We settled that long ago. When he couldn't bear the defiance in my eyes, he tore them out with his own fingers. But then I bit off his thumb and defied him all the more.'

The stench of Jezi Yaga's loathing drove into my belly and made me want to vomit. I gasped out to her: 'Such hatred — for your own father!'

'Ha, ha,' she laughed out again, 'my father commanded that I should be his bride. But he was not my dragon man, no, no, he was not, even though he calls himself the Great Red Dragon.'

'Abomination,' Kane muttered beside me. 'Every filthy thing, every degradation.'

'Is that you, Elijin?' Jezi called out. 'You speak of abomination?' 'So, I do,' Kane said to her. 'Morjin used a varistei, did he not, to bring you forth?'

'The greenstone,' Jezi Yaga said. 'Ha, ha — he did use it this way. And he wanted to use it to breed a new race out of my sweet, sweet womb.'

'So, the Marudin.'

'The Marudin, the Marudin,' she sang out. 'The Great One who will defy even the Dark One. But my father is not to be his father. When I told him that, he took my eyes and gave me these pretty purple stones in their place. He said that since my heart was stone, I should turn to stone any man who tried to love me. My skin can be hard as stone when I make it so, and therefore no one can kill me with sword or arrow. But my heart is never stone — if it were, I would die. As I nearly did die. He cursed me, my sweet father did, then cast me out. And so it's been ever since. I've looked all across the world for my dragon man. I've looked upon so many men these many, many years. One day, I shall find him.'

A moan from Maram returned me from the horrible past to the even more horrifying present. He called out, 'Leave me — leave me alone!'

'Yes, Valashu,' the maddened being inside the house said to me. 'Leave us alone. Go off to kill my father, and I will thank you for it. But leave me alone so that I might test the strength of the snake.'

'We won't leave without Maram!' I shouted.

'Will you not?' she shouted back. 'You vex, little man! You vex me.'

Her voice faded, and I heard her feet shuffling against rough floor stones. And Maram cried out, 'No, please don't bite me again — no!'

'You vex me!' Jezi Yaga called out. 'You vex me!'

Just then Maram let loose a terrible scream. It froze me motionless, as if I were a piece of ice standing with my fist clenched around my sword in the dark of the night. It took all my will to keep myself from whipping about and looking through the crack into the house.

'Val!' Maram shouted to me. 'Go away, or she'll eat me alive! Go, and save yourself!'