Black Jade

'Valashu Elahad!' Jezi Yaga's rolling voice called out. 'Sweet man! I'm coming! I'm coming!'

I moved quickly to help Atara down from her horse, then positioned her behind this snorting beast. The rest of us likewise took shelter behind our horses. Then we waited.

'Sweet man! Sweet man! Did you think you could escape my lovely, lovely eyes?'

A moment later, Jezi Yaga appeared at the top of the slope above us. She stood smiling with her hands planted on her huge, round hips. Her great breasts hung nearly to her waist and shook as she let loose great peals of laughter. She lifted back her blocky head in order to shake her hair out of her glowing, violet eyes.

'Come out from behind your beasts, that I might see you better!' she shouted to us. 'Must I turn them to stone, too? I've no liking for horseflesh, for it's not as sweet as man.'

I crouched behind Altaru's great, trembling body, and I stroked his neck and prayed that he could not understand Jezi Yaga's cruel words. It would be a simple thing, I thought, for Jezi to charge down the slope and find us out behind our horses once she had turned them to stone.

'Come out! Come out!' she called to us. 'Come out and bring me the greenstone! I've no liking to have to chisel it from your hand!'

Master Juwain, I saw, slightly behind me, cringed in back of his horse as he made a fist around his varistei. He called out, 'Take my crystal then, but let us be!'

'I will take it! I will take it! But I will not let you be!'

Just then the sun rose through the gap behind Jezi Yaga enveloping her in a ball of red fire. It sent rays of light streaking straight at us like arrows. I felt its heat on the mail of my legs, which the legs of my horse could not quite cover.

Liljana, standing behind her horse near me, called out, 'I must try!'

I looked over to see her bring her blue gelstei up to the side of her head. A moment later, she flung the little figurine down upon the ground as she cried out: 'He is still there!'

Kane, to my right, touched the smooth, black gelstei glued to his forehead, and growled out, 'So, Valashu, if I fail, remember your sword. Remember the valarda.'

Then he looked up the slope toward Jezi Yaga. He had only a single moment to cry out: 'Damn him!' before his eyes closed and his grip upon his horse's saddle broke. I felt the life drain from his limbs as of water being- sucked into dry sand. Then he fell to the ground. Never had I seen this great warrior lie so still.

Jezi Yaga turned her head toward him. Her eyes grew brighter.

I closed my eyes as I looked for the killing sword of valarda inside me. But whether because of my promise or because I didn't hate Jezi as I did her father, I could not find it.

I looked down to see the skin along the back of Kane's hand changing color and hardening. I hated it that I could think of nothing to do.

Then there came a booming in the distance like thunder. It took me a moment to realize that it was a voice, a great human voice full of wrath. I could not make out what words echoed through the mouth of the gap, but I knew with a great leaping of my heart that they belonged to Maram.

'My man!' Jezi cried out. 'My dragon man!'

The hardening of Kane's body suddenly ceased. I risked looking over the top of my horse's saddle. A streak of brilliant red fire split the air. The fire grew even more incandescent and merciless as it fell upon Jezi Yaga's naked back. With my eyes, I followed the line of this flame from the top of the slope. There, on a shelf of rock, stood Maram. The ruby light that spilled forth from him dazzled my eyes so that I could not see clearly, but I knew that he gnpped his hands around his firestone.

'My man! My man!' Jezi called out to him. Her words came out more slowly now, for it seemed that she was having difficulty forming them. 'My sweet, sweet dragon man!' She stood as still and steady as a statue. She had turned her head halfway toward Maram. But it seemed that she could move it no farther. The skin across her neck and back had hardened into a carapace of stone. As the fire continued to fall upon her, the stone grew thicker. I sensed that instinct had driven her to protect her body from the fire.

'My man. My … beautiful man.'

Those were her last words. The flames from Maram's firestone burned straight into her, melting the stone that she made of her own flesh. A thick, glowing lava ran down her back and sides, and dripped in bright red splashes upon the ground. In order to assuage the anguish of Maram's red-hot flame, or so I sensed, Jezi hardened layer upon layer of herself, deeper and deeper, until even her muscles and bones began to petrify. At last, the power of the purple gelstei worked its way into the deepest part of her being. I felt the life leave her then, for as she had said, she must surely die if ever her heart turned to stone.

After that, I came out from behind Altaru and called up to Maram that Jezi Yaga was dead. He must have understood, for the fire pouring out of his red gelstei suddenly ceased. I walked up the slope toward the statue of Jezi Yaga as he walked down to us, with Daj close behind him. He came closer, and I ground my teeth together to see what she had done to him. He was entirely naked, even down to his bloody feet. Blood still oozed from the bites that she had taken out of his chest from his shoulders and belly, his hindquarters and legs, too, and nearly every other part of him.

'I knew you wouldn't abandon me,' he called out to me. 'You saved my life again, old friend.'

'Even as you saved mine,' I said, smiling at him as I clasped his hand.

He gripped his other hand around his firestone. I saw to my amazement that not a single crack marred its ruby interior.

'But how?' I said to him. 'How did this happen?'

While Estrella stood oyer Kane's still form, Master J uwain and Liljana helped Atara walk up to us. Then Maram looked at his red crystal and explained: 'I told Jezi that all my, ah, powers of love and life, my very potency, were bound up in this. I persuaded her to make it whole it again. And so with the touch of her eyes, she healed it.'

He reached out to touch Jezi's face, and he ran his fingers across her cheeks. As when he had first seen her, a thin layer of stone covered the purple jewels of her eyes.

'Amazing,' Master Juwain said, examining the firestone. 'I didn't know the purple gelstei had such powers.'

'In anyone else's hands, so to speak,' Maram said, 'I doubt if it does. Jezi, though, has had a thousand years to learn its secrets.'

Master Juwain considered this a moment, before his attention turned to more immediate things. He examined Maram and said, 'But what happened to your boots and clothes?'

'She burned them, too bad,' Maram told us. 'She said that I would never have need of them again, since I was to remain inside her house forever.'

He went on to tell of how Daj had forced his way through the crack in Jezi's house, and like an angel of mercy, had freed him. Daj stood basking in Maram's gratitude. It was nearly the proudest moment of his life.

'But what about your armor?' I asked Maram.

'Gone,' he told me. 'Jezi softened the steel and reformed it into a cauldron. She told me that she would put me in it, piece by piece, if I failed her.'

I could think of nothing to say to this, or to the torment that he had suffered. Then Liljana asked him, 'But if she wanted a child from you, why take bites and weaken you?'

'I think she was testing me,' Maram muttered. 'Testing my strength and the, ah, juiciness of my body, as she put it. My very blood. Then, too, old ways die hard, and I don't think she could help herself.'

Liljana looked him up and down, and said, 'At least she didn't bite off that unruly snake of yours.'

Maram's face flushed bright red beneath the rising sun as he covered himself with his hand and groaned, 'Oh, my snake — my, poor, poor, mighty snake!'

'That should be the least of your concerns,' Master Juwain said to him. 'We've got to see to those wounds of yours. They are many, and deep, and no animal's bite is as poisonous as a human being's.'

'All right,' Maram said, 'but first I want payment for what this monster did to me. Daj, hand me my dagger!'

Daj, who bore Maram's sword and dagger, moved to comply with his command. But then Atara, divining Maram's intentions, rested her hand on Jezi Yaga's face and called out to him: 'No, let her keep her eyes — please.'

Maram looked at me, and I nodded to him. Then he bowed his head to Atara as he muttered, 'All right then, I