Black Jade

pack of hyenas waited for the lion to finish his feast, as vultures circled high overhead.

As it grew hot, we all donned the hats that Liljana had made for us: rather ridiculous-looking constructions that might have been cowls hacked off of robes. They would help protect our heads and necks from the ceaseless sun. I sweated streams of salt water beneath my hat, cloak and my armor. Soon it became clear that I could not go on this way. I could cast aside my cloak, but that would leave my armor exposed to the sun's fierce rays. The rings of steel mail would quickly heat up like the metal of a skillet and roast me inside. Kane had warned me that I would not be able to wear my armor across the desert, but I had not wanted to believe him.

'You must divest yourself of it,' he told me, riding up beside me. 'As I must, too.'

'Must I?' I said, touching my finger to my burning, jangling mail. How many times, I wondered, in how many battles had it saved me from being pierced by arrow, spear or sword? 'I'd feel naked without it. A little farther — let's see if we can bear it.'

We rode on deeper into a burning plain dotted with clumps of ursage and thornbush. The wavering air heated up even more. So did I — so did we all. The horses sweated profusely; never had I seen so much water pour from Altaru's sleek black hide. Flies descended on us in buzzing, black clouds. Sweat now ran inside my armor in rivers; it seemed as if I were swimming in a hot, salty bath. Sweat worked its way down my forehead and stung my eyes. The others suffered as badly, or worse. I could almost feel the sweat soaking through Maram's many bandages and working salt into the red rawness of his wounds.

'Ah, oh!' I overheard him grumble to himself. 'Maram, my old friend, you're supposed to marvel at the One and all the One's works, but tell me truly: if you had made the world, would you have filled it with such horrible heat and these bloody damn flies that take pieces out of a man? No, no, it's too much, a child could see that — too, too damn much.'

When the sun grew too fierce, in the terrible heat of the afternoon, we broke to take shelter beneath our sun cloths and rest. I finally removed my armor and the sodden leather underpadding, and stowed this heavy mass of accoutrements with one of the packhorses. I donned a long tunic that coveted me from neck to ankle. I forced myself to go water the horses before partaking of any of vital liquid myself. It was astonishing how much a thirsty horse could drink. In nearly all our journeys, there had always been some river or stream for our mounts to try to empty. Now, as we held leather buckets to their frothy lips, they did empty them, with such alarming rapidity that we had to pull the buckets away and ration them. We were only slightly kinder to ourselves.

When Daj handed me one of our waterskins, I drank enough to ease some of the parch of my throat, but not enough to really replenish me. With every fiber in my body crying out for moisture, it seemed that there wasn't enough water in all the world to fill me.

Kane, turning east to orient himself on the white mountains of the Yorgos range, said to us, 'We've made good distance today, and so we should reach the first well tomorrow. There we can drink as much as we'd like.'

'If the well isn't dry,' Maram said, licking his puffy, much-bitten lips. He kicked at a clump of brown ursage and said, 'Everything about this land is dry and growing drier by the mile.'

'Ha — you think this is bad?' Kane called out to him. He stood squinting up at the sun as if challenging this bright white orb to take the water from him. 'In the deep desert, there is no water. Nothing grows, and so nothing lives. The winds drive the sand into mountains. The Tar Harath, they call that place.'

He looked toward the northwest, and a strange burning filled his eyes.

'If there is no water there,' Maram asked him, 'then how will we cross it?'

'We won't,' Kane said, pointing almost due west. 'Our course lies well to the south of the Tar Harath. There'll be water enough, if we don't waste what we have and keep ourselves strong enough to reach it.'

Stregth, however, Maram now lacked, for Jezi Yaga had bled much of it out of him. In the late afternoon, with the heat abating slightly, he dozed if his saddle and several times nearly fell off. Dusk found us still plodding along, for we had to take advantage of the first evening hours to gain as many miles as we could, in the cool twilight Maram fought to keep his eyes open and his_ hands fastened around the reins of his horse. At last I took pity on him and gave him the bag of barbark nuts that I had removed from the pocket of the cloak draped around Berkuar's petrified body. I hated to see Ma ram put tongue to any intoxicant, but if the barbark juice would help him to remain awake and ease his I pain, so much the better.

We finally encamped on a little swell of ground affording a fine view in all directions. Maram struck up a tittle fire, and Liljana brought out her gleaming cookware, made of galte that the Ymanir had forged for her out of the ores of the White Mountains. None of us had much stomach for the hotcakes and roasted gazelle that she prepared for dinner. But she, like Kane, insisted that we must keep up our strength. I tried to eat with a grateful smile, but found myself longing for pears, plums and other succulent foods instead.

Kane, having 'slept' more than long enough beneath the evil enchantment of his black gelstei. flood watch through most of the night.

Maram thought it strange that we had seen no sign of man since setting foot in the desert. But as Kane told him: 'I once wandered here for forty days, and my only companions were the lizards and snakes.'

'Wandered?' Maram moaned. 'I don't like the sound of that!'

'Don't worry,' Kane said. 'Our course is set and is nearly straight. Now get yourself a little sleep, and heal those ugly wounds of yours.'

Our journey the next morning was much the same as that of the previous day, save that it seemed even hotter. Maram sweated the scabs off his wounds, and Master Juwain had to cast away his bloody bandages and make new dressings. I grew very alarmed at the rapid and inexorable disappearance of our water. As I calculated things, we would arrive at the first well with our waterskins less than half full. If the well proved dry, our situation would fall grim.

'If the well proves full,' Maram said to Kane, 'it's likely to be in use, isn't it? By the Taiji. as you call these people? They'll see us coming from miles away. I only hope they greet us with alias instead of arrows,'

Maram, I knew, felt even more vulnerable than I at losing his armor.

Kane waved off his concern, saying. 'The Ravirii tribes know nothing of arrow, as they haven't any wood to make them. Their weapons are the lance and sword, And they don't wear armor, either.'

His words encouraged Maram, a little, and for a while it seemed he sat up straighter on his horse. When Kane finally descried the hills that he had told of rising red along the horizon, Maram let his hand rest upon the hilt of his sword. He licked his lips and swallowed against the dust, then said, 'If there is water there, I'd fight a very dragon to claim it.'

Late that afternoon we drew closer to the last, low hump of a hill. I looked hard to make out anything that seemed like a well, but the perpetual shimmer of the desert distances stymied me. The horses' hooves kicked up a cloud of dust that billowed into the air like a great, waving banner. We all waited for Taijii warriors to ride out to greet us — with either salutations or swords.

But no one did. Maram, who could blow as fickle as the wind, chose to take this as a bad sign, saying that surely this proved the well must be dry. We rode closer to the place toward which Kane had pointed us. At last I saw the well: a circular wall of stones built as if erupting from the very ground. All around it was nothing except ursage and bitterbroom, spike grass and thornbush and the red rocks of the desert.

I fought the urge to press my heels into Altaru's sides and gallop straight up to the well. We continued our slow ride in good formation. I saw signs of old encampments everywhere: the blackened rocks of firepits and rubbish heaps full of bits of broken horn, charred wool and cracked, sun-bleached bones. When we had drawn within a dozen yards of the well, I noticed Altaru's nostrils quivering as if he had caught scent of water; he nickered happily and dug his hoof into the earth. I knew then that the well was full. Maram, though, couldn't quite believe our good fortune, and so I told him to go see for himself.

He fairly flew off his horse and ran up to the well. After bracing his hands on its rim, he stuck his head down into it and called out a great, echoing shout of relief. Then he jumped back, grabbed up the leather bucket attached to a long rope tied around the well, and heaved the bucket down in. There came a muffled splash.

Maram cried out again.

'Oh, joy!' he called out. 'Oh, mercy and sweet succor! There is hope for us yet!'

In the hours after that, we pulled up many bucketfuls of sweet, cool water. We all drank to our deepest