Black Jade

That was all I was willing to say then. After that I tried to sleep but could not. I failed even to meditate, as Master Juwain prescribed for me. I dreamed terrible waking dreams. Two hours before dawn, when it came time to rise and break camp, I could barely force myself to climb on top of Altaru. With my friends on their horses behind me, I rode toward the still-shadowed lands to the west as if moving into a black cloud.

Dawn brought a glowing beauty to the harsh, sculpted terrain of the desert at odds with the ugliness that I knew lay ahead of us. The sun rose higher and flared ever hotter and more terrible. As we approached the third well, I nearly retched to espy a dark cloud hovering low. in the sky a couple miles ahead of us. It was not a rain cloud. We drew closer, and the cloud broke up into hundreds of vultures circling above an outcropping of red rocks. Atara, I thought, was lucky that she could not see them.

Soon many tents came into view. Perhaps forty or fifty people lay on the rocky ground between the tents and the single, central well. They did not move. We shouted out to scare off a few hyenas who had already gone to work on them, then rode up ever closer. I feared we would find slashed throats and pierced bellies, but I could see no mark on any of the bodies, a few of which were stripped naked. They were, I thought, a tough-looking people. The men, though slight of stature, seemed hard as whipcord, with curly black hair and beards, dark skins and chiselled features as stark as the desert rocks around them. The folds and fissures of one old woman's face could only have been burnt by a lifetime of wind and sun. I tried to look away from the rictus of agony stamped into the countenances of a young boy and girl who lay near her. Kane dismounted and found more of the dead inside the tents. By the time he had gone about the encampment, making a count of them, I was ready to retch up the little water that I had drunk an hour before — either that or to kill whoever had killed these poor people.

'Sixty-four,' Kane said, walking up to where I sat stunned on my horse. His eyes picked apart the jumble of rocks farther away from the well. 'We might find more of them out there.'

So many dead, I thought, as I stared through the burning air. I wondered what their names were. I wondered how it was possible to slay so many innocents so wantonly just to strike vengeance into the enemy.

'Oh, Lord!' Maram said. 'Oh, my I too bad, too bad!'

The rest of us dismounted. Master Juwain examined a young man whose body and limbs were covered in a dusty white robe. He said, 'He is nearly twelve hours dead.'

'Dead of what then?' Maram asked him.

Maram, I saw from the dread that worked at his face, knew well the answer to this question. So did we all.

'Poison,' Master Juwain said. 'I'm not sure which one.'

Liljana joined him kneeling beside the man's body. After shooing away the flies, she sniffed at his open mouth and ran her finger over the whites of his eyes. She said to us; 'I believe it is zax. It is a slow poison but a certain one.'

'Who did this?' Maram suddenly raged, kicking at the ground. 'Who would poison all these people to get at us?'

It was a question that answered itself. It came time to tell of the rider that Kane had seen the day before, and this I did. When I had finished, Maram drew his sword.

'It is the droghul,' he said. 'It is surely the second droghul.'

He offered his opinion that the droghul must have ridden into the encampment last evening and either charmed these simple desert-dwellers or enchanted them with one of his illusions. And then somehow managed to pour his evil poison into the well.

Liljana confirmed that the well was indeed poisoned, walking over to lean down into it and sniff its water far down in the dark earth below. Atara stood looking at nothing; I wondered if she had seen this terrible moment in one of her visions. Kane went about collecting waterskins, from the tents and the many horses that stood about not knowing what to do. He pried them from the very hands of the dead. All the skins were empty. It seemed that the droghul must have poured their water into the sand.

'So,' he said, gripping his fists around one of the skins. 'I'd hoped we'd find at least a few of them full of untainted water.'

Maram brought his sword up to his face and stared into its mirror-like steel. I heard him murmur: 'Ah, you're thirsty, aren't you, my friend? Very thirsty, and that's a very bad way to die, isn't it — the very worst?'

I asked Liljana how long our remaining water might last if we were very careful, and she slowly shook her head. Her voice trembled and nearly cracked as she looked at the children and forced out: 'Another day, perhaps.'

'And the next well?' I asked Kane.

'So. So,' he said, gazing into the burning land to the west. 'It is another seventy miles.'

'Seventy miles!' I wanted to cry out. We could not make such a distance in a single day, not with our horses worn to the bone and Maram nearly ready to drop from loss of blood. I could not let into my mind the meaning of Kane's words; the horror of what had happened poisoned my soul and nearly paralyzed me. Death was suddenly upon us. A short while before we had been looking forward to drinking our fill of cool, sweet water, and now we found ourselves sentenced to die. So it always was. Death always hovered behind one's neck like a great, black vulture, watching for its chance and waiting.

I knew better than to entertain such thoughts, or even to think them. Some of my despair overflowed into Maram, who said, 'That droghul did his work well. Now it's time to do our work as well.'

He began to contemplate the point of his sword in a way that struck fear into my heart.

'No, Maram,' I said, stepping over to grip my hand around his arm. 'We're in a bad way, it's true, but we can't give up hope.'

'Hope?' he cried out. 'What hope is left even to give up?'

I rubbed my eyes, which seemed as dry as my brain and every other part of my body. I tried to think; it was like trying to see my way out of a cloud of dust. I tried to think as Morjm would think. Finally, I drew my sword and swept it in a circle toward the desert around us. 'The droghul has journeyed on, and so he must have water. It may be that we can find his tracks and ride after him.'

'To appropriate his water?' Maram said. 'Even if we could overtake him, it wouldn't be enough.'

'It might be enough,' I said.

'If we did overtake him,' he said, 'he would poison his water before letting us have it.'

'He would,' I agreed, 'if he hadn't already poured all his poison into the well.'

'Then he would empty his water onto the sand. Do you think Morjin would care if his damned droghul dies of thirst?'

I shook my head and told him, 'It may be that we could take him before he does this.'

'Take him how?'

'Even a droghul,' I said, 'must rest sometime. We might be able to take him while he sleeps.'

'Do you really think that's possible?'

'It might be possible,' I said. 'The droghul must have been sent to meet us here. And so he might know of water that we do not.'

'Do you think he would just tell you where this water is, then?'

I looked over at Estrella, staring down at a fly-covered boy about her age. Her dusty face, I saw, almost concealed the anguish and suffering that she did not want me to see. I said to Maram, 'There must be a way — there's always a way. We can't just lie down and die.'

'No — can we not?' Maram looked around the well at all the bodies splayed there. He dropped his sword with a loud clang. With a great, heavy sigh, he sat down on a long slab of sandstone, and then collapsed back against it. 'Ah, my friend, this is surely the end, and since I'm in such fine company, I think I will just lie here and die.'

I could find no words to rouse him. It would take a horse, I thought, and a rope tied around his ankles to drag him from that spot. Just as I was contemplating such desperate actions, I overheard Liljana scolding Daj. It seemed that while the rest of us had concerned ourselves with other matters, Daj had gone about the dead stripping them of jewelry, which he had piled up on top of a sheepskin. Most of this was of gold, but a few silver bracelets and rings, set with bright, blue stones that I hadn't seen before, flashed in this mound of yellow.