Black Jade

He explained that the dead around us were of the Ayo clan, whose people often camped at the well at the beginning of summer. Kane nodded his head at this as he stared at the mountain to the south. 'You say that you are of the Masud tribe? What happened to the Taiji, then, who once claimed this well?'

Yago's eyes grew bright with astonishment. 'You know of the Taiji? It has been long, past my grandfather's great-grandfather's time, since they dwelled here. But the Taiji are no more.'

His face burned with pride as he continued: 'Long ago, we of the Masud came up from the southern hadrahs, while the Zuri came out of the pans to the west. Each tribe took half of the Taiji's lands, leaving the Taiji with only sand to eat and air to drink.'

He spoke of the annihilation of the Taiji as one might the slaughtering and division of a chicken. He spared little more sentiment for the sheep baahing in the scrub outside the encampment, or indeed, for the poisoned people of the Ayo clan whose bodies were rotting in the sun.

'The dead are dead,' he told us. He licked his dry lips. 'Soon, we too will have only air to drink, and we will join them.'

'But you must know of other wells?' Maram said to him. He wiped dusty beads of sweat from his face.

'Yes, I know,' Yago said calmly as he pointed across the blazing sands to the west. 'The nearest well lies that way, seventy-five miles. It belongs to the Zuri. Do you think to claim it from them?'

'We left gold coins at the first well that we came to,' Maram said, pointing to the east. 'That is good,' Yago said. 'And the Zuri will take your coins — your horses, weapons and clothing, too. They do not abide pilgrims.'

'But there must be other wells!' Maram said. 'You must know where we can find water!'

Yago smiled grimly at this and said, 'We'll find all the water we wish in the Hadrahs of Heaven, when we rest with the dead.'

'But what about the hadrahs in the southeast that you told of? Where there are trees and enough water to grow wheat and barley?'

'They are two hundred miles distant,' Yago said. 'This time of year, there is no water along the way. We cannot return there.'

'But we can't just lie down and die!' Maram said.

I couldn't help smiling as Yago turned to look at his saber, which Maram now gripped in his hands. Yago said to him, 'No, I won't die here. If you'll give me back my sword, I'll ride after the well-poisoner and kill him before the sun kills me.'

'But what about your son?' f said looking at Turi, who still sat watching us from the back of his horse.

Yago shrugged his shoulders. 'The dead are the dead. He'll ride with me. No Ravirii of any tribe can suffer a well-poisoner to live.'

I looked at Maram and said, 'Give Yago his sword.'

Maram did as I asked, and Yago's fingers closed gratefully around the hilt of his saber. I said to him: 'We'll ride with you, too. It might be that we can persuade the Poisoner to tell us where there is water.'

Yago's fatalistic smile played upon his lips again. He pointed to the west and said, 'Nowhere, in all the Zuri's lands, will we be allowed to drink their water. Toward dead south, if we rode that way, we would find the Vuai, who are worse than the Zuri. And to the north lies the Tar Harath, where there is no water.'

I turned to the east, scanning the broken country over which we had ridden. I knew that we couldn't make the return journey to the first well with the little water that remained to us, Then I looked to my left, at the highlands some twenty miles to the northeast. These mountains were stark and reddish-brown, showing no hint of snow or ice-cap. But mountains, as I knew, often called down the rain of passing clouds. And so I said to Yago, 'What of that way?'

And Yago told me, 'I don't know — that is the country of the Avari, and no one ever goes there. It is said that the Avari kill any man of any tribe who trespasses, and drink his blood.'

'Then it seems,' I said to Yago, 'that we have no choice but to pursue the Poisoner.'

'The dead are the dead,' he intoned, looking out into the wasteland to the west.

'And the living are the living,' I said to him. 'And as long as we're still alive, there is still hope.'

Yago shook his head as if marveling at the foolishness of outlanders and pilgrims. Then we went to work, stripping the dead of their jewelry, which Yago insisted we wrap in sheepskins and bury at the base of the red standing stone. The poisoned Ayo we could not bury, for there were too many of them and the ground was too hard to dig out graves.

'We'll leave them for the hyenas,' Yago said. 'Others of the Ayo clan might find their bones.'

'And their jewelry?'

'They might find that, too. But if they fail, better that the Zuri, if they come here, don't find it.'

After that we had a hard labor of gathering up boulders to heave down into the well and render it useless. Thus did we protect any who would come here after us, even the Zuri. As Yago said, not even the Zuri deserved to die by poison.

Just before leaving the well, Yago checked our horses' loads and announced. 'They carry too many things.'

'Only the necessities,' Liljana told him.

'In the desert,' Yago said, 'pots and pans are not needed. You might as well bring with you lumps of lead. You must leave them here, or kill even more horses.'

I felt Liljana's keen disappointment at facing once again the prospect of jettisoning her precious cookware. I said to Yago, 'In the miles to come, we might have need of her pots. Is there no other way?'

'No, there is not.' Then he opened the pack where I had stowed my armor, and he grasped the mail and shook it so that its links rattled. 'All this metal! You and Rowan must leave your armor here, too.'

Kane scowled at this dictate, and I shook my head. I said to Yago, 'In the country beyond the desert, we might have to fight battles. We will need our armor.'

'If you bring it with you,' he told me, 'you might not reach whatever country you hope to find. If you would survive in the desert, you must follow the desert's ways.'

I considered this for a long few moments, and so did Kane. Finally, we consented to Yago's harsh logic, and we left our armor with most of Liljana's pots, buried behind some rocks. I thought it a miracle that he allowed her to keep a single, small kettle, for boiling water for tea and coffee.

In the heat of the afternoon, we set out after the droghul. It seemed mad to let the sun simply roast all the juices out of us, but we had already spent too much time by the well. The droghul, by now, would be miles away. And every hour that we waited would only sweat more water out of us.

Yago found the droghul's tracks outside the encampment; I thought it a fine work of tracking to make out the faint hoof marks in the hard, gritty ground. We followed them, riding as quickly as we dared. Turi, after exchanging a few brusque words with Daj and Maram, kept his desert pony close to his father. And his father kept close to me.

'Tell me,' he said as our horses worked against the sun-baked turf, 'of the well-poisoner.'

And so I did. I began with an account of the Red Dragon's recent conquests, news that had reached even the isolated tribes of the Red Desert. I said that Morjin wished to bring down his iron fist upon all lands, and toward that end had sent his Red Priests into every kingdom of Ea. He had other agents, too. I tried to tell some-thing of the droghul, without detailing the droghul's hellish gesta-tion or how Morjin moved his mind. I settled on explaining that Morjin had chosen several men who looked like him to send out and act in his stead. It was close enough to the truth.

Yago thought about this as he pulled at his beard. We rode on in near-silence toward the west. The air grew brutally hot, and then hotter. For the next few miles, the country flattened out a little, and the hardpack gave way to scattered sweeps of sand. A few red rocks and clumps of hardy ursage poked out of it. Lizards took shelter there from the blistering sun; so did the flies. These buzzing black beasts must have caught Maram's bloody scent, for they swarmed around him, and worked at his wounds where his bandages had come loose. I could almost feel them biting their hard mouthparts into his already-raw flesh. Maram's lips pulled back in torment, but he uttered no complaint. It made me proud to see him riding on so bravely. Yago took note of his determination, too.

'You pilgrims are tough,' he said to me as his eyes found mine. 'Almost as tough as we Ravirii. I find it strange, though, that the Red Dragon would set a poisoner upon a band of pilgrims.'