Black Jade

'Kane!' I said to him, hating the dark lights that filled up his eyes. I felt this darkness inside myself, and hated it even more.

'So, Val — what would you have us do then? The priest might be able to tell us if the droghul spoke of things. The droghul might have known what Morjin knows, eh? It would be folly, I say, to lead the next droghul straight to the Maitreya.'

'No,' I said to him, remembering my vow, 'no more torture.'

'But what if the third droghul,' he persisted, 'is waiting for us? What if this priest knows where?'

'And what if he doesn't? Would you have us do this evil thing to him only to achieve no good end?'

Kane stood staring at me, and gave no answer, which was answer enough. Then Master Juwain came forward. He, whose ear opening had been seared by one of Morjin's fire irons, said to Kane, 'If I can bear to see this man spared such torture, so can you.'

Liljana, whose mind Morjin had ravaged, reluctantly agreed with Master Juwain. Then Atara, gathering in all her memories of that terrible day in Argattha, tapped the end of her unstrung bow toward the priest and said, 'He is a torturer, and so it is fitting that he be repaid in kind. He is a crucifier — being staked out beneath the sun is like unto crucifixion, and only what he deserves. Justice is hard. But how are we to restore the world as it should be without justice?'

She spoke legalistically, with steel in her tongue and a cold heart. She seemed as opaque and impenetrable as a block of ice. At that moment, I felt that I could never really know her.

'Justice the poisoner shall have,' Sunji said to us. 'But we are in the desert now, and the desert ways shall prevail. Maidro, what do you say to this?'

'I say stake the poisoner to the sand!' Maidro called out.

'And you, Laisar — what do you say?'

'Stake him, and cut off his eyelids that he might meditate on the sun!'

The Avari, I thought, might be different in some ways from the other Ravirii tribes, but they were still a cruel, hard people.

I stood over the bound Red Priest, who tried to show brave but quaked inside with a terrible fear. If I let these people torture him, how would I be any different from him? This question enraged me, for I felt myself caught in an inescapable trap. I burned to put fire to the priest even more badly than did Kane; I wanted to know what he knew. Even more, I wanted that he should suffer as Master Juwain and Atara had suffered. I hated the One that had created a world of such evil need and vengeance — almost as much as I feared what might befall if we let the priest keep his silence.

'No,' I said again, drawing my sword, 'no torture!'

The three Avari warriors who guarded the priest angled their sabers toward me. I wondered if I could cut down all of them before one of them managed to put his sword into my armorless body.

'He is our captive!' Sunji called to me. 'He and his kind have killed my warriors! And foully killed the Masud at their well!'

I felt him grieving for his dead tribesmen; I had overheard one of the Avari say that he had lost a cousin and a nephew to the Zuri's swords. I gazed at Sunji, and at Yago. And I said to them, 'You have lost kinsmen and friends to the Red Dragon's poisoned claws, and the pain of such loss cannot be measured in numbers. But I have lost much, too. Four thousand of my countrymen died upon the Culhadosh Commons. All my brothers. Asaru, the greatest knight in our land, took a lance through his chest so that I might live. I have promised to join him in the stars rather than allow what he would have died a thousand times to prevent.'

I stood with my sword held back behind my head. Out of the side of my eye, I caught a gleam of glorre blazing as brightly as the sun. I felt as wild as a thousand suns. I was ready to stand against all the Avari warriors staring at me in awe, and if need be, all the armies of the Red Dragon.

Sunji finally could not bear looking at me. I knew that he did not want any more of his warriors to die; curiously, I sensed that he likewise did not want them to kill me. He turned to Yago and said, 'Masud — this stranger brings strange sentiments into our land. But it was your tribesmen, too, that the poisoner killed. And so I must ask you, too: what do you say?'

Shawls still covered the heads of the Avari, so it was difficult to guess what they looked like, but I thought it impossible that their faces could be any harder than Yago's face, with its harsh planes, knife-blade of a nose and thin lips set together like stone. I knew that he wanted to call for the Red Priest to die in the most painful way possible. And yet he hesitated before speaking. He looked at me. As I met his gaze, I couldn't help remembering how other Red Priests had staked my mother and grandmother to wood. I could still feel the agony of the nails burning through my own hands. I couldn't help wishing that no one would ever have to die this way again. Yago looked at me for a long time before he turned to answer Sunji's question.

'The punishment for well-poisoning is everywhere known,' he said. 'And yet there is another punishment, much older and less well-known. My great-grandfather told me of this: that in the old days well-poisoners were made to drink their own poison.'

'That is not told among the Avari,' Sunji said. He looked at the green bottle that Laisar still held, with great care, as he might a scorpion. Sunji continued, 'But it seems to me a just punishment. Fifteen of my warriors are wounded and must be taken back to my father's hadrah to be cared for. I do not care to linger here fighting off the vultures and hyenas until the poisoner manages to die.'

He took counsel with Laisar and Maidro, who agreed to Yago's proposition. Sunji bowed his head to me. Then he ordered the priest's bonds untied, and gave him the bottle of poison with his own hand. He stepped back quickly. Twenty Avari warriors stood around aiming stones at the priest's head in case he should attempt any treachery, such as throwing the poison at those who had condemned him to death.

The priest, however, was not that brave. Taking even the worst poison would be better than being staked out in the sun. With a trembling hand, the priest pulled open the bottle's cork stopper. He had to fight to bring the bottle up to his lips. And then, as I watched in horror, he threw back his head and drained the bottle in three huge gulps.

Compared to the other deaths planned for him, this one was merciful. And yet no death, I thought, was easy. Almost immediately, the priest's chest began working violently as he struggled for breath and his lips turned blue. He screamed like a dog crushed beneath a wagon's wheels. Tremors ripped through his whole body; as I watched, these intensified into such terrible convulsions that I heard his bones begin to snap. Blood ran from his nose; he coughed and vomited bright red blood, and Sen stopped moving. He lay in the dirt whimpering in agony.

Before anyone could stop me, I raised up my sword and rushed forward. I stabbed the point of it into the back of the priest's neck killing him instantly. I would never be sure whether I did this out of pity or hatred for a man who had helped torture Master Juwain and Atara.

None of the Avari objected to my hastening his end. The sight of the priest dying had sickened them, as it had me.

'I really must have some water,' Lilljana called out. She stood almost faint by Atara's side, and it seemed the two women practically held each other up. 'I must take water to the children, now.'

She looked behind her at a warrior holding a waterskin. And the warrior barked at her: 'Avari water is for the Avari!'

Liljana dropped Atara's hand, and she began walking toward one of the riderless Zuri's horses to appropriate the waterskin slung on its back. But another warrior blocked her way, saying, 'The Zuri's water belongs to the Avari, too, as payment for the lives they took.'

Liljana, now furious, stalked straight up to Sunji and shouted, 'What is wrong with you? We've been without water a whole day! The children are suffering the worst of it! They'll die without water!'

Laisar, the old judge of the Avari, looked at Sunji a moment before turning back to Liljana. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'They will die anyway. That is the law.'

'Law? What law?' Maram bellowed out. Until now, the priest's terrible death had driven him into silence. 'For mercy's sake, give us a little water!'

The Avari warriors, seeing Maram's oozing sores, drew back from him as from a leper. Then Sunji said to him, 'It is our way to kill those who enter our land uninvited, and it is a mercy that we haven't put you to the sword, for you have brought here only death.'

'Kill me then!' Maram said, pulling open his tunic in order to expose his hairy, much-bitten chest. 'Put your