Black Jade

by David Zindell

  Sunji explained that this strange name meant Water Bringer or Water Maker; among the Avari, no one else was so revered, not even their king.

  'You have brought much death with you,' Sunji said to me. 'But also much life.'

  He smiled as he pointed down into the darkly gleaming river flowing past us. 'That is life for a thousand Avari.'

  In order to drink, Sunji and his two judges had opened their shawls. I could now see their faces, and I marveled at what I beheld: their long noses, broad brows and the stark bones of their cheeks and chins seemed cut out of the same mold as the faces of the Valari. Their eyes were as my eyes. The signs had been there from the first, but I had been too thirsty and too full of dread of battle to see them. Their names recalled those of my dead countrymen: Avram, Laisu and Sunjay. And my brother, Mandru. Avari sounded nearly like Valari, and I suddenly knew that we had come across one of the lost tribes of my people.

  As I stared at Sunji, he remarked upon this resemblance that he had noticed in Kane and me from the first, saying, 'When I saw you, Valashu, I wondered if one of my tribesmen might once have sired a child stolen away into another land. And so with Kane. There is a mystery here that I would like to understand. It is written that all men shall be as brothers. I would wish this of you and Kane. And Master Juwain and the boy, too - even the fat one. The women shall be our sisters. And the girl, Estrella, you call her, the Udra Mazda, For the time, at least, you shall all be of the Avari. And then we shall help you cross the desert.'

  He did not confer with Maidro or Laisar in this decision, for their bright, black eyes gleamed with their consent. He dipped his hand into the river and used the water to wash the dust from my forehead. Then he clasped his wet hand against mine.

  'You must tell me of your homeland,' he said to me. 'You must tell me of your people that you call Valari.'

  Then with a smile, gripping his newly-filled waterskin, he turned to walk up back through the cave and show his people the great treasure that Estrella had found.

  Chapter 23

  Later that afternoon, with the day's heat finally escaping the earth's hold on it, we said goodbye to Yago and Turi. They would set out for the Masud's country and the hadrahs in the south where most of his tribe was encamped.

  'I must tell Rodaj of what has happened here,' he said to me as he readied his horse for the journey. It turned out that he was one of the Masud chief's many nephews, and he knew Rodaj well. 'He will want to know that the Red Priests have poisoned the Zuri and Vuai - and I don't mean their wells.'

  'Tell him also,' I said to him, 'to keep watch over the gap in the mountains by which we came into the desert. There you will find many stone statues. One day the Red Dragon will send soldiers through it.'

  'Thank you, Valashu Elahad. for giving such consideration to the people of a tribe you hardly know.'

  'I know you,' I told him.

  'And I know you. It has been a pleasure fighting by your side.'

  We clasped hands, and in his honest, brutal way, he added, 'I don't think you will live to return from out of the desert, but if you do. I shall ask my uncle to command that you'll be welcome in the Masud's lands.'

  'Thank you,' I said.

  'Thank you for helping me to avenge my tribesman. It was the best thing I have ever done, cutting off that Morjin thing's head!'

  With that he smiled grimly, and mounted his horse. He wetched as Turi made his farewells to Daj and Estrella. Then they turned to ride back down through the canyon and out into the glowing red desert beyond. We lingered a little longer. With the crisis of pursuit and battle behind us, Maram complained that his wounds hurt with particular acuteness. His sores, he said, burned as if someone had rubbed salt into them, and worse: 'Ah, it's as if something is eating into them - something is moving there, I can feel it!'

  Master Juwain ordered him to remove his tunic, and this he did. He stood naked like a mountain of hairy white flesh. In the strong, clear light of the sun, we immediately saw what ailed him: it seemed that the flies had gotten to a dozen of his sores where his bandages had come loose, laying eggs there. The eggs must have recently hatched, for now his sores swarmed with little, squirming maggots.

  'Oh, Lord!' Maram bellowed out, shaking his arms and legs and hopping about madly as if to shake loose the maggots. 'Get them off me!'

  His shouts drew the attention of many Avari, who gathered around. Master Juwain laid his hand on Maram's shoulder to calm him, and said, 'We should let these creatures alone. They will eat the dead flesh and clean your wounds.'

  'I don't care!' Maram bellowed again. 'I won't live like this! I can feel these worms eating me alive, and it's driving me mad!'

  His frantic pleas finally persuaded Master Juwain to debride his sores with a scalpel and tweezers. One of the Avari took pity on Maram and produced a fresh bit of cloth that Master Juwain cut up into bandages. It wasn't enough to bind all of Maram's sores, but it would keep the flies out of the most serious of them.

  'This is worse than the Vardaloon,' Maram said to me as he shooed away a couple of buzzing flies. 'We always knew that accursed wood would have an end, but it seems the desert goes on forever.'

  Later that afternoon, when the Avari had finished burying their dead, they filled all their waterskins from the river that Estrella had discovered. They helped the wounded onto their horses and drew up in a loose formation. My friends and I, now swathed in the robes of the fallen Avari warriors, gathered near the front, for Sunji had invited us to ride with him. We set out into the dusk, with the first stars appearing in the heavens like countless glittering grains of sand.

  It was Sunji's intention that we should journey to the Avari's greatest hadrah, which lay a day's ride toward the mountains to the north. There we would rest as long as we wished. There, too, Sunji would take counsel with King Jovayl and the Avari elders as to our best course. 'My father,' he said as we made our way over the darkening desert, 'will honor my pledge to help you. Though when he discovers that the girl is an udra mazda, he will not want to give her up to the desert.'

  It was a mystery, he told me, whom the gift of finding water would touch.

  'Such a gift is very rare,' he said, 'for an udra mazda is born only once every hundred years.'

  He told me that he also wished to solve the mystery of our seeming kinship. As he put it: 'My tribe dwells in the desert, and so we are counted as being Ravirii. But we Avari are not like the peoples of the other tribes. The minstrels tell we are not of the desert; they sing that the Father of the Avari came here from the stars long, long ago.'

  As the night deepened and the horses drove their hooves against the rocky ground, Sunji's account of the Avari's origins convinced me that they were indeed one the lost tribes of the Valari. Vast reaches of time and isolation here in the desert, though, had done their work upon the Avari's collective memory: the facts of history had degenerated into legend, and legend had become myth. According to the story that Sunji told me, the Father of the Avari had descended to earth riding upon the back of a fiery mare named Ea. It had been told that here on this barren world, called the Ar Ratham, or the Wrath of the One, the Father of the Avari would find the golden cup that would restore the desert to life and keep it from spreading to devour the whole of the world.

  'After many years of searching over the dunes and across the burning sands,' Sunji told me, 'the Father of the Avari did indeed find the Kal Urna, which had been hidden in a cave. Upon drinking of its cool waters, the burning veils of mirage were lifted from his eyes, and he saw the world as it might be. He saw his mare, Ea, as she really was, and he gave her to drink of the waters of the Kal Urna. At once, the fires consuming her were put out, and Ea stood revealed as a beautiful woman. So happy was she to be restored to herself that she wept whole rivers of tears. These fell upon the desert's hadrahs, and there trees grew. But they were not enough to turn the desert green; only the Kal Urna held so much water. The Father of the Avari and Ea went forth to bring this sacred water everywhere. B
ut then a man of one of the Ravirii tribes in his cursed covetousness, cast his evil eyes upon the golden cup. His name was Ar Yun, which means the Cursed One. Ar Yun stole the golden cup from the Father of the Avari. It is said that a sandstorm sent by the One ate the flesh off his bones, and the Kal Urna was lost.'

  As we rode past dark clumps of ursage and bitterbroom forcing their way up through the cracked earth, Maidro and Laisar pressed their horses in close to hear this telling of the Avari's ancient story. Daj and Estrella rode next to me, and they seemed eager to hear more. So did Kane. His eyes, beneath the cowl wrapped around his face, gleamed in the starlight.

  'After that,' Sunji went on, 'the Father of the Avari took Ea as his wife, and she gave birth to our people. For generation after generation, the Avari have gone into the desert to search for the Kal Urna. It is said that one day, a great Udra Mazda born of the Avari will restore the sands to new life.'

  I caught Sunji gazing at Estrella as if in hope that she might be this Udra Mazda. But he shook his head, for it was obvious that whatever people Estrella claimed as her own, she had not been bojrn of the Avari.

  I said to Sunji, 'What was the name of the Father of the Avari?'

  'We call him Ar Raha, the Beloved of the One.'

  I smiled and then told him of the history recorded by my people: of how Elahad had brought the Lightstone to Ea, only to be murdered by his brother, Aryu. Aryu, I said, had then stolen the golden cup and fled with it into the west. Elahad's son, Arahad, had led a vain search for Aryu and the Lightstone that had lasted a hundred years. When Arahad and his followers failed to find it, their descendants at last settled in the Morning Mountains under the leadership of Shavashar, Arahad's son and king of the Valari.

  'It must be,' I told him, 'that your people were sons and daughters of Arahad, too, who remained in the desert. And so the Avari and the Valari are as one.'

  From the back of his horse, Sunji regarded me as we rode across

  the starlit earth.

  'Think of the names,' I told him. 'Ea. Ar Raha and Arahad; Ar Yun and Aryu - these are nearly the same, are they not?'

  Sunji admitted that they were, then added, 'And your people's story is nearly the same as my people's. It is a pity, though, that many parts of it have been misremembered and come down to you as only myths.'

  I smiled again, and was glad for the shawl that hid my face. I said to Sunji, 'Both our accounts, at least, tell that the Lightstone will restore the world to new life.'

  'I do not know, Valaysu,' he said to me. 'Can the Lightstone really be the Kal Urna? I think perhaps this golden cup of yours is only one of your gelstei made after the image of the Kal Urna.'

  'That is because you have not held it in your hands and beheld the stars shimmering inside it.'

  'To see is to know,' he said to me as his eyes gleamed. 'And I would like to know the truth about this Lightstone of yours and the Maitreya. I will ponder what you have told me, and take counsel with my father and the elders when we reach Hadr Halona.'

  This was the name of the Avari's greatest hadrah. After a long night's ride through rugged terrain that took us ever higher, with the Avari warriors and the confiscated Zuri horses strung out in a long line across the rocky desert, we came to this place of water just before dawn. The Avari had made a home for thousands of their people in a five-mile wide break between the mountains. The Hadr Halona proved to be more of a small city than an encampment. Although many woolen tents had been pitched around springs and the single lake, many houses had also been built of stone. As Sunji told me, these had walls ten feet thick and cellars dug thirty feet deep, down into the ground where it was always cool, even in the blazing heat of summer. But even the tent-dwellers found life within the hadrah more pleasant than in the open desert. It was higher here, and therefore cooler. The towering peaks above the hadrah held snow for at least part of the year, and gave this water to the Avari in Seams that filled the lake. But most blessed of all were the hadrah's many trees: mostly the gnarled sakur trees that bloomed yearly with pretty pink flowers and gave a succulent fruit called a kammat. According to Laisar, it was a crime punishable by disembowelment to cut the sacred sakur trees for wood.

  As we made our way down into the hadrah, sentinels standing on rocky prominences blew horns to announce our arrival. A thousand people, it seemed, roused themselves from their beds to come out and greet us. They stood in robes outside of their tents and houses, and lined the dusty lanes as we rode past. We created a great stir in the lives of the Avari, for they rarely welcomed strangers into the hadrah. Then, too, the news of the battle caused many to shout with excitement at the prospect of dividing up the Zuri's horses, swords, clothing and other spoils - and it set off rounds of wailing, too, in those who mourned sons, brothers or fathers killed in battle.

  The house of Sunji's father, Jovayl, had been built near the valley's small, single lake. Compared to the houses around it, it rose up like a palace; but compared to the palaces of great kings that I had seen, it was little more than a hut. Its walls were of sandstone, plastered with dried mud and painted white. Slender sandstone pillars twelve feet high held up the tiled roof and fronted the house's porch. There, in the dawn's red light. Jovayl stood waiting to greet us. He was a tall man, like most of his people. Here, in the hadrah, where he had no worry about losing the moisture of his breath to the air, he wore no cowl to cover his face. The deep lines cut into his dark, ivory skin suggested that he had seen more than sixty years. His features were as aquiline as any eagle's, with a great, broken nose and black eyes that darted about in quick assessment as we rode up. He seemed more intelligent than cunning, and less cruel than hard. Sunji told me that the Avari's king was a simple man and a great warrior who had killed sixty-three men in battle.

  He saw immediately that my companions and I were all exhausted. He ordered that baths be prepared for us, and food. We were to rest that day, he said, in his house's deepest rooms, set out with urns of cool water, bowls of fruit, flowers and fresh linens. Then, in a harsh, old voice like grinding stones, he told us, 'Tonight we will sit at feast and listen to the story of the Poisoner with the Voice of Ice and the Udra Mazda.'

  We had no trouble heeding his command. The hospitality of King Jovayl's house afforded us the first real comfort we had known since leaving the Brotherhood's school many miles and many days before. In a steamy stone room in the back of King Jovayl's house, we washed the dust and grime from our bodies; then outside on the porch we filled ourselves with good food. We lay down to rest in dark, quiet rooms. When evening came, servants brought us robes woven of virgin lamb's wool. They were King Jovayl's gift to us, and we were to wear them to the feast.

  This commenced at sunset, upstairs in the great room of King Jovayl's house. We joined King Jovayl's wife, Adri, and Sunji and young Daivayr in a sort of windowless hall hung with brightly-worked tapestries of cotton, which proved to be the Avari's most precious cloth. Other guests included Laisar and Maidro, and four other elders even more ancient. Three well-seasoned men -captains like Sunji - arrived, too, and their names were Arthayn, Noldayn and Ramji. We all sat on cushions arrayed in a great circle on top of a white woolen carpet. A small table, carved out of stone, was set in front of each of us. King Jovayl sat to the north, beneath a tapestry woven with silver swans and stars. I nearly wept to see this beautiful thing appearing as if by the magic of fate here in the middle of the desert.

  We ate roasted lamb and kid, the fattest of King Jovayl's flocks. The Avari grew wheat on irrigated land, and so we had bread as well, stuffed with bits of garlic, onions and nuts, and hot from the ovens. With reverence, King Jovayl passed around a bowl of salt to sprinkle on these meats and breads. There were cheeses, too, and figs, oranges and the plump red fruit called a kammat. The Avari did not drink blood, as their enemies told, but they did celebrate with wine, and to Maram's delight, beer. His happiness in discovering these beverages being passed around the circle, however, lasted only as long as Master Juwain's murmured warni
ng to him: 'Remember your vow!'

  Maram sat next to me, and I heard him murmur back: 'In the desert, I nearly died of thirst, and now I'm dying of a different thirst, if you know what I mean. It would be rude of me to refuse King Jovayl's gracious hospitality, would it not?'

  With a great smile he eagerly held up his silver wine cup.

  But when Barsayr, a toothless old man, overheard this conversation, he passed the word to King Jovayl that Maram's vow of abstinence must be respected. And King Jovayl, sitting with his cup full and waiting to make a toast, raised his cup to Maram and called out, 'It takes a brave man to make and keep such a vow, and we all honor you. But you must toast with us, and so you shall have the most honorable of all drinks.'

  He then asked one of his daughters, Saira, to fill Maram's cup with mare's milk. When this tall, pretty girl had carried out this request, Maram took a long look at the warm, greasy white liquid in his cup and muttered, 'Milk - it's barbaric to drink an animal's secretions. I might as well be made to drink a horse's saliva or sweat!'

  'You didn't object to drinking the Ymanir's kalvaas,' I reminded him.

  'That's because it was, ah, fermented. Besides, my sensibilities have grown more refined.'

  He smiled politely, though, when King Jovayl lifted up his cup and spoke a requiem in remembrance of the Avari warriors who had fallen in the Battle of the Dragon Rocks, as they named it. After that, other Avari made other toasts: to King Jovayl's guests and to the nighttime sky, and most especially, to the new water that Estrella had found and to Estrella herself.

  'It is strange that an udra mazda should come to us from beyond the desert,' King Jovayl said to us. He sat cross-legged on his cushions as he looked at me. 'And strange, too, that you propose to take this girl away from us so soon.'

  During the feast, we had told the King as much as we had Sunji and his warriors. For hours, our talk had centered around the news that we brought and the seemingly miraculous things that we told to the Avari. Now it had come time to decide if King Jovayl would help us.