The Jade Seed

by Deirdre Gould

  Keram wrote quickly, his hand now accustomed to the square, solitary shapes of Ganit's words. "I'd like to hear your history anyhow. Perhaps there is something there that may help, or point us toward this woman you seek."

  Long hours they sat each watching the other as Ganit retold his long journey and Keram scratched questions into paper. At last Ganit finished as hunger began to creep over them. Keram handed his questions over and turned away, absorbed in the preparation of a meal.

  The question that troubled Ganit most was the one he had asked himself a dozen times since waking. How would they get down the mountain with Ganit on a shattered leg? His heart warmed though to know Keram was thinking of it as well. It seemed this strange, silent man had no intention either of abandoning Ganit or throwing him from the house. They ate in silence, though both realized this was the time for planning. Worrying over Brone occupied all of Ganit's mind and for the first time, he was immobilized, not only in body, but in thought as well. Keram reflected long over Ganit's history. How could he face Hadur again when he had succumbed to the beast's madness? This man was a powerful weapon, a blaze of dawn against the evening of the world. Yet turned to madness, he would be a comet burning up the earth and Keram instead. He watched Ganit sit, lost in thought, lost in all the dark alone. Keram burned with shame. This man was neither weapon nor savior. Long miles had he traveled, endured hardship and loss beyond telling and yet deserved it no more than the villagers Keram had sought to avenge. He looked at Ganit's face, eroded by long anxiety and want. Yet Keram could see the youth beneath, it shone through as clearly as the glow from his skin. Keram sighed, a toneless gush of breath, but still Ganit heard it and started. He smiled and Keram sought no longer to wield the fire of dawn and his thoughts turned to how he could protect it from Hadur instead.

  Ganit looked down at his shattered leg. "It is a puzzle. Even if we had a steel dragon, Keram, I could not drive with my leg broken," he frowned and looked up at Keram. "Do you know much of illnesses Keram? I fear it may be infected."

  Keram shook his head and rubbed his cheek with worry. He had packed Ganit's leg with medicine and clean bandages, but still he could smell the sickly sweet scent of it from across the room. He was struck by how fast it had spread, but what he could do, he had already done.

  "We may have to remove it. I don't think I can do it myself, Keram."

  Keram shook his head quickly, his hands waving as well.

  "You have to help me. If you cannot I will die, for where will we find medicine now?"

  Keram wrote swiftly and his hands shook so that it was hard for Ganit to read his message: "If we remove it, there will still be a wound. Why should it not get infected?"

  "It's still in the leg. If we do it outside, I will wait until you can go far away from me and I will burn it closed."

  Keram gasped and then covered his face with his hands, still shaking his head. Ganit leaned across the table and pulled Keram's hands from his face. "I wouldn't ask if there were any other way. It's going to be difficult enough getting down the mountain without me being insensible with fever. It's spreading fast, we don't have much time. Every hour we sit here Hadur sweeps further west spreading this dreadful madness. Somewhere between that army of lunatics and that fell orange burning Brone wanders. I don't expect you to understand, but she carries all that is left. A poor remnant, a fading hope perhaps, but she cannot fall."

  Keram breathed a deep sigh and then rose. He found a hatchet near the fireplace. It was dull, but they had not the means to sharpen it. Keram placed the metal head onto the coals that still smoldered there and fed the fire more fuel to make it blaze. He wrote quickly and passed his message into Ganit's hand: "It's no good removing your leg for one infection only to give you another. We must burn out any illness that seethes upon the hatchet. Stay still. I will find a flat spot far from the house."

  Taking blankets to cover the dust and a torch to light his way, Keram left the little hut and walked out into the dark.

  Chapter 26

  Brone's eyes were swollen and heavy from her tears, yet she saw the strange man seated next to her immediately upon waking. She sat up in quick alarm.

  "You need not weep for that woman. I was only a moment behind you and all her camp is dust now." The man's voice was as the crackle of frost creeping over water and Brone shivered as he spoke. She said nothing but stared, bewildered. The still, worn face reminded her suddenly of the stone Messenger from so long ago. She reached to touch the necklace of emerald vines that had sprung from the seed. But the man didn't notice. "She would have harmed you, if she could, you know."

  "I killed her."

  "I know. But if you hadn't she would have killed you and she would still be dead now anyhow. Waste no more time worrying over her. She does not think of you now."

  "Should I not weep when another is gone from this world? When I myself have done the deed? It is still a loss, it is still my guilt."

  The man laughed and in Brone's ear it was as the creak of naked trees in a winter storm. "You must then, spend your entire life at weeping."

  "It feels that way, sometimes."

  "All the world is dying, Brone. Weeping will neither return it to life nor halt me in my path. What you carry within is all that matters now." he blew a chilled, dry breath upon the boulder beside them and it crumbled with a sound of sliding sand or falling snow. Brone stared at him in sudden fear and wonder. "All the rest is sliding away into twilight."

  Brone at last knew the man for what he was. "Why? Have we failed somehow? I know we are imperfect, but the entire world? All the beasts and trees, even stone, all the memory of this world gone? What is it that we have done to deserve this?"

  Brone was shocked to see small clear icicles hung from the lashes of the man's strange eyes, as if he had wept and his grief was frozen there still. Yet his lips smiled gently and he turned his face full upon her. "You think this is punishment for some wrong? Yet not so very many hours ago you were convinced death would be a mercy, a gift. Do you believe I withheld it then because you did not deserve mercy? No more do my brothers and I bring the end as a judgment. I know not what foul creature taught you to fear me, to fear death, but so many of your kind ask the same questions, feel the same terror when they realize I approach. The world is tired, Brone. All of its stories have been told, all of its corners uncovered, all of its battles fought. So many, many deeds have been done upon its face, who could say what it deserved? It is simply time for this world to die away, for another perhaps, to take its place."

  "But you destroy even the record that we have existed. Our very bones and carven words, like a footprint fast filling with snow, unseen, unknown. All useless." Brone began to weep. Arvakir placed a cool, dry hand upon her shoulder as he watched her. His touch was as the smooth bark of winter birch.

  "You think the only memory of this world, of the deeds done here exist in the stories you leave for each other to find? Forgive me Brone, but that is poor memory indeed. Nothing you do is forgotten. Far greater eyes than mine have read the true history of this world and their memory is long, longer even than me. Liken yourselves not to a footprint in snow. Say rather that your buildings, your beasts and tombs are as gleanings in an autumn garden. In spring you do not plant among the chaff of older years, but plow them away, loosen the earth to accept new seeds, new sprouts."

  The pale man looked around slowly at the barren plain, its grasses dry and crumpled, its small shrubs toppled, snarled upon themselves. "How difficult," he said, "it already is, struggling through weeds, through drought and flood. How could a seed, how could a new world survive if it must push through the weight of all the old roots, all the old history of last season. What a weight! To carry all the old grief, the old rules and prejudices upon its young back."

  Brone watched Arvakir's face empty into thought. "This has happened before then?" she asked.

  Again the man laughed and Brone shivered in the cool gust of it. "Thousands upon thousands of years the creatures of thi
s world have believed they were the first, the only inhabitants, and that is good. It means that I and my brothers have done our job well. Many, many worlds have lived here, have told out their time in ways you could not imagine. Let it make you feel less lonely, less forgotten."

  "Is this- is this the last time the world will end?"

  He smiled at her again. "What you really mean, I think, is will there be another beginning? Take comfort, Brone, there has been life beyond measure before you and there will be even more after we are both gone. But come now, time is short and we have talked for too long. I have much work to do and your time draws ever nearer." He held out a pale hand to lift her to her feet. She hesitated but took it, standing before him, her eyes opened very wide and she thought her breath had never tasted sweeter.

  "You mean," she asked, "This is it? You came for me?"

  Arvakir looked puzzled a moment. "No, no. Well, not yet, you have work yet to do. We are all going west, who are left. There is only one battle left in the east and it is neither mine nor yours. I thought that we might speed each other on the way, if we traveled together. You did me a service during my birth, so I will do a service to your own children. You will not be alone when that time comes."

  The man picked up her broken pack and Brone took his hand. They started again westward, into the great soft light of dusk that lingered there. Around them a light wind swirled. All that it touched slid away in a fine dust. Brone worried for Ganit, wondering if the unknown battle in the east were his and whether one of Death's many brothers were lying in wait for him there.

  Chapter 27

  Ganit did not have long to regret his decision. Keram found a place quickly and spread the blankets wide, so no dust should fall upon Ganit's leg. He was grim, his face hardened and aged in only a few moments. Keram could not help remembering the wild man he had killed. He paced quickly and raked his fingers through his hair. Planting his torch in the earth near the blankets he flung himself down upon his knees. He pressed his face into the cool dust and silently prayed the hatchet would not swerve, nor glance off. When he rose the dust stuck to him, a dull paste where he had wept. Keram walked through the dark to the hut, wiping his face upon the hem of his shirt. Taking up the hatchet from the fire, his heart choked and he hesitated. He wrapped it carefully in a clean bandage and tucked it into his belt. Keram did not look at Ganit, but slung him gently over his shoulder. Though Ganit was a powerful man, Keram felt no burden and Ganit's light cast a clear path to the prepared spot. Keram lowered Ganit onto the clean blanket and squatted beside him, waiting. The beasts already were beginning to circle around Ganit, starved for his warmth. Keram felt a sharp crackle of heat and knew fear was beginning to take hold in Ganit. The animals began to shy away and draw off quickly.

  "Do it fast. And then run as far as you can. It will have to be very hot I think." Ganit gripped Keram's hand a moment. "Okay," he said, "I'm ready."

  Keram was sweating as he unwrapped the hatchet from its bandage. It was still warm from the fire and Keram tried hard not to notice that its gleam was too dull, like a hammer blunted from too much use, not sharp and glinting as it ought. He raised it over his head, and though he was careful not to meet Ganit's gaze, Keram saw the broken leg shift slightly as Ganit flinched. "Please . . ." he thought and brought the hatchet down. The leg snapped cleanly as if it were a thin chicken bone and Keram was grateful he could not hear it. He felt a warm push like a great wave washing against him and Keram began to run. The wave of heat overtook him and a great light, as if the sun had burst into noon brightness upon the midnight world. He stumbled and rolled down the slope of the hill until he came to rest against a jagged boulder that scraped his back. His eyes were clenched tight, but still the savage light pierced them. "Am I to be blind as well?" he thought. The burst of heat subsided, though when Keram looked again upon the world it remained flooded with clear morning light and he could see miles and miles beneath him.

  Though Keram ought to have seen where his village lay, not so very far eastward, though he ought to have seen the quiet fields and pools, the footpaths and great roads that had been the map of his entire life, Keram saw none of these things. All was a dull gray dust, a flat, strange plain where tall mountains and deep valleys ought to have been. A windless desert, a silt basin, as if he looked at a dry sea bottom. For a moment, Keram wondered if he had indeed been struck blind after all. He turned back toward the slope that he lay upon and was sick. Suddenly remembering Ganit, he scrambled up the hill. The blankets were charred, and Ganit was unconscious. Keram approached him and with great relief, found Ganit still breathing. Squinting his eyes against the brilliant light, Keram lifted Ganit into his arms and carried him back to the hut. Ganit slept soundly, and Keram was himself exhausted, but he did not want to leave Ganit's leg. It worried him to think the animals might find it, or the wild men of Hadur. Keram shuddered. He picked up a shovel and left the hut. Ganit's light pierced the shack's flimsy walls, great shafts of day spilled out upon the hill and Keram needed no torch. The beasts that had followed Ganit over long miles of dark remained upon the hill, but no longer drew into a tight circle around the hut. They wandered across the peak, as if a leash were loosened and they stayed far now from Keram.

  He could feel the sunburn tighten across his cheeks and in his hands as he gripped the shovel and he shivered though he knew it was not cold. He found the site ablaze, as if a new wind had caught some spark to build a strange pyre. Keram hoped the hatchet was burning itself away as well. He walked again to the edge of the slope and looked out. The light was dimmer now and crossed with shadows while Ganit slept within the hut, but Keram still could see the flat emptiness stretched on for mile after mile. Pacing the rim of the hill, he make out nothing but dust plain and a far, sickly glow to the west. He collapsed next to the dying fire and wept in despair. He watched the fire die away to a small pile of ash. A small breeze, the first in many days that Keram had felt, stirred the embers and pulled a tiny whirlwind of burning flakes up into the shadowy sky. The flakes scattered, but instead of slowly sinking into darkness, they stuck, tiny flares far out of reach. Keram rubbed his eyes, but the tiny spots of light moved not, nor flickered out. At last, worn out with care, Keram fell back and slept in the dust under the soft blended light of the new dawn and the shattered sparkle of new stars.

  Chapter 28

  Brone knelt beside the gray trickle of cold water that welled up from the dust. It carved the beginning of a new river, its sides cut shallow in the soft muck beneath. The water was a smooth ripple on her lips and throat and it carried no silt, though Brone wondered why. The western fires were bright now, a flare just over the horizon. Everything she touched had started to spread with green, as if she were a stone skipping over still waters. The pale man blew all into shadows and swirling earth before them, while behind Brone's steps rippled with cool, green grass and saplings, small flowers like stars and moss that crept even before her eyes.

  "Spring must follow," Arvakir had laughed when he saw the life that followed in her wake, "And so shall dawn."

  They had spoken little, for Brone struggled now to keep his pace, but he had helped her to sink beside the small stream and had paused often to ease her along the way. As Brone rested, he looked back toward the eastern sky.

  "Look," he said, "It comes faster than even I had thought." He pointed a slim, ashen finger toward the eastern horizon. Brone caught her breath as far, far upon a lone gray mountain the sun rose, breaking over the plain. Already she could see the horizon broken upon the dark forms of new trees and her heart rejoiced to see color again. So long had she lived in shadow, the light struck her eye as one new born from a mother's womb and she was dazzled. A moment later, it faded and Brone cried out in fear and sorrow. Her cold companion caught her hand in his.

  "Wait! Don't despair, it is not gone, but it is not time yet for day."

  And Brone looked again and there in the eastern sky, a pale light lingered, a soft twilight gray, as if it were only the m
oment before dawn. As if the sun would climb over the hill again and flood the world with green and purple and gold. The man beside her stretched up on his long legs and held his hand out to help her up.

  "We have lingered overlong. We have still so much to do and still time slides past us. You will have to ride now Brone, though your time is nearing. I will be as gentle as Death can be. It will not be so rough now, all the hills have sunk away." He drew a deep breath and ran from her side. A great snowfall sifted over them both and Brone could no longer see him. But he circled back and she could hear a steady thrum of hooves. The Ghost Horse knelt beside her. His legs were so thin that she feared her weight would shatter them, but she struggled onto his back and he rose as if she were naught but a few flakes of snow.

  They neither halted nor spoke more as the Ghost Horse ran west, shrieking as it went. Though Brone no longer trembled with the sound, she still held a great sorrow in her heart as she watched the old, gentle hills slough away or the shattered shell of buildings burst into a fine gray mist and evaporate. Now and then, though she knew the land was empty, already dead, Brone wept, and where her tears touched the dirt, the Greening spread, as a thaw creeps over a winter lake, in small flickers until it overtakes the cold. At times her hips ached as if a dull, slow fire grew there and the stone of her belly rattled against her ribs until she felt as if she drowned. But Arvakir pressed on, and Brone knew he would never tire, neither with distance nor time. Exhausted with the dull, gray flatness he created before her, Brone closed her eyes and pained though she was, fell at last into a sleep as dreamless as the waste they crossed. Even the screams of the Ghost Horse woke her not and she slept for many, many miles.