Black Jade (61 page)

'Ah, and that is
why,'
Maram continued, 'we must try to cross . the Tar Harath after all - we're all mad, as you must have guessed, even to have come this far.'

Now I couldn't help smiling, nor could King Jovayl or Sunji or even Old Sarald and many others sitting at their little tables. King Jovayl nodded at Maram. 'It may be that only a madman could survive in the Tar Harath. And yet there is a chance for others to survive, one chance only. It may be that the udra mazda could lead you to this water.'

All eyes in the room now turned toward Estrella. This slight girl, with her dark curls and dreamy eyes, sat between Atara and Liljana, eating an orange. She seemed unused to people expecting such great and even miraculous things of her. And yet I knew that she expected great things of herself. What these might be, however, I thought that she could not say, not even to herself.

She put down her orange rind, and looked at me. Her eyes shone like dark, quiet pools. She seemed to have a rare sense of herself, and something more. She nodded her head to me. She smiled, then turned to bow to King Jovayl, too.

'It would be cruel to take this child, or any child, into the Tar Harath,' King Jovayl said to us. 'And yet your way has been nothing but cruel. That the udra mazda chooses this freely is a great thing. We have drunk to her finding water; now let us drink to her finding such great courage.'

He commanded that everyone's cup be refilled again. Maram tried not to show his disgust at the prospect of have to swallow yet more warm milk. Estrella and Daj both seemed delighted to see their cups filled with wine - as far as I knew, their first taste of it.

'To Estrella!' King Jovayl said. 'May the One's light always point her way toward water!'

We all drank deeply then - all of us except the children, as Liljana permitted them a few sips of wine but no more. King Jovayl then called for an end to the feast and commanded that we should go to take our rest.

'Even with an udra mazda to guide you,' he said to me, 'a journey across the Tar Harath will be a desperate chance. I cannot supply you with men, horses and water until I have conferred with the Elders more. So go, rest - tonight and tomorrow. And then tomorrow night, I shall give you my answer.'

My companions and I went down to our rooms then, but I did not sleep very well because I shared a room with Maram, and he slept poorly. Despite his exhaustion, he kept moaning as he tossed and turned in his bed, struggling to find a position that did not put pressure on his sores. He grumbled and cursed and finally fell into oblivion vowing that he would never ogle another woman again.

But the next day, late in the morning, I found him outside leaning back against an orange tree near one of the hadrah's springs. He sat in the shade of this fragrant-smelling tree as he used a shard of a broken pot to scratch at his sores. He watched the children at play: with swords and dolls, and kicking a leather ball across the dusty square. He watched the Avari women, too. They came and went to draw water from the spring. They cast us looks of both curiosity and suspicion, and then hurried away.

'Ah, these Avari woman are as comely as those of the Morning Mountains,' Maram said to me as he fixed his gaze on a young matron bending over the walled-off spring. 'At least, I
think
they are - who can really tell with those ugly robes and shawls of theirs?'

'I thought that women no longer interested you,' I said to him. 'Did I say that? No, no, my friend, it is I who do not interest
them.
In truth, I think I repulse them. And who can blame them? I think they would rather take a leper into their arms.'

He scratched the edge of his potsherd across one of his bandages. After sniffing at this stained white wrapping, his face fell into a mask of disgust. He shooed away the buzzing flies then let loose a long, deep sigh.

'Master Juwain,' I said to him, 'worries because your wounds are not healing as they should. He believes it would be best for you to rest here.'

'A year would not be too long,' he said. 'That is, if I could just engage one of these women in a little, ah, conversation. And if not for these damn flies.'

His hand beat the air in front of his face as he tried to snatch up and crush one of the black flies bedeviling him. But he might as well have tried to grasp the wind.

'Master Juwain,' I said to him, 'believes that it might be best for you to
remain
here.'

'Remain here?' he said to me. 'And watch the rest of you go on without me?'

I said nothing as I watched him scratch at his bitten leg.

'Ah, do you think I haven't thought about it?' he said to me. 'I don't suppose these Avari would deny me wine, though they'll keep their women away from me as they would silk from a pig.'

He made a fist and punched out at a particularly large, loud fly. Then he said, 'The truth is, though, no matter how drunk I tried to remain, I couldn't get away from these damn bloody flies. Unless I go with you into the Tar Ha rath, where there are no flies, if King Jovayl is right. Then too. . .'

'Yes?'

'Then, too, I could never desert you,' He dropped his potsherd and clapped me on the shoulder. 'Haven't I told you that a hundred times?'

We traded smiles, then he said to me, 'In any case. King Jovayl might decide not to help us. Then we'll have the merry little choice between giving up our quest or going into the Tar Harath anyway where we'll die.'

I knew that he hoped for a good reason to give up our quest -and perhaps even longed for death to end his sufferings. But that evening. King Jovayl, according to his promise sent us word of his decision. Sunji found me outside King Jovayi's house as I sat on a large rock and gazed out at the stars.

'You shall have my father's help in crossing the Tar Harath,' he told me. 'I, myself, am to to lead three of our warriors and twenty horses to carry water across the sands.'

'Thank you,' I told him. 'The Avari are generous. And kind.'

'Sometimes we are. But some of the elders, I must tell you, spoke against this journey. They
do
not believe this Maitreya you hope to find really exists.'

'And you?'

'I have
seen
that Morjin thing you call a droghul. If such crea-tures of dark exist, why not a being of great light?'

Why not indeed? I wondered as I watched the bright stars.

'The elders,' he went on, 'believe that we Avari can live here as we have almost forever, keeping strangers away. But my father does not. and I do not. I believe that we will have to fight this new enemy, or die. Or worse: watch the world die.'

I clasped hands with him then and smiled sadly. Sunji, descended

from Elahad and Arahad, was of Valari blood, even as I was. It seemed that it was the fate of our people ever to fight against the evil that Morjin and Angra Mainyu had made - that is, when we weren't busy fighting each other.

Sunji pointed at the dark line of hills against the glowing sky to the west. He said to me, 'I went into the deep desert once, and promised myself I never would again. But life is strange, is it not?'

Yes, life
was
strange and precious, I told myself as I watched the play of lights that pointed the way to the Tar Harath. We might yet come to death there, or anywhere, but for the time being at least our quest to find the Maitreya would go on.

For four days my companions and I rested at the Avari's hadrah. We ate good food and enjoyed good conversation, even as Maram bemoaned his wounds that wouldn't heal and beat away the biting black flies. King Jovayl sent out warriors and horses heavily laden with water into the west. The only well between the hadrah and the Tar Harath lay sixty miles toward the setting sun; no one knew whether or not at this time of year it would prove to be dry. As we learned when the warriors returned, the well
was
dry. And so the warriors had left a cache of water at the well. It wouldn't be enough to get us across the Tar Harath, but it would help us replenish the water that we brought with us. Hours before dawn on the twenty-third of Soldru, a day that promised to be as hot as any that summer, all who would be journeying into the Tar Harath gathered by the springs. We filled our waterskins and slung them on the backs of our horses. The pack-horses, of course, carried much more water than did our mounts and remounts - unless one considered that Altaru and Fire and our other old friends carried
us,
who were mostly water. I nearly wept when I learned of the Avari's plan for the horses, which was cruel: their packhorses would be given barely enough water to keep them alive. And then, if no additional water was found, as we and our mounts drank our precious water and lightened the packhorses' burdens waterskin by waterskin until nothing remained, the Avari would have to kill the now-useless horses to spare them from a worse death. As I had been told more than once: the ways of the desert were hard.

'If the worst befalls,' Sunji said to me, 'we'll have to reserve our water for ourselves and let our mounts go without. Not that this will save us for long, for if our mounts die, then
we
will die.'

In the quiet of the dark, with night's cold practically freezing us, I placed my hands over Altaru's ears so that my great stallion wouldn't have to hear such terrible words. I stroked his long neck and whispered to him: 'Don't worry, old friend, I won't let you be thirsty. You shall have water first before I drink, and if I must, I'll give you my own.'

He nickered in understanding, if not of my words, then of the bond of brotherhood that had taken us from land to land and battle to battle.

Sunji had chosen companions from his own tribe to go with us: Arthayn and a younger man named Nuradayn, whose black eyes burned with a desire to please his prince and do great things. Nuradayn seemed all whipcord muscle and quick, almost violent motions that blew out of the center of him like a whirlwind. I thought he might be impulsive or even wild, whereas I knew that Sunji's third companion was the opposite. This was Maidro. It surprised me that Sunji would choose an old man for such a difficult venture, but as Sunji told me: 'He is as hard as a rock and wiser in the ways of the desert than any man I know, even my father.'

When it came time for us to set out, King Jovayl rode up to the springs with his queen, Adri, and their two other children, Daivayr and Saira. They kept their farewell to Sunji brief. I overheard King Jovayl say to Sunji: 'Help Valaysu and his people to cross the desert, but do not go any farther than you must, and return as soon as you can. May the One always lead you to water.'

We assembled in a formation with Sunji and Maidro in the lead, followed by my companions and me, and then the packhorses, whom Arthayn and Nuradayn watched over. We made our way out of the hadrah as we had come, past the sentinels standing on high rocks. This time, in the deep of night before dawn, they did not blow their horns. I couldn't help wondering if Sunji and his warriors would ever return out of the Tar Harath to be heralded as the brave men they truly were.

Sunji led us on a course that wound through a series of low, rocky hills. In the near dark, we moved slowly lest one of the horses bruise a hoof and draw up lame. If a horse grew
too
lame, we would have kill it, and so come that much closer to killing our chances of success - as well as ourselves.

Just before dawn Flick made one of his mysterious appearances. Our four Avari companions marveled at his twinkling lights, and we explained as much as we knew of this luminous being. Maidro took this as a good omen, saying, 'Look - Valaysu brings the veil stars with him!'

An hour later the sun rose, and cast long shadows ahead of us against the gritty, hardpacked earth. Here, in the country near the hadrah, many things lived: ursage and bitterbroom, spike grass and soap grass, all glazed with a sticky, whitish alkali. Ostrakats ran across the desert on their two powerful legs chasing lizards and snakes, and even rabbits. We heard the roar of the distant lions who sometimes chased them. Other birds
-
the smaller sandrunners and rock sparrows - hunted beetles, grasshoppers and other insects. I was curious to lay eyes upon a strange creature that supposedly lived in these hills. Maidro called it a baboon, and said that the males protected their harems and young from the hyenas by the mere display of their hideous blue and red faces.

As we made our way west, the desert grew drier. The ursage and rockgrass thinned out, leaving the horses little forage. Soon they would have to subsist on the grain that the packhorses carried, along with the water. It was not good for the horses to go without grass, but there was no help for it. I prayed that in the Tar Harath, they wouldn't grow so hungry and maddened by thirst that they tried to eat sand.

After only a few hours into this leg of our journey, I noticed that Maram was having a very hard time of things. Every lurch and jolt against his saddle tormented him; he bit his own lip against the pain of his sores to keep from making complaint. Only the barbark nuts that he chewed, I thought, and some fierce inner fire kept him going.

He did not want to arise from our midday break; I felt him almost flogging himself to drive his great, afflicted body forward. That night, with the wind driving fine particles of grit into our mouths and eyes, he dismounted and collapsed down onto the warm ground. He ate the food that Liljana prepared for him with little enthusiasm. I knew that he was close to giving up hope.

Seeing this, I took Master Juwain aside and said to him, 'Maram is failing.'

'I'm afraid he is,' Master Juwain said to me. 'I don't know how to help him. All my ointments and medicines have availed not at all.'

'There is one medicine we might try.'

Master Juwain cast me a knowing and censorious look, and said, 'Do you mean the brandy? It would do nothing to heal him.'

'It wouldn't heal his body,' I admitted. 'But if we can strengthen his spirit, it might help him bear the grievances to his body.'

Master Juwain thought about this and smiled sadly. 'Why else would brandy be called "spirits"?'