David Zindell - Black Jade

After pounding across the stone-strewn turf and accidentally trampling the nest of a meadowlark, I came up to Bajorak. He held up his hand and called for a halt then. When he saw the look in my eyes, he led me away from Pirraj and the huge Kashak and his other warriors. He reined in his horse near a large boulder about fifty yards from his men. And he said to me, 'What is it, Valashu Elahad?'

For a moment I studied this great Sarni warrior, with his limbs, neck and head encircled in gold and his face painted with blue stripes like some sort of strange tiger. Most of all I looked deeply into his dazzling blue eyes. And then I asked him: 'Do you know of two rocks, along the mountains, shaped like an ass's ears? There would be a span between them — and possibly a stream or a river.'

His eyes grew brighter and even harder, like blue diamonds, as he stared at me. And he answered my question with a question: 'Is that where we are to escort you then?'

'Perhaps,' I told him.

His fine face pulled into a scowl, and he snapped his braided, black quirt against his hand. 'I know not of any ass's ears, and I care not.'

I couldn't keep down my disappointment, and he must have felt this for his eyes softened as he said, 'But there are two great rocks like unto those you describe, about ten miles south of here. We call them the Red Shields. If that is your destination, however, you would have had a hard time finding it.'

'Why so?'

'Because the Shields face east, and we approach them from the northwest. From our vantage, we will see only their edges — and the rocks and trees on the slopes behind them.'

I continued gazing at him, and I finally asked, 'Do these shields, then, guard a gorge cutting through the mountains?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'I know not. No Sarni would ever journey into the mountains to find out.'

He turned to snap his quirt toward the mountain and asked me, 'What is the name of this gorge?'

Our eyes locked together, and something inside him seemed to

push at me, as I pushed at him. I said, 'If you've no care for gorges, you would have even less for its name.' Now he whipped the quirt against his hand so hard that it instantly raised up a red welt — but no redder and hotter than his anger at me. He seemed to bite back words that he might regret speaking. He turned away from my gaze to look at the mountains and then behind us at the Red Knights, who had also paused to take a rest. Then his eyes moved toward my friends, grouped together in front of the Manslayers; I knew with a painful leap of my blood that he was watching Atara.

'What have I done,' he asked, 'to make you scorn me so?'

And I blurted out: 'I do not scorn you, only the way that you look at one… whom you should not look at at all.'

Astonishment poured out of him like the sweat that shone from his brow and beaded up on his golden fillet. And he said to me, 'Atara is a great warrior, and more, imakla! And even more, a beautiful woman. How should a man look at such a woman, then.'

Notin lust, I thought, fighting at the knot of pain rising up in my throat. Not in such terrible desire.

He turned back to me, and his astonishment only deepened. And he half-shouted 'You are Valari, and she is Sarni — half-Sarni! And she is your companion in arms who has yet to fulfill her vow! You cannot be betrothed to her!'

'No, we are not betrothed,' I forced out. 'But we are promised to each other.'

'Promised how, then?'

I watched Atara giving Estrella a drink from her water horn, and I said, 'Promised with our hearts.'

I did not really expect this savage Danladi warrior to understand such deep and tender sentiments, for the Sarni beat their women when they displease them and rarely show them kind-ness. And so he astonished me once more when he said. 'I am sorry, Valashu, I will not look at her again. But I too, know what it is to love this woman.'

I glared and him and said. 'My father taught me that one should not mistake lust for love.'

'No, one should not,' he agreed. 'But it surprises me to hear a Valari speak of love.'

'I have heard,' I told him, 'that you Sarni speak of love only for your horses.'

He patted the neck of his brown stallion as he smiled sadly. 'That is because you know little about us.'

Some hurt in his voice — seething and keen and covered with layers of scar — made me feel my way past my jealousy deeper into his being. And what I sensed pulsing inside him so fiercely was only love. Love for Atara, love for his family, for his horses or the beautiful land over which they rode, I could not tell. It didn't matter. For this bright flame filled my blood and broke me open, and I could never scorn him again.

'And you,' I said to him, 'know little about us.'

His eyes softened, and he looked at me strangely as he said, 'I have heard what the Red Dragon did to your land. What he did to your mother and grandmother.'

My eyes filled with a hot stinging, and the green grasses of the steppe beyond Bajorak's wild, mournful face grew blurry. I swallowed against the lump in my throat and could not speak.

Now he wiped at his own eyes, and his throat seemed raw and pained as he said, 'When I was twelve years old, the Zayak crossed the Jade to raid for women. They surprised us, and many were taken. My mother, my sister, too — Takiyah was her name. But they would not consort with the Zayak, and so their chieftain, Torkalax, scourged them with his quirt and gave them to Morjin. But they would not be slaves in Argattha either, and they tried to kill themselves to keep Morjin's priests from possessing them. It mattered not. The filthy Red Priests ravished them all the same. And then Morjin crucified them for the crime of trying to steal the use of their bodies from the priests. It is said that he set them in his great hall as an example to others. A gem seller who did business with my father brought us the news of their torture. And on that day my father made me vow that I would never make peace with the Zayak or with Morjin.'

Out on the steppe, a lion roared and a meadowlark chirped angrily — perhaps the same bird whose nest Altaru had destroyed. And I said to Bajorak, 'Our enemy is one and the same, and so they should be no quarrel between us.'

'No quarrel, perhaps. But the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend. Were it so, we would make cause with the Marituk, who hate the Zayak as much as we do.'

'It is hard,' I said to him, 'for a Valari and a Sarni to be friends.' 'And yet you and the Manslayer call each other "friend", if nothing more.'

I saw him searching for something in my eyes as he gazed at me. And I searched for something in him. I found it beneath his gold-studded armor in the sudden surge of his blood. It was the promise of life, the very pulse of the world and breath of the stars. When I opened my heart to him, I felt it beating strong, wild and true.

'Freinds,' he told me, 'do not keep secrets from each other.'

'No, they do not,' I said.

It came to me then that I had a sort of Scales of my own, for I gave great weight to what my heart told me was true. One either had faith in men, or not. As Bajorak looked at me so openly, without entreaty or guile, I knew that I trusted him and that he would never betray me.

'The name of the gorge we seek,' I told him, 'is the Kul Kavaakurk.'

I went on to explain the nature of our quest. Only the Maitreya, I said to him, could contend with Morjin for mastery of the Lightstone. We had no idea where on Ea to search for this great-souled being, but the Grandmaster of the Great White Brotherhood in their ancient school in the mountains above us might know.

'It is a small hope,' I said to him. 'But unless the Maitreya is found, it won't matter if the Danladi or Kurmak or Valari refuse to make peace with Morjin. For Morjin and all his allies will make war against us and destroy us one by one.'