David Zindell - Black Jade

Bemossed did not escape the Grandmaster's demands. Indeed, he had the hardest work of all of us, for he had to face the most terrible of enemies in a relentless combat. Each morning just after dawn, Abrasax would go into the little stone conservatory to sit with Bemossed and Master Virang, who led Bemossed in endless hours of meditation. Their labor, as I understood it, was to clear each of Bemossed's chakras so that the deep light that lived within him might rise and blaze forth, unclouded by the dark moods and sense of doom that too often grieved him. And each afternoon, in the short sharp brightness of the winter days. Bemossed met with Master Storr to attune himself to the Cup of Ashurun. Whenever Bemossed dared to lay his hands upon it, this great work of silver gelstei glowed with a strong golden radiance and resonated with the Lightstone hundreds of miles away in Argattha. Master Storr soon determined that Bemossed could touch upon the True Gelstei from afar and reach with his luminous being deep into its heart. Someday, he might even master it this way, though Master Storr thought the danger to Bemossed would be very great.

Bemossed did not like to talk about this, nor would he say very much about his endless struggles with Morjin. One night, however, after a particularly brutal session of delving the Lightstone's mysteries, he took me aside and confided to me, 'Morjin will die before ever giving up the Cup of Heaven again. And he will slay. He hates … so hatefully, Valashu. Far more than you do. And it is so foul — fouler than a corpse rotting slowly in a slaughterhouse for a thousand years. You think that you have known darkness in the Skadarak, but what lies within Morjin is blacker than any Black Jade.'

He told me then that he did not know how he could bear it.

But bear it he did, and more, he gained a great victory over Morjin. There came a day in Yaradar, just past the darkest time of the year, when we all felt our gelstei free of Morjin's taint, as of wounds drained of poison. Master Juwain ventured to use his varistei to germinate and grow some barbark seeds that he had brought out of Acadu, while Liljana pressed her blue figurine to her head and managed to speak mind to mind with one of her sisters in faroff Alonia, or so she said. Maram broke off his versifying to go out into the Valley of the Sun with his red crystal and unleash bolts of fiery lightning, just for the sheer joy of it. Then Kane took out his gelstei to demonstrate how the black jade had been designed to be used. It frustrated Maram for Kane to steal his fire, so to speak, but more than once, Kane kept Maram from killing himself in a great blast of rock and heat, or at least badly burning his hands. As for Atara, she did not regain her second sight. Even so, she spent what seemed entire days gazing eyeless into her clear scryer's sphere. As she told me, she did not look for things faraway in space or time, but rather concentrated all her will upon imagining them to be.

Master Storr finally deemed it safe to begin exploring the properties of Estrella's blue bowl, which Estrella gladly lent to him. He thanked her for bearing it all across Ea, and told all of us: 'You do have a talent for discovering gelstei. It is a pity, though, that you could not also bring me the lilastei that you say the Yaga used to turn men to stone.'

In early Triolet, with the snows falling heavy and deep, we broke our usual rhythms and routines to receive a rare winter visitor to the valley. A Brother Vipul, at great risk, had forced his way through the mountains on snow shoes to bring Abrasax important news. After Abrasax had allowed Master Juwain to use his green crystal to heal Vipul's frozen feet and had sat drinking hot cider with Vipul for most of an afternoon, Abrasax called the Brotherhood's masters into a conclave to speak with my friends and me.

We met in the conservatory that evening. Bemossed entered the room looking tired and troubled, and yet strangely happier than he had ever been. In truth, his whole being seemed to glow. We all took our places around the three low tea tables. One of the brothers came in to fill our cups with steaming tea and serve us hot lemon cakes. The many candles set ablaze in their stands cast their warm radiance on the twelve pillars holding up the domed roof. Snow plastered over the round windows to the north and west, but the southern windows let in the light of the stars.

After asking each of us to tell of the progress in the tasks appointed to us, Abrasax moved on to his purpose in calling us together. He sat straight and stern on his colorful cushion, his curly hair and beard framing his striking face in a wreath of white. Then he said to us, 'Brother Vipul has been ordered to bed, and so we will discuss his tidings in his absence. It is time, in any case, that we discussed certain things.'

With what seemed infinite patience, he bit off a piece of his cake and chewed it thoroughly before taking a long sip of tea. He looked from Estrella to Bemossed. Then he looked at the table in front of me, where I had laid the diamond that Ramadar had given me by the pool on Givene: the great gem that had once been set into my ancestor, Adar's, crown. Abrasax had asked me to show it to the Brotherhood's masters as a proof of miracles.

'I have said many times,' he told me, and the rest of my friends, 'that each of our acts, as with a stone dropped into a pool, ripples outward forever. Together on this last quest of yours, you have cast entire mountains into the waters of this world. We all worried that the risk would be too great and the goal almost impossible to achieve. And yet you forced Morjin to take great risks of his own. He spent much time and will working his three droghuls from afar. And to what end? The tribes of the Red Desert now ally themselves against him. In Hesperu, brave spirits have made rebellion again. It is said that King Arsu has recalled part of his army from Surrapam to smash it, and so we do not need to fear the conquest of Eanna and the northwest, at least not yet. Something else is said, not just in Hesperu, but in Sunguru, Uskudar and all lands: that Morjin is dead. The rumor has spread like a wildfire. The Red Dragon will now have to spend even more will to quell it. Perhaps he will even be forced out of Argattha to show himself, in Sunguru, I think, and in Karabuk. Already, in Galda, it is too late.'

He ate another bit of cake and drank some more tea. I sensed that like a minstrel working up to the end of a great epic, he revelled in making us wait for his good news.

'In Galda,' he finally told us, 'there has been another revolt, greater than the last. The Red Priests and anyone connected to the Kallimun have been killed or driven out. A common knight named Gallagerry has claimed lordship of the land.'

He looked at me and added, 'I am told that the revolt was led by common captains of the army that you and yours so terribly defeated at the Culhadosh Commons. You count that battle as the worst moment of your life, and rightly so, but what you did there, Valashu, now engulfs the world with the force of a tidal wave, does it not?'

I noticed Bemossed smiling at me, and I remembered that false humility would not serve me. But neither would pride. 'On the day you speak of,' I reminded Abrasax, 'what I did caused the Lightstone to be lost.'

'Lost, yes, but not forsaken.' Abrasax looked across the table at Bemossed, and bowed his head to him, as did Master Storr, Master Matai and the other masters of the Brotherhood. 'Bemossed now keeps Morjin from wielding it.'

'But Bemossed cannot wield it himself.'

'No, he cannot, and that bright eventuality must likely await the day when he sets his hands upon it.'

Across the room, the Cup of Ashurun gleamed upon its stand. I found myself wishing that this work of silver gelstei was the real Lightstone. I found myself wanting to promise Bemossed that the day would surely come when he would lay his hands upon the true Cup of Heaven.