David Zindell: Black Jade

Then, in a kindly way, Master Storr said to him, 'You do know, lad, that the black gelstei has no power to do such things. Not even the Lightstone can be used to bring the dead back to life.'

'This is my story,' Daj said, staring across the table at him. 'And in Khalind, people can live again.'

Abrasax met eyes with me for a moment, then turned to Daj to say, 'Perhaps they can indeed. Well, I for one would like to hear the whole of this gest. Will you sing it for us?'

Daj nodded his head proudly and said, 'If Master Nolashar will accompany me.'

Master Nolashar smiled at this, and brought out his flute. He played a haunting melody, while Daj stood up and sang out verse after verse of the Gest of Eleikar and Ayeshtan. When he had finished, we all clapped our hands, even Alphanderry, who did so without making the slightest sound. Then he said to Daj, 'Hoy, a minstrel you are! Why don't you and I sing together — Master Nolashar, too? There are so many songs!'

Abrasax called for a little more brandy, but Maram — along with Master Storr — drank much more than a little. Master Storr finally got up from his cushion and wobbled over to Liljana. He kissed the back of her head and told her, 'I'm sorry I ever called you a witch.' Then he wobbled back to his cushion.

After that, we sat for a long time in that beautiful place, in the best of company. As the evening deepened into night. Master Nolashar played his flute, while Daj and Alphanderry stood together in the starlight, and seemed to sing the whole universe into creation. It was one of those rare times when I sensed that all things might be possible, even the impossibilities of Daj's story.

Bright days followed that night, and grew longer and longer as winter passed into spring. In Gliss, the month of the new leaves, the snow began melting from most of the lower reaches of the Valley of the Sun. My friends and I would still have to wait until Ashte before daring the passes of the eastern Nagarshath, and so we had little to do except to study and prepare ourselves for another journey — and to wait and hope.

Late one morning, on a perfectly clear day, I met with Atara, and we walked together along the path by the river just below the school's ash grove. The trees showed a greenish fuzz of new leaves. while the first dandelions and fairies' eyes pushed up through the grass in sprays of yellow and white. We found a beautiful place, I and laid down two blankets on the sloping ground that looked out over the partially frozen river. Water rushed in a gleaming black torrent down the channel cut through the river's ice. The petals of the flowers all around us caught the sun's brilliant light and reflected it up into the bluest of skies.

It was warm enough that we sat comfortably with only our tunics and cloaks to cover us. After a while the sun reached its zenith, and it grew warmer still, and we cast off the gray, woolen coverings that had seen so many miles. Atara smelled like her mare, Fire, for she had spent part of the morning trimming her hooves and combing her down. We picnicked on some cheese and bread, and apple cider that the Brothers had made last fall. For a while we spoke of little things such as the fine spring weather and the health of the horses. And then we moved on to other matters.

'Will you not consider remaining here with the Brothers?' I asked her.

'No, I don't think so,' she said. 'I've promised Fire a ride across the Wendrush again. But I promise you that I won't slow us down.'

I looked at the clean cloth that she had wrapped around her face. I said, 'I know you won't. But has there been nothing at all? Even a hint of your second sight returning?'

'No, nothing,' she murmured, shaking her head.

'Perhaps if you remained here all summer, and sat in the conservatory with Bemossed, he might — '

'I would rather ride beneath the open sky with you.'

'But he is doing such great things,' I told her. 'One day.. '

I let my voice fade off into the soft roar of the river. I had nearly spoken of that which Atara did not wish me to speak of.

She grasped my hand in her warm fingers and said, 'It's all right — all right for you to wish that he might restore me.'

'But do you never think of this now, yourself?'

'Of course I do. But of course I mustn't. What will be will be. What is, now, is just as it should be. In so many ways, even after this last terrible, terrible journey, I have been restored already.'

I smiled at this, and said, 'I remember that you once told me how suffering carves hollows in the soul — only to leave room for it to hold more joy.'

She pressed her palm to her blindfold, which covered hollows as deep as the caverns beneath Argattha. And she said, 'These past days, with the children safe and Bemossed so happy in becoming this shining light for everyone. I have been so happy, too.'

My smile deepened as I squeezed her hand in mine. I gazed at her face, wishing with a hot pain in my eyes that she could gaze back at me.

'Bemossed makes people happy,' I said.

'The Maitreya, we call him, the Lord of Light,' she said to me. 'But what does that mean? What light can any man summon to bring help for this terrible world? This above all, I think: that everything that is, is so beautiful. It all shines, here and now.'

I looked out across the river at the acres of star lilies and white fairies' eyes gleaming in the strong sunlight. In the sky, an eagle soared, a little streak of gold against icy mountains and bright blue rock. The whole valley, with its brilliant green fields and forests powdered with snow, seemed on fire.

'What you say is true,' I told her. 'And yet, somewhere in the world, right now, a bird of prey is tearing out the insides of a vole or a hare. And somewhere, a man or a woman is dying upon a cross.'

'That, too, is true,' she said, and her voice grew thick with sadness. 'But even dying, they look out upon the same sky and the same earth that we do.'

I pressed her hand to my face, and I said softly, 'But you do not see at all now, not even with your second sight.'

'Don't pity me,' she said, pulling her hand away from me. The old coldness seemed to fall over her face like a cloud covering the sun.

'I don't pity you. But I will not believe there is no hope.'

She smiled coldly, even as her sadness deepened. Her fingers reached into the spray of blond hairs falling over her shoulders. She managed to pluck one of them out, and she held up this gleaming, golden filament for me to see. 'One chance only, Val. One slender, slender chance exists, finer even than this, of what you hope will be. And for all our gladness at finding Bemossed and what he has accomplished, it is exactly the same chance we have of defeating Morjin, in the end.'

'I know that,' I told her. 'But even if there is only one chance in ten thousand, I will think of how we might bring his defeat, and nothing else.'

I reached out and prised the hair from her fingers. I coiled it around one of mine, then folded it into a handkerchief, which I put in my tunic's pocket. And I said, 'Almost nothing else. If there is only one chance in all the universe of you being made whole and marrying me, I will make it be.'

She sat next to me, with the sun beating down upon her, and the essence of horse and her musky skin steamed off her garments. I listened to her deep, quick breaths. Then she said, 'You sound so sure of yourself. The tone in your words — I have never heard you speak this way.'

I felt my own breath building in my throat like a storm. I no longer doubted that I could give voice to what whispered in my heart.

'My grandfather,' I told her, 'believed that a man can make his own fate. What can a man and a woman together make? Everything, Atara.'