Almost without thought, my hand fell upon my sword. Seven diamonds, like stars, were set into its hilt, carved out of true black jade, which might be dug up from the earth like any other stone. But the jade of which Kane spoke was the black gelstei, rarest of the rare, wrought in furnaces long ago from unknown substances and with an art long since lost. And not just any black gelstei.
Kane paused in his pacing to set his bow on top of the logs of the breastwork. Then he brought forth a flat, black stone, shiny as obsidian, and held it gleaming dully in the palm of his hand. And he said to us, ‘This baalstei is small, eh? And yet the one that Kalkin used upon Angra Mainyu was no larger – in size. But it had great power, like unto the dark of the moon, for in it was bound all the blackness of space and the great emptiness that lies inside all things.’
He stood still for a moment as he stared up at the sky. Then he continued: ‘You can’t imagine its power, for in a way, the Black Jade is the Lightstone’s shadow. I spoke of how the Ieldra might be forced to unmake the universe, but I say the Black Jade is the greater dread. For even men, such as Morjin, might use it to steal the very light from this world: all that is bright and good.’
Maram thought about this as he gazed at Kane. Then he asked him, ‘But why didn’t you tell us that the black gelstei you used on Angra Mainyu had power beyond any others?’
‘Because,’ Kane said, ‘I didn’t want to frighten you. So, I didn’t want to frighten myself. To wield it was to touch upon a cold so terrible and vast that it froze one’s soul in ice as hard as diamond. To wield it too long was to be lost in a lightless void from which there could be no escape. Angra Mainyu himself, early in the War of the Stone, forged this cursed stone we call the Black Jade. There will never be another like it. Long ago, it was lost. And so once the Baaloch is freed, no one will ever bind him again.’
Maram stood up from the fire to get a better look at the black crystal seemingly welded to Kane’s hand. And he asked: ‘If Angra Mainyu made the great baalstei, how did Kalkin come by it?’
‘So, how did Kalkin come by it, eh?’ Kane said. He spoke his ancient name as if intoning a requiem for a long lost friend. ‘That is a story that I won’t tell here, unless you’d like to remain in this cursed gorge for a month, and then half a year after. Let’s just say that the Lightstone wasn’t the only gelstei that the Amshahs and the Daevas fought over.’
‘But how was it lost, then?’
Kane clamped his jaws together with such force that I heard the grinding of his teeth. Then he said, ‘That story is even longer. I can tell you only that Angra Mainyu’s creatures regained it. Some say that it was brought to Ea, to await his coming.’
Again, I stared at the chasm’s layers of rock, now nearly black with the fall of night. It seemed that in ages without end, on uncountable worlds, anything might happen – and almost everything had. It seemed as well that the folds of the earth might conceal many dark things, even one as dark and terrible as the ancient black gelstei.
Kane suddenly made a fist, and the small crystal seemed to vanish. When he opened his hand again, there was nothing inside it except air.
And I asked him, ‘Do you believe the baalstei was brought to Ea?’
‘Where else would it have been brought if not here?’
My mysterious friend, I thought, possessed all the evasive arts of a magician. Somewhere on his person, no doubt, he had secreted the black gelstei. Just as somewhere in his soul he kept hidden even more powerful things.
‘You told us once,’ I said to him, ‘that the Galadin sent Kalkin to Ea. Along with Morjin, and ten others of the Elijin?’
Kane’s eyes grew brighter and more pained as he said, ‘Yes – Sarojin and Baladin, and the others. I have told you their names.’
‘Yes, you have. But you haven’t told us why you were sent here? Why, if Ea was so perilous for your kind?’
‘It was a chance,’ he said, looking up at the night’s first stars. ‘A last, desperate chance. The Lightstone had been sent here long before, and that was chance enough.’
And this supreme gamble on the part of Ashtoreth and the other Galadin on Agathad had nearly succeeded: Kalkin, in the great First Quest, had led the others of his order to recover the lost Lightstone. But then Morjin had fallen mad; he had murdered Garain and Averin to claim the Lightstone for himself. And Kalkin, in violation of the Law of the One, had killed five of Morjin’s henchmen, and in a way, slain himself as well. Now only Kane remained.
‘So, you see how it went for the Elijin who came to Ea,’ Kane said. ‘How much worse would it be for any Galadin to come to this cursed place?’
At this, Liljana’s kind face tightened in anger. She patted the ground beneath her, and snapped at Kane: ‘Such things you say! I won’t listen to such slander! The earth is our mother, the mother of us all – even you!’
As Kane regarded Liljana, I felt a strange, cold longing ripple through him.
‘Liljana is right,’ Master Juwain said. ‘You can’t blame Ea for corrupting Morjin. Neither can you blame the black gelstei.’
And Kane said, ‘The greatest of scryers foretold that Ea would give rise to a dark angel who would free the Baaloch.’
‘Either that,’ Master Juwain reminded him, ‘or give birth to the last and greatest Maitreya, who will lead all Eluru into the Age of Light.’
For a moment, Kane stared down at his clenched fists. Then he looked at Master Juwain and said, ‘I know you are right. It is not soil or even black gelstei that poisons men, but their hearts. What lies within.’
He reached down to scoop up a handful of dirt. He said to us, ‘And that is the hell of it, eh? What being, born of earth, does not suffer? Grow old and die?’
‘The Galadin do not,’ I said to him.
‘You think not, eh? So, the Bright Ones grow old in their souls. And in the end, it is their fate, too, to die.’
The brilliance of his eyes recalled the most beautiful, yet terrible, part of the Law of the One: that each of the Galadin, at the moment of a Great Progression, in the creation of a new universe, was destined to die into light – and thus be reborn as one of the numinous Ieldra.
‘And as for suffering, Valashu,’ he said to me, ‘despite what you have suffered, you cannot know. How many times have you swatted a mosquito?’
For a moment, his question puzzled me. My skin fairly twitched as I recalled the clouds of mosquitoes that had drained my blood in the Vardaloon. And I said, ‘Hundreds. Thousands.’
‘Could you have killed them so readily if they had been human beings? Do you think they suffered as men do?’
I, who had already killed many tens of men with my bright sword, said, ‘I know they did not.’
‘Just so,’ Kane said to me. ‘The pain that men, women and children know, compared to that of the Galadin, is minuscule. And yet it is no small thing, eh? And that in the end, is what poisoned Angra Mainyu’s sweet, sweet, beautiful heart.’
Kane’s words were like a bucket of cold water emptied upon me. I sat by the fire, blinking my eyes as a chill shot down my spine. I said to him, ‘I never thought to hear you speak such words of the Dark One.’
And he told me: ‘Angra Mainyu was not always Angra Mainyu, nor was he always evil. So, he was born Asangal, the most beautiful of men, and when still a man, it is said that he loved all life so dearly that he would not swat mosquitoes. And more, that once he saw a dog in excruciating pain from an open wound being eaten with worms. Asangal resolved to remove the worms, but could not bear for them to die. And so he licked out the worms with his own tongue so as not to