Free Black Jade by David Zindell Page A

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