The Jade Seed, Page 2

  Chapter 3

  Though the truth may have sent men into terror and despair, few indeed knew the truth of the terrible drumbeat. Even Ganit and Brone were not sure until the echoes began to rend the bones of the earth. Brone had an unearthly sense that she would not fail so early, the seed kept her heart alive. Ganit alone was terrified, but only briefly, as the chill of snow touches the skin and disappears in life's warmth. But Ganit's faith saved him. In his most secret heart, Ganit believed the end could never come, that someone would save them. Holding that tiny seed, the small jade star ever warmed by her skin, he started to believe that Brone would save them, its small weight, its solid edge convinced him. So fervently did this belief cling to him, that Ganit resolved to follow Brone until the end. Until the last dusk of the old world he believed that it would be saved, until Brone's very last breath on a cold distant shore. And when the world shuddered under his feet, he sprang up and clasped Brone's hand, begging her to flee with him.

  "My parents," he said, "both father and mother, I must warn them."

  "The day is late Ganit, it must have happened everywhere now. You cannot save them now. We cannot turn back the dark."

  "You can help them, we can save them together. It is not too late, we must go." He turned to face her, his hand still wrapped around hers and she was struck by the undimmed hope she saw in him.

  Though Brone's heart was not hard or barren, she knew that she could not save man, nor even delay the ruination of the world. She grieved for Ganit, though they had just begun, and tried to warn him, but Ganit was not strong enough to hear. He would not be dissuaded and Brone could no longer leave him behind, his belief in her binding them to the last. Together they traveled to the village of Ganit's people. The steel dragon devoured the long path, but still far from Ganit's village, the path split open, was swept away in front of them. Crumbling and twisting the black stone way writhed, a dying beast, deep wounded while the earth groaned beneath. There the steel dragon stopped, conquered. There it sits still, its bones lost beneath the Greening, its eye sockets the home of small beasts, flying and crawling things, its smoking throat silent and cold.

  "You see," said Brone, "The night is ahead of us, it thwarts us ever. We are too late by far. Turn back with me Ganit. Turn back and let the memory of your family stay bright and breathing."

  "No, I must warn them. They will be frightened. If I can reach them before the end, just reach them, all will be well. I must go on."

  Brone had no certain path, no chosen direction and so she only shook her head sadly, and walked on with him. With great care they chose their way through the new-heaved hills and cracks of the wounded ground. Many people around them, all frightened, many lost to the light of day. Great was the noise of grieving and Ganit was bewildered. But Brone kept him close, threading them over the broken path away from the gathering press of men. They stopped once to pull a man up from the brink of the earth's jaw. He clung to the lip of the path and Ganit heaved him back to the road. As the three sat and rested, the man thanked them and said, "I thought I was dead." Brone knew the man and all the others they had met or would were already walking the path toward their ends, each man's world ending when he did. All they had done was offer an alternate road to the same place. But Ganit would not believe this, and he took joy in this small rescue and others after. Brone, whose heart was warm, helped Ganit in these good deeds. But she felt greater grief all the while, for she alone knew the people helped along the way were given only a short reprieve and must die at last. In her heart the screaming world was already silent, empty, dark. She showed it not. Ganit's faith drove her on until the last, long after all of her own hopes had failed. Longing to believe as he did, Brone shielded Ganit from the truth she had known from the start. Ever they walked against the flood, these dazed and dreaming tides of men walking away from death, still clad in the earth that had flung itself upon them. Ganit asked each for news of his people. Some said nothing but stumbled past, broken and mad, unhearing, unseeing. Others slowly shook dusty heads or clasped his hand and wept. But none had news beyond their own shattered hearth, none had eyes for any but the memory of their own children and spouses. Brone watched as some waited in small herds, waiting for help that was not coming. Among them were young families whose children tired of flight, the aged and sick sitting near the broken road. A woman leaning her back against an upthrust stone, apart from the others, her forehead gashed and her skin pale as moonlight nursed a small bundle. Brone brought water from the well of the road, all she could offer. She washed the woman's face and clasped her hand. The woman smiled sadly and waved farewell when Brone and Ganit continued walking. It was many, many months before Brone stopped dreaming of her, of her tiny bundle, waiting on the road, ever waiting in the growing dark.

  Many footsteps lay between the dead steel dragon and the village of Ganit's people. They slept, small things on the shivering earth, open to the ashen sky, together and alone in the noiseless dark. Each was relieved as the day rose, shimmering with bloody red dust, the last breath of quaking stone. An ancient, worn out morning, heavy and clotted, but morning again at least. As the footsteps closed on Ganit's village the ground had opened wider and deeper. Great drifts of stone pierced the sky, still warm and slithering beneath the feet of Brone and Ganit. All that stood had crumbled, been pushed aside as a man treading through snow leaves a wake. So Ganit's memory made him doubt his way. At last, weary and sad, the travelers found the home of Ganit's people. The buildings slid flat or piled themselves in sharp heaps and bristling valleys. Here and there the corners of cloth billowed and shook in violent waves and the leaves of fallen trees wavered and broke free. But nothing else moved. No beast or man walked, no bird circled, not even the carrion insects crawled. But Ganit sought the dwelling of his family, even yet hoping they were saved. His faith drove him to madness, pulling up the bones of his home, unburying his memory. He called them, many times he recited their names to the empty wind. Grief tore at his fingers and palms, and Ganit's blood watered the grave of his people, but he found them not. Brone tried to bring him away, tried to show him the emptiness, the silence of the place.

  "I'm sorry," she said, "But it is all gone Ganit. We must come away, the earth is hungry today. It is devouring all, even itself. We must go or be sucked in."

  But for a time, Ganit could not see. Until his arms shook with the weight of debris and he stumbled with weariness, Ganit tried to unearth his home. Brone waited, though she felt it time to go, that she must move on with or without Ganit. Yet she stayed her steps for him. Then, the madness cleared away from his eyes and Ganit knew the lateness of his arrival, the lateness of the age. Without reproach and ever gently Brone bandaged his hurts in the lingering dusk as they sat on the stone step of his ruined home. Long he wept as the day bled its last, for all he had known had sunk into the open wound of the earth. Their breath shattered the silent dark as even Ganit's sorrow died away, subsided into a low endless cracking in his chest. He wanted to touch her, for her face was lost in the dusk, a gray, empty oval. He wanted to be sure he was not utterly alone.

  "I'm sorry," he said, "but I had to know. I had to try. Will it be like this everywhere?"

  Her heart clenched to hear his fear in the open air. She wanted to give him the warmth of her hand, to give comfort where there could be none. She reached not for him, but her breath touched his skin, warm and sweet in the dark. "I cannot stay, Ganit. Will you come away with me?"

  "You are going to stop it? Is there time to end this?"

  "Late is the hour of my starting out. I was not charged with stopping this."

  "But you must. You were entrusted with the seed to begin anew"

  "I can not stop this, I don't even know how to start." Her voice was as the sad winter wind that creeps over the hollows of the land, and Ganit was struck with panic.

  "You can, I will help you. You must try."

  Brone shut her eyes and was silent. Then in the falling dark, Brone heard the heavy throb of hoo
f beats quick and growing. "We have stayed overlong here Ganit," she said, "I must go now or fail. Will you come with me?" She stood over him, tall in the flat emptiness of the dead village. Ganit rose, a solid shadow in the twilight and started when he heard the approaching beast. They tried to run in the shifting rubble, at last working free of the rift.

  But Ethon it was not. Instead, her shining silver son, her Hadur drummed the music of strife through the lands of man, from one brink of the wide water to the other. Everywhere, the heartbeat of men shifted, became the echo of Hadur's steps. Hadur's music passed as a dire wind over the land, its echoes the clash of metal, the bang of spitting fire, the roar of beasts who had once been men. The weak who heard it fled and hid in terror, were hunted like deer or rabbit. Where it entered the heart of the strong, it beat a sword of their copper blood, it stabbed their stomach with greed and anger. Everywhere in that haunted land, the music of Hadur made men into wolves, slavering, rending, starving things that wore the flesh and names of men. All they craved was the death of every bird or beast nearby them. Hadur led them in packs, gnashing his heavy teeth and rolling his great eyes, hooves ever trampling earth, plant or bone, his silver hide a deviceless banner, without reason or justice, a wild moon ridden thing.

  Brone and Ganit fled before the pulsing call of war. Already they could see the ghastly silver glow of Hadur's flesh, already hear the mighty winding of his chest like the oncoming tide. The music, the bloody melody clutched the heart of Ganit, though Brone heard it not. The dust of the Messenger or the tiny jade star at her throat would not let Hadur's magic touch her. But Ganit's face dimmed and his muscles strained. He stumbled on the shattered stones dragging Brone down by the hand. She tried to pull him up as Hadur pressed down upon them. Ganit looked up and Brone saw his lips press into a snarl, his eyes emptying, he dragged her down, trying to fell her under Hadur's wrath. Hadur came ever on, his hoof beats scattering stone and stick, pallid eyes sparking the night. And Brone fell. She fell not for weakness or for fear, her only thought to shield Ganit from the violence of the beast, from the smashing teeth, the sharp and deadly hooves. Ganit was hot with rage and would have torn Brone asunder with his own claws under the maddening breath of Hadur, no thought even for his own survival. Too late did Brone see the face of Ganit, too late she saw her death there. Ganit, the laughing dawn, was gone, only hungering anger waited there.

  "Ganit, no!" she cried. But no man who heard the song of Hadur knew even their beloved again, nor reprieve for their children or aged. Caught between the madness of man and the relentless, sweeping wind of wrath, Brone should have died, unfinished, unmourned she ought to have passed into the open jaw of the earth. Instead she knelt, small and alone in the damp of the dust. Barely knowing that she did it, Brone gathered a breath of the last sweet air, and blew the green flesh of life back into the soil. Warm and fragrant, the ocean of her lungs woke the unborn, created the undone. Quick sprang leaf and twig and then the mighty tree, the yew called forth to banish death, to reverse madness. Writhing roots and dipping limbs, the holy tree outspread and shielded Brone. Hadur stumbled over the roots, and screaming fled, beating his war song over the land. Even yet, Brone knelt behind the hollows of yew limbs, and Ganit raged outside. Quiet and smooth, a spring night's breeze flowed from Brone's chest over his face. As ripples on a clear pond, slow and spreading, Ganit calmed. Turning his back against the tree, closing his face from Brone, he wept for what he had become. In that small circle of new birth, that green wild wonder, Ganit wept for what was lost, of himself, of the world. Brone was weary as the straggling leaves of winter, worn and weak she longed to sleep, but could not leave Ganit alone in his sorrow. At last, Ganit rose to sit beneath the spreading yew.

  "How did you do that?" he asked, not yet turning his face to her.

  "I don't know, it just happened," she said. "I'm very tired now Ganit. I must stay here."

  "Do you want me to go? I'm sorry for -" he shook his head and rose to go.

  "No, no. Stay with me. Please, at least for the night. The world is so silent now. I think it's being undone around us." she had already slipped halfway into dreaming. He watched her propped against the yew trunk, her neck ever bent under the weight of the dying world. He walked slowly back to his home. He gathered soft cloth that flapped from broken windows or tumbled in the empty road. He made a soft pad and moved Brone gently to it. Long he watched her sleep and ever thought he would walk out again into the night, away from her, away from what he had done. But he remembered the loneliness that had filled her voice. Ganit shivered and stretched out beneath the leaves. There was no breeze to stir them, no soft night noises. And deep in Ganit's heart, he knew they alone were sane in all that land. Hadur's song spread as black mold, quick and sour, infecting all the air. For the first time in all his life, Ganit, the bright hunter, the laughing dawn, feared the coming of the morning.

  In his dreams, the world unraveled in circles around the yew and filled with the blank water of the beginnings. Dark and reflecting nothing, still as stone and wider than the great water of the world. Only one tiny island, the spreading yew was all that remained. Across the water came a bone gray ship, rising from the deep darkness, surfacing as long dead flesh in a flood. No sail, no wind, no oar. Slow and with the pale cruel sparkle of starlight, the boat came on, steaming with cold. Ganit dreamed it bore them, he and Brone far from the green island into the lonely dark. On he sailed until morning.

  Brone dreamed her bones filled with the Messenger's dust, the black soil of ancient leaves, crumbled, rotted into black blood. Brone, the last Grower, was filled with fear. But in her dream came a voice. "Fear not! This is how it always starts. When it is neither dusk nor dawn. This deep dust and the dark waters. Just a handful, an island to stand upon. That is the Beginning that comes after all is ended." And the sweet breath fluttering through Brone calmed her and she slept in peace. When Brone woke, her fingernails were thick with dank dirt. The seed that lay in its linen wrapping, the hard jade hope, split its casing.

  The dawn broke and the yew was indeed an island being swallowed by dark waters. No glint of sun shone off the surface and no depth could be seen. Foul with the excrement of men's ancient lives, over used, overtired, wasted and sour the waters rose to eat the history of man. But it covered not the face of the world yet, nor even the land where Brone and Ganit were. They knew it not, for the lake spread it's fingers farther than their sight. So Ganit was prevented from departing, from leaving Brone in his shame.

  "What shall we do? I must keep going." Brone splashed into the foul water and Ganit pulled her back.

  "Wait" he said.

  "I can't wait, we have to go. We can't sit on this island forever. It's being devoured."

  "Wait," Ganit smiled and was the laughing dawn, the bright hunter again. "It's coming, just wait."

  "What are you speaking of? What's coming?"

  But he didn't need to answer, for the Bone Ship surfaced, now in the bright of the sun. Curling with steam, glinting as raw antler, the foul waters running from its side. Slow, slow it came to the island, when the water had reached the trunk of the holy tree. There it stopped and stayed, caught in the cradle of yew roots. Ganit boarded but Brone hesitated.

  "From what dark grave comes this ship?" she asked, recoiling from his outstretched hand, "To what end does it sail?"

  "Follow me." said Ganit and held out his empty hand to her, "I will not lead you astray in this. I have seen it. Let me help, atone for my madness." So she relented, and glided over foul waters, aimless and purposeful, to purify the dying world. Behind them stood the young tree, the holy yew, first of the green spring, straddling the last of the ancient world.

  So cold was the Bone Ship, its wake was a solid fan of frost, a sparkling shower of crystals, falling stars on the bloody waters of the world. Strange and beautiful, the carven ivory prow as laced leaves and twigs made frozen in stone. But all the rest was a funeral bier, built of dead men, raw bones stitched with ice. Gray and white and b
lue the light played on the solid deck. The Bone Ship, as a swift iceberg it swam bringing the deep winter with it. Stagnant were the pools they traveled through, stinking worse than old death, worse than the midden mounds. And ever on the side of the boat, the remains of man slipped by. Vanquished steel dragons, the twisted corpses of villages, and always the dead that the human wolves had left. On the edge of their vision, the land crept back slowly to press against the foul waters. No helmsman steering, neither oar nor sail and yet the sped as a rapid flood, as a skate over smooth midwinter ponds.

  Ganit stared some time at the ruined land and ahead at the still foul water. "Brone, I know not where we are bound. Only that we were meant to take this ship away from the yew."

  "It matters not, I have no destination except the uttermost end. So I will wander until it is found. Until the stillness of the world overtakes me."

  Ganit watched Hadur's men upon the bank, their madness pressing them on, ever tearing anything asunder that moved . Slaughtering each other. The bodies of men lay unburied upon the banks, floating in the water, bargeless, shroudless, flameless, cold and still flowing ever back towards the sea. The Bone Ship drew them down, a procession, an army on the wide waters, a mob of dead as leaves falling from an autumn tree. "Who will mourn them?" he asked aloud.

  "I will mourn them, Ganit. As long as my breath remains. The silent tomb of the world will be their dirge, the fallen snow will both their shroud and gravedigger be."