A Dirge for Prester John

I sat on my haunches below her pillow, a wide, winnowed, wind-broken lash of stone. “All right,” I roared up to her, my chest so full of her beauty up there, with the sun shining through her as if it wanted to climb inside her skin. “Teach me what you know.”

The woman had collapsed on the north end of the building site, where the curls of stone the masons had chiseled and hammered off piled up in mountains of blue shards. Already the cathedral cast a long shadow—I remember John saying these took generations to build, that a little boy might be born, he might grow up strong with golden hair and grey eyes, might learn a trade, blacksmithing or glassworking, might go to war in the Levant and lose his blessing fingers in a battle with pirates, might marry a woman with a limp because she knew how to read and he did not, might have four children, one a son, and that son have a daughter who married a minor lord, elevating the whole family, and her daughter might marry an earl and own a strand of pearls that cost more than her grandfather had earned in his life, and in all that time still a cathedral would only be begun. Yet we were meant to have it done and dusted by the time the human king got home.

Already Gahmureen had begun to plan a long, winding stair to wrap the whole building, spiraling up and up, made of malachite with its endless green swirls. I suppose the gryphons helped it along, and the stones wanted to be together, after all, as they had once been. As soon as you brought two together the day seemed a little brighter. We’d done so much. Those mounds of stone chips towered, cast their own shadows.

And in one of them we found her. Very lovely, in a ragged dress that showed most of one breast and no shoes, her long dark hair tangled and matted, her skin ruddy and dark, but not healthy. Windburned and chapped, her poor legs had been slashed with tiny strokes, as though a thousand needles had scored her.

The cametenna lay as though dead, her huge hands thrown up over her face as if to hide herself from heaven.

THE VIRTUE OF THINGS

IS IN THE MIDST OF THEM

12. On Emeralds

Several enormous emeralds rolled along the hallways of the Mount. They were approximately the size of a healthy man, his limbs extended to make a wheel, should you run ribbon from his head to his hands to his feet. I was sometimes able to tell them apart by their inclusions, but often they simply dazzled me, or the late afternoon sun would stream through them, showering the chambers with green prisms. I counted at least seven that I knew by sight—there might have been more, indeed this seems very likely.

The unicorn was bad enough, I hear you say, and some of our visiting female cousins had to turn their eyes from the page when you mentioned his horn. And now you would have

us believe in locomotive gemstones?

I have told you before, good readers, that when the world presents itself, properly dressed in its strangeness, I need embroider nothing with fancy.

As all men know, emeralds have great healing powers, but demons love them. A terrible trade for a mystic, but I have never been muchly concerned with demons. I met one while snowbound in Ecbatana and he seemed a nice enough fellow. Very long fingers, as I recall. A whiff of myrrh about his person. Other than that he kept to himself, wrote several very good poems, shot game, and with a great deal of sadness took a lord’s youngest daughter to wed in remuneration for having cured the man’s tumors. I remember the demon sighing: I did not look to get married so young. I might have liked to have seen Pandemonium first, or finish my book. Nothing ever goes to plan, in the end.

The emeralds do not have a language as such. However, they are more than capable of communication—in fact, their method commands much more attention than merely shouting down the hall. The gems glow with a great green fire, and their feelings flow forth within the flames—when the light touches the flesh, you feel what the emerald feels and have little choice in the matter. There they go, the grinding, glittering wheels, flashing here and there, sending a beam of well-being here, of anger and bitterness there, of love unrequited and unlooked for—whatever private operas play out among the jewels.

This was how I discovered that, after the unicorn hunt, I was no longer permitted to move about the Mount as I pleased. I attempted to leave my room and a queen emerald, one I thought of as Cabochon, for that was her cut (I assume she was a she—I suppose she could be a he as easily, or a nothing at all since emeralds are hardly sticklers on social points, but I prefer women’s company so I shall call my Cab what I like), rolled across the door, shining with a strong sense of not a chance, my friend. I implored, but Cab’s light did not change.

Cabochon seemed to be a sort of pack leader—an alpha gem, along with the one I thought of as Trillion, again, for the cut of him, a broad bull emerald. But Cab could spin down the halls at such speeds, and Trillion, with his points, had a slower, more plodding, more meditative pace through the world. She would roll around him with such merriment, throwing out rainbows of teasing delight, like a puppy nipping at a litter mate, and he would simply glow.

Having little else to do with a gigantic jewel wedged in my door, sparkling with regret and chagrin, I asked her several questions I had been considering, but too interested in my friend Agneya’s eggs (one had gone totally black—this is apparently considered an omen of great good luck) and the ever-distant Bonfire and the disturbing events of the hunt to interview the rolling gems.

“Do emeralds alone grow to such great size, or are there rubies and sapphires, too, roaming the hills in packs, jasper prides digging trails through the brush, carnelian wheels spinning along the seashore?”

Cabochon glowed pride: only us, we alone.

“Do you have a mother, a father?”

My sweet Cab flickered—too complex.

“Are you born?”

Green warmth: yes.

“From another jewel, a parent gem?”

Cabochon grew cool and dim: no.

“The mountain then. The mountain is your mother?”

A blaze of grassy color—Indeed! A dark piney flash: more I cannot say.

“Are you servants here? Like dogs set to guard a treasure? Or are you citizens of Simurgh, being fiery, after a fashion?”

Cab rolled back and forth, distressed. Her light took on a bluish cast. The Masters will hear.

“I do not mean to discomfit you! Let us move on to easier topics. Do you have art among you? Music, theater, epic and historical poetry?”