The Castle Оf Hape. Caves Оf Fire Аnd Ice. The Joining Оf Тhe Stone

FOUR

She stood on a narrow, rocky trail. Far below her sprawled a city, and beyond it gleamed them pale smear of open water. The Bay of Pelli? The Bay of Sangur? Or could it be the wilder sea beyond Carriol? At the thought of Carriol her heart contracted with longing. Could that city be part of Carriol, a city grown beyond her wildest dreams? No, from the position of the sun she must be looking south toward the Bay of Pelli. And this mountain was far too close to the coast to be a part of the Ring of Fire. It could only be Scar Mountain, standing just above Zandour. Scar Mountain, where Ram had been born; and like a whisper the tree man’s words touched her, stirred her, Follow the source of Ramad’s beginning. Touch the place of his childhood and his strength.

Could this be the time of Ram’s childhood? The thought excited and terrified her. Up this narrow path would she find Gredillon’s house carved into the side of the mountain? Find the young Ramad there, a child, as she had first known him? Would his Seer’s skills tell him that she would one day be his friend, in time still ahead of him? She started up the path with bent head, uncertain in her emotions. Was she afraid to see Ram so, small and vulnerable? She felt very tired suddenly, almost weak. She realized she was hungry and could not remember when she had last eaten. Early morning beside Gravan’s campfire? No, she remembered cooking rock hares on the mountain. That seemed a lifetime ago. She turned a bend in the path, thinking of her empty stomach, and came on the stone house abruptly. Stone slabs against the mountain, heavy timber door.

It was just as Ram had shown her in their childhood visions. Inside, she would find it carved deep into the mountain, half-house, half-cave. And its walls would be all carved into shelves where stood hundreds of bells wrought of amber and clay and amethyst, of tin and of precious glass and bronze. How often, when he waked from nightmares, had Ram yearned after his home, yearned for Gredillon? Was the bell woman here, waiting for her to push open the door just as she had waited for Ram’s mother before Ram was born? Was Ram here?

She remembered the clay bell in her hand then. But her fist was tight, and when she opened her palm, only clay dust lay there. Had she shattered it in the excitement of the wild ride? In her tense climb up the mountain? She could not remember. Or had it shattered itself, when its mission was done? She mourned its loss, felt a strange fear because she could not remember when she had last held it lightly, when she had clenched her fist so tight. She did not like to be unable to account for her actions. She knocked and waited, knocked again, and then with sudden impatience, almost with fear, she flung the door open and lurched inside, hastily pushing it to behind her.

The room was very dim, with only small, shuttered windows to light it, the shutters partly broken, with some of the heavy slats hanging crooked. There were plates on the table, and chairs pulled out as if a meal had just been finished. But the food was petrified into dry greenish lumps; and a layer of dust thick as gauze covered plates, table, the chairs and beds, covered shapeless litter scattered across the floor, heaps of rags or clothes, and the scattered bits of what she made out to be broken bells, as if someone had pulled them from the shelves in a rage and flung them on the stone floor. She remembered then, Ram telling of his father’s fury when he came searching for Ram and could not find him; how he had torn this house apart, searching. She remembered Ram’s words suddenly and sharply. Ancient scenes began to rise out of the dust, and voices to speak in the room. She was immersed suddenly and wholly in Ram’s childhood, immersed in joy, in pain, in a dozen scenes, sweeping her through those painful, growing years until she was a child again herself, loving Ram with all her child’s soul.

She stood, drained at last, with tears running down her cheeks. The room loomed dim and gray around her. Now that she knew this part of Ram’s life, knew it too well, the pain of it would never leave her.

Near the hearth lay a small boy’s tunic, its shape plain under the blanket of dirt. She knelt to pick it up, and it fell apart in her hands. When she touched the cover of one of the three cots, the thread disintegrated under her exploring fingers. She shivered, hugging herself, trying to drive out the cold. If she went down into the city of Zandour, which lay below this mountain, would she find it dead and moldering, too?

Or if Zandour were a city still alive, would she hear talk of a long-dead Ramad of the wolves?

She had a strong desire to clean this room, to sweep away the dust and collect the broken bells, make it clean and livable. Perhaps to stay here awhile. But in hope of what? That Ram would come to her in this long-lost place? She looked at the petrified food on the table with distaste, at the dusty bed.

She knew she must sleep, she was achingly tired, but did not find the thought of sleeping in this room very pleasant, because of the decay, because of the painful scenes the room seemed still to contain. A cold draft touched her, and she tightened the latch on the door, wished for her sword. She turned back the bedcover at last, managing to make only one tear in it. The blanket beneath seemed sturdy enough, though it smelled of ancient things. Darkness drifted through her mind, as if the dust itself drugged her. She fell onto the bed and curled around, knees bent, her arm over her bow and pack.

She slept deeply. Not until hours later did the dreams begin to push around her, to touch on moments of Ram’s life, to form a pattern that, afterward, she could not reconstruct, but which left her somehow strengthened. As if she had touched powers basic to Ram and touched a meaning central to all life.

She woke to a gray, dim morning, hungry because she had not eaten the night before, angry at herself for not taking better care. She sat up, fuzzy with sleep, the night dreams hardly separated from the gray shadows of the room, and began to rummage in her pack for food. A small sound stopped her. The door latch was lifting.

She snatched up her bow, pushing cobwebs from her mind, as the door pushed noiselessly in.

Dull gray light crept in through the widening crack, the same flat gray that seeped in around the broken shutters. She waited, arrow to bow, her heart pounding, sleep cast aside. What was that smell? Like something dead.

Then she saw the hand feeling in through the crack of the door. A thin, white hand. The dead smell increased, was sickening. A shadow blocked the widening crack. The door pushed in in one quick movement, and a dark figure stood looking in at her, a faceless silhouette. A figure slight as a twig.

When it turned, she could see the side of its face: pale, skull-thin. Its cape was bloodstained; blood lay smeared across its cheek, down its side and arm. It stood watching her. And she knew it had come here to die. Had followed her, meant to take her body in place of its own dying one.

Why her? Why had it sought her? Across what span of Time had it come seeking, and what had wounded it so badly? And where was Torc? What had happened to Torc, who had gone so confidently to follow and destroy the wraith? She felt a twisting fear for Torc; and a fear for herself that made her go sick with apprehension. It is a dead soul that can never die again. The memory of Torc’s words made her shiver. It would possess you. She longed to kill it and knew she dare not do so.

She made her mind seek out, listening, until at last her inner Seer’s sense touched the essence of the wraith. Its dark image came around her, lusting to drive out her spirit, lusting for the shell of her body, for her skills. Images of torture crowded in from its mind. Then she felt the pain of a sword across the wraith’s cheek, was swung into sudden battle. A dark, familiar Herebian raider slashed at its shoulder, and she felt the wraith’s pain. Then the Herebian HaGlard attacked his brother, and she did not understand what they fought for among themselves.

She saw Ram suddenly, slipping inward toward the battle unseen, and caught her breath. Ram, preparing to attack the Herebians. Her heart pounded at the sight of him. He moved stealthily, his red hair in shadow. Ram, linked with the Herebians who had captured the wraith; surely linked with the wraith itself. But why? What had happened to bring them together across Time and space?

Ram was almost on the battle but still unseen, then one of the warriors glimpsed him and turned from fighting to attack him. She watched with drawn breath, willing her power against the Herebians as both swords were raised against Ram. And she knew, suddenly and sharply, what they fought over, what Ram sought.

The Herebians had found a shard of the runestone. A shard sniffed out by the wraith from beneath the mountain Tala-charen. But she was seeing a vision past; seeing, from the wraith’s mind, what had already happened to it, for the wraith itself moved in the room behind her. She jerked suddenly from the vision and spun to face it, her fury drowning fear, her fury at what it had intended for Ram.

The wraith had waited, on the edge of that battle, waited for Ram to die. Its cold desire for Ram’s death sickened her. She stared at its white, bloody face and lunged suddenly, grabbed it, sickened by its stench. It spun. She kneed it in the belly, so it fell screaming, and she was on it again, hitting it across the neck so it cowered away from her in pain. She stood over it, trembling with fury. She sensed the battle, sensed Ram fighting for his life against the two Herebians while the wraith waited for him to die. She saw Ram fall, saw HaGlard draw sword over Ram, then the vision went foggy or she dizzy, she did not know which. She was so confused, was wild with anxiety for Ram. She shook the wraith, screaming. “Is he dead? Did he die there?” But the wraith only looked at her, cold and expressionless. She shook it again, hit it so hard it screamed, gurgling, fighting unconsciousness with cold hatred. Ram could not be dead, or the wraith would have taken his body. She pulled the wraith up, nauseated at its closeness, tried to see again that other time, glimpsed for an instant something lying in the dust of that time, trampled by the boots of fighting men. Something shining green. Saw a hand reach for it in shadow, then the wraith was unconscious and the vision gone.

*

Ram knifed a Herebian and spun away as the man fell. He saw the runestone gleaming in the dust at his feet for one instant, then kicked aside. He searched wildly and could not find it. As the other Herebian bore down on him, wounded and uncertain, he turned and killed the man. The wraith groveled beside the first body, then was gone. Vanished. And with it, the runestone was gone.

He stood shaken, staring at emptiness where the wraith had been, where the runestone had been. Clouds of Time swirled around him and he felt then as he had felt when he first sensed the stone here through the thoughts of the wraith. He had trailed those thoughts. But he had battled and killed the Herebians only to see the stone snatched from the dust beneath his feet. He stood staring at the two dead bodies, hardly seeing them, stricken at his stupid, senseless loss of the runestone.

And stricken at the escape of the wraith. He should have killed it. For he saw it suddenly and clearly in the vision of a dim, shuttered room rimed with dust; and he saw the figure it faced.

How had it come there to the room he knew so well? How, out of all possibilities, had Skeelie come there? Why?

Why? He felt her cold fury sharply as she faced the wraith; then felt her terror.

How had Skeelie crossed the barrier into Time? Why had she? Had she been flung so, against her will? Or had she, stubborn Skeelie, somehow crossed the barrier on purpose? He did not want to ask himself why.

In what time was she, then, in that moldering stone house? And why had the wraith gone to her? Ram reached out to her, but could no more guide himself to her than to Telien. The wraith had the runestone now and would surely be the more powerful because of it. What was that creature? Was it linked to the same evil as the dark Seers? As the Hape? Was all evil linked in some patterning of forces he could not yet comprehend? Surely that evil touched Skeelie. He forced his powers out blindly across Time to drive the wraith away from her. But he felt as clumsy and helpless as a babe.

*

Skeelie stood staring across the littered room at the wraith as it regained consciousness, but her thoughts were all of Ram. Was Ram injured, badly hurt? She could touch no vision now from the wraith’s mind. Had it taken the runestone? If it had, did that mean that Ram did indeed lie wounded?

The wraith opened its eyes, watched her coldly. She felt its longing for death, knew it wanted her to kill it. It rose slowly and, without changing its expression, began to stalk her. She backed away from it, bow drawn. It shuffled toward her. She spun, pushed the table at it, twisting, and knocked the wraith flat. It lay writhing beneath the upturned table for some moments before it rose, and again moved toward her. Its shoulder drooped now, and its wounded arm hung loose. It moved silently and steadily with hatred so strong she thought hatred alone might stifle her breath. It began to whisper hoarsely. She could not at first make out the words. Was it saying, Our way? Yes. “Our way. Our way,” over and over. Its voice was dull and muted, insistent as a heartbeat. Perhaps its voice replaced the heartbeat, in the emptiness of that inhuman void. “Our way. Our way. Our way. You will come into me our way, as the others have come. You will be part of us. We will live in you. Healthy. Young. We will have strength in you, strength . . .” It ended hissing, pushed toward her, its bony hands reaching.

She backed away from it. Its eyes never left her, never blinked. She glanced around the room, searching for anything that might help her. How could you fight something you dared not kill? Her hands trembled. She brought all the strength of her mind to bear against it. But her Seer’s power seemed not to touch it. She began to lose her nerve.

Stop it, Skeelie! Kill it if you must, then battle its dark spirit! But don’t quail before it! You’ve killed Herebian soldiers. What makes you afraid now? The dark, she thought, quailing in spite of herself. The death-face, the cold evil that it stinks of. She backed away, her eyes never leaving it, her arrow taut in the bow. If I kill it, I can defeat it! I will defeat it! If only she had her sword, her clean-silver sword. She remembered coldly Torc’s stubborn thought, Do not kill it, sister! If it dies, you cannot defeat it! But I will defeat it! She shot without waiting or thinking, pinned her arrow through the side into the table with one swift act that released all her fear, that made her predatory again and aggressive. She watched the wraith squirm, heard its scream, thin and faint like a pinioned rabbit; the arrow was deep, it would not loose itself. The wraith struggled against the table, continued to scream, its blood flowing onto the stone floor as it wrenched ineffectually against her arrow. Quickly she ripped the blanket from the bed into strips. She would tie the creature and leave it. If it died of thirst and hunger and loss of blood, she would be well away, where it could not claim her body.

Yet still she was loathe to touch it. If she touched it, would it possess her? Come into her body through her touch and destroy her? She went sick at the thought of handling it, yet knew she must touch it, must tie it, and more: knew she must search for the runestone among the folds of its clothing.

Did it have the stone? What had happened when Ram fell? She could only see in her memory HaGlard with his sword drawn, then the wraith close and attentive. Think of the stone, Skeelie! Find the stone! Had the wraith snatched it up? She tried to touch some sense of that moment from its mind; but the creature shielded and she could see nothing. She stared at it with repulsion and then with resolution. At last she began to tie it, holding her breath against its stench. It was less like a man than a corpse was. Parody of a man. Parody of death. She tied its hands tightly, then twitched a fold of cape aside and felt along the wraith’s body, drew away quickly, sickened. It did not speak, seemed to have lost all desire to speak. Never had she felt such disgust for anything, not even for the dark Seers of Pelli.

At last she forced herself to search its clothing: the folds of cloth, the pockets, and inside the small, once-elegant boots. She found nothing, and turned away retching. The room seemed very close, dank and fetid. Her senses seemed awry, dull and confused, as if something had twisted and warped them. She had to get out of this place, would turn to emptiness if she stayed. She could not bring herself to search further, to examine its body. Grabbing up her pack and bow, she fled the house, bolting the door behind her, jamming the rusted lock through the bolt with relief.

She stood a moment trying to collect herself and put down the sickness, knowing she should go back to search further but unable to do so.

She wandered across a small patch of ground that must once have been Gredillon’s garden, confused and uncertain, not knowing what to do. An ancient zayn tree stood tall and sheltering. Ram had spoken of a young zayn tree standing near the house when he was small. There should be a grave nearby, of the small boy with red-dyed hair who had been disguised as Ram and buried here to deceive HarThass in his search for Ram. She found only an indentation in the earth that might have been a grave, sunken in. The marker would long since have rotted. She felt there was a body here, felt the sense of bones, of pale dust, said a short prayer for that unknown child who had helped Ram to live. Standing beneath the zayn tree, staring up at the mountain, she could almost see young Ram running there, surrounded by foxes. The sense of him in this place was so very strong; the sense of his learning years, the sense of his reaching out to mysteries still beyond him, to skills he meant, stubbornly, to make his own.

Gone, now, that childhood. Gone into Time. And yet it would be a part of Ram always. A part she would hold dear to her.

She turned at last, paused before the bolted door, sensed the wraith with distaste, then headed down the trail that would lead to the city of Zandour, walking fast, wanting now only to put space between herself and that dark shadow. As she walked she suddenly remembered Torc, felt fear for the great wolf. Torc had followed the wraith and the Herebians. Why, then, was she not at Tala-charen? Why had she not killed the Herebians as she had meant to do, then dispose of the wraith? What had happened to her?

But Ram had been there; Torc could not have killed the wraith while it could enter Ram’s body. Still, she would have attacked the Herebians, helped Ram. Skeelie’s pace slowed with her concern for the golden bitch wolf. She stood staring off down the mountain, wondering, worrying.

*

High up Tala-charen, Torc lay looking down the cliff to where Ram stood over the two dead Herebian raiders. Her strength was at low ebb, her body light and weak with loss of blood. The painful arrow in her side prevented her from lying out flat in any semblance of comfort. She must go down to Ram now, he was alone. She rose and started down to him.

But the short journey over rocks, which she should have leaped in moments, was slow and painful, and when at last she came down onto the foot of the mountain, she was nearly too weak to go further. She had not spoken to Ram in her mind, but rather had listened, touching his remorse and fury that the wraith had gone, his worry over Skeelie. His anger at the disappearance of the runestone. His ever-present sadness and yearning for the girl called Telien.

When she reached level ground, she skirted the four horses with sense blocking, so as not to frighten them away, and went to stand beside Ram. He was so preoccupied, standing unheeding over the dead Herebians, that he did not see or sense her. She lay down behind him, watching him, knowing she could be patient for a while longer.

Ram kicked with idle anger at the nearest Herebian arm, pushed the body over with his toe. He knew he should strip the corpses of valuables. There could be jewels, money, things he might well need. He knelt at last and turned one of the bodies so he could feel into its pockets. And as he turned it, he saw a glint of silver beneath its shoulder. He held the body up and stared at the silver handle.

Then he drew Skeelie’s sword out of the blood and dust. Skeelie’s sword! He crouched there holding it, trying to fathom how it had gotten there and could sense nothing. How could Skeelie’s sword be here? How could it have been taken from her, except in death? Only a moment before, he had sensed that Skeelie lived, that the wraith had tracked her through Time. He slipped her sword into his belt, turned, and saw the golden bitch wolf lying awkwardly behind him, the arrow sticking out, her thick coat matted with dried blood.

He knelt, took her face in his hands, tipped water into her parched mouth. He tried to make her more comfortable, then quickly made a fire, sick at the thought of what he must do. He must cut the arrow out, and it was deep. He would need herbs, birdmoss for the healing. Great Eresu, he wished Skeelie were there. The look in the wolf’s golden eyes told him she would be patient, that she trusted him.

Yet he drew the wolf bell from his tunic and held it a moment. It gave him power; perhaps it would give her strength. Perhaps it could help him to numb the pain of the cutting.