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

NINE

Kish tied the winged mare near a water lick, though the stupid animal seemed so sickly she didn’t think it would last long. RilkenDal’s mare was already dead. Curse them. Curse RilkenDal for dying and leaving her here. Curse the bastard son of Ramad and the wolf bell that clung to him. She would have that bell and the stone it held! She spilled the shards of the runestone into her palm, felt their weight, considered their amassed power, then dropped them back into her tunic. She must have the other two shards still missing, must find a way to seek them out. She stared up at the black cliff above her and at the winged lizards diving mindlessly after birds. Perhaps, because of the sickly mare, she would have no choice but to subdue the creatures and somehow bring them down to her and make them tractable, bad-tempered and stupid as they were. She had to have some way out of this barren valley. She wished she had RilkenDal’s skill at controlling stupid beasts. But now, with the stones . . .

Some distance away on a ridge, the gray mare the girl had ridden stood watching her. Nasty thing. She tried to lure it. The power of the stones came strong, exciting her, making the mare shy and paw and try twice to wheel and fly away, though caught by the power Kish wielded, its wings were pinioned as if it were in a snare. But then in one wild surge it reared and rose, straining in spite of her power, and was gone. Curse the stupid animal! She stood sulking and furious. Then she pulled the stones from her robe once more and stared down at them.

The power of the stones might not have held the mare, but they wielded a far greater force in battle, for with them she had strengthened the Kubalese warriors until now they drove the Carriolinians back toward Carriol, drove her own ungrateful cults back with them. A handful of cultists remained loyal and fought now beside Kearb-Mattus with a zeal that made her smile with satisfaction.

She shook the stones and watched their green fire flash across her palm. Three more stones to complete the nine-stone. The wolf bell had been as immovable as if it were fastened to the earth when she tried to lift it from the Seer’s tunic. Curse Dracvadrig and RilkenDal both for being dead. She needed their power now. But she would have the wolf bell. She must.

She thought with brief speculation of Kearb-Mattus, but he had no Seer’s powers to help her, only brute strength. Still, he might be a satisfactory lover if nothing more. He was brawny, with a killer’s lust she liked. There would be time for play once she had the stones and a human creature bred to the joining. She smiled. Now it would be her runestone, whole and powerful. Shared with no one. She would raise the child of Lobon to her ways, and he would do her bidding.

She turned to stare down the long drop of the abyss to where the iron gates held safe her captives. Now there was only to breed them, to get the heir to the stone’s final and inevitable joining. She scowled. The girl seemed as without passion as a toad. Blast her. The spell on her had so far only made her avoid the boy like a plague. And that one, Lobon, gone surly and silent. Sexless, that’s what they were. She stood letting her mind open to darkness, to forces now moving across Ere, powers that excited her and made her blood pound. Forces she understood and could draw to this place. She would have the bell. She would call forth a child to join the stone. And she would shape both child and stone to darkness.

Then Ere would kneel to her will. Then the entire land would be her courtyard and all men her willing servants. And the Seers—the Carriolinian Seers—would be as docile to her as the horses of Eresu had been to RilkenDal.

And the gods, Kish? And the sacred valley of Eresu? What of them?

There were no such things as gods, no such place as Eresu. Urdd, yes. Urdd was real and flaming and violent with the anger of the earth ripping it. Urdd was alive and cruel and satisfying.

But Eresu with its Luff’Eresi was simply a dream without substance, the crutch of weak men afraid to live on their own terms.

She left the tethered, dying mare, and stood staring up at the flying lizards, then reached out with a cold power and laid a cloud over their dim minds that made them wobble in flight and begin to circle uncertainly. She made one come down so close to the tethered mare that the imbecilic animal threw herself futilely against her tether. Kish smiled. Yes, she could tame the lizards, dumb and nasty-tempered as they were. She let the creature return to its friends. She found the path Dracvadrig had worn smooth with his hard, scaly body over years of use and started down. It was just dusk.

By dawn she was standing outside the locked gate, watching the two within with cold distaste. Idiots. Sleeping as far apart as they could in the wide cave. She watched the girl stir, then wake, and Kish drew back into the shadow of the cliff, blocking. Perhaps the girl would go to the boy now, touch him. But no, she knelt beside the dark wolf and began to dress his wounds. Stupid child! The two were as dense and sexless as any humans she had ever encountered.

They must breed! What else was there to do, male and female alone! What else, when her curses tied them so strongly!

At last she fetched food from the ogres’ cave and set it inside the bars, then left them, sick at the sight of them. She would not let them starve, though. That was not part of her plan.

Lobon woke, sensed her approach, watched her come to the bars and shove the bowl inside. He did not move. The sense of her was always around them, growing stronger or weaker as she moved about the abyss, suffocating them when she stood close, tolerable only when she was above in the valley.

He and Meatha could speak to the mare up there, but the poor creature was so miserable and sick she had ceased to say much, so weak from mistreatment, from lack of enough food that they were not sure she would live. Even Michennann was able to do little for her except to bring mouthfuls of green grass when the warrior queen had gone.

Lobon watched Meatha kneeling in the gray dawn, tending Feldyn, her dark hair tumbled over one shoulder, the pale skin of her neck like silk against the wolf’s dark coat as she leaned to lay her cheek against his head. He rose from his stone bed. The gash across his shoulder was stiff and sore, not healing properly, for they had no healing herbs. Meatha looked across at him. “We need birdmoss. For you. For Feldyn.” She said nothing about her own burns. “Michennann could bring birdmoss, carry a little in her mouth. Somewhere where the valleys are green there will be birdmoss beside a running stream. . . .”

“It will do little good to be healed if the sick mare dies and there is only one mount to carry us out. Michennann had best stay with her. It’s a slow business, carrying grass. . . .”

“It’s no good to have a mount, Lobon, if you’re dead of festering wounds!” Kneeling, her hand on Feldyn’s shoulder, she spoke out in silence to Michennann, ignoring Lobon’s advice.

When she raised her head at last, she Saw the gray mare in sharp vision rising into the morning sky, flying swiftly beside the black cliff, saw her rise to keep clear of the bad-tempered lizards. “She will bring birdmoss,” she said, glancing at Lobon. He looked back at her. He guessed she was right. He knew she was beautiful. His need of her began again to run wild; he turned and moved away from her deeper into the cave. “Bring water,” she called after him, her own voice tight with restraint.

He filled the waterskin, which Kish had inexplicably returned to them. But what else would Kish do? She could not breed a son from would-be lovers who were dying of thirst, Or maybe she thought that with less time spent carrying water in cupped hands, there would be more time for idleness, and so for desire. He returned and knelt beside Feldyn, to tip the waterskin to the wolf’s mouth. Meatha moved away at once. As Seers need, so Seers cleave, and in cleaving bring new life. The heat of Kish’s curse never abated.

They ate at last from the bowl Kish had left, sharing the mass of boiled roots and reptiles equally with the wolves. The wolves thought it delicious. It made Meatha and Lobon retch. Feldyn licked the bowl clean.

“When Feldyn is healed,” Meatha said, “we must go from this place. We cannot—” She looked at him pleadingly. “We cannot stay here together.”

He stared at the locked gate.

“Could we—go deeper into the cave?” she asked. “Could there be another way out? I can—sometimes I think I can feel something there. Not very clearly, but does something call to us from deeper in?”

He looked at her, tried to answer, and found himself reaching for her. She rose and moved away.

“You could go,” he said, deflated and miserable. “If I could make Kish open the gate, if I could trick her, you could call Michennann down, you . . .”

“Trick her how? And where would I go? Except—except to find the seventh stone.”

He frowned at her, puzzled. “The seventh stone?”

“Kish carries six. If we—”

“She carries the stone that was Dracvadrig’s. The two you took from Carriol. And three that were Ramad’s. But the seventh stone is here.” He held the wolf bell out to her. “Inside the belly of the wolf.”

Meatha stared, and she reached to touch the rearing bronze wolf; but at once she drew her hand back.

“I thought you knew,” he said. “The dark seems unable to touch it. The power of the wolves—or maybe Skeelie’s power reaching . . .”

“Skeelie? Skeelie of Carriol?”

“She is—Skeelie is my mother. My father was Ramad,” he said simply.

It was moments before she spoke. He could feel her confusion, and her sharp interest. When she did speak, her voice was barely audible. “Ramad—Ramad lived generations ago.” But her eyes were wide as she considered the truth. “Ramad—did move through Time,” she whispered. “How—how can such a thing be?”

He tried to give her a sense of Ramad’s life, the same sense, the same scenes that Skeelie had given him so often, Time warping and thrusting Ram forward into generations not yet born in his time. And as Lobon wrapped her in the visions of Ramad’s life, a change swept Lobon himself, twisted his very soul, the final changing sense of what Ramad was, what Ramad’s life had meant.

And so what his own life meant.

She sat Seeing it all, sensing with him the power of Ramad’s quest for the shards of the runestone, gripped by Ramad’s commitment, by the urgency that Ramad had felt, even in his own time, for the salvation of Ere.

When the vision faded, she sat silent. He could not remember having moved so close to her. It was impossible to keep from touching her. Now she shared Ramad’s life with him, shared his memory with him. When he took her hand, she startled; but she rose and moved away. Then she turned a forbidding look back at him that only made his desire stronger. He stood up, meaning to go to her, but a stir of wind at the bars made him turn back. Michennann was there, her wings flared against the sky. As she thrust her soft gray nose between the bars, Meatha ran to her, then hugged her through the bars and wept against the mare’s cheek as Michennann nuzzled her.

At last Michennann drew back, placed her muzzle in Meatha’s outstretched hands, and spit a great wad of birdmoss into her palms, shaking her nose afterward at the sharp, bitter taste. She nuzzled Meatha’s cheek once more, then she was gone, in a lifting hush of wings, almost straight up through the abyss. They could feel her terror of the abyss, her repulsion. Meatha watched her out of sight, then turned to dressing Feldyn’s wound with a little of the birdmoss.

When Feldyn was comfortable, she made Lobon lie down, and bared and dressed his shoulder. The birdmoss was still damp from the stream. He watched her, and he wanted to hold her.

“We must not,” she said coldly. She tied the bandage and left him, rubbing the birdmoss from her hands into the burns that scarred her arms. The remaining moss she laid on a stone.

His passion remained like a fever, he could not turn his mind from her. His dreams of her soared and swept him away so he woke exhilarated and needing, then woke fully to feel only frustration. He knew his passion was of Kish’s making, that its results if ever it were let free would threaten all of Ere, but still he was miserable. He did not know what Meatha dreamed, though at times her desire reached burning to him.

And Meatha began to think privately, If we bred a child, a child that could be hidden safe from Kish and from the dark forces, a child to wield the stone long after we are dead, a child—Lobon’s child . . . a child who would keep safe the forces of light . . .

She began to waver in her resolve. She wanted Lobon, she wanted to be one with him. She turned away from him again and again, biting back tears.

“Meatha?”

She could not look at him directly. Her hands shook. His presence, his powers, drew her like a creature in a snare. He moved toward her.

Feldyn growled. Crieba stepped between them, snarling.

He dropped his hand and stepped back. He stared down at Crieba’s cold eyes, and sense returned to him. “I will try to find a way out,” he said flatly. “A way back through the cave.” And he left them.

*

Well before dawn, Michennann spoke silently but so urgently that Meatha jerked upright. She thought the mare was again at the gate, but saw only emptiness beyond the bars. Cammett has died. She is lying twisted in the traces that bound her. But her spirit is free now, free. Meatha understood then that Michennann spoke from the valley above. The mare’s terrible sadness tore at her, Michennann’s terrible hatred of the warrior queen.

When she looked up and saw that Lobon was not in the cave, it took her a minute to remember that he was not simply getting a drink of water. Had he found a way out? Oh, he would not go without her. She felt a moment of panic, and then she reached out to him, searching, afraid to hope that there was another entrance to this cave. How could there be? The dragon would never have locked them here if they could escape.

She felt his presence, as warm and close as if he knelt beside her; Saw his face in a sudden vision and had to smile, so smeared with dirt was he, his cheeks and nose, his hands—his hands were bleeding, the nails torn where he clutched a stone. He had been digging in the cave wall. As she watched, he thrust his arm through the small hole he had made, she felt him reach into empty space, sensed now the narrow tunnel beyond. It was blocked, he told her, a wall of dirt and stone. And the earth charred as if the fire ogres had built it. Come, Meatha, quickly. Help Feldyn if you can while I dig it out so we can get through.

She wrapped the wolves’ chains around their necks as best she could. Crieba pushed ahead. Feldyn came slowly, hobbling, caught in the pain of his wounds. She could sense Lobon’s tension, was linked with Lobon and the wolves in careful blocking to prevent discovery by the warrior queen.

Meatha and the wolves were soon past the trickle of water in the inner tunnel, could hear Lobon digging now. Then suddenly they felt Kish’s presence somewhere out in the abyss. They pushed on faster, Feldyn ignoring his pain. The dark wolf pressed against her to hurry her. Then Kish was at the gate, they could hear her opening it. They felt her alarm, then her sharp, angry cry echoed down the tunnel. “Gone! They are gone! Bring swords, bring—hurry, you stupid beasts!”

They sensed her searching the cave, then pushing deeper in, sensed fire ogres shuffling behind her covering the ground too quickly. Soon behind them the tunnel began to grow red, and they knew that the ogres had pushed past Kish in their predatory and mindless quest.

They came on Lobon suddenly, pulling rocks away from a small ragged hole in the stone and earthen walls. He pushed Meatha through, Crieba leaped after her, then Lobon lifted Feldyn, for the dark wolf could not jump. Meatha took Feldyn’s shoulders, heavy as lead, and at last they got him through. He stood on unsteady legs, then moved ahead again as the fiery light behind them increased.

They hurried, pressed against one another in the narrow space. Soon behind them they heard rock being torn away from the hole, heard the bulky ogres pushing through. Lobon picked Feldyn up, and they ran. But the dark wolf weighed heavy, Meatha could feel Lobon tire, feel the throbbing pain in his shoulder and arm. “Let me take part of his weight,” she whispered. Feldyn snarled in protest, then was still.

With Feldyn’s forelegs on Meatha’s shoulders and Lobon carrying his rear, they moved faster though clumsily in what, in other circumstances, would have been a ludicrous scene, but was now too desperate to be funny. And even with their increased speed, Kish and the ogres were gaining. At another turning in the tunnel, when fire flared close behind, Feldyn leaped free in spite of his hurt leg and stood beside Crieba facing the advancing fire ogres. Kish pushed forward between them, her bow taut. “You will go no farther . . .” But the wolves leaped and tore at her so she dropped her bow; her knife flashed; Lobon struck an ogre with a rock, struck again, was past it and on the warrior queen as she slashed at Crieba; it was then they saw the fissure, a small crevice in the rock that seemed to go some distance. Lobon’s thought flashed at Meatha. Get in there! Take Feldyn! It’s too small for ogres! More fire ogres were pushing up the tunnel from the cave. Meatha balked. Lobon grabbed her and pushed her into the crevice as Crieba leaped at Kish.

“I won’t leave you, I—”

“Take Feldyn, he—” And Lobon twisted away to face the warrior queen and ogres. Feldyn snarled at Meatha and pushed her into the crevice, crowded in after her, pressing her on. Behind them the battle was fierce.

When she paused, Feldyn snarled and leaped at her. She went on at last, kept pushing in, the space so tight in places she had to squeeze. She could feel Feldyn’s pain sharply as he pushed through. The sounds of battle echoed behind them; then suddenly there was the sound of falling rocks. What had happened? She could make no picture come. Ahead she saw flame and thought fire ogres were there, too, then saw it was molten lava far below, that they had come through the tunnel to a ledge high along the side of a cavern. Where was Lobon? What was happening?

At last Crieba appeared, and Lobon behind him; and she went weak with relief.

“The tunnel was filled with ogres,” he panted.

“That noise, like falling rocks . . . ?”

“I pulled boulders down to block the tunnel. There were too many, we couldn’t fight them.” She felt his shame at having fled. She touched his cheek, and he put his arms around her. They clung together, let their need for solace take them for a moment, her face pressed into the leather of his tunic, the wolf bell hurting her ribs; and suddenly they were caught in a vision of a city on fire, men balding among burning buildings, then of winged ones above leaping through red, smoky sky—winged ones carrying dark riders, Kubalese riders; then the winged ones began deliberately to fall, smashing to earth, their riders under them. They Saw for an instant the whole of Ere torn with warring; then Meatha pulled away from Lobon, ceased to touch the bell, and the vision was gone. He let out his breath.

“They were fighting on the border of Carriol,” he said with fury. “Carriol’s armies are driven back to the border.” He had never cared, before, about Carriol. Not as he now cared.

They found a way leading downward, and only when they reached the floor of the cavern did they stop to rest. They could sense nothing following them. The air seemed fresher to their left, and they saw an opening in the far wall. They crossed to it, ducked low beneath stone, then stood staring upward with drawn breath.

Far above them in the roof of the cavern shone a jagged hole with a patch of sky beyond, sky gray with storm. As they watched, clouds blew across swept by fast winds. “There was a hole like that in another cavern,” Meatha said, “where I first met Anchorstar.” But this opening was so very distant.

To their right a crude stairway was cut into the wall, wide steps as if made for the use of fire ogres. They crossed to it and began to climb. The steps were scorched by ogres’ feet. The sounds of their footsteps made a scuffing echo across the cavern. They sensed that somewhere above them their ascent was noted, and awaited.

Then suddenly the wolves stiffened and began to stalk, and from around the bend ahead three fire ogres came shuffling, creatures awash with red flame. Lobon held the wolf bell high, and his power joined with the wolves—unfettered now by Kish’s answering power—to drive the creatures stumbling backward up the steps until they turned at last and shuffled into a high crevice. Surely they were more docile than the other fire ogres. Was it because of the bell’s power? Or was their little group together growing stronger?

Or perhaps these creatures were more used to humans and not so easily nudged to fury. Did men come here, then? And why?

They knew before they reached the top of the cavern that winged ones waited there, tied in small cells. Yes, men had been here. Dark Seers. For these were RilkenDal’s fettered mounts, captive and beaten and starving. They were of the bands from the far mountains that had been so long silent, they whose brothers were at this moment killing themselves deliberately in battle, to turn the outcome of the wars. Twenty winged horses waited, all of them scarred and stiff with wounds, burned from the fire ogre’s touch, their wings bound with leather cords, their heads tied to bolts in the stone.

When they reached them, Meatha and Lobon went sick at the sight of them. The horses were so thin and weak. They came away from their bonds walking stiffly, trying to lift wings grown heavy with disuse. Meatha’s hand shook as she began to dress wounds with the little birdmoss that was left. She applied the moss as tenderly as she could into the long gash on a white mare’s chest, wincing as the mare flinched with pain. She tore up the rest of her shift for bandages.

For four days they camped on the ledge high up the wall of the cavern. Lobon found grain in a cavern below, kept there by RilkenDal for the horses he took into battle. They found charred leather buckets by a water runlet and carried them countless times up to the winged ones.

From this height they could see lakes of fire strung across the cave floor below like a necklace. Above, through the high opening that was still so far away, they watched the first night as the sky darkened; then they crouched in the stalls away from the storm that broke with a terrible violence, drenching the cave. When at last the sky cleared and the sun shone weakly, the wind, twisting down into the cavern, was bitterly cold.

There was a constant but gentler wind, too, of beating wings, as the horses of Eresu worked at strengthening unused muscles so they could fly once more. Soon some of the horses began to descend to the floor of the cavern to drink, though they did not like going there. When the earth began again to tremble, they became nervous and would startle and sweep up into the heights of the cavern without drinking. Then on the third night a gusher of lava broke out of the cave wall below them and flowed in a river toward the molten lakes.

As the lava spilled onto the floor, fire ogres began to appear from fissures in the cave below and to move ponderously toward the lava river, then to shuffle along and around it in a cumbersome and terrifying ritual. A few turned away and came up the stairs toward the ledge, but two winged stallions rose and struck at them from the air with sharp hooves until the clumsy creatures fell to the floor below. The wolves killed a third with quick, striking slashes, then lay licking their burns. Lobon killed two with a rock and sent another over the side by tripping it. The flaming, twisting bodies lit the cave wails as they fell.

When the last ogre was gone, Meatha curled at once into the hollow of stone where she slept, trying to get warm. Crieba came to lie beside her, and she wished it were Lobon there. But when she caught his unspoken words and saw him watching her, she made a wall between them until he lay down at last beside a winged stallion to shelter from the wind that blew down on them in sharp gusts.

When Lobon woke, the wind was still. Moonlight touched the cavern from above; and the mountain was trembling in long, violent rumbles; that was what had waked him. All around him winged ones were up, balancing with open wings, for the ledge had become a turmoil of moving rock. Meatha clung to a dark stallion; the white mare pushed close to Lobon crying, Mount, Lobon! Mount! The shocks were violent, wave upon wave. The cave could shift or collapse, they could be trapped here. Lobon grabbed Feldyn and lifted him between the mare’s wings, and she leaped toward the hole above. He got Crieba mounted, felt the wolf’s fear. “Hang on with your teeth! Crouch between her wings and hang on!” He saw Meatha mounted and flung himself onto a pale stallion, grabbed a handful of mane, and felt the world drop away from him as he was swept away; felt wings fold tight around him as the stallion slipped through the hole; felt drowned by wind as the stallion beat his way out onto the open sky to make way for those coming behind.

They were free of the cave. Free. But they stood on unsteady, trembling ground; and then suddenly they were caught in a confusion of battle come out of nowhere, out of the sky all around them, no hint, no sense of it beforehand. Heavy wings beat at them, sharp-toothed lizards tore at them, diving, then wheeling away. Lobon had no weapon. The stallion he rode struck and bit. The sky was filled with lizards. Winged horses screamed. Lobon tried to see Meatha, felt teeth tear his arm. The sound of beating wings, of screams, of the earth thundering, all were mixed and confused. The stallion struck and struck, and soon below Lobon could see a dark smear of bodies on the moonwashed earth. Lizards? Horses of Eresu? Where were Feldyn, Crieba?

Meatha’s command was sharp. The wolf bell, Lobon! Use the power you carry!

But he had no chance, for the lizards were drawing away. Almost as quickly as they had come, they were gone, a stutter of wings then a black flock like huge birds against the moonwashed sky.

Why? What had called them away?

The stallion came to earth. Lobon slid down. The dark stallion who carried Meatha winged to earth and she slipped down, to rest her head against the horse’s withers. Ere’s two moons hung like half-closed eyes in an empty sky. Lobon stared at Meatha.

“Why did they leave? It was Kish guiding them. Why would she call them off?”

“She never meant for them to attack,” she said with certainty. “They—can’t you feel it? She can hardly control them. She meant only to follow us. She has sensed something—something . . .” She frowned, groping to put vague images together. “She has sensed something—that I have sensed, Lobon.” She was trembling with the need to See more clearly. What was it? So close, so urgent yet so hard to See. “Something that has lain in my thoughts. Something Anchorstar knew,” she whispered. “Kish senses it.” She turned to look away in the direction the lizards had disappeared. “Kish means to follow us, Lobon. She thinks we will seek—that we . . .”—she caught her breath—“. . . that we know where the eighth stone lies!”

They stared at one another. Slowly, frowning, she began to pull knowledge out of the deeper reaches of her mind, reaches touched by Anchorstar. Slowly a vision began to unfold, the vision Anchorstar had given her: a green valley and the crystal dome. A white-haired child. And, as if she had forgotten half the vision, a sense of power now couched beneath the crystal dome: power that could be only one thing.

“A stone lies there,” she whispered.

“Yes.” He Saw the vision as clearly as she. The wolves Saw it. A shard of the runestone beneath a crystal dome in the center of a bright green valley.

“Kish sees it, too,” Meatha said.

“She means to follow. She means to see us find the stone, and then . . . then . . .”

She reddened, swallowed. “Then see our child born. Take the stones and our child.” She felt a stab of pain as if, indeed, there were a child, tender and helpless child so very vital to Ere. And now she felt pain and shame at having taken the stones from Carriol, pain at her self-deception. And she saw in Lobon’s eyes the knowledge of his own self-deception. She felt his shame at having so long ignored the truth of what he must do, and what his life must mean.

She touched his shoulder. He put his arms around her, rested his brow against her hair, and they knew as one the blind, twisted paths they had both followed, so willful, so dangerous for Ere. Something of their spirits joined in that moment that could never again be parted.

Something much dearer, much stronger than Kish could ever create with her spells.

At last they stepped apart without speaking.

Crieba had gone to hunt. Feldyn watched them drowsily as they gathered sticks for firewood among the sparse, low bushes. The winged ones were scattered across the rounded butt of mountain, grazing the thick grass greedily. There were no trees for shelter here, only stunted bush. The mountain was ancient, long ago worn nearly flat—though still it rose higher than the surrounding peaks. Only two peaks, to the south, were higher. Eken-dep with her glacier, and the peak that both were sure was Tala-charen, for still a power like a voice reached out to them from that cone-like mountain.

When the fire was burning well, Meatha went to stand alone where the mountain dropped off into space.

How were they to find the crystal dome? In what place lay the green valley? She had had no sense of its direction. And if they found it, could they avoid leading the warrior queen there?

And how were they to get the six stones that Kish herself possessed?

Quietly, with all the strength she could muster, she reached out to Tala-charen and tried to draw its power into herself. But no strength touched her; she could not make herself feel stronger. In desperation she reached beyond Tala-charen to Carriol, for she needed Anchorstar now; he must speak to her.

But she could get no sense of him. She stood vainly trying for some minutes, then suddenly, sharply, she Saw the white-haired child. Jaspen. Her name was Jaspen. She Saw the stone itself then. A long shard of jade lying in the child’s curled hand.

But where? Where was the crystal dome? Where dwelt Jaspen?

When nothing more came, she turned away, swallowing. Never once had there been a sense of Anchorstar. Only the disembodied vision. She went slowly back to the fire and sat down close to Feldyn, seeking the wolf’s strength, seeking comfort. Feldyn laid his head in her lap. She leaned over him, stroked his cheek, then leaned her forehead against his, trying not to cry. The stone in the vision seemed so close. But where? Where?