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

THREE

Ram rode out for Blackcob well before dusk. As he left the ruins, he turned in the saddle and saw Skeelie standing in a portal watching him. He waved, but wished she were not compelled to see him ride out, compelled to worry over him. She had sat with him while he ate an early meal, nagged him about his wound, as had Tayba. He turned his back on the ruins and made his way through the village. The low sun behind the stone houses made the thatched roofs shine, sent deep shadows across the cobbles. His horses’ hooves struck sharp staccato as he exchanged greetings with men and women coming in from work, from the drilling field. He could smell suppers cooking. Children flocked around his two horses, then stormed away like leaves blown. He left the town at last to pass occasional farms along the sea cliff, then soon the cliff was empty of all but the sweeping grass, the wind salt and harsh. Waves pounded up the side of the cliff bouncing spray into his face. He relished the solitude, needed this solitude to heal the sense of defeat that would not leave him, the sense of mounting disaster. The sense of wasted lives. They had lost some good men at Folkstone. He would be a long time forgetting it.

And the attacks kept coming. Not a large, full-scale battle, but small, bedeviling attacks first in one place, then another, harassing the farmers and herders, delaying what should have been the joyful, disorderly growth of the new country; destroying crops, stealing livestock . . .

Yes, and that was just what the Seer BroogArl intended. Delay and harassment, the wasting of Carriol’s resources, the disrupting of her peaceful pursuits, of building new craftsmen’s shops, of fencing rich pasture, breaking new farmland. All lay untended, interrupted as Carriol’s settlers went off to defend the land—and perhaps to die. Such harassment did BroogArl’s work most effectively. If it lasted long enough, Ram wondered reluctantly, could the Pellian Seers conquer Carriol?

And something else kept nudging him, a feeling of urgency that puzzled him. His senses seemed infected by it. As if, ahead, lay not only his mission to the gods, to the valley of Eresu, but something else—something beckoning. The very air around him seemed fresh with anticipation, the wind sharper, even the sea meadows seemed brighter in spite of his sickness at the recent battle, in spite of his mourning of friends. He had no idea what made such a feeling, but the sense of anticipation refused to leave him, and the ride along the coast seemed as perfect as the songs in citadel, rich and full of subtleties, glorious with the powers of sea and wind.

He must be growing foolish; this must be some twisting of his mind grown out of his relief at being still alive after battle. Some wild reverence for life so nearly lost.

Even when the pack mare grew edgy, snorting and pulling back, he was more amused than disturbed. He spoke only gently to his own mount when he started to sidestep and stare at emptiness. The waning day was clear as a jewel; there was nothing to disturb them.

They settled at last and Ram, lulled by the steady rhythm of the sea, thought with pleasure of the two-year-old colts that would be ready soon for breaking. Fine colts, near the finest yet of the new breed he and Jerthon had taken so much time with. Well-made, eager animals, sensible in battle—not like these two, gaping at nothing. Colts that would one day sire a line of the finest horses in Ere, quick, short-coupled horses, handy in battle and fast and brave in attack.

He left the sea cliffs with reluctance to head inland, down through low-lying fog into the marsh cut by the river Somat Cul as it bowed south to meet the sea. The river was flanked here by coppery reeds, the air very still. Even the suck of hooves was silenced by the press of fog. The marsh smelled of decaying life and of new growth. Ahead, the fog thickened into a mass as heavy as a wall. As he approached it, the pack mare snorted and plunged wildly, and his mount went spraddle-legged, staring. A hushing sigh came from the mass of fog, then all at once, where the fog was thickest, a shape began to form.

It was tall, seemed to swell in size until it loomed above him. Was it . . . was it winged? A winged figure? But it was too large to be a horse of Eresu. Was that a human torso rising between the great shadows of its wings? Not a god!

It was utterly silent, did not speak into his mind as a god would. As the fog thickened further, it all but vanished, yet the frightened horses plunged and fought him so wildly it was all he could do to keep the frantic mare from pulling away.

The figure darkened again, came clearer. Then it spoke to him. “Ramad! You are Ramad!” Its voice was hollow, void of expression or of kindness. And it spoke aloud, not in a god’s thought-language. He swallowed, waited in silence, clutching his sword and knowing a sword was useless.

“You are Ramad of wolves, are you not! Answer me, Seer!”

Ram did not answer, did not move.

“Afraid to speak, cowardly Seer? Well, hear me then! You pursue an unworthy mission, Ramad of wolves! You ride sniveling like a baby to whimper before gods! Ignorant mortal, would you lay the troubles of men before gods to solve?” Then the creature laughed, a terrifying, rasping thunder that echoed through the fog.

Ram fought it with his mind, tried with Seer’s powers to reduce it to the fog from which it must have formed, fought uselessly, all his skills unable to turn aside the dark being. It swelled larger, and the mist around it seethed, and it screamed at him, “Turn back, Seer! Turn back from your precarious quest lest you destroy the very cause you so covet!”

Suddenly the horses became strangely still. The creature shifted, and Ram felt himself grow dizzy. In spite of the fear that threatened to engulf him, he made his voice thunder in return. “If you give me honest words, show yourself!” Did he see the turn of a horse’s body, a man’s torso rising from its withers? All was so unclear, constantly changing. Was this a god with some enmity he had never imagined a god to have? Yet the sense that emanated from the mist was not godlike, was forbidding and cold. “If you Speak truly,” Ram challenged again, “show yourself to me!”

Its laugh was terrible. But it began to fade until soon its gigantic form was only a wash of dark. The mist thinned and receded. Coppery reeds showed through. And there was, suddenly, nothing before him. Only the river, reflecting Ere’s rising moons. Farther upriver, a heron screamed.

Ram sat staring at the marsh where the thing had risen. His wound throbbed. He felt spent, dead of spirit suddenly. When at last he started on again the horses walked as heavily as if they had already traveled the night’s distance. Ram felt as a child feels after a time of fever—as he had felt when he was small and his mind had been swept away during sleep into the dark Pellian caves by the Seer HarThass, possessed there by HarThass so he had battled for his life, was left so weak and listless afterward he hardly cared for life. Now he felt the same, weak, without volition. Without purpose. Too sharply he remembered HarThass’s lurid mind and inner worlds, which had spun him away from the living so he had been able to cling only tenuously to any strength within himself. Never, since that time, had he known complete freedom from the dark harassment of the Pellian Seers: a curse that, perhaps, had been welded into the fabric of reality generations before his birth, when a dark Seer lay dying in the caves of Zandour, predicting his birth, predicting his destiny.

Well enough he knew, from the teaching of Seers greater than he, from the words of the Luff’Eresi themselves in visions and written on the walls of a far cave among the Ring of Fire, that no man’s destiny was fixed. That no man danced to a pattern like a puppet on an invisible string. How had that long-dead Seer known then, that Ram would be born, that Ram would carry the blood of the cult of wolves? Had that Seer, before he died, been swept ahead on the living warp of Time to touch the fabric of Ram’s birth and life? He must have done; for others had known his words, though he spoke them quite alone in the cave of the wolf cult that would become his tomb:

A bastard child will be born and he will rule the wolves as no Seer before him has done. A bastard child fathered by a Pellian bearing the last blood of the wolf cult. My blood! My blood seeping down generations hence from some bastard I sired and do not even know exists. A child born of a girl with the blood of Seers in her veins. A child that will go among the great wolves of the high mountains where the lakes are made of fire . . .

In the throes of death, had that Seer swung into the fulcrum of Time for his vision, just as Ram and Skeelie had stood in that fulcrum when the runestone of Eresu split?

Always the memory of that prophecy, repeated to him out of the dark mind of the Seer HarThass, left him agape with wonder, weak with a knowledge of the incredible—yet he, too, had ridden the warp of Time, when he stood inside the mountain Tala-charen.

And his own experience had left him restless, with a fierce need that he could never make come clear. As if he were not whole suddenly, as if something had been left behind there in that spinning, thundering, echoing warp of Time; something that was terribly a part of him.

When he came at last out of the marsh where the river foamed over rocks, he was among scattered farms, fields of whitebarley and mawzee, fat grazing animals lifting their heads to watch him pass. A horse nickered, but Ram’s horses did not return the greeting, remained quiet and subdued. The sun had dropped behind hills, leaving a pale orange wash preceding nightfall. The council would be meeting now in the citadel, would sit around the meeting table, the jade runestone gleaming in the center. Outside the portal, the thin moons would rise. The council would lay careful plans for the protection of Carriol—plans perhaps destined to go awry, he thought bitterly. And they would discuss Jerthon’s attack on Kubal. Jerthon, riding out again so soon to battle. Jerthon who was more father to Ram than a real father could have been: Seer, teacher of Seer’s powers, his mentor since the days Ram first turned to him for protection from the dark Pellian.

Jerthon, whom his mother loved but would not marry because of the guilt she carried and refused to put aside.

Ram wished she would come to her senses. She need feel no guilt, she had proven that. He wished she would marry Jerthon and be done with this stupidity. Eresu knew, Jerthon wanted her. It was Jerthon who had drawn forth, from Tayba’s willful spirit, power undreamed; more power even than Ram had imagined his mother possessed. It was Jerthon who had taught her to use that power, who had loved her for the strengths he saw despite her weaknesses.

And he had seen her look at Jerthon. He knew what she felt for him. Yet she wouldn’t marry him, felt she alone was responsible for their partial defeat in Burgdeeth, for having to leave the town in Venniver’s hands; felt now, Ram knew, a burning guilt that a child had burned in Venniver’s fires. Believed that without her near-betrayal, her partial betrayal, Burgdeeth would now stand as a free city, and safe for Seers.

And she was, Ram knew, very likely right. Well, but you could not carry guilt all your life. She had made amends, made a new life; she was a fierce, willing fighter for what Jerthon and all of them stood for. Why in Urdd didn’t she marry Jerthon and give him, and herself, some happiness?

*

The cool light of evening washed the citadel. The sea roared like a large, slow animal, and wind hushed through the portals smelling sharply of salt and kelp. Tayba pulled her red cloak lightly around her shoulders and stared almost transfixed at the runestone: powerful talisman, shard of deep green jade, jagged where it had split away from the whole sphere, smooth and rounded at the large end and marked with incomplete runes. A stone that, if it had not been for her lusting, stupid hungers, might lie here whole now, round, perfect and immensely more powerful—though even this shattered shard could concentrate and strengthen the powers of the Carriolinian Seers. Only . . . not enough. Not enough power to battle the Pellian Seers in their new, incredible force.

And this jagged bit of jade was a symbol, too, of the frightening powers Tayba found within herself and which she had not, even yet, learned to deal with easily; though she tried. With Jerthon’s help, she tried.

There sat at the council table eight of Carriol’s fifteen Seers. Five of the eight had come to Carriol from Burgdeeth twelve years ago after freeing themselves from Venniver’s slave cell. They were Tayba; Jerthon, who sat with his back to the portal, the fading light casting a halo around his red hair; his sister Skeelie, her wrists protruding from her tunic as usual, her skewered hair awry, her dark eyes timed to some inward pain as she tried without success to See Ramad on his lonely journey—none of their skills were worth a spoon of spit since the dark Seers had learned to master such cold, impregnable force.

The fourth of the group was Drudd. He sat as far from Tayba as he could manage. Always he avoided her as deliberately as he had done in Burgdeeth. Then, he had had reason to do so. The short stocky forgeman, who had worked by Jerthon’s side to forge the great bronze statue they had left behind them in Burgdeeth, had never ceased to dislike her. But he was a true good man, loyal perhaps beyond all others to both Ram and Jerthon and their cause.

The fifth of those from Burgdeeth was young freckled Pol, a good-natured lad, skilled Seer, though he seldom said much. He was always there when one wanted something done, always there when a raid must be led or a scout sent out in the middle of a freezing night.

The other three Seers, two men and one woman, had lived on this land all their lives. They were good, kind folk who had used their Seer’s skills to protect their land and their families and had never had the need to delve into the dark compelling skills and acquaint themselves with lurid subtleties. The two men were older, bearded and creased and very much alike, except Berd’s hair and beard were white, and Erould was dark of hair and smooth-shaven. They were equally succinct and short in speech. The woman was young: a tall, square, dark-haired farmgirl who could wield sword and bow as well as any man and had a fun-loving way with the young, unmarried soldiers that added to the sharp-witted, rollicking pleasure of all concerned.

Jerthon leaned forward. They had been discussing the raids. His anger was deep, and searing. “No more than a handful of Herebian raiders—calling themselves a nation—Kubal!” His green eyes blazed.

“They would not be so free with us,” Drudd countered, “were it not for BroogArl and the cursed power he has amassed!”

“It will be a touchy job setting the captives free,” Jerthon said. “Even if the Kubalese prison is no more than a hog cage, it will be a job getting them out safe before the Kubalese shoot them from hiding, out of spite.” He unrolled a mat of blank parchment and began to sketch out quick plans for defending Carriol should the need arise. Drudd made a suggestion. Pol asked about horses in the north. They had nearly agreed to all the necessary details when Jerthon saw that no one was listening, all had turned to stare beyond him to the portal. He spun around, alarmed, as the wind, risen suddenly, swept into the citadel, lifting and tearing the maps, toppling chairs as the Seers rose to crowd around the portal, staring out. And in the wild sky Horses of Eresu were battling, tossed on the wind, their great wings torn by the gale; they were swept away, they beat against the wind, forcing themselves back, powerful animals buffeted like birds as they fought toward safety. A mare was blown to the ledge, fighting to keep her balance, two stallions were tumbled, descended at last, came in beside her. The Seers moved away from the portal as six more winged ones braced against wind, then pushed inside, heads down and ears back against the onslaught. Soon the whole band had fought its way down out of the seething sky to the ledge and into the protecting grotto. The winged horses came at once to the Seers, stood close; and the Seers spoke softly to them, made their minds open and receptive; but no thought passed from one to another. As if the horses had gone mute or the Seers deaf. Jerthon stood with his hand on a brown stallion’s cheek, trying to understand what had happened; what force had created such sudden chaos in the sky—though well enough he knew. Curse the Pellians! Curse this damnable silence! The dark made a web they could not penetrate. He tried to feel into the falling night for the shape and sense of the thing that had driven and buffeted the winged ones; he touched something dark and unyielding, and then his mind was torn and driven until at last he must withdraw.

A monstrous darkness lusting for blood, thriving on fear and confusion.

He sent for grains and the mild ale the winged ones so relished, and they made themselves at ease, some lying on the low stone shelves and outcroppings that had been worn smooth by their ancestors before them, some standing, still, beside the portal watching the darkening sky. When they were rested, Jerthon knew, when the danger was past, they would be off again, and the citadel would seem strangely empty.

The Seers moved among the winged horses caressing them and speaking to them with a reverence that came from awe, but too, from a gentle mutual understanding of this world that they shared so differently and yet with such like sympathies and fears. Skeelie stood beside a pale mare who seemed only slowly able to calm her terror. The winged horses had been, from her early childhood, the source of fierce wonder for Skeelie. Now, seeing them so distressed, her anger stirred painfully. Let the dark do battle with Seers, not with the gentle winged ones. BroogArl must hate everything beautiful, would kill all joy if he could. Surely the very essence of life, the wild freedom of the winged ones, offended him. She pressed her face against the mare’s pale neck, hiding tears of helpless anger—of rage at an evil they could no longer fight, rage at a force she did not know how to battle. She thought of Ram then, suddenly, Ram moving alone toward the dark mountains, vulnerable to attack, and she went sick with apprehension. What further evil would the dark be about this night? The mare shivered. Skeelie smoothed her neck, tried to reassure her; but her terrible fear was now for Ram. She prayed silently for Ram’s safety.

*

Ram watched darkness fall. The wind swept cold and damp down from the mountains and across the hills, flattening the tall ruddy grass, blowing the horses’ manes with sharp whipping motions. The darkness was early, hurried by heavy clouds. He looked toward the mountains, which were only a smear now in the falling night, and was gripped with a sudden sharp longing for the wolves, for Fawdref s wolfish grin and his cool wisdom.

It had been more than a year since they had met; Fawdref was growing old—even the great wolves grow old. Growing gray and thinner, Ram knew. He longed to go to him, to hold Fawdref’s shaggy head on his shoulder, to see gentle Rhymannie bow and smile at him; to be alone inside the dark mountains and the old grottoes, among the wolves once more. But he could not.

He had reached out again and again toward Burgdeeth, trying to sense something of what was occurring there. Had Venniver another victim for his fires? But Burgdeeth remained maddeningly locked away from him. He could only hasten, now, up toward the black mountains and into them, to seek as quickly as he could the hidden valley of Eresu, and then to use every skill he possessed to gain the gods’ help in stopping Venniver’s insane murders.

The wind blew clouds across the stars, hiding Ere’s slim moons. He could smell rain, and the wind chilled him through. He dug his leather cape from the pack none too soon, for thunder began to rattle; and then the rain itself came pelting sudden and sharp and cold. The pack mare lurched close to his knee, seeking protection. The night was black as sin, drear and damnably wet. His leather was near soaked through and the horses drenched when he sensed suddenly that a man rode beside him, just beyond his sight in the pounding rain. He felt the rider draw closer. He could see the darker shape then, in the heavy downpour. A tall man, on a tall horse, caped, he thought, and looking down at him. He could feel his stare like a lance. Ram slipped his sword from the scabbard, more irritated than afraid, and waited. He wondered that his horses gave no sign of fear, not a twitch from his mount He wanted badly to bark out a challenge, but held his silence.

The rider lurched suddenly so close to Ram that their boots touched, Ram’s sword poised inches from his chest. And though he had to shout above the driving rain, the man’s voice was uncertain and lost. “Can you tell me—I—what place is this? I seem . . . I seem to have lost my way.”

Ram frowned. “You are in Carriol. We—you ride toward her western border, toward Blackcob. Where do you come from, stranger, that you are so lost as that? Where do you come from that you are out on such a night?”

“I—from the mountains. I come from the mountains and—have lost myself and could . . . I could not stay where I was. You . . .” he reached out a hand then and touched Ram’s shoulder unexpectedly. Ram felt a sudden ease, a sense of comfort. “And you, lad? Unless a man were lost like me, only an urgent mission would bring him out on such a night.” They were both shouting, impossible to be heard otherwise, but their words might have been spoken quietly, almost shyly.

“I ride—I ride on a private mission,” Ran said warily.

“I see. And may I come along with you until I—until I get my bearings? I don’t . . . Or is your mission too private to allow me that?”

“You—you may ride with me.”

“There are—if we are riding toward the west hills of Carriol, there will be fences lad, in the dark . . .”

Ram frowned, puzzled. “There are few fences on this land. Though—though fences—stone walls perhaps, would be useful.”

“Few fences yet? But . . .” The man went silent for a long moment, and when he spoke again it seemed to be with some care. “Carriol—Carriol is not so large a nation, then.”

“Everyone in Ere, I would have thought, knows Carriol’s exact size and strength.”

“I have . . . I have been a long time in the mountains.”

Ram’s unease increased. “No man dwells for long in those mountains, stranger. No man I ever heard of.”

“I come—I have traveled far into the mountains for a time—into the unknown lands these—many years. I do . . . I do not know what has happened in any of the nations of Ere. I must have been wrong about the fences, about remembering. . . . You—you would favor me by telling me the news if you don’t mind shouting over this damnable rain.”

Ram studied the shadow that rode beside him. Who was this man? Why did he seem so confused? How could he remember fences that had never been? Ram knew he should challenge him further, question him, but he could not bring himself to do it. There was a sense of hurt about the man, as if he had suffered, as if his strange confusion came from some painful experience; he felt, suddenly, very gentle with the man, felt as if this man needed to know Ere’s history, as if to tell him would be to help him find himself.

Ram told him, shouting through the rain, of Carriol’s past from the time he had come there twelve years back, leaving out only those things that might, to the wrong ears, be harmful to Carriol. He told him something of the rising power of the dark Seers, though not all of it. The man’s questions were strange, disoriented. Ram thought he was old, the timbre of his voice was of an aged man. And some of his questions seemed strange indeed, given his confusion, implied a knowledge of Ere he should not have if he had been in the mountains for years. He puzzled Ram, but did not frighten him. They rode in silence for a while, each with his own thoughts, and Ram could not touch the man’s mind—though whether that was because of some skill he held, or because of the dark Seers, Ram did not know.

The heavy rain lasted full three hours across the hills to the river Urobb and did not abate as they rode up the last steep rise to the settlement of Blackcob that lay overlooking the river—though one could not see or hear the river, only driving rain. It was near midnight. Not a light shone anywhere; Blackcob was still as death and the rain likely never to end. Ram found Rolf Klingen’s corral only after bruising his shins on some piled barrels and swearing a lot. The stranger followed him obediently, and it occurred to Ram as he unsaddled the gelding that he had not even asked the man’s name; and perhaps he was foolish to bring him here into Blackcob, which had already seen more trouble than it wanted. Yet still he trusted the man. He unsaddled the pack mare under the shed, rubbed the horses down and, because they bumped one another in the dark, knew the stranger did the same. He felt reluctant to ask a name not given. They found grain at last and buckets; and when the animals were cared for, they went to wake old Klingen. Ram badly wanted a mug of something hot, and some food. Knowing he must have the stranger’s name if they were to spend the night with Klingen, he shouted, “How are you called, stranger?” and got a mouthful of rain.

“I am Anchorstar. And you, lad?”

“Ram. You can call me Ram.”

Ram felt the stranger pause in the downpour and stare, then come on again. “Ramad?” he cried, almost softly. “Ramad—Ramad of wolves, then?”

“Yes, I am Ramad. But how . . .” Cold and wet and hungry, Ram spent but little time wondering how the old man had known his name when all else about Carriol seemed so confusing to him. When the old man made no answer, he put it out of his mind and rapped sharply at Klingen’s door, stood hunched under the overhang shivering, the wound in his side paining him abysmally after the long ride. What in Urdd was taking Klingen so long? He pounded again, felt Anchorstar stir beside him and push closer to the log wall. He pounded a third time, fit to break the door, then reached to lift the latch.