The Ring Оf Fire. The Wolf Bell

TWO

The path was rough, blocked by jagged outcroppings, narrow and uncertain; they climbed northward up over the rim of Scar Mountain, and as night came the wind blew wild and cold as if icy hands pushed at their backs. Ram trudged on silently, leading the willing pony. Tayba shivered, chilled through, aching from the long climb. She missed Gredillon’s warm hearth. Near dark they found a shallow cave for shelter and built a little fire from brush and twigs, to half cook the rock hare Gredillon had tied to the pack. This would be their last fire for some time. For on the following evening they stood well down the mountain’s north slope staring out over the black plain, both afraid to build a fire that would be seen by someone—something—that might be watching unexpectedly from that desolate expanse. The wind bit through their clothes bitter cold, the blackened plain swept away alien and immense. Ram pushed on, saying little, but Tayba stared out at the gathering dusk over that empty plain and knew, suddenly and painfully, that they could not go there. They would die there. They must turn back in the morning, while still they could.

“We will go on,” Ram said, looking at her coldly. “And we will go on tonight for a little while. It looks—it looks more sheltered there, farther down.” He frowned and looked away, then forced the mare on, holding her head so she wouldn’t stumble among the shadowed rocks. Mamen puzzled him. Why was she so reluctant? He could feel nothing but her hesitancy, her fear. Below them on the plain, dark boulders rose twisting into nightmare shapes, seemed to grow larger as the light faded.

Tayba followed him reluctantly, thinking they had too little food to cross that immense expanse, thinking of a hundred excuses. What if the mare should break a leg? The plain was wrought with malevolence, she could sense it. Perhaps an evil had been laid upon it by the gods to protect the ruined city that lay ahead in the black mountains. Surely the gods would prevent them from crossing to that place.

Ram turned, scowling at her, then stopped abruptly, turned to stare behind them not toward Zandour, but in the direction of Pelli. Fear touched him, cold and hard. EnDwyl and an apprentice Seer had left Pelli this hour. “They are following us, Mamen. They ride big, rough horses that can cover many more miles than we can. The Seer knows my fear. He knows, Mamen, he makes in your mind the fear you feel. It is hard to—I cannot block him. He is too strong.” He took the mare’s bridle and pulled her on down the slope so fast she nearly fell, then turned to steady her. Behind him, Tayba stared back at the darkening mountain they had crossed and felt the vast emptiness and their utter aloneness here and tried to put down her fear and could not.

They kept on until it was too dark to see, then crouched behind a shallow outcropping, made a cold meal of mountain meat, and wrapped in their blankets. The mare grazed as best she could on the sparse grass. They slept little, and Ram tossed restlessly, feeling the Seer’s cold presence, trying to strengthen his own forces against the man’s power. They were awake at first light. Ram watched Tayba stare out toward the far mountains, nearly lost in low cloud, and felt her increased conviction that they could never reach those peaks.

“We can’t go on, Ram. We will . . . we will die out there. Would it be so bad to be a Pellian Seer?”

He flung the saddle on the mare irritably and secured the packs. “We won’t die. Come on. Walking will warm you. You’ll feel better when we’re moving.” He watched her share out the meager meal, ate quickly, then set out. She followed him sullenly. They came down onto the plain at last between monster-shaped black boulders. The wind swept at them like knives of ice. They tried to walk in the shelter of the mare, and she in turn pressed against them and kept wanting to turn tail to the wind.

They had gone well out onto the plain among the twisted boulders when Tayba began suddenly to feel comforted and to know that it would be safe to turn back. Something so warm enfolded her, something so familiar and welcome. EnDwyl would care for them. EnDwyl meant only to help Ram, surely they should wait for him. Eagerly she looked ahead to Ram and saw him turn, stare back at her in anger. Well, she thought, he didn’t understand. EnDwyl would make the Seers of Pelli help him. Ram could come into his full power only through those Seers, she realized. He would learn skills with them that Gredillon could never have taught him.

Ram stopped and turned, and his dark eyes were filled with cold fury. But he said nothing. When he turned away at last, he slapped the mare so hard she was forced into a wild trot. Tayba had to run to catch up. As she followed Ram, she began to weave dreams around EnDwyl. She remembered the caves of Scar Mountain and being in EnDwyl’s arms. She stood again before the stone hut greeting EnDwyl, and this time he held her and caressed her.

Ram swung around. His white face was that of a stranger, his fury terrible. “Stop it, Mamen! Go back if you like, if it’s what you want! But you will go alone!”

She stared at him, shocked. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

“I’ll talk to you any way I wish, when it’s my life you would sell. EnDwyl does not care for you!”

“You don’t understand, you’re only a child! You don’t understand anything!”

“Oh don’t I understand! EnDwyl never loved you! EnDwyl made a fool of you!” His dark hair was jerked by the wind, his cloak pulled away from him. He spoke as an adult, wiser and harder than Tayba. “EnDwyl left you once. You were young and beautiful then. Why should he want you now? Can’t you see. It’s the Seer making you think like this. EnDwyl can’t send thoughts. It’s the Seer. Don’t you know what they are doing to you—to me, Mamen. They would kill me.”

“Oh surely not. They—”

His scowl silenced her, a terrible, dark scowl filled with fury—born of fear. She swallowed, tasted bitterness in her throat, said nothing more. She followed him, chastened and uncomfortable and wanting only to be left alone with her own feelings; to be warmed by EnDwyl—to turn back to him.

When again EnDwyl’s voice began to whisper, she thought of Ram’s fear and tried to put his words away from her; but they warmed her until soon she was clutching at them eagerly, could think of nothing else. Ram plodded ahead of her hunched and miserable as EnDwyl and the Seer drew closer.

Night after night, when they would rest for a few hours, Tayba would toss with dreams of EnDwyl and wake wanting him, her need for him a sickness. She no longer saw Ram’s fear, she began to rejoice that the riders were drawing close, felt elation when the mare turned to stare back over her shoulder, sensing her own kind there behind them.

Ram spoke not at all. Or, when he did speak, anger shaped his words. “Don’t you know I am fighting with all the strength I have? Use your mind, Mamen! Use something to resist him. Haven’t you anything in you but—but the instincts of a creature in rut?”

“You daren’t say that to me! You . . .” She lowered her eyes before him. “They want . . . they want only to help you,” she breathed, hating Ram then.

“Help me? They would train me like an animal, that’s what they want of me. An animal taught to rule as they rule, with a lust that thinks nothing of the feelings of men. They want my soul, Mamen.”

She followed him without volition, simply because he was stronger.

For three days more Ram forced her on. He was pale, pinched with the effort he made against the Seer. He felt hard and unchildlike and wanted comforting. He longed for Tayba’s tenderness and warmth, but she did not give it. Even when they lay close at night, each was drawn tight and did not comfort the other.

Sometimes in a brief moment of clarity, Tayba was appalled at her feelings and knew then that the Seer did, indeed, lay a sickness on her. Then her shame would wrap her in a cocoon of loneliness so she could not reach out to Ram. She was not sure how long it was since they had left Gredillon, or even why they had left.

They were always cold and could not rid themselves of the blowing sand that had worked itself into every fiber of their clothes and blankets, into the food. The mare grew weaker and slower with the meager grass she received and only scant water from the sluggish springs. They might have been on that plain forever among the black rock and emptiness. Ram held the wolf bell often, taking strength from it, from the vague voices like puffs of wind that came to him when he said the words of the bell. There ahead in the mountain something stirred and eased him, lifted his spirits and gave him hope.

Tayba watched him, uneasy when he touched the bell. She felt sick, felt old, wanted only to turn back. They came at last one late morning around boulders to where they could see a line of trees ahead instead of writhing stone. At once their pace quickened, the mare nickered. They drew closer and the mare thrust her nose out eagerly, and they could hear the churning of water. They had reached the river Owdneet.

They came through trees to the river and looked beyond it and beyond the trees and could see the roofs of Burgdeeth. The dark riders were close behind them; the mare’s ears kept turning back as she measured the sounds of their approach. The river raced white and foaming over stones, but was shallow enough to ford. The mare sucked up water noisily. Ram sprawled to drink, and Tayba stared at the cold, fast rapids, then leaned against the pony until her dizziness passed, sick with exhaustion and with her own overwhelming emotions. She looked at Ram and was swept with remorse at her behavior.

Ram had even stopped shouting at her when she was drawn to EnDwyl, when she could not help the tide of heat and yearning that swept her. He had pushed on and on across the plain as if he and the mare were quite alone, as if Tayba no longer existed. Small and sturdy, plodding on in the bitter cold, his dark hair and his desperate determination making him seem a stranger.

She had thought once that she must dye his hair again, but then she had forgotten.

The mare lifted her dripping muzzle to gaze downriver. They heard a horse snort. Tayba grabbed at Ram, pulling him up. “Get on the mare. Get across the river, into the town.” She shoved at him, forcing him.

But he pulled away, spun to face her. “No, Mamen. I will go no farther.” He put his hand inside his tunic, drew out the wolf bell now; the cold sun caught at the bronze, so the bell flashed with light He held it up and gazed past her toward the dark mountains. “The wolves will come. They speak to me.”

“You can’t call wolves! Jackals, a fox maybe. That can’t help us! Not wolves, Ram. They won’t . . .”

He whispered the words of the bell precisely and slowly and did not hear her. Downriver the brush rattled, and the mare shifted to look, pricking her ears with eagerness. Tayba tried to pull Ram away, heard a hoof strike rock.

“Get on the mare, Ram!”

He turned then and suddenly was quite ready to mount. “They will come,” he said quietly. There was a look on his face she had never seen before. He was not a child now, but something ageless. He mounted the mare slowly. Brush rattled.

“Hurry!” She had nearly lost patience with him. The mare nickered as riders came crashing through brush. Then suddenly the noise stopped, the riders were still. Ram hit the mare hard, forcing her into the river. Tayba ran alongside splashing, clinging to the mare against the swift current as the freezing water surged around her legs. The riders came crashing through bushes again. Icy water foamed around her thighs and washed the mare’s belly so she balked; Tayba jerked and jerked at her. At last she went on again and soon they were in shallower water. The mare scrambled wild-eyed up the bank as Tayba clung; and the riders plunged into the river. Tayba tried desperately to see the town ahead, but now it was hidden; she could see only the plain rising above the trees, cloud shadows blowing fast across the empty land. She saw Ram stare up at the rising land, heard him draw in his breath sharply. Those were more than cloud shadows. They were running shadows: dark animals racing down across the cloud-swept plain. Dark wolves running. . . .

Wolves, flicking from sun to shade, huge wolves sweeping down toward them, now, through the woods. The mare reared as they leaped toward her, spun away, pulling the rope in a sharp burn through Tayba’s hands; Ram jumped from the saddle as the pony veered under him. “Let her go, Mamen! Let her go!” The terrified pony leaped wildly past the approaching riders and disappeared into the trees—and the wolves surged around Ram, their eyes like fire. Tayba stood backed against a boulder, could not speak for the terror that held her. Huge shaggy wolves pressed against her, tall as her waist, rank-smelling; and their yellow eyes looked at her with a knowing that shook her.

She saw Ram put out his hand to the dark wolf leader, saw the wolf come to him, saw Ram thrust his hands deep into the wolf’s coat in greeting, then lay his face against the animal’s broad head as its tongue lolled in a fierce smile—the smile of a killer; saw the riders trying to approach, fighting their panicky horses.

Ram plunged his face against the warmth of the great wolf, smelled his wild smell, and felt whole suddenly, as if a part of himself had returned. Then he lifted his head to face EnDwyl and the Seer, pulling the big wolf close as he did so.

He sensed their fear with pleasure, saw the Seer’s hesitancy and how the dark wolf watched the riders with lips drawn back. Ram’s own lips twitched into a smile. “Fawdref,” he said, caressing the wolf’s ears. “You are Fawdref.” Fawdref turned his head to nudge Ram and to nose at the wolf bell. Ram held the bell, and together he and Fawdref made a power that lifted and amazed him, a power that held the Pellian Seer immobile, unable to touch them with his darkness, his thin face ashen, his pale eyes bulging with the effort—but then suddenly a new power surged within the Seer: Ram could feel it like a tide, something sweeping out of Pelli to support the Seer—the man beat his terrified horse so it plunged toward Ram, his sword raised. Ram cried out, the wolves leaped; they were wild with killing now, wild for blood. Behind him Tayba stood frozen, her sword drawn. The Seer’s horse went down with wolves tearing at it; the Seer screamed, and his scream seemed to echo beyond this place. Ram felt cold fear as EnDwyl flayed his horse through the pack, his face twisted with hate. As the animal reared over Tayba, EnDwyl shouted, “You told me he was dead! You . . .” Wolves leaped snarling to pull his horse down. He leaped clear, his sword flashing, slashed at wolves, forcing himself toward Tayba. She ducked his blade, her own blade blazing out And the pack was on the horses and tearing at the flailing Seer. The smell of blood sickened Ram. EnDwyl swung around to loom over him then. Ram felt a sharp blow, went dizzy, saw Tayba’s sword plunge into EnDwyl; he clung to consciousness, saw EnDwyl lash out—then saw EnDwyl poised over Tayba with the point of his sword at her throat.

The wolves, crouched to leap, held motionless, waiting for Ram to bid them.

EnDwyl looked coldly at Ram. “If I die, your mother will die.” Blood oozed from his side. “If the wolves touch me, she dies.” His pale hair was ribboned with sweat. He shivered. Ram tried to get up, readied to touch Fawdref s shaggy neck, was so dizzy that Fawdref blurred. He gripped the bell and spoke quietly, and the great wolf growled deep in his throat, did not take his eyes from EnDwyl.

“She will die, boy.”

Ram saw the fear in Tayba’s eyes. He saw her swallow, saw the blood soaking her tunic. He looked at the fear in EnDwyl that was different from Tayba’s fear, at the evil in EnDwyl. He touched Fawdref’s shoulder and felt the massive bone, felt Fawdref’s impatience, felt the tenseness of the pack of wolves—then felt Fawdref’s sharp dismay as he bid the animals draw back.

“Let her live,” he said to EnDwyl, “but go quickly. I can’t hold them long. The Seer is dead and your horses are dead, and they want you now.”

EnDwyl stared at Ram with hatred, his sword steady against Tayba’s throat. “You may be my son, but I waste no love on you. If you send the wolves for me after she is freed, you will die. The Seer of Pelli knows you have killed his apprentice. If I die too, he will send an army to kill you. An army no wolf could stand against.”

Ram smiled scoffingly. But he knew with dark certainty that what EnDwyl said was true. He crouched there, dizzy, and could feel a fury rise to him out of Pelli colder and more brutal than anything he had ever encountered. “Go in safety,” he said, swallowing. There was a bitter taste in his throat. The ground spun, he saw blood. He must send the wolves away. He saw EnDwyl go, knew that he caught the exhausted pony up there in the woods. He bid the wolves away then, as the earth spun under him. . . .

When EnDwyl had gone, the dark wolf stood staring after him with cold eyes, then bent to lick Ram’s face. Finally he turned and left Ram, his pack slipping up the plain beside him as silent as the cloud shadows they melted into, silent as the black boulders that shielded them from the town. Fawdref looked back once in a wordless promise that touched Ram even as Ram’s mind swirled in blackness.

*

The four old women were walking slowly downriver filling reed baskets with dolba leaf and evrole and lemon-tongue. They talked incessantly; or, three of them did, gathering exceedingly slowly, gossiping about nothing until Dlos, who led them, thought she would go mad. You couldn’t hear your own thoughts with those three prattling. She drew ahead, finding clumps of herbs the others might miss and marking them with rags tied to bushes. She was quite alone when she saw the two bodies, one bleeding, saw the gutted horses beside the boulder.

She saw the red roots of the little boy’s hair in one quick glance and knew that if the child were alive now, he might not be alive for long with that hair. Quickly she turned back, distracting the three slow cronies, got them turned aside to a bed of cherba they had missed. “I will search for perrisax for soap,” she said shortly. “Return here when your baskets are full. Be sure you pick all the cherba—but leave the roots! Don’t pull up the roots!”

She watched the women amble away, then hurried up the path and knelt by the little child. He was so cold. There was an ugly bruise on his forehead, going purple, swollen and bloodied under the skin. She covered him with her shawl, pulled off her woolen underskirt, and dipped it into the cold river to make a compress. She chafed his hands, trying to bring the blood up, to stir him. He must be seven or eight. A sturdy child. The red hair showed plainly where the roots had grown out beneath the dye. She pulled the compress on his forehead up to cover his hair and bound it.

At last she turned to the girl, a dark, stirring beauty of a girl, the kind that would light men’s souls—or goad them to hate and killing. Dlos examined the ugly wound in her side and washed and dressed it with dolba leaf hastily ground between stones. She dug into the pack on one of the dead horses, found clean cloth, and made a bandage.

The cloth in the pack was man’s clothing, this was a man’s pack. She examined the other pack, thick with blood and half-hidden under the dead, twisted animal and saw that it too had belonged to a man. No woman’s clothes or child’s things here. She found dye in that pack though, dye made from sweetburrow paste, a small stone crock of it She glanced again at the child. There was no doubt the child was a Seer. Had this rider, then, tended the Seer child, kept his hair dyed, seen to him? And where was that rider? She removed the boy’s bandage, opened the crock, applied the dye quickly until the roots no longer showed, then dropped the crock into her tunic pocket where it would not be seen. She wiped the dye from his forehead, being careful of the swelling bruise. Now his hair seemed as dark as the girl’s. Was this young woman his sister? His mother? Where were the men whose packs and horses these were? Surely there had been two men. What had happened in this meadow? Dlos rose and began to search.

She found the man at once, lying mangled beside the horses, his body nearly hidden by torn hindquarters. She looked more closely and saw the red roots along his hairline. His tunic and the amulet he wore were those of an apprentice Seer of Pelli. There were coarse animal hairs caught in his belt. She found the tracks of the great wolves among the gore and glanced toward the path. The cursed women would be coming.

Quickly she stripped the Seer’s tunic and amulet from his body and buried them in leaves, then applied the dye to his hair. That finished, she began to search downriver for the second man but found only the hoofprints of a third and smaller horse going away at a gallop, the marks very deep as if the animal carried a heavy weight.

She returned to the girl and child and the mangled body, to find the three women staring as uncertainly as she had expected. She put them to work stripping the dead horses of packs and saddles, of bridles. No sense leaving good leather for wolves to chew.

When she knelt to lift the child, she felt a hard lump beneath him. It was a bronze bell; she shielded it instinctively from the three women until she could look at it more closely. The rearing bitch-wolf made her stare and shiver. Suddenly and wildly the old fables from Pelli and Zandour filled her head, making her catch her breath.

What was this child, to carry such magic? Or had the older Seer carried it and the boy simply fallen where it lay? But, she thought puzzling, the wolves had attacked only the two men. They had not touched the girl or the child. That was a sword wound in the girl’s side, not the jagged tear a wolf makes.

Surely the wolves had moved to the call of this bell. Why had a Seer of Pelli been traveling here with such a boy? And why did the Seer lie dead? She knelt there staring at the boy in her arms. What sort of child was this that she held so close to her? And what havoc would he create if she brought him to Burgdeeth?

Dlos touched the child’s soft cheek, shadowed by dark lashes, looked at the bloody, swollen bruise on his forehead. She raised her eyes and summoned the other women. She would need help.

*

Ram felt himself carried, saw bare branches swing close above his face; then suddenly he fell away from the light sky into darkness again and was dropping down and down. There were voices fading. Once lightness blazed, and he saw his mother’s face close to him, rocking; the falling came again, tumbling him. He was so dizzy. He fell deep down beneath the earth into a cave so black. A man lay there. He lifted his head and whispered, and his face was thin and pale. The walls of the cave were painted with pictures of wolves leaping and snarling, bloodthirsty wolves that made Ram cry out in fear. He whispered, “Fawdref!” And didn’t know what he said, or why. The man held up his hands, and they had turned to white bone. He shouted, “Bastard! A bastard born. . . .” And he was a skeleton, white bone lying in rags. His skull gleamed. The wolves on the cave walls waited.

Ram felt hands lift him, felt himself covered, relaxed into warmth. But something pulled and lifted him away from the hands, lifted his very soul and plunged it back into the blackness so he was torn away, his mind torn from his body.

He was in the cave again, and a man in silver sat high on a dais looking down at him and laughing. The painted wolves crouched, slavering. Ram pushed past them into the very stone with all his strength, searching for the real wolf’s body, saw Fawdref leap snarling at the painted wolves as they came off the walls to slash and tear. Ram cried out, saw light come. The wolves all disappeared.

There was a plain stone wall beside him, low rafters overhead, the smell of mawzee grain. He could see the arch of a door. He came awake at last and clear in his mind and felt himself laid down and the cover drawn up over him. He stared up at a face, a wrinkled old woman.

Then the man in silver pulled at him insistently. Ram cried out, felt hands soothe him, heard a voice trying to reach him. He saw a child’s face close to him and wanted to touch her, then fell away and all was terror, the painted wolves leaping again and the man in silver striking out at him so he clung to Fawdref. He saw blood on the wolf and was dizzy, so dizzy. . . .