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

THREE

Jagged peaks surrounded them. The afternoon sky grew gray and chill. The way was narrow between black cliffs, then sometimes only a ledge above a sheer drop, so Skeelie’s fear of height held her tense, and she must force herself on with stubborn will. Once as they rounded a narrow bend, Torc’s interest quickened, but was masked at once, leaving Skeelie uneasy. Torc stopped and turned to look at her. I do not hide anything, sister. I try only to calm my hatred. The shadow is there in that place, come there before us. I will kill it there. She let Skeelie feel the wild fury that drove her. Skeelie drew back, chastened, and followed Torc in silence.

They came on the valley without warning. One minute they were squeezing between black rock walls, and the next they stood staring down past their feet to a valley cupped out of the cliffs, far below. Its edge was brilliant green where grass pushed against the cliffs, but it was bare and rocky at the center, and there lay the lake of fire, a pool red as blood seeping up out of the rock, like a wound upon the land. Skeelie remembered too vividly the burning lava river inside Tala-charen, where a wolf had nearly died, remembered lava belching from mountains down over the fields to burn beasts and men alike. What kept this lava from rising continuously out of the earth to spill over its banks? The flow seemed to her to have halted only temporarily, as if it must soon rise strongly again and drown the valley.

As they made their way down the steep cliff, the wolf’s silence seemed a barrier between them; then Torc turned quite suddenly, went leaping up a cliff on the left and soon was out of sight. There was no contact between them, but Skeelie knew she was not meant to follow. Was Torc leaving her? Going on her own way alone, too intense with the need to kill to follow the slow descent that Skeelie must take? Skeelie could not tell what she, herself, sensed in this wild place. As she descended the steep cliff, she began to feel the lake’s hot breath, heavy and oppressive. When she stood at last close above the wide belt of grass that brushed against the rocky cliffs, she could see the dark mouths of half a dozen caves, below and to her left. She started along toward them, drawn, curious. Then suddenly Torc was before her, ears flattened and eyes flaming, baring her teeth. Skeelie backed away from her until she struck the cliff behind. Stay hidden, sister, there are men!

Where, Torc? How many? She strained to hear voices, but could make out nothing, see no movement against the back cliffs. Had sensed nothing.

Beyond that outcropping, at the end of the valley. Five men. Come, I will show you. Torc led her through a narrow cleft between jagged rock, toward the head of the valley. They stood at last, hidden and silent, watching five riders below them. Now she sensed them, evil and primitive, steeped in some lusting need she could not make out. Four were broad, heavy men, dark and bearded, dressed in fighting leathers. Herebian warriors. The fifth was a thin, pale creature, mounted, but with his hands bound behind him and his horse on a lead. Skeelie felt the cruelty of all five; felt the primitive strength of the warriors, and the weak, groveling avarice of the thin creature. Torc’s head was lowered as for attack, her ears flat, her expression predatory and cold, her mind seeking out to read the shadowy creature, to understand its nature. That is the one I follow, sister, that cold shadow of a man mindless and unliving. He is death, inhabiting the body of a man. I do not understand how. The ancient Seers would have called such a wraith, sister. One of living death. He seeks something here. Seeks something even as I seek him. He has abandoned following you, sister, for something he seeks more. And the greedy Herebians have seen his need and made him captive through his own lusting weakness. They seek what he seeks, they seek a treasure here.

Skeelie could feel it now, the sense of the riders having been drawn to this place. What power had this valley to draw them? What did they seek? And what did she herself seek? She watched them dismount, felt the captive begin to quest out, intent, searching out blindly, then sniffing, turning its face from side to side.

Torc’s eyes glinted, her lips pulled back in the silent snarl of a killer. Skeelie laid her hand on Torc’s rough shoulder and opened her mind wider to the great wolf, nearly reeled with Torc’s hatred and with the force of evil that Torc’s senses touched from the wraith. They stood pressed together, girl and wolf, strung tight; then Torc left her, began to creep forward between the stone cliffs.

Don’t Torc! Four armed warriors. . . But Torc did not pause, and Skeelie followed her, sword drawn. They descended in silence, stood at last just above the men, so close that Torc could have leaped down onto any one of the horses and killed it. Skeelie felt the mind-shield that Torc placed against the beasts, so they did not sense her. The warriors had begun to prod the wraith impatiently; then they made it kneel. It began to crawl, snuffling at the ground like a hunting weasel, inching along smelling the dirt, changing direction again and again in search of some illusive scent, its thin body making jerky movements, its resemblance to a man all but gone. Was it something other than human, in human shell? It doubled back, then thrust forward with an oily, reptilian motion, as if it had found a scent at last; groveled against its tether toward the caves.

What does it search for, Torc?

But Torc stood tense, her thought only a thin breath of meaning. Do not speak, sister. Not even in silence. That one has Seer’s blood. Skeelie felt Torc’s shielding of thought and tried to push out with a shield of her own, but felt clumsy and uncertain, as if the very unhealthiness of the creatures had laid a fog upon her mind. She watched Torc creep forward, felt the wolf’s cold readiness to attack. She followed, knowing this was madness; began to sense shadows from the creature’s mind, to feel the vague shape of that for which it searched: something small and heavy, something buried deep. She could feel the creature’s lust for that treasure.

“She had a vision then of the wraithlike creature as it had stood beside the river Owdneet in darkness, watching her drink. Yes, it had sensed an aura about her, something it wanted, but she could not make out what. But then suddenly it had turned away, drawn to another trail, had followed the four Herebians who moved silently up the mountains searching—searching for what? The vision went dull and faded, left her with only the sense of the wraith sniffing and whispering around the Herebians, caught in its own mysterious greed. Skeelie could see clearly how the Herebians had stripped their pack animal, distributed the packs among the five horses and forced the wraith to mount; and the wraith, eager to search, had not resisted very strongly. She watched it now, knew that it sensed some power buried within this mountain, for it was pulling ahead eagerly toward the largest of the caves.

What did it search for? What lay there among the caves, whispering out such an essence of power that the creature seemed unable to resist?

And then she knew what it searched for, with a sudden sense that shocked her. Something small and heavy, something buried deep. She sensed the creature’s lust for that treasure: a jagged, heavy treasure, shining green, roughly broken, carved with the fragments of an ancient rune.

Treasure of all treasures. That loathsome creature searched for, snuffled after, a shard of the runestone of Eresu.

Three Herebians followed it. They had lit a lamp, held it high. Skeelie could feel their greed; and feel something more from them. Why are they afraid, Torc? They burn the lamp so brightly. Can’t you feel their fear?

It has to do with the gods, sister. A fear bred of Herebian memory of the ancient caves of the gods. They fear the caves, fear the very mountains of the Ring of Fire. And sister, fear, in those selfish minds, makes them even the more cruel and bloodthirsty.

I can never understand their evil, Torc, or why I feel they are different from other men of Ere—different somehow in the very facts of their birth, their beginnings.

All souls born upon Ere are not of an age, sister. Some have lived many times on other planes. Some are new and untried. Some, perhaps, come upon Ere with a wash of evil already sucked into their natures, from willfully embracing past evils.

The men pushed fearfully into the cave, the lamp burning brightly. The fourth Herebian remained behind, holding the five horses. Torc moved without sound; Skeelie crept close behind her, knowing that they could die here, that she could die fighting these men and never find Ram. But she would not abandon Torc. Torc’s hatred, her lust to kill the wraith, was overpowering. When the bitch stopped suddenly and drew back with one motion to lie flat beside Skeelie, Skeelie dropped down, too. Their faces were so close she could feel Torc’s warm breath, smell her musty smell. What do you sense? Why—you’re afraid, Torc! For suddenly Torc’s whole, intense being was caught in some horror that Skeelie could not fathom. She touched the wolf’s shoulder. What is it, Torc? What can make you afraid?

I cannot kill him, sister. I dare not. Feel out, feel out and sense what I sense, and tell me I am wrong.

Skeelie lay still, sensing the snuffling creature, trying to become one with it against all her instincts; though she shielded herself from it. She began to feel its physical weakness, the exhausted limits of its weak body. She felt the rough, rocky earth over which it crawled, smelled earth and the dampness of the cave. Then quite suddenly and with cold terror, she knew the nature of the creature in sharp detail. Sharp as pain came the knowledge, the reality of what it was.

She understood that Torc must not kill it.

For this creature could not die. Only its body would die. The evil within would, at the body’s death, be set free to take the body of another.

The body of a Seer, sister.

There were no Seers there among the Herebian warriors.

You are the only Seer, Skeelie of Carriol. If I kill that creature, its dark, fetid soul will enter into your body. And you cannot prevent it.

I would fight it, Torc! I—

You cannot fight this. I think it is too steeped in evil. It is a dead soul that can never die again. I think it would possess you. It . . . without a body to possess, it would slowly fade into nothing. In that sense, I suppose it would die. But you cannot kill it. If a human tries, it will possess him. You must go away from here, sister. If they kill it, after it finds the runestone, it will come to possess you.

I will not go away. It searches for a shard of the runestone. If it should find such, I must somehow take that shard. For Ram—for all of Ere. I could not leave a shard of the runestone.

The Herebian beside the cave’s entrance tipped up a wineskin to drink. He held the five horses carelessly, their reins tangled in one hand. Torc watched him with cold appraisal. I could kill him with no trouble, the fat Herebian. Make one less to battle later, if the shard is found.

Skeelie tried to sense the men inside the cave, but now no sense came clear except that of the wraith. The guard drank again. Skeelie took off her pack to make movement easier, laid it beside her quiver and bow behind a boulder. Then she started forward behind Torc, her hand on her sword.

He has heard you, sister.

I made no noise.

He heard something, he’s looking up. He’s coming. Torc crouched, ready to spring.

Don’t let him see you, Torc!

Torc glanced at her with disdain.

If he sees you, he will know you are a great wolf, and so know me for a Seer just as Gravan did. If he finds me alone, maybe . . .

But Torc’s fury exploded; the wolf flew past her in a streak of dark violence as the warrior came up the last rise. She hit him so quickly he could not cry out, pinned him, her teeth deep in his throat as he fell, his only sound a gurgle of expended breath.

He lay still beneath Torc’s weight, twisted once, then went limp. Blood gushed from his throat. The left shoulder of his tunic bloomed with spreading red stain as if a red flower opened. Torc turned to stare back at Skeelie, then spun away from the man, crouching anew, a snarl deep in her throat. Skeelie swung around, her sword challenging sword as a warrior towered over her, come silently out of the cave, perhaps at the small noise of scuffling; and he followed by another, so the two drove Skeelie back. Then one spied Torc, sheathed his sword and drew arrow. Get away, Torc! Get away! The wolf spun, leaped to disappear among boulders seconds before the arrow loosed. Skeelie parried one broad sword, then two, could not summon power to touch the wolf’s mind, so occupied was she; felt the sting of a blade, was backed against the cliff. Saw Torc leap on one of the warriors; and she was battling only one Herebian as the other rolled against her feet locked in fierce embrace with the snarling wolf. The Herebian swung his heavy sword at her like a battering ram. His dark face filled her vision, filled her mind. Black beard, stinking leathers. She dodged, plunged her blade at the man’s leather-clad belly, and felt her sword swept away, felt a dull blow along her neck, a fist across her face. She was falling, twisted with pain. Knew no more.

*

She woke, was lying on rocky ground, her hands tied behind her, her feet tied. She ached all over, as if she had been dragged down the cliff. Her sword was gone, the silver sword Ram had forged for her. She stared at the empty sheath, then tried to roll over, pushed against stone, lifted her head to see she was lying against a boulder at the mouth of the cave. She could hear voices from the darkness, could not make out the words. When she twisted around, pain clutched at her like fire. She stared into the dark cave. Faint light moved there, and a voice rose shouting with anger, the words muffled by echoes. Another man swore—garbled, choppy sounds. Then a thin, querulous voice that must be the wraith’s. “I cannot! It is not the same! Not the same!” Shaking voice, nearly weeping. “I swear it! I swear!”

“This is all you found! We came into the wretched cave for this?” A dull shattering, as if something had been thrown against the cave wall and broken. She felt dizzy, could not bring a vision or make sense of the exchange. The whining of the wraith pulled her back.

“I swear there is nothing, I swear. It is buried in a mountain, maybe not this mountain, maybe . . .”

“You’ll search every mountain in the Ring. You’ll find it, or die looking.”

“It lies to the west, perhaps. Lies deep in a mountain, I promise . . .”

Tala-charen? Did the wraith sense a shard of the runestone lying buried beneath Tala-charen, as she and Ram had always thought? It cried out in pain. The Herebian shouted. “Get up or I’ll kick you again!” Then, “Fetch the horses, BolLag! Why didn’t Stalg tie them before he—never mind, just catch them! We’re heading to the west reaches. Worse luck those two clods got themselves killed. If you see that wolf again, slaughter it.”

Feet went by her. Large and heavily booted. She kept her eyes closed, did not move. “What about the wench?” the man called back.

“Throw her over Stalg’s saddle. He won’t be riding again.”

“She’s no good to us. What do we need her for?”

“Stupid dolt. She’s female, ain’t she!”

The feet went on. She could hear sounds as if he were gathering up the horses. The other warrior came out, leading the wraith. It paused to look into her face. She kept her eyes closed, could feel its interest like a lance. When it continued to stare, she could not help but open her eyes. Its face was loose over the bones. Its pale, dead eyes were sunken deep, the whites gone yellow. Eyes dark-ringed, expressionless, looking deep inside her, seeing things she did not want it to see. The cold sense of the creature gripped her. She stifled the need to cry out, turned her face away from it with horror. What was this thing, dwelling in a man’s body?

The thing crawled on at last, but pulled constantly against its lead back toward the darkness. The Herebian kicked it to move it along, then bound it to a boulder and left it; then he returned to stand over Skeelie.

“Get up!”

She lay as if unconscious.

The man grabbed her by the shoulder and flung her up like a bag of meal, scraping her bound hands beneath her across the rocky wall. He pushed her against the wall, and when she struggled, he hit her hard. She lunged at him, bit his hand, then crouched, doubled with pain when he struck her in the stomach.

“Not the sort of female I relish,” the one called BolLag said.

“Female’s female, What’s the difference. Throw her over the saddle and tie her down good. I’ll take the fight out of her tonight.”

“But she’ll only slow us HaGlard. What—”

“Hoist ’er!”

Skeelie was thrown across a saddle face down, her head hanging. The horse shied and snorted, then went still and trembling, as if it would bolt any minute. The breath was knocked out of her. The saddle pressed deep into her ribs, smelled of rancid oil. She could feel Torc somewhere close by, gauging her position, gauging her best angle of attack. Don’t, Torc! Wait until they separate. Follow us, Torc, and wait! The man called HaGlard had said westward. Would they carry her in the direction of Tala-charen? But maybe she needn’t wait, for they had not tied her to the saddle yet, though her hands and feet were tied and she felt nearly helpless, belly down across the horse. Still, the Herebian who held the reins had turned away to tend another mount. Her horse was nervous, trembling at its strange burden: it would take little to make it leap away. To make it run. She could sense Torc slipping closer, then could feel the wolf’s tenseness as she crouched.

Now, sister! Gig it! Gig it!

She kicked the animal’s shoulder, its belly. It screamed and leaped away, nearly dumping her. BolLag cried out, swearing, as the reins were jerked from his hand. Skeelie clung to the saddle, her ribs bruised, as the terrified horse crashed through tall grass along the cliff. She could feel turmoil behind her, knew that Torc had leaped for a horse’s throat. It was all she could do to cling, to balance on the plunging horse. She could hear another horse running.

She felt Torc behind her at last. Felt Torc swerve, sensed an arrow released. She heard a horse scream, twisted around in the saddle enough to glimpse a riderless horse careening away. Her own horse spun, nearly spilling her, and began to scramble in terror up the boulders. She was slipping, tried to sense what was happening. Torc! Torc! Felt Torc leap and pull at her. Now, sister! Now! She slid off the crazed horse nearly under its hooves, rolled free as it plunged away, and lay still among boulders, hurting all , over, trying to collect her senses.

She felt Torc’s warm breath on her wrist, Torc’s teeth, as the bitch-wolf chewed at the rope.

Skeelie’s hands were free. She bent to untie her feet, struggled with ropes, jerked them loose at last, and they leaped together up the side of the cliff and began to climb, Torc slowing, waiting for her as, behind them, a rider drew bow. They slipped behind rock. Skeelie heard the two men running over gravel. “There, HaGlard, they climb there!” She ran blindly, following Torc, trusting Torc’s keener senses as the wolf swerved into a cave, ran in darkness. She was terrified of being trapped there weaponless, could hear the Herebians gaining, was panting with fear as running footsteps echoed close behind, then felt Torc swerve back to attack—but there was sudden silence behind them.

Torc had stopped, stood listening, feeling out.

Low voices slurred by echo against the cave walls into senselessness. But voices coming closer in the formless dark. They have no light, sister. They have left the lantern or lost it. Help me—help me bring a vision upon them, for they fear the dark caves.

Together, Torc and Skeelie brought darkness down thicker and deeper than the cave’s darkness, darkness with the sense of gods in it. The Luff’Eresi towered, winged creatures half-man and half-horse, violent in their power and righteousness, brought their fury into the cave, so their hatred of the weak and twisted filled the cave with an awesome thundering power, so real and frightening that Skeelie wondered afterward if she and Torc alone had wrought such splendor and felt that they had not. Felt that what they had formed there was aided by something unknown.

They sensed the warriors’ fear, felt them stumble and turn; heard them running out of the cave. Skeelie felt Torc’s silent wolfish laugh. A fine vision, sister. Fine. They search for their horses now. They will leave us, never fear. And the terror of our vision will follow them. And I—I will follow them. 1 must follow them.

They stood together, just inside the dark entrance to the cave, and watched the two Herebians drive their horses to a central point against the cliffs and capture them. Watched them strip the dead horse of its gear, then force the captive wraith up onto one of the animals and tie him to the saddle.

Skeelie did not want to think of Torc leaving her, but the bitch wolf must do as she had committed herself to do.

When it is away from you, when it can no longer enter your body, I can kill it, sister.

“But you said, if it is freed from that body it will take another. Become more powerful. The Herebians are strong, they—”

They must separate when they make camp, to hunt, to gather wood, to see to the horses. I will follow until I can kill them both, one at a time. Then only the wraith will be left, and when I kill it, it will wander bodiless and so grow weak. It cannot enter into me, it has not that power, sister. That shadow killed my cubs. If I do not kill it, I will cripple it so it finds the body useless, yet cannot escape it.

The riders headed up toward the west side of the valley, hurrying their horses. Torc’s very spirit seemed to follow them, heavy and predatory. Ramad would bid me stay with you, sister, but I cannot. Ramad is not here to bid. The bitch wolf’s eyes never left the receding figures as they urged their horses up between the rocky cliffs. I must trail that darkness, sister, and destroy it.

Skeelie knelt, put her arms around Torc’s shaggy neck, pressed her face into the bitch-wolf’s golden coat. The great wolves had comforted her and Ram in their childhood, were her security in a deep, indestructible way. She felt tears come, hugged Torc hard. The wolf’s warmth and strength flowed through her; the bitch-wolf licked her neck, took her arm between killer’s teeth, gently, in a timeless salute.

Then Torc was gone down across the valley past the molten lake, leaping through the grass on the far side of the valley, then up the cliffs until she was lost from view. Gone in one instant. Gone.

Skeelie turned away at last, annoyed at herself for feeling such loss. Torc did what she had to do.

Skeelie made her way along the rim of the valley to where the two Herebians lay dead, retrieved her pack and bow, her arrows, searched for her sword, knowing well she would not find it, and cursed the Herebians sharply. It was lucky she had hidden her pack and bow. She searched the dead warriors for sword or knife, but their friends had stripped them of everything useful. At last she entered the cave where the wraith had crawled and snuffled and began to search for what it had found there, striking her flint over and over until she had collected eight pieces of what looked like a small clay bowl. It puzzled her, for there seemed indeed to be a power about it. She climbed the cliff to some stunted trees, gathered pitch on a sharp rock, and stuck the pieces together: a bowl with a small, useless base. Then, with rising excitement she turned the bowl over and saw that it was not a bowl at all, but a bell. What had seemed the base was a part of the broken handle. She held the bell on her open palm, lightly, and memories flooded back to her. Ram had grown up in a house of bells, hundreds of bells collected by Gredillon, she who had raised him and taught him his Seer’s skills. Had this bell something to do with Ram? Did it hold some message for her? Had it led her here? In Gredillon’s house of bells, the wolf bell had stood on the mantel, presiding over Ram’s birth, and with it he had learned to call down the jackals and foxes before ever he spoke to the great wolves.

The strength of this bell was what the wraith had felt and thought it the runestone, though there was little comparison. The bell had a power, but not like the runestone of Eresu.

Still, it spoke to her. She closed her eyes and let it bid her. It made no vision, but led her directly, gently, to the fiery lake with so strong a bidding that she hardly saw the rocky ground, saw little clearly until she stood on the lake’s shore, staring down at the blood-red lava. The heat was intense and soon nearly unbearable, so she ripped open her collar, then at last removed her tunic.

The vision came suddenly, turning the lake black as jet, and she saw Ram reflected in a brief flash of battle, his face smeared with blood and his mouth open in a silent shout. Then the lake grew red and boiling again. As if she had dreamed and was only now awakening, something shouted silently, Open your mind, Skeelie. Open your mind and look. She tried to see deeper, then closed her eyes at last and let herself float on the incredible heat, letting go, felt a calm take her and opened her eyes to feel cool wind above the red lake. Then the colors of lake and mountains began to dim, to soften, and the sky to grow iridescent, the grass along the cliffs to turn silvery. And mists were blowing across the lake forming the shapes of creatures, shimmering, animals crowding all around her, mythical animals, a silver triebuck, a pale snow tiger, animals she could not afterward remember, all cream and silver and pale-hued. At first they did not move or blink. Then one shifted, its movement so slight she was not sure she had seen movement. Another turned its head deliberately to stare at her, but the motion was so smooth it might have been only shifting light. And yet it stared, its eyes like translucent moons.

And then came a great dark lumbering animal pushing between the others. It was all movement and weight, was neither bear nor bull, but so strangely made that it seemed both of these. It came shouldering up to Skeelie, smelling of musky deep places half-forgotten and carrying heat about it, a breath of musky heat. She could see the ridges and roughness of its coarse-haired hide. It knelt before her suddenly and clumsily.

She knew she was meant to mount. She watched its little dark eyes. A shudder rippled her skin. She took up her pack, her bow. The beasts stood watching, silver and tawny pale, the great dark animal like a misshapen mountain patiently awaiting her.

She mounted at last, swung up onto the beast’s broad, warty back and settled herself into its heavy folds of rough skin. It wheeled with her, and the wind caught her face; she saw the other animals wheel in a blaze of silver, lifting into the wind, lifting through white space. Valley and lake vanished in a blur. Space was light, and light was Time, and nothing existed but this moment endless across wind, careening, wind tearing at her.

The animal’s body was warm, but her pack and bow were like ice against her back. Her hands gripped the warty skin along its neck. They sped through space, leaped winds. Time melted into one great wind, and she rode at its center, her blood pounding in her ears. The pale beasts crowded against her legs in their headlong flight, their wind-torn breath warming her. Once the great dark beast turned its head to look back at her, and its eyes shone white and wild in that dark, ugly face.

They sped through a world of ice and crystal and pale shadows. Pastel-tinted waters slid past against pale hills. White sunsets rose before them like great diamonds, and on they sped. The animals’ occasional clash of hoofbeats over rock was like the sound of jewels spilled on marble. Time was the wind rushing past them in tearing waves, showing now a bloody snatch of battle, now a peaceful village, all vanishing at once. A face, a woman crying out, a scene of death. All gone at once.

Then suddenly, with no change of motion, the beast had ceased to move. He stood still upon a ridge of craggy stone. Skeelie sat staring dumbly about her, realized they were still, realized that the wind had stopped, the flight stopped. The pale beasts stood silently around her and then began to fade. Her own steed was fading; she must slide down, must not fade with them.

She dismounted, shaky and unsteady, stood staring helplessly as the beasts became thin and transparent. They shimmered as if they were seen through water; then they were gone.

She stood alone on a mountain path in bright midmorning.

The sense of wild flight and of terrible cold, and of the beast’s warmth and its musty scent, clung about her. Midmorning in what time? A path in what place?