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

FIVE

Skeelie moved quickly down the mountain. The dropping sun, a sharp slash of yellow, blurred her view of the trail and of the city below. Then, as she rounded another curve, the sun was hidden, leaving only a line of yellow fire along the edge of the mountain. Ahead of her another trail came winding down in shadow, little more than an animal trail. That trail beckoned her, so she turned at once upon it and began to climb, touched with a spark of excitement, then of promise. She climbed quickly, never doubting that she must, scrambling over loose scree and in between close-set boulders; at the top of a mountain cliff, she stopped surprised, to stare out upon a vast flat plain. Smooth sand, black and fine as silk, glinting in the falling sun, stretched away to a line of misty peaks that formed the jagged edge of the mountain. She was nearly at the top of Scar Mountain, where its ancient crown had been eaten away by wind and rain and time to form this dark, silken desert, unmarked by the print of animal or bird. To her left, at some distance, gleamed a lake blacker than the sand. She made her way toward it.

The sense of Ram’s childhood still clung around her, the aura of the dust-wreathed stone house and the ancient garden. A sense of Ram’s destiny grew stronger now. She looked back only once, was surprised by the line of her own footprints across the silken black sand. How long would that lonely, alien trail mark this place before the mountain’s winds smoothed it away? When she reached the lake, she stood looking down at the clear water over black sand and stones, feeling unaccountably afraid. Then she felt the lake pulling at her, and knew, suddenly, a strong, terrifying desire to enter it.

She was not sure when first she was aware of something stirring around her, of shadows moving subtly across the plain as the shadow of a bird might wing across earth, light and quick, and gone. Did she hear the echo of some sound long vanished? She shivered, and the very air seemed to shift, but when she looked directly anywhere, all was still as before. Yet there was movement at the edges of her vision, movement within her senses, as if she were becoming a part of the fleeting shadows. She knew she must make some decision or she would indeed become a part of those shadows. This time she must choose her own direction or be swept into the meaningless shadows of Time; swept perhaps generations from Ram. She felt so close to him, felt that the thread of his life, picked up like a silken strand there in Gredillon’s house, was leading her. She dared not let it slip away. She stared at the black water and knew what she must do and did not know why, made no sense of it. The water pulled at her, some need was reaching out from beyond it and she could not resist.

She argued with herself for some time. The lake stretched away beyond low hills so she could not see the end of it. Could not see down into its depths beyond the first dark rocks and sand. It would be insanity to swim out into that black, concealing water. What did she imagine she would gain by drowning herself in a pool of black water on top of a mountain in a time she could not identify, and where no one would know she was dead, or care? She stared at the black water defiantly. But she knew she was going to do it and began at last to pull off her boots. Then she stood idle for some time deciding about her clothes. It would be foolish beyond measure to go into unknown water fully dressed, to be made helpless by heavy, wet leathers. Yet the thought of removing her protecting garments was worse.

She undressed at last down to her shift and strapped her scabbard of arrows across her naked shoulders, slung on her bow. The water, as she stepped in, was so cold it made an aching, stifling pain in her legs. Surely she had gone mad. She was soon over her head and swimming strongly; trying in desperation to control her panic. With each stroke, as her face went under water, she opened her eyes to stare about her in fear, but could see only dim shadows. Then, suddenly, when she looked up, it was dark. She was swimming through the night, stars overhead and Ere’s twin moons hanging low over the water, nearly full, reflecting like a second pair of eyes in the black water. There was no sign of land. Some distance ahead, a black tower rose up out of the water, a tall, unlighted tower, silhouetted against the stars. She swallowed, swam toward it, filled with fear.

When she reached the tower she began to circle it, swimming slowly, looking up. It reared above her like some ancient monster risen from unknown depths, hoary with water weed or with some vine that clung to its sides. At one place, high above her head, she could make out a protrusion like a thick door. When she thought she had circled the tower, she grabbed a handful of vines, tugged at them, found them strong, and began to climb, still following that instinctive Seer’s sense of inevitability; and following, too, the only way of escape from the icy water. She climbed until she was out of breath, then clung there shivering. Now she could see the black shapes of hills against the starry sky. There was no sound from within the tower. She pulled herself higher, came to a tiny window and stared in, could see a glint of white, but nothing more. She climbed again, half-naked, cold, wishing for her clothes, her lantern, her sword. Wishing herself home in Carriol, warm and safe in her bed.

She could see high above her a tiny balcony, hardly more than a ledge. By the time she reached it she was warmer, and her shift had begun to dry. She pulled herself up onto it and found she was facing a little barred window. When the wind hit her, she felt cold again. She huddled on the ledge and peered through the bars into the dim stone room. She could see nothing at first but a window directly across from her, where stars shone, a similar window to her left and another to her right. Four windows spaced equally around the circular room. Then she began to make out the room itself. A cot, a chest, a small table, a stool. There was a darker shadow across the cot, like a sleeping figure. As the moons rose higher, she could see the cot better. Yes, someone slept there, long pale hair spilling across the cover.

.The figure sighed and stirred, so her face was caught in moonlight. Skeelie’s emotions pitched, her fists so tight around the bars her knuckles went white. Telien? Was it Telien? Without meaning to, she breathed the name, harsh against the night’s silence.

The girl twisted up suddenly, with drawn breath, raised up to face the window; “Who spoke—who?” Slowly she put one bare foot from under the blankets onto the stone floor, then the other foot, almost as if she moved in a dream. She seemed unafraid—or perhaps beyond fear. She came hesitantly toward the window, peering against the faint moonlight. Then she caught her breath. “There is someone! I thought it was a dream. How . . .?” She stared at Skeelie, then reached out through the bars in a frenzy. “How did you . . .? Why, I know you! I remember! Skeelie? Is it Skeelie?” Telien knelt on the sill clutching Skeelie close, pulling her into the bars with more strength than one would think she possessed, pressing her face against Skeelie through the bars in an agony of need for warmth, for human contact. Skeelie touched the cold, thin cheek, felt deep hollows where there had been none. She held Telien against her through the bars for a long time while Telien cried silently, shivering. When Telien raised her face at last, the moonlight caught across little lines around her mouth and on her brow. Her hair was no longer golden, but as pale a color as the moons. Skeelie shuddered. How long had Telien been in this place? Why was she here? The girl’s confusion, her trembling emotion blurred any sense Skeelie might have taken from her, any answers she might have found.

At last Telien raised her face and stared at Skeelie’s near nakedness as if she had just perceived it. Then she rose and drew her blanket from the bed, thrusting it through the bars in a gesture that touched Skeelie terribly.

They had been close once, when Telien was first lost in Time and had cried out to her in spirit, had, in her tumbling frantic flight through ages, needed Skeelie badly. “I wished for you, Skeelie. For a long time after I could no longer feel you in my thoughts, I wished you would come back. But you never did. After a while I stopped wishing.”

“I could not. It—the power faded. How long has it been for you, Telien? How many years?” It was only days since Skeelie had left the caves of Owdneet, but surely Telien was years older. She could not understand the warping of Time.

“I don’t know how long. My—my baby was born four years after the battle at the Castle of Hape. I have been here nearly since then. I have lost count of years.”

“Your—baby?” Skeelie’s voice trembled. Whose baby? Ram’s baby?

“My baby . . .” Telien’s eyes were dark and huge with her sadness. “I don’t want Ram ever to learn of my baby. I—could not face Ramad now. My baby is the child of the dark Seer, Skeelie. The child of NilokEm, who escaped from the battle at the Castle of Hape. My child—my child has the blood of the dark Seers.

“Ni-NilokEm brought me to him out of Time, I do not know how. I was suddenly standing in the garden of his villa. He . . . I bore NilokEm’s child, and then—then my baby was taken from me.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know. It was winter when NilokEm locked me here. I think—perhaps four more winters have passed since then. Four winters. It is fall now, I can see color changing on the hills. I lived in his villa for more than a year. Six— six years, then, since I first stood in the garden of NilokEm’s villa, terrified of him.”

Six years. Skeelie’s head spun. How could the number of days each had lived since they left their own time be different? Six years for Telien, a matter of days for herself.

“Six years since Ramad held me on that windswept mountain. Six years since the huge trees turned suddenly to small saplings, and then we were torn apart. I was alone, Ram was gone in that dark, terrible storm of Time. I have tried not to remember. When that wild storm stopped and all was still, I was in an elegant courtyard, and a man stood watching me, a tall, thin man, stooped, with pale skin and thin dark hair. He terrified me, his look—I knew he was a Seer. I was so afraid of him, I turned to run and saw the gates were bolted with great iron locks. I turned again and would have run through the rooms where a side door opened, but he grabbed me and held me, and . . .

“He—he knew my name without my telling him. He took me to wife.” She turned her face away. “I hoped Ram would come, would find me. I was kept locked inside or, if I was let to go about the grounds, I was guarded. I tried to make friends with the guards, hoping they would help me. I had nothing to bribe them with. They were not friendly, they were afraid of NilokEm. I tried to slip back into Time, but I did not know how. I carry the starfire still, but I do not know how to use it. It confuses and upsets me. I have no Seer’s powers. I have never known what its power was, but I kept it hidden from NilokEm. I thought sometimes he sensed its power but didn’t know what he sensed. I was a prisoner, more confined than when I was watched so constantly in my father’s village. I have never understood why NilokEm wanted me, why he called me out of Time. I would not want to see Ram now. But . . . Is Ram safe?”

“He is safe. Somewhere . . .”

“If he knew I had lain with a dark Seer, that I bore that Seer’s child . . .When—when NilokEm knew I was with child, he locked me in my room so I could not run away. He kept me there until Dal was born, kept us locked in afterward with a nurse, a mute woman.

“When Dal was weaned, NilokEm took him away from me. He said my baby would be raised in the villa, and he had me brought here to this tower and locked in. A servant brings me food once a week.”

“But why—why does he hate you so? And if he hates you, why does he keep you alive? He could have—”

“Because of the runestone.”

Skeelie stared at her. “The runestone you brought out of Tala-charen,” she said slowly.

“NilokEm is convinced that I have it, that he can sense its power. But I don’t, Skeelie. It is lost. I don’t know where. I can’t remember where. After that moment on Tala-charen, I was so tired, so confused. I can’t remember what happened to it. There was darkness. I can remember sleeping, and then afterward it was gone. But I remember something, Skeelie. I remember clearly that on Tala-charen, at the moment of the splitting of the stone, I saw NilokEm.”

“NilokEm? I don’t—at the moment of the splitting?”

“He was there, in Tala-charen. Holding a shard of the stone in his cupped hands, hunkering over it, and then gone, faded just as I faded.

“Skeelie, NilokEm possesses a shard of the runestone of Eresu.

“When I first stood in his villa, I knew I had seen him but I could never remember where. Then, just after Dal was born, NilokEm was standing in my room looking down at Dal, and suddenly he disappeared.

“He appeared again in a moment, holding the runestone in his cupped hands, staring at it with amazement, his cheeks flaming red the way he gets when he is terribly excited, eager for something. He . . . I was so tired, dizzy, and confused. I couldn’t believe he held a shard of the runestone. I couldn’t understand what had happened, not then. I only knew he had come into the birthing room wanting to see his heir, then disappeared, then appeared again. When he—when he returned, he stared at me almost with wonder, forgot himself, he was so excited at having the stone. But he had seen me there on Tala-charen, and soon his look turned to terrible fury. I didn’t understand what he was saying. He kept shouting. ‘That is the secret you harbor! That is the secret!’ over and over. He stared at me with terrible hatred. I pulled Dal close and thought he would kill us both. He said, ‘That is the power I felt in you! That is why I chose you, because the power of the runestone is on you! You carry a runestone of Eresu! You were there on Tala-charen!’ He was clutching the runestone in his hand; he held it up flashing green in the lamplight and shouted, ‘This one is my stone! But you carry a shard of the runestone, and I will have it!’ He didn’t even notice his son. He was . . . he terrified me.”

Skeelie held Telien against her, the bars hurting them. The wind came cold; the steel bars were cold as ice.

“He wouldn’t believe I didn’t have the stone, that I have no Seer’s powers. I told him over and over I had no power, that I had lost the stone, and truly, I don’t know where it is. He beat me, he took Dal from me and knocked me down. Took . . . took Dal away . . .” Her tears caught light, trickling. “But then Dal would not nurse another, they could not find a wet-nurse he would take, so NilokEm had him sent back to me. He swore that when Dal was weaned he would lock me in this tower and leave me here until I told him where the stone is or until I died. But I cannot remember where, I cannot! He beat me over and over. I don’t know why he didn’t kill me, except he truly believes that one day I will tell him. He wants two runestones; he wants them all. His greed for power—”

“But where . . .?”

“I do not know where. It is lost somewhere in Time. All of that is confusion to me now, is only a dark dream that comes sometimes so I wake screaming. A churning dream, everything flowing and warping together, one voice drowning another. I can make nothing come clear, Skeelie. I think there is darkness around the stone. I am almost able to remember sometimes, then it is gone. A woman cries out, horses come thundering, there is blood, all so mixed-up, so . . .” She was weeping again, silently, into her hands.

Skeelie pulled her close. They clung so, in silence, warming each other, the bars pressing between them, Skeelie knowing Telien’s pain and fear and confusion and not understanding how to help her. Skeelie anticipating Ram’s terrible hurt when he learned at last that Telien had borne the son of NilokEm.

She felt awe of the power with which the stone shaped the lives it had touched. How different their lives would be if none of them had ever held the runestone. Why had each of them been drawn to it? And how?

Why, for that matter, was the wraith drawn to it? Had the wraith, too, touched the runestone at some distant time and been ever after drawn greedily back to it?

Had the runestone, then, as much power to offer those of evil as it had to those who battled evil? But of course it did, the very splitting of the stone had come from the violent battling between forces of the light and the dark so evenly balanced, so cataclysmic, that they tore asunder all Time for one blinding instant.

And because he sensed the aura of the stone around Telien, NilokEm had brought her to this time to breed into his heir the power he had thought she held. Skeelie remembered suddenly, startled, what old Gravan had said. The goatherd’s voice echoed like a shout in her mind. Many think NilokEm died, lady, by the hand of Ramad of wolves. His words pounded over and over. By the hand of Ramad. By the hand of Ramad.

“Telien, where is NilokEm?”

“In the villa, I suppose. He never comes here. Skeelie, I felt so helpless, moving through Time I don’t know how far, then being pulled back so close to our own time, but unable to reach our time. When I found myself in NilokEm’s garden, it was only three years after the battle of the Castle of Hape. But I could not reach that time. I could not reach Ram. . . .”

Skeelie remained silent. Three years—and six more years had passed since Telien stood in that garden. Nine years . . . Old Gravan’s words were like a shout in her head. Some say NilokEm died, lady, by the hand of Ramad— Ramad returned nine years after the battle of the Castle of Hape and killed the last dark Seer.

This year, this time, was nine years after the fall of the Castle of Hape. Skeelie wanted to say, Ram will kill him, Ram will kill NilokEm. She stared at Telien, a dozen emotions, a dozen thoughts assailing her, and she could not say it; but a thought like ice gripped her: Ram would kill NilokEm if nothing happened, if Time did not warp into a new and unpredicted pattern.

What power might NilokEm hold over Ram with the runestone he held, if Ram did not also carry a shard of the jade? Power enough to change a prediction? And in the meantime, before that prediction came to pass—if it came to pass—what evil deeds would NilokEm accomplish, using the runestone of Eresu?

At least, if Ram were to be cast into this time to battle NilokEm, he need not find Telien captive. He could find her safe, free of this dark tower. Skeelie clung to the bars, the cold wind biting at her, and tried to form some plan. Telien leaned against her nearly asleep, sighing deep inside herself as if her spirit felt quite safe now that Skeelie was there. When Skeelie moved, to stare down the side of the tower, Telien woke suddenly and clung fast to her, “You aren’t going away? I thought . . .”

“I am right here. Where would I go? Telien—how do they bring food to you?”

“There is a drawbridge on the other side. I can see it when they let it down. I can go down there into the lower chamber, to empty my chamber pot. Down past the cells with the bones of men in them. The messenger leaves food down there for me. I can hear him let the bridge down, then hear him walking across it. The hooves of his horse make a hollow sound. I can hear the lock to the inner door rattle, then it opens. I know every movement by the sound. He shouts and leaves the food and goes away again. He has never spoken to me, except for that brutal shout. I wait on the narrow stone stair until he is gone. I always hear him coming and know it is another week.”

Skeelie felt sick. She turned away to examine the narrow balcony, though she already knew it ended abruptly and there was no way to get around the tower to the other side except to swim, or to climb along the vines. The top of the tower was high above, and she could see, leaning out, that the vines ended far short of it. She stared below her again. “I saw a small window climbing up here. It was barred. Are there others?”

“There are six. All little, and all barred. You can see them in the lower cells. I tried to dig the bars away in many places, but . . .”

Skeelie saw where Telien had dug into the dragon-bone mortar and had a sudden quick image of Telien’s spoon, ragged and bent from digging. Who knew how deep the bars were set into the mortar? She shook one, then another, then dug with the tip of an arrow. The mortar was nearly as hard as rock. At last she settled her scabbard and bow more comfortably across her shoulders and felt down with her bare toes to find a foothold in the vine. “I will try to reach the drawbridge,” she said shortly. The idea of climbing again above the dark water did not enchant her. Telien touched her shoulder, wanting her to stay. Skeelie wriggled her foot into the vines, reached farther with her other foot, swung out, ignoring Telien’s need. The girl began to talk rapidly, as if to keep Skeelie there, though Skeelie was already away. Skeelie wished she would be still. “The vine will hold you, Skeelie. It is thick on the banks of the lake, you’ll see when it is morning. It grows inside the cells, lower down. Where it was not cut away, it grows right over the white bones of dead men—”

‘Telien, take your blanket and go around to the next window. Tie it to the bars, and tie another on if you have it. Find a stick, something to push the blanket to me if I tell you, if the vine grows thin.” Anything to keep Telien occupied. Skeelie gripped the vine harder, swung away to her left, jolting the breath out of herself, clung there cold and fearful, gripping vine with her toes. Great Eresu, she wished she were home. She swung on around, reaching and clutching, until at last she saw the blanket hanging just ahead. Above, Telien’s white fingers gripped around it where she had reached out through the bars. “You can move the blanket on, I’m all right this far.” The blanket jiggled, then made its way upward until the end of it slid over the ledge. Skeelie worked herself on around, feeling out blindly, gripping, clinging, not wanting to look down at the far black water.

She came to the blanket again, feeling as if she might be destined to repeat this action forever, to look up innumerable times to see Telien’s white face above her. She pulled herself on around the tower, came to the blanket a third time and, when she looked down, could see a thin silver line crossing over the dark lake, crossing to the shore. A rope? She could see the vine crowding along the shore in thick clumps as if it had climbed over itself again and again reaching for the sky. She made her way downward until she came to the rope where it was fastened into the stone wall of the tower beside a tall slab of wood like a huge door: the wooden drawbridge pulled up against the wall of the tower.

She felt among the vines until she had located the pulley system, then began to haul on the rope. It was awkward, holding herself to the vine with one hand and pulling with the other. But at last the drawbridge began to lower toward the far bank. She clung, resting finally, as its own weight pulled it on down. And it was then, as she rested, that the sense of men drawing near made itself heard in her mind. She clung there cold and aching, very tired, knowing that riders approached. Herebian warriors. And a dark Seer among them.

And did something else move with them? A shadow darker even than NilokEm? A shadow that was death itself, come there seeking? Did it follow NilokEm’s runestone?

She saw clearly for a moment, in a cold vision, dark, thin NilokEm, heavy-robed against the night air, riding across open meadows with three dozen warriors at his side, riding hard and silently and less than an hour away. They had warning of her: NilokEm knew she was at the tower.

And then she sensed another rider moving through the wood. Her heart raised with hope. A friend? But as she clung shivering and feeling out to him, she knew he was not a friend.

This was the regular messenger, bringing Telien’s food, sent out before Skeelie came to the tower, before NilokEm was aware of her there.

The messenger would bring the food and leave. NilokEm and his band meant to stay long enough to see that Skeelie would never leave the tower alive, for they knew her for a Seer. But the wraith intended that she live. Following its own purposes, suffering from festering wounds in a sick body, it sought like a beast of prey for a new body. She felt that its will and its power had strengthened. Why? Did it carry the runestone that should have been Ram’s and draw strength somehow from the jade? A tremor touched her. Her hands shook. The wraith meant to find a new home for the bodiless evil that was all that remained of a thing once human. Its intent, cold seeking filled her. It meant that she would leave the tower alive and soulless, empty inside herself save for its own presence. But why her? Why not NilokEm? NilokEm, too, was a Seer. Did the fact that he carried a runestone make him too powerful for the wraith to overcome? Or did she, by her friendship with Ram, who had held the stone at its splitting and who surely was destined to join together that stone, if ever that should happen, did she through that friendship present some even more compelling scent to the weasel-like wraith?