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

SIX

Torc lay before Ram’s fire, her shoulder bandaged, her eyes closed in a deep, dreamless sleep. Ram crouched on the other side of the fire, exhausted, his hands stained with her blood, the Herebian arrow lying at his feet. The strength of his mind-power over the bitch wolf, giving her blessed sleep, was all that had enabled him to cut so deeply into her shoulder. He kept the shadows heavy on her mind, now, for she needed rest. He wished they could both sleep, but was afraid that without the spell she would wake and the pain would be too great.

He kept her so for several days, her mind shadowed into sleep against the pain, her wound packed with birdmoss, which he gathered along the banks of a small, fast stream. He hunted for the two of them, let her wake sufficiently to eat. Took his own rest in short, fitful periods. He had hobbled the four Herebian mounts, though he meant to turn all but one loose when at last Torc was able to travel. If he did not suddenly disappear from this meadow, leaving the hobbled horses, and also leaving Torc to travel alone.

By the fifth day she was well enough so she needed no more spells for sleeping. Ram slept the night around and sat beside her the next morning much improved, roasting rock hares over the coals. He had stripped the Herebians of their valuables and buried the bodies beneath stones at the base of the mountain, wishing he were burying the wraith with its dark soul intact in it. Skeelie’s sword hung from his belt. The bitch wolf watched him now, across a fire gone nearly invisible in the bright morning sun. Her golden eyes were steady, but her thoughts were drawn away in some private vision that she did not share with him. He reached to lay more wood on the coals, and suddenly her thought hit him quick and surprising, jarring him so he dropped the wood, making the fire spark wildly. “What, Torc?” He stared at the golden bitch, her head lifted regally, watching him. “What did you say, Torc?”

Why is the wraith linked to Anchorstar? She repeated. Do you not feel it, Ramad? I see it as if in some future time; I see the wraith feeding on the pain of young Seers still as death. All in the future, Ramad. And Anchorstar is there.

Ram turned the rock hares with a shaking hand. Fat dripped down to make the flames leap anew, smoke twisting against sunlight. “Why is he there, Torc? As victim of the wraith? Or—as accomplice?”

As victim, Ramad. Sleeping, drugged, as close to death as those young Seers.

He breathed easier. He would not have liked betrayal by Anchorstar, would not have liked betrayal by his own senses in trusting Anchorstar so implicitly. He took from his pocket the three starfires that Anchorstar had given him and held them near the flame, watched them catch dark green streaks within, then turn to amber once more. He looked up at Torc, squinting against the sun. “Is your vision a true one?”

As true as any vision of future time can be, Ramad of wolves.

“If it is so, then Anchorstar will need all the power he can muster.” He touched the starfires. “I do not see what the future holds for Anchorstar, but I know he suffers deep within. I have never plumbed those depths, nor do I understand Anchorstar well. I hope that by giving me the starfires he has not weakened his own power. If I could help him, there in that future time, I would do so. I would give back the starfires if it would help.”

The starfires are a treasured gift, Ramad.

“Though they have little power, I think, other than to move through Time. Strange stones, Torc. I cannot guide my fall through Time by them, yet I feel their power in the very warping that Time makes. Sometimes I feel, like Anchorstar, that I should cast them away.”

I would not, Ramad. You could do great harm by that. All is linked. All. The starfires, Anchorstar, the wraith, Skeelie—more than you know. Telien is linked to all of it.

“Linked—how? You have taken a prophetic turn, Torc.”

I do not know how. I only see it. Lying here half in fog, mesmerized by your Seer’s skills, Ramad—visions came. Sweeping senses like the gray fog swirling up, and then gone. No reason to it. Only the sense of it, a sense of purposeful linking, of creatures touching across Time, meeting across Time in some meaning and purpose I do not comprehend. A sense of your lady, Telien, linked to all of it.

Telien. He saw her face in a memory filled with pain, her green eyes clear as the sea. Was it memory or vision? His emotions and his longing for Telien were so raw he could never be sure. Perhaps memory and vision muddled together; but now he sensed her in a time long past. He was very sure of that suddenly. Had she returned to their own time? He saw danger around her, saw cruelty touch her, a vision immersed in darkness, filled with agony. He reached out his hand involuntarily, and burned his fingers in the fire, then sat staring morosely at the flame. Torc watched him in silence.

When he looked up at last, he was tense with purpose. “I must be with her, Torc. Somehow, I must. She is in need. When I try to reach out, nothing comes. The starfires do not help me, never help me. But I know she is in need.”

And there was another vision that touched him, puzzling him, seemed to be linked to Telien, though he could not understand how. A young Seer reached out to him in dreams, a young redheaded man with clear blue eyes. And something, perhaps the turn of his cheek, so like Telien that Ram could not forget his face; a young Seer reaching out of Time to speak to him not in words but with a need that Ram knew he must at last acknowledge. There was surely a linking between them, they were creatures linked across Time somehow. But what was that linking? And how was Telien a part of this? The young Seer seemed to hold in his mind repeated visions of Ram and the wolves fighting beside him; as if he needed Ram, would purposely draw him into another time and yet another battle if he could. As he had been drawn into Macmen’s battle. And did that other Seer hold a runestone, just as Macmen had? Ram dared not dream that he did. Yet he sensed a power that the young, untrained Seer seemed to wield with little assurance. Ram knew he must reach out to him, that it was not only Telien he must seek—though it was Telien his seeking spirit longed for. He looked across at Torc. Who was this young Seer who beckoned to him now? Torc watched him in silence, seeing his thoughts with sympathy. And, feeling her kindness, his longing for Fawdref and Rhymannie and their pack came sudden and sharp. “They have not been with me, Torc. Fawdref and Rhymannie were swept away even as I was, into Time. The rest of the pack was not with us, might still be in our own time, I do not know.”

They are not in our time, Ramad. The pack did not return to the mountain after the battle at the Castle of Hape. I was not with the pack when they attacked the castle, I was in the whelping dens, awaiting my cubs. She paused, then went on. The pack did not return there. But I know that my mate was killed, battling at the Castle of Hape. He spoke clearly in my mind then. Spoke of private things. They—the band will be with you, Ramad, if they are needed. Call them. Speak to them with the bell. Fawdref is growing old. He needs you, now, as much as you need him.

*

Hermeth saw the enemy driven back, saw his men resting from battle where they had fallen, where tired horses had stopped to blow. Soldiers began to sponge away blood with water from their waterskins, dressing the wounds of their animals before they tended themselves and their brothers. He ached with fatigue, with remorse at the waste of war, stared out across the near-dark remains of what had so recently been farm buildings, milking pens, now only smoking rubble peopled with the corpses of horses and men. Waste, desolation, just as his father before him had known at the hands of the Herebian raiders—at the hands of dark Seers Macmen thought he had destroyed in his last great battle, the year that Hermeth himself was born. Hermeth sighed and considered the desolation before him with some sense of victory, for they had driven the bastards back, had sent a fresh battalion to pursue them on good mounts, to slaughter every Herebian son of . . . He lowered his head suddenly and clenched his eyes closed as another vision swept him. The battlefield disappeared; he saw a wolf again, only one wolf this time. A golden bitch wolf with golden eyes reflecting the light of a campfire. Across from her sat the dark-eyed Seer he saw each time a vision came. He was leaning to turn roasting rock hares, his red hair so bright in the morning sun it seemed to dim the firelight. The wolf wore some sort of poultice on her shoulder. The young Seer wore two swords now, one with a carved silver hilt. The vision faded slowly, firelight and sunlight filtering together until it dazzled his eyes; and the figures were gone.

Why did such visions haunt him? He had never in his life had visions; his Seer’s skills had never been strong. These visions were so real he could smell the fire and the roasting rock hares, and feel the cold breeze. Feel sharply his need to speak to that Seer. Surely there was a meaning, surely it was the runestone he carried that made such power in him. But why did it do so now, when it never had before? Did the runestone itself have some mysterious link to that young, dark-eyed Seer?

Hermeth knew his skills had come stronger since his visions began. The conjuring he had laid upon the sheep pastures, to deceive the rabble raiders, had been more than satisfying; that memory still left him with a shock of surprise that he had been capable of such. And his power seemed linked to the other Seer; he felt that they were meant somehow to stand together in battle, though he could not divine the reason. Had that, too, to do with the stone? He felt increasingly that he needed that other Seer in a battle yet to come. He stared into the thickening dark, puzzling. A fitful wind touched his cheek, blowing down from the high deserts that rose above the rim, and he seemed to touch a sudden and desolate sense of space, of eternity, that dizzied him, made him draw back, want human company. He turned away toward the cookfires where his men were tending their wounds, knelt beside a young soldier and took the bandage from his hands, began to wrap the boy’s arm. When he looked up at last, the cast of firelight caught his men’s faces in a quiet brotherhood that stirred him deeply, the brotherhood of soldiers who knew they might die together, soldiers who fought together fiercely.

Wars had flared, died, moved across the coastal countries like a series of sudden storms, the raiders appearing in one place then disappearing suddenly. Sly, clever bands took shelter in the rough hills and woods, then slipped out to leave families dead and crops and homes destroyed. Slowly then the Herebian bands, provisioned from what they did not destroy and armed anew, drew ever closer to the ruling city of Zandour. So far they had been thwarted in Sangur and Aybil and Farr, or sometimes set one against the other when Hermeth could conjure friction and quarrels through a few trusted men who traveled among the enemy troops. This close, efficient network of spies was the first such in Ere since Carriol had come to power and, after the battle of Hape, sent out small cadres across Ere as protection against the dark Seers rising anew.

Though Carriol herself had changed her ways more than a generation ago and now spent her Seer’s powers—so much less without the runestone that Ramad had wielded, countless years back in her history—to hold solid her own borders, protecting those who would come to her for sanctuary, but letting the rest of Ere fend as best it could.

And now the sons of the dark twins, street-bred sons of whores, drew closer upon Zandour in these small, agile bands, easily lost among the hills and woods, impossible to track sometimes, except by Seeing. And Hermeth’s small handful of Seers was not omniscient. Seers tire, too. Seers grow weary in war and, grown weary, become uncertain in their skills.

He remembered with satisfaction that time in Aybil, in the curve of the bay nearest to the sunken island of Dogda, when he had laid a vision-trap that brought forty Herebian warriors down upon what they thought were sheep farmers and turned out to be soldiers herding boulders. That was a victory. But his skill of vision-making was uneven, and not often to be relied upon.

He thought of the power that that other Seer must wield. He coveted that power, not for himself, but to win this cursed war; envied the strength of mind he sensed in that Seer, was drawn to that young man who could command the great wolves and, most likely, command the powers of a runestone with none of his own hesitation. At times the stone would not work for him at all. He would feel a darkness then, a shadow around him; and the runestone would be lifeless in his hands so the visions would not come, let alone any illusion-making.

Then the veil would lift, and visions would come sharply. He would imagine that Seer and a great band of wolves fighting by his side, defeating the street Seers of Pelli. Was that Seer heir to Ramad, who had lived at the time of the Hape? Surely he must carry the wolf bell that had belonged to Ramad, for how else could he wield power over the great wolves? Hermeth scowled, puzzling. He thought of his father and the story of his victory over the dark twins. A mysterious warrior had fought by Macmen’s side. A warrior commanding wolves and believed by many in Zandour to have been Ramad of wolves come mysteriously across Time. Macmen’s own stories, when Hermeth was small—before Macmen died in Hermeth’s sixth year—had named that warrior Ramad. But mustn’t he in truth have been the grandson of Ramad, also named Ramad? The stories were garbled and unclear. The original Ramad had battled NilokEm nine years after the battle of the Castle of Hape, nearly ninety years gone in Ere’s past.

Hermeth felt overwhelmed with questions. It would make no sense for a vision to come to him of the original Ramad, long dead. Not when he envisioned so clearly that Seer fighting beside him. Could the redheaded Seer of his visions be the son of the second Ramad, son of the Ramad who had fought by Macmen’s side? Was this young man drawn to him now by the ties that their two sires had known on the battlefield?

*

When she had the drawbridge down, Skeelie found that an arrow was of little use in trying to undo the great iron lock on the door. Only the tip of the blade would go in, and the hasp was long and well set into the wood. It was hard to work by moonlight. She fiddled with the hinges, found one somewhat loose where the wood was softer. The panic of the closely approaching rider made her nervy, and she was fearful of the large band of riders farther off. Carefully, but with trembling hands, she began to dig out the hinge.

She hacked at the wood, dug, carved at it until at last she was able to work her arrow tip under and pry the hinge loose. When it came free, she began working on the lower one, which seemed solid indeed. She listened with growing tension for the galloping messenger, tried to plan what to do, swore at the lower hinge, which was set into the wood as if it had grown there.

She heard him before she had made even a dent in the wood. Exasperated, fearful, she drew back into the shadow of the door, her arrow taut in the bow.

He drew up his horse at the far bank and sat staring across, filled with apprehension, gazing into the shadows of the tower searching for the intruders who had lowered the drawbridge. Could he see her? The angle of the moons left only deep shadow where she stood, but some light came from the star-washed sky. She hardly breathed.

At last, with drawn sword, he urged his horse onto the bridge, approaching slowly and deliberately. The horse’s hooves struck hollow echoes. Skeelie knew the horse smelled her, could feel it tensed to shy. She soothed its mind until it calmed and came on quietly. Then when it was nearly on top of her she leaped out, shouting and waving her arms. The good animal screamed in terror and spun, nearly went over backward in its panic, dumped its rider and stepped on his arm as it lost its footing and fought to avoid the lake. It righted itself, then hammered away across the bridge and disappeared into the wood.

The rider half rose, groaning; crouched facing Skeelie, her drawn arrow inches from his face.

“Get up, soldier.”

He rose, staring at her with fury.

“Unlock the door. Hurry.”

He fumbled with the key, pushed it into the lock with shaking hands, got the door open at last, pushed it to. The cell room was dimly lit where moonlight crept through small cell windows. Barred cells rose all around, tier upon tier, with a winding stairway like a great snake leading up.

“Go in ahead of me. Stand in the center of the room. Where is the food?”

He stood in the moonlight facing her, dropped a leather pouch at his feet.

“Unsling your bow and your arrows and drop them. Your knife. Then step away from them, over by that cell.”

The man stared at the cell, then glanced at his knife still in the scabbard. She raised her arrow a quarter inch and drew her bow tauter. He removed the knife and dropped it.

“Now take your leathers off. Take your boots off. Toss them here. And the key.”

He stared at her with fury. At last he began to peel off his fighting leathers. She heard the key clink at her feet. When he was stripped to graying undergarments, she nodded toward the cell and he, docile now in his near nakedness, went into it. She gestured, and he pushed the door closed. “You would not leave me, miss. Not to starve, not to die of thirst here. . . .”

“There are riders coming. They will set you free. If they find you.” Skeelie saw Telien then on the narrow stair that led to the top of the tower. “There is a horse, Telien, go catch it; you are good with horses. Take—take his knife and bow.” She thought Telien would be afraid, would refuse. But the thin girl did as she was bid quickly, taking up the weapons and slipping out the door and across the wooden bridge soundlessly in her bare feet. Skeelie fitted the key to the cell door. “Miss, don’t lock me in here. I was only—I didn’t hurt her, I was only bringing her food.”

Skeelie locked the door and rattled it, gave the messenger a cold look, pulled on his leathers, all too big for her, rolled up the pants, the sleeves. She put on the boots, but they were impossible. She took them off again and tossed them into a locked cell halfway up the hall. She could see white bones in some of the cells.

She left the tower, locked the door behind her, pocketed the key, and ran noiselessly across the drawbridge. Her heart had begun to pound again, in a panic with the closeness of the riders. She found the rope, pulled the drawbridge up, straining with its weight. Then she stood silent, reaching out to Telien. Yes, there—she ran, her heart like a hammer, toward where Telien held the big Herebian mount on short rein among the black trees. Good girl! She was mounted, gave Skeelie a hand up, and they were off at a gallop across the soft carpet of leaves. “West,” Skeelie whispered. “They come, NilokEm comes at us from the north.” The moons were dropping down, would be behind the hills soon. Already in the east the sky above the trees was growing gray.

*

Hermeth’s soldiers pinned one cadre of the rabble invaders against a cliff and slaughtered them, but the main army melted away into the hills, and there hid waiting for dusk. Hermeth sent a rider fast across the hills to bring additional troops from out the sheep fields and farms, to raise a new wave of attack. Then he climbed alone up the high hill beside which his armies were camped, stood staring down across the green valley, cast in shadow now as the sun fell. Far out on the meadows the night patrol circled in silence. Behind him, on the far side of the hill, two sentries stood shielded among boulders watching the darkening plains, and below, his men were building supper fires, tending the wounded, caring for the mounts. An army resting after battle, a scene so often repeated it sickened him. He was sick of fighting, wanted it over with, wanted to see his men marching home freed at last from the Pellian menace, from the Pellian greed for land and riches, freed to live in peace as men were meant to live. His hatred of the rabble Seers burned inside him, a festering hatred of men who could think of nothing but attack and theft and killing. Now, only Farr lay between his troops and Pelli itself. Farr where half the country held allegiance to the dark street rabble. Though the other half would stand with Zandour, if need be.

And there might be need. If he could destroy this army he followed, he could break the back of the Pellian rabble. He felt the sense of the rabble Seers leading them. Only a handful, but strong in their skills; and they wanted the runestone above all else; they lusted for it harder than they lusted to rape and burn and kill.

Alone on the hilltop as evening fell, he tried to reach out across space, across elements he little understood. He needed that other Seer’s power to help him now, that Seer who commanded such skill with the wolf bell and would surely wield the power of the runestone better than ever he could himself. He felt sometimes, with the stone he carried, like a child trying to learn speech, and no one to teach him the words. He needed power now against the rabble leaders, for if they were not destroyed soon, perhaps they would grow so strong that Zandour would never be free of them. One handful of greedy street waifs risen to such strength. One handful drawing to them every lusting Herebian raider they could muster and holding them with promises of power.

He slipped the runestone from his tunic, held it so it caught the last light of the vanished sun. This runestone, which their common ancestor had commanded: NilokEm, from whose seed both Hermeth, himself, and the dark street rabble had sprung. He wondered fleetingly who that unnamed woman, his great-grandmother, had been who had borne their common grandfather then disappeared so mysteriously.

He watched night fall around him, watched the supper fires die at the base of the hill and his men roll into their blankets, to sleep exhausted. The guards circled in the thickening dark; then he felt the darkness shift and felt unfamiliar shadows move upon the hill, felt the sense of expectancy that foreshadowed the appearance of a vision, stood staring eagerly into the darkness, clutching the runestone, and felt rather than saw the shadow standing tall with the great wolf beside him. But then the figures were gone again as if they had never been, and the hills curved empty in the deepening night.

At long last Hermeth went down to his men, heavy with disappointment.

*

Ram sensed the other’s presence, then felt a lulling emptiness as if that other Seer had turned and gone away into shifting shadows. He stood beside Torc, with his hand on her shoulder, where she had risen at the first sense of the vision. They waited, he, tense and expectant, and at last the shadows came strong again, the familiar shifting of earth and sky, and he and Torc stood suddenly upon a hill watching a figure descend to where campfires flickered in the night, where men slept with weapons by their sides, exhausted from battle. He stood looking down the hill, filled with the sense of a meeting imminent, of a power between himself and that receding figure. Why? Did that Seer carry a shard of the runestone? The sense of such power was strong. He saw in his mind the young man’s face, the turn of his cheek so like Telien. Pale brows, sandy lashes like Telien’s. But was there another resemblance, too? Or did he only imagine the likeness to Macmen?

Macmen had stood quietly after defeating his twin brothers, holding with reverence the runestone that he had won from them. Macmen—the square face, the square cut to his chin very like this young man. Though Macmen’s coloring was darker.

In what time was this hill on which he now stood? In what time did this young man live? Ram sensed a pattern intricate and all powerful, a pattern that seemed woven of the powers of mind and earth, equally awing him. Macmen’s son had been born in the year Ram fought beside Macmen. Macmen’s son . . .

The sense of that pattern vanished, leaving him taut with desire for the hidden answers it held. He stood watching the redheaded figure moving now among the troops. Torc pressed close to his side. That is what I felt, Ramad, that sense of a linking, of creatures and powers touching. But wait—there are others with us. Ram could feel Torc’s pleasure, then felt other bodies against his legs, and the great wolves were pushing all around him in wild confusion. He nearly shouted with delight, knelt to embrace them, their wild reality leaping into crazy joy. He hugged Fawdref, felt the great wolf take his hand between killer’s teeth, pressing gently. Rhymannie nuzzled him, the wolves pushed at him, nearly toppling him in their delight. He was drowning in a sea of wolves, delirious; huge shaggy bodies pressing and licking with wolfish humor as they bit and pushed and nuzzled.

When he rose at last and glanced down the hill, he saw the figure standing below staring up at them, felt the young Seer’s wonder. Then the man climbed quickly, and stood before him at last, caught in silence. The moonlight touched his red hair, his sandy brows and pale lashes, the light, clear depths of his eyes. “I do not know your name. But who else would walk with wolves except the son of the second Ramad?”

“There was only one Ramad. And I am not his son.”

“Who, then?”

“I am Ramad.”

“You cannot be Ramad; perhaps Ramad’s son fought beside my father twenty-three years past, in the summer that I was born. But you cannot be he and surely not Ramad of the wolves.”

“I am Ramad. You must take my word. And you are the son of Macmen. You are Hermeth. I remember you as a babe,” Ram said, grinning.

Hermeth stared and could not believe. They were of an age, surely. He studied Ram; the smooth cheek, the dark eyes beneath thick red hair. He saw the wolf bell Ram took from his tunic. He felt the sense of Ram’s truth. At last he held out his open hand, where the shard of the runestone gleamed. Trusting beyond question, he dropped it into Ram’s hand. It lay like a dark slash across Ram’s palm, and a drumming of power like thunder shook them. Hermeth’s green eyes looked into Ram’s dark eyes and laughed. Time grew huge around them. The wolves raised their voices in a wail that chilled the blood and panicked the horses tied in the valley below and woke four battalions of sleeping soldiers, who leaped up drawing weapons, before Hermeth spoke down to them.

At last the soldiers rolled back into their blankets and slept. The sense of the power of the stone calmed. Ram and Hermeth stood staring at one another, both filled with questions, Ram with perhaps even more curiosity than burdened the young ruler of Zandour. This meeting with Hermeth, so long foreshadowed, seemed to open his mind to every puzzling thought he had pushed aside. He felt it as a turning place, though he did not know why or how. Questions came that touched on the core of his being, on the nature of his own power and of the power of the runestone. On the nature of the compromise he must find within himself between his search for Telien and his search for the shards of the runestone.

He looked at Hermeth and felt for an instant he was seeing the shadow of Telien. What was this likeness to Telien that made him think such thoughts. What was he trying to unravel, to imagine? He had a sense of Time curving in on itself, touching itself at its own beginnings, and this confused and upset him.

Then he put such thoughts aside, smiled at Hermeth, and they descended the hill thinking of a hot brew. Ram did not notice until later that Torc was no longer with them, no longer among the wolves that crowded around him down the hill; did not sense the pattern of unseen forces, and the will of Torc herself, that twisted her away into another time, far distant.