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

EIGHT

It was a rare good night of feasting and singing. The hall of Hermeth’s rough stone villa was crowded with tables laden nearly to overflowing with meats and breads and delicacies brought from all around the city by the townsfolk: shellfish from Zandour’s coast baked in leaves of tammi; breads of mawzee grain and whitebarley and wild grass seed; and great custards of tervil and vetchpea and dill. A huge fire blazed on the hearth, roasting chicken and chidrack and wild pig from out the marshes and haunches of deer and sheep. Folk heaped their plates high and carried them to the courtyard, where singing and gay music stirred the night, and the dancing was wild and fast, celebrating Zandour’s victory.

How long they had awaited this day; how eagerly they had anticipated the time when they could tend their flocks on Zandour’s green hills without fear of Herebian raiders, could sleep at night beneath the peaceful silence of Ere’s cool moons, not listening every moment for the sounds of raiders descending from dark hills to burn and steal and kill. There would still be danger. Zandour must still maintain guards and patrols, and the army must train as ever. But not danger as it had been. The street-rabble Seers were slaughtered. Neither Hermeth or Ram could sense any lingering taint of them. The only evil that threatened now was the common strain of straggling raiders never caught up in the Pellian warring, small Herebian pilferers that Zandour could easily deal with.

Zandour showed its pleasure in joyful celebration. The songs sung were mostly the old songs, “Smallsinger Tell Me,” “Jajun Jajun,” “The Goosetree of Madoc,” songs from the coastal lands. Then a young bard made a song about the war in the dark wood, sang the words amidst a sudden stillness as Zandour’s people went hushed; and long would it be sung in Zandour. It told of the two stones that were one stone, of Ramad of wolves come out of Time to fight by Hermeth’s side; of NilokEm, the dark ancestor, and of Telien, who was mother to Hermeth’s grandfather, come suddenly into that wood. It did not speak of the wraith, for only a few had seen that shadow and understood what it was. The song did not tell where Telien had gone, once she disappeared from the wood.

Ram did not join the festivities. He took supper alone beside the hearth in the great hall, his back to the crowds that came to load their plates. He ignored Skeelie, who lurked by a window watching him. He wished she would go away, wanted only his own lonely company. He ate quickly, hardly tasting the deer meat and the carefully prepared dishes, then wandered out of the hall and through the crowds, unaware of the music and jostling. It was to the quiet dark beyond the stables and outbuildings that he was driven by his taut, violent agitation.

Skeelie wanted to follow him and knew he would not tolerate that. He was utterly closed to her in a remoteness that not even friendship could bridge; so awash with suffering for Telien, so deeply grieving. She saw him disappear into shadow and stood in the courtyard for a long time alone after he had gone. Like him, she was unaware of the crowds around her, of the gaiety; and at last she found her way to the room Hermeth had given her.

She shut the door, stood with her back to it, letting the tension ease, letting the sense of isolation, the emptiness of the big square room soothe her. A bathing tub had been brought in, which steamed invitingly. She sat for a while in a deep chair beside the fire, admiring the tapestries and the bright Zandourian rugs, thinking of Ram and of Telien, too lazy even to get into the bath, then began at last to strip off her boots and her borrowed dirty leathers.

The steaming tub felt so good; the aches of battle and the tired stiffness were slowly eased away. She took up the thick sponge, then the ball of perrisax soap, sniffing it with delight, and in a pleasant fog began to scrub off the blood and dirt of battle. When finally she dozed, the water in the tub grew cold and the low fire burned to embers.

*

Ram wandered alone in the dark between the outbuildings and pens. He could smell the pigs plainly, and the goats. The music and singing faded to an almost-tolerable blur. He could have done without it altogether. Hermeth had taken one look at his black expression and left him. Skeelie had hung around, annoying with her silent concern. He felt a twinge of guilt. Well, but Skeelie understood. She always knew his pain. Yes, and that in itself was annoying. He stared up at the sky, immense and distant, and cold desolation touched him, the reality of Telien’s fate sickening him nearly to madness: Telien, captive in a horror worse than any death could be; Telien trapped now as he had never dreamed possible. Was she aware of her possession yet unable to battle it? Or had her spirit been crippled, or destroyed?

*

Hermeth found Ram some time later still among the sheep pens and sties. He went to stand beside him, stared absently at the waning moons, watched pale clouds blow across the stars. The singing came faint and cool, muffled by stables and grain rooms. Neither spoke. Ram leaned tiredly against the sty fence, and Hermeth watched him. Ramad of wolves. Ramad, hardly aged since he fought by Macmen’s side twenty-three years gone. The clouds shifted to cover the moons, then uncovered them suddenly so moonlight marked the flaming hair of the two Seers. Ram’s olive skin and dark eyes and the slight dishing of his face were in sharp contrast to Hermeth’s paler, square face and clear blue eyes fringed with pale lashes. Hermeth uncapped a flask of honeyrot. Ram sipped at it absently. Hermeth frowned. “You cannot tear yourself from the image of her, Ramad, from the horror of her possessed. You will not rest until you have followed her. But you . . .” Hermeth took a sip of the honey-rot and capped it. “You do not know how or where to look, how to find your way into Time in the direction she—the wraith—has taken.”

Ram nodded, caught in misery. He stared bleakly into the night.

“There is a story in Zandour about a man called the Cutter of Stones. It is said by some that he is evil. I do not believe that. I think he is a magical person.”

Ram turned for the first time to look directly at Hermeth.

“A Seer, yes,” Hermeth answered his silent question. “But a Seer with special skills. It is said that he cut, from one large stone, five golden stones called starfires that could . . .” He was stopped by Ram’s look. “What did I say? Why does the mention of starfires—?”

“Don’t stop! Get on with your story!”

“It—it is a tale from herders in Moramia. Five starfires that can hurl a man into Time and carry him—well, just carry him. . . .” Hermeth swallowed. “But you have already been carried into Time.” He watched Ram with slow realization. “You—you carry the starfires! You . . .”

Ram reached into a fold of his tunic, drew forth his hand, and held it palm up so the faint light of the moons caught gleaming upon three pale amber stones, cut and faceted, their cool light increasing, deepening at their centers then blazing out suddenly like fire. “Starfire,” Hermeth breathed, staring. “Then, Ramad, you have known the Cutter of Stones.”

“No. The starfires were given me by another. A man called Anchorstar. He said they were given to him by someone he trusted, but he did not name that man. Perhaps it was the Cutter of Stones, perhaps not. Tell me of the Cutter of Stones.”

“It is said the Cutter of Stones can shape Time to his own uses when he chooses.”

“Where can I find such a man?”

“It is told that one cannot find him, cannot seek him out, that he dwells outside of Time and will bide you come to him only if he chooses. But with those starfires—if they can touch Time, can’t you . . .”

“The starfires seem sometimes to lead me, but more often only to confuse and twist that which I attempt. Though— though perhaps, after all, they led me to you. Perhaps it was the starfires that led us into the dark wood where Telien—where Telien . . .” Ram bent his head. “I do not know.” He stared at the starfires coldly, then said with pent-up anger, “Led me to Telien too late.” He looked up at Hermeth. “Could—could this Cutter of Stones be evil?” He dropped the starfires into his tunic with sudden distaste. ‘Tell me all you know of him.”

“I know little more. It is said that if you need him, and if he deems your need a true one, he will call you out of Time to come to him.” Clouds raced across the moons in white veils, and as Hermeth turned to look up, a sudden vision came around them, cold as winter. The sty fence disappeared, the villa. The land itself seemed to swim and fold around them and shadows raced across it sparked with silver light. Other, denser shadows rose as a fog might rise from hidden ground, shadows that were figures surging together in the midst of ephemeral winds; they saw young Seers, Children of Ynell, many and many of them: Children soon to be born, perhaps already conceived, Children walking out across Ere carrying light within their souls. Hermeth and Ram saw them struck down, saw them flee before dark warriors; flee to Carriol or northward up over the wild black peaks away from Ere into the unknown lands. They saw other Children living in silence, hiding their skills for fear of death.

They saw Children lying as if dead, asleep with some mind-bending drug, lying on stone slabs in a dark underground place. And the very breath of the wraith pervaded that place so that Ram almost cried out. Did Anchorstar, too, lie there bound in mindlessness? Surely the sense of him was there; but then the vision faded.

For long afterward, Ram could not free his mind from the inexplicable weight of that vision.

*

Skeelie dozed and woke in a cold tub. She got out shivering, wrapped herself in a blanket, and huddled before the dead fire. When at last she stirred up the embers and laid on new kindling she felt muzzy, vaguely hungry, and wished she had eaten more supper. Streaks of light came through the shuttered windows and snatches of song from the courtyard, muted and pleasant. She huddled to the fire and soon began to feel warmer, crouched there absently admiring the bright colors of the Zandourian rugs, the pattern of the bedcover. The bed linen, turned back white and smooth, invited her. She rose at last, yawning, and began to prowl the room. In a corner behind a dressing screen, new leathers had been laid out for her, and fresh underlinen, a soft wool tunic, new boots. The sight of them, and the thought of Hermeth’s kindness, made tears come suddenly and surprisingly. Someone cared. She caught her breath in a sob that amazed her and stood clutching the leathers, bawling like a child.

Why should someone’s kindness make her cry? You’re tired, Skeelie! Stop it! Stop crying and get into bed! Yet she knew she was not crying just over the clothes and Hermeth’s kindness, that she was crying for Ram, for a kind of gentleness that Ram could never show her.

If only Ram needed her now—as a friend. Instead of going off alone. At last, exhausted with crying, she climbed into bed. In spite of her misery, she took pleasure in the clean sheets, appreciated the gentle softness of the bed. Wriggling down, she let the bed soothe and ease her, clutched the pillow to her and slept almost at once.

For nine days they remained in Zandour, idle as sheep, eating prodigious and succulent meals, riding the countryside just for the pleasure of it, sleeping long and unbroken nights. Skeelie took so many hot baths her skin seemed permanently wrinkled; she luxuriated in her comfortable room, in her new leathers, and in the simple new gowns Hermeth brought to her. Her body began to feel like something human again, fed and clean and rested, the scabs and little wounds healing, and pampered with soft fabrics. Her senses were pampered with the handsome, well-furnished hall—not elegant but well appointed—with the bright tapestries and rugs, and with the neat farms of Zandour and the rolling green sheep pastures. How long such an idyl might last was impossible to guess. Skeelie simply soaked it all up while she could. Though Ram did not do the same. In spite of good meals and the luxuries he had long been without, he was morose, steeped in painful thoughts of Telien. Even occupied with teaching Hermeth the ways of the runestone, Ram had too much time to think; he would sit in the evenings alone beside the fire, preferring his own company and silence, or go skulking off into the night by himself in spite of anything Skeelie and Hermeth might think of to divert him.

The wolves were seldom seen; they had gone to hunt the cliffs up on Scar Mountain, making Skeelie stare away toward that towering mass with a wild, persistent curiosity. The very existence of Scar Mountain there so close, of Gredillon’s house only a short ride away, made her taut with questions. What would the house be like if she went there now? In what time had she stood there? Before this time of Hermeth? Or in a time still to happen? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that Gredillon’s house, or perhaps some power from Gredillon herself, had given her the gift of truly touching Ram’s early life. That would always be with her. Had Gredillon sent her the clay bell through some powerful manipulation of Time? And what was Gredillon? White-haired Gredillon—was she one of Cadach’s children just as Anchorstar must surely be? Skeelie wondered, if she returned to Scar Mountain now, whether she would find answers to such questions. But she did not return. Something she did not question prevented her, turned her away from that thought, willed her to let the sleeping house be.

Nor did Ram go to Sear Mountain, though surely he must long for the house of his childhood. She could not sense what he felt; his thoughts were closed to her, sunk in desolation. And then on the night of the ninth day, when Ram had been gone longer than usual and it was going on to midnight. Hermeth went to search for him, and did not return.

Skeelie sat immobile beside the fire after Hermeth left her, muzzy with too much honeyrot, disgruntled with Ram’s difficult ways, in spite of knowing how he suffered for Telien. She dozed, awakened, dozed again, and still neither Hermeth nor Ram returned. At last she lit a lamp, took up her sword, and went out into the night, her unease making her cross.

She found Ram in the darkness of sheds and sheep pens. Moonlight cast a thin outline across his shoulders where he knelt. What was he doing kneeling beside a sheep pen in the middle of the night? Then she felt, suddenly, the sense of something very wrong, a sense of hollowness; felt Ram’s shock and his terrible remorse. Felt the sense of death. Saw then that he knelt beside a body. She went to him without speaking.

Hermeth lay beside the sheep pen, twisted and unnatural in death. Her hands began to shake. She felt the sense of his death like a blow, sudden and sharp, not wanting to believe. Someone she had just been talking with, sitting before the fire with, could not be so suddenly lying dead in the night, in the mud.

But of course he could be. Why had she sensed nothing, back in the hall? She stared at Ram’s white, twisted face not understanding anything. When Ram spoke at last, his voice was hoarse and flat.

“She has come here. Telien has come. The wraith—it— has taken the strength from Hermeth. Taken the life from Hermeth.” She thought he would drown in his pain. “How can it have become so strong, to do such a thing, Skeelie? I don’t understand. It could not have done this before, at Tala-charen.” He paused, stared at her. “Did it draw strength from the stones, there in the wood?” His voice was hoarse, near to tears. “Or from NilokEm, before he died? Not— not from Telien. She was so weak, so very frail and weak.”

“She was frail of body, Ram. But Telien’s spirit— she . . .” Skeelie could not finish.

“When she came out of the night I wanted . . .” He bit his lip, turned his face away. “I wanted only to hold her, to comfort her. I couldn’t believe . . . She was so pale. Great circles under her eyes. She—she was so close to the end of her strength. As if the wraith did not dare let her faint. She—it stood looking at me. It has new power, Skeelie. It has learned to sap the strength from a man like a . . .” Ram swallowed. “Like a lizard sucking out the strength from a creature and leaving a bare shell.”

“But she . . .” Skeelie stared at him, knowing suddenly and clearly that the wraith had not come here for Hermeth. “She came for you, Ram.”

“She—was so near to failing of strength altogether. The wraith knew he could not get me to kill Telien. Worked it out that it could take a man’s strength to replenish itself. Thought that, because Telien and I—because we . . . that it could make me give in to it, that it would be easy to drain my body of strength, make me—give myself to her.”

She felt a guilty elation that Ram lived, that it was Hermeth lying dead and not Ram. “But how . . .?”

“Hermeth came upon it—upon us. He battled by my side. We—we battled together, and then suddenly Telien’s color heightened, she stood straight, seemed altogether different, healthy, alive. I—I thought she had come back. I thought she had defeated the wraith. I reached out to her. And too late I saw . . .” He drew in his breath. ‘Too late I saw Hermeth fall. Just—just fall, Skeelie. And she—she reached to put her arms around me, to—to draw me to her. I—I went to her. Wanting her, Skeelie. I knew what she was. She held me. It was . . . I could not let her go. But then I—I began to resist her, to battle her until she drew back. She looked at me with a hatred I can never forget. And then she—she was just suddenly gone.” His face filled with pain. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here—how long ago that was. Forever. For Hermeth, it will be forever.”

The moons had gone. Ram and Skeelie carried Hermeth’s body back to the hall and began to wake Hermeth’s men, wake the families who helped in the hall and kitchen. Lamps were lit. Hermeth was laid on a bench in the hall before the dead fire. Those who came knelt immediately, as if no man wanted to stand taller than Hermeth in this moment. Messengers were sent throughout the town.

They made his grave upon a hill at first light. Processions streamed out of the village from all directions in absolute silence: Folk cleanly dressed and carrying little bowls of grain in the traditional gift for the winged horses who might come over Hermeth’s grave to speak with him and carrying little bowls of fruit and meats to leave there on his grave for the gods, for if fate smiled, the Luff’Eresi might come too in a last rite to Hermeth. The ceremony itself was simple enough. Ram spoke solemn words, as did Hermeth’s lieutenants, the five Seers among them bowing their heads in a last gift of power to Hermeth. Ram held the runestones tight, wanting power for Hermeth now in these moments, wanting to lend Hermeth strength; thought he knew that already Hermeth had left his body, left this place to move into another place and time, another sphere; that there was no need for the power of Seers, of the stones; but still they gave it.

Ram turned away at last from the bare earth that covered the grave like a scar against the green hill. Hermeth’s men and the entire city of Zandour followed him down the hill in silence. The wolves, who had come at Hermeth’s death down out of Scar Mountain, stood last upon the hill and raised their voices in a wailing lament, in a death song that trembled the sky and would long, long be remembered in Zandour. And then the wolves came down, too, from Hermeth’s grave, and his body was alone there beneath the rising sun.

They would carve and lay a slab of granite, the people of Zandour, to mark the place where Hermeth lay. A little child, staring back up the hill, said, “He can look out now over the sheep meadows.” But no one thought Hermeth was there to look out. He was in another place that they could not yet fathom.

“He left no children,” Skeelie said, mourning. “No wife—no young Seers.”

“There are other Seers, that handful among his lieutenants.”

“Untrained. Unskilled, Ram. Just—just those with some power, but not master Seers.”

Ram looked down at her, unsettled. “Was I meant to stay here, Skeelie? To use the stones, in his place, to protect Zandour? Or if I can follow Telien, was I meant to leave Hermeth’s shard of the runestone behind, to keep only that one taken from the wraith?”

“I don’t think you are meant to do anything, Ram. Do you think it is all planned out? What do you know you must do?”

He looked at her a long time, a deep look, searching his own soul through what he saw reflected in her eyes. “I will hold these shards of the runestone and keep them, Skeelie. Against the day when the stone will again be whole. And I—I will follow Telien.”

That night in the hall, Ram brought together a council of the five young Seers who had ridden as scouts for Hermeth, seeking to understand what skills they had, and to train them.

This five, then, must rule Zandour, for in them lay the needed power. A council of the entire city sat with them, planning; men taking over, as smoothly as they could, the work that had been Hermeth’s. Late in the night Skeelie dozed in a chair beside the hall fire, waking only now and then to the men’s raised voices. Then suddenly she woke to Ram’s hand on her arm, saw that the night had waned and dawn had begun to touch the shuttered windows with gray. Ram stood staring down at her, tired, drawn tight with too much talking. “Get your pack, Skeelie. Put on your boots, your leathers. Take off those silly sandals. I want . . .” He turned to stare northward as if he could look through the very walls of the hall. “I want to climb Scar Mountain. I want . . .” The sense of unrest about him, of need, was powerful.

She rose, forcing herself awake, hurried through the hall, and returned shortly dressed in leathers, with her pack and weapons, to find him in the courtyard pacing and restless as a river cat, his own pack and bow slung over his shoulder, eager to be moving. What Was drawing Ram so? Simply restlessness? The sudden need to return to his childhood place? A hope of finding Gredillon for some reason? He was strung taut as a bowstring. Surely something spoke to him, something was pulling at him, but she could make no sense of it. She was only grateful that he wanted her to go, too. They started off at once into the faint touch of dawn, north up the first hill of the sheep pastures, Ram striding out impatiently and Skeelie hurrying to keep up. As they climbed, wolves began to come to them out of the darkness, one here, and then two, all in silence, until soon a dozen wolves paced beside them, Fawdref pressing close to Ram, Torc and Rhymannie nuzzling sometimes at Skeelie’s arm.

As they climbed, the sense of promise, of beckoning grew strong indeed. On the crest of the hill Ram stopped and turned to watch the dawn sky lighten. Down in the town they could see the dark shapes of wagons and of horses and riders moving in over the hills and roads, as folk from the farther reaches of Zandour began to arrive in Zandour’s city to pay their last respects to Hermeth. Ram stood staring down, then silently he drew from his tunic the little pouch he had made of soft white goathide and spilled the two runestones and the starfires out into his palm. He seemed puzzled. Skeelie watched, still and expectant, not knowing what was to happen, but filled with growing excitement. Something was building around them, something of power. She began to feel Ram’s curiosity, his questions rising, felt him begin to reach out hesitantly. They stood looking down upon the slowly lighting land, and then, alarmed suddenly, she turned to look back up the mountain, saw the wolves turn too; Ram turned as if someone had spoken his name. He took her shoulder in a sharp grip.

Above them the mountain had become unclear, as fast winds moved down across it sweeping toward them, blurring their vision. Fingers of wind snatched at them, blurring the dawn sky. Then the great body of wind itself was sweeping and pummeling them, ripping at their tunics, laying the wolves’ coats and ears flat. Fawdref crouched and snarled; the wind pounded, tore the very grass from the hill, and a rider came racing out of it leading two wild, rearing horses, shouting, “Mount! Mount you, Ramad!” The hooded rider, his cowl bound tight against the bite of the wind, his tall, thin figure leaning from the saddle, urged Ram; and Ram did not pause or question, but grabbed the reins and was in the saddle. Skeelie’s fear for him rose like a tide. “No, Ram! Wait!” She leaped for his reins, tried to stop his plunging horse. “Don’t follow! You don’t know . . .” Terror of his being swept away, terror of the cowled rider made her scream into the wind as Ram kicked the horse, jerked the reins from her hand and sent his mount into the turmoil alongside the dark rider.

“Oh, don’t, Ram. You don’t know . . .” All hint of dawn had disappeared; the wind was dark as midnight. The wolves stood frozen, then suddenly leaped to follow Ram. “Ram . . .” Skeelie’s voice was empty, a whisper blown back in her face. “You don’t know where he leads you. . . .” But Ram had disappeared in the storm of wind.

She jerked the reins of the riderless horse until it stood still, then leaped to the saddle and was swept into the dark wind herself. The flanks of the dark mounts were ahead; then the wolves were running beside her leaping through wind. She stared ahead at the hooded rider. Who was this man, racing out of Time’s winds to snatch them up like this? She felt his attention, though he had not changed his crouching position over the withers of his stallion. Then suddenly he straightened in the saddle, brushed back his hood as if annoyed, and turned to look at her, wind whipping his white hair across his face.

Anchorstar?

Was it Anchorstar? Yes, she recognized him now, that long, thin face. He nodded to her and she stared back through the wild wind, cross and suspicious. But she settled down to ride, watching Anchorstar warily, watching Ram’s back ahead of her. The tearing speed of the horses increased as the wind increased, and the wolves sped with them across winds that threatened to fling the riders from their saddles into timeless space, washing Skeelie with cold fear, and exciting her to madness. Never was there land, but faces looked out of darkness, and the moons were full, then gone, then new again.

Then the wind died. The night became dense and still. The moons hung like two half coins, casting silver light across the quiet horses where they stood on an open hill beside a wood. The white-haired rider dismounted as casually as if he had just trotted across a farm meadow. He unsaddled his stallion, then turned it loose to graze, ignoring Skeelie and Ram. Picking up sticks from the edge of the wood, he began to lay a fire on the bare slope.

The wolves turned, grinned, then leaped away into the wood. Torc flung back, To hunt! To hunt for meat, sister! Skeelie could feel the passionate curiosity among the wolves at being in a new place, could taste for a moment the new smells as Torc did; and she held for a brief moment Torc’s wild excitement at the newness, the land virgin to be traveled and tasted and known intimately. Then she dismounted, only slowly recovering from the drunkenness of that wild ride.

Ahead rose immense mountains, washed in moonlight. To her right, the wood was a velvet patch of dark. And to her left, the land dropped down steeply to what seemed, in the moonlight, a very deep chasm or valley. The space around her seemed greater than she had ever known. She felt exposed, threatened by such space; and felt again a cold twinge of unease because Ram had followed so easily. But she was being foolish; Ram knew Anchorstar. She turned to unsaddling her mount. What else did she think Ram would do but follow whatever way might lead to Telien? She reached out to Ram in her mind, but he was oblivious to her in his sudden hope that this wild ride had set him on a course that would bring him soon to Telien.

“Unsaddle your horse, Ramad,” Anchorstar said. “He cannot graze with the bit in his mouth. He will come to me when I call. They are Carriol-bred horses, bred from your own stock, Ramad, in years past.” He tipped his chin toward the tall dun stallion he had ridden. “Do you not remember him? You tried to buy him once.”

Ram pulled himself back from his tumbled thoughts. “I remember him. A horse I would have sold my soul to have.”

Anchorstar bent to put flint to the fire. When the blaze had flared, then settled and begun to burn steadily, he produced from his saddlebags a tin kettle, tammi tea, hard mawzee biscuits, mountain meat.

Skeelie hunkered down by the fire, hardly tasting the food she ate, so caught was she in Ram’s rising hope, his need to push on, to reach out to Telien; and then in his beginning uncertainty that perhaps Anchorstar would try but could not lead him to Telien; and then his growing depression, his returning desolation at the horror of Telien’s possession.

“We will sleep here until dawn,” Anchorstar said, ignoring Ram’s depression, “and then we will push on. We are in a time out of Time, Ramad. We are now in the time of the Cutter of Stones.”

Ram stared at him. “How can you move with purpose through Time when I cannot? I could not follow Telien. 1 have only been buffeted through Time with never any reason until—until it was too late. I could not touch her soon enough, reach far enough back into Time to save her from NilokEm. There is no reason to how I have moved.”

“There was reason, Ramad, when you fought to help Macmen, then to help Hermeth.” Anchorstar stared into the fire, and Ram did not speak again. Anchorstar said at last, “I do not move us through Time, nor do I pretend to know the intricate patterns that touch such movement. Though I know that I lead you, now, to the Cutter of Stones, lead you by his will. And that through him you can seek the wraith, seek Telien.”

“Why do you help me? Why do you care if I find Telien, or if I can save her and destroy the wraith?”

“I am linked to the wraith, even as are you. I do not know why. Perhaps it has to do with my own time. I feel that this is so. I feel certain I must return to my own time, and soon. Something there calls to me, and perhaps the wraith has to do with that in some way I do not yet comprehend.”

*

The wind changed in the night to blow icy, down from the mountains. Skeelie woke once to see Anchorstar building up the fire, then slept again. Dawn came too soon, and she woke huddled in her blanket, to watch Ram saddle the horses while Anchorstar came from out the shadowed wood carrying the tin kettle. He gave her a rare smile. “There is a spring there in the wood if you care to wash.”

She sat up, pulling the blanket around her. The sky was hardly light. The wood lay in blackness. Ahead, the dark smear of sharp peaks rose against a gray horizon, peaks with a shock of snow at the top. To her left, the hill dropped steeply to the valley far below. She could sense, but not yet see, that a river ran there at the bottom like a thin silver thread. Wild land, and huge, rising up to peaks that must surely be a part of the Ring of Fire.

She rose and went barefoot into the shadowed wood where dawn had not yet come, found the stream twisting cold between the roots of ancient trees, washed herself, shivering, kneeling in shallow rapids. When she came out, dawn was beginning to filter into the wood, and the wolves were there among the trees. She pulled the blanket around her, embarrassed at her nakedness, and rubbed herself dry. Only when the wolves had gone, Fawdref dragging the carcass of a deer over his shoulder, did she remove the blanket to pull on her shift. She could sense Ram finishing with the horses, could feel his mood like a dark pall, knew he had waked with the sense of Telien’s captive spirit gripping him. When she returned to the camp, he was surly and rude.

Anchorstar had cooked thin slices of the deer meat on a stick. Ram ate hunched over, not speaking, gulping his food. The morning was bright, the air cold and clear. Skeelie reached out to the aliveness, the wholeness of the rising morning, needing this, needing to put away from her the sense of death and depression Ram carried. Deliberately, she savored the tender deer meat, the tea and warmed bread. But though she tried, she could not rid herself of Ram’s misery. She supposed he knew she shared it. Perhaps that made him surlier still. He tossed down his eating tin finally and rose, glowering at her before he went to untie the horses.

She gazed up at the far peaks, crowned with white, feeling miserable herself suddenly, angry at Ram for making her so, and angrier at herself for letting him. Anchorstar laid a hand on her knee in friendship and understanding. She stared into his strange golden eyes, felt his sympathy. His voice was soft. He glanced once to where Ram had already mounted, then looked ahead to the mountains. “This is strange, wrinkled land. There lies ahead a mountain still hidden, we will come on it as we top the next hills. That is our destination, Esh-nen, a mountain capped with ice but with fires deep in its belly, with a lake like a steaming bath. Well, but you will see.”

When they set out, Ram’s thoughts still ran through Skeelie’s mind and would not be stilled. If the wraith was growing stronger so rapidly that it could now suck out a man’s life, could they hope to defeat it before it destroyed them? It carried Hermeth’s spirit within it now, which made it infinitely stronger; Skeelie remembered its hoarse whisper, there in Gredillon’s house, You will come into me our way, as the others have come Could they, even through the Cutter of Stones, follow and destroy that creature of death? The sense of the wraith closed in around her as they started over a rise of boulders, the horses humping in a lurching gallop against the steepness; and then suddenly, coupled with her worry over the wraith and somehow a part of it, she began to feel Anchorstar’s restlessness, his growing need to return to his own time. She thought that he could sense something amiss there but not discern its shape; she felt a darkness touching him too painful to bring to view.

At midday the riders came over the last of a series of rises and were facing quite suddenly a great white mountain that sprawled just above the hills like an immense reclining animal. “That is Esh-nen,” Anchorstar said. “The white shoulder.” The west wind blew the mountain’s cold breath down to them. “There in Esh-nen the Cutter of Stones dwells in a place out of Time, a place impervious to Time.”

They built a fire for their noon meal and set the meat to cook. Ram stripped the horses to let them graze, then hunched down beside the fire and drew the leather pouch from his tunic. He fished out the three starfires and held them in his palm. They caught the firelight, flashing. He looked up at Anchorstar with taut impatience. “Tell me about the Cutter of Stones. Tell me where he came by the stone from which he cut these, and what he intended for them.”

“The Cutter of Stones himself will tell you what he wishes you to know of the starfires, Ramad.” Anchorstar shrugged, dismissing the subject. Then he looked at Ram and seemed to soften, adding, ‘There were five. I carry one still. And Telien carries the other.”

“And that one has not helped Telien. Perhaps they are cursed stones.”

“I do not think that,” Anchorstar said, then grew silent. When at last he spoke again, his words were harder, clipped, as if he in turn had lost patience. “Where is the runestone, Ramad, that Telien brought out of Tala-charen?”

“I do not know. When I held her close to me there in the wood, I caught a sense of it, quick and fleeting. A sense of it in darkness. Lost. As if Telien herself did not remember where.”

“And if you were made to choose between the search for Telien and the search for the shards of the runestone—which you vowed once, Ramad, that you would join together again—which path would you choose?”

Ram stared at him for so long it seemed he did not mean to answer. At last he rose, still silent, and walked away from them. When he turned back, his scowl was more lonely than angry; and still for a long moment he did not speak. Then he said only, “You know as well as I, what I would do. What I must do. But it does not help to contemplate that pain before—unless—I must.”

He stood silent, seemed to have forgotten them. Then at last, “When I held her, there was a sense of mountains, dark peaks rising. I could feel her despair. I saw the stone in darkness for an instant.” He paused, seemed drawn away suddenly, then he looked across at Anchorstar with surprise. “Words come into my mind. Words—unbidden.” He began to repeat slowly, then with more assurance, in a kind of prophecy that none of them ever afterward could put a name to except, simply, a moment of Seer’s prophecy. “It lies in darkness somewhere, in the north of Cloffi, or in the mountains there.” And then his words became trancelike. “Found by the light of one candle, carried in a searching, and lost in terror. Found again in wonder, given twice, and accompanying a quest and a conquering.” The cold wind touched them, the fire guttered then sprang bright. Never, even in all the violent visions of his childhood, had words of prophecy sprung clearly into Ram’s mind, ringing in his head almost as if spoken by another. Visions had come, scenes, direct knowledge. But not words thundering to be spoken.

He repeated softly the prediction, then turned to Skeelie, suddenly needing her. “Did—could Telien have spoken this into my mind? Could she remember—somehow know . . .?” But then his eyes went dark, his expression turned grim once more. “Telien could not speak such a prediction. She is not a Seer. Such a prediction comes—within a pattern I cannot even imagine. Can any Seer know the pattern by which he takes power?”

Anchorstar emptied the kettle, began to pack up the remains of the meal, then stopped to look at Ram. “A Seer can know the pattern as well, as he knows the pattern of the heavings of the earth and the birth and rebirth of souls. We are a part of something, Ramad. The runestones are a part of it. But what that pattern is, or what made it, we do not know. Why can we three move through Time when all men, even all Seers, cannot?” The white-haired Seer fell silent, caught in his own private sadness.

Skeelie said softly the words of the ancient tree man, “. . . born to weave a new pattern into the fabric of the world. Those so born are not anchored to a single point in Time.” The words of the man who was surely Anchorstar’s sire. Anchorstar looked at her a long time, a deep, puzzled look. She could not read his thoughts, but his face held infinite sadness, as if those words touched a remote place within his soul, a place of everlasting pain.