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

The Joining of the Stone

Part One: Ramad’s Heir

Early pages from the journal of Skeelie of Carriol.

Why do I write these words? No one I know will ever see them. Everyone from my own time—except Ramad—was long dead when first I knew that I had moved through Time into an unknown future. I didn’t think of loneliness then, I knew or cared for nothing but Ram. And I searched for him through Time that carried him and used him in ways I could not have imagined.

Was Time unlocked by Ram’s need, for it to take him so readily? By Ram’s love for Telien? Perhaps some day I can write of those cataclysmic flingings through Time, but now I can only mourn Ram.

Ramad is dead. Ramad of the wolves is dead. My love is dead, and I can only mourn him with the same pain that, eight years gone in our lives, he mourned the death of Telien.

I have come away from the abyss of fire, having buried Ramad beside it. I have brought our son here to the city of cones. I need to be near people for a little while, if only these simple folk. I write these words in a small cone house they have given me. Torc and Rhymannie doze by my feet before the fire as complacent as dogs, for these folk have accepted the wolves just as they accepted Lobon and me, gently and unquestioning. Fawdref is not with us—Fawdref, master of his pack, Fawdref who loved Ram so. He is buried beside Ram, in a grave that was once our home. Rhymannie mourns him just as I mourn Ram. Their big cubs and the rest of the pack roam the hills at this moment, hunting our dinnermeat. I cannot take my mind from the rocky valley where Ramad lies and where we lived in happiness for eight years that seem no longer now than a day. I cannot take my mind from the fiery pit where Ram died, nor tear my soul from him.

The demon Dracvadrig is gone from the pit, or I would have sought him there and done my best to kill him. He carries with him the one shard of the runestone that Ramad fought to win, and I carry the four that Ram put in my keeping.

Would I have gone to kill Dracvadrig that day had he remained? Truly, I don’t know. I know now only that all my strength must be for our son, that I must give Lobon all that Ram would have given him of training, of skill, and of strength. He has the stubbornness, he has shown that plainly enough. He is only six, but as stubborn and fierce already as any young wolf cub could be. Can I temper and direct that willfulness? But I must. He is Ramad’s heir—heir to Ram’s commitment, heir to the joining of the runestone. Heir to the joining of those nine shards, if ever they can be brought together.

Ram died too soon. He died with the stone still asunder.

These four shards that I hold are Lobon’s legacy. If Ram’s life meant anything, then these stones must be used one day to turn the fate of Ere away from darkness. One shard more lies drowned in the sea. One lies hidden in darkness, lost by Telien I know not where. And there are two shards to which I have no clue. Dracvadrig carries his shard in a metal casket around his neck, the chain dangling past his waist when he is a man, and pulling tight across his scaly throat when he takes the dragon form. Nine shards of jade. Nine shards of power that must somehow be joined again, and our son heir to the skills and to the nature of that joining.

Meanwhile, dark eats upon the land, flaunting the runestone’s broken, weakened powers. And Lobon frightens me; his violent nature, so filled with cold fury at Ram’s death, frightens me. If such anger does not abate, his powers as a Seer cannot grow. I must learn to temper that anger; I must learn to strengthen the man in him. I must learn to do for Lobon what Ramad would have known to do. When I take up sword again, to teach him its skills, I must train his spirit as well. And when I teach him the Seeing powers, I must teach him patience and wisdom—just as skillfully as Gredillon the white-haired once taught the child Ramad, in a time long dead.

Where we will go from this place, I have no idea. It is enough just now to rest and try to ease the wound of Ram’s death, I am filled with tears, and I cannot weep. I know deep within that I will survive the pain, but my spirit does not believe that. I know I must mend, for Lobon, but I have not the heart to mend.

If no eyes but mine see this journal, still it helps to set forth my thoughts; it eases something in me. The time of Lobon’s manhood will come too soon, and there is a cold fear in me of that time that I cannot put aside.