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

Part Two: Heritage of the Dark

From the journal of Skeelie of Carriol.

I must try to write of that earlier time before Ram died, before ever we lived as husband and wife. Perhaps if I write of our lives together, I can ease the pain of remembering. And perhaps not, perhaps the pain will only be worse. But I know that I must try.

We came away from that first visit to the city of cones across the mountains carrying Telien. She was so pale, so very close to death. The spirit that had possessed her, the wraith that Ram had driven out, had left little more than a shell, only a small spark of life. We nursed her as best we could, but by morning Telien was dead.

We buried her on an unknown mountainside in the unknown lands. Ram turned from the grave of his lost love in silence, and we headed south at once, where the known countries must lie. Ram walked as if he were alone, wrapped in darkness. But he looked up when we heard the high, keening wolf cry on the mountain, and his eyes darkened with a bitter triumph, for we knew then that Torc had destroyed the wraith that had possessed Telien. Too late—too late destroyed. Soon the bitch wolf joined us, filled with her dark vindication.

Our way was slow. We met jagged walls of stone and gashes in the land far too wide and deep to cross. We retraced our steps many times. When at last we found a way over the mountains, we were heading north away from the known countries of Ere. Ram grew impatient then, for which I was grateful, for his armor of mourning seemed less severe. Soon he began to think once more of the four shards of the runestone he carried—and of the shards still to be sought. Slowly and with pain he began to mend from Telien’s death, as much as ever he could mend.

We meant to find our way south, back to our own lands, but now Ram seemed pulled northward. We traveled among creatures and plants new and strange to us. Soon we were in high, jagged country, and cold, for a glacier rose to our left beyond a black cliff. It was here we were attacked by huge winged lizards with teeth like knives. We took shelter in an abandoned dwelling place, little more than a few bed-holes carved into the cliff, with narrow steps from one hole to the next, and the bones of game animals littering the floors. But the holes were deep enough so the flying lizards could not reach into them, though they forced clawed talons in, incredibly ugly beasts with wrinkled, scaly hides and breath that stunk of decay. The creatures gave way at last, either from boredom or discouragement, and we went on still hoping to find a way south. But the cliff was a sheer wall on our left and rose even taller ahead of us. Soon we came to a deep chasm. We could hardly see the other side, and it stretched so far to our right that it ended in haze against distant peaks. Deep down we could see red molten rivers. The place excited Ram, but the wolves paced restlessly along its lip. Fawdref was as cross and edgy as I have ever seen him, all dark, fierce killer with blazing eyes. Even Torc was upset with the sense of the place, and moved as if she were stalking, head down, watching the abyss. Ram stood at the edge staring down to the fires that burned far below, and I felt his intention chill me long before he spoke. “I must go there, Skeelie. I must go down into that pit.”

I was sick with fear for him, but I could say nothing. He must follow his own way.

We were eight years in that valley, living on wild plants and rock hare and deer. Ram studied the abyss and traveled again and again down into it, convinced that somewhere below, among the fires, lay a shard of the runestone of Eresu. He could feel its presence there, touching him. I knew he would never leave that place without it—and he did not leave it, not in body.

Our son was born in that valley.

We found a shelter of boulders that first day, to make a beginning dwelling, and piled stones to enlarge it. I thatched the roof to cover the cracks between the boulders, and Ram went to hunt with the wolves. As easily as that we established a home. Though it was a long time before we lived as husband and wife. The delay was not my doing. When Ram healed at last from the worst of his mourning, I was able to ease his pain somewhat, to give him of warmth and gentleness, someone to cling to. I hid my joy from him. I was afraid to let him know how much I cared.

From the entrance to our rock home, gazing southwest, we could see in the far distance beyond the cliff and beyond the white apron of the glacier, a peak rising so high and alone that Ram felt sure it was Tala-charen. He could feel a power from that peak that seemed to reach toward our desolate valley, a power he felt was linked to the runestone. He was more and more certain that a shard of the runestone lay down in the burning chasm, and sometimes he felt a presence down there, too, as if a living thing were watching us. I could not speak my fears to him, nor would I turn him aside. I knew I might see him die, but I would not hinder what he must surely do. We went again and again into the pit. It was a place of mystery, of shifting smoke, the changing lava flows and the falling stones tearing away the land so our way was never the same. We saw fire ogres there with flame playing across their thick, wrinkled hides, ogres only the heaviest arrows could kill. And something larger and infinitely more evil lay in that abyss, a creature formed perhaps from the heart of the abyss itself. Something that watched us at first only half-alive, that followed the sense of our movements, followed the sense of power from the runestones Ram carried with ever growing interest, as if it were slowly acquiring life, slowly becoming more powerful.

Could the stone that lay in that abyss have nurtured such a creature? Could a shard of the runestone, if it lay long enough immersed in that evil place, have bred evil? Bred a creature that, on sensing Ram’s four runestones, quickened to life further and thirsted for ultimate power? Or was there another explanation? And how did the runestone get into the abyss? And when?

The creature moved unseen, eventually tracking us and tracked by us. Over the years its power became stronger and the sense of its size seemed to increase. And then at last the sense of its name came to us. It called itself Dracvadrig. We sensed that sometimes it was like a man, sometimes like a great worm. And it had about it the essence of death. Had it risen from death or near death? Was it a creature like the wraith, perhaps? The wraith had once been a man, given over to the drug MadogWerg and to the evils that grew from it. Was this thing in the pit the same, a man unable to die, growing after his body’s death into another form? Had it lain in the pit long after its death, its moldering body couched around the runestone before life came seeping back sufficiently for it to rise and watch us, and to grow slowly into the monstrous dragon that we saw at last? I do not know. I only know that it was Dracvadrig who killed Ram.

I did not go with Ram into the pit that day, nor had for some days, for Lobon was ill with fever. Torc and Rhymannie were excellent nurses, but I could not leave Lobon when he was so sick. Ram gave into my hands the four runestones so that I could help him with their power, and I stood watching as the twelve wolves descended with him into the abyss. I had no premonition that Dracvadrig would rise that day to show itself, that it would at last challenge Ram. I sent my power with them, and later I stood reaching with all my force into the battle Ram waged against the creature. Even Lobon’s young, untrained power came strong then, to defend Ram, our powers focused through the runestones in a battle soon turned desperate, then terrifying, the wolves leaping and tearing at the dragon as it flailed and twisted in battle, its screams of fury echoing across the pit and between the mountains. And the power of the stone it possessed struck against Ram and against the stones I wielded with a force that made me reel with its intensity. I used every power, every force I knew, felt Ram’s furious, angry battle, his powers linked with mine against the creature as if we stood side by side. Lobon, his face flushed with the fever, had come to stand beside me, his power raging against the dragon, more power in that moment than I had thought any child could contain.

But our powers were not enough. Ram’s strength was not enough, nor the wolves’ fierce and continued attacks. Perhaps other forces fought beside the dragon, forces of the dark. I felt that this was so, and wondered if they had watched us longer than we ever knew.

Ram was wounded. He lay dying. He was dead before I reached him. Climbing and running down into the pit, I could only think over and over, If only I had been with him battling with sword as well as with the stones.

But I cannot dwell on that. It likely would have made no difference. Yet I do dwell, am sick with it even yet. I wake sometimes seeing him die, and cry out into the night before I can stop myself.

I lashed together a sapling drag to bring Ram’s body out. Five wolves stood guard over him. Seven wolves lay dead. Fawdref lay dead, his dark coat smeared with blood, his body torn by the dragon’s claws. Torc and Rhymannie were badly hurt. They limped out slowly, not able even to keep pace with the drag. As I turned away from the scene of battle after my first climb, I saw the wounded dragon creeping toward me. I spun and raised my bow, but the creature was hurt and clawed at the cliff then slipped and fell deeper into the pit. Suddenly it stayed its fall, with leathery wings raised, and beat its way clumsily skyward, twisting as if at any minute it would fall again. It must have been near to death at that moment, not to have come after the stones I held close inside my tunic, yet it flew up out of the pit, scrambling and clawing at the stone walls, and disappeared over the farther lip of the abyss where lay the unknown lands. Whether it returned to the abyss or not, I do not know. But every creature returns to its nest.

We buried Ram and Fawdref and the six young, strapping wolves who died with them in the stone room that had been our first home, made a cairn of that place, and covered the entrance with rocks. Lobon worked in stoic silence, ignoring his fever, carrying rocks to secure his father’s grave. Five days later, when Lobon was well and the bitch wolves had begun to heal, I set fire to the larger, sapling hut that Ram and I had built together and burned it to the ground. Then we went away to the east, where lay the city of cones, Lobon and I and five wolves, silent in our mourning; Lobon so broken by Ram’s death that it was many months before he could shed a tear.

We remained among the people of the city of cones until the pain of Ramad’s death began to heal for me. Lobon, even at six years old, was filled with such cold fury that I felt it would never abate.

Then, as I mourned in the city of cones, Canoldir spoke to me across Time. He spoke again and again, this man who lived outside of Time, and at last he helped me to see life around me once more, and I was glad for his caring.

We came to Canoldir at last, after nearly two years, came in an instant of Time, Lobon and I and the wolves, an instant of dizziness and shock, moving across Time and outside of Time to stand suddenly in Canoldir’s villa, where I had stood only once before—beside Ram.

Canoldir is gentle with me. He is helping me to heal as much as ever I will be healed, until I join Ram again in some life yet to come to us.

*

Excerpt from pages written some time later in Skeelie’s life with Canoldir:

And even now, though I dwell outside of Time and have touched knowledge that was before closed to me, I do not know what Dracvadrig is. Canoldir thinks he was once a man, that he stood in Tala-charen at the moment of the splitting and received a shard of the runestone; that he let the darkness lure him with that stone until he was drawn into the evil caverns of Urdd; that he grew there in evil until at last he took the dragon form in a dull, half-somnolent life. And then, awakened by the powers of Ramad’s stones, came again fully alive, this time in a rising, lusting evil. Surely there was a strength beyond the power of one shard of the runestone in that abyss when Dracvadrig killed Ramad; it was as if the powers of dark dwelt with him, and strengthened him.

But even Canoldir’s knowledge of this is limited, for something new touches us in this place outside of Time. Canoldir can no longer move so freely, at will, through Time. No longer See into all times freely to solve such mysteries. Is this place, our home, beginning to move back into the river of Time ? Canoldir has begun to show small signs of aging, too—which only make him the handsomer. Something is happening to Ere even here, powers drawing in and shifting, as do the forces of the mountains themselves, power driving against power until surely something must give, in fury and in violence.

Will the fabric of Ere’s powers heave and twist as do the mountains? Is what we are experiencing now a part of this, is Lobon’s search for Dracvadrig a part of this, is the pitting of stone against stone a part?

And what part did Ram’s life play in focusing such powers—or in staying them, in quelling them so to delay some possible holocaust?

What if Ramad had never been born, and the runestone never split?

Oh, but Ram was born; Ere would not have been complete without him. I loved him, and I can never cease to mourn him in my heart and in my soul, and in the way I touch life now; though I never can touch life very gently, I never could. Canoldir chides me, and laughs at me for that, just as Ramad did.