The Ring Оf Fire. The Wolf Bell

EIGHTEEN

It was a dream that was not a dream. Afterward Zephy could not say whether it had been a vision, or whether she had been fully awake. And if what she saw was true, then somewhere in Ere, Meatha was surely alive.

In her dream she had risen and slipped out from under the blanket shelter and was standing on the bank of the river in the fog. She felt a sense of movement without effort that was dreamlike, and the fog swirled like water around her as she began to walk forward up the smooth path.

When the fog thinned, she could see that the sun was shining; and soon it became so bright she could hardly look. Then through the glare the dark shapes of mountains began to appear close around her. And she was approaching a rough spire, a monolith. It rose pale against the dark mountain; and as she drew near, she knew it was the death stone.

Meatha was there, tied to its base. She was dressed in smeared rags. Clytey was being led forward by red-robed Deacons. As Clytey was being bound, Zephy tried to go to Meatha, to speak to her; but she could not. She was held unmoving by something—as if she were not real there, as if she were on another plane.

The Deacons were saying a prayer over the captives, performing some last ritual unknown in Burgdeeth. They appeared to be genuflecting to each other rather than to the sacred valley of Eresu that she knew lay in the mountains above. They turned at last and, leading the two donkeys, started down the path toward Burgdeeth. They passed so close to Zephy she should have been brushed aside, but they did not see her. She saw Nida’s saddle on Dess, the straw sticking out, and both donkeys smeared with dung and blood. Then the vision was gone, the air shimmering and the mountain and death stone indistinct—all was clear again and it was late evening, the light soft and welcoming. Meatha and Clytey were still tied, looked exhausted as they slumped against the cutting bonds.

And there were gods there, standing huge before the two bound girls.

The Luff’Eresi surrounded them. Shifting and indistinct they were, but their human arms were outstretched, and their men’s faces stern—tall and awesome beyond anything Zephy could imagine. Was this the sacrifice, then? Zephy turned her face away in dread; but she could not help but turn back. She stood staring, in a terror of apprehension, trying to push forward, to somehow stop what would happen, but unable to move.

A god came close to the Children but did not touch them, she sensed that he could not: he seemed not real in the same way that Meatha and Clytey did, seemed not so solid. But then came a figure from beside the Luff’Eresi, a human figure stepping out dressed in pale robes. She came to the Children; Meatha’s face was white as the woman touched her. Yet as Zephy watched, Meatha’s face lost its fear. The woman released Meatha’s bonds, then those of Clytey, and stepped back.

Zephy watched Meatha and Clytey approach the Luff’Eresi as if they were enchanted, saw them reach up to the closest god in awe—and saw they could not touch him. It was as if they were touching air.

Then a Horse of Eresu came forward and bowed his head and knelt. Zephy could feel his warmth as Meatha and Clytey climbed onto his back. He rose in a gesture that was startling and beautiful: from his kneeling position he flowed to stand, then his wings took him into the sky in one liquid motion. She could feel, as if she rode there, the rough silk of his mane in her hands, the wind sweeping her. She moved with Meatha and Clytey as they were carried above the mountain, above incredible peaks; the Horse of Eresu’s strong wings knifed and turned the wind; the mountains, jagged, swept below. Then the valley came into view, a valley so terribly green . . .

She saw Eresu and it was as if her vision were many-faceted. She saw the green secret land honeycombed with terraces and bowers, saw the valley and inside the caves and bowers all at one time, moved within the lighted caves with their tumbling falls of water; and it was as she had dreamed. She saw the Luff’Eresi moving freely on the wind above the cliffs and terraces and on the low green hills. She saw Meatha happy among them and others like her. This was Eresu, so Meatha must be dead; yet Zephy didn’t understand how that could be, for the Luff’Eresi had not killed her.

Then something began to happen to Meatha, Zephy could feel the change in her. She gathered with the other Children of Ynell, Clytey, the girl who had released her, all of them. There were no more than a dozen—boys, girls, men and women—and they began to march out of the valley. Zephy could see them going along the white path and down along the river, down and down along the hills, walking silently. Then there was sudden darkness, and she heard Meatha cry out to her in her mind; then a silence that was terrifying in its emptiness. She could see Meatha no more; only the sense of her remained, and Zephy thought she was whispering, Now you will come. Now you must come to help us.

Meatha’s words faded so Zephy was not sure they had ever been. Her sense of Meatha became quickly contracted as in the darkness of an unhappy memory. As one might remember someone long dead.

Did Meatha live? Zephy had no sense of how to distinguish what death was. The atmosphere around her began to grow more solid. Then it was suddenly as if what had gone before could now be seen as a dream, and she had awakened at last to stand, fully in charge of her senses, in the valley of Eresu.

Five winged gods came away from the rest in the valley, and she trembled as they approached her. They were more magnificent than anything one could have imagined. The dignity and the joy in their faces was as if joy was the very essence of life. Their faces might have resembled human faces except for their perfect strength and for that joy. She was drawn to them so she could not look away, even had she wanted.

Their movement was like water over stones, their golden bodies shifting with light and their wings—their wings were tapestries of light glinting, shattering; it was as if she saw them through a curtain of shifting air, not steady as Meatha had appeared. Yet so real, more than real. And there were Horses of Eresu there among them. And though the Horses of Eresu mingled with the gods, they were solid to look at; Zephy could see them clearly, where the gods shifted as light shifts on blowing leaves. The wings of the Horses of Eresu were not blinding, but were wonders of velvet-toned grace. They still looked like horses despite their differences, while the gods were like no animal or man, not like any creature of Ere.

Then one Luff’Eresi shifted and was standing close above her, huge, his horselike body far taller than her head, his human face solemn, his eyes, from their great height, holding her completely. Above the silken coat of the horselike body—a dark, burnished shade—his torso was muscled and full of powerful grace, and his terrible strength made Zephy tremble. His expression and dark eyes sent a wave of awe and wonder through her that made her kneel; but his voice roared at once in her mind, Rise, child, do not kneel before me!

When he spoke, it was as Ynell, silently in her mind; and it was as if all her life she had waited for this. She rose and stood before him, and thought only, You are the god of Ere!

Mortal! His silent words thundered in her mind. I am mortal! Not a god, Child of Ynell. I am as mortal as you! She stood staring at him, not believing him. Yet he was forcing her to believe, to stretch her mind to believe him. Her thoughts would not come in any kind of order, only in the overwhelming sensations that swept her. If you are not a god, she thought at last, then there can be no god. There can be no being meant for us to worship if you are not he.

1 am a mortal creature. The Luff’Eresi spoke this time so sternly that she drew back, chastened. I am mortal just as you. I am only different. To call me a god is to humble yourself, human! And yet—and his voice-thought grew softer now, gentler. And yet there is the spirit, the spirit that all mortals yearn for. But it is not here on Ere, Child of Ynell. No god is here. The gods we seek—and all of us seek them, Zephy Eskar—the gods we seek are spirits so far removed from Ere and from this time and place, that few can guess at the reality of their beings. To be mortal is to understand mortality. But beyond that, the next step of your spirit’s life can only be grasped when you are ready.

Zephy felt as insignificant as a grain of mawzee—yet she felt, at the same time, a sense of continuity, of a stretching out before her, felt a lift and exultation as the Luff’Eresi showed her the meaning of his words, gave her the sense of layers of life, of intricacies she could not unravel but which laid a richness on her mind, a richness and maturity on her very soul.

At one moment she felt she could almost touch the varied planes of existence, the plane, different from her own, where the Luff’Eresi dwelt, the plane that came closer to Ere in the Waytheer years. She could almost understand the physical differences that made their two worlds not quite touch, not quite mesh. She could almost embrace, for a moment, concepts quite beyond her experience, could almost make sense of them.

But why—if this were true—why didn’t Cloffi and all of Ere teach this true wonder, make prayer for the reality instead of—instead of . . .

Instead of worshipping false gods! The Luff’Eresi bellowed into her thoughts. And the feel of his laughter overwhelmed her. Instead of worshipping us. You are right, Zephy Eskar. Your people have been led as donkeys are led. You have been given chaff when there was whole good grain to serve you. You have been lied to, to feed the evil lust for power that the Cloffi masters have nurtured like a sickness in their breasts.

“But why?” she said aloud. “Why, if you knew . . . ?”

He did not respond with a voice in her mind now, but with a surge of direct knowledge that nearly overpowered her, with a feeling that lifted her, made her see the life of Ere, all of Ere as the Luff’Eresi saw it: a slow, ordered—though there were times that seemed without order—rising and growing of the generations that came one after another. A slow laying on of knowledge and then in places the breaking down of that knowledge, and the destruction of it by falsehood, by deceit, so that people for many generations afterward foundered, led by falsehood and avarice and laziness, led by warped emotions where they should have seen clearly. Until, here and there, a few broke away, and knowledge was built again slowly, and stronger.

She could see those who understood come, over the centuries, to stand at the gates of Eresu. Like a tableau, Ere’s history flowed past and around her, a tapestry woven of the warp of truth, but laid over with the weft of human frailty and fear, with the human need for security even at the expense of truth; then with the brightness of the human spirit rising like flashing colors here and there against the easy dullness of human sloth and greed.

They must come at their own times, at their own terms, Child of Ynell. If we were to go into Ere and change the way men live, change willfully what they believe, we would destroy something in those men. Once we told men we were mortal, for generations uncounted we spoke to them of this and tried to give them truth. But they would not drink of it. The suffering men do to themselves in believing their myths can only winnow out the strong and the loving and make them stronger still. They who search for truth will come seeking. And they are welcome here.

“But the death stone—why . . . ?”

The death stone, Zephy Eskar—yes, we have influenced man sometimes. We have taken our liberties—to save those rare few who are the true wealth and hope of Ere. Before the death stone, they were killed in temple ritual with the populace looking on. Now they are brought here and they stay in Eresu or go elsewhere as they choose. Your Cloffi landmasters are not sure enough in their minds of any truth to resist us in this. And they may truly believe that the Children die here. At least they are conveniently rid of them. . . .

And she was suddenly awake, standing by the fogbound river shivering, longing for the Luff’Eresi, for the words she had lost.

She had wanted to ask more, so much more, to ask help. But she had been given all she had a right to ask. The saving of the Children through the use of the death stone had been all the help the Luff’Eresi found it fit to give. Any more would have weakened the very strength of the human condition that the Luff’Eresi, by their reticence to interfere, had nurtured over the generations.

Her feet were wet. She could hear the river churling. There were tears on her cheeks. She heard a stirring and saw the campfire come to life as if the ashes had been uncovered and tinder added. Thorn came through the fog and stood looking down at her, and she knew he had seen what she saw, for it was with him still.

“Yes,” Thorn said huskily. “I saw it. I was there with you.”

And then she was in his arms as if he could give her rest from that terrible longing for the almost known, rest from that terrible awe.

*

When they gathered before the fire with the others, Thorn was able to tell, more lucidly than Zephy, the sense of what the Luff’Eresi had said, the sense of wonder they both had known as they faced him.

He was able to describe better the sensation of cold dark that had pressed around them, too, with the last vision of Meatha. He watched Tra. Hoppa’s increasing excitement and eagerness, watched Toca’s pallor and Elodia’s serious, pale silence as the children tried to deal with the word pictures and the strong, direct thought sensations.

It was Toca, grasping at the vision and words as another child would grasp at a magical tale, who spoke a few words of the Luff’Eresi haltingly, taking them from Zephy’s mind, “. . . can only winnow out the strong and the loving and—and make them stronger still. They who search for truth will come seeking. And they are welcome here.” It seemed strange to hear the words from the little boy’s mouth. How had they come this close to each other in such a short time? Was it partly the fear they shared, fear of the Kubalese, of being captured? Fear of the darkness that lay ahead of them?

When they discussed Meatha, surely fear was there. And later as Zephy and Elodia tried more skillfully than Thorn to reach out for Meatha, a sickness came around the children, too. But there also came a sense of direction quite apart from that, a sense of something pulling from the low hills to the south, a taut insistence, heavy with urgency, as if the darkness wanted them, would swallow them.

Thorn grew increasingly uneasy. Tra. Hoppa and Bibb and Toca should go safely into Carriol now, and find shelter. But he felt Tra. Hoppa’s stubbornness. And Toca could be stubborn too. Even the baby seemed awash with the emotions of the others, for when their thoughts and talk were frightening, he cried. Much of his crossness could be the lack of milk, though. Dried mawzee mixed with water was meager food. “He needs milk,” Thorn said, “We can’t take him into Kubal.” He stared down the hills where the fog was lifting at last. “We can’t take a baby there.”

“We must stay together,” Tra. Hoppa said. “There are farms in Kubal. We can steal milk.”

“Get caught stealing milk, our throats cut, and never find the Children,” Thorn scoffed.

But Tra. Hoppa’s blue eyes flashed. “We must be together. We need each other now.”

“If something happens to me and Thorn,” Zephy said evenly, “why should it happen to all of you?” But Tra. Hoppa’s stare defeated her. The old lady, at least four times their years, had perhaps four times their stubbornness, too.

Elodia simply remained quiet, with no intention of being diverted.

*

There had been no trees on the mountain, only stone and grass. Now as they followed the downward trail beside the River Urobb, they left the stone boulders and outcroppings and came into a forest of zantha trees whose silk hung long and pale like a woman’s hair. They could not see the valley for trees and hills, but the river rushed beside them. The zantha branches cut off the sky, and the trail looked as if it was seldom used, tangled with dead branches and thick vines that would have tripped human and donkey if Thorn had not cut them away. They made slow progress, Thorn slashing at the heavy growth. Then late on the eve of the second day, the zantha trees disappeared and the hills became bare and rocky once more, dropping quickly to the valley of Kubal. Here the river left them in a sudden waterfall that tumbled to the valley floor.

They stayed hidden as best they could among the stony hills and dry grass. When they came to a place where two flat boulders met overhead, they made camp in their shallow wedge, setting the donkeys on the most sheltered grazing and rolling out their blankets under the stones.

They made no fire, but ate cold mawzee soaked in water. Then Thorn took Toca and set out, as darkness dropped down, to scout the country below for a farm.

As they started off down the rocky slope, they could hear the falls, then the river running, below them. Their progress was hesitant. Thorn, slowing to keep pace with the little boy, fingered the length of rope wound around his waist, felt for his knife and hoped he wouldn’t need it. It seemed, as they moved downward and darkness increased, that a strange unease reached up to touch them, though he thought it might only be his apprehension at going into the hostile land. Toca was very quiet. They came at last to a widening of the river and saw it curve off sharply to their left. It would meet the Voda-Cul farther on. The rich Kubalese pasture and farm land lay in this curve of the river.

It was perhaps an hour later, as they made their way along the edge of the hills, that Toca whispered, “There’s a farm there, cows are in the field. And horses in a shed, I think.” He took Thorn’s hand and guided him away from the shelter of the hills onto the open fields, then along them until they came to a fence, nearly ramming into it in the darkness. They stood there in the blackness, silent, while Toca tried to pull the cows to him. The little boy’s hand tensed in Thorn’s and grew sweaty. Then after a long uneasy time, “I can’t. There’s something the matter. It’s not like—like when we’re together. It’s not so strong now, I don’t know if I can.”

Thorn felt it too, as if something were awry; felt a weakening of the security he had grown used to as they travelled, the wholeness and gentle strength that had surrounded them when they were together. Now it was fragmented, shattered.

“Maybe you’re trying too hard.” But he knew that was not it.

“We have to go into the field. I can do it closer.”

But even in the field and quite close to the cows, it was perhaps half an hour before one reluctant animal, snorting softly with uneasy curiosity, came to Toca from the dark lump that marked the little herd, and let him put the rope on her. She stood tensely for some time until the two of them had soothed her, though when Thorn began to milk her at last, Toca, at her head, seemed to have endeared himself to her sufficiently so she let her milk down all right. They got nearly a full waterskin—a hard job, milking into the small mouth of the water-skin, and her fidgeting. As Thorn finished, a light burst out in the dark field, and they saw that a door had been opened, that there was a house there. A figure stood in the light for a few minutes, then the door was closed. Thorn and Toca slipped away, through the fence and up into the hills as quickly as they could.

“It was different,” Toca repeated. “It isn’t the same as with all of us together.”

“How different, exactly?”

“The strong is gone, the strong thing.”

“What strong thing?”

“The thing that makes—that helped me call the birds down, the thing that makes you stronger.”

Thorn looked down at the child and knew he was right. It was as if Toca’s increased strength, Zephy’s increased ability for visions had grown as the four of them grew closer together. Had grown as strong, he realized, as if they did indeed carry the runestone as they had intended to do. As strong as if they had had the runestone all the time—Zephy’s vision, Elodia’s dreams . . .

He stood staring into the night. What had Meatha done with the stone? Stripped of her clothing, then tied across Dess’s back, what could she have done with it? She had been so silent, Zephy said. Meatha had not fought back, she had not screamed as Clytey had . . .

Could she have held the stone in her mouth?

Could she have held it there all the way to the mountain, held it until she was left alone at the death stone? But Zephy’s vision had not shown that. He tried to see Meatha again as Zephy had seen her last in Burgdeeth, to see Meatha’s hands and feet being tied, to see her lifted across Dess’s back, see her face pushed into the dung and grime that was smeared across the donkey and saddle, see her face turning away, pressed against the leather . . .

And then he knew.

He pulled Toca up, and they began to run hard up the hills.

*

After Thorn and Toca had gone, Zephy lay for a long time beneath the rock shelter, wakeful and uneasy. The others were sleeping. The baby woke once and fussed, and she took him up and calmed him, then lay him back beside Elodia. Her growing restlessness made it almost impossible to lie still. She tried to feel if Thorn was in danger, but she could be sure of nothing. At last she rose and went outside, to stand gazing down at the dark valley and at the two rising moons.

Then when Thorn came at last, charging over the crest of the hill suddenly, with Toca some distance behind him, she could only stare. He pushed past her into the shadow of the shelter, she heard Elodia groan, then out he came dragging Nida’s saddle. She watched him, perplexed, as he pitched the saddle down where the faint light from the moons could touch it. His knife flashed, and she stared in amazement as he ripped open the stitching she had done. An excitement was growing in her; she knelt beside him eagerly as he reached into the straw. Toca stood over them, a silent little figure.

When Thorn drew his hand out, she reached to touch the stone that gleamed in his palm, and at once they were locked in the vision that rose and swept them, the moonlight gone, locked in utter blackness. Torchlight was drawing near them; there were figures dark and still on the stone slabs. Now they saw faces, though, saw Clytey first, then Meatha, saw the faces of Children they did not know. And dark thoughts were there among them. And there were grown men and women, the Children of Eresu who had marched out from the valley with Meatha. And then they saw the tall figure lying still and silent and alone, his white hair catching the torchlight. Zephy’s very soul cried out to him, tried to wake him . . .

The three of them knelt there as one, their hands touching the runestone, willing Anchorstar to wake, willing with all the strength they possessed to wake him. But he did not stir; and as morning began to come, they let go, exhausted and discouraged. They laid the stone down and stared at it, gleaming dully beside Nida’s saddle. Elodia, who had awakened, came to hide herself in Zephy’s arms. From the shelter the baby whimpered in a kind of sleeping panic.

At last Zephy picked up the stone in her handkerchief, tied it, and handed it to Thorn. He fastened it to his belt, and they returned to the shelter to prepare for the journey ahead.