The Ring Оf Fire. The Wolf Bell

Part Two: The Wolves

FIVE

Ram and Skeelie groped through black clefts deep inside the mountain. “We are going clear through it,” Ram said. “We will come out into caves like an underground world. Fawdref is there.”

“Couldn’t the wolves have come and led us?”

“They lead us. It is all that is needed. The power gets . . . it grows stronger as we get closer.”

They moved through passages in the stone so narrow they must walk sideways, and when they came at last to light again, they shouted with surprise and pleasure at the sudden golden rays of the dropping sun and stood grinning at each other. Such an urgent thing, the need for light, when one has moved in darkness.

They were in a part of the mountains now where no men had been for generations—not since Seers dwelled there among the gods. Skeelie sat down on a ledge and stared out at the hundreds of peaks that rose beyond, considering the desolation and the strangeness of that wild land. Ram stood looking, feeling the power of something immense pulling at him, and facing Fawdref’s call. And he could sense forces meeting here in a conflict of which he knew he was suddenly the center. He could not settle, he was too eager to get on, was tight-strung and shaken.

When they did go on, they heard water falling and came into a tall cave lit by the sun’s golden light. A waterfall plunged down from the ceiling into a light-filled pool, casting rippling reflections on the cave walls. The pool’s breath was cool in their faces. Ram stripped off his clothes and swam, his body transformed in the lighted green depths into something pale and fishlike. Skeelie was drawn to that enticing world but was more modest. She turned her back to undress. They swam until they were numb with cold, then dressed and went on again through dark corridors and passages where only a dull gray light marked their way. In time they saw ahead dark shadows that seemed to move. Skeelie drew back, but Ram followed the silent shapes eagerly.

And suddenly the shadows were warm, huge bodies leaping all around them, wolves pouring around them, sweeping past each other to push close to them. Dark, rough-coated, huge. Their eyes glinted, they were as tall as the children’s chests, twice the children’s weight, their teeth like ivory swords. Fawdref pressed against Ram, and Ram clutched Fawdref in a wild hug. The great wolf grinned and licked his neck and cheek. His mate, Rhymannie, curved against Ram, her forelegs out, her head ducked, smiling up at him. He scratched her head and saw her yellow eyes laugh with pleasure.

Ram felt their power like a tide around him, and his own power seemed heightened so his pulse beat in a wild surge. Here, he was one with the wolves, linked in an ancient heritage of power and magic.

Yet something else stirred, too. Something dark in a different way from the wolves’ powers. Something insidious and threatening. “The Seer of Pelli reaches out,” he breathed. He brought all of himself to shield against HarThass’s searching. Then he understood that the wolves had been shielding since he and Skeelie left Burgdeeth; linking with Ram’s own shielding to hide this quest from the Pellian Seer. So much more came clear when he was near to the wolves. And there was so much more for him to learn, so much yet to understand, so much skill yet to master.

Beyond the rough arch where they stood, a deep underground world opened out. A softly lighted, mysterious world into which the children moved now, to stare around them with wonder, their footsteps echoing, their voices hushed. The grotto’s high roof floated in mists. The farthest walls and arches were all but lost. For an instant they saw a time long past, saw gods and Horses of Eresu soaring on silent wings, saw that some of the horses carried men on their backs, saw a time of wonder when anything was possible to men. Ram felt, then, that the powers he sought had to do with this—with a time when all was open to humankind.

The vision vanished. The wolves led them through the grotto to another opening, through which they could see the setting sun and a grassy hill rising up steeply to meet sheer, black cliffs, which swept on up to a mountain peak. Against the mountain stood a building made by men, a black stone structure so well conceived it seemed to have grown from the mountain itself. They went out of the grotto and up the grassy bank and in between the black pillars to a great hall. The grass underfoot gave way to thick moss that carpeted the interior, running up over stone seats and creeping in fingers up the stone walls. The walls themselves were carved from the living stone of the mountain. Only the front wall, through which they had entered, was made of great blocks of black stone set by men.

The hall rose to an incredible height. The thin arches that floated high above might have been carved by men, or might not: pale stone bridges crossing back and forth thin as threads. Ram felt tremendous power here, felt the essence of all the ages of Ere gathered here and understood there were picture records of Ere’s past sealed away and bark manuscripts of runes, and treasures beyond his dreams; and that he would return here someday, in some time yet to come.

The wolves led them through myriad openings in the hall, through chambers carved from the live stone in a labyrinth, flanked by huge slabs or by delicate filigrees of stone carven into the shapes of animals. The caves grew dim when the sun had set; but soon the moons rose, their light washing the stone walls and picking out caves high above that once had been sleeping chambers. And the ceiling was brilliant with motion, a moving panorama, a story told in pictures, that drew Ram as he started forward to climb to it, paying little attention to the narrowness of the steps or to the dizzy height. Six wolves went on with him and Skeelie. The rest turned back; many, Ram knew, because of waiting cubs. The steps were narrow and steep, carven into the cave walls with nothing to hold to. The height increased until the children could no longer look down without growing dizzy. Ram pushed on eagerly, for somewhere up there in the moonlit chambers at the roof of the grotto lay the answer to the question that burned in him with an intensity that nearly overwhelmed him.

He felt the Seer’s probing then and spent himself blocking HarThass’s seeking mind as the man quested blindly, not knowing where Ram was, or why, but knowing that an urgency occupied him. Like a scenting ferret, the Seer reached out. Ram felt his own powers strengthened by the wolves as they spread a cloud of darkness against the Seer.

When they reached the top of the grotto at last, they stood looking down that immense distance at the bridges of stone sweeping in arches below them, and at the one thin arch flung out across the grotto at their feet. Skeelie looked and was suddenly frozen with terror, unable to move, was convinced she would fall if she moved. She had not expected such fear as this, was confused and surprised at herself, was scarcely able to breathe for the fear that gripped her.

A wolf nudged her. She resisted, fear flaring into panic. Another pressed close, warm against her. She wanted to cry out.

Then the wolves began to push into her mind, into the white fear that held her. Gently, slowly they began to ease her, to take away the terror. She could feel Fawdref in her mind like some dark, happy troubadour shouting out his songs, so it was hard to be afraid.

At last the drop into space was no longer horrifying. She could look down comfortably and was able to move forward again without losing her balance, even to look above her at the pictures on the ceiling, so close. The bright panorama hung above them alive with wonderful creatures, with the gods lifting in awesome flight; showed them a fierce history of Ere, showed killings and fire and destruction. Showed them a procession of gods moving out across the ceiling that spoke to Ram with such urgency that he pressed forward onto the thin bridge to follow it.

Moonlight swam in through the far, arched windows to touch the narrow span. Ram started across, afraid for a moment, then drawn beyond fear to that far wall and to the cave there. Fawdref came behind him. Ram hesitated as he heard Fawdref growl, low and menacing.

There, in the center of the bridge, something had begun to glow silver.

It grew quickly brighter, terrifying Ram, holding him poised precariously over empty space.

The Seer’s cape became visible, the cowl hiding his face in darkness. He stood silently blocking their way. Ram’s new terror mixed with Skeelie’s terror, with Fawdref’s fury. The Seer’s intent was clear, Ram’s death was clear if he should move forward.

*

Farther down the mountain in the darkness of a tunnel, Dlos and Tayba stopped suddenly at the echo of a growl. Dlos turned her head, as if perhaps she heard more than a growl, looked upward toward the dark heart of the mountain. “We do not hear it, we hear a message. As we would hear a message of fear sent by a Seer.”

Tayba followed Dlos’s swinging lantern, now terrified for Ram. He should not have come here. Why had he? The smell of damp, cold stone had begun to nauseate her. Couldn’t they go faster? How could they help Ram against wolves? She touched her sword with a trembling hand. What had the wolves done to him? If she let her mind dwell on it, the terror would overwhelm her. Her throat ached with the tenseness that gripped her. She would harbor no thought except that the wolves endangered him. Felt a voice within telling her she must battle wolves.

Then suddenly something else was there in her mind, subtle and compelling. It eased her fear for Ram, soothed her; yet she quailed before it.

*

The silver cape moved on the night breeze that stirred through the grotto. Ram’s fists were clenched. Moonlight washed the cave, seemed to make the thin span shift sickeningly. The Seer’s voice was cold.

“Go back, Ramad. Go back before you die.” Cold and softly echoing, like some insidious whisper of death that could not be stilled.

Ram’s voice cut suddenly across space, sharp as a blade. “You are a fool, HarThass! You had better take yourself back to Pelli. We are coming across.”

“You cross and you die, Ramad of Zandour!”

Ram began slowly to walk toward HarThass across that thin span. He smiled. “Do you want me dead, Seer? Have you decided not to make a slave of me? Have you decided you do not want to rule the bell?” And with each step he drew closer to that faceless apparition, swallowing the fear that twisted inside him. “I think, HarThass, that you see your defeat so clearly you want to end it now. Before you must confess failure. You will end it by dying here, HarThass.”

The Seer’s voice rang. “You are no longer worth keeping to toy with, child of the mountain. I grow tired of you. I find your death more intriguing—death in a fall to that stone floor. Look down, Ramad. That will be your tomb, those hard rocks on which your body will lie crushed like jelly, a bloody smear on the stone and your tame dogs dead beside you!”

“It will not be my tomb, HarThass! What is there beyond this span, that you would prevent me from seeing? What is there that is so important to you, that you would give up your quest for the wolf bell forever?” Ram challenged. But his chagrin was terrible that his own blocking had failed, that in that instant when he faced the thin bridge and empty space, his fear had let the Seer slip by, let HarThass See the painted procession and know that it led to something urgent.

The Seer moved toward Ram. Fawdref growled and slipped up beside him on the narrow bridge, terrifying him, moved ahead of him lithe as a cat, to face the Seer. Ram lifted the bell, spoke its words urgently. The moonlight caught at the rearing bitch-wolf, making her seem to turn. “You are dust!” Ram cried. “You are only dust in this place, HarThass! You are bone and blood only In Pelli! If you do not return there, you will be only dust there, silenced in death, Seer of Pelli!”

The silver cape shifted. HarThass’s hate was terrible, a black tide that suffocated. Ram rang the bell, swallowing his terror; and a thousand bells rang, and the wolves cried out; and the Seer’s fury rose as he moved forward along the span. Ram could feel his force, knew that HarThass could, by his very power, catapult him and the wolves into space; his force, the force of all his Seers, must be joined in this. “You are dust, HarThass!” Ram shouted.

And then he felt it: that other power with him, that surging of strength that bolstered his own. And the Seer paused. Ram moved forward. “You are dust, HarThass! And to dust you will return!” Ram stood pouring all of his power with Jerthon, with the wolves, into a tide that could sweep HarThass from that place.

The silver cape began to grow dimmer, the Seer’s hands to fade. The Seer stepped back.

And the power within Ram lifted, Ram’s own power and the power of the wolves rising with Jerthon to sweep down on HarThass so hard the Seer cried out in fury, his sudden fear vibrating across the grotto fainter and fainter still until it clung in echoes of anger.

Clung, long after he had vanished.

At last the span before Ram was empty. Then, shaken, swept with relief, the little procession began to cross the thin bridge in the still wash of moonlight, Skeelie clutching gratefully at the pale wolf that walked so carefully just ahead of her. Across the span, they could see a small cave opening. And the procession on the ceiling traveled with them toward an unknown wonder of such urgency for Ram that he was almost sick with the need to reach it.

Below them two figures looked upward, could not call out, stood watching the children and wolves cross over the high span until at last they reached a stone ledge and turned into the cave, to disappear.

Tayba swallowed, exhausted by her own emotions and by her fear. That other power, that had spoken to her—it had been with Ram up there, helping Ram. She had no sense of what it was. But she was warmed and supported by it. Her mouth tasted of metal. She felt sticky with sweat, even in this cool place. What were they doing up there? She had never imagined that wolves would climb into heights like that, like great cats. She wished they would come back, wished Ram were there on the ground beside her, would not rest until he was.

*

Fawdref led the children slowly, letting them look. They both had cricks in their necks, could not stop gazing upward at the solemn procession where gods with folded wings walked solemnly beside men. The procession traveled up mountains and across valleys, was attacked by fire ogres, skirted lakes of fire. The gods could have flown in safety, yet they did not fly.

The Seer who led them carried a small carven box. And in that box lay, Ram knew, a power like nothing else on Ere, a power that excited and awed him. The gods marched out of the caves at last onto a high mountain meadow; and ahead of them across the meadow, a slim, tower-like mountain rose into cloud. ‘Tala-charen,” Skeelie breathed. “I thought—I thought it was only a story. The mountain like a castle, with jewels and beautiful things inside. What do they . . . ?”

The last picture showed a cave high in the peak of Tala-charen, where a Seer placed the box into a wall and covered it with stone. Then the gods turned and launched themselves into space like great wild birds soaring out.

And the procession of Seers turned back down the mountain. Ram knew then that because of the caching of the box there, men and gods no longer dwelled together. Had become at the moment of its placement apart from each other. This, then, was the cause of the parting. This box that held the most powerful force in Ere. This was why he was here, this force was, he knew, needed now upon Ere. And it was in his power to release it.

They climbed at last, quite silent, down a stair in the outer wall, reached a bay halfway down where the cold night wind came in over a wide ledge. The wolves from below had gathered here onto the stones and outcroppings. The children stood looking down over the moon-washed land. A half-dozen wolves stood boldly at the edge letting the wind whip their fur and flatten their ears, then raised their voices in a wailing chorus.

“I will go to Tala-charen,” Ram said. “And soon.” His blocking of the Seer was stronger now—yet it was too late. HarThass had seen too much; would be an increased danger in what Ram had to do. Yet for a few moments he held a curtain against HarThass that blinded and confused the Seer. “There is need for the power the gods placed there. Was I . . .” He stared at Skeelie, then his eyes searched Fawdref’s. “Was I born to this, for this one thing, to bring the stone out into Ere?”

Fawdref’s answer was shaded with meaning. He made Ram understand that no person was born to one thing. That there was no power that could make a babe come into the world for any purpose. There was only the coming together of powers and events, the linking into a whole that made time and need bring an urgency upon life. This was how he was born, a culmination to that urgency. There was no one intelligence that could dictate his birth or would presume to. If he succeeded in bringing that power out, the forces of Ere would be bent into a new pattern; if he did not . . . but Fawdref broke off and turned to stare out over the land, his mind dark and watchful.

*

Tayba lay watching the morning’s soft light flood the grotto, catching at the labyrinth and soaring spans; she remembered the silver-caped Seer up there last night, Ram balanced on the thin bridge, the ring of their voices echoing hollowly. She turned to see the children, already up, bringing water from a pool then burrowing in her pack for breakfast, for they had eaten all their own food. She saw Dlos crouch over the little fire against stone, to lay mawzee cakes to warm, strips of mountain meat to toast. She watched the wolves, some distance away, eating from the kill that part of the pack had brought in during the night. Even now she was fearful of them—though she understood at last that here lay Ram’s safety, that they did not threaten him. She understood at last—as she should have long before—where Ram’s real danger lay. Where else, she thought, wondering at her own confusion, but with the Seer of Pelli? Had her very confusion been a part of that dark Seer’s twisting, insidious ways? Had he meant to use her in some way against Ram and the wolves? But he had not used her. Perhaps some other force had prevented that. For it seemed to Tayba that a terrible balance of forces surged and tilted around her. She wanted only to turn away from the turmoil; this was nothing she could touch or have influence over; was nothing she wanted any part of.

She rose and folded her blanket, remembered the children curled against wolves last night, sleeping in perfect safety, Fawdref’s great head sheltering Ram’s small head so she had lain awake a long time, watching them. She was tolerated here with the wolves, but she was not a part of this, nor ever could be. The children had played with wolf puppies around the fire last night, laughing, squealing with pleasure, and she had only been able to watch the bitch wolves in silence as they, perfectly at ease, had lain beside the human children and the cubs. I haven’t the faith Ram has, she thought. Even yet, now that I know they will not harm Ram, I can’t have faith like that. I am empty inside me—and I do not know why.

When they had breakfasted, they left the grotto. The wolves remained behind. The sadness of parting between children and wolves made Tayba turn away, to go on ahead into the dark, low tunnels. The children caught up at last, following the lantern light, and were very quiet.