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

To their right a crude stairway was cut into the wall, wide steps as if made for the use of fire ogres. They crossed to it and began to climb. The steps were scorched by ogres’ feet. The sounds of their footsteps made a scuffing echo across the cavern. They sensed that somewhere above them their ascent was noted, and awaited.

Then suddenly the wolves stiffened and began to stalk, and from around the bend ahead three fire ogres came shuffling, creatures awash with red flame. Lobon held the wolf bell high, and his power joined with the wolves—unfettered now by Kish’s answering power—to drive the creatures stumbling backward up the steps until they turned at last and shuffled into a high crevice. Surely they were more docile than the other fire ogres. Was it because of the bell’s power? Or was their little group together growing stronger?

Or perhaps these creatures were more used to humans and not so easily nudged to fury. Did men come here, then? And why?

They knew before they reached the top of the cavern that winged ones waited there, tied in small cells. Yes, men had been here. Dark Seers. For these were RilkenDal’s fettered mounts, captive and beaten and starving. They were of the bands from the far mountains that had been so long silent, they whose brothers were at this moment killing themselves deliberately in battle, to turn the outcome of the wars. Twenty winged horses waited, all of them scarred and stiff with wounds, burned from the fire ogre’s touch, their wings bound with leather cords, their heads tied to bolts in the stone.

When they reached them, Meatha and Lobon went sick at the sight of them. The horses were so thin and weak. They came away from their bonds walking stiffly, trying to lift wings grown heavy with disuse. Meatha’s hand shook as she began to dress wounds with the little birdmoss that was left. She applied the moss as tenderly as she could into the long gash on a white mare’s chest, wincing as the mare flinched with pain. She tore up the rest of her shift for bandages.

For four days they camped on the ledge high up the wall of the cavern. Lobon found grain in a cavern below, kept there by RilkenDal for the horses he took into battle. They found charred leather buckets by a water runlet and carried them countless times up to the winged ones.

From this height they could see lakes of fire strung across the cave floor below like a necklace. Above, through the high opening that was still so far away, they watched the first night as the sky darkened; then they crouched in the stalls away from the storm that broke with a terrible violence, drenching the cave. When at last the sky cleared and the sun shone weakly, the wind, twisting down into the cavern, was bitterly cold.

There was a constant but gentler wind, too, of beating wings, as the horses of Eresu worked at strengthening unused muscles so they could fly once more. Soon some of the horses began to descend to the floor of the cavern to drink, though they did not like going there. When the earth began again to tremble, they became nervous and would startle and sweep up into the heights of the cavern without drinking. Then on the third night a gusher of lava broke out of the cave wall below them and flowed in a river toward the molten lakes.

As the lava spilled onto the floor, fire ogres began to appear from fissures in the cave below and to move ponderously toward the lava river, then to shuffle along and around it in a cumbersome and terrifying ritual. A few turned away and came up the stairs toward the ledge, but two winged stallions rose and struck at them from the air with sharp hooves until the clumsy creatures fell to the floor below. The wolves killed a third with quick, striking slashes, then lay licking their burns. Lobon killed two with a rock and sent another over the side by tripping it. The flaming, twisting bodies lit the cave wails as they fell.

When the last ogre was gone, Meatha curled at once into the hollow of stone where she slept, trying to get warm. Crieba came to lie beside her, and she wished it were Lobon there. But when she caught his unspoken words and saw him watching her, she made a wall between them until he lay down at last beside a winged stallion to shelter from the wind that blew down on them in sharp gusts.

When Lobon woke, the wind was still. Moonlight touched the cavern from above; and the mountain was trembling in long, violent rumbles; that was what had waked him. All around him winged ones were up, balancing with open wings, for the ledge had become a turmoil of moving rock. Meatha clung to a dark stallion; the white mare pushed close to Lobon crying, Mount, Lobon! Mount! The shocks were violent, wave upon wave. The cave could shift or collapse, they could be trapped here. Lobon grabbed Feldyn and lifted him between the mare’s wings, and she leaped toward the hole above. He got Crieba mounted, felt the wolf’s fear. “Hang on with your teeth! Crouch between her wings and hang on!” He saw Meatha mounted and flung himself onto a pale stallion, grabbed a handful of mane, and felt the world drop away from him as he was swept away; felt wings fold tight around him as the stallion slipped through the hole; felt drowned by wind as the stallion beat his way out onto the open sky to make way for those coming behind.

They were free of the cave. Free. But they stood on unsteady, trembling ground; and then suddenly they were caught in a confusion of battle come out of nowhere, out of the sky all around them, no hint, no sense of it beforehand. Heavy wings beat at them, sharp-toothed lizards tore at them, diving, then wheeling away. Lobon had no weapon. The stallion he rode struck and bit. The sky was filled with lizards. Winged horses screamed. Lobon tried to see Meatha, felt teeth tear his arm. The sound of beating wings, of screams, of the earth thundering, all were mixed and confused. The stallion struck and struck, and soon below Lobon could see a dark smear of bodies on the moonwashed earth. Lizards? Horses of Eresu? Where were Feldyn, Crieba?

Meatha’s command was sharp. The wolf bell, Lobon! Use the power you carry!

But he had no chance, for the lizards were drawing away. Almost as quickly as they had come, they were gone, a stutter of wings then a black flock like huge birds against the moonwashed sky.

Why? What had called them away?

The stallion came to earth. Lobon slid down. The dark stallion who carried Meatha winged to earth and she slipped down, to rest her head against the horse’s withers. Ere’s two moons hung like half-closed eyes in an empty sky. Lobon stared at Meatha.

“Why did they leave? It was Kish guiding them. Why would she call them off?”

“She never meant for them to attack,” she said with certainty. “They—can’t you feel it? She can hardly control them. She meant only to follow us. She has sensed something—something . . .” She frowned, groping to put vague images together. “She has sensed something—that I have sensed, Lobon.” She was trembling with the need to See more clearly. What was it? So close, so urgent yet so hard to See. “Something that has lain in my thoughts. Something Anchorstar knew,” she whispered. “Kish senses it.” She turned to look away in the direction the lizards had disappeared. “Kish means to follow us, Lobon. She thinks we will seek—that we . . .”—she caught her breath—“. . . that we know where the eighth stone lies!”

They stared at one another. Slowly, frowning, she began to pull knowledge out of the deeper reaches of her mind, reaches touched by Anchorstar. Slowly a vision began to unfold, the vision Anchorstar had given her: a green valley and the crystal dome. A white-haired child. And, as if she had forgotten half the vision, a sense of power now couched beneath the crystal dome: power that could be only one thing.