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

Then the winged ones banked and swept away, leaving Tala-charen behind.

Beyond Tala-charen they began to hear rumbles from the land below, and twice they saw explosions of fire in the mountains far to the north. They were flying over mountains still, but now the desert lay ahead, a white smear against the sky; and soon they saw the foot of the peaks had begun to curve northward skirting the vast white dunes. It was not long afterward that they saw the pale granite cliff tilting to the sky. Then they were over the white dunes, gleaming like snow below them. They began to stare downward between the horses’ beating wings, searching among the closer dunes for the small green valley. Behind them, the lizards paced them, never varying their distance; and Kish watched them.

To the north among the mountains, red smoke rose into the moon-pale clouds. Flame belched from a far peak, then was still. They could hear earthshocks, some of them faint as a whisper. All eyes searched the dunes below, searched the black half-moons of shadow deep between dunes, for the valley and for the gleam of the crystal dome. And they could feel and sense more than earthshocks around them: other powers were gathering, too, those awakened by the dark Seers, and those nurtured by the light. Both were alerted and building, clashing crosswise against one another, drawing strength from that very clashing. Drawing strength from the rising need of the Seers and the desire to control the fate of the stones. For the stones were like a magnet now to all the forces that rose across Ere. The forces of good swelled and drew in around the little flying band, and the powers of dark drew around the warrior queen, whose evil was older than Time. And the powers, by drawing close, strengthened yet again—just as, below the flying bands, the powers of the earth itself broke into new fissures as the earth cracked, and so built to crescendo.

Along the coastal countries, shocks came so harsh they brought down houses and outbuildings. Fissures opened across the fields, and terrified animals stampeded. A ewe with a lamb ran blindly into a crack opening a hundred feet deep. The river Urobb flooded its banks just above Sangur and drowned a small village in its sweeping tide. The bloodthirsty Herebians, many of them wounded and beaten by Carriol, backed off from warring and thought of returning home—but only to wait for the holocaust that seemed imminent and that would give them sure victory. For well they remembered past upheavals. Always, the Herebians had risen first and strongest after the wild heaving of the land. Always, the Herebians had taken the spoils as other men cowered in fear before volcanoes they thought were the gods’ wrath.

Kearb-Mattus gathered his scattered forces. He did not let them draw away to wait out the holocaust as they wished, but sent them riding hard toward Carriol’s border, for what better time to destroy Carriol than when accompanied by the violence of the land itself. And while his main band rode toward Carriol, Kearb-Mattus himself with fifty troops rode hard for Farr, where his scouts told him Kish’s cults marched, led by the adolescent Carriolinian upstarts. So they thought to help defend the border of Carriol! He had not known until an hour before that they had had the nerve to fetter those among them who held to the ways of Kubal and to Kish, and to lock them into the old villa at Dal and bar the portals with stone and mortar. Brash, snivelling . . . Kearb-Mattus smiled and thought with heat of killing the two young Seers who led that crew. He knew them. Oh, how he would pleasure himself by their deaths, those two that had so defied him—fracking brats—before he took Burgdeeth two years ago. Those two that had destroyed the training of the Children of Ynell there in the drug-caves of Kubal. They would die now, and painfully.

*

Lobon saw the emerald valley first, hidden in a moon-shaped crease between dunes, visible only because the crystal dome reflected moonlight. They could not have missed it in any case, however, for a sense of power had begun to draw them, the sense of the runestone there. They feared for that runestone now, for Kish was close behind. Lobon turned to look back at her. Her lizards were massing close around her, as if for attack. But still she kept her distance. Lobon leaned between the dark stallion’s wings as he swept down over the valley, a shadowed niche now between the silvered dunes. The dome glinted, then lost itself as their angle of descent steepened, then gleamed again; once it reflected Ere’s moons just before they came to earth.

They came down onto heavy grass. The winged ones folded their wings along their backs and stood facing the crystal dome. Behind and above them, Kish’s band drew close, sweeping over and back. Lobon could feel power strong now from the stone that dwelt beneath the dome. How had it come here? How had the dome come here? And who was the white-haired child? He did not dismount from Lannthenn’s back, nor did Meatha dismount. She looked across at him in silence. Her fear and her exhilaration shook him. They could feel the powers gathered around them, could feel the earth’s trembling, could feel the intolerable weight of Ere’s very existence balanced in this moment.

Inside the crystal dome, the white-haired child paused, then came slowly to the crystal door and pushed it open.

She came up to Lannthenn’s side, carrying a sheathed sword, the sight of which made Lobon start. She wore a second sword. And she held her right fist clenched against her chest. She was tiny, surely no more than seven. Her hair was snow white in the moonlight, her thin shift hardly enough to keep off the cold, though she was not shivering. Her eyes looked, in the moonlight, as golden as a wolf’s eyes. As golden as Anchorstar’s eyes, Meatha told him. With effort the child lifted the sword. Lobon stared again at the hilt, felt weak and strange, took it from her and unsheathed it, sat holding Skeelie’s sword. How had it gotten here? “Where is she?” he whispered, glancing past the child into the dome, but he could see no figure there, caught no sense of her.

“Skeelie, your mother, bids you take her sword,” was all the child would say. “The silver sword that Ramad forged for her.” Then she held up her partly closed fist to him and without another word, without any hesitation, she laid the heavy jade in his hand.

It was surely the largest of all the shards; a heavy, thick dagger of jade nearly as long as his palm, carved with the runes that were its own fragment of the whole rune:

power end life

Lobon held it for a moment then slipped it into the inner lining of his tunic beside the wolf bell. He watched the two wolves leap clear of the winged horses that had carried them. They went directly to the child and stood head-high beside her, facing toward the warrior queen sweeping and wheeling in the sky above.

Lobon knew he must carry the stone into battle. They all knew, as if the child had told them, that Kish could not take the runestone from the crystal dome; that this stone was the true lure to draw Kish, and so retrieve the six stones she carried—the bait on which the fate of all eight stones waited.

The child unbuckled the second sword and handed it to Meatha. Then Lobon turned Lannthenn skyward with a thought, the stallion as eager as he to do battle. The white mare wheeled next to him, Meatha taut with nerves, and all the winged ones following, mind meeting mind as they formed a rhythm of attack. Ahead, the winged lizards swarmed, hissing. Kish swept out ahead of the pack, her sword drawn, her power in the stones she carried like a sword itself. The sky had begun to go milky with the coming dawn. Kish’s lizards slithered beneath heavy wings in a close-flying swarm as Kish swept down toward Lobon.