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

She was a tall girl. Her long, angled face, her dark hair pulled into a careless bun, her wrists protruding from her tunic sleeves made her seem gangling and awkward, though she was not. She stood praying to whatever there was to pray to that Ramad would not die. Half her life had been spent trying to heal the fool’s wounds. Only when they were children the wounds were not often so simple as those from arrow or sword; they had been wounds of a mind lashing out from darkness to contort Ram’s spirit and nearly drive him mad. She touched his shoulder gently, laid her hand on his cheek, a thing she would hesitate to do if he were conscious. “You will not die, Ramad of wolves! You can not, you must not die!”

Above the sea wind she heard shouting voices then and turned from him to stand in the cavelike window to see flocking across the sky a dozen more winged horses. They swarmed down, the second wave of rescuers, diving through the sea wind to sweep onto the balconies below her, then stand quietly as their wounded were helped to dismount. She watched with clenched fists, sick at the slaughter their men had endured, and behind her Ram came awake suddenly shouting, “No gods! There are no gods!” Then came to himself and hunched up on one elbow wincing at the pain, stared straight at Skeelie, and growled, “Do you think I can lie here all day with nothing in my stomach, woman! Get me some food!” His red hair boiled over his forehead like the fires of the mountain itself.

“You can’t eat solid food with a wound like that. ] brought soup, there beside you on the shelf.”

“I want meat! Get me some meat, Skeelie! I haven’t eaten for two days!” He glared at the soup then pulled closer and began to eat ravenously.

She went out, relieved at his stubborn strength, went down four stone flights to the great kitchen, among the clatter of women preparing poultices and herbs; she put cutlets to fry bloody rare and dished up some baked roots. Catching Dlos’s eye where the older, wrinkled woman was hastily passing out bandages, she saw Dlos’s concern for Ram, and grinning, put down her own concern. “He’s cursing me and shouting for food.” She saw Dlos’s relief, then turned away. The kitchen was a hive of activity. She poured milk, then carried the mug and warm plate up to him as quickly as she could—and found him asleep again.

She sat beside his bed waiting for him to wake.

The first time she had ever brought him food, when they were children, she had fed him with a spoon like a baby. His red hair had been dyed black then, to disguise the Seer’s skill that ran like fire in his veins. The swollen wound on his forehead had been meant, certainly, to kill him: his pursuers, if unable to take him captive, would surely have killed him. She could hear the sea crashing below, and a slash of afternoon sun caught across the foot of his bed; and all of an instant time seemed to flow together. The light-washed cave-room seemed one with the cobwebby storeroom where she had tended Ram so long ago, the two times seemed one time, the child Ram and the man he now was lay sprawled as one figure on the cot; she was as much a skinny frightened girl as she was a woman grown, no less afraid for Ram then than she was at this moment. Her hands shook. Then, seeing him wake, she reached for his plate, very practical suddenly, and began to cut his meat.

As his eyes lifted to her face, she felt the dark around them pressing at them, and she knew too well the presence of the dark Pellian Seers, their minds intruding unseen into the room. How she hated them: she sent hate back at them with a vehemence that at last drove the dark back until only a chill remained. She felt a brief fleeting satisfaction in that small power she had wielded; for her own skills were as nothing compared to Ramad’s.

The dark had grown so strong. It was the same dark that had gripped and twisted Ram’s mind when he was a child, only then it had been the Pellian Seer HarThass who had wielded it. Now, with HarThass dead, the strength of the dark had so increased under BroogArl’s manipulations that it was a new and terrifying force over Ere, a force dedicated to Ram’s destruction and to the destruction of all like him. The black Pellian’s powers twisted and crippled the Seers of light now as never before. Made Ram’s skills, the skills of the Carriolinian Seers, next to useless. An incredible force that blocked the Carriolinian skills so they could seldom, now, speak in silence even one with the other. They rarely had foreknowledge of the fierce Herebian attacks as hordes swarmed over Carriol’s borders to rape and burn and steal. Carriol’s Seers were little more sensitive now to the forces around them than was any ordinary man. Only occasionally did BroogArl’s powers abate for a few precious moments so their light was restored, like a sudden rent in the cloud-shrouded sky.

Ram ate ravenously. The wound seemed to make no difference to his hunger. She wished he had not bled so much; he was very pale. She took his empty plate at last and stood staring out again at the town, while behind her he stirred restlessly, thrashing the covers. Partly from the pain, she knew, but already wanting to get up. If he would just lie there sensibly and let the wound heal . . . If she were closer to him, close in a different way, perhaps she could bully him into taking better care of himself. Perhaps. She scowled, annoyed at her own thoughts, and stared distractedly down at the street, where the wounded were being led and carried to their homes. The most critical would be lying in rooms in the tower where they could be doctored more easily and drugged against the pain. The stone sill beneath her hand was smooth from generations of use. This tower had seen so much, the lives of the gods who had dwelt here, the lives of the winged horses of Eresu and of those Seers who had come here for sanctuary in ages past: for in no age had the Seers of Ere been ignored by common men. Revered, yes. Worshipped and given rule, or driven out and killed as emissaries of the fire-spewing mountains, driven out so they came for sanctuary to the cities of the gods. Innocent Seers blamed for the fires of the earth, just as the gods had been blamed. And always there were evil Seers, too, revered by the ignorant and feared so it was easy for them to retain rule.

But never Seers left to themselves. In times past, only in the three cities of the gods had the gentle Seers found sanctuary from their evil brothers and from human ignorance.

She caressed the smooth stone sill, and again a sense of Time slipping away gripped her so strongly she shivered. Suddenly she was very afraid, afraid for Ram—as if Time wanted suddenly to pull him into its wild vortex as it had done once when they were children. She turned to stare at him, stricken, was terrified in a way she could not understand. Where did this sudden sense come from of such danger? And, this sudden sense of someone reaching out to Ram with tenderness? Someone . . . She, Skeelie, was not a part of this.

Down on the street many of the wounded were beginning to come out again from doorways, their fresh bandages making pale slashes against sun-browned skin. They came toward the tower, came haltingly together beneath Ram’s window, stared up at his portal, and their voices rose as one, supportive of him and vigorous, “Ramad! We want Ramad!” They shouted it over and over; then they began to sing Carriol’s marching song, Carriol’s song of victory, “. . . beyond the fire she stands unscathed, beyond the dark she towers . . .”

Their voices touched Skeelie unbearably. This handful of men loving Ram so, loving Carriol so they must gather, wounded and half-sick, to sing of Carriol’s victory—to reassure Ram of her victory. Skeelie heard Ram stir again, and turned expecting to see him rising painfully to come and stand beside her, to join with his troops.