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

“But she’ll only slow us HaGlard. What—”

“Hoist ’er!”

Skeelie was thrown across a saddle face down, her head hanging. The horse shied and snorted, then went still and trembling, as if it would bolt any minute. The breath was knocked out of her. The saddle pressed deep into her ribs, smelled of rancid oil. She could feel Torc somewhere close by, gauging her position, gauging her best angle of attack. Don’t, Torc! Wait until they separate. Follow us, Torc, and wait! The man called HaGlard had said westward. Would they carry her in the direction of Tala-charen? But maybe she needn’t wait, for they had not tied her to the saddle yet, though her hands and feet were tied and she felt nearly helpless, belly down across the horse. Still, the Herebian who held the reins had turned away to tend another mount. Her horse was nervous, trembling at its strange burden: it would take little to make it leap away. To make it run. She could sense Torc slipping closer, then could feel the wolf’s tenseness as she crouched.

Now, sister! Gig it! Gig it!

She kicked the animal’s shoulder, its belly. It screamed and leaped away, nearly dumping her. BolLag cried out, swearing, as the reins were jerked from his hand. Skeelie clung to the saddle, her ribs bruised, as the terrified horse crashed through tall grass along the cliff. She could feel turmoil behind her, knew that Torc had leaped for a horse’s throat. It was all she could do to cling, to balance on the plunging horse. She could hear another horse running.

She felt Torc behind her at last. Felt Torc swerve, sensed an arrow released. She heard a horse scream, twisted around in the saddle enough to glimpse a riderless horse careening away. Her own horse spun, nearly spilling her, and began to scramble in terror up the boulders. She was slipping, tried to sense what was happening. Torc! Torc! Felt Torc leap and pull at her. Now, sister! Now! She slid off the crazed horse nearly under its hooves, rolled free as it plunged away, and lay still among boulders, hurting all , over, trying to collect her senses.

She felt Torc’s warm breath on her wrist, Torc’s teeth, as the bitch-wolf chewed at the rope.

Skeelie’s hands were free. She bent to untie her feet, struggled with ropes, jerked them loose at last, and they leaped together up the side of the cliff and began to climb, Torc slowing, waiting for her as, behind them, a rider drew bow. They slipped behind rock. Skeelie heard the two men running over gravel. “There, HaGlard, they climb there!” She ran blindly, following Torc, trusting Torc’s keener senses as the wolf swerved into a cave, ran in darkness. She was terrified of being trapped there weaponless, could hear the Herebians gaining, was panting with fear as running footsteps echoed close behind, then felt Torc swerve back to attack—but there was sudden silence behind them.

Torc had stopped, stood listening, feeling out.

Low voices slurred by echo against the cave walls into senselessness. But voices coming closer in the formless dark. They have no light, sister. They have left the lantern or lost it. Help me—help me bring a vision upon them, for they fear the dark caves.

Together, Torc and Skeelie brought darkness down thicker and deeper than the cave’s darkness, darkness with the sense of gods in it. The Luff’Eresi towered, winged creatures half-man and half-horse, violent in their power and righteousness, brought their fury into the cave, so their hatred of the weak and twisted filled the cave with an awesome thundering power, so real and frightening that Skeelie wondered afterward if she and Torc alone had wrought such splendor and felt that they had not. Felt that what they had formed there was aided by something unknown.

They sensed the warriors’ fear, felt them stumble and turn; heard them running out of the cave. Skeelie felt Torc’s silent wolfish laugh. A fine vision, sister. Fine. They search for their horses now. They will leave us, never fear. And the terror of our vision will follow them. And I—I will follow them. 1 must follow them.

They stood together, just inside the dark entrance to the cave, and watched the two Herebians drive their horses to a central point against the cliffs and capture them. Watched them strip the dead horse of its gear, then force the captive wraith up onto one of the animals and tie him to the saddle.

Skeelie did not want to think of Torc leaving her, but the bitch wolf must do as she had committed herself to do.

When it is away from you, when it can no longer enter your body, I can kill it, sister.

“But you said, if it is freed from that body it will take another. Become more powerful. The Herebians are strong, they—”

They must separate when they make camp, to hunt, to gather wood, to see to the horses. I will follow until I can kill them both, one at a time. Then only the wraith will be left, and when I kill it, it will wander bodiless and so grow weak. It cannot enter into me, it has not that power, sister. That shadow killed my cubs. If I do not kill it, I will cripple it so it finds the body useless, yet cannot escape it.

The riders headed up toward the west side of the valley, hurrying their horses. Torc’s very spirit seemed to follow them, heavy and predatory. Ramad would bid me stay with you, sister, but I cannot. Ramad is not here to bid. The bitch wolf’s eyes never left the receding figures as they urged their horses up between the rocky cliffs. I must trail that darkness, sister, and destroy it.

Skeelie knelt, put her arms around Torc’s shaggy neck, pressed her face into the bitch-wolf’s golden coat. The great wolves had comforted her and Ram in their childhood, were her security in a deep, indestructible way. She felt tears come, hugged Torc hard. The wolf’s warmth and strength flowed through her; the bitch-wolf licked her neck, took her arm between killer’s teeth, gently, in a timeless salute.

Then Torc was gone down across the valley past the molten lake, leaping through the grass on the far side of the valley, then up the cliffs until she was lost from view. Gone in one instant. Gone.

Skeelie turned away at last, annoyed at herself for feeling such loss. Torc did what she had to do.

Skeelie made her way along the rim of the valley to where the two Herebians lay dead, retrieved her pack and bow, her arrows, searched for her sword, knowing well she would not find it, and cursed the Herebians sharply. It was lucky she had hidden her pack and bow. She searched the dead warriors for sword or knife, but their friends had stripped them of everything useful. At last she entered the cave where the wraith had crawled and snuffled and began to search for what it had found there, striking her flint over and over until she had collected eight pieces of what looked like a small clay bowl. It puzzled her, for there seemed indeed to be a power about it. She climbed the cliff to some stunted trees, gathered pitch on a sharp rock, and stuck the pieces together: a bowl with a small, useless base. Then, with rising excitement she turned the bowl over and saw that it was not a bowl at all, but a bell. What had seemed the base was a part of the broken handle. She held the bell on her open palm, lightly, and memories flooded back to her. Ram had grown up in a house of bells, hundreds of bells collected by Gredillon, she who had raised him and taught him his Seer’s skills. Had this bell something to do with Ram? Did it hold some message for her? Had it led her here? In Gredillon’s house of bells, the wolf bell had stood on the mantel, presiding over Ram’s birth, and with it he had learned to call down the jackals and foxes before ever he spoke to the great wolves.

The strength of this bell was what the wraith had felt and thought it the runestone, though there was little comparison. The bell had a power, but not like the runestone of Eresu.