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

She stood, drained at last, with tears running down her cheeks. The room loomed dim and gray around her. Now that she knew this part of Ram’s life, knew it too well, the pain of it would never leave her.

Near the hearth lay a small boy’s tunic, its shape plain under the blanket of dirt. She knelt to pick it up, and it fell apart in her hands. When she touched the cover of one of the three cots, the thread disintegrated under her exploring fingers. She shivered, hugging herself, trying to drive out the cold. If she went down into the city of Zandour, which lay below this mountain, would she find it dead and moldering, too?

Or if Zandour were a city still alive, would she hear talk of a long-dead Ramad of the wolves?

She had a strong desire to clean this room, to sweep away the dust and collect the broken bells, make it clean and livable. Perhaps to stay here awhile. But in hope of what? That Ram would come to her in this long-lost place? She looked at the petrified food on the table with distaste, at the dusty bed.

She knew she must sleep, she was achingly tired, but did not find the thought of sleeping in this room very pleasant, because of the decay, because of the painful scenes the room seemed still to contain. A cold draft touched her, and she tightened the latch on the door, wished for her sword. She turned back the bedcover at last, managing to make only one tear in it. The blanket beneath seemed sturdy enough, though it smelled of ancient things. Darkness drifted through her mind, as if the dust itself drugged her. She fell onto the bed and curled around, knees bent, her arm over her bow and pack.

She slept deeply. Not until hours later did the dreams begin to push around her, to touch on moments of Ram’s life, to form a pattern that, afterward, she could not reconstruct, but which left her somehow strengthened. As if she had touched powers basic to Ram and touched a meaning central to all life.

She woke to a gray, dim morning, hungry because she had not eaten the night before, angry at herself for not taking better care. She sat up, fuzzy with sleep, the night dreams hardly separated from the gray shadows of the room, and began to rummage in her pack for food. A small sound stopped her. The door latch was lifting.

She snatched up her bow, pushing cobwebs from her mind, as the door pushed noiselessly in.

Dull gray light crept in through the widening crack, the same flat gray that seeped in around the broken shutters. She waited, arrow to bow, her heart pounding, sleep cast aside. What was that smell? Like something dead.

Then she saw the hand feeling in through the crack of the door. A thin, white hand. The dead smell increased, was sickening. A shadow blocked the widening crack. The door pushed in in one quick movement, and a dark figure stood looking in at her, a faceless silhouette. A figure slight as a twig.

When it turned, she could see the side of its face: pale, skull-thin. Its cape was bloodstained; blood lay smeared across its cheek, down its side and arm. It stood watching her. And she knew it had come here to die. Had followed her, meant to take her body in place of its own dying one.

Why her? Why had it sought her? Across what span of Time had it come seeking, and what had wounded it so badly? And where was Torc? What had happened to Torc, who had gone so confidently to follow and destroy the wraith? She felt a twisting fear for Torc; and a fear for herself that made her go sick with apprehension. It is a dead soul that can never die again. The memory of Torc’s words made her shiver. It would possess you. She longed to kill it and knew she dare not do so.

She made her mind seek out, listening, until at last her inner Seer’s sense touched the essence of the wraith. Its dark image came around her, lusting to drive out her spirit, lusting for the shell of her body, for her skills. Images of torture crowded in from its mind. Then she felt the pain of a sword across the wraith’s cheek, was swung into sudden battle. A dark, familiar Herebian raider slashed at its shoulder, and she felt the wraith’s pain. Then the Herebian HaGlard attacked his brother, and she did not understand what they fought for among themselves.

She saw Ram suddenly, slipping inward toward the battle unseen, and caught her breath. Ram, preparing to attack the Herebians. Her heart pounded at the sight of him. He moved stealthily, his red hair in shadow. Ram, linked with the Herebians who had captured the wraith; surely linked with the wraith itself. But why? What had happened to bring them together across Time and space?

Ram was almost on the battle but still unseen, then one of the warriors glimpsed him and turned from fighting to attack him. She watched with drawn breath, willing her power against the Herebians as both swords were raised against Ram. And she knew, suddenly and sharply, what they fought over, what Ram sought.

The Herebians had found a shard of the runestone. A shard sniffed out by the wraith from beneath the mountain Tala-charen. But she was seeing a vision past; seeing, from the wraith’s mind, what had already happened to it, for the wraith itself moved in the room behind her. She jerked suddenly from the vision and spun to face it, her fury drowning fear, her fury at what it had intended for Ram.

The wraith had waited, on the edge of that battle, waited for Ram to die. Its cold desire for Ram’s death sickened her. She stared at its white, bloody face and lunged suddenly, grabbed it, sickened by its stench. It spun. She kneed it in the belly, so it fell screaming, and she was on it again, hitting it across the neck so it cowered away from her in pain. She stood over it, trembling with fury. She sensed the battle, sensed Ram fighting for his life against the two Herebians while the wraith waited for him to die. She saw Ram fall, saw HaGlard draw sword over Ram, then the vision went foggy or she dizzy, she did not know which. She was so confused, was wild with anxiety for Ram. She shook the wraith, screaming. “Is he dead? Did he die there?” But the wraith only looked at her, cold and expressionless. She shook it again, hit it so hard it screamed, gurgling, fighting unconsciousness with cold hatred. Ram could not be dead, or the wraith would have taken his body. She pulled the wraith up, nauseated at its closeness, tried to see again that other time, glimpsed for an instant something lying in the dust of that time, trampled by the boots of fighting men. Something shining green. Saw a hand reach for it in shadow, then the wraith was unconscious and the vision gone.

*

Ram knifed a Herebian and spun away as the man fell. He saw the runestone gleaming in the dust at his feet for one instant, then kicked aside. He searched wildly and could not find it. As the other Herebian bore down on him, wounded and uncertain, he turned and killed the man. The wraith groveled beside the first body, then was gone. Vanished. And with it, the runestone was gone.

He stood shaken, staring at emptiness where the wraith had been, where the runestone had been. Clouds of Time swirled around him and he felt then as he had felt when he first sensed the stone here through the thoughts of the wraith. He had trailed those thoughts. But he had battled and killed the Herebians only to see the stone snatched from the dust beneath his feet. He stood staring at the two dead bodies, hardly seeing them, stricken at his stupid, senseless loss of the runestone.

And stricken at the escape of the wraith. He should have killed it. For he saw it suddenly and clearly in the vision of a dim, shuttered room rimed with dust; and he saw the figure it faced.

How had it come there to the room he knew so well? How, out of all possibilities, had Skeelie come there? Why?

Why? He felt her cold fury sharply as she faced the wraith; then felt her terror.