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

She left the tower, locked the door behind her, pocketed the key, and ran noiselessly across the drawbridge. Her heart had begun to pound again, in a panic with the closeness of the riders. She found the rope, pulled the drawbridge up, straining with its weight. Then she stood silent, reaching out to Telien. Yes, there—she ran, her heart like a hammer, toward where Telien held the big Herebian mount on short rein among the black trees. Good girl! She was mounted, gave Skeelie a hand up, and they were off at a gallop across the soft carpet of leaves. “West,” Skeelie whispered. “They come, NilokEm comes at us from the north.” The moons were dropping down, would be behind the hills soon. Already in the east the sky above the trees was growing gray.

*

Hermeth’s soldiers pinned one cadre of the rabble invaders against a cliff and slaughtered them, but the main army melted away into the hills, and there hid waiting for dusk. Hermeth sent a rider fast across the hills to bring additional troops from out the sheep fields and farms, to raise a new wave of attack. Then he climbed alone up the high hill beside which his armies were camped, stood staring down across the green valley, cast in shadow now as the sun fell. Far out on the meadows the night patrol circled in silence. Behind him, on the far side of the hill, two sentries stood shielded among boulders watching the darkening plains, and below, his men were building supper fires, tending the wounded, caring for the mounts. An army resting after battle, a scene so often repeated it sickened him. He was sick of fighting, wanted it over with, wanted to see his men marching home freed at last from the Pellian menace, from the Pellian greed for land and riches, freed to live in peace as men were meant to live. His hatred of the rabble Seers burned inside him, a festering hatred of men who could think of nothing but attack and theft and killing. Now, only Farr lay between his troops and Pelli itself. Farr where half the country held allegiance to the dark street rabble. Though the other half would stand with Zandour, if need be.

And there might be need. If he could destroy this army he followed, he could break the back of the Pellian rabble. He felt the sense of the rabble Seers leading them. Only a handful, but strong in their skills; and they wanted the runestone above all else; they lusted for it harder than they lusted to rape and burn and kill.

Alone on the hilltop as evening fell, he tried to reach out across space, across elements he little understood. He needed that other Seer’s power to help him now, that Seer who commanded such skill with the wolf bell and would surely wield the power of the runestone better than ever he could himself. He felt sometimes, with the stone he carried, like a child trying to learn speech, and no one to teach him the words. He needed power now against the rabble leaders, for if they were not destroyed soon, perhaps they would grow so strong that Zandour would never be free of them. One handful of greedy street waifs risen to such strength. One handful drawing to them every lusting Herebian raider they could muster and holding them with promises of power.

He slipped the runestone from his tunic, held it so it caught the last light of the vanished sun. This runestone, which their common ancestor had commanded: NilokEm, from whose seed both Hermeth, himself, and the dark street rabble had sprung. He wondered fleetingly who that unnamed woman, his great-grandmother, had been who had borne their common grandfather then disappeared so mysteriously.

He watched night fall around him, watched the supper fires die at the base of the hill and his men roll into their blankets, to sleep exhausted. The guards circled in the thickening dark; then he felt the darkness shift and felt unfamiliar shadows move upon the hill, felt the sense of expectancy that foreshadowed the appearance of a vision, stood staring eagerly into the darkness, clutching the runestone, and felt rather than saw the shadow standing tall with the great wolf beside him. But then the figures were gone again as if they had never been, and the hills curved empty in the deepening night.

At long last Hermeth went down to his men, heavy with disappointment.

*

Ram sensed the other’s presence, then felt a lulling emptiness as if that other Seer had turned and gone away into shifting shadows. He stood beside Torc, with his hand on her shoulder, where she had risen at the first sense of the vision. They waited, he, tense and expectant, and at last the shadows came strong again, the familiar shifting of earth and sky, and he and Torc stood suddenly upon a hill watching a figure descend to where campfires flickered in the night, where men slept with weapons by their sides, exhausted from battle. He stood looking down the hill, filled with the sense of a meeting imminent, of a power between himself and that receding figure. Why? Did that Seer carry a shard of the runestone? The sense of such power was strong. He saw in his mind the young man’s face, the turn of his cheek so like Telien. Pale brows, sandy lashes like Telien’s. But was there another resemblance, too? Or did he only imagine the likeness to Macmen?

Macmen had stood quietly after defeating his twin brothers, holding with reverence the runestone that he had won from them. Macmen—the square face, the square cut to his chin very like this young man. Though Macmen’s coloring was darker.

In what time was this hill on which he now stood? In what time did this young man live? Ram sensed a pattern intricate and all powerful, a pattern that seemed woven of the powers of mind and earth, equally awing him. Macmen’s son had been born in the year Ram fought beside Macmen. Macmen’s son . . .

The sense of that pattern vanished, leaving him taut with desire for the hidden answers it held. He stood watching the redheaded figure moving now among the troops. Torc pressed close to his side. That is what I felt, Ramad, that sense of a linking, of creatures and powers touching. But wait—there are others with us. Ram could feel Torc’s pleasure, then felt other bodies against his legs, and the great wolves were pushing all around him in wild confusion. He nearly shouted with delight, knelt to embrace them, their wild reality leaping into crazy joy. He hugged Fawdref, felt the great wolf take his hand between killer’s teeth, pressing gently. Rhymannie nuzzled him, the wolves pushed at him, nearly toppling him in their delight. He was drowning in a sea of wolves, delirious; huge shaggy bodies pressing and licking with wolfish humor as they bit and pushed and nuzzled.

When he rose at last and glanced down the hill, he saw the figure standing below staring up at them, felt the young Seer’s wonder. Then the man climbed quickly, and stood before him at last, caught in silence. The moonlight touched his red hair, his sandy brows and pale lashes, the light, clear depths of his eyes. “I do not know your name. But who else would walk with wolves except the son of the second Ramad?”

“There was only one Ramad. And I am not his son.”

“Who, then?”

“I am Ramad.”

“You cannot be Ramad; perhaps Ramad’s son fought beside my father twenty-three years past, in the summer that I was born. But you cannot be he and surely not Ramad of the wolves.”

“I am Ramad. You must take my word. And you are the son of Macmen. You are Hermeth. I remember you as a babe,” Ram said, grinning.

Hermeth stared and could not believe. They were of an age, surely. He studied Ram; the smooth cheek, the dark eyes beneath thick red hair. He saw the wolf bell Ram took from his tunic. He felt the sense of Ram’s truth. At last he held out his open hand, where the shard of the runestone gleamed. Trusting beyond question, he dropped it into Ram’s hand. It lay like a dark slash across Ram’s palm, and a drumming of power like thunder shook them. Hermeth’s green eyes looked into Ram’s dark eyes and laughed. Time grew huge around them. The wolves raised their voices in a wail that chilled the blood and panicked the horses tied in the valley below and woke four battalions of sleeping soldiers, who leaped up drawing weapons, before Hermeth spoke down to them.