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

The shadow drew closer. It, too, carried a shard of the runestone; yet it was drawn inexorably by the shard Ram held and the shard NilokEm held, seemed unable to distinguish between the gray, lifeless shard and the live runestone shining deep green in Ram’s closed fist. Ram stared at the jade absently, unaware of the shadow, and shoved it in his tunic, held Telien close to him against all harm.

The wraith approached NilokEm first, stood over the fallen Seer sensing out and felt only then the lifelessness of the shard. In anger, it reached down its cold hands, then drew back when NilokEm opened his eyes to stare up at it.

Slowly NilokEm rose, a bull of a man, seething now with hatred, mindless with fear of the powers that had risen uncontrollably around him. He stared at the wraith, drew his knife from his boot, began to stalk the wraith as a creature smaller and weaker than he. And as he drew close to it he knew suddenly and with pounding heart that this deathlike creature carried a shard of the runestone.

He would have that stone.

He dared not think of the destruction of the stone he carried, dared not think of the power that could have done such a thing. Now the stone possessed by this weak creature would be his. The two figures crouched motionless, locked in a gaze of mutual contempt. Of mutual greed. NilokEm’s greed was for the runestone, but the wraith’s greed was for something else altogether, now that NilokEm’s shard of the jade was useless. Its greed was like cold flame, wanting the powerful Seer’s body.

Ram watched, frozen; saw the wraith’s expression change to sudden pleasure; knew it wanted to die, wanted NilokEm to kill it, that it was aware of nothing now but the closeness of the dark Seer, that it wanted to slip as a shadow into the strong Seer’s body. Ram raised his bow. But he was not quick enough, the dark Seer thrust his knife into the wraith’s throat; the wraith twisted and fell, its breath gurgling in its severed throat. Ram watched, appalled. He felt the wraith’s cold spirit leave that dead body and reach out to enter NilokEm. The dark Seer was aware only then of his danger. He fought with terror, but already he had been weakened. NilokEm struggled against the wraith in desperation, then with growing horror. At last he drew on some deep well of final strength and determination. He lifted his knife and plunged it into his own heart.

NilokEm fell dying, had escaped the wraith in the only way left to him.

The wraith, thwarted and bodiless and in terror for its own existence, turned the darkness of its being suddenly and desperately to enter Ram’s body instead, wanted Ram now, this Seer who was master of the stones. Ram battled it, pushed back its questing dark with more strength, even, than he had battled the Pellian Seers when he was a child. Yet he went dizzy under the wraith’s growing power, did not understand the increase in that power. Had it drawn strength from the dark Seer as he died? He felt its desperation and drew upon powers he hardly understood in his battle to escape it, to be free of it.

He began to loose its hold at last. He was barely conscious, unaware of the fighting around him or of Telien holding him to her, her knuckles white on his arm where she tried with stubborn will to help him fight. He knew nothing of Skeelie’s straining, hard-biting battle to give him power. Yet sick, nearly lost, he rallied finally to drive the wraith out. He felt it go free of him and gasped for air as if he had been drowning. Trying to clear his head, he looked down at Telien.

He saw too late. Saw with cold horror.

Telien had dropped her hands to her sides and was staring up at him with a look of wary hatred. The sense of her being was closed and secret. But her lust for the runestone could not be hidden. She watched Ram greedily. Her beauty, her gentle green eyes, every feature he loved had been changed in an instant to a parody of Telien, horrifying in its greed and coldness.

Sick with shock, Ram watched her kneel over the wraith’s thin, abandoned body. He thought only then of the runestone it carried, watched appalled as Telien began to pry its dead fingers apart. He reached for her, but Skeelie was quicker: dark hair flying, she was on Telien reaching for the stone. Telien tore at her, scratching and striking Skeelie across the face. Ram grabbed Telien, sick at hurting her, pulled her off of Skeelie and saw her closed white fist, heard Skeelie gasp, “She has it!” Wincing, he forced Telien’s arm back, sick at doing this, amazed at her sudden strength. The pain in her arm seemed to be his own as he pried apart her fingers, took the stone from her; then she was gone from his grasp. Gone once more into Time. He stared at empty space, uncomprehending. A riderless horse lurched past him. The battle erupted nearly on top of him. Ram turned away from it unseeing, his fists clenched around the stone, sick inside himself, tears stinging his eyes.

Somewhere in Time the wraith moved, couched in the fair beauty of Telien. How much of Telien remained, aware and terrified, but unable to escape?

Ram turned back at last and saw Skeelie turn away quickly as if she had been watching him. She was kneeling beside the wraith’s body, occupied with pulling the boots off its feet. He stared at her, forgetting his grief for a moment. “You’re not going to wear those!”

She looked up at him as if she had forgotten he was there, though he knew well enough she had been staring at him caught blindly in his grief. Her face was smeared with dirt and blood. The knot of her dark hair was crooked and loose, hanging against her shoulder. “I have no boots. They’re only boots, Ram. My feet are cut and bleeding.” Her dark eyes held him; and suddenly they were children again; Skeelie a skinny little girl stealing iron spikes from the smith. It occurred to neither of them that their remarks about the wraith’s boots were nearly the first words they had spoken to one another in the generations since both of them had been swept away from their own time.

“I will need boots, Ram, if we are to follow her.”

Ram wanted to hug her. He remembered her sword then and held it out to her mutely, the silver hilt glinting. Her dark eyes went wide with amazement. Behind them the battle had swept past, not a battle so much now as a mopping up of unhorsed soldiers trying to flee on foot, stumbling over their dead brothers and pursued by wolves and by Hermeth’s riders. Ram said, “I took it off a dead Herebian at the foot of Tala-charen.”

She ran her finger down the flat of the blade, then sheathed the sword in a quiet ritual, discarding the heavy Herebian one she had used. When she looked up at him, her eyes were deep. “I missed it, Ram. I missed it quite a lot.”

*

The battle was ended. Hermeth’s soldiers stripped the bodies of valuables and dragged them to a common grave scraped out of the loose loam of the woods. Skeelie’s image-wolves were gone. Only the real wolves remained, licking their wounds from battle. Five wolves were dead, lost to the battling armies. They will live again, Fawdref said, ignoring Ram’s grief for them. They will live again, Ramad, in the progression of souls. Perhaps as men—or perhaps they will be luckier, he said dryly, nudging Ram. Ram cuffed him on the shoulder.

“Those dead ones fought for Hermeth, for the stone, Fawdref. Your wolves fought bravely.”

We fought for all of us, Ramad, just as we fought at the Castle of Hape. Just as we fought for Macmen. Never forget, Ramad; it is our battle too. Men are not the only sufferers when the dark grows strong upon Ere.

Ram knelt suddenly and pressed his face against Fawdref’s rough shoulder, reassured by Fawdref’s warm, solid presence.

The old wolf was silent for a few moments. Then he looked away across the wood. Those who have been buried in the common grave, who came from the time of NilokEm, are gone now, Ramad. Only traces of dry, rotting bones remain in the earth where, a moment ago, they lay still warm from recent life. And look behind you at NilokEm’s skeleton. His hand still holds the lifeless gray stone that is also a skeleton, lifeless body of the runestone. That stone will vanish too, as, in his own time, the live jade is lifted from his bloody palm to be passed on to his heir who was NilokDal, and to come at long last down to Hermeth’s hand—that jade that lies now in your tunic, Ramad.