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

Hermeth lay beside the sheep pen, twisted and unnatural in death. Her hands began to shake. She felt the sense of his death like a blow, sudden and sharp, not wanting to believe. Someone she had just been talking with, sitting before the fire with, could not be so suddenly lying dead in the night, in the mud.

But of course he could be. Why had she sensed nothing, back in the hall? She stared at Ram’s white, twisted face not understanding anything. When Ram spoke at last, his voice was hoarse and flat.

“She has come here. Telien has come. The wraith—it— has taken the strength from Hermeth. Taken the life from Hermeth.” She thought he would drown in his pain. “How can it have become so strong, to do such a thing, Skeelie? I don’t understand. It could not have done this before, at Tala-charen.” He paused, stared at her. “Did it draw strength from the stones, there in the wood?” His voice was hoarse, near to tears. “Or from NilokEm, before he died? Not— not from Telien. She was so weak, so very frail and weak.”

“She was frail of body, Ram. But Telien’s spirit— she . . .” Skeelie could not finish.

“When she came out of the night I wanted . . .” He bit his lip, turned his face away. “I wanted only to hold her, to comfort her. I couldn’t believe . . . She was so pale. Great circles under her eyes. She—she was so close to the end of her strength. As if the wraith did not dare let her faint. She—it stood looking at me. It has new power, Skeelie. It has learned to sap the strength from a man like a . . .” Ram swallowed. “Like a lizard sucking out the strength from a creature and leaving a bare shell.”

“But she . . .” Skeelie stared at him, knowing suddenly and clearly that the wraith had not come here for Hermeth. “She came for you, Ram.”

“She—was so near to failing of strength altogether. The wraith knew he could not get me to kill Telien. Worked it out that it could take a man’s strength to replenish itself. Thought that, because Telien and I—because we . . . that it could make me give in to it, that it would be easy to drain my body of strength, make me—give myself to her.”

She felt a guilty elation that Ram lived, that it was Hermeth lying dead and not Ram. “But how . . .?”

“Hermeth came upon it—upon us. He battled by my side. We—we battled together, and then suddenly Telien’s color heightened, she stood straight, seemed altogether different, healthy, alive. I—I thought she had come back. I thought she had defeated the wraith. I reached out to her. And too late I saw . . .” He drew in his breath. ‘Too late I saw Hermeth fall. Just—just fall, Skeelie. And she—she reached to put her arms around me, to—to draw me to her. I—I went to her. Wanting her, Skeelie. I knew what she was. She held me. It was . . . I could not let her go. But then I—I began to resist her, to battle her until she drew back. She looked at me with a hatred I can never forget. And then she—she was just suddenly gone.” His face filled with pain. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here—how long ago that was. Forever. For Hermeth, it will be forever.”

The moons had gone. Ram and Skeelie carried Hermeth’s body back to the hall and began to wake Hermeth’s men, wake the families who helped in the hall and kitchen. Lamps were lit. Hermeth was laid on a bench in the hall before the dead fire. Those who came knelt immediately, as if no man wanted to stand taller than Hermeth in this moment. Messengers were sent throughout the town.

They made his grave upon a hill at first light. Processions streamed out of the village from all directions in absolute silence: Folk cleanly dressed and carrying little bowls of grain in the traditional gift for the winged horses who might come over Hermeth’s grave to speak with him and carrying little bowls of fruit and meats to leave there on his grave for the gods, for if fate smiled, the Luff’Eresi might come too in a last rite to Hermeth. The ceremony itself was simple enough. Ram spoke solemn words, as did Hermeth’s lieutenants, the five Seers among them bowing their heads in a last gift of power to Hermeth. Ram held the runestones tight, wanting power for Hermeth now in these moments, wanting to lend Hermeth strength; thought he knew that already Hermeth had left his body, left this place to move into another place and time, another sphere; that there was no need for the power of Seers, of the stones; but still they gave it.

Ram turned away at last from the bare earth that covered the grave like a scar against the green hill. Hermeth’s men and the entire city of Zandour followed him down the hill in silence. The wolves, who had come at Hermeth’s death down out of Scar Mountain, stood last upon the hill and raised their voices in a wailing lament, in a death song that trembled the sky and would long, long be remembered in Zandour. And then the wolves came down, too, from Hermeth’s grave, and his body was alone there beneath the rising sun.

They would carve and lay a slab of granite, the people of Zandour, to mark the place where Hermeth lay. A little child, staring back up the hill, said, “He can look out now over the sheep meadows.” But no one thought Hermeth was there to look out. He was in another place that they could not yet fathom.

“He left no children,” Skeelie said, mourning. “No wife—no young Seers.”

“There are other Seers, that handful among his lieutenants.”

“Untrained. Unskilled, Ram. Just—just those with some power, but not master Seers.”

Ram looked down at her, unsettled. “Was I meant to stay here, Skeelie? To use the stones, in his place, to protect Zandour? Or if I can follow Telien, was I meant to leave Hermeth’s shard of the runestone behind, to keep only that one taken from the wraith?”

“I don’t think you are meant to do anything, Ram. Do you think it is all planned out? What do you know you must do?”

He looked at her a long time, a deep look, searching his own soul through what he saw reflected in her eyes. “I will hold these shards of the runestone and keep them, Skeelie. Against the day when the stone will again be whole. And I—I will follow Telien.”

That night in the hall, Ram brought together a council of the five young Seers who had ridden as scouts for Hermeth, seeking to understand what skills they had, and to train them.

This five, then, must rule Zandour, for in them lay the needed power. A council of the entire city sat with them, planning; men taking over, as smoothly as they could, the work that had been Hermeth’s. Late in the night Skeelie dozed in a chair beside the hall fire, waking only now and then to the men’s raised voices. Then suddenly she woke to Ram’s hand on her arm, saw that the night had waned and dawn had begun to touch the shuttered windows with gray. Ram stood staring down at her, tired, drawn tight with too much talking. “Get your pack, Skeelie. Put on your boots, your leathers. Take off those silly sandals. I want . . .” He turned to stare northward as if he could look through the very walls of the hall. “I want to climb Scar Mountain. I want . . .” The sense of unrest about him, of need, was powerful.

She rose, forcing herself awake, hurried through the hall, and returned shortly dressed in leathers, with her pack and weapons, to find him in the courtyard pacing and restless as a river cat, his own pack and bow slung over his shoulder, eager to be moving. What Was drawing Ram so? Simply restlessness? The sudden need to return to his childhood place? A hope of finding Gredillon for some reason? He was strung taut as a bowstring. Surely something spoke to him, something was pulling at him, but she could make no sense of it. She was only grateful that he wanted her to go, too. They started off at once into the faint touch of dawn, north up the first hill of the sheep pastures, Ram striding out impatiently and Skeelie hurrying to keep up. As they climbed, wolves began to come to them out of the darkness, one here, and then two, all in silence, until soon a dozen wolves paced beside them, Fawdref pressing close to Ram, Torc and Rhymannie nuzzling sometimes at Skeelie’s arm.