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

As they climbed, the sense of promise, of beckoning grew strong indeed. On the crest of the hill Ram stopped and turned to watch the dawn sky lighten. Down in the town they could see the dark shapes of wagons and of horses and riders moving in over the hills and roads, as folk from the farther reaches of Zandour began to arrive in Zandour’s city to pay their last respects to Hermeth. Ram stood staring down, then silently he drew from his tunic the little pouch he had made of soft white goathide and spilled the two runestones and the starfires out into his palm. He seemed puzzled. Skeelie watched, still and expectant, not knowing what was to happen, but filled with growing excitement. Something was building around them, something of power. She began to feel Ram’s curiosity, his questions rising, felt him begin to reach out hesitantly. They stood looking down upon the slowly lighting land, and then, alarmed suddenly, she turned to look back up the mountain, saw the wolves turn too; Ram turned as if someone had spoken his name. He took her shoulder in a sharp grip.

Above them the mountain had become unclear, as fast winds moved down across it sweeping toward them, blurring their vision. Fingers of wind snatched at them, blurring the dawn sky. Then the great body of wind itself was sweeping and pummeling them, ripping at their tunics, laying the wolves’ coats and ears flat. Fawdref crouched and snarled; the wind pounded, tore the very grass from the hill, and a rider came racing out of it leading two wild, rearing horses, shouting, “Mount! Mount you, Ramad!” The hooded rider, his cowl bound tight against the bite of the wind, his tall, thin figure leaning from the saddle, urged Ram; and Ram did not pause or question, but grabbed the reins and was in the saddle. Skeelie’s fear for him rose like a tide. “No, Ram! Wait!” She leaped for his reins, tried to stop his plunging horse. “Don’t follow! You don’t know . . .” Terror of his being swept away, terror of the cowled rider made her scream into the wind as Ram kicked the horse, jerked the reins from her hand and sent his mount into the turmoil alongside the dark rider.

“Oh, don’t, Ram. You don’t know . . .” All hint of dawn had disappeared; the wind was dark as midnight. The wolves stood frozen, then suddenly leaped to follow Ram. “Ram . . .” Skeelie’s voice was empty, a whisper blown back in her face. “You don’t know where he leads you. . . .” But Ram had disappeared in the storm of wind.

She jerked the reins of the riderless horse until it stood still, then leaped to the saddle and was swept into the dark wind herself. The flanks of the dark mounts were ahead; then the wolves were running beside her leaping through wind. She stared ahead at the hooded rider. Who was this man, racing out of Time’s winds to snatch them up like this? She felt his attention, though he had not changed his crouching position over the withers of his stallion. Then suddenly he straightened in the saddle, brushed back his hood as if annoyed, and turned to look at her, wind whipping his white hair across his face.

Anchorstar?

Was it Anchorstar? Yes, she recognized him now, that long, thin face. He nodded to her and she stared back through the wild wind, cross and suspicious. But she settled down to ride, watching Anchorstar warily, watching Ram’s back ahead of her. The tearing speed of the horses increased as the wind increased, and the wolves sped with them across winds that threatened to fling the riders from their saddles into timeless space, washing Skeelie with cold fear, and exciting her to madness. Never was there land, but faces looked out of darkness, and the moons were full, then gone, then new again.

Then the wind died. The night became dense and still. The moons hung like two half coins, casting silver light across the quiet horses where they stood on an open hill beside a wood. The white-haired rider dismounted as casually as if he had just trotted across a farm meadow. He unsaddled his stallion, then turned it loose to graze, ignoring Skeelie and Ram. Picking up sticks from the edge of the wood, he began to lay a fire on the bare slope.

The wolves turned, grinned, then leaped away into the wood. Torc flung back, To hunt! To hunt for meat, sister! Skeelie could feel the passionate curiosity among the wolves at being in a new place, could taste for a moment the new smells as Torc did; and she held for a brief moment Torc’s wild excitement at the newness, the land virgin to be traveled and tasted and known intimately. Then she dismounted, only slowly recovering from the drunkenness of that wild ride.

Ahead rose immense mountains, washed in moonlight. To her right, the wood was a velvet patch of dark. And to her left, the land dropped down steeply to what seemed, in the moonlight, a very deep chasm or valley. The space around her seemed greater than she had ever known. She felt exposed, threatened by such space; and felt again a cold twinge of unease because Ram had followed so easily. But she was being foolish; Ram knew Anchorstar. She turned to unsaddling her mount. What else did she think Ram would do but follow whatever way might lead to Telien? She reached out to Ram in her mind, but he was oblivious to her in his sudden hope that this wild ride had set him on a course that would bring him soon to Telien.

“Unsaddle your horse, Ramad,” Anchorstar said. “He cannot graze with the bit in his mouth. He will come to me when I call. They are Carriol-bred horses, bred from your own stock, Ramad, in years past.” He tipped his chin toward the tall dun stallion he had ridden. “Do you not remember him? You tried to buy him once.”

Ram pulled himself back from his tumbled thoughts. “I remember him. A horse I would have sold my soul to have.”

Anchorstar bent to put flint to the fire. When the blaze had flared, then settled and begun to burn steadily, he produced from his saddlebags a tin kettle, tammi tea, hard mawzee biscuits, mountain meat.

Skeelie hunkered down by the fire, hardly tasting the food she ate, so caught was she in Ram’s rising hope, his need to push on, to reach out to Telien; and then in his beginning uncertainty that perhaps Anchorstar would try but could not lead him to Telien; and then his growing depression, his returning desolation at the horror of Telien’s possession.

“We will sleep here until dawn,” Anchorstar said, ignoring Ram’s depression, “and then we will push on. We are in a time out of Time, Ramad. We are now in the time of the Cutter of Stones.”

Ram stared at him. “How can you move with purpose through Time when I cannot? I could not follow Telien. 1 have only been buffeted through Time with never any reason until—until it was too late. I could not touch her soon enough, reach far enough back into Time to save her from NilokEm. There is no reason to how I have moved.”

“There was reason, Ramad, when you fought to help Macmen, then to help Hermeth.” Anchorstar stared into the fire, and Ram did not speak again. Anchorstar said at last, “I do not move us through Time, nor do I pretend to know the intricate patterns that touch such movement. Though I know that I lead you, now, to the Cutter of Stones, lead you by his will. And that through him you can seek the wraith, seek Telien.”

“Why do you help me? Why do you care if I find Telien, or if I can save her and destroy the wraith?”

“I am linked to the wraith, even as are you. I do not know why. Perhaps it has to do with my own time. I feel that this is so. I feel certain I must return to my own time, and soon. Something there calls to me, and perhaps the wraith has to do with that in some way I do not yet comprehend.”

*

The wind changed in the night to blow icy, down from the mountains. Skeelie woke once to see Anchorstar building up the fire, then slept again. Dawn came too soon, and she woke huddled in her blanket, to watch Ram saddle the horses while Anchorstar came from out the shadowed wood carrying the tin kettle. He gave her a rare smile. “There is a spring there in the wood if you care to wash.”