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

“Yes, Ramad. The core of the runestone, just as Time has a core about which it weaves endlessly.”

Ram drew from his tunic the leather pouch and spilled its contents onto the table. The two jade runestones. The three starfires. But suddenly the starfires were four. His hand paused in midair. He looked up at Canoldir again with cold shock. “Telien’s starfire? Telien’s . . . You brought it here! Is Telien . . .”

“It is Anchorstar’s,” Canoldir said quietly. “Anchorstar has no need for such a stone now. Anchorstar moves in his own time, thirty years beyond the time in which you mourned and buried Hermeth of Zandour, Ramad. Perhaps Anchorstar may move in Time yet again, but only shallow slips through Time, I feel. I think that he will not need the power of the starfire in that time to which he truly belongs. That time in which he was bred by Cadach. For Cadach, too, born twice upon Ere, wandered Time, bred his children through Time, in different times by different women, before he turned his powers into an evil that was his undoing.

“The starfire belongs with you, Ramad. You have need for all the starfires together, in the semblance of the one stone. Perhaps that need in part is simply to signify that in some time yet to come, you will join the stone itself. Make it whole again.”

“You seem very certain.”

“I am not certain. But if your powers seek out sufficiently well, if your powers, your commitment, are strong enough, unswerving enough—then that very force can change and realign forces moving upon Ere, can well bring you, at some time not yet clear, into the realm of all the shards of the jade. And then, Ramad, all powers may align with you—the powers you can touch but do not fully comprehend. If you are strong enough, all powers may draw in as they did at the splitting of the jade, atop Tala-charen. But this time the jade might be fused again into one whole stone. I do not say this will happen. I say that it is possible. It will depend on you. There is something in your blood, in your breeding, that belongs to the stone and its joining.”

“If all depends on me, is Anchorstar’s mission of no concern then? Does he search for that one stone in vain?”

“Anchorstar’s mission is urgent. All powers, all forces, must move as one, Ramad. You may be the last key in the final joining, or someone close to you may. But the powers and strengths of all who move in this battle are of urgency. Anchorstar’s mission is a part of the whole; the mission that consumes him now is to battle that which has gone awry. He moved with such intensity that he has all but forgotten that which has occurred before. Other times have become as a dream to him. His ruling passion, now, is to find that lost shard of the runestone and to aid those Children made captive by forces uglier than any that have yet touched the Children of Ynell.”

Canoldir picked up the starfires, placed them on the table before him, and began to arrange one next the other in the way they had been cut. Fitting perfectly, they made a rough oval but with a hole where one stone was missing. “The starfire that Telien carries.” He then took up the two runestones. “Now tell the runestones for me, Ramad. Count them.”

Ram pushed his bowl aside, gave Skeelie a long questioning look, then, unexpectedly, a comforting one. “The stone that I brought out of Tala-charen is lost in the sea, off the coast of Pelli.”

“Yes.”

“The stone that NilokEm brought out of Tala-charen and passed down to the dark twins is the stone in your left hand, given me by Hermeth.

Canoldir nodded.

“The stone in your right hand, the wraith dug out from beneath the mountain Tala-charen.”

“Yes. You took it from the wraith at the moment that it possessed Telien.”

Ram studied Canoldir. Did this man care that Telien had been taken by the wraith, that her very soul was captive? But why should he care? What was Telien to him?

“Continue, Ramad. What I care about is not of moment here. I would not have brought you here had I not intended to help you pursue Telien. Though I care for more than that. I care for the fate of the stones. And I care for a coupling you do not dream of; and of which I will know a long sorrow.”

Ram watched him, unable to make sense of his words. “What coupling? What do you speak of in such riddles?” Yet the sense Skeelie caught from Canoldir’s thoughts was so disturbing she upset her mug, occupied herself for some time mopping it up with her napkin.

Canoldir said softly, “Continue, Ramad, with the naming of the stones.”

“The—the stone that Telien brought from out Tala-charen when she was first flung into Time, that stone is lost somewhere in darkness and she could not remember where. ‘Lost in darkness. Found by the light of one candle, carried in a searching, and lost in terror,’“ Ram repeated.

“That prediction, Ramad, is one of the wonders that moves through Time unchanged. Ever, ever changing are the winds of Time, ever nebulous and moving. And yet moments among those winds, words or predictions sometimes, the fate of a man sometimes, can move through those winds unchanging even as the swirling storms of Time change. ‘Found again in wonder,’ the prediction says. ‘Given twice, and accompanying a quest and a conquering.’ That is four stones, Ramad. What of the other five?”

“The fifth is the starfires, of course.”

“Yes. Though the starfires do not hold the same magic as do the other runestones. The starfires know only their own magic, they know only the work of the core, which they are; they know only the magic to plunge into the core of Time.” Canoldir lifted the ale pot from beside the hearth and poured out more of the spiced liquor into their empty mugs. “Five stones, then. Five you have accounted for. And what of the other four?”

“I do not know. I know only that all the shards must be brought together, that Ere cannot know peace until the runestone is whole once more. Four missing shards. Four—”

“No, Ramad. There are not four. There are only three.”

“But I—”

“You carry the sixth runestone close to you. Do you not know what you carry?”

Ram stared at Canoldir. “I carry no other stone. I know no other stone. I carry no stone but these. What do you . . .?”

“Reach into your tunic, Ramad, and put on the table what you carry there.”

Ram drew out from the folds of his tunic the only other object he carried and placed it on the table before Canoldir. The bitch wolf grinned in the firelight, her long rearing body turned red-gold before the flame. Ram raised his eyes to Canoldir, unbelieving.

Canoldir did not speak. The room began to fade, fog to come around them, then the space to warp and remake itself, so Ram and Skeelie stood in a small stone chamber lit with torches round the walls. A young man dressed in a deep blue robe knelt there in some private ritual; then suddenly a brilliant white light shattered around them and they were in Tala-charen, Ram a child again holding the shattered runestone in his hand while all around him came figures out of Time to receive those shards in one flashing instant, and among them the man in the blue robe. Ram recognized his face from having seen it in a vision long before; it was NiMarn, a younger NiMarn than Ram had seen, who had fashioned the bell of bronze. NiMarn, founder of the cult of the wolf. Time warped again, a dark-clad forgeman labored by NiMarn’s side. The blaze of the forge flared and died and flared. He poured his molten metal, and NiMarn, in a strange, quick ceremony, placed the jade shard within. They saw the casting harden, they saw NiMarn raise the bronze bitch wolf aloft, smiling cruelly.

Long after the vision faded, Ram sat staring at Canoldir. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “How can it be? The wolf bell was already made when—when the runestone shattered. How . . . ? It cannot be. The bell . . .”