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

Yellow wolf eyes watched him. Unfathomable. I cannot know if your lives will touch again, Ramad. Nor can you. I only know that she will live, perhaps in more joy even than this life gave her.

“ More joy? She had no joy. She had only pain. Fear of her father. The beatings. Then carried into Time. The wraith—”

She had joy, Ramad. Joy in you. Fawdref turned away then and went up into the hills, a dark, shaggy shadow melting among boulders, carrying darkness with him. It did not settle well with the great wolves to feel human pain so closely, pain of friend, unless that friend were bent on mending the pain. Just now, Ramad was not.

Skeelie stood at the base of the hill looking after Fawdref and knowing his thoughts: Ram must mend himself and no one could do that for him. She was surprised to find that his thoughts lifted her suddenly, made her feel lighter.

Must Ram mend himself, was the great wolf right? She felt a presence, then, in her mind, and looked up into the sun-bright wind; a craggy, lined face, a bear of a man, black-bearded; dark eyes watched her in a vision so sharp it made her catch her breath. What will you do, Skeelie of Carriol?

I will go with Ram.

And if he doesn’t want you?

Only time will tell that.

I live with all of Time. I can wait, then.

You must not wait for me.

There will be others. A man does not well, always alone.

They will be transient ones. But if you come to me, Skeelie of Carriol, I will belong to you for all time. All Time will be yours to wander. If so you choose. Go with him now, and be happy. Even in his pain, make him happy. Beyond his pain, give him joy.

The sun shone strong. The figure was gone, the thoughts gone. Ram stood at some distance, where boulders crowned the hill, had turned, was watching her. He said nothing, just looked. Perhaps, she thought, he could mourn Telien without destroying himself with the pain. He came to her at last, stood looking down at her, the sun making his hair like fire. “You would go with Canoldir if it were not for me.

“I mean to go with you.”

They looked at each other a long time.

At last Ram shouldered his pack, cuffed Skeelie in a poor imitation of the old roughness between them, and looked up to where the wolves stood watching them. Then he started off southward, in the direction where home must be, for all the unknown lands lay to the north of the eleven countries of Ere. How far they were from the lands they knew, from a time that would have meaning for them, they had no idea. Skeelie felt Ram’s despondency, his deep mourning for Telien. But there was something else, a deep abiding purpose that lay strong within him. She watched him take the white goatskin pouch from his tunic and touch the runestones briefly, then clutch the pouch tight in his hand. He quickened his pace, striking off toward the head of the valley. She hurried beside him, the warmth of the lifting sun on her cheek.

But she stopped suddenly, hardly in her stride, to stare up at the eastern mountains.

She felt the high howling before she heard it. Felt in her soul the wailing that, in another moment, would split the air over the mountain. The wolves stood alert, sensing that vibration, looking eastward up the mountain, holding within themselves the vibration of that far, silent wail.

Then they heard it, far and clear. A keening of cold, lonely victory. And they lifted their muzzles and cried out a reply that sent chills rippling the still mountain air. She would come now. Torc would come.

The Joining of the Stone

Part One: Ramad’s Heir

Early pages from the journal of Skeelie of Carriol.

Why do I write these words? No one I know will ever see them. Everyone from my own time—except Ramad—was long dead when first I knew that I had moved through Time into an unknown future. I didn’t think of loneliness then, I knew or cared for nothing but Ram. And I searched for him through Time that carried him and used him in ways I could not have imagined.

Was Time unlocked by Ram’s need, for it to take him so readily? By Ram’s love for Telien? Perhaps some day I can write of those cataclysmic flingings through Time, but now I can only mourn Ram.

Ramad is dead. Ramad of the wolves is dead. My love is dead, and I can only mourn him with the same pain that, eight years gone in our lives, he mourned the death of Telien.

I have come away from the abyss of fire, having buried Ramad beside it. I have brought our son here to the city of cones. I need to be near people for a little while, if only these simple folk. I write these words in a small cone house they have given me. Torc and Rhymannie doze by my feet before the fire as complacent as dogs, for these folk have accepted the wolves just as they accepted Lobon and me, gently and unquestioning. Fawdref is not with us—Fawdref, master of his pack, Fawdref who loved Ram so. He is buried beside Ram, in a grave that was once our home. Rhymannie mourns him just as I mourn Ram. Their big cubs and the rest of the pack roam the hills at this moment, hunting our dinnermeat. I cannot take my mind from the rocky valley where Ramad lies and where we lived in happiness for eight years that seem no longer now than a day. I cannot take my mind from the fiery pit where Ram died, nor tear my soul from him.

The demon Dracvadrig is gone from the pit, or I would have sought him there and done my best to kill him. He carries with him the one shard of the runestone that Ramad fought to win, and I carry the four that Ram put in my keeping.

Would I have gone to kill Dracvadrig that day had he remained? Truly, I don’t know. I know now only that all my strength must be for our son, that I must give Lobon all that Ram would have given him of training, of skill, and of strength. He has the stubbornness, he has shown that plainly enough. He is only six, but as stubborn and fierce already as any young wolf cub could be. Can I temper and direct that willfulness? But I must. He is Ramad’s heir—heir to Ram’s commitment, heir to the joining of the runestone. Heir to the joining of those nine shards, if ever they can be brought together.

Ram died too soon. He died with the stone still asunder.

These four shards that I hold are Lobon’s legacy. If Ram’s life meant anything, then these stones must be used one day to turn the fate of Ere away from darkness. One shard more lies drowned in the sea. One lies hidden in darkness, lost by Telien I know not where. And there are two shards to which I have no clue. Dracvadrig carries his shard in a metal casket around his neck, the chain dangling past his waist when he is a man, and pulling tight across his scaly throat when he takes the dragon form. Nine shards of jade. Nine shards of power that must somehow be joined again, and our son heir to the skills and to the nature of that joining.

Meanwhile, dark eats upon the land, flaunting the runestone’s broken, weakened powers. And Lobon frightens me; his violent nature, so filled with cold fury at Ram’s death, frightens me. If such anger does not abate, his powers as a Seer cannot grow. I must learn to temper that anger; I must learn to strengthen the man in him. I must learn to do for Lobon what Ramad would have known to do. When I take up sword again, to teach him its skills, I must train his spirit as well. And when I teach him the Seeing powers, I must teach him patience and wisdom—just as skillfully as Gredillon the white-haired once taught the child Ramad, in a time long dead.

Where we will go from this place, I have no idea. It is enough just now to rest and try to ease the wound of Ram’s death, I am filled with tears, and I cannot weep. I know deep within that I will survive the pain, but my spirit does not believe that. I know I must mend, for Lobon, but I have not the heart to mend.