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

Hux smiled with satisfaction. “I guess my image-changing worked so well that not even you could see me lighting out with that old wagon clattering over the hills.” He threw back his head in a huge laugh, his dark hair boiling down over his forehead. “Forty-seven Kubalese raiders chasing after a rock hare thinking it was me, while I drove the wagon, bent-for-Urdd, off in the opposite direction!” He grew serious then. “Kubalese raiders are coming out of the hills everywhere, raiding, then gone. Folk travel heavily armed, on the ready for trouble. For the most part, the cities are still able to drive them back. Our raids help to keep the Kubalese down, but there are Seers among the Kubalese, Alardded. Unskilled Seers, but cruel. If we had more than one shard of the runestone, maybe we could thwart those Seers—strengthen our forces enough to destroy the fracking Kubalese! As it is . . .” He leaned forward. “The stone in the sea, Alardded—if we had one more stone . . .”

Meatha watched Hux now with gentler feelings. She liked him best when he was serious, was concerned for Carriol, angry at Kubalese oppression, the hearty, attentive role dropped—though he seldom used it with her, never with Alardded, of course.

Alardded leaned back in his chair, pushed his plate away. “Perhaps we will have the stone soon. Perhaps. The new diving suit works very well. It is ready for testing in deep waters. The wax-coated leather and lighter metal were just the thing. I plan to take it up to the Bay of Vexin in a few days.”

Hux leaned forward eagerly. “I will travel with you, then. I have a cart full of wares to deliver to the charcoal burners and miners, everything imaginable, Zandourian wine, Farrian carved leathers that I had to buy dearly in Dal, boots. I want to see the diving. If the diving suit fit me, Alardded, I would try! Think of it, the stone has lain there for six generations, and only now has anyone known how to bring it up!”

Alardded smiled. “The stone is not in our hands yet, my lad. Though I’ll admit I’m excited. It must have been frustrating indeed for our fathers to know where it lay, so deep, to sense it there and not be able to go into those deep waters. But as to the diving . . .” He gave Hux a wry look. “You won’t fit the suit, Hux my boy. You’re nearly twice the size of Nicoli or Roth. I’d hate worse than fires in Urdd to have to pull you up at the end of the rope!

“But we’d be glad of your company north,” he added. “You can help Nicoli with the horses, and I’ll be there to protect her from any amorous ideas you might have—though the wily Nicoli can protect herself, certainly. Now show us, Hux, the countries you traveled, and how they fare.”

Meatha tried to put her own unsettled emotions aside and attend as Hux showed them in sharp visions the cities of Zandour and Aybil and Farr, the stone and sand fortifications, the patrolling soldiers. He showed them the walled city of Dal, where the dark Seer RilkenDal had reigned before his rule fell to an angry coalition of farmers and sheep men who drove him out of the country keeping only his fine, well-trained mounts. “No one knows where RilkenDal has gone,” Hux said. “But all fear him. Fear he will return and retake Dal. Folk seem to want to make a legend of him, which only increases their fear. They speak of him appearing here, there, come out of the sky mounted on a winged one.” Hux scowled. “No winged one would carry such as RilkenDal!”

“I would hope not! No winged one would carry a dark Seer!” Alardded said.

They grew silent, lost in speculation. A wagon team passed their table, and the smell of fresh-cut hay filled the air. From a nearby shop the voice of a woman rose, scolding her child, then was still. The young waiter filled their cups.

“However,” Alardded said slowly, “there is something amiss among the winged ones. They do not speak of it, but a darkness stirs among them. Nicoli senses it. And some of the outlying bands have not been heard of for a long time.”

Meatha shivered, was alarmed by Alardded’s words; but then, at his mention of darkness, was engulfed in her own confused thoughts once again, so she heard little more of the conversation until suddenly Hux cast into their minds a sharp vision of the place where the cults had gathered along the Pellian coast. She Saw suddenly the mass of hide tents and lean-tos clustered above the sea cliff, and she could imagine Zephy and Thorn and their companions there now, making impressive ceremony for the gathered cultists. Hux showed them the cultist’s passive faces, their quiet submissive minds, so very puzzling.

“They swear hatred of the Kubalese raiders,” Hux said, “but they will not attack them, even to save other cultists. There is—there is a leader who guides the cult leaders, but I can get little sense of him—or of her. Sometimes I think it is a woman. Someone they think of nearly as a god. The cults are so . . .”

“Yes. So committed to good,” Alardded said, “yet so unwilling to uphold that commitment.” Then, “We have known nothing of such a leader. We must speak in Council of it. We must speak with the missions that have gone out. If Zephy and Thorn and the other missions can learn something of an unknown leader . . .”

Hux nodded. “Perhaps, in the journal I bargained for in Zandour and carried hidden in my tunic, there might be some answer to the puzzle. It is written by a Zandourian soldier and covers many years up to the present—but a rambling, incomplete history and hard to read. Handwriting worse than my own.” He showed them in vision the small leather-bound volume he had given to Tra. Hoppa at first light, going directly to her chambers from unhitching and tending his horses. They felt Tra. Hoppa’s excitement as she stood in the doorway, her white hair ruffled from sleep, and took the little book in her thin hands, then eagerly turned the pages. Felt her disappointment at the scratchy, illegible script. But the old woman’s eyes had filled with hope nonetheless, hope that with patient deciphering the cults might be explained, or, even more important, some clue to the missing shards of the runestone might be found.

The sea wind quickened up along the cliff, lifting the tall grass that grew between the broken old walls, then slicing down into the town. On the cobbled street beside the green a line of carts drew up and began to unload vegetables and bags of grain and flour and bolts of cloth from the north of Carriol and to load up ale kegs and hides and small parcels. Along the upper-story living quarters above the shops, curtains blew in and out between the shutters. A band of children raced by on their way to some lesson or perhaps to weapons practice. Their small waiter hastily filled the tea mugs, then removed his apron and vanished, following his peers. More wagons rumbled in. Smoke from chimneys rose then was snatched away by the wind.

A band of soldiers rode by toward the upper practice grounds, then the sense of skyward motion gripped them all, and every Seer looked up into the western sky, their gazes copied at once by every common man; and soon out of the sky came winging a battalion of returning riders, sunlight slanting across their armor. The sense of them said plainly they had been victorious—but that they carried two dead. All the town turned at once to preparing the simple ritual that would precede the burial of the dead. Alardded and Hux and Meatha began to clear away the tables, so the green could be more easily used for the parting ceremony; then Alardded went alone to the citadel, where his powers would be stronger, to tell, across the length of Carriol, of the deaths.

Meatha watched the bodies lifted gently from the backs of the winged ones and laid out in the simple pine caskets kept always ready for such deaths. She shivered and felt sick and turned away.