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

But why should these deaths upset her? She had seen dead soldiers. These were boys from the north of Carriol, farm boys, one as freckled as an otero egg, with tumbled sandy hair. She had danced with him once at a festival. Death, and the fear of death, filled and sickened her.

She did not sleep well that night, and the next morning was tired and irritable and filled with formless fears. And with that presence, cold and foreboding, that she could not escape nor name, and to which her spirit seemed to cling in spite of fear.

THREE

Shorren paused on a narrow ledge well down in the abyss, then her coat blazed white as she leaped deeper still, to join Lobon. Something more than Dracvadrig stirs in this pit, Lobon. Something I cannot yet name or put form to.

“I sense it, Shorren! Don’t you think I sense it!”

The two dog wolves followed Shorren, to press around Lobon as he descended between jagged boulders.

They had been four days in the abyss, yet seemed hardly to have broken away from its rim, so twisting and slow was the route, so deep the chasm. And Lobon had begun to swing from anger to a deep depression that would grip him for hours as Dracvadrig sought to control his mind.

Why didn’t Dracvadrig simply come out of the abyss and battle him for the four stones he carried, for the added power they would bring? Why didn’t the dragon attack him, show itself, instead of waiting unseen, reaching up only with mind-powers to haze and confuse him! To enervate his will with darkness and with tricks. Twice the wolves had driven back fire ogres before he even knew they were there, so dulled had he become, and once a huge, coiling macadach, whose poisonous bite would have killed him. Sometimes he was aware of little else but the creeping darkness freezing his thoughts; he knew he must find Dracvadrig soon, before he was weakened further. And now the sense of other beings assailed them, too, of an evil creature as cold-blooded as the macadach, though he could not make out what it was.

They came at mid-morning to a lava river twisting between jagged monoliths of stone and stood considering how to cross. When the earth trembled beneath them, Lobon shrugged. What danger could the earth present, that Dracvadrig could not? Moving slowly, heavily, with Dracvadrig’s power on him, he found boulders small enough to roll down the cliff into the lava river and began to construct a way across.

It took the better part of the day to make a causeway they could cross without being scalded by the flowing lava. The heat was unbearable; Lobon’s leathers were soaked with sweat, the wolves panting. Yet they must cross the lava, for he could sense Dracvadrig far deeper in the abyss. Once across, Lobon’s strength was drained. He rested between stone outcroppings where a small trickle of hot water came down. He drank and filled the waterskin. The air was heavy with smoke and unfamiliar fumes. Even the wolves’ strength had ebbed. They all slept fitfully through a red-tinged darkness and moved on again in a sulfurous dawn, pushed deeper and deeper into the abyss, across more molten rivers and nearly impassable rifts. They ate lizards and rock crabs and snakes and had never enough to drink. All four sensed that they were watched by the firemaster, though he was never there. Nor did he speak again. The wolves were increasingly edgy. Lobon was driven on, despite his strange confusion and fatigue, by his all-consuming need to kill Dracvadrig.

Sometimes he would feel Dracvadrig turn from him and reach out for the girl, and then he would come more fully alert, and would follow the creature’s mind and watch him lay his ugly darkness on her thoughts. He would watch Dracvadrig lead her to Carriol’s citadel again and again, watch her stand staring mesmerized at the suspended runestone, then turn away as Dracvadrig built a need in her to hold the stone that at last she would be unable to resist. Her desire for it was beginning to consume her like a slow fire, and soon, Lobon knew, she must burst the bonds of her own reticence. Dracvadrig seemed in no hurry, as if he were enjoying her torment.

As he is enjoying mine? Lobon thought. Is that why he does not attack me for the stones, but leads me always deeper into the abyss? He stared down into the pit that humped and curved below him, seeming to go on forever.

“Curse him. Curse his burning soul. Why doesn’t he show himself, come up here and face us and see who is the more powerful!”

Shorren stared up at him, her yellow eyes steady. You are letting him goad you, Lobon. You faint at shadows.

“Dracvadrig is no shadow!”

You let the firemaster destroy your temper. You make yourself weary sparring with what is not yet known.

He laid a hand on her heavy white coat, felt the power of her muscles, the breadth of her shoulders. He wished she would be still. He wanted to confront Dracvadrig, to battle Dracvadrig! Couldn’t she understand that!

All four of us seek the same goal, she said calmly, infuriating him further. We all seek Dracvadrig’s death and the joining of the stone. We all seek the salvation of Ere.

He turned to glare at her. “I seek only to kill the worm Dracvadrig! To avenge my father’s death! The saving of Ere is not my business, nor is the joining of the stone!”

Shorren’s eyes slitted. The saving of Ere had better be your business, Lobon the hotheaded. It is not enough simply to kill Dracvadrig. The powers within you were born to the salvation of Ere, through your father’s blood. If you do not seek to save Ere, you do not avenge Ramad’s death, you defile it.

“I will avenge my father’s death in the killing of Dracvadrig.”

You do not see clearly. The bitch wolf’s ears were flat, her lips curled back over gleaming teeth. Your hatred warps your senses, Lobon, son of Ramad! If you deny Ramad’s quest, if you do not defy evil, not only do you refuse to avenge his spirit, but you deny the rebirth of your own soul. If you fail the purpose of your own life, your soul will wither, your powers wither. Your shriveled spirit will crave only to lie in limbo, as does Cadach, locked forever locked into the trunk of a tree in the caves of Owdneet.

“I don’t care about my soul! And the tale of Cadach is nothing but an old woman’s tale!”

It is not, Lobon. Cadach lives. Your own mother spoke with him when she came into Owdneet’s caves searching for a way into Time, seeking to follow Ramad into Time. And Cadach’s white-haired children live, and move through Time, choosing to atone for his evil. Know you, whelp, that the woman Gredillon who raised your father was one of Cadach’s white-haired children, as was Anchorstar, who helped your father save one shard of the runestone and acquire another. Never think, Lobon the big-headed, that Cadach is a myth—or that such could not happen to you!

“Well, but Cadach—”

Cadach denied his heritage and sold his soul for avarice and greed—in your own time, Lobon, in this time, before he was swept back in Time to die a living death in the tree, never to know the progression of his soul.

Lobon scowled. He did not want to believe in Cadach. He was not sure he believed in the progression of souls. Such things were a nuisance to think about.

The two dog wolves raised their muzzles and stared at him with hard yellow eyes. Crieba said, Shorren is right, you are guardian of more than you are willing to embrace, Lobon. You lust for revenge alone, and that is not enough, even in the name of your father. You shame Ramad.

Lobon turned from them, furious, and swung away down the cliff. His own mother had said those same words before he left the house of Canoldir, told him that he shamed his father’s name with his self-centered fury. “You must temper the purpose that leads you into battle before you will be equal to Ram! As you are now, Lobon, you are not fit to hold the fate of Ere in your hands!”