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

I did not go with Ram into the pit that day, nor had for some days, for Lobon was ill with fever. Torc and Rhymannie were excellent nurses, but I could not leave Lobon when he was so sick. Ram gave into my hands the four runestones so that I could help him with their power, and I stood watching as the twelve wolves descended with him into the abyss. I had no premonition that Dracvadrig would rise that day to show itself, that it would at last challenge Ram. I sent my power with them, and later I stood reaching with all my force into the battle Ram waged against the creature. Even Lobon’s young, untrained power came strong then, to defend Ram, our powers focused through the runestones in a battle soon turned desperate, then terrifying, the wolves leaping and tearing at the dragon as it flailed and twisted in battle, its screams of fury echoing across the pit and between the mountains. And the power of the stone it possessed struck against Ram and against the stones I wielded with a force that made me reel with its intensity. I used every power, every force I knew, felt Ram’s furious, angry battle, his powers linked with mine against the creature as if we stood side by side. Lobon, his face flushed with the fever, had come to stand beside me, his power raging against the dragon, more power in that moment than I had thought any child could contain.

But our powers were not enough. Ram’s strength was not enough, nor the wolves’ fierce and continued attacks. Perhaps other forces fought beside the dragon, forces of the dark. I felt that this was so, and wondered if they had watched us longer than we ever knew.

Ram was wounded. He lay dying. He was dead before I reached him. Climbing and running down into the pit, I could only think over and over, If only I had been with him battling with sword as well as with the stones.

But I cannot dwell on that. It likely would have made no difference. Yet I do dwell, am sick with it even yet. I wake sometimes seeing him die, and cry out into the night before I can stop myself.

I lashed together a sapling drag to bring Ram’s body out. Five wolves stood guard over him. Seven wolves lay dead. Fawdref lay dead, his dark coat smeared with blood, his body torn by the dragon’s claws. Torc and Rhymannie were badly hurt. They limped out slowly, not able even to keep pace with the drag. As I turned away from the scene of battle after my first climb, I saw the wounded dragon creeping toward me. I spun and raised my bow, but the creature was hurt and clawed at the cliff then slipped and fell deeper into the pit. Suddenly it stayed its fall, with leathery wings raised, and beat its way clumsily skyward, twisting as if at any minute it would fall again. It must have been near to death at that moment, not to have come after the stones I held close inside my tunic, yet it flew up out of the pit, scrambling and clawing at the stone walls, and disappeared over the farther lip of the abyss where lay the unknown lands. Whether it returned to the abyss or not, I do not know. But every creature returns to its nest.

We buried Ram and Fawdref and the six young, strapping wolves who died with them in the stone room that had been our first home, made a cairn of that place, and covered the entrance with rocks. Lobon worked in stoic silence, ignoring his fever, carrying rocks to secure his father’s grave. Five days later, when Lobon was well and the bitch wolves had begun to heal, I set fire to the larger, sapling hut that Ram and I had built together and burned it to the ground. Then we went away to the east, where lay the city of cones, Lobon and I and five wolves, silent in our mourning; Lobon so broken by Ram’s death that it was many months before he could shed a tear.

We remained among the people of the city of cones until the pain of Ramad’s death began to heal for me. Lobon, even at six years old, was filled with such cold fury that I felt it would never abate.

Then, as I mourned in the city of cones, Canoldir spoke to me across Time. He spoke again and again, this man who lived outside of Time, and at last he helped me to see life around me once more, and I was glad for his caring.

We came to Canoldir at last, after nearly two years, came in an instant of Time, Lobon and I and the wolves, an instant of dizziness and shock, moving across Time and outside of Time to stand suddenly in Canoldir’s villa, where I had stood only once before—beside Ram.

Canoldir is gentle with me. He is helping me to heal as much as ever I will be healed, until I join Ram again in some life yet to come to us.

*

Excerpt from pages written some time later in Skeelie’s life with Canoldir:

And even now, though I dwell outside of Time and have touched knowledge that was before closed to me, I do not know what Dracvadrig is. Canoldir thinks he was once a man, that he stood in Tala-charen at the moment of the splitting and received a shard of the runestone; that he let the darkness lure him with that stone until he was drawn into the evil caverns of Urdd; that he grew there in evil until at last he took the dragon form in a dull, half-somnolent life. And then, awakened by the powers of Ramad’s stones, came again fully alive, this time in a rising, lusting evil. Surely there was a strength beyond the power of one shard of the runestone in that abyss when Dracvadrig killed Ramad; it was as if the powers of dark dwelt with him, and strengthened him.

But even Canoldir’s knowledge of this is limited, for something new touches us in this place outside of Time. Canoldir can no longer move so freely, at will, through Time. No longer See into all times freely to solve such mysteries. Is this place, our home, beginning to move back into the river of Time ? Canoldir has begun to show small signs of aging, too—which only make him the handsomer. Something is happening to Ere even here, powers drawing in and shifting, as do the forces of the mountains themselves, power driving against power until surely something must give, in fury and in violence.

Will the fabric of Ere’s powers heave and twist as do the mountains? Is what we are experiencing now a part of this, is Lobon’s search for Dracvadrig a part of this, is the pitting of stone against stone a part?

And what part did Ram’s life play in focusing such powers—or in staying them, in quelling them so to delay some possible holocaust?

What if Ramad had never been born, and the runestone never split?

Oh, but Ram was born; Ere would not have been complete without him. I loved him, and I can never cease to mourn him in my heart and in my soul, and in the way I touch life now; though I never can touch life very gently, I never could. Canoldir chides me, and laughs at me for that, just as Ramad did.

FIVE

Skeelie paced, restless as a river cat. Her dark hair, knotted crookedly, caught the firelight. Canoldir watched her from where he sprawled on hide-covered cushions in the shadows beyond the hearth. He was concerned for her but smiling, too, at the force of her anger. She stared back at him, tense and irritable. “Lobon moves there now, into the abyss, just as Ramad did. It is nothing to be amused about. How can you—it means nothing to you! Nothing!” Though she knew that was not so.

“It means, my love, more than you know. But give the lad room, give him time. Give him room to breathe, room to make mistakes and recover from them.”

“He’s had all his life to make mistakes. This is not the time. If he makes a mistake there—I can feel the evil of Dracvadrig like a stench. And, Canoldir, I think there are others there, I sense other presences. Lobon does not know what awaits him. He does not go there as Ramad did, with a purpose larger than himself. He goes with personal anger, personal hatred. He does not do justice to what Ram was, he—”