Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

Shame rose in her like a tide. She wanted to look away and could not, he held her with his knowing gaze. She saw in his eyes knowledge far beyond a child’s knowledge. “I. . . .” She swallowed and turned away then, and could deny nothing. Could not deny that in the night when her own inner turmoil, when her terrible need became unbearable, she would slip away to follow the dark path down the mountain and go into the drinking halls and go with men into the night. Men who warmed her and made her whole again so she could return quietly, at last, to the mountain.

Gredillon never spoke to her of this. Her disapproving looks the next morning were always quite enough. And now here was Ram confronting her so bluntly she wanted to scream at him.

He hugged her again. “It’s all right, Mamen, I. . .” but he did not finish, stopped abruptly to stare past her, down the mountain. She rose to look, but saw only sky and the empty rock, and Zandour lying like a toy city below.

But Ram saw something, looked cold suddenly, and white.

“What is it? Ram. . . ?”

“A rider is coming. He is maybe two days away. A man—a man riding out of Pelli. A man . ..” He searched her face. “He is a man you know well. A man with yellow hair.”

Her heart leaped. EnDwyl. EnDwyl was coming.

“He is—he is the man who is my sire.”

EnDwyl was coming for her. Coming to, take them away, to care for her. . . .

“No, Mamen. He does not come for you.” He went to stand by some boulders where the land fell abruptly. “He comes to the mountain for me.” He turned to face her. “To take me away to Pelli. He would take me by force to Pelli. The Seer of Pelli has sent him—the dark Seer.” There was growing fear in his eyes. He stood silent for some moments as if listening, then said hesitantly, “They—they would make a ruler of me. Whether or not I want it. I will have no choice in the matter, if EnDwyl finds me.”

“I wouldn’t let him take you. I—”

“What could you do? He is stronger. You—you have no power against this man.” His knuckles were white. “Don’t you understand! The Seers of Pelli are forced to rule, are twisted. Their minds are all twisted. . . .” He stepped so close to the steep drop she gasped, reached to pull him back. He scowled, turning from her. “They need—there is something about me they want. Something besides just that I am a Seer.” He looked puzzled, fearful. “I will not go. And you will not make me go. I will not be their slave so that you—so you can live in comfort, Mamen!”

She stared at him, turning sick at something in herself, at the sudden truth he had touched. “Get Gredillon,” she said coldly. “Go and get her! She is in the field above the garden.”

Gredillon made the plan, took Tayba’s silver and went down the mountain into Zandour, to return the next morning leading a pack pony that bore a small, closed burial coffin on its back, the dirt still clinging.

They carried the coffin up beyond the garden. Gredillon pried up the lid and applied ironroot dye to the hair of the corpse until it shone bright red. Then she closed the coffin and buried it and made a wooden marker. Ram said, “We must hide the pony. The Seer of Pelli saw this place, the house and the garden, has made EnDwyl see it. EnDwyl knows we had no pony when he left Pelli. He will wonder why we do now.”

“We will hide her,” Gredillon said, “inside the mountain, just as you will be hidden.” So they stored dry grasses deep in a cave that opened from inside the stone house, and when EnDwyl was halfway up Scar Mountain, Ram took the pony there, hid in darkness, and Saw in his mind the approach of the man who was his sire.

Tayba stood alone in the doorway watching EnDwyl come around the last turn of the path, his horse sweating from the climb. His cape was gray with the grime of travel, his boots wrinkled and misshapen from long wear. He reined in his mount. The dropping sun touched his pale hair, his ice blue eyes. He watched Tayba intently. His eyes on her upset her, she turned away and busied herself drawing water as she might for any traveler. When she handed the mug up, his look made her remember.

He did not speak, but drained the mug in one swallow. At last he said coldly, “You have a child of me.” His abruptness shocked and hurt her. “He is a Seer born. I have come for him.”

He was so sure of himself, sitting there on the fidgeting mount. “I had a child,” she said quietly. “He is dead. Ram is dead.” She saw his eyes, not believing her, and her temper rose. “And even if he were alive, he— he would not be your property! You deserted us both when I—when. . . .” She dissolved into tears, half with true emotion at her desertion and half with the artful deceit she had practiced, turned away from him weeping and stricken with emotions she could not really sort out.

“You lie! My child is not dead!” He dismounted in one motion and took her by the shoulder. “Dead how? Not my son!”

“He is dead.” Her voice faltered. “My baby—Ramad died on the mountain. He fell from the mountain.”

“You’re lying! The boy was not dead when I left Pelli, the Seer of Pelli saw him. My son was born a Seer. No Seer would fall from a mountain.”

His anger was of such power she could hardly hide her fear. “It is a long ride from Pelli. It is many days ride since any Seer saw Ram alive. Yes, EnDwyl, he would have been a Seer. But a Seer, too, can fall from the mountain.”

EnDwyl hobbled his horse with such haste the animal snorted and reared. He flung past her into the stone house and began to tear it apart in his search, scattering and breaking the frail bells, throwing the bedding on the floor, ripping open cupboards. He found Ram’s small clothes and cast these onto the table. “You keep the clothes of a dead boy?”

“It’s all I have of him! It’s all I have left of him!” She grabbed up Ram’s tunic and trousers and clutched them to her.

“Where is his grave, woman? Where is Ramad’s grave?”

It was then that Gredillon spoke from the doorway, the low sun behind her making her white hair a halo, hiding her face in shadow.

“Can’t you see what you’re doing to her! The girl hasn’t eaten, has been beside herself with grief. I’ve done my best with her, and now you come along and undo it, now she will grieve herself to sickness again.”

“The grave, old woman. Where is my son’s grave?”

“It’s there beyond the herb yard. Past those three outcroppings, by the zayn tree,” Gredillon said angrily.

When EnDwyl had gone Tayba clutched Gredillon’s shoulders. “Will he believe it? He could have heard in the town that you bought a coffin, a body—”

“He did not hear such.”

“But the earth is raw where we buried it, new turned and—”

“The earth is covered with wet leaves, the same as the garden.”

Tayba waited in terror for EnDwyl to return.

And in the dark cave, Ram clung to the pony, his fear of EnDwyl like a sickness as he felt the man’s relentless, evil searching. Clearly, he saw EnDwyl take up a garden spade and unearth the little coffin and open it to examine the wrapped, moldering body. Ram clung to the pony where the animal stood quiet in the unfamiliar dark, and each was comforted by the other. The pony nibbled at his tunic, responding to the child’s soft touch and quick whispers.

In those moments, standing frightened in the darkness, Ram knew his father deeply, and hated him. And he felt Tayba’s fear of the man, and felt her desire for him in spite of fear. And that vision gave the child little comfort

*

EnDwyl left the stone house uncertain in his mind that Ram was dead and unable to find proof that he lived. The cave was well-hidden, Ram and the mare silent in the darkness—though Ram had begun to think he would forget what light was like, would come forth blinded from being so long in darkness. The mare did not eat well of the grasses they had stored, and when Ram led her, blinking, out into the light of Gredillon’s stone room, both were weary from the dark. “He is gone,” Ram said, staring around like a small owl. “It was awful in there. I am hungry for a hot meal.”