Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

They had gone well out onto the plain among the twisted boulders when Tayba began suddenly to feel comforted and to know that it would be safe to turn back. Something so warm enfolded her, something so familiar and welcome. EnDwyl would care for them. EnDwyl meant only to help Ram, surely they should wait for him. Eagerly she looked ahead to Ram and saw him turn, stare back at her in anger. Well, she thought, he didn’t understand. EnDwyl would make the Seers of Pelli help him. Ram could come into his full power only through those Seers, she realized. He would learn skills with them that Gredillon could never have taught him.

Ram stopped and turned, and his dark eyes were filled with cold fury. But he said nothing. When he turned away at last, he slapped the mare so hard she was forced into a wild trot. Tayba had to run to catch up. As she followed Ram, she began to weave dreams around EnDwyl. She remembered the caves of Scar Mountain and being in EnDwyl’s arms. She stood again before the stone hut greeting EnDwyl, and this time he held her and caressed her.

Ram swung around. His white face was that of a stranger, his fury terrible. “Stop it, Mamen! Go back if you like, if it’s what you want! But you will go alone!”

She stared at him, shocked. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

“I’ll talk to you any way I wish, when it’s my life you would sell. EnDwyl does not care for you!”

“You don’t understand, you’re only a child! You don’t understand anything!”

“Oh don’t I understand! EnDwyl never loved you! EnDwyl made a fool of you!” His dark hair was jerked by the wind, his cloak pulled away from him. He spoke as an adult, wiser and harder than Tayba. “EnDwyl left you once. You were young and beautiful then. Why should he want you now? Can’t you see. It’s the Seer making you think like this. EnDwyl can’t send thoughts. It’s the Seer. Don’t you know what they are doing to you—to me, Mamen. They would kill me.”

“Oh surely not. They—”

His scowl silenced her, a terrible, dark scowl filled with fury—born of fear. She swallowed, tasted bitterness in her throat, said nothing more. She followed him, chastened and uncomfortable and wanting only to be left alone with her own feelings; to be warmed by EnDwyl—to turn back to him.

When again EnDwyl’s voice began to whisper, she thought of Ram’s fear and tried to put his words away from her; but they warmed her until soon she was clutching at them eagerly, could think of nothing else. Ram plodded ahead of her hunched and miserable as EnDwyl and the Seer drew closer.

Night after night, when they would rest for a few hours, Tayba would toss with dreams of EnDwyl and wake wanting him, her need for him a sickness. She no longer saw Ram’s fear, she began to rejoice that the riders were drawing close, felt elation when the mare turned to stare back over her shoulder, sensing her own kind there behind them.

Ram spoke not at all. Or, when he did speak, anger shaped his words. “Don’t you know I am fighting with all the strength I have? Use your mind, Mamen! Use something to resist him. Haven’t you anything in you but—but the instincts of a creature in rut?”

“You daren’t say that to me! You . . .” She lowered her eyes before him. “They want . . . they want only to help you,” she breathed, hating Ram then.

“ Help me? They would train me like an animal, that’s what they want of me. An animal taught to rule as they rule, with a lust that thinks nothing of the feelings of men. They want my soul, Mamen.”

She followed him without volition, simply because he was stronger.

For three days more Ram forced her on. He was pale, pinched with the effort he made against the Seer. He felt hard and unchildlike and wanted comforting. He longed for Tayba’s tenderness and warmth, but she did not give it. Even when they lay close at night, each was drawn tight and did not comfort the other.

Sometimes in a brief moment of clarity, Tayba was appalled at her feelings and knew then that the Seer did, indeed, lay a sickness on her. Then her shame would wrap her in a cocoon of loneliness so she could not reach out to Ram. She was not sure how long it was since they had left Gredillon, or even why they had left.

They were always cold and could not rid themselves of the blowing sand that had worked itself into every fiber of their clothes and blankets, into the food. The mare grew weaker and slower with the meager grass she received and only scant water from the sluggish springs. They might have been on that plain forever among the black rock and emptiness. Ram held the wolf bell often, taking strength from it, from the vague voices like puffs of wind that came to him when he said the words of the bell. There ahead in the mountain something stirred and eased him, lifted his spirits and gave him hope.

Tayba watched him, uneasy when he touched the bell. She felt sick, felt old, wanted only to turn back. They came at last one late morning around boulders to where they could see a line of trees ahead instead of writhing stone. At once their pace quickened, the mare nickered. They drew closer and the mare thrust her nose out eagerly, and they could hear the churning of water. They had reached the river Owdneet.

They came through trees to the river and looked beyond it and beyond the trees and could see the roofs of Burgdeeth. The dark riders were close behind them; the mare’s ears kept turning back as she measured the sounds of their approach. The river raced white and foaming over stones, but was shallow enough to ford. The mare sucked up water noisily. Ram sprawled to drink, and Tayba stared at the cold, fast rapids, then leaned against the pony until her dizziness passed, sick with exhaustion and with her own overwhelming emotions. She looked at Ram and was swept with remorse at her behavior.

Ram had even stopped shouting at her when she was drawn to EnDwyl, when she could not help the tide of heat and yearning that swept her. He had pushed on and on across the plain as if he and the mare were quite alone, as if Tayba no longer existed. Small and sturdy, plodding on in the bitter cold, his dark hair and his desperate determination making him seem a stranger.

She had thought once that she must dye his hair again, but then she had forgotten.

The mare lifted her dripping muzzle to gaze downriver. They heard a horse snort. Tayba grabbed at Ram, pulling him up. “Get on the mare. Get across the river, into the town.” She shoved at him, forcing him.

But he pulled away, spun to face her. “No, Mamen. I will go no farther.” He put his hand inside his tunic, drew out the wolf bell now; the cold sun caught at the bronze, so the bell flashed with light He held it up and gazed past her toward the dark mountains. “The wolves will come. They speak to me.”

“You can’t call wolves! Jackals, a fox maybe. That can’t help us! Not wolves, Ram. They won’t . . .”

He whispered the words of the bell precisely and slowly and did not hear her. Downriver the brush rattled, and the mare shifted to look, pricking her ears with eagerness. Tayba tried to pull Ram away, heard a hoof strike rock.

“Get on the mare, Ram!”

He turned then and suddenly was quite ready to mount. “They will come,” he said quietly. There was a look on his face she had never seen before. He was not a child now, but something ageless. He mounted the mare slowly. Brush rattled.

“Hurry!” She had nearly lost patience with him. The mare nickered as riders came crashing through brush. Then suddenly the noise stopped, the riders were still. Ram hit the mare hard, forcing her into the river. Tayba ran alongside splashing, clinging to the mare against the swift current as the freezing water surged around her legs. The riders came crashing through bushes again. Icy water foamed around her thighs and washed the mare’s belly so she balked; Tayba jerked and jerked at her. At last she went on again and soon they were in shallower water. The mare scrambled wild-eyed up the bank as Tayba clung; and the riders plunged into the river. Tayba tried desperately to see the town ahead, but now it was hidden; she could see only the plain rising above the trees, cloud shadows blowing fast across the empty land. She saw Ram stare up at the rising land, heard him draw in his breath sharply. Those were more than cloud shadows. They were running shadows: dark animals racing down across the cloud-swept plain. Dark wolves running. . . .