Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

Old Poncie pushed back her sparse white hair and glared at Skeelie, handed out a pail in her thin clawlike hand. “Here, child, take this pail and get us some water! Oh my, you’ve used this other bucket for scraps! Can’t you . . .”

Skeelie grinned at Tayba and went out swinging the two buckets. Tayba looked through the open window and saw Ram run to join her as if he’d been waiting. He looked fine and healthy now, as if he had never been sick. Behind her the old women began to whisper; she heard her name, could feel them looking at her, caught words that angered her. Well, she’d rather work at serving table in the dining hall than with this whispering handful of biddies.

*

They were at supper in the storeroom, Ram and Skeelie and Tayba, when Venniver came to look them over like some kind of new livestock. Ram knew he was coming and bristled, stopped eating and felt almost sick, the food nauseating him. Skeelie disappeared at once behind some barrels. Ram sat stiff and apprehensive as Venniver pushed open the outside door to stand silent, blocking out the moons, a dark blotch. They could not see his face, and when he did not move or speak, Tayba began to fidget. Ram wished she would hold still; her nervousness both annoyed and amused Venniver.

Still, the sense of him was so powerful Ram could understand her feelings. She could not continue to eat casually under the man’s steady, hidden gaze. She received the sense of him very surely, and Ram wondered, not for the first time, why she could not bear to accept, even in her private thoughts, that she had Seer’s skill. She hid from the idea utterly, turned from it in terror, and he could not understand that in her.

When Venniver stepped into the room at last, so the candlelight touched his face, Ram saw Tayba’s surprise. The man’s cold blue eyes and curling black hair and beard seemed strange against the clear, pink-cheeked complexion, rosy as a girl’s. He seemed too big for the room. Ram felt Tayba’s thoughts careening like a shrew in a cage, awed by him and frightened—yet drawn to him. She began to fiddle with her plate, and Venniver looked at her coolly, gave a snort of disgust that dismissed her entirely, and turned his attention to Ram.

He stared at Ram piercingly. He was a frightening man. Ram looked back at him steadily, unflinching, with a calmness that took a good deal of concentration.

“Ram—Ram has not been well,” Tayba said nervously. Ram wished she would keep still. “He is strong, he will be a strong worker. He was sick because he fell, you can see the lump, but he. . . .” Ram stared at her, trying to make her be still. “We—we came to Burgdeeth,” she said more calmly, “to be away from Seers. Perhaps Theel told you that. I—I am a good worker. We both are.” She looked back at him steadily now.

“What can the boy do?” Venniver said mockingly.

“He—he can learn to lay stone. He will grow to be a man well-trained to the work of the town.”

Venniver snorted.

Tayba looked down, keeping her hands still with great effort; when she looked up, she quailed anew before Venniver’s piercing gaze. “We have nowhere else to go,” she said softly. “We—we are at your mercy here.”

Ram was sickened at her submissiveness. She had nearly dissolved before Venniver.

When Venniver turned to leave, he looked back at her unexpectedly and spoke much as Theel had spoken.

“You may stay here if you work as you are directed. We have no food for idlers or for women and children who do not know their places. That means that you will keep our sanctions, both of you. There will be no favors because your brother is my lieutenant. You will hate the evils of Ynell, you will hate the Children of Ynell as I hate them. You will, if you value your life, young woman—and his life,” he added, jabbing a careless thumb toward Ram. “If I am displeased with you, I will send you to die on the plain. I have no qualms about doing so.” His look chilled Ram utterly. In one motion, then, he was gone into the night. The moons shone coldly through the empty doorway.

They stared after him in silence. “He means,” Ram said at last, “that you must hate the Seers, Mamen. That is what the Children of Ynell are. That is what I am.”

“Yes.” She drew him to her, and he let her hold him. He could feel her discomfort at the man’s cruel coldness. When she parted his hair to be sure the roots had not shown before Venniver, Ram turned his head away. And he stared up toward the mountain with a terrible need suddenly, a longing to go there, to be among the silent, pure strength of the wolves and away from the emotions that flooded and twisted around him like shouting voices.

FOUR

Skeelie was stealing iron spikes from the forgeman. Ram watched her in his mind, saw her slip behind the man as he worked at the forge, slip out of the forgeshop to pile the spikes in the alley. Ram kept his mind closed from her, sneaked up behind her, surprising her so she nearly cried out, his hand quick over her mouth to silence her. She was clever as a house rat at stealing. They grinned at each other, froze as a guard went by the end of the alley, then together they carried the spikes around behind the town to the pit and down into it when the guard was turned away.

Nightmarish objects peopled the pit, parts of horses cast in bronze: heads, bodies, wings. But not nightmarish when you looked. They were beautiful, the wings sweeping and graceful, the horses’ faces filled with a wonder and exaltation that made Ram stare.

Jerthon turned the forge fire, his tunic and red hair dark with sweat. His eyes roved above the pit. He watched the guard walk away, assessed the one guard in the pit who slept against a pile of timbers, then gestured toward a heap of stone. The children slipped the spikes into a space between the stones, then Skeelie clung to Jerthon. Jerthon gave Ram a quick wink and hugged his little sister close. Ram could feel their warmth and closeness. It made disturbing feelings in him. Jerthon said, “The visions are not so bad now? You are learning to control them, Ram?”

“Thanks to you. I didn’t—I didn’t know how much I hadn’t learned, until—until you showed me. The deep blocking, the turning away from the Pellian Seer’s force. He is strong, Gredillon could not show me how strong—maybe even she didn’t know. It has helped to learn to turn away, and yet not seem to turn. . . . He looked at his teacher quietly. They had come very close, and quickly, when Ram lay so ill—possessed by the Pellian Seer. It had seemed a miracle the first time he had felt the touch of Jerthon’s mind helping him, supporting him, when he had thought he was all alone against the Pellian.

Jerthon said, “I can only help to teach you, it is you who does the hard work.” His green eyes searched deep into Ram’s. “Be careful, Ramad of Zandour. Be careful of the Pellian Seer, of how you deal with him. He would kill you—he can kill you with that power if you waver. . . .

“Yes. But I must learn from him—you know I must. I will be careful, Jerthon.” Ram searched Jerthon’s face. “Only by letting him try to mold me can I . . . can I learn to better him. There is something hidden. Something I cannot touch. The Seer quests after something, even besides controlling the power of the wolf bell. He has a great need for it and has no idea where to look. It—it has nothing to do with me, but if I could—if I knew what it was, and where. . . .” The sleeping guard stirred suddenly, and at Jerthon’s silent command the children scrambled up out of the pit and disappeared into the alley, were away quickly from that warm touch with him. He took her small, bony hand. Could feel Jerthon’s satisfaction in their silent, hasty retreat. When the guard slept again, they came out to walk innocently along the edge of the pit, just to be near Jerthon. They could see part of the wooden model of the statue, a full-sized carving Jerthon had made from which he now cast the bronze pieces. It rose behind piles of stone and timbers, its lifting wings catching at the wind as if the god and the two horses would lift suddenly and fly. It thrilled Ram, that statue, gave him a sense of wonder and space that held and excited him. He gazed down at it, standing there among the rubble of the pit, “Why must Jerthon work in a pit? It’s so—well, he is private and sheltered I guess, but—oh, I see. To block the forge fire from the north wind.”