Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

Part Two: The Wolves

FIVE

Ram and Skeelie groped through black clefts deep inside the mountain. “We are going clear through it,” Ram said. “We will come out into caves like an underground world. Fawdref is there.”

“Couldn’t the wolves have come and led us?”

“They lead us. It is all that is needed. The power gets . . . it grows stronger as we get closer.”

They moved through passages in the stone so narrow they must walk sideways, and when they came at last to light again, they shouted with surprise and pleasure at the sudden golden rays of the dropping sun and stood grinning at each other. Such an urgent thing, the need for light, when one has moved in darkness.

They were in a part of the mountains now where no men had been for generations—not since Seers dwelled there among the gods. Skeelie sat down on a ledge and stared out at the hundreds of peaks that rose beyond, considering the desolation and the strangeness of that wild land. Ram stood looking, feeling the power of something immense pulling at him, and facing Fawdref’s call. And he could sense forces meeting here in a conflict of which he knew he was suddenly the center. He could not settle, he was too eager to get on, was tight-strung and shaken.

When they did go on, they heard water falling and came into a tall cave lit by the sun’s golden light. A waterfall plunged down from the ceiling into a light-filled pool, casting rippling reflections on the cave walls. The pool’s breath was cool in their faces. Ram stripped off his clothes and swam, his body transformed in the lighted green depths into something pale and fishlike. Skeelie was drawn to that enticing world but was more modest. She turned her back to undress. They swam until they were numb with cold, then dressed and went on again through dark corridors and passages where only a dull gray light marked their way. In time they saw ahead dark shadows that seemed to move. Skeelie drew back, but Ram followed the silent shapes eagerly.

And suddenly the shadows were warm, huge bodies leaping all around them, wolves pouring around them, sweeping past each other to push close to them. Dark, rough-coated, huge. Their eyes glinted, they were as tall as the children’s chests, twice the children’s weight, their teeth like ivory swords. Fawdref pressed against Ram, and Ram clutched Fawdref in a wild hug. The great wolf grinned and licked his neck and cheek. His mate, Rhymannie, curved against Ram, her forelegs out, her head ducked, smiling up at him. He scratched her head and saw her yellow eyes laugh with pleasure.

Ram felt their power like a tide around him, and his own power seemed heightened so his pulse beat in a wild surge. Here, he was one with the wolves, linked in an ancient heritage of power and magic.

Yet something else stirred, too. Something dark in a different way from the wolves’ powers. Something insidious and threatening. “The Seer of Pelli reaches out,” he breathed. He brought all of himself to shield against HarThass’s searching. Then he understood that the wolves had been shielding since he and Skeelie left Burgdeeth; linking with Ram’s own shielding to hide this quest from the Pellian Seer. So much more came clear when he was near to the wolves. And there was so much more for him to learn, so much yet to understand, so much skill yet to master.

Beyond the rough arch where they stood, a deep underground world opened out. A softly lighted, mysterious world into which the children moved now, to stare around them with wonder, their footsteps echoing, their voices hushed. The grotto’s high roof floated in mists. The farthest walls and arches were all but lost. For an instant they saw a time long past, saw gods and Horses of Eresu soaring on silent wings, saw that some of the horses carried men on their backs, saw a time of wonder when anything was possible to men. Ram felt, then, that the powers he sought had to do with this—with a time when all was open to humankind.

The vision vanished. The wolves led them through the grotto to another opening, through which they could see the setting sun and a grassy hill rising up steeply to meet sheer, black cliffs, which swept on up to a mountain peak. Against the mountain stood a building made by men, a black stone structure so well conceived it seemed to have grown from the mountain itself. They went out of the grotto and up the grassy bank and in between the black pillars to a great hall. The grass underfoot gave way to thick moss that carpeted the interior, running up over stone seats and creeping in fingers up the stone walls. The walls themselves were carved from the living stone of the mountain. Only the front wall, through which they had entered, was made of great blocks of black stone set by men.

The hall rose to an incredible height. The thin arches that floated high above might have been carved by men, or might not: pale stone bridges crossing back and forth thin as threads. Ram felt tremendous power here, felt the essence of all the ages of Ere gathered here and understood there were picture records of Ere’s past sealed away and bark manuscripts of runes, and treasures beyond his dreams; and that he would return here someday, in some time yet to come.

The wolves led them through myriad openings in the hall, through chambers carved from the live stone in a labyrinth, flanked by huge slabs or by delicate filigrees of stone carven into the shapes of animals. The caves grew dim when the sun had set; but soon the moons rose, their light washing the stone walls and picking out caves high above that once had been sleeping chambers. And the ceiling was brilliant with motion, a moving panorama, a story told in pictures, that drew Ram as he started forward to climb to it, paying little attention to the narrowness of the steps or to the dizzy height. Six wolves went on with him and Skeelie. The rest turned back; many, Ram knew, because of waiting cubs. The steps were narrow and steep, carven into the cave walls with nothing to hold to. The height increased until the children could no longer look down without growing dizzy. Ram pushed on eagerly, for somewhere up there in the moonlit chambers at the roof of the grotto lay the answer to the question that burned in him with an intensity that nearly overwhelmed him.

He felt the Seer’s probing then and spent himself blocking HarThass’s seeking mind as the man quested blindly, not knowing where Ram was, or why, but knowing that an urgency occupied him. Like a scenting ferret, the Seer reached out. Ram felt his own powers strengthened by the wolves as they spread a cloud of darkness against the Seer.

When they reached the top of the grotto at last, they stood looking down that immense distance at the bridges of stone sweeping in arches below them, and at the one thin arch flung out across the grotto at their feet. Skeelie looked and was suddenly frozen with terror, unable to move, was convinced she would fall if she moved. She had not expected such fear as this, was confused and surprised at herself, was scarcely able to breathe for the fear that gripped her.

A wolf nudged her. She resisted, fear flaring into panic. Another pressed close, warm against her. She wanted to cry out.

Then the wolves began to push into her mind, into the white fear that held her. Gently, slowly they began to ease her, to take away the terror. She could feel Fawdref in her mind like some dark, happy troubadour shouting out his songs, so it was hard to be afraid.

At last the drop into space was no longer horrifying. She could look down comfortably and was able to move forward again without losing her balance, even to look above her at the pictures on the ceiling, so close. The bright panorama hung above them alive with wonderful creatures, with the gods lifting in awesome flight; showed them a fierce history of Ere, showed killings and fire and destruction. Showed them a procession of gods moving out across the ceiling that spoke to Ram with such urgency that he pressed forward onto the thin bridge to follow it.