Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

Moonlight swam in through the far, arched windows to touch the narrow span. Ram started across, afraid for a moment, then drawn beyond fear to that far wall and to the cave there. Fawdref came behind him. Ram hesitated as he heard Fawdref growl, low and menacing.

There, in the center of the bridge, something had begun to glow silver.

It grew quickly brighter, terrifying Ram, holding him poised precariously over empty space.

The Seer’s cape became visible, the cowl hiding his face in darkness. He stood silently blocking their way. Ram’s new terror mixed with Skeelie’s terror, with Fawdref’s fury. The Seer’s intent was clear, Ram’s death was clear if he should move forward.

*

Farther down the mountain in the darkness of a tunnel, Dlos and Tayba stopped suddenly at the echo of a growl. Dlos turned her head, as if perhaps she heard more than a growl, looked upward toward the dark heart of the mountain. “We do not hear it, we hear a message. As we would hear a message of fear sent by a Seer.”

Tayba followed Dlos’s swinging lantern, now terrified for Ram. He should not have come here. Why had he? The smell of damp, cold stone had begun to nauseate her. Couldn’t they go faster? How could they help Ram against wolves? She touched her sword with a trembling hand. What had the wolves done to him? If she let her mind dwell on it, the terror would overwhelm her. Her throat ached with the tenseness that gripped her. She would harbor no thought except that the wolves endangered him. Felt a voice within telling her she must battle wolves.

Then suddenly something else was there in her mind, subtle and compelling. It eased her fear for Ram, soothed her; yet she quailed before it.

*

The silver cape moved on the night breeze that stirred through the grotto. Ram’s fists were clenched. Moonlight washed the cave, seemed to make the thin span shift sickeningly. The Seer’s voice was cold.

“Go back, Ramad. Go back before you die.” Cold and softly echoing, like some insidious whisper of death that could not be stilled.

Ram’s voice cut suddenly across space, sharp as a blade. “You are a fool, HarThass! You had better take yourself back to Pelli. We are coming across.”

“You cross and you die, Ramad of Zandour!”

Ram began slowly to walk toward HarThass across that thin span. He smiled. “Do you want me dead, Seer? Have you decided not to make a slave of me? Have you decided you do not want to rule the bell?” And with each step he drew closer to that faceless apparition, swallowing the fear that twisted inside him. “I think, HarThass, that you see your defeat so clearly you want to end it now. Before you must confess failure. You will end it by dying here, HarThass.”

The Seer’s voice rang. “You are no longer worth keeping to toy with, child of the mountain. I grow tired of you. I find your death more intriguing—death in a fall to that stone floor. Look down, Ramad. That will be your tomb, those hard rocks on which your body will lie crushed like jelly, a bloody smear on the stone and your tame dogs dead beside you!”

“It will not be my tomb, HarThass! What is there beyond this span, that you would prevent me from seeing? What is there that is so important to you, that you would give up your quest for the wolf bell forever?” Ram challenged. But his chagrin was terrible that his own blocking had failed, that in that instant when he faced the thin bridge and empty space, his fear had let the Seer slip by, let HarThass See the painted procession and know that it led to something urgent.

The Seer moved toward Ram. Fawdref growled and slipped up beside him on the narrow bridge, terrifying him, moved ahead of him lithe as a cat, to face the Seer. Ram lifted the bell, spoke its words urgently. The moonlight caught at the rearing bitch-wolf, making her seem to turn. “You are dust!” Ram cried. “You are only dust in this place, HarThass! You are bone and blood only In Pelli! If you do not return there, you will be only dust there, silenced in death, Seer of Pelli!”

The silver cape shifted. HarThass’s hate was terrible, a black tide that suffocated. Ram rang the bell, swallowing his terror; and a thousand bells rang, and the wolves cried out; and the Seer’s fury rose as he moved forward along the span. Ram could feel his force, knew that HarThass could, by his very power, catapult him and the wolves into space; his force, the force of all his Seers, must be joined in this. “You are dust, HarThass!” Ram shouted.

And then he felt it: that other power with him, that surging of strength that bolstered his own. And the Seer paused. Ram moved forward. “You are dust, HarThass! And to dust you will return!” Ram stood pouring all of his power with Jerthon, with the wolves, into a tide that could sweep HarThass from that place.

The silver cape began to grow dimmer, the Seer’s hands to fade. The Seer stepped back.

And the power within Ram lifted, Ram’s own power and the power of the wolves rising with Jerthon to sweep down on HarThass so hard the Seer cried out in fury, his sudden fear vibrating across the grotto fainter and fainter still until it clung in echoes of anger.

Clung, long after he had vanished.

At last the span before Ram was empty. Then, shaken, swept with relief, the little procession began to cross the thin bridge in the still wash of moonlight, Skeelie clutching gratefully at the pale wolf that walked so carefully just ahead of her. Across the span, they could see a small cave opening. And the procession on the ceiling traveled with them toward an unknown wonder of such urgency for Ram that he was almost sick with the need to reach it.

Below them two figures looked upward, could not call out, stood watching the children and wolves cross over the high span until at last they reached a stone ledge and turned into the cave, to disappear.

Tayba swallowed, exhausted by her own emotions and by her fear. That other power, that had spoken to her—it had been with Ram up there, helping Ram. She had no sense of what it was. But she was warmed and supported by it. Her mouth tasted of metal. She felt sticky with sweat, even in this cool place. What were they doing up there? She had never imagined that wolves would climb into heights like that, like great cats. She wished they would come back, wished Ram were there on the ground beside her, would not rest until he was.

*

Fawdref led the children slowly, letting them look. They both had cricks in their necks, could not stop gazing upward at the solemn procession where gods with folded wings walked solemnly beside men. The procession traveled up mountains and across valleys, was attacked by fire ogres, skirted lakes of fire. The gods could have flown in safety, yet they did not fly.

The Seer who led them carried a small carven box. And in that box lay, Ram knew, a power like nothing else on Ere, a power that excited and awed him. The gods marched out of the caves at last onto a high mountain meadow; and ahead of them across the meadow, a slim, tower-like mountain rose into cloud. ‘Tala-charen,” Skeelie breathed. “I thought—I thought it was only a story. The mountain like a castle, with jewels and beautiful things inside. What do they . . . ?”

The last picture showed a cave high in the peak of Tala-charen, where a Seer placed the box into a wall and covered it with stone. Then the gods turned and launched themselves into space like great wild birds soaring out.

And the procession of Seers turned back down the mountain. Ram knew then that because of the caching of the box there, men and gods no longer dwelled together. Had become at the moment of its placement apart from each other. This, then, was the cause of the parting. This box that held the most powerful force in Ere. This was why he was here, this force was, he knew, needed now upon Ere. And it was in his power to release it.