Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

Ram lay dying, couldn’t she . . . Ram, whose mind could open like the sweeping winds; the boy would one day be a Seer without peer. Already he wove patterns so intricate even Jerthon had trouble following. Ram could not die, the child who had clung to Jerthon in terror when the Seer of Pelli tore at him, who lay balanced now on an abyss of such peril. Ram who had woven the images of wolves into the night air and made Venniver’s guards follow them. Jerthon looked across at Drudd, thinking angrily, He will not die this night. He will not.

But Drudd stared back at him coldly. “You should have slipped out of the tunnel and taken the bell yourself. She is not reliable.”

“She will call Fawdref. She—Ram is her child . . .

“She doesn’t care enough. She cares for Ram, but not for what he is. She does not care that to lose Ram would be to jeopardize—Ere itself. That means nothing to her, would not if you told her.” Drudd scratched his bearded cheek irritably. “The damned girl is a danger. To you, to Ram, to us all. And she will defeat all we’ve worked for. You wait and see. The statue . . .”

“We can’t argue now, we haven’t the strength for it. There is something in her, something—she has power, Drudd.”

“She has a power better left alone. She doesn’t want it. If you force her to it, we will all be sorry. There is betrayal in her. This plan—four years breaking our backs for it, and she could destroy it She stinks of betrayal like a bad cheese.”

Pol looked at Jerthon, his thin freckled face showing alarm; and Jerthon turned at once to the business at hand, felt the Seers of Pelli forcing in stronger, felt Ram’s breathing falter. And Jerthon locked with HarThass in a straining hold of powers, weaving tangles of empty darkness to distract and confuse the Pellians, conjuring black holes in space beyond the Pellian’s powers to balance . . .

*

Tayba crawled up the cliff’s side, crying out in fear and desperation to Fawdref. Her hands and legs were bleeding. She groped upward onto cliffs like black abysses above her, holding the bell, protecting it from harm. Her desperation for Ram was terrible. Fawdref must come. He must help. She could not command the bell. Would her desperate need be enough? And then suddenly she felt a force surrounding her, pressing upward with her as if she battled shoulder to shoulder with others. She felt her own strength and the strength of others as one, forcing back the darkness, shattering the desolation. She felt their power together—all of them—holding Ram, making Ram live; pushing the cold Seer back.

She stood on a summit calling out, commanding Fawdref now; and knew she was one with Jerthon and the Seers. She did not question; felt her own power rise in her in a surge that brought tears . . .

And as she began to move upward again, clinging to stone, the boulders above her moved, and a bloodcurdling cry broke the night. Fawdref stood above her, his golden eyes on her. His voice terrible and powerful, his wild cry vibrating across the breadth of the night.

The pack was ranged around him on the cliff. Sentries stood out at either side. Fawdref started down the cliff toward her. He was an entity to himself, a ruler here; she was nothing. There was no gentleness in him now, as he had shown with Ram. She wanted to turn and run wildly and uselessly, was sick with fear as he moved catlike down the cliff; felt his disdain for her. He looked at her coldly, with contempt.

She felt Jerthon urging her, supporting her. Fawdref paused on the ledge above her. Her hands shaking, she held up the bell, then knelt in the wolves’ symbol of submission, the bell a talisman thrust up to him. She made a picture of Ram, of his fever and weakness; and she knew that Fawdref knew too well, saw all of it; she felt the wolf’s heavy power as he battled with the dark forces alongside Jerthon, felt his cool command of her, felt again that sense of many forces poised in an intricacy of balance that she could not comprehend; knew that somehow she was the fulcrum on which they waited, that now she alone could tip that balance, in bringing the power of the bell close, in augmenting Fawdref’s strength, in giving of that power in herself that she had so long denied. She clutched the bell in a cold grip, swung between terror and wonder. And suddenly Fawdref’s howl filled the night, stunning her anew. The pack wolves echoed, their voices shaking the wind, opening a vast realm. She felt Ram reach out to her in desperate need. She felt something within her rise up in surging power, saw spaces open and tumble, break around her in terrifying vastness. She felt her own power come whole and strong at last. It terrified her. The wolves cried out, touching stars unborn and souls unmade in a powerful animal lament. In raw prayer they were linked, all of them, and infinity vibrated in the wolves’ howling voices; infinity twisted inward into something larger than infinity, and she was part of it, she spoke beside Jerthon and Fawdref to command a vastness of space that left her breathless as they tore life from the cold realms of the dying to give it back to Ram.

And in the tumult, suddenly, Ram whispered.

His whisper stilled them like a shout. The wolves waited, heads lifted. Ram spoke fuzzily—then he shouted out in all his fury at the Pellian Seer, shouted with sudden, terrible strength.

She could feel the Pellian fall back, she could feel life fill Ram, feel the Seer turn away into blackness. In defeat.

She stood up, reached to touch Fawdref’s muzzle. The wolf came down to press against her, nuzzle her. She laid her hand on the broad dome of his head. He looked up at her and grinned a fine wolf grin, amused and cruel. Very knowing. Then he turned away from her in one liquid movement and slipped up into the night. He vanished, the pack vanished; and she stood alone high on the black cliff.

*

Ram rose from his bed and stood looking toward the mountain, sobered after his close brush with death. He could not feel Fawdref with him now, could not feel Tayba, though he was filled with wonder at her sudden power unleashed, a power so long hidden. And he knew that already it was becoming a dream to her, that in a few minutes more she would have convinced herself it had never existed, that what she experienced had been Fawdref’s doing, and Jerthon’s.

He returned to his bed very tired and curled up to sleep, warm under the blankets that Skeelie drew over him.

The slaves ate a little of their cold meal, then slept too—all but Jerthon. He could not sleep, but lay in the dark cell thinking of Tayba. Why did she deny what she held within her? Selfish, Drudd was thinking drowsily. Jerthon closed his mind to Drudd. But it was true; if she admitted to such a power, then she must align herself either with good or with evil. And if that choice were for good rather than evil, she would not be able to pursue her own whims regardless of their consequences. Not when she could wield such power over others. A selfish, small view of the world she took, he thought with fury.

It was a waste to ignore such power as hers. It angered him. He felt Ram, half waking, probe in with childlike curiosity. Why do you care? Why, Jerthon? Why do you care what Mamen does?

It is a waste, Jerthon repeated. Such power ignored is a waste.

I see. Ram slept again, only puzzling a little at what Jerthon held back from him, an interest in Tayba that was not purely one of righteous anger.

EIGHT

Alone on the cliff, Tayba stood looking down at the empty moon-washed plain, felt drained of all emotion and strength. No one spoke in her mind now. The power she had felt was gone—had never been there, was all illusion. Her aloneness stabbed at her like a knife. She started down the cliff trembling with apprehension and stood at last at the mountain’s base, gripped with terror at the emptiness, at the looming boulders. The eerie expanse panicked her—and she began to run suddenly and wildly toward Burgdeeth, dodging boulders and the reaching shadows, shivering, until at last she could see the lights of the town.