Runestone of Eresu

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  No one knew where Ram was, she could not sense him now as she had so short a time ago, but the feeling that he would come was intense; and her awful sense of pain remained, pain soon to be known; and she felt she could not face its coming.

  Maybe she was imagining it, maybe the fighting and strain of these last days had put wild ideas into her head, maybe Telien was not the same girl at all. But she knew better, knew Ram would come and that with his coming something in her life would change, would die; that she would be truly alone. And—it seemed to her that something terrible waited, something beyond her own pain, but she could not sense its shape, could not put a name to it.

  Curse the fettering destruction of their Seers’ powers. The sense of strength she had felt in the ruins, when Ram was freed at last of Burgdeeth, the power she had sensed then when they had all beheld that vision—now it seemed to be fading. What had it been, that power? Was it a strength of the mountain, fading now that those thundering peaks had quieted? A vision would come so suddenly, then be cut away again. Maybe . . . did it come clear while BroogArl’s attention was focused elsewhere, perhaps? While he was strung taut with the conflict of some battle? Did Pelli raid Farr and Aybil, too? Perhaps for supplies? Was it only then, preoccupied, that BroogArl loosed his powers? And then, in his sudden rousing to their increased strength, did he lay hard on them again to destroy that strength?

  And the sense of something else bothered her, too. As if someone else were blocking her powers of Seeing, someone . . . Was there something unfinished in Carriol? Was Jerthon hiding something from her, blocking her senses? But why would he? Oh, it was her imagination run loose. What would Jerthon hide from her, and why?

  She removed her saddle with mechanical motions, plunging deeper into despair, turned away from Berd when he reached to take her saddle, his old, wrinkled face twisted with concern for her. She was rubbing saddle marks from her horse’s back when a farmer standing high on his shed roof waved his hammer and shouted, “Winged one! Winged one and rider. A Seer . . .”

  Skeelie stood frozen, saw one soldier running, saw Berd drop the saddles; she began to run too, toward the gray stallion winging down on the wind, dropping in silence between cottages. She saw Ram slide down, pale with fatigue. She felt the sense of Telien strongly. He was awash with concern for her. Telien, lying in a cave, hurt. She went to him then, began, with the soldier and Berd, to gather the stores he needed.

  Mechanically, painfully, but with efficiency, she put into a pack herbs and salve, dried meat and new bread, roots, a pot to cook in, blankets, waterskins. She saw one soldier tying firewood into bundles, saw one preparing grain and feed. She worked dully, mechanically, caught in desolation.

  When Ram stood looking down at her, prepared to depart, she could only look back at him and did not trust her voice to speak. His brown eyes were dark with pain—for Telien, but for her, too. And that made her feel worse. He pitied her, was trying to be gentle with her! She could not bear pity and gentleness, swallowed, could not speak. Choked back tears she would not let him see.

  He extended his hand. “Friends, Skeelie? Skeelie . . . ?” He touched her arm. She turned away from him, then turned back with effort to look him straight in the eye.

  “I hope she—that she will be well quickly, Ram. That you will care—care well for her.” She took his hand then with a solemnity she had not intended and could not avoid. “Good-by, Ram. Ramad of wolves . . .”

  She turned and walked away. She did not run until she was out of sight beyond the sheds. Then she ran straight down the hill to the river and among the boulders to a sheltered place, pushed her face against a boulder, choking back sobs until she could no longer choke them back, until she could not help the sobs that escaped her aching throat.

  *

  The flight of the silver stallion was heavy now, loaded with bundles such as no winged one before him had ever had to suffer. Like a pack donkey, he let Ram know with some humor as he thundered aloft on straining wings. And Ram, so lost in remorse for Skeelie, so ridden with her pain, gave back little of humor, could only quip weakly that perhaps pack donkeys should grow wings.

  The sun was low in the west, the dying afternoon stifling as heat rose from the cooling lava. Smoke drifted up, still, in the north between far peaks, and ash drifted down, burning Ram’s throat and making Dalwyn cough. At last they winged over above the cave and dove for its lip—and on the lip of that drop, Telien stood poised as if she would step into empty space. Before her, nearly without foothold, Fawdref couched. Ram could feel the wolf’s furious growl before he heard it.

  The stallion remained motionless on the wind above her, weighted, struggling. One step and Telien would be over. Fawdref edged into her, forcing her back with bared teeth. She stared at him uncomprehending, and Ram felt her whisper, ‘They are waiting in the garden. I don’t . . . I must go to them!” Ram tried wildly to reach her mind, to awaken her, and could not. Fawdref pushed her another step back. The stallion dropped down to the ledge, and Ram leaped clear, was beside her lifting her away, saw Rougier winging down from the sky then, answering Fawdref’s summoning from some far distant grazing.

  He laid Telien again on the stone shelf. Her ash-covered hair fell around her like dulled silver. She looked up at him blankly, her green eyes far away, seeing beyond him into—into what?

  When he had stripped the packs from Dalwyn, seen the stallion leap skyward beside Rougier, he made a small fire, put a pot of water to boil, added herbs for tea, and began to prepare a meal for her. He laid out fresh bread and cold roasted meat, cicaba fruit that Skeelie had carried from Carriol, then put into his pack.

  When the tea was ready, he led her to the fire. She knelt, held her hands to the warmth. Her eyes were softer now, very needing; she seemed so very frail. Yet beneath that frailty must lie an indomitable strength, to have brought her through that burning land; and, too, to have sustained her those long years living under AgWurt’s rule. He poured out tea for her and held it so she could drink strong, aromatic tea. “You were far away, Telien. Can you tell me where?”

  She pushed her hair away from her face, struggled to remember. “I was . . . it was spring, Ram. Suddenly it was spring, and I was in a garden in the center of a wood. But a dark, ugly garden, all in morliespongs and ragwort and beetleleaf, great dark leaves, and someone was calling to me, soldiers were watching me and I—I must . . .” she stopped, raised her eyes to him. “Where was I to go? What were they telling me to do?”

  “Was there a building there in the garden?”

  “A—yes! A dark hall, a terrible dark castle with heads! Its top was made of three huge heads! The eyes were windows, the mouths . . .”

  He stared at her, chilled through. The Castle of Hape had touched her. BroogArl had touched her. But why?

  Why? Because Telien would hold the runestone, was being drawn inexorably toward the runestone—being drawn into Time, the dark Seers pulling at her in their lust to have the stone.

  Were they manipulating Telien into Time? Or were they simply following, like jackals, seeking to control her and so to take the stone?

  He knelt beside her, tucked the blanket around her, and handed her the plate, found he was ravenous himself. Down in the cave the foal was playing while Meheegan ate of the grain Ram had brought, an expression on her face of wonderful pleasure and contentment. He watched Telien lay her meat on the bread in the Herebian way, taste it appreciatively, then fall to as if she had discovered quite suddenly how hungry she really was. But soon enough she seemed exhausted with the effort of eating, lay down with her head on his lap, her color gone. “What is it, Ram? What’s the matter with me?”

  Could it be the wound on her forehead? It was so like the one he had received as a child. That had made him dizzy and sick, though he was never certain how much of that misery was due to the wound and how much to the dark Seer’s attacks on his mind. Attacks that had left him unconscious or delirious while his mind wandered in terrifying vastnesses.

&nbs
p; “Ram, tell me what is happening to me.”

  “You have had a bad blow on the head. Did you fall?” He saw her nod imperceptibly. “But—but more than that, Telien. The ice and snow. You—you have stumbled out of Time. Into another time, somewhere . . . Just as I did once.”

  Meheegan looked up from eating. Telien watched the colt for a moment, in perfect harmony with the mother and foal. But her eyes were large with the fear that would not leave her. “I think, if you would tell me what happened to you that . . . maybe I would be less afraid.”

  He did not like telling her. And yet he had known he must, for she had a part in this. If it was still to happen to her, she had better know all she could. He moved close to her. She fit against him, warm, so close. She smelled of honey, he had never noticed that. Distracted, he brought his mind back with effort to his journey into Tala-charen, told her how he had gone there to find the runestone, meaning to stop the evil that Venniver wove in Burgdeeth, meaning to help free Jerthon and the slaves, meaning to battle the Pellian Seers in their increasing sweep of evil upon Ere. He told her how he and Skeelie and the wolves had climbed the icy mountains, fought the ice cat, the fire ogres, had come at last into the cave at the top of Tala-charen to face the dragon gantroed. How, when he found the runestone, it had split in white heat, and figures had appeared come out of time to take the shards. How he had seen Telien there.

  She stared at him, swallowed, considered this. “I was there, Ram? I was in that place. But I have not been.” She looked at him for a long time, as if she were memorizing his face. “Then—that is what is happening to me. I am falling through Time. The snow and ice, that was—I am being pulled back there—Tala-charen.” She shuddered, took his hand. “I—I will see you there. Ramad the child . . .” She put her head against his shoulder, clung to him, trembling and cold. But when she lifted her face she seemed to have come to terms with it. “You—you cannot prevent it.” It was not a question. “You . . .” She reached to stir the dying fire, then turned back to him smiling tremulously. “Tell me—tell me why you lived in Burgdeeth. You were a Seeing child. How did a Seeing child come there to Venniver, to that cruel man? Tell me about your life then, when you were small.”

  “I suppose I must start with the day I was born,” he quipped.

  “Yes,” she said seriously. “Yes, that would be best, I think.”

  Evening was. falling, the fire low. A faint breeze blew down to them from the mouth of the cave, and there was the dullest smear of moonlight behind the ashen sky. She settled into his arms once more and he began to tell her. “I was born a bastard. A bastard conceived of my mother’s spite at being sold into unwanted marriage. I was deserted by my father before Tayba bore me. She found her way to a powerful old woman living alone on Scar Mountain. There in Gredillon’s hut I was born and reared until I was eight.” He drew the wolf bell from his tunic. The rearing bitch wolf shone softly in the muted moonlight.

  “Gredillon gave me this. It stood on her mantel. She put it into my hands minutes after I was born. She said I was born to it.” At the sight of the bell Fawdref, dozing in shadow, spoke in muffled voice, a low, whining moan of pleasure. Telien touched the bell gently, tracing the line of the rearing wolf.

  “As a small child, I called the foxes and jackals with the bell. When I was eight, the Seer HarThass, three days ride away in Pelli, discovered my skills and sent my father EnDwyl after me, to bring me to be trained as a Pellian Seer.

  “Mamen and I ran away across the black desert toward Burgdeeth. EnDwyl followed us, riding out with an apprentice Seer on fast horses, overtook us as we were nearly into Burgdeeth. I—I called the wolves, then, Telien. In my fear of EnDwyl, I called the great wolves, wolves for the first time, called them down from the mountains to save us. It was . . .” He felt again that thrill, that overriding exaltation diminishing even his terrible fear of their pursuers. “The wolves came streaming down from the mountains, running like great shadows swiftly over the land. Fawdref was young then. Fierce as now. He . . . the wolves would have killed both men, had I not stopped them. EnDwyl held a knife at Tayba’s throat. To save her, Fawdref set EnDwyl free.”

  He held her tight to him, aroused by the memory of fear, of that first time the wolves surged around him; sharing this with her, aroused by Telien. He took her face in his hands. How perfect the bones. Her eyes were huge, so clear. Something in him had always been missing since that moment on Tala-charen. And now it was not missing.

  She studied his face with great concentration. “When I was a child, Ram, before my mother died, I used to dream of someone—I was always alone, even with other children. I felt as if I were waiting for someone.

  “When I grew older, when AgWurt brought our band up into Kubal, I . . . the men treated me badly. But always I thought there was someone who would not. Who would care. Who would know how I felt without my speaking of it, who would be . . .”

  When he kissed her, they belonged to the mountain, belonged to Ere’s moons, to the stars reeling and to Ere’s winds: belonged to that vortex in Time when time mattered not.

  *

  He woke before dawn with a sense of intense pleasure, then was twisted awake and plunged into terrible dread by a clear vision. Carriol was at war, engaged in a battle unlike earlier attacks, a battle in which all in Carriol fought the dark Seers. He sat up, flinging the covers back, Saw the attack all across Carriol, every little farm and croft, Saw Jerthon’s battalion riding hard—but away from Carriol! He stared into the darkness, Saw where Jerthon rode, straight for Pelli! Fast and heavily armed. Three battalions remained in Carriol and they battled the fierce Herebian attacks in skirmishes all across Carriol’s fields and woods. Ram rose, felt the emptiness suddenly, turned back to the stone shelf, and saw that Telien was gone.

  He lit tinder, stared around the cave, saw the wolves lined up at the cave mouth and felt their voices, felt Meheegan’s voice. Yes, Telien was gone. Gone utterly. Gone not only from this place, gone out of Time itself, gone this instant as he woke—and they could not prevent it. Ram leaped for the cave mouth shouting her name, spun around to stare back into the cave in bewilderment, snatched up the wolf bell and sent his power winging out to find her—felt no breath of her. “Telien! Telien!” He drove with every strength he possessed to surge across space and time seeking Telien.

  He could touch nothing but emptiness.

  At last he subsided into cold defeat, and then the battle in Carriol engulfed him once more, against his will. Fawdref came to him, mourning Telien with opaque, distant-focused eyes; but alarmed, too, by the battle, tense with it as a wolf is tense stalking prey.

  And now Ram began to sense that all across Ere Seers were stirring to the call of battle. He gripped the wolf bell, trying to force clarity to the breath of vision he touched, saw at last dark leaders raise their eyes as the harsh vibrations of battle touched their twisted minds; for this battle had to do with them, this balance of evil and light to do with them. Slowly Ram felt the slippery and the watchful reach out toward the dark wood, to bring their forces under the powers of Hape.

  And he sensed that all across Ere gentle Seers, too, Seers who had moved unrecognized among men, hidden in fear, had begun at last to yearn again, to test their unused powers, to stand taller, to shake off their fear of discovery and listen with widening senses. And they, too, reached out toward Pelli—but, cowards too long, they were now afraid to bring their powers to battle the Pellian Seers, and they paused, ridden by confusion. They might have helped Jerthon, might have laid themselves unto a stronger master and thrown their forces with Jerthon; but they were too weakened by their own failures, too afraid.

  Ram shouted for Dalwyn, laid his hand on Fawdref’s head. Fawdref stared at him with an inexplicable look. Ram knelt, threw his arms around the shaggy, beloved neck, stayed so in silence for a long moment, heard the commotion at the mouth of the cave then and rose to join Dalwyn—but a great band of winged ones was descending, and only slowly did he understand what was
happening, only belatedly see a huge band of wolves streaming down the mountain: Fawdref’s small family tribe and more; the entire band of the great wolves. They must have come from caves all over the mountain, perhaps had been waiting in the mountain for the fires to cool, must have gathered at their leader’s call, for they glanced again and again at Fawdref as they moved down, their tongues lolling, their eyes keen and predatory. Ram stood stricken with wonder as they surged down the mountain and then, by ones and twos, by half a dozen at a time, began to jump to winged backs as the horses of Eresu swept in close to the ledge: wolves leaping to crouch between the horses’ great wings. He saw Fawdref leap past him and settle between the wings of a dark mare, saw wolves riding in the sky in a spectacle that left him numbed. And he understood: it was their battle, too. The defeat of the Hape belonged to them, to all of them, not to men alone.

  Dalwyn was there, snorting, eager, his eyes like fire. Ram swung onto his back, he leaped clear of the mountain; they were windborne, a surging mass of winged ones sweeping into the morning sky, wings spread across miles of sky. They swept over the scorched earth then across green hills as the morning light came brighter, across woods like dark seas below them. When they crossed the river Urobb where it flowed into Pelli, the winds were high and cold, buoying a hundred pair of wings. They swept above sheep fields and crofts toward the dark wood, and saw beyond it the cold sea.

  Below them rose the dark castle surging with battle that raged across her fetid gardens and up the castle walls. The scream of horses and the clash of swords came sharp on the wind, and new bands of Pellian soldiers were riding fast out from the dark wood. The Hape had taken the form of an immense lizard, twisted around the castle itself, its three heads snatching up men and tossing them like sticks: head of horned cat, head of toothed snake, head of eel tearing at the soldiers’ flesh. Dalwyn dropped suddenly upon the writhing lizard. Ram leaped, was clutching one scaly neck. Around him, winged horses dove and wolves jumped for the lunging coils, clinging, tearing at its scaly hide. Ram’s knife flashed. The Hape reared, swelled in size, grew so huge the castle was nearly hidden beneath its writhing coils. Ram rode the scaly neck, trying to sever the cat-head, and the Hape’s power was like hands tearing him away.