Below him, mounted soldiers slashed at the Hape, arrows flew, piercing its thick hide; swords were more useful than arrows as the soldiers rode in under its coils to slash at the softer belly. Ram felt Jerthon’s strength suddenly from somewhere—he was not in this lizard battle, was somewhere dark, sending his power but to Ram. Ram felt the wolves’ indomitable stubbornness as they fought; saw wings sweep above him and hooves slash as the winged ones themselves attacked the Hape, carrying two dozen Carriolinian troops. A winged horse screamed, swords flashed to cut at the Hape, dodging claws. Below, the battle was a melee; wolves were falling from the flailing snake down into the battle.
At last Ram clung alone as the winged ones surged around him dodging the Hape’s lashing heads while soldiers slashed out. Blood spurted. Ram had almost severed the cat-head when the other two heads swung toward him and the toothed eel reached to clutch at him, the eel-head horrifying, grinning, mouth open to devour. Below, soldiers were climbing now, straddling the whipping lower coils; and Ram could sense soldiers below in the dark rooms, sense Jerthon there battling in darkness. He worked frantically at beheading the neck to which he clung, slipping in the spurting blood.
All but spent, Ram felt the last neck sinews sever, saw the cat-head fall, felt the Hape weaken as blood spurted anew from the neck. He could feel the dark Seers’ forces gathered in surging hatred as the Hape writhed wildly, one neck headless and flailing, splattering blood, the eel-head coming down on him to tear him apart. He felt himself slipping and grabbed the severed neck bone, the only handhold, faced the eel-head in desperation and saw it had changed to a huge grinning head of a man.
*
Below in the castle Jerthon and two dozen troops routed Seers from locked rooms, tearing open bolted doors with a battering post; then turned suddenly to face torch-swinging Pellian troops. The battle was brutal in the half-dark, the torch fires swinging to show face of enemy, of friend, then swinging so only dark shadow lay before a man’s sword. A grim, desperate battle waged in the close, fetid dark. Jerthon’s men fought with a fierce hatred of that dark, fought with righteous fury until at last not a Pellian soldier remained standing, until all around their feet lay the dead and dying. Jerthon’s men swept past them to fling open farther doors down darker hallways. ‘Take no captives!” he shouted. “Kill them all, we want no captives such as these!” Not captives with Seer’s minds to trick them, not in this desperate bid for victory. And as doors were flung open, monsters slithered out, abominations leaping to embrace them—monsters cut down by Jerthon’s men, or sent trembling back to disappear when he held the runestone high before them.
And then in the cellars at last they came upon BroogArl secreted, as if he feared failure, among shadows; cringing. He stood suddenly, naked of flesh in a wild vision, white bone wielding a sword like flame, his sightless eyeholes seeing too clearly the stone in Jerthon’s hand. Jerthon dropped the jade quickly into the pouch at his waist. And dangling from BroogArl’s neck were the bloody heads of a dozen Carriolinian soldiers, comrades fallen in battle.
BroogArl raised white bony hands and brought forces down upon Jerthon and Pol that drove them to their knees. They sought to rise, sweating, straining.
The two powers held equal for a long moment; Jerthon was hardly aware of the battle above, so desperately did he bring his powers against BroogArl. But BroogArl’s force held Jerthon’s sword frozen. Jerthon strained, sweating, until at last the bone-man gave way for an instant and Jerthon leaped on him, splitting his skull with one blow, severing the head so it lay at his feet like a halved apple, gleaming white. Then it darkened, turned once more to BroogArl’s bearded head, split horribly, grinning in the last spasm of death.
And above the castle, as if the Hape and BroogArl were one, Ram at the same moment severed the snakehead. Both heads fell, BroogArl and snake, the dark powers mortally wounded and trying in desperation to rally, trying in desperation to change the Hape into another body; but failed to change it. And now all across Ere, as the dark Seers strove to buoy the Hape’s powers, the timid Seers began at last to come together in sudden resolve, to reach out toward Pelli, to lend the Carriolinians their strength. And that added force maddened the Hape further so it surged with its own last strength in leaping fury and rose uncoiling into the sky, its two severed necks bleeding, its man-face laughing horribly. It tore away treetops in its frenzy, ran wildly in the sky, and it was winged: leathery wings beating the wind. Ram clung to its neck, his hands slipping in blood. The wind tore at him, the Hape writhed, trying to unseat him. And then the winged ones came surging, darkening the sky, and from their backs riders shouted and swords flashed out.
The Hape flew lurching toward the sea. Ram gripped the slippery, bloody body, looked down at the rushing land, dug his knees deeper but was slipping, clung desperately to the severed neck. The wind nearly pulled him off, wind like giant hands tearing at him as the monster sped over Pelli’s coastal city. And now Ram could sense Jerthon and Pol, a second wave of soldiers leaping into the sky above the castle to follow the Hape, could sense as a wild dark melee the battle that singed around the base of the castle itself where Carriolinians and Pellians fought to take possession of the castle now that all inside it were dead; he caught a vision of the wolves fighting alongside mounted soldiers, wolves leaping to pull dark riders from their mounts. And then the winged ones were crowding the Hape’s flight closer so it clawed in the air and screamed.
They were over the sea, it rolled and churned below them. And Ram stared down at that wild water and knew, suddenly and coldly, that the Hape meant to dive into it, and he was filled with fear. For an instant everything seemed to pause, and then the Hape drove straight down toward the sea. Fury engulfed Ram. He cut hard into the thick hide until the Hape bellowed with pain and shivered the length of its body. But still it dove for the sea in a paroxysm of rage. Ram saw the sea coming fast, then was swallowed by it, tumbling in churning water, down, down, as the Hape twisted and thrashed. Ram kicked out, trying to free himself from the thrashing coils. The foaming surface above, dimly lit, seemed miles away. He could never hold his breath long enough to reach it, already his lungs were bursting. The Hape fought blindly, lashing the sea into storms. Ram tried to swim away from it, to fight upward, was suffocating. He had to breathe, had to. Shadows appeared above him, striking fear through him anew; then he saw that they were men. Suddenly he felt hands take him. He must breathe, must suck in air. Someone was lifting him through the churning water. The Hape’s tail thrashed at them, nearly tore them apart Jerthon—was it Jerthon there above him?
Yes, Jerthon. With terrible effort Jerthon pulled him free of the Hape; it roiled below them now so the water heaved and tore at them. Then the Hape grasped Jerthon in its claws and was pulling them down again. Jerthon pushed Ram free; someone dove past Ram. He had to breathe. He struck out feebly toward Jerthon, could see nothing clearly, knew he must suck water into his dying lungs; felt himself pulled upward again and began to kick in a feeble attempt to lift himself up.
He broke surface, sucked in air wildly, clutched at air, tried to call for Jerthon and could only gasp, knew he must dive for Jerthon. The sea was wild with the Hape’s thrashing, red with blood. Hands were pulling at him. He could not see Jerthon. He lost consciousness.
He woke heaving, throwing up water as someone pummeled him, rough hands pushed water out of him. He twisted around and sat up, searching blindly.
Jerthon stood over him, soaking wet, his tunic ripped into shreds. Ram shouted with relief at seeing him, tried to rise and went dizzy.
Only slowly did Ram sense Jerthon’s chagrin, understand the pain of his expression. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He could not read the sense of it, stared at Jerthon’s shredded tunic, was wildly glad Jerthon was alive, stared at the torn leather pouch where the runestone of Eresu had lain.
The bottom of the leather pouch was ripped away. The leather hung limp and empty.
Jerthon’s look was dark, full of misery. He could
not speak for some time. Ram dared not speak, dared not ask. When Jerthon did speak at last, his voice was tight and stilted. “It is—the runestone is in the sea.”
Ram rose, stood dripping and cold, dizzy. The runestone could not be lost. Not in the sea. Not . . .
“It is lost,” Jerthon said, his eyes miserable.
“I thought—I thought you would drown. How did you get out? You saved my neck down there.”
“Drudd pulled me out, pulled us both out,” Jerthon said, dismissing it.
Ram turned to stare at the sea. Its breakers plunged and rolled steadily. Only a pink-tinged swirl could be seen where the Hape had been. Only very slowly could he bear to face the loss of the stone. “The runestone: in . . . in the sea? But the—the Hape will have it then, it . . .
“The Hape is weak, Ram, nearly dead. If we—if we can defeat BroogArl’s forces completely, I think the Hape—with no strength from BroogArl’s men to draw into itself, I think the Hape may die.”
Ram stared at him, trying to collect his senses. To defeat Pelli, to prevent the Hape taking the stone . . . He stood at last, rallying himself. “Let’s get on with it. We’ve a war to win.” He gave the signal to mount. “I will ride behind you if Dalwyn can carry us both.”
Girded with fury at the loss of the stone, the band came down on the castle in wild force, joined with the troops there. They cornered Pellians against the castle wall and slaughtered them. They drove hard into the wood and found troops hiding, wounded, tired of battle, and slaughtered them. No Pellian could be let to live and use, if he carried Seer’s blood, his dark powers against them.
And the wolves killed many, fighting by the soldier’s sides, leaping, tearing, enjoying the attack in all their animal lust. When the battle had done, when not a Pellian could be found alive, the great band of wolves came all around Ram and stood looking up at him with bloody muzzles, grinning.
It was then Ram saw the tall white-haired figure slipping away into the wood. He swung around, staring. “That one, Fawdref! Where did he come from?”
The dogwolf looked at him a moment, licking blood from his lips before he answered. He came out of the wood, and fought beside us, Ramad. He is fierce as a wolf himself. He came out of a time you are yet to touch, moves driven by the winds of Time in a way he can seldom control. He is a lonely man. Lonely.
Ram stared at the wolf’s knowing eyes and felt his spirit lift suddenly with hope. Hope for Telien; for if Anchorstar moved on the winds of Time, then Anchorstar moved in the realms where she had been swept, and perhaps he could touch her there. “I will speak with him, I will summon him!” Ram cried, wild with his sudden need.
The great wolf moved close to Ram, pressing his shoulder against him, laid his head against Ram’s arm. He is gone, Ramad.
And though Ram searched the wood, there was no sign of Anchorstar or the dun stallion. Gone. Gone into Time. Why had Anchorstar come here, why had he fought here?
Jerthon’s troops stormed the castle, searching for stragglers they might have missed, holding back in secret rooms; and he and Ram came at last to the cellars. Jerthon turned BroogArl’s body over with his toe, thought of burying it, shook his head. “BroogArl can end in flame like his castle. Let’s get out of here, the smell of him makes me choke.”
“Jerthon, did we kill them all?”
Jerthon gave him a long look, touched unthinking the place in his tunic where the runestone had ridden, glanced down, his face dark with its loss. “Kill them all, Ram? What do you feel?”
They stood silently then, sensing out into Pelli, into all of Ere for that feel of dark that had ridden so long with them. After some moments their faces began slowly to lighten; they looked into each other’s eyes with hope flickering, then with a rising sense of victory. There was no trace of the evil now, no sense of BroogArl’s retinue, or of the cloying dark that had been the Hape. A sense of scattered, dark Seers, yes, drawn together at this time in their hatred of the light; but Seers separated by their own selfish ways, their own despotic little hierarchies, and as opposed to one another as quarreling snakes. There was no sense, with BroogArl and the Hape gone, of unity among those who were left.
“Kill them all, Ram?” Jerthon’s fatigue had left him. He lifted his head in triumph. “I hope perhaps we have. Killed all the power that resided here.”
Ram’s hope had lifted to wing outward as he examined the cool absence of massed evil. He wanted to shout suddenly, he embraced Jerthon with wild joy. “And the runestone—we will dive for it!”
Jerthon looked chagrined. “Dive, Ram? The sea in this place is deeper than any man can think to go. We were deeper than I would have thought possible. The stone . . . but perhaps we will think of a way.”
Ram gripped Jerthon’s shoulder. “The stone is gone, but we are not! We have won, man! We’ve destroyed the Pellian monsters!” And yet, as he tried to cheer Jerthon at the loss of the stone, beneath his own bravado lay a heaviness that would not subside. For the loss of the stone, yes. But the real pain there, like a dull knife wound, was for the loss of Telien.
Jerthon, seeing his pain, cuffed him and grinned. “Come, then, Ramad of wolves. Let’s make an end to this den of Hape. Come, watch the roasting while we bury the monsters in flame!”
They went up the dark stairways and into the dim hall, where Jerthon’s men were throwing the furniture into a great heap, stacking on logs from the castle’s firewood, building a tall pyre. In the upper rooms, the shutters were flung open to act as a chimney.
Jerthon took up a torch from those stacked beside the castle door, struck flint, and when the torch flared he lighted the pyre. Timbers and furnishings caught at once and began to burn hot and quick, the flame leaping upward in the draft from the windows above, the main hall soon so hot it drove them out through the wide double doors.
They stood in the murky wood watching as the Castle of Hape was consumed in flame. The winged ones crowded close to the soldiers, not liking fire, glancing again and again toward the sky as the flames leaped higher.
At last the castle’s stone walls began to crumble. The wolves pushed closer together, and Fawdref came to Ram. Ram stood abstracted, his hand on the dogwolf’s head, watching the burning of the castle until the old wolf began to nudge and push at him. No sensible wolf lingered near a fire in forest land. And no sensible man, either, Fawdref let him know. Ram knelt before the great wolf, but Fawdref drew back his lips at the rising flame and nudged Ram until he rose and backed away from the fire. And then, as if they could bear the fire no longer, the winged ones stirred and leaped suddenly skyward like hawking birds and were away toward the dark mountains.
The wolves pushed together in a great band to crowd around Ram, eager, too, to be away. Ram pulled Fawdref to him, reached to touch Rhymannie, was loathe to let them go, imagined with a sense of loss the great wolves streaking silently away up through Ere’s forests toward the Ring of Fire.
And suddenly, clearly, Ram knew that he must go with them. Must return to the cave where Telien had been. Must seek her first in that place. And were there secret runes in the old caves there that would tell him how to span Time? How to take himself into the spinning center of Time where Telien had gone?
TEN
Telien, swept like a chip in Time’s leaping river, could not stop herself. Her mind reeled with a hundred places tumbling one atop another, with cities, with voices and faces and smells jumbled. And then suddenly she sensed that someone was with her, reaching out to her. A girl, someone close, someone caring—someone who seemed like a sister. She had never had a sister. She felt tears come in her eyes at the sudden touch of warmth, this sense of someone young and caring reaching out to push away the terrifying loneliness, to push back the vast reaches of Time. For Skeelie had reached out to her, and Telien clung to that sense of strength with terrible desperation.
Skeelie had been resting after battle, exhausted, dirty, starved, when she began to think strongly of Telien.
All across Ere troops had b
attled the forces of the dark Seers, forces boiling out of the hills, small dark bands riding fast out of isolated camps to wield destruction across Carriol, just as Jerthon laced destruction down upon the Castle of Hape. That had been Jerthon’s secret. She had Seen at last, and known. And Ram had known. She and Berd and Erould and the men of Blackcob had joined Carriol forces in mid-battle up the Somat Cul, pursuing stolen horses, cutting down dark raiders. And, as in Pelli BroogArl had died, and then as the Hape’s body had died, the forces that Skeelie’s band battled had diminished. Without the dark powers to force them back, Carriol’s troops had begun to slaughter the Herebian in a wholly satisfying manner, had driven them out until not a raider remained on Carriol soil alive. And the dark blocking had pulled back, and Skeelie had Seen, not only the battle in Pelli but the battles that flared up across other parts of Carriol, battles being won now by Carriol’s troops.
Yes, she thought bitterly, Jerthon had shielded his knowledge of that attack on Pelli from her. He had kept it secret—in order to shield the knowledge from Ram. In order to give Ram his moments with Telien, undisturbed. She bit her lip with fury, with pity for Telien, with emotions she could not sort out. Had Jerthon known that Telien’s time was so short?
Skeelie and old Berd, his white beard flying, and Erould with blood running down his dark hair, had fought shoulder to shoulder the dark Herebians high in the loess hills until those still able to ride had fled from them.
Now the men, sensing no new attack, sensing with growing eagerness the feel of victory in Pelli, had gone downriver to rest and to care for their mounts. Skeelie, alone in an isolated bend of the river, stripped to the buff and washed away the white loess dust, the sweat and blood of battle, had rinsed out her clothes and sat now shivering as they dried over a hastily built fire. Her cuts burned. One sword wound along her arm was deeper. She laced it with birdmoss from the riverbank, to soak away the poison. She bet she was a pretty sight, all scarred. But who was to see? Who would care? She could hear the men’s voices downstream, and the voices of the women farther upstream.
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