The feet went on. She could hear sounds as if he were gathering up the horses. The other warrior came out, leading the wraith. It paused to look into her face. She kept her eyes closed, could feel its interest like a lance. When it continued to stare, she could not help but open her eyes. Its face was loose over the bones. Its pale, dead eyes were sunken deep, the whites gone yellow. Eyes dark-ringed, expressionless, looking deep inside her, seeing things she did not want it to see. The cold sense of the creature gripped her. She stifled the need to cry out, turned her face away from it with horror. What was this thing, dwelling in a man’s body?
The thing crawled on at last, but pulled constantly against its lead back toward the darkness. The Herebian kicked it to move it along, then bound it to a boulder and left it; then he returned to stand over Skeelie.
“Get up!”
She lay as if unconscious.
The man grabbed her by the shoulder and flung her up like a bag of meal, scraping her bound hands beneath her across the rocky wall. He pushed her against the wall, and when she struggled, he hit her hard. She lunged at him, bit his hand, then crouched, doubled with pain when he struck her in the stomach.
“Not the sort of female I relish,” the one called BolLag said.
“Female’s female, What’s the difference. Throw her over the saddle and tie her down good. I’ll take the fight out of her tonight.”
“But she’ll only slow us HaGlard. What—”
“Hoist ’er!”
Skeelie was thrown across a saddle face down, her head hanging. The horse shied and snorted, then went still and trembling, as if it would bolt any minute. The breath was knocked out of her. The saddle pressed deep into her ribs, smelled of rancid oil. She could feel Torc somewhere close by, gauging her position, gauging her best angle of attack. Don’t, Torc! Wait until they separate. Follow us, Torc, and wait! The man called HaGlard had said westward. Would they carry her in the direction of Tala-charen? But maybe she needn’t wait, for they had not tied her to the saddle yet, though her hands and feet were tied and she felt nearly helpless, belly down across the horse. Still, the Herebian who held the reins had turned away to tend another mount. Her horse was nervous, trembling at its strange burden: it would take little to make it leap away. To make it run. She could sense Torc slipping closer, then could feel the wolf’s tenseness as she crouched.
Now, sister! Gig it! Gig it!
She kicked the animal’s shoulder, its belly. It screamed and leaped away, nearly dumping her. BolLag cried out, swearing, as the reins were jerked from his hand. Skeelie clung to the saddle, her ribs bruised, as the terrified horse crashed through tall grass along the cliff. She could feel turmoil behind her, knew that Torc had leaped for a horse’s throat. It was all she could do to cling, to balance on the plunging horse. She could hear another horse running.
She felt Torc behind her at last. Felt Torc swerve, sensed an arrow released. She heard a horse scream, twisted around in the saddle enough to glimpse a riderless horse careening away. Her own horse spun, nearly spilling her, and began to scramble in terror up the boulders. She was slipping, tried to sense what was happening. Torc! Torc! Felt Torc leap and pull at her. Now, sister! Now! She slid off the crazed horse nearly under its hooves, rolled free as it plunged away, and lay still among boulders, hurting all , over, trying to collect her senses.
She felt Torc’s warm breath on her wrist, Torc’s teeth, as the bitch-wolf chewed at the rope.
Skeelie’s hands were free. She bent to untie her feet, struggled with ropes, jerked them loose at last, and they leaped together up the side of the cliff and began to climb, Torc slowing, waiting for her as, behind them, a rider drew bow. They slipped behind rock. Skeelie heard the two men running over gravel. “There, HaGlard, they climb there!” She ran blindly, following Torc, trusting Torc’s keener senses as the wolf swerved into a cave, ran in darkness. She was terrified of being trapped there weaponless, could hear the Herebians gaining, was panting with fear as running footsteps echoed close behind, then felt Torc swerve back to attack—but there was sudden silence behind them.
Torc had stopped, stood listening, feeling out.
Low voices slurred by echo against the cave walls into senselessness. But voices coming closer in the formless dark. They have no light, sister. They have left the lantern or lost it. Help me—help me bring a vision upon them, for they fear the dark caves.
Together, Torc and Skeelie brought darkness down thicker and deeper than the cave’s darkness, darkness with the sense of gods in it. The Luff’Eresi towered, winged creatures half-man and half-horse, violent in their power and righteousness, brought their fury into the cave, so their hatred of the weak and twisted filled the cave with an awesome thundering power, so real and frightening that Skeelie wondered afterward if she and Torc alone had wrought such splendor and felt that they had not. Felt that what they had formed there was aided by something unknown.
They sensed the warriors’ fear, felt them stumble and turn; heard them running out of the cave. Skeelie felt Torc’s silent wolfish laugh. A fine vision, sister. Fine. They search for their horses now. They will leave us, never fear. And the terror of our vision will follow them. And I—I will follow them. 1 must follow them.
They stood together, just inside the dark entrance to the cave, and watched the two Herebians drive their horses to a central point against the cliffs and capture them. Watched them strip the dead horse of its gear, then force the captive wraith up onto one of the animals and tie him to the saddle.
Skeelie did not want to think of Torc leaving her, but the bitch wolf must do as she had committed herself to do.
When it is away from you, when it can no longer enter your body, I can kill it, sister.
“But you said, if it is freed from that body it will take another. Become more powerful. The Herebians are strong, they—”
They must separate when they make camp, to hunt, to gather wood, to see to the horses. I will follow until I can kill them both, one at a time. Then only the wraith will be left, and when I kill it, it will wander bodiless and so grow weak. It cannot enter into me, it has not that power, sister. That shadow killed my cubs. If I do not kill it, I will cripple it so it finds the body useless, yet cannot escape it.
The riders headed up toward the west side of the valley, hurrying their horses. Torc’s very spirit seemed to follow them, heavy and predatory. Ramad would bid me stay with you, sister, but I cannot. Ramad is not here to bid. The bitch wolf’s eyes never left the receding figures as they urged their horses up between the rocky cliffs. I must trail that darkness, sister, and destroy it.
Skeelie knelt, put her arms around Torc’s shaggy neck, pressed her face into the bitch-wolf’s golden coat. The great wolves had comforted her and Ram in their childhood, were her security in a deep, indestructible way. She felt tears come, hugged Torc hard. The wolf’s warmth and strength flowed through her; the bitch-wolf licked her neck, took her arm between killer’s teeth, gently, in a timeless salute.
Then Torc was gone down across the valley past the molten lake, leaping through the grass on the far side of the valley, then up the cliffs until she was lost from view. Gone in one instant. Gone.
Skeelie turned away at last, annoyed at herself for feeling such loss. Torc did what she had to do.
Skeelie made her way along the rim of the valley to where the two Herebians lay dead, retrieved her pack and bow, her arrows, searched for her sword, knowing well she would not find it, and cursed the Herebians sharply. It was lucky she had hidden her pack and bow. She searched the dead warriors for sword or knife, but their friends had stripped them of everything useful. At last she entered the cave where the wraith had crawled and snuffled and began to search for what it had found there, striking her flint over and over until she had collected eight pieces of what looked like a small clay bowl. It puzzled her, for there seemed indeed to be a power about it. She climbed the cliff to some stunted trees, gathered pitch on a sharp rock, and stuck the pieces toge
ther: a bowl with a small, useless base. Then, with rising excitement she turned the bowl over and saw that it was not a bowl at all, but a bell. What had seemed the base was a part of the broken handle. She held the bell on her open palm, lightly, and memories flooded back to her. Ram had grown up in a house of bells, hundreds of bells collected by Gredillon, she who had raised him and taught him his Seer’s skills. Had this bell something to do with Ram? Did it hold some message for her? Had it led her here? In Gredillon’s house of bells, the wolf bell had stood on the mantel, presiding over Ram’s birth, and with it he had learned to call down the jackals and foxes before ever he spoke to the great wolves.
The strength of this bell was what the wraith had felt and thought it the runestone, though there was little comparison. The bell had a power, but not like the runestone of Eresu.
Still, it spoke to her. She closed her eyes and let it bid her. It made no vision, but led her directly, gently, to the fiery lake with so strong a bidding that she hardly saw the rocky ground, saw little clearly until she stood on the lake’s shore, staring down at the blood-red lava. The heat was intense and soon nearly unbearable, so she ripped open her collar, then at last removed her tunic.
The vision came suddenly, turning the lake black as jet, and she saw Ram reflected in a brief flash of battle, his face smeared with blood and his mouth open in a silent shout. Then the lake grew red and boiling again. As if she had dreamed and was only now awakening, something shouted silently, Open your mind, Skeelie. Open your mind and look. She tried to see deeper, then closed her eyes at last and let herself float on the incredible heat, letting go, felt a calm take her and opened her eyes to feel cool wind above the red lake. Then the colors of lake and mountains began to dim, to soften, and the sky to grow iridescent, the grass along the cliffs to turn silvery. And mists were blowing across the lake forming the shapes of creatures, shimmering, animals crowding all around her, mythical animals, a silver triebuck, a pale snow tiger, animals she could not afterward remember, all cream and silver and pale-hued. At first they did not move or blink. Then one shifted, its movement so slight she was not sure she had seen movement. Another turned its head deliberately to stare at her, but the motion was so smooth it might have been only shifting light. And yet it stared, its eyes like translucent moons.
And then came a great dark lumbering animal pushing between the others. It was all movement and weight, was neither bear nor bull, but so strangely made that it seemed both of these. It came shouldering up to Skeelie, smelling of musky deep places half-forgotten and carrying heat about it, a breath of musky heat. She could see the ridges and roughness of its coarse-haired hide. It knelt before her suddenly and clumsily.
She knew she was meant to mount. She watched its little dark eyes. A shudder rippled her skin. She took up her pack, her bow. The beasts stood watching, silver and tawny pale, the great dark animal like a misshapen mountain patiently awaiting her.
She mounted at last, swung up onto the beast’s broad, warty back and settled herself into its heavy folds of rough skin. It wheeled with her, and the wind caught her face; she saw the other animals wheel in a blaze of silver, lifting into the wind, lifting through white space. Valley and lake vanished in a blur. Space was light, and light was Time, and nothing existed but this moment endless across wind, careening, wind tearing at her.
The animal’s body was warm, but her pack and bow were like ice against her back. Her hands gripped the warty skin along its neck. They sped through space, leaped winds. Time melted into one great wind, and she rode at its center, her blood pounding in her ears. The pale beasts crowded against her legs in their headlong flight, their wind-torn breath warming her. Once the great dark beast turned its head to look back at her, and its eyes shone white and wild in that dark, ugly face.
They sped through a world of ice and crystal and pale shadows. Pastel-tinted waters slid past against pale hills. White sunsets rose before them like great diamonds, and on they sped. The animals’ occasional clash of hoofbeats over rock was like the sound of jewels spilled on marble. Time was the wind rushing past them in tearing waves, showing now a bloody snatch of battle, now a peaceful village, all vanishing at once. A face, a woman crying out, a scene of death. All gone at once.
Then suddenly, with no change of motion, the beast had ceased to move. He stood still upon a ridge of craggy stone. Skeelie sat staring dumbly about her, realized they were still, realized that the wind had stopped, the flight stopped. The pale beasts stood silently around her and then began to fade. Her own steed was fading; she must slide down, must not fade with them.
She dismounted, shaky and unsteady, stood staring helplessly as the beasts became thin and transparent. They shimmered as if they were seen through water; then they were gone.
She stood alone on a mountain path in bright midmorning.
The sense of wild flight and of terrible cold, and of the beast’s warmth and its musty scent, clung about her. Midmorning in what time? A path in what place?
FOUR
She stood on a narrow, rocky trail. Far below her sprawled a city, and beyond it gleamed them pale smear of open water. The Bay of Pelli? The Bay of Sangur? Or could it be the wilder sea beyond Carriol? At the thought of Carriol her heart contracted with longing. Could that city be part of Carriol, a city grown beyond her wildest dreams? No, from the position of the sun she must be looking south toward the Bay of Pelli. And this mountain was far too close to the coast to be a part of the Ring of Fire. It could only be Scar Mountain, standing just above Zandour. Scar Mountain, where Ram had been born; and like a whisper the tree man’s words touched her, stirred her, Follow the source of Ramad’s beginning. Touch the place of his childhood and his strength.
Could this be the time of Ram’s childhood? The thought excited and terrified her. Up this narrow path would she find Gredillon’s house carved into the side of the mountain? Find the young Ramad there, a child, as she had first known him? Would his Seer’s skills tell him that she would one day be his friend, in time still ahead of him? She started up the path with bent head, uncertain in her emotions. Was she afraid to see Ram so, small and vulnerable? She felt very tired suddenly, almost weak. She realized she was hungry and could not remember when she had last eaten. Early morning beside Gravan’s campfire? No, she remembered cooking rock hares on the mountain. That seemed a lifetime ago. She turned a bend in the path, thinking of her empty stomach, and came on the stone house abruptly. Stone slabs against the mountain, heavy timber door.
It was just as Ram had shown her in their childhood visions. Inside, she would find it carved deep into the mountain, half-house, half-cave. And its walls would be all carved into shelves where stood hundreds of bells wrought of amber and clay and amethyst, of tin and of precious glass and bronze. How often, when he waked from nightmares, had Ram yearned after his home, yearned for Gredillon? Was the bell woman here, waiting for her to push open the door just as she had waited for Ram’s mother before Ram was born? Was Ram here?
She remembered the clay bell in her hand then. But her fist was tight, and when she opened her palm, only clay dust lay there. Had she shattered it in the excitement of the wild ride? In her tense climb up the mountain? She could not remember. Or had it shattered itself, when its mission was done? She mourned its loss, felt a strange fear because she could not remember when she had last held it lightly, when she had clenched her fist so tight. She did not like to be unable to account for her actions. She knocked and waited, knocked again, and then with sudden impatience, almost with fear, she flung the door open and lurched inside, hastily pushing it to behind her.
The room was very dim, with only small, shuttered windows to light it, the shutters partly broken, with some of the heavy slats hanging crooked. There were plates on the table, and chairs pulled out as if a meal had just been finished. But the food was petrified into dry greenish lumps; and a layer of dust thick as gauze covered plates, table, the chairs and beds, covered shapeless litter scattered across the floor, heaps of r
ags or clothes, and the scattered bits of what she made out to be broken bells, as if someone had pulled them from the shelves in a rage and flung them on the stone floor. She remembered then, Ram telling of his father’s fury when he came searching for Ram and could not find him; how he had torn this house apart, searching. She remembered Ram’s words suddenly and sharply. Ancient scenes began to rise out of the dust, and voices to speak in the room. She was immersed suddenly and wholly in Ram’s childhood, immersed in joy, in pain, in a dozen scenes, sweeping her through those painful, growing years until she was a child again herself, loving Ram with all her child’s soul.
She stood, drained at last, with tears running down her cheeks. The room loomed dim and gray around her. Now that she knew this part of Ram’s life, knew it too well, the pain of it would never leave her.
Near the hearth lay a small boy’s tunic, its shape plain under the blanket of dirt. She knelt to pick it up, and it fell apart in her hands. When she touched the cover of one of the three cots, the thread disintegrated under her exploring fingers. She shivered, hugging herself, trying to drive out the cold. If she went down into the city of Zandour, which lay below this mountain, would she find it dead and moldering, too?
Or if Zandour were a city still alive, would she hear talk of a long-dead Ramad of the wolves?
She had a strong desire to clean this room, to sweep away the dust and collect the broken bells, make it clean and livable. Perhaps to stay here awhile. But in hope of what? That Ram would come to her in this long-lost place? She looked at the petrified food on the table with distaste, at the dusty bed.
She knew she must sleep, she was achingly tired, but did not find the thought of sleeping in this room very pleasant, because of the decay, because of the painful scenes the room seemed still to contain. A cold draft touched her, and she tightened the latch on the door, wished for her sword. She turned back the bedcover at last, managing to make only one tear in it. The blanket beneath seemed sturdy enough, though it smelled of ancient things. Darkness drifted through her mind, as if the dust itself drugged her. She fell onto the bed and curled around, knees bent, her arm over her bow and pack.
Runestone of Eresu Page 20
