Runestone of Eresu

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  Skeelie felt sick. She turned away to examine the narrow balcony, though she already knew it ended abruptly and there was no way to get around the tower to the other side except to swim, or to climb along the vines. The top of the tower was high above, and she could see, leaning out, that the vines ended far short of it. She stared below her again. “I saw a small window climbing up here. It was barred. Are there others?”

  “There are six. All little, and all barred. You can see them in the lower cells. I tried to dig the bars away in many places, but . . .”

  Skeelie saw where Telien had dug into the dragon-bone mortar and had a sudden quick image of Telien’s spoon, ragged and bent from digging. Who knew how deep the bars were set into the mortar? She shook one, then another, then dug with the tip of an arrow. The mortar was nearly as hard as rock. At last she settled her scabbard and bow more comfortably across her shoulders and felt down with her bare toes to find a foothold in the vine. “I will try to reach the drawbridge,” she said shortly. The idea of climbing again above the dark water did not enchant her. Telien touched her shoulder, wanting her to stay. Skeelie wriggled her foot into the vines, reached farther with her other foot, swung out, ignoring Telien’s need. The girl began to talk rapidly, as if to keep Skeelie there, though Skeelie was already away. Skeelie wished she would be still. “The vine will hold you, Skeelie. It is thick on the banks of the lake, you’ll see when it is morning. It grows inside the cells, lower down. Where it was not cut away, it grows right over the white bones of dead men—”

  ‘Telien, take your blanket and go around to the next window. Tie it to the bars, and tie another on if you have it. Find a stick, something to push the blanket to me if I tell you, if the vine grows thin.” Anything to keep Telien occupied. Skeelie gripped the vine harder, swung away to her left, jolting the breath out of herself, clung there cold and fearful, gripping vine with her toes. Great Eresu, she wished she were home. She swung on around, reaching and clutching, until at last she saw the blanket hanging just ahead. Above, Telien’s white fingers gripped around it where she had reached out through the bars. “You can move the blanket on, I’m all right this far.” The blanket jiggled, then made its way upward until the end of it slid over the ledge. Skeelie worked herself on around, feeling out blindly, gripping, clinging, not wanting to look down at the far black water.

  She came to the blanket again, feeling as if she might be destined to repeat this action forever, to look up innumerable times to see Telien’s white face above her. She pulled herself on around the tower, came to the blanket a third time and, when she looked down, could see a thin silver line crossing over the dark lake, crossing to the shore. A rope? She could see the vine crowding along the shore in thick clumps as if it had climbed over itself again and again reaching for the sky. She made her way downward until she came to the rope where it was fastened into the stone wall of the tower beside a tall slab of wood like a huge door: the wooden drawbridge pulled up against the wall of the tower.

  She felt among the vines until she had located the pulley system, then began to haul on the rope. It was awkward, holding herself to the vine with one hand and pulling with the other. But at last the drawbridge began to lower toward the far bank. She clung, resting finally, as its own weight pulled it on down. And it was then, as she rested, that the sense of men drawing near made itself heard in her mind. She clung there cold and aching, very tired, knowing that riders approached. Herebian warriors. And a dark Seer among them.

  And did something else move with them? A shadow darker even than NilokEm? A shadow that was death itself, come there seeking? Did it follow NilokEm’s runestone?

  She saw clearly for a moment, in a cold vision, dark, thin NilokEm, heavy-robed against the night air, riding across open meadows with three dozen warriors at his side, riding hard and silently and less than an hour away. They had warning of her: NilokEm knew she was at the tower.

  And then she sensed another rider moving through the wood. Her heart raised with hope. A friend? But as she clung shivering and feeling out to him, she knew he was not a friend.

  This was the regular messenger, bringing Telien’s food, sent out before Skeelie came to the tower, before NilokEm was aware of her there.

  The messenger would bring the food and leave. NilokEm and his band meant to stay long enough to see that Skeelie would never leave the tower alive, for they knew her for a Seer. But the wraith intended that she live. Following its own purposes, suffering from festering wounds in a sick body, it sought like a beast of prey for a new body. She felt that its will and its power had strengthened. Why? Did it carry the runestone that should have been Ram’s and draw strength somehow from the jade? A tremor touched her. Her hands shook. The wraith meant to find a new home for the bodiless evil that was all that remained of a thing once human. Its intent, cold seeking filled her. It meant that she would leave the tower alive and soulless, empty inside herself save for its own presence. But why her? Why not NilokEm? NilokEm, too, was a Seer. Did the fact that he carried a runestone make him too powerful for the wraith to overcome? Or did she, by her friendship with Ram, who had held the stone at its splitting and who surely was destined to join together that stone, if ever that should happen, did she through that friendship present some even more compelling scent to the weasel-like wraith?

  SIX

  Torc lay before Ram’s fire, her shoulder bandaged, her eyes closed in a deep, dreamless sleep. Ram crouched on the other side of the fire, exhausted, his hands stained with her blood, the Herebian arrow lying at his feet. The strength of his mind-power over the bitch wolf, giving her blessed sleep, was all that had enabled him to cut so deeply into her shoulder. He kept the shadows heavy on her mind, now, for she needed rest. He wished they could both sleep, but was afraid that without the spell she would wake and the pain would be too great.

  He kept her so for several days, her mind shadowed into sleep against the pain, her wound packed with birdmoss, which he gathered along the banks of a small, fast stream. He hunted for the two of them, let her wake sufficiently to eat. Took his own rest in short, fitful periods. He had hobbled the four Herebian mounts, though he meant to turn all but one loose when at last Torc was able to travel. If he did not suddenly disappear from this meadow, leaving the hobbled horses, and also leaving Torc to travel alone.

  By the fifth day she was well enough so she needed no more spells for sleeping. Ram slept the night around and sat beside her the next morning much improved, roasting rock hares over the coals. He had stripped the Herebians of their valuables and buried the bodies beneath stones at the base of the mountain, wishing he were burying the wraith with its dark soul intact in it. Skeelie’s sword hung from his belt. The bitch wolf watched him now, across a fire gone nearly invisible in the bright morning sun. Her golden eyes were steady, but her thoughts were drawn away in some private vision that she did not share with him. He reached to lay more wood on the coals, and suddenly her thought hit him quick and surprising, jarring him so he dropped the wood, making the fire spark wildly. “What, Torc?” He stared at the golden bitch, her head lifted regally, watching him. “What did you say, Torc?”

  Why is the wraith linked to Anchorstar? She repeated. Do you not feel it, Ramad? I see it as if in some future time; I see the wraith feeding on the pain of young Seers still as death. All in the future, Ramad. And Anchorstar is there.

  Ram turned the rock hares with a shaking hand. Fat dripped down to make the flames leap anew, smoke twisting against sunlight. “Why is he there, Torc? As victim of the wraith? Or—as accomplice?”

  As victim, Ramad. Sleeping, drugged, as close to death as those young Seers.

  He breathed easier. He would not have liked betrayal by Anchorstar, would not have liked betrayal by his own senses in trusting Anchorstar so implicitly. He took from his pocket the three starfires that Anchorstar had given him and held them near the flame, watched them catch dark green streaks within, then turn to amber once more. He looked up at Torc, squinting against t
he sun. “Is your vision a true one?”

  As true as any vision of future time can be, Ramad of wolves.

  “If it is so, then Anchorstar will need all the power he can muster.” He touched the starfires. “I do not see what the future holds for Anchorstar, but I know he suffers deep within. I have never plumbed those depths, nor do I understand Anchorstar well. I hope that by giving me the starfires he has not weakened his own power. If I could help him, there in that future time, I would do so. I would give back the starfires if it would help.”

  The starfires are a treasured gift, Ramad.

  “Though they have little power, I think, other than to move through Time. Strange stones, Torc. I cannot guide my fall through Time by them, yet I feel their power in the very warping that Time makes. Sometimes I feel, like Anchorstar, that I should cast them away.”

  I would not, Ramad. You could do great harm by that. All is linked. All. The starfires, Anchorstar, the wraith, Skeelie—more than you know. Telien is linked to all of it.

  “Linked—how? You have taken a prophetic turn, Torc.”

  I do not know how. I only see it. Lying here half in fog, mesmerized by your Seer’s skills, Ramad—visions came. Sweeping senses like the gray fog swirling up, and then gone. No reason to it. Only the sense of it, a sense of purposeful linking, of creatures touching across Time, meeting across Time in some meaning and purpose I do not comprehend. A sense of your lady, Telien, linked to all of it.

  Telien. He saw her face in a memory filled with pain, her green eyes clear as the sea. Was it memory or vision? His emotions and his longing for Telien were so raw he could never be sure. Perhaps memory and vision muddled together; but now he sensed her in a time long past. He was very sure of that suddenly. Had she returned to their own time? He saw danger around her, saw cruelty touch her, a vision immersed in darkness, filled with agony. He reached out his hand involuntarily, and burned his fingers in the fire, then sat staring morosely at the flame. Torc watched him in silence.

  When he looked up at last, he was tense with purpose. “I must be with her, Torc. Somehow, I must. She is in need. When I try to reach out, nothing comes. The starfires do not help me, never help me. But I know she is in need.”

  And there was another vision that touched him, puzzling him, seemed to be linked to Telien, though he could not understand how. A young Seer reached out to him in dreams, a young redheaded man with clear blue eyes. And something, perhaps the turn of his cheek, so like Telien that Ram could not forget his face; a young Seer reaching out of Time to speak to him not in words but with a need that Ram knew he must at last acknowledge. There was surely a linking between them, they were creatures linked across Time somehow. But what was that linking? And how was Telien a part of this? The young Seer seemed to hold in his mind repeated visions of Ram and the wolves fighting beside him; as if he needed Ram, would purposely draw him into another time and yet another battle if he could. As he had been drawn into Macmen’s battle. And did that other Seer hold a runestone, just as Macmen had? Ram dared not dream that he did. Yet he sensed a power that the young, untrained Seer seemed to wield with little assurance. Ram knew he must reach out to him, that it was not only Telien he must seek—though it was Telien his seeking spirit longed for. He looked across at Torc. Who was this young Seer who beckoned to him now? Torc watched him in silence, seeing his thoughts with sympathy. And, feeling her kindness, his longing for Fawdref and Rhymannie and their pack came sudden and sharp. “They have not been with me, Torc. Fawdref and Rhymannie were swept away even as I was, into Time. The rest of the pack was not with us, might still be in our own time, I do not know.”

  They are not in our time, Ramad. The pack did not return to the mountain after the battle at the Castle of Hape. I was not with the pack when they attacked the castle, I was in the whelping dens, awaiting my cubs. She paused, then went on. The pack did not return there. But I know that my mate was killed, battling at the Castle of Hape. He spoke clearly in my mind then. Spoke of private things. They—the band will be with you, Ramad, if they are needed. Call them. Speak to them with the bell. Fawdref is growing old. He needs you, now, as much as you need him.

  *

  Hermeth saw the enemy driven back, saw his men resting from battle where they had fallen, where tired horses had stopped to blow. Soldiers began to sponge away blood with water from their waterskins, dressing the wounds of their animals before they tended themselves and their brothers. He ached with fatigue, with remorse at the waste of war, stared out across the near-dark remains of what had so recently been farm buildings, milking pens, now only smoking rubble peopled with the corpses of horses and men. Waste, desolation, just as his father before him had known at the hands of the Herebian raiders—at the hands of dark Seers Macmen thought he had destroyed in his last great battle, the year that Hermeth himself was born. Hermeth sighed and considered the desolation before him with some sense of victory, for they had driven the bastards back, had sent a fresh battalion to pursue them on good mounts, to slaughter every Herebian son of . . . He lowered his head suddenly and clenched his eyes closed as another vision swept him. The battlefield disappeared; he saw a wolf again, only one wolf this time. A golden bitch wolf with golden eyes reflecting the light of a campfire. Across from her sat the dark-eyed Seer he saw each time a vision came. He was leaning to turn roasting rock hares, his red hair so bright in the morning sun it seemed to dim the firelight. The wolf wore some sort of poultice on her shoulder. The young Seer wore two swords now, one with a carved silver hilt. The vision faded slowly, firelight and sunlight filtering together until it dazzled his eyes; and the figures were gone.

  Why did such visions haunt him? He had never in his life had visions; his Seer’s skills had never been strong. These visions were so real he could smell the fire and the roasting rock hares, and feel the cold breeze. Feel sharply his need to speak to that Seer. Surely there was a meaning, surely it was the runestone he carried that made such power in him. But why did it do so now, when it never had before? Did the runestone itself have some mysterious link to that young, dark-eyed Seer?

  Hermeth knew his skills had come stronger since his visions began. The conjuring he had laid upon the sheep pastures, to deceive the rabble raiders, had been more than satisfying; that memory still left him with a shock of surprise that he had been capable of such. And his power seemed linked to the other Seer; he felt that they were meant somehow to stand together in battle, though he could not divine the reason. Had that, too, to do with the stone? He felt increasingly that he needed that other Seer in a battle yet to come. He stared into the thickening dark, puzzling. A fitful wind touched his cheek, blowing down from the high deserts that rose above the rim, and he seemed to touch a sudden and desolate sense of space, of eternity, that dizzied him, made him draw back, want human company. He turned away toward the cookfires where his men were tending their wounds, knelt beside a young soldier and took the bandage from his hands, began to wrap the boy’s arm. When he looked up at last, the cast of firelight caught his men’s faces in a quiet brotherhood that stirred him deeply, the brotherhood of soldiers who knew they might die together, soldiers who fought together fiercely.

  Wars had flared, died, moved across the coastal countries like a series of sudden storms, the raiders appearing in one place then disappearing suddenly. Sly, clever bands took shelter in the rough hills and woods, then slipped out to leave families dead and crops and homes destroyed. Slowly then the Herebian bands, provisioned from what they did not destroy and armed anew, drew ever closer to the ruling city of Zandour. So far they had been thwarted in Sangur and Aybil and Farr, or sometimes set one against the other when Hermeth could conjure friction and quarrels through a few trusted men who traveled among the enemy troops. This close, efficient network of spies was the first such in Ere since Carriol had come to power and, after the battle of Hape, sent out small cadres across Ere as protection against the dark Seers rising anew.

  Though Carriol herself had changed her ways
more than a generation ago and now spent her Seer’s powers—so much less without the runestone that Ramad had wielded, countless years back in her history—to hold solid her own borders, protecting those who would come to her for sanctuary, but letting the rest of Ere fend as best it could.

  And now the sons of the dark twins, street-bred sons of whores, drew closer upon Zandour in these small, agile bands, easily lost among the hills and woods, impossible to track sometimes, except by Seeing. And Hermeth’s small handful of Seers was not omniscient. Seers tire, too. Seers grow weary in war and, grown weary, become uncertain in their skills.

  He remembered with satisfaction that time in Aybil, in the curve of the bay nearest to the sunken island of Dogda, when he had laid a vision-trap that brought forty Herebian warriors down upon what they thought were sheep farmers and turned out to be soldiers herding boulders. That was a victory. But his skill of vision-making was uneven, and not often to be relied upon.

  He thought of the power that that other Seer must wield. He coveted that power, not for himself, but to win this cursed war; envied the strength of mind he sensed in that Seer, was drawn to that young man who could command the great wolves and, most likely, command the powers of a runestone with none of his own hesitation. At times the stone would not work for him at all. He would feel a darkness then, a shadow around him; and the runestone would be lifeless in his hands so the visions would not come, let alone any illusion-making.