Runestone of Eresu

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  Part Three: The Lake of Caves

  From the Fourth Book of Zandour, Writer unknown.

  Dark mysteries surround the history of Hermeth and surround his victory in the wood of the dark tower south of Dal. Time-flung raiders died in that wood and turned to bone ages old, crumbling before Hermeth’s eyes. And a Seer of light came out of a spell-casting to fight by Hermeth’s side. Some said the Seer was Ramad of wolves, as the song of that battle tells. Most folk say that could not be. But surely that Seer led wolves: two score great wolves fought by his side to defeat the street-bred rabble and to defeat mysterious warriors. Some say that Hermeth defeated on that battlefield his long-dead ancestor, NilokEm.

  Surely Hermeth returned victorious to Zandour with a dark-eyed Seer riding beside him and surrounded by running wolves. And there was celebration in Zandour for the victory of free men. But then in Zandour came tragedy to Hermeth. A tragedy no Seer could undo.

  EIGHT

  It was a rare good night of feasting and singing. The hall of Hermeth’s rough stone villa was crowded with tables laden nearly to overflowing with meats and breads and delicacies brought from all around the city by the townsfolk: shellfish from Zandour’s coast baked in leaves of tammi; breads of mawzee grain and whitebarley and wild grass seed; and great custards of tervil and vetchpea and dill. A huge fire blazed on the hearth, roasting chicken and chidrack and wild pig from out the marshes and haunches of deer and sheep. Folk heaped their plates high and carried them to the courtyard, where singing and gay music stirred the night, and the dancing was wild and fast, celebrating Zandour’s victory.

  How long they had awaited this day; how eagerly they had anticipated the time when they could tend their flocks on Zandour’s green hills without fear of Herebian raiders, could sleep at night beneath the peaceful silence of Ere’s cool moons, not listening every moment for the sounds of raiders descending from dark hills to burn and steal and kill. There would still be danger. Zandour must still maintain guards and patrols, and the army must train as ever. But not danger as it had been. The street-rabble Seers were slaughtered. Neither Hermeth or Ram could sense any lingering taint of them. The only evil that threatened now was the common strain of straggling raiders never caught up in the Pellian warring, small Herebian pilferers that Zandour could easily deal with.

  Zandour showed its pleasure in joyful celebration. The songs sung were mostly the old songs, “Smallsinger Tell Me,” “Jajun Jajun,” “The Goosetree of Madoc,” songs from the coastal lands. Then a young bard made a song about the war in the dark wood, sang the words amidst a sudden stillness as Zandour’s people went hushed; and long would it be sung in Zandour. It told of the two stones that were one stone, of Ramad of wolves come out of Time to fight by Hermeth’s side; of NilokEm, the dark ancestor, and of Telien, who was mother to Hermeth’s grandfather, come suddenly into that wood. It did not speak of the wraith, for only a few had seen that shadow and understood what it was. The song did not tell where Telien had gone, once she disappeared from the wood.

  Ram did not join the festivities. He took supper alone beside the hearth in the great hall, his back to the crowds that came to load their plates. He ignored Skeelie, who lurked by a window watching him. He wished she would go away, wanted only his own lonely company. He ate quickly, hardly tasting the deer meat and the carefully prepared dishes, then wandered out of the hall and through the crowds, unaware of the music and jostling. It was to the quiet dark beyond the stables and outbuildings that he was driven by his taut, violent agitation.

  Skeelie wanted to follow him and knew he would not tolerate that. He was utterly closed to her in a remoteness that not even friendship could bridge; so awash with suffering for Telien, so deeply grieving. She saw him disappear into shadow and stood in the courtyard for a long time alone after he had gone. Like him, she was unaware of the crowds around her, of the gaiety; and at last she found her way to the room Hermeth had given her.

  She shut the door, stood with her back to it, letting the tension ease, letting the sense of isolation, the emptiness of the big square room soothe her. A bathing tub had been brought in, which steamed invitingly. She sat for a while in a deep chair beside the fire, admiring the tapestries and the bright Zandourian rugs, thinking of Ram and of Telien, too lazy even to get into the bath, then began at last to strip off her boots and her borrowed dirty leathers.

  The steaming tub felt so good; the aches of battle and the tired stiffness were slowly eased away. She took up the thick sponge, then the ball of perrisax soap, sniffing it with delight, and in a pleasant fog began to scrub off the blood and dirt of battle. When finally she dozed, the water in the tub grew cold and the low fire burned to embers.

  *

  Ram wandered alone in the dark between the outbuildings and pens. He could smell the pigs plainly, and the goats. The music and singing faded to an almost-tolerable blur. He could have done without it altogether. Hermeth had taken one look at his black expression and left him. Skeelie had hung around, annoying with her silent concern. He felt a twinge of guilt. Well, but Skeelie understood. She always knew his pain. Yes, and that in itself was annoying. He stared up at the sky, immense and distant, and cold desolation touched him, the reality of Telien’s fate sickening him nearly to madness: Telien, captive in a horror worse than any death could be; Telien trapped now as he had never dreamed possible. Was she aware of her possession yet unable to battle it? Or had her spirit been crippled, or destroyed?

  *

  Hermeth found Ram some time later still among the sheep pens and sties. He went to stand beside him, stared absently at the waning moons, watched pale clouds blow across the stars. The singing came faint and cool, muffled by stables and grain rooms. Neither spoke. Ram leaned tiredly against the sty fence, and Hermeth watched him. Ramad of wolves. Ramad, hardly aged since he fought by Macmen’s side twenty-three years gone. The clouds shifted to cover the moons, then uncovered them suddenly so moonlight marked the flaming hair of the two Seers. Ram’s olive skin and dark eyes and the slight dishing of his face were in sharp contrast to Hermeth’s paler, square face and clear blue eyes fringed with pale lashes. Hermeth uncapped a flask of honeyrot. Ram sipped at it absently. Hermeth frowned. “You cannot tear yourself from the image of her, Ramad, from the horror of her possessed. You will not rest until you have followed her. But you . . .” Hermeth took a sip of the honey-rot and capped it. “You do not know how or where to look, how to find your way into Time in the direction she—the wraith—has taken.”

  Ram nodded, caught in misery. He stared bleakly into the night.

  “There is a story in Zandour about a man called the Cutter of Stones. It is said by some that he is evil. I do not believe that. I think he is a magical person.”

  Ram turned for the first time to look directly at Hermeth.

  “A Seer, yes,” Hermeth answered his silent question. “But a Seer with special skills. It is said that he cut, from one large stone, five golden stones called starfires that could . . .” He was stopped by Ram’s look. “What did I say? Why does the mention of starfires—?”

  “Don’t stop! Get on with your story!”

  “It—it is a tale from herders in Moramia. Five starfires that can hurl a man into Time and carry him—well, just carry him. . . .” Hermeth swallowed. “But you have already been carried into Time.” He watched Ram with slow realization. “You—you carry the starfires! You . . .”

  Ram reached into a fold of his tunic, drew forth his hand, and held it palm up so the faint light of the moons caught gleaming upon three pale amber stones, cut and faceted, their cool light increasing, deepening at their centers then blazing out suddenly like fire. “Starfire,” Hermeth breathed, staring. “Then, Ramad, you have known the Cutter of Stones.”

  “No. The starfires were given me by another. A man called Anchorstar. He said they were given to him by someone he trusted, but he did not name that man. Perhaps it was the Cutter of Stones, perhaps not. Tell me of the Cutter of Stones.”

&
nbsp; “It is said the Cutter of Stones can shape Time to his own uses when he chooses.”

  “Where can I find such a man?”

  “It is told that one cannot find him, cannot seek him out, that he dwells outside of Time and will bide you come to him only if he chooses. But with those starfires—if they can touch Time, can’t you . . .”

  “The starfires seem sometimes to lead me, but more often only to confuse and twist that which I attempt. Though— though perhaps, after all, they led me to you. Perhaps it was the starfires that led us into the dark wood where Telien—where Telien . . .” Ram bent his head. “I do not know.” He stared at the starfires coldly, then said with pent-up anger, “Led me to Telien too late.” He looked up at Hermeth. “Could—could this Cutter of Stones be evil?” He dropped the starfires into his tunic with sudden distaste. ‘Tell me all you know of him.”

  “I know little more. It is said that if you need him, and if he deems your need a true one, he will call you out of Time to come to him.” Clouds raced across the moons in white veils, and as Hermeth turned to look up, a sudden vision came around them, cold as winter. The sty fence disappeared, the villa. The land itself seemed to swim and fold around them and shadows raced across it sparked with silver light. Other, denser shadows rose as a fog might rise from hidden ground, shadows that were figures surging together in the midst of ephemeral winds; they saw young Seers, Children of Ynell, many and many of them: Children soon to be born, perhaps already conceived, Children walking out across Ere carrying light within their souls. Hermeth and Ram saw them struck down, saw them flee before dark warriors; flee to Carriol or northward up over the wild black peaks away from Ere into the unknown lands. They saw other Children living in silence, hiding their skills for fear of death.

  They saw Children lying as if dead, asleep with some mind-bending drug, lying on stone slabs in a dark underground place. And the very breath of the wraith pervaded that place so that Ram almost cried out. Did Anchorstar, too, lie there bound in mindlessness? Surely the sense of him was there; but then the vision faded.

  For long afterward, Ram could not free his mind from the inexplicable weight of that vision.

  *

  Skeelie dozed and woke in a cold tub. She got out shivering, wrapped herself in a blanket, and huddled before the dead fire. When at last she stirred up the embers and laid on new kindling she felt muzzy, vaguely hungry, and wished she had eaten more supper. Streaks of light came through the shuttered windows and snatches of song from the courtyard, muted and pleasant. She huddled to the fire and soon began to feel warmer, crouched there absently admiring the bright colors of the Zandourian rugs, the pattern of the bedcover. The bed linen, turned back white and smooth, invited her. She rose at last, yawning, and began to prowl the room. In a corner behind a dressing screen, new leathers had been laid out for her, and fresh underlinen, a soft wool tunic, new boots. The sight of them, and the thought of Hermeth’s kindness, made tears come suddenly and surprisingly. Someone cared. She caught her breath in a sob that amazed her and stood clutching the leathers, bawling like a child.

  Why should someone’s kindness make her cry? You’re tired, Skeelie! Stop it! Stop crying and get into bed! Yet she knew she was not crying just over the clothes and Hermeth’s kindness, that she was crying for Ram, for a kind of gentleness that Ram could never show her.

  If only Ram needed her now—as a friend. Instead of going off alone. At last, exhausted with crying, she climbed into bed. In spite of her misery, she took pleasure in the clean sheets, appreciated the gentle softness of the bed. Wriggling down, she let the bed soothe and ease her, clutched the pillow to her and slept almost at once.

  For nine days they remained in Zandour, idle as sheep, eating prodigious and succulent meals, riding the countryside just for the pleasure of it, sleeping long and unbroken nights. Skeelie took so many hot baths her skin seemed permanently wrinkled; she luxuriated in her comfortable room, in her new leathers, and in the simple new gowns Hermeth brought to her. Her body began to feel like something human again, fed and clean and rested, the scabs and little wounds healing, and pampered with soft fabrics. Her senses were pampered with the handsome, well-furnished hall—not elegant but well appointed—with the bright tapestries and rugs, and with the neat farms of Zandour and the rolling green sheep pastures. How long such an idyl might last was impossible to guess. Skeelie simply soaked it all up while she could. Though Ram did not do the same. In spite of good meals and the luxuries he had long been without, he was morose, steeped in painful thoughts of Telien. Even occupied with teaching Hermeth the ways of the runestone, Ram had too much time to think; he would sit in the evenings alone beside the fire, preferring his own company and silence, or go skulking off into the night by himself in spite of anything Skeelie and Hermeth might think of to divert him.

  The wolves were seldom seen; they had gone to hunt the cliffs up on Scar Mountain, making Skeelie stare away toward that towering mass with a wild, persistent curiosity. The very existence of Scar Mountain there so close, of Gredillon’s house only a short ride away, made her taut with questions. What would the house be like if she went there now? In what time had she stood there? Before this time of Hermeth? Or in a time still to happen? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that Gredillon’s house, or perhaps some power from Gredillon herself, had given her the gift of truly touching Ram’s early life. That would always be with her. Had Gredillon sent her the clay bell through some powerful manipulation of Time? And what was Gredillon? White-haired Gredillon—was she one of Cadach’s children just as Anchorstar must surely be? Skeelie wondered, if she returned to Scar Mountain now, whether she would find answers to such questions. But she did not return. Something she did not question prevented her, turned her away from that thought, willed her to let the sleeping house be.

  Nor did Ram go to Sear Mountain, though surely he must long for the house of his childhood. She could not sense what he felt; his thoughts were closed to her, sunk in desolation. And then on the night of the ninth day, when Ram had been gone longer than usual and it was going on to midnight. Hermeth went to search for him, and did not return.

  Skeelie sat immobile beside the fire after Hermeth left her, muzzy with too much honeyrot, disgruntled with Ram’s difficult ways, in spite of knowing how he suffered for Telien. She dozed, awakened, dozed again, and still neither Hermeth nor Ram returned. At last she lit a lamp, took up her sword, and went out into the night, her unease making her cross.

  She found Ram in the darkness of sheds and sheep pens. Moonlight cast a thin outline across his shoulders where he knelt. What was he doing kneeling beside a sheep pen in the middle of the night? Then she felt, suddenly, the sense of something very wrong, a sense of hollowness; felt Ram’s shock and his terrible remorse. Felt the sense of death. Saw then that he knelt beside a body. She went to him without speaking.

  Hermeth lay beside the sheep pen, twisted and unnatural in death. Her hands began to shake. She felt the sense of his death like a blow, sudden and sharp, not wanting to believe. Someone she had just been talking with, sitting before the fire with, could not be so suddenly lying dead in the night, in the mud.

  But of course he could be. Why had she sensed nothing, back in the hall? She stared at Ram’s white, twisted face not understanding anything. When Ram spoke at last, his voice was hoarse and flat.

  “She has come here. Telien has come. The wraith—it— has taken the strength from Hermeth. Taken the life from Hermeth.” She thought he would drown in his pain. “How can it have become so strong, to do such a thing, Skeelie? I don’t understand. It could not have done this before, at Tala-charen.” He paused, stared at her. “Did it draw strength from the stones, there in the wood?” His voice was hoarse, near to tears. “Or from NilokEm, before he died? Not— not from Telien. She was so weak, so very frail and weak.”

  “She was frail of body, Ram. But Telien’s spirit— she . . .” Skeelie could not finish.

  “When she came out
of the night I wanted . . .” He bit his lip, turned his face away. “I wanted only to hold her, to comfort her. I couldn’t believe . . . She was so pale. Great circles under her eyes. She—she was so close to the end of her strength. As if the wraith did not dare let her faint. She—it stood looking at me. It has new power, Skeelie. It has learned to sap the strength from a man like a . . .” Ram swallowed. “Like a lizard sucking out the strength from a creature and leaving a bare shell.”

  “But she . . .” Skeelie stared at him, knowing suddenly and clearly that the wraith had not come here for Hermeth. “She came for you, Ram.”

  “She—was so near to failing of strength altogether. The wraith knew he could not get me to kill Telien. Worked it out that it could take a man’s strength to replenish itself. Thought that, because Telien and I—because we . . . that it could make me give in to it, that it would be easy to drain my body of strength, make me—give myself to her.”

  She felt a guilty elation that Ram lived, that it was Hermeth lying dead and not Ram. “But how . . .?”

  “Hermeth came upon it—upon us. He battled by my side. We—we battled together, and then suddenly Telien’s color heightened, she stood straight, seemed altogether different, healthy, alive. I—I thought she had come back. I thought she had defeated the wraith. I reached out to her. And too late I saw . . .” He drew in his breath. ‘Too late I saw Hermeth fall. Just—just fall, Skeelie. And she—she reached to put her arms around me, to—to draw me to her. I—I went to her. Wanting her, Skeelie. I knew what she was. She held me. It was . . . I could not let her go. But then I—I began to resist her, to battle her until she drew back. She looked at me with a hatred I can never forget. And then she—she was just suddenly gone.” His face filled with pain. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here—how long ago that was. Forever. For Hermeth, it will be forever.”