Runestone of Eresu

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  They came at mid-morning to a lava river twisting between jagged monoliths of stone and stood considering how to cross. When the earth trembled beneath them, Lobon shrugged. What danger could the earth present, that Dracvadrig could not? Moving slowly, heavily, with Dracvadrig’s power on him, he found boulders small enough to roll down the cliff into the lava river and began to construct a way across.

  It took the better part of the day to make a causeway they could cross without being scalded by the flowing lava. The heat was unbearable; Lobon’s leathers were soaked with sweat, the wolves panting. Yet they must cross the lava, for he could sense Dracvadrig far deeper in the abyss. Once across, Lobon’s strength was drained. He rested between stone outcroppings where a small trickle of hot water came down. He drank and filled the waterskin. The air was heavy with smoke and unfamiliar fumes. Even the wolves’ strength had ebbed. They all slept fitfully through a red-tinged darkness and moved on again in a sulfurous dawn, pushed deeper and deeper into the abyss, across more molten rivers and nearly impassable rifts. They ate lizards and rock crabs and snakes and had never enough to drink. All four sensed that they were watched by the firemaster, though he was never there. Nor did he speak again. The wolves were increasingly edgy. Lobon was driven on, despite his strange confusion and fatigue, by his all-consuming need to kill Dracvadrig.

  Sometimes he would feel Dracvadrig turn from him and reach out for the girl, and then he would come more fully alert, and would follow the creature’s mind and watch him lay his ugly darkness on her thoughts. He would watch Dracvadrig lead her to Carriol’s citadel again and again, watch her stand staring mesmerized at the suspended runestone, then turn away as Dracvadrig built a need in her to hold the stone that at last she would be unable to resist. Her desire for it was beginning to consume her like a slow fire, and soon, Lobon knew, she must burst the bonds of her own reticence. Dracvadrig seemed in no hurry, as if he were enjoying her torment.

  As he is enjoying mine? Lobon thought. Is that why he does not attack me for the stones, but leads me always deeper into the abyss? He stared down into the pit that humped and curved below him, seeming to go on forever.

  “Curse him. Curse his burning soul. Why doesn’t he show himself, come up here and face us and see who is the more powerful!”

  Shorren stared up at him, her yellow eyes steady. You are letting him goad you, Lobon. You faint at shadows.

  “Dracvadrig is no shadow!”

  You let the firemaster destroy your temper. You make yourself weary sparring with what is not yet known.

  He laid a hand on her heavy white coat, felt the power of her muscles, the breadth of her shoulders. He wished she would be still. He wanted to confront Dracvadrig, to battle Dracvadrig! Couldn’t she understand that!

  All four of us seek the same goal, she said calmly, infuriating him further. We all seek Dracvadrig’s death and the joining of the stone. We all seek the salvation of Ere.

  He turned to glare at her. “I seek only to kill the worm Dracvadrig! To avenge my father’s death! The saving of Ere is not my business, nor is the joining of the stone!”

  Shorren’s eyes slitted. The saving of Ere had better be your business, Lobon the hotheaded. It is not enough simply to kill Dracvadrig. The powers within you were born to the salvation of Ere, through your father’s blood. If you do not seek to save Ere, you do not avenge Ramad’s death, you defile it.

  “I will avenge my father’s death in the killing of Dracvadrig.”

  You do not see clearly. The bitch wolf’s ears were flat, her lips curled back over gleaming teeth. Your hatred warps your senses, Lobon, son of Ramad! If you deny Ramad’s quest, if you do not defy evil, not only do you refuse to avenge his spirit, but you deny the rebirth of your own soul. If you fail the purpose of your own life, your soul will wither, your powers wither. Your shriveled spirit will crave only to lie in limbo, as does Cadach, locked forever locked into the trunk of a tree in the caves of Owdneet.

  “I don’t care about my soul! And the tale of Cadach is nothing but an old woman’s tale!”

  It is not, Lobon. Cadach lives. Your own mother spoke with him when she came into Owdneet’s caves searching for a way into Time, seeking to follow Ramad into Time. And Cadach’s white-haired children live, and move through Time, choosing to atone for his evil. Know you, whelp, that the woman Gredillon who raised your father was one of Cadach’s white-haired children, as was Anchorstar, who helped your father save one shard of the runestone and acquire another. Never think, Lobon the big-headed, that Cadach is a myth—or that such could not happen to you!

  “Well, but Cadach—”

  Cadach denied his heritage and sold his soul for avarice and greed—in your own time, Lobon, in this time, before he was swept back in Time to die a living death in the tree, never to know the progression of his soul.

  Lobon scowled. He did not want to believe in Cadach. He was not sure he believed in the progression of souls. Such things were a nuisance to think about.

  The two dog wolves raised their muzzles and stared at him with hard yellow eyes. Crieba said, Shorren is right, you are guardian of more than you are willing to embrace, Lobon. You lust for revenge alone, and that is not enough, even in the name of your father. You shame Ramad.

  Lobon turned from them, furious, and swung away down the cliff. His own mother had said those same words before he left the house of Canoldir, told him that he shamed his father’s name with his self-centered fury. “You must temper the purpose that leads you into battle before you will be equal to Ram! As you are now, Lobon, you are not fit to hold the fate of Ere in your hands!”

  He had shouted, “I don’t care about Ere! I care only to avenge Ramad!”

  “Then you are not man enough to be Ramad’s son! You will leave this house without my blessing, and without Canoldir’s blessing!”

  He had not spoken to her again, had gone out of the house of Canoldir in a rage, the three wolves leaping to join him unbidden. He had found his way down the ice mountains, warmed by his own terrible anger, had come at last to the lands where Time flowed forward like a river, had crossed the mountains to the range below the glacier, driven by rage and by the sense of the runestone there coupled with the sense of Dracvadrig, and never once had he thought or cared that he could not even have left Canoldir’s house without that man willing him back into the mainstream of Time.

  The wolves had censured him constantly for his temper. “And why,” he said now, scowling, “why, Shorren the wise, why does Dracvadrig seek out that one stone in Carriol, when the four stones I carry are so much nearer to hand? Answer me that riddle!”

  Dracvadrig thinks to have your stones easily enough. He considers them already in his hand, to be plucked when he is ready. He is most pleased that you bring them closer to him with each step we take. Dracvadrig lusts after the more unattainable stone—that stone that hangs in Carriol. And he wants, also, the stone that lies in the sea. Shorren stretched and stared down at the broken crevices below them, then looked back at Lobon. Her white coat caught the slanting light. You, Lobon, he considers but a plaything. If you knew Dracvadrig as you should, you would see him taking the form of the dragon simply for the pleasure of catching a fire ogre and tossing it, teasing it, letting it run, then snatching it up and, much later, killing it. Just so does he play with us, just so does he watch us descend to him, just so does he send fire ogres and serpents to harass us.

  “Why do you remain with me, then?” he said sarcastically. “And how do you know more of Dracvadrig than I, bitch wolf?”

  We follow because we must. We are linked to Ramad just as you are. And we know Dracvadrig because we attend to the subtleties of his presence, Lobon, while your mind is fogged by his thoughts, and by your fury, and by your preoccupation with the girl.

  “The girl could be useful! You don’t—”

  Useful to you in gaining revenge. Not useful in preventing Dracvadrig from having Carriol’s stone. Not useful for the good of Ere.

 
“You talk drivel! Revenge is all that is needed.” He was sick to death of her censure. He snatched the wolf bell from his tunic. “All three of you talk rubbish.” He stared at them in fury, his dark eyes flashing, his unruly red hair gone wilder, as if the very power of his anger made it flame. He hated the wolves in that moment. They were arrogant, filled with senseless dreams. They did not understand or care how he felt. He didn’t need them; he would be better off without their haranguing. He raised the wolf bell and brought a power to banish them, to drive them away. Let them return to Skeelie and the rest of their cursed band. “You will—”

  A black streak leaped, Feldyn’s teeth gripped his arm, Feldyn’s weight crashed into him. He went down, the black wolf’s teeth inches from his face, Crieba and Shorren crowding over him. He could feel their breath, see nothing but killer’s teeth. He stared up at them unbelieving. Never had the wolves acted so, never. He was their master. He was master of the wolf bell.

  Feldyn’s thought came sharp: You are not our master, Lobon! Not as Ramad was, though you hold the wolf bell. You have not Ramad’s level of power, or his caring, yet to master us. You are our brother, yes. And because you are, we speak truths to you, and we command that you listen to us!

  Crieba’s voice was cold behind his silver snarl. The great wolves have power of their own, Lobon! You will not banish us. This mission is ours as much as it is yours. Our sire died by Ramad’s side battling Dracvadrig, and we too will avenge. But there is more to avenging, Lobon the hot-tempered, than you are willing to admit. You will fail, Lobon. You will ultimately fail unless you accept the whole of Ramad’s commitment, as do we; unless you strive to win that which Ramad himself would win.

  The wolves turned away from him then and left him sprawled. You can stay or follow us, Shorren said, just as you choose.

  He stared after their retreating backsides. Their tails swung jauntily. He looked down at the wolf bell clutched in his sweating hand. His fury was spent, his doubts painful and raw. He cursed them silently and ground his fist against the wolf bell.

  He rose at last and started on. They could die in the blasted pit for all of him. He would seek Dracvadrig alone.

  *

  In a land of ice that lay beyond Time, in a villa walled by banks of snow, a woman watched in sharp vision Lobon’s rude and foolish defiance of the wolves. When she let the vision go at last, she stood staring into the cold ashes of the fireplace, her fist pushing against the stone mantel in a gesture very like Lobon’s. A tall woman, thin, inclined to stand stooped unless she remembered and straightened. The knot of her dark hair was half-undone, twisted over her shoulder. Lines of care and loss creased her face. She was alone in the raftered hall, for Canoldir was hunting far back in the ice mountains; though even at such a distance he touched her now and again with a warmth that helped to ease her distress. The seven wolves who hunted with him touched her mind, too, whispering now, Sister, be of cheer, sister of wolves: We tell you that not Shorren nor Feldyn nor Crieba will leave Lobon. They will see him safe, in spite of his surly ways.

  But their assurance did little good. Skeelie worried for Lobon and was furious with him. She turned away from the mantel at last, her light fur robe swirling around her long legs, and began to pace the room. She was a woman bred to sword and saddle, she carried the difficult years well, as trim and agile as she had ever been. She seemed self-contained, but the younger, vulnerable Skeelie was there, the distress and love she had felt for Ram ever since she was a child pouring out now over his son to leave her shaken. What had she done or failed to do, that Lobon should grow to manhood with such shortsighted purpose?

  He will grow out of it, Canoldir whispered to her, touching her mind from afar. Ramad’s blood is in him, and your own blood, my love. Lobon will come through, to be what he was meant to be.

  She bowed her head, warm in Canoldir’s gentleness; but she knew she had failed Lobon. Had she not expected enough of Lobon the child? Not loved him strongly enough? Not praised him enough for successes and been strong enough with him about failures? Eresu knew, she had tried to be a gentle mother, yet give him the strength that Ramad would have given.

  Since they had come to Canoldir when Lobon was eight, fleeing from the city of cones, Canoldir had been as strong and fair a father as Ramad himself would have been. Where then did that wild angry streak in Lobon come from? Certainly not from Canoldir’s treatment. And not, alone, from the child’s memory of his father’s death, she knew.

  For Lobon’s anger had shown itself much earlier than Ram’s death, from the time he was a small babe demanding to be fed, demanding to be comforted, never asking or gentle. Ramad had laughed at—and wondered at—the child’s temperament. And frowned, disturbed, sometimes. For Lobon was too much like Ramad’s mother. He was, Skeelie admitted, far too much like Tayba, who had conceived Ramad out of angry defiance, borne him in anger, and nearly killed him when he was nine because of her own willful and traitorous greed. Tayba, who with her fiery temperament had been one cause of the violent clashing of evil against good that had shattered the runestone of Eresu there on Tala-charen. Yes, surely Tayba’s violent spirit was mirrored in her grandson. Could I not, Skeelie thought, could I not have prevented Lobon’s growing up to be what he is?

  You could not have! Canoldir’s thoughts shouted in her mind like a roaring bear, making her smile. She let her burden relax a little, warmed by him, and paused from her pacing beside a low table near the hearth.

  At last she sat down on a hide-covered cushion before the table and took up quill and ink. She sat thinking for a while longer, letting her mind ease, putting herself into a routine of discipline that had been hard to learn, yet necessary to her survival against the madness that had seemed to hold her after Ram’s death.

  She had lost the first pages of the journal long ago, had left them, she supposed, in the city of cones. The memory of those days after Ram died was so twisted and painful that even now her thoughts, straying to that time, were like an open wound. She had never stopped loving Ram and never would, though she loved Canoldir too in another way, with another part of herself. Canoldir knew it. He sheltered her and soothed her, and took joy in her in spite of her commitment to Ram. She filled the page slowly, released at last of some of her distress over Lobon, then laid down her pen and sat looking into the cold fireplace. Suddenly she felt the stirring movement of the earth near to Lobon, and tensed anew. When it continued unabated, she reached out to Canoldir, frightened. The land trembles, Canoldir! The land in that time trembles steadily beneath the chasm, it—

  Yes, the land trembles. I cannot stay it, Skeelie. Even the Luff’Eresi cannot stay such a thing as that.

  But you—

  You know what is happening to my powers, you know I do not reach out of Time as well as once I did, that I cannot snatch Lobon from danger! Nor should I!

  Because of me, your powers—

  We do not know that. Whatever it is, I cannot deal with fate as if it were a game. She felt his anger and turned away from him in her mind until he should calm. She did not like to distress him like this.

  But she could not help her own distress. She had felt for some time that forces across Ere she could not sort out or describe were drawing together, insidious and threatening. Forces very aware of Lobon and utterly unpredictable as they moved toward him. Forces at least as powerful as those that had swept around her and Ram before the runestone split. Forces that could bring, now, even more disaster?

  *

  High in the black cliff overlooking the abyss, one small portal might be seen, if the shadows lay right. One would not expect a portal there. It was like a single eye in the smooth stone wall, black against black. It looked out from a room carved deep in the living stone, a dim room, square and rough-hewn. A thin figure moved inside, so pale it seemed to cast its own light. It stood looking out the portal, so the hole held a smear of white as if the eye had opened wide. The figure was still, then turned at last to look back into the room behind her wh
ere two men sat, one at either end of a stone bench carved along the back wall. Her voice was flat, cold. “Light the lamp, Dracvadrig.”

  The man grunted. Flint sparked, sparked again, then a flame flared and settled at last into a greasy glow smelling of lamb fat. It threw Dracvadrig’s tall, thin shadow up the wall in such a way that he might have been in dragon form still, rearing up the wall. When he leaned across the lamp, it cast an eerie light up over his long, lined face, picking out warty skin as if the dragon in him never truly abated and making the large high-bridged nose seem huge. His eyes were the color of mud. His lank hair would take on life only when it became wattled dragon mane. His fingers and nails were long and brown and looked as if they could grow into claws with ease. His voice was dry and harsh, little different from when he took dragon form, only not as loud. He sat stiffly against the cave wall, as if he were not entirely comfortable in human form. “Something touches this Lobon, something I don’t like,” he said. “Another Seer touches him. Perhaps more than one Seer. I don’t—”

  “I feel it,” RilkenDal said, cutting him short. He sat more easily than Dracvadrig. He had laid his sword on the bench between them and played now with the leather thong attached to the hilt. He was a broad, heavy Seer with greasy black hair, as dark of countenance as the ancestors whose names he bore and with a mind perhaps darker. “Yes. A female Seer touches him.” He glanced at the pale woman. “What female, Kish? What is she up to?”

  “Whoever she is, we don’t need her,” Kish said. Her eyes were lidless, like serpent’s eyes. Her pale skin caught the dim lamplight like the white belly-skin of a snake. But her body was voluptuous, and she could be beautiful when she chose—at least to a man with jaded tastes . Now she was only cold, bored with her companions and showing it.

  “It is a presence I cannot abide,” Dracvadrig said. “If it is female, Kish, then you must deal with it.”