Runestone of Eresu

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  It seemed a long time but was perhaps only minutes before Nicoli drew close among the tumbled, drowned boulders to where the stone lay, its power on her rocking her senses. Meatha felt Nicoli move quickly in the almost total darkness to a narrow cleft between stones, pulling her air line to keep it free; felt her kneel in the cumbersome suit and reach into the cleft. Meatha fought the fear of being trapped. Her hands were sweating. Frantically she blocked to keep from being discovered, tried to calm herself, felt something deeper give her strength and knew it must be her own power before untapped. She sensed Nicoli reaching, touching . . . Then she felt the sudden shock in Nicoli’s fingers as she touched the stone.

  Nicoli grasped it in a handful of sand and pebbles and brought it close to her face. She could see it only as a vague shape through the small, thick glass, but its presence in her hand was like a pulsing heartbeat of power. Meatha felt as if the stone held within itself the thunder of the sea. She felt as if her own hands were on the ropes as Nicoli began to ascend, the runestone tucked safely into her diving suit.

  *

  Dracvadrig smiled with fine satisfaction. They had the stone. His frustration at searching uselessly across the cursed desert for vanished wolves was as nothing now. The stone was at this moment being carried to the surface of the sea. It was safe, ready to be plucked, ready to be given. He had only to guide and protect Meatha, reassure her, help her to slip the stone away from the divers at the right moment and bring it to him. Then she and the wretched young Seer would begin the final act. Oh, yes, soon, soon—as a dragon measures time—the runestone would be whole again, be his, all power would be his.

  Meanwhile he must settle Kish. He could not have her taking the stone, tampering with his plans. He swept fast along the coast out of Karra and across the Bay of Pelli above the sunken islands and came at Pelli from the sea, but low and on the west coast, so he would remain unseen by the divers around on the southern cliffs. He sensed Kish, then soon saw her riding hard. She had crossed the inlet by barge and was already on the high meadows. He dove on her and saw her horse rear and twist in terror, too frightened even to run. “Turn back, Kish. Leave the horse, my dear, and come onto my back as you were meant to travel.”

  “Why should I! You would not help me when I wanted you, why should I heed you now! Go on about your warring, worm, and leave me to mine!”

  His smile was a hideous sight in that evil dragon face with the ruined eye. “Do not resist me, Kish. You know you do not want to lose me, I am too fine a lover. Surely you would not want me as your enemy. Come, Kish, come—I will destroy the cults for you if that is what you wish, you do not need the stones for that.” He undulated close around her, so the poor horse nearly fell dead from fright. “Come, my love, come Kish.” He caressed her with a scaly coil. “Come, my love, we are one in this.” He drew his rough dragon tongue across her neck.

  She jerked the horse until its mouth bled and stared up at Dracvadrig in fury. “If we are one in this, why shouldn’t I use the stones! I won’t have my cults—”

  “There is no time! The young Seer Lobon has reached the gates and will be captive in moments. I need the stones now, I need to bring the girl there to the cells to him, draw her and the stones there to him. . . .”

  “You move them like sticks and brittles! It’s only a game to you!”

  “More than a game, Kish. This must be done my way. No one must go near or turn the direction of what has begun until she has the stone—the most delicate part, the theft of the stone from the master Seer, is yet to be consummated. Let the girl be, Kish. Come with me. Watch me lead the girl to the abyss.” His voice was low and gentle. “Come with me.” But his claw on her arm was like iron, his coils pressing around her strong enough to break bones. Both knew he could kill her if she did not obey. She shivered. Why couldn’t she amass the power to drive Dracvadrig away? Even that artless young Seer had—what powers had he touched in that moment when he leaped at Drac and plunged his sword into the dragon’s eye? What powers . . .? She shivered again, thrust the thought from her and swung her terrified horse away from the dragon with a brutal jerk; she was afraid of Dracvadrig suddenly, she who was afraid of nothing.

  “Come, Kish . . .”

  “Curse your plan!” she hissed. “Curse the wretched girl, curse your precious stones! If you can’t use them for me, then stuff them in your gullet!” She kicked the horse hard; the animal leaped away in panic into a dead run, freed at last from the monster, frothing and half-blind with its fear. But she kicked and reined it back toward the dark tower, not toward the direction of the divers, knowing full well that Dracvadrig would kill her, if only to save face, if she pursued the stones. Curse Drac! She did not like having him against her. She needed . . . yes. RilkenDal. RilkenDal would do her bidding. The dark Seer could be more than useful now. Defeated in Zandour by wolves, sore at such defeat, RilkenDal would welcome a woman’s sympathy. Later she could consider how to get the stones and deal with the cults, once she had RilkenDal’s forces behind her. And then she would take care of Dracvadrig.

  *

  Lobon sensed the fire ogres massed beyond the cliff. Cold fear touched him. Flame edged the cliff, then the first ogre hulked against the sky. The wolves crouched to leap; he raised his bow and shot; a good shot in the neck, the creature fell and rolled down the cliff dislodging stones as it flailed. Two more ogres appeared above, then half a dozen rounded the bend of the narrow trail ahead. He shot again, the wolves leaped, a wolf cried out with pain from the flaming hide. He faced the fire ogres with sword drawn. They advanced until their heat seared him, flame leaping over their warty hides and froglike faces, their small red eyes flame-veiled like evil coals as they forced in around him. One fell from his sword, another pushed in. He slashed and parried, and they were so thick now they were as impregnable as a wall, closing in, stepping across their dead brothers, reaching with flaming hands. He was grappled from behind with burning hands, felt the desperate battling of the wolves with more pain than his own, for they could not attack without being burned; felt chains hot as fire forced around him. He fought the chains until an ogre struck him, and he knew no more.

  He woke staring at cell bars. His weapons were gone. The wolves were chained to the wall. On the ground beside him lay the deerskin pouch, charred and torn open. He reached for it, searching uselessly for the runestones, knowing what he would find. He shook it, then lay cursing silently.

  But when he felt in his tunic for the wolf bell, its familiar shape cleaved to his hand. He drew it out and stared at it. How had they missed the wolf bell?

  They did not miss it, Lobon. Feldyn told him. They touched it, and it sent pain through them. We have powers in the bell, too, son of Ramad. And we know a hate for the fire ogres perhaps surpassing your own. Though we had not enough power to keep them from chaining us. The black wolf lay looking across at Lobon, fettered by chains, bleeding and weak with pain. Lobon pulled himself up and went to examine Feldyn’s wounds.

  The chains binding the wolves had been locked to bolts in the wall. The smell of singed hair was strong. All three wolves were burned, but much of the burn was hair, not deep into the skin. He looked for his waterskin and saw it at last lying some distance outside the cell bars, charred black. The ground was wet where it had been dumped.

  *

  Meatha curled down in her shelter of boulders to wait for deeper night. She was glad the sky was cloudy, for dusk had come more swiftly. Alardded’s campfire smelled so good, and supper smelled even better. She munched on cold mountain meat and waited. The drowned stone lay so close, just there in Alardded’s pack.

  It had been nearly a day since she left Carriol. Was the illusion she had created in the citadel, of a runestone hanging there, working so well that still no one suspected? When she thought of what she had been capable of these last days, she could hardly believe it was all her own doing. Yet what else could it be? She felt the power in herself. If her illusion held, if they thought the stone was still in the
citadel—just until she could slip into Alardded’s camp, retrieve that second stone, slip away to join the battles in Farr and Aybil, banish the darkness there—if only her image of the false stone would hold so she would not be followed. She put her head on her knees and dozed, waiting for those below to sleep, holding her blocking tight around her, secure in the goal she pursued, secure in her love for Carriol.

  *

  Lobon’s hands were bloody from scraping against stone where he had been digging at Shorren’s chain. He had dug late into the night, and when at last Shorren pulled herself free with a final lunge, the twin moons were low, casting shadows through the cell bars. The white wolf had slunk away deep into the cave to the trickle of water Lobon had found, dragging her chain behind her. Lobon stared down at the rock in his hands, then he began to dig anew, at Feldyn’s chain. Crieba lay patiently waiting his turn. Lobon tried not to think that they could die here, with two wolves still chained to the wall. He tried not to remember that the sense of Dracvadrig he had followed to the cell had been a trap, just as the wolves had said. That if he had listened to them, none of them would be captive now behind a barred, locked gate.

  He continued to dig. The digging stones kept breaking, and his fingers were raw. When the wolves’ thirst grew too great, he went into the inner caves and let his cupped hands slowly fill with water from the small, warm trickle there and brought it out to them, making the trip over and over. Shorren brought water in her mouth and let them suck it up.

  Once as he dug at the stone he Saw an image of the girl, her beautiful face rapt in some vision he was unable to share, her lavender eyes deep and intent, very determined as if she contemplated something demanding, though he could not make out what. He felt clearly her rising excitement.

  Why did such visions touch him? Whatever she was about, whatever vision she cleaved to, had nothing to do with him. Her dark lashes were soft on her cheeks, her dark hair tumbled about her shoulders. Her eyes held him so strongly that he thought she Saw him; but then she rose preoccupied, unaware of anything but the turmoil within herself. She pulled off her boots and slipped barefoot out of the rock shelter where she had been sitting, into the moonlight, and began to move carefully down a steep cliff. He could hear the sea crashing. He saw her destination: a camp below on a rocky ledge. When she reached it at last, she stood watching the two tents, sensing out. Finally she approached the larger one, still in silence, and he could feel her blocking.

  How could he See her when she blocked so strongly? He frowned, puzzling. Did he have some special affinity for this girl, to so breach her blocking? Some tie with her that he did not understand? She approached the tent and entered in silence. He sensed rather than saw the two sleeping figures, and startled, for a master Seer slept there. And a boy, also with Seer’s skills. The girl knelt beside the master Seer and began to feel with light, quick fingers among his belongings, quickly touched something of power that made him start and catch his breath.

  She pulled the runestone out of the pack, he felt the weight and power of it as if he held it himself. A shard of the runestone of Eresu.

  Now she had two shards, he thought, puzzling. What was so urgent to this girl? What exactly did she plan? He watched her retreat softly and climb the cliff. He felt her silent call, then felt the answering call and saw a winged mare bank between clouds and plummet down beside her out of the moonwashed sky; and he felt the strange reluctance of the mare. The girl swung onto her back and nearly at once they were windborne, the girl prodding, forcing the mare. He wanted to move with them, to follow. What was the girl’s destination, carrying the runestones? She seemed to imagine something urgent, but her intention was muddled and confused in his mind. He tried to follow her in vision, but his thoughts remained fixed above the cliff as mare and rider disappeared into moon-touched cloud.

  He had started to turn from the vision of the empty cliff when he Saw the other rider standing motionless beside a winged stallion. How could he have missed them, missed sensing them? Had they come out of the sky unseen only a moment before? Or had they been standing hidden by boulders watching the girl just as he himself had watched her? A tall, thin man with short white hair. The sight of him struck a chord of recognition in Lobon, though he could not think why. He didn’t know him. There was a power about him, a mystery about him that drew Lobon. The stranger stood looking into the sky where girl and mare had disappeared with a cold, impersonal censure. Then in one leap he was mounted and following.

  *

  Dracvadrig clung in resting coils around the peak of Scar Mountain, drawing the girl to him, watching the mare wing through the night sky, pulled inexorably by his power and by the power RilkenDal had laid so beautifully upon her. Even should the girl turn reluctant, the mare would not waver from the hold they now had on her. And where better to receive the stones than here atop Scar Mountain, where Ramad had been bred and born, then snatched away from his rightful destiny as a child of the dark masters? Now the stone would return to dark. Here, where it had first been betrayed.

  Never mind how the warring fared across the coastal countries, it didn’t matter now, with this tender Seer girl to seal the fate of Ere. He smiled a toothy smile against the dark sky. Oh, yes, the girl would seal Ere’s fate—but not in the way she dreamed. To drive back the dark? Oh, no, young woman! Dracvadrig chuckled, a sound like grinding bones. Not to drive back the dark, but to breed an heir to the dark. An heir to the joining of the runestone.

  His eye began to pain him. He pawed at it absently, never taking his mind from his prey. Here on Scar Mountain had Ramad been bred out of cold revenge. Here this night the girl would come, she in turn to be bred—to begin a new line of Seers that would be heir to Ramad. Heir to the joining of the stones.

  Seers subservient to him alone, and to the dark powers.

  For something had been building for generations and it was culminating now. His own quickening to life there in the abyss was witness to that building of powers. Powers growing in strength, powers of the earth itself as natural as the volcanoes that belonged to them, or the sly movement of the moons; and other powers wrought of the minds of living creatures—forces humans called good and evil. Forces that moved like winds, shifting, violent, that even he, Dracvadrig, did not always anticipate.

  Forces that could split Ere’s plane of life apart, could open it to other planes. Already there was a wound in the fabric of this plane: there the Luff’Eresi dwelt. If Ere’s plane should so shatter, as the stone had once shattered, then when it opened to new planes, those must be the planes of the dark. And if such violence should not occur? Oh, but the dark could force such holocaust, if it had the stone, joined in darkness. And the dark powers would then own Ere.

  No matter his scoffing at the joining when he faced young Lobon, that joining was now too opportune to ignore. And it must be for the dark. And only an heir to Ramad could so join it.

  This girl, coming to him now as docile as a ewe, would make that heir for him. An heir far more tractable, more obedient, than ever the difficult young Lobon could be. He soothed the girl and beckoned her on, and she drew ever closer. Then suddenly his senses stirred uncomfortably. Scowling, he felt out across the night sky, parting winds, reaching—and he Saw suddenly the white-haired Seer following close behind the girl, riding tall between a dark stallion’s wings. A white-haired Seer! Dracvadrig spat fire, pawed the stony peak with fury. Where had this man come from! Why were the white-hairs not gone from Ere! Surely he and Kish had destroyed them. His snarl of rage rose to a scream against the lonely night. It was the white-haired one called Anchorstar, the same who had led the Children of Ynell from Burgdeeth, who had led Ramad outside of Time—that one would die this time. He wanted to spring into the sky; but he remained steady, drawing the girl, and with her the white-haired one, closer.

  *

  The mare flew strongly toward the northwest. Meatha did not wonder when Michennann ceased to resist her, when the mare began to beat steadily across the night wind.
She thought only that she had bested Michennann at last.

  She could sense new movements of Kubalese troops, knew she must come down on them there in the north, drive them back with the potency of the stones. She must circle the coastal countries, destroy every Kubalese soldier as only that power could destroy them. She was the stones’ willing servant now in this last, this all-decisive attack. She was very sure, very aware of her power; so engulfed in the aura of that power that she did not sense the presence following her. She turned to look back only when Michennann faltered, touched with sudden fear.

  She looked back beneath Michennann’s wings, sensed the man suddenly and sharply, then saw him: Tall and slim he sat the dark, winging mount, white hair gleaming, and her first response was sudden wild joy at knowing he was alive, he whom she had mourned.

  Then fear swept her as it had swept Michennann. And then shame. His censure was sharp as a sword.

  But why was she ashamed? He had no right to make her feel ashamed. He should be pleased, should be helping her. She felt amazed and hurt. Why didn’t he understand? She tried to touch his thoughts and met only coldness and disdain. She urged the mare faster, appalled at his insensitiveness, he who had always understood. Dracvadrig’s power pulled at her, and she followed blindly, needing that power now in her loneliness, pushing back wildly the suspicion that was beginning to awaken within her deepest thoughts.

  She was over the north of Zandour. She would turn now and come low onto the Kubalese troops, bring the power of the stones down on them. She spoke to the mare in silence, laid a hand on her neck, urging her into a low sweep over Zandour.

  But the mare would not turn or lower her wings to sweep down, would not speak or acknowledge her command. She simply continued north, ignoring Meatha’s bidding. Meatha glanced back at Anchorstar. This was his doing! How could he! She brought her power strong against Michennann, against Anchorstar, and was ignored by both. Michennann would not turn aside, would not speak to her, the mare was caught in a mindless pull northward. How could Anchorstar not understand? She wanted to scream at him and make him draw away.