Runestone of Eresu
Page 47
“And what was Cadach’s crime?” Lobon said, not knowing if she would answer.
Skeelie spoke for her. “Cadach, in a time two years gone from this present time, showed the Kubalese how to use the drug MadogWerg—not to ease pain, but to control the minds of the Children of Ynell.” She looked across at Meatha and saw that Meatha had gone pale. “Cadach by so doing,” she said gently, “nearly took the life of his own son, of Anchorstar. Cadach, when he died, then was trapped in the tree.”
“We knew nothing of this until now,” Jaspen said. “I knew only that I guarded the stone. And that I waited, so very long, I waited.”
“But how did you get the stone?” Meatha said. “How . . . ?”
“I was an orphan child,” Jaspen told them. “In Moramia. The slave of a miner. Another child, a slave, was treated cruelly—we all were, but he died from his beatings. It was he who kept the stone secret and hidden. He, Sechen, had been there on Tala-charen.” She looked up at Skeelie. “You were there. You were on Tala-charen beside Ramad.”
Skeelie nodded, a bond of sympathy and pain between them.
“When Sechen died, I took the stone from him, and a power came around me, a sense of—” She stared at them with her golden eyes and could not put to words the sense of the wonder, could only show them. They were caught in the vision of the Luff’Eresi surrounding the child, speaking to the child.
“They told me,” Jaspen said, “that my father had served the dark, and that if I were willing I could atone for him. That if I would return to the source of the stone, then the dark could never touch it. They said that it was very rare for them to guide the way of a human. They showed me where the dome was, and then they were gone; and I was alone in the slave hut with the stone to hide until I could escape.
“The wolves came to me in the night, I was terrified. But they spoke to me, and were so—I put my arms around them and I cried; for no one, except Sechen, had ever loved me.
“I followed them. They led me to the crystal dome, and then they went away. I—” She looked around, forgetting that the wolves had left them. “I missed them when they were gone. But . . .” She looked up now with a new brightness, a wonder they had not before seen. “But my sisters and my brothers will come now. We can be together if we wish.” She took Skeelie’s hand. “If you would wait with me, you could know—the woman who reared Ramad.”
“I almost, once—I almost . . .” Skeelie found to her consternation that she was crying. She turned away and went to stand staring out through the clear dome.
All of Time that she had moved through, all the generations, all her life and Ram’s seemed to culminate here. She felt terrified, lost, and exhilarated. She turned at last to Lobon and Meatha. “The Kubalese are driven back and docile,” she said with certainty. “Kearb-Mattus crawls away beaten—alive, but injured and beaten.” She sighed. “Carriol will rebuild now that which war and the violence of the land has destroyed. All Ere will begin anew now, as it has begun before. You—you will be a part of that building.”
Lobon’s voice caught. “And you, Mamen? You . . .”
But already she had turned toward the crystal door. As she stood with it flung back, a big dark stallion winged down out of the sky and a man, broad of shoulder and bearded, leaped down, taking her into his arms.
She was crying, held tight against Canoldir. At last she turned away from him, took Lobon in a strong embrace, and then Meatha. She kissed the child Jaspen and said, “I will return to see Gredillon.” She called to the mare who waited close beside the dome, a bright russet mare. She mounted, and the mare leaped up through clouds beside Canoldir’s stallion, whether to that place outside of Time or to another destination, no one knew.
Stepping to the crystal door. Meatha slid onto the back of the white mare, and Lobon chose Michennann. Skyborne, they turned to wave down at the little pale figure beside the crystal dome, then looked ahead; soon, from the sweeping sky, they saw below them the two wolves heading south, leaping across dunes like swift shadows. Will you come with us? Lobon asked them. We can carry you. And the winged ones banked upon the winds to await their answer.
But the wolves did not pause. We will take our own way, Lobon of wolves, Feldyn told him. There is time now for us to follow our own wild spirit, and time for you, Lobon, to ride a gentler wind.
Time, now, for a kinder life, guided by the runestone, Meatha said silently. And we, in turn, must stand strong to guard the stone’s power. Was it a warning, when the land shattered? That if we fail to keep the safe the runestone, if we weaken and grow soft and let the dark rule the stone, all will be lost forever?
There will be no turning back again, Lobon agreed. We cannot hope to retrieve, another time, what we would lose through weakness. Forever, now, we must stand strong. He touched Michennann’s sleek neck and the winged ones lifted into the wind; their powerfully beating wings carried them up, ever higher, into the clear, deep sky.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shirley Rousseau Murphy grew up in southern California, riding and showing the horses her father trained. She attended the San Francisco Art institute and later worked as an interior designer while her husband attended USC. “When Pat finished school, I promptly quit my job and began to exhibit paintings and welded metal sculpture in the West Coast juried shows.” Her work could also be seen in many traveling shows in the western States and Mexico. “When we moved to Panama for a four-year tour in Pat’s position with the U.S. Courts, I put away the paints and welding torches, and began to write.” After leaving Panama they lived in Oregon, Atlanta, and northern Georgia before returning to California, where they now live by the sea.
Besides this novels in this volume and the preceding one, The Shattered Stone, Murphy wrote the Dragonbards trilogy (also available as ebooks) plus sixteen children’s books before turning to adult fantasy with The Catswold Portal and the Joe Grey cat mystery series, which so far includes sixteen novels and for which she is now best known. She is the winner of five Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists Author of the Year awards as well as eight Muse Medallion awards from the national Cat Writers Association.
ALSO AVAILABLE
The Shattered Stone
An omnibus containing the first two books of the five originally published as the Children of Ynell series, which tell of the youth of the characters in The Runestone of Eresu.
In most regions of Ere to be a Seer, gifted with telepathic and visionary powers, means death—or does it? For some it may mean an even worse fate: destruction of their minds and enslavement by the dark powers determined to conquer the world. In Ring of Fire, Zephy and the goatherd Thorn are dismayed to discover that they themselves are Seers, but once they know, they are driven to escape from the repressive city of their birth and rescue others, many of them children, who have been captured and imprisoned by its attackers. Only the discovery of one shard of a mysterious runestone offers hope that they can succeed. In The Wolf Bell, set in an earlier time, the child Seer Ramad seeks the runestone itself with the aid of an ancient bell that enables him to control and communicate with the thinking wolves of the mountains, who become his friends. But will they be a match for his enemies, the evil Seers of Pelli, who are determined to control Ramad’s mind and through him, to obtain the stone for their own dark purpose?
Dragonards Trilogy, Book 1: Nightpool
As dark raiders invade the world of Tirror, a singing dragon awakens from her long slumber, searching for the human who can vanquish the forces of evil—Tebriel, son of the murdered king. Teb has found refuge in Nightpool, a colony of talking otters. But a creature of the Dark is also seeking him, and the battle to which he is drawn will decide Tirror’s future.
Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 2: The Ivory Lyre
The bard Tebriel and his singing dragon Seastrider together can weave powerful spells. With other dragons searching for their own bards, they have been inciting revolts throughout the enslaved land of Tirror. Only if they can contact u
nderground resistance fighters and find the talisman hidden in Dacia will they have a chance to break the Dark’s hold on the world.
Dragonbards Trilogy, Book 3: The Dragonbards
Only the dragonbards and their singing dragons have the power to unite the people and animals of Tirror into an army that can break the Dark’s hypnotic hold over the world. Before their leader Tebriel can challenge the hordes gathering for the final battle, he must confront the dark lord Quazelzeg face to face in the Castle of Doors, a warp of time and space.