Inside lay the cask, carved of pale wood.
Ram drew it out, held it with shaking hands, oblivious to the battle, to everything. Felt the spell on it, saw his fingers try to lift the lid, watched his hands pry at it uselessly.
The dark reached, needed to blind him. He could feel HarThass close. He brought his forces trembling against the Seer; saw Tayba’s sword raised . . .
He shouted into the screaming storm. Wind lashed through the chamber.
*
Tayba faced Jerthon quietly, then looked down at Venniver, fallen and bleeding, looked with shock at her blood-covered blade. Jerthon said softly, “You meant to kill me. Why did you change your mind?
“I could—I could do nothing else.” She stared and stared at Venniver, could feel his pain. Was he dying? Had she killed him? Then she looked up at Jerthon and knew she truly could have done nothing, nothing else but save this tall, fierce man who stood before her drenched with rain and blood, searching her face with an honesty he had, at last, forced her to accept.
They saw too late the soldiers leaping through rain to block the alley, dark shapes in darkness, lurching forward; saw HarThass, cape blowing, sword drawn.
Tayba and Jerthon stood together to face the challenge as, behind them, Venniver rolled onto his side and tried to rise; and suddenly all was confusion, and time twisted with a jolting shock and held cold. Space and time were asunder. The alley and cave were as one. Soldiers were poised; Ram’s fingers reached to touch the stone; the mountain rocked. Lightning flashed in a jagged bolt that turned the cave pale, made the gantroed look white. The lightning seared Ram’s hand, struck the Runestone.
It shattered.
The stone lay white hot in his hands. Nine long shards of jade, glowing white.
Then they began to cool. Turned pale green, then darker until they were the deep color of the sea. The Runestone of Eresu, broken apart. The power shattered. Ram stared at the stones, shocked. Felt their terrible weight. Felt the power that remained; it was the same power, only divided. Not whole, not . . .
The mountain trembled again, and the floor beneath their feet began to crack, a long, jagged wound growing wider. They leaped back as the dark abyss widened. The dying gantroed began to slip down into the emptiness.
In Burgdeeth, Venniver rose slowly and painfully to his feet. Jerthon held him captive and held the soldiers back with his threat to Venniver. They watched silently as HarThass approached.
Ram reached to give Jerthon power from the stone he held. And in the cave hazy figures had suddenly appeared all around him, ghostly figures growing clearer. A girl with long brown hair leaped from the back of a winged horse to run toward them; a red-haired young man turned to stare at Ram; a man dressed in blue robes looked up in surprise; others, a pale, lovely young woman who gazed into Ram’s eyes with such recognition that he went giddy with a feeling he had never encountered.
The figures stood with hands cupped upward in ceremony. Ram’s hands were the same, palms up. And the terrible weight of the jade shards was lighter; for now only one section of the Runestone lay in his palm. He stood staring at it stricken with the shattering of the stone, the shattering of that perfect power. Felt the power of the one stone, though. Saw that in those other, ghostly hands, lay shards of jade. Two? Three? He could not be sure. But there had been nine.
Had some gone, then, careening down into the dark abyss? As he stared down into the emptiness, the jagged cavern began to narrow, to close. They all drew back, watching; the ghostly crew mingling quite comfortably among wolves.
The floor closed slowly until only a jagged black scar marred the cave floor. This remained. The gantroed’s bones, white and clean, protruded from it; wedged deep in the mountain, perhaps to mingle with the lost jade.
*
Jerthon held the soldiers frozen, felt HarThass’s power like a tide. He glanced at Tayba. “Are you with me? Help me hold them.” She felt him draw her out. She swallowed, brought her power stronger to lift and surge upward, catching her breath. How did she know to do this? Jerthon faced HarThass, swords clashed; their figures spun, were as one in the dark alley; she held the soldiers back, held Venniver back, straining; gasped as HarThass went down and Jerthon stood over him, his sword at the Pellian’s throat; turned away with shock at the Seer’s quick death.
But they could not hold Venniver long. He rose, came at them bleeding. She faced him sword drawn, as Jerthon whirled and had him in a grip like steel. She stared into Venniver’s eyes, could not speak, his hatred chilling her through. Would Jerthon kill him?
But Jerthon backed away from the guards, Venniver his captive. “He can’t hold that rabble forever.”
“Even—even with the power of the stone? Ram—”
“Even with Ram’s power, in that one shard of jade. HarThass’s apprentices are well trained—out there somewhere. Can’t you feel them?” He glanced at Venniver, held tight against him, then at her, appraising her. “This one will buy our freedom. If it is freedom you want.” He was watching her, but she could only look at Venniver. His hatred was terrible, she stared back at him, sick. Yet that hard, confining shell around herself had cracked away. Something new was determined to live, something beyond what she had known with Venniver. Something more real and urgent than anything in her life. She looked at Venniver and swallowed, looked away. Her tears were mixed with rain, salt and bitter.
She stood beside Jerthon and, in a power she had never admitted, never wanted, she held with him, held the soldiers back. A power that rose, now, from the very core of her being. She stayed the guards, the Pellian Seers, her mind coolly linked with Jerthon’s. They forced Venniver down the street toward the band of mounts that waited, guarded by Dlos. Some of the horses were saddled, some roped together. Derin and Saffoni led horses forward. Tayba could not speak for the effort she made to hold strong against the Pellian forces, against Venniver’s stifled guards. How long she could hold, she did not know.
Slaves were coming out of the dark, some leading the soldier’s horses. The rain had slacked, nearly ceased. She saw men carrying wounded, felt out with Jerthon in quick assessment. He said, “Drudd? Pol?”
“Yes. We are here,” Drudd said, lifting a wounded man up. “Trane is dead. And Vanaw. I don’t think . . . where are the women?”
Derin rode up, leading saddled horses. “They . . . Barban and Hallel are dead.” Her voice caught. “Cirell is here, with Dlos. We . . . must we leave our dead?”
“Yes,” Jerthon said shortly. The rain had ceased. The clouds began to part so that a little light touched the hurrying band as they mounted and sorted themselves out. Tayba could feel Jerthon’s effort with her own, holding their pursuers.
Were there still horses there in the dark street that could be used to pursue them? More slaves were coming. But they were not slaves, she thought suddenly. They were free now. At last, all accounted for, they rode quickly out of Burgdeeth, Venniver tied to his mount, furious and silent, his bleeding staunched with rags.
They turned him loose somewhere above Burgdeeth, to struggle home on foot as best he could. Then they loosed their waning hold on the soldiers and guards and heard them shouting back in the town for horses they would never find.
*
Ram and Skeelie lay on their stomachs in the deep window of the room where they had slept, staring down the steep side of Tala-charen at the wild, empty land. Ram said, “We’ll go down this way, come out in that long valley.”
“But we came the other way, into the other side of the mountain. How—”
“I think . . . I just feel that we can. We’ll have to see. Those stairs—didn’t you wonder how Tala-charen could crack apart but leave the rooms untouched? Didn’t you—”
“Oh, I figured that out,” she said offhandedly. “There, where the mountain bows out. The crack is in there, the other side of the caves.” She stared at Ram, giving him a picture.
She had waked at first light to climb up onto this sill and lie so, looking out
at the sun-touched peaks of the lower mountains to the northwest, Tala-charen’s shadow cast long across them. She had seen where the crack in Tala-charen might be. She had slid down from the sill and gone down the spiraled flight to the next room, and the next below it. There the wall was cracked too, the gantroed’s bones pushing through. She had reached in among those bones to search with blind fingers; but no shard of jade had she found, had turned away at last disappointed. Nothing in that dark crack but bones and more bones. She turned to look at Ram.
“Why did the stone shatter? After all that climb and nearly getting killed, the cliff, the fiery lake—if you were meant to have the stone, why did it shatter?”
“It just did,” he said simply. “No one planned it. I wasn’t meant to have the stone—the time was just right that I seek it.”
She only stared at him.
“You don’t think . . . ? The forces on Ere . . . everything was right for me to seek out the stone, but no one planned that I do it. And no one said, ‘Now we will shatter it.’” He watched her, frowning a little. “Mostly it was HarThass’s power, though. He waited too long, he played me too long, like a clumsy fisherman. And then when it was too late he threw all his power into the shattering of the stone, to destroy it. And with the other forces there, wheeling, all that power . . .” He spread his hands. “It—is shattered.”
“But those others, those who came and held the stone then. That wasn’t accident, Ram!”
“Yes it was. It was accident. All—all those forces, balanced like that for an instant, threw—threw us outside of time. And those who desired the power for good—somehow they got through. Maybe—maybe there were others among them. I don’t know. Now,” he said with awe, “in other times there are shards of jade like this one. Power, Skeelie. All strewn across time. Because of accident, because of a clashing of powers—because of one Seer’s lust for power that tipped the scale.”
“What—what will happen because of it?”
He stared out over the mountains silently, longing to See all of time spread before him just as the nameless peaks were spread, but seeing only peaks. “No one . . . no one can know, Skeelie.”
“How can you be so sure? How can you be sure, Ramad of Zandour, that there is not one force making—causing all this to happen?”
“Nobody is sure,” he said patiently. “There is one force. But it is made of hundreds of forces. You can feel it—a Seer can. But it doesn’t make things happen. They just happen. Forces balance, overbalance—that is what makes life; nothing plans it, that would take the very life from all—all the universe.
“But something—something judges,” he said with certainty. “In all of it together, there is a judgment.”
Fawdref came to push close, and Ram put his arm around the great wolf’s neck. “But it is the strength of the force in our little desires for good and evil, Skeelie, that balances and counterbalances and makes things happen. Makes life happen.” He stared hard at her. “It is not planned! Like—like a recipe for making soap!”
He looked out across the unknown mountains, and she could feel in him the challenge of those forces. He tousled Fawdref roughly, making the great wolf smile. Out there—across the unknown lands and back behind them in the seething, warring countries—there was all of life: to explore, to come to terms with in his new power. What could he do, what good could he help to draw from the balancing, ever-changing forces of Ere? She wanted to be with Ram in this, wherever he went, whatever forces he touched.
He took her hand, and they started down out of Tala-charen toward the north.
They emerged on the other side of the mountain from the place where they had started, stood blinking in the bright sun.
The wolves tasted the air, gave the children a parting nudge, and went to hunt Ram and Skeelie started up the long valley, wishing they had horses. “I think,” Ram said, scanning the mountains on either side, “I think. . . .” He knelt found a small stone, scraped away grass, and began to draw on the ground. “Here we are in the valley.” He drew mountains, another valley, a narrow way around mountains and then a valley beyond that, very wide, dotted by lakes of fire and steaming geysers. And beyond that again, cliffs. Then at last a round valley through which the Owdneet flowed. “They are there; they are beginning to pack up. They will come this way, Jerthon knows we are here. Mamen . . .” He began to smile. “Mamen knows! Mamen Sees us, Skeelie!”
“She—she will be all right?”
“Yes. She will.”
*
“Now Venniver will go on with his plans for the town,” Dlos said, dishing out mawzee cakes, her face flushed from the fire. They had all slept late in the peaceful little valley; the night guards slept still, beyond a pile of pack saddles. She stared at Jerthon. “Is that what you want, Venniver building his little empire?” Her wrinkles deepened in a scowl.
Jerthon gave her a hard, steady look. “It is not what I want Dlos. Nevertheless, Burgdeeth may prove to be of value.”
Dlos stared. “How have you worked that out?”
“Burgdeeth might be,” he said shortly, “a place of tempering. A place of testing.”
“Testing? You are mad, Jerthon!
“No, not mad. HarThass is dead. I don’t think his apprentices will bother with Burgdeeth. They are—a weak lot. If they had the Runestone, they would. But without it, I think the power of the stone that Ram holds will be enough to stop them.” He speared some side meat from the fire, laid it on a slab of bread. “The town is different now. The statue is there. The tunnel is complete, has vibrations of its own. Strong ones. Young Seers born there—if they are of true worth—will have something to lead them, to draw them toward truth. And they will have—a liberal education in what sloth and evil are all about, if they grow up in Venniver’s town.”
Tayba swallowed her meat with a dry throat. She would not two days ago, have bothered to speak out or have cared. “He—he will kill them,” she said evenly. “Don’t you know he means to kill them, even the babies? To burn them on the altar of the Temple?”
“He means to,” Jerthon said. “But that will not come for a while. And before it does, perhaps we will be able to prevent it.”
She stared at him and didn’t see how anything could prevent Venniver from his plans, as long as he was master of Burgdeeth.
“There are ways,” Jerthon said. And would say no more.
*
The children came down a face of rough lava, half sliding, the wolves frolicking across it. Below, horses grazed. The smoke of a campfire rose. A rider spurred her horse out wildly up the hill. Ram began to run.
“Mamen!”
She plunged galloping up through the woods, pulled her horse up and slid from the saddle to hold Ram fast. She was crying, hugged him fiercely. Other riders came galloping. Jerthon rode up quietly and sat looking down at Ram.
Ram took the Runestone from his tunic and handed it to Jerthon.
Jerthon read the runes carven into the one side. Senseless words, for the rest were broken away. “Eternal . . . will sing.” He looked at Ram. “Did it sing?”
“If you call thunder a song. It thundered when it broke apart. It exploded in my hand, hot as Urdd!”
Jerthon handed it back.
“But where . . .” Ram said, watching Jerthon. “We don’t know, really, where it’s gone. The other parts. The Children out of time . . .”
“It went into time, and that is all we can know.” Jerthon dismounted and laid a hand on Ram’s shoulder. “Now, barring something we cannot foresee, in each age from which those Children came, time will warp again, once, in the same way.”
“There—there was a girl,” Ram said. “A young woman. She—”
“She was out of a future time,” Jerthon said.
“You saw her?”
“I saw.”
“Well, what . . .” He remembered the pale young woman’s look, as if she longed for him. Remembered his own strange feelings.
“Have you ever been in l
ove, Ramad of Zandour?”
“Of course not!” he said indignantly.
“Well, you will be.”
When Ram looked up, Fawdref was grinning at him. Rhymannie raised her head in a sly, female look. Ram scowled at Fawdref. “Old dog, what are you laughing at?”
But then he grew sad, for Fawdref meant to leave them. “Not yet,” he said. “Jerthon goes to Carriol and so do I. You—you could journey with us. At least as far as the grotto.”
But Fawdref let him know his band could travel faster alone. That he would see them in the pass behind the great grotto when they reached it, would perhaps bring fresh meat for them. And so the wolves vanished, faded into the wood that flanked the lava flow and were gone as if they had never been; and if Ram had tears, he let no one see.
They made a feast that night of stag and morliespongs and wild tammi, fat otero roasted on the fire. For at dawn they would split forces, some to ride deeper into the unknown lands through which they were passing, to search for new country or to come, at last, back to Carriol with more knowledge of these lands than anyone now had.
Though most would go to Carriol with Jerthon.
“There is much unsettled land in Carriol,” he said, leaning back against stones besides the fire, Skeelie snuggled close. “The ancient city of the gods, the town that has grown around it—they are not a country. The time has come when Carriol must become a country or perish. It is not strong enough now to prevent the Herebian onslaughts that are surely coming.”
Ram would follow Jerthon. He would go nowhere else. He stared sleepily into the fire. They would go to Carriol and build a county of freedom and great pleasure.
They slept close beside the campfire, the night sentries keeping watch. Drudd snored, his head propped on his saddle. Derin and dark-haired Saffoni shared a blanket. It seemed strange to Ram to sleep without Fawdref’s shaggy warmth. He snuggled close against Tayba, but she was not furry, nor as warm. Ere’s two moons hung low in the clear sky; and the star Waytheer rode between them, its power speaking down to the Runestone, and to Ram.
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