The Castle Of Hape. Caves Of Fire And Ice. The Joining Of The Stone

And what part did Ram’s life play in focusing such powers—or in staying them, in quelling them so to delay some possible holocaust?

What if Ramad had never been born, and the runestone never split?

Oh, but Ram was born; Ere would not have been complete without him. I loved him, and I can never cease to mourn him in my heart and in my soul, and in the way I touch life now; though I never can touch life very gently, I never could. Canoldir chides me, and laughs at me for that, just as Ramad did.

 

 

 

FIVE

 

Skeelie paced, restless as a river cat. Her dark hair, knotted crookedly, caught the firelight. Canoldir watched her from where he sprawled on hide-covered cushions in the shadows beyond the hearth. He was concerned for her but smiling, too, at the force of her anger. She stared back at him, tense and irritable. “Lobon moves there now, into the abyss, just as Ramad did. It is nothing to be amused about. How can you—it means nothing to you! Nothing!” Though she knew that was not so.

“It means, my love, more than you know. But give the lad room, give him time. Give him room to breathe, room to make mistakes and recover from them.”

“He’s had all his life to make mistakes. This is not the time. If he makes a mistake there—I can feel the evil of Dracvadrig like a stench. And, Canoldir, I think there are others there, I sense other presences. Lobon does not know what awaits him. He does not go there as Ramad did, with a purpose larger than himself. He goes with personal anger, personal hatred. He does not do justice to what Ram was, he—”

“Then your anger is not for Lobon’s safety, my love, nor for the safety of the stones—but at Lobon’s disrespect for Ramad!”

“It is his ignorance! There is danger in his willful ignorance!” She stared at Canoldir’s reclining shape, wished he would come out of the shadows and stop lounging like a bear. His dark hair and beard blended with the hair on the coarse hides, his eyes, from the shadows, saw too much, his mind Saw too much. She turned away from him toward the fire’s blaze and rested her head against the high mantel. When she looked back at him at last, it was with more conviction. “I feel something else, too. I feel a force moving out from Tala-charen, the force that Ram felt. What is that power? It touches the abyss. It seems to reach toward Carriol, too, toward that shard of the runestone. It is a power that belongs to the stones, Canoldir, that comes from the mountain where the whole runestone once lay.”

Canoldir sat up. His eyes never left her. “I think it is in truth a power born of the mountain and of the forces that placed the stone there. A power that is only a part of the great forces that made and nurture Ere—forces neither good nor bad, Skeelie. But forces that can feed on the powers of either.” He paused, pulled on his beard, deep in thought. “The powers of the earth can be wedded to either darkness or light. The master of Urdd would wed himself to the earth’s powers and bring them ultimately into the realm of the dark, and his very commitment to the dark gives him strength.”

She stared back at him. “And Lobon has not wedded himself to any power but his own.” She sighed, began to pace again. “Lobon faces the master of Urdd with too little belief, too little commitment to the stones and their destiny. Dracvadrig means to destroy him, and he has not the strength even that Ram had. Is he blind? Doesn’t he see? Did Ram die only that Lobon could gratify his own mindless need for revenge and lose his life—and lose the runestones forever? Give over Ere forever to evil?”

Canoldir rose and came to her. He held her until at last her fears drew back, though the darkness remained across their minds like a sickness as the forces of dark knit and swelled.

*

The black cliff stood in shadow, a last ray of sun touching along its top edge, the abyss below nearly dark except for the red glow of its fires. Within the cliff in the small cave room, Kish stood, sensing out across Ere as delicately as a snake senses. For she, too, felt forces amassing, felt dark spirits stirring in Ere’s depths, waking, rising out of rocky graves. Kish smiled, coldly and eagerly.

As she watched the abyss below, the scenes of the last days came to her, Dracvadrig leading the young Seer ever deeper into the abyss, teasing him ever more sharply, until now the son of Ramad had been driven into a shallow cave where he stood panting and so angry he was hardly master of himself; hardly master of even his limited skills, in his fury. And Dracvadrig waited beyond a stone shelf, blocking his presence, ready to strike again.

*

Lobon leaned against the cave wall trying to stop the excessive bleeding from a long wound down his arm. The wolves prowled the cliffs below, but Dracvadrig was gone from the abyss, Lobon could feel its emptiness.