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

The power of the stones might not have held the mare, but they wielded a far greater force in battle, for with them she had strengthened the Kubalese warriors until now they drove the Carriolinians back toward Carriol, drove her own ungrateful cults back with them. A handful of cultists remained loyal and fought now beside Kearb-Mattus with a zeal that made her smile with satisfaction.

She shook the stones and watched their green fire flash across her palm. Three more stones to complete the nine-stone. The wolf bell had been as immovable as if it were fastened to the earth when she tried to lift it from the Seer’s tunic. Curse Dracvadrig and RilkenDal both for being dead. She needed their power now. But she would have the wolf bell. She must.

She thought with brief speculation of Kearb-Mattus, but he had no Seer’s powers to help her, only brute strength. Still, he might be a satisfactory lover if nothing more. He was brawny, with a killer’s lust she liked. There would be time for play once she had the stones and a human creature bred to the joining. She smiled. Now it would be her runestone, whole and powerful. Shared with no one. She would raise the child of Lobon to her ways, and he would do her bidding.

She turned to stare down the long drop of the abyss to where the iron gates held safe her captives. Now there was only to breed them, to get the heir to the stone’s final and inevitable joining. She scowled. The girl seemed as without passion as a toad. Blast her. The spell on her had so far only made her avoid the boy like a plague. And that one, Lobon, gone surly and silent. Sexless, that’s what they were. She stood letting her mind open to darkness, to forces now moving across Ere, powers that excited her and made her blood pound. Forces she understood and could draw to this place. She would have the bell. She would call forth a child to join the stone. And she would shape both child and stone to darkness.

Then Ere would kneel to her will. Then the entire land would be her courtyard and all men her willing servants. And the Seers—the Carriolinian Seers—would be as docile to her as the horses of Eresu had been to RilkenDal.

And the gods, Kish? And the sacred valley of Eresu? What of them?

There were no such things as gods, no such place as Eresu. Urdd, yes. Urdd was real and flaming and violent with the anger of the earth ripping it. Urdd was alive and cruel and satisfying.

But Eresu with its Luff’Eresi was simply a dream without substance, the crutch of weak men afraid to live on their own terms.

She left the tethered, dying mare, and stood staring up at the flying lizards, then reached out with a cold power and laid a cloud over their dim minds that made them wobble in flight and begin to circle uncertainly. She made one come down so close to the tethered mare that the imbecilic animal threw herself futilely against her tether. Kish smiled. Yes, she could tame the lizards, dumb and nasty-tempered as they were. She let the creature return to its friends. She found the path Dracvadrig had worn smooth with his hard, scaly body over years of use and started down. It was just dusk.

By dawn she was standing outside the locked gate, watching the two within with cold distaste. Idiots. Sleeping as far apart as they could in the wide cave. She watched the girl stir, then wake, and Kish drew back into the shadow of the cliff, blocking. Perhaps the girl would go to the boy now, touch him. But no, she knelt beside the dark wolf and began to dress his wounds. Stupid child! The two were as dense and sexless as any humans she had ever encountered.

They must breed! What else was there to do, male and female alone! What else, when her curses tied them so strongly!

At last she fetched food from the ogres’ cave and set it inside the bars, then left them, sick at the sight of them. She would not let them starve, though. That was not part of her plan.

Lobon woke, sensed her approach, watched her come to the bars and shove the bowl inside. He did not move. The sense of her was always around them, growing stronger or weaker as she moved about the abyss, suffocating them when she stood close, tolerable only when she was above in the valley.

He and Meatha could speak to the mare up there, but the poor creature was so miserable and sick she had ceased to say much, so weak from mistreatment, from lack of enough food that they were not sure she would live. Even Michennann was able to do little for her except to bring mouthfuls of green grass when the warrior queen had gone.