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

It was smashed and twisted by Kish’s sword. The belly of the bitch-wolf gaped open where the blade had gone in. Inside that cut, gleaming green, lay a shard of the runestone. He turned the wolf bell and spilled the stone into his hand beside the others. At once he was stricken with a force like thunder, felt heat and a white light burst around the stone so bright it blinded him.

When the light died, he remained still, shocked, hypnotized with the force that gripped him.

In his hand lay not the shards of the runestone, but a round jade sphere. The whole stone. No mark or line showed where the shards had joined. The runes were carved around its surface, the whole rune—or nearly whole: for a chasm ran along one side of the stone deep into the center, a rough-edged scar where the missing shard should have been. Inside, he could see the golden heart that had been the starfires. He looked up then, and saw Meatha. Skeelie stood beside her, the look on her face unfathomable, her dark eyes deep with emotions that shook Lobon’s soul, the sense of Ramad so strong between them, the sense of their closeness.

“It is joined,” he said inadequately. He felt heavy and stupid with shock. “How—how could such a thing happen? It is not whole, it is flawed. How . . . ?” He was fighting dizziness, fighting to remain standing.

Skeelie moved to support him, stood tall and strong beside him, holding his shoulders. Her voice shook only slightly. “Perhaps it is flawed just as Ere is flawed. Just so—as men’s lives are flawed.”

“Yes,” he said, staring down at the stone.

“Though,” she added quietly, “that makes their lives no less magnificent.”

He leaned against Skeelie, felt her strength, her gentleness. Then he looked across to Meatha, reached to take her hand.

“It is done,” Meatha said. Above them the sky was empty, the remaining lizards had fled.

“And the wolves?” he said suddenly, looking around him. The white-haired child stood alone, a little way from them.

“The wolves are gone,” Meatha said. “They make for Carriol and their brothers.” He glimpsed them in the shadows of his mind racing across the sand. “They will return to us,” she said. “Maybe with mates by their sides.” She smiled. “Too long alone, those two.” Her warmth and her strength, like Skeelie’s strength, reached out and steadied him; and Skeelie moved away.

He looked long at Meatha. “And—are you too long alone?”

She lowered her eyes, then looked up. “I am not alone,” she said boldly. Kish’s spell had fallen from them. The force that linked them now was their own, woven not of darkness nor of another’s greed. He put his arms around her and found the lack of a spell made little difference in the way he felt. He drew her close, wincing as he pressed her against a sword wound; he felt the pain of all his wounds, as if the numbing strain of battle had worn away and his senses come clear once more; pain, and then dizziness.

*

He woke with strong hands lifting him to a sitting position. He was in a bed, staring dumbly at a steaming mug of something vile. He looked up at Skeelie’s face.

“I can’t drink that. It stinks.”

“Ram always drank it. So can you. It will ease the pain.”

He pushed it away. “I don’t need droughts for pain.” Though pain was nearly crushing him.

He began to remember, and the memory so shook him that it, too, brought pain. He gripped the stone in his hand and dared not look at it.

“Drink!” Skeelie insisted. Scowling, he gulped the hot, bitter brew. Not till it was gone did he lift the stone, and read the runes carved into it;

 

Eternal quest to those —— power

Some seek dark; they —— end.

Some hold joy: they know eternal life.

Through them all powers will sing.

 

The child Jaspen stood silently beside the bed—this surely must be her bed, a narrow cot. She said softly, “Eternal quest to those with power. Some seek dark, they mortal end.” The touch of the stone seemed to Lobon like fire, immense, filling the light-washed dome. He remembered the moment of the joining, the white light, the stone joining in his hand just as, six generations gone in Time, it had shattered in Ramad’s hand.

On the floor beside the cot lay the split and battered wolf bell. The bitch-wolf was still grinning.

The drug was beginning to take hold, to make him muzzy. He remembered the battling across Ere, Carriol’s desperate warring against the Kubalese, felt with dulled senses how the powers had struck at them, and the powers of darkness called by Kish with the rage that shook all the land. Sleepily, he realized that the sense of those powers was gone now, that infinite calm lay around him and lay too across Ere. He looked up with hazy vision. Both Meatha and Skeelie were watching him, and the child Jaspen, her thin little face calm beneath that shock of white hair.

“The dark is gone,” Meatha said. “Or—the dark has drawn back,” she corrected herself.

Skeelie touched his cheek. “Perhaps the dark will never be entirely gone. Maybe that is what the flawed stone tells us.”