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

“As long as we are mortal,” Jaspen said sadly, “the dark will be somewhere close to us, even when we are at peace.”

“The land is quiet now,” Meatha said. “And it is different, Lobon. Can you sense it? The land is split apart. Kish did that. The mountains—” She stopped speaking, and the vision came around them, flowing from one mind to the others. All three had Seen the moment of the splitting, only Lobon unaware as if he stood in the blind eye of a storm. They had Seen the fissure begin as a crack high up inside the Ring of Fire, and run jagged and increasing in size, down through the mountains, to cut back and forth across Cloffi with the terrible force of the dark, and across the river Owdneet, so the river’s waters mixed with lava, sending up blinding steam; and the rift had shouldered south through Aybil, toward Farr and toward the villa of Dal.

*

Zephy and Thorn had sensed the rift, as had the five young Seers locked with them in the villa at Dal, sensed it and felt the earth heave and knew that they could die there. In an agony of terror each for the other, they sought out for help. They dug at the stone, forcing their shoulders and backs against the rubble with which their cell was sealed, staring skyward through the small hole they had made, hoping. . . . They felt the earth shift beneath them, and tore with bloody hands at the wall that imprisoned them.

Zephy saw the winged ones first, high in the sky above them, and cried out. The sky outside was filled with wings. Get back! the silent voices cried. Get back! The winged ones turned their backsides to the wall and kicked, kicked again in wild drumbeats until at last the wall gave way. Rubble fell around their feet. The earth’s heaving increased. The Seers tumbled through, leaped to mount. The horses swept skyward as the rift sucked Dal’s villa into a fiery maw and crushed and toppled it a hundred feet into the earth, then moved on, hungering for the sea.

*

The rift had shattered through Farr and split the coastal shelf and then the sea floor, sending the sea leaping out onto the land. Behind it the eleven countries of Ere, so long joined in isolation from the rest of the primitive globe, were no longer joined. Now to the west lay Moramia and Karra in the high desert, nearly untouched, and clinging to them, Zandour and Aybil and Cloffi. That land lay separated now from the eastern nations. The rift was half a mile wide. In the east lay Carriol and Pelli, Sangur and Kubal, and what had once been Urobb. Farr was an island now, cut off from the land.

In the mountains, the fissure had snaked through the caves of Owdneet, which were already shattered by the earlier quakes. The magnificent grotto where Ramad had met the dark Seer was no more. How many mortals and living creatures had died in the devastation, they couldn’t know. How many families crushed, terrified—generations, whole villages. All the fabric of their civilization torn asunder by Kish, by the dark, and all record of it, all the history of Ere wrought in paintings on the stone ceiling and laid out in parchment scrolls gone, neither present nor past to endure save what fragments future generations could slowly piece together. The fissure’s tail snaked north, to end at last at the foot of Tala-charen. Ere was split in two. Only Tala-charen lay untouched.

“We will start anew,” Meatha said, “We will retrieve what we can of the past, and we will write a new history. Tra. Hoppa will write it.”

Lobon looked at Jaspen. What would happen to the white-haired ones? He knew from Meatha that Anchorstar and Merren Hoppa had no idea that they were brother and sister.

“We know about each other now,” Jaspen said, “We are all the children of Cadach. Anchorstar knows, and Merren. Gredillon, in her own time knows. Our brother Thebon who moves through the unknown lands knows. Cadach has died now,” she said, “and has been released, and so we are released from our vows to atone for him. That won’t change what we are, and what we care about.”

“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 . . . ?”