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

“There are fifteen Seers in Carriol. Jerthon of Carriol is older than you. There are some old men, some women. There is only one other young man, and he is thin and freckled, older. There is only one as young as you and red of hair. And brazen sometimes, so the captives say.”

He grinned. ‘Tell me your name.”

“I am Telien.”

“Yes, Telien. You freed a woman and her daughters and they came to us.” He wanted to tell her something, to share with her something, but he did not know what. He wanted to give her something. “I was riding toward Eresu,” he blurted, and he had not meant to tell anyone this. He saw her eyes widen: green eyes, cool green in the glancing moonlight. He wanted to touch her cheek and didn’t understand his feelings. She studied his face, and he was stirred by her, and restless and afraid. What was this strangeness? He felt a closeness to her like nothing he could remember, a closeness as brothers of blood would feel, yet not like that at all; the closeness of a woman, but unlike what he had felt for any woman.

How could a man feel tenderness, feel passion, kneeling in the muck of a corral, freezing cold? Yet he felt all this for Telien. She started to speak but a lantern flared nearby, and at once she was gone into the night as if she had never been.

When he woke again it was dawn, and some chidrack were screaming and pecking after bugs at one side of his pen. He rolled over, stared at the crossed bars. He had been sleeping in the mud like an animal. He rose painfully, saw the ropes lying half buried in the mud, and remembered Telien. He moved stiffly, every bone ached, and his wound pulled painfully. His stomach was empty as a cavern, his mouth dry. Hardly light, nothing stirred. There were no cobbled streets here, only mud. No stone houses. Rough wooden sheds, many pens. No smoke from the tin chimneys yet. He stood looking through the bars, knowing he should try to make a plan of escape and unable to think of anything but Telien.

At last he stirred himself, found the gate to his pen, and began to examine the lock, a huge heavy thing set into wide steel straps so it could not be pried loose. He gave it up finally and turned once more to sorting out his surroundings.

The nearby pens held horses slogging in mud so it was a wonder they weren’t all lame. In a far corral human captives slept on the ground like dead bodies—could have been bodies scattered, except some of them snored. In a corral to his left stood a great mare, her rump turned to him. She—he stared, not believing what he saw. When she turned, he caught his breath.

A mare of Eresu! And her wings shorn bare so he went sick at the sight of her. Wings clipped to the skin like some fettered barn fowl, wings made ugly and monstrous, misshapen, held tight to her sides in pain or in shame, ungainly bony protuberances that once had been graceful arcs commanding winds, commanding the skies of Ere. Her body was covered with the long welts of a lash, cruel and deep.

He tried to reach her with his thoughts, but she stood hunched and unresponding. How long had she been in this place? Had she been captured in AgWurt’s snares? What did AgWurt intend for her? To clip her wings like this, to cripple her—and the poor mare was heavy with foal. What did he want? Only to bedevil and degrade these wild creatures whose spirits he could not touch? Or to ride them, to become their masters in some sick-minded attempt at mastering that which no man could ever master.

He turned his attention again to the compound. He could not help the mare, not yet. But AgWurt shared now in the cold, purposeful hatred Ram held for Venniver who burned children, and for the dark Pellian Seers.

The sky was growing lighter, the compound taking fuller shape. There was a long shed beyond the pens that could be a central kitchen and sleeping hall, perhaps an arms store as well. How many men did the encampment house? He could see another row of sheds some distance beyond the first, and more corrals. He counted sixty-two horses, some of them very good mounts, many from Carriol. He caught his breath when he saw the dun stallion standing tall among the other mounts.

And where was Anchorstar, then? He could not see him among the prisoners. He stood looking, outraged, uncertain. Was the tall, white-haired man sleeping in the hall among the Kubalese? Was he friend to the Kubalese, had he spoken to Ram in deceit?

Had he alerted the Kubalese that Ram was near, traveling alone?

He could hardly believe that, and yet . . . why had Anchorstar come here? What business could the man have with the Kubalese?

In the closest prison pen, figures were beginning to rise stiffly from the mud where they had slept. Ram watched them, hoping to see Anchorstar among them, but assuming he would not; and Anchorstar was not there. When Ram turned, Telien stood beside his cage.