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

She said, abruptly, without greeting, “He keeps—AgWurt keeps the key chained to his wrist.” As if she had thought all day about how to set him free. “I—he almost never takes it off. Once, by the water trough . . .”

“Yes, when you freed Mawn Paula and her children.”

“Yes.” She moved along the fence until Ram had turned so the faint moonlight fell on his face. She reached as if she would touch his hair, then stilled her hand, remained silent, watching him.

He wanted to whisper to her, to hold her.

“You can’t dig out, Ram. The posts are buried a long way and the ground is like rock.”

He touched her hand, her cheek—that face he had seen in dreams for half his life. Why didn’t she remember? He wanted to speak of Tala-charen and could not.

“I can steal a knife, though. If you . . .”

He searched her eyes. So direct, so concerned for him. “A knife, yes. If I could get AgWurt to enter this cursed pen . . .” Should he speak of this? AgWurt was, after all, her father.

“If you could do that, you could kill him and take the key. I want to kill him. I am—I am afraid. I have tried. He—he wakes in his sleep. It is the—the only way I know to do it, in his sleep, and I can’t even do that.”

“He will die,” Ram promised. “He needs to die. Is this . . . Telien, is this why you help me? Only so I will kill AgWurt?”

She looked shocked, drew back. “I—I suppose it is, in part. But . . .” She came close again. “But there is more to it than that, Ramad. I don’t understand. I would help you anyway, you are a Seer of Carriol. But . . .” She was so close to him. “There is something more that I do not understand.” She searched his face, trying to make sense of it. “We are together. In a way I do not understand.” Was there a glint of fear on her cheek? He seemed unable to tell her how he felt. They stood on the brink of wonder beyond any he had ever known, and he could not speak. The moment on Tala-charen was a part of it, he could almost feel again Time warping, space warping beyond comprehension to form new patterns—and then suddenly terror gripped him. Terror for Telien swept him as he Saw her sucked through the barrier of time, in a vision so abrupt, so lucid, a vision of Telien’s fate. . . . Gone. Lost in Time, perhaps for eternity.

It could not be! He would not let it be! He felt her stir and found he was gripping her hard, hurting her. He loosed her. She touched his clenched fist. For an instant she thought his pain was from the wound and then, watching him, she knew it was not; she saw his fear and her eyes were huge with it.

When he did not move or speak, did not draw himself from the vision that held him, she dug anxious fingers into his arm and reached to turn his face to her. “What is it, Seer? What vision holds you?”

His fear for her and his sudden rending pain for himself because of it, his pain for the two of them, shook him utterly. He could not touch the edges of the vision, nor grasp the causes of the chasm of time through which he saw her fall. He could only taste his own fear and then his terrible, unbearable aloneness.

She watched him with sudden growing understanding—at least of what he felt, of what she herself felt. Of what she had felt last night, this strangeness, this sense of having known him always. She was amazed and shaken by it. There had been men; this was not like that. This was as if a part of her had suddenly, irrevocably, come home. As if her very soul had come to her suddenly out of unimaginable space.

She bent forward so her cheek was pressed against the bars and drew him to her. He held her fiercely in a grip he could not quell, kissed her, was unaware of the bars pressing into his side and shoulder; they clung together wounded by the bars of his cage, clung with a terrible sudden knowledge; and a sudden awesome fear that would never again quite fade.

For long after Telien left him, he paced, could not settle to sleep. Long after the warriors’ voices died and lanterns were extinguished so the compound lay dark, he walked the perimeter of his pen, examining again and again his feelings for Telien.

Had they always been linked in some crevice of fate that had swept them incredibly to this place at this time? Had they always been one by some turn of their very spirits that neither one understood?

And why, then, did Telien not remember?

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