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

Above the sea wind she heard shouting voices then and turned from him to stand in the cavelike window to see flocking across the sky a dozen more winged horses. They swarmed down, the second wave of rescuers, diving through the sea wind to sweep onto the balconies below her, then stand quietly as their wounded were helped to dismount. She watched with clenched fists, sick at the slaughter their men had endured, and behind her Ram came awake suddenly shouting, “No gods! There are no gods!” Then came to himself and hunched up on one elbow wincing at the pain, stared straight at Skeelie, and growled, “Do you think I can lie here all day with nothing in my stomach, woman! Get me some food!” His red hair boiled over his forehead like the fires of the mountain itself.

“You can’t eat solid food with a wound like that. ] brought soup, there beside you on the shelf.”

“I want meat! Get me some meat, Skeelie! I haven’t eaten for two days!” He glared at the soup then pulled closer and began to eat ravenously.

She went out, relieved at his stubborn strength, went down four stone flights to the great kitchen, among the clatter of women preparing poultices and herbs; she put cutlets to fry bloody rare and dished up some baked roots. Catching Dlos’s eye where the older, wrinkled woman was hastily passing out bandages, she saw Dlos’s concern for Ram, and grinning, put down her own concern. “He’s cursing me and shouting for food.” She saw Dlos’s relief, then turned away. The kitchen was a hive of activity. She poured milk, then carried the mug and warm plate up to him as quickly as she could—and found him asleep again.

She sat beside his bed waiting for him to wake.

The first time she had ever brought him food, when they were children, she had fed him with a spoon like a baby. His red hair had been dyed black then, to disguise the Seer’s skill that ran like fire in his veins. The swollen wound on his forehead had been meant, certainly, to kill him: his pursuers, if unable to take him captive, would surely have killed him. She could hear the sea crashing below, and a slash of afternoon sun caught across the foot of his bed; and all of an instant time seemed to flow together. The light-washed cave-room seemed one with the cobwebby storeroom where she had tended Ram so long ago, the two times seemed one time, the child Ram and the man he now was lay sprawled as one figure on the cot; she was as much a skinny frightened girl as she was a woman grown, no less afraid for Ram then than she was at this moment. Her hands shook. Then, seeing him wake, she reached for his plate, very practical suddenly, and began to cut his meat.

As his eyes lifted to her face, she felt the dark around them pressing at them, and she knew too well the presence of the dark Pellian Seers, their minds intruding unseen into the room. How she hated them: she sent hate back at them with a vehemence that at last drove the dark back until only a chill remained. She felt a brief fleeting satisfaction in that small power she had wielded; for her own skills were as nothing compared to Ramad’s.

The dark had grown so strong. It was the same dark that had gripped and twisted Ram’s mind when he was a child, only then it had been the Pellian Seer HarThass who had wielded it. Now, with HarThass dead, the strength of the dark had so increased under BroogArl’s manipulations that it was a new and terrifying force over Ere, a force dedicated to Ram’s destruction and to the destruction of all like him. The black Pellian’s powers twisted and crippled the Seers of light now as never before. Made Ram’s skills, the skills of the Carriolinian Seers, next to useless. An incredible force that blocked the Carriolinian skills so they could seldom, now, speak in silence even one with the other. They rarely had foreknowledge of the fierce Herebian attacks as hordes swarmed over Carriol’s borders to rape and burn and steal. Carriol’s Seers were little more sensitive now to the forces around them than was any ordinary man. Only occasionally did BroogArl’s powers abate for a few precious moments so their light was restored, like a sudden rent in the cloud-shrouded sky.