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

But his expression was not an animal expression, was so very human. She looked up at him partly in fear and partly with rising wonder; and in excited desperation she thought Ram’s name, Ramad of wolves. “Ramad,” she croaked, and put out her hand. Were these wolves Ram’s brothers? She was so dizzy, and still very much afraid in spite of her rising excitement. Animals hated fear. The big dog wolf came close to her. She knew, somehow, that she was expected to touch him.

She reached. Her hand trembled. His teeth gleamed in a—was it a smile? He grinned widely, she could see the dark roof of his mouth. When she touched his face at last, the little hairs along his muzzle were soft as velvet. He looked down at her not as a wolf would look, and she repeated, “Ramad,” gone in terror. Gone in wonder.

The wolf licked her hand and laid his head on her shoulder, and his gentleness wiped away her fear. How could she have feared him? She looked across at Meheegan and Rougier and realized that the mare and stallion had never been afraid; they stood among the wolves in perfect friendship.

In the dim cave the red stallion and the five great wolves, the exhausted mare, and Telien stood watching—all alike in their wonder—as the new foal sought to rise and spread his wings. A colt red as his sire, born among the flames of the mountains. And Telien thought, Ram will love him. Then tears for Ram came suddenly and painfully, and she crouched against the shaggy dog wolf clutching his coat and weeping for Ram, washed with a sense of Ram’s danger, wanting Ram and so afraid for him.

But then all at once, without Seer’s skill, her mind lay open. The dark wolf spoke in her mind, and she saw Ram bound to the stake, saw fire blaze around his naked legs. She knew this was a vision of something past. She heard a faint chanting, the fire, the sacred fire, and then she saw the glancing shattering brightness of the Luff’Eresi descending upon Burgdeeth and saw the dark Burgdeeth leader—black of beard, broad of shoulder—quail before the gods. And she saw Ram loosed from his bonds. She saw Ram carried aloft on the back of the silver stallion amidst the bright dazzle of the gods and knew that he was safe.

*

Ram rode between the stallion’s wings, oblivious to the fury of the Pellian leaders at his escape. Oblivious to their dark push to touch his mind. So numbed by exhaustion was he that only an echo remained in his mind of the Luff’Eresi’s voices, swelling with laughter and thundering victory. They had risen with him above Burgdeeth, then, very high above the hills, their light had shattered all around him and they had vanished. Simply vanished; the night sky suddenly empty except for the smoke-dulled light of Ere’s moons.

The victory in Burgdeeth had been fine. Riding now free in the night, the wind chilling his naked body, Ram grinned at the memory of Venniver’s face, twisted with rage and fear, with submission.

Below, flames licked down to touch hills and meadows, but the mountains themselves seemed to have calmed. He could see no flame there now. Dalwyn dropped his silver wings in a glide and brought Ram down to the hill where the wolf bell lay buried. Ram retrieved it, searching in darkness, then crouching naked among stones, digging. Then they leaped skyward again, the stallion keeping well south of the fires. They flew low over hills where thin fingers of lava crept down in the deepest creases. Ram could see, at some distance, a few dim lights burning where Kubal lay; and the stallion had begun to drop toward that place. Ram felt the horse’s quick humor and agreed he needed clothes.

Where one guard stood with his back to them, the stallion came noiselessly down out of the sky to land without a stir of air.

Ram sized up the man’s height and width of shoulder. Yes, these clothes would do fine. His pulse quickened. He poised ready, moved silently.

Ram took the guard’s clothes and left him naked and unconscious in a tangle of sablevine; fingered the weapons and was glad he had left a few in Kubal. Now, perhaps, the Kubalese would learn to hunt with clubs. When he turned to the silver stallion, he stood with his hand on the great horse’s neck, tried to reach out to Telien, to sense her somewhere in those mountains, and could not.

“Can you find her, Dalwyn? If she lives among those fires, can you find her? Can you sense the red stallion and his mare?”

Dalwyn turned to stare toward the dark mountains. He would try. His every nerve went taut, trying to sense Rougier and Meheegan, to sense the invisible. They would go among the mountains. They would try.

Ram knelt beside a spring and washed and drank. He smelled the stink of the borrowed clothes, made a face, wished he had found a cleaner guard.