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

Dalwyn was sloshing and drinking, enjoying the water thoroughly. Ram’s wonder was never diminished that even this horselike action was as a man would do, that every action of the horses of Eresu was a sentient, balanced action, unhorselike in the extreme. The stallion turned to him at last; Ram swung himself up, and they leaped skyward so fast he was almost unseated, heading at once into deep smoke and heat.

On the land beneath them, smoking lava lay cooling, little flames licking out where grass and bushes still burned. As they rose toward the higher peaks, Ram prayed for Telien. And prayed that if she had died, it was quickly and without pain.

To think of her dead was unbearable; Telien could not be dead. He would know in the same way he had known, when first he saw her, that they were linked in a way he might never understand. Telien had never really left him since that moment on Tala-charen. All the women he had known since had been judged against her. Skeelie had been judged against her, good, faithful Skeelie whom he otherwise might have loved; Skeelie, who was his sister, his mother, his friend, but never anything more—because of Telien.

*

It was dawn on the road between the ruins and Blackcob. Skeelie and the old Seer, Berd, and a few soldiers rode hunched over, sleepy, sated with a huge breakfast. They had left in darkness, the pack horses only black lumps at the ends of their lead ropes; desperate to get to Blackcob because they knew there would be a need there. They rode now along the edge of the dark sea, the breakers making a pattern of white movement against darkness. The sea’s pounding seemed not a part of that pattern, seemed a delayed echo from the recent wild thunder of the mountains.

What they would find in Blackcob was largely unclear. They had watched all night the fiery sky, heard the rattling cries of the mountains. But only glimpses had come to them of the seething land itself. Skeelie had held for one brief instant a clear vision of Ram leaping skyward from Burgdeeth amidst the fiery sky, had known with elation Ram’s victory and the victory of the gods of Eresu—Carriol’s victory over Venniver’s sadism. She stared ahead in the direction of Blackcob, buoyed by this victory against the pain that awaited her there. She could not extricate herself from the blackness into which she had been driven when first she heard, from the refugees coming out of Blackcob, that Ram had found Telien. She had turned away, fists clenched, when they spoke of the two of them whispering together their good-byes.

Ram would be coming to Blackcob, she knew that clearly. How or why, she did not know. But she must see him once more. See for herself that he was lost to her. She pulled her cape around her, found she was hugging herself in a desolate passion of loneliness.

Yet still hope rose in spite of logic, and she rode for Blackcob with some wild unexamined notion that maybe . . . maybe . . .

She knew Ram would ride for Blackcob strung tight with some urgent need, come there in wild desperation. And when she was honest with herself, she had to wonder: Did she ride for Blackcob with the hope that Ram would come there in grief, having lost Telien to the holocaust of the mountains? Yes, if she was honest, she knew she wished Telien dead. Wished her gone, and wished to console Ram in his sorrow.

Yet Telien’s death would make no difference; Ram would love Telien, not until she died, but until he died.

Tears touched her cheeks. No matter the pain of her jealousy, she wanted no pain for Ram. No matter her own sorrow, underneath her hatred she wanted Telien to live—for Ram. For Ram to be happy. Wanting that, Skeelie was more miserable than ever.

She had insisted on going, had stared into Jerthon’s eyes with fine defiance and seen his hurt for her, had sworn at him for a fool. “I don’t go because of Ram! I go because they will need me. If there are wounded, burned from the fire . . .

“You go because Ram will come there, Skeelie girl. And you . . .” He had left the rest unsaid. Great fires of Urdd! Sometimes she wished they were none of them Seers and could never, never see into the mind of another!

*

The stallion changed direction suddenly, seeking over the fiery land, winged over and down into a blast of hot wind then through a narrow valley, rock walls rising beside them. Ram clung, saw not the walls or the smokey sky, Saw a clear vision suddenly of Telien kneeling, white and sick, beside the newborn foal. He heard Telien’s thoughts as if they were his own: was death the same as birth? Was death, too, a wild struggling after a mystery we cannot know, can only sense? He shouted into the hot wind, “Don’t speak of death! Don’t think of death!” And only the stallion heard him.