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

The wolves pushed together in a great band to crowd around Ram, eager, too, to be away. Ram pulled Fawdref to him, reached to touch Rhymannie, was loathe to let them go, imagined with a sense of loss the great wolves streaking silently away up through Ere’s forests toward the Ring of Fire.

And suddenly, clearly, Ram knew that he must go with them. Must return to the cave where Telien had been. Must seek her first in that place. And were there secret runes in the old caves there that would tell him how to span Time? How to take himself into the spinning center of Time where Telien had gone?

 

 

 

TEN

 

Telien, swept like a chip in Time’s leaping river, could not stop herself. Her mind reeled with a hundred places tumbling one atop another, with cities, with voices and faces and smells jumbled. And then suddenly she sensed that someone was with her, reaching out to her. A girl, someone close, someone caring—someone who seemed like a sister. She had never had a sister. She felt tears come in her eyes at the sudden touch of warmth, this sense of someone young and caring reaching out to push away the terrifying loneliness, to push back the vast reaches of Time. For Skeelie had reached out to her, and Telien clung to that sense of strength with terrible desperation.

Skeelie had been resting after battle, exhausted, dirty, starved, when she began to think strongly of Telien.

All across Ere troops had battled the forces of the dark Seers, forces boiling out of the hills, small dark bands riding fast out of isolated camps to wield destruction across Carriol, just as Jerthon laced destruction down upon the Castle of Hape. That had been Jerthon’s secret. She had Seen at last, and known. And Ram had known. She and Berd and Erould and the men of Blackcob had joined Carriol forces in mid-battle up the Somat Cul, pursuing stolen horses, cutting down dark raiders. And, as in Pelli BroogArl had died, and then as the Hape’s body had died, the forces that Skeelie’s band battled had diminished. Without the dark powers to force them back, Carriol’s troops had begun to slaughter the Herebian in a wholly satisfying manner, had driven them out until not a raider remained on Carriol soil alive. And the dark blocking had pulled back, and Skeelie had Seen, not only the battle in Pelli but the battles that flared up across other parts of Carriol, battles being won now by Carriol’s troops.

Yes, she thought bitterly, Jerthon had shielded his knowledge of that attack on Pelli from her. He had kept it secret—in order to shield the knowledge from Ram. In order to give Ram his moments with Telien, undisturbed. She bit her lip with fury, with pity for Telien, with emotions she could not sort out. Had Jerthon known that Telien’s time was so short?

Skeelie and old Berd, his white beard flying, and Erould with blood running down his dark hair, had fought shoulder to shoulder the dark Herebians high in the loess hills until those still able to ride had fled from them.

Now the men, sensing no new attack, sensing with growing eagerness the feel of victory in Pelli, had gone downriver to rest and to care for their mounts. Skeelie, alone in an isolated bend of the river, stripped to the buff and washed away the white loess dust, the sweat and blood of battle, had rinsed out her clothes and sat now shivering as they dried over a hastily built fire. Her cuts burned. One sword wound along her arm was deeper. She laced it with birdmoss from the riverbank, to soak away the poison. She bet she was a pretty sight, all scarred. But who was to see? Who would care? She could hear the men’s voices downstream, and the voices of the women farther upstream.

And, sitting before the fire, her thoughts were pulled away from her suddenly. She Saw Telien in a clear vision, knew Telien intimately. Was angered at first by Telien’s presence in her mind, wanted only to be rid of her. But Telien’s fear became her fear, she knew the girl’s terror as if it were her own, knew in every detail Telien’s confused journey into the maelstrom of Time, was stricken suddenly with a terrible empathy for Telien and reached out to her at last, knew she must go to her.

She tried, forced her powers out away from her own time into Time itself. But as suddenly as it had come, the vision vanished from her, and she could not sense Telien at all. She tried desperately, again and again, and failed. Failed Telien, and so failed Ram.

She turned away at last, wanting to weep and unable to weep, weary and very much alone.

*

When the sense of someone there with her, supporting her, vanished, Telien was more alone than ever, cut adrift again in the eternal vastness of Time, unable to know, any more, what future or past was: she was swept on an endless sea in which she could find no bearing, find nothing to cling to, nothing to tell her, even, who she was.