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

The cave faded. She clutched the stone, trembling, crying out to Ram though he could not hear her. She gripped the stone to herself and knew that she must give it to Ram. That she must, through all of Time, return to Ram with the runestone.

She stood on a mountain meadow in sunlight and suddenly she saw Ram again. But he was a very little boy now, red-haired, running in the wind carrying the wolf bell, laughing, followed wildly all around by foxes running. Ram! Ramad! She could not reach or speak to him, and he faded. Then she saw him once more, a little older, his hair dyed black. Saw him running again, but now in fear across a vast black desert, leading a trotting pony, followed by a dark-haired, beautiful woman. She saw men riding hard after them. She saw Ram and the women turn in a wood, to face their pursuers. Ram would be killed! She heard him call the wolves then, in a strange rhyming voice, and saw the wolves come streaming down the mountain to leap and kill . . .

And she heard Ram’s voice suddenly, deep, as she knew it. Close to her. Imperative. “Telien! Telien!

She stared around frantically, reaching out, but he was not there. Her own voice died on Time’s winds as she cried out for him, and she was swept away again into darkness.

She was so tired. Despondent. So close to Ram, his voice so close, and then to be swept away. She clutched the jade to her, sick with fatigue. So confused. She must rest or she would die, must drink. She leaned against the dirt wall of—Was she back in the cave with the dying Seer? Where was she?

Did it matter where she was, or in what time she stood? She was so thirsty, wanted water, wanted to lie down. As she turned, her hand brushed a hollow in the wall. She raised her face to it blindly. Could there be water seeping out? She reached in cautiously. But it was only a dry little niche. Suddenly, too sick to hold the jade any longer, trembling, she laid it there in the niche, far back, then huddled down on the floor against the earthen wall, shivering, wanting only to sleep, to be left alone.

“Telien! Telien!”

She did not hear his voice. She slept, gone in exhaustion.

“Telien!” But he could not reach her.

When she woke at last, she was curled up just as she had been in the close dark, but now lay on an open expanse of stone with the wind icy, the evening sky darkening so stars had begun to burn cold in its icy blue. She was freezing cold, stood up, huddling against the rising hill behind her, to stare around her. Far away she could see jagged mountains. She was on a bare plateau. Space fell to her left, and on the rocky hill behind her stood five huge trees, ancient and twisted.

“Telien!” She spun around, nearly fell. His voice was only a whisper, but real! She stared around expecting to see him, saw nothing but stone and emptiness. His voice was in her mind, only in her mind. She stood barely breathing, tears flooding down.

*

Ram had ridden hard to keep up with the fleeing wolves, for they seemed bent on reaching the mountains in one day’s run. The Pellian mount he had taken was nearly spent. He stopped at last beside a clump of small trees to rest the poor beast. Fawdref and Rhymannie alone remained with him, urging the rest of the pack away, for their very presence in the lowlands seemed a discomfort to them. As evening fell, he tended the horse, built a supper fire, then stood at the edge of the cliff staring out into the vast northern reaches, at the jagged peaks of the Ring of Fire standing black in the falling light. And suddenly he felt her there beside him. “Telien! Telien!” And yet the ledge was empty. Distraught, frantic, he shouted to her, oblivious to all else but the sense of Telien come so suddenly to him.

He shouted over and over into the falling night, but now she was gone again, he could sense nothing of her now, there was only emptiness. The thin moons hung dull in the ash-clouded sky, lonely and bleak.

From Time indecipherable he had sensed her there, standing in the same place he stood, Telien there beside him on the ledge, her presence so close. And then she was gone.

When he turned away at last in anguish, in rising fury at powers he could not control, he saw Anchorstar. Anchorstar, standing motionless beside the fire between Fawdref and Rhymannie, his white hair catching the firelight. Anchorstar come out of Time in this empty place, standing still as stone, his eyes seeking Ram’s, his face stern and drawn.

*

And in the north of Carriol, Skeelie remained alone by the river as the soldiers made camp. She tried again with an effort that left her exhausted to move into Time, to touch Telien. She went dizzy and sick with the effort, reached, felt Time like a river swirling away from her so no matter how she reached, came close to it, thought she had thrown herself into its current; it slipped aside and was gone; she could not touch Telien. She gave it up at last, defeated.

*