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

She picked up the lantern, sighing, and turned deeper into the mountain.

He did not love her, could never love her. Because of Telien. If she found him with Telien in some idyl far in Time, she could only turn away again to lose herself in Time unending, in desolation unending. And yet she must follow him, she could do nothing else.

Who knew where Time had swept him, or to what purpose? Truly to follow Telien? Or had some evil reached to touch Ram, to open Time to him?

She searched for long hours, hardly pausing to eat. She had all but lost her sense of time. Night was no different than day. She slept little, wrapped in her cloak for an hour or so, always cold. Woke and went on until she grew exhausted or very discouraged, slept again. There was enough lamp oil for perhaps four more fillings.

Then came the moment when she woke from a light sleep suddenly, startled, struck her flint hastily to the lamp. What had awakened her? There was a difference in the cave, she felt a new sense, a sense of something pulling at her.

Confused and yawning, trying to collect her wits, she rose, jumbled her scattered belongings into her pack, and began to make her way toward that beckoning hope, prodding her anew. Her dark hair, bundled into an untidy bun, had slipped down to her shoulder. Her bow and quiver hung crooked across her pack. Her leather tunic was wrinkled, her wrists protruding from her sleeves. Her dark eyes were intent and haunted. What had reached out so suddenly to wake her, to pull at her? She followed with growing urgency. Had her need to search out the secrets of Time at last awakened some magic deep within the mountain? But why? She had found no key, yet, to unlocking those secrets. Nor did she carry one of the starfires, such as Anchorstar had given to Ram, to quicken the magic of Time. What called to her, then, from deep within the mountain?

And if she found a way into Time’s reaches, where would that way lead her? To Ram, or a million years from Ram? Once she crossed Time’s barrier, would she have the skills to find Ram? Uncountable centuries swept away to a future unborn and backward to incredible violence and turmoil. How could one enter Time, enter a future unborn? Yet it had happened to Skeelie and Ram when they were children— Time rocking asunder, future and past coming together. That moment had changed the very history of Ere, that moment on Tala-charen when the runestone of Eresu split, when men and women came out of Time to receive the shards of that shattered jade.

She knew she should turn back to hunt and replenish the lamp oil, but could not deny the power that drew her. She followed the beckoning sense down a dark, narrowing tunnel, pushing always deeper inside the mountain. She had been so tired, but now she moved quickly, the chill gone, hunger unheeded. She remembered the quick vision she had had ten days before of Ram standing beside his supper fire, then suddenly Telien with him, her pale hair caught in moonlight as she reached out of Time itself to hold Ram. Then the sense of the night twisting in on itself, Ram swept out of Telien’s arms shouting her name over and over, uselessly. Ram alone, and the trees only saplings once more—and then the hill empty as Ram himself was swept away in Time’s invisible river.

The tunnel became so low she had to walk bent over, her hair catching in the stone of the roof, very aware suddenly of the weight of the mountain above her, tons of stone above her. She turned the lamp lower to save oil, knew she must save two fillings to return to the main grotto or be trapped in darkness. The press of stone against her shoulders made her want to strike out, want to drive the mountain back. She controlled herself with effort, pulled urgently forward by something insistent, something compelling. Something evil? Was that which beckoned to her evil?

At last the tunnel ended, and she stood in a cave that seemed not bounded by walls, seemed to warp and to hint of distant, terrifying reaches. Her guttering light caught at uncertain shadows and at dark so thick that light could not penetrate it. Nothing was clear, but the cave seemed to extend far beyond any area the mountain could possibly contain. A terror of infinite space yawned beyond her vision, and suddenly she could not bring herself to go forward, was terrified of the very thing she sought, terrified of falling into Time, of being lost in Time. All her determination disappeared, and the fear she had kept at bay so long overwhelmed her. She wanted to turn back, wanted to run blindly. She stood with clenched fists, trying to control herself. You’ve come this far, Skeelie. You can’t turn back. You can’t run away now. She was caught between her sudden horror of the unknown and her need to become a part of that dark emptiness in Time where Ram was. She moved on at last, shivering.