Runestone of Eresu

by Murphy, Shirley Rousseau

  Jerthon stared at Midden. “Out of the sky?”

  “Yes, Seer. Out of the sky. Something dark and huge as the clouds and so fast you never see it. It is there and gone, and the animals lay stripped of flesh where they stood.” He led Jerthon out and showed him five horses’ skeletons stripped clean, scattered on the turf. “You see the darkness come, the wind goes wild, you see the dark that is its shadow maybe. It is all screaming wind, then it is gone and the horses are like that.” Midden stood staring sickly at the scattered bones. “Like that, Seers. Our animals—our poor animals.”

  Jerthon put his arm around the old man. He had worked so hard with the breeding, had taken such care with the selection of a stallion, with the nurturing of the mares and the careful, gentle training of the colts. He felt the old man’s sickness as his own at this mindless destruction.

  Mindless? Was it mindless?

  “And the dark—the thing of dark moves eastward, Seer. Toward the ruins.”

  Jerthon and his troops rode fast then to the east, pounding hard across the early morning hills, arrived on sweating, blowing horses to find the town shuttered and bolted just as Midden’s farm had been. Every house and shop closed tight. No animal to be seen, no person.

  He stared up at the citadel and saw that the portals had been covered with the slabs of stone that slid across from within.

  *

  The council and the townsfolk all had gathered in the citadel, sealed the portals, had chambered the horses and cattle in the lower caves and sealed these portals, too, as the invisible dark murmured and swept round the tower.

  At last the council drew together and began to make its way down stone flights toward the main portal that led to the town. Skeelie stared at Drudd’s broad back where he marched before her and thought she had never been this afraid, even in Burgdeeth. Behind her, behind Pol and the others, the people of Carriol crowded down the stairs too, all of them armed. And in front of Skeelie, Tayba held the runestone. Their minds—their every strength—were linked to it to create one power against the dark; and beyond the portals as they descended, the dark creature screamed out is fury, and it descended too, its great maw lusting after flesh. At the far end of the deserted town, Jerthon and his battalion came silently, walking their sweating, spent horses in between the farthest cottages.

  And neither group of Seers touched the thoughts of the other, each blinded in silence by the dark; and the dark increased until morning was as night. And creatures began to be born from the dark, horned, slithering creatures that swept the blackened sky with leathery wings then descended without sound onto the thatched rooftops and began to creep in silence down the stone walls.

  In the portal, the runestone glowed in Tayba’s hands as the Seers’ powers gathered, as slowly they tried to force the creature of dark back, to force half-seen monsters back and back into darkness; but still the dark advanced: their powers were not enough.

  Without, the dark creatures lurched and faded, became winds raging. Became, then, a part of the sea, so waves lashed in fury upon the tower seeking to break it away. The sea pounded in tidal humpings against the lower caves, and they filled with rushing water then drained, then filled again and the frantic cattle and horses swam in the cave blindly and in terror, and the weakest among them drowned.

  The runestone shone with the power of the Seers as Tayba held it high, battling the wind and the raging sea, battling the dark with every fiber she possessed. Then as Jerthon came closer, the dark swept down in the form of a huge bird-monster, silently above him, changeable as wind, brother to wind, and clawed, with great beak reaching; he did not sense it; it dropped low over Jerthon’s band and followed them, invisible to them, as the battalion came through the narrow streets in darkness knowing there was danger but blinded to its source, every man’s weapon drawn. The sweating horses cowed in fear as unseen creatures shadowed them and crouched waiting among houses and shops.

  Tayba saw Jerthon come, a sudden glimpse, tried to cry out to him and could not, tried to run through the streets to him and couldn’t move, was held as if she were stone, and her voice would not come in her throat.

  What was this power come so strong out of Pelli? She pushed at her dark hair with quaking hand as if it would stifle her; her every fiber strained, yet no sound or forward movement could she make, and when she turned she saw Drudd’s fury—did he think she wasn’t trying? Did he think—she stared at Pol, white beneath his freckles, at Skeelie, her thin face drawn with effort; then she turned back and felt the dark descending around Jerthon, and she tore with her very soul at it, with a will close to hysteria against the surging dark.

  Part Two: The Gods

  There stood in the heart of the Pellian nation a wood of ancient twisted trees so dense the air beneath did not know sun; a wood so old it had seen the first coming of men into Ere; a wood chill of spirit as death is chill. No one ventured there save the Pellian Seers. In the center of the wood rose a black stone wall, and inside this wall the Pellians had wrought a castle, grotesque in design, shaped like the jointed heads of a snake, an eel, and a horned man, their grinning mouths serving as high portals, their eyes leering windows. And a creature lived within the castle, a creature named Hape. This was the castle of Hape.

  Below the three grinning heads that formed the upper castle ran three rows of windows narrow and dark, and beneath these again was an arched place whose door was carved with the Hope’s runes and with signs of death and adversity.

  At first, three years earlier, the Hape had been no more than a whispering dark reaching from beyond the mountains to summon BroogArl. Heeding its call, BroogArl had sent Seers north into the dark mountains to seek the Hape out, an expedition that traveled past the gods’ city of Owdneet, past the mountain Tala-charen, and past Eresu itself, far, far into the unknown places, led on by the Hope’s soft urging: twelve Seers and apprentice Seers traveling two years, and returning at last to Pelli not alone. The Hape rode with them, rode the winds above them, nurtured on their dark thoughts as they traveled, and grew stronger than ever it had been. It ran beside their shying horses as a great six-legged cat, or it strode beside their cringing mounts as a giant with head of goat and deer’s horns; or it housed itself in the dark of their minds only and rode there. When the Seers arrived in Pelli, it housed itself in the castle they built for it at its own instruction, and BroogArl knew he had captured a creature of evil beyond his wildest dreams. There in the wood, Hape would come out at night in the shape of a horned man or an eel or snake, or in the form of a thousand chittering creatures slithering unseen. This was Hape, potent, feeding on the dark Seers’ minds and nurturing their evil wills, slave to their wills—or was he slave?

  Who ruled now? The Seers of Pelli, or Hape?

  Perhaps it did not matter who ruled in this coupling of evil.

  SIX

  Ere’s thin moons lit Ram’s way from Kubal toward the River Urobb; then he rode up along the fast-falling moonlit river, atop a ridge, toward the first jagged peaks of the Ring of Fire; rode, knowing that beneath those cold stone peaks the mountains’ bellies burned with molten fire tenuously contained, boiling rivers fettered now, but always eager to be free. All of Ere lived with this sense of the mountains’ captive fire; it was a part of Ere’s race-memory, the knowledge that the land might suddenly burst forth in rivers of fire. Such knowledge should have made Ere’s people close and kind with one another, but it never had.

  As he rode, his vision cleared suddenly without warning in a way he could never understand. What made the dark leaders pull back of a sudden, so that those of light could see? Were their powers amassed elsewhere, and thus weakened for a few moments in the blocking of other Seers’ skills? He Saw the Hape suddenly and clearly, saw what it was and how the Seer BroogArl had brought it into Ere less than a year past, saw the Hape’s dark lust, saw the castle that was built for it. He pulled up his horse, turned, sat staring back through the night toward Pelli, the vision holding him. And he understood at last wha
t the power was they had been battling, remembered Jerthon’s voice in citadel, “Something rides with them, Ram. Something more than the dark we know, something like an impossible weight on your mind so the Seeing is torn from you, your very sanity near torn from you . . .” He remembered his own feelings in battle, his words to Skeelie as she tended his wound, “A power that breathes and moves as one great lusting animal . . .”

  It was an animal, this breath of evil that BroogArl had brought out of the unknown lands, a monster not of flesh but formed of hatred and lust.

  He went on at last, shaken by the dark vision, afraid of it, and awed.

  Toward morning he made camp high up a ridge, dozed over a small fire as his horse grazed, then came awake suddenly with a sharp sense of something amiss and saw the moon had set and in the east the sun was already casting its light across the far sea. What had waked him? He sat staring at his dozing mount and slowly, coldly, he began to sense a heaviness: a peril over Carriol. He felt the dark’s attack then, and in confusion, nothing clear, tried to See in a sharper vision and could not, but was gripped with a terrifying sense of disaster.

  When at last the vision went from him, he did not know whether the dark had drawn away from Carriol in defeat, or whether Carriol lay defeated. Should he go back, should he ride for Carriol?

  But that would be useless, he could not arrive in time. He strained to use his power against the evil monster and could touch nothing, was as blind. He turned desperately and saddled up; perhaps if he were in Eresu his power would come stronger, so he could help. He rode hard and was soon deep in a zantha wood where the leaves hung down like a woman’s hair, trailing tendrils wet from the night dew, drenching him.

  He came out of the wood at long last to ride up along the Urobb until he found a shallow fording with a vein of smooth white stone skirting the other side. He forded here and followed that smooth trail quickly, with growing urgency.

  He came at midmorning to a narrow, dark canyon with twisting black boulders rising against its walls, a place immensely silent, where his horse’s hoofbeats fell like blows. The land rose steeply, soon was too abrupt and rocky for any horse. Here Ram unsaddled the gelding and turned him loose, leaned his saddle inside a shallow cave out of the weather, shouldered his pack, and started ahead on foot up beside the fast-falling river.

  The way grew narrower and steeper still, and distant rumblings began to speak inside the mountains. The sun was high when he came suddenly around boulders to where the river ended abruptly and he stood facing a barrier, facing the sheer rocky wall of a mountain.

  The river vanished beneath the mountain; or rather, came flowing out from beneath it in a clear swirl. The water should have been dark but was not, was washed with light as if light itself flowed out from beneath the stone. The old songs spoke of just such a swirling pool washed with light, of the river’s end lighted from beyond: from Eresu. He began to search the mountain’s face for a way to enter into that fabled valley.

  He could find no opening among the boulders and crevices, there was no cleft that might lead him through into the valley. As he searched, the mountains to the west rumbled again, spoke long trembling oaths deep inside their bellies, so he was distracted with sudden fear for Telien. He continued to search, but could see clearly only Telien’s face, was distraught thinking of her danger if the mountains exploded in fire.

  He had no sense of being watched, no normal Seer’s quickening to the sense of another observing him, so skilled was the Seer who stood half-hidden in shadow against the stone cliff. When at last the figure stirred, lifted a hand, Ram started violently.

  The man, sun-browned against brown stone, clad in brown robes like the stone, was hardly visible. When he moved, calling attention to himself, Ram stared, startled, drew his sword in reflex so its tip touched the tall man’s belly; but he looked into the face of the tall Seer, felt the sense of him, and lowered his sword, grinning almost sheepishly. This man meant him no harm. He was—he was as pure and unsullied as if he were himself a sort of god. Ram stood with lowered sword studying the man. He was old, his face thin and lined, his nose very prominent. The lid of one eye drooped. His beard and locks were stained with a ruddy hue that must once have been red as Ram’s own, but was pale now.

  Ram knew at once the man’s name was Pender, knew he had come here to guide him; knew, with sudden shyness, that the gods waited his coming, felt utterly ignorant suddenly, as inept as a baby, leaden-tongued. So close to the gods now. So close. Felt a sudden fear of going on; but he must go on, and quickly. Must, when he entered Eresu, turn all his power to helping the battle in Carriol before ever he could turn to another mission.

  The old man, watching him, said suddenly and abruptly, “Try now, Ramad. I will show you, help you.” And Pender gave him, with sudden jolting clarity, a vision of the battle in Carriol, so powerful a vision that Ram felt the grim determination of the Seers as they battled the Hape. He held the wolf bell, felt his own force grow within him; saw the runestone glowing in Tayba’s hands. He reached out with the council to try to turn the dark, saw silent creatures slithering among buildings, saw Jerthon’s battalion and the dark monster flying above them, its claws outstretched like knives; then saw Jerthon’s men fighting it, and his spirit fought beside them. Saw blood flow and terrified horses rearing and falling as the Hape swung low on buzzard wings, saw Skeelie start forward, and Tayba grab her wrist. Men and women were streaming out of the tower to do battle with the Hape. Ram was with them, felt the Seers’ total strength forcing upon the monster, the power of the stone like fire; felt the Hape unbalancing at last; saw Jerthon’s soldiers strike and slash as its beating wings struck them, its beak struck them; their horses were wild, cringing down, spinning and falling. Riders leaped clear, swords flashing. Ram saw Jerthon kick his mount into submission as he thrust his sword again and again at the bird-Hape, at the dark beak and neck, and Ram thrust with him—until at last the Seers’ powers began to weaken the Hape and confuse it, and for a moment its senses went awry.

  A silent moment, the forces balanced. But then the Hape’s powers surged stronger in a last dying frenzy, and suddenly it was three-headed, the horned cat’s head lashing out with teeth like knives, the man’s head laughing, the eel’s head tearing a soldier’s face; but the heads even as they battled weakened in the strength of their images, came and went in clarity and vigor as the creature clawed at the horses so they fell stumbling among their fellows on bloodstained cobbles. The Hape rose surging with fury as the soldiers beat it back; it was mad with their attack now, flung men like toys as others cut and flailed its body. In the portal of the tower, the silent council of Seers hardly breathed in their terrible concentration, and the powers balanced, tilted—Ram brought his own power stronger, sweating, calling the power of the wolf bell; buoying the power of the Seers until at last the Hape weakened again, wavered, swung low in the air. Soldiers grabbed its wings, pulled it down; it thrashed, then it was suddenly wingless, was only a snake writhing and lashing among them, the leathery wings they had pinioned quite gone. They fell on it, striking steel blows, crowding it in their fury until it turned away screaming—but it carried the body of a man in its jaws.

  It moved fast, thrashing, crowded on all sides by hard-riding soldiers, would not drop the screaming man, lunged out between buildings toward freedom.

  But it was dying, writhed twisting in death as it fled. It lay still at last, in a field, the wounded soldier crumpled in its jaws, the soldiers’ swords thick in it as quills, their spent horses resting over it, blowing. And behind them all of Carriol advanced, horses foaming in fear, men and women on foot with weapons raised. The Seers, Ram, brought every power they possessed down through the runestone then, to destroy it utterly.

  But it was not destroyed utterly. Suddenly the Hape was no animal but only an essence of dark, a shapeless darkness growing thinner and thinner until grass could be seen through patches of melting hide and blood. And then it was not there, was only a blowing blackn
ess on the wind. Hape was the wind, was a darkness flung between earth and cloud.

  The Hape had fled, and the soldier lay dead on the grass, his blood drying in the cold sun.

  Ram saw less clearly now, as in a dream. Saw Skeelie running through the bloody streets to embrace her brother, Saw people surging out of the tower to tend the wounded. Saw Seers’ white robes smeared with blood, women and children kneeling over bodies. He saw Tayba standing alone in the portal holding the runestone in her shaking hands, saw Jerthon look up at her across half the town, his green eyes kindling, saw him go to her striding through blood, past wounded men and animals, past Skeelie, hardly seeing her. Jerthon leaped the three steps to the portal and took Tayba in his arms. Ram felt Jerthon’s love for her, and he felt her fear and trembling and her uncertainty.

  Ram stood for a long time after the vision faded. So strong a vision. His gaze returned to Pender, to the drooping eye, the thin, lined face. “And,” Ram said, choking, “what—what of Telien?”

  ‘Telien—Telien I cannot show you,” Pender said. “You have no need, she must find her own way among the Ring of Fire. And you must abide, Ramad of wolves. Now you have seen the Hape at last, Ramad. Would you defeat the Hape?”

  “I would, Pender. How—But can I defeat it?”

  “Only you, Ramad of Zandour, only you can answer that.” The old man scratched his chin briefly. “And if you do not defeat it, what of Carriol, of Ere?” Pender turned without waiting for an answer and led Ram up along a nearly invisible ledge and into a crevice behind outcroppings of stone.

  They entered into absolute darkness, continued to climb, and rose at last into an underground cave lighted from above by an opening where the sun stood flaring down.