She felt the silent laughter then, stood staring around her, frowning. Then she started toward that presence with sharp, unspoken challenge.
It laughed silently at her wariness, its voice exploding in her mind. You need not be wary of me, sister. A pale, huge wolf showed itself suddenly against dark boulders. But it moved into darkness again without seeming to move, was cloaked in shadows. Was it a wolf? Certainly no common wolf. Her pulse pounded. No common wolf could speak to her in silence. Were the great wolves here? Fawdref’s band? Was Ram here, traveling with the wolves who were his brothers? Tense with excitement, she reached out in silent speech, hoping, praying, this wolf band had to do with Ram. Do you come from Ramad?
I come alone, without Ram’s bidding, sister. Though he would have me here if he knew. We are far from Ramad. Far in years, sister. Far in generations. I followed you in the caves, you sensed me there. Then 1 followed you in Time. I was alone in the caves when I knew you wandered there. I was alone there with a sadness. The wolf closed her mind without revealing more and slipped once again into the moonlight where Skeelie could see her deep golden coat, her wise, ageless face, the broad forehead of the great wolves, the darker stripe running from forehead to nose between wide-set golden eyes, the great breadth of shoulder. A huge wolf, carrying herself with pride and wisdom. She lifted her head to stare across at the campfire, then pulled back into shadow with, it seemed to Skeelie, more of humor than of fear as Gravan rose to stand silhouetted against the fire, his bow drawn. Your friend has seen me, sister. He would protect his herd. Her laughter was silent and gentle. Skeelie stepped toward Gravan, past where the wolf stood hidden.
“Slack your bow, Gravan.”
But the man stood frozen, staring at the boulders waiting for the wolf to attack. The sense of him was not of fear, but only of protectiveness for his herd. Could this man, raised all his life in the protecting of the herds, stay his hand against one he thought a predator?
“This wolf will not harm your goats, Gravan.”
Did Gravan know what the great wolves were? Had he ever heard of them?
The goats themselves, those battle-wise, wary bucks, had made no move of alarm. Skeelie could see three bucks standing calmly, gazing unafraid toward where the wolf stood hiding in shadow. Gravan stepped forward meaning to seek the wolf out. Skeelie raised her bow. “Lay it down, Gravan! Lay down your bow!”
Slowly he lowered his bow, watching her. When he had laid his bow aside, the wolf came out and stood crowding close to Skeelie, the great broad head pushing against Skeelie’s waist. Skeelie spoke to her in silence. How are you called? Where have you come from? Was it—was it you who opened the warp of Time for me? Both Skeelie and the wolf watched the herder, who stood unmoving, utterly engrossed with the sight of the huge wolf that seemed as tame as a pup. Then the wolf looked up at Skeelie, her eyes appraising.
You are very full of questions, sister. I am Torc. I moved through Time when you did, but for my own reasons. I can control Time no more than you can. In that cave were talismans, things of power that helped us. The rune. The limited powers of Cadach. Things of which you did not know. You did not know that by your very presence, by your terrible wanting and searching, you made those talismans more powerful. You did not understand Cadach’s words about the accident of your birth.
And you? Did you understand them?
I am not sure, sister. I will think on it awhile.
Skeelie knelt, laid her head against Torc’s warm shoulder, nearly weeping with the pleasure of the wolf’s closeness. She felt like a child again, hugging another bitch wolf, pressing her face into the bitch’s thick coat, feeling her love and power. Torc licked her arm, then raised her head. Skeelie could feel her sudden wariness, and she grew quiet too. What is it, Torc? What do you sense? Not the herder. He is harmless.
There was another presence, sister, when you first went to the river. Did you not sense it when you stood beside the river? An evil presence—but perhaps it now is gone.
Skeelie felt every sense grow taut with questioning, but could feel nothing. There was something, Torc. I cannot sense it now. What was it?
I do not know how to call it. A dark shadow. It is the shadow I have followed, it is what brought me here. I must study it, sister, before I can know what it is. I do not like studying it. It sickens me.
Skeelie stood up, glanced at Gravan who still stood frozen, staring at Torc. The moons, risen higher, cast their light across his lined face. He began to limp toward them. Skeelie tensed, for though he had laid aside his bow, surely he had a knife. She felt Torc’s amusement. I could kill him with one quick slash, sister. But he means no harm. Skeelie saw that Gravan’s face was filled with wonder now. She reached to touch his thoughts, felt his awe; his voice was filled with awe. “She is no common wolf, lady.”
She hardly paused, but lied smoothly. “No, Gravan, she is not. She is quite unlike her wild brothers. I found her on the mountain and raised her from a cub.” Why did she feel it necessary to be so secretive about Torc’s true nature? Yet the fewer who knew what Torc was, and so what she herself must be, the safer they would remain. Only a Seer could speak with the great wolves.
“You trained her? A wolf from the mountains? But she is so big. She is not . . .”
“I found her orphaned. I fed her as the herb woman bid me, to make her grow large. I trained her just as I have trained horses. Folk tell me I have a gift for such, for training the dumb brutes.”
She felt Torc’s silent laughter.
Gravan stared at her only half-believing, then settled once more by the fire, content, it seemed, to let her words lie. He said nothing more for a long time, then at last he drew his knife and began to slice meat from the roasting haunch and lay it on thick pieces of bread. She was ravenous, found the meat tender and juicy, and did not talk for some time—though she spoke in silence to Torc. Where are we Torc? Into what time have we come?
I do not know, sister. Nor do I care. I only follow the shadow.
But you gave me visions, back there by the river. As if you—
Visions that came to me, sister. I cannot say why. Some linking, something here that has to do with the powers you and Ramad have touched. Visions that came because of that power. But nebulous, sister, she said, feeling Skeelie’s rising excitement. Ramad is not here, nor does he come here, that I can surely sense. I do not know in what time we are. You must learn that from the herder.
Skeelie accepted another slice of bread heaped with deer meat, then began to reach into Gravan’s mind. She did not receive at once any sense of time, for his thoughts were filled with the knowledge of goats, more knowledge than she wanted. Finally she began to touch on Gravan’s childhood. He had come to these mountains when he was very young, she could see the child’s vision of his family and the Cherban tribe making their first rude camp. Yet something more interesting lay at the edges of his mind„ something shadowed, half-forgotten. Something she could not sort out unless he were to bring it directly to his own attention. Something to do with darkness, with Seers. Some old bitterness, a tribal bitterness that lay half-buried.
“Your people settled Dunoon, Gravan?”
“Yes, lady.”
“And where did they come from? Why did they come to this spot?”
“Oh, from the Bay of Pelli, lady. From the marsh country.”
“But why? That is fine pasture, Gravan.”
“Surely you know that Pelli was all but laid waste when the Hape ruled there, lady.” She stared at his mention of the Hape. “My grandparents left Pelli at that time, a young couple with small children, herding their goats, their livelihood, up into the hills of the Urobb.”
Gravan’s grandparents had been young, then, in the time of the Hape. In the time that she had left less than an hour ago. And his sense of darkness came from that time, from tales told and retold. Fear of the Hape and of the dark Seers lay like an ancient shadow on his mind.
“After the Hape was slaughtered by the Seers of Carr
iol, lady, there were no more dark Seers save the one who escaped that battle. My family could have returned to Pelli, but they had not the heart. They worked their way northward up into these pastures. They were raided many times by the Herebians while they lived along the Urobb. This land, these high pastures, seemed to hold some terror for the raiding Herebian tribes. They would not come here.”
So a dark Seer had escaped from the battle of the Castle of Hape. She had not known that, nor had Ram. None of them had known. He must have spun a strong mind-shielding indeed, to hide his escape as well. How had he managed it? And where had he gone? Which Seer had it been, among those dark, evil ones? “Tell me of that dark Seer, Gravin. There must be many tales of him.”
Gravan produced the wineskin and passed it to her. “Surely you know, lady, how NilokEm fogged the minds of the Carriolinian warriors so they did not know he escaped, how he and his kin after him rose to power.” He watched her drink, accepted the wineskin. “But of course there are no dark Seers of power any more. A handful of alley-bred street rabble, some with Seer’s blood among them, that is all. There has been no power since the twin grandsons of NilokEm were defeated by Macmen, and by a mysterious warrior. It is said their grandmother was a spell-cast woman come out of some enchantment, bred by NilokEm like a ewe on the hill, then never seen more. NilokEm died some years after his son’s birth, with a knife through his heart. Some say that he died by the hand of Ramad of the wolves.” Gravan stopped speaking abruptly and stared at her. “What is it, lady? What did I say to startle you so?”
“Nothing, Gravan. Nothing.”
“Folk tell that Ramad returned nine years after the battle of Hape, to kill NilokEm. Surely you have heard of the battle of the Castle of Hape. That is an old, old tale.”
The excitement made her stomach churn. “I—have heard it. Tell me what happened after Ram—Ramad killed NilokEm. You speak very well of these things.”
Gravan sipped reflectively. “The land was peaceful until the dark twins rose.” He settled back against the boulder. “The twins’ younger brother, Macmen, was a Seer of light, raised apart from them. It is told there was a streak of goodness come down from the grandmother. When Macmen came to power in Candour, the dark twins were enraged by his gentle leadership and brought Pellian armies to attack Zandour. Then there came a young man, out of some spellcast place, to fight by Macmen’s side.” Gravan looked across at her, caught by the wonder of the tale. “A young man with a great band of wolves by his side, lady. And the winged horses of Eresu come down out of the sky like a tide to help him. Just so did Ramad of the wolves, before him, fight at the castle of Hape, mounted on a winged horse, and with the magical wolves slaughtering the dark Seers. Wolves some say are only myth.” Gravan stared at Torc, his eyes kindling with the knowledge of what Torc must surely be. Torc looked back at him blankly, then rolled over on her back with utter lack of dignity, as if she had no idea what human speech was about. Skeelie reached idly to rough her fur, hiding her apprehension at Gravan’s interest. But Gravan was not put off. “She is one of them, lady. You—you fondle a great wolf as if she were a kitten. Only a Seer can command the great wolves, lady. You—you are of Seer’s blood.”
Skeelie looked back at him uneasily. But his look was only eager, filled with wonderful curiosity. What difference would it make for this little man to know the truth about her? He stared so openly, so eagerly awaiting her answer.
Be careful, sister. Take care.
But he knows. It’s no good lying now.
Then say nothing. Divert him! Torc thought sharply.
“Surely there are Seers among your tribe, Gravan. You are of Cherban blood, the very blood of Seers.”
Gravan seemed utterly in awe of her now. “Not so many Seers, lady. Not like the old times. The Seeing is not as strong as the old tales tell it once was.” He could not disguise his fascination with both Skeelie and Torc. He stared at Torc until the pale wolf thought cryptically, Oh well, the little man is harmless. He thinks 1 am beautiful, sister.
Skeelie scowled at Torc, laid a hand on the wolf’s broad head, gave Torc a push. You are insufferably vain. Then, “Who was that Seer, Gravan? The Seer who appeared so suddenly to fight by Macmen’s side?”
“What folk tell is impossible, lady. Folk believe that Seer was Ramad of the wolves, returned upon Ere sixty-six years after he defeated the Hape.”
Skeelie sat frozen. Ram was alive then. He moved through Time, moved through Ere’s history undaunted. Somewhere Ramad lived. Or, he had been alive at least in the time of Macmen. “How long has it been, Gravan, since the battle of Macmen?”
^”Why, twenty-three years, lady. But no one—no one living in Ere could help but know these things—to know all that I have told you. And you, a Seer—but forgive me, lady. I speak too freely, perhaps.”
Why had Ram come out of Time to battle NilokEm, and then again to battle the dark twins? It was Telien who had drawn him into the swirling fulcrum of Time, Telien he sought, not battles. Had the very existence of the dark Seers turned him from his search for Telien? How could that be? How could he be turned aside from the search for his love? Or had he been pulled out of Time without volition? Had the power of the runestones moved him to other needs here, beyond his commitment to Telien?
“And now,” Gravan said, almost to himself, “now perhaps evil rises anew. Perhaps people were foolish to put off the street rabble of Pelli as of little consequence. There are rumors, now, that the Seers among that rabble may have more power than men thought. That they may be the sons of the dark twins, street-bred from whores. That perhaps they are not only tricksters and petty thieves, that maybe they are to be feared. That perhaps they are the cause of new disagreements and small skirmishes between the several countries. Even the poor senses of the few Seers in Dunoon stir sometimes to waves of evil, to a breath of darkness off somewhere among the coastal countries.”
“But if this is so, if they should rise, won’t Carriol march against them?”
“It is all Carriol’s Seers can do to keep their own borders strong. They have no runestone now, lady. Have not had since the stone that Ramad brought out of Tala-charen was lost in the sea.”
Nearly ninety years, she thought, since the stone was lost. Yet to her it was but a handful of days. She felt empty inside, lost and afraid. Everyone she knew was dead, was dust now. Her brother, Jerthon, Tayba, all the Carriolinian council. All those she had loved. All but Ram. She bent her head to her knees, swept with desolation, with a loneliness too vast to deal with, sat so in silence for some time.
He said gently, seeing her misery but not understanding it, “Carriol will shelter any who come to her, lady—Seers in fear for their lives. But she will not march forth to right the wrongs across Ere, to depose the tyrants from Burgdeeth and other cities that enslave.”
“If Burgdeeth is a place of slavery, Gravan, why have your people remained so close to it, on these pastures? Doesn’t the Landmaster try to rule you?”
“We trade with the Landmaster, lady, but we keep an upper hand in that matter. And only here will the Herebian raiders not come, for fear of the old city of the gods.” Gravan leaned back and grinned, showing a missing tooth. “If the landmaster becomes difficult, we disappear among the mountains for a time, and Burgdeeth is without goat meat and hides.” Skeelie caught from his mind a clear picture of a hidden valley rich with grass, and at its center a lake of molten fire. A hidden place; but a place of meaning beyond anything Gravan imagined it to have. A place that she knew, instantly, she must touch. That lake—liquid fire, red as blood, reflecting a sullen sky. Reflecting more. Hinting of images she knew she must hold in her mind and examine. Gravan prattled on comfortably, but she hardly heard him. There was a message there, in that place. Perhaps a way to Ram there.
Torc raised her head to look at Gravan. The wolf held in her mind sharply the image both she and Skeelie had taken from his thoughts, the lake of flame hidden among rising hills in a valley flanked round by sharp blac
k peaks. Yes, there was something in that place, something they must seek, something that held as vital a meaning for Torc as it held for Skeelie.
We will go there, sister.
Yes, Torc, we’ll go there. But she was afraid, though she was eager to see what that place held. Would it tell her news of Ram that she could not bear to hear? She studied Gravan, hardly able to form the question she must ask, yet knowing she could not rest until she had. She watched the shadows around the fire, watched the dark red embers of painon wood pulsing with their heat, then looked back at the old man. “When—when the battle of Macmen was ended, Gravan, what do the tales tell happened to Ramad? Do they—do they tell that Ramad died there battling by Macmen’s side?”
“Oh no, lady, they do not tell that.” Gravan peered at her, puzzling at her interest. Why couldn’t she learn to hide her feelings more carefully? “The tales tell, lady, that after the battle, Ramad stood by the side of Macmen with the great wolves around them and that—that the next minute Macmen stood alone on the silent battlefield, Ramad and the wolves gone as if the wind itself had swallowed them.”
Skeelie slept that night beside Gravan’s fire with her hand couched on Torc’s flank, replete with roast deer meat and Gravan’s mawzee bread, and perhaps more wine than was necessary. In the early dawn, while the old herder rounded up his bucks and their does to go down into the village, she made a quiet departure, wishing him well, and headed up between black peaks in the direction his thoughts had shown her, toward the lake of fire. Torc shadowed her unseen, hunting, returning now and again or speaking to her from a distance. A silent journey back .into the wild mountains.
When Torc returned from her hunt at midmorning, she lay waiting for Skeelie stretched out in a patch of sunlight between black, angled boulders, licking blood from her muzzle. Two fat rock hares lay by her side. For your noon meal, sister. In the sharp daylight, Skeelie could see plainly that Torc had recently nursed cubs. Torc raised her head. My cubs are dead. They were small and helpless. I had gone to hunt.
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