At last, as morning came with a pale whisper of light across the little window, so came the babe slipping out onto the white goat blanket Gredillon held for him and crying lustily in the bright room. At once Gredillon laid the wolf bell beside him; and at once the baby clutched at it.
Tayba fed him, exhausted and half-gone in sleep, and did not look at the boy well until she woke at midday. Then she saw with shock that he was marked, the mark of the Seer, for he had hair like flame. Hair red as sable-vine. Burning red against the white goat blanket.
Gredillon ignored Tayba’s dismay. “He is a Seer born,” she said triumphantly.
“A Seer born, and marked,” Tayba replied. “It can’t be my blood. I have no blood of Seers.”
“Do you not?” Gredillon looked hard at her, and again Tayba felt discomfort, some knowledge forcing itself into her mind that she did not want there. Angrily she put it away from her.
“And why must he have red hair? Not all Seers are so marked!”
“I grant you, he will be easily known for what he is unless he is disguised. All Seers are not so marked, but all with red hair are surely Seers. Well, we must take care of that when the time comes.” Gredillon raised her face to the slanting light of the westerly sun that flooded the room, then touched the wolf bell that stood now beside the baby’s sapling crib. “What is that sullen look, young woman? You do not know, or even care, what you have borne here. This child—this child and the mystery he seeks may well reshape the history of Ere!” And without consulting Tayba, “You will name him Ramad, Ramad means ‘Of the Mountain,’ and surely this child is of the mountain. He is a love child—a spite child—conceived and born on Scar Mountain.”
Tayba held the baby close to her. Ramad? Ram? It seemed a strange name. She stared at Gredillon. “Who are you? How can you take the liberty even of naming him? What—what do you intend for him? Why should you . . . ?” And suddenly she felt the agony the babe would one day know, born a Seer—born to rule or to be killed by Seers. And she held him and nursed him tenderly then and loved his small, helpless body that curved so easily to her own. But she stared past him to Gredillon. “Who are you?” she repeated.
“Who am I? I come out of Pelli,” Gredillon said, “where the Seers rule so strongly. From this mountain I have watched the Seers of Zandour grow stronger, after generations of weakness. Soon again they will be as strong as the Pelli an Seers. As cold and unbending. One day soon Seers may rule all the coastal countries.” She rose to slice cold meat for Tayba, and new bread, and watched the girl eat as if she had not seen food in days. “There is little love between the Zandourian Seers and the Pellian, but their ways are too much alike for comfort. The simple days on Ere are past, young woman. The days when there were no nations, but only roving tribes with the land between falling to one group then another, then belonging to no one as the volcanoes swept down.
“Even the days when Zandour ruled all the coast clear to Sangur was a simple time compared to what lies ahead. Though those rulers were strong indeed, with the cult they brought upon Ere.” She looked down at Ram. The baby was staring at her intently, as if the sound of her voice stirred him.
“Well, the volcanoes helped end that rule. But now the Seers grow stronger again and begin to band together. All but the Seer of Pelli. He does not band with anyone. He is close in spirit to the old Zandourian rulers—he would take the coast if he could, as Zandour once did. And those Seers who are of goodness will continue to be driven out or killed.” She took the babe from Tayba then. “But this child—mind my words, young woman. This baby will one day help to bring together those Seers who cling to the good. He will, if no evil defeats him, bring a force of great wonder back into Ere, a force that will aid all men of goodness.” She stared at Tayba coldly. “Who am I? I am no one. I am one who cares.” Then she said, as if reluctant to speak of it, “I am of Herebian blood and also of the blood of Seers; the blood of the wild, raiding Herebian tribes that would have raped and murdered everyone in Ere if they could have managed it—and the blood of the Cherban Seers, some of whom hold great good and some of whom lust after evil as surely as the Herebian ever did. Perhaps I feel, because of my mixed blood, a need to see a stop to the evils, a need to help against the darkness.”
Tayba finished her meal in silence and accepted the baby from Gredillon. Too many thoughts crowded her mind. She settled Ram beside her for sleep. This tiny newborn thing—how could Gredillon speak of his changing all of Ere? That was ridiculous. The woman was quite mad. He was only a baby.
But Ram grew into a handsome, sturdy boy, healthy as a young animal, and when he was of an age to learn, Gredillon taught him his letters. Then she taught him the ancient runes of the gods that few men of Ere could decipher. She taught him the myths of Zandour and Aybil and of the coastal countries, and of Carriol and the high desert tribes. She bade Tayba sit at the lessons, though she was an unwilling, fidgeting student who gazed off toward Zandour and thought unruly thoughts. Ramad listened well and was embarrassed by his mother’s inattention, and by the sense of her thoughts that he caught and did not understand.
In time, Gredillon taught young Ram the skills to roam out of his mind into the minds of others, the minds of men down in Zandour, simple men at first whose thoughts were easiest to enter. Ram didn’t like that much. He found the minds of men cruel and unhappy. And the Seeing was never constant, often it would not come at all as was the nature of the art, so that Ram might spend days reaching out in vain. A small boy’s patience, even a small Seer’s patience, has its limits. But Gredillon’s own patience never flagged. She nurtured Ram’s Seer’s skills and built on them. She made him know that his salvation, his very life, lay only in the talents he could master.
She taught him the herbs and the simple potions, too, and taught these to Tayba and made her pay attention. Tayba and her child learned to find and gather and dry the herbs of Scar Mountain, and to use them.
Then Gredillon taught them the sword. She drilled them in mock battles until both Tayba and Ram were near exhaustion; and this practice held Tayba’s attention, pleased her. Then at last Gredillon began to teach Ram the use of the wolf bell, though there was little need to teach him. The boy was drawn to the bell, and quickly he became skilled with it. There were no wolves on Scar Mountain in those days, but soon enough Ram could call down the foxes and jackals. The foxes came slipping close to rub against his legs and eat from his hand, coy and appealing, with pink-tongued smiles that made Ram laugh. But the jackals were sly and ugly. Big, rangy animals, gaunt and slit-eyed, that hung their heads and looked up at Ram menacingly. They frightened Tayba. She went tense while Ram held them with the bell’s power, and when he loosed them they fled and did not hang back to clown as the foxes would.
At these times Ram seemed not a child. Scarce six years of life he had, then seven, but always when he brought the wild animals down to him, the man Ram would one day be shone out, calm and sure. His small boy’s face was filled, then, with light, with a strong intensity that spoke of power—and drew only unease from Tayba. Once when the jackals had fled, she stared after their slinking shadows and said crossly, “Why do you want to call them? They—they make me so uneasy.”
“They are brother to the wolf, Mamen. One day I will call wolves.” He turned away from her to stare out over the mountain, and she pretended she did not see the hurt in his face, see his disappointment in her.
He looked back at last. “One day,” he said, unsmiling, “I think the wolves will save you.”
“How could wolves save me?” But at his words she hastily pushed something away that rose far back in her mind, a picture of wolves leaping, a wild unbidden thought that she did not want, that could not be. There was nothing in her, nothing, that could call forth a vision; she had not the blood for that.
“I don’t know how they will save you, Mamen. But it comes into my mind that one day they will. It is the same as the visions of the gods. I See, but I don’t understand—yet. One day I will un
derstand.”
She looked at him, her hand shaking. “Does—does Gredillon know you have visions of gods?”
“She knows. I see the winged gods. . . .” His eyes were alight now, eager. “They only seem half-horse and half-man, they are nothing like either. They are so beautiful!” The exalted expression in Ram’s dark eyes made her catch her breath. She sat down beside him on the boulder and touched his red curling hair and shivered. She wished—but what good did it do to wish? He was as he was. She could not change that
“I see the gods in the old cities. In Opensa and Carriol and Owdneet,” he said with wonder. “I see how the cities were, the mountains carved with bowers and caves. And, Mamen, men dwelled there with the gods. Seers like me, Seers. . . .” He stared up at the sky. She watched him and knew, bitterly, that he belonged to this more than to her. To this wildness, to the Seeing of gods. He stared past her, puzzling. “The gods dwell in one path of air, and the Seers in another. But they dwell together. I do not fully understand—yet It is like the fish Marga in the sea and the bird Otran in the air. They speak to each other, but each lives in its own world. Only—it is the same world.” He frowned, trying to work it out, looked possessed by this. Why was it so important to him? She wished they had never come to Gredillon, never seen the wolf bell. That bell—and Gredillon’s teachings—led him into worlds she could not touch, made him dream precarious dreams. He would be better off without it, might even be a normal boy and forget he was born a Seer.
He put his arm around her waist, leaned close against her, was so tender suddenly and sweet. She loved the little boy smell of him, his smooth bright hair—but wished it were dark instead of red. She held him close, loving him and wishing to change him.
He took her face in his small hands, was so close his dark eyes were the whole world. “I would not be better off,” he said, reading her thoughts so easily. “I am eight years old, Mamen. If we had not come here, I would be. . . . Without Gredillon to show me, I would not know what is inside of me, or what to do about it.” His whole being had grown fiercely intense. “I do not ask you to change, Mamen. I do not ask you to keep yourself from the trips you make at night down the mountain when you—when you are unhappy. When you think I am sleeping and cannot know.”
Shame rose in her like a tide. She wanted to look away and could not, he held her with his knowing gaze. She saw in his eyes knowledge far beyond a child’s knowledge. “I. . . .” She swallowed and turned away then, and could deny nothing. Could not deny that in the night when her own inner turmoil, when her terrible need became unbearable, she would slip away to follow the dark path down the mountain and go into the drinking halls and go with men into the night. Men who warmed her and made her whole again so she could return quietly, at last, to the mountain.
Gredillon never spoke to her of this. Her disapproving looks the next morning were always quite enough. And now here was Ram confronting her so bluntly she wanted to scream at him.
He hugged her again. “It’s all right, Mamen, I. . .” but he did not finish, stopped abruptly to stare past her, down the mountain. She rose to look, but saw only sky and the empty rock, and Zandour lying like a toy city below.
But Ram saw something, looked cold suddenly, and white.
“What is it? Ram. . . ?”
“A rider is coming. He is maybe two days away. A man—a man riding out of Pelli. A man . ..” He searched her face. “He is a man you know well. A man with yellow hair.”
Her heart leaped. EnDwyl. EnDwyl was coming.
“He is—he is the man who is my sire.”
EnDwyl was coming for her. Coming to, take them away, to care for her. . . .
“No, Mamen. He does not come for you.” He went to stand by some boulders where the land fell abruptly. “He comes to the mountain for me.” He turned to face her. “To take me away to Pelli. He would take me by force to Pelli. The Seer of Pelli has sent him—the dark Seer.” There was growing fear in his eyes. He stood silent for some moments as if listening, then said hesitantly, “They—they would make a ruler of me. Whether or not I want it. I will have no choice in the matter, if EnDwyl finds me.”
“I wouldn’t let him take you. I—”
“What could you do? He is stronger. You—you have no power against this man.” His knuckles were white. “Don’t you understand! The Seers of Pelli are forced to rule, are twisted. Their minds are all twisted. . . .” He stepped so close to the steep drop she gasped, reached to pull him back. He scowled, turning from her. “They need—there is something about me they want. Something besides just that I am a Seer.” He looked puzzled, fearful. “I will not go. And you will not make me go. I will not be their slave so that you—so you can live in comfort, Mamen!”
She stared at him, turning sick at something in herself, at the sudden truth he had touched. “Get Gredillon,” she said coldly. “Go and get her! She is in the field above the garden.”
Gredillon made the plan, took Tayba’s silver and went down the mountain into Zandour, to return the next morning leading a pack pony that bore a small, closed burial coffin on its back, the dirt still clinging.
They carried the coffin up beyond the garden. Gredillon pried up the lid and applied ironroot dye to the hair of the corpse until it shone bright red. Then she closed the coffin and buried it and made a wooden marker. Ram said, “We must hide the pony. The Seer of Pelli saw this place, the house and the garden, has made EnDwyl see it. EnDwyl knows we had no pony when he left Pelli. He will wonder why we do now.”
“We will hide her,” Gredillon said, “inside the mountain, just as you will be hidden.” So they stored dry grasses deep in a cave that opened from inside the stone house, and when EnDwyl was halfway up Scar Mountain, Ram took the pony there, hid in darkness, and Saw in his mind the approach of the man who was his sire.
Tayba stood alone in the doorway watching EnDwyl come around the last turn of the path, his horse sweating from the climb. His cape was gray with the grime of travel, his boots wrinkled and misshapen from long wear. He reined in his mount. The dropping sun touched his pale hair, his ice blue eyes. He watched Tayba intently. His eyes on her upset her, she turned away and busied herself drawing water as she might for any traveler. When she handed the mug up, his look made her remember.
He did not speak, but drained the mug in one swallow. At last he said coldly, “You have a child of me.” His abruptness shocked and hurt her. “He is a Seer born. I have come for him.”
He was so sure of himself, sitting there on the fidgeting mount. “I had a child,” she said quietly. “He is dead. Ram is dead.” She saw his eyes, not believing her, and her temper rose. “And even if he were alive, he—he would not be your property! You deserted us both when I—when. . . .” She dissolved into tears, half with true emotion at her desertion and half with the artful deceit she had practiced, turned away from him weeping and stricken with emotions she could not really sort out.
“You lie! My child is not dead!” He dismounted in one motion and took her by the shoulder. “Dead how? Not my son!”
“He is dead.” Her voice faltered. “My baby—Ramad died on the mountain. He fell from the mountain.”
“You’re lying! The boy was not dead when I left Pelli, the Seer of Pelli saw him. My son was born a Seer. No Seer would fall from a mountain.”
His anger was of such power she could hardly hide her fear. “It is a long ride from Pelli. It is many days ride since any Seer saw Ram alive. Yes, EnDwyl, he would have been a Seer. But a Seer, too, can fall from the mountain.”
EnDwyl hobbled his horse with such haste the animal snorted and reared. He flung past her into the stone house and began to tear it apart in his search, scattering and breaking the frail bells, throwing the bedding on the floor, ripping open cupboards. He found Ram’s small clothes and cast these onto the table. “You keep the clothes of a dead boy?”
“It’s all I have of him! It’s all I have left of him!” She grabbed up Ram’s tunic and trousers and clutched th
em to her.
“Where is his grave, woman? Where is Ramad’s grave?”
It was then that Gredillon spoke from the doorway, the low sun behind her making her white hair a halo, hiding her face in shadow.
“Can’t you see what you’re doing to her! The girl hasn’t eaten, has been beside herself with grief. I’ve done my best with her, and now you come along and undo it, now she will grieve herself to sickness again.”
“The grave, old woman. Where is my son’s grave?”
“It’s there beyond the herb yard. Past those three outcroppings, by the zayn tree,” Gredillon said angrily.
When EnDwyl had gone Tayba clutched Gredillon’s shoulders. “Will he believe it? He could have heard in the town that you bought a coffin, a body—”
“He did not hear such.”
“But the earth is raw where we buried it, new turned and—”
“The earth is covered with wet leaves, the same as the garden.”
Tayba waited in terror for EnDwyl to return.
And in the dark cave, Ram clung to the pony, his fear of EnDwyl like a sickness as he felt the man’s relentless, evil searching. Clearly, he saw EnDwyl take up a garden spade and unearth the little coffin and open it to examine the wrapped, moldering body. Ram clung to the pony where the animal stood quiet in the unfamiliar dark, and each was comforted by the other. The pony nibbled at his tunic, responding to the child’s soft touch and quick whispers.
In those moments, standing frightened in the darkness, Ram knew his father deeply, and hated him. And he felt Tayba’s fear of the man, and felt her desire for him in spite of fear. And that vision gave the child little comfort
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