The wolves, crouched to leap, held motionless, waiting for Ram to bid them.
EnDwyl looked coldly at Ram. “If I die, your mother will die.” Blood oozed from his side. “If the wolves touch me, she dies.” His pale hair was ribboned with sweat. He shivered. Ram tried to get up, readied to touch Fawdref s shaggy neck, was so dizzy that Fawdref blurred. He gripped the bell and spoke quietly, and the great wolf growled deep in his throat, did not take his eyes from EnDwyl.
“She will die, boy.”
Ram saw the fear in Tayba’s eyes. He saw her swallow, saw the blood soaking her tunic. He looked at the fear in EnDwyl that was different from Tayba’s fear, at the evil in EnDwyl. He touched Fawdref’s shoulder and felt the massive bone, felt Fawdref’s impatience, felt the tenseness of the pack of wolves—then felt Fawdref’s sharp dismay as he bid the animals draw back.
“Let her live,” he said to EnDwyl, “but go quickly. I can’t hold them long. The Seer is dead and your horses are dead, and they want you now.”
EnDwyl stared at Ram with hatred, his sword steady against Tayba’s throat. “You may be my son, but I waste no love on you. If you send the wolves for me after she is freed, you will die. The Seer of Pelli knows you have killed his apprentice. If I die too, he will send an army to kill you. An army no wolf could stand against.”
Ram smiled scoffingly. But he knew with dark certainty that what EnDwyl said was true. He crouched there, dizzy, and could feel a fury rise to him out of Pelli colder and more brutal than anything he had ever encountered. “Go in safety,” he said, swallowing. There was a bitter taste in his throat. The ground spun, he saw blood. He must send the wolves away. He saw EnDwyl go, knew that he caught the exhausted pony up there in the woods. He bid the wolves away then, as the earth spun under him. . . .
When EnDwyl had gone, the dark wolf stood staring after him with cold eyes, then bent to lick Ram’s face. Finally he turned and left Ram, his pack slipping up the plain beside him as silent as the cloud shadows they melted into, silent as the black boulders that shielded them from the town. Fawdref looked back once in a wordless promise that touched Ram even as Ram’s mind swirled in blackness.
*
The four old women were walking slowly downriver filling reed baskets with dolba leaf and evrole and lemon-tongue. They talked incessantly; or, three of them did, gathering exceedingly slowly, gossiping about nothing until Dlos, who led them, thought she would go mad. You couldn’t hear your own thoughts with those three prattling. She drew ahead, finding clumps of herbs the others might miss and marking them with rags tied to bushes. She was quite alone when she saw the two bodies, one bleeding, saw the gutted horses beside the boulder.
She saw the red roots of the little boy’s hair in one quick glance and knew that if the child were alive now, he might not be alive for long with that hair. Quickly she turned back, distracting the three slow cronies, got them turned aside to a bed of cherba they had missed. “I will search for perrisax for soap,” she said shortly. “Return here when your baskets are full. Be sure you pick all the cherba—but leave the roots! Don’t pull up the roots!”
She watched the women amble away, then hurried up the path and knelt by the little child. He was so cold. There was an ugly bruise on his forehead, going purple, swollen and bloodied under the skin. She covered him with her shawl, pulled off her woolen underskirt, and dipped it into the cold river to make a compress. She chafed his hands, trying to bring the blood up, to stir him. He must be seven or eight. A sturdy child. The red hair showed plainly where the roots had grown out beneath the dye. She pulled the compress on his forehead up to cover his hair and bound it.
At last she turned to the girl, a dark, stirring beauty of a girl, the kind that would light men’s souls—or goad them to hate and killing. Dlos examined the ugly wound in her side and washed and dressed it with dolba leaf hastily ground between stones. She dug into the pack on one of the dead horses, found clean cloth, and made a bandage.
The cloth in the pack was man’s clothing, this was a man’s pack. She examined the other pack, thick with blood and half-hidden under the dead, twisted animal and saw that it too had belonged to a man. No woman’s clothes or child’s things here. She found dye in that pack though, dye made from sweetburrow paste, a small stone crock of it She glanced again at the child. There was no doubt the child was a Seer. Had this rider, then, tended the Seer child, kept his hair dyed, seen to him? And where was that rider? She removed the boy’s bandage, opened the crock, applied the dye quickly until the roots no longer showed, then dropped the crock into her tunic pocket where it would not be seen. She wiped the dye from his forehead, being careful of the swelling bruise. Now his hair seemed as dark as the girl’s. Was this young woman his sister? His mother? Where were the men whose packs and horses these were? Surely there had been two men. What had happened in this meadow? Dlos rose and began to search.
She found the man at once, lying mangled beside the horses, his body nearly hidden by torn hindquarters. She looked more closely and saw the red roots along his hairline. His tunic and the amulet he wore were those of an apprentice Seer of Pelli. There were coarse animal hairs caught in his belt. She found the tracks of the great wolves among the gore and glanced toward the path. The cursed women would be coming.
Quickly she stripped the Seer’s tunic and amulet from his body and buried them in leaves, then applied the dye to his hair. That finished, she began to search downriver for the second man but found only the hoofprints of a third and smaller horse going away at a gallop, the marks very deep as if the animal carried a heavy weight.
She returned to the girl and child and the mangled body, to find the three women staring as uncertainly as she had expected. She put them to work stripping the dead horses of packs and saddles, of bridles. No sense leaving good leather for wolves to chew.
When she knelt to lift the child, she felt a hard lump beneath him. It was a bronze bell; she shielded it instinctively from the three women until she could look at it more closely. The rearing bitch-wolf made her stare and shiver. Suddenly and wildly the old fables from Pelli and Zandour filled her head, making her catch her breath.
What was this child, to carry such magic? Or had the older Seer carried it and the boy simply fallen where it lay? But, she thought puzzling, the wolves had attacked only the two men. They had not touched the girl or the child. That was a sword wound in the girl’s side, not the jagged tear a wolf makes.
Surely the wolves had moved to the call of this bell. Why had a Seer of Pelli been traveling here with such a boy? And why did the Seer lie dead? She knelt there staring at the boy in her arms. What sort of child was this that she held so close to her? And what havoc would he create if she brought him to Burgdeeth?
Dlos touched the child’s soft cheek, shadowed by dark lashes, looked at the bloody, swollen bruise on his forehead. She raised her eyes and summoned the other women. She would need help.
*
Ram felt himself carried, saw bare branches swing close above his face; then suddenly he fell away from the light sky into darkness again and was dropping down and down. There were voices fading. Once lightness blazed, and he saw his mother’s face close to him, rocking; the falling came again, tumbling him. He was so dizzy. He fell deep down beneath the earth into a cave so black. A man lay there. He lifted his head and whispered, and his face was thin and pale. The walls of the cave were painted with pictures of wolves leaping and snarling, bloodthirsty wolves that made Ram cry out in fear. He whispered, “Fawdref!” And didn’t know what he said, or why. The man held up his hands, and they had turned to white bone. He shouted, “Bastard! A bastard born. . . .” And he was a skeleton, white bone lying in rags. His skull gleamed. The wolves on the cave walls waited.
Ram felt hands lift him, felt himself covered, relaxed into warmth. But something pulled and lifted him away from the hands, lifted his very soul and plunged it back into the blackness so he was torn away, his mind torn from his body.
He wa
s in the cave again, and a man in silver sat high on a dais looking down at him and laughing. The painted wolves crouched, slavering. Ram pushed past them into the very stone with all his strength, searching for the real wolf’s body, saw Fawdref leap snarling at the painted wolves as they came off the walls to slash and tear. Ram cried out, saw light come. The wolves all disappeared.
There was a plain stone wall beside him, low rafters overhead, the smell of mawzee grain. He could see the arch of a door. He came awake at last and clear in his mind and felt himself laid down and the cover drawn up over him. He stared up at a face, a wrinkled old woman.
Then the man in silver pulled at him insistently. Ram cried out, felt hands soothe him, heard a voice trying to reach him. He saw a child’s face close to him and wanted to touch her, then fell away and all was terror, the painted wolves leaping again and the man in silver striking out at him so he clung to Fawdref. He saw blood on the wolf and was dizzy, so dizzy. . . .
THREE
Tayba woke. She ached, every bone ached. She was in a dim room cluttered with objects she could only slowly make out. Kegs and tools, a loom. Cobwebs hung thick from the low rafters. The room smelled of dust and of grain. The one small window showed dull gray sky, whether of morning or evening she could not tell. Her mouth tasted stale. She tried to sit up and gasped at the pain, remembered EnDwyl’s sword ripping her side, blood flowing; she touched her side carefully and felt bandages. Then she remembered EnDwyl standing over her, his sword at her throat, and Ram—where was Ram? EnDwyl had hit him, had. . . . Swept with panic, she pulled herself up so pain tore through her side and stared around the room. She could not see Ram, could see nothing but the jumble of kegs and tools.
Had EnDwyl taken Ram? Had EnDwyl escaped the wolves with Ram held captive? Her thoughts were dizzy and confused. She pulled herself out of the cot, leaned against the stone wall until the pain became bearable.
She was naked, her garment not in sight. She shivered in spite of the warmth of the room and pulled the blanket around her, staring dumbly at the clutter and at the iron stove in the far corner with its low blaze. Her cot was rough-split timbers, a root bin with straw hastily stuffed in to make a bed. Her blanket was thick and soft, though, and well-made. She recalled Ram again, shook her head to drive out the fuzziness, and began to search the room for him.
He was lying in a little boxlike bed wedged next to the mawzee thresher, a bed so like a child’s coffin she gasped. She knelt beside him, her stomach heaving with pain, and could feel oozing as if blood flowed from her wound. The swollen purple lump on his forehead made her feel sick. He was so pale, so very still. She laid her face against his chest and, finally, could feel the faint, welcome beating.
When she stood up she saw a square little woman poised in the doorway watching her. Tayba started to speak, then found she was unaccountably lying on the floor, the woman trying to lift her.
When she was back in bed at last, the woman held a mug for her. Tayba studied the leathery face bent over her, then drank. The taste was bitter, the liquid dark and hot. She thought she remembered that she had been given some before. By a child, perhaps? There was no one else in the room. Her pain began to subside almost at once. She felt sleepy, deliriously floating.
Morning sounds brought her awake again, the clank of buckets, a stove being stoked. Her head ached, her side was sore. She thought longingly of a tub of hot water. The little window was bright with sun now, and she could hear milk cows and the screams of chidrack fowl, the creak of wagons. A man’s voice spoke beside the window, a shadow crossed it, then some steady pounding began and she could hear the harsh shouts of men giving orders.
She must have dozed, woke feeling dizzy as if she were falling, had to pull herself fully awake with a great effort, terrified suddenly of falling into sleep again. It was quite dark, though a few faint stars showed through the little window.
What had awakened her? She lay there confused and fearful, wondering if Ram had cried out for her. She slept and woke again and was being bathed, the square old woman leaning over her. The soap was perrisax, smelled spicy. She lay enjoying the warmth and luxury of the soapy cloth washing her body, felt the bandage removed, and opened her eyes to watch the woman binding fresh cloth around her, nudging her to move now and then. She did not want to look at the wound, the thought of it made her weak.
Later she woke in darkness not knowing where she was and the pain so bad she moaned, lurched against the stone wall so she scraped her arm and then swore. She saw a candle lit, was given a draught by someone small, little hands, a child’s hands holding the mug and candle. She slept.
Then she woke at last to a morning when her senses were sharp and aware and lay watching the sun slant bright through the cobwebs that hung from the rafters. This room with its clutter of tools and furniture was entirely comforting.
The square, small woman was sitting by the window holding Ram in her lap, feeding him spoonful by spoonful as if he were a baby. Tayba rose, the ache in her side making her wince. She pulled the blanket around herself, supported herself against a barrel, then the thresher as she made her way across the room. The pain seemed to have been with her forever. She sat down on the bench close to the woman. What a wrinkled, leathery face she had; yet her mouth and eyes showed the lines of wry humor. The woman lifted Ram into Tayba’s lap, and handed her the bowl so she could feed him. But she could only sit holding his chin and staring into his dull, expressionless eyes. Was he even aware of her? He looked like a stranger; and she had forgotten his hair was black. The swollen wound on his forehead sickened her unbearably; so tender a place to be injured. She cradled him close, nearly weeping in her distress for him.
“He is better than he was,” the woman said. “It’s been all I could do to get some food down him, some herb tea.” Her hands were square and as wrinkled as her face. She wore shapeless coarsespun, a tunic over a long skirt, both dull brown in color and smelling of lanolin from the sheep.
“I am Dlos. I serve the master, Venniver, as we all do in Burgdeeth. My room is there, off this storeroom. We are behind the sculler of the Hall.”
“How did Ram and I come here? I can only remember being by the river, lying there—how long have I been in this room, how long has Ram been so hurt and sick?” She stared with growing fear at Ram’s closed, mindless expression. “Did anyone come with us? A man? Anyone . . . ?”
“I brought you here five days ago, me and three old women. There was a man with you.” Dlos studied Tayba carefully, reading her fear. “A dead man.”
“Was he . . .” Tayba’s voice caught. “Dead? Oh—was he tall and fair? Pale hair? He—”
“He was old and swarthy. Thin-faced like a rat. A Seer. An apprentice Seer of Pelli lay dead there wearing his Seer’s robes and amulet and torn to shreds by wolves. Their tracks were there—wolves that did not touch you two. I stripped him, disguised him, and buried his belongings. We do not need the trouble that a dead Seer would cause.”
Tayba’s head spun. “Disguised him?” She saw shadows on the plain and the great wolves leaping and tearing at the horses, at EnDwyl and the Seer, wolves pinning her against the boulder so she stood frozen in fear. She touched Ram’s forehead with shaking fingers and raised her eyes to Dlos. “How could you disguise a Seer, his hair. . . .” Then her eyes widened, her fingers flew to Ram’s hair, parted it, searching.
Ram’s hair had wanted dying, she had meant to dye it. Now there was no red. She stared at Dlos, her lips parted in fear.
‘The Seer carried a crock of dye. I used it on him to avoid questions about who he might be. And I used it on the boy, before the old women saw him.”
“You dyed Ram’s hair? But you—why would you disguise him?” she whispered. “We are nothing to you.”
“I have my reasons for doing what I do.” The old woman straightened the blanket around Ram’s feet. “The other man, the fair one you spoke of—perhaps he rode back downriver. I found the tracks of a third and smaller horse, carrying
a heavy load and trailing blood. Was that your horse, the small one?”
“Yes, our pack pony.” She held Ram tight to her, trying to think. “EnDwyl will return. He will follow us,” she breathed suddenly. “He will come—”
“The two men were pursuing you?” Dlos asked, puzzling. “And you and this child sought sanctuary here, where Seers are so hated? But didn’t you know . . . ?”
“I meant to keep Ram’s hair dyed. My brother—my brother Theel is here.” She looked at the older woman. “You know about us. You know what Ram is. Have you told the leader Venniver?”
“Why would I dye the boy’s hair, if I meant to tell his secret?”
“But if—if Venniver finds out, what will he . . . what will he do to Ram?”
“If the boy is found out, he will be enslaved to work the stone.” The old woman pushed back her untidy hair and glanced out the window. “Mark you, I will tell no one. I have my own reasons for keeping that promise. Now, just why were you running from a Pellian Seer and from this EnDwyl you speak of?”
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