Runestone of Eresu Read online

  “I cannot wake him, he sleeps drugged for the pain . . .” She felt Ram’s exhaustion, felt his inexplicable despair as if it were her own.

  The silence of the men was sudden and complete. Skeelie stared down at them, sick at their defeat, and behind her Ram’s voice was like death. “I can’t, Skeelie. I think—I think I don’t believe any more.”

  She turned to look at him.

  “I’m tired. I’m tired of all of it. Do you understand that?”

  “No, Ram. I don’t understand that.” She looked down at the men again, wanting to reassure them and not able. They began to sing simply and quietly, pouring their faith into words that might soothe Ram’s sleeping spirit. Ram did not stir at first. But after a few moments of the gentle song, the gentle men’s voices, he could stand no more gentleness; he stirred angrily at last and threw the goathide back.

  She supported him haltingly as he made his way toward the portal, then leaned heavily upon the stone sill. The men cheered wildly, laughed with pleasure at his presence, then went silent, waiting for him to speak. He was white as loess dust. He stood for a long moment, the blood oozing through his bandage. She thought he would speak of failure. She trembled for him, trembled for Carriol. How could he lose hope? He must not, they were not that close to defeat. These were Herebian bands, rabble, they fought. Rabble! She watched him with rising dread of the words he would speak to his men as he leaned from the stone portal.

  He shouted suddenly and so harshly that all of them startled. “Yes, victory! We are men of victory! We are a nation of victory!” They cheered again and stood prouder as if a weight were lifted. Ram’s voice was surer now. “The dark is ready for the grave! We will geld the dark, we will skewer the Pellians and bring such light into Ere as Ere has never seen!”

  They went wild. “Death to the dark ones! Death!”

  When at last they had released Ram, stronger in themselves, healed in themselves, Ram returned to his bed to lie with quick, shallow breathing, so very white. She sponged his forehead and smoothed his covers and could do nothing more. He lay quietly, staring up at her. “I have no idea in Urdd how we could skewer even one Pellian bastard, let alone pour light on what that son-of-Urdd BroogArl has wrought!” He closed his eyes and was silent for so long she thought he slept. Then he stared up at her again, his green eyes dark with more than physical pain, with a pain of the mind. “Something—there is something grown out of the Seers hatred into a force of such strength, Skeelie. Almost like a creature with a will of its own, it is so powerful.” He turned away then. But after a moment, “A power . . . a power that breathes and moves as one great lusting animal, Skeelie! That is the way I see the powers of the Seers of Pelli now.”

  She wanted to comfort him, wanted . . . but she could not comfort him. It would take another to comfort Ram. She stood washed with uncertainty. Could they defeat the Pellian Seers who ruled now the dark rabble hordes? Could they—or did Ram see too clearly a true vision of Carriol’s defeat?

  No. He was only tired, sick from the wound. Pain made him see only the grim side. She reached involuntarily to touch his cheek, then drew her hand back. She wanted to hold him, to soothe him in his pain of body and spirit, and she could not. Only another could do that.

  And that other? He might never know her. Lost in another time and in another place, Ram might never know her. Skeelie turned away from him, furious at life, seeing once again that instant when she and Ram were swept out of time itself and Ram had looked, for one brief moment, onto the face of another and had been lost, then, to Skeelie forever.

  When she looked back, he had risen and sat stiffly on the edge of his bed, seemed to be thinking all at once of something besides his pain and his own defeat. His look at her was pain of another kind. “Has there been no word of Jerthon? It is nine days since he rode to the north.” He said it with a dry unhappiness that was like a worse defeat.

  “He—no word. Nothing.” A whole band out there fighting Kubalese troops and no message, no lone soldier riding back to bring news, no message sparking through Seers’ minds to soothe Carriol’s fears and to inform. Surely farms had been ravaged, captives taken, crops burned and farm animals driven across Carriol’s western border into Kubalese lands.

  Were there, then, no surviving soldiers? With the Seer’s skills so destroyed by the dark, it was hard to know. Had Jerthon . . . oh, Jerthon could not be dead. Her brother could not be dead.

  “No message? No news, no sense of the battle, Skeelie? Can’t you . . . ?”

  “Nothing!” Skeelie snapped. “Nothing! Don’t you think I’ve tried! Don’t you think we all have!”

  “But you—Tayba has the runestone. Hasn’t she . . .” But then his frown turned suddenly from Skeelie toward the door, changed to a look of concern, and Skeelie turned to look.

  Tayba stood there, handsome even in faded coarsespun, but her dark hair wild, her cheeks pale. There was fear in her expression and something of guilt. Ram rose at once, catching his breath at the pain, and went to his mother’s side. “What is it? You . . .”

  “Joheth Browden brought a woman and two children in from his little farm north of Folkstone.” Her voice was shaking. “Brought them in the wagon. They—they were nearly starved and they—they have been mistreated. They escaped from the Kubalese, but before—before that they . . .” She seemed nearly unable to speak. “Before that, Ram—they escaped from Burgdeeth.” She stopped, was almost in tears. Her dark hair lay tangled across Ram’s arm. She swallowed. “Those little girls saw their nine-year-old sister burned to death. Burned, Ram! Burned in Venniver’s fire! In Venniver’s cursed ceremonial fire!” She pushed her face against Ram’s shoulder so her voice came muffled. “It has come, Ram. A child has been burned alive. The thing we dreaded . . .”

  Skeelie stared at them, her fists clenched, feeling Tayba’s awful dismay, and Tayba’s shame. Her own emotions were so confusing and unclear.

  Tayba had been Venniver’s woman, in Burgdeeth. Tayba had nearly killed Ram, her own son, and nearly killed Skeelie’s brother Jerthon, too, with her treachery. If she had behaved differently, Venniver would be dead now and there would be no ceremonial fires, no children dying. Burgdeeth would be free and not ruled by a false religion. Tayba was suffering all of it now again, all the guilt and terror from those days, flooding out. “We thought to stop it in time,” Tayba whispered. “And we have not. A child has burned. A child—a Seeing child . . .”

  Ram spoke at last, his voice strangely cold. “We have always known it, Mamen. We have always known it would come.” And then, bitterly, “We did not know our Seers would be blinded and unable to know when it was to happen.”

  Skeelie stood watching them dumbly, then at last she pushed by them out of the room and went down the twisting stone flights to the kitchen.

  TWO

  In the kitchen the open fire had just been fed, its flames blazed up, lighting the faces of the three frightened refugees clustered around it: a tall woman, a girl perhaps thirteen, and a very little girl who was being bathed by Dlos in the wooden tub. The woman was half-undressed and washing herself in some private ritual as if to wash away all that had been done to her. A dozen Carriolinian women were bustling about preparing food, bringing clean clothes. Skeelie knelt by the tub and took the little girl from Dlos as the old woman fetched her out. The child was covered with sores. Skeelie dried her, then began to dress her. “What is your name? Can you tell me your name?” The child would not speak. Her lank brown hair was dark from the tub.

  “She is Ama,” said her older sister. “I am Merden.” Merden had a long, thin face and lank hair like her little sister. They both looked remarkably like their mother. Little Ama spoke then, softly against Skeelie’s shoulder. “Our sister Chanet is dead in the fire. Why is Chanet dead? Why did the Landmaster burn her?”

  The older girl touched her little sister’s shoulder, stared unseeing at Skeelie with an expression that brought goose bumps. “Chanet was only . . . she was nine years old.”<
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  When Ram came to stand in the doorway, the tall young woman glanced at him, then carelessly pulled clothes around her as if she had been exposed so often to male eyes that another pair made little difference. As if her ablutions were more immediate than modesty. Ram turned away until she was dressed, then came to speak to her. Skeelie watched him in silence. He’d never begin to heal if he didn’t stay in bed, he had no more business coming down here—no more sense than a chidrack sometimes. She stared pointedly at his bloody bandages. He ignored her.

  Mawn Paula told Ram her story quickly and almost without expression, as if she held her emotions very taut within herself, afraid to let them go. She and her three little girls had been kneeling in temple when, in the middle of the ceremony, Venniver rose from the dais and came down among the benches. Without warning he reached across Ama and Merden and pulled Chanet from her seat, jerked her into the aisle and stood scowling down at her, his black beard bristling, his cold blue eyes piercing in their study of the child. The temple had been silent. Those in front had glanced behind them uneasily then stared forward again. Mawn had remained quiet, terrified for the child, fearful that the least motion, the least whisper from her would jeopardize Chanet further. After a long scrutiny, Venniver had forced the child before him up the aisle to the dais. Mawn had remained with great effort in her place. She had not let herself believe the truth, even then, that Venniver knew Chanet for a Seer, that he meant to kill her, to sacrifice her on the altar of fire, could not let herself believe it. It was only when Venniver forced Chanet with brutal blows to confess to Seer’s skills, that Mawn must believe. And even then she had sat frozen, terrified, as Venniver made the child climb the steps to the top of the dais.

  When Venniver began to tie Chanet to the steel stake, Mawn had screamed and leaped up, had run to stop him, fighting the red-robed Deacons. They tried to hold her as she bit and scratched and hit out at them, finally they had her in a grip she could not break. Ama and Merden had fought fiercely, but at last all three were held immobile and forced to remain still as nine-year-old Chanet was burned to death in the flames of Venniver’s ceremonial fire as appeasement to the gods.

  Skeelie heard the story, sick with revulsion. A child burned to death as appeasement. Appeasement to the gods. She lifted her eyes to Ram to see her hatred of Venniver reflected in his face, see her pain reflected there.

  Mawn and the two girls had escaped Burgdeeth late at night while the guards sat drinking in the Hall. They slipped down into the tunnel as soon as it was dark, the secret tunnel that no one but a Seer could know of. Then they left the tunnel again well after midnight to make their way out of Burgdeeth in the sleeping, silent hours. They took little with them but some vegetables hastily pulled from the gardens and a waterskin they had found in the tunnel.

  Ram listened intently to this, and Skeelie nearly wept, so thankful was she now for the painful years her brother Jerthon had spent digging that tunnel secretly beneath Venniver’s very nose while he was held as Venniver’s slave.

  “And then you were captured by the Kubalese?” Ram said.

  “Yes, in the hills,” Mawn said. “We were digging roots.”

  “It must have been bad.”

  “Yes. It was bad.”

  “Will you tell me what the Kubalese stockade is like? Will you tell me as much as you can about their camp?”

  “The stockade is like houses for chidrack, thick boards with space between and the roof is the same so rain comes in. The soldiers watch you undress, do—do everything. The boards are far too thick to break without tools. The herd animals are in pens close by. You are fed once a day on gruel and stale water. We were . . . we were sick much of the time. The guards . . . they didn’t open the gate, they just shoved the food through. A girl . . . she was the leader’s daughter, though he treats her badly. She slipped extra food to us and fresh water. She helped us to escape. Ama and Merden, when we were away, both knew that she was beaten for what she did.”

  “It was,” Merden said, “as if the thing that kept us from Seeing opened out all at once and we could See. All—all of a sudden. We—we didn’t want to see that. We didn’t want to see her father beat her.”

  Ram stared at her. Her voice seemed to fuzz so he could barely understand her. He was growing weak, the room swam, seemed hazy around him. The pain and bleeding were worse. “Were you—were you the only captives?”

  She hesitated at his obvious discomfort, then continued. “There were many captives. When—when Telien freed us she had the key for only a minute, when her father left it by the water trough as he ran to catch a loose horse. He had been—in our pen, making . . . been in our pen. Telien unlocked the lock then slipped it round so it looked locked. She whispered for us to wait until dark. She put the key back before he returned, and there was no time to free the others.

  “We got out after dark and went up into the hills, then we came south and east until we saw the little settlements and knew we must be in Carriol.”

  The mention of the girl Telien made a disquiet in Skeelie, though she could not think why. She had never heard of Telien, knew nothing of such a girl. But her uneven Seer’s sense reached out now to concern itself with this girl so suddenly and with such distress that Skeelie trembled. She did not understand what she felt, knew only that she was suddenly and inexplicably uneasy.

  Merden turned from combing her little sister’s hair. “Telien—Telien told us about Carriol.” She stared at Ram. ‘Telien spoke of you, of Ramad of the wolves . . .

  Skeelie stiffened.

  Merden smiled, a faint, uncertain smile. “Telien said that you would care for us, that we could make a new life here, that all who want freedom can. She spoke of the leader Jerthon, too, and of a world—a world very different from what we have known.”

  Skeelie hardly heard the child for the unease and pounding in her heart. Yet she had no reason to feel anything for a girl from Kubal. What was the matter with her? She was almost physically sick with the sense of the girl.

  Merden said quietly, “Telien said the leaders of Carriol were close to the gods. That you—that you have more powers than we do. That maybe you will be able to stop the killing in Burgdeeth.” She looked at Ram with such trust that he wanted to turn from her—or shout at her. Mawn, seeing his look, whispered diffidently, “Telien told us you command—command the great wolves that live in the Ring of Fire.”

  “No one . . .” Ram said, wincing, “no one commands the great wolves. They—they are my friends. My brothers.”

  Skeelie said uneasily, angrily, “If a girl of Kubal know such things, surely she is a Seer.” What was wrong with her, why was she bristling so?

  “No,” Mawn said, “Telien is not a Seer. She learned what she knows of Carriol, of you, from the other captives. From Carriol’s settlers taken captive. They say Carriol is the only place of freedom in all of Ere.”

  Later, when Ram had allowed himself to be helped upstairs by two of his men coming in to raid the larder Skeelie asked Merden the question that would not let her be. “What is she like? What is this Telien like?” And whet Merden looked back at her, that serious, thin, child’s face quietly reflecting, then described Telien, Skeelie could not admit to herself the terrible sudden shock that gripped her.

  “Telien has pale, long hair. She is slight and she—she is beautiful.”

  Skeelie stared, stricken. “And—and her eyes are green, are they not? Green eyes like the sea.”

  “Yes. That is Telien.” Merden watched Skeelie, puzzling. She said nothing more. Perhaps she saw in Skeelie’s face, heard in her questions, more than Skeelie intended to show.

  And Skeelie stood remembering bitterly and clearly that moment when she and Ram had, as children, stood inside the mountain Tala-charen, had felt time warp, had seen those ghostly figures appear suddenly out of time, seen the pale-haired, green-eyed girl stare at Ram with such eager recognition, with a terrible longing as if she would cross the chasm of time to Ram or die.

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sp; Was Telien that girl? Was she here now, in Ram’s own time? But this time had been only a dim, unformed future when Ram was eight. This time had not yet happened. How could—She broke off her thoughts, her head spinning.

  He had never forgotten that girl. Never. Though he had never once spoken of her.

  Was Telien that girl? Had she lived in this time? Had she traveled backward in Time to the long ago day when Ram was nine? Was she here in this time, and would Ram find her? Skeelie turned away. Had the thing that she had dreaded so long at last come to pass? She went from the kitchen in silence.

  She went down through the town to the stables, got a horse, and rode out along the sea at a high, fast gallop that left her horse spent, and at last, left her a little easier in herself. If this was Ram’s love, come to claim him, then she must learn to live with it just as she had lived with the knowledge that one day it would surely happen.

  *

  It was not until four days later, in the middle of the simple worship ceremony in the citadel, that Skeelie’s brother Jerthon returned from the battle in the north, coming quickly into citadel in his sweaty fighting leathers. A ripple of welcome went through the citadel, through the singing choir, and Skeelie wanted to run to him. She found it hard to keep singing as he sat down heavily in the back row next to Ram. Jerthon leaned against the stone wall as if he were very tired, stared up at the light-washed ceiling, and seemed to listen to the hush of the sea, to listen in sudden peace to the choir’s rising voices.

  The citadel was the largest hall in the honeycombed natural stone tower that had once been the city of the gods. Here in the citadel the winged gods and the winged horses of Eresu had come together for companionship; a meeting place, a place of solace and joy where the outcast Seers had come too, in gentle friendship. A place where the moving light, cast across the ceiling by the ever-rolling sea, seemed to hold sacred meaning; and the cresting sea made a gentle thunder like a constant heartbeat. Skeelie saw Jerthon lift his chin in that familiar sigh, then turn to stare at Ram, saw Ram speak.