Meatha’s command was sharp. The wolf bell, Lobon! Use the power you carry!
But he had no chance, for the lizards were drawing away. Almost as quickly as they had come, they were gone, a stutter of wings then a black flock like huge birds against the moonwashed sky.
Why? What had called them away?
The stallion came to earth. Lobon slid down. The dark stallion who carried Meatha winged to earth and she slipped down, to rest her head against the horse’s withers. Ere’s two moons hung like half-closed eyes in an empty sky. Lobon stared at Meatha.
“Why did they leave? It was Kish guiding them. Why would she call them off?”
“She never meant for them to attack,” she said with certainty. “They—can’t you feel it? She can hardly control them. She meant only to follow us. She has sensed something—something . . .” She frowned, groping to put vague images together. “She has sensed something—that I have sensed, Lobon.” She was trembling with the need to See more clearly. What was it? So close, so urgent yet so hard to See. “Something that has lain in my thoughts. Something Anchorstar knew,” she whispered. “Kish senses it.” She turned to look away in the direction the lizards had disappeared. “Kish means to follow us, Lobon. She thinks we will seek—that we . . .”—she caught her breath—“. . . that we know where the eighth stone lies!”
They stared at one another. Slowly, frowning, she began to pull knowledge out of the deeper reaches of her mind, reaches touched by Anchorstar. Slowly a vision began to unfold, the vision Anchorstar had given her: a green valley and the crystal dome. A white-haired child. And, as if she had forgotten half the vision, a sense of power now couched beneath the crystal dome: power that could be only one thing.
“A stone lies there,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He Saw the vision as clearly as she. The wolves Saw it. A shard of the runestone beneath a crystal dome in the center of a bright green valley.
“Kish sees it, too,” Meatha said.
“She means to follow. She means to see us find the stone, and then . . . then . . .”
She reddened, swallowed. “Then see our child born. Take the stones and our child.” She felt a stab of pain as if, indeed, there were a child, tender and helpless child so very vital to Ere. And now she felt pain and shame at having taken the stones from Carriol, pain at her self-deception. And she saw in Lobon’s eyes the knowledge of his own self-deception. She felt his shame at having so long ignored the truth of what he must do, and what his life must mean.
She touched his shoulder. He put his arms around her, rested his brow against her hair, and they knew as one the blind, twisted paths they had both followed, so willful, so dangerous for Ere. Something of their spirits joined in that moment that could never again be parted.
Something much dearer, much stronger than Kish could ever create with her spells.
At last they stepped apart without speaking.
Crieba had gone to hunt. Feldyn watched them drowsily as they gathered sticks for firewood among the sparse, low bushes. The winged ones were scattered across the rounded butt of mountain, grazing the thick grass greedily. There were no trees for shelter here, only stunted bush. The mountain was ancient, long ago worn nearly flat—though still it rose higher than the surrounding peaks. Only two peaks, to the south, were higher. Eken-dep with her glacier, and the peak that both were sure was Tala-charen, for still a power like a voice reached out to them from that cone-like mountain.
When the fire was burning well, Meatha went to stand alone where the mountain dropped off into space.
How were they to find the crystal dome? In what place lay the green valley? She had had no sense of its direction. And if they found it, could they avoid leading the warrior queen there?
And how were they to get the six stones that Kish herself possessed?
Quietly, with all the strength she could muster, she reached out to Tala-charen and tried to draw its power into herself. But no strength touched her; she could not make herself feel stronger. In desperation she reached beyond Tala-charen to Carriol, for she needed Anchorstar now; he must speak to her.
But she could get no sense of him. She stood vainly trying for some minutes, then suddenly, sharply, she Saw the white-haired child. Jaspen. Her name was Jaspen. She Saw the stone itself then. A long shard of jade lying in the child’s curled hand.
But where? Where was the crystal dome? Where dwelt Jaspen?
When nothing more came, she turned away, swallowing. Never once had there been a sense of Anchorstar. Only the disembodied vision. She went slowly back to the fire and sat down close to Feldyn, seeking the wolf’s strength, seeking comfort. Feldyn laid his head in her lap. She leaned over him, stroked his cheek, then leaned her forehead against his, trying not to cry. The stone in the vision seemed so close. But where? Where?
TEN
Lobon woke to bright moonlight and to the howl of wolves. He sat up, could see Feldyn and Crieba beyond the camp, silhouetted against moon-silvered clouds, gazing off toward the southeast. He tried to sense what they sensed and could not. They raised their muzzles again in wails that shattered the night. Meatha woke and came closer to the fire. The winged ones stirred, lifted their heads in alarm, spread their wings ready for flight; then at the wolves’ reassurance, they settled down once more. Lobon scowled. What was this all about? But already the two wolves were returning. Feldyn nuzzled him and took his arm between sharp teeth as he was wont to do when he was in high spirits. Our brothers speak to us, Lobon, our brothers descended from Fawdref. We feel more than their strength now, we hear their voices clearly. Feldyn stretched and gazed again toward Carriol. They battle the Kubalese now alongside Carriol’s warriors, to defend the border of Carriol. The wolf’s golden eyes were filled with intense and mysterious promise. Wolves of our pack battle the dark, Lobon. And they speak to Crieba and me. They know the crystal dome, where lies a shard of the runestone. They know the vision Meatha carries.
Meatha caught her breath. “Can they show us?” But already she, like Lobon, was being pulled into the vision of the small green valley with its crystal dome; but now they Saw it from a wider vantage. Saw it was surrounded by dunes and by vast reaches of sand. “The high desert,” Meatha breathed. And behind the valley on one side rose a line of mountains, and higher peaks behind these with five sharp peaks marching just beyond a vast sweep of granite, pale in the moonlight. And far behind these, another peak towered higher still, a peak shaped like Tala-charen, though different in some way that Meatha could not make out.
“Different because it’s the other side, I think,” Lobon said. “As if the crystal dome lies on the far side of Tala-charen, to the north of it—there where the desert must sweep around the end of the Ring of Fire.” He raised his eyes to her. “If that is so, then the valley lies far up in the unknown lands.”
“But we can find it now, we—”
“We have only to move across the skies above Tala-charen until we see that great slab of granite.” He rose, pulled on his boots. He did not mean to wait until morning.
“Kish will follow us,” she said.
“I hope so. She carries the stones—I don’t want her far away.” Though he felt naked without a weapon, though he would have sold his soul for sword or bow.