He could find no opening among the boulders and crevices, there was no cleft that might lead him through into the valley. As he searched, the mountains to the west rumbled again, spoke long trembling oaths deep inside their bellies, so he was distracted with sudden fear for Telien. He continued to search, but could see clearly only Telien’s face, was distraught thinking of her danger if the mountains exploded in fire.
He had no sense of being watched, no normal Seer’s quickening to the sense of another observing him, so skilled was the Seer who stood half-hidden in shadow against the stone cliff. When at last the figure stirred, lifted a hand, Ram started violently.
The man, sun-browned against brown stone, clad in brown robes like the stone, was hardly visible. When he moved, calling attention to himself, Ram stared, startled, drew his sword in reflex so its tip touched the tall man’s belly; but he looked into the face of the tall Seer, felt the sense of him, and lowered his sword, grinning almost sheepishly. This man meant him no harm. He was—he was as pure and unsullied as if he were himself a sort of god. Ram stood with lowered sword studying the man. He was old, his face thin and lined, his nose very prominent. The lid of one eye drooped. His beard and locks were stained with a ruddy hue that must once have been red as Ram’s own, but was pale now.
Ram knew at once the man’s name was Pender, knew he had come here to guide him; knew, with sudden shyness, that the gods waited his coming, felt utterly ignorant suddenly, as inept as a baby, leaden-tongued. So close to the gods now. So close. Felt a sudden fear of going on; but he must go on, and quickly. Must, when he entered Eresu, turn all his power to helping the battle in Carriol before ever he could turn to another mission.
The old man, watching him, said suddenly and abruptly, “Try now, Ramad. I will show you, help you.” And Pender gave him, with sudden jolting clarity, a vision of the battle in Carriol, so powerful a vision that Ram felt the grim determination of the Seers as they battled the Hape. He held the wolf bell, felt his own force grow within him; saw the runestone glowing in Tayba’s hands. He reached out with the council to try to turn the dark, saw silent creatures slithering among buildings, saw Jerthon’s battalion and the dark monster flying above them, its claws outstretched like knives; then saw Jerthon’s men fighting it, and his spirit fought beside them. Saw blood flow and terrified horses rearing and falling as the Hape swung low on buzzard wings, saw Skeelie start forward, and Tayba grab her wrist. Men and women were streaming out of the tower to do battle with the Hape. Ram was with them, felt the Seers’ total strength forcing upon the monster, the power of the stone like fire; felt the Hape unbalancing at last; saw Jerthon’s soldiers strike and slash as its beating wings struck them, its beak struck them; their horses were wild, cringing down, spinning and falling. Riders leaped clear, swords flashing. Ram saw Jerthon kick his mount into submission as he thrust his sword again and again at the bird-Hape, at the dark beak and neck, and Ram thrust with him—until at last the Seers’ powers began to weaken the Hape and confuse it, and for a moment its senses went awry.
A silent moment, the forces balanced. But then the Hape’s powers surged stronger in a last dying frenzy, and suddenly it was three-headed, the horned cat’s head lashing out with teeth like knives, the man’s head laughing, the eel’s head tearing a soldier’s face; but the heads even as they battled weakened in the strength of their images, came and went in clarity and vigor as the creature clawed at the horses so they fell stumbling among their fellows on bloodstained cobbles. The Hape rose surging with fury as the soldiers beat it back; it was mad with their attack now, flung men like toys as others cut and flailed its body. In the portal of the tower, the silent council of Seers hardly breathed in their terrible concentration, and the powers balanced, tilted—Ram brought his own power stronger, sweating, calling the power of the wolf bell; buoying the power of the Seers until at last the Hape weakened again, wavered, swung low in the air. Soldiers grabbed its wings, pulled it down; it thrashed, then it was suddenly wingless, was only a snake writhing and lashing among them, the leathery wings they had pinioned quite gone. They fell on it, striking steel blows, crowding it in their fury until it turned away screaming—but it carried the body of a man in its jaws.
It moved fast, thrashing, crowded on all sides by hard-riding soldiers, would not drop the screaming man, lunged out between buildings toward freedom.
But it was dying, writhed twisting in death as it fled. It lay still at last, in a field, the wounded soldier crumpled in its jaws, the soldiers’ swords thick in it as quills, their spent horses resting over it, blowing. And behind them all of Carriol advanced, horses foaming in fear, men and women on foot with weapons raised. The Seers, Ram, brought every power they possessed down through the runestone then, to destroy it utterly.
But it was not destroyed utterly. Suddenly the Hape was no animal but only an essence of dark, a shapeless darkness growing thinner and thinner until grass could be seen through patches of melting hide and blood. And then it was not there, was only a blowing blackness on the wind. Hape was the wind, was a darkness flung between earth and cloud.
The Hape had fled, and the soldier lay dead on the grass, his blood drying in the cold sun.
Ram saw less clearly now, as in a dream. Saw Skeelie running through the bloody streets to embrace her brother, Saw people surging out of the tower to tend the wounded. Saw Seers’ white robes smeared with blood, women and children kneeling over bodies. He saw Tayba standing alone in the portal holding the runestone in her shaking hands, saw Jerthon look up at her across half the town, his green eyes kindling, saw him go to her striding through blood, past wounded men and animals, past Skeelie, hardly seeing her. Jerthon leaped the three steps to the portal and took Tayba in his arms. Ram felt Jerthon’s love for her, and he felt her fear and trembling and her uncertainty.
Ram stood for a long time after the vision faded. So strong a vision. His gaze returned to Pender, to the drooping eye, the thin, lined face. “And,” Ram said, choking, “what—what of Telien?”
‘Telien—Telien I cannot show you,” Pender said. “You have no need, she must find her own way among the Ring of Fire. And you must abide, Ramad of wolves. Now you have seen the Hape at last, Ramad. Would you defeat the Hape?”
“I would, Pender. How—But can I defeat it?”
“Only you, Ramad of Zandour, only you can answer that.” The old man scratched his chin briefly. “And if you do not defeat it, what of Carriol, of Ere?” Pender turned without waiting for an answer and led Ram up along a nearly invisible ledge and into a crevice behind outcroppings of stone.
They entered into absolute darkness, continued to climb, and rose at last into an underground cave lighted from above by an opening where the sun stood flaring down.
Beneath their feet was an immense slab of stone hollowed underneath by the river, the river flowed beneath them into a triangular pool reflecting perfectly the high noon sun.
The cave walls were carved into wavelike shapes by long past action of the river, and the river’s flow now cast the sun’s flicking light back upon these, so the whole cave seemed to be moving underwater. A memory came sharp to Ram, of another cave filled with light, and he was nine years old; he and Skeelie stripped naked were swimming in just such a light-struck pool, in a cave in the old city of Owdneet. Pender turned to look at him.