“Can’t you stop the fires!” Ram shouted. “Can’t you make a safe way for her! She . . .”
The Luff’Eresi roared in his mind, Cannot! We cannot do such a thing! And it is not the right of any of us to ask Telien to abandon what she is about. You must abide, Ramad! And no creature of Ere can stop a tantrum of nature! People—simple people, Ramad—believe we make the fires. We do not do that, no more than are we gods! To think we are gods makes them feel safe, for that is easier to understand than to try to understand our differences. And they think we make the fires because that is the easiest thing to believe. But humans grow, Ramad. They believe, then they question that belief. They find a new truth, then question again. They come at last, by a long painful route, to real truth. And that truth, Ramad, is more shot with wonder than ever was the myth.
Ram looked around at the light-washed bodies moving on the wind, so alien to him yet so right. “How does . . .” he began, and felt very young and unsure. “How do we know the truth when at last we find it, then? How do we, when some think each belief is truth?”
The Luff’Eresi’s laugh was a windswept roar. You prove it, Ramad. At each belief humans find ways to think they prove that belief. At last one day they will understand how to find real proof, to look at the small, minute parts of a thing and understand its nature from that. Even then, Ramad, even when he is able to prove, humans will only see the beginning of proof and think that is everything.
Ram puzzled over this and stored it away to ponder at a later time, felt awed by the thoughts it began to awaken within him. He could see Kubal now, off to his left, lit by the dropping sun. He turned, stared back toward the eastern mountains and saw smoke rising there and a stream of red lava winding down toward the Voda Cul, for there in the east, too, a mountain had erupted. Twisting around, holding a handful of mane to steady himself, he stared out beneath Dalwyn’s lifting wings to see five peaks spaced around the rim of the Ring of Fire, spewing smoke: all along the ring, then, some great underground force was belching up. He turned back, looked toward Carriol. The ruins did not seem threatened, nor the loess plains in the north. Blackcob, farther west, was the only part of Carriol that lay directly below the fires, and even there the lava was well to the north of her. Carriol’s coast lay untouched, softened in mists that rose from the sea. He longed for the peace of his cave room, with the rippling sea light washing across its ceiling, the roar of the sea like a second heartbeat. He imagined Telien there, then turned away from that thought.
They were past the mountains now and above the foothills near Burgdeeth. Ram leaned across the stallion’s neck to stare down at the grassy, empty hills, and at the great desert plain south beyond Burgdeeth that brought sharp memories. He had fled from the Seer HarThass’s apprentice across that plain, he and Tayba, he a child of eight, and Tayba caught willingly in HarThass’s web so she had nearly got him killed.
The stallion landed between rocky knolls, but the Luff’Eresi remained skyborne like a bright, swirling cloud above him. We leave you here, Ramad of wolves, but we will return. Now go you into Burgdeeth. Become Venniver’s captive there—if you believe in us, if you trust us to return, if you believe in what you want of us. Go, and allow yourself to be taken.
Ham slid down from the stallion’s back. The Luff’Eresi disappeared in a surge of iridescent light, were gone utterly; the sky was clear once more, unfractured by light, as if all matter had returned to its customary and familiar place in the world, mundane and lonely. A whole dimension had been suddenly removed, a dimension ultimately desirable. Ram stood with the stallion in the strange, lonely calm, rubbing the sleek, silvery neck. Then at last the gray horse leaped away too, to slip across winds. Ram watched him disappear, flying easterly away from Burgdeeth so he would not be seen from that place. He stared up at the mountains, stricken with a great emptiness, suddenly very much alone.
Smoke rose above the mountains like a gray smear, and there was, again, the muttering of the earth, then silence. He trembled for Telien; thought resolutely of what must be done, created a prayer for Telien that must be heard by something; somewhere there was that that could heed him, though it was not the Luff’Eresi. Then he looked down across the hills toward Burgdeeth and thought of the slave prison there and thought of facing Venniver, and his mind churned with apprehension. His memory of the slave cell, memory of Venniver’s sadistic cruelty, of Venniver’s whip across men’s backs, was not pleasant.
At last he shrugged as if to shake off demons, squared his shoulders, and began to make his way over the hills toward Burgdeeth.
The hill grass was dry and crunched under his boots. Hares leaped away. There were no trees. Occasional misshapen boulders, black and twisting, rose against the setting sun. Tangles of sablevine lay here and there, turning red to mark the dying summer. There was no sunset, the sky was strangely green as he stood on the last hill looking down on Burgdeeth. He buried the wolf bell there, deep among rocks, and covered it with earth. To become Venniver’s captive carrying the wolf bell would be to incite rage unimaginable from Burgdeeth’s dark leader.
Directly below him were some uncultivated fields, beyond them tall stands of whitebarley nearly ready for harvest, and beyond these the housegardens, running on to the back of the town. The town itself was three times as big as when Ram had left it, looked more permanent, with cobbled streets and all the stone buildings completed, where before many had risen roofless and empty above mud streets. The new temple was shockingly beautiful, all of white stone. Behind it, the Landmaster’s Set looked almost finished, with turrets and sloping roofs that hinted of rare luxury within. There was open ground before it, perhaps a parade ground, with some smaller buildings, then a high, wall around three sides and partially finished on the fourth where it would join the temple. All this stood upon what had been bare, rough land when Ram last saw Burgdeeth. The great pit had been filled in and gardens planted across it. And there, between temple and town, the town square was completed and the statue in its center even more awesome than Ram remembered: so tall, the falling sun striking behind it edging the god’s wings with light. The memory of the long years Jerthon had spent molding each piece tightened Ram’s throat. He thought of the secret tunnel beneath the statue, and wondered if he would need it in some wild escape from Venniver’s execution fire—but the Luff’Eresi would come; he had only to get himself captured.
He saw that the slave cell was gone, though the guard tower still stood. There was a garden beside it now as if someone lived there. With no slave cell, what did Venniver do with his captives? Or were captives not kept alive long enough to house in any cell? Did Venniver not keep slaves any more?
Ram saw that women and girls were working the gardens. Perhaps with enough women to do the heavy garden work, and with the building of the town nearly complete, Venniver had no need of slaves. And perhaps, after Jerthon’s rising against him and almost taking the town, he felt that the keeping of slaves was too risky.
Ram made his way across the fallow fields and through the stands of whitebarley, onto a path between the gardens. At once a woman, kneeling and half-hidden in the mawzee, looked up, saw his red hair and rose up frightened to run silently toward the Hall. Another woman slipped away and disappeared around the end of the Hall. “A Seer! A Seer comes!”